Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[starman]

He chose what he saw as the best option at the time. Other engines were of questionable use and for whatever reason he didn't want to make his own engine. That latter is probably because with CryEngine he could start banging out assets straight away and pretend the demo they made was actually in-game footage.

If they could have made the game they sold in the timescale they initially sold, then CryEngine might have made sense. But they couldn't, and after all these years and investments, it may be that making their own engine would have been the sensible choice. But there again, they would never have got the funding they did if they had gone that route.

If only you were in charge of the project and of conceptualisation then thing might have been different.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

If only you were in charge of the project and of conceptualisation then thing might have been different.

For sure! For a start, unlike Chris, i understand things like deadlines, budgets, taking responsibility, listening to my experts, and letting those who know their job better than me do it!

In fact, i'd probably hire competent people (not cronies), hand them the requirements, and let them get on with their jobs while i sat in my office playing Elite

 

[ZeeWolf]

If the mighty Chris Roberts considers Lumberyard to be the engine of choice then who is to argue with that.

Crytek? Crytek literally went wanted to go to court and argued about it a whole lot.

 

[Skizomeuh]

He chose what he saw as the best option at the time. Other engines were of questionable use and for whatever reason he didn't want to make his own engine. That latter is probably because with CryEngine he could start banging out assets straight away and pretend the demo they made was actually in-game footage.

Pitch and sell quick with eye candies. Crytek was already in bad shape, needed some kind of flag ship. And he had an insider with Ortwin.
What it would mean to deliver the dream never was taken into consideration, and obviously still isn't.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

…and before anyone jumps in with more talking points from CI¬G — a company that has demonstrated no working knowledge of multiplay gaming in general and networking in particular — no, “server meshing” will not solve that problem. In fact, it could just as likely to make it worse if it was attempted.

The problem is fundamentally one of keeping the instance and everyone in it updated with the information needed to see the world around them. The stupendous but wholly ignorant idea that has been floated on top of CI¬G PR is that, through meshing servers, you get around the processing limits implied by such a division by having different servers deal with subsets of the workload. Double the number of players = four times the communication needed (because it's an O(n²) problem to keep everyone updated) = mesh four servers to deal with it… right? Except no, because this assumes that player 1 will only deal with instance-partition 1, and ignores that the whole point is that they also see players 35, 88, and 159 in the other three partitions. So all those updates still need to happen, and all partitions need to be aware and updated on the state of all players. Perhaps not the entire state, so some gain could be had by filtering out and not sending that data all over the place, but for the exact same reason, that data would not be a huge part of the workload to begin with. And that would count against the increased overhead of keeping the meshing going and figuring out what other partitions need and need not be updated with.

They're trying to parallelise an asymmetric and stateful problem that therefore cannot be parallelised, and they're seemingly ignoring the overhead costs even if that could be done.

So server meshing would “solve” the problem of not being able to deal with 2× the players (i.e. 4× the work) in a single instance by spinning up three more servers and making them deal with 15× the workload. Why 15 rather than just 4? Because, again, the work can't be cut cleanly; each of the four servers will still need to know most of the things about those other players — not all, but most, and especially the parts that already create the majority of the workload — and a whole bunch of syncing overhead on top of that. Congratulations, instead of having 1 server be 300% over capacity, your server meshing has made 4 servers be 275% over capacity. That's a whole lot of overworked servers for no gain (everyone is still stuck on an overworked and stalled server) when the intelligent and sensible solution — and therefore the one that CI¬G is fundamentally, almost genetically, incapable of producing — is to decide on a hard limit to the partition size and… you know… design a game that operates within those limits.

But that requires forethought; it requires planning; it requires letting limits drive creativity; it requires saying “no”. It will never ever happen with this company and these people in charge.

Why would players want or need to see other instances than theirs? If there isn't enough interesting happening in your instance bloating up connections to stupid levels wont lead to other instances being more interesting than yours.
Seriously what's the point of this whack?

 

[Vetinari]

Serious question, without loading screens between systems....how long does it take to get there? Does one person experience time at a different rate to another ie it becomes quicker to travel between systems than within them?

just thinking and extrapolating ED, if we had to SuperCruise between systems it would take years, literally years.

 

[Cairton]

Valid tactic. If i don't write down what my wife is saying i'll forget it 5 seconds later

Even validder(?) tactic: I'd to get pen & paper, and if I hadn't forgotten by then I'd go and get a "better" sheet of paper.

 

[Dooguk]

Serious question, without loading screens between systems....how long does it take to get there? Does one person experience time at a different rate to another ie it becomes quicker to travel between systems than within them?

just thinking and extrapolating ED, if we had to SuperCruise between systems it would take years, literally years.

I can think of one SC backer who would love that. Not joking.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Serious question, without loading screens between systems....how long does it take to get there? Does one person experience time at a different rate to another ie it becomes quicker to travel between systems than within them?

just thinking and extrapolating ED, if we had to SuperCruise between systems it would take years, literally years.

There is only 1 system in SC

 

[Vetinari]

Not seriously but it could work.

SC announce an alien invasion, everyone must flee, it will take just under 10 years ('It wont take 10-20 years' - CR). Then every time you log in youre just in your ship in Deep Space for 40 Quarters of updates while they fix everything and then you arrive. True exploration, never been done before, which game ever had a 10 year travel time to explore? Amazing immersion and nobody expecting anything soon. Sign up in 2 years an know youre looking at an 8 year journey.

Buys a lot of time in one go, no need for 'There may be an Earthlike we can reach late next year....turned out to be a High Metal Content, never mind on we go, late next year we foresee....'

 

[Tippis]

Why would players want or need to see other instances than theirs? If there isn't enough interesting happening in your instance bloating up connections to stupid levels wont lead to other instances being more interesting than yours.
Seriously what's the point of this whack?

Because Chris started bleating about those 1000 simultaneous players; about never-done-before large-scale battles; about 10:1 NPC-to-player ratios, none of which can happen in an instance with just 50 players in it. So by being able to perceive traces of other instances, you can maintain an illusion that those other ships outside the porthole also contain 50 players, and in total, all the ships you see fulfil that 1000-player dream. But that can only happen if you actually see across the instance boundaries, from [ship instance] -> [battle instance] -> [other ship instance], ostensibly with each layer filtering out most of the inside guts of what goes on in it (another reason why container streaming and infinimaps were such huge hype points).

The problem that it is inherently undefinable and uncontrollable exactly what you need to see when you look across those boundaries, and that effectively, it would just end up having to be one large instance rather than two separate ones has been very thoroughly dodged and ignored from the very start.

 

[Skizomeuh]

With water-closets with more content than Skyrim, sure it'd be a fidelicious journey any sane proud Citizen would love to experience

 

[ZeeWolf]

Serious question, without loading screens between systems....how long does it take to get there? Does one person experience time at a different rate to another ie it becomes quicker to travel between systems than within them?

just thinking and extrapolating ED, if we had to SuperCruise between systems it would take years, literally years.

I thought Star Citizen was going to make you play a sewer shark mini-game between systems?

 

[Skizomeuh]

The problem that it is inherently undefinable and uncontrollable exactly what you need to see when you look across those boundaries, and that effectively, it would just end up having to be one large instance rather than two separate ones has been very thoroughly dodged and ignored from the very start.

The dawn of a new griefer haven... Hop into the fray and release hundreds of boxes, kill everyone's framerate, eventually crash the server and enjoy the show! I admit it'd be as awe inspiring as an Outer Wilds end of loop.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Serious question, without loading screens between systems....how long does it take to get there? Does one person experience time at a different rate to another ie it becomes quicker to travel between systems than within them?

just thinking and extrapolating ED, if we had to SuperCruise between systems it would take years, literally years.

SC has QT and will have wormholes between systems. Like in ED, travel in system will take longer than between systems.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Because Chris started bleating about those 1000 simultaneous players; about never-done-before large-scale battles; about 10:1 NPC-to-player ratios, none of which can happen in an instance with just 50 players in it. So by being able to perceive traces of other instances, you can maintain an illusion that those other ships outside the porthole also contain 50 players, and in total, all the ships you see fulfil that 1000-player dream. But that can only happen if you actually see across the instance boundaries, from [ship instance] -> [battle instance] -> [other ship instance], ostensibly with each layer filtering out most of the inside guts of what goes on in it (another reason why container streaming and infinimaps were such huge hype points).

The problem that it is inherently undefinable and uncontrollable exactly what you need to see when you look across those boundaries, and that effectively, it would just end up having to be one large instance rather than two separate ones has been very thoroughly dodged and ignored from the very start.

And that's it, isn't it? Not gameplay, just a mark to achieve like it's never done before.

 

[Vetinari]

I thought Star Citizen was going to make you play a sewer shark mini-game between systems?

SC has QT and will have wormholes between systems. Like in ED, travel in system will take longer than between systems.

OK that begs more questions, sorry if these are old.

That mini-game of 2m tunnel travel..between every system every time? And people want that? Reminds me of the Eagle Flight Dream sequences in Assassins Creed and they get pretty stale pretty quick. Cant even go an put the kettle on while jumping? Have to sit there and steer for 2 minutes with nothing happening....doing that for the 10,000th time (I have approx 25K 'jumps' in ED, sometimes I'm jumping through 10 systems to get where I want to be)

How does it work in one PU. Works in ED because of instancing, but in one PU with different people travelling at different speeds / realities of time? That seems like a total paradox but am I missing something?

is it one wormhole per ship? Presumably yes, you dont want to meet an Idris coming the other way.

What happens if you do crash out into nowhere as CR describes? If you need a jump gate to jump, and now your in deep space, wheres the jump gate or wormhole creator? If ship can just create one, whats the point of the Jumpgates, if need a jumpgate, how long will it take me to get to one if I'm halfway through the tunnel and crash out?

Extra questions about loss of connection, server crash mid-way etc but they can wait

 

[ECity]

Most of those 63.5 GB are ships. In jpegs.

But it's 400 billion star systems to one. In 25 GB.

 

[Arcondes]

OK that begs more questions, sorry if these are old.

That mini-game of 2m tunnel travel..between every system every time? And people want that? Reminds me of the Eagle Flight Dream sequences in Assassins Creed and they get pretty stale pretty quick. Cant even go an put the kettle on while jumping? Have to sit there and steer for 2 minutes with nothing happening....doing that for the 10,000th time (I have approx 25K 'jumps' in ED, sometimes I'm jumping through 10 systems to get where I want to be)

How does it work in one PU. Works in ED because of instancing, but in one PU with different people travelling at different speeds / realities of time? That seems like a total paradox but am I missing something?

is it one wormhole per ship? Presumably yes, you dont want to meet an Idris coming the other way.

What happens if you do crash out into nowhere as CR describes? If you need a jump gate to jump, and now your in deep space, wheres the jump gate or wormhole creator? If ship can just create one, whats the point of the Jumpgates, if need a jumpgate, how long will it take me to get to one if I'm halfway through the tunnel and crash out?

Extra questions about loss of connection, server crash mid-way etc but they can wait

That’s the same with the whole SC concept. Wake up walk do something. Get into your ship set a course and wait. Even combat is so unchallenging and boring in SC.

 

[Skizomeuh]

What happens if you do crash out into nowhere as CR describes? If you need a jump gate to jump, and now your in deep space, wheres the jump gate or wormhole creator? If ship can just create one, whats the point of the Jumpgates, if need a jumpgate, how long will it take me to get to one if I'm halfway through the tunnel and crash out?

Welcome to CIG brain: make awesome dreams, build up pretty assets, sell them, never go far enough to confront with reality check thanks to endless tier-0 implementation and/or waiting for the [magic tech with fancy name]