Like poaching/hiring employees of Crytek ?
Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12
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Or pooping bartenders
Viajero
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On the 64b thing, to be fair, CIG was aware they needed it at least from the early days of Arena Commander and their tiny maps with boundaries, if you remember. 64b was not a consequence of the december 2015 decision to go full planets. They were allegedly working on it at least as early as december 2014:
Now, I personally do not think they have succeeded at it. The omnipresent glitches, physics bugs related to position, clipping, the limitation to quantum travel where pilots can only go point to point and no free fly allowed etc etc etc it all suggests a very defficient and quite limited implementation of 64b precision. IANAD but after 6+ years of work on the feature (probably more), and seeing how other games such as Space Engineers, Infinity Battlescape or ED have achieved it with no fuss, in the case of SC it does not look at all like the product of a particularly competent developer.
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For what was envisioned at the KS Cry Engine was fine. As the project morphed into the expanded vision it was manifestly not the right engine. Changing engine at any point is a bold move, but could CIG have known that the revenue stream would hold up. We can say now looking back, yes it most likely would. Unlike a traditional KS where you have your money up front and can budget your development upfront and consume from it, CIG have an ongoing revenue stream that drives their development budget, so their model is much more dependent on the ongoing revenue stream than would be the case in a normal KS. I believe the engine should have been changed the moment the scope moved, but I can understand why they didn't and the longer its been left the more difficult that decision is to make. I think the decision was also hindered by the fact that CR it would appear prefers to hear its possible from his reports rather than no it's not. This is why I suspect we have all these miracle techs that stem from trying to provide ways to make it work.
Every time I see that roadmap and look at all the "gameplay" elements , I wonder when they are going to start on some real gameplay features.Every year that they keep pursuing 'dynamic server meshing', and keep the promised gameplay staples in a holding pattern, it feels like the odds of that get more and more remote. It already feels like the two main paths for the PU are 'janky Second Life sandbox', or a much maligned, but competent, gut and rework.
Currently they’re just running into a wall repeatedly. You don’t accrue much of note that way except rubble.
Who knows on SQ42 though. It’ll probably be a mawkish, old-school single player campaign. They’re not super in fashion. But if they can get it to work 70% of the time I’m sure there’s a market for it. Just probably not a blockbuster one.
Because I mean surely, with all the resources they’ve got, and even if they have borked up the historical mocap, and it’s just a retrograde 'movie experience', surely they can put that together?
Although you look at all the SQ42 badges on the roadmap features...
And you consider the many years of missed deadlines, and you combine them together to spell 'developmental hell'... And yeah. It does seem possible they’ll balls that up somehow too
Also, one thought, will there be a way to "level up" in SC? What is the measure/mechanism of progression ?
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
As far as I know same as in ED. No levels. Progression would be based on equipment and upgrades. And skill. At least that is the promise.
![[VR] Merkir](https://d2aefvhu2f0gi9.cloudfront.net/data/avatars/m/141/141091.jpg?1553527154){kind=avatar}
I suspect it's the size and cost of your ship(s), but judging by their current development priorities, it might be the level of luxury of your poop cubicle.
Why would he expect 3.13 to change that?
It'll just be the same, but he'll be able to push and pull boxes too.
And did they poach or hire ex Crytek employees? If so, was it their specialist game engine devs or perhaps just a legal counsel or two?
Some big differences with DU though: the CEO is actually competent (he's coming from one of the top schools in France), had a solid idea on how to develop the core MMO networking engine (which is the most critical part), used a custom built game engine (see how it doesnt take billion$ to do it), and had a solid scope that was clearly delimited from the start. So they had a chance to successfully deliver, which they did from what i hear, at least in beta.
I see a combination of reasons here:
- He's really incompetent at software development (which was pointed out more or less directly by Warren Spector & Richard Garriott)
- As a manager who has taken that decision, he will never back away as it would be perceived as a sign of weakness (management 101, yeah that's what most of them in big companies have been taught)
- He's poached Crytek employees and tries to make the best of it. That's a backwards reasoning too but one i've seen in many places especially in IT, where managers have a hiring paralysis due to total incompetence on the subject so they'll stick to whatever old crummy piece of software their current staff can maintain, ignoring the pool of actually competent developers currently on the market.
- He's got Ortwin on board, who knows what deal he's passed with that person
He's indeed bitten way more than he could chew, but I dont see that affecting his decisions much at all (see how he promptly resumed trying to finance his hollywood aspirations).
As for the legal apect, he's got a CE license but it only defines limitations (no redistribution for instance), he could use whatever engine he wants, if he could afford to fire Crytek employees and Ortwin. I doubt he could recruit anyone on the market though as his company reputation is at joke level.
See what they delivered in 9 years of intense development: nothing. I could list again for you all the core engine aspects that could have been done (probably twice) in that time frame but that would be futile.
That's 2 years into the project. Anyone with 2 connected neurons would understand the need of a special coordinate system from day 1. What did they exactly do during these 2 years ? IIRC they sold pixels for $$, and put up a quick CE demo with the base "hello world" example with existing assets and that was the "hangar module". Interesting to see what this thing has become now (it's totally abandoned), or how that hangar would be "connected to the universe" somehow, which will never happen now since they chose to spawn the ships directly from stations or spaceports.
It's worse than that: from what I can see, they use an euclidean coordinate system for their "interconnected maps", which creates all sorts of issues, that cannot be ignored with such distances. The way to go is of course relativistic frames of reference, which are not only correct in terms of physics, but also solve a lot of coordinate issues, since the transition between two coordinate references would happen in deep space anyway (so you would not notice the associated jerk). Also, polar coordinates. Current system creates a lot of troubles for just the HUD scales to align properly for instance (since where you are on the surface on the planet will change your angle from the current orthogonal coordinates..)
As for QT it's kinda free fly you can stop wherever you want, or free fly anywhere, it works with their "interconnected maps" system. Imagine the star system itself has its own 3D coordinates, notice how all planets are exactly on the same plane by the way...
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I beg to differ! Just as ED has 'Mostly harmless', "Tycoon' and 'Elite' to mark your progress, SC has 'Consierge', 'Admiral', 'Wing Commander'.
The only difference here is ED tracks how much in-game currency you earned while SC tracks how much real-life money you spent.
They had built the company!
After that they were building the tools!
After they had built the tools, they were busy building better tools.
I'm waiting for Chris to start building a better company any day now.
Oh, you were talking about the game? Well it's playable now, buy an Idris.
I dont know. Things like 1-server technology allowing hundreds and thousands of players to play and interact together were mentioned and advertised at Kickstarter already and its as impossible today as it was then. Also the pledge goals included 100+ systems and we are nowhere near that number and wont be for a considerable time to come. Because I heard the "scope change" argument so often already I d like to mention before the knee-jerk reaction that Chris Robert himself claimed that the increased scope wouldnt change Star Citizens timeframe or cost and we know this was a sack of manure which suggests that even the KS claims already were sacks of manure.
There is a history of very critical things in Star Citizens story that relay a picture of delay and distraction tactics. Clinging to the notion that "CiG is really trying you guys" is wishful thinking and more than just naive at this point. Maybe a lot of the newcomers who claim to be new to the project not caring about its history havent been disappointed often enough yet or they come with such low expectations that even SC can easily match them but I can understand that a lot of people are done granting CiG another chance and demand hard evidence before they are willing to spend more money or even good words on this project.
Dual Universe has promised a lot too and I think it is mostly nollocks too. But I saw the same hype and believing going on with that. People just cant distinguish truth from hype.
In the old days media filtered out the biggest trash. Today free online channels allow for the biggest tosh to spread and people just buy it.
In the old days media filtered out the biggest trash. Today free online channels allow for the biggest tosh to spread and people just buy it.
Was considering HZD. Also new X4 update. For now I play Rimworld tribals. The psycasting is strong with these ones. I recommend trying them.
Requires DLC.
You know, games like Rimworld made me wish for more universal games - complete the world and then move to the stars but it usually comes down to the universalust games just being bad at being universal.
And that is because they cant capture the complexity anymore properly.
New shiny ships in 3.13
I would not want to defend CR/CIG, except that I think the decision to change engine was a tough call to make without risking the revenue streams which was the point I was trying to make ( albeit badly). The 1-server tech is a problem with any engine, so not a factor in the change, if the tech existed the change would be a no brainer.
As I remember they were still pledging new systems in 2014 circa two years after the KS.
Given the choice of Cry Engine I was imagining a system would be a series of POI's ( each POI being a cry map) that you moved between with some sort of transition and systems would have differing numbers of POI's. Some POI's would be unique set pieces and others would be copy/pasted. I was also expecting proc gen to enable them to scale content, so eg POI of an oasis on a desert planet could have a proc gen generated number of trees around a variable sized piece of water. I was not imagining a system would be a single cry map. If you look at the hanger module that is exactly what it is a Cry map. For me, that was doable with the engine.
Indeed, but a space game is a poor fit to start with. The entire premise of SC, before planet surfaces were added, was to pilot star ships across vast systems and distances. It's already a huge issue for CE. I'll maintain it was a poor fit from the very start.
As for the "1-server technology" it does exist, it's called the cloud (that 1 server is actually made of a lot of physical nodes). That CiG may or may not be aware of that is a different issue - there are indeed ways to host apps that serve concurrent data to millions of people simultaneously. Of course, for games that means developing a bespoke engine as current engines on the market (for those that include networking) are meant for small multiplayer sessions with a single physical server. That's where CiG failed from the start, selling an MMO without thinking they would have to develop an MMO.
FWIW it's still a very limited multiplayer game, runs like crap compared to many decent-tier multi games, even indies do better here. And i see nowhere on their roadmap any indication of going in the right direction...
(edit) Also learned recently that lifts in SC have their own CE map, coordinate system, and physics grid. Explains a lof of wonky issues with those and also that kind of side effect:
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/lq4589/bounty_hunting_in_a_nutshell_right_now/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
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That was their first plan, then they struggled and realized they won't be able to do that and Frontier was showing planets so they decided to take an even more harder road as money flowed.
CIG is a baby that can't help but misstep a carpet but is sure he'll jump over to the moon by
That maybe works for a SP game without much trouble. For MP the procgen needs to be seeded so everyone would see the same thing when sharing the same instance.