Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
MTBFritz said:
Things like 1-server technology allowing hundreds and thousands of players to play and interact together were mentioned and advertised at Kickstarter already
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I don't think they ever made those 'king of all shards' style claims back at Kickstarter. The closest you get on the KS site are some fuzzy claims about multiplayer, a large universe, and 'Star Wars style' multicrew. (Oh yeah and private servers and modding and such ;)). They say they wanted to support 200k players in the alpha, but never say anything about the format.

I know he was getting properly carried away by 2016:

Source: https://youtu.be/nvule1cD_zk?t=1690

We're going to have this sort of mesh of servers, so we'll be able to have, hopefully, a large amount of players all in the same area, so we won't have to instance it, in the way that originally we were thinking we'd have to instance it. We have a kind of different server design now that could potentially have thousands of players all in the same sort of area at the same time, which would be really cool. Because that's something that again, it's not something that you could get a while, y'know, a year ago or ten years ago, but you know with sort of the newer tech, the power of the machines, kind of some of the stuff you can do in the cloud, the possibility is sort of opened up and you want to utilize it.
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Not sure how and when they slid into that world though.
 
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kilvenny

kilvenny
Navigare Necesse Est said:
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.
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Agreed, I was envisaging you would have a small database with the system and planet characteristics including POI's so you would store a POI type and some sort of size parameter (eg trees) which is effectively the seed and the proc gen sizes the water and trees based on that, building the same thing each time for the provided size.
 

dannysquid

dannysquid
Navigare Necesse Est said:
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.
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And anybody remember Limit Theory? I remember lots of "this is going to be better than Elite and he's doing it all on his own" posts. And it turns out it's really difficult and time-consuming to simulate the entire contents of the universe. And have it be fun at the same time.

I think these sorts of games are really easy to fantasise about while lying in the bath (procedurally generated quest-giving NPCs, herds of dinosaurs which evolve differently depending on planet types, I want an arcade cabinet in my Sidewinder where I can play old Colecovision games, players can own their own caravan parks, zero-gravity caber-tossing, real physics for cat hair etc..) but there's basically an infinite amount of things to do and because the players are also lying in their baths fantasising about all the things you could do in a procedural space game you're chasing a moving target against a backdrop of whiny disappointment.

But I think the fact that it's easy to imagine all the amazing things they could do is why the bosses of games companies get carried away in interviews. They're just as excited as we are. And also underestimating how difficult it all is.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Yay! Back from my thread ban!

No more talking about Sandi's acting career for me!

Back to topic...

I hear ED is adding bathrooms on stations with Odyssey. Which will get pooping mechanics first? Star Citizen or ED? The race is on!
 

Firkrayt

Firkrayt
Agony_Aunt said:
Yay! Back from my thread ban!

No more talking about Sandi's acting career for me!

Back to topic...
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And here I thought that was because of your new avatar...
49810.jpg
 

Skizomeuh

Skizomeuh
dannysquid said:
And anybody remember Limit Theory? I remember lots of "this is going to be better than Elite and he's doing it all on his own" posts. And it turns out it's really difficult and time-consuming to simulate the entire contents of the universe. And have it be fun at the same time.

I think these sorts of games are really easy to fantasise about while lying in the bath (procedurally generated quest-giving NPCs, herds of dinosaurs which evolve differently depending on planet types, I want an arcade cabinet in my Sidewinder where I can play old Colecovision games, players can own their own caravan parks, zero-gravity caber-tossing, real physics for cat hair etc..) but there's basically an infinite amount of things to do and because the players are also lying in their baths fantasising about all the things you could do in a procedural space game you're chasing a moving target against a backdrop of whiny disappointment.

But I think the fact that it's easy to imagine all the amazing things they could do is why the bosses of games companies get carried away in interviews. They're just as excited as we are. And also underestimating how difficult it all is.
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Though it looked like the foundations were far more forethought and advanced than anything CIG ever happened to materialize.

I bet Tony Z and Chris R were daydreaming (and trying to learn?) a lot watching Josh's dev diairies... Drool on their lips.
I imagine the two like that after each watch:

 

dannysquid

dannysquid
Skizomeuh said:
Though it looked like the foundations were far more forethought and advanced than anything CIG ever happened to materialize.

I bet Tony Z and Chris R were daydreaming (and trying to learn?) a lot watching Josh's dev diairies... Drool on their lips.
I imagine the two like that after each watch:

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Poor Josh. Apart from the total burnout, I think he was susceptible to the something I can recognise in myself. If you're working on your own you can often end up in a comfort zone of endlessly reworking and improving the part of the project you really enjoy (in his case, it seemed to be scripting languages!) and lose the big picture. I tried to write a proc-gen fantasy strategy thing and just found myself endlessly trying to make the mountains look better! "Look at the way the water tributaries are coming down the hills! I've calculated where heather would grow! The game? No, I'm not sure what it is yet! Something to do with elves maybe."

I think with CIG they're just drowning under the weight of millions of little things that are harder than they seem. Although decent project management should have spotted this! For example, people make fun of lifts not working. But the logic of lifts in a multiplayer game must be a total nightmare. There are probably more weird edge cases going on with something like that than you'd get in whole other AAA games. What happens if an NPC is standing in the doorway when I'm going down in a lift and two people call the lift and one of their internet connections breaks and the spaceship that the lift's in turns upside down and somebody drops a load of crates into it etc... etc...
 

Vetinari

V
dannysquid said:
and just found myself endlessly trying to make the mountains look better! "Look at the way the water tributaries are coming down the hills! I've calculated where heather would grow! The game? No, I'm not sure what it is yet! Something to do with elves maybe."
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You could get paid for that nowadays, I know of one company where thats the norm and theres no pressure to deliver to cramp your style, just dream.
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
dannysquid said:
And anybody remember Limit Theory? I remember lots of "this is going to be better than Elite and he's doing it all on his own" posts. And it turns out it's really difficult and time-consuming to simulate the entire contents of the universe. And have it be fun at the same time.

I think these sorts of games are really easy to fantasise about while lying in the bath (procedurally generated quest-giving NPCs, herds of dinosaurs which evolve differently depending on planet types, I want an arcade cabinet in my Sidewinder where I can play old Colecovision games, players can own their own caravan parks, zero-gravity caber-tossing, real physics for cat hair etc..) but there's basically an infinite amount of things to do and because the players are also lying in their baths fantasising about all the things you could do in a procedural space game you're chasing a moving target against a backdrop of whiny disappointment.

But I think the fact that it's easy to imagine all the amazing things they could do is why the bosses of games companies get carried away in interviews. They're just as excited as we are. And also underestimating how difficult it all is.
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I have little sympathy. It is the same hubris / ignorance in the face of realities that made that one fail. The biggest one was probably that soloing the gamedev would be possible.
 

Skizomeuh

Skizomeuh
Navigare Necesse Est said:
I have little sympathy. It is the same hubris / ignorance in the face of realities that made that one fail. The biggest one was probably that soloing the gamedev would be possible.
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Harsh, but understandable. Though I'd like to point out he only asked for few thousands of dollars, and didn't beg for more with predatory tactics after the KS ended.
 

Thargon

Thargon
MTBFritz said:
Emergency meeting at Aegis Dynamics. A short glimpse.

CEO: I m getting angry calls from some of our biggest spenders and it disrupts my quiet time in my new mansion. Whats happening?
Dude1: We are still trying to figure out....
Dude2: (interrupts) Its the Idris line sir.
CEO: My brain baby? Whats the problem? Did somebody figure out the "limited supply" scam we are running?
Dude2: No sir, thats fine, nobody figured that out yet. Sales are going strong whenever we open up the store even tho nobody got one delivered yet....
CEO: (relieved breath) phew I got worried for a second. Alright then, whats the problem? The Idris is the most powerful vessel in our portfolio. Dont tell me we ran out of gloss paint again? Just leave it bare and call it "industrial version"....put on another 25% of the price, that should do it.
Dude2: a bunch of ragtag miners destroyed one.....
CEO and rest of the room: ..........................................
CEO: (laughs nervously) damn Sandi is right, I need to go to the doc about my ears. Imagine I just heard you saying our APEX WARSHIP MODEL was wrecked by some hillbillies and their stone heaters hahaha
Dude2: ....thats exactly what happened sir.
CEO: (sputters) WHAT? HOW? WHY? No, go back to HOW. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?
Dude1: As I said we are still trying to figure that out sir. Initial reports say they melted the ship in a short time.
CEO: So they cheated somehow? Whats the weakness they exploited? Or was it an unmanned derelict just sitting there? We got to get ON this horse people, the backlash might affect our stock value!!!!
Dude1: Far as we can tell the Idris was at peak power, fully alert and trying its best to fend off the miners sir.
CEO: (getting angry) Lets not forget who works for who here. Why am I the only one providing some sort of explanation? Somebody tell me the reason RIGHT NOW!!!!
Various dudes look at each desperately: ....
Derek Smarts bug on the Janitor bot sweeping the room: -crackle- its because the design suuuuuuucks pal LOL, 90 days tops


Lets leave that scenario for now and get back to our regular program ^^
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I don't usually take the time to read MTBFritz wall's of text (TM) but this one was bloody brilliant :) Very amusing you made my day :)
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
Skizomeuh said:
Harsh, but understandable. Though I'd like to point out he only asked for few thousands of dollars, and didn't beg for more with predatory tactics after the KS ended.
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Imagine now a sales talent trying to pull it off. Would a natural seller have lied down in fetal position when suspecting doom about the project?
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Not sure if free fly is still going, but now i've got Valheim so any spare play time is going that way.

Also amusing to note they broke 1 million paying customers in just a few weeks. While i'm not sure the exact numbers of paying individuals for Star Citizen i think its been confirmed that its well under 2 million. Over half of what CIG have taken to rope in in just a few weeks compared to the years of highly misleading marketing put out by CIG.

Both are early access type games. Yeah, people can bang on about how what CIG are doing is more complex etc, but what the devs of Valheim have shown is how to make a highly playable early access game that is fun for people to play. People are playing because they see its a damn fun game and it works.

Which brings me back to free fly. I'd promised myself to give SC solid tries. But the week was busy and didn't have that much time spare and quite often in the evening my brain wasn't up to fighting with SC.

So what I ended up with is 1 go during which i encountered numerous bugs and ended up with my clipping into the roof of the hangar and getting stuck there. End of attempt 1. And the second attempt client or server crashed almost as soon as i got in.

Performance was abysmal, even after following advice about setting graphics to very high.

In short, based on my experience, SC is a piece of poo.
 
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