Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
Factabulous said:
Did TonyZ say anything about how the events that citizens will be able to trigger will relate to shards? i.e. in ED if something is triggered via the BGS then everyone can see it at that location, but would the same happen with shards? So if my crew worked to triggered a XenoThreat / Jump Town 2 event would all shards see it, or just mine?

Either seems to have possible issues - if everyone sees it then it just looks spontaneous to every other shard (which I guess is ok - might be confusing if you are trying to trigger Jump Town and you find a Xeno Threat :) ). If it is only my shard then won't you get people trying to pile in to take advantage (as they said you can switch shards freely).

🤔 Interesting stuff - maybe I should actually watch that stream ... and the one about sharding, so if it made any more sense than the internet commentary :)
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It seems that Tony's stuff hasn't even been set up to work with the shards yet:

VR Golgot said:
Loads of current stuff will need redesign: "So you can imagine that this will affect things like missions that currently are spawned locally on the game server. These now need to be spawned globally within the chart and also persist their state. So all services that are attached to missions where, whether it's the Quantum system in the back end, or the Quasar tools, need to know know about the concept of a shard. This also goes deep into like things that are mechanical, like you know getting global chat to work on a server. That concept now needs to be extended to the shard where this will probably push us to implement this as a location-based chat for example. And so many teams in the company now need to change their feature to take into account the meshing technology that's behind it."
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(Quantum is their planned BGS & 'dynamic missions' stuff. Quasar = the backend tools).

Frankly I'm damned if I'm going to watch his stream, because as far as I can tell they're majorly blocked until the new server stuff rolls out. And have been this entire time... Hence why he keeps just saying the same old grandiose stuff and adding next to none of it.

I keyworded the transcript though, and he only talks about Server Meshing to mention how it takes engineers away from his stuff ;)

Although I did notice this fun bit ;)

Well, the genesis of this, though, Nine Tails was not originally actually supposed to be a PvP event at all. It was much like XenoThreat, supposed to be just pure PvE.

That had performance problems, frankly. Spawning enough ships in a pure giant fleet battle to challenge 30 to 50 players made the server just tank. It was incredibly painful and it just didn't play very well. It also, to be honest, was the same thing as what XenoThreat already had done. And I wanted to do something a little different.

And that kind of combined into this push to get the aforementioned kind of duct tape solution for hostility in, so that you can align on both sides. And by doing that, I make it so that I don't need to spawn ships to challenge 30 to 50 people. If things are running smoothly, I have 25 versus 25, and I don't need to spawn really just about anything.

You bring the NPCs in just to flesh out, to basically even the odds, to get the challenge.
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Which speaks to cigwatch's point about AI also playing a role in server performance & player caps etc.

As to how they get these missions working in a sharded world, I guess we'll find out. Over the ensuing years... :oops:
 
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VR Golgot said:
It seems that Tony's stuff hasn't even been set up to work with the shards yet:



(Quantum is their planned BGS & 'dynamic missions' stuff. Quasar = the backend tools).

Frankly I'm damned if I'm going to watch his stream, because as far as I can tell they're majorly blocked until the new server stuff rolls out. And have been this entire time... Hence why he keeps just saying the same old grandiose stuff and adding next to none of it.

I keyworded the transcript though, and he only talks about Server Meshing to mention how it takes engineers away from his stuff ;)

Although I did notice this fun bit ;)



Which speaks to cigwatch's point about AI also playing a role in player caps etc.

As to how they get these missions working in a sharded world, I guess we'll find out. Over the ensuing years... :oops:
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Tony Zällunswaz is just another narrative element in SC marketing. You don't to expect him to get anything really done, do you?
 

Skizomeuh

Skizomeuh
I love how TonyZ' talks are 45% live brainstorming, 45% present tense to express wishful thinkings, 10% justifying why everything barely exist because difficult because reasons.

I hope that someone at CIG is taking notes on what's said during his ramblings into design docs because it looks it doesn't exist and could made up as words come out of his mouth.
 

cigwatch

cigwatch
VR Golgot said:
Which speaks to cigwatch's point about AI also playing a role in server performance & player caps etc.

As to how they get these missions working in a sharded world, I guess we'll find out. Over the ensuing years... :oops:
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Which brings me to another point. What clearly went down the drain already:
  • mega battles, including cap ships
  • thousands of players in a single location
Now, remember how SC is supposed to be happening in an NPC-dense universe, in which maybe 10% of the traffic is caused by players and the rest are NPCs going about their ¿Que Pasa? lives?

Well.

I mean, there are more NPCs than players on a shardserver already but their lives consist of very simple routines. Instead, they are supposed to pilot ships, engage in missions, mining, refuelling, salvage, man turrets, operate missiles, load cargo, do deliveries etc.

If a character limit per shard is, say, 1000 (optimistically), that would still allow for only about 100 players.
 
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Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
cigwatch said:
Which brings me to another point. What clearly went down the drain already:
  • mega battles, including cap ships
  • thousands of players in a single location
Now, remember how SC is supposed to be happening in an NPC-dense universe, in which maybe 10% of the traffic is caused by players and the rest are NPCs going about their ¿Que Pasa? lives?

Well.

I mean, there are more NPCs than players on a shardserver already but their lives consist of very simple routines. Instead, they are supposed to pilot ships, engage in missions, mining, refuelling, salvage, man turrets, operate missiles, load cargo, do deliveries etc.

If a character limit per shard is, say, 1000 (optimistically), that would still allow for only about 100 players.
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Ah! But quanta will solve all this by simulating the NPCs so they will only spawn if needed in an area... but then, we have the same issue. NPCs spawn, taking more resources, and anyway, who cares if NPCs are really doing stuff in an area where nobody is? Even if just being simulated on Tony's PC.
 

cigwatch

cigwatch
Agony_Aunt said:
Ah! But quanta will solve all this by simulating the NPCs so they will only spawn if needed in an area... but then, we have the same issue. NPCs spawn, taking more resources, and anyway, who cares if NPCs are really doing stuff in an area where nobody is? Even if just being simulated on Tony's PC.
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It is always the same issue because the system is easily trollable to create a "dense" situation. Imagine a hundred of players, each with an Idris, incapacitating and kidnapping NPCs all over Stanton in the same shard. They load them to their Idrises and meet in the same location. Now you have a thousand characters in a single shard bubble.

30k
 
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Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
cigwatch said:
It is always the same issue because the system is easily trollable to create a "dense" situation. Imagine a hundred of players, each with an Idris, incapacitating and kidnapping NPCs all over Stanton in the same shard. They load them to their Idrises and meet in the same location. Now you have a thousand characters in a single shard bubble.

30k
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Ah, that might be fun to see.
 

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Agony_Aunt said:
Ah! But quanta will solve all this by simulating the NPCs so they will only spawn if needed in an area... but then, we have the same issue. NPCs spawn, taking more resources, and anyway, who cares if NPCs are really doing stuff in an area where nobody is? Even if just being simulated on Tony's PC.
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Quanta is as real as Server Meshing and iCache.
It just is buzzwords to excite ppl like Lil Ant who keep repeating their fantasies about it elsewhere. It's kinda viral marketing riding best the dumber the audience is you market to.
 

cigwatch

cigwatch
BTW, that Twitter shard person, Chad McKinney, is also working on this game:

store.steampowered.com

Recursive Ruin on Steam

A story rich narrative puzzle game in which an artist comes to terms with their grief. Explore an infinitely recursive world of strange fractal beauty and solve mind-bending puzzles. Confront the ineffable and chat with your cat in a search for meaning and hope.
store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com

Looks cool conceptually and artistically, fractal geometries and all.
 

WotGTheAgent

WotGTheAgent
Chad McKinney has also done some work on the UI for Elder Scrolls Online (consoles) and wrote some music for Hellgate: London. And worked at Zynga for three months.

And then he started at CIG around March 2016.

That's the guy trying to make this all work as the Senior Lead Gameplay Engineer. A guy whose major releases are UI for consoles and mobile games. Zero experience as a gameplay engineer on anything besides Star Citizen.
 

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WotGTheAgent said:
Chad McKinney has also done some work on the UI for Elder Scrolls Online (consoles) and wrote some music for Hellgate: London. And worked at Zynga for three months.

And then he started at CIG around March 2016.

That's the guy trying to make this all work as the Senior Lead Gameplay Engineer. A guy whose major releases are UI for consoles and mobile games. Zero experience as a gameplay engineer on anything besides Star Citizen.
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So basically he's an artist? I mean it can work as creative lead. You have the concept, and the engineers you hired make it real. If his brother can do the coding on their game it can work out.
 

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You could probably argue who is so easily parted from their cash deserves to be parted. And maybe we need a harsher environment so not anybody can just survive. It should take a minimum amount of common sense to be here, but that is quite darwinist talk.
 
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