The Star Citizen Thread v 4

[swfanatic717]

Well... I should ask then... you know of any game in alpha/beta or even released without bugs?

That's not a fair question and you know it. But games with no frequently occurring bugs that significantly affect the gameplay experience? Kerbal Space Program, for one, worked pretty well. You could always design, build and launch, fly, and land typical spacecraft without worrying that said spacecraft would spontaneously flip off the launchpad or terrain. Unlike SC, in KSP I could expect the entire operation of the spacecraft to go according to plan without something going horrifically wrong due to the game engine. Unlike SC, when my ship disintegrated in KSP it was normally my own fault, not the result of bad programming.

Please stop generalising what people are saying.

Given the consistent nature of those posts in misrepresenting and overgeneralizing arguments I would've long ago reported them for "straw-man attacks to another user, ignoring the actual debate and questions at hand" and moved on, but that would require me to unblock the user(s) in question.

Regardless, overgeneralizing things and accusing others of "drama" and "conspiracy" is the only way their flawed arguments can look even semi-legitimate, so I wouldn't count on things improving.

 

[MaxLexandre]

their abandoning all their promises about VR. You can see that any time a dev talks about it.

Where have they abandoned the VR promises?

If something that happened recently, was the prioritization of VR on early 2016, because far said the intent is deliver VR with Squadron 42.

 

[milligna]

Yes, more promises. In early 2015 CR claimed DK2 support was a few weeks away. That never happened. Excuses, excuses, talk about CryEngine adding it, more forked code, more distance, more potential complications in EVER doing it. Pardon me if I take this promise with a bucket of salt considering there has been not a single perceivable sign of movement on the VR dev front, no CIG employees at VR conferences, no planning the animation/cutscenes/UI with VR in mind, and the impossibility of running SC assets at 90 hz for consumer CV1 and Vive.

Also, I've chatted with several Oculus dev relations employees and let's just say they aren't working closely together with CIG. This is the year of the launch of consumer VR and Roberts missed the boat. He had his chance, he was there at the ground floor but his priorities were with his "movie" and he's added nothing but roadblocks to ever adding anything but clunky, sick-making support. CR crying "me too!" just because the competition absolutely nails VR is NOT an adequate replacement for actually doing the nuts and bolts work that makes VR work. Folks have been living with VR for 3 years now... they understand what's required and can see what's not working here plain as day!

CR telling a journalist once he's going to "refocus" on VR support isn't the same as actually doing the hard work. Has he EVER addressed how the hell he expects to do VR when FPS locomotion makes lots of people ill? Has he thought about those problems at all or planned to mitigate them? No? He has no clue what it involves and has no experience whatsoever in the field, and he's alienated his employees who DO have an interest in VR. They are off making stuff on their own on the side!

I expect to play Squadron 42 with VorpX and hit the middle mouse button for cut scenes. I'm willing to put money on it not getting official support in 2016 or 2017.

 

[bitstorm]

Because it's game development, delays happen, features might change or might even not see the light of the day, and the things we might have been shown were labeled as demos or even prototypes.
People who work on the industry know this, people who don't, think game development is something perfect and shiny and beautiful... just because you don't see it, as behind closed doors... you won't know.

As a wise game developer once said, "The easy part is develop 80% of something, the remaining 20% that usually take 80% of the time."

That's the Pareto rule.

SC is nowhere near 80% complete, not even close, really difficulty to put a percentage on it but maybe 40%?

It's kinda hard to define because there are a bunch of separate pipelines that have to be done, some of which can be parellised, some can't, some that could be done in parallel but it would impact elsewhere if they did, some are dependent. Also you'd have layers so the core game engine, then the game on top of that.

CIG still have a metric tonne of star systems to produce and ships to build, the core engine on which the game would be built doesn't even appear to be close to sorted yet.

If you were applying the Pareto rule to software dev as regards time to complete. You'd be looking at a game that's reasonably close to finished.

I think perhaps you could apply the 80/20 thing to something like ED on release, it was THERE, but there were a few issues/bugs that needed ironing out, the point being those bugs are the trickier ones that aren't trivial fixes. SC feels a long way off that.

 

[MaxLexandre]

Yes, more promises. In early 2015 CR claimed DK2 support was a few weeks away. Pardon me if I take this promise despite not a single perceivable sign of movement on the VR dev front, no CIG employees at VR conferences, no planning the animation/cutscenes/UI with VR in mind, and the impossibility of running SC assets at 90 hz for consumer CV1 and Vive.

They already have one engine, that they kept updated with core VR support and intent on it, that's why VR already works on SC, un-officially. Now that they are abandoning it, when the studios finally started reporting progress on that front...

The status of VR integration is that we’ve been pretty busy with getting [Alpha] 2.0 [out] and we’re trying to get 2.1 so I would say we still have some stuff to integrate from the most recent CryEngine drops. They’ve been actually doing quite a lot of VR, I’m pretty sure you guys have noticed that they’ve completely doubled down and they’re all VR now.So there are some updates on VR that we need to integrate in. It’s a little more complicated because we’ve changed the engine so much, we’ve changed the rendering pipeline to enable us to do a lot of things that we need to do so it’s not very easy. Nowadays we’ve diverged from CryEngine where we don’t take regular updates from them any more although we will cherry pick certain features that maybe we’re not working on that we think would help out well and VR is a good example of that.
So it’s really just a matter of getting some engineering time in the Frankfurt team. The Frankfurt team… [includes many of] the guys that originally did the VR work at Crytek so they know it pretty well but I would be expecting it to get up to speed with the most recent [VR] stuff sometime early next year.

 

[Aleksej]

But what is the point of implementing SDK support now, when there are no consumer devices, and all currently available devices are test samples? SDKs and all VR related software are being constantly modified. This would only mean that is is possible that they would have to rework the implementation from scratch each time something with VR and their software change. And then everything might be totally different when they release final version of VR to consumers.

 

[swfanatic717]

Though as I say if it doesn't work in the hangar, a cut back single player scenario with all objects stationary and none of the complexities that networking brings, I'm not sure why it should be ok in the main game.

Have to say, God knows why they think these bug videos are good PR.

I mean imagine watching these videos and laughing if you'd put a few thousand in.

By showing that they acknowledge that these glitches exist, it makes it look as though they have more of a handle on the situation by taking control of them before any third party can spin them out of control. Laughing at their own bugs is supposed to inspire confidence in the viewer that they are not a major concern. The video acts as a means of telling people how they should react when seeing the bug. It's basically a propaganda video.

 

[MaxLexandre]

SC is nowhere near 80% complete, not even close, really difficulty to put a percentage on it but maybe 40%?

It's not about the whole project, it's about features, the way SC is being developed is batch by batch until we have all of that. The features they are to implement, is where the 80% rule enters, we see them, they look great, but until it's actually completed it's that 20% final stage, that takes so much time, it's on that 20% rule, that things can get even rewritten and dropped because they didn't work out, and then people speculate and panic things get cancelled and abandoned.

It's simply not a pretty process, and with the scope of SC, it only makes it that they are pulling off many parts of the game at once, including SQ42 in separate, it won't be a fast process. It just won't, SQ42 we won't see really until it actually releases, and the PU shouldn't have that much progress with most of the company prioritizing SQ42. That's just the reality of the setting.

But what is the point of implementing SDK support now, when there are no consumer devices, and all currently available devices are test samples? SDKs and all VR related software are being constantly modified. This would only mean that is is possible that they would have to rework the implementation from scratch each time something with VR and their software change. And then everything might be totally different when they release final version of VR to consumers.

They are going back to Cryengine to back their recent quite major VR improvements, there was also reports on Germany of hires related to VR implementation in-game.

To VR be around right now on full-focus, may be because SQ42 is aimed to have its support.

 

[Voivod]

Please stop generalising what people are saying

Alphas have bugs yes, we all know this. Everybody knows this. You should accept everyone here knows alphas have bugs, we play ED right.

Even released games have bugs, people know this too, please credit people with a bit of intelligence.

Folk are putting forward nuanced arguments and you generalise them into something that wasn't even said.

I wish I could rep you again

 

[MaxLexandre]

Okay, so we all know alphas have bugs, yet we are on this thread using the fact one alpha has bugs to justify how bad and incompetent the developer and its code is?

 

[Voivod]

They are going back to Cryengine to back their recent quite major VR improvements, there was also reports on Germany of hires related to VR implementation in-game.

To VR be around right now on full-focus, may be because SQ42 is aimed to have its support.

I don't understand what you're saying.. is VR a priority right now or isn't it?
I thought development was open so we should know right?

Also I would be very impressed if they released SQ42 with full working VR suport by the end of the year but somehow I very much doubt they'll release the actual game (by the end of the year), let alone with VR support.

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Okay, so we all know alphas have bugs, yet we are on this thread using the fact one alpha has bugs to justify how bad and incompetent the developer and its code is?

Bitstorm already perfectly answered you on the subject and yet you refuse to understand.
It's fine, move on.
For the love of Cthulhu.

 

[milligna]

But what is the point of implementing SDK support now, when there are no consumer devices, and all currently available devices are test samples? SDKs and all VR related software are being constantly modified. This would only mean that is is possible that they would have to rework the implementation from scratch each time something with VR and their software change. And then everything might be totally different when they release final version of VR to consumers.

Current SDK support isn't the issue. VR best practices and design, that's the issue -- work that could've been started YEARS ago. The devkits were released for a reason. Supporting devkit SDKs weren't it: using it to help build your game to WORK in VR for an eventual consumer SDK was it.

VR best practices are NOT "totally different" later. They remain the same and they have to be considered early on in development, its not something you tack on later as its stuff that's the very core of the game experience. Implementing the SDK is the EASIER part: it's the design, the UI, the animations, the camera, the not making people sick part that's the hard part. None of that has anything to do with implementing SDKs, its basic design issues. I have yet to hear anyone from CIG address first person locomotion. They are NOT serious about it.

 

[MaxLexandre]

I don't understand what you're saying.. is VR a priority right now or isn't it?
I thought development was open so we should know right?

Here's the update on VR as posted, with the info that's being worked, and reported, on the Germany Studio, that far the hires go, has people hired only for VR during last year:

The status of VR integration is that we’ve been pretty busy with getting [Alpha] 2.0 [out] and we’re trying to get 2.1 so I would say we still have some stuff to integrate from the most recent CryEngine drops. They’ve been actually doing quite a lot of VR, I’m pretty sure you guys have noticed that they’ve completely doubled down and they’re all VR now.

So there are some updates on VR that we need to integrate in. It’s a little more complicated because we’ve changed the engine so much, we’ve changed the rendering pipeline to enable us to do a lot of things that we need to do so it’s not very easy. Nowadays we’ve diverged from CryEngine where we don’t take regular updates from them any more although we will cherry pick certain features that maybe we’re not working on that we think would help out well and VR is a good example of that.


So it’s really just a matter of getting some engineering time in the Frankfurt team. The Frankfurt team… [includes many of] the guys that originally did the VR work at Crytek so they know it pretty well but I would be expecting it to get up to speed with the most recent [VR] stuff sometime early next year.

SQ42 with VR support can be one nice experience, even if, it's not *100%* 1st person.

For the love of Cthulhu.

For the love of Christ Roberts! Bless us with more ships.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Modular development, huh?

While this is completely off-topic - and I completely expect the mods to smack me for this - I am all too reminded of agile development and parking lots

While I can't code anything high-level to save my life (I'm a hardware guy) I'm pretty good at the low-level stuff, metal-bashing we used to call it. The job gets done and the customer is happy. Now, where the code guys get involved - there are two options. The old "waterfall" approach, where peeps are tasked - they work, and produce results. Then there is the agile alternative. Hmmm. Where agile development has been involved - the job never gets done. Not in one single instance. Ever. It's all "in the parking lot" to be brought out when needed, or forgotten about when proven not to work, or "in the cloud" and "progressively deliverable as a service" when it's utterly confidential data sets.

The mind boggles - it really does.

 

[Rolan]

That's not a fair question and you know it. But games with no frequently occurring bugs that significantly affect the gameplay experience? Kerbal Space Program, for one, worked pretty well. You could always design, build and launch, fly, and land typical spacecraft without worrying that said spacecraft would spontaneously flip off the launchpad or terrain. Unlike SC, in KSP I could expect the entire operation of the spacecraft to go according to plan without something going horrifically wrong due to the game engine. Unlike SC, when my ship disintegrated in KSP it was normally my own fault, not the result of bad programming.

Why?Because I answer something you don't like is not fair but asking why there are bugs in an alpha game is fair?...
I'm going to quote you That's not a fair "answer" and you know it.
KSP is a fully finished and released product, SC is a game in development..

 

[Aleksej]

Current SDK support isn't the issue. VR best practices and design is the issue, work that could've been started YEARS ago. The devkits were released for a reason. Supporting devkit SDKs weren't it: using it to help build your game to WORK in VR for an eventual consumer SDK was it.

Should I provide you an example of the developer that has implemented VR support more than two years ago, however, ran into issues last year in Autumn?

 

[bitstorm]

It's not about the whole project, it's about features, the way SC is being developed is batch by batch until we have all of that. The features they are to implement, is where the 80% rule enters, we see them, they look great, but until it's actually completed it's that 20% final stage, that takes so much time, it's on that 20% rule, that things can get even rewritten and dropped because they didn't work out, and then people speculate and panic things get cancelled and abandoned.

You're saying you can throw in any old broken feature and that covers 80%? Even if it needs retrofitting with something brand new later on?

I don't think this is good application of a principle intended to give a rough estimate of completion.

If that's how you're going to do it, then don't bother, the estimate is going to be totally meaningless.

You seem to be advocating the Pareto Principle as a means of managing PR by providing misleading figures wrapped around a fancy name.

 

[Voivod]

Should I provide you an example of the developer that has implemented VR support more than two years ago, however, ran into issues last year in Autumn?

How does that nullify what milligna said? Do you disagree that you need to plan your game for VR from the very beginning? There's practices that your game has to have in order for it to be actually enjoyable in VR.
Mentioning FD's problems with the new SDK is totally irrelevant.

 

[ianw]

Have they said how will they implement VR in SQ42 (or is that a no no given all the TPV and movie stuff)?

Have they said how they will implement it in game with all the animations that take over the camera?

I thought all that stuff was meant to be a non starter for VR?

 

[swfanatic717]

Why?Because I answer something you don't like is not fair but asking why there are bugs in an alpha game is fair?...
I'm going to quote you That's not a fair "answer" and you know it.
KSP is a fully finished and released product, SC is game in dveelpment.

By "unfair" I meant that you, like Max, were overgeneralizing things in claiming that all bugs were equal to each other and misrepresenting other people's arguments by claiming that SC's alpha is no worse than any other alpha in terms of quality because all alphas have bugs, even though a lot of them only have minor ones that are only noticeable under scrutiny of the game's functionality.

I think KSP is a reasonable example of a prerelease alpha with no major isssues. Like SC, KSP is notable for spending a long time in a pre-release alpha state. Unlike SC however, most of KSP worked fine throughout that period as new features were added. You don't have to like that answer but it's the truth.

Please don't overgeneralize and misrepresent other people's words in future.