The Star Citizen Thread V10

[Agony_Aunt]

It's symptomatic of a larger theme that has run through all of CIG's concepts since day one. Chris' “creative” mind

I think you could have stopped there.

CR decides what he wants, then expects the devs to do it, without regards for whether its even feasable or how much time it will take, and of course, whether it will even be fun.

I mean, we can poke fun at many games about the fun part, but the devs at least usually investigate feasability and effort before deciding to do it.

The dream of SC is built upon a mountain of CR's ideas, with little thought put into how it will all work.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/bi1xxz

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/bi1xxz/clive_johnson_is_on_fire_today_with_the_server/

The network team is -- but as he said, server meshing in particular relies on work from a ton of different teams across the company (just like object containers and serialized variables did when they first implemented them), and that work hasn't even been scheduled yet, because they need to agree on a plan first.
So it's likely not as close as some people may have thought.

Or not as close as CIG may have led people to believe... usually just before they release another concept sale.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

On the roadmap, CIG plan to gamify hovering!

 

[Surefoot]

Nothing on that roadmap about server meshing.

Because it's done since it's the very core of the game engine (and it's not called "server meshing" there). The technique differs somewhat from the vague plans exposed by CiG, as for DU they went with a clever real time space-slicing technique called 3D tessellation based on player density. The cloud node allocation is dynamic, and based on that tessellation engine. Everything has been detailed at various developer conferences. As a dev myself i can see how it can work and how it addresses all usual concerns (players grouping in a small area vs huge empty areas, players moving around and interacting, etc.).
But i insist the main and most important difference is DU treats this as the core engine of the game, which is done as a top priority over everything else, while CiG will try and refactor their idea (which affects the very structure of the game engine..) 7+ years in with a huge existing code base. Not even considering the amount of handwavium or hopeful wishes i have seen in their comments, this will be a very daunting task, and given they didnt manage to make networking function properly for about 20 players in a time frame of 7 years, that's a 50+ year commitment here. Good luck to them.

 

[StuartGT]

Because it's done since it's the very core of the game engine (and it's not called "server meshing" there). The technique differs somewhat from the vague plans exposed by CiG, as for DU they went with a clever real time space-slicing technique called 3D tessellation based on player density. The cloud node allocation is dynamic, and based on that tessellation engine. Everything has been detailed at various developer conferences. As a dev myself i can see how it can work and how it addresses all usual concerns (players grouping in a small area vs huge empty areas, players moving around and interacting, etc.).
But i insist the main and most important difference is DU treats this as the core engine of the game, which is done as a top priority over everything else, while CiG will try and refactor their idea (which affects the very structure of the game engine..) 7+ years in with a huge existing code base. Not even considering the amount of handwavium or hopeful wishes i have seen in their comments, this will be a very daunting task, and given they didnt manage to make networking function properly for about 20 players in a time frame of 7 years, that's a 50+ year commitment here. Good luck to them.

You clearly don't understand game development

Spoiler

 

[Zetta]

Because it's done since it's the very core of the game engine (and it's not called "server meshing" there). The technique differs somewhat from the vague plans exposed by CiG, as for DU they went with a clever real time space-slicing technique called 3D tessellation based on player density. The cloud node allocation is dynamic, and based on that tessellation engine. Everything has been detailed at various developer conferences. As a dev myself i can see how it can work and how it addresses all usual concerns (players grouping in a small area vs huge empty areas, players moving around and interacting, etc.).
But i insist the main and most important difference is DU treats this as the core engine of the game, which is done as a top priority over everything else, while CiG will try and refactor their idea (which affects the very structure of the game engine..) 7+ years in with a huge existing code base. Not even considering the amount of handwavium or hopeful wishes i have seen in their comments, this will be a very daunting task, and given they didnt manage to make networking function properly for about 20 players in a time frame of 7 years, that's a 50+ year commitment here. Good luck to them.

Exactly this. It is also something I have seen from City State Games (the devs behind Camelot Unchained). Their main focus from the very beginning of the project is making sure the engine is able to support and be performant with thousands of clients in one area.
CIG seem to be operating on the idea that they can shoehorn it in afterwards, which is complete madness to me. Or what is more likely is that they are going to rebuild everything, almost from scratch, as they claimed to have done with 3.0 back in 2016.

 

[Sanya V. Juutilainen]

We use Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) for our server hosting. I don't know the exact numbers but they have tens of thousands of servers available in each region, and we can add as many of these as we want to our network within a matter of minutes. That's a crazy amount of computing power, right at our fingertips.

Somebody here forgets that additional servers cost additional money. Amazon is getting everything paid, whether we're talking about storage, servers, computing power. And the prices for such stuff aren't exactly small (consider here that many gaming companies prefer local building-hosted servers for a reason).

Saying "We'll just add more" is a good way to bankruptcy - and it can happen even with smaller games.

 

[mp4x]

Somebody here forgets that additional servers cost additional money. ...

CIG sells additional jpegs

 

[Skizomeuh]

Money is magic!
Money buys time, money buys shiny things that help silence of the crowd, money. Money money money!
If Amazon cant cope with all the fidelities it's because we have to pay with more MONEY!!! If we can't do things it's because you don't give enough MONEY!!!
Money!

 

[jmp470]

Something super cool, IMO, happened to me today on SC. Yesterday, as I was about to log off, I asked if anyone would like to use my 600i explorer. Someone said yes, so we meet up over Port O, and I showed him/her around the ship. Then I unlocked it and logged out in the master bedroom. Fully expecting to wake up at Port O and have to claim my ship.

Well I woke up in a hangar at a rest stop, in the crew quarters, but, still in my ship. RP, I went to kitchen to eat, then showered in my quarters. Then, refueled, repaired and rearmed my ship.

I thought that was awesome. I know small things make me happy.

Anyways, off to a server wide ship meetup now. See if we can crash the server.

 

[Tippis]

So… giving someone a ship and getting it back is the low bar we have to pass to qualify as “super cool” now?

Well, hey, SC might actually compete with Planetside if they ever manage to squeeze an FPS out of the FPS engine.

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

Something super cool, IMO, happened to me today on SC. Yesterday, as I was about to log off, I asked if anyone would like to use my 600i explorer. Someone said yes, so we meet up over Port O, and I showed him/her around the ship. Then I unlocked it and logged out in the master bedroom. Fully expecting to wake up at Port O and have to claim my ship.

Well I woke up in a hangar at a rest stop, in the crew quarters, but, still in my ship. RP, I went to kitchen to eat, then showered in my quarters. Then, refueled, repaired and rearmed my ship.

I thought that was awesome. I know small things make me happy.

Anyways, off to a server wide ship meetup now. See if we can crash the server.

You’re going to run out of superlatives pretty quickly if you claim that to be super cool.

 

[ZeeWolf]

Remember that flying car you paid for in 2012?

Good news. The flying part, we've not started yet - there's a bunch of stuff that we need to prepare before make our cars fly. Flying is hard. But we totally know how its going to work so everything is fine.

In the meantime we've got some amazing "road" tech, so you can fly your flying car on the road using all the awesome power of "roads".Our flying car is far beyond anything anyone has ever done before, for example our unique wheel-tech interfaces our cars with "roads" in a way flying cars have never done before.

Awesome flying cars may not be suitable for road use. Flying car does not meet any safety standards. Flying cars are Alpha so everything's ok.

Give us more money.

 

[jmp470]

Remember that flying car you paid for in 2012?

Good news. The flying part, we've not started yet - there's a bunch of stuff that we need to prepare before make our cars fly. Flying is hard. But we totally know how its going to work so everything is fine.

In the meantime we've got some amazing "road" tech, so you can fly your flying car on the road using all the awesome power of "roads".Our flying car is far beyond anything anyone has ever done before, for example our unique wheel-tech interfaces our cars with "roads" in a way flying cars have never done before.

Awesome flying cars may not be suitable for road use. Flying car does not meet any safety standards. Flying cars are Alpha so everything's ok.

Give us more money.

Heck yeah I would buy a family sized quadcopter, that fit 8. If it cost about $150K after completion, I would give them $75K tomorrow. As for safety, we are all going to die. No one has ever gotten out of life alive!

 

[Skizomeuh]

Brace yourself as you'll probably get out of life without having played SC 1.0 too.

 

[Fishy]

So… giving someone a ship and getting it back is the low bar we have to pass to qualify as “super cool” now?

In all fairness, it's actually a pretty cool feature to be able to lend your ships (at your own financial perils) to someone else. I don't have many actual friends playing ED but for those few, I'd have loved to be able to let them have a spin at various of my ships to get a taster of what stuff is like, at zero hassle for them (no buying, no outfitting, no RNGineering...). There's plenty to lol about with the state of the game, but that isn't part of it imho.

 

[Mole HD]

Something super cool, IMO, happened to me today on SC. Yesterday, as I was about to log off, I asked if anyone would like to use my 600i explorer. Someone said yes, so we meet up over Port O, and I showed him/her around the ship. Then I unlocked it and logged out in the master bedroom. Fully expecting to wake up at Port O and have to claim my ship.

Well I woke up in a hangar at a rest stop, in the crew quarters, but, still in my ship. RP, I went to kitchen to eat, then showered in my quarters. Then, refueled, repaired and rearmed my ship.

I thought that was awesome. I know small things make me happy.

Anyways, off to a server wide ship meetup now. See if we can crash the server.

Trouble with logging out in the ship bed is that it mostly doesn't work...mainly since there's no incentive, therefore no reason for Ci¬G to at least attempt any version of persistence that would in the short and long term cost them money.

I'm still fussing over my broken HOTAS settings amidst Ci¬G's paid online minions patronising me on the fancy schmancy concierge 'direct line' moan-a-lot web page. Seemingly I can buy ship packages ranging up to $35,000 but I can't get them to fix the bloody HOTAS settings so I can fly my ships without exploding into the scenery every time I either press the 'F' key to interact with MFD's or bring up my Mobiglas...

I keep reminding them I don't require an FPS M/KB style speed limiter in my ships that doesn't work since I have a £250 HOTAS that conveniently places a nice speed limiter under my left hand...It's called a throttle, strangely enough. If I pull it back to cut throttle, I don't expect me pressing a menu button or keypress to override it and lawndart me into a planet...

 

[Mole HD]

In all fairness, it's actually a pretty cool feature to be able to lend your ships (at your own financial perils) to someone else. I don't have many actual friends playing ED but for those few, I'd have loved to be able to let them have a spin at various of my ships to get a taster of what stuff is like, at zero hassle for them (no buying, no outfitting, no RNGineering...). There's plenty to lol about with the state of the game, but that isn't part of it imho.

It doesn't cost me a penny lending my ships out in SC, they all appear like magic back in my inventory after folks have dumped them or blown them up...seems that's all I do these days along with answering endless questions in the chat for the new folks.

 

[Fishy]

It doesn't cost me a penny lending my ships out in SC, they all appear like magic back in my inventory after folks have dumped them or blown them up...seems that's all I do these days along with answering endless questions in the chat for the new folks.

Well, the lack of cost is even better or worse depending on which side of design you're on. Imho the better design is that it should cost the owner an insurance claim each time if it isn't brought back in a don't-lend-what-you-can't-afford-to-replace, but ah.

 

[Tippis]

My point is, that was a neat thing to do back in 2003 when PS1 and EVE came out — a decade and a half later, it's pretty darn mundane. Calling it “super cool” is somewhere between nonsensical and ignorant, doubly so when it's implemented in such a meaningless and lacklustre way as in SC.