Well, the game is ready for that. It is well optimised and the core mechanisms are extremely robust and free of any glitches and bug, so why not go over the top. Clearly every gamer will invest in a heavy duty workstation with 1/2 TB memory and 4 sockets with 80 cores total. And the net code, well, it's such a masterpiece, peanuts to handle such complexity.
The Star Citizen Thread v5
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Well, the game is ready for that. It is well optimised and the core mechanisms are extremely robust and free of any glitches and bug, so why not go over the top. Clearly every gamer will invest in a heavy duty workstation with 1/2 TB memory and 4 sockets with 80 cores total. And the net code, well, it's such a masterpiece, peanuts to handle such complexity.
You can make AI do a lot of interesting things with not much CPU penalty. However, it is so complex beast to make it right that these promises are again sky high. If SC would be working game and that would be next version of AI I might even believe they can do half of it. But it isn't.
But there is a difference between making individual AI do stuff, and creating a society of smart NPCs that populate a galaxy. It's the interactions between individual AIs that kill you, not the individual AI itself.
Meanwhile in Planet Coaster, crowds have pretty awesome AI at pretty low cpu costs...
But that is mainly movement stuff, which is based on simplified fluid dynamics simulations. This is based on an entity which is the crowd. But in SC vision there are emergent entities, like NPC crews dynamically reacting to any circumstances, one NPC being wounded and being replaced by another that has to do two jobs now etc. This is ridiculous. And NPC's managing trading empires? Come on.
Germans having 75% of CIG income doesn't surprise me in any bit. Germany is strongest world economy at this point, people still have their disposable income... Also lack of critical information on SC in German might contribute that.
Speaking of witch, anyone helping Derek to translate his site to German?
Just some quick numbers, comparing the coverage of SC in GameStar to World of Warcraft (incl. expansions).
Number of articles (previews, reviews, special features):
WOW: 33
SC: 29
Number of news:
WOW: 1046
SC: 228
Number of videos (special features, trailers):
WOW: 109
SC: 162
WOW was _released_ in 2005, SC announced in 2012. See the difference?
http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/star-citizen/48820.html
http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/world-of-warcraft/33592.html
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Why didn't I know about this earlier, I almost died watching the "Assassin", "Chicken", "Overburdened" and "Skip"
Viajero
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OT but hey. Nothing in this seems "simple" to be honest:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ating_believable_crowds_in_Planet_Coaster.php
https://medium.com/@nicholasRodgers...ios-in-planet-coaster-9b5743bd805c#.o2wdupuue
And it does not seem to be just about flow, but about individuals in the crowd reacting (i.e, changed flow pattern + animations + park simulation impact on spend, ride use etc) to park events, animators, rides breaking down, thirst or hunger, park being dirty etc
The amount of work "just for that" seems quite significant and far from trivial. And really puts in perspective how ridiculous that reddit dreaming post is imho.
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But wait! There's more!. Each an every blood cell in those NPCs is simulated, along with oxygen consumption. When they get tired from running from their beds to action stations it actually affects their ability to AI. It's amazing!
Indeed. Doing what they are dreaming would chew up CPU, memory, and bandwidth. If its what CIG are really planning, then i think that would be the point where i finally say the game is . Because if CR has dictated this will be, we know he doesn't like devs that tell him no, so they would march forward trying to do this.
Abstract everything away that isn't needed for the gameplay, until its actually needed. Its the only way to keep good performance.
Now let's not go overboard here... Surely the technology simply isn't there to precisely keep track of the exhaust emitted from the nipple jets. Although given their state of dress in that situation, maybe commandos don't run on oxygen at all...?
They started out with fidelity in all things, they've never been concerned about performance, gameplay or endlessly redoing art assets even when entire teams got sick of it and walked out on them. Your criteria was met and exceeded years ago.
Wasn't this also the dream for Strike Commander and Freelancer?
The living breathing NPC world that magically throws out a neverending stream of meaningful and involving interactions has been a Genuine Roberts fantasy for decades now.
You bet! And he'll never see anything like that in SC too ^^
Let's theorycraft a more plausible moment-to-moment story in SC...
You wake up in your spawning bedroom, eager to live one of the best day of you citizen life. You reboot the game because your player refuse to move. Minutes later you're finally walking towards your ship. On your way, you meet another citizen hard at work mopping the floor, supported in his task by an epic soundtrack. 'Chris' Verse is more real than reality!', you shout on the local voicechat channel. 'True! 15 hours of mopping and I could buy myself a Ionic-gimballed Starmop! I'm here for the hard-earned cash, don't want to buy it on store...' says the 8 years old Citizen through its female avatar in sexy leather dress.
After having ordered 10.000t of goods you aim to trade in another of the half-dozen star systems available (you can't help yourself thinking of the bliss you'll have in twoweeksyears when CIG will release a new batch of carefully fidelitized star systems...), you PAARP your way to the landing pad... 'Ha yes, I forgot to put my spacesuit on... So good CIG made this bug a feature, they really listen to their customers'.
As you approach your beautiful starship, you witness the impressive Subsumption 4.5 in action: five NPCs loading by hand your precious cargo. 'Only 9.857t remaining...' notices your Mobiglass. You're not bored, because of the immersive fidelity of the thing. Then you notice a sixth NPC stuck (for how long?) in a collider, spinning crazily... Another NPC is suddenly hit by a spagghetified limb of the poor buddy and thrown against the pile of containers. In seconds, 5000+ tons of cargo are lost in the void. But your immersion remains high: 'Ha! And fools said CIG forgot to code the Space... They really didn't understand game development 15 years ago!'
Well, time to socialize a little. You summon Spectrum 0.15 in your Mobiglass, seeking for fellow Citizens eager to replace the NPCs and fulfill your immersion. After many cordial responses from 'sorry, already saving a damzel in distress' to 'buzz off, I won't break my immershun for yours', you're relieved to receive a message from your Corp: 'Attention all personels, gather at quadrant A-01-1102 to support our Idris fleet!'
So much for the cargo, you run to your pilot seat... Halfway through, you receive another call: 'Too late, we're down... Thank you lamers! I'll ban all of you from the corp' How dare he? You have your golden ticket, for Chris' Sake! You're about to answer back when your ship starts to move. Oh my, a Citizen is stealing your JPEG! As the ship leaves the landing pad you clip through the hull and fall flat on the starport. You're resentful, yet proud, because you know a physicalized 4096 triangle modelized tear is rolling down your avatar's face. Such physics, so realism, much immersion.
You file a report abuse in Subsumption. 2 seconds later BB-Lensl0k, moderator, answers 'it's the game. Infraction to rule 9.2. Stop reporting or you're banned'. But you almost miss the message as you're already back inside the starport to order another ship. 'Haha! I was so smart to spend $13.000 back then. No wait for me!'
Let's go to where your Corp's Idris fleet was destroyed toscavengehelp you friends. As you approach you're prompted: 'sorry, no more room in the instance, 16 players limit exceeded. Would you like to be disconnected or trigger a special mission handcrafted specially for you?' Wow, for you, specially, like you could feel Chris' breath on you shoulder! You're obviously in.
10 minutes of loading later (so much crafty magical german hands!) your starboat is funnelled towards the closest planet. As your ship falls, the mission chains multiple minigame objectives from "avoid the 'roids" to "run amok around your ship to stick you fingers in hull's leaks". Thrilling, and you know it'll be more awesome next time as the epic soundtrack should stream without hiccups from the Cloud then.
Ship crashes on the ground. Actually she's still intact, but APSDS (Awesome Procedural Ship Damage System) finally triggers once the game scans your account to check that you paid for the extra module. Of course you did, you're not DSmurt's minion! It triggers and spawns the placeholder of your damaged ship - hey, it's alpha what were you thinking? - as a magnificent artwork jpeg of your damaged ship is received by your Mobiglass.
Ok, time for the awesome "you're stranded and must survive, alone, in a dangerous alien place" totally algorithmic moment. You know it'll be great because you read a post from a citizen living in Orlando. You keep your immersion level high by consciously ignoring the multiple ships and citizen flying/paarping around you. Forest is deep and detailed, and totally not faked as you experience many collisionbugsfeatures throwing you spinning in the air. Wildlife too. You never laughed so much in a videogame, this is figuratively and literally pushing boundaries!
Eventually reaching a glade you spot enemy NPCs. They're standing still, not reacting to your presence. You get it: events didn't trigger because you didn't came from the good path. You don't want to make magic germans sad, so you backtrack and take the good path (after stealing enemies weapons, because fun). As a real galactic hero you dispose of the NPC scum. Special snowflakes rain down to congratulate you.
But you're sick, starving and your clothes are dirty. Time to loot, craft and and heal yourself with local flora (yes you have 35 medpacks and 120 big bennys in your inventory, but you have to roleplay!). Once done, a strange creature comes close to you. Maybe you can tame it, even educate and marry it eventually. Such emotions! The creature is about to reveal a secret when it gets shot in the head.
Oh noes, some evil goons found you to break you immersion! Thankfully, CIG anticipated this and the game triggers the immersion-break prevention system :
You can't wait to play tomorrow, when your CPU will get cooler enough to be able to boot the game again.
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A chunk of what was posted is already done by AI in any semi-competent RPG.
Further depth would need a lot of planning, but we haven't even seen basic AI yet.
Oh I think that reddit poster was trying to say "My backer number is lower than 50,000", to indicate he is an early backer; rather than saying he has spent 50,000 backing the thing!
Has Tony actually begun the process of making his wild gameplay mechanics into something we can view? Or at least gotten them outside of the concept stage. No offence to the guy and I'm not saying he can't do it but arc corp is the only really playable and remotely interactive (hardly) element that was produced under him (that I know about). He has no problems with these big ideas but honestly I haven't seen an ounce of evidence they can deliver on any of those.
I'm saying this as a (now limited) backer who is kind of tired of hearing wild concept ideas since nov 2012.
I had zero clue back then that in Jan 2017 this is the same garbage I would be hearing. I just don't care about long term stuff any longer, not when the core game is still so barely a tech demo.
I'm saying this as a (now limited) backer who is kind of tired of hearing wild concept ideas since nov 2012.
I had zero clue back then that in Jan 2017 this is the same garbage I would be hearing. I just don't care about long term stuff any longer, not when the core game is still so barely a tech demo.
That is not the CIG way of doing things.
I never meant to say it is simple! Just compared to the society simulation CIG is talking about.
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