It's rubbish. They will never - ever - pull it off. The game is going to remain an instanced mess in which anything above 16 players is a miracle. The netcode will never be robust enough to be an "MMO". Then they will walk back that particular promise and fallback to the original mantra in which they said - on the record (it's in my blogs btw) - that Star Citizen was NOT an MMO. That's what they are going to do. Bookmark this post.
The Star Citizen Thread v5
- Thread starter Brett C
- Start date
- Status
It's rubbish. They will never - ever - pull it off. The game is going to remain an instanced mess in which anything above 16 players is a miracle. The netcode will never be robust enough to be an "MMO". Then they will walk back that particular promise and fallback to the original mantra in which they said - on the record (it's in my blogs btw) - that Star Citizen was NOT an MMO. That's what they are going to do. Bookmark this post.
In all fairness, it doesnt seem to be a CIG thing but rather a trend in gaming: people stop being consumers and start being supporters, pretty much the same way people support a football club. The unfortunate thing is that because of it discussing games is becoming increasingly like discussing football clubs with fans of each club. Normally if you buy a product, and two years after the estimated delivery date they are not even remotely close to half-way you'd be upset, cancel the order and get something else. Not so with games anymore, we have to distort the truth, attack the critic, hide behind vagueness and all that nonsense. Its really no much different than standing at the sideline of FC Hopeless versus FC Desperate, 11th amateur division, on a raindy saturday and proclaim that it may be a bit rough around the edges but still some of the best football ever seen.
That's patently false
NO fps game has two sets of animations for first and third person. The way it works is that some legacy games used to have different arms for the fps view as that increases the visual fidelity in that you can have arms (which holding a weapon) with over 20K polys, while the actual character (seen only in 3rd person if the game has that view, or remotely by other players if multiplayer) may only have arms with about 1K polys.
The issue with allowing the same character pov for 1st person is that you have to set the camera POV so that it doesn't intersect the character model. So if you have a fov of 60 and someone decides to change the settings set it to 90; this will break the view. The end result is that the camera will either end up inside the character model or worse.
Like all games with 1st/3rd person view, even LoD does this. We have high resolution arms for holding weapons, interacting in 1st person etc. They are completely different (in terms of polys and models) from the arms on the actual character model itself, and which other players see remotely in multiplayer.
If they are unifying the 1st and 3rd person models now, it simply means that they are no longer using a separate model (e.g. arms) for the 1st person view. If they were in fact using two FULL character models for 1st and 3rd person - which I think is unlikely - that right there is part of the problem with this game. Everything is just a broken mess.
"visual stabilization" is just a fancy term for "we went back and changed to how it really should be, because how we did it before was unconventional rubbish". And the removal of head bob is just a camera manipulation, coupled with physics input, depending on how they implemented it. So they disabled it. And if they were actually animating the head movement, then they also went in and removed that character "head" animation if in fact it was a separate entity.
Finally, If you ever see someone shooting at you, even though they are reloading, that has absolutely nothing to do with models or visual stabilization. At all. It is purely to do with netcode synchronization because the client and server are not in sync.
Ben Parry knows. So he - assuming he wants to - can shed more light on how they did it, and why the change now.
- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -
They made the very inept design decision to have the camera slaved to the character model and to have the first-person view slaved to the third-person model, as opposed to having a sensible and easily adjusted camera and to make distinct first- and third-person animations to ensure that it always works properly.
This is part of why the game isn't VR-compatible at the moment, and while there are some examples out there of how CryEngine normally cheats it, it is also not a problem that CryEngine has also already solved. They're also problems that would normally only exist in a far more complex combat sim than what SC has on offer. So yeah, it's a bit grandiose for what should be a trivial thing to change, but in best CIG tradition, they've made it non-trivial for no good reason and thus caused all kinds of very silly follow-on effects.
If they're clever, this “vision stabilisation” still just means what you think it should mean, but with them fixing the camera design first. But by that logic, chances are that they've implemented a movement mechanic to combat the regular movement mechanic, because nothing says good engineering as having two different parts of the system constantly battling each other.
Yeah, that.
- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -
Waiiiiiiitaminute! WOT!?!?!?
...this is the part where my brain did a BSOD
A very sad truth and not just about the gaming industry, quite a poignant reminder about the state of consumer culture in general.
I think this would make a better game. They should have opted for an an open world single player campaign with Dark Souls style hop-in co-op and pvp. This would have been far more achievable and deliverable.
I still don't understand how they plan on "frankensteining" an MMO, with private servers, in a persistent universe, with an economy etc etc. I just don't see how that is going to all gel together into a cohesive experience worth playing. Why waste my time in the "MMO" when I can spawn whatever I want in a private server and just enjoy what gameplay there is to offer? Ultimately it's going to be the same activities, without a time constraint, surely?
It's made harder to understand when the basic elements of any part of the gameplay loop don't even exist yet.
Last edited:
They won't. Nobody cares about Star Marine other than backers who were already promised it, and are entitled to it. Especially since it's just another mode inside a convoluted game with modes that aren't cohesive.
The hilarious part is that Star Marine (if they call it that in the end, seeing as they don't have the IP rights) is actually coming back; though it was claimed to already be in the PU. Yeah.
I'd like to jump in here, does SC have a bug reporting system similar to ED? as in an automatic report for any CTD or game breaking bugs, and if not why not?
Surely a bug reporting structure like ED would be a boon to the SC's developers who could then nail down these game breakers quickly and efficiently.
Surely a bug reporting structure like ED would be a boon to the SC's developers who could then nail down these game breakers quickly and efficiently.
Yes. Pretty much.
imo, the alarm bells should start going off the minute you see the part where they were asking for only $500K to build that kind of game.
They have this:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/issue-council
I don't know how it functions, or if it does, but hey, they removed the head bob thing before the end of the third week of September, 2016.
So there's that.
I hear you Derek and I mostly agree with your statement however I still think that CIG can"cheat"about players number per instance especially when it comes to the multicrew ships....ships with more then few crew members will generally been see to the server same as the single seater...as players in those ships will do probably very simple tasks that don´t require huge data-net-transfer so it´s kind of possible to have 16 + per instance and as the tech progress and overall users net speed&stability who knows maybe in few more years we can see some other games with crazy mp numbers.....
Last edited:
Not relevant.
According to metrics; the people still giving them money are pre-existing backers (some of who are whales) as reflected in the funding numbers (which we still thing is mostly ) compared to the number of backers.
Just because a number of backers are still giving them money by buying stuff, doesn't mean that the "noise" is any less relevant.
- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -
No, they can't. There is no feasible way to just ignore the fact that an instance with 16 players, is somehow going to automagically support 24 because of multi-crew.
I've developed that tech, and I know how it works, inside and out. At the end of the day, if an instance supports 16 players, then mult-crew is only for those 16 players in that instance. There is absolutely NO WAY around that. At all.
And all the data in that instance, all of which doesn't care if it's multi-crew or an asteroid, still has to be sent back and forth.
Last edited:
Well In Arcorp for example they had 40 players right....I know it´s totally different just saying when you lowering your net-data-transfer it is possible to squeeze more players per instance right?I certainly not any kind of expert in this field just seems kind of logical to me....
YESSSS!! COME ON FOOTBALL ANALOGIES!!!!!
I think at this point we're just taking each patch as it comes.
I dunno, man...
You've really no idea how a studio of more than a handful of people operates, have you? I've made it quite clear that I write rendering code. Personally I've not ever worked on bones/skinning type stuff, but even if I did I wouldn't have had anything to do with what animations are being played or how they're being blended together - by the time it hits the renderer it's just bone soup.
So thats basically just a long version of "no, I dont know anything about that." Fine, but just say so without the passive agressiveness. Anyway, at this point I guess it might make more sense to fix CS/SQ42 rather that search the internet for example of other games that had bugs, but luckily neither is my job.
Most of all the forum users have no idea about programming or managing a game studio, but we could still argue about design choices and strategic decisions.
That Crysis gif was awesome! xD
The animation I linked isn't a bug as far as I know, I linked it in response to the idea that no games have separate first/third-person animations.So thats basically just a long version of "no, I dont know anything about that." Fine, but just say so without the passive agressiveness. Anyway, at this point I guess it might make more sense to fix CS/SQ42 rather that search the internet for example of other games that had bugs, but luckily neither is my job.
As for fixing SC, it's a Saturday afternoon. I shouldn't be in work on a Saturday afternoon.
- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -
Indeed, and I wouldn't hold that against users who don't manage a game studio or make sweeping claims about how they operateMost of all the forum users have no idea about programming or managing a game studio, but we could still argue about design choices and strategic decisions.
.- Status