This is "DUPE"
The Star Citizen Thread v5
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This is "DUPE"
Listening to Derek - interesting and measured. Probably talking about some of this thread 
Arrakis.....Dupe.....content desert.
Those who have lived long enough on the planet Dupe develop blue-in-blue refactor glands.
That was nice.
(But I noticed in that version the space station isn't rotating - it's static.)
What concerns be about SC procedural tech is where is the procedural bit?
It looks like the heightmap is procedural, an all the surface (the 'biomes') are just tiles placed by an artist. I hope I'm wrong about this 'cos if I'm right it just makes proc gen pointless.
If the surface of a planet is made up of tiles that have been placed (and modified) by an artist, then all the data of where each tile is and it's orientation has to be either downloaded in the game files, or streamed to you as you explore. Proc gen would allow the planetary surface to be created by a process on your computer.
The data for one planet in the artist mode is immense - we're talking about gigabytes of data here, for every planet! If we have 100 systems with, on average 4 planets each we are talking about terabytes of data that have to be either stored on your HD or streamed as required!
Please can someone tell me where I've gone wrong here because I don't believe CIG haven't thought of this and I'm probably just in stoopid mode right now
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Marak - it is all hand placed, that's why they demoed the editor because it shows how they can hand place objects in varying ways. PG just uses an algorithm to build A LOT of whatever you want with varying differences and how they differ depends on the seeds/templates, input, and the algorithm involved. You can actually get some wildly varying PG stuff, it just requires a lot of forethought to produce it.
What is going on with SC, though, I can't believe is PG simply because they apparently can only get one asset (planet) from something that is designed to churn out at least a dozen (again, depends on desired content output) but up to billions of randomly generated things based on the inputs for the desired outputs.
That's why, how is this procedural generation if they only have 1 planet but clearly they are hand placing almost all of it?
It just smacks of smoke and mirrors and hand waving.
I see them relying on the general ignorance of what procedural generation is - look at what Orlando thought PG was he claimed it was to build planets on the fly but that is something totally different - and so they claim PG then say they define local areas with hand placed editing from devs... so then why aren't there at least five planets already built with certain areas that are hand crafted so that gameplay can be demoed by traveling between those planets and doing various missions? Don't even need AI, just do MP with 10 people and the basic missions they already have designed. The absence of that just makes me believe they don't have PG working, they don't have much of anything working, and they are building these custom demos to get more money to keep trying to get something maybe at some point that they can say "well, we tried out best and this is what you get..."
What is being presented just doesn't make sense if they have procedural generation working.
What is going on with SC, though, I can't believe is PG simply because they apparently can only get one asset (planet) from something that is designed to churn out at least a dozen (again, depends on desired content output) but up to billions of randomly generated things based on the inputs for the desired outputs.
That's why, how is this procedural generation if they only have 1 planet but clearly they are hand placing almost all of it?
It just smacks of smoke and mirrors and hand waving.
I see them relying on the general ignorance of what procedural generation is - look at what Orlando thought PG was he claimed it was to build planets on the fly but that is something totally different - and so they claim PG then say they define local areas with hand placed editing from devs... so then why aren't there at least five planets already built with certain areas that are hand crafted so that gameplay can be demoed by traveling between those planets and doing various missions? Don't even need AI, just do MP with 10 people and the basic missions they already have designed. The absence of that just makes me believe they don't have PG working, they don't have much of anything working, and they are building these custom demos to get more money to keep trying to get something maybe at some point that they can say "well, we tried out best and this is what you get..."
What is being presented just doesn't make sense if they have procedural generation working.
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It looks like the heightmap is procedural, an all the surface (the 'biomes') are just tiles placed by an artist. I hope I'm wrong about this 'cos if I'm right it just makes proc gen pointless.
If the surface of a planet is made up of tiles that have been placed (and modified) by an artist, then all the data of where each tile is and it's orientation has to be either downloaded in the game files, or streamed to you as you explore. Proc gen would allow the planetary surface to be created by a process on your computer.
The data for one planet in the artist mode is immense - we're talking about gigabytes of data here, for every planet! If we have 100 systems with, on average 4 planets each we are talking about terabytes of data that have to be either stored on your HD or streamed as required!
Please can someone tell me where I've gone wrong here because I don't believe CIG haven't thought of this and I'm probably just in stoopid mode right now
I seem to remember that the 'planetary generation' was originally intended to "pad out" the blank areas of the planet (as people didn't want to be restricted to "loading screen landing at a specific site"). The active bits of the planet "with stuff on it" are generated by an artist+level designer.
But note it's not "gigabytes" per-planet exactly, as there are 2 parts to the 'tweaking':
- the 'biome'. In ED terms this is akin to the 'plate tectonics'. Basically the designer says "this part of the planet has sand on the surface" and the terrain generation in that area is then tweaked to generate small hills rather than mountains, and switch the terrain textures.
- the hand-crafting. This is basically the same as the engineers bases, or Dixon Dock etc.
However, the total download size of this project is almost certainly bordering on the insane.
And a drawing of spice (probably NUTmeg)
But if it's all hand placed, on entire planets, there is no way that that amount of data can be either stored locally or streamed.
I must be wrong - CIG has some really talented programmers on the team so surely someone has mentioned this to Chris. Stuff can't be randomly generated on a planet as everyone needs to see the same thing in an MMO. If tiles are just proceduraly 'dropped' then landscapes would be awfully repetitive.
I think that I'm missing something here. but I don't know what.
They already stated numerous times that the planets in SC are artist driven and built with the help of procedural techniques.
This means that they don't press a key to procedurally generate a planet. They use procedural generation as a tool to help the artist build a planet in a much quicker way than if he had to manually do the mountains or place every rock and every tree manually.
This means that they don't press a key to procedurally generate a planet. They use procedural generation as a tool to help the artist build a planet in a much quicker way than if he had to manually do the mountains or place every rock and every tree manually.
You could do it the NMS way, but you need loads of assets? or every planet/building looks too similar. Like NMS.
How big are these planets again?
Procedural generation isn't random. It will always produce the same results because it is using the same assets, algorithm and seed/template. It will only be repetitive if allowed to be by limited data.
The first Elite had PG planets to save storage space, sure they weren't incredibly advanced but procedural generation saves storage space. It only gets bigger in memory when the PG algorithm is run to generate whatever it is supposed to generate.
The hand placed stuff augments the PG stuff. For example - like the Engineer bases in ED. The rest of the planet is PG, but the base is built by devs and placed.
SC, on the other hand, isn't showing multiple planets. They are showing one. So that is why PG does not appear to be there.
PG should always be the first part of building a large amount of "similar" things - like planets, or creatures, and if you want to touch up or add custom stuff then the devs step in and manually add it.
It is never "artist driven" with "help of PG" that is bassackwards which shows just how ignorant those are that produce statements like that regarding PG and SC.
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The CitCon demo showed an artist dropping 'tiles' onto an area to create biomes, then adjusting the orientation of a few tiles to make them look different.
Many of the trees looked the same & I posted earlier about how all the 'rock pillars' looked exactly alike, before an artist played with them. In ED there is no artist involvement in any of the planets (except for the placement of bases etc), as soon as you have artist involvement in the appearance of a whole planet then PG is out of the window and you have a massive download. Unless the actual features are PG'd, but the Citcon demo showed the aren't.
That's not entirely true. ED base seeds for planet types are reviewed by artists. David talks about this here:
[video=youtube;GEVutbSqBI0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEVutbSqBI0[/video]
Major point is - for FD result is a seed. It can have authorized overrides. It can persistent POIs added to it (since 2.2 it is a thing). More or less now PG universe is galaxy seed + overwrites. Everything else is different layer.
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This is what I posted earlier. All the pillar assets are the same tile until (if you watch the demo) they are moved by an artist.
The interference by an artist cannot be proceduraly generated and so must be stored as data either on your HD or streamed. Otherwise, the planet will have lots of rocks, trees, tufts of grass etc. that are identical.
Those items are the same though, so it isn't making the data size larger. The mapping just references objects and places them at coordinates. There is only one thing (texture element - size can be adjusted on the fly so one texture can be varying rocks of varying sizes with no additional storage cost) stored for the rock, and it is replicated when loaded into memory from the drive when accessed.
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Ohh yeah.
There's reason why FD spent considerable time for asteroid fields to look different. They are PG generated, using handcrafted textures smartly so they would look unique.
What SC does it very basic at this point. Even NMS succeeded to make variants of assets not to feel the same.
edit: but yeah, them being replicated doesn't mean they are repeatedly stored on hard disk, quite opposite.
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