The Star Citizen Thread v5

[Backer42]

This game is a wonder of the internet. I don't care about 'facts' anymore, because there are none. It is all about the narrative and I am stunned how flexible it is, even in this case. I mean an open development project that wants to start a rebellion against the big players in the business starts to cooperate with amazon and tells its supporters one year later (on December 24). Major overhauls of the game engine are worked on over months/years to create the super-innovative new game, but after 4 years they buy one of those generic big-company-toolsets.

Maybe we just witness the beefing-up for a an Amazon sellout? Oculus VR were just as "open development" and "crowdfunded" until they managed to finally get that Facebook funding.

Cheeky advertising...

Spoiler

https://s24.postimg.org/uya0k8tlx/Image_001.jpg

If you know a bit about the market, it fully loses believability. Top Buy2Play AAA franchises hardly manage to pull even 100k concurrent players on PC and only the top of list manage to sell over a million copies. Elite Dangerous has a few thousand concurrent players on Steam. We have that number stated by CIG of a total 70k accounts, who launched the Alpha 2.0, though it's still unclear who many of those actually paid for the game.

So pretending to have a MMO with 1.6 million actual players is completely ridiculous considering the environment. I bet 95 % of those grey market accounts never downloaded the game.

 

[Dooguk]

Seeing as it's Christmas Day, should we call a truce, come out of our respective trenches and meet in No Man's Sky?

 

[Barking_Mad]

I'm walking the dog, so I get a free post pass on Christmas Day!

From here: http://imperialnews.network/2016/12/lumberyard-and-you/

"Add in GridMate and the AWS horsepower necessary to support a persistent, online world and you’ve got the recipe that’s been supporting Elite Dangerous since the beginning. It’s also the core tech for Amazon Gaming’s ‘New World’ MMORPG title."

 

[Tuub t Tute]

Seeing as it's Christmas Day, should we call a truce, come out of our respective trenches and meet in No Man's Sky?

I see what you did there!

 

[ianw]

Merry Christmas all!

Featuring Don Powell smacking the drums like animal from the The Muppetts towards the end...

Spoiler

[video=youtube_share;cWgwTe01kMU]https://youtu.be/cWgwTe01kMU[/video]

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I'm walking the dog, so I get a free post pass on Christmas Day!

From here: http://imperialnews.network/2016/12/lumberyard-and-you/

"Add in GridMate and the AWS horsepower necessary to support a persistent, online world and you’ve got the recipe that’s been supporting Elite Dangerous since the beginning. It’s also the core tech for Amazon Gaming’s ‘New World’ MMORPG title."

That David fella must be smart, he is always ahead of everyone

Happy first Christmas guys! World of gloom continues outside, but games keeps us warm and fuzzy, don't you ever forget

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If you know a bit about the market, it fully loses believability. Top Buy2Play AAA franchises hardly manage to pull even 100k concurrent players on PC and only the top of list manage to sell over a million copies. Elite Dangerous has a few thousand concurrent players on Steam. We have that number stated by CIG of a total 70k accounts, who launched the Alpha 2.0, though it's still unclear who many of those actually paid for the game.

So pretending to have a MMO with 1.6 million actual players is completely ridiculous considering the environment. I bet 95 % of those grey market accounts never downloaded the game.

I +1 you but it doesn't really matter, does it? Reading YouTube video headlines, etc. they are specially aimed to people WHO DON'T KNOW THIS. Young backers. They are trying to tap them with help of that 'reputation company'. So truth doesn't even matter to CIG. That desperate they are.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Seeing as it's Christmas Day, should we call a truce, come out of our respective trenches and meet in No Man's Sky?

I heard that one game where you can fly in Milky Way galaxy and where you can meet people...most of the time and with good connection. Something with danger....Can't put my finger on it.

 

[Stormprooter]

In the spirit of the traditional x-mas ceasefire, don't pick on Ben he's a graphics guy and everyone from the biggest fan to the loudest detractor agrees it's a very good looking game.

Happy x-mas everyone.

+1

Ben takes the time to try to explain technical stuff about the game engine and his area of expertise in rendering, and he doesn't have to. As far as I can tell, he's not a salesman and is not trying to sell us anything, just trying to give us muggles a bit of an insight into what it takes to get the nitty gritty stuff done on game development. We are fortunate to have him share his knowledge.

Merry Christmas everyone.

 

[Tippis]

Any claims of a Jesus Patch are always stupid. At least most of the time they seem to come from over-enthusiastic know-it-all fans, and I do wish they'd stop, because they show themselves up while making CIG look bad too. The idea that 2.6 was due in summer is a bit silly though, this seems to be based on the idea that the original plan was monthly updates, therefore the contents of 2.6 is whatever was originally planned for June?

The original plan presented was monthly updates, and even without that, the expectation was always a big roll-out for the expos — one that was shunted into the future for untold reasons and replaced by a point release (or would that be a letter release with the oddball numbering scheme of SC?). Even as it became clear that this, too, was a CIG-schedule, 2.6 was always just around the corner to show everyone! Instead, it arrived at the worst day of the year with marquee features cut.

By the way, as far as narrative goes, I noticed that it has now swiftly shifted from something that's been going on throughout the year to “it took one day for two guys,” all while not delaying anything in any way at all (you know, aside from the very obvious delays for 2.6 and 3.0).

Most times that I saw, when someone brought up the idea of an engine change as a "great idea", it was for moving to UE4, or some other totally unrelated codebase, as though the CIG code could just be sort of lifted up and moved over. That one poll about moving to Lumberyard was in a similar vein, pointing at a bunch of bullet point features without any deep look at whether they'd really be useful or work as expected. I'm curious though, what were the reasons you considered an engine change to be an expected and logical path to take?

Because it became increasingly clear that CryEngine was the wrong choice for this kind of project and that the frankenengine that evolved to overcome that was straining at the seams — the whole joke about how it was no longer possible to make a reliable FPS in a FPS-centric engine didn't spring out of nowhere. It may not be the kind of image you'd want to be a part of, but from the outside, the DNF and Daikatana parallels have been accumulating for quite some time…

 

[Adept]

I heard that one game where you can fly in Milky Way galaxy and where you can meet people...most of the time and with good connection.

Sounds a bit dangerous if you ask me.

 

[Osmanthus]

Sounds a bit dangerous if you ask me.

Yeah but once you start doing it for a while you feel a bit elitist about it really

 

[Ben Parry]

The original plan presented was monthly updates, and even without that, the expectation was always a big roll-out for the expos — one that was shunted into the future for untold reasons and replaced by a point release (or would that be a letter release with the oddball numbering scheme of SC?). Even as it became clear that this, too, was a CIG-schedule, 2.6 was always just around the corner to show everyone! Instead, it arrived at the worst day of the year with marquee features cut.

By the way, as far as narrative goes, I noticed that it has now swiftly shifted from something that's been going on throughout the year to “it took one day for two guys,” all while not delaying anything in any way at all (you know, aside from the very obvious delays for 2.6 and 3.0).



Because it became increasingly clear that CryEngine was the wrong choice for this kind of project and that the frankenengine that evolved to overcome that was straining at the seams — the whole joke about how it was no longer possible to make a reliable FPS in a FPS-centric engine didn't spring out of nowhere. It may not be the kind of image you'd want to be a part of, but from the outside, the DNF and Daikatana parallels have been accumulating for quite some time…

Well, if your prediction of an engine change was based on CryEngine being fundamentally unsuitable, then the switch to an identical codebase doesn't really prove your point, does it?
As for the delays, have you considered that sometimes there's more than one thing happening, so the thing that's delaying stuff can be different from the thing that's taken a couple of days? I'm guessing the "year" spent on it was mostly companies talking to each other and stuff.

 

[SuperG]

Not knowing your scope and budget is no excuse for lack of forward planning.

If you know your car engine isn't going to get you any further than the next city then promising a round the world trip is a stupid idea.

Merry Christmas, thanks for your input on the thread

Wrong if you take car as analogy to CoD
And games like Spore or SC to mission to mars.

You can plan very right on the spot on 11 th sequel of something done before like car or CoD.
But Quantum computer fusion reactor mission mars. Is
More the way of a game concept wich is way more complex and not routine build and .
Its commpon to prototype new idea. Produce with the agile scrum method.
Where car or CoD or ATM software the waterfall method is doable.

In game branch there is often this 80 20 rule.

There where games with got to the 100% there is dev book that mention that game.
But often in the indie scene where there lot of room to experiment. Prototyping and agile method make more sense.

 

[Toumal]

As for the delays, have you considered that sometimes there's more than one thing happening, so the thing that's delaying stuff can be different from the thing that's taken a couple of days? I'm guessing the "year" spent on it was mostly companies talking to each other and stuff.

Ben, you have to admit that the date announced for 3.0 back at Gamescom was unrealistic, no?

 

[Ben Parry]

Wrong if you take car as analogy to CoD
And games like Spore or SC to mission to mars.

You can plan very right on the spot on 11 th sequel of something done before like car or CoD.
But Quantum computer fusion reactor mission mars. Is
More the way of a game concept wich is way more complex and not routine build and .
Its commpon to prototype new idea. Produce with the agile scrum method.
Where car or CoD or ATM software the waterfall method is doable.

In game branch there is often this 80 20 rule.

There where games with got to the 100% there is dev book that mention that game.
But often in the indie scene where there lot of room to experiment. Prototyping and agile method make more sense.

I think you're overstating the difference slightly, they're probably closer than that, but still different.

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Ben, you have to admit that the date announced for 3.0 back at Gamescom was unrealistic, no?

It's hard to say. If SQ42 had been on the schedule that it seemed to be, maybe 3.0 wouldn't have been unreasonable for this year. Maybe a little over optimistic like usual.

 

[Osmanthus]

It is wholly unreasonable to expect a man to speak publicly against the company he works for.

 

[Dooguk]

I hate talking about work when I'm on holiday.

 

[Asp Explorer]

It is wholly unreasonable to expect a man to speak publicly against the company he works for.

That doesn't explain Disco Landrover and Famous Actor and Developer Ben Lenslock

 

[Osmanthus]

That doesn't explain Disco Landrover and Famous Actor and Developer Ben Lenslock

I think the difference is those people are dishonest in their substance and Ben Parry is not, as far as we know

 

[Zyll Goliat]

Well, if your prediction of an engine change was based on CryEngine being fundamentally unsuitable, then the switch to an identical codebase doesn't really prove your point, does it?

C´mon Ben we all know what is the main issue with the Cry Engine right?It´s not that any of us in here with the common sense had anything agains the Crytek or that we just do not like the glorious graphical fidelity that this engine can offer?No Ben...I think that majority of us keep asking for years how this engine going to handle hundreds of players in the same instance and because of that some fanatical citizens start to rage against us,we become Haters and Goons in their eyes....we become those that want to bring this game down....Well guess what Ben "someone"decide to switch the engine after all and the MAIN reason is due poor networking capabilities.....Now this is a good thing,and I think its great that LY is basically CE 3.8 with just fresh networking wich making this transition really smooth&easy,still this engine is yet to prove how good actually network&MP is going to be in SC PU......