The Star Citizen Thread v5
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Indeed - despite the protestations of a very few if you check the posting history of virtually anyone on this thread you'll find them criticising Elite and Frontier plenty.
This attempted creation of a crusade like them vs us siege mentality is just another marketing tactic to inspire gang/tribal behaviour and dismissal of reason.
It's just that this thread is about SC, so if you wanna bash Elite you gotta relate the two at least and any critique of Frontier pushing out half-baked features must be considered in the context of Star Citizen and it's 0.2 of a feature.
CMDR_Orlando
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Well that's the norm, if you post in a forum more than a handful of times you are definitely in the spectrum of fanboy/critic that enjoy the chitchat. That's why it's such a small minority compared with the actual game community that just focus on actually playing the game and interacting inside it instead of the forums.
I think I've read somewhere that generally in game communities only about 20% of the playebase reads the forums and only 5% actually post's so you that's why you allways get a lot of strong oppinative individuals that post like they are "god tier developers"! [big grin]
Oh and Christmas is over by now so even if your opinion mattered enough to ruin someone's day it wouldn't be Christmas [big grin]
So I decided to take time out of my vacation to write up a new blog, Irreconcilable Differences, which discusses, among other things, the Lumberyard engine switch.
Anyone who somehow thinks that this switch is a good thing, clearly either isn't paying attention, or they haven't been in videogaming long. Or they work and/or shill for CIG/RSI.
ps: I have chosen to not engage in the on-going circular discussions because they're all hopelessly repetitive, and pointless.
Anyone who somehow thinks that this switch is a good thing, clearly either isn't paying attention, or they haven't been in videogaming long. Or they work and/or shill for CIG/RSI.
ps: I have chosen to not engage in the on-going circular discussions because they're all hopelessly repetitive, and pointless.
Well, that's fine, they are circular indeed, mostly having stupid fun.
I have however question for you Derek. What do you think are potential release dates for whatever CIG will push out as first part/intro of Squadron 42 and what it will contain?
Just for historical reference.
edit: nice summary about engine switch in your article.
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Yes - I was in it - the guy that set it up got fed up and was trying to abandon it - not sure if he did in the end or not. Someone else asked a while back and found it - I can't remember what it was called but Elite was part of the name I think.
Really? Please enlighten me.
He probably thinks of the difference between "VR support" and a "game designed for VR". The former only means that it would be possible to use a VR headset with it, the latter means that the game's designed to work well in VR. VR support in itself is much easier to accomplish, and probably could be added to Star Citizen. However, it's obviously not designed for VR, as noted in detail by several previous posters. If you try to play a game that does have VR support but was not designed for VR, odds are you're going to have a rather bad time.
But of course, if the aim is only to be able to tick the checkbox of promised VR support, then that's that.
Yeah, it is obvious that CIG doesn't plan ahead in regards of VR, so even if they will have support, it will be most likely not that good to put it politely.
I am impressed with how many things you can get wrong in a single article.
I see you're sticking with the "64-bit engine has a specific meaning" line of reasoning, along with the "64-bit positioning is just floating origin". No wonder the arguments are circular.
Edit: Also several references to CryEngine 4, which literally doesn't exist.
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"Actual problems" is of course relative. At some point merge-and-reconcile type updates become a pain, but having a working implementation open in one window, and legal rights to copy-paste it block by block into your own code, is still quite a pleasant place to be vs just having a technical doc for the interface and a lot of questions.
Well, could you give us your POV what is wrong in Derek's article?
Just for factual sake.Wow, theres a "few" organizations there with "Elite" in their name.
But i think i found the correct one as theres Elite emblem as their avatar.
Just thought that id ask if there is one, im already in two organizations, but i might join that Elite players org also at some point.
I know zero about game development, I'm an old gamer, who do project management in the 25 - 50 million USD range globally, and from where I stand the SC project is cursed with a top management who don't know the basics, "how to manage and build a company". They prove that so many times i stopped counting.
Well, could you give us your POV what is wrong in Derek's article?
I'm not sure if this thread will withstand the discussion (slapfight) of this magnitude.
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Well, regarding the 64-bit thing, look elsewhere in this thread for a lot of mincing around on definitions. Spoiler: "64-Bit custom engine" doesn't have any particular meaning, 64-bit positioning sort of has a meaning, but could be twisted, 64-bit floating point (aka double precision) positioning has a pretty clear meaning and is actually what is. He's still adamant that the positioning is a 32-bit with floating origin, I don't know why, it's a totally reasonable (worked well enough for Elite) way to do things, so CIG would have just said they did that, but because they didn't do that, they said they did the thing they actually did. "It has emerged" apparently. From where I dare not ask.Well, could you give us your POV what is wrong in Derek's article?
He creates a false dichotomy between MMOs that instance their areas, and ones that have a single world and you have to create a new character or pay to move between. He literally undermines it with an example of LoD allowing people to move from server to server. Another obvious counterexample is WoW, which has explicit servers you can't move between, but still instances certain areas. I don't know much about the network plans for SC, but he misrepresents the obstacles it would have to overcome to make it look impossible.
Next section: Apparently an engine switch would be ridiculous but for some reason Unreal 4 would be a good move it it weren't so much work to do the port? No explanation given why UE4 would be a great engine for MMOs. Ignore and move on.
He then links to a forum post where someone called Loiosh describes a very sensible way to cut down network stalls, and he shoots it down because "it would break the server loading of assets that require textures". Just unpack that for a moment. Firstly, the idea that you couldn't un-break that by making changes to the server. Secondly, why would the server be loading textures to begin with? Gods' sakes, man, where is it going to draw them? Unless what he's saying here is that the server, receiving a message that says "load this whole ship", would no longer be able to work out not to load textures, which is equally hopeless.
Ok, then we reference CryEngine 4. Which doesn't exist.
He then compares Lumberyard changelog sizes with CryEngine 3 patch notes length, I think to imply that Lumberyard is a much greater set of changes, moments before quoting me, complaining that CE3 patch notes tend not to include all the changes they made. Bravo.
Then we get to some shade-throwing about whether it's actually 50% edited, and wait.. "I can safely say that it’s completely inconceivable that both of these dev teams have made exactly the same revisions (tweaks, fixes, improvements etc) to CE3.x, and to the extent that both engines are comparable to each other." Finally something I can 100% agree with. Besides straightforward typo-type bugs, the changes are almost certainly going to be different. Hell, I'd say that over 95% of devs on this planet would agree with him on that one.
We get back to form quickly though:
"Given the facts of both engines, and the nature of game development in general, there isn’t a single game dev on this planet, who will look at those statements and find anything factual in them."
As usual, Derek presumes to speak for the entire planetary games industry. I'm putting my hand up, here, I'm on this planet, and I think the claim that it took two days is factual. Even if they hand-integrated some key updates, because if you've got the version-control history and you know what you're doing, it just ain't that hard. The best I can make out, he's simultaneously arguing that an engine switch is a massively complex fool's errand, and also that it's a tiny and meaningless change. That it's a failure of open development that all this work wasn't shared with backers, and also that 2.6 doesn't have enough Lumberyard runtime components in it for much work to have been done.
"By all accounts, either they are currently working on the full switch to Lumberyard – which, given the massive undertaking – is going to take the better part of 2017 if you ask me – or this was a publicity stunt in order to use Amazon". False dichotomy, see the buffet analogy.
The next part is the part I like best though. He gives a whole list of features that Lumberyard might provide, including DX12, Vulkan (it's spelled with a K, Derek), and console support. He then says none of those would be possible without throwing out a significant percentage of the work done in the last few years. Here I was like, OK, you're downplaying the benefits of the switch, solid argument. BUT NO! No, the "fact" that it would require a massive deletion of all the stuff that's been done, INCREASES the chance that it's all in aid of a console port: "All of a sudden, those rumors of an inevitable console port aren’t looking so far-fetched now after all, are they?" Seriously. This is S-Grade trolling, I never saw it coming, I gotta tip my fancy hat to him for that one.
Edit: I totally get that there are reasons for people, and people in this thread, to dislike CIG or Star Citizen. Most are touchy territory that I don't touch. But fictitious technical problems shouldn't be among them.
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Absolutely - I've been in a SC org since june 2013. Also got my friend to join it in late 2014.
We haven't touched SC in a year now, and judging from our org's activity, neither has the vast majority of org mates.
But we are still in that org, hoping for better days.
Well, could you give us your POV what is wrong in Derek's article?
I'm guessing he doesn't mean the bits where Derek has quoted comments from Ben (Parry), Chris, Erin, and David Swofford.
But it would be handy to have some specifics other than the equivalent of you're totally wrong so Ner!
ETA - irrelevant as Ben has now expanded as above and copied below..
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Isn't this v4 naming for easier communication though, and therefore appropriate? v5 is the current, and v3 existed, so isn't it succinct to refer to the intermediate stage as v4?
Between CryEngine 3 and CryEngine 5, CryTek decided to re-brand the engine to simply "CryEngine" without the version identifier - the subversions released under that re-branding were 3.6.x to 3.8.x. If when referring to that timeline of subversions in a discussion involving the overall engine history, using the correct term of simply "CryEngine" would surely cause confusion?
I'd forgotten that they briefly removed the number, but he refers to SC as being based on CryEngine 3, when it's 3.7/3.8, so for consistency it makes sense to say Lumberyard is based on 3.8. Five is right out.
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