Author Topic: 3.0 Progress Watch  (Read 144799 times)

Kyrt

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #270 on: January 03, 2018, 12:40:38 PM »
Great read, its seems in the link provide that even if they switch to LY that they may not be able to delivered what was promised. Do you think that at any point crytek devs have given Chris  false info from the earliest demo on what they could do? I have always wondered at one point and I believe it had to happen that Chris was aware he could not deliver on the stretch goals? I personally believe he would of know much earlier looking looking at the 3.0 release issues.

Did CryTek give CIG false info?

IMO.....no.

Chris Roberts had a vision. A spiritual commander to Wing Commander with multiplayer and a few open world elements.

CryEngine would not have been perfect for such a game, but few non custom engines are. That's why licenses often include the right to tweak the engine. CryEngine...for that game...would have worked. Its basically CODIW.

But Chris Roberts got ambitious. The game went from limited multiplayer to a full fledged MMO. It went from a few locations you could visit at will to a full fledged open world set up. It went from a few basic game mechanics designed to add a little depth to the universe to a full fledged life simulator.

And with that upgrade in scope came a requirement for better AIs. A 64 bit engine. Better physics modelling. Server and network coding that could handle instances and meshing. And more.

Chris Roberts went from a game that CryEngine could easily handle to one which required a near total engine rewrite.

Unfortunately....it looks that by the time he'd made that decision, contracts had been signed and third parties already engaged.

But Chris Roberts change in scope doesn't reflect on CryTek at al. He chose an engine that was suitable for the game he was creating. It isn't CryTeks fault he later changed the scope.

Chris Roberts should have dropped CryEngine at this stage. He should have created a new engine. He should have continued development of Star Citizen using CryTek and then built his MMO as a side project. He should have tried to terminate the contracts he had.

Instead....I honestly don't know why he did what he did. If CryTeks charges are true, CIG dug themselves a deep hole...

And the simplest explanation is either that they honestly believed they had more rights or freedoms than they did, or they decided CryTek was going down and they could do what they wanted because CryTek could never object.

So they stopped promoting CryEngine and they merged LumberYard with CryEngine. They used code in Bugsmashers and they didn't buy a second license.

This might be excused as an oversight or misunderstanding...bit if CryTek really has been talking to them for two years then that becomes unlikely. Wilful and Intentional as they believed CryTek was going down becomes believable.

Add in the mess over the lawyers, and the way they hired exCIG devs to change CryEngine and then promoted it as StarEngine, the way they talked down CryEngine instead of promoting it and that the main benefit of switching from CE to LY was the possibility of sidestepping royalties and fees and CryTek can make a fair case that CIG knew exactly what it was doing

Its quite a mess.

I can't wait to hear CIGs defence.


« Last Edit: January 03, 2018, 11:04:03 PM by Kyrt »

jwh1701

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #271 on: January 03, 2018, 02:37:44 PM »
Did CryTek give CIG false info?

IMO.....no.

Chris Roberts had a vision. A spiritual commander to Wing Commander with multiplayer and a few open world elements.

Good post Kyrt, I'm curious about what you think of the viability of the original goals.
Even thought he greatly kept making promises as the money flowed I still wonder.  I go back every so often to look at the stretch goals especially the 6 million one. Looking at what has been accomplished do you think he could even achieved the 6 mill stretch goal with the engine? 


Kyrt

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #272 on: January 03, 2018, 03:07:23 PM »
Good post Kyrt, I'm curious about what you think of the viability of the original goals.
Even thought he greatly kept making promises as the money flowed I still wonder.  I go back every so often to look at the stretch goals especially the 6 million one. Looking at what has been accomplished do you think he could even achieved the 6 mill stretch goal with the engine?

The $6million goal provided a full orchestral score...doable....the Bengal Carrier...doable...a mission disk for S42...doable and 100 systems, which I presume is what you are interested in.

I see no major reason why the game couldn't have 100 systems at launch.

A procedural generation system could create the basic structure for these systems fairly quickly. All you would need then is to determine the level of handcrafting each system would receive.

Some would no doubt get a lot. I would presume most would get little or none.

To be honest...given how relatively simple procgen is, it is surprising that CIG hasn't generated a few dozen systems simply to show off. If it even just populated Stanton with empty worlds, that would have taken some of the sting away from 3.0.

The only reasonable explanation is that CIGs procgen system doesn't work as well as might be expected. It seems that if they could go for the easy win of a fully populated system they would have

jwh1701

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #273 on: January 03, 2018, 03:35:24 PM »
The $6million goal provided a full orchestral score...doable....the Bengal Carrier...doable...a mission disk for S42...doable and 100 systems, which I presume is what you are interested in.

I see no major reason why the game couldn't have 100 systems at launch.

Thank you for the response, I'm not sure if it was from here but I got linked to a procgen demo using unreal to create a cave system. The person easily created a vast cave system only using 4 basic images and I could not tell without serious looking that 4 images were use. So it seems the procgen at that level was pretty simple.

dsmart

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #274 on: January 05, 2018, 07:36:03 AM »
Ho Lee Cow! They retconned the issue council!

All previous bugs gone. The oldest (500+) is now 2 weeks old.

Say hello to the MVP suckas!

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/issue-council/star-citizen-alpha-3
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

David-2

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #275 on: January 05, 2018, 08:39:22 AM »
Ho Lee Cow! They retconned the issue council!

All previous bugs gone. The oldest (500+) is now 2 weeks old.

Oh really, Derek.  If you were a real software developer you'd know that that's what we in the software development business call "triage". Here is Mozilla's page describing it, which of course if you were a real software developer you'd already know.

Obviously what's going on here is a standard process described in point 2 under "Why Triage": "Your bug queue is not overwhelming: New members of your team do not see the bug queue and get the wiggins."  (I'm not sure what "wiggins" is - must be some kind of technical term I'm unaware of.)

As you should know, getting rid of 3000+ bugs that you don't know how to fix and that you're never going to fix will not only keep your newest members of your team from "wigginsing", obviously an important goal in itself,  but has other benefits as well.  For example, deleting bugs via triage also helps your bug tracking software run faster.  (God knows JIRA isn't fast even at the best of times.)  And makes backing up your bug database easier.  Oh yes, it's a common thing.

Yes, we've all done it.  The devs and PMs take a pass through the bug list and realistically assess how important the bug is to fix vs other priorities such as shipping the product.

Triage.  That's what it is.  Normal software development process.  For game development especially, I'm reliably told.


« Last Edit: January 05, 2018, 08:41:30 AM by David-2 »

jwh1701

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #276 on: January 05, 2018, 08:48:59 AM »
My question that I wonder about concerning the council is do they record and keep the bugs after they expired. In dev at IBM they were named from p1 to p4, we routinely shipped the golden master build with p4s and p3. We always kept a list of all previous issues and if time allowed would work and correct p3/4. Its just weird for me to see an expiration on a bug list.

Flashwit

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #277 on: January 05, 2018, 09:37:09 AM »
At best it makes sense for transient bugs that haven't been reproduced. But then a dev should have just marked it as unreproducible and closed it. Oh well, I have to say this is definitely the fastest way of fixing bugs I've seen. Just delete them!

dsmart

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #278 on: January 05, 2018, 02:09:19 PM »
Oh really, Derek.  If you were a real software developer you'd know that that's what we in the software development business call "triage". Here is Mozilla's page describing it, which of course if you were a real software developer you'd already know.

LOL!! Yeah, wiping the bug dB clean, isn't what a triage means.  :lol:
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

dsmart

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #279 on: January 05, 2018, 02:10:32 PM »
My question that I wonder about concerning the council is do they record and keep the bugs after they expired. In dev at IBM they were named from p1 to p4, we routinely shipped the golden master build with p4s and p3. We always kept a list of all previous issues and if time allowed would work and correct p3/4. Its just weird for me to see an expiration on a bug list.

That's standard. But in this case, that's not what they did. They just wiped the db clean. Like the bugs never existed. Ever.  :shrug:
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

Motto

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #280 on: January 05, 2018, 02:49:57 PM »
Well, you have to admit that trying to verify every bug from 2.6.3 probably is more work than just starting logging from scratch all over with 3.0. Especially since the bugs will never get fixed anyways.

David-2

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Re: 3.0 Released To PTU
« Reply #281 on: January 05, 2018, 04:35:21 PM »
LOL!! Yeah, wiping the bug dB clean, isn't what a triage means.  :lol:

After a few posts have been similarly misunderstood I'm beginning to think my dry sense of humor isn't agreeable here.  Tant pis.

 

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