Author Topic: Star Citizen General BS  (Read 1981949 times)

Serendipity

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #405 on: July 17, 2017, 03:23:26 PM »

Only investors and backers have that power. I don't, as I don't have "standing" in any lawsuit against them. I do have a case for defamation against CIG and Chris Roberts, but I have no interest in pursuing that because it would be too distracting, and cost (my liability insurance won't cover it, unless they sue or counter-sue) too much by the time we get around to the Star Citizen part.

So all we can do now is just wait, watch, and laugh.

But not a single backer has tested their luck? None of the whales, of which surely some, have enough money to burn and have crossed their patience threshold? It seems strange. There is anger and disposable income, why no court? What would have to be proven from a case to achieve anything?

I seem to remember reading somewhere that for any relevant consumer case they'd have to prove that development on the game has stalled/stopped. If that is the case, it would be an interesting argument between videos and videos of apparent game development versus content sparse incremental updates for a long time.

It just seems very strange that it hasn't happened or is happening, not that we'd necessarily know about it I suppose.

Have you said you knew of cases ongoing against CIG then, if not actually made by by yourself? There's a definite memory of you asserting to such in some way in my mind. Maybe I'm wrong.

HycoCam

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #406 on: July 17, 2017, 04:28:53 PM »
What would be the reasoning for the lawsuit?  CIG isn't using their employees like you want them too? 

There needs to be a basis for a civil lawsuit--some kind of damages.  If you are a backer and unhappy with CIG--CIG right now simply gives you back your money.  Once CIG gives you back your money--there is no civil case.  Now once CIG runs out of money and/or announces they have released a game and will no longer provide refunds--that is when we might start seeing civil cases.

StanTheMan

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #407 on: July 17, 2017, 04:55:00 PM »
At this point in time, a lot of Backers don't actually want a game, they are paying for an "experience" and CIG know it.

Star Citizen and SQ42 are just ideas and paying for JPEGS lets you pretend you are part of a new frontier in PC gaming and can talk about being in the club.
« Last Edit: July 17, 2017, 04:56:43 PM by StanTheMan »

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #408 on: July 17, 2017, 05:43:34 PM »
What would be the reasoning for the lawsuit?  CIG isn't using their employees like you want them too? 

There needs to be a basis for a civil lawsuit--some kind of damages.  If you are a backer and unhappy with CIG--CIG right now simply gives you back your money.  Once CIG gives you back your money--there is no civil case.  Now once CIG runs out of money and/or announces they have released a game and will no longer provide refunds--that is when we might start seeing civil cases.

That's correct. Any complaint that is filed, they can refund and end the case. HOWEVER, if the person wants to continue, they can insist that they were promised something in return (e.g. a game, financials etc) and they would be right. The question is, if after you got your money back, why would you want to waste money to continue the lawsuit.

And in all of that, it has to go through arbitration anyway. The only time this goes into open court, is via State of Fed action. Sure there is a way that a backer can get around the arbitration clause, but it's not easy.

The major problem is only going to come when they can no longer do refunds.
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.

Narrenbart

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #409 on: July 17, 2017, 10:10:25 PM »
10 to 1 NPC/PC ratio the answer on everything!

Economy?
Players can't have any significant impact because the NPC system is a master in balancing the economy out - no matter what happens.

Griefing?
You will be unable to tell if the character is a player or a NPC so 90% of the time you'll be griefing NPCs! take this Goons!

Empty Space?
There will be so much NPC action and interaction that you have always something to do, basically the NPCs act like a player.

Multiplayer?
You can hire NPCs with their own personality they will act as a real person, they will betray, steal and climb out of cargo boxes.

Current active NPC count: 0 (soon to be 1)

... I wanna cry where is my comfort-me NPC ...

Epilogue
A few years ago I stopped reading the forums for a game in development when I found a thread that is just disillusional dreams.
In case of Star Citizen we used to read the stuff friday evenings for a laugh when we are getting drunk.
But now they reached a level where it physically hurts to read the stuff the backers are coming up in order to defend the project.

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #410 on: July 18, 2017, 04:50:03 AM »
None of that shit is ever going to happen. It's all dreams.  :bahgawd:
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.

Serendipity

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #411 on: July 18, 2017, 06:45:02 AM »
The AWS service CIG are using have an element called 'GameLift' that amazon say allows latency dependant games to work well for up to millions of players. Sounds good. I'm guessing the truth isn't so simple though?

"Built on AWS’s proven computing environment, Amazon GameLift lets you scale high-performance game servers up and down to meet player demand. You pay only for the capacity you use, so you can get started whether you’re working on a new game idea or running a game with millions of players."

"Q. Does Amazon GameLift work for latency-intolerant games, such as first-person shooters? Does Amazon GameLift add latency to my game?

Amazon GameLift is designed to work for latency-intolerant games. Amazon GameLift introduces no additional latency during gameplay."

https://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/faq/


CIG have been seen saying their technology is going to do things never been done before and that they can't go into specifics about how and what exactly they're doing. It's the make or break issue I feel. Content can be created. The laws of physics though...not so much.

It's crunch time for them. Survival on the line. 3.0 to 4.0. Over to you CIG, what you got?

Narrenbart

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #412 on: July 18, 2017, 07:17:18 AM »
The AWS service CIG are using have an element called 'GameLift' that amazon say allows latency dependant games to work well for up to millions of players. Sounds good. I'm guessing the truth isn't so simple though?

"Built on AWS’s proven computing environment, Amazon GameLift lets you scale high-performance game servers up and down to meet player demand. You pay only for the capacity you use, so you can get started whether you’re working on a new game idea or running a game with millions of players."

"Q. Does Amazon GameLift work for latency-intolerant games, such as first-person shooters? Does Amazon GameLift add latency to my game?

Amazon GameLift is designed to work for latency-intolerant games. Amazon GameLift introduces no additional latency during gameplay."

https://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/faq/


CIG have been seen saying their technology is going to do things never been done before and that they can't go into specifics about how and what exactly they're doing. It's the make or break issue I feel. Content can be created. The laws of physics though...not so much.

It's crunch time for them. Survival on the line. 3.0 to 4.0. Over to you CIG, what you got?
AWS used to be expensive and slow due to all the "beginner features" that are implemnted, maybe now its just expensive ...
There is a reason why MMO games are 1-2 graphic generations behind - Video Lag - If a player lags on the client side - UDP still has to guess (UDP is guessing all the time thats how it works) what the player wants.
This will lead into a shitfest of Char Hopping, T-Posing, Fall through World, Physic Errors and Rubberbanding if there are many players with ever varying client FPS and input lags.

For Explanation:
The Captain has a 6000$ StarCitizenPowerMachine that manges to run the client on 30FPS+, his poor crew is playing on max 15FPS. This results in Graphic Lags for the crew, the UDP has to guess every 2nd frame what the crewclient wants in relation to the captain in 6DOF and always remember ... the floor isn't a floor it's just a 2D collider mesh - an error rate of 1cm will cause very funny stuff.

Edit: And I am pretty sure Amazon is reffering to games where you walk around and shoot things not stuff like "And the Spaceship will detonate, all parts are exploding with physics calculations and needed to be spread over the network cause a part could hit another spaceship and damage it".
Edit Edit: including the mug that was resting on the pool table in 64bit coordinates...
Edit Edit Edit: in a game where you have hours of motion capture how to carry a box in 3 different ways which snaps to a grid when dropped ...
« Last Edit: July 18, 2017, 10:53:00 AM by Narrenbart »

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #413 on: July 18, 2017, 03:48:23 PM »
Yeah, even that's being generous.

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: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #414 on: July 19, 2017, 07:42:13 AM »
I posted this on SA. Just copying it here.

Quote
The Titanic posted:

My thoughts on landing and day night cycles:

CIG can pull off a day night cycle currently as well as a planet rotating (not orbiting anywhere, just spinning in place) by not requiring the ship to actually land. Just get close to the planet and you auto-land in a loading cutscene.

They can also time the FPS sun to the orbit sun pretty easily. Of course they should also be able to have the ring on their space station rotate easily too, so there's a good chance they'll fuck this up if they try it.

But a loading zone, planet rotation that doesn't require actual reentry, and an FPS day and night cycle could be very doable for their 3.0 stuff.

- Planet rotating. They can't do it because due to how CryEngine works, they would have to make the sphere an entity object - with a collider - and animated. Have you see the Port Olisar rings?

Probability of them doing it: 0%

- Planet orbiting. They can't do it because that would mean moving the spherical entity through the world. Which means adding a physics body to it.

Probability of them doing it: 0%

- Day and night cycle. They can do it in the editor as they have shown, because they are manipulating the light source manually. Doing that dynamically in the client is completely different ball game.

It's not trivial, and it will completely fuck up your lighting in both day and night cycles, requiring most of the object materials to be redone to compensate. I should know this because we ran through the same problem. We use SilverLining (and Triton for water) by http://sundog-soft.com/ software because it was cheaper than doing it from scratch. Then we had to integrate it into our custom engine. It fucked up everything. And we had to redo a number of our asset materials. And we had to go back in a mess with the scene lighting because at some times at night, it was so very dark. Done right, you end up with results like the LoD day/night shots.

Probability of them doing it: 50% (if they cheat instead of doing it correctly like SilverLining)

- Tying the TOD to the star

This is not needed as it's arbitrary and doesn't need to be mapped to any Sun. You just create a curve that's matched to your virtual day/night cycle. e.g. in LoD, a full day<->night cycle is 3hrs. But I can change that to anything I want. In fact, in the last server update, I made it 1hr so that we can continue to quickly test lighting issues in day or night without having to use our console cheat code to change the TOD.

Probability of them doing it: 0%

- Procedural world generation

There are two parts to this :

1) World Terrain

Involves creation of the world terrain (space or planet) using either 1) procedural generation or 2) handcrafting

No Man's Sky does 1

All my games use a combo of 1 & 2 depending on the game e.g. LoD has no procedural generation other than the ground terrain generated from pre-computed height map data

In my space/planetary combat games such as Battlecruiser/Universal Combat/Echo Squad, the entire world is data generated, while the planet/moon surfaces are procedurally generated from data. The POIs (star base etc) are hand-crafted in an editor, and placed in the desired locations.

In LoD, everything - aside from the ground terrain data - is handcrafted. The ground terrain data is generated from heightmaps which are stored on disk. That terrain is loaded into our editor so that the POIs can be placed where designed.

In SC, their SolEd tool is apparently used for them to design their world space to match what they have in the Star Map. All it does is say where things are. It doesn't actually generate anything. That data is stored on disk so that when the world is loaded, it knows where everything is located.

I have the same tool. It's called TED, is over 30 years (I shit you not) old, and looks like this (showing the Jupiter region). All it does is allow the manual placement of objects (planet, moon, jump anomalies) so that when the world is loaded, those entities are then mapped by data files which determine how to handle them in real-time via procedural generation. That's all it does.



2) World Assets

Involves placing assets in the world using either 1) procedural generation or 2) hand crafting

No Man's Sky does 1 & 2 . All my games use 1 & 2

My legacy games (Battlecruiser, Universal Combat, Echo Squad) which have space combat, use TED to create the space world, and PTE to handcraft POIs with pre-computed terrain. It looks like this.



This editing tool not only allows you to setup and test things like weather, ToD etc, but it also allows the creation and placement of POIs anywhere on a planet, anywhere in the game world.

There is a full album with more shots here: http://imgur.com/a/KQ2Ii

This entire world map you see below from Battlecruiser/Universal Combat series, was built using only those two tools. The engine does everything else in real-time.



And because the client and server handle all this crap on-the-fly, there are no loading (other than disk access depending on where you are on the planet) times or performance issues to contend with.

As massive and complex as it is, not to mention having low visual fidelity due to age, you can download the latest version of Universal Combat CE right now on Steam, and see everything they're trying to do - besides the fps in ships/stations part - working just fine. Just like in ED (though it doesn't have planets).

And the beauty of it is that a lot of world object such as stations, starbases etc are totally scripted into the game world. This way they can be added/removed as-needed; something that you can't do with a world built with static geometry. For e.g. you can destroy any space station in BC/UC/ES games, but you can't do that in Star Citizen.

This Vimeo video shows what Universal Combat CE looks like with a single space region, complete with orbiting planet, station etc.

Not a valid vimeo URL
A few months back, I released the modding tools UCCE 3.0x. Even if you don't own the game, you can download it and check out the data files and tools.

STAR CITIZEN 3.0:

They are apparently using World Machine for their terrain height maps. There are several tutorials on the Internet showing how to create surface terrain in CryEngine.

The terrain data is generated on-the-fly using some procedural techniques for terrain relief, rocks, fauna etc. No way you're going to handcraft all that crap manually.

They have tools that also allows them to 'paint' terrain features, generate relief data, as well as repeating objects like rocks, fauna etc giving more control over POI areas.

As above, they are also manually adding POI assets (base, derelicts, mission data) in the editor.

The problem they are going to have is in performance and networking.

I predict that 3.0 is going to be an unmitigated disaster if they release it before year end. But they will, because they have no choice. They have a LOT riding on this one, and Spergs really think this is the 'one' that brings salvation & vindication to the flock.

None of this is rocket science or brain surgery. You just need to build the tech, along with an engine to power it. You can build engine tech  (e.g. see Outerra, Infinity Battlespace, Duel Universe etc) all day long, putting a game on top of it, is a whole different ball game.

And God help you if you put the cart before the horse, as they've done with Star Citizen - then your project is FUBAR. That's where they are now.

All they had to do was this:

1) Pick the right engine (not CryEngine) or build a custom engine from one that wasn't designed primarily for one type of game

2) Build the world editing tools for creating both space and planetary terrain

3) Build the space terrain so that the entire space world (as seen in the Star Map) is there

4) Build the space related missions and features

5) Build the planetary tech. Since this would be isolated from all of the above, it doesn't break continuity because, like what ED did, once you have it working, you LATER just edit your space world to handle planet entry into planets and moons

6) Build the planet related missions and features

But no, that was too easy, and they had an incompetent buffoon who hasn't worked in a dev team, let alone build a fucking game in almost two decades, at the helm. I would bet that, aside from Squadron 42 requiring ALL the tech they're building for Star Citizen, it too probably has planet based missions. Which is probably why they're now having to build this in 3.0, instead of fleshing out a "game", then adding that later. All this time could have been spent on 3-4 above to keep backers happy and dropping their knickers with each patch. Then you hit them with planetary tech one day - and boom - all their clothes come off. But you see, as backers have been giving them money this whole time, they had no reason to plan properly, let alone show meaningful progress. I mean, 6 years + $155M later, as I mentioned here, look at this shit. LOOK AT IT!!

- 3.0 (Moons) is planned for Aug 2017
- 2.6 (Star Marine) // Dec 2016
- 2.0 (Persistent Universe + Multi-Crew) // Dec 2015
- 1.2 (ArcCorp Social Module) // Aug 2015
- 1.0 (Arena Commander) // Dec 2014
- 0.x (Hangar Module) // Aug 2013

They're so fucked, it beggars belief. No wonder they are now talking about 5 - 10 systems at "launch", when in fact they don't even have 1 (Stanton) ready.

Now, if 3.0 actually comes out, this is how much it has been scaled back....



Compared to what was promised almost a year ago



NOTE: The LoD game engine was built from various middleware (why re-invent the wheel), and is completely different from what we've used for our legacy games. It was built from scratch.

And in case you missed my post about the furor that the GameStar preview has caused, you can read it here.

This was Aug 2016

« Last Edit: July 20, 2017, 11:53:53 AM by dsmart »
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.

helimoth

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #415 on: July 19, 2017, 10:46:29 AM »
I predict that 3.0 is going to be an unmitigated disaster if they release it before year end. But they will, because they have no choice. They have a LOT riding on this one, and Spergs really think this is the 'one' that brings salvation & vindication to the flock.

CR will just bait and switch again. He'll rattle off some speech about how some core tech was still needed but they were a matter of days/weeks away from releasing a "proper" 3.0 but will release what they have. This days/weeks becomes months and all of sudden 4.0 is the new jesus patch.

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #416 on: July 19, 2017, 12:01:29 PM »
I predict that 3.0 is going to be an unmitigated disaster if they release it before year end. But they will, because they have no choice. They have a LOT riding on this one, and Spergs really think this is the 'one' that brings salvation & vindication to the flock.

CR will just bait and switch again. He'll rattle off some speech about how some core tech was still needed but they were a matter of days/weeks away from releasing a "proper" 3.0 but will release what they have. This days/weeks becomes months and all of sudden 4.0 is the new jesus patch.

Well most of the hardcore already moved the Jesus Patch to 3.1; or didn't you get the memo?
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.

Serendipity

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #417 on: July 20, 2017, 02:43:20 AM »
So am I to take it Derek, that adding various middleware modules onto an already existing engine is an easier and more stable solution to modifying an existing engine with the people who made it in the first place?

This seems counter intuitive to me. Surely the more modules you add on, the more likely it is to cause conflicts. Obviously I know little on the subject but it seems you're outright accusing the devs at CIG of lying in every video they put out. It seems unlikely they would all be happy to bare faced lie on camera about their progress and achievements.

Isn't it possible that they could, after many years of work, have modified enough of the engine to do what they claim they've done? A guy called Occam would think so. Doing what they say they're doing is the simplest explanation, rather than the whole company making stuff up on camera to the tune of these stories of inevitable failure.

Something doesn't add up. I suppose 3.0 will aid us all in our mathematics.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2017, 02:45:21 AM by Serendipity »

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #418 on: July 20, 2017, 05:04:45 AM »
So am I to take it Derek, that adding various middleware modules onto an already existing engine is an easier and more stable solution to modifying an existing engine with the people who made it in the first place?

Yes. That's why things like middleware, plugins (Unity, UE etc) and such exist. They are designed specifically for the target engine and are always a time saved. And most of the implementation is always straightforward. e.g. Star Citizen uses Scaleform (we use Iggy in LoD) for their UI. No way they would have spent time building a UI into StarEngine, as that takes up a lot of time. CIG also use various other middleware for things like AI, physics, networking etc.

Back when I started out, even as the tools I showed those images of are old and look awful, I had to write everything from scratch. We didn't have middleware or plugins to do this crap. That's one of the main reasons (besides inexperience) that my first game, Battlecruiser 3000AD, took so long. Then again, until LoD, my game engines were all written from scratch, and specifically customized for the games I was making.

This bit about CIG hiring some of the CryTek engineers in GER is always interesting to me. Those are not the guys who "built" the engine. They have experience with it, more than anyone else at CIG. Why? Because CryEngine isn't popular like Unity, UE4 etc, so very few people have experience using it. And since they opened that studio, and when backers were claiming they were the magicians who were going to make it happen - three years later, they haven't. As I wrote back in 2015, they were better off starting with a custom engine that had a different framework to support the increased scope of the game. If you are building a house with a sand foundation, building a mansion, instead of an apartment, on top of it, isn't to work out so well in the future. And replacing the sand foundation with concrete is a lot of work, so you could pour cement over the sand and hope for the best. That's their StarEngine atm. The sand foundation - being CryEngine - is still there.

Quote
This seems counter intuitive to me. Surely the more modules you add on, the more likely it is to cause conflicts. Obviously I know little on the subject but it seems you're outright accusing the devs at CIG of lying in every video they put out. It seems unlikely they would all be happy to bare faced lie on camera about their progress and achievements.

A lot of the time using third-party middleware is a time saver; and also it helps if you don't have someone on staff who knows enough about the engine to implement those pieces into it. Any conflicts, if any, are usually resolved during the integration process.

I don't know what "progress" you are talking about, or how it pertains to this subject, but I don't recall accusing them of lying about anything. There is a difference between lying, and being inexperienced and/or incompetent.

Quote
Isn't it possible that they could, after many years of work, have modified enough of the engine to do what they claim they've done?

No.

Quote
A guy called Occam would think so. Doing what they say they're doing is the simplest explanation, rather than the whole company making stuff up on camera to the tune of these stories of inevitable failure.

Actually no, that's not how Occam would apply in this situation because the simplest explanation isn't that they have actually done it. It's that they can't do it.

Quote
Something doesn't add up. I suppose 3.0 will aid us all in our mathematics.

It won't. And 3.0 is no indication of anything. It's just another module (ground access) tacked on. I remember back when some people were saying the same thing about 2.0.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2017, 05:09:10 AM by dsmart »
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.

Serendipity

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Re: Star Citizen - The Game
« Reply #419 on: July 20, 2017, 05:39:26 AM »
CIG claim to have a single map, millions of km in size, populated with object entities, such as planets and moons etc, that is all accessible seamslessley, without loading screens, streaming data to the clients as you approach them. They've talked about this and shown it in numerous ATVs and other places. They've said they get real time day and night cycles because of this way they've built the game. They've said they can have planet rotation and orbits.

You seem to be suggesting they can't do what they have repeatedly said they can do. 0% probability, as you say up there, means anyone who has said they've got the ability to do it is telling a lie. Each and every time. I find it unlikely that everytime a dev on ATV has said they can do any aspect you've mentioned as being impossible, they've been telling lies. After all, they're the ones working with the modified engine, not you. How sure can you be about them having zero percent probability of achieving something they say they can, and have, achieved, when you don't have access to their cryengine base code?

I do not like absolutes. I'm a scientist and nothing has zero percent probability...

 

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