Author Topic: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.  (Read 1903035 times)

Meowz

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #720 on: August 04, 2017, 08:47:01 AM »
DS, you've mentioned they would have to build their own engine from scratch to pull off what they intended. What would happen if they scrapped it all now and started building a bran new unique engine? Would any of the work be usable in the new engine (art, etc...), or would it be as if they started from day 1? Obviously they don't have the money or time for this, but I am wondering at what point they could of done the right thing and still managed to save the project.

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #721 on: August 04, 2017, 10:15:08 AM »
DS, you've mentioned they would have to build their own engine from scratch to pull off what they intended. What would happen if they scrapped it all now and started building a bran new unique engine? Would any of the work be usable in the new engine (art, etc...), or would it be as if they started from day 1? Obviously they don't have the money or time for this, but I am wondering at what point they could of done the right thing and still managed to save the project.

All the art assets can be retained. They just need to be re-exported from MAX or MAYA, depending on which they use, for the target engine.

But at this point, the only way forward for them, is to stick with their custom CryEngine/Lumberyard FrankenEngine. Sure, they will have to make some sacrifices along the way in terms of world size (no way in hell they retain it, while trying to build the rest of the world), but with Amazon's advancements in Lumberyard, they could very well pull it off - in about another 3-5 years. Except that it would take time, and cost more money.

I don't care what hardcore backers say or think, if 3.0 doesn't knock their socks off - and it won't, since it doesn't bring that much in the general scheme of what's left to do - they're going to have a tough time getting funding for another 3-5 years. And if Roberts comes back with an MVP, and marks the game as "released" in 2017 or 2018, well the fallout will be amazing to behold.

We're facing the same engine issue with LoD in our moving to UE4 for the console versions as that is quicker and also because all our middleware tools are supported in UE4. As we won't be using UE4's Blueprint feature, and just sticking with C/C++, our engine framework remains largely the same. Most of the work will be exporting our assets from MAX, as well as in porting huge swathes of engine (Havok Vision Engine) specific game play and visualFX code to UE4. All art and 3D assets would need to be not only exported, but also in some cases, heavily revised in order to take advantage of UE4 features we don't currently support such as HDR, PBR etc.

I was planning to port the whole thing to UE4, so we would have a multi-platform target again, but the time it would take, the costs etc, made is vastly prohibitive, and I didn't want to take the risk. Especially since the game isn't being sold atm. So we've decided to just release the PC version with the current engine, then use a UE4 port for the console version which will be released later down the road. Of course if had a ton of other people's money, then this won't be an issue, as we'd just head full bore into a 9-12 month port without worrying about money.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2017, 03:23:12 PM 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.

Andrew

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #722 on: August 04, 2017, 03:31:50 PM »
But at this point, the only way forward for them, is to stick with their custom CryEngine/Lumberyard FrankenEngine. Sure, they will have to make some sacrifices along the way in terms of world size (no way in hell they retain it, while trying to build the rest of the world), but with Amazon's advancements in Lumberyard, they could very well pull it off - in about another 3-5 years. Except that it would take time, and cost more money.

If they've spent 3 years+ on customizing CryEngine is there no point at which they've changed the engine so much that it is in essence the same as if they had built an engine from scratch minus the renderer of somesuch that they'd need anyway and works just fine? Maybe I'm not enough of a developer but it would seem that the difference between taking an existing engine and just changing it all around can't be so much harder than building it from scratch. Or is it and if so, why?

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #723 on: August 04, 2017, 03:53:48 PM »
But at this point, the only way forward for them, is to stick with their custom CryEngine/Lumberyard FrankenEngine. Sure, they will have to make some sacrifices along the way in terms of world size (no way in hell they retain it, while trying to build the rest of the world), but with Amazon's advancements in Lumberyard, they could very well pull it off - in about another 3-5 years. Except that it would take time, and cost more money.

If they've spent 3 years+ on customizing CryEngine is there no point at which they've changed the engine so much that it is in essence the same as if they had built an engine from scratch minus the renderer of somesuch that they'd need anyway and works just fine? Maybe I'm not enough of a developer but it would seem that the difference between taking an existing engine and just changing it all around can't be so much harder than building it from scratch. Or is it and if so, why?

No because when you build your own custom engine, you don't have to add all the other fluff that middleware engines have and which you don't need. When I build my custom engines, I only implement and create what is needed for my game. Nothing more, nothing less.

But when you license middleware, you have to not only deal with all the fluff and stuff you don't need, but also each time you modify something in creating your own custom routines, all those engine parts have to still be functional, even the parts you don't need. e.g. we use a lot of middleware for LoD and the base Havok Vision Engine which is the "game engine" (like UE4, Unity, CryEngine, Lumberyard etc) has a lot of crap we don't need or use. But each time we make a modification to our custom game engine, it tends to break quite a few things. Heck, each time Sundog releases a build of either Silverlining or Triton, it tends to break a lot of things that we then need to fix in order to use the latest versions. And sometimes you can't ignore new versions of middleware because they tend to contain critical bug fixes that you can't easily integrate without bringing in all the new stuff they may have added in a patch.

The above is the problem that CIG is currently facing, even with Lumberyard.
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: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #724 on: August 04, 2017, 04:00:08 PM »
So, how about Sandi's latest tweet? Is that in-game?

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #725 on: August 04, 2017, 04:01:04 PM »
So, how about Sandi's latest tweet? Is that in-game?

That's in the editor. The skybox is a dead giveaway.
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: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #726 on: August 04, 2017, 04:06:50 PM »
Obviously. Now, let's wait on the fanboys who think that this is actual in-game from 3.0  :dance:

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #727 on: August 04, 2017, 04:19:49 PM »
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.

Andrew

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #728 on: August 04, 2017, 04:20:33 PM »
The above is the problem that CIG is currently facing, even with Lumberyard.

Makes sense.

Is that the reason why they are struggling so much with the netcode? Because they can't rip it out and just write their own or replace it with something else (is there such a thing as Netcode they could buy and adapt)? From a laymans perspective it would seem weird that the network-layer-stuff would be integrated so deeply into everything.


dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #729 on: August 04, 2017, 04:23:18 PM »
The above is the problem that CIG is currently facing, even with Lumberyard.

Makes sense.

Is that the reason why they are struggling so much with the netcode? Because they can't rip it out and just write their own or replace it with something else (is there such a thing as Netcode they could buy and adapt)? From a laymans perspective it would seem weird that the network-layer-stuff would be integrated so deeply into everything.

Yes. The issue with the netcode is that they either 1) rip out and replace the entire thing in CryEngine, or 2) they continue to kludge it.

They've been doing #2 for awhile now and I have NO reason to believe that they will ever attempt #1. Aside from the fact that there's nothing in the public dev schedule to indicate that.
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: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #730 on: August 04, 2017, 04:25:09 PM »
In that infographic, I'm missing the "Derek Smart was right" option. The only one I'd go for...

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #731 on: August 04, 2017, 04:26:11 PM »


« Last Edit: August 04, 2017, 04:34:56 PM 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.

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #732 on: August 04, 2017, 04:27:30 PM »
In that infographic, I'm missing the "Derek Smart was right" option. The only one I'd go for...

I'm a TROLL + HATER + HERETIC all rolled up into one angry union.  :supaburn:
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.

Andrew

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #733 on: August 04, 2017, 04:27:56 PM »
That's in the editor. The skybox is a dead giveaway.

Can you describe in more detail what gives it away if it is in the editor? Not doubting, would like to learn to spot this myself.

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #734 on: August 04, 2017, 04:37:34 PM »
That's in the editor. The skybox is a dead giveaway.

Can you describe in more detail what gives it away if it is in the editor? Not doubting, would like to learn to spot this myself.

I would have to download the image and annotate it, but I don't have time. Things to look for:

- the lighting in the skybox (sky) is all wrong
- the lighting falloff on the terrain is all wrong
- there appear to be two directional point lights in the scene; you don't get to see those in the client due to their source distance
- the camera pan, obviously that's not a client gameplay controller doing that. so it has to be mouse and/or keyboard

But what do I know? I'm just an old failed game developer who knows nothing about game development.  :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.

 

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