D_Smart posted:

Yeah, that math is 100% wrong. Like COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY WRONG.

Lladre posted:

It was probably more that the person had a sub account of someone who paid for one. A lot of businesses back then would buy an account (You got 5 users per) and so your reps could now dial in to the office wherever they were. AOL had a pretty good coverage for dial up.

Twenty some odd years later and the account is still tied to that original transaction and so the person is out of luck.

Colostomy Bag posted:

Yeah, been that way for a while. At least the previous one had them.

I just love how sensitive this clusterfuck is. Like it is an Oscar screener or top secret documents.

SomethingJones posted:

Star Citizen: Around the Verse - Performance and Optimization
March 8 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU0sMZbhqoU

@21:14


Clive Johnson:
One of the questions we get asked quite a lot is... with our... ah... SERVER, having the target frame rate of... 30 frames a second, and clients having a... a... target frame rate of 60 frames a second...

How is that possible, why aren't they tied together. And the reason for that is we're not operating in something called LOCK STEP and LOCK STEP would be where the server sends an UPDATE and the client has to WAIT until it receives an update before it goes, 'OK, this is where this entity should be', and then it has to wait for another update and it goes, 'right, entity's moved to HERE', and so on.

What we actually do is, em... the server will send its updates... 30 frames a second... the client's running at 60 frames a second, in theory the client should receive an update for entities every two frames, so it has to kind of GUESS... what's happened in the MIDDLE FRAME... eh... so basically what it's doing is it's locally simulating all the entities.

So an entity moving across a flat plane in a fixed speed in a fixed direction, it can guess where the entity should be at each point, and it'll get the ah, the next update from the server and go, 'mmmm, that's slightly out from where it should be I need to nudge that one a little bit over to the left'

And a bit later on down the line the entity's turned a bit so I need to nudge it a little bit over the other way

So that allows the client and server to run at different frame rates, and we don't need to worry about something like operating in lockstep which can cause big issues 'cos of latency on the server... on the internet and how that varies quite randomly all the time, eh, it would be quite a bad experience.

It's alright for things like turn based games

Well, I won’t waste your time trying to change your mind on that point then. But here’s some food for thought on the matter of leaks more broadly.

I think we all recognize frustrations are higher and faith lower in the community these days than at this time last year. The matter was addressed very recently in a sympathetic video by Dagaimez, who is certainly no Goon. The comments on his video by frustrated backers show the resonance even though DaGaimez isn’t railing about anything, he’s lamenting that the unplayability issue has destroyed confidence and is leading people he likes to either get angry or give up.

BoredGamer addressed some frustrations himself on a related point, about CIG’s tin ear to community sentiment and needs.

I bring these up as context to show that the climate of frustration is being openly addressed and is widely felt.

With that in mind, it might be less surprising than you think that there are Evocati who share things with Goons. It would be rather hard to believe in the current climate than every single Evocati member was free of frustrations with CIG and felt honor bound to abide by NDA. As I noted elsewhere, CIG hasn’t exactly set a high bar for trustworthiness themselves, which is *itself* a source of widespread frustration. Some Evocati likely feel aggrieved and maybe have legitimate reasons for that that transcend any tribal affinity to CIG.

So it may be less surprising than people think that frustrations can turn Believers into Skeptics or Heretics. Once that happens, it gets harder to feel like the old haunts are as hospitable. It’s harder to sing the old tunes with glee — they don’t feel nearly so inspiring as they once did. They feel a little false, a little empty.

In that context, SomethingAwful starts to seem less like the headquarters of the eternal enemy and more like a place that it is now and long has been — home to a non-stop cacophony about Star Citizen where anyone can sing any tune in any key because the song is called “” and the worse it sounds, the better it sounds.

TL:DR - Against a backdrop of non-trivial community frustration, and with an Evocati population that includes hundreds of longtime backers, it might not be surprising if some choose to leak to the community far more sympathetic to the frustrated.

Tippis posted:

Here comes the jargon lesson of the day:

Blocking call.

This ends the jargon lesson of the day.

D_Smart posted:

Hey, remember that networking fiasco which I chimed (1, 2) in on a few times? And I said that they just can't implement "bind culling" without breaking everything - so they kept kicking it down the road?

Right.

The Saddest Robot posted:

1/60th of a second is 60 milliseconds.

1 second = 1000 milliseconds

1000 / 60 = 16.6

16.6 != 60

1/60th of a second is not 60 milliseconds

But giving talks can be nervous. Giving the wrong number is an easy mistake to make. I wouldn't mock him for that. Sure, I'd chuckle a bit, but then I'd move on. These cat pictures aren't going to browse themselves.

The Saddest Robot posted:

I was actually surprised from the get-go that they were trying to use CryEngine's networking in the persistent universe. It is such an ill suited match for what they intended to accomplish that I assumed they would roll their own networking code or use something already available.

Tippis posted:

Here comes the jargon lesson of the day:

Blocking call.

This ends the jargon lesson of the day.

Lladre posted:

Hey remember no one remember any of this because it's always getting kicked down the road?

Right.

Hav posted:

So, game devs, why not run the server at whatever frame rate and have the client make asynchronous calls? Is it a matter of the intersection calculations for raycasting sometimes being comically off due to latency, or is there a deeper reason for maintaining a deep coupling with the server tick rate?

Derek Smart Was Right posted:

(FEB 25, 2018)

Mere days after I wrote this article, CIG released their updated schedule which revealed that they had – once again – pushed network traffic culling, a critical component, from 3.1 into 3.2.

This is something that has been in the schedule since 2016, and was supposed to have been released in the 2.6 build (the first Lumberyard build) back in late 2016. Then it was moved into the 2.6.1 schedule. And again into the 3.0 schedule.

I have written about this particular feature in past (Dec 2017, Oct 2017, Jul 2017) articles. As I’ve written before, CIG is once again just making up bullshit names for standard tech so that it looks like they’re actually inventing new things. And backers get to foolishly think they’re paying for innovation. Whatever it is CIG is wanting to do, here is a 2014 article that explains Network Traffic Culling.

As if on cue, I posted this scoop on Twitter:

“Star Citizen 3.1 was due out end of March. I am hearing that it’s way behind schedule. Also, they can’t get network traffic culling working – at all. So don’t expect it anytime soon – if ever. They also sent out Evocati notice that they may increase it to 2000 invites.”

Less than 24hrs later, Clive Johnson issued this statement on Spectrum:

“We decided it was necessary to push Bind Culling back for the following reasons:

1) Progress has been slower than we had hoped, partly due to taking longer than anticipated to convert the last few places in the code that were using old-style Aspects and RMIs to Serialized Variables and Remote Methods, and then completely strip those legacy systems from the network code. That was a necessary step because we didn’t want to have to implement Bind Culling for both the old and new systems. I’m not embarrassed to tell you there was some dancing and a few air-punches on my part when the last line of that old code was deleted.

2) There wouldn’t have been enough time left before 3.1 for the network and gameplay programmers to deal with the issues we’re expecting the introduction of Bind Culling to cause.

3) Bind Culling would result in clients streaming entities in and out based on distance, but without asynchronous Object Container Streaming it was always a gamble whether the resulting synchronous loading stalls would be worse or better than what players experience now. The plan was to get Bind Culling working, see what the impact on player experience was and then make the call whether to turn it on for 3.1.

4) Range-based Serialized Variable Culling was our backup plan in case Bind Culling didn’t make it into 3.1. You may remember that we were working on SV Culling for 3.0 but that it wasn’t quite ready in time. Well, it was the first thing we tackled when we came back at the start of the year, and has been working in our development branch for several weeks now (not the branch 3.0.1 was taken from). SV Culling already gives us a lot of the performance gain we would expect from Bind Culling so the urgency for the later has dropped significantly.

5) The network team is needed for other tasks that have increased in priority since they were first added to our schedule.”

Derek Smart Was Right posted:

(DEC 11 2017)
When they switched (a dubious claim I’ve written about before) to Lumberyard, the usual hype around networking started to pop up. This has been continuously fueled by even more meaningless (in the general scheme of things) bullshit such as serialized variables, network bind culling, server mesh network etc. All of which backers – despite our telling them it was all inconsequential nonsense – were thoroughly convinced would one day solve the networking issues with the game – and they were totally going to get an MMO. Heck, even though 3.0 is the worse ever build (it even tops 2.0, if you can imagine that) in terms of performance, stability, networking – and pretty much everything else – there are those who still want to believe that some day down the road, everything will be fine with networking because CIG said so. This despite the fact that, time and time again, those promises have either been flat out lies, or just simply didn’t materialize.

In the video above, Erin (yeah, he too was promoting that whole bullshit about server meshes, “hundreds of thousands” of players instances etc) mentions serialized variables, leading into Clive’s appearance at the 13:10 mark to talk about and explain…..serialized variables. Here’s the thing, those buzz words aren’t even noteworthy they are a fundamental part of any robust networking tech. But we get broadcasts like this because, like every successful con and confidence scheme, you have to keep your targets believing in what you’re selling and promising.

So it should come as no surprise that in the past 24 hrs, Clive has inadvertently started a massive poo poo storm with this post about the networking. On any other day, this would be par for the course with Star Citizen; but given how some backers have put so much hope and trust in CIG about the inbound networking improvements, this one is bit too close to the reality that they are about to face. This despite the fact that they know in their hearts that they’re never – ever – getting the game they were promised anyway.

The Saddest Robot posted:

1/60th of a second is 60 milliseconds.

1 second = 1000 milliseconds

1000 / 60 = 16.6

16.6 != 60

1/60th of a second is not 60 milliseconds

But giving talks can be nervous. Giving the wrong number is an easy mistake to make. I wouldn't mock him for that. Sure, I'd chuckle a bit, but then I'd move on. These cat pictures aren't going to browse themselves.

Streetroller posted:

Cali Lawyer: fired off motion to dismiss,
Judge: See you in court

Amazing Zimmo posted:

The watermarking of evocati stuff is still going strong.

This is a leaked screen cap of the reclaimer (taken from reddit) showing the watermark:

SomethingJones posted:

Star Citizen: Around the Verse - Performance and Optimization
March 8 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU0sMZbhqoU

@38:00

Clive Johnson:
Miles is sat in his bar, in Levski. And you're on Port Olisar.

So we need a little marker rendering on your client, showing where Miles is, so you know where to head. But with BIND CULLING the Miles Eckhart entity won't be there, so what do we draw the marker on?

So those are the kinds of problems we need to figure out ways to deal with it, there's a couple of different ways we can deal with that situation and... (cut)

But until we do, we can't really put BIND CULLING in because it would break the gameplay. Probably won't see the full implementation of bind culling in until as I say, we get object container streaming in. Ehm... but for us internally we need to get it in as soon as possible before we can move on with some of the other stuff that we're planning.

So another thing which we've kind of done, I've mentioned BIND CULLING, I've mentioned OBJECT CONTAINER STREAMING, ehm... there's also SERIALISED VARIABLE CULLING, em... which is because we can't do bind culling just yet, because we can't get it out into the hands of the backers... SERIALISED VARIABLE CULLING is what we CAN do.

source http://dereksmart.com/forums/reply/6239/

source http://dereksmart.com/forums/reply/6078/


Bind Culling and serialised variable were BOTH supposedly in development for v2.6 in 2016:



They even included them in press releases:




Bind Culling coming in 2.6
Bind Culling coming in 2.6.1
Bind Culling coming in 3.0
Bind Culling coming in 3.1
Bind Culling coming in 3.2
Bind Culling necessary to make the game run at >20fps with 8 clients

Derek Smart Was Right posted:

Let me summarize this for you. Five years later, they not only have a badly broken mess of a pre-Alpha, with sub-par standard multiplayer, but they haven’t even started with core tech that could possibly form the basis for anything remotely resembling a multiplayer layer for an MMO game. And my guess is that they’re never – ever – going to get there. So there is no way in hell they’re going to ever get an MMO out of this poo poo-show. Heck, if they get to the part where they ever get 16 players in a server instance playing reasonably well, and as expected, I will personally send Chris Roberts an autographed card.

FYI: Right now, one of the hottest games, PUBG, has server instances with up to 100 players in a single session. And it just works. Not to mention the number of multiplayer games which don’t even consider 32 players a high limit anymore. But Star Citizen, with all this money and supposed talent, can’t get a session based client-server game running with even a 16 player low limit without the server heading South of the border.

Heck, even without having the luxury of time and other people’s money, when we were building Line Of Defense, right from the onset the multiplayer technology was designed to work in either a standard session based client-server model, or as an MMO with client limitations. That took us the better part of over four years to get it right.

This isn’t something you just tack on several years down the road. Don’t take my word for it, read some of these legacy articles (1, 2) if you think that a “multiplayer game” is the same as a “massively multiplayer game”. Heck, go ask the guys working on Dual Universe or Battlespace Infinity if they left the massive multiplayer part for last.