Star Citizen: Death of a Space Thread?

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Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Scruffpuff posted:

This is kind of an important point, and it's really hard to explain here, but I'll do my best.

If CIG is using a term that is used in actual game development, they're doing it to appear like a real game development studio. In these cases, they're using the term wrong. See: refactoring, pipeline, pre-alpha

If CIG is using a term that is NOT used in actual game development, they're doing it to appear like they're creating cutting edge technology. In reality, the technology has existed for years, if not decades, with a different name, and CIG's implementation is completely wrong and is full of errors that even the actual pioneers didn't make when they were first figuring it out. See: subsumption, tier 0, quantum linking

Oftentimes they will find a way to combine the two approaches, and use real game development terms in a way that makes them appear like they're the first people to figure out a long-solved problem. In every case, they're either using the term wrong, or mangling the underlying technology beyond recognition. See: network bind culling, serialized variables, object container streaming

This post from awhile back is really important

# ? Aug 8, 2018 04:37

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# ? May 31, 2024 12:16

Ramadu: Aug 25, 2004; 2015 NFL MVP

Zaphod42 posted:

Oh my god

https://youtu.be/G42MQ1aVjlA?t=41m46s

Chris simply has no idea what he's talking about. He throws around buzzwords but he can't connect the dots. This is pretty largely wrong.

Also his wiggly hand motions are amazing, what the gently caress are you snorting Chris.

"And the final thing is, server meshing, which will.... you know..."

Hahahaha what.

Also when Chris says "then we can get the player count up to 200 or so" Lando stares into the camera like "Are you guys loving this or what? Aren't we amazing?"

No, dude, 200 players in an instance isn't impressive at all. Fix your poo poo.

had 100+ people in a boat fishing in wow today :thunk:

# ? Aug 8, 2018 04:49

Tokamak: Dec 22, 2004

Morphix posted:

but I did find this in couple seconds
http://docs.cryengine.com/display/CEPROG/Streaming+System

is this poo poo already in the engine?
Because I mean, it kind of sounds like Cryengine already does what they're describing. So what's taking so long to start them streams yo?

Most AAA games load game assets in the background as you're playing them. Object container streaming reduces the network overhead by reducing the amount of load commands it has to send to clients. Currently if someone spawns an Aurora, the server tells every client to load 'aurora_landing_wheel', load 'aurora_pilot_chair', load 'aurora_metal_texture_1', load 'aurora_metal_texture_2', load.... And since everything is extremely fidelitous, everything has a bajillion things to load (which causes the server to poo poo itself). OCS hopes to simplify the loading with a more generic commands, such as load 'aurora_lr', and load 'port_olisar'.

While this is good for network overhead, you now have to deal with the problem that if you are flying to a landing zone, load 'levski' should prioritise loading the exterior of the station and not things like bar stools and wankpod beds. There's also the problem that you might need a small subset to load really fast (while the rest can be loaded later), or that the entire thing might not fit into video card memory at once. Basically they have to write the logic to load assets intelligently (like an open world game) because Cryengine doesn't do it by default. Turns out that doing this isn't straight forward, and it's made much harder when you already have a heap of finished assets and technologies that you can't easily rework to conform with the streaming logic.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 05:10

Deadguy2322: Dec 16, 2017; Greatness Awaits

G0RF posted:

Ha - I missed that. Not surprising Giuseppe would be embedded somewhere, fighting the good fight.

Alas, the thread took a turn for the worse of late, with the Defense Force team resorting to toxicity and meltdowns rather than engage in actual dialogue. They got Boraxed.

Oh well. At least they tried.

Toxicity? In the sewer that the NeoGAF mods dug when they couldn�t stand behind Malka�s shitbag behaviour safely anymore? Shocking.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 05:24

Beet Wagon: Oct 19, 2015

G0RF posted:

Ha - I missed that. Not surprising Giuseppe would be embedded somewhere, fighting the good fight.

Alas, the thread took a turn for the worse of late, with the Defense Force team resorting to toxicity and meltdowns rather than engage in actual dialogue. They got Boraxed.

Oh well. At least they tried.

Nelva�s one of those dudes that creeps me out to the point that I purposefully avoid his articles comments sections. I mean he�s not exactly special in that he�s a rabid fanboy who writes gushing articles eagerly slurping down Crobblers latest lie and then puts the banhammer to anyone who disagrees in the comments, but something about the smug way he does it just grosses me out

# ? Aug 8, 2018 05:25

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Tokamak posted:

Most AAA games load game assets in the background as you're playing them. Object container streaming reduces the network overhead by reducing the amount of load commands it has to send to clients. Currently if someone spawns an Aurora, the server tells every client to load 'aurora_landing_wheel', load 'aurora_pilot_chair', load 'aurora_metal_texture_1', load 'aurora_metal_texture_2', load.... And since everything is extremely fidelitous, everything has a bajillion things to load (which causes the server to poo poo itself). OCS hopes to simplify the loading with a more generic commands, such as load 'aurora_lr', and load 'port_olisar'.

While this is good for network overhead, you now have to deal with the problem that if you are flying to a landing zone, load 'levski' should prioritise loading the exterior of the station and not things like bar stools and wankpod beds. There's also the problem that you might need a small subset to load really fast (while the rest can be loaded later), or that the entire thing might not fit into video card memory at once. Basically they have to write the logic to load assets intelligently (like an open world game) because Cryengine doesn't do it by default. Turns out that doing this isn't straight forward, and it's made much harder when you already have a heap of finished assets and technologies that you can't easily rework to conform with the streaming logic.

Its oddly rear end-backwards too because the server shouldn't be telling the client that poo poo. It should say "there's a port olisar at X" and then let the client decide if it wants to load that or render it or cull it or whatever.

But you're right, OCS is indeed a server-side and network optimization, which in itself will not improve client FPS in any way. But backers don't get this and hold on for OCS delivering 100+ fps.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 05:42

colonelwest: Jun 30, 2018

Zaphod42 posted:

gonna post this every opportunity I get

I remember around 2013 when the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were launching, Sony and Microsoft were being poo poo on a little bit by the media for how under-powered their new hardware was compared to even mid-tier gaming PC's at the time. They got constant questions about how they could ever hope to pull off emerging technologies like 4K and VR. Their answer was always "we'll harness the power of the cloud!". It was always framed in a way that made it seem like there was this mythical cloud somewhere out in the internet that was an unending source of computational power and they would never have to worry about bandwidth or latency.

I'm surprised that Chris hasn't used this line when Store Citizen's horrible performance is brought up. "Ahh well... right now you see.. ah that players need a powerful gaming PC to run Star Citizen... because uhm the unprecedented level of fidelity we achieved... ahh because of our super high AAAA polygon counts that uhm... are more than any AAA publisher... so but ahh when Star Citizen releases we will harness the power of the cloud in a way never before seen... to uhm offload most of the computation, so that uhm even a player with a Surface Pro can play the game at medium settings."

colonelwest fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Aug 8, 2018

# ? Aug 8, 2018 05:50

Morphix: May 21, 2003; by Reene

Tokamak posted:

Most AAA games load game assets in the background as you're playing them. Object container streaming reduces the network overhead by reducing the amount of load commands it has to send to clients. Currently if someone spawns an Aurora, the server tells every client to load 'aurora_landing_wheel', load 'aurora_pilot_chair', load 'aurora_metal_texture_1', load 'aurora_metal_texture_2', load.... And since everything is extremely fidelitous, everything has a bajillion things to load (which causes the server to poo poo itself). OCS hopes to simplify the loading with a more generic commands, such as load 'aurora_lr', and load 'port_olisar'.

While this is good for network overhead, you now have to deal with the problem that if you are flying to a landing zone, load 'levski' should prioritise loading the exterior of the station and not things like bar stools and wankpod beds. There's also the problem that you might need a small subset to load really fast (while the rest can be loaded later), or that the entire thing might not fit into video card memory at once. Basically they have to write the logic to load assets intelligently (like an open world game) because Cryengine doesn't do it by default. Turns out that doing this isn't straight forward, and it's made much harder when you already have a heap of finished assets and technologies that you can't easily rework to conform with the streaming logic.

Zaphods and Titanic explanations while earnest just left me more confused. This actually explains it fairly well, thanks.

So to even make this object container streaming thing a reality in the way citizens are envisioning it, they would have to redo all of their assets and game stuff for the nth time. But because that looks like utter failure, they're sort of stuck patching a leaky ship.

well thankfully we can always fall back on that new ship pipeline they're always talking about to pull a hail marry and get a touch down for one visionary Roberts and his merry band of lovable scamps

# ? Aug 8, 2018 05:52

Morphix: May 21, 2003; by Reene

colonelwest posted:

I'm surprised that Chris hasn't used this line when Store Citizen's horrible performance is brought up.

I'm new to this mess so I'm sure someone can provide the link but I'm 100% sure there is a quote of Roberts saying he has the entire economy and AI running on a series of cloud super computers, just ready to go, waiting for one crucial piece, but otherwise all ready! I think it was like 2015-16

# ? Aug 8, 2018 05:54

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Morphix posted:

Zaphods and Titanic explanations while earnest just left me more confused. This actually explains it fairly well, thanks.

So to even make this object container streaming thing a reality in the way citizens are envisioning it, they would have to redo all of their assets and game stuff for the nth time. But because that looks like utter failure, they're sort of stuck patching a leaky ship.

well thankfully we can always fall back on that new ship pipeline they're always talking about to pull a hail marry and get a touch down for one visionary Roberts and his merry band of lovable scamps

Nah they don't have to redo assets, they just have to code the server better. But that's really hard for them apparently, lol.

They will have to redo assets when they switch engines though hahahaha.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 05:54

Awesome!: Oct 17, 2008; Ready for adventure!

colonelwest posted:

I remember around 2013 when the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were launching, Sony and Microsoft were being poo poo on a little bit by the media for how under-powered their new hardware was compared to even mid-tier gaming PC's at the time. They got constant questions about how they could ever hope to pull off emerging technologies like 4K and VR. Their answer was always "we'll harness the power of the cloud!".

i think this was all microsoft

# ? Aug 8, 2018 05:58

no_recall: Aug 17, 2015; Lipstick Apathy

Zaphod42 posted:

Oh my god

https://youtu.be/G42MQ1aVjlA?t=41m46s

Chris simply has no idea what he's talking about. He throws around buzzwords but he can't connect the dots. This is pretty largely wrong.

Also his wiggly hand motions are amazing, what the gently caress are you snorting Chris.

"And the final thing is, server meshing, which will.... you know..."

Hahahaha what.

Also when Chris says "then we can get the player count up to 200 or so" Lando stares into the camera like "Are you guys loving this or what? Aren't we amazing?"

No, dude, 200 players in an instance isn't impressive at all. Fix your poo poo.

Class act. Lets review.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_6vDLq64gE

# ? Aug 8, 2018 06:02

Tokamak: Dec 22, 2004

Zaphod42 posted:

Its oddly rear end-backwards too because the server shouldn't be telling the client that poo poo. It should say "there's a port olisar at X" and then let the client decide if it wants to load that or render it or cull it or whatever.

When you take an FPS engine and naively extend its capabilities, you get weird workarounds like this.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 06:06

no_recall: Aug 17, 2015; Lipstick Apathy

One major gripe I have is Chris seems to be the "expert" for all these code and systems related details instead of actually being the dude that gives the game a vision / direction, which includes playing and reviewing what is currently made and getting the team to refine that experience.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 06:07

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

no_recall posted:

One major gripe I have is Chris seems to be the "expert" for all these code and systems related details instead of actually being the dude that gives the game a vision / direction, which includes playing and reviewing what is currently made and getting the team to refine that experience.

Even that is giving him too much credit. He's just a guy who demands fidelity and makes up cool ideas and then dumps them on a team to implement. He has zero idea of what is technically feasible or not or what would be a good feature to focus on or what is outside of scope. There is no scope, he just demands everything. That's not a vision, that's not a direction, that's just dumb.

Just like Molyneux, but even more insane.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 06:15

Awesome!: Oct 17, 2008; Ready for adventure!

they are just ideas. not cool ideas.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 06:22

Mirificus: Oct 29, 2004; Kings need not raise their voices to be heard

# ? Aug 8, 2018 06:28

Tokamak: Dec 22, 2004

Morphix posted:

So to even make this object container streaming thing a reality in the way citizens are envisioning it, they would have to redo all of their assets and game stuff for the nth time. But because that looks like utter failure, they're sort of stuck patching a leaky ship.

Generally engine and gameplay stuff can be worked on independently, but sometimes they interact and it's a good idea to set those interactions in stone early. So it's possible, but I'm not an game engine expert so I couldn't say for sure. Besides, they have already changed the way objects are formatted in order to support new gameplay functionality. They call it 'item 2.0' and they've had to go back and reformat every asset to support it.

In this case though, it's more engine work on stuff that is adjacent to asset streaming. The issue is that they're building the game engine one step at a time, and each new thing they add, they have to go back to old code to make changes which accommodate the new feature. It's the same kind of deal as item 2.0, but for engine reworks.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 06:41

Spiderdrake: May 12, 2001

Awesome! posted:

they are just ideas. not cool ideas.

They're not even really ideas, unless you call it an idea when you watch scifi and go I WANT THAT. AND THAT. and then you make whooshing motions with your hand.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 06:46

TheAgent: Feb 16, 2002; The call is coming from inside Dr. House; Grimey Drawer

Mirificus posted:

I see gone are the days of "chris roberts pays himself like 60k a year because he loves us" type posts

now its "I'm sure he makes a lot of money but he deserves it and we don't need to know how much because he says he spends it wisely and I trust him completely"

# ? Aug 8, 2018 06:53

Baxta: Feb 18, 2004; Needs More Pirate

Fallout 76 preorders are up. You get to test the beta. Dunno how I feel about this.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 07:23

Sandweed: Sep 7, 2006; All your friends are me.

The Titanic posted:

Yay!

Looks kind of maybe ok but also not quite the AAA makeover it deserves today.

Also I'm not backing it, sorry guys!

You will be sorry when I gank you in my pledgeship.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 07:26

Sandweed: Sep 7, 2006; All your friends are me.

Baxta posted:

Fallout 76 preorders are up. You get to test the beta. Dunno how I feel about this.

Multiplayer fallout without npcs or story?

# ? Aug 8, 2018 07:27

G0RF: Mar 19, 2015; Some galactic defender you are, Space Cadet.

https://twitter.com/RobertsSpaceInd/status/1026976302002319360
https://twitter.com/heletzac/status/1027075515864309760

Well they walked right into that one.

:gary:

# ? Aug 8, 2018 07:27

Sandweed: Sep 7, 2006; All your friends are me.

Imagine that you walk out of vault 13 in the first game and a guy named GokuHimler1488 shoots you with a minigun immediately.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 07:29

The Rabbi T. White: Jul 17, 2008

Mirificus posted:

Yeah, about those open financials and treating "pledgers" like publishers.
What the gently caress is wrong with people? How can they be so deluded that they are can't tally up the lies along with the current state of their "product" and realise they've been hosed?

I bet lots of these people purchased Butterfly Labs poo poo, too.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 07:31

The Rabbi T. White: Jul 17, 2008

G0RF posted:

https://twitter.com/RobertsSpaceInd/status/1026976302002319360

That guy is just amazing in front of a camera.

"Who should we get to demo our facial expression system?"
"How about the least expressive person on the planet, who also speaks like he's on the nod?"
"We're loving great at our jobs."

# ? Aug 8, 2018 07:37

SpaceCurtisLeMay: Sep 30, 2016; We're at war with Goons. We were attacked by Goons. Do you want to kill Goons, or would you rather have Citizens killed?

Baxta posted:

Fallout 76 preorders are up. You get to test the beta. Dunno how I feel about this.

I don't really have much interest in Fallout 76 or much else coming out this fall. At least it will be easy on the pocketbook.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 07:48

no_recall: Aug 17, 2015; Lipstick Apathy

G0RF posted:

https://twitter.com/RobertsSpaceInd/status/1026976302002319360
https://twitter.com/heletzac/status/1027075515864309760

Well they walked right into that one.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 07:56

Lord Stimperor: Jun 13, 2018; I'm a lovable meme.

Baxta posted:

Fallout 76 preorders are up. You get to test the beta. Dunno how I feel about this.

Fallout 4 base building on Survival was like crack to me. Elder Scrolls Online was a sleeping pill. Curious where FO76 falls between the two.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 08:40

Lord Stimperor: Jun 13, 2018; I'm a lovable meme.

G0RF posted:

https://twitter.com/heletzac/status/1027075515864309760

Well they walked right into that one.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 08:41

Fatkraken: Jun 23, 2005; Fun-time is over.

The Titanic posted:

The problem, at its core, is that Chris Roberts thinks that he can convert an arena style game into an mmo by setting int maxPlayers = 1000000;

The issue is that he already promised this.

The difficulty is that he needs to rebuild the entire network system under the core CryEngine system.

The blocker is that he doesn't have anybody skilled enough to make an mmo, twitch based, super low latency, land/air/space/galaxy/shoot guns across instances/shoot another player in another ship from inside your own ship/ships alone can have 100's of players as "crew" game.

In fact, there's a better than odd chance that this person and this technology does not currently exist and he cannot make it happen simply because he "had a loving idea".

So now we get to the "band-aid" part, where they have people trying to mess around with the core CryTek stuff and attempt to tweak it enough to get as much as they can from it. The problem with that is that they aren't good at it, but that won't stop them from trying to coin new terminology for things that already exist.

Currently what they've done to increase player counts on a server is to reduce npc counts. I guess this is a victory somehow. This sort of juggling is all they will be able to achieve, until they start actually trying to build an mmo engine instead of try to tweak an arena death match engine.

But again, for some reason nobody even realizes that the reality of Star Citizen the mmo is that it's not even being developed yet. If anything, they are building a framework for a drop-in-drop out multiplayer game like the original concept of Squadron 42.

Star Citizen is not even a concept of a game yet. It does not exist. Sq42 the multiplayer arena game exists.

Read (or find the audiobook of) "bad blood", about the Theranos silicon valley blood testing company fiasco. The similarities are loving uncanny. The utterly ignorant founder had an "idea" (that was completely unfeasible, it was a stick on patch that tested blood and delivered medication on the spot automatically which is probably 50 years away if the physics ever even allows it at all), pivoted into a rather more pedestrian sounding but still extremely ambitious yet simple idea (lets build a single small desktop machine that can do ALL the blood tests from ONE DROP!) while apparently thinking answer to "why haven't the multi billion dollar established blood test companies already done this since it would be worth billions" was "they're just too short sighted to have ever tried!!!!!".

The prototypes that got built were lovely jury rigged glue-dispensing-robots in a box or unreliable inaccurate mini versions of existing machines that were designed to run on large samples, or even those actual machines bought from proper companies being run in a hidden lab so they just diluted the single drop samples which is explicitly against the instructions for the real machines because of detection thresholds and confounding factors.

This is all set against a background of lies, falsehood, deception and legal chicanery used to silence dissenters and potential whistle blowers, the occasional employee suicide and of course millions of dangerously inaccurate blood tests received by members of the public, which probably (but not yet PROVABLY) led to avoidable deaths and definitely led to a lot of wasted money, distress and heartache. And of course BILLIONS in funding based on nothing but faith, fear-of-missing-out, a charismatic leader and a blind leading the blind effect garnered from some recognizable retired government types and "top investors" being family friends and putting in money early on.

It's a great read and SO MUCH is applicable to the SC story and mindset it's uncanny. All thes has happened before, all this will happen again

# ? Aug 8, 2018 08:46

Dr. Kyle Farnsworth: Apr 23, 2004

I love the FOIP thing because Everquest 2 tried it years ago and it was horrifying so they pulled it back out. On the other hand you could fidelitously watch my horrifying visage while I eat chips in real time.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 09:05

Pixelate: Jan 6, 2018; "You win by having fun"

Morphix posted:

I'm new to this mess so I'm sure someone can provide the link but I'm 100% sure there is a quote of Roberts saying he has the entire economy and AI running on a series of cloud super computers, just ready to go, waiting for one crucial piece, but otherwise all ready! I think it was like 2015-16

You mean this old mess?

quote:

Chris: [...] We actually have a full Universe simulation that runs� we actually don't need it to run on any particular bank of servers. It just actually runs on one server, and it simulates about 20 million AI agents. It simulates the AI agents in a very sort of high-level manner. Ok, you've got a mission, you're going to go from here to here, so it's not simulating it on the fidelity level that you would do when you're actually connected to the game and flying around and doing combat maneuvers or flying from point to point, it's simulating it more in the � here's the jobs, here's the missions, here's the market demand, here's the things that are happening [...]

Pixelate fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Aug 8, 2018

# ? Aug 8, 2018 09:13

Daztek: Jun 2, 2006

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/95h8bm/how_i_learned_to_stop_being_concerned/

# ? Aug 8, 2018 09:48

Quavers: Feb 26, 2016; You clearly don't understand game development

Baxta posted:

Fallout 76 preorders are up. You get to test the beta. Dunno how I feel about this.

Also, servers aren't wiped at end of Beta, so all progression is kept. So it's more like a server-stress-test early access

# ? Aug 8, 2018 10:11

History Comes Inside!: Nov 20, 2004

Baxta posted:

Fallout 76 preorders are up. You get to test the beta. Dunno how I feel about this.

It's been available for preorder since the day they announced the game and the "beta" is scheduled for like a week before launch.

The hot breaking news is that there's not going to be a wipe at the end of "beta"

How much further can companies stretch this concept of "beta testing" as a marketing gimmick? This is a very appropriate question to ask in the Store Citizer thread.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 10:22