trucutru posted:

Remember when the stick figure animations in Pitfall! were groundbreaking? If so you an old.

DigitalPenny posted:

Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you should.

Like why do you need any model with a billion triangles... other than to scan something with lidar and be to lazy to clean it up.

Hats off to them if it works that is pretty incredible.

colonelwest posted:

I’m pretty sure that there was actually an older version of SQ42 that was close to being done at one point, but it was scrapped sometime after the vertical slice demo in 2017. Since then I think Chris has been furiously trying to refactor the whole thing in a vain attempt to try to catch up with modern games.

Chronojam posted:

You're always working at a higher initial resolution, if you can automate away the need to bake lighting and generate lod then you've just found an incredible development speedhack especially if it lets high-end systems scale forward in a future-proofy way.

MarcusSA posted:

Wasn't one of the rumors that they had to scrap the nearly completed SQ42 because the scale was completely off.

Like right now everything is tiny as gently caress but they company that put SQ42 together just used normal size poo poo so nothing was compatible.

quote:

exactly. not sure why the whole unreal, unity, whatever drama from over 5 years ago is even brought up anymore. not only is it not relevant, but in hindsight CIGs decision to use Cryengine (and now lumberyard) can be seen as a very good one.

CIG used Cryengine and its worked out fine, get over it people.

quote:

Choosing CryEngine or Unreal when they started development would have been practically the same thing, as CIG would've had to rewrite half of either engine anyway, cos neither had 64-bit positioning/maps/etc. In fact, due to Crytek's debacle, CryEngine turned out to be the best option (albeit unexpected and unplanned), because tons of disgruntled Crytek employees turned to CIG's flock and created the Franktfurt studio, and because that allowed CIG to go under Amazon's mantle. Or do you see Epic having a complete server infraestructure by any chance?

quote:

I'm also quite confident that if Team 17 wanted to they could use Cryengine 1 to create a Worms map with 10,000 concurrent worms.

Bubbacub posted:

I was never tempted to be a backer, but this looked like a big red flag to me early on. Like, no other game dev on the planet touts poly numbers as a feature. And if you have to pump them up like that, wtf is wrong with your normal mapping?

Brazilianpeanutwar posted:

Give me a muton fighting a krogan in an exploding nightclub,then they both bust through a wall into a mario game before a gundam stomps into view and kicks bowser into the sun?

Bootcha posted:

*rapidly tapping nuke*

Quavers posted:

Unreal Engine 5 just revealed and showed some interesting new tech that hopefully inspires CIG as well...

See over here: UNREAL 5 TECH DEMO VIDEO
- Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry, which frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see.
- Lumen, a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes.
Kinda amazed by their tech in this case and here's hoping that CIG gets inspired as well, that Nanite tech seems very impressive, I wonder if it could be used for Ships as well, it would certainly seem to reduce asset production, seeing that you most likely wouldn't have to make any low poly models anymore, if I understand it correctly.

I mean this is the opportunity cost of technical debt - you fall behind trying to put flashy graphics tech before building blocks like OCS and server meshing and before long you're lapped by other emerging technologies that makes your game look dated.

Kinda wack to suggest the game looks "dated" because a demo comes out with tech no one's using. There's still no real alternative to what SC is doing. If it was that easy to fulfill SC's ambitions then another studio would have taken up the mantle and started gobbling up the market for complex space sims that we now know exists.

It doesn't look dated today, but by the time it releases it will definitely look dated.. very dated I'm afraid.


In their defense - the community is largely responsible. It's an endless string of pitchforks demanding a playable game at a point in the development where a playable game isn't on the table. Arguably - in a closed-door development cycle, they WOULD build things like OCS/Netcode first. But they need to sell pretty things to stay afloat and we demand a playable product ahead of schedule. It's a bad set up, in the end. They'd have been better off never deploying the PU, although the funding probably wouldn't be the same either.

Counterpoint: Here is a line from CR in a letter from the chairman in 2014
"We keep a healthy cash reserve so that if funding stopped tomorrow we would still be able to deliver Star Citizen (not quite to the current level of ambition, but well above what was planned in Oct 2012)."
If the excuse in 2020 has become "they need to sell things to stay afloat", then they have either wasted the vast majority of funding provided to them, or they've always been lying about it all. Either way they created this situation themselves. No one forced them to do things the way they've been doing them, they have shown time and time again that in the end they care very little for the opinion of a vocal subset of the community too. The only reason they're doing things this way is because they want to sell pretty pixels for more cash. The end result is a game that isn't progressing at all it seems, and other games slowly but surely overtaking them in the graphics department aswell, give it another 5 years and the engine they're trying to cobble together will be completely obsolete... But 5 years seems an optimistic estimate for release at this rate of "development".

The whole, its the backers fault thing strikes a nerve with me. As if the backers have any real pull when it comes to CRs game. He had to get kicked out of Digital Anvil when he didnt produce for MS, you think his direction changes with backer opinion? Eff no.... And the "well early backers voted for this" rhetoric is just as tiring. You poll only people whove paid enough attention to even know Star Citizen was a thing, and only poll people whove financially backed. Basically ask the space sim fam crowd of people backing the project, "do you want a better game"?... of course people will vote yes. If you could travel back in time and add the caveat itd be 2022 before sq42 came out, i doubt youd have such avid support. But my point is, the poll is already inherently biased due to the people and type of funding the project. Saying its on backers for this turning into a 9 or 10 year dev cycle for the singleplayer portion is bananas

Spiderdrake posted:

This sounds a lot less like you recognize "things" as exciting so much as "brands"

colonelwest posted:

I’m not really saying they have some ace up their sleeve that we aren’t seeing, as much as Chris still believes that he can salvage something and that is why he hasn’t walked away yet.

But I will go out on a limb and say that we will eventually see SQ42 released in some form. It will be a horrible poo poo pile of a game, but it will see the light of day. I’m pretty sure that there was actually an older version of SQ42 that was close to being done at one point, but it was scrapped sometime after the vertical slice demo in 2017. Since then I think Chris has been furiously trying to refactor the whole thing in a vain attempt to try to catch up with modern games.

Brazilianpeanutwar posted:

It was just a suggestion,if you’re going to show something off why not make it colourful?

Brazilianpeanutwar posted:

It was just a suggestion,if you’re going to show something off why not make it colourful?

Solarin posted:

At this point there must have been at least 2.5 full scrap and reboots of SQ42.

DigitalPenny posted:

i have done a huge amount of 3D modelling, and not having to worry about point counts, polygons and ect would be awesome .... the tech looked really cool. dont get me wrong 20 million triangles on screen in real time is mind mind'bogglingly awesome

but to have a flat plane with 7 million polygons is just bloat ... more doesn't mean better, no matter how many triangles you add a square it will just be a square ... and unless you are getting out the microscope you done need thousands of triangles to see a circle... how many round hand rails have you seen in games and thought dam if only they could add a few more hundred triangles and smooth it out ?

The Titanic posted:

I love the Star Citizen polygon count claim because it showed very well how unaware certain people were to how game components and art needed to be created.

CR is not the first person who said "well let's just use the high detail models in the game!" instead of use them as a reference for baking a normal map onto a lower polygon count object.

This was not revolutionary. It was ignorance.

Brazilianpeanutwar posted:

I already know the answer to my own question but why do they make these tech showoff promo things so intensely boring and subdued?

Give me a muton fighting a krogan in an exploding nightclub,then they both bust through a wall into a mario game before a gundam stomps into view and kicks bowser into the sun?

BOORIING!

Fidelitious posted:

As a software engineer I'm all about being as lazy as possible.

DarkDobe posted:

Man the last Worms I played was that short-lived Worms 3D which was actually fun.

New Worms when?

Fidelitious posted:

As a software engineer I'm all about being as lazy as possible.

Quavers posted:

Quavers posted:

Quavers posted:

Sarsapariller posted:

I, too, believe that Ready Player One is the pinnacle of artistic achievement.

Sarsapariller posted:

I, too, believe that Ready Player One is the pinnacle of artistic achievement.

Brazilianpeanutwar posted:

I already know the answer to my own question but why do they make these tech showoff promo things so intensely boring and subdued?

Give me a muton fighting a krogan in an exploding nightclub,then they both bust through a wall into a mario game before a gundam stomps into view and kicks bowser into the sun?

BOORIING!