Sabreseven posted:

Might be because there's more than 12 goons here with actual working experience of software design and coding?


Hold on, there is no evidence of Amazons server hosting being cheaper or easier than running a home server setup.

Sunswipe posted:

It's an MMO, there's no "win state," so it can't be pay to win. Checkmate, goonies.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

To be honest I think it's more likely that Frontier would do something to make Elite a compelling, immersive game with enough player-driven content to keep me interested than that CIG would ever produce anything worth paying money for. And that's in spite of the fact that Braben has repeatedly said that he has no intention of ever doing that with Elite.

D_Smart posted:

Nice try.

10/31/2016

http://dereksmart.com/forums/topic/star-citizen-musings/#post-4746


12/27/2016

http://dereksmart.com/2016/12/star-citizen-irreconcilable-differences/


Your move.

D_Smart posted:

Clearly you're ignorant and behind the curve if you don't know that until it becomes a reality, everything - and anything - about Star Citizen is all conjecture. And that includes the premise that they are actually making a game.

Hav posted:

Firstly, deferred updates on some things. These are writes that can be queued. Also use a table driver that handles row level locking rather than table level.

Sharding in database terms usually means splitting actual tables, plus you can use temporary table schemas to handle adhoc transaction states that are 'bundled' back into the main table.

After that, you're into the heady world of binary replication and master/slave configurations. Binary replication is effectively a tight communication line to the slave that just replicates any changes on the master.

But no, you're entirely right, database scaling is a absolute pig. Row locking can be an arsehole, Sharding increases complexity and replication - I had a database fall out of sync once with a slave, and it took 45 minutes to rebuild from the binary logs; a straight dump and rebuild of the master would have taken fifteen. Admittedly that was late 90s, but the second you step out of the technological comfort zone, costs skyrocket.

Eve online had this problem with their MSSQL DB, so the first thing they did was slap it on the biggest SAN array available. They already sharded the systems themselves, but it still gave them an upper limit on number of things they could track that had nothing to do with Moore's law or elastic compute, and more to do with the honking bottleneck around table writes.

Hav posted:

What are you doing now? Still DBs?

Banks are essentially betting huge amounts of cash on reducing latency, so they throw all those loving overdraft charges at the scaling issues. We have a bunch of HA stuff that runs the backbone, but I'm not a DB guy, I'm a network guy. I know some _very_ good DB guys who I get drunk regularly so they answer my phone calls, though.

Right behind the banks at the moment are the ad buying networks, which are effectively realtime bidding for eyes. The whole system is gamed to gently caress and back, but there are rules around comscore, and this creates more traffic than you'd believe.

AWS' other big issue, apart from shared infrastructure - unless you pay the big bucks, and you're still not sure where your poo poo 'lives' - is that they like to handle internal routing, so load balancing across availability zones is a bitch to the extent where we've had people routing west coast to east coast, then back to west coast after hitting the AWS network.

Lumberyard was intended to lower to bar to entry for people to produce games, 'hopefully' re-creating the desktop publishing publishing model. It doesn't actually _fix_ anything. Now they have to slipstream their changes to take advantage of the development on HEAD after they aligned to a much, much earlier commit.

Hav posted:

This is kinda where I am. We're in the middle of a multi-year move to divest datacenters into AWS (and other cloud services). We sold one of our datacenters for around $20m a couple of years ago. It's less about infrastructure and chasing the 60% utilization for us, at least.

To expand on that; business dev considers is wasteful to have boxes suck up cold air at 0.5% utilization, so it's all microservices and elastic computing. We'll spend twice the money getting there, but the overall feel is that the gains will be made over time.

Now, if we can stop people sending network traffic the wrong way around the globe, we might see that.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

Unfortunately CIG's art direction, like everything else, is limited by the imagination of its creative director. Color is just one example. There's little inspiration with respect to any aspect of the game, from the appearance of characters to the starships to even the lore itself. It's pretty sad when the story of Star Citizen (the project) is more interesting and immersive than the story of Star Citizen (the game).

I feel like a lot of it is that Star Citizen has no soul. It has no defining characteristics or rules that dictate how things look or how the universe operates. If you look at something out of Star Wars or Star Trek you can associate it with that universe. Firefly did the same thing by focusing on a western, frontier aesthetic. Elite has largely done the same thing (although I think the Guatamaya ships are a bit out of synch). Wing Commander (the game) did as well with their jets in space and open hangars trying to create a WW2 look within the limitations of the technology. In WC1/2 the ships were bright and colorful, with distinctive silhouettes that attempted to evoke the look of a WW2 space plane. Between WC1 and WC2 the emphasis was placed on increasing the style by using the extra pixels to add paneling in a manner that suggested a riveted warbird. This aesthetic was also transitioned over to the Kilrathi ships, which had a distinct look but retained a "riveted together" appearance. Privateer also follows this aesthetic even with the alien Selkath craft which have a paneled look. The same thing is visible in the cut scenes, and in the inside of the cockpits. Incidentally the limited viewspace of the cockpits was a technical trick; the less you could see out the window the less you had to render.



Curiously Privateer shows an interesting turning point for Wing Commander. While the ships are still sprites they were clearly based off of 3D models. If you compare the difference between ships featured in the first WC and Privateer you can clearly see that the color palette is now muted. We see the same thing happen in later WC ships. As more freedom allows for more detail, it seems to come at the expense of color. This continues in the Wing Commander movie and ultimately now in CR's latest release.

Unfortunately the technological freedom of Star Citizen has resulted in a mish-mash of creative ideas with little in the way of a unifying appearance. Vanduul, Xian, Banu, and Human ships have little to suggest they're part of the same universe. Even the different Human manufacturers take wildly different approaches and leave a lot to be desired. Why does a Hornet have massive "hydrogen scoops" and wings but the Aurora has neither but relies on fans? Why does Drake have everything from a wingless stump of a ship in the Herald to a Cutlass to a space-jet Buccaneer? Where is the unifying theme? What universal rules bring everything together? I would argue there are none, and instead the various ships reflect the lack of vision of the creator. Given the freedom to do anything, Chris Roberts chooses to do everything.

TheAgent posted:

hello

all of these are god knows how credible

• chris roberts is transitioning away from any game or art design to focus more on company matters
  
• someone close to chris (sean tracy??) will be handling all end stage design and art approvals
  
• expect 3.0 features in 2018 at the minimum
  
• sqlude is still scheduled for this year
  
• sqlude is working off a different engine branch than 2.6/3.0 (???)
  
• mocapped assets are undergoing redesigns (again)
  
• some mocapped characters have changed due to rewrites, causing dialogue to be re-recorded
  
• crawling/wall/fast attacking vanduul were too "problematic," will now stand and fire normally
  
• AI still broken (shooting through walls, instakilling the player, animations not firing correctly, spazzing out into the great beyond on death anim)
  
• netcode still broken
  
• updated design docs are forthcoming and will detail some "minor" changes to scope
  
• larger ships with full player crews will be hamstrung fighting against AI ships until problems are fixed
  
• larger battles are still not possible (2018/2019 minimum) and SC will focus more on smaller player driven skirmishes
  
• end year sales "barely put our nostrils above water"
  

Colostomy Bag posted:

Oh sure, totally agree. I view the PvE and PvP as a general disagreement. Sure there are nutballs that want a cargo rape mechanic but those are outliers.

Guess my point is that at the end of the day you take a random sampling of their dreams and you'd be hard-pressed to find two opinions that would be congruent. Thanks to the lack of design documents, imaginations run wild and ultimately they pat each other on the back thinking Robert's grand vision will address all their individual needs before they snuggle in under a warm blankie for the night. The perpetual dream factory not only keeps cash flowing in, it is more or less a lifeline for these souls. Refactors and adjustments are just a patch away that will solve all of their individual issues.

So, when the real details actually manifest themselves from four studios and they disappoint everyone...that's when the real fireworks will start. Releasing the game is the ultimate mistake.

RearmingStrafbomber posted:

Frontier: Goon Encounters

Ramadu posted:

something something COSMIC RADIATION

The Expanse has so far had the best depiction of what happens if you open your helmet in space i.e. nothing if youre holding your breath and its not for very long. Pretty cool depictions.

Now that I think about it, they could def take some monster design cues from the crazy bendy people for the Ceres asteroid infections.

TheAgent posted:

hello

• backers will be able to "early access" (alpha test) the sqlude
  
• this will be considered the "preview" release version (mvp I guess)
  
• this will also count as the first episode
  

ManofManyAliases posted:

Backers are not getting early "alpha" test access to SQ42. I don't really have a clue to mission lengths yet. SQ42 is very tight-lipped.

peter gabriel posted:

To give you an idea of how god awful the tutorial was, if you had a joystick it would not work in the tutorial only. The the one place you got taught how to fly was the one place you could not use your HOTAS

Tijuana Bibliophile posted:

Here's a question for you nerds:

Is a dog in alpha a:

• puppy
  or
  
• wolf
  

Beet Wagon posted:

How is there not a loving full-scale revolt going on over the fact that some dude who gave them 12 grand to make a game could potentially be banned and lose everything before the game even leaves alpha?

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

The response when more and more people lose faith is going to be even more interesting. Some folks will just shrug and move one. Others (like me) will watch the whole thing burn, and then of course there's the subset of folks who might get violent or self-harm. I hope that subset doesn't exist, but you don't scam hundreds of thousands of people without getting a few outliers.

MeLKoR posted:

A Neurotic Corncob posted:

Decrepus posted:

The Skyrim Dragon language was the best because it sounded cool. It was just English with different letters because WHO GIVES A gently caress

OhDearGodNo posted:

Simply put, they don't have a revenue stream.

TrustmeImLegit posted:

I think I'm pretty moderate.

A lot of my org buds think no SQ42 shown is no big deal, everything's great etc. I thought it sucked I was looking forward to seeing some stuff. But I don't spiral into negativity and see stuff that simply isn't there. Some of you make Annabelle Huxley on RSI look unbiased.

TrustmeImLegit posted:

Seriously. Every game has negative consequences if you mess up and don't do your homework. This is a not a new concept.

aleksendr posted:

As for the "Elite players are Carebear and had to have a solo mode". This was what was pitched back in the original funding rounds. The concept for E:D was just that:An up to date version of Elite, a solo game. It grew into a Hybrid MMO but Frontier got a lot of flack for it from some backers, thus the compromise of "solo play" was born.

aleksendr posted:

It may not be fun for those wanting live or PvP interactions, but some players sometime just want to chill back, see the stars and pew-pew at some poor helpless Ai pirates. The game model does not require a minimum viable population like most mmo for participating in some content, so why not have both kind of players enjoy the game ? You can play Mal Reynolds on the frontier if you want to or go all Diamond Frogs and mess up other players for fun. Being able to pick either make for a better game in my opinion.

TrustmeImLegit posted:

It seemed like it'd be easier and more ethical to just type "yea my bad didn't see it I'll be sure to do my homework next time" instead of digging a hole another 6 feet and making yourself look like a horse's rear end.

Goobs posted:

Gremlich and Erillion will kill themselves when SC doesnt come out. Calling it.

Madcosby posted:

Just curious, how would people in thjs thread rate derek smarts games?

TrustmeImLegit posted:

Your cynicism is unreal

For example, the multi-crew tech that Chris specifically mentions will be in 3.0. That is something that is arguably in development (or at least nailed down enough to start development) for the near future. Even if 3.0 has only basic versions of persistence (not just loadouts like now, but actual positional persistence), insurance, missions, planetary ecosystems/hazards, landing zones, multi-crew stations, and the other advancements slated to come with Items 2.0, then every item they talked about that covers those topics likely very much qualify as in development for the next content patch, even if you are skeptical of 3.0 imminence.

TrustmeImLegit posted:

Posts like this are frustrating.

The problem is that if they tell you how they plan to do it and it doesn't go exactly that way, this entire thread will have shitfits even more than usual. That's why they say that's how we'd like to it, that's what we're hoping to aim for. People really don't get how insanely complex, dynamic, and constantly changing game development is.

It is one of the most blatant real-life examples of "a well-laid plan never survives contact with the enemy unharmed/without having holes punched in it". You can lay a general plan; you can say, we want to do this, we think this will be fun, we hope to do this, but the actual day to day development, much less long-term layout, is changing constantly and messing with those plans. Especially on a game that is trying to do this much, that is this big, and is doing so many things that haven't been done at this scale, fidelity, ambition, etc. Iteration is constant, unpredictable, and necessary to get something good.

Most people outside of the industry don't seem to be able to understand, conceive, or deal with this reality, and it's part of why most games, especially of this scale, are not developed even remotely openly. Because everyone who isn't in the trenches can't handle how unpredictable, difficult, iterative, complex, and nonlinear it is.

TrustmeImLegit posted:

SC is clearly Agile. We get constant updates, buildwise and information wise on a near daily basis. A project like SC is going to take a long time to iterate to the final product to be sure. But to say this isn't Agile is really ignorant about what is being released on this project on a regular basis.

MeLKoR posted:

gently caress you, Chris Roberts! You piece of poo poo motherfucker, I hope you choke on a caviar hors-d'oeuvre in the middle of the Atlantic.


e: f;b

The Titanic posted:

This is so sad.

I hope this guy gets to be satisfied with the game at some point.

DapperDon posted:

I think what just gets me the most about this lunatic is his inability to distinguish what is actually in the game right now vs whatever word vomit the handwaving idiot crobbers shits out of his mouth hole. When this thing goes tits up, he is one of the first ones I will make sure to ask where all of these things were. Although I suspect he will just hit the ejector seat button on his accounts to run from the embarrassment. No way is this fucker facing that music.

DapperDon posted:

That is why when people speculate if the "True Believahs" may off themselves when CIG collapses, I just don't care. Not one bit. If they are hinging their entire identity and life over a video game? That's natural loving selection at work in real time. That kind of mental illness needs to be culled from the gene pool.