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G0RF
Mar 19, 2015

Some galactic defender you are, Space Cadet.

Xaerael posted:

Watching the stream I posted, SC is hosed. Valkyrie looks stunning, immersive and fun. I can't wait to get my hands on a headset to play it.

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Fractal Wave
Feb 7, 2009
Need to incorporate ben or stretched out gary face into this, or maybe change bacon into parrrpp gun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYUZB7ljI1A&feature=youtu.be&t=92

Shameless download links:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mycroft.porkchophero&hl=en
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pork-chop-hero/id710665903

Scruffpuff
Dec 23, 2015

Fidelity. Wait, was I'm working on again?

Jobbo_Fett posted:

opendevelopment.txt

My favorite "open development" event with Star Citizen was the PCGamer "preview" that just went on for paragraphs about how loving awesome the game would be. Then, at the end of the article, the writer says "now I haven't actually seen any of this, it's being described to me by a developer" which negates the article's validity 100% and is one of the funnier things I've read from PCGamer. Citizens leapt to the defense of the article, with this gem: "With development this open, it's no surprise PCGamer wasn't allowed to see any of it."

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013

Scruffpuff posted:

Exactly. By trying to hide a perfectly intelligent and normal thing to do in a video game, because they lied about it, they're making it infinitely worse. The code to maintain the illusion that they're not doing what they're doing is interfering with what they're doing. It's like setting your house on fire to hide the surprise party waiting inside.

And there's not even a reason for the lie! What possible benefit would there be to the way they say it controls? Why would it be attractive at all not[ to fudge it?

Xaerael
Aug 25, 2010

Marching Powder is objectively the worst poster known. He also needs to learn how a keyboard works.


That has to be a troll. No one can be so dumb to not realize that is how a feed from a VR headset looks.

Scruffpuff
Dec 23, 2015

Fidelity. Wait, was I'm working on again?

Justin Tyme posted:

I don't understand how they can seriously call it a "donation" with a straight face given all CIG's language is "sale" "buy" etc and the fact you have to pay VAT on everything.

They flip to the "donation" narrative when defending CIG's policy of refusing refunds on their non-game. Logic need not apply. Nor reality.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.


Yeah… it's the cutting edge headset that has an outrageous cost — the one that fills your entire field of vision rather than a tiny screen. :cripes:
How are these people alive? Do they have 24/7 assistants around them to remind them how to breathe? And no, it really has come to this point where I fully expect citizens to say these kinds of things — it's not like we haven't seen them do it before.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

And there's not even a reason for the lie! What possible benefit would there be to the way they say it controls? Why would it be attractive at all not to fudge it?

Because they've created their entire “immersion”/sim narrative around similar statements of grandiose nonsense. They can't go back on it now and say that, no, they'll actually do the sensible thing, like everyone else does — how can it be the BDSSGE if it does what everyone else has been doing for the last two decades?

Tippis fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Jan 22, 2016

Tortolia
Dec 29, 2005

Hindustan Electronics Employee of the Month, July 2008
Grimey Drawer

Lime Tonics posted:

A loving FPS weapon breaks the game, I still can't even.....

I can't stop laughing about this for some reason, it's so loving weird/bad/wtf dev.

I mean come on.

edit : star citizen : don't touch that shotgun

Maybe the shotgun is firing the fish that kept disappearing from the aquariums.

It's as likely as anything else in this clusterfuck.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

Scruffpuff posted:

Citizens leapt to the defense of the article, with this gem: "With development this open, it's no surprise PCGamer wasn't allowed to see any of it."

Are you sure that wasn't a goon incognito? I have a real hard time processing that as a true statement made by a #StarCitizen :psyduck:

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013

Xaerael posted:

That has to be a troll. No one can be so dumb to not realize that is how a feed from a VR headset looks.


Pretty sure someone said earlier in the thread i_still_trust_cig was them.

e:wrong quote.

Mirificus
Oct 29, 2004

Kings need not raise their voices to be heard
Star Citizen Alpha 2.1 keeps making believers out of the uninitiated and out-of-the-loop.

jestest
Feb 12, 2014

Ancient Aliens: Closer Encounters

i want to believe this is a real person. but i realize now it is prob a troll. i got over excited that someone could compare a pixelinternetspaceship to a real piece of hardware that actually does something.

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013

jestest posted:

i want to believe this is a real person. but i realize now it is prob a troll. i got over excited that someone could compare a pixelinternetspaceship to a real piece of hardware that actually does something.

I think the thing that gives it away is that a cultist wouldn't even admit a possibility of ever not trusting CIG, let alone whether they currently trust them.

titaniumone
Jun 10, 2001

Google Butt posted:

I still can't wrap my head around how an adult person can care so much about a video game that they write that many real mad words

i struggle to just read 1/100th of the crap in this thread and i love laughing at failure

Agrajag
Jan 21, 2006

gat dang thats hot

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Mirificus
Oct 29, 2004

Kings need not raise their voices to be heard
"the efforts of artists who modeled the toilets wouldnt go to waste"

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/41nvue/idea_since_washroomwhy_not_allow_graffiti_in/

Rudager
Apr 29, 2008

alf_pogs posted:

the line "i crashed 10 times yesterday. how will they be using that?" is a perfect question.

Especially when there's no in built bug reporting system.

Scruffpuff
Dec 23, 2015

Fidelity. Wait, was I'm working on again?
Here's something morose to think about. Think about being in a plane that is going down. This is it, you're gonna die. But wait, what specifically will kill you? Will you get crushed between the seats as the plane breaks apart? Will a piece of the fuselage impale you? Will you get tossed out and smack into the side of a mountain? Or will you technically be alive until final impact? Wasn't that a fun mental exercise?

In the same vein I wonder what will be the magic bullet that kills SC. Will the costs outstrip the funding? Will the devs finally say "gently caress it" to the design impossibilities? Will Chris disappear overnight with nary a word? Or will the site stop getting updated one day and we never find out exactly what happened? That magical moment is what's captivating me most about this project. With other studios and games that fail, it's usually just some dull article like "so and so pulls plug on whatever." But with the ridiculous scope of this project, and its funding model, and high visibility in the industry, its death will definitely be autopsied. I wonder what the results will be.

Mekchu
Apr 10, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Xaerael posted:

Watching the stream I posted, SC is hosed. Valkyrie looks stunning, immersive and fun. I can't wait to get my hands on a headset to play it.

CCP were on earlier today and organized a Team vs Team streamer match with them.

That was pretty cool.

Colostomy Bag
Jan 11, 2016

:lesnick: C-Bangin' it :lesnick:

What a poo poo show...glad Thursday didn't disappoint.

Besides the backers losing a shitload of cash, I have to think the employees (who always look like they've beaten to a pulp) will have to explain this one on their resumes in their future.


So back to 16 in an instance after a day of hitting 24. So let's say we crank it up to 64. What is that, an Idris, Javelin, and a news van filling it all?

Absurdity.

Scruffpuff
Dec 23, 2015

Fidelity. Wait, was I'm working on again?

This is why I can't troll these people. Nothing I post won't be taken seriously. I tried a few times months ago and just gave up.

actually3raccoons
Jun 5, 2013



Space is bigger
It's bigger
Than Ben, and you’re in my ship
The reddits that I will go to
The jpegs in your eyes
Oh no, I've paid too much
I sent them booze

That's him in the Connie
That's him in the wheelchair
Losing his immersion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've paid too much
I haven't paid enough

I thought that I heard you paaarping
I thought that I saw you post
I think I thought I saw you buy

Every package
Of every funding sale
I'm choosing my collection
Trying to keep an eye on Chris
Like a hurt lost and blinded fool
Oh no, I've said too much
I got banned

Consider this
The gif of the century
Consider this
The slip that brought me
To Derek’s new blog post
What if all these sperging whales
Come flailing around
In just two weeks

I thought that I heard you paaarping
I thought that I heard you shave
I think I thought I saw her act

But that was just a dream
That was just a dream

That's me in the Idris
That's me in the CryMod
Losing my immersion
Trying to hide from my wife
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've doxxed too much
I haven't shaved enough

I thought that I heard you paaarping
I thought that I heard you crash
I think I thought I saw you launch

But that was just a dream, try, cry, why, try
That was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream
Dream

titaniumone
Jun 10, 2001

Xaerael posted:

That has to be a troll. No one can be so dumb to not realize that is how a feed from a VR headset looks.

o realy do u think????????????

alf_pogs
Feb 15, 2012


Scruffpuff posted:

In the same vein I wonder what will be the magic bullet that kills SC. Will the costs outstrip the funding? Will the devs finally say "gently caress it" to the design impossibilities? Will Chris disappear overnight with nary a word? Or will the site stop getting updated one day and we never find out exactly what happened? That magical moment is what's captivating me most about this project. With other studios and games that fail, it's usually just some dull article like "so and so pulls plug on whatever." But with the ridiculous scope of this project, and its funding model, and high visibility in the industry, its death will definitely be autopsied. I wonder what the results will be.

this is exactly why i'm hooked too. i want to see it happen in glorious real-time and surely this year's the year.

i always wanted a proper autopsy of what went wrong with aliens: colonial marines, which was the last time i preordered a game. that was a good lesson to learn. but this project is on a whole other scale, and unlike the weird sega / gearbox buck passing at the end of A:CM there's no real confusion about who's responsible for the end product.

Amarcarts
Feb 21, 2007

This looks a lot like suffering.
It sucks I had to skip close to 100 pages

jestest
Feb 12, 2014

Ancient Aliens: Closer Encounters

Amarcarts posted:

It sucks I had to skip close to 100 pages

it moves so fast, i wish i had more downtime just to keep up

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013

Scruffpuff posted:

Here's something morose to think about. Think about being in a plane that is going down. This is it, you're gonna die. But wait, what specifically will kill you? Will you get crushed between the seats as the plane breaks apart? Will a piece of the fuselage impale you? Will you get tossed out and smack into the side of a mountain? Or will you technically be alive until final impact? Wasn't that a fun mental exercise?

In the same vein I wonder what will be the magic bullet that kills SC. Will the costs outstrip the funding? Will the devs finally say "gently caress it" to the design impossibilities? Will Chris disappear overnight with nary a word? Or will the site stop getting updated one day and we never find out exactly what happened? That magical moment is what's captivating me most about this project. With other studios and games that fail, it's usually just some dull article like "so and so pulls plug on whatever." But with the ridiculous scope of this project, and its funding model, and high visibility in the industry, its death will definitely be autopsied. I wonder what the results will be.

I think an autopsy on its death would look eerily similar to Lesnick's eventual one, a slow self-inflicted death caused by over-indulgence, and lack of self-control.

actually3raccoons
Jun 5, 2013



alf_pogs posted:

this is exactly why i'm hooked too. i want to see it happen in glorious real-time and surely this year's the year.

i always wanted a proper autopsy of what went wrong with aliens: colonial marines, which was the last time i preordered a game. that was a good lesson to learn. but this project is on a whole other scale, and unlike the weird sega / gearbox buck passing at the end of A:CM there's no real confusion about who's responsible for the end product.

The possibility of a trial (in two weeks) is pretty wild. Not just because of the characters, but the possible implications for crowdfunding. It's kinda Wild West right now, and I can't see that continuing if this goes to trial and it turns out that CIG was willfully misusing the funds, as opposed to the more likely scenario of just being loving idiots.

A Neurotic Jew
Feb 17, 2012

by exmarx
honestly the best way to keep up with this thread without reading the thread is through Derek Smart's twitter. Contrary to his missives he offers pretty succinct summaries of anything that's happened.

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

I think an autopsy on its death would look eerily similar to Lesnick's eventual one, a slow self-inflicted death caused by over-indulgence, and lack of self-control.

Has anyone said Fart Shitizen yet?

fuctifino
Jun 11, 2001

If a player becomes a ship when they sit in the pilot's seat, does that mean their crew mates become parasites?

"I'm just walking to the arse end of the ship" :yarg:

fuctifino fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Jan 22, 2016

Trundel
Mar 13, 2005

:10bux: + :awesomelon: = :roboluv:
- a sound investment!

fuzzknot posted:

Well Bootcha and I of course do, and I think at least three other people in this thread do.

Root for the Red Wings. They're the best.

Only suckers root for the Red Wings. The Senators are the best.


Let us all take solace that we don't root for Edmonton, where 1st round draft picks go to die.

Amarcarts
Feb 21, 2007

This looks a lot like suffering.

A Neurotic Jew posted:

honestly the best way to keep up with this thread without reading the thread is through Derek Smart's twitter. Contrary to his missives he offers pretty succinct summaries of anything that's happened.

A Neurotic Jew posted:

honestly the best way to keep up with this thread without reading the thread is through Derek Smart's twitter.

A Neurotic Jew posted:

Derek Smart's twitter.



Amarcarts
Feb 21, 2007

This looks a lot like suffering.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Has anyone said Fart Shitizen yet?

Yes but so far nobody has said Star Blumpkin

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

Trundel posted:

Only suckers root for the Red Wings. The Senators are the best.


Let us all take solace that we don't root for Edmonton, where 1st round draft picks go to die.

:hfive:


Also, go Panthers! (I love a good underdog story)

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Justin Tyme posted:

I don't understand how they can seriously call it a "donation" with a straight face given all CIG's language is "sale" "buy" etc and the fact you have to pay VAT on everything.

Have any of them asked if they could write off their :airquote: donations? :airquote:

spacetoaster
Feb 10, 2014

Amarcarts posted:

It sucks I had to skip close to 100 pages

From AtV today.

sanctimoniousqfd
Dec 16, 2015

Mendrian posted:

Maybe someone who actually programs can give me some insight into this:

Why isn't the number of players per instance like their top loving priority? That seems like something that will never be able to change once you release the game minus maybe some miracle optimization trick that could double that number some point way, way down the line. Each system you layer on top of it is only going to give the system more data to process and lower the effective number of people. It would seem to me that's something you build your entire game around - 'Okay, we want X number of people per instance and no less. Any system that interferes with that either needs to be optimized or trashed'.

EDIT: I mean I suppose it would depend on why more players are unfeasible? Like if number 17 joins and the whole engine has a little vomit, that's a bigger problem than, '16 is the magic number. After that it starts to chug a bit.'

Not caught up yet, so entirely feasible someone has already answered this, but...

Basically it all boils down to architecture and data budgets.

When designing an engine, the architecture of the engine is determined based on a set of requirements drawn up very early on and taking into account technology now and (e: *possibly*) projected technology a couple of years out. That determines how much run time a given thread gets, how quickly file IO requests will be serviced, how data pipelines will be organized to guarantee a particular memory fill and drain rate and reduce CPU/GPU stalls, at what frequency inputs are processed in order for them to be translated, serialized and sent to the simulation (whether server-side, client-side or some combination of both) to make the game feel responsive. How gameplay events are processed (e.g. interrupt, single-, double- or even triple-buffered) by the various gameplay systems, what inputs must be authoritative vs extrapolated for the physics and animation systems to do their work, what order gameplay events are processed by the gameplay components that consume them, etc, etc.

As a result of laying down all of these specifics, an engine builds up thresholds in its tolerance to changes in the underlying assumptions made in order to turn the engine into a viable product... "cruft", if you will. For the CryEngine, evidently one of those thresholds was that it can handle simulation inputs for 16 players, but going above that starts to create instabilities in other systems - perhaps important messages are now dropped by the networking systems due to buffers not being big enough to handle the additional influx of data.

I am not overly familiar with CryEngine, but this may or may not scale linearly, resulting in a geometric or (eek!) exponential increase in resource requirements - in any given instance, the simulation server needs to be able to simulate a possible X*(n*(n-1)) interactions in a given timestep (where X is the number of interactions possible by a player in a given timestep, and n is the number of players), and the clients need to be able to handle the increased event load that comes with it. Going from 16 to 24 players means more than doubling the number of possible interactions in given timestep, all of which is sent to and from the server with varying guarantees of delivery (lost packets may be re-requested, resulting in a delay in processing, or dropped altogether and so never known about).

Now, there are steps that can be taken to greatly mitigate the increased traffic, such as defining interaction "causality bubbles" where fine-grain interactions are only sent to peers in the general locality, but the engine still needs to be able to cope under the strain of all players choosing to be in the same place at once.

That's why engine limitations like number of supported players are usually set in stone and do not tend to fluctuate much over the course of an engine's lifetime without large-scale changes to how those interactions are implemented. From an engineering standpoint, depending on the the original specifications for an engine it can often be easier to throw it all away and start again... but that is enormously costly, in terms of time, money and lost experience. This is why COD still runs on a heavily modified Quake engine, why Bethesda games still run on Gamebryo, why the latest Splinter Cell still ran on an extremely mature version of the Unreal Warfare engine that was used for the very first Splinter Cell, etc, etc.

Wow, my first effort post on SA... hope you enjoyed it :-)

sanctimoniousqfd fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Jan 22, 2016

Tokamak
Dec 22, 2004

Mendrian posted:

Well yes, this is the obvious answer. "It's all a scam so everything is just lies and illusions" explains away every problem.

As a thought exercise I like to approach the SC issue as if these are people who actually intend to do what they say and maybe are just really bad at it. Yes, I've seen all the 'evidence' that it's a big scam but I'm just not completely sold on the idea. If these people suck as much as they appear to I have no confidence they'd be able to pull of a scam of this scale. I think it's far more likely that they've stumbled onto a lightening rod of funding and suddenly wanted to make all of their dreams come true, instead of making the little space game that CRoberts probably had in mind way back when. Believing no more compromises were required considering the size of the budget, they went off the deep end.

With that in mind, is it actually possible to scale up the player size of the PU at this point, or would be an actual/logical/functional impossibility given the limitations of Cryengine? Would they have to in fact start over again to get anywhere at this point?

It is not a scam, in the sense they are taking your money with no attempt to deliver. They truly believe that they are working on a game that will eventually be delivered. The 'scam' part is paying himself, his wife, and friends higher wages then what is expected from a scrappy startup running on donations. They outfit their offices with expensive office equipment that would make Ion Storm blush. There is no accountability over whether delays are due to incompetence (or not) because it might jeopardise their position and paycheck. It isn't a scam, but Chris is definitely taking advantage of his customer's generosity.

There is no reason to believe that there is substantially more (gameplay/mechanics wise) than what is currently in the game. Releases have historically been monolithic, and are limited by completed technology. The hanger module is a bog standard crysis map which you can load ship models in. Arena Commander is a pretty Crysis mod (0 gravity, no ground, new vehicle controls...), but there was no 64-bit positioning, or localised physics (you can't get out of the pilot seat). And now the baby PU has a handful of critical engine modifications, but is missing basic gameplay elements (no system jumping, mining, scanning, economy, persistence etc.). All of that stuff is coming, it is just coming in baby steps. And at the rate we are seeing, it won't be coalescing into a shippable product for many years.

Technology wise, if they are using Cry Engine's netcode then they have already scaled up what the engine can handle. Cry Engine 3 handles 16 players, and the ships behaving like independent entities effectively doubles that count to 32 players. The problem is that Cry Engine netcode is not fundamentally able to scale to the hundred/s of players being bandied about. FPS netcode is different to fighting game netcode, which is different to RTS and MMO netcode. They have different design parameters, and prioritise different things. They would essentially need to rewrite the netcode if they want to accommodate more than what FPS games typically handle (16-32 players). The same criticism applies to basically everything they make which does not directly relate to an FPS game. And even the FPS stuff they are using is buggy in a way that you wouldn't expect from a commercial FPS engine (broken cross-hairs, shotgun crashing game).

Work is slowly getting done, but as it is folded back into the game, new problems arise. Many of these problems are due to how the engine is designed (hard coded 'use' icon, incompatible character animation system, FPS netcode etc.) and require work around's that are essentially rewrites of the engine.

Tokamak fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jan 22, 2016

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G0RF
Mar 19, 2015

Some galactic defender you are, Space Cadet.

sanctimoniousqfd posted:

:words:

Wow, my first effort post on SA... hope you enjoyed it :-)
One of the best first effort posts I've seen in the last three Star Citizen threads. Thank you for this!

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