Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

An ANONYMOUS GAMES DEVELOPER requested I post this here so his boss wouldn't fire him. Or something. Either way it's a good read and makes fun of Star Citizen so I support it.


I wonder how many people understand the absolute insane cluster-gently caress this would be to try and implement. Star Citizen seems to have enough trouble getting a normal client-server mechanism going, and this implies that each client is attached to multiple servers/instances. So the main server will be telling your client about the ship you're in, while another server will be giving information about what's going on outside your ship, and yet more servers could be giving information about what's going on inside other ships which are nearby.

Imagine this:

The fully crewed mining freighter, Whale 1, is going through space, and the pirate constellation USS Goon, also fully crewed, decides they want to board it and raid it. The USS Goon shoots out the Whale 1's engines, then uses its main weapons to blow a hole through the side of the ship. It then comes to a stop next to the crippled ship, with it's main door roughly aligned with the hole it just made.

So, we have 3 instances, one for space and one for the interior of each ship:



Blue is the instance for the pirates, pink is the instance for the miners and white is the instance for space. According to the design, a pirate can look through the door, through space and through the hole into the other ship, where the miners are stood waiting, but cannot shoot at them or interact with them. Now, say the pirates decide to jump out of their ship, and EVA over into the other ship, we now have 3 problems:

1) The system needs to seamlessly transition the pirates from the blue instance into the white instance, and then into the pink instance. This is not a simple thing; a lot of the glitches we see in the PU are caused by the system loving up moving a player from one physics grid to another, this problem is like that, only much worse. This can be done though, it's just hard.

2) These instances are all supposed to have a limited number of players, so what if the number of players in the mining ship is already enough to reach the max player limit for the ship's instance? What does the system do as the pirates try and enter the blue instance? It can't just spin up another instance, because then you'd have half the players in one copy of the mining ship and the other half in the other copy of the mining ship. I honestly can't see a way of fixing this issue, instance based systems only work when a controlling system can safely allocate players to instances to balance them. If players can freely move from instance to instance at will, the system is hosed, end of story.

3) A pirate could float literally just outside the hole to the whale ship, and still be invulnerable to all attacks from inside the miner since they're still in the white instance, not the pink one, and players can't interact between instances. In theory, you could code the instances to talk to each other so that a bullet fired from one instance is capable of damaging a player in another instance, once again this is NOT easy to do by any means. If nothing else, it undermines the whole reason for having separate instances in the first place, since each instance would not only need to track the players within it, but also the players in nearby instances who might be shot at from inside the instance, so you might as well just shove everyone in one huge instance and have done with it.

Now, I haven't done network coding personally for a few years, so maybe someone will come in and tell me how completely wrong I am, and that I know nothing about game development, but I'd really love someone to try and explain how they'll fix this stuff.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

Now, I haven't done network coding personally for a few years, so maybe someone will come in and tell me how completely wrong I am, and that I know nothing about game development, but I'd really love someone to try and explain how they'll fix this stuff.

Solarin posted:

I've been working on a theory about the original marketing plan for this game mass delusion and think I'm pretty close. SC thread please peer review my model.



I am legit fascinated by the combination of personality disorder (from pretty much everyone involved including us) and exploitation on display here.

Daztek posted:

Yeah, it's from a 6 month+ old episode

They're even using the clips to make a new series!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UT3e96qQik

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXTCwsfI_7c

Jobbo_Fett posted:

I haven't bothered watching the entire videos, but is it just me or does no one have any charisma and/or non-random comments in any/all their shows?

Strategic Tea posted:

Because it's fuckin cool? I mean SC ia a joke but that's a drat sexy helmet.

ThoughtBomb posted:

Forgive Me...

peter gabriel posted:

This along with that Universe Busters feels like someone has recently had the bright idea of heading people off at the pass who are making glitch / funny videos.
A marvellously transparent plan imo

Cao Ni Ma posted:

We haven't seen a single alien in SC yet and elite has been hinting their return since the game came out. A month ago people found alien "barnacle" things on a planet near a nebula and now capital ships are showing up destroyed. Their patch schedule suggest the last big patch before the expansion will probably be related to them so get ready for CIG to refocus on aliens after it becomes more apparent thats where frontier is going.

Gilganixon posted:

this sort of stuff could be funny/cute if the entire game wasn't an expensive, broken clusterfuck and if they had any intention or ability to fix whatever's causing those glitches

Tippis posted:

Meh. It's a pretty standard case of trying to control the message by (seemingly) embracing the existing narrative and deflate, reinterpret, or subvert the meaning of it. I'm sure Sandi has come across it in a book somewhere as she's been trying to read up on what, exactly, someone in her position is supposed to do.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

An ANONYMOUS GAMES DEVELOPER requested I post this here so his boss wouldn't fire him. Or something. Either way it's a good read and makes fun of Star Citizen so I support it.


I wonder how many people understand the absolute insane cluster-gently caress this would be to try and implement. Star Citizen seems to have enough trouble getting a normal client-server mechanism going, and this implies that each client is attached to multiple servers/instances. So the main server will be telling your client about the ship you're in, while another server will be giving information about what's going on outside your ship, and yet more servers could be giving information about what's going on inside other ships which are nearby.

Imagine this:

The fully crewed mining freighter, Whale 1, is going through space, and the pirate constellation USS Goon, also fully crewed, decides they want to board it and raid it. The USS Goon shoots out the Whale 1's engines, then uses its main weapons to blow a hole through the side of the ship. It then comes to a stop next to the crippled ship, with it's main door roughly aligned with the hole it just made.

So, we have 3 instances, one for space and one for the interior of each ship:



Blue is the instance for the pirates, pink is the instance for the miners and white is the instance for space. According to the design, a pirate can look through the door, through space and through the hole into the other ship, where the miners are stood waiting, but cannot shoot at them or interact with them. Now, say the pirates decide to jump out of their ship, and EVA over into the other ship, we now have 3 problems:

1) The system needs to seamlessly transition the pirates from the blue instance into the white instance, and then into the pink instance. This is not a simple thing; a lot of the glitches we see in the PU are caused by the system loving up moving a player from one physics grid to another, this problem is like that, only much worse. This can be done though, it's just hard.

2) These instances are all supposed to have a limited number of players, so what if the number of players in the mining ship is already enough to reach the max player limit for the ship's instance? What does the system do as the pirates try and enter the blue instance? It can't just spin up another instance, because then you'd have half the players in one copy of the mining ship and the other half in the other copy of the mining ship. I honestly can't see a way of fixing this issue, instance based systems only work when a controlling system can safely allocate players to instances to balance them. If players can freely move from instance to instance at will, the system is hosed, end of story.

3) A pirate could float literally just outside the hole to the whale ship, and still be invulnerable to all attacks from inside the miner since they're still in the white instance, not the pink one, and players can't interact between instances. In theory, you could code the instances to talk to each other so that a bullet fired from one instance is capable of damaging a player in another instance, once again this is NOT easy to do by any means. If nothing else, it undermines the whole reason for having separate instances in the first place, since each instance would not only need to track the players within it, but also the players in nearby instances who might be shot at from inside the instance, so you might as well just shove everyone in one huge instance and have done with it.

Now, I haven't done network coding personally for a few years, so maybe someone will come in and tell me how completely wrong I am, and that I know nothing about game development, but I'd really love someone to try and explain how they'll fix this stuff.

D_Smart posted:

They're hosed.

The End.

Making it Rain posted:

Moments like this our Lord & Savour Derek Smart says it the best

Booblord Zagats posted:

So how does GTA Online handle it? Because really that's what they should be trying to rip off wholesale anyhow

Hopper posted:

I don't know how game development worksTM ....but I imagine "boarding" would probably be easiest when it involves a tractor beam or giant grapple or some other weapon you fire to "latch onto" the other ship.
The second you are latched on an instance is spun up that is basically a box of space with 2 stationary ships and 20 dudes in it, that works like an FPS level.

Of course ship movement would be none but you are playing an FPS anyway at that point...

Ghostlight posted:

I'm sorry to say this, Mrs Tea, but it looks like Strategic has contracted citizenitis. There is no cure, we can only pray for an inexpensive death.

Scruffpuff posted:

True, but there's another facet to this, and it's tied up with what you're saying. The larger publishers are also not too thrilled with Star Citizen, but not for the reasons CIG claims.

The cult narrative is "Take that, evil publishers! CIG is showing that you're not needed, and the PEOPLE are taking back gaming from your greedy hands!"

The reality is almost the opposite. First of all, a very conspicuous project that steals over 100 million dollars with nothing to show for it is a black mark on the very industry they rely on for their own profits. You can occasionally see that kind of political thinking in all kinds of industries - for example, if a restaurant makes headlines for being blatantly racist or something, you can bet that other restaurants will go out of their way to distinguish and separate themselves from the outlier, to protect their own reputations and continued operation. Secondarily, for a few years now, larger publishers have been studying crowdfunding very closely, working different angles hoping to reduce the risk of their own financial investments. A good place to start reading about this is studying the effects of Bioshock: Infinite - a beautiful, artistic, and compelling game (minus the combat) which was a total financial failure. Now, this project totally jeopardizes the entire concept of crowdfunding - if people can't trust good old Christ Roberts the wonderboy, who in their right mind would help crowdfund an "evil publisher" who already has plenty of capital for investment?

So why hasn't anyone said anything? The same reason any atrocity builds pressure for as long as it does before the dam bursts - self-interest. I don't mean that in a derogatory fashion, either. The people working there need cash. Not everyone can afford to move their families and take their chances elsewhere. Some are genuinely thinking they can get it done. Some are just excited to work in the industry in any fashion, and are riding the wave to pad their resumes. Developers working other titles don't want to badmouth Star Citizen because that carries the risk of alienating potential future customers (due to the toxic cult surrounding it), and coming off as snide and petty. Publishers don't say anything because until this collapses, anything they say will be construed as sour grapes. Media outlets are a joke.

The only people that can bring this down, barring legal action, are the people on the inside. Someone, preferably several someones, need to be willing to sacrifice their own careers to bring this down once and for all. That does not happen very often, and even when it does, and those people turn out to be right, they STILL get vilified. See: Enron for a good example. So I don't see a very good end to any of this, unless someone is willing to sacrifice themselves to that extent.

Hopper posted:

I don't know how game development worksTM ....but I imagine "boarding" would probably be easiest when it involves a tractor beam or giant grapple or some other weapon you fire to "latch onto" the other ship.
The second you are latched on an instance is spun up that is basically a box of space with 2 stationary ships and 20 dudes in it, that works like an FPS level.

Of course ship movement would be none but you are playing an FPS anyway at that point...

darkarchon posted:

ThoughtBomb posted:

Forgive Me...

c2usaf2004 posted: