sorla78 posted:

He certainly tried, everyone can be wrong at times.

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/266159145923801088
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/286590301190098944
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/286576157938307072
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/286590079928004611

Inacio posted:

AP posted:

https://twitter.com/Thoughtfulwand1/status/786910091869958146

orcinus posted:

Or incredibly nonexistent.

Breetai posted:

So wait, SQ42 prelude doesn't have aliens in it because of quality issues surrounding the alien models.

So the first part of SQ42 before you go on to fight aliens will be a fight against fellow humans.

Just.

Like.

Freespace.

Two.


Ben must be livid.

Inacio posted:

The Titanic posted:

This was one of those kids who's only rebuttal in school was "I am rubber you are glue" and got his butt kicked on the bus on a daily basis.

orcinus posted:

Or incredibly nonexistent.

sorla78 posted:

He certainly tried, everyone can be wrong at times.

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/266159145923801088
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/286590301190098944
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/286576157938307072
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/286590079928004611

happyhippy posted:

Fight?
What made you think that.
Its you in space bootcamp, where you have to do what the space drill master tells you for 3 hours until you graduate.
Prepare to see your bed and bunk more than ever before!

orcinus posted:

Wut dat?

JB50 posted:

Shes actually pretty decent looking from what I saw on her twitter. Purple hair though, so theres that.

orcinus posted:

Star Citizen: Check out this cool picture

A Neurotic Jew posted:

just gonna post the whole thing cause its good

http://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/151797723437/weekly-video-analysis-3-star-citizens

quote:

Weekly Video Analysis #3: Star Citizen’s Procedural Planets

I’ve been asked via my twitter to take a look at a number of videos, but most of them are just marketing fluff and don’t have much analysis to actually do. This week’s, however, is a recent demo that was shown at CitizenCon 2016, this past weekend. In it, the Star Citizen guys showed off some gameplay on a planet named Leir III. For those who haven’t seen it, here’s the video. Fair warning, it is kind of long.

The guys behind Star Citizen announced a few things at CitizenCon - their single player module is being delayed, there’s a new ship coming that you’ll be able to buy for $750, and some new features for the game like procedurally generated planets. That’s what we’ll be looking at today.

Procedurally generated content is content that’s generated by machines instead of humans. There are always tradeoffs to this - the machines don’t have any sense of aesthetics or pacing. They have very limited forms of creativity, typically limited to a random number generator. They cannot recognize fun when it occurs. However, they never get tired and can complete their tasks extremely quickly, which is why we rely on them. They can quickly populate an entire planet with landmarks and reasonable-looking terrain, and that’s what Star Citizen is using it for.

That said, let’s take a look at the demo. You should take note of what isn’t there, because that’s just as important as what is. Looking at the planet of Leir III, it’s got mountains, it’s got valleys, it’s got snow, rocks, foliage, water and more. It looks reasonably pretty, as most demos should be. But do you see what it doesn’t have? It doesn’t have points of interest. It doesn’t have landmarks. It doesn’t have interesting things to do.

Throughout the entire 30 minute video, there’s exactly one quest on the entire planet, that’s accessed through the one landing point. And, while on the quest, you’re treated to some of these neat cinematic cut-aways to showcase the enemies nearby, hiding in the nearby areas. Those cinematics certainly aren’t procedurally generated - they’re all hand-made. The enemies aren’t procedural either, they’ve been placed by hand as well. That leads me to think that the rest of the points of interest - the little doohickeys the player interacted with were also placed by hand. That sand worm, those cuts, those were all placed there just for the demo and almost certainly won’t be procedurally generated.

This leads me to the set of speculations. If they procedurally generate the planets, what does that mean for the content? Exploration isn’t particularly fun if there isn’t anything to actually do. Even No Man’s Sky had the option to collect resources and use them to build your ship and do stuff. Imagine playing No Man’s Sky, but without even that to do. Just going to a planet and looking at how it’s different might be fun for the first few minutes, but it gets boring pretty quickly without some sort of objectives to accomplish and rewards to obtain. Look at the demo - you can see that the majority of the time is spent traveling from location to location. Sure, it looks very pretty the first time. But after you get used to seeing the environments on the planets (since they will look very similar), will it still be as interesting to you? Will the fiftieth planet be as interesting to drive across as the first? It might be purple instead of brown, and have more trees. Is that enough to be interesting?

Of course, they could try to solve this by procedurally generating quests/resources/enemies/collectables/etc. as well as the planetary geometry. This is what games like Diablo do - it procedurally generates maps from predesigned puzzle pieces and then populates them with a random assortment of monsters, shrines, lootable objects, and so on. They can then select some tasks from a list for you to do and set the system to randomly place the collectable items and interactable objects along with the regular terrain for you to complete the tasks. This lends itself well to the common MMOG-ish fetch/kill quests - kill ten rats, bring back eight skinned bear asses, click on six separate foozles on the map someplace, and so on.

If this sounds like fun to you, then great! Star Citizen will probably be very good for you. If this sounds like it will wear kind of thin after a while, then that’s because it does. The biggest problem with procedurally generated anything is, of course, how similar-feeling it all tends to be. You’ll eventually see all of the variations on the tasks, all of the variations on the enemies, and all of the rewards as well. There’s really only so much time and resource that we can put into making content, and that includes variations. Procedurally generated content definitely has some basis for replay value, but only if there are tertiary goals that are interesting enough for the player to chase (e.g. Diablo’s loot chase). It could work for Star Citizen, but it’s still not something they’ve actually shown… and that’s worrisome, because a procedurally generated quest system is something that requires an awful lot of work to build, and the most logical place to announce it would be right alongside the procedurally generated planets. So far all of the Star Citizen videos I’ve seen have been about showing off the environments, ships, and guns, but not much in terms of objectives to use those ships and guns you collect to accomplish. Owning objects in space isn’t particularly interesting if there’s nothing to do with them.

AP posted:

https://twitter.com/SandiGardiner/status/786297264234909696

Screenshot for Samizdata

ManofManyAliases posted:

Will you guys Aurora LN GoonSwarm into the cap-ships of my enemies once the game is released? I'd like to think you'd choose me over them.

D1E posted:

Holy poo poo is Derek picking a fight with Braben now?

<sigh>

AP posted:

AP posted:

https://twitter.com/SandiGardiner/status/786996661566308352

Concerns raised about over staffing.

Samizdata posted:

Nah, I use SALR. The editor makes my life easier.

sorla78 posted:

He certainly tried, everyone can be wrong at times.

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/266159145923801088

tuo posted:

Then maybe I am experiencing a bug. As soon as a teleport to one of the map, my movement speed is very, very slow (like much too slow for an FPS), and I also don't experience any fatigue, I can run from one end of the map to the other without ever getting slower, but the running speed is also rather slow. As soon as I enter water, I move at what feels like couple of pixels per second.

It's similar to what posted in a LoD video couple of weeks ago.

I'll see where I can post it as a bug report.

quote:

For testing purposes, we have relaxed the fatigue factor rules.

The issue is that since we unlock all weapons and items, and haven’t enabled the restrictions on how many items can be carried, grabbing stuff from the packs (weapon, supply, medical), especially weapons which comes with ammo, increases your carry weight, which then affects movement speed and fatigue.

We still allow the regular weight calculation, but simply reduced it to 25% of the total value. This gives a very good feel of some fatigue even at that maximum load, but not to the point where you’re constantly dealing with it. Sprinting from no fatigue to full fatigue takes about 15 seconds under a full load.

In the final game, this will be a non-issue once we enable these item carry restrictions and players can manage inventory items. You’re not supposed to be running around with a truck-load of weapons of mass destruction anyway.

tuo posted:

Exactly. You are blogging about Star Citizen's demise, which means you are covering it on your blog with a couple of posts (which form your blog). You write a new post, not a new blog. A new blog would mean you create a new site for each post. Blog => log, post => logentry.

Noticed this misuse of the word blog couple of times, but never dared to confront the warlord with this. The again, it's splitting hairs, I know.