Star Citizen: Big MoMA's House

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Beet Wagon: Oct 19, 2015

Dante80 posted:

The right foot being a plank makes this very, very good btw.

Thanks! Necessity is the mother of invention - I have no idea where the original foot went, and it wouldn't stand on a stump.

e: dogge

Beet Wagon fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Apr 13, 2016

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:45

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 20:26

Tortolia: Dec 29, 2005; Hindustan Electronics Employee of the Month, July 2008; Grimey Drawer

Page 3170 got kinda dark

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:47

Beer4TheBeerGod: Aug 23, 2004; Exciting Lemon

Toops posted:

I love your effortposts beer.

Thanks! Every now and then I get inspired.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:48

fnox: May 19, 2013

darkarchon posted:

I've talked about this in Dereks Discord channel but I can recapitulate everything here, maybe even more coherent. Wall of text incoming.

The main issue is that cheaters will be rampart in this game, as long the game has such huge issues and trusting the client with so many things. Can you imagine the screams of thousand wales that will cry out in horror once they will be ganked by cheaters and have their multi-thousand dollar ship destroyed without doing any damage to the attacker? Yeah, because that's likely going to happen as long as they continue down this road.

There are two main issues at hand, and many games solve this differently. First, we have a very twitch-y based shooter (be it FPS or flight, doesn't matter at this point since ships steer like normal FPS) and second being their plans for the multi-server-meshed network. Let me elaborate for a little bit.

Games have dealt with cheaters in different ways. You can either go with the client-authoritative route, like many FPS do, with an extra anti-cheating tool running in the background, checking for the process to have changed memory or whatever. Or, you can go with the server-authoritative route, like all MMOs, and very few games otherwise, do, which allows the clients only to do what the server actually allows them to do.

So you might think, hey, let's just go the server-authoritative route. Sure, why not? It sounds better and hey this will be an MMO, right? Well, guess why they can't do that? One word: latency. The latency when you try to do everything server-authoritative will be way too high.

Let me explain. Basically, when you don't do server-authoritative hit detection and physics, everything is calculated by the player in question. The player shooting, the projectile flying and hitting the enemy. This procedure will be calculated on the local machine and the result, plus the intermediate steps will be transferred to the server and synchronized among the network. So the player says, I shoot now, I fly at position X,Y,Z with the directional vector X,Y,Z, my shot is also going in the same direction. When the client shoots and the projectile hits the enemy, the client says to the server "hey I scored a hit" and this will be propagated through the network by the client. The issues with that are obvious, believing whatever the client says in a multiplayer game can be tough. Of course there can be cross-checks whether the enemy is actually in that location when the projectile hits and stuff like that.

When you go server-authoritative, the client has to ask the server first, whether it can shoot, then the projectile will be spawned by the server and propagates through the network. All the collision detection, spawning of projectiles and physics will be done by the server. This induces a lot of lag basically. I personally know of only one game that actually does server-authoritative shooting that is also a shooter, which is MWO. In the beta, it was clear what happens once you go that way. When you had a ping of, let's say 150ms, there's a roundtrip time of at least 300ms until you can actually see the projectile firing. So a delay of 300ms, or even more, is pretty unacceptable in this case, because it might end up in death or a complete miss given the lag involved. In a twitchy shooter like SC this is almost impossible to implement alone because of that. Plus, additionally this increases the server load extensively, since every projectile, every playerobject and everything has to be simulated by the server, along with everything else that they plan to do, and propagated through the network to all the players. In the case of MWO, they fixed this lag-issue by creating something called Host State Rewind, which basically transfers everything "laggy" to the player, doing predictions and stuff like that and whenever the player shoots the server rewinds the status on the network, compares to the lag of all the players that might be evolved and with that resolves whether the enemy was hit or not. In the case in MWO again, this is comparatively simple, since they only track the 'Mechs and ballistics in question, also the game is way slower than SC, making it not that obvious. Compared to SC, where the server has to care for even more stuff like that, that might be close to impossible, given that the servers today already run on 15fps (according to Crobbers), this will make a huge impact on the server load.

Now, when you even add the multi-meshed network instances that they plan to do at some point (hah, as if), the servers will likely have to cross-check all the authoritative actions through all connected servers, inducing even more lag and even more stress on the servers, with waiting cycles waiting for the responses of the other instances and stuff like that. I cannot even begin to imagine how the gently caress they will be ever able to include a server-authoritative structure to the game, while it's actually really needed in their case, to prevent rampart cheating. Not for nothing all MMOs actually use server-authoritative gameplay, that is based on internal ticks and synchronized evenly. But for a twitch-based gameplay, this is just not feasible at all. Additionally the load on the servers will be pretty drat high, even more reducing the people actually be able in a single instance.

So long story short, the game will have a lot of cheaters in the MMO, since it's a pretty impossible task for them to switch to a server-authoritative game design given their very fast paced gameplay.

Parp. I hope this won't be buried that fast. I spent a lot of time for this poo poo.

God drat does this thread move fast.

To this I would like to add that the whole problem is actually surmountable, should you design the actual engine to solve it. This is why CryEngine is such a bad idea, it's not that it's a bad engine, it's ultimately because they have to strip too much of it, they can't use their networking at all, they can't use their physics either, so what are they using it for really? Graphics? You can make a brand new graphics solution from the ground up in a year, tailored to make space really look pretty, there's more than enough capable programmers that are up for the job.

The solution to their networking problems is ultimately solved by streamlining the gameplay. The less things you have to network, the better. If you make ship flight predictable, "physics" stop mattering that much because latency can be accommodated by clientside prediction, FPS games have had solid clientside prediction solutions for years so for that part of the game it's just a matter of imitating what they do. This is all poo poo that you have to design into the engine's infrastructure though, this isn't stuff you can tack on. There is simply no chance in hell that they can fix the networking problems later, no matter how much hardware you throw into it, or how much you patch it, the path that they have chosen to take, which is that the server synchronizes its state with ALL the clients at regular intervals will simply not work when they get a significant amount of players in the same instance simultaneously.

In short, they simply cannot fix those problems. The PU will at any point in time feel awful to fly in.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:49

Oleyo: Mar 28, 2016

Beet Wagon posted:

I don't either. You're yelling at the smelly, befedora'd wall.

This might be my new favorite word.

befadora'd
verb

(of a group) To be festooned with a statistically unlikely number of or fedoras, usually in an inappropriate setting.

Full Disclosure: I own a nice Panama hat, though I generally only wear it at the beach, to keep sun off my translucent flesh.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:51

Tijuana Bibliophile: Dec 30, 2008; Scratchmo

Beet Wagon posted:

Thanks! Necessity is the mother of invention - I have no idea where the original foot went, and it wouldn't stand on a stump.

e: dogge

Stimpire crisis averted

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:52

G0RF: Mar 19, 2015; Some galactic defender you are, Space Cadet.

Duckaerobics posted:

I don't know what is and isn't acceptable, but they are using backer money to lease expensive cars/houses and (almost certainly) paying themselves huge sums. Then there is the question of who pays for all the vacations/acting lessons/piano lessons/martial arts training/ect.

The allegations that backer funds have been used to cover the Roberts' $15k+/mo rental property and 50th anniversary Porsche 911 purchases remain only that-- allegations.

That they have a cavalier attitude about their stewardship of those funds and have made a series of wasteful purchases for the CIG LA office is not in question. Chris opts to spend $5000+ more than necessary for his trips to the UK-- and he makes those often enough.

Chris supposedly encouraged Sandi to do the same, arguing, "The fans will never know- you've got to be comfortable" and she supposedly turned it down due to her thriftiness with backer funds... (Even though she thinks nothing of blowing $3000 a night of somebody's money on table service in Vegas.)

I digress but my point it-- it may be within their temperaments to be highly wasteful. But we do not yet have proof -- actually proof -- that the cars and house are being covered by CIG monies

I would sooner believe they pay themselves $1M each a year and cover those expenses out of pocket than that they're actually sending checks from CIG to Porsche dealers or Landlords in Pacific Palisades. That would be a special kind of recklessness that we've thusfar not see ...

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:52

Scruffpuff: Dec 23, 2015; Fidelity. Wait, was I'm working on again?

fnox posted:

There is simply no chance in hell that they can fix the networking problems later, no matter how much hardware you throw into it, or how much you patch it, the path that they have chosen to take, which is that the server synchronizes its state with ALL the clients at regular intervals will simply not work when they get a significant amount of players in the same instance simultaneously.

Ah, but this is where the genius behind CIG comes into play ... there will never be a significant amount of players in the same instance simultaneously; ergo, the problem is resolved.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:53

peter gabriel: Nov 8, 2011; Hello Commandos

I don't know where I'm goin'
But I sure know where I've been
Hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday
An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time
Here I go again, here I go again

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:54

Goobs: Jan 30, 2016; Doxcat is watching you PU.

Beet Wagon posted:

Legman for SP:

(please don't judge me)

im the person walking into your workshop to ask if you want any coffee and seeing you work on this.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:55

Toops: Nov 5, 2015; -find mood stabilizers
-also,

Beet Wagon posted:

Legman for SP:

(please don't judge me)

holy poo poo

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:55

Beet Wagon: Oct 19, 2015

Goobs posted:

im the person walking into your workshop to ask if you want any coffee and seeing you work on this.

I have to keep it locked up in a closet because I left it out one night and the cleaning lady told my boss she wouldn't go into my shop as long as it was in there and started chain-firing Hail Marys :/

# ? Apr 13, 2016 17:59

bird with big dick: Oct 21, 2015

SurfaceDetail posted:

If they closed up today legally they'd be just fine. All they're legally on the hook for is any physical asset promises they made for the kickstarter. So they can spend some cash on that but otherwise legally speaking they've made a "good faith" effort to make the game.

You could try to sue but its highly unlikely you'd win. They just suck at making games and flail around.

If they hosed up the taxes or whatever they may get fined but honestly "a visit from the FCA" can mean anything from they hosed up a simple form to they are all going to jail for ten years. That's even assuming it happened because Derek is hearing all this poo poo 3rd hand supposedly from employees.

Edit: I ran all this by Legal, a tabby named Gibbs, ESQ.

I think it depends. There's no doubt they tried to make a game, but what if Crobbits was paying himself and his lady 5x industry average salaries plus billing CIG 50 grand a month for mansion and Porsche rentals in three different places?

I don't think there will ever be a successful lawsuit because by that point there won't be any money left to sue over. Maybe whatever crobbits has squeezed out of the company. But depending on what's happening behind the scenes it could be entirely possible to successfully sue CIG/Robberts, maybe just not worthwhile.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:01

Tijuana Bibliophile: Dec 30, 2008; Scratchmo

Beet Wagon posted:

I have to keep it locked up in a closet because I left it out one night and the cleaning lady told my boss she wouldn't go into my shop as long as it was in there and started chain-firing Hail Marys :/

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:03

Xaerael: Aug 25, 2010; Marching Powder is objectively the worst poster known. He also needs to learn how a keyboard works.

Beet Wagon posted:

Legman for SP:

(please don't judge me)

I think what makes these images awesome is what I'm assuming is Kayak's feeding regime on the whiteboard.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:04

G0RF: Mar 19, 2015; Some galactic defender you are, Space Cadet.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

People didn't buy into Star Citizen because Chris Roberts told them their lives mattered. They bought into Star Citizen because Roberts told them they could be someone else and live vicariously through an alter ego that was perfectly tailored to whatever their personal dream was.

This whole thing was greatness. Hearing Chris repeatedly talk about the game in expressly those terms, "The game you can live your second life in-- and be whoever you want to be" just made the specific quote especially worth calling out. That really is the big sell... And that really is the impossible dream.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:08

Xaerael: Aug 25, 2010; Marching Powder is objectively the worst poster known. He also needs to learn how a keyboard works.

FrankieGoes posted:

I think it depends. There's no doubt they tried to make a game, but what if Crobbits was paying himself and his lady 5x industry average salaries plus billing CIG 50 grand a month for mansion and Porsche rentals in three different places?

I don't think there will ever be a successful lawsuit because by that point there won't be any money left to sue over. Maybe whatever crobbits has squeezed out of the company. But depending on what's happening behind the scenes it could be entirely possible to successfully sue CIG/Robberts, maybe just not worthwhile.

In the UK, if someone wins a case against someone for recovery of significant money, the court pays the plaintiff and the defendant has to repay the court, usually via their tax code being changed and money being directly removed from their wage.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:09

Happy Sisyphus: Nov 13, 2013; You take the blue paarp - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red paarp - you stay in pre-alpha, and I show you how deep the sperg wallet goes.

Xaerael posted:

I think what makes these images awesome is what I'm assuming is Kayak's feeding regime on the whiteboard.

lol

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:09

AP: Jul 12, 2004; One Ring to fool them all
One Ring to find them
One Ring to milk them all
and pockets fully line them; Grimey Drawer

Tortolia posted:

Page 3170 got kinda dark

Yeah the "2 completionist packages".

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:09

orcinus: Feb 25, 2016; Fun Shoe

SurfaceDetail posted:

I was gonna invest 2500 into SC but I put 2000 into some diversified mutual funds and the rest into a gold plated butt plug.

Is that a ship name?

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:10

Oleyo: Mar 28, 2016

Mirificus posted:

Kill anyone anywhere?

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/6554252/#Comment_6554252

Nothing less than a HARD-CODED vault of safety is sufficient protection. It should be reinforced to withstand brief overpressure of no less than 10 kGu (kilo-Grief Unit) resulting from direct contact with level 1 griefer.

Additionally, shape and material should provide plenty of passive grief protection, enabling evasion of potentially grief inducing AHC (Actual Human Contact ) events. Computer generated shapes can diffract and disperse the large volumes of internally generated Sorrow, which could otherwise entice griefers from parsecs away.

Likewise, ablative coating materials may be utilized to safely absorb the force of incoming sarcasm, which could otherwise evaporate the carefully husbanded and extremely unstable particles of Dignity-239 maintained in the vehicle core.

I think B'tak might need his own special vehicle in Solar Plebian.

e: fixed quote

Oleyo fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Apr 13, 2016

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:11

Beet Wagon: Oct 19, 2015

Xaerael posted:

I think what makes these images awesome is what I'm assuming is Kayak's feeding regime on the whiteboard.

I normally keep a weekly list of work stuff I have to do there, but at the last minute I realized some of it would self-doxx me so I changed it all to "Give Kayak Chicken" except for Saturday which is "Give Kayak Mackerel" which is what he gets for special occasions lol

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:11

orcinus: Feb 25, 2016; Fun Shoe

Beet Wagon posted:

Legman for SP:

(please don't judge me)

The Quiet Zone sign sells it.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:12

Quavers: Feb 26, 2016; You clearly don't understand game development

TTerrible posted:

Diatom posted:
Coming from the UK banking industry, the FCA is the UK banking regulator, they don't handle tax matters (HM Revenue & Customs) or fraud (The SFO or the police). Unless Cloud imperium is offering investment products, even if CR was pocketing all the cash, the FCA would not be involved.

Not sure what Derek was talking about.

I thought this too, but apparently its something to do with the tax credits scheme or something. Loxbourne is also in the industry, I believe. He was talking about it at length.

CIG's plans to offer an in-game store - cosmetics & UEC for real money - and the grey-market existing for "cashing-out", I guess CIG would have to apply for a licence for being a "digital bank". If that's true, and they haven't applied but the FCA got wind of it somehow... or they did apply but the FCA see the (obvious) possibilities of fraud and money laundering...

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:13

Tijuana Bibliophile: Dec 30, 2008; Scratchmo

Beet Wagon posted:

I normally keep a weekly list of work stuff I have to do there, but at the last minute I realized some of it would self-doxx me so I changed it all to "Give Kayak Chicken" except for Saturday which is "Give Kayak Mackerel" which is what he gets for special occasions lol

dog confirmed spoiled

e: nah man that felt mean :/ that dog deserves his mackerel

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:13

Beet Wagon: Oct 19, 2015

Tijuana Bibliophile posted:

dog confirmed spoiled

e: nah man that felt mean :/ that dog deserves his mackerel

Nah it's cool, he totally is spoiled.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:20

Jst0rm: Sep 16, 2012; Grimey Drawer

Could someone please post the event horizon star citizen gifs? Thank you

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:20

Tijuana Bibliophile: Dec 30, 2008; Scratchmo

Hello CIG person reading this thread I have a couple good solutions for all your cash probs plz read

Next ship you offer you sell for $145 melt value but only $125 in fresh cash

also you limit the melt value of ships to 90% of their purchase price

You can defend it by saying you're trying to make actions have consequences to stop people from switching at will, also your backers will defend it as a money sink that's a first step to an in-game economy

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:21

Beer4TheBeerGod: Aug 23, 2004; Exciting Lemon

fnox posted:

God drat does this thread move fast.

To this I would like to add that the whole problem is actually surmountable, should you design the actual engine to solve it. This is why CryEngine is such a bad idea, it's not that it's a bad engine, it's ultimately because they have to strip too much of it, they can't use their networking at all, they can't use their physics either, so what are they using it for really? Graphics? You can make a brand new graphics solution from the ground up in a year, tailored to make space really look pretty, there's more than enough capable programmers that are up for the job.

The solution to their networking problems is ultimately solved by streamlining the gameplay. The less things you have to network, the better. If you make ship flight predictable, "physics" stop mattering that much because latency can be accommodated by clientside prediction, FPS games have had solid clientside prediction solutions for years so for that part of the game it's just a matter of imitating what they do. This is all poo poo that you have to design into the engine's infrastructure though, this isn't stuff you can tack on. There is simply no chance in hell that they can fix the networking problems later, no matter how much hardware you throw into it, or how much you patch it, the path that they have chosen to take, which is that the server synchronizes its state with ALL the clients at regular intervals will simply not work when they get a significant amount of players in the same instance simultaneously.

In short, they simply cannot fix those problems. The PU will at any point in time feel awful to fly in.

CryEngine is not an engine for making a next generation massively multiplayer game. That was well established years ago. CryEngine is an engine for making a beautiful, cinematic, single player or small group experience.

That's exactly what backers will be getting.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:22

Tijuana Bibliophile: Dec 30, 2008; Scratchmo

Beet Wagon posted:

Nah it's cool, he totally is spoiled.

No non-dog-hating person would ever not spoil that dog

Dog spoils you all the time :3:

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:22

Daztek: Jun 2, 2006

http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/

Derek typed more words

quote:

*16-04-13 update1: This has now been confirmed to me by sources.

Also, in consultations with my attorneys, I can now add the commentary previously not included when this blog first went live.

I can now reveal that on a date certain in May, my attorneys and I will � again � walk into a Federal building.

Further to my comments above regarding how to follow and account for backer money, one thing that sticks out in all the research material I have, is the allegation that when Simon Elms (see the aforementioned Gizmondo debacle) was called back to join the fold, he, Derek Senior, and Erin Roberts (brother of Chris Roberts) � all execs in the UK � were allegedly �bought out� by CIG for an undisclosed sum. While I see no evidence of this in the short-form financial filings (as they are public) of the UK companies, if this did in fact take place as alleged, then it was probably done on the US or German CIG side of those companies (see why we started tracking all these companies?) where the details are not accessible by the public, as they would be in the UK. Why is this relevant? If true, and even if found to be legal, it would still be a blatant violation of trust as per the transfer of liquid cash assets, the bulk (again, assuming that the $112M does not include other non crowd-funded investment) of which was raised with the sole purpose of creating this crowd-funded project.

Despite the fact that we do not know how much private investment is in the project, the fact remains that they should disclose this to backers, as Chris was quick to proclaim that he didn�t need investors or publishers if he could raise the money from crowd-funding. And these are some of the things that should raise Red flags pertaining to their refusal to provide complete financials to backers, as was promised in the ToS they themselves constructed. They obviously put that in there in order to gain the trust and confidence of backers, and to show a level of accountability. Then, like everything else, after getting all this money, and still failing to deliver a product, and by the deadline promised, they reneged. Pretty much how he wrote this pledge during crowd-funding, and has thus far, has failed to uphold it.

In a meeting with the interested parties, we will provide them with an entire dossier of research material, as well as statements (some sent anonymously) by third-party sources (some who agreed to be named to the authorities) who are concerned about being accused of being complicit in what is really going on with the project, and not currently known to backers. I made the decision not to turn any of this over to gaming media because most of them cannot be trusted. And those who can be trusted, without sources on the record, probably won�t touch this with the longest barge pole until it finally collapses. Aside from the fact that they (e.g. the major UK media organisation currently doing their own investigation that I have recently become aware of) stand no chance of ever getting any of these sources to go on the record, outside of a subpoena or hearing, due to reprisals by the gaming industry proper, as well as the Shitizens who have made the attacking of dissenters, a social media sport.

As my attorneys have already indicated, we would have no problems reviewing the project financials in private and under NDA, with the sole purpose of finding out how the money has been spent, and whether or not they have reserves (as Chris has indicated several times) to complete the projects as promised. Or we can agree on a neutral third-party forensics accounting firm, for which I will bear the expense as I had offered last year. And if we are satisfied with the findings, I will issue a statement to that effect. At which point, regardless of the findings (which I won�t be able to disclose anyway), my role in this would be at an end.

To be clear, their inability to complete and deliver the project as promised, is simply a matter of failure due to ambition. I have no doubt that Chris believed that this game could be developed as he envisioned. But to date, with all the feature cuts, technical challenges, broken promises, almost eighteen month delay etc, he has been proven to be wrong. And that�s not likely to change. So for all intent and purposes, that will all be irrelevant if the money was simply wasted, albeit with no evidence of malfeasance or fraud; neither of which I am in any position to accuse them of. That�s up to the authorities and the legal system to determine.

And as I have stated before, Chris being a dreamer, I don�t believe that he set out to scam gamers. However, the only right thing that he can do now is to come clean, explain to the backers what he can and cannot do, what went wrong and how, provide the financials to the backers who are entitled to it, and stop taking money for a project he knows all too well that he simply cannot deliver as originally promised.

At the end of the day, when it all comes out, fact, opinion, hyperbole, or whatever, one thing is certain, my blogs will still be here, cataloging what has gone on with the project, and why, as an industry and as gamers, we simply cannot let this happen again.

That said, if current events don�t make them bring a frivolous lawsuit in order to tie me up in court, silence me etc, nothing will. They can bring it. My liability insurance is in need of a workout. I remain convinced that what I�m doing is legal, right, and just; and my opinions are my own. Unless and until they provide backers with the complete financials for this project as promised, and coupled with a concrete date for the delivery of Star Citizen and Squadron 42 projects, I will continue to seek accountability.

DISCLOSURE: Under the legal right to own, buy and sell digital assets, I currently have a combined total of $1,853 in the project. Thanks to all of you who helped make that happen. We will get answers; this I promise.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:22

SomethingJones: Mar 6, 2016; <3

loving cultists have invaded the Elite subreddit again, I'm planning to get a few hours of Elite in tonight and jumped on there just to have a quick browse of Stuff, and there they are, talking about how the design decisions in SC are light years ahead of anything in Elite and all the other bullshit. It really honest to god fucks me right off.

Sorry, had to vent.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 18:22