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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 20 Dec 2022 20:40

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... y_shoutout

calan89 wrote:3.18 Persistence Technology Shoutout

Paul, Benoit, and all the folks at CIG and Turbulent working on the PES tech -

You're probably not going to see this, but as someone who works in Operations on complex, critical, live IT systems, I can say you've done an amazing thing leading right into winter break. I certainly wouldn't have the chutzpah to publicly load-test brand new architectures and technologies this time of year.

I'm sure the data you're getting back on the performance from the graph database platform and all the interstitial systems is both fascinating and mildly terrifying, and I know many of your engineers will be very inclined to spend the break digging into it. I just want to express that even getting this out the door before the end of the year is enough, and even with all the excitement around the new related gameplay systems, I hope everyone doesn't feel too pressured into fixing everything in the next week or two.

Great job and looking forward to what you're able to accomplish next year.


L0b0t0my wrote:It might not be every person there, but CIG employees read everything, from discord servers, the refunds sub, spectrum, YouTube comments, and of course the front page of the largest SC discourse page. I can almost guarantee atleast 2 of their 1000 employees will read your post. :)


CaptFrost wrote:Reminds me of when I did the Hyper Vanguard Force all six missions back to back flawless recording and posted it on here. Found out after the fact when one of them shot me a message that the folks who worked on it all crowded around and watched my video to see the lunatic who went and aced their mini-game, lol!


Hyper Vanguard Force is a pixel art STG they put inside Star Citizen, or rather on their website iirc.

3.18 is now in Wave 1 PTU btw, which means basically subscribers (me, Chev, Archonus and Adjudicator afaik). They plan to put it in open PTU before they leave for the holidays later this week. I 'aint playing until it's in Live, sometime in January.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 23 Dec 2022 23:55

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _pyro_2023

Genji4Lyfe wrote:I mean, it's not a "hit piece" if it's accurate. CIG's goals are factually slipping farther and farther as time goes on.

The fact that even the most optimistic backers have finally abandoned nearly all talk of "Squadron 42 next year?" in the 12th year of development is probably the biggest sign of that.


Enwinor wrote:Can we maybe agree on how long SC has been in development? Because it's been 10 years since the Kickstarter in late 2012 and about 9 since development began in earnest.


Paraquat_ wrote:9 years since they hired outsourced studios to develop the game for a few years, before realising they wouldn't be able to handle the scope of the game that was evolving with such a team. Then essentially restarted the process of building their own studio that only really came online a couple years after that...

It's been like 4-5 decent years dev with COVID in the middle of it.

Not huffing the copium here, I'm pretty indifferent to the time span, very happy to wait and I joined in September 2012 as a golden ticket holder
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 24 Dec 2022 00:06

ArcCorp's parallax shader for buildings in 3.18 is really awesome!
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _in_318_is

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Show me another game.

Too bad though you can't win by rolling on the floor for 30 hours. It will never be GOTY.

Fr0stBytez24 wrote:Sorry, can someone explain what I'm looking at?


Falcon_Flow wrote:A shader is making the flat textures on the building look like actual rooms.


Gawlf85 wrote:Those rooms you're looking at aren't really there. It's a very clever trick that makes a flat texture look like a complex 3D scene.


Orison and New Babbage have the same treatment, reportedly.

Ornias wrote:The windows in Cyberpunk are a good example of this technique being used almost to perfection. Even with your nose pressed against the window it's difficult to tell it's just a shader in that game.


FeFiFoShizzle wrote:Happens in the AAA hits Spiderman and Spiderman miles Morales too.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 24 Dec 2022 20:21

3.18 PTU hand salvage and repair multitool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lkVkjNKJ4M

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A new era of interactivity is upon us. Such stunning effects would not have been possible in a normal survival-builder because they lack the budget for them. Your 100s/1000s of dollars spent on ships in this game are being put to good use.

And how awesome is it that the hand-repaired part doesn't look brand-new?

Neontetra78 wrote:this effect is super cool and I can see hand repair being helpful during dynamic events


Exactly. In most normal play situations, hand-repair won't be much use since you can always just repair back at the landing zone. But in the middle of a dynamic event, you gotta haul ass, and that's when manual repair will come in. One more parameter to add to the already enormous complexity of the events.

Of course eventually hand-repair will be useful in lawless systems like Pyro, plus the complexity of even regular missions in lawful systems will increase and then you'll need hand-repair everywhere.

Btw, if a wing gets blown off, etc., then you can't hand-repair it.

FlaK wrote:I think I'm seeing why this took so long to implement, lmao


Exactly. They take forever to add stuff, but the stuff they add is extremely complex AND it's being added with unparalleled detail and beauty, while in most survival-builders stuff is being duct-taped into the game and looks crap.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 26 Dec 2022 16:39

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... &context=3

magic8192 wrote:I think the only place you can use that cryptokey in 3.18 is Kareah? That place is going to be HOT!


RedWizardDOM wrote:if there are no 50 player server anymore (yes i know, they actually stay, but server meshing gonna chain up servers)

and server meshing is incoming than it's gonna be hot pot


Hironymus wrote:There haven't been any 50 player servers for a while now.


RedWizardDOM wrote:what's instead now?


TheRealZer0Cool wrote:120 though I've been on a server which got as high as 170


sorec007 wrote:Moving forward, SPK is going to be for the bold, running with crew, or straight up don’t care. I think the expectation is, you’ll be going back to Pyro. Grim Hex being like the embassy in Stanton.


Security Post Kareah (SPK) should be wild with more people in the server. Kind of like a 24/7 Jumptown in a space station. I don't quite get the last guy's comment about Pyro/HEX though, but I like the general sentiment. Shit's about to get real as the servers get bigger basically. Every aspect of the game will get tougher with more players, like a PlanetSide running on a galactic scale.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 03 Jan 2023 21:07

New Letter from the Chairman dropped on December 30th. You can tell Chris Roberts is super-pumped about the game because that's the second Letter in 2022, whereas before he'd gone years without writing one.

Letter From the Chairman
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm ... e-Chairman

It's huge and everyone should read all of it, plus it has cool images and an awesome video of the Corsair at the top, so I'll just quote a couple of highlights.

Chris Roberts wrote:A great example of our ability to take the long-term view and invest in research and development that most projects don’t have the time or ambition for is Persistent Entity Streaming (PES), which creates true lasting persistence for the Star Citizen universe; if you leave some equipment in a remote cave, shoot down a bounty over Daymar, manage to fend off some pirates around Yela – the results of your actions will persist – items, debris, ships, even dead bodies will all stay where they were left and still be there even if you log off and return a week later - assuming other players haven’t taken or cleaned up the results of your adventures!

To do this for a universe as big and detailed as Star Citizen, to have this apply to everything, not just player-owned items, for a MMO with millions of players is a major technical accomplishment – I am not aware of any other large-scale MMO that has tried to deliver this level of persistence.


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Chris Roberts wrote:Our Daily Active Users (DAU) this year, i.e. unique players logging in each day, has grown 50% over last year, and is double what it was at the end of 2019. This year, we are also averaging over 240,000 Monthly Active Users, which is 33% higher than our average MAU from last year, with highs of over 400,000 during May with this year’s Invictus Launch Week.


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Chris Roberts wrote:Looking Forward – The Road to Alpha 4.0

This coming year is going to be a huge one for Star Citizen, possibly its biggest one to date!

The first order of business is to continue to stabilize Alpha 3.18 so we can release to the Live servers in January, once the team is back from their well-earned Holiday break.

Then we will continue to “harden” PES, improving aspects and adding some additional quality of life features including the ability to choose which PES Shard you would like to join. The current game server / PES shard matchmaking tries to match you to the last PES shard you were in when you log back in or recover from a crash, but if that shard is full, it places you in a different one. But in the short term, before Server Meshing makes this not so necessary, we also want to give players the choice to wait in a queue for their preferred shard if it is full.

The next step will be to separate the Replication Layer (RL), the in-memory cache that remembers all dynamic objects’ state, from the Game Server and have scalable RL workers that communicate the state changes between the various game clients, servers, and the RL.

This is very important for Server Meshing, as universe state needs to be fully decoupled from server state. It will also make Star Citizen much more crash resilient on the client side as a server crash will no longer take down the RL as well, meaning that clients can stay connected while a new server takes over where the last one left off. It will also have the added benefit of having the view every client has of the universe around it be a little more fluid with less lag as the client’s update and refresh of object state will no longer be tied to the tick rate of the game server. This means players will see state changes from other remote clients and game servers as they happen at the rates the various clients and servers push them.

Once this happens, we’ll be able to have multiple game servers communicate with the RL (much like multiple game clients communicate right now with the RL) allowing Star Citizen to have multiple servers simulating the universe’s state, which we call Server Meshing (SM).

We will start with Static Server Meshing, where different servers are assigned to simulate different Entity Zones in a star system. Entity Zones, sometimes referred to as Local Grids, are separate simulation areas; the inside of a spaceship is a different Zone to the space around which the spaceship flies. A planet is a different Zone than the Star System Zone where all the planets and moons exist in, and a landing zone can also be a different Zone, nested inside the Planet Zone, nested in the Star System Zone.

At first, the servers will be bound to fixed Zones but we will quickly move to Dynamic Server Meshing V1, where we assign servers dynamically to Entity Zones, based on gameplay and simulation load. This will be a much more efficient use of the servers in the cloud, as you only need servers where the players are, whereas with Static SM you have servers assigned to Zones, even if there are no players there.

Dynamic Server Meshing V2 will take this dynamic assignment of servers one step further by subdividing Entity Zones into “simulation islands” (this is organizing the dynamic objects in one Zone / Local Grid into different groups, based on which objects can interact / collide with each other), allowing these islands to be distributed between servers to again help balance simulation load.

At this point we should be able to handle tens of thousands of players all playing in the same PES universe shard, bringing Star Citizen much closer to the ultimate goal of a huge living universe densely populated with players and AI.

Once we achieve Static Server Meshing, we can open the universe of Star Citizen to other star systems, starting with Pyro. By having authority pass from one server to another, you’ll be able to transition seamlessly (without the need to log out of game) between star systems.

We are aiming to put Static Server Meshing and Pyro into the hands of players in the fourth quarter of 2023. The large caveat with this goal is that complicated engineering work that involves a completely new paradigm, requires a host of new backend services, and technology is hard to estimate and schedule accurately as the issues and problems that can come up along the way are hard to foresee as no one has implemented this system before, and plans rarely survive contact with the users, especially at scale. This has been true for PES, as it is no secret that we were hoping to have Alpha 3.18 and PES release to Live by end of the year as opposed to just the PTU. Delays in finalizing 3.18 and PES impact the team’s ability to start on the next stage, and we still have the unknowns of how PES performs after months of heavy load, and people seeing exactly how much space junk they can leave around!

Beyond this, there are a host of other exciting features and content we have planned for 2023; Pyro with its assorted planets, moons, settlements, space stations and assorted factions and AI population being the headline, but we also will be rolling out the New Item Resource system in ships which replaces the old pipe system with a much more dynamic and scalable system to allow for truly emergent behavior (in fact elements of this new system can already be seen in 3.18 in the Salvage gameplay), Bounty Hunting with a full tracking system and the ability to actively restrain and transport both players and AI, Persistent Hangars with freight elevators allowing you to call up your stored inventory or place things into storage. Towards the end of the year, we should see some of the more Squadron 42 related work arrive in Star Citizen; more flexible player traversal, especially on ladders and ledges, a greatly improved interaction system, FPS scanning, the new Star Map, MFDs using the more performant and flexible building blocks UI system and much deeper combat AI. Now that the Gen 12 renderer is functioning in 3.18, the Graphics team will work on multi-threading improvements and optimizations for the renderer as well as hook up the Vulkan Graphics API to it, to unlock some of the performance gains that the Gen 12 renderer can provide.

There are numerous more things the Star Citizen team are working on for this coming year, but this letter is already long enough!


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Chris Roberts wrote:The universe and how you interact with it is up to you; from exploring, to hauling, trading, mining, salvage, refueling, refining, bounty hunting, piracy, to being a hired gun to just sightseeing and being a social butterfly.

And that is just what we have now – in the future you’ll be able to farm or gather other resources, build, craft and sell. The universe of Star Citizen is a huge sandbox for everyone to play in and I couldn’t be more excited by what the future holds.

Star Citizen is more than just a game, it is an escape to another reality where anyone can pursue their imagination, not bound to a single playstyle or profession, where they can interact with other players that share in the same common dream.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jan 2023 12:12

https://twitter.com/tobiigaming/status/ ... 5336591362

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Eye-tracking seems like halfway to VR. Check the video. It looks incredibly immersive. I wonder if VR headsets also do this. Also, what if you have a triple-display setup? Will it track your eyes across displays?
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 23 Jan 2023 03:58

Nyx II
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... 8qq/nyx_ii

Pics are from Subscriber Vault: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm ... ng-WIP-III

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The great thing about SC's planets is that... they are what PA2's planets should look like. In fact they're the coolest planets in all of videogame AND movie history. Hell they look better than real planets, which is what art is all about.

But even cooler are the mechanics that all these systems and planets will make possible. Check out some early heated discussion about that, to get an idea of what's at play here.

bobijsvarenais wrote:The best thing about NYX is that it's 2 jumps away from Stanton. I imagine I would feel really far from home there.


I bet the trip will take at least an hour of real time.

SmoothOperator89 wrote:I'm excited to see how the light fighter meta copes with these extended ranges. Though people are absolutely tryhard enough to own and solo operate a Liberator just to carry their Arrow or Gladius beyond its quantum range. Still, I'd like to think that the inconvenience of that will eventually lead to more medium to large size ship fights and the Vanguard becoming the defacto long-range escort fighter.


One_Translator_1892 wrote:I mean yeah, but the viability of a liberator to go and hold its own in a lawless environment is nil. That's why I say a Kraken with a full compliment


SmoothOperator89 wrote:That's why I say a "try hard". People are going to try and solo the Liberator with a fighter and just abandon it when they're going out to dogfight. People just see it as a range extender for their fighters.


One_Translator_1892 wrote:Fair, and those are the people who will be getting picked off lol.


SmoothOperator89 wrote:I'm sure there will be a wave of buyer's remorse and angry demands to make carrier gameplay viable for solo players. My hope is that range limitations will be the great equalizer of combat meta.


killasnikov wrote:Space is big. Finding a solo carrier like a Liberator will not be simple.

Besides what you really want is a starfarer buddy to escort you with top-ups.


FratumHospitalis wrote:Liberator is probably the easiest to do it in, but solo will still be sketchy.


SmoothOperator89 wrote:Really depends how long range scanning ends up working. I doubt detection range will be limited to the immediate radar surroundings forever. Eventually explorers will need to be able to scan deep space to find anomalies and such. If an explorer can find rocks thousands of kilometers away, a pirate should be able to find a powered down ship. The strategy of "I'll just leave it in deep space where no one can find it" is making a big assumption that scanning tools will never be more powerful than what's in game right now.


Prestigious_Care3042 wrote:Why wouldn’t people solo a Liberator? It’s crew is 1-2? It will be perfect for moving a fighter or 3.

A bigger stretch will be the Crucible which will move a fighter and repair/rearm it simultaneously but it’s supposed to be 3-8 crew.

Of course the Kraken will be able to move and repair as well but it’s more for moving 8 ships at the same time so probably a little overkill to move a single fighter.


SmoothOperator89 wrote:The issue is soloing the Liberator and leaving it unmanned while you go out on your light fighter. Since we don't know how effective long range scanning will be, it's a big assumption that you'll be able to just leave a ship in deep space and expect it to not be discovered.


Prestigious_Care3042 wrote:Right now scanners work to about 15km.

I’m pretty sure if you park 3 million km away from anything you will be fine in the future.


killasnikov wrote:Just short cruise out a bit and park in the dark. 3d space is absurdly huge. They still haven't found the wreck of the Malaysian airlines aircraft, on a 2d planet surface with only a few thousand miles range. Imagine the task of finding a Liberator in a 3d circle of 100k km or so? Impossible.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 04 Feb 2023 16:23

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... omplicated

International-Base88 wrote:Chris making things too complicated?

After watching the stream today, did Chris's longtime friend confirm that Chris made DnD an amazing experience, but at the same time, too complicated to actually play for more than 3 sessions, while he was just 15?

Seems like a hard-coded pattern to me. :)
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 04 Feb 2023 16:29

kepler4and5 wrote:On the contrary, I think that is the very reason we are all here playing SC. If Chris didn't think like that, we'd have another unremarkable space game that I'm pretty sure I personally would not be interested in playing at all.

When I heard that DnD story, I was like that is why SC feels the way it does!

Btw, we will not get another Chris – same way we will not get another Steve Jobs. So enjoy this while it lasts.


whypplgottasuck wrote:For sure it’s hard coded in him lol the cit con talk he gave that went on for hours proved that lol.


SaltyFuckingProcess wrote:Now play all the Wing Commander games and Privateer and Privateer 2 and read the pitch deck for Privateer Online over at Wing Commander CIC. You'll see CR has been working up to SQ42 and SC since his childhood...


SaltyFuckingProcess wrote:One more tidbit...30 years ago WC2 took more floppys to install than Windows at the time, WC4 came on 6 CDs and only had low res movie due to space, they re-released WC4 on DVD when that was a new thing to bump up video quality as intended, CR is ALWAYS pushing: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ed_21mb_of


SaulTighsEyePatch wrote:I appreciate it being so detailed and applaud CIG's commitment to fidelity, it's one of the reasons why I enjoy the game. At the same time, there's things that he goes overboard with and crosses the line into being unfun. Like, manually loading each bullet into magazines should not ever be a thing lmao :)


OMeffigy wrote:I want Chris Roberts to be my DM!


I am better.

And he's busy.

Skormfuse wrote:Complexity is the name of the game well for this game, it's also likely why his ideas work best in video games.

Because you don't need to remember the complexities most the time you focus on what you do and it just works around you.

Tabletop games have a harder time because you have to think about a lot more, it's compromise for having so much freedom, while a game can just do so much out of sight.

For example think about managing days, weeks and months in a dnd game, tedious, now think about how it's done in a game and it's seamless.


Google VTTs buddy.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 04 Feb 2023 23:18

If you want to see the segment on Chris Roberts as DM, this is where it is, the latest Star Citizen Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nk_RXw17oc

Go to 49:40. They have a schoolmate of Chris Roberts telling how it was playing D&D with him.

It's hilarious that the reason he stopped DMing is the same reason I keep taking breaks from it. It's just too much work the way we're doing it lol. He actually says it's like a job.

I would never have guessed that the creator of Wing Commander was a DM. And btw, Jared Huckaby, the show host, also plays D&D with other CIG employees: https://twitter.com/discolando/status/1 ... 4493895680

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What a life, working on SC all day, and playing D&D at night.

It makes sense they would be playing, since that company is full of basically geniuses.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 04 Feb 2023 23:45

From the comments:

Denis De Plaen wrote:Chris was Syrinscaping before Syrinscape! He's always been visionary, looks like!


Syrinscape is a company that adds sound effects and background music to VTT RPGs. We use them too.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 05 Feb 2023 19:28

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ed_of_cigs

rock1m1 wrote:From the outside looking in, I'm amazed of CIG's employee retention rate

Especially at a time when it is so normal to see layoffs, developers moving to different projects, etc. Also this might be a on-camera thing, but the devs themselves look happy and relaxed being part of the project. So I just want to appreciate the culture CIG build around themselves. If there is one thing which can guarantee the development success of the game, is retaining the brilliant people making it.


NATO_CAPITALIST wrote:CIG is probably one of few companies where not only you aren't crunched, but you also get to go wild on what you implement and it's overall an interesting project that I'm sure is more fulfilling to work on than generic shooter #4020


sig_kill wrote:And the nature of the game provides some really great opportunities to work on tech the games industry wouldn’t normally allow for.

Server meshing itself is one, and by nature facilitates the need for multiple backend systems, orchestrated and managed with modern deployment techniques (I’d be surprised if they weren’t using containers, some form of K8S, etc.)

Then all of the individual gameplay systems, quantum (Hi Tony), tooling, build tooling, ad infinitum.

Normally studios are pushing for the BARE MINIMUM to start taking pre-orders and move on to the next game.


Robomoo quit The Cult to make precisely a bare minimum game as above. And not even in an interesting, modern genre.

Now he'll be applying to work at CIG, when he reads this, being too stupid to also understand the next point:

rdtthoughtpolice wrote:I would quit my job and work for CIG if they had an Australian office. It would be nice to work on something this much of a passion project.

(Hi CIG I am a scrum master hire me please I'm tired of building insurance software)


sig_kill wrote:I used to think this too, but then I changed my mind.

When I was in the game development industry I got home at night and didn’t want to go near a game. I’d sit around and do nothing because the day job doing it sapped my passion for playing them.

I get that everyone and every situation is different, but I feel like Star Citizen is THE GAME we’ve been wanting to play all of our lives... I’d want to give myself the best possible chance of enjoying it for years.


How is it possible to read icycalm for years and learn nothing about making games, or even playing them?

It's called stupidity.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 06 Feb 2023 10:17

Image

I had totally forgotten about this!

There was a training sim in the bar in the original Wing Commander!

I doubt I used it, that's why I had forgotten about it.

But yeah, that's how far back Arena Commander goes.

Imagine putting a simulator of the game within your game all the way back in 1990! Shenmue what???

That bar—and the game in general—is STILL more immersive than MOST new games coming on Steam every month! That's why the game is VGART but the rubbish people buy on Steam will never be.

Notice also how good the pixel art is, and that's before you add scanlines! Another thing practically nothing new on Steam can match.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 07 Feb 2023 21:30

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... t_upgraded

SpectreHaza wrote:Playing star citizen is like becoming an encyclopaedia of bugs and issues, with a workaround for everything


garack666 wrote:Yea you are alpha testing that's right


suclatox wrote:Like I said I’m a new player so I haven’t found myself completely angry and frustrated (at least yet) and I’m not jaded to the game. The game is amazing, the details are insane, the ships feel awesome, the space stations are beautiful and I’m still in constant awe at the game, sure there’s some bugs that make it annoying and 30ks and falling of your ship etc, I’m not a crazy gamer nor a programmer, but on my brain this bugs make sense when you think of the scale of the game etc. the way the map looks and feels to me is so clunky and bad that feels like it’s from a different game, it almost doesn’t match the atmosphere that the game creates, so when there’s so much attention to detail to stuff even if they are buggy, it just doesn’t make sense to me how the map can be so meh. But again it’s just my opinion as someone that is enjoying the game very much.


BannedNinja42 wrote:
  • when the map was created, this game had not full planets but only POIs (so only a limited number of targets). Map would just connect these. This changed but shit map stayed and OF COURSE was not changed

  • shit map was created with flash. This does mean 2 things: 1) it is a quick hack stopped developed when it was barely working (common flash theme in SC, just look at the MFT shit) 2) it will not see any bug fixes because noone will change flash code

  • a major part of problems with shit map are comming from quantum router. It sometimes cannot route you around objects (eg. if you are on the back of a planet). Some super clever guys thought, that when something just not works it is just enough information to deal with this. Unfortunately CIG had quite a few of these shit heads working for them and in general, gui is lacking and does not tell you, when something does not work (which is quite hilarious in a alpha like SC were things are bugged like shit). Basically this shit works like this: if you cannot plot a route, just fly to a random OTHER target and try again. Chances are pretty good that this works (especially that quantum router seems to lose track. Just fly to an OM and it can navigate again)

  • the 3rd component which brings you pain are the markers. Sufficient to say, that CIG has no clue what to do about them, so you normally end up with seeing ALL of them or NONE (at least none of them you need). Sadly this is sometimes on purpose (like OM are only seen when you target the planetary body and fly to it - of course nobody tells you this funny idea, you just see them occasionally and you never know why)

  • unfortunately CIG only hires the cheapest developers they find and they also pay the bare minimum so we got only color blind devs in SC no extra color for landing zones or backside objects (they are dashed though). So much fun to find the OMs out of hundreds of other same looking markers. I cannot find any reason why a dev could be proud of this shit


His last point isn't true, CIG devs are great. They wouldn't have been able to make this game otherwise.

Grouchy_Kitchen_3857 wrote:They’re currently working on a complete overhaul of the mobiglass, star map, MFDs, radar and scanning etc but it won’t be ready for 3.18. They’re well aware of how abysmal it is.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 08 Feb 2023 00:45

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... atch_notes

kingkongjaffa wrote:The problem is regression is unpredictable, as they develop new systems, things that were previously marked as fixed get broken again.

The development path is chaotic and they release stuff that introduces regressions.

Usually this is put down to getting more testing data but I struggle to see that they are meaningfully using any of the data they have been capturing, for like a decade.


Twisted-Biscuit wrote:I can't see how they could possibly avoid regression and chaos over a decade when their scope shifted so much. The game I backed in 2014 is not the game they're working towards today (and I'm totally fine with it).

Now they're looking to integrate granular simulation with high fidelity graphics, player interaction and all in a giant, procedurally generated MMO setting. There's no other game like it, no other benchmark to go off.

2016 is realistically the true beginning of Star Citizen, before that was essentially proof of concept and building block inception - all the stuff which underpins the future of the game and allows it to expand at scale never seen before.


dainw wrote:Too logical. I think we should whaargarble about how the game has been in development from the very first moment the idea occurred to Christ Robbers.

/s ... you know, for legal reasons.


M3lony8 wrote:In my honest opinion, the game developement really only started in in 2019. Thats 4 years of developement in total. And what they achieved in 4 years is quite impressive. If they release it in the next 4 years it would be 8 years total, which is about industry standard for a AAA game now a days, expect with way more scope and content. So quite the achievement in a rather average industry standard time frame.


Red-Halo wrote:Imo, the game's development only really started in 2024.

It's incredibly impressive what CIG did in negative one year.


M3lony8 wrote:absolutely mindblowing


Reading these threads is more fun than playing other games.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 08 Feb 2023 05:40

https://twitter.com/_johncrewe/status/1 ... 0376906752

Image

WTF everyone at CIG plays tabletop games? This is the vehicle director.

Not only do they play, but they find time to post on Twitter about it.

That's why development isn't going faster lol.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 08 Feb 2023 06:48

I lolled with his ending line. "Insane and unfinished." You can say that about pretty much all my projects. Insane because of the ambition, unfinished just because I don't see any reason to finish anything anymore when I can just keep complexifying and improving everything until the day I die. Only the simpler stuff will get finished. Like the PUA book and such. But the philosophy, and my game... I don't WANT to finish them at this point. They're just way too much fun. (That said, I will post the last chapter of Orgy so that, when I die, the reader can just slap that at the end of the last aphorism, and the book will indeed be finished at that point).

No end in sight...
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... d_in_sight

GuilheMGB wrote:I guess you meant only 1 live update (that's not true, but that's beside the point)?

The thing is, progress is not linearly measured by frequency of releases or quantities of release cards in an arbitrarily defined representation of upcoming content. For instance, CIG was accustomed to what seems like card padding in some patches (making cards out of insignificant additions), while conversely they would and very much still do undersell additions you only read about in individual patch notes, for some reason. So big QOL improvements can be added and not much discussed, let alone remembered as progress later on. So unless you are obsessively tracking every change, it can give a biased perception that things are one way or another.

What's much better as an indication of progress are measurable outcomes: how many people play the game actively, for how long, how often to they come back, how many missions they complete, and so on. Why? Because ultimately adding a feature here or there only really delivers tangible progress if it enables the game to be more enjoyable, more replayable, more varied. If we are to believe CIG (and frankly the much increased account numbers, record funding, and little army of content creators who brought audiences to this game), things are looking good on that front.

Personally, compared to say 2020, I'm more optimistic about the outlooks of the game. I'm not talking about the long-term long-held promises about NPC crews helping players run their giant capital ships through giant battles, I'm talking about where the game is, and how it's been evolving in the last 5-6 patches (including 3.18, which is a big leap forward for sure).

I find that I have a lot more missions, activities, encounters, and goals that make me want to invest more time in the game vs 12 months before, 24 months before, and so on.

However where I totally agree is that we're temporarily headed, I believe, towards, 1 or 2 really large patches a year, with more minor patches to keep dripping content and locations. And you're absolutely right I think, more time to bake in patches is absolutely necessary for complex core changes. Releasing patches at this stage of development is an *insane* overhead. It'd make absolutely 0 sense if it wasn't for CIG to keep funding the game and keep us excited.

It means _weeks_ of relentless debugging and stabilization, which if kept internal, would be minimised to enable more, faster, smaller iterations with frequent code merges that then, once more element are in place would go through the same hell of stabilizing a patch to be made playable enough. If going through these mini-betas takes 2 months, 3 months...then of course when is the actual feature development happening? So yep, I think we're headed for another "PES" situation for the separation of the replication layer from DGS (which I think will be the main core tech milestone this year, with meshing being the one in 2024).

That said, as I think tomorrow will illustrate we'll have plenty to keep us engaged with the game regardless.

Now, regarding the _communication_ about progress, well ironically you're posting less than 24h before the big roadmap update, which was not abandoned but sign-posted weeks ago (prior to the Christmas break). But yeah, that's a long time to be waiting for an update on plans (though it's the same every year).

The "progress" tracker however leaves a lot of be desired. In terms of functionality (can't filter to only current issues, or filter out completed ones, time reports days between start and end, not actually planned days (so if one has a task week 1 and 2nd task week 50, it shows 50 weeks) but also in terms of accountability: no clear definition of the _goal_ of the scheduled time, nor of the outcome.

Does it mean CIG's development is going nowhere? Nope. It just means that, like many things CIG deliver, the progress tracker is both insane (who else goes in that much depth about scheduled work??) and unfinished.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 12 Feb 2023 18:15

This is my CIG appreciation post
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ation_post

Image

It took me a moment to figure out what it is saying lol.

I am posting it in the SC thread and not in the lol thread because it's saying something profound about the game that I'll elaborate on in the (many) sections of my essay.

AxitotlWithAttitude wrote:Play elite dangerous if your looking for space trucking, it's probably the best system it does besides mining.


I knew Elite Dangerous is space trucking when I saw Beakman play it a lot with his mexican friends. That's on top of the fact I played the original Elite back in the '80s for a little bit, and hated it. So I kinda knew what the new game would be about when I heard it announced. That's why I haven't bothered to try it so far, even though it did look good in screens way back when (nowhere near as good as SC of course).

More from the comments:

AussieCracker wrote:They're progressively going to introduce Cargo Freighters that hold Tens of Thousands SCU, which will introduce 'Escort' requirements eventually.


Dangerous-Wall-2672 wrote:Just wait until physicalized armor becomes a thing (though I've been saying this for years now, still waiting...). People are gonna be losing their shit when a stray shot from an Aurora pierces their cabin and gets them through the head, although they spent beaucoup bucks for a high-end fighter thinking $$=win


Sattorin wrote:There was a patch or two back in the day where this could actually happen... players would bleed out sitting in the pilot's seat.


Naqaj_ wrote:When I started playing around 3.12, the splash damage from C-788s could kill pilots in their seats ... which could turn a hostile NPC ship neutral ... which gave you CS for firing at a neutral target :)


Mr_StephenB wrote:I remember that! It would happen in Arena Commander as well if I remember correctly.

That and the Canopy bug where your canopy would open randomly, and you'd be hit by a ballistic round directly was pretty hilarious.


Cheeseball4life wrote:I'm fully in favor of red pill. I want my damn star wars GTA!
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 12 Feb 2023 18:26

More SC and ED comparisons: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... &context=3

ProcyonV wrote:Not talking about Eve, started to play it for two hours and didn't manage to find it appealling, more than 350h in Elite, and seriously, except killing pirates, mining and doing some cargo runs and a few exploration, what's more to do ?

Anecdotic alien encounters, brainless exploration, fedex missions to raise rep to gain a few ressources for engineers, with a hint of multiplayer events fights in ships ?

SC is far superior in term of sandboxing, even as an alpha.

Do any player in Elite invented games using physics, like Picoball, or snowboarding ? Did racing become a thing, with entire servers dedicated to international events ? Can you play chess ingame ?

Want to compare CitizenCon and Frontier Expo, for the lolz ?
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 27 Feb 2023 01:10

Image

icycalm wrote:Just look at this seat. There's more cool detail put into it than in entire other games. In fact, even in reality there's not a cooler seat than this.


Still wondering why people spend real money on these vehicles? Wait for my full essay on the subject (which will be part of VGART STAR CITIZEN).
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 08 Mar 2023 17:12

Tomorrow is such a great day for the game. For gaming in general! Not only we’re getting a new update, but we’re also getting an ISC episode of a brand-new game mechanic, plus of course the 3.18 trailer—and these trailers are always a work of art in their own right. Plus I am buying two ships (upgrading to them at any rate): Vulture and Antares.

All this fun before I’ve even launched the game lmao. It’s gonna be a great year, and I have so much content to share about this game, I am holding lots of it back just because I don’t want it to swamp my other projects and sideline them.
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PC Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 | Lasting Legacies

Unread postby icycalm » 11 Mar 2023 02:33

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 | Lasting Legacies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cco7eiNJZQ

Image

Not a big fan of this trailer. In hindsight though, it was inevitable. There's so much new content, and the chunks of it are so varied in nature, that I don't think anyone could have weaved a cool narrative that included everything, and lasted only a couple of minutes. The trailer at any rate drives the point home that this is a humongous upgrade to the game.

Check out the new page advertising the main features: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm ... g-Legacies

Cloud Imperium Games wrote:Explore the Biggest Star Citizen Update Yet!
03/10/2023 - 11:45 PM

Alpha 3.18 throws open the door to the next stage of Star Citizen’s groundbreaking universe. Alongside adding immersive careers, stunning locations, and thrilling gameplay, the latest patch holds the key to true in-game persistence – one of the biggest hurdles in the pursuit of a living universe that evolves alongside its inhabitants.

Play now to discover everything Alpha 3.18 brings to the 'verse. And remember, this is just the beginning; there’s much, much more on the horizon.


For anyone interested in getting into the game, this update is a fantastic entry point. For one thing, we just got a wipe and might not be getting another one until 4.0, which should be at least a year away. So it gives you plenty of time to pretty much finish everything in Stanton before Pyro comes online with a brand-new set of missions and content. When Pyro hits, and everything wipes, we're moving over there, and the trip back and forth will be long. So you might as well finish all the Stanton content this year (we're talking 800 or so missions, last I heard). The 3.19 patch expected in late spring/early summer will add still more content, but likely no wipe, so you can just keep building your fleet, rep, and credits all through the summer and beyond.

That said, I wouldn't RUSH to play TODAY, because the servers are melting, and serious bugs remain. You can play if you wish, but the longer you wait, the smoother experience you'll have. They're planning a Free Fly event (where prospective players can play for a few days without buying the game) towards the end of the month, once they've ironed out the main remaining bugs, and that'd be a great time to jump in. That said, I'll probably play over the weekend. Right now I am sorting out my vehicle upgrades/purchases... It's quite complex, and there are so many cool new paints too... I'll be posting details in other threads over the next few days.

So I'll see you all in the verse throughout the weekend. Can't wait to experience everything, and above all the crazy persistence. In Rust and co., if you drop something on the ground, it's gone in MINUTES. In SC it now persists FOR WEEKS, and that's just FOR STARTERS. They're aiming for MONTHS down the line. People are already doing insane things with this level of persistence, and we shall too, soon.
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