Star Citizen Lies, Ramblings, Jpegs, and Bullshit

[dsmart]

Erin Roberts latest interview during a studio tour, inspired me to create this new section so that these don't get buried

Mar 12, 2018. Interview with BoredGamer

Goon transcriber, SomethingJones, has a transcript of the amazing parts of this word salad.


@ 06:37

Q: Improvements to persistance as well?

Erin Roberts:
Em... to... to... em... persistence and stuff yes there's a lot of improvements to persistence, there's improvements to ECONOMY, so we make it so, you know... you know... so... you know... it... it's gonna be, you know... uhm... the, you know... no... eeehhh CARRYING CARGO to make it on your map and stuff, how that works is gonna be different in terms of what you do and how you're doing things like that.

So THAT sort of level of stuff will come in, and then obviously the next BIG iteration for all that kind of stuff will be 3.2... um... where we're gonna add a BUNCH of new FEATURES such as mining, um... and SALVAGING and stuff like that.

So people can go and MINE and make money that way, um, SALVAGE and um... things like that.


Q:
So you've chosen to not have a presentation at Gamescom this year, can you tell me more about that decision?

Erin Roberts:
Eh, well ah... the MAIN reason was uh, was... it was actually uh... that was more ME than anybody else, because every year at Gamescom, even though it's really COOL and we love doing it and the big th...

I mean look, ah... we... we... LOOK, to start with we WILL be at Gamescom, we're gonna be, I mean... I will actually be there and some other people and so forth, em, so we do our sort of like our um... COMMUNITY EVENTS so we'll have like big ARTS and stuff and like MEETINGS and there will be some extra (unintelligible) there

What we're NOT doing is the big presentation and the main reason for that is it's a HUGE uhm... DEV DRAIN... which, ah.. because THIS year we're really trying to get this CADENCE of delivering constant um... ah... eh... you know... STUFF to the community, we want to basically make sure that we have, uhm...

Uh, we... we... you know... we're delivering, um, you know... like I said... you know... you know... you know... EVERY QUARTER plus you know, any other PATCHES we're doing between SO FORTH, the... you know, having to DEAL WITH both a CITCON and a GAMESCOM is a HUGE ISSUE because it takes you OFF what you're trying to do, the CADENCE of what you're doing of trying to deliver this kind of STUFF and then you've to go, 'OK what's the DEMO we're gonna do' and all this kind of STUFF

And it... it's the SAME PEOPLE who are trying to actually get the STUFF... all these FEATURES out to the community who are also putting these PRESENTATIONS together to show where the TECH's going and so forth, so...

The decision was made well, you know, um... you know... based on... THANKFULLY for me because I was really pushing for it was that, 'OK well we WON'T do Gamescom this year', ah... and so that really allows us to concentrate on THIS stuff and also it means we can really concentrate on a new format for Citizencon which is, which... which we did last year, um...

We really enjoyed and we think the community did as well and we can actually get a lot more of our people over and we can have a lot of oh... chom-pu-ooa... THIS YEAR... we're... we're doing it in AUSTIN THIS YEAR um... ehm... you know the DATES will soon be, uhm, going out to people and SO FORTH AND THINGS but...

The plan is to... uhm... we're gonna go BIGGER, we're gonna basically have... have a lot of uhm... ah... MORE, you know... PEOPLE involved... in terms of doing TALKS and stuff like that, you know at that kinda LEVEL... and obviously you know, and of course there'll always be a KEYNOTE from CHRIS and all that kind of stuff.
[/quote]


@ 10:05

Q:
Is there going to be something this year, potentially, that makes me SIT DOWN with other people that don't know about the Star Citizen project and go, 'Let's play this for a long period of time', what are these gameplay hooks going to be, is it going to be something that we can do this year? Or is it something that someone outside the project might want to do later?

Erin Roberts:
I guess it depends what you want to be, I mean I'm sure that a lot of the guys that are with us now enjoy building it and playing it as it goes along and so forth... so, ehm, you know... I think, ehrm, you know... uhr... for me, 3.1 is about, you know, a lot of um... a lot of POLISH, em, you know, OPTIMISATION and work and stuff and that'll go on through the year and so forth

With 3.2, which will be JUNE, uhm, then... uhm... so outside of CARGO which obviously we'll put work into that and POLISHING for 3.1, you'll then, you know, other people can start, you know, start using some of the SHIPS they have, like, you know, uhm... you know... where they can actually go and... and MINE, or they can use, they can go RECLAIM goods so those mechanics will come in

So I think if... I think with the JUNE, you know the JUNE UPDATE which will also have some other stuff in there, that'll get a lot more gameplay mechanics in...

3.2 is JUNE. And basically... and THAT is gonna introduce a bunch of game mechanics which I think will make those whole... the... the AREA of CRUSADER, you know... the AREA... that we're IN... CRUSADER, is basically gonna be a lot more fun, lots more stuff going on.

The big JUMP for us is going to come with OBJECT CONTAINER STREAMING. That at the moment is due to come online, ah, you know, in SEPTEMBER in 3.3.

What that gives us is the ability to create the WHOLE SYSTEM. And once you have one system, you know like pretty much, you know... it's not just, you know, like, you know... THREE MOONS AND A GAS GIANT sort of thing and a space station, when you've actually got the PLANETS.


@ 15:40

Q:
Can you tell me more about the current target for players on the server by the end of the year?

Erin Roberts:
We are gonna be... ehm... we are gonna be... first off we wanna see how much one server can handle, so obviously we went from 24 to 50 now, we've improved the ability in... as we said now... as we optimise and cache our locations a little bit better, ah... ehrm... you know... for that... for that sort of STUFF... and also a lot of, uhm, WORK going on in the codebase to optimise that to make sure the, you know, there's...

Uhm... the... the... something like OBJECT CONTAINER STREAMING is great for CLIENT, for a SERVER... the SERVER has to know about EVERYTHING anyway. Now it doesn't need to... it doesn't... physically need to have, you know... it needs... it... it... there's some information it DOESN'T need, so it needs to know... but it needs to know EVERYTHING... where EVERYBODY is, it needs to know, you know, uhm... you know, you know... you know... some of the PHYSICS SITUATIONS for that but it doesn't need, it doesn't need to DRAW anything but it needs to understand that kind of stuff, the problem is you're doing the whole server for a LOT of people, it's doing a lot of CALCULATIONS and so forth

Well actually not a lot of calculations and actually when the servers aren't hitting these EDGE CASES they're actually pretty good shape, so we're seeing that we know that actually they can HANDLE IT, but there are some bugs... that's what I'm saying, in the next FEW WEEKS we really wanna... if we can, you know, if we can knock ONE OR TWO out of the park and fix those that'll be better for everybody, ehmmm... but...

...ehr... ehrm... you know in ter... in... sorry, uh, the QUESTION, going back to the...

Q:
What's your TARGET for number of players in a server by the end of the year? Blue skies thinking, I'm not going to hold you to it.

Erin Roberts:
We would LIKE to, I mean, you know, we're pushing hard, we want to get to about a HUNDRED people, ahm, you know if we can do that... uhrm... and then, um... and then of course when the SERVER MESHING comes online then they'll be DYNAMIC in terms of... of, you know, depend... it... it'll be... LOCATION SPECIFIC because you could have a server that is basically managing a ROOM, and if it's just basically an ARENA or just people wandering around in an FPS you could probably, the server could probably manage a lot more than 100.

But if the server's managing an area of space, when you've got SHIPS which are basically... got lots of moving parts, lots of stuff going on, maybe you have, maybe you can't handle so many.

So this is where we use the server POWER to say, 'uh, this is what this server will handle', and the server will handle anything from a SYSTEM down to a ROOM and... and so, you know... if we if all of a sudden, you know, your whole GUILD decides to trundle in, into... in to... to meet up in one PLACE then we can just say, 'OK, we better make one SERVER just handle that SITUATION', and then when you walk out of that place and it transfers to another server because that's the rate that... you know the... the WALKWAY outside, so...

That's the way it's going to work.

So I think we're going to have... when we say that we're trying to get the server meshing going, we'll have RUDIMENTS of it HOPEFULLY working by the end of the year, but the FULL thing working PROPERLY will not be until... until NEXT YEAR.

Q:
Is there a POTENTIAL that you will have thousands of players in a SHARD by the end of the year?

Erin Roberts:
Ummm... I...

...

I'm not... sure...

We'll see...


@ 30:56

Q:
Will this be more Squadron 42 based? Are you planning to provide any extra content updates after Squadron 42 Episode One is released or just patches and bugfixes?

Erin Roberts:
Yeah I mean at the MOMENT it's... I mean the PLAN is... is... it's SQUADRON, and we HOPE we won't be patching it, a-haha! I mean really, SQUADRON for us is gonna be, eh... we REALLY wanna make sure... and that's not a big thing that's why I'm kind of... very... quiet about it and don't show it too much... until we you know... until we want you know to do different stuff and things but...

THAT'S the thing we wanna release, and when we release it we don't want to have, you know... I don't... well... WE WON'T RELEASE IT if... if we...

And the GREAT thing about the way we do this is, you know... we... we... when... and especially because we're LIVE and you know we can just... you know, you DOWNLOAD it... is we don't have you know... we don't have some problem where somebody says, 'Well you have to get to MANUFACTURING by this date, oh well we'll just finish this off and we'll patch it later'

So, you know, we want that FIRST experience when it comes out, we feel it's a good experience the first time it goes out and people will really BLOW THEIR MIND

But Squadron because obviously A, we think it's a massive great story and a brilliant game, and we wanna make sure we don't RUIN it, so...

So Squadron WILL come out when it's ready, so hopefully, on the PATCH side, you know, I... I mean you can't say... MAYBE there'll be one or two EDGE CASE PCs and we'll find some problem and fix it, there's a little patch for THAT... but hopefully... hopefully it should really work well.

Straight after that, the plan will be to go straight on to the second episode.

[dsmart]

In case anybody isn't taking the time to actually comprehend what Erin is talking about regarding the networking and server meshing, what he has outlined is a server per area, with a server hosting a room or an area or a portion of space. These will be instanced and 'walled off' (Erin's example about the walkway) so areas will be separated by a hard transition, like a doorway for example.

The instances will not be talking to each other despite the fantasies of backers, their server mesh is a bunch of hard instanced CryEngine maps and servers will spool up, load the exe, handshake and transfer data when you move from one to the next.

That's what Erin has just explained, that's your networking, that's what they are saying is targeted for next year. That's your MMO, hard server instances separated by 'walkways'.

Gee. Are they copying us now? That's EXACTLY how we partitioned the LOD world, with a separate server handling separate regions. Then we transparently move players from scene (server1) to scene (server2). Except that we DO have intercommunications between all clients - anywhere in the game world.





13 scenes. 13 server instances

[dsmart]

To be fair to the guy asking the questions - these were good questions and the first sign I've seen of of a SC content creator holding CIG's feet to the fire a bit. I appreciate the transcripts are a fucking riot, but you can in fact grasp what they're trying to do.

Erin's long pause when asked about a single shard with 1,000 players - well it depends what you mean by 'single shard', CIG have just moved the goalposts for 'server mesh' and finally admitted that areas will be instanced right down to an individual room in which they reckon they can push the player count to 100. Well in theory you can push the player count to whatever you want, that doesn't mean that it's going to remain playable or stable.

Now those instances can't talk to each other (except in a slow transactional way) because they are each an instance of a headless server exe on a server, they are each protected from each other by the OS. So when room A and room B are in separate exes, you can't see what's in the other room even if there's a window right there.

Chris's fantasy was that you could share player data in realtime between the instances, and in fact he went as far to say that you could translate bullets from one to the other. This is what he sold as the genesis of his Server Mesh idea.

Now Chris will tell you that's all still on the table, that's all long term stuff, but there are hard physical network limits that are so fundamental and well known that guys who work with this stuff know the numbers and the formulae off the top of their heads. Asp Explorer, the network guru on the FDev forum jokes about CIG needing to get the fibre reaching the rack of every Star Citizen client.

CIG's network guy in Manchester is talking about ping times and finding central geographical locations for servers to reduce latencies, Chris Roberts is talking about server instances communicating with each other and THEN updating hundreds of clients with updates on each of the other hundreds of clients at 30hz in fucking CryEngine, and a network bloke in a thread at the arse end of the Frontier forum is wiresharking the client and laughing his ass off at all of it.

Erin's answer to the networking questions is a dose of reality that will be impossible to grasp for pretty much all backers because it's embedded within a word salad and requires at least some level of actual working experience in the field.

The follow up question to the 'walkway' transition between instances would naturally be one of latency and of 'seeing' beyond the instance, but that would require anyone who is supportive of this project to have the slightest fucking clue about technology.

Erin is relying on the fast babbling of his words and the ignorance of his audience to keep them on board for another 6 months, he knows exactly what he's doing, make no mistake about that.

It's never going to work. Like at all.

For them to partition their world like that, they would have redo ALL their levels and content. Then each one would have to be loaded independently by the server. ON DEMAND. Like fucking 

In LOD, we use powerful servers (not cloud instances) running up to 4 instances. A "cluster" of 4 servers is partitioned like this to support up to 1024 clients (256 in each scene).

[CLUSTER1]

SERVER1 // planetary scenes

Heatwave
Nightbridge
Frostbite
Gulge

SERVER2 // space scenes

Lyrius
Lennen
Zilon
Sygan

SERVER3 // stations + carrier

Arkangel
Vanguard
Overwatch
Templar
Starguard

SERVER4

db for all 4 servers in the cluster

[CLUSTER2]

Replication of CLUSTER1 in order to have more clients

- A cluster talks to others via a proxy. See the chart I posted above.

- Scenes are connected via jump points (space & planetary scenes) or dynamic jump pads (stations/carrier & planetary scenes).

- A client moving from one scene (e.g. Vanguard station in space) to another (e.g. Heatwave base on the planet), would use a DJP. When the menu pops up and the client makes a target selection, the server they are on, talks to either the instance (if located on the same server) or the target server (e.g. a scene on a different server). If the handshake succeeds (server or instance is running, is not full etc), the target scene is loaded and the client is moved to it. Hence the loading screen while the target is being loaded on the CLIENT side. There is nothing to load on the SERVER side, as it's already loaded an running at server startup.

- Each scene/level allows only 256 clients. You can't connect to a target scene if it's full, unless a client drops (dying doesn't disconnect you) from the scene either by leaving the game or moving to another scene.

- Clients in SERVER1 cannot see, but they can communicate (chat) with, other clients, anywhere in the cluster. So clients on Vanguard are oblivious to any battle waging on Heatwave. They only know about it when they see the scores, conflict resolutions, chat messages etc.

That tech took almost 2 years and 3 people to develop. We haven't touched that bit of code since 2014. It just works.

[StanTheMan]

That's your MMO, hard server instances separated by 'walkways'.

This is absolutely fantastic. 

Next generation MMO to save PC gaming right there.   

Never mind all the other fantastic features and new technology CRoberts and Erin are doing for the paultry sum of $180mil.. 

It makes my heart sing..

[dsmart]

Hey, remember that $350 dinner at CIG we read about back in January? Well it was last night.

I know some people who went and I am waiting to hear more details. But basically, it took place at the company cafeteria. They served Whale soup as appetizers.

[Star Chip]

Found this comment, not sure is a mockery, a conspiracy, or just an exceptional idiot.

Just wait until Star Citizen comes out, it'll be everything ME:Andromeda wanted to be, only around 30 times better (and better than Elite Dangerous and EVE combined)! . Hundreds of hand crafted spaceships with their own gravity and airlock systems, each one customizable with hundreds of guns, missiles and electronics etc to choose from.

A lot of the ships also have a role, like exploration, science, mining, prospecting, building outposts, ambulances, police, criminal transport, fuel, cargo, command, fighters, bombers etc etc. There are multi crew ships where you and around 40 of your friends can all play on a capital ship and players can launch out in smaller player controlled fighters.

A hundred hand crafted star systems on release, with dozen of planets and moons which are all 100% explorable. These planets, moons and space stations will be inhabited by billions of NPC which each individually have their own AI subsumption algorithms so it seems like they have a life. They will get up in the morning, leave their apartment, go get breakfast, go to their job at air traffic control and when they finish work, they will go to bars, meets their NPC girlfriend and go for food, do shopping then go back home. You can chat and banter with them when you request a landing spot, you can judge their mood by how and what they say that day. You can even bump into them later in the bars and buy them a drink if you think they need cheering up, it possible to block them from going to work and they will act differently depending on their character traits and how they have been feeling lately, they may just yell for the cops, or attack you or even break down and start crying!. Later on you can even hire them to be an NPC member of your crew!

The planets have vast cities that put the city in Blade Runner to shame with hundreds of intractable stores, missions givers and other players. Outside the cities and on uninhabited plants there will by hundreds of alien life forms to discover and exploit. There are at least 2 (or 3?) sentient races which have had their own unique alphabet and language written for them by an expert in alien languages. These Alien races attitudes will very subtly change over time depending on how you and all the other players interact with them. It is possible they will form some sort of alliance with you or go to war with you. Their dialog on interactions will gradually change over time and my go from a friendly tone to a more hostile attitude, it's very very subtle to an untrained ear but the length of the word and pitch can be a clue as to how they feel about you.

Space battle will be beyond epic and set a new gaming standard that very few big Dev companies will be able to come close to over the next decade. Imagine you are in a capital ship with about 30 of your real life friends escorting a massive mining vessel crewed by some other friends being escorted by a handful of fighters ranging from single seat fighters to 5 man missile ships etc. Unknown to you an enemy guild have been secretly following you in some cloaked stealth ships trying to work out your destination. They might lose track of you but thanks to some long range scanning ships they pick up your scent just before you leave the system. They wait for you to jump and then a couple of stealth ships follow you through the wormhole thing to the planet you are going to mine. The mining ship lands and the crew get to work unloading ore processing equipment, vehicles etc. The smaller ships are scouting about the system looking for a good place to put an outpost and the capital ship is up in space above the mining ship just chilling out whilst the crew busy themselves with everyday duties like ship repairs, cooking, showering (more important than you think) etc.

Suddenly a large enemy military class torpedo ship warps in using a cloaked enemy scout as a warp-to-point. It launches 4 huge torps at the capital and while your crew is scrambling to combat stations and manning turrets etc the enemy turns around and warps out. Seconds later 30-40 enemy human player (a rival guild) ships warp in at various ranges. Thankfully they have no capitals but have some pretty big multi-turret ships and many fast attack craft. Your crew are just now launching a swarm of small fighter so create a defensive perimeter around the ship. You, the player, will be in charge of all of this, overseeing on a large 3D strategic map, commanding which wing of fighter should attack what target (the in-game comms is handled by new software and optional hardware, where a special cam on top of your monitor captures your facial movements and transfers them into your ingame characters face, so other players can see how angry, alarmed of chilled out you are) , telling the engineering team to divert most the engine power to shields on the starboard side, telling repair crews which parts of the ship are priority repairs and the torps burst into your cap ship and rip open a few level to the void! As the fight continues over the next 40 minutes and fighters retreat, dock, repair, change fatigued crew for fresh pilots the enemy manage to get a crew transport ship to the break in your hull, so now you have to command your chief security officer to get out of one of the turrets and form a security team to go and repel the invaders!

Your whole ship is now on lock down with all airlocks sealed unless voice comms confirms someone wanting to pass through an airlock is an actual crew member. You can evacuate the pressure out of certain parts of the ship to hinder the invading enemy team or put out fires. You run to your quarters realizing it's make or break time, you open your kit container and have to choose from a selection of light, medium, heavy types that you have collected over the last few weeks, then after that you choose which weapons are most suitable for the situation. Then you go out leaving the space battle to your second in command as you go full FPS Doom style fighting. Except get this, Star Citizen will have a better FPS fighting experience than anything else on the market right now and probably better than anything to come over the next decade or so.

All of the animation has been captured by Motion Capture techniques and then hand crafted into the game so that it does not look like a computer game but more like a blockbuster movie that you happen to be controlling! You will have blazing fire fights throught the corridors, mess halls, hangars etc of the ship constantly calling back to your second in command to help in using the ship itself to your benefit. Like you get to a main hangar and the enemy team are setting up a force shield wall with a heavy gun turret and are busy burning through an airlock to one of the armories. Just before you go in from a different airlock you get the pressure removed so you are acclimatized, then get the hanger bay door to swing open into space which sucks out some of the enemy into space, the you open your airlock and charge in with your mag-boots on and start moving between the ships, ship wrecks, cargo, ammo crates etc having the best gun fight you've ever had. All the while through the open bay doors you are watching the space battle play out with ships exploding and way down on the surface of the planet you can just make out the massive mining ship kicking up dust on the planet as they mine away oblivious to whats going on above them as space to ground comms is being jammed by a ship with that specific role!.

That'll just be one morning of gameplay in Star Citizen!

[dsmart]

just an exceptional idiot.

The first line gave it away. 

[jwh1701]

Hey, remember that $350 dinner at CIG we read about back in January? Well it was last night.

I know some people who went and I am waiting to hear more details. But basically, it took place at the company cafeteria. They served Whale soup as appetizers.

Beyond crazy to act like Buffet and fail to deliver over and over.

[krylite]

Q:
So you've chosen to not have a presentation at Gamescom this year, can you tell me more about that decision?

Erin Roberts:
Eh, well ah...

, can't even tell from the response whether or not there will be a SC presentation at gamescon this year. It must not be that easy anymore to keep floating show distractions like foip, intel deals, Dune sandworms, LOTR-yells from snowy mountaintops, ED cutter ripoff shiny trailer ads, etc. along with engine scripted trailers leaking emergency command line fixes on display every following year at these 'cons.

[dsmart]

They already said they weren't doing those shows anymore. Only CitizenCon and private $350 dinners.

[Backer42]

They already said they weren't doing those shows anymore. Only CitizenCon and private $350 dinners.

As usual for cults, they will continue to move their activities out of public view. Next thing will be secret rituals, from which only the initiated will even hear off, before it turns into full blown scientology.

[dsmart]

As usual for cults, they will continue to move their activities out of public view. Next thing will be secret rituals, from which only the initiated will even hear off, before it turns into full blown scientology.

You do know about the $350 private dinner from a few days ago, right?

[Backer42]

You do know about the $350 private dinner from a few days ago, right?

Yet we both know about it. I bet at some point there will be whole citizencon-like events nobody on the outside even knows about, where people are going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on. 

[dsmart]

Wow, how the mighty have fallen.

So with the advent of new GDPR rules, CIG is now bribing backers with 1500 in-game credits if they accept the newsletter as part of also accepting the new GDPR notice.

I'm not joking.

[dsmart]

Back in Aug 2015, shortly after I wrote The July Blog, Chris claimed they had a full universe economic simulation running on separate servers.

We now know that, as always, he lied. FF to @ 7:16

He repeated that same bs in an Oct 2016 interview to Gears magazine.

It’s now June 2018. And no such thing exists, in any way, shape or form in Star Citizen or SQ42