https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/864185416232177664Well, they've given croberts more of the worst news ever. He can't have "seamless" space<->planet transitions because the engine can't do it. I had reported before that 3.0 (which now has moons, not planets) was just another level (like the current ones) in which they place the moon object in the scene like a station.
Who remembers this? FF to 12:48
10 for the Chairman: Episode 70,
Nov 16, 2015We don’t have planetary landing we have landings on various space stations then we have three main space stations and six or seven communication satellites scattered around the Crusade gas giant. We’re not going to have the planetary landings this year. It will be next year. It will definitely be like the CitizenCon we saw in 2014 but probably much better.
This is what he was saying it would better than.
Star Citizen CitizenCon 2014 Persistent Universe Demo,
Oct 13, 2014And this the R&D tech demo from CitizenCon 2016
Star Citizen: Procedural Planets v2,
Oct 11, 2016Chris Roberts Reddit AMA,
Nov 1st, 2012"You wont be able to seamlessly land on a planet from free flight (but we will have a nice in engine cinematic that feels fairly seamless).
Planets are really your "save" points and where you go to trade, upgrade your ship and get missions / hear gossip of profitable trade runs or pirating opportunities"
Word is they still can't do seamless anything.
What is this "seamless transition" nonsense anyway?
- start off in your wan...erm, space pod
- requisition your space chariot
- enter space chariot
- plot a course for the moon|planet you see in the map
- jump/fly to spherical object representing the moon|planet
- fly ahead as you enter the sphere, you breach the atmosphere and enter the moon|planet. no cut scene
- land space chariot, exit. do stuff
- to leave, enter space chariot, go vertical, reach escape velocity, breach atmosphere, end up in space
To see this in action:
- watch any movie from ED; though they only have some moons and planetoids which you can land on
- watch any movie from Battlespace Infinity (it took them forever to get it done right btw)
- watch any movie from Universal Combat. Though I cheat (to cut down on the transition time) somewhat by using an external camera transition when the moon|planet gravity grabs the ship
To have a truly seamless transition, you need a scene manager that is capable of handling not just the objects (planets, moons, stations, players, asteroid fields etc) in the space but also stuff inside them. In the case of stations, those are the internal hand-crafted levels; which is how you can land your chariot at a station, then enter it in fps.
Even though they've been touting "procedural planets" since last year, and then changed it to moons for 3.0, they are only apparently able to add moon/asteroid objects in the scene like they do stations. This will allow you to land on them like you would a station.
Apparently what you saw at CitizenCon 2016, even though they've come out and said it was R&D anyway, isn't actually working for a production client/server build. That's why they switched to moons since they are smaller, mostly rock, don't need that much detail to look interesting etc. Basically, they're doing what ED, LoD, COD:IW, ME:A et al are doing. Except that ED doesn't yet have space legs. And even they are having problems ranging from collision detect (you can fall right through the world) issues, popping, bland assets - and nothing to do. Yet, they are saying all of this is coming in mid July. Why it's not surprising that they've starting cutting stuff from 3.0 and deferring it. Which is not an issue in itself, since that happens all the time. The issue is that, once again, it's mid-2017 by the time 3.0 comes out, and sources are saying it's not going to be much progress; and certainly not what backers are thinking is coming.
I
wrote this missive back in Feb this year, about ALL THE PROCEDURAL PLANETS PROMISES TO DATE
ps: Line Of Defense does not have seamless space<->planetary transitions because 1) the bases on the planets are all handcrafted 2) they needed to be separate so that our networking tech can better handle "per scene" updates, and thus be able to handle a large number of players. Mass Effect: Adromeda also does it this way.
Remember this nonsense?
Chris Roberts on Star Citizen's Procedural Planets, Alpha 3.0, & CitizenCon, September 24, 2016
Chris Roberts on Character Tech, Weather System, & Engine Architecture, September 24, 2016
Roberts: Star Citizen Is Now ‘Best Damn Everything Simulation, Sep 27, 2016
***UPDATE - [05-16-17]***I am getting questions about the difference between seamless and non-seamless. So let me try and explain my thoughts from a layman's perspective.
SEAMLESS TRANSITIONThe planet sphere has its own ecosystem, with weather, skies, atmosphere etc. You can see it from space, and when you fly into it, you smoothly go from space to planet, and there is no cut-scene or interruption.
When you are on the surface, depending on where you are, and based on the engine (performance issues, culling etc), you should be able to see objects (e.g. station, moon, planets) in space from the planet.
This is how the upcoming Battlescape Infinity does it.
Evochron, another old game also did something similar.
My Universal Combat games also have it seamless but they use an external camera transition during the switch from space to planet and vice versa. Similar to the jump sequence, I added the camera to cut down on the time it takes to go from space to the planet surface. You can see the craft and planet in the view as it flies (with entry burn visual effects) toward the planet (all the moons and planets are procedural generated). In the game, you can select exactly where you want to enter the planet. But if you don't have an entry point selected in the Tacops computer, the engine picks one based on your direction of entry to the planet sphere. You can see it in
which shows this. FF to 15:00. The only entities that are rendered in the night sky when you are on the planet, are the stars (using real time world position data btw). The engine doesn't render anything else for performance reasons.
The GALCOM Echo Squad game does it the same way because it uses the same game engine.
NON-SEAMLESS TRANSITIONLine Of Defense uses a standard loading screen (with a progress bar) after you select one of the planet bases via the jump gate map. It works the same way if you jump from a station in space to the planet using an HAIS flight suit. The engine doesn't render anything in space as seen from the planet surface. The
sky, day & night transitions, atmosphere, weather etc are all powered by our custom (we use it to render
the actual moons in a separate context as seen in the sky) version of Silverlining middleware. The
water is powered by our custom version of Triton middleware. Basically, each of the 4 planetary bases, 4 space scenes are all hand-crafted in our editor in exactly the same way that we handle the 4 stations and 1 carrier. They are all individual levels, linked by jump gates and such to make it look like
one large cohesive game world. Sure we could put all 13 scenes in one big scene because we don't have that whole "64-Bit problem", but that would not only impact performance, but will also be too big a world for the number of players we're targeting. It would also not allow us to control the scene population which
our networking tech was designed to help us have control over.
Mass Effect Andromeda uses a cut-scene with a very long loading time, after which you are over the base that the mission calls for.
COD:IW does it the same way as the above I believe.
STAR CITIZENBack in 2012, Chris was going to do it the same standard way as LOD, ME:A, COD:IW etc because that's how the CryEngine, and most engines, were designed to handle such scenes. Like Battlescape, Evochron, Universal Combat, we were able to do seamless because 1) we have procedural worlds 2) we have
custom engines designed from the ground up for that.
This is what
he said back in Nov 2012 after they had raised a little over $2m.
You wont be able to seamlessly land on a planet from free flight (but we will have a nice in engine cinematic that feels fairly seamless). Planets are really your "save" points and where you go to trade, upgrade your ship and get missions / hear gossip of profitable trade runs or pirating opportunities
The
$41m stretch goal which they reached around Mar 31st, 2014, was the first time that procedural planet generation was mentioned. From the chairman's letter he states:
I’m incredibly happy to hit this goal as it green-lights a very important research project aimed at **improving Star Citizen’s long term future**. With this funding, we’ll be **looking into procedural generation** to help build the universe out in a greater detail and scope **in ways we didn’t think possible when we started developing the game**! We will have some exciting **announcements to make down the line** involving some of the talent we’ve been talking to about helping us with procedural system and planet building.
Procedural Generation R&D Team – This stretch goal will allocate funding for Cloud Imperium to develop procedural generation technology for future iterations of Star Citizen. Advanced procedural generation will be necessary for creating entire planets worth of exploration and development content. A special strike team of procedural generation-oriented developers will be assembled to make this technology a reality.
From the CitizenCon 2016 presentation, they had an R&D showcase which backers were led to believe is what was actually coming in the game client. That set the stage for backer anticipation for 3.0 because it seemed to represent a
major milestone in the project. We come to later find out that it was R&D and not indicative of the game client. That 2016 presentation showed what appears to be a seamless space to planet transition, though most people later noticed the glitch (not just in the sandworm) in the scripted sequence
Months later, they went from planet to moons instead for 3.0. We still don't know why, but the speculation is that moons are barren and easier to populate than entire planetary masses. And also they can be constructed like standard objects in a level - with no atmosphere and such - negating the need for any of that seamless nonsense which they can't get working anyway.
The interesting part is that why didn't they just use the tech shown from CitizenCon if that was actual production quality client code and not something they slapped together like they always do? They did the same thing with many previous presentations such as Star Marine, Nyx, Pupil to Planet etc. And each time, they raised money because most backers are gullible in believing that stuff done in a game engine editor sort of
just works in the game client. Hint: It doesn't.
In a game engine editor, you can build a base as a level and make it look like a moon or asteroid (e.g. remember Nyx?). In the game world, it would be like any other object except that it looks different. This is how the other bases in the PU currently are created and put in the game world in the editor. So if they built a moon, put a base on it, then positioned it in the game world, it would be the
same as any other base already in the game world. That means you can fly to and from it -
seamlessly - without the need for cut-scenes. You could also land in fps and do the same things you currently can in the other bases.
Even so...
Will it have its own ecosystem, weather patterns, day & night transition, atmosphere etc? Maybe not because moons tend not to have that, as they are usually barren rock or pure gas.
Will they fake atmosphere with a skybox which is only shown when you are on the moon, or leave it open like they do when you are on the platform at one of the current bases? Elite Dangerous leaves it open. Both ME:A and LOD have their own atmosphere because the bases are their own individual scene levels.
Going into GamesCon and CitizenCon 2016, Chris was saying all kinds of things, most of them just complete and utter bullshit - and lies. Mostly lies. For example:
Procedural Generation (“Planets V2”) “An artist can crank out five or six moons in a week for you,” Roberts told us, emphasizing that “once you've got your building blocks, somethings will be quicker. There isn't going to be a matter where we hit a magic number and, 'boof,' here comes a planet.”
Yet somehow, after promising over 100 systems, all containing God only knows how many moons and planets, as 3.0 approaches, and having changed from planets to moons (or planetoids), and moved 1 of them from 3.0 into 3.1, they are only coming out with
2 moons.
This is what was promised back in 2014 after passing $41 million in Mar that year.
Star Citizen’s Procedural Generation Explored"We are going to use it as a tool for universe building. I know a lot of people think Star Citizen is purely hand-crafted and that something like Elite or No Man's Sky is all procedural, but the reality is that all of these games have a mix of hand-crafted and procedural stuff in them."
CIG has been promoting procedural world generation since they reached $41m over two years ago. Then in late 2016 they started promoting procedural generated planets in 3.0. They are now going to be delivering moons instead, but nobody knows how they are going to do it, and if they are seamless or not. If the moons are the bases of future tech which would see the promised planets then until they do it, I think speculation is going to be going on for months to come.
If they are using hand-crafted moons which are not procedural generated, but are just hand-crafted levels (like the existing stations in the game world) with procedural techniques used for generating terrain data and such, does that make much of a difference? I don't think so because as long as there is no cut-scene, I don't think that it makes any difference to gameplay. But that would depend on backer expectations.
In the long term, I personally can't think of any explanation that they would have for making planets like moons without doing it one of two ways:
- seamless space<->planet transition in which the planets are their own bodies
This is what they were showcasing at CitizenCon 2016 as R&D in a constrained and controlled environment. And this is the tech that sources say they are still struggling with, they can't make it work in a multiplayer client, and that was the basis to go with moons instead for 3.0.
- cut-scene loading transition
They already have quantum travel visual FX. So they could do it the same way that LOD, ME:A and COD:IW do it. Which makes it "just another level" that's just an entity trigger in the larger PU world.
None of this matters. At the end of the day, the real issue is what do backers who funded a $1m stretch goal for "R&D" in this area, think of the end result? Will they be happy with bases on moon objects? Will they patiently wait for real planets to show up some time down the road? Will they continue to fund the project until CIG gets around to solving the problem?
Right now, sources are saying that they still don't have the tech, they are still deep in Star Engine -> LumberYard transition, that 3.0 is still a pipe dream with more cuts (thus making it a lot like 2.7, than the ground-breaking 3.0 they've been promoting) to come. In about two months, we'll see.
***UPDATE - [05-17-17]***For those who
DON'T know the difference...
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/864667015977553928Example:
SEAMLESS WORLDAll
my games which use the same engine (improved over time and across various iterations) have a seamless world. This means that there are no individual scenes (aka levels) to load. The entire game is one cohesive, data driven, procedural world.
It is also important to note that this engine has several explicit renderers for space and planets. The only games which have a completely different, non-procedural planetary terrain engine, are All Aspect Warfare and Angle Of Attack games. And they have no space combat component.
NON-SEAMLESS WORLDLine Of Defense is our only game with a completely new custom engine which has individual scenes (4 space, 4 planets, 4 stations, 1 carrier).
STAR CITIZENAll the modules (
Star Marine,
Hangar,
Arena Commander,
Planetside) are all non-seamless because they are individual levels which are loaded on-demand. In 2.6 patch update, for Star Marine, they introduced something called a "
mega map" to reduce the level loading timers. It isn't what it sounds like because it's not a contiguous map generated by stitching several together. Well, read this for yourself:
“We load the Mega Map as we would a standard map. The Mega Map itself is empty, but once the Mega Map is loaded, we actually start to fill the Mega Map with content of various game modes, fire, and object containers. So, we would load the Mega Map, which is empty; load the front end, which is a set of object containers; [and] load the front-end game rules, which tells the game how to work in that game mode. The user would then pick a new game mode to play. At that point we throw away all the object containers. We throw away the game mode, [then] load in the Free Fly game mode and the Dying Star object containers, but we do that via streaming rather than a complete level load, so we are able to shave the vast majority of the load time down to a few seconds rather than long enough to warrant a load screen.”
The PU
appears to have a single contiguous seamless world. What is still not clear is whether or not it is one contiguous scene, or if they "stitched" together several pieces and "demand load" pieces as you get close to a border. I
wrote about this in Oct 2016.
***UPDATE - [05-18-17]***Added time-lapse video from Elite Dangerous showing seamless travel from a moon to a planetoid
Also Infinity Battlescape
**FIXED BROKEN FORUM LINKS**
