Following statements by Ben Parry regarding the engine switch, I added an UPDATE section to the
Irreconcilable Differences blog. It's in the middle, just before THE FUD SQUAD section. It is also pasted below.
Shortly after this blog went live, the link (start
here) was posted on the Frontier Dev (makers of competing game,
Elite Dangerous) forum where
Ben Parry, a low-level Star Citizen visual effects programmer who used to work for Frontier, but now works for Foundry 42 (one of the CIG/RSI subsidiary companies in the UK), frequently posts. Taken to task over various inconsistencies in the CIG/RSI explanation for the Star Engine to Lumberyard switch, his
eventual meltdown (all captured to static images, seeing as they are likely to disappear) is an eye-opener, and further evidence as to just how messed up this whole project is now.
Basically, they can’t explain how it is possible for them to have merged a
50% modified derivative CE3.x (Star Engine) with a
heavily modified derivative CE3.x (Lumberyard) in
two days – and without losing any prior work. So he created a graphic to illustrate what he believes took place.
For the programmers reading this, yes, a programmer is claiming that what Chris Roberts wrote, is what happened. Then said programmer comes up with an illustration that proves otherwise. It needs no explanation, seeing as it clearly proves that they didn’t do any core Lumberyard integration – and especially not in two days. So basically, the claim to be using Lumberyard is currently restricted to basically the swap from Google Compute to Amazon EC2 (as abstracted in Lumberyard), as well as adding the required Lumberyard logo due to them using the Lumberyard implementation of EC2.
Further along the discussion, he finally admitted it.
Basically not only proving me right, but also – once again – proving that Chris Roberts is either a liar, or clueless as to what is actually going on with his project.
Ben also had
this to say about
Sean Tracy, the Technical Director for the project when someone pointed out that Ben is claiming that even Sean had no clue what CE3.x version they were actually using in Star Engine.
“Sean’s an artist, he doesn’t have much incentive to care about exact version numbers. Despite this, he’s basically right that it’s a branch of 3.7-3.8-ish, and he’s talking openly about it.”
Ben was last seen updating his resume.
Though that still will not account for the 50% modification to the engine they claimed to have done
It does account for it. It means they changed nothing to their custom code to accommodate any merge, and thus got nothing from the proper Lumberyard code.
They have their 50% customization or whatever they claim (provided that is true, which who knows?). And they are still "behind" the 3.8 point that LY forker from. Exactly as much "behind" it as they were before.
Seriously, that graph shows a gross misunderstanding of how git works.
Nope. It shows that the SC branch remained as it were. They are not at the head of LY, lmao (and they are probably laughing their butts off too at that).
Parry explained it more on the frontier forums, and then some other guy also offered his understanding of it and Parry seems to have agreed.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/259596-The-Star-Citizen-Thread-v5?p=4943960&viewfull=1#post4943960
Basically, second image shows the trunk red (but it's the same trunk as the first image) because it is now let's say labeled as LumberYard code, even though it is identical to the CryEngine "trunk" up to the point that LY forks off (3.8.x). (Ben or some other guy call it "LumberYard legacy code" up to the point of the fork off CE 3.8, where LumberYard proper begins). SC remains forked off the previous point (3.7) as it was originally.
No actual merge has occurred.
But they are now in "LumberYard" because Amazon has a license that gives them access to the CryEngine source code "history versions" before 3.8 (3.8 being the point where they forked off from and did their own thing); so basically SC can now say its a fork off LumberYard "legacy code" (ie Cryengine 3.7 as it always were) or has switched to LumberYard (marketing speak mainly).
After all is said and done, this was Ben’s stance on such an engine switch, back in Sept 2015. This was also
pointed out to him in the discussion thread.
