I wrote this over at SABeer4TheBeerGod posted:
You start off with some stuff. Supposedly. In reality the players would take a shitty little Aurora, fly directly to the crash site, grab the box while shooting some NPCs scavengers or animals or whatever, and GTFO the second something with any kind of firepower showed up. Or a group gets a bunch of players to get the same mission, and they all run in and grab their individual boxes while the rest hang outside and murder whatever scripted opponent shows up the millisecond it spawns.
"Reality" in this case actually meaning never because that requires CIG to develop shit that isn't O-Face Over IP or whatever bullshit Chris Roberts gets a hard on for next time.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that it won't work. Like ever.
Especially since it's a multiplayer environment.
This is why multiplayer "quests" are usually designed for solo and grouping play in order to ensure that they don't break.
This "quest mission" was just a showcase. Nothing else. And I have no reason to believe that it will ever appear in the game as depicted. Let me illustrate what they're going to be faced with.
- You need a rail gun to take down that ship. Without it, script breaks, mission fails
- You need a vehicle (Nox, Rover etc) to get to the crash site. Without it, script breaks, mission fails
- You need an aircraft to take on the opposition (NPC | players). Without it, script breaks, mission fails
Fuck it, I had n-1 computations, and just decided to fucking stop typing because it's pointless to even bother illustrating all the ways it will break and simply won't work
This is not those "take on pirates" or "flip a switch" missions in the PU which are purely for solo play.
If this mission was even for SQ42, that implies NPC will be doing those roles, the player will be directed to meet Miles, get a rail gun, find a vehicle, go get the box etc. And the Idris will be AI controlled as well.
:lol: If any of this shit is ever getting done, when they can't even get NPC pathfinding to work right.
Notice how, for 3.0, they didn't even bother playing ANY mission which would be designed for and released in that build.
n+ 1 = Other players fucking with your mission.
Going to land me a ship on their Rover, or get inbetween their guass missile shot to trigger the AI security to fuck them up.
Yup, pretty much. I had all of those running through my brain. As I mention on Discord during the stream, I've written game scripts for over 30 years, and I know precisely how they break, what can/cannot break them etc.
Heck, right now, if you have
Universal Combat CE 3.0 on Steam, you can
download the free scripting tools (which includes sources for ALL the game scripts) I released a few months back, and script everything you saw in the Star Citizen GC2017 presentation. Without the fps inside station "fidelity" bullshit of course.
Here's what you can script with UCCE 3.0. I was actually going to do this, then play it on a live stream. But I decided that it may be regarded as poor taste, me promoting my games etc.
[scenario]
01) Start game with 3 NPC companions (marines, commanders, crew etc) at a planetary base on Earth
02) Rendezvous with a scripted NPC
mission giver (e.g. Karl Reines) at the base
03) Being within range of NPC, triggers the dialogue and gives the mission, description etc
04) Go outside to a supply platform and get a
rocket launcher05) Still outside, get a
ground vehicle, either a scripted one specific to the mission, or any of those already at the base. Your NPC companions who follow you everywhere WILL enter the vehicle with you - no prompting (though they do receive AI orders from player) required
06) Drive to location of mission and retrieve a scripted
cargo box07) When you reach a certain location, hostile aircraft (
gunships or
fighters) will engage the vehicle
08) Exit vehicle (as will your NPC companions)
09) Collect box using vehicle. Yes, that's actually a thing and there is UI for it. Box is transferred to to cargo of vehicle
10) A scripted capital ship (
carrier,
cruiser, or
transport) is triggered to appear and land (yes, it's an actual script command)
11) Drive to the capital ship while evading airborne hostile AI ships. As the driver in a single player game, you will have to stop, exit vehicle, engage with rocket launcher if you want to avoid getting killed en-route. NPC team will also do the same!
12) Reach capital ship, enter (this will also give you command if you want) - as will NPC team.
13) Fly capital ship, fly to altitude, reach Escape Velocity, enter space. Plot jump course to delivery location at a planetary base on Mars
14) Emerging from hyperspace jump within Mars orbit, activates scripted hostile ships
15) Defeat hostile cap ships
16) Either A) fly cap ship to the Mars base, land and delivery cargo or B) use the cap ship's transporter to beam you, your team, and cargo to the location below
When the script detects the cargo pod within proximity of the destination location - scenario ends. You
WIN.
Without having to download the full GBS package above, here are the
docs and
command reference to give an idea of how ALL of the above can be scripted. Here is what a sample complex mission looks like. This guy even
did a TC using the scripting tools.
And - right now - there are various scripts in both UCCE 2.0 and 3.0, as well as AAW, which use and show ALL of the above.
Also, you can do pretty much everything you see in the demo in LoD; complete with fps inside a station (space or planet), vehicles on a planet etc. Except that LoD is pure PvP and has no scripting components, due to it using a completely different (a far less advanced) engine from my BC/UC games. Also, there is no cap ship combat like in BC/UC.
And if you want to see highly advanced NPC fps AI, then go play
All Aspect Warfare, which is purely fps, vehicle, and aircraft action. And that engine was built off the core BC/UC engines.
And UCCE is from 2004. While UCCE 2.0 is from 2009. And hopefully UCCE 3.0 will be completed by end of 2018, as 95% of the work is in redoing over 1000+ assets used in the game.
And a six year project which has raised over $157M, worked on by over 500 people (past and present), can't complete a simple quest script, let alone build a custom engine that fucking works. :argh:
There is nothing innovative or unique about Star Citizen. Those Shitizens are fucking dreaming themselves into a nightmare where there's a hole in their wallets.
This Star Citizen bullshit, is why I decided to even do this UCCE 3.0, which is getting a major graphics overhaul, without changing anything else about the robust underlying engine tech.
ps: There are some videos on our
YT channel
