Star Citizen - The E.L.E.

[dsmart]

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/865707775728508928

[dsmart]

Spotted this post over at FDev

Well, in the case of FDEV for info actually, roughly this:

- Elite: Dangerous
- Elite: Dangeorus Horizons
- Elite: Dangerous ports to Xbox and PS4
- Planet Coaster and subsequent updates
- Allegedly having started work on Elite: Dangeorus season 3.0
- Allegedly having started work in a 3rd franchise

Some figures may be slightly off depending on your assumptions for $ to £ conversions etc:

Totals revenue FDEV since June 2013: $134 m
Totals revenue CIG (as per tracker) since June 2013: $139 m

FDEV sales in fiscal year June 2016 - May 2017 (pre audit): £36 m ($44.3 m) This fiscal year FDEV will be generating around 20% more than CIG in revenue.
CIG funding (as per tracker) from May 2016 - April 2017 (using May to April as proxy since May 2017 not quite finished yet): $35 m

FDEV sales in fiscal year June 2015 - May 2016: £21.3 m ($30.8 m)
CIG funding (as per tracker) from June 2015 - May 2016: $31.1 m

FDEV sales in fiscal year June 2014 - May 2015: £22.8 m ($35.4 m)
CIG funding (as per tracker) from June 2014 - May 2015: $39 m

FDEV sales in fiscal year June 2013 - May 2014: (including IPO which generated around $6 m): £15 m ($23.3 m)
CIG funding (as per tracker) from June 2013 - May 2014: $34 m

[Narrenbart]

My head is exploding ....

They are working on implement other parts of LY now? Are are they changing to LY? I mean ... LY Volumetric Fog is inherited from Cry 3.8 - SC Frankenengine is Cry 3.7 ...
If they are really trying to implement stuff from a different Cry Version, which also has been modified by Amazon into their framework they will open a fresh can of bugs.

I get headaches just trying to imagine all stuff that can and will go wrong when merging 2 different repositories that also have been modified by 3rd party into one repository ...

Didn't they learn anything from the Duke?

[Scruffpuff]

CIG is guilty of the same exact crime every other company is guilty of when it's run by a complete incompetent idiot - they concentrate on the things they CAN get done, and put off the impossible until project collapse.

Imagine a checklist of 100 items - 99 of them are doable, but the 100th is something like "hold your breath for 1 straight year".  You know the 100th item is impossible, so instead of tossing the entire agreement, you get busy with the other 99 items and you tout that as progress toward a complete product.

"Look, we're 10% done!  Now 35%!  Wow we're 90% done, almost there!"

Except you're not.  If one item on the list is impossible, then the net progress toward completion, no matter how many individual items you check off, is always 0%.

Chris is not a visionary who is "aiming high" and trying things "publishers are too scared to try" and things "nobody thought of."  He's a fucking moron who doesn't understand even the most fundamental concepts of gaming, and is trying to do the impossible because he's too goddamned stupid to know WHY these things haven't been done.  Hint:  it's not because "nobody thought of it" or "nobody was good enough."

Rule of Thumb:  If Chris Roberts has an idea, someone somewhere already had the same idea, but better.

So when CIG finally hits that wall, all this microprogress on ultimately inconsequential nonsense will add up to a boatload of nothing because there is no game.

[StanTheMan]

CIG is guilty of the same exact crime every other company is guilty of when it's run by a complete incompetent idiot - they concentrate on the things they CAN get done, and put off the impossible until project collapse.

That is an over reach - there are many ways that people leading companies can be incompetent but I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your post.

We can't read Chris Robert's mind but we can look at what he says and does.

He has been given far too much freedom to do as he wishes by Backers, the press and the industry as a whole.

He is hiding issues and lying to Backers, he is not delivering.

[dsmart]

My head is exploding ....

They are working on implement other parts of LY now? Are are they changing to LY? I mean ... LY Volumetric Fog is inherited from Cry 3.8 - SC Frankenengine is Cry 3.7 ...
If they are really trying to implement stuff from a different Cry Version, which also has been modified by Amazon into their framework they will open a fresh can of bugs.

I get headaches just trying to imagine all stuff that can and will go wrong when merging 2 different repositories that also have been modified by 3rd party into one repository ...

Didn't they learn anything from the Duke?

Yes. This is what I was going on about when I wrote an entire section about this LY switch in my "Irreconcilable Differences" blog.

LY is based on a CE 3.8 branch, while StarEngine is based on a CE 3.7 branch. So regardless of what they do, they still have to merge every single thing between 3.7 to 3.8 in order to get to and use the LY branch. This would also mean merging in their own custom changes to CE 3.7. Which is going to be a fucking nightmare because they have to preserve their own custom changes across LY drops.

I have been there. We use Havok Vision Engine for our custom game engine in LoD. It's a lot of work to keep merging builds when they release them. Sometimes a lot of things that used to work, just flat-out break. And each time we take a build, we have to merge it carefully so we don't break our custom code. At some point we just stopped taking builds from them completely. Then they ceased development on the Vision Engine, scuttled any plans for an XB1/PS4 version, leaving us without a console path. So we had to either port the entire game to a third-party engine (LY or UE4), or continue using our Havok custom engine for the PC, while using UE4 for the XB1/PS4 versions.

That's why it's hilarious to me when some backers buy that bullshit that somehow, CIG was able to go from custom (StarEngine) CE 3.7 to custom CE 3.8 (LY) in "days". Then months later, we come to find out that one of the 3.0 delays is related to volumetric fog - which was implemented in CE 3.8. Of course they have to merge it. And of course it will break a bunch of things. That's where they are now.

[dsmart]

Go sign up!!

Star Citizen: the unsolved multiplayer problem

[dsmart]

I wrote this over on FDev. Thought I'd share it here.

It's clear as day in the 3.0 schedule.

EDIT: Whoops, my bad, it's in the Schedule, not the 3.0 schedule. Object Container streaming is in 3.2 as a possible goal.

http://massivelyop.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/starcitizen.png

- Object Container Streaming (3.2 goal)
- Object Container Streaming: Server Side Streaming Manager
- Bind Culling

Wrong again. Those features have nothing to do with any of that. You should read up on them a bit more before jumping to the conclusion that they're automagically going to make 100 clients per instance a possibility (hint: it's not. like ever). If anything, even without network bind culling (LY calls it netbinding, the correct term for it), the best they're going to achieve is better networking performance in their 8-24 client instances. They could possibly push it to 32 if they get the results they're hoping for. But >32? With the current network layer/stack that's based on CryEngine (which even LumberYard shoved AWS into). Nope, not gonna happen. Like at all.

Even Lumberyard never claimed that they had implemented anything different from what CryEngine had as a networking layer. So it's the same horrid network layer, which wasn't built for MMO games. They just abstracted and replaced some parts of it with their own layer (GridMate). The analogy is like upgrading your PC with a high-performance GPU, even though you're still stuck with a subpar CPU. Yeah, you're going to get performance improvements in some areas.

Q. Is Lumberyard based on CryEngine? <-- see what they actually added/revised

Lumberyard Release Notes – Beta 1.0 (February 2016) <-- read about GridMate in the Networking section + GameLift (which I suspect is where SC is going to end up)

GridMate is Lumberyard's networking subsystem. GridMate is designed for efficient bandwidth usage and low-latency communications. You can synchronize objects over the network with GridMate's replica framework. GridMate's session management integrates with major online console services and lets you handle peer-to-peer and client-server topologies with host migration. GridMate also supports in-game achievements, leaderboards, and cloud-based saved games through third-party social services such as Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, and Steam.

Amazon GameLift is a managed service for deploying, operating, and scaling dedicated game servers for session-based multiplayer games. Amazon GameLift makes it easy to manage server infrastructure, scale capacity to lower latency and cost, match players into available game sessions, and defend from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. You pay for the compute resources and bandwidth your games actually use, without monthly or annual contracts.

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - in LumberYard that even comes close to what CIG are claiming (100 or 1000 player instances) they are going to be doing. And they can't even do what ED is doing because 1) they don't have the talent 2) they don't have the time 3) they don't have the resources. So they're going to gut their StarEngine networking crap, implement what LumberYard gives them for free, then hide them behind fancy names (Object Container Streaming which is basically GridMate in LY)

BONUS READ: CryNetwork Backward Compatibility

CryNetwork has been deprecated and removed, and is no longer be supported in Lumberyard. There were several systems added to provide backwards compatibility for GridMate to the networked systems in CryEngine, namely remote method invocations, network serialization, and aspects. For more information, see the following sub topics.

[dsmart]

Holy Crap these guys and their dreams.

The latest eye-opening example that someone posted on my Discord channel yesterday:

I am in the $3k bracket myself and honestly, even if the game failed, I would be ok with it at this point. I have gotten my entertainment value out of it. It has also pushed technology in games to another level. Something this industry sorely needed because of people like Derek Smart making lackluster games with the excuse of "it's an art style". CIG has created new technology that other developers are already looking at and already implementing themselves. They are doing more than just creating the BDSSE. Again, something Derek Smart was never capable of doing.

They continue to make stuff up out of whole cloth because that's all that they have. Nothing else. I mean, seriously.

Ask them which technology it is pushing, and they won't have a response. Ask them what new technology that others devs are "already looking at implementing", and they won't have an answer. They lie. All the time. Just because they have nothing else, and because there is no way to defend this project without employing hyperbole, lies - and dreams.

[Narrenbart]

Holy Crap these guys and their dreams.

The latest eye-opening example that someone posted on my Discord channel yesterday:

I am in the $3k bracket myself and honestly, even if the game failed, I would be ok with it at this point. I have gotten my entertainment value out of it. It has also pushed technology in games to another level. Something this industry sorely needed because of people like Derek Smart making lackluster games with the excuse of "it's an art style". CIG has created new technology that other developers are already looking at and already implementing themselves. They are doing more than just creating the BDSSE. Again, something Derek Smart was never capable of doing.

They continue to make stuff up out of whole cloth because that's all that they have. Nothing else. I mean, seriously.

Ask them which technology it is pushing, and they won't have a response. Ask them what new technology that others devs are "already looking at implementing", and they won't have an answer. They lie. All the time. Just because they have nothing else, and because there is no way to defend this project without employing hyperbole, lies - and dreams.

They've invented Ragdoll ... and Ragdoll while EVAing ... then they uninvented it because it didn't work.
They've invented IK and with it Body Horror IK ... the "Event Horizon" crew is still hiding in the machine room fearing of the unthinkable horrors that may await in the dark ...
They've invented player controlled elevators ... and elevators that are elevating other elevators .... and elevators that are elevating other elevators ... well that didn't work out so well ... but ... they invented it!
They've invented PBR never seen in this fidelity before
They've invented 550k poly NPCs regardless of Client <> UDP <> Server Issues - Only the strong will survive
They've invented procedural planet tech, procedural damage, procedural birds and procedural bugs
They've invented a game mode where you can play Crysis AND Subnautica at the same time ... IN SPACE!!!
They've invented Sand Worms but only once
They've invented Subsumption AI and other words - Ron Gilbert would've had wet dreams of such futuristic tech ... well just before he invented SCUMM
They've invented 20 fantastillion cubic km of empty space just to fill it with tons of astounding nothingness to explore
They've invented persistance and persistant shopping ... and the Linden-Dol... wait
They've invented a network system that supports hundreds of thousands of players in one gameworld ... theoretically ... it will work ... someday ... soon ...
They've invented item 2.0 right after item 1.0 (whatever that was) items can have stats now ... and states ... and inventory stuff ...
They've invented a FPS shooter more lethal than CoD with more tactics than ARMA - 2 years behind schedule ... on an isle FPS engine ... Almost as good as the ole known FPS shooter Bubble Witch Saga

and ships, ships, ships...

But first and foremost they have invented a machine to burn 150.000.000 Dollar of other players money.
What have the romans Derek ever done for us? - And don't you dare to say "Before the Derek Things Were Smelly"

[dsmart]

Hey remember that time when Goons noticed that Star Citizen was using stock image (the discount symbol used in the in-game store) from a third-party company, and reported it? Yeah, me too.



I would bet dimes to donuts that they only paid for it after the alarm was raised and noise was made.

This is even more plausible when you consider that an artist in a company with lots of artists, couldn't make an image like that; but had to purchase stock photo.

$150 million.

[dsmart]

SoTA costs $230K per month to run 36 people. Imagine what that Star Citizen scam with 5 worldwide studios + 400 people costs.

Know how Star Citizen ended up with 5 studios around the world?

[dsmart]

So according to the latest analytics from our resident Goon numbers guy :

I know everyone's dying for an update on the leaderboard numbers. I haven't done a detailed analysis, but over the past 11 days, the average concurrent player count in Star Marine was 26.8 (split across the two game modes), while in Arena Commander the equivalent number was 36.0. The racing module managed to garner a score of 3.7.

[dsmart]

The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development

Read that and substitute Bioware for CIG, and ME:A for Star Citizen.

[dsmart]

Ah yeah, the dawn of the new Jesus Patch is upon us. I remember when it was 2.0, then it was 2.5. Now it's 3.0.

DAE feel like prospective backers should wait for 3.0. the current alpha is frustrating. honest opinions.