Star Citizen - The E.L.E.

[dsmart]

So the year is almost ended. We've had GamesCom, CitizenCon, and recently the anniversary stream - none of which have shown any signs that the game is coming any time soon.


I still don't believe that the game pitched can ever be made; and 2017 is going to be the year that it all collapses.


Your thoughts?

[Gradis]

its all fucked with t-bags is my sincere opinion

[Dementropy]

You mean T-poses.

[Scruffpuff]

I've made my opinion tragically clear on the SA forums and elsewhere, but I'll summarize here for posterity.  The game as pitched will never be made ... by Chris Roberts.

A skilled leader with a good studio might be able to release something along these lines someday.  I'm sure the $130 million has not gone magically unnoticed by real game development studios - for all we know there's already a real game like this being made somewhere, and every pit CIG falls into buys them time, confidence, and laughter.

There is absolutely no aspect of this project that hasn't been tragically mismanaged.  None.  I could list them here but I'd be typing all night - the enormity of Chris's ineptitude is absolutely staggering.  Every single thing he's done and every choice he's made is the absolute diametric opposite of the correct way to go about making a game.

As thorough as Derek's blogs are, they only scratch the surface.  Think about how much he's written - the vast tomes of accumulated and sourced data - and realize that you're reading less than 20% of what's wrong at CIG.  This isn't just an issue of "can the game be made."  It's so far beyond that it's incredible.

We're going to be dissecting this corpse for years.  Future game developers will use this as a case study in failure.  Chris's failure is so immense that the impact tremors have actually damaged studios they've worked with, and the careers of people involved.

It's incredible.

[David-2]

I'm not a player/game owner but looking at Major Tom's latest video on 2016-11-21 it is astonishing how crappy the software is.  Collision avoidance (clipping) errors are ubiquitous (and hilarious)!  (I especially like the people walking through each other.) He's still able to fly in space without a spacesuit with the thrusters jetting out of the avatar's body like erupting pimples.  Random pieces of ... stuff ... just appear and disappear in front of him.  >$100M flushed down the toilet!  There's no way this game could ever be finished at all, much less in 2017.

By the way, one thing I really enjoy about the progress updates on the RSI site is how often they "refactor" something as if that's a normal course of events for a large project: to write and rewrite and rewrite one piece of code after another.  I've been a hard-core developer for 40 years (C, C++, C#, Java, Assembly) at many major software development companies and have never seen this level of fail on a project that eventually shipped anything. (In fact, I've never seen this level of fail: projects are cancelled by Microsoft/Oracle/Google/Amazon/etc. long before they reach this stage.)

"Refactoring" is meant to be a very small scale and localized rewrite of a limited piece of code in order to pave the way for future development/enhancement.  To label something major a "refactoring" is a way a late/distracted/confused developer attempts to pull the wool over his manager's eyes - and it may even work for one or two sprints - but try it the third time in a row and he'll find himself with a "performance plan" and on the way out.  The idea that the chief guru/designer/visionary of this sad production himself uses the term over and over and over again to explain that there's "progress" means that actually there's nothing but flailing and failure.  D.S. can confirm this, of course.

[David-2]

Speaking of lack of progress ... for how many months now has Major Tom been posting videos of his avatar going out on the deck of the space station and flying around in space without his spacesuit?  How is it possible that "fixing" this wasn't the highest priority as soon as it showed up?  Aren't they at all embarrassed by how ridiculous Major Tom's videos make the game look with the thrusters jetting out of the guy's body and skivvies? I crack up every time I see it.

[Propagandist]

He can only do that by hacking his .cfg files, which is completely unallowed and absolutely the definition of hacking, and I'm sure the invisible hand of the SC community will swiftly put a stop to his hacking antics in the PU.   :)

[Scruffpuff]

Speaking of lack of progress ... for how many months now has Major Tom been posting videos of his avatar going out on the deck of the space station and flying around in space without his spacesuit?  How is it possible that "fixing" this wasn't the highest priority as soon as it showed up?  Aren't they at all embarrassed by how ridiculous Major Tom's videos make the game look with the thrusters jetting out of the guy's body and skivvies? I crack up every time I see it.

David,

I'm not sure how closely you've followed the SA thread but there's a fabulous explanation for why it's like this.  I apologize in advance if you already know the details.

See, Major Tom had a hunch that Star Citizen doesn't actually have any code in it that differentiates air from a vacuum.  (Particularly onerous since "fidelity" is their rallying cry, and firearms would act differently in both environments, but I digress.)  His theory was that the reason people died outside without a space suit is because they had a simple trigger on the airlock door switch.  If you're wearing the spacesuit when you hit the switch, you're fine.  If not, then it just kills you.

He made a video while he tested his theory.  He went in the airlock and waited for someone else to hit the switch.  Voila - no problems, and he can walk outside naked.  Of course with the high quality of the game and its engine he also accomplishes the same thing regularly by simply clipping through the airlock door.

So he was right - no actual zone properties for vacuum or air, just a simple hack they put in at the last second after introducing outfits to the game.

Which means, as we all know, an absolutely tremendous amount of work.  Maybe not for a game development studio, but definitely for CIG.

[David-2]

He made a video while he tested his theory.

I saw that video!  I agree with your description of it.  But I do disagree with your assessment that fixing it is a tremendous amount of work.  I believe it is a moderate to minor amount of work.  I'm not going to explain why I think that though - but it has to do with my belief that you can't populate a simulated world with "objects" that behave in flexible ways without having some form of "property bag" system for each object including a hierarchical "inheritance" system for objects from their "classes" and "superclasses".  And in a system such as this you would build it from the beginning with multiple hierarchical inheritance systems ... some static (is-a) and some dynamic (located-in, owned-by).

If they don't have such a system built in ... then yes it's a tremendous amount of work ... but its so obvious that such a thing is needed for this kind of simulated world why would you not have it?

Well, I guess I did explain why I think that.  And it has to do not with my experience building games, but my building developer tools (IDEs and compilers) and multi-tenant SAS software.  This concept (multiple inheritance hierarchies of properties) appears over and over in software systems.

And maybe this kind of fix (checking an inheritable property of the object (in this case, the avatar) against an inheritable property of the avatar's location) wouldn't solve projectile ballistics in vacuo but it would be sufficient to prevent the embarrassment of naked pilots floating in space, parp parp parp.

He can only do that by hacking his .cfg files

So I've seen this claim once or twice in comments on his videos, but I don't get it.  Are you saying this game ships with user-changeable files that allow a user to, for example, turn off collision detection?  Is that a common thing in shipping games?  Or in "alpha" games?  I get that software (including games) frequently have debugging modes, sometimes controlled by property files, that alter software behavior, but usually that stuff isn't shipped.  Or if it is shipped (so that you can, for example, troubleshoot software installed on users' devices) it is typically under manufacturer control - residing in a database accessed indirectly by the client through the server it is connected to, or in an encrypted file that customer service sends to the affected customer.

I guess CIG could do otherwise given their claim the software is in "alpha" - i.e., plan to tighten things up later - but given that there is so much concern among gamers about cheating in networked multi-player games I would think a game studio would want to lock that stuff down in the beginning to avoid bad reviews.  What's the story here?

[Propagandist]

So I've seen this claim once or twice in comments on his videos, but I don't get it.  Are you saying this game ships with user-changeable files that allow a user to, for example, turn off collision detection?  Is that a common thing in shipping games?  Or in "alpha" games?  I get that software (including games) frequently have debugging modes, sometimes controlled by property files, that alter software behavior, but usually that stuff isn't shipped.  Or if it is shipped (so that you can, for example, troubleshoot software installed on users' devices) it is typically under manufacturer control - residing in a database accessed indirectly by the client through the server it is connected to, or in an encrypted file that customer service sends to the affected customer.

I guess CIG could do otherwise given their claim the software is in "alpha" - i.e., plan to tighten things up later - but given that there is so much concern among gamers about cheating in networked multi-player games I would think a game studio would want to lock that stuff down in the beginning to avoid bad reviews.  What's the story here?

Idiot commandos claimed he was "hacking his config files" in order to do the silly shit he does in his videos.  When he's not, he's doing things that any QA tester worth a shit would do.  Like run into a wall to see if you can teleport through it.  We just use the phrase as a joke. 

[ConfusedMonkeh]

So the year is almost ended. We've had GamesCom, CitizenCon, and recently the anniversary stream - none of which have shown any signs that the game is coming any time soon.


I still don't believe that the game pitched can ever be made; and 2017 is going to be the year that it all collapses.


Your thoughts?

My thoughts are, you're full of poop Mr. Smart. As ever. You were convinced 2016 wouldn't be seen out by CIG, never mind the infamous 90 days tops comments. You also promised I wouldn't be banned from your discord on your twatter feed but that turned out to be complete bollox too.


CIG are showing progress at each event they hold. Your over riding narcissism and jealousy prevent you from backing down from any previous statements made despite being proved wrong again and again. By jealousy I mean that you're jealous of the attention and funding Chris and David have received upon returning to video game development when your latest game flounders in obscurity and insignificance. I understand that. It's only human.


I've posted this elsewhere and I feel it fair to post it here too. You became convinced they couldn't make this game after reading a dev blog in June or July of 2015 that mentioned the 64 bit conversion. You stated it was too much work to complete and starting it then was far too late and shortsighted. Fact is they had started the conversion years before that. That dev blog actually stated that they had almost finished the work on the conversion and it was great to see the fruits of their labour coming together and making the game possible.


Your entire crusade has been off the back of reading incomprehension. Good work. Now I'm not going to pretend that CIG are perfect or development has been an easy road because I'm not an idiot...well, not completely, but they are doing things never done before. 64 bit CryEngine maps is new. No matter how often you try to say otherwise. Doing things never done before will be a rocky road. The Wright brothers didn't fly across the Atlantic first time and Mr Ford didn't create the Model T in a fortnight. Your ELE has been ongoing for quite some time now. Mass walk outs were predicted... Funding stopping was predicted... Seeing out 2016 was going to take a miracle... Now it's 2017 that won't be seen out. What happens when we approach 2018, will you make the same prediction then as well?


2.5 million in 4 days isn't too shabby. It suggests to me that general backer faith isn't wavering despite the usual malcontents on the forums. The game is coming. Squadron 42 first and then some form of MMO after. Of course it won't be feature complete on release, they've always said that, but it's going to be special and no amount of BS from DS will stop it.


We still haven't seen any legal action yet despite you saying you were walking into a federal building quite some time ago now. Why have you not initiated legal proceedings with all this evidence you claim to have?


I thank you for the endless entertainment over the last couple of years though. Please don't change.

[AP]

The game is coming. Squadron 42 first and then some form of MMO after. Of course it won't be feature complete on release, they've always said that, but it's going to be special and no amount of BS from DS will stop it.

I too look forward to your special incomplete game being released.  Are you picking anything up in one of the current sales?

[ConfusedMonkeh]

The game is coming. Squadron 42 first and then some form of MMO after. Of course it won't be feature complete on release, they've always said that, but it's going to be special and no amount of BS from DS will stop it.

I too look forward to your special incomplete game being released.  Are you picking anything up in one of the current sales?

Your question is irrelevant. The game being incomplete does not preclude being special. I believe they can pull off enough to make it an excellent gaming experience. You obviously don't. That's OK. Excellence is very subjective but messing around in the broken and buggy alpha shows me enough to suggest something special coming down the road. How far down is another question. Less irrelevant, as funding can't go on forever despite appearences to the contrary.

It's cute you've followed Derek from SA to here by the way. Not a cult huh? Something something glass houses and stone throwing.

[AP]

Sorry I asked if you were buying anything in the sales, I wouldn't have brought the subject up if I'd known you have concerns about funding.  I'm sure everything will be fine, can't wait to play Star Marine myself.

[ConfusedMonkeh]

Sorry I asked if you were buying anything in the sales, I wouldn't have brought the subject up if I'd known you have concerns about funding.  I'm sure everything will be fine, can't wait to play Star Marine myself.

I'm not concerned about funding and you have nothing to apologise for.. Why are you so excited about Star Marine? Looked pretty generic to me. Pretty cool for a space sim but bland for an FPS game. May I recommend Battlefield 1, Titanfall2 or maybe even Call of Duty: Infinite warfare instead.

Glad you're excited for it though. Good for you.