Star Citizen – General Discussions

[dsmart]

As I posted elsewhere:

“Quite a number of people don’t realize just how serious I am taking all this. I’m not doing it for shits ‘n giggles; or because I don’t have better things to do with my time and money, but to spend it on legal bills, investigations, research etc.

And the latest thing to irk me (because I know a lot more than what has been public), is the Illfonic situation and how RSI/CIG have pretty much thrown them under the bus over SM since last year. And if you’ve heard my rants about how they are treating some of the people still working on this project, then you already have a pretty good idea what my motivation for all this is. Outside of the fact that they drew first blood.

Since no private person is going to be able to sue them over Star Citizen without going through arbitration, even though there is a very slim chance that it can be tossed out of arbitration and into court (State or Federal), I have been hoping (yeah, I know right?) that they’d sue me by now because that gets around the entire arbitration conundrum and gets the ball running. But they know that ANY lawsuit for ANY reason that arises out of this farce, makes it open season on everything – including Star Citizen which is the reason for all this. My attorney already put them on notice in one of his letters (which I made public) for that specific reason.

And since I have no intentions (at this time) of suing Chris or CIG/RSI over his defamatory diatribe (in his response to The Escapist), since that’s just going to be a waste of time given how long it would take to slog through that and get to the Star Citizen part, I am left with no choice but to do precisely what I said I would do: get the State and Fed authorities involved so that THEY can go take a look and determine what’s best for the consumer. After all, that’s precisely what the FTC (a Fed agency) is for.

And since I haven’t and wont’ do ANYTHING illegal, they simply can’t hurt me in any way, shape or form (Chris knows this, and has said on the record that “I have nothing to lose”. He’s right) over this, given the fact that 1) I’m not making shit up on a whim 2) most of what I’ve stated as opinion and/or hyperbole is not legally actionable 3) any action they bring, and which we get tossed is a win for me and very – very – bad for them, they have no choice but to weather the storm until they either deliver or fold.

Chris’s commentary over the SM debacle should be notable to anyone who read his Escapist diatribe and understood the tone, premise and hubris within.

They’ve been playing a very bad game of “Derek Smart” poker with me. And losing. And I don’t even play poker.”

---

“Yes, the issue with the govt – as I’ve stated before – is that 1) they take their sweet time and probably won’t get to it until it’s all over 2) we won’t be privy to any of the information that backers are entitled to because Fed action is not the same as a private or class action – they won’t tell you shit if you’re not part of the action

Yes, myself or anyone can sue them over Star Citizen but as attorneys (even the two that contacted me and offered to help pro bono) have said, we run the chance of it being tossed out of State or Fed court and into arbitration due to the ToS. In my case, since they have NO evidence that I ever agreed to their new ToS, having never – ever – played the game or done anything that resulted in my agreeing to said ToS, I do have a case. But a slim one.

So the choice is either :

1) sue in State or Fed court and run the risk of it being tossed to arbitration as per Star Citizen ToS. waste of time and money. bad.

2) then (as per above) in arbitration, show enough cause to get it tossed back into State or Fed court. waste of time and money. bad. going back to #1 is good.

3) sue Chris for defamation, make RSI/CIG a party to the suit and add a litany of causes of action related to Star Citizen.

4) wait for the whole thing to collapse. now there are so many reasons (aka “Cause Of Action”) to sue either in arbitration, State, Fed court because now we’re talking about the collapse of a $106M+ project; which is still shy of the $150M+ collapse of 38 Studios and which reached a crescendo of legal shenanigans only because the State had $75M invested in it.

There are other options which I am not at liberty to discuss. But at the end of the day, I have always maintained that I have no intentions of giving up unless and until they 1) give people the refunds they asked for 2) they provide the financial accounting they promised

In the US, you don’t need a plausible reason to sue someone. I could walk into court today, and for less than $500, sue them for a laundry list of things. They will attempt to get it tossed. And if they succeed, they can petition for their legal costs etc.

The legal system is fucked. Which is why a company like this can do shady shit like the ToS shenanigans – and get away with it for a long as they can.”

[dsmart]

[quote quote=2369]Again I have to interupt this broadcast to correct facts:

“There will be no Star Marine module, and there need not be one, as the features formerly promised are now available in the PTU. Deal with it.”

That is not what he said! What he said was that they have SOME of the FPS features in he PU today and will continue to implement them along the way, he specifically mentions the cover system as coming up next. After that the maps and FPS competitive mode will be enabled with the maps we’ve already seen. But there will be no big patch or drop labelled “Star Marine” (maybe because, as you pointed out, they don’t even own the TM for it) That is what CR said. If that is what is actually going to happen or if he’s plain old lying we’ll see soon enough. Yes it goes against alot of what was stated last year, such as the infamous “matter of weeks” and yes the people who backed because of cool pew-pew may feel they have been bait-and-switched, but the fact is that everything that was promised is either in the game now or will be in the game when it’s done. (If anyone has reason to yell foul it’s the early backers that backed a Wing Commander like game (vision 1), not a MMO with fully fledged FPS, but that’s beside the point) [/quote]

You’re just arguing semantics as usual. Star Marine is no more. There is no other way to explain it away. Even if everything that was promised in Star Marine was coming to the PU at some point, it does’nt take away from the fact that: Star Marine, as was sold to backers, is no more.

[dsmart]

Cloud Imperium Games invests £15 million in its UK studio

They took $16.5M (Euros) – $21.5M (Sterling) – of backer money – out of the US corp and put in Chris’s brother’s studio, Foundry 42, which is developing Squadron 42. Some of it via tax credits as I reported last year in my Interstellar Pirates blog (search for: credits)

I spoke to some people earlier this week and they claim that’s not what happened. Wording is key. They’re saying that this press release was about two things:

1) UKTI promoting the allocation of tax credits to a UK company – for the public record. It happens here in the US as well, when States do the same thing. e.g. The Rhode Island $75M investment in 38 Studios

2) The total approx investment to date of CIG into the Foundry 42. The UKTI would have this number since they’d need to have all those records when CIG/F42 applied for those tax credits anyway.

UPDATE: It’s actually worse than I thought.

UK studio opened in January 2014. Two years ago.

Since then they’ve spent (since tax records show they don’t have any money in the UK) according to the article, over £15 million (approx $21.5M) on that office.

With the fluctuation of the exchange rate over the last two years; that amounts to about $23M dollars.

Again, tax records show they aren’t holding more than £400K anymore.

So in two years they’ve spent $23M+ on just the UK studio; which everyone knows is the cheapest location of all their studios for salary and rent.

So sum it up:

That is the ENTIRE game’s ORIGINAL budget for two years of their least expensive [i]per capita[/i] of the 4 studios.

If you add up:

Frankfurt 1 year
LA 3 years
Austin 3 years
BHVR (Behavior Interactive) 3 years
Illfonic 2 years
Void Alpha 1 year
CG Bot 2 years,
Turbulent 3 years

PLUS mocap costs you understand WHY they are out of money and need to keep raising funds.

And the rest…

The Imagarium Studios
Atomahawk Design
Cubic Motion
Massive Black
Rmory.net

List of all corporate entities associated with Star Citizen.

1. Cloud Imperium Games Corp, West Hollywood, CA
2. Cloud Imperium Games LLC, West Hollywood, CA
3. Cloud Imperium Services, LLC West Hollywood, CA <– The one is interesting. It is found on BBB, but is not in the CA Secretary Of State dB records
4. Cloud Imperium Games LLC, Santa Monica, CA
5. Cloud Imperium Games Texas LLC, West Hollywood, CA
6. Cloud Imperium Games Texas LLC, Austin, TX
7. Cloud Imperium Games UK Limited, UK
8. Foundry 42 Limited, UK
9. Foundry 42, Germany
10. Gemini 42 Entertainment LLC, West Hollywood, CA
11. Gemini 42 Productions LLC, Santa Monica, CA
12. Roberts Space Industries Corp, West Hollywood, CA
13. Roberts Space Industries International Limited, UK
14. Twin Brothers Production Inc, West Hollywood, CA
15. Twin Bros, Germany

[Blix]

you forgot the testbed for emergent game play and AI etc. Just like AC. And just like the guy who said that it is gone.

If they merge any of the illfonic work then we will get updates to the FPS if not sol.

And this exactly NOT what CR said. In any other world other than CIGland that is cancelled or indefinitely delayed. (toast).

[Hotsauce ShoTYME]

HOLY SHIT.  THERE AINT ENOUGH POPCORN AND SODA FOR ALL THIS SHIT!!!!!

[Hotsauce ShoTYME]

LOL They keep taking shots at Derek in their fiction.  ROFLWAFFLE.  You have royally pissed them off!!!!

[J HOW]

Been thinking of the 64 bit implementation on Star Citizen and how it would impact Star Citizen as an MMO and to be honest struggling to see how it would be implemented.  Let’s look at how CIG want to implement their Persistent Universe and how large it is expected to be.  Looking on their website I’ve come up with some calculations. I’ve simplified the figures below.

Based on how I knew things worked at the time:

Based upon their 32 bit figures and their universe explorer using 64 bit implementation at minimum the universe or grid in 3d space would be 15.2GB (assuming nothing is moving, and assuming all data is static, this is a very conservative estimate here). The maths behind this is the basic grid of data under 32 bit (this was calculated by CIG for their previous plans as 500MB maximum per instance (to hold the world only when it was literally just the 3d matrix “the world you fly around in”) that was based upon the projection of 50MB per grid, that’s 10 grids at 5000×5000. Now under 64 bit it would be twice the size (100MB per grid – assuming the grid is the same size at 5000×5000), now the universe in the PU map is a grid size of 152, that would mean 100MB * 152 = 15.2GB. This is VERY big.

Now the above is just the world size in 3d space without any objects loaded into memory, assuming nothing is being streamed (unlikely on the server side) this means one instance at minimum would be occupying 15.2GB of memory alone just for the 3d world in co-ordinates, the trouble would come in the form of adding objects into the world (space stations, planets, NPCs), assuming conservative estimates again, let’s say each object has a 32x 32 bit array (under 64 bit) of properties (i.e. IsPlanet, IsNPC, Team, Description, NPCName etc) that would be 8MB per object unstreamed, based upon the size of the world 10,000 entries (again very conservative), 8MB * 10000 = 80GB! Now you can under IsPlanet, IsNPC you cut this down to a boolean after speaking to some devs I know – BUT you are still left with 32 bit arrays taking 64 bit address space. I base the 8MB on the 32 properties set in the cryengine under the modifications for Star Citizen – I would say 4-6MB could be shaved off but I am going by their figures.

Now let’s say for arguments sake you can get past all this (or the above calculations are wrong, or way off), you still have to account for the rest of the server software (connections, overhead, protocols, main API calls, logging, persistent server data held in memory, is AI handled by the server?, overhead), you would add at least 50% to any figure you come up with (if you have any sense so you don’t run out of virtual memory and end up using swap), so going with the above figures 15.2GB + 80GB = 95.2GB + 50% = 142.8GB personally I don’t see a single instance of this being possible on one node.

We have the problem and thinking about the solution, how about we have a number of the grids loaded on a specific instance. i.e. 10 grids per node. Now it becomes possible to host, BUT you have to redo your architecture and your platform. Let’s assume for arguments sake we have done this already. 100MB * 10 = 1GB for the world alone, 80GB / 16 = 5GB for objects + 50% = 9GB per instance BUT over 16 instances, this becomes very expensive, plus it only hosts a number of players per instance with a cap – let’s assume we add 16 players per instance, how many instances would we need to allow 100 players to play in the same area at any one time? It would be 6.25 duplicate instance of the same grids, say 6 to round that number down (conservative)

16 instances for the entire world * 6 instances for the amount of players in each area = 96 instances (very very expensive) considering the memory requirements for such a setting would be 96 * 142.8GB = 13.71TB and this is for less than 100 players in each instance, limited to 96 instances.

I cannot see how this would be possible without massively scaling down the persistent universe size or using nasty workarounds like streaming data from disk on the server (very bad (may lose data)), or storing areas where the players are not in to hard disk (slow), or running from SSD storage to stream to memory where needed (sensible but would be prohibitively expensive).  It would also be very costly to maintain.

[Kristoffer S]

You’re just arguing semantics as usual. Star Marine is no more. There is no other way to explain it away. Even if everything that was promised in Star Marine was coming to the PU at some point, it does’nt take away from the fact that: Star Marine, as was sold to backers, is no more.

What you call semantics I call sticking to the facts. When you say Chris said something he didn’t I’ll point it out, just as much as I’ll happily point out all of the facts CIG get’s f*cked up.

But the thing about this issue it seems to be very relative and opinionated and no clear black or white. You say “Star Marine, as was sold to backers is no more” which is a matter of opinion. There will be no Star Marine patch/drop (which goes against pretty much every PR they had last year), but everything we saw of Star Marine and was promised is still going to be implemented. It’s hardly a point you want a court to settle, especially when CIG can wave their screenshots of “all things subject to change” alert when pledging.

But it’s safe to say that my guestimations of the full PU as promised ever seeing the light of day outside of CIG are going down to single digit percentages with all this crap. We still only have ONE landing zone for example, we barely have the ships promised in the KS campaign even flyable. Good thing I backed for SQ42 because that may actually come out .. sometime around 2020.

[Author]

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