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@MDrake lots of things going on that I simply can’t talk about publicly. The Nov 30th deadline has come and gone; and they haven’t satisfied the requirements of the original ToS.
And yeah, we are aware of what they’re doing wrt refunds because we are still getting emails about this sent to [email protected]
All I can say at this point is that if you know of anyone still having difficulties getting refunds, please give them that email address.
I will keep you all posted once I have something that I can publicly share.
Star Citizen is not being ported to DX12. Words fail me…
While you were sleeping, news broke that the folks over at the Star Citizen camp were in the process of porting the entire custom engine (built on top of CryEngine3)…to DX12.
Seriously. This news broke over night; and I’m still stumped.
This for a game which, by all accounts and going from the recently rushed 2.0 pre-Alpha release, is so far off that only the whales still putting money into it have any hopes that they will ever see a game.
$100m (triple-A title budget) crowd-funded, and over 4 years later, nothing but a glorified proof-of-concept tech demo exists.
My guess is that, if they survive 2016, the next big piece of news is that the game is going to be ported to Xbox One.
Not to mention the fact that this article confirms my suspicion that this is still a 32-Bit game with zones. NOT a seamless 64-Bit universe as has been pitched. It’s all right there on p6. And that has **very** serious implications for the game and those who are expecting a seamless universe as has been pitched.
I mentioned that here last week.
At this point, nothing further needs to be said. I’m just going to watch what comes next.
I don’t believe they’ve done it. And there won’t be anything ground-breaking about it for any mag to write about since some of us have already done it years ago.
I just watched a stream which showed the same problems with jittering (not to be confused with z-fighting) issues and similar precision related issues.
Graphics issues are easy to fix; so I’m sure that if you are no longer seeing those anomalies, that they are actively fixing them. Though I don’t see any such notation in the 2.0 patch notes thus far. Could be they don’t deem them important enough to list.
Some more thoughts on the Persistent Universe and whether or not the game is in fact an MMO. Read more about how I think they’ve partitioned the world to fit within their zones + instancing architecture.
First of all, right now, there is nothing persistent about 2.0. Nothing.
These are the facts:
Chris flat out said it wasn’t an MMO, right off the start.
2012 Kickstarter FAQ: Is Star Citizen an MMO?
No! Star Citizen will take the best of all possible worlds, ranging from a permanent, persistent world similar to those found in MMOs to an offline, single player campaign like those found in the Wing Commander series. The game will include the option for private servers, like Freelancer, and will offer plenty of opportunities for players who are interested in modding the content. Unlike many games, none of these aspects is an afterthought: they all combine to form the core of the Star Citizen experience.
2012 (pre-Kickstarter) RSI website pitch. Navy wings are made of Gold
Star Citizen brings the visceral action of piloting interstellar craft through combat and exploration to a new generation of gamers at a level of fidelity never before seen. At its core Star Citizen is a destination, not a one-off story. It’s a complete universe where any number of adventures can take place, allowing players to decide their own game experience. Pick up jobs as a smuggler, pirate, merchant, bounty hunter, or enlist as a pilot, protecting the borders from outside threats. I’ve always wanted to create one cohesive universe that encompasses everything that made Wing Commander and Privateer / Freelancer special. A huge sandbox with a complex and deep lore allowing players to explore or play in whatever capacity they wish.
…
Playable offline or online, co-op with friends, you sign up for a tour of duty with the UEE fleet, manning the front lines, protecting settlements from Vanduul warbands.
…
If you distinguish yourself in combat, you might be invited to join the legendary 42nd Squadron. Much like the French Foreign Legion of old, they can always be found in the toughest areas of operation and always snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, regardless of the odds.
…
Upon completion of your tour you’ll re-enter the persistent Star Citizen universe with some credits in your pocket and Citizenship to help you make your way. But in the universe of Star Citizen when one conflict ends, another is just around the corner. You’ll have opportunity to spend more time with your squadron mates as additional Campaigns are released as part of the content update plan.
RSI Forum comment Nov 2014 (<— ironic)
We have chosen Google Compute for our initial cloud implementation as we think its the best combination of power, price and flexibility. We are attempting to build a dynamic server system where local nodes can be spun up to handle the hi-fidelity server “instances” in areas that would help reduce the ping for people that are matched together.
Arena Commander is our test bed for this. When you join a multiplayer match you are currently connected to a game server by the matchmaking service. This server eventually will spin up on demand in an appropriate location to the people that the match maker has put together.
In the PU as you travel around a Star System (or jump from one to another) every time you come out of “warp” (or jump) you’ll be handed off to one of these server instances that will be spun up on demand taking into account where the people that have been contextually matched together are playing from. As we’re first prototyping / building on Google Compute this will naturally happen where there are Google Compute data centers. With some extra work we can fold other Linux Server Cloud providers into the matchmaking and server management. But it doesn’t make sense to do this before we’ve even finished the base system on Google Compute. Right now we spin up a fixed number of servers in the Google NA data center for the current multiplayer. One of the ongoing engineering tasks is to make this dynamic based on demand and then at different data centers around the world. Once this happens we would be ready to expand it to other cloud server providers if need be.
Then it became an MMO. Just like that. Why? Probably because the experienced engineers made it clear to Chris (who has no knowledge or experience building MMO games – ever) that his bullshit “dream” couldn’t be built without the architecture of an MMO.
About the game – Experience a first person universe
More than a space combat sim, more than a first person shooter and more than an MMO: Star Citizen is the First Person Universe that will allow for unlimited gameplay.
Then there was this: CHRIS ROBERTS ON MULTIPLAYER, SINGLE PLAYER AND INSTANCING
One thing I don’t like about most MMO structures is the fragmentation of the player base between these “shards”. If you had joined much later than a friend of yours, there may not be room on his world instance anymore and you have to join another parallel one and so cannot play together. This is one of the nice things about the Eve Online design – everyone plays in the same universe.
Despite the above message, it’s precisely what the heck is going on right now in 2.0 and there is no persistence in that PU. None.
And everything you read in that above missive, is pure and utter bullshit. They haven’t built any of it, have no hopes (or the tech) of building it.
And until then, my guess is that it’s going to remain a sharded, instanced world, bereft of anything remotely cohesive, massive, let alone persistent. In other words, a glorified instancing game in which you and a group of friends (12-16 atm) exist in your own pocket universe and doing basic stuff and none of what has been promised in a persistent world.
Dev explanation of instancing from back in July 2015
I think some of the confusion comes with the vocabulary, traditional instances are “copies” of an area which a small subset of players inhabit – reducing things like network lag etc. However this does also limit the player experience as not everyone is truly a part of the same world at the same moment. In our case we would like achieve the highest concurrency we can while still making the game playable. To that end we are approaching instances both in this traditional way as well as working on some newer ideas. If we look at it traditionally, an instance of an “area” like planetary orbit will have a maximum number of player slots, the logic of the Generic Instance Manager (GIM) will handle things like assuring that friends/parties as well as adversaries, factions, skill levels, and other attributes are all taken into account to place people into these instances. This will work in conjunction with a “Galaxy” server which simulates the universe to determine the likelihood of “encounters” or the population currently in orbit of a planet and stages the instances.
To speak to the newer ideas, and your question of “can I see through other instances?”, if you think about an instance as described above than I would say you would not “see” into another instance, it Is essentially a copy of the same area of space (parallel world of sorts) – however this does not mean that an instance is limited to one actual “server”. So for example (these are just example numbers not hard facts) if a server can support 20 people and another 10 people (through GIM or “Galaxy” logic) need to be added to that instance; a 2nd server would be spun up thus allowing a current total of 30 people in that instance shared across 2 servers (a missile object fired by any person in that instance could be seen and interacted with by any other person). This could theoretically be scaled continually, however there will most likely be rendering and network limitations at some point, let’s say that number was 100 players. So you would have 5 “servers” capable of supporting 20 players each make up a single 100 person “instance” – players can seamlessly move from server to server behind the scenes and be unaware.
This is not that same as changing instances though, which could be another set of 5 servers with another 100 people in a copy of that same area. In that specific moment the 100 players in Instance A will not see the 100 players in Instance B, though imagine 2 ships in Instance A and 1 ship from Instance B fly away from that planet towards the same open space, at some point those 3 ships will be “moved” out of their planetary orbit instances and perhaps have an encounter in a Battle Instance that was initiated around them, so you really can’t think of the different “instances” as fixed, they are not like realms, where only a subset of players exist. They are quite fluid and constantly being updated and refined by the GIM and Galaxy services.
On the slightly more technical side, depending on the contents of an instance it could be that it will be scaled differently than another instance, 10 Carriers in a single instance may cap itself to 70 players across 5 servers instead of the 100 in my above example. There are a vast array of metrics that go into determining these things, from both in-game stats as well as hardware wise like cpu and mem limitations. New technologies like containerization and the zoning system will help us spin up servers faster and allow for the seamless backend mentioned.
It is important to note that much of this is in development by many different teams and the final application and usage could vary from this roadmap. While not directly addressing each point you ask hopefully this gives you some insight into the instance system.
And this mixed message is part of the on-going engineering problems they’ve had and is not unlike all the other development missteps whereby stuff gets done, ripped out, redone etc. Rinse. Repeat.
I am going to say it again. There is no way on this God’s Earth that they can build the game they pitched and promised. Not as a sharded instance, nor as a persistent world MMO.
And note that here we are in Nov 2015 and in 2.0 they still can’t get more than 12 clients in any “instance”. For a game that’s supposedly launching in 2016, there is still no evidence of anything persistent about the world. Let alone half the shit they promised.
Thing is, MMOs can be instanced while still be persistent.
For those of you who can’t grasp the concept, here is a well-written and very relevant primers:
Sorry no, that’s not how that works. The prototype (proof-of-concept) stages all took time, money etc. So yeah, it’s 4 yrs. You don’t just ignore that, throw out the time, effort, money – just because you can.
That never – ever – happens in reality. That’s like saying when you’re about to build a house, the time taken to find the land, get the permits, draw up the architectural plans etc, should all be discarded because they are of no relevance to when they started the construction.
Chris himself has gone on the record as saying that “development” started in 2011. His words. Nobody made that up.
Also, here is a statement from Ben Lesnick back in Dec 2014.
“One important note: the footage you see in the trailer is in-engine, not pre-rendered! Chris put together a live Star Citizen demo for the announcement at GDC Next. Chris created the Squadron 42 demo by himself over the course of a year or so, with support from his old friends where needed (especially for the art, as the demo needed three ship exterior models, internals for the Bengal and one cockpit.)
This was not a game, or even something that would become a game – it was a proof of concept to show investors (and then the public) that the CryEngine could be adopted for the game we wanted to make. There was no privately funded game development period with different investors. We had investors lined up to support the project IF we could hit the crowd funding goals… but not before. There were no development studios or producers or schedules or network engineers or 3D artists or anything of that nature working on Star Citizen before the end of the campaign in November, 2012.
As for the overall speed of development today – we’ll always do our best to show you how it’s going. To be honest, I came in thinking exactly the same thing: how are we going to do these ten thousand things and finish what we’ve promised? Martin Galway explained it to me best: making a game is a lot like a roller coaster… it feels like you’re going up and up and up forever, seeming to have a minimal return. But that’s because the first half of the experience is building the systems that let the ride down happen. There’s a point in the development cycle where we hit the top and suddenly you see how the production team has plotted all the pieces to start coming together. I think we’re near the top of the coaster now – for the first time, I can look at the pieces and absolutely understand how Star Citizen happens.”
So, it’s either 4 or 3 years, depending on who is counting. And if they paid themselves for the work prior to Nov 2012 as has been rumored, then it’s all the more relevant to count that 1 year.
And from the original 2012 Kickstarter page:
We are aiming for a AAA game experience. But depending on the funding levels reached, we may have to limit the experience for the initially released game version. Nonetheless, Chris Roberts and his teams have shown consistently that they are able to develop epic story-based games. Even with our very limited self-funding we have been able to do already a lot of work which is why we can show you not just concept art and a cinematic trailer, but an extensive demo of actual game play. So, we are confident that even with limited means we will be able to deliver an amazing experience.
Oct 19th, 2012 Interview with Chris Roberts
“We’re already one year in – another two years puts us at 3 total which is ideal“
And the 500 head count is a number that Chris himself has already quoted numerous times. Many have come and gone, and right now that count, across four locations, is around 300 people. Just because there are less people now, doesn’t negate the work that those who have since left, had done.
The truth about Star Citizen 2.0 premature release
This is what I said on Nov 2nd ahead of the Star Citizen anniversary sale..
- I don’t believe that there will be anything tangible in the upcoming AC 2.0. And by the time the dust settles, everyone will be wondering why it’s not AC 1.47 (or whatever)
- I believe that they will try to get that 2.0 build out in the PTU in time for the anniversary sale on or before 11/26.
- That 2.0 build won’t i) have fps (aka Star Marine) in it ii) have anything “persistent” about it iii) have anything previously promised (see below) in it
- Probably won’t support any new ships. And if it does, there will be maybe one multi-crew ship (still trying to find out which one is the likely candidate)
And whatever they release as 2.0 is purely designed as more smoke and mirrors to show “progress”. So it will be a buggy mess in PTU until well into 2016. Lest you forget, AC is still a buggy mess. And whatever it is they currently have in the PTU is best not even discussed. Remember, they still can’t even get buggies to work right.
Going into 2016, we’ll be dealing with v2.0x builds; all of which will remain in the same buggy state that the current v1.xx builds are in.
Four years. $94m+. 500+ people. Still talking pre-Alpha. And no game in sight
2016 is the mad rush to get a scaled down version of EP1 of SQ42 out. Depending on how much they want to cut, it probably won’t happen. Which is why they are currently hiring more people at Foundry 42 because all bets are now being placed on SQ42.
In the latest Around The Verse E 2.08
“You guys have seen this already, we’re up to about 15000 players right now. BugSmashers are hard at work fixing the various crashes and lag spikes and issues you discover. It has been an incredible process though. 2.0 is ***working exactly as we imagined it***, people were getting in there and seeing how Star Citizen works, it’s all coming together. There’s the FPS, there’s the multi crew combat, there’s all sorts of parts everyone’s been waiting for, it’s a great experience for us, we feel good here” – Ben Lesnick
…then there’s this exchange…
SG: Yes of course 2.0 has been on the PTU since our anniversary livestream.
BL: Yes! I know people look to us and say you planned that but it was touch and go all the way but I think Sandi had to threaten Erin Roberts at one point perhaps.
SG: Yes…..
BL: But they got it out to the first 1000 during the livestream and we’ve been ramping up since then. The stream itself was a great success. It was three hours with Chris, Erin and the rest of the team. If you have not had a chance, go back and check it out, lots of new Star Citizen content in there.
[Sandi and ben laughs]
BL: Sorry it’s my serious face!!
Someone put it best, so I’ll just quote the whole thing:
“I found it interesting in the latest “Around the Verse” that Ben basically said Sandi outright demanded Erin release the Baby PU as is — and Sandi confirmed the characterization.
This actually is illuminating for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it suggests power dynamics that are quite difficult to see from our cheap seats. Though their account can be read as semi-humorous– it’s easy to believe this is somewhat representative of their dynamic– that Sandi (Chris’ wife / VP of Marketing) ultimately has the authority to tell Erin (Chris’ brother / Executive Producer) what to do.
That it should NOT be this way is obvious– Erin as Executive Producer, one with a longer term track record of gaming success than his brother (and a history of saving his own brother’s arse)– shouldn’t be pushed around by a VP of Marketing or his brother’s wife.
But it also prompts question– why? Why was Sandi demanding Erin release it- despite his implied reservations.
The answer seems pretty clear– Sandi knew that prospects of the entire Anniversary Sale without the Baby PU would be pretty grim. And for Sandi– there is not other priority or consideration beyond the continued extraction of wealth from the pockets of the Sperg Militant.
Fixing customer service– so they stop having 4+ week trouble ticket queues?
“Screw it– that would mean hiring more people. Let the current employees suffer with never ending backlogs and pissed off backers, and let the backers think that lengthy delays are actually normal rather than a complete embarrassment…”
Fixing our slow-as-hell, pathetically subpar and disorganized China-based merchandising / shipping operation so the fans can get stuff more quickly?
“Screw it– who cares if it takes a month to deliver things, and our shipper loses loads of inventory often, and fans who get broken / misprinted / subpar merch end up having to wait 3-5 weeks to get through the support queue, after waiting just as long for delivery, whereupon they’ll wait yet another month to get a replacement? Let them think China is actually a brilliant solution delivering higher quality stuff than America or Europe can match and it’s worth the wait. Because that means we can squeeze even more bucks out of their sperg asses.”
For Sandi, the only measure of CIG’s success is cash in the bank and furnishings in the Santa Monica office (and surely the Roberts home / life). Screw quality of support, product, or game or workplace experience. Keep the money rolling in at all costs. Everyone else — backers, employees, other offices — can suck it”.
They removed the other refund link from both TinyPic as well as UltraIMG. So now I’m hosting it.
