64bit precision

Regardless of realism, I'm simply interested in whether or not I have to shift the universe around all the time (or some equivalent) - if you can fly 100km continuously in any direction that's more than enough for a 'level' with a station and warp gates at each end or something like that. A space flight arena of 10km radius is just not enough for anything.

 

Don't be confused by looking the space station. It looks like is not far away. A space station can be 100km but in this small planet probably is around only 40 km or less. Probably my data is not correct but I mean that in the planet horizon probably there are far away objects with more distance than the space station itself.

A 10yr old (2007) 32bit example: youtube (and my clouds)
What is cool in StarCityzen is the innovative cash flow donation system and game Vr. development release.............


How to make a 64bit game simulator using big space in Unity?
I love the excellent job that Kerbal Space Program has done using Unity.

Good info that they did not mention when I contact them. [Unigine1]
@Ryiah do you know how much Unigine cost? 15.000u$d ? ...

In reddit I make the mistake of asking in SC why they make the desition of using CryEngine and they discover that I was using Unity = I lost all my comment karma!

I try CryEngine and after 200.000u (200km) I was having the same problems that I'm having in Unity after 10.000u (10km). So was not necessary to reset often. I know that in Unity I has to move my world each 1km to *-1 ( -1km ). But not more much info about.

My problem is in editing 2000km scene! How do I go around? Also the editor has a limited space.

I'm confuse about 64 and PhysX.
PhysX gets more stable in 64bit? because 1 PhysX mass unit is hard to understand (mass 1 = 1tone ? )

I think Unity is so powerful and versatile. Probably in the Unity Learning is missing how to make big scenery game. There is enough software and hardware power. @MortenSkaaning A live tutorial training about big space, simulation (please) for racing cars, airplanes, ships and spaceships can be so handy. In this way procedurally can be explored with less fear for beginners.

 

Information that is available both in the features section of the website and on the chart where you can see a breakdown of the different editions available. Chances are sales just ignores anything that is not a direct inquiry into the price of the engine.

http://unigine.com/en/get-unigine

No, at least not the edition that supports double precision. It's marked "Contact Sales" which almost always equates to "What we charge is determined by the game being developed and/or the company making it". One company may receive a five digit figure while another company may receive a six or seven digit estimate.

 

Thx Ryiah... at that time was early vr1. 2013 costs start at $30k USD up-front payment for the binary, Windows license.

If I start making only 1 digit I will be so happy!!

I wish so hard a Unity Live about large game scenes simulation for beginners...

 

AT least there is this script:
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=Floating_Origin

and this exhaustive stack overflow:
http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/qu...om-coordinate-system-possible-in-unity/110369

It's mostly a display problem, you can actually use whatever coordinate you want, with as many variable you want, at the precision you want, for the logic (and you knew it). Then translate that around the display position you want to deal with relatively. It's always a delta of this position against the diplaying coordinate of objects.

 

Have you played x3? It had sector sizes up to about 100..120 kilometers. No actual planets to land on, however. Those weren't very big, even with x3 artificial limit on speed.

Elite Frontier had close to real distances - without jumpdrive you could go up to about 2/3rd of light speed, if I remember correctly. With that in mind 10 kilometers is something you won't even notice as you blink through it. Elite Frontier also had newtonian flight physics. Meaning you could accelerate in some direction, then turn ship around without changing course and shoot whoever was flying behind you with your front turret.

I disagree. The thing about space is that it is huge, so large sizes and huge distances is the primary feature I'd expect from any spacesim that takes itself seriously. Without that, it'll be pretty much just an arcade shooter.

Making space game with small planets is like building a formula 1 game that has only one racing track that is 10 meters long.

 

I used to play x2 for ridiculously long amounts of time (funnily enough mainly for the (shocking) trading system for some reason) so I assume x3 is about the same. And yes that's what I consider to be a good place to start in terms of 'levels' - enough for a scatter of stations and outposts and a decent amount of 'airspace' - enough that anything that happens doesn't just happen in front of your nose, you have to go there.

I agree with @BoredMormon when it comes to planets - I don't consider planetary landings to be a primary feature of space games and I think rendering these huge perlin-bumped spheres is (so far) a pretty pointless and boring endeavour - but I absolutely think that distance in space itself is a huge part of the space game experience.

 

Did you know you could land on planets in elite frontier? The one from 1993?

I'm not asking to model eveyr grain of sand on the planet. Also, perlin bump won't be really visible.

However, I believe this is an important part of space experience:

Spoiler

Speaking of which, here are screenshots from celestia, which is free.

Spoiler

--------
Aaand, this is apparently what mountain everest looks like from ISS in reality:

 

I'm definitely not saying planetary landings aren't cool! I'm trying to say from the point of view of space games in general, while planetary landings aren't essential, 64 bit precision pretty much is, unless you want to fiddle around a lot.

That said I do think these perlin planets are a little bit of this trend in games to be bursting with lifeless 'content' at all costs. A great exploration game could take place on a single asteroid if anyone bothered to try and put some quality into the experience. I definitely like the sense of the size of the universe that you get watching stuff like the OP video, and that's great but that's as far as it goes really, after that I'd rather have a focus on fun and drama, because that's what games are for me. They aren't a replacement for actually exploring the rest of the universe.

The best thing I've seen so far in SC was the mission with the npc interaction, it shows that actually there might be some dramatic experience to be had, rather than simply waving at avatars of other players and shooting random stuff.

 

I don't see why "a whole planet" (or many) needs to be handled any differently than existing open-ended open-world games. I've spent probably 40 hours running around NYC in Division fighting on the same streets and rooftops over and over, and did the same in Destiny before that (a better comparison, all truly multiplayer). No reason that exact proven mechanic couldn't be scaled up. In fact "scaled up" isn't even relevant, come to think of it: generally whatever the player is interacting with only exists in a small radius around them. And no reason at all that can't be smoothly mixed with storylines and missions, because plenty of games already do that, too.

Near as I can tell, the appeal of Star Citizen is a promised insane-level-of-detail. We watched the longer presentation you posted yesterday (I think it was the same one, almost 90 minutes -- there is a 3-hour one I don't have the resolve to sit through) and it sure looks like they're making very good, real progress. I ignored this game for a very long time but I admit I'm becoming interested (and that's somebody who prefers console gaming since I sit at a keyboard for a living).

Read somewhere yesterday their fundraising has now exceeded $128 million. Still skeptical about the wisdom of spewing studios all over the planet but I think the OP article from less than 60 days ago cited $124mm... if accurate, that's impressive momentum by anyone's standards.

 

Well I don't know if I put it very clearly, what I don't like is this idea of tacking on huge amounts of semi-procedural 'exploration' content just to keep people playing. I admit it may be personal preference, but I go to games to get something rich and satisfying not to wander around some 'endless' level hoping to find something new.

I see a lot of times with games like No Mans Sky and SC people look at a planet or something and say "Wow you can walk around the WHOLE planet!" And I want to say "Well yeah, it's probably pretty much just the same 10km^2 rendered over and over again, do you want to spend the rest of eternity exploring a perlin function?" ... it's a kind of tragic illusion imo, this desire/irrational expectation of finding something new when you know it's impossible.

But anyway, SC is certainly not vaporware or anything like that, it's already a project of insane size and detail and will no doubt grow. And it is pretty much what was promised all along, so if people are getting what they wanted that's great.

I just wish that the quality of the game experience would grow at the same rate that content seems to at this stage. At the moment it's like getting a lifetime supply of Coca cola, somewhat exciting at first because of the sheer amount but kind of boring after a while.

 

Actually, no. I think 64bit precision in rendering is not essential for a space game, because most of the time due to large distances and nature of the environment, a game will be dealing with objects that can be displayed a single precision using various tricks. It starts being important when we start talking about planetary landing, where maintaining continuous environment will turn into major pain.

I think it is the right direction, but most people don't put enough effort into it. Dwarf fortress on galatic scale would be fun to play.

 

Perlin function actually does not ever loop (if it is properly implemented), as far as I'm aware, so you can spend eternity exploring it. Speaking of which, isn't that kinda realistic? I mean, if you were tranported to the moon, all you'd see would be rock and dust in different shapes.

By the way, we have minecraft which is probably another variation of another noise function under the hood.

I'm still very skeptical about this project, mostly because of Chris Robert's disappearance for 11 years coupled with that time where they blew every deadline in 2014. That created a very unpleasant impression. For how long was the dogfighting module delayed, exactly? Half a year? More? Because I honestly don't remember. That deadline accident create impression of Roberts being someone with a strong vision BUT without good business skills. Which smelled like trouble at that time.

"Insane size" and "insane detail" is not a good thing. It indicates a very high risk, especially when it is coupled with "it will grow". Basically, the project can run out of funding and croak, crushed by feature bloat. Looking at the video I can tell they could've spent half a year making pilot and cockpit animations. However, what about the rest of the game? And the rest of the in-game universe? And at the same time, the ship does not even appear to turn around its center of mass... So, it gives impression of a lot of polish put on not a very good foundation.

 

I don't see any mysterious absences. He was out of the game scene in the early 2000s but it seems that's because the Wing Commander flick got him into movies for awhile. Freelancer was 2003, then he was producing films steadily through 2008 (and one would imagine looking for others for a bit after), then was back to games by 2011.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris..._No_Return_Entertainment.2FAscendant_Pictures

From what I've read it sounds as if all the major features were locked down years ago, mostly during the initial fundraising frenzy. Execution is still a risk factor, of course, (that's a lot of complex systems to integrate), but they don't appear to be going crazy making major new promises these days. Business acumen is always a risk, of course -- I keep harping on that ridiculous "open studios everywhere" move as a very bad sign. I certainly won't be pre-ordering!

 

Yes but, maybe not...!

That's the thing with openworld/procedural universe games, I feel drawn emotionally but rationally I know there's nothing to be seen beyond the first half an hour. If the game was controlled by a superintelligent AI it would be a different story. And non-periodic functions are just not enough to keep me glued to the screen!

On the other hand, going out into space for real, there's the opportunity (if not probability!) of discovering something extraordinary that no one has ever seen or imagined before. However it's unlikely that you'll find a lot of drama out there most of the time.

So that's why games for me are about drama, but they don't replace real discovery or exploration, and I find it sort of sad to go into them with that expectation like a lot of people did with NMS.

PS like I said earlier in the thread, I'm worried that funding will run out and the game will sport a few 'missing limbs' but definitely what has been done so far is correlated with the money being spent. I don't think enough time is going into polish, or rounding off the parts of the game so that they feel complete.

 

#NotAllGamer
I'm still discovering vista that make me go wow, I still watch stream that make me go wow, and this triple with mod like "big things" that finally make the game it's true final form, I still remember that planet that seems right from a disney barbie animation, only missing ponycorn, that was a surprise..

 

Actually, how would you know that "rationally"? "Rationally", you can only assume, not know that.

A system based on simple rules can produce unpredictable result:

It is fairly well known.

Dwarf fortress does not have superintelligent AI controlling it, and occasionally still present unpredictable twists like attack of Murderous Dwarf-eating Carps. Those are unscripted.

It is kinda amusing, you know?

At first, given a short demo that could've been staged through and through, based on visuals alone you decide that the team will be able to make a great game.
At the same time you also arbitrarily decide that now way in hell that team would be able to setup enjoyable set of procedural rules that can generate interesting planets.

Those two ideas kinda contradict each other, don't you think? If they can make handcrafted scenes, then they can also have artists that can direct procedural generation. At the same time, if their team is not competent enough to come up with a nice way to generate planets, then they can mess up non-procedural part too.

I don't know, looks like massive overspending on art and secondary assets instead of fleshing out core gameplay and building on top of it. I mean there were news about hiring hollywood voice actors and such.

 

@neginfinity it's more a case of what I expect rather than what's possible.

@neoshaman sure, it's kind of interesting to see something cool, but I wouldn't play a game for that, at least not a traditional one.

I just think it's being used in a poor way. NMS would have been ok if it was just flying around looking at planets, but they just had to add all that grind. Is the procedural stuff there just to support the grind? Surely it's not the other way around or it wouldn't make any sense.

It's cool to have a game like Spore or NMS, I really enjoy seeing them (although most of what interests me is not anything I'd get from playing it) - but I wouldn't play the game just to see something random pop up that happens to look good (while I stand there 'mining' away for hours just to survive).

But anyway, who knows? I like seeing new stuff happening, like the sheer scope and beauty of SC, and I'm watching to see how it goes. It definitely interests me but I hope it doesn't fall down at the end.

 

Hashtag not all gamer.

NMS was a niche game who blew up past its niche and people not part of the niche was disappointed. There isn't a grind in the game, it's a red herring, it's a grind if you try to finish a game not made to be finished (which will be disappointing since the ending is more a red herring than anything else). There is no grind because there is no hurry and there is plenty resource to fit you well, even with the cramped inventory slot there is no need, most resource are pointless to hoard as they are everywhere. Dying barely consume your resource anyway and even hazard chip protection slowly. It's really a mimicry game, the nagging (outside of F***ing dumb milestone pop up) aren't really nag, they are part of a make believe (beware this dangerous place ... not really), It's about being a kid and pretending to explore a universe, the same feeling when you are a kid and you read 70s scifi that did their thing not caring if kid read them. That's why there is a hardcore irreducible community of NMS with 300+ hour in the game, surprisingly they are mostly 30+ years old, ie they were kid who grew up with those scifi, the gameplay fit them like a glove. That's just not your type of game

 

I don't pretend to speak for everyone.

As someone who grew up reading a huge library of 70s scifi that my parents collected, I still can't really draw much of a comparison with NMS - many scifi stories, such as Robert Heinlein etc were all about exotic drama and action. The Star Trek series stories were crazy, fun and full of interpersonal drama and all that kind of thing.

While NMS might be exotic, it doesn't have much drama or action, in fact the only thing that reminds me of those stories is the graphics. I still admire the game in a lot of ways, but it has more in common from my perspective with modern grindy games than anything else.

Btw the grind in NMS is something I read about almost universally in reviews, so while I can't back it up from experience when a lot of mouths say the same thing there's usually something going on.

But anyway, don't want to get too far off topic. I'm looking forward to playing SC.

 

Drama is something I'm looking for PCG anyway, I don't think we have a consistent (not just emergent) proof of concept yet (maybe versu, but while the structure is there, it wasn't the initial intent of the technique).

 

Well no. 64-bit precision is only required once you enable planetary landings. Precision is only important when you combine very large numbers, like the distance between planets, with very small numbers, like the distance a FPS character walks on a planetary landing. If you take out one of these factors, you don't need 64-bit precision.

A single perlin function has a period, meaning it crosses the central value at some defined frequency. It also has an annoying symetry around the origin. However all of this can be overcome by combining several perlin functions together, which every sensible implementation does.

The bigger challenge is that Perlin always has the same feel. Clever implementations can get around this. And you can combine it with different noise types. However ultimately there is only so much variation that can be produced.

Of course planets in our actual universe are likely to be far less varied then anything found in a game.

 

Everything is possible, but some things are more possible than others, especially in 32 bit.

 

RAW perlin has the same feel.

But when talking perlin there is actually 4 fonctions:
1. Population of space (probability of)
2. Filling object attribute
3. Sequencing of events
4. Shape modulation (generally landscape).

People see perlin and only think of the fourth with RAW perlin.

But really what perlin does is giving you a basis for modulation, once you have it you use it through a handcrafted description that need to be modulate (monte carlo based perlin give you cool shape), the quality of the description will give you the quality of the final result, perlin isn't magic.

In fact it's just a spatial hash with random data at the corner of the hash, and a method to interpolate that data, which you can also control to obtain different result.

The principal quality of perlin is to give smooth coherent data with a good distribution (ie the same in every direction). There is a number of stuff you can do to to break the smoothness (thresholding is the simpler) and you can further add perturbation the data with displacement, which further break the inherent regularity.

RAW perlin or even FBM (multi octave perlin noised mixed together) are not enough and is baby first landscape. You still need to design to get desired features, and design is planned.

 

CChecked the source.
IMproved implementation loops.
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/noise/

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. // JAVA REFERENCE IMPLEMENTATION OF IMPROVED NOISE - COPYRIGHT 2002 KEN PERLIN.
3.  
4. public final class ImprovedNoise {
5.    static public double noise(double x, double y, double z) {
6.       int X = (int)Math.floor(x) & 255,                  // FIND UNIT CUBE THAT
7.           Y = (int)Math.floor(y) & 255,                  // CONTAINS POINT.
8.           Z = (int)Math.floor(z) & 255;
9.       x -= Math.floor(x);                                // FIND RELATIVE X,Y,Z
10.       y -= Math.floor(y);                                // OF POINT IN CUBE.
11.       z -= Math.floor(z);
12.       double u = fade(x),                                // COMPUTE FADE CURVES
13.              v = fade(y),                                // FOR EACH OF X,Y,Z.
14.              w = fade(z);
15.       int A = p[X  ]+Y, AA = p[A]+Z, AB = p[A+1]+Z,      // HASH COORDINATES OF
16.           B = p[X+1]+Y, BA = p[B]+Z, BB = p[B+1]+Z;      // THE 8 CUBE CORNERS,
17.  
18.       return lerp(w, lerp(v, lerp(u, grad(p[AA  ], x  , y  , z   ),  // AND ADD
19.                                      grad(p[BA  ], x-1, y  , z   )), // BLENDED
20.                              lerp(u, grad(p[AB  ], x  , y-1, z   ),  // RESULTS
21.                                      grad(p[BB  ], x-1, y-1, z   ))),// FROM  8
22.                      lerp(v, lerp(u, grad(p[AA+1], x  , y  , z-1 ),  // CORNERS
23.                                      grad(p[BA+1], x-1, y  , z-1 )), // OF CUBE
24.                              lerp(u, grad(p[AB+1], x  , y-1, z-1 ),
25.                                      grad(p[BB+1], x-1, y-1, z-1 ))));
26.    }
27.    static double fade(double t) { return t * t * t * (t * (t * 6 - 15) + 10); }
28.    static double lerp(double t, double a, double b) { return a + t * (b - a); }
29.    static double grad(int hash, double x, double y, double z) {
30.       int h = hash & 15;                      // CONVERT LO 4 BITS OF HASH CODE
31.       double u = h<8 ? x : y,                 // INTO 12 GRADIENT DIRECTIONS.
32.              v = h<4 ? y : h==12||h==14 ? x : z;
33.       return ((h&1) == 0 ? u : -u) + ((h&2) == 0 ? v : -v);
34.    }
35.    static final int p[] = new int[512], permutation[] = { 151,160,137,91,90,15,
36.    131,13,201,95,96,53,194,233,7,225,140,36,103,30,69,142,8,99,37,240,21,10,23,
37.    190, 6,148,247,120,234,75,0,26,197,62,94,252,219,203,117,35,11,32,57,177,33,
38.    88,237,149,56,87,174,20,125,136,171,168, 68,175,74,165,71,134,139,48,27,166,
39.    77,146,158,231,83,111,229,122,60,211,133,230,220,105,92,41,55,46,245,40,244,
40.    102,143,54, 65,25,63,161, 1,216,80,73,209,76,132,187,208, 89,18,169,200,196,
41.    135,130,116,188,159,86,164,100,109,198,173,186, 3,64,52,217,226,250,124,123,
42.    5,202,38,147,118,126,255,82,85,212,207,206,59,227,47,16,58,17,182,189,28,42,
43.    223,183,170,213,119,248,152, 2,44,154,163, 70,221,153,101,155,167, 43,172,9,
44.    129,22,39,253, 19,98,108,110,79,113,224,232,178,185, 112,104,218,246,97,228,
45.    251,34,242,193,238,210,144,12,191,179,162,241, 81,51,145,235,249,14,239,107,
46.    49,192,214, 31,181,199,106,157,184, 84,204,176,115,121,50,45,127, 4,150,254,
47.    138,236,205,93,222,114,67,29,24,72,243,141,128,195,78,66,215,61,156,180
48.    };
49.    static { for (int i=0; i < 256 ; i++) p[256+i] = p[i] = permutation[i]; }
50. }
51.  

Here's the thing, though. Nothing really stops people from using a bigger hashtable.

 

Has this been posted yet?

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/237434-star-citizen-single-player-delayed-indefinitely

 

Somehow I knew Squadron 42 was going to take a bullet. I think the top comment there puts things in perspective:

 

This goes back to the point I (and many others) have made: Given the sheer scope of Star Citizen, the studio should have released several games along the way.

They could have released a single player FPS (Star Marine) and a space dogfighting game (Squadron 42) by now. They should have released a couple smaller titles using an unmodified version of the game engine, and then pushed the art assets into the final all-in-one game with the modified game engine once it was all ready.

I have been really excited about Star Citizen, but I understand the terrible pressure that scope creep brings. I really hope their money does not run out before the game is ready.

 

BTW what are the exact feature promise?
- 60 missions long cinematic single player with planet landing and dog fight
- MMO in space with dog fight and planet landing (trading, fighting, questing)
How could that fail?

 

The original crowdfunding was a reasonable scope, but it rapidly increased thanks to stretch goals. Here is an overview page:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals

 

Oh, wow. No, you're the first one to post.

And to think that their last stretch goal was "procedural universe"

Also, this perfectly explains the kind of doubts I was having about Chris Roberts:

Basically, 11 years absence from the gamedev, and then taking on massive projects can result in this kind of thing.

Not to mention:

I mean, come on.

 

More in depth info here: http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/23/inside-the-troubled-development-of-star-citizen

 

I saw that video of SC this week. Its impressive.

Something struck me as a problem though. Chris Roberts' focus on immersion to the last finite detail is a problem.

Why?

Because when you add all these minute features like animated cockpit chairs, ships with interiors and the ability to carry a crew which can walk around while in flight and do a number of different things all at the same time, it adds lots of complexity.

I think with any level of technology there is a level of complexity which is normally manageable.

If complexity were a container (like a Milk jug) where the top being full meant that was as much as you could reasonably manage (both intellectually and financially) then when you use up most of your space in the container with minute features like animated swivel chairs, detailed first person animations, walkable ship interiors, and other things then at some point you approach filling up your container.

So the actual gameplay becomes very bland and simple. IMO like someone else said it lacks visual identity. It looks bland. The gameplay as a result of my "complexity container" analogy will be pretty shallow in the grand scheme of things, unless Chris Roberts can keep somehow adding funds and somehow hire freakin' geniuses.

That same complexity could be used to develop deep gameplay instead of the cool (but silly) things I categorized here.

 

What I read from "aledged" employees talking about him sounded pretty insane. Granted it was all one-sided stuff, possibly from ex-employees who had been fired for good reasons, but usually there's at least a bit of truth to the wildest allegations. I mean, other "gamedev stars" like Molyneux and Schafer failed to deliver Kickstarter projects within the agreed budgets and scope too.

Somehow I feel like "stretch goals" are often a stupid idea that tends to kill quite a few kickstarter projects in the end. Do they really work so well to increase the funding, that you have to have them? Or do people just get too excited at the sight of money, that they start promising things they haven't thought through?


edit: might as well post this old article too:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...alk-Star-Citizen-and-the-State-of-the-Company

 

The problem with SC is that so much is done for these presentations, as a backer all I wanted was alpha builds, I remember the dogfighting module it was meant to be out before the end of year with some flyable ships to mess around with, you saw all the demo's before the end of year. And for me I just wanted to play with some of the S*** they already had in builds, as an early backer its what I paid for was to be part of it. However for Chris its all about doing S*** for the presentations and glory of that, so the dogfighting module was held back into the next year and polished up for another convention..

They play the game well with the media and presentation to the public and it works (even the negative press worked out in there favour lol) , it has brought in more backers for the game, and its increased the scope of the games ambitious goals.. So I'm on the fence if it wasn't the ride and entertainment this game has provided watching it and its youtube channel just about every week to see how things are going, without that its community and entertainment this game would not have the dedicated loyalists invested in the dream and it simply would not have made it this far.

I don't agree with all that nonsense its not bland at all and gameplay is there if you like moving big bennys around but If you have been watching SC progress from the early days.. watching CIG path has been exactly that, they keep this going even with all the development decisions which are part of Chris ambitious vision to provide a good entertaining show for the conventions, demo's and media, and it works great for that (seriously without it this project would not be where its at now, most kickstarter projects die because of lack of fans and thus funding motivating the developers to push onwards with the pressure, and you can't have fans without people and things to entertain them through the dry spells ).. anyway its not stuff that you'd enjoy playing after the 10th time, like your character having to pick up a helmet watch some fancy animation that looked great once, basically spend about 3mins going through this 'realistic sim' climb into your ship and finally get into a menu screen to do a spaceship battle match and that was after 4mins of game loading into a hanger module even though you just wanted to fly one of your ships and a menu screen for that provided before loading a hanger module would have worked better. The entire premise of the DFM is its an arcade simulation, at this point you just want to use there debug builds with all the shortcuts the devs use to skip this crap. It's easy to see why so much of the development time is spent doing things that will be scrapped or redone again at a later point but for the most part its stuff they've had to do to get where they are now..

And they still come out picking up even better talent along the way, because of the funding they get from these things. Crytek studio's partial financial disaster a few years back worked out great for CIG and I dunno how many of Cryteks ex employees. They get to work on the same engine, on a game that has such a dedicated fanbase for the vision. Not to mention talented creative people from the movie industry who fed up of working on holywood S*** etc the list goes on they keep attracting talented people to the vision and its paying off for the game.

To me they have already pushed this way beyond the point of failure now, that makes me happy because I like where its going now more than ever before, the planet tech was a game changer that came in alot earlier than expected and it was obvious that S42 would be delayed from having any partial demo of it out this year because of that addition alone. The track record of estimate releases has always been off into the following year .. . I've been very critical of them in the past and pissed at the game/engine and lack of gui options for console cmds (like disabling S***ting motion blur but then its cryengine doing ui stuff is a pain in the ass, and its not in Chris vision so its not there yet it just F***ing better be soon ) and bugs with module stuff but they are like tech demos and milestone achievements for the bigger projects development, Its hard to take them seriously as anything more than that really. Although I see with Star Marine module really kicking things off with the game getting more popular for next year, its the only FPS game I'm interested in as most of what the industry has for a FPS games is bleh to me now well apart from UT. The past minor screwups in design with the module gameplay and those mistakes are less relevant with the upcoming stuff now. So just looking at the greater picture of it, they are going in the right direction and that's all that matters really.

 

The stuff I read from neoshaman's quotes is a sort of a tiny glimmer of hope (as in that light at the end of the tunnel that may be an oncoming train). Robert's brother sounds like someone who knows what they're doing, and apparently he got in control after Chris blew the first couple of deadlines. So it is consistent with my impression.

However, I'm still not sure. I have a feeling that a lot of people have thoughts along the lines of "Oh wow...over 100 hundred million usd! That's way more than I can ever make this amount of money and there's no way in hell this sum can run out!", maybe subconsciously. It CAN run out.

What I'd love to see would be a financial report for the Robert's Space Industries. That would be a clear indication of what they're doing and what kind of situation they are REALLY in. I mean, last time I checked, companies that trade stock release those kind of reports and and allow investors to vote on important decisions. Allowing backers to vote on technical details would probably be a bad idea, but seeing where the money went would be nice. The game demo they posted give me major "overspending on art" vibe. I mean, this ship pretty much looks handpainted, motion capture on the actor is very high quality, and there are all those interactive UIs everywhere. There's polish, polish, polish, polish, polish, everywhere on the ship. At the same time it does not seem to turn around its center of mass, wheels on the vehicle behave strangely and in unrealistic fashion and ragdolls on nomads is not very good. That may indicate that core of the game is rotten.... and it also gives impression of the demo being simply a means of maintaining hype and donations cash flow.

I mean, it is a tecch demo, with "Imagine the POSSIBILITIES" kind of message.

Spoiler

Possibilities are something that may not happen and does not exist right now. People may overlook that simple problem, start imagining stuff that may never happen, and throw money down the drain on a project that may ultimately fail.

What I'd love to see instead of that demo would be flying through the galaxy on untextured cubes with all core mechanics fleshed out. I mean, elite dangerous wasn't a super hit, but it delivered quite a lot of its promises and with smaller budget too.

 

If we ignore other expenses and assume an overhead of 10 000 usd per employee with 300 employees. 300 x 10 000 x 12 = 36 000 000 per years, aka 3,4 years of production. But they also get an influex of 1-2millions per month with the fan, weren't at full headcount (but are hiring) at the beginning, etc ... so you have a rough estimation of the burn rate.

 

What do you mean by burn rate if I may ask? Just how much money they are going through? Sorry it wasn't very clear to me...

And if I can't read your jumble of text... good luck getting me to respond.

 

Star Citizen WILL be a disappointment. They promise everything to everybody. They can't deliver. It will be a huge bloated turd.

 

There is already parody game
http://store.steampowered.com/app/463720/

 

Sure, it will be a disappointment. But if they locked down what they have right now and polished it, it would be fantastic, and I hope that's what it means when they canned Squadron 42 (much as I wanted to play it). The dogfighting module itself is worth tens or hundreds of hours of gameplay, not to mention the persistent universe as it currently is. What disappoints me is how crappy and boring some of the gameplay looks (such as the demo where you board a damaged ship to retrieve some blueprints). It just doesn't look all that fun and appears incredibly superficial. There's a lot of potential and content but it's not ready yet and it'll take time and money to get it there.

 

Dwarf Fortress promises more and they're actually delivering.

 

Ever played wow, most the quests amount to collect and kill x and come back when you finished... that made blizztard millions, and most of its world was dead, as far as neutral/friendly npc's doing anything other than standing still. From the demo's and behaviors AI work the SC world should feel alive, so I'm sure the missions will get better AI and events that take place.

"What disappoints me is how crappy and boring some of the gameplay looks (such as the demo where you board a damaged ship to retrieve some blueprints)."

For me that demo of boarding the ship to retrieve blueprints was fine up until *surprise* enemies are inside of it, to me to threw off the immersion of the mission premise, to have this seemingly empty ship that your super hi tech ship scanners and no other ships around to detect, and suddenly inside you get ambushed with a few enemies that must have been camping out for a sometime to take care of.. it seemed a little silly, but these demos are put together to show some action and various gameplay mechanics even if does not seem fully cohesive.

Doubt that will be the standard of final S42 gameplay missions on the whole.. anyway just don't get the disappointment sentiments going on, the game has funding, the only disappointment will be for those who haven't upgraded pc in a while. And its kinda why I don't care about S42 expectations (which I doubt gets fully released until 2018) but partial release late next year maybe, is that not everyone even has the kind of pc capable of running the game decently anyway, where as in another year or two the hardware that will be out and existing hardware will have come down in price.

 

You know though this doesn't mean it was cancelled. It just means they see more potential for income in the MMO aspect of the game that was also promised. Nothing sells cash shop items better than seeing your competition with one and wanting it.

 

Fortunately, no.

Not only that, the whole thing just looked boring, there was no strategy whatsoever, the enemy drifted slowly past the door like some sort of space turd and somehow managed to miss the player even though the player didn't seem to make any attempt to find cover or dodge. And then CR seems to apologise for the enemy being a bullet sponge, which is one of my pet hates.

OK, maybe they want to demonstrate a multiplayer concept but you'd think they could try to add a bit of excitement into it.

The worst thing for me is that being outside the ship, in space, feels absolutely no different whatsoever to being inside it. There's no sense of being a tiny speck in the 'big void' of space, there's no feeling of vulnerability as you drift around with nothing but your suit between you and nothingness. It looked like they simply made an fps game and swapped out the skybox, and switched off gravity. I feel like there's no attempt made to capture the atmosphere of space.

 

"the enemy drifted slowly past the door like some sort of space turd"
"And then CR seems to apologise for the enemy being a bullet sponge, which is one of my pet hates."

well the fact he recognizes it being an issue is actually a good sign..now if he could just recognize the state of the current modules gui gfx options settings being that of a cheap console port right now. And do something about that for the next StarMarine release I'll be happy.. its the little things yknow

 

Well read the presentation card, it's simply not properly implemented, I think it's meant to show WIP or else the game would have been ready to ship ...

 

Well he sounded like he only realised because of the tension of being on stage, it was like "oh, yeah the enemy takes a few bullets actually" ... I don't know, a lot of their demos have been dodgy and very unpolished and I get the sense that no one is cracking the whip to get things tight.

Like at the end of the demo of the NPC mission where you go to retrieve the cargo, and then get 'double crossed' it's like someone just whacked that in half an hour before because they realised that the whole thing just came to an arbitrary end. I always hear CR reminding everyone of the 'good bits' semi apologetically as if they didn't quite have time to put them in properly. Compare that to someone like Kojima who says almost nothing and presents very polished, subtly worked demos that get people talking and looking for things on their own.

I always feel a bit embarassed during SC demos for some reason. That's not to say that there's not a lot of great stuff in there, but there's a little bit of a smell of confusion amongst the developers themselves.

 

DF uses ASCII for display. SC uses AAA 3D. This makes a HUGE difference.