StarCitizen Server Meshing Architecture(sc-server-meshing.info)
sc-server-meshing.info
StarCitizen Server Meshing Architecture
https://sc-server-meshing.info/wiki
142 comments
There's Elite Dangerous and No Man's Sky, as well as Eve online depending on what you're looking for.
All have their faults, but there are obvious alternatives to StarCitizen out there that's not vaporware.
All have their faults, but there are obvious alternatives to StarCitizen out there that's not vaporware.
> There's Elite Dangerous and No Man's Sky, as well as Eve online depending on what you're looking for.
None of those offer all the things as SC even at it's current state. Elite Dangerous is closest and even then they're just different games inherently.
> there are obvious alternatives to StarCitizen out there that's not vaporware.
You can download and play Star Citizen right now. It is, by definition, not vaporware.
None of those offer all the things as SC even at it's current state. Elite Dangerous is closest and even then they're just different games inherently.
> there are obvious alternatives to StarCitizen out there that's not vaporware.
You can download and play Star Citizen right now. It is, by definition, not vaporware.
I've tried NMS and Elite, Elite was on the right path but fell off hard.
Starcitizen is for better or worse unlike any other. Until another game comes where me and my friends can hop onto a capital ship and travel to planets etc seemlessly - ill switch. But nothing on the horizon yet.
Also love the ground vehicle gameplay too and its quite underrated.
Starcitizen is for better or worse unlike any other. Until another game comes where me and my friends can hop onto a capital ship and travel to planets etc seemlessly - ill switch. But nothing on the horizon yet.
Also love the ground vehicle gameplay too and its quite underrated.
I think that of the two, Elite Dangerous is the only one that scratches a similar itch, especially in terms of the spaceship mechanics. But it too has suffered from severe mismanagement (pursuing features that got advertising hype over those that made the game fun, abandoning features and leaving them in a broken state, taking forever to fix bugs but being quick on exploits, poor communication and of course the general brokenness of the way they designed their multiplayer in the first place).
I suppose Elite's one saving grace is that it doesn't claim to be in alpha.
I suppose Elite's one saving grace is that it doesn't claim to be in alpha.
My biggest problem with Elite: Dangerous is the Engineering mechanic, which basically gives you strictly better ship components in exchange for very long and boring MMO-style grinds.
If you want to be seriously competitive in PvP, it's required to do Engineering.
If you want to be seriously competitive in PvP, it's required to do Engineering.
Everything about Elite: Dangerous is a huge grind. You basically cannot play it casually, even in the completely offline and singleplayer session.
Elite is kind of tragic in that there are serious steps backwards in performance, VR, and visuals that they just don’t fix things.
A lot of great gameplay mechanics have been added over the years, but it hasn’t all been forward progress.
No Man’s Sky is the total opposite and I really want to come back to that at some point and get lost in it the way Elite was in VR.
Truly transported you elsewhere and gave you presence in an empty uncaring galaxy that made the tedium and grind still feel like something.
A lot of great gameplay mechanics have been added over the years, but it hasn’t all been forward progress.
No Man’s Sky is the total opposite and I really want to come back to that at some point and get lost in it the way Elite was in VR.
Truly transported you elsewhere and gave you presence in an empty uncaring galaxy that made the tedium and grind still feel like something.
I think Elite's devs bit off way more than they realized they were willing to chew, especially with Odyssey, thus dropping consoles and VR.
On the other hand, over the years they've left so many things broken/unfinished or just in general avoided certain things, makes me wonder if maybe the foundation itself was unstable. Eg powerplay being ignored even when it wasn't working right, many years between the addition of new ships and the lack of creativity in terms of the ship's capabilities, similarly with SRVs, weapons bugs, completely failing to capitalize on the excellent PvP mechanics they have, the relative standstill of the Thargoid plot until people largely lost interest, the stagnation/disconnect of Colonia from everything else etc.
On the other hand, over the years they've left so many things broken/unfinished or just in general avoided certain things, makes me wonder if maybe the foundation itself was unstable. Eg powerplay being ignored even when it wasn't working right, many years between the addition of new ships and the lack of creativity in terms of the ship's capabilities, similarly with SRVs, weapons bugs, completely failing to capitalize on the excellent PvP mechanics they have, the relative standstill of the Thargoid plot until people largely lost interest, the stagnation/disconnect of Colonia from everything else etc.
Yeah, I gave up on it ages ago. The only fun thing was docking/undocking.
It's funny, we've seen games released by the previous generations leading lights in game design and they're all disappointing so far. Relying on boring grinds, poor difficulty curves, etc.. Julian Gollop, David Braben, Chris Roberts, Peter Molyneux, etc.
It's like they can't adopt the new ideas from the next generation to make their games fun. Quite eye opening on how old age or perhaps success, not sure which, can make your thinking rigid.
Elite Dangerous is one of the worst. It's simply not fun. So pointlessly grindy for what is predominantly a single player game. I was so excited for the first 5-10 hours, and then so disappointed as it was obvious that every mechanic was just another massive progress bar that barely moved after hours of play.
No Man's Sky was much better, 40-50 hours fun play before the procedural nature of it became too obvious for me to enjoy it anymore. I played it 2-3 years after launch though, after all the updates. I'd probably play it again over a holiday weekend if I ever get the MS game pass again.
It's funny, we've seen games released by the previous generations leading lights in game design and they're all disappointing so far. Relying on boring grinds, poor difficulty curves, etc.. Julian Gollop, David Braben, Chris Roberts, Peter Molyneux, etc.
It's like they can't adopt the new ideas from the next generation to make their games fun. Quite eye opening on how old age or perhaps success, not sure which, can make your thinking rigid.
Elite Dangerous is one of the worst. It's simply not fun. So pointlessly grindy for what is predominantly a single player game. I was so excited for the first 5-10 hours, and then so disappointed as it was obvious that every mechanic was just another massive progress bar that barely moved after hours of play.
No Man's Sky was much better, 40-50 hours fun play before the procedural nature of it became too obvious for me to enjoy it anymore. I played it 2-3 years after launch though, after all the updates. I'd probably play it again over a holiday weekend if I ever get the MS game pass again.
>Elite Dangerous is one of the worst. It's simply not fun. So pointlessly grindy for what is predominantly a single player game. I was so excited for the first 5-10 hours, and then so disappointed as it was obvious that every mechanic was just another massive progress bar that barely moved after hours of play.
Speak for yourself, I had a lot of fun for hundreds of hours and revisited the game multiple times over the years. I did space trucking and mining and combat at various times, and enjoyed never paying a monthly fee for an MMO.
Elite Dangerous was announced at the same time as Star Citizen, for comparison, and it's so old now that the main reason I don't play it anymore is because I did everything I could do in single player and the concept has finally lost its allure.
I have a friend who played thousands of hours because he was more social than I and wound up in a large player guild.
I love(d) Elite so much that I bought a VR headset and a joystick solely for it, and I don't regret these purchases.
Speak for yourself, I had a lot of fun for hundreds of hours and revisited the game multiple times over the years. I did space trucking and mining and combat at various times, and enjoyed never paying a monthly fee for an MMO.
Elite Dangerous was announced at the same time as Star Citizen, for comparison, and it's so old now that the main reason I don't play it anymore is because I did everything I could do in single player and the concept has finally lost its allure.
I have a friend who played thousands of hours because he was more social than I and wound up in a large player guild.
I love(d) Elite so much that I bought a VR headset and a joystick solely for it, and I don't regret these purchases.
I'm sure it's fun for a small minority of players. The kind that like truck simulators. Takes all sorts. Other than that, it has incredibly shallow game elements. With long grinds of those shallow game elements to get new ships.
Lots of E:D's own player base acknowledge this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/qk6kqs/why_...
Lots of E:D's own player base acknowledge this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/qk6kqs/why_...
Whether the term "vaporware" applies to SC is kind of subjective IMO. The server meshing feature has been advertised for a long time and it still hasn't been shipped. Though they did add object persistence a few patches ago which really changed the game for salvaging.
I bought the game based on what I see people doing in it already, and it was fun enough for me. That definitely won't be the case for everyone and I recognize that. So to me it's not vaporware and there are lots of other people still enjoying the game today.
I bought the game based on what I see people doing in it already, and it was fun enough for me. That definitely won't be the case for everyone and I recognize that. So to me it's not vaporware and there are lots of other people still enjoying the game today.
This is just the SC project, honestly. Lots of "we will have this" and "we will do this" that never pan out because the scope is in perpetual and constant creep, with shifting priorities.
It's a cool project though, and I do enjoy the game, I just find that their plans and announcements should always be taken with a liberal grain of salt.
It's a cool project though, and I do enjoy the game, I just find that their plans and announcements should always be taken with a liberal grain of salt.
Never played Star Citizen myself but follow the development closely. From my understanding it's the only one (of the ones you mentioned) that simulates actual planets, orbits and has seamless transitions from space down to the pavement of a city.
No Man’s Sky also does seamless transitions from space down to the planets’ surfaces, though I’m not aware of there being any cities on any of the planets, just ancient ruins at best. It’s an infinite universe, but a deserted one (besides various animals and whatnot), and the main questline is about finding out why.
You have to watch closely and find the situations, and yeah Elite has this limiting unrealistic physics, but you have orbital mechanics you can even watch given the right system and patience, and you also can seamlessly transition from space down to planet, just systems are always jumps.
Plus, afaik Star Citizen is the only other game out there that has an equivalent of the "flight assist off" model (that is, has the option of allowing a spaceship to be flown more like a spaceship than a plane).
That toggle adds so much depth and skill to combat in Elite, it's a shame it isn't a more common thing in space games (also a shame that Elite itself doesn't really take advantage of it).
That toggle adds so much depth and skill to combat in Elite, it's a shame it isn't a more common thing in space games (also a shame that Elite itself doesn't really take advantage of it).
Yes, that exists, but still I found the Elite flight model with its unrealistic max speed limit a real downer.. and the arguments about it being the only way space fights would be fun and everything else too complicated for the masses a real lame excuse, and if there is any foundation to that easily solvable with more flight assist systems (that you could toggle off if desired).
It was fun in the old first Elite games :)
It was fun in the old first Elite games :)
Yeah the max speed limits are a downer. I never experienced the earlier Elite games unfortunately, but did get the experience of "true" spaceship control from KSP.
Many (I would have guessed most) Star Citizen players are long time players of these other games! What SC offers just isn't replicated by anyone yet, but you can be sure that players of this genre keep an eye on the horizon for what other projects might be offering, on a quite regular basis.
Given the development time and effort required to get SC to its current state, it’s hard to see another game getting close to it.
There is such a thing as developement hell. Meaning lots of effort, but not much progress when certain layers became a mess. The latest Duke Nukem game for example was developed for 10 years (I think) and then abandoned and never released.
And I follow SC just from the outside, but at least partially, I get that impression. So sure, shiny new ships are coming out. But the game itself does not seem to get much more stable and .. playable.
And I follow SC just from the outside, but at least partially, I get that impression. So sure, shiny new ships are coming out. But the game itself does not seem to get much more stable and .. playable.
The jump gate to Pyro was a very exciting prospect when they first demoed it four years ago...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tB3cark5lA
But I'm in a similar boat now, backed on Kickstarter almost eleven years ago now, and playing the game is just too much of a job.
In its current state, you spend 20 minutes riding elevators and trains around to get off a planet, and then crash into an invisible asteroid and explode, respawn and start over. And add a bunch of errands flying around the system to replace all your gear that blew up.
When it works it's very cool. But unless you have a lot of free time, not worth all the times when it doesn't work.
I hope they finish it, once it stops wiping progress and is possible to slowly accumulate longer term progress I'd be more willing to put in the effort. As-is, I'm not putting in any more money. They need some pressure to actually finish the damn thing (especially Squadron 42), and the bottomless fountain of crowdfunding with no publisher calling the shots clearly isn't working.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tB3cark5lA
But I'm in a similar boat now, backed on Kickstarter almost eleven years ago now, and playing the game is just too much of a job.
In its current state, you spend 20 minutes riding elevators and trains around to get off a planet, and then crash into an invisible asteroid and explode, respawn and start over. And add a bunch of errands flying around the system to replace all your gear that blew up.
When it works it's very cool. But unless you have a lot of free time, not worth all the times when it doesn't work.
I hope they finish it, once it stops wiping progress and is possible to slowly accumulate longer term progress I'd be more willing to put in the effort. As-is, I'm not putting in any more money. They need some pressure to actually finish the damn thing (especially Squadron 42), and the bottomless fountain of crowdfunding with no publisher calling the shots clearly isn't working.
It looks to me like "server meshing" is a concept coined by SC for the architecture they have planned. The top page of Google for the term turns up only SC-related results.
EVE uses a different, simpler model where each system is a process, and players connect to proxy servers that keep track of which system they're on (and therefore which server they need to connect to) [0]. I'm sure there are layers of caching and other optimizations built on top of that basic structure, but that's just Gall's Law in action: a working complex system invariably evolved from a working simple system.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the architecture that I can describe in a single sentence is the one powering the legendary 20-year-old game, while no one seems to be quite able to explain what "server meshing" will look like except that it seems to have a lot of moving parts and still hasn't been finished.
[0] https://www.engadget.com/2008-09-28-eve-evolved-eve-onlines-...
EVE uses a different, simpler model where each system is a process, and players connect to proxy servers that keep track of which system they're on (and therefore which server they need to connect to) [0]. I'm sure there are layers of caching and other optimizations built on top of that basic structure, but that's just Gall's Law in action: a working complex system invariably evolved from a working simple system.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the architecture that I can describe in a single sentence is the one powering the legendary 20-year-old game, while no one seems to be quite able to explain what "server meshing" will look like except that it seems to have a lot of moving parts and still hasn't been finished.
[0] https://www.engadget.com/2008-09-28-eve-evolved-eve-onlines-...
Star Citizen is trying to handle physics for objects in stations/planets/ships, debris, asteroids etc. A couple orders of magnitude more objects, I think.
Note that I don't play or follow either game, but I think you're making an unreasonable comparison.
Note that I don't play or follow either game, but I think you're making an unreasonable comparison.
I'm only referencing EVE because OP did, but I don't think the comparison is unreasonable: using a simpler architecture doesn't mean you don't use beefy machines and write your code in C instead of Stackless Python to get better performance in your physics simulations. It just means that instead of being overly clever in your network infrastructure from the get go, you pick something simple that works and iterate from there.
It probably starts at picking a game engine that doesn't absolutely suck dick at any multiplayer workload.
SC was from the start supposed to be a giant multiplayer world, yet they picked cryengine, which can barely handle simple shooter multiplayer gameplay. Half of the updates Chris has given on development are just over-explaining simple multiplayer game engine functionality that they've had to implement from the ground up, while you can download unity or unreal and replicate it in the next hour.
I've always found him to be full of bullshit. The kickstarter video had him spend like ten minutes waffling on about how the ships have thrusters on them and all the physics are calculated off those actual thrusters, as if 1) that's not just a useless implementation detail that changes nothing about the actual game, 2) as if that's impressive in 2012 instead of the exact thing the rest of the industry was doing, 3) as if that was hard work instead of just a normal thing a video game developer should be comfortable building, 4) AS IF IT MAKES THE GAME MORE FUN
I don't understand how he sold anyone off that video. The sales pitch wasn't even aspirational, it was clearly and obviously a grift, though maybe unintentionally, from the very beginning.
It's a great example of someone thinking "more simulation detail === more better". Every game developer should really attempt to take a class on the human psychology of games.
SC was from the start supposed to be a giant multiplayer world, yet they picked cryengine, which can barely handle simple shooter multiplayer gameplay. Half of the updates Chris has given on development are just over-explaining simple multiplayer game engine functionality that they've had to implement from the ground up, while you can download unity or unreal and replicate it in the next hour.
I've always found him to be full of bullshit. The kickstarter video had him spend like ten minutes waffling on about how the ships have thrusters on them and all the physics are calculated off those actual thrusters, as if 1) that's not just a useless implementation detail that changes nothing about the actual game, 2) as if that's impressive in 2012 instead of the exact thing the rest of the industry was doing, 3) as if that was hard work instead of just a normal thing a video game developer should be comfortable building, 4) AS IF IT MAKES THE GAME MORE FUN
I don't understand how he sold anyone off that video. The sales pitch wasn't even aspirational, it was clearly and obviously a grift, though maybe unintentionally, from the very beginning.
It's a great example of someone thinking "more simulation detail === more better". Every game developer should really attempt to take a class on the human psychology of games.
That doesn't work. The biggest battle ever in EVE online[1] had 2,670 players in a single system. The server is chugging through movement/actions/collisions for a few thousand objects, almost all of them not touching and just doing raycasts.
Star Citizen seems to have 100k+ entities per system[2], some with extremely complex collision (eg player models, ship interiors), many of them interacting with each other on each timestep, probably very few of them sleeping.
You can't fix that with faster processors. All those updates trying to go out to players, all subject to checks, all needing updates. It's not in the same class of difficulty.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_B-R5RB [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/qbqv7v/heaps_m...
Star Citizen seems to have 100k+ entities per system[2], some with extremely complex collision (eg player models, ship interiors), many of them interacting with each other on each timestep, probably very few of them sleeping.
You can't fix that with faster processors. All those updates trying to go out to players, all subject to checks, all needing updates. It's not in the same class of difficulty.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_B-R5RB [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/qbqv7v/heaps_m...
I've played 1,483.4 hours of Elite Dangerous in the past 2-3 years. You don't have to wait for SC to catch up.
Something that needs to be pointed out here is the fact that nearly all of CIG's resources are allocated to finishing their single player game, Squadron 42: Episode 1, and a veritable skeleton crew is working on the Persistent Universe (the MMO). Considering this, and the fact that most of the work done on Squadron should directly translate over to the PU, a lot of the skepticism over how fast development is going is misplaced. At least... I hope so.
> At least... I hope so
As do we all, but CIG doesn't make it easy to hold on to that hope when their transparency has all but disappeared. Squadron 42's store page has been removed from their website for months now, where any links to "pledge" lead to a 404 error. The only acknowledgement of it from them was buried as a reply to a days-old, user-posted forum thread where they claim it was removed for a price change. That was months ago. Meanwhile, multiple ships' prices have been updated.
As do we all, but CIG doesn't make it easy to hold on to that hope when their transparency has all but disappeared. Squadron 42's store page has been removed from their website for months now, where any links to "pledge" lead to a 404 error. The only acknowledgement of it from them was buried as a reply to a days-old, user-posted forum thread where they claim it was removed for a price change. That was months ago. Meanwhile, multiple ships' prices have been updated.
They publish monthly reports about their progress on all development related to SQ42 though..
I'm honestly stunned how often I see the pattern repeat of telling the users they are wrong [1], particularly in this MMO space that I'd dearly love to see more games in.
World of Warcraft ("WoW") is the elephant in the room. It killed the previous elephant (Everquest aka EQ) but has reigned supreme in a shrinking space for 18 years. It partially shrank because it used to have a social component that has mostly been replaced by social media but there are other factors too.
But what I scratch my head at is all the bad competitors that came afterwards and predictably failed because they made product decisions. The most common one is focusing on PvP. MMO is an interesting genre because only something like 10% of the population at best cares about PvP. So right off the bat you've reduced your potential market by 90% without doing a thing. But no, you get assured that "our PvP is so good, casuals will want to PvP".
There's another factor here too: in a persistent world where your power increases, PvP players fundamentally want an unfair fight. They want to be rewarded for various grinds. Contrast this with deathmatch and battle royale games where everyone is basically equal other than player skill.
Anyway, Star Citizen has now raised (and spent) over half a billion dollars on the same bad premise of PvP.
Server meshing aims to create a single persistent universe but PvP, which most will want to avoid, is fundamentally unfair because the people with the best ships, paid for with real money, will win. This is such a fundamentally bad and limiting design, it's hard to comprehend.
Imagine instead SC had defined a small core game loop and gone for a Sea of Thieves like world, both PvP and non-PvP. SoT has like 8-12 players on a server and they can PvP. Interestingly, a lot of players don't want this so they monopolize a server and agree not to PvP. Even in WoW, which has faction PvP, the players have basically voted out world PvP by concentrating a single faction on each server with very few exceptions.
But SC is doing things like server meshing when after a decade they still don't have a core game loop. I occasionally check in on the SC roadmap and progress. Not because I'm interested in playing but because I like watching a car wreck in super slow motion. Constant missed deadlines, new (incomplete) features being promised (and a few added), more promised features to fix the bad previous features and so on. It's a disaster.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik
World of Warcraft ("WoW") is the elephant in the room. It killed the previous elephant (Everquest aka EQ) but has reigned supreme in a shrinking space for 18 years. It partially shrank because it used to have a social component that has mostly been replaced by social media but there are other factors too.
But what I scratch my head at is all the bad competitors that came afterwards and predictably failed because they made product decisions. The most common one is focusing on PvP. MMO is an interesting genre because only something like 10% of the population at best cares about PvP. So right off the bat you've reduced your potential market by 90% without doing a thing. But no, you get assured that "our PvP is so good, casuals will want to PvP".
There's another factor here too: in a persistent world where your power increases, PvP players fundamentally want an unfair fight. They want to be rewarded for various grinds. Contrast this with deathmatch and battle royale games where everyone is basically equal other than player skill.
Anyway, Star Citizen has now raised (and spent) over half a billion dollars on the same bad premise of PvP.
Server meshing aims to create a single persistent universe but PvP, which most will want to avoid, is fundamentally unfair because the people with the best ships, paid for with real money, will win. This is such a fundamentally bad and limiting design, it's hard to comprehend.
Imagine instead SC had defined a small core game loop and gone for a Sea of Thieves like world, both PvP and non-PvP. SoT has like 8-12 players on a server and they can PvP. Interestingly, a lot of players don't want this so they monopolize a server and agree not to PvP. Even in WoW, which has faction PvP, the players have basically voted out world PvP by concentrating a single faction on each server with very few exceptions.
But SC is doing things like server meshing when after a decade they still don't have a core game loop. I occasionally check in on the SC roadmap and progress. Not because I'm interested in playing but because I like watching a car wreck in super slow motion. Constant missed deadlines, new (incomplete) features being promised (and a few added), more promised features to fix the bad previous features and so on. It's a disaster.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik
Excellent observations, allow me to propose a semi-ironic counter position: at the time of its greatest success, SC had a very unique value proposition: instead of pay to win, it was pay to imagine winning. They were selling the daydream of getting one's entire attention and and ambition consumed in a game like a fourteen year old, to greying forty-years olds who grew up core gamers but who stopped a long time ago sinking quality hours into games. Now either hardly any hours at all, or just downwinding hours. The reality of PvP might be bleak, but an imagination of PvP is the best of all imagined gaming. Of course this form of virtual virtual entertainment can't go on forever because it's always been built on the promise of one day ditching one of the virtuals, but it's been quite a ride, one of its kind.
Only the biggest MMOs, really just WoW and FF14, can deliver PvE content at a pace even close to satisfying players. It's expensive to develop and players can only play the same content PvE for a limited amount of time. It's just not possible for anyone but the largest dev teams.
I would like to see an MMO that really focused on a wide range of gameplay systems rather than content. It's been attempted before, one example I think is Archeage, but unfortunately ruined by monetization.
I would like to see an MMO that really focused on a wide range of gameplay systems rather than content. It's been attempted before, one example I think is Archeage, but unfortunately ruined by monetization.
I have a counterexample for you: Classic WoW.
For those unfamiliar, WoW came out in late 2004 and has had some ~8 expansions since. Each expansions adds new lands, new cosmetics, new dungeons, new raids and new systems. Additionally, these expansions changed existing systems. So much so that what is now refered to as "retail WoW" is considered too complex with too big of a barrier to entry by many. It's partially why the player base has shrunk as the game has increasingly catered to the top 1% to 5% ta the expense of the casual player base.
There has been a rich history of so-called private servers. These are privately run WoW servers that stick to older versions of the game, particularly the vanilla game and each of the first two expansions. These are illegal and never last long.
At Blizzard's annual conference, famously this came up when an audience member asked about it and the head of the game said "You think you do but you don't" [1]. This one guy probably did more to move this cause forward than anyone as it galvanized the community behind this idea.
Then 4-5 years ago Blizzard announced they were releasing "classic WoW". This is basically (but not entirely) the original game with some changes. Some were understandable, some less so. But it was basically the original game.
This has been massively popular and continues to be, so much so that Blizzard just released "hardcore classic WoW", servers where your character is over when you die. Lots of games have hardcore modes but it's interesting in WoW that it may takes ~6 days played to get to max level and a lot of people still want hardcore mode.
But my point is that this 18 year old game with about the same graphics continues to be massively in demand. You don't need to constantly churn out new content to a large scale like you suggest.
Also, SC has over a half a billion dollars and continues to somehow raise a lot through ship sales (which, to me, is bizarre). They very much could afford to continually pump out new content. But there's still only one system with the second years delayed.
Studios like PvP because it falls into user-generated content. The players entertain themselves and that costs almost nothing. But they fail to acknowledge that they're, at best, catering to 5-10% of the potential market.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wrw3c2NjeE
For those unfamiliar, WoW came out in late 2004 and has had some ~8 expansions since. Each expansions adds new lands, new cosmetics, new dungeons, new raids and new systems. Additionally, these expansions changed existing systems. So much so that what is now refered to as "retail WoW" is considered too complex with too big of a barrier to entry by many. It's partially why the player base has shrunk as the game has increasingly catered to the top 1% to 5% ta the expense of the casual player base.
There has been a rich history of so-called private servers. These are privately run WoW servers that stick to older versions of the game, particularly the vanilla game and each of the first two expansions. These are illegal and never last long.
At Blizzard's annual conference, famously this came up when an audience member asked about it and the head of the game said "You think you do but you don't" [1]. This one guy probably did more to move this cause forward than anyone as it galvanized the community behind this idea.
Then 4-5 years ago Blizzard announced they were releasing "classic WoW". This is basically (but not entirely) the original game with some changes. Some were understandable, some less so. But it was basically the original game.
This has been massively popular and continues to be, so much so that Blizzard just released "hardcore classic WoW", servers where your character is over when you die. Lots of games have hardcore modes but it's interesting in WoW that it may takes ~6 days played to get to max level and a lot of people still want hardcore mode.
But my point is that this 18 year old game with about the same graphics continues to be massively in demand. You don't need to constantly churn out new content to a large scale like you suggest.
Also, SC has over a half a billion dollars and continues to somehow raise a lot through ship sales (which, to me, is bizarre). They very much could afford to continually pump out new content. But there's still only one system with the second years delayed.
Studios like PvP because it falls into user-generated content. The players entertain themselves and that costs almost nothing. But they fail to acknowledge that they're, at best, catering to 5-10% of the potential market.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wrw3c2NjeE
This is really cool, I play Star Citizen a bit every time they release a new version just to see what they are up to. Persistent Entity Streaming was tech they were working on for a long time, it had a bit of a rocky launch but seems to be pretty smooth now. Crazy to see how much went into shipping that.
For anyone curious what PES does, when a player places an object somewhere or for example their ship explodes, that object will remain on the server in the same place even if you disconnect. Seems fairly simple from a user perspective but required a lot of changes to make work apparently.
For anyone curious what PES does, when a player places an object somewhere or for example their ship explodes, that object will remain on the server in the same place even if you disconnect. Seems fairly simple from a user perspective but required a lot of changes to make work apparently.
How does this relate to the technology that Improbable[^0] have built? I gather that their core tech is a massively distributed object graph designed to support the sort of interactions necessary for an MMO game to operate a global instance rather than shard worlds.
Improbable seem to have gone a bit... off the rails(?) in recent years, diving into Web3, metaverse, and defence contracting, but I assume the core tech is still there.
[^0]: https://www.improbable.io/
Improbable seem to have gone a bit... off the rails(?) in recent years, diving into Web3, metaverse, and defence contracting, but I assume the core tech is still there.
[^0]: https://www.improbable.io/
Unity ECS, which should really be called Unity “2”, sort of obsoleted Improbable’s approach. It is a base on which massive MMOs can be built correctly without the R&D cost of, well, inventing your own ECS architecture.
I don’t know if their Unreal offering is comparable to what they were doing with unreal.
I don’t know if their Unreal offering is comparable to what they were doing with unreal.
Improbable is basically a joke in the games industry.
I’m not exactly an expert in them or anything, but the last time I looked at them at all (admittedly many years ago) the whole concept of what they do seemed both very expensive and mostly useless for real games.
I’m not exactly an expert in them or anything, but the last time I looked at them at all (admittedly many years ago) the whole concept of what they do seemed both very expensive and mostly useless for real games.
As someone who glimpsed inside for a little bit during the first days - it's a curse of having too many resources, or too few pressure points. They were well funded from the beginning (read their founding history) and got a lot of additional money throughout the way (well, including but not limited to SoftBank) - so they were free to explore their vision, and gosh did they take their time to do it. They had good ideas coupled with a great engineering team, but the problems they were trying to solve did not exist in the real world - or at the very least - the problems were not important enough that game companies wanted to throw money at it. 1M concurrent online players looks good on paper - but who really cares to play such a game? Or who wants to pay exuberant prices for it when you can have the same amount of fun through sharded servers. So, although their vision materialized to an extent (they had the means to do it), and they had the foresight to know they had to support the engine with enough tooling and partnerships and what not and they built that as well, they were not able to make money out of it. If they set out to set problems that really existed in the world (gaming or otherwise) they could have been profitable by now. Instead, they panicked, restructured and pivoted into the latest hype(s) - they still have the means to go on, but with that culture and "baggage" (they are not nimble like a startup anymore) I give them less than 10% chance to turn a profit ever.
Ah. Lack of Product-Market fit. Classic. Thanks!
They had an incredible pmf - they could sell virtual spaceships in a game that didn't exist! People were hurling money at what they thought the product was going to be. It's just a question of how well they actually delivered on that promise.
That's not an example of product market fit, as the actual product: the game, never existed. The "product" in this case is a dream. "Star Citizen" means something very different to pretty much anyone who has thrown money at them.
My comment was referring to Improbable, not Star Citizen. I'd agree that SC seems to have reasonable product-market fit, but Improbable clearly doesn't if the parent comment is to be believed.
The fact this is not done by members of the dev team is pretty impressive both from the fact that they share this much information freely (on their youtube dev vlog?) and that someone was able to recreate the architecture semi-faithfully with that same info, including over-time.
I'm vaguely familiar with these topics. StarCitizen is a controversial game, if I'm not mistaken? What's this website about?
Back-end server technology, they want to make it a persistent MMO with thousands of concurrent players and effectively infinite objects in space.
But this MMO is the most expensive video game of all time (although there's others that have had more invested in them over time, I'm thinking of World of Warcraft or GTA 5, possibly upcoming titles like GTA 6), therefore the server technology also looks like some of the fanciest of all time. They have 1100 employees working on a game that's been in development for over 10 years now, funded to the tune of $600 million so far, with about 50-60 million still coming in every year just from pre-orders / donations / in-game purchases / ships for a possible game that may come out at some point.
But this MMO is the most expensive video game of all time (although there's others that have had more invested in them over time, I'm thinking of World of Warcraft or GTA 5, possibly upcoming titles like GTA 6), therefore the server technology also looks like some of the fanciest of all time. They have 1100 employees working on a game that's been in development for over 10 years now, funded to the tune of $600 million so far, with about 50-60 million still coming in every year just from pre-orders / donations / in-game purchases / ships for a possible game that may come out at some point.
The majority of the team is actually said to be working on the "solo" project which is Squadron 42. So they have an excuse for the sluggish development pace. Funny thing is, there hasn't been a single footage of SQ42 in 5 years, and you can't even buy the game anymore. There's a roadmap that says that the game is nearly done, but well, they seem to say this all the time.
>So they have an excuse for the sluggish development pace.
Except it shouldn't take almost 1000 people more than ten years to make a single player space game.
Except it shouldn't take almost 1000 people more than ten years to make a single player space game.
I would say it can take an infinite amount of time, if you have bad management, scope creep (or no defined scope at all), high turnover, obsoleted core technologies, and if people give you money even if you don't do anything anyways
Looks like someone mapped out the tech deliverables that SC has completed to meet their tech goals.
$600M buys you a lot of TBDs apparently.
If this game ever actually comes out and doesn't cure at least one type of cancer the weirdest online people are going to be furious.
If this game ever actually comes out and doesn't cure at least one type of cancer the weirdest online people are going to be furious.
Sure not everyone who bought the game or a ship at this stage has enjoyed it, but a lot of us have. Even in its unfinished state there’s a lot of fun to be had.
And, part of the game at this stage is watching it develop.
The amount raised/sold so far is massive, but people keep buying because they’re getting something out of it.
And, part of the game at this stage is watching it develop.
The amount raised/sold so far is massive, but people keep buying because they’re getting something out of it.
What features are built and playable at this point? By its nature, it's hard for me to disentangle the aspirational marketing from the actually-available content, and there's so much critical content about SC over the last decade that it's hard to know which criticisms still apply. What can you actually do in-game?
There are nearly a dozen mission types that net you money and gear that you use to build your inventory + fleet. There are bounty systems that interact with your ability to pirate others and commit crime. There is mining, cave exploration to track down bad guys, literally hundreds of custom-designed ships that are fun to discover and drive for their various missions. And then a whole layer of social emergent gameplay on top of it.
I know I left a few comments like this on this thread already, but I'm a big fan of the game. As a game dev, I have a lot of respect for their ambition, tech, and recent transparency. I'm not sure why people always fixate on the money - people invest and donate to worse things. RSI isn't predatory about it, they're very honest about the progress and expectations (especially recently)
I know I left a few comments like this on this thread already, but I'm a big fan of the game. As a game dev, I have a lot of respect for their ambition, tech, and recent transparency. I'm not sure why people always fixate on the money - people invest and donate to worse things. RSI isn't predatory about it, they're very honest about the progress and expectations (especially recently)
There's quite a lot you can do in game and there are tons of ships with many different specializations (cargo, salvaging, mining, exploration, fighters, bombers, corvettes). Some need multiple players to crew effectively
PVE - Cargo delivery missions (from small to large size) - Bounty hunting (in space and on planet) - Mining - Salvaging - Cave exploration/rescue - Escaping from prison
PVP - Bounty/pirate hunting
Just search for Star Citizen content on YouTube. You fill find a lot. My favorites are https://www.youtube.com/@CaptainBerks and https://www.youtube.com/@Morphologis
PVE - Cargo delivery missions (from small to large size) - Bounty hunting (in space and on planet) - Mining - Salvaging - Cave exploration/rescue - Escaping from prison
PVP - Bounty/pirate hunting
Just search for Star Citizen content on YouTube. You fill find a lot. My favorites are https://www.youtube.com/@CaptainBerks and https://www.youtube.com/@Morphologis
Basically, procedural trash grinds?
Squadron 42, the cinematic, single player, space campaign, was supposed to come out in 2014!
Squadron 42, the cinematic, single player, space campaign, was supposed to come out in 2014!
Isn't that all games though? Especially MMO's. Why do people think it's so much different for star citizen than any other game? At the end of the day, they're all just entertaining ways to waste time.
Because they were explicitly selling a wing commander type game as part of the package.
Perhaps you don't know how evocative that is, and how cynical it is for you to compare that to procedural MMO quests.
They're very different things. It's like paying for a gourmet meal and then being given a month's supply of tasteless protein bars.
Perhaps you don't know how evocative that is, and how cynical it is for you to compare that to procedural MMO quests.
They're very different things. It's like paying for a gourmet meal and then being given a month's supply of tasteless protein bars.
> They're very different things. It's like paying for a gourmet meal and then being given a month's supply of tasteless protein bars.
Isn't StarCitizen funded by their Kickstarter though?
So it would be more like someone asks you for money so they might make you a meal, of unknown quality with unknown timeline, and won't promise you anything even after you pay them. Which is standard for a Kickstarter.
Isn't StarCitizen funded by their Kickstarter though?
So it would be more like someone asks you for money so they might make you a meal, of unknown quality with unknown timeline, and won't promise you anything even after you pay them. Which is standard for a Kickstarter.
Can we get a field report from someone who has played it? I remember hearing about it 10 years ago and it seemed cool, I always thought it turned into vaporware.
I tried it during one of their free play weekends. The first time I rode an elevator to the hangar, it ejected me through the wall, breaking my legs and forcing me to crawl to a medbay before I could do anything else.
Curious, not saying its your fault but did you have the game installed on Nvme/ssd? On a standard HDD even with high r/w speeds the game is borderline unplayable.
Also free fly weekends are when the game is at its worst, the servers are bought to its knees.
Again, no fault to the player and its completely on CIG but its a shame that a lot of players never get to see the game in its best light because free fly is a nightmare.
Also free fly weekends are when the game is at its worst, the servers are bought to its knees.
Again, no fault to the player and its completely on CIG but its a shame that a lot of players never get to see the game in its best light because free fly is a nightmare.
I might be missing something - are you suggesting that the elevator blasted me through a wall and broke my legs because I installed the game to a hard drive? I can't remember what sort of drive I installed it to, it wasn't installed for very long.
Yes youre missihg something, SC on slower disks (even ssds) sucks it needs to be on an NvME drive for best performance
It fails to load geomoetry on slower disks sometimes, i.e. insides of an elevtator which causes the player to clip through and the game tries to compenstate and cause funky reactions.
It fails to load geomoetry on slower disks sometimes, i.e. insides of an elevtator which causes the player to clip through and the game tries to compenstate and cause funky reactions.
How has ejecting through a wall got anything to do with server load??
Yes youre missihg something, SC on slower disks (even ssds) sucks it needs to be on an NvME drive for best performance
It fails to load geomoetry on slower disks sometimes, i.e. insides of an elevtator which causes the player to clip through and the game tries to compenstate and cause funky reactions.
It fails to load geomoetry on slower disks sometimes, i.e. insides of an elevtator which causes the player to clip through and the game tries to compenstate and cause funky reactions.
And what has that got to do with server load?
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Sounds about right. I played off and on for a month or so; through a few updates.
There had/have been recurring problems with elevators and inventory. I would get ejected into space; no leg breaking.
I think just the way they mesh the world together makes that something that has been hard for them to fix.
The inventory issues are what got me to stop playing. Long inventory load times, and then 75% of the time, inventory would be lost or permanently broken (items lost/can't add new things to inventory).
Still fun for a few days. Pretty graphics. Space flight was fun. FPS missions needed a lot of work, but functional.
Another thing that made me quit, was the tedium of setup. You respawn quickly, from death into the hospital (unless you end up in prison, for shooting an at FPS guard that looks 90% exactly like an FPS enemy (then you get the prison play loop, which is fun once or twice)). But, then you need to take the elevator (chance of instant death) down to the ground floor. find the train. wait for the train. take the elevator (chance of death; or stairs if you are lucky [ i feel like there's a 'I'm gonna git you sucka' joke in here ]) to the shopping district. Wander around the shopping district (which is different on each planet) to hopefully find new Armor, Rifle, Mining tool, Gravity-gun tool (not all planets have the things you need, even)... then get back to the train and repeat for the space dock. then elevator to your ship bay. ... that's like 10-30 minutes. it just gets tedious. - probably more fun playing with groups of people, but it got too tedious playing solo.
Was an early Kickstarter backer, so I'll try it again at some point when it is more polished.
Agree that what I paid for was mainly a modern Wing Commander/Freelancer type game, and they are overreaching by a lot. I think the First-person-shooter stretch goal was added later in the funding campaign.
I also feel like a lot of the kick-starter ships have been power-creeped (and they also seem to be lagging behind in quality updates; because CIG has to design and sell new ships to make more money to fund development, and then most of that money goes to make new ships).
They should not be making new ships at all at this point, unless those ships are required for the single player campaign. Focus should be on game systems and game play.
There had/have been recurring problems with elevators and inventory. I would get ejected into space; no leg breaking.
I think just the way they mesh the world together makes that something that has been hard for them to fix.
The inventory issues are what got me to stop playing. Long inventory load times, and then 75% of the time, inventory would be lost or permanently broken (items lost/can't add new things to inventory).
Still fun for a few days. Pretty graphics. Space flight was fun. FPS missions needed a lot of work, but functional.
Another thing that made me quit, was the tedium of setup. You respawn quickly, from death into the hospital (unless you end up in prison, for shooting an at FPS guard that looks 90% exactly like an FPS enemy (then you get the prison play loop, which is fun once or twice)). But, then you need to take the elevator (chance of instant death) down to the ground floor. find the train. wait for the train. take the elevator (chance of death; or stairs if you are lucky [ i feel like there's a 'I'm gonna git you sucka' joke in here ]) to the shopping district. Wander around the shopping district (which is different on each planet) to hopefully find new Armor, Rifle, Mining tool, Gravity-gun tool (not all planets have the things you need, even)... then get back to the train and repeat for the space dock. then elevator to your ship bay. ... that's like 10-30 minutes. it just gets tedious. - probably more fun playing with groups of people, but it got too tedious playing solo.
Was an early Kickstarter backer, so I'll try it again at some point when it is more polished.
Agree that what I paid for was mainly a modern Wing Commander/Freelancer type game, and they are overreaching by a lot. I think the First-person-shooter stretch goal was added later in the funding campaign.
I also feel like a lot of the kick-starter ships have been power-creeped (and they also seem to be lagging behind in quality updates; because CIG has to design and sell new ships to make more money to fund development, and then most of that money goes to make new ships).
They should not be making new ships at all at this point, unless those ships are required for the single player campaign. Focus should be on game systems and game play.
I played during a free play weekend. I got out of my bed and immediately fell through the world and died. Tried again and went to look for the space port. Had to take a train to get there. The train ride was cool exactly once, but then you realize the planets are vast nothingness and the cool city you see really is completely empty. Lots of T-posing 3D models standing on tables and chairs. A much-vaunted "Bartender AI" that plays the same pint glass flip animation and says the same few dialog bits ad nauseum. The flight model is rather.. erm.. version zero like the rest of the game? As in, it doesn't really exist but maybe someday.
It's not an MMO as such, with something like 50 players per server. The Server Meshing God-tech that they've been banging on about for years now is practically impossible as described. To paraphrase, "you'll be able to shoot a gun from one ship and the bullet will pass through several cloud servers as it hits a player in another ship". Latency and n^2 are not your friends here. Honestly, based on this alone I'm surprised by the amount of Gell-mann Amnesia in the thread.
In my experience it's a "make your own fun" sort of game. Try it on a free play weekend, but IMO don't get sucked in and donate tens of thousands of dollars to a broken CryEngine demo running on promises.
It's not an MMO as such, with something like 50 players per server. The Server Meshing God-tech that they've been banging on about for years now is practically impossible as described. To paraphrase, "you'll be able to shoot a gun from one ship and the bullet will pass through several cloud servers as it hits a player in another ship". Latency and n^2 are not your friends here. Honestly, based on this alone I'm surprised by the amount of Gell-mann Amnesia in the thread.
In my experience it's a "make your own fun" sort of game. Try it on a free play weekend, but IMO don't get sucked in and donate tens of thousands of dollars to a broken CryEngine demo running on promises.
I've got over 3k hours at this point roughly, so i maybe slightly biased
The game has major ups and downs, but nothing really comes close to the same feeling of being on a capital ship with your friends pulling out from a beautiful space port. I wish there was a better alternative but there isn't, nothihng really comes close.
Performance has vastly improved from 50 players per server to 110 now i beleive? And i think theres talks of increasing it further.
The game has major ups and downs, but nothing really comes close to the same feeling of being on a capital ship with your friends pulling out from a beautiful space port. I wish there was a better alternative but there isn't, nothihng really comes close.
Performance has vastly improved from 50 players per server to 110 now i beleive? And i think theres talks of increasing it further.
There's a fully simulated solar system (Stanton) in game right now with 5 (I think?) populated planets that have cities and towns to visit and more space stations and moons to explore in first person. As for missions, there is fully functional economy with trade or smuggling, salvage, bounty hunting, and piracy. There is also a single player mode focused on dogfighting, and a basically unpopulated pvp FPS mode. There are upwards of 60 ships and 10ish ground vehicles to use in game alongside a small arsenal of small arms and pretty much all of them can be bought with in game currency or obtained in game through other means, though the servers do occasionally wipe when major updates happen (things you bought IRL are not wiped).
I backed this game on Kickstarter back in 2012. I don’t care for all this focus on multiplayer, I was just in it for the singleplayer aspect. I wish they would just deliver that.
At this point what you actually want is to download the "Wing Commander" mod for the open re-implementation of the FreeSpace 2 engine. It's really good looking and a fun to play experience.
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This game is weird. It is like not failing and failing at the same time.
The game is the meta-experience of playing an early access game at this point.
I know the words on this site. But I dont know what they mean. "Quantum Economy Scaling", "Subsumption AI", "pCache". Can someone ELI5?
~Im assuming this has to do with a service mesh and kubernetes of some sort. But I'm a bit lost.~
Edit: Ah! Seems like this is a game. But I still have no idea what any of this means :)
~Im assuming this has to do with a service mesh and kubernetes of some sort. But I'm a bit lost.~
Edit: Ah! Seems like this is a game. But I still have no idea what any of this means :)
These are basically marketing terms meant to try to explain why after 10 years and $600 million dollars in "crowdfunding" the game is still in alpha.
I too wish to find such gullible investors to fund me for 10 years of alpha building.
you just need to sell the vision well enough. The so-called investors are not buying for financial gain, but for that vision.
It's a pretty cool vision, but it's just unlikely to succeed in my eyes, and that's why i didn't buy in.
It's a pretty cool vision, but it's just unlikely to succeed in my eyes, and that's why i didn't buy in.
It's impossible to please the people who have bought in, because they bought into something impossible to make. They don't want a fully featured MMO space opera, or a new Wing Commander, but rather some vague dream they can't get away from. It's probably just nostalgia for most of them, chasing the high of childhood that they misattribute to Wing Commander, which was a fun series of games but in no way justifies the support Chris Roberts has had.
Wow! I thought $600M was an exaggeration, it's not: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
Star Citizen is a big planned online MMO. This page is about their current and planned back-end server architecture, where they want to have thousands of players online in a single virtual world, along with all of the random items - from ships to bits of trash - that float around in space visible to everyone.
Ambitious and such; the only other game I know of that tried it was Eve Online, which has tens of thousands of players in the same world, but which is limited to hundreds of players that can actually see each other.
Ambitious and such; the only other game I know of that tried it was Eve Online, which has tens of thousands of players in the same world, but which is limited to hundreds of players that can actually see each other.
This page is about their current and planned back-end server architecture, where they want to have thousands of players online in a single virtual world, along with all of the random items - from ships to bits of trash - that float around in space visible to everyone.
I would be surprised if they reached "hundreds" of players in a single instance. I don't think thousands is ever going to be attainable for them. Unless they are somehow able to make some sudden breakthrough that's alluded them in the last decade plus of development.
I would be surprised if they reached "hundreds" of players in a single instance. I don't think thousands is ever going to be attainable for them. Unless they are somehow able to make some sudden breakthrough that's alluded them in the last decade plus of development.
They've already exceeded the 100 player limit (previously 50). Theres rumours they're going to increase this to 200+.
I have been in 1000 player battles in Eve Online. It is possible because the game operates in ticks (increments) of 1 second.
And doesn’t time dilation occur with lots of concurrent events?
You sure about that? There are several EVE battles that involved multiple thousands of players at once.
In large EVE battles you don't really see ships, you see lots of little boxes on the HUD and a list of hostile targets on the overview window.
Combat is all about range, and if you're close enough to actually see the enemy ship models, you're probably about to explode.
I'll be amazed if Star Citizen ever comes close to the scale of EVE battles, though. There's so many technical challenges in making an MMO scale, especially when a game is so focused on graphical fidelity.
(Then again, EVE is a 20-year-old game at this point, and was designed for the limited PCs and bandwidth of the time. But I'm assuming that they're using modern top-end hardware for the servers, and they still struggle with the biggest battles)
Combat is all about range, and if you're close enough to actually see the enemy ship models, you're probably about to explode.
I'll be amazed if Star Citizen ever comes close to the scale of EVE battles, though. There's so many technical challenges in making an MMO scale, especially when a game is so focused on graphical fidelity.
(Then again, EVE is a 20-year-old game at this point, and was designed for the limited PCs and bandwidth of the time. But I'm assuming that they're using modern top-end hardware for the servers, and they still struggle with the biggest battles)
Those battles all take place under .25 or lower time dilation so that the servers can handle the load. Star Citizen plans on having a massive player count per shard under full normal time.
O(n^2) is a pain. Just updating everyone with what happened in a tick requires 4,000,000 data points a tick at 2,000 players.
At 10 Hz that is 40 million updates a second.
There are caches and prediction that can help but I ignore all gameplay in that number, it is just flying around.
At 10 Hz that is 40 million updates a second.
There are caches and prediction that can help but I ignore all gameplay in that number, it is just flying around.
How do they plan on doing that though. There are like fundamental computer science problems to be solved, and it's not just like a problem you can throw a faster computer at.
"Trust us, we picked cryengine, a game engine with near zero multiplayer tech, for a game that is literally trying to break new ground in computer science. We definitely know what we are doing, and Chris Roberts is totally a great project manager that hasn't come close to killing nearly every project he has been in charge of, including several space games."
That's how.
That's how.
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RSI's "plans" are less reliable than a politician's campaign promises.
It's a game that will never be completed, almost a kickstarter as performance art.
The words they choose must serve the goal of their performance first, conveying technical meaning is a optional secondary requirement
The words they choose must serve the goal of their performance first, conveying technical meaning is a optional secondary requirement
There's a massive set of articles pertaining to the topics. You won't be able to grok all the terms from a simple graphic, it's a massive project.
Star Citizen is a space simulation game in a large and persistent simulated universe.
Quantum is a system for simulating activity with economic impacts and determines how much of raw material or assembled products are available and where, how much things cost, how busy and how dangerous or safe space travel lanes are, and other such aspects of economic scaling.
Subsumption AI is used to drive NPC behavior up close. The game is supposed to have a population that is 90% AI NPCs that drive economic variation and action in general. This makes the game world seem alive even if there are no players currently with you in game. The NPCs have the ability to decide what to do, how to move around, make jokes and idle banter, and can use various equipment in the game as well as fight either in person or as spaceship pilots.
Not totally sure about pCache but it appears to be used on the server to capture changes to state in the universe that should be stored persistently. This is part of the server container streaming feature which allows servers to stream in areas and sets of objects as players approach and then stream them out when they are left empty for a time.
Quantum is a system for simulating activity with economic impacts and determines how much of raw material or assembled products are available and where, how much things cost, how busy and how dangerous or safe space travel lanes are, and other such aspects of economic scaling.
Subsumption AI is used to drive NPC behavior up close. The game is supposed to have a population that is 90% AI NPCs that drive economic variation and action in general. This makes the game world seem alive even if there are no players currently with you in game. The NPCs have the ability to decide what to do, how to move around, make jokes and idle banter, and can use various equipment in the game as well as fight either in person or as spaceship pilots.
Not totally sure about pCache but it appears to be used on the server to capture changes to state in the universe that should be stored persistently. This is part of the server container streaming feature which allows servers to stream in areas and sets of objects as players approach and then stream them out when they are left empty for a time.
they're looking to use AI to simulate an economy, the "quantum" is just what they're calling their tech.
They have several youtube videos on their channel where their game director has come out to talk about these projects in a technical manner. It's pretty neat.
[I say these things as a backer patiently waiting for more game]
They have several youtube videos on their channel where their game director has come out to talk about these projects in a technical manner. It's pretty neat.
[I say these things as a backer patiently waiting for more game]
QES and SA, the latest in technology
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Judging from the games performance, this looks probably better than what their dev team has.
The game was always built for "future computers", but then, that was ten years ago. They're really putting a lot of money and effort into reporting on their progress, after a few years of radio silence. But then, they have a lot of money to burn.
indeed, haven't been able to finish a mission yet due to crash after bug after crash.
I’m running and finishing missions daily. There are bugs, yes, but it is imminently playable.
I also do missions daily without much disruptions. As long as the servers aren't overwhelmed its fine
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Have you built anything comparable? It's in alpha, making performance/presentation comments seems really out of place. If you were well-informed on the project, you would know that they intentionally put performance optimizations on the backburner, because optimizing tech they intended to replace is not a good use of time.
Besides, in the last 6 months performance has drastically improved, as anyone that actually plays will tell you. I play regularly, do a variety of delivery/bounty/mining/recovery missions, explore planets/stations, have funny interactions surrounding all of that with other players, etc. Rome wasn't built in a day.
Besides, in the last 6 months performance has drastically improved, as anyone that actually plays will tell you. I play regularly, do a variety of delivery/bounty/mining/recovery missions, explore planets/stations, have funny interactions surrounding all of that with other players, etc. Rome wasn't built in a day.
> It's in alpha, making performance/presentation comments seems really out of place.
This is a ridiculous statement. They've collected half a billion dollars from customers and have been in alpha for over 10 years.
This is a ridiculous statement. They've collected half a billion dollars from customers and have been in alpha for over 10 years.
Reminds me of the film director dismissing the view of a film critic who had never made a film in his entire life...
That sounds like a good thing. Artists rarely care about what critics say, and when they do it's seen as an obsession to get rid of. I would hope Kurosawa didn't waste time listening to critics and instead took feedback from those that made films.
The director cared enough to make the dismissal.
Do I have to build something comparable to be able to comment on the performance issues I have witnessed? I don't think so.
Do I have to accept all those excuses, which like those pictures of ships never run low in this company, to comment on the performance? I don't think so.
They promise a lot. They don't deliver. They break things which were already working and I'm still waiting. Those are clear signs of terrible Project Management and I think, I don't have to know all those cool insiders-excuses to be able to comment on this failure.
So please. Spare me your epigrams. They won't change anything about the facts.
Do I have to accept all those excuses, which like those pictures of ships never run low in this company, to comment on the performance? I don't think so.
They promise a lot. They don't deliver. They break things which were already working and I'm still waiting. Those are clear signs of terrible Project Management and I think, I don't have to know all those cool insiders-excuses to be able to comment on this failure.
So please. Spare me your epigrams. They won't change anything about the facts.
Hey, please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Your reply here is a noticeable drop hellward, and that's what we're trying to avoid here!
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
BowBun(2)
What is the state of the art for MMO servers?
got addicted to SC this year, spent an embarrasing amount on it. this Server Meshing they're planning is impressive if implemented
"impressive if implemented" is a nice nutshell for star citizen, which on the whole isn't terribly impressive.
Its pretty impressive if you go in with an unbiased outlook
IF you have the hardware to run it and you're a scifi nerd its mindblowing the first time around, even after 3000 hours i still have moments when i'm mindblown. (Recently had a tank that shot my friends ship from the sky during an ingame event)
IF you have the hardware to run it and you're a scifi nerd its mindblowing the first time around, even after 3000 hours i still have moments when i'm mindblown. (Recently had a tank that shot my friends ship from the sky during an ingame event)
> (Recently had a tank that shot my friends ship from the sky during an ingame event)
Except this isn't actually impressive if you've been playing games. Supreme Commander lets you block artillery shells with your planes if you are lucky, with zero scripted event, and that game released in 2007, is single threaded, is an RTS, and allows you to play 8 vs 8 games where EACH PLAYER can control 1000 units and play on a 50km by 50km map. Now that is impressive IMO.
Of course, if you attempted those things with a 2007 computer, you get about 2fps, but it works great nowadays. Also, that company was never handed half a billion on a silver platter before releasing anything.
More to your point, here are a bunch of other games that let you shoot a plane out of the sky with a tank, from before star citizen, that show just how mundane of a situation that is: Arma 2, Battlefield (all of them), Planetside 2, Damn Halo!, Various airplane and helicopter wargames from before the millennium, various tank games from before the millennium etc etc etc.
Hell, Atari's Battlezone from 1980s had helicopters as a target for your tank!
Except this isn't actually impressive if you've been playing games. Supreme Commander lets you block artillery shells with your planes if you are lucky, with zero scripted event, and that game released in 2007, is single threaded, is an RTS, and allows you to play 8 vs 8 games where EACH PLAYER can control 1000 units and play on a 50km by 50km map. Now that is impressive IMO.
Of course, if you attempted those things with a 2007 computer, you get about 2fps, but it works great nowadays. Also, that company was never handed half a billion on a silver platter before releasing anything.
More to your point, here are a bunch of other games that let you shoot a plane out of the sky with a tank, from before star citizen, that show just how mundane of a situation that is: Arma 2, Battlefield (all of them), Planetside 2, Damn Halo!, Various airplane and helicopter wargames from before the millennium, various tank games from before the millennium etc etc etc.
Hell, Atari's Battlezone from 1980s had helicopters as a target for your tank!
None of them have the graphic fidelity or immersion that remotely close, it has no space ship interiors or seemless atmospheric entry. Nor the future potential scope of engineering ships etc..
Starcitizen is probably one of the most technologicaly advanced games out there currently barring something rockstar produces in the near future.
You're just ignorant.
Starcitizen is probably one of the most technologicaly advanced games out there currently barring something rockstar produces in the near future.
You're just ignorant.
And yet there is nothing really impressive imo in Star Citizen tech wise, the server is still slow, fps are low, not many people on screen and a lot of issues.
You should do tech improvment to enhance the gameplay, and currently I don't see many gameplay improvements that have real value.
Starfield maybe the first space opera fantasty that will deliver.
You should do tech improvment to enhance the gameplay, and currently I don't see many gameplay improvements that have real value.
Starfield maybe the first space opera fantasty that will deliver.
Escape Velocity delivered on the fantasy just fine.
There's an open source successor to Escape Velocity that's fun and continues to grow:
https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky
https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky
I'm still waiting for the single-player Wing Commander-alike game that was supposed to be the whole reason to bother buying into this Star Citizen thing in the first place.
It's the reason I insta-backed in October of 2012 but I haven't heard a status update in years.
Did you watch the kickstarter video? It was so clear that they did not have a good plan to achieve their goals, and very obvious Chris was obsessed with extremely minor technical details that didn't matter.
I loved the Wing Commander games, but they had people in charge who could actually direct a project. Chris Roberts can't get out of his own head. The video was a clear indication that he was going to ruin it.
I loved the Wing Commander games, but they had people in charge who could actually direct a project. Chris Roberts can't get out of his own head. The video was a clear indication that he was going to ruin it.
I backed via RSI before the Kickstarter went live.
There will be news about it next month during the annual citizencon. Whether its good news I cannot say though.
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I really hope server meshing pans out, but I'm skeptical that RSI has the chops to pull it off. The number of objects in SC is huge and the world is seamless. This not something that's entirely new though. EVE Online has meshed servers for persistence of tens of thousands of concurrent players in a single universe successfully for decades now.