How many games have you taken part in developing? Or even how many software projects have you participated in?
I can tell you unequivocally that people have no idea about game development. That's not to say that SC is being run well. However, it's also extremely open, possibly more so than any other game in history.
Not to mention having to address serious technical concerns in the engine.
There are a plethora of factors that people just seem to conveniently ignore if they do, in fact, known anything about game development. Unfortunately it's binary with people, there is very little logic involved.
Why not help raise the collective intelligence of the murca? It's, obviously, desperately in need of it.
Like i said a couple of times before: I am a professional C/C++ Engineer specializing in execution optimization. I worked on the original C/C++ compilers (yes i am that old ). My professional resume contains amongst many other things 10 years at SONY, multiple jobs for ID Tech 1 and 2, CryEngine, UnrealEngine, couple of lesser known game engines and some i still can't talk about. I have managed teams of up to 30 people spread over multiple countries. I worked for a lot of big corporations out there including optimizing stock trading software for Bloomberg and a lot of Banks. Milliseconds do make a difference in the banking world just as much as in rendering games.
Client: "We need to shave off 10 milliseconds on this part of our event loop, can you help us?" Me: "I try my best, let's see what you got here." 2 weeks later Me: "I got you 8 milliseconds improvement, any more and i have to start talking to Intel re-factoring some of their ALU and FMUL DIV Instructions." Client: "Thank you, that will do nicely." ___
The development of Star Citizen is not open. What you mean is that there is a lot of Marketing and Propaganda. Little substance.
Showing new Ships, answering questions and producing a plethora of "tv shows" that are basically just marketing and fluff is not open development. Every game development company does that and it's called Marketing and pushing the hype train.
Open development would be:
Showing current development status for every single promised feature and stretch goal. Current blockers and broken features. Timeline and planning. Budget and spending.
___
They can never deliver the promised features with the original CryEngine. What they have to do is gut the engine and re-write it almost completely, that includes part of the rendering code to support large scenes. The CryEngine is optimized for fast paced and great looking action games with "small" levels, minimal multiplayer support and simple physics.
Honestly i have no idea how they are going to pull this off. Even with a good team of about 30 engine developers i would estimate at least 10 years to get a polished, stable, high performance engine that supports 1,000 players in an instance and delivers all the promised features.
The amount of things that can go wrong is just endless and they will go wrong, we can see some of the effects in the current Alpha.
___
I doubt that raising the collective intelligence is even possible.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling." - Michael Bitton Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about." - SEANMCAD
"The keyword for this month has been ROADMAP. Lots
of scheduling and planning has been going on this month for 2016, and
we’ve made good progress in laying down a roadmap for features and
content."
Planning for the year 2016. Just as they do for every year. Special emphasis: " Lots
of scheduling and planning has been going on this month for 2016." Taken from the January 2016 monthly report. You know, that planning thing you do every year at the beginning. So we should believe something odd is happening? I call BS. Please MrSnuffles site your source for no planning has ever happened at CIG.
Where did i say no planning has ever happened at CIG?
Please cite ( <-- that is how you spell it) your source.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling." - Michael Bitton Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about." - SEANMCAD
Honestly i have no idea how they are going to pull this off. Even with a good team of about 30 engine developers i would estimate at least 10 years to get a polished, stable, high performance engine that supports 1,000 players in an instance and delivers all the promised features.
Fine then that they are not planning to have 1000 players in an instance because they do it differently:
Honestly i have no idea how they are going to pull this off. Even with a good team of about 30 engine developers i would estimate at least 10 years to get a polished, stable, high performance engine that supports 1,000 players in an instance and delivers all the promised features.
Fine then that they are not planning to have 1000 players in an instance because they do it differently:
Star Citizen : How Servers & Instances Work
Have fun
This is not official and the described system is just horse-puckey.
1. Your corporation can't field a large squadron (100+) to fight against another corporation because: "Your instance is full" 2. You can't go to sector X and meet Corporation X there to fight because: "Game put you in random instance X because it thinks it knows better" 3. People will have to constantly switch instances or find an empty one for everyone to meet up because: "Your instance is full" 4. What happens when you want to go have fun with 20 starfarer ships. Those have 25 crew. Will they all fit into one instance? Do you have to spend 20 minutes to find an instance and organise everyone?
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling." - Michael Bitton Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about." - SEANMCAD
This is not official and the described system is just horse-puckey.
1. Your corporation can't field a large squadron (100+) to fight against another corporation because: "Your instance is full" 2. You can't go to sector X and meet Corporation X there to fight because: "Game put you in random instance X because it thinks it knows better" 3. People will have to constantly switch instances or find an empty one for everyone to meet up because: "Your instance is full" 4. What happens when you want to go have fun with 20 starfarer ships. Those have 25 crew. Will they all fit into one instance? Do you have to spend 20 minutes to find an instance and organise everyone?
How many games have you taken part in developing? Or even how many software projects have you participated in?
I can tell you unequivocally that people have no idea about game development. That's not to say that SC is being run well. However, it's also extremely open, possibly more so than any other game in history.
Not to mention having to address serious technical concerns in the engine.
There are a plethora of factors that people just seem to conveniently ignore if they do, in fact, known anything about game development. Unfortunately it's binary with people, there is very little logic involved.
Why not help raise the collective intelligence of the murca? It's, obviously, desperately in need of it.
Like i said a couple of times before: I am a professional C/C++ Engineer specializing in execution optimization. I worked on the original C/C++ compilers (yes i am that old ). My professional resume contains amongst many other things 10 years at SONY, multiple jobs for ID Tech 1 and 2, CryEngine, UnrealEngine, couple of lesser known game engines and some i still can't talk about. I have managed teams of up to 30 people spread over multiple countries. I worked for a lot of big corporations out there including optimizing stock trading software for Bloomberg and a lot of Banks. Milliseconds do make a difference in the banking world just as much as in rendering games.
Client: "We need to shave off 10 milliseconds on this part of our event loop, can you help us?" Me: "I try my best, let's see what you got here." 2 weeks later Me: "I got you 8 milliseconds improvement, any more and i have to start talking to Intel re-factoring some of their ALU and FMUL DIV Instructions." Client: "Thank you, that will do nicely." ___
The development of Star Citizen is not open. What you mean is that there is a lot of Marketing and Propaganda. Little substance.
Showing new Ships, answering questions and producing a plethora of "tv shows" that are basically just marketing and fluff is not open development. Every game development company does that and it's called Marketing and pushing the hype train.
Open development would be:
Showing current development status for every single promised feature and stretch goal. Current blockers and broken features. Timeline and planning. Budget and spending.
___
They can never deliver the promised features with the original CryEngine. What they have to do is gut the engine and re-write it almost completely, that includes part of the rendering code to support large scenes. The CryEngine is optimized for fast paced and great looking action games with "small" levels, minimal multiplayer support and simple physics.
Honestly i have no idea how they are going to pull this off. Even with a good team of about 30 engine developers i would estimate at least 10 years to get a polished, stable, high performance engine that supports 1,000 players in an instance and delivers all the promised features.
The amount of things that can go wrong is just endless and they will go wrong, we can see some of the effects in the current Alpha.
___
I doubt that raising the collective intelligence is even possible.
OK! So, first of all, sorry about having to work on early compilers.
Secondly, you should know all about bad planning then. Ok, so I don't need to explain to you that as an estimate increases in length, the statistical probability of that actually being successful approaches zero.
Third, you should also, based on your experience, understand the technical limitations that have been overcome already, with regards to engine, and how that work is not trivial, either.
Fourth, you've likely had a salesperson or marketer sell something that wasn't made yet, promised a date which was ridiculous, and then you had to reign them in.
Fifth, you should be able to appreciate the scope change. So we can simply say that the original game, as speced, is much different than what is now being marketed. So the original 2014 estimate shouldn't even be included in these arguments.
Sixth, the customer asked for you to shave 10ms off and you only shaved 8ms off, yet they didn't tear you a new asshole, right? So why the difference here?
So, basically, I'm saying that the delivery of SC is in flux. We can't say it will be successful or a failure at this point. What we have seen is people whining and bitching about SM being cut, when it's probably the best thing that could have been done. In fact, I'm sure you'd agree that they need to kill PU and focus on SQ42 as it presents fewer technical issues than PU. Not to mention all the fluff functionality like gathering/collecting of resources, massive persistent universe, yada yada. SC is probably the path of least resistance at the moment. The issue is that the marketing has shot off their mouths, which happens more often than not in some regard.
I'm not going to speak to the engine issues. I mean they, arguably, have the best people working on the engine as you can get. If they felt like it couldn't be done (optimize the engine for SC) then I'm sure they wouldn't have taken it on (bwahahaha). However, they really just need to zip their lips and stop giving freakin' estimates. I mean they were giving estimates even when they weren't at full operating capacity. So no disagreements that there's been some poor decisions.
As far as open development goes, no, it's not open. It's more transparent than most games, though. Would you agree that SC development is in the top 10% of games with regards to transparency? I mean there's no NDAs, developers are out there throwing out dates, they're publicising legal documents, etc. I have, actually, never heard of a private company who just opens their books. I don't really think that's a realistic expectation. Maybe under the circumstances? However, I've been saying for over a year that their burn rate is probably around $2.5 million a month and then DS seemed to agree with that in a recent blog he did, so I guess I'm a genius too. Either way, they are showing that they are scaling back, which means that they are likely needing to ship something. I'd say they are probably funded up until mid-2017. So we've got like a year to wait. Guess we'll see.
OK here we go again, @Erillion you guys love comparing SC to non KS games. You also love to say how many devs they have and use it as some lame excuse of why it is taking so long. Then we have this:
Work on it began in 1999
Five years, 50 developers, and about $63M: That’s what it took to make vanilla World of Warcraft. Development began at Blizzard back before the turn of the century, the same year that EverQuest and Asheron’s Call released.
You do see that 63m and only 50 devs. Now exactly what has CR done with 107m+ and how many devs. LOL what a joke.
Also @Erillion there is not one thing CR has done that is groundbreaking or new tech. Everything CR says no one else has done is just not true. It has been done in other games and it has been shown to you guys numerous times yet you ignore it and keep saying these lies.
Ok there is one thing...raised over 100m and after all this time, does not have any working game. Just a demo. So yeah you have that from 2011! He should be very proud.
Are you honestly comparing WoW's original development to CIG? Ok, so then why is it that WoW increase their team size by 40% for MoP? Then it increase another 50% for WoD? If we are to believe what you're saying, Blizzard should have been able to complete their expansions with 50 developer, right? Also, WoW expansions are estimated to take somewhere in the arena of 3 years to complete. So what's the explanation? Have they become more inefficient? have things become more complex?
Why did GTA V cost over $100 million? Why did Destiny cost over $100 million? Why did The Witcher 3 cost around $80 million? I mean if they made WoW for $63 then anything over that is ridiculous. I mean every game is essentially the same.
Lol you can't accept what I wrote and compare apples to apples you throw a few oranges in it. You just can't accept facts. You want to argue facts but never accept them when thrown at you.
OK! So, first of all, sorry about having to work on early compilers.
Secondly, you should know all about bad planning then. Ok, so I don't need to explain to you that as an estimate increases in length, the statistical probability of that actually being successful approaches zero.
Third, you should also, based on your experience, understand the technical limitations that have been overcome already, with regards to engine, and how that work is not trivial, either.
Fourth, you've likely had a salesperson or marketer sell something that wasn't made yet, promised a date which was ridiculous, and then you had to reign them in.
Fifth, you should be able to appreciate the scope change. So we can simply say that the original game, as speced, is much different than what is now being marketed. So the original 2014 estimate shouldn't even be included in these arguments.
Sixth, the customer asked for you to shave 10ms off and you only shaved 8ms off, yet they didn't tear you a new asshole, right? So why the difference here?
So, basically, I'm saying that the delivery of SC is in flux. We can't say it will be successful or a failure at this point. What we have seen is people whining and bitching about SM being cut, when it's probably the best thing that could have been done. In fact, I'm sure you'd agree that they need to kill PU and focus on SQ42 as it presents fewer technical issues than PU. Not to mention all the fluff functionality like gathering/collecting of resources, massive persistent universe, yada yada. SC is probably the path of least resistance at the moment. The issue is that the marketing has shot off their mouths, which happens more often than not in some regard.
...
I'd say they are probably funded up until mid-2017. So we've got like a year to wait. Guess we'll see.
First: I love working on compilers. It's a real trip. Seriously, taking an artificial language and translating it to silicon based logic is faffin' amazing. Still blows my mind today how far humanity has come.
Secondly: Actually, the whole "Software development is always late" is a myth perpetuated by bad management. I have worked on countless projects and i always hit my deadlines. The first thing you learn in BA is to double your estimate although with recent development in how Software is produced compared to when i got my degrees there is probably less overhead needed.
Thirdly: None of the technical difficulties have been overcome already. The Alpha shows exactly the technical difficulties you get when you try to mess around with multiple physics grids in a high precision environment with inadequate net-code. Nothing has been overcome at all. Look at the Alpha.
Fourth: Never had to reign in a salesperson because people usually don't sell stuff that does not exist.
Fifth: I do appreciate the scope change. What i do not appreciate is the game changes. We now have 2 games instead of one.
We lost opt-in opt-out for SQ42 so there will be no CoOp. A huge reason i backed it for originally. I want to play it with a friend.
Sixth: You misunderstood my example. I could shave off 8ms but it was impossible to shave off more unless you would change underlying hardware or reduce functionality. Physical limitation. Some things are just impossible. The same problem i suspect CIG to be in with the proposed features they promised.
____
For me it's a problem because i expected SQ42 to be multiplayer as originally pitched. Sure their scope has changed but i was never asked if i am cool with it.
____
I'd say 2017 for SQ42 first episode with a couple of missions seems possible.
For the PU with all features it largely depends how much they make with the SQ42 sales. 2025 although a very long beta disguised as Early Access release will be in place starting much earlier.
If SQ42 is not extremely polished and amazing and it does not bring in enough cash it's game over.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling." - Michael Bitton Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about." - SEANMCAD
OK here we go again, @Erillion you guys love comparing SC to non KS games. You also love to say how many devs they have and use it as some lame excuse of why it is taking so long. Then we have this:
Work on it began in 1999
Five years, 50 developers, and about $63M: That’s what it took to make vanilla World of Warcraft. Development began at Blizzard back before the turn of the century, the same year that EverQuest and Asheron’s Call released.
You do see that 63m and only 50 devs. Now exactly what has CR done with 107m+ and how many devs. LOL what a joke.
Also @Erillion there is not one thing CR has done that is groundbreaking or new tech. Everything CR says no one else has done is just not true. It has been done in other games and it has been shown to you guys numerous times yet you ignore it and keep saying these lies.
Ok there is one thing...raised over 100m and after all this time, does not have any working game. Just a demo. So yeah you have that from 2011! He should be very proud.
Are you honestly comparing WoW's original development to CIG? Ok, so then why is it that WoW increase their team size by 40% for MoP? Then it increase another 50% for WoD? If we are to believe what you're saying, Blizzard should have been able to complete their expansions with 50 developer, right? Also, WoW expansions are estimated to take somewhere in the arena of 3 years to complete. So what's the explanation? Have they become more inefficient? have things become more complex?
Why did GTA V cost over $100 million? Why did Destiny cost over $100 million? Why did The Witcher 3 cost around $80 million? I mean if they made WoW for $63 then anything over that is ridiculous. I mean every game is essentially the same.
Lol you can't accept what I wrote and compare apples to apples you throw a few oranges in it. You just can't accept facts. You want to argue facts but never accept them when thrown at you.
What a joke.
Well, if you think what you're saying is apples-to-apples then great. Buying a car these days must be a painful process for you, though. It's so difficult to find a brand new car for less than a thousand dollars.
I don't understand how you can compare a development project from over a decade ago to something current and say it's apples versus apples.
First: I love working on compilers. It's a real trip. Seriously, taking an artificial language and translating it to silicon based logic is faffin' amazing. Still blows my mind today how far humanity has come.
Secondly: Actually, the whole "Software development is always late" is a myth perpetuated by bad management. I have worked on countless projects and i always hit my deadlines. The first thing you learn in BA is to double your estimate although with recent development in how Software is produced compared to when i got my degrees there is probably less overhead needed.
Thirdly: None of the technical difficulties have been overcome already. The Alpha shows exactly the technical difficulties you get when you try to mess around with multiple physics grids in a high precision environment with inadequate net-code. Nothing has been overcome at all. Look at the Alpha.
Fourth: Never had to reign in a salesperson because people usually don't sell stuff that does not exist.
Fifth: I do appreciate the scope change. What i do not appreciate is the game changes. We now have 2 games instead of one.
We lost opt-in opt-out for SQ42 so there will be no CoOp. A huge reason i backed it for originally. I want to play it with a friend.
Sixth: You misunderstood my example. I could shave off 8ms but it was impossible to shave off more unless you would change underlying hardware or reduce functionality. Physical limitation. Some things are just impossible. The same problem i suspect CIG to be in with the proposed features they promised.
____
For me it's a problem because i expected SQ42 to be multiplayer as originally pitched. Sure their scope has changed but i was never asked if i am cool with it.
____
I'd say 2017 for SQ42 first episode with a couple of missions seems possible.
For the PU with all features it largely depends how much they make with the SQ42 sales. 2025 although a very long beta disguised as Early Access release will be in place starting much earlier.
If SQ42 is not extremely polished and amazing and it does not bring in enough cash it's game over.
OHHH!!!! OH DAMN!!! So you mean WRITING compilers? Yeah, no, I'm out! I did some obligatory course work in Assembler and that was enough for me.
Secondly, I think that Agile does help a bit in that, theoretically, you're estimates are pulled in on a more regular basis and you get better at estimating as you go along. As far as software being late, again, Agile is a great way to cut a feature set that isn't going to work for your deadline, but in the case of games (and SC specifically) that's considered moving the goalposts. Is it not? I think that software done using something other than an interative process is DIFFICULT to realize. Also, if we're talking about estimating a project when a line of code hasn't been written, where everything is critical path, then the risk of not completing the project on time grows exponentially depending on the length of your estimate.
Third, maybe I missed something. I think that one of the massive tech hurdles was 64-bit 3D positioning. Is that not in there? I thought that was like the major premise of DS' original rant. I never really went back and revisited it, though.
Fourth, really? Are you doing like custom apps that are signed-off by the customer? That's the assumption I'm making.
Fifth, AHHHHH!!!! Yeah, and I get that. That's a huge beef I have, too. Like don't inflate the freakin' scope when it's already clear you don't have a good handle on the current scope. That part is pretty brutal. Doesn't mean it won't ship, but it does suck. I mean ED had to cut offline mode and people were pretty pissed at the time, but it all comes around.
Sixth, I totally agree! However, the difference is what are people willing to bend on, and it seems like not much. I always say that it seems like people are very hyper-sensitive about SC (both camps). The reality is, though, that some things aren't going to be feasible, right now. They aren't out-right cutting them, but people are screaming for them to focus on priorities and then screaming when they start cutting features, too. At this point it's a necessary evil to generate income to complete the other features. I WILL be pissed if they cut these features and then finish them after release and try to charge people for them.
Agreed on SQ42 ship date, although I'd love to see it in time for Christmas.
I'd say PU will be maintained as-is and updated and officially released in 2018. That's making some assumptions only because I'm not aware of the massive technical hurdles still outstanding.
Agreed! I mean ED saw something like 5 times the number of sales as in their original KS just on Steam alone, so SC would hopefully to be in that same neighbourhood. Actually, 5 times is lower than most other games, not sure if it's a genre thing or not.
OHHH!!!! OH DAMN!!! So you mean WRITING compilers? Yeah, no, I'm out! I did some obligatory course work in Assembler and that was enough for me.
Secondly, I think that Agile does help a bit in that, theoretically, you're estimates are pulled in on a more regular basis and you get better at estimating as you go along. As far as software being late, again, Agile is a great way to cut a feature set that isn't going to work for your deadline, but in the case of games (and SC specifically) that's considered moving the goalposts. Is it not? I think that software done using something other than an interative process is DIFFICULT to realize. Also, if we're talking about estimating a project when a line of code hasn't been written, where everything is critical path, then the risk of not completing the project on time grows exponentially depending on the length of your estimate.
Third, maybe I missed something. I think that one of the massive tech hurdles was 64-bit 3D positioning. Is that not in there? I thought that was like the major premise of DS' original rant. I never really went back and revisited it, though.
Fourth, really? Are you doing like custom apps that are signed-off by the customer? That's the assumption I'm making.
Fifth, AHHHHH!!!! Yeah, and I get that. That's a huge beef I have, too. Like don't inflate the freakin' scope when it's already clear you don't have a good handle on the current scope. That part is pretty brutal. Doesn't mean it won't ship, but it does suck. I mean ED had to cut offline mode and people were pretty pissed at the time, but it all comes around.
Sixth, I totally agree! However, the difference is what are people willing to bend on, and it seems like not much. I always say that it seems like people are very hyper-sensitive about SC (both camps). The reality is, though, that some things aren't going to be feasible, right now. They aren't out-right cutting them, but people are screaming for them to focus on priorities and then screaming when they start cutting features, too. At this point it's a necessary evil to generate income to complete the other features. I WILL be pissed if they cut these features and then finish them after release and try to charge people for them.
Agreed on SQ42 ship date, although I'd love to see it in time for Christmas.
I'd say PU will be maintained as-is and updated and officially released in 2018. That's making some assumptions only because I'm not aware of the massive technical hurdles still outstanding.
Agreed! I mean ED saw something like 5 times the number of sales as in their original KS just on Steam alone, so SC would hopefully to be in that same neighbourhood. Actually, 5 times is lower than most other games, not sure if it's a genre thing or not.
Yeah i wrote parts of the first C and C++ compilers.
2. Agile is great but i am not sure CR is using it, he is old school and has not developed anything in the last decade. He was trying to make movies, remember. I sincerely doubt he kept up with things like that.
3. I am not sure if they already have high precision implemented yet. It's a big deal yeah but doing it is easy. The problem is making everything else work with it. Let me give you a simple example. Whenever you fall through the floor in the Alpha that is high precision coupled with net-code that was not written for high precision.
4. What i have done most of the time was go to a client when they needed specific optimizations for their source code. Be it game engine, application or driver. If you know exactly what the compiler creates you can optimize the code by about 30-50%. Optimization like that is very expensive though.
5. nothing to add
6. There is a lot of room for shenanigans and i don't like it. The whole Episodic release in Chapters of SQ42 is a clear indication that they are aiming for maximum milking.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling." - Michael Bitton Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about." - SEANMCAD
..... 2. Agile is great but i am not sure CR is using it, he is old school and has not developed anything in the last decade. He was trying to make movies, remember. I sincerely doubt he kept up with things like that.
..... 6. There is a lot of room for shenanigans and i don't like it. The whole Episodic release in Chapters of SQ42 is a clear indication that they are aiming for maximum milking.
Roberts is full of puffery and self aggrandizement. He didn't even do the main programming in Wing Commander 1. Stephen Beeman did the heavy lifting there. There's a hilarious video of Chris trying to show off his programming chops, something he did when DS was first starting to talk about SC, which apparently made Chris nervous. Despite the fact that as the lead dog, he really shouldn't be doing that anyway. Giving his poor management skills anything is possible. Except the likelihood of his programming being very useful.
Beeman shared designer credit with Roberts on WC1, and directed WC2
Comments
Client: "We need to shave off 10 milliseconds on this part of our event loop, can you help us?"
Me: "I try my best, let's see what you got here."
2 weeks later
Me: "I got you 8 milliseconds improvement, any more and i have to start talking to Intel re-factoring some of their ALU and FMUL DIV Instructions."
Client: "Thank you, that will do nicely."
___
The development of Star Citizen is not open. What you mean is that there is a lot of Marketing and Propaganda. Little substance.
Showing new Ships, answering questions and producing a plethora of "tv shows" that are basically just marketing and fluff is not open development. Every game development company does that and it's called Marketing and pushing the hype train.
Open development would be:
Showing current development status for every single promised feature and stretch goal.
Current blockers and broken features.
Timeline and planning.
Budget and spending.
___
They can never deliver the promised features with the original CryEngine. What they have to do is gut the engine and re-write it almost completely, that includes part of the rendering code to support large scenes. The CryEngine is optimized for fast paced and great looking action games with "small" levels, minimal multiplayer support and simple physics.
Honestly i have no idea how they are going to pull this off. Even with a good team of about 30 engine developers i would estimate at least 10 years to get a polished, stable, high performance engine that supports 1,000 players in an instance and delivers all the promised features.
The amount of things that can go wrong is just endless and they will go wrong, we can see some of the effects in the current Alpha.
___
I doubt that raising the collective intelligence is even possible.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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Please cite ( <-- that is how you spell it) your source.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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Star Citizen : How Servers & Instances Work
Have fun
1. Your corporation can't field a large squadron (100+) to fight against another corporation because: "Your instance is full"
2. You can't go to sector X and meet Corporation X there to fight because: "Game put you in random instance X because it thinks it knows better"
3. People will have to constantly switch instances or find an empty one for everyone to meet up because: "Your instance is full"
4. What happens when you want to go have fun with 20 starfarer ships. Those have 25 crew. Will they all fit into one instance? Do you have to spend 20 minutes to find an instance and organise everyone?
This system sounds horrible and you know it.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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PS: your link is not working.
Have fun
Secondly, you should know all about bad planning then. Ok, so I don't need to explain to you that as an estimate increases in length, the statistical probability of that actually being successful approaches zero.
Third, you should also, based on your experience, understand the technical limitations that have been overcome already, with regards to engine, and how that work is not trivial, either.
Fourth, you've likely had a salesperson or marketer sell something that wasn't made yet, promised a date which was ridiculous, and then you had to reign them in.
Fifth, you should be able to appreciate the scope change. So we can simply say that the original game, as speced, is much different than what is now being marketed. So the original 2014 estimate shouldn't even be included in these arguments.
Sixth, the customer asked for you to shave 10ms off and you only shaved 8ms off, yet they didn't tear you a new asshole, right? So why the difference here?
So, basically, I'm saying that the delivery of SC is in flux. We can't say it will be successful or a failure at this point. What we have seen is people whining and bitching about SM being cut, when it's probably the best thing that could have been done. In fact, I'm sure you'd agree that they need to kill PU and focus on SQ42 as it presents fewer technical issues than PU. Not to mention all the fluff functionality like gathering/collecting of resources, massive persistent universe, yada yada. SC is probably the path of least resistance at the moment. The issue is that the marketing has shot off their mouths, which happens more often than not in some regard.
I'm not going to speak to the engine issues. I mean they, arguably, have the best people working on the engine as you can get. If they felt like it couldn't be done (optimize the engine for SC) then I'm sure they wouldn't have taken it on (bwahahaha). However, they really just need to zip their lips and stop giving freakin' estimates. I mean they were giving estimates even when they weren't at full operating capacity. So no disagreements that there's been some poor decisions.
As far as open development goes, no, it's not open. It's more transparent than most games, though. Would you agree that SC development is in the top 10% of games with regards to transparency? I mean there's no NDAs, developers are out there throwing out dates, they're publicising legal documents, etc. I have, actually, never heard of a private company who just opens their books. I don't really think that's a realistic expectation. Maybe under the circumstances? However, I've been saying for over a year that their burn rate is probably around $2.5 million a month and then DS seemed to agree with that in a recent blog he did, so I guess I'm a genius too. Either way, they are showing that they are scaling back, which means that they are likely needing to ship something. I'd say they are probably funded up until mid-2017. So we've got like a year to wait. Guess we'll see.
Edit: I would love to see a timeline, though.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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What a joke.
Star Citizen – The Extinction Level Event
4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
Secondly: Actually, the whole "Software development is always late" is a myth perpetuated by bad management. I have worked on countless projects and i always hit my deadlines. The first thing you learn in BA is to double your estimate although with recent development in how Software is produced compared to when i got my degrees there is probably less overhead needed.
Thirdly: None of the technical difficulties have been overcome already. The Alpha shows exactly the technical difficulties you get when you try to mess around with multiple physics grids in a high precision environment with inadequate net-code. Nothing has been overcome at all. Look at the Alpha.
Fourth: Never had to reign in a salesperson because people usually don't sell stuff that does not exist.
Fifth: I do appreciate the scope change. What i do not appreciate is the game changes. We now have 2 games instead of one.
We lost opt-in opt-out for SQ42 so there will be no CoOp. A huge reason i backed it for originally. I want to play it with a friend.
Sixth: You misunderstood my example. I could shave off 8ms but it was impossible to shave off more unless you would change underlying hardware or reduce functionality. Physical limitation. Some things are just impossible. The same problem i suspect CIG to be in with the proposed features they promised.
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For me it's a problem because i expected SQ42 to be multiplayer as originally pitched. Sure their scope has changed but i was never asked if i am cool with it.
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I'd say 2017 for SQ42 first episode with a couple of missions seems possible.
For the PU with all features it largely depends how much they make with the SQ42 sales. 2025 although a very long beta disguised as Early Access release will be in place starting much earlier.
If SQ42 is not extremely polished and amazing and it does not bring in enough cash it's game over.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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Well, if you think what you're saying is apples-to-apples then great. Buying a car these days must be a painful process for you, though. It's so difficult to find a brand new car for less than a thousand dollars.
I don't understand how you can compare a development project from over a decade ago to something current and say it's apples versus apples.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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OHHH!!!! OH DAMN!!! So you mean WRITING compilers? Yeah, no, I'm out! I did some obligatory course work in Assembler and that was enough for me.
Secondly, I think that Agile does help a bit in that, theoretically, you're estimates are pulled in on a more regular basis and you get better at estimating as you go along. As far as software being late, again, Agile is a great way to cut a feature set that isn't going to work for your deadline, but in the case of games (and SC specifically) that's considered moving the goalposts. Is it not? I think that software done using something other than an interative process is DIFFICULT to realize. Also, if we're talking about estimating a project when a line of code hasn't been written, where everything is critical path, then the risk of not completing the project on time grows exponentially depending on the length of your estimate.
Third, maybe I missed something. I think that one of the massive tech hurdles was 64-bit 3D positioning. Is that not in there? I thought that was like the major premise of DS' original rant. I never really went back and revisited it, though.
Fourth, really? Are you doing like custom apps that are signed-off by the customer? That's the assumption I'm making.
Fifth, AHHHHH!!!! Yeah, and I get that. That's a huge beef I have, too. Like don't inflate the freakin' scope when it's already clear you don't have a good handle on the current scope. That part is pretty brutal. Doesn't mean it won't ship, but it does suck. I mean ED had to cut offline mode and people were pretty pissed at the time, but it all comes around.
Sixth, I totally agree! However, the difference is what are people willing to bend on, and it seems like not much. I always say that it seems like people are very hyper-sensitive about SC (both camps). The reality is, though, that some things aren't going to be feasible, right now. They aren't out-right cutting them, but people are screaming for them to focus on priorities and then screaming when they start cutting features, too. At this point it's a necessary evil to generate income to complete the other features. I WILL be pissed if they cut these features and then finish them after release and try to charge people for them.
Agreed on SQ42 ship date, although I'd love to see it in time for Christmas.
I'd say PU will be maintained as-is and updated and officially released in 2018. That's making some assumptions only because I'm not aware of the massive technical hurdles still outstanding.
Agreed! I mean ED saw something like 5 times the number of sales as in their original KS just on Steam alone, so SC would hopefully to be in that same neighbourhood. Actually, 5 times is lower than most other games, not sure if it's a genre thing or not.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
2. Agile is great but i am not sure CR is using it, he is old school and has not developed anything in the last decade. He was trying to make movies, remember. I sincerely doubt he kept up with things like that.
3. I am not sure if they already have high precision implemented yet. It's a big deal yeah but doing it is easy. The problem is making everything else work with it. Let me give you a simple example. Whenever you fall through the floor in the Alpha that is high precision coupled with net-code that was not written for high precision.
4. What i have done most of the time was go to a client when they needed specific optimizations for their source code. Be it game engine, application or driver. If you know exactly what the compiler creates you can optimize the code by about 30-50%. Optimization like that is very expensive though.
5. nothing to add
6. There is a lot of room for shenanigans and i don't like it. The whole Episodic release in Chapters of SQ42 is a clear indication that they are aiming for maximum milking.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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Roberts is full of puffery and self aggrandizement. He didn't even do the main programming in Wing Commander 1. Stephen Beeman did the heavy lifting there. There's a hilarious video of Chris trying to show off his programming chops, something he did when DS was first starting to talk about SC, which apparently made Chris nervous. Despite the fact that as the lead dog, he really shouldn't be doing that anyway. Giving his poor management skills anything is possible. Except the likelihood of his programming being very useful.
Beeman shared designer credit with Roberts on WC1, and directed WC2
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1768361/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stebee
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.