Also more importantly, just imagine what kind of hell the devs would be in if they had to make their servers run on whatever server hardware they had available in 2015.
And imagine what kind of hell they'll be in 2030 when they have to run on whatever server HW they had available in 2023... and so on, and so on...
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
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Ironically Cryengine is 64 bit as of 5.6's release several years ago now.
EDIT: Not to knock SC with that comment in particular.
Tech development is simply a massive moving target. It's hard to predict all things that are coming around the corner and adapt to it. 64 bit was already creeping into a variety of engines, but things like current mass agent models, baked octree meshes (nanite), and new lighting systems that more cleverly hybridize ray and raster for efficiency and realism...
It took an industry lead to push much of that into broader adoption and implementation. And once it's done, it leaves other companies to be playing catch up that sometimes they are just not capable of with their focus, budget, and technical capacity all aimed elsewhere.
Can be more rough when in the interim of developing systems you see the commercial solution crop up.
Semantically if all was needed was something like the 64 bit conversion, that could have been done a long time ago, but it's far from the only thing on a laundry list of technical goals.
But it does take a ding out of projects to see particular technical objectives and hurdles solved by others in the interim while they're still stuck in the middle of it all none the less. This being added to by new technical features that then push the idea of original goals now being "dated".
Especially if one is just talking from a consumer perspective.
Star Citizen is probably getting more advantage than disadvantage from tech development: They have huge troubles trying to make their game engine and server do all the planned stuff. As the development for that stuff overshoots their schedules by more than 5 years, it means they're now able to throw new programming techniques and hardware developed in the meantime at those problems.
Without the ongoing tech development they wouldn't have that option, and their own server and engine development would be even worse behind the schedule than they already are.
So-so. The problem they're presented with in that scenario is compatibility. Similarly they can't just yoink code from Unreal or other licensed engines, they'd have to both pay for the code and then work to adapt it to their version of Cryengine. They can benefit more directly from open source code based, but it's still on them to adapt the syntax or entire language being used to fit their own project.
This is one of the reasons MMOs in general have classically lagged behind other games in terms of tech driving them. Outside of a few exceptions, the ability to adopt new technology into an established pipeline is limited. So the longer a game takes to develop, the longer it runs into the issue and risk assessment of adapting new tech.
Star Citizen is already at the phase where they've got a lot of devs rewriting their server and client functionality one part at a time because the old one wasn't enough. That kind of rewrites give them a lot of opportunities to use new tech and innovation.
Also more importantly, just imagine what kind of hell the devs would be in if they had to make their servers run on whatever server hardware they had available in 2015.
That only applies in scope of technology applying to netcode/acrhitecture, and only in scope to that which is compatible specifically with their intended setup. the more things you are making servers do handoffs on, the more the system is going to be bogged down across the board with their previously explained design. They have to limit that overhead.
While not 2015, they likely will be settling on server architecture and hardware that at release will be at least a few years old compared to "current". That's just the nature of development.
Ironically Cryengine is 64 bit as of 5.6's release several years ago now.
EDIT: Not to knock SC with that comment in particular.
Tech development is simply a massive moving target. It's hard to predict all things that are coming around the corner and adapt to it. 64 bit was already creeping into a variety of engines, but things like current mass agent models, baked octree meshes (nanite), and new lighting systems that more cleverly hybridize ray and raster for efficiency and realism...
It took an industry lead to push much of that into broader adoption and implementation. And once it's done, it leaves other companies to be playing catch up that sometimes they are just not capable of with their focus, budget, and technical capacity all aimed elsewhere.
Can be more rough when in the interim of developing systems you see the commercial solution crop up.
Semantically if all was needed was something like the 64 bit conversion, that could have been done a long time ago, but it's far from the only thing on a laundry list of technical goals.
But it does take a ding out of projects to see particular technical objectives and hurdles solved by others in the interim while they're still stuck in the middle of it all none the less. This being added to by new technical features that then push the idea of original goals now being "dated".
Especially if one is just talking from a consumer perspective.
Star Citizen is probably getting more advantage than disadvantage from tech development: They have huge troubles trying to make their game engine and server do all the planned stuff. As the development for that stuff overshoots their schedules by more than 5 years, it means they're now able to throw new programming techniques and hardware developed in the meantime at those problems.
Without the ongoing tech development they wouldn't have that option, and their own server and engine development would be even worse behind the schedule than they already are.
So-so. The problem they're presented with in that scenario is compatibility. Similarly they can't just yoink code from Unreal or other licensed engines, they'd have to both pay for the code and then work to adapt it to their version of Cryengine. They can benefit more directly from open source code based, but it's still on them to adapt the syntax or entire language being used to fit their own project.
This is one of the reasons MMOs in general have classically lagged behind other games in terms of tech driving them. Outside of a few exceptions, the ability to adopt new technology into an established pipeline is limited. So the longer a game takes to develop, the longer it runs into the issue and risk assessment of adapting new tech.
Star Citizen is already at the phase where they've got a lot of devs rewriting their server and client functionality one part at a time because the old one wasn't enough. That kind of rewrites give them a lot of opportunities to use new tech and innovation.
Also more importantly, just imagine what kind of hell the devs would be in if they had to make their servers run on whatever server hardware they had available in 2015.
That supports the case that SC is nothing but scope creep gone wild. The 'features' they want to include are beyond the current technology, so they try to rebuild their core technology to fit the feature, when then changes. There is a definite lack of 'accept it and scale back' attitude in this project. Ambitious, maybe. Any new technology will be subject to future promises about new, exciting features, and there will be newer, more expensive things to buy in the cash shop.
Building and rebuilding core technology is not an excuse to lead a cult into a decades (yes, plural) long trek to reach the promised land. Even those promises will be stale and outdated by the time of arrival.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
So can we all agree going forward that this is an early alpha, subject to wipes, and this is no way shape or form is the completed launched game?
I wouldn't even go there.
I mean you can't call yourself a real MMO player if you haven't been through absolute hell on both on game release or major updates release
Doesn't matter if it's an MMO released for years or if an alpha, it still breaks. I've had so many rodeos I've lost count lol, but this is the roughest SC release ever I'd say.
Or you could do what I and many others do, never take part in a beta or early access, never buy the game at launch, wait for the reviews and in doing so give the game a couple of months to patch the immediate issues.
That said I was there for the launch (not beta) of Lotro and ESO, but these days nothing could tempt me to do that again.
So can we all agree going forward that this is an early alpha, subject to wipes, and this is no way shape or form is the completed launched game?
I wouldn't even go there.
I mean you can't call yourself a real MMO player if you haven't been through absolute hell on both on game release or major updates release
Doesn't matter if it's an MMO released for years or if an alpha, it still breaks. I've had so many rodeos I've lost count lol, but this is the roughest SC release ever I'd say.
Or you could do what I and many others do, never take part in a beta or early access, never buy the game at launch, wait for the reviews and in doing so give the game a couple of months to patch the immediate issues.
That said I was there for the launch (not beta) of Lotro and ESO, but these days nothing could tempt me to do that again.
Totally agree, I avoid most games even at launch as I'm not willing to go through "absolute hell" just to play something new.
Life's just too short to spend any time playing bad, buggy or incomplete games.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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So can we all agree going forward that this is an early alpha, subject to wipes, and this is no way shape or form is the completed launched game?
I wouldn't even go there.
I mean you can't call yourself a real MMO player if you haven't been through absolute hell on both on game release or major updates release
Doesn't matter if it's an MMO released for years or if an alpha, it still breaks. I've had so many rodeos I've lost count lol, but this is the roughest SC release ever I'd say.
Or you could do what I and many others do, never take part in a beta or early access, never buy the game at launch, wait for the reviews and in doing so give the game a couple of months to patch the immediate issues.
That said I was there for the launch (not beta) of Lotro and ESO, but these days nothing could tempt me to do that again.
Totally agree, I avoid most games even at launch as I'm not willing to go through "absolute hell" just to play something new.
Life's just too short to spend any time playing bad, buggy or incomplete games.
Completely agreed here. My gaming time these days is precious (and limited), so I’m not interested wasting it fighting with problems in a game when I should be playing and enjoying it.
Not truly surprising. Complex games and incredibly large content updates spell problems. With ever-increasing pressure to finish the game or make major progress towards finishing, things are bound to get dicey. Years of seemingly sluggish development followed by a vastly increased pace (If my understanding of new leadership is correct) will lead to further problems.
So can we all agree going forward that this is an early alpha, subject to wipes, and this is no way shape or form is the completed launched game?
I wouldn't even go there.
I mean you can't call yourself a real MMO player if you haven't been through absolute hell on both on game release or major updates release
Doesn't matter if it's an MMO released for years or if an alpha, it still breaks. I've had so many rodeos I've lost count lol, but this is the roughest SC release ever I'd say.
Or you could do what I and many others do, never take part in a beta or early access, never buy the game at launch, wait for the reviews and in doing so give the game a couple of months to patch the immediate issues.
That said I was there for the launch (not beta) of Lotro and ESO, but these days nothing could tempt me to do that again.
Totally agree, I avoid most games even at launch as I'm not willing to go through "absolute hell" just to play something new.
Life's just too short to spend any time playing bad, buggy or incomplete games.
For MMO's especially, I usually wait 6 months to a year after it releases, then read the reviews, and then make a decision whether to play it or not.
Games that are still in development, and therefore still can change a lot before they release, are not really worth investing any time in, at least for me.
Games that are actually in alpha, meaning the architecture is done, and the coding is done, and the final game is being tested for the first time, might be worth watching. Today though, games claim to be in "alpha" when they have something that "wiggles", and development is still ongoing.
Not truly surprising. Complex games and incredibly large content updates spell problems. With ever-increasing pressure to finish the game or make major progress towards finishing, things are bound to get dicey. Years of seemingly sluggish development followed by a vastly increased pace (If my understanding of new leadership is correct) will lead to further problems.
There's talk about how something allows them to increase their development pace every 1-2 years. It's never actually increased.
olepi, what you are describing as 'alpha" I would think most people would call it "beta". Is not "beta" what they use to do when they were getting to the point of soon applying "polish"/final tweaks to the game?
olepi, what you are describing as 'alpha" I would think most people would call it "beta". Is not "beta" what they use to do when they were getting to the point of soon applying "polish"/final tweaks to the game?
As I understand it, in SC there are many game loops that are not evident, not deployed, or not working at all. Beta usually means most game activities are available.
Many view SC as a glorified tech demo, not even an alpha.
While some of that is semantic arguments, the game doesn't even have persistence yet, one of the basic attributes of this style of game. Eleven years in.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
olepi, what you are describing as 'alpha" I would think most people would call it "beta". Is not "beta" what they use to do when they were getting to the point of soon applying "polish"/final tweaks to the game?
In professional software development of a system, there are several phases:
- definition of the project, leads to a specification
- development on the parts of it, like the database, the GUI, graphics etc
- unit test of the parts, does the database work? does the UI function? etc
- alpha test, where all of the pieces are put together, after passing unit tests, to see the whole thing working. Not expected to work, really.
- beta test, where the whole thing is being tested, and it is supposed to mostly work after passing alpha test
- release to production
I worked on chip design software that usually sells for $100K to $1 million a copy. Legally, software that is officially in beta cannot be used in production by the customer.
So alpha is supposed to be a short testing period *after* the code is done and the system is integrated. Beta is trying the product in real scenarios.
Today's games though call it "alpha" long before the code is done, while the pieces are still being developed.
While some of that is semantic arguments, the game doesn't even have persistence yet, one of the basic attributes of this style of game. Eleven years in.
???
It does have persistence, but like every pre-release game of this type, it conducts wipes.
Character persistence, reputation progression, missions, inventories, customization of ships, etc. etc. That's the 101 MMO persistence, and SC goes a step further with PES.
PES adds game-world persistence, however, it doesn't exactly mean "you'll spawn where you left", but if you leave a ship in the open world before you leave and don't bed logout it will remain the world.
idk what basic persistence are you talking about really.
While some of that is semantic arguments, the game doesn't even have persistence yet, one of the basic attributes of this style of game. Eleven years in.
???
It does have persistence, but like every pre-release game of this type, it conducts wipes.
Character persistence, reputation progression, missions, inventories, customization of ships, etc. etc. That's the 101 MMO persistence, and SC goes a step further with PES.
PES adds game-world persistence, however, it doesn't exactly mean "you'll spawn where you left", but if you leave a ship in the open world before you leave and don't bed logout it will remain the world.
idk what basic persistence are you talking about really.
If I get in a fight, and pick up a new gun from a downed opponent, is it there when I log back in the next day?
If stuff from gameplay doesn't stay through logout and login, it's not gameplay persistence.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
If I get in a fight, and pick up a new gun from a downed opponent, is it there when I log back in the next day?
If stuff from gameplay doesn't stay through logout and login, it's not gameplay persistence.
Yes, it does so since the inventory system was added. You're talking about pre-3.15 where you just could equip items you found during a player session and they'd last that session.
If I get in a fight, and pick up a new gun from a downed opponent, is it there when I log back in the next day?
If stuff from gameplay doesn't stay through logout and login, it's not gameplay persistence.
Yes, it does so since the inventory system was added. You're talking about pre-3.15 where you just could equip items you found during a player session and they'd last that session.
Haven't seen many MMORPGS which have persistence of dropped items, that's a feature that was largely eliminated by most.
In EVE dropped items stayed in the world until the next server restart, which used to happen daily back when I used to play about 6 years ago. (All could see)
Fallout 76 was similar, again, all could see and dropped items lasted quite a while, but eventually disappeared if the world instance got restarted. (Though there were some cleanup routines near where events operated which scrubbed the area in 15 mins or so.)
New World is like 2 minutes and dropped items can only be seen by the character who dropped them, not very persistent at all.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
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Comments
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
While not 2015, they likely will be settling on server architecture and hardware that at release will be at least a few years old compared to "current". That's just the nature of development.
There are very few exceptions to this.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
That said I was there for the launch (not beta) of Lotro and ESO, but these days nothing could tempt me to do that again.
Life's just too short to spend any time playing bad, buggy or incomplete games.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
Many view SC as a glorified tech demo, not even an alpha.
While some of that is semantic arguments, the game doesn't even have persistence yet, one of the basic attributes of this style of game. Eleven years in.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
It does have persistence, but like every pre-release game of this type, it conducts wipes.
Character persistence, reputation progression, missions, inventories, customization of ships, etc. etc. That's the 101 MMO persistence, and SC goes a step further with PES.
PES adds game-world persistence, however, it doesn't exactly mean "you'll spawn where you left", but if you leave a ship in the open world before you leave and don't bed logout it will remain the world.
idk what basic persistence are you talking about really.
If stuff from gameplay doesn't stay through logout and login, it's not gameplay persistence.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
In EVE dropped items stayed in the world until the next server restart, which used to happen daily back when I used to play about 6 years ago. (All could see)
Fallout 76 was similar, again, all could see and dropped items lasted quite a while, but eventually disappeared if the world instance got restarted. (Though there were some cleanup routines near where events operated which scrubbed the area in 15 mins or so.)
New World is like 2 minutes and dropped items can only be seen by the character who dropped them, not very persistent at all.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.