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Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 | The 'Verse Awakens
- Thread starter Raticus79
- Start date
All this talk about damping and none about how a planets gravity affects the liquid in drinks
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/5-8/features/F_Carbonated_Beverages_Space.html
Now I'm wondering what higher gravity would do... less fizz, more burps?
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
Every aircraft flexes, from fixed to rotary wing, even the space shuttle. Wing flex is is a pretty sure way to dissipate stress without compromising the airframe (the Dreamliner takes this to an extreme). SC ships have wings and even variable geometry wings so there is aerodynamics in mind, so having something that takes some of that stress from what is demonstrated as a hard landing sells the believability.
PS It's hard to find a hard helicopter landing gif that doesn't result in crash lol
All the realistics. All of it.
staticneuron
Member
Not to mention that there are vertical thrusters on all SC ships and there is no telling what gravity the planet or moon was at when shown that demonstration.
It would be an interesting visual touch but one that may be more of a burden than it is worth.
You are comparing present day technology and materials that take in account earths atmosphere.
A look at our history, looking at materials such as plastic, aluminum, titanium, and many alloys, what we know changes alot over a relatively short amount of time. The rules of what we know get rewritten when we either find new material or new methods to work on previous material. And given the ship in they demonstrated is supposedly built 900 years from now... maybe they either have better materials or tech that handles stress on the ships.
EDIT: could you imagine someone from 900 years ago seeing a present day 747?
iirc this was the pinnacle of tech back then
CitizenVectron
Member
At a certain point fun has to matter more than realism, and I hope they realize this. I really don't care about airframe flex, or having realistic micro-thrusters on 22 parts of the ship. No matter which flight you make, in the end we're going to be going around in circles until the guy with the better turn stat wins (in open space). Focus on the content, not the physics (past a certain point).
There's a reason why there will never be fighters in space: they aren't feasible. If missiles are good at tracking, then they will make fighters impossible. Likewise, if lasers are good at tracking, then fighters are impossible. Space combat in general is impossible as we imagine it. Combat always develops towards efficiency. Shooting missiles and lasers at thousands of kilometers is better than guns at 500m.
So to even make this game fun they have to compromise on realism and focus on the fantasy of space combat. That is good! But if they are already compromising on combat (that guns would be relevant at all, that missiles don't go 30,000km/h), then they might as well compromise on the flight model, too.
Just make it fun, and spend more time on the content!
If we raise another $50 trillion, we might turn this game into a real space program.
Well, if we go by the principle of mutually assured spaceship destruction, we'll just do gun-to-gun combat on an invaded third spaceship.
Finally improved landing gear.
That looks really good.
New sneak peek.
Klaus & Werner Laser Repeater
Company founder Hector Klaus firmly believed that when it comes to weapons, function is more important than form. Despite this utilitarian philosophy, Klaus & Werner weapons not only get the job done, but look good doing it. This weeks sneak peek of the company's laser repeaters is a prime example.
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
SC isn't a realistic take on the future. Ships have canopies, piloted by humans and fight in gun range. Plus having landing gears, fuel based propulsion etc etc. SC, like every sci-fi thing draws heavily from the real world as it is now. My point is even though it is fantastical it doesn't mean it shouldn't look plausible.
VlaudTheImpaler
tl;dr
lol. You are arguing for realism while at the same time saying that the game you are arguing for it in isn't realistic...
I just thought it was funny. Not coming at you man.
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
Yes and no, I just want it to look plausible in the reality they have made. Like in BSG, they have a set logic that the world operates even if it is a sci-fi setting. SC wants to have the mechanical parts working like actual aircraft, so hopefully there is some logic in there that that pieces look familiar in the in how they behave.
iHaunter
Member
True, but also you must understand it's the first iteration.
900? Shit,that was the pinnacle of technology a little over 100 years ago
staticneuron
Member
There is no way to have a realistic take on the future, I am pretty sure we don't know what it would look like. All I am pointing out is that you are saying look plausible based off of a very narrow piece of tech, within earth's atmosphere. I find it funny to hang your hat up on that. Not every sci fi does that. Star trek, Star wars, Dark Matter, BSG and many others have never been restricted to making their ships resemble present day tech.TBH they have done the opposite, every sci fi I can think of with awesome ships, have ships that can do things that would reduce are current airplanes to shards of metal.
I understand certain details can break immersion for people. I just don't agree with you on why that particular detail sticks out to you. Even though it is not fully out of earths gravity, have you ever thought that same 747 in your gif wouldn't behave the same way if landing on the moon. The stress put on a ship is relative to the planet and environment it is on.
Speaking of BSG, you might want to go back and look at the emergency landings the Vipers took before the ship jumps.
Yea, we really advanced quickly in these is past century. Maybe communication, shared knowledge, and the lack of trying to kill each other in droves helps out.
joecanada
Member
Ship transfers should take months 😉
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
They used magnetic arrestors to retrieve fighters in a pinch. Otherwise they had landing areas for ships. Which is partly my point, in that world it was plausible. What I'm saying is that little things like landing and how ships behave on contact should look plausible to keep the world believable.
Edit: BSG took a lot of inspiration from actual carrier ops to make it believable. Again it fits in thier world but still based off what we use.
Cabbagehead
Member
lol
staticneuron
Member
None of the ships flex when landing, high speed or otherwise. That is what I am trying to point out.
Imo, the most down to earth example of how much it sucks for humans in space, is the Expanse. I love how they even show how dangerous a trajectory change of a very fast moving massive ship is to the humans inside.
Then again if they took that route I don't think the game would be much fun.
Dictator93
Member
Beyond using softbody physics for their airframes of these ships (ala BeamNG), what ways are there to simulate / emulate something like that?
edit: I am happy the P4AR is seeing a remodelling / update for 3.0
I am honestly not the hugest fan of the gubbins G36c.
RubberJohnny
Banned
So SC did their yearly shill piece with Gamestar, which is getting a bit embarrassing because none of the stuff mentioned in their shill piece last year is in the game or has even been shown yet, so they're bending over backwards to avoid acknowledging that before they start shilling some more.
Anyway, it contains this gem:
Haha, they're only doing a tenth of the game and slapping a "finished" label on it! Amazing! Remember how CR said the extra money would help them develop stuff faster and get all the stretch goals into the first release of the game?
Also 3.0 looks even more cut down, maybe only one mission giver, no player trading, no GrimHex race track (originally destined for 2.7), no shared missions. But it will have lots of ground vehicles for you to buy buy buy, because how transparent can we be?
Anyway, it contains this gem:
Haha, they're only doing a tenth of the game and slapping a "finished" label on it! Amazing! Remember how CR said the extra money would help them develop stuff faster and get all the stretch goals into the first release of the game?
Also 3.0 looks even more cut down, maybe only one mission giver, no player trading, no GrimHex race track (originally destined for 2.7), no shared missions. But it will have lots of ground vehicles for you to buy buy buy, because how transparent can we be?
I love that we are discussing hard physic simulations instead of all that loan bullshit or other things Smart always complains about...
... oh, it's you again. Video game magazine coverage is now embarrassing shilling? You're not even trying to be subtle this time.
... oh, it's you again. Video game magazine coverage is now embarrassing shilling? You're not even trying to be subtle this time.
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
To be fair SC does have blackout/redout (which IMO they should take out) so G-forces and human stress is something they are considering. The Expanse is a more "realistic" take on space travel and colonization. At the same time SC wants things like cargo load shifting and fluid dynamics. IIRC their explosion stuff does have deformation as well.
TBH it was X-plane 11 that really sticks out on how having frame flex really sells the realism. I'm also not advocating it be an all time time thing or in physics based. Having it as a "you done fucked up" shimmy in frame for a hard landing would sell the immersion and gve that sense of mass that is missing a lot more IMO.
re:G36 same. I like BSG using the Mx4 as thier space rifle but I'd personally want to see a futuristic take on the AUG or STG.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Genuinely what is the point of insulting the article writers by shills I mean ffs Johnny:
Dreams-Visions
Member
I mean Johnny might be a bit of an ass with the way he presented that post, (and other posts in the past) but it's not like he doesn't have a point. I don't see anyone correcting him on the stuff he brought up. That could be because of it being a Johnny post and no one wants to actually respond to him or because no one wants to face the fact that he might be right.
RubberJohnny
Banned
I mean, they are - CIG go to them before their conferences because they know they'll get uncritical hypemongering. Where are the hard questions asked? They just reported the game will have one-twentieth to one-tenth of the content at launch, why not follow that up?
Why not ask why they've misjudged their development so much that they're so late and still having to cut stuff down massively? Why not ask why people should believe that SQ42 is another year away when they said that in 2014, 2015, 2016, etc?
Anyway, more bad news, orbiting planets and moons are out, rotating planets and moons are out, and Nyx is also dropped from 3.0 (which might be why Eckhart is gone, because he was supposed to be there).
Nyx was "coming soon" in July 2015, if you remember.
MasterOfPastures
Banned
Johnny's verbose abortion of a post points mostly to the same problem that CIG has had to deal with since the beginning: re-iteration of tech and CR's unrealistic predictions of production (although that has been tampered ever since Erin Roberts brought sense and scheduling into the mix, as noted by the kotaku exposè).
If people want to hold them up to task for something said in 2012 when the game was going to be 1/20 the size and complexity it is now, with a team no larger than a garage, they are free to do so if it tickles their fancy. But more money came in, and the game has grown, after two truncated re-starts, to be a truly new breakthrough in tech that others are now aping (see BG&E2's tech demo).
The original kickstarter goals of 100 systems seemed easy if they had stuck with a tech level of Freelancer, where you could just put planets not to scale and fake a loading screen as a landing. But now? They have to detail the insides of buildings. And at that level, 10 systems at release is a sensible and very varied goal, even if it means that literalists continue popping hate-boners.
Now, we could try and discuss if it would have been more ethical towards backers to maintain the original pitch and scope of the project, even after they got around 20 million in funding, but with the likes of Johnny boy and his aneuristic style of arguing, we would all be better served by smashing our nuts with a brick rather than engaging with him.
Apologies for spelling. My phone has no autocorrect when typing in forum posts.
Eolz
Member
Anyway, more bad news, orbiting planets and moons are out, rotating planets and moons are out, and Nyx is also dropped from 3.0 (which might be why Eckhart is gone, because he was supposed to be there).
Nyx was "coming soon" in July 2015, if you remember.
Not sure why you're using this screencap when it's confirmed as incorrect (Levski along with other stuff is indeed in 3.0)
You've described 99% of video game news scoops. Whatever this game did to you I don't know, but you've grown an unhealthy obsession with trying to discredit everything they do. It's a video game man, if it's not as good as they promised we'll just be disappointed and move on with our lives. Nobody forces you to follow news of the game if it doesn't look good to you. You're tilting at windmills and I do not know what you have to gain by seriously misinterpreting everything they say and do.
I'm mainly reminded of all that loan speculation that reached ridiculous heights and when a very plausible explanation was posted, Johnny twisted that story and tried to double down on his original premises. I mean, there are certainly things he's been right of critiqueing. I just think the fact that he only comes here to post negative stuff, never acknowledges stuff he had wrong or just ignores people making another point has people get tired of discussion. There's a difference between a healthy (critical) discussion and just straight up stirring the pot over and over.
The problem comes from the fact that this isn't some small team who barely scraped by to fund their game. They have hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and hundreds of employees at this point. It's been 5 years already, how long are people willing to wait for any of the core features that were promised to release? Where it stands right now, SC is a pretty big example of how not to handle scope creep. I think if SQ42 is released by the end of the year then that will go a long way to satisfy people if it turns out to be good. If it gets delayed again then you'll probably have a lot more Johnny's showing up.
it's the Derek Smart tactic, just ignore it.
MasterOfPastures
Banned
The team did not start with 400 employees and 150 mil in funding in 2012. They accrued both over the succesive years, thanks to the large money train coming in. With more people, and more scope, came more development and research, and complexity. Do you think they knew how to code and implement the shit they are showing now? There is no supermarket for tech in regards to games. Everything has to be built, and in a folly of ages, CIG wasted a lot of time rewriting Cryengine for it to do what they wanted (again, wasted time and resources).
This build up of the engine and pipeline was compounded by the sliding growth of the company, which led to the two major re-starts of the project. Going from 32 to 389 is nightmare if you still have the structure of an indie studio. But, as pointed out before, this is something that Erin helped with, since he kept working with games and knew the modern ways of production.
Normally, this train of convoluted processes is invisible to all of us due to the nature of publisher secrecy and game development. But SC being a crowdfunded project, had to open up its doors and show this growth spurt to all, with the inefficiencies and uglyness it entails. Now, we are seeing what a concerted effort and solid foundations lead to.
But, I do agree that SQ42 has to be either released, or ahown extensively this year. I backed this game way back when, and though I work in the industry as well, this has gone on long enough for my tastes.
RubberJohnny
Banned
Look, I might have been wrong on a few things here, but I don't think my accuracy level is any different from the SC supporters, it's just that my posts are questioned for accuracy and theirs aren't. How many backers in here insisted that SQ42 was coming in 2015, then 2016? Or that 3.0 with the whole Stanton system was coming in 2016?
Just go back sixty pages and check! And how many backer suggested that the game is much further along than we see?
Clickthrough to see how old that post is. I mean, one of the big things I've noticed with the SC community is not just people get defensive because they have thousands of dollars invested, but those same people don't seem to actually know what's in the game at the moment (or even on the website). No one plays the thing, because it sucks! I've had arguments with backers in 2016 that swore cargo was already implemented in the alpha and you could open up the containers and look at the goods inside, for example. They'd never played it of course, just gotten all this from Youtubers shilling for the project.
I think it's important to have a counterbalance in here, where people keep telling others to invest on inaccurate information like this.
Too right duder
So instead of prophesying the gloom and doom that this game will never be out or that it's a scam or that it's completely out of money, you actually maintain some semblance of balance yourself? You clearly have an agenda. You aren't fooling anyone. That's the reason people want you gone from the thread.
Anyway, more bad news, orbiting planets and moons are out, rotating planets and moons are out, and Nyx is also dropped from 3.0 (which might be why Eckhart is gone, because he was supposed to be there).
Nyx was "coming soon" in July 2015, if you remember.
I usually don't bother responding to you, but now you're blatantly mistepresenting the facts or even outright lying in your ongoing vendetta against CIG. So I feel I need to set the record straight.
As someone already corrected you, Daymar and the Levski landing zone (with Eckhart) have not been dropped from 3.0. The original quote was from a system designer who misspoke and later corrected himself on Spectrum. In addition, the Nyx system was never supposed to be in 3.0 in the first place. Nyx is a system and CIG was just temporarily taking one of its asteroids, Daymar and its Levski landing zone, and placing it in the current Stanton system for testing. Daymar and Levski itself were always considered stretch goals for 3.0 since the Production Schedule came out and despite that, it looks like they and Eckhart will be making it into 3.0 from the last update to the Report this past Friday.
On orbiting planets and moons, they have not been dropped from the game. CIG have stated they are working hard to get this into 3.0 but they are not sure it this feature will make it. If not in 3.0, then 3.1, it's not a huge deal warranting such deep "concern".
Rotating planets and moons are not out of the game. Actually, planets, moons and stars rotate right now, albeit slowly. You would probably know this if you actually played Alpha 2.6.3.
RubberJohnny
Banned
Man, reading through the old posts in this thread is kind of hilarious, look at this one!
If doing one system 100% means they've done 100 systems 80%, then why are they only suggesting they can deliver 5-10 for release?
Somehow this procedural tech is so poor and work intensive they can only launch with 5 systems, yet so great that the rest will rush out at such a rate that players won't be waiting decades for them to do the other 90/95 after launch they have planned - of course, this asks the question why don't they wait a little longer and deliver all of them, given the SC community is incredibly patient and no stranger to waiting?
Prediction time: I bet they'll only hit the lower bound of that CR estimate, if they can hit it at all, I'd say three systems would be more likely, and that would be after six or seven years (bear in mind they'll hit 5 years without delivering one).
If doing one system 100% means they've done 100 systems 80%, then why are they only suggesting they can deliver 5-10 for release?
Somehow this procedural tech is so poor and work intensive they can only launch with 5 systems, yet so great that the rest will rush out at such a rate that players won't be waiting decades for them to do the other 90/95 after launch they have planned - of course, this asks the question why don't they wait a little longer and deliver all of them, given the SC community is incredibly patient and no stranger to waiting?
Prediction time: I bet they'll only hit the lower bound of that CR estimate, if they can hit it at all, I'd say three systems would be more likely, and that would be after six or seven years (bear in mind they'll hit 5 years without delivering one).
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Again, calling it a yearly shill article because they don't have it out for the game as much as you is not only immature, it's straight up ridiculous at this point.
staticneuron
Member
I have him on ignore but when people quote him I still see it. He doesn't have a point. Example he says none of the stuff has been shown yet when mentioned the last article
Summary of last issue
No misunderstanding, they actually played it. Chris and Erin were there as well. There's also a new screenshot of Mark Hamils face and the Onion Knight in uniform, faces definitly look better now than before.
Summary made from from PC-Games latest article
If you like to support the content creator check out: http://epaper.pcgames.de/ - scroll down to register.
Scope of what PC Games played resp. what was demonstrated:
They were able to play the latest build that feat. procedural generated planets, they claim to have flown to the moon-sized planet Delamar part of the Nyx-system. The landing zone that they aimed for on the surface, was the abandoned mining station Levski. They approached from space, went into orbit than entered the athmosphere before landing on the surface. They got out of the cockpit and moved around freely on the planet surface.
They were shown a gameplay stage of the latest Star Marine module.
Edit:
2.6 will launch Star Marine as separate module just like Arena Commander, this was also played a gameplay stage was demonstrated by staff to PC Games and they are saying it's much more polished on the FPS side and feels a lot better than current rudimentary FPS in the PU. - Interesting side-note: they talked about map->s in plural.
2.7 will bring procedural planets and you will be able to travel the whole stanton system and all planets and moons can be directly approached down to the surface.
Edit:
- They say the new lighting system as part of the procedural planets build looks much more natural.
- They say that approaching the planet looks and technically feels better than with Elite Dangerous.
- You can land anywhere manually, automatic landing gets you to fixed positions i.e. landing zones.
- Microtech and Hurston come in follow-up patches after 2.7
- They aim to have Stanton fully playable i.e. with all stations and landing zones (according to CR about 40 locations) by end of 2016
- There will be more jobs and missions as well.
- Trading will be in by then, specifically purchase and sale of goods should play a more important role
- Chris describing that missions accepted up in space stations could lead you eventually down to planet surfaces, not clear if this is going to be in with 2.7 but seemingly something SQ42 will benefit from.
- Planets and moons are revolving around suns, with naturally simulated day and night cycles.
- When flying over the ocean they were noticing that the horizon had a correctly simulated curve.
- Trees and Animals seemingly are planned (edit: doesn't seem to be in with 2.7, sorry) - they have them seemingly setup in pre-made templates they call eco-systems - these can be brushed over the planet surface, some magic blends the transitions to make it look naturally and consistent.
- Planetary surface and topograhy details are controlled by a dynamic LOD system.
- Some pop-up was visible during the planetary approach but they described it as impressive regardless.
- They were also impressed with the cloud system, which wasn't just a simple texture layer but seemingly is described what I assume would be volumetric, i.e. they have deepth and height and impact visibility, leading to mountain crests piercing through clouds and valleys being covered.
- They are writing that there isn't any artificially restricted view range, visibility is rather a result from the volumetric calculation of the athmosphere.
- Parallax-Occlusion maps with dynamic tessellation is used for the surface details.
- GTX 980 was used with 100 fps on the planetary surface, so performance seems to be pretty good already, sorry, that was just editor performance - in-game performance was 45fps
- They mention that subsumption AI is going to allow NPC to form independent decisions based on environment and situational context. They then write that subsumption AI is also being used in real life for programming robots with human like behaviour. (they don't really clarify what exactly they mean)
- Some stuff about the subsumption-AI saying NPCs might have hobbies and possess their own virtual mind, allowing them to remember and be influenced in their opinions by the player. To avoid performance issues, they seemingly control the update cycles for NPC AI based on player proximitiy i.e. update cycles go to 1hz instead of 60hz if no one is around.
- There was also a part about server architecture, how they intend to improve upon it in order to sustain more concurrent players in the same server zone. target is to reduce the numbers of instances.
- They intend to mesh servers together in order to form a huge cluster, the necessary optimisations are already being coded into star citizen, accordingly they also should yield some marginal performance improvements on the client side.
Most of this was shown already via demos and ATV. All of it is scheduled for 3.0 plus more that wasn't even in original projected window. Micro and Hurston are scheduled for later so we have not seen them and We have only seen an example of a mission and it is kind of difficult to show mission branches in action and I am sure they don't want to spoil it. Truth be told though most people who have been to the studios have seen it in action despite not being able to talk about it. Apparently Cabbagehead went to CIG LA. I am no where near any of their offices so I haven't gone myself.
The truth is, RJ is doing this on purpose. I could talk about the posts he made on Something awful forums about trying to convert the neogaf cultists or even the most recent example of him trying to spread FUD only to be proven wrong 24 hours later and exposing his nonsense to even more people and the mods.
He is not trying to talk, debate or inform. He is constantly trying to spin and spread FUD. He likes the attention, so we ignore him.
If he sounds like he makes sense to you. Fantastic. I would advise looking up the information yourself or going directly to RSI, since they have a metric ton of videos and information they put out every few weeks. But after literally years of dealing with RJ, it has shown to be a waste of time. Also the few trolls who pop in around same time as well, because he isn't only one.
Case in point
Not only has RJ been corrected before but he is constantly wrong about things.
Well that is the issue, this is 2 games that share the same tech. Why do people believe that an mmo and single player element should only take five years? Throwing money at development doesn't mean it is going to go faster. If you compare to larger titles such as GTA or AC, they have had over a thousand people working on those games for years not including outsourcing, engines that do what they want for the most part so they only need to iterate instead of creating fundamental changes and all this and cig has under 400 people working for them and they have grown to this size. They started with 7 then grew to 30. Most walk into this with assumptions about game dev because non of the big pubs ever let you see from the very start. Games are normally shown after a year or two of work has already been done. And also there is no increase in scope, the goals stopped at the end of 2014. Everything there are implementing has been talked about as far back as wingmans hanger and even 10 for the chairman. So it doesn't help to spread that perpetual myth as well.
And your old posts, what about those? You refuse to recognise people correcting you a few posts down and you tarring somebody else for old posts?
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
I know that it didn't start with the funding and staff has now, that's my point. With the amount of funding and people that they currently have, it shouldn't be in the situation it is in now. It is this way because of scope creep. There have been plenty of other crowd funded games that raised a good chunk of change, (nothing like SC obviously) that did not run into the problems that SC has. All crowd funded games are built on promises at the start, the difference is that SC are still promising things instead of fulfilling them after five years.
90% of people in any SC thread have an agenda. The difference between Johnny and other people is that his agenda isn't the same as the majority of the thread. There are plenty of people who are on the opposite end of the spectrum than he is that also won't admit when something is wrong. I'm not really trying to specifically defend Johnny here, I'm just pointing out the fallacy in posts like this because it always happens in any OT of any game when someone is negative about it.
The difference here is that there are actual facts here that are indisputable. Arguing with RJ is like arguing with a hardcore Trumpist, he certainly acts with a similar MO.
You are defending him, because you're specifically minimising the kind of bullshit he brings to these threads. It is tiresome to argue with people that are so intellectually dishonest.
edit: case in point below.
RubberJohnny
Banned
You're right, the facts are indisputable. Four and a half years in and they don't have a vertical slice yet. Just a buggy, unfun tech demo.
staticneuron
Member
It kinda does seem like it when you are repeating stuff like scope creep. How about this. Can you show examples of scope creep? What have they been working on that was not discussed and debated years ago?
RubberJohnny
Banned
You'd have to take me off ignore but they literally mentioned base building for the first time last month. Before that was the first mention of survival gameplay in March this year. And before that all the new outposts and stuff they have to do for all the procedural planets now.
Scopes increasing all the time brother! Chris Roberts even admits as much.
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