Posted on February 27, 2018 | written by GOONRATHI
February Set 8
Posted on February 27, 2018 | written by GOONRATHI
February Set 8
Status of bind culling continues to frustrate backers
I feel like this is probably how the year will be shaping up. Quarterly releases, but with everything substantial gradually moving one patch along until it all piles up into one big dump at the end of the year.
So basically the same as last year, only this time instead of pretending there’s going to be one big update that continually fails to appear, we now have four smaller patches that will appear but fail to have anything in them.
CryEngine/LumberYard does have culling at the render level, but the clients and “server” (which is essentially a modified client running on their end) are getting CPU-choked from redundant entity state synchronization and physics simulation.
Their network engine doesn’t support ANY KIND of culling. That’s why they are talking about replacing state synchronization and remote method invocations with custom code. They’re still coding the building blocks needed for actual distance-based culling / interest management. If bind culling ever arrives, nothing will improve, there will be tons of new bugs, and a new jesus network feature will take its place.
The thing to understand about StarEngine Bind Culling™ is that it’s not an optimization, it’s a core engine feature, and one that is a hard requirement to ever make this more than a CryEngine mod masquerading as a space MMO.
It’s not network culling, it’s not interest management, it’s not innovative, it’s been in every single MMO since they grew out of MUDS.
It’s embarassing that they’re hyping the work on this as a “good thing”, but it’s impressive how they can turn this very “bad thing” into marketing spiel
G0RF
I had this playing in the background last night while Overwatching. To hear Erris recount at some point how people like he and his were putting CIG’s feet to the fire for missed dates and disappointments was just too much. More like they’ve held Chris’s buttcheeks to the lips after drinking Love Potion #9.
More noteworthy — and stated in The Captain’s Table as well — are concessions on the part of these stalwarts of faithfulness of getting burned out on the game. I was too busy junkratting to note the time stamp, but I’ve heard this confession on multiple streams in the new year.
It’s not that we don’t know they’re burned out — they’re not playing the game even on their streams. They’re playing Tarkov, Sea of Thieves, KCD and other honest to goodness games even though so often we’ve read / heard the refrain “Star Citizen has more content than most AAA games I’ve played!”
Even as it’s becoming safer to admit sheer exhaustion from the 6 year cycle of overpromising, underdelivering, and theorycrafting to fill the yawning gap between the two, the old habits die hard. The shows spend very little time seeking anything like accountability. Theorycrafting fills the void of actual news. Lengthy discussions about footage and whatever gameplay they think it implies…
On that note… I guess at this point there’s no harm in sharing the letter I sent to Erris last year.. I’d attempted a dialogue with Jake on Discord but he and Dolvak jetted before I’d barely exchanged a couple of sentences.
Hopefully it’s at least good for some Goon laughs:
Star Citizer: REPENT YOU BOW-TIED HERETIC!!!
The Titanic
This all came to a head when Beer4TheBeerGod went toe to toe with Sandi and made her dreams of being the smartest person in the room look very fraudulent. I feel like this hurt her because all along the way she genuinely started to believe the lies she told everybody around her about herself.
**There was a very distinct change at this period. Everything changed from “this is personal to me!” to “its not personal at all and I don’t really care what you think”. (Bear in mind marketing people care, and people watching the money, because the money is the important aspect here. It’s flow cannot be jeopardized and all hell will be refuted or backed up over if it looks like something slipped out that may jeopardize that flow.)
This is kind of an important bit though, because it gave them an ability to no longer care about what they were saying. There was no longer this responsibility feeling that “yeah I’m actually going to do this thing I’m telling you because I think in my head it’s not a lie at all!” Now there can be lies, with not even an iota of thinking or believing they will ever be honored at all. There’s not as much of a personal defense going on, and it’s certainly not from CR or his wife unless it’s some kind of a video they are starring in for YouTube and only to save the money flow as referenced above.**
This disconnect makes it easier to sell lies, distance themselves from the reality of the project vs the marketing needs of the project. It lets marketers go full on bullshit and the Roberts don’t need to care or address it.
This is probably an important turning point in the project as well. It’s where the game part stopped, and the marketing engine became important. It’s why today we have land sales, and tank sales, and anything and everything else sales. The game is the marketing engine. Everything else is there just to support it, with the game itself on a constant maintenance mode that it will never get out of.
Even right now, they’re probably working on another 100% fake demo that will look great either as a video or as “people playing” it. It’ll never go public though, and no normal people will get their hands on it… but it’ll create more sales, and that’s what’s important right now.
It’s a high profile cash grab, with a ton of work put into marketing and faking progress, or outright lying about progress, and minimal work actually being done on the product itself. Just enough that it still looks like it’s moving forwards, and trying hard to keep people from paying attention to time.
It’s one thing to load up the game and see it’s a wreck and say “180+ million dollars, over 5 years development, a multinational staff across multiple studios with over 400 employees!” and have people not go “what the fuck are you guys really doing because this is not representative of that!!!”
But if development time is always obfuscated, and it’s always just starting, then it looks like great progress is being made.
CIGs primarily marketing goal is information overload, and fact obfuscation. Be it about the status of the game or it’s condition or what’s coming next. You’ll both never know, never be right, and somebody can always point you at some random video where they ironed out that exact question and you’re a fool for not seeing it yourself.
Virtual Captain
You’re 100% right about Sandi, she checked out a long time ago and it’s frankly surprising there isn’t more pressure from her to get SQ42 on more than just youtube demo reels. Maybe she knows the character and/or performance sucks.
But I don’t think Chris was actively lying prior to 2016. He believes his own hype. He believes his schedules (except the ones he grandstands on stage). no feature is a lie when development will continue forever.
TheAgent
! In an alternate universe Chris Roberts and Derek Smart reconciled their differences and are best friends
Please use spoiler tags when discussing key plot elements of Love Pledge. Thank you.
Virtual Captain
This is how it’s always been described. Subsumption is purely a buzzword.
The promises in regards to features are laughable.
The microtransactions for not existent things are laughable.
Every single demonstration of this game has been laughable.
The actual current playable incarnation is laughable.
That people actively defend Chris Roberts over This is laughable
I am seeing parallel to how a real cult in my hometown never stop asking for more money from the believers to keep building bigger
temples, with the promise of a spot in heaven. It’s their money, for sure, but you can’t just feel some resentment growing inside. Absolutely
gorgeous temples, with air conditioned buildings and lots of green surrounding, but still.
I actually feel pretty uncomfortable with it right now as a long time backer. The emails they send out advertising their ships just
feel kind of weird and predatory in how they are worded. I still think it will end up being an interesting game and that it will finish
production, but the methods they’ve used to get there don’t sit well with me. I also think it will be clunky as all hell for years.
Don’t follow the game other than what makes the news, but people voluntarily buy into the project so I say to each their own. I am,
however, surprised by the resiliency of people’s faith. All that’s left now is to see if ol’ Musky makes it to Mars before SC does.
I feel like the backlash of SC’s release will make No man sky’s launch drama look tame in comparison.
“Open Development” is not a magic shield towards criticism of the insane feature creep and constantly shifting release date this project has, along with the slowly increasing trail of MIA features and broken promises. SQ42 (only the first episode) went from a late 2015 release to “At some point this will be finished”, 3.0 didn’t launch with a fraction of the features it was advertised to. It really doesn’t matter how “open” this development is or “No one has ever tried to do anything like this before” when you are actively selling products to the consumer, and constantly having to walk back the features and deadlines that you sold them on in the first place.
How about the man stop making promises he knows he can’t keep, and maybe the reaction from fans wouldn’t be so negative all the time.
I’m glad to be proven wrong, and if on release this game is everything the hype lives up to be, I’ll gladly buy in and play. But dismissing those who haven’t already paid, especially with the almost instant “Do you own the game? Do you follow the weekly updates? Have you watched every con keynote?” is sad. Because none of those actually alleviate any concerns that this project is ever going to finish in a reasonable timeframe.
The tactics used by CIG are not good. They’re predatory in fact. Yeah other people are putting their own money into that hole and they’re free to do that but that doesn’t mean it can’t be called out and others warned. I’ve thought for a long time the management of this project has been horrible, the wrong things prioritized and championed, and they reached well beyond their means with the level of talent and tech they have. I feel even more strongly about that by what they’ve shown and what I’ve played. The term “Alpha” is not a catchall or an excuse at this point. Basic stuff was worse off than how it was when I had played earlier. That’s just insane and my PC is significantly better as well.
I do think some people are so finically and emotionally invested to the point where they can not see how bad it is. Some refuse to see how CIG is stringing them alone with promise after promise that gets broken almost every time. They simply can not push away from the table , stand up, and take a hard look around. That’s not at all something that is limited to Star Citizen. There are many situations in life that result in the same thing. Be it other investments or personal relationships. In all those other situations it takes people from the outside looking in to see the real problem and even danger that exist and those involved dragged away for their own good. If this fails tomorrow I think people will better for it in the end.
Star Citizen lives in a very specific bubble and caters to a very specific niche audience that would probably cut off their own leg to get the game they are imagining.
I just hope the developers are not maliciously abusing of their patience and goodwill to feature scope the game until eternity until one day they close the shop. They created insane expectations and asked for crazy amounts of money throughout the years, they better deliver, even if in 12 years. They’re playing with the hearts of “obsessive” fans who really want this to become real, if it doesn’t happen I expect similarly vehement negative reactions by them.
Thoatse
Worth Clicking:
(video: Erris fantasies about launching other steam games from inside Star Citizen)
i have the feeling that severs state is getting worse and worse fays after days. When i had some constant 25+ fps some weeks a go, actually i never reached a server with more than 15-18 fps with some big freezes.
Plus, on top of that, i encounter more and more bugs that were supossedly fixed, aka:
• duplicated ships
• impossibility to claim some ships
• the come back of the multi interdictions (6 interditions to day to do Olisar >>Yela
• missing parts on ships.
Maybe am i wrong and had bad luck these last weeks, but i’m wooried of the state of the servers with so “low” gameplay and features on the 3.0.1 and was wondering if any of you encountered the same issues. Gn citizens
It has taken a nosedive in performance since 3.0.1, it isn’t a lot of fun to play right now.
Pirate swarm is so refreshing after PU with 80+ fps. But it also had some bugs, end even final wave killed themselves by flying out of bounds…
The sad thing is some of this is indeed supposed to have been fixed. Then again, what do you expect from the fine folks who apparently still can’t prevent Olisar airlocks from locking up…
I'd read it. When looking at Star Citizen in the classic "Project Management Triangle" they appear to have no concept of limit on cost, schedule, or scope.
Star Citizen's Scope, Schedule, and Funding are Inextricably Linked: https://t.co/AIo7ZRGPmR
ANY implementation of a radar scan HAS to know the position of an entity being scanned, that location data not only needs to be obtained, stored, and updated - in real time - but that CANNOT be done without actually having accurate position data for the entity being scanned.
Back in 2014 when Chris and backers were figuratively intoxicated with dreams they thought they would be able to code all of this in non-Speed of light communications. I of course heard about it was after the fact but that still stands out to me as one of the most absurd dreams.
Not surprisingly that didn’t work out, I think a dev said something or all the talk about Spectrum made it clear. Communications were going to be instant even across long distances.
Quite remarkable is not only to read this article today, about four years later and comparing what was promised or was said to be right around the corner, and what is here today. But in particular a picture in the article that might be the perfectly condensed image of the relationship between the CIG and the big players in the gaming press in the early days in particular. The journalist of the magazine (left) literally went to bed with the Roberts brothers to get a glimpse of the newest, hottest Star Citizen software. This was and is the quality journalism in the gaming media offering its readers grounded and critical analysis of what is going on. Although as someone who teaches social science methodology including qualitative interview techniques I have to admit there might be a minor risk about losing the ability to critically reflect the positions of your informants http://www.gamestar.de/artikel/star-citizen-chris-roberts-greift-nach-den-sternen,3056240,seite3.html
When accelewrath, who later “did security” for CitCons, was sexually harassing women on the official forums and using them to send pictures of his dick, Ben Lesnick banned the victims. When goons complained about this happening Ben Lesnick called out all goons publicly and threatened to ban every single person from Something Awful because we wouldn’t drop the sexual harassment issue.
Backers took this as “Pushing our Agenda” some of them have said “Pushing our SJW Agenda” and it’s evolved into a nefarious plot to control the game that only failed when the Benjamin Lesnick stood up to us by punishing the victims of sexual harassment to spite goons.
This has passed into the realm of myth and legend where the heroic CIG used a seer to see the direction the evil goon forces were trying to take their game and they declared for all of midgard to hear “NO! We Shall NOT cater to yon evil! We shall NOT waver in our resolve!” before defeating the armies of darkness and evil for all time.
TheAgent
yea it’s really weird how all this started over trying to defend people from being harassed, including the whole accelewrath thing and the whole dunking on gay people on their official forums
it turned from that into “swj goons were baiting people into getting banned” or whatever the fuck that means because ben posted about that specifically
then it turned into “well they were sad/mad because they couldn’t control the game” and has stayed there
G0RF
I laughed out loud when I heard Twerk a few weeks back complaining that the larger ships needed to be designed with FPS concerns in mind because they suck as battle maps. That was exactly the kind of stuff Beer was warning about ages ago to no apparent avail.
Without too much identifying information on a board that goes public (dropping the paywall) on a regular basis - Freelancer was in a very similar state to where Star Citizen is right now. They had a pre-alpha type of engine and overall was more or less an interesting tech demo that lacked any form of design mechanics in it. Microsoft’s arrival (and reset of the project) started the game on an actual design path. Prior to the buyout, the team was mostly focused on the endlessly refactoring of Chris’s favorite area to drive people crazy: Art
It also had lots of stunning previsualization and pre rendered hires videos (done by the very talented internal VFX team) showing off what it was going to become if given unlimited time and money: Which MS wised upped to after so many years of stalling and sizzle videos. Most of that team knew this was never going to happen, so the exodus of staff from DA was very quick and very large around the time MS came into play.
Stop paying them for the pleasure would probably be a good start.
I don’t intend to start a flaming war out of no where, but the situation I’ve been in really angry me.
I’ve got my first ship over 2 years ago with a subscription. Since then, I’ve slowly bought many ship. 6 months ago, I was at way over 2000$ worth of ship, I can’t even remember the value of all those other game account I exchanged for the ships.
Around Christmas, I was offered ships, some which I already had, at low price, from 2 seller. I jumped on them and had them transfered to me. Few hours later, RSIi contacted me saying I had stolen ships and deleted my account. I have had a ticket open without reply from them and left with no account after spending over 4000$ total on those. How can they ignore more for almost 6 weeks ?
This is really starting to look like a scam from RSI, allowing transfer of ship that are supposely irreversible, and then locking account which paid for them.
I resent a message in the ticket but have got no reply. Am I really to hire a lawyer over this? Because I’ll do, simply for the sake of integrity, if it needs to be done.
This joke has been going on for long enough, I paid thousands for those ships.
