Star Citizen - Chris Roberts, lots of spaceship porn, lots of promises

[tomchick]

I want a needlework sampler of this to hang in my kitchen.

-Tom

Don’t you ever ban Teiman, Tom. I don’t care if he posts CP and/or ISIS pictures on the board, you can never ban him.

If we ever had some sort of, like, Battle Royale last-man-standing scenario where we all got banned until there was only one person left, that person would be Teiman.

-Tom

[LokeUtgaard]

LOL. That totally needs to go into Teimans tagline. The Keith Richards of QT3

[Teiman]

The next time somebody call you a snowflake, reminds them that most asteroids are made of ice and a asteroid killed all dinosaur.

Man, you guys are awesome. I feel like like a rich men that received a tax cut. I dont deserve or need it. But, hell yea :-)

[dsmart]

I imagine I was not the only one confused, as it only takes basic reading comprehension to know that @Desslock was saying that even though rights are often separately described in great detail, this does not matter because a general reference to intellectual property would adequately encapsulate said rights. To say that there are “two parts to his discussion”, one which affirms your beliefs, is absurd. The only reason he wrote that first part down is to explain why it does not matter. When you said that his post cleared things up, it would naturally mean you were speaking to the entire point he was making.

In the interest of good faith discussions, I am going to do my best to break this down for you because I see that you are genuinely confused.

REF: June 13th, Charge by Coutts & Co UK. (NOTE: this is a 29 page JPG album for easier viewing than a PDF)

1. ARGUMENT

Is Star Citizen in it’s entirety really excluded from the “Collateral” (p22) as per the “Excluded Collateral” (starts on p22, continues on p23) definition?

2. DEFINITIONS

Collateral means the Chargor’s right, title and interest in and to (i) the property charged pursuant to Clauses 4.1 and 4.2 hereof and (ii) the property assigned pursuant to Clause 5 hereof; excluding in all cases the Excluded Collateral;

Excluded Collateral means (i) the assets that have been charged pursuant to the Nat West Security Agreement; and (ii) all Intellectual Property Rights and all exploitation and distribution and other rights and all title, interest and materials with respect to the video game provisionally entitled “Star Citizen”;

Also on p7

4.2.2 the Game Assets and the Distribution Rights

4.2.5 all digital material and sound and visual material made or to be made incorporating or reproducing all or any part of the Game

By process of elimination, we know that “Game” refers to Squadron 42. This is because there are only two games (Star Citizen & Squadron 42) in this project. And the former is mentioned in “Excluded Collateral”.

3. PREAMBLE

NOTE: These are all FACTS, no hypothesis, conjecture, hyperbole, or opinion.

• Star Citizen (hereinafter “SC”) is the multiplayer aspect of the game. It consists of various “disconnected modules” which are: Arena Commander (space combat), Star Marine (2 level FPS), Hangar (3D ship viewer), Planetside (shopping/social), Persistent Universe (all-encompassing space combat in larger universe).
• Squadron 42 (hereinafter “SQ42”) is the stand-alone, story driven, single player portion of the game, with Hollywood talent acting the cutscenes.
• SC was developed using a custom engine which uses CryEngine 3.x as it’s core baseline. The only “custom” in the code, are top-level elements (e.g. 64-Bit space addressing) added to create their own “game engine” aka StarEngine. This is similar to Unity3D, UE4 etc which are baseline engines to which you add your own assets, code (internal or via plugins developed by others) etc to make your game.
• In late 2016, without any prior notice, it was discovered (by me) that CIG had switched to Amazon’s LumberYard (also a more recent subset of CryEngine). I cover this extensively in my 2016-12-27 – Irreconcilable Differences blog.
• Both SC & SQ42 are developed using StarEngine (currently undergoing the switch from base CryEngine to LumberYard - 6 yrs into development)
• Both SC & SQ42 take place in the same world, and share the same IP (more on this later). All the same ships, places, weapons etc are part of both games.
• The only assets which are unique to SQ42, are the cut-scenes, musical score (SC has its own), story-driven dialog based script etc
• Without all the tech, tools, and common assets in SC, there can be no SQ42.

I have 1st hand knowledge of how that last item works, because I have done it. In 2006, I started working on All Aspect Warfare, a combined-arms game with no space combat. In early 2009, ahead of the game’s release, the community were saying that the aerial flight combat aspects of the game were worth being it’s own game. So I came up with Angle Of Attack which used the same engine and all the same assets. However, it had no FPS aspect, had its own aerial only missions, it’s own multiplayer session (AAW clients cannot connect to AOA and vice versa). I released both games in 2009, and sold them separately, as well as in a bundle. The game’s movies and screen shots show the differences in gameplay, though they share the same basic components. So, without AAW, there can be no AOA.

4. SYNOPSIS

“Excluded Collateral” excludes the following:

• the company’s income bank account secured via a prior NatWest bank loan which we believe to be a Line Of Credit. Note that NatWest, like Coutts, is also owned by RBS. So basically, two arms of the same company, made these loans.
• all Intellectual Property rights and all exploitation and distribution and other rights and all title, interest and materials with respect to the video game provisionally entitled “Star Citizen”;

Item (2) above is the point of contention as it pertains to how some of us believe that the collateral in 4.2.5, came to inadvertently include parts of SC, namely the tech (source code) due to it being used to develop SQ42.

The reason for this position is that there is no feasible way to strip Star Citizen from SQ42, without affecting that game as a whole. ergo, there is no SQ42 without critical components of SC.

Some (like me) argue that “Intellectual Property” defined in “Excluded Collateral”, does not cover everything about Star Citizen, and that as a result, parts of Star Citizen cannot be excluded in this manner, due to the SQ42 dependency.

Others disagree (possibly due to ignorance of how IP law works) with this assessment. Even as they ignore that the same section specifically mentions an aspect, “materials”, which would normally be covered under “Intellectual Property” if it was such an all-encompassing and broad definition - which it isn’t. The other aspects, “exploitation”, “distribution”, “other rights”, “all title”, “interest”, are not generally covered in IP definitions.

The “Intellectual Property” definition which includes Star Citizen, is ambiguous enough to cause a dispute in the event that this loan defaults, and the bank seeks to secure everything related to SQ42 as defined in Section 4. And specific to this, is the carefully worded 4.2.5 which some of us contend, will include the Star Citizen tech, and various assets by the mere fact that they are 100% REQUIRED in order to make SQ42 the “Game” defined, and understood by the bank, to be what they secured as part of this loan. To the extent that they went to great pains to itemized various “Game” components and rights, without ever resorting to using a blanket “Intellectual Property” term to secure them, as they did in “Excluded Collateral”. I wonder why that is.

The argument continues in which, despite the fallacy within, some people have convinced themselves that “Intellectual Property” - as it pertains to SOFTWARE - almost always includes source code, tech etc. That opinion is pure and utter NONSENSE. The reason being, every good software contract that seeks to defined IP, will list what that definition entails, in the same way that the bank used an itemized Section 4 to list what the “Charges” under this loan contain.

Desslock, understanding both sides of the argument, wrote a short-form opinion which covers both aspects of this argument. The second part of his argument, the one that seems to be in line with my opinion on the matter, is what you are obviously in confusion about, because you don’t understand why it is that I agree with that part of his 2-part opinion.

It boils down to this:

1. some contracts DO NOT itemize software in Intellectual Property definitions because it is “supposedly” (FYI, it’s not) a common knowledge assumption that it would invariably include “source code”.
2. some contracts DO itemize Intellectual Property so that there is no ambiguity as to what rights are included

Any good IP lawyer will immediately tell you that in software IP, item #1 above is an immediate legal problem if it were to end up in dispute that a source code for the works (e.g. a video game) was in dispute. One common example - which has in fact resulted in various court cases - is whereby a company, owning an IP, hires a contractor to create some work (art, script, code) for the IP. If the 1099 “work for hire” contract doesn’t clearly stipulate who owns what, and a dispute arises down the road - for whatever reason (e.g. contractor seeks unpaid amounts for their work), that’s a problem. If an employer finds out that an employee is working on a part-time project, while on their clock, they could have a valid claim to his work, regardless of any claims to IP by the employee. See Zenimax v Oculus.

Comparing IP works of art, writings, movies etc to that of software, is the dumbest thing ever. As is the notion that, Intellectual Property automatically encompasses everything associated with the “works” in question.

Intellectual Property Law and Legal Definition

FindLaw - Intellectual Property

5. CONCLUSION

All the above considered, my opinion remains that if this loan defaults, and the bank seeks to secure it’s collateral assets, and they find out that they really don’t have all the components of the “Game”, they would have a case for either misrepresentation, not negotiating in good faith, or worse, bank fraud (as this security was in exchange for money).

There is NO circumstance under which this loan defaults, the bank succeeds in taking control of SQ42, seeks to sell it etc, while CIG/F42, after giving the bank what amounts to a “dud” asset as defined in the “Game”, goes on their merry way to continue to develop, distribute, and sell, SC as a separate and non-competing entity.

I have to once again point to this excellent graphic by one of our friends here, as it illustrates the issue as no tome of words ever could.

Moons, rather.

There are no procedural moons in 3.0

[Juan_Raigada]

I think there are supposed to be procedural moons with hand placed non-geographic elements. There are no random planetary bodies, but the ones included are procedurally generated (in terms of geography) with a fixed seed???

[Timex]

I think there are supposed to be procedural moons with hand placed non-geographic elements. There are no random planetary bodies, but the ones included are procedurally generated (in terms of geography) with a fixed seed???

Ya.

According to their production schedule report :

MOONS
We are adding 3 new moons to the Crusader system; Yela, Cellin, and Daymar.
Feature Complete

[Ryan_Kelly]

Desslock, understanding both sides of the argument, wrote a short-form opinion which covers both aspects of this argument. The second part of his argument, the one that seems to be in line with my opinion on the matter, is what you are obviously in confusion about, because you don’t understand why it is that I agree with that part of his 2-part opinion.

I understand perfectly why you agreed with him saying that software rights are often described in great detail. The thing that’s so funny to me is that he wasn’t covering both aspects of the argument, he was explaining why your side of the argument is wrong in his opinion.

As for the moons, I’ll let you respond to Juan and Timex.

[dsmart]

I think there are supposed to be procedural moons with hand placed non-geographic elements. There are no random planetary bodies, but the ones included are procedurally generated (in terms of geography) with a fixed seed???

There are no procedural moons or planets in 3.0. It’s all bullshit.

The manner in which they create the terrain, uses procedural tools to generate it. e.g. terrain (height maps created from World Machine), rocks etc. That’s the extent of their “procedural” tech.

Most of us who have developed procedural planets - in their entirety (e.g. see Outerra, Infinity Battlescape, Dual Universe, Battlecruiser 3000AD, Universal Combat etc), know the difference.

Basically, the planetoids and moons are simple CryEngine levels in which the terrain is generated from height maps.

And the placement of some assets (buildings etc) is hand placed by artists. We do the same thing in our games, including Line Of Defense for which the procedurally generated height map looks like this, and the resulting terrain looks like this, and the resulting assets placed (in an editor) on it, looks like this.

They were touting “procedural planets and moons” in which backers were under the impression that this would allow them to generate the 110 star systems and 500+ planets and moons within a reasonable amount of time. Effectively in real time, as it is supposed to be done.

After the fundraising drive for GamesCom 2016 and CitizenCon 2016 ended, and they got the money based on those promises, the reality sunk in.

Which is how, instead of planets and moons - as we gamers have come to know them, ended up being level based planetoids and moons. Meaning that, using this method, it would take them up to +10 years to build the universe they promised. That’s why the upcoming 3.0 that was originally promised as coming 7 months ago, has now been significantly scaled back to now have only 3 moons.

[dsmart]

I understand perfectly why you agreed with him saying that software rights are often described in great detail. The thing that’s so funny to me is that he wasn’t covering both aspects of the argument, he was explaining why your side of the argument is wrong in his opinion.

Well, that was not my understanding of it. If it wasn’t my understanding, I wouldn’t have agreed with it. I even highlighted the parts that I was in agreement with I think.

So we will just have to let him chime in on his intentions there; though I find it unlikely that he would use two different things to illustrate a singular point of contention.

Regardless, I think my missive above clearly illustrates why, any argument that IP automatically includes software, fails on merits alone.

[Ryan_Kelly]

So are you saying that the moons cannot be described as procedural because they’re not 100% arranged by algorithms? Should I use the term “moons created with procedural tools” instead?

They were touting “procedural planets and moons” in which backers were under the impression that this would allow them to generate the 110 star systems and 500+ planets and moons within a reasonable amount of time. Effectively in real time, as it is supposed to be done.

The developers have said that they made a conscious decision to avoid complete reliance on procedural generation so as to avoid the random meaninglessness you would find in a game like No Man’s Sky. To quote Tom’s review of that game:

Exploration is only as meaningful as what you can find. If I explore the attic of my parents’ house, I can find my junior high yearbook. If I explore an unknown planet, I can find a fantastic new life form. That’s why there are more games about exploring universes than games about exploring attics. But if I explore No Man’s Sky, a game about exploring a universe, I can find the exact same thing I found ten minutes ago, and ten minutes before that, and ten minutes before that, and each of the ten minutes before that for the entire playing time. Exploration isn’t about exploration. It’s about discovery. No Man’s Sky doesn’t understand this at all.

But I suppose you are under the mindset that this is not an artistic choice, but due to them not having the technical ability to generate planets 100% procedurally?

[Telefrog]

I think the problem is that when someone describes something in a videogame as “procedurally generated” most people take that to mean that it’s done live in real-time while playing.

[Teiman]

Minecraft may generate terrain from a algorithm but do it only once, … when is generated, is stored to disc, so the next time you visit that particular chunk… is not calculated but loaded from disc. Notch could have distributed Minecraft withouth the terrain generator algorithm, a lot of pre-generated terrain in the disc. If the terrain is generated in real time or not, is moot point. If the game developer can get away with it, it will be cached or pregenerated has much has possible.

[Ryan_Kelly]

I think the problem is that when someone describes something in a videogame as “procedurally generated” most people take that to mean that it’s done live in real-time while playing.

But Dr. Smart mentions games like Infinity Battlescape and Dual Universe as games that use procedural generation proper. These are multiplayer games with a shared world that could not have been generated entirely in real time from the perspective of a new player. They’re playing with the same seed that was created at the beginning, regardless of when they joined.

[Telefrog]

Right, but the worlds are generated when someone fired the game up and asked it to do so. There’s a difference between that and something in a game that was created by a programmer using procedural generation tools before the game shipped.

For example, it’s entirely accurate to say “GTA V’s Los Santos landscape was created with a lot of procedural generation help” because vegetation, terrain, and NPCs were the result of some savvy use of that code. It would be odd to say “GTA V’s Los Santos is procedurally generated” because that implies a completely different process.

[Timex]

Right, but the worlds are generated when someone fired the game up and asked it to do so. There’s a difference between that and something in a game that was created by a programmer using procedural generation tools before the game shipped.

Sure. The latter is mainly just used to enable faster creation of planetary bodies.

They look pretty nice from what we’ve seen thus far.

[Ryan_Kelly]

Infinity Battlescape always takes place in the same system, with the same layout, according to the CEO.

With Dual Universe, it seems that everyone starts on the same two planets that have already been seen in the demo videos, with new solar systems expanding outward that are generated in real time.

[Timex]

True procedural generation enables things like you see in No Man’s Sky, where you have basically infinity planets you can go to.

In practice, it ended up being pretty boring after you saw a few.

[Telefrog]

Infinity Battlescape always takes place in the same system, with the same layout, according to the CEO.

I’m not saying otherwise. As long as you’re using the same seed and algorithm, you should get the same results. For example, No Man’s Sky, despite not actually connecting players in real-time, generates the same universe with the same content for everyone.

[Ryan_Kelly]

You said:

Right, but the worlds are generated when someone fired the game up and asked it to do so. There’s a difference between that and something in a game that was created by a programmer using procedural generation tools before the game shipped.

My point was that Infinity Battlescape will have the same layout for everyone because that’s the layout that the developers chose before the game shipped.

The CEO’s words:

I guess that depends on how you define “real” procedural generation. Our planets are about as procedural as they can get .

[dsmart]

So are you saying that the moons cannot be described as procedural because they’re not 100% arranged by algorithms? Should I use the term “moons created with procedural tools” instead?

Yes, because the terms are NOT interchangeable. See my previous comment.

The developers have said that they made a conscious decision to avoid complete reliance on procedural generation so as to avoid the random meaninglessness you would find in a game like No Man’s Sky. To quote Tom’s review of that game:

That came AFTER (I even wrote an entire article about it) it was made clear they were full of shit. See my previous comment.

But I suppose you are under the mindset that this is not an artistic choice, but due to them not having the technical ability to generate planets 100% procedurally?

It’s irrelevant. Nobody gives a shit HOW they do it. The issue with HOW boils down to the fact that 6 fucking years later, they don’t even have 1% of the promised game universe built. It’s now mid year 6, and 3.0 is going to have 3 moons. as levels.

So, if they were using procedural algorithms to define and create the world, while using manually work to create the actually landing areas/zones, that cuts out about 75% of the work they have to do for 110 star systems and 500+ planets and moons. THAT’S the problem. It’s a matter of 1 yrs, versus 10 years in building the world they promised, back when in 2014, $65m was enough to build the game.