Given their planned method of discovering jump paths between systems, growing the overall game world over time should work pretty well after initial release.
Well, if they still have issues with the netcode even with most of the code replaced by theirs… it makes me wonder what’s going on. Well, I hope they fix the whole thing soon enough.
Eh, they’re just hitting a bug. It happens. They’ll work the problem and fix it. To some extent, this is the point of the different tiers of testing they have. They’ll probably bit more stability issues as things progress.
From what they’ve said, it doesn’t seem like they have any plans to abandon the original starmap, including all of the lore attached to it. Thus, if they were to bring some of these systems online after release, I doubt they would have the players discovering jump points that were already discovered centuries ago according to their own backstory. Especially when the systems are already inhabited by humans.
Yeah that’s patently FALSE. You just made that up in your head. Even CIG have made no such claim.
Fact is, the netcode is the same baseline kernel from CryEngine 3.x and which they have been massaging since day one in order to get it to work well with more than 8 clients joining an instance without the server falling over. And that’s the hallmark of the shitty netcode that CryEngine has been famous for since the very first Crysis game.
CIG has been promising new netcode since early 2016. It was supposed to be in variants of 2.x. Then they discovered what a shit-show it was going to be to actually make any reasonable changes without affecting the normal release schedules for builds.
So they deferred it to 3.0. That didn’t work out so well either. So it’s no longer in any of the 3.x builds. And I suspect that they have dropped the idea of replacing it, and instead are going to continue kludging it. That aside from the fact that their switch to Lumberyard had done nothing but complicate things even further in this regard.
That’s all bollocks. All of it.
First, that’s not a design doc/article, it’s the classic literal diarrhea that Chris tends to write and spout in order to keep backers in the dream.
And none of it currently exists.
If you think that 6 years in, if they haven’t got a SINGLE aspect of that actually working yet, that they’re EVER going to do it, then you’re a fool. Go buy an Idris and prove me wrong.
The game is always going to remain an instanced session base game because unless and until they are able to get a decent networking framework working - which by all accounts they can’t - they’re not building any of that shit.
We’ve actually built it. With a combination of custom code and middleware (RakNet). I know it’s a nightmare. And it took the better part of 3 years to do. And it supports both open world and session based.
There are only two known middleware networking engines (RakNet and ReplicaNet. both of which I have used in my games) which are capable of coming anywhere close to doing what they want. And you still need custom code to handle the world entities, updates etc. Unlike graphics and AI, networking in games is the single most difficult thing to do. Bar none. Especially where real-time communication is required - in twitch based games.
At this point, the best that backers can hope for is that CIG at least gets 16 client sessions working with some degree of stability, because there is no way they’re going to go beyond that with any reasonable performance or stability. Heck, look at how Elite Dangerous did it. And that’s not even an MMO. And somehow you guys think that CIG is suddenly going to do anything like that, or even surpass it? Fucking LOL!!
Further reading:
http://www.scqa.info/transcript/?episode=10FTC-053
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/5284313/#Comment_5284313
Why would you want something bad to happen? Should I wish for something bad to happen to you so that it would be a cautionary tale?
They don’t. The starmap is the entire game world. Like everything else, that nonsense about "discovering jump points’ went out the window five minutes after Chris uttered it.
Heck, even in the upcoming much touted all-elusive 3.0 they had to “move” a planetoid all the way from a different system, Nyx, in order to have a planetoid and moons in the Stanton system. Why? Because 1) they haven’t built any other system yet 2) there is no travel between star systems - which is they rather than build an empty Nyx, and leave Delamar there, they decided to move it to Stanton.
It’s fucking hilarious, really. I wrote extensively about it already.
It’s all pipe dreams. None of that shit is ever happening. The client instances can’t sustain more than 8 players reasonably well, and backers actually think they’re going to be flying around in capital ship chariots with a dozen of their best mates inside.
It’s hilarious.
I’ve looked for updated info on ‘StarNet’ and it seems difficult to come by. Whatever their plans for netcode customisation/re-write a year ago, I am going to be unsurprised to eventually learn it went largely out the window with the switch to Lumberyard and the networking features AWS has added to that.
I’ve explained multiple times in this thread why I want this game’s development to crater but your false equivalence is noted.
This made me smile
Yeah, there’s that. However, the way CryEngine is designed, not only is it an arduous task to replace the networking kernel, but what AMZ has done to their Lumberyard implementation makes it largely insurmountable to even attempt it. Especially due to all the AWS hooks they also spent the better part of a YEAR implementing.
Basically CIG is never - ever - going to build an MMO from this. Like at all. And that “server mesh” nonsense they were going on about, which is similar to how ED does it with their instancing, is also out the window because they switched to LY.
I wrote about this back in May.
That did strike me as a bit of a “but why male models?” question, but I mean that in a good natured / teasing way. It can be really hard to keep up with this thread sometimes.
Yea, this is all me “wishing in one hand”. I’m sure my other hand will fill up far faster.
Your article linked there doesn’t mention the switch to Lumberyard precluding the server mesh, just that they “would have to build it themselves”. Did you write more about that topic somewhere else?
No it doesn’t. They were talking about all that server mesh bullshit prior to it being public that - without telling backers beforehand - they had switched to LY. Subsequently, even if they had any chances (they didn’t) of doing it, switching to yet another CryEngine based custom engine, sealed the fate of that. Which explains why nothing tangible about networking or anything related to server work, is mentioned anywhere in the 3.x dev schedule.
My article on the LY switch is in my Irreconcilable Differences blog.
Think I’m kidding when I say the netcode is garbage? Watch this networking analysis of Star Marine when it was first released in the 2.6 patch earlier this year.
And this is Chris, in an interview from Q4/16, claiming “thousands of players on a server”.
Your May article was written in response to a CIG developer talking about their server mesh plan, the Lumberyard switch happened last year. Thus, it doesn’t seem the switch has resulted in them abandoning their server mesh plans, else they wouldn’t still be talking about it on the forums. When they plan to actually implement it is another matter. As you noted in your article, it’s very possible they will go through the entire 3.x cycle with their current architecture.
That was a great video.
- they’ve been talking about this server mesh nonsense since 2015
- we’ve been discussing it since then. here is one thread post about it
- my May 2016 article (about instancing and networking) was in response to the Spectrum & Reddit discussion that popped up a day earlier, and in which they were all theory-crafting a load of nonsense
- the interview I linked above with Chris is from Aug 2016, ahead of GamesCom. They were already apparently doing the LY switch during this time - without saying anything
- they made the LY switch during 2016, released is in the 2.6 patch in Dec 2016, and never disclosed it until they were busted due to the LY logo being required to be displayed by all licensees. Chris’s statement, the newsletter to backers about it.
Them still talking about their “server mesh”, like they do with everything else, is immaterial because it doesn’t matter either way, as they’re never going to be able to do it, regardless. Much like most of the features they’ve promised and either dropped or have yet to touch. Six years + $156M later.
Also, it should be noted that much like the bait & switch tactics they’ve been engaged in, during 2016, they had networking in the dev schedule and led backers to believe they were working on vast improvements and rewrites. Then they stopped talking about it entirely, removed it from the schedule, and moved onto procedurally generated planets nonsense as the next phase of the hype.
I am sure they are still planning to overhaul the networking, but whether they do it or not, and when, is an entirely different story. The elephant in the room in all that is due to the game’s use of AWS, and with no off-line play mode since it’s not a single-player game, the AWS bills alone are going to be an on-going cost problem. And if they get to the point whereby they do collapse, then the game is useless because there is no offline mode, and they never got around to implementing private servers which they promised since 2012, then later said they won’t visit it until post release.