I mean, I’d rather it’s 200 whales that get hosed than 2m backers.
Yeah, but it’s those 200 whales who are going to be shafted the most because they’re invested beyond any reasonable level for a game that’s not an investment with returns on same.
Sure, but they were always pissing the money away. It’s not an investment. So if people are not going to get what they were promised, I’d rather there were fewer of them.
Or in another view, those 200 are much more likely to have more money than sense than 2 million. Even then, you just know there’s a certainly more than a few who have invested too much for their means, even if they don’t anymore, and those special ones aren’t helping.
Precisely. e.g. that Algared guy is a teacher. Unless he’s a trust fund kid, no way in hell someone can just plonk down $7K (word is that he is over $25K “invested”) on a train wreck like this.
You have to read this. Just read it. THESE are the guys we’re dealing with. There is no way to compete with that.
This one is better (trust me).
“To talk about the “toxicity in this community” belittles its greatness in the grand relation to online gaming communities, and looks bad to a newcomer seeing an entire thread dedicated to this.”
I’ve wondered if that might be because of these possible factors:
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I’m not spawning at or visiting Hurston/Lorville anymore. No reason to if you are looking for gameplay IMHO. Though it was still mostly fun to see and explore until the realization that it is a HUGE time suck with nothing to accomplish (grind without reward?) as far as any gamer high is concerned settled in.
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Could CIG have intentionally nerfed the missions to improve the FPS and crash situation for the free-fly? Any thoughts/facts that corroborate/refute that possibility?
I am thankful that toxic clowns in the Star Citizen community continue to provide endless lols while proving us right. A thread about toxicity descending into toxicity is par for the course. And somehow it’s still all my fault.
It’s definitely a combination of all the above, as well as being in an unpopulated instance or with few clients within close proximity. The fps and memory spikes are symptomatic of their on-going implementation which, just as I had predicted and written, the Lorville just proves that when an engine is incapable of doing something, nothing you do will address it. That’s just putting a Band-Aid over a gushing wound.
Like the invincible NPC issue, the missions have been broken for sometime now. So I don’t think they nerfed that intentionally. Everything is just plain broken. And the OCS + NBC implementations increased that instability and performance issues - just as I had predicted.
I had been noodling about the “clients within close proximity” aspect as well. I’ve not been able yet to understand how that would degrade a given program’s performance due (I hope) mainly to my ignorance of software (game engine specifically) functionality in this case.
But from a macro viewpoint, I would assume that if having multiple clients in close proximity does degrade performance in an MMO, then it should follow that increasing the game space available should spread out those clients and, therefor, improve performance (albeit artificially)?
Could the performance improvements that I am quite sure I have observed recently be just due to the increased size of the “play area” recently introduce in SC and therefor be the result of the decreased “density” of other clients?
If the 50 client max per virtual server instance is still correct, and the area of play has increased, then my proximity to other clients should be reduced, right? And from experience I can definitely say I do encounter fewer PCs in SC now (while the number of NPS has increased).
Sorry if I ramble on! This is all very interesting to me.
NONE of the above. And it’s far too technical to explain to a layman. Here is a brief overview which I hope helps.
- having 8 clients within proximity inside a box, is less process (graphics, ai, networking etc) intensive than having 50 clients within the same proximity
- having the same number of clients inside a larger box, doesn’t change anything
- a client inside a larger box doesn’t see any increase|decrease in performance because of the increased play area because it all depends on what is inside the box - and within view of the client - as well as how many clients are within proximity
CryEngine and Lumberyard are “level” based games. Meaning the world is created inside an editor - just like all games which aren’t procedurally generated. The larger the level, the more assets in it - the more the performance decrease when clients are inside. This is why even before moons were introduced in 3.0, performance which sucked before, became worse. Then they had to do something about it via OCS + NBC before they could increase the world again in 3.3.
Since they couldn’t do it in time, they split 3.3 into two parts. First releasing 3.3 with the WIP versions of OCS+NBC, then 3.3.5 which had Hurston/Lorville with improved versions. It didn’t do anything to improve performance during a standard “gameplay” session. All it did was improve performance for a group of clients within an area that’s not heavily populated. It’s why some people are claiming 60 fps, then going to Lorville and getting 20 fps or less - with few clients.
SC is constructed like a series of interconnected boxes. Think of the PU start location Port Olisar (Crusader) hub, Levski (Delamar moon), and Lorville (Hurston) as 3 separate but connected boxes - all created inside an editor. It’s how they were able to disable Area 18 (shopping which was previously accessible from a menu like Arena Commander, Star Marine) and move all the shops to Port Olisar. It’s also how both AC and SM can be played separately, as they are just separate level boxes.
Each box has a different level of complexity and content which determines the performance requirements.
Welcome to Stanton key locations currently implemented. The number at the end of each line is my approximation of the level of processing required for 16 (standard number) clients within proximity (clients can see and interact with each other) of each other.
- Space: (empty) - 4
- Space: (areas with hubs such as security hub Kera orbits Cellin, Covalex orbits Daymar, various rest stops) - 7
- Hub: Port Olisar - 6
- Moon (surface) - 4
- Planetoid (surface) - 4
- Planet (surface): 5
- Hub: GrimHEX (Yella) - 6
- Hub: Levski (Delamar) - 6
- City: Lorville (Hurston) - 20
So if you were getting an average of 30 fps in 3.2, then getting 50 fps in 3.3, it has to do with the OCS+NBC implementation. However, it’s sporadic because all those do is - in some cases - prevent the loading of assets inside boxes (and within a certain range of the current box) that the player can neither see, nor located in. But, as most have now seen, it breaks a LOT of things. Heck, even when in the same box, you can see clients and ships being removed prematurely, even if they are in the same box you’re in, within proximity etc. And when clients are all within the same box or within visual interaction distance, guess what happens? If you guessed that performance tanks again because now everything within the same box is processed, then you would be correct.
And THAT is how we end up with these fps spikes which go from bad to worse during “gameplay” interactions between clients. It’s also why you would be hard-pressed to find gameplay related videos which aren’t totally shit. Citizens and streamers instead focus on taking screen shots and nav videos because the game’s visual fidelity is mostly what sells it outside the backer base.
Performance in space is better than inside hubs and on the planets because there’s hardly anything in space. Also, performance on the moon/planet terrain is better because most of the assets (rocks, fauna etc) are procedurally generated like in all games. Meaning, an artist didn’t sit down and place every rock, or tree manually in the editor, as that would be an impossible amount of work.
The reason that Lorville is such a performance hog is because it is the largest box, and has the most assets. And they attempted to reduce the performance demands by preventing players from flying too close and within the city by adding no-fly-zones. Otherwise, anyone getting 20 fps right now flying outside those zones, will be getting about 5 fps or less flying within the city. So imagine what happens if several clients are in that city. And THAT is why, even after touting it for over a year, they had to take it out of 3.3 in order to implement performance improvements via OCS+NBC. When they brought it into 3.3.5, they added those zones once they discovered that even OCS+NBC won’t help because 1) the engine is shit and can’t handle that sort of thing 2) the visual fidelity of the assets is just to great a burden - and CryEngine/Lumberyard are notorious performance hogs in EVERY aspect
And what they did with Lorville, is precisely what they are going to have to do with Microtech (the next planet) which they have also promoted as a city on a planet. For a hearty lol, take a look at the concept art and descriptions for these locations, which they were touting as far back as 2013.
Further reading (my articles on OCS + NBC and why they didn’t yield the expected results)
10/27/2018
10/15/2018
09/22/2018
09/08/2018
02/20/2018
12/11/2017
First, let me say thanks for that overview! It definitely helps me (the layman) better understand the entire SC (and general game dev) engineering parameters better.
I’m still confused on how they pull off “space” in the described constraints of the “interconnected boxes” analogy. Is space considered one big box unto itself that contains the smaller boxes that the PC enters when in proximity to the stations/planet/moon boxes? Or is space possibly an array of boxes (that you leave and enter when traversing) that may or may not contain said stations/planet/moons? Or something completely different?
You’re welcome!
Yes. Think of space as a big box. Then in that box, you have all the other entities (planets, bases, asteroids etc). And some of those entities (planets, bases) are boxes themselves. Think of it as a Russian doll. e.g. you open space, then you go into Olisar which opens that box. When you leave Olisar, you go back to space, then when you go to Hurston, you enter another box.
In 2.0 which was released Dec 2015, they introduced their first 64-Bit positioning. I wrote an article explaining it back in Nov 2015 because, as they usually do, they complicated the explanation to make it sound more groundbreaking that it was. This despite the fact that both my BC/UC games, as well as ED, had done the same thing for our massive worlds - but better. And we built custom engines to do it, not rely on an fps focused engine like CryEngine to shoehorn it into.
Basically what they did there was update the engine so that they could make a smaller box, bigger. In this case, the space box. And it comes at a cost both in performance as well as all the craziness that can happen to physics, positioning in world space etc.
Watch this SC video from a year ago to see what I mean about how they create the game world in an editor
One of the issues with their sizes is that travel gets boring quickly. And you can’t put things too close together because then they will also be rendered and processed at the same time; thus leading to major performance issues. Right now, in some ships, it takes about 15 mins to travel from Hurston/Space to Hurston/Atmosphere/Lorville because of that. And it’s why I used an external camera transition in my Battlecruiser/Universal Combat series to speed things up. You have to compromise for gameplay reasons.
If you look at their starmap, you can see that their plan is to make different space boxes - the size of Stanton space - and then connect all of them using jump points. That’s how, if they get that far, they are going to be able to do interplanetary travel. e.g. from Stanton system to Hadrian system. Which is what I also did in my BC/UC games as you can see from my starmap. Except, like ED, my world is also procedurally generated, and not created in an editor like SC.
I use wormholes to go from system to system, and jump gates to go between distant locations within the same system. e.g.
- to go from Earth space region in Sol system to Alpha Centauri system, you have to first use a jump gate to Pluto space region, then use the wormhole in Pluto space region to get to Centris space which is in Alpha Centauri.
- to go from Pluto space region to Earth planet, you would target the Earth planet, then manually use jump engines to get to it. Your crew will prompt if you want to enter the planet after the jump. If you say NO, you will remain in orbit outside the planet. If you say YES, an external camera transition (which is designed to cut the distance and time taken to go from orbit to planet surface) plays, then positions you above the planet. If you want to emerge at a precise location on the planet, then from orbit you would use the TacOps computer to set a waypoint. When you enter the planet, you will be exactly above that waypoint.
Watch this short video to see how that works.
These are all basic things that SC, for some reason, struggles with. I did this almost 30 years ago - and never had to change that tech; other than to improve on it over time.
Well, I-War 2 had the best traversal I’ve seen in any space game so far (fairly authentic, too). It had jumps but you could go seamlessly from a point to the other “manually”, so to speak, if you preferred. It worked marvelously well.
Even low-budget, indie games like Evochron figured that out. Had SC been developed right, it wouldn’t be a problem there either, but the fact that they went with CryEngine because of “visual fidelity” only shows where their priorities are. :(
My BC/UC games also have that.
Well, the free-flight week is off to a good start.
Everything (website, auth/login, forum, CDN etc) is broken
Well, I’ve played BC3000AD on release (yes, I still have that silver/chrome box in storage, and I had to import it even). It was a loooong time ago and I remember the wormholes and all, but not the seamless part of traversal. Even then, it didn’t induce the same sense of awe I had with the FTL drive in I-War 2.
Oddly enough, my favorite part of BC3000AD was the fact that pilots/marines had schedules and fatigue, and you had to manage that. I still wait for a game that has the captain of a ship handling that kind of stuff. Maybe I’ll make one someday. ;)
Also, in 3.3.6 which they released a few days ago ahead of today’s event, they moved the starting spawn point from Lorville back to Port Olisar. I couldn’t believe that they did that. but it makes sense because Lorville is a massive performance nightmare and glitch fest. They’re hoping that new players aren’t going to stick around to find out that Lorville exists, let alone how to get there.
So with this move, to get to the Lorville location and shopping area, n00bs - in a badly broken game with horrid documentation, have to do the following:
- spawn at Port Olisar
- figure out how to get a ship
- take-off
- fly about 15 mins to Hurston
- figure out how to stay outside the no-fly-zones without dying, land etc
What do you mean by “seamless”? Are you talking about from space<->planet transition? If so, what’s not seamless about it? All I do there (as in the video above) is interrupt it with an external camera transition because of the amount of time that it would take. The same complaints that SC is currently having.
And yeah, I-War did it differently, and it was cool. But it’s the same traversal system for long distances. Visuals don’t change it.
Yeah, it’s been the hallmarks :)