[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Rennadrel]

https://massivelyop.com/2021/01/08/c...-star-citizen/

Aight I'm super confused...CIG just got a perpetual license to Cryengine...but hasn't the official line been that they're no longer using Cryengine and that they're now using Lumberyard (yes I know, which is technically Cryengine but isn't).

So...they're licensing both, then?

I was under the impression years ago when they licensed Lumberyard, that it was for server side technology, not the game engine itself. Star Engine is their modified CryEngine that the game is built around.

[MrAnderson]

Except I didn't say that backers should have a say or vote, just that they should be kept informed by a company operating transparently. That's a philosophical view for me when it comes to crowdfunding across the board. If you're asking customers for money and promising a product in return for the money, the process should be as transparent as it is with any investor backing a new product. Which this game largely is and gives good progress reports and updates. But any investor would absolutely demand to know the details of this agreement given the potential financial impact on operations and the business implications.

If the current backers are fine with that and still happy to throw money at CIG, cool. I'm just interested to find out more, because it's a strange development.

Crowdfunding is about supporting games, getting updates of the development and early builds to play are a "bonus" that developers use as a way to keep their community engaged and generate trust and ongoing funding. The financial and overall business side of running a private company is rightly so private and only disclosed if there's a pressing need. General curiosity from one or two backers is not one of them.

I was under the impression years ago when they licensed Lumberyard, that it was for server side technology, not the game engine itself. Star Engine is their modified CryEngine that the game is built around.

That is, they changed very little to make use of the server side technology as Star Engine is already quite more developed than current "default" Lumberyard.

[Kyanion]

General curiosity from one or two backers is not one of them.

*eyeroll* So this game able to have more than 50 people playing without it exploding yet? It is 2021 and still no sign of a MMO that can host 50 people and not die. Also they keep on kicking the can down the road for the 'greyboxed years ago' single player mode.

[Cyclone Jack]

And that they're being so vague about it, rather than transparent as they should be as a crowdfunded game, raises the question as to why they're being so vague.

And also why they need to license an engine they're supposedly no longer using.

Its possible that they didn't say anything about the license due to legal reasons, since nothing of the settlement has really been mentioned. If not for the annual report, we still would not be aware.

That's my guess, at least.

[MrAnderson]

*eyeroll* So this game able to have more than 50 people playing without it exploding yet? It is 2021 and still no sign of a MMO that can host 50 people and not die. Also they keep on kicking the can down the road for the 'greyboxed years ago' single player mode.

The player count will only increase when server meshing is implemented. 50 players in the same area is still better than what Elite, NMS, GTA or RDR2 Online provide for example.

[Wilian]

Open Development is not the same as Open Business. Anything besides the games development is nobody else's business but CIG.

It's almoust as if they promised total transparency exactly because it's not going to be handled business as usual developement. Good thing they have horde of drones there to shield them while they laugh their way to the bank

[Dezerte]

I'm pretty sure I've seen Elite videos with more than 50 people in them.

[Cracked]

The player count will only increase when server meshing is implemented. 50 players in the same area is still better than what Elite, NMS, GTA or RDR2 Online provide for example.

I'll believe it when I see it. If you know anything about game application lifetime and networking, proper server meshing sounds like a pipe dream. In reality, what you will get is pretty much WoW sharding, where the gamers are technically in the same universe but not really.

[1001]

The player count will only increase when server meshing is implemented. 50 players in the same area is still better than what Elite, NMS, GTA or RDR2 Online provide for example.

Pretty sure that right now it is 40 players, not 50. And lets be honest the other games listed have not spent years claiming they are aiming for hundreds of thousands per instance, like the quote below from 2017

So with the next big release a lot of the underlying game is there and then we can look at transferring people between servers so we can have hundreds of thousands of people maybe in one instance, but that doesn’t come online until later.

[MrAnderson]

It's almoust as if they promised total transparency exactly because it's not going to be handled business as usual developement. Good thing they have horde of drones there to shield them while they laugh their way to the bank

But they never promised such thing, you're just making things up to join the conversation.

I'll believe it when I see it. If you know anything about game application lifetime and networking, proper server meshing sounds like a pipe dream. In reality, what you will get is pretty much WoW sharding, where the gamers are technically in the same universe but not really.

Same here but many doubted before they could make huge seamless maps with no loading screens or full planets with crysis level of detail and they pulled it off.

I'm just happy they are going for it because that's exactly why I backed them.

Pretty sure that right now it is 40 players, not 50. And lets be honest the other games listed have not spent years claiming they are aiming for hundreds of thousands per instance, like the quote below from 2017

It's still 50 players per server atm.


That's one of the great aspects of crowdfunding games with open development. You get early access to developers long term intentions for the direction of a game and adjust your expectations accordingly. Nothing wrong with that.

[Beazy]

I don't think so, I've seen nothing that indicates that as they still have their license with Amazon. That's what I'm trying to figure out, because it's almost seeming as if SC is running off Lumberyard and SQ42 is CE? Or that they still need the CE license to use LY for some reason?

Been trying to track down some clarity on this but not finding anything.

Its because they dont have a full lumberyard build, and until they do (L OH FUCKING L), they will need a cryengine lisc. Happens all the time, we had to pay Atlassan for JIRA and Bitbucket lisc while also paying for the modified custom code lisc from the source.

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It's still 50 players per server atm.

LoL. I love that "ATM" part Ando`.

[Kyanion]

That's one of the great aspects of crowdfunding games with open development. You get early access to developers long term intentions for the direction of a game and adjust your expectations accordingly. Nothing wrong with that.

Long term intentions. Sure I imagine if most people in the Kickstarter knew just how long this was going to end up taking they'd never have gotten off the ground.

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The player count will only increase when server meshing is implemented.

And when is that going to be implemented? 2027?

[1001]

I don't think so, I've seen nothing that indicates that as they still have their license with Amazon. That's what I'm trying to figure out, because it's almost seeming as if SC is running off Lumberyard and SQ42 is CE? Or that they still need the CE license to use LY for some reason?

Been trying to track down some clarity on this but not finding anything.

They're not using LY at all, not for SC or SQ42. All of their work is based on a version of CryEngine prior to the one Amazon turned into LY.
They've not even backported anything from LY (this was used as one of the main selling points for justifying the switch).

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It's still 50 players per server atm.

Last I heard it had been reduced down to 40. They were having problems and the easiest way to remedy them was to reduce player load on the servers.

That's one of the great aspects of crowdfunding games with open development. You get early access to developers long term intentions for the direction of a game and adjust your expectations accordingly. Nothing wrong with that.

LOL. Imagine saying this 8 years after the start of development with almost $400 million spent so far.
Never change Mr.A

[MrAnderson]

Long term intentions. Sure I imagine if most people in the Kickstarter knew just how long this was going to end up taking they'd never have gotten off the ground.

And when is that going to be implemented? 2027?

Uncertainty is a big part of developing new tech, the continuous growth in funding along the years as well as players show's there's no shortage of people happy to go on with their lives while the company develops the tech needed to make the game they want to make. It's not like there's another similar game with it to play instead of waiting for it to be developed by CIG. You either support it and wait for it or don't support it and still wait for it, from CIG or other company. At least with CIG we know they are actively pursuing it. When it will be done only they can tell.

Last I heard it had been reduced down to 40. They were having problems and the easiest way to remedy them was to reduce player load on the servers.
LOL. Imagine saying this 8 years after the start of development with almost $400 million spent so far.
Never change Mr.A

Nop, still 50 players per servers.

If the tech was already developed or there was a faster solution to implement it I'd say CIG would have gone for it. Since there isn't the only option is to develop it themselves. Waiting is only a problem for those who have nothing to do. But then again, that's irrelevant to CIG.

[1001]

Nop, still 50 players per servers.

Without some official confirmation I'm inclined to not believe you.
From what I remember they dropped the numbers for Invictus week back in May 2020, they also kept numbers down so they could spawn bigger ships and videos clips seem to support this as they are all 40 players VS

They also note a reduced player limit on the PTU build just prior to xmas as it was causing problems

• Note: Per Server Player Limit for this build has been set to 40 players

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/s...-notes/3706593

If the tech was already developed or there was a faster solution to implement it I'd say CIG would have gone for it. Since there isn't the only option is to develop it themselves. Waiting is only a problem for those who have nothing to do. But then again, that's irrelevant to CIG.

Nah. They've had years to do the tech, it's not like they didn't know what the plan was. They've just done it arse about face.

[MrAnderson]

Without some official confirmation I'm inclined to not believe you.
From what I remember they dropped the numbers for Invictus week back in May 2020, they also kept numbers down so they could spawn bigger ships and videos clips seem to support this as they are all 40 players VS

They also note a reduced player limit on the PTU build just prior to xmas as it was causing problems

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/s...-notes/3706593

Nah. They've had years to do the tech, it's not like they didn't know what the plan was. They've just done it arse about face.

Live Servers are at 50 player. Easy to confirm by just joining a server and checking the Global Channel number as it shows the player cap 49/50 along with the players names on the side, you can ask some Twitch streamer to show the chat channel and confirm for yourself.

PTU server builds setups can change depending on what CIG wants to test. One build they upped the player cap to 60: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/s...-to-60/2712212

They spent years converting to 64bit map size, years developing their planetary tech, years building big ships and so on. Developing new tech will always involve a lot of time and money. If it was an easy feat to accomplish server meshing or many other features of Star Citizen it would probably already been developed by other studios and seen in more demanding games.

[Cracked]

They spent years converting to 64bit map size, years developing their planetary tech, years building big ships and so on. Developing new tech will always involve a lot of time and money. If it was an easy feat to accomplish server meshing or many other features of Star Citizen it would probably already been developed by other studios and seen in more demanding games.

While out of context this might be true, it's rather dishonest to say. The return on investment on those features is just not worth it for other games, so they don't do it. It's not that they don't do it because it's somehow the pinnacle of engineering, but that it requires many people and a lot of trial and error... and if it turns out that business requirements changed along the way (game design wise mostly), then it might end up having to be rebuilt from basically square 1. That's why you never see these grandiose features in games. Plenty other software implements "server meshing", the problem in games (particularly mmo) is that there is expectation of constant change, and what is hard is designing robust systems where future breaking changes are guaranteed.

So if SC does end up creating a server meshing solution, it will either 1) slow down future development considerably as any additions will have to conform to this system or 2) mean that no large changes can ever happen again.

[MrAnderson]

While out of context this might be true, it's rather dishonest to say. The return on investment on those features is just not worth it for other games, so they don't do it. It's not that they don't do it because it's somehow the pinnacle of engineering, but that it requires many people and a lot of trial and error... and if it turns out that business requirements changed along the way (game design wise mostly), then it might end up having to be rebuilt from basically square 1. That's why you never see these grandiose features in games. Plenty other software implements "server meshing", the problem in games (particularly mmo) is that there is expectation of constant change, and what is hard is designing robust systems where future breaking changes are guaranteed.

So if SC does end up creating a server meshing solution, it will either 1) slow down future development considerably as any additions will have to conform to this system or 2) mean that no large changes can ever happen again.

Many other games/studios have tried or dabbled in such features like seamless planetary landings Bioware when they were making Mass Effect: Andromeda or how Ubisoft as been working for years in Beyond Good & Evil 2.

So the "not worthy for other games" is not true at all. Still, it doesn't really matter what other gamers, dev's or studios deem worthy or not. If Chris Roberts, CIG and it's backers feel it's worthy enough to pursuit, develop and back respectively then nothing else matters. A product doesn't have to please everyone to thrive but just have enough people that appreciate it enough to fund it's production in a perfect symbiosis.

[Erous]

I'm curious, with how long this has been in development, how many backers have now grown too old or have too many IRL responsibilities to now play the game. This game will never release in it's entirety because simply put they won't make the same amount of money. It's all over the tech news threads that it's just delay upon delay, over 10 years of money being thrown at the studio with no end in sight.

[1001]

Live Servers are at 50 player. Easy to confirm by just joining a server and checking the Global Channel number as it shows the player cap 49/50 along with the players names on the side, you can ask some Twitch streamer to show the chat channel and confirm for yourself.

Or you could log in and screenshot it to back up your own words instead.