[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Tradewind]

So Star Marine is fuckin' fun lol.

Kneel before meeeee!!

[masterhorus8]

From Chris Roberts regarding the Lumberyard switch:

Lumberyard and StarEngine are both forks from the exactly the SAME build of CryEngine.

We stopped taking new builds from Crytek towards the end of 2015. So did Amazon. Because of this the core of the engine that we use is the same one that Amazon use and the switch was painless (I think it took us a day or so of two engineers on the engine team). What runs Star Citizen and Squadron 42 is our heavily modified version of the engine which we have dubbed StarEngine, just now our foundation is Lumberyard not CryEngine. None of our work was thrown away or modified. We switched the like for like parts of the engine from CryEngine to Lumberyard. All of our bespoke work from 64 bit precision, new rendering and planet tech, Item / Entity 2.0, Local Physics Grids, Zone System, Object Containers and so on were unaffected and remain unique to Star Citizen.

Going forward we will utilize the features of Lumberyard that make sense for Star Citizen. We made this choice as Amazon's and our focus is aligned in building massively online games that utilize the power of cloud computing to deliver a richer online experience than would be possible with an old fashioned single server architecture (which is what CryNetwork is).

Looking at Crytek's roadmap and Amazon's we determined that Amazon was investing in the areas we were most interested in. They are a massive company that is making serious investments into Lumberyard and AWS to support next generation online gaming. Crytek doesn't have the resources to compete with this level of investment and have never been focused on the network or online aspects of the engine in the way we or Amazon are. Because of this combined with the fact we weren't taking new builds of CryEngine we decided that Amazon would be the best partner going forward for the future of Star Citizen.

Finally there was no ulterior motive in the timing of the announcement. The deal wasn't fully finalized until after the release of 2.5 and we agreed with Amazon to announce the switch and partnership upon the release of 2.6, which would be the first release on Lumberyard and AWS. If you have been checking out our schedule updates you would know that we originally had hoped to release 2.6 at the beginning of December, not Friday the 23rd!

I hope this clears up some of the speculation I have seen. We are very excited to be partnered with Amazon and feel this move is a big win for Star Citizen and by extension everyone that has backed the project.

p.s. I wont be replying to this as it is Christmas and I am meant to be enjoying a bit of time off with my family (and playing some games - you may see me pop into a Star Marine or AC match or two!)

p.p.s Happy Holidays All!

source: https://forums.robertsspaceindustrie...cussion/364217
@Edge-

[Edge-]

Nice, glad Roberts made a follow up post pretty quickly with more detail. That's exactly what I was hoping for.

[KyrtF]

Nice, glad Roberts made a follow up post pretty quickly with more detail. That's exactly what I was hoping for.

Maybe - but they've kept Star Engine, and the CryEngine model they had was so customised they'd stopped applying CryTek patches. So his assertion that Amazon modified their core the same way CIG modified their CE core seems dubious.

As it is, he seems to be saying that they added "Star Engine" to Lumberyard, and then if any of Lumberyards core modules were different, they swapped them for the modules they'd been working on.

Meaning, all that CIG effectively did under this "engine swap" would be to add Lumberyards Netcoding into their existing engine.

That isn't a bad idea as it gives them access to Amazons server hosting set up and AWS and Twitch, and it potentially removes the need for licensing fees to Crytek as Lumberyard is "free". But it also indicates this isn't as really as big a deal as CIG are currently trying to imply.

It is interesting he is not blaming this swap for the delays in 2.6

[masterhorus8]

Maybe - but they've kept Star Engine, and the CryEngine model they had was so customised they'd stopped applying CryTek patches. So his assertion that Amazon modified their core the same way CIG modified their CE core seems dubious.

As it is, he seems to be saying that they added "Star Engine" to Lumberyard, and then if any of Lumberyards core modules were different, they swapped them for the modules they'd been working on.

Meaning, all that CIG effectively did under this "engine swap" would be to add Lumberyards Netcoding into their existing engine.

That isn't a bad idea as it gives them access to Amazons server hosting set up and AWS and Twitch, and it potentially removes the need for licensing fees to Crytek as Lumberyard is "free". But it also indicates this isn't as really as big a deal as CIG are currently trying to imply.

It is interesting he is not blaming this swap for the delays in 2.6

It's interesting that you're able to extrapolate so much speculation from this post and saying it like it's fact...

Clarification:

So his assertion that Amazon modified their core the same way CIG modified their CE core seems dubious.

He never said that Amazon was modifying their version of Cryengine the same way. He just said that the base was the same. There is a difference.

and then

It is interesting he is not blaming this swap for the delays in 2.6

Why is it interesting? He said it only took them "a day or so of two engineers on the engine team".

[Rennadrel]

It's interesting that you're able to extrapolate so much speculation from this post and saying it like it's fact...

The reaching is strong with that one

[Omians]

I noticed star citizen was having a Boxing day sale but im not seeing anything really on sale

[masterhorus8]

Also, for more information on the switch:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...mberyard_info/
I have not had a chance to read over all of it yet, but from what I first looked at it, there seems to be more info in one place than the other sources that I have seen. Specifically, there seems to be a post from Erin Roberts about the switch.

As you’ve (correctly) surmised, any suggestions that the engine switch would have a major impact on our development couldn’t be further from reality. Lumberyard is completely based on Cryengine, yet with a lot of improvements. As a consequence, we do not have to change the fundamental core engine at all which is why this change has had absolutely no effect on our development of Star Citizen.
The advantage of Lumberyard is that we get great ongoing support on the cloud / networking side from Amazon as well as great tools support while continuing uninterrupted development on what we have built up over the last 4 years. As we’ve tried to explain many times before, we have pretty much rewritten 50% of what we licensed 4 years ago now, even in core systems from CryEngine. What is great is that everything we have reworked, also now seamlessly integrates into Lumberyard, and the engine switch has not required any extra engineering time. We are actually very lucky that this opportunity presented itself to work with a powerful and committed company like Amazon that is investing heavily in its tech. This collaboration will effectively allow us to do more for our community going forward without costing us really anything in terms of engineering time or otherwise, so it is a win-win situation and good news all around.

- - - Updated - - -

I noticed star citizen was having a Boxing day sale but im not seeing anything really on sale

I think it's just that there are some ships that are for sale that usually aren't. Might even just be them stretching their anniversary sale out (which the link seems to indicate in the url).

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/p...versary%202016

[KyrtF]

The reaching is strong with that one

The problem is that...for me...CIGs comments on the issue don't appear consistent.

Chris Roberts speaking of a "partnership" while others speak pf CIG simply being an ordinary licensee? I could put that down to hyperbole.

But there are other aspects....

CIG appatently modified their copy of CE to a huge extent. So much so that they'd stopped applyibg patches. Doing so broke too much. Their version with all of its changes was simply that different from the baseline.

But yet.....the changes they made were minor enough that they could just breeze through a transfer onto the Lumberyard build. Which, even if it were based off the same Crytek build, has also undergone a large degree of modification and changes in prder to turn it from CryEngine into Lumberyard.

And it took two engineers just two days to perform the switch.

I don't do game development....but I do do software and while I am not familiar with CryEngine or Lumberjack, merging codebases like this probably should have caused some major issues. And if you are talking about a relatively minor part of the codebase, then the same changes that prevented CIG accepting support and patches from CryTek will have the same effect on Amazon.

[Cyclone Jack]

In tech, a "partnership" doesn't mean what it means. You can complete a certification and become a partner, resell a product one time and you are a partner. Most likely, CIG and Amazon are partnered because CIG is using some of Amazons net code, and calling it a "partnership" sounds cooler than "we worked together this one time." Heck, I myself am partnered with a handful of companies, and we might exchange emails once or twice a year.

As for the code changes, if you are working on a modular project, it can be quite easy to replace entire modules without interfering with the rest of the program. CIG took the net code from Lumberyard and replaced their net code, the other areas in which CIG has modified the engine would have been completely untouched. The Cryteck patches most likely updated a wide variety of modules, whereas the Lumberyard integration only modified specific modules.

[Gorsameth]

The problem is that...for me...CIGs comments on the issue don't appear consistent.

Chris Roberts speaking of a "partnership" while others speak pf CIG simply being an ordinary licensee? I could put that down to hyperbole.

But there are other aspects....

CIG appatently modified their copy of CE to a huge extent. So much so that they'd stopped applyibg patches. Doing so broke too much. Their version with all of its changes was simply that different from the baseline.

But yet.....the changes they made were minor enough that they could just breeze through a transfer onto the Lumberyard build. Which, even if it were based off the same Crytek build, has also undergone a large degree of modification and changes in prder to turn it from CryEngine into Lumberyard.

And it took two engineers just two days to perform the switch.

I don't do game development....but I do do software and while I am not familiar with CryEngine or Lumberjack, merging codebases like this probably should have caused some major issues. And if you are talking about a relatively minor part of the codebase, then the same changes that prevented CIG accepting support and patches from CryTek will have the same effect on Amazon.

It could be correct if Lumberyard is almost entirely modifications of the network elements of CryEngine (which it sounds like it is?).

It doesn't matter what CIG has done to the rest of CryEngine because they can put the network code from Lumberyard into their heavily modified CryEngine without having modification overlap.

[Odeezee]

Star Citizen Alpha 2.6 Trailer:


Star Citizen Star Marine Trailer:


Star Citizen's Director's Mode:


Draegast's Patch 2.6 Impressions:


LevelCapGaming's Star Marine Impressions:


Obsidian Ant's Patch 2.6 Impressions:


4k screenshot taken using Director's Mode:


the game is starting to come together very nicely folks, and in a very visible way. i am really looking forward to 2017, bring on patches 3.X and Squadron 42!!!!!

[KyrtF]

It could be correct if Lumberyard is almost entirely modifications of the network elements of CryEngine (which it sounds like it is?).

It doesn't matter what CIG has done to the rest of CryEngine because they can put the network code from Lumberyard into their heavily modified CryEngine without having modification overlap.

Apparently, on the Elite forums, one of the people involved with the game just confirmed that the two days with two engineers were essentially a license switch and that integration of the LY engine into SC has not yet occurred. Which is essentially what Chris Roberts stated in his own letter...that the integration he spoke consisted of CIG simply pasting Star Engine and any modified CE code onto Lumberyard, keeping only the bits that were the same between the two versions.

As I posited before, assuming Roberts is correct, this turns out to have been a lot of fuss about nothing. Nothing has really changed for now but now CIG get to use Twitch and AWS. No changes means no problems and no time spent by engineers on resolving clashes between two heavily modified engine cores. That makes a lot more sense to me.

Looking forward to 3.0 and what they can do now once they do start integrating LY into the game.

[Malibutomi]

Awesome short film made with SC ingame shots, using the new camera modes:

[Demoncrash]

Star Citizen Passes $141 Million in crowd funding. Surprised it took this long. Didn't it reach $100 million a long time ago?

Still, it's quite an impressive milestone for a crowd funded game.

[masterhorus8]

Star Citizen Passes $141 Million in crowd funding. Surprised it took this long. Didn't it reach $100 million a long time ago?

Still, it's quite an impressive milestone for a crowd funded game.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1694467207


2015-12-13 $100 million passed at 02:34 UTC+1

2016 was the year with the most funding, at $36,100,538.
2015 was $35,961,202.
2014 was $32,933,205.
2013 was $28,446,117.

[Demoncrash]

Guess i was wrong then. Thought it raced to $100 mill around 2013-14.

[Majestic12]

I cancelled my sub after the end of year stream and boy was I glad to do that. The sub content has been very lacking for a long time. I am way past the "omg pls no spoilers" stage. I just want content like they used to provide.

[stellvia]

AMD is finally releasing their new CPU architecture around March 1st. I guess we'll see what that means for people looking to build a new rig between now and the full PTU release. They really haven't had new CPUs for about 4 years now, and even those were quite weak. Not that Intel can brag much, as they've been phoning it in the last 5-7 years due to AMD's anemic offerings. The new Intel stuff is more notable for supporting DDR4, NVMe, and USB-C than the performance gains of the actual CPU. (Benchmarks put the 7770K only about 25% better than my 3770K from 5 years ago)

[Odeezee]

I cancelled my sub after the end of year stream and boy was I glad to do that. The sub content has been very lacking for a long time. I am way past the "omg pls no spoilers" stage. I just want content like they used to provide.

LMAO, talk about being completely disingenuous. to anyone that has actually been watching and not biased af. you know that the shows are actually MUCH better for content than the way the shows used to be and they give more sneak peaks and in-depth info on systems. i get that you are not a fan of SC, but why create falsehoods (i highly doubt you were EVER a sub) to then use to create a Strawman argument? your point of view can't stand up on its own seeing as it's driven purely by conjecture and speculation, huh? /sigh

anyway, to those of you interested in SC and actually helping to give feedback, i found this poll on Reddit that you may want to participate in about the flight feel in 2.6.0

POLL