Star Citizen Megathread v. procedurally-generated deadlines
1,645 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Lord Hayden;52139412]But that also comes back to being humanoid, armor is designed to protect your bits, and if the alien has a nearly identical bits to you, it makes sense that the armor isn't going to be as alien looking as something with 5 arms and reproductive organs for eyes. It comes back to the fact that there's only so much you can do when you're trying to make something humanoid.
Although I [i]do[/i] think we're going to get some very extravagant combat armor for the Banu leaders/generals/whatever they have, with their culture being so materialistic and all. Maybe the 21st century infantryman was just one of the lower Banu fighters?[/QUOTE]
I was referring to this image specifically:
[img]https://i.imgur.com/5aJt50H.png[/img]
It just looks like he's wearing kevlar with a shemagh around his neck and a generic backpack. Although after watching the video on them it has the full picture and he looks like he's wearing some robes with it so it's at least a little different.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/5aJt50H.png[/IMG]
Need to link directly to the URL ending in a file extension, not an album page URL.
My mistake, I fixed it. You see what I mean though? He looks like an alien trying to masquerade as a generic army guy.
Well not everything needs to be over the top alien looking.
I think it looks fine honestly.
He [i]really does[/i] looks like they took a generic 21st century army outfit and put it on him, I do see where you're coming from now.
For all we know, that [i]could[/i] be (my Star Citizen lore is really bad so this could be impossible) a UEE soldier. The weapon looks very Earth-like, and the accessories s/he has with them look very out of place with it. I don't know of any reason why other races wouldn't join the UEE military (unless they're hostile of course)
Alternatively, they have said that the Banu love to incorporate other tech if they like it (the Defender has Xi'an engines I think it was?), so for all we know, the UEE might've gone "hey, check this shit out", and then Banu quickly incorporated it into their uniforms.
I'd love some more context of that concept art from CIG to figure out if they were just feeling a bit unimaginative or if there's some reasoning behind it.
It makes sense if you consider that this Banu might have just went and bought himself a bunch of human clothing and equipment because it happens to fit his completely bland physique. It means all the npcs can share the same equipment and systems that already exist. This extends to facial animation as well.
The same could not be true for these guys:
[img]http://orig13.deviantart.net/793a/f/2010/263/9/4/protest_by_abiogenisis-d2z403w.jpg[/img]
It doesn't seem like a compromise Chris would make if he wants the greatest sci-fi everything ever, so I'm not sure if he or his designers have no imagination or if someone talked him down to not having any form of interesting alien physiology for the sake of development. I'm going to say it's a bit of both.
Just came across some Olisar concepts, has CIG announced plans to expand Olisar in any way aside from shops? Maybe fill out the station a bit more with stuff aside from a store or two?
[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/4xlgl3vhu9gfer/source/Shopping_district_lobby_moodshot.jpg[/t]
Croberts has some pretty crazy ambitions but some things massively increase dev time for very little gain and it seems very unlikely he's just completely unaware of them, non humanoid alien races are one of those things. Queue examples of things that fit that definition to varying degrees but are ingame anyways.
The Banu Defender is another stellar design :vs:
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcm37qDgrYQ[/media]
That bent downwards "solution" looks kinda retarded though.
[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;52139984]It doesn't seem like a compromise Chris would make if he wants the greatest sci-fi everything ever, so I'm not sure if he or his designers have no imagination or if someone talked him down to not having any form of interesting alien physiology for the sake of development. I'm going to say it's a bit of both.[/QUOTE]
I'm confident that it came down to technical reasons. CIG has a huge library of NPC animations for bipedal humanoids that came directly from mocap sessions, and these animations are tied to templates of interaction structures (e.g. the generic boxes of a fighter cockpit with entry ladder) with very specific dimensions in order to ensure that e.g. generic cockpit entry animations [I]always[/I] work with any ship using the templated animation sets. This extends to basically everything except for one-off performance capture for SQ42 cinematics that don't involve anything more than pacing around a set.
Vanduul are physically much larger than humans, but they're still essentially upscaled humans, so Imaginarium pcap data can be used pretty much 1:1, just tweak the scale up by 25% or whatever. If the proportions are a bit off, the actors can be on platform shoes or short stilts or something if need be. This makes their mocap the same workload as a conventional capture session dataset, the only thing that's different is that the actors have to act quite differently when performing.
Things get a lot harder if you have to animate four arms on someone who is not a mutant freak in real life. Now you've got to either rig up some sort of animatronics pack and animatronic arms for the actor to wear, and this has to somehow work for anything Chris Roberts puts into the script, [I]or[/I] the mocap goes through with an actor with two normal arms and the extra arms are then tediously hand-rigged and animated while not appearing to be of a substantially lower fidelity than the precision mocap. The time commitment starts to climb rapidly.
Make a race with nonstandard physiology and have them be a common alien race that players can expect to meet in a variety of situations? You've just created the need for a duplication of most of the animation library for a non-human leg/whatever configuration, and if there are any of these aliens serving in the UEE and specifically on board the ships the player is on in SQ42, "most" becomes "almost all" of the library. The engineering debt skyrockets.
CIG has discussed the potential of allowing players to eventually create characters of alien races. Backers would definitely want to play as the six-armed three-legged Floogleglorps, and now someone's got to figure out how to make this a playable control scheme (without just being humans with four useless arms that do things on autopilot to look busy) and re-engineer every type of interaction template on top of rebuilding the animation library all over again.
Chris Roberts has huge dreams and unpopular ideas on how important it is to delay release to achieve them, but his career wouldn't have gotten as far as it has if he was that profoundly retarded in pushing vision over practicality.
Again, my complaint wasn't with the fact that the Banu are humanoid, but with how it was dressed in that particular picture. I just think that alien clothing and gear shouldn't look like something I could pick up at the surplus store.
I mean, humans always feel compelled to wear alien clothes in sci-fi. I don't see why an alien couldn't wear human clothes if they fit.
if I read it right, a lot of Banu wear all sorts of things to try to fit in to appeal more.
Based on what they were saying in that video they do like to wear clothing and trinkets from various worlds and cultures to show they've been there and to show others they've travelled a lot.
For them (if I am getting this right) titles and names mean very little but your history and worth is shown in what you have. A good example they use is how the Banu ships have a "greeting room" that will have a lot of things on display that the Banu in question feels represents them best.
[QUOTE=_Axel;52140741]That bent downwards "solution" looks kinda retarded though.[/QUOTE]It looks entirely better in its landed pose. I wouldn't mind if it's flight position was much closer to that.
[video=youtube;srMIxHS51Ow]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srMIxHS51Ow[/video]
Congrats to Arch and co, [URL="https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1545588&p=52121378&viewfull=1#post52121378"]Combined Arms is this week's MVP.[/URL]
Weekly schedule is about normal, but there's a subscribers townhall stream for the Banu MM/Defender. Unlike the usual schedule, this subscriber stream is [I]tomorrow[/I], Tuesday, at noon CIG LA time (PDT aka GMT-07).
AtV this week is a Frankfurt update and then a special on QA, so there'll be some goodies coming.
Honestly, since they started doing the studio spotlights, every ATV has been bloody awesome and filled with amazing stuff. Frankfurt always seems to have the weirder stuff happening as well as heaps of teasers.
[video=youtube;hMcLjNW8-SA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMcLjNW8-SA[/video]
[video=youtube;oCgg5Gk0faQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCgg5Gk0faQ[/video]
Banu MM [I]has[/I] increased in size but not as large as the Defender sale concept art makes it look. CIG doesn't know how big it'll be, but it'll be closer to a [del]Pegasus[/del]Polaris in size, not a Javelin or Idris. [del]Interestingly, the Pegasus is not in the ship matrix, nice job Ben.[/del] :v: The Polaris' length, according to the current ship matrix, is 155m.
[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/15869-TRACKER-Technical-Difficulties"]This week's lorepost is a bounty hunter show clip about hacking and the tech arms race.[/URL]
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52154077]Banu MM [I]has[/I] increased in size but not as large as the Defender sale concept art makes it look. CIG doesn't know how big it'll be, but it'll be closer to a Pegasus in size, not a Javelin or Idris. Interestingly, the Pegasus is not in the ship matrix, nice job Ben. :v:
[/QUOTE]
1km MM confirmed
[del]it's polaris[/del]
Anyone have the X56 that can testify? My X52's sensors are wearing out and the thrust master stuff is just too expensive or doesn't have all of the bindable buttons I want.
I've got an X55 (very similar stick) and have a complicated opinion about it. I had an X52 before it and while I think the X55 is a functional upgrade, it is an ergonomic downgrade. There's a lot of things I don't like about it, and even made a little foam handrest to help with the stick's ergonomic problems, but the throttle is just unfixably dumb in a lot of ways. However, I can't see myself going back to an X52 because the functionality gained is tremendous and hugely useful, even if I think the stick's design itself is a disaster.
The X56 specifically puts those two thumbsticks in stupid positions. I can see why somebody might think putting one where your thumb rests on the stick [I]seems[/I] like a good idea, but in practice that means you lose the best secondary fire button on the stick because the X55 does not have a 2 stage trigger like the X52 did. The best thing I can say about that thumbstick on the stick is that if the profiling software doesn't blue screen your computer (a very real concern as Saitek driver and profiling software is legendarily bad), you can use it to simulate the CMS hat switch, which for is very important for flight sims and fixes an issue I have with the X55.
The throttle thumb stick is in the same place as the mouse nipple on the X55, which again has me wondering if Saitek is run by aliens with no knowledge of human physiology. The throttle is an ergonomic nightmare. If they were going to put an analog anything on the throttle I would rather have had it on the back of the throttle where your index finger sits. The X52 had a hat switch there that was [I]perfect[/I] for 6DOF movements, but the X55 lacks that. The position of the thumbstick on the X56 is in an awkward to reach place if you plan to use it for 6DOF. If they had to put the stick on the front of the throttle, it should have been where the top hat switch sits as that's a much more natural resting position for your thumb. Although it still would have been [I]much[/I] better on the back of the throttle for control binding related reasons.
I don't know if the X56s got any better, but X55s were notorious for build quality issues. Some are DOA, some just have problems. Mine for example has a much stiffer twist than my friend's. I've opened my stick up, loosened it, and lubricated some stuff to make it better but it's still not as smooth as his. I've written a lot about the stick in the past and am trying to find those posts.
It's not a stick I would recommend without making sure somebody knew what they were getting into. Unfortunately, there's really nothing else like it in its price range though with the same raw amount of buttons and features, so you don't really have a choice if you're looking for the specific combination of features that only the X55/X56 offers.
No two stage trigger? That's kind of a big deal since I use it for manual laser targeting in BMS Falcon and gun stabilization for DCS-A10C. I think maybe I'll just get an X52 Pro and a button panel to go with it. Hopefully logitech makes them fix their shit with new models.
I don't know how reliable the new Thrustmaster standalone throttle is, but in theory it's a great replacement throttle for anything short of an X55/Warthog. It has plenty of hat switches and buttons. It even looks like it has an analogue stick where your index finger rests. If you don't have a standalone throttle at all, it seems like it would be a great buy, but again these are pretty new and most people in the genre already have X52s/X55s/Warthogs so there hasn't been much said about it. They're about $70 on Amazon.
[t]http://www.thrustmaster.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/media/product/twcs-smart.jpg[/t] [t]http://www.thrustmaster.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/media/product/twcs-3b.jpg[/t]
With an X52 that gets a little strange because you can't use an X52 stick without having the throttle plugged in, but you could make it work if you're married to the X52 stick.
[video=youtube;y78PPfs1NXc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y78PPfs1NXc[/video]
New peek of Mark Hamill footage because May the 4th and piggybacking on SW press, Austin and Turbulent studio updates, and a look at devops.
[t]https://i.imgur.com/Dy2KfSq.jpg[/t]
The LA Times ad shown right at the beginning.
[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/24xg6q1wl4tazr/source/Yela_02.jpg[/t]
[video=youtube;YiWa2yds98E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiWa2yds98E[/video]
[video=youtube;THBr3J4QNGc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THBr3J4QNGc[/video]
[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/15884-StarWatch-Ancient-Scandals"]This week's lorepost is another installment of celebrity gossip show, StarWatch.[/URL]
[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/q40yxt9u4j6upr/source/Lb1N2l9.jpg[/t]
From the community spotlight on a backer's collection of CIG staffer photoshops.
so I just found out CIG is going for Vulkan as their long-term target. does that mean they're planning on implementing it down the road? iirc, they're using DX11 now and the DX12 transition was planned for later. Not a lot to draw from that little forum response. If they want it sooner rather than later, say goodbye to deadlines for graphics updates because holy fuck Vulkan is a verbose (but powerful!) API. And it completely turns the paradigm of rendering common to OpenGL3.3+ / DX10+11 on its head. Its a super neat API though, and it'd be really neat to see a title as big as this pick it up. even if that would be mother of all scope creeps, in terms of required dev time.
Maybe I should be keeping an eye out for job listings, then [sp] for which I am hopelessly underqualified but hey game engine and graphics programming is something worth sacrificing my sanity for, right? [/sp]
[editline]5th May 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52188319]
[t]https://i.imgur.com/Dy2KfSq.jpg[/t]
[/QUOTE]
I wonder how long Star Citizen takes to build from scratch, like a full rebuild. According to a friend who works on it, Microsoft Excel takes ~4-5 hours. Thats an entirely different kind of codebase, but I do wonder how their build process works tbh
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52188319][video=youtube;y78PPfs1NXc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y78PPfs1NXc[/video][/QUOTE]
Is that what a Adult Mutant Ninja Turtle looks like?
They are planning on transitioning to Vulkan instead of DX12; Vulkan does what they wanted to go to DX12 for (they also discussed Mantle support in the past, and Vulkan is essentially the evolution of Mantle) without the closed-source Win10-only limitations of DX12.
They were going to have to completely upend the rendering core by going from DX11 to DX12, all that's different is that they're going to (eventually) go from DX11 to Vulkan instead. When? I don't know, but I think it's unlikely Erin's going to let it hold back, at minimum, SQ42.
As for the time it takes to do one single total rebuild, if executed as a single batch job, I don't know, but a few years ago it was something like 16 hours. That is clearly unsuitable, and so CIG IT/devops has built an impressive build farm (the latest evolution is detailed in this week's AtV spotlight) that runs a huge number of build tasks in parallel in order to yield a reasonable time and allow different builds (server rc, release client rc, profiling client rc, internal tools rc-whatever, etc.) to be done in parallel.
I'd guess it probably still takes 3 hours under normal business conditions, at least.
Are they able to build more than one at the same time? If you're doing 15 to 25 a day then it'd be just under an hour if they can only do one build at a time.
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Star Citizen Megathread v. procedurally-generated deadlines
