Around the Verse - Dude, It's the July 12th Update
From turret improvements to environmental storytelling, get the scoop on
what’s happening in Star Citizen now, as well as what the devs are
working on for future patches.
This is the UI App for in-depth communication, Spectrum is to be integrated into the actual game, we can notice several things there, from Organization channels, channel management, voice channels as announced before to come as well, also "Visor Feeds" that seems to be the channels that will display in your screen at all times.
Will a solo player with high quality NPC crew be able to compete with a skilled human crew, given all other conditions are equal? Yes. Some of the NPCs currently hit 95% of the time. When the NPCs are trained properly they should be able to compete but maybe more complex problem solving could be too hard of a problem for an NPC to solve as quickly as a player (because of the limitations of what AI can do on computers currently).
Will we have propls like a grapple or jetpack to help us move across rough terrain or wrecks? They talked about using the EVA thrusters to stop you on long falls or allowing boosted jumps (nothing too extreme) but they haven't talked about much more yet.
What is the status of moving ships from a 100% chance of canned explosive death that kills everyone aboard to rendering ships inoperable through physical or energy damage without all the colorful explosions? The EU vehicle team is working currently on wear & tear and individually damaged components. The EU/US vehicle team will work on adding the actual physical items to the ships in the future. The inner and outer object container of the ships also does not currently communicate, once this has been implemented they will be able to add this feature.
When can we ecpect Tier 0 of the survival mechanics to get added? Jens is implementing character properties right now. When he has implemented that and they have added food, drinking, showering and so on (they will be added individually). Jens is basically setting up the hooks that they can use to add these features.
On the old roadmap, we could see a "downed state" that was planned for September 2017. Have there been any developments on this mechanic? They are working on knockdowns, knockbacks kind of staggers. This is their way to increase the time to kill. They also have to add the medical aspects of the gameplay.
Medical gameplay soon™? When they add medical ships is when they want the gameplay to be ready. (Jared hints at new a new medical gameplay ship this AtV/RTV?)
Starting with the ability to rent ships in the PU already actively in-dev, the one coming the next update will first be on Arena Commander and Star Marine.
So some of the last major tech hurdles of SC in terms of network:
- Object Container Streaming: Starting with next update this major refactor entirely changes how the game loads things, no longer putting everything in memory every load, providing a major performance increase and the ability to expand the game-world.
- Batch Update Physics: This is a refactor of physics to be able to change how they are processed, to properly use more than 4 cores in server machines, providing scalability to physics, this was hinted that after implemented together with Object Container Streaming, it's when the player population per server will be increased, possibly up to ~200 players.
- Server Meshing: This is the end-game of the netcode, to be able to mesh these multiple areas handled by their own server in a localized matter, working as players move on a single persistent more populated game-world.
So some of the last major tech hurdles of SC in terms of network:
- Object Container Streaming: Starting with next update this major refactor entirely changes how the game loads things, no longer putting everything in memory every load, providing a major performance increase and the ability to expand the game-world.
- Batch Update Physics: This is a refactor of physics to be able to change how they are processed, to properly use more than 4 cores in server machines, providing scalability to physics, this was hinted that after implemented together with Object Container Streaming, it's when the player population per server will be increased, possibly up to ~200 players.
- Server Meshing: This is the end-game of the netcode, to be able to mesh these multiple areas handled by their own server in a localized matter, working as players move on a single persistent more populated game-world.
Its not many, but its a huge improvement on just 50 players, although, while i am not suggesting they go the route that CCP did with Eve Online with thousands of players in an area simultaneously, though i would be more than happy if they could surely there must be something that CCP are doing that could help CIG improve on the simultaneous player count? particularly as available server hardware has improved quite a bit over the years.
Its not many, but its a huge improvement on just 50 players, although, while i am not suggesting they go the route that CCP did with Eve Online with thousands of players in an area simultaneously, though i would be more than happy if they could surely there must be something that CCP are doing that could help CIG improve on the simultaneous player count? particularly as available server hardware has improved quite a bit over the years.
That would already be more than what this was ever announced with, aka the tops were maybe 150, now with the server mesh they pushing on it's heavily about a more dense population, it'd be on the sorts of ESO you don't have many in one spot but everywhere you go there are people.
As for EvE, the reason why nobody even approaches the scale of their PvP, is because EvE is very simple on network, it's about the giveaways done to achieve scale; SC, from higher server tick rates (core to FPS combat) to a lot of more simulation and physics being done on the servers on the ships and characters (and AI), to high-quality visuals, it's just something you can't do miracles with, servers might scale to be powerful enough, but the client side performance will easily be overwhelmed without stuff like serious culling or visual downgrade.
There are some edgy realism points that seem to be more annoyance than anything else, such as immobilizing the player during transportation and healing. O_o
Some SQ42 assets were leaked and able to get "data-mined". This is the shubin mining station, it's very raw footage with no context just the station overall assets.
Some more data-mining showing some assets, not really spoilers as this is stuff overall we've seen bits of, this WIP stuff sometimes gets checked into the public builds and people find these raw assets that are being worked on:
Comments
Around the Verse - 5 Minutes or Less
Studio Monthly Report - June
Around the Verse - Dude, It's the July 12th Update
MobiGas UI CommLink WIP.
This is the UI App for in-depth communication, Spectrum is to be integrated into the actual game, we can notice several things there, from Organization channels, channel management, voice channels as announced before to come as well, also "Visor Feeds" that seems to be the channels that will display in your screen at all times.
Will a solo player with high quality NPC crew be able to compete with a skilled human crew, given all other conditions are equal?
Yes. Some of the NPCs currently hit 95% of the time. When the NPCs are trained properly they should be able to compete but maybe more complex problem solving could be too hard of a problem for an NPC to solve as quickly as a player (because of the limitations of what AI can do on computers currently).
Will we have propls like a grapple or jetpack to help us move across rough terrain or wrecks?
They talked about using the EVA thrusters to stop you on long falls or allowing boosted jumps (nothing too extreme) but they haven't talked about much more yet.
What is the status of moving ships from a 100% chance of canned explosive death that kills everyone aboard to rendering ships inoperable through physical or energy damage without all the colorful explosions?
The EU vehicle team is working currently on wear & tear and individually damaged components. The EU/US vehicle team will work on adding the actual physical items to the ships in the future. The inner and outer object container of the ships also does not currently communicate, once this has been implemented they will be able to add this feature.
When can we ecpect Tier 0 of the survival mechanics to get added?
Jens is implementing character properties right now. When he has implemented that and they have added food, drinking, showering and so on (they will be added individually). Jens is basically setting up the hooks that they can use to add these features.
On the old roadmap, we could see a "downed state" that was planned for September 2017. Have there been any developments on this mechanic?
They are working on knockdowns, knockbacks kind of staggers. This is their way to increase the time to kill. They also have to add the medical aspects of the gameplay.
Medical gameplay soon™?
When they add medical ships is when they want the gameplay to be ready. (Jared hints at new a new medical gameplay ship this AtV/RTV?)
Around the Verse - Ready, Set, Mine
Calling All Devs - Missiles, 600i and Quantum Filters
50 players quantum jumping together, as SC allows parties of up to 50 players
Around the Verse - Party of Fifty
Starting with the ability to rent ships in the PU already actively in-dev, the one coming the next update will first be on Arena Commander and Star Marine.
Reverse the Verse - It's Chris Roberts, Y'all!
- Object Container Streaming: Starting with next update this major refactor entirely changes how the game loads things, no longer putting everything in memory every load, providing a major performance increase and the ability to expand the game-world.
- Batch Update Physics: This is a refactor of physics to be able to change how they are processed, to properly use more than 4 cores in server machines, providing scalability to physics, this was hinted that after implemented together with Object Container Streaming, it's when the player population per server will be increased, possibly up to ~200 players.
- Server Meshing: This is the end-game of the netcode, to be able to mesh these multiple areas handled by their own server in a localized matter, working as players move on a single persistent more populated game-world.
As for EvE, the reason why nobody even approaches the scale of their PvP, is because EvE is very simple on network, it's about the giveaways done to achieve scale; SC, from higher server tick rates (core to FPS combat) to a lot of more simulation and physics being done on the servers on the ships and characters (and AI), to high-quality visuals, it's just something you can't do miracles with, servers might scale to be powerful enough, but the client side performance will easily be overwhelmed without stuff like serious culling or visual downgrade.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/16705-Q-A-RSI-Apollo
There are some edgy realism points that seem to be more annoyance than anything else, such as immobilizing the player during transportation and healing. O_o
Around the Verse - Happy Race, Ya Filthy Rover
XIAN leaked cargo ship raw asset load:
Its Moons:
Hurston Savanah biome: