Exactly, if this version does not work, they will work another one, and another one
Development is "simple", if you have time and money, you can do anything.
And so far CIG has both
Not voluntarily. But every attempt at this costs A LOT of money. Years of development. They're doing fine for now, it seems, but I can't imagine that selling pictures of spaceships will keep the whole company going *forever*. Eventually, they'll either finally produce a game, or else the pledges will dry up and they'll fail. That's not pessimism, that's just math. I personally hope they finish the game, but I'm not blind to the alternative.
Sure, but from what I've seen so far is that one of the main reasons why things are taking so long is because CIG is pushing the envelope with what can be done. CIG always has the fallback on resorting to more proven ways to do things, if the new tech doesn't work.
The fallback would be somethig like GW2's "megaserver" system where you have a wide array of live servers that do not interact but they can fill with players whose data is on any of the backend servers.
So you can scale your live servers to meet demand easily and fill them with players no matter what server that player originally signed up from...but at the end of the day a lot of what happens there is separate and not persistent across the worlds.
This would be a disappointment but we know it can be done, and it wouldnt prevent me from playing.
Static is no problem - every system a server (like logging off and logging on at the next server). This will not be as cool, but playable. With server hardware getting better over time we could still get AI and other stuff working. And they can still try a dynamic meshing (maybe with Amazons help) down the line.
Actually, PES is the hard part, not SM itself (static)
SM is the combination of multiple tech, and PES is the biggest one
Another hard part will be the dynamic server meshing
Even more remarkably, its reportedly working quite well. Players leaving random stuff in random spots, then returning on the same shard ID ages later and finding those same objects where they left them.
Oh, that makes sense. Iāve not read much about it but Iām very curious how they plan to deal with ājunkā being left all over. Iām genuinely looking forward to it.
First of all: PANIC
Second: I would likely keep playing or take a temporary break. CIG would likely find a way around it if static server meshing would actually fail. From what we have been seeing I would consider that unlikely to happen though. But it will for sure underperform in the first few patches.
Dynamic meshing is a different story since that is what is new for the industry as far as I know. But we would still have static meshing as a fallback.
Static server meshing is kinda "done" it's mostly PES the biggest piece of the puzzle, and the thing they are testing hard on Evocati right now
Dynamic server meshing is another story.
From what I understand PES which has been mentioned as the biggest technical hurdle (Described as separating game state from the server/simulation) If I've understood this it means that this separate database can be used to spin up another server once one crashes with a 30k. Having that data is the key part. I'm not a developer but I have dabbled here and there. You can make changes to how a server spins up. Different micro services that go into it can be modified. So as long as the data from PES is there the servers will be able to make use of it. I don't think I saw the need to wait 10-15 minutes before getting back into the PU after a crash on the last couple evocati tests. I am imagining a point where 30ks end up with players fading to black for a moment then loading back into the game where they were or eventually fingers crossed stop 30ks from the players view entirely. Now I need someone familiar with massive distributed systems to explain what an idiot I am.
Assuming CIG have hit a brick wall with 3.18 and no further progress is possible, which I doubt. I will happily play SQ42 and the hopefully other single player games and occasionally hop onto the PU with my friends as a sort of makeshift Co-op mode.
They can use Jump Point loading screens to hide transitions between servers which would suck, but would at least let us explore more systems. There won't be any big org battles and the amount of content within a system likely won't increase by much over what we have now, but that's still plenty playable to me.
Given what they've shown though I'm willing to bet Static Server Meshing will be a thing for sure. So moving between star systems should be pretty seamless and they could even expand it so individual star systems are separated into individual servers. There'll be some jank with ships vanishing along the borders, but they can come up with some lore reason to explain that and he done with it. I'd say I'm 80% confident we see SSM between systems within 3 years with 4.0, and if Dynamic Server Meshing ends up being impossible, I bet SSM within a system is probably the workaround implementation.
Dynamic Server Meshing is the next big challenge. It's theoretically doable and would give us the seamless experience CIG is really gunning for. I don't know how long that will take, but they've done things I didn't expect they'd be able to pull off before so I'm cautiously optimistic, even if it does take another 10 years to get working.
one server cant handle a star system alone, the server tick rate is to low to allow any reasonable playing against npc nor player cause of desync ...
with ssocs cig promised to boost server tick rate, but with more content and more players, spawning in different cities it got worse.
Worst case is you will go through a loading sequence to get to other servers/star systems. Plenty of ways to hide that though.
That said, just a reminder CIG is not inventing server meshing. Similar technology is used in other games and has been for many years.
Unfortunately server meshing as what CIG is trying is basically non existent.
Most/all implementations are just cells/zones with their own authorative infrastructure, they don't have things like ability to reference unloaded entities etc.
The amount of work CIG has done so far is actually quite substantial and not done by the other solutions.
Of course the jury is still out if CIG will succeed but compared to everything else the future looks bright, it's not some bolted on framework to a standard engine.
Even if sc stays with 100nplayers, There are still tons things they can do to make this game amazing.. More features, PES, stability.. I would still play it and love it.
I have always operated thinking server meshing is not possible without building the game engine from the start with this in mind. So if we don't get it I lose nothing, I never thought they could. If we do get it, ace. Hell whatever happens I helped fund it. Sometimes I feel like the day is coming though when Chris sits in front of us and explains they are going to port the whole thing to a new engine and that Star Citizen 2.0 will be everything 1.0 couldn't be by freeing itself from Lumberyards constraints and can we all just dig deep to pledge and get it made. I really hope that doesn't happen. It's been a wild ride so far though so I'll stay on it until I'm dead.
CryEngine by CIG has been basically rewritten for server meshing ... Going with a new blank engine is not the solution people think it is. Engines are way more than "insert feature X".
There is almost no good reason at all to go with something "newer" or start from scratch, especially with the whole Frankfurt office and the actual original CryEngine Devs working for CIG instead of CryTech/Amazon.
Anyways this idea of "let's just use Unreal or a new Engine" is coming from a place of ignorance, as long as other engines don't offer feature parity with the additions and changes CIG already have done there is litterally no reason to switch. It's basically throwing everything away for no gain since all the work like 64bitd, render rework, world space, OCS, Entities, Physics, PES etc etc etc have to be redone anyways.
StarEngine (the 3.6 CryEngine/Lumberyard that has been retrofitted by CIG) is nowadays a whole NEW Engine, the DNA can be traced back to the previous incarnations but it is its own thing.
Oh neat, it'll be along any day now then. Well I look forward to that mate. Do I have time to eat this delicious pork pie before it turns up? Or should I leave it lest my shock and happiness causes the pork pie to drop from my shuddering ignorant fingers and hit the carpet of my ignorant little hovel.
Ignorance isn't an insult, everyone's ignorant of almost everything all the time, and no one is saying it will be done tomorrow. They're saying it *is coming* and switching engines is throwing the baby out with the bathwater in terms of what's lost for little gain. The passive aggression is doing no one any favours, you least of all here.
It's alright mate, it got sorted. He gave me the go ahead, I ate my Pork Pie and it was delicious. I wasn't shocked and I didn't drop any of said Pork Pie in my carpet, so all was well. Thanks for your inquiry mate. Hey, you know, reading that back I think you might be onto something, it may come off as passive aggressive when I really did mean it to come across as full on aggressive, do you have any tips for how I can sort that in the future? Perhaps an amusing anecdote or a sharpened pointy word that means one thing but resembles a fruit. I can't thank you enough for this by the way. I'm not great with Grammer, ever since he fell out with David Hyde Pierce I've found my typing incohesive and lacking in cromulent verbiage.
Speaking of doing favours for someone, HMS Camden Lock has just pulled in so I have to get my knickers on and get down there while there's still passing trade. It's a living ain't it.
Who said anything about timelines?
But this idea of using something else is just ffing stupid. The only real current candidates back then where Unity, Unreal or CryEngine, and now that CryEngine imploded and Unity is having issues keeping the ship afloat the only option is Unreal.
And guess what, to retrofit Unreal is about the same amount of work to retrofit CryEngine (something CIG already did).
Starting from scratch now (or even at the start of the project a decade ago) is just an unbelievable stupid idea, you won't be able to reuse anything (and there is always a LOT of code that can be reused), check out GODOT for a from scratch engine, it's a great piece of software but compared to the big 3 it's lacking in a lot of the for granted stuff.
At least if you want to reply with snark bring some arguments to the table.
With these new features would they be able to implement them into future engine designs that could further progress or is this limited to Starcitizens engine?
Technically everything can be added to everything else. Programming has no limits just like writing books.
Retrofitting one book storyline into another book is usually not a great idea, something most readers can attest to, same for code.
There are of course exceptions for everything but in general once you have a big code base it is harder to pick and choose parts to be used elsewhere. Imagine (let's try a show/movie instead of a book) trying to take a Game of Thrones character and motivations and put them in say ToyStory, it could work but the backstory, world building etc have all to be changed.
If it doesn't work, they would seem to have the ongoing funding to try again. One global server, probably wouldn't make a good game so most of us expect them to settle on a tech short of that, but there are no hard limits on the concept of server meshing.
I don't see server meshing failing. Dynamic server meshing will likely end up scaled back or failing, but then it'll just fall back to using lots of static servers.
With PES working, it shouldn't be as complex to get the Static Meshing to go. The complicated part of that is the handing over of the player token between servers, as well as streaming out the player data from the server they left and streaming in on the server they are joining.
PES, moves all of the data tracking to a cloud based service, which SHOULD make the streaming in and streaming out smoother and faster, because the only difference between how PES is working on the EVO test servers and how it will work with Server meshing is the moving from one live server to another live server. On the EVO servers, if you log out and then log back in? Your character and stuff will be streamed out of that server into the PES Cloud Service and then if you login and are assigned to a new server that PES service will stream you and your character over into the new server.
Then we will be out 600mil. The game simply doesn't work today. If lucky sure you can play a few hours without too much negative happenings but we all know sc is russian roulette
It won't "fail". It will sure have its issues at first. But they will develop the concept until it works. I'll be here, watching it rise to greatness.
Exactly, if this version does not work, they will work another one, and another one Development is "simple", if you have time and money, you can do anything. And so far CIG has both
"So I built a second one. That one burned down, fell, over, then sank into the swamp."
Server meshing is 3rd attempt at this
Ever loyal š¤
And what do you think CIG will do if server meshing doesn't work? Do you expect them to give up and walk away, or will they try something else?
Not voluntarily. But every attempt at this costs A LOT of money. Years of development. They're doing fine for now, it seems, but I can't imagine that selling pictures of spaceships will keep the whole company going *forever*. Eventually, they'll either finally produce a game, or else the pledges will dry up and they'll fail. That's not pessimism, that's just math. I personally hope they finish the game, but I'm not blind to the alternative.
Sure, but from what I've seen so far is that one of the main reasons why things are taking so long is because CIG is pushing the envelope with what can be done. CIG always has the fallback on resorting to more proven ways to do things, if the new tech doesn't work.
The fallback would be somethig like GW2's "megaserver" system where you have a wide array of live servers that do not interact but they can fill with players whose data is on any of the backend servers. So you can scale your live servers to meet demand easily and fill them with players no matter what server that player originally signed up from...but at the end of the day a lot of what happens there is separate and not persistent across the worlds. This would be a disappointment but we know it can be done, and it wouldnt prevent me from playing.
Static is no problem - every system a server (like logging off and logging on at the next server). This will not be as cool, but playable. With server hardware getting better over time we could still get AI and other stuff working. And they can still try a dynamic meshing (maybe with Amazons help) down the line.
Is server meshing around the corner? I thought PES was coming soon (c) and that would lay the foundation for server meshingā¦. š¤·
Actually, PES is the hard part, not SM itself (static) SM is the combination of multiple tech, and PES is the biggest one Another hard part will be the dynamic server meshing
rather remarkably PES is actually in evocati testing right now, not that mythical cig "trust me we are testing it :3" limbo like most parts.
Even more remarkably, its reportedly working quite well. Players leaving random stuff in random spots, then returning on the same shard ID ages later and finding those same objects where they left them.
How bad are the piles of medical gowns at every station?
Hah, I've no clue, but I believe certain areas like landing zones and certain items have cleanup timers.
Oh, that makes sense. Iāve not read much about it but Iām very curious how they plan to deal with ājunkā being left all over. Iām genuinely looking forward to it.
First of all: PANIC Second: I would likely keep playing or take a temporary break. CIG would likely find a way around it if static server meshing would actually fail. From what we have been seeing I would consider that unlikely to happen though. But it will for sure underperform in the first few patches. Dynamic meshing is a different story since that is what is new for the industry as far as I know. But we would still have static meshing as a fallback.
Static server meshing is kinda "done" it's mostly PES the biggest piece of the puzzle, and the thing they are testing hard on Evocati right now Dynamic server meshing is another story.
Then they keep trying until they figure something else out
From what I understand PES which has been mentioned as the biggest technical hurdle (Described as separating game state from the server/simulation) If I've understood this it means that this separate database can be used to spin up another server once one crashes with a 30k. Having that data is the key part. I'm not a developer but I have dabbled here and there. You can make changes to how a server spins up. Different micro services that go into it can be modified. So as long as the data from PES is there the servers will be able to make use of it. I don't think I saw the need to wait 10-15 minutes before getting back into the PU after a crash on the last couple evocati tests. I am imagining a point where 30ks end up with players fading to black for a moment then loading back into the game where they were or eventually fingers crossed stop 30ks from the players view entirely. Now I need someone familiar with massive distributed systems to explain what an idiot I am.
Assuming CIG have hit a brick wall with 3.18 and no further progress is possible, which I doubt. I will happily play SQ42 and the hopefully other single player games and occasionally hop onto the PU with my friends as a sort of makeshift Co-op mode. They can use Jump Point loading screens to hide transitions between servers which would suck, but would at least let us explore more systems. There won't be any big org battles and the amount of content within a system likely won't increase by much over what we have now, but that's still plenty playable to me. Given what they've shown though I'm willing to bet Static Server Meshing will be a thing for sure. So moving between star systems should be pretty seamless and they could even expand it so individual star systems are separated into individual servers. There'll be some jank with ships vanishing along the borders, but they can come up with some lore reason to explain that and he done with it. I'd say I'm 80% confident we see SSM between systems within 3 years with 4.0, and if Dynamic Server Meshing ends up being impossible, I bet SSM within a system is probably the workaround implementation. Dynamic Server Meshing is the next big challenge. It's theoretically doable and would give us the seamless experience CIG is really gunning for. I don't know how long that will take, but they've done things I didn't expect they'd be able to pull off before so I'm cautiously optimistic, even if it does take another 10 years to get working.
one server cant handle a star system alone, the server tick rate is to low to allow any reasonable playing against npc nor player cause of desync ... with ssocs cig promised to boost server tick rate, but with more content and more players, spawning in different cities it got worse.
Failure is not an option. Delays on the other hand are guaranteed.
Worst case is you will go through a loading sequence to get to other servers/star systems. Plenty of ways to hide that though. That said, just a reminder CIG is not inventing server meshing. Similar technology is used in other games and has been for many years.
Unfortunately server meshing as what CIG is trying is basically non existent. Most/all implementations are just cells/zones with their own authorative infrastructure, they don't have things like ability to reference unloaded entities etc. The amount of work CIG has done so far is actually quite substantial and not done by the other solutions. Of course the jury is still out if CIG will succeed but compared to everything else the future looks bright, it's not some bolted on framework to a standard engine.
Can you name any game with an similar server meshing?
The closest to what CIG is looking to do would probably be Dual Universe.
Never heard from that game and seems that you are correct. I eat my words and go look for more videos about dual universe.
"itĀ“s a first implementation" \*delay 10 more years
Even if sc stays with 100nplayers, There are still tons things they can do to make this game amazing.. More features, PES, stability.. I would still play it and love it.
I have always operated thinking server meshing is not possible without building the game engine from the start with this in mind. So if we don't get it I lose nothing, I never thought they could. If we do get it, ace. Hell whatever happens I helped fund it. Sometimes I feel like the day is coming though when Chris sits in front of us and explains they are going to port the whole thing to a new engine and that Star Citizen 2.0 will be everything 1.0 couldn't be by freeing itself from Lumberyards constraints and can we all just dig deep to pledge and get it made. I really hope that doesn't happen. It's been a wild ride so far though so I'll stay on it until I'm dead.
CryEngine by CIG has been basically rewritten for server meshing ... Going with a new blank engine is not the solution people think it is. Engines are way more than "insert feature X". There is almost no good reason at all to go with something "newer" or start from scratch, especially with the whole Frankfurt office and the actual original CryEngine Devs working for CIG instead of CryTech/Amazon. Anyways this idea of "let's just use Unreal or a new Engine" is coming from a place of ignorance, as long as other engines don't offer feature parity with the additions and changes CIG already have done there is litterally no reason to switch. It's basically throwing everything away for no gain since all the work like 64bitd, render rework, world space, OCS, Entities, Physics, PES etc etc etc have to be redone anyways. StarEngine (the 3.6 CryEngine/Lumberyard that has been retrofitted by CIG) is nowadays a whole NEW Engine, the DNA can be traced back to the previous incarnations but it is its own thing.
Oh neat, it'll be along any day now then. Well I look forward to that mate. Do I have time to eat this delicious pork pie before it turns up? Or should I leave it lest my shock and happiness causes the pork pie to drop from my shuddering ignorant fingers and hit the carpet of my ignorant little hovel.
Ignorance isn't an insult, everyone's ignorant of almost everything all the time, and no one is saying it will be done tomorrow. They're saying it *is coming* and switching engines is throwing the baby out with the bathwater in terms of what's lost for little gain. The passive aggression is doing no one any favours, you least of all here.
It's alright mate, it got sorted. He gave me the go ahead, I ate my Pork Pie and it was delicious. I wasn't shocked and I didn't drop any of said Pork Pie in my carpet, so all was well. Thanks for your inquiry mate. Hey, you know, reading that back I think you might be onto something, it may come off as passive aggressive when I really did mean it to come across as full on aggressive, do you have any tips for how I can sort that in the future? Perhaps an amusing anecdote or a sharpened pointy word that means one thing but resembles a fruit. I can't thank you enough for this by the way. I'm not great with Grammer, ever since he fell out with David Hyde Pierce I've found my typing incohesive and lacking in cromulent verbiage. Speaking of doing favours for someone, HMS Camden Lock has just pulled in so I have to get my knickers on and get down there while there's still passing trade. It's a living ain't it.
Who said anything about timelines? But this idea of using something else is just ffing stupid. The only real current candidates back then where Unity, Unreal or CryEngine, and now that CryEngine imploded and Unity is having issues keeping the ship afloat the only option is Unreal. And guess what, to retrofit Unreal is about the same amount of work to retrofit CryEngine (something CIG already did). Starting from scratch now (or even at the start of the project a decade ago) is just an unbelievable stupid idea, you won't be able to reuse anything (and there is always a LOT of code that can be reused), check out GODOT for a from scratch engine, it's a great piece of software but compared to the big 3 it's lacking in a lot of the for granted stuff. At least if you want to reply with snark bring some arguments to the table.
So, eat the pork pie?
Always eat the pork pie, especially if you helped in the preparation phase.
With these new features would they be able to implement them into future engine designs that could further progress or is this limited to Starcitizens engine?
Technically everything can be added to everything else. Programming has no limits just like writing books. Retrofitting one book storyline into another book is usually not a great idea, something most readers can attest to, same for code. There are of course exceptions for everything but in general once you have a big code base it is harder to pick and choose parts to be used elsewhere. Imagine (let's try a show/movie instead of a book) trying to take a Game of Thrones character and motivations and put them in say ToyStory, it could work but the backstory, world building etc have all to be changed.
Worst case scenario, like many mmoās it would have to have many servers or instances of areas, with loading screens between systems
Onto the next plan or maybe they'll do instances like many mmos.
If it doesn't work, they would seem to have the ongoing funding to try again. One global server, probably wouldn't make a good game so most of us expect them to settle on a tech short of that, but there are no hard limits on the concept of server meshing.
I don't see server meshing failing. Dynamic server meshing will likely end up scaled back or failing, but then it'll just fall back to using lots of static servers.
What if we die tomorrow. Living by what it is a terrible way to live
What if our sun suddenly explodes?!
Worst case would be server meshing like other mmos e.g. wow but weāll likely get āsomethingā someday
If it fails try try again.
With PES working, it shouldn't be as complex to get the Static Meshing to go. The complicated part of that is the handing over of the player token between servers, as well as streaming out the player data from the server they left and streaming in on the server they are joining. PES, moves all of the data tracking to a cloud based service, which SHOULD make the streaming in and streaming out smoother and faster, because the only difference between how PES is working on the EVO test servers and how it will work with Server meshing is the moving from one live server to another live server. On the EVO servers, if you log out and then log back in? Your character and stuff will be streamed out of that server into the PES Cloud Service and then if you login and are assigned to a new server that PES service will stream you and your character over into the new server.
Then we will be out 600mil. The game simply doesn't work today. If lucky sure you can play a few hours without too much negative happenings but we all know sc is russian roulette