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Digital Foundry: Star Citizen's Next-Gen Tech In-Depth
- Thread starter Deleted member 8674
- Start date
They are a tech site that is focusing on tech stuff, what is strange about that?
Era: "FUCK YEAH! GAME AWARDS AND E3! Totally not ads! Really cool!!! Lets make 1000 pages threads about them!"
Also Era: "A video talking about the technical side of video games? Fuck off with those ads!!!"
Also Era: "A video talking about the technical side of video games? Fuck off with those ads!!!"
OP
OP
Have you played the game?? The planets are definitely not 2d. You literally fly down to them and can go anywhere on their 3 dimensional surface. And the caves are fun as hell to explore.
It's a technology documentary not a video game review
It's Digital Foundry, you know one of the most knowledgeable and informative publications out there that focus primarily on the technology behind games, so what exactly are you on about?
It's like going into a sushi bar and complaining that they gave you sushi.
he means the way they're generated/the data. Like basically any other game environment, the environment is a mesh generated by a 2d heightmap -- you take a flat plane, and look up each point on the plane on a texture, where lighter values mean you raise the surface up, and darker values mean you lower it down. SC is using that traditional technique (with other, similarly 2d maps mixed in) to generate the planets, just wrapping that flat surface around a sphere instead of laying it flat.
The alternative, of course, is using the same kind of volumetric tech that they are for the clouds (which is basically 3d textures, 3 dimensional grids of data), but in a an editable/generateable/interesting way for geology, which is probably like, decades away and an utterly ridiculous thing to ask for.
The solo campaign of the game should, theorically, be playable in it's beta version around Christmas for an official release next year.
But well... It's CIG, so expect delays.
Yeah, the pissbabies really come out for SC threads.
MuH jOuRnaLIstic INteGrITY
Surely there are a lot of "tech stuff" in the gaming industry, that aren't attached to a scummy business practices, for DF to cover.
If you want journalists to only look at stuff made by companies that are not doing scummy busniess practices, they'd only look at small indy studios. And even then, a lot of them are scummy as well.
Say what you will about CIG, they are far from being as evil money grabbing assholes than EA or Activision for instance.
OP
OP
This absolutely. Alex, your work and the team is excellent. Nothing comes close to the same quality in the game tech analysis so please don't be discouraged by some comments.
With nonsensical logic like that, what can I even say?
Great idea though, for the tech focused publication to willingly ignore impressive technology that they routinely cover because reasons.
I will engage despite my better judgment.
- How is the "journalistic integrity" of a channel focused on real time game tech compromised by focusing on real time game tech?
- While a poor implementation of tech can be interesting, no publisher / developer is going to give insight into that while the game is relatively fresh. That analysis comes much later when the community can reverse engineer that themselves.
- Pretty sure digital foundry still exists to showcase what's wrong with a game.
What I posted above applies to you too.
Graphically the game looks good as always. Doesn't excuse the dev's sleazy business practices though. I have little faith in the finished product as well. Still surprises there's still no story mission gameplay or anything like that.
I don't know about that. EA and Activision sell digital stuff for their games. CI sells digital stuff for the game, that will someday hopefully relese. In my opinion, the latter is far more evil money grabbing than the former.
If you look through the users post history they're almost exclusively spouting toxicity in Star Citizen threads, so that one is certainly a lost cause, they came into the thread looking to provoke, this exchange from an earlier thread says all you need to know.
One is a crowd-funded project, the other is a long-installed billion-earning company.
You really seem to care about "bad business practices".
Regarding the GTA Casino and kids access to it:
Regarding crossplay:
Regarding Diablo Immortal and the fear it would be a MTX infested game:
Or about MTX or on-disc DLC itself:
Man. You really do care!
Don't let the negativity get you down, you and Dark1x do great work and most of us appreciate it. DF is the only gaming-focused Youtube channel I watch with any regularity these days.
DF is always critical. They're the reason I was able to go into Jedi Fallen Order with my eyes wide open.
And here we go again... We have the privilege of not only having a group of passionate people who are able to give us detailed tech analyses of various games, sometimes even flying out to get the information from developers themselves, but also the privilege of having them on our forum so we can share our excitement and our reaction is to respond with increasing hostility and skepticism.
I'm not sure what your point is here. Alex is making a series of videos specifically about the visuals of the game and the tech behind it and your first reaction is to call it an ad because he didn't also address the controversies surrounding the game that have been discussed here and elsewhere countless times already? What would that achieve? Just satisfy your bias it seems.
I rarely hop into these threads anymore because when I do I sometimes notice people being hostile towards Dark1x and Dictator for really stupid reasons. They shouldn't have to put up with that and it must be really disappointing and tiring to put a ton of effort into a video and see the dedicated thread here and have to hope that for once you won't have to defend yourself. We really should be better.
I mean in general, the style of your videos. It's like you have to take a number of screenshots about a game, and you can decide on one side to select those screens that showcase the best the game can do, on the other side you can take screenshots of bugs, glitches and everything else that might be broken, or that works poorly.
The "automatic" reflex you get from the first choice is that users will think the game looks indeed great, but can't exactly trust that it represents the actual game.
What I mean is that you'll get these types of reactions, I see it as a predictable consequence. So you can complain about this user or another, but it will keep coming up.
I meant to generalize because it's not about a specific video, but a stylistic choice.
The tech itself is not simply what is there, but also how well it is designed and executed (where Star Citizen especially has giants limits and oversights). I'm not criticizing what you're doing, and I understand well the reasons behind those choices. Maybe you won't chase after clickbait but you surely want developers to keep seeing you in a good light in order to continue to offer you the chance to produce these insights and previews, especially when the game is a long way even from coming out.
But you have to understand you'll always also get a certain reaction from the public as consequence of that kind of style because it's felt as biased cherry picking.
"Tech videos" don't imply you carefully look at what works while ignoring what doesn't.
In fact it would be even more informative to know what isn't working and why. Star Citizen is especially a story interesting for what went wrong. If any good comes out of it we'll see in the future.
I mean he said in the video is part of a small series.
Regarding what? The technical side of the game?
Exactly! "Evil corporations" sell you product, CI sells you a pitch. Investors of "Evil corporations" get a piece of a profit, investores of CI will maby someday get a game or a refund. Interest free loan.
That's right. You've spend so much time constructing this reply and cut pieces of my comments, but it is all still true.
Happy to reply. Tech videos should not just be showcases, that's the role of PR.
The video/article enumerates all this high end stuff only to say that at the moment, servers only support up to 60 players at the same time because server meshing is not implemented yet. And it's fine but what it doesn't mention is that it's been in development for at least 8 years now and server meshing is still not in sight. That might, for some people, be a worrying thing. It talks about the tech but not how well the implementation of it is going.
Of course no developer will want to talk about the negatives of their own game in their own studio. That's why the in-house reports are so dodgy and difficult to pull off. Thats's why Konami got all that free PR from their Boot Camp event in 2015 and no one could know that the game had huge dev problems and was unfinished.
IG's biggest sin according to "Games Journalists" is not releasing an Alpha game and calling it a finished AAA game "like OTHER companies"
A summary
- Developers and their families are human too and live strange human lives
- Chris Roberts has money to buy a nice house after a long successful career
- People still keeps backing this game and they don't understand why, so they assume it's a scam
- The game is taking too long time to make according the the author. (The game isn't out yet like Anthem, Fallout 76 and Mass Effect: Andromeda.. you know; proper AAA games released on a schedule. The way it's supposed to be done. And CIG's workers aren't treated like shit with a neverending crunch and 16 hour workdays like other succsessful tripple A companies does it in order to meet company deadlines. Shame on CIG for doing it the wrong way.)
- Chris Roberts is a stickler for details and had a guy work three months on the new ship shield effects (I can't wait for those, apparantly they will make ships crashing more performant as well :) )
- Jesse Schell, a random "prominent game developer", with huge hits behind him like "Water bears", "Domino world" and "Peg + Cat" !? thinks Chris Roberts doesn't know how to make games
- Chris Roberts once spent too much time on Freelancer to make the game he wanted to make; and that made Microsoft upset
- A majority of the concepted ships have already been made, the ships that are not finished yet are still concepts
- A man named Ken that has multiple sclerosis did not get his money back after purchasing ships. (Nothing was stated about if stores like Steam had offered refunds due to his illness, I guess the important point was that SC didn't.) Ken has continued to buy ships after he was refused a refund
- A backer that offers an alternate view on matters, that CIG is really working towards something awesome, gets a tiny paragraph in which he is identified as a "Believer"
- Star Citizen is a game currently in active development where you can purchase one or more ships at varying prices to help fund the game (With the lowest price for full access to the game being 45USD)
- You can buy most of the ships ingame as well as rent them ingame
- They are making 2 games (SQ42 and SC)
The 100 star systems quote was back when they said they will only make landing zones and not full fledges planets... of course full planets with no loading times inbetween are better so it takes more time. also you can check out the game right now for yourself there is a freefly weekend.
also at people saying this is a scam and they are running away with moeny LOL you can literally check out all their finances on their company website because they have to according to the Law in UK
Your videos are beautiful and provide an amazing amount of insight into the technology behind games. The people whining don't deserve a thought.
CIG is a independant studio trying to make one of the most ambitious ever.
EA and Activivions are huge companies reselling us the same sports games years after years with just minor improvements and cutting features while the other "regular" games are done with less and less content and ambitions under the guise of "GAAS".
CIG is using "macro" transactions to fund their game, targeting wealthy players while always telling them that they DON'T have to buy anything other than a starter pack (around 60 bucks).
EA and Activision are using microtransactions, targeting regular players and childrens, promoting them ALL THE TIME, EVERYWHERE in EXTREMELY intrusive methods in game and outside and always telling you that you have to buy their shit while pushing the payers to gamble.
CIG is using the money generated to make the game they are promising.
EA and Activsion are using most of the money they make to please their shareholders and proceed to fire devs to maximize the profits.
Yeah. Who's the scummier, i wonder.
Honestly, thread needs to be rebooted. It got derailed before it made it off the first page.
Hasn't there been a few articles written about alleged complaints from ex-CIG employees that wouldn't be out of place from any other expose article about [insert big game company here]?
CIG is actually also making two games (Star Citizen MMORPG and Squadron 42 Singleplayer game).
You never see those shitposts in Cyberpunk 2077 threads. A game from an established studio that didnt need to hire new people and open studios around the world and create the infrastructure. By the way Cyberpunk has been in development since mid 2011 so where is the outcry for that?
CI sells you a product. You can play it right now. It's not finished because the scale and ambition of the product surpass anything that has ever been done before in the gaming industry.
User Warned: Platform warring.
People aren't going to like this but I feel Alex really doesn't like the fact next-generation consoles have features like hardware ray-tracing and comparable CPU/GPU. I've noticed his sniggering in other Digital Foundry video's when mentioning technologies in the PC space in context to consoles.
Recently he's been ramping up the whole 'look at how great PC's are' narrative.
I like Digital Foundry video's but I wish there wasn't as much sniping along the way. After all, we all like games and the technology that powers them.
Kids spending thousands of dollars on Fortnite to get new dances or Pay to Win mobile games. Microtransactions riddle every AAA title
Every backer knows the deal. As of right now you basically pay $45-65 for an elaborate Space sandbox game that is quite frankly well worth that money as is. The fact they are developing and building on it releasing new stuff is only making your investment more worth it. In times when creativity is beaten the hell out of any games and sacrificed for rushed production and money grabs I will gladly support an ambitious endavour however it might pan out. SC could abandon further development tomorrow and my only though would be "man what a bummer I really wanted this to pan out" and not "what a waste of money that was". It's a risk I am taking just like the developers are. We kind of in this together with them all hoping and working towards a goal that it will pan out.
Are they in it to make money? Of course they are! Is that wrong? No! Because they are going about it the right way.
If you feel scammed by Star Citizen I have no idea how do you play any other video games. I bought Black Ops for $70 or so and played that thing for like 10hours for that new Blackout mode until I realized there is no plans of adding more to the mode. That was a fucking scam. Destiny? Was hyped out to be WoW of space shooters. That was a fucking scam. So for once we get this gem that's already head and shoulders above a lot of AAA titles and Forbes going to shit on it? Because some rich dudes spent $2k on a virtual ship? Pretty sure that person can afford it and if they can't and still do it that's mainly on them. It literally says $2k for this exact ship, nothing else on it. Meanwhile Clash of Clans still racking up bank charging $5 so people don't have to wait 40 hours for things to build making the game unplayable not knowing that they already racked up those small charges to a $5k bill. You tell me which version is a scam or what should we be focusing on.
BTW this is a great video from DF and Im happy they showed the more technical achievements.
Every backer knows the deal. As of right now you basically pay $45-65 for an elaborate Space sandbox game that is quite frankly well worth that money as is. The fact they are developing and building on it releasing new stuff is only making your investment more worth it. In times when creativity is beaten the hell out of any games and sacrificed for rushed production and money grabs I will gladly support an ambitious endavour however it might pan out. SC could abandon further development tomorrow and my only though would be "man what a bummer I really wanted this to pan out" and not "what a waste of money that was". It's a risk I am taking just like the developers are. We kind of in this together with them all hoping and working towards a goal that it will pan out.
Are they in it to make money? Of course they are! Is that wrong? No! Because they are going about it the right way.
If you feel scammed by Star Citizen I have no idea how do you play any other video games. I bought Black Ops for $70 or so and played that thing for like 10hours for that new Blackout mode until I realized there is no plans of adding more to the mode. That was a fucking scam. Destiny? Was hyped out to be WoW of space shooters. That was a fucking scam. So for once we get this gem that's already head and shoulders above a lot of AAA titles and Forbes going to shit on it? Because some rich dudes spent $2k on a virtual ship? Pretty sure that person can afford it and if they can't and still do it that's mainly on them. It literally says $2k for this exact ship, nothing else on it. Meanwhile Clash of Clans still racking up bank charging $5 so people don't have to wait 40 hours for things to build making the game unplayable not knowing that they already racked up those small charges to a $5k bill. You tell me which version is a scam or what should we be focusing on.
BTW this is a great video from DF and Im happy they showed the more technical achievements.