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Star Citizen Pre-Alpha: 'Arena Commander' Dogfighting

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You know somebody is going to give a presentation on crowdsourcing bug reports at GDC or conferences like it. This kind of thing is fairly common in Open Source projects, though this one is a bit more user friendly and more reddity.
It is great.
Quite a nice description :)

Stealth bragging.

Sensational bug report. <3

Much love, fellow citizens. Much love.

It only needs 3 more reproductions till it is confirmed. Saweeeet.

I am actively affecting this game's development: it is a pretty surreal feeling.
 

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
All right, I added one. The elevator panel doesn't show it either. http://i.imgur.com/pcRlzjP.png
I did see some motion blur on the body in one shot I attached - maybe it's just set to a lower motion blur setting for the body, but not completely off.

Really nice that people can attach videos on these.
 

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
Super awesome. Thanks!

I also "responded" to your post in the bug report. Hot damn this is cool.

Oh, nice, I was wondering how to do that.
Guess I didn't know the difference between "per object" motion blur and camera movement blur and wound up finding a different bug in the process.
Adding another shot on High which matches your result more closely.

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Took a quick video of the Freelancer in Arc Corp after glitching my way through the glass door there (side to side mouse movement).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBRmpK1SBE4
Same thing others have done before. This one's downsampled from 4k. I really like the way the metal looks - check out that landing gear.

(edit: Freelancer, not Constellation. Oops! Had heard someone else call it that from the distance and it stuck)
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Maybe this is a good place to ask about Star Citizen in general.

"What do you DO in No Man's Sky" has become almost a joke at this point, but I only just realized I don't have a great idea of what you will actually do in Star Citizen once the game is "released."

I understand that it will be split into some kind of online "thing" called Star Citizen and some kind of offline "thing" called Squadron 42. I understand that at "launch" it won't be procedurally generated like NMS or Elite Dangerous, but that they want to eventually do procedural generation. In that intervening time then what kind of world will you explore? Will it be similar to the Elite experience but just with a smaller number of hand-crafted star systems?

I'm guessing the reason I don't understand too well is I've never played Wing Commander. I asked around about it and I think it's just a regular mission-based fighter game like Freespace or something (which I've only briefly played so far)? And then I'm only just now hearing about the Privateer games which sound like Elite-style experiences but, again, without the procedural generation. So is Star Citizen trying to be like a return to Privateer and Squadron 42 a new Wing Commander game?

I didn't have a good understanding of what NMS might be like until I went back and tried out the first two Elite games. Maybe all of Star Citizen's advertising is going directly towards the PC space game audience that already knows what it is.
 
Will it be similar to the Elite experience but just with a smaller number of hand-crafted star systems?

That sounds about right--I don't think they're trying to do anything to the scale of Elite but rather going for a more finely crafted system. I don't even think there will be much of an exploration component to the game, in terms of exploring and finding new systems.

  • Star Citizen comes with a single-player focused cinematic scripted campaign and is projected for general episodic releases starting from mid 2015, which will later be updated with paid DLC expansions.
  • Landing on planets in Star Citizen will use scripted in-game cinematics and will be limited to specific landing zones as opposed to Elite: Dangerous where it will be freeform (manual pitch/yaw/roll) land wherever you want.
  • Star Citizen's interplanetary fast travel will allow a speed of up to 20% the speed of light (0.2C), which necessitates scaled down star systems to compress spatial distances to make travel times practical. It also won't be freeform (Autopilot Only) nor have combat manoeuvring in this mode, so you will not have the ability to specify an exact random location in space. You can navigate to known locations or tag a ship they want to track or ambush. Also you must fly through wormhole-like jump points (which will allow some interactivity) at fixed locations to other star system.
  • Star Citizen's galaxy will have 120 star systems at launch, with time compressed to 2 hours for each day (1:12 scale time) and a more casual take on spatial size and distance of celestial bodies, meaning planets won't be properly scaled and they might also not orbit. To give an example, Elite: Dangerous will have stars alone that can engulf whole star systems of Star Citizen multiple times. Also see this video to give a sense of scale. Given what we know about our solar system, the orbits of exoplanets and the fact that the maximum speed in Star Citizen will be 0.2C, with a targeted travel time of around 30 minutes to cross a star system, it is calculated that the size of Star Citizen star systems will be compressed to around 1:100 up to 1:2500 scale.
  • In Star Citizen, planetside movement will be restricted to specialized locations, connected by scripted sequences, such as star ports, small city hubs, bars and FPS arenas, while the rest of the planet is off limits.
Note that the above information actually comes from an Elite Dangerous FAQ comparing the two games, but it seems to give a pretty fair comparison. Some of the info may be out of date, though.

I feel like, out of NMS, E:D, and SC, Star Citizen will probably have the most easily defined "things to do" vs the other two, which are more like sandbox games.
 

tuxfool

Banned
Maybe this is a good place to ask about Star Citizen in general.
I understand that it will be split into some kind of online "thing" called Star Citizen and some kind of offline "thing" called Squadron 42. I understand that at "launch" it won't be procedurally generated like NMS or Elite Dangerous, but that they want to eventually do procedural generation. In that intervening time then what kind of world will you explore? Will it be similar to the Elite experience but just with a smaller number of hand-crafted star systems?
Yes that is correct. The "thing" is just like a regular story based single player game, like wing commander or Freespace (though it will probably be a more localized war). The other half is the Persistent Universe, which will be like Elite but with more hand crafted content, and more variety of tasks, for ex. things like space mining and ships with a crew of more than a single person

The whole structure of the game is from the first person view of a pilot so on planetside landing zones you visit shops. Then the game also will have FPS combat in regions and EVA on things like derelict ships. I suggest you take a look at the multi crew demo from gamescom to get a sense of some of the gameplay loop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qLcXt9Hxxo

Also the social module, to get a sense of what a landing zone will look like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc4oDwwD0oY
 

MrBig

Member
Star Citizen's PU will largely be economy driven. Players make up a very small percentage of the total number of entities in the galaxy, the rest of which drive a demand for materials and things that players deal with. One very high level example: A merchant needs ore, one place has it for some amount, another has it in much higher abundance (and thus is cheaper), so they win the bid... now it needs to be transported. Going into specialized details (divied up between many players) someone has to find a system, scout that ore, then someone has to mine it, haul it away, get in touch with info runners to find a buyer and safe passage to them - safe from AI and player pirates that want the valuable cargo for themselves. So maybe all you want to do is explore, so you're the one scouting for new system and the things that are in them (from raw materials to abandoned tech) keeping it to yourself or selling that information to others; or you just want to shoot, so you're the pirate going after cargo.

Look to Eve as the only current example of a well-functioning multiplayer economy driven game I know of.
 

KKRT00

Member
[*]Star Citizen's interplanetary fast travel will allow a speed of up to 20% the speed of light (0.2C), which necessitates scaled down star systems to compress spatial distances to make travel times practical. It also won't be freeform (Autopilot Only) nor have combat manoeuvring in this mode, so you will not have the ability to specify an exact random location in space. You can navigate to known locations or tag a ship they want to track or ambush. Also you must fly through wormhole-like jump points (which will allow some interactivity) at fixed locations to other star system.
Actually it wont be full autopilot only, it will be used also for exploring.
Exploration will be within solar system, not galaxy like in Elite, so You will be searching for stuff inside systems that is not covered by standard star maps.
 
Actually it wont be full autopilot only, it will be used also for exploring.
Exploration will be within solar system, not galaxy like in Elite, so You will be searching for stuff inside systems that is not covered by standard star maps.

I think that's referring to how you go into the fast travel mode to get to a destination within the solar system, like the recent Star Citizen presentation when they jumped/fast traveled to the derelict ship.

Are you saying that, instead of using that jump/fast travel, you could just instead explore the solar system and fly around, free form? So you could eventually just reach the derelict ship without using fast travel, it would just take longer?
 

tuxfool

Banned
I think that's referring to how you go into the fast travel mode to get to a destination within the solar system, like the recent Star Citizen presentation when they jumped/fast traveled to the derelict ship.

Are you saying that, instead of using that jump/fast travel, you could just instead explore the solar system and fly around, free form? So you could eventually just reach the derelict ship without using fast travel, it would just take longer?

Yup. It would take you hours, but you could do it.

Also somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but the Quantum Drive is to get around quickly within star systems. To get between star systems you travel with wormholes.
 
Yup. It would take you hours, but you could do it.

Also somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but the Quantum Drive is to get around quickly within star systems. To get between star systems you travel with wormholes.

Gotcha, thanks!

And yeah, I believe Quantum Drive is just intersystem travel and wormholes are for interstellar.
 

Danthrax

Batteries the CRISIS!
Yup. It would take you hours, but you could do it.

Also somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but the Quantum Drive is to get around quickly within star systems. To get between star systems you travel with wormholes.

You are correct. Quantum Drive is basically like autopilot within a system. The Jump Drive is used to travel through jump points (which I guess you could call wormholes) to other systems. Like Wing Commander Privateer.
 
Interesting to look at the changes to their asset texturing, modelling and work flow:

This is the old design and texture work:
gemini_lh-86_combusti43s6x.png

This is the new:
screenshot0004t3sgh.jpg


Waaaaay less shit painted into the diffuse map. Much better.
 

KKRT00

Member
Interesting to look at the changes to their asset texturing, modelling and work flow:

This is the old design and texture work:
gemini_lh-86_combusti43s6x.png

This is the new:
screenshot0004t3sgh.jpg


Waaaaay less shit painted into the diffuse map. Much better.

Dunno, i like the old design more i think, mostly due to detail. Dat scratches on the metal underneath the lock handle.

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After watching Infiltrator demo, we need its AA asap! I have not seen even one scene with aliasing there, it was outstanding.
 
Dunno, i like the old design more i think, mostly due to detail. Dat scratches on the metal underneath the lock handle.

Presumably that is how the weathered variant will look.

Problem with the first one is since so much of that "detail" is painted into the diffuse, it would not look right under different lighting conditions. Basically bad PBR workflow.
 
Just curious; is this the OT for the Star Citizen Pre-Alpha? If so, why doesn't it have an OT in the title lol? I know it's a minor complaint, but I keep wondering why this thread kept getting bumped, only to realise when I went on the front page that it was the official thread haha.

I personally think it'll just make it clearer for people to understand and go to the OT if need be. Just a suggestion! :)
 

KKRT00

Member
Just curious; is this the OT for the Star Citizen Pre-Alpha? If so, why doesn't it have an OT in the title lol? I know it's a minor complaint, but I keep wondering why this thread kept getting bumped, only to realise when I went on the front page that it was the official thread haha.

I personally think it'll just make it clearer for people to understand and go to the OT if need be. Just a suggestion! :)

I dont think Alphas get 'real' OTs.
 
I dont think Alphas get 'real' OTs.

Hmmmm, I see. Although I do think it should happen; it'd be easier to identify and have a main stickied thread to discuss it, since the Alpha has been and will be going on for quite a while. Oh well, maybe it's something I can discuss with the mods.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Interesting to look at the changes to their asset texturing, modelling and work flow:

This is the old design and texture work:
gemini_lh-86_combusti43s6x.png

This is the new:
screenshot0004t3sgh.jpg


Waaaaay less shit painted into the diffuse map. Much better.
The new one looks a bit more like a toy to me and almost less "realistic" but maybe that's the art style.

After watching Infiltrator demo, we need its AA asap! I have not seen even one scene with aliasing there, it was outstanding.
I just wish ye olde MSAA were possible. I've seen complaint(s) about UE4's AA because of how blurry it is and how much it depends on temporal aliasing, so I guess there are at least two camps on that issue.
 
The new one looks a bit more like a toy to me and almost less "realistic" but maybe that's the art style.
It is hard to see in a screen shot of course, but the way light will play off of the newer one vs. the older one would be drastically different.

All the faked AO, faked stuff into the diffuse texture of the first makes it only looks right in certain scenarios or in light box set ups. The bottom one is purelly driven by shading and shadowing instead of textures.
I see you've come around to the UE4 TAA solution.

I think it would make a fantastic option.
Let's hope at least they switched over the default AA to the SMAA from Ryse when Star Marine releases... considering the 3.7 version they merged has it as default. That has very similar results as the TAA from UE4.
I just wish ye olde MSAA were possible. I've seen complaint(s) about UE4's AA because of how blurry it is and how much it depends on temporal aliasing, so I guess there are at least two camps on that issue.

It may again one day... maybe. DX12 opens up a lot of cool MSAA stuff.
 

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
Presumably that is how the weathered variant will look.

Problem with the first one is since so much of that "detail" is painted into the diffuse, it would not look right under different lighting conditions. Basically bad PBR workflow.

Interesting. It would be nice to see those in motion so I could see what you're talking about more easily.
 

KKRT00

Member
I see you've come around to the UE4 TAA solution.

Yep, Ryse's TAA is great, but Infiltrator's AA is just awesome.

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I just wish ye olde MSAA were possible. I've seen complaint(s) about UE4's AA because of how blurry it is and how much it depends on temporal aliasing, so I guess there are at least two camps on that issue.
I dont personally, not for Star Citizen at least, this game will be demanding as hell without MSAA :) And MSAA would take like 30% of GPU time in CryEngine, so fuck that ;p
 

Zabojnik

Member
Yep, Ryse's TAA is great, but Infiltrator's AA is just awesome.

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I dont personally, not for Star Citizen at least, this game will be demanding as hell without MSAA :) And MSAA would take like 30% of GPU time in CryEngine, so fuck that ;p

Pascal will save us, KKRT00. Please believe.
I'm expecting the usual 20-30% performance increase. Don't believe the hype.
 

tuxfool

Banned
I don't get why people want MSAA so badly. It sucks in general for game today.

It would be useful to reuse the subpixel sampling hardware for different algorithms, but hardware MSAA breaks on alpha, shading and texture aliasing. It only works on geometry. Even on deferred engines that allow MSAA it sucks performance and often resolves poorly.
 

MrBig

Member
I don't get why people want MSAA so badly. It sucks in general for game today.

It would be useful to reuse the subpixel sampling hardware for different algorithms, but hardware MSAA breaks on alpha, shading and texture aliasing. It only works on geometry. Even on deferred engines that allow MSAA it sucks performance and often resolves poorly.

SC is highly dependent on geo (and complex material shaders that MSAA of course can't help) for its detail, unlike most modern games that are still dependent on normals and textures. Having it would be a nice option in addition to something like temporal AA.
 

tuxfool

Banned
SC is highly dependent on geo (and complex material shaders that MSAA of course can't help) for its detail, unlike most modern games that are still dependent on normals and textures. Having it would be a nice option in addition to something like temporal AA.

You're forgetting the other point I was making that MSAA often has poor resolve in deferred engines, due to the point at which it is applied in the pipeline. Ignoring that aspect it probably would work fairly well for ship geometry, but less so for things like character models which are liable to have more alpha and more complex shaders.
 

KKRT00

Member
SC is highly dependent on geo (and complex material shaders that MSAA of course can't help) for its detail, unlike most modern games that are still dependent on normals and textures. Having it would be a nice option in addition to something like temporal AA.

Sure, but most of AA problems in SC are from shading aliasing, not geometry aliasing, so MSAA would not help that much.
 

Blizzard

Banned
I dont personally, not for Star Citizen at least, this game will be demanding as hell without MSAA :) And MSAA would take like 30% of GPU time in CryEngine, so fuck that ;p

I don't get why people want MSAA so badly. It sucks in general for game today.

It would be useful to reuse the subpixel sampling hardware for different algorithms, but hardware MSAA breaks on alpha, shading and texture aliasing. It only works on geometry. Even on deferred engines that allow MSAA it sucks performance and often resolves poorly.
Sure, but most of AA problems in SC are from shading aliasing, not geometry aliasing, so MSAA would not help that much.
You're forgetting the other point I was making that MSAA often has poor resolve in deferred engines, due to the point at which it is applied in the pipeline. Ignoring that aspect it probably would work fairly well for ship geometry, but less so for things like character models which are liable to have more alpha and more complex shaders.
I'm not sure if it's many people, maybe just me and one other person who like MSAA (or MSAA with transparency from Nvidia) in general.

I do not mean this in an insulting way, but I feel these quoted posts almost perfectly show the normal progression whenever MSAA comes up in discussion: Someone will mention that it can have a high performance impact (regardless of whether computers in the future will be able to handle that impact). Someone will mention that it has issues on deferred engines. Someone will mention that it has issues with shaders.

I realize it is not perfect, but I like the clarity and personally feel the alternative blurry or ghosty options are also not perfect. Obviously the majority seem okay with it though so I'm just a weird isolated case talking about it. :p
 
I'm not sure if it's many people, maybe just me and one other person who like MSAA (or MSAA with transparency from Nvidia) in general.

I do not mean this in an insulting way, but I feel these quoted posts almost perfectly show the normal progression whenever MSAA comes up in discussion: Someone will mention that it can have a high performance impact (regardless of whether computers in the future will be able to handle that impact). Someone will mention that it has issues on deferred engines. Someone will mention that it has issues with shaders.

I realize it is not perfect, but I like the clarity and personally feel the alternative blurry or ghosty options are also not perfect. Obviously the majority seem okay with it though so I'm just a weird isolated case talking about it. :p

I have nothing against MSAA mate. BTW, regarding MSAA that is god like... you have Cryengine 3's implementation in Crysis 3 which is basically perfect. Works on vegetation, can be combined with a number of post process and temporal AAs, and even special MSAA sampling patterns (MFAA).

With just two geometry subsamples in Crysis 3 you can get some seriously awesome image quality.
 

Daedardus

Member
I don't care if it is MSAA or not, as long as it gets the job done. The current SMAA 2TX is doing a very poor job at handling aliasing. SSAA can't be the only option I hope.
 
I don't care if it is MSAA or not, as long as it gets the job done. The current SMAA 2TX is doing a very poor job at handling aliasing. SSAA can't be the only option I hope.

Whatever it is, it aint 2Tx. It does not have the reprojection problems that T2x has... so it is probably just straight old SMAA1x.
 

pottuvoi

Banned
I have nothing against MSAA mate. BTW, regarding MSAA that is god like... you have Cryengine 3's implementation in Crysis 3 which is basically perfect. Works on vegetation, can be combined with a number of post process and temporal AAs, and even special MSAA sampling patterns (MFAA).

With just two geometry subsamples in Crysis 3 you can get some seriously awesome image quality.
Agreed, proper MSAA samples, custom resolve and some temporal re-projection can be very nice.

It's good idea to call it MSAA samples now a days, so people do not confuse it with old good MSAA with box filter. ;)
 
The AA method was shown on the debug panel info. Don't think they ever commented on the AA, though.

Yeah r_displayinfo has shown 1tx in videos, but presumably the pre-ryse variant that is also apparently completely missing the temporal component. Otherwise the game would not look the way it does.
It's good idea to call it MSAA samples now a days, so people do not confuse it with old good MSAA with box filter. ;)

Agreed!
 
how is it 1-Tx if it doesn't have a temporal component?
Two guesses:
1. It is thoroughly broken due to some compatibility problem.
2. That or the more reasonable assumption that SMAA1Tx is only active / on at default in the sandbox editor´: which uses a separate config.ini than the game launcher (which we use when we play SC).

I would imagine stuff like that gets overseen / is not high priority at the moment.

Sadly... glorious Ryse style SMAA1tx is sitting their in the game engine... taunting us... hiding behind currently inaccessible console commands.
 

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
Tons of good info in the Reverse the 'Verse today:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3m3dzv/notes_from_reverse_the_verse_chairman_edition/

Quantum drive fuel as a rare fuel for Starfarer captains to harvest is interesting. I was thinking it would be a relatively low-reward necessity like hydrogen harvesting in Elite. Sounds like for quantum fuel, it could fit into the explorer-led org model like mining and salvage.

Some good news about the Idris:
"[Favourite ship?] Idris is turning out to be pretty amazing. Connie's pretty awesome too. People'll see some peeks at the inside of the Idris next month, which is way bigger than it was first imagined. It's massive inside, so the few people that have it, they A, got a deal, and B, they're gonna need some friends."

Sounds like the Endeavor is going to be a pretty big deal (and expensive).
"Keep the Endeavor's 200+ meter size in mind when we see its price. It can overclock, it can grow crops, etc... Pricing for it on the forums later today."

Crops...? Could make sense if they're illegal crops I guess. Edit: yup.
"The Endeavor has also found its way into the service of less reputable organizations, where it can has been modified for everything from narcotics production to black market surgery."
Might swap out the Orion for it depending on how much of a jump it is.
 
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