You called it a "demo" but that is not a "demo". That is pre-recorded footage in a presentation. And it honestly looks like a movie, not someone playing.
@@erufenrito66 "Demo" means "Demonstration" and recorded footage is a demonstration. For another use-case of 'demo' not meaning 'game', refer to Amiga Demoscene, which consists of MIDI music from the Amiga era, as well as, I believe, referring to the Amiga/Commodore era where skilled users released 'demos' of videos and effects on such systems that were far in excess of what one would normally expect such systems to be capable of performing. It probably looks like a movie, because someone is playing it for the display value, not for themselves. Slow, smooth view input controls can help give this effect and are entirely doable with a controller or, with some practice, a mouse.
@@SnprMk7 Correct! Demo means demonstration. So if a=b then demo=demonstration. So you just regurgitated what I said. We got a demo that looks like pre-recorded footage. You know what's easier than getting a production ready product and forcing a play tester to record slow panoramic footage? pre-rendered fake on rails footage. A movie, if you will. which is exactly what you just admitted this looks like lmfao.
@@erufenrito66 No, I did not regurgitate what you said. You are inherently disagreeing that what we got was a demo, in an implicit insistence that a demo can only be a game you can interact with, which is an incorrect statement. I admitted it looks like someone is playing it as one would in the manner of someone making a Machinama would. Which is to say, a fucking human being is doing all this. Learn to read, and then learn to never again speak for another without getting confirmation that what's about to ooze forth from your mouth is actually true, firs and foremost. You assume without evidence. Don't bother opening your mouth further unless you're ready to admit that all you're doing is succumbing to pessimism and fearmongering. Anything less will see you fall silent, like it or not.
I was always very passivly looking at star citizen waiting for it to be playable enough and only ever playing with friends during a few free flights. This Citizencon actually got me hyped for the future of this game for the first time ever!
Don't do it, save your money until it's done. If you can't resist, just buy a 35 USD package and don't give them ANOTHER dime. Know that your money for SC will be going to SQ42 n not SC. See, CR has no interest in the MMO gameplay. He is not a fan. Chris has been quoted, several times, saying he doesn't care for MMOs.
SQ42 will (hopefully) be the intro and proof so many prospective players have been waiting for. Something you can finally sink your teeth into and get a feel for what a finished CIG project will feel like.
This citizencon was a huge and much needed injection of trust in the project. Last couple of years had been really underwhelming. Hype is back in full force
We'll see if the hype and "trust" can persist. First order of business for CIG would be to deliver on the things they said would still be rolled out in Q4 this year. That in itself would already be showing that CIG can keep their word (some would say "promise") for once. Let us judge them by their actions, not just their words.
@@avon_c6199 We are judging them on their actions. The actions being developing the Star Engine, something which will put a dent in the history of gaming, to say the least; having S42 nearly complete & being better than ever, and server meshing being achieved. There's a lot of action, the problem is that people only define "release to the market" as action. After seeing what Star Engine is capable of idc about the timestamps anymore, give em a couple more years if they need it; this is easily the most game-changing project in the history of the industry. People keep asking for a true next-gen experience, complaining about suits forcing devs to push out half-baked games without enough development; Star Citizen is the answer to those complaints.
Ye, all those people seeing the latest trailers / videos will be v disappointed when they hit the current PU. Not time to lose to bring all that goodness over immediately.
@@Nykandroscome on man, Star Engine put a dent in the History of Gaming? Really? How old are you? Oh and “star Engine” is basically a modified cryengine 3.7, they get to name it now, because Amazon made lumberyard open source. Have you seen cryengine 5 , or even unreal engine 5? I know you are hyped for the game, but dial down the copium.
I was so enthusiastic that I even asked for a day off on Monday because I wanted to be able to watch all of it. And that CitCon was phenomenal to say the least. Even from afar and through a screen. Seeing the SQ42 section with all the new UI elements, the map... I was blown away. And when I saw the Server Meshing demo... Boy! I'm a software engineer. And I REALLY appreciated how smooth, solid that demo was.
Some of us originally backed mostly for SQ42 more than the PU. I enjoy the Pu as well, but I really want Squadron to get finished. I also understand that about half the work of SQ42 carriesd over to the PU as well. I really hope SQ42 does well enough for them to do the planned sequals to it as well. A true modern successor to the Wing Commander franchise is still my hope.
Oh man, Getting a live demo of the server meshing tech is so bloody exciting!! I know this is still going to be a fair ways off but goddam, the crazy bastards did it :D Good luck to the teams working on this, very keen for SQ42 and very keen for the future of SC!
I backed Star citizen all the way back in 2015. I never thought it was a scam but over the long years I had lost a lot of trust in the company. This Citizencon made me feel a little bit like how I did when the PTU was first released all those years ago. Here’s hoping SQ42 is a success and by citizencon 2025 we might even have a release timeline for Star Citizen itself.
@@thepaidninja6077 Here is what I don´t understand about people like you: Why does it have to be a "Scam", meaning CIG KNOW they CAN NOT deliver and yet still continue their fundraising, Instead of CIG simply being UNABLE TO DELIVER as promised? While plagued by delays the development has made constant progress on a timescale that is not dissimilar to large projects of established studios. Just how long has GTA 6 been in development again? There is also the fact that the technology to support the project does not, or after Citizen Con, DID not exist but it was ASSUMED TO BE POSSIBLE. I can completely understand people who have little to now trust in CIG being able to finish the project (thus assuming incompetence), I fail to see exactly where people get the idea that there is deceptive intent, which is what a Scam is.
@@thepaidninja6077I was on the scam bandwagon thanks to Derek Smart until they showed the Star Engine trailer and demonstrated server meshing this weekend and said Squadron 42 is feature complete. Now I see that Chris has taken so long because he just wants to make the ultimate game of all games. Smart said the game would be impossible and he knows this because he has experience in this realm. Server meshing and being feature complete proves that Smart was wrong.
@@sircastic959 until it releases with all features it is a scam, giving examples of other game companies is totally useless as i trust no gaming companies. I don't have to give you examples of the numerous amount of times game companies have showed/ promised amazing games with mind-blowing features and have delivered shit all or have just released a game that has done bare minimum to pass off as mid at best. My thumb rule is to never pre order/ get hyped about anything these game companies promise until it's delivered and assume they will scam us with all the micro transactions. Especially when a game has stupidly expensive micro transactions in their early access stages. If you are optimistic about this not being a scam good for you, but until i see the completed game release with all promised features working as intended I'll continue assuming it's a scam.
Chris is absolutely a passionate creator more than he is a cunning project manager. It's only taken how many excitedly announced internal goal dates to realize that targeting something internally will be taken by the public as an announced release date. I think it really does weigh on him to not be shouting out when he is scheduling the big items to be done. It's ultimately good that he isn't announcing dates without certainty but it would be nice to know where he thinks things are at.
I missed the part about the Idris slipup. I'd heard earlier in the year that they had a release target towards of the end of next year, but it's nice to hear that it's still their target. I just hope they delay it a little if the game needs it, as I'd much rather have a polished game a bit later than a rushed game sooner.
Do not worry CR will not release the update until it is completely fully polished. Also if everything goes according to plan and they do not run into any blockers during the polish phase you more than likely will see many of the ships that you've been waiting on. I am myself I'm waiting on a number of the big ship site on like the Polaris, BMM, Orion if possible and many others. From now until the end of next year it's going to be an extremely exciting time for us and it will be absolutely awesome as well.
You won’t see the Idris anytime soon because the ship with a full crew will still completely kil the server meshing shard into a crying heap of molten metal.
@@tropicthndr That makes no sense. Sure, an Idris would take up a quarter of a current server's population if fully crewed (it rarely ever will be as most people would be doing nothing), but that's not exactly going to kill the server. There's been parties on 890 Jumps with pretty much the entire server on them and it was more or less fine, and this is before we have meshed servers to reduce the load. Regardless, we're not seeing it any time soon because it's not releasing until SQ42 does, which is going to be at least a year.
I can't wait to see how some of the set pieces look when they have added global illumination. They already look insanely good. Regardless of how everything else goes i am confident we are going to see close to movie quality battle scenes in this game and i am here for it.
I've always held a more positive outlook on the project and never felt it was a scam. I've been a backer since the Kickstarter. I'm a network infrastructure engineer, and while I have no direct involvement with game development, I know how incredibly difficult it is. Plus, my best friend owned a game development company so I have personal insight into how difficult it can be. For this reason I never felt the game was a scam. CIG is pioneering a ton of new technologies that have never been done before. If people truly understood what this means then they would understand why it's taken 11 years to get this far. Game development is nightmare difficulty. CIG isn't playing on nightmare difficulty. They're playing on ridiculously insane just might be impossible difficulty. Once we look back in history at what CIG showcased at this citizencon I believe we will realize how momentous and groundbreaking this presentation truly was.
This scam narrative is just dumb and has become a bad meme. Starfield was in active development for 8 years, and the Bethesda engine still can't handle vehicles. Hello? Why is it not called Scamfield? Ten times the bs? Because people often don't think rational about things and jump to silly conclusions. Like if scepticism was a genius trait, flat eather would be our leaders. But a real sceptic person is also sceptic about his own opinions, or its just bias.
Very well put. This is a company that was 7-8 years ahead with there engine then what a dedicated engine development company like Unreal was. What Unreal engine 5 has brought now, CIG had achieved that in 2015-16 and had it fully working in-game in a live environment. I had moments of frustration thru the years for sure, but the monumental achievements thru the years had me always believing that this is an incredible group of extremely talented ppl. Thank you for your insight.
@@madrooky1398what makes it a scam by definition is that during the Kickstarter when they asked us for money... they said the game would be released November 2014. In a few days it will be November 2023. Get it?
@@sheffieldshen148 Ther server meshing is amazing if it actually works. However this isn't the first time server meshing has been achieved. it just comes at a massive cost to performance which pretty much defeats the point. so if they really made it run this well that will be huge. As for changing the future of MMO... maybe? its hard to say. theres a lot of tricks devs can use to make the transition from one scene to another pretty smooth already.
I really appreciate your candor and honesty when narrating CIG’s history and why SQ42 in particular is such a major deal for everyone. I’m one of the loyal backers, but it’s good for me to be reminded of why so many people have such an axe to grind when it comes to this project. Love this video Morph. I can hear the renewed enthusiasm for this project throughout the entire thing. This CitCon seems to have really been a shot in the arm for you!
Ive been following this game for 10 years and backing/playing it for 6. i never really worried about the release date because once i started researching and got into the game and actually saw what they were trying to do i immediately understood the sheer scope of the project. I told myself itll be done when its done, and i believed they would deliver. I remember when PO was the only thing in game and seeing it evolve to the point its currently has proven to me that, although its not done, they are sticking to their word. After seeing the CitizenCon previews all i can do is tip my hat and pat them on the back because it looks like we are nearing a major milestone in gaming history.
That's the only reasonable attitude to have and it doesn't require any software development experience. Just common sense and any experience doing something hard. Well done you. The world is full of spoiled entitled brats though, unfortunately, and they all seem to live on YT...
This citizen con definitely reignited a lot of excitement for the game for me. I've been a backer since the original crowd funding of the game and the current scope that they've show off is more than I could have ever imagined from chris' original pitch. It's really cool to see so much new tech and content that is primed in the pipeline just waiting for the fine spit shine and release.
The fact that it's becoming real is stunning, I really want to play SQ42 now like I was impressed. Also bought the Zeus that was gorgeous 🥰 my first big purchase
Appreciate you putting this out and distilling the focus to the two most important pieces. Wholeheartedly agree and loved getting your perspective and insight!
I am really excited for SQ42 more then the PU. The single player experience for one will get you used to all the systems the game has. You could argue that you can learn in the PU but I see SQ42 and one immersive tutorial for the PU. Holding the line for another 12 months!
TLDR 1. Squadron is feature complete, only polishing and balancing is left. Probably going to release in 12 months for next citizen con around Christmas. 2. Server meshing works and has been tested at scale. We wont get server meshing this year, but Morph predicts Q1 next year.
This citizencon was simply amazing and full of emotion and passion. It was incredible. I really do hope Sq42 launches without a hitch and is a massive success because I have also been worried about it coming out to mediocre reviews or at worse, a failure. I don't think it will come out buggy though, I can imagine CR himself playtesting this game over and over again alongside all the other playtesters in CIG and will squash all the bugs they can (of course there will still be some, all games have some). I just hope the gameplay and story rocket themselves into more success because that means even more for the backers of our ludicrous space game.
Heeey you managed to speak with Chris himself, that's awesome! I've been following the coverage lightly, watching some of the press conferences here and there, this year has been pretty huge milestone for CIG and SC it seems, been waiting for your video covering the overall event. CIG has impressed a lot of people as of late, outside of the people usually in it's bubble. I have never played SC, but have been consistently following your coverage and the game's development over the years.
Excellent summary. Did notice that you and CR were chatting for a while (I wasn't in the line, just watching from the sidelines), glad you were able to gather some important sentiment from CR. It was my first CitizenCon, and what an event! Couldn't imagine it being any better. Hope we see these SQ42 features coming into the PU soon.
The scope of SC is crazy, but the one thing that keeps me positive and excited is every time Chris is doing his presentations every year, you can see, feel and hear the passion on him. You dont see that from a lot of CEOs of game companies these days because all they care about is the paycheck and are not directly involved in development. Chris Roberts for all intensive purposes is just as much in the know about his game as the devs are. Despite the mismanagement we have seen. He has remained just as passionate and hopeful.
Totally agree with the point of SQ42 needed to hit it out of the park. It's non negotiable imo. A bad release needing months if not years of patch fixes like a BF2042 situation would do massive damage to CIGs already less than stellar reputation. It would definitely turn away new sales and limit overall development resources. CIG would likely be forced to continue its shady unfinished ship sales strategy and annoy backers even more.
Thank god you've covered these two things. Most youtubers were barely mentioning SM at all when it's THE biggest news (for SC). Thank you so much for this and for your work overall, you're a king.
Back when I first backed in 2016 I was fully in it for star citizen, but recently and especially after that trailer I'm very happy my game package included S42. Its looking like everything I like from modern singleplayer games combined with the greats like half-life 2. It could still suck, but I'm more optimistic than i have been probably since my first backing.
I have been a very vocal critic of CIG over the last 18mths, this year in particular. And deservedly, they really neglected the PU, they oozed complacency internally in the face of ever increasing pledge ‘revenues’, and generally seemed to think the backers would accept a dysfunctional persistent universe and radio silence on everything else. What we saw at CitizenCon has for me reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the project. It was a triumph of substance over style, no dumb sandworms of demos of a Pyro system years away from completion, while hinting ‘the upcoming Pyro system’ was literally around the corner. This was a much more humble CIG who seem to have spent time assessing what they need to do, and understanding the value of the community and people like me who pledged substantial amounts (but only if I think the project deserves the backing). I thoroughly enjoyed the presentations, but for me the highlight by FAR was the demo of server meshing, which is as exciting (more so actually) than the first iteration of the persistent entity streaming layer. As for Squadron 42.. it looks outstanding and is going to make Starfield look laughably old fashioned when it releases (I say that as somebody who really enjoys Starfield). I really hope CIG do not rush the release now: take the time to test it thoroughly, make sure it’s as bug free as Starfield (which is exceptional from a game of that size on release), and make sure this cements CIG’s reputation in the wider gaming community. Unlike Bethesda they don’t have much of a reputation, so this is the time for them to make their mark by releasing it the right way.
if they get server meshing working it will change gaming forever. it will be the new MMO standard and in the next decade if this server meshing tech ends up working we will see other developers implementing this kind of technology into their games. I would love to see a server meshing battlefield war game that is like the game squad but takes place on an entire planet with territory control. with this kind of technology we can make that happen but first I need to see it to believe and and boy do I hope I see it.
Sever meshing is a technology that i think will truly ,for lack of a better word, revolutionize the space game, and MMO industry. The ability to lighten the over all server load by modularly running clusters of servers capable of interacting with one another for a more smooth experience to the players is strait out of science fiction and I am here for it. I can imagine CIG licensing the tech to other companies so they can do server meshing for their games. We could be living in a world with a server meshed star wars space game running on more improved versions of star engine in the next 10-15 years, Or fantasy MMO's where towns, sections of open fields and environments, dungeons and so on are all meshed servers rather than just one large server, allowing for tens of thousands of players to share the same game space. It's truly an amazing technology. Say what you will about the amount of money and time CIG has been raising and spending on Star Citizen/S42, but the tech they have developed from it is nothing short of awe inspiring and will launch the gaming industry into a new era.
Now imagine fleet's of ships like the Squadron 42 fleet, or bigger, facing off with a Vaandull fleet manned by players playing as Vaandull. It will be battle for history books. I See This happening someday.
3:35 Squadron 42 wasn't pitched alongside Star Citizen at the start, the original kickstarter was for Squadron 42 only. A vote was taken during the kickstarter to develop an open world version of SQ42 and this is where Star Citizen came from.
Must have been pretty early on, as SQ42 was part of the Kickstarter prior to it making over 400k (Oct 19th 2012, that was Day 2 of the Kickstarter campaign afaik). Would love to know your source, cause as it stands I'm calling BS.
@@firestarter18xRead my comment again. I said SQ42 was the original kickstarter, and a vote was taken during kickstarter to develop SC as an open world version. My source: I voted.
@@firestarter18x OP is 100% correct, you just read it backwards haha. SC was a stretch goal more or less (though the official stretch goals are all the crazy scope features of SC).
This is a misunderstanding. Both games were a part of the kickstarter. However Star Citizen was much smaller in scope. After a couple years of growth in funding the poll was taken and the scope increased.
@@jackinthebox301 It's not a misunderstanding at all. I was there. I voted. It was originally SQ42 only. The game when it entered kickstarter was called Star Citizen: Squadron 42. After a vote, it became Squadron 42 (the original pitch) as well as Star Citizen which was the MMO. The original kickstarter video even talks about it being one game, whereas it was split in to two separate games after the aforementioned vote. Yes, there were MMO intentions for SQ42, but it all happened in the same game. Whereas now they are two separate productions.
Yeah, we had an explantion from two french developpers, in a french twitch stream, who work in the server field for bank system and they explained how amazed they was to see this server in action and that, this architecture doesn't exist in other game cause this kind of developpment (at this level of skill) is usually done in other industries but not in the video game industries for different reasons (long time to developp and not cheap to developp, skillfull developper specialize in network and online not related to video games, usually game developper will use the fonctionatlity implemented in the multiplayer engine and won't put much work in the server tech). They finished by saying they was not really confident about cig work before seing that, but now they knew they had to put a TONS of work to get to this point, which ppl cannot really understand, and they was confident CIG was really working hard and not only selling JPEG.
I knew it! Been saying the release was 4th Qtr next year! We'll see tho...thanks again for another tremendous video. Great getting to meet you at CitizenCon and hope to catch up in the Verse with ARMCO
I'm glad we got to see more of the tools development in StarEngine as I think many people - like me - are ever curious how they will streamline processes to start cranking out planets, moons and locations at a higher rate.
I didn't expect much from citcon, but the engine video and the SQ42 were amazing (especially the bagpipes part of SQ42 vid). Hell I even started to think I might buy a ship a 3rd ship which I refused for a long time.
Cactus-Jack here. Hoped to meet you at the con but I missed ya! Enjoyed discovering the jump points with you prior to the Markers being added. Great Vid
regarding the interactions between items on different servers you saw it in the citizencon presentation, servers are only ever streamed out when they're unlikely to interact with players or with each other, in the demo the 3 servers areas Paul Reindell showed that he could be in a different server adjacent to another and shoot and affect (blow uo) an entity on a different server. Those servers exchange data all the time, its when 2 servers are in positions relative to each other that they wont affect any entity in its node hierarchy for a player to experience that it streams those assets out and uses the simplistic lightweight version for other things like interactions between various quanta when that system is implemented into meshing.
I remember the original pitch for the kickstarter being a game quite similar to Starfield... Cutscene transitions between space and ground, limited landing zones...
@@SmartassEyebrows The only stretch goal that can be related was the $41 Million one (announced March 31st, 2014) which discussed looking into procedural generation for _future iterations_ of Star Citizen. But perhaps when they saw the procedural planetary tech after the stretch goal they decided to integrate it right away since it appears to be part of Nyx's preview the following year. Even though they seemed to have added basic planetary tech by that time, I'm not even sure CIG knew when they did the _From Pupil to Planet_ towards the end of 2015 which showcased seamless ground to space just how much foundational changes that seamless transitioning would cause and how it would set the project back by a number of years. I think if they had realized the changes or time it would have taken, they never would have marketed SQ42 with the Answer the Call campaign in 2016 (at least I would hope they wouldn't have knowing all that).
You are correct. Its surprising how many don't know that. And my original game package in 2013 for $110 has now purchased me everything we have today and still coming. And CIG has never required me to spend anymore money to have it. I really don't get the scam tag on this project. In fact it seems the opposite of the definition of scam. Giving me more than promised for my money. Now go look at ED's kickstarter pitch, and see what they required from the players to continue to play. Look at what they still haven't accomplished in that pitch after 11 years. And see where its headed now. Now define scam again. When procedural planet tech was created, CIG gave the community a vote for "stick with the original plan, or expand the scope of it". About 85% voted for expansion. Here we are now. I been having a blast since we could log in.
@@festersmith8352 *_When procedural planet tech was created, CIG gave the community a vote for "stick with the original plan, or expand the scope of it". About 85% voted for expansion._* I don't know if it is looking back with rose colored glasses or what, but this is a common misconception by many of the most ardent supporters of CIG. In actuality, there were two polls related to expansion and both were in regards to stretch goals. The first one was in September of 2013 when _Letter from the Chairman: $19 Million_ was posted, and it specifically asked "What should we do with the crowdfunding counter after we reach our goal?" and 88% of backer responses voted for "Keep it up through development and continue to offer stretch goal rewards in addition to extra features and development milestones" which sounds like the majority wanted it. If you look at a resource like the Crowdfunding Development Spreadsheet, which has kept track of backer numbers during the course of development, you'll find out that 21076 backers voted. That means about 18.5k backers chose to keep going with stretch goals and they make up about 10% of the total backers at the time of about 179k backers. The second poll was in June of 2014 in _Letter from the Chairman: $46 Million_ was posted. It asked, "Should we continue to offer stretch goals?" with 34590 total backer responses to the question out of about 247k backers. Of those responses, 55% were "Yes" so about 7.7% of backers decided that more stretch goals were good. The important thing to remember is that only the people who had the most interest in the project were watching all the postings on the website and only they would have known about the polls so the polls were biased toward people who were most interested in expanding the game with further stretch goals. As I indicated earlier, at the end of March was the stretch goal about procedural generation for _future iterations_ of Star Citizen. But if you look at the _Letter from the Chairman: $47 Million_ which indicates the result of the final poll about stretch goals, here is what Chris said: "Speaking of stretch goals, last time around we put their future up to a vote. 54% of Citizens voted that we should continue to offer goals, and we’re going to honor that choice. As I said last time, every dollar supports Star Citizen’s persistent universe… but I’m not comfortable promising additional features with each million unless they’re truly additive. When we have a new idea that really impacts the final game and needs the funding then we’ll offer it here… but you can expect a number of player rewards and new ways of highlighting Arena Commander as immediate goals!" At the time he wrote that post, he in no way indicated that procedural planetary tech, seamless ground to sky, or anything else that severely altered the scope and time the game would take to produce were known about. Matter of fact, it looks like if something that major was going to be in the works, it would be told to the backers. What I haven't been able to find is _any_ indication that happened. The first glimpse we get of procedural planet tech might have been the Nyx Landing Zone Preview in August of 2015, but it wasn't until the _From Pupil to Planet_ video released in December that it was obvious that they had massively sized objects, possibly using procedural planet tech, in the game. I don't think Chris, or anyone else at CIG, fully knew what kind of delays and foundational adjustments would have been necessary for the game to incorporate seamless ground to space when they released that video. I think they knew some aspects, and probably had some sort of game plan, but they didn't let the backers know that it was likely going to cause a big delay. Had they communicated those aspects openly and honestly, like so many people seem to think they did, I'm not sure that they would have gotten as positive a response and the current game might not exist. Don't get me wrong. I definitely think that the changes have made Star Citizen unique and a better game in the long run, one need only to look at Starfield to see why, but I don't like this continued narrative that "CIG asked and backers agreed to expand the scope" is being presented as what happened when there were clear issues with CIG's communication when it came to negative news, issues, and delays.
I initially backed SQ42 way back in 2012 because I was a massive Wing Commander fan in the 90s and I wanted a spiritual successor. So I am very glad to see it finally becoming a reality, and it looks great! The cinematic presentation seems like a great blend of Wing Commander and Mass Effect Your analysis is correct overall, particularly in that CIG cannot afford to fumble SQ42's release or else it will jeopardise Star Citizen.
On the whole shooting across server boundary lines, that generally translates pretty well in other games. The problem which previous developers have run into when meshing servers across in-game boundaries, is that NPC scripting across the boundary either hangs and terminates or is overlooked. Part of the solution to this and DC or 30K bridging is to have servers handle everything from the adjacent servers (and vice-versa) which creates the situation demonstrated. In order to maintain a complete connection across a server outage, it will probably be necessary to run a third layer which offers a redundant data stream which the client can switch to if the current source stream is interrupted or corrupted. The key is simply scalability.
Server meshing need the replication layer for any of it to make sense. Because it would be dumb for each server to simulate what happens in the adjacent server, then work would basically quadrupled for each server alone. I hope the simulation for the server meshing will be simply a replication from the replication layer put to live, so it won't be taxing the server try to simulate what is happening in every adjacent server.
Citizencon was exactly what we as a community needed. A good deep look into why content has been slow. Why deadlines were pushed back. And what Patience is going to reward us. Seeing just how good SQ42 looks, gives us a good reason as to why it took so long. They've practically redone the entire thing to better fit with modern standards. And focusing on it, should now see us feeling some great improvements when it trickles in to SC. I really hope 42 is only a few months away. because if they can release it in the right window. I'm sure it'll have the same effect BG3 had for Larian studios. It'll pull a lot of people to the name.
Was nice to meet you at the event. I'm the guy who asked for some more architect reviews of buildings. Anyway, I think I picked a GREAT first Citizencon to attend, huh? Let's keep an eye on the first couple of deliverable reports on the road maps and see just how many of those awesome features we think we might get in our hands in the next 12 months. Keep in mind, the new cloud tech and some new character "heads" were promised for Q4 of 2023 and I think some of the progression features as well for gangs.
Another amazing video friend! CitizenCon was truly something special this year and I can't wait to see things come further into fruition. It was also amazing to finally meet you in person and be able to get a picture with you!!! Best time of my life!
Morph, I am too glad to have held the line :D. Since 2012, backed during the original crowdfunding campaign :). Honestly though I never had any doubts but that is just me being me :D. We celebrated Citcon as a watchparty at home and boy, it was an experience that we needed at least a week to properly digest.
I think I'm going to literally cry when I finally boot up SQ42 if it releases next year. I've already marked my calendary for (a) potential week(s) where I'm going to take a vacation and just enjoy the story. TEN YEARS. Finally.
Amazing video..im proud to have been on this journey with so many other people since the beginning. Server meshing has always been the big question mark for me and I couldn't be happier to hear this news..
I think the best part of SCs server meshing is the scale of what is possible. Right now, Eve Online servers slow to a crawl when 1000 players show up in the same area. In SC, 1000 players can have a combined arms battle. Server Meshing could just spin up a server to handle this 100 km region or so. Players packed so densely means that region wouldn't have to process any NPCs, and not really have to worry about much destruction. Then outside the 50km region the main server would handle any of the spillover traffic.
I am Glad you had a good time at Citizen Con Morph. With all the great things we saw, the future looks Bright! With you I will Hold the Line! See you next year.
9:00 I think it's important here to distinguish between "feature-complete" and "content-complete". While it's true that this means all of the major and likely most if not all of the minor gameplay features are now complete and in the game that doesn't necessarily mean that the game's story is complete. it just means that from now on there won't be any new gameplay elements or mechanics that need implementing which will definitely speed up development but if there truly was _only_ polishing left to do we'd likely have gotten at least a tentative release window.
I'm more hyped for SQ42 than SC, to be honest. I'm old enough to have played the Wing Commander games, and they were fantastic! The single player experience is where Chris Roberts has really shined in the past. I've been a backer of SC since 2014 and have a few ships, but I am convinced that SQ42 will be really great while I still have a lot of questions about SC, like will they be able to let players experience more than 5-10% of the game without being forced into PvP constantly? I don't want to be in endless dickmeasuringcontests just to be able to play the game. SQ42 will be amazing, I'm sure, and it might even give me more hunger for the combat part of SC. :)
I was the one standing in line right next to you while you were engaged in conversation with Chris. You were driving me crazy in the best way possible!🤯
I've lost hope so many times along the way. Been here since before there was anything to even play. This is honestly the brightest spot I remember in history. To finally have a product that's in it's home stretch, brings a tear to the eye. I just hope I'm alive to see it all release and be fully functioning products.
Funny how long term memory fades since 2014 > 2015 > 2016 > 2017 ... CIG stops talking about this stuff for 6 years then reiterates what they said 6 years ago and somehow it's like it's the first time they said any of this and are not repeating themselves. But wait ... they literally repeated themsevles circa 2017 !!!! The game was feature locked and asset complete in 2016 and wouild be released at athe end oif 2017 (BEFORE we got the Vertical Slice). Ignorance is bliss. AND evey single "positive" comment here is "EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES" worthy !!
@@uberfu Yea if you haven't actually learned about the development or have no understanding of software in general then I could see this. They had issues getting the game engine working how it needed to, to the point that they were going to pay for the engine to be modified but there was some type of business to business falling out. So they redid literally everything in lumberyard. As much as people usually don't want to hear that the first several years were wasted, they were to an extent as 2017-2018 is really when the development begin on what we have today as they had to recreate the old and then build from there. I wish CIG was more open with this info, but as it stands you've got to hunt to find the details, more than some passing comment or half baked explanation anyway. Also you have to understand the technologies at play :)
I think the server meshing tech demo was great, but there are some considerations that were not talked about during the demo. Remember during that demo he made it clear the entire stack was running on that PC. So there was 0 latency between the 3 servers and the replication server. Now without knowing what how the infrastructure in the real world will handle the environments in the game, I have to assume that for a given area all the servers(whatever number), need to be in the same datacenter or 'availability zone' you can read about azure availability zones to get an idea what I mean. Anyway, there has to be very little latency between the replication server and the universe servers. Additionally while they have mitigated resource utilization with streaming out areas where 'clients' are not present, this represents a large commitment in compute resources for the high availability the server meshing will offer as well as performance. It remains to be seen how this will scale with the persistent universe. I am not trying to sound skeptical, all I am pointing out here is that this demo will work and look great all running on the same PC. because 0 latency between the replicator and the servers running the PU. It will be interesting to see how this will scale and how it will handle clients coming from all over the world.
That live demo was done with a few laptops - but as far as the scalability of the tech goes - the way the P.U. runs now 1 server handles an entire solar system - having the replication layer just giving the servers what they need = a huge decrease in the load even if you just go from 1 server handling it all to 2 servers, instead. That demo didnt seem like much .. Anybody could recreate that same demo if they wanted - they would just need years of R&D and patenting and inventing tech to come up with their own solutions like the Object containers that can talk to the replication layer.. thats why ServerMeshing on a game scale was always 'theoretically' possible but nobody thought anybody would be able to get past the prerequisite tech hurdles to even get to the 'meshing' part
The game 'server' is basically just an instance; discreet copies of the server engine running on a platform. Seperate the idea of a 'game server' being a physical or virtual server. It is possible that a number of instances can run on one compute node. Neither Amazon or Microsoft muck around with connectivity, both platforms are capable of running gigantic dispersed workloads over connectivity with very low latency. The biggest latency is likely always going to be game running on a players computer, and the server(s) connected to. What has always been challenging isn't scale at speed (ie fast connectivity) as that's a solved issue for the most part. It's the individual instances being able to synchronize and share state, in real time. By adding an entity graph and tracking states across servers, they can be kept updated and as the client is connected to the same place the servers are, everything can be reliably tracked. It is not by accident that instances are geographically spread as they are. That won't (and can't) really change, with physics being what it is. In fact, breaking down areas into instances, means they can be much smaller, be modular, and operate more like containers than servers. Which means _many_ instances can fit on one compute node, and even spreading across compute nodes in the same data center isn't a huge issue with sorts of performance, iops and low latency now available. The thing you are concerned about, basically, has been a solved thing for some time; scale out vs scale up. It's the game world managing cross instance communication and entities, in real time, that's the tech that's pretty amazing and so important to the entire thing ever having the potential to work.
I personally assumed that the refocus on to Squadron 42 was meant as a pressure release for the team working on server meshing. As long as features where actively being worked on for Star Citizen I'm sure the devs that where supposed to be working on Server Meshing where feeling pressure to finish so that features like Pyro can be enabled, they very well may have been distracted and/or retasked temporarily to fix/help with some issues that popped up. With less focus on Star Citizen they can buckle down and focus on getting server meshing working with less pressure and distractons.
Only question i had during the server meshing part is when a server goes down, does one of the "linked" servers take over that portion while a new one starts up to take over
I suspect not... becasue each 'zone server' should be running near capacity (ideally, from a cost-optimisation perspective)... but that would mean they'd have no capacity to take on a second zone... and they can't split a zone across multiple servers, because that is - effectively - Dynamic Server Meshing.
For me CitCon as a presentation was a huge success. I was extremely happy after watching the two day show. Server meshing will succeed if enough resources and talent are used to drive its development. Nay sayers are people who simply give up too soon, while others keep focusing their efforts on the solution and the dream. Nice episode Morph 👌
14:07 I played Eve back when system was the smallest compute unit, that is not strictly the case anymore. Grid tactics are all about exploiting the creation, deletion, and merging of compute units, which CCP calls grids. Eve has multiple tiers of remoteness for remote processes. A system I do not believe can spread across multiple blades, but each blade has multiple compute units with dedicated RAM, and a system can be split between multiple of those with each grid cell in a single memory space. In game, a grid cell is everything that can see each other in space in real time. Small nitpick, but server meshing, as the term is used by CIG, covers systems similar to Eve's grid system as well as Eve's System system.
LOL I had the same problem at the 2017 CitCon with Chris Roberts. He is amazing to talk to but after 15 min the group too obviously waiting their turn was so big, I had to remind him other people wanted to speak to him too,
I really hope sq41 comes to pass. Regardless of the results though, SC and SQ41 can still safely be regarded as a scam (which seems to be becoming the way business is done now a days). Money is collected for something, then what was paid for is changed afterwards. What the money gets you also changes. The timelines seem to mean nothing, I'm all for quality over rushing to get something out, this does not mean you can just for any realistic estimates and thinking ahead of time. I recently read a piece praising project management of the golden gate bridge, since it was delivered ahead of time and under budged. While ignoring the other costs, like human life and a red bridge being called golden! What they seem to ignore is that now a days projects are started by people that are not limited by stupid things like knowledge, they sell it for what they think they can get for it and then "deal" with the consequences. Dealing with the consequences usually means two things. More lies and "explanations" to distract from the actual problem. Putting pressure on the executers of the project to come up with ways to get it done, often replacing people with knowledge for others with a presentation.
I think many people don't realize what it takes to do some programing. When you are honestly doing something new, there is no guarantee that you will come up with a solution. I'm sure they had a lot of reason to think they could get server meshing working, but it was never something that was 100% sure. I can only imagine the relief they had when they finally got it actually functioning.
I believe that if Squadron 42 comes out subpar in anyway, it might very well kill SC and any remaining faith the community has, hence why they HAVE to take all the time they need to deliver a near perfect product, their company's future relies on it.
If the server meshing is like the demo this could be a massive gaming moment like when game companies first made games that was a seamless start->finish without loading screens. The scale of that accomplishment cannot be understated for MMOs as a genre
Interesting hiccup I just spotted. -> 18:23 if you look closely, you can see that one entity is "bugged". Its authority still lies with the green server, even tho it is firmly inside the purple server. And this is consistent across the whole replication layer, as you can see that the red server (which has the purple server streamed out) still knows about the pico which decided to "stay" on the green server's authority. (the smaller object box down in the void is a pico that was shot off the walking layer during an earlier scene, but this one, altho visible on the red server, has the correct authority.)
Finally the tech is getting to a place where the core game is getting finalized. Once the core game is done then features can quickly be added. This is like getting the structure, plumbing, electrical etc of a house done. Now you can easily add on the furnishings and paint. This is an exciting time because over the next year you will see the core get finished. The features from Squadron ported over and tested. And the game reach a state where new features and systems can quickly be added.
The fact that CIG have developed the tools to build this game, built the engine along side those tools as well as build 2 games at the same time, that are cutting edge and only 2 years longer than Starfield took is an amazing feat in of itself. So to all you nay Sayers plz take your back seat and shove it where it don't shine.
Finally someone who doesnt treat the ''i held the line'' as cringe. With the amount of time, entire comunities of haters, lawsuits, broken and fullfilled promises. I think we can take the W this time
How is SQ-42 feature complete. Is it much smaller scope that Star Citizen? or is there still content to be added? They said polish... So it seems all the content is there? I didn't back Squadron 42 myself. All those years ago it sounded like Star Citizen does everything the single player campaign offered and more. At least for the scope they talked about. In 2015 I build a PC to try the alpha 2.whatever and now I am building a new PC again, because I haven't been able to play since 3.17
Yeah, S42 is your single player narrative experience. Think campaign a la Call of Duty and Ace Combat. Lots of set pieces, big production values. If you've played the original Wing Commander, it's the modern reincarnation. Star Citizen (the multiplayer) is getting the features developed for the singleplayer over the next 12 months and then continue to get more afterwards. As for S42, feature complete means there doesn't need to be new tech or gameplay systems added for the experience to work, but they do need to do passes to polish the experience. Think editing cutscenes, tweaking mission pace, balancing encounters, improving animations etc. But at least all the pieces are in place and you can hone in on a final vision. Optimization and bug fixing is last phase before release.
@@mudkipper1 Yeah they made a decision to focus on S42 development a while back. There's been a drought of content on the multiplayer side that definitely made my group of friends antsy about the project in general. Especially because we have very little idea of how the singleplayer is coming along. At least until this year's CitizenCon. I think what you're seeing from a lot of people that have followed, played or are familiar with the project is a collective sigh of relief.
'Feature Complete' means all the game systems, the mechanics, are decided upon locked in and functional. Content such as missions and cutscenes may be in any state of completeness, visuals could still need to be worked on, bugs could still need squishing. But no more game systems need to be created or designed.
Squadron 42 is actually what got me to pledge to the kickstarter. Now I spend my days wandering the verse in my 4 cheap ships (on my potato of a computer) I have 0 regrets.
It's not cheesy. In fact it's very appropriate and it's one statement that embodies the sentiment and commitment of all the backers that have withstood soooo much negativity over the years. So I say it proudly: I HELD THE LINE
Only had time to play in my cutlass a few times over the years, but at this point i have still gottten my moneys worth in the amount of entertainment, had and knowledge gained from following the content released on the various dev processes.
Server meshing was my litmus test for Star Citizen ever being a real thing. I have been waiting my entire life for server meshing if this type to exist. Even if Star Citizen fizzles out this integration of server meshing will change the landscape of online gaming for humanity going forward. I hope they release a white paper on just how they manage to achieve this holy grail of gaming connectivity.
If CitizenCon is in the UK next year, I'm definitely going to try to be there. Watching the presentations from this one on RUclips has been great as it is, and if your predictions are correct, next year's is going to be even more exciting. Here's hoping they're able to make it happen. Love to everyone at CIG for working so hard in the face of so much adversity, and love to you, Morphologis, for keeping such a quality spotlight on this fascinating project.
@Morphologis: We are not there yet with server-meshing. Just look at 18:13 in your video. One entity didn't switch to the other server ( green outline while on the violet server) even on this small scale. I hope there are able to solve this but I think it will take a little longer.
yes, and no - given this tech is only ~3 weeks old it'll definitely have bugs that need to be cleaned up (which is why they're not releasing is immediately)... but at the same time, a delay in handing over an entity isn't the end of the world, given that it can be seen and interacted with from both servers.
You did a great job explaining the necessity of server meshing. Most people just explain it in the context of expanding the game world, but no, it's most important application is making the "MMO" portion of the game possible. Without dynamic meshing and interaction over server boundaries, you couldn't have the large scale space battles Chris had envisioned. Well done! Happily holding the line since 2016 😊
That hinted release date has me so excited, even though it's later than my high hopes. I have a dedicated time to look forward to now though! Thanks Morph, such a good video :)
And of course, I forgot to add the link to the squadron 42 demo. So here ya go: ruclips.net/video/IDtjzLzs7V8/видео.htmlsi=zT2b1Wetj4jMyk3h
You called it a "demo" but that is not a "demo". That is pre-recorded footage in a presentation. And it honestly looks like a movie, not someone playing.
@@erufenrito66 "Demo" means "Demonstration" and recorded footage is a demonstration. For another use-case of 'demo' not meaning 'game', refer to Amiga Demoscene, which consists of MIDI music from the Amiga era, as well as, I believe, referring to the Amiga/Commodore era where skilled users released 'demos' of videos and effects on such systems that were far in excess of what one would normally expect such systems to be capable of performing.
It probably looks like a movie, because someone is playing it for the display value, not for themselves. Slow, smooth view input controls can help give this effect and are entirely doable with a controller or, with some practice, a mouse.
@@SnprMk7 Correct! Demo means demonstration. So if a=b then demo=demonstration. So you just regurgitated what I said. We got a demo that looks like pre-recorded footage.
You know what's easier than getting a production ready product and forcing a play tester to record slow panoramic footage?
pre-rendered fake on rails footage. A movie, if you will.
which is exactly what you just admitted this looks like lmfao.
@@erufenrito66 No, I did not regurgitate what you said. You are inherently disagreeing that what we got was a demo, in an implicit insistence that a demo can only be a game you can interact with, which is an incorrect statement.
I admitted it looks like someone is playing it as one would in the manner of someone making a Machinama would. Which is to say, a fucking human being is doing all this. Learn to read, and then learn to never again speak for another without getting confirmation that what's about to ooze forth from your mouth is actually true, firs and foremost.
You assume without evidence. Don't bother opening your mouth further unless you're ready to admit that all you're doing is succumbing to pessimism and fearmongering. Anything less will see you fall silent, like it or not.
that SQ42 "trailer" scene was such a throwback to things like Battlestar Galactica.
Just epic large scale space fleets get me every time.
The pan to the 2nd fleet literally gave me chills when I first saw it and it still does.
Felt like Halo 1-2 in a good way
Mass effect enters the chat
@@Maysy787 i replayed the first and 2nd mass effect like 4 times ^^
Indeed, and the music xarried it big time!
I was always very passivly looking at star citizen waiting for it to be playable enough and only ever playing with friends during a few free flights. This Citizencon actually got me hyped for the future of this game for the first time ever!
don't play on free flights, the servers already don't like the normal amount of people. with free flight, it's often unplayable.
Don't do it, save your money until it's done. If you can't resist, just buy a 35 USD package and don't give them ANOTHER dime. Know that your money for SC will be going to SQ42 n not SC. See, CR has no interest in the MMO gameplay. He is not a fan. Chris has been quoted, several times, saying he doesn't care for MMOs.
Dont get too excited. Game still pretty frustrating.
@@rikixassBro CR literally said he cried when the team first showed him the birth of server meshing. I'm pretty sure he likes MMOs to some degree.
SQ42 will (hopefully) be the intro and proof so many prospective players have been waiting for. Something you can finally sink your teeth into and get a feel for what a finished CIG project will feel like.
This citizencon was a huge and much needed injection of trust in the project. Last couple of years had been really underwhelming. Hype is back in full force
We'll see if the hype and "trust" can persist.
First order of business for CIG would be to deliver on the things they said would still be rolled out in Q4 this year.
That in itself would already be showing that CIG can keep their word (some would say "promise") for once.
Let us judge them by their actions, not just their words.
@@avon_c6199 We are judging them on their actions. The actions being developing the Star Engine, something which will put a dent in the history of gaming, to say the least; having S42 nearly complete & being better than ever, and server meshing being achieved. There's a lot of action, the problem is that people only define "release to the market" as action.
After seeing what Star Engine is capable of idc about the timestamps anymore, give em a couple more years if they need it; this is easily the most game-changing project in the history of the industry. People keep asking for a true next-gen experience, complaining about suits forcing devs to push out half-baked games without enough development; Star Citizen is the answer to those complaints.
Ye, all those people seeing the latest trailers / videos will be v disappointed when they hit the current PU. Not time to lose to bring all that goodness over immediately.
As always after every CitizenCon
@@Nykandroscome on man, Star Engine put a dent in the History of Gaming? Really? How old are you?
Oh and “star Engine” is basically a modified cryengine 3.7, they get to name it now, because Amazon made lumberyard open source.
Have you seen cryengine 5 , or even unreal engine 5?
I know you are hyped for the game, but dial down the copium.
I was so enthusiastic that I even asked for a day off on Monday because I wanted to be able to watch all of it.
And that CitCon was phenomenal to say the least. Even from afar and through a screen.
Seeing the SQ42 section with all the new UI elements, the map... I was blown away.
And when I saw the Server Meshing demo... Boy!
I'm a software engineer. And I REALLY appreciated how smooth, solid that demo was.
ucraine flag....brainwashed
@@Turican76nobody cares, stooge.
It's a demo. You're very easily impressionable.
As a developer myself ignore the other idiot replies. We can appreciate how difficult what they demoed is.
As we have been doing for the past 10 years. Thank you for the message of support. 🤘🏼@@tlove21
Some of us originally backed mostly for SQ42 more than the PU. I enjoy the Pu as well, but I really want Squadron to get finished. I also understand that about half the work of SQ42 carriesd over to the PU as well.
I really hope SQ42 does well enough for them to do the planned sequals to it as well. A true modern successor to the Wing Commander franchise is still my hope.
Same here. When I backed in October 2012 the PU was nothing but a stretch goal.
Oh man, Getting a live demo of the server meshing tech is so bloody exciting!! I know this is still going to be a fair ways off but goddam, the crazy bastards did it :D
Good luck to the teams working on this, very keen for SQ42 and very keen for the future of SC!
the crazy bastards did it --- cringe
So great how we got to hear from the devs about the progress on SQ42 and it being feature complete
Didn't they say it was feature complete years ago? Does this whole community have Biden brain?
I backed Star citizen all the way back in 2015. I never thought it was a scam but over the long years I had lost a lot of trust in the company. This Citizencon made me feel a little bit like how I did when the PTU was first released all those years ago. Here’s hoping SQ42 is a success and by citizencon 2025 we might even have a release timeline for Star Citizen itself.
Until it releases and has all the promised features working as shown, I'll keep considering it a scam.
I would be stoked if I'm proven wrong though.
@@thepaidninja6077 Here is what I don´t understand about people like you:
Why does it have to be a "Scam", meaning CIG KNOW they CAN NOT deliver and yet still continue their fundraising,
Instead of CIG simply being UNABLE TO DELIVER as promised?
While plagued by delays the development has made constant progress on a timescale that is not dissimilar to large projects of established studios. Just how long has GTA 6 been in development again?
There is also the fact that the technology to support the project does not, or after Citizen Con, DID not exist but it was ASSUMED TO BE POSSIBLE.
I can completely understand people who have little to now trust in CIG being able to finish the project (thus assuming incompetence), I fail to see exactly where people get the idea that there is deceptive intent, which is what a Scam is.
I think 2027 is more realistic
@@thepaidninja6077I was on the scam bandwagon thanks to Derek Smart until they showed the Star Engine trailer and demonstrated server meshing this weekend and said Squadron 42 is feature complete. Now I see that Chris has taken so long because he just wants to make the ultimate game of all games. Smart said the game would be impossible and he knows this because he has experience in this realm. Server meshing and being feature complete proves that Smart was wrong.
@@sircastic959 until it releases with all features it is a scam, giving examples of other game companies is totally useless as i trust no gaming companies.
I don't have to give you examples of the numerous amount of times game companies have showed/ promised amazing games with mind-blowing features and have delivered shit all or have just released a game that has done bare minimum to pass off as mid at best. My thumb rule is to never pre order/ get hyped about anything these game companies promise until it's delivered and assume they will scam us with all the micro transactions. Especially when a game has stupidly expensive micro transactions in their early access stages.
If you are optimistic about this not being a scam good for you, but until i see the completed game release with all promised features working as intended I'll continue assuming it's a scam.
You could tell he really wanted to give the date, lol. Chris seems like a legit good dude who's extremely passionate about his creation.
Chris is absolutely a passionate creator more than he is a cunning project manager. It's only taken how many excitedly announced internal goal dates to realize that targeting something internally will be taken by the public as an announced release date. I think it really does weigh on him to not be shouting out when he is scheduling the big items to be done. It's ultimately good that he isn't announcing dates without certainty but it would be nice to know where he thinks things are at.
Chris Roberts is a dreamer. It has both been a blessing and a curse.
Apparently he let slip at the CC VIP event after a few beers he expects it to be ready for CC 2954. This makes sense
I missed the part about the Idris slipup. I'd heard earlier in the year that they had a release target towards of the end of next year, but it's nice to hear that it's still their target. I just hope they delay it a little if the game needs it, as I'd much rather have a polished game a bit later than a rushed game sooner.
Do not worry CR will not release the update until it is completely fully polished. Also if everything goes according to plan and they do not run into any blockers during the polish phase you more than likely will see many of the ships that you've been waiting on.
I am myself I'm waiting on a number of the big ship site on like the Polaris, BMM, Orion if possible and many others.
From now until the end of next year it's going to be an extremely exciting time for us and it will be absolutely awesome as well.
You won’t see the Idris anytime soon because the ship with a full crew will still completely kil the server meshing shard into a crying heap of molten metal.
@@tropicthndr That makes no sense. Sure, an Idris would take up a quarter of a current server's population if fully crewed (it rarely ever will be as most people would be doing nothing), but that's not exactly going to kill the server. There's been parties on 890 Jumps with pretty much the entire server on them and it was more or less fine, and this is before we have meshed servers to reduce the load.
Regardless, we're not seeing it any time soon because it's not releasing until SQ42 does, which is going to be at least a year.
I can't wait to see how some of the set pieces look when they have added global illumination.
They already look insanely good.
Regardless of how everything else goes i am confident we are going to see close to movie quality battle scenes in this game and i am here for it.
I can't wait to see people make entire shows in game. I'll gladly be watching them :)
I've always held a more positive outlook on the project and never felt it was a scam. I've been a backer since the Kickstarter. I'm a network infrastructure engineer, and while I have no direct involvement with game development, I know how incredibly difficult it is. Plus, my best friend owned a game development company so I have personal insight into how difficult it can be. For this reason I never felt the game was a scam. CIG is pioneering a ton of new technologies that have never been done before. If people truly understood what this means then they would understand why it's taken 11 years to get this far.
Game development is nightmare difficulty. CIG isn't playing on nightmare difficulty. They're playing on ridiculously insane just might be impossible difficulty. Once we look back in history at what CIG showcased at this citizencon I believe we will realize how momentous and groundbreaking this presentation truly was.
This scam narrative is just dumb and has become a bad meme. Starfield was in active development for 8 years, and the Bethesda engine still can't handle vehicles. Hello? Why is it not called Scamfield? Ten times the bs?
Because people often don't think rational about things and jump to silly conclusions. Like if scepticism was a genius trait, flat eather would be our leaders.
But a real sceptic person is also sceptic about his own opinions, or its just bias.
Very well put. This is a company that was 7-8 years ahead with there engine then what a dedicated engine development company like Unreal was. What Unreal engine 5 has brought now, CIG had achieved that in 2015-16 and had it fully working in-game in a live environment. I had moments of frustration thru the years for sure, but the monumental achievements thru the years had me always believing that this is an incredible group of extremely talented ppl. Thank you for your insight.
@@madrooky1398what makes it a scam by definition is that during the Kickstarter when they asked us for money... they said the game would be released November 2014.
In a few days it will be November 2023. Get it?
How do u think about the sever meshing tech? Some said that this would change the future of MMO, but haven't heard many opinions from professionals.
@@sheffieldshen148 Ther server meshing is amazing if it actually works. However this isn't the first time server meshing has been achieved. it just comes at a massive cost to performance which pretty much defeats the point. so if they really made it run this well that will be huge.
As for changing the future of MMO... maybe? its hard to say. theres a lot of tricks devs can use to make the transition from one scene to another pretty smooth already.
I really appreciate your candor and honesty when narrating CIG’s history and why SQ42 in particular is such a major deal for everyone. I’m one of the loyal backers, but it’s good for me to be reminded of why so many people have such an axe to grind when it comes to this project.
Love this video Morph. I can hear the renewed enthusiasm for this project throughout the entire thing. This CitCon seems to have really been a shot in the arm for you!
Ive been following this game for 10 years and backing/playing it for 6. i never really worried about the release date because once i started researching and got into the game and actually saw what they were trying to do i immediately understood the sheer scope of the project. I told myself itll be done when its done, and i believed they would deliver. I remember when PO was the only thing in game and seeing it evolve to the point its currently has proven to me that, although its not done, they are sticking to their word. After seeing the CitizenCon previews all i can do is tip my hat and pat them on the back because it looks like we are nearing a major milestone in gaming history.
That's the only reasonable attitude to have and it doesn't require any software development experience. Just common sense and any experience doing something hard. Well done you. The world is full of spoiled entitled brats though, unfortunately, and they all seem to live on YT...
This citizen con definitely reignited a lot of excitement for the game for me. I've been a backer since the original crowd funding of the game and the current scope that they've show off is more than I could have ever imagined from chris' original pitch. It's really cool to see so much new tech and content that is primed in the pipeline just waiting for the fine spit shine and release.
The fact that it's becoming real is stunning, I really want to play SQ42 now like I was impressed. Also bought the Zeus that was gorgeous 🥰 my first big purchase
Appreciate you putting this out and distilling the focus to the two most important pieces. Wholeheartedly agree and loved getting your perspective and insight!
I am really excited for SQ42 more then the PU. The single player experience for one will get you used to all the systems the game has. You could argue that you can learn in the PU but I see SQ42 and one immersive tutorial for the PU.
Holding the line for another 12 months!
Good to see that the game is going somewhere!
TLDR
1. Squadron is feature complete, only polishing and balancing is left. Probably going to release in 12 months for next citizen con around Christmas.
2. Server meshing works and has been tested at scale. We wont get server meshing this year, but Morph predicts Q1 next year.
This citizencon was simply amazing and full of emotion and passion. It was incredible. I really do hope Sq42 launches without a hitch and is a massive success because I have also been worried about it coming out to mediocre reviews or at worse, a failure. I don't think it will come out buggy though, I can imagine CR himself playtesting this game over and over again alongside all the other playtesters in CIG and will squash all the bugs they can (of course there will still be some, all games have some). I just hope the gameplay and story rocket themselves into more success because that means even more for the backers of our ludicrous space game.
Heeey you managed to speak with Chris himself, that's awesome! I've been following the coverage lightly, watching some of the press conferences here and there, this year has been pretty huge milestone for CIG and SC it seems, been waiting for your video covering the overall event. CIG has impressed a lot of people as of late, outside of the people usually in it's bubble. I have never played SC, but have been consistently following your coverage and the game's development over the years.
Excellent summary. Did notice that you and CR were chatting for a while (I wasn't in the line, just watching from the sidelines), glad you were able to gather some important sentiment from CR. It was my first CitizenCon, and what an event! Couldn't imagine it being any better. Hope we see these SQ42 features coming into the PU soon.
The scope of SC is crazy, but the one thing that keeps me positive and excited is every time Chris is doing his presentations every year, you can see, feel and hear the passion on him. You dont see that from a lot of CEOs of game companies these days because all they care about is the paycheck and are not directly involved in development. Chris Roberts for all intensive purposes is just as much in the know about his game as the devs are. Despite the mismanagement we have seen. He has remained just as passionate and hopeful.
Totally agree with the point of SQ42 needed to hit it out of the park. It's non negotiable imo. A bad release needing months if not years of patch fixes like a BF2042 situation would do massive damage to CIGs already less than stellar reputation. It would definitely turn away new sales and limit overall development resources. CIG would likely be forced to continue its shady unfinished ship sales strategy and annoy backers even more.
"shady unfinished ship sales stratagy" 🤣
Thank god you've covered these two things. Most youtubers were barely mentioning SM at all when it's THE biggest news (for SC).
Thank you so much for this and for your work overall, you're a king.
Yeah I couldn’t help tearing up with the Server Meshing presentation. Very pivotal moment for the future of the project.
Back when I first backed in 2016 I was fully in it for star citizen, but recently and especially after that trailer I'm very happy my game package included S42. Its looking like everything I like from modern singleplayer games combined with the greats like half-life 2. It could still suck, but I'm more optimistic than i have been probably since my first backing.
the Squadron 42 FPS is giving me old school Crysis vibes both aesthetically in performance.
I have been a very vocal critic of CIG over the last 18mths, this year in particular. And deservedly, they really neglected the PU, they oozed complacency internally in the face of ever increasing pledge ‘revenues’, and generally seemed to think the backers would accept a dysfunctional persistent universe and radio silence on everything else.
What we saw at CitizenCon has for me reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the project. It was a triumph of substance over style, no dumb sandworms of demos of a Pyro system years away from completion, while hinting ‘the upcoming Pyro system’ was literally around the corner. This was a much more humble CIG who seem to have spent time assessing what they need to do, and understanding the value of the community and people like me who pledged substantial amounts (but only if I think the project deserves the backing).
I thoroughly enjoyed the presentations, but for me the highlight by FAR was the demo of server meshing, which is as exciting (more so actually) than the first iteration of the persistent entity streaming layer. As for Squadron 42.. it looks outstanding and is going to make Starfield look laughably old fashioned when it releases (I say that as somebody who really enjoys Starfield). I really hope CIG do not rush the release now: take the time to test it thoroughly, make sure it’s as bug free as Starfield (which is exceptional from a game of that size on release), and make sure this cements CIG’s reputation in the wider gaming community. Unlike Bethesda they don’t have much of a reputation, so this is the time for them to make their mark by releasing it the right way.
if they get server meshing working it will change gaming forever. it will be the new MMO standard and in the next decade if this server meshing tech ends up working we will see other developers implementing this kind of technology into their games. I would love to see a server meshing battlefield war game that is like the game squad but takes place on an entire planet with territory control. with this kind of technology we can make that happen but first I need to see it to believe and and boy do I hope I see it.
Sever meshing is a technology that i think will truly ,for lack of a better word, revolutionize the space game, and MMO industry. The ability to lighten the over all server load by modularly running clusters of servers capable of interacting with one another for a more smooth experience to the players is strait out of science fiction and I am here for it. I can imagine CIG licensing the tech to other companies so they can do server meshing for their games. We could be living in a world with a server meshed star wars space game running on more improved versions of star engine in the next 10-15 years, Or fantasy MMO's where towns, sections of open fields and environments, dungeons and so on are all meshed servers rather than just one large server, allowing for tens of thousands of players to share the same game space. It's truly an amazing technology. Say what you will about the amount of money and time CIG has been raising and spending on Star Citizen/S42, but the tech they have developed from it is nothing short of awe inspiring and will launch the gaming industry into a new era.
Now imagine fleet's of ships like the Squadron 42 fleet, or bigger, facing off with a Vaandull fleet manned by players playing as Vaandull. It will be battle for history books. I See This happening someday.
3:35 Squadron 42 wasn't pitched alongside Star Citizen at the start, the original kickstarter was for Squadron 42 only. A vote was taken during the kickstarter to develop an open world version of SQ42 and this is where Star Citizen came from.
Must have been pretty early on, as SQ42 was part of the Kickstarter prior to it making over 400k (Oct 19th 2012, that was Day 2 of the Kickstarter campaign afaik). Would love to know your source, cause as it stands I'm calling BS.
@@firestarter18xRead my comment again. I said SQ42 was the original kickstarter, and a vote was taken during kickstarter to develop SC as an open world version.
My source: I voted.
@@firestarter18x OP is 100% correct, you just read it backwards haha. SC was a stretch goal more or less (though the official stretch goals are all the crazy scope features of SC).
This is a misunderstanding. Both games were a part of the kickstarter. However Star Citizen was much smaller in scope. After a couple years of growth in funding the poll was taken and the scope increased.
@@jackinthebox301 It's not a misunderstanding at all. I was there. I voted. It was originally SQ42 only. The game when it entered kickstarter was called Star Citizen: Squadron 42. After a vote, it became Squadron 42 (the original pitch) as well as Star Citizen which was the MMO. The original kickstarter video even talks about it being one game, whereas it was split in to two separate games after the aforementioned vote. Yes, there were MMO intentions for SQ42, but it all happened in the same game. Whereas now they are two separate productions.
YOU CAN'T JUST HIT ME WITH THE 2ND FLEET REVEAL IN THE OPENING MORPH! Somehow every time I hear that Hurdy Gurdy I get cold chills.
Squadron is important as the financial bread and butter for as long as new expanding story chapters can be imagined.
Yeah, we had an explantion from two french developpers, in a french twitch stream, who work in the server field for bank system and they explained how amazed they was to see this server in action and that, this architecture doesn't exist in other game cause this kind of developpment (at this level of skill) is usually done in other industries but not in the video game industries for different reasons (long time to developp and not cheap to developp, skillfull developper specialize in network and online not related to video games, usually game developper will use the fonctionatlity implemented in the multiplayer engine and won't put much work in the server tech). They finished by saying they was not really confident about cig work before seing that, but now they knew they had to put a TONS of work to get to this point, which ppl cannot really understand, and they was confident CIG was really working hard and not only selling JPEG.
CiG has done a great job with animating NPC eye tracking. It actually looks like live people looking at the person they're talking to.
I knew it! Been saying the release was 4th Qtr next year! We'll see tho...thanks again for another tremendous video. Great getting to meet you at CitizenCon and hope to catch up in the Verse with ARMCO
I'm glad we got to see more of the tools development in StarEngine as I think many people - like me - are ever curious how they will streamline processes to start cranking out planets, moons and locations at a higher rate.
I didn't expect much from citcon, but the engine video and the SQ42 were amazing (especially the bagpipes part of SQ42 vid). Hell I even started to think I might buy a ship a 3rd ship which I refused for a long time.
Cactus-Jack here. Hoped to meet you at the con but I missed ya! Enjoyed discovering the jump points with you prior to the Markers being added.
Great Vid
regarding the interactions between items on different servers you saw it in the citizencon presentation, servers are only ever streamed out when they're unlikely to interact with players or with each other, in the demo the 3 servers areas Paul Reindell showed that he could be in a different server adjacent to another and shoot and affect (blow uo) an entity on a different server.
Those servers exchange data all the time, its when 2 servers are in positions relative to each other that they wont affect any entity in its node hierarchy for a player to experience that it streams those assets out and uses the simplistic lightweight version for other things like interactions between various quanta when that system is implemented into meshing.
I'm more curious now about the Battleship version of the Bengal Class seen in the fleet to the right of the bengal center on screen at 0:15
In lore it appears to be a Cruiser. Astro historians most recent video touches on it, it’s worth checking out.
A slight correction/clarification: Squadron was the initially pitched product, the MMO Star Citizen was a stretch goal.
I remember the original pitch for the kickstarter being a game quite similar to Starfield...
Cutscene transitions between space and ground, limited landing zones...
The power of kickstarter stretch goals
@@SmartassEyebrows The only stretch goal that can be related was the $41 Million one (announced March 31st, 2014) which discussed looking into procedural generation for _future iterations_ of Star Citizen. But perhaps when they saw the procedural planetary tech after the stretch goal they decided to integrate it right away since it appears to be part of Nyx's preview the following year. Even though they seemed to have added basic planetary tech by that time, I'm not even sure CIG knew when they did the _From Pupil to Planet_ towards the end of 2015 which showcased seamless ground to space just how much foundational changes that seamless transitioning would cause and how it would set the project back by a number of years. I think if they had realized the changes or time it would have taken, they never would have marketed SQ42 with the Answer the Call campaign in 2016 (at least I would hope they wouldn't have knowing all that).
Yep, and the MMO was more like what Elite Dangerous did with their instances and instance matchmaking.
You are correct. Its surprising how many don't know that.
And my original game package in 2013 for $110 has now purchased me everything we have today and still coming. And CIG has never required me to spend anymore money to have it.
I really don't get the scam tag on this project. In fact it seems the opposite of the definition of scam. Giving me more than promised for my money.
Now go look at ED's kickstarter pitch, and see what they required from the players to continue to play.
Look at what they still haven't accomplished in that pitch after 11 years. And see where its headed now.
Now define scam again.
When procedural planet tech was created, CIG gave the community a vote for "stick with the original plan, or expand the scope of it".
About 85% voted for expansion.
Here we are now.
I been having a blast since we could log in.
@@festersmith8352 *_When procedural planet tech was created, CIG gave the community a vote for "stick with the original plan, or expand the scope of it". About 85% voted for expansion._*
I don't know if it is looking back with rose colored glasses or what, but this is a common misconception by many of the most ardent supporters of CIG. In actuality, there were two polls related to expansion and both were in regards to stretch goals. The first one was in September of 2013 when _Letter from the Chairman: $19 Million_ was posted, and it specifically asked "What should we do with the crowdfunding counter after we reach our goal?" and 88% of backer responses voted for "Keep it up through development and continue to offer stretch goal rewards in addition to extra features and development milestones" which sounds like the majority wanted it. If you look at a resource like the Crowdfunding Development Spreadsheet, which has kept track of backer numbers during the course of development, you'll find out that 21076 backers voted. That means about 18.5k backers chose to keep going with stretch goals and they make up about 10% of the total backers at the time of about 179k backers. The second poll was in June of 2014 in _Letter from the Chairman: $46 Million_ was posted. It asked, "Should we continue to offer stretch goals?" with 34590 total backer responses to the question out of about 247k backers. Of those responses, 55% were "Yes" so about 7.7% of backers decided that more stretch goals were good.
The important thing to remember is that only the people who had the most interest in the project were watching all the postings on the website and only they would have known about the polls so the polls were biased toward people who were most interested in expanding the game with further stretch goals. As I indicated earlier, at the end of March was the stretch goal about procedural generation for _future iterations_ of Star Citizen. But if you look at the _Letter from the Chairman: $47 Million_ which indicates the result of the final poll about stretch goals, here is what Chris said:
"Speaking of stretch goals, last time around we put their future up to a vote. 54% of Citizens voted that we should continue to offer goals, and we’re going to honor that choice. As I said last time, every dollar supports Star Citizen’s persistent universe… but I’m not comfortable promising additional features with each million unless they’re truly additive. When we have a new idea that really impacts the final game and needs the funding then we’ll offer it here… but you can expect a number of player rewards and new ways of highlighting Arena Commander as immediate goals!"
At the time he wrote that post, he in no way indicated that procedural planetary tech, seamless ground to sky, or anything else that severely altered the scope and time the game would take to produce were known about. Matter of fact, it looks like if something that major was going to be in the works, it would be told to the backers. What I haven't been able to find is _any_ indication that happened. The first glimpse we get of procedural planet tech might have been the Nyx Landing Zone Preview in August of 2015, but it wasn't until the _From Pupil to Planet_ video released in December that it was obvious that they had massively sized objects, possibly using procedural planet tech, in the game.
I don't think Chris, or anyone else at CIG, fully knew what kind of delays and foundational adjustments would have been necessary for the game to incorporate seamless ground to space when they released that video. I think they knew some aspects, and probably had some sort of game plan, but they didn't let the backers know that it was likely going to cause a big delay. Had they communicated those aspects openly and honestly, like so many people seem to think they did, I'm not sure that they would have gotten as positive a response and the current game might not exist.
Don't get me wrong. I definitely think that the changes have made Star Citizen unique and a better game in the long run, one need only to look at Starfield to see why, but I don't like this continued narrative that "CIG asked and backers agreed to expand the scope" is being presented as what happened when there were clear issues with CIG's communication when it came to negative news, issues, and delays.
I initially backed SQ42 way back in 2012 because I was a massive Wing Commander fan in the 90s and I wanted a spiritual successor. So I am very glad to see it finally becoming a reality, and it looks great! The cinematic presentation seems like a great blend of Wing Commander and Mass Effect Your analysis is correct overall, particularly in that CIG cannot afford to fumble SQ42's release or else it will jeopardise Star Citizen.
Honestly, i didnt watch any recaps until i saw this come up, was waiting eagerly (It's just your voice man, its so easy to listen too)
i was eagerly awaiting your coverage on this, Morph. it is always a pleasure.
Video hasn't even been uploaded a minute ago, but I already know it's gonna be of top quality.
I think you're absolutely right. If SQ42 is a bust, it's game over. That being said, I have high hopes based on what we've seen from CitCon!
Hi Morph! Didn't get to see you in person during citizencon, but we shared the hype!
On the whole shooting across server boundary lines, that generally translates pretty well in other games. The problem which previous developers have run into when meshing servers across in-game boundaries, is that NPC scripting across the boundary either hangs and terminates or is overlooked. Part of the solution to this and DC or 30K bridging is to have servers handle everything from the adjacent servers (and vice-versa) which creates the situation demonstrated. In order to maintain a complete connection across a server outage, it will probably be necessary to run a third layer which offers a redundant data stream which the client can switch to if the current source stream is interrupted or corrupted. The key is simply scalability.
Server meshing need the replication layer for any of it to make sense. Because it would be dumb for each server to simulate what happens in the adjacent server, then work would basically quadrupled for each server alone. I hope the simulation for the server meshing will be simply a replication from the replication layer put to live, so it won't be taxing the server try to simulate what is happening in every adjacent server.
Citizencon was exactly what we as a community needed. A good deep look into why content has been slow. Why deadlines were pushed back. And what Patience is going to reward us.
Seeing just how good SQ42 looks, gives us a good reason as to why it took so long. They've practically redone the entire thing to better fit with modern standards. And focusing on it, should now see us feeling some great improvements when it trickles in to SC. I really hope 42 is only a few months away. because if they can release it in the right window. I'm sure it'll have the same effect BG3 had for Larian studios. It'll pull a lot of people to the name.
Was nice to meet you at the event. I'm the guy who asked for some more architect reviews of buildings. Anyway, I think I picked a GREAT first Citizencon to attend, huh? Let's keep an eye on the first couple of deliverable reports on the road maps and see just how many of those awesome features we think we might get in our hands in the next 12 months. Keep in mind, the new cloud tech and some new character "heads" were promised for Q4 of 2023 and I think some of the progression features as well for gangs.
Another amazing video friend! CitizenCon was truly something special this year and I can't wait to see things come further into fruition. It was also amazing to finally meet you in person and be able to get a picture with you!!! Best time of my life!
Im so glad to be a part of this since the beginning :D
Golden ticket crew sound off!
Morph, I am too glad to have held the line :D. Since 2012, backed during the original crowdfunding campaign :). Honestly though I never had any doubts but that is just me being me :D. We celebrated Citcon as a watchparty at home and boy, it was an experience that we needed at least a week to properly digest.
I think I'm going to literally cry when I finally boot up SQ42 if it releases next year. I've already marked my calendary for (a) potential week(s) where I'm going to take a vacation and just enjoy the story. TEN YEARS. Finally.
Amazing video..im proud to have been on this journey with so many other people since the beginning. Server meshing has always been the big question mark for me and I couldn't be happier to hear this news..
I think the best part of SCs server meshing is the scale of what is possible.
Right now, Eve Online servers slow to a crawl when 1000 players show up in the same area.
In SC, 1000 players can have a combined arms battle. Server Meshing could just spin up a server to handle this 100 km region or so. Players packed so densely means that region wouldn't have to process any NPCs, and not really have to worry about much destruction. Then outside the 50km region the main server would handle any of the spillover traffic.
I am Glad you had a good time at Citizen Con Morph. With all the great things we saw, the future looks Bright! With you I will Hold the Line! See you next year.
CIG's senior technical lead needs a serious raise. I hope his team got a patent for server meshing
Multiple patents.
9:00 I think it's important here to distinguish between "feature-complete" and "content-complete".
While it's true that this means all of the major and likely most if not all of the minor gameplay features are now complete and in the game that doesn't necessarily mean that the game's story is complete. it just means that from now on there won't be any new gameplay elements or mechanics that need implementing which will definitely speed up development but if there truly was _only_ polishing left to do we'd likely have gotten at least a tentative release window.
I'm more hyped for SQ42 than SC, to be honest. I'm old enough to have played the Wing Commander games, and they were fantastic! The single player experience is where Chris Roberts has really shined in the past.
I've been a backer of SC since 2014 and have a few ships, but I am convinced that SQ42 will be really great while I still have a lot of questions about SC, like will they be able to let players experience more than 5-10% of the game without being forced into PvP constantly? I don't want to be in endless dickmeasuringcontests just to be able to play the game.
SQ42 will be amazing, I'm sure, and it might even give me more hunger for the combat part of SC. :)
Severmeshing is literally insane. I am so hyped for the future of the game with this tech.
I was the one standing in line right next to you while you were engaged in conversation with Chris. You were driving me crazy in the best way possible!🤯
I've lost hope so many times along the way. Been here since before there was anything to even play. This is honestly the brightest spot I remember in history. To finally have a product that's in it's home stretch, brings a tear to the eye. I just hope I'm alive to see it all release and be fully functioning products.
Funny how long term memory fades since 2014 > 2015 > 2016 > 2017 ... CIG stops talking about this stuff for 6 years then reiterates what they said 6 years ago and somehow it's like it's the first time they said any of this and are not repeating themselves. But wait ... they literally repeated themsevles circa 2017 !!!! The game was feature locked and asset complete in 2016 and wouild be released at athe end oif 2017 (BEFORE we got the Vertical Slice). Ignorance is bliss. AND evey single "positive" comment here is "EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES" worthy !!
@@uberfu Also if Pyro was almost ready to be released in 2019 then why do they only have a limited demo of it ready now?
@@uberfu Yea if you haven't actually learned about the development or have no understanding of software in general then I could see this. They had issues getting the game engine working how it needed to, to the point that they were going to pay for the engine to be modified but there was some type of business to business falling out. So they redid literally everything in lumberyard. As much as people usually don't want to hear that the first several years were wasted, they were to an extent as 2017-2018 is really when the development begin on what we have today as they had to recreate the old and then build from there.
I wish CIG was more open with this info, but as it stands you've got to hunt to find the details, more than some passing comment or half baked explanation anyway. Also you have to understand the technologies at play :)
I think the server meshing tech demo was great, but there are some considerations that were not talked about during the demo. Remember during that demo he made it clear the entire stack was running on that PC. So there was 0 latency between the 3 servers and the replication server. Now without knowing what how the infrastructure in the real world will handle the environments in the game, I have to assume that for a given area all the servers(whatever number), need to be in the same datacenter or 'availability zone' you can read about azure availability zones to get an idea what I mean. Anyway, there has to be very little latency between the replication server and the universe servers. Additionally while they have mitigated resource utilization with streaming out areas where 'clients' are not present, this represents a large commitment in compute resources for the high availability the server meshing will offer as well as performance. It remains to be seen how this will scale with the persistent universe.
I am not trying to sound skeptical, all I am pointing out here is that this demo will work and look great all running on the same PC. because 0 latency between the replicator and the servers running the PU. It will be interesting to see how this will scale and how it will handle clients coming from all over the world.
That live demo was done with a few laptops - but as far as the scalability of the tech goes - the way the P.U. runs now 1 server handles an entire solar system - having the replication layer just giving the servers what they need = a huge decrease in the load even if you just go from 1 server handling it all to 2 servers, instead. That demo didnt seem like much .. Anybody could recreate that same demo if they wanted - they would just need years of R&D and patenting and inventing tech to come up with their own solutions like the Object containers that can talk to the replication layer.. thats why ServerMeshing on a game scale was always 'theoretically' possible but nobody thought anybody would be able to get past the prerequisite tech hurdles to even get to the 'meshing' part
The game 'server' is basically just an instance; discreet copies of the server engine running on a platform. Seperate the idea of a 'game server' being a physical or virtual server. It is possible that a number of instances can run on one compute node. Neither Amazon or Microsoft muck around with connectivity, both platforms are capable of running gigantic dispersed workloads over connectivity with very low latency. The biggest latency is likely always going to be game running on a players computer, and the server(s) connected to.
What has always been challenging isn't scale at speed (ie fast connectivity) as that's a solved issue for the most part. It's the individual instances being able to synchronize and share state, in real time. By adding an entity graph and tracking states across servers, they can be kept updated and as the client is connected to the same place the servers are, everything can be reliably tracked.
It is not by accident that instances are geographically spread as they are. That won't (and can't) really change, with physics being what it is. In fact, breaking down areas into instances, means they can be much smaller, be modular, and operate more like containers than servers. Which means _many_ instances can fit on one compute node, and even spreading across compute nodes in the same data center isn't a huge issue with sorts of performance, iops and low latency now available.
The thing you are concerned about, basically, has been a solved thing for some time; scale out vs scale up. It's the game world managing cross instance communication and entities, in real time, that's the tech that's pretty amazing and so important to the entire thing ever having the potential to work.
I wasn't able to pay good attention, and needed a tldr, which you delivered, thanks!
Was so excited to see meshing in action, even at a small scale. We are close!
I personally assumed that the refocus on to Squadron 42 was meant as a pressure release for the team working on server meshing. As long as features where actively being worked on for Star Citizen I'm sure the devs that where supposed to be working on Server Meshing where feeling pressure to finish so that features like Pyro can be enabled, they very well may have been distracted and/or retasked temporarily to fix/help with some issues that popped up. With less focus on Star Citizen they can buckle down and focus on getting server meshing working with less pressure and distractons.
Only question i had during the server meshing part is when a server goes down, does one of the "linked" servers take over that portion while a new one starts up to take over
I suspect not... becasue each 'zone server' should be running near capacity (ideally, from a cost-optimisation perspective)... but that would mean they'd have no capacity to take on a second zone... and they can't split a zone across multiple servers, because that is - effectively - Dynamic Server Meshing.
For me CitCon as a presentation was a huge success. I was extremely happy after watching the two day show.
Server meshing will succeed if enough resources and talent are used to drive its development.
Nay sayers are people who simply give up too soon, while others keep focusing their efforts on the solution and the dream.
Nice episode Morph 👌
It was such a good Con and it was wonderful to meet you there. I was standing behind you in line for meeting the man Chris Roberts!
14:07 I played Eve back when system was the smallest compute unit, that is not strictly the case anymore. Grid tactics are all about exploiting the creation, deletion, and merging of compute units, which CCP calls grids. Eve has multiple tiers of remoteness for remote processes. A system I do not believe can spread across multiple blades, but each blade has multiple compute units with dedicated RAM, and a system can be split between multiple of those with each grid cell in a single memory space. In game, a grid cell is everything that can see each other in space in real time. Small nitpick, but server meshing, as the term is used by CIG, covers systems similar to Eve's grid system as well as Eve's System system.
LOL I had the same problem at the 2017 CitCon with Chris Roberts. He is amazing to talk to but after 15 min the group too obviously waiting their turn was so big, I had to remind him other people wanted to speak to him too,
I really hope sq41 comes to pass. Regardless of the results though, SC and SQ41 can still safely be regarded as a scam (which seems to be becoming the way business is done now a days).
Money is collected for something, then what was paid for is changed afterwards. What the money gets you also changes. The timelines seem to mean nothing, I'm all for quality over rushing to get something out, this does not mean you can just for any realistic estimates and thinking ahead of time.
I recently read a piece praising project management of the golden gate bridge, since it was delivered ahead of time and under budged. While ignoring the other costs, like human life and a red bridge being called golden! What they seem to ignore is that now a days projects are started by people that are not limited by stupid things like knowledge, they sell it for what they think they can get for it and then "deal" with the consequences.
Dealing with the consequences usually means two things. More lies and "explanations" to distract from the actual problem. Putting pressure on the executers of the project to come up with ways to get it done, often replacing people with knowledge for others with a presentation.
I think many people don't realize what it takes to do some programing. When you are honestly doing something new, there is no guarantee that you will come up with a solution. I'm sure they had a lot of reason to think they could get server meshing working, but it was never something that was 100% sure. I can only imagine the relief they had when they finally got it actually functioning.
It's finally done, it's finally feature complete. Wow. Chills. Now the polish, I'm excited for this solo adventure that we all will take together.
I believe that if Squadron 42 comes out subpar in anyway, it might very well kill SC and any remaining faith the community has, hence why they HAVE to take all the time they need to deliver a near perfect product, their company's future relies on it.
If the server meshing is like the demo this could be a massive gaming moment like when game companies first made games that was a seamless start->finish without loading screens.
The scale of that accomplishment cannot be understated for MMOs as a genre
Interesting hiccup I just spotted. -> 18:23
if you look closely, you can see that one entity is "bugged". Its authority still lies with the green server, even tho it is firmly inside the purple server.
And this is consistent across the whole replication layer, as you can see that the red server (which has the purple server streamed out) still knows about the pico which decided to "stay" on the green server's authority.
(the smaller object box down in the void is a pico that was shot off the walking layer during an earlier scene, but this one, altho visible on the red server, has the correct authority.)
Finally the tech is getting to a place where the core game is getting finalized. Once the core game is done then features can quickly be added. This is like getting the structure, plumbing, electrical etc of a house done. Now you can easily add on the furnishings and paint. This is an exciting time because over the next year you will see the core get finished. The features from Squadron ported over and tested. And the game reach a state where new features and systems can quickly be added.
The fact that CIG have developed the tools to build this game, built the engine along side those tools as well as build 2 games at the same time, that are cutting edge and only 2 years longer than Starfield took is an amazing feat in of itself. So to all you nay Sayers plz take your back seat and shove it where it don't shine.
Finally someone who doesnt treat the ''i held the line'' as cringe. With the amount of time, entire comunities of haters, lawsuits, broken and fullfilled promises. I think we can take the W this time
Got to get better rig than our current ones. Even ones in the 2020s rigs be outdated when theses games release.
How is SQ-42 feature complete. Is it much smaller scope that Star Citizen? or is there still content to be added? They said polish... So it seems all the content is there?
I didn't back Squadron 42 myself. All those years ago it sounded like Star Citizen does everything the single player campaign offered and more. At least for the scope they talked about.
In 2015 I build a PC to try the alpha 2.whatever and now I am building a new PC again, because I haven't been able to play since 3.17
Yeah, S42 is your single player narrative experience. Think campaign a la Call of Duty and Ace Combat. Lots of set pieces, big production values. If you've played the original Wing Commander, it's the modern reincarnation. Star Citizen (the multiplayer) is getting the features developed for the singleplayer over the next 12 months and then continue to get more afterwards.
As for S42, feature complete means there doesn't need to be new tech or gameplay systems added for the experience to work, but they do need to do passes to polish the experience. Think editing cutscenes, tweaking mission pace, balancing encounters, improving animations etc. But at least all the pieces are in place and you can hone in on a final vision. Optimization and bug fixing is last phase before release.
I heard this from someone else so Idk how true it is but I heard most of there dev resources were being used on SQ-42
@@mudkipper1 Yeah they made a decision to focus on S42 development a while back. There's been a drought of content on the multiplayer side that definitely made my group of friends antsy about the project in general. Especially because we have very little idea of how the singleplayer is coming along. At least until this year's CitizenCon.
I think what you're seeing from a lot of people that have followed, played or are familiar with the project is a collective sigh of relief.
'Feature Complete' means all the game systems, the mechanics, are decided upon locked in and functional.
Content such as missions and cutscenes may be in any state of completeness, visuals could still need to be worked on, bugs could still need squishing.
But no more game systems need to be created or designed.
I've been a fan of the project and a backer since 2015. It's been rough at times, but it's great to see things really coming together now.
Squadron 42 is actually what got me to pledge to the kickstarter. Now I spend my days wandering the verse in my 4 cheap ships (on my potato of a computer)
I have 0 regrets.
It's not cheesy. In fact it's very appropriate and it's one statement that embodies the sentiment and commitment of all the backers that have withstood soooo much negativity over the years. So I say it proudly: I HELD THE LINE
Only had time to play in my cutlass a few times over the years, but at this point i have still gottten my moneys worth in the amount of entertainment, had and knowledge gained from following the content released on the various dev processes.
Server meshing was my litmus test for Star Citizen ever being a real thing. I have been waiting my entire life for server meshing if this type to exist. Even if Star Citizen fizzles out this integration of server meshing will change the landscape of online gaming for humanity going forward. I hope they release a white paper on just how they manage to achieve this holy grail of gaming connectivity.
If CitizenCon is in the UK next year, I'm definitely going to try to be there. Watching the presentations from this one on RUclips has been great as it is, and if your predictions are correct, next year's is going to be even more exciting. Here's hoping they're able to make it happen.
Love to everyone at CIG for working so hard in the face of so much adversity, and love to you, Morphologis, for keeping such a quality spotlight on this fascinating project.
@Morphologis: We are not there yet with server-meshing. Just look at 18:13 in your video. One entity didn't switch to the other server ( green outline while on the violet server) even on this small scale. I hope there are able to solve this but I think it will take a little longer.
yes, and no - given this tech is only ~3 weeks old it'll definitely have bugs that need to be cleaned up (which is why they're not releasing is immediately)... but at the same time, a delay in handing over an entity isn't the end of the world, given that it can be seen and interacted with from both servers.
No shit. Why do you think its not in the live build? Because they just don't feel like it?
You did a great job explaining the necessity of server meshing. Most people just explain it in the context of expanding the game world, but no, it's most important application is making the "MMO" portion of the game possible. Without dynamic meshing and interaction over server boundaries, you couldn't have the large scale space battles Chris had envisioned.
Well done! Happily holding the line since 2016 😊
Good summary. I just hope they'll deliver both Server Meshing and Squadron 42 within the next 12 months. We'll see.
It's a very 90's sci-fi vision - Robert's second go at making a movie/game about big space fleets and hotshot combat pilots.
CitizenCon was absolutely amazing this year. The roar of the crowd. It thundered. One of the best times of my life seriously. Such a great showing.
That hinted release date has me so excited, even though it's later than my high hopes. I have a dedicated time to look forward to now though! Thanks Morph, such a good video :)
Morphologis is just space dad at this point, helping his space younglings to understand our crazy space game