New Tech - Server Meshing

[treasure]

Hey guys, wondering what your thoughts are on this.  star citizen are getting ready to release their server meshing tech.  essentially it is where the servers do a lot more processing, relieving the load on local CPU and GPU.  it is invisaged that this tech will enable more seamless gameplay in so called "supergames" that will essentially be the future of games.  games with limitless scale.  anyhow i dont want to say too much about it as i will no doubt short sell it.  a search on star citizen server meshing will bring up lots of results. and just to keep the algorithm happy, i dont play start citizen and this is not a promo for it.  i only heard about it as one of my fav games reviewer started playing it.  ultimatly dcs will go full earthmap, its inevitable (but i dont want to kick start that discussion again)  with a full destructible earth thats going to need something more.

[Grimes]

Well one is an MMO and the other isn't. The whole concept of a game between the two are vastly different. In the context of Star Citizen's Persistent Universe and server meshing the idea is for person A to be on one side of the galaxy while person B is on the other, each have their position, well everything about them really, saved in persistence on the same database, but their actions occur on different servers. There could be hundreds of servers all interacting with the same database. If player A attempts to travel to player B then as they transit different locations they will be migrated to different servers as needed. 

In DCS the state of the world is effectively an "instance" to borrow from MMO nomenclature. It isn't intended for the game to be a unified experience and world state. What is going on within a mission is only relevant to that mission. There is no persistence nor does DCS even feature a save/load functionality within a given mission. There are scripts that attempt persistence but the functionality is limited. Can't load current ammo state, object orientation, exact tasks, weapons that are already launched, unit damage state, etc.

[Mars Exulte]

On 9/2/2022 at 3:55 PM, treasure said:

Hey guys, wondering what your thoughts are on this.  star citizen

  Well, considering that developers tendency to promise the moon and then deliver an oreo, I'd discount everything they have to say offhand.

 Addressing the matter directly, Star Citizen and DCS are very different. One is an MMO, the other is not nor will ever be. Both simulate physics and systems, but DCS is a bit mire intensive plus sensitive to latency. In other words, some stuff can't be offloaded to another system, it has to be done on yours because even milisecond delays are likely to introduce significant deviations.

 Ever seen players/ships warping around due to a bad net connection? That's latency, when there's a discrepancy between where you are and where the server thinks you are and the warping is the periodic updated communications. Some stuff can be done ''offsite'' some can't, because of a similar issue.

[KenaiPhoenix]

I have been following Start Citizen since 2013, and got my first ships a couple of years ago (I have a Constellation). The game is vastly different, the only way this "tech" could be useful for DCS to move to MMO style multiplayer with a 100 players in really large maps. I think that's out of the picture for the devs, but im not gonna lie and told you that's a good idea, imagine some kind of Fox Hole but in DCS with people flying and other commanding the ground troops.

Now, for the "Tech"... it is mainly smoke and mirrors sadly. They have been stating how that new tech is SO powerful that is gonna make the game playable, the truth is that it is not. I dont want to get off topic but the Star Citizen has been really mismanaged to the point other games like X, Elite, and other are doing what they still can't and all in stables builds. So be aware of some YouTubers, the truth is that in the game you are gonna experience a lot death because you clip through the floor, your ship just exploded because reasons, etc.

So I honestly don't think this new tech is gonna be revolutionary or that DCS will ever use it. I have years believing it will change the gaming world but its been almos 10 years and the game still lags terribly. 

[dmatsch]

Star Citizen is the most shameless and pervasive money-grabbing microtransaction vaporware scheme that I've ever heard of.  

Everyone knows that this "game" will never be complete and/or playable.  Meanwhile Chris Roberts is making 300+ million off of this POS

[Dragon1-1]

It's the perfect illustration of "too much of a good thing" principle. If he was working on a normal budget, with normal goals, he could have gotten it done and then grown it organically. He does a history of highly successful games. Instead, he bought into his own hype. Worst thing is, he's wasn't even proposing anything truly revolutionary or never done before.

Funny thing is, Roberts already tried this once. Microsoft told him to stuff it and release already. The result was the half-finished, but still immensely fun Freelancer.

[Mars Exulte]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

It's the perfect illustration of "too much of a good thing" principle. If he was working on a normal budget, with normal goals, he could have gotten it done and then grown it organically.

  No project he personally ran has ever been ''on budget'' afaik, which is kinda the problem.

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

He does a history of highly successful games.

  His successes were generally tied to having somebody running roughshod over him to kee him on task.

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Instead, he bought into his own hype.

  Him and his wife both are wannabe Hollywood celebrities. He's actually.turned out a couple movies, that imo, were pretty decent but he wants to make a blockbuster, not a video game, that's a big part of the issue. A whole raft of A and B list celebrities? For what? At best that's just pissing off money to feed his ego.

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Worst thing is, he's wasn't even proposing anything truly revolutionary or never done before.

  Yeah, I mean in principle he's.just combining several genres, each of which have indeed been done separately before... which is kinda the point, it's a lot to try to combine all that together and make it work coherently.

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Funny thing is, Roberts already tried this once. Microsoft told him to stuff it and release already. The result was the half-finished, but still immensely fun Freelancer.

  I believe the issue was he was pilfering funds from Microsoft, who wrote him a blank check based on his Wingcommander rep, to make that awful Wingcommander movie. They didn't tell him ''release it already'', they fired him and had to finish the game themselves with somebody else, a process that took another couple years because he had made exactly zero real headway.

 

Me hearing about all this a couple months into the fundraising was when I realised the project was screwed and we had all been had. I helped organise most of my entire clan's ''divestment of Star Citizen assets''. In the years since, I have been vindicated by the condition of it. There's bits of a game there, pieces of fun, but nothing coherent. After this many years, sure maybe it's a ''evolving project'' but there shouldn't still be core mechanics being hammered out. They should have the framework finished and be fleshing it out with content.

Instead, we've got a whole lot of disjointed <profanity>. Just a rafter here, a room over there, part of a concrete foundation and some plumbing over there but only one wall.