Wow, that loaded extremely fast and runs very smoothly. It feels very un-browser-y, really impressive.
Star Citizen's ARK Starmap
61–70 of 78 posts
Re: Star Citizen's ARK Starmap
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are making it sound good... I can't imagine playing any FPS at 40FPS. And 40sec of load time on an SSD? That's a lot if you ask me. Fortnite loads in It's great hat they are making improvements, but as another commenter said it seems like they haven't polished core gameplay enough -at least not enough for me to care.
One thing to note about Star Citizen is that you load into the universe once and that's it. Assuming no crashes (it'll happen someday) you can play for hours across multiple space stations and planets without another loading screen.
I hope they do stream assets on the fly and loading is masqueraded by stuff like travel time. 99.99% of the universe will be invisible at any given time conservatively speaking, likely more. Loading the whole thing doesn't seem the right direction.
Re: Star Citizen's ARK Starmap
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the actual game, the FPS kills their otherwise really fun UI. I finally got to play it at 40 FPS or more recently and it makes an insane difference to how it all feels. It doesn't feel clunky or broken when it's running properly. You also start to understand some of their choices when you play for a while and feel the built in pacing of the game. It's not a flashy fast paced space call of duty. Every interaction i…
Ah, the "it's still alpha" defense. The KSP player's lament. (Or subnautica, or any other popular alpha in nrecent years.) Problems that persist in alphas tend to never get fixed. Improvements are only ever incremental. If you arent happy with the alpha, you wont be happy with the final product.
never saw ksp eva issues fixed and at this point I just lost hope. doesn't help that the whole mvp team quit by now.
Re: Star Citizen's ARK Starmap
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing to note about Star Citizen is that you load into the universe once and that's it. Assuming no crashes (it'll happen someday) you can play for hours across multiple space stations and planets without another loading screen.
I hope they do stream assets on the fly and loading is masqueraded by stuff like travel time. 99.99% of the universe will be invisible at any given time conservatively speaking, likely more. Loading the whole thing doesn't seem the right direction.
I believe that falls under the "object container streaming" system slated for 3.3 (end of Q3), which a new engine system for efficiently nesting containers. Situations like a room in a ship in a hangar in a space station in a planet's orbit in a star system, such that the parts you need can load in and out seamlessly.
There's also related work with getting things like ship spawning off the main thread and improving the networking so that it only sends you data that's relevant to areas you're in.
Hopefully this stuff doesn't get pushed further down the schedule because it should make a big difference to performance.
You can see their development roadmap online: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/1-Star-Citi...
Re: Star Citizen's ARK Starmap
#65On Edge and Safari it's just an interface over a black screen. For a video game to reach a wider audience, should this not be a little more compatible with us boring old vanilla users?
I just now tried again and it works. Maybe it was just bandwidth or they fixed something. Both?
Re: Star Citizen's ARK Starmap
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the actual game, the FPS kills their otherwise really fun UI. I finally got to play it at 40 FPS or more recently and it makes an insane difference to how it all feels. It doesn't feel clunky or broken when it's running properly. You also start to understand some of their choices when you play for a while and feel the built in pacing of the game. It's not a flashy fast paced space call of duty. Every interaction i…
Ah, the "it's still alpha" defense. The KSP player's lament. (Or subnautica, or any other popular alpha in nrecent years.) Problems that persist in alphas tend to never get fixed. Improvements are only ever incremental. If you arent happy with the alpha, you wont be happy with the final product.
If the game ever stops being alpha in the first place. Why leave alpha if people will still buy your game and also defend its flaws?
Re: Star Citizen's ARK Starmap
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, the "it's still alpha" defense. The KSP player's lament. (Or subnautica, or any other popular alpha in nrecent years.) Problems that persist in alphas tend to never get fixed. Improvements are only ever incremental. If you arent happy with the alpha, you wont be happy with the final product.
I personally wish it was closed Alpha to be honest. I get tired of repeating myself to those expecting an alpha like what other companies release. 75% of the game isn't actually in the Alpha yet, so there is a long way to go before it's representative of the final product.
That is the lament, the prayer of the alpha customer. What will happen is that one day the money will run out. Then the game goes live regardless of its current state. Maybe you get that 75% but far more likely you will get whatever the last patch was, plus a couple bugfixes. Hope for 75 but expect 5%.
Re: Star Citizen's ARK Starmap
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing to note about Star Citizen is that you load into the universe once and that's it. Assuming no crashes (it'll happen someday) you can play for hours across multiple space stations and planets without another loading screen.
That's a good point about loading times. I haven't played it yet and was just assuming it needs a load screen from system to system.
If Elite is anything to go by, they 'hide' the loading by showing you flashy 'jump' animations. IMO it takes far too long to get anywhere - and I've traveled in a similar way in Eve Online.
Re: Star Citizen's ARK Starmap
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, the "it's still alpha" defense. The KSP player's lament. (Or subnautica, or any other popular alpha in nrecent years.) Problems that persist in alphas tend to never get fixed. Improvements are only ever incremental. If you arent happy with the alpha, you wont be happy with the final product.
never saw ksp eva issues fixed and at this point I just lost hope. doesn't help that the whole mvp team quit by now.
New bugs in latest version make it unplayable for me. Faint hope that they will be fixed. Gave up on longstanding bugs ever being fixed mamy years ago.
Re: Star Citizen's ARK Starmap
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good point about loading times. I haven't played it yet and was just assuming it needs a load screen from system to system.
If Elite is anything to go by, they 'hide' the loading by showing you flashy 'jump' animations. IMO it takes far too long to get anywhere - and I've traveled in a similar way in Eve Online.
Yes, travel from one place to another isn't instantaneous, and they "hide" the loading while you travel. But the game's not supposed to be a fast paced space shooter (check out Everspace for that!), and I don't think they'd take out the travel times even if they could. Trips between moons are maybe 10 seconds, and trips between planets will be longer. But it's very pretty, and the visual effects make it feel fast. Canonically I believe quantum drive around a system is moving about 0.2c.
If you don't want a "quantum drive" scene going from one place to another, you're also free to make a seamless flight using regular engines! Port Olisar to Daymar takes a bit under 10 hours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_iXlgxsEVc (timelapse of that trip condensed to 15 minutes)
And if you're in something bigger than a single seat fighter, you can get up and do other stuff around your ship while it's traveling, but it's not a good idea in areas with pirates. Still, more options than a Mass Effect elevator.
Flying around a planet/moon all the way down to the surface, getting out of your ship and walking around, and going inside the various outposts happens completely seamlessly. I've only fired it up a couple times since beta 3.1 came out, but my first trip down to Yela was pretty mindblowing.