BeansnBread said: what point does an estimation serve?
They are meant to estimate, not to assurance. On the reality of development, especially a large-scale project at this, this will float constantly. Even if you finish your task within the deadline, how can you ever accurately estimate bugs and the time they will take to fix?
Then obviously a company will internally want the most out of dev-time, so they won't be giving soft deadlines for their tasks.... and we are getting such internal data.
BeansnBread said: what point does an estimation serve?
They are meant to estimate, not to assurance. On the reality of development, especially a large-scale project at this, this will float constantly. Even if you finish your task within the deadline, how can you ever accurately estimate bugs and the time they will take to fix?
Then obviously a company will internally want the most out of dev-time, so they won't be giving soft deadlines for their tasks.
Taking a comment out of context like that is to be expected from you.
Taking a comment out of context like that is to be expected from you.
What I get on your context is that you're frustrated as they admitted on its disclaimer, that the dates given will in many cases be changed as the development flows.
I guess they perhaps would require a PR/Marketing "translation" of the dev workflow when it comes to the estimates, giving soft-estimates instead.
Taking a comment out of context like that is to be expected from you.
What I get on your context is that you're frustrated as they admitted on its disclaimer, that the dates given will in many cases be changed as the development flows.
I guess people like you, they perhaps would require a PR/Marketing "translation" of the dev workflow when it comes to the estimates, giving soft-estimates instead.
People "like me" are made slightly woozy by how often they break deadlines. This is another blatant example and will continue to be an example of that until they decide that it's too toxic because they fail to meet their deadlines. I am witnessing a dishonest company take advantage of consumers good will by over-promising and under-delivering.
But I agree with you that these are fake deadlines. They are useless in any real world scenario since they are not going to be met.
But I agree with you that these are fake deadlines. They are useless in any real world scenario since they are not going to be met.
It feels that for some people this less filtered feed of the information they work with internally seems to confuse/frustrate people as to why they give dates that will most likely be changed.
They try to clarify the process but that seems to not be enough.
That's why I kinda agree they shouldn't publish their internal estimates like this, they should pass through PR/Marketing before reaching the community.
But I agree with you that these are fake deadlines. They are useless in any real world scenario since they are not going to be met.
It feels that for some people this less filtered feed of the information they work with internally seems to confuse/frustrate people as to why they give dates that will most likely be changed.
They try to clarify the process but that seems to not be enough.
That's why I kinda agree they shouldn't publish their internal estimates, they should pass through PR/Marketing before reaching the community.
It doesn't confuse me. It's quite clear what they are doing.
They are promising something they not only won't deliver on, but can't deliver on. And it has been evidenced, again, and within a week.
BeansnBread said: They are promising something they not only won't deliver on, but can't deliver on. And it has been evidenced, again, and within a week.
That's not true, for example on the Schedule of 2.6 had its own tasks who got deadlines changed every week and the ones that met their deadlines.
The ones facing delays, the most complex, bugs, dependencies, even one engineer who got sick forced a feature to be cut from 2.6, that's just how it rolls.
BeansnBread said: They are promising something they not only won't deliver on, but can't deliver on. And it has been evidenced, again, and within a week.
That's not true, for example on the Schedule of 2.6 had its own tasks who got deadlines changed every week and the ones that met their deadlines.
The ones facing delays, the most complex, bugs, dependencies, even one engineer who got sick forced a feature to be cut from 2.6, that's just how it rolls.
One note on your last bit, it's been one week since the schedule was made public, not since this tasks had been scheduled and started dev.
That they can convince people that meeting deadlines is no longer important is amazing to me in its own right. All they have to do is tell people that nothing is set in stone, present them with a huge list of things that they can't possibly be expected to produce and then pronounce it is completely normal not to meet deadlines.
Even here you are asking me why I am so confused. You act like I don't understand production schedules and that it's normal for everything to be delayed at all times. Somehow, they have convinced you that their extreme lack of adherence to deadlines makes perfect sense (no matter how much money they take in based on those deadlines).
(no matter how much money they take in based on those deadlines).
The disclaimers are there, loud and clear, about what it is and how the process works, they are telling you the opposite of set in stone. You can go there and read the caveats before the schedule is presented. If they are getting money based such deadlines, for sure it's not by implying something they are not.
(no matter how much money they take in based on those deadlines).
The disclaimers are there, loud and clear, about what how the process works, they are telling you the opposite of set in stone. You can go there and read the caveats before the schedule is presented.
If they are taking money based such deadlines, for sure it's not by implying something they are not.
If only those were the only deadlines they lied about.
Like you imply, obviously these "estimations" don't actually mean anything. If they can mis-estimate over half of their estimations, what point does an estimation serve? After all, according to you, "they are only estimations." There is no reason why anyone should expect them to meet their goals. Estimations, according to you, are meant to be broken. This only means that their schedule is actually bullshit.
I miss over 90% of my own estimations about how long my trip to work takes, but last time I was late was is November.
Estimations rarely hit bullseye, and you should not expect nor demand them to hit bullseye. You should only expect them to be reasonably close and only complain if they are missed by a lot. Not treat them like deadlines. Deadlines are different thing.
That's not to say that Star Citizen wouldn't have given us plenty reason and them some more for how they've totally failed to meet many of their estimations over the years. But if you extend your complain to every estimation that gets missed a bit, and thus to something that's completely normal, you just devalue the good argument that you could make.
Vrika said: But if you extend your complain to every estimation that gets missed a bit, and thus to something that's completely normal, you just devalue the good argument that you could make.
Do you not see what is wrong with this statement? If every estimation gets missed a bit (they are actually being missed by months already), then there is a serious issue. I understand the concept you are trying to explain to me, but in this case, I believe it works the other way around.
They are using this to pretend like delays are completely normal and you are supporting it. From now on, every delay is to be expected because it is just an estimate. That June 29th date... Do you think they will hit it with all of that stuff on the list? Of course not. But ideally for them, everyone will accept that it was inevitable that they did not live up to their promises.
The 3.0 patch needs to have everything they showed last August plus vastly improved netcode / client performance or you can kiss a general release of SC goodbye for at least another 3 years.
If i was betting they will either:
Release a very limited patch in June with whatever they have ready, or
Delay the patch until it has something more meaningful in it. Think Christmas.
They need to start delivering now or the project is dead in the water.
On the other hand if something gets misestimated by 200% that is liable to cause a chain reacting where other teams need to redo their own plans because something they needed is not ready yet, efficiency all around the studio drops, and both budget and schedule are exceeded by a lot.
Yup this is the big headache of producers when a task delays to the extent other scheduled tasks with that dependency can't work until it is done that can cause the biggest delays.
Then the worse thing you can't estimate is the bugs you'll consider blockers, how much time until they are dealt with.
Wouldn't it still be a delay with swapping being the reason for the delay?
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
On the other hand if something gets misestimated by 200% that is liable to cause a chain reacting where other teams need to redo their own plans because something they needed is not ready yet, efficiency all around the studio drops, and both budget and schedule are exceeded by a lot.
Yup this is the big headache of producers when a task delays to the extent other scheduled tasks with that dependency can't work until it is done that can cause the biggest delays.
Then the worse thing you can't estimate is the bugs you'll consider blockers, how much time until they are dealt with.
Wouldn't it still be a delay with swapping being the reason for the delay?
It depends on your point of view.
If you're waiting for UI Owner Component to finish then it's a delay. On the other hand if you're waiting for next patch, then doing those things in different order should have no effect on its release date or content.
The 3.0 patch needs to have everything they showed last August plus vastly improved netcode / client performance or you can kiss a general release of SC goodbye for at least another 3 years.
If i was betting they will either:
Release a very limited patch in June with whatever they have ready,
When it comes to releasing what they have shown on Gamescon 3.0 demo, that's a quite superficial release by itself.
On the 3.0 demo, we saw the Delamar landing zone, landed on it, took a mission from the Miles guy, explore a wrecked starfarer, took and did fly the Dragonfly (released already), traveled to one Moon finishing the quest, on it, there was also the Rover.
Seeing the schedule, all that was shown last year is on the 3.0 release, the release has more than what was demoed but less than what was originally road mapped.
One relevant comment from a Dev on Reddit yesterday on the Network Bind/Unbing and Network entity update component scheduler:
Both of these are very important, but by far the most important thing is to get object container streaming working. Object container streaming will allow us to only have a subset of entities on the client and server that are the minimum required for gameplay, which should dramatically reduce update time as well as a fair amount of memory usage. It will also make other game code behavior such as zone queries faster by making these queries operate on a smaller set of potential entities.
Unforutnately this is not going into 3.0 as it is a huge epic legendary task that will introduce many complexities into various other systems in the game, but we are actively working on it.
This kinda clarifies what is going on the network front, and what to expect to cause the biggest impact on how the game performs to be something to expect beyond 3.0. The goal mentioned is scheduled for 3.1.
This object container stuff is a prerequisite for Sq42 from what I remember, the team working on it were hoping to have it done later this year, however if such a key piece of tech has yet to be implemented it seems unlikely that Sq42 will be launching this year
What's interesting is that only a month ago Erin Roberts was saying that it was pretty much ready for 3.0
The next big release improves things significantly because of the new
object containers which turn stuff on and off, not just turn it off but
everything else which is going on in there so people should see a
dramatic improvement in performance, not necessarily the finished
article, there are still other things to come but this should make
things a lot better.
This object container stuff is a prerequisite for Sq42 from what I remember, the team working on it were hoping to have it done later this year, however if such a key piece of tech has yet to be implemented it seems unlikely that Sq42 will be launching this year
Why would it be?
I think you might be confusing this with the MegaMap streaming tech that we saw implementation on the last 2 patches. SQ42 needs that because that is the fundamental tech piece that avoids loading screens.
The object container streaming seems to be the PU implementation of the "Megamap".
No Max I am not confused about it. If anything it is you confusing it with other stuff. It has been widely reported that the room system, object streaming etc are all required for Sq42.
From BoredGamer
Squadron 42s Missions & Chapters are Optimized by splitting up the
other chapters in the game into logical object containers using this
system. An Object Container can contain many items & various room system “rooms” with varying pressures & contents.
No Max I am not confused about it. If anything it is you confusing it with other stuff. It has been widely reported that the room system, object streaming etc are all required for Sq42.
From BoredGamer
Squadron 42s Missions & Chapters are Optimized by splitting up the
other chapters in the game into logical object containers using this system. An Object Container can contain many items & various room system “rooms” with varying pressures & contents.
Hah so the MegaMap will stream the object containers around you, in the case of SM/AC this is always a one-time load, the tech dependency seems to be when it needs to move in-between containers to stream them in/out as you move.
With this stalled for 3.1, 3.0 will have to release the planet and moons without such tech, better hope they manage the servers to behave until this greater network pieces get available.
But we can't tell if this isn't already used for SQ42, being that there's a singleplayer and multiplayer implementation of it to do.
Hah so the MegaMap will stream the object containers around you, in the case of SM/AC this is always a one-time load, the tech dependency seems to be when it needs to move in-between containers to stream them in/out as you move.
With this stalled for 3.1, 3.0 will have to release the planet and moons without such tech, better hope they manage the servers to behave until this greater network pieces get available.
But we can't tell if this isn't already used for SQ42, being that there's a singleplayer and multiplayer implementation of it to do.
They will NEVER get the container within a container figured out. I showed how they never picked up the container they dropped in that fake video they made supposedly showing how they could load cargo inside a box into a ship, yet the guy dropped it on the loading ramp and the guy inside never picked it up.
Just like how they 'unpackaged' that hornet inside that blown up ship, another fake shot I showed was clipped and edited and the thing they unpackaged was simply a picture of the hornet, and the hornet itself wasnt able to be flown until the guy was already on it (in first person already, and they never showed the guy climbing on it) and it took off (again at that time it wasnt inside the ship he was supposedly in either he was in open space basically.
The fact they have already said that is being delayed until 3.1 (and will be delayed further than that to be sure) speaks volumes. Why would something they showed as WORKING (according to them) last Sept need to be delayed almost a full year ( I suspect 3.1 will be close to Sept the way they do things)?
Same as everything else they have shown in those movies they make for the conventions to get people excited and give them (the suckers) more reason to spend more money. Because there has never been anything shown at those conventions that has made it into the test bed yet. Especially the 'cool' stuff that even though they claim the video they showing is actual gameplay footage never seems to materialize into anything people (other than some ghost 'media' and internal testers) can actually experience first hand.
i always find it strange that people "armchair develop" a game whose code they have never seen and whose recent tech has not been shown to them, but you will find "experts" saying that this or that cannot be done. it's rather perplexing how conjecture can be used as evidence by said people. the devs say they are working on something and can resolve it and i will believe the people actually working on the game, until they don't manage to implement it, over some random guy on the internet.
it's scary how ignorance nowadays is seen as a badge of honor where people without having verifiable evidence and facts of the issue at hand will just make things up and pass it off as fact. we need to stop that.
we know what is planned for 3.X releases as per the CIG schedule, if things change they update it weekly and explain to us how and why things changed. we won't know if something will take shorter time or require more time like the Network Bind/Un-Bind and the Object Container Streaming, so why even bother theorizing it? there literally is no need as they will tell us if it (or anything else for that matter) will make it into which build. maybe it's just boredom, fear, resentment or something else but it stifles any actual productive discourse.
people also seem to forget that we are literally testers, meant to test the game and give feedback, this is not like head-start access to a game and people need to start treating it like the alpha that it is and not be disingenuous and require it be release ready while they are still working on the fundamental mechanics. it's completely unreasonable and frankly intellectually dishonest.
"Cherish the quiet...before my STORM!" For a $5/5000 in-game credit bonus for backing Star Citizen (MMO) or Squadron 42 (Single Player/Co-op) use my Referral code: STAR-3QDY-SZBG
i always find it strange that people "armchair develop" a game whose code they have never seen and whose recent tech has not been shown to them, but you will find "experts" saying that this or that cannot be done. it's rather perplexing how conjecture can be used as evidence by said people. the devs say they are working on something and can resolve it and i will believe the people actually working on the game, until they don't manage to implement it, over some random guy on the internet.
it's scary how ignorance nowadays is seen as a badge of honor where people without having verifiable evidence and facts of the issue at hand will just make things up and pass it off as fact. we need to stop that.
we know what is planned for 3.X releases as per the CIG schedule, if things change they update it weekly and explain to us how and why things changed. we won't know if something will take shorter time or require more time like the Network Bind/Un-Bind and the Object Container Streaming, so why even bother theorizing it? there literally is no need as they will tell us if it (or anything else for that matter) will make it into which build. maybe it's just boredom, fear, resentment or something else but it stifles any actual productive discourse.
people also seem to forget that we are literally testers, meant to test the game and give feedback, this is not like head-start access to a game and people need to start treating it like the alpha that it is and not be disingenuous and require it be release ready while they are still working on the fundamental mechanics. it's completely unreasonable and frankly intellectually dishonest.
All the evidence I need is that they havent released anything they claimed to have working for years now. They have shown about a dozen 'game play' videos at various 'cons' (apropos to be sure) over the years, all with these 'groundbreaking' and 'innovative' advances. All coming 'soon' to the alpha test bed. Not a single one of those things has made it yet. Despite them being shown in a GAME PLAY video. How is that possible?
This whole list is a non issue anyway. Just another sales pitch to give people something to talk about and keep the most irrelevant game ever, relevant. Because if they dont have something stupid to talk about then there really isnt anything to talk about concerning this project.
When the most 'positive' thing to happen to this project was their partnership (squireship) to Amazon (which has nothing to do with actually making a video game) then you know this thing is treading water at best. Oh and the 150 million (allegedly) they have raised by selling subs for 'info' and jpegs. Still nothing to do with actually delivering a playable game.
Comments
Then obviously a company will internally want the most out of dev-time, so they won't be giving soft deadlines for their tasks.... and we are getting such internal data.
Taking a comment out of context like that is to be expected from you.
I guess they perhaps would require a PR/Marketing "translation" of the dev workflow when it comes to the estimates, giving soft-estimates instead.
People "like me" are made slightly woozy by how often they break deadlines. This is another blatant example and will continue to be an example of that until they decide that it's too toxic because they fail to meet their deadlines. I am witnessing a dishonest company take advantage of consumers good will by over-promising and under-delivering.
But I agree with you that these are fake deadlines. They are useless in any real world scenario since they are not going to be met.
They try to clarify the process but that seems to not be enough.
That's why I kinda agree they shouldn't publish their internal estimates like this, they should pass through PR/Marketing before reaching the community.
It doesn't confuse me. It's quite clear what they are doing.
They are promising something they not only won't deliver on, but can't deliver on. And it has been evidenced, again, and within a week.
The ones facing delays, the most complex, bugs, dependencies, even one engineer who got sick forced a feature to be cut from 2.6, that's just how it rolls.
Even here you are asking me why I am so confused. You act like I don't understand production schedules and that it's normal for everything to be delayed at all times. Somehow, they have convinced you that their extreme lack of adherence to deadlines makes perfect sense (no matter how much money they take in based on those deadlines).
If only those were the only deadlines they lied about.
I miss over 90% of my own estimations about how long my trip to work takes, but last time I was late was is November.
Estimations rarely hit bullseye, and you should not expect nor demand them to hit bullseye. You should only expect them to be reasonably close and only complain if they are missed by a lot. Not treat them like deadlines. Deadlines are different thing.
That's not to say that Star Citizen wouldn't have given us plenty reason and them some more for how they've totally failed to meet many of their estimations over the years. But if you extend your complain to every estimation that gets missed a bit, and thus to something that's completely normal, you just devalue the good argument that you could make.
Do you not see what is wrong with this statement? If every estimation gets missed a bit (they are actually being missed by months already), then there is a serious issue. I understand the concept you are trying to explain to me, but in this case, I believe it works the other way around.
They are using this to pretend like delays are completely normal and you are supporting it. From now on, every delay is to be expected because it is just an estimate. That June 29th date... Do you think they will hit it with all of that stuff on the list? Of course not. But ideally for them, everyone will accept that it was inevitable that they did not live up to their promises.
If i was betting they will either:
Release a very limited patch in June with whatever they have ready, or
Delay the patch until it has something more meaningful in it. Think Christmas.
They need to start delivering now or the project is dead in the water.
Wouldn't it still be a delay with swapping being the reason for the delay?
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
It depends on your point of view.
If you're waiting for UI Owner Component to finish then it's a delay. On the other hand if you're waiting for next patch, then doing those things in different order should have no effect on its release date or content.
On the 3.0 demo, we saw the Delamar landing zone, landed on it, took a mission from the Miles guy, explore a wrecked starfarer, took and did fly the Dragonfly (released already), traveled to one Moon finishing the quest, on it, there was also the Rover.
Seeing the schedule, all that was shown last year is on the 3.0 release, the release has more than what was demoed but less than what was originally road mapped.
This kinda clarifies what is going on the network front, and what to expect to cause the biggest impact on how the game performs to be something to expect beyond 3.0. The goal mentioned is scheduled for 3.1.
What's interesting is that only a month ago Erin Roberts was saying that it was pretty much ready for 3.0
object containers which turn stuff on and off, not just turn it off but
everything else which is going on in there so people should see a
dramatic improvement in performance, not necessarily the finished
article, there are still other things to come but this should make
things a lot better.
I think you might be confusing this with the MegaMap streaming tech that we saw implementation on the last 2 patches. SQ42 needs that because that is the fundamental tech piece that avoids loading screens.
The object container streaming seems to be the PU implementation of the "Megamap".
From BoredGamer
other chapters in the game into logical object containers using this
system.
An Object Container can contain many items & various room system “rooms” with varying pressures & contents.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/5wjeka/item_20_object_container_streaming_the_room_system/
With this stalled for 3.1, 3.0 will have to release the planet and moons without such tech, better hope they manage the servers to behave until this greater network pieces get available.
But we can't tell if this isn't already used for SQ42, being that there's a singleplayer and multiplayer implementation of it to do.
They will NEVER get the container within a container figured out. I showed how they never picked up the container they dropped in that fake video they made supposedly showing how they could load cargo inside a box into a ship, yet the guy dropped it on the loading ramp and the guy inside never picked it up.
Just like how they 'unpackaged' that hornet inside that blown up ship, another fake shot I showed was clipped and edited and the thing they unpackaged was simply a picture of the hornet, and the hornet itself wasnt able to be flown until the guy was already on it (in first person already, and they never showed the guy climbing on it) and it took off (again at that time it wasnt inside the ship he was supposedly in either he was in open space basically.
The fact they have already said that is being delayed until 3.1 (and will be delayed further than that to be sure) speaks volumes. Why would something they showed as WORKING (according to them) last Sept need to be delayed almost a full year ( I suspect 3.1 will be close to Sept the way they do things)?
Same as everything else they have shown in those movies they make for the conventions to get people excited and give them (the suckers) more reason to spend more money. Because there has never been anything shown at those conventions that has made it into the test bed yet. Especially the 'cool' stuff that even though they claim the video they showing is actual gameplay footage never seems to materialize into anything people (other than some ghost 'media' and internal testers) can actually experience first hand.
it's scary how ignorance nowadays is seen as a badge of honor where people without having verifiable evidence and facts of the issue at hand will just make things up and pass it off as fact. we need to stop that.
we know what is planned for 3.X releases as per the CIG schedule, if things change they update it weekly and explain to us how and why things changed. we won't know if something will take shorter time or require more time like the Network Bind/Un-Bind and the Object Container Streaming, so why even bother theorizing it? there literally is no need as they will tell us if it (or anything else for that matter) will make it into which build. maybe it's just boredom, fear, resentment or something else but it stifles any actual productive discourse.
people also seem to forget that we are literally testers, meant to test the game and give feedback, this is not like head-start access to a game and people need to start treating it like the alpha that it is and not be disingenuous and require it be release ready while they are still working on the fundamental mechanics. it's completely unreasonable and frankly intellectually dishonest.
"Cherish the quiet...before my STORM!"
For a $5/5000 in-game credit bonus for backing Star Citizen (MMO) or Squadron 42 (Single Player/Co-op) use my Referral code: STAR-3QDY-SZBG
All the evidence I need is that they havent released anything they claimed to have working for years now. They have shown about a dozen 'game play' videos at various 'cons' (apropos to be sure) over the years, all with these 'groundbreaking' and 'innovative' advances. All coming 'soon' to the alpha test bed. Not a single one of those things has made it yet. Despite them being shown in a GAME PLAY video. How is that possible?
This whole list is a non issue anyway. Just another sales pitch to give people something to talk about and keep the most irrelevant game ever, relevant. Because if they dont have something stupid to talk about then there really isnt anything to talk about concerning this project.
When the most 'positive' thing to happen to this project was their partnership (squireship) to Amazon (which has nothing to do with actually making a video game) then you know this thing is treading water at best. Oh and the 150 million (allegedly) they have raised by selling subs for 'info' and jpegs. Still nothing to do with actually delivering a playable game.