* Star Citizen *

[Jonj1611]

Millennium, if you log into your account it should tell you what you have access to. In My Hangar it says I have :-


Mustang Omega : AMD Edition Ship
Self Land Hangar
Legacy AC

Also Contains
Starting Money: 1,000 UEC
2 Month Insurance
Digital Star Citizen Manual
Star Citizen Digital Download
Squadron 42 Digital Download

Though I got mine with an AMD graphics card, it should tell you there what your account contains.

[badass]

I've just jumped on the freebie week.

First impressions:
So much potential. Incredible worlds. Unbelievable detail, size and scope.

It's made clear that it's an Alpha and it most certainly behaves like one. Performance is shockingly bad - presumably due to a lack of optimisation at this stage. less than 25 FPS in cities with an RTX 3060 and Core I5 10400F - it's CPU bottlenecked!
Also, bugs. Lots of bugs.

I'm not ready to pay for it yet. The performance really killed it for me. However it is absolutely obvious that a tremendous amount of human effort has gone into this game so far.

[Ttaskmaster]

It was actually jolly good fun during v3.13... then they nerfed a bunch of stuff, changed a bunch of other stuff, broke a whole load of other stuff, and then released v3.14 and now 3.15, whereupon it's just cacked itself.

Some lovely looking ships and other pretty parts.
Other than that, probably best to just wait until it's out and things remain persistent. I had been making progress, but the recent reset kinda killed most of the fun as I lost it all. I knew it would happen, but it's still disheartening when all that effort and playtime gets wiped.

[cheesemp]

I've had a golden ticket (one of the first 2000) accounts but not played it in a long time. Backed it for the single player. I just wish rather than tweaking everything 50x for the multiplayer they just got the single player done and then did multiplayer. I've very little interest in multiplayer now (My free time is gone as I've gone from single to married father of 2!) and just want another good single player. Oh well I can keep waiting.

[DanceswithUnix]

It's made clear that it's an Alpha and it most certainly behaves like one. Performance is shockingly bad - presumably due to a lack of optimisation at this stage.

Bad performance isn't something that you magically optimise away at the end. It's like security, you don't retro fit it you build it into the design. They've been doing this long enough now that I would expect their software build system to include frame time metrics as part of the automated testing, so if someone introduces code that makes the game go lumpy it gets flagged immediately. But from the stories you hear, I suspect they haven't.

[badass]

Bad performance isn't something that you magically optimise away at the end. It's like security, you don't retro fit it you build it into the design.

Yes and no I'd say. Obviously a bad design cannot be optimised anything like as much as something well designed. However you can design software with future optimisations in kind without implementing them - only to optimise later. E.g. you want to throw out a working engine/world quickly. The code to render the entire scene is less than the code that includes removal of objects off camera and objects blocked by other objects (Occlusion culling). The engine is designed to have that part there from the ground up, however the actual process just skips for time reasons.
Later, you optimise by beginning work on your occlusion culling.

They've been doing this long enough now that I would expect their software build system to include frame time metrics as part of the automated testing, so if someone introduces code that makes the game go lumpy it gets flagged immediately. But from the stories you hear, I suspect they haven't.

If they had followed modern (at the time of inception) software development practices they would have been doing this all along. However like you I suspect they haven't.

What seems strange to me is that my machine is CPU limited - i.e. all 6 cores/12 threads at 100% while the GFX card hovers between 50% and 90-100% depending on the situation. I wonder what CPU usage is like for more cores?

[Ttaskmaster]

What seems strange to me is that my machine is CPU limited - i.e. all 6 cores/12 threads at 100% while the GFX card hovers between 50% and 90-100% depending on the situation. I wonder what CPU usage is like for more cores?

i7-5960X here, with 8c/16t.
I'm usually around 75% usage on the RAM, and 70-80% on the CPU.
My 980Ti usage, when I asked the thing itself, was, "YAWN.... what the fluff did you even buy me for, Tasky? Stuff this, I'm goin' back to bed....".

[DanceswithUnix]

Yes and no I'd say. Obviously a bad design cannot be optimised anything like as much as something well designed. However you can design software with future optimisations in kind without implementing them - only to optimise later. E.g. you want to throw out a working engine/world quickly. The code to render the entire scene is less than the code that includes removal of objects off camera and objects blocked by other objects (Occlusion culling). The engine is designed to have that part there from the ground up, however the actual process just skips for time reasons.
Later, you optimise by beginning work on your occlusion culling.



If they had followed modern (at the time of inception) software development practices they would have been doing this all along. However like you I suspect they haven't.

What seems strange to me is that my machine is CPU limited - i.e. all 6 cores/12 threads at 100% while the GFX card hovers between 50% and 90-100% depending on the situation. I wonder what CPU usage is like for more cores?

At this point they have been releasing code for 6 years, and have sucked in vast amounts of money. Really, the sort of things you mention should have been in place long ago at this point.

[Kovoet]

Best thing I did was give mine away as in ID or whatever you call it.

[dannyboy75]

At this point they have been releasing code for 6 years, and have sucked in vast amounts of money....

$400 million and counting when I checked just now, over nearly a decade. That is utterly absurd.

[badass]

At this point they have been releasing code for 6 years, and have sucked in vast amounts of money. Really, the sort of things you mention should have been in place long ago at this point.

It's what happens when something is run by an *artist* with *vision* - you know rather than someone that understands more about people and process to get things done properly.

[DanceswithUnix]

It's what happens when something is run by an *artist* with *vision* - you know rather than someone that understands more about people and process to get things done properly.

Well even Duke Nuken Forever only took 15 years, so maybe we are 2/3rd of the way there

[Ttaskmaster]

I'm usually around 75% usage on the RAM, and 70-80% on the CPU.

Correction: That must have been just the minute I spent quickly checking the other day - I played last night and mostly saw 25-30% usage.
I also suspect part of the high usage issue was the guys with an Idris mucking around outside Port Olisar... Heard a lot of complaints about them on the chat.

[badass]

I had another go of the free fly event a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't work out how to get water/food and decided that I couldn't be arsed to find out how.
Apparently they are planning using toilets as well at some point. My enthusiasm for this has dropped significantly.

[Jonj1611]

I am amazed its still rolling on. Seems to be just need to add one more thing, then one more thing, then one more......

[DanceswithUnix]

Apparently they are planning using toilets as well at some point.

Now if done amusingly enough "Space Toilet Simulator" could be an amusing VR game.