Guard Frequency Episode 125 | Unreal Trouble Down Under
Greetings Citizens and Civilians, you’re tuned to episode 125, of Guard Frequency — the best damn space sim podcast ever! This episode was recorded on Friday 17th June 2016 and released for streaming and download on Tuesday, June 21st 2016 at GuardFrequency.com [Download this episode]
Geoff, Lennon and Tony are back once again this week to bring you another exciting installment of the Best Damn Space Sim Podcast Ever. In this week’s Squawk Box, we take a look at why you shouldn’t mess with the blockchain. Nor the bobchain. On the Flight Deck we see what news has landed from your favourite space-sims as we cover:
- More coverage of Star Citizen’s 2.4 patch and the Drake Dragonfly
- Tweaks to the Engineers and a call for tourist destinations as passenger gameplay will come in Elite: Dangerous 2.2
- And a quick report on the trouble from the Land Down Under in Descent: Underground
Next, we debate grey markets, and finally we tune into the Feedback Loop and let you join in on the conversation.
This Week’s Community Questions
- Do grey markets provide a needed outlet for casual gamers to get the edge they don’t have time to acquire? Or are they just greedy outlets run by people who are ruining the games for everyone else?
Let us know your thoughts by commenting below!
We got patches!
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Priority One Productions are always looking for new team members that have a passion for space sims. Please know that all of our positions are volunteer, but we do offer a well known outlet for your work. If you have a particular skill that you believe could enhance our content, then send your contact information and experience along with a few writing samples to squawk@guardfrequency.com
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Thanks to Ronald Jenkees for his permission to use his music in our show. Visit www.ronaldjenkees.com for more of his work! Enjoy the show!
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Comments (14)
Jirou
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The Issue with CIG writing a new engine is that won’t take another year, it will take another 5 years. The CryEngine wasn’t make for Crysis. Crysis was made for CryEngine to showcase its features. The business decision to purchase engines is a huge timesaver for the game developers to not have to reinvent the wheel. The issues of having to reimplement upgrade engine features after customizing the engine for the developers needs just becomes a balancing act of developer time versus value of the feature to the game. But, nothing is ever impossible and they would have still save a lot of time and money (our money I might add).
Game and Graphics Programmer
Gameloft New Orleans
Jirou
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Justin Lowmaster
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I look at it like CIG cooking like my wife does. She had a recipe, starts with it, decides it’s not good enough, applies other ingredients, and it turns out really good. When she just does what it says on the recipe only, it is just mediocre. CIG took the CryRecipe and is making it suit their needs.
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Ian Rafferty
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“CIG keeps selling useless pixellated art…” is the moment in the broadcast where I stopped playing and removed the podcast from my favorites list. Sad since this used to be my favorite Star Citizen podcast.
That is the kind of shallow disinterested and frankly uninformed commentary that I can find anywhere. I won’t spend my limited discretionary time listening to it here.
Ciao, gentlemen.
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Justin Lowmaster
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Fairly certain that the comment in question wasn’t intended to be taken all that seriously.
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Ian Rafferty
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I can appreciate that may be the case, however it is hardly an isolated instance. Almost weekly, listeners need to call out mistakes made in the broadcast; places where a criticism was directed at CIG that had a clear explanation that anyone doing a podcast on the topic should have known about.
Understandably, mistakes will happen. It is a big game with a lot going on. That’s why I listen to news shows about it. CIG is not beyond reproach. (Far from it.) There needs to be someone criticizing what they do and — as has been said on this show — holding them accountable.
There is enough to criticize without needing to aim commentary at the parts that aren’t broken.
Thank you for taking the time to respond.
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Justin Lowmaster
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Oh I post in our chat all the time when they say something g that was covered on a 10ftX it AtV, etc that was forgotten. And listeners can always point out errors, which goes into feedback, like this conversation will {:0D
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Django X Lowe
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I don’t think they were being serious either, On the same token, even if they were serious. There is a conversation to be had about the what this business model makes some of the citizen feel. Yes they sell things in a way that is long before it’s delivered. Some people have issues with that and it should be discussed especially among citizens. And it’s not a reason to leave… speak out yes, leave no.
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Jirou
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my bad I put my real name.
Django == Jirou
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David DeCosta (TheronShan)
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No. But again this is something the community ASKED for, in fact BEGGED for. Now if CIG didn’t do it people would be crying that they don’t listen to the community. Now that they did do it people are complaining that it’s a money grab. Not for nothing and I know I’ll take a shot for this next comment but “useless pixelated art” is the exact same criticism that Derek Smart has leveled at the game. I may be grasping at straws and making connections where none actually exist but the tone and tenor are not the same and it wasn’t as if Jeff stated “No I’m just kidding, I actually really like the ship/concept” afterward to clarify.
As Tony said, “It’s all useless pixelated art”. It’s a game man. My reply (in my best Russian accent) is “Why you mad bro? Is only game”
People who want it will buy it and those that don’t won’t. It will make for cool game play in getting around on planets once PG planets drop.
I’m not bailing on you guys as you do hit the mark more than you miss but you’ve been in a slump of late. Hope to see something about the game bring back the joy.
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seannewboy
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Had a blast listening.
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BrckWallGoalie
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What would prevent CIG from creating their own “gray market” similar to Diablo 3’s real money auction house (RMAH)? Items could be sold for in game currency or real money, and that real money could be deposited in the users’ game account to be used in game, or in a [u]VERIFIED[/u] PayPal account for withdrawl. CIG would take a cut off the top and still make money. Account security is obviously a concern when real money is changing hands, so require 2 step authentication to use the RMAH.
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David DeCosta (Aka TheronShan)
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So……A new day and something new that Jeff is Salty about with the development of SC 😉 (although this sounds like something that’s been bothering him for a while)
I am not a software engineer or game developer but in doing some light reading about the subject of game engine development in general and CIG’s decision to use CryEngine specifically, I have to respectfully say “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about”
This is a quote from http://angryjoeshow.com/ajsa/forums/topic/19330-cryengine-whos-crying-now/
“I don’t think you understand the difficulty of writing a game engine. As a software engineer, I can tell you it is no trivial task. It’s not like dropping buttons into a form in .NET, where the compiler will do all most of the backend code for you. When you make a game engine from scratch, you are making everything:
How visuals are rendered (DirectX or OpenGL)
How sound is rendered (i.e. XAudio)
How input is handled (mouse, keyboard, joysticks, gamepads, Oculus Rift, and everything else people want)
How memory is managed at runtime (most frustrating part right here)
How multiplayer works (don’t get me started on the complexity of a network stack); even companies who have been around for a decade still struggle with this (*cough* DICE *cough*)
People like to complain how long SC is taking. Well, imagine if first they had to write the engine. There’s no content creation until this is done, so you can expect the development process to take way longer. How is that preferable?
There’s a reason game developers license an engine: making your own from scratch is absurdly hard and time consuming, especially if you just started your new company and want to focus on making wonderful content. Unless you have a massive team with years of experience, you’re better off starting with an engine that already exists.
And, in time, if they want to, they can focus on forking their own engine. It happens all the time. Valve forked the Quake engine to make GoldSrc, and later made Source from that. That makes more sense that starting the game with a blank *.CPP file.”
Try to remember the ABSOLUTE WINDFALL CIG got by being able to hire nearly the entire Frankfurt CryEngine staff. When you create your own engine from scratch, there are NO experts to help you out with bugs and dead ends and stuff like that. YOU ARE THE EXPERT. That means tons of learning curve. With what a staff of less than 100 people? Twenty five (if we were lucky) of whom are actual game engine developers.
If you think you’re salty now go back in time and do it the way you suggest. P.S. Do a little bit of research on CryEngine/Crytek first before referencing them. Crytek started in 1999. Far Cry was the first use of CryEngine, which according to an article in Wikipedia (I know. I know) was originally done as a tech demo for Nvidia in 2002 and released as a game in 2003. CryEngine 2 wasn’t released until January 23, 2007 with Crysis released in November 2007. So four years after the founding of the studio with a game with 1/4 of the scope of SC, Far Cry was released. Four years after that (eight years total) they released Crysis. Oh yeah let’s not forget about the partnership they had in 2004 with EA. I don’t know the details but it must have infused some capital into the company at the very least.
CIG isn’t perfect and I’m glad you guys call them on their BS, but let’s refrain from back seat driving and second guessing every turn they make on the road to delivery of a finished game product. There are things they done that were/are dumb. The choice of CryEngine does not list among them. Regardless of what anyone (wink wink nudge nudge) may say.
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David DeCosta (aka TheronShan)
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Let I-Novae Studios be a prime example of building your own game engine. Yes much smaller company but at the time CIG wasn’t much bigger. Great engine built from scratch but we’re still waiting for a game. No hate. No salt. Before someone chimes in with “$114 million dollars” just remember that having 9 pregnant women doesn’t mean you get one baby every month.
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David DeCosta (aka TheronShan)
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Just so you guys don’t think I just come on here to complain, I thought the “grey market” conversation was a good one. I feel the main problem is currency is artificially unlimited in supply while Assets are artificially limited in supply. Maybe not to the extent that money is supplied but hopefully that makes sense. You can hoard money in ridiculous amounts with no risk to money supply (inflation/deflation/devaluation, interest, etc.)
I think we should have all kinds of enemies in all areas. I hate when you are in an area and it’s like ok this area is SUPER DUPER EASY because this is the starting area. Yes there should be a proportionally greater amount of less skilled AI in starting areas but there should still be (using a bell curve) some elite AI interspersed throughout a relatively “easy” area. Same goes with in hard areas but in reverse. I would expect out in the lawless areas that most of the AI would be on the “experienced” end of the curve but there should always be a few “incompetent” or mid to lower range level AI even in the harder areas but they obviously should be less common.
One of the things I’m hoping to see with subsumption is that AI react more realistically. If they’re outnumbered, they run but if their numbers increase or notice you’ve taken damage they may become more emboldened and counter attack. If AI could bait you into a trap that would be glorious.
If I’m using the term correctly, I think of “regression to the mean” if AI are sucky it doesn’t encourage players to play better because it doesn’t matter but if AI are harder (not soul crushing hard, well not all the time anyway) it forces players to …….”Git Gud”. As long as the mean is at a level above where the average player is, regression to the mean can be a good thing.
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