DUST Search - Dust/Project Nova OOPSY

xxwhitedevilxx M wrote:

One Eyed King wrote:

I disagree, and I only play on PS consoles.

First, PC is CCP's forte.

Second, developing the game on PC gives them more freedom than developing for the PS4. CCP doesn't need to go through Sony for anything. They could not have pulled off the demo they did as quickly and easily had it been developed on the PS4. They also couldn't use test servers for Dust when coming up with changes, and look how that turned out. Development on the PC allows for test servers to try out changes beforehand, and working out kinks before releases and patches hit the player base.

I do hope that Nova eventually releases for a console, but I think that the best way for that to happen and give the best chances for long term success is to first develop on the PC.

There are + and - to be honest. I'm sure if current gen consoles were a little bit more powerful we wouln't even be talking about PC games for some simple reasons.

PC, we all know by now, are not equal in performance. None of them. Every PC has its own CPU, its own GPU its own RAM, Motherboard etc,and can throw out very different performances running the very same game. Now, imagine, you have to produce a videogame and you cover every possible position in a team: would you rather know exactly what's the max polycount target, what's the exact texel density, how many draw calls in order to sqeeze the hardware you have? I'd say of course I'd prefer to know beforehand what's possible and what's not, and that's exactly the main point in developing for consoles: you have your hardware and you push it to its best. On PCs, instead, you usually don't do it: you usually try to guess what will be the "average" PC build, scale it down a bit in its core "heavy" features, and then pump it up with visual fx for people who have better builds.

So, no. It's not easier. The fact that (and it was true) it was easier to develop for PC rather that consoles was only valid for PS3 (not even xbox 360) due to its "very strange" architecture (based on what developers said).

I might repeat myself but I really want to stress that seriously, if Ps4 was some kind of GTX 970 build, we wouldn't be here arguing on what's better between PC and Consoles. Having to deal with SONY and Microsoft instead of being free to publish your game whenever, wherever you want would have just been a lesser inconvenience, but nothing more.


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Alena Asakura Rogue Clones Yulai Federation 1329	Posted - 2017.01.07 23:05:00 - [1] - Quote juan sum hunny wrote: Is it just me or is CCP made the wrong decision putting Nova on PC. Maybe they should just put Dust 514 on Ps4.... Just sayin No it's not just you. Many of us have said exactly the same thing. It's pointless, though, CCP have long since pulled the plug on Dust and seem hell bent on PC for whatever comes of NOVA. Actually, as far as I can see, a new product, developed and based on PC and ported to other platforms as necessary is probably a better strategy. But until they actually produce something, ANYTHING, it's all just vapourwear to me.
Alena Asakura Rogue Clones Yulai Federation 1330	Posted - 2017.01.08 20:45:00 - [2] - Quote Glass Bowtie wrote: On the control front, having the options of a KB/M setup is, of course, better. Though a controller feels more comfortable to me personally, the options/flexibility alone that a KB/M provides make it a better control method. A moot point of course, as you can use a KB/M with the PS (3 for sure, I'd imagine 4 is the same). Yeah, they tried it with Dust, but not the right way. And on the port front, it seems to me that with the move to PC for the added power and space to work with, the resulting game would be very difficult to port to PS4, especially if Nova gets past the initial bare bones phase and starts adding content. TL:DR- I don't feel the question is "should Nova have been a console game instead of a PC game?", the question should be "does CCP know what kind of game it's making, and who they are making it for?" Which unfortunately seemed to be the same question throughout the life of Dust. My personal belief is whatever happens in Nova or EVE, CCP needs to start working on an EVE 2. I know, I know. Nobody ever likes to hear that, but too bad, I said it. EVE is old as sh*t, and it wouldn't be hard for someone dedicated to come along and replace it with a new model. It might as well be CCP. Put it on PC, thats fine. And I don't care about the details, progress/char transfer, whatever. That doesn't matter. What matters is CCP is sitting on a gold mine simply with an EVE 2 alone. If they develop an EVE 2 and a Dust 2 in tandem I think they could actually give us the dream that was suppose to be EVE/Dust. And they would actually be in sync with their target player base for once. In the short term I do hope Nova isn't a complete bust. I won't be participating, I'm currently focused on the grind towards home ownership, but hopefully CCP gets some solid FPS experience under their belt, maybe a bit of confidence, and if they don't dissappear after this sale deal concludes there will be a brand new universe waiting for me/us in the next 5 years or so. First of all, I don't believe having control options is the right way to go. All controls should be the same, to ensure an even playing field. Some people dominate with kbm while others struggle with it, and likewise for controllers. That said, putting NOVA on PC is automaticly going to make it a kbm game. Being one who prefers controller for all games which work with analog input, I would be looking for a controller option anyhow. As for ports, CCP develops games on the PC with lowest common denominator performance in mind. EvE has options to scale down load on processor, memory or graphics to allow people to run it on a fairly low spec machine. Yes, it's point and click but the performance of the presentation can be improved markedly by scaling down one or more of these. The result is potentially a game that performs well but looks crap. The same sort of scaling can be applied for porting to consoles. CCP would already have to develop NOVA to work on a lower spec machine, with options to allow it to perform acceptably on that platform. Porting to a console should be a no-brainer, as long as there is support for controllers. EVE2 - We already have it. By its very nature, EvE is a continuously developing game. There have been quite a number of very major releases, which to my mind qualify as virtually a new product. The only thing that was the same between them was the general nature of the game. A brand new EvE would presumably require a brand new database? Why? Databases can be and are rebuilt quite frequently, for instance when there's a very significant extended downtime, that's when the database is likely being rebuilt. What benefit is there in having an EVE2? It would only be some sort of PR thing because EvE is already virtually a different product from its early days. The engine has changed for a start. Would that not qualify as an EVE2? EvE is NOT as "old as sh!T". The CONCEPT of EvE IS. What you seem to be saying is that you want a new concept, but the existing players of EvE NEVER want a new concept. They basicly want whatever they have at any given time to just stay that way. New features are, I think, designed to keep the game moving, to maybe attract new players (lose quite a few in the process) and generally keep EvE from becoming the "old as sh!t" game you claim it to be. I think your gold mine of EvE2 and Dust2 could simply be achieved by the same upgrade process for EvE, but with inclusion of Nova into it. The only thing that would have to happen to make this work is potentially some upgrades to the database, if the capacity for the necessary switches and data isn't already there. Are you talking about some sort of interactions between the games, like was intended for Incarna? eg. walking in stations, EvE pilots carrying Dust mercs around the galaxy, that sort of thing? That would require new functionality in EvE that the EXISTING EvE community has already said it doesn't want. Any new EvE2 product would have to first and foremost satisfy the existing EvE community because that's how it is with EvE. You're not talking about a GAME, you're talking about a CULTURE. You can't change a culture by just rolling out a new version of a game. I myself am mainly concerned with the concept of a sale. Why are they even contemplating selling? What aspects of CCP are they using as selling points. My gut feeling is that they aren't selling EvE, but rather they're trying to make the company look like a VR shop, to attract new buyers with glitzy toys. A new company that bought CCP for the toys and ignores EvE will be death not only to EvE but also potentially for CCP. Any entity that bought CCP without recognising they're buying the CULTURE of EvE, not just the game, will be a negative.
Alena Asakura Rogue Clones Yulai Federation 1335	Posted - 2017.01.10 01:33:00 - [3] - Quote Glass Bowtie wrote: On the port front, I'm far from knowledgeable in game development and software and coding and all that. I would imagine the chance for Nova to grow into something larger than could be ported is there isn't it? I'm not against a port, but while there is no certainty they ever will port, I would think there is also no certainty they would be able to port if Nova ever came together like a lot of us would like it to. No, not really. There's no point in building a game that will only run on top-flight systems. Noone will be able to run it so noone will buy it. They have to develop to what the industry considers reasonable "games machines", which will definitely have more in the way of graphics and perhaps processor and memory than a "productivity" (office) machine. In other words, no matter what they produce, they have to put into the produce enough tweaks to let people run it on a machine that maybe isn't what the developers intended. That could have a negative effect on the playing community, so developers have to keep their code under some reasonable sort of control. There will always be some who won't compromise, and there will always be those who build machines (not buy them!) to run these games and more, but the majority won't go out and build a new machine for each new game that maxes out their old one. Consoles represent a standardised set of resources for running games, appropriate to the era they are produced for. So it's fairly easy to develop on PC (a common platform) with appropriate controls for resource usage, to make a game fit more or less on a standard games PC or a reasonably current console. Generally speaking most modern consoles have more of the resources that makes for "games machines" than most PCs. EvE will run rather well with scaled down everything, on a fairly lack-lustre PC. I can't see any reason that games developed for PCs would be necessarily better than games that were developed for consoles.
Alena Asakura Rogue Clones Yulai Federation 1335	Posted - 2017.01.10 01:46:00 - [4] - Quote Glass Bowtie wrote: Look I don't know nearly enough about EVE to comment on what all they could do different for an EVE 2. And that's honestly a bad title, because of this very part of our conversation. But I do agree EVE is very particular about what they want, and I do agree the culture holds total sway, and that's fine. But you can't tell me that this style, this genre of game has reached its pinacle, aside from some updates from time to time. While I understand EVE may still innovative within Tranquility itself, I think it is silly to say there is no innovation to be had outside of Tranquility. And to do that you can't be thinking about changing a culture, you have to be thinking about creating a new one just as i would think Nova intends to do. I always end up back on the same question. "Does CCP know what kind of game they are making, and who they are making it for?" EVE targets a very specific gamer, one that has partially proven in some ways uninterested in an FPS. I doubt simply putting an FPS on PC will sway the cornerstones of the EVE community. And if you aren't targeting EVE, who are you targeting? They would be entering a competitive section of gaming, saying "we have a small, generic shooter, we (as of this moment) have jettisoned literally everything that made said games spiritual predecessor unique, and we are utterly devoted to our original IP, EVE, at any and every cost". I just wonder why. If you don't intend to tie a shooter to Tranquility, don't make the shooter, stick with EVE. If you want to tie a shooter into a Tranquility type setting, start from scratch on both sides. I'm fine with an "EVE2" having to be a new concept, I see no reason to avoid creating a new community, just as I would see no reason to tie a shooter made in say 2020 to a space simple game made in, what, 2003? My point is that EvE2 would be superfluous. We already have EvE2 - the current EvE is in fact EvEX (pick a number). It's continuously developing. Yes, of late, the development has probably slowed due to crises like Incarna, and the new obsession with VR, but if they wanted to, they could make EvE as advanced as they want. The point is, they don't want to. It's already as advanced as they want, and if they want it improved, they can just do it via the current mechanisms. Your other reason for producing an EvE2 is so they can integrate a Dust/Nova FPS into it. They can already do that too. They were going to do that with Dust, and it was the EvE community that crushed that. Walking in Stations was to be the first move towards a fully integrated mobile-avatar tactile environment within EvE that would interface with the same sort of thing in Dust. There was no reason that could not have occurred then or even now. It would not take a rewrite of EvE to do it, just additional modules which would interface with EvE while utilising the same database (Tranquility). The issue, as with Dust, is going to be the acceptance of it by the EvE community. If CCP can get around that, the job will be so much easier. I have a suspicion, though, that at least one of the reasons they are going so heavily into VR is that they want to move away from EvE and the hornet's nest they disturb anytime they want to change things. Nova may or may not be seen by the EvE community as having anything to do with EvE. I suspect if they think that Nova is changing EvE in any way, they won't like that. You seem to acknowledge that the EvE community at least is partially responsible for this issue, and that perhaps an EvE2 might get around that. But EvE2 still has to be populated by the Denizens of New Eden, namely the current population of EvE, so we don't really get away from that community. From a development perspective, leaving EvE in place and integrating new modules into it is far more reasonable than rewriting it.
Alena Asakura Rogue Clones Yulai Federation 1338	Posted - 2017.01.10 09:46:00 - [5] - Quote Glass Bowtie wrote: EVE has already said no to an FPS. They tried it and didn't like it. And Dust was suppose to have a meaningful impact on Tranquility. Hell, the dream was Dust would have a MAJOR impact on Tranquility, and EVE was still not interested. To be completely clear, EvE never actually tried it. They said they didn't want it before they even tried it. Yes, some did, like me, and stopped fairly early on because it just didn't make sense to me in those early days. But most never even looked at Dust. Many didn't even have a PS3 to do so. I don't think it's helpful to make such broad statements. It gives a completely different perspective to look at the real reason EvE didn't want a FPS, which was they never wanted one in the first place, didn't want anyone "wasting" resources implementing ANYTHING that supported it. The only part of Incarna (the release that brought in the link to Dust) that had anything to do with EvE was Captain's Quarters, the first step in Walking In Stations, which the EvE community hated. EvE didn't want a FPS because they never wanted a FPS, not because they tried it and didn't like it. Had the whole thing been handled better by CCP, the EvE community would not have been the target aurdience in the first place. As for Dust having a major impact on Tranquility, that would definitely have been a major reason EvE DIDN'T want it.
Alena Asakura Rogue Clones Yulai Federation 1339	Posted - 2017.01.11 06:59:00 - [6] - Quote Mobius Wyvern wrote: Certain vocal memebers of the EVE Forum Community which makes up a TINY fraction of the actual player community went on tirades because "MUH EVE DOLLARS" were being spent on something other than EVE, which is a stupid and childish issue to raise and just shows how much of no-life wastes of organs they are. /end rage I hardly ever ran into an actual player in the game in all my time of playing Dust and EVE at the same time, doing OBs for FW and PC, and just chatting in Local that actually didn't like the idea of Dust 514. Most of them just didn't like playing FPS or didn't own a console. It was more that they were apathetic than anything else. I actually talked to many people that didn't know the influence Dust 514 had on EVE, and found the idea exciting after I explained it to them. On many occasions people in the Gallente Militia channel would get psyched and go fit up a Catalyst to try out an OB for themselves. Don't believe the EVE Forums. ESPECIALLY not anything you read on General Discussion. Likewise I never talked to anyone in EvE that was actively doing anything to support or play Dust. I did talk to plenty that always wanted to try it. They just never did. When I reappeared in EvE after the plug was pulled on Dust, they asked where I was and I said I had been playing Dust. A lot of them said they wanted to play Dust, and when I told them they couldn't anymore because they'd pulled the plug, they almost uniformly said they wished they'd tried it. But none of them did. The more vocal ones at the time when Dust first started, referred to things like Walking in Stations as examples of things they didn't want, because it represented to them the fact that "EvE developers" had been working on something they didn't want. EvE players as a whole either didn't want it at the time. Later, many wanted to try it but basicly never did. Only a very few like yourself and myself, actually tried it, loved it, got hooked and were dismayed when they closed it down. Apathy or vitriol were the reasons that EvE players didn't try Dust. But the end result is they DIDN'T try it. Had they, perhaps there would have been more support for keeping the game going.
Alena Asakura Rogue Clones Yulai Federation 1342	Posted - 2017.01.11 18:37:00 - [7] - Quote xxwhitedevilxx M wrote: One Eyed King wrote: I disagree, and I only play on PS consoles. First, PC is CCP's forte. Second, developing the game on PC gives them more freedom than developing for the PS4. CCP doesn't need to go through Sony for anything. They could not have pulled off the demo they did as quickly and easily had it been developed on the PS4. They also couldn't use test servers for Dust when coming up with changes, and look how that turned out. Development on the PC allows for test servers to try out changes beforehand, and working out kinks before releases and patches hit the player base. I do hope that Nova eventually releases for a console, but I think that the best way for that to happen and give the best chances for long term success is to first develop on the PC. There are + and - to be honest. I'm sure if current gen consoles were a little bit more powerful we wouln't even be talking about PC games for some simple reasons. PC, we all know by now, are not equal in performance. None of them. Every PC has its own CPU, its own GPU its own RAM, Motherboard etc,and can throw out very different performances running the very same game. Now, imagine, you have to produce a videogame and you cover every possible position in a team: would you rather know exactly what's the max polycount target, what's the exact texel density, how many draw calls in order to sqeeze the hardware you have? I'd say of course I'd prefer to know beforehand what's possible and what's not, and that's exactly the main point in developing for consoles: you have your hardware and you push it to its best. On PCs, instead, you usually don't do it: you usually try to guess what will be the "average" PC build, scale it down a bit in its core "heavy" features, and then pump it up with visual fx for people who have better builds. So, no. It's not easier. The fact that (and it was true) it was easier to develop for PC rather that consoles was only valid for PS3 (not even xbox 360) due to its "very strange" architecture (based on what developers said). I might repeat myself but I really want to stress that seriously, if Ps4 was some kind of GTX 970 build, we wouldn't be here arguing on what's better between PC and Consoles. Having to deal with SONY and Microsoft instead of being free to publish your game whenever, wherever you want would have just been a lesser inconvenience, but nothing more. The "very strange" architecture was hardly ever really used properly. Most usually just developed on some other platform then used emulation to cram it into the PS3. The architecture we're talking about, by the way, was the "Cell Broadband Engine" which was actually more of a small neural net than a multiprocessor. Of course, that functionality was far too obscure for most, so they just treated it as an 8-core processor. Very sad, because that same chip was apparently being used in supercomputers where the neural net capability allowed it to vastly improve on a simple multiprocessor. I liked the fact that every core on the chip knew what every other core on the chip was doing. So each core didn't just do its own job, it could be programmed to be "aware" of the other cores and react. I believe there were very few games that ever used this, and all of them were developed specificly for the PS3 - the ultimate exclusive as those games could never then be ported to a "normal" platform. The PS3 was its own worst enemy - the very architecture which made its processor generations ahead of everything else made it so hard to program for that virtually noone did it. I would have loved to see games that were developed exclusively for PS3 using this functionality. I don't believe Dust ever used it, as it's obvious that the performance was clunky, where it should have been lightning fast. Now we'll never know, of course. The PS3 and what it could have done will be lost to antiquity.
Alena Asakura Rogue Clones Yulai Federation 1344	Posted - 2017.01.11 22:36:00 - [8] - Quote xxwhitedevilxx M wrote: Oh yes, I've read a lot on the Cell Processor and I've always read very discordant opinions on the matter (at the time it was blazing fast with single precision and "meh" with double precision) and don't have an opinion on that really since I don't now enough on the matter. Even tho, I don't see many ways to use it in the game industry specifically (perhaps in AI?). I honestly think the issue is now moot. They'll never again (not anytime soon!) revisit this kind of architecture in a games console, nor for that matter in a PC. It was just too complex for an industry that only wanted multiprocessing. As for the things it was NOT good for, that was probably developers trying to use it for processing that it wasn't designed for. Again, valid, but not necessarily relevant. The fact is, whatever it could have done, the Cell Broadband Processor was largely ignored for its unique capabilities, which by the way were simply activated with appropriate firmware, but you had to program to those functions in order to use them, otherwise it was just going to be emulating some other platform in the same way as the early PS3s could emulate a PS2. Emulation will always result in a slower product, even if the architecture itself is capable of much more. Anyway, we won't see anything like it again until the whole industry moves towards similar neural net architecture. The problem for the PS3 was it was just too advanced for most to use natively, and too different to support porting from other platforms well enough. When everyone is doing the same thing, that might change.
Alena Asakura Rogue Clones Yulai Federation 1345	Posted - 2017.01.12 04:06:00 - [9] - Quote xxwhitedevilxx M wrote: Alena Asakura wrote: xxwhitedevilxx M wrote: Oh yes, I've read a lot on the Cell Processor and I've always read very discordant opinions on the matter (at the time it was blazing fast with single precision and "meh" with double precision) and don't have an opinion on that really since I don't now enough on the matter. Even tho, I don't see many ways to use it in the game industry specifically (perhaps in AI?). I honestly think the issue is now moot. They'll never again (not anytime soon!) revisit this kind of architecture in a games console, nor for that matter in a PC. It was just too complex for an industry that only wanted multiprocessing. As for the things it was NOT good for, that was probably developers trying to use it for processing that it wasn't designed for. Again, valid, but not necessarily relevant. The fact is, whatever it could have done, the Cell Broadband Processor was largely ignored for its unique capabilities, which by the way were simply activated with appropriate firmware, but you had to program to those functions in order to use them, otherwise it was just going to be emulating some other platform in the same way as the early PS3s could emulate a PS2. Emulation will always result in a slower product, even if the architecture itself is capable of much more. Anyway, we won't see anything like it again until the whole industry moves towards similar neural net architecture. The problem for the PS3 was it was just too advanced for most to use natively, and too different to support porting from other platforms well enough. When everyone is doing the same thing, that might change. Coincidences: I was reading this right before reading your post http://www.anandtech.com/show/10907/amd-gives-more-zen-details-ryzen-34-ghz-nvme-neural-net-prediction-25-mhz-boost-steps But I believe it's used in a substancially different way- Yes, it does look different - used for predictive decisions rather than multiply-aware cores, but it's good to see that some form of neural net processor is starting to hit the mainstream!