***The Official Starfield Thread*** (As endorsed by TNA)

Mr_Sukebe said:
To me, feels like there was a plan to be more complex than it ended up being, but then someone pulled the plug on certain mechanics that were considered a bit too much like hard work for it’s target market, eg
- the outposts, which felt to me that an earlier design intended for players to mind for materials to build ships from and also to fuel them
- mining, similarly dumbed down
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Yes - it definitely feels 'rudderless' - as if the team was working on a bunch of different elements in isolation and then, realising they had to ship something, attempted to build a game out of the pieces they had.

In one interview I saw, a (former) Bethesda dev said the proc-gen stuff was intended to be much more sophisticated/advanced but they had to choose between assigning devs to that *or* to ship-building - internally the ship-building was testing very positively, so that's what got the love.

Another good example is stuff like food/cooking, ailments/cures, environmental hazards and resistances - there's all the *pieces* in there to create a fairly hardcore 'survival' mode - but it's completely absent in the final game and all these elements are largely superfluous and/or dumbed down.

I suspect quite a bit of time was invested in trying to make that work and in the end, it either wasn't complete enough or fun enough to make the cut. Ship combat was also neutered because apparently the AI wasn't fun to fight against.

I imagine getting their ambitions for Starfield squeezed down onto the Series S was quite a challenge too. I wonder what the 'alternate universe' version of Starfield that would've been a PS5 exclusive would've looked like..? (a lot less loading at the very least).
 
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I don't think it's fair to put any blame on the Series S for Starfield.
To me, I played the start and was so thoroughly underwhelmed that it was absolutely a no go. No sense of wonder, or magic at all.

Seems like it might be a good game to pick up in 5 years when they're on their 3rd definitive remaster, anniversary update, cosmos edition.
 
Emlyn_Dewar said:
I don't think it's fair to put any blame on the Series S for Starfield.
To me, I played the start and was so thoroughly underwhelmed that it was absolutely a no go. No sense of wonder, or magic at all.

Seems like it might be a good game to pick up in 5 years when they're on their 3rd definitive remaster, anniversary update, cosmos edition.
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I think Starfield's largest technical failing (the loading) is absolutely down to the Series S.

And to elaborate, you only have to look at the New Atlantis Transit which was clearly a last-minute addition based on the unfinished state of the animation/cut-scene. NA was obviously too big to fit on the Series S in a single load so they split it up into regions.
 
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people are moving between the inside of buildings to walking around outside on the planet surface to flying in to space, to flying in a gas giants atmosphere and from there back inside building, then back out in to space to a giant gas cloud and in to a huge space station, back out again to fly to another planet at the speed of light in to the atmosphere and eventually the surface of yet another planet.............................. all that, billions of KM without a single loadscreen on a GTX 1070.

Its just code, its programming, its the engine, its software :)

 
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humbug said:
Why would it be?

The difference between loading screens and not is code, its nothing to do with the hardware.
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The difference between having to load and not having to load is the volume of assets you can handle with the memory you have available. Some engines are built and optimized around streaming assets in from disk/SSD but Creation Engine isn't a modern engine - it's absolutely being held back by an 8GB console.

And re: Star Citizen - that's a game that was planned from the outset to take advantage of modern PC hardware - it wouldn't run on Series S either (well, maybe at 540p, with 'cinematic' fps) :p
 
Aegis said:
The difference between having to load and not having to load is the volume of assets you can handle with the memory you have available. Some engines are built and optimized around streaming assets in from disk/SSD but Creation Engine isn't a modern engine - it's absolutely being held back by an 8GB console.

And re: Star Citizen - that's a game that was planned from the outset to take advantage of modern PC hardware - it wouldn't run on Series S either (well, maybe at 540p, with 'cinematic' fps) :p
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"Modern PC hardware" in 2017.

Of course there is a level where it will not work, but as your point. It was planned from the outset to have not a single loadscreen because they knew from the outset what they wanted to do and they knew that meant not a single loadscreen ever.

When they cracked the technology they put this discreet little video out, 6 months later, in spring 2017 it was in game as i described it, the series S gives the best PC hardware from 2017 a run for its money and all you actually needed was upper mid level stuff at the time to do this.

 
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humbug said:
the series S gives the best PC hardware from 2017 a run for its money
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The Series S has less half the RAM available that the minimum requirements for SC state :p

(actually, once you start reserving stuff, the S has closer to one third of RSI's min specs).

Try running SC on 6GB system RAM and a 2GB GPU and get back to me on how it performs :p
 
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Aegis said:
The Series S has less half the RAM available that the minimum requirements for SC state :p

(actually, once you start reserving stuff, the S has closer to one third of RSI's min specs).
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its 10GB of GDDR6

This was a playthrough demo, October 2016, a couple of months after the Pupil to Planet video, done with a GTX 1080.

 
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humbug said:
its 10GB of GDDR6

This was a playthrough demo, October 2016, done with a GTX 1080.
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It's 8GB of 128-bit RAM and 2GB of 32-bit RAM - as a developer, you can use *some* of that 2GB but it's primarily there for the OS and stuff like Quick Resume.

That 8GB also gets partitioned up since you need to allocate a frame buffer (since there's no dedicated VRAM) - again, there's no way SC could run on the Series S (without *massive* refactoring).
 
We may find out soon enough, The single player campaign, Squadron 42, which is the same engine, same technology is rumoured to be targeting current consoles, we don't know if its specific consoles or what yet, they are in talks.

Star Citizen its self is also moving forward, its last needed "Jesus tech" server meshing but like never been seen before is currently in the tech-preview channel being tested. who knows where that might end up as well but certainly the PS5 is powerful enough to run SC.
 
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humbug said:
We may find out soon enough, The single player campaign, Squadron 42, which is the same engine, same technology is rumoured to be targeting current consoles, we don't know if its specific consoles or what yet, they are in talks.

Star Citizen its self is also moving forward, its last needed "Jesus tech" server meshing but like never been seen before is currently in the tech-preview channel being tested. who knows where that might end up as well but certainly the PS5 is powerful enough to run SC.
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I hope it's great - been waiting a loooong time to play it. Yes, the PS5 is much better specced - double the GDDR6 of the Series S and twice the bandwidth.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
I do think that Bethesda could revisit it and improve it significantly with a bit of effort.
However, their history of updates to Falllout 76 doesn’t fill me with any level of confidence.
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I'm certainly curious to see what they do. Had a lot of fun with Starfield so anything else is a bonus to me (really hoping the DLC is good!).
 
humbug said:
people are moving between the inside of buildings to walking around outside on the planet surface to flying in to space, to flying in a gas giants atmosphere and from there back inside building, then back out in to space to a giant gas cloud and in to a huge space station, back out again to fly to another planet at the speed of light in to the atmosphere and eventually the surface of yet another planet.............................. all that, billions of KM without a single loadscreen on a GTX 1070.

Its just code, its programming, its the engine, its software :)

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What Starfield could have done is not have no loading screens between each star system and just have a loading screen quantum jump screen that travels u to another star system but from there it should be seamless.

That would have made a big difference
 
Aegis said:
The difference between having to load and not having to load is the volume of assets you can handle with the memory you have available. Some engines are built and optimized around streaming assets in from disk/SSD but Creation Engine isn't a modern engine - it's absolutely being held back by an 8GB console.

And re: Star Citizen - that's a game that was planned from the outset to take advantage of modern PC hardware - it wouldn't run on Series S either (well, maybe at 540p, with 'cinematic' fps) :p
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Yes modern pc hardware from back on 2015 Hehe.

I'm pretty sure the Xbox series s is superior to a pc built almost 10 years ago?
 
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jonneymendoza said:
What Starfield could have done is not have no loading screens between each star system and just have a loading screen quantum jump screen that travels u to another star system but from there it should be seamless.

That would have made a big difference
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Loading screens are fine, for a single player or limited coop type game, Elite Dangerous proved you can have loadscreens without it feeling or looking like that.

What you can't have is an MMO with loadscreens, CIG knew that from the start which is why..... You see when you have 20 of your mates on your ship all doing their own thing you cannot "load them" from place to place, you think about that for a second :) So the only way to have first person space MMO with space scope is no loadscreens.
 
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