Instancing and The new Zones System

[Obsydian]

Like many people who got on board early(ish) with Star Citizen, I was extremely excited at the thought of having small gang battles of around 25-50 ships per side.

i was also extremely disappointed when I finally heard the dreaded I-word, instances.  Like many people, to me this brought to mind the now typical MMO instancing that you commonly find in games such as World of Warcraft, where many groups can carry out the same raid, in literally the same space, without interfering with each other, and without even seeing each other.

Oh no! I thought. Two opposing fleets of 50 ships per side could meet, but with the instancing limit of approx 50 ships, what happens? Does half of your buddies suddenly disappear from view? What happens when your wingman gets put in a different instance to you? How are you to protect that hauler you are escorting if it is placed into a separate instance?

Well, many of those questions have now been answered, thanks to the following interview with Chris Roberts and Steve from Gamers Nexus. This is a "must watch" for anyone who doubts the instancing system or who wants to know how CIG are intending for it to work.

enjoy...
[video=youtube_share;j0r6aOasFEQ]http://youtu.be/j0r6aOasFEQ[/video]

[Gorion]

Majorly disappointing to be honest.

Whilst the graphic difference, and mechanics cannot be compared, Freelancer a game from 2003 didn't use any zones and the entire universe with everything in it including hundreds of players and thousands of AI didn't need any instancing at all.

And these things were hosted on a bloody Pentium 4.  Today we have server farms, millions of dollars, and the best we can do is 50 ships?, for gods sake already..

Throughout the interview he's always referring to the cryengine limitations, and how much work is needed to even try and fix the issue.  Why not build your own engine custom made for the needs of the game.  There surely isn't a lack of money after 79 million dollars for crying out loud.  Why limit the game by using a substandard engine.  I think roberts should get over his trophy "wife" engine, and make a suitable "cocoon" for his game, and not appeasing for modified rubbish, as modified rubbish will in the end still be modified rubbish.

Who cares about the bloody eye-candy if the goddamed thing isn't capable of carrying out the tasks needed for a game of this caliber.

[Galatoni]

Agreed with the 'making modifications' to the engine thing. It would be nice to see an uninstanced environment but at the same time for me it brings up another issue. I would rather they spent time and money on developing the game and not the engine. I'm not saying that it'd be impossible, mind you, for them to achieve it  

Another thing. If it was uninstanced and there was a clan battle, can you imagine a smaller fleet going up against a much larger one? With a ship cap you'd need to think tactically about who was included and not just throw everyone at it. And also people who don't want to be involved with fights at all and just want pve.

[smilodon]

Sorry Gorion but I have no idea what you're talking about. :blink:
 The discussion with Chris Roberts explains precisely why the zone system deals with traditional instancing problems. Its a solution to the problem not a problem itself.

Back to the OP...... We discussed this yesterday and the video plus Obsydian's expatiation is very encouraging. The idea of large numbers of ships trying fly and fight in the same part of space was always a worry. But the system explained seems to nicely address this, assuming it all works properly. As long as it's transparent to me as a player and I don't experience the traditional instance issues highlighted in the OP then that's fine. To be honest how they design the game to allow large numbers of ships to engage in battles etc isn't really important. The fact that there is a system which will be invisible to me is the encouraging point.

[Obsydian]

As smilodon says, this is a solution to the '50 ship limit', and means that fleets of hundreds could engage each other.

The system would simply carve the battle into separate - but linked - groups,with the servers controlling each group talking to each other.  This means that what is going on in each group should be visible - distance permitting - from the other groups.  And the instances aren't fixed, they're dynamic, so if one instance gets close enough to another, the servers re-allocate everyone into one or more new instances, all - hopefully - seamlessly.

E.g. a ship in one instance could peel off and head towards another instance (say, because they've seen a big juicy target in their HUD that happens to be in the other instance) and, as they get close to the other instance, the servers would hand over the control of that ship, so the new instance would see the incoming ship.  This dynamic will be being done over and over again during the period of a battle, and, if it works ok, should happen seamlessly.

Dont forget, ships, small ones at least, are almost invisible over 1km away, so getting 50+ ships to fly within a few hundred metres of each other is going to be unlikely, and this is the crux of the system: it only needs to include ships that can visibly see each other.  The position of those ships will be communicated to all linked instances so they up can be rendered in the HUDs of the ships in other instances, making it appear to all players that they are fighting in one big fur ball.

[smilodon]

The other element I liked was the mechanic for bigger ships with several crew members. From the outside I don't need the server to tell me where each crew member is located. I only care if their actions are visible to me i.e. a player fires a cannon or the pilot turns the ship. When this happens I will see the cannon fire or the ship move and the ship will be a single 'entity' in my 'zone (instance). It won't be fifty little entities inside one bigger entity. So in theory I could fly past ten ships each with a crew of fifty players. That's potentially 511 things for my client to be thinking about (10 ships + 500 crew members + me) However in reality I only need to think about 11 things (ten ships and me) as the server won't update my client with details of the 500 crew as they are irelevent to me. Only when one of them steers the ship, launches a missile etc will I receive the update and see the effect.

If this works.... IF this works.... then it will solve the whole issue of rendering large numbers of detailed assets, many player or AI controlled all operating in the same local area of space. Roll on massive space battles.....

[TeaLeaf]

Yes, I took this as very positive news, not at all negative.  What we care about is our experience, the instance system explains how they think they will be able to give us what we want.  I won't care if they break the fight down into multiple linked instances as long as it seems seamless to me when I'm in the fight - and that's the aim of their design.   All good news tbh.