Star Citizen

[Nekosan]

There's literally bugger all info on what or how anything works. That's the bigger problem in my mind. We've got multi-years old rough ideas and no actualisation of them... or updates. Also random off the cuff comments from Chris about things that would be cool... blugh.

This is what kills a lot of these grand projects, the dev teams spend so much time pissing about with assets and having feature circlejerks and somehow never seem to actually do any of the important shit. It fucks with my head that these guys can be this far in and we know basically NOTHING about how ANYTHING in the game will actually work. It feels to me like they theorycrafted a bunch of cool ideas and now they're dragging their heels with the basic engine mechanics.... who gives a crap about fancy mechanics when you have nothing to build on? They're talking about interior features of cars when they don't even have a working cement truck to start building the factory with.

I purchased Elite: Dangerous last week while it was on sale to have piss about with a friend and all i can think so far is "SC are fucked if they intend to have something even remotely on this scale with the shittalking they do". I don't agree with some design choices and it's a bit off in some aspects imo (feels more like a single player game or an old school MUD where player interaction happens mostly in messageboards rather than in game) but they've built something with decent depth and with dramatically less money and time.


After watching this happen to multiple games (fuck you Vanguard: Saga of Heroes), i feel like theres one thing egotistical devs never learn... never ask the community what they fucking want, they don't know. Take your vision and fucking stick with it until you have a product and THEN make changes based on what YOU think is wrong.

[DarkMellie]

never ask the community what they fucking want, they don't know. Take your vision and fucking stick with it until you have a product and THEN make changes based on what YOU think is wrong.

Couldn't agree more... never crowdsource your vision.

[boars]

Pretty sure Chris's vision already contains what the community want plus more, he's got that problem without crowd sourced input. I honestly don't think the backers have increased the scope all that much if at all. You've just got to hope Erin Roberts has got Chris under control. Chris is a dreamer and Erin seems more like a just get it done kind of guy. How this actually pans out though...

I don't know about elite having much depth though... Play it a few months and let me know if you still feel that way. I'm pretty disappointed with elite personally. The feel of vr in the game is unbelievably cool however. It's certainly a game I pickup every now and then to see if it's got a bit more substance.

[bender]

This is what kills a lot of these grand projects, the dev teams spend so much time pissing about with assets and having feature circlejerks and somehow never seem to actually do any of the important shit. It fucks with my head that these guys can be this far in and we know basically NOTHING about how ANYTHING in the game will actually work. It feels to me like they theorycrafted a bunch of cool ideas and now they're dragging their heels with the basic engine mechanics.... who gives a crap about fancy mechanics when you have nothing to build on? They're talking about interior features of cars when they don't even have a working cement truck to start building the factory with.

...i feel like theres one thing egotistical devs never learn... never ask the community what they fucking want, they don't know. Take your vision and fucking stick with it until you have a product and THEN make changes based on what YOU think is wrong.

Yeah, totally agree. I noticed this back in 2013/2014, many of the devs seemed to be focused on the cool flashy stuff, e.g. hangars, damage states, fog on masks, helmet animations, fancy (poorly designed) huds, and worst of all the horrid holo viewer. The community always gushed with hype about stuff like that, so they focus on it. Only until recently have we started to see stuff about core game functionality. Even then, there's still plenty of things that they are keeping quiet on (i.e. cross region play and network/server design).

Star citizen from the kickstarter was both a single and multiplayer game from day 1, says so https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen, changing the name of something of it doesn't remove the obligations to what backers are owed.

Roberts is not some naive kid who pitched an mmo wanting half a million dollars on kickstarter, the dude worked at Origin, pretty much the 90's DICE or Infinity Ward. He mentioned in the early days he could do SC on $20M, $75M to get all the stretch goals done, he's raised 7 times the initial $20M since and is still failing to make the game.

The onus falls directly on CIG for asking if players wanted to increase scope of the game, all of it, they did this, this wasn't a bunch of players asking if this or that could be added into the game in tiny increments later on, CIG took a poll that few actually voted in, came up wanting more and then they never said no to a feature of any kind since no matter how dumb is request is.

I'm a golden tick holder (only reason I am is because there was a GON article about it) and backed a bounty hunter package in the kickstarter, I was happy to get a single player game kind of like freelancer/wing commander, with a bit of a mmo to play after, like privateer or end game freelancer, but with newer graphics and gameplay. I was thinking we would get a GON server going and I'd fly around in that. It was cool to get some stretch goals at first, but when the game started to become a 'first person experience' or whatever chris describes it as, it kind of seemed like a different game. I still like a lot of the game, but there's also a lot in the game that just doesn't interest me, star marine, mining, hauling, exploration etc. I'm really just wanting a decent space sim with good flight mechanics. I feel this is what was pitched in the kickstarter, and its what they should be focusing on.


As for the tax thing, it kind of does raise alarm bells, but it could also be that they want to raise some capital to hire some extra people to push SQ42 out before the end of the year, rather than staying within their budget and releasing in 2018. SC currently has a steady yearly income, but I think even the most rabid SC fans would start to get concerned if SQ42 doesn't release this year. SC income would dwindle and then they may run out of money. If they push SQ42 out this year, it will give them a large income boost and appease the community (assuming its good). At this stage, i'll just be happy if they release something decent soon. I'll be done with SC if 3.0 release is delayed into September/October or SQ42 isn't released this year.

[boars]

3.0 progress if you want to see how delayed each task is...
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?res ... -UspMKhCNM

It's nice they're releasing this kind of info now - feels a bit more open.

Would love something similar for s42 though... as s42 doesn't need a lot of the PU mechanics, it'd be interesting to see what the hold ups are specifically. There's supposedly a bunch of s42 ships finished that we wont see till s42 arrives, which is why PU ship development has ramped up a lot. I mean if it was a year or more ago, the AOPA Nox would be a jpg sale, not a complete ship.

[stingtwo]

Pretty sure Chris's vision already contains what the community want plus more, he's got that problem without crowd sourced input. I honestly don't think the backers have increased the scope all that much if at all. You've just got to hope Erin Roberts has got Chris under control. Chris is a dreamer and Erin seems more like a just get it done kind of guy. How this actually pans out though...

I don't know about elite having much depth though... Play it a few months and let me know if you still feel that way. I'm pretty disappointed with elite personally. The feel of vr in the game is unbelievably cool however. It's certainly a game I pickup every now and then to see if it's got a bit more substance.

The thing is I don't think Chris knows what he wants himself, he has stated numerous times he wants a mix of Call of Duty, Battlefield, GTA5 and ARMA set in space and those games have VASTLY different game mechanics.

To go left field for a moment, Star Citizen is kinda like Duke Nukem Forever in a lot of ways, none of it is positive.
Duke had an initial release date of 1998, So we have Blood 2, Half-Life and Unreal MDK, now we delay to 2000, now we have No one lives forever, Counter Strike, Deus EX and System Shock 2, further delays and the list of games it has to go up against in the market climbs to the point of it's 2013 release theres 1000 of games from all the years between and unlike in 1998 where games that ran on DOS may or may not work on windows 98, it doesn't sell well because well peoples interest in the title was eroded by that point(it was also looked like a game with level designs from 2001 and graphics from 2006 didn't help it)

Now 3D Realms was able to keep on trucking for as long as it did for simple reasons, they had an abundance of cash from previous titles, selling various game IP's over the years like Prey and the trickle of money from porting Duke 3d to consoles like the the GBA and Xbox Live, but even 3D Reamls ran out of money in the end, they had to sell everything Duke related to Gearbox to get the game out the door.

CIG has one cash flow pipe; thats the backers. The backers have only a finite amount of money to hand out, that in itself has slowed down over the past year, people are getting refunds. CIG doesn't have a safety net from a previous line up of games to keep going forever, doesn't have a publisher to steer it right, downsizing/closing a studio in the immediate future to reduce costs will cause a bank run from backers.

Even if we can ignore all of the teething problems of Star Citizens development from within the company, money, what is or what isn't finished, Chis not able to play his own game but the problem is look at games like Rebel Sky, Astroneer, Everspace and even Elite are leaving Star Citizen on the dusty planet. What would entice the average gamer to go buy this for $45 right now instead of the countless games on steam, not to mention future space games.

[bender]

The thing is I don't think Chris knows what he wants himself, he has stated numerous times he wants a mix of Call of Duty, Battlefield, GTA5 and ARMA set in space and those games have VASTLY different game mechanics.

Thats because Chris wants nearly everything he possibly can (this is his masterpiece). Its more a matter of him/CIG figuring out what they cant have due to technical restrictions and practicality. He is vague on some things as they haven't exactly figured out what they cant do yet. I think he cites examples of games of possible gameplay mechanics to help convey the basic idea to the community.

[boars]

Duke slowly looked worse and worse, SC is seemingly getting prettier and prettier with each year. The development of the Hornet is pretty much just that. Each iteration has looked better than the last. Duke was a very simple game, which had to start from scratch several times for engine switches and god knows what else. Was there ever a real tell all, warts and all article? That'd make some interesting reading.

I think 3DRealms did ok with the initial Prey but were doomed when trying to do so again.
Duke never really got any visibility other than a few random screenshots over the years, it's just a fraction more open with SC.

Agree with bender ... but that's more of a gut feel than an actual evidence based argument from me.

CIG has one cash flow pipe; thats the backers. The backers have only a finite amount of money to hand out, that in itself has slowed down over the past year, people are getting refunds. CIG doesn't have a safety net from a previous line up of games to keep going forever, doesn't have a publisher to steer it right, downsizing/closing a studio in the immediate future to reduce costs will cause a bank run from backers.

We get to see one revenue stream, correct.
Do they have any investors? Is there any way to tell?
What's the deal they have with Amazon and Lumber Yard?
Do they have any deals with AMD? What did they get out of them for the AMD ship sponsorship?
What if anything did they get out of NGSS?
Are there any other background deals underway that we're unaware of? No idea.

Even if we can ignore all of the teething problems of Star Citizens development from within the company, money, what is or what isn't finished, Chis not able to play his own game but the problem is look at games like Rebel Sky, Astroneer, Everspace and even Elite are leaving Star Citizen on the dusty planet. What would entice the average gamer to go buy this for $45 right now instead of the countless games on steam, not to mention future space games.

Very impartial video you've selected there that's taken some technical issues, and then altered the speed of the video slower (29mins instead of 19) to make them sound slow and stupid. Subtle trolling by that youtuber. In development games have issues, yes, it crashed a bunch and he demo'd stuff despite the issues. At least he soldiered on. He also crashed his ship the first time we saw him fly in another demo, he's a terrible pilot.

Honestly I don't know what the magic is that entices people to buy SC at the moment other than people believe it will become something better. I've pre-ordered a bunch of games based on previous developers games/series etc. I've closed beta tested some for over a year that DIDN'T improve for the entire year and released with the bugs that we logged at the start.

I bet some other AAA developers would like to emulate the funding that is going on and are trying to get in on some of that action.

Either way, it's still selling new copies and the community continues to expand despite the howling in the wind.

[Nekosan]

Duke slowly looked worse and worse, SC is seemingly getting prettier and prettier with each year. The development of the Hornet is pretty much just that. Each iteration has looked better than the last.

This is part of the problem i have with the whole thing... why the fuk are they making and revising so much base art bullshit when the core of the game is nonexistant? I'd feel better about 15 versions of each ship if they had some of the more important shit working.

[boars]

Duke slowly looked worse and worse, SC is seemingly getting prettier and prettier with each year. The development of the Hornet is pretty much just that. Each iteration has looked better than the last.

This is part of the problem i have with the whole thing... why the fuk are they making and revising so much base art bullshit when the core of the game is nonexistant? I'd feel better about 15 versions of each ship if they had some of the more important shit working.

Excess art capacity, not excess coding capacity would be my guess?

They're supposedly at over 100 ships completed or at very least completed for purpose (ie some alien ships no doubt have zero interiors and we'll never see inside them, like kingship or other big Vanduul warships. I'd also assume these numbers includes variants as separates. Whether or not you'd consider something like the Starfarer as "complete" is well, debatable at best. No proof to this pudding and just heresay/talk and people stuck with NDA's after visiting CIG offices for tours. Wish I was on a holiday near one of the offices, that way I could see for myself - not that I'd go for a holiday to those places to check, not quite that crazy

Also one of the major issues was starting to build things before the fully fleshed ship pipeline was in place or even knowing how in depth or detailed things would be. The pipeline/end goal *seems* (emphasis really needed) to be complete/somewhat locked down now with "item 2.0" interactions. That's kind of the flaw with doing really early releases and such when the bones of the core game weren't even done.

[boars]

Latest ATV is out, featuring proc moon and planet tech (title is a bit deceptive, its more than just moons) along with a F42/UK update.

Bit of a sneak peak at the reclaimer too...

If you want the episode summed up in 30secs or so watch this part:
https://youtu.be/DbEKn6gN4Qk?t=1596

Few bugs with pop in/outs but even with those if they launched 3.0 looking like that... I think there'll be a few happy campers.

[boars]

Another good ATV episode...

LA update was more interesting than I thought and the derelict feature was very interesting. Looks like there's going to be a decent amount of variation going on. Sadly going to be mostly unpopulated by the sounds of things.

• Persistance in parking vehicles inside other vehicles looks to be going well.
• Landing suspension looking good.
• Anvil hurricane is in whitebox, looks nice.
• Some civillian clothes
• New mobiglass looking slick.
• Day night cycle on derelicts looks cool: https://youtu.be/I_rSQGavuiI?t=922
• and finally their recent slick outtro to end the episode (nice examples of derelicts): https://youtu.be/I_rSQGavuiI?t=1517 throwing off some homeworld vibe with the radio chatter there...

Weekly highlights...

• Bugsmashers (decent episode, features a tiny bit of planetside and a whole lot of man on crate action) featured cargo, which seems to be looking like you'll be able to load and unload cargo manually by hand. Supppppposedly in 3.0. (although auto looks featured too see: ATV)
• The aurora rework is now apparently done and slated for 3.0.
• There's apparently a wreck in 3.0 that can be seen from orbit, that's a big ship! My bet is on Javelin or Vanduul driller as both have been seen demo'd. Next likely would be a Bengal.. because whatever it is it needs to be huge to be seen from orbit. Mind you we're talking only a few pixels big at that distance.
• Gamestar article on SC/S42 released - old info considering its a print magazine but interesting content:
  • Imagery: https://imgur.com/gallery/9iwKw
    Includes some cool looking armour I've never seen amongst other interesting shots
  • Translation from german - Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... y_summary/
  • Translation from german - Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... r_citizen/
  • Apparently 7-14 missions planned for 3.0
  • No player to player trading in 3.0
  • Interesting snipped: Marco Corbetta and Carsten Wenzel (ex-Crytek members, now for 2 years at CIG) make clear, that there is no CryEngine anymore. If you compare the engines 1:1 you have around 50% of CryEngine code and 50% of new engine code. But if you look at the actually used code by SC, you have around 10% CryEngine code and 90% new engine code.
  • Only 24 player instance for 3.0 - oh well, probably for the best till the network rework is done.
  • Current performance: i7 5930K, Nvidia GTX 980 and 32GB RAM - about 30 Frames.
  • Min specs goal: 4 core CPU, 2GB GPU, 8GB RAM. SSD Recommended
  • Still talking about possibly dropping all dx11 for vulcan by release, only extending with vulkan at present.
  • Some food for the critics and the trolls: For release C.R. is aiming for 5 to 10 star systems. Someday, Star Citizen should contain around 100 star systems with over 300 planets and moons.

[Disruptor4]

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/58522/sta ... index.html

So have they implemented incremental patches yet???

[boars]

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/58522/sta ... index.html

So have they implemented incremental patches yet???

Still internally testing supposedly but not officially slated for 3.0.

[Nekosan]

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/58522/sta ... index.html

So have they implemented incremental patches yet???

Still internally testing supposedly but not officially slated for 3.0.

Everquest 2 launched with that in 2004....

[bender]

Wow, they are only going to have 5-10 systems on release? I thought they might cut it down to 20-30, but 5-10...

CIG seem to be using the excuse for not having the patcher in 3.0 as we would have to download the whole game anyway as so much has changed, so an incremental patcher wont make a difference. Presumably it will come in 3.1 with a bunch of other things that were originally supposed to come with 3.0.

[Otto-matic Reiffel]

You'll have to redownload the whole game to get the incremental patcher

[stingtwo]

Wow, they are only going to have 5-10 systems on release? I thought they might cut it down to 20-30, but 5-10...

CIG seem to be using the excuse for not having the patcher in 3.0 as we would have to download the whole game anyway as so much has changed, so an incremental patcher wont make a difference. Presumably it will come in 3.1 with a bunch of other things that were originally supposed to come with 3.0.

And everything(roles, patcher, this magical netcode) was supposed to be in 2.0, then 2.1, 2.4 and so forth and so forth, oh it's not in this patch so it will be in the next one, it's all bullshit.

[boars]

And everything(roles, patcher, this magical netcode) was supposed to be in 2.0, then 2.1, 2.4 and so forth and so forth, oh it's not in this patch so it will be in the next one, it's all bullshit.

Except some of the netcode changes are marked as completed and should be in 3.0. I cannot speak to what was supposed to be in 2.0 because that's eons ago and I'm too lazy to Google.

[stingtwo]

I thought I had pointed it out here but guess not, this is the 3rd time they will attempt to increase the player counts to 24 players per instance https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm ... a-220#NFSS, i'll hedge my bets towards the "they will drop it back to 16" after a few weeks when players complain about the DISMAL framerates and their servers fall over like they did last time

:edit removed snark remarks:

[boars]

I thought I had pointed it out here but guess not, this is the 3rd time they will attempt to increase the player counts to 24 players per instance https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm ... a-220#NFSS, i'll hedge my bets towards the "they will drop it back to 16" after a few weeks when players complain about the DISMAL framerates and their servers fall over like they did last time

:edit removed snark remarks:

From my understanding the current limit is still 24 but I believe Star Marine is less by design (maps are small).
Not sure where you get your info from but I don't believe it is correct, confirmed by both CIG support and players.
It's been that way for a while - the only way to find this number is to check your friends list and see how many players are on their instance. (admittedly hard for you to actually verify since you refunded IIRC)

Having said that, last I played when a server was full, it performed quite terribly (correct and no one is debating this) when compared to offline play so yes, the changes they have made so far have been minor at best. I've had minor frame-rate increases but debatable as to where those gains have been from.

As such player numbers are not changing in 3.0, they're staying at 24.

[Nekosan]

5-10 systems on release? What's the point?

This kind of thing needs some procedural generation and hundreds of systems otherwise it might as well not exist.

[boars]

5-10 systems on release? What's the point?

This kind of thing needs some procedural generation and hundreds of systems otherwise it might as well not exist.

It's an interesting conundrum.

100 systems at this level of detail (2-3 landing zones per system - all of which are just on rails interactive cut scenes at best):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gx-3iwXvoQ

or

5-10 systems at this level of detail (near total freedom with landings, with far more places to land, planets, moons and no on rails landings - aside from maybe proc cities):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdCFTF8j7yI

There's no way to do the second on a huge scale without a hell of a lot more time... and we all know everyone wants this out by yesterday or its failed and or a scam.

[Otto-matic Reiffel]

The real question is how big are the systems? Space is very, very, very big, so it may not matter that there are only 5-10 systems.

[stingtwo]

The irony is, players have gotten nor are getting either option, the planet in the video(or the AI, sandworm, the vehicles) isn't making it into 3.0(only getting moons), the only "supposed" no loading screen planet landings they have shown is the exact same one shown at citizencon and THATS been up for debate if that was just FMV since it's very existence.