The Star Citizen Thread v 3.0

[Virgil Tracy]

The cynic in me wonders if they have any incentive whatsoever to produce an actual game at this point. Before the thing has even released they're bringing in something like $2m per month, or the equivalent of something like 30k $60 unit sales per month.

When they release the game, that income stream changes dramatically. Their existing customer base, those who are happy to throw money at concept sales, stop being the cash cow. Instead they have to rely on *new* sales and that's a scary place to be. Your future is then make or break on how good the product you delivered is. So yeah, why not keep developing until you've milked that cash cow dry?

FWIW, I'm not implying that this is what's going on. But the longer development continues for and the more the scope of the project keeps increasing and churning, the more it looks like that from the outside. I hope I'm wrong. I hope that for the £30 I paid I get a AAA game that I can play for years to come. Hope is pretty much all I have at this point. ;-)

Sadly, I think that's precisely what's going on. When Chris states that the scale of the game and its development is based on funding income - he just means that the more people give him , the longer it will take (because it's going to be even bigger and better, of course).

Every new concept ship means yet another sale and a lot more money, but it also adds even more work to the already excessive backlog, designing and modelling the ships. People are still waiting to see ships they bought years ago, without adding more and more. And with ships like the Endeavor, completely new game mechanics which will have to be designed and implemented. Science Labs? Space Farming? Spacial Telescopy ? Using the Supercollider ? Engineering debt is an apt term.

Perhaps they realise just what an enormous task they have set themselves, one that grows with every new ship. Perhaps they realise they can never catch up and will never get the game to a completed and finished state. But they have no incentive to ever finish it. Because that would mean turning off the money tap, and I think CIG are now addicted to the $$$ stream.

 

[Mr.Nowak]

Hey Mr.Nowak - can you explain what sort of gameplay you expect from the Alpha? Has it been discussed? There's been lots of talk about the game, but not so much about the play part

Hello Barking.

Here is a video that shows the basic functionality of Alpha 2.0

[video=youtube;SrpeLpQWzTk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrpeLpQWzTk[/video]

This is the information picture. It shows what it includes.

Great! When can I play it? Because at this point, little else matters. Not another demonstration. A download.

Demonstrations matter. Because if they don't show what they are working on they are called a SCAM. For some reason? Also it shows how close they are to things. What they show are live demos with people playing. You just have to wait until it's release ready. It will come out when it's ready.

My estimate is by the end of December.

 

[Leper Messiah]

My SC impressions with the code Mr Nowak kindly posted. I went in as clear headed as possible. I'm neither a huge Wing Commander/Chris Roberts fan nor am I a huge Elite/David Braben fan (more of an Xwing/TIE fighter + Freespace fan!).

Initial load up took an AGE, I'm not a patient person and had to grab my guitar while I waited. Once it started up I was impressed with the looks but not frame rate (dropped gfx down to high sorted that out), explored the hanger. I have to give CiG credit here with the details...VERY impressive, looks nice on my mid range rig (i5 3570k @3.4 and a GF GTX660TI). Adjusted FPS controls and checked out the ships and 3rd person view, movement seemed a little bit clunky, I think it was when the game was animating the body or something. Sudden transtion to strafing seemed to cause it. Probably more realistic as humans cannot instantly side step from forward movement like that....just seems weird after a million FPSs.

walked up to a space ship and "use" came up. Pressed a shed load of keys, looked at key bindings and couldn't see a "use" key option. Checked online, it's "f"!! Back into game and got up into the cockpit, nice animation...once again the details are awesome. Could have done without the head moving around quite that much, would prefer the head to be kept as still as possible. Sat in the craft kind of hoping this would be "free flight"....nope. Damn, looked online again and I have to access the "pod" (really should have read up a lot more first, but wanted to dive right in).

Got in the "pod" and selected the take off tutorial. I really liked this bit too. All nicely done and better than Elites tutorial presentation wise in making me feel a part of the game. Adjuested some of the joystick controls and after tweaking out the constant roll (I have a REALLY old x35T and x36F Hotas setup!) I managed to get out of the hanger. Next issue I had was not knowing what button was what! But I got the initial steps sorted out, had to adjust things to how "elite" is set up regarding the yaw and roll axis on my stick. Graphics are really nice and detailed, craft i was in felt very twitchy (but I was expecting that).

Then I had to shoot the drone, damn I couldn't get on with the controls, I need to seriously spend some time tweaking things (when I get time I'll dive into the 'net for advice and settings). I find Elite too slow and ponderous (especially the yaw, I understand WHY (to stop turrets in space) but I felt, for me, the nerf was a bot too much) and I understand the ships in Elite are huge and have mega mass (and it conveys that nicely...a bit TOO nicely for me! )

But SC was too twitchy, I can sort of understand the complaints (didn't try kb and mouse). They need to nail basic settings, maybe have some presets for people to try (or if they already have presets I need to find them!).

I managed to hit the drone enough times and then it was missles, once I sussed out what button 4 was on my stick I fired missile after missile and every smegger missed....hmmm, either I'm doing something wrong or this is borked!

to summarise
SC Looks VERY nice (I knew this from what I'd gleaned)
FM was a bit hard to get into as a noob.
I was expecting a "bit" more, am I missing anything? Hanger, and the pod, is that it?

I have no preconceptions on time and money, I find those issues largly irrelevant. Did this give me enough to want to put money in? Nope, not right now. I'm going to continue a very interested observer and when I get time I'll try and acclimatise to the game a bit more as long as the access lasts (I think it's till the 24th so I have time). See if I change my mind, I can see it has enormous potential. And once again wish to every deity there is that XWing/TIE games get the same treatment Elite and WC have!!

 

[Mr.Nowak]

My SC impressions with the code Mr Nowak kindly posted. I went in as clear headed as possible. I'm neither a huge Wing Commander/Chris Roberts fan nor am I a huge Elite/David Braben fan (more of an Xwing/TIE fighter + Freespace fan!).

Initial load up took an AGE, I'm not a patient person and had to grab my guitar while I waited. Once it started up I was impressed with the looks but not frame rate (dropped gfx down to high sorted that out), explored the hanger. I have to give CiG credit here with the details...VERY impressive, looks nice on my mid range rig (i5 3570k @3.4 and a GF GTX660TI). Adjusted FPS controls and checked out the ships and 3rd person view, movement seemed a little bit clunky, I think it was when the game was animating the body or something. Sudden transtion to strafing seemed to cause it. Probably more realistic as humans cannot instantly side step from forward movement like that....just seems weird after a million FPSs.

walked up to a space ship and "use" came up. Pressed a shed load of keys, looked at key bindings and couldn't see a "use" key option. Checked online, it's "f"!! Back into game and got up into the cockpit, nice animation...once again the details are awesome. Could have done without the head moving around quite that much, would prefer the head to be kept as still as possible. Sat in the craft kind of hoping this would be "free flight"....nope. Damn, looked online again and I have to access the "pod" (really should have read up a lot more first, but wanted to dive right in).

Got in the "pod" and selected the take off tutorial. I really liked this bit too. All nicely done and better than Elites tutorial presentation wise in making me feel a part of the game. Adjuested some of the joystick controls and after tweaking out the constant roll (I have a REALLY old x35T and x36F Hotas setup!) I managed to get out of the hanger. Next issue I had was not knowing what button was what! But I got the initial steps sorted out, had to adjust things to how "elite" is set up regarding the yaw and roll axis on my stick. Graphics are really nice and detailed, craft i was in felt very twitchy (but I was expecting that).

Then I had to shoot the drone, damn I couldn't get on with the controls, I need to seriously spend some time tweaking things (when I get time I'll dive into the 'net for advice and settings). I find Elite too slow and ponderous (especially the yaw, I understand WHY (to stop turrets in space) but I fell for me the nerf was a bot too much) and I understand the ships in Elite are huge and have mega mass (and it conveys that nicely...a bit TOO nicely for me! )

But SC was too twitchy, I can sort of understand the complaints (didn't try kb and mouse). They need to nail basic settings, maybe have some presets for people to try (or if they already have presets I need to find them!).

I managed to hit the drone enough times and then it was missles, once I sussed out what button 4 was on my stick I fired missile after missile and every smegger missed....hmmm, either I'm doing something wrong or this is borked!

to summarise
SC Looks VERY nice (I knew this from what I'd gleaned)
FM was a bit hard to get into as a noob.
I was expecting a "bit" more, am I missing anything? Hanger, and the pod, is that it?

I have no preconceptions on time and money, I find those issues largly irrelevant. Did this give me enough to want to put money in? Nope, not right now. I'm going to continue a very interested observer and when I get time I'll try and acclimatise to the game a bit more as long as the access lasts (I think it's till the 24th so I have time). See if I change my mind. I can see it has enormous potential. And once again wish to every deity there is that XWing/TIE games get the same treatment Elite and WC have!!

You can also visit Arccorp. Which is the planetside section. It is a tech test bed for future landing zones. To enter Arccorp go to your Hangar and you will see that another door will open to an elevator get in the elevator and click on Arccorp. You can take a look to the planetside see other people explore it and of course talk to them.

Here is a Scott Manley video on visiting Arccorp

[video=youtube;38gofAbkilE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38gofAbkilE[/video]

 

[xyphic]

Sadly, I think that's precisely what's going on. When Chris states that the scale of the game and its development is based on funding income - he just means that the more people give him , the longer it will take (because it's going to be even bigger and better, of course).

Every new concept ship means yet another sale and a lot more money, but it also adds even more work to the already excessive backlog, designing and modelling the ships. People are still waiting to see ships they bought years ago, without adding more and more. And with ships like the Endeavor, completely new game mechanics which will have to be designed and implemented. Science Labs? Space Farming? Spacial Telescopy ? Using the Supercollider ? Engineering debt is an apt term.

Perhaps they realise just what an enormous task they have set themselves, one that grows with every new ship. Perhaps they realise they can never catch up and will never get the game to a completed and finished state. But they have no incentive to ever finish it. Because that would mean turning off the money tap, and I think CIG are now addicted to the $$$ stream.

Taking my cynic hat off, I can understand the thinking. Chris Roberts wants to make his dream game, something of a mix of Hollywood production values with huge scope for personal and multiplayer storytelling. Toward the start of the project he had an idea of what he wanted from the game given a modest budget, and he probably could have delivered it but it would have had to be full of compromises. But he's hit upon a reliable and regular income stream, so any compromises he had to make due to budget have gone away. Unfortunately somewhere along the way he's lost his pragmatism and it *has* become about maintaining the income stream so that his game can reach some sort of state of perfection.

The best thing that could happen for this project is to get that pragmatism back. Realise that it's important for marketplace and customer faith (and not just those core few who will continue to pump money in regardless) to start delivering and that sometimes "good enough" is actually good enough.

 

[Leper Messiah]

You can also visit Arccorp. Which is the planetside section. It is a tech test bed for future landing zones. To enter Arccorp go to your Hangar and you will see that another door will open to an elevator get in the elevator and click on Arccorp. You can take a look to the planetside see other people explore it and of course talk to them.

Here is a Scott Manley video on visiting Arccorp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38gofAbkilE

Many thanks for the info, I'd rep again if the damn site would let me!

- - - Updated - - -

Taking my cynic hat off, I can understand the thinking. Chris Roberts wants to make his dream game, something of a mix of Hollywood production values with huge scope for personal and multiplayer storytelling. Toward the start of the project he had an idea of what he wanted from the game given a modest budget, and he probably could have delivered it but it would have had to be full of compromises. But he's hit upon a reliable and regular income stream, so any compromises he had to make due to budget have gone away. Unfortunately somewhere along the way he's lost his pragmatism and it *has* become about maintaining the income stream so that his game can reach some sort of state of perfection.

The best thing that could happen for this project is to get that pragmatism back. Realise that it's important for marketplace and customer faith (and not just those core few who will continue to pump money in regardless) to start delivering and that sometimes "good enough" is actually good enough.

This makes a lot of sense to me, but I must admit I would just like him to get the money to do his vision justice. I'm in no rush to play the game, and I hope that he never has to rush something out the door to pay bills/shut some people up. I'm a perfectionist myself and have often infuriated people with my lack of progress and speed. But if I do anything I do it 100% and will not be rushed into half arsedness! Of course finding the balance so that he actually DOES release something is the key!

 

[Mr.Nowak]

To keep up with E: D news I follow ObsidianAnt often apparently he also released a video covering the new Star Citizen Star Map.

Take a look.

[video=youtube;SrgpnKhE31A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrgpnKhE31A[/video]

If you want to check out the Star Map for yourself it's here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/starmap There is quiet a bit of lore attached to most of the objects.

 

[adoredtv]

I'm really trying hard to understand the hate this game generates...

I can understand the anger for those who contributed early, the game (from what I've read) has changed focus and left many early backers disenchanted. But it seems logical to me that as the funds grew the scope of the game grew and (again) logically that has created delays. Some of those delays are expected ones (design shifts) and others are unexpected (problems).

I dunno of it's me as I am not one to listen to hype (in fact hype makes my sceptical mode kick in BIG time!), so once we know the basis of the game then why continue to complain? I would say that surely people who backed early and are seeing something evolve that is NOT what they backed, can get a full refund? But if other people are still excited by what the game offers and promises then why rag on them so much?

It's like I said much earlier in the thread - certain people are now so heavily invested in seeing the game fail because they've been ranting against it for even longer than DS has. For them now, only the death of the game is a win. It's not hard to tell who feels that way.

"We're not very far away from being content and functionality complete," he said. "That will be in the near future, by which I mean inside... soon."

Has that been expanded on anywhere? What does he mean by "content and functionality complete"?

The press video demo shows most of what you're getting. Basically the entire game mechanics (which cannot be done according to nearly every dev in this thread) rolled into one mini universe. Now, it's *very* small compared to the final game universe but the point is to show the functionality exists to get people from planetside to space travel/combat, to doing missions/FPS and back again. In other words, the guts of the game will be there, it just needs to be expanded on to 100's of systems and fleshed out. The *hard* stuff - the "stuff that couldn't be done" *has* been done.

Sadly, I think that's precisely what's going on. When Chris states that the scale of the game and its development is based on funding income - he just means that the more people give him , the longer it will take (because it's going to be even bigger and better, of course).

Every new concept ship means yet another sale and a lot more money, but it also adds even more work to the already excessive backlog, designing and modelling the ships. People are still waiting to see ships they bought years ago, without adding more and more. And with ships like the Endeavor, completely new game mechanics which will have to be designed and implemented. Science Labs? Space Farming? Spacial Telescopy ? Using the Supercollider ? Engineering debt is an apt term.

Guys designing ships are designing ships, that's their job. The FPS part is what has held up everything tbh, not more ships. Telescopy and overclocking were already in the game and known for a long time. By the looks of what they said about farming, it's something they've had planned for a while too. Science labs are pretty obvious additions.

Much of this stuff is required for the "background sim" to work. Telescopes are gonna find encounters, create science and missions (mining for example) that others can use. This stuff is for sure a bit further off than the rest, but all games are WIP these days.

I don't get why people are so keen to fixate on minor stuff like ship backlogs while ignoring the fact that the *major* stuff is (mostly) working? Ok I get that if you bought one of these ships that hasn't been released yet, then the wait is a bit annoying, but they were never left in any doubt about what it was they were buying.

 

[1500]

That because it is no pre- order. It doesn't become that even if you just pledge the amount of a preorder game price.
It funding. More a donation then a investment.

Then why is the same package sold as a pre-order as it was a pledge?

 

[Voivod]

It's like I said much earlier in the thread - certain people are now so heavily invested in seeing the game fail because they've been ranting against it for even longer than DS has. For them now, only the death of the game is a win. It's not hard to tell who feels that way.

Other than DS, who's publicly known now for his rage against the game, I don't see how anyone can hold such a grudge.
I mean they get a chance to criticize and gloat the kitten out of SC if it fails and they get a good game to play if it actually succeeds.
It's win / win for them.

People should stop being obsessed.

 

[1500]

Hello Barking.

Here is a video that shows the basic functionality of Alpha 2.0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrpeLpQWzTk

This is the information picture. It shows what it includes.

http://i.imgur.com/OGGTzcC.jpg



Demonstrations matter. Because if they don't show what they are working on they are called a SCAM. For some reason? Also it shows how close they are to things. What they show are live demos with people playing. You just have to wait until it's release ready. It will come out when it's ready.

My estimate is by the end of December.

Remember the FPS Demo CIG showed a YEAR ago, ya we still have not gotten that, in fact it looks worse now, and is indefinitely delayed. From the looks of it, it seems CIG had to start over on the FPS module. They also showed the demo you just linked months ago, again, it is also indefinitely delayed.

 

[Zyll Goliat]

@Zyll: Yup. People complained about how buggy and unpleasant to fly things were in AC Alpha and Chris Roberts claimed that the reason AC was released in a buggy state was because of the fans being so impatient.

Now, we don't get any dates whatsoever, because we gave him prandial byproduct for giving dates.

Exactly,I can't said that I am in love when he miss the date's that HE previously mention as a release dates but the worst thing is not acknowledging the obvious problem and keep up saying that everything is in perfect state.Making katamari threads and ignore all this ppl. that have valid&good concerns for years now,try to keep them quiet and hide the real problems under the rug,that's the real issue I have with CR&CIG and probably many others backers as well.....

 

[jcrg99]

Why does he keep on going with this ridiculous narrative?
It's getting sooo tiring and is offensive to so many other developers who have been developing great PC games while he's been doing Hollywood films.
Also yeah space combat games are back, some have released and others are coming... it's not because of Star Citizen.

Why does it HAVE to be pompous and exagerrated comments every single time.

This press article released how ridiculous it is very well:

http://www.lazygamer.net/genre/sim-genre/cloud-imperium-celebrates-its-millionth-star-citizen/

 

[adoredtv]

Remember the FPS Demo CIG showed a YEAR ago, ya we still have not gotten that, in fact it looks worse now, and is indefinitely delayed. From the looks of it, it seems CIG had to start over on the FPS module. They also showed the demo you just linked months ago, again, it has an indefinite release date.

Star Marine was pushed back in favour of the SC Alpha 2.0 and is not "indefinitely delayed". The FPS will still be part of SC Alpha 2.0. Does it look worse than before? Yes. Does it look like it still needs a lot of work? Yes. But we've seen it working as part of the PU and we can see the constant development going on with it in weekly updates on the site - https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15005-WIP-Star-Marine-Armor-Part-II

This is not some ruse to get more money out of us. They are clearly working hard on the FPS.

 

[1500]

Star Marine was pushed back in favour of the SC Alpha 2.0 and is not "indefinitely delayed". The FPS will still be part of SC Alpha 2.0. Does it look worse than before? Yes. Does it look like it still needs a lot of work? Yes. But we've seen it working as part of the PU and we can see the constant development going on with it in weekly updates on the site - https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15005-WIP-Star-Marine-Armor-Part-II

This is not some ruse to get more money out of us. They are clearly working hard on the FPS.

Please tell me the release date of Star Marine, that's right you can't, so its indefinitely delayed. As AC 2.0 is also delayed with out a release date it is also indefinitely delayed.

Everything that CIG does is a ruse to get more money out of its backers.

 

[adoredtv]

Please tell me the release date of Star Marine, that's right you can't, so its indefinitely delayed. As AC 2.0 is also delayed with out a release date it is also indefinitely delayed.

"Indefinitely delayed" has connotations with "cancelled" as you fine well know. This is not the case for either part as can clearly be seen with the constant development updates on the site. Nobody is fooled with this "indefinitely delayed" nonsense.

https://forums.robertsspaceindustri...6/no-more-star-marine-yes-more-star-marine/p1

Hey guys! One big clarification from CitizenCon: the Baby PU is NOT replacing Star Marine, it's simply going to include a lot of the work we've done on the FPS. We still intend to release Star Marine proper (with Gold Horizon and the HQ game mode and all that.) In all likelihood, you'll see Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 first and then Star Marine proper shortly after that... and we'll continue to update with more details on both as they're locked down.

At patch 1.2 now, 1.3 coming soon and with 2.0 being the start of the PU, they have a clear path to Star Marine (the FPS will exist as part of the PU in 2.0 at any rate). This is not the same as "indefinitely delayed".

 

[1500]

"Indefinitely delayed" has connotations with "cancelled" as you fine well know. This is not the case for either part as can clearly be seen with the constant development updates on the site. Nobody is fooled with this "indefinitely delayed" nonsense.

Did I use "indefinitely delayed" nope, I used it has its actual meaning. Please stop making things up, its near impossible to have an actual discussion with you.

Yes both modules are in fact indefinitely delayed, and so far you have not proved otherwise.

 

[Voivod]

Why don't they tell us what exactly happened with the FPS module and put it all to rest?


This being transparent development n' all

 

[1500]

Why don't they tell us what exactly happened with the FPS module and put it all to rest?


This being transparent development n' all

Could you imagine the storm that would happen if CIG admitted they had to throw out most of Illfonic's work.

 

[adoredtv]

Did I use "indefinitely delayed" nope, I used it has its actual meaning. Please stop making things up, its near impossible to have an actual discussion with you.

Yes both modules are in fact indefinitely delayed, and so far you have not proved otherwise.

They have a clear path to release as mentioned in the link and by Roberts at CitizenCon. This is not the same as an exact release date but it also clearly does not mean it's delayed "indefinitely".

We've been told to expect SC Alpha 2.0 coming after 1.3, at which point we'll have access to the working FPS and then Star Marine afterwards. Again, in no way can you call this an "indefinite" delay.

- - - Updated - - -

Could you imagine the storm that would happen if CIG admitted they had to throw out most of Illfonic's work.

I can imagine the storm that some people would try to create. Most people though will just look at the recent demos and say "well it seems to be working reasonably ok now at least".