The Star Citizen Thread v5

Neo-ST · Aug 22, 2016

CMDR_Orlando said:
You betcha! Got reach that $200 million mark to beat SWTOR.

It already did. However, CIG delivered nothing yet.

SWTOR: $200M, publisher model (EA)
SC: $120M by crowd funds, $480M if it were publisher model (we already talked about this, CR himself said that 1 crowdfunded dollar is worth 4 "publisher model" dollars)

CMDR_Orlando · Aug 22, 2016

Neo-ST said:
It already did. However, CIG delivered nothing yet.

SWTOR: $200M, publisher model (EA)
SC: $120M by crowd funds, $480M if it were publisher model (we already talked about this, CR himself said that 1 crowdfunded dollar is worth 4 "publisher model" dollars)

Well it might be the best "nothing" ever delivered then. [big grin]

$480M? So that explains how they can raise a studio from scratch and make Star Citizen and Squadron42 at the same time...

Codger · Aug 22, 2016

I watched the Gamescom stuff. It was very nice looking, very high tech-ish, nice graphics, etc. But the direction the game is going is much more FPS in space sort of thing, with scripted missions and lots of first-person moving around and whatnot. I'm not much into any of it, myself. I have the impression that SC isn't going to be a game I like. I guess time will tell.

CMDR_Orlando · Aug 22, 2016

artigan99 said:
I watched the Gamescom stuff. It was very nice looking, very high tech-ish, nice graphics, etc. But the direction the game is going is much more FPS in space sort of thing, with scripted missions and lots of first-person moving around and whatnot. I'm not much into any of it, myself. I have the impression that SC isn't going to be a game I like. I guess time will tell.

That demo mission was a coop mission, although the main camera was on the FPS guy, his mate never left the ship (very good pilot that QA guy, Chris I think it's his name).
You could be that guy, I'll happily adventure with you and go fps while you do the flying, you will have to trust me I won't double-cross you though.

szopin · Aug 22, 2016

CMDR_Orlando said:
That demo mission was a coop mission, although the main camera was on the FPS guy, his mate never left the ship (very good pilot that QA guy, Chris I think it's his name).
You could be that guy, I'll happily adventure with you and go fps while you do the flying, you will have to trust me I won't double-cross you though.

Yeah, the absence of any AI was quite telling (no smoke/mirrors here guys). In was in fact 6 missions in one, count one mission for each pirate to have this mission be anywhere close to what was shown until they clear the AI in 64-bit space blocker (that's my bet on the main blocker come December). In theory, having missions generated like this to work around no NPC AI could work, but in practice - the guy who got 'wait for a guy in the crashed ship and kill him' mission could be a bit tardy and wait forever as our main 'hero mission' guy got the black box and exited from there before he got to his post; the guys waiting on the surface could wait forever if the first guy actually shot at the player instead of floating left/right and shooting at walls...

Sterlino · Aug 22, 2016

at the end the most important thing is the number of people who work on a project.

SC has a lot of offices and worker now.
I would that Elite has the same number of employed, but it's not...
that's why the time necessary for the releases is increasing.

and that's why SC has an impressive increasing of technology applied on each new release we see.

Komemiute · Aug 22, 2016

Sterlino said:
at the end the most important thing is the number of people who work on a project.

SC has a lot of offices and worker now.
I would that Elite has the same number of employed, but it's not...
that's why the time necessary for the releases is increasing.

and that's why SC has an impressive increasing of technology applied on each new release we see.

Waitwaitwait. You ARE serious?!

Zyll Goliat · Aug 22, 2016

Sterlino said:
at the end the most important thing is the number of people who work on a project.

SC has a lot of offices and worker now.
I would that Elite has the same number of employed, but it's not...
that's why the time necessary for the releases is increasing.

and that's why SC has an impressive increasing of technology applied on each new release we see.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
What SC impressive release you are been playing????Where is it???

hairychris · Aug 22, 2016

szopin said:
Yeah, the absence of any AI was quite telling (no smoke/mirrors here guys). In was in fact 6 missions in one, count one mission for each pirate to have this mission be anywhere close to what was shown until they clear the AI in 64-bit space blocker (that's my bet on the main blocker come December). In theory, having missions generated like this to work around no NPC AI could work, but in practice - the guy who got 'wait for a guy in the crashed ship and kill him' mission could be a bit tardy and wait forever as our main 'hero mission' guy got the black box and exited from there before he got to his post; the guys waiting on the surface could wait forever if the first guy actually shot at the player instead of floating left/right and shooting at walls...

Yeah, no AI in any of the SC demos, is that true?

ED had it from early on. Admittedly pretty stupid to start with though!

Ian Phillips · Aug 22, 2016

Sterlino said:
at the end the most important thing is the number of people who work on a project.

SC has a lot of offices and worker now......

I'm trying to recall that story of one baby and nine women......how does it go?

Gully Foyle · Aug 22, 2016

it takes one woman nine months to make one baby, "nine women can't make a baby in one month".

Brooks Law

Brooks' law is a claim about software project management according to which "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".[1][2] It was coined by Fred Brooks in his 1975 book The Mythical Man-Month. According to Brooks, there is an incremental person who, when added to a project, makes it take more, not less time.

Wikipedia

szopin · Aug 22, 2016

hairychris said:
Yeah, no AI in any of the SC demos, is that true?

ED had it from early on. Admittedly pretty stupid to start with though!

They do have spaceship AI (or at least something that resembles it, no idea if it ever shot at the players, they seem to do circles mostly), but did not see any first person AI walking, just sitting/standing, maybe to reduce network chatter, maybe 64-bit rewrite screwed with the default cry-AI and now needs to be rewritten, who knows

CMDR_Orlando · Aug 22, 2016

Sterlino said:
at the end the most important thing is the number of people who work on a project.

SC has a lot of offices and worker now.
I would that Elite has the same number of employed, but it's not...
that's why the time necessary for the releases is increasing.

and that's why SC has an impressive increasing of technology applied on each new release we see.

You do have a point because not because "SC has a lot of offices" but because they have offices in different time zones.
They have 2 main studios in the US (LA & Texas) and another 2 in Europe (UK & GER). So that allows them for an almost 24h ongoing development cycle, yes there are/were surely a lot of communication hurdles that they have/had to overcome, but with that oiled up and with the experience they keep getting it only gets better with time.

So while the "nine women can't make a baby in one month" is very much correct, we have to acknowledge the gestation of a baby doesn't stop when the mother goes to sleep but game-development indeed stop's when Dev's go to sleep.

szopin · Aug 22, 2016

CMDR_Orlando said:
You do have a point because not because "SC has a lot of offices" but because they have offices in different time zones.
They have 2 main studios in the US (LA & Texas) and another 2 in Europe (UK & GER). So that allows them for an almost 24h ongoing development cycle, yes there are/were surely a lot of communication hurdles that they have/had to overcome, but with that oiled up and with the experience they keep getting it only gets better with time.

So while the "nine women can't make a baby in one month" is very much correct, we have to acknowledge the gestation of a baby doesn't stop when the mother goes to sleep but game-development indeed stop's when Dev's go to sleep.

Interesting logic, FD needs to split their team into 24, to cover every time zone, this will give how much improvement you say?

Ian Phillips · Aug 22, 2016

into 3, assuming 8 hour work days.

lysan · Aug 22, 2016

Gully_Foyle said:
it takes one woman nine months to make one baby, "nine women can't make a baby in one month".

Brooks Law

Brooks' law is a claim about software project management according to which "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".[1][2] It was coined by Fred Brooks in his 1975 book The Mythical Man-Month. According to Brooks, there is an incremental person who, when added to a project, makes it take more, not less time.

Wikipedia

CIG don't know anything about project management, that one is pretty obvious!

GaryII · Aug 22, 2016

Sterlino said:
and that's why SC has an impressive increasing of technology applied on each new release we see.

Technology is not gameplay...and currently SC looks like tech demo nothing more...

Sure 3.0 Demo looks great, but will it have gameplay or will endup as tech demo - one planet one mission...

This game to me starts to look like NMS big marketing/promises -> average product...

and CR has some bad history about this already:

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

AJW · Aug 22, 2016

I'm just loving the idea that software development works like that.

szopin · Aug 22, 2016

Ian Phillips said:
into 3, assuming 8 hour work days.

Then you might as well introduce shifts and have the same in one location, what for were the timezones for again?

CMDR_Orlando · Aug 22, 2016

They've mentioned several times that they share information on a daily basis between studios, they often send stuff to other studios to work on before leaving, so while they sleep other devs across the world are looking into it, and vice versa.