The Star Citizen Thread v5

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Literally who cares. Like i said awards don't make a game good.

Do you know the track record of games with awards? we get stuff like fallout 4 and skyrim. Not very good games and i own both.

I hate Bethesda and their constantly regurgitated experiences that have barely changed since Morrowind. But I don't deny that many many many more players love them and consider them some of the best games ever made.

"Not very good games" is just disingenuous.
 
One word of note: the Star Citizen KS campaign started in 2012, but work on assets and development began a year prior as stated by Chris Roberts himself. Indeed the fact that they already had a game prototype was stressed by Chris several times, and the opposite being the case for Elite was the reason I didn't back Elite Dangerous until very late into their campaign. So really, as per CR's own statement, the start date for SC is 2011.
I'd just like to correct you all on something. "Elite IV" (ie before they settled on calling it Elite: Dangerous) was worked on long before the kickstarter. Rollercoaster Tycoon III was known, even back then, to be preparatory work for large number NPC handling specifically for a future Elite project. The Outsider while being developed as its own game, was also preparatory work for Elite IV, and let's not forget that without the Cobra engine, there would be no Elite Dangerous. To say work on Elite Dangerous started when the kickstarter was funded (or ended) is not accurate.
 
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I'd just like to correct you all on something. "Elite IV" (ie before they settled on calling it Elite: Dangerous) was worked on long before the kickstarter. Rollercoaster Tycoon III was known, even back then, to be preparatory work for large number NPC handling specifically for a future Elite project. The Outsider while being developed as its own game, was also preparatory work for Elite IV, and let's not forget that without the Cobra engine, there would be no Elite Dangerous. To say work on Elite Dangerous started when the kickstarter was funded (or ended) is not accurate.

Sorry but no, you are incorrect.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/20351-David-Braben-Live-Chat-Thread-(5th-June)/page11?p=455714#post455714

No problem!

I have wanted to do a sequel for a long time, and there has been 'skunk-works' development, on and off for quite some time, but full on development is mostly since (and somewhat during) the Kickstarter campaign. So you are correct.

-David Braben

Working on the engine is not the same as working on the game, the engine is the same engine they use for all their games.
 
Sorry but no, you are incorrect.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/20351-David-Braben-Live-Chat-Thread-(5th-June)/page11?p=455714#post455714



Working on the engine is not the same as working on the game, the engine is the same engine they use for all their games.

No, YOU are incorrect ... "and there has been 'skunk-works' development, on and off for quite some time" ie BEFORE the kickstarter.
This skunkworks development included work on RCTIII and Outsider (or do you think they just wasted that time and forgot everything they did?)
I'll also add I've been on this forum since 2008 (check my join date) and have read rumours, reports and interviews since long before the kickstarter.
What you linked to, actually proved me right, not wrong.
 
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Let's not go down this side loop again? Otherwise SC has been in development since CryEngine was made... Assertions like that tend to upset some folks round here, for some reason.
 
Alien, DB himself clarified that they had nothing at the start of the KS. Those wireframe flatshaded graphics in the background of the pitch video is all they had, plus their engine and tools.

Nothing of that skunkworks phase is in ED. If the engine counts too, then SC must be counted as in development since 2002.
 
No, YOU are incorrect ... "and there has been 'skunk-works' development, on and off for quite some time" ie BEFORE the kickstarter.
This skunkworks development included work on RCTIII and Outsider (or do you think they just wasted that time and forgot everything they did?)
I'll also add I've been on this forum since 2008 (check my join date) and have read rumours, reports and interviews since long before the kickstarter.
What you linked to, actually proved me right, not wrong.
Alien, you're correct :)
When the Kickstarter launched they already had playable demos of ED with ships flying in asteroid belts. It was a long way past "just an engine".
Here's the kickstarter link, with videos of E:D before the KickStarter finished...:D
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous/description
 
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ojHY4lL.png


This game is going to be apocalyptic and will change the generations to come.
 
Yerse... I spent an hour yesterday in a crater the size of a large city on one of the planets in the Jaques system. Enjoying the terrain / scenery jumping the Srv into massive ski jump hang time and prospecting... found some yttrium! I can only wonder what Games other than SC would be like if they had engaging planetary gameplay!

Perhaps CiG could license Himmelblau by Die ärzte as a them song for their project?
 
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1. They had a presentation, at Gamescom. People buy tickets to Gamescom to see that demo or get invited as press. It is first and foremost, an advertising platform for developers to show off their games. Whether you're in the business area, or the public area, it doesn't matter. You have a demo, trailer or whatever to show. Over 300k people come, they vote on what is the best thing they see in certain categories.

2. None of these articles say "best demo ever", not close or even in the same ballpark.

Most of them say words to the effect of "Star Citizen is finally starting to show off what may be in it's future - but it still has a long way to go".

Gamescom awards are a way for the press and players attending the event to say "Watch this game, it looks good". It's also something the devs get to take away and smile about.


As I keep saying, your head is in the clouds. If you think it is the best game ever and everything it shows is the best ever, that's fine.

But if you're going to discuss it and try to show why objectively - using sources, industry comparisons and their technology, then your sources and the tech better agree with you. So far none of them have. At best the media offers cautious optimism, your industry comparisons are laughably silly and the tech is still unproven, very buggy and strewn across lots of demo's and pictures rather than being part of the main client.

As always I say, I have every hope for it, it sounds like the type of game I want to play - but when discussing it I'd prefer to read and respond to accurate information and logical expectation rather than marketing hype.

Sometimes, reading your responses, is like having a discussion with an advert. Very unnerving and peculiar.

SC is great for it core feature that are the highly detailed space craft that are flyble mini FPV maps .
My first experience with this features was a very old non space game Unreal tournament where 2 space craft alongsite with animated stary background that give the feel of speed. And where you teamdeathmatch and captute the flag on arena sized map consisting of big spacecraft . Yes so few decades back I got this feel decades ago of a FPS engine can be used to build a space game on it.
The next non space genre experience with this is Mass effect where you get sense of be in a detailed space craft.
Keep in mind most gamers in the world did not grow up with Elite but got in this genre with.
Wingcommander
Privateer
And startrek and starwars games.
And as such these IP are reference for SC and that why most gamers went on SC train.
Because the know Privateer and Wing commander .

SC is fresh start of IP
Like Farcry became Crysis
Operation flashpoint became ARMA
With the deverence made by same studio same engine lagacy .
SC has Large gap and dead'ish genre and started from scratch so went for licensable engine.

I like the strong focus on space craft detail and deep simulation in gamyfied way.
While they compared it with games with totaly different focus on extreem exploring type of games.

Where those depend on Procedural content generation for the excesive exploring focus.
A triple A production focus on high detailed space craft need a big asset art production team to have large playable space craft.

Where it is possible to extend the game focus to each direction. As PCG is still option so to extend art team .
I got this feel a little bit with Xrebirth only playable little spacecraft , its clear what a big budged can do on spacecraft detail and have a few dozen of them from small fighters to realy big one.

To me SC production is producing decent amount of space craft that are mini FPS map .

Installed it for the first time this year on my W10 install . Only Hangar I did check out. For now.
Next step get my flightstick on my game rig and fly with something.

I was actualy waiting for my next year PC build but my brother want a start package and did not have Paypal so then check it out on my old rig. And arange his package.

So I can imangine the world is still enthausiast about this game in production as the world does not follow this soap and don't check it out on dayly basis . 3 month or 6 mont make more sense for large production.
 
SC is great for it core feature that are the highly detailed space craft that are flyble mini FPV maps .
My first experience with this features was a very old non space game Unreal tournament where 2 space craft alongsite with animated stary background that give the feel of speed. And where you teamdeathmatch and captute the flag on arena sized map consisting of big spacecraft . Yes so few decades back I got this feel decades ago of a FPS engine can be used to build a space game on it.
The next non space genre experience with this is Mass effect where you get sense of be in a detailed space craft.
Keep in mind most gamers in the world did not grow up with Elite but got in this genre with.
Wingcommander
Privateer
And startrek and starwars games.
And as such these IP are reference for SC and that why most gamers went on SC train.
Because the know Privateer and Wing commander .

SC is fresh start of IP
Like Farcry became Crysis
Operation flashpoint became ARMA
With the deverence made by same studio same engine lagacy .
SC has Large gap and dead'ish genre and started from scratch so went for licensable engine.

I like the strong focus on space craft detail and deep simulation in gamyfied way.
While they compared it with games with totaly different focus on extreem exploring type of games.

Where those depend on Procedural content generation for the excesive exploring focus.
A triple A production focus on high detailed space craft need a big asset art production team to have large playable space craft.

Where it is possible to extend the game focus to each direction. As PCG is still option so to extend art team .
I got this feel a little bit with Xrebirth only playable little spacecraft , its clear what a big budged can do on spacecraft detail and have a few dozen of them from small fighters to realy big one.

To me SC production is producing decent amount of space craft that are mini FPS map .

Installed it for the first time this year on my W10 install . Only Hangar I did check out. For now.
Next step get my flightstick on my game rig and fly with something.

I was actualy waiting for my next year PC build but my brother want a start package and did not have Paypal so then check it out on my old rig. And arange his package.

So I can imangine the world is still enthausiast about this game in production as the world does not follow this soap and don't check it out on dayly basis . 3 month or 6 mont make more sense for large production.

So you actually didn´t even try flying at all???I personally don´t like to judge things if I didn´t try them for myself....
 
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I'd just like to correct you all on something. "Elite IV" (ie before they settled on calling it Elite: Dangerous) was worked on long before the kickstarter. Rollercoaster Tycoon III was known, even back then, to be preparatory work for large number NPC handling specifically for a future Elite project. The Outsider while being developed as its own game, was also preparatory work for Elite IV, and let's not forget that without the Cobra engine, there would be no Elite Dangerous. To say work on Elite Dangerous started when the kickstarter was funded (or ended) is not accurate.

Yes it is, just as saying that SC only started development in 2013 or is it 2014 I never seem to understand game development.
 
https://i.imgur.com/ojHY4lL.png

This game is going to be apocalyptic and will change the generations to come.
Pretty sure just two months ago there were people saying very similarly toned statements about how NMS was going to change gaming forever complete with detailed plans about their future life in space

People love to dream. With no reality to bring them down to any sort of sense of scale their imaginations have run wild - they dream of entire second-life style adventures on just one planet full of procedural cities with workplaces and jobs and missions and stories where they get to play a bit part and run around as the hero building a continent sized empire before even launching into space to carve out their niche in the galaxy

It's just madness and is going to end so messily. In many ways the NMS drama should have been the biggest red flag to reign this stuff in and concentrate on what's been planned, what's been scoped out, what mechanisms have actually been implemented to test but with them putting bits like farming out there it's only encouraging it. I can only conclude this will never end and we're already seeing the start of the transformation into a subscription paid service to let them keep developing forever just dancing that line between delivered content and future promise to keep the cash rolling in from the faithful
 
All the bickering about who started first is irrelevant. Only the release date matters to us. I don't care if elite started development in 1973... they've delivered a game.
They could have said on the SC kickstarter that they had only just started and it was going to take ages, but they didn't, they said we'd have a game in 2014.
I backed it then, for an achievable, if ambitious game that was a couple of years from completion.
I didn't back for increased scope and dreams maybe someday.....
 
Pretty sure just two months ago there were people saying very similarly toned statements about how NMS was going to change gaming forever complete with detailed plans about their future life in space

People love to dream. With no reality to bring them down to any sort of sense of scale their imaginations have run wild - they dream of entire second-life style adventures on just one planet full of procedural cities with workplaces and jobs and missions and stories where they get to play a bit part and run around as the hero building a continent sized empire before even launching into space to carve out their niche in the galaxy

It's just madness and is going to end so messily. In many ways the NMS drama should have been the biggest red flag to reign this stuff in and concentrate on what's been planned, what's been scoped out, what mechanisms have actually been implemented to test but with them putting bits like farming out there it's only encouraging it. I can only conclude this will never end and we're already seeing the start of the transformation into a subscription paid service to let them keep developing forever just dancing that line between delivered content and future promise to keep the cash rolling in from the faithful

It's interesting to contemplate what FD could have done with 120M.

Base game took 2 years to make, team of 80 4M UK pa (DB figures), so 6M USD for the comparison so 12M USD for the 2 years. Since then they have run 2 teams for two years So at the end of the year cost will be around 36M with season 2 almost finished and season 3 half developed (year in background development and a year developing the dot releases. 120M would cover a 10 year plan. Space legs and planets with atmospheres make take 4 seasons to do, but that still would leave some seasons for something else!
 
None of this changes the state of SC/SQ42 in any way - if it's going to succeed then a handful of people on an unrelated forum can't change that. If on the other hand it's going to fail - or more likely - end up being a bit mediocre (having missed it's window of opportunity to impress by years) nothing any of us says will change that either.
Except that - with sensible metrics applied - the video game Kickstarter project already failed. Just because a few whales in denial still throw moar good money after bad doesn't make that an "if".
 
It's interesting to contemplate what FD could have done with 120M.

Base game took 2 years to make, team of 80 4M UK pa (DB figures), so 6M USD for the comparison so 12M USD for the 2 years. Since then they have run 2 teams for two years So at the end of the year cost will be around 36M with season 2 almost finished and season 3 half developed (year in background development and a year developing the dot releases. 120M would cover a 10 year plan. Space legs and planets with atmospheres make take 4 seasons to do, but that still would leave some seasons for something else!
I suspect this is why we see nothing about the finances - who'd want anyone actually able to make such comparisons properly? Could be ugly. What's certain is it's a hugely long way from transparency and the Pledge
 
It's interesting to contemplate what FD could have done with 120M.

Base game took 2 years to make, team of 80 4M UK pa (DB figures), so 6M USD for the comparison so 12M USD for the 2 years. Since then they have run 2 teams for two years So at the end of the year cost will be around 36M with season 2 almost finished and season 3 half developed (year in background development and a year developing the dot releases. 120M would cover a 10 year plan. Space legs and planets with atmospheres make take 4 seasons to do, but that still would leave some seasons for something else!

I'd love to see a glimpse into an alternative universe where the amount of money would be swapped between two companies. Who knows, perhaps both games would be better for it? By the way, do you have any sources for the ED figures?

Edit @kilvenny: thanks for the link
 
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