The Star Citizen Thread v5

[Monk]

Looks like the loyal Citizens aren't sharing the cautiously optimistic views of the Kotaku article that Monk and McGlashan seem to have of it...

I think, what the article does, is humanize the entire project. They are not gods of video game development. They don't have all the answers. They aren't using backer funding as efficiently as they really should.

However, I think it shows a commitment to produce something, even if the path has gone awry.

This is the middle ground that I think Mr. Nowak alludes to...the project is nowhere near the platitudes heaped upon it by CR and his boosters....but it will get somewhere. I think he is more optimistic about that somewhere than I am, but I've also seen and been involved in a number of truly blundered software projects.

EDIT: The CIG/RSI booster club is taking the obvious route when your world view is being dismantled...wild accusation and conspiracy theories.

 

[Dooguk]

I think, what the article does, is humanize the entire project. They are not gods of video game development. They don't have all the answers. They aren't using backer funding as efficiently as they really should.

However, I think it shows a commitment to produce something, even if the path has gone awry.

This is the middle ground that I think Mr. Nowak alludes to...the project is nowhere near the platitudes heaped upon it by CR and his boosters....but it will get somewhere. I think he is more optimistic about that somewhere than I am, but I've also seen and been involved in a number of truly blundered software projects.

EDIT: The CIG/RSI booster club is taking the obvious route when your world view is being dismantled...wild accusation and conspiracy theories.

Or maybe he toned down the negativity of the article, for fear of upsetting broken bottle wielding Commandos.

 

[Hi-Ban]

The point is this:

Plan for VR from the beginning: ground is prepared, put the actual VR support in place when ready. Minimal rewriting required.

Don't plan for VR from beginning: refactor menus/HUD, refactor character & camera interaction, refactor cockpit models, remove "loss of control" moments, plus more before you can even look at implementing the VR technology itself.

So, CIG could add VR at some point, but to do so they will need to do a huge amount of rewrites (increasing as more content is added).

EDIT: So, if VR is actually planned, it is bad management not to design the game with it in mind from the beginning as you are adding a massive amount of extra work further down the line.

We don't really know if they have already been doing that. A high resolution HUD is not a clear indicator of anything, they can make alternate lower-res HUDs for VR. About the loss of control moments, like ship entering animation, it's part of the game experience. Obviously they dont want the player to teleport himself to the cockpit, that's not immersive. I guess that's something VR users will have to live with, they are already trying to make those moments shorter.
The unified 1st/3rd person animations and vision stabilization are a good sign. Yes, i've read people have some problems with the "use" context menus when using VR (they are already a bit messy without VR anyway), i guess they will make that more easy to use, they already showed some WIP changes.
The cockpit models are ok, i see no problems with them.

 

[Osmanthus]

I think, what the article does, is humanize the entire project. They are not gods of video game development. They don't have all the answers. They aren't using backer funding as efficiently as they really should.

However, I think it shows a commitment to produce something, even if the path has gone awry.

This is the middle ground that I think Mr. Nowak alludes to...the project is nowhere near the platitudes heaped upon it by CR and his boosters....but it will get somewhere. I think he is more optimistic about that somewhere than I am, but I've also seen and been involved in a number of truly blundered software projects.

EDIT: The CIG/RSI booster club is taking the obvious route when your world view is being dismantled...wild accusation and conspiracy theories.

Yes, I think that hits the nail on the head. From the cynical side of things it's easy to think of the project as some profoundly screwed-up attempt, and this makes it apparent that yes, there is actually some progress happening over there.

It might not be very quick, but they're trying.

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The unified 1st/3rd person animations and vision stabilization are a good sign.

I beg to differ. The only person who was really optimistic about it in the Kotaku article was CR.

 

[Frank]

I thought that article was a superb piece of work. It actually makes me feel more hopeful about Star Citizen than I have done for a long time.
Talk to me about how you're solving problems not showing off the latest tech advances, any monkey can do that.
This article is open development to me, I want to see how the company works, how the people work together, where it all fails and how they get it going again. That's what separates the people who can and can't, it's what gives me reassurance about what they're doing.

I just finished reading the article and I see what you mean. For me the most hopeful statement had to be this...

Todd Papy, design director at the Frankfurt studio, had this to say: “I'm a firm believer of 'You tell me I can't do that and I will prove you wrong'.

 

[Monk]

Or maybe he toned down the negativity of the article, for fear of upsetting broken bottle wielding Commandos.

IDK...if he had more damning stuff to say, he would have said it. The juicier the story, the better, no matter the backlash of some empty threat wielding fanatics.

I'm wondering what is coming in the next entry, if there is one.

 

[hairychris]

We don't really know if they have already been doing that. A high resolution HUD is not a clear indicator of anything, they can make alternate lower-res HUDs for VR.

It's more about HUD design for readability, not just a "low res" version.

About the loss of control moments, like ship entering animation, it's part of the game experience.

Which will make VR users throw up.

Obviously they dont want the player to teleport himself to the cockpit, that's not immersive. I guess that's something VR users will have to live with, they are already trying to make those moments shorter.

No, you'd need to make the ship boarding actions either a cut, or have it under manual control. Having a forced movement system that makes you throw up is also not "immersive".

I suppose that some thing short and vomit-inducing is slightly better than something long and vomit-inducing, but not by much.

The unified 1st/3rd person animations and vision stabilization are a good sign. Yes, i've read people have some problems with the "use" context menus when using VR (they are already a bit messy without VR anyway), i guess they will make that more easy to use, they already showed some WIP changes.

Well bring on the changes then. Fingers crossed.

The cockpit models are ok, i see no problems with them.

We'll see!

 

[Hi-Ban]

I beg to differ. The only person who was really optimistic about it in the Kotaku article was CR.

Why? It was discussed in this thread that the headbob was not good for VR. They removed headbob and made movement smooth. That's ideal for VR users.

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

We don't really know if they have already been doing that. A high resolution HUD is not a clear indicator of anything, they can make alternate lower-res HUDs for VR. About the loss of control moments, like ship entering animation, it's part of the game experience. Obviously they dont want the player to teleport himself to the cockpit, that's not immersive. I guess that's something VR users will have to live with, they are already trying to make those moments shorter.
The unified 1st/3rd person animations and vision stabilization are a good sign. Yes, i've read people have some problems with the "use" context menus when using VR (they are already a bit messy without VR anyway), i guess they will make that more easy to use, they already showed some WIP changes.
The cockpit models are ok, i see no problems with them.

In other words, you haven't a clue how VR works and how important it is to plan the implementation of it carefully when considering stuff like how your GUI will work with it, or how the character model animations can affect VR vision and cause serious issues like motion sickness.

Stop trying to obfuscate a point you don't understand, or even attempt to try to understand, whilst people point out the current situation that CIG have dug themselves into with the recent media articles that have been released today.

 

[Zetta]

Looks like the loyal Citizens aren't sharing the cautiously optimistic views of the Kotaku article that Monk and McGlashan seem to have of it...

Interestingly enough that is that Artemis guy who was posting here earlier in the week.

 

[darkoff]

the studio things was quite interesting to read and fairly logical when explained.

Cig Santa monica was the place chris roberts liked the most so they made it head office instead of austin
Austin office struggled with getting cry engine capable people to work there, and it was much harder to hire ppl there thanks to Bioware, Arkane, Blizzard, NCSoft and Sony Online Entertainment having offices in austin
To answer the slow working pace CIg opened up england studio lead by erin roberts who had excellent connection on english developers
An opportunity further arised as crytek began to have financial problems. So they decidet to open germany studio to speed up the development process.

another interesting part of article was this

I asked each of my sources if they thought Star Citizen could actually be made, knowing what they do, and there was no clear consensus. But there was clear agreement on ‘overscope’.

One source, for instance, said that “there's a lot of Star Citizen that is incredibly impractical, while not a lot of it is impossible. With enough time and money and clever people, anything can be made, right? I think it suffers from the same problem that has dogged all video game development since the beginning: overscope. There's not a video game ever made that's not had stuff cut from it, or dropped, or been redesigned because it turns out it was too big.
“Star Citizen started from this small development targeted at doing this one specific thing with a specific set of technology, which was absolutely fine – and then it grew and grew. Rather than adapting to new technologies and approaches for the new scope they stayed with what they had, which slowed everything down. In the end, what they should have done was decide a figure after the Kickstarter and gone 'Right, we're going to $25 million', and if they had hit that, they should have gone 'We're done. This is the game and with $25 million we can make it in this time.'
“But instead they just let it grow and grow and grow. I know they’ve said 'we're not adding features anymore', but the feature set they've already got is so vast and unwieldy and huge and the tech they're trying to adapt is not supporting it. If it had infinite time and infinite money and everyone working on it had infinite patience then, yeah, at the end you'd probably see something and it would be pretty cool.”

Another source flat-out believed that Star Citizen could not be made. “Not what they've promised, absolutely not. If it happened then I would believe in God.” They added: “the biggest obstacle to finishing, if you were going to take out money and time, is the scope. They could make a smaller game. They could make a really nice dogfighting shooter in space and it would probably do really well. That's the general attitude of most people in the industry.”

Another source said that if the team had focused on a single module first then it “could have been done a year ago”, and “then CIG could have built on top of it and rolled out updates.”
“Stop trying to give your audience every part of the game and calling that beta complete,” the source continued. “Say 'Hey, listen, we're going to give you a tiny bit of this thing here and a tiny thing of this here. We're going to polish these things up to a beta state, roll those out, monetise it, and now we're not relying on fake items to keep the game afloat.' We'd actually be keeping the game afloat with real assets.”

It contains both side of arguments people that still believe in project and people that have doubts that project has changes to finish.

also this video was interesting
[video=youtube_share;c-J2Ejl1gLI]https://youtu.be/c-J2Ejl1gLI?t=1448[/video]
24 minutes in they showcase how bengal works.
They also showcase combat of bengal against vanduuls.

the whole interview is quite fun.
Chris for example talks how 6 years is too long for game development.
And how he left freelancer project in begin of 2001.

The article has plenty of more information. Theres even responses from chris roberts.
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/23/inside-the-troubled-development-of-star-citizen

 

[milligna]

Hi-Ban, do you at least own an HMD or is this VR knowledge coming from watching CIG videos?

Removing headbob is not actually a huge step towards VR support, it's just obvious stuff. There's no way a headlook camera would be setup WITH excruciating headbob. Geez!

 

[Osmanthus]

Why? It was discussed in this thread that the headbob was not good for VR. They removed headbob and made movement smooth. That's ideal for VR users.

I was talking more about the 1st/3rd person unificiation that necessitated this idiotic stabilization work in the first place. They could have saved themselves so much work, and the players would have lost very little if anything.

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

IDK...if he had more damning stuff to say, he would have said it. The juicier the story, the better, no matter the backlash of some empty threat wielding fanatics.

I'm wondering what is coming in the next entry, if there is one.

Apparently Monk, this article is the first of several that will be talking about Star Citizen's troubled development.

Stay tuned for more articles, and there is no guarantees that the writer will be using kid gloves like with this initial article....

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Interestingly enough that is that Artemis guy who was posting here earlier in the week.

Oh really? Looks as though he is rather angry about getting the FDev boot firmly applied to his backside then.

 

[milligna]

I doubt kid gloves will be employed considered he concludes with:

"But no game can be made on belief alone. As of right now, there is no Star Citizen. There are several different live demos, but they are just that: demos. There is no game.

Star Citizen is the biggest crowdfunding success in history. The story of its development so far, rocky as it has been, is fascinating – and, as we’ve discovered, much more complex than it looks from outside. But sooner or later, Roberts and his team have to deliver a game, or all of this will be just a prelude to the most expensive failed development of all time."

There is no game. No hay banda! SILENCIOOOOOOO!

 

[Osmanthus]

I doubt kid gloves will be employed considered he concludes with:

"But no game can be made on belief alone. As of right now, there is no Star Citizen. There are several different live demos, but they are just that: demos. There is no game.

Star Citizen is the biggest crowdfunding success in history. The story of its development so far, rocky as it has been, is fascinating – and, as we’ve discovered, much more complex than it looks from outside. But sooner or later, Roberts and his team have to deliver a game, or all of this will be just a prelude to the most expensive failed development of all time."

something wicked this way comes

 

[Monk]

Apparently Monk, this article is the first of several that will be talking about Star Citizen's troubled development.

Stay tuned for more articles, and there is no guarantees that the writer will be using kid gloves like with this initial article....

Oh damn, for real...this guy

 

[Hi-Ban]

I was talking more about the 1st/3rd person unificiation that necessitated this idiotic stabilization work in the first place. They could have saved themselves so much work, and the players would have lost very little if anything.

Well the guy explained his reasons for that in the last ATV. He wanted to make sure that what you see is exactly what your friends see, because he feels that very important in a MMO in which you'll most likely be having constant interaction with your friends. Given the results, i think at the end of the day it has been worth it.

 

[hairychris]

I doubt kid gloves will be employed considered he concludes with:

"But no game can be made on belief alone. As of right now, there is no Star Citizen. There are several different live demos, but they are just that: demos. There is no game.

Star Citizen is the biggest crowdfunding success in history. The story of its development so far, rocky as it has been, is fascinating – and, as we’ve discovered, much more complex than it looks from outside. But sooner or later, Roberts and his team have to deliver a game, or all of this will be just a prelude to the most expensive failed development of all time."

There is no game. No hay banda! SILENCIOOOOOOO!

I bet that The Escapist are feeling a little smug right now.

OK, well some of their article was a bit iffy but the general gist was about the same - crappy management, wasted dev effort due to bad decisions, technical issues, etc.

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

In slightly related news to Star Citizen...

Spoiler

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...kingdoms-of-amalur-court-case-comes-to-an-end

Of course, Star Citizen isn't the same as this! CIG have over 300 employees and over $125 million in backer money! They are marching towards completion of the greatest game of all time as we speak!

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I bet that The Escapist are feeling a little smug right now.

OK, well some of their article was a bit iffy but the general gist was about the same - crappy management, wasted dev effort due to bad decisions, technical issues, etc.

Yo Ortwin.... Still waiting on that killer lawsuit you said you were working on buddy.

Anytime now would be good for you I'm sure.


Any. Time.