The Star Citizen Thread v5

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

To your other comment, you do realize this was over 17 years ago right? Not like we all have perfect memory, but what that auspices deal was, I can't comment on it. Also what other projects are we talking about here?

Funny that, because you'll realize that Battlecruiser 3000AD (that mess of a game) came out even longer ago, but that didn't stop you having a swipe at DS whilst bigging up CR at the same time. Oh well.

Other projects? The dreadful Wing Commander movie, the wild over promising he made with the mess that was Star Lancer (which he didn't even make, that was largely under Erin but he was making pronouncements about super advanced AI and such which never came close to emerging, since it was impossible to begin with), how the first Wing Commander game wasn't a success and the ballooning budget on that project almost sank Origin Games....

 

[Mu77ley]

* How everything CIG does is unique and "first ever" (ProcGen - I mean, really? PG was blasted by CR low hack job and not worthy of his concepts. It took several years to change his mind lol);

Ironically, myself and many others were shouted down to oblivion way back in 2013 on the CIG forums when we dared to suggest that there was no way in hell that CIG could ever hope to populate all the proposed star systems for release without using some form of procedural generation. We were repeatedly told that we know nothing, and that the "hand-crafted" worlds would be far superior to any "randomly generated" ones (showing a complete lack of understanding of how procedural generation works).

We knew they would either have to use procedural generation, or massively reduce the amount of systems in the game at launch; now it now turns out they will do both.

Of course, now all the true believers who previous railed against us for doubting think procedural generation is the dog's danglies. Whereas until as late as last year they would slag off anything that even mentioned the word procedural, as it was a point of pride that SC was "hand-crafted". This has now changed tack and it's just that CIG will be doing "ground-breaking procedural generation that has never been seen at this level of fidelititiousness before", so they can still slag off other games for doing procedural generation because it is now seen as somehow being inferior to CIG's procedural generation.

 

[VidarSnipes]

I would never taken anything from Derek Smart, I've played his games and I've played CR's games. I can clearly tell you and the entire gaming community, let alone the industry on who is actually the better developer by countless miles/levels/or whatever scales you choose.. As for the Star Marine, yeah that is another big fiasco, not sure on what happened behind the scenes, but either way, if what you stated regarding models etc. that falls under CIG fault, its their responsibility to keep contractors in scope and feature set and what needs to be done. Actually that also reminds me of my earlier comment regarding expectations and communication. I remember back over 1.5 yrs ago when Star Marine was promised to come out within "2-3 weeks" only for it to be indefinitely delayed. Thanks for that reminder.

Source for the Star Marine thing - The Kotaku article (http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/23/inside-the-troubled-development-of-star-citizen), header "The problem with contractors", fourth and fifth paragraph, sixth for Roberts' confirmation. As for Derek Smart, whatever you think of him, multiple predictions of his were broadly true, which to me is a reason enough to think past CIG employees use him as a safe way to talk about problems with SC. Besides, he helped disappointed backers a lot with trying to coax out refunds. He doesn't have to be a good developer to do that.

 

[Helfix]

Ironically, myself and many others were shouted down to oblivion way back in 2013 on the CIG forums when we dared to suggest that there was no way in hell that CIG could ever hope to populate all the proposed star systems for release without using some form of procedural generation. We were repeatedly told that we know nothing, and that the "hand-crafted" worlds would be far superior to any "randomly generated" ones (showing a complete lack of understanding of how procedural generation works).

We knew they would either have to use procedural generation, or massively reduce the amount of systems in the game at launch; now it now turns out they will do both.

Of course, now all the true believers who previous railed against us for doubting think procedural generation is the dog's danglies. Whereas until as late as last year they would slag off anything that even mentioned the word procedural, as it was a point of pride that SC was "hand-crafted". This has now changed tack and it's just that CIG will be doing "ground-breaking procedural generation that has never seen at this level of fidelititiousness before", so they can still slag off other games for doing procedural generation because it is now seen as somehow being inferior to CIG's procedural generation.

Oh man, don't get me even started on that, especially that Mr.Nowak dude regarding this. Does he even post here anymore?

Funny that, because you'll realize that Battlecruiser 3000AD (that mess of a game) came out even longer ago, but that didn't stop you having a swipe at DS whilst bigging up CR at the same time. Oh well.

Other projects? The dreadful Wing Commander movie, the wild over promising he made with the mess that was Star Lancer (which he didn't even make, that was largely under Erin but he was making pronouncements about super advanced AI and such which never came close to emerging, since it was impossible to begin with), how the first Wing Commander game wasn't a success and the ballooning budget on that project almost sank Origin Games....

I think that a game franchise being so popular that it eventually spun out a movie from it speaks volumes for itself. When I first watched the movie as a kid I thought it was great, but later on, yeah I agree with you, its terrible movie.

 

[briguy168]

Yes, that's precisely what it is. Thanks for confirming the obvious though.

And who in their right *mind* is going to wait 10/20 years for a game to come out anyway? We're not talking about James Cameron and the creation of the movie Avatar* here, we're talking about a blooming *videogame*.

Please name me a game or even a movie that has come out in the last 20 years, which has taken over a decade to be in active development and production before release, and has gone on to be a success, even remotely?

*(The idea of the Avatar movie was thought up by Cameron in the early 1990's, but it was obvious he couldn't make the movie then with the available special effects technology. It was only towards the middle of the 2000's that he was able to see technology catch up with his "Vision" and it was only because he is a rather good director, had the best special effects houses basically break new ground in 3D effects (and almost $300 million dollars) that Avatar ended up being so successful. Chris Roberts is NOT James Cameron, in any way, shape or form.)

*Edit* As Dementropy rightly points out below, with regards to movies like Avatar or Star Wars, those are all financed privately through the studios own coffers, or even out of the director's own pocket.
Expecting the general public to keep the money tree going for Star Citizen for a decade or more is, quite frankly, stretching credibility beyond the breaking point.

Label it whatever you want, but there is a distinction.

No, I'm not going to waste the time to do some arbitrary research over an argument on an online forum especially when the argument revolves around a false equivalency. Generally speaking, it takes maybe 2 years to create a movie after the script has been approved when in game development it can take 3 or 4 times that if not longer. If you were arguing for scripts....that is a whole different ballgame. But just to satisfy your inquiry, http://www.hollywood.com/movies/boyhood-movies-that-took-a-long-time-to-make-60220737/#/ms-22024/1 granted, not as long as 10-20 years but long enough.

Try to come up with a better equivalent argument next time, thanks .

 

[briguy168]

No. It's just ridiculous. If Roberts had ever even hinted that the game was going to take that long, he'd never have got the funding in the first place. Not that there is any prospect of development continuing over that timescale, even now. The 'whales' aren't going to carry on supporting an increasingly-outdated project forever, and eventually the inevitable refunds, along with continuing development costs will exhaust whatever funds are currently left. I'd say that CIG have 3 more years at the very outside before they face oblivion, if they can't get something out the door and into the market.

While I generally agree with your overall statement, what I said are but my own opinions. See I don't care if it takes a long time because, for me, there are far more better things for me to do than get all bent out of shape about a video game's development cycle. I'm more than willing to admit that my way of thinking quite possibly isn't the norm but then again I don't care about that either.

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

Label it whatever you want, but there is a distinction.

No, I'm not going to waste the time to do some arbitrary research over an argument on an online forum especially when the argument revolves around a false equivalency. Generally speaking, it takes maybe 2 years to create a movie after the script has been approved when in game development it can take 3 or 4 times that if not longer. If you were arguing for scripts....that is a whole different ballgame. But just to satisfy your inquiry, http://www.hollywood.com/movies/boyhood-movies-that-took-a-long-time-to-make-60220737/#/ms-22024/1 granted, not as long as 10-20 years but long enough.

Try to come up with a better equivalent argument next time, thanks .

So again, you can't actually give an actual answer to the question and choose to deflect and obfuscate instead. Perhaps looking at the reasons those films had the issues they did would help ya out a bit, where trifling things like World War II, the fact hand drawn animation takes a        g age to do, especially back in the 1930's, getting voice actor contracts sorted out, making a film actually following a child growing up in virtually real time.... Some of those things aren't exactly usual circumstances in film making.

Meanwhile you're happy to just sit there twiddling your thumbs for a decade or more to have the game *you* want to emerge.

*Pfft* Ok, more power to you Bri. I can't penetrate that shill-shell of impervious belief. Good luck to you.

 

[briguy168]

More balanced and completely unbiased commentary of that Kotaku article from folks that know what's really going on with Star Citizen...

Spoiler

[url]http://i.imgur.com/RVnIVmY.jpg[/URL]

[url]http://i.imgur.com/OZ45RJU.jpg[/URL]

[url]http://i.imgur.com/9AHacs3.jpg[/URL]

[url]http://i.imgur.com/KI9cnpo.jpg[/URL]

Good job showing a handful of peoples' opinions about that article. Now I haven't read every single comment that mentions the Kotaku UK article but I've read my fair share when I was bored at work yesterday and the general consensus was that it was a well researched and fair article. Basic summary of your current arguments thus far, mountain out of an ant hill.

 

[Stigbob]

So again, you can't actually give an actual answer to the question and choose to deflect and obfuscate instead. Perhaps looking at the reasons those films had the issues they did would help ya out a bit, where trifling things like World War II, the fact hand drawn animation takes a g age to do, especially back in the 1930's, getting voice actor contracts sorted out, making a film actually following a child growing up in virtually real time.... Some of those things aren't exactly usual circumstances in film making.

Meanwhile you're happy to just sit there twiddling your thumbs for a decade or more to have the game *you* want to emerge.

*Pfft* Ok, more power to you Bri. I can't penetrate that shill-shell of impervious belief. Good luck to you.

Talking of patience when making movies I hear Kevin Costner doesn't like being messed about.

 

[CMDR_Orlando]

Ironically, myself and many others were shouted down to oblivion way back in 2013 on the CIG forums when we dared to suggest that there was no way in hell that CIG could ever hope to populate all the proposed star systems for release without using some form of procedural generation. We were repeatedly told that we know nothing, and that the "hand-crafted" worlds would be far superior to any "randomly generated" ones (showing a complete lack of understanding of how procedural generation works).

We knew they would either have to use procedural generation, or massively reduce the amount of systems in the game at launch; now it now turns out they will do both.

Of course, now all the true believers who previous railed against us for doubting think procedural generation is the dog's danglies. Whereas until as late as last year they would slag off anything that even mentioned the word procedural, as it was a point of pride that SC was "hand-crafted". This has now changed tack and it's just that CIG will be doing "ground-breaking procedural generation that has never been seen at this level of fidelititiousness before", so they can still slag off other games for doing procedural generation because it is now seen as somehow being inferior to CIG's procedural generation.

PG would never be good method for what Chris Roberts wanted because he was not thinking in needing to seamlessly fly to those systems/planets, it would be a masked loading screen, planets would not be land able, you would get a small city to shop, bar to talk. Very small, just like freelancer but with enhanced graphics.

Now PG is only a reality because the Crytek German experts allowed for it. They allowed for the game's scope increase, CR didn't planned the game thinking about PG landings, he allways said it would be something for way later in the game. That's why you have the number of of 100+ systems in the stretch goals with 1 system per $1million dollars.

Now look at the list of systems in Freelancer: http://discoverygc.com/wiki/Category:Systems

Star Citizen is Freelancer+Privateer Redux on steroids. [big grin]

 

[Stigbob]

Good job showing a handful of peoples' opinions about that article. Now I haven't read every single comment that mentions the Kotaku UK article but I've read my fair share when I was bored at work yesterday and the general consensus was that it was a well researched and fair article. Basic summary of your current arguments thus far, mountain out of an ant hill.

"There is no game"

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Star Citizen is Freelancer+Privateer Redux on steroids. [big grin]

Nope Star Citizen is duke nukem forever on tranquilizers.

 

[CMDR_Orlando]

"There is no game"

[video=youtube;UcvsHumjsBQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcvsHumjsBQ[/video]
Seems like a game to me

Nope Star Citizen is duke nukem forever on tranquilizers.

Maybe you should try doing some research about Duke Nukem before comparing it with CIG/Star Citizen because that actually helps reinforce the case that they are on the right track!

 

[Toumal]

Ironically, myself and many others were shouted down to oblivion way back in 2013 on the CIG forums when we dared to suggest that there was no way in hell that CIG could ever hope to populate all the proposed star systems for release without using some form of procedural generation. We were repeatedly told that we know nothing, and that the "hand-crafted" worlds would be far superior to any "randomly generated" ones.

Hahaha oh man, I actually forgot about that. Yeah there were entire Memes created about how silly procedural generation would be compared to the fidelity of handcrafting.
Oh how the tune has changed... They're all ok with that though, the rabid fanboys I mean. Now that CIG changed their mind, the true believers follow suit with nary a thought back to what they themselves said the day before.

 

[AJW]

PG would never be good method for what Chris Roberts wanted because he was not thinking in needing to seamlessly fly to those systems/planets, it would be a masked loading screen, planets would not be land able, you would get a small city to shop, bar to talk. Very small, just like freelancer but with enhanced graphics.

Now PG is only a reality because the Crytek German experts allowed for it. They allowed for the game's scope increase, CR didn't planned the game thinking about PG landings, he allways said it would be something for way later in the game. That's why you have the number of of 100+ systems in the stretch goals with 1 system per $1million dollars.

Now look at the list of systems in Freelancer: http://discoverygc.com/wiki/Category:Systems

Star Citizen is Freelancer+Privateer Redux on steroids. [big grin]

Are you using procedural generation to write your comments now? None of that even approximates to a coherent argument about anything.

 

[Dementropy]

Given the default keyboard configuration, SC seems to have procedural controls, at least.

 

[CMDR_Orlando]

Hahaha oh man, I actually forgot about that. Yeah there were entire Memes created about how silly procedural generation would be compared to the fidelity of handcrafting.
Oh how the tune has changed... They're all ok with that though, the rabid fanboys I mean. Now that CIG changed their mind, the true believers follow suit with nary a thought back to what they themselves said the day before.

Like there were memes laughing at the idea of Star Citizen having seamless landings? Or having seamless large maps with Cryengine?

Since they can now land on planets seamlessly they need PG, why is that so hard to understand? That's why they are developing tools to create PG planets with the same detail you see on space stations. Don't forget that the game is already a First Person Game, the assets have to hold in quality from very close!

Chris Roberts about PG in 2014 and now:

Spoiler

2014 = "We are going to use it as a tool for universe building. I know a lot of people think Star Citizen is purely hand-crafted and that something like Elite or No Man's Sky is all procedural, but the reality is that all of these games have a mix of hand-crafted and procedural stuff in them."

This week he went more indepth:

“[Procedural planets V2] is a lot more artist authored and driven, so it uses procedural techniques the same way that World Machine and so on does, but it's very artist-driven. We use these techniques to allow artists to build the world out at scale, but they're determining where the continents are, where the forests are, where the mountains are, where the desert plains are.

"There's a bunch of biomes that are built, so the artist creates these different biomes whether it's a mountain biome, desert biome, woodland biome. There's an overall map for the planet, and there's both a height map and a distribution map. The height map determines the general height of the terrain. The biomes themselves are additional to that height, so the shapes of the mountains are a combination of the overall heightmap and biome data. The distribution map is determining where the trees and vegetation are, so that's kind of how they build it.

"[…] You have this sphere in Planet Ed[itor] and you sculpt it. You push and pull it, paint on top for the distribution map. Based on that and the biomes you've created, it's like painting on a great scale. On top of that, you can go in and specifically paint areas with brushes that go all the way from a few meters in size to hundreds of kilometers in size. You specify what's going to be in your brush.

“That allows the artists to totally craft their environment. They can also place specific art, like a mineshaft, or ruins, basically carve out an area in the planet and place that in it. It's very much built as a tool to allow them to build this at scale. If you think of the tools they had for CryEngine at a much smaller scale for building the maps that they had, imagine that but at a much smaller scale.”

About Planetary Clouds:

Spoiler

The team is also working on planetary clouds and weather systems, from what both Tracy and Roberts have told us. Planetary clouds will be generated and mapped via a full weather simulation, and the team has axed its flow maps in favor of a more artist-driven weather ecosystem. Timelapses of planets, we're told, will eventually show full weather systems taking place on the surface below.
As for the procedural generation pipeline, each planet will remain a hands-on endeavor to create. There is no planet which is fully generated by procedural tools, we've been told. Roberts indicated that different astral body types will have tool sets to accelerate creation, and Tracy hammers the Crytek mantra of “using tools to get 90% of the way there,” with hands-on delivering the rest.
“An artist can crank out five or six moons in a week for you,” Roberts told us, emphasizing that “once you've got your building blocks, somethings will be quicker. There isn't going to be a matter where we hit a magic number and, 'boof,' here comes a planet."

Source: http://www.gamersnexus.net/gg/2613-...-citizen-procedural-planets-alpha3-citizencon

Are you using procedural generation to write your comments now? None of that even approximates to a coherent argument about anything.

Yeah sorry Im using BlackLabel PG tech while writting! [big grin]

 

[ianw]

Is there an ETA for a release of all the things that have been promised actually working in the game - with lots of people playing at the same time?

ETA - when I say "lots" I mean more than 50

 

[Helfix]

Is there an ETA for a release of all the things that have been promised actually working in the game - with lots of people playing at the same time?

ETA - when I say "lots" I mean more than 50

I think your guess is good as any. From my perspective, I think SQ 42 might be out Q2/Q3 2017 and the PU Q4 2017/Q1 2018. I think just going by state of the PU they need a solid year or so of work to get it where it needs to be, getting in the underlying tech is what takes a while. Also I think its a toss up on how many people will be in a single location as well. I am hopeful for 40-50 people .

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

So all wall of texts aside - please correct me if I am wrong - SQ42/SC Alpha 3.0 next year (no precise time table yet), CR thinking about doing MVP release and then move forward from there - most likely late 2017/early 2018. Am I right?

 

[briguy168]

Source please. An actual verifiable source, stating the amount of refunds paid.

Get a court order or subpoena.