The Star Citizen Thread v5
- Thread starter Brett C
- Start date
- Status
How this turned into proper horrifying Doctor Who episode so quickly? Damn British.
Some of us do want the game to be released so we can revive the old tradition of Whale Hunting
Careful friend - that way lies madness!
Careful there Johnny foreigner we're only brexiting as a prelude to the second British Empire. Best that you practice tea drinking and how to queue properly.*
*note for r/ds this is a joke and not the basis for a new round of conspiracy theories even though David Braben has an OBE.
Someone needs to explain this joke to me. I don't get it.
In the days before we had things like Steam and digital delivery, games publishers wanted to make sure that we were playing copies of the games we had actually paid for. This became known as Digital Rights Management, or DRM for short.
Elite on the Spectrum (and probably other platforms too) had a DRM called Lenslock. You had to look at something through a piece of plastic (the lens) and get a code. You then put this code into the game when asked for (usually before being able to start a game) and it would let you play. If I recall, Elite on the C64 asked you for a word on a page in a paragraph in the manual (this might have been FEII, I can't remember clearly which)
Here's the Lenslock in question ...
Last edited:
Thing is, even with the lower budget and production values in terms of visuals, ED might be stealing the show somewhat if it gets to the finish line with some features first and is present as a released product. But the "stealing each other's show" argument is a hard one to make, as the effects these projects have on each other are hardly quantifyable. For all we know, cross pollination is a thing as well.
Multi crew - if competently implemented - could also win some Citizens over. Of course Elite being a released games with all its warts doesn't compare to the dream of the eventual "BDSSE", but multicrew is a large part of what seems to make the fascination in Star Citizen for people, so the less zealous Citizens may be susceptible to trying this feature as implemented in other games, while they have to wait for it being fleshed out in SC.
The next "reality check" so to speak might be, when Elite actually releases "space legs". Seamless first person universe is the next big thing Star Citizen claims to have above other space games. While Elite is heavily instanced and certainly not seamless, space legs, if they are to come, will be space legs.
Last edited:
Ah thanks, didn't know that! I played the uhm DRM-free version when I was a kid :-S
Still have the feeling I'm missing something here, though. As I'm assuming Lenslock is a play on Lesnick, who is apparently an Actor and Developer now (with capital letters no less). There must be a juicy story here that I don't know of.
It probably is a play his name as well. I'm not familiar with him, so you taught me something as well.
Not completely sure what you mean, but I agree that FPS mechanics in ED is really needed to expand the player base. Of course it should be combined with opening up some atmospheric planets that are simple, and not with wild life and huge cities.
SC also will be heavily instanced and maybe even with worse net-code then Elite (CryEngine, best ever MP experience, Yeah...said nobody... ;P) due its over-complicated gameplay, but since there is no game yet, SC fans does not know it yet...
Space legs in Elite, not coming anytime soon as Braben stated some time ago, but at least for me its not critical missing feature, FD better improve current base game like Powerplay, net-code and add more stuff to do on planets for SRV and in general create more dynamic Galaxy...
Last edited:
I like to call it a reality check, as in making the progress of both projects mroe comparable. Now, whenever the progress of Star Citizen is brought up in relation to the budget and dev time, it's always down to its unique scope. If other project are available that match that scope more closely, that'll make them comparable.
I'm not sure if space legs will come with atmospheric planets. The level of detail needed for exploring a planet on foot without feeling like playing Delta Force 2 is on a whole other level of detail, than we have in Elite currently. I'd expect that it would make enough material for an expansion of its own. Ship interiors and stations will probably take more than enough time to develop. At least those are what I expect to come first with the space legs.
That begs the question: What is in the season 3 expansion? And when did Braben state that? Few people expected planetary landings to manifest in the first expansion either. Maybe because they secretely hoped the game would be fleshed out in terms of depth, before it was expanded in terms of breadth of its options.
Last edited:
While Sandro said both these things are in 'far future', legs definitely will come first. Atmosphere planets will be primitive at first, and will get more complex as more is added to the game.I like to call it a reality check, as in making the progress of both projects mroe comparable. Now, whenever the progress of Star Citizen is brought up in relation to the budget and dev time, it's always down to its unique scope. If other project are available that match that scope more closely, that'll make them comparable.
I'm not sure if space legs will come with atmospheric planets. The level of detail needed for exploring a planet on foot without feeling like playing Delta Force 2 is on a whole other level of detail, than we have in Elite currently. I'd expect that it would make enough material for an expansion of its own. Ship interiors and stations will probably take more than enough time to develop. At least those are what I expect to come first with the space legs.
That begs the question: What is in the season 3 expansion? And when did Braben state that? Few people expected planetary landings to manifest in the first expansion either. Maybe because they secretely hoped the game would be fleshed out in terms of depth, before it was expanded in terms of breadth of its options.
Well, so far it is a mystery, and Sandro cryptic comments (might be tongue in cheek) really didn't help much. I got message that FD is not planning to stop to work anytime soon, Season 2 is still ongoing at full swing, and they aren't ready to talk about Season 3. I expect more planets unlocked, new effects, new gameplay mechanics (maybe ship walking). They have might have changed focus, but FD is very aware that many people want to see space legs done in ED. What we know for sure we will have our avatars v 1.0 at 2.3. So that's a start.
Last edited:
A Scanner Distortedly
Maybe it's to do with the way the Lenslok distorts everything you view with it.
I did suffer the Lenslok, and it was worse for me because my telly wasn't the right size for the thing to decode. I guess they never thought anyone would play the game on a 26" screen.
Do you see that cassette tape to the right of the picture. If you got the code wrong after three attempts then you had to spend another 15 mins reloading the game.
The fact that is was the honest people like myself who ended up having to endure this torture is one of the reasons why I'm so anti-DRM today.
Maybe it's to do with the way the Lenslok distorts everything you view with it.
I did suffer the Lenslok, and it was worse for me because my telly wasn't the right size for the thing to decode. I guess they never thought anyone would play the game on a 26" screen.
Do you see that cassette tape to the right of the picture. If you got the code wrong after three attempts then you had to spend another 15 mins reloading the game.
The fact that is was the honest people like myself who ended up having to endure this torture is one of the reasons why I'm so anti-DRM today.
Someone needs to explain this joke to me. I don't get it.
He's not a developer and he can't act.
Star Citizen has the best period of funding at this time of year compared to all other years.
Source: http://imperialnews.network/2016/10/star-citizen-10-million-in-60-days/
2015 doom and crash prophecy was wrong. 2016 doom and crash prophecy was wrong. I think CIG and Star Citizen doomday is delayed to 2017? The Swedish mafia collab with CIG was a fairy tale. The whole East Europe thing is prolly also a fantasy.
It's incredible how people trust someone who has produced some of the worst games in the industry to somebody who has made actual classic games that were amazing for their time as well as producing holy-wood movies and is working with A list actors who rally behind him and admire him. But that's what you get. Misinformation is far more dangerous than being un-informed.
Source: http://imperialnews.network/2016/10/star-citizen-10-million-in-60-days/
2015 doom and crash prophecy was wrong. 2016 doom and crash prophecy was wrong. I think CIG and Star Citizen doomday is delayed to 2017? The Swedish mafia collab with CIG was a fairy tale. The whole East Europe thing is prolly also a fantasy.
It's incredible how people trust someone who has produced some of the worst games in the industry to somebody who has made actual classic games that were amazing for their time as well as producing holy-wood movies and is working with A list actors who rally behind him and admire him. But that's what you get. Misinformation is far more dangerous than being un-informed.
Last edited:
Game is delayed to 2017 at least, too
Hard to say what is reason for all this money incoming...maybe "Alfa Whales" now want to push SC no meter at what cost...after all weak CitCon event (no release dates...) and all negativity..
About CR vs DS, I guess truth is somewhere in between..
Last edited:
You owe me a less coffee-soaked keyboard LOL
Whatever attacks you want to make about DSmart I don't care - I'd decided this game was before I'd ever heard his name and entirely independently of him - the rest is pure comedy.
CMDR_Orlando
Banned
It's easy to explain, Google on why some people take pleasure in seeing other's fail. It's very telling.
Article: The merits of Star Citizen's development openness
Chris Roberts and his team take a lot of flak for the delays to their ambitious game, but their openness has earned the forgiveness of core fans
Cloud Imperium Games
CitizenCon is a hell of a thing. It's not unusual for developers to use game conventions and expos to showcase upcoming, unfinished games, of course; but a day-long game convention entirely dedicated to an upcoming, unfinished game, whose whole raison d'être is to show off development progress? That's unusual, to say the least. This anomaly on the gaming landscape has been around in one form or another since 2013 (though in its first year it was a livestream, and only became a ticketed event in 2014); that we barely raise an eyebrow at its existence is a testament to just what an unusual phenomenon Star Citizen itself is.
The most heavily crowdfunded game in history is a huge experiment in many ways. It's a game development experiment, a design experiment, a funding experiment and a business model experiment. Not all of those experiments appear to be going quite according to plan, or to schedule. The game as a whole is running late (which is why it's had no fewer than four annual events to show off its development progress) and milestones for its individual components are regularly missed. The big news from CitizenCon 2016 was that Squadron 42, the single-player component of the game, has been delayed again; Star Marine, a first-person shooter component, appears to have gone through yet another design iteration after widespread reports of being stuck in development hell.
All these delays and changes have led to an air of mistrust around Star Citizen as a whole. Many people who follow the games business dismiss the game as being a borderline scam; the competency and ability of Chris Roberts and his team to deliver the game they've taken $110 million from customers to develop is openly and aggressively questioned. Almost any discussion of Star Citizen quickly leads to scathing criticism of Roberts' supposed inability to rein in his own huge ambitions and promise something actually achievable, rather than a sprawling enormity of a game that often seems to claim to be all things to all men. The undercurrent has become all the more blatant since the controversy around the launch of No Man's Sky. This too, detractors say, is a game that over-promises and will inevitably under-deliver - except this time, the developers had pocketed over a hundred million bucks from consumers on the way.
"As well as rewriting the textbook on how games are funded and created, Roberts and his team are also trying out a bold experiment that rewrites the fundamental rules of how game developers communicate with their fans and consumers".
On the other side of the fence entirely are the true believers - Star Citizen's fans, and often its funders, who believe passionately in what Roberts is doing and fully expect the game to live up to its promises. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even next year; but some time, Star Citizen will be the game they dream of. There's not a whole lot of common ground between Star Citizen's believers and its skeptics, and to a skeptic, the position of the believers is tough to understand. Can't they see the same delays, the same development problems, the same cracks in the firmament that generally indicate a project going awry? Are they blinded by the dream of a game that they were sold, or perhaps wilfully refusing to believe that they backed a losing horse?
I confess to being on the skeptical side of things for quite a long time; though I'm a long-standing fan of Chris Roberts' games, I've always had a sense that he bit off more than he could chew with Star Citizen. Watching the live streams from CitizenCon 2016, though, I felt like I could understand the perspective of the game's true believers much more clearly - and I realised that there's another experiment Star Citizen is attempting. As well as rewriting the textbook on how games are funded and created, Roberts and his team are also trying out a bold experiment that rewrites the fundamental rules of how game developers communicate with their fans and consumers.
This year's CitizenCon was a remarkable event in many ways, but one of the aspects of it I found most interesting was just how open the Star Citizen team is about their development process - and just how technical they're willing to get along the way. Fans who tuned in to the event learned that Squadron 42 has been delayed and Star Marine is being reworked, yes; but where almost any other developer would have hand-waved away these changes with some carefully PR-approved lines about "polishing it as much as possible to ensure you get the best game we can make" or "spending the time it takes to meet our own exacting standards", Star Citizen's developers put up blunt, technical slides explaining which bits of the code and design needed work. Fans didn't just learn that Squadron 42 is going to be late, they learned that it's late because it still needs work on the implementation of things like its pathfinding logic. Do gamers care about pathfinding logic, above and beyond the simple question of "does it work"? Perhaps not, but it was right up there on screen, in a bulleted list with multiple other technical issues, giving a real sense of the nitty gritty of what's going on with Star Citizen's development.
This is really unusual, to say the least. The closest analog I can think of is the .plan files which staff at id Software used to update during the development of games like Quake, which often included detailed technical insights into building the engine and creating the game. That was twenty years ago, though; since then, it's become far more commonplace for the nuts and bolts of development to be tucked away from sight, with stylish trailers and carefully worded platitudes being fed to consumers instead.
That makes perfect sense, of course - most consumers don't know about, or care about, the technicalities of game creation. On the other hand, though, hiding all of that detail away from consumers may have actually hurt the industry in some ways. The extremely demanding and sometimes unreasonable nature of modern game consumers is something that's often bemoaned; explanations for this behaviour commonly come down to a question of Internet community cultures or the rising cost of games proportional to average incomes, both of which are definitely important factors. Might there be another factor, though; the lack of understanding of what's actually involved in game development? Could it be that by hiding away the technical details, we've left consumers with a skewed idea of what goes into a game, or a sense that game development is much easier and less involved than it actually is? Just think of how many people, after the launch of No Man's Sky, insisted that multiplayer could have been added to it in "a week or two"; or the regular requests that are made for complex added features in any online game, usually accompanied by slightly incredulous statements that boil down to "I can't understand why you guys didn't add this already, it would be so easy."
"By talking about problems early and explaining delays and issues, they've ensured that anyone following the development of the game knows what to expect and when to expect it. That's a radically different model of developer communication"
Now, I'm not saying for a second that Star Citizen's developers aren't sugar coating their messages somewhat; but compared to almost any other major developer, they are being incredibly open and honest about what's happening in their creative process, where they've hit stumbling blocks and what they're putting into their game right now. That takes guts; there's a good reason people don't build sausage factories with glass walls (also related to guts, as it happens), and many game developers would recoil at the notion of sharing as much with their consumers as Star Citizen's creators are. But far from exposing the team, might this sharing of development insights actually be insulating them from criticism and attack? Star Citizen's fans, the true believers, feel like they're part of the process, along for the ride. They're more understanding of delays and problems, because they can see why they happen, and see how much work is being done, how involved and complex the creation of new features and elements of the game actually is.
This model won't work for everyone, of course. Star Citizen's target audience is by its nature fairly geeky and more likely to be interested in the details of development than the audience for a lot of other types of game. But by their openness, Star Citizen's creators have managed to cultivate a loyal audience of people who feel well-informed and in touch with the game, and they've earned forgiveness for any number of delays and problems that might have soured the fans of any other game. Moreover, they've taken nasty surprises out of the process; by talking about problems early and explaining delays and issues, they've ensured that anyone following the development of the game knows what to expect and when to expect it. That's a radically different model of developer communication; but it seems to be one that works. It might be worthwhile for other developers to ponder whether their audiences might not respond equally well to a little more openness.
Cloud Imperium Games
CitizenCon is a hell of a thing. It's not unusual for developers to use game conventions and expos to showcase upcoming, unfinished games, of course; but a day-long game convention entirely dedicated to an upcoming, unfinished game, whose whole raison d'être is to show off development progress? That's unusual, to say the least. This anomaly on the gaming landscape has been around in one form or another since 2013 (though in its first year it was a livestream, and only became a ticketed event in 2014); that we barely raise an eyebrow at its existence is a testament to just what an unusual phenomenon Star Citizen itself is.
The most heavily crowdfunded game in history is a huge experiment in many ways. It's a game development experiment, a design experiment, a funding experiment and a business model experiment. Not all of those experiments appear to be going quite according to plan, or to schedule. The game as a whole is running late (which is why it's had no fewer than four annual events to show off its development progress) and milestones for its individual components are regularly missed. The big news from CitizenCon 2016 was that Squadron 42, the single-player component of the game, has been delayed again; Star Marine, a first-person shooter component, appears to have gone through yet another design iteration after widespread reports of being stuck in development hell.
All these delays and changes have led to an air of mistrust around Star Citizen as a whole. Many people who follow the games business dismiss the game as being a borderline scam; the competency and ability of Chris Roberts and his team to deliver the game they've taken $110 million from customers to develop is openly and aggressively questioned. Almost any discussion of Star Citizen quickly leads to scathing criticism of Roberts' supposed inability to rein in his own huge ambitions and promise something actually achievable, rather than a sprawling enormity of a game that often seems to claim to be all things to all men. The undercurrent has become all the more blatant since the controversy around the launch of No Man's Sky. This too, detractors say, is a game that over-promises and will inevitably under-deliver - except this time, the developers had pocketed over a hundred million bucks from consumers on the way.
"As well as rewriting the textbook on how games are funded and created, Roberts and his team are also trying out a bold experiment that rewrites the fundamental rules of how game developers communicate with their fans and consumers".
On the other side of the fence entirely are the true believers - Star Citizen's fans, and often its funders, who believe passionately in what Roberts is doing and fully expect the game to live up to its promises. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even next year; but some time, Star Citizen will be the game they dream of. There's not a whole lot of common ground between Star Citizen's believers and its skeptics, and to a skeptic, the position of the believers is tough to understand. Can't they see the same delays, the same development problems, the same cracks in the firmament that generally indicate a project going awry? Are they blinded by the dream of a game that they were sold, or perhaps wilfully refusing to believe that they backed a losing horse?
I confess to being on the skeptical side of things for quite a long time; though I'm a long-standing fan of Chris Roberts' games, I've always had a sense that he bit off more than he could chew with Star Citizen. Watching the live streams from CitizenCon 2016, though, I felt like I could understand the perspective of the game's true believers much more clearly - and I realised that there's another experiment Star Citizen is attempting. As well as rewriting the textbook on how games are funded and created, Roberts and his team are also trying out a bold experiment that rewrites the fundamental rules of how game developers communicate with their fans and consumers.
This year's CitizenCon was a remarkable event in many ways, but one of the aspects of it I found most interesting was just how open the Star Citizen team is about their development process - and just how technical they're willing to get along the way. Fans who tuned in to the event learned that Squadron 42 has been delayed and Star Marine is being reworked, yes; but where almost any other developer would have hand-waved away these changes with some carefully PR-approved lines about "polishing it as much as possible to ensure you get the best game we can make" or "spending the time it takes to meet our own exacting standards", Star Citizen's developers put up blunt, technical slides explaining which bits of the code and design needed work. Fans didn't just learn that Squadron 42 is going to be late, they learned that it's late because it still needs work on the implementation of things like its pathfinding logic. Do gamers care about pathfinding logic, above and beyond the simple question of "does it work"? Perhaps not, but it was right up there on screen, in a bulleted list with multiple other technical issues, giving a real sense of the nitty gritty of what's going on with Star Citizen's development.
This is really unusual, to say the least. The closest analog I can think of is the .plan files which staff at id Software used to update during the development of games like Quake, which often included detailed technical insights into building the engine and creating the game. That was twenty years ago, though; since then, it's become far more commonplace for the nuts and bolts of development to be tucked away from sight, with stylish trailers and carefully worded platitudes being fed to consumers instead.
That makes perfect sense, of course - most consumers don't know about, or care about, the technicalities of game creation. On the other hand, though, hiding all of that detail away from consumers may have actually hurt the industry in some ways. The extremely demanding and sometimes unreasonable nature of modern game consumers is something that's often bemoaned; explanations for this behaviour commonly come down to a question of Internet community cultures or the rising cost of games proportional to average incomes, both of which are definitely important factors. Might there be another factor, though; the lack of understanding of what's actually involved in game development? Could it be that by hiding away the technical details, we've left consumers with a skewed idea of what goes into a game, or a sense that game development is much easier and less involved than it actually is? Just think of how many people, after the launch of No Man's Sky, insisted that multiplayer could have been added to it in "a week or two"; or the regular requests that are made for complex added features in any online game, usually accompanied by slightly incredulous statements that boil down to "I can't understand why you guys didn't add this already, it would be so easy."
"By talking about problems early and explaining delays and issues, they've ensured that anyone following the development of the game knows what to expect and when to expect it. That's a radically different model of developer communication"
Now, I'm not saying for a second that Star Citizen's developers aren't sugar coating their messages somewhat; but compared to almost any other major developer, they are being incredibly open and honest about what's happening in their creative process, where they've hit stumbling blocks and what they're putting into their game right now. That takes guts; there's a good reason people don't build sausage factories with glass walls (also related to guts, as it happens), and many game developers would recoil at the notion of sharing as much with their consumers as Star Citizen's creators are. But far from exposing the team, might this sharing of development insights actually be insulating them from criticism and attack? Star Citizen's fans, the true believers, feel like they're part of the process, along for the ride. They're more understanding of delays and problems, because they can see why they happen, and see how much work is being done, how involved and complex the creation of new features and elements of the game actually is.
This model won't work for everyone, of course. Star Citizen's target audience is by its nature fairly geeky and more likely to be interested in the details of development than the audience for a lot of other types of game. But by their openness, Star Citizen's creators have managed to cultivate a loyal audience of people who feel well-informed and in touch with the game, and they've earned forgiveness for any number of delays and problems that might have soured the fans of any other game. Moreover, they've taken nasty surprises out of the process; by talking about problems early and explaining delays and issues, they've ensured that anyone following the development of the game knows what to expect and when to expect it. That's a radically different model of developer communication; but it seems to be one that works. It might be worthwhile for other developers to ponder whether their audiences might not respond equally well to a little more openness.
New cool pirate weapon shown in the newsletter:
Last edited:
- Status