Star Citizen Thread v6

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VidarSnipes

V
Stigbob said:
I've frequently posted in the past few years that player numbers versus promised systems made exploration entirely unworkable, that was also before they cut 90-95% of the content. Never got anything approaching a coherent answer.

The games already failed.
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Well, they can go the EVE/ED route and have respawning, randomly generated points of interest in space.
 

McGlashan

McGlashan
Memnoch said:
If they can create 5-10 worlds with PG and then sprinkle on the more highly detailed hand made stuff like stations and factories, surely churning out another 95 wouldn't be some impossible goal.
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That's the big "if". They haven't managed to deliver a single world in a working, playable form yet, let alone 5-10. Let alone 100. It's tempting to think that once they break the back of the first, the rest will come easily, but that depends on how much smoke and mirrors is involved in getting 3.0 out the door. If it's riddled with hacks and shortcuts then it won't scale up that easily, if at all, and CIG will end up having to develop "planets 2.0" (or 3.0 or 4.0 or whatever it is now) to make it possible, which will be like starting over from scratch.
 

Memnoch

M
Frontier have shown that it can be done. But that's with their own engine designed to do what it was intended for. That's not the case with CIG. I would imagine that secretly they wish that they had developed their own engine once it became apparent the sheer volume of pledges they were getting would have funded that. I guess they are too far down the road to even consider that now.

But I haven't written them off and at least hope they can pull this off somehow.
 

Zetta

Zetta
The trouble is just how long each body takes to create.

They anticipated a moon taking around 1 week and that's just for the moon alone, no wrecks, no POIs, no missions etc. A planet having that much more diversity is obviously going to take a good deal more time, then there's the time involved adding everything that makes it worthwhile going there.

Like someone on reddit said, they're doing 1 planet in 3.1 another in 3.2 etc that's how slow these things are at present. If they could crank out 4 planets a month it's still 7 years to do them all.
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
Isn't Genuine Roberts on record as saying that the tech had been generated to allow their artists to build entire worlds in an afternoon, and that they could churn them out in no time at all?

“We are using the procedural generation to create the undulation in the terrain or determine the distribution of trees or rocks and we are using that to fill out large areas, but the areas are specified by an artist,” says Roberts. “The way that works is that the artist can create biomes, which are templates for different areas. So you can have a template for woodland forests, or a temple for jungle, or grass land, or mountains and even within in those you can have several variations. Then you paint the big area, you basically say ‘this area is mountainous, this is woodland, and this is where the ocean is’, and then the procedural code takes that and uses that as a guide to place the biomes correctly and alter the height map. In two hours they can generate a planet and then they can spend time tweaking areas by hand.”
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Marak

Marak
McGlashan said:
That's the big "if". They haven't managed to deliver a single world in a working, playable form yet, let alone 5-10. Let alone 100. It's tempting to think that once they break the back of the first,
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The worrying thing is that they'll probably just do a 'cut & paste' of one world (with a few minor changes) to make all the rest. The problem with promising worlds with 'deep engaging hand crafted gameplay' is that you have to handcraft worlds with deep, engaging gameplay.

So far they only have staff that can make ships, stations and pretty pictures. Even their 3 strong gameplay team seem to be focusing on stuff that has nothing to do with gameplay (or it was - I haven't heard from them for ages).
 

ChiefRedCloud

ChiefRedCloud
[video=youtube;o-xvCg8CI9U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-xvCg8CI9U[/video]

This video appears to have come out in 2014 and seems to reflect Jump Gates like in the original Freelancer .... interesting ... I see no mention of them now but this is the direct link that someone posted earlier ...

Chief
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
Many things CIG have shown off or gone on about at great length and exacting detail have completely vanished over the course of development, mostly as Genuine Roberts discovers some new shiny that just has to be in the game, and whatever wasn't quite shiny enough forgotten about or discarded.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Viajero
Has CIG formally confirmed or denied the article's info about the 5-10 systems only at launch?

In case they do confirm I am really interested to see how straight the presenters at the "SC Loremaker's Guide to the Galaxy" will keep their face in the upcoming episodes.
 

Zetta

Zetta
I strongly disagree with the opinion that Chris Roberts makes games only to make profit and enrich himself. It is my personal opinion that this is a significant misjudgment w.r.t. his motives. I think he is an artist driven by a vision of perfection. Only difference is that his art is computer games instead of oil paintings or church ceilings.
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I wonder he said the same prior to the release of the wing commander movie?
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Viajero
Asp Explorer said:
Isn't Genuine Roberts on record as saying that the tech had been generated to allow their artists to build entire worlds in an afternoon, and that they could churn them out in no time at all?
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Wow. So how exactly again can the Procedural Tech be used as an argument to explain the 95% content drop?

Ps: linky please?
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
Viajero said:
Wow. So how exactly again can the Procedural Tech be used as an argument to explain the 95% content drop?

Ps: linky please?
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I'm not at home so I cannot be 100% sure this is the exact source I'm thinking of, but it ought to be close enough - there were about half a dozen near-identical ones.

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

The quote I used earlier is from the Red Bull article last year.

https://www.redbull.com/int-en/making-star-citizens-planets-believable
 
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Thargon

Thargon

Zyll Goliat

Zyll Goliat
“There can only be a maximum of 24 players on each server currently (this will most likely also be the case in Alpha 3.0). […] The revision of the CryEngine in combination of a new server architecture in form of an intercommunicating server network (also known as Server-Meshes) instead of individually isolated servers should allow larger instances with thousands of players.”

Should be a small correction in that txt above,it´s not regular Server-Meshes it´s Roberts-Server-Meshes......and they can handle any number of players with no problem at all.........JUST WAIT............
 
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1500

1500
Back in 2012 Penny Arcade called Star Citizen a bad bet.

Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen needs your money to get more money, and promises everything to get it

Chris Roberts earned much media attention when he announced the details of his upcoming open-world space simulator Star Citizen yesterday, and he wasn’t shy about promising the sun and the moon. The game will feature a solid single-player campaign, as well as a strong multiplayer setting. You can fly around the huge world, have areas named after you, create your own ships, and the whole thing will be supported by a one-time purchase price for the game, followed by microtransactions.

This is the sort of ambitious, large scale space title PC gamers have been dreaming about, and Roberts has some tech demos and videos to show how much work he has finished already. Of course, for all this to happen, he needs your money.

Why that’s a bad bet

Let’s look at what’s being promised here. A complete single and multiplayer game. A persistent online world. Microtransactions. Customization. Roberts talked about ships you can create and then sell for a profit. A world that’s updated every week or two, with a team that continually creates content. All of these things, combined with the level of graphical fidelity that’s been shown in the videos, cost money. A ton of money. The game is being crowdfunded, with Roberts looking for $2 to $4 million from players to get the ball rolling.

While other games like Planetary Annihilation have reached that level of funding, the creators of those games go out of their way to cut costs and think of realistic ways to deliver the content being promised. Planetary Annihilation won’t ship with a single-player game, nor will there be multiple factions. In many ways it’s a conservative project, because everyone at Uber Entertainment is aware that they’re working with a very limited budget for game development. I’ve sat down with people behind that project, and budget concerns along with a realistic look at features that can be promised were big parts of their business plan. That’s a good bet.

Roberts, on the other hand, is promising damn near everything. During a demo he showed a ship with eight thrusters, and said flying it could change if an enemy took one or two out. “We model damage to that level,” he told Polygon. “This ship has 300 different parts, 60 of those are articulating and animating. This is a level of fidelity that hasn’t been done in this style space flight game before.” The game will support a wide variety of peripherals, including the Oculus Rift. There is talk of space ships that you can fly with your friends, so that everyone can jump onto a turret or get into the cockpit and fly as a team. Everything is possible at Zombo.com.


Other outlets share my disbelief at the promised features. “I’m reluctant to keep on listing features though, because all this stuff is very much future tense. Star Citizen is still a couple of years away – at least – and as much as I’d love to see everything promised come to fruition and be amazing, I wouldn’t bet against more than a few bits being put on the backburner or falling through the ‘Molyneux Gap’ during development,” Rock Paper Shotgun wrote. “The single-player campaign in particular (which in keeping with Star Citizen’s slightly shaky grasp on what makes for a cool sounding name is called “Squadron 42″) seems like a great addition for Wing Commander fans, but distinctly snippable if pressed for time.” I can’t imagine funding the game only to find that my favorite feature is cut; what’s being promised and what is likely to be delivered in the shipping product will likely only feature a passing resemblance to each other.

You’re not funding the game, you’re baiting other investors

Keep in mind that the $2 to $4 million Roberts hopes to raise won’t fund the game, it will merely attract the interest of other investors who will provide the rest of the money. Your cash is just bait, and your interest will hopefully make the game seem like a good bet to other investors.

“If we can raise between $2 to $4 million we have investors that have agreed to contribute the balance we need to complete this game as long as we can validate that there is a demand for a high end PC space game,” the official site states. Major publishers won’t be interested in a project like this, and Roberts says that venture capitalists are only interested in mobile or social games, which is why our money is so important up front.

“Roberts will create Star Citizen without a publisher. He has private investment, but needs to do ‘an element’ of crowdfunding to raise between two and four million dollars and validate the private investors’ valuation of the project,” Eurogamer reported. “The game itself will cost between 12 million and 14 million dollars to create.”

Let’s be clear, just because there’s no publisher doesn’t mean there’s no middle man. We’ve just become the middle men ourselves, except with little to no power over the game, and Roberts will still be responsible to the people putting up the other $10+ million. This isn’t a strike against “the man,” this is the last-ditch effort for a developer with big ambitions to get the money he needs to create his dream game, and many of the features listed feel like exactly that: Dreams.

There is nothing to lose when it comes to promising things at this stage. The more people like a certain feature or idea the more people will give money. During production it’s likely that many of these features will be dropped, or pushed way back into an expansion or update. This is a single-player game mixed with an MMO mixed with a player-driven economy, all wrapped around space ships with complex physics and amazing graphics that will be sold as product and then given free-to-play-style mechanics. It could be the most complex project possible in gaming, and Roberts only has experience with a few aspects of the design. This is a risky, expensive, and deliriously optimistic project.

Keep in mind all this funding is going through Roberts’ own website, so don’t assume any of the Kickstarter or IndieGoGo rules apply. If funding fails you can choose to get a refund but, as with all crowdfunding efforts, don’t give anything you wouldn’t be comfortable losing.

Don’t mistake my skepticism for a lack of enthusiasm, as I want to play the game Roberts is describing. I want to give him money to make that game. If Roberts can buckle down, show something a little more real, and give players a stronger idea of the core feature set that will be available at launch, I may do so. Promising so much when there are such high stakes involved with this first round of fundraising may make sense to get the initial interest of players, but this would be a project that would seem nearly impossible with a huge publisher throwing masses of money at each problem. For $14 million and an independent team it’s downright quixotic.
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https://web.archive.org/web/20131221025111/https://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/chris-roberts-star-citizen-needs-your-money-to-get-more-money-and-promises-

This is CR's response.
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Edit: I added the article.
 
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