Star Citizen Discussions v7

[nosscar]

No money invested in SC/S42 at this stage.

But that vertical slice looked good to me, assuming more optimisation polishes are coming (I did notice a few FPS jerky moments).

For me it really captured the 'sci-fi military' trope feel, with good voice acting and scripting as far as I could see. Put me in the mind of pottering around the Normandy in Mass Effect talking to the crew and overhearing background chatter, or the immersive feel of the Station in Alien Isolation.

Ye gotta agree with that, AI response to player was good, Facial animations was on par, and in some cases better than a lot of games i have seen.

The mission itself looked interesting, encompassing flying, eva, exploration, and fps.

Ye very jerky, needs lots of optimisation. Loving the Idris too, i can really imagine me enjoying the game with another 60+ varied missions.

But one thing that worries me, after 6 yrs how much of this stuff have they got, if its just the one bit we saw, how long is it gonna take for the other 69 missions.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

No money invested in SC/S42 at this stage.

But that vertical slice looked good to me, assuming more optimisation polishes are coming (I did notice a few FPS jerky moments).

For me it really captured the 'sci-fi military' trope feel, with good voice acting and scripting as far as I could see. Put me in the mind of pottering around the Normandy in Mass Effect talking to the crew and overhearing background chatter, or the immersive feel of the Station in Alien Isolation.

Can forgive the jankiness somewhat, but it does highlight how its not just SC that suffers such problems, and that's without the excuse of networking.

But notice how when walking around stations they are moving slowly, and when they pan the camera they are careful to do it slowly. Compare that to how people tend to play, running from A to B, spinning the camera quickly... i suspect if they did that with the current engine the FPS would tank.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

But one thing that worries me, after 6 yrs how much of this stuff have they got, if its just the one bit we saw, how long is it gonna take for the other 69 missions.

Pre-alpha WIP..... enough said.

But if you listen to CIG they say they have everything already white/grey/black boxed and its just waiting for the tech. Not sure how deep into CR you have to be to take that at face value though, and its not like you can just go for the mission frameworks to integrating the tech and suddenly have a working product overnight.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Just to playing evil's advocate:
1) lose item 2.0 and start with something more elegant and less floaty;
2) don't zoom on characters when talking, pointless gesture;
3) those corridors beg to be run around, add emergency for players;
4) don't know full story, but it felt a bit formulaic;
5) while SQ42 benefits of some ideas on SC, some of ideas clash heavily with flow of the game. It is not a graphics tech demo;

Longer thoughts - seeing this I am very convinced CIG will fail to release any of games unfortunately. Whatever money they have gotten, at this point it is just not enough. Game visibly have lot of issues and it's scope is impossible to keep. If CIG survives next year, then maybe in 2019, but at that point what?

I think everybody involved would be very ok with less demanding game with same actors, mocaps, music and story two years ago. It would even be a potential market hit. Now?

Despite my scepticism I had always place in heart for SQ42, because I genuinely liked some of WC moments. During falling to sleep I realized I really don't care that much about fidelity as long as game is good - that was biggest worry for ED, and while some people don't like it, I like it very much. However what I just saw doesn't feel much a game yet. And we are 6 years from starting point. When then if not now?

 

[nosscar]

Not sure if its been mentioned earlier in thread, but i got an email saying Ptu goes live tomorrow, and CIG is shutting down until 8th Jan now.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Pre-alpha WIP..... enough said.

But if you listen to CIG they say they have everything already white/grey/black boxed and its just waiting for the tech. Not sure how deep into CR you have to be to take that at face value though, and its not like you can just go for the mission frameworks to integrating the tech and suddenly have a working product overnight.

Btw, has anybody seen any real combat gameplay? Formations? AI reactions in space?

 

[Cmdr-Wotherspoon]

Not sure if its been mentioned earlier in thread, but i got an email saying Ptu goes live tomorrow, and CIG is shutting down until 8th Jan now.

I applied to have my PTU account activated 24 hours back, and I haven't yet received an acknowledgement, so I can't try the PTU out. This may be a deliberate way of throttling the number of users, or it may be they simply can't cope with the number of applicants.

 

[Zyll Goliat]

I applied to have my PTU account activated 24 hours back, and I haven't yet received an acknowledgement, so I can't try the PTU out. This may be a deliberate way of throttling the number of users, or it may be they simply can't cope with the number of applicants.

Hmmm...strange...Did you applied through the patcher?In my case that worked totally automatically as I received confirmation and PTU password immediately....

 

[nosscar]

I applied to have my PTU account activated 24 hours back, and I haven't yet received an acknowledgement, so I can't try the PTU out. This may be a deliberate way of throttling the number of users, or it may be they simply can't cope with the number of applicants.

I wouldnt bother with PTU now tho, it is going to live version tomorrow (or today according to date of email), ptu is ending.

"

Happy Holidays from RSI December 22nd, 2017

Dear Citizen, Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 goes Live tomorrow. The latest build is currently in open PTU for all backers to play, but we’ll be make it an official Live release tomorrow to get more eyes and ships into the 'Verse to help stress test and identify the bugs to smash in the new year. Now that the team had completed the heavy lifting to get the tech, content and systems for 3.0, they can focus on optimizations, feature consolidations, and polish for our first quarterly release Thanks to all of our backers and the entire Cloud Imperium team for making this possible. The release expands the game and adds features, like procedural planetary tech, our new mission system, and the cargo and commodity system. It also introduces flyable ships like the Dragonfly, Nox, and an updated Cutlass Black. The recently introduced Tumbril Nova is an imposing brute, but a closer look reveals a deceptively versatile tank. Learn more in a Q&A that highlights this iconic war machine. Also, check out our Around the Verse holiday special featuring extensive Squadron 42 gameplay. Need the perfect gift this Holiday season? Pick up one of our discounted Starter Packages, like a chic Consolidated Outland Mustang, utilitarian RSI Aurora, or reliable Aegis Avenger? Check out all three exclusive packages here. Our team will be taking a break over the holidays, and we’ll be back to full speed with our shows and updates on Jan 8th. We will, however, have episodes of Around the Verseairing on their usual day and time. Happy Holidays, everyone.

Sincerely, The Star Citizen Team "

 

[Rudolphus]

I have not seen all of it already to busy in real life, while I find it look good, the script of me came over as a remake of WC3 & WC4, and that is not what I wanted, I have played this more then 20 years ago

 

[BaronDeKalb]

I applied to have my PTU account activated 24 hours back, and I haven't yet received an acknowledgement, so I can't try the PTU out. This may be a deliberate way of throttling the number of users, or it may be they simply can't cope with the number of applicants.

There was just shy of 69000 peeps watching the twitch stream today, using that number, which is prolly very low, and 50 players per host, puts us at 1380 VM's to spin up lol .

 

[Goose4291]

Can forgive the jankiness somewhat, but it does highlight how its not just SC that suffers such problems, and that's without the excuse of networking.

But notice how when walking around stations they are moving slowly, and when they pan the camera they are careful to do it slowly. Compare that to how people tend to play, running from A to B, spinning the camera quickly... i suspect if they did that with the current engine the FPS would tank.

Yeah.. I couldn't work out if it was a case of trying to manage FPS issues, or doing slow panning for 'showing off' reasons.

I also do feel Liam Cunningham is underrated and underused, good to see him getting a front and centre role.

The more I read about this Tank though, I suspect the whole design concept was someone shouting "SPASH TANK!" and quickly making a concept based on the Israeli Merkava and then doing the Warhammer 40k trope thing of making it bigger.

I mean.... the current biggest ship is the carrier thingy, right? This'll squeeze into that, and it's going to need a dropship to deploy it. So the space-LPD is going to need to be bigger than the carrier we've seen for the past few years.

Another thing I'm a little bemused/concerned by was the relatively complex sensor suite interaction for a basic fighter. I dread to wonder how the ONE pilot in the AWACs variant is going to cope

 

[Rilzi]

Just watched the verticle slice, and had two very nice glasses of scotch. I wrote some notes which I'll tidy up. here are my thoughts:

The game of thrones dude is a good actor. Its cool that he and Mark Hamill got to work together.
Theyre still using 1055 carbon steel blades in the future? Huh.
What was with the hard cut to the cinematics? Granted it keeps happening but seems like it'd be annoying to play.
Why does such a big ship have such a small flightdeck? Can it only hold three fighters?
Stutters when first in space. And a bunch of other times throughout.
Space thunderstorms? Eh, why not. Was pretty cool I guess.
Whats with the tiny minimap globe? Is that really going to be the way to navigate as well as track enemys and everything else?
Having the decision to change your mission is nice - I wonder if it branches or if your funneled to the same point anyway.
Dat flight model doe it looks so bad whenever ships come to a stop and maneuver.
Dat space combat model doe someone should get Chris to play Wing Commander Prophecy or Freespace 2.
Looks like a new Avenger model? Looks good.
Flying along the ground took forever. If he had been going fast it would have at least be exciting but it was like a one of those kids trains. Can the Gladius fly faster?
The cutting tool was aight - though at least the one in Aliens v Predator 2 had a little shield to protect your eyes.
Stealth kill animation... meh.
SUDDENLY SHOOTING! Did someone miss their cue because it sure sounded like someone shooting before the pc is seen. Also the fps was pretty jank.
So you rescue the damsel in distress but its not cliche because shes a badass wants to complete the mission and so on... eh.
Is it me or was there a lot more walking around than flying?

Overall? I liked it genuinely. The plot was cheesy as hell but thats what I expected from CR, and cheese can be fun if you don't take it too seriously. It seemed about 90 percent of the video was cutscene, or travelling from a to b to get to the next cutscene - but again, not a huge surprise, and at least acting was good. The big problem is the gameplay part - multiple stutters, some parts where the frame rate was pretty obviously low, and the ground combat - well I'm suspicious about the ai there, there was something just a little off.

 

[Goose4291]

Why does such a big ship have such a small flightdeck? Can it only hold three fighters?

I imagine they're trying to go with the idea of the Frigates being akin to real-world ones, i.e one or two support airframes embarked, but not a carrier (which is probably the actual they're sending a SITREP to at the start of the vid).

 

[ZeeWolf]

Here is Chris back in 2013 saying that the great thing about crowd funding is how it forces him to have hard deliverable for the community instead of vertical slice smoke & mirrors demonstrations that he normally uses to fool publishers. This is pretty much him saying he can't get away with the very thing he got away with for the following five years.

[video=youtube;hYFCfRK4e6Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYFCfRK4e6Y&feature=youtu.be&t=22m55s[/video]

 

[TenakaFurey]

Just to playing evil's advocate:
1) lose item 2.0 and start with something more elegant and less floaty;
2) don't zoom on characters when talking, pointless gesture;
3) those corridors beg to be run around, add emergency for players;
4) don't know full story, but it felt a bit formulaic;
5) while SQ42 benefits of some ideas on SC, some of ideas clash heavily with flow of the game. It is not a graphics tech demo;

Longer thoughts - seeing this I am very convinced CIG will fail to release any of games unfortunately. Whatever money they have gotten, at this point it is just not enough. Game visibly have lot of issues and it's scope is impossible to keep. If CIG survives next year, then maybe in 2019, but at that point what?

I think everybody involved would be very ok with less demanding game with same actors, mocaps, music and story two years ago. It would even be a potential market hit. Now?

Despite my scepticism I had always place in heart for SQ42, because I genuinely liked some of WC moments. During falling to sleep I realized I really don't care that much about fidelity as long as game is good - that was biggest worry for ED, and while some people don't like it, I like it very much. However what I just saw doesn't feel much a game yet. And we are 6 years from starting point. When then if not now?

That's one of the issues.

The graphics...again, looked OK. yes...they are "good", but they aren't "great". They were "great in 2012, but in 2017 - never mind when the game is released - they are just good.

That is discounting the performance issues. I would assume that, properly optimised, the game would run at least as well as some other FPS games, but I'll note that even some of those can have performance issues depending on graphical options and available hardware.

The sound is a bit better than I expected, but the ships still sound bad.

Animations...for all the fuss about mocap...looked a little weird in place. Maybe I'm imagining it, or it might have been the feed, but on occasion they looked stiff and unnatural or just appeared to skip a frame or two.

Gameplay? It's hard to tell from the demo. There was, as others have noted, a LOT of time spent wandering around corridors or simply flying about appreciating the scenery rather than actually doing stuff. I hope that this is all preamble stuff and that there won't be twenty minutes of walking around and ten minutes of flight before and after every mission. The crew were also very chatty for some reason...even the captain got to bring up personal information about his own family. In other words....generic twaddle. Maybe the story will get better the further into the mission you go.

And I really hope we can RUN in the actual game. Walking everwhere at that sloooooow pace was annoying just watching.

The acting itself seemed decent even if the models themselves appear aged...good, but aged.

So - in summary - the game looks good (now, maybe not in 2 or 3 years) and sounds decent but is still suffering performance issues (in a pre recorded session that was obviously **very** tightly controlled on what was almost certainly a VERY powerful custom rig), but has a generic (slightly corny) script and story and - most damningly - gameplay that looks poor. All that filler needs to go. The world does not need a corridor walking simulator. Not too worried about the script - it doesn't look bad enough (yet) to be teeth grinding - and it looks good enough to pass muster for now but the gameplay really looks like it needs work

As others have said, this looks more like Chris Roberts was making an interactive movie more than a game.

The problem now is that the game doesn't look ready to launch for another two years at least. It needs better gameplay, it needs better graphics, and it is now up against some serious competition. What is on display is stuff that should have been released 2 or 3 years ago. Today, it looks like an also ran. The genre is filling up and worse - people have gotten fed up with sci fi FPS style games so even the market for this, while it isn't as niche as that for SC, is much reduced.

 

[ianw]

So if I've got this right. What they were showing was the single player game - which presumably talks to the server but doesn't have to update/get updates to/from a load of other clients?

And the performance was still poor - even when they're using their best kit in a scenario designed to show the thing at it's absolute best right now.

We know the dev said that "the fidelities" were causing a lot of problems and this seems to show it's really poor even without the added load of the yet to be sorted out netcode.

So - if the above is a correct assumption - what do they optimise? The ships and static scenery looked highly detailed and shiny - the characters ranged from good-ish (though I'm pretty sure I've seen better WIP/demo characters on other game trailers recently) to really not very good.

So what gets "optimised" to make it perform acceptably in single player mode?

 

[Rilzi]

So if I've got this right. What they were showing was the single player game - which presumably talks to the server but doesn't have to update/get updates to/from a load of other clients?

And the performance was still poor - even when they're using their best kit in a scenario designed to show the thing at it's absolute best right now.

We know the dev said that "the fidelities" were causing a lot of problems and this seems to show it's really poor even without the added load of the yet to be sorted out netcode.

So - if the above is a correct assumption - what do they optimise? The ships and static scenery looked highly detailed and shiny - the characters ranged from good-ish (though I'm pretty sure I've seen better WIP/demo characters on other game trailers recently) to really not very good.

So what gets "optimised" to make it perform acceptably in single player mode?

Thats the 176 million dollar question - if a prerecorded section of gameplay presumably under the most ideal conditions can't run smoothly, how likely is it they can get it running working well any time soon? Not to mention that the entire section shown could be built and run smoothly in a bunch of games out now - probably with some tricks to cover for the fidelities and seemlessnessness. It's not hard to imagine the likes of CoD:Iwar or No Mans Sky being able to impliment that exact sequence.

 

[lysan]

I’m playing assassins creed origins now, huge game very detailed, got 60fps.

SQ42 was looking ok, but not 60$ Ok they need a lot polishing to get it up to standard.
Next question, where will they sell it? RSI store only or via steam?

They need a huge budget to sell that game so they can get enough revenue to keep the wheels spinning, 400 devs is not cheap
They got nothing else in the works but SC and SQ42 so hard times ahead for sure.

 

[Viajero]

well I'm suspicious about the ai there, there was something just a little off.

What AI.