I have my doubts about that. It would require CIG to make public a great deal of so-far unrevealed information about the state of their finances.
The Star Citizen Thread V10
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I have my doubts about that. It would require CIG to make public a great deal of so-far unrevealed information about the state of their finances.
It's still all pure speculation at this point. Neither have insider knowledge to make correct predictions, and even so they would have to be inside the head of CR and his new investors. And yeah it's quite obvious for everyone that SC will not be ever released unless there is another fund injection and a complete engine rewrite..
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I don't think an engine re-write would work. I think a different engine would be a better approach. I would guess that designing your own to do what you want of it would be easier than taking someone else's and trying to do the same. And with 200 million and more of funding they had more than enough money to do that and should have. But of course the man who had next to no experience of modern game engines was the one to make that choice and here we are.
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Everything is pure speculation at this point, including "there is a game" and "SQ42 in 2020" so dont feel bad about predicting stuff that doesnt occur. Nobody in this project has a track record of "hits" so to speak from all the pro-fans repeating "soon" and "wait for next patch" to all the haters saying "90 days tops" etc.
I was thinking about a possible engine re-write as well but frankly, I cannot believe that backers will be THAT gullible and second....have the funds to repeat something like this a second time. It would throw the whole thing back another decade and while a few delusional fools still cling to "quality first...take as much time as you want" this would break the 600 million $ tag easy at which point SC would be possibly the first (non-) game to cost more then 1 BILLION dollars. At least there would be something groundbreaking about it then
The best thing they could do would just be to give up and let someone competent make a game with that kind of scope from scratch with a solid foundation for the project in the form of a engine that can do everything needed from the start.
Yeah by engine re-write i mean get a new fresh engine from the ground up. Maybe licensing an existing one that can handle large scale 3D maps with high concurrent users (like Dual Universe.. but that one is not complete yet).. otherwise they'd have to start from zero, which they should have done from the start in 2012 and would then have saved tens of millions and a lawsuit. Current engine is a complete dead end and throwing money and effort at it is a complete loss as shown by the current state of affairs.
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Yeah, the stuff that Amazon is doing with Lumberyard and their upcoming New World MMO looks really interesting.
100's to maybe 1000's of players in the same location etc.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/amazon-new-world-mmo-dev-interview/
CIG really should look into using Lumberyard.
Squadron 42 won't be released either unless there is another fund injection and a complete engine rewrite.
On the other hand, if they could sell to backers they could probably get away without committing to all the financial obligations and milestones and whatever other legal waffle the pros demand. It would be like free money, but they could only do it once, unlike selling jpegs.
Better yet: sell shares in the pretend in-game companies. They could have AGMs and virtual Apple-style conferences where the new jpegs are announced. They could simply pull numbers out of thin air and pretend it's the "dynamic economy" in action, and fans could imagine that they're serious traders and play the pretend markets, with absolutely zero real-world liabilities for Roberts and Co. And if they need to sell more shares to raise money, they can just invent new companies. They could add a tax haven planet, called, I don't know, Grand Cayman, where orgs could set up their own shell companies. The more I think about it, the more I'm amazed they haven't done it already.
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So you think Roberts should scrap the years of work that has (supposedly) gone into their proprietary server meshing (or diffusion or whatever it's called this week), and reboot with Amazon's own off-the-shelf multiplayer solution?
Personally I can totally see that happening, although they'll pretend it's what they planned all along, and that SC's implementation is a special, improved version, and that Amazon basically got the tech from them in the first place, even though it never actually existed.
If I've learned anything reading this forum, it is that the engine CIG is using is not and never will be capable of large worlds/play areas and high player counts like they want to do in Star Citizen.
If CIG is going to change engines, they should consider Lumberyard with all the work Amazon is putting into it.
Oh, sorry, I thought you were being sarcastic.
Chris Roberts said:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...mises-move-amazons-lumberyard-wont-delay-game
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Oh wow! This is quite the revelation! Have any of you let Jeff Bezos know that Lumberyard will never work for MMO type games? With huge play areas and tons of players? I'm sure he would be very grateful if someone alerted him to this fatal flaw in Lumberyard. It is a shame Amazon is wasting all this time trying to create New World using the Lumberyard engine.
It would be a better use of time reminding Genuine Roberts that he has still failed to deliver both games he promised us years ago.
Oh, and our space-ship USB sticks
It would be a better use of time reminding Genuine Roberts that he has still failed to deliver both games he promised us years ago.
Oh, and our space-ship USB sticks
The amount of salt SC is going to produce on its final run will dwarf every ounce dangerous discussion has ever produced. Itll still be flavoring pickles and chips in gaming circles in the year 3300. I can't wait.
It's completely possible that Amazon will produce a game that offers a large scale MMO experience. It's also possible the game will be cancelled, because it wouldn't be the first. But while they're describing it as "skill based", I would guess it's going to have more in common with traditional MMOs than with a space combat / twitch shooter hybrid like SC, and it certainly won't have multicrew space ships flying around, so even if they pull it off there's a good chance the tech they produce won't be a viable solution for SC.
CI(G) switched to Lumberyard nearly 3 years ago and it hasn't made any noticeable difference so far, so don't assume Amazon's going to solve all of CR's problems.
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Found on Something Awful, and thought this thread might like a copy pasta. The goons were talking about what happens if Sq42 isn't received well:
Posted by Quavers on SA:
Chris Roberts explains what went wrong on the Squadron 42 game
I recently spoke with Chris Roberts about his in-development-limbo game Star Citizen, but as a fan who grew up playing Wing Commander it was hard not to pick his brain about the classic gaming series. Roberts said he’s most proud of the first and third Wing Commander titles, although he thinks the game was the best in the first title and the narrative was handled well in the third.
In fact, the first Wing Commander game was the only title he’s released where he wouldn’t change a thing. Roberts spent around a year prototyping the game by himself, he brought on a small team for the last six months, and the game he had imagined became the game we played. “We hardly did any balancing on the game. We designed it on paper, all the missions and everything, and it came together the way I saw it in my head,” he said. “It’s amazing, because maybe we tweaked one mission and that’s it. We put it on paper, and then we did it and it worked.”
There was something else I wanted to ask about, but I didn’t want to poke at old wounds. Looking back, what did he learn from the Squadron 42 game? There was a long silence, long enough for me to grow slightly uncomfortable, and then he began to laugh.
A learning experience
I don’t want to attack the man or mock the game, because even though Roberts was inexperienced when it came to this generation's AAA games, he went in there and got that thing made. It takes guts to step up to that kind of task and take your best swing at it, and I have nothing but respect for someone who was able to bring a world to both games and movies, even if the final result wasn’t as good as it could have been. Roberts was candid about the experience, and seemed more than comfortable talking about what went wrong.
“Squadron 42 was very frustrating for me. I saw the game in my head, and the game that was made was not the game I saw in my head,” he said. “I learned a lot making the game, I think if I was making a game again it would be very different, after the ten years I’ve spent making this game.”
Roberts wrote and directed Squadron 42, but his career in gaming didn’t stop there; he’s since worked mopping floors on a number of yachts, including the wonderful Lord of Stimperor with EightAce, The Agent and Major Tom.
So why wasn’t the game. How do I put this… very good? “There’s a litany of reasons. I was a first time crowdfunding developer, and even though I had directed live action in Wing Commander 3 and 4, directing mocap is a different level of subtlety. There are many small things and small moments that you need to pay attention to when you’re doing a game scene that you don’t need to doing vignettes for a movie,” he explained.
“Squadron is all about the quiet moments, and the visual moments, and as a visionary game director you’re looking at a script and you see all this dialog, and naturally that’s taking up 80 percent of the page,” he continued. “And you just think you need to create that and you’re all good. But it’s the reaction shots, it’s the staring off in the distance, or just the texture of the models to give you a feeling. You need to think about that, and now when I go back to building Star Citizen, I do think about that.”
He worries about fans who think he doesn’t care about the multiplayer Star Citizen, because he’s bringing what he’s learned making single player games to making the MMO its own game, apart from the PvP slider.
A short production schedule
“You have to prepare correctly,” Roberts told the Penny Arcade Report as he listed what went wrong on the Squadron 42 part of project Star Citizen.
One of the problems with Squadron 42 was that the deal with the Calders happened before the company had repaid the many bank loans. Calder then told Roberts that Squadron 42 had to be done to release the Christmas of 2020, which gave him only another two years of production, nine in total.
That’s an incredibly tight turnaround for any game, but it was even worse for a fidelity-driven production. Ten years or so would be closer to the standard, and many games are in the planning stages for much longer. With only two years to prepare for release, there wasn’t enough time to do things like mocap the design of the females. The budget was also an issue, as they were only given $290 million, a record-breaking budget for a science fiction game (and later MMO) that would rely so much on fidelity and immersion sequences.
“That’s why the Vanduul sucked and they were basically cut out of the game,” Roberts said bluntly. “If we had the proper pipelines we could have prototyped, and had some time and make sure it was done well. These are all things I learned so when I produce games for other people I can apply what I’ve learned and hopefully help some of the other directors in the way I wish I had been helped out when I made a game. But it was a learning experience.”
The pressure was also intense. He was already a well-known person in the world of classic gaming working on a well-known property. He didn’t have much room to learn, or to fail gracefully. “My first game wasn’t Wing Commander,” he said. It took a while before he understood what makes a good 16-bit game, and then he created Wing Commander. He didn’t have the same luxury with the modern games. “There’s a little bit of learning the craft and I went right in there in a visible position.”
So if anyone asks what went wrong with the Star Citizen project, there you go. You had a first-time crowdfunded developer dealing with a scope-creeped schedule, and a record-breaking budget for two fidelity-driven science fiction games. Roberts said he wished someone had sat him down, forced him to pick four or five things that it was important to do well, and focus on those. Instead he tried to do too much, and didn’t have the budget nor time to do any of it particularly well.
Still, if someone were to give him a dream budget to make either a Wing Commander game or film, after having created both, he’d much rather go back to the movies. With games the trick is to get the player to immerse within the main character, where the movie allows you to visualise the main character. The viewer looks in on Roberts' world.
“So then the trick is how to draw the rest of the world with such a level of detail that it suspends your disbelief and you’re in this world,” he said. “That’s what our industry is trying to work out, and will work out, and once all is said and done movies are going to be the powerful immersive entertainment medium moving forward. We’re just in the beginning of it, and that’s exciting. Who doesn’t want to save the world?”
Posted by Quavers on SA:
Followed by the gaming media interviewsTrilobite on SA said:
Chris Roberts explains what went wrong on the Squadron 42 game
I recently spoke with Chris Roberts about his in-development-limbo game Star Citizen, but as a fan who grew up playing Wing Commander it was hard not to pick his brain about the classic gaming series. Roberts said he’s most proud of the first and third Wing Commander titles, although he thinks the game was the best in the first title and the narrative was handled well in the third.
In fact, the first Wing Commander game was the only title he’s released where he wouldn’t change a thing. Roberts spent around a year prototyping the game by himself, he brought on a small team for the last six months, and the game he had imagined became the game we played. “We hardly did any balancing on the game. We designed it on paper, all the missions and everything, and it came together the way I saw it in my head,” he said. “It’s amazing, because maybe we tweaked one mission and that’s it. We put it on paper, and then we did it and it worked.”
There was something else I wanted to ask about, but I didn’t want to poke at old wounds. Looking back, what did he learn from the Squadron 42 game? There was a long silence, long enough for me to grow slightly uncomfortable, and then he began to laugh.
A learning experience
I don’t want to attack the man or mock the game, because even though Roberts was inexperienced when it came to this generation's AAA games, he went in there and got that thing made. It takes guts to step up to that kind of task and take your best swing at it, and I have nothing but respect for someone who was able to bring a world to both games and movies, even if the final result wasn’t as good as it could have been. Roberts was candid about the experience, and seemed more than comfortable talking about what went wrong.
“Squadron 42 was very frustrating for me. I saw the game in my head, and the game that was made was not the game I saw in my head,” he said. “I learned a lot making the game, I think if I was making a game again it would be very different, after the ten years I’ve spent making this game.”
Roberts wrote and directed Squadron 42, but his career in gaming didn’t stop there; he’s since worked mopping floors on a number of yachts, including the wonderful Lord of Stimperor with EightAce, The Agent and Major Tom.
So why wasn’t the game. How do I put this… very good? “There’s a litany of reasons. I was a first time crowdfunding developer, and even though I had directed live action in Wing Commander 3 and 4, directing mocap is a different level of subtlety. There are many small things and small moments that you need to pay attention to when you’re doing a game scene that you don’t need to doing vignettes for a movie,” he explained.
“Squadron is all about the quiet moments, and the visual moments, and as a visionary game director you’re looking at a script and you see all this dialog, and naturally that’s taking up 80 percent of the page,” he continued. “And you just think you need to create that and you’re all good. But it’s the reaction shots, it’s the staring off in the distance, or just the texture of the models to give you a feeling. You need to think about that, and now when I go back to building Star Citizen, I do think about that.”
He worries about fans who think he doesn’t care about the multiplayer Star Citizen, because he’s bringing what he’s learned making single player games to making the MMO its own game, apart from the PvP slider.
A short production schedule
“You have to prepare correctly,” Roberts told the Penny Arcade Report as he listed what went wrong on the Squadron 42 part of project Star Citizen.
One of the problems with Squadron 42 was that the deal with the Calders happened before the company had repaid the many bank loans. Calder then told Roberts that Squadron 42 had to be done to release the Christmas of 2020, which gave him only another two years of production, nine in total.
That’s an incredibly tight turnaround for any game, but it was even worse for a fidelity-driven production. Ten years or so would be closer to the standard, and many games are in the planning stages for much longer. With only two years to prepare for release, there wasn’t enough time to do things like mocap the design of the females. The budget was also an issue, as they were only given $290 million, a record-breaking budget for a science fiction game (and later MMO) that would rely so much on fidelity and immersion sequences.
“That’s why the Vanduul sucked and they were basically cut out of the game,” Roberts said bluntly. “If we had the proper pipelines we could have prototyped, and had some time and make sure it was done well. These are all things I learned so when I produce games for other people I can apply what I’ve learned and hopefully help some of the other directors in the way I wish I had been helped out when I made a game. But it was a learning experience.”
The pressure was also intense. He was already a well-known person in the world of classic gaming working on a well-known property. He didn’t have much room to learn, or to fail gracefully. “My first game wasn’t Wing Commander,” he said. It took a while before he understood what makes a good 16-bit game, and then he created Wing Commander. He didn’t have the same luxury with the modern games. “There’s a little bit of learning the craft and I went right in there in a visible position.”
So if anyone asks what went wrong with the Star Citizen project, there you go. You had a first-time crowdfunded developer dealing with a scope-creeped schedule, and a record-breaking budget for two fidelity-driven science fiction games. Roberts said he wished someone had sat him down, forced him to pick four or five things that it was important to do well, and focus on those. Instead he tried to do too much, and didn’t have the budget nor time to do any of it particularly well.
Still, if someone were to give him a dream budget to make either a Wing Commander game or film, after having created both, he’d much rather go back to the movies. With games the trick is to get the player to immerse within the main character, where the movie allows you to visualise the main character. The viewer looks in on Roberts' world.
“So then the trick is how to draw the rest of the world with such a level of detail that it suspends your disbelief and you’re in this world,” he said. “That’s what our industry is trying to work out, and will work out, and once all is said and done movies are going to be the powerful immersive entertainment medium moving forward. We’re just in the beginning of it, and that’s exciting. Who doesn’t want to save the world?”
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New World is doomed. Lethality has been shilling for it. If Lethality starts shilling for a game you know its going to be bad.
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