Star Citizen Thread v6

[Actionman2222]

I understand tho it makes me sad a little. Its because I am personally unable to bring across a point in 2 or 3 lines as I see others do on this forum. Its a remarkable quality I dont possess. I always try to avoid "rambling on" and try to post quality posts but I realize the sheer volume can be deterrent. Maybe my skill will improve one day for more people to read them

/cheers

I did read it, and enjoyed it. Crunch time is coming. Can SC prove you wrong and flog some life into the horse to get it across the finish line for 3.0? Or are they flogging a dead horse after all? I can't wait to see.

Certainly, the secrecy isn't helpful.

 

[MTBFritz]

I've got refund recently, but I also kept basic package as I have both games included and many other nice pledge goal rewards.

Can't say I am not bit excited to test 3.0 when it finally comes out, but for now I am unable to find any kind of insider info from people playing Evocati.
If someone heard something would be nice to share with us here.

Glad to hear you are able to keep your optimism regarding the project yet are realistic enough to determine that everything beyond a starter package is a unnecessary risk as well as unneeded. I agree that its nearly impossible to find "trusted" sources for evocati leaks yet all these video snippets show new stuff that isnt available on the current PTU so I believe that we do indeed see 3.0 content. Most of these second-long snippets dont really show anything thats what makes me very suspicious really. Either its because all footage comes from a single source so variations are limited (unlikely to be honest) or because there simply isnt much to 3.0 (my personal favorite) which would allow showcasing cool stuff.

The further along the project gets the more obvious it becomes that the fundamental basics are not designed very well or didnt get the level of attention they need/require. Bugs like the space bike and how it interacts with the interior cargo bay for example. Bugs or glitches be damned, thats not the issue. Its that these kind of bugs and glitches still exist in SCs 6th year of development that makes it noteworthy.

Either way, good for you to get a refund. I can totally agree with the "starter package, lets see how it goes" attitude of yours

 

[MTBFritz]

Depend on who you ask...some people are calling it a disaster, the leaks that I managed to catch weren't too encouraging, but the general consensus seems to be that it is both incredibly buggy and flawed, but fun, at least for a while.

Thats always been the case to be honest tho. Since day 1 you had video material and 2 different groups. The ones salivating at the mouth then going off to theorycraft the heck out of it and the skeptics who are not easily impressed with shiny graphics and photoshopped pictures. At least with old material even tho it didnt "sell the game to me" I was able to understand the other side being impressed and excited because tho not providing any technical evidence of capabilities at least it looked nice. The current leaks for 3.0 tho I fail to see anything positive about it. Especially as 3.0 has been worked on FULLTIME by CiGs own admission for a year or more already. I really was expecting a lot more then what we are able to see at the moment.

The general consensus is coming from an incredibly small group of "preferred" testers none of which is known for his skeptical assessment capabilities. People like BoredGamer. If I watch any of his videos I would be veeery careful with believing a general consensus like that coming from his mouth. Now add the fact that there are people out there who refuse to call actual crap crap and instead continue to praise it as the second coming and describe something to you that simply isnt on the table. If 3.0 would be fun even if short then I would expect leaks showing exactly that but none of it does show fun stuff or even impressive stuff at the moment. Its all the same boring 1 minute content from different angles. Like always this will be a "I believe it when I see it" case. CiG has too long lived and prospered on words alone.....we all know where that lead to. Time for actions I think.

 

[TenakaFurey]

Thats always been the case to be honest tho. Since day 1 you had video material and 2 different groups. The ones salivating at the mouth then going off to theorycraft the heck out of it and the skeptics who are not easily impressed with shiny graphics and photoshopped pictures. At least with old material even tho it didnt "sell the game to me" I was able to understand the other side being impressed and excited because tho not providing any technical evidence of capabilities at least it looked nice. The current leaks for 3.0 tho I fail to see anything positive about it. Especially as 3.0 has been worked on FULLTIME by CiGs own admission for a year or more already. I really was expecting a lot more then what we are able to see at the moment.

Well, it seems that 3.0 looks bad because turning the graphics way down is how to bypass the watermarks.

Which shows the general level of competence at CIG. The whole idea of watermarks is that they can't be gotten rid of. All the system does now is add "poor graphics" to the list of complaints rather than discouraging leaks.

As it is - I am not concerned with bugs. End of the day - this IS a pre Alpha. Bugs are expected

That doesn't excuse the state of the game after more than six years of development - which is the real problem. CIG is spending so much time working on content rather than the core systems, they are having to redo that work. CIG have thrown out years of work because they didn't tell the teams involved about changes to the engine - such as Ilfonics FPS work. CIG are working on one system to make it work, then ripping it out and replacing it with a "better" system that will work better, examples being AI and the netcode. CIG are working on unnecessary cosmetic features such as VOIP and FOIP.

It's easy to explain why the game is progressing so slow when you realise that CIG are effectively writing it 2 or 3 three times. They added AI and replaced it with subsumption. They refined the netcode and are replacing it. They rewrote about 70% of CryEngine to create StarEngine and then replaced it with Lumberyard. They worked on content and ships - which is no incompatible with the engine and so needs to be rewritten. And so on.

I also doubt anyone would want StarEngine even if they could license it...it has to be a mess, and whats more, we know it isn't finished. There's no point to use an engine optimised for a space sim game if it lacks decent netcode, flight mechanics or physics. There's tweaking and then there is wholesale rewriting and avoiding that last is why you want to buy an off the shelf engine.

Add to that the time wasted dealing with feature creep and bloat - AND the time wasted dealing with CIGs weird developments cycle which sees them producing Beta level assets at the same time as pre-Alpha level engine work and Alpha level functionality, and the work they carried out on S42...

Its easy to see why the game is so slow to progress and why so much money has been wasted.

The trouble is, Chris Roberts has the budget for ONE game of the scale he wants...although $2-300 million might be more realistic given the way he is operating...but he's creating two, and of those two, he's affectively rewritten one of them twice already.
$160 million for the equivalent of four games...especially given the costs of other AAA games; quite a bargain when you look at it like that

 

[Ian Skippy]

As it is - I am not concerned with bugs. End of the day - this IS a pre Alpha. Bugs are expected

That doesn't excuse the state of the game after more than six years of development - which is the real problem.

So you are concerned.

 

[MTBFritz]

[video=youtube;jonC52_ItF4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jonC52_ItF4[/video]

Usually I dont give a damn about this guys videos and I only was watching it in order to leave a snarky comment but listening to his descriptions and what he actually says I was left with pure admiration fore this guy. BoredGamer seems to be a professional that has made Star Citizen his main focus for the time being. I cant say if its profitable at all as I have next to no experience with youtube monetization his subscription base is smaller then 100K and most of his videos hover around the 20k hit mark. I was marking that guy as a shill but really, he only works the topic as best he can WITHOUT openly lying or deceiving people. Most of his videos are theorycrafting which means he adds rumors and his own thoughts of possible future content. He doesnt act as an official mouthpiece and generally stays hyped and pumped about the topic. His voice as well as his attitude about Star Citizen (might be acted, some people really have that down) are infectious to others .

In the past I thought he was deluded to NOT SEE the obvious flaws but came to accept that this is somebody who consciously concentrates on the good parts in order to keep his source and his status (among the SC fanbase and he is also one of the ecovati). He doesnt use deception or outright lies to keep his audience amused thats something I give a big + for. He is not involved in the SC development, he probably knows exactly as much as I do about it but his "work" demands that he sells the idea and he does exactly that very well. You might label him as a co-perpetrator and I have done that in the past but he is an outside individual who uses Star Citizen as a tool to pay his own bills. As we all should be responsible for our own thoughts and actions you cant really blame him like I did in the past. Looks like I need to look closer more often and not make hasty judgements

Why I posted the video in the first place. He makes announcements about the coming CitizenCon which I found intriguing tho hard to believe. I dont accuse him of making anything up. I realize that there is so much trivia in such a volume surrounding this project that its easy to miss small details and none of his claims appear to be outrageous. Like the number of rooms being transformed into showrooms showcasing individual aspects and features of the game. Like this years Citizencon might be a lot more interactive then the last few years. Quoting developer remarks and twitterfeeds and generally painting a picture of a company brimming with activity to keep the good work going. If he is correct and CiG indeed invests more time and effort into this years Citizencon to spice things up and generally behaves like they are eager to publish their superior product I find myself doubting my conviction of it all being a scam. Its just temporary doubt mind you because in the end whatever claim is made has to be provided in actual doings. And what makes a scam a scam is the scammer acting natural and believable after all. So like always until we have definitive proof I will stay with my gut feeling. Citizencon isnt far off and I of all people can afford to wait

 

[MTBFritz]

Well, it seems that 3.0 looks bad because turning the graphics way down is how to bypass the watermarks.

Which shows the general level of competence at CIG. The whole idea of watermarks is that they can't be gotten rid of. All the system does now is add "poor graphics" to the list of complaints rather than discouraging leaks.

As it is - I am not concerned with bugs. End of the day - this IS a pre Alpha. Bugs are expected

That doesn't excuse the state of the game after more than six years of development - which is the real problem. CIG is spending so much time working on content rather than the core systems, they are having to redo that work. CIG have thrown out years of work because they didn't tell the teams involved about changes to the engine - such as Ilfonics FPS work. CIG are working on one system to make it work, then ripping it out and replacing it with a "better" system that will work better, examples being AI and the netcode. CIG are working on unnecessary cosmetic features such as VOIP and FOIP.

It's easy to explain why the game is progressing so slow when you realise that CIG are effectively writing it 2 or 3 three times. They added AI and replaced it with subsumption. They refined the netcode and are replacing it. They rewrote about 70% of the CryEngine and replaced it with Lumberyard. They worked on content and ships - which is no incompatible with the engine and so needs to be rewritten. And so on.

Add to that the time wasted dealing with feature creep and bloat - AND the time wasted dealing with CIGs weird developments cycle which sees them producing Beta level assets at the same time as pre-Alpha level engine work and Alpha level functionality, and the work they carried out on S42...

Its easy to see why the game is so slow to progress and why so much money has been wasted.

The trouble is, Chris Roberts has the budget for ONE game of the scale he wants.....but he's creating two, and of those two, he's affectively rewritten one of them twice already.
$160 million for the equivalent of four games...especially given the costs of other AAA games; quite a bargain when you look at it like that

Thats an interesting observation. I am of the opinion that Star Citizen has good visuals going for itself....and nothing else really. No content, no impressive features nor solid mechanics. But its looking good and thats also the angle most people go for when they try try to present Star Citizen in a positive light. I am able to look past the flashy visuals and observe and judge what the game actually is underneath. Lots of people are unable or unwilling to do this. "Fun" is in the end uncovered as "looks great" which is not the same. Now we have the 3.0 leaks and due to the watermarks (which is another fail as you noticed, thanks for that hahaha) people get rid of Star Citizens one and only strong point.....the visuals.

Basically preventing the masses from being blinded and distracted by good looks all the leaks show is the actual meat of 3.0 and it doesnt look like a big piece of steak to me. And everybody else too. CiG might be more successful with the leaks if they didnt put the watermarks in. That they negated their biggest strength themselves is another notch on the "self-own" list, very funny

edit: you people need to post more else it ll look like I m dominating this forum

 

[Red Anders]

"Distance to Ceilin: 8855km"
Wot?!

https://tof.cx/images/2017/10/12/c0a8e12c694a9819a1687135ee6ea67b.png

"Distance to Daymar 107158Km"
Wodda heckin wut?!?!!!

https://tof.cx/images/2017/10/12/9e95def0d5452be223f1624779140809.png

And yes, the Immershun Outcentered Helmet Technology™ is awful.

I'd already seen a few in-cockpit in-helmet videos and I still can't get past those two blue searchlights which are for some reason mounted in there. I mean it's exactly what you want when looking out from an environment which will already have a low level of ambient light from the cockpit display panels into an environment that's predominantly black isn't it?

I wonder if Chris straps a couple of D-cell Maglites to the inside of his car roof pointed at his face when he's driving along a dark freeway at night? Y'know, just for the superbly enhanced vision it provides.

Not even getting into the distances. Distance to Ceilin in that screen screenshot: 8,855km. Distance from the UK to roughly the centre of the USA - 6,800km So it's what, about the size of a decent melon?

 

[Tippis]

That doesn't excuse the state of the game after more than six years of development - which is the real problem. CIG is spending so much time working on content rather than the core systems, they are having to redo that work. CIG have thrown out years of work because they didn't tell the teams involved about changes to the engine - such as Ilfonics FPS work. CIG are working on one system to make it work, then ripping it out and replacing it with a "better" system that will work better, examples being AI and the netcode. CIG are working on unnecessary cosmetic features such as VOIP and FOIP.

Come to think of it… aren't we fast coming up on two years since v0.2α was released? And how much has happened or been added since? An FPS mode made in an FPS engine and not markedly different than what the original engine did 10 years ago (other than the fascinating new bugs that makes the whole thing pointless)? An unyieldingly broken flight model? Consistently broken physics and world interactions? A pointless vanity item shop where you can't shop because it's all done through a separate UI? NPCs that have to be disabled and locked down, or they keep getting pushed out of the world?

Time and money well spent, obviously.

The trouble is, Chris Roberts has the budget for ONE game of the scale he wants...although $2-300 million might be more realistic given the way he is operating...but he's creating two, and of those two, he's affectively rewritten one of them twice already.
$160 million for the equivalent of four games...especially given the costs of other AAA games; quite a bargain when you look at it like that

Sure, but looking at it like that is also what gives rise to the nonsensical notion that the game hasn't been in development for six years. At the end of the day, even if ideas are thrown out or redone or reworked, they're still part of the process — they've still cost time and effort and money. In that process, CIG has now spent 6 years to not even make an appreciable fraction of a single game, and in spite of a impressive nest egg, they've been operating in the red for a very long time now. So yeah, he had the budget for one game. He wasted it on producing no game. That doesn't leave much for the (very long) future that will have to pass before he can actually make any headway on a release.

 

[Asp Explorer]

That doesn't leave much for the (very long) future that will have to pass before he can actually make any headway on a release.

Ahh, but Genuine Roberts will surprise everybody with the blockbuster release of Squadron 42 with it's all-star cast, immersive and gripping storyline of epic heroism and darkest betrayal in a world-renowned universe, with an amazing script to rival Tolstoy, and he's going to do it soon.

 

[Red Anders]

The watermark is a unique code per backer repeated over the screen. By lowering gfx quality it disappeared. With the watermark its pretty much like having the name of the leaker all over the screen. And yes, reddit/youtube is beung monitored, and plenty of hardcore idiots are willing to snitch. You might even become avocado yourself!

Most open development.

Yeah it's the Stasi model, an organisation who were of course noted for their open approach.

 

[VidarSnipes]

Not even getting into the distances. Distance to Ceilin in that screen screenshot: 8,855km. Distance from the UK to roughly the centre of the USA - 6,800km So it's what, about the size of a decent melon?

He's really close to that moon, though. Daymar is an another thing. It looks like its' orbit has a diameter of more than 107,158 kilometers, let's say 120,000km, which that gives us a radius of 60,000km. For a bit of comparison, let's take the closest moon of Saturn, Mimas, which orbits at around 185,539 km, almost three times further out. Doesn't seem as much of a difference when CIG has said (explicitly in theory, buried somewhere in practice) that their systems are scaled down.

 

[Red Anders]

That really seems to sum up this 3.0 "release". They desperately want to give the impression that they've finally produced it, all of it, I mean look at all the cool features listed in the patch notes, right? But at the same time, the truth about what features it does or does not actually include is locked away behind NDAs and watermarks and excuses about rolling out features in waves, and who knows how long it will be before it's deemed ready for the rest of us filthy backer plebs. Months would be my guess. So really it's just a way to buy even more time, because it's clearly still not "done" by any stretch of the imagination.

I expect the line at CitizenCon will be something like "We know it took a little longer than expected, hahaha, but now that 3.0 is finally in players' hands, we can start looking to the future and all the exciting things we have planned for upcoming patches!" But as far as I'm concerned, as long as 3.0 is evocati-only, they haven't delivered it.

This is one of the fairly telling things that's happening - considering that 3.0 was originally slated to be out in December 2016 until it was sightly delayed after they decided they had better start with making a plan for 3.0 in January 2017, you would have thought they would have moved hell and high water to get 3.0 out to the general player base before PARPCon 2017, on the basis that since it's obviously going to be so utterly brilliant, everybody would then rejoice and spend their money on more immersion chariots.

Not having any form of 3.0 released in time for PARPCon would obviously have been a bad thing and even the most sturdy of white knights may have struggled to fix their lances and ride into glorious battle against the unwashed hordes if their rallying cry was going to be 'ready in December 2017! No, we really mean it this time, honest!'

So if you know the latest build of your game is complete dog's eggs even after you've stripped out a load of the stuff that was originally supposed to be in it because you know you have no chance of fixing it to an acceptable standard within two years, but still have your annual love-in/fundraiser fast approaching and can't be seen to have nothing at all to show for the last year's supposed work, what smoke and mirrors could you possibly pull out of your ill-fitting helmet to work around this problem?

I know. How about you release some patch notes that say a load of stuff is in 3.0 even though it's actually not in 3.0 yet at all, then release something masquerading as 3.0 to a bunch of your most dedicated shills and enablers, with the added bonus that they aren't allowed to talk about it at all anyway due to the NDA. Then you can show any old pre-rendered rolling demo/carefully controlled scripted demo crap at PARPCon in a couple of weeks time (as usual) whilst telling the faithful that 3.0 looks exactly like that and will be with them shortly, just as soon as the crack team of fidelity avocados have done with it.

Then you can hit them with a quick ship sale or two to get some more cash flowing in and it's back to CIG Towers to scuttle back behind the space doors, have a nice cup of coffee and start the serious business of pricing up three weeks in the Bahamas over Christmas.

 

[dayrth]

<snip>

This is exactly what will happen. This is exactly what always happens. Wish I could rep you but I've run out

 

[Asp Explorer]

This is exactly what will happen. This is exactly what always happens. Wish I could rep you but I've run out

I found a spare rep while I was looking for the fidelity cable in the immersion rack

It's only a couple of weeks, and we'll find out for sure

 

[McGlashan]

Ahh, but Genuine Roberts will surprise everybody with the blockbuster release of Squadron 42 with it's all-star cast, immersive and gripping storyline of epic heroism and darkest betrayal in a world-renowned universe, with an amazing script to rival Tolstoy, and he's going to do it soon.

I do hope Miles Eckhart appears in Squadron 42. He's such a compelling, original and well-written character.
But seriously, it makes me laugh how he gets name-dropped by CIG as if he's some kind of iconic superstar character that anyone at all gives a damn about. Oh, Miles Eckhart is actually going to be in 3.0?! Awesome! That more than makes up for the lack of game play mechanics.

 

[Asp Explorer]

I do hope Miles Eckhart appears in Squadron 42. He's such a compelling, original and well-written character.
But seriously, it makes me laugh how he gets name-dropped by CIG as if he's some kind of iconic superstar character that anyone at all gives a damn about. Oh, Miles Eckhart is actually going to be in 3.0?! Awesome! That more than makes up for the lack of game play mechanics.

Oh our dear Miles is an iconic superstar character. Half man, half table armed with an indestructible glass weapon, immune to physical boundaries, known for sleeping rough, invisibility, and picking fights with gravity and winning.

 

[Cobra1984]

So in the last transcript from a couple of weeks back, Erin was telling the UK guys to take one feature at a time and debug it for the evocati builds.

In this transcript Chris is telling the same team to get out of that mindset and instead focus on putting finished ships and areas in AND debug it.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Wasn't it last week where he was saying "I can't do four things at once!"

That's exactly what's happening.

 

[MTBFritz]

This is exactly what will happen. This is exactly what always happens. Wish I could rep you but I've run out

I picked up your slack, I wonder how you folks always run out of rep ^^