Sounds like he took the course "instant scifi just add quantum". WTH is quantum fuel even supposed to mean? Fuel made out of quantum particles? Because your ordinary gasoline already fulfills that premise.
The Star Citizen Thread v 3.0
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Sounds like he took the course "instant scifi just add quantum". WTH is quantum fuel even supposed to mean? Fuel made out of quantum particles? Because your ordinary gasoline already fulfills that premise.
Great i lost my reply x.x
Yeah i am afraid so. We've all seen the precision issues they had in the last demos. But there's still time to improve things.
They should take whatever time they need, that is preferable to releasing another lackluster barebone "module".
I would not expect anything other than Freelancer 2.0 however. With some hopefully nifty FPS and multicrew action.
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You know, i don't have a problem with that. It is science fantasy. SC is less about realism (uh, gonna get roasted by the SC-is-so-realistic gang) and more about experiences and cool setpieces. Quantum fuel, so what? Fine by me.
They're not basing their propulsion upon the alcubierre drive or determine which stars you can scoop hydrogen from based on scientific principles. And they don't have to. Doesn't mean it's a less good game.
Yeah i am afraid so. We've all seen the precision issues they had in the last demos. But there's still time to improve things.
They should take whatever time they need, that is preferable to releasing another lackluster barebone "module".
I would not expect anything other than Freelancer 2.0 however. With some hopefully nifty FPS and multicrew action.
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You know, i don't have a problem with that. It is science fantasy. SC is less about realism (uh, gonna get roasted by the SC-is-so-realistic gang) and more about experiences and cool setpieces. Quantum fuel, so what? Fine by me.
They're not basing their propulsion upon the alcubierre drive or determine which stars you can scoop hydrogen from based on scientific principles. And they don't have to. Doesn't mean it's a less good game.
To be fair Elite switches to a different, slower FM once you extend the landing gear...
Mu77ley
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That's not a different flight model, it's just a different max speed and is primarily to add a little risk/reward element to scooping, as during alpha people just flew around with their cargo scoop deployed in the piracy/bounty hunting scenario.
Like Toumal, I am also a full-time software developer (18 years). Mostly focussing on database back-end, but I've looked at a wide variety of stuff over the years, and in my spare time at game engines.
Every environment, platform or engine has it's limitations - some of those limitations can be overcome by refactoring the base engine - but ultimately any engine is designed from the ground up to support a certain set of features, and work in such a way as to suit a particular type or genre of game, or perhaps a few types of game.
I think that if CIG eventually manage to pull off the whole Open universe -> FPS -> Space Combat seamless experience (and make the FPS, social interaction, space flight & combat good), it will be an amazing achievement. I think it is "technically" possible - however, it is an extremely difficult challenge to overcome.
Will they do it? I really hope so - but I have my doubts.
Hey I was actually a games developer at Codemasters once so that makes everything I say even more important and wise right?
No it's the foaming mouthed drivel of a mad man.
Seriously the only crazy thing about Star Citizen's development for me is the backwards asset first approach. Typically on the two games projects I was on there was a bunch of rough assets that were used during development with art teams working on the final assets much later on.
With Star Citizen they seem to really focus on pretty ships and eye candy without having much core mechanics in place. Common wisdom before was to leave yourself with lots of flexibility to work assets around the game as the project matures, but here those pretty ships are out there in hanger module and the project must work around them or they need to be redone again and again. This seemed to be an obvious risk to me very early on and I'm still not convinced it's working well for the project other than the obvious funding rush to purchase more assets to put in hanger modules following each reveal show they have.
That and Roberts' insistence that deadlines don't matter anymore because they have enough money to avoid the ticking clock. Not sure I can imagine that working out well, at some point they will seriously need to start pulling everything together in earnest and the ticking clock has really done well for civilization since the industrial revolution. Say what you will about Frontier releasing ED when they did, it actually required them to pull in a huge amount of over-time during the Christmas period. Games don't just fall into place, they need a serious push for everyone to feel motivated.
It doesn't mean the approach is wrong or ultimately going to fail though. It's just interesting to see everything being done in a manner that goes against the grain. Some things are working well for them, other things remain questionable.
No it's the foaming mouthed drivel of a mad man.
Seriously the only crazy thing about Star Citizen's development for me is the backwards asset first approach. Typically on the two games projects I was on there was a bunch of rough assets that were used during development with art teams working on the final assets much later on.
With Star Citizen they seem to really focus on pretty ships and eye candy without having much core mechanics in place. Common wisdom before was to leave yourself with lots of flexibility to work assets around the game as the project matures, but here those pretty ships are out there in hanger module and the project must work around them or they need to be redone again and again. This seemed to be an obvious risk to me very early on and I'm still not convinced it's working well for the project other than the obvious funding rush to purchase more assets to put in hanger modules following each reveal show they have.
That and Roberts' insistence that deadlines don't matter anymore because they have enough money to avoid the ticking clock. Not sure I can imagine that working out well, at some point they will seriously need to start pulling everything together in earnest and the ticking clock has really done well for civilization since the industrial revolution. Say what you will about Frontier releasing ED when they did, it actually required them to pull in a huge amount of over-time during the Christmas period. Games don't just fall into place, they need a serious push for everyone to feel motivated.
It doesn't mean the approach is wrong or ultimately going to fail though. It's just interesting to see everything being done in a manner that goes against the grain. Some things are working well for them, other things remain questionable.
This planet has already seen too many specialists that look at something from their own perspective, capability's and knowledge. The reality is that things are always evolving and that limits are not reached at all. The planet was once flat and you could be hanged for saying otherwise. Now get a mirror, look yourself in the eye and be honest.
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I have to agree. I am fed up with the "look at this cool thing" and "look at this new cool thing with shiny graphics" - I don't care, I just want the space combat to be fixed so I can enjoy AC.
This latest thing about the stick moving the reticle and the ship then following - ugh! really not my cup of tea, I'd much rather a smoother ship control, fixed weapons, and just slow things down slightly so fixed weapons can be viable - either that or have auto-tracking gimbals (with innacuracy). You can still have complete controller parity with the mouse - well it works well enough in games like FreeSpace2 & Evochron Mercenary.
Why the persistence with the manual gimbal mouse aim is beyond me - it's like some kind of pride or ego thing. I think it's a bad idea, and does not work well for controller parity.
No limits?
Here's one that crops up relatively often.
BTW, the plural of capability is capabilities (I know, that it should come to this, picking up on spelling) - Correct syntax is crucial in software development.
And any given game engine has it's limitations, no matter which perspective you choose to look at it from - it's a fact, not an opinion
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I forward the motion to assign ZeeWolf as the official Star Citizen Thread games development expert consultant!
Do I have a second?
No limits?
Here's one that crops up relatively often.
http://crackingthevault.typepad.com/.a/6a01156eaaf373970c01543694518d970c-pi
BTW, the plural of capability is capabilities (I know, that it should come to this, picking up on spelling) - Correct syntax is crucial in software development.
And any given game engine has it's limitations, no matter which perspective you choose to look at it from - it's a fact, not an opinion
You mean it's not just about believing!?
Shoot for the stars man! (just make sure you don't go off course and end up with your head buried in Uranus!)
When you find out that both of the games I worked on were for the PS2 just before it released (2000 era) and both titles got canned then I seriously have no better input that the next person.
Also, Ben Parry sometimes comments in this thread and he's actually worked on ED and Star Citizen which neither David Braben or Chris Roberts can lay claim to!
You mean it's not just about believing!?
Shoot for the stars man! (just make sure you don't go off course and end up with your head buried in Uranus!)
Hehehe, it would be nice if we could just "wish" our own perfect game into existence by believing hard enough. But that kind of tosh is for hippies and thickies, and I don't see a lamp with a genie in it around anywhere
As for "shooting for the stars" - well, I am currently working on a personal project to migrate all the single player missions and campaigns from X-Wing, Tie-Fighter, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance into the Freespace2 engine - this is intended to work with one of the upcoming Star Wars mods for FS2. I am not doing this by hand - I am developing a bit of software to automate (as far as possible) the migration. It's a reasonably complicated thing to attempt, but not impossible. There are over 200 missions that need migration.
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Yeah, I've seen some of Ben's posts - seems like a good guy.
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It could be worse. The other option offered by Roberts was for flightsticks to be good at manoeuvring and mouse to be good at aiming...
The money keeps on rolling in so they can do whatever they want with the development.
There's fans sighing in relief that new ship costs ONLY 425$
Opted out of that craziness last year - still spent a little more than I intended though - thanks alcohol and livestream!
Regarding engines, if you're buying in something 3rd party you'll have to accept limitations of some sort. Be it in asset management, visual fidelity, scale, etc. there'll be *something*. CIG chose CryEngine because it is visually stunning, and they've shown with what they've delivered so far what a space game on modern hardware can achieve visually. Unfortunately, the compromises they had to make were with broken netcode and limited map sizes. Upon learning of these limitations, they would have had two choices: 1) pick a new engine and hope it's better, and sink the costs of converting their assets and processes to the new engine; 2) modify the existing engine to do what they want. They went for the second option, and to be frank I don't think it was the wrong choice, especially as they were able to hire in specialist expertise to do the work for them. I may not like how their ships handle, but that isn't really an engine limitation as much as a design choice.
Frontier were in the perfect position to develop ED, in that they already had an engine that had been built with an eye to a potential Elite successor. While I'm sure they've had to do a *lot* of work under the hood, particularly around the audio and networking side of things, they already had resource onboard to do that work. I would say that COBRA's visuals aren't on par with CryEngine yet, and that's really where Frontier have had to compromise.
From the FPS vs. space flight perspective, CIG effectively get FPS for free (though I'm sure the zero-g stuff was an interesting challenge even then) and had to put a lot of work into space flight. For Frontier it's likely to be the other way around; while we know that COBRA has at some point had FPS features implemented (The Outsider) it's still likely to take a lot of effort to implement. It's certainly going to be interesting to see how the two games develop over time and particularly whether Frontier and CIG can keep their respective engines contemporary with improvements in PC hardware.
Frontier were in the perfect position to develop ED, in that they already had an engine that had been built with an eye to a potential Elite successor. While I'm sure they've had to do a *lot* of work under the hood, particularly around the audio and networking side of things, they already had resource onboard to do that work. I would say that COBRA's visuals aren't on par with CryEngine yet, and that's really where Frontier have had to compromise.
From the FPS vs. space flight perspective, CIG effectively get FPS for free (though I'm sure the zero-g stuff was an interesting challenge even then) and had to put a lot of work into space flight. For Frontier it's likely to be the other way around; while we know that COBRA has at some point had FPS features implemented (The Outsider) it's still likely to take a lot of effort to implement. It's certainly going to be interesting to see how the two games develop over time and particularly whether Frontier and CIG can keep their respective engines contemporary with improvements in PC hardware.
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