The Star Citizen Thread v 4

[milligna]

http://www.polygon.com/2016/5/30/11720714/what-to-expect-from-the-pc-gaming-show



Edit: Ninjad

Gary Oldman's old man voice is with them in spirit.

 

[Backer42]

The rep added that the studio will have something to show at Gamescom in August.

I fully expect them to skip that, too.

 

[Karhu Major]

I rest my case. If anyone, on this forum, can give solid, real guarantees for those features, I'll buy their stocks or whatever. Because that's what I bought in SC kickstarter.

Hey I'm not going to tell you what to believe or not believe in. If you don't, that's fine. If they manage to pull it off you can always buy the game in a few years. If they fail, you lost nothing. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me on your end.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/5/30/11720714/what-to-expect-from-the-pc-gaming-show



Edit: Ninjad

http://i.imgur.com/5Pfw8p0.jpg

Weak, man. I get that this thread over time devolved in a "Poke fun at those idiots at CIG, lol" thread, but this is below the belt. That guy is working hard on his dream, just like David Braben. He hardly takes time off, to the point were people are concerned with his well being (the image is of Chris Roberts celebrating his birthday).

 

[ianw]

I fully expect them to skip that, too.

Well August is holiday time for many people - you can't reasonably expect the Robertsessss to just cancel their vacation plans - that sort of thing does incur cancellation charges!

 

[Zyll Goliat]

It is/was a bug - please stop arguing you seem pretty funny.

A bug is not only, like mr BOT said, a mistake when writing code.
It's any behavior that deviates from the intention of the code/solution. A soon as they found the issue it's classified as a bug. Yes, it may have been as simple as toggling a stupid initialization parameter - that simply means that the bug will be/should be easy to fix.
Capish ?

Well maybe I am a comedian........So you calling it a bug something that does exactly what it suppose to do and it was programmed to do exactly that?¿
Definition of software bug one more time:
"A software bug is an error, flaw, failure or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its design, or in frameworks and operating systems used by such programs, and a few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code. A program that contains a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy or defective. Reports detailing bugs in a program are commonly known as bug reports, defect reports, fault reports, problem reports, trouble reports, change requests and so forth."

 

[PhanttoM]

I fully expect them to skip that, too.

I dunno, skipping two big events entirely might be a bit too much. But I can totally see them only releasing scripted cutscenes/trailers.

 

[dsmart]

A shame they didn't just avoid all this need for magic beans and German Skype sessions and just purpose built their own engine that could pull off more of what was claimed for this project. Why didn't he? His teams usually did before, that's how they were able to innovate and push PCs, right? By actually innovating. Those Origin kids were the best! What does a visionary need with a dated FPS engine? What does god need with a starship? I mean...

STAR CITIZEN MEMORY LANE

Dateline: 11.3.12

"One of the reasons I sort of left the business for a while was because I was feeling increasingly disconnected from my audience," he said. The breaking point came when the 12 to 18 months development cycles Roberts was used to stretched into a four-year slog with Freelancer. "Spending that many years disconnected from your audience, sort of working off by yourself, wasn’t creatively fun for me."

To help keep Star Citizen development from dragging on that long, Roberts will be starting with the pre-made CryEngine 3 for Star Citizen. That's a first for Roberts, who has always built new engines for his games from scratch in the past. "This time around, I look at it [and] say, 'I could put a team together, I could build a really good engine, but that’s going to take me two years.' During that time I could be using resources and time to improve an existing engine and also build the features I want specific to my game... If I’m making a movie, I’m not inventing a camera before I use it.”

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/...berts-discusses-upping-the-ante-on-pc-gaming/

It's definitely an advantage working with an incredibly dated by cutting edge game development standards engine modded by a revolving door of programmers going in and out of CIG and prrrrobably not providing much documentation as they are told to clear their desks and take their piles back to Pittsburgh. Something something local physics grids something something. The initial project scope changed pretty quickly as it was clear they had way more money and could've spent the two years CR claimed building their own engine especially for SC. Instead they bought furniture, contractors that produced useless work, and refactored themselves sick in the corner while binging and purging on fan-sent booze.

Instead -- four and a half years in, they have an engine that can't pull off half of what they aim for it. How many more years to mod it, then? Will they just quietly admit defeat on the networking front? They could get away with saying Squadron 42 would go out as planned but the PU would be delayed two years to be upgraded to a custom engine, CE5, UE4, or Lesnick 3.1 for Workgroups. Fans would defend it and there would be a game in the meantime. They might even be able to pull off some of the feats they claim! It's certainly not going to happen on a broken CryEngine mod tech demo.

STAR CITIZEN FOREVER

Remember... "The breaking point came when the 12 to 18 months development cycles Roberts was used to stretched into a four-year slog." Boy, wouldn't want that to happen again, huh? Things will tend to turn "stale," after more than 3 years, said a famous game developer who understands game development who totally is named Chris Roberts.

http://i.imgur.com/BKAjdAg.jpg

The disconnection continues...

^this. It was eloquent. And beautiful. And informative.

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Star Citizen is indeed an Alpha though. It's missing some very major game mechanics. That said, it's very strange... it's a polished Alpha. Typically in Alpha you're missing tons of assets because you don't have players actually playing it. Who cares about all that art and junk, it'll come sooner or later anyhow. But in Star Citizen's Alpha, you can run around fully-textured stations with all of their particle effects and all (alright most) of the collision detection is there, etc.

No, it's not. It's a tech demo no less than a CryEngine mod. It doesn't even have 10% of what was promised. So how exactly is it an Alpha?

It is pre-Alpha, at best.

FYI this is the software cycle that most of us devs have had to abide by since we started out.

 

[ghcannon]

Well maybe I am a comedian........So you calling it a bug something that does exactly what it suppose to do and it was programmed to do exactly that?¿
Definition of software bug one more time:
"A software bug is an error, flaw, failure or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its design, or in frameworks and operating systems used by such programs, and a few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code. A program that contains a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy or defective. Reports detailing bugs in a program are commonly known as bug reports, defect reports, fault reports, problem reports, trouble reports, change requests and so forth."

Please remember that we're talking in the context of SC. It was already said to you in a previous post but I think you dismissed it.
If you're working on Crysis, then it's a feature to you, but if you're working on or talking about SC - it's a bug. And we are talking about SC here in this thread. Right?

Thank you for the definition of what a bug is. Seeing as I'm fixing bugs right now, it didn't really help me like them any more ..

Edit: I don't get it - the definition I gave is 100% to what you posted, why post it really?

It helps clarifying what a 'feature' and a 'bug' is to aid the factual and constructive dialog in this thread.

 

[viceroy_blue]

It's ok, computer games are hobbies, no need to get "damn serious". I backed E in December 2014, because of the hype (I'm old but not that old to have played original Elite); and thankful for it. If Elite was a faliure, would I (or anyone) spend so much time to bash it? No. I don't think, at least.
But, oh, man, look at the promises. I've played EvE and clearly remember the sporadic "Star Citizen" posts from enhusiatic players in Eve. I saw C. Roberts name, remembered W.C: Prophecy , and said no. But they continued to act like it's the best thing since sliced bread.
I don't blame Mr. Roberts at all. He wanted 2 million dollars and got 114+ $. I'd also go crazy. But will this facade live up to hype? That's the question people are asking.

 

[dsmart]

My personal take on the seamless planetary landing video is that it was disingenuous. When the ship dropped out of Quantum (or whatever SC call it?) next to the small Orbital station, that was exactly the point in ED where you drop out of SuperCruise. the fact that the SC planet is tiny in comparison to most ED planets made it easier to camouflage that.

Also, that was the point when the great "Oh, we didn't mean EVERYTHING would be hand crafted, hahaha, how silly of you to think that! It would be crazy talk to state that all 100 systems would be handcrafted, we only meant the landing areas!" revisionism kicked in.

Prior to that, one of the big jousts between the two "rival camps" was: "400 Billion Planets!"... "Yeah but they all look the same due to PG, our 100 are all hand crafted high fidelity beauty!" And round and round it went.
Then a day before Horizons launches, all of a sudden we see CiG drop a revelation of a video, a fully PG planet with a long seen hand crafted landing area asset pritt-sticked onto it.

That was the point I lost the idea that SC could be an impressive alternate to what was already commercially launched.

Yes - that was precisely what they did. Even back when the pupil-to-planet video was released, Nyx was already floating around in a Vimeo video. And I wrote about it, as did others here.

 

[Tuub t Tute]

Please remember that we're talking in the context of SC. It was already said to you in a previous post but I think you dismissed it.
If you're working on Crysis, then it's a feature to you, but if you're working on or talking about SC - it's a bug. And we are talking about SC here in this thread. Right?

Thank you for the definition of what a bug is. Seeing as I'm fixing bugs right now, it didn't really help me like them any more ..

Edit: I don't get it - the definition I gave is 100% to what you posted, why post it really?

It helps clarifying what a 'feature' and a 'bug' is to aid the factual and constructive dialog in this thread.

I think what Zyll is alluding to, is that failing to RTFM does not make the software bugged. If they knew from the start it was water at Z -16 and found the switch to turn it off (drop it to -10000) had no effect, that would be a bug.

 

[Clawhammer]

No, it's not. It's a tech demo no less than a CryEngine mod. It doesn't even have 10% of what was promised. So how exactly is it an Alpha?

It is pre-Alpha, at best.

FYI this is the software cycle that most of us devs have had to abide by since we started out.

From your source:

Alpha
The alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin software testing (alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, used as the number 1). In this phase, developers generally test the software using white-box techniques. Additional validation is then performed using black-box or gray-box techniques, by another testing team. Moving to black-box testing inside the organization is known as alpha release.[1]

Alpha software can be unstable and could cause crashes or data loss. Alpha software may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version. In general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon in proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions. The alpha phase usually ends with a feature freeze, indicating that no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the software is said to be feature complete.

So we ARE Alpha. Because:

The alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin software testing

Pre-Alpha means:

Pre-alpha refers to all activities performed during the software project before testing

Currently players are testing. Sounds for me like alpha.

 

[ghcannon]

I think what Zyll is alluding to, is that failing to RTFM does not make the software bugged. If they knew from the start it was water at Z -16 and found the switch to turn it off (drop it to -10000) had no effect, that would be a bug.

And that is precisely what I'm saying is wrong.
It's a bug as soon as they finish implementation of what they believe is the physics code necessary to make it work. That's before they go in and investigate the parameter issue or whatever. If they changed it and it didn't have an effect - that would be just be a weird bug.
Is it really that hard to understand?

 

[dsmart]

This is to discuss star citizen. If you can't comprehend that. Please don't derail the thread. Nobody cares what you think about other websites or other games or some video or some other games developer.

When is 2.4 hitting the PU? Is it going to be tomorrow, is there going to be a ToS revision? I sound like the voice over guy from Soap!

I have thus far just blocked (I don't care to read any of their attack vector nonsense) all 4 of them who showed up after I did. So if my responses are out of synch, that's why. As long as you guys keep reporting them, soon enough the thread will be clean again.

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That's some accusation right there.

If you guys continue to quote their rules breaking nonsense, they will keep doing it. Just report it.

 

[milligna]

If they are skipping E3, there will be no S42 release this year. I wonder when he'll get around to informing the fanbase... December?

 

[Tuub t Tute]

And that is precisely what I'm saying is wrong.
It's a bug as soon as they finish implementation of what they believe is the physics code necessary to make it work. That's before they go in and investigate the parameter issue or whatever. If they changed it and it didn't have an effect - that would be just be a weird bug.
Is it really that hard to understand?

Yes it is hard to understand. It is like that episode of Top Gear when Clarkson couldn't find the fuel filler cap release on the Lambo... Just because he didn't know where to find it, didn't make it wrong or broken.

What I am getting from you is that because CE did something entirely predictable, that they didn't appreciate, it is allowed to be called a bug in CE?
If what you mean is "because CE did something entirely predictable and borked their ship flight characteristics, CiG's code was bugged" I can see where you are coming from.

 

[Stigbob]

Stopped reading there as it proves that you do not really know what you are talking about. Yes, I know how to use flight assist off. No, it does not increase the turn rate. What it does is that your ships continues to travel into the same direction with its current velocity, unless you start manually accelerating into another direction.

While flight assist off mode is certainly helpful it does NOT increase the turn rate.

Sorry, your statements are ludicrous. I doubt that you even play Elite Dangerous or have flown anything bigger then a Viper lll.

It does affect turn rate, which is why I do it.

Gamma backer, A-rated FDL, DBE for exploration, DBS mission runner and a (new) Viper 3 for enhanced booster fun. The FDL is pretty much useless in a fast dogfight unless you know what you are doing with flight assist, and I only make money from hunt/assassination missions and bounties no cargo bays at all.

Having played ED since gamma I can confirm the flight model is excellent and has been excellent since autumn 2014.

Star citizen have a lot of catching up to do, which I think is beyond them given their past performance of broken promises, broken game mechanics, missed dates, obsession with mo-cap and misleading advertising.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Clawhammer - I don't mean to pick you out in particular, this is a generic You and not You personally, but have you ever worked on a real product for release?

It could be paint, software, dangleberry combs, anything.

 

[Zyll Goliat]

Please remember that we're talking in the context of SC. It was already said to you in a previous post but I think you dismissed it.
If you're working on Crysis, then it's a feature to you, but if you're working on or talking about SC - it's a bug. And we are talking about SC here in this thread. Right?

Thank you for the definition of what a bug is. Seeing as I'm fixing bugs right now, it didn't really help me like them any more ..

Edit: I don't get it - the definition I gave is 100% to what you posted, why post it really?

It helps clarifying what a 'feature' and a 'bug' is to aid the factual and constructive dialog in this thread.

How difficult is for you to admit that this was such an obvious CIG mistake,and it was very sad one or funny I guess really depend how are you look at it...The worst thing it's not the actual knowledge about the CE and what this guys didn't know back then...the problem is that they need 3 DAYS&John Pritchett to figure this out....We are in 2016(back then maybe 2013) age where we can all communicate with each other instantly(like me&you) all over the world + GOOGLE the things... and NO ONE can figure this simple and obvious task for 72h......you see that's the problem....

 

[ghcannon]

Yes it is hard to understand. It is like that episode of Top Gear when Clarkson couldn't find the fuel filler cap release on the Lambo... Just because he didn't know where to find it, didn't make it wrong or broken.

What I am getting from you is that because CE did something entirely predictable, that they didn't appreciate, it is allowed to be called a bug in CE?
If what you mean is "because CE did something entirely predictable and borked their ship flight characteristics, CiG's code was bugged" I can see where you are coming from.

Dear god what are you even talking about ...
Forget it man ..