The Star Citizen Thread v5

[MTBFritz]

Isn't that one of the haters quibbles?

Not only the "haters" but pretty much everybody who has a realistic memory of what CR promised, said and how he presented himself.

He said the BASE game was fully funded. Not the complete game.
He has also stated that the commercial release would NOT ship with all the stretch goals.
And that money raised would go into expanding the game, its vision and making it richer and more detailed.

He never really made a distinction or underlined BASE game. It was "the game" at the same time "BDSSGE" and then there were the stretch goals. And he promoted quite of few of those as well. I mean so many ships have been stretch goals but strangely enough a lot of man hours and effort goes into these particular STRETCH goals including refining, refactoring, redesigning yet the BASE game is still missing. So the BASE game would mean a working PU with all features locked down. Looks like we are at least another year off that mark.

Yes he stated that the comercial release wont include all the stretch goals. I remember that quite clearly.

Money raised after commercial release was supposed to go into a 10year plan (I wonder if he said that because Elite dev Braben mentioned the exact same number). Thats a given tho not sure why you mention that. He still missing a base game.

What I see is that he is telling the truth here....he has the money for the baseline game

Does he? How do you know that? As far as I know CiG never released financial information so I wonder where you take the knowledge from.

Also...would you care to list what the BASELINE game includeds? Just so we are all on the same page here. Then we can tick off whats still missing to reach the "baseline" game. Another thing.....is "baseline game" the same as "base game"?

At no point has he come out and said the game is fully funded

At 65million dollars reached he quoted that the game was fully funded. This obviously doesnt include the stretch goals but at least the "game" which is nowhere in sight 80million dollars later.

You can quibble over what exactly he means by "base game" but that is about all.

"Base game" never was an issue to quibble about until some white knights brought it up in order to regulate or tone down expectations. We picked it up because CR and his crowd suddenly started using the term. Its not "us" quibbling about base game. So far we STILL dont know what base game means or whats supposed to be in it. Another distraction?

Funny to see how many stretch goals are/look like already in production when so many core features of the base game are yet to be seen...

Funny how the simple truth doesnt need lots of works but hits the mark with 1 line

Thanks @Britney for digging out the quote for tenaka. That info was publicly available to everybody yet somone didnt want to put in the effort but went with selective memories......hmmm.

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

SA forum user GazChap raises a very good point regarding the rate of development currently being experienced by CIG, and how it compares with one of the most well known computer game failures... Daikatana by Ion Storm.

Jesus. Reading through this, and there are a metric ton of parallels between Ion Storm and CIG.

This quote is talking about what happened when the team at Ion walked out thanks to all of the broken promises being made by the bosses, the lack of direction, the constant need to have to do everything again, and suddenly being told that you needed to get a multiplayer demo going in time for a show when that show is only a few months away and there's barely a game, let alone a multiplayer game...

quote:

The marketing group at Eidos quickly sprung into action to spin the story in a positive light. Romero posted in his online plan file available to online gamers that the team left "at an opportune time. Most of the levels are in a final state [and] much of the coding has been completed."


What was it CIG said about most of the missions for Squidman 42 being done? And then all the "code complete" nonsense in the "release schedule" for SC.

quote:

After regrouping over Christmas, Ion Storm proudly announced on January 5, 1999, that the switch to the Quake 2 engine was complete. The engine switch was supposed to take a few weeks but ended up taking close to a year.


'nuff said.

(Quotations taken from this link... http://web.archive.org/web/20050105095704/http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-daikatana/ )

 

[Red Anders]

That's not really how stretch goals work though. If you buy a car for £10,000 and the garage says "for £11,000 you can have a car with a really nice stereo", you are allowed to be annoyed if you give them £11,000 and get a car with no stereo "but if we sell a few other cars we'll come and fit one later".

People have already paid for the stretch goals. He can't go and spend that money on space doors and say "Well, we'll try to do that later if we have the money" because that really is a steaming pile of organic fertilliser (bordering on fraud).

Exactly. That's what a stretch goal is, it's not an aspirational target that appeals as a concept that you might possibly want to think about, maybe, at some point, if you get even more money. You are saying if we raise X amount over and above the target we will also add Y. The stretch goal is supposed to be what it costs to deliver it, not to conceptualise it as something that might get added later depending on the phases of the moon.

The only thing he's stretching right now is credibility.

SA forum user GazChap raises a very good point regarding the rate of development currently being experienced by CIG, and how it compares with one of the most well known computer game failures... Daikatana by Ion Storm.



(Quotations taken from this link... http://web.archive.org/web/20050105095704/http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-daikatana/ )

It is actually terrifyingly similar to what happened at Ion Storm. It also has the same root problem - a megalomaniac in charge who completely lost touch with reality.

 

[Neo-ST]

Generally speaking: stop giving them money and enjoy as the drama unfolds

 

[Agony_Aunt]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/5pnj2k/pcgames_around_half_of_all_stretch_goals_are/

Translation:

"From 122 Stretchgoals 32 are completed and another 31 are actively being worked on, 10 were modified or are part of other Stretch goals. Work on 48 Stretch goals has not started yet or there is no information on their status.

Suppose that's good news. Bigger issue though is how much of the core game is completed?

 

[DLewth]

There is one difference between SC and Daikatana, of course:
One of them is a game.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/242980/

 

[Skizomeuh]

"Completed" is overexagerated though, but in phase with "flick of a switch" that core features might only need to get done, I suppose.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Reading SC subreddit I feel pitty - so much theorycrafting how far game exactly is in development. And this is "open development". Sigh...

 

[frostypaw]

I dont think that was a serious thought or plan. Chris Roberts merely mentioned that the level of detail in his game will be so high that this particular situation will be possible. He didnt state that survival and livingoff the land is part of his integrated gameplay loops but rather "emergent gameplay" due to the high fidelity. This example has simply been blown out of the water until you folks now wonder if this is yet another stretch goal.

I dont like the man and have a rather extreme opinion about SC but that was putting words in his mouth.

You and I know that with our perspective of having looked at this for a while but to someone where that's the first they hear of the game he describes it just so.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I dont think that was a serious thought or plan. Chris Roberts merely mentioned that the level of detail in his game will be so high that this particular situation will be possible. He didnt state that survival and livingoff the land is part of his integrated gameplay loops but rather "emergent gameplay" due to the high fidelity. This example has simply been blown out of the water until you folks now wonder if this is yet another stretch goal.

I dont like the man and have a rather extreme opinion about SC but that was putting words in his mouth.



This keeps coming up in slightly different wordings. Yet the statement seems to be "shut up and wait patiently until it comes out, stop your hating and give the man a chance" do I translate that about right? Do you care to remember how many second chances Chris Roberts got so far? How many more are you willing to provide even tho the past history shows that there are serious problems regarding competence and reliability?

Btw....what is this "nightly build"?

Anyway....this forum in particular discusses the CURRENT status of the game. Most of the posters here deal in facts and present conditions, not about dreams and rolling in fantasies. As an example.....seamless transition from pupil to space is a feature that many pro-SC backers consider "implemented" and "done". Its ticked off as yet another major breakthrough that no other game has managed and forget that CiG also didnt manage to do it yet. Because the only physical proof we have about seamless transition is the cinebox presentation which was basically a movie with ingame graphics. So far no other "demonstration" has been provided or seen and this feature sure as hell is not in the game at the moment.

edit: correction the homestead demo also features seamless transition BUT relying on after-show analyzes its doubtfull that we actually saw a real seamless transition and there has been suspicions that the whole approach was actually a pre-recorded movie and the switches between actual gameplay and movie were carefully hidden. Technical analyzis certainly shows a great deal of little things that support this claim. Even if we believe Chris Roberts that the shown seamless transition has been a completed feature which was simply taken and used for this demo then theres still the fact that we havent seen any other demonstrations about it nor have access to it in the PU (thats what it was created for). Such a major break-through mechanic never seen before should be shown off at every corner yet I dont think anybody else has shown this feature LIVE at any other point....

Seamless Transitions = hot air and promises...thats (almost) a fact.

And this actually counts for many many features. Future announcements or theorycrafting made by CR himself taken as fact and ingame. Why people suddenly are unable to differentiate between "have" and "have-not" is beyond me.

Sometimes the discussion gets a little overboard but many people here mostly rib SC for its broken promises and theres generally a rather bleak view on the current course of the project. Rightly so IMO. Sitting back and waiting till it releases is a valid course for pretty much everything. BUT Star Citizen still tries to make as much money as possible so if they continue to rake in millions per month then I think open discussion should be happening otherwise we would be true sheep grazing the "grass" having glassed-over eyes and living the dream. A company usually defends itself by delivering results and satisfy expectations. The range of expectations is incredibly large so theres a lot of people happy with the current status while even more people expect far more. Sadly the "result" part is severely lacking (missing). Thats how the public eye perceives an avilable product. Yet we have people going up in arms (not you) attacking nay-sayers, spouting lies and generally behaving very agresssively to a simple "I dont like it". I wonder why that is.....



No doubt about it thats why its rather worrying that we STILL didnt have seen a single snippet of SQ42 even tho according to CR they ve been continously working on it and "all hands" have been on SQ42 for the past 6 months......yet no results. You tell me what that means. SC defenders point to patch notes and mention all these lil steps which are necessary for SQ42. Havent SQ42 been ready 4 months ago? Theres a BIG discrepancy between "ready" and "I need to implement the basics first and I m going to start now". Its as if Chris Roberts suddenly realized people actually EXPECT the stuff he mouthed off in the past and in order to prevent a burning crash he now actually has to deliver!!!! So he starts NOW even tho these things were advertsied as "done" months ago.

Is that yet "another" second chance? Should we look past the lies and obvious deceptions and take his word for it because a proven liar is honest until proven a liar yet again?



Thats funny

The cinematics are basically not part of the game. They were done with different tools (Cinebox not cryengine), not needing ANY of the features and mechanics we discuss and the animation is human-hand painting. Basically every cinebox promotion video we ve seen in the past (that includes all the ship advertisements) is smoke and mirror and simply an illusion. The mistake so many people do is to actually assume that the cinebox MOVIES are ingame footage and CR certainly stated just that in the past. The effort required to produce a cinebox movie is miniscule compared to actually MAKING the stuff it shows ingame. Not trying to belittle the graphgic designers but thats a fact as well.



I m not saying that might not happen or is impossible but I dare to say due to their past history and reluctance to show even the smallest thing about it....the probability that its like you think it is is really really REALLY low.



Indeed and until then we dont see anything as usual.

This is a personal opinion so depending who you ask SQ42 takes priority over the PU and vice versa. SQ 42 was a STRETCH GOAL tho yet currently all work focuses on the single player campaign neglecting the PU. Of course this leads to almost NO results whatsoever and defending posts point to basic mechanic which need to be fixed down and finished before something can be seen. Yet SQ42 was considered and promised as "soon" and a "done deal" and NOW they start to work on critical features SQ42 requires? Thats a bit fishy. Of course you can just throw out another "second chance" because THIS TIME it ll be different

What does "emergent content due to high fidelity but without gameplay loops" mean? To "live off the lands" means there is something to do beyond looking at very big textures and counting poly count.

'Fidelity' is really the worst meaningless buzzword in the entire project.

 

[GaryII]

I don't think all of them where made up - they really went out and hired PG guys to get planets and it was a stretch goal - but I agree quite number of them are well...questionable.

By that I mean, that one extra million suddenly allows to hire all PG guys...
Sure there are less expensive goals like this one:

$58,000,000 READ CHAIRMAN'S LETTER
10,000 UEC – In honor of the goal, we’re giving 10,000 UEC to every backer that you can use for upgrades and flair in the Voyager Direct Store. I’d advise you hold on to the creds: we’re going to have some cool configurable weapons and other upgrades for Arena Commander in the near future! 10,000 UEC may not seem like a lot, but at this stage in the game it actually means we’re giving our backers several million dollars to outfit their ships!

Basically give use real money in exchange for fake one...

Anyway now we see that even after 141m they can not deliver completed game..

 

[Winterwalker]

The "open" part simply means everything is open to speculation...

Not forgetting 'open' ended .. delivery date. (arf)

 

[Viajero]

What he has not said - in anything I have found - is that he has the money to do all the stretch goals.

I presume you must be confused about what stretch goals are. Either that or I am not sure what you are trying to say. When you declare a stretch goal at a specific amount of money, and you get that money, one would expect that that additional stretch goal scope/content is covered and not subject to potential future revenues.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals

He got all the money needed for the stretch goals when those got duly funded at the 65 USD million mark. Any money in addition to those 65 million is basically extra above what is required for both the "base" game (as in kickstarter scope) and all the additional scope (any stretch goals covered up to 65 million).

Now with 140+, more than double the original required figure of 65, he should have had more than enough to cover the SC game, and not need any future revenues (SQ42 or otherwise) to fund it.

 

[Skizomeuh]

Let's also remember that 1 crowdfunded dollar is worth 4 evil publishers' ones.

 

[NeilF]

Let's also remember that 1 crowdfunded dollar is worth 4 evil publishers' ones.

...and it's 100x less accountable for how it's spent and who it pays (& how much)...

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

TheAgent over on SA, has posted this excellent piece explaining the processes and work required to get motion captured performances into a state that is suitable for use.... and why it's almost inevitable that you'll NEVER see Squadron 42 see the light of day because of the amount of re-shoots, re-writes and issues that came about when the project is "led" by a "visionary" director with not one ounce of knowledge about the technology they are using, nor any understanding about just how time intensive modifying said mo-capped performances into any sort of interactivity needed for a computer game....

Look, just read the following...

Posted by TheAgent on SA:

Spoiler

It's not incompatible.

Mocapping a few animations that end up blending into other animations is all fine and good, because its usually a brief second or two of animation that your anim team has to hand scrub anyway.

Mocapping an entire performance gets tricky. If you're not 100% confident of the take, you can have a lot of problems. You get weird wandering heads, eye darting, jiggling jowls, hands and arms and legs clipping through clothes and backgrounds and other characters and a whole lotta other weird you gotta clean up by hand. These happen no matter how good your take is anyway, but the problems get more severe the less you understand about the technology and the more you utilize it. What might look great on the screen can be very, very hard to translate into a great performance.

What you end up doing, usually, is doing small point captures of various scenes. What no one has done because its goddamn stupid, is record 20+ hours of mocapped data. Especially if you don't have the model dimensions down, the scenery already fleshed out. Every rewrite or change is another huge amount of time, money and energy wasted.

So in walks Chris Roberts with his directorial dreams, not understanding the following:

for every second of footage you shoot in the mocap rigs, it can take up to a ten minutes of dev time per character to fix (sometimes more)
some scenes were shot with many, many characters (up to six to eight)
multiple clothing changes or scene changes can increase this time
the more characters interacting together in a scene, the more time it takes per character to animate correctly

You're talking with that 20+ hours of mocap footage alone, something like 12,000 hours of manpower at the very minimum. But wait, this only really works if these are all entirely cutscene type deals with 0 player interaction. Because then you need programmers to script the triggers for the 20+ hours of conversation you have going on.

To get that into a fully working state for 20+ hours of mocap, I'd say that's three to five years of work across art and programming teams, after the principle mocap shoot was completed. It's about fifteen times longer than your average cartoon 3d animated film AND you're trying to hit the highest fidelity ever seen in this media. That means extra work on hair, clothing, textures, shaders, everything for every single character and every single costume has to be absolutely perfect in every. single. . scene.

This also means any script changes or rewrites or other problems after the principle shooting has to be reshot, completely redone by the art team and then rejiggered by the programming team.

This also means that the game you're building to showcase this amazing twenty hour long opus needs to be built as well. And you're not just building a single player game, but a heavily multiplayer driven MMO style FPS action game too, with hundreds of not entirely fleshed out mechanics. And if you up and realize ", we can't get this <whatever feature> to work right, but we have an hour+ of footage important to the game that needs that feature," you need to go back and edit and reshoot and have your artists and programmers redo a bunch of work again and again and again and again and again and again

[Edit] Placed the comment behind spoiler tag because it was pretty lengthy

 

[MTBFritz]

What does "emergent content due to high fidelity but without gameplay loops" mean? To "live off the lands" means there is something to do beyond looking at very big textures and counting poly count.

'Fidelity' is really the worst meaningless buzzword in the entire project.

It sure can get complex very fast doesnt it? I d assume it would be in everybodies interest to stay as simple as possible to avoid confusion but as "NO GAME - PAST 2014 - WHERE IS??? /grunt" is not sufficiant anymore we have to use more and more acronyms for saying the same ^^

Okay. Survival mechanics were never part of the game nor the stretch goals. I think CR mentioned this only once so far. That means that there is neither a roadmap for survival mechanics nor a design paper in order to have an idea how to implement it. So there are no official gameplay loops for survival mechanics (a la Rust). Fidelity really is simply a fluff word for "realism" and CR claims his game is so ultra-realistic that even the bloodstream of a character is simulated (not yet but the horde tells you it will be so after jesus patch or when commercial release happens). This leads to all kinds of consequences. Lacking hygine can lead to illness, untreated wounds can become serious issues. All of these things are not part of a designed gameplay feature but due to realism /fidelity simply appear as a "side effect". That would mean that due to complete simulation of a character down to the cell level said character will require nourishment to stay healthy. Also a side effect and not intended gameplay loop due to fidelity. If a character crashes on a planet and cant get off according to CR the simulation will lead to demand in food and treatment of wounds else the character will perish => living off the land etc. Emergent gameplay would be un-intended gameplay which is possible due to the mechanic and features the game provides.

....why the player simply doesnt RESET and teleport back into his crib I dont know but maybe the whole game will be refactored in order to line up with that "vision".

- - - Updated - - -

TheAgent over on SA, has posted this excellent piece explaining the processes and work required to get motion captured performances into a state that is suitable for use.... and why it's almost inevitable that you'll NEVER see Squadron 42 see the light of day because of the amount of re-shoots, re-writes and issues that came about when the project is "led" by a "visionary" director with not one ounce of knowledge about the technology they are using, nor any understanding about just how time intensive modifying said mo-capped performances into any sort of interactivity needed for a computer game....

Look, just read the following...

Posted by TheAgent on SA:


[Edit] Placed the comment behind spoiler tag because it was pretty lengthy

Holy Cow.....I had no idea mo-capping is so complex. If this is true (and I ll assume it is, I certainly wont read into mocapping to build up personal expertise) and it sure sounds valid then its going to be a glorious year 2017 with yet again no snippet of SQ42 footage. I ll follow this with interest

 

[Mu77ley]

It sure can get complex very fast doesnt it? I d assume it would be in everybodies interest to stay as simple as possible to avoid confusion but as "NO GAME - PAST 2014 - WHERE IS??? /grunt" is not sufficiant anymore we have to use more and more acronyms for saying the same ^^

Okay. Survival mechanics were never part of the game nor the stretch goals. I think CR mentioned this only once so far. That means that there is neither a roadmap for survival mechanics nor a design paper in order to have an idea how to implement it. So there are no official gameplay loops for survival mechanics (a la Rust). Fidelity really is simply a fluff word for "realism" and CR claims his game is so ultra-realistic that even the bloodstream of a character is simulated (not yet but the horde tells you it will be so after jesus patch or when commercial release happens). This leads to all kinds of consequences. Lacking hygine can lead to illness, untreated wounds can become serious issues. All of these things are not part of a designed gameplay feature but due to realism /fidelity simply appear as a "side effect". That would mean that due to complete simulation of a character down to the cell level said character will require nourishment to stay healthy. Also a side effect and not intended gameplay loop due to fidelity. If a character crashes on a planet and cant get off according to CR the simulation will lead to demand in food and treatment of wounds else the character will perish => living off the land etc. Emergent gameplay would be un-intended gameplay which is possible due to the mechanic and features the game provides.

....why the player simply doesnt RESET and teleport back into his crib I dont know but maybe the whole game will be refactored in order to line up with that "vision".

- - - Updated - - -



Holy Cow.....I had no idea mo-capping is so complex. If this is true (and I ll assume it is, I certainly wont read into mocapping to build up personal expertise) and it sure sounds valid then its going to be a glorious year 2017 with yet again no snippet of SQ42 footage. I ll follow this with interest

There's some great behind the scenes footage of the mocapping used in Last of Us (an insanely good game BTW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH5MgEbBOps&feature=youtu.be&t=1423

Obviously includes spoilers, so don't watch if you haven't played the game yet

 

[Ian Skippy]

It sure can get complex very fast doesnt it? I d assume it would be in everybodies interest to stay as simple as possible to avoid confusion but as "NO GAME - PAST 2014 - WHERE IS??? /grunt" is not sufficiant anymore we have to use more and more acronyms for saying the same ^^

Okay. Survival mechanics were never part of the game nor the stretch goals. I think CR mentioned this only once so far. That means that there is neither a roadmap for survival mechanics nor a design paper in order to have an idea how to implement it. So there are no official gameplay loops for survival mechanics (a la Rust). Fidelity really is simply a fluff word for "realism" and CR claims his game is so ultra-realistic that even the bloodstream of a character is simulated (not yet but the horde tells you it will be so after jesus patch or when commercial release happens). This leads to all kinds of consequences. Lacking hygine can lead to illness, untreated wounds can become serious issues. All of these things are not part of a designed gameplay feature but due to realism /fidelity simply appear as a "side effect". That would mean that due to complete simulation of a character down to the cell level said character will require nourishment to stay healthy. Also a side effect and not intended gameplay loop due to fidelity. If a character crashes on a planet and cant get off according to CR the simulation will lead to demand in food and treatment of wounds else the character will perish => living off the land etc. Emergent gameplay would be un-intended gameplay which is possible due to the mechanic and features the game provides.

....why the player simply doesnt RESET and teleport back into his crib I dont know but maybe the whole game will be refactored in order to line up with that "vision".

- - - Updated - - -



Holy Cow.....I had no idea mo-capping is so complex. If this is true (and I ll assume it is, I certainly wont read into mocapping to build up personal expertise) and it sure sounds valid then its going to be a glorious year 2017 with yet again no snippet of SQ42 footage. I ll follow this with interest

Right. So there is no roadmap for survival, nor is there a gameplay loop. But there will supposedly be hygine , illness, hunger etc.

That's just mincing words. Either you put that stuff in, and there is a gameplay loop, or you don't. Hygiene monitoring doesn't just code itself, nor is it coded just for lack of other things to do. Currently there is no roadmap for any of this, so there will be no survival stuff, emergent content, realism, fidelity or whatever. They are just empty slogans.

 

[Skizomeuh]

TheAgent over on SA, has posted this excellent piece explaining the processes and work required to get motion captured performances into a state that is suitable for use.... and why it's almost inevitable that you'll NEVER see Squadron 42 see the light of day because of the amount of re-shoots, re-writes and issues that came about when the project is "led" by a "visionary" director with not one ounce of knowledge about the technology they are using, nor any understanding about just how time intensive modifying said mo-capped performances into any sort of interactivity needed for a computer game....

Look, just read the following...

Posted by TheAgent on SA:


[Edit] Placed the comment behind spoiler tag because it was pretty lengthy

Given that so little have been shown of SQ42, the rumored script refactorings and the admitted mocap reshoots, my personal guesswork would add "Hollywood big name(s) fled out of the project, and CIG lost usage rights on said big name(s) image, voice and capture performance" to Biggest Damn Crowdfunded Car Crash Ever recipe.