....been done before
The Star Citizen Thread v8
- Thread starter Yaffle
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....been done before
That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Money for nothin' and Ships for free!!!
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Call me ignorant but I have trouble understanding the term. I think I understand the graph display but why is it called "trap"?
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
It just means that you can receive a unusually high number of downvotes, perhaps unfairly, like a trap.
Meanwhile, all those high poly counts and fidelity just went down the drain...
Just like SC, they got carried away with the visuals and forgot to add any gameplay. Anyway, you can't compare them because space legs and uniqueness and reasons.
SC has 4 moons, with plans for 100 systems on launch and a degree of handcrafting that will take 2 years to complete and an end goal of 150 worlds and about 600 worlds.
SCs scale is very modest and is the sort of update that should be doable in an afternoon precisely because it is going to have rely on huge amounts of procedural generation to create its systems.
The idea that the scale and scope of SC is somehow new, exciting, unique is little more than PR talk.
SC may very well end up with more handcrafting than ED.....but in reality, the likelihood is that there will be LESS handcrafting of systems but what there is will be much more concentrated on fewer systems and worlds.
Perhaps our Space Ship Shaped USB drives will include a hardware bit-blitter for advanced background screen effects - it needs a cool never-done-before-name so how about COPPER - and a built in preemptive garbage collection unit that is so advanced, it doesn't actually install the game.
I believe he was rebutting your insinuation of SCs scale
ED is a complete game, and one that that has undergone a full development cycle of the base game, with several DLCs and XPacs available.
SC has no complete game loops, no complete gameplay, no complete mechanics, and its content is incomplete at 4 moons out of 600 worlds.
Further....talking about scope....ED already has most of what SC plans (in a complete game) and plans to add the rest as well as improve upon what is already there.
SC is hardly the "most complete" space game in development.
Because, to some, criticising a heavily flawed development process that is glacially slow and highly wasteful is easier to ignore if the critic is described as hating rather than criticising.
Many people on this forum have experience with software and game development. We know, for a fact and sometimes from first hand experience, that many of the excuses pushed by CIG and backers are...well...wrong.
To be blunt, it is - in a way - fascinating to see what SC backers will let CIG get away with in the name of developing a product that shows no signs of releasing its potential.
Its going to take years of work to get their engine reworked and functional. Once the engine is working, they are then going to have to revamp all the actual game code so it can work with the engine. But only after they sit down and do the actual design work that should have been done years ago. Once those systems are in place, they'll then need to take several years just to add the content.
Sure...they could try to do everything at once but that is akin to performing heart surgery on a beating heart. Not to mention the sheer wastage of time and money involved.
Personally, I think a process which effectively throws away $5 out of every $6 spent is deserving of criticism.
Or to put it another way...if CIG spent $8 million and 18 months creating 3.1, it'd be great. Unfortunately, it's been 70 months....not 18....and $150 million instead of $8 million.
Whatever money is being raised is not going into game development. Or rather, it is but it isn't doing anything
What other game in development has spent so much and taken so long using so many employees to create so little?
A company pays a billion to build a bridge. Five years later, they come back and find the bridge isn't built, the materials haven't been purchased, the company has too many painters and only a handful of engineers capable of building it, they've spent hundreds of millions buying up land that was essentially free and now they are askibg for more money because they've designed the Western half and just require a little bit more money to actually build it.....so long as you don't need the road or railtrack which will need to be designed and added later.
And a blockchain. Because every application must have a blockchain.
For SC to get an engine written and functionally complete? To perform basic, fundamental design work? To create the basic gameplay, base mechanics and mission loops? To create a procedural generation system capable of creating 150 systems overnight?
With the proviso that each game jas its own unique needs and challenges...probably less than $15 million and 3 years at most. Polishing it, updating the graphics, testing, arranging for server and networking infrastructure and marketing...perhaps another 2 years to get it to a Gold status.
While there might be challenges in SCs design, CIG should have SOMETHING resembling an actual game now. Rather, they should have had something 2 or 3 years back.
Absolutely nothing of what SC promises is radically different or new. The most technically challenging aspect is 1000 player instances...but as CIG appears to define instances as entire solar systems where those 1000 players may not even see each other (as opposed to the 1000 player battle instances many backers seem to expect), this could probably be met.
What is telling about CIG is what they have not done, what they do not have.
They have not finalised basic design work
They do not have a working finalised engine
The server and network code is not in place
There are (at best) limited game mechanics, gameplay and mission loops
It will take them years to develop and design all the ships and assets they have sold/promised already and they keep selling more.
And more
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No game of thus sort is "seamless", and SC is no exception. The only issue is how well it hides the seams, not whether they exist.
Seriously?
Oh I can easily believe that!
At one point during testing someone managed to plant their ship (not sure which one exactly - bigger than my Freelancer) face first into the ring of Olisar, and people were flying other ships right through it's geometry, or jumping off the station in FPS, flying to the ring, and glitching not only through the boundary of the stuck ship, but into the others flying though it
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
Oh I can easily believe that!
At one point during testing someone managed to plant their ship (not sure which one exactly - bigger than my Freelancer) face first into the ring of Olisar, and people were flying other ships right through it's geometry, or jumping off the station in FPS, flying to the ring, and glitching not only through the boundary of the stuck ship, but into the others flying though it
Truthfully the most complete game in development.
![[VR] Merkir](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/141/141091.jpg?1553527154){kind=avatar}
Oh I can easily believe that!
At one point during testing someone managed to plant their ship (not sure which one exactly - bigger than my Freelancer) face first into the ring of Olisar, and people were flying other ships right through it's geometry, or jumping off the station in FPS, flying to the ring, and glitching not only through the boundary of the stuck ship, but into the others flying though it
My first interaction with my ship during the recent free fly weekend was me walking straight up to it and my head clipping through the hull so that I could see the innards. I thought the game engine might have already had collision detection built-in, but perhaps CIG have tampered with it?
There is a reason some people call it the Frankenengine. CIG took a working game engine that didn't do what they needed it to do. Crytek did a great job of making a demo that got Chris all excited. So excited Chris showed that off to backers as though he personally had coded it and it was all part of a working game in development.
CIG then spent the following years trying to make it do what they wanted turning into "StarEngine" and then switched to Lumberyard (in just 2 days!) and presumably porting over all their modifications as well.
How much they broke while trying to make the engine do what they wanted is quite impressive.
The sense of "complete" that was being used was in the context of what the game includes. ie space flight, FPS and multiple players in the same ship. Rather than complete in terms as to what has been produced.
VR is a game changer and for a space game VR should be a pre-requisite. Not to have VR properly working after all these years is frankly shocking.
Back in 2012 Star Citizen was the visionary leader of the genre, now, despite the fact that its taken 180M, it is reduced to a follower. Worse there is no evidence they can ever get the frame rates and networking to a point that would enable them to deliver their vision, let alone introduce VR. There is no sign either that they have built the tools which will allow them to build one system effectively let alone the 100 promised.
Instead what we have is the classic "I have a dream" and that dream is always over the next hill and the marker on the hill is the next patch. Trouble is when you reach what you think is the top of the hill you realise it's not and you need to keep on climbing.
VR is a game changer and for a space game VR should be a pre-requisite. Not to have VR properly working after all these years is frankly shocking.
Back in 2012 Star Citizen was the visionary leader of the genre, now, despite the fact that its taken 180M, it is reduced to a follower. Worse there is no evidence they can ever get the frame rates and networking to a point that would enable them to deliver their vision, let alone introduce VR. There is no sign either that they have built the tools which will allow them to build one system effectively let alone the 100 promised.
Instead what we have is the classic "I have a dream" and that dream is always over the next hill and the marker on the hill is the next patch. Trouble is when you reach what you think is the top of the hill you realise it's not and you need to keep on climbing.
SC will never have VR IMO. It would be far too much work to retro-fit, after the event. VR should have been considered during the entire design process. Even just looking at the font sizes on the dashboards, it would require throwing out the old and starting again. Even though CIG has a track record of doing just that, I think in the case of VR it would just be too many years of wasted work for even them to consider. Unless ofc the whales can be harvested for another decade...
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