The Star Citizen Thread

[Mr.Nowak]

Here is the backstory of Arena Commander.

Prior to 2943, Original Systems was best known as the creator of the ULTIMATE series of action roleplaying games. In just eight years, Original has gone from teenagers developing MobiGlas games in their parents’ hangar to a worldwide multimedia concern, with all indications being that even bigger and better titles are in the works. Most recently, the company saw a massive sea change (and a stratospheric rise in units sold) this year with the release of the massively successful Arena Commander space combat game.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13886-Galactic-Guide-Original-Systems

 

[Toumal]

Prior to 2943, Original Systems was best known as the creator of the ULTIMATE series of action roleplaying games.

I see what they did there...

20km^3? Sounds like the default max cube in Crysis with a bit of downscaling of the actual entities. Hm. That's rather difficult to get excited about for me. Remember back in Alpha 1 when people noticed they could just fly straight towards the planet and actually get there?

 

[Bains]

I see what they did there...

20km^3? Sounds like the default max cube in Crysis with a bit of downscaling of the actual entities. Hm. That's rather difficult to get excited about for me. Remember back in Alpha 1 when people noticed they could just fly straight towards the planet and actually get there?

I agree. can't speak about the ED alpha not having been involved but this seems even smaller than I expected. I'd actually prefer to have been proved wrong.

Here is the backstory of Arena Commander.

...Most recently, the company saw a massive sea change (and a stratospheric rise in units sold) this year with the release of the massively successful Arena Commander space combat game.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13886-Galactic-Guide-Original-Systems

Video game audience must be pretty easy to please in the future.

 

[Dante80]

Its an arcade style dogfighting module guys...ing around will get you killed anyway..XD

 

[Mr.Nowak]

I kind of have to say that there is no point in making and endless map in Arena Commander. The aim is to test the basics of Star Citizen's dogfighting not to fly around to other planets or such. They got to have people dogfighting in a sizeable area. Imagine it like the first alpha of Elite : Dangerous scenarios.

This is not the PU Alpha.

 

[Bains]

But this is ...really small. I even don't like flying planes in BF2 & BF3 because you're constantly having to turn away from the end of the map.

Oh well.

This picture of the 300i looks very nice

Good news!

[

Spoiler

 

[Dante80]

I kind of have to say that there is no point in making and endless map in Arena Commander. The aim is to test the basics of Star Citizen's dogfighting not to fly around to other planets or such. They got to have people dogfighting in a sizeable area. Imagine it like the first alpha of Elite : Dangerous scenarios.

This is not the PU Alpha.

Yep, this is the plan.

Also guys, have in mind that the 20km3 quote as a very old one, before CIG enabled double floating point precision in CRYENGINE. The actual maps might be a lot larger. In any case, we are going to find out in a week..C:

 

[Brett C]

But this is ...really small. I even don't like flying planes in BF2 & BF3 because you're constantly having to turn away from the end of the map.

Oh well.

That picture of the 300i looked very nice

That's just how map design works for such engines/game 'modes'. You could get to a particular distance, then the game would begin giving you a countdown before it auto-kills you. One of the reasons that I concluded to such 'feature' is to keep the fight centralized and active rather allowing people freedom to roam wherever. However, if no 'wall' limit was in place, people could take such vehicles, take them completely out of the zone/map, and grief their team.

 

[Bains]

I kind of have to say that there is no point in making and endless map in Arena Commander. The aim is to test the basics of Star Citizen's dogfighting not to fly around to other planets or such. They got to have people dogfighting in a sizeable area. Imagine it like the first alpha of Elite : Dangerous scenarios.

This is not the PU Alpha.

You mention the ED alpha. I wasn't involved. Tell me, was it a case of having to turn around every few seconds because of map size? I would be surprised if it was.

That's just how map design works for such engines/game 'modes'. You could get to a particular distance, then the game would begin giving you a countdown before it auto-kills you. One of the reasons that I concluded to such 'feature' is to keep the fight centralized and active rather allowing people freedom to roam wherever. However, if no 'wall' limit was in place, people could take such vehicles, take them completely out of the zone/map, and grief their team.

Hmmm. Not sure about that. For any kind of flight combat this is a very long way away from 'too big', and more like flying around in circles in a fish bowl.

 

[Toumal]

The aim is to test the basics of Star Citizen's dogfighting not to fly around to other planets or such. They got to have people dogfighting in a sizeable area. Imagine it like the first alpha of Elite : Dangerous scenarios.

Oh I completely understand that. But you see, I've worked with CryEngine before. Their announcement of adding double precision to the engine made me cringe because I have a bit of an idea what's involved there. This is really fundamental if you want to get beyond the rather limited world sizes and retain any kind of reasonable precision for intersect calculations for collisions and hit detection.

Apparently that's still a work in progress. Now the question is, what does DFM do then? They can't use any of the physics or performance constants that work for DFM in the new system because everything will be different, and you can't just multiply everything by a factor and call it a day. It doesn't work like that. Everything from thrust to relative sizes will be different, the physics will behave differently. Trust me, I've done this sort of thing before, I've worked on a procedural terrain system for the Torque engine, basically facing the exact same problem of needing a vastly bigger world while increasing accuracy so that the physics and collision detection still work properly. When you do that, you start all your movement speeds and physics parameters from scratch.

I hope the DFM is not just there to pass the time so RSI can figure out how to tackle the big issues. Does anyone know if they at least are running their own netcode now or if it's still the stock CryEngine stuff?

Gah. I guess I should stop worrying.

 

[Dante80]

I hope the DFM is not just there to pass the time so RSI can figure out how to tackle the big issues. Does anyone know if they at least are running their own netcode now or if it's still the stock CryEngine stuff?

Gah. I guess I should stop worrying.

From what has been communicated until now, the major reason for postponing the DFM in the first place was to make their own network back-end, and not make something from the Cryengine3 code that would be scrapped later. So, the network system seems to be completely custom..

 

[Mr.Nowak]

New concept art of the Banu Merchmantman appeared.

Spoiler

 

[Bains]

New concept art of the Banu Merchmantman appeared.

Keep it coming man. Love seeing these concept pics. These artists are so gifted.

 

[Mr.Nowak]

Keep it coming man. Love seeing these concept pics. These artists are so gifted.

Banu Merchantman landing concept. (same ship as the one above)

Spoiler

 

[Sir.Tj]

Guys. You need to add spoiler tags to large images. Those on mobile devices etc will struggle to load the page.

Thanks.

 

[Mr.Nowak]

Guys. You need to add spoiler tags to large images. Those on mobile devices etc will struggle to load the page.

Thanks.

Thanks will remember to do that next time!

 

[Bains]

Just visited the RSI forum and the DFM/AC reveal thread.

I'm not sure if I understood this right, but am I now expected to buy a 5 dollar pass for this release??

I notice there also seems a lot of general concerns. It's been a while since I've been there. I had not realised how things were going. When I was last active I was one of the few doubters, practically a heretic. That's no longer the case.

 

[Dr Wookie]

I think those passes are for people who don't have alpha access in their pledges. What I'm more concerned about is that I heard that they might charge per play for trying ships you don't own... Sod that!

 

[Mr.Nowak]

Just visited the RSI forum and the DFM/AC reveal thread.

I'm not sure if I understood this right, but am I now expected to buy a 5 dollar pass for this release??

I notice there also seems a lot of general concerns. It's been a while since I've been there. I had not realised how things were going. When I was last active I was one of the few doubters, practically a heretic. That's no longer the case.

Alpha access packages ran out a month ago. So after this point each module costs 5 dollars extra to try out.

 

[Memnoch]

And each purchase should include a little GIF of CR taking another sip from a big glass of brandy and going "Cheers!"