I have seen around some corners of the internet, and even here on ED some vile comments about SC. Chief among them the usual "enjoy your 350.00 space ship and only a dog fighting module to show for it"
Anyway I decided to look for myself. So I can hopefully shed some enlightened perspective on the project, for people who know nothing of it.
So seems Star Citizen will be an MMO on completion. A First person scifi simulator, i.e. first person on planets (in specific zones, not everywhere on the planet), first person in any ship designed for the game and first person in space stations. You activate the chair on your ship in the pilot position to fly it. So really it is a first/third person game, where your character can engage in ground combat on planets/space stations/ship interiors and fly ships, and also be a crew member on other person's multi crew ships.
That is the overall grand package.
Right now SC is divided into several modules: these are to be united eventually to be called star citizen, all developed in the Unreal Engine.
Arena Commander:
We have the arena commander module, designed to test networking, space combat, physics and I imagine work out and iterate all design as it relates to space combat, apparently multicrew ships are soon coming for arena commander, so it would seem all aspects of the space borne gameplay will be in this module. Even space walking or space jet packing is here.
First Person Shooter Module (their title)
So this module is in production at the moment, and I imagine will be to test all aspects of networking, player combat on space stations, planet zones and ship interiors. Inclusive of boarding NPC or player ships and engaging in battle their.
Social Module
This seems to be the module test bed for the planetary gameplay, where you land at specific zones, explore specific cities, buy/sell, get missions, interact with other players NPC, basically the HUB areas of MMOS. It is said the areas will be quite big to explore, but not so big as an entire game world kind of thing, since they are just planetary landing zones. This module also includes the testing of the star citizen mobiGlass, their unique GUI for the game, where all interface interaction is projected onto the screen and not menu based in the form of menu based interfaces as we know them to be currently.
Squadron 42
This module seems to be the mesh of all the modules mentioned above inclusive of a single player campaign with which to test them. So apparently the missions in S42 are being designed with dynamic mission locations in mind. E.g. fly a fighter to a pirate outpost, destroy pirate ships in space combat, land, explore the base on foot, engage in combat with pewpew guns, do the objective, and exit stage right. A test of space, ground combat merged into one. Because apparently the missions you will be doing in the Star Citizen game will be dynamic like this, and be either space borne, ground or a combination. So S42 is the test of all the modules combined, how they work together, kinks and iterating on the fun and getting feedback for the eventual launch of the all in one Star Citizen.
OK! So the cost to enter all of this is roughly $45.00 the lowest. This allows you to play arena commander at least as far as I see on the package, but doesn't mention the FPS or Social Module. It does mentioned a digital download of S42. Also beta access which I take to mean the beta of the final game star citizen.
You could also choose to buy some more high end ship which doesn't necessarily have arena commander access, then pay five dollars for arena commander access which gives you a loaner fighter to play in the module.
So you don't have to buy any of the 'extra' special expensive ship packages to get the game, it seems its available at the very least for 45.00.
I've then moved onto the constant criticism of things moving slow and not much to show. It seems for a game which just began funding in November 2012, and which went through an evolution of design philosophy in the process (to be totally crowd funded and keep accepting pledges) that a lot has been done. The team was built through 2013. Production began on some modules in 2014. The only aspect still in the design phase is the PU. And this is more related to rules and features of things related to persistence since all the gameplay is largely being developed in the in production modules.
My conclusion? People want the game so bad it hurts to wait for it, and have become angry.
Also the fact that the game began development right in front of person's eyes and was not announced as usual games are ( a year or slightly more away from completion) the passage of time has felt a lot slower and hurt a lot more.
When I first heard of SC, I chose to bookmark it and forget about it for two years. I've finally now caught up on it, and I am in the home stretch stage of production. Hopefully.
Anyway I decided to look for myself. So I can hopefully shed some enlightened perspective on the project, for people who know nothing of it.
So seems Star Citizen will be an MMO on completion. A First person scifi simulator, i.e. first person on planets (in specific zones, not everywhere on the planet), first person in any ship designed for the game and first person in space stations. You activate the chair on your ship in the pilot position to fly it. So really it is a first/third person game, where your character can engage in ground combat on planets/space stations/ship interiors and fly ships, and also be a crew member on other person's multi crew ships.
That is the overall grand package.
Right now SC is divided into several modules: these are to be united eventually to be called star citizen, all developed in the Unreal Engine.
Arena Commander:
We have the arena commander module, designed to test networking, space combat, physics and I imagine work out and iterate all design as it relates to space combat, apparently multicrew ships are soon coming for arena commander, so it would seem all aspects of the space borne gameplay will be in this module. Even space walking or space jet packing is here.
First Person Shooter Module (their title)
So this module is in production at the moment, and I imagine will be to test all aspects of networking, player combat on space stations, planet zones and ship interiors. Inclusive of boarding NPC or player ships and engaging in battle their.
Social Module
This seems to be the module test bed for the planetary gameplay, where you land at specific zones, explore specific cities, buy/sell, get missions, interact with other players NPC, basically the HUB areas of MMOS. It is said the areas will be quite big to explore, but not so big as an entire game world kind of thing, since they are just planetary landing zones. This module also includes the testing of the star citizen mobiGlass, their unique GUI for the game, where all interface interaction is projected onto the screen and not menu based in the form of menu based interfaces as we know them to be currently.
Squadron 42
This module seems to be the mesh of all the modules mentioned above inclusive of a single player campaign with which to test them. So apparently the missions in S42 are being designed with dynamic mission locations in mind. E.g. fly a fighter to a pirate outpost, destroy pirate ships in space combat, land, explore the base on foot, engage in combat with pewpew guns, do the objective, and exit stage right. A test of space, ground combat merged into one. Because apparently the missions you will be doing in the Star Citizen game will be dynamic like this, and be either space borne, ground or a combination. So S42 is the test of all the modules combined, how they work together, kinks and iterating on the fun and getting feedback for the eventual launch of the all in one Star Citizen.
OK! So the cost to enter all of this is roughly $45.00 the lowest. This allows you to play arena commander at least as far as I see on the package, but doesn't mention the FPS or Social Module. It does mentioned a digital download of S42. Also beta access which I take to mean the beta of the final game star citizen.
You could also choose to buy some more high end ship which doesn't necessarily have arena commander access, then pay five dollars for arena commander access which gives you a loaner fighter to play in the module.
So you don't have to buy any of the 'extra' special expensive ship packages to get the game, it seems its available at the very least for 45.00.
I've then moved onto the constant criticism of things moving slow and not much to show. It seems for a game which just began funding in November 2012, and which went through an evolution of design philosophy in the process (to be totally crowd funded and keep accepting pledges) that a lot has been done. The team was built through 2013. Production began on some modules in 2014. The only aspect still in the design phase is the PU. And this is more related to rules and features of things related to persistence since all the gameplay is largely being developed in the in production modules.
My conclusion? People want the game so bad it hurts to wait for it, and have become angry.
Also the fact that the game began development right in front of person's eyes and was not announced as usual games are ( a year or slightly more away from completion) the passage of time has felt a lot slower and hurt a lot more.
When I first heard of SC, I chose to bookmark it and forget about it for two years. I've finally now caught up on it, and I am in the home stretch stage of production. Hopefully.
