Star Citizen: Chris Robert`s new space sim (the Wing Commander guy)

[rivethead]

but I don't think the main guy can say no.

Me either. Some would say that is a good thing. Others say it's a bad thing.

I tend to think feature creep is going to be a real threat to the delivery timelines for this game.

 

[SunnyD]

The hundreds of thousands of star systems is Elite Dangerous, not SC, and is possible only with procedural generation (granted, SC is looking into it).

Having played several titles with "procedural content" before, I have to say it's probably one of the most mind numbingly boring features I've had the pleasure to experience in titles like these.

Procedural content usually gets pretty damn stale after about the third time you do some sort of content in said area. Invariably the mission generators only have so many variables, and they end up recycling them rather quickly and blandly. Procedural content holds no candle to well scripted content - and that includes filler content.

 

[SLU Aequitas]

Having played several titles with "procedural content" before, I have to say it's probably one of the most mind numbingly boring features I've had the pleasure to experience in titles like these.

Procedural content usually gets pretty damn stale after about the third time you do some sort of content in said area. Invariably the mission generators only have so many variables, and they end up recycling them rather quickly and blandly. Procedural content holds no candle to well scripted content - and that includes filler content.

Agreed, and it's been my biggest complaint surrounding Elite: Dangerous as well.

 

[Fallen Kell]

The hundreds of thousands of star systems is Elite Dangerous, not SC, and is possible only with procedural generation (granted, SC is looking into it).

Correct. The main context that they are looking into it is for planetary exploration, but possibly star system creation as well. My thought is that they may use it to quickly prototype systems and then tweak by hand, but having the majority of it being auto-generated by a tool saves hundreds of hours of work.

 

[shortylickens]

If Freelancer and Starpoint Gemini are any indication, I'd much rather have a small detailed universe than a huge bland one.

 

[Red Storm]

If Freelancer and Starpoint Gemini are any indication, I'd much rather have a small detailed universe than a huge bland one.

Well it is space, so huge and empty is to be expected for most of the setting (at least the further out you go). I personally like that space feels really vast and lonely, it's realistic, compared to say an Elder Scrolls game where in their huge world something is happening every 20 feet.

 

[SithSolo1]

Star Citizen Anniversary Sale Now Open, Nov. 21-28

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14314-Star-Citizen-Anniversary-Sale

All ships/packages in the sale come with 2-year in-game insurance. Ship prices remain the same as the last time they were sold
so people who own these with 6mo insurance can melt their current packages/ships and pick up the versions with 2-yr insurance if they so desire.

Ship List

Aurora LX
350R
F7C-M Super Hornet
Freelancer MIS
M50
Cutlass Blue
Gladiator
Retaliator
Xi'an Khartu (scout)
Catepillar
Banu Merchantman
Starfarer

Other in-game items
Model II Arclight Sidearm
Racing Suit
UEE Environmental Coat (Firefly coat)
Advocacy Tools

Also next Friday (Nov. 28th) a limited number of civilian variants of the Javelin Destroyer will be up for sale for $2.5k each.
At the same time 5000 Aurora packages will be sold at discount for $20 each. In addition the Carack(dedicated exploration ship) will go on sale for $345 w/ LTI.

 

[TheVrolok]

Maybe I'll pick up an M50.

 

[cytg111]

Me either. Some would say that is a good thing. Others say it's a bad thing.

I tend to think feature creep is going to be a real threat to the delivery timelines for this game.

Star Citizen Forever?

 

[cytg111]

Well it is space, so huge and empty is to be expected for most of the setting (at least the further out you go). I personally like that space feels really vast and lonely, it's realistic, compared to say an Elder Scrolls game where in their huge world something is happening every 20 feet.

If they were smart(er) they'd take a hint from minecraft at let the universe be expandable through player creation.
Create worlds, have a rating system, top rated worlds get closer proximity to known universe. Something like that.

 

[Fallen Kell]

If they were smart(er) they'd take a hint from minecraft at let the universe be expandable through player creation.
Create worlds, have a rating system, top rated worlds get closer proximity to known universe. Something like that.

They are. All developer tools and APIs are being released, as well as the server code to run your own server. You can mod away all you feel like, build your own ships, etc... If the community likes some of the mods enough and it doesn't alter the vision of the universe, they have said they have no problems incorporating them into the persistent universe. Case in point being the "Next Great Starship" competition they had where fans created a ship based on guidelines from RSI, fan votes, and feedback from Chris Roberts and the heads of their artwork and ship design teams.

The only thing they are not releasing is the developer version of the game engine (since they don't own it to do so), but the free one available from the makers of the engine will get you 95% there for any mods you might want to make (only things missing I believe are some of the PVR tools for creating new materials). But you are free to purchase a license for the developer version (it costs like $1k I believe).

 

[ThinClient]

The hundreds of thousands of star systems is Elite Dangerous, not SC, and is possible only with procedural generation (granted, SC is looking into it).

400 billion

A star system contains at least one star with an asteroid belt and/or planets and moons. Elite: Dangerous is planned to contain over 400 billion destinations within the multitude of star systems that comprise of the Milky Way.

 

[SLU Aequitas]

400 billion

A star system contains at least one star with an asteroid belt and/or planets and moons. Elite: Dangerous is planned to contain over 400 billion destinations within the multitude of star systems that comprise of the Milky Way.

And? Magnitude might as well be hundreds of thousands, either way you're not going to see them all, even dedicating your entire life to just Elite. :lol:

Either way, point stands, he was definitely thinking of Elite since SC doesn't have that focus.

 

[ThinClient]

And? Magnitude might as well be hundreds of thousands, either way you're not going to see them all, even dedicating your entire life to just Elite. :lol:

Either way, point stands, he was definitely thinking of Elite since SC doesn't have that focus.

...and?

My post wasn't intended to claim that you can or would (or would want to) see them all. My post wasn't conflicting the claim of who was thinking of what game.

Relax, broski. :thumbsup:

 

[SLU Aequitas]

...and?

My post wasn't intended to claim that you can or would (or would want to) see them all. My post wasn't conflicting the claim of who was thinking of what game.

Relax, broski. :thumbsup:

It's chillax, broseph.

Btdubbs, have you been playing the last beta? Haven't had time to log the last two, probably won't until release :sadpandatears:

 

[ThinClient]

It's chillax, broseph.

Btdubbs, have you been playing the last beta? Haven't had time to log the last two, probably won't until release :sadpandatears:

Picked a direction and flew off to get lost.

Spent hours and hours and hours flying around. I have no idea where I am. I haven't seen another soul in days.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Sounds like fun...

 

[ThinClient]

Sounds like fun...

It's a lot more fun than racing the same dumb track over and over after getting bored in the same boring space arena over and over.

Oh wait, now you can play in a FPS map over and over so at least you can do something else now for a little bit before getting bored soon.

 

[Dannar26]

I backed.

Aurora LX anniversay package with an arena commander pass. Gotta work up them dogfighting skills.

I have my doubts, but I'm patient. I really love space sims, so here's hoping....

 

[lehtv]

I'm just waiting for my Avenger to be AC ready... And FPS module...

 

[The Boston Dangler]

selling virtual ships for $2500 to "allow" the sale of more ships? note that ships purchased over a year ago have no sign of delivery.

 

[chimaxi83]

The money grabbing and loyal suckers are ridiculous.

 

[shortylickens]

400 billion

A star system contains at least one star with an asteroid belt and/or planets and moons. Elite: Dangerous is planned to contain over 400 billion destinations within the multitude of star systems that comprise of the Milky Way.

If theres that many, they will suck. They cant all be detailed and interesting.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Aurora LX anniversay package with an arena commander pass. Gotta work up them dogfighting skills.

I don't like the controls right now. KBM is a nightmare for me right now and I think it's mostly because I cannot rebind certain keys. And there is no roll axis either. So I'm having difficulty controlling the ship with KBM. I'm faring much better controlling the ship on an Xbox controller, but it's so difficult to aim well with it.

Still, I'm having fun with it because it really does have this realistic feel to it, if I could even know what realistic in space is like. Frequently I'll have my ship drifting sideways or even backwards after making sharp turns, which is totally expected in a frictionless environment. It looks beautiful too.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I still don't understand all the hate you guys are posting about this game. Sure they are funding it in a new way. If they hadn't started funding it this way, the game would have never been made and space combat sims wouldn't be a genera that is coming back again. 2 years ago there wasn't a publisher on the planet that would sink $1 million into backing a space combat sim, let along $20-80 million that a AAA title costs. Now, well, every publisher that passed on Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous are kicking themselves and looking for anything they can find that might be competitive for the market that just voted with their wallets to fund these games themselves since no publisher would touch them.

For the peanut gallery that keeps on attacking have any of you ever worked in software development? Have any of you worked on game development? What about in publishing or even project management? I highly doubt it based on the comments made. AAA titles take 2-5 years to make, longer when you are defining a whole new game (i.e. this isn't COD : 20, which was really just COD : 19 with a couple new skins, vehicles, and new maps). It is one of the main reasons they cost so much, because they take that long.

Sure, RSI has essentially made all the money they need to release the game and then some at this point. The extra funding now allows them to really do just about everything they ever wanted to do in a space combat sim, and do it right. Will that happen? I don't know. So far it certainly seems that most of it is being done the right way (i.e. releasing modules makes sense, especially when they are a part or a whole section of end game content, like a look at the combat instancing, or racing instances, or boarding/FPS mechanics, etc., things that will be directly used in the game as a whole with binding code to seem them together). It made sense to delay the Dog Fight Module release when they did to get all the backend in place so that they were not coding a second product that was going to be completely thrown away just to hit a self stated deadline. Throwing away code like that would have been wasting our donated funding, and irresponsible act of project management.

Everything seems to be moving at a proper pace to make release in 2016, which is what they have been shooting for from the beginning. The feedback they have been getting on flight and combat from the modules that have been released so far has been constantly being used to tweak and fix the game. They have been slowly introducing the original ships into the Dog Fighting Module and been balancing them against one another so that the ships fit the roles and positions they felt they should.

We will probably see the first iterations of the first person shooter combat module within the next couple months, along with the release of all single person/pilot ships (base ship, not necessarily all variants). Multi-person ships have been work in progress in their developer code-base, with some previews already shown a month or two ago, so we know that they are getting there. There is tons of information constantly being put out to let everyone know what is going on, what the different studios have been working on, etc., so that everyone can be made aware of status of different things.

There hasn't been any major changes to the game itself since initial inception (additional planets, and ships are not major changes, just level/vehicle design). Boarding actions with FPS combat always planned from the beginning (check the original kickstarter, it was one of the reasons why a FPS engine was chosen in the first place). A dynamic market was planned from the beginning. Oculus Rift support was in the kickstarter... In other words, all the stretch goals have amounted to just additional art/vehicle/level assets, with the sole exception being the creation of a team working on procedural generated content to deal with exploring planets/moons (since mapping out millions of square miles of planet would be impossible from both level design arts time requirement as well as from a computer games disk/memory space requirement, but simply storing a planet's "seed" value to a MakeMap function, with a global hash table of discoverable items/etc., that are currently located at coordinates x,y,z getting looked up from the global servers is very possible).