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

[Red Storm]

stuff

Agreed 100%. Also after the disappointment that is Elite Dangerous (unless I see some major changes in the next two weeks which doesn't seem likely), it brings a smile to my face to see how SC is really trying to raise the expectations for what a AAA space sim should be. Heck the game could be delayed to 2017 and I wouldn't mind one bit, I want them to do it right more than hit a target release date.

 

[rivethead]

Heck the game could be delayed to 2017 and I wouldn't mind one bit, I want them to do it right more than hit a target release date.

Ok. What if the game is delayed until 2027 so that Chris Roberts and team can add 30,000 more space pets, 100,000 more alien races, and 500,000 more ship variants?

That's my concern. And that seems to be the current trajectory.

I get the whole "best damn space simulation ever" thing. I actually appreciate that. But at some point they need to employ the 80/20 rule and release the game.

 

[Red Hawk]

They could follow the Minecraft model, where they release a playable beta of the game and are continually updating it with new content.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

I get the whole "best damn space simulation ever" thing. I actually appreciate that. But at some point they need to employ the 80/20 rule and release the game.

They will, in 2016 or 2017. If you look at the image below, there really aren't that many ships when you consider we are talking about an entire universe here (I think there are still two ships that are way larger than anything here). And considering players will be "living" in some of these ships, I am very happy they are paying some serious attention to detail. All of these fully functional and modular would really be a good start to the PU, imo.

Don't forget they are working on FPS too! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cir3w-wIx9U
(This obviously needs some work)

 

[DigDog]

from watching the videos, SC seems more skill based than ED, which in turn seems more knowledge-based. i prefer the former over the latter, but that's just me.

They could follow the Minecraft model, where they release a playable beta of the game and are continually updating it with new useless content, like new flowers or new colors of wool, instead of real f* gameplay changes.

fixed

 

[njdevilsfan87]

I'm hoping next year we get another area to fight in. SC looks beautiful, and I'd love to try out some dogfighting in Saturn's rings! But only if doesn't stop them from getting the PU out in 2016. Some locations of the rings are as thin as 30 feet wide (IRL) so it could be done to scale pretty easily based off what I've seen in AC, and make for a great dog fighting location. :thumbsup:

This is some random image I found

versus what AC looks like right now on my computer (which looks a lot better, but I'm just thinking how the above could look in CryEngine)

 

[Bubbleawsome]

(I think there are still two ships that are way larger than anything here)

That hornet is ~= to a scythe right? That helps scale it to this chart.

fixed

To be fair, what would you change in minecraft. It's become so defining of it's own type of game that it can't change without making a ton of people mad. It's built off it's own simplicity.

Also, new ship. I think it might be the "crawler" from above image.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I think one thing that a lot of people are also not taking into account is that ships in SC are more like actual computer modeled designs than they are a video game models. Things like wiring harnesses, cooling conduits, CPU/computer systems, control wires, thruster positioning, weight distribution, thrust vectoring, weapon lines of sight, etc., etc., etc., need to be done to work properly. Combine that modeling level with the physics engine they have established, plus the damage/destruction models, and you have a lot more work involved than any other game that I can think of has ever done for a vehicle model (they mostly just hard code functions for an acceleration curves, turn rate, etc., and at most when damaged, a one off modifier that affects those default values). And because of the direction SC has taken, you will see a lot more variety of interactions that will arise from making the game work this way (say, adding some custom armor plates to your ship, or adding a redundant cooling line to certain systems, or swapping out the main thrusters for higher output ones, or any of dozens of other ideas, all of which are possible because the ship is actually made from components).

 

[Bubbleawsome]

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14345-Monthly-Report-November
Awesome!

 

[Whitestar127]

I still don't understand all the hate...

Me neither honestly. I hope both ED and SC turn out to be totally awesome. To hope for anything else would be irrational IMO.

 

[Dannar26]

Anybody here any good at dogfighting?

It's fun as hell, but I blow at it...

 

[ginfest]

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14345-Monthly-Report-November
Awesome!

Thanks for the link. Looks like things are progressing nicely. I have to say, if this game comes together as planned it looks to be one of the best, if not the best games of any genre to be produced all time!

 

[Kev]

Ok. What if the game is delayed until 2027 so that Chris Roberts and team can add 30,000 more space pets, 100,000 more alien races, and 500,000 more ship variants?

That's my concern. And that seems to be the current trajectory.

I get the whole "best damn space simulation ever" thing. I actually appreciate that. But at some point they need to employ the 80/20 rule and release the game.

Really? You don't think you might be exaggerating just a tiny bit?

 

[rivethead]

Really? You don't think you might be exaggerating just a tiny bit?

Oh I'm definitely exaggerating.

But every time Chris Roberts talks about the game, it's mostly in terms of adding content....new ships, new races, new "things". He doesn't talk in terms of the end game....completion.

I'm looking forward to the day when he says: "we're done with content...now it's time to focus on putting this all together and releasing a final product".

To me, getting this all to "work" seamlessly (economy, dogfighting, planetside, ship boarding, etc., etc.) is the bigger battle.

 

[Red Storm]

Oh I'm definitely exaggerating.

But every time Chris Roberts talks about the game, it's mostly in terms of adding content....new ships, new races, new "things". He doesn't talk in terms of the end game....completion.

I'm looking forward to the day when he says: "we're done with content...now it's time to focus on putting this all together and releasing a final product".

To me, getting this all to "work" seamlessly (economy, dogfighting, planetside, ship boarding, etc., etc.) is the bigger battle.

You do understand there's no real end to new content right? They're going to continue making new stuff post release.

 

[Fallen Kell]

You do understand there's no real end to new content right? They're going to continue making new stuff post release.

Exactly. Everything he keeps talking about and adding are art assets, maps, places... These aren't things that are feature creep. It is simply more things to do, places to go, ships to use. I mean, look at World of Warcraft, they have had what 50-100 content additions now? That is exactly what SC is planning on doing as well. Constantly add more and more content for as long as they can.

This doesn't stop the core engineering teams from working on the actual game. This is more of the people don't really understand how games are made kind of thing. There are 3 MAJOR different groups of people that work on making a game. You have the designers/architects that come up with the overall game itself, story, game type, ideas, etc. Then you have the software engineering teams which write the code, creating functions, APIs, toolkits, game engines (or modifying existing engines), and game framework, NPC AI, etc (essentially these are the guys that make the underlying things that allow a game to work). Then you have the graphics artists and modellers who use the toolkits and game engine provided to them from the software engineering team to create all the visual artwork, effects, 3D models, game maps/levels, items, objects, lighting, shadows, etc. All of these groups work to create the game. Adding more artwork and models is done by a completely different team then the people who are working to "put this all together and release a final product". This is done until the software engineering team has finished coding all the APIs, frameworks, tools, AI, etc., etc., and there are enough art assets/levels/maps for the players to then use. So while there is still lots of engineering work going on, nothing prevents you from adding more and more art assets, levels, models, except for a limited budget (as you need to pay for the 3D artists to be on staff), and in fact, if you have 3D artists who are idle, well, you give them a new ship to design, or character model to build, or weapon to design, or planet city/location to layout, because otherwise he/she is just freeloading on you while you wait for other things that have to be finished.

 

[Bubbleawsome]

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/...ter-From-The-Chairman-Multi-Crew-Ship-Systems

Looks like they might be channeling development away from tons of stretch goals and towards a release. That's been one of the things I, and I think others, have been kinda cautious about.

Someone also made this slightly disturbing image.

 

[taserbro]

Anybody here any good at dogfighting?

It's fun as hell, but I blow at it...

I'm nowhere close to being good at it but here's a few things I've learned if that's what you wanted:

Turn off your G-force safety and learn to decouple and recouple. When your ship is decoupled, it will keep flying into the direction you were going the instant you decoupled but you can turn into any direction without affecting your vector, making you into a flying turret. When you are fighting an enemy, aim for a direction that will allow you to intercept without running into a rock then press tab and pivot your ship to shoot them, then recouple and decouple boost into another safe direction to make abrupt turns while keeping yourself within shooting range. Also, you can evade most shots past a certain distance by pitching/yawing while rolling because the game's movement prediction assumes your ship is going in a straight line and there aren't any projectiles that travel so fast that they can hit after your ship changes vector while it's travelling.

Key bindings are important but it's impossible to unbind a directional axis from the mouse without messing with the XML file. It's possible now after some folks have posted a completely unbound template of the file so we can finally steer the ship with WASD and shoot the gimbaled guns with the mouse which is the only control scheme I would advise you to get used to.

Leaderboard pilots in arena commander are major leagues tryhards so don't feel bad if your starter ship isn't doing well. They buy 8 sets of guns and ammoboxes (which you have to buy 3 entire ship packages for or else the game limits you to 2 sets for each type) for their superhornet so that one full volley can 1-shot most ships. They fly M50s that can literally out-run your gun bullets while strafing making them pretty much invincible in a 1v1 and outfit them with glitched 35mm cannons that are supposed to be too big to be able to fit its hardpoints.

Watch some of the regular streamers on twitch tv playing arena commander. They often have multiple 1000's of usd worth of hotas with pedals/occulus rift/triple screen/trackIR/voice attack setups and some of them have confessed to having over 500 hours of gametime in pvp. After seeing them, I felt better about not taking it too seriously and just flying for fun because there's no way in hell I'm going to compete with those nutjobs.

 

[TheVrolok]

Good tips man!

 

[catnapper]

I got some info. I tend to trust advice here more but I'm set now.

 

[Kalmah]

New trailer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJ9TcGxhNY

Looks nice! I still think everything feels a little stiff though. (animations and such) I just got done reading somewhere that they intend on using some motion capture studio which is yet to be implemented.

 

[Worthington]

AC 1.0 released yesterday. Added a bunch of single seater ships to the module, started fleshing out various guns and missiles, added the missile targeting and signature systems.

Pretty massive update.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Wow 20gb patch.

 

[rivethead]

New trailer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJ9TcGxhNY

Looks nice! I still think everything feels a little stiff though. (animations and such) I just got done reading somewhere that they intend on using some motion capture studio which is yet to be implemented.

Agreed. And a bit dark too. Cracks me up that in SC we have this awesome technology (lasers, ships, etc.)....but no enough technology to light up a store, city, etc. Everything is so "dark".

Still very awesome trailer....thanks for sharing.

 

[Bubbleawsome]

New trailer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJ9TcGxhNY

Looks nice! I still think everything feels a little stiff though. (animations and such) I just got done reading somewhere that they intend on using some motion capture studio which is yet to be implemented.

Hm. I guess they liked this fanmade trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceBbcT7S2_Q

Still waiting on the mustangs to come out to be buyable.