Star Citizen, Roberts Space Industries - Chris Roberts' life support and retirement fund [2012-]

[Lightman]

I was quite excited about SC when I initially backed it up very early on.
I must admit, I lost that excitement and no longer even log in to try new beta releases. Their sales model is utter shame to me and I rather support other dev. studios than give any more money to CI. Luckily we have plenty of good and great games released the past 4 years to not even notice SC delaying their own deadlines for years now.

 

[Jupiter]

I prefer it over the 2016 GamesCom demo but last year's Homestead demo is unmatched in my opinion. This years GamesCom presentation was much more complex than any live demo before with 20 players. A player corrupted the flight ability of the space ship. Thats why they needed to restart the server. With 20 players it is also difficult to ensure a parallel playing.

The new render to texture feature is awesome. This allows players to make real-time video coms like in Star Trek. If a pirate wants to enter your ship you can negotiate on a screen just as in the Star Trek movies. (at 1:36:38 to 1:37:05)

Or short in this video:

My negative Points of this years GamesCom presentation:

• shadows were completly missing in some situations after a short distance --> after the server restart the error was gone
• the ramp of space ships has no collision with the ground like seen in the recent streams before and it can cause the death when entering
• even with the new hydraulic landing gear the ships still bounced/jumped often (colission issue with the ground/surface).
• vehicles are too narrow and the dimensions of the rover for the Aquila are also very tight --> CIG should model everything a bit more generously
• running animations still do not have the same quality level in comparison to the ones when a weapon is used
• in the case of large combat ships they need weak points of which the fire should be concentrated --> but they just got the Idris functioning in game enough for a fight. Thats why a detailed damage system is not implemented yet
• how much better are turrets now?
• acceleration/slow down curve is too steep
• lack of inertia/mass physics in flight model
• showed little interaction with the large ships

__

The RP talking did not bother me at all. Some people need to make a drama out of nothing.

Roberts needs a new boat to get to his yacht?

They have 500 developers which costs about $50 million a year. Without fresh money they go under.

By the way this is the trailer for the ship:

Very noble. I think of Porsche. Origin = something like a German spaceship manufacturer.

welp gamescon came and went and while the demo was impressive we are still on a planet with one space Station

Three moons.

Spoiler

 

[Jupiter]

Since CIG will not release a press version this time here is a shorter version which was edited by an user:

The new and complex user interface at the beginning is not shown or explained here.

 

[Pixel]

I wonder if the mirage of achieving an absolutely huge procedurally generated universe seems like the siren call that has the potential to crashes and maroon lots of projects, like No Man's Sky & Mass Effect Andromeda. Is Starcitizen going to navigate past those sirens or will it get marooned too?

Most games now days employ varying levels of procedural generation however few do to the scope that Andromeda originally planned and No Man's Sky has done.

 

[hoom]

I wonder if the mirage of achieving an absolutely huge procedurally generated universe

Are they actually still going for that?
The above video shows they are still faffing around and failing at heavily scripted manually setup stuff all these years later, no sign whatsoever of actual emergent procedural gameplay.

Game has synch issues with 20 players on a LAN?
How can they ever possibly expect to have thousands of simultaneous players over the internet

'first live capital ship battle' and they just rammed each other

How is it that so far along they still have stupid twitchy/glitchy landing stuff?

You need to have someone get out of the rover & help you park in your FTL capable spaceship and the rover doesn't even have a handbrake

But hey, they have a shitton of boring glossy car ads for ugly-ass ships

 

[Jupiter]

The Idris capital ships was deliberately set up to be destroyed fast.

Let's see how the missions will be. There are two mission givers with some missions that can overlap with other players. And there are about 28 mission archetypes that can be used to generate millions of missions. Possibly also here with counter-missions of other players.

For ground vehicles they are likely to develop auto parking. This already exists in space ships with landing platforms and this works well.

CIG this presentation sooner than they have liked. For example in 2.6.3 I was able to play 4 hours in a row without a crash.

Network was rework for 3.0 and they are converting the gameplay systems over to make it all work.
__

What other developers said about that demo:

TJ_McWeaksauce

I used to work in the video game industry. Among the developers I worked with, one of the sentiments we all shared was, "working conventions fucking sucked". During the weeks or months leading up to a big event where your project will get demo'ed, you have to do a lot of work to make that demo go as smoothly as possible. It's not uncommon for devs to crunch for conventions like E3 or Gamescom.

In many cases, that work gets tossed out once the convention is over, because you were just using temporary "duct tape" code and assets meant to keep the demo from falling apart in front of an audience.

Here's an article in which developers talked about the problems associated with E3 and conventions like it.:“From a pure development point-of-view, an E3 demo tends to be a massive distraction,” said designer Sam Bass, who’s worked on E3 demos for nearly 20 years, including Star Wars: Force Commander, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun, Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, and many others. “You are derailing a good chunk of your team for 1-2 months of what is often essential development time and often leaving them pretty burnt out after the fact.”

Most studios don't put their games on the convention circuit until beta, or at least not until the core features are in a presentable state. Star Citizen is only in early alpha - almost all of its core features are either incomplete or missing, entirely - and already CIG demo's it at Gamescom and Citizencon every year. They'll demo it at at least those 2 conventions every year until the project is done. If it takes 5 more years to finish, then their team has 5 more, consecutive convention seasons to look forward to. That's an unprecedented amount of something that devs generally hate.

Think of how much of a distraction that is. Think of how much potential crunch and burn-out that is for their team. If they work on demo-only code, think of all the waste.

Because Star Citizen is not like a conventionally-developed game - i.e. it's been under a public microscope since day 1, plus its funding is tied directly to hype - CIG is under a lot of pressure to keep up appearances. My guess is that they're crunching pretty much all-year round, starting in alpha. There's no telling when this game is going to be done, so who knows how long they'll be crunching.

RossCoBrit

I've been in the industry for sixteen years (yes, I'm bloody old), and just from what they show of their studio environments I think you are right on the money.

Everything screams "Endless death march" to me, and I'm willing to bet there are a lot of junior guys in there on not very much money being told they are working on something really special and it will all pay off any month now. Pair that with extra crunch time to finish demos which don't make the game better? shudder.

I've been there (the situation, not the company). It sucks, and as a junior it can be very hard to pull the eject handle.

Oh, and just to top it off I bet they haven't stopped reading their own forums yet, so they constantly read about how lazy and incompetent they are. Which is nice.

More in the link.

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/path%3D%252Fr%252FGames%252Fcomments%252F6we9ua%252Fstar_citizen_gamescom_2017_presentation_no_dialog%252Fdm7i1di

McWeaksauce:

"in the future don't be as transparent with it"

-->
They didn't really have a choice, because this game is crowdfunded. Not only that, but it's the biggest crowdfunded game, ever, which shines an even bigger spotlight on the project.

When a studio decides to crowdfund their game, they automatically sign up for transparency. It's forced transparency, really. Studios of crowdfunded games who don't update their backers regularly get a lot of anger directed their way.

Crowdfunding has a couple of key advantages over traditional development financing, the most significant being how it gets studios their funding upfront and with minimal oversight. But there are disadvantages, too.

In some ways, SC is being developed backwards. A lot of flashy, good-for-marketing things are being done first - faceware, cinematics with motion capture, shiny ship models, and other things that help make fancy trailers. Meanwhile, the core features aren't close to being done yet.

This backwards development is exemplified by how CIG has marketed Squadron 42. Like this trailer that came out 2 years ago. Look at all these famous names. Look at that rousing speech. "Answer the call: 2016!"

It's now 2017, and nobody's seen a demo of SQ42 yet. Furthermore, critical features like the flight model and AI aren't done yet. Nobody knows, exactly, what the final flight controls will be, nor do they know how enemies will behave, yet CIG claimed that SQ42 would be out last year?

Marketing before core features = it's backwards. That's what you get with crowdfunding and this forced transparency.

TJ McWeaksauce

"I think there's got to be a better balance like do your pitch like you would to a publisher then go in silence for a few years releasing only periodic updates."
-->

Frankly, I don't think studios that go the crowdfunding route can do that. Studios that get financed by publishers have the luxury of secrecy, but not them.

This is particularly true of CIG. They need to keep their funding going, and that can't happen if they go quiet.

Star Citizen passed $100 million in crowdfunding in December 2015. Sure, that's a hell of a lot of money. But in the context of what CIG endeavors to do, it actually isn't that much. Like you said, they had to build a studio from scratch, open offices in different countries around the world, and staff it with hundreds of devs. They had to do this on top of developing perhaps the most ambitious game project, ever.

There are a few studios that have done less with more money. For example, Star Wars: The Old Republic reportedly cost $200 million to develop.

New report recounts creation of BioWare's MMORPG; 800 staffers on four continents worked for six years to bring game to market.

SWTOR isn't as big, complex, or pretty as what SC is expected to be. Yet that supposedly cost twice what CIG had in crowdfunding at the end of 2015. They had to continue raising money, which means more fancy trailers, weekly updates, "Around the Verse" videos, Citizencon etc. The hype train has to keep running. Now, 2 years later, they're at $150+ million in funding, which still isn't as much as what Bioware used to make a less impressive MMO.

My wild estimate is that CIG will officially release SC around 2023. They're going to need to continue raising more and more money to keep production going that long. They really can't go silent.

So yeah, they're in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kinda situation. People would be outraged if they went silent. So instead, they're forced into transparency. Unfortunately for them, people are still pissed off because they now see how ugly AAA game development is, especially for a studio that didn't exist a few years ago, and who hasn't completed a single game together before working on one of the most complicated projects in history.

TJ_McWeaksauce

"I read somewhere they spent over half their budget on marketing, which I'm sure CIG isn't following suit on."

-->
They got Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, Andy Serkis, Liam Cunningham, and other geek-friendly stars to record dialogue and do motion capture for Squadron 42 cutscenes back in 2015. They also had these stars record interviews in which they talked about a game that in 2017 still doesn't have a playable demo.

They have star-studded cutscenes and promos recorded for a space sim that doesn't even have a final flight model yet.

They also have an annual convention for a brand new franchise and a game that's likely several years away from completion. Nobody in the history of games has ever done that before.

I wouldn't be so sure that CIG doesn't spend a lot on marketing.

Edit: Also, in regards to SWTOR marketing cost, I found this article.
Three days after analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen & Co speculated that the “total all-in investment” in Star Wars: The Old Republic “is probably approaching half a billion dollars”, a story in the LA Times blog Hero Complex put a sticker price of “nearly $200 million” to Electronic Arts’ massively multiplayer online game. However, that number refers to the development cost and doesn’t factor in marketing expenses or royalty payments to Star Wars license holder LucasArts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/path%3D%252Fr%252FGames%252Fcomments%252F6we9ua%252Fstar_citizen_gamescom_2017_presentation_no_dialog%252Fdm7l9p5

 

[Billy Idol]

Am I the only one that is shocked about the bad overall quality of the Gamescom demo?!? The animations of humans, the facial animations, the many glitches, the sparse environment...it really shocked me. This is Mass Effect Andromeda level of bad imo, even worse as the expectations are sky high.

Shouldn't those things be automated in such a huge game? You can't fix every single animation by hand at this scale. You need a robust system, right? I don't expect Uncharted level of quality of course...but with this amount of funding and the huge amount of time already sunk into this project...I had hoped for more than what was shown.

The weirdest thing: the showed it, so this is a sign that they are happy and proud with the current state (why show it otherwise), which make me think about the quality standards they have as their goal.

Worried backer here...

 

[Jupiter]

Bad animations?

This is a multiplayer and not even the most singleplayer games have this animation quality.
And as I said the movements on foot and without a weapon do need some work.


Uncompressed the Levski station should look more like this plus volumetric fog, area lights, new GI etc. (these pictures are older)

Levski screenshots:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/4c/69/32/4c6932ac3f4c5a0e64bda52fd5ab17e7.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/28/c5/17/28c517c61f8e8ec5761e0ade8300c933.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c2/99/b9/c299b925fcd4fdb5406a6caeec806618.jpg
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/asset...e/nicolas-novali-grandbarter02.jpg?1491424702
https://cdna.artstation.com/p/asset...e/nicolas-novali-grandbarter03.jpg?1491424705
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/asset...791/large/nicolas-novali-nyx01.jpg?1491424457

 

[Grall]

Worried backer here...

I'm not sure facial animations - or even character animations in general - is what I'd be looking at when playing a game like SC. I wouldn't worry about that, tbh. Besides, animations can be improved later.

That said though, it's disheartening that feature creep is apparently still happening without core systems being finished. They should focus on finishing what's on their plates already, so that some day people can start playing the game they've already paid for.

The only reason I can see for silently just pushing release dates off into the future by adding shit to the game is that if there's a playable but not fully finished - whenever that will be - version out there, the game might accrue badmouth that could reduce the amount of funding they'll be able to pull in. *shrug*

However not releasing anything will simply eventually lead to the game getting declared vaporware by a lot of its backers, who will then demand refunds, and then the company will implode under its own weight.

Get the game out there, even if it won't have all the bells and whistles Roberts wants it to have.

 

[hoom]

in 2.6.3 I was able to play 4 hours in a row without a crash.

What stuff can you actually do though?
Isn't it just separate fly around dogfighting, fly around on your own, walk around the bases/garage?

The above quotes basically say similar to what I was meaning: Its really troubling that they spend such a huge amount of resources/effort making/re-making vast amounts of marketing shiny & scripted demos but really fundamental basics of the game its supposed to become don't seem to have progressed in years.

I disagree that its the crowd-funding which causes it, the Devs have chosen to take that particular approach.

 

[Rodéric]

Doesn't the company have enough money for ten years of dev at this point?

 

[Malo]

Doesn't the company have enough money for ten years of dev at this point?

Based on what? They've been doing this for 4 years or so now. $150m doesn't go very far with all the employees they have.

 

[Rodéric]

158M$ is well enough for 3 AAA games, taking 3 years each to make...
So 4 years and no game...

 

[Malo]

158M$ is well enough for 3 AAA games, taking 3 years each to make...
So 4 years and no game...

Maybe for big studios with 3-4 year set plans in place, efficient development and creation systems, existing tools etc. This is basically a brand new studio and there's been a lot of moving goalposts and changes over the years with a lot of wasted time/money. Though this is getting into the realms of standard SC arguments, a rabbit hole I don't really intend of going down.

 

[Billy Idol]

It just seems weird to me that they keep adding gimmicky new buzzword tec gizmos (like this face capturing), but can't even implement robust systems for interaction, animation, collision detection, etc etc.

The world still feels empty, the demos are still super early proof of concept tec snippets.

This studio might have the right creative vision and qualification. But it is getting more and more obvious to me, that this studio lacks organisation, proper business plans and structure to pull off such a large scale project. They just don't have the expertise imo.

 

[Jupiter]

Squadron 42 will be the main theme of the CitizenCon which to my knowledge will take place time on October 27th. Allegedly a Squadron 42 launch is not excluded for this year but I personally do not believe in a 2017 release date

158M$ is well enough for 3 AAA games, taking 3 years each to make...
So 4 years and no game...

As far as I know in the industry one expects 80 to 100 000 USD per year for one developer

With a headcount of 500 people the money is quickly gone. For Squadron 42 the raised money (158 Mio USD) will be enough but Star Citizens development still needs years. After the core tech there are still content and mission types such as mining etc. to develop. We also saw nothing of Squadron 42.

 

[Jupiter]

The first PTU wave can already test 3.0 but currently the frame rate is very bad because of the many players. There is also a new launcher and patches are often only 200MB in size after downloading 3.0 once (before a patch was 10-30GB large). CIG released about 5 patches in the last 7 days.

Some 3.0 footage

Fantrailer

Day night cylce

I like the new ACES filmic tone mapping curve.


dramatic lighting

 

[eastmen]

A month to go in 2017 , any release date for SQ 42 ? Release date for the final PU ?

 

[cheapchips]

After a no show at CitizenCon, SQ42 is apparently the focus of the holiday live stream.

I think their trying to release 3.0 at Christmas, in it's now more limited form compared to 2016 promises.

I was really only interested in SQ42. Given the glacial progress on SC, it's hard to believe they'll manage to get SQ42 out the door next year.

I got irritated by their lack of delivery and got a refund (on my heady £25 backing).

 

[Grall]

Looked at the Hammerhead on their page because a mate of mine loves it (but he's not gonna buy it because...well, lol, just look at the price), and for charging such a crazy amount of real-world money - over $600 - there's a fantastically tiny amount of information given out on what exactly you're buying. There's almost no technical stats on the ship at all, other than some basic dimensions. That it has six weapons turrets you have to eyeball by looking at the screenshots, even though this is a warship there's no list of armaments at all. Also not mentioned: which turrets are/can be manned and which are computer controlled.

There's no speed, range, armor or shield strength stats (if applicable) that I can see. There's no crew capacity/requirements mentioned, no data on the hangar or what fits into it, cargo capacity, nothing. There's basically no fucking interior screenshots (like, two total for a ship that's 100m long), or basically any screenshots worth a damn at all. No straight-on dorsal side images, straight from front, side, rear etc. It's all really shitty and amateurishly made even though the actual website design is nice. Interesting dichotomy there, but also very frustrating.

Even if I did have the money to spend willy-nilly on fake spaceships in an unfinished game I totally wouldn't, because I don't know what I'm paying for. Nobody would buy a car unseen, with almost no stats on either its specs or performance, so why would I buy an expensive spaceship?

The game looks fantastic all of which I've seen, including this Hammerhead thing, but the whole development process and the company itself is so amazingly godfuckingly badly run that the whole thing deserves to just crash and burn into a smoldering pile of nothing, because that's basically what it is right now. It's just a pile of bits and pieces, and most of them aren't anywhere finished and basically all of them don't even work properly (IE, falling through the floor of your crib and suffocating in the vacuum of space - whattafuck.) And I'm fucking tired of hearing how the scope grew and shit like that - FINISH THE FUCKING GAME FIRST SO THOSE WHO HAVE PAID FOR IT MANY YEARS AGO NOW CAN PLAY IT. THEN ENLARGE IT.

Don't feature creep all over the fucking place for half a decade without delivering a single fucking thing. Jesus, hasn't this guy done ANY games development at all before?

It's like, if 3drealms decided to, you know, constantly keep up with the moving state of the art of 3D engines and computer graphics as they made their game, and make everyhing really interactive, and it ending up developing for 11 years and almost bankrupting the company and getting themselves sued because they still didn't have a finished game yet after all that time yet accepted an advance from their publisher - oh yeah. That's right, that did happen!

So, history. Friggen learn from it, okay.