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

[Lefungus]

Each year, like a clockwork, I post in this thread, I fully expect to be there in 2020, asking about SQ42 !

So in case you forgot, last year they almost had a demo for it, just before some convention, but it was just a little too late, sorry. But don't worry, there's still 2017. Oh and we should really reread those 3.0 slides again and appreciate the good old times.

There wont be many cinematics 90% of 20 hours of performance capture will be in scenes were the player has the control over his character. Thats something just a few AAA games have done

You mean like Half-Like decades ago ?

Exactly these are all very important components. They could build a bad single player campaign like the one from BATTLEFRONT II easily.

Yes they could release something, but releasing something mean exposing themselves to even more criticism. Not releasing anything keep the dream and the whales alive.

Many others and me want a game like Prey 2 and Far Cry with space combat, epic moments and interaction possibilities with characters.

Prey was done with a tiny fraction of Star Citizen budget.

Hopefully they show a lot in the holiday live stream.

Famous last words

 

[Jupiter]

You mean like Half-Like decades ago ?

Yes they could release something, but releasing something mean exposing themselves to even more criticism. Not releasing anything keep the dream and the whales alive.

Half Life 2 has no performance capture. First games with this tech were Crysis 3, Beyond: Two Souls, Ryse etc. Because this is so costly and expensive the developers usually want to present it under perfect conditions where they can control all factors. In Squadron 42 the freedom of the player is to be limited as little as possible even in such scenes which is very advanced for me.

Most "whales" are not that much interested in Squadron 42 but Star Citizen where CIG is showing new stuff every week etc. Many of them would not even mind if Squadron 42 would not be released. From the 172 million USD CIG has raised so far probably 90% came only from Star Citizen not Squadron 42. This budget allows CIG to develop a real first person AAA single player title and not an alibi project.

Prey was done with a tiny fraction of Star Citizen budget.

Prey 2 was announced in 2011 and until it came it took a long time. Besides, they did not change the CRYENGINE so much. Star Citizens engine on the other hand is almost completely changed visually as well as in the background.

 

[CSI PC]

Half Life 2 has no performance capture. First games with this tech were Crysis 3, Beyond: Two Souls, Ryse etc. Because this is so costly and expensive the developers usually want to present it under perfect conditions where they can control all factors. In Squadron 42 the freedom of the player is to be limited as little as possible even in such scenes which is very advanced for me.

Most "whales" are not interested in Squadron 42 but Star Citizen where CIG is showing new stuff every week etc. Many of them would not even mind if Squadron 42 would not be released. From the 172 million USD CIG has raised so far probably 90% came only from Star Citizen not Squadron 42. This budget allows CIG to develop a real first person AAA single player title and not an alibi project.

But then Ninja Theory successfully released Senua Hellblade that uses a lot of real-time motion capture for both cinematics and gameplay, all for under £10m.
Star Citizen started off with what seemed innovative ideas or concepts to implement, but as time goes on they will start to be overtaken by others, which has started to happen.

 

[Jupiter]

Does Hellblade have >60 actors with which the player can interact or could they concentrate on a little? Squadron 42 should be bigger and more complex than Hellblade.

Cast from Squadron 42 and that's not even all. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5194726/

Recently, Peter Capaldi was leaked as another actor.

 

[Rodéric]

Does Hellblade have >60 actors with which the player can interact or could they concentrate on a little? Squadron 42 should be bigger and more complex than Hellblade.

Cast from Squadron 42 and that's not even all. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5194726/

Recently, Peter Capaldi was leaked as another actor.

Hellblade exists as a finished product, Squadron 42 doesn't...

 

[Jupiter]

Squadron 42 does have real actors and Hellblade not, which is why overacting becomes clear in this game.

It was said that Hellblade would technically overtake Squadron 42 what I do not see. The game has limited options, small sections and Ryse gameplay. In my view Hellblade it is not AAA game a The Division, AC: Origins, Wildlands, Horizon Zero Dawn etc. is multiple times more complex. After playing 3.0 for many hours I do not even see why CIG should not be able to do Squadron 42 anymore. The biggest challenge for CIG will be the network stuff which should not have much influence on Squadron 42.

 

[CSI PC]

Squadron 42 does have real actors and Hellblade not, which is why overacting becomes clear in this game.

It was said that Hellblade would technically overtake Squadron 42 what I do not see. The game has limited options, small sections and Ryse gameplay. In my view Hellblade it is not AAA game a The Division, AC: Origins, Wildlands, Horizon Zero Dawn etc. is multiple times more complex. After playing 3.0 for many hours I do not even see why CIG should not be able to do Squadron 42 anymore. The biggest challenge for CIG will be the network stuff which should not have much influence on Squadron 42.

Ninja Theory for Hellblade used the services of Andy Serkis albeit more in a technical/advisory role early on, I mentioned this before, but the context was innovation and this is an example how Star Citizen is slowly being matched or overtaken, one could also argue about visual quality that was great when Star Citizen showed a few years ago has also been matched by complete launched games as well now.
And while you mention Squadron 42 has real actors, we still do not know the level of their engagement/activity with it or indeed how much has even been done.

Not sure how you think Hellblade has small sections.
But anyway they did the whole game for under £10m, and if want to mention real actors some used for the Star Trek Indy mini film from Axanor Productions (precurser to raising funding before it all ended up being shut down) cost in total around $75k for around 22 minutes; that is including actors/production crews/effects/etc.
Yeah I appreciate there are tier of actors, but still if they are interested they will do it for a lesser fee, Sigourney Weaver in Doc Martin for a few episodes is an amusing example as she is a big fan.

Worth watching as it is very well done, especially when considering the budget.

Edit:
I forgot another major example, the work done by Oats Studio, context of budgets and using real actors and effects: https://oatsstudios.com/
Sigourney Weaver is an actress with one of their projects, but there are other notable big name actors/actresses as well such as Dakota Fanning, scroll down the main page to see the various projects.

 

[Jupiter]

As long as there are real actors it is good. But artists were taken for Hellblade. Good actors are important. Otherwise the developers would have to correct more in scenes by hand. I doupt that its advisable to correct more of the performances of >60 characters than necessary.

I do not see that CIG is technically caught up by others. It is rather the opposite. Since they do not have to clean up so much in the engine anymore the developers have more time for the graphics, animations, etc. On CitizenCon they showed Coruscant like planet.






Graphics
Dynamic global Illumination for indoors. The one for outdoors is ready.

CPU

Spoiler

Ds game needs good hardware without 16GB RAM it does not even work. It also requires 8 threads and a GTX 1060. Its CPU and RAM need is more of a case for the next generation of consoles.

The Procedural Animation System for leg movements which CIG showed at CitizenCon is also far supirior/more precise to all games I own on PC. Which is very good for a first person game with an unified rig.

 

[iroboto]

at this rate, oh man... kickstarter backers will make these guys billionaires.
all the kickstarting money is just going towards engine development.

Once the engine is complete, they can go to VC capital or sell the engine for massive profits.
The game is pretty secondary on their list in my opinion.

 

[swaaye]

Yeah. It's an interesting social engineering thing going on here with a multiplayer space dream and lots of graphics technology hype.

 

[Jupiter]

For me it would be one of the reasons to explore. I want to enjoy spectacular views and space events. If its ugly and boring I would not explore. Besides, they are not just working on this they also want to offer many gameplay options. In 3.0 there are missions and cargo transport. SC needed the item system first otherwise they can do everything again from the beginning.

As long as you wait you can listen to Star Citizen/Squadron 42 music on this channel:

I think Pedro Camacho is a very good composer I will buy all of his SC music CDs.

 

[swaaye]

Nevermind.

 

[eastmen]

at this rate, oh man... kickstarter backers will make these guys billionaires.
all the kickstarting money is just going towards engine development.

Once the engine is complete, they can go to VC capital or sell the engine for massive profits.
The game is pretty secondary on their list in my opinion.

At this rate they go to Disney when they are out of money and slap on a star wars coat of paint and release it as a star wars game , sell it for $60 for a single player star wars game and $15 a month for the MMORPG portion.

 

[hoom]

Wondering when the feature-list will include these minor details:

• non-janky flightmodel
• actually interesting space combat
• server that can handle a LOT more than 20 people on a LAN
• a functional economy

 

[Davros]

Wondering when the feature-list will include these minor detail:

A playable game

 

[Lefungus]

Prey 2 was announced in 2011 and until it came it took a long time. Besides, they did not change the CRYENGINE so much. Star Citizens engine on the other hand is almost completely changed visually as well as in the background.

Wikipedia states Prey, the reboot, not Prey 2, was begun by Arkane Studios around 2014 after Dishonored was done. Certainly not in 2011 because Prey 2 was aborted this year and Bethesda began looking around for a new developer.
So like most games, Prey was developed & released in around three years.

https://kotaku.com/old-leaked-design-documents-show-what-prey-couldve-been-1795295577
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=828196

Star Citizen, on the other hand did start development around 2011 and can only show a glorified tech demo with poor fps & abysmal network code.

Stating Prey started in 2011, like Star Citizen is disinformation

 

[Jupiter]

Wondering when the feature-list will include these minor details:

• non-janky flightmodel
• actually interesting space combat
• server that can handle a LOT more than 20 people on a LAN
• a functional economy

The flight model is significantly better than that of the competition. While CIG's combat is absolute not n00b friendly its great for those who have enough skills.

Elite Dangerous' is boring to me. Especially in combat. No skill at all is needed because the game auto targets as long as the player aims his ship in the right direction. If he has all front weapons heavy forward then all other points are auto target turrets so ships are hit no matter what direction the player is facing. Even with the front weapons no targeting is needed because the game auto targets them for the player. The player just have to fly a bit and keep within the area of gimbal for the weapons and they hit. When I got into PVP fights with similar sized ships I dont lose because I will use auto gimbal locked weapons. Only time I lose is when someone is camping a spot with numerous big ships and there is no chance to do anything. The lock system is not an issue. It is making sure that the weapons I am using offer a large FOV coverage. Elite Dangerous' combat is boring I opted not to play any more of it. One can grind NPC combat to earn credits to buy a bigger ship to do even less fun combat.

In 3.0 are currently 50 players on a server with several spaceships. I even participated in major tests with 60 players and 300 spaceships but currently I see the server infrastructure as the biggest weakness.

Wikipedia states Prey, the reboot, not Prey 2, was begun by Arkane Studios around 2014 after Dishonored was done. Certainly not in 2011 because Prey 2 was aborted this year and Bethesda began looking around for a new developer.
So like most games, Prey was developed & released in around three years.

https://kotaku.com/old-leaked-design-documents-show-what-prey-couldve-been-1795295577
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=828196

Star Citizen, on the other hand did start development around 2011 and can only show a glorified tech demo with poor fps & abysmal network code.

Stating Prey started in 2011, like Star Citizen is disinformation

You know there was no CIG before. Three employees at the beginning while other studios already exist. How do you get to 2011? The engine teams (UK and Frankfurt) were founded only in 2014 and 2015 which is why the development of Star Citizen starts in 2014 from my point of view.

 

[eastmen]

You know there was no CIG before. Three employees at the beginning while other studios already exist. How do you get to 2011? The engine teams (UK and Frankfurt) were founded only in 2014 and 2015 which is why the development of Star Citizen starts in 2014 from my point of view.

So they crowd funded it for millions in 2012 and then just sat around doing nothing till 2014 ?

I'm willing to give you that they didn't start till the begining of 2013 however they ramped up quickly to over 100 developers which should have been more than enough for thier original vision. They are also far behind their original release date of nov 2015. As a backer i still have not gotten any of my physical rewards for backing either

 

[Lefungus]

You know there was no CIG before. Three employees at the beginning while other studios already exist. How do you get to 2011? The engine teams (UK and Frankfurt) were founded only in 2014 and 2015 which is why the development of Star Citizen starts in 2014 from my point of view.

Ok, my mistake, 2011 is only studio creation. Wikipedia says end of 2012 for start of development, let's say 2013

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Ok, my mistake, 2011 is only studio creation. Wikipedia says end of 2012 for start of development, let's say 2013

In which case it's only starting to get as long as World of Warcraft (4-5 years original development time), Final Fantasy XIV (5 years for original release, PS3 version delayed indefinitely at that time due to it being so bad, and then finally releasing in a playable state on PC and PS3 in 2012, so 7 years for the real version), and many other MMORPGs.

If you want something really long. Diablo 3 originally started development in 2001 and didn't release until 2012...11 years. Star Citizen has a ways to go before they match that.

When talking about the development time of a game, it's good to keep in mind the scope of the game, and how fleshed out they want to make a large world. Comparing Star Citizen to single player games of much smaller scope doesn't make sense, but even in that case, as Diablo 3 shows, you can still run into cases of exceptionally long development times.

Regards,
SB