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

[Jupiter]

Weekly Sneak Peek - Dragonfly in-engine

 

[eastmen]

If I'm funding the game instead of pre-purchasing it, when will I get my shares of benefits ?

what benfits ? They took away so many from those of us there at the start.

 

[homerdog]

what benfits ? They took away so many from those of us there at the start.

At least you get to watch the sexy Asian lady talk about videogames like she gives a shit. It's pretty hilarious IMO.

 

[eastmen]

At least you get to watch the sexy Asian lady talk about videogames like she gives a shit. It's pretty hilarious IMO.

What you mean Chris's wife that's a failed model and actress that is some how qualified to be vice president of a 100m + company ?

The whole project has started to seem like Chris failed in Hollywood and came back to video games to try and make his Hollywood vision.

 

[swaaye]

It's almost like the old Ion Storm story, except I don't think Romero conned Eidos out of that much money. I'm waiting with baited breath to see if Star Citizen turns out to be the greatest failure of all time. Of course I would prefer it to be the most amazing space game imaginable. But...yeah not convinced at the moment.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What you mean Chris's wife that's a failed model and actress that is some how qualified to be vice president of a 100m + company ?

That's some wacky logic. I ran my own company and wasn't a successful model or actor. Strangely this "fail" did not hold me back, it's like it's a completely unrelated skill set or something! And yes, my other half the time was Company Secretary

 

[eastmen]

That's some wacky logic. I ran my own company and wasn't a successful model or actor. Strangely this "fail" did not hold me back, it's like it's a completely unrelated skill set or something! And yes, my other half the time was Company Secretary

Is the company your running making 2-4m a month and have customer support needs of 200k people and growing ?

 

[eastmen]

It's almost like the old Ion Storm story, except I don't think Romero conned Eidos out of that much money. I'm waiting with baited breath to see if Star Citizen turns out to be the greatest failure of all time. Of course I would prefer it to be the most amazing space game imaginable. But...yeah not convinced at the moment.

At least John tried and was part of projects that were delievered on time. John's biggest problem is that without Carmack he was behind the tech curve and not in front of it. If he had access to the newest engines from ID from the start he wouldn't have had the problem. Instead he had to restart the project to get it on a modern engine.

The thing is Chris could have taken the money and made this game and gotten some lower end actors that he could have paid scale to. Maybe get Mark for a cameo due to his Wing Commander past. But instead he hired A list Celebs. The money used for them could have been spent on more devs to make the game.

If you look at this production company its just a string of failures leading to him coming back to gaming.

 

[Jupiter]

PCGHardware published an article too

Some content:
"And although we certainly can not calm all critical voices - nor should we want to - one thing is immediately certain: the development of Star Citizen continues on and will make a clearly visible jump in the near future for backers."

"The AI allows eye contact during cutscenes or regular conversations while the player is allowed to roam freely around which is difficult as you need to constanly change lightning and reflections"

"CIG has physically based render solution to switch clothes, hairstyles etc easily during conversations"

PCGH saw some of the cutscenes and call it something that has never be seen up to now. Ships flying through volumetric gas clouds in space. RSI aims to run the cutscenes in real time

"More complex models of weapons, such as a be located at the time of our visit to work shoulder weapon for ship defense, consisting of over 60,000 triangles. For Relation: One of the very detailed main characters in The Witcher 3 is composed of about 40,000 polygons."

A few screenhots

Spoiler

Source: http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Star-Citizen-Spiel-3481/Specials/Studio-Preview-1204131/

PCGHardware visited the Studio in late June.

Tomorrow at 20:00 UTC CIG will have a live stream with new stuff.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Is the company your running making 2-4m a month and have customer support needs of 200k people and growing ?

That was some time ago, not now. We were supporting about 3m customers. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything?

 

[swaaye]

At least John tried and was part of projects that were delievered on time. John's biggest problem is that without Carmack he was behind the tech curve and not in front of it. If he had access to the newest engines from ID from the start he wouldn't have had the problem. Instead he had to restart the project to get it on a modern engine.

The thing is Chris could have taken the money and made this game and gotten some lower end actors that he could have paid scale to. Maybe get Mark for a cameo due to his Wing Commander past. But instead he hired A list Celebs. The money used for them could have been spent on more devs to make the game.

If you look at this production company its just a string of failures leading to him coming back to gaming.

I think Ion Storm had many more problems than just technology. But you're right they did eventually ship some decent stuff. Not so much Romero's game though.

Yeah you can feel Robert's desire to make big movies looking at this game. Too bad he went feature creep insane and also wants to make the biggest MMO in history. It's just crazy. He should have just built Squadron 42 first. But it looks like fueling imaginations with hype is bringing money in quite well so why bother. Heh

 

[homerdog]

I think Ion Storm had many more problems than just technology. But you're right they did eventually ship some decent stuff. Not so much Romero's game though.

Yeah you can feel Robert's desire to make big movies looking at this game. Too bad he went feature creep insane and also wants to make the biggest MMO in history. It's just crazy. He should have just built Squadron 42 first. But it looks like fueling imaginations with hype is bringing money in quite well so why bother. Heh

It's gonna be the best FPS and the best space sim and the best MMO with the best acting and the best graphics and the best sound. Pretty much the best everything

 

[milk]

It's gonna be the best FPS and the best space sim and the best MMO with the best acting and the best graphics and the best sound. Pretty much the best everything

pretty much like trespasser.

 

[jlippo]

pretty much like trespasser.

Trespasser was best of it's kind for a long time.
Yes, it was a mess, but still.

 

[homerdog]

I would say ambition is generally a good thing, but it can quickly turn into insanity when you have the entire Internet showering you in dollar bills.

 

[Jupiter]

1 hour Alpha 3.0 gameplay

They will show more modern 3.0 gameplay at CitizencCon.

This Gameplay was awesome. They showed even more gameplay than I thought they would do. I dont know what was the most amazing part. Maybe the entry into the atmosphere of the planet or the hovering Dragonfly.


Planetary re-entry effects: https://clips.twitch.tv/starcitizen/GloriousEchidnaDeExcite

This game will be very CPU heavy when one can see ships flying outside from a very detailed station on a planet. The player in the Freelancer could even the the elevator moving from outside.

Spoiler

Landing on Nyx screenshots

Spoiler

Drake Dragonfly

Spoiler

Besides ArcCorp, Hurston, Microtech, Crusader and Delemar there will be 30-40 new space stations with more than 400 landing platforms without counting asteroid belts etc.
3.0 should launch at the end of the year with much more content and new technolgy like Item System 2.0, StarNetwork 1.0, Subsumpion AI.

 

[milk]

yeah, that video just made me eat my words a little bit. It seems to be in a lot better shape than I imagined. Still unsure if they can create all the content they've set out to within that stupidly high quality bar. Specially, if they can do it fast enough that the game is not already technologicaly obsolete when it gets to release in full form. I hope for the best of course...

 

[Jupiter]

My summary with the most important things outside of the gameplay video from the Gamescom presentation for you guys

Alpha 2.6 will have Star Marine and an improved Arena Commander
Star Marine = fps and Zero G arena where FPS can be played
-improved control and movement in FPS and EVA
-better character models with new tech
-improved gun handling

Arena Commander = Arena for fast ship fights
-flight and control improvements
-impoved camera modes
-new multiplayer map
-new race track in asteroid belt

Flyable Herald and the Vanguard (with the Drob Ship module)

Alpha 3.0
-full Stanton System with all planets like ArcCorp, Hurston, Microtech and Crusdaer (Delemar is normally not located in the Stanton System but they integrate it until the Nyx System arrives)
-over a dozen moons
-30-40 space stations
-much lore (look at the ARK map on RSI)
-artist driven planets: they decide where the oceans, mountains, trees will be located
-basic professions: first implementation of selling, trading, piracy, mercenary, bounty hunting
-first iteration of the AI System
-Item 2.0: when the player get into his ship he can do more things with one item; he can use a water bottle, drink it, put it down etc.; picking up objects and moving them around; rapairing the ship, switching damaged objects inside the ship etc.
-netcode refactoring will increase performance
-Subsumption Mission System: allows to have dynamic missions where you can interact with NPCs

Some of these elements were not in this demo. The demo at CitizenCon in October will be more refined. It will also have an improved PlanetaryTech 2 which was not shown in this demo. -->CIG community manager just said that PlanetaryTech 2 will have flora and fauna.

yeah, that video just made me eat my words a little bit. It seems to be in a lot better shape than I imagined. Still unsure if they can create all the content they've set out to within that stupidly high quality bar. Specially, if they can do it fast enough that the game is not already technologicaly obsolete when it gets to release in full form. I hope for the best of course...

The stations were build modular by CIG. If the assets for Crusader, Microtech, Hursten etc. are done soon they can assemble hundreds of stations relative fast.
CIG wanted to develop the technolgy behind the game at first. Then they can create content exponentially faster. The programmers are developing tools which will allow one artist to build/shape one planet in one day. All of this will pay off in retrospect.

I see a bigger problem in eliminating the bugs and glitches.. Hopefully the new FPS system -combined with Item System 2.0- will eliminated much problems from the scratch.
The physical-based EVA eliminated many bugs with EVA with one/two patches.


EDIT:
New 2.5 ships

ARGO:

Reliant:

 

[Malo]

yeah, that video just made me eat my words a little bit. It seems to be in a lot better shape than I imagined. Still unsure if they can create all the content they've set out to within that stupidly high quality bar. Specially, if they can do it fast enough that the game is not already technologicaly obsolete when it gets to release in full form. I hope for the best of course...

Yeah they're getting all the core components together well and it's working fantastic. Doing that en masse with a lot of content is going to be a massive effort though. As you said, the quality is insanely high.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Just to be clear:
- there's still no release date for Squadron 42, which the developer claimed last year that the first episode would be available this year?