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

[Jupiter]

Some one to two year old screenshots I made in this game (multiple where made just in FullHD)





Every one of those ships has a detailed interior.











I like that I can watch outside and see flying ships etc..

 

[PSman1700]

What system specs you have?

 

[milk]

It all just reminded me of the movie synecdoche new york.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Because unlike every other game ever, it never needs to release so RSI can keep rewriting the engine with the latest tech. It'll always be the best looking game as it'll have the very latest tech ever, and it'll never release as a result because, unlike the HZDs and Uncharteds and everything else out there who pick a release date and chose a tech at the time of creation that'll aim to release for that deadline, RSI will have to keep postponing release to make it better.

Not having the same technical constraints as everyone else renders RSI's achievements far less impressive than their raw appearance seems.

This isn't quite true, although true to an extent. It IS playable, albeit at whatever alpha or beta stage the game is at.

And there are released games that are constantly rewriting or upgrading the engine as tech progresses. Just some examples.

• Warframe is pretty aggressive at this, just this year they had a massive graphical overhaul and rewrite of their engine, asset updating constantly happens to reflect better shader tech and/or progress in how to use textures.
• FFXIV sort of does this every time a new major expansion comes out, although not all of the improvements will be reflected in older content as assets would also need to be updated.
• World of Tanks is now working to start implementing RT in limited parts of the game.
• Eve Online periodically rewrites their engine for the latest rendering tech.
• CDPR used to do this with their games. Both The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 2 had engine rewrites a year or two after their release on PC in order to implement more advanced graphics tech that didn't exist during their development.

Each one of those (with the exception of the CDPR games) will also, at certain points in their lifetime discard legacy tech baggage and require more modern graphics hardware. Even FFXIV on console did this by deprecating support for the PS3.

Just because a game is released doesn't mean it has to stop updating/rewriting the engine for the newest tech.

IMO, I think it's fair to talk about the tech in these kinds of games compared to games that have been released.

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This isn't quite true, although true to an extent. It IS playable, albeit at whatever alpha or beta stage the game is at.

And there are released games that are constantly rewriting or upgrading the engine as tech progresses. Just some examples.

Just because a game is released doesn't mean it has to stop updating/rewriting the engine for the newest tech.

Indeed, they all release. CIG is refusing to 'release' SC so they can keep upgrading it. So, new tech comes out, raytracing. FFX and Eve Online are finishing up their latest upgrade which doesn't include RT, and they'll incorporate RT in a future update years away. In contrast, CIG ditch their current work and start incorporating RT, and role out PR video of their bleeding-edge technology doing what no-one else is doing. If CIG were actually beholden to customers, they'd have to work a few years behind the bleeding edge, same as everyone else.

They have the luxury of being able to jump to the latest, greatest tech which no-one else running a conventional business can do.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Indeed, they all release. CIG is refusing to 'release' SC so they can keep upgrading it. So, new tech comes out, raytracing. FFX and Eve Online are finishing up their latest upgrade which doesn't include RT, and they'll incorporate RT in a future update years away. In contrast, CIG ditch their current work and start incorporating RT, and role out PR video of their bleeding-edge technology doing what no-one else is doing. If CIG were actually beholden to customers, they'd have to work a few years behind the bleeding edge, same as everyone else.

They have the luxury of being able to jump to the latest, greatest tech which no-one else running a conventional business can do.

Sure, but it's all still "playable" by backers of the game. The amount of content varies depending on what a person is looking for, so that is certainly a point of contention. Myself, I jump in every now and then to see the state of the engine, but without a storyline for me to follow, I don't stick with it. OTOH, a friend of mine has spent hundreds of hours in this "unreleased" game.

Regards,
SB

 

[PSman1700]

I want to try this game myself on my own pc sometime, do i need to pay to play it? I'm not so interested in the game/story but i would like to experience the graphics myself, have a touch of next gen, have only seen the game being played by a friend so far. Bought a ryzen 7 3700x pc, with a 2080 (non Ti), nvme ssd and 32gb ram. I don't think i will have too much trouble, not expecting 60fps at 4k either.

 

[cheapchips]

I want to try this game myself on my own pc sometime, do i need to pay to play it? I'm not so interested in the game/story but i would like to experience the graphics myself, have a touch of next gen, have only seen the game being played by a friend so far. Bought a ryzen 7 3700x pc, with a 2080 (non Ti), nvme ssd and 32gb ram. I don't think i will have too much trouble, not expecting 60fps at 4k either.

They do free weekends every so often, so you could keep an eye out for those.

 

[Jupiter]

It seems that Gamersyde made a video from the current version:
https://www.gamersyde.com/download_star_citizen_alpha_3_7-44294_en.html

It's also on Youtube:

What system specs you have?

All right but on the GPU side not enough for my demends. A jump to the RTX 2080Ti would be too small for me and so I'll wait till next year. In Star Citizen the CPU also plays an important role but I'm waiting for a reason to upgrade. At the moment I prefer to wait until I know exactly what the game will need.

It all just reminded me of the movie synecdoche new york.

Never heard of this movie before. Maybe I will have an eye on it.


EDIT:

In 2013 Star Citizen looked different

 

[Rootax]

This is a technical analysis video about the technical aspects of a technically ambitious game .. developer politics, gameplay, game reviews is not and should not be part of the discussion.

If it should be part of the discussion then why not also mention the agressive monetization schemes in Ghost Recon Breakpoint or Battlefront 2 or FIFA or whatever, in their respective technical videos. How about loot boxes and the horrible gambling practices in dozen other titles? There will be no end to this kind of distractions.

Well, it's maybe needed to clean the industry...

 

[Jupiter]

I am not into streaming but Lirik seems to be one of the famous ones. Yesterday he streamed SC and people in the chat went crazy some times:

They particularly liked the 890 jump. Altogether I found it funny. It was like a story and the other players were funny too. One gave him a turtle as a present, the other one a bear, one has an cockney accent, the other a disfigured look and so on.

 

[Malo]

That 890 is just insane. The scale of what they're building in SC is way beyond anything else.

 

[Jupiter]

I was able to test the 890 Jump for a few hours. I liked the many panorama windows and the hangar the best. The hangar offers room for one or multiple smaller ships. Big ships like the 890 Jump or Reclaimer can jump faster but they need a lot more fuel and are also slow in the atmosphere. Some can't even hold their own weight in the atmosphere. With another ship inside the bigger ship you could for example leave the big ship in space and then do something with a smaller ship like the mining ship on a planet or moon. A ground vehicle can also be transported on the rear ramp.

If CIG finally makes progress with server OCS and AI then the ship could house many NPCs which can do something. Currently it is often a little too empty for the size. I also hope that a ship of this size will allow small side missions without leaving the ship. For space stations they want to introduce secondary missions soon. There you will be able to repair internal systems.

The fact that the server OCS is not ready yet holds back a lot in the game. Then they can fill the world with a lot of NPCs, players and areas. Currently the server performance would suffer too much.

Here is the ship size chart for all planned and finished ships.

Hopefully my Carrack (Prometheus like ship but smaller) will be ready by the end of the year.


I always wondered how the want to make capital ship battles look awesome. In the Squadron 42 roadmap they are saying (features section) that they want a "softbody collision simulation on rigid objectst" which uses "the physics engine to create a system that looks spectacular and […} behaves realistically when large objects such as ships are being damaged by weaponry or colliding with other ships, locations, or even planets."

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/2-Squadron-42

 

[Jupiter]

This isn't quite true, although true to an extent. It IS playable, albeit at whatever alpha or beta stage the game is at.

And there are released games that are constantly rewriting or upgrading the engine as tech progresses. Just some examples.

• Warframe is pretty aggressive at this, just this year they had a massive graphical overhaul and rewrite of their engine, asset updating constantly happens to reflect better shader tech and/or progress in how to use textures.
• FFXIV sort of does this every time a new major expansion comes out, although not all of the improvements will be reflected in older content as assets would also need to be updated.
• World of Tanks is now working to start implementing RT in limited parts of the game.
• Eve Online periodically rewrites their engine for the latest rendering tech.
• CDPR used to do this with their games. Both The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 2 had engine rewrites a year or two after their release on PC in order to implement more advanced graphics tech that didn't exist during their development.

Each one of those (with the exception of the CDPR games) will also, at certain points in their lifetime discard legacy tech baggage and require more modern graphics hardware. Even FFXIV on console did this by deprecating support for the PS3.

Just because a game is released doesn't mean it has to stop updating/rewriting the engine for the newest tech.

IMO, I think it's fair to talk about the tech in these kinds of games compared to games that have been released.

Regards,
SB

I thought about it and I think there are some very good points in it. For me Star Citizen can be called a game since a few patches. Sure it has more bugs than many games but they usally dont break the game. If you know the game well you can also avoid most of the bugs. It's also very interesting when something new is always added. That makes it even more exciting than having a "finished product" where nothing changes and you have to wait for the successor. Whenever a new SC patch comes it also motivates me to play the game.

One cannot say it's just a tech demo anymore. Tech demos are mostly just highly polished and isolated demos without an asset-complete run-time environment. Now there are many gameplay possibilities in Star Citizen. In this game you can also earn money to borrow ships. From my point of view Star Citizen is already a game.

 

[Jupiter]

They do free weekends every so often, so you could keep an eye out for those.

Thy just announced that there will be one for Alpha 3.7.1 soon.

In about four weeks the CitizenCon takes place. This is always the biggest Star Citizen event of the year with some content showing the future of Star Citizen. There will also be exciting presentations. Last year I thought it was first class.

There are already leaks and I'm curious if they're right.

I want to try this game myself on my own pc sometime, do i need to pay to play it? I'm not so interested in the game/story but i would like to experience the graphics myself, have a touch of next gen, have only seen the game being played by a friend so far. Bought a ryzen 7 3700x pc, with a 2080 (non Ti), nvme ssd and 32gb ram. I don't think i will have too much trouble, not expecting 60fps at 4k either.

For newcomers it could be very complicated. Apart from some in-game advice they still do not have enough help to get started.

 

[jlippo]

Thy just announced that there will be one for Alpha 3.7.1 soon.

In about four weeks the CitizenCon takes place. This is always the biggest Star Citizen event of the year with some content showing the future of Star Citizen. There will also be exciting presentations. Last year I thought it was first class.

Last years presentations were amazing.
The volumetric cloud presentation would have fitted nicely to GDC.

 

[Jupiter]

Free Flight Week Starting Monday 28th of October for the whole week.
https://mailchi.mp/cloudimperiumgames/freebirds-142071?e=17605a099d

___

CizizenCon 2949 shedule : https://robertsspaceindustries.com/citizencon/schedule

22 November 2019, 13:00 - 23:30 (UK)

Anvil Stage Panels (will be live on Twitch, YouTube etc.)
1. Opening ceremony
2. Planet Tech 4 (weather, better visuals?)
3. showing new MicoTech planet
4. some stuff about the lore of this game
5. new game mode where you probably can test fps and vehicle gameplay (could be something like Battlefield 2142 with vehicles and soldiers)
6. unknown content
7. Cosplay Contest
8. "Feel the power of the backend tool that lets us edit your universe" (dont know what they will show there)
9. Main presentation. Keynote (1 hour 30 minutes) showing new gamelay, Chris Roberts will talk about the future, maybe some Squadron 42

Croshaw Auditorium (most of them will only be uploadet later (no livestream))
1. Xenolinguistics
2. sound of space ships
3. first insight into prisons (criminal players can get into prison. How will the gameplay be inside prisons?) -> will be livestreamed
4. they will showkase the new UI
5. armor archetypes
6. talk about the new ships of CitizenCon

Last years presentations were amazing.
The volumetric cloud presentation would have fitted nicely to GDC.

It takes a lot of memory to do something like that. In the future games will need a lot more memory to make huge jumps in the graphics area. Hopefully the next consoles will get as much memory as possible. Then you could do a lot more graphically.

 

[Jupiter]

The game is inconsistent. Some videos look really good and some videos are rather unimpressive. But there are too many versions of the game, so it might be because we're looking at an old build.

There is one consistent point that impresses me since the beginning though, it's the polygon density that is clearly unmatched.

I think that I've already said this but they mostly don't bake normal maps into objects. Instead they are using bent normals/ weighted vertex normals on the edges of objects. CIGs assets have a higher triangle count per object than most other games. However, this comes at the cost of the texture footprint.

Some other games also use this but with Star Citizen I am very satisfied with the level of detail per object. If something bothers me it's rather some unsharp dirt shaders that lie above it. In general, however, it must be said that problems with assets are more noticeable in games from the first perspective since you're much closer to them.

The triangle count does not depend on the size of the object but rather how important the object is for the player. Objects which can be picked and viewed up close have for more detail.

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/VertexNormal

https://polycount.com/discussion/154664/a-short-explanation-about-custom-vertex-normals-tutorial

 

[jlippo]

I think that I've already said this but they mostly don't bake normal maps into objects. Instead they are using bent normals/ weighted vertex normals on the edges of objects CIGs assets have a higher triangle count per object than most other games. However, this comes at the cost of the texture footprint.

Some other games also use this but with Star Citizen I am very satisfied with the level of detail per object. If something bothers me it's rather some unsharp dirt shaders that lie above it. In general, however, it must be said that problems with assets are more noticeable in games from the first perspective since you're much closer to them.

The triangle count does not depend on the size of the object but rather how important the object is for the player. Objects which can be picked and viewed up close have for more detail.

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/VertexNormal

https://polycount.com/discussion/154664/a-short-explanation-about-custom-vertex-normals-tutorial

They save quite nice amount of memory and get nice and defined hard surfaces with vertex normals.
Quite happy not to see classic normal map compression artifacts and resolution problems.

They also use parallax mapping quite tastefully.

 

[Jupiter]

Free Fligh started: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/promotions/37-Free-Fly

For newcomers it could be very complicated. Apart from some in-game advice they still do not have enough help to get started.

Now there is well made "New Player Guide to Star Citizen"

Another one

They save quite nice amount of memory and get nice and defined hard surfaces with vertex normals.
Quite happy not to see classic normal map compression artifacts and resolution problems.

They also use parallax mapping quite tastefully.

Exactly. Especially with objects as small as screws you could often think they are 3D. POM is used very well there.