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

[hoom]

In a universe where a truck sized spaceship is capable providing life-support for extended periods, powering shields, high-power energy weapons & FTL travel, where your hud knows your position at high precision relative to your ship through hundreds of meters of rock and your space-suit has built-in lights: can someone explain to me why the fuck you need to buy glow-sticks to help you navigate in a cave?

With that kind of tech some primary school kid should be able to write a hud program that generates a glowing floating track of your route.

But 'fidelity' or some other poorly though out bullshit I guess

 

[Jupiter]

The caves are sometimes complex and players get lost. These glowsticks can used as a way marker and it lights up the place for about thirty minutes. This makes it easier to know where you've already been.

With the HUD you can't do any routes or scans of caves yet. I don't know when something like this is coming or if something like this is coming at all. As long as we don't have this stuff these simple glowsticks can help a bit out.

EDIT:
Interesting interview with Marco Corbetta (he worked on FarCry, Crysis 1 etc.)
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=it&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eurogamer.it%2Farticles%2F2019-10-15-star-citizen-e-come-sviluppare-tre-tripla-a-simultaneamente-speciale%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0avIDKoqnVhlfcQgs2s3wjpCtdou7kC754ZUjXXeO-ulU0NKGl9-wCKsE

EG.it: From the technical point of view, what is the most difficult challenge to face in developing Star Citizen?

The scale and the level of detail: the simulation of a complex, highly detailed universe with stratified narrative represents a very ambitious and difficult challenge to face. It's like developing several triple A simultaneously, online and on a much larger scale. This approach concerns every technical aspect of Star Citizen: practically the entire core of the original engine has been rewritten to be able to travel seamlessly from one part of the universe to the other, visiting planets and orbiting stations without having to share the same system in separate layers and then stop the game to make uploads. This work is the basis for continuous expansion, from the Stanton system to the other systems. There are so many aspects that continue to be developed to compose this shared universe on the net. We add them to the game in the updates we release every three months.

About Planet Tech 4

Procedural and planetary technologies have been and will always be the result of incremental improvements. We will give detailed information on the V4 technology during this year's "CitizenCon". The technology will be ready when the new Microtech planet is released and all existing planets will be converted to the new version. This modular and procedural development will help us develop the Earth in the future, given that some of the parts of such a complex planet are already scattered in the game, such as the different climate environments in Hurston, Microtech, Levski, the first version of the cities in Arccorp and etc.

 

[hoom]

The caves are sometimes complex and players get lost. These glowsticks can used as a way marker and it lights up the place for about thirty minutes. This makes it easier to know where you've already been.

You missed the point.

Given the tech in the fictional universe using glow sticks is the equivalent of people walking around in present day reality with a modern smart-phone in one pocket and an abacus in the other because a smart-phone can't be used for calculating numbers.

 

[SlmDnk]

The project rakes in millions in profits and RSI still can't hire talent good enough to make the faces look realistic. That's what always catches my eye in gameplay videos; the very gamey-looking faces.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The caves are sometimes complex and players get lost. These glowsticks can used as a way marker and it lights up the place for about thirty minutes. This makes it easier to know where you've already been.

I think that's the point. If the caves are large, the only way to know where you've been to wander through the caves to see if they are lit-up. This is definitely sub-optimal compared to a HUD-based auto-map, where you can see where you can been compared to where to have not. Think Diablo III's auto-map.

This is a) better for the actual player, and b) consistent with the technology in the universe. I don't have a problem with glow-sicks per se, if for example it is possible to be in environments where your HUD simply does not work in which case you need an emergency fallback but as the primary method of navigating locales like this it's an odd choice.

 

[hoom]

*Waiting for ships to start dropping trails of glowsticks as they fly around, because space is dark y'all*

 

[Jupiter]

CitizenCon Livestream started: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/citizencon/livestream

 

[BRiT]

Is Con for Confidence or Convention in this context?

 

[Jupiter]

Guide System where other player can help new players
https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/guide

microTechnicalities
New bioms, space stations and the landing area looking epic. Nothing comes close. Why is there currently nothing comparable in the gaming industry? What CIG's doing is a new genre to me.

Loremaker’s Guide to 2949
I am not deep into the lore stuff but the Galactapedia looks great and extensive. You can get lost in it.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/galactapedia

It's good that they want to bring this also into the game world (Mobiglas?).

Shoot ‘em Up
The livestream stutters annoyingly here...
Theatres of War is the new mode in Star Marine. This combined arms mode will be more Battlefield like with seamles fighting from ground to space. In general I would call this a compressed PU experience. SC is not this type of game where you can play only half an hour at a time. Here you can jump into and get fast action. With Theatres of War they can also balance a lot of weapons, space ships, ground vehicles etc.

This mode is what Star Wars Battlefront players asking since 2004. A mode with

Alien languages
That was not suitable for such aneEvent. Should have shown prison gameplay instead!

Cosplay stuff
Was funny.

Building a Dynamic Universe
They talked one hour about SC's economy. Sounds complex to me. The functioning demo was interesting and I know that some people would like to play such an economy simulation.



CitizenCon Gameplay presentation:

-he wakes up in the Carrack spaceship and then flies with a smaller C8 Pieces spaceship (which is inside the bigger spaceship) to the Microtech planet
-they look over the new ice landscapes and landing in a space port which has a new and more modern architecture style compared to Lorville and Area 18
-they are going to the mission giver and take a id card and clothing with them (clothing has real-time physics)
-board an AI-controlled Valkyrie spacecraft and fly to the mission point
-they can enter trough the id card and then they sneak and steal something
-flee and come into a blizzard whereby the player can freeze to death (new weather system and survival mechanics)
-finds new clothes that will keep the character warm
-finds a rover with a physically calculated tarpaulin on it
-the colleague lands with Carrack and he drives with the rover into the hangar of that space ship
-turret fire fights with followers
-flies to a jump gate (looks like in Stargate?) to enter a new solar system
-goes into the jump gate and sees the new Pyro solar system

Almost everything in the video will be available in the game soon.


Can't wait explore my Carrack spaceship:

I thought it was exciting. But they forgot to activate the gyro mode in the Carrack turret. It would have been much easier to aim with that enabled.


When they announced yesterday that they would move the Carrack from December to February I was angry. At least I'll see it today in the presentation.

 

[nutball]

TBH I'll wait for the FTR review.

 

[Jupiter]

You mean that Failure To Report dude? Haha no. Beeing anti-SC seems to be his only thing. He's got videos of him talking negative about SC for 10 hours in a row. Anyway, he seems to like wasting life time.

He also talked badly about hover mode. Only because of crying N00bs like him (and many others) they took the awesome mode out again. That was probably too demanding for many.

 

[nutball]

is exactly what I meant.

Sorry but him >> you IMO.

 

[techuse]

Any info on release dates?

 

[Jupiter]

Economy in Star Citizen

1 % graphics and 99 % gameplay. Looks like a complex economic simulation.

Any info on release dates?

There is a roadmap on the websitde and probably they will talk about Squadron 42 in December.

EDIT:

Some presentations

Star Citizen: CitizenCon 2949 - Locked Up
https://youtu.be/99Z7tXKEOwk

 

[Jay]

BBC Click (their technology program)

 

[Jupiter]

Alpha 3.8 is out: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/17370-Alpha-38-New-Frontiers

New industrial mining space ship for multi crew gameplay (Orion loaner)

The new tech (also weather tech) for planets and moons is really good.

One can see every little mountain from space. When flying to the surface there are no surface changes. Sure they need to improve LODs and other stuff but when whole planets with billion times the surface area have the detail from other games thats a new level for me. Besides you fly with 1000 km/h over the surface. If you were on foot the pop ups would be much less visible.
Currently they are currently working on Vulkan/Gen12 renderer and we'll see how much that brings. They already wrote some interesting comments about it.

Here you can see them zooming out fast

Low flying
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/eb6c9n/38_microtech_multi_biomes_insane_ship_sounds/

BBC Click (their technology program)

Interestingly they are saying that releasing a new and big alpha version every quarter slows down the development a bit. I think that it worths the price since this year it's my most played title for the first time.

 

[Malo]

New industrial mining space ship for multi crew gameplay (Orion loaner)

I like how they presented the ad for the M.O.L.E. in the cliche US F-150 style.

 

[PSman1700]

I guess PS5 will be able to this kind of graphics without problem?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I've been watching Lawlman stream this on Twitch the past week or so, and I have to say the game is finally at a point where I can say it's extremely impressive. There are still quite a few rough spots, but you can finally see things coming together and work on ironing out some of the major problems in previous releases has progressed significantly. For example, far less deaths due to bad net code and rubber banding players slamming into other players and killing them.

FPS gun play has progressed significantly where it isn't really janky, but NPC AI is still horrible.

Squadron 42 assets are pretty spiffy looking and polished as well.

Also, while I wish I had as much money as some of these people throwing thousands of USD at the developers to buy some of the premium ships, it is almost awe inspiring to see them in game either flying past you or just wandering around inside of them. The sheer scale of some of the larger ships is impressive, not to mention how well things work inside of them.

It's still years away from a release (although Squadron 42 will obviously release sooner), assuming it's not something that is just continually worked on for as long as people are willing to spend money on it. But there's already one completely playable system in game replete with quests, shops, planets, moons, asteroids, pirates, space stations, etc. And there's still a lot of jankiness (cargo on cargo elevators going into and out of ships, for example), but it's finally looking like something that many people would find playable.

Still not for me, but at least I know that there's a fair bit of stuff to do in the current patch so that I don't feel like the 15 USD I spent to crowd fund (even before they put it on Kickstarter) the game is going to waste.

Regards,
SB

 

[Jupiter]

I like how they presented the ad for the M.O.L.E. in the cliche US F-150 style.

I had to check right away and it's true. In general, the advertising trailers in the game seem more similar to those from the USA. In Germany advertising is different and more boring.

I guess PS5 will be able to this kind of graphics without problem?

It should at least for the first few years. However, I would not expect 60fps.