Chris Roberts new project... Star Citizen

[muppetts]

I miss Wingman's Hanger (aka Nutz), so much of the new vid segments have never for me had the same personnel touch + I have yet to see any of them show any presentation chops bar Mr Disco Lando who I would have fronting all the vid segments. Sandy and Chris no doubt have many skills but being in front of a camera is not one of them!

[RegisterMe]

I haven't been keeping up to date with Star Citizen, at all. What's the current status / expectations for release?

[muppetts]

Well given that the early Alpha is still 3 months away from releasing to the pub for testing, i think a release of the main game is still 24 months away. I have seen nothing to suggest the 40+ mission (something like that) squad 42 will be out any sooner either.

I used to play Murray races and the Swarm but have not logged in for over a year and at this point I will probably not for another 18 months. Once I get an idea of when the non wipe beta is I will get stuck in.

[RegisterMe]

Oh well, I guess it will be a while before I fly my Connie then. Thanks anyway muppetts .

[muppetts]

Yeah your gunna need them to develop the A.I NPC's to fly the badboy properly anyway and they have not even started on that yet.

[Redvers Ganderpoke]

I think I'll wait until I retire before I give this a go. ED will have probably completed it 10 year plan by then as well.

[segmentationfault]

Alpha 3.0 could be a good time start to follow the project more closely. We don't know when it will be released for public but AtV every Thursday should give some ideas.

To me Alpha 3.0 looks absolutely amazing and can't wait to be able to play some more.

[muppetts]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... GcG0g7GsOI

Watch from 13.00 mins in for new cities, kinda blew me away when they started to fly over it all, gets really impressive.

23.30 great seemless exit and detail.

So that's a loadless journey from inside a building on foot to an orbital station, I know that there is allot of hate on SC but this is impressive stuff either way.

[Morkonan]

...So that's a loadless journey from inside a building on foot to an orbital station, I know that there is allot of hate on SC but this is impressive stuff either way.

This looks great. I hope Egosoft can release X4 before SC gets released!

I don't know much about "hate" with the exception of a few controversies that crept up over the past year or so. They're obviously pushing boundaries in development, so the money is well spent.

Lots of greebles. I wonder how in the heck they generated a whole world covered in believable architecture! Some of it is sort of obvious, but the "city clumps" have to have a great deal of detailed auto-generation behind them. A whole planet can't be done "by hand" and I wonder about the tech they used to help create it.

Saw a couple of characters locked in a "T-Pose." Lol!

The first-person camera... That strafing? What's up with that? It may just be the user's habit in movement, but that was a bit motion-sickness-inducing sort of walk. I felt constantly pulled to the right and I hope that's just the operator trying to strefe to show everything. The FoV may need to be a tiny bit wider, too, in first-person. I liked the third-person view, though.

And, all this is great, but how long until the gamers demand "fast travel" in what appears to largely be detailed scenery designed for "walking simulator" travel?

[Aken_Bosch]

This looks great. I hope Egosoft can release X4 before SC gets released!

Worry not, we'll probably see X5 before this gets released!

To put it bluntly, there was an idea for a great game, and there are a lot of very talented artist and programmers giving their best to pull it off someway...if only all of them weren't at the mercy of an appallingly awful project management, that literally burned (and still is burning) dozens upon dozens of millions of backer funds through refactorings, changes of scope, plainly wacky pointless gameplay ideas (I'll let to you do a search about pooping mechanics, no joke)...and almost regularly every year, they come up with a wonderful tech demo showing a lot of amazing stuff that of course is nowhere to be seen in any actual playable release...Alpha 3.0 should have been a matter of weeks coming the end of 2016, after that dazzling demo showing the sandworm on a desert planet, and is still nowhere to be seen a full year later, while what remains of that 3.0 (with a vastly reduced set of features) is still under close doors testing by a restricted pool of backer-testers.
On the Squadron 42 front in the meantime, everything is eerily silent.

To top it off, just shortly before (or after, can't remember) their latest convention they came with another of their "concept ship" sale, literally selling the idea (accompanied by a fancy jpeg of course) of a ship intended for a number of gameplay concept of features that they didn't even start to really think through (base building, planetary colonization and whatnot), let alone actually implement in any playable form anywhere, all of this for the meager sum of 850,00 $ each.
It's a matter of personal perception and I'm fully aware of that, but I personally fail to see how this can be seen as normal, or as part of a honest and healthy development cycle of a videogame.

And it's a real pity, because I've been more than eager to part of my good share of money for a properly made remake of the glorious Wing Commanders of old, even with a whiff of MMO gaming thrown in...as it stands, whatever is slowly crawling out of this twisted development doesn't resemble anything that was originally kickstarted, my opinion being that Chris Roberts is simply incapable of managing any such projects, as he already extensively demonstrated back in Digital Anvil times, when he practically showed the very same development pattern with Freelancer, almost considered as vaporware at a certain point and published in the end (and in a considerably limited version compared to its initial pitch) only thank to Microsoft taking the helm of the project while practically kicking Roberts out of his own role.

I'm in no hurry of seeing this release, and I'll be more than happy to give them my 50-60 € eventually for a good released game, but the more time goes by, the more my eyebrow gets raised by what I'm seeing.

[Golden_Gonads]

On the Squadron 42 front in the meantime, everything is eerily silent.

There's a livestream of it in December and they'll be sharing their 'roadmap for its completion'... Which I'm hoping is nonsense-speak for 'release date'.

[Chips]

As said before, backed it (see thread start ) but since then kept pretty much clear of everything - which means i almost forget about it at times whilst playing Guild Wars 2 instead.

However, the other year when I heard about the FPS fighting with squads... that was a serious low point.

Still, I've spent more on stuff I played for less than 1 hour, so will just keep waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting... all I wanted was Freelancer 2

[muppetts]

I think calling it a tech demo at this point is silly, I'm playing it now, ship combat, system missions, pirate missions, very freelancer evolved but WAYYYY beyond a tech demo. I have 170 hours of play time in various elements, from the FPS, to co-op combat to PvP to PvE.

I agree there have been lots of issues but then again no one has ever done this before in the history of game design, name one major game dev house that has the production schedule published and updates weekly with blogs, live show, (have you watch Bug Smashers?). This is revolutionary as much as many people do not want it to be.

So many people Want this to fail, to reinforce their belief that this is not possible. I'm not blind, I signed up to a process of 5-6 years from the 4th week but developing in public is brutal, every mistake, every fk up is live and in the public.

End story I think this is still getting there and will happen. Plus lets be honest here, I put in £20 quid and I have had 170 hours of fun and still do last man standing and co-op fighters and FPS at the weekend.

I think people obsess over the bad and refuse to comment on the great stuff. These tech breakthroughs and game design and the right of passage will be something Roberts and the company will be able to bank off for some time. I don't see a company in trouble, I see a company doing something new.

[Chips]

That's all fine. But none of it invalidates the very truthful criticism that he can't manage projects effectively; the larger the project the worse it gets!

Criticising his inability to manage projects effectively also doesn't mean people are hoping it fails. No-one should be hoping that - mainly as it's pointless, it achieves nothing.

[Alee Enn]

I backed it during the kickstarter for £60, I've played the Alpha, laggy though it is. I've failed at binding controls to the keyboard or joystick and have pretty much ignored it since. I am not holding my breath for 3.0 or a full game.

I haven't added it all up, but I think I've spent a bit more than £60 with Frontier in their store on all the DLC stuff I've bought and recently a 2nd account. That's probably because despite all the things you could criticise Elite Dangerous for, it is an actual game, Star Citizen on the other hand, has not had and is not getting another penny from me for the foreseeable future.

[muppetts]

That's all fine. But none of it invalidates the very truthful criticism that he can't manage projects effectively; the larger the project the worse it gets!

Criticising his inability to manage projects effectively also doesn't mean people are hoping it fails. No-one should be hoping that - mainly as it's pointless, it achieves nothing.

Since I actually say it in my post, clearly I am not invalidating anything....

[segmentationfault]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... GcG0g7GsOI

Watch from 13.00 mins in for new cities, kinda blew me away when they started to fly over it all, gets really impressive.

23.30 great seemless exit and detail.

So that's a loadless journey from inside a building on foot to an orbital station, I know that there is allot of hate on SC but this is impressive stuff either way.

Well, that was a very impressive demo. Not only that demo but they showed interesting material in panels too. I think CitizenCon 2947 was easily one of the best events CIG has ever had.

What comes to Chris's management skills I think it is still way too early to judge. Not only the game is very complex the structure of CIG is that as well; multiple offices around the world. I have not seen any other game this huge and complex developed a company with similar structure and being developed in similar open way, so it is quite hard to make a comparison.

[Morkonan]

...It's a matter of personal perception and I'm fully aware of that, but I personally fail to see how this can be seen as normal, or as part of a honest and healthy development cycle of a videogame...

You are probably onto something, here.

In normal product development, you're limited by one ever-present necessity - You will eventually have to sell the product. "Release Day" is coming. Followed closely by "Patch Day" and "Survive the Refund Blitz" day, all during "We have to pay the electric bill" day.

With a very obnoxious amount of money in their pocket, they're free from certain necessary constraints that most people in the business world call "motivations."

Give an artist a bunch of money and tell them "do art" and you'll be lucky to get anything of any value out of them in any reasonable amount of time. Of course, when the money runs out, "suddenly" they're motivated to produce "art." Funny how that works...

There's nothing wrong with someone being paid for coming up with cool ideas. Some people make a good living doing that. BUT, eventually, someone has to take that idea and then do something useful with it. That's the guy that "applies" cool ideas and it's what drives innovation in every industry.

There are lots of cool ideas, but little that they're being applied to a clearly defined product and everyone is fat, dumb, and happy as long as the money holds out. And, when it starts to run short?

THAT'S when fans will eventually see a "product" and no sooner.

PS - Someone given that much cash and then sitting in a corner and piddling with themselves until it runs out... They should be ashamed. If all this is true, then it appears that "Roberts Space Industries" is in the "business" of making promotional videos and marketing efforts for products and ideas that have little or no practical application. Must be a great business to be in!

PPS - I have always loved your sig.

[Chips]

Since I actually say it in my post, clearly I am not invalidating anything....

no one has ever done this before in the history of game design, name one major game dev house that has the production schedule published and updates weekly with blogs, live show, (have you watch Bug Smashers?). This is revolutionary as much as many people do not want it to be.

I read that as excusing his shortcomings around project management. But who cares.

It'll arrive when it's done whenever that is... and meanwhile they'll keep putting more things into it that weren't in the original scope while there's no release - and therefore people will continue to question.

However, talking about SC is pointless as it achieves nothing. It is what it is and will just have to keep on waiting for its eventual release.

[segmentationfault]

However, talking about SC is pointless as it achieves nothing. It is what it is and will just have to keep on waiting for its eventual release.

Well, it is interesting project to talk about . In the end it is the most promising project for many and it is great to be able to follow the development and test it during the development.

Squadron 42 should be a main topic in Holiday Livestream. SQ42 is not the game I'm hugely interested in but it is great to see how their another huge project in progressing.[/i]