Star Citizen

Athan

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(I'm aware of the 'Wing Commander 2014?' thread, https://forums.freddyshouse.com/threads/wing-commander-2014.249217/ but that's not exactly obvious when searching).

So, Star Citizen is coming along nicely. For anyone not in the know it's a new game from Chris Roberts, the guy who brought us the Wing Commander series in the 90s, Privateer, Freelancer, and who spent about a decade making movies instead of games. Now he's back and has had a successful kickstarter and continued crowd-funding support for this new game.

The game is in part a shoot-em-up in space, aiming for WWII-era style dogfighting, but will have larger ships, including capital ships, as well. Along with that will be a completely simulated economy across 100+ star systems, plenty to explore (if you're first to find and successfully navigate a new Jump Point you'll get to name it) and Bounties to Hunt. If this sounds a little bit like EvE ... yes and no. The economy won't be as player-driven, although players will have an influence on it. There'll also be a complete single-player campaign, "Squadron 42".

The official site is Roberts Space Industries , which includes the forums, as well as being where you can pledge to the cause (which is how you get Alpha and Beta access, along with other goodies). If you want to know more in general about the game there's both the official FAQ and the fan-made one on the forums.

Tomorrow is the public reveal of the Hangar Module (they're doing a staged release), and backers should get access to it this coming Thursday, 29th August. Sometime in December we should get the Dogfight (think Deathmatch with ships in space) Module.

It's fully expected that the Hangar Module will have... issues ... as Chris Roberts is on record as saying this is being released to the backers in far worse state than he'd normally show a publisher. It's all part of keeping the community of backers involved in the development as much as possible.

So, have any other Freddies pledged yet ?
 

Deebs

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I shall take a look tomorrow as I loved the Wing Commander series and have fond memories of it :)
 

Aada

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I got boned with Shadowrun on Kickstarter from what I pledged I felt the final product was vastly different from what they described.

Would not use a backing scheme after my experience :(

This looks special though.
 

Mabs

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I got boned with Shadowrun on Kickstarter from what I pledged I felt the final product was vastly different from what they described.

Would not use a backing scheme after my experience :(

This looks special though.


so whats so bad with shadowrun ?
 

Athan

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Mostly you just have to trust Chris Roberts on this one. His initial plan was Kickstarter to prove interest in the PC space sim genre was there, and then he was going to get investment capital in to cover the rest of the projected ~$21mil cost.

But the kickstarter + crowdfunding on the game site was so successful that he decided it was possible to do without the investment capital, and thus without the investors. Indeed it's coming up on $16mil total raised now. With no investors, or publishers, to stick their oar in with "this other game is kind of like this and had feature X, we should have that too" or the like the creator is free to actually execute his vision.

But, yeah, we'll see how it turns out long-run. Won't really know until at least this time next year. This is why I only pledged at the Digital Mercenary level for now, the minimum to get alpha/beta access, along with one of the most basic ships. Keep in mind that all pledge ships will be available to buy in the game with the game's currency once it's all live, so there's no need to pledge for certain packages unless you want to show support and get a headstart on owning that ship.
 

Aada

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so whats so bad with shadowrun ?


At release the classes were borked to the point of basically go guns and nothing else matters and as far as I'm aware it's still like that, a few shitty bugs to go with it.

The campaign is about 3 hours long if that, for the money I gave I have to say I feel pretty annoyed with the final product and it has put me off future kickstarters, not all together but I won't be putting my money down anytime soon.
 

Bigmac

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Is this a space combat sim game? I've been waiting for a decent one to be developed since the days of Colony Wars on the PS1 and Nexus the Jupiter Incident on the PC.
 

Athan

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Is this a space combat sim game? I've been waiting for a decent one to be developed since the days of Colony Wars on the PS1 and Nexus the Jupiter Incident on the PC.

Yes, it is exactly that, with somewhat Newtonian (there'll be inertia, something akin to a drag force* to keep speeds in check, but no gravity from planets etc) physics. There are already huge discussion threads about exactly how that will work all over the RSI forums.

For those with money and the need there should be support for all manner of joysticks, throttles, rudder pedals, Oculus rift, multiple displays, etc.

* NB: The stated reason for speed limit is "go too fast and you'll never be able to steer around obstacles, including other ships, so the flight computer stops you going faster". So, there'll be 'drag' as in you can't go past a certain speed, but you'll be able to cut engines and drift as well without any slowdown due to 'drag'.
 

Moriath

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Drag. In space ? Hmmm Nothing in space to make drag
 

Athan

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Drag. In space ? Hmmm Nothing in space to make drag

It's for technical (go too fast and you won't have enough floating point accuracy to correctly model things, i.e. you'd skip right through a moon between 'frames') and gameplay (if you approach another ship at 1000 km/s and he's doing the same in the other direction you'll barely see each other, let alone have chance to shoot) reasons. The only struggle they're having is finding a good in-fiction reason for it.
 

Athan

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Hawkwind

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It's for technical (go too fast and you won't have enough floating point accuracy to correctly model things, i.e. you'd skip right through a moon between 'frames') and gameplay (if you approach another ship at 1000 km/s and he's doing the same in the other direction you'll barely see each other, let alone have chance to shoot) reasons. The only struggle they're having is finding a good in-fiction reason for it.


There is plenty of fiction already based around plotting course before warp speed - Star Trek and Star Wars. Reason you already stated, not wanting to fly through a planet etc. Bit like driving a car on a freeway as opposed to a motorway. You slow down for safety and maneuverability.
 

Athan

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Any backer with a ship can now download, install and access the Hangar Module.

But note the CDN they're using seems to have ... issues ... with UK IPs. The download of the initial installer program is giving most UK people a "File not authorized" 403 error. I worked around this by using a shell in France to proxy through. The actual game patcher/launcher is working OK with my UK IP.
 

Athan

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Ctuchik

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Well, god knows that the X-universe series needs some healthy competition so they stop rereleasing the same fucking game with minor tweaks.
 

Athan

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In a little under 2 hours there's a livestream to celebrate 1 year since the initial crowdfunding campaign was announced. Most people are expecting some announcement about new/limited ship sales, although I think those hoping for discount prices are in for disappointment. Whatever they announce it should be running through to Monday at least, so no rush tonight.


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8HvfFCysYU


Come join us in #starcitizen on Quakenet IRC :) http://webchat.quakenet.org/?channels=starcitizen&uio=d4
 

Athan

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Well, the livestream was a technical disaster, too little upload bandwidth where they were or somesuch, but the recording of it is available:


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5YJDOwil0k


Lots of cool stuff in there, new ship reveals, the whole player Organization tool that's being worked on looks like it'll go far beyond what any other website/game has had that I've ever seen, sales this weekend (including polo shirts).

And we get another hangar patch today with things like the fish tank backer reward :)
 

Athan

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And there's $20m in crowdfunding: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13284-Letter-From-The-Chairman-20-Million
...
It's crazy how much this game is pulling in, it's just under a year since the initial announcement (10th October) !

And now it's closing in on $34m (yes, Thirty Four Million US Dollars) ! There was a 4 hour livestream recently for the "1 year since end of original crowdfunding campaign" which did reveal some cool stuff like a first look at how HUDs will look and work.

The DogFight Module seems doomed to be delayed until January 2014 now, but we'll get an in-hangar firing range instead. This particular delay seems to be because they are actually wanting to get damage models/explosions working for the first DFM release, rather than literally just giving us something to fly around in. Multi-player will also be delayed until they have their own netcode/backend all working, rather than getting it up on the CryEngine stock code and then having to redo much of it for their own.

They're also switching over to Physical Based Rendering (where the engine just uses what you set as the object material and the lighting where it is to decide how it's rendered as opposed to hand-tuning textures and shaders not only per object but also per environment the same object is in), which this video of the re-worked Avenger shows. Apparently this will speed up a lot of the graphics work in the future due to no longer needing to do all that fine-tuning.
 

svartalf

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Some "news"...
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/12/06/more-star-citizen-features-mean-more-devs-roberts-says/
massively.com said:
More Star Citizen features mean more devs, Roberts says
by Jef Reahard http://data:image/png;base64,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 on Dec 6th 2013 8:30PMSci-Fi, Interviews, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Sandbox, Star Citizen, Buy-to-Play0


You don't have to look very far to find armchair developers wringing their hands over Star Citizen's supposed feature creep. Heck, some bloggers and forum denizens have even gone so far as to label the space sim sandbox vaporware in spite of its publicly available pre-alpha hangar module.

Cloud Imperium founder Chris Roberts spoke with Ten Ton Hammer recently and addressed the backlash. "Feature creep doesn't mean quite the same with Star Citizen as it might in other games. In other games, it's a concern because they have a hard release date and as you add new stuff it gets to a point where other things have to be rushed or dropped," Roberts said. "We add new people to the team to cover the new features and because everything is so modular, it has minimum impact on the rest of the game."



Tags: armchair-developers, armchair-devs, chris-roberts, cloud-imperium, cloud-imperium-games, crowdfunding, feature-creep, internet-spaceships, kickstarter, sandbox, sci-fi, spaceship, star-citizen
TTH said:
Star Citizen
Ten Ton Hammer

Chris Roberts Responds to "The Cult of Star Citizen"


Posted Fri, Dec 06, 2013 by ricoxg
254962


A couple days ago I was checking out the latest Minecraft release when my cell phone rang.To my surprise, Chris Roberts was calling to talk about Xerin’s recent article, which happens to echo some of the same points I’d made in another article touching on the dangers of crowd-funding.Though I guess I shouldn’t have been all that shocked, as it’s no secret that I’m an open supporter of this project.

Interestingly enough, I’d just had this conversation with a friend thinking of supporting SC a few days ago, so I was really glad to talk to Mr. Roberts about it. My friend had some of the same concerns about all the additional stretch goals and schedule slip that Xerin had referred to, so I asked Chris about it.

Chris Roberts:Star Citizen is still scheduled to come out 2015, and we’re on target for that.What I think gets missed is that backers get access to the game much earlier than that. We’ve already released the hanger module, and as we complete the various components of the game, backers will get patches to add those components to their clients.So yes, we release in 2015, but backers will actually be seeing the game much earlier than that. Also, the alpha should be out late next year for those backers who’d rather wait for something more like the complete game before looking at it.

Ricoxg:There have been some rumors of schedule slip, so those aren’t true?

Roberts:Well, there has been some slipping here and there, but that’s typical for internal milestones. Inside the industry you see these sorts of slips all the time, but the release date for the game itself doesn’t change.What a lot of backers are seeing is just something that’s common for us, but because they haven’t been exposed to other side of development like they are here, it’s not something they’re used to seeing.

And honestly, some of those slips will likely be due to them, which is one of the things I’m most proud of with how we’re making Star Citizen.For instance, we showed some of the HUD concepts during our Anniversary Live Stream and the immediate feedback was that it was too busy.A traditional game, we would have gotten that feedback at release, or maybe just before it, and then had to decide whether or not we had resources to change it.In Star Citizen, we got that feedback way earlier, so the HUD team can adapt on the fly.It might cause a minor schedule change with that one component, but because of the modular development process we’re using, it shouldn’t impact any other parts of the game schedule-wise.

Ricoxg:I think the specific slip everyone’s curious about, and a hot item in the forums, is the dogfight module.How are we looking on that one?

Roberts:I’m making a decision on that one next week, so it’s not set in stone yet.Because of the additional funding we’ve been able to put a lot more work into the back end than we would have been able to accomplish otherwise. There is a Crysis backend that could be used for dogfighting, but we’ve always planned to design our own. Rolling out the dogfight module on something we don’t really plan to use long-term would eat up time that might be better spent somewhere else. But then getting the backers into the dogfight module is important to us as well.There’s a lot of data we need to collect as they test it out that goes into making the rest of the game. So, it’s hard to say right now, but there’ll likely be a decision in the next week.

Ricoxg:Still, there has been a lot added to the game or expanded on in some of these stretch goals. Fears about getting everything done on time seem pretty founded. What do you say to those concerns?

Roberts:I can see that.Everyone sees us expanding the scope of the game, but we’re additionally expanding the team to meet those new needs.For instance, we also just added a new team in Manchester, UK that will be led by my brother, Erin.These are some of the same guys that worked on Privateer, so they know what they’re doing.Also, we’re expanding wide as well as deep, so we don’t just bring on people to handle new components like the boarding actions.We also add to existing teams so that they can do more as well.



Lastly, feature-creep doesn’t mean quite the same with Star Citizen as it might in other games. In other games, it’s a concern because they have a hard release date and as you add new stuff it gets to a point where other things have to be rushed or dropped. We add new people to the team to cover the new features and because everything is so modular, it has minimum impact on the rest of the game.

Besides, absolute worst case scenario our way of releasing new content to backers as it’s completed means the whole game doesn’t wait because some piece isn’t done. I don’t think it’s likely, but the design process we’re using allows us that sort of flexibility.

Ricoxg:I guess my last question would have to be one about cash, then.A lot of money is being thrown at Star Citizen and there are some individuals throwing a lot more than others. How do you respond to the suggestion that this could be somehow exploitive?

Roberts:I don’t think you should ever under estimate the power of the people and what they want. We live in a culture where the people have the power to vote for what they want with their wallets and their feet, and the people are saying that they want this game.Quite frankly I’m happy that so many people are excited about this game.

It’s not like some other games where more people, means more money in our wallets. All this money directly goes to the game and expenses in making it.We don’t want to add people to our list of customers to get rich, we want them to help us make a bigger, more awesome, game.People see that and it’s not the traditional model for how games are made, so they maybe misinterpret what they’re seeing.

We'd like to thank Chris for taking the time to talk with us, and providing some new insights into the ongoing development of Star Citizen. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the game, and how crowd funded projects on the scale of Star Citizen will impact our role as consumers in future games development, so be sure to drop your comment bombs below!
 
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Kami

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Giving this a bump, there's tons of new content, they've shat all over the $40,000,000 funding goal and are milking us silly bastards for cash at an alarming rate :)

Seriously though the game is coming together nicely, dog fighting module (DFM) is going to be previewed at PAX and then released to alpha testers in April/May.
 

Roo Stercogburn

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Although not much chatter on this, still watching out for it. Bought a cheap-ish joystick and have reinstalled Freelancer to get back in the feels for some dogfighting. Just need to sort out a profile on my G13.
 

Ormorof

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Although not much chatter on this, still watching out for it. Bought a cheap-ish joystick and have reinstalled Freelancer to get back in the feels for some dogfighting. Just need to sort out a profile on my G13.

i know theres another thread somewhere about wing commander, but i would highly recommend the fan made one Darkest Dawn, its mission based but even on normal it is a damn hard game and sooo much fun :)
 

Athan

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The livestream in Boston pre-PAX East was a bit of a fail due to technical issues, but it does seem the DFM is coming along. Latest word (from CR in that stream) is "end of this month, maybe start of next" for us getting the DFM.

 

Lethul

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Seems like Arena Commander was released today, anyone got it?
 

Athan

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Yeah, I've got it. No remapping of controls atm, so I'm still spending time getting my X-45 setup.

Default joystick sensitivity is way too high, but I've found how to tweak that in Saitek profiles, so will give it another go later. Also need to RTFM a bit before playing more.

Didn't seem to run too badly on my i5-760 with GTX 560Ti 448 core, but that only means I didn't notice a slowdown/stutter, rather than my FPS actually being definitely decent.
 

SFXman

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Jumped on this bandwagon this week. Bought the cheap $45 arena commander starter package that has the game, beta access, and arena commander.

Tried it for a moment, really pretty game. Naturally the dogfighting is a tiny part of it all. Plus in general it's all still very early stuff.

The development is looking good, with also the FPS part being revealed. More a rainbow six type thing there, which is good.
The FPS part of the game is apparently the most high risk thing to do, and afaik it's not a necessary part at all.

Also dying in this game isn't completely without costs, and eventually your character will wear out from the future healthcare that brings you back. You can replace organs/limbs etc. to a certain point.
If your character does die, from what I've read you can have another character be the dead one's heir.



The funding of this game is insane, closing in on $61 million.
 

Gwadien

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Think I'll just drop this here.

https://wasp-inc.com/

Basically, I joined WASP to play Planetside 2 and they haven't failed to impress me, they way that they operate is pretty much anti-zerging (Playing 60 man teams on set nights against 200-300 man teams.)

If they transfer this kind of playing to CS, I think we could potentially be a successful medium sized organisation, but since we're unsure of the numbers of original members that are playing, we're going to recruit when Alpha comes out for the actual game, for now, we're just having a publicity drive, so people are aware of WASP for when they look for an organisation to join.

Feel free to go on the forums and such and chat to people. :)

Here's the official recruitment mumbo-jumbo! :)

qqER68x.png


Warfare Activities | Specialist Protection Inc.


Introduction to WASP Inc:
WASP Inc is an influential gaming community for mature and serious gamers who strive to be top tier in the games we play, without losing sight on the aspect of fun. Our current success derives from our outstanding teamwork, communication and organisation, supported by like-minded gamers who value and respect the community both inside and out of WASP. While we organise ourselves to play with high quality team play and success in mind, we also value the importance of playing games socially and for fun.

We have two highly successful core game divisions at the moment, APB: Reloaded & PlanetSide 2, but we also play many more games as a large community too. With ambitions to expand our influence and establish ourselves into more games as we grow, we can expose more gamers and communities to our name, our abilities and our gameplay style.

Due to our success especially with APB and Planetside 2, we've become very established in the communities we've put our primary effort in, which we are now looking to put into Star Citizen. For example, we commissioned the ex-senior artist of APB that created the game's artstyle to create us artwork that would describe us especially with APB in mind. We also recently commissioned some more general artwork that isn't tied to any specific game.

Our role in Star Citizen:
Our typical agenda in the games we play is the idea of being a PMC, typically working for what we consider to be the right cause. We excel in combat, but we are also open to an idea of having an in-house industrial wing. We don't want to try defining our role too strictly at this time, as much remains to be learned about the game, but since a more playable game (dog fighting) is approaching, we want to start slowly recruiting and putting our name out there. While the game will shape our way of playing, it is clear that we will be combat oriented and PMC-themed organization and a community.

Our values:
WASP Inc has a strong emphasis on teamwork. We don’t care about your background or nationality so long as you are capable of communicating clearly in English and are willing and able to play in a team. While individual skill does make a difference for us, the ability to play in a team effectively is far more important. As we are a committed and widespread gaming community of mature and serious gamers, we always try to hit a sweet spot between strict organised play for the win and the value of playing socially for fun.

Requirements:
•Minimum 18 years of age
•Working TeamSpeak 3 and microphone
•Ability to speak and understand English sufficiently for our needs
•Ability to work in a team, to take orders and execute them

If you are interested:
Please check out our website at http://wasp-inc.com and apply there. You have to register and log in first before you will see the SC application form in the Apply-section. Feel free to also check out our YouTube channel. Don't forget to check out the organization page for more info!
 

wolfeeh

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I've just bought into Star Citizen today, it's currently downloading.
 

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