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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 19 Mar 2023 04:44

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Star Citizen has now been down for over a week, which is ridiculous. I don’t think they’ve ever had such a serious outage. Some players can get in, but they can barely play with all the crippling bugs. Things have been improving daily though, and we do get the occasional player now reporting on Reddit that they played a few hours with no problem. Still the issues are so serious that CIG is no longer committing to a date for full resolution.

All that said, those who have played are reporting tremendous improvements to the game in a core mechanical sense with the introduction of the deepest persistence in an MMO ever. Seas of corpses hanging around for ever and turning environments creepy, backed up parking lots, tons of wrecks smoldering in the aftermaths of battles and staying there for salvagers to clean them up, and of course trash lying around everywhere for the few conscientious players to clean them up. And btw, people are also reporting performance improvements, which is tremendous news because there was speculation before the release that the demands of persistence would degrade performance, and especially server performance. I even heard at one point that they might have to decrease server population size from 100 back to 50. Thank god that hasn’t happened, though a major issue remaining is that a fully loaded C2 does cause server performance issues, which raises the question of how the hell do they expect to put the Hull C in the game later this year which carries 4-5 times as much... I am hoping the issue can be solved with some coding trickery. It’s fundamental because there are planned to be ships in the game that far dwarf even the Hull C in carrying capacity.

Server status can be seen here: https://status.robertsspaceindustries.com

I wouldn’t play until everything is green, because people are reporting ships missing, paints missing, etc. if you’re too unlucky during the character creation process. I am just going to chill and let them fix their game for however long it takes.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Mar 2023 07:22

While a lot of people can't connect, perhaps someone can answer the most important question: Where's Waldo and his crew?
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ct_perhaps

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myaltaltaltacct wrote:I know a lot of people are miserable with this patch, but the screenshots are AWESOME!


stereoid wrote:its crazy how much debris is currently around point of interests, it even ads a very dangerous aspect while flying. You need to be extremly careful to navigate around now. I got trapped at some point after exiting a QT point and was surrounded by shipwrecks.


Site-Staff wrote:This is PES in a single picture.


Tomorrow's ISC is about ship tractor beams. People are speculating that the Argo SRV (Standard Recovery Vehicle) will be released with 3.19 to allow us to clean up stranded ships by dragging them away. I am really excited for these mechanics.

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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 24 Apr 2023 02:57

Star Citizen: Wingmen | Xenothreat Event | Epic 4K Gameplay Cinematic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAGHkLE ... XdPpMT44TR

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An incredible movie-like SC video that sort-of showcases the XenoThreat Dynamic Event. I say sort-of because most of the video shows getting to the event, and returning from it. The actual event is given little time, and even then it only shows the space battle, not the FPS portion (I've never played the event, but it is my understanding that part of it is on foot, or at least in EVA).

I placed this #16 in my Ultimate Trailer Ranking, though note that I keep rejigging the list, so it could end up higher or lower eventually. It definitely belongs in the top 20 of trailers, at this moment.

I recommend watching it to get hype for the coming week, because XenoThreat is running, and we're playing it. I am just waiting to nail down this week's Ruins of Azlant session, and then I'll schedule this, so watch out for the announcement, and see if you can get some training in during the week. I'll certainly be playing a bit. The game works smoothly now, reportedly, and there's so much new content for us to engage, and stuff to buy.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 30 Apr 2023 21:54

The reason we're salty is because we know it's on the cusp of being really good.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... now_its_on

SmoothOperator89 wrote:The video game of Sisyphus.


Jamstraz wrote:Although at this point I feel more like Prometheus. Getting my organs eaten out everyday just to heal again.


SashaNightWing wrote:Despite all the problems, delays, and issues I have with the game and development process, there's not a single game that is currently playable that matches what Star Citizen can do even now. Even missing so many features, having the bugs that it has, it is a unique game on the market.

So, in spite of my frustration with the development pace, I continue to be patient because I'd rather have a good game later than a crappy game now.

And honestly, it's really easy to forget what limitations we had so long ago. Starting off with nothing, then we got the hangar module, able to put a ship or two into a hangar (not even all of your ships if you had a lot), then the hangar was upgraded to expand, then we got Arena Commander and actually got to fly our ships!

A while later we got Crusader. I still remember the first time I loaded into Crusader and stepped out onto the platform of Port Olisar and saw the massive gas giant in front of me. We had only a few missions we could do but we could finally play with a few other people. It then expanded to have the moons of Crusader and then soon the rest of Stanton. Mining, bounty-hunting, trading and scavenging were all dreams during those times.

Yeah I wish there was more progress just like everyone else. But, looking back to where we were when we started, I love seeing where we have come.


When Star Citizen Alpha 4.0 releases next year (which'll be GOTY btw) with the addition of jump points and the Pyro PVP system, plus apartments and base-building go in, there almost won't be any reason to ever play another game again (apart from mine, of course). Threads like the above will disappear and everyone will be busy working three jobs during the day to be able to afford to live in luxury in the game at night.

Welcome to the metaverse.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 30 Apr 2023 23:37

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... on_42_much

mesterflaps wrote:Reading the emails from Chris gives me deja vu in that they're always talking about mundane stuff like 'serving drinks' as getting 'really close now', and so it goes year after year after year.

I am not convinced in the first place that we need our make believe bartenders and janitors to have elaborate daily schedules with secret hopes, dreams, fears and alimony payments, but that's the direction it's going.

Do we need our AI entities to be competent baristas, mop and bucket men, fire extinguisher jockeys and short order chefs all in one who are also capable of showering themselves and others? Maybe not, but that's what's being made according to the emails.

I'm sure it's all top quality, seamless, and with no undesired interactions with other systems.


Omni-Light wrote:While I somewhat agree, a big repeated talking point for AAA titles like CP2077 is how empty the world feels due to how shallow their AI is, despite them talking about how alive and vibrant the city feels, while games like RDR receive a lot of praise for how detailed and believable their AI behaviours are.

If they're going for 'if you want to, you can stand and watch/follow an AI and see them go about their daily routine' then what they're saying makes sense. Nothing about what CIG has said tells me they're aiming for a simple yet fun game, I think we learned that a long time ago.


Omni-Light wrote:Yeah I'm not saying everybody finds believable AI to be an important factor to a singleplayer game, just that it is a very hotly discussed and repeated topic for these types of games. I'd say a lot of people find it an important factor in believing in a game world.

Now this is a guess, but I imagine it is much easier to have crazy-good AI in SQ42 because their performance isn't reliant on sending their actions to a multiplayer server and 100s of players at the same time.

Either SC and SQ42 will have the exact same AI and they somehow solve the networking problem for SC, or SC's AI will be much reduced in detail compared to SQ42 just to reduce the number of requests going to their servers.

Think about if you start SQ42 on a capital ship, they are going to put a ton of effort into the behaviour of just a few AI (maybe a crewmate in a mess hall) that nearly every player is going to see, they may go so far as to give that AI unique behaviours just because it's someone we all see regularly through the campaign. That level of detail isn't needed in SC, so instead I guess the SC AI will have a routine based on their profession and what the economy is doing. A mining AI might go back and forth from a refinery, to their prospector, to an asteroid field, and all other mining AI probably behave similarly. A cool routine, but not insane levels of detail that you expect in a singleplayer - like RDR2 how you have literal rail-workers hand-hammering every individual nail into a track in real time.


ProcyonV wrote:This is a short term sight.

It may seem trivial to have bartenders having a daily routine, but, as explained many times, when one NPC is able to follow that routine, it means it's ready for all other NPCs, you just have to specify the requisites for each profession.

They chose bartender because it was funnier than a runway boy, as it has to interact with different objects and the player, amongst other things.


mesterflaps wrote:I will absolutely believe it is a good thing when I see it in action and working. Past attempts by gaming companies to deliver comprehensive AI agent NPCs have been a mixed bag at best:

  • Edit: Deus Ex Invisible War developers talked about making an AI so perceptive that it would be able to infer causality and react accordingly. The example they gave was if a player knocked over a flammable object that hit a cat, that cat might in turn run away in terror past an NPC who could vocalize "OMG who set that cat on fire" and then go looking for you. It didn't work, the AI was braindead.

  • Oblivion NPCs at one point had 'needs' modeled, but it ended up always devolving in to them stealing food because they were hungry, ending up in jail, or getting killed by the guards. They had to scale it waaaaay back to avoid serious problems and get the game out on time.

  • Cyberpunk said that every NPC would have a schedule and motivations. That went nowhere fast to the point where at launch NPCs would disappear when you turned around or would be in the same spot 24/7.

If CIG achieves their ambition it will be a monumental achievement. Based on what I'm seeing on the PU in year 11 of development, I'm not holding my breath.


TNT_Jonathan wrote:Watch dogs legion is probably the closest game there is to achieve that goal

All NPCs have a personal schedule basically, they would despawn, but not if you are following one


N0SF3RATU wrote:Chow hall lines! Bed sheet linens! Barristas! You know, the important things.

edit: mop and buckets people!!
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 02 May 2023 12:12

Cast of characters every time the game goes through a rough patch
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _game_goes

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Putting it here instead of the lol thread because it's not a joke, it is a demographic study. If you understand all the references, congrats, you're no longer a casual player (you must read Reddit for some months to understand them all on top of playing the game).
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby Discord BOT » 05 May 2023 19:03

CULT|shubn
I have I think 2.3M in my personal account, I'm gonna farm some more now and tomorrow and send more to the bank.

CULT|icycalm
Let's not use the word "farm" with SC again (unless you're really farming with the upcoming farming mechanics Chris Roberts says they are working on). It gives the impression that the game is a boring MMORPG. For the same reason, no use of "grind" either. Instead, say you're earning money, or whatever.

CULT|shubn
Roger. I don't like these words either to be honest.

CULT|icycalm
For other games they are useful.
Originally posted in the Insomnia Discord.

Insomnia Discord bot powered by proprietary next gen next level neural networked quantum learning self aware AI developed by Cult Games.
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Star Citizen Alpha 3.19 - Call to Adventure

Unread postby icycalm » 17 May 2023 05:07

Star Citizen Alpha 3.19 - Call to Adventure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtOogpjeehk

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What a game.

CadMan Fox wrote:I love these trailers. While they might not really matter, the effort put into them is evident.


Mohamed Shafik wrote:Whoever does those videos is a genius


https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _adventure

djsnoopmike wrote:The cinematics team is getting better and better every year


BOTY123 wrote:Was thinking exactly the same, the transitions in this video are amazing!


Remember to clear your user and shader folders I think it is. Detailed instructions can be found pinned in our Discord.

Although there was no wipe, plenty of people are reporting missing vehicles, and CIG has confirmed there's nothing they can do about them. So check your stuff and if you're missing anything, report it in the Fleet thread. I pray for the Retaliator.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 19 May 2023 04:17

Just a comparison between my expectations in 2020 and today
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ns_in_2020

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Talon2947 wrote:I would say some of the red should be green or may be an orange for partial.

Zero G racing we have at GrimHex.

Ship Neutralization is in with soft death.

Selling stolen goods is in.

Ore refining is in.

Manual repair is partially in with hull repair.

Other than that it's spot on.


jonmediocre wrote:Yep, and under "Healing" we have Dynamic Missions (rescue beacons) or you could put it under "getting paid to heal"

We also have:

Prices depending on supply and demand

Zero-G moving


Sensitive_Ad_9771 wrote:There was an inside and a post that speak about that. The only two comodities that are dynamic are fuel and repair materials. You can search it online.


LucidStrike wrote:Their increasing focus on 'settlements' has me very excited. The lack of interesting settlements is the main reason I never got into ED or NMS, tho I appreciate their stature in their specific niches.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 30 Jul 2023 16:56

Something about the cashmoney issue that really should have occurred to me before but somehow didn’t, probably because you need to go through several wipes to realize it.

Buying a vehicle with real cashmoney doesn’t really change anything in your experience with the game, at least not after you’ve bought it once in-game and then lost it to a wipe, since you’re not supposed to be rebuying the same vehicle twice a year anyway. In the final game, once you buy something it’s yours forever. So I don’t think I am missing out on anything by using cashmoney as often as I feel like. It’s basically wipe-protection at this point, and I think it raises your experience, it doesn’t lower it. Plus the money is used for development of course, so the expense is always a good thing.

As for having fewer things in the game to buy due to all the cash purchases, we’ve collectively spent at least $10k so far, and we still don’t even have 10% of the vehicles. Even if one of us bought ALL the vehicles (never gonna happen because it’s tens of thousands of dollars), the others wouldn’t, so we’ll always have things to buy.

So again my conclusion is: buy what you want, and as much as you can (easily) afford. It’s a win-win-win on all fronts. You’re going to earn the credits for your purchases in-game many times over anyway, you aren’t skipping anything besides being forced to re-earn what the wipes take from you.

This entire issue will become moot once apartment and base assets are released over the next couple of years anyway and the cost of buying everything skyrockets out of the realm of anyone but multimillionaires. The solution for them will be joining a clan so that they’ll have way more things to purchase.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby shubn » 02 Aug 2023 12:58

Ever since I started playing, I've been using a rule where I'm only allowed to buy a ship or vehicle with real cashmoney if I've first "unlocked" it by buying it in-game or by giving away the amount of aUEC it costs. I've been doing this to feel like I've truly earned it, to feel like I'm acquiring vehicles in a way that makes sense within the game world. I forget if I thought it up myself or if icy came up with the idea. It's not a hard rule by any means, and I may decide to break it on occasion, but I've been sticking to it so far, with the obvious exception of ships that aren't available in in-game shops.

I've been keeping a document with my unlocks, wishlists, and unlock credits (credits I've accumulated by re-buying ships I'd already unlocked, or by giving away aUEC, or aUEC I had before a wipe). The screenshot below is how it looks right this moment. At the top are my current "unlock credits", which I rounded up to look nicer since the real number is probably higher anyway. Checkmarks mean they've been unlocked, no checkmark means they haven't. Green text means I'm thinking of buying it with real cashmoney. At the bottom are JPEGs I'm keeping an eye on, to maybe get a CCU next time they're available.

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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 02 Aug 2023 13:21

Someone made a thread on Reddit asking if there'll be a wipe in the next update, because he says wipes can basically mess with his motivation to play: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... fw8lm/wipe

These threads are quite common, so I sent him this as my philosophy on the subject, in a DM:

I wrote:Regarding your wipe concerns, this is how I view the situation: the most important asset in the verse is... people. When Pyro comes in and you have an enormous lawless solar system and eventually even base-building, neither aUEC nor ships nor weapons will get you far. What will get you far is a tight team of people, and that is something you can always work on, and CIG can never wipe it. So, for me, no hour spent playing the game is ever lost as long as it is spent with friends, and making new friends and contacts. Friends are the number 1 commodity in the verse, just as they are in real life. So that's the number 1 thing I "grind" for in the verse.


I have more to say on the subject, and I've already said more elsewhere, but I think this is the number 1 argument to bring up when the wipes are discussed. When it's time to man a fleet, no amount of credits or gear or rep will do the job, and the grind to assemble the dozens of people needed takes YEARS and can never be wiped. So the players who wait for the game to be "released" thinking they aren't missing out on anything in the meantime are missing out on EVERYTHING. Imagine how scary the verse will feel to a newbie in 2030 when the first time he logs in the game he is surrounded by tens of thousands of orgs with hundreds of thousands of players who've been playing together for so long that they've essentially trained more than actual militaries.

Don't be that guy. Start playing now, and start making friends and learning skills and tactics.
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VGART: Star Citizen - The Chow Hall Drama

Unread postby icycalm » 08 Aug 2023 05:49

CONTENTS
Prologue
The Insomnia Best Game of All Time Award: Star Citizen
Thank you God
"There has never been anything like it"
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wipe
The Chow Hall Drama
Too Good to be True
The Most Released Game of All Time
The Year of Chris Roberts
The Coolest Thing You'll Ever Own
Star Race, or The Whitest Game Ever
Go On, Play Some More Steam
Citizen Annihilation
The Birth of Quantum Gaming
The Project Game In Your Garage
The Greatest Screenshot Ever
The Sum of All Genres


The Chow Hall Drama

Does YOUR game have chow hall mechanics?

chow hall mechanics next level star citizen to the moon 2025

send it

Three Years of Chow Hall Development
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... evelopment

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You can joke all you want, but do you know any other game that simulates an entire restaurant scene in the middle of a Star Wars-level script in a fully explorable multi-solar-system environment?

So play your Tetrises, but realize your Tetrises are retarded and THIS is the future of gaming.

Onwards with another 3 years of chow hall development.

/sarcasm


Now let me explain to you why Chris Roberts puts so much emphasis on the chow hall, because no one on Reddit understands this. A few of them understand how technically complex such a scene would be, but none of them understands WHY CR is so obsessed with putting it in the game.

In the 1990 Wing Commander, there was a bar in the capital ship on which you served. That bar was unheard of at the time, and in fact I struggle to find another example in later years beyond CR's own games. The bar was the focal point of the ENTIRE GAME. That's where you went before and after every mission to interact with your friends and rivals, the romantic interest, etc. That's where the scoreboard was that kept track of your kills so you could try to outscore every other pilot and become the top ace on the ship. That's where the simulator was where you could practice your skills. AND ALL THIS BACK IN 1990. In Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger the whole thing was even live-acted by actors such as Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell and John Rhys-Davies.

So obviously, to someone like me who has played these games and still remembers them and can put two and two together, CR is merely remaking those bar scenes with A BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS, but instead of remaining restricted to a tiny bar, he's taking it to the next level with an entire military refectory with dozens if not hundreds of NPCs all of them realistically picking up their trays, lining up to get their food, then walking to their tables to eat while talking to each and avoiding hitting you, or even replying to you if you address them etc. I am sure there will be bars in the game too, but the next-level shit is the chow hall, and THAT'S why so much effort is going into it. You will lose your fucking shit when you play this thing in a couple of yearsTM. It's literally the center of the game, because DRAMA is the center of a great cinematic game like CR likes to make them, and in order to generate drama you need PEOPLE. That's what the chow hall will give to you: PEOPLE, as opposed to the faggot milsim games where you're given a static briefing screen and then dropped right into the battlefield. CR doesn't make that sort of shit, he's been making entire moviegames since 1990, and he aint about to stop now that A BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS have fallen in his lap!

Moreover think about it from a purely logical perspective. These people are building out entire multi-kilometer long capital ships, rendering them all the way down to individual functioning toilets! So wtf are they supposed to do with the chow hall? Pretend the ship doesn't have one? Keep it sealed off by invisible walls for the duration of a game that lets you go anywhere you want in ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEMS? They HAVE to have a chow hall, otherwise they can't sell the illusion of a fully rendered and functional capital ship, and if there is a chow hall, there MUST be dozens or hundreds of NPCs milling about in it realistically, and if you have no idea how tough that is it do because you're fuckin' retarded and you've been solely playing stupid ass piece of shit games where you roll on the ground for 100 hours straight and call it game of the year, here's a clue:

GreatRolmops wrote:Looks like the work on the basic chow hall AI and animations was done by the end of 2021. But then it had to be super dynamic, they needed seperated animation sets, bigger bowls and now NPCs even have to start commenting on tv shows. They just keep adding more and more stuff and ideas to their features so they never get quite finished. Even something as simple as NPCs eating in a mess hall just keeps getting refined over and over again.


Of course there's nothing "simple" about it, as you will understand by reading the posts of the guy with the most technically sound answer. His best post is currently rated -26 and you need to click through several garbage posts in order to reach it:

vorpalrobot wrote:It's their test case for AI, probably the most complex situation they need the NPCs to work through.

Dynamic everything as they line up in the right place for food, grab props, sit down where they want and use the props, clean up as they leave.

The NPCs everywhere will need development but they fleshed out this area first in order to fix up all the edge cases of NPCs phasing through each other or bad decision making etc. Fixes in those chow hall scenes should mostly carry over to the rest of the game.


More comments from the same guy, all downvoted to hell:

vorpalrobot wrote:And other developers have stated in these very comments that it's pretty common to flesh out one complex scene first above all others in order to figure out blockers, set up your workflows, adjust your dev tools, train/practice, and look for edge cases.

I'm sure the chow hall has a bunch of bespoke work but if you get the NPCs to move around there believably, then generally that sort of work would carry over to bridge scenes, and even things like a black market with wandering crowds.

What you learn in getting them to use utensils and tray stations carries over to hangar crew taking out the necessary tools for the scene.


vorpalrobot wrote:That's literally what they have told us over the years. I'm quoting CIG on this one.

And they haven't been ONLY working on the chow hall AI, it's just that they use it to monitor the AI in general. If they change something and the NPCs are gonna start T-posing in certain situations, the chow hall is where you're often gonna find that as a dev. It's a lot like those zoos they used to show off where they set up a bunch of props to play with force reactions, or engineering gameplay prototypes.

In this case they prototyped a bunch of different AI routines in a social setting and have continually updated/polished that scene in these reports as the rest of the game has developed.


But even more insightful than the above was the ONE guy in the entire enormous thread who actually gets it and basically gave the same answer as me, and his comment was downvoted to obscurity. His take is probably even smarter than mine because it doesn't seem like he's played any Wing Commanders, so he figured it all out even without that massive knowledge and background that I have.

BadAshJL wrote:It's going to be the main social space between missions so players will be spending a lot of time there talking to wingmen and other characters I'd imagine. If they're trying to sell a living breathing crew then there will be a lot of focus on getting that working properly.


Shmeeno_able wrote:'It's going to be the main social space between missions' - why do you think that?


BadAshJL wrote:Because it is mentioned that it's used in several chapters and is basically a central hub on the ship, between that and the bunkrooms your only other commonly seen area is the briefing room. It also makes sense as when you're not sleeping or eating you're probably going to be out on a mission. Rather than have players running to all ends of the ship to talk to wingmen for story advancement they would have you talk to them in a place that makes sense for everyone in the ship to congregate at naturally.
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VGART: Star Citizen - Too Good to be True

Unread postby icycalm » 10 Aug 2023 00:03

CONTENTS
Prologue
The Insomnia Best Game of All Time Award: Star Citizen
Thank you God
"There has never been anything like it"
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wipe
The Chow Hall Drama
Too Good to be True
The Most Released Game of All Time
The Year of Chris Roberts
The Coolest Thing You'll Ever Own
Star Race, or The Whitest Game Ever
Go On, Play Some More Steam
Citizen Annihilation
The Birth of Quantum Gaming
The Project Game In Your Garage
The Greatest Screenshot Ever
The Sum of All Genres


Too Good to be True

ShinyTracker - 2023-08-09 Progress Tracker Update
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ker_update

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Spending some time perusing the above progress tracker update can help tremendously with understanding how Star Citizen is doing, and where it's going, because it makes all the game's hyped crazy features concrete. It's one thing hearing that a second solar system is coming, and another thing altogether to learn exactly how many developers are working on it RIGHT NOW. As you can see from the image, CIG has hundreds of developers on their payroll (the exact count amounts to about 1,100 last time I checked) and these people are paid MILLIONS OF DOLLARS LITERALLY EVERY MONTH. So Chris Roberts isn't stupid, he isn't paying them FOR NOTHING, they MUST be doing useful work!

The most important work, for me, is that which expands the "play area" for lack of a better term. And not just the empty planet area (though that too is cool), but above all the detailed and complex locations within it, the buildings, the structures, the cities. So with that in mind, notice the following:

  • Above all, the Pyro System has no fewer than 29 active developers, if I am reading the chart right. That's almost the highest number of people on any single task, by which you can tell how important Pyro is to CIG, and how much effort is going into it. The thing will blow us away!
  • Next in my interest ranking are the Outpost Homesteads - Independent & Outlaw with 16 developers right now. These will turn the game into a literal RTS to the extent that they will give you a tool that turns the screen into an RTS screen so you can place down buildings. Read more about it here: https://starcitizen.tools/Homestead

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  • Next up are Building Interiors with 18 active developers. This will turn entire skyscrapers in the cities into fully-fleshed-out player apartments, from dingy accommodations to penthouses with pianos and ballrooms and soaring views over cities. So not only will you be able to build in the wilderness, you'll also be building inside cities, and moreover these buildings will lead to the cities slowly becoming full GTA-like open-world cities with open-world missions that will allow you to play GTA in any inhabited planet you choose and not even have to go to space.
  • Next up are the Underground Facilities with 15 active developers. These will be James Bond-like underground lairs for players to infiltrate and explore, giving Star Citizen the one dimension that Planetary Annihilation lacked: the underground dimension, so that while PA had 4 layers (ground, naval, air, and orbital), Star Citizen will have a 5th on top of those (the typical RTS has 2 or 3 because that's how many the midwit brain can handle). P.S. 2 developers are currently working on Swimming, and CIG has said that ships and even submarines are coming, so the naval layer is 100% coming to SC. There are already oceans, but you can't do much with them. Also, the VFX team is working on advanced water effects, so hopefully at some point the water will look like Atlas's etc., if not better (the best water in a game right now is Rust's after the latest naval update [ > ]).
  • And finally, Squadron 42 has HUNDREDS of developers working on it, and don't forget that that comes with at least 1-2 solar systems, which will presumably be integrated into the Persistent Universe a year or two after release, bringing the total of solar systems in the game to AT LEAST 4 sometime in the next couple of years.
  • In addition, you can see that the RSI Polaris has 7 developers working on it, the most of any vehicle because it's the biggest vehicle that's coming up, and will be the biggest in the game when it's added, with its crew going up to 14. Moreover, even bigger ships like the Idris frigate and the Bengal carrier will be released with Squadron 42, so again we can expect to see them in the Persistent Universe within the next 2-3 years.

As you can see from the above, the scale and scope of Star Citizen are like nothing gaming has ever seen to the extent that even to someone as plugged into gaming culture as me, these goals sound UNBELIEVABLE. Full RTS gaming in a Cyberpunk 2077-level detailed world across multiple solar systems is a nuthouse-level design document, and when people hear it they tend to tune out and plain disbelieve it. In fact this document is so unreal that practically no one even knows it exists, everyone is stuck in 2012 still thinking that Star Citizen is a "space game" and you have to spend months on Reddit and the Star Citizen Wiki and watching shows like Inside Star Citizen merely to GLIMPSE this design, and I know no one who has managed to COMMUNICATE it succinctly as I have done above. No one except me even realizes this design is Planetary Annihilation 2, or PlanetSide 3, or Shenmue 4, or Factorio 2, ALL AT THE SAME TIME, and even I, despite realizing this is the goal, find it almost impossible TO BELIEVE IT.

That's where the progress tracker updates posted on Reddit come in, because they make this crazy-abstract unbelievable design CONCRETE. Armed with these charts I know that every day I wake up in the morning, 1,100 developers wake up in 5 studios across the White world (Europe and North America) and put in a full workday on precisely these crazy objectives I listed above, and many more besides ("prison soap mechanics" is an actual deliverable on the detailed work schedule).

The Matrix fantasy is becoming reality in the brand-new metaverse genre, and Cloud Imperium Games is bringing that to us with Star Citizen in real-time action format, while Cult Games is bringing it with my Battlegrounds in real-time-with-pause roleplaying format, and both these unbelievably advanced games are playable right now, even as they're being worked on daily to further expand and complexify them.

The future, then, is now. But no one except me—and now you, dear readers—knows about it. Because the future isn't for everyone.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 14 Aug 2023 06:01

There's been a flare-up of drama on Reddit recently (the usual stupid shit about the game not being "released"), so someone posted this video as a retort:

Instead of Drama and Clickbait, try this video | Star Citizen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD79VXWlQGc

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It includes the upcoming fire effects that I've been meaning to post about (they're more terrifying than a disaster movie, you've never seen fire in a game like this before), plus some incredible shots of Pyro that were recently unveiled. Makes everything else look like a 1990s game, especially considering this is fully interactive and no other real-time game is.
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 14 Aug 2023 06:10

Top comment in that video:

@nothnutg8665 wrote:Thanks for wonderful scenes, good to remind people we aren't just backing a game for the future but in many ways the future of gaming.
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VGART: Star Citizen - The Most Released Game of All Time

Unread postby icycalm » 18 Aug 2023 20:42

CONTENTS
Prologue
The Insomnia Best Game of All Time Award: Star Citizen
Thank you God
"There has never been anything like it"
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wipe
The Chow Hall Drama
Too Good to be True
The Most Released Game of All Time
The Year of Chris Roberts
The Coolest Thing You'll Ever Own
Star Race, or The Whitest Game Ever
Go On, Play Some More Steam
Citizen Annihilation
The Birth of Quantum Gaming
The Project Game In Your Garage
The Greatest Screenshot Ever
The Sum of All Genres


The Most Released Game of All Time

A few days ago was The Cult's 1-year anniversary in Star Citizen (August 6, 1 PM UTC, to be exact [ > ]), and I was planning to do something special about it, maybe run an all-day session or something. In the event, I don't remember what I did, I probably slept in or was otherwise occupied, but I never removed the item from my tasklist, and so today, 12 days later, I decided to honor the occasion with a new chapter in my Videogame Art essay on the game explaining what motivated me to finally get into it just over a year ago.

I had of course been aware of the game for years, but not super-interested in it because I thought it was a "space game", which of course it isn't (you can spend your whole playtime on a planet without ever leaving the atmosphere). That's one of the many misconceptions that persist about the game, since no one writes about it. Another misconception is that the game is not "released". Another that it must "make back its investment". The list of misconceptions is endless, as you'd expect of one of the highest-IQ games ever that the public therefore struggles to grasp, and no one seems to manage to write intelligently about. But let's take a few of these misconceptions, some of the chief ones, one by one, and finally explode them here as a way to celebrate The Cult's 1-year anniversary in the game.

So first off, Star Citizen is not a "space game"—or at least it no longer is. I don't know at what exact point in time it became possible to spend your whole playtime on a planet, but at least ever since The Cult got into the game, it has been possible, for two of the planets: Hurston and microTech (and it's coming soon to Crusader too in the next update, which adds more floating platforms on which you can take missions). You can fly or drive across these planets to all kinds of ground or air missions without ever leaving their atmospheres (or "atmo" as players call them). "Space game" btw is a BAD thing for a game to be, something which I think I have already talked about in my Out Run essay. Space games are boring because SPACE is boring, it is EMPTY, and therefore BORING. Capish? It shouldn't be hard to grasp this, unless you're autistic. The only interesting things in space are the PLANETS, but once you're on a planet, THE GAME IS NO LONGER A SPACE GAME, with space having become merely the way in which you get between planets. Now you might say that many space games have planets, but they aren't real planets because you can't go on them: they're just dots in the background, barely larger than points of light in the sky. It is only very recently, due to improvements in hardware tech, that we've seen space games add actual planets that you can visit and roam on, and in fact Star Citizen is probably one of the first ones. I think that Elite piece of shit added them AFTER Star Citizen, and No Man's Faggotry has randomly floating planets in space but with no orbits or rotation lol, really a faggot's understanding of space. Meanwhile a bunch of survival-builders such as Space Engineers, Empyrion, Starbase and the like—games that is to say which hail from the Rust tradition, as opposed to the space sim tradition—do feature planets, but they are barebones and ugly; depressing places really; certainly places you wouldn't want to spend any time on to the point where even the barren boring emptiness of the space that surrounds them seems more attractive than them. Star Citizen's planets, meanwhile, are MORE ATTRACTIVE THAN SINGLEPLAYER SANDBOX ENVIRONMENTS like your GTAs or Far Crys or whatever, which is a stupendous achievement for a "space game". Moreover, Star Citizen's planets aren't barren, like all other planets in games ever: they feature entire freakin' cities, in one case even a planet-spanning city with 2 trillion citizens! That's why you can spend so much time on a Star Citizen planet: because it is a gorgeous fully-fleshed environment, uniquely among space games. I mean, once you're IN a Star Citizen city, it looks and plays exactly like any GTA or Shenmue to the point where you wouldn't even know there is space and that you can go to it if you saw someone playing the game and you didn't know what game they're playing, and for what other space game can you say this? That's how Star Citizen TRANSCENDS the "space game" label, to become a UNIVERSE game, or more simply a metaverse. And btw, yes I played Wing Commander on release and loved it, despite it being a space game, but at least that was a SPACE OPERA game, with a level of plot and drama worthy of Hollywood, and THAT'S what kept me playing, NOT the empty barren boringness of space! Apart from that I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING HATE SPACE GAMES, whether we're talking the original Elite (which I played for half an hour in the '80s and hated), or Master of Orion, which I've already reviewed at length and which despite what everyone else is saying is merely a mediocre game, and not by any means a 4X as everyone else thinks it is.

So STOP referring to Star Citizen as a "space game" and get a fucking clue: it is a new genre, and this genre is called "metaverse" because I just baptized it thus, because that's the best and most accurate way to understand it. And to grasp the revolutionary nature of the tech powering this new genre, watch the "Pupil to Planet" video CIG released a good 7 years ago:

Star Citizen: From Pupil to Planet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yLTm8DZ8s4

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@DamonCzanik wrote:This, for me... is when the project ballooned FARRR beyond its original scope. Making planets is easy (NMS, and E:D do it). Making them interesting, feel alive, and unique is something else. It can't feel like the same planet with a different color sky and grass. It required them to make stuff explorable: cities, an entire city planet, a floating city, dynamic weather, outposts, towns, apartments, wreckages, fauna, bases, caves, trains, planetary mining, prison planets, varying levels of gravity, gas giants, ringed planets, different biomes, trees, dust storms, clouds, blizzards, orbiting space stations, hospitals, nightclubs, bars, refineries, environmental dangers (freezing, overheating, winds, etc.), new server tech, flora, rivers, canyons, cars, speeder bikes, tanks, food, etc. Why is SC taking so long? This. Because making a believable universe with free exploration, interesting planets and locations isn't easy. They had to dump old stuff, and it's almost like they decided to make a new game from scratch here.

It's taking forever! Still, I'm glad they did. Walking from a space station, to my ship, flying down to a planet, grabbing my space suit, walking around then out of my ship, and taking my first steps on a new planet... all without a loading screen? It's what I've wanted since I was a kid. Nobody else does it like this.


@finalform11 wrote:Honestly, without planets being what they are now I would not have jumped on. I've had some of my best gaming moments in SC thanks to this one addition and how amazing it is, rolling into a desert planet with ZDF while War Children is being played over someone's headset before we do a 25v25 battle...


@shaggnar2014 wrote:In-engine footage doesn't mean a lot. But in-engine footage rendered in real-time sure as hell does. Great work.


@ORYG1N wrote:Dear god, you people are creating art in the form of a living, breathing universe! Every time I see something new from Star Citizen I get more and more excited!


@commanderdon4300 wrote:This video brought tears to my eyes, it is like the game I have always wanted but never thought they would be able to make.


You have never seen a game engine that powerful: everything else is a Game Boy microgame in comparison. It even has a name, it's called the Star Engine, though you'll never hear of it from journalists because they're too retarded to know about it. They'd rather talk about how rolling on the floor for 100 hours is game of the year experience. And it probably is—if you're a midwit, and can't parse anything more complex.

So that was one of the reasons I was never in a hurry to get into Star Citizen: because I hate space games, and I had mistakenly thought this was what it is. In my defense, this WAS what the game was SUPPOSED to be, back when it was first announced: a space-focused game where the only interaction with planets would be via small "landing zones" navigable via menus or at most limited FPS controls. But eventually a programmer showed Chris Roberts that the engine could handle rendering entire planets in "millimeter detail", as CR puts it, and so, once the funding also exploded and allowed for it, the entire game was reworked to feature full planetary surfaces.

But all the above was lost to me in the early days, since I wasn't following the game closely enough to learn of these things. And then in 2017 CIG made waves during CitizenCon 2947 by demonstrating a planet-spanning city that was instantly hailed as "pretty much Coruscant". That's when journalists finally started to notice the game beyond its budget, and several breathless articles were written about it, and that's when I saw the segment where they take off from the city and land in a space station overlooking it, all seamless in real-time with no loading screens. Watch CR's keynote at 12:53 for the planet, and at 25:15 for the space station landing.

STAR CITIZEN: CitizenCon 2947 - Chris Roberts' Keynote Address
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGcG0g7GsOI

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"There isn't really a skybox. Everything is real."

@regu1ar_ryan wrote:If this game really turns out great, plays smoothly, and includes all the features they've shown... I cannot imagine playing any other games.


@fraydizs7302 wrote:I second that thought. Like... with as many planets and entire star systems, black holes, discoverable alien life forms as they plan on making, if they actually manage to pull off everything they promised at launch... this will be THE game. How would it even be possible to get bored of this?


@Genesys1040 wrote:The talent in the CIG team is incredible. From music to tech, passing through design, this demo is a work of art.


@gigadude556 wrote:The amount of work you guys put into this project is mind boggling. This is going to be the best game in history, at least for me.


@Holammer wrote:I never expected to see something like this when I played Elite on my humble C64 as a child. What a time to be alive.


@DarkSideSixOfficial wrote:This is no longer a game in development. It's possibly the most expensive Art project now. This is Art.


When I saw this, I finally understood what CR was making, and at that point I was hooked, yet didn't see a reason to jump in yet since none of these features were in the game yet, and there was no clear date on when they would be. So I filed the game in the back of my mind, and forgot about it since I had plenty of other cool games to play at the time and look forward to, specifically Rust, and all the games in that vein such as Life is Feudal, Atlas et al. which were basically delivering what Star Citizen meant to deliver—a real environment to adventure in, as opposed to old-school videogame "levels"—but at a smaller scale. Those games, however, were already out, and Star Citizen wasn't, so I focused on what I could play, and got lost in it for years, since these games are so deep they can suck you in for months at a time.

Then a couple years later Star Citizen again attracted my attention with its trailer for Alpha 3.8. By that point, the planet-spanning city, ArcCorp, was already in, together with several other planets and cities, and the trailer was showcasing the latest version of CIG's planet tech that allowed for far more detailed and realistic planets "with no biomes or repetition", plus a brand-new planet that was built using these tools. Have a look, it's a remarkable watch to this day; you haven't seen anything like it in any other game, and probably won't for many years.

Star Citizen: Alpha 3.8 Now Playable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAQx7i0 ... PZP7ZdyIAC

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The snowstorm, trees and tents blowing in the wind and driving in the snowy conditions blew me away, and in retrospect I should have jumped into the game then and there since unlike the previous videos this one was, after all, titled "Now Playable"; but the stupidity of thinking of the game as "not released" was still stuck to my head from all the misinformation clouding the game online, and I went back to my normal games, filing Star Citizen once again as something to "keep an eye on" in the future, but even more closely now than before. Around the same time (4 days later in fact), CIG released a Squadron 42 trailer that was even more impressive, if such a thing is possible; but Squadron 42 was even less playable than SC—it was not playable at all, and still isn't—so it didn't change anything about my decision to delay my entry into Star Citizen. If anything, it reinforced it, as in the back of my mind I probably unconsciously thought I'd wait for SQ42 to come out so I could use it as my entry point into Chris's "verse", as he and the community were now calling the world they were building.

Squadron 42: 2019 Visual Teaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aCE7gxQOVY

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So ultimately the main reason I wasn't in a hurry to get into the game, even after multiple videos convinced me it was a must-play, was because of the "release" faggotry. I thought there's no hurry, since I can always play it later, "on release", or at least closer to "release", so that I'll play a "more complete" game or whatever. But then what happened finally last summer was that a new trailer came out, showcasing the latest version of the game, Alpha 3.17.2, and when I saw that trailer, the whole "release" faggotry collapsed and I just HAD to jump into the game RIGHT THERE AND THEN. I mean for christsake watch this trailer and tell me if the game looks "released" or not to you:

Star Citizen: Alpha 3.17.2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH0ppWX ... PZP7ZdyIAC

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This is a cooler trailer than 99.9% of the games coming out every year on the market, and it's a mere quarterly update! If SC is not "released" by this point, everything else might as well be considered a fuckin' prototype, since they have way fewer features!!!

So this trailer made the game look like a next-gen PlanetSide, and it blew me away. There's barely any "space" shown in it, by the way; almost all of the scenes are planetside, and even the few space scenes shown look cooler than any space game I've ever seen, with EVA and FPS action inside giant derelict spacecraft that make the game look like Shattered Horizon or Boundary in addition to PlanetSide and even Halo (the Siege of Orison Dynamic Event launched with this update is basically an MMO Halo level).

So at that point, a mere 2 days after the 3.17.2 trailer dropped, I made the "Cult War Journal #9: Star Citizens" post on Patreon and accompanying Scheduling thread in the forum, and all the rest is history. And here we are, one year later, still putting time into the game every week, tens of thousands of dollars into our fleet, and with an entire new subforum featuring dozens of threads and thousands of posts that is the greatest Star Citizen resource on the internet [ > ]. And by the way, to clear one more common misconception, spending money on the game is not an "investment", and the game doesn't have to "make its money back", as my friend Ciaróg thought when he tried the game out with us some time ago. He's worried about the game "making its money back", because it's "raised" half a billion dollars; but this is money that we threw at the game with no expectation of—and no right to—a return. Chris Roberts and CIG owe nothing to no one, and they're making quite a nice living out of the project since they're all paid wages above industry average (CR is making $400k a year, for example). So if the game shut down tomorrow, no one would lose anything—apart from the industry losing the best real-time game ever, of course. Which would be a tragedy, and unthinkable at this time when the game is making over 100 million a year and accelerating. HOWEVER, all things must come to an end, and perhaps a global economic downturn will stop people from throwing money at the game (it certainly would stop me), so it's not impossible for the game to shut down at some point, and besides, any one of us might drop dead at any moment and never get to try the best real-time game ever just because the braindead journalists have convinced us that the game is "not released" and we must wait for the "release" to play it. But the "release"—whatever that stupidly outdated term might mean (and for a metaverse in open-ended development it means next to nothing)—might take another decade or more! Are you certain you'll be alive at that time? Plenty of OG backers have died in the last few years, without even seeing the coolest stuff like the planets, and much is made in the community about this real tragedy. We're talking about day 1 people way more invested than me, who flew around to CitizenCons when there was no more to the game than a hangar to walk around your ships in. And these people are now DEAD and will NEVER see the GLORY that they funded! It's almost like I feel a MORAL OBLIGATION to fully explore and enjoy the game in their honor! The game certainly wouldn't exist without them, since I didn't bother to fund it before buying my measly $45 game package last year.

To recap:

1. Star Citizen is not a "space game": it is an open-world sandbox game on a galactic scale, or as I prefer to call it, a metaverse game.

2. Star Citizen is the biggest crowdfunded project of all time, and precisely for this reason it doesn't have investors or shareholders to "pay back". That's why its design can be so ambitious and open-ended: because only Chris Roberts controls it, and he makes $400k a year doing so.

3. Star Citizen is OUT NOW and is even the #10 most played online game, by some metrics, and quickly rising in the rankings, receiving more new content every year than entire other new games thanks to the no fewer than FIVE STUDIOS working on it, totaling 1,100 employess AND RISING (they had 68 job openings last time I checked). Check this playlist for trailers of its quarterly updates to get a sense of the sheer amount of new content and technologies that are packed into the game every few months: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... PZP7ZdyIAC

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In conclusion: there's nothing that Chris Roberts and CIG need to do to attract anyone's attention; no gate they need to pass to get the "okay" from the press that their game is suitable now for players to jump into it and enjoy it ("released"). Chris Roberts and CIG are WHOLE DECADES ahead of ANY CONCEIVABLE COMPETITION and their game is therefore THE MOST RELEASED GAME OF ALL TIME, and now it's up to each individual player to figure this out and hop aboard, because the devs aren't waiting for anyone, and the future doesn't need every single person's approval to go ahead. It just needs enough people to fund it, and Star Citizen already has more than enough. Anyone beyond that just needs to ask themselves if they are interested in the future, and if they want to be a part of it or not.

So, are you? And do you?
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 20 Aug 2023 14:22

Hey so can we get a ban on these dumb and often poorly hidden "Your games so doomed, Starfields coming" posts. Seriously there is one every hour from throw away accounts, they add nothing to the sub except baiting arguments with trolls.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _and_often

TheGazelle wrote:People are saying "Oh there'll be 10 Star Citizens by the time this comes out"...

So where are they? It's been 11 years. The amount of money being made has been a very public thing in gaming media the whole time. There's clearly a market for this kind of game.

So where are they?

Oh, that's right. Literally nobody else is even trying it because they're all chasing the gambling/fomo dollars.

So no, there definitely will not be anyone else even attempting to make something like Star Citizen.

The only things that maybe came anywhere close are No Man's Sky and Elite: Dangerous. The former only got to what most people thought of as "pretty good" like 5 years after it released, and is still nowhere close to even trying half of what Star Citizen aims to be. Elite: Dangerous is basically the dictionary definition of "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle", and has pretty much gotten worse over time.

And that's because despite the memes, Star Citizen is genuinely trying to become something that nobody else has ever, and likely ever will try, because for pretty much any other dev, this kind of project would get laughed out of the boardroom in favor of something with more certain ROI and recurring revenue.


m0llusk wrote:I've been in software development for over 30 years and have participated in several projects that went on for over 10 years. Software is an extremely difficult art. Overall around 40% of projects fail and that includes conservative and well funded proposals. This effort started with an insane dream and zero funding. That there have been any results at all is something of a miracle. And what there is however messy is a game that many have fun with.

CIG never lied, they only promised to try. You critics lie constantly, though.


FYI Starfield makes you gay. Just sayin'.

(And Elite: Dangerous makes you brown, just ask Beakman. No Man's Sky meanwhile makes you a furry.)
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 20 Aug 2023 14:57

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... nt/jwya5cm

Beltalowdamon wrote:Don't understand why people expected it to take less time to develop.

It took one of the largest established gaming studios over a decade to add server instancing/sharding tech to their game (WoW). Even when they re-released a 15 year old game, the server couldn't handle more than 100-150 players in the same area without lagging to hell and back and crashing.

And WoW is an order of magnitude less complex than SC.

If it really was that easy, some other gaming studio would have done it, because other gaming studios happen to like money too, and it's real easy to see the demand for such a game when you look at SC's funding.

It's just so lazy to go "well they are mismanaging the project".
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VGART: Star Citizen - The Year of Chris Roberts

Unread postby icycalm » 27 Aug 2023 17:41

CONTENTS
Prologue
The Insomnia Best Game of All Time Award: Star Citizen
Thank you God
"There has never been anything like it"
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wipe
The Chow Hall Drama
Too Good to be True
The Most Released Game of All Time
The Year of Chris Roberts
The Coolest Thing You'll Ever Own
Star Race, or The Whitest Game Ever
Go On, Play Some More Steam
Citizen Annihilation
The Birth of Quantum Gaming
The Project Game In Your Garage
The Greatest Screenshot Ever
The Sum of All Genres


The Year of Chris Roberts

So here are my suspicions for how the rest of 2023 and 2024 will play out with Star Citizen and Squadron 42. These thoughts are based on bits and pieces of info I've accumulated over the last few months, and I won't be citing all these sources because it'd take forever to find them.

A few months back Squadron 42 was taken off the store, and CIG said it's to change its price, which basically means increase it. Which makes sense when you consider it'll be the biggest campaign game ever, and it was selling for $45 iirc, while campaign games sell for $70 nowadays. Moreover, this year's CitizenCon will be two days, instead of the one day they used to be, so my suspicion is that the first day will be for Star Citizen and the second for Squadron 42. About a year ago, Chris Roberts' brother was cited in a Bar Citizen as saying that Squadron 42 is "a couple years out", which would make it about a year from now, which is about how long a beta would take to polish for a game of this complexity. And last month, the word "beta" was mentioned for the first time in a Squadron 42 work report in relation to animations which have now moved into the beta stage. And finally, the whole tenor of these reports in recent months has been less and less about fundamental work and more about increasingly smaller tasks, so it feels like development is reaching towards a conclusion.

I basically believe—as some others in the community—that the long-awaited marketing push for Squadron 42 will start at CitizenCon with a kickass new trailer and the reintroduction of the game for sale at a higher price point, plus with a bunch of limited editions, maybe season passes, the usual stuff.

As for Star Citizen, they have been promising Pyro every year for going on four years now, but it seems we might finally be there, because they're selling Pyro skins for CitizenCon and flat out telling us to buy them so as to "let the people of Stanton know you're ready for an expedition to Pyro" [ > ]. The Pyro progress reports have been about polish for a LONG time now, and the last blocker was server meshing; not full meshing though—that has been proven to be a monster of a task, and has been therefore continually pushed back—but some type of bandaid solution just to get Pyro out the door but without sending the player back to the main menu to pick between systems. Chris Roberts is committed to a seamless in-game transition between systems but, with each system handled by a different server, there must be some kind of basic server login transfer to get it working, and they've been working on this for at least half a year now, with total radio silence, so it's not a stretch to imagine they have finally done it, and Pyro is about to drop Q4 2023, or Q1 2024 at the latest. Another related tidbit is that at a Bar Citizen a few months ago one of the attendees was asking the devs about the next large-ship release, and the dev said "You don't want to miss CitizenCon". So they'll unveil a large ship at CitCon, and my guess is it'll be the Liberator because it's the smallest quasi-capital ship in the game, and it would be a godsend if not a necessity on Pyro, given the much larger distances and lack of refueling infrastructure: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm ... -Liberator

The Liberator easily accommodates three ships on its open-air landing pads, from light and medium fighters to mining and freight craft. The distinct double-deck configuration makes exceptional use of a relatively compact space, rendering take-offs and landings effortless. Fighters can therefore launch and help repel any attackers, should the Liberator come under assault during its journey. The interior bay is further capable of housing two ground vehicles, such as tanks and mining vehicles.


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The above speculations were pieced together via many ambiguous tidbits, but in the most commonsensical interpretation of them they all point strongly towards the same direction: an explosion of content coming from CIG in 2024, which the newly 2-day CitizenCon seems about to showcase. And if I am correct, and both Pyro and Squadron 42 arrive in 2024, that would easily make it The Year of Chris Roberts, as his accumulated labor of a decade will finally break over the industry with such an explosion that it will be impossible for even the braindead gaming public, and even more braindead journalists, to continue to ignore. For christsake HENRY CAVILL is the star of Squadron 42! GARY OLDMAN and MARK HAMILL are his commanders! That's how Chris Roberts rolls, that's how he has been rolling since I played his first masterpiece in 1990, and an entire industry who DIDN'T play it back then (because they weren't even alive) is about to find out why this man is a God among those of us who know what gaming's all about. I mean I have played four of his games (Wing Commander 1, 2, 3 and Strike Commander), and they were ALL masterpieces. I bought all of them at launch and finished them immediately, and I would struggle to find a single negative thing to say about them. So what are the chances that Squadron 42 will not be great? And we already know Star Citizen is basically the best game ever.

So in 2024 Chris Roberts and CIG will simultaneously dominate the singleplayer campaign and sandbox MMO genres, which are basically the entire industry (sorry Tetris players, your game doesn't count). The biggest crowdfunded project in history, which just passed $600M, is about to deliver the most immersive singleplayer and the most immersive multiplayer games ever, and I believe the explosion caused by this event will catapult the project to $1B by year's end, and the world will finally start to grasp what the metaverse genre is about. (It is about immersion, and not rolling on the floor for 100 hours in a barren wasteland surrounded by invisible walls while bad anime plays every 10 minutes, which is what basically all popular, programmer-led games are about.)
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icycalm
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Re: PC Star Citizen

Unread postby icycalm » 30 Aug 2023 20:48

Sq42 - Any clue what this game will be like? Features, scale, etc...
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ll_be_like

lord_nagleking wrote:I'm also curious and this is what I've put together so far:

You can create your own character (male or female). But you're also a navy pilot so it's not like you can be whatever you want. Don't think you're going to be pirating anyone here.

It's going to be a mix of dog-foghting, space exploration, FPS infiltration/combat gameplay, there are going to be lots of social interactions with the other members of your crew—this is apparently common in older Chris Roberts games.

It seems like it's going to be heavy on story, but just how much the game is "on rails" is yet to be seen. In this Future of Squadron 42 video they show the new Mobiglass and it shows numerous missions—this makes me think it could be closer to RDR2, where there's a very straightforward story you can follow but you can take on multiple side missions. Who knows though, that's speculation.

If you go to the Progress Tracker on the RSI website and filter by SQ42 in Deliverables mode, you can see all sorts of interesting stuff—here's some of the more interesting things I gleaned from looking through it:

Salvage is definitely going to be a thing. Whether that's just with your multi-tool or if you'll have a salvage ship, I don't know. Maybe you'll be able to take on little side jobs for the navy between missions.

AI Dancing was something that took me aback. That Deliverable describes how NPCs, after work will go to bars and get drinks and dance. There are multiple AI behaviors in the progress tracker but this one made me think this game might be more "open" than we suspect. Again, speculation and this one is also a SC deliverable so there's that.

The Greycat Industrial Cydnus Mining Droid is described as a game-ready vehicle which if you look up videos and pictures of, is pretty badass looking. Of course, when they first showed off the Cydnus Mining Droid they said it would be NPC only... That was 8-9 years ago hah

Anyhow, that Future of Squadron 42 video that I linked above is actually pretty neat and gives more information than I think any other video to date—vertical slice included.

Chris talks about the game being more of a stealh shooter during the FPS segments, since your character is less of a Space Marine and more of a navy pilot who occasionally infiltrates places on foot. There's going to be sneaking around, hacking, cutting open grates, knife take downs, and I suppose numerous weapons.

They show some exploration using the new NAV mode and how it "makes the SQ42 world feel bigger" in the words of Chris Roberts.

My best guess is there are going to be segments of SQ42 that are very linear and on-rails, but it seems there might also be moments where the game sort of opens up and let's you explore a little bit. Again, maybe like RDR2, but I'm in no way saying it will be that open world.

There's an ISC from a while ago where one of the developers describes SQ42 as essentially a huge mission inside of Star Citizen. What that tells me is it's going to feel a lot like SC, but with a better frame rate I'm sure, and more curated content.

Anyhow. I've sort of been having the same thought as you lately... What is this single player game that I also pledged for 10 years ago, and that's a little snippet of what I've gathered over the past month.


Everyone needs to watch this 1-hour play footage video from 5 years ago that I link below. It's still the coolest singleplayer campaign game you've ever seen. Think of it as an episode in a TV show and spend the hour. You'll see the interior of the Idris, the fabled chow hall, the lockers working, the mop and bucket, multiple big time actors, new pieces of armor and gear. I was especially stunned to see that, among all the other games and genres it incorporates, it also heavily incorporates DESCENT, since much of the flying seems to be inside huge structures or natural formations. Of course, here it looks amazing and fits in with the locations and plot as opposed to Descent's autistic nonsensical spaceship-in-Doom setup.

Don't miss this video, you've never seen such seamless campaign play. It makes movies look lame. And it was playable HALF A DECADE AGO. I can't imagine what the game will be like now, but we'll find out at CitCon end of October.

Squadron 42: Pre-Alpha WIP Gameplay - Vertical Slice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHR1aEdTA4M

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And once you've watched that, catch up with the official teaser from 4 years ago:

Squadron 42 Cinematic Teaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VppjX4to9s4

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Then another one from 3 years ago:

Squadron 42: 2019 Visual Teaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aCE7gxQOVY

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And finally the leaked internal review environment video from 10 months ago:

SQ42 FULL 9MIN LEAK - better quality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aD_TdBnUrI

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Now you're a true believer that all other campaign games look lame compared to this, and are all caught up for CitCon.


P.S. Just imagine how many players this will bring into Star Citizen!
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icycalm
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Inside Star Citizen: This Sounds Like Ship

Unread postby icycalm » 31 Aug 2023 23:53

Inside Star Citizen: This Sounds Like Ship
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=542d0p1dYmU

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I am putting this here because it superbly illustrates how far ahead SC is compared to other games when its mere sound design is more interesting than the full design of 99% of other games out there. Must-watch episode.
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icycalm
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