The website with a schedule is now online. There seems to be many interesting talks this year. Good to see Tony on the stage again. I have never heard/seen a boring talk from him.

eurogamer.it made an interview with Marco Corbetta recently. No big news here but it is always interesting to hear opinions directly from developers themselves.

Google translate:

EG.it: At Cloud Imperium Games you are developing procedural and planetary technologies that have evolved over the years.In the last monthly reports of the company, a "v.4 Planetary Technology" has been mentioned several times in development.What distinguishes this version and how far are you still from being able to create a complex planet like the Earth?

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

I just want them to release Squadron 42. If they can get that out the door, I'll hopefully feel like I got my money's worth even if the rest of it never comes to fruition.

@conmulligan: SQ42 is their first priority project so it definitely gets pretty much all their attention. I wouldn't be surprise if CitizenCon's last big gameplay demo would be SQ42 mission. Hopefully it will despite I'm much more interested about PU in general.

Obligatory shitposting: Was it really the best of ideas to call their convention "Citzencon 2949"? They are just writing the jokes themselves at this point

Still. Hopefully the folk who are all in will enjoy it. I'd like to see Squad 42 at this point but I've also lost a lot of faith in it being any good. But it might help contribute to a renaissance for narrative space dogfighting games.

@gundato: Not the best name and numbering for their convention for sure :). In the other the joke got old years ago already so no one seem to care that much anymore.

Why have you lost faith that SQ42 could be any good?

@spacegg: Continual feature bloat coupled with almost all of the focus over the past years being "look what actor we got" and less "Here is a fucking awesome dogfight".

I'm sure there is stuff I am not paying attention to. But what little gameplay we have seen is very "meh" and their engine as we can play it runs worse than Bloodstained on switch.

@gundato: How much "feature bloat" affects or has affected to SQ42 is unknown. The performance of SQ42 is also unknown at this point.

What comes to SQ42 and PU I think performance is not even important in Alpha stage. Server Side Object Container Streaming (SSOCS) should bring lots of benefits just like Client Side Object Container Streaming (CSOCS) did. Hopefully we would see first parts of SSOCS being integrated in PU Alpha 3.8.

I'm personally very big fan of this "feature bloat". That's one thing which makes the whole project interesting. There are plenty of great simpler space games in the market and more coming but I love to have an enormous space game like Star Citizen as well.

And good for you. If you are the audience who wants all this crap, kudos. I am not, and I am kind of annoyed that I've had to wait years to see Squadron 42 because so much time was spent on this feature bloat and mismanagement.

And if the current game is not indicative of S42 then we have even bigger issues and I'll need to start making halfassed 3949 jokes.

@gundato: But the thing is that we don't know how much any of this "feature bloat" has affected SQ42 if at all (depends what one thinks is "feature bloat"). SSOCS is one big tech that is blocking SQ42 and it is not ready yet.

Here the roadmap for SQ42

Can we send Ben or Dan to this event? I think that should happen.

@spacegg said:

Why has SQ42 been delayed repeatedly if not for feature bloat? When I pledged, it was originally supposed to come out in 2016. Now, it appears unlikely to launch before 2021, and even that seems tenuous.

@conmulligan: There is also the very real question of why a single player game needs to wait for server tech (for those unaware, "SSOCS" is "Server Side Object Container Streaming" and is a way to hopefully improve performance for the main game).

Which boils down to how they architected the engine and the game and so forth.

Was half tempted to get into it. But I've long since written off whatever I spent on the fighter ship I'll never use and the squad42 game that will probably never come out.

@conmulligan: It depends what you consider as a bloat and what not. If one expected to get modern Wing Commander clone then pretty much all other than a cockpit and dogfighting is bloat.

I expect to get "A rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person." which doesn't count for example planetary gameplay out. I rather play the game than watch cut scenes and that's why I'm fine that they add for example first person melee and sneaking gameplay. They are able to tell the story as they wanted.

I believe that if they would have released a space combat game they would have never have change start to build Star Citizen as massive and ambitious project as we know it now.

@gundato: I guess they want both SQ42 and PU using the same tech and code base as much as possible. With SSOCS they can have the same rich universe on both single player and MMO game.

There is an interesting article about OCS in Jump Point issue 07 10.

Monthly report of October gives some more ideas what we can expect to see in CitizenCon.

Star Citizen Monthly Report: October 2019

@spacegg: I'm not going to get into this any more because it is a waste of everyone's time. You clearly are all for that Rich Universe (TM) . I, and many others, want what we actually bought the better part of a decade ago

What I will say is this: I and many other backers bought a narrative space dogfighting game from one of the guys most involved with some of the highlights of that genre. Checking back on the Kickstarter, that was scheduled for release 5 years ago (Nov '14).

Instead, we are told that we'll need to wait until the janky as hell open world multiplayer is fixed

And its good that you are getting what you want (some day). Believe me, I get it. I get my space truck on in Elite. I am the mofo who "well, actually"'d NMS with Evochron. I actually like the Battlecruiser games (even if Derek Smart cursed me out with a bunch of slurs a decade or two ago). I am all for that shit. But not if it is blocking what people actually paid for.

And if you don't understand why folk might be a bit peeved at the "bloat" then I really don't know what to tell you

@gundato: Yeah, I'm 100% with you on this, I want a dogfighting game with a series of distinct missions, a few branching paths and some Mass Effect style character interactions in the carrier bar/quarters between the missions, preferably presented in FMV, but I'll settle with in-game rendered cutscenes. I don't want any open world stuff, no "do you want to be a pirate, merchant or fighter pilot", little to no on-foot stuff and definitely no always online MMO stuff with raids and seasons or anything like that.

And over the last 8 years we seem farther away from that than ever.

@gundato: I competely understand that there are backers who are disappointed that they are not going to get a game exactly like Wing Commander but a single player narrative dogfighting game with first person gameplay. Hopefully at least most of disappointed backers requested refund.

Why do you think SQ42 needs to wait for PU gets fixed? As far as I know the release of SQ42 doesn't depend on PU which will be released later.
They are not fixing PU but developing it - fixing comes later stage of development.

@fisk0: I kind of go back and forth on the space legs debate.

On the one hand, I think being able to be Lars Fuchs (how the frigging hell did I remember the name of that character?!?!?) and hide in an asteroid belt to flank enemy kill ships and steal haulers sounds amazing.

On the other hand, none of that would ever work in an open world game. Even video game space is too big for that to be anything other than the most obnoxious of bullshit for campers or the chokepoints are already so defined that you might as well sit in your ship. And beyond that it just equates to annoying menus I will skip through if possible and get pissed off when I can't. Hell, having to walk around the hub town in the Breakpoint beta is probably what stopped me from buying that game.

In that regard, I think integrating space legs into a tightly coupled campaign would actually be a great idea. I wouldn't want it between every mission, but having it on the cadence of a scanning/stealth mission in a WC/Freespace would be fine with me. My mind is STILL a bit blown from doing runs in to a burning space station in ED to rescue civillians and combining that with a set piece space legs bit could be great. Whether it is worth adding space legs for a few missions is, of course, debatable.

Hmm, was Infinite Warfare any good?

----

I am a bit biased, but I think the Elite Dangerous model is closer to correct. Give us a vertical slice of gameplay then broaden it. And in that regard, I think Star Citizen advertised the right idea. Give us Wing Commander. Then give us Privateer. Then give us... Elite Dangerous.

Obviously E:D screwed the pooch on that because Frontier can't seem to commit to actually going deep in any aspect AND have managed to make everyone give zero shits about their years long story campaign. But the idea of getting the base game in and then digging deep on each aspect is a sound one and is more or less what Paradox and Amplitude are built around.

@fisk0: That description sounds very much of SQ42 to me although we have not told yet how much there will be on-foot stuff.

Hopefully we will see and hear about SQ42 in CitizenCon.

Well, it's definitely what we were pitched in 2011, but all the talk since sound less and less like it. I'd love to hear some news on it, though I've pretty much written this whole thing off, at least I didn't spend more than $40 on the kickstarter back in the day.

They talk about SQ42 very little and that's why it is big deal for backers when they talk about it or demo it even a little. CIG tries to keep it spoiler free as much as possible.

I don't remember hearing any particular info which would imply that SQ42 is going to very different direction than originally planned. What kind of info you think suggests so?

Well, basically the things you just brought up, they basically don't talk about SQ42, while talking a whole lot about all the other stuff that's not at all close to the game they pitched to backers in 2011.

@fisk0: Yeah, SQ42 is being developed in traditional "behind the closed doors" way. It is understandable that devs doesn't want to talk anything about a plot/story to avoid ruining the experience but can be pretty frusfrating in long development cycles. CitizenCon would be a perfect place to show more about SQ42.

One thing I have noticed is people seems to have very different wishes how SQ42 plays. Me personally would like to have very slow paced game having more feeling of "The Expanse" than fast paced "Star Wars"; long travel times, lots of time spent with ships and a crew, etc.

Especially flight model shares opinions strongly - the debate have been going on years inside the community. No matter how the FM will end to be there will be lots of disappointed backers.

You mentioned Mass Effect but would you like SQ42 to be more fast paced movie kind of experience?

The stuff the are talking about are mainly game development, tools and PU. Since PU and SQ42 shares the tech one can get at least a bit an idea how gameplay mechanisms works in SQ42. But in general I really like this "open development" style of making AAA game. I don't know any other big game which is being developed this openly.

Free Fly Week is coming for the 24th as part of the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//17351-Anniversary-Promotion-Free-Fly-Details

There will be a separate site opened up on the 24th at http://IAE2949.com

Time to dust off my yearly joke: More like Citizen Con!

Seriously though I haven't kept up with Star Citizen in like two or three years. Here's hoping it all works out or at the very least we get an amazing behind the scenes book.

According to streams people seems to have great time in CitizenCon. It would be so nice to meet developers and be able to discuss with them ...

Intergalactic Aerospace Expo is in-game expo showing new and old ships. This year it is kept in Bevic Convention Centre Area 18.

So what is actually finished in this game? I remember this and Elite Dangerous were competition, now that game is super old and this one still doesn't seem to have come out yet, but is always adding on more things.

Lots of interesting presentations given and information shared so far. Can't wait to see all presentations once they come to Youtube.

The official videos are not out yet but bunch of community members has submitted videos from different panels to Youtube already.

One of my favorite panels were Tony Z's and Jake Muehle's "Building a Universe".

It it pretty interesting how enormous in scale and detailed the game is. You can move objects around your flat and be doing daily tasks; drinking coffee, making video calls with friends VoIP/FoIP, read news, etc. and at the same time there is full simulated universe affecting everything around you. One other very interesting aspect is that the system doesn't make difference between players and NPSs. They are creating and doing both same shared tasks, missions, etc.

Can't wait for the Netflix documentary about this a la Fyre Festival.

They did reveal some new ships in CitizenCon. One of them was Mole - a multi crew mining ship. The ship becomes very useful now because they are going to add multiple types of mining lasers. It is scheduled for Alpha 3.8 so hopefully it will make it.

Did they give any kind of update on Squadron 42?

@conmulligan: Unfortunately not directly. Of course all techs and panel talks are more or less related to SQ42 too but lets see if they will still have something for end of year as some rumors hints ...