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    Star Citizen

    Game » consists of 6 releases. Released Nov 11, 2021

    A first-person space combat & flight simulation MMO inspired by the Wing Commander series of games.

    Tony Zurovec: Quantum, Quasar, and Virtual AI

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    spacegg

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    @gundato:

    Aside from that: You keep saying the development is working for them when it clearly isn't. It has taken 11 years to STILL not deliver on what they promised and you yourself acknowledge they need to repeatedly scrap things and can't even integrate all the things they are working on. That is not "working".

    There has been no need to repeatedly scrap things but they recently needed to remove a location (which didn't even belong there in the first place) to give room to another location. They had to do it because the foundation is not ready yet, but they would have done that later anyway.
    I don't see how having "a modern Wing Commander" would have helped the situation because that game wouldn't have been the foundation / vertical slice they need.

    So, instead of modern WC they concentrated to make a first version of foundation what they need. After first iteration they have kept iterating it. Soon, the next iteration will be released to wider amount of backers for testing. Since they have been able to do this, in my opinion shows that the current way of development works for them.

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    Gundato

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    @spacegg:

    So they haven't had to scrap anything but they have had to remove things and reimplement it or add different stuff because they don't have a foundation after 11 years.

    And once they do have that foundation they can start iterating on it and showing it to backers (of which I think I am still not one because I only gave them money and am not actively advertising for them? Still unclear on that). Which maybe they'll have before the 15 year mark.

    Out of curiosity: Would you say that the Duke Nukem Forever development process worked? They eventually released something. Ooh, or what about Cyberpunk? That shit made a lot of money.

    Again, it is fine if you like something. Hell, even though he called me the c-word on a message board, I actually loved Derek Smart's games back in the day. But that doesn't mean I am going to defend their flaws and insist that they were intuitive or even had functioning tutorials (fun fact: Because the tutorial was just a starting seed for a mission it was very common for RNG to break it while you tried to follow along in the manual).

    But as myself and others have pointed out: Of all the things that can be said about SC, it not having a dysfunctional development process is not one of those. It has taken them 11 years to STILL not provide a "foundation".

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    spacegg

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    @gundato:

    So they haven't had to scrap anything but they have had to remove things and reimplement it or add different stuff because they don't have a foundation after 11 years.

    They will add the location back once they have needed core techs integrated and when they integrate a star system the location belongs to.

    Yes, some core techs are still missing and some of them has been integrated. These core tech "pillars" makes the foundation. Without them SQ42 and SC PU can't happen as they have planned.
    It is long time to wait but no other developer has made a game like SQ42 and SC PU either during this time. Fortunately many backers has good time with test versions / iterations while waiting the projects get finished.
    If some other developer will make a games like those meanwhile, even better. I definitely would like to have many more games like these.

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    Gundato

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    #54  Edited By Gundato

    @spacegg: Ah, so everything is on track except that it has taken 11 years to still fail to get some core pillars in. Oh yeah, that is some A+ game development and I hope they give plenty of ted talks so that the game dev industry can learn the REAL way to manage to not make a game while still crunching your employees to death AND demanding they come to work during a natural disaster.

    But I see you're back to just insisting star citizen is unique and disrespecting pretty much every other talented developer in the industry so... whatever. I'll at least assume there is some bad faith involved since you keep ignoring most of what everyone says to you in the interest of repeating the same "Nothing is done but this is unique and nobody has done it so it works even though it has taken 11 years to not even get out of the tech demo stage" line.

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    bigsocrates

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    @gundato: The only way that this development will have "worked out well" is if Star Citizen ultimately becomes something dazzling and amazing, a true step forward in game design. The thing that @spacegg refuses to acknowledge is that there's absolutely no reason to think this will ever happen. It's possible. But they've blown all their projections up to this point, so having faith in some vague "roadmap" is like trusting a prophet who keeps predicting the apocalypse and then moving the date when it fails to happen.

    They have zero credibility remaining at this point. And they need* to stop expanding the scope and just put something out.

    Sea of Thieves is another example of a game that launched kind of bare bones and then built itself out over time, and that a lot of people really like.

    Star Citizen gets away with not actually shipping anything of substance by claiming that the game is going to be so amazing that it's taking much longer to develop than other games, and that's what makes it seem like a scam or a cult (I don't actually think it's a scam in the sense that I think they're trying to make a game and not just selling stuff they don't intend to deliver). It keeps making these incredible promises and urging everyone to have faith, and then showing very little but using that as evidence that's what's coming is just going to be spectacular, like a lot of scams do.

    Maybe this whole thing comes together some day into a game that people can enjoy. I think that's possible. It's had such a long runway and so much work has been done that it seems like they should be able to finish something up. But it's not going to be the giant leap forward in game design that the backers believe it will, and it's not going to justify the time and costs.

    I am sure that the dedicated followers will insist that it's amazing and everything they dreamed of, though. They're too invested not to. People can fool themselves of much more fundamentally obvious things than whether a video game is good or bad.

    I hope they enjoy what they get.

    *They don't TECHNICALLY need to do this because for now people are still funding the boondoggle and who knows how long that will last, maybe forever.

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    spacegg

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    @gundato: Maybe you could finally reveal these other project which provides Star Citizen experience so me and other backers could start to play them already.

    No, I don't know any other project that would give me Star Citizen experience. Yes, the project may very well fail.

    Should me and others just give up and stop testing and enjoying it? Just keep continuing playing E:D, Empyrion and others and hope that one day they will be like Star Citizen.

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    bigsocrates

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    @spacegg: Nobody has suggested you stop playing a game you enjoy or stop testing or reporting bugs if that's something you like to do. It's video games. If you aren't hurting anyone else then do whatever makes you happy.

    What bothers everyone is your insistence that this has been a well-managed project and denial that CID has been deeply dysfunctional in a development process where they have continually failed to hit their goals and are still in a state where they have to pull stuff from the alpha build because their code hasn't come together yet.

    That's the issue. The claim that everything has gone well when it's obvious to everyone that it hasn't.

    Whether you want to keep playing the game going forward is entirely up to you.

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    Gundato

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    #58  Edited By Gundato

    @bigsocrates: Ironically, I think star citizen actually DOES have a very solid and successful pipeline. I just don't think it is a game development one

    While I am sure there are some players who genuinely love playing the game (and more power to them), I imagine most people are like myself and the various space game influencers who usually check in during a free weekend because they know people are interested, have their mind blown for the first five minutes, and then remember why they don't play it shortly after.

    But that isn't what CIG are selling. They are selling the dream and the ships/RMTs. And in that regard, I think they are fine. It is similar to how a lot of people support games like Dwarf Fortress or the latest streamer bait not because THEY want to play it but because they want to watch other people play. Except that in the case of SC there isn't even really playing so much as the imagination of what playing could be like.

    Like, I don't know what the best term would be, but I consider CIG to be something like a youtuber or a twitch streamer who is going full friend simulator and making bank off people paying to get their donation messages read and so forth. And, aside from me being somewhat pissed I will never get the game I bought, I am all for that.

    I just get more than a bit cranky when the advertisement squads outright disrespect all the really talented developers and game studios that HAVE delivered on the promise of SC over the decades. And I still can't believe it took me until this thread to realize Mount & Blade is an elite game...

    @spacegg:I did all the way back on page 1. You actively ignored it like you do any time someone makes a point you don't think can be ignored by just saying that you love star citizen and all the real backers are happy and they are successful.

    I am all for having a good faith discussion of how the various elite games are converging on the same concept and how there are actually a lot more elite games than we thought there were. Let me know if you ever think you're ready for that.

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    bigsocrates

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    @gundato: What you're describing is, in fact, a scam, so I am 100% not all for that if that's what they're actually, consciously, doing. It's no different from all the get rich quick schemes that soak people on the promise of a better life they can't deliver, except that the better life they're promising is a virtual one.

    I don't think it's what they intend to do, though. I think they are actually trying to make a great game, it's just that they can't accept that they're not going to make the game in their imagination and just settle for whatever game they can make. It's like a writer who keeps ripping up his novel because it's not up to his standards, only instead of one schmuck alone with an Underwood this is a big company that has taken in hundreds of millions of dollars to produce something that it can't make and maybe can't be made. But I think the intent is to make something, and I feel like something will eventually come out. There are a lot of people building assets and writing code for no reason if the intent is just to sell a dream or a fantasy!

    I also think that the disrespect of other developers is bad but it's also kind of necessary to their pitch. The only way to keep the @spacegg types on the hook is to promise something they can't get anywhere else. You see this in all kinds of scam operations. Why do you think Scientology goes after Psychiatry so hard?

    I have respect for some of the people doing work on Star Citizen (some of the artists have made some really cool stuff!) but the project is problematic in so many ways, even if it does end up putting out a good game in 2025 or whatever.

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    BladeOfCreation

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    Reading this thread is the most fun I've had with Star Citizen, so that's saying something.

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    spacegg

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    #61  Edited By spacegg

    @bigsocrates:

    What bothers everyone is your insistence that this has been a well-managed project and denial that CID has been deeply dysfunctional in a development process where they have continually failed to hit their goals and are still in a state where they have to pull stuff from the alpha build because their code hasn't come together yet.

    I look this project pretty simple way. CIG has been able to continue the development thanks to solid support and they have been able to release test version for backers which has kept them, me included, happy so far. That's pretty much it.

    Then what comes to project management and missed goals. Yes, they have missed goals and I'm sure there are plenty of reasons behind it. For example as far as I know they had iCache implementation already in testing in-house, but they pulled that version back because found regressions. I'm not going to bash Mark and other core devs and blame them because they had to delay features because of that - yet another missed goals. Next try in Alpha 3.15.

    In the end we know very little about the development. What is happening in their repos, meetings and about all the issues they have with these core techs. These techs is all new to them as well so more issues (and delays) is still expected. I really hope that once they get them "done" things gets easier when the rest of the project can lay on solid foundation.

    I still don't believe that making some much more simpler games without all these techs would have been better way to go. Yes, we would have got an "modern Wing Commander" but what about Squadron 42 and Star Citizen PU as we know them now?

    How am I disrespecting any other developers? I enjoy playing many space games but none of them provides Star Citizen experience. I play X4: Foundations because Star Citizen doesn't provide the same experience.

    I take this easy and enjoy the ride.

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    Gundato

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    #62  Edited By Gundato

    @bigsocrates: I dunno. "Scam" is a strong word but I also wouldn't entirely disagree. And it is definitely problematic and exploitative but it is also "normal" in ways I find pretty fascinating

    When someone buys twenty subs in a twitch chat, hopefully they understand that they are just giving their favorite influencer money. And said influencer will usually give them a shoutout, say thanks, etc. Throw a bit of interaction their way. It is the friend simulator and how you get your parasocial relationship on. When it is bad... it gets real bad. But for most people it is throwing five bucks at the screen and hearing your name from someone who makes you laugh (or horny).

    A lot of industries are based around selling the illusion of companionship. This is selling the illusion of adventure. And while there are definitely people who think buying that bendy bar will make them as big as Bautista, most people (hopefully) on some level know they are buying a fantasy that will collect dust on a shelf.

    I have it in my head because of the got awful sniper ghost warrior press event, but it is like when people pay for those weekend camps that teach them to be a stunt person or a soldier or a mime or whatever. They aren't really learning anything useful and they will NEVER use that skill. But it makes them THINK that if the entire French Mime Society eat bad shellfish that they can rush up on the stage and save the show.

    I think it is massively fucked up but I also think it is pretty cool. It just... isn't a game. But is it that different than all the people who buy whatever the latest streamer bait game is because they think they'll suddenly grow five friends with face cams who will RP something in a generic first person shooter?

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    bigsocrates

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    @gundato: There's a difference between associative marketing and making false promises that you know are false. You have to be stupid or mentally ill to believe that the Bendy bar will make you look like Bautista. Yes they are selling the image, but the people buying it generally know it won't actually do that (even if they think it's more effective than it is because he endorses it) just like the people buying shout outs on streams mostly know the streamers are not really their friends, unless they are deranged.

    And nobody is making those promises. The Bendy Bar people are not promising that you'll look like Bautista they're just saying it's a piece of exercise equipment. The streamers aren't saying they'll actually be your friends, they're just pretending to like their audience and acting friendly. You're buying a simulacrum of something but you are not being told it's the genuine article. It's like paying for the Girlfriend Experience with a hooker.* You can enjoy the simulacrum but you know it's not real, unless you're stupid or deranged.

    It's a whole other kettle of fish when you are being promised something very specific that they aren't going to deliver. They explicitly promised a video game you could fly your ship in. That's why you backed the game I assume, because you were directly promised something. If they are promising that and not delivering it, without intentions to deliver it, then of course it is a scam. What else could it be? A lot of people get some kind of psychological satisfaction while they're being scammed. That's sort of integral to most scams. The get rich quick schemes make people fantasize about being rich!

    But that doesn't make it not a scam. Quite the opposite. And it's not the same as the bendy bar, and I don't think it's cool at all.

    *note, this is something I've only seen on TV shows.

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    Gundato

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    #64  Edited By Gundato

    @bigsocrates: I mean, @spacegg was right in that there are different kinds of customers. As someone who wanted squadron 42, I give zero shits about buying a virtual ship that maybe someday I can have a party on in vrchat or whatever they are up to. And I do think it is a huge issue for those who actually backed when SC was a game and I have quite a few issues with how the "no questions asked" refunds rapidly started having questions once people noticed it.

    But in terms of the modern consumer base? You get some folk who do a free weekend or who want to try it who buy it and maybe they have fun and maybe they are miserable. I am not sure if I would really consider that too different from stuff like Escape from Tarkov in that sense. Folk very much don't know what they are getting in to when they see a streamer gush about it but you pretty rapidly learn and, unless you are an idiot, you are buying at the "I guess I learned a lesson about supporting storefronts without refund policies" level.

    But as for the die hards? They kind of ARE just buying that girlfriend experience (I was thinking more "strippers' but people get really hung up on that and think comparing twitch streamers to strippers is a bad thing). They are coming back month after month to keep doing that stunt actor training. Maybe they'll eventually spend enough money to sign a bunch of waivers to get set on fire but most likely they are going to be rolling around on the ground and play disarming each other.

    And yeah, it is definitely shitty that there are a LOT of people out there who genuinely think they are going to be Shatner commanding a forty person space ship or that they'll get to go into space with Tom Cruise or that that prostitute really DOES love them. But for the most part, it is people who are spending some cash to have a good time and a good reminder that Fortnite et al competes more with Netflix than anything else. If that time is them rolling in the park while little timmy has his bar mitzvah then cool. If that time is them talking on a message board about how great it will be and how they have so many plans for how they are going to use their cargo ship? I don't get it, but cool? And if that time is them getting their rocks off with someone who is willing to cuddle for the rest of the hour then... as long as there is no trafficking involved, cool.

    I dunno. I have a lot of issues with it but I also have a lot of issues with game monetization in general and every time there is a discussion of addictive loot boxes I remember when we had those same concerns over skinner boxes and diablo and how many people have stories of almost failing a class because of Everquest.

    But putting aside my desire to actually play squadron 42 some day: Its really interesting in the same way that the realization that most of Dwarf Fortress's audience will never play the game is. And if you consider the product to be The Dream then CIG are actually doing a good job. If you consider the product to actually be a game then holy fucking shit.

    As for actual promises: That gets into a legal mess where I am sure CIG covered their asses but I also don't care. When you see an ad with forty giant beefcakes jiggling a shakeweight, the implication is that you too can get swole if you buy a shakeweight. When I check facebook to see what construction is going on downtown and see that soap ad about the girl who is sniffing a guy in the shower I understand that the implication is that this soap will get you some sex. I am sure they all have fine print text making it very clear that there is no guarantee of that in the same way that SC almost assuredly has some text saying "You are buying this as is and there is no guarantee you can ever do anything meaningful with this". And all of that is nonsense that exists solely for legal purposes and has nothing to do with anything close to reality.

    And I do think Star Citizen is a fascinating case study in when a crowd funded project's scope increases so drastically that there is no way to actually satisfy everyone. If they focused on what a lot of us actually paid for, it would piss off all the people currently throwing dollar bills on the stage. I would personally prefer that to be the priority but I can definitely see the arguments for "We gave you a chance to get a refund. Sorry but you are now riding with us". And similar to spending some money to learn about refund policies: I would say my 70 bucks or whatever squadron 42 was taught me to actually read all the stretch goals and be ready to re-assess my pledge the day before things finalize. Like, I do think that if they had focused on that vertical slice it would be easier to support S42 and not-destiny at the same time. But that ship has sailed and is unlikely to ever come back barring a bankruptcy.

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    bigsocrates

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    @gundato: Nobody thinks that Axe body spray is going to make hot women jump all over them. That kind of advertising is not about making specific promises it's about projecting an image, and it's very different.

    All legal arguments aside (and disclaimers don't generally cover active lying about what you're doing, more failure to deliver a product that you tried to deliver in good faith) the people buying into Star Citizen do not think they're just buying a pleasant fantasy. They may get some pleasure about speculating on message boards or day dreaming about being fleet commanders, but they think they're buying assets in a real video game that gets made.

    Look at @spacegg. He's not saying "I love imagining what this game could be." He's saying that he thinks production is going well because they have roadmaps and plans. I mean buddy is out here diligently filling out bug reports. BUG REPORTS. He's paying to do playtesting, which is a beautiful inversion of how it's supposed to work. Buddy does not think it's just about daydreaming.

    They have made explicit promises. To the extent they are still making those promises but do not intend to deliver on them, that's a scam. Whether or not you are cool with that or think it's cool is up to you, but it would be kind of the textbook definition of a scam.

    And Star Citizen is a fascinating case study of a bunch of stuff. Unchecked ambition and hubris. The perils of getting way more money than you actually know what to do with (If the game had gotten $5 million in funding we would have a probably competent but rough around the edges Wing Commander clone long ago). The way people retrench and dig in deeper when it becomes apparent that they fell for a song and dance routine. Insular and self-reaffirming communities. Poor management. All of it. It's like Daikatana but with hundreds of millions of dollars of customer money. But we have to separate out whether it's fascinating from whether it's okay and whether it's a scam.

    For the record I don't think it's a scam because I think the team really is working on the game and wants to put it out. I think they're trying. I just think it's so horribly managed that they're spinning their wheels, and unlike Daikatana nobody is going to pull the plug and scream "ship it!" on this because the money is still coming in.

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    spacegg

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    #66  Edited By spacegg

    @bigsocrates:

    Look at @spacegg. He's not saying "I love imagining what this game could be." He's saying that he thinks production is going well because they have roadmaps and plans. I mean buddy is out here diligently filling out bug reports. BUG REPORTS. He's paying to do playtesting, which is a beautiful inversion of how it's supposed to work. Buddy does not think it's just about daydreaming.

    Well, I think the current way of development works because CIG is able to continue developing their two projects without restrictions and backers gets new versions to test. I don't see how it is not working for CIG and what would be better and faster way backers to get SQ42 and SC PU with planned features while still having possibility to give different iterations a try.

    I'm not paying to do playtesting. You made a ~$45 pledge one time to get SQ42 and SC PU and also you got access to alpha versions. Testing is voluntary.

    Sending bug reports is a common practice when one is doing alpha or beta testing but no one is forced to do so. Just doing anything in test versions gives them data and helps them on development. Test phase gives also a good change to send them feedback.

    I test Star Citizen because it is more fun than playing most of the released games. It is a good way to support projects you like.

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    AlexW00d

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    Even at the beginning I thought this entire game was a huge scam, but goddamn the more that time goes on the more I am convinced it is a full on pyramid scheme.

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    bigsocrates

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    @spacegg: People have explained what they could have done differently. Lock the specs. Finish making a fully functioning playable version of the game. Add additional features and systems over time, like a half dozen other games people have mentioned in this thread.

    Nobody is saying that they shouldn't develop in "early access" and let people play and fill out bug reports if they want to, but they keep moving the targets and then proving that they are utterly incapable of hitting a moving target. If this were functional game development they would have long ago put out Squadron 42, and they would now be working on or have already released a sequel (or episode 2) with all the features they keep adding to the thing. Squadron 42 was, in fact, supposed to be a Wing Commander-like single player space fighting game and it is FIVE YEARS LATE already and still doesn't have a release date. I have no idea how you can keep saying "I don't see what they could have done differently."

    And whether or not you are required to send in bug reports while playtesting you still paid $45 by your own reckoning (and maybe more if you bought additional ships or other products, as many have) to play a very incomplete product, for which you are filling out bug reports.

    Filling out bug reports is something that people are generally paid to do. In some early access games people willingly do it for free, and that's fine if it brings you joy. My point was more that filling out bug reports is not something you do if you don't believe the game will eventually be finished.

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    spacegg

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    #69  Edited By spacegg

    @bigsocrates:

    People have explained what they could have done differently. Lock the specs. Finish making a fully functioning playable version of the game. Add additional features and systems over time, like a half dozen other games people have mentioned in this thread.

    This is exactly what they are doing. But since the core techs are not ready they currently have to use placeholders.

    • Missions are not dynamic or chained because Quantum, etc. are not ready yet (Tony's video in OP)
    • All players are not sharing the same universe because server meshing, etc. are not ready yet.
    • No physical inventories or one is not able to take a battery out of radio, fly to planet X, drop battery there, some other player go to pick it up and use it another radio because iCache, etc. are not ready yet.
    • ...

    Core techs affects every aspect of the game. What they could do is release very bare bone version of Star Citizen PU and start to iterate it. Alpha 3.14 is the next iteration.

    Squadron 42 depends on many of these core techs as well. As you can see from their Jira (Roadmap) they are working on these core techs and systems which are using them. It is not possible to make fully fuctioning playable version of SQ42 and SC PU with current specs without those techs and systems.

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    bigsocrates

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    @spacegg: The whole point everyone here is making is that these core techs should have been ready a long time ago (things like them have been in other games for decades) or they should not have been "core" techs and the game should have been polished into something playable a long time ago and then these things could have been added later (No Man's Sky didn't have multiplayer at launch and now it does, so finishing the game into something playable and then putting in something like server meshing is quite possible.) If server meshing couldn't be ready for 11 years then it should not have been part of the core design. That's terrible management!

    And I don't even understand how any of these things affect Squadron 42, which, again, was supposed to be a single player Wing Commander-like experience. Why do you need server meshing and the ability to drop off batteries on a planet to play Wing Commander? And if the dynamic missions stuff (something lots of other games have done for many, many, years) isn't ready then drop it, put episode 1 in, and either update it to include dynamic missions or just include that stuff in Episode 2.

    In a well managed project there's no reason that this kind of stuff should prevent the game from being in a fully playable state, including stuff like functional AI and not having to remove chunks of the game to put other stuff in.

    Destiny 2 is another example of a terribly managed game, but even as horrible as that project is (the idea of removing large chunks of an MMO because your tools are just complete and utter garbage should have that whole team hanging their heads in shame) they at least put a playable game out that large numbers of people enjoy.

    Star Citizen has, in 11 years, put out a tech demo that a small number of people enjoy or at least are willing to play test until it becomes something actually enjoyable.

    And your claim that "the backers are happy" is just false. Star Citizen has over 700,000 backers and a much, much, smaller regular player base. So they took money from a ton of people to make a project that less than 10% of those people are actually playing. That's not serving your backers well. That's serving a small, hardcore, audience with money from other people to whom you have not delivered a playable game.

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    spacegg

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    @bigsocrates:

    I'm still not aware of games which has had all the same core techs in use for decades. You guys keep saying they exists and I would definitely like to hear about them and give them a try. More great games to play, the better.

    Chris has made clear that they will not cut corners until it is totally necessary. They have been in a position that there has been no need to cut corners so far and this is one reason why I think the current way of development has worked well.
    I'm personally much more willing to wait than have some simplified version which wouldn't nowhere near match even with current alpha versions.

    It is impossible to say how things would have go but to me it feels like that spending few years of making extremely more simpler game with limited features and without all these core techs would have not made projects like SQ42 and Star Citizen PU possible as we know them now.

    And I don't even understand how any of these things affect Squadron 42, which, again, was supposed to be a single player Wing Commander-like experience.

    Sure, not all core techs, like server meshing, are affecting to Squadron 42 but some of them are like (S)SOCS and iCache. If I remember right the game was planned to be first-person space adventure with few focus areas. That is already pretty vague but SQ42 is very different project today anyway. So in current projects things like physicalized inventories/containers and objects, physicalized ship components, Mag stripping/refill (bullet by bullet), etc. are very relevant.

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    TurtleFish

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    @spacegg said:

    Star Citizen will probably be partially outdated and especially graphically, but I personally think that's a minor concern. You could use UE5 and all its features in NMS and it still wouldn't be Star Citizen. One could say Dwarf Fortress looks awful but IMO it is still hard to find a better game. "Star Engine" has been and is under continuous development and I do have faith it will be good enough graphically (+physics, etc.) as well. Btw. Star Citizen will use Vulkan and switch could happen pretty soon.

    I have seen amazing UE5 tech demos and I would love to see someone using it in a project similar to SQ42 and Star Citizen PU.

    Sure - but there's a difference between a tech demo and a fully functioning game. And it's not just graphics (though, obviously that's a big part of the draw) - it's game physics, it's enemy AI, it's object tracking, it's UI/UX, it's all sorts of things you can do when you have more CPU cycles to burn and more memory to cache objects in.

    But it all has to coalesce into a coherent game design and a coherent game. Dwarf Fortress works because the game design is amazing, regardless of how rough the UX is. NMS didn't work at launch because, it was pretty, and it was aspirational, but, for 90% of the audience, there wasn't enough game there. For NMS, it took six years since launch, ten years since development began, and they finally have something that's close to what people thought the game would be back in 2016.

    It is kind of easy to have a dream and faith since because we are able to keep testing development version and follow the development. Also, because there is no alternatives in sight all one can do is wait :). The worst thing what could happen is that CIG would start to cut corners and release the game before it is as they have envisioned.

    No, the worst thing that can happen is that CIG burns through US 500 million in money and all that's left are a bunch of tech demos and an aspirational development roadmap document. Unfortunately, that's the way the story usually ends. That's just history, not just in software development, but business in general in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

    But there are exceptions. I wish you luck, and maybe CIG will be one of them.

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    spacegg

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    @turtlefish:

    Sure - but there's a difference between a tech demo and a fully functioning game. And it's not just graphics (though, obviously that's a big part of the draw) - it's game physics, it's enemy AI, it's object tracking, it's UI/UX, it's all sorts of things you can do when you have more CPU cycles to burn and more memory to cache objects in.

    This exactly. It is common to see someone coming with (usually) UE4/5 demo and start to praise how amazing upcoming games will be compared to current ones. As you said there is still a long way to go to have those amazing games. New improvements in UE5 could make that work much more easier when certain burdens are off your chest and many resources are saved.

    I have no concerns about Star Engine and I kind of need to just have faith that they keep improving it as they have done all these years. There are more detailed information about the improvements in their monthly reports.

    But there are exceptions. I wish you luck, and maybe CIG will be one of them.

    I hope Star Citizen is an exception. I would be greatly disappointed to not have a game like it. No matter how many great space games there are released already I just don't see them as an alternative to SC. Of course I hope that someday they will be.

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