Star Citizen Central

Det.Bullock 2018-11-27 00:33:25 UTC #1561

It took me two days to download the new freeflight trial, then I tried it for about ten minutes in the arena mode and then I thought I had better things to do.
There are so many little bewildering things about the way it plays I don’t even know where to start.
Hell they don’t even seem to know whether the cockpit is supposed to be decorative or not since there seem to be perfectly working gauges that somehow aren’t in the default field of view and it has that irritating habit I observed in some modern spacesims to have the weapons mounted on manual gimbals (Starway Fleet has the same problem) which makes practically impossible to aim when doing sharp movements (and the button combinations that allegedly should make them fixed doesn’t seem to work).
Also random frame rate dips with a fricking RX580.
At least now it can recognize more than one control peripheral at a time and it seems to remember control settings but it took them years to implement stuff that Elite had basically from the start while still not getting other basic stuff.

TheDreamlord 2018-11-27 13:01:24 UTC #1562

So 2030 release confirmed, yes?

Kiril 2018-11-27 13:32:51 UTC #1563

I hopped back in too, they have released a planet with a city. I don’t think there is anything major to do in the city at the moment. The flight model is still very weird or I am.

The cockpits are meant to be interactive, which would be great if you didn’t have to hold f to then move your view around to see the buttons and then not have any idea if they work.

Det.Bullock 2018-11-28 01:43:02 UTC #1564

This is silly, interactive cockpits are for those hardcore flightsim not for more accessible spacesims.
It’s the redout/blackout effects all over again.

Kiril 2018-11-28 11:50:06 UTC #1565

The blackouts are so stupid. I was going in to land on Hurston, the new planet and it takes forever, and I moved my ship a tiny bit and blackout. Is there no internal dampeners? I wasn’t even in atmosphere yet.

Shadoko 2018-11-29 19:14:49 UTC #1566

Is the interface fucking readable now ? Because last time I tried the game it was a WTF contest, between the markers that didn’t indicate what side of the planet they were on, the color issues, the overral shittyness of the mobiglass and the clunky controls.

TheDreamlord 2019-01-29 13:34:16 UTC #1567

Well … it’s end of January 2019. I guess Squadron 1.0 release end of 2018 didn’t materialise (shocking!).

I am taking bets for December 2019 release.

Anyone?

No?

LexW 2019-01-29 19:04:24 UTC #1568

No-one could possibly have predicted this stunning upset! And yeah if they make 2019 at all with it I will be shocked.

Chaz 2019-01-30 11:11:25 UTC #1569

Well they’ve got a really fancy video for it. Surprise. To be honest I have no idea how well this is going these days. My guess would be either late 2019 or first half of 2020.

I suppose it really depends on how much of Star Citizen needs to be in the single player game. My guess is that the single player campaign will be a mostly an on the rails canned experience and not a sandbox type affair. That makes things a lot simpler for them and they can just concentrate on making the set pieces needed for the campaign, rather than trying to fit it all into a big sandbox with all that entails.

Star Citizen on the other hand, the big sandbox multiplayer experience, still looks light years away at the current pace of development.

Kiril 2019-01-30 12:48:47 UTC #1570

Squadron 42 is meant to be a new wing commander game, small arenas with a go to here and blow something up. I am looking forward to it but am not at all waiting for it, when it comes I hope to enjoy it but thats it.

TheDreamlord 2019-01-30 13:18:37 UTC #1571

When it arrives, they can try and pry our old, arthritic fingers off the joystick!

Blackcompany 2019-02-02 00:02:43 UTC #1572

They spent $193 of their $210 million by the end of 2017. Leaving them with roughly $14 million. Those are official numbers.

They then sold part of the company to someone else for $46 million, taking on two directors they must answer to in all things (something Roberts said he would not do). That was in May 2018, right before Ben left while declaring on Twitter that failure is okay as long as you try.

So how long can $46 million plus ship sales carry a company of more than 500 people? Honestly, I will be shocked if they make it to the end of 2020. And even if they do, if SQ42 does not sell millions of copies they are done for. My bet is SC never sees the light of day, with them going broke before it ever gets there.

BillButNotBen 2019-02-02 00:07:10 UTC #1573

I don’t want to start another Elite VS Star Citizen fight (remember those…), and I haven’t played either, but it’s interesting to see how their different approaches are playing out over time.
Does anyone know if Elite still has enough interested/active players that the devs are still expanding it? I guess its risk is that players stop playing before they add enough expansions to get up to SC’s goal, where’s SC’s risk is that it fails before it gets anywhere.

Blackcompany 2019-02-02 17:38:42 UTC #1574

Elite is in maintenance mode and its remaining players are basically in denial. At least that is how it looks.

Late last year, Elite tacked on a phone mini game and called it exploration. Nothing new to discover, mind you. Just an annoying, fiddly mini game that takes you out of the cockpit and lets you fiddle with dials to “decipher” audio signals. Its basically Analog Radio Tuning, the Mini-Game. Annoying, fiddly, tedious and pointless, since their exploration update added nothing new to discover.

On top of that, they scrapped visual updates for Ice planets and Fleet Carriers. Made a nebulous announcement about the “next era” of the game, specified that it would NOT come soon, gave no dates or information about what is next and their financials revealed that they were in the Red last year, save for the stock purchase from Tencent.

Elite has turned out to be every bit the scam Star Citizen is. None of the mechanics Braben hinted at or claimed the studio was interested in are present. Nor will they be. When asked about Legs and Atmospheric planets, Brett from Frontier stated they were “PROBABLY still INTERESTED in adding those…once the tech could support it.”

So yeah, maintenance mode.

Det.Bullock 2019-02-02 19:15:46 UTC #1575

Blackcompany:

Elite is in maintenance mode and its remaining players are basically in denial. At least that is how it looks.

Late last year, Elite tacked on a phone mini game and called it exploration. Nothing new to discover, mind you. Just an annoying, fiddly mini game that takes you out of the cockpit and lets you fiddle with dials to “decipher” audio signals. Its basically Analog Radio Tuning, the Mini-Game. Annoying, fiddly, tedious and pointless, since their exploration update added nothing new to discover.

On top of that, they scrapped visual updates for Ice planets and Fleet Carriers. Made a nebulous announcement about the “next era” of the game, specified that it would NOT come soon, gave no dates or information about what is next and their financials revealed that they were in the Red last year, save for the stock purchase from Tencent.

Elite has turned out to be every bit the scam Star Citizen is. None of the mechanics Braben hinted at or claimed the studio was interested in are present. Nor will they be. When asked about Legs and Atmospheric planets, Brett from Frontier stated they were “PROBABLY still INTERESTED in adding those…once the tech could support it.”

So yeah, maintenance mode.

Not really Elite is technically functional while SC was slow even with my new video card a few months ago even if it doesn’t look that different from Everspace or Elite itself, after so many years.

The scan thing is very YMMV, you don’t like it? Fine, but it’s a great improvement that makes exploration more interactive.
[IIRC Roberts wanted to do something conceptually similar for SC but never got around to implement it for some reason, guess he went “oooh, shiny!” on something else]

They don’t say anything because otherwise they’d find themselves making promises that may look feasable at the moment but may not be once they worked a bit more on it, like it happens every time with SC.

Atmosphere flying can be stupidly complicated to integrate both on a technical and gameplay standpoint, since while not realistic you have to make it at least feel diffrent from flying on some airless rock whilst at the same time simulating weather conditions which can be a pain especially on an entire procedurally generated planet on the same visual quality level of the rest of the game.

Also SPACE LEGS ARE STUPID AND POINTLESS.

Shadoko 2019-02-02 19:40:40 UTC #1576

Agree on space legs.

In fact I think I don’y really get the overall obsession for seamlessness. If it means my game wont become incredibly bloated and complicated I would be quite happy with space sims featuring separated sectors and planetary landing through cutscenes. Not everything must be seamless.

Det.Bullock 2019-02-02 21:11:23 UTC #1577

And that’s the rub, innit?
Elite can’t do a lot of stuff because all that “1:1 universe in real time” thing doesn’t allow for shortcuts.

I personally like landings but I could do without supercruising for tens of minutes at a time to map an earth-like or land at a base that’s at 50.000 light seconds from the main star, in single player a simple Privateer-style autopilot or some time compression would have made this aspect much more bearable.

And I bet Star Citizen will be the same in many aspects, even if it takes some shortcuts it can’t take too many only even buggier.

Kiril 2019-02-02 21:32:33 UTC #1578

Star Citizen takes FOREVER to get to a planet, yes you can walk around it but you will be bored senseless before you get there. They originally planned cut scenes I believe which would be so much better than now.

I like space legs, I love being able to walk out and see the ship, walk around it and into the cockpit. It makes the ships seem big or small and grounds you into the world. I would love Elite to introduce space legs in station. Have boom worlds/stations full of rich folk, poorer region less so you can see more of the system than just text on screen. I don’t think Star Citizen will have much background simulation like Elite but already you get a bigger sense of the worldbuilding when you walk around the stations and see other players running and lifting off.

Lukasz 2019-02-03 01:58:35 UTC #1579

Erm. Why not?

Just make the ship go faster through stretches of nothing is happening right now

Det.Bullock 2019-02-03 02:03:37 UTC #1580

I think the problem is that supercruise is also dependent on a gravity simulator, it’s already easy enough to overshoot stations and planets that are close now if you get distracted and don’t cut the throttle in time imagine if they just scaled the game to go faster, they’d probably have to invent a different physics system for the longer stretches but where would it start to kick in?

If it was single player you could just either select a planet/station and press a button to autopilot (like in Privateer) or have time compression (like in the X series) but neither is feasable when other human players may be there.