Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[Paelos]

They aren't going to deliver, have no fears.

And you suck! Oh btw your sport blog is crap and that's why NO ONE reads it! And Baseball is the most boring sport ever anyway! *slams door*

Temper temper! 

I just don't trust anybody with this much cash and absolutely no legal reason to deliver on even half the crap he promised. I've watched too many developers blow games with actual shit on the line.

[Lucas]

Regarding crunch time, it's the consequence of creating a "virtual slice", like Margalis said, of this ambition and for a BIG audience compared to the present status of the project. If they manage to stick to their plan, in about a month the full multiplayer version of Arena Commander (which is, all the single seaters, not the multi ones) will be playable by about 400,000 players and counting.

Also, and that's positive, it's basically testing for the single-player game (with the A.I. enemies) and the Persistent Universe, but both without a context that would risk a certain "burnout" (a proper plot or trading runs). HUD, ship balance, physics, lightning, implementation of the engine on a variety of specs and more.

Arena Commander represented a HUGE and messy bottleneck for the last 8-9 months, but in perspective in might prove very useful.

[Miasma]

They aren't going to deliver, have no fears.

And you suck! Oh btw your sport blog is crap and that's why NO ONE reads it! And Baseball is the most boring sport ever anyway! *slams door*

Temper temper! 

I just don't trust anybody with this much cash and absolutely no legal reason to deliver on even half the crap he promised. I've watched too many developers blow games with actual shit on the line.

I think he cares more about his ego than his wallet.  If this fails he will go down as one of the worst developers ever, he is either too stupid or too optimistic to understand that it is currently failing.

[Paelos]

I don't think it matters. He can care all he wants too, but I think this thing is out of his control.

The problems of giving people this much money happens on the front end, as they spend wildly on people and assets.

EDIT: In essence, the hole has already been started. Now it's a matter of just trying to keep people digging.

[schild]

Every time this thread gets bumped I know I'll hate the result of clicking on it.

It has never once fallen short of my expectations. What a fucking cult.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Well, for a slightly silver-tinged (if you squint hard enough in just the right light) lining, their income is probably still exceeding their expenses, assuming their executive compensation packages aren't front-loaded like a former 989 Studios' developer's crowdfunded project turned out. So there is actually a chance that this thing could auger in and go splat and they'd STILL have enough money to start over and do it right!  It just needs to go *splat* sooner rather than later while there is still money to rebuild with. Unlike, say, a certain ex-baseball player's business trajectory.

OK, snowballs have a better chance in hell, but it's still a non-zero chance!

[Falconeer]

Dogfight Module is live. Downloading now, 10 gigabytes.

[schild]

Are you requisitioning cycles from a bitcoin mining operation to run it?

[Falconeer]

Download is over but I am at work so I won't be able to try it for another 5 hours. I am sure someone else will report here before me.

EDIT: maps not loading, files missing, shit happening. In short: not working yet, nobody's in.

[Lucas]

The 28-pages AC manual, completely done "in-fiction", much like the old Wing Commander manuals :)

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/dpd639fngtcakr/source/Arena-Commander-Pilots-Guide-V0-8.pdf


EDIT: looks like they fixed the problem with the AC maps not loading.

[Falconeer]

In the meantime, new store page: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/cross-chassis-upgrades

[Lucas]

Twitch directory for live streams:

Linky

[Falconeer]

This game is very aracde-y. Damage numbers when you hit enemy ships are not of my liking. Hope they are only active in the "drone simulation". I understand people love them, from World of Warcraft to World of Tanks. Still...

[Lantyssa]

Yeah.  It would be silly for the ultimate space sim to have floating numbers.  We'll see.

[Falconeer]

They don't float, that would be ridiculous. No, they just appear below your crosshair, supposedly in your ship's HUD. Makes slightly more sense.

Anyway, my very first comment after 20 minutes fighting drones is that it feels like.... Warthunder in space. Which is not even a bad thing, but Warthunder in space has already been made by the same company that makes Warthunder, and it's called Star Conflict.

Also, and it goes without saying, Star Citizen will have the sandbox stuff and that will make the difference.

Anyway, this is just a very first impression and I am not even gonna lie, it is clearly influenced by my recent Elite: Dangerous experience, which atfer trying both I am inclined to prefer. So don't take any of this too seriously.

[Typhon]

They don't float, that would be ridiculous. No, they just appear below your crosshair, supposedly in your ship's HUD. Makes slightly more sense.

Anyway, my very first comment after 20 minutes fighting drones is that it feels like.... Warthunder in space. Which is not even a bad thing, but Warthunder in space has already been made by the same company that makes Warthunder, and it's called Star Conflict.

Also, and it goes without saying, Star Citizen will have the sandbox stuff and that will make the difference.

Anyway, this is just a very first impression and I am not even gonna lie, it is clearly influenced by my recent Elite: Dangerous experience, which atfer trying both I am inclined to prefer. So don't take any of this too seriously.

That's funny (ok, only to me).  I was responding to your previous post ("arcade-y") that they probably saw how much effort War Thunder put in the Sim game, but the arcade is the more popular mode and decided to lead off with something simpler (and honestly it's truer to their roots, Wing Commander was not a simulator).

[Lucas]

There is also a topic on the official forums talking about this aspect of the game:

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/137450/arcadey-commander-chase-the-mouse/p1
---

Anyways, still downloading :P (you do what you can with a puny 6Mbps connection :P)

[Pennilenko]

Wow, this thing handles like dogshit. Even if I hadn't played Elite Dangerous yet, I would still be extremely disappointed. There was zero support for my joystick set up, no control customization, flying with the keyboard and mouse sucks. No way to control vertical or lateral thrust, and if there was it was impossible to figure out. This is extremely disappointing to say the least. I am glad I only wasted 45 bucks.

Some people might say its alpha and yadda yadda, that doesn't invalidate the fact that their core physics and flight control are complete trash. No matter how much depth and economy and trading and other shit you can do in it, you are still going to have to spend the most time interacting with their bullshit physics and control scheme.

I can't even begin to use words to explain the gulf of quality between Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen.

[Mrbloodworth]

I Disagree. The Physics are rather solid. My Joystick works great, and showed me the Difference between mouse an keyboard (Logitech® Extreme™ 3D Pro Joystick).  Leading me to the M&KB discussion. Mouse flight has a dead zone, and is demonstrably less effective at precise controlling and flying of your ship. While you may have a slight Gimbals with a mouse, you will be out maneuvered, in tight areas, completely smashed into objects. With the mouse, you will be sliding around and be flying using jerky corrections and the Flyby wire and thrust will have to catch up. Its also just the first implementation of the control systems, bare and default.

Performance wise, it runs better than I was expecting on my rig, I was expecting crippling performance issues. No noticeable low FPS, no hitching nothing. The only issue I noticed was a slight delay on disk streaming for textures in some instances. Not sure if that's the LOD systems or just unoptimized throughput. The Damage model is simply amazing. I had functional parts falling off and being destroyed which in turn effect flight and combat characteristics. I was quite surprised when one of my wings was blown off, but killed the chase plane because it went though the windshield.

As for control customization, I would assume that to come, but each setup has a default mapping guide.

As for ED, and a quality gulf. I Imagine its not that hard when you have 1/5 the complexity, and years more development time. I would find it hard to compare, unless I was in a vacuum.

[schild]

I would find it hard to compare, unless I was in a vacuum.

hmmm

[Mrbloodworth]

I would find it hard to compare, unless I was in a vacuum.

hmmm

There is a lot of that here.

[Pennilenko]

I use a thrustmaster t-flight hotas x, which like I said had no support for my stick. There was no reverse thrust and no lateral or vertical thrusters, only forward throttle of varying degrees. The ship feels like it has no mass. Using any type of Yaw control produces a noticeable wobble. There is an appalling lack of interior sounds. I'm assuming the interior of the ship should be pressurized since there is a sleeping bay in it. There should be sounds inside the ship. The UI is horrible and unintuitive. Many of the keyboard key-bindings do nothing.

Elite and Star Citizen have had roughly the same amount of development time. In elite, I can jump between 6 major systems currently or take my sweet ass time flying to any star I can see. I can trade, hunt down pirates, be a pirate, and participate in faction battles that I do not have to experience special loading screens to get to. When dog-fighting in elite, I can switch between assisted and non assisted controls "easily", I have complete control over my ship vector and thrust in any direction and the ship feels like it has the appropriate amount of mass. Oh yeah,in Elite I can also dock, undock, buy ship components and inspect upgrades while docked. If I don't want to do any of the above I can just fly around and explore.

Star Citizen has the slowest load times of any game, I have ever played including battlefield 4. In outside views, textures randomly disappear and sounds that do exist fade in and out. One thing Star Citizen has going for it is that you can walk around, but that's about all you can do, in a tiny room with a tiny fish tank.

I know that you have a considerable amount of money and emotion invested into Star Citizen Mr. B, please do not think I am trying to attack you personally, I do feel that you are not seeing or playing the same game I am. I have zero nostalgia for the old games and am looking at these two games with a fresh look.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yeah, there are a number of reports about HOTAS setups not working correctly.  Seems to working for some, but not all. Drivers are being pointed at in some cases. But I don't have one, so I'm not following that all that closely.

I know that you have a considerable amount of money and emotion invested into Star Citizen Mr. B, please do not think I am trying to attack you personally, I do feel that you are not seeing or playing the same game I am. I have zero nostalgia for the old games and am looking at these two games with a fresh look.

I Don't. In all cases. Its the first day of an early release of an extreamly ambitious and early version of a portion of a game. I expect experiences to vary wildly based on hardware and such. I Was pleasantly surprised by my performance, you were not. And no, ED has had many more years of development time, the kickstarter campaigns were around the same time. ED started Development after 3, even if in a limited fashion as they tried to find funding. For me though, there is no strife between the two titles. Even both development houses have supported each other, especially during the kick starter campaigns.

There are STARK differences in scope of the two games however, and I feel you need to take that into consideration when comparing the two. Weather you believe the scope is justified/feasible or not. Its still there, and ED in nearly every category is a smaller scope in comparison. Least of which is Procedural VS. Handcrafted.

[Falconeer]

Not that random people's opinions are worth that much but on the forusm there's a lot of crying because apparently having a HOTAS is gimping yourself and in fact people are asking Roberts to "nerf mouse" (sereiously, they are). So if you feel that a joystick makes you superior to K+M congratulations, you must be really good (no sarchasm intended).

I am not sure why you think Elite is gonna be so less complex than Star Citizen, there might be some misinformation on your side. Granted, Star Citizen is promising to let you travel around your ship and land on planets at launch while Elite says that will come in an expansion, but that stuff is easy to boast when you plan to launch in 2016 or so. Braben is being cautious, walking in stations and planetary landing will happen but not until the core game is released and working. I can live with that, especially because Elite is *supposedly* coming out in a working state by the end of the year.

So, I wouldn't call developing so many "modules" separated from each other so much more complex when it literally takes ages to do it. These two games started development pretty much at the same time, and when it comes to "dogfighting" one seems to be already fine, while the other is struggling for no apparent reason despite having ten times the budget of the other one.

Or let me rephrase it:

These guys -and I specifically mean the ones tasked with the Star Citizen's dogfight module since everything is a "module" here- have been working within a well estabilished and documented engine like the CryEngine for about 19 months (same as Elite, with a proprietary engine) and all they have been able to show is an arena with bots and two (!) player ships? It's hard to call that impressive, and now that it is out it is difficult not to feel something along the lines of "Wow.. almost two years working while swimming in cash, and this is it? Seriously?"

[Malakili]

I would find it hard to compare, unless I was in a vacuum.

hmmm

There is a lot of that here.

Or, you know a lot of people with more games than time so they can't really waste it on a game that isn't fun to play regardless of whether or not you can justify a reason why it is that way.

[Mrbloodworth]

I am not sure why you think Elite is gonna be so less complex than Star Citizen

There is more complexity in the flight model, the damage model, and systems than ED. To name one of many. Its simple to compare bullet point to bullet point with out the details of how its really implemented. Also, your statement about cash seems to imply they have spent it all on just this module, so it should be better.

Again, both games look great. I'm just stating I have a hard time with "elite is better" when its not nearly as complex. The ships alone are not comparable to me.

I just wanted to share my experience, especially in performance. Believe me when I say, I was expecting it not even to run for me at this point.

[Falconeer]

I could list the many things where Elite is much more complex than Star Citizen, and I could ask you what makes you think that, for example, the flight model is more complex in Star Citizen because it looks and feels the other way around, but it doesn't matter. Damn, Elite has science behind the flight model and the galaxy simulation where Star Citizen has a 100% arcade soul. Not that one is better than the other, but "more complex"?
I know you are usually very well informed, and I might be the one in the wrong this time, but it really sounds like you are completely out of the loop when it comes to Elite: Dangerous. Not sure if you have tried it, not sure how much documentation you have read. You might be in for a surprise, but then again, it doesn't matter. Seriously, no reason to try and top each other on this. Eventually time will tell.

The only thing I want to say is that my problem with Star Citizen so far is tht I was expecting to be blown away, after all this time waiting for what is supposed to be an incredible game. Instead, I was met with a generic space shooter with good graphics. That doesn't mean the whole thing won't be awesome, I still hope so, but we have finally put our hands on something and damn it tastes like plastic. I don't know where they put the money, all I know is that they HAVE and HAD the resources to produce a mindblowing space dogfighting experience even in this early stage and I challenge anyone to say that it is.

[Mrbloodworth]

I could list the many things where Elite is much more complex than Star Citizen, and I could ask you what makes you think that

I Don't think you can. With possible exception of the Procedurally generated systems.

Example:

Damage model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0fYd8Ns7DI

The hornet alone has over 100 objects that can break off and be rigid body body objects in the scene.  Reference my story of how my wing got blasted off and hit the trailing plane and went though his windshield and kill him. In Comparison I only know of the mounted guns, and a Decal Deformation system in ED. With possible exception of the canned animation of a capital ship.

That's what I mean by complexity, and I'm posting this to clarify what I mean. I'm just happy there are space games again.

EDIT: Also, SC is not Arcade, its pure Newtonian, to the point that they have had to move Vector thrusters during revisions of the ships because the artist was "incorrect".

[Margalis]

Rationalization engines engage, maximum thrust!

[Paelos]

We're going to start getting to the fun part of this thread over the next year.

[Lucas]

The topic I linked above is getting bigger and bigger, with valid points indeed, but I think people are getting overly dramatic on the subject. Official forum drama...incredible, uh?  

Now, I'm not surprised in the least about the approach Roberts took when it comes to the Flight Control system, compared to the Elite one; just try to play Privateer and then Frontier II, or Freelancer and Elite Dangerous. Elite:Dangerous, just like Frontier, or X3:TC, have a more "laid back", "meditative" approach (and yeah, probably more on the simulation side); can you say the same for any game released by Chris Roberts, including Strike Commander? I feel it's just a matter of expectations.

Single player will take a cinematic approach, and the PU itself won't resemble X3:TC or Elite Dangerous at all because Roberts wants an entirely different monster, just like he wanted something different compared to the first elite, or a different feel compared to XWing/Tie Fighter when it came to flight control or mission design.

Regarding Arena Commander, within the next couple patches (which hopefully won't take ages to implement) we'll surely get fully customizable controls, with more profiles for joysticks. In the Arena Commander launch letter, they also mentioned they're working on ship balance, flight system, and everything else concerning it will be an ongoing process.

What I don't like, and I hope they get tweaked, are all the little "adjustments" the automated flight control system makes, even when you try to toy around with the various settings (try ctrl - CAPS LOCK to disable g-force control, comstab; or just caps lock for coupled-decoupled mode. And finally, try CTRL - F). Plus, deadzones for joystick and sensitivity for mouse are abysmal, so hopefully they'll get better.

[Margalis]

Single player will take a cinematic approach, and the PU itself won't resemble X3:TC or Elite Dangerous at all because Roberts wants an entirely different monster, just like he wanted something different compared to the first elite, or a different feel compared to XWing/Tie Fighter when it came to flight control or mission design.

The whole point of this game is supposed to be that it's the ultimate PC hardcore gamer flight sim. That was the pitch. Not that's it's Square Enix's Sylpheed for 360. They set the expectations and collected huge amounts of money based on those expectations.

[Lucas]

Single player will take a cinematic approach, and the PU itself won't resemble X3:TC or Elite Dangerous at all because Roberts wants an entirely different monster, just like he wanted something different compared to the first elite, or a different feel compared to XWing/Tie Fighter when it came to flight control or mission design.

The whole point of this game is supposed to be that it's the ultimate PC hardcore gamer flight sim. That was the pitch. Not that's it's Square Enix's Sylpheed for 360. They set the expectations and collected huge amounts of money based on those expectations.

I know what you're trying to say, Margalis, although I'm not so sure that the whole picture of having the "ultimate" space sim (which entails trading, landing on planets, economy, dogfight, various kinds of space "activities", walking around with an avatar and more...Something that Elite Dangerous wants to implement too, albeit with a whole different pace and development approach) necessarily needs a more "simulative" approach to dogfight. Elite Dangerous is covering this particular facet perfectly, anyway.

[Falconeer]

They can have a Newtonian model running underneath but at the moment their Intelligent Computer Flight System makes your ships fly as if they were out of Star Fox 64. You know what other game was PURE Newtonian? Braben's Elite 2 Frontier, and among its many qualities the fun of the dogfights wasn't one of them. In order to make Newtonian bearable and playable Roberts put in things like the IFCS, except he went too far and the result is an arcade shooter.

I am sure they will tinker with it and make it less floaty. There's no way they are going ahead with such a poor (adjusted) flight model.

[Lucas]

Yeah, infact Frontier II was excellent but boy, those dogfights, what an endless drag :) . Anyways, they surely won't lack feedback on this particular issue, judging from the forums :P. And I think there is room for toying around without having to dramatically change the way ships work (the whole "gimballed" vs non-gimballed guns thing that is going on).