Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[Malakili]

So, I'm confused about the relationship between boarding and trading I guess.  Cargo inspection first came up in the context of trading and then we go onto boarding, and frankly I don't understand the relationship between the two.

Maybe I need to go back to basics here.

A guy has some stuff in his ship.  I want to buy it from him.  What happens?

[ajax34i]

You invite him to a group, so you can enter his instanced ship, and then look at his cargo and inspect it.  Then you exit his ship and go back to your ship, and both of you open a secure trade interface and he drags the icon of the cargo to the interface and you type in the amount, and both of you hit accept.

[Lucas]

@Margalis

I was writing a much more detailed message, but no, let's keep this simple: I think it's not that different from trying to create a sandbox MMO, which infact is VERY difficult to create while making it "fun" in the process  . And that's because, among other things, realism calls for more realism.

The major bullet points of any space sim created in the past are all there, including what Elite: Dangerous is doing, just with a different approach (just like Frontier and Privateer were doing so much time ago). With SC, there is also the single-player cinematic adventure, similar to Wing Commander.

The current "Hangar" is no more than what "instanced housing" will be in Star Citizen; then, you'll just visit shops in person instead of visualizing them on a computerized screen; the FPS part, beside boarding, will be something not THAT different to MMO arenas or battlegrounds, maybe in a much more "story-driven" environment.

- Boarding is quite a different thing here, yes; plus all those possible scenarios that come from a "sandbox" approach and how they interact with the whole economy and reputation system (SC characters won't have levels or skills).  

It's a question on how you put everything in place: yes, there will be compromise, maybe in the end some systems will be much more "game-y" than what they aimed for, but the most common features of any space sim will be there.

[Ingmar]

Their ability to handle shit continuing to happen outside when you're transitioning between indoor/space 'instances' is where I see the huge challenge being. Unless you're going to be actually flying your ship from the FPS interface, sitting in your chair and looking out a window or whatever, there's a very big area for problems arise when you try to glue the FPS to the space sim.

It reminds me a bit of the main problem with turning a game like Pirates! or Mount & Blade into a multiplayer game and including the overland map along side the battles.

[Lucas]

So, I'm confused about the relationship between boarding and trading I guess.  Cargo inspection first came up in the context of trading and then we go onto boarding, and frankly I don't understand the relationship between the two.

Maybe I need to go back to basics here.

A guy has some stuff in his ship.  I want to buy it from him.  What happens?

I think that, in this case, is just like opening a trade interface in any MMO; The fact here is that Roberts is batshit crazy about immersion. Let's return to the snippet I posted about the Merchantman "negotiation room":

You’re looking at what we call the “negotiation room” in the Banu Merchantman freighter. It’s a place where traders can invite others into their ships, display their cargo (the bay is visible) and make deals!

So, Merchantman will be a player flyable ship, but I assume we'll also see other Merchantman run by NPC crews; the visible bay is just a show off because, like I said, Roberts is batshit crazy about immersion. It's possible that the negotiation room will be some sort of flying "shop" for the Banu Merchantman only, so that you have to go there in person to have access to the shopping and trading interface. But again, it's pure speculation for now.

[Lucas]

Their ability to handle shit continuing to happen outside when you're transitioning between indoor/space 'instances' is where I see the huge challenge being. Unless you're going to be actually flying your ship from the FPS interface, sitting in your chair and looking out a window or whatever, there's a very big area for problems arise when you try to glue the FPS to the space sim.

It reminds me a bit of the main problem with turning a game like Pirates! or Mount & Blade into a multiplayer game and including the overland map along side the battles.

They're exploring other possibilites I haven't mentioned, yet (sorry if I can't provide the source, I'm usually more accurate than this, but everything is buried in snippets among various kinds of media):

- When a ship is under attack, they're considering using faster animations for the avatars, so that transitions themselves are quicker (can you do that in a multiplayer environment?). Same would happen during a dogfight when one of the crew have to move from a co-pilot seat, for example, to a turret.

- They're considering booby traps for the cargo; or traps to place on the floor and so on; Via your command center, you will be able to deplete a room of oxygen, or take out gravity. Everything so that you can pay attention to the external environment. But yeah, situational awareness is a big "IF".
----

But there is a much more interesting possibility, that ties with their current idea of the multiplayer environment for Star Citizen. As you may know, it won't work as in EVE (a big sandbox world): they're going for a strange and debatable "matchmaking" system (yeah, I don't like it, although I understand the need for it) . Take some time to read this. Since Nov 2012, it hasn't really changed:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/12770-Chris-Roberts-On-Multiplayer-Single-Player-And-Instancing

Plus, this:

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/87865/common-misconceptions-about-star-citizen-mk-ii/p1#Comment_1568172 ("the tricky stuff")

So, it might be highly possible that, once a boarding action starts, all the interested parties are brought to an instance that looks like the area they're actually in, so there is no external disturbance. And that is one of the compromises I talked about in my message above.

[Falconeer]

In Elite: Dangerous (as I know you know, Lucas) trading is managed by menus and your cargo is pretty much just names on a list. Still, when you are attacking another ship, if you care about taking what they are carring, you have to actually aim for the cargo port before blowing them up in order to have the cargo float out of the destroyed port and salvage as much as you can after the battle.

The point is that even in a game that is about ten times more streamlined (for financial and design reasons) than Star Citizen they managed to come up with something interesting when it comes to cargo without cluttering it with dreams of virtual reality or a true, authentic, believable Second Life in space.

And we are back to square one with Star Citizen: it's easy to promise EVERYTHING, even easier to dream it, but can you actually design it? Can you code it? Can you make it work? While we all secretely hope so, nothing tangible points in that direction so far.

[Margalis]

The major bullet points of any space sim created in the past are all there, including what Elite: Dangerous is doing, just with a different approach (just like Frontier and Privateer were doing so much time ago). With SC, there is also the single-player cinematic adventure, similar to Wing Commander.

Making a list isn't making a game.

Rapid prototyping is how you create complex systems that work. Or very careful design. This game has neither. What happens when they get to the cargo / boarding section of the game then realize that ship-board combat is terrible because the way the ships are modeled the hallways are too narrow? The kind of stuff you run into almost instantly if you try to develop the systems together, but that you won't run into if you do them one at a time.

Maybe the big cargo carrying ships are just too big and a huge pain in the ass to walk around. Maybe they're too small. Maybe the ships that smugglers would use don't have the cargo room to smuggle anything worthwhile. Maybe entire ships have no place in the game that develops and modeling them is a huge wasted effort.

This is like drawing a person by drawing one elaborately detailed, fully finished finger, then the next finger, then grabbing a thumb that a separate team did, joining those all together with various other body parts and hoping you get a great portrait instead of a monstrosity.

It's just not a good method of game development. If you ask 100 game producers how to make a game 99 of them will tell you this isn't how it's done, and the 1 remaining guy will be someone at Ubisoft where they've mastered assembling parts from different studios together through long practice.

They are praying that it all comes together. Not planning in such a way that that will happen, or using a methodology that ensures that will happen. Just hoping. It probably won't.

I'm not opposed to having physical cargo. I'm not opposed to any cool ideas. What I am opposed to is developing the game as a series of modules, and developing module A in a way that doesn't take into account modules B through Z.

They've basically chosen to make their game as a series of vertical slices. Who does that? Developers hate vertical slices!

[Lucas]

Well, at this point, I'm sure it would be interesting to get a SC dev to answer that kind of valid issues you put foward, Margalis.

I'm not so sure they're so..."disjointed" in their current production/development method as you suggest, though. Or that they're not developing a "module" with the other combining parts in mind once the project is complete. For example, what if they built the multi-crew ships with already in mind the average height of an avatar and its possible animations (including the speed from point A to B), all provided by the stock cry-engine editor?

Plus, from what I understand, this "module" approach is also a way to present the playerbase with playable stuff 'til release, so that they can test in advance. A few days ago, the community coordinator, Ben Lesnick, mentioned in the official chat that the current SC "full" client is 200GB 

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/130892/star-citizen-is-200-gb-what

So, there might already be some sort of SC "client" where they're slowly putting the big picture together via very rough (to say the least) iterations of the various sub-systems.

[Pennilenko]

And....drum roll please...arena commander module is delayed.

Not ready for release due to problems and stuff.

[Margalis]

For the past 3 days or so the Neogaf thread on this has been "only 3 more days to announce a delay." It's pretty funny. With the constant delays and the total botch at PAX people are starting to wise up.

This is a multiplayer online shooter, done in an engine used to make multiplayer online shooters. It was supposed to be released in what, February? (Edit: Actually December originally according to their forums!) And we think a bunch of complex systems being made by different teams are going to come together and form a good game in any sort of non-glacial timeframe?

Honestly...these guys need to fucking hire a producer. It's like they have no idea how to make a video game, or how to read one of a million pieces of written wisdom on how to make a video game. Maybe Roberts is just old and set in his ways - white-boxing, "find the fun", constant iteration and prototyping, "fail fast", getting the system running as a whole then iterating - these have been common practice for a decade.

I'll say it again - these guys have voluntarily chosen to structure development as a series of vertical slice releases, when it's generally understood that each vertical slice you do is a counter-productive drain on resources you only do at the behest of a publisher. (Except for maybe the first one you do to set the bar, establish tone and goals, etc)

For fuck's sake. Stop adding polygons to the fucking underside of a wing on a ship when you don't even know if the ship fits into the game. Stop doing motion capture when you don't even know what the verbs in your game are and what motions you need to capture.

Put together a game that has the major systems in place to some degree with shitty flying winnebagos for graphics and go from there. Being able to change the texture on the calendar in the hangar can wait.

[Paelos]

So have they actually released anything yet?

[Margalis]

I also want to say that now you see why publishers won't support some of these KS games. It's not because publishers are terrible and greedy and close-minded and don't recognize demand, at least not always. Often it's because publishers aren't dumb and don't want to work with unreliable people.

A lot of KS games, especially the earlier ones, were pitched as a sort of "us vs them" where publishers were them. But they're largely proving that publishers are correct when they pass on these games.

Publishers won't fund a game like Broken Age. Gee, I wonder why? The game went way over budget, was delayed, released as half a game and sold poorly.

[Lucas]

Regarding the "Us vs. Them" mentality of KS projects and publishers, yeah, I agree, but mostly because I've never embraced the "evil" concept of the publisher (save for very few exceptions).

Regarding the need of a Producer, looks like Chris Roberts agrees with you, as I reported a week ago:

in other news, Chris Roberts hired Alex Mayberry (WoW: TBC, WOTLK, Diablo 3) to act as Executive Producer.

http://cloudimperiumgames.com/news/94-PRESS-RELEASE-Alex-Mayberry-Named-EP-On-Star-Citizen

Regarding the use of Cryengine in the "space dogfighting" environment (with all that entails), the devopers mentioned that, apparently, it's significantly different compared to your average FPS "ground" level and poses new challenges, but hey, I'm no game dev.

Here's the latest on the bugs (they will provide daily reports) :

Arena Commander V.8 Bug List – May 28, 2014

Blockers

Vanduul Swarm – Display drivers can crash when Vanduul spawn or blow up
Lag in feedback and update of essential game events resulting in increasingly divergent multiplayer sync

Critical

Battle Royale (Crash) – While Flying (Shader)
Camera – After respawn character is stuck looking up
Vanduul Swarm (Crash) – Shortly after missile lock
All Maps – Occasionally, when first spawning into the maps lasers and ballistic fire is invisible but can be heard when firing – they eventually appear
Crash on exit after returning from DFM match
Character is unable to exit DFM Aurora bed if helmet is on
G-force animations are not playing on the pilot in any of the ships
Character and parts of cockpit interior vanish while accelerating

EDIT: Looks like they made significant progress

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/26rp39/travis_days_chat_updates_on_dfm_bug_list/

Blockers
Vanduul Swarm –Driver Crash Fixed

Lag in feedback and update of essential game events resulting in increasingly divergent multiplayer sync

Critical

Battle Royale (Crash) – While Flying (Shader) Fixed
Camera – After respawn character is stuck looking up. Still Open
Vanduul Swarm (Crash) – Shortly after missile lock Fixed
All Maps – Occasionally, when first spawning into the maps lasers and ballistic fire is invisible but can be heard when firing – they eventually appear Seems fixed.
Crash on exit after returning from DFM match Fixed.
Character is unable to exit DFM Aurora bed if helmet is on Fixed.
Gforce animations are not playing on the pilot in any of the ships Fixed, awaiting full regression test.
Character and parts of cockpit interior vanish while accelerating Fixed.

Note that anything listed here as fixed is "Claimed Fixed".

[KallDrexx]

From the post:

It would be foolish to release an unstable build, even if pre-alpha for the sake of meeting an internal deadline. This is the power of the crowdfunding that made Star Citizen possible: a publisher would make us ship tomorrow regardless of the current build quality… but as you are all focused on quality rather than a financial return for shareholders we are able to take a few more days to deliver something that is stable.

What a crock of shit, and I'm sure most people buy that.  It's people like him that enhance the "us vs them" mentality surrounding publishers.  If a publisher was involved the publisher wouldn't have them ship arena commander at all and instead more focus on the actual core game.  For a game that realistically wouldn't see the light of day (as a complete game) for at *least* a year most of those bugs are not super critical to focus on immediately, but since they've forced themselves to release pieces in isolation publicly they are forcing themselves to fix something that will most likely break again prior to the release of the actual, full game.

[Mrbloodworth]

Blockers

    Vanduul Swarm – Display drivers can crash when Vanduul spawn or blow up
    Lag in feedback and update of essential game events resulting in increasingly divergent multiplayer sync

Critical

    Battle Royale (Crash) – While Flying (Shader)
    Camera – After respawn character is stuck looking up
    Vanduul Swarm (Crash) – Shortly after missile lock
    All Maps – Occasionally, when first spawning into the maps lasers and ballistic fire is invisible but can be heard when firing – they eventually appear
    Crash on exit after returning from DFM match
    Character is unable to exit DFM Aurora bed if helmet is on
    Gforce animations are not playing on the pilot in any of the ships
    Character and parts of cockpit interior vanish while accelerating

Most of the bugs they listed are reported Fixed. Its off to QA. At most the game is delayed a day or two. Not months.

[Margalis]

What a crock of shit, and I'm sure most people buy that.  It's people like him that enhance the "us vs them" mentality surrounding publishers.  If a publisher was involved the publisher wouldn't have them ship arena commander at all and instead more focus on the actual core game.  For a game that realistically wouldn't see the light of day (as a complete game) for at *least* a year most of those bugs are not super critical to focus on immediately, but since they've forced themselves to release pieces in isolation publicly they are forcing themselves to fix something that will most likely break again prior to the release of the actual, full game.

For a pre-alpha all these issues are fine, with the exception of frequent crashes. They want to release something polished as leverage so that they can continue to collect more money. Polishing one tiny part of the game makes little sense.

As far as hiring a producer...they hired the D3 producer, lol. That's exactly the opposite of what they need. Blizzard is another company that polishes up alpha builds well before it's required (in part so they can show it at Blizzcon), then throws away a bunch of that work and starts over. Another company that pays little attention to schedule.

They need someone like a Gameloft guy used to making a game entirely from scratch in 3 months.

[Falconeer]

Not coming today, but the most important part:

Do not be too concerned that today’s list (of bugs) is longer than what appeared yesterday: it’s not unusual for additional bugs to be generated as we squash more serious issues.

[Maledict]

A guy on PA mentioned that he had spent over $1000 dollars on this.

That really scares me - I'm not exactly a great saver myself, but the thought of giving $1000 to a dream that may or may not actually come true is really shocking to me. That's a decent holiday!

[Lucas]

Here's another update from 30 minutes ago (as of this message), taken from the official chat where the Assistant Producer, Travis Day, dropped by:

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/134183/travis-day-chat-notes-30-mins-ago

[Goreschach]

Ok, now you're just going creeper.

[Miasma]

A guy on PA mentioned that he had spent over $1000 dollars on this.

That really scares me - I'm not exactly a great saver myself, but the thought of giving $1000 to a dream that may or may not actually come true is really shocking to me. That's a decent holiday!

There's a guy on SA in for over $11,000.  Anyone with an Idris class ship is basically in for more than a $1000 and there are a lot of Idrissesessses.  Amazingly, you can still sell your Idris for more than it cost, on the gray market.  So those people can actually make their money back and then some.

[Venkman]

I'll say it again - these guys have voluntarily chosen to structure development as a series of vertical slice releases, when it's generally understood that each vertical slice you do is a counter-productive drain on resources you only do at the behest of a publisher. (Except for maybe the first one you do to set the bar, establish tone and goals, etc)

It's almost like they are developing in the exact order of the funding rounds they achieved on KS. Because nothing could go wrong with that approach 

[Margalis]

I don't know how true this is, but I read on Neogaf that after doing the hangar module they had to redo the ships it included to include the physically-based rendering, and also because the thruster placement didn't make sense once they got their flying physics working.

That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. Until you have the systems running you have no idea if the design of the ship even makes sense. Even once you have the flight physics working you still don't know if the ship interiors are laid out properly for FPS boarding fighting, or if the ship concept even ends up working in the game.

[calapine]

I don't know how true this is, but I read on Neogaf that after doing the hangar module they had to redo the ships it included to include the physically-based rendering, and also because the thruster placement didn't make sense once they got their flying physics working.

That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. Until you have the systems running you have no idea if the design of the ship even makes sense. Even once you have the flight physics working you still don't know if the ship interiors are laid out properly for FPS boarding fighting, or if the ship concept even ends up working in the game.

That detail is something that's causing some whine on the official forums actually. There is the 300 type of spaceships that have a [power]class 4 reactor that takes up 50% of the entire ship. And then there is the Avenger type ship that has a more powerfull class 5 reactor that seemingly fits into briefcase. 

I used my very limited graphic-editing skills to create an illustration. Voilà:

[UnSub]

From the post:

It would be foolish to release an unstable build, even if pre-alpha for the sake of meeting an internal deadline. This is the power of the crowdfunding that made Star Citizen possible: a publisher would make us ship tomorrow regardless of the current build quality… but as you are all focused on quality rather than a financial return for shareholders we are able to take a few more days to deliver something that is stable.

What a crock of shit, and I'm sure most people buy that.  It's people like him that enhance the "us vs them" mentality surrounding publishers.  If a publisher was involved the publisher wouldn't have them ship arena commander at all and instead more focus on the actual core game.  For a game that realistically wouldn't see the light of day (as a complete game) for at *least* a year most of those bugs are not super critical to focus on immediately, but since they've forced themselves to release pieces in isolation publicly they are forcing themselves to fix something that will most likely break again prior to the release of the actual, full game.

I'm incredibly curious about what Star Citizen looks like at launch and if all the people who put their money into it now are going to be willing to pay more once they see the entire game.

Right now SC can't even get its basic deliverables right, let alone a single / multi-player / MMO / super feature rich space game.

[Falconeer]

New trailer for the Dogfight Module out, even though now it's called Arena Commander.

It certainly looks pretty and spirited, but of course, and as as usual, it doesn't say anything about actual gameplay. Ah well, we are gonna find out soon anyway, right? Right?

[Lucas]

Well, you could compare the first, upcoming   iteration to E:D Alpha 1.0 (single-player combat only with scenarios) and the first multiplayer alpha. Now, of course, all the comparisons stops there 'cause we won't get the equivalent for the E:D Alpha 3.0 or 4.0 for quite some time :P (but hopefully the first episode of Squadron 42 won't suffer a lot of delays...right, Right?)

The new 300i cockpit looks fantastic (first pic of the article)

[Falconeer]

In all honesty I can't fucking wait to put my hands on Star Citizen arena commander/dogfight module or anything that lets me fly a ship, and that's why I am pissed at the constant delays. Even more so now that I have the Elite Dangerous comparison (yeah, I bought in), but as usual I am not trying to bash Star Citizen, I am just hoping they will finally deliver something even though everything so far points to the opposite. Which makes me even more nervous since I'm a backer and I can't afford too much schadenfreude.

[Miasma]

I'm incredibly curious about what Star Citizen looks like at launch and if all the people who put their money into it now are going to be willing to pay more once they see the entire game.

Right now SC can't even get its basic deliverables right, let alone a single / multi-player / MMO / super feature rich space game.

Despite all the screw ups and failures the game still takes in tens of thousands of dollars in new pledges every day.  You can see the chart on their main page https://robertsspaceindustries.com/ .  On Wednesday when they announced they would again miss their latest promised released date there was a jump in donations to 70k.

If I trusted those shady gray market sites I would have sold my account months ago.

[KallDrexx]

Fuck me, they are still taking in over a million per month.......

[calapine]

Fuck me, they are still taking in over a million per month.......

That's a lot for fundraising, yes. I'd actually be most worried that in the end theoretically they'd be able to deliver on most promises but just run out of money. Considering they have over 200 people now working on this they must burn through funds at an alarming rate.

Edit: Does Chris Robert look terrible here? Those bags under his eyes and generally he comes across as exhausted. Watching this makes me feel sorry for him.  

[Paelos]

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

[calapine]

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*



[Green, in case I have to say it!]

Edit: Btw, DFM is supposed to be coming out next week. They are working on it over the weekend. (Is it normal/healthy to start with crunch two years before release?) I actually believe this estimate, but except it to be an unplayable mess. Especially for Falconeer who just played a fairly polished beta like Elite.

[Stormwaltz]

I still want the game to succeed, but every day it feels more like they received so much money so fast, they couldn't figure out responsibly use it. Every time they've announced a new feature, equipment aquisition, or team spinning up, I've cringed.

My interpretation is that they were unexpectedly handed all the resources to implement a long, steady development, and instead of socking it in the bank to dig into as needed, they tried to do everything at once. It's something like the Peter Principle applied to a company. I do think there was a plan to do all they've announced eventually, but the company grew too fast to take it all on in an organized fashion.