Chris Roberts speaks out about the time it's taking for Star Citizen to release

[ACatWithThumbs]

Not because something is unlikely to happen means that it's ok to give the creators the options to just fucking run a scam because this is what this is: a motherfucking scam. A no compromises free money scam to do whatever you want with it when getting money from a bank or an investor (or a publisher) involves actually being accountable. So any crowd funding game IS morally reprehensible under the excuse of "oh nobody wants to just give me money without having to do anything for it but promise shit! Fans help me!" and it's particularly bad for a large and unwieldy project as I mentioned before.

If a game can't be made other wise it's totally than there is no moral issue it's donation funded that's not any different from any other large scale donation from making a game to building schools in Africa a scam is tricking people into giving them money without any intention to actually deliver a product.

Star Citizen would have never existed without donations as no publisher would've invested in a dead genre just like Broken Age which was a point and click adventure nobody is going to fund it but now we have it and it's great.

[Misanthrope]

If a game can't be made other wise it's totally than there is no moral issue it's donation funded that's not any different from any other large scale donation from making a game to building schools in Africa a scam is tricking people into giving them money without any intention to actually deliver a product.

Star Citizen would have never existed without donations as no publisher would've invested in a dead genre just like Broken Age which was a point and click adventure nobody is going to fund it but now we have it and it's great.

 

I addressed this before: Just because it wouldn't exist otherwise doesn't means that it should exist in it's current form. So far nobody has addressed that comment: would it be so bad if this game had a much more sensible budget and less fancy engine like Unreal Engine 2 or 3 and more modest graphical details and such? If it was all about the experience and reviving a dead genre then it wouldn't matter all that much to me as long as is somewhat modern but no, we must use the absolute best graphics and assets to destroy systems because fuck it, we've got free money right?

 

THAT is my issue, the fact that it's not just being done, it's being completely overdone.

[dalekphalm]

LOL Derek Smart???? The world's biggest asshat in games development, making Phil Fish out to be a saint?

 

Who on earth would cite Derek fucking Smart as a source for anything, jesus backflipping christ. That guy has himself provided 4 spectacular miscarried games with his next-to-zero business and game development skill.

Agreed, Derek Smart is the biggest Jackass piece of shit in gaming development history.

Do you remember when he tried to buy the rights to make Freespace 3, and the Internet lost their shit over it? That was hilarious - although a little terrifying at first before we realized that the rights-holders would refuse to sell to him.

[Doobeedoo]

Games like MMO need time as much as they need. Why it's so strange to people that it's "taking so long" for such a game. You'd want an utterly broken MMO game? I want them to have as much as time they need to polish every corner of it and actually make a good next gen MMO that can be good and popular for years to come.

[ACatWithThumbs]

I addressed this before: Just because it wouldn't exist otherwise doesn't means that it should exist in it's current form. So far nobody has addressed that comment: would it be so bad if this game had a much more sensible budget and less fancy engine like Unreal Engine 2 or 3 and more modest graphical details and such? If it was all about the experience and reviving a dead genre then it wouldn't matter all that much to me as long as is somewhat modern but no, we must use the absolute best graphics and assets to destroy systems because fuck it, we've got free money right?

 

THAT is my issue, the fact that it's not just being done, it's being completely overdone.

People want an AAA level space sim if we wanted a small indie space sim we could just play one of the hundreds of small garbage indie space games on Steam or go back and play Freelancer or Wing Commander.

The whole point of Star Citizen is to have a space sim on the level of a modern AAA title which we didn't have in almost a decade.

And it being publisher restriction free and PC exclusive gives finally the chance to actually push the boundaries gameplay as well as graphic wise.

It's not overdone it's exactly how it should be done only very few games like GTA V takes this approach of game development where every small detail counts and this is exactly what this industry needs more off instead of games that aren't even in a playable state like Batman Arkham Knight or AC Unity.

 

[sof006]

I'd rather they take their time rather than release an unfinished product. Its like releasing a car without tires or without mirrors.

[bcredeur97]

I'll say it again; this is why games should be surprises. No announcements. I don't want to know anything until release date, and I don't want to know the release date.

[fade]

I for one want them to take their sweet time on the game and make sure its as flawless and perfect as can be for release...but the reason people are mad is because they gave a time frame on its release.  The fault is on them for doing that not on the people complaining.

[dalekphalm]

I for one want them to take their sweet time on the game and make sure its as flawless and perfect as can be for release...but the reason people are mad is because they gave a time frame on its release.  The fault is on them for doing that not on the people complaining.

Well to be fair, when you're kickstarting a game, you kind of have to give a timeframe. I thought it was understood by everyone that the timeframe was a rough outline only, and subject to change as the game development actually kicked off... But then again, most people don't know anything about AAA level game development.

[rentaspoon]

I don't see why people are even complaining that the game is taking so long. Isn't that what people were bitching about to DICE about because BF3 and 4 were complete and utter messes at launch? Now they don't want the devs to put time in to making a good game? God damn...

Source

I'm trying to do a big update thread on the project few interesting things he said in the 10FTC update, add this if you want, these were taken from my short hand notes so wording is slightly different

How has the scope of SC changed?

"It’s changed a lot, i didn’t think we would have the support we have now, i was expecting 2-3 million and once the game was out I could build the game up to what i always wanted, now we can make a fully featured game that people have been waiting for... even the persistent universe was a stretch goal when we started."

What about the people that say its impossible to finish?

-Chris looks as though this hits a nerve-

"i don’t think it impossible at all, I think its very doable and i think that people that claim that don't have the imagination or enough of the technical ability to do that.

I know that in all the features we’ve talked about in terms of the large PU; how we are going to move between it from planets to space, to move in and out of these big ships to smaller ships and everything be seamless. We’ve got the fundamental technology pretty much cracked.”

“we’re going to gamescom this year to show the first large world map and this is only a small corner of possibility of it, the gas giant your orbiting around is 122km in diameter and we have 3-4 moons that if you flew between them it would be about two and a half hours and there are no loading screens (of course we have jump drives).

We need higher level of position so we are using a 64 bit system for all our 3d bit positions and we have that blended with the zone system that works as a dynamic container system that’ll tell us positions of a player or item, it can be used like a Russian doll so you have a container inside a container so we can have a planet you can land on and that could be one zone and there could be a space station orbiting that planet and that itself would be another zone and inside that space station each room could be a zone”

“people keep saying "You were going to give me the game in two years, well we can’t give you this [opens hands wide] in two years when we where going to give you this initially [closes hands].. which is why the switched the design philosophy we weren't originally talking about hanger modules.. dogfighting modules “the money that is coming in now is helping make this game as polished as possible.. And my goal is to make the journey as enjoyable as possible”

Just some random things he said:

 Chris is actually coding as well at the moment, FRANKFURT has the Crtek experts including CRYTEK UK experts, including the guy who created cry animation. “NETWORKING IS A BITCH”.

*most fps games have a floating camera where your arms are attached to your ears and your guns right in front of you

“hoping to have the FPS in the PTU at gamescom BUT IT’s NOT INDEFINITELY DELAYED, trust me it’s frustrating that it’s not out now but there is no one here thinking “lets make them sweat a while" and we’re talking weeks not months

BEN: “this is not us thinking we want to make call of duty this is core to everything we are doing to move forward”

Chris: “this isn't just about the FPS but about what is happening in the persistent universe and you flying multi crew ships”

“I hate having unneccasery work done so I hate having parallel systems so i’d rather do one right than do 2 different things and get something out sooner because longterm it doesn't help you and you was money and you spend time on something you have to change at a later date anyway” “it’s a better way of looking after everyone's money” “it’s foundational for the entire game”

“EVERYONE AT CRYTEK HAS TALKED ABOUT DOING IT THIS WAY, they talked about doing it on Crysis 2 and 3 but they gave up because they had deadlines, we’ve made more progress than they did but we dealing with some of the same issues and we are determine to crack them”

Source: https://youtu.be/e1Mkcq160cE

And the thing about Derek Smart, the games he has made are buggy with outdated graphics and he's charging for starter packs for Line Of Defense (which is awful). The hypocrite.

[GeathX]

The difference is huge in memory usage for no real gain. If you can still see a pixel, the tile was done incorrectly.

 

People were irrational to get mad at Bethesda for that. Now, Bethesda could have done more in the same texture sizes. I won't deny that, but providing 4K resolutions is actually quite stupid when you can get the same effect with less memory and fewer computational resources.

 

 

No it wouldn't. If you used it correctly there would be no seams, no blotchiness, no nothing that could tell you it was a lower resolution texture.

 

 

There are plenty of counterexamples for that, Elder Scrolls Oblivion being a good one where the tiling was done too obviously in some cases of mountains and trees. If done right, you get the same effect as a higher-resolution texture for less memory and fewer cycles taken out of the GPU. Now you can do more.

 

 

I think....you are getting a few things confused here, mixing up the mega texture/resource tiling tech with UV texture resolution.

[patrickjp93]

I think....you are getting a few things confused here, mixing up the mega texture/resource tiling tech with UV texture resolution.

I'm saying you don't need a massive texture to cover a large surface. That could be a wall or a space ship or a huge dragon. Use of lower resolution textures, maybe multiple, can get the job done with the same beauty for less memory and computational complexity.

[GeathX]

I'm saying you don't need a massive texture to cover a large surface. That could be a wall or a space ship or a huge dragon. Use of lower resolution textures, maybe multiple, can get the job done with the same beauty for less memory and computational complexity.

And there is the back track. Up to the point you didnt make mention of using multiple texutres. If you use 2k textures, once you go over 4 of those you have more pixel data than what a 4K would have had and depending on how well you could have packed UVs you could have had all the mesh on a single texture and then have the easier time of loading a single texture rather than 4 or more. But also on the other hand depending on what tech there is in the engine, you could very well have a 8k or 16k texture and have the game only load up certain section of it as it is visable on the monitor. That is IDs mega texture tech and the more generic term Tiled resources. Then you could also have mipmaps of textures so you can chose what rest to load depending on where objects are in the scene.

 

If there was an object, say a space ships wing, taking up the majority of the frame, a 4k texture could very easily start to look pixelated, as almost half of that textures resolution is being shown on screen in that instance, but that texture would most likely have texture detail for other parts of the wing than you can't see, say the underside or fins or any other parts of the model. And the only way for that wing to not look pixelated by loading in only what you can see, is if the texture was higher than 4k to begin with as it can't generate texture detail, only draw what is there in the file.

It it certainly not a case of "You do not need" but more of a "as you need" scenerio. Pleanty of games on last gen consoles used multiple 2k textures for assets and texutres could still look blury or lower quality at 720p

[Bean86]

I addressed this before: Just because it wouldn't exist otherwise doesn't means that it should exist in it's current form. So far nobody has addressed that comment: would it be so bad if this game had a much more sensible budget and less fancy engine like Unreal Engine 2 or 3 and more modest graphical details and such? If it was all about the experience and reviving a dead genre then it wouldn't matter all that much to me as long as is somewhat modern but no, we must use the absolute best graphics and assets to destroy systems because fuck it, we've got free money right?

THAT is my issue, the fact that it's not just being done, it's being completely overdone.

So I'll try to address your comment. In my opinion it's the right move to go for the best graphics possible for several reason. One is the fact that this game will take a few more years before it's released by then CPU and GPU will have further advanced - this is taken into account and work out great. Another point you mention is 'the experience'. What CR is aiming for, apart from a seamless universe (that needs a modern engine to work), is immersion (also a reason why they put effort towards compatibility with VR): Super Mario graphics aren't immersive.

There's no such thing as overdone - I'm glad there are people out there like CR, trying to push the boundaries of what's possible. If it wasn't for visionaries like him our real world would be very different, no cellphones with the computational power of a recent desktop, plains, GPS, Tesla and so forth. Almost every breakthrough in science and technology is due to somebody who thought we can do better and I don't give a rats ass if 'they' say it isn't possible.

I'm not a die hard fan of SC but I'd really like to meet CR once in real life for he is an inspiring person regardless of SC.

Also I'm very sure he will prove you wrong and it will work as he makes SC for himself, it's a concept he envisioned for decades but never had the opportunity to create until now and this isn't something you'll let pass or disappoint on. For lack of better words SC is his child and a good parent will move mountains for it's child happiness and success.

[Misanthrope]

So I'll try to address your comment. In my opinion it's the right move to go for the best graphics possible for several reason. One is the fact that this game will take a few more years before it's released by then CPU and GPU will have further advanced - this is taken into account and work out great. Another point you mention is 'the experience'. What CR is aiming for, apart from a seamless universe (that needs a modern engine to work), is immersion (also a reason why they put effort towards compatibility with VR): Super Mario graphics aren't immersive.

There's no such thing as overdone - I'm glad there are people out there like CR, trying to push the boundaries of what's possible. If it wasn't for visionaries like him our real world would be very different, no cellphones with the computational power of a recent desktop, plains, GPS, Tesla and so forth. Almost every breakthrough in science and technology is due to somebody who thought we can do better and I don't give a rats ass if 'they' say it isn't possible.

I'm not a die hard fan of SC but I'd really like to meet CR once in real life for he is an inspiring person regardless of SC.

Also I'm very sure he will prove you wrong and it will work as he makes SC for himself, it's a concept he envisioned for decades but never had the opportunity to create until now and this isn't something you'll let pass or disappoint on. For lack of better words SC is his child and a good parent will move mountains for it's child happiness and success.

 

Actually I bet you there will never be another crowd funded project the size and scope of start citizen which proves my point: this is getting made because it started early and people really didn't understood crowd funding but it will not happen again trust me.

 

Other than that I disagree: you really don't have to go down to mario bros levels of graphics I suggested Unreal Engine 3, which has games that look as good as Bioshock infinite: plenty fucking immersive enough without breaking the fucking bank. So yeah you're just wrong in my opinion, you just like this game to be made no matter what and like Shenmue III fans you guys don't seem to understand the damage kickstarter and crowd funding is doing to the gaming industry.

[Bean86]

@Misanthrope

So you say development should stop at the Unreal Engine 3 (which is 10 years old) as it's good enough. Even the Unreal developers think that is bad, else they wouldn't have made UE 4. And I don't agree with you that crowd funding is damaging anything. It's either valid competition (which is a good thing in every economy) or in the cases where it didn't work nothing to worry about (yes those who invested in a flop lost some money but that's life). I get a feeling you've been let down by crowd funding at one point in your life.

Back in the days before crowd funding was a word I did many a group buy on custom car parts which is essentially the same. As is every business that's listed on the stock exchange (and don't start with the argument that they have to answer the investors - news papers are filled with cases were the investors got screwed over) non the less there are also many cases were things worked out just fine as they should. Only difference good new are no news and therefore we rarely read about them.

EDIT: regarding the bet - I wouldn't say never but yes a crowd funded game to this scale is going to be rare as it need a lot of work and enthusiasm and experience to pull it off. Not many developers around that would take the plunge give 5 years of their life for it.

[C.G.F.Sabre]

The more time they take the better.

[patrickjp93]

And there is the back track. Up to the point you didnt make mention of using multiple texutres. If you use 2k textures, once you go over 4 of those you have more pixel data than what a 4K would have had and depending on how well you could have packed UVs you could have had all the mesh on a single texture and then have the easier time of loading a single texture rather than 4 or more. But also on the other hand depending on what tech there is in the engine, you could very well have a 8k or 16k texture and have the game only load up certain section of it as it is visable on the monitor. That is IDs mega texture tech and the more generic term Tiled resources. Then you could also have mipmaps of textures so you can chose what rest to load depending on where objects are in the scene.

If there was an object, say a space ships wing, taking up the majority of the frame, a 4k texture could very easily start to look pixelated, as almost half of that textures resolution is being shown on screen in that instance, but that texture would most likely have texture detail for other parts of the wing than you can't see, say the underside or fins or any other parts of the model. And the only way for that wing to not look pixelated by loading in only what you can see, is if the texture was higher than 4k to begin with as it can't generate texture detail, only draw what is there in the file.

It it certainly not a case of "You do not need" but more of a "as you need" scenerio. Pleanty of games on last gen consoles used multiple 2k textures for assets and texutres could still look blury or lower quality at 720p

It's not a backtrack, and that's not necessarily true when you take texture compression into account. And you still have to put the 4K, 8K, 16K full texture into the frame buffer to load a piece of it. It's pointless and wasteful.

[rentaspoon]

I addressed this before: Just because it wouldn't exist otherwise doesn't means that it should exist in it's current form. So far nobody has addressed that comment: would it be so bad if this game had a much more sensible budget and less fancy engine like Unreal Engine 2 or 3 and more modest graphical details and such? If it was all about the experience and reviving a dead genre then it wouldn't matter all that much to me as long as is somewhat modern but no, we must use the absolute best graphics and assets to destroy systems because fuck it, we've got free money right?

THAT is my issue, the fact that it's not just being done, it's being completely overdone.

Actually the kick starter was to prove to investors that people wanted a game like this, it was always ment to be the next big game, system destroyer like Crysis was (PCs struggled to run that). The engine was chosen because Chris decided that was the best engine for the game, especially since physics where an important part of the game. Why use a FPS engine for a space sim right? They had there reasons and TBH playing the game, it was the right choice. Its not exactly free money either.

[dalekphalm]

Actually the kick starter was to prove to investors that people wanted a game like this, it was always ment to be the next big game, system destroyer like Crysis was (PCs struggled to run that). The engine was chosen because Chris decided that was the best engine for the game, especially since physics where an important part of the game. Why use a FPS engine for a space sim right? They had there reasons and TBH playing the game, it was the right choice. Its not exactly free money either.

Also there weren't really any practical alternatives for the vision they had. UE4 was just a concept on a whiteboard somewhere, with no practical implementations or dev tools released yet. CE3 was real and tangible and they could look at it, test it, see it. It was flexible enough to handle (in theory) everything they wanted to do.

 

UE4 might have been a kickass alternative - if Star Citizen was conceived a year or two later then it was - but the end result is that UE4 was never an option, because it simply didn't exist in anything resembling a state in which a dev could say "We can definitely base our game on this".

 

@Misanthrope

I don't see SC as unethical at all. People paid for what they wanted. You don't get to decide what people spend their disposable income on. You also can't say that it was bad for the gaming industry. This game is single handedly employing 4 dev offices and like 300 devs. It might flop still - but then again ANY GAME might flop. All things look good though.

 

Would it be so bad if it was less ambitious and less graphically demanding? No, not necessarily. But then it wouldn't be Star Citizen. It would have been a totally different game.

 

If you want that game, go make it. Or go back someone who says they will make it.

 

People decide how their money will be spent. If other smaller kickstarter projects would have come up, that people were interested in, they would back them. The fact that SC is here or not is completely irrelevant to that.

[Hulk]

I would really appreciate it if the media didn't cover Derek Smart's opinion- he doesn't represent a majority of PC users who wish the complete opposite, and if his opinion carries weightage, I am afraid to think of the long term implications of the result of devs taking his opinion seriously.

[rentaspoon]

@Misanthrope

I don't see SC as unethical at all. People paid for what they wanted. You don't get to decide what people spend their disposable income on. You also can't say that it was bad for the gaming industry. This game is single handedly employing 4 dev offices and like 300 devs. It might flop still - but then again ANY GAME might flop. All things look good though.

 

Would it be so bad if it was less ambitious and less graphically demanding? No, not necessarily. But then it wouldn't be Star Citizen. It would have been a totally different game.

 

If you want that game, go make it. Or go back someone who says they will make it.

 

People decide how their money will be spent. If other smaller kickstarter projects would have come up, that people were interested in, they would back them. The fact that SC is here or not is completely irrelevant to that.

This, I put my money behind it because I played Chris's games growing up and it was meant to bring mainstream PC gaming beck to where it was before the FPS boom, pushing the limits and the graphics are beautiful I wouldn't want it any other way. I know I'm having to wait but I'm glad, I'm playing the game almost daily when I'm not RMAing parts and I've watched the game evolve into something that started good to something that is great.

 

 

I would really appreciate it if the media didn't cover Derek Smart's opinion- he doesn't represent a majority of PC users who wish the complete opposite, and if his opinion carries weightage, I am afraid to think of the long term implications of the result of devs taking his opinion seriously.

 

I dare you to play one of his own games like line of defense and not call him a hypocrit

[NinjaTitan]

 

@Misanthrope

I don't see SC as unethical at all. People paid for what they wanted. You don't get to decide what people spend their disposable income on. You also can't say that it was bad for the gaming industry. This game is single handedly employing 4 dev offices and like 300 devs. It might flop still - but then again ANY GAME might flop. All things look good though.

 

Would it be so bad if it was less ambitious and less graphically demanding? No, not necessarily. But then it wouldn't be Star Citizen. It would have been a totally different game.

 

If you want that game, go make it. Or go back someone who says they will make it.

 

People decide how their money will be spent. If other smaller kickstarter projects would have come up, that people were interested in, they would back them. The fact that SC is here or not is completely irrelevant to that.

 

I don't pay attention to such people who think SC is a scam because of KS, or because of its crowd funding. That is poor logic. ANYTHING can be a scam, funded by the public or funded privately. SC could crash and burn. Right now, it isn't. Its a expansive project that had its goals clearly laid out for all to see. 

 

All the add ons for this game were SUGGESTED AND VOTED ON BY THE COMMUNITY. WE wanted all this crap, RSI obliged and is working towards it. How is that bad? We wanted more, RSI said we get more. That is now a crime? 

 

Misanthrope has this flawed idea of how people should spend their money. People are free to spend how they please on whatever they please; people here need to get off their high horses and stop telling others how to spend their money. Doubly ironic since some users here live off their parents income, so telling others how to spend their money is just spectacularly sad. 

[Misanthrope]

Also there weren't really any practical alternatives for the vision they had. UE4 was just a concept on a whiteboard somewhere

UE3 was available and it's certainly not a bad looking engine even today. No it is not the most up to date but it's good enough if you care about sensible goals and dev time without publisher backing.

 

@Misanthrope

I don't see SC as unethical at all. People paid for what they wanted. You don't get to decide what people spend their disposable income on.

1) I have never suggested that my moral objections are absolute or even relevant for most people: people are always free to do whatever they want with their money up to and including burning it.

2) Just to not spin our wheels on the same rethoric I'll give you another example on why I personally consider this came unethical: the argument was already made here in this discussion on how this is just to offer proof to potential investors that there's interest in the game. This game has sufficient funding without it, but it set a dangerous precedent for that very principle with Shenmue III going after kickstarter money even when we know they have other funding available includying Sony themselves putting up a significant part by covernig all marketing and distribution themselves. This means that Sony could have financed the game if they wanted to, but they rather use kickstarter as a preorder system in disguise since the devs are still not disclosing all of the Shenmue III money sources and they claim that all the money to actually develop it comes from the kickstarter but it's only that: a dubious claim with overt AAA publishers involvement that will probably only be fully revealed to backers much later down the line.

This is what crowd funding runs the risk of turning into: another get money early from fans scheme by Activision, EA, Sony, Microsoft, etc. Obviously if Activision said "We wanna release a new Elder Scrolls game but we need your help funding it!" hordes of fans would donate but do you really think they need the money?

[Agent181]

I don't pay attention to such people who think SC is a scam because of KS, or because of its crowd funding. That is poor logic. ANYTHING can be a scam, funded by the public or funded privately. SC could crash and burn. Right now, it isn't. Its a expansive project that had its goals clearly laid out for all to see.

All the add ons for this game were SUGGESTED AND VOTED ON BY THE COMMUNITY. WE wanted all this crap, RSI obliged and is working towards it. How is that bad? We wanted more, RSI said we get more. That is now a crime?

Misanthrope has this flawed idea of how people should spend their money. People are free to spend how they please on whatever they please; people here need to get off their high horses and stop telling others how to spend their money. Doubly ironic since some users here live off their parents income, so telling others how to spend their money is just spectacularly sad.