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

[NAP51DMustang]

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.

 

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 mans 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

1) UE3 isn't as good as CE3 for what they wanted (an engine designed around a FP view)

2) Epic wasn't going to sell them a full copy of the source (ie not a license but a straight up fully owned copy)

3) Crytek helped CR to build out the tech demo he showed us at the announcement

4) show me one original IP AAA title (ie not a sequel) that has been developed in less than 2 years that is the scale of SC. heck, Elderscrolls and Fallout games (which are sequels) take 5 years from start to release.

[NinjaTitan]

1) UE3 isn't as good as CE3 for what they wanted (an engine designed around a FP view)

2) Epic wasn't going to sell them a full copy of the source (ie not a license but a straight up fully owned copy)

3) Crytek helped CR to build out the tech demo he showed us at the announcement

4) show me one original IP AAA title (ie not a sequel) that has been developed in less than 2 years that is the scale of SC. heck, Elderscrolls and Fallout games (which are sequels) take 5 years from start to release.

 

2 is a big one for RSI. 

 

They've had their way with the engine and tore it apart where needed, for good reasons. They didn't have the know how to built a new engine, but they had the know how to manipulate an engine to do what they needed, as much as we love EPIC, they wouldn't have allowed RSI to bastardize UE3 to that degree. 

[dalekphalm]

2 is a big one for RSI. 

 

They've had their way with the engine and tore it apart where needed, for good reasons. They didn't have the know how to built a new engine, but they had the know how to manipulate an engine to do what they needed, as much as we love EPIC, they wouldn't have allowed RSI to bastardize UE3 to that degree. 

I would say that it's not so much that they didn't have the know-how to build their own engine, but why would they?

 

1. Building an engine is incredibly expensive. Most companies only build an in-house engine for two reasons: To license it out for a fee, or to build a franchise/many games off it

2. Building an engine is incredibly time consuming. If they had to build their own image, they would likely be a year or more behind schedule

 

I think they have the talent and programmers to do it themselves, but it's a waste of their time and money when CE3 already existed, and the CE engineers were available for support.

[Godlygamer23]

At least they admit they can't develop the game the way it was advertised.

 

Edit: Mixed up Smart and Chris partially.

[dalekphalm]

At least they admit they can't develop the game the way it was advertised.

I'm not sure what you mean? The way it was advertised was smaller in scope and features compared to what they're actually doing. They had a specific plan for when they expected $2 million. They had stretch goals for higher, which is where they are now. They've surpassed all stretch goals and had even more goals in mind for what they truly wanted to do.

 

Dev time, of course, wasn't as advertised. But the advertised dev time was for a $2 million game, not the game we are getting.

[Godlygamer23]

I'm not sure what you mean? The way it was advertised was smaller in scope and features compared to what they're actually doing. They had a specific plan for when they expected $2 million. They had stretch goals for higher, which is where they are now. They've surpassed all stretch goals and had even more goals in mind for what they truly wanted to do.

 

Dev time, of course, wasn't as advertised. But the advertised dev time was for a $2 million game, not the game we are getting.

I know where I messed up - I thought Chris was talking about the model being unsustainable. I went back to look at the quoted content and found that Smart actually talked about that.

[dalekphalm]

I know where I messed up - I thought Chris was talking about the model being unsustainable. I went back to look at the quoted content and found that Smart actually talked about that.

Yes, Smart is the one saying that they will run out of money - despite the fact that once released, SC could potentially sell millions of copies. I know TONS of people who want to play SC but haven't backed it. All of them are likely to be interested in buying it once it comes out.

[jtai117]

I reckon if this was a company like Bethesda they wouldn't have even announced the game yet. The fact that CIG let us in so early in to the development cycle is already pretty cool.

[dalekphalm]

I reckon if this was a company like Bethesda they wouldn't have even announced the game yet. The fact that CIG let us in so early in to the development cycle is already pretty cool.

If it was ANY traditional AAA developer, we wouldn't know anything about the game yet. It MIGHT have been announced yet, but even that is unlikely.

 

This is the problem with crowdsourced game development. People hear about all the completely normal development cycle, and flip their shit because... oh wait... AAA games take a long time to make.

[GeathX]

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.

 

It is a back track because up to that point you said nothing about multiple textures. Compression is relevent when the texture data is being stored on a HDD or disc, not when being worked on in memory. The data is uncompressed once the gpu would need to start working on in. And no, you wouldn't have to load the whole texture, that is the whole thing with megatexture/titled resources (which cryengine has), only what is visually seen of the texture is loaded into memory. So for a 4 or 8k texture, all you would load is what is needed.

[patrickjp93]

It is a back track because up to that point you said nothing about multiple textures. Compression is relevent when the texture data is being stored on a HDD or disc, not when being worked on in memory. The data is uncompressed once the gpu would need to start working on in. And no, you wouldn't have to load the whole texture, that is the whole thing with megatexture/titled resources (which cryengine has), only what is visually seen of the texture is loaded into memory. So for a 4 or 8k texture, all you would load is what is needed.

No, the data is only decompressed while in use or being primed for it. It will sit compressed in VRAM until needed unless the programmer using it is a twit. Decompression takes practically no computational power. That's also not possible with a metric ton of CPU and PCIe overhead and not what those techniques are for. That's an incorrect use of the tool.

[GeathX]

No, the data is only decompressed while in use or being primed for it. It will sit compressed in VRAM until needed unless the programmer using it is a twit. Decompression takes practically no computational power. That's also not possible with a metric ton of CPU and PCIe overhead and not what those techniques are for. That's an incorrect use of the tool.*

 

 

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2013/06/26/higher-fidelity-graphics-with-less-memory-at-microsoft-build/

 

 

Please have a read/watch these links.

[patrickjp93]

Please have a read/watch these links.

You do realize I'm not only sitting in the 3rd row, but that this actually agrees with me, right?

[GeathX]

You do realize I'm not only sitting in the 3rd row, but that this actually agrees with me, right?

What does he say that agrees with you?