Star Citizen developers show off external & internal multicrew destruction

[Guest Kloaked]

LOL. While Chris Roberts live streams from CitizenCon.... Derek Smart is making a fool of himself by watching and posting sarcastic comments on twitter

https://twitter.com/dsmart?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

 

Him and the naysayers are so irrational it's sad.

[LePawel]

I would say its part of what makes a core part of the game.... ship combat and damage from that combat is kind of important. I dont see how this would not be considered part of the core gameplay.

Projects can be split into 3 parts: the Must Haves, the Would Be Nice and Bells and Whistles. What these guys seem to do all the time, is create 1 Must Have, look at all Bells and Whistles that relate to it, work all of those, and only then move onto something else.

They could have had much more of their game mechanics done if they didn't spend some much of their pre-release time on stuff that's not important. Sure you can have precise destruction effects going from one module to another and have them spin away from the hull based on some force and whatever, or just have it spin off for now, create another "module" and do an update after release of the full game.

[TopWargamer]

This work was done by three FX artists. What do you expect them to do? Go help the engineers with engine issues? All the FPS blockers are programming problems rather than graphical issues, so they certainly won't help out there. Destruction is a pretty important part of the game, it involves everything from their GOST (object state management system) to mechanics such as boarding and repair. It's very much "working on the core part of the game".

 

CIG has only ever provided estimates, not firm dates. They're not going faster or slower than any other AAA developers. Expecting a playable beta for a game of this size after less than 3 years is insane.

Where in the sources does it say that it was just 3 people working on it? If so, good on them. That's impressive for only 3 people.

 

Anyways, there's other things that they can do other than working on the engine. They can work on speeding up development of the star systems, speeding up character models, speeding up location (cities, space stations, etc.) settings, etc. There's a lot of other more useful things they could be doing. 

 

And yes, destruction visuals is important to an extent, but it's not something that they have to prioritize right now. It's not a core part of the game. Core parts of the game include the star systems and planets, because people need places to travel to; game mechanics, weapons, etc., because SC is a game where you have the possibility to shoot up whatever, and having a variety of weapons to choose from is important; Cutscenes, to move the core story (Squadron 42) along; Character models, because a bland character doesn't make for a good game in this case. Those are just a few things that are more important than destruction visuals at the moment. 

 

As for the beta we were supposed to have by now, it was promised way back when during the Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen/description

 

The people who pledge for their spaceships will get to test-fly them long before the general public. 12 months in, we will allow the early backers to play the multiplayer space combat Alpha, and then 20-22 months in they will get to play the Star Citizen Beta, adventuring around the huge open galaxy, well before the general public. We are going to limit our alpha slots to 200,000 as we want to stress test the game with real users, but will not be ready for the full load until we have finished Beta.

 

By that estimation we were supposed to have the beta last August, in 2014! I get it, shit happens in development, but how can you over shoot a goal so badly that it's more than a year overdue? Not only that, but you can't have the beta without having the persistent universe, and they're not even done with that yet! Nor do they have the FPS module completed! Not only are they more than a year over schedule, they don't even have the components ready to make a beta happen. 

[Guest Kloaked]

I'm perfectly aware of that. I'm just saying that the people working on those minor things should really be put to more useful work, like working on the core part of the game. Ya know, to help speed things along. CIG is pushing these "Oooooo shiny" things every now and then to give the fans something to get "Wow'd" about. It's a distraction from the fact that CIG is grossly behind on the development process.

 

May I remind you that we were supposed to have a full playable beta by now, and we're nowhere even close to getting that. 

 

You don't put the animation department on bug fixing. You don't put AI programmers on effects creating, and so on.

 

The people at CIG aren't dumb. They're doing what they can with their teams. They're not just all basic pawns that you put in different resource pools like in a video game, they all have their areas of expertise and they're where they need to be.

 

I'll say the same thing that I did when everyone was bitching about GTA:5 taking as long as it did: we can either get a POS broken game like Ubisoft keeps giving us, or we can sit back and wait on these guys who know what they're doing and aren't on a time schedule by corporate suits that forces them to cut content from release.

[TopWargamer]

You don't put the animation department on bug fixing. You don't put AI programmers on effects creating, and so on.

 

The people at CIG aren't dumb. They're doing what they can with their teams. They're not just all basic pawns that you put in different resource pools like in a video game, they all have their areas of expertise and they're where they need to be.

 

I'll say the same thing that I did when everyone was bitching about GTA:5 taking as long as it did: we can either get a POS broken game like Ubisoft keeps giving us, or we can sit back and wait on these guys who know what they're doing and aren't on a time schedule by corporate suits that forces them to cut content from release.

Why is everybody assuming I said that the people who made the destruction visuals go on teams that wouldn't work for them? I never said that. Stop putting words in my mouth.

 

And I do want a quality game. I'm fine with devs taking a little while to complete a game so long as they're making the game better. My issue with Star Citizen is that their initial predictions were grossly over shot and that they should have set more realistic predictions. They set the goals already. I expected them to meet those goals, because ya know, they're smart people and should be able to gauge how long it'll take. They did not meet those goals, at all. Now I'm stuck wondering where in development it is, and that's never a good sign.

[Guest Kloaked]

Why is everybody assuming I said that the people who made the destruction visuals go on teams that wouldn't work for them? I never said that. Stop putting words in my mouth.

 

And I do want a quality game. I'm fine with devs taking a little while to complete a game so long as they're making the game better. My issue with Star Citizen is that their initial predictions were grossly over shot and that they should have set more realistic predictions. They set the goals already. I expected them to meet those goals, because ya know, they're smart people and should be able to gauge how long it'll take. They did not meet those goals, at all. Now I'm stuck wondering where in development it is, and that's never a good sign.

 

Because you talked about moving resources around is all.

 

And it's going to take a long time. They're getting a ton of shit done for the amount of people they have on staff, from what I'm seeing. I understand why people have doubts because they're seeing what's going on behind the scenes, rather than AAA studios keeping everything behind a curtain until they're ready for a release, or near release.

 

The FPS module (IIRC) for example has technically been finished for quite a while, it's just Chris Roberts wasn't satisfied with what he was seeing, so he delayed it to get worked on more. They're putting more quality in the game, so it's going to keep taking more time to finish. I personally don't see anything to worry about, honestly.

[euniqe]

I always laugh at "explosions in space"

 

yeanh cos there's always a bunch of oxygen lying around. Unless people wanna claim the air comes from life support..

[ACatWithThumbs]

Why is everybody assuming I said that the people who made the destruction visuals go on teams that wouldn't work for them? I never said that. Stop putting words in my mouth.

 

And I do want a quality game. I'm fine with devs taking a little while to complete a game so long as they're making the game better. My issue with Star Citizen is that their initial predictions were grossly over shot and that they should have set more realistic predictions. They set the goals already. I expected them to meet those goals, because ya know, they're smart people and should be able to gauge how long it'll take. They did not meet those goals, at all. Now I'm stuck wondering where in development it is, and that's never a good sign.

They just released like 5 or 6 videos with new gameplay as well as motion capture footage that should give you an idea how far they are.

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/464931-star-citizen-features-gary-oldman-gillian-anderson-mark-hamill-citizencon-round-up/page-1

And they also announced that they aren't doing modules anymore but instead are just releasing it as one big alpha.

[NAP51DMustang]

Him and the naysayers are so irrational it's sad.

I swear a physcologist should see his rants, the diagnosis would be hilarious.

[Guest Kloaked]

I swear a physcologist should see his rants, the diagnosis would be hilarious.

 

What's even worse is there's a shitload of people who agree with everything he says.

 

Escapist's forum is full of them. If you even so much as offer some slight chance that they're wrong, they'll shit on you.

[NAP51DMustang]

I always laugh at "explosions in space"

 

yeanh cos there's always a bunch of oxygen lying around. Unless people wanna claim the air comes from life support..

I always laugh at people that laugh at "explosions in space:" in a peice of science FICTION

[RagnarokDel]

I'm interested in Star Citizen a lot but for the multiplayer and I feel like they're trying too hard on effects. Sure it's pretty but if it runs at 0.1 fps, there's no purpose.

 

 

 

I would say its part of what makes a core part of the game.... ship combat and damage from that combat is kind of important. I dont see how this would not be considered part of the core gameplay.

It absolutely is, but at the same time, we're not trying to look at a movie here. Nothing's going to be able to run this properly in real time with a bunch of players/npcs/objects moving around.

 

 

 

I know sound isn't supposed to carry in space but still

you wouldnt hear it but it's generally accepted in movies/games because we're used to it on earth. Interesting random fact I just read. If you detonate a nuclear bomb in space, there is no blast, there is no thermal radiation but the neutron and gamma radiation is massively increased. http://history.nasa.gov/conghand/nuclear.htm

 

 

PS: this chart shows a 20 kilo-ton bomb's radius

 

 

 

 

 

Trik means more along the lines of the amount of content we're getting, not just how it looks.

 

I think Chris Roberts even said they'd be able to update visuals easily with how they're designing the game as time goes on - I don't have sauce on this though.

 

Updating visuals is some of the easiest thing to do in a game... Smite did it like 4 times since it was in beta in 2012.

 

 

What's even worse is there's a shitload of people who agree with everything he says.

There's a shitload of people who think Obama's coming for their guns

[Mihle]

Amazing!

[Letemburn]

I'm interested in Star Citizen a lot but for the multiplayer and I feel like they're trying too hard on effects. Sure it's pretty but if it runs at 0.1 fps, there's no purpose.

 

Since the very beginning they made it very clear that this game is meant to look amazing and is aimed at high end gaming PC's. It's unfortunate, but people who don't have the hardware simply shouldn't look forward to playing this at a reasonable framerate upon release.

(I created an account just to post this by the way lol, i'm a long time lurker.)

[NAP51DMustang]

I'm interested in Star Citizen a lot but for the multiplayer and I feel like they're trying too hard on effects. Sure it's pretty but if it runs at 0.1 fps, there's no purpose.

 

It absolutely is, but at the same time, we're not trying to look at a movie here. Nothing's going to be able to run this properly in real time with a bunch of players/npcs/objects moving around.

 

have you ever heard of Chris Roberts? over the top in graphics is kinda what he does. infact this level of fidelity is what he has been saying since 2012 when he announced the game.