Star Citizen's Star Marine released to Live Servers including a free fly week! also "ditched" cryengine for Lumberyard.

[rentaspoon]

After a year long delay and gaming media misreporting saying it was delayed indefinitely, Star Marine has finally been released to the Live servers just in time for Christmas.

Quote

Alpha Patch 2.6.0 has been released, and is now available for players! This patch provides access to Star Marine – with two maps and two game modes to choose from, we hope you’re all as excited as we are for this release! We also have four new flyable ships, four new variants of existing ships, new FPS combat mechanics such as cover, mantle and vault, major ship balance changes, Pirate Swarm game mode and so much more in the form of fixes and updates to existing content!

With this patch comes a new flight model, Dynamic Music, Cinematic camera (handy for those people creating in game content), new character models, facial animations. One other thing to note is that the splash screen now says Lumber Yard rather than CryEngine.  

(thank you @Gyre-Taenn for capturing this)

UPDATE: JUST RECIEVED THIS EMAIL

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There is one other big announcement we would like to make with the release of 2.6.  We are now basing Star Citizen and our custom technology development on Amazon’s Lumberyard Engine.  Since the beginning of the project, we’ve had to make a huge number of changes to the CryENGINE code and tech to enable us to deliver Star Citizen.  While the original CryENGINE had great strengths in many areas like rendering and cinematics the needs of our game were well beyond what came ‘out of the box’.  So we have, over time, changed significant parts of the engine for our technology, such that only a baseline of the original engine truly remains. In the future we will continue to make significant changes to AI, Animation and Network code and systems. When Amazon announced Lumberyard back in February 2016, we were immediately interested. While based on the same baseline technology as Star Citizen, Lumberyard is specifically designed for online games, utilizing the power of Amazon’s AWS Cloud Services and their Twitch streaming platform. Amazon’s focus aligns perfectly to ours as we’ve been making significant engineering investments into next generation online networking and cloud based servers.  Making the transition to Lumberyard and AWS has been very easy and has not delayed any of our work, as broadly, the technology switch was a ‘like-for-like’ change, which is now complete. As an added benefit Amazon AWS data centers are spread around the world from North America to South America, Europe to China to Asia Pacific, which will allow us to better support the many backers across the globe as we scale up Star Citizen. Finally, Amazon has made Lumberyard freely available for anyone building their own game. That means that technically-inclined members of the community can have a better view 'under the hood' of our game than ever before. It's also a great path for anyone interested in game development professionally; I fully anticipate that in the coming year we will be hiring programmers who have taught themselves using Amazon's Lumberyard resources! As we move forwards, we are confident you will see great benefits from our partnership.  Amazon will bring new features to Lumberyard to assist in creating online persistent games, adding great support for their products like Twitch (which we use extensively) and of course investing heavily in engine research and development for years to come.  We could not find a more stable and reliable engine partner than Amazon, so with this partnership we are sure we have secured the future development and continuing technical innovation for Star Citizen.  With that I would like encourage everyone to download and play Alpha 2.6. It is a lot of fun and I look forward to seeing you in the ‘verse! Happy Holidays!

-- Chris Roberts

Either way it's fun to finally have the FPS side start taking shape rather than the ok feel the guns have had in 2.5 which lacked recoil.

here's a backers video showing the new camera and models off.

The next patch will bring planetary landings, better netcode and better AI.

 

Free fly code:   WELCOME2SC

Enter code here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/promotions/welcome-to-sc

 

 

Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//15653-Star-Citizen-Alpha-260

+me

[rentaspoon]

1 minute ago, Sampsy said:

I'm tempted to check it out, if anything because I think if Star Citizen is likely to screw anything up, it will be the FPS combat. It's so easy to make it a horrible experience. But the game ran like ass last time I tried it, being heavily bottlenecked on my 2500k so I'm not sure if I'd really be able to get a representative experience.

well the networking is being worked on, 2.6 was delayed due to staff that specifically worked on the networking being ill. a free fly code will be out soon which i shall update the  thread with

[2FA]

I got an invite to the PTU last week but 30+GB is too large for me want to test it out.

[Trik'Stari]

"Star Citizen will never come out" - quite a lot of people on these forums, and elsewhere.

 

Keep saying it, surely it will happen.

[rentaspoon]

8 minutes ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

I got an invite to the PTU last week but 30+GB is too large for me want to test it out.

not worth the hassle unless you want to download it again everyday only to find the latest patch is unstable, i enjoy the bug reporting however plus i now have fast broadband.

4 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

"Star Citizen will never come out" - quite a lot of people on these forums, and elsewhere.

 

Keep saying it, surely it will happen.

 A lot of people have been waiting for Star Marine, I was gutted when @Slick reported on WAN wrong

[2FA]

10 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

"Star Citizen will never come out" - quite a lot of people on these forums, and elsewhere.

 

Keep saying it, surely it will happen.

They aren't actually making a game, it's all a money stealing scheme. What? There are videos showing otherwise? Ignore those, it's all part of the cover up... /s

[rentaspoon]

17 minutes ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

They aren't actually making a game, it's all a money stealing scheme. What? There are videos showing otherwise? Ignore those, it's all part of the cover up... /s

lol we've come a long way from this buggy mess

 

[Energycore]

With Crytek having bad finacnial issues, it's a relief that companies are dropping Cryengine, it wasn't without its faults.

[ADM-Ntek]

lumberyard is cryengine just a modified version.

[Zodiark1593]

51 minutes ago, ADM-Ntek said:

lumberyard is cryengine just a modified and better supported version.

Ftfy 

[Misanthrope]

3 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

"Star Citizen will never come out" - quite a lot of people on these forums, and elsewhere.

 

Keep saying it, surely it will happen.

So if we keep saying it it will happen? If we shut up it won't get made? Damn it man don't use double negatives like that ffs.

 

Also even if a fork of Cryengine it's still an engine switch so it's probably a large setback to their timeframe and a great excuse to fail to deliver or under deliver on many promises "We couldn't do that/do it well cause of the engine troubles!"

 

Their licence is not only for lumberyard but also a get-out-jail free card with backers now.

[Bcat00]

interesting news but then again, no one is gonna care unless they are a backer. 

 

Unless they actually have a solid playable game for release, i for one will just see this as a ponzy scheme to reap for money.

[zMeul]

"released" 

 

it's a fucking ALPHA build 

 

---

 

as for the LumberYard engine .......

RSI spent millions of USD and god knows how many work hours in evolving the CryEngine, to have it replaced ... that's another major fuck-up

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, ADM-Ntek said:

lumberyard is cryengine just a modified version.

No it isn't. I have friends from university working on it. The entire core rendering engine has been redone from scratch.

[rentaspoon]

3 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

No it isn't. I have friends from university working on it. The entire core rendering engine has been redone from scratch.

Amazon's own wording is that it's based on the architecture of cryengine, how much of it still  exist in it I don't know however I would be interested to find out.

3 hours ago, zMeul said:

"released" 

 

it's a fucking ALPHA build 

 

---

 

as for the LumberYard engine .......

RSI spent millions of USD and god knows how many work hours in evolving the CryEngine, to have it replaced ... that's another major fuck-up

"released to Live Servers" important there, and LumberYard wasn't an option when they started the game, also I didn't know you had access to there finances.

4 hours ago, Bcat00 said:

interesting news but then again, no one is gonna care unless they are a backer. 

 

Unless they actually have a solid playable game for release, i for one will just see this as a ponzy scheme to reap for money.

I don't think they need your money anymore anyway, it's fairly playable and 2017 is the focus on gameplay mechanics anyway. Also Ponzi scheme expect return for its older investors first, people who brought the caterpillar only saw a "return" where as new players could buy in any number of ships and know when to expect a return as a majority of ship are out or people can look up which patch they will be released. By definition Star Citizen isn't a Ponzi Scheme.

4 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

So if we keep saying it it will happen? If we shut up it won't get made? Damn it man don't use double negatives like that ffs.

 

Also even if a fork of Cryengine it's still an engine switch so it's probably a large setback to their timeframe and a great excuse to fail to deliver or under deliver on many promises "We couldn't do that/do it well cause of the engine troubles!"

 

Their licence is not only for lumberyard but also a get-out-jail free card with backers now.

Well they said it took no time to switch over and since regular updates have been released it's hard to argue that it took to much time plus the switch now may save time in the future when they are struggling to create the mod tools.

[zMeul]

12 minutes ago, rentaspoon said:

also I didn't know you had access to there finances.

ok?!? they haven't spent a single penny on it - is that what you wanted to hear?

or is it more like RSI hired programmers specifically to modify the CryEngine - they even own their CryEngine fork, StarEngine, for god's sake

RSI bought the source code: https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/2895381/#Comment_2895381

 

last I heard, Amazon payed 50-70mil$ for the CryEngine source code: http://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/61063/amazon-strategic-gaming-move-cryengine/

[Hawx]

5 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Also even if a fork of Cryengine it's still an engine switch so it's probably a large setback to their timeframe and a great excuse to fail to deliver or under deliver on many promises "We couldn't do that/do it well cause of the engine troubles!"

It's already done. They've stated it themselves. 2.6 is "running on" lumberyard.

 

It's because this is nothing but a branding change. They're not literally moving the codebase over the new engine, they're just picking bits and pieces from lumberyard to implement, such as the AWS and Twitch stuff.

[rentaspoon]

37 minutes ago, zMeul said:

ok?!? they haven't spent a single penny on it - is that what you wanted to hear?

or is it more like RSI hired programmers specifically to modify the CryEngine - they even own their CryEngine fork, StarEngine, for god's sake

RSI bought the source code: https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/2895381/#Comment_2895381

 

last I heard, Amazon payed 50-70mil$ for the CryEngine source code: http://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/61063/amazon-strategic-gaming-move-cryengine/

That's 50 to 70 Mil of speculation there, of which if I use the source you provided they didn't have 50 Mil in 2013, my point is you don't know if they spent thousands or millions let alone wasted that backers money, the switch is done and the game has improved, the engine was released in 2016 for free and what would be a waste of money would be continuing to use Googles North America servers and cryengine rather than Amazon worldwide servers and Lumberjack.

 

 

Australian backers will be jumping up and down with joy right now.

[zMeul]

4 minutes ago, rentaspoon said:

That's 50 to 70 Mil of speculation there, of which if I use the source you provided they didn't have 50 Mil in 2013, my point is you don't know if they spent thousands or millions let alone wasted that backers money, the switch is done and the game has improved, the engine was released in 2016 for free and what would be a waste of money would be continuing to use Googles North America servers and cryengine rather than Amazon worldwide servers and Lumberjack.

 

 

Australian backers will be jumping up and down with joy right now.

good god!

what I said and what you understood 

 

RSI bought only the source code not including the redistribution like Amazon did

 

RSI payed for the source code at least 1mil USD, that's because CryTek licenced the CryEngine for AAA titles for that much before they rethought their licencing / game copy sold

 

I have't said RSI bought the licence for 50mil$, but they didn't pay less than 1mil either - and that's only the licence and not the $ spent in modifying it

[rentaspoon]

10 minutes ago, zMeul said:

good god!

what I said and what you understood 

 

RSI bought only the source code not including the redistribution like Amazon did

 

RSI payed for the source code at least 1mil USD, that's because CryTek licenced the CryEngine for AAA titles for that much before they rethought their licencing / game copy sold

 

I have't said RSI bought the licence for 50mil$, but they didn't pay less than 1mil either - and that's only the licence and not the $ spent in modifying it

Yes as I said your working on speculation regardless all the work on cryengine has been moved over onto Lumberjack. Nothings been wasted.

[Napper198]

Here's another source: http://venturebeat.com/2016/12/23/star-citizen-and-squadron-42-are-using-amazons-lumberyard-game-engine/

 

So basically Star Citizen is already running on AWS servers, which is win win for everyone: Amazon gets a big, prestigious customer and maybe some technology, CIG gets some free technology and a big, international server network, maybe a good deal on the servers themself too and we the players get faster client downloads and in some situations lower pings.

 

How much technology Amazon got/will get, how much cheaper CIG got the servers (if at all) and if they will be able to redistribute their rewritten engine is yet unclear.

 

As for the delay, lets say they got hold up for about 2-3 weeks as 2.5 was one of the longer running patches (almost 9 weeks). So either not much has changed, or the switch went really smooth, but in both cases it was really fast for an "engine swap". There are some new optical bugs, but those don't necessarily originate from the new engine (likely though)

[Misanthrope]

1 hour ago, Hawx said:

It's already done. They've stated it themselves. 2.6 is "running on" lumberyard.

 

It's because this is nothing but a branding change. They're not literally moving the codebase over the new engine, they're just picking bits and pieces from lumberyard to implement, such as the AWS and Twitch stuff.

So that means their modifications to Cryengine where either no all that important or not all that difficult to implement to begin with?

[rentaspoon]

1 hour ago, Misanthrope said:

So that means their modifications to Cryengine where either no all that important or not all that difficult to implement to begin with?

No the modifications to cryengine have been modified to the LumberYard engine. I believe the coding was the "easy part" actually figuring out how to fix things like the head bob because of the way the camera works like a human eye it's would be impossible to implement it like the human brain does. In the end they ended up stabilising a camera the same way birds do. The R&D has taken time not the coding but they had to fix this due to implementation of things like the rift.

[Misanthrope]

3 minutes ago, rentaspoon said:

The R&D has taken time not the coding.

Well, it's still a direct consequence of engine shortcomings after all, however the time is spent.

 

See this tends to happens when you're overly ambitious and the tech you need to make your concept reality doesn't exists: either you're on a perpetual cycle of delays or you end up falling laughable short of the mark like Peter Molyneux.

[Prysin]

And thus the gaming world's most popular ponzy scheme lumber on