[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Tradewind]

The procedural planets is really out of necessity. The file sizes would be ridiculous without doing some on demand shit. They already are and that's just with the one star system, not 100+.

[carnifex2005]

Here's a couple of interesting images on the scale of that planet in the V2 demo...

[Edge-]

That's neat and all but it begs the question...and? It's large but is there anything interesting in the largeness? As far as I see it, nobody is really going to be spending time on foot exploring every nook and cranny of planets. I'm sure folks will explore here and there, but the vast majority of that open space is going to be...well, empty.

I'll gladly take a small game world that's packed with fun stuff a la Saints Row over some truly ginormous planet that's 99% empty space. It's great if there's interesting stuff on the planets and I'll praise that stuff, but the remainder of the empty space, despite it's massive size, isn't terribly interesting IMO.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

That's neat and all but it begs the question...and? It's large but is there anything interesting in the largeness? As far as I see it, nobody is really going to be spending time on foot exploring every nook and cranny of planets. I'm sure folks will explore here and there, but the vast majority of that open space is going to be...well, empty.

No. That's where the painted tools the video presentation showcased come in; the devs can "paint" over the planet and install dozens of cities, hideouts, and other points of interest very quickly, as well as having the ability to alter those painted areas. Very specific objects can be implemented the traditional way as well (such as a memorial for a crucial backstory fight).

[Edge-]

No. That's where the painted tools the video presentation showcased come in; the devs can "paint" over the planet and install dozens of cities, hideouts, and other points of interest very quickly, as well as having the ability to alter those painted areas. Very specific objects can be implemented the traditional way as well (such as a memorial for a crucial backstory fight).

Yeah, I got that. And that's going to be the cool content (we hope). But they're going to end up with a ton of "empty" space on their planets. I mean, that mirrors reality in a sense, but it's also a lot of "wasted" space that's not terribly interesting.

I'm less interested in the "grand scale" of it, and more interested with if what the end up releasing is any good or not. And for that, we just have to patiently wait until we can get some serious hands-on time with the worlds : )

[stellvia]

As I mentioned before, it's my understanding that the intention for using generation seeds is to rapidly prototype a base template. From there, your asset team would go in and work on sculpting it further, adding Points of Interest, etc.

IE: For pottery/ceramics, if you want to work on your glaze artistry, why spend time making all the pots yourself if you could have someone provide them for you and just focus on the glaze?

That being said, you will never find the level of detail of a theme park MMO in content that is generated on a larger scale. Especially in a space game where the majority of the planets are frontier ones with little to no habitation. As pointed out with the scale in Skyrim's map vs. this ... you might as well just never design a space sim game if you expect all planets to be chock full of POIs. Especially ones without life or a variable biome. I mean, Mars may have some interesting things to look at, but overall the place has a lot of samey nothing realistically speaking.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Yeah, I got that. And that's going to be the cool content (we hope). But they're going to end up with a ton of "empty" space on their planets. I mean, that mirrors reality in a sense, but it's also a lot of "wasted" space that's not terribly interesting.

Immersion is the key point here; when CR said he wanted us to be able to land in the middle of nowhere with nothing else in sight and participate in events - be they player organized or NPC generated - he didn't mean some football field sized patch of grass in between Whiterun and Rorikstead with caravans on the road fifty feet away from you; he truly meant a land in the middle of nowhere with nothing else in sight. (Same reason as to why Kingdom Come Deliverance is going to have a gargantuan sized, realistically scaled world). Furthermore, this is for practical reasons: there's going to be 40 systems at launch (that number may have increased since the initial plan). Assuming each system has at least one, solid planet (with high enough gravity you can walk on and low enough gravity that you don't get crushed to death, and atmospheric pressures that don't pulverize or liquify your suit) per each system, with the maximum size being the 1000km x 1000km planet you've seen, you've got 40 million square kilometers of ground for your playerbase to hypothetically play on. Now, given that Star Citizen is going to host a single, persistent universe, you have to ensure there's enough land for each and every single player online at once to engage in their own quest or activity on a planet, be it a quest assist to scientists in the field with mini questline involving investigating the surrounding area, a crashed ship whose SOS signal you have picked up and searching through the debris scattered around for survivors, cargo and datalogs, or even wiping an area of pirate forts off a map. Given how many people will be playing the PU... your going to need millions of square kilometers. Fortunately, a minimum of 40 1000km x 1000km planets gives CR around forty million square kilometers to outfit, and not all of them need to be.

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As I mentioned before, it's my understanding that the intention for using generation seeds is to rapidly prototype a base template. From there, your asset team would go in and work on sculpting it further, adding Points of Interest, etc.

This pretty much.

[carnifex2005]

Good points Valyrian. The other extremely important thing about planet sizing is the exploration mechanic. Exploration is pretty much the #1 profession people want to take part in (according to various forum and Reddit polls), so having large world spaces with "nothing" are important, especially if you want people to explore to find artifacts, ruins or resources and not be discouraged because the planet is small enough for all of that to be found within a few weeks of launch.

[stellvia]

One thing thats going to be problematic for them is if they have randomly generated quests. In a regular theme park MMO, people don't grumble much about daily quests in the same area that are constantly repeated. Or that every new zone has the same sort of kill or gathering quests and you move on, never to move back and they respawn for the next person. Yet have the exact same stuff come from a generator and everyone loses their minds is what I see happen.

[Darkrulerxxx]

Yeah, I got that. And that's going to be the cool content (we hope). But they're going to end up with a ton of "empty" space on their planets. I mean, that mirrors reality in a sense, but it's also a lot of "wasted" space that's not terribly interesting.

I'm less interested in the "grand scale" of it, and more interested with if what the end up releasing is any good or not. And for that, we just have to patiently wait until we can get some serious hands-on time with the worlds : )

another thing that will "populate" the areas as well will be people doing their own things. If this goes well, there will be millions of players, creating their own content, putting their own waypoints on certain areas of the planet for meetings, trading, smuggling, strategizing....the problem with no man's sky was that it was just yourself.

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funny as the things you can do right now in SC takes 30 mins-max 1 hour 1000 hours per system ? lol. dreams and promises of mechanics never heard of.

125,000,000 $ , 5 years , 350 staff over 4 studios and they can't even make a FPS (Star Marine) with a FPS engine. Managerial incompetency at it's finest.

i don't know what you are talking about, i've easily spent over 200 hours now playing with my friends, joining with different groups, playing different styles, different ships...you just troll the thread with inaccurate statements....they started with a budget way less than GTA4 and you act as if they had 350 people from THE VERY BEGINNING in which you know it's not true. Please leave because you are bringing nothing but bait to the table and nothing constructive.

[masterhorus8]

i don't know what you are talking about, i've easily spent over 200 hours now playing with my friends, joining with different groups, playing different styles, different ships...you just troll the thread with inaccurate statements....they started with a budget way less than GTA4 and you act as if they had 350 people from THE VERY BEGINNING in which you know it's not true. Please leave because you are bringing nothing but bait to the table and nothing constructive.

Not to mention, FPS is in the game, there just isn't a separate arena style module for it.

But no, of course he doesn't bother mentioning any of that. I wouldn't be surprised if he actually doesn't know any of that. Because the only reason he's in this thread is to help with the FUD campaign and to get as many people away from the game as possible. All because a certain unaccredited computer science major is so jealous of someone else's success that he spends the last 20 years of his life trying to undermine it.

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For anyone that didn't want to watch the whole CitizenCon video, INN did an analysis on it.

http://imperialnews.network/2016/10/...ncon-analysis/

[KyrtF]

Just because you don't understand the level of the architecture that CIG is having to design to make this game doesn't mean it's not revolutionary. The shear size, level of fidelity, and seamless transitions between everything is what makes this game special. There are a couple games here and there that have 1 or 2 of those features, but none of them have all 3. And then toss in the actual game features with all of it, and then some. They're letting you have your cake and eat it at the same time with this, which is part of the problem as to why it's taking so long.

I personally was disappointed with CC16. Some new info...a nice tech demo....but nothing truly solid.

But I think I'd object to the description of SC as revolutionary.

It isn't really doing anything other games haven't done.

What is it doing that NMS hasn't done?
Or Elite? That looks like it'll have atmosheric landings and a FPS system by the time SC launches.

Gameplaywise...both those games do pretty much everything SC promises to do.

SC might end up doing it better...but I don't think that would qualify as revolutionary.

And that is part of the problem I'm concerned with. SC when it was launched was exciting....but as time passes, it becomes more and more simply what is expected. Being ahead of its time three years ago could mean being behind the times if it launches in 2018.

[masterhorus8]

I personally was disappointed with CC16. Some new info...a nice tech demo....but nothing truly solid.

But I think I'd object to the description of SC as revolutionary.

It isn't really doing anything other games haven't done.

What is it doing that NMS hasn't done?
Or Elite? That looks like it'll have atmosheric landings and a FPS system by the time SC launches.

Gameplaywise...both those games do pretty much everything SC promises to do.

SC might end up doing it better...but I don't think that would qualify as revolutionary.

And that is part of the problem I'm concerned with. SC when it was launched was exciting....but as time passes, it becomes more and more simply what is expected. Being ahead of its time three years ago could mean being behind the times if it launches in 2018.

That was my point though, especially with NMS. My point was that nothing on an individual scale is impressive or new. It's having all of it, which quite frankly, is part of the "problem" with it taking so long.

[stellvia]

Now you're just talking out of your ass. The level of fidelity planned for mining and salvaging etc. Is much better than the simplistic point and click used in nms. Way more thought and planning are going into the menus and hud, ambulation, even the integrated comms to the launcher is something no other game has done.

I'm not saying it will be the greatest thing ever, or even be "fun" to most people, but to glibly discount this game to nms tier is insulting to the devs.

[KyrtF]

That was my point though, especially with NMS. My point was that nothing on an individual scale is impressive or new. It's having all of it, which quite frankly, is part of the "problem" with it taking so long.

Not sure I understand....

Those other games...especially NMS...DO have it all.

I'm not seeing what makes SC 'revolutionary'. SC might very well do things better or differently but that wouldn't be revolutionary.

[Cyclone Jack]

Not sure I understand....

Those other games...especially NMS...DO have it all.

Like a character model? and multiplayer?

[kenn9530]

Not sure I understand....

Those other games...especially NMS...DO have it all.

I'm not seeing what makes SC 'revolutionary'. SC might very well do things better or differently but that wouldn't be revolutionary.

What other space game has ships you can run all over in real time and interact with, multi crew ships along with things down the line as doing repairs on your own ship, also things like mining in SC is going to take some sort of skill in order to be effective at it, and flying at least in SC takes a little more skill than in Elite or NMS, the planet tech in NMS and elite is no where near as detailed as what SC is going to be when the tech is finalised.

Star citizen will have just about everything avaible in the game where as games like NMS and elite are missing all those things that improve gameplay by a large margin, in elite was bored within 50 hours of gameplay, NMS pretty much done everything in 50 hours also, those games don't have the depth that star citizen has in such things as exploration where you actually land on a planet and explore things, elite and NMS is not very interaction in many aspects of gameplay.

Star citizen will have most if not all the features it needs to function as a proper space MMO game, whats the point in have a big space ship if you cant do anything on it apart from fly it from point a to b.

[Rennadrel]

Not sure I understand....

Those other games...especially NMS...DO have it all.

I'm not seeing what makes SC 'revolutionary'. SC might very well do things better or differently but that wouldn't be revolutionary.

Comparing SC to One Man's Lie is amusing. NMS flopped hard at delivering all of the shit the devs had promised, was in development for several years and still wound up failing to deliver on the content. The game is god damn empty, it's a single player game no matter what the devs tell you, and the game has a severe lack of depth in both the combat and space flight aspects of the game in itself. NMS is missing a butt load of content to make it a deep game, which Star Citizen will provide at release. Even ED didn't have a lot of features added until after the game had launched. Comparing SC to NMS and ED is downright stupid and illogical, they aren't even in the same realms.

[Edge-]

What other space game has ships you can run all over in real time and interact with, multi crew ships along with things down the line as doing repairs on your own ship, also things like mining in SC is going to take some sort of skill in order to be effective at it, and flying at least in SC takes a little more skill than in Elite or NMS, the planet tech in NMS and elite is no where near as detailed as what SC is going to be when the tech is finalised.

Technically, no game. Since Star Citizen isn't finished and hasn't delivered on all of those claims yet. That's their plan, but as we frequently see plans change. So we'll see if they're actually able to deliver on all their promises.

Remember how much more No Man's Sky promised and failed to deliver? Just a reminder to keep expectations realistic and not believe all the marketing hype.

[masterhorus8]

Technically, no game. Since Star Citizen isn't finished and hasn't delivered on all of those claims yet. That's their plan, but as we frequently see plans change. So we'll see if they're actually able to deliver on all their promises.

Remember how much more No Man's Sky promised and failed to deliver? Just a reminder to keep expectations realistic and not believe all the marketing hype.

Except, the difference with SC vs NMS on that is we're getting development updates multiple times a week, as opposed to silence. So we're actually seeing what they're working on and getting put in. To deny what they're showing us constantly is akin to saying that they're flat out lying to us, which is beyond being skeptical.