[Megathread] Star Citizen

[zealo]

No, you just place your stuff and the third-party engine does everything for you.

Cryengine in it's original form wasn't built to handle anywhere close to what the star citizen alpha currently does in it's live build, let alone what's in the works. They've long since forked it far away from that.

Not saying I don't distrust CIGs time tables, but what they're doing is far more than just "place your stuff".

[Odeezee]

Gameplay might work, but it isn't functional in a live client system.

because the game is still being made, that is such a confusing statement that you just made. isn't your point literally moot?

[Katchii]

because the game is still being made, that is such a confusing statement that you just made. isn't your point literally moot?

The game has been in development since 2012...that's 5 years. It should be putting the last bits of spit and polish on the game not struggling to come up with viable actual gameplay footage on a live client system. Where is the game in actual development? Looked at the 3.0 schedule and really couldn't tell.

[Malibutomi]

The game has been in development since 2012...that's 5 years. It should be putting the last bits of spit and polish on the game not struggling to come up with viable actual gameplay footage on a live client system. Where is the game in actual development? Looked at the 3.0 schedule and really couldn't tell.

Well no.
4.5 years to build an MMO+a single player is not a lot, especially that tgey started from zero basically (a dozen people in 2013), and had to build up the teams/studios on the fly.
A big single player game takes 3-5 years for established studios, with ready team and funding, and no new tech involved. Or typical hacknslash MMOs took 5-6 years which had the most simple engine, basically no physics, smaller maps, so those are basically content creations, whereas SC needed an engine rewrite to incorporate the wast space maps, and extensive physics.
So expecting them to finish an MMO in that time is unrealistic.

[endersblade]

The game has been in development since 2012...that's 5 years. It should be putting the last bits of spit and polish on the game not struggling to come up with viable actual gameplay footage on a live client system. Where is the game in actual development? Looked at the 3.0 schedule and really couldn't tell.

Well no.
4.5 years to build an MMO+a single player is not a lot, especially that tgey started from zero basically (a dozen people in 2013), and had to build up the teams/studios on the fly.
A big single player game takes 3-5 years for established studios, with ready team and funding, and no new tech involved. Or typical hacknslash MMOs took 5-6 years which had the most simple engine, basically no physics, smaller maps, so those are basically content creations, whereas SC needed an engine rewrite to incorporate the wast space maps, and extensive physics.
So expecting them to finish an MMO in that time is unrealistic.

And the difference being, normally a game company doesn't make a major reveal of what they've been working on until most of it has been established. Star Citizen did it from pretty much day one. So whereas most games you're looking at maybe 1 year from reveal to release, maybe a bit more, Star Citizen has been public knowledge for most of its life. Unfortunately people go all ADD on it and complain that it should be ready by now, just because they've known about it so long unlike how other companies work.

[1001]

I'm less concerned about how long it has taken and more concerned about how long it is going to take.
If, after 4.5 years we still don't have a single completed star system, how long is 100+ going to take? At the rate things are going we won't be able to jump to another star system until December 2018 and that's just a tiny portion of the game. They want to make everything individual and unique and Crysis-quality etc but that's going to take a stupidly unreasonable amount of time.

[KyrtF]

And the difference being, normally a game company doesn't make a major reveal of what they've been working on until most of it has been established. Star Citizen did it from pretty much day one. So whereas most games you're looking at maybe 1 year from reveal to release, maybe a bit more, Star Citizen has been public knowledge for most of its life. Unfortunately people go all ADD on it and complain that it should be ready by now, just because they've known about it so long unlike how other companies work.

Well....that and the fact it was supposed to be out in 2014.

And even with the 18 month delay...its late.

You also have the incredibly stupid decisions such as Chris Roberts going on stage and "promising" 3.0 would be out by December 2016 and then finding out that CIG hadn't even started it by then. Hadn't even sketched it out.

And this isn't the first time CIG have given dates that they have missed.

SC isn't likely to be out before 2020. 2018 if they cut a lot. Anything else isn't realistic. Problem being that people backed it on a promise of a 2014 release date. And that CIG keep soliciting backers based on dates they keep missing.

3.0 is slated for a June 29 release. Will they make it?

[Gorsameth]

3.0 is slated for a June 29 release. Will they make it?

Short answer: No
Long answer: Nooooooooooooooo

[Malibutomi]

Well....that and the fact it was supposed to be out in 2014.

And even with the 18 month delay...its late.

You also have the incredibly stupid decisions such as Chris Roberts going on stage and "promising" 3.0 would be out by December 2016 and then finding out that CIG hadn't even started it by then. Hadn't even sketched it out.

And this isn't the first time CIG have given dates that they have missed.

SC isn't likely to be out before 2020. 2018 if they cut a lot. Anything else isn't realistic. Problem being that people backed it on a promise of a 2014 release date. And that CIG keep soliciting backers based on dates they keep missing.

3.0 is slated for a June 29 release. Will they make it?

People backed it on a promise of a much smaller games 2014 release...then voted twice to go on with the funding, and add stretch goals, use the additional funds to make a bigger better game.
So yeah it maybe takes until 2018, that is 1 year more than GTA5s PC version took, and its a much bigger game.

Yes they have delays. Which is not uncommon in the gaming industry. We just happen to see it at CIG, not just reading a short news article few months before release that XY title pushed back 6-12 months.

[Rennadrel]

The game has been in development since 2012...that's 5 years. It should be putting the last bits of spit and polish on the game not struggling to come up with viable actual gameplay footage on a live client system. Where is the game in actual development? Looked at the 3.0 schedule and really couldn't tell.

No, it hasn't been in development since 2012. The game didn't even have a proper engine until two years ago. Most of the time has been spent fixing and replacing all the bullshit that Crytek put into their engine in order to make it function as they want it to. It's pretty hard to build core mechanics when you have to keep rewriting existing code in order to make it work.

[1001]

No, it hasn't been in development since 2012. The game didn't even have a proper engine until two years ago. Most of the time has been spent fixing and replacing all the bullshit that Crytek put into their engine in order to make it function as they want it to. It's pretty hard to build core mechanics when you have to keep rewriting existing code in order to make it work.

Technically it has, as can be seen from this quote from October 2012 "Chris: Basically I’ve been working with a small team over the course of the past year to get the early prototyping and production done." https://www.themittani.com/features/...-chris-roberts

The game did have a proper engine, what actually happened is that CIG realised the engine they had chosen wasn't suitable for the task they now envisaged and had to write/re-write large portions of it to make it function in the way they wanted. That's on them for changing the design of the game, it's not like CryEngine's limitations weren't known about beforehand.

There's some argument to be made for growing the studio but even still it's not like people were sitting around doing nothing all day until they reached 300 staff or whatever.

[Rennadrel]

Technically it has, as can be seen from this quote from October 2012 "Chris: Basically I’ve been working with a small team over the course of the past year to get the early prototyping and production done." https://www.themittani.com/features/...-chris-roberts

The game did have a proper engine, what actually happened is that CIG realised the engine they had chosen wasn't suitable for the task they now envisaged and had to write/re-write large portions of it to make it function in the way they wanted. That's on them for changing the design of the game, it's not like CryEngine's limitations weren't known about beforehand.

There's some argument to be made for growing the studio but even still it's not like people were sitting around doing nothing all day until they reached 300 staff or whatever.

Hindsight is what it is, they really did not think that the engine was going to be a problem initially. But once they dug deeper, they discovered that wasn't the case. There are always lessons to be learned when you are taking on a massive project that you have never done before, it's the same in any industry. I have been in that boat before where I work and wound up spending the better part of a year completing a project that at best should have taken 3 months to complete. It was the most complex project we had ever done too. There were a lot of things we took away from it that helped us improve as a business.

[Malibutomi]

Technically it has, as can be seen from this quote from October 2012 "Chris: Basically I’ve been working with a small team over the course of the past year to get the early prototyping and production done." https://www.themittani.com/features/...-chris-roberts

The game did have a proper engine, what actually happened is that CIG realised the engine they had chosen wasn't suitable for the task they now envisaged and had to write/re-write large portions of it to make it function in the way they wanted. That's on them for changing the design of the game, it's not like CryEngine's limitations weren't known about beforehand.

There's some argument to be made for growing the studio but even still it's not like people were sitting around doing nothing all day until they reached 300 staff or whatever.

I agree on that, it is development that they work on the engine, also they did work on it in early 2013, when they only had a dozen people. It is very small portion of the development, but it is development nontheless.
On the engine side: There was no engine in 2012 (and there's none since then) which can support the technical aspects of SC, so they need to rewrite the engine any way.

[Cyclone Jack]

I'm less concerned about how long it has taken and more concerned about how long it is going to take.
If, after 4.5 years we still don't have a single completed star system, how long is 100+ going to take? At the rate things are going we won't be able to jump to another star system until December 2018 and that's just a tiny portion of the game. They want to make everything individual and unique and Crysis-quality etc but that's going to take a stupidly unreasonable amount of time.

Fortunately, from what they have shown, they are putting a huge amount of work into the content tools to allow said content to be released quickly. Just look at what they are doing with the outposts. They are creating a bunch of different rooms that can interlock in different configurations, allowing for quick creation of numerous different outposts. The exteriors are using shaders that automatically apply variations based on the biome they are located, and the artist can adjust adjust a few sliders to adjust the exterior colors and age the structure as well. This lets them create a huge number of variations fairly quickly without needing to hand-craft each one; and each additional room increases the number of variations exponentially.

While I'm a bit bummed at the time it had taken, I do appreciate the time they are putting into the tools to do things right. I would rather them take more time to do something like the above, rather than say, the Bioware way, where they make 2-3 (if we're lucky, sometimes its just 1) different floorplans and reuse them over and over.

[Katchii]

No, it hasn't been in development since 2012. The game didn't even have a proper engine until two years ago. Most of the time has been spent fixing and replacing all the bullshit that Crytek put into their engine in order to make it function as they want it to. It's pretty hard to build core mechanics when you have to keep rewriting existing code in order to make it work.

It has still been in development since 2012. Yeah they switched engines in 2016...that doesn't change the fact that they had been working on the game since 2012.

You don't give the mechanic a free pass when they say you'll have your car back in 3 days, and then 3 days later they let you know they were trying to fix it with tools that didn't work and now need another...unknown amount of time, but it's OK they have some pretty pictures of the new tools they're using to fix it, of your car in the garage on the lift and the hood up and clips of a car that looks like yours driving down the road trying to show you what it would look like when it finally does get fixed.

[masterhorus8]

It has still been in development since 2012. Yeah they switched engines in 2016...that doesn't change the fact that they had been working on the game since 2012.

You don't give the mechanic a free pass when they say you'll have your car back in 3 days, and then 3 days later they let you know they were trying to fix it with tools that didn't work and now need another...unknown amount of time, but it's OK they have some pretty pictures of the new tools they're using to fix it, of your car in the garage on the lift and the hood up and clips of a car that looks like yours driving down the road trying to show you what it would look like when it finally does get fixed.

I see what you're saying, but still a shitty comparison. SC wasn't an already working car that needs to be fixed.

[Katchii]

I see what you're saying, but still a shitty comparison. SC wasn't an already working car that needs to be fixed.

The point is that we were given an original "ready by" date and they missed it by MILES. Regardless of what's happened between now and then, the game has been in development since 2012 and there is very little to show for it. If they changed engines because the first one wasn't working for them, that's a very good and valid reason, however it's absolutely ridiculous that it took them 4 YEARS to figure that out or make the decision to cut their losses and move to a different engine.

For the point of this discussion I'm not poking at the game itself, I'm poking at the development and program management of this as a project and this just looks and feels like one of the most horribly managed projects I've ever seen. Whether the game that comes of it is amazing or not, I'm not hopeful that it will last long because if this is how the game gets managed.....it's not going to do well in the long term, IMO. We'll have to wait and see.

[masterhorus8]

The point is that we were given an original "ready by" date and they missed it by MILES. Regardless of what's happened between now and then, the game has been in development since 2012 and there is very little to show for it. If they changed engines because the first one wasn't working for them, that's a very good and valid reason, however it's absolutely ridiculous that it took them 4 YEARS to figure that out or make the decision to cut their losses and move to a different engine.

For the point of this discussion I'm not poking at the game itself, I'm poking at the development and program management of this as a project and this just looks and feels like one of the most horribly managed projects I've ever seen. Whether the game that comes of it is amazing or not, I'm not hopeful that it will last long because if this is how the game gets managed.....it's not going to do well in the long term, IMO. We'll have to wait and see.

You do know that I said that I knew what you were saying and didn't disagree...right?

But now that you added more, I can disagree, because it didn't take them 4 years to switch engines. The initial stuff was just that, initial. I believe it was late 2013 when they did their poll to not bother with the dogfight module on the old engine and start working on updating CryEngine (around when I started watching stuff, so my memory may be hazy). Everything else after that point has been them working on the baseline framework at the same time as having management problems and building the company up (likely related to each other). If you're referring to the recent Lumberyard switch, that's mostly due to the networking problems (AWS is just flat out better than their previous setup). It was still the same engine, just putting their mods back onto the same thing that has mods in different places.

[Deleted]

Is this game ever going to be released?

For me it seems this is a neverending crowdfunding black hole.

[masterhorus8]

Is this game ever going to be released?

For me it seems this is a neverending crowdfunding black hole.

It's almost like a game is being made and worked on. Who knew that a game took time to make?

This is why studios never announce anything until they're almost done.