[Megathread] Star Citizen

[zysis]

=just because you cant understand how to do something doesnt mean it cant be done,=

Incorrect. I don't think you understand the limits that both hardware and PACKET LOSS present to the end-user.

If you had, you wouldn't be sold on the idea of such a game being able to exist when the tech isn't capable of it.

[MrAnderson]

Let's play fact/opinion.

Don't see where the confusion about those statements comes from:

1- Huge Seamless Universe with fully traversable planets.

Star Citizen universe is indeed all completely seamless and it's planets completely traversable. There are no loading screens besides the initial one. All planets, moons, space stations, cities etc are fully rendered and modelled and shared by all players in the server without magical dusty clouds or glide stall trickery's.
Here's a video tour around the system:

2- Highly detailed ships and cities.

Self explanatory. Top of the Crop.

3- "Wasn't thought to be possible back in the early days":
The original vision for Star Citizen didn't included seamless flying from space to planets but a transitional loading screen to small areas like in the game Freelancer as the engine wasn't able to do it at the time.
Only in late 2014~2015 when CIG managed to hire the Cryengine original developers who left Crytek they were able to upgrade the engine to be able to go for the seamless approach and fully modelled planets with "Crysis quality". Until this day Star Citizen features the best looking, performing, fully modelled, playable and traversable planets in the industry.

4- "Enjoying the best space sim and having a blast!"
Can confirm as a matter of fact I'm enjoying the best space sim and having a blast.

Those two guys aren't going to give you a straight answer because they know it's not going to look good.

You didn't quite provide a straight answer but more of a faulty and incomplete one. C'mon, You're supposed to be one of the rare posters here that actually played the game and follow it's development more in-depth.

IIRC there were like 40+ star systems promised. Right now, there is just the Stanton system, with 4 planets. There used to be 5 planets but it was too much for the servers so we're down to 4. And there is a dozen moons that are nothing to write home about. The planets and moons are quite barren, with only a few copy-pasted habs and caves. Microtech has forests with no animals in them.

There's 100+ systems planned you mean. This goes back to the original vision of Star Citizen where just alike Freelancer, each system would be comprised of only 1-2 small hero zones. So, way before the move for fully procedural planets and the decision to detail every system at much higher degree. Every known system, with their own lore etc can be seen in their interactive map: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/starmap

Stanton is the "Hero System", the one they choose to do first because it has the most variety and complexity and that serves as a template to base others upon.



Delamar doesn't belong to Stanton System but to the Nyx system, so it was removed. It's not really a planet but more like a big ass asteroid. It was actually the very first testing bed for the seamless planetary landings and was showcased in the very first demo of such.

I struggle to think of any other video game with spaceships or even interior housing that is as detailed as - and on such a large scale as - SC's ships, with all of the little doodads and drawers you can open up. Perhaps certain Skyrim housing mods might have more stuff. Maintaining such a level of detail for large gunships like the Hammerhead is quite impressive, though it remains to be seen if this will extend to the humongous capital ships that aren't playable yet.

Indeed there's not really anything to question about the graphical quality and detail of Star Citizen in general. We've got a good taste of the detail of the humongous capital ships with the Javelin tour during Invictus, all looking top notch as usual.

The cities are deceptively small. From a distance, they seem big, but there is a no-fly zone barrier that prevents you from getting too close to see the smoke and mirrors. Only a tiny fraction of each city is actually playable space, being mostly 2 or 3 plazas with train/bus rides that connect them. I'd say that Skyrim, Witcher, and Assassin's Creed cities are more detailed and larger.

Did you meant deceptively big? As in they look massive but inside are smaller? Well that is by design. They are player hubs after all and need also to be practical to play. Still, the structures are there and are modelled and convey a great sense of scale. No, we can't enter everywhere or go anywhere like in any other game there's limitations for performance and playability reasons but they did a great job conveying the city feeling. Travelling the metro loops is a chill experience. New Babbage has no "no-fly" zones though that I've found.

Not much. You can walk into a bar to talk to a questgiver, and that's about it. There are pool tables but you can't play pool like you would in Yakuza. There are arcade machines but you can't play them like you would in Yakuza.

There are a couple hundred NPCs in the playable areas, but they're usually broken, either walking in place or T-posed in chairs. When they do work, they just walk their preset patrol route around the cities. They don't even have day/night schedules like in other open world games.

Cities like most mmorpg big player HUB's are used for a multitude of things besides the social aspect or the hero quest givers.

- Cargo Buying/Selling
- Ship Buying / Rental
- Personal Clothing, Armour and Weapons
- Ship Weapons/Shields

Every city has some personalized items that can only be bought there which for collectors is and fashion inclined folks is enough reason to explore around.

[XDurionX]

Don't see where the confusion about those statements comes from:

1- Huge Seamless Universe with fully traversable planets.

Yeah but what's the point about a "huge, seamless, fully traversable Universe" if it's completely barren and empty? I mean it's easy to procedurally create unlimited amounts of space, the hard part is to make it interesting.

2- Highly detailed ships and cities.

Yeah nobody denies that part, but the "cities" are tiny and the ships are completely useless without any game mechanics to employ them in

3- "Wasn't thought to be possible back in the early days":

Yep, and it still isn't, which is proven by CIG year after year. They cannot even provide a small fraction of what they promised, and they never will.

4- "Enjoying the best space sim and having a blast!"
Can confirm as a matter of fact I'm enjoying the best space sim and having a blast.

I think we all can agree that this is anything but a fact.

[MrAnderson]

Yeah but what's the point about a "huge, seamless, fully traversable Universe" if it's completely barren and empty? I mean it's easy to procedurally create unlimited amounts of space, the hard part is to make it interesting.

That's the thing. It's not "completely barren and empty". It's sprinkled with handcrafted locations with purpose and meaning all tied with a deep and rich lore. That's the benefits of doing things handcraft instead of letting a mathematical algorithm generate the locations.

Yeah nobody denies that part, but the "cities" are tiny and the ships are completely useless without any game mechanics to employ them in

Cities are quite big if you actually take the time to visit them and players often get lost in them, even with all the signs.

And there's plenty of ships to go around (100+!) supporting multiple forms of gameplay:

Yep, and it still isn't, which is proven by CIG year after year. They cannot even provide a small fraction of what they promised, and they never will.

Seamless Planetary landings on highly detailed planets has been a thing for some time now.

I think we all can agree that this is anything but a fact.

Since you've been quoting myself I can confirm you that it is indeed a fact as I've been enjoying the best space sim and having a blast for many years.

[kenn9530]

Incorrect. I don't think you understand the limits that both hardware and PACKET LOSS present to the end-user.

If you had, you wouldn't be sold on the idea of such a game being able to exist when the tech isn't capable of it.

The technology already exists to allows thousands of players in one area as it is, they just need to develop the tech so the largest amount of ships and players can interact with each other at the same time, you dont understand what they are actually developing and how the server system will work in SC, current tech in the alpha can handle 100 ships in the same area with very little issues and load in everything on the server at the same time, when the server is not handling everyone all at the same time that number will increase a large amount, there will be a limit on how much can be handled on a server but it will be a fairly large number.

[Katchii]

The game released???

Holy crap guys I guess we have been wrong for years

As disingenuous as I find most of his posts, this one is actually true. The game is available to play. Just like any other pre-release game where you can pay money to access the features that are available, Star Citizen IS available to play. And has been for a long time.

It's not "released," as it's not feature complete...or functioning like the developers promised, but it IS available to play.

I'm not defending him, so much as maybe trying to keep the criticism against the game to the factual stuff about it. Laying facetious or outright fallacious arguments against the game, when there's plenty of legit stuff wrong with it, doesn't help and just encourages people like Anderson.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

That's the thing. It's not "completely barren and empty". It's sprinkled with handcrafted locations with purpose and meaning all tied with a deep and rich lore. That's the benefits of doing things handcraft instead of letting a mathematical algorithm generate the locations.

Very, very little of the Stanton system is "handcrafted". Besides the 4 cities, Port Olisar, the Klesher prison mines on Aberdeen, and the Javelin crash site on Daymar, the rest of the Stanton system is just copy-pasted procedural assets. Procedurally generated space stations that use the same tileset and asset. Hundreds of the same copy-pasted outposts and bunkers. Hundreds of procedurally generated caves that all look the same.

[kenn9530]

Very, very little of the Stanton system is "handcrafted". Besides the 4 cities, Port Olisar, the Klesher prison mines on Aberdeen, and the Javelin crash site on Daymar, the rest of the Stanton system is just copy-pasted procedural assets. Procedurally generated space stations that use the same tileset and asset. Hundreds of the same copy-pasted outposts and bunkers. Hundreds of procedurally generated caves that all look the same.

Everything is handcrafted though, doesnt matter if assets are resued is other locations, in a large scale game is it to be expected to reuse assets.

[MrAnderson]

Very, very little of the Stanton system is "handcrafted". Besides the 4 cities, Port Olisar, the Klesher prison mines on Aberdeen, and the Javelin crash site on Daymar, the rest of the Stanton system is just copy-pasted procedural assets. Procedurally generated space stations that use the same tileset and asset. Hundreds of the same copy-pasted outposts and bunkers. Hundreds of procedurally generated caves that all look the same.

No no no, you got it all wrong. It's the way around!

Very little is exclusively procedurally generated in Star Citizen. Most it's placed and crafted by artists using special procedural tools developed by CIG to be able to "paint" each planet with different biomes seamlessly add details etc. This has been explained and showcased a number of times in several panels by CIG dev's:



The same goes for space stations. The Covalex, Space Port Kareah, GrimHex space stations were all placed and crafted manually. The Hurston crashed satellite tied to a mission, caves aren't all the same, some are big others small. Some you can only access by foot, others you can enter with ground vehicles and some are only accessible with a spaceship. The multiple Easter egg areas in many planets and moons were all hand-crafted and placed there by devs in that exact location by choice. The Benny edge stop in yela's asteroid, Christmas fire place below Microtech main building, The bench with beers overlooking the spaceport and city. And most recently the painting of Jax Mccleary in New babbage skyscraper showed inthe trailer is there too.


What CIG has been doing is building the tools and refining them to be able to automate the process the most possibly without loosing quality and purpose. But their Universe is for the most part curated with the work to achieve that leveraged with the help of procedural tools, but never automatically generated by an algorithm by a set of parameters to infinity.

So the look of the outposts belonging to the law abiding companies in Stanton will not be the same look of the outposts in Pyro where they have no presence. Pyro will have it's own colonialist style reflected along that system be it in the architecture or inhabitants clothing and so on.

[Easo]

Everything is handcrafted though, doesnt matter if assets are resued is other locations, in a large scale game is it to be expected to reuse assets.

So it is or is not handcrafted? You just contradicted yourself.

[qwerty123456]

Is it just me or did my post send Mr.Ando into a NPC logic loop because his last few posts are almost identical. It is just posting a youtube vid in response to something and a few lines twisting what the poster he is replying to said. Just like he takes harsh criticism of the hover bike as "fiery interest". I would love to see the thought process that came to that conclusion.

As for that hover bike like another poster I also played SW:TOR and this bike dose not even come close to how smooth and fun TORs hover bikers were.

Yeah and its funny how Val explained things and came into the defense of Star Citizen for some of the criticisms and yet Anderson couldn't do shit and continues to say shit about Val like: "You didn't quite provide a straight answer but more of a faulty and incomplete one. C'mon, You're supposed to be one of the rare posters here that actually played the game and follow it's development more in-depth."

How fucking deep in the cult do you gotta be to insult someone that gives credit where credit is due.

It's also funny how many of his non "former Elite" youtube videos are all from less than 200 sub accounts. There are much bigger youtubers that talk about Star Citizen and yet he never uses them cause they like Val also offer complaints about the game. TBH I wouldn't be surprised if all those little accounts were either marketing accounts or all his own.

If you refuse to actually explain and respond to shit and just post marketing materials and when you do respond you just insult people you should be banned just like any self advertising. Just because there isn't any proof he actually works for the company doesn't mean he isn't invested in it. The dude paid and yes manned his way into the special talk to the devs tests he is way more invested into the game than your average employee and most certainly benefits if he tricks people into spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on the game since eventually the people who already backed the game can only give so much.

[kenn9530]

So it is or is not handcrafted? You just contradicted yourself.

So do you think things just magically appear in a game, it has to be handcrafted so no i didnt contradict myself as everything is handcrafted and placed by hand in the game, they are making ways to generate things automatically but all the assets are still handcrafted even if they are automatically generated and placed.

[Edge-]

So do you think things just magically appear in a game, it has to be handcrafted so no i didnt contradict myself as everything is handcrafted and placed by hand in the game, they are making ways to generate things automatically but all the assets are still handcrafted even if they are automatically generated and placed.

Handcrafted and procedural generation are two very different things. I mean yes, if you're using procedural generation tools you're still "hand-crafting" it since you're using your hands to use to tools, but that's a dishonest framing of it.

By this definition, literally everything in the game is handcrafted because developers are using their hands to make things in the game. That's beyond silly.

What SC seems to have, which isn't uncommon, is a hybrid approach where they use procedural generation to do the heavy lifting and the go touch up some details by hand later. They have control over the procedural generation to a point with what appears to be sliders, but that's not "hand-crafting", that's literally using procedural generation tools...just with your hands.

Here's a pretty decent talk from a smaller developer about hand crafted vs. procedural generation and the benefits of leveraging the strengths of both together -

[MrAnderson]

Yeah and its funny how Val explained things and came into the defense of Star Citizen for some of the criticisms and yet Anderson couldn't do shit and continues to say shit about Val like: "You didn't quite provide a straight answer but more of a faulty and incomplete one. C'mon, You're supposed to be one of the rare posters here that actually played the game and follow it's development more in-depth."

How fucking deep in the cult do you gotta be to insult someone that gives credit where credit is due.

It's also funny how many of his non "former Elite" youtube videos are all from less than 200 sub accounts. There are much bigger youtubers that talk about Star Citizen and yet he never uses them cause they like Val also offer complaints about the game. TBH I wouldn't be surprised if all those little accounts were either marketing accounts or all his own.

If you refuse to actually explain and respond to shit and just post marketing materials and when you do respond you just insult people you should be banned just like any self advertising. Just because there isn't any proof he actually works for the company doesn't mean he isn't invested in it. The dude paid and yes manned his way into the special talk to the devs tests he is way more invested into the game than your average employee and most certainly benefits if he tricks people into spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on the game since eventually the people who already backed the game can only give so much.

But there's no defence or attack though, just different levels of knowledge about the game and it's development.

What was pointed out clearly and concisely was the inaccuracies in his assessment while providing the valuable and pertinent information to the subject and with the added bonus of giving visual examples of what's discussed, which is easier for those who don't play the game to follow.

Which, let's be fair, is more than you've ever added to this thread. And as much amusement the silliness of such accusations are and the thought that anyone in this day and age would buy a game by impulse just by reading a forum thread when there's a multitude of media channels and ways to observe a game and form it's own conclusions, it's important to remember that my stance as always been to NOT recommend Star Citizen if you're looking for a polished gameplay experience. And if one really is curious about the game it has Twitch streams to look into along with several free-fly events where the game can be played free of charge for lengthy periods of time.

[XDurionX]

So it is or is not handcrafted? You just contradicted yourself.

Everything is handcrafted using procedural tools.

[qwerty123456]

But there's no defence or attack though, just different levels of knowledge about the game and it's development.

What was pointed out clearly and concisely was the inaccuracies in his assessment while providing the valuable and pertinent information to the subject and with the added bonus of giving visual examples of what's discussed, which is easier for those who don't play the game to follow.

Which, let's be fair, is more than you've ever added to this thread. And as much amusement the silliness of such accusations are and the thought that anyone in this day and age would buy a game by impulse just by reading a forum thread when there's a multitude of media channels and ways to observe a game and form it's own conclusions, it's important to remember that my stance as always been to NOT recommend Star Citizen if you're looking for a polished gameplay experience. And if one really is curious about the game it has Twitch streams to look into along with several free-fly events where the game can be played free of charge for lengthy periods of time.

Yeah different levels of knowledge like how he explained several things about the bike to the poster while you were just a snide jackass.

Of course I know less than Val which is why I check out the thread and to see people call you out for your bullshit. You had a perfect opportunity to explain things about it that the poster had questions about and instead of taking the time to go through and explain stuff like Val did you put your head in the sand and ignored it. Also what have I ever been wrong with in this thread?

And of course people will impulse buy shit. Which is why you repeatedly try to keep the thread on the front page instead of letting it die. You need to trick more people so your investment in the game isn't a waste. Just look at every other game thread here. Nobody no matter how fanatical about the game behaves the same way you do in any of the other game threads most people let a thread die for months at a time and yet here you are constantly posting videos from low sub account youtubers. You want to prove you aren't trying to trick players into spending on the game why not let the thread die for 6 months? Then post a bunch of new amazing content showing working npc's and tons of wildlife or what ever.

[Easo]

So do you think things just magically appear in a game, it has to be handcrafted so no i didnt contradict myself as everything is handcrafted and placed by hand in the game, they are making ways to generate things automatically but all the assets are still handcrafted even if they are automatically generated and placed.

Edge already explained it clearly - either there is a hybrid approach or you are contradicting yourself.

Everything is handcrafted using procedural tools.

I am gonna need painkillers after this one.

[MrAnderson]

Yeah different levels of knowledge like how he explained several things about the bike to the poster while you were just a snide jackass. Of course I know less than Val which is why I check out the thread and to see people call you out for your bullshit. You had a perfect opportunity to explain things about it that the poster had questions about and instead of taking the time to go through and explain stuff like Val did you put your head in the sand and ignored it. Also what have I ever been wrong with in this thread?

Had to go back to understand what you were referring to. That post was so out of wack that I felt it was best ignored as the poster clearly was in a altered emotional state at that time. His post went from straight to the insults and then a long tirade of judgment about things he clearly had no clue about. When on mobile and at work some posters aren't really worthy the reply.

And of course people will impulse buy shit. Which is why you repeatedly try to keep the thread on the front page instead of letting it die. You need to trick more people so your investment in the game isn't a waste. Just look at every other game thread here. Nobody no matter how fanatical about the game behaves the same way you do in any of the other game threads most people let a thread die for months at a time and yet here you are constantly posting videos from low sub account youtubers. You want to prove you aren't trying to trick players into spending on the game why not let the thread die for 6 months? Then post a bunch of new amazing content showing working npc's and tons of wildlife or what ever.

I think you're giving too much credit to this thread or my posts. If you take a step back and don't let emotions get in the way you'll notice that the videos are from all over youtube.

Also, if you wanna see the thread die isn't it counterproductive to keep posting in it?

I mean, it's not that it matters anyway since Star Citizen will keep on being developed, enjoyed and discusses by gamers either you like or not so it's not like you have any other choice besides ignoring it or accepting it.

[Proskill]

Also, if you wanna see the thread die isn't it counterproductive to keep posting in it?

I mean, it's not that it matters anyway since Star Citizen will keep on being developed, enjoyed and discusses by gamers either you like or not so it's not like you have any other choice besides ignoring it or accepting it.

i like to think u have same face as in your avatar when calmly explaining things like this

[kenn9530]

Edge already explained it clearly - either there is a hybrid approach or you are contradicting yourself.



I am gonna need painkillers after this one.

Not contradicting myself in the slightest, currently nothing is just automatically placed in the game so yes it is handcrafted as nothing is currently automatically generated, every planet is going to be manually placed and tuned by hand, its not just going to be completed by just pressing a button, procedural generation of items doesnt mean that things are still not hand crafted.