[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Val the Moofia Boss]

New interview with the planet content team. Some highlights:


Q: Will pyro have flowing lava fields?
A: Lava is planned. It will probably be added into Pyro sometime after Pyro is released. Lava will probabbly make the deadline for Pyro's release.

Jared interrupts to clarify: "We aren't saying that Pyro is coming this year. We are saying that we are working on it this year. Pryo may or may not have lava at release. It depends on when we release it and how the schedules for the various teams line up."


Q: Will there be explorable oceans? (As in underwater stuff)
A: It is an idea they're interested in but they're not working on it.


Q: Why does only microtech have clouds?
A: Clouds are a time investment (to get them to look right?) and have to happen early on in the development of a new planet. They're working on rolling out clouds on more planets. They want the clouds to feel different depending on the planet.


Q: Are Dense jungle biomes possible with the current tech?
A: No. There are multiple problems. In SC, they have to make things that work from all distances (ie, seeing millions of trees from orbit), but they're working on improving computer performance, which is a big obstacle right now. Good looking, dense forests are a high priority right now.


Q: What happened to touch bending? Ie, binding animation skeletons to plants, so that when you walk through a plant you bend the leaves on it?
A: Still being worked on. This is part of a broader effort to develop vegetation, like vegetation that changes depending on the season of the planet. New tech for vegetation is in development.


Q: Will there be planets with multiple biomes? Planets are diverse as our earth? Oceans and deserts and forests and mountains and swamps on a single planet?
A: It is a goal. We aren't there yet. Still a ways to go. We started with single biome planets. Then with Microtech, we had a two biome planet (tundras and boreal forests). With Pyro, there will be more diversity. We also want to go back and update the older planets.


Q: What is the relationship between roads, rivers, and lava tech?
A: A lot of overlap in the tech. Still lots of development is needed before we get roads to drive on.


Q: What mechanics will encourage us to use ground vehicles over flying around in ships?
A: We want extreme weather conditions to affect ships and encourage the player to land and explore more safely in ground vehicles.


Q: What are the blockers to adding more depth or altitude to planets?
A: There was an interview at Citizencon 2020 that went into this problem at length. We're still trying to address this.


Q: Caves we can fly through?
A: We've talked about it. Going to need more work to make a large cave you can fly through while maintaining visual quality. Not workin on it right now.


Q: Why are trees indestructible? Why does my tank flip over when I drive into a small tree?
A: Limitation of the game where it can't differentiate between small and large sized vehicles, like little golf carts and giant tanks. We are working on addressing this. This is why we try to avoid adding little trees for now.


Q: Will the amount of rocks on moon and planet surfaces be adjusted to make them more traversable by rovers?
A: We went back and redid the old planets and moons to try to make them a little more driveable.


Q: Progress on the Nyx star system?
A: We did lots of work on it. Looks good. Needs a polish pass. Server meshing isn't ready yet so we can't implement Nyx into the game.


Q: Favorite planet/moon in pyro?
Daniel: the one I first worked on, and I like the vibe of it.
Max: Pyro 4, because of how alien it looks and it looks nice.
Sebastian: Pyro 3, because I worked on it and the colors. Pyro 3 is the one from the 2021 Citizencon.


Q: Has there been work on ArcCorp?
A: always on our backlog to prevent it from utterly breaking but we are aware it has fallen behind in quality. ArcCorp breaks the rules of our planet tech and is very difficult to work with and is very easy to break. There will be a day when we come back to ArcCorp.

[Edge-]

Q: Will there be explorable oceans? (As in underwater stuff)
A: It is an idea they're interested in but they're not working on it.

This is actually a very good thing, the last thing the team needs is more things added to their to-do list. Especially what sounds like it would likely be a major undertaking with new systems to design around it.

Q: What mechanics will encourage us to use ground vehicles over flying around in ships?
A: We want extreme weather conditions to affect ships and encourage the player to land and explore more safely in ground vehicles.

I dig this idea. Neat shit.

Q: Why are trees indestructible? Why does my tank flip over when I drive into a small tree?
A: Limitation of the game where it can't differentiate between small and large sized vehicles, like little golf carts and giant tanks. We are working on addressing this. This is why we try to avoid adding little trees for now.

JustAlphaThings, this is kinda hilarioud.

Q: Progress on the Nyx star system?
A: We did lots of work on it. Looks good. Needs a polish pass. Server meshing isn't ready yet so we can't implement Nyx into the game.

Man...honestly wondering what happens if server meshing doesn't happen. Like, literally the entirety of the SCPU relies on this tech to function, otherwise it seems we may be stuck to 50-player servers per star system.

Q: Has there been work on ArcCorp?
A: always on our backlog to prevent it from utterly breaking but we are aware it has fallen behind in quality. ArcCorp breaks the rules of our planet tech and is very difficult to work with and is very easy to break. There will be a day when we come back to ArcCorp.

This is like, the third thing in the interview they've talked about needing to go back and do extensive rework on. It feels like they're building the same game multiple times with how long everything is taking, and this is why trying to build out content before core tech/features are locked is not a best-practice for project management in gamedev. The goal is you finish something and it's done outside of needing to polish it, not build something, leave it be for a while, do extensive rework on it to update it for new systems leave it be for a while, need to go back and rework it again for even more new systems etc.

Overall some good stuff though.

[Forteofgray]

Yup. Still capped at a measly 50 players... who now almost never see each other because they are spread out across 4 planets and dozens of spacestations and moons. Also the NPCs are broken now. Oh and you lose your inventory upon death now and there are more ways than ever to die through no fault of your own.



Being able to seamlessly wake up in a city, take a train ride to the spaceport, get into your ship, fly out of atmosphere, warp to another planet, fly down through the atmosphere, and land in the woods is technically pretty impressive. That said, it doesn't make for a very fun game.

The project is nowhere near close to fulfilling basic promises like a singleplayer campaign or a massively multiplayer online game, let alone the other big promises like 40+ star systems or colonizing planets or capital ship battles and such.

when it actually works

[Proskill]

"We aren't saying that Pyro is coming this year. We are saying that we are working on it this year."

it WAS supposed to come out this year, no?

[Henako]

Man...honestly wondering what happens if server meshing doesn't happen. Like, literally the entirety of the SCPU relies on this tech to function, otherwise it seems we may be stuck to 50-player servers per star system.

This is what I keep saying. Without server meshing, there is no game.

[Easo]

Man...honestly wondering what happens if server meshing doesn't happen. Like, literally the entirety of the SCPU relies on this tech to function, otherwise it seems we may be stuck to 50-player servers per star system.

The million dollar question... I would like to believe they have to make it work, otherwise the company won't be able to handle the fallout of yet another restart. I hope, but whales might not be that smart.

[Jastall]

This is what I keep saying. Without server meshing, there is no game.

There's apparently no need for a game. The whales keep throwing money at it even with plain evidence that the devs won't be able to make their promised perfect dream game work this decade if that.

The dream of of what server meshing can do brings in more profits than server meshing itself would, most likely.

[banmebaby]

Dont embarass yourself

Talking about embarrassment, after the amazing:

*Ken in a Nutshell*

I bring you, Anderson on the long run:
(A re-post… because last time posted, it totally didn’t get deleted by the moderation for being posted by a totally not alt-account, good thing I backed it up.)

Might want to go through my post history more thoroughly

__________

Topic: “Hate”
TL,DR Ver.: Criticizing or poking fun at anything Star Citizen related makes you “hater”, however it’s totally fine shitting on other video games or users as long as its in favor of Star Citizen. A moldy strawman hypocritically flung around as a poor attempt to discredit what other users posted.

haters will hate no matter what product or company

Considering the numbers of NoManSky or Elite Dangerous id say the "p2w buggy pre-alpha tech demo" is doing alright.

Elite is so barebones that people need a second monitor running netflix or they fall asleep playing it.

Elite Dangerous player takes on Star Citizen for comparison

Compared with Elite or Dual Universe which had/have higher entry costs to be able to play the alpha and smaller testing periods made/make Star Citizen more appealing to back.

The alpha tops charts on Twitch leaving games like Elite or EvE in the dust.

But the handful of planets and moons in Star Citizen are more complete and detailed than all in Elite, there's more gameplay loops in Star Citizen than in Elite. I mean you can't even leave your ship and walk in stations or engage in fps battles, much less have the ability to get into other players ships and steal them or partake in multicrew activities. You can't load your rover inside other players ships...

They've produced much more than "4 planets", all at a much higher quality than anything you'll ever find in Elite

Oceans are OK'ish for a procedurally generated full planet, still miles better than anything Elite or any other space game has delivered, which was the point.

I don't think the quality of the screenshot as anything to do with the potato-quality of ED planets

And ultimately it's just a waste of time arguing with someone so invested in hating a video-game. It only fuels their hate and that's not what this thread should be about.

....

No point in comparing with elite because it's game systems aren't deep enough and well connected enough to allow the kind of gameplay that Star Citizen does

Also you keep bringing up that kid's game NMS as if it has anything to do with me or Star Citizen. Development in one single Star Citizen ship has more complexity than both NMS and Elite together

please don't compare Frontier and Elite with CIG and Star Citizen. Frontier is has shareholders to cater to, they want profit above everything else.

Comparing ED with Star Citizen makes no sense, just because they are set in space and you can fly spaceships doesn't make them competitors or the same kind of game.

__________

Topic: The superiority complex
TL,DR Ver.: Reminds me of The Naked King tale, often portrays himself as quite the “intelectual”, a man of facts & logic, only here expose lies and correct the misinformation (unless such lies and misinformation comes from backers such as Kenn of course…), while everyone else is just a small brain hate fueled dirty peasant who can’t even start to grasp the magnitude of Star Citizen’s development, meanwhile his facts will just keep changing out of pure convenience and whenever confronted with it he will bury his head deep in the sand, a slimy naked coward - "Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong."

I post facts and evidences that expose lies and misconceptions

Star Citizen may not have been officially released and in a deep alpha stage of development that is open to the public willing to buy a basic package.

The fact that Chris Roberts created a company from nothing and that after 6 years of work and without the released of a single title its valued at 500 million dollars and in your head you see it as a bad thing not only showcases how strong is your delusion and axe to grind against cig and chris roberts but also your naiveness and childish view of how game development and business in general works in the real world.

Well considering the game is released (since 2014)

Big difference is that Star Citizen Alpha is clearly and officially an unfinished game in active development and not released and sold as a finished and polished experience

Because Star Citizen Alpha is clearly marketed and labelled as a non released

If you're not ready to endure the uncertainties that come with game development and are just looking for a complete and polished game experience you shouldn't pledge for crowdfunded games. Period. Stick to officially released games and if you're interested in a product in development wait for it to release and review it before committing any money to it. Simple as that.

Star Citizen is released though, and it's been playable since the very first prototype back in 2013.

The scope changed to bigger and better things, if you are in a hurry you should not put money on games in-development but on released games, your fault, deal with it.

Changing stances as you go.

Calling out their bullshit is easy because they have no leg to stand on.

They dont care about facts or reasoning, just being "right”

__________

Topic: The toxicity
TL,DR Ver.: By now you should already be aware that hypocrisy is quite the common theme, poking fun a company is toxic behavior, flaming the living shit out of you for it is just “straightnening” plain hard facts, and “facts don’t care about your feelings, liptart!”.

Glad we've kept that little subset of toxic gamers out of the game. It's our pleasure.

I don't give a F*** if you or anyone else likes it, what I give a F* is haters shitting on it because of personal grudges or petty reasons, twisting words out of context or going as low as lying to attack it.

Your reaction seems one of a depressed poor lowlifes who cant find strength to get a nice paying job, still trying to find a way to leave momy's house and complaining about expensive things that you don't even have to buy much less enjoy to have a fulfilling life .

because your dumb and a troll with nothing else but a grudge. Stop wasting everybody's time with useless goon rubish.

You're full of shit. Lying and deceit it's all you got.

Hahahah staling? You guys seing this shit? That's what I talk about being dishonest and full of bullshit.

Another pathetic display of intelectual dishonesty

And please keep your goon bullshit in the ed/sa shitholes.

Why does it always have to resort to blissful ignorance with the haters?

you are full of shit, like most of the kid's who are angry with Chris Roberts because he "broke his promise" you have no problem in lying and deceiving to get your way.

It seems to me that the problem is that you can't manage your feelings. Your heart generated hype that your brain can't handle.

You have no capacity to think clear and for yourself.

You and the other haters with an axe to grind , dumb as dumbells

Basicaly you're another entitled brat

Why does it seems im discussing with 5 year olds?

you lack the knowledge and the intelligence to see further than what your red tinted binoculars allow you to.

You (and others) seem to get overly emotional about this game and it's development

I believe you're letting your emotions getting in the way though....I think you're still too invested in being angry and "fighting a war" that you'll never win, because it's mostly happening in your head.

I'm fine with "critics" or detractors as long as they aren't acting in bad faith or being hostile to being accountable for their shitposting or when called out on their hypocrisy and general own flaws

How am I Insulting people?

Not insults just straightnening plain facts.

__________

Topic: twitch lives matter
TL,DR Ver.: Did I ever tell you that Star Citizen has more viewers than two other games that shouldn’t be compared to Star Citizen unless I’m the one comparing them to Star Citizen? No? Good, because it does, it’s the most watched space game on twitch, that’s games, with space in them, almost an entire thousand of viewers, big stuff, right next to other crazy popular titles like Bloons TD 6, in case you forget I’ll next time I want to address specific topics, together with half a dozen YouTube videos.

*Cue the cricket sounds*

The game is still in alpha stage and it's already the most watched space game on twitch.

The game never played better, they constantly top twitch views in the space game genre

Star Citizen is the most promising space game and the most viewed on twitch.

Star Citizen is the most played and watched *space* game on twitch surpassing similar genre titles like EVE, NMS, X4, Elite and so on.

That's why it's top in the engagement on twitch compared with games of the similar genre.

The alpha tops charts on Twitch leaving games like Elite or EvE in the dust.

Star Citizen regularly has more players/streamers on twitch than the other space games.

I don't think I need to post again all the streamers and viewers enjoying the game on Twitch right now do I?

has established itself as the most streamed and watched space game on Twitch.

That's why Star Citizen twitch stats increased greatly as they improved performance, added atmospheric planets, more missions, professions, gear, ships, weapons etc.

If you look carefully you can also see the amount of people playing Star Citizen in the Twitch platform. It's the "Streamers" stat. For example, NMS has had more streamers but they play for less time so get less "watched hours" and "viewers".

Being the most streamed space game on the Twitch platform makes it the most played space game on the Twitch platform.

….Zzzzz…

getting a bit repetitive and kinda desperate by now

What's the intention of reashing the same old posts year after year?

you keep harping about how many subs a youtuber has like any of it matters. I post videos as visual examples of many of the topics discussed, that's it. Such an weird hill to die on.

__________

i.imgur.com/flrVzR9.png

Ohh so much buthurtness...

No need to deflect anything.

If you post whatever shit you like on a public forum expect to be called out on it.

Not my fault you dont remember your own posting.

__________

A alpha game in development doesn't because it's pointless to make a tutorial before all the pieces are in place. If you do it will become outdated in the next patch and be a waste of time.

Due to the ever changing nature of alpha it would be a waste of time and resources to make an in-depth ingame tutorial because it would be obsolete by the time it was ready.

It's useless to do a tutorial for a game in development since things can change considerably from patch to patch. From keybinds to game mechanics every patch changes something along the way.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.19 patch went live with much goodies like new player tutorial

__________

A quick reminder that these are just a few posts found by a fairly quick search on very specific words on this thread, and to avoid being accused of taking them out of context, you can just click each individual quote and read the entire post.
Also, please don’t confuse people like Kenn & Anderson as the “Star Citizen Community”, they are just a vocal minority part of it that will turn even on other members of the community as soon as they put Star Citizen development into question. Despite whatever noble intentions presented, the truth is that they can’t keep a story straight, they will lie, spread misinformation, and show extreme toxic and hateful behavior towards other users and video games, they are everything that they are supposedly against, the only difference is that they do it FOR Star Citizen, it’s fanaticism in the most hypocritical way possible.

On another topic, what an amazing couple of weeks it has been for Star Citizen, I know I’m a bit late to the party, but holy shit CiG PR is top notch, blaming the community throwing thousands and thousands of dollars their way for their own inability to meet their own goals, bravo!

Note that once your point total comes to 45, your account will be permanently banned. If you wish to avoid this, I would strongly recommend you refrain from participating in this thread further if you are unable to control yourself about issues you have previously been warned about.

Please, I should have been permanent banned ages ago already, it’s not like it takes a genius to realize that I only pop here once in a while to have a giggle or two at the expense of a few very special individuals and that’s about it. To be fair, it’s not like there is much to discuss about this project considering how slow it moves anyway, and even if something new happens it just boils into a one-sided discussion, where the people who disagree will just repeatedly tell you that you are full of shit or just too fucking ignorant to understand anything… and then there’s the random ass moderation, that makes no fucking sense tbh, I mean, Kenn has been saying this sort of shit since 2015, why the fuck would you even bother banning him now for it? Might as well let him be, at least it’s entertaining to read and it keeps the thread alive.

That said, it was fun while it lasted, thank you all, peace out my friends!

[KOUNTERPARTS]

--snip--

This saga truly was amazing to keep up with. I do hope this is not the end for you. Truly a joy to read.

[Easo]

That said, it was fun while it lasted, thank you all, peace out my friends!

That was truly impressive. A bit unhealthy, but impressive. Not like the two will learn, or answer without ignoring this, but whatever.
As for banning, eh... Pointless discussion.

[Wilian]

That was truly impressive. A bit unhealthy, but impressive. Not like the two will learn, or answer without ignoring this, but whatever.
As for banning, eh... Pointless discussion.

They are not here to learn. Kenn already basically slipped working for the company.

[DarkAmbient]

Server meshing extended into 2023 https://robertsspaceindustries.com/i...8853/x1212.JPG

[Gorsameth]

*surprise Pikachu*

[XDurionX]

Server meshing extended into 2023 https://robertsspaceindustries.com/i...8853/x1212.JPG

Strange way to spell "never".

[Proskill]

2022 was supposed to be the golden year of SC alpha

REEEEEEEEEEE

[Xeenith]

it's clearly missing a "... for now!" somewhere in the sentence !

[Yelmurc]

Server meshing extended into 2023 https://robertsspaceindustries.com/i...8853/x1212.JPG

This doesn't mean anything, they are working on static server meshing so they can release Pyro. They will still need to work on server meshing to get to the ultimate goal of dynamic server meshing after that. So this OMG server meshing pushed to 2023 is stupid. It just shows that they will work on server meshing, static and maybe dynamic till the end of the year since that's how far the schedule reaches. Guess what the progress tracker is a schedule for time features are being worked on. They will extend, stop and restart several times in some cases. It's just an internal schedule. Sorry to burst your CIG is the devil bubble. On this one you're just wrong.

[Thestrawman]

This doesn't mean anything, they are working on static server meshing so they can release Pyro. They will still need to work on server meshing to get to the ultimate goal of dynamic server meshing after that. So this OMG server meshing pushed to 2023 is stupid. It just shows that they will work on server meshing, static and maybe dynamic till the end of the year since that's how far the schedule reaches. Guess what the progress tracker is a schedule for time features are being worked on. They will extend, stop and restart several times in some cases. It's just an internal schedule. Sorry to burst your CIG is the devil bubble. On this one you're just wrong.

Kenn is that you dodging bans again?

[Yelmurc]

Kenn is that you dodging bans again?

Lol no, I just saw some wrong information being spread so I figured I'd make sure everyone knew how the progress tracker worked.

[Kyanion]

This doesn't mean anything, they are working on static server meshing so they can release Pyro. They will still need to work on server meshing to get to the ultimate goal of dynamic server meshing after that. So this OMG server meshing pushed to 2023 is stupid. It just shows that they will work on server meshing, static and maybe dynamic till the end of the year since that's how far the schedule reaches. Guess what the progress tracker is a schedule for time features are being worked on. They will extend, stop and restart several times in some cases. It's just an internal schedule. Sorry to burst your CIG is the devil bubble. On this one you're just wrong.

It doesn't mean anything? It means server meshing won't be in the game in 2022. I mean the reality is server meshing has been pushed back many times. But hey if you want to defend a company who lies to people that give them money, by all means. Die on that hill if you want.

- - - Updated - - -

Lol no, I just saw some wrong information being spread so I figured I'd make sure everyone knew how the progress tracker worked.

Wrong information? Server meshing will not be in the game in 2022 as shown by their own roadmap. YOU are the one spreading wrong information if you believe something else.