[Megathread] Star Citizen

[MrAnderson]

I can't imagine any normal person thinking it's a good thing to have to "endure" poor game design.

The idea of basical tutorial tips popping up is like an hour or two of work for one person. It removes exactly zero focus from the development of whatever the fuck they're meant to be focusing on at this point. When the experience is bad enough to turn people away, you put some quick and easy things in to help smooth the transition. It has nothing to do with hand holding or what have you.

As keeps being pointed out, it's "alpha" so the point is getting people playing and testing. You can remove whatever you add later on when you actually have the game you're meant to be releasing. Trying to pass what are tiny additions to the experience off as something that takes away focus from the "important stuff" is like using the "cost a raid tier" meme. It's dumb AF and, in this case, used as a handwave to avoid criticism of the piss poor experience being described.

Hundreds of developers and they can't manage some tooltips? Come on...

But there are tutorial tips ingame. They should be in the Game Settings as Show Tooltips or Hints. Dunno if they are on by default as I've always had them disabled.
But good thing is enduring games in alpha is a personal choice just like it is playing sim games with deeper learning curves instead of simpler ones.

To each it's own really since no game, Alpha or Gold, will ever be for everyone.

[Gorsameth]

A lot of the interface screens you'll find in game are really old and based on Adobe Flash. The mobi glass and starmap(Skyline) are still in flash. They are in the middle of moving everything to their in house technology for menu's call Building Blocks. An example of the building block UI would be the console you call you ships with and the trading terminal in weapon and armor shops.

wait, what? They actually use Flash?
That is such a SC thing to do, design UI elements in an abandoned format so they have to redo everything at a later date.

For funzies, since a certain someone was talking about how development only really began in 2016, that is when Flash was already declared dead...

[MrAnderson]

wait, what? They actually use Flash?
That is such a SC thing to do, design UI elements in an abandoned format so they have to redo everything at a later date.

For funzies, since a certain someone was talking about how development only really began in 2016, that is when Flash was already declared dead...

But SC didn't "do it". It came with the engine by default.

Cryengine used flash for UI like many other engines from that time.

It's legacy code that is being replaced by their own proprietary tech (building blocks).

[banmebaby]

A decade of development and we still on about the “building blocks”, yet people are “armchair devs” for calling features like coffee shops or NPC shitting routines “fluff”, because obsly unless they are a CiG developer or MrAnderson/Kenn, there is no way they can know about the priority of an NPC having to take a shit time to time. It's pure comedy.

[Yelmurc]

A decade of development and we still on about the “building blocks”, yet people are “armchair devs” for calling features like coffee shops or NPC shitting routines “fluff”, because obsly unless they are a CiG developer or MrAnderson/Kenn, there is no way they can know about the priority of an NPC having to take a shit time to time. It's pure comedy.

I don't know about the shitting routines but the coffee shops AI was a onboarding project for a new dev to get them use to the tools.

[Snowfunk]

Scam Citizen mega thread pops up on the front page.

Life Liners at it again?

Yep.

[MrAnderson]

A decade of development and we still on about the “building blocks”, yet people are “armchair devs” for calling features like coffee shops or NPC shitting routines “fluff”, because obsly unless they are a CiG developer or MrAnderson/Kenn, there is no way they can know about the priority of an NPC having to take a shit time to time. It's pure comedy.

"Building Blocks" is the name CIG gave to their proprietary Tool/Software to make UI's in a easier and faster way. Since they are building a Universe they require all kind of UI's with different shapes and forms to avoid repetition of visuals and work.

Having their own tool designed specially for their needs means that many panels can be created by regular webdevs, UI designers and even interns, not C++ programmers whom have to code all the functionality themselves. Building their own tools allows them to create enough variety in their UI according specifically to their needs.

A shopping kiosk has different needs than the engine core on a ship, the captain's quarters, the gunnery stations, the pilot and so on. Each of these can have their own color scheme, themes and each theme has slightly different looks of its component elements; buttons, select, menus, radio buttons, checkboxes, text input fields and so on. In this way, a designer can create/select a theme and populate the screens and subscreens with components that suit the end result.

And I don't see how AI work is fluff as It's always a very important part of building living breathing worlds and extra-special in story driven games who focus on immersing the player in their world and make them care about their characters and the plot.

[banmebaby]

I don't know about the shitting routines but the coffee shops AI was a onboarding project for a new dev to get them use to the tools.

I'm not going to lie to you, but the first thing that popped my mind after reading that was “Well, now that’s some big ass bullshit.”, but after taking into consideration how slow the progress has been, it does make some sense, I guess…

Scam Citizen mega thread pops up on the front page.

Life Liners at it again?

Yep.

It's quite poetic if you ask me, because the people going around the internet bumping threads with random YouTube videos every time they fall from the first page, are the ones that often brag about the “hype” around Star Citizen, and if the thread happens to get any traction and people start sharing their own opinions about it, they start getting shit for supposedly being ignorant, liars, armchair devs or whatever It's a never ending cycle of funzies.

Might be time to start considering personal blogs instead of forums…

"Building Blocks" is the name CIG gave to their proprietary Tool/Software to make UI's in a easier and faster way.

Well thank fucking God for that.

I don't see how AI work is fluff

Honestly, you not seeing how an NPC having to stop serving its purpose to take random virtual 4k Ultra HD shit every now and then may be considered as “fluff” comes as no surprise to anyone, CiG actions and words are sacred after all, unless they go against itself, which doesn’t really fit your narrative.

[MrAnderson]

Honestly, you not seeing how an NPC having to stop serving its purpose to take random virtual 4k Ultra HD shit every now and then may be considered as “fluff” comes as no surprise to anyone, CiG actions and words are sacred after all, unless they go against itself, which doesn’t really fit your narrative.

When thriving for immersive and believable worlds usually putting a lot of effort into AI and mundane animations is a must. It's those little mundane things all together that can make all the difference between playing a game or feeling like you're there. Rockstar for example went well and beyond with them for Red Dead Redemption 2 and received a lot of accolades for how immersive the game felt.

[banmebaby]

When thriving for immersive and believable worlds usually putting a lot of effort into AI and mundane animations is a must. It's those little mundane things all together that can make all the difference between playing a game or feeling like you're there. Rockstar for example went well and beyond with them for Red Dead Redemption 2 and received a lot of accolades for how immersive the game felt.

Yes, I’m also sure that’s exactly what Rockstar focused on after a decade of development funded by microtransactions during it’s alpha/pre-alpha phase, years away from a base release, with many of the basic game loops and systems still missing, and 1/100 of the map complete, it was at that point that Rockstar stopped and pondered… horse balls!

[MrAnderson]

Indeed iteration is part of developing games. All of their previous games work make the next one better, just like RDR2 advanced what was done in RDR1 and GTA5 ao will GTA6 be a iteration of work done in GTA5 and RDR2.

Witcher 3 was the culmination of work and experience done in W1 ans W2 and so on. Cyberpunk was new ground so it required further iteration to improove.

[banmebaby]

I know right?! Isn’t it crazy though?! Actually developing and releasing video games! Then using its profits to fund bigger and better new video games, what an insane concept!

It’s like they are totally unaware of the possibility of milking rich gullible addicts for years, allowing you an eternal development cycle while still feeding your expensive Hollywood wannabe life-style, those silly developers!

[MrAnderson]

I know right?! Isn’t it crazy though?! Actually developing and releasing video games! Then using its profits to fund bigger and better new video games, what an insane concept!

It’s like they are totally unaware of the possibility of milking rich gullible addicts for years, allowing you an eternal development cycle while still feeding your expensive Hollywood wannabe life-style, those silly developers!

Oh I'm sure Rockstar is well aware. GTA and RDR2 are one the biggest earners of revenue that make Take Two generate almost 3$Billions per year in revenue.

Which is also part on why they can have so many studios across the world and such lenghty development times.

In Other news, Mining got some improovements:

[Revamp Man]

I was hoping for maybe some new info about a time-line but it looks like minor changes and more promises

They need more funding for Gucci clothes.. I mean for software development

[banmebaby]

Oh I'm sure Rockstar is well aware. GTA and RDR2 are one the biggest earners of revenue that make Take Two generate almost 3$Billions per year in revenue.

What?!? That's insane! It's like 6 times more than what CiG managed to milk away from jpgs in almost a decade! By releasing products! Hell, with this crazy talk you almost make me believe that CiG actually had the option to use the crowdfunded cash to finish and release Squadron 42, and then use it and it's profits as the base for Star Citizen... this is a really positive learning experience for me.

[Caerrona]

Another year rolls around and the same two clowns with 3 mortgages out on their house invested in this scam shilling it up.

All is right in the world.

[chiddie]

Wait a second, are you telling me that this game is still in a testing phase?

Lol they took less time to build pyramids.

[Yelmurc]

It looks like the free fly event is happening from May 20 - 31 if anyone is interested. You'll be able to rent most of the ships in game for free and try them out for 48 hours.

[ldev]

"Building Blocks" is the name CIG gave to their proprietary Tool/Software to make UI's in a easier and faster way. Since they are building a Universe they require all kind of UI's with different shapes and forms to avoid repetition of visuals and work.

Having their own tool designed specially for their needs means that many panels can be created by regular webdevs, UI designers and even interns, not C++ programmers whom have to code all the functionality themselves. Building their own tools allows them to create enough variety in their UI according specifically to their needs.

A shopping kiosk has different needs than the engine core on a ship, the captain's quarters, the gunnery stations, the pilot and so on. Each of these can have their own color scheme, themes and each theme has slightly different looks of its component elements; buttons, select, menus, radio buttons, checkboxes, text input fields and so on. In this way, a designer can create/select a theme and populate the screens and subscreens with components that suit the end result.

And I don't see how AI work is fluff as It's always a very important part of building living breathing worlds and extra-special in story driven games who focus on immersing the player in their world and make them care about their characters and the plot.

I like how you describe primitive mundane things. Are you sure you're not a project manager in this shit company?

This UI can show a button. But requirements for this are different, this will need a checkbox. And our proprietary tech shall fulfill these demands! We also have developed our own custom tool which shall let us place a button or a checkbox, depending on what the interaction element design requires for maximum immersion!

Amazing, without irony.

[kaminaris]

Instead of developing another proprietary UI solution they should have either used ready to go or straight up use a fucking html and css as it not only it will have vastly more capabilities of flexible layout but also its extremely easy to find developers for it. Like this: https://coherent-labs.com/