3304

They seem to be tackling things that no one else has ever really tried to deal with.

3305

You never played Arma then! :P

3306

Typically I’ve only seen fps tank because of networking when clients are strictly in lockstep like some RTS games do it. Shooting games almost never follow that model, but with the kitchen sink thing they have going on I have no idea.

Cool presentation though. I’m still waiting to see how all the shit they’re trying to bolt together actually works before I get too invested.

3307

some of the same tech that’s meant to smartly stream areas is also intended to smartly not tell clients that a bin fell over a thousand kilometres away.

If a bin fell over and no one received the packet data, does the bin truly exist?

3308

Best to switch off the artificial gravity so that your bins don’t fall over in the first place.

3309

If there was no gravity, we could never know the sound of one bin lid flapping…

3310

The video is impressive, but it’s the type of technology it can fall apart as you add more and more players in a system.

3311

Kotaku posted something today.

3312

That article is fantastic and to me, pretty reasurring that we will actually get a great game, even if it takes a while.

3313

Agreed. They’ve tightened the ship considerably, and recent demos have shown the components coming together.

I always got the sense the UK studio was doing well, and that’s good for Squadron 42.

I’m looking forward to the end product, but I realise will take time. That’s fine by me. A longer wait means I’ll upgrade to a more powerful PC close to release. :)

Wendelius

3314

From the article, it sounds like the early days were really boned from Roberts’ leadership. His continual feature-creep changes, company structure decisions, and lack of project management really hurt development.

It also sounds like they’ve figured this stuff out and gotten a better handle on it all.

Still, I’m waiting to see what actually ships.

3315

Really thorough article. Previous behind-the-scenes bits were usually centered on 2-3 production anecdotes to outline scope creep, other types of mismanagement and Roberts’s way of overriding leads and getting involved even in the smallest of details. Think helmet UI.

The new Kotaku piece does a good job at detailing the logistical and organizational side of things and how it changed over time. Definitely worth reading.

That said, I’m still very glad that I never backed Star Citizen. All these articles keep on confirming the concerns I’ve had at the time. I was mostly interested in having a single-player experience akin to Wing Commander and Privateer, and I was always worried that plans for an online component and the first-person part–neither of which I care about at all–would affect the development and scope of Squadron 42 significantly.

If it comes out and delivers, I’ll happily hand over some cash. Certainly not in advance though.

3316

It’s weird. When I see articles like this where the lead suddenly opens up and tells all. My impression instead is that time and money is running out and it’s ready to implode.

3317

Not any time soon. The article show a company that’s finally getting a grip of managing those teams and is not relying on contracted work force near as much anymore. The people working there now are obviously quite invested in the project.

Also, if you check the funding goal page and switch the funding widget to a monthly view, you’ll see that their lowest monthly earning this year was about $900K. The highest was last month (where the demoed the 2.5 and later features, planetary landings, …) where they made over $4M.

I don’t think SC going anywhere any time soon. They’ve got plenty of time to work on it.

Wendelius

3318

Yes. Will be great if my instincts turn out wrong. Another good space sandbox will only add to the great gaming scene we’re already having in recent years.

3319

But what’s their burn rate? It’s gotta be a helluva lot more than $4 million a month with that many people and studios.

3320

It’s probably about half that in direct costs, but they also probably spend quite a lot in outsourcing and one off contracts.

I don’t think they are currently breaking even, but they should have some unspent cash too. I don’t see them panicking yet (no rushing of releases, same glacial pace as always).

What I find interesting is that with the latest trailers and demos, the press narrative is changing quite a lot (being somewhat less negative), although the fundamentals are still the same as they where a year ago (impressive tech, slow development, messy project). It’s just that the development has advanced so there’s obviously more systems implemented.

In October they will have to release more info on SQ42 (and it’s delay) so we should have a clearish picture on when that one’s gonna ship (which, I admit, is the game I’m really interested in).

3321

I am pretty sure if they show some good progress with Squadron 42, there will be a hefty surge in funding all over again. Hell it might finally convince me to pitch in for the $45 edition. I like it when people push the envelope.

3322

“But instead they just let it grow and grow and grow. I know they’ve said ‘we’re not adding features anymore’, but the feature set they’ve already got is so vast and unwieldy and huge and the tech they’re trying to adapt is not supporting it. If it had infinite time and infinite money and everyone working on it had infinite patience then, yeah, at the end you’d probably see something and it would be pretty cool.”

I guess this confirms that they stopped adding new features internally after the final stretch goal.

The author of the article and several of their sources state that Star Citizen should have gone with the same development model as Elite: Dangerous. Instead of scaling up to five studios by promising 68 stretch goals worth of extra features, they should have released a $2m game using just their Austin studio (as originally intended) and then sold extra features through expansions.

I guess the only way to find out which is better will be to wait until Star Citizen and Squadron 42 have both released and then compare them to the state of Elite: Dangerous as of that year to see which development method has produced a richer experience.

Also, E:D was rather bare-bones when it launched, and there were people who were dissatisfied with its state at that point. Did that first impression stick, or were they willing to give the developers a second chance and buy the Horizons expansion pack?

The author and some of their sources seem to imply that the initial crowdfunding pitch was for the single-player campaign alone:

The Star Citizen described in the 2012 Kickstarter campaign is rather different from the Star Citizen that is now in development. The initial goal was essentially to fund the development of a single-player campaign, with all the features of Star Citizen’s living universe set aside as stretch goals. But CIG decided not to complete the single-player first and add the massively-multiplayer components in later; instead it’s building both at the same time.

Which is strange, because if you look at the original Kickstarter page, the first words are:

Real quick, Star Citizen is:

A rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person.
Single Player – Offline or Online(Drop in / Drop out co-op play)
Persistent Universe (hosted by US)
Mod-able multiplayer (hosted by YOU)
No Subscriptions
No Pay to Win

And then…

Star Citizen is a destination, not a one-off story. It’s a complete universe where any number of adventures can take place, allowing players to decide their own game experience. Pick up jobs as a smuggler, pirate, merchant, bounty hunter, or enlist as a pilot, protecting the borders from outside threats. Chris Roberts has always wanted to create one cohesive universe that encompasses everything that made Wing Commander and Privateer / Freelancer special. A huge sandbox with a complex and deep lore allowing players to explore or play in whatever capacity they wish. That universe is Star Citizen.

Indeed, Squadron 42 is really only introduced 1/3rd of the way down. Aside from that confusion, it was a good, balanced article. Much better than the one put out by the Escapist.

One of their sources says this:

CryEngine was a fine pick when $500,000 was all they were looking for and they needed tech to build a game on. You can’t build your own engine for $500,000. But you can with $100 million.

They didn’t reach $100m until December 14th, 2015. Were they supposed to put everything on hold and start making their own engine at that point? That’s probably too literal of an interpretation, but the point still stands: How much money does it take to make your own engine? Should they have put everything on hold once they reached that level of funding?

3323

Apples and oranges. Also one was fraught with significant additional risk and had (has?) a high-probability of non-delivery while the other was always aiming low. I am intrigued by the constant comparisons between Elite and SC mainly because it reminds me of kids arguing over what car is better based solely on its color. Space and flying stuff, that’s where the comparisons for these two titles end.

If I remember the Kickstarter campaign correctly, the branding for SQ42 and Star Citizen were intrinsically linked. Could you even back SC and not get SQ42 during the KS? Heck, if I were really going to go out on a limb, I’d say they were pushing SQ42 as the Kickstarter and SC as a later world add-on. Anyway, my point being is that I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions about where on the page a feature was or wasn’t mentioned.[quote=“Ryan_Kelly, post:3322, topic:74635”]
They didn’t reach $100m until December 14th, 2015. Were they supposed to put everything on hold and start making their own engine at that point? That’s probably too literal of an interpretation, but the point still stands: How much money does it take to make your own engine? Should they have put everything on hold once they reached that level of funding?
[/quote]

Of course it’s too literal of an interpretation. There’s no magical absolute figure here that once exceeded made sense to make a new engine. The author was merely trying to convey that with that much coin in play there were dozens of decision points about whether to change technologies. It’s a pretty piss poor project manager that states “Hey, we’re going to keep plowing ahead on a potentially dangerous technological path because we’ve spent a tiny fraction of our available resources on developing content for a particular technology piece,” rather than “Hey, let’s reevaluate our situation given our resources, our resource trajectory, what we’ve learned about the problem space, and the new promises we’ve made since our original decision.”

Then again, who’s to say they didn’t reevaluate and decide to stick with it because they thought it was best. But in that case you sort of have to wonder about who was making those decisions and whether they had a firm grasp on the technological implications of it. Roberts’ technical prowess sort of reminds me of someone who believes a 64bit application is better because it’s “faster.”