Star Citizen - Chris Roberts, lots of spaceship porn, lots of promises

@BrianRubin
Pinworms are small parasites that can live in the colon and rectum. :D

It’s a good thing you posted this for him. There’s no right-click on a HOTAS.

“Really?.. Commander?”

With the recent ship sale, the game added a little over $7 million dollars in November. Overall total is now at $137 million raised.

Analogy taken from the Star Citizen forums:

Cook: I haven’t made a dinner in 10 years, please pay me money to make a dinner for you!

Customer: You are a famous chef so OK, how much money do you need?

Cook: just enough for 10 people, and it will be done in 20 minutes and be the Best Damn Meal Ever!

Customer: ok, that sounds great! here is enough money for 50 people just in case.

Cook: wow thanks…

20 minutes goes by

Customer: So where’s the meal?

Cook: well, since you gave me money for 50 people, I decided to change the recipe and make a bigger meal, so I started over. It’s going to take an hour now, but I need more money. It will be the Best Damn Meal Ever!

Customer: OK, still sounds great. Here is money for 100 people just in case.

Cook: Thanks it will be ready in an hour!

hour goes by

Customer: So where’s the meal?

Cook: funny thing, we had a problem with cooking the recipe backbone, and had to start entirely over again. And we need more money, and it will take all rest of the day now. But it will still be the Best Damn Meal Ever!

Customer: I am getting pretty hungry, can I at least get an appetizer?

Cook: I don’t want to spoil the meal, so I won’t show you anything form the main course, but here are some broken crackers to munch on. Send us More money now please!

Customer: OK, here is money for another 20 people, will that be enough?

Cook: Oh we always had enough money to make the meal, just the more money we get, the more ingredients we can put in it!

Customer: OK, I will wait till the end of the day.

end of the day

Customer: So where’s the meal?

Cook: silence

the next day

Customer: I am getting kind of tired eating broken crackers, where is the meal? You said it would be the BDME?

Cook: It’s coming along great! But I don’t want to show you anything or it might spoil it. And we need more money again, but now we won’t be delivering all the ingredients, we can only put the Minimum Viable Ingredients into the meal.

Customer: I don’t care, I am starving, just serve whatever you got please.

Cook: Ok I will give you a slice of the meal later today to snack on while we finish the meal.

Customer: for sure later today?

Cook: Yes! For sure later today! Also please send us more money for better ingredients, and cash only no credit!

end of day

Customer: So where is the slice of the meal?

Cook: silence

Customer1: This is Bullshit™

Customer2: The Cook never promised to give you a slice!

Customer1: Yes he did you idiot, he said it just 7 lines above this one!

Customer2: You can’t rush a good meal! Stop acting like an entitled special snowflake-- oh look here comes the cook again, I bet he has our slice!
Cook: Hey, while you are waiting, here is a menu to browse through which shows all the ingredients we are working with, and estimated times for cooking. And please send us more money again, cash only no credit!

Customer1: well, that makes me feel better at least, here’s money for another 20, thank you.

Customer2: I am sure we will get that slice, and the morrow tour, and 2.6 and 3.0 in the next 5 minutes because they probably were cooking them all at the same time!..

Customer1 stabs Customer2 in the head with a salad fork

Seriously, is this game coming out next year? or 2018? I know theres the single player portion, thats the one im talking about. the Squadron game. Is it due by 2017? Or should people just move on and play Eve or Elite? I didn’t donate money… so will I be at a disadvantage if I buy later?

i don’t think we’ll see SQ42 next year. Maybe in a Beta state, at most. I would bet 2018 for full release, going by what they have said they have done already, and if development goes smooth enough.

They might be further along than I think, though. But until they release something concrete, the above would be my best guess.

I can’t disagree, given they have still shown nothing of actual SQ42 gameplay and if we do see something this year it is likely to be a vertical slice only.

SQ42 is becoming the rod on their back. It needs to be good, excellent even, on release as it will be viewed as a yardstick for SC. If it is released with a bunch of jank or bugs, even presuming the story and gameplay is otherwise ok, it is likely to have a cooling effect on additional funding and I think they need that train to keep rolling if they want to achieve their end goals.

Eh… well, I think it’s kind of missing something to say you haven’t seen anything of SQ42’s gameplay.

Because you have. That’s what you can play right now. SQ42 is the current gameplay, with cutscenes added on.

And how many of those systems are in final state? Any?

Well, I suspect they will continue to mature over time, but they’re in quite a mature state right now. I mean, the core gameplay in terms of space combat is pretty solid, and has been for a while, as is the FPS combat at this point.

From what it seems, the 3.0 version is going to have all the main parts complete to a large extent, although as I said they’ll likely keep growing and evolving forever.

I just worry they are stuck in a development loop. Tweak ship flight dynamics, or animation rigging, or asset meshes, or weapon damage, break SQ42 mission/scripting, or force a balance pass. Rinse, repeat ad nauseum as SC is in a constant state of development change and forms the foundation of SQ42.

It’s certainly possible, although like I said, I think the space combat is pretty slick at this point, and that’s ultimately, the core of the game. I guess we’ll see.

Yeah. The difference between having the sandbox systems ready and making those systems work in a narrative scripted experience without everything breaking is daunting. That, and the level of polish in a non-sandbox SP experience needs to be higher to be competitive. I do think (unless proven otherwise if they suddenly show something) that they are still far away. Last report a couple of months ago said they were still in semi-greybox state for most missions. That’s a lot of work left.

Colour me surprised:

In anticipation of today’s Live Stream, I did want to address one thing that I have been seeing speculation on in the forums: whether or not today’s Live Stream will feature the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice.

After we made the decision before CitizenCon that the Squadron 42 vertical slice wasn’t ready to be shown publically, we spent some time on reviewing how far off we were and what we wanted to achieve in order to be comfortable showing a full chapter of S42 gameplay. After all the effort we expended for CitizenCon, we didn’t want to spend additional developer time polishing intermediate solutions if it wasn’t going towards the final product. A slick demo isn’t that helpful if it pushes back the finished game, so we decided that the priority should be completing full systems over getting the vertical slice into a showable state.

Item 2.0, Subsumption AI, Subsumption Mission System and asynchronous Object Container Streaming are all core systems that will power Squadron 42. In addition, there is some significant low level animation and lighting tech that we need to finish up to realize the goal of real time player interactions and conversations at a level that would previously only be possible with pre-rendered cinematics. We want moving around and talking to the crew to be as fluid and look as good as pre-rendered cut scenes from other games.

So while it may be disappointing not to see something this year on Squadron 42, I believe it’s the best choice for the long term good of both Squadron 42 and Star Citizen. It’s critical that we focus on finishing up the core systems we’ve designed to handle the needs of both games, as without them, other parts of the development team are blocked from finalizing key gameplay.

I revise my SQ42 release estimate to 2019.

After Citizencon they said they would endeavor to get it shown in one of the final livestreams of 2016, since it was so close to making it. Up there that is reneged and the story has changed to not wanting to spend anymore time on a vertical slice at the expense of actual development.

Why are they even considering vertical slices, it’s not like they have to coax milestone payments out of publishers. Or are they expecting big fund injection from the public after showing it?

We want moving around and talking to the crew to be as fluid and look as good as pre-rendered cut scenes from other games.

Which other games? I can’t recall the last time I saw a pre-rendered ingame cutscene that wasn’t just using the game engine. On PC you can tell, as suddenly the cutscene looks worse by dropping to lower resolution and framerate. ;)

Mafia 3. In fact, when they patched in the option to change the main character’s clothing, cutscenes still show the default look for the player. The devs said they’d have to render new cutscenes for each optional appearance if they wanted it to match.

Yep, still implementing core functionality. Best guess: 2018 Alpha/Beta, 2019 full release.

Apparently the livestream was a clusterfuck of production/broadcast/technical difficulties.

But don’t forget to get your holiday on!

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/Combos/Armada-Discount-Pack-Holiday-2016

Holy shit, the Holiday Livestream has been pulled from the SC Youtube page!

lol!

I still have it open in a page, so looks like it was just delisted.

It should be here:

Ha! Or not. Video has been made private.