This is more my type of trailer:
Those ships…
I’m so tempted to pull the plug and upgrade my PC so I can finally really jump in soon.
Don’t know what they were thinking with the final “shot” though. That’s advertising something people might not exactly be looking forward to…
Wendelius
No one should really invest money in this unless they are thinking of it as a Kickstarter donation, because that’s really what it is. You are paying to fund this crazy scheme by Roberts.
If you just want to buy a game, then just chill out and wait until it’s in a state you want to play it. There’s no reason to contribute money at this stage unless you believe in the cause.
Totally agree. I’m a backer because I wanted to support the project whatever the outcome. But nobody should put in money now if they want a finished game. You’ll have plenty of time for that much later (At the very least, I’d wait and see when and how 3.0 pans out, but likely even longer if what you want is SQ42).
For those of us who backed it though, there is constantly more stuff to play with and more refined systems. That’s why I’m getting really tempted to get a PC that will play the game. Mine is around 7 years old now (i7-920, an amazing -for the time- 6GB of RAM, …). I’ve been delaying as the builds come and go. The longer I wait, the more Star Citizen ready and cheaper my PC will be.
Wendelius
I don’t know that Space Marines trailer left me as excited as their character model looks as it is about to enter combat.
Briefly excited.
I logged into a Space Engineers server that had tons of Star Citizen ships flying around. You can just play that if you want.
I’m not even excited about that Star Marine trailer. That looked more like a tech demonstrator, like 3DMark. And not a particularly good tech demo, either.
I’d wait for it to hit 1.0 - I.e. being an actual release of the finished product.
That’s what it reminded me of! It was bugging me like, Where have I seen this? But is that really a bad thing? I liked how it looked.
There’s a reason why tech demos look the way they look; it’s because they can focus entirely on the graphics and don’t have to worry about gameplay or AI or anything like that.
This felt the same way. It’s mainly just a bunch of guys shooting at each other in tiny rooms. Lots of fast-cutting, so you don’t actually see like 10 or 15 seconds of uninterrupted gameplay. The animation seems wooden, the character faces are almost comical, and there’s nothing really interesting going on.
Sure, it looks pretty. It looks like a CryEngine game, and I’m reminded why I’ve never seen a good multiplayer experience out of the CryEngine.
Point taken.
You’re going to be waiting a long time in that case. If someone is asking whether the current version of an Early Access/Alpha game is worth getting, it usually means they are the sort of person who is willing to deal with the nuances of Early Access in order to get their hands on a game sooner. Or they could just be trolling for whatever reason.
Even if they fall into the former category, I would recommend holding off on 2.6. The core gameplay loop of the Persistent Universe has not been completed, and a smooth experience is impossible until the netcode refactor. Arena Commander and Star Marine, while functional enough, are not representative of Star Citizen’s broader vision.
Chris Roberts made a forum post concerning the switch to Lumberyard:
Lumberyard and StarEngine are both forks from exactly the SAME build of CryEngine.
We stopped taking new builds from Crytek towards the end of 2015. So did Amazon. Because of this the core of the engine that we use is the same one that Amazon use and the switch was painless (I think it took us a day or so of two engineers on the engine team). What runs Star Citizen and Squadron 42 is our heavily modified version of the engine which we have dubbed StarEngine, just now our foundation is Lumberyard not CryEngine. None of our work was thrown away or modified. We switched the like for like parts of the engine from CryEngine to Lumberyard. All of our bespoke work from 64 bit precision, new rendering and planet tech, Item / Entity 2.0, Local Physics Grids, Zone System, Object Containers and so on were unaffected and remain unique to Star Citizen.
Going forward we will utilize the features of Lumberyard that make sense for Star Citizen. We made this choice as Amazon’s and our focus is aligned in building massively online games that utilize the power of cloud computing to deliver a richer online experience than would be possible with an old fashioned single server architecture (which is what CryNetwork is).
Looking at Crytek’s roadmap and Amazon’s we determined that Amazon was investing in the areas we were most interested in. They are a massive company that is making serious investments into Lumberyard and AWS to support next generation online gaming. Crytek doesn’t have the resources to compete with this level of investment and have never been focused on the network or online aspects of the engine in the way we or Amazon are. Because of this combined with the fact we weren’t taking new builds of CryEngine we decided that Amazon would be the best partner going forward for the future of Star Citizen.
Finally there was no ulterior motive in the timing of the announcement. The deal wasn’t fully finalized until after the release of 2.5 and we agreed with Amazon to announce the switch and partnership upon the release of 2.6, which would be the first release on Lumberyard and AWS. If you have been checking out our schedule updates you would know that we originally had hoped to release 2.6 at the beginning of December, not Friday the 23rd!
I hope this clears up some of the speculation I have seen. We are very excited to be partnered with Amazon and feel this move is a big win for Star Citizen and by extension everyone that has backed the project.
Is it just me or does it look like the alpha 2.6 already has enough content for possible gameplay longevity longer than most 60$ AAA games?
Now I will still not buy it since I am interested in Squadron 42, but what I am seeing seems solid to me. And Chris’s explanation makes perfect sense.
I’d say that Alpha 2.6 is still very much a tech demo rather than a complete AAA package. Any longevity would come from online Arena Commander and Star Marine matches, neither of which possess the scale to warrant $60 (and probably not the actual $45 price tag either). The real meat of the game lies in the Persistent Universe, which is currently waiting for several core gameplay features.
I got the impression in the PU module there are some 17 missions to do, possible to fly with 48 different ships, play solo or with/against people…that was wrong impression ?
That is all true, but there are caveats:
The missions are short and simple with one exception.
They have not yet added kiosks which let you buy ships in the PU with in-game currency. Also, the 48 ship number includes variants of the same ship class with minor differences.
With interdiction mechanics not yet added, PVP space battles in the PU will end whenever someone decides to warp off.
The first point is being addressed in 3.0, the third in 3.1, and the second is currently being worked on but I don’t know when it will be implemented.
Thanks for info. So it is more like an extensive demo for now.
It’s an Alpha version. It has incomplete game systems, limited content, bugs and lacks polish. A demo is a different beast.
Yes, I meant content-wise. Of course it has has bugs and lack of polish when it’s called Alpha 2.6 :)
It is similar to alpha and beta of Kingdom Come, which were also more like demos when it came to content.