These are worth a look, translation of recent German magazine interview.
Part 1
Part 2
Lets see now…
- …you have around 10% CryEngine code and 90% new engine code.
- They are not done with many things for 3.0, so more delays can be expected.
- The game makes use of a Low-Level Interface like Direct X 11. Because Direct X 12 is Windows 10 only, they will switch to Vulkan for newer API features.CryEngine already plans in the near feature to support Vulkan 5.4, but CIG can’t take these updates because the code is too different. But they have a similar plan like Crytek, but they first have to complete the underlying re-write of many components to work on this.
- Someday, Star Citizen should contain around 100 star systems with over 300 planets and moons. For release C.R. is aiming for 5 to 10 star systems.
- The planets don’t get procedurally generated as you fly by.
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The quest-givers and subsumption in 3.0 are test objects because, in the future, every NPC will use this technology in Star Citizen and Squadron 42.
- Not everything that will be in 3.0 could they test. (trading, insurance and stamina).
- Question for Todd Parry: Can you fill this huge space with interesting stuff? Todd: “I don’t know. But it is my goal. I am as long pessimistic until I see results”.
- Many people think, that C.R. should have forced some parts a bit more and don’t be the perfectionist. But with 3.0 the editor thinks, that they may not have done something huge (content wise), but something that will be the base for a game that can be played for years.
So, 3.0 will be pushed, not have all the features people are expecting. Moreso, it seems CR is aiming for SC release with only 1/10 of the target content (5-10 systems of 100)? That can’t be right, can it? Something lost in translation? Meant to be a reference to 3.0, rather than SC1.0 proper?
Procedural planets, as expected, just use procedural generation techniques to build and are then tweaked and populated for uniqueness and points of interest, as opposed to a NMS style seeded generation technique. And they needed this tech to populated the universe - which may only launching with 10 systems.
On SQ42:
The displeasure after the cancelled demo for SQ42 was huge, but everyone who knows CIG for a bit longer knows why it wasn’t shown. At first, there was the new planet tech. SQ42 is C.R.'s baby. And everything has to be perfect. Gamestar speculates, that C.R. want to have the planet tech also in SQ42 (!speculation!).
An additional reason was the work on the AI. Until last year, they worked on Kythera and CryAI, but C.R. didn’t want two systems. Brian Chambers: the foundation has to be perfect for such an important part of the game. They had to make half a step backwards and build it right. Both systems got merged together into the subsumption AI.
Todd about SQ42: “It’s going”. Brian: “I would like to show and say so much more”. He sees every week all these cinematics and epic space-fights and then he always thinks: “what are procedural planets?! Look at this!”. But they can’t they anything about that. All the animations and their quality are the same in SQ42 and SC.
Brian: “It needs more time, but they think it was the right decision. We make good progress, but the core elements they develop for 3.0 are also needed for SQ42. So the work at the NPCs are necessary for SQ42 to achieve such high-level animations, facial expressions and behavior. They really want a high quality for the characters. Everything must be better or at the same quality as everything in other comparable games. And I am not happy until we reached this goal. For Star Citizen, I show features when they are not ready and polished, but for SQ42, I don’t want to do this. If I show it, it has to be like Activision or Bethesda is unveiling a new game at E3, only with the difference that everything we show is ingame.”
According to C.R., no work got wasted from last years Vertical Slice of SQ42. The team decided to not show any work in progress last year. He wants to show the finished system without any compromise solution and workarounds. With the current status is C.R. very happy:“When the people see it, they will understand and they will be very happy about it”. It’s done when it’s done. When we can see SQ42 didn’t want C.R. us to tell.
Soooo much of SQ42 is dependent on SC core systems, yet those systems are still in active development - item 2.0, subsumption AI, planet tech, flight modelling, etc. I don’t even know how they could really be making much progress on SQ42, beyond cinematics, without those systems in place. How can they design any given mission/level, beyond high level, when they don’t even have complete systems and features in place that can inform what will be possible in a mission, or even allow them to build and test it? So, my guess no SQ42 in the foreseeable future, other than some cinematic reveals, maybe dressed up with pre-rendered ‘gameplay’ demonstrating features that have not yet been implemented.
They still have a long, long way to go.
