6036

Twitch feed has the actual gameplay at around the 32 minute mark.

6037

I watched this, and wrote up a whole thing, but it was all mean and not in the holiday spirit. So I deleted it.

6038

My 42-part thread on wot I thought of the SQ42 vertical slice presentation:

6039

My takeaway was that you would give it a 7 on the IGN scale.

Anyone else bother to watch it? Curious for opinions, have no interest in spending time watching it.

6040

I watched some, skipped through a lot.

It’s long, slow, and not a lot happens… but seems like they have at least been doing something. :) I’d predict a couple years away from release still.

My initial thought, after

'what the hell is wrong with his knees?'

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was ‘where’s the clutter’? In what appears to be the mess hall there’s some people sitting around but it’s all so sterile and lifeless.

I reckon it’ll be great if you’re into walking simulators and watching cutscenes. There is some brief space combat shown, but it seemed to me to be the worst part of the demo. The frame rate looked like it tanked and it was all kind of bland and underwhelming.

6041

From the teaser trailer earlier: “KurAsawa” station? Not KurOsawa?

6042

This is just the demostration itself

6043

I mean I think I understand, it’s a nice technical challenge to make things look good, period. It’s really impressive though when you can do so efficiently… And the improbable is when you can use the technology to make a good game. This game is still struggling to be efficient… not sure there is a game there at all to back up the visuals. They’ve failed to accomplish a third of what the Crysis engine managed years ago.

6044

6 minutes in. Not sure if it is just the YT encode, but framerate looks to be mostly woeful and all over the place.

6045

A generic corridor shooter with space elements was done better last year by Activision in COD Infinity Warfare. I know they brought this upon themsleves to some extent but I feel pity for the fans.

6046

256 color 320x200 VGA version of the tigers claw lockers and beds looked way better than the sterile shiny Abrams Trek corridors of the apple Enterprise.

6047

Barring the framerate and animation/polish issues it looks pretty much exactly like what I expected (and hoped) Squadron 42 to look like. I love the fact that it is so “uncinematic”, in that it starts with waking up, then I can explore the whole ship, get to the briefing, get to my ship, fly somewhere far away, go EVA and explore some derelict, come back to my ship, fly to a planet, land there, shoot some enemies…and all seamlessly without any loading screens. Like some space based immersive sim.
Hopefully they can pull at least this singleplayer game off fully, regardless of how many more rich people have to give them money.
Recording with commentary (haven’t seen yet)

6048

This is not surprising. With young game developers still in training as it were, like the senior college students in our Game Studio, populating even a very small space with enough stuff to make it feel realistic, or even just natural or satisfactory within the game’s own context always turns out to be much harder than anyone expected. “We can do a Victorian mansion, no problem!” becomes"We can do one floor of a mansion, sure!" which becomes “Ok, one room seems doable!” which ultimately becomes either “Erm, yeah, here’s our room, but it’s kind of empty” or “Screw it, we’re doing a platformer.”

But even for professionals with often lots of industry experience, the sheer volume of stuff you need to populate even modest environments is mind-boggling. And whey you’re trying to do that while, in all likelihood, the core game systems are still being worked on, and maybe even the core design vision is in flux, well, I’m surprised they have this much to show.

6049

Holy crap, that framerate at ship launch! lol!

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See why he quickly switched to the external camera view?

6051

It’s people like you that have cruelled this games chances.

6052

Is that a Cruella de Vil reference?

6053

Hmm, a coat made from the pelts of…Kilrathi?

6054

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Thanks @Timex for the heads up. As I was going through the video, I loved the fact that the ship you are stationed on is more than the 4-5 rooms we got in WC3. Also, mission briefings with GoT characters are pretty cool too.

Some of my favourite scenes were:

  • The flight between the 2 asteroids looking for the wreck (so claustrophobic and love the lightning) before meeting a salvager protective of her find.
  • First arriving around the planet with a belt of debris (and seeing the falling pieces burn up in the atmosphere)
  • Flying into the ship for a bit of exploratory EVA. It’s the kind of thing I’d have loved to be able to do in WC too.
  • The planet surface flight was pretty moody too.
  • Oh, and that scene with the marines and prisoners was so nicely tense. Loved it.

I’m not super psyched about having a FPS in my space sim, but I do like that you can choose the path you take while you explore. Also, I like the actress playing Trejo. Need to look her up.

As a vertical slice of gameplay demonstrating elements without being an actual game, I thought it was pretty awesome.

@Paul_cze, I have been watching that commentary video next. It’s very interesting. CR is pretty candid about what’s in, what’s missing, why the framerate is janky (yes, they are aware and no it’s not the final product), what more they plan to add, why player aids are thin on the ground, …

To quote the TL;DW from Reddit:

Summary:

  1. Perfomance issues: They are aware but have not had time to work on this yet since they are currently still focused on actually bringing tech and systems/mechanics in.

  2. Missing mechanics: Scanning (almost made it), atmospherical flight model tweaks, space combat and flight tweaks, FPS tactical visor

  3. Missing Graphics Tech: Gas Cloud iterations, facial animation (skin jittering), hair shader improvements, render to texture improvements,

  4. UI needs a lot of work and they acknowledged that. 3D Map of Interiors, Tactical Visor, improved UX etc

  5. All cinematics can optionally be viewed from player view instead.

  6. Core gameplay loops (Dogfighting, Flight, FPS) are off, because they were 100% focused on getting everything work together on a systemic and tech level. Next step is tweaking it to make it fun and user friendly.

  7. Player guiding: Will improve with better HUD. Since the mission is 1/3 into the game, less tutorials are apparent. There is actual tactical instruction where to land and what to do based on both intel acquired and the tactical visor.

  8. Future AI improvements: AI readability (communication between agents), AI behaviour (Coordination, tactics), fleeing when the player is rambo-ing everyone etc, search mechanics for when the player is taking a stealth approach

  9. General comments: -too much space trash in orbit of that planet -lighting in hangar is missing, thus too dark -they have more than 32768 animations in the game (stock Cryengine limit) -more than 100 scanned heads -you can interact with most crew members -Point of interest system for AI to interact with player and environment (i.e. reacting to player looking at sth, etc) -was getting caught part of his plan?

I think it’s interesting and gives more context to the vertical slice.

I’m still really looking forward to playing SQ42 when it finally comes out.