I mean, it sounds like an interesting spin on the MMO raid to me.
(If it was well implemented, which it won’t be)
But if you wanted it to it that way the big ships would be owned by a “space force” guild org. But that doesnt work when you sell them for real money, so they are tied to individuals and sell the toxic myth that you put in lots of money and then people will want to play with you because you have a big phallic substitute err ship.
This is well made and funny. The tragi-comic story of a man deciding to run to the Invictus exhibition center rather than use the shuttle.
I’m going to reverse course and recommend people skip this Invictus (not that any were rushing in :) ). It’s turned into a huge stress test for the servers and players are encountering issues of disconnections, missing access to the exhibition hall and ship rental failing intermittently.
Big streamers have recently streamed it and the free account creations are at record daily levels this Invictus (over 10k day 1, over 22k day 2). It shows with log in queues and the aforementioned issues.
I’ve been lucky enough my 2 sessions were fine except for one issue renting a ship. But it might not be the best first impression.
The next free event should benefit from the additional stability of being on the same major patch and the subsequent fixes.
I just think it’s kind of funny that the main game mode is called “PU”.
Edit: that running video is also funny.
Mind blown that people are still spending tons of $$ on this after a decade.
Not the same people… Mostly. As pointed out in the Letter from the Chairman I linked to earlier:
And as great as our 2020 year was in terms of engagement and sentiment, the back half of 2021 was at another level. We saw more people than ever before flocking to Star Citizen, carried in on waves of good will and excitement from current players asking their friends to join, and from complete newcomers awed by the spectacle of Crusader, the gameplay of XenoThreat, and the opportunities from new features like Personal Inventory and Looting. (…)
Our wins in 2021 set us up for an absolutely historic start to 2022. So far, we have blown past all our projections on new players joining the ‘verse. In fact, this year, we have more than doubled our rate of New User acquisition, and with the recent launch of Alpha 3.17: Fueling Fortunes, we are seeing over two thousand new players a day joining the ‘verse. Our DAU (Daily Active Users) has grown by over 50% since the numbers I shared in my last Letter from the Chairman in December 2020, and with this latest patch, we are enjoying double the daily login traffic of our last April patch launch. We are enjoying MAU (Monthly Active Users) which is well beyond the highs of 2020. And we have had nearly 1 million New Accounts created since then, and more than half a million New Pledging Players join the game. And this week, we had our 2 millionth unique player log in to play Star Citizen. We are on track this year to break 4 million total accounts, over 1 million unique logins this year, and more than $500 million in lifetime revenue.
It stands to reason that a small portion of those new players are also people with a fair amount of disposable income. And, just like you see people go all in on 10 board game Kickstarters before they know what they like when they are new to the hobby, I’m not surprised to see some of those people jumping in on those ships. And, sure, some old hands too. I don’t know whether CiG making those limited sales limits the amount of people spending that money or increases it.
But it should be remembered the median spend on SC accounts is still around $45 last I heard.
As for why people are excited and spend money (though they really, really should not spend that much on a ship!), it’s because what’s there is actually quite impressive and quite fun, no matter how short it falls of the final goal. For some, it’s enough to jump in and support development, for others not.
I played some 5+ years ago and mostly decided to wait until it was done. I do have a couple of ships on my account tho. I’d probably bounce back in, but the pandemic turned me into a couch gamer for now (Work from home left me not wanting to simply shift to PC gaming in the same chair/office, etc.)
ah-ok. I missed it. Been away for some time working on…stuff.
Agreed. That was one of the best aspects of it all.
Well that’s not an issue. That’s why I’m buying 6. It’s the only way to be sure.
You and at least 2 of your dumb buddies. The rest will remain in your imagination because a server can’t even handle 30 clients without giving up the ghost.
That’s their version of collectible cards of Pokemon.
But Pokemon is an actual game.
I learned about this video in a reaction video and had to watch it all. It’s pretty cool and true to life. Imagine joining SC with low expectations and then having a terrible first night. SC can definitely be like that.
The guy is a very good storyteller too. If you want to see the rough side of SC as well as some redeeming features, this is a good one:
In other news, RSI released a new trailer for the Scorpius:
It’s mainly notable for 2 things. It kinda shows what Squadron 42 cut scenes in engine might look like (this reminds me a bit of the take off videos in Wing Commander; though slightly higher res :) ). It also has a Kraken (unreleased giant ship) jump into view 10 seconds in.
It’s a big boy.
You got me there.
Yeah, I watched that when it first came out because I have a bunch of SC fans who keep sending crap to my DM hoping to convert me or to yell at me with “90 days! Tops!” because they’re totally convinced that a game I said couldn’t be done…7 (!) years ago…is really on track because it totally exists, didn’t collapse, and I’m wrong. I don’t even lol anymore, I just pity those guys.
I dunno, but spending $50K on a movie then using that to raise millions is pretty notable to me.
It’s a beautiful day on Orison again. The view distance, the factories venting, the shuttles and transports gliding around make for a pretty awesome view.
Today is also Drake DefenseCon. Drake is shunned by the UEE and standard manufacturers, as their clientele can tend towards the seedy or downright criminal. So they hold their own exhibition, separate from the main Invictus event.
The star of the show for me this year is the Drake Vulture. The first salvage ship, finally introducing that new gameplay loop, is due in the next patch. And it was on display at DefenseCon.
It’s a one crew ship. Space is tight. And Drake is not known for wasting money on comfort or frivolities.
So you get:
A small hangar at the back which can carry some cargo or a small vehicle.
The pretty cool looking salvage arms sitting right in front of the pilot’s seat. The bridge gives you access either back to the living quarters or directly outside on the arms and onto a side ladder.
And this being a Drake ship, the components are sitting right behind your head. You might not want to take damage in that ship, or the sparks and explosions if components get destroyed will be uncomfortably close to your head.
Overall, a cool design and perfect for solo flights. I’m looking forward to trying it out.
TO: SQUADRON 42 RECRUITS
SUBJ: DEVELOPMENT UPDATE 06:01:2022
REF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX
AI (Content)
Last month, AI Content’s main focus was on adding background life to Shubin station. Part of this involved motion-capturing actor performances for the commuter behavior.
“We captured people patiently waiting for a tram to arrive and getting frustrated when it didn’t come on time, sleeping across benches, and falling asleep in their seats. These are all things you might expect to see on a subway.” AI Content Team
They then wrapped up work on the arcade machine, which was reviewed to ensure the team were happy with the amount of animation variety.
AI (Features)
For Human animation, the team continued to iterate on the pistol animation set using the overlay approach, which is already seeing benefits to memory, iteration time, and effort.
AI (Tech)
The internal representation of the GUID and SuperGUIDs was improved too.
Animation
They also worked on AI pistol animations, making overlays that will properly work on the stocked base-set to more efficiently produce pistol gameplay. They also converted the male spec-ops assets to female versions.
On the gameplay side, Animation progressed with various social AI aspects, including beds, the chow-line, arcade machine assets, female characters sitting on bar stools, standing console updates, drinking in various useables, and more. AI locomotion progressed too, with the team testing overlays on the base cycles so NPCs appear to think about what they’re doing rather than just moving forward.
Art (Characters)
Character Art spent May working on UEE Navy outfits and Screaming Galson armors. They’re also working alongside the Graphics team on the final version of the hair shader.
Engine
On the core engine, various improvements were made to the profiling system to better analyze fibers and their preemption to track callers of semaphore waits and file reads… Also, power scaling is now disabled for all threads the engine spawns with normal or time-critical priority, which helps thread scheduling (main, render, physics, batch worker, etc.) and improves performance. Additional optimizations were made, including removing the final lock in the background job manager, checking authority requirements when activating component updates based on ECUS events, and skipping updates of hidden entities. Lastly, improvements were made to reduce the size of Windows executables and their symbol files.
Gameplay Story
A technically challenging scene involving two characters unloading crates from a spaceship was finished and is looking great in-game.
They also delivered a substantial new scene for chapter five that features the player getting into an elevator.
Graphics & VFX Programming
The team also continued improving shaders with experimental improvements to the hair-color model and Wear v2, including the addition of primer/compliment in LayerBlend v2.
UI
New door panels were created that will be used throughout SQ42, while the programmers developed AR boxouts – popup information that floats over the game screen to give more information about selected things.
VFX
They also continued work on a highly complex destruction sequence, which is progressing well.
Finally, the VFX Tech Art team reviewed the gas cloud setup to ensure it’s still functioning as expected and investigated cross-team options for in-game destruction.
So, release date 2032? The update is meaningless.
Damn, when S42 comes out in 2032 it’s going to be the coolest fuckin game of 2019, hands down.
I do admire how committed they are to in-game political lore.
As a developer/engineer and someone who has run multiple studios this entire update is hysterical.
Getting into an elevator scene CONFIRMED.
SUBSTANTIAL
Yup. It’s ludicrous. Though I’m happy they’re analyzing fibers to track callers of semaphore waits! I hope they find out how to avoid deadlocks and race conditions. ;)
You’re burying the lede. Female characters can now sit on barstools! Don’t you guys know how sore your feet get standing around in heels?
I’m just wondering what took them so long. Thankfully, their commitment to transparency is really paying off!
-Tom
