Next thing ya know, you’ll be out on your lawn, yelling at kids, or maybe shouting at a cloud!
Not many kids around here, and I don’t care about my lawn, but clouds? I rail at them constantly!
Their tech doesn’t seem to be able to generate very many planets very quickly, though. Is it a fair comparison? E.g., Elite and NMS systems were made to do millions of them, SC seems very ‘hand-crafted’.
Or is this the way SC is going too?
It is great-looking, cool planet tech though, no doubt.
Star Citizen is a mix. Stanton was a proof of concept of the early planetary tech. They have kept refining it and adding new features for Pyro. This allow them to auto-generate biomes, have smooth transitions between them, auto-generate candidates for river placements, auto-place flora, …
But then there is a pass by the artists who handcraft and refine what the planet generation tool suggests. Artists also spend time generating the assets you find on planets (the moss mentioned above, corn like plants, weird fruits, …).
I get the impression (without following that closely), that generating a planet is getting faster and is a process which will get more generalised as they add more systems. But it’s not going to be a game that can generate 100 planets and moons they are happy to release over a couple of months.
Back to Citizen Con, Morphologis has posted a good 25’ summary of the whole event:
The most interesting parts to me are the discussions on the new flight model and power management. The former will bring the game back towards a more dogfighting style of combat (and make capital ships more dangerous). The latter is what will allow us to have true multi crew ships with non combat roles.
Definitely be interesting to see how all those things look when they add Pyro into the game at an unknown date in the future. They have definitely spent the last few years talking about how awesome they are making it.
Yep. This is the SC philosophy:
:)
One day you will see how good it looks. One day.
Naaah.
SC is really missing any talk of what the core gameplay loop is going to look like. That video above shows off like investigation missions and bunkers and stuff but its so unclear how those are going to factor into the real gameplay loop other than how it exists now… It’s sad. I’ve been playing Maruders recently, which is kinda like space Tarkov, and it really shows off how cool a thing like SC could be. But marauders is made by a small dev team and is already miles more playable as a real game than SC even though it just came into early access…
Yah…but does that game accurately model the wear on floor surfaces based on NPC traffic!!! SC has priorities.
What are you expecting? It’s only 10 years in so clearly they are still in early concept stages.
Yeah, and those 10 are equal to one Citizen Year.
We need to start thinking about this whole time thing differently if this game is going to have a chance.
Somewhere in a multiverse world quantum entangled with ours Star Citizen has been out for ten years and is the single greatest game ever made.
That version probably doesn’t even have vending machines that sell you soda.
Speaking of drinking things!
TO: SQUADRON 42 RECRUITS
SUBJ: DEVELOPMENT UPDATE 11:02:2022
AI (Content)
Throughout October, the AI Content team progressed with the vendor and patron behaviors, realizing the full flow of NPCs ordering, carrying, and consuming food and drink.
Progress continued on the utility behavior, with AI characters opening crates, taking items out, and putting items in. This was a surprisingly complex task but the various elements are now working well together.
Other tasks involved polishing the quartermaster behavior, making animation pose updates, setting up wildlines, overhauling documentation, and prototyping food eating.
AI (Features)
For non-combat AI, the team worked on functionality to support NPCs moving cargo from one location to another, including picking up crates, stacking them on a trolley, moving the trolley to a destination (such as a cargo hold), and then taking them off the trolley and re-stacking them.
Finally, AI Features took the first steps towards implementing ‘buddy AI’ that will support gameplay where the player is accompanied by one or more characters.
Animation
Blockouts were also done for bin rummaging and the beggar.
Finally, a three-day mocap shoot was done on the new Manchester stage focusing on stealth takedowns and mastery levels, non-spec-op level combatants, and various social AI improvements to better tie them into their environment.
Features (Gameplay)
New security-token functionality was also worked on to control access to various aspects of a level.
Gameplay Story
Lastly, two new scenes were created to allow characters to work on top of the Gladius. These are still work in progress and will require new mo-cap at a later date.
Narrative
The Narrative team continued with detailed reviews of gameplay chapters. In addition to alterations to several existing scenes to improve clarity, a handful of new scenes had dialogue written and scratch audio recorded. This included a scene with two outlaws debating the best way to breach a locked door.
“A small scene like this serves to provide some flavor and life to the AI combatants but also helps direct the player towards what their next objective is and how to potentially bypass a puzzle. The next steps will be to test the dialogue additions during future playthroughs and make any additional adjustments as needed.” Narrative Team
This would maybe be a great people-watching in a cafe game. Too bad it’s supposed to be a space combat sim.
And then it hit me. They’re never going to release the game. They can’t. Because it’s already here, THIS is the game.
Why? Why! Is real life not depressing enough? Are their animators that bored with literally nothing else to do? When do they start the blockouts for heroin junkies shooting up, and the homeless tent cities?
Gah.
Do you feel the same about beggars and rundown areas in Cyberpunk 2077? Should those animators have been doing something else? This is not a 20 people company.
Some of the planets and areas in SQ42 and SC are under oppressive regimes (Hurston), run down or populated with pirates (Pyro), leaving the population scrounging. SC is not a utopia. Neither is the Star Wars or The Expanse universe.
Their animators have plenty to do, as we all know. It’s a sloooow process. But grit in sci fi seems fine to me. And SQ42 and SC, for better (Realism!) or worse (Get on with it!), add a lot of life and animation to their locations.
When you walk through SC locations, they are pretty darn impressive (as long as the NPCs are not standing on tables :) ).
Oh cool, I had no idea. That’s fine then. I thought this was on the big ships lol.