You seem to be forgetting that the game it “exists within” doesn’t exist yet.
-Tom
Honestly, I’d be shocked if this ever comes out–at least not in any form resembling a moderately functional full game.
Rise of Flight has pretty good damage modeling considering the planes are essentially large canvas bags of nothing. You could lose individual control surfaces, gets holes in wings and bodywork, snap struts and even lose individual wheels in the bicycle landing gear, which made landing even more fun.
The Fokker E.III was held together with piano wire (and hope) and you could shoot the wires, causing the wing to fold up on itself.
And then you could have things like this happen. In a spaceship there wouldn’t be enough red flashing lights.
It was done well enough that eventually I could deliberately snap the ailerons off the Nieuport XI at will and was pretty good at deliberately snapping the top wing off the Dr.I.
Timex
1746
What they just got done showing at citizenCon would suggest otherwise.
mok
1747
This is a very interesting ppt slide:
This would change some of the burn rate calculations. Did not reach 200+ until late 14/early 15
Star Citizen was released at StarCon? Cool! How did it turn out?
-Tom, who knows the difference between an actual game and a game in development
JonRowe
1749
Probably also helps to explain the slow process of building the game. Took a long time to staff up. Basically built a studio from scratch.
Also, I would be wary of calling Star Citizen a game yet. Prey 2 had a pretty impressive demo too.
Unless the game is a ‘walking the hall simulator’ and ‘lots of blah blah blah mission intro crap you are going to just hit ESC through anyway’, they have a long long way to go.
JD
1751
S42 opening cinematic with digital Gary Oldman delivering a by-the-numbers battle speech. A behind-the-scene piece and another oneon the facial animation.
Cast summary via Kotaku:
Gary Oldman
Mark Hamil
Mark Strong
John Rhys-Davies
Jack Huston
Ben Mendelsohn
Andy Serkis
Harry Treadaway
Liam Cunningham
Rhona Mitra
Ian Duncan — The Player
Sophie Wu
Gemma Whelan
Craig Fairbrass
Gillian Anderson
Timex
1752
Certainly, it is not fully complete. But there is clearly an actual game there at this point. It’s well beyond vaporware.
What they showed off just now, and which is apparently the next thing to be released in “the very near future” is seemingly a functional persistent universe. It’s only one system, but it looked like over a dozen different places you could go in that system. Looked like they have pretty much nailed the seamless transition between space combat and first person movement. They said there were something like 30+ missions you can engage in. Combat with AI as well as other players in space and on foot in that world.
I mean, it’s clearly coming together. It looked pretty badass.
Plus all the stuff they showed regarding the progress on the single player campaign.
On a separate note, they put up the interactive starmap showing all the systems, and the jump routes between them, as well as some of what is in each system, for folks to check out.
It looks like their website is getting crushed though.
The archived stream is worth watching. The Constellation ship is awe inspiring. The multi crew flying looks like it could be a lot of fun with friends.
And the EVA at the damaged satellite want half bad either.
I don’t need the full FPS experience. But having a body and being able to leave the ship like that is really nice.
I’m really looking forward to trying that module.
Wendelius
That star map is pretty awesome. I think I’m gonna buy in, once I can get into the website. The twitch stream sold me. I don’t mind waiting…I’m still waiting for Starbound to get good, after all.
MMDuran
1755
You are drinking the Kool-Aid if you think that showing a clip from an opening cinematic alongside a clip of a partial walking/talking tutorial (with no substantial spaceflight, it should be noted) indicates that an actual game being there at this point. The “seamless transition” you just mentioned is a video; if this was a playable demo where an audience member could try that transition on for size, I’d be compelled to agree that it was looking like a game that was clearly coming together and even then I’d say you’d be nuts to tell me, given what they’re willing to show right now that this game will launch next year. I just don’t see it and, based on what most game companies are willing to show at expos a year prior to release, there’s no reason I should. I remember what BioWare put on for me at PAX with Dragon Age: Inquisition a year before release; this is nowhere near that level of functionality.
Having watched the twitch stream out of morbid curiosity, I’d be very, very concerned if I was a SC backer right now.
Timex
1756
Err… No, it wasn’t a video. They were actually playing it on stage. That’s what they’re going to be releasing next as their “SC 2.0” release, which seems like it’s going to be coming out in the next few weeks.
I’m not sure what you meant by “no substantial space flight”, given that it showed them flying between different locations using the various types of flight control, entering into combat, EVA’ing out of ships and into structures, landing ships on bases, engaging in first person combat, getting back into ships, flying off to other locations.
I mean… that’s kind of all the space flight there is, right? And they showed it all working.
You realize I’m not talking about the SQ42 intro cinematic, right? That they had a demonstration of the Crusader v0 module prior to that in the conference?
mok
1757
I got an estimate from someone that is in a similar line of work that the burn rate is about $122K/y per employee across all employees - including hardware/travel costs/benefits. I am sure this number can be up for debate.
Just real rough guesses with that number extrapolated over time with a burn rate of about $10.2K per employee/mo comes out to about $46M to date if you start Jan 13. So based on that number they have a few more dollars left, but are now nearing $3M a month. If they don’t collect another dollar or hire another employee, perhaps they can last another year and a half.
Can’t wait to see the numbers tomorrow for new subscribers and money coming in. :D
I just want Squadron 42, it looks like it has so much potential.
ridge
1761
I saw a twitch presentation. It had a few minutes of some bad to mediocre space combat, and then they were doing fps shooter and walking in space. It seemed like a massive waste to me.
