Also looks like the SQ42 campaign is going to have (extensive?) FPS sections.
Yeah, I’m less than thrilled about that (in part because while I think they might get a very cool space combat game, I’m far more dubious about the FPS gameplay -which I haven’t yet played, so I can’t judge-). Hopefully they are not that extensive…
I also have doubts about the persistent universe. Basically, the size of it could be an issue. they are going to have 100 systems (some of them hostile) and they are up to almost 1 million players. It could be too crowed, and I don’t know how they are going to make the networking work at those scales. As a comparison Eve has around 300k subscriptors and 5400 systems. And they get by by not being an action game.
meeper
1804
I’m not a backer, but I am quite interested in having a 201X version of Wing Commander. So with that said, does anyone think that SQ42 required those FPS segments? Or is this a justification for it to be pushed back again until the FPS portion is complete?
mok
1805
When I look over the materials and demos, for some reason I keep thinking of WOW cities and how there is all this expansive coolness, but as I recall it is cool to look over once and then no one cares after that and those areas become ghost towns. Seems like a lot of walking/looking in the demos - definitely going for the flight sim crowd. Action oriented types are not going to want to walk long corridors to gate 2.
Oh, I think it will be required.
For starters, everything you do here:
Will now be done in first person mode instead. Walking around the ship and talking to individuals to get their backstory and drive the story/missions forward. Added to that, I’m sure, will be no shortage of actual FPS and EVA style missions, whether it be ground combat after a crash landing, on ship infiltration missions, EVA puzzles, etc.
Just a guess of course.
The obvious option is to go for some sort of dynamic and transparent “sharding”, as Elite Dangerous does. With all it does entail…
mok
1808
Yeah, but the numbers to imply there could be some “Jita Moments” as with EVE.
But it’s so entertaining.
Ok, speaking seriously, they are way behind schedule, as I feared. Let’s forget for a moment the too-ambitious-space-pseudo-MMO thing, Squadron 42 was a more concrete product, a single player campaign where the player does a set of missions one after another. That should be doable.
And it had a original release date of end of 2015. Like… around the present date. But surprise surprise, it has been delayed to 2016. And it doesn’t even look like a “slip”, a 3-4 month delay, or at least to me it doesn’t look like that. If that would be the case, if it’s a 30 mission campaign, at least a handful of them should be almost finished, in beta stage. They could have shown for example a full mission of the campaign in the conference, that would have been reassuring. But no, a speech video, and a fps/tutorial part. Oh yeah, and lots of footage with Hollywood actors, and promises of 10 hours of dull videos. Just what we wanted.
If this picture is true:
Then I have no idea how anyone could expect full version of Squadron 42 (let alone entire SC) before 2016. Hell, I expect it in 2017 or 2018. And it will still be a pretty decent development time. Much less ambitious games took much longer than this…and that’s with already existing established studios.
Yes, it does read like a one year delay (since they haven’t given any dates but the year and shown little of the content). No matter how many people they have working on this, 30 missions (with some of them combining FPS and shooting sections) will take a long time to integrate properly.
Looks nice. So promise was 2014 so now it will be 2016. If Croberts runs out of money before it ships that will be annoying.
JeffL
1813
Really? I backed because I was wanting the single player space combat game - and now I will be required to play FPS as part of the missions? Ugh. Any bets on SQ42 actually being released in 2016?
Timex
1814
Base on earlier statements, everyone is not going to be in the same instance of a given location. When you are in a system, you will see some other players, but mostly NPC’s, and nowhere near all the players who are actually in that system at the same time. They explain this at some point in one of their write ups about matchmaking, I believe.
Yeah, that’s kind of a bummer for me. On the other hand, I haven’t been particularly keen on the ‘slew mode’ flight model, so maybe an FPS segment will be a nice distraction.
I think something will come out in 2016, but probably a smaller set of missions. It seems like the technology is in place, so it’s a matter of overcoming the ‘enemy of good’ and getting it done.
I think they are making the right move with the upcoming sandbox area. It’ll give them something to iterate on and expand without having a bunch of isolated mechanics (did anyone notice no mention of Space Marine?). I also think it will be janky as hell.
I hope it works out for them.
mok
1817
I was curious about that as well.
Timex
1818
I think they are making the right move with the upcoming sandbox area. It’ll give them something to iterate on and expand without having a bunch of isolated mechanics (did anyone notice no mention of Space Marine?). I also think it will be janky as hell.
I agree, the persistent world environment is a better way to go that contributed separate modules. It’ll give an actual game in line with what a lot of their backers want, and they can just keep adding new systems to expand it over time.
In terms of space marine, I believe Roberts actually did mention it. They are skipping it, and just going straight into the persistent universe. The FPS mechanics are just going to be deployed in the actual game environment, rather than a separate module
It’s a reference to Microsoft Flight Simulator (and maybe some other sims as well?). It’s a feature where you hit a key and can move your plane around to a new position, outside of the constraints of the flight model. It basically treats your airplane like a camera. Players use it to admire the scenery, or get their plane quickly to a new position, or whatever.
That’s what the movement of ships in Star Citizen looks like to me. Watching them take off looks exactly like what happens in MSFS when I hit slew mode and move the plane upwards. There’s a seeming lack of inertia and mass.
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB3XvwWMsEc#t=4m46s
Ah, have you played it? there’s a LOT of inertia and mass. So much the first time you try to navigate among asteroids you are warranted to crash.
You can indeed change your facing without changing direction of movement by decoupling the engines (as you should be able to in any newtonian space fighting game), but to change direction of movement you have to either thrust or couple your engines again.
Now, when you turn in SC with your engines coupled, your ship automatically starts to adjust trajectory so that you move in the direction you are facing. This:
1- Is not automatic, takes a while.
2- Has a lot of inertia applied to the ship. Basically, it puts the ship under acceleration to overcome that inertia. This means that too sharp a turn might stress the body of the pilot leading to a black-out. It seems they are planning to put structural integrity also in, with ships breaking if turning too sharp and compensating too much.
3- There’s a system that limits the amount of force applied to avoid black-outs and structural failure. So even with adjustment applied, there’s a lot of inertia at high enough speeds. Limited by blackout forces and maximum thrust strength in each direction (dependent on ship config). I find myself going to red or black and white vision quite often already.
4-At low speeds (take off speeds) the thrusters are indeed so powerful they can compensate and stop a ship almost immediately, creating that feel you are seeing in those moments. It does not feel like that in combat. I would agree with you in saying that the flight model doesn’t feel right at landing and take off speeds, but it’s consistent (making it have inertia at low speeds would make turns impossible at high/combat speeds if the same thruster strengths were used). A solution would be to use less powerful thrusters in landing mode, but that seems unrealistic (why would you)?
5- This adjustment system tends to slow your ship to a crawl while turning, so sometimes it’s not the best option to use while in a dogfight. Thankfully you can turn it off and use an asteroids style controls system (full inertia, thrust in the direction your nose is pointing). This preserves speed, but good luck with controlling your ship fully.
Tl;dr: This is a very comprehensive handling and physics model, highly configurable and open to crazy maneuvers, that feels great when you are dogfighting between asteroids at full speed (when you have to control your inertia to avoid crashing while pursuing an enemy). That the model suffers at landing and take off speeds is not a huge deal, since asteroid dogfighting is (in my book) a more important part of a space combat game than landing and take off.
I would say the shooting is a far greater problem than the flying.
Go to 19:40 in the video you linked to see how the flight feels.
I have to say that I´m quite underwhelmed.
I think that the whole ruckus about the financial situation covers the shortcomings of the actual game.I know they showed us an Alpha for the gameplay demo, but it doesn´t resemble an AAA title in 2015. I can´t fathom that they speak about Hollywood stars and advanced weapon accoustic etc. and at the same time showing us that demo.
The part with the Constellation looks like a mixture of X Rebirth and (of all things!) Battlecruiser 3000AD, there is nothing that thrills me, nothing that wants me to get my credit card ready and I´m a sucker for such games. Further, 80 percent of the whole demo shows the FPS part whereas the dogfight looks rather bland and unconvincing.
