HRose
1942
There’s still Elite to prove the opposite.
The point is, when you have that kind of money, technology will be the key to actually deliver a solid product. It’s exactly because SC is so different from a normal shooter than designing a new engine would have made it more realistic.
RichVR
1943
My assumption was, that when Tom actually posted the following:
I don’t think Derek joining the conversation necessarily means we’re not going to be able to have interesting discussions. I also don’t think it’s necessarily going to be the Derek Smart show. I trust that you guys – and Derek, of course – are able to keep the discussion from becoming a mass of noise. It’s not like the forum will suddenly fall apart under the weight of Derek’s personality. I hope. :)
Besides, it’s not like there’s much of an actual game for us to discuss yet. How much can the thread be derailed at this point? And like it or not, Derek’s actions on the sidelines is at the very least a footnote to Star Citizen’s development.
That it was and is Derek. Looking forward to talking to him.
DTG
1944
I’ll just say that I, for one, am glad to see you back here, and back in attack formation. Entertaining reading over on your blog. Didn’t usually agree with your rants back in the day but they were interesting and fun to read. But I like this one.
[edit] - changed “didn’t always agree” to “didn’t usually agree”.
geewhiz
1945
Wouldn’t that make it the “Get Smart” show? :)
We need the Cone of Silence!
dsmart
1946
OK, the connection between Simon Elms, Nick Elms, Chris Roberts & Erin Roberts has been made. It goes back to Warthog and Gizmondo (the money laundering op). They’re all lifelong friends and is most definitely a Red Herring, but still intriguing nonetheless.
Someone put together this: http://pastebin.com/DDeWufw2
Further reading:
Timex
1947
So you’re saying it’s a red herring, and there isn’t actually anything going on?
I’m sorry, I don’t understand what exactly you are trying to say here. Did they do something bad?
That’s some pretty tenuous connections being made.
Oh man. Would you all hate me if I said I secretly sorta wished Derek would show up? :D
ShivaX
1950
Nope, this game ain’t ever getting made.
Behold, Sataball:
Sure, I get building out lore for your game and both the community and CIG seems heavily invested in building the lore together, which is kind of cool.
But they are spending time and resources building assets for a fictional in-game sport? Where CR is actually involved in design decisions as well? Not even just assets, but apparently actual game animations and (maybe) gameplay - apparently they were/are using Sataball to test Star Marine’s zero-G locomotion system? Like, instead of the core Star Marine gameplay itself?
Is Star Marine supposed to contain a story element? I mean I guess this stuff could be used for that, or a combat environment/map or something, but this seems like some way wacky, out of control feature creep.
rowe33
1952
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” I love that that’s a quote on the linked wikia page above.
I assume Sataball is just the first of several major sports in the lore.
In Moneypit, UEE citizens are dumped headfirst into an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled completely with old Earth-style paper money and forced to “swim” toward a solid gold chain at the center of the pool. The first one to reach it is pulled out to safety, while the rest are left to flounder and die a slow death of a thousand papercuts.
Otagan
1954
When you’re playing sataball, you gotta think about sata and nothing else. If you do, that’s when you lose.
I’m assuming Sataball must be in the Squadron 42 campaign, like as a tutorial for zero-g/mag-boot combat. Maybe?
Timex
1956
I’m not sure if its a bad idea or not.
In some ways, it’s like the racing mode they put in.
At this point, the development bottleneck seems to be the technical mechanics involved in making the gameplay work, and they don’t really seem to have that much trouble in terms of assets. They have a lot of assets going now. If this is the case, then adding in things like this may (MAY) provide a way to get a decent amount of additional gameplay out of previously developed mechanics in the game.
So, if they’re able to add in something like this without a huge investment of effort, and its popular among players, then it helps buy them time for future development that requires more significant technical development.
This kind of sport always seems to show up in sci-fi environments though, and the idea of having various sports in the game has always been a consistent talking point for star citizen. I’m not sure I’d really invest time in it at this point though, unless you really had artists who didn’t have any critical path work for the more central aspects of the game. But that may be the case, as they already seem to have a large set of character models and other assets developed.
“Sataball”? Looks like Blitzball to me, but with a little less teen angst and with zero-G instead of water.
And I suppose the development process for Star Citizen in CIG is based on Calvinball. ;)
Not to sidetrack, but the Cobra Engine has been around a long while (since 1988)!
https://www.frontier.co.uk/our_technology/
Obviously it has changed alot in that time, but a bespoke custom engine can be a long drawn out path to perfection. I have no idea how long SC was on the drawing board in any serious form, but i think they started money raising for it 4 years ago or so?
Anyway back to the smoke and mirrors, or an actual game with (too) huge ambitions.
I can’t wait to see what else is planned. Is there a fully fledged stock market? Can you run a zoo, collecting species from different planets? Will cooking (and gathering of rare ingredients!) be added?
rei
1960
I want feature creep to include fishing.
It already does - they be castin’ fer whales…
