Support NeoGAF

[Keasar]

Yeah, but a lot of their assertions are exactly the same but get a away with anonymous sources. Sorry, but my anonymous sources say they're full of shit.

I'm sorry but if you're validating that idiot in any shape or form, you have already lost the plot.

Well of course they're bloody anonymous, when you work for a company and the story is that they treat their workers harshly, who the hell would release their identity so that the company could find them and potentially sue them?

And I am not validating him, I said he did play part in the controversy surrounding the game and that since he is a public person regarding this whole matter it is kinda obvious they would interview him. They even do a thorough write up about his own history of making games like Battlecruiser 3000 A.D and now the whole Line of Defence debacle (NOT in a positive light either).

 

[tuxfool]

Well of course they're bloody anonymous, when you work for a company and the story is that they treat their workers harshly, who the hell would release their identity so that the company could find them and potentially sue them?

You see the problem here though. They're repeating information that has been stated before, seemingly verbatim. If you don't validate your statements in some shape or form it stays suspect. The previous article lumped all these accusations with a whole load of shit that turned out not to be true. So if the escapist article was using these sources where half of the information was provably false then surely it muddies the waters a tad.

 

[Geist-]

LEVEL did bring up the Escapist article and wrote about its story in the history of the game's development.

They do their own investigations though, it's time they can afford when they do a bi-monthly magazine. They did have interviews with both Chris Roberts and Derek Smart in the same article too because Smart did cause quite a lasting ruckus.

Seriously, you can't expect me to believe some of this stuff, some of which is clearly almost criminal (employment discrimination based on race is against the law in the US, especially Calfiornia), without any valid evidence, because anonymous sources are not evidence. They're not. They can be used give more legitimacy to real evidence, but if all you have are anonymous sources, there's no way to verify any of the information in an article, it's basically just harmful hearsay.

So yeah, like the escapist, I'll wait for actual evidence before I get worked up.

 

[staticneuron]

Okay, 3 years and 9 months, I rounded up.

It is still a long time and it is still a damning article about the conduct of CGI's behaviour towards people.

They trusted the developer's stated timeline. That seems to make sense to me, unless you're saying that thinking the developer is untrustworthy is a necessary condition for buying in.

I don't know why people react badly to the "long dev time" thing, it's true.

Everyone knows that the majority of the dev team is on SQ42 and the PU is limping along slowly as a result, and this will be the case until SQ42 launches, which doesn't appear to be this year. And even then they'll likely be on Episode 2 and 3 so I wouldn't expect much of a speedup unless they greatly expand their dev team off the back of Episode 1 sales.

There's no careers other than combat, and no indication they've written even a single line of code for the other careers. There's only 7 landing zones in various states of development over the last four years.

At the current rate of development, 2020 seems optimistic.

1. Long dev time complaint is idiotic. It ignores changes to scope as funding increased Something that was pointed out could happen in the original kickstarter. Because you need a point of reference for an assertion that a game should just be made within a specific timeline. People normally use AAA projects as reference, which are normally kept under wraps untill a certain amount of development has been done and usual has a large ramp up for most dev houses. With exceptions of certain teams that are small but deliver fixed experiences (Team ico for instance) most major games have hundreds of employees working on a project and outsourcing that can get up to a thousand. Name a game. Then watch the credits. In addition to this, two things are being created at the same time. Basically an MMO and a Single player game. So that should also be factored into the attacks against development time but almost never is.

SC employee count?

So unlike most AAA games you can think of which have full staff from start, CIG wasn't one of those companies. And even using your best thinking cap, you shouldn't logically think they would be far along given scope and the fact that they are making an MMO and SP campaign at same time.

2. If you bought in at the original kickstarter, the increase of scope along with the budget was mentioned in the original pitch. So there should be no surprises there, unless you didn't actually read what was stated about development in related to funds pledged.

3. You know as far as what was done there was a leak, which showed alot that they worked on that was NOT supposed to be released to public but shows a good amount of assets that have been completed. If employees were being mistreated, I doubt people would "stay". We have seen many employees that had to leave and state so on a forum for whatever reason. major employees from other very large and notable devs come to work at CIG. There just a huge lapse in logic to actually believe these complaints against CIG given the people that are working there. A company cannot sue someone for reporting something illegal. That is not how our justice system works.

But it is odd. That this stuff comes in waves in this thread. The juniors, and the people that almost never post, seemingly speak up around the same time and are highly critical using the silliest of assertions.

 

[~Cross~]

The whole "You dont understand games development" argument is even dumber. Maybe someone should have explained to Chris Roberts what games development is about now days so that he wouldn't have pegged the release date at 2014.

 

[Zalusithix]

The whole "You dont understand games development" argument is even dumber. Maybe someone should have explained to Chris Roberts what games development is about now days so that he wouldn't have pegged the release date at 2014.

They would have had to place some date down for the Kickstarter. It was going to be off no matter what. Scale shifted with funding (like the majority of other Kickstarters) and thus the date did as well. There's no way you can simply throw more people at it and have it done in the same time. For better or worse, the game that was to exist and be done on that time scale (and far less funding) is no more.

 

[SmartBase]

The whole "You dont understand games development" argument is even dumber. Maybe someone should have explained to Chris Roberts what games development is about now days so that he wouldn't have pegged the release date at 2014.

"Let's choose an engine that we're going to have to entirely rework so we can portray space in our space sim!"

 

[Geist-]

"Let's choose an engine that we're going to have to entirely rework so we can portray space in our space sim!"

Name a better alternative in 2012.

 

[RubberJohnny]

SC employee count?

You know as far as what was done there was a leak, which showed alot that they worked on that was NOT supposed to be released to public but shows a good amount of assets that have been completed.

CIG actually made heavy use of outsourcing early in development, which isn't counted on that chart. Those Vanduul fleet assets that got accidentally leaked by Lando were actually made by Streamline Studios based in Malaysia. They had Behaviour Interactive in Montreal working on Boarding FPS - from their press release: "Behaviour is forming a team of up to 60 developers to collaborate on the Star Citizen project.", and Illfonic for Star Marine. Void Alpha were building out landing zones back in 2013, like this one: https://youtu.be/3UaFSd-ezQc

They had Moon Collider building the Kythera AI, 3lateral and Cubic Motion doing animation and face capture before Imaginarium and Liquid Development, Massive Black and CGBot doing art assets including ships like the Cutlass, there was Atomahawk Design doing concept art in the UK, there was Confetti SpecialFX doing the explosion FX and added procedurally generated nebulas to their engine. All of this is either in the Letters from the Chairmen or those companies portfolios online.

So they've always had a big development team of several hundred, at some point they closed those relationships and switched to doing everything internally, with what I reckon was a soft reset of the project.

 

[jaaz]

"Let's choose an engine that we're going to have to entirely rework so we can portray space in our space sim!"

It wasn't like there was an off-the-shelf graphics engine they could use to achieve what they wanted when they started. There still isn't. No game before has done what they are aiming to do.

 

[Akronis]

"Let's choose an engine that we're going to have to entirely rework so we can portray space in our space sim!"

I think the developers are a bit smarter about engine choice than you bud.

As another poster said, what would have been a better choice in 2012?

 

[Zalusithix]

I think the developers are a bit smarter about engine choice than you bud.

As another poster said, what would have been a better choice in 2012?

Writing an entirely new engine from scratch. Obviously. They could just have that one guy in the corner bang it out in a month.

 

[cyress8]

Writing an entirely new engine from scratch. Obviously. They could just have that one guy in the corner bang it out in a month.

Nah, the Gamebryo engine would have been a better choice. (I know that it is actually a decent engine. Bethesda just tainted the name so fucking badly.)

 

[SmartBase]

It wasn't like there was an off-the-shelf graphics engine they could use to achieve what they wanted when they started. There still isn't. No game before has done what they are aiming to do.

Name a better alternative in 2012.

I think the developers are a bit smarter about engine choice than you bud.

As another poster said, what would have been a better choice in 2012?

The engine recode has been blamed by CIG for causing everything from delays to world famine, it was a simple jab at the sacred cow. I'm guessing most engine options at the time wouldn't have worked that well either, but I'm no developer.

 

[staticneuron]

The whole "You dont understand games development" argument is even dumber. Maybe someone should have explained to Chris Roberts what games development is about now days so that he wouldn't have pegged the release date at 2014.

You obviously didn't understand the point I was making about scope and the picture of staff growth.

The KS ended at 6 million and there was 8 people working at CIG eventually ramped up to 20 in early updates after KS ended.

What was originally planned on being released would have been done and the original target date would have stood. Instead of one large project with added mechanics, this would have been separate and pieced together.

But this didn't happen overnight. The change in scope happened with people pledges and feedback that happened even after the kickstarter ended. The kickstarter ended at 6 million and 34k people pledging. The growth was pretty huge afterwards and within months, there were 3 times the amount of people that jumped on project that had pledged in kickstarter. In one month ( june 2013) 40,000 people signed up in 72 hours.

looking even back to wingmans episode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi9mqnKmzdA

The growth and scope fueled be backers and feedback. So the question about why it changed from kickstarter isn't complicated nor does it take super indepth knowledge of game development. Just understanding how scope changed and why. Once you understand scope changed then that will explain why projected release date in KS no longer was valid.

 

[Zalusithix]

And speaking of engines, how long until SC supports Nvidia's Ansel tech? Short of actual VR support, being able to get some decent screenshots would be nice.

 

[Geist-]

And speaking of engines, how long until SC supports Nvidia's Ansel tech? Short of actual VR support, being able to get some decent screenshots would be nice.

You should ask them tomorrow during RtV. I'm sure it's on their radar.

 

[~Cross~]

Writing an entirely new engine from scratch. Obviously. They could just have that one guy in the corner bang it out in a month.

They got the guy that literally wrote the book on working with cryengine. Engine development isn't something that takes a lot of staff, its usually 2 or 3 really talented engineers. Realistically, they could have gotten it done with less man hours invested than trying to unfuck cryengine, since to this day that hasn't been fully accomplished. You could say that they needed the tools right then and there to start working on content, but again, what content produced during that time is still being used today?

Star Citizen cant be a hack job for it to work. The foundation had to laid out and be extremely solid for it to work as advertised. Everything I've seen so far is that the foundation for the game is jello and they keep piling in steel beams like some extreme jenga. One wrong move and your character extends his arms like he's jesus on the cross and fly's away from your ships cockpit while naked and shooting air from its nipples.

Also that bengal everyone is hyped about? It exemplifies the CIG attitude of development. Lets put 7 people to work in it, a massive ship that by their own admission cant even fit into memory yet, that even if you could fit into memory without having the galaxy burst at its seams, cant be manned fully because there is no way you can fit that many people into an instance. That even if you could fit that many people into its instance has no where to actually be in because they've yet to implement a full system let alone the hundred they promised. That even if it had a system to be at, the instancing tech in the game would be a massive show stopper for anyone trying to defend/assault it properly.

From the ground up, designed and produced incorrectly. The epitome of putting your cart before the horse.

 

[staticneuron]

CIG actually made heavy use of outsourcing early in development, which isn't counted on that chart. Those Vanduul fleet assets that got accidentally leaked by Lando were actually made by Streamline Studios based in Malaysia. They had Behaviour Interactive in Montreal working on Boarding FPS - from their press release: "Behaviour is forming a team of up to 60 developers to collaborate on the Star Citizen project.", and Illfonic for Star Marine. Void Alpha were building out landing zones back in 2013, like this one: https://youtu.be/3UaFSd-ezQc

They had Moon Collider building the Kythera AI, 3lateral and Cubic Motion doing animation and face capture before Imaginarium and Liquid Development, Massive Black and CGBot doing art assets including ships like the Cutlass, there was Atomahawk Design doing concept art in the UK, there was Confetti SpecialFX doing the explosion FX and added procedurally generated nebulas to their engine. All of this is either in the Letters from the Chairmen or those companies portfolios online.

So they've always had a big development team of several hundred, at some point they closed those relationships and switched to doing everything internally, with what I reckon was a soft reset of the project.

I know of this, it is outlined in their facing reports, but outsourcing these task is not the same as developing the game itself outside of illphonic. From capture work, concept art, middleware support, or base animation (pre mocap), those were done small scale and to budget at time. Take for instance, from moon collider 3 people were assisting with helping the middleware work in the game not actually developing SC itself. Putting a list together of things that have been taken over by internal teams, middle ware support, concept art, and/or redone in-engine in-house doesn't really help the assertion that things should automatically be done by now.

Again in reference to other AAA companies, they are larger AND they also outsource as well. Hence my comment about looking at a AAA game you want to compare then looking at credits.

Edit:

They got the guy that literally wrote the book on working with cryengine. Engine development isn't something that takes a lot of staff, its usually 2 or 3 really talented engineers. Realistically, they could have gotten it done with less man hours invested than trying to unfuck cryengine, since to this day that hasn't been fully accomplished. You could say that they needed the tools right then and there to start working on content, but again, what content produced during that time is still being used today?

Star Citizen cant be a hack job for it to work. The foundation had to laid out and be extremely solid for it to work as advertised. Everything I've seen so far is that the foundation for the game is jello and they keep piling in steel beams like some extreme jenga. One wrong move and your character extends his arms like he's jesus on the cross and fly's away from your ships cockpit while naked and shooting air from its nipples.

Also that bengal everyone is hyped about? It exemplifies the CIG attitude of development. Lets put 7 people to work in it, a massive ship that by their own admission cant even fit into memory yet, that even if you could fit into memory without having the galaxy burst at its seams, cant be manned fully because there is no way you can fit that many people into an instance. That even if you could fit that many people into its instance has no where to actually be in because they've yet to implement a full system let alone the hundred they promised. That even if it had a system to be at, the instancing tech in the game would be a massive show stopper for anyone trying to defend/assault it properly.

From the ground up, designed and produced incorrectly. The epitome of putting your cart before the horse.

What are you talking about? Seriously? Please do tell....How long would it take three people to code cryengine from scratch? Then tell us how long it would take those same people to code the current incarnation CIG is using from scratch? And as for the rest.. I don't even know where to start with this. I must ask. Are you actually being serious with this or are you kidding?

Edit 2: Please forget I asked anything. I don't want to know.

 

[Mugen08]

May I ask (as a lower-tier KS-backer) what is the state of the latest Alpha? What functions/modes etc. are there and what is missing? Has anything from Squadron 42 been included yet? My latest experience was to download a crazy large alpha version (closer to 100 gigs) where I could walk around on a space station, view my ship and fly around a bit. Didn't work that great for me though, clunky controls, no great setup for my flight stick, shooting was lacklustre I felt then. This was quite a while ago though.

 

[tuxfool]

They got the guy that literally wrote the book on working with cryengine. Engine development isn't something that takes a lot of staff, its usually 2 or 3 really talented engineers. Realistically, they could have gotten it done with less man hours invested than trying to unfuck cryengine, since to this day that hasn't been fully accomplished. You could say that they needed the tools right then and there to start working on content, but again, what content produced during that time is still being used today?

Realistically one facepalm isn't enough here. I needed 2 or 3 really talented facepalmers.

 

[staticneuron]

May I ask (as a lower-tier KS-backer) what is the state of the latest Alpha? What functions/modes etc. are there and what is missing? Has anything from Squadron 42 been included yet? My latest experience was to download a crazy large alpha version (closer to 100 gigs) where I could walk around on a space station, view my ship and fly around a bit. Didn't work that great for me though, clunky controls, no great setup for my flight stick, shooting was lacklustre I felt then. This was quite a while ago though.

Squadron 42 is a single player story campain, so no, it isn't included in the alpha. Feature list and ship status can be seen here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/feature-list
The changes and link to new control schematic is here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//15355-Star-Citizen-Alpha-24-Available

 

[Zalusithix]

It's worth mentioning that even if the Bengal never makes it into SC for any number of technical reasons related to networking, it'd still be a damn good set piece for the single player campaign. There'd be so many epic things that you could do story and battle wise with a fully realized carrier. Shit, I'd be giddy just to play a game centered around one.

 

[CyberPunked]

"Let's choose an engine that we're going to have to entirely rework so we can portray space in our space sim!"

CryEngine is an incredibly powerful engine on all fronts, especially graphical. In the right hands you can do great things with it, see the technical masterpieces that are every Crytek game.

 

[RubberJohnny]

May I ask (as a lower-tier KS-backer) what is the state of the latest Alpha? What functions/modes etc. are there and what is missing? Has anything from Squadron 42 been included yet? My latest experience was to download a crazy large alpha version (closer to 100 gigs) where I could walk around on a space station, view my ship and fly around a bit. Didn't work that great for me though, clunky controls, no great setup for my flight stick, shooting was lacklustre I felt then. This was quite a while ago though.

It's about the same, but with buyable clothes and more ships now

 

[CyberPunked]

It's about the same, but with buyable clothes and more ships now

You're under the impression that the alpha build released to players is everything they've created? Amusing.

 

[Zalusithix]

You're under the impression that the alpha build released to players is everything they've created? Amusing.

Well the original question was about the state of the playable alpha, not actual development, so it's not really inaccurate for that purpose. The actual chart heading is misleading though.

 

[Mugen08]

Squadron 42 is a single player story campain, so no, it isn't included in the alpha. Feature list and ship status can be seen here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/feature-list
The changes and link to new control schematic is here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//15355-Star-Citizen-Alpha-24-Available

It's about the same, but with buyable clothes and more ships now

Ok, thanks! I'll wait a bit more before getting back to it then. Thinking of the state of Elite: Dangerous the promised gameplay features do not excite me anymore in comparison to a good campaign that I hope we will see in Squadron 42. Maybe if they vastly improve on everything gameplay in comparison with Elite: Dangerous the open world multiplayer might pull me in.

 

[Geist-]

Ok, thanks! I'll wait a bit more before getting back to it then. Thinking of the state of Elite: Dangerous the promised gameplay features do not excite me anymore in comparison to a good campaign that I hope we will see in Squadron 42. Maybe if they vastly improve on everything gameplay in comparison with Elite: Dangerous the open world multiplayer might pull me in.

Keep an eye on Gamescom next month. There's going to be a lot of Squadron 42 reveals there (we assume. They're recreating the Idris Frigate bridge as their gameplay booth, so it will probably have something to do with the campaign)

 

[Mugen08]

Keep an eye on Gamescom next month. There's going to be a lot of Squadron 42 reveals there (we assume. They're recreating the Idris Frigate bridge as their gameplay booth, so it will probably have something to do with the campaign)

Ok, will do. Giggled when they announced Hamill, Oldman and Gillian Anderson for mocap. I REALLY hope that the writers have come up with something competent.

 

[RubberJohnny]

You're under the impression that the alpha build released to players is everything they've created? Amusing.

I mentioned the seven landing zones in various states of completion on the last page, but for the PU you're not going to get a big SQ42 style leak, it pretty much is WYSIWYG.

CIG are attempting to get their very first system together by the end of the year, and there's no indication that a single line of code has been written for any of those game mechanics.

 

[Zalusithix]

Keep an eye on Gamescom next month. There's going to be a lot of Squadron 42 reveals there (we assume. They're recreating the Idris Frigate bridge as their gameplay booth, so it will probably have something to do with the campaign)

Wasting more backer money on frivolous things like booths. Shame on them.

Spoiler

/s

 

[~Cross~]

Realistically one facepalm isn't enough here. I needed 2 or 3 really talented facepalmers.

OK so I read up more on the issue, anywhere from 10-20 people over a span of a year or two, of which like 3 of them are seniors, and the engine is being tailored to the game you are making. Thats 2-3m dollars to get it done.

SE got the frame work for Luminous and the entirety of FFXIVs 2.0 engine done in like a year. They migrated everything from 1.0 while completely redoing how the game handled calls for both the renderer and networking since both were a mess initially.

CIG spent at least 3.8m dollars in Illfonics contract and that was mostly a waste. They could have gotten a proper engine done in that time instead of having to deal with cryengine.

 

[RubberJohnny]

Luminous Engine is fucked and basically already scrapped though, realistically you need fifty people fulltime developing an engine nowadays and it wouldn't get you the game any quicker.

I agree that CryEngine wasn't a great choice, the movement kind of sucks, the lighting is dated, but they really didn't have any great choices back then, it was an awkward time just before a generation transition.

 

[Chev]

You see the problem here though. They're repeating information that has been stated before, seemingly verbatim.

The reporter was asked about it on a swedish site and says they had their own sources, and they were checked independently from Smart's claims. In fact, the article mentions CIG's PR became unresponsive once they discovered he'd been talking directly to employees. They also offered CIG several weeks to present their own version of the story, which they didn't.

Which is what it all boils down to, right? If only CIG would communicate more about what's happening progress-wise, it'd help alleviate the doubts, instead of people waiting on a gamescom appearance and wondering if SQ42 will even come out in 2016.

 

[Geist-]

The reporter was asked about it on a swedish site and says they had their own sources, and they were checked independently from Smart's claims. In fact, the article mentions CIG's PR became unresponsive once they discovered he'd been talking directly to employees. They also offered CIG several weeks to present their own version of the story, which they didn't.

Should CIG respond to a hit job? Regardless of what the reporter says, there's still no verifiable proof. It's the reason you don'the see any other websites picking the story up, but the TOS changes were posted everywhere. The TOS is public evidence. Everything else is hearsay unless proven otherwise.

 

[Zalusithix]

The reporter was asked about it on a swedish site and says they had their own sources, and they were checked independently from Smart's claims. In fact, the article mentions CIG's PR became unresponsive once they discovered he'd been talking directly to employees. They also offered CIG several weeks to present their own version of the story, which they didn't.

Might be pending litigation on the matter and they were advised to not say anything. Who knows. Either way, I personally have trouble believing totally anonymous sources on any matter where personal grudges and bias might be present. Particularly when there's routes to legally deal with some of the claimed offenses which are far more reasonable than going to the gaming press.

 

[Primus]

The reporter was asked about it on a swedish site and says they had their own sources, and they were checked independently from Smart's claims.

You can't corroborate anonymous sources with anonymous sources. That's not how journalism works. You can certainly start with anonymous sources to lay the groundwork for the story, but if you can't provide actual, quantifiable proof then you've got nothing but 24 pages of regurgitated Escapist article.

In fact, the article mentions CIG's PR became unresponsive once they discovered he'd been talking directly to employees. They also offered CIG several weeks to present their own version of the story, which they didn't.

Considering what happened with the Escapist's load of bollocks last year, CIG declining to talk with another group writing a new unsourced hit piece is definitely a good idea.

 

[Geist-]

AtV Ep.100 Part 3

Those SQ42 Testers are such a tease.

Edit: Free Fly Weekend tomorrow.

Edit2: Holy fuck, that Big Benny Ballad. XD

 

[KKRT00]

OK so I read up more on the issue, anywhere from 10-20 people over a span of a year or two, of which like 3 of them are seniors, and the engine is being tailored to the game you are making. Thats 2-3m dollars to get it done.

SE got the frame work for Luminous and the entirety of FFXIVs 2.0 engine done in like a year. They migrated everything from 1.0 while completely redoing how the game handled calls for both the renderer and networking since both were a mess initially.

CIG spent at least 3.8m dollars in Illfonics contract and that was mostly a waste. They could have gotten a proper engine done in that time instead of having to deal with cryengine.

Please stop.
Do you even have any experience in software development?
Do you even grasp what game engine mean? How big it is and how many components it touches?

 

[mnannola]

It doesn't really matter how much it costs to build an average game engine that looks nice.

It matters how much it costs to build an engine that can support:

1. massive open solar system spaces.
2. planets you can land on and walk around on
3. space stations you can walk around on
4. space ships you can walk around on while they are flying.
5. All of the above with the addition of complex physics handling
6. All of the above with the addition of multiplayer.

I'm sure I am forgetting a ton, but fact is no one has a clue how much it would cost to build this engine. I'm sure the Star Citizen guys new that any engine they were going to choose was going to need a massive amount of work done in order to support these things. Would they have saved time creating this engine themselves? Who knows, but you can't look at how much it would cost to build an average game engine and compare that to building a game engine that can support massive features that have never been done before.

 

[tuxfool]

OK so I read up more on the issue, anywhere from 10-20 people over a span of a year or two, of which like 3 of them are seniors, and the engine is being tailored to the game you are making. Thats 2-3m dollars to get it done.

SE got the frame work for Luminous and the entirety of FFXIVs 2.0 engine done in like a year. They migrated everything from 1.0 while completely redoing how the game handled calls for both the renderer and networking since both were a mess initially.

CIG spent at least 3.8m dollars in Illfonics contract and that was mostly a waste. They could have gotten a proper engine done in that time instead of having to deal with cryengine.

You are aware that Crytek sold the complete Cryengine IP to amazon for 50-70m. That is how much the engine is worth.

What you posted here is worthless, let alone the fact that you're using Luminous as an example. That engine is is a Garbage Fire. It is really capable graphically, but an engine is much much more than just a renderer. It is an entity system, state machine for game logic, networking infrastructure, object importer/exporter, User tools, plus a whole lot more.

 

[CitizenVectron]

As someone who was a big champion of this game when it was first announced, and who got 3 friends to kickstart it as well, I too have to say that at this point I don't really expect it to be released in any real final form that lives up to most people's expectations.

I would ask those who are most optimistic about the game, when do you expect it to be feature-complete? 3 to 4 years? I'm guessing much longer than that, unfortunately.

I openly admit that the delays are not entirely their fault, in the sense that their goals aren't actually attainable for the most part with existing engines. But they still promised it, and there is a decent chance they will fail to deliver.

I am guessing at a bare-bones alpha of open-universe gameplay with 2-3 systems by 2018, something like the Everquest Landmark alpha/beta when it launched. I wouldn't expect a fairly-complete feature-filled version until 2020-2022, assuming that they stop adding new ideas.

As I said, it's not entirely their fault for some of the problems they are facing, but I'm also realistic that we won't ever get the game we were sold on.

 

[ultrazilla]

I've got money sunk into the game and highly doubt we'll get anything near what was promised. Especially when they changed their TOS recently basically saying once you back the game with your money, you understand you may never actually get the game that was promised. Basically they're saying if they stop development tomorrow, they don't owe you jack shit. Huge red flag.

I'd love to know just how much development money they have on hand from backers at this point. It would either set folks at ease or set off the alarms.

 

[Geist-]

As someone who was a big champion of this game when it was first announced, and who got 3 friends to kickstart it as well, I too have to say that at this point I don't really expect it to be released in any real final form that lives up to most people's expectations.

Here's a question for those who are still very optimistic, when do you expect the full, open-universe to be released and have most of the content in it? Within the next 3 years?

I openly admit that the delays are not entirely their fault, in the sense that their goals aren't actually attainable for the most part with existing engines. But they still promised it, and there is a decent chance they will fail to deliver.

I am guessing at a bare-bones alpha of open-universe gameplay with 2-3 systems by 2018, something like the Everquest Landmark alpha/beta when it launched. I wouldn't expect a fairly-complete feature-filled version until 2020-2022, assuming that they stop adding new ideas.

As I said, it's not entirely their fault for some of the problems they are facing, but I'm also realistic that we won't ever get the game we were sold on.

That's...incredibly pessimistic considering everything they've been showing us lately, especially the last few weeks of AtV. Next week will be the Frankfurt studio episode where I expect there will be a lot of info on the procedural generation tech, which needless to say will speed up the system creation process.

Personally, based on the progress I've been seeing, I think it's entirely possible to see both the first episode of Squadron 42 and a feature complete Beta in 2017. Most of the time sinks for this games development seem have been technology R&D, and based on the videos and monthly reports CIG is getting very close to implementing many of the major systems.

We'll see of course, but I remain optimistic.

 

[TheVoidDragon]

I've got money sunk into the game and highly doubt we'll get anything near what was promised. Especially when they changed their TOS recently basically saying once you back the game with your money, you understand you may never actually get the game that was promised. Basically they're saying if they stop development tomorrow, they don't owe you jack shit. Huge red flag.

I'd love to know just how much development money they have on hand from backers at this point. It would either set folks at ease or set off the alarms.

No, the TOS changing doesn't imply anything at all. It's just been added to cover every eventuality, obviously if the game does actually fail they'd be in no state to refund every single backer anyway. Most of the changes made to the ToS aren't that different from how the TOS are a year ago (Some things are just more clearly worded now).

Apparently though, that article about the guy getting the refund in that way isn't even entirely true according to his thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/DerekSmart/comments/4sjhcn/new_ds_rant_boom_there_it_is_if_your_browser

All these complaints about "the game taking so long" make no sense to me. Did people seriously want them to make continue making what was going to be a $2mil game when they had $100mil? 4 years is not that long in games development, that's a pretty standard time for a large game, especially MMOs. If the game hadn't changed in scope (which from what i remember happened pretty much right after it was revealed via the kickstarter) then the complaints would be understandable. Besides, Chris Roberts has pointed out that the 2014 date was for ONLY the much smaller Squadron 42 campaign originally intended from the Kickstarter:

-In 2012, a Kickstarter FAQ indicated that the high cost of stretch goals was in order to ensure a 2014 delivery date.

CR: Is this the FAQ line you’re talking about?

The purpose of the higher stretch goals is to ensure that the game-as-described is finished in the two year time period. We intend to build the game that Chris Roberts described at GDC Online regardless, but without additional funding we are going to have to do it one piece at a time, starting with Squadron 42, rather than as a single larger production. With more funding we can include more ships, systems, unique locations, animations and cinematic sequences.

You will notice that this is saying that we would only be able to deliver Squadron 42, not the bigger game without additional funding.

...

Could we have shipped a small scale 30 mission game in the old Wing Commander format in two years? Yes, but that’s not the game the community wants or the game we’re building. What we are delivering now, just on the Squadron 42 side is more akin to a huge AAA game that would retail for $60 by itself.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14979-Chairmans-Response-To-The-Escapist

 

[KKRT00]

I think people need to realize that game in current form is not game that was originally planned.
Why? Because Chris Roberts never imagined that they will be able to do procedural generation two-three years in SC production, let alone on the first release.
Yes, it delayed SC and made everything more complex, especially from network side, but in the end it will make this game like nothing that has been done before.

I think pushing this further is much smarter move now, than two years from now, even though it delays the game.


And too be fair. How can you even estimate how much work do you need to do to create systems that can handle 3x times bigger than Battlefield levels to fly and interact with everything around it?


---
tuxfool is banned ;/ i hope its only temporary.

 

[mercenar1e]

I think people need to realize that game in current form is not game that was originally planned.
Why? Because Chris Roberts never imagined that they will be able to do procedural generation two-three years in SC production, let alone on the first release.
Yes, it delayed SC and made everything more complex, especially from network side, but in the end it will make this game like nothing that has been done before.

overly ambitious games with constant delays is nothing new to CR. anyone can look at the debacle that was Freelancer, Digital Anvil and Microsofts rescue. if it wasn't procedural tech it would have been something else lol

 

[KKRT00]

overly ambitious games with constant delays is nothing new to CR. anyone can look at the debacle that was Freelancer, Digital Anvil and Microsofts rescue. if it wasn't procedural tech it would have been something else lol

It was not overly ambitious. They moved to procedural tech when they knew they will be able to deliver that.
If Foundry 42 Frankfurt's engineers didnt make alpha tech of it and said that they can actually do it in reasonable time, i dont think CR would decide to use it in the first iteration.
But how can you blame him at pushing it, when it changes everything regarding the game for a better.

 

[gatti-man]

The whole "You dont understand games development" argument is even dumber. Maybe someone should have explained to Chris Roberts what games development is about now days so that he wouldn't have pegged the release date at 2014.

Terrible post. No one ever pegged a release date of any kind after the Kickstarter blew up.