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Star Citizen Gamescom presentation [Over]

issues aside, the simulation attention to detail is pretty awesome.

I could see myself putting serious timing into mining or cargo shipping or something, and really losing track of time on the mundane details of actually having to load cargo manually, process minerals manually in machines, manually unload supplies into warehouses or whatever, etc.

and that moon base earlier on where you walk around inside the bars and shops, and then go outside in that big base was visually pretty great.
 

Vash63

Member
The game can use a webcam to read your facial expressions and map them onto your in game avatar. So when you talk and make facial expressions your character will as well.

They are selling some special star citizen branded webcam that will be better at it or something.

To expand on that, their custom webcam has a larger than normal sensor for low-light and is 1080p/60. Any similar webcam will probably perform just as well.
 

~Cross~

Member
Like bugs you'd expect from a work in progress or bugs that are generally worrisome for the project?

I'd say things like things clipping and the collision detection going wild and killing everyone isn't necessarily a huge problem and its to be expected when people are rushing to get things out.

But things like performance going to shit after more than 12 people go into an instance, in this stage of the game where the clients are pushing the least amount of data they'll push out (wait till they add character customization variables, quests, stamina/oxygen levels, damage states, and now facial capture) is a fundamental flaw in their game design that wont be remedied easily, if at all.
 

Jams775

Member
The game can use a webcam to read your facial expressions and map them onto your in game avatar. So when you talk and make facial expressions your character will as well.

They are selling some special star citizen branded webcam that will be better at it or something.

That's cool. I used that tech on Everquest 2 back when they tried that. It worked surprisingly well. I bet it'll work even better now.
 
What's with this CGI commercial for a ship?

/googles the ship name

"$400." "$770" 'fully loaded.'

Oh :O

I mean, I love how this game looks and what the mining sim stuff could be. But damn... do they really need still be making more CGI to sell more 400 dollar ships :p I mean, let's just focus on ramps for a bit hehe so I can go moon mining :D
 
Awwww.

I was hoping for this project to come together.

To be fair most of his posts are about how much he hates Star Citizen. I was pretty impressed personally. There was a crash that set them back a bit and communication delays slowed the pacing down a bit, but a lot of cool stuff shown off along the way.
 

Trickster

Member
What's with this CGI commercial for a ship?

/googles the ship name

"$400." "$770" 'fully loaded.'

Oh :O

I mean, I love how this game looks and what the mining sim stuff could be. But damn... do they really need still be making more CGI to sell more 400 dollar ships :p I mean, let's just focus on ramps for a bit hehe so I can go moon mining :D

At this point you just have to admire the hustle
 

Lord Panda

The Sea is Always Right
I'd say things like things clipping and the collision detection going wild and killing everyone isn't necessarily a huge problem and its to be expected when people are rushing to get things out.

But things like performance going to shit after more than 12 people go into an instance, in this stage of the game where the clients are pushing the least amount of data they'll push out (wait till they add character customization variables, quests, stamina/oxygen levels, damage states, and now facial capture) is a fundamental flaw in their game design that wont be remedied easily, if at all.

Fundamentally it's the flight model that breaks the immersion for me; particularly in atmosphere. But I hold on to the hope that this will be overhauled in future builds.

Take-offs and landings still feel like you're just a detached camera floating around instead of a ship with any sense of mass or inertia but since it's Alpha I'm assuming it's also on the to-do list as well.

I hope we also get engine flares at full burn instead of this pathetic ion/plasma trail affect.
 

HowZatOZ

Banned
I mean, isn't 3.0 going to be doing a complete modern overhaul of older tech alongside adding brand new mechanics and gameplay elements? I can kind of understand the sheer amount of testing that would need to be in place for something as grandeur as that, and no doubt bugs will easily slip through even on a team tenfold what this studio has.

Look, when it comes to Star Citizen I'm happy to just see the tech evolve. I'm no backer and have yet to put my money down as I'm not 100% convinced I want to yet with what is available as an alpha but I'm happy to see its progression. When it came onto Kickstarter with Chris talking such pie-in-the-sky elements to what sounded like an amazing sci-fi MMO I knew it wasn't going to be an easy development like other games have. I can feel for those who are still waiting and expecting but lets be realistic, with what was shown today and previously this game is well beyond what is typical of modern gaming as we currently know it.

When it is done, it'll be something mindblowing and as another poster said, will easily change the landscape of gaming as we know it. When that will happen, who knows. But hey at least we know ramps in ships are OP as fuck.
 
What's with this CGI commercial for a ship?

/googles the ship name

"$400." "$770" 'fully loaded.'

Oh :O

I mean, I love how this game looks and what the mining sim stuff could be. But damn... do they really need still be making more CGI to sell more 400 dollar ships :p I mean, let's just focus on ramps for a bit hehe so I can go moon mining :D

the whales will love it though.

shitsa0b3g.jpg
 

WalTech

Member
I missed the very end of it, but man this looked bad. I can forgive the crashes and stuff, but face over IP? The hell?

It's pretty clear this is being held together by scotch tape and bubblegum. Also, that pre-scripted mission nonsense was cringey as all get out.
 

Lord Panda

The Sea is Always Right
I was laughing pretty hard at some points during the presentation especially framed by the stoic role playing despite the shit falling apart around them and Chris's awkward laugh punctuating the demo.

However there were some parts that impressed me such as the internal scale of the capitall ships and all that multicrew stuff and the ships scrambling to defend their capital ships.
 

K.Jack

Knowledge is power, guard it well
lol. I can't tell if you guys are serious.
Dead serious.

Once again, they can't even put together a tight stage presentation, or a vertical slice to convince us that they have a semi-stable build of the game.

That worries the fuck out of me.
 

Spuck-uk

Banned
Awwww.

I was hoping for this project to come together.

Watch the stream (not all of it, it's three hours long), and judge for yourself. It's very buggy, and for some reason they're trying to develop facial animation over webcams now.
 
2100$ for some ships? Man the economics of this game is beyond ridicolus. I know you wont have to buy everything and you will be able to buy ships using the ingame economy. Will be really interesting to see how that pan out in reality.
 

Jackpot

Banned
My reactions throughout:

  • How long are we going to spend talking about facial animation and lip synching? It's impressive stuff that one day all high-end online social games will use but right now it's like showing the original Euphoria Animation demo videos when I came for GTA4. This is more tech demo stuff.
  • JUST HIT RESET!
  • Oh God, why did you hit reset? It's taken 29 minutes just to get back to where we were.
  • veFOrqf.gif
  • 1HICLDo.gif
  • Special edition Star Citizen web camera
Ok, jokes about live mishaps aside, this was not reassuring. It was a string of tech demos duct-taped together that was flying apart at the seams. Getting this to work with the "Massively" part of MMO looks unthinkable at this point
 
That was a stupid demo imo. It was just the 3.0 we saw last year but with little changes and way worse presentation.

The capital ships at the end made the show better than the holiday livestream at least.
 

F!ReW!Re

Member
This is all very "cart before the horse" to me.

Yeah this is the most apt description in the thread.

Like focus on making this a game first.
The other tech is very impressive like the facial ip and stuff.
But how about you add all of that in as a 1.5 or 2.0 addition.

Focus on making all of the basic stuff work first.
 

Vash63

Member
My reactions throughout:

  • How long are we going to spend talking about facial animation and lip synching? It's impressive stuff that one day all high-end online social games will use but right now it's like showing the original Euphoria Animation demo videos when I came for GTA4. This is more tech demo stuff.
  • JUST HIT RESET!
  • Oh God, why did you hit reset? It's taken 29 minutes just to get back to where we were.
  • veFOrqf.gif
  • 1HICLDo.gif
  • Special edition Star Citizen web camera
Ok, jokes about live mishaps aside, this was not reassuring. It was a string of tech demos duct-taped together that was flying apart at the seams. Getting this to work with the "Massively" part of MMO looks unthinkable at this point

The railgun has an intentional travel delay. They were showing it off on the live streams throughout the week and mentioned you have to lead your targets.

Anyway, the game crash was unfortunate and it doesn't look like they have the physics figured out for ramps on uneven terrain but otherwise I thought it was a pretty solid show technically. They should really stop trying to heavily script the dialog though.
 
The railgun has an intentional travel delay. They were showing it off on the live streams throughout the week and mentioned you have to lead your targets.

Anyway, the game crash was unfortunate and it doesn't look like they have the physics figured out for ramps on uneven terrain but otherwise I thought it was a pretty solid show technically. They should really stop trying to heavily script the dialog though.

Did they also show of ships using their warp speed accelerator to intercept those railgun delays?
 

~Cross~

Member
Its more like the ship teleports forward in full damage state and sort of noclips down. Janky and without any sense of actual inertia.
 

HowZatOZ

Banned
The railgun has an intentional travel delay. They were showing it off on the live streams throughout the week and mentioned you have to lead your targets.

Anyway, the game crash was unfortunate and it doesn't look like they have the physics figured out for ramps on uneven terrain but otherwise I thought it was a pretty solid show technically. They should really stop trying to heavily script the dialog though.

Seems they rely on heavy scripting to ensure it runs to a T to lessen bug encounters. They have likely ran through this vertical slice hundreds of times in different configurations to see which way can be done without blowing up the entire demo while presenting the most apt amount of gameplay possible.

Edit: Is the opening cinematic in-game? It seems extremely choppy.
 

jett

D-Member
Ok, jokes about live mishaps aside, this was not reassuring. It was a string of tech demos duct-taped together that was flying apart at the seams. Getting this to work with the "Massively" part of MMO looks unthinkable at this point

This is what the game looks like to me every time it's demoed. They show these controlled, scripted vertical slices, which still break down despite that. I've never seen anything that resembles an actual game. I agree with you that I don't see how this can turn into an MMO.
 

Outrun

Member
Side things like this webcam thing. That's a cool, "nice to have" feature, but totally unnecessary tech for a base game. If you're looking to build a "minimum viable product" like a base game, you usually don't spend time and money building stuff like that unless it's part of the core of your game, which this clearly isn't.

What I mean by "core gameplay" is what a player does in a typical Star Citizen play session, which is still somewhat unclear because the devs keep on covering so many different topics and genres. I'd like to see demos focus more on how a person would actually play the game.

These demos seem very cart before the horse, as mentioned here.

This is the sense that I am getting.

Nail down the core mechanics and then expand to the peripheral stuff like this cam business.

Anyways. I wish CIG the best. I hope that they realize their dreams.
 
What I mean by "core gameplay" is what a player does in a typical Star Citizen play session, which is still somewhat unclear because the devs keep on covering so many different topics and genres. I'd like to see demos focus more on how a person would actually play the game.

These demos seem very cart before the horse, as mentioned here.



Sometimes i wonder if the people that comment in threads related to SC. Know anything about how CIG does things demos and what they usually focus on showing. All of it was core game-play to some degree. So i have no idea why you think otherwise. The game ins't finished, the game-play loop is not yet established, there's barely any economy and this was a demo of a mission gameplay-loop. It's not the time to show a typical play session. When the AI isn't finished, which is big part of the game-play loop.

The webcam is third party created and the face tracking is not coming out anytime soon, unless they get it in a place that it seems feasible to be tested early. In either case it has no effect on what happens with core mechanics. Why anyone would think otherwise is perplexing.

Talk about cart before the horse. In relation to this game and it's development state. Lets hold those expectations for later builds closer to beta, while the backers help CIG cement that game-play loop.

In either case there's a lot that still needs to be done to support/showcase a session that will show. What a player will be doing. Plus space games have an issue of seeming aimless.
 

Outrun

Member
Sometimes i wonder if the people that comment in threads related to SC. Know anything about how CIG does things demos and what they usually focus on showing. All of it was core game-play to some degree. So i have no idea why you think otherwise. The game ins't finished, the game-play loop is not yet established, there's barely any economy and this was a demo of a mission gameplay-loop. It's not the time to show a typical play session. When the AI isn't finished, which is big part of the game-play loop.

The webcam is third party created and the face tracking is not coming out anytime soon, unless they get it in a place that it seems feasible to be tested early. In either case it has no effect on what happens with core mechanics. Why anyone would think otherwise is perplexing.

Talk about cart before the horse. In relation to this game and it's development state. Lets hold those expectations for later builds closer to beta, while the backers help CIG cement that game-play loop.

In either case there's a lot that still needs to be done to support/showcase a session that will show. What a player will be doing. Plus space games have an issue of seeming aimless.

I can see that.

CIG is expanding on all fronts and I hope that it all coalesces into a solid final product.
 

Nozem

Member
Those ship prices.

Fucking shameless, jesus christ.

Goddamn.

You can buy that one ship, or 35 full priced $60 games.

What I mean by "core gameplay" is what a player does in a typical Star Citizen play session, which is still somewhat unclear because the devs keep on covering so many different topics and genres. I'd like to see demos focus more on how a person would actually play the game.

I think the intention was to demo that here: meet up with people, accept a mission, buy guns, fly to planet, do mission, shoot stuff.
 
They really need to just put a pin on everything and just get Squad 42 out the door first, THEN work on the rest...

EDIT: Also, A fucking EvE TITAN doesn't cost as much as that god-damn Origin package...
 

Cartho

Member
You have to hand it to them, they've managed to work out a way of getting suckers to part with HUNDREDS of dollars for virtual ships, for a game which hasn't even been properly released yet.

It's utterly despicable at this point.
 
Goddamn.

You can buy that one ship, or 35 full priced $60 games.



I think the intention was to demo that here: meet up with people, accept a mission, buy guns, fly to planet, do mission, shoot stuff.

They really need to just put a pin on everything and just get Squad 42 out the door first, THEN work on the rest...

EDIT: Also, A fucking EvE TITAN doesn't cost as much as that god-damn Origin package...


Wait what?

That package you guys are looking at includes 10 ships and a rover. The companies lore is luxury so they are expensive and the 890 jump ($900) is apart of the package. You don't need to spend more than $40 dollars to get the game and right below that picture includes the disclaimer they put on every sale.

Remember: we are offering this pledge ship to help fund Star Citizen's development. The funding generated by sales such as this is what allows us to include deeper, non-combat oriented features in the Star Citizen world. All ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game. The goal is to make additional ships available that give players a different experience rather than a particular advantage when the final persistent universe launches.

The "concern" many gamers have for how other spend their money is always interesting.

And since I never played EvE I had to look it up.

https://www.engadget.com/2010/02/08/diagram-shows-real-world-cost-of-losing-ships-in-eve-online/
The prices show the sheer scale of the losses incurred in large battles and are based on a player buying game time codes for cash to be sold in-game for ISK. A fully geared battleship, one of the most common types of ship for players to own in the game, comes out as being worth approximately $10 US Dollars. Most ships fall somewhere between $1 and $13 but perhaps most shocking is the price of a fleet-ready titan, which is estimated at $7600. The next time you hear about a titan being killed or a fleet of capital ships being wiped out, perhaps this chart can help show the sheer scale of that loss.

There isn't a single ship in star citizen that is worth that much. Packages contain multiple ships and even the $5000 package contains 33 ships including a capital ship with a rail gun. Most people aren't expected to even look at these packages nor afford them.

Interesting
 
I'm cool with the progress so far. Gamescon meant little to me. I'm a lot more interested in seeing how 3.0 is when it launches. I'm very patient as I want it to be good.
 

Pepboy

Member
This is what the game looks like to me every time it's demoed. They show these controlled, scripted vertical slices, which still break down despite that. I've never seen anything that resembles an actual game. I agree with you that I don't see how this can turn into an MMO.

They are focusing on making ships and locations, waiting till the last minute to create a game, otherwise everyone will figure out the gameplay isn't what they personally imagined and donations would stop.

This demo just seemed "slow" to me. The fps was low, sitting in a chair took a long time, loading stuff on a ramp took a long time, calling an elevator took a long time. I guess some fans of Euro Truck Simulator might like this sort of "I'm a space-trucker" game? Heck, I might like to play that sort of game! But it's pretty painful to watch, especially with the cringeworthy dialogue and delivery.

Goddamn.

You can buy that one ship, or 35 full priced $60 games.

I think the intention was to demo that here: meet up with people, accept a mission, buy guns, fly to planet, do mission, shoot stuff.

To be fair, Star Citizen's development will probably take 35 times as long as most AAA games, so it should cost 35 times as much. (j/k)

More seriously, I think it's interesting the game has focused so much on creating individual locations, ships, UI, holograms, etc. You'd think like maybe just having a landing pad with a text menu would be a good start, get the game stable, playtest the core gameplay loops, then worry about walking around inside a moon (which seemed to add nothing but a long walk before they could start the mission).

I'm guessing they will give up on the truly MMO element. There's just very little chance it will happen as players currently expect. Instead, I imagine something much more like "MMO-lite-with-instances". So that "technically you can meet anyone at a given location" but most of the time you only have a handful of players on a given instance, even if you're occupying the same space in the virtual world. The framerate can barely handle a few connections (locally), and they are sending even more data over these connections soon. Maybe in 6-7 years they'll find a solution to have 200+ ships, but I doubt it will ever be more than 75 before they 'release' the game.

The interior of the moon was also way too detailed. All those shops and debris, site-specific signs, etc. It's setting a production target that they will not be able to match in other locations, unless they unveil like 3-5 new planets a year.

I also don't understand the idea behind the "Spectrum Backbone". Why would you want to put your website and your video game stuff on the same server architecture? Seems like it would make DDoS attacks particularly bothersome to players. I was very confused why they thought anyone would be excited by that... I guess maybe eventually players can comment on the forums while in game?
 

Masonica33

Neo Member
Looks fucking amazing imo. Utterly bug riddled and clearly not really a workable game yet, but man, I have to admire the tenacity to go and make something this detailed, this huge in scope, this utterly bonkers.
Really hope this game comes together, because if it does... Goodbye life.
 
Wait what?
https://www.engadget.com/2010/02/08/diagram-shows-real-world-cost-of-losing-ships-in-eve-online/


There isn't a single ship in star citizen that is worth that much. Packages contain multiple ships and even the $5000 package contains 33 ships including a capital ship with a rail gun. Most people aren't expected to even look at these packages nor afford them.

Interesting

Ships in Eve have no real world value, you cannot go to the website and buy one for 7600 dollars. You can buy game time from CCP and sell that in game to get the in game money for a titan. The price you get paid for that time and how many $ your titan costs is determined by supply and demand, not an arbitrary value set by CCP.
From what I can see a titan is currently about 850 dollars in game time value.
 
Ships in Eve have no real world value, you cannot go to the website and buy one for 7600 dollars. You can buy game time from CCP and sell that in game to get the in game money for a titan. The price you get paid for that time and how many $ your titan costs is determined by supply and demand, not an arbitrary value set by CCP.
From what I can see a titan is currently about 850 dollars in game time value.

I just quoted the webpage and they did explain that.

The prices show the sheer scale of the losses incurred in large battles and are based on a player buying game time codes for cash to be sold in-game for ISK.

Even as such it doesn't change the fact the package they were talking about is not one ship but 10 separate ships and one Rover. As also quoted, this is only for development of game, ships will not be sold once game exits beta per CiG.
 
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