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Star Citizen Pre-Alpha: Hangar Module

MrBig

Member


Developer: Cloud Imperium Games
Publisher: None, crowd funded
Website: Robert Space Industries
Live Release Target: 'Early 2015'
Platform: PC- x64 Windows Vista+
Price: $30+ (crowdfunding donations go higher)

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02/26/14 - Preliminary Oculus Rift support added in patch 11.1
01/21/14 - NeoGAF Social Organization established - Feel free to join!
12/20/13 - Dogfighting update stream
12/20/13 - Cutlass and firing range added to hangar
11/26/13 - LTI purchase cutoff
10/22/13 - Hornet F7C variants added to hangar
10/12/13 - Avenger added to hangar
10/10/13 - CitizenCon event/stream
08/29/13 - Initial hangar release
08/24/13 - Gamescom hangar presentation

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Star Citizen will be released in several modules that will each be continually iterated upon leading up to the full release, starting with the Hangar Module this month. Each module will be available to backers with alpha/beta access. The alpha period will be limited in slots, expanded upon when the game is in a state capable of supporting more players entering testing.

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Hangar Module [August 29th] - Walk around your starting hangar and view the ships you have purchased. The initial release will only feature the original pledge ships: the Aurora, Hornet, 300i, Constellation, and Freelancer, as well as a statue of the Cutlass. There will be some limited customization options and testing of the in-game purchase system. Later builds will feature more ships and more types of hangars, as well as allow you to invite friends to enter your hangar with you and use a Rift DK. Note that you will have to wait for the dogfighting module to fly around in your ships.

Client Download: www.robertsspaceindustries.com/hangar-module
The ships currently available in the hangar are listed on this page.

Hangar FAQ


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Dogfighting Module [April 2014] - Exit the hangar with your ships and engage in dogfights with other players and/or NPCs, testing for balance, functionality, performance, player count, etc. CIG's target player count per instance is >~100 players, though that may or may not be realized in this portion of the alpha.


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Planetside Module - Travel to the surface of planets to socialize with other players and visit the NPCs, businesses, etc that populate the environments.


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Ship Boarding Module - Board ships and engage in firefights with combatant ship crews.


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Squadron 42 Module - Branching single player missions (Dark Souls-like online component), in which you enlist in the UEE military in hopes of making it into Squadron 42, a team of the most elite pilots of the UEE military. Squadron 42 will be released to backers episodically but will be one continuous story that will be finished for SC's live release. This campaign is a prequel to the time of the persistent universe.


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Persistent Universe Module - The primary component of Star Citizen, the PU is the open galaxy for you to explore. You create your own gameplay. One server will host everyone playing the game.

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Live Release [2015] - Initial release version available for purchase. Continued support is planned, with updates on a two week cadence delivering new content, progressing the living story of the universe, and improving the game in addition to paid expansion packs to the single player campaign at some points.


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Star Citizen, currently being produced by Cloud Imperium Games, will feature a persistent universe, where the entire population can interact together, fueled by players taking up rolls and doing whatever they want to do to create a living and compelling universe, also inhabited by millions of human and alien AI characters, a campaign featuring dark-souls-like online components (offline capable) that will receive expansions in the future, and private servers that will be able to replicate the PU server in a limited way (the full PU server would be data center level, full replication wouldn't be feasible), though they feature mod support for near infinite possibility within whatever limitations.

Star Citizen's lore will follow the arc of the fall of Rome. The United Earth Empire is extremely vast and powerful, spanning much of the galaxy and having made contact with neighboring civilizations, is destabilizing. How the story unfolds will be guided by the players, with CIG evolving the game and advancing the story as people interact with eachother, and the other elements in the universe. Squadron 42 (the campaign) ties into this as a sort of prequel to the persistent universe.

There are many types of ships to explore the galaxy with, from single person fighters and merchant vessels, to multi crew exploration ships, frigates, destroyers, and extremely large carrier and capital ships. What you do with them is up to you, a galaxy with over a hundred systems is being simulated in high fidelity with a functioning economy and democratic government supported by you, the corporations, dealers, miners, explorers, mercenaries, pirates, etc.

The game puts immersion first, being a first person game everything is finely detailed and simulated, making it an ideal supporter of the Oculus Rift, which will be useable starting at some point with the Hangar Module. While KB/M is fully supported, a HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick) system is greatly recommended, allowing you to have precise and immersive control over your ship. Most current options will work, but CIG is pursuing creating custom peripherals for SC.

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Robert Space Industries - Star Citizen's official site; new lore and updates are released daily and each dev at CIG has a thread on the forums for you to interact with
About the Game - An intro to Star Citizen
RSI Youtube - CIG team interviews and game content. Wingman's Hangar is a weekly series produced by CIG with news about the game, Wednesdays at 17:00 gmt
SC FAQ - Outdated but a lot of good information can be found here
What makes up a ship? - Overview all of the components of the ships in SC, how their individual components function and interact
The SC Economy - An overview of some of the in-game economic systems
SC Ship Stats - Listing of all available technical specifications for the ships in SC

Community supported links:
SC Wiki
Galaxy Map - known position and information of the systems in SC
SC Economy - Compilation of knowledge about how the economic/crafting/upgrade systems will work in SC
Pulse Magazine: a Community produced magazine

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Star Citizen is currently being funded entirely via crowd funding, with more success than any other crowd funded product at over 18 million dollars. If $23m can be achieved by the SC community, SC can be released and maintained completely free of private investors/publishers affecting the game (accomplished on 10/17/13!). You can see a selection of bulletpoints of where all that money is being spent here. Note that all the money is being spent on hiring staff, operating costs, R&D, etc, each funding milestone is not all being funneled into one specific thing, and that the development goals listed here are for Star Citizen as a whole, not necessarily for when the game goes live in 2015 - it will remain in active development, providing constant (free) updates for years.

There are several packages with different ships and extra digital/physical content available for purchase, their content listed here. Digital Mercenary ($40) is the cheapest package with alpha/beta access and full access to the final game. For a starter ship I would suggest an Aurora, which will start you off to then build up your fleet/assets through in game progression according to your own interests, but the other pledge levels come with different ships if you really want to donate more to the game. Remember that these pledges are donations to fund SC, you are not directly buying ships and the cost of packages is not necessarily related to the in-game cost or value of ships, and that you are not entitled to keep ships attained this way indefinitely if you lose them while playing the game. This game will not have a cash shop and the ability to receive ships by donating will not be available later on.

Users in at least some of the Alpha tests are limited, be sure to check the front page for a count of the remaining slots.

While you may also purchase additional ships to start off with in the game, do not feel compelled to purchase a bunch of ships, no content you can buy is exclusive to this backing period or to purchases, everything may be earned ingame. If you want to contribute more to the funding of Star Citizen, you can pledge a monthly/yearly subscription. The money from subscriptions is used to fund media like Wingman's Hangar, and the subscription doesn't offer in-game perks as SC is not a subscription based game.

Ships/packages can also be reclaimed or gifted. If you own a package that you wish to exchange for something else you can reclaim it to be credited for the amount it was purchased for and you can put that credit towards anything else on the RSI store. Gifts can be sent to any e-mail address, once they claim it they own all rights to the use of everything included with it, but they will not recieve backer status if the account hasn't actually bought anything.

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Regular Video Broadcast Schedule

Shows will be available at the posted times on the RSI youtube channel.
  • Mondays (3 PM PST GMT-7) – 10 for the Chairman
    Chris Roberts, founder of CIG and director of Star Citizen, discusses questions posed by backers.
  • Wednesdays (9 AM PST GMT-7) – Wingman’s Hangar
    News updates about SC, studio reports (a look at things currently in development), discussions of development progress, community spotlights, and backer questions sections.
  • Fridays (3 PM PST GMT-7) – The Next Great Starship
    Teams from around the world will compete to build Star Citizen’s new gunship.

Monthly Report: Status updates from the various studios working on star citizen, a summation of high level development progress. Posted on the first week of the following month.

Click images to see larger versions

Concept Art




Images




Trailers

Squadron 42 Trailer
Original Kickstarter Pitch

In-Fiction Ship Commercials
Origin 300i
RSI Aurora
Anvil Aerospace Hornet F7C (4k direct download)

Development

Studio Report: Shubin Mining Colony
Test Dogfighting Gameplay
Dogfighting Update 12/20/13
CitizenCon 2013
Making of the Hangar
Making of the 300i
Star Citizen Galaxy Map (WiP)
Very early AI combat tech demo
Very early gameplay tech demo
 

Smiley90

Stop shitting on my team. Start shitting on my finger.
After the initial "file access not authorized" error, I now downloaded the patcher. Now in the patcher, downloading the game, hopefully before servers go to shit.

COME TO DADDY, FREELANCER AND 325A
 

MrBig

Member
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Star Citizen is a very big game, and there is no singular source of information for it. Here I will disseminate major details as I can. Note that this FAQ is for all of SC, not just for the hangar module release. For a video overview of some of the aspects of SC and how it came to be, watch this.

Q. What are Robert Space Industries and Cloud Imperium Games?
A. RSI is an in-fiction manufacturer of ships within Star Citizen, the persona of CIG which, headed by Chris Roberts, is the studio producing Star Citizen.

Q. What platforms will Star Citizen be available on, what engine was it made on, when will it be released, and what is the business model?
A. Star Citizen is being produced for Windows PCs - with Linux/Mac likely in future and interest in consoles mentioned*** -, developed on a custom version of Cryengine 3, will be available as a release product some time in 2015, and will be a single purchase "Buy to Play" game, no additional costs required but sustained by a limited cash purchase system (limited in quantity to the point where people that don't spend a lot of time playing can keep pace with their peers) for purchasing the in-game credits, items are not intended to be directly purchasable after the crowd funding phase and so everything can be earned through playtime.

Q. What does pledging now get me for the final game?
A. Buying a package now will grant you access to the final game, which will have free content updates delivered every ~2 weeks for the persistent universe. You'll be funding the development of SC and you'll get whatever ship you pay for in the alpha/beta/final versions of the game, during which time you can help to shape the development of SC. Nothing you buy, beyond limited cosmetics, will be exclusive in any way to the backing period or to cash at all.

Q. What "package" should I buy?
A. The game itself is $30, that is the Aurora MR package. Alpha/beta testing access is available in $40+ packages, eg the Digital Merc pack. Anything else is an entirely optional donation you can make to CIG, so if you want to give them more money I'm sure you can find an appropriate package.

Q. What kind of a campaign is Squadron 42?
A. You enlist in the UEE military and serve as a soldier hoping to make it into the UEE's elite fighter pilot team, Squadron 42. It has a branching structure, you will go on assignments and depending on your performance and skill you will branch out and be assigned different missions. The campaign will not have traditional co-op, but other players will be able to drop in as wingmen or as enemy fighters at times. In contrast to the persistent universe, the online component is not essential and so it can be played offline. Playtime, scope, and content is unknown.

Q. What is the gameplay like?
A. Star Citizen will feature gameplay similar to the original Wing Commander and Privateer. Explore with interstellar travel in many different kinds of ships, build a corporate empire, become a mercenary or a freelancing merchant, become a pirate and engage in ship to ship battles with other players and board ships for FPS-like engagements, engage with hostile and allied foreign races. Join a clan/guild/corporation/network and build friendships. It's completely open ended, what happens in the game is completely up to you and the other players that inhabit the universe. Massive amounts of players and millions of NPCs inhabit the universe, going about whatever it is they do, existing together in a free-form, ever evolving universe that allows you to do anything that's possible with the tools you find.

Q. What will the combat be like?
A. The game will be first person (with an option for third person, but with little/no tactical awareness, purely for vanity). Most ships will be armed, with options for offense and defense, to engage in ship to ship combat with other vessels, which can be controlled by both players and NPCs, though fighting in UEE space without a warrant for a bounty will land you in serious trouble. There will be single crew fighters, multi crew exploration/mercantile vessels, and capital ships, escorts, carriers, frigates, etc that require large crews to operate and could be capable of carrying many fighters within them. Ships can be disabled and boarded, in which case the perpetrator can dock and attempt to take over the ship through FPS combat.

Q. How will exploration work?
A. There will be over 100 charted or uncharted systems in the SC universe at launch, each one connected to others via a "jump point", a point that allows ships to to engage in FTL travel between vastly separated destinations. For the uncharted systems, you can discover new jump points and, if you can successfully navigate them, you can inform the UEE of their existence and have it named after you, or keep the info to yourself and to others you wish to share it with. Ship fuel is not infinite, you will need to collect fuel as you go from stations, tanker ships, or directly from gas giants. As for what's out there for you to find in systems, you'll have to discover those things for yourself.

Q. Whats the end-game goal?
A. Per CR: "There isn't a "win" in Star Citizen, nor even an end game - it's a living universe - just like in life the definition of "win" or "lose" is up to you. Some people consider themselves winners by acquiring wealth, or by their prowess in an athletic pursuit, others by achieving great things, others measure their success by how much they make other people's lives better. I see the same dynamic being the case in Star Citizen - everyone will have different definitions of what they consider winning or their objective in the game." There is no level or XP system.

Q. What happens when I log out?
A. Planets, stations, and other docking points act as "save points", there it is safe to log out without repercussion. Your ship will be safe and you lose nothing for being logged out for any amount of time. If you log out while in flight your ship will not disappear, it will still exist in the PU and will be at the mercy of whatever's out there, the auto pilot or a friend can try to take it in to the nearest docking station to save, but if it gets destroyed while you're logged out you will lose your ship and whatever was onboard sans insurance. If you're out in deep space exploring there will be an option to go into some sort of hibernation mode.

Q. How will death be handled?
A. In the final game, if you manage to eject from your vessel and your body can be recovered by automated systems or by other players, it can be revived, but eventually your character will begin degenerating after each death, eventually becoming unrevivable and will finally die. Destroying an escape pod is possible, but it is an extreme offense in UEE space, a large bounty will be placed on the killer and they will not be able to operate in UEE space without being persecuted. When creating a character you will name a next of kin, you will become that person after your death, attend your past character's funeral, inherit some of your past character's property, and continue the game. For a very in-depth look at this system, read Robert's write-up about it.
For ships there will be an insurance system, in which you pay (with in-game credits) a menial amount to insure your hull or cargo. If your ship is destroyed in an area that your insurance plan covers its hull and/or cargo will be replaced, but not instantly. Whatever was in your ship may be destroyed (including you) or will survive to be scavenged by whoever destroyed it.

Q. How do the servers work?
A. In Star Citizen there is going to be one persistent universe server that everyone exists on. So you will never be separated from your friends, and if you want you’ll be able to meet up and adventure together. A detailed write-up about this is available here, but be aware a lot of specific information in this article is outdated.
There will also be privately hosted servers (projected <24 player count), which will have modding support and a limited version of the full game universe.

Q. How does the naming system work?
A. Login name is private, Handle is your permanent, unique identifier used for tracking all of your identities, Community Moniker is your public, non-unique, changeable forum display name, and ingame each of your characters may each have a non-unique name. The game systems (friends list, etc) identifies users by their unique Handle, but in-game you will only see their character name unless you have the technology to scan for a player's handle (which will be possible to defend against) or you already know their handle. You may have multiple ingame characters.

Q. Hardware support?
A. Oculus Rift, HOTAS systems, KB/M, gamepads, multi monitor setups, Track IR, and more. Support to any of these may not be fully functional or available at all as part of these alpha tests.

Q. What is PBR?
A. Physically Based Rendering entails using a library of materials (containing textures, effects, shaders, lighting characteristics, etc) to define surfaces rather than a traditional texturing pipeline in which each individual texture would define the characteristics of each individual asset, e.g. adding light/dark variations, ambient occlusions, false depth information to the texture itself. So for example you would have a material that defines what titanium looks like and how it reacts to light, and then in every instance of titanium being used throughout all of the assets of the game, the same titanium material will be used. In the end it practically means it's just a different way of approaching the texture/material pipeline that should make everything look more compelling and cohesive.

These are my own words and I'm not an engineer, my experience is with concept art/design, so while I may get the high level concept of it I can't say how it actually works. For a more technical/accurate explanation you can read more from people who actually know what they're talking about, e.g. this article from Marmoset.

Q. I'm concerned about the effects of buying ships with money, how will that be handled?
A. The ship package prices available during the backing period are not necessarily related to the in-game worth of the ship, they are a reward for backing with different sums of money. The game is being balanced around a "rock/paper/scissors" approach, and each ship is roll based rather than a direct upgrade to another; for instance the starting Aurora (a small single-seat merchant and defense vessel) can't be replaced by the Idris (an extremely large capital ship that has many turrets and offense/defense capabilities, but requires a crew of 10 to operate). Star Citizen is about the journey, figuring out how you want to play, who you want to be, and working to fulfill your goals by earning appropriate gear and ships, simply buying the most expensive ship will net you no direct advantage over everyone in the vast reaches of the galaxy. People being able to buy these things now, though, means that when the game launches it will not rely on exploiting players with heavy monetization techniques and the game will be delivered free of the molestations of publishers or private investors modifying the game to their will.

Q. Will there be a NDA for the Alpha?
A. No. You are free to talk about and show the game, but remember that the game is in active development, many things will be broken, there will be bugs, there will be issues, there will be things missing, there will be <problem you hate the most/>, and publicly damaging the image of Star Citizen based solely on work in progress content is not appreciated. The hangar module itself is a very small part of a big game and it is not representative of the whole game. Wait for the live release if you are expecting a solid experience.

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Hangar config file: ...\StarCitizen\CitizenClient\Data\game.cfg

Q. What are the system requirements?
A. 8gb RAM, GTX 400 or Radeon 5000 series GPU (DX11 required), and a CPU with a minimum of 4 threads are the baseline components, as well as a 64bit OS install. Recent, high performance hardware is targeted: recommended specs are 8gb RAM, GTX 670, i5 2500k, or newer of equivalent class/brand.

Why can't I set my desired display resolution?
The game currently shows a list of preset resolutions instead of automatically detecting a list of possible resolutions, so if you lose your native resolution you cannot reset it directly. To set a custom resolution, open game.cfg and add the following two lines:

Code:
r_width = 2560
r_height = 1440

Change 2560 and 1440 to your desired pixel dimensions.

Why doesn't it run well on my machine?
This is an extremely early preview of the game. There is no optimization work done to it. Optimization is one of the last steps in constructing a game because it depends on a relatively stable platform to optimize upon, and SC currently very well before that point. While performance will get better over time, do not expect a well optimized game until 2015, but then the game is targeting running well on the hardware to be released in 2015 and is overall being designed to push the boundaries of PC hardware, not pursuing simply the biggest audience.

Is it possible to try out the hangar module even though I don't have a DirectX 11 GPU?
Yes, read this post.

The module fails to start for me
Check this post to see if there is a solution for your symptoms

General Tweaks
add what you want to game.cfg
Code:
cl_fov = 90

r_FullscreenWindow = 1
-- fullscreen windowed mode, pressing alt-tab or esc will free the cursor to interact with other windows while keeping the game up

r_hdrbloomratio = 0.07
-- reduces the bloom effect; towards 0 reduces the effect, 0 is off, 0.15 is default

r_motionblur = 0
-- disables motion blur, 2 is default

r_ChromaticAberration = 0
-- disable chromatic aberration

sys_maxfps = 30
-- set a frames per second cap

A more complete list is available here
 

Smiley90

Stop shitting on my team. Start shitting on my finger.
server keeping up at 3MB/s and some fantastic music playing on the launcher

The music is pretty fantastic, agreed. The track's a bit short, but then usually patcher downloads shouldn't be this large, too. :p
 

Danthrax

Batteries the CRISIS!
I have to work for another six hours =(

But at least my girlfriend is awesome enough to download it for me at home so I can walk in the door, grab a beer and boot it up!

My Hornet and Aurora XL are waiting patiently until then.
 

Smiley90

Stop shitting on my team. Start shitting on my finger.
Apparently the Cutlass is there... as a miniature model LOL. Not the full thing.

20mins left to download -sigh-

EDIT: Beaten
 
Squadron 42 Module [Mid 2014]

Really? That's fantastic, I had thought that was meant for release at the end of 2014. I can't wait to get my hands on it!

The hanger seems like a cool idea to get to see a piece of the game in action, I get to see my lonely ship in a hanger just begging for some "friends".
 
Logged in, have to migrate account... my handle has to be different than my login ID? The hell? I would have used a different login ID from the get go then :\
 

Smiley90

Stop shitting on my team. Start shitting on my finger.
I'm watching a stream of the hangar WHILE downloading a hangar :lol

Most surprising thing so far is that the back of the Aurora isn't a cargo bay, but a bed? apparently?
 

Smiley90

Stop shitting on my team. Start shitting on my finger.
Same... The cutlass is so expensive but sounds so awesome. Its so big it comes with a mini fighter ship that is also flyable!

hu? I don't think the cutlass does. Do you mean the Constellation? I know the constellation comes with the smaller P52 fighter thing.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Whoa, this is starting today? I will download this with the force of a thousand suns (once I dig up my login information). I think I went for one of the intermediate tier packages so I don't know if I will actually have any ship though, lol.
 
Whoa, this is starting today? I will download this with the force of a thousand suns (once I dig up my login information). I think I went for one of the intermediate tier packages so I don't know if I will actually have any ship though, lol.

You totally have a ship.

The way they set up the download process makes it very explicit after you logged in.

Great design on everything here and impressive download speeds (maxed my connection).
 

Marven

Member
This is going to make me want to buy more ships.. i know it :(

Same here. That list of ships on the hanger page is taunting me. Must..resist.

Edit: And I didn't look at the prices of those other ships until now. Holy crap. Ya, I'm cool with the Aurora for now.
 

akira28

Member
dammit...I love Wing Commander.

but I loved MechWarrior too....

But this is Chris Roberts, I can trust him.

Can't I?
 

MrBig

Member
The Constellation ship is $225 real dollars. Did I read that right?

The objective with buying ships is to fund SC. The dollar value doesn't necessarily relate to the in-game value. The ability to purchase ships directly with money will disappear when the funding period is over.
 

epmode

Member
Does anyone know a way to manually set the resolution? The game doesn't have my native resolution as an option and I can't find anything in the config files. I suspect that this information is in one of those encrypted XML files but I don't know how to get at it.
 
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