[Star Citizen News]Chris Roberts announces new Space Sim "Star Citizen"

They’ve mentioned that you could actually find new jumps and name them after you. That kinda implies there’s going to be

1. A fair amount of exploration;
2. A fair amount of systems;
3. Finding new jumps will be non-trivial.

Well, everyone slated black prophecy for using this method, and rightly so considering how boring it became. If you think it will be better simply because it’s being done by chris roberts, then good for you, but black prophecy looked a hundred times better than freelancer, yet still flopped because you couldn’t explore.

FF, think about it, all he’s really saying is that the jump will show up as an anomally or something on your nav map when you jump past it, in other words another bubble or instance which contains a pilotable jump point.

Unless there is a jump point, planet, base, asteroid belt, or something else on your map, the instance will not exist, which is why everyone not in an instance will be on the global server.

I think Roberts made a mistake in talking about the back-end, really. People are making a mountain of a molehill.

instancing means no dynamic solar object creation like player owned bases or other unique objects.

I used a straight forward solution for techdemo: zone server processes some amount of systems which can be adjusted that allows to change environment in any way. Ofcourse such approach wont handle 9000 players at once nor instancing would help much here.

Why not? Instancing doesn’t preclude syncing static objects across instances. All it means is compartmentalizing players so that the network load is manageable.

FriendlyFire wrote:
Why not? Instancing doesn’t preclude syncing static objects across instances. All it means is compartmentalizing players so that the network load is manageable.

“syncing static objects”
doesnt include destroyable player constructed bases for example, as it wont be possible to sync them across all instances.

w0dk4 wrote:
So Roberts talked about the instancing, what does that have anything to do with how exploration will work?

Because it tells me that they are likely to handle the game in the same way as black prophecy did, which I’ve no doubt you’ve played.

I think that they’ve just done an extremely good job of convincing people to part with their hard earned money for a product that doesn’t even fully exist in the makers eye yet, and they’ve walked straight into it like kids in a sweet shop buying ships and elektro skins without having any idea what they’re getting.

Call me negative, I’m just pissed off that people can milk money out of others just by talking a good talk with added spin.

What I’m pleased about though, is that it should have a great looking single player experience, all that time in the movie business and great artists should make for a masterpiece on the eye.

That’s the principle of Kickstarter, Timmy. Instead of having to hope and pray publishers will make the game you want, developers can go straight at you and ask “we want to do this, are you willing to fund us?”

Yes, there’s a lot more risk, but also a lot more potential reward. It’s not evil, it’s not milking, it’s a whole new funding method, and I honestly see it in a very good light. Publishers only pump Call of Duty clones, but Kickstarter projects range from everything between SC to new adventure games to Dungeon Keeper spiritual successors to whatever else you can imagine.

Having recently spent a ton of time in a MMO (not WoW. lol… LOTRO) the past year i can see this (instancing) being a good idea… but only as long as there is ample space in between to “get lost in” … as that’s the real magic of any big game.

I think Roberts is getting a bit ahead of himself with his predicted numbers though… But then again… he may have sights set firmly on competing against EVE & TOR… and in that case were not getting a space sim… but another MMO.

Im 100% fine with that… MMO’s are the future of multiplayer… it’s greed and badly designed pay for extra’s that ruin the fun in MMO’s… if they keep a tight hold on that (no flying freakin pink dragons that shoot panda’s… or somethin) they could do really well, in both the game, and the extra’s … imagine being able to buy a new paint job? (best system is earning cred ingame honestly) keep it cosmetic and not anything that gives any advantage and folks will sill buy it (for bling!) and nobody’s hurt on the “pay to win” ethos…

This… could work… for us and them.

They are absolutely milking the tits out of everyone

A lot of these poor people are handing over money for a load of slick sales pitch trash, and they’re making it look like taking candy from a baby. Only another quarter mill for a robot, only another half a mill for an extra ship, hundred grand for an extra system, really? Expensive game at that rate don’t you think. An extra million will get you monthly dev updates? WTF? You shouldn’t have to pay to be kept up to date on a game they should be pitching to you and the press anyway.

It’s all such utter bs. More money = better game, everyone gets that, but the tactics suck. You start off with your 30 bucks pre order of a game, then it’s 5 bucks for a skin, then another skin, and another, but you’ve no idea what the ship looks like, what the skin looks like, how the game will work…they can keep that up forever never having to disclose any real info and by the time you see the artwork the funding will be done and your money taken. Now they want you to start adding friends to your account like a freaking pyramid scheme.

These are the cheapest tricks in the book for taking peoples money and running off with it only nobody seems to be questioning any of it. Because his name is Roberts? He failed before, budgets, timescales, all of it.

Your average kickstarter project is for a few thousand, not millions, yet there’s no saying they will not take millions and give you back a game of frogger that doesn’t work right.

Like I say, I hope it’s really good, but I don’t like these tactics at all. Many must be secretly asking themselves these same questions.

Nobody has to pay for anything outside of the basic game.

Timmy51m wrote:
Many must be secretly asking themselves these same questions.

Well mate, we all ask ourselves the same questions (and more) but we’ve got hope that this might just be a game worth playing. Hope dies last. Either way, since with this game announcement I’ve seen a wave of new and old people getting interest in this game genre and in playing Freelancer, just look at how many people are playing Freelancer right now, the numbers almost doubled
Even I had plans on playing the new Syndicate game but after all this talk about spaceships and a new game being made, I got interested in Freelancer again and I HAD to play the vanilla campaign again one more time to see if I still get that wow-feeling when I unlock new ships and find new systems … and I did get that feeling, it’s incredible that a game’s campaign which I played dozens of times can still deliver the thrill of exploring and fighting or simply sightseeing.

Dont wanna ruffle any more feathers, I see a good argument on both sides, but heres what i think… for what its worth…

Recently i tried kerbal space program its a great little game where you design, build then try to launch your vehicles into space, orbit or go try land on the moon…anyways, they have a free demo download of an old version for people to try before they pay for the latest update and give those people free updates as each new version is released. The problem i guess is that people wont be buying the game twice so….

Chris Roberts has completed lots of projects now and i guess he knows how much funding is needed to accomplish the goals set, so i kinda get why they ask for cash for extras etc
There are lots of other game developers out there trying the same kind of thing and getting good results and others not so.

Anyhow, i’m still very excited by this development and will keep my eyes on it… still thumbs up here :pint:

If the authors want people to pay more, then it’s common practice to set incentives for them to do so. Nothing unusual about that, every crowdfunded project is doing it, so why wouldn’t RSI?

Timmy, I wouldn’t say that instancing is an evil thing that caused Black Prophecy to tank. In my opinion, it was due to a series of bad decisions, such as the staggering lack of new content after the short storyline (just reused stuff), and the very high grind factor.

Besides, think about this. Suppose Freelancer servers could run each and every system as a separate instance. Would that be visible to players? Most probably not. However, being able to run separate processes for them would be great, in my opinion.

Oh, and both Squadron 42 and Star Citizen are already funded, so nobody need worry about that. Even if the four million mark is not achieved, I’d still be willing to bet that they’ll release modding tools for the community some time down the road: it’s in their own interests to do so too, after all.

Well I’m amazed. I was certain that this was one of the most negative and cynical communities that I had ever come accross on the net. Almost always quick to judge, vaporware would be the average response to a project such as this in the past, if anyone was actually interested enough to make a response when a new game or project was announced.

So why the sudden change of attitude I wonder? What’s so different this time? Is it love for the man?

I got quite a bit of bro love for the fella.

Nah, actually, I agree with many of the ways he’s advertising/marketing this product. He’s attempting to get a grass root movement - getting his backers to donate to his cause early. I think it’s something that we needed in the space sim genre.

I’ve also been impressed by the videos they’ve produced showing great modeling/graphic work already. I’m excited to see what else they’ll show the SC community. Furthermore, I can’t wait to mod the game once that comes available. Actually having ready made modding tools…I can only imagine the possibilities!!