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

Combination of over-reach and under-funding is a recipe for wipe-out. I hope it comes to pass, in some form or another, but I’m not getting excited about it. I’m jaded on this stuff.

I’m sure they’ll make it happen in one form or another. Bare minimum they seem to have a plan for a solid movie like storyline for singleplayer/ co-op, probably could make that happen on the next gen consoles as well as pc I would imagine if the bigger plan fails. I have faith.

“Hardback bound 42-page Engineering Manual for Modders”
is buried in there so maybe

w0dk4 wrote:
And that modding handbook …

lets hope that it wont be just a CE-blueprint-artbook

The definetly have my support i am gonna buy Wingnut package

Btw its not just military based you will be able to be anyone u think pirate, mercenary, bounty hunter, trader, explorer just like freelancer. So if you are really true freelancer fan you wont hesitate to support tis and give your pledge. Open your wallets boys and become hero we signed many petitions for next freelancer sequel now its time we show how bad we want it.

So… I have some questions:

When you made the pledge which one did you choose?
-White Citizen
-Green Citizen
-Bronze Citizen
-Silver Citizen
-Gold Citizen
or are there even folks among us going Platinum and Titanium?

And how are the Golden Tickets related to this? If I had the cash I would have gone with the Freelancer package (Bronze citizen) but I’m seriously considering the Green Citizen Card because of:
*Digital game soundtrack
*Digital map of the game universe
*Digital 42-page Star Citizens manual

And something tells me the digital map and Galactapedia are somehow related… That being said, it looks like they will reach their pledge goal well in time. I check yesterday and it was at $600,000. Now it’s at $700,000. I hope this is a steady stream of money for another week. That would put them in a safe spot.

*I just noticed this:

“- Yes, you will be able to upgrade your pledge.”
Well then, I will go with the Green Citizen and hopefully upgrade my way to Freelancer/Bronze Citizen by November. :lol:

Next step: Figuring out how to raise the money to run a game like that one. :lol:

The Cinematics trailer looks amazing, but except the FL02 on the hull the rest of the video is a Wing Commander homage.

If this one takes a parallel niche along freelancer for me it’s gonna be good, but if doesn’t it’s gonna be amazing! Cuz freelancer will remain inimitable :x

I won’t be believing in this game, too early, especially front strongly marked MMO propaganda. They can just waste all their resources for making another web-based entertainment application like thousands around and nothing for old-school players will be left. Twony-fourteen will show.

Sorry for krookiz-crooked english

I’m in doubt in Freelancer pledge because i don’t know whats really in it.

Just preordered

For me not enough.

Say, am I reading the stretch goals wrong, or will the online persistent part only happen if the 5.000.000$ goal is met?
“Star Citizens will receive access to the Wing Commander/Star Citizen universe for on-line persistent play (30 months)” only appearing at stretch goal 3 can be interpreted several ways, so it would be good to know if anyone has more info on this. After all, I didn’t watch all the videos and stuff.

Funny that the “Creation of Professional Mod Tools provided free to players” will only happen at four million though. Ah well, it’s not like Freelancer had any bundled with the game.

Oh, and WhiskasTM: please note that MMO does not equal being a browser-based game. They did say the game will use the CryTek engine, so you can rule that out.

What I find unsettling here is: what the hell do you guys think? That Freelancer’s going to survive forever? That you’ll always have full servers to play on? Most servers are dead, the few remaining are not growing anymore. We’ve been extending the life of the game for years, but even our best efforts are no more sufficient.

This game will be the final nail in the coffin of Freelancer whichever way it pans out. That I can guarantee. You should start thinking about this as the spiritual successor to Freelancer and not as a new DarkStar One.

It first has to prove to be successful. A few shiny graphics don’t make a good game yet (see Black Prophecy) and Chris Roberts is no guarantee for success (see his failure at Freelancer in 2001 or some of his movies).
Such high detail projects (as he is doing now) mostly have two things in common: performance problems and lag.
So unless this game comes delivered with a high end PC for free and fast internet connection a large amount of Freelancer players will not be able to play it (or only in a very limited way).

I also would doubt that one server can handle the game and thousands of players… it is more likely that they go for a multi-server solution… which in the end limits private servers and modding.

Private servers will have a similar cap to current FL servers. I don’t see that as a problem, merely a technical limitation that we are all fully aware of. I wouldn’t expect Roberts to do magic.

Graphics are scalable, and CryEngine 3 is a lot better in that regard than it used to be. You can run Crysis 2 on a variety of hardware platforms and I expect this to be the same. Will you be able to play it on a PC made 6 years ago? Probably not, but nor can you play any modern title anyway.

Also, a large amount of Freelancer players means what, a few hundreds? If you’ve not upgraded your computer in that time, well you shouldn’t expect to be playing new releases. Regardless, that kind of number is negligible for a new release with sales numbers in the tens of thousands at the very least. FL’s been held back by the myth that many people can’t run graphically intensive stuff so we have to step down the visuals of mods and new games. Bullshit.

Finally, nothing I’ve seen in that video makes me feel that the game would be any more intensive on networking than before. I mean, you do realize number of polygons has no impact on network performance, right? The server’s not streaming you the models in real time… All that matters is positions, orientations and interactions, which aren’t more complex than FL but benefit from more modern network stacks. If you can play FL with your current connection, I don’t see why you couldn’t play SC.

Once the news broke about Chris new space sim I decided to revisit the good old Lancers Reactor.
My one source of everything Freelancer back in the day.
I haven’t played it in years but I had one hell of a time in that game.

Anyway guys. The more I read and watch interviews with Chris the more excited I am about this new project.

He is trying to do the space sim of our dreams but he really needs money to reach those high goals.

On top of a campaign similar to Wing Commander,
we will have an open universe much like Freelancer, with support for third party servers but also with one main one if people wish to play on the official one.
On top of this Chris wants to use the power of the modding community much like it was used in Freelancer.
The third party servers will be able to go crazy with the modding stuff. And the official one will accept certain mods if they indeed fit into the universe.
Watch the interviews he has given on Youtube and visit the website where he tries to explain everything in detail.

In the “Streght goals” he explains in detail what he wants to do with the extra money.
I think this could be a hit. And the tech he has shown really seams promising.

IF you guys love space sims I see no other greater project to put your money in than this one.

FriendlyFire wrote:
…
That Freelancer’s going to survive forever?
…

At rights of the joke but… if you will not see game that better then FL for you it will survive forever (speaking like Chris in his mail ‘personally to all’)

No you are right… the number of polygons clearly has nothing to do with the traffic… thats a client side problem.
But the detail grade has major impact on server performance as hit detection needs to be calculated and that is already a major performance problem in FL. Sure they can build simple hitboxes similar to the surs that we have in FL but i doubt that this makes much sense seeing the scale of the ships, their detail grade and of course the need to have exact hit detection on such large objects (not just a vague “bump here, bump there” behaviour.

The traffic is just of interest when you take into consideration how many details have to be synchronized between server and client.
1000 players cause of course more traffic than 100 players… large battles cause more traffic, players running around on stations cause more traffic, dynamic economy causes more traffic, a dynamic universe (if included) will cause alot more traffic.
However… the bottle-neck is not the traffic… the bottle-neck will always be the server performance.
And if players can play on the big server… why should they join the small ones which “only” the limited player amounts and limited content?

The client performance is a topic that probably is no problem at all (dunno)… but the feedback I got over the years from many players is that they dont have newest hardware (which in some cases is the reason why they stick to FL).
Just take a look at the successful online games with hundred-thousand or even millions of players. That are games with very minimalistic system requirements… and these games are by far more successful than the shiny new games that were released in the past few years.

Performance and gameplay decides if a game is successful, not the number of polygons on the screen.
Gameplay wise Chris Roberts has not shown that much… everything he presented so far as something “new and revolutionary” has in one or another form existed already.
Physics driven flight model -> Jumpgate RSI
Fancy moving thrusters -> Wing Commander Prophecy, Starlancer, various other games
Realtime economy -> Jumpgate
Cockpit animations -> practically every space sim released during the past years

There is nothing new actually, except that you pay for the game before you know what it will actually be like. Thats clearly new.

You have brought it to the point, we should not expect magic… unfortunately people have such expectations. And while they do so they are blind for everything else… including related problems and difficulties.
I hope that this games will be a major success but Id like to stay with my feet on the ground and keep a realistic view on this development instead of getting over-excited about a few shown graphics.
At the same time I also hope that there will be an alternative at hands IF the new Chris Roberts game wont lead to the wanted success or cant be played by many players (it never was a good idea to stake everything on one card).