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

Chris doesn’t want to use Kickstarter that’s why he implemented the Kickstarter features into his own page.

Here’s a question? Did anyone ask if he knew where FL source code is or what tools they use in freelancer are/ if he has any laying around, to help us out? I’m pretty sure Microsoft absorbed the source code, but it never hurts to ask.

I guess in a few years we know more. My worries remain for now since I heard similar statements about Freelancer ages ago. However, for me its time to let this topic drop and concentrate again on more important topics like modding FL.

From arecent interview with Chris Roberts (see http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/chris-roberts-answers-your-question/

The Wing Commander games didn’t allow much content creation, but Freelancer continues to flourish because of mods. What is your position on user-created content?

Absolutely for it! I love what the Freelancer community has done, and I’m impressed what other communities like the Skyrim or Team Fortress achieve with good tools. There’s a lot of talent and creativity out there and I fully intend to enable it and support it in my new game.

And another one from FAQ (see http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/draft-faq/)

How will modding work?

Players will be given full control of their game! When operating private servers, players will be able and encouraged to mod the game. It doesn’t stop there, though: we hope to institute a ‘mod approval’ process that will allow the best of the best player created ships and other additions to be integrated into the central persistent world as well.

Something someone posted, probably relevant - or you can shoot it full of holes too.

Posted by another user on the RSI forum (Flashpoint) but I believe this is something all the Cynics should read.
……

I posted this as a reply on another thread, as it suddenly dawned on me what the success or failure of this game actually means.
I thought it might be good to give it its own thread…

I have a simple question for you lot: Do you like space sims? Yes or no?

If the answer is yes, be that the Wing Commander style or the Freelancer/Privateer style, then you MUST back this game.
Why?
Remember this…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZfURi4it5M

Look at the words at the beginning of that trailer and remind yourself how long it has been since the last AAA space sim.
Remember how many industry ‘experts’ said it was a dead genre. Remember how many times you’ve said to yourself, friends or forums that you’d kill for a new AAA space sim.

This game is a challenge to those experts. It’s a blatant ‘prove you wrong’ piece and if it fails, a thousand developers, publishers and ‘experts’ will shake their heads and smugly say ‘We told you so’, and then the space sim WILL truly be dead.

If you don’t back this now (and remember that a pledge of just $30 gets you the finished game. How cheap is that???) for whatever reason you choose to dig up, if you don’t back it because the Wing Commander element comes before the Freelancer element or because the game might not be 100% exactly containing everything you exactly want, if you just let everyone else do it, then you lose the right to complain about no more space sims.
If Squadron 42 is a massive success, then Star Citizen will be a success like the PC has never seen. If this happens, there will be new space sims springing up all over the place. So even if Star Citizen ends up not quite doing what you wanted, the chances of someone else doing it increase exponentially.

IF THIS IS A SUCCESS THERE MOST PROBABLY WILL BE THE FABLED FREESPACE 3 (A point which I am about to make to the SCP forums).

This is not 23 days to make this game viable, this is 23 days to save our genre.
If you don’t help to do it, you have nobody else to blame.
If we don’t do it, who will?

I know there are cynics amongst the midst - the “it’s not Freelancer 2” folks, the “I don’t think he can do it” folks and the “argh it’ll interfere with my own dreams” folks.

Sadly being a cynic is almost a self fulfilling prophecy - if everyone was one. If no-one pledged money, then it’d go nowhere. Lastly, with enough coverage, we may well see the “death knell” of the genre. I hope some people’s enthusiasm isn’t negatively affected by others derision. Things will have their supporters, detractors, cynics, sceptics, fan boys etc. Make your own mind up, don’t be put off by criticisms - especially if they’re criticisms from sectors I’d label as “non professional” (i.e. those actively involved in development, or having extensive knowledge of, what is required to achieve his claims)

p.s. Related to hitboxes and so on. FPS games generally have relatively simple models and scenery I would admit. Yet they manage 50 odd players running around blatting weapons and more without any lag issues. Does that instantly translate to Space? Not really, but rest assured that clever folks can make many optimisations - and we’re talking 10 years since FL. The computational power increase is… insane.

With FL, a lot of “lag” was graphical - during big battles.

And yes, you can use “big” hitboxes too - because if something doesn’t intersect that hitbox, you have zero need to perform further calculations. If it does, then you can start calculating what it hits, or whether it actually misses.

For all the criticisms being levied I’d ask what are the qualifications to be in a position to really offer an insight into the troubles being faced. For instance, hosting for a persistent universe won’t be on a single box you know… nor on your home network either.

p.s.s Need to clarify. Not saying people shouldn’t be cynical - that’s their prerogative. What I am saying is that unless the cynics are offering up a reasonable base from which they’re cynicism is borne (if being mentioned) you should be simply not take what they’re saying as truth.

Is that a threat?

So if it fails all those who didnt supported it have to be accused. Sure thats the thing how it works nowadays. I tend to like the space genre.

But honestly I support what i like to support and not because someone tends to accuse me that i am guilty if a thing fails or not. What happens if it fails? There will be a next trial of someone else. Earth does not stop rotating - and there are many centuries left on this earth to bring other space sims or try it

If its a success then well - congratulations. All involved deserved it then. And they shall have fun and enjoy it!

Sometimes its just as easy as that. Postings like the one Chips quoted wont bring me any closer to fund this project - more likely the other way round. They shall convince fund givers and not beg for it.

What wonders me a bit - why in gods name shall this game make everything different than all the others who failed until now? Just because Chris Roberts is involved? Lets assume the project reaches the total sum it requires - it still could fail. Who says it will be a success if all funds could be collected?

Looks like the crowd-funding total has just passed 1 mil, half way in less than a third of the time.

That should be enough to convince the undecided and maybe even the cynics ;).

I think we tend to look at this as an ambitious FL mod being assembled by a bunch of inexperienced coders in their spare time. In actual fact it’s a business venture that has to have been planned and researched thoroughly before it’s green lighted, Chris Roberts and his backers intend to profit from this game but if it gets me a new space sim they deserve it!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen

Isn’t it also cynic to say that the genre is dead while during the past 10 years +20 games of this kind were released? Sure, the space sim genre is not main stream (it actually never was)… but it is not dead at all.
There are currently 28 space sims in development (star citicen included). If Chris Roberts develops his game or not is not important and to save the genre is not required at all. Such comments were just respectless to every game developer which worked and released space sims during the past years while Chris Roberts did nothing for the genre in that time.

I also would disagree with the conclusion mentioned in that quote above. IF star citizen becomes a major success then all small space sim projects practically will die out. Quoting FF:

What I find unsettling here is: what the hell do you guys think? That Freelancer’s going to survive forever?

… same practically applies to the rest of the space sims sooner or later.
New projects will have major problems to establish because in order to be successful they would need the same amount of support, time and money that Star citizen has… and that with the disadvantage of not having a famous name (Chris Roberts) in the team.

You SWAT guys are always focussing on the negative mind aren’t you lol. I have to agree with one thing you point out though, there are a shed load of space games on kickstarter, some funded, so this is far from the live or die situation some would make you believe it is.

I’m itching to pledge for the freelancer ship, but I still want to see more first. Plenty of time left.

Not really focusing on the negative. I just try to weight what has been given. And just an outline of what is planned. A especially rendered trailer, some nice pictures are just what they are. All of what was done for BP too.

It didnt raise (dunno unfortunate) a WOW effect for me, CRAZY a new game that everything else now developed would make looking bad thing^^ For me its just a game in development - i admit i follow its progress - but actually thats all and its not the only game that gets my attention in this matter.

Well, we are focusing on diversity and don’t let a shiny light at the horizon blind us. If that is negative in your eyes then ok, fine.

Damn it OP, even when I put lol on the end, you still take it seriously. Bloody Germans, there’s no hope!

I, however, fully agree with Chips. This project could be a return to fame for space sims, whether you want to believe that or not. It’s the first space sim in a long, long time that has garnered widespread media attention across the entire gaming scene.

You can talk about the bazillion Kickstarter space sims, but the truth is that many of them are orders of magnitude smaller in scope and visibility than Star Citizen. I’m not personally convinced that SC is the game I want (far from it, even), but I’m willing to back it for the sake of the genre.

If it succeeds, it will be a wake-up call to the industry, showing that space sims can still be made even today. If it fails, space sims will get to survive, barely, away from the spotlight as they have for the past decade.

@OP: 20 games in the past ten years is a dead genre. No other genre has put out so few games in such a long period of time, and if you’re still using that list I saw you trotting about, there’s like a quarter of those “games” that are mods for FS2Open or X expansions.

But hey, honestly, I did not expect anything else coming from you. I also know I won’t convince you. I’m just attempting to stem the utter negativity that’s exuding from every post you’re writing.

wish i had the money to give a big wad, but i wont before the date ends to give anything. makes me sad

This is an excerpt of the Freelancer review from Gamespot.
http://www.gamespot.com/freelancer/reviews/freelancer-review-2912041/

When Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts announced that he was leaving Origin Systems, fans of his games were concerned that he had abandoned the space simulation genre. In 1999, those concerns were replaced with eager anticipation when Roberts announced that his next game, Freelancer, would be one of the most ambitious space simulations yet. But then Roberts left the project, and gradually several of its more innovative features were scaled down or dropped altogether while its target release date was constantly postponed. Freelancer has finally arrived, and while it’s not the revolutionary title it initially promised to be, it delivers the exact combination of addictive and accessible gameplay that the genre has needed for a long time.

Gives me a mixed feeling of deja vu and foreshadowing. Let’s just hope Roberts has learned from the past and his ambitions will turn into reality. I can already tell that they will miss the deadline. No way they can finish all of it in 2 years unless they finished major components of the game mechanics for the open world part by now.

What do you guys think about the fact that the story does not play in the Freelancer universe? I think it’s good and bad. First of all as much as I enjoyed Freelancer, the story was kinda weird. On the other hand, the website has pages and pages of story and we’ll have no other choice but suck it all in to get an idea about the new universe. It will take a while to learn everything.

IF 20 games (and I mean games, not just mods) are a dead genre then everything except First Person Shooters or Real Time Strategy is dead with the difference that the people from the other genre games dont cry that much.

And if you say that FS2Open games or the various X games are nothing but mods then in conclusion Star Citizen is just another crysis mod too. That also means that every game based on the source engine is just a Halflife2 mod. That would be equal judgement based on game engines.

Timmy, yeah… hmm…
did see the lol but obviously ignored it, bad habit.

Seriously?

I’m sorry but I don’t have time to debunk such bullshit.