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

I’m with Chips and FF here.

I don’t care what you think about the project. This is the best shot the space sim genre has gotten in the past ten years for a revival.

I’ve often wondered to myself what it would take to bring back the space sim genre. Not necessarily in the spotlight mind you, but visible enough that it’s a real genre that people make games for. A genre that people talk about and can find the funding to make large AAA games with. A genre about as accepted and diverse as the racing game.

My conclusion was always that it would take one of two things. Either somebody highly visible comes out of nowhere with a lot of money and strong marketing, or a respectable and established studio that can afford to take a big loss decides to do something radical and risk making a AAA space sim.

In a bizarre twist of fates, the first scenario is happening right now in front of us. This is a project with a big name behind it, with a big and flashy enough demo to wow the average consumer, and potentially with the money to even attempt something on the scale of a AAA space sim. This is our chance. I don’t care what you think about Chris Roberts, his reputation, or Star Citizen itself. If this game fails, we won’t get another shot at this for who knows how long.

THAT is why I’m backing this. THAT is why I support this game. Am I worried that Roberts could be pulling a Peter Molyneux? Absolutely, but this is a chance I’m willing to take. If nobody takes that chance, then we are guaranteed to get nothing, and you can rest easy in your knowledge that your cynicism was rewarded.

Why485 wrote:

THAT is why I’m backing this. THAT is why I support this game. Am I worried that Roberts could be pulling a Peter Molyneux? Absolutely, but this is a chance I’m willing to take. If nobody takes that chance, then we are guaranteed to get nothing, and you can rest easy in your knowledge that your cynicism was rewarded.

Completely agree with this post! Well said!

What he said! LOL

Risking my £20/$30 is a price worth paying for something I want to play, after all what space sim released in the last ten years other than FL deserves our attention!

NOT being a SMART A$$ I can tell only one thing.
Can’t wait to see this game how ever it may look like in the end !
After all, this game will be slightly (I believe) adjusted by players and their mass demands (which maybe some will not like) by the fact they support its development.
Shame I have no option to donate any cash from my country (even I had some), and most likely, in beginning, youtube will be my experience how it feels like playing it

After all, dont see a reason why we all cant be happy that its moving, after years of waiting, in some direction, either good or bad - doesnt matter!

Oh hey look a thread on the Starport with OP posting in it, and suddenly everyone is at each other’s throats.

Gentlemen, get at my throat now, for I am about to throw controversial things in here.

The space sim genre is very unpopular, inactive, and to many players even unknown. Now, that there are still space sim games produced doesn’t change the fact that the genre is more or less dead.

On the other hand, realising this may sure indicate a healthy perception, but only as far as the facts go. To say there is no chance of revival is a self-fulfilling prophecy and not one of those any of us would be happy to face.

As to Freelancer: It is about time we grow up and stop working toward any gain. We may drag about a hundred players into it, we may bring some back or hold some for a few more years. Expecting more is futile and if the expectation is our reason to work, than we either should start looking for a better reason or stop working.

That being said, thank you, Why. And while I disagree with what Bob implies with his latest post (there was trouble with this thread sure before OP jumped in), I think I can extract a secondary message there. We probably wouldn’t be at each other’s throats if those of us who do make the difference would be here because they still (or at all) enjoy it.

I tried to restrain myself from posting in here. I just couldn’t bear looking at it going down that dirty old road again.

Crowdfunding pretty much ensures anyone can have a crack at making anything they want anytime they want now. I’ll back this game, but I wont be doing it cos I’m scared it might mean the death of a genre, I could care less, I’ll do it because I think I might like to play it. This is business, and he’s lucky enough to be doing a job he likes, he’s not doing anyone any favours.

this is a large Community - faced mainly on one Space Sim and it is (in my eyes) a successfull Community which covered a lot of things which went worse to the good of those who likes to play FL.

Also after many years this game is still active.

Now their seems to be someone bringing a wake up call into the genre again. If i remember correct, when i first started to play FL in 2003, it technically wasn’t the best Space Sim but it survied - until now.

There was a few Games lately trying to start a space sim, which failed but having a look to eve shows an example of a really successfull Space Sim - shows: their is a base of potential customers and even a base of loyal players (everyone of us for example).

Pointless imO to crashtalk an attempt for doing something down instead of helping to keep it upgiving a chance to it.

Better:

Let’s have a look,
offer help if wanted,
try to promote it on your sites
and with luck we have a follower of our game.

Additional to this Chris Roberts is on it - the chance of a better start for this Game Type.

I’m going to make a new topic. Hopefully someone will read this to.

Perhaps many still haven’t received the news. Star Citizen has now more than $3 million in crowdfunding. But it is stil a bit far from what Chris would want to have. $4 million would open up a lot more options.
For starters much better mod tools.
I was a very active Freelancer player and if anythings user created mods are what has made this game live long past it’s “dated” graphics.
This community still exists because someone had the vision to do some things right. That someone was Chris Roberts

We don’t talk about it but he was responsible for making the first open universe multiplayer space sim. Freelancer to be in fact.
It’s because of him that we have a space sim game where space does not fell empty. It has “terrain” so to speak.

And he wants to make yet another more ambitious space sim.
With everything that made Freelancer popular. Mods, multiplayer, open universe and so on.

Their making a real effort. So much so that companies like NVIDIA, Alienware and so on have given them some “toys” for him to offer us.
We get a chance of winning NVIDIA GTX 680, a top of the line Alienware computer, Oculus Rift and so on the more people we get to pledge.

So come on guys. Help this project. It is not called “Freelancer 2”. But it is the spiritual successor of Freelancer.

Well, now we’ve been given the info I’ve been waiting for, which was how they intend to handle the multiplayer experience and instancing, I think there’s a fair chance it’s going to suck. Sounds too similar to how they handled it in black prophecy, bubbles of activity with no exploration or manual flight in between.

Screw that, glad I was patient for once and didn’t buy into all the hype and rediculous comments about how this would decide the fate of space sims.

I’m sure I’ll very much enjoy the single player story experience, but really glad I didn’t pledge for a load of multiplayer equipment that I might never appreciate.

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.