I remember during Kickstarter, SC fanboy like you saying ED was a scam because they have nothing to show, while SC had already a working prototype and a lot more content.
Funny how things change in time.
What are you talking about? I supported ED in KS - hell i even payed for the 200ÂŁ alpha.
Cry engine (âStar-engineâ) started development in 1999.
RSI has 300+ employees working on Star CitizenâŚ
6 Likes
It would be interesting to see how long an Infinity MMO would take to develop if it were to contain all the exact same features of SC (for comparison sake). IMO the only difference will be SC having to take longer due to adapting an existing engine.
Elite will eventually reach the same or similar feature set promised as SC but that will likely take another 2-3 years (assuming the new additions donât radically FUBAR its development). Again, a similar development time frame.
ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ
1 Like
Well, with access to similar levels of resources INS could have made a lot more progress. Being able to pay Keith and the art team to work full-time would have an immediate benefit. Iâd expect Flavien and Keith would grow INS pragmatically, avoiding hiring faster than they can get people up to speed with process. Theyâd have a mixture of a blessing and a curse in that having their own engine means they donât need to hire the engine devs wholesale to fix their engine, but on the other hand new hires will have no experience with the engine.
Things would probably go better on the art front, as proper investment can be made into VFX, SFX, and music.
A large portion of the money would then go into better infrastructure, and hiring cloud specialists to manage their Azure serves, which would make having an MMO a possibility.
Obviously, without that level of resource, the point is moot, because INS as it stands canât make an MMO
1 Like
Iâm not into MMO style gameplay any more. You can get hybrid types sure, but the hotkey ones just bore me to tears. As soon as you remove any kind of player skill from the game it stops being one, a game I mean. Its a spreadsheet with a fancy front end.
The first MMO I played that seemed to break that mould was Neocron. I was like âYou mean I actually have to AIM my attacks?â As a first person sci-fi MMO it was such a rush.
I donât think the term MMO is exclusive to RPG style gameplay. I see it more as a prefix to denote online persistence. Nowadays the latency issue is reduced which is allowing for more twitch style games to enter.
////////////// Just throwing a simple example in the case of battlescape that I learned over time is that if we go back to the 2010 tech demo, it was good enough and generated a good deal of hype (no matter how buggy the engine code would have been at that time) infinity battlescape kickstarter or game should have been launched with a single planet and multiplayer game mechanics integrated by 2011 as a minimum viable product. This would have made this game more famous and generated a good deal of funds and its development would be way ahead today, infact it could have generated the funds to develop TQFE by now and would have had a good large team. Safe development for a stable release or getting stuck in perfectionism in the code can cause you to lose sight on bigger things such as maintaining hype/marketing etc. Now the past is gone and nothing can be done about it, time is still their to make right decisions in the future, but this is a lesson for me as well as game developers in general that code perfectionism or delayed safe releases would leave room for others to grab the opportunity and this is exactly what has happened in the case of battlescape. star citizen / elite dangerous just threw vague ideas with limited tech demos and generated the funds for their goal and battlescapes fame and hype died down in process and right now, there are so many space games eating up the opportunity/fame/hype pie such as no mans sky, elite, dual universe, star citizen etc, that people dont remember battlescape when this game is shown to them or are unable to make out as to what does this game offers which others dont already, what is a unique feature of battlescape in the pool of space games and their features that are already out their. //////////// (Quoted from my post above) //////////////////////////////
well after looking at no mans skyâs release, I take back my statement above. Over hype can be dangerous and it literally destroyed no mans sky. Battlescapeâs development is going nicely and is on right track, but star citizen is still there and their development is also doing great, the game is still on. 
2 Likes
Having supported SC and Battlescape from the beginning, I definitely believe Flavien and fellow Devs got it right by not being sloppy and tossing it out there like SC. The problem for Infinity wasnât âperfectionismâ (in fact without it I doubt this Engine would even exist), but something else entirely. Of course Infinity could have gone the SC route and promoted features without a proper working engine but theyâd end up in the same situation SC now finds itself: forever moving the bar and endlessly rewriting the backend with dubious results.
Moreover, itâs kind of silly to compare SC and Battlescape because the Infinity Engine is light years ahead of any other engine, especially CryEngine; to compare the two is like comparing an old broken down 1965 Volkswagen with a Ferrari 458. And this vast difference in performance and capability came about because Infinity took the time to get it right from the beginning. So Iâm happy Infinity choose to go the methodical, practical route instead of making it up as they went. Perhaps one day when youâre flying around entire life size planets with stunning visuals and ZERO loading screens, youâll understand.
Whatâs more, it wasnât perfectionism or not rushing their product out the door that caused waning enthusiasm but a lack of updates. This is the only fault I can find in Infinityâs approach but I would much rather see them stumble here than focus on slick marketing and worry about game mechanics after the fact. Fortunately though, the DEVs recognize they need to update supporters and the public more often and they have been doing so 2, sometimes 3 times a week.This will pay dividends when the game comes out in Alpha.
As for NMS being over-hyped, I agree. But SC has been over-hyped too - waaaaaaay over-hyped. Of course they still might be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat and come up with a gameâŚbut I doubt it will be the game most people are expecting.
1 Like
well first of all star citizens hype is managed by the baby universe releases with current version at 2.5 in ptu test phase soon to go live, it gives you an idea of what game would look and play like. so hype meters remain in sync with the progressive releases of the game. Also they show what they are working on and what they have achieved with in engine screenshots and videos so star citizen is managing the hype nicely vs no mans sky that released suddenly (due to publisher pressure for sure). Atleast star citizen and battlescape are free from that pressure.
regarding engine, first of all I would never say that infinity engine is light years ahead of cry engine or star engine that they have. There are a ton of features missing in infinity engine that the cry engine provides and they are not some small features they are either equally or more hard to implement than just the double precision space of a solar system. Like for example there physically based shading model is way ahead of infinity engine, there lighting system is also ahead and better looking. They have volumetric particle light system (have you seen anything like that in infinity engine) but its present in star citizen 2.5. Using it you can create different visual effects such as gas clouds, explosions, planetary atmospheric clouds etc which they have done and shown though for planetary clouds they are hiding it for the event. They have subsumption AI implemented in engine, first person shooting mechanics, vehicle physics mechanics, cythera AI for space combat. Also there largest battleship is equal to the size of 4 to 5 battlefield maps (this is a techical achievement not something easier than a planet terrain generation) and its called bengal carrier and its 1 km long. And there are countless other features such as persistence, network system, voip, physics grids for interior of moving ships in space etc, and they are also technical achievements not to be taken lightly. flying on an empty planet gets old quick no matter how seamless it is. You need a filler gameplay to make it interesting.
some links for references.
(1 km ship)
As far as infinity battlescape is concerned what they have achieved in technology is truely great and with the resources they have they can create a decent and stable game by the end of next year but how they progress from that point onwards is going to be something that is yet to be seen. Like going the route of the quest for earth like game. Because keep in mind, if disasters hidden in time dont popup as we progress, then star citizen by then would be way ahead in its quest for dream space game.
also we have yet to see how seamless star citizen would be with a single solar system and especially planets with large cities, based on discussion on some reddit, I am totally talking about community rumours, that in star citizen the planets with large cities would be restricted vs planets with some stations or landing zones. so they have yet to crack the tech of rendering large detailed cities on planets. lets see how it goes.
Jepp, August 19th at Gamescom. I hope there is more than presenting the 2.5 version (which would be a little disappointing).
You do realize CryEngine is a FPS and was not designed for what they intended. Whatâs more, I highly question your point of view that âhype meters remain in sync with the progressive releases of the gameâ when only a mere 20 players can get on which is far from the estimated 200 then 100. And of course SCâs engine reputation for rubber-banding and crashes is well known. Not to mention SC was already suppose to be Alpha a year ago:
â [Then] an alpha of the single-player game, and then finally a beta of the persistent universe by the end of the year (2014). â
âChris Roberts, Forbes May 2013 Interview[3]
So you might want to check your facts before postingâŚ
A few more facts you might want to read before posting:
http://starcitizen.wikia.com/wiki/Anticipated_Release_Schedule
what i expect they might be showing is more star marine and fps mechanics, maybe racing mechanics at grimhex and a little bit of planet tech at gamescom for 2.6 but they will keep the major goodies for october citizencon.
well chris roberts at that time overhyped the release date for sure. But i think the scope of the game at that time was very small, they didnt had 100 million + by then, they probabley had 6 to 10 million i guess. But even then the release date was over optimistic and it always happens with devs. I only started following star citizen when they announced procedural planets in december 2015 since then I have been following there development on weekly basis.
you can redesign an existing code into something that you want so cry engine code didnt put a hard limit that you can only create an fps game, especially when you have the people who created cry engine in the first place, core engine programmers.
All of these projects have the same fundamental challenge - a lack of focus on getting functionality into customersâ hands.
Thatâs what product development is all about. You swallow your pride, turn off the spotlights and microphones, dig in and build functionality that your customers are going to enjoy. If you donât like putting features and functionality into other peopleâs hands, then you have no business running a company. Steve Jobs understood this utterly, and he was crazy-laser-beam-focused on doing that one specific thing.
Game companies are typically guilty of one major distraction - technology. The game technology is so amazing and so many things are possible that they get bogged down in mastering it. Instead, they should be looking to see what they can do with the resources available, and then get to work pushing functionality into the hands of their customers.
There are other distractions, of course, which include the media spotlight. People can get seduced by that stuff pretty easily, and just saying âYeah, weâre looking into thatâ can be enough to fan the flames of the press and bring ever more adulation.
Stay focused. Itâs all about getting stuff to your customers. Everything else is merely potential raw materials to employ towards reaching that goal.
5 Likes
Lets just be clear here, everything in that wikia is based on loose estimates given by the devs prior to some significant delays. Having been delayed, they are no longer facts but are simply a record of intent. Dev scope can and will change so itâs fallacious to be so single minded about these estimates.
If I:Bâs scope changed and the release date slips are you going to hold them to the KS promise? Or their new estimate?
If Devs make money from advertising a release date they should be held accountable - this includes I:BS Devs. That said, It would also depend on how many release dates were missed and how well the Engine works - SC is so far behind in this regard with an Engine that struggles that it is tantamount to false advertising. I:BS has not even scratched the surface of CIGâs malfeasance, but rest assured, if the DEVs here start constantly moving the bar with piss poor engine performance, Iâm going to say something. I am not one of those ad hominem fanboys who worship at the feet of DEVs and push dubious products. Fortunately, what I have seen so far is very positive and I can see the DEVs here care more about their product than slick marketing.
Itâs a matter of perspective. I wasnât debating the the uncertain quality of the product but rather the developers freedom to make crucial design decisions. For example if INS had the scope to change their design and explained their reasons then itâs easy to accept that. I can understand there have been some growing pains early in SCs timeline but overall they have been very transparent with their choices no matter how uncomfortable it might be for some.
If those choices amount to nothing then yes Iâll be part of the lynch mob demanding my money back but so far they are only just barely reaching the point where they can show the results of these changes.
Changes and more delays is their modus operandi. I expect youâll be waiting a very long time.
2 Likes