Roberts Space Industries - Star Citizen

You can see the cockpit in first-person view (you’re in it, after all), and exterior view (though not currently the inside of the cockpit from the exterior, as far as I can tell). You can fly close to some of the megastructures in the game already, and you know that they are big.

always no immediate solutions. I’m expecting the game to be consumer-ready, not “trained-eyes ready”, if you prefer. It’s not for me, it’s like an advice…

For your indirect solutions, is there a classic door on installation so we can know what is the size of a human comparing to them ? I’m pretty sure you could be surprised of the difference between what you think the tall of the different objects is and what it really is.

Edit : Again, just my opinion, maybe nobody cares…

this is how wing commander did it:

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Dunno if you ever been hiking in larger mountains before? Sometimes you are just looking around and wonder how big the whole thing is. Then you spot a few people in the distance and you realize that everything is a lot bigger than what you’d guess. You absolutely lose a sense of scale in real life too.

Grasping the size of natural things such as mountains with trees on them, that your brain had evolved to understand, is really difficult. You can be walking around all day, but unless you have something you can look at to understand the scale, humans will fail beyond a few hundred meters. First person walking could help players understand the size of small things without a doubt, but it’s not really an effective way of doing it. Sure, it could work for your fighter that you can walk around, but when you get to km long space stations, ridges or freakin planets, humans are just not good at this sort of stuff anyway. Putting in recognizable human sized things is the fastest and most effective way of indicating size that I can think of. You need it even if walking is in, and it already addresses everything in the topic of scale that walking could help you with.

Yes, he had to be reigned in before but that was when he was beholden to a publisher who could withdraw funding. With his current project he has no external publisher, he has all the funding he might ever need, although the juries still out on that one depending on how long SC takes, and the only people that might make a difference would be the public requesting their money back.

I was incredibly sceptical when I read that they weren’t going to develop their own engine for the game and instead take one primarily used for FPS games. I just couldn’t see how they were ever going to pull it off.

I’ve now watched a few of those showcases from the conventions and I’m amazed at what they have achieved. It looks like a game I want to play. Not right now, mind. But maybe in a year or two.

I know you’re right but in game it would be interested to have markers precisely to not loose the scale of things; Because it’s big you know, and in your example, when you realize that everything is a lot bigger than you though, it’s a great moment.

I’ve an old memory similar to your example : when I was young I reached the mountain peak of the “Dune du Pilat”, the only thing that let you guess how big is the part of the ocean you sea is the big yachts that look like the same size as the boat on you’re bathroom (and don’t tell you haven’t got a boat to play with when you take your bath :smile:)

I have no problem regarding scale and everything seems fine in I:BS. I would however like avatars but for other reasons. Sadly a lack of funding has squelched that dream. :cry:

I struggle to believe that, considering their continued funding drives.

You can still get that. You just fly next to a structure that is considerably larger than your ship

and for the ship when you’re in empty space, maybe just before launching the game, I don’t know if there is going to be a menu where you can choose your ship, the example of karacho could finally be the best thing to do (add a concept art with a human near the ship). To see its scale before piloting it could be enough maybe

That’s not a bad idea. I don’t know what the plans are for the menu yet, but I agree that would be a pretty good compromise.

A game like GTA has had many development cycles, improving it at every release. The development cost of only version 5 was about $135 million. The scale and complexity however dwarfs by the scale and complexity needed to build SC. I think it is therefore reasonable to have doubts towards the reality of building SC. You can call this ‘poppy cutting’ or simply being realistic.

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You consider things linearly, like if there was a proportion between scale/complexity of your target and time/budget needed to reach it. A greater scale doesn’t means (it can like it cannot) a greater budget needed, and the same goes for a greater complexity. Both need you to build greater tools.

For example, the tool to build planets that made SC is the perfect demonstration of how you handle a different problem without linearly increasing the time and budget needed.

You can doubt of the success of SC, but imo, it is not logical to doubt about the reality/feasibility of the concept/project.

In the current (pre?) alpha version of SC you can see that even implementing basic elements like opening doors proof to be too difficult in their multiplayer implementation (you get stuck, the doors wont open etc). Thinking big is easy, but the amount and complexity of the code needed to implement these big ideas is enormously. That is why extremely talented programmers are needed to implement it. I do not think they have them given the current state of their demo product. This is why I am very skeptical.
If the (pre) alpha/demo contained a hint of what they are planning it would make their endeavor a lot more credible. Of course many will argue that all programmers are working on the new version and have no time to fix things, and that is why everything is very buggy. But that is not the point. The point is that talented programmers would not have build a demo that works so poorly. Especially given the fact that 90% was already build by Crytek.

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this is exactly why everything is so buggy. they refactored more than 50% of the engine (they internally call it the StarEngine). You should take the problem by this side : how can you explain that so talented developers built a demo where there is so many bugs (but not blockers, though). The fact is that they are talented, so it may have another reason to explain the state of 2.5 (personally, I find it largely acceptable… I already played with supposedly final products that was unplayable. For an alpha, it’s correct)

And the doors need to be corrected but it is not a blocker, you can literally pass through them even if in appearance they closed just after opening.

But this is the point !! they are in parallel of building a demo entirely refactoring and add core features on the engine they choose to build the game. Of course in the middle of that, releasing a demo results on what you can see 2.5.

Just a question : do you often play to the current alpha ? Because I have the feeling that people who are skeptical about the game are also the ones who played it like 10 minutes a year ago and never updated their minds… Personally, I approximately play it once a week, and you can make different missions, I find there is a lot of flyable ships (nearly 30/40 I think), I just bought a vest, a new assault rifle that looks so great… thus I am at the lowest graphics possible (I even change the resolution to 1300*760) and it looks beautiful ! Also already a lot of places to go, and this beautiful images when you travel in direction of the gaz giant… I crashed two or three times, always on the same contexts (first, I was accelerating with my ship, and don’t know what happen I’m just ejected of my ship and I die, and the game crashes :smiley:

Also, there is a bug on the main door on Grim Hex (I accidentally became a pirate…), when you hit the button for depressurization, you can randomly been killed :smile:

After that episode I made the mission where you hack a terminal to remove your name on the black list. I am now perfectly civilized, my next goal is an armor (but it costs near 15000 aEUC and I just have 2750… so I’m repairing satellites)

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I found this link a while ago, date May 2016, of a fan made tweak showing ship development status. It’s a bit on the large side.

http://cd8ba0b44a15c10065fd-24461f391e20b7336331d5789078af53.r23.cf1.rackcdn.com/mmorpg.vanillaforums.com/editor/bn/earu8vkgwxex.jpg

Here’s an official one, although even this is out of data apparently.

After CitizenCon, all the flyable ships were available. I counted them but I can’t remember if it was 29 or 39 (but no doubt it is one of those two numbers)

Whenever I visit that site I am always amazed that someone would spend $400 for a ship, they could potentially lose in the future, like another player stealing it from them or simply being blown up. For that money you get 6 months insurance and then boom.

Is LTI an option any more?

During the alpha, every ship you own has an LTI now. You’ll have 3 months of insurance at the start with an aurora and then you’ll have to buy a lifetime insurance if you want, don’t know if it will be an option. IF you pledged before 2012, november, LTI for all of your pledged ships

Edit : My answer is incomplete, you should check the FAQ

FAQ link

LTI is a weird gimmick that doesn’t really give any benefit other than removing a small hull insurance fee. All non-LTI ships purchased come with Standard Hull Insurance for 1, 3 or 6 months. To keep your ship hull, you will just need to keep paying the in-game fee similar to Elite.

Currently LTI is only available when CIG releases a new concept ship in their lineup. After that it reverts to Standard.

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