Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 is available
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buhehe
AFAIK culling isn't implemented yet, so the client updates using all the entities' data it receives from the server, so performance is bad.
NewTRUMP Order
Loobyluggs
I'm not sure what is worse: a games company using their backers to test their software, or a games company surviving on pacification of target audience.
If I invested what some people have invested into something, maybe a car, a STB, a phone; I'd no doubt be emotionally invested, and obviously financially as well. I get why people become defensive of this kind of crap, and really I am just flat-out furious that CR is doing what he did in the 90's, but using crowd-sourced funds from susceptible gamers to do it.
Preying on the people's dreams is bad, and there will come the day when these dreams get shattered, akin to children finding out Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy, Big Foot and Uncle Bob are not what they think.
That day? The day the final reviews come out for the final, 'buy it in the shops', completely-complete game. Gaming will hopefully mature that day, and crowd-funded exploitation will get taken out back and put down.
That is, of course; after a long period of mass expenditure of time and money into pacification. That court case is also very interesting...
/ot
Elite Dangerous took 2 years to launch, and since then has had multiple expansions, released on PS4 (this year), Xbox, MAC (!) and of course Windows.
And just to cap off that minor miracle, they did it using their own game engine...and got an average of 8/10 across the board...not to mention also releasing Planet Coaster last year and are the only company being tasked with releasing Jurassic World Evolution. You may have heard of Jurassic World/Park...being 'like, one of the biggest franchises out there with billions of revenue...am I seriously not the only one surprised (and glad) that EA didn't get that franchise? No mega company got that, just a little one in Cambridge...
/bot
I saw this on Steam earlier:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/719180/Revulsion/
If you want to spend money on someone working solo on a project, this looked like a worthwhile investment. I don't know anything about this developer, but I would trust a thousand people just like him any day of the week. You can hear it in their voice...passion, for gaming.
buhehe
Loobyluggs
Cave Waverider
gx-x
Cave Waverider
gx-x
We do agree to a point. I will however have to insist that SELLING an alpha version should be out of the question.
With that said, it's a different matter when people are like "take my money!!!!". Doesn't make it right, but it does make it somewhat justifiable from the company standpoint. But when the company thinks that they can just continue to milk these gullible people because if they release the game the funding is over, then it begs the question: how much is too much and when does it become illegal?
Why would they ever release the game (that would mean no more hiding behind the "alpha" ) if they can keep the netcode as it is (barley working), engine as it is, and really just delay all the hard work on engine indefinitely (while still charging people for new "modules")???
sometime just having a certain combination of hardware is qualification enough. No one can expect a company to have 1000000 hardware combinations to test on...
PS. People complain about bugs that have been in game for 3 years...Is it really unreasonable to complain about them while watching modules added, plans changed etc? Or, let's put it the other way around - is it reasonable for a company to not fix some of the earliest bugs (~3 years old) but put out 4 new modules (claiming it took xyz thousands of hours and whole NASA to make) and take money for those?
But like I said (and so did you) - it's Alpha, so...company doesn't really have to fix that NOW, as long as the money is coming in - its all fine 😀 (yea, I am one of those that leans toward the "it's never going to be released" side)
NewTRUMP Order
Loobyluggs
[youtube=uJ2OuEzfAE4]
"...that's, where I find out where all the bugs are..."
Says it all...minus the massive, colourful, vibrating throne they all sit on...I partially expected an entire floor filled to the brim, with people designing the internal furniture of the office, that will also be in the final game. See? This would be allowed under federal law as they are using the game to justify resigning their own offices!
Never have I seen something so utterly transparent and self-indulgent.
Money won, is twice as sweet as money earnt yet, free money is bitter, making self-indulgence in bitter-sweet pursuits, with no cherries waiting; the result...
Denial
dontnod entertainment. So if you want to attract that level of developer/artist/etc you need to have all that shit as well, or they'll just go someplace else. The entire game development industry is like that - there are relatively few people that actually have good experience/knowledge and they like to be pampered with bullshit and if not you just have to pay them significantly more to get them to stay.
I also still think it's too early to call it. I know people love to say it's been in development forever, but it really hasn't. It's about 5 years, 6 if you include like CR messing around in an editor. StarCraft 2 took 7 years and is a relatively simple RTS game. Team Fortress 2 took 9 years, same thing, simple game - Diablo 3 took 11 years. People will look at those games and say "well those games restarted development and shifted in scope" but that's exactly what's happening with Star Citizen - the game started out with like a 5 million dollar budget and now its' at $160+M - obviously the scope is going to shift. Plus they had to build out multiple studios, create a workflow between the studios and contend with shipping modular updates to appease backers. None of those other games had to do that. And like, I get it - it's 100% possible that a "polished" version of SQ42/Star Citizen will never ship and the company will fold - but I think it's pretty apparent now that they are working on something. Like loobyluggs sat here two years ago and said the entire game is a scam and CR is pocketing all the money and we will never see x, y or z feature and now x, y are in the game, z is on the horizon and the SQ42 mission they showed off is kind of cool looking, packed with a bunch of detail and while unpolished is definitely further along than a lot of people here said they would ever get. And it's like, I don't know how much money they spent - how do I know they don't have $60-70M in the bank still and can fund development for another 2-3 years and get it where it needs to be?
There isn't exactly a playbook for building a crowd sourced AAA title - the company is clearly winging it to some degree and I think in that position you have to. Their deadlines are garbage, I'll agree with that and I do think feature creep is becoming more of a problem then I'd like to - but again, I don't know how much money they have or how they are allocating those resources. Like GX-X says they should be fixing these 3 year old bugs instead of shipping new modules, but most of those bugs are in code that's being completely gutted and replaced in the next couple major revisions anyway. Why would you allocate resources on fixing network code issues when the entire network stack is being replaced in 3.1? With stuff like that it's not like you can throw more people at it to make the problem go away faster. I think the network team is like 3 people? And in that video he specifically said having more people just slows them down because you have to spend like 3-6 months training each person, which is why they are building an internal API for it. The planetary system is another perfect example, it took them like 8 months IIRC to build the first star system, it took them like 2 years to finish the "star system tool" or whatever they call it and now they can build new systems in like 10 minutes. That's typically how game development works, the bulk of the development time is just getting the engine components and systems online, then you scale it out and polish it.
I don't know if they will ever finish it - but I'd like to see where it goes because right now, watching that SQ42 video, it looks way cooler than any other game currently in development. And if it takes another 2-3 years to get there in a polished state, I'm ok with that and I think it would be more than worth the journey.
That being said I haven't spent any money on the game so lol
The problem is most AAA studios have all that stuff - just search "EA Offices" or "Ubisoft Offices" and it's like a giant playground or even smaller studios like Loobyluggs
The Laughing Ma
ramthegamer
I don t see the reason people still talk about a game that will probably never be released....we ve had years with this game s news yet it will never come to light and fully release...
TheDeeGee
Denial
Ghosty
Loobyluggs
CPC_RedDawn
StarPunk2077