Windows Star Citizen

For how much longer will backers be willing to pony up? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious as to at what point backers will draw the line. It's not just about belief in the project, it's about ability/willingness to put hands in pockets. The sums continuing to be raised seem pretty substantial relative to the active userbase.

 

The assertion by many is that the longer the delay in releasing a substantial part of the game, the more chance they will go out of business and run out of money. That's not what is occurring as the funding has increased over time, with two income records just getting broken again despite the negative press. In the meantime, the Star Citizen mmo aspect of the game is slowly getting its act together in terms of gameplay. I did my first mining with a helpful player and it was a lot of fun, although the spelunking needs a bit of work, as I got lost finding the mission objective. Next year they are opening up a second star system Pyro, so 2 down, 98 to go (!).

How long is a piece of string? This started in Q3 2012. Many original backers have changed as individuals since their first pledges. As someone quipped on reddit, the closer they get to retirement the more money they have...

From my perspective, I am glad it is being developed. There is no other game out there where you wake up, walk to your ship and take off and can explore outer space seamlessly that is as beautiful and detailed as this game.

 

This just appeared in my PTU account

 

New article from Digital Foundry on the engine.
For those encountering a New Word: 'Froxel' = Frustum Voxel. Split screen-space into a grid then project that grid from the camera point, and you have a 2D array of frustums. Slice those by Z-depth exponentially larger steps as Z increases) and you get stacked frustums in a 2D grid: Froxels.

 

I have actually played this again recently, it’s a totally new game to the one I played, it still feels like it’s missing huge things,

the missions are very generic, collect and fetch, kill quests, repair stuff, nothing ground breaking or new

ship to ship combat felt broken, my freelancer hull tanked at least 5 police ships and took 0 shield damage

fps is now satisfactory and stable (6700k and 1080 gpu 1440p all settings maxed)

load times on an SSD are 10 seconds instead of 1 minute

so things are improving just slowly slowly

 

3.9 has finally entered "wave 1 PTU" (subscribers & "concierge" players have access)

Patch Notes

 

Anyone fancy a job at CIG?
https://cloudimperiumgames.com/jobs/uk/monetisation-designer-wilmslow

Yep, that job title is "Monetisation designer".

 

Can't see why they would need that role - they seem to be doing it pretty well already!

 

Presumably the previous monetization designer quit because the moral putrescence of their existing pay-to-win strategies finally rotted a hole in the steel casing around their shirvelled husk of a soul.

I exaggerate. This scale of pay-to-win fleecing is only unethical once the game is finished and development costs are no longer required as investment for future content and progress. If the game is proportionately more amazing by the time it leaves Beta, this will all in hindsight have been ethically acceptable as a means to an end. If it doesn't, this will all have been the biggest swindle the gaming world has ever seen. It's like Schroedinger's Game. While it's in Beta, it could be a huge achievement, or a huge con. It is already one of those things. But we won't know which it is until it leaves Beta.

(I know I'm misusing the Schroedinger metaphor, but I don't care.)

 

3.9 is now in "Open PTU", and looks probable for going to the live servers later today.

CORRECTION - 3.9 went live at around 5pm UK time today.

 

CitizenCon 2020 has been officially cancelled.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/17567-CitizenCon-2950-Update

 

mac game is available?

 

Nope. PC only.

 

So I had a bit of a play of this last night, first time in ages. I'm still impressed by how much of a broken mess it is! They've had at least $300 million now and its still far from a functioning game let alone a polished one!

 

its never going to by a polished games, people are willing throwing money at it so they gonna stick to "when its done" mode. i bet 3d realms are looking at this and smacking them shelves silly they could milk peeps outta thier hard earned cash like this around 20 years ago duke game.

 

You will be able to repeat this post in 3 years time. Making even the slightest change to the messy code is like steering the mother of all ships now, such is the complexity.

It will keep going because backers are addicted to spending money on the promise, a bit like the psychological mechanism behind loot boxes.

Maybe (!) Squadron 42 will be different, as they have kept that under lock and key, but again I doubt we will see a release for several years.

 

Is this Ponzi scheme still going?

 

Very much so.

Thing is, they have now come up with something quite impressive to be fair.

I'm surprised that people are still giving them money though. There should be more than enough to make the game now.

 

This is going to be another Duke Nukem Forever game to me, when/if it finally releases it's not going to meet expectations.

Honestly I wish I could get my £50 back, as my dad tried it the other day using my account and there has been nothing really of note added since I last tried it around 2 years ago.

I just cannot believe people still give them money.