Windows Star Citizen

1am? Sleeping.

 

No bloody way. Hold it back another 3 months, just because? They need to get the DFM out, regardless of bugs. It's an Alpha, and people should be expecting bugs, even big ones, that will get patched as the Alpha continues and people hammer the servers. It's exactly what an Alpha is for - testing en masse.

CIG can tweak and adjust things to their hearts content for the next 18 months or more. What they need to do is start delivering some vestiges of a product to their backers - it'll raise the hype further, generate even more funding and ultimately give them valuable feedback to boot.

By July I'd be hoping we'll be starting or very near multi-crew ship DFM (or v2).

 

In the Wingman's Hangar episode the line "This is the first day we've been able to dogfight" (or something along those lines) was spoken, giving the impression that they'd just got it working in a highly bugged state...however it doesn't actually place a date on that day. It could have been recorded weeks ago. Telling a little white lie like that in the editing adds a sense of drama, and CiG look like heroes for working hard in to the wee hours to deliver an alpha exactly on time (late). Or it sets up an excuse as to why it isn't launched immediately after PAX. 1am? Watching...

 

It can't be that recent - they've shown footage weeks ago of dogfighting happening in the various offices, and progress reports have mentioned it as well. I think they're very much in crunch mode to get something released for whatever their deadlines are (show something at PAX East and allow demos to press), and then backer launch in a few weeks. I remember that they're not launching to backers after the announcement though.

Regardless, I'm excited to get my HOTAS warmed up by the end of April!

 

I think that comment was possibly missing context, that it was an online version of the DFM, rather than LAN as im sure when they've been asked who's the best dogfighter at CIG they've said they've only been able to play in each studio and that there hasnt really been organised games to determine a victor as such.
So i think maybe whats new is them being able to do this online, in any studio all connecting to the master server.

They've shown dogfighting months ago though, didnt they show something at xmas when they said it wouldnt be released for xmas afterall?? Theres certainly a (iirc) 2hr livestream recording on youtube for it.

As for holding off, and it being an alpha and bugs should be accepted... people are going to complain if theres an issue, and news will be made of terrible events where the alpha isnt a flawless full release, it doesnt have every ship and it isnt perfectly balanced blablabla.
I dont mind flawed alphas, if it works and its released as-is with the expectation that it will have many issues, we're helping to weed them out and help them track and solve them. But i think too often people treat them as demos like the game is coming out next week here's what to expect.
Thats not CIGs fault, but i cant blame them if they know of larger issues which they can fix and distribute a more playable release a little later than planned. Its not about finely polished, it just needs to be playable, and within reason representative of the game they're still making and will be spending the next 1yr+ finishing.

 

Well, it doesn't look like we'll be playing the DFM for a good few months yet. They've been hinting at this for a while now, so it shouldn't come as a massive surprise.

That all ok though. Its a ridiculously ambitious game, built on a ridiculously amazing engine, so like GTAV, and other ground breaking titles, its going to take a good few years to come together.

At the moment I'm thinking a August release for DFM, and the PU in Xmas 2015 is realistic.

 

Well, I fell asleep after 12:30am
Anyone watched it live?

 

yeah, looks like it might be a while before we get our hands on it, quite a few issues in there which prevent it being playable really.
feel sorry for those guys though, cant be easy doing an unveil at that state and having it misbehave like that in front of folks.

 

Eh? CR said end of the month, start of next. So that's a month at most, where are you getting August from? It's right at the start of the second video, about 15s in.

http://www.incgamers.com/2014/04/star-citizen-dogfighting-module-details-revealed-full-report
Written overview.


EDIT:
Must say, I'm a bit confused. CIG seem to be making out that DFM was literally nothing a week ago, and has been pulled together in the last five days. That begs the question of what the hell have they been doing for months? All the videos in the last couple of months have been going on about DFM though - but it's being presented as if they've done nothing except design ships up until a week ago.

 

Oh did he! I didn't see that bit, I only had time to watch a little bit, and the amount it crashed suggested that it'd still be a while before it came together! Huzzah!

EDIT: Did any of us stay up and watch it live?

 

Yes, yes he did. The optimistic date is end of April, the CR realistic date is early May.

I didn't stay up and watch, but I'm watching it now, and bouncing through the forums/reviews at the same time. There's a lot of grumpy people out there, but also a lot of positivity.

 

There was a temptation to, but sleep beckoned.

Had a nosey around and it seems it would have been frustrating anyway due to the stream being balls.
Again

 

Thoughts as I watch the stream:

- Love the HUD initialisation animation, and the general work that has gone in to the UI. I do think the sidebars are a bit big right now though, and take up too much space (the target info, weapons systems etc). The animation when you lock on to a ship might be a tad excessive...
- CR is terrible at flying with a controller
- It sure does look pretty
- Not sure about the G-force greying/blackout. AFAIK this is new in a game, so will have to see. Might just be a case of balancing so it isn't present all the time on every turn.
- Engageable Newtonian mode is awesome. Flying backwards!
- Aurora, 300i and Hornet in DFM to start, with other ships added as they're prepared with damage states etc.
- Overall they seem to have visual polish, with no placeholder textures/models etc, so what you're seeing is the finished product. However I think this has left them less time to handle core programming and go bug hunting...
- It's buggy. Multiple crashes, damage states not working (CR bounced off several asteroids with no effect). By May I'd hope things will have improved a bit, especially in game-stopping crashes.
- Wow the crowd are outright rude.
- They need to balance things. Flight seemed very slow to me, and the ships incredibly manoeuvrable. I was expecting a lot more "weight" to the ships, with faster top speeds etc.
- Didn't see any power/cpu/heat/shields etc management systems, assuming this is added later?



- SP seems to be a LOT more stable than MP right now
- Definitely getting triple monitors...

 

I dread to think what the forums are like! Keep posting your thoughts!

 

Two camps. Most are positive, and accepting the bugs as inevitable for an early Alpha. There's some who are inevitably having a whinge - mainly about the quality of the stream, but sometimes about tiny aspects of the game.

 

I stayed up to watch it.

It's definitely not new in games, it may be new in this game however and I'm glad they've implemented it - Two enemies eternally circling each other isn't fun, and a system to discourage that is welcome. It will also mitigate the strength of certain control methods (mouse) when switching from thrusters to newtownian physics.

 

Looked like a familly and friends alpha in truth it was as buggy as that normally is. Would also question if end of April or start of may is close to realistic.

Alpha is what it is but that looked pretty unplayable the issues they had getting it going was high and even when it did work it was not really stable. Theres a huge difference between friends and familly and first real alpha.

Id guess they have spent the last 4months on netcode work judging by the state of it at PAX and id be very surprised if come may 31st we are actually able to play it.

As for the moans people expect perfection from SC if it is not perfect people will complain. And thats there version of perfect not SCs they want every bit of sim information some people do its rather insane.

As others have said im expecting a late July / Early August release of first DFM now and a optomistic Q1 - Q2 2016 launch window for the real game. Which is about a year later than most were hoping.

Personally I hope they ignore the pressure from fans and do what blizzard did with Starcraft 2 and similar games its ready when its ready and not push a launch window for the sake of it. That applys to all Module releases as well would much prefer they launched things near enough completed instead of requiring major patches for each module launched.

Star Trek online and Age of Conan both pushed a launch window and both games were broken on launch by game breaking bugs.

MMO you get 1 chance to make an impression once the game is live if you can not play it for more than 1hr at a time as Star trek and AOC was at launch then your not gonna stick with it.

Good luck to them is what id say.

 

Agree with pretty much all of the above.

 

Attention Bit Sec: one of the corps on the RSI forums are giving away an Idris.

I'd ask that all members of Bit Sec enter their competition (all you have to do is write in the thread), as it may be our one chance to bag an Idris.

Linky

 

Done (sadly, the thread was already up to page 202 at time of posting there!)