Star Citizen

[Timby]

So for those who haven't been following this massive Ponzi scheme in space, CIG casually let drop at 4 p.m. last Friday afternoon that StarEngine was dead and Star Citizen had switched over to Amazon Lumberyard for its engine. (Lumberyard is also a fork of CryEngine.) The transition started early this year.

So much for "open development."

In any event, this is a huge win for CIG. Now, every time something gets delayed, Chris Roberts can say, "Well, we're ready to go, but we're waiting on Amazon to push an update to Lumberyard to make it work."

(Also, Amazon's own documentation says that Lumberyard and the GameLift AWS backend are not designed for always-on games like MMOs or the Star Citizen "persistent universe.")

 

[Amaris]

Holy pickles. While I haven't really been involved, I've been watching the arguments between people who are showing what is going on behind the curtain, and the ardent defenders of the game. I swear that CIG could ultimately end up delivering a text adventure, and there would be fans who would champion it as a proof of concept, and promise paid on delivery.

 

[FPAlpha]

So for those who haven't been following this massive Ponzi scheme in space, CIG casually let drop at 4 p.m. last Friday afternoon that StarEngine was dead and Star Citizen had switched over to Amazon Lumberyard for its engine. (Lumberyard is also a fork of CryEngine.) The transition started early this year.

So much for "open development."

In any event, this is a huge win for CIG. Now, every time something gets delayed, Chris Roberts can say, "Well, we're ready to go, but we're waiting on Amazon to push an update to Lumberyard to make it work."

(Also, Amazon's own documentation says that Lumberyard and the GameLift AWS backend are not designed for always-on games like MMOs or the Star Citizen "persistent universe.")

Just to repeat myself

 

[USS Triumphant]

...the ardent defenders of the game. I swear that CIG could ultimately end up delivering a text adventure, and there would be fans who would champion it as a proof of concept, and promise paid on delivery.

They need something to argue about now that Axanar is over, right?

 

[Amaris]

They need something to argue about now that Axanar is over, right?

Also, they'll need that money to buy ocean front property. There's a great surplus of them in Arizona, and CIG is going to deliver them to only those who believe in the super special awesome true believers in gamedom that is CIG.

 

[Noname Given]

So for those who haven't been following this massive Ponzi scheme in space, CIG casually let drop at 4 p.m. last Friday afternoon that StarEngine was dead and Star Citizen had switched over to Amazon Lumberyard for its engine. (Lumberyard is also a fork of CryEngine.) The transition started early this year.

So much for "open development."

In any event, this is a huge win for CIG. Now, every time something gets delayed, Chris Roberts can say, "Well, we're ready to go, but we're waiting on Amazon to push an update to Lumberyard to make it work."

(Also, Amazon's own documentation says that Lumberyard and the GameLift AWS backend are not designed for always-on games like MMOs or the Star Citizen "persistent universe.")

Um - Lumberyard IS Cryengine. In fact both "StarEngine" and Amazon's Lumberyard are forked off the SAME version of Cryengine (3.8).

So, no; "Star Engine" isn't dead. It's now just running (with SC Alpha 2.6 which was just released to the Live server on 12/23); on Amazon Web Services (IE Amazon Cloud Server platform) as opposed to what CIG had been using before - Google Compute (IE Google's Cloud Server platform). From all reports the SC servers have been using AWS since 2.5 was released.

The nice thing about the AWS platform is that it's more tailored to online gaming then Google Compute was.

As for "Star Engine" - realize that to date CIG (who have a lot of the original Cryengine developers on staff as everytime Cryengine misses payroll more seem to take jobs with CIG) have re-written/added 50% of Cryengine 3.8 - and stopped taking further updates from Cryengine around January 2015. I honestly doubt they're taking any updates from Amazon Lumberyard proper as their engine is VERY different. About the only re-work that was required was about two days by a couple of CIG engineers to make network code changes to allow their 'Starengine' to run on Amazon's AWS.

If you want to believe it's a Ponzi scheme - more power to you; but they've made a lot of progress - and SC has only been in development 4 years - has a lot of innovative features promised - and hell, most standard MMOs take 6 years to get to a retail launch state; so it's not like SC is taking longer -- it's just that because they've taken an open development strategy, everyone's heard and seen the bad and the good - and gotten in depth info LONG before a normal developer would even talk about the game publically.

AM I a backer? Yep since 2012. Do I think they're spending the money raised on the game and the cloud servers they have the Alpha running on for backers to playtest? Yep. Do I know if they'll finish the game (get to a retail launch state)? Nope - but again, there's ample proof that they are working towards this; and they really aren't taking longer than 'normal' to create the game.

If you believe it's a scam/Ponzi scheme you should hold on to your money and wait for release. But if you want to playtest what they have now and provide feedback that may shape the development of the game - and are willing to risk $45; (all you need is one starter package and while yes, there are more expensive ones - the cheapest one's will give you access to the Alpha); you might find it interesting.

But, in the end (if you're interested) you should read up on the project yourself (there's PLENTY of info available) and decide for yourself.

 

[Timby]

Um - Lumberyard IS Cryengine. In fact both "StarEngine" and Amazon's Lumberyard are forked off the SAME version of Cryengine (3.8).

So, no; "Star Engine" isn't dead. It's now just running (with SC Alpha 2.6 which was just released to the Live server on 12/23); on Amazon Web Services (IE Amazon Cloud Server platform) as opposed to what CIG had been using before - Google Compute (IE Google's Cloud Server platform). From all reports the SC servers have been using AWS since 2.5 was released.

The nice thing about the AWS platform is that it's more tailored to online gaming then Google Compute was.

As for "Star Engine" - realize that to date CIG (who have a lot of the original Cryengine developers on staff as everytime Cryengine misses payroll more seem to take jobs with CIG) have re-written/added 50% of Cryengine 3.8 - and stopped taking further updates from Cryengine around January 2015. I honestly doubt they're taking any updates from Amazon Lumberyard proper as their engine is VERY different. About the only re-work that was required was about two days by a couple of CIG engineers to make network code changes to allow their 'Starengine' to run on Amazon's AWS.

If you want to believe it's a Ponzi scheme - more power to you; but they've made a lot of progress - and SC has only been in development 4 years - has a lot of innovative features promised - and hell, most standard MMOs take 6 years to get to a retail launch state; so it's not like SC is taking longer -- it's just that because they've taken an open development strategy, everyone's heard and seen the bad and the good - and gotten in depth info LONG before a normal developer would even talk about the game publically.

AM I a backer? Yep since 2012. Do I think they're spending the money raised on the game and the cloud servers they have the Alpha running on for backers to playtest? Yep. Do I know if they'll finish the game (get to a retail launch state)? Nope - but again, there's ample proof that they are working towards this; and they really aren't taking longer than 'normal' to create the game.

If you believe it's a scam/Ponzi scheme you should hold on to your money and wait for release. But if you want to playtest what they have now and provide feedback that may shape the development of the game - and are willing to risk $45; (all you need is one starter package and while yes, there are more expensive ones - the cheapest one's will give you access to the Alpha); you might find it interesting.

But, in the end (if you're interested) you should read up on the project yourself (there's PLENTY of info available) and decide for yourself.

I see you believe every last word Chris Roberts says.

For example, at one point CIG was saying that it had ripped out so much of CryEngine that more than half the code was new. Now CIG says that switching to Lumberyard was a matter of a few days. That doesn't happen if you've done that much new coding.

Edit: Also, in Roberts' own words, development began in 2011.

Edit 2: If this was such good news, why did CIG hide it for a year? They could have just announced this as part of the network 3.0 plan and spun it as "since it's still all based on CryEngine it really won't cost us a whole lot of additional time or money." Waiting until the Friday evening two days before Christmas when it's clear this has been in the works for a long time looks like they were deliberately hiding it, meaning it's bad. If it was such a good deal why didn't they announce it the minute they made it?

Again, it all comes back to CIG's track record of obfuscation.

 

[Noname Given]

I see you believe every last word Chris Roberts says.

For example, at one point CIG was saying that it had ripped out so much of CryEngine that more than half the code was new. Now CIG says that switching to Lumberyard was a matter of a few days. That doesn't happen if you've done that much new coding.

Edit: Also, in Roberts' own words, development began in 2011.

Edit 2: If this was such good news, why did CIG hide it for a year? They could have just announced this as part of the network 3.0 plan and spun it as "since it's still all based on CryEngine it really won't cost us a whole lot of additional time or money." Waiting until the Friday evening two days before Christmas when it's clear this has been in the works for a long time looks like they were deliberately hiding it, meaning it's bad. If it was such a good deal why didn't they announce it the minute they made it?

Again, it all comes back to CIG's track record of obfuscation.

Um no I don't believe every word CR says. I do however have a degree in programming and understand what and how 'game engines' work - and yes, it's a fact that Lumberyard is just a fork off Cryengine 3.8 (the same version where CIG started modifying Cryengine to create Star Citizen) - so yeah, the fact is, the only Lumberyard specific changes they'd need to worry about is making sure their netcode works with Amazon's AWS -- and as 2.6 is up and running - that modification seems to be working and I'm sure they'll continue to optimize and improve where they can going forward.

 

[Timby]

CryEngine didn't hit 3.8 until 2014. Star Citizen began development in 2011.

Try again.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

At this point I don't think CIG will run out of money before they are able to release a game, but I suspect that what finally gets released will be a disappointment of such enormity that it will put No Man's Sky to shame.

At best, I anticipate something that's more or less a retread of EVE and Elite: Dangerous with perhaps more in the way of social elements--in other words, nothing groundbreaking or especially novel, no matter how much Roberts tries to convince people otherwise.

There's also that Squadron 42 game or whatever it's called. I imagine that will end up landing with a thud--is anyone really dying to play a cinematic-heavy space combat game in 2017?

I suppose delivering a working game at all will be an achievement, but comes off looking like a waste given how much money has been dumped into this. Games with budgets this size basically come in two flavors: genre-defining hits, or resounding flops. Where CIG has an advantage is that they are funded almost entirely by crowdfunding backers who basically have no recourse if the game sucks or fails to ship at all.

 

[Amaris]

At this point I don't think CIG will run out of money before they are able to release a game, but I suspect that what finally gets released will be a disappointment of such enormity that it will put No Man's Sky to shame.

At best, I anticipate something that's more or less a retread of EVE and Elite: Dangerous with perhaps more in the way of social elements--in other words, nothing groundbreaking or especially novel, no matter how much Roberts tries to convince people otherwise.

There's also that Squadron 42 game or whatever it's called. I imagine that will end up landing with a thud--is anyone really dying to play a cinematic-heavy space combat game in 2017?

I suppose delivering a working game at all will be an achievement, but comes off looking like a waste given how much money has been dumped into this. Games with budgets this size basically come in two flavors: genre-defining hits, or resounding flops. Where CIG has an advantage is that they are funded almost entirely by crowdfunding backers who basically have no recourse if the game sucks or fails to ship at all.

I think the hardcore fans will call it a triumph, regardless. Even if it's almost exactly like EVE Online, you'll see praise about how superior it is to every genre. When you invest the kind of money some of these people have invested: in ships, perks, and other benefits, you're going to look for the shiniest silver lining there is amongst the darkest of gray clouds. Like you, I'm thinking it will end up more as a No Man's Sky for the rest of us. Yet the most ardent will tell everyone they need to fuck off and die (comments from fans to doubters that I saw when the social module was released), and they will love the shiny new game that only cost far more than it should have.

 

[USS Triumphant]

There's also that Squadron 42 game or whatever it's called. I imagine that will end up landing with a thud--is anyone really dying to play a cinematic-heavy space combat game in 2017?

:Raises hand: Wing Commander V, pretty please and right now.

 

[FPAlpha]

:Raises hand: Wing Commander V, pretty please and right now.

I wouldn't mind it too.. i have the fondest memories of the WIng Commander series however i have zero faith that Roberts can pull off an Oscar worthy story and have an equal performance pulled out of the A List cast he had. Hell, i'd settle for mediocre but even this i don't believe.

At this point i'd settle for a game on the level of Elite (which is a fantastic game on its own) just with prettier graphics and more options, if that is delivered i would be one satisfied gamer. I have zero faith in it but for the sake of gaming i hope i'm proven wrong.

 

[SPCTRE]

settle for a game on the level of Elite

I would settle for a car on the level of a Rolls-Royce

 

[Timby]

I wouldn't mind it too.. i have the fondest memories of the WIng Commander series however i have zero faith that Roberts can pull off an Oscar worthy story and have an equal performance pulled out of the A List cast he had. Hell, i'd settle for mediocre but even this i don't believe.

I'm pretty sure that over the course of his career, Roberts' ceiling as a storyteller would be something just barely above the levels of The Asylum. Not that he's aware of it, of course, considering in every single interview he still refers to "Squadron 42 the movie," not "the game."

 

[Amaris]

Wow! Star Citizen reaches $141 million in funding!

Star Citizen, the upcoming space flight simulation game from Cloud Imperium Games, surpassed an unprecedented $141 million in crowdfunding this weekend.
If people are at all immersed in the video game world, they are likely familiar with Cloud Imperium Games, Foundry 42, and Behaviour Interactive’s most buzzed about upcoming title: Star Citizen. Marketed under developer and designer Chris Roberts’ company, Roberts Space Industries, Star Citizen is a multi-company project developed in a distributed research process. The sci-fi title is centered around space voyage, combat, and exploration.

Star Citizen humbly began development in 2011, creating demo modules on the CryEngine 3 before making the switch to Amazon Lumberyard a few years down the line. In October 2012, Cloud Imperium Games made the wise decision to launch a crowdfunding campaign to back its ambitious game — and to realize a true vision. Through a dual-channel funding process, on both the developer website and on Kickstarter, Star Citizen brought in over $6 million combined by the end of the initial campaign in November 2012. This made Star Citizen the biggest crowdfunded gaming project in history.

Star Citizen has yet again made headlines, as it has surpassed $141 million in crowdfunding this weekend. Just over 1.7 million backers have contributed to the project, with one particularly invested Star Citizen fan admitting to contributing over $30,000.

Cloud Imperium Games founder Chris Roberts issued a “Happy New Year!” statement, thanking those who have supported Star Citizen. Roberts commented on how happy the team is to see such positive feedback on the game’s latest update, Alpha 2.6. Roberts also mentioned the plans for improvements and enhancements in the game, after “digesting both our own and [audience’s] thoughts” on the recent patch. The Star Citizen team also has plans to release a new community forum and new outlets to better communicate with their audience.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Now that's some ethical video game journalism!

 

[Noname Given]

CryEngine didn't hit 3.8 until 2014. Star Citizen began development in 2011.

Try again.

You really don't understand how software development works. As CR said - they were integrating Cryengine updates up until the start of 2015 (IE yes, SC was in fact runniong on and being developed on Cryengine 3.8). They've been doing their own modifications to the base Engine since development start. CIG actually has many of the people who originally created and designed Cryengine - so they're fully capable of making their own changes to the source code which they purchased the rights to do.

Come on man - you run this BBS, you should have enough of a background to realize that anyone with proper knowledge can alter source code - as I'm sure you've done with the software running this BBS. CIG wasn't 'locked' into the version of Cryengine that they started developing the prototype with in 2011; as THEY said - they were taking and integrating Cryengine updates until January 2015. I assume they stopped because at that point they'd done so much of their own modifications, it wasn't worth the time required to see it a Crytek made Cryengine update could be integrated - especially since that was the time they'd successfully completed upgrading the map system to 64-bit precision.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

You really don't understand how software development works. As CR said - they were integrating Cryengine updates up until the start of 2015 (IE yes, SC was in fact runniong on and being developed on Cryengine 3.8). They've been doing their own modifications to the base Engine since development start. CIG actually has many of the people who originally created and designed Cryengine - so they're fully capable of making their own changes to the source code which they purchased the rights to do.

Come on man - you run this BBS, you should have enough of a background to realize that anyone with proper knowledge can alter source code - as I'm sure you've done with the software running this BBS. CIG wasn't 'locked' into the version of Cryengine that they started developing the prototype with in 2011; as THEY said - they were taking and integrating Cryengine updates until January 2015. I assume they stopped because at that point they'd done so much of their own modifications, it wasn't worth the time required to see it a Crytek made Cryengine update could be integrated - especially since that was the time they'd successfully completed upgrading the map system to 64-bit precision.

This isn't Timby not understanding how development works, but you contradicting yourself. See your previous post:

it's a fact that Lumberyard is just a fork off Cryengine 3.8 (the same version where CIG started modifying Cryengine to create Star Citizen)

Anyone with a grasp of the English language would understand this to mean that CIG began modifying CryEngine as of 3.8, of which Lumberyard is a fork. But this is impossible, as 3.8 didn't come out until 2015, and SC has been in development since 2011.

This may not be what you meant, but it's what you said.

If you meant that CIG kept pace with CryEngine updates as they went along, well, that's fine. But it isn't what you said.

 

[Amaris]

You really don't understand how software development works. As CR said - they were integrating Cryengine updates up until the start of 2015 (IE yes, SC was in fact runniong on and being developed on Cryengine 3.8). They've been doing their own modifications to the base Engine since development start. CIG actually has many of the people who originally created and designed Cryengine - so they're fully capable of making their own changes to the source code which they purchased the rights to do.

Come on man - you run this BBS, you should have enough of a background to realize that anyone with proper knowledge can alter source code - as I'm sure you've done with the software running this BBS. CIG wasn't 'locked' into the version of Cryengine that they started developing the prototype with in 2011; as THEY said - they were taking and integrating Cryengine updates until January 2015. I assume they stopped because at that point they'd done so much of their own modifications, it wasn't worth the time required to see it a Crytek made Cryengine update could be integrated - especially since that was the time they'd successfully completed upgrading the map system to 64-bit precision.

Are you sure you didn't mean 3.0 or something like that? Because 3.8 didn't come out until 2015: http://docs.cryengine.com/display/SDKDOC1/EaaS+3.8.1