Actually, I played pretty much all of the Wing Commander series, apart from the extra missions of Prophecy, and I played Starlancer. I played one or more of the Freelancer series, but the trading side wasn’t for me.
Well, that depends upon the numbers, doesn’t it?
I’ve got to agree with you there.
I remember Freelancer being innovative in that you used the mouse instead of a joystick.
I played both Freelancer and Starlancer. Freelancer was entertaining enough, though between the world space being broken up into a bunch of small boxes and the “mouselook” flight controls I wasn’t impressed. Starlancer was… a game I played. I think. I honestly had to look it up, and couldn’t remember much about it other than it came out around the same time as X-Wing Alliance and Freespace 2 and wasn’t as good as either.
Took a while to think this over.
Here’s my very short question, because I can’t figure this out. What is this game actually supposed to be? Depending on who is talking and where, it seems like* Star Citizen* is meant to be somewhere from a purist single-player experience to something akin to Eve Online but better. Some of the side modules alone seem rather… non-trivial.
In short, it’s supposed to be everything.
Concept art is cheap compared to the production of in-game assets and it’s useful to have a visual target that you’re shooting for. It helps focus development resources. Also, if you’re pitching the game to get funding, it’s good to be able to show the look you intend for the finished game. Is it dark? Cartoony? Stylized? It gives investors a better idea of what they’re buying into.
Early concepts aren’t essential though. Putting them off until later isn’t a huge deal. But moving too quickly to final art is.
Interesting question. Common errors I’ve seen:
Spending too much time designing the social elements surrounding the game (friends lists assets, trading, posting to outside media) while neglecting core gameplay.
Not getting metrics on asset production times. How long does it take to make a character? A level? Figure out how long it takes you to make something, and scope your game accordingly.
Not budgeting for tools. Spending time to create a level editor at the beginning of a project can pay big dividends at the end.
Conversely, spending too much time on tools while ignoring the game itself. Or rewriting big chunks of an off-the-shelf engine for minor visual/performance gains.
Leaving hard challenges to last. You need a custom animation system for your boss battles? Start building that early.
Allowing scope creep. Making a level 20% larger than planned. Making 10 enemy types when you only need 6. Adding a feature because you saw it in another game that was just released. You don’t want your game so stripped down that it feels sparse, but at the same time you should be able to justify everything you build. Why is this going into the game? Could the time spent on this feature be better spent on something else?
This. Which is exactly what ended up warning me away from it when I first heard about it.
If I’m reading this right, they have three separate but intertwined games?
Right now they have one, barely.
Their PLAN is another question. I believe there they intent for one Ubergame and two essentially cut down versions of it with some extra stuff. i.e. the super-mega-nutso-MMO-with-everything, the dogfighting arena, and the single player campaign.
I wouldn’t really call those “intertwined” though, since I don’t think there’s any feedback from one to the other.
Spore, in space.
I’m actually downloading it now, to give it a look and see what they’ve got.
I’ll let you know.
What you are currently downloading-what does it cost, and how large is it?
The very fact that those aren’t straightforward questions is indicative of what the problems with this game and the associated circus are.
Well, one’s easy. It’s 33gb.
How much is it?
Well, this page lists the ‘game packages’ that you can buy. The cheapest ones are $54. One of the things they don’t make particularly clear as they try and get you to spend $240 on a multi-crew starship is that all the spaceships they list there are going to be available, in game, for in-game money. So what do you also get for your $240? There’s a big list of things in the “more info” tab, but I don’t understand a lot of them. What’s a Fishtank Mark 1? I dunno.
Anyway, $54 gets you into the game, and a ship you can fly.
What is it? It’s the “Arena Commander” mode, which promises the chance to fly your ship around some asteroids, and also some multiplayer combat. I don’t know myself what is involved - that’s why I’m downloading it.
Hilariously, the more expensive your ship is, the less likely it is to actually be available to fly in Arena Commander mode yet. And if they ship you’ve bought is not available yet… you get to fly the cheapest one!
It’s nearly DLed.
Actually, I’m impressed.
If he’d just been creating a spaceship fighting type game, it’d be great. The graphics are smooth, the ship control is pretty intuitive (although there’s lots of keys to learn for nav commands and weapon systems and things), and it is very, very pretty.
Well, I got in it for free, so I can afford to be optimistic.
The info screens for the ships mention insurance. What exactly is that insurance for?
For when your ship gets blown up i would assume.
Yeah, I think it’s based on the Eve Online model of owning a ship, but possibly losing it if it’s blown up in battle. It’s not remotely implemented yet.
Yep, a guy I work with is insane about this game. The insurance is to get your ship re-spawned.
He’s probably spent several thousand on it so far. In addition to in-game ships, he’s gotten all sorts of bling–coffee mug, t-shirt, baseball cap, mouse pad deluxe (it’s about 3’ wide, so you can put your offhand controlle & joystick on opposite sides of your keyboard, and nothing slides around when you play). When he first told me about it, it sounded like it was actually available as a playble game so I spent the $60 to buy the basic package. Logged in once about a year and a half ago, found out that it was just an unplayable space combat simulator and haven’t logged in since. There have been a lot of improvements, but there’s currently no playable game (so far as I know; I’m just going off of the reports he gives because he thinks I’m interested in a pre-release game…). If and when they actually announce the game is up and doing something, I’ll try logging in again; when I upgraded to Win10, it seems to have forgotten how to recognize that I have a joystick, which will make the space combat problematic.
Not really sure why this would breed optimism. These things are the things that are basically solved problems. They’re the minimum acceptable threshold to get a playable space flight game.
Once again, we come back to this: If he had said “I’m gonna make a new singleplayer spaceflight game in the vein of Wing Commander!” then this WOULD be grounds for optimism, because this is probably the HARDEST part of making a good single player spaceflight sim. But they’re among the easiest parts of making a massively multiplayer spaceflightradingplanetconqueringeveonlinealike.
All I was hoping for was a Privateer like MMOG with combat similar to the game Jump Gate. When I heard of the plans for FPS combat in ships I became wary, we had Star Wars battle front for that. A few squads I am in from the old Jumpgate days bought an Idris.