CIG objectively has very good artists and software engineers who have created and accomplished some really impressive things (including a lot of bullshit like "ok guys time to refactor cryengine to use bigger floats so we can have coordinates on an accurate astronomic scale that maintain millimeter precision, instead of just keeping things in local coordinate bubbles like literally every other game that's looked at this problem in history" which they shouldn't have been asked to do in the first place, but successfully did).
The downside is that the executive leadership has an impossible, ever-shifting vision for it which means a lot of that work is wasted when they decide on a whim that they want to go in a different direction, and through all of this they've been incredibly vague about actual gameplay mechanics instead of pure simulationist stuff, and I'm not sure if they've even managed to solve the problem of NPCs just t-posing on chairs instead of doing anything yet. I haven't downloaded and played the alpha for four or five years now, and I understand that they've added a lot but definitely not as much as they should have in that time frame.
It is kind of interesting to watch development hell play out in real time and in full view of the public, though. Usually this sort of thing happens behind closed doors for a decade before the funding dries up and they scrap it or shove out a half-finished wreck following last minute revisions to scale it back, but here they've managed to capture the imaginations of enough well-off middle aged PMC types to secure a constant flow of funding.
It'll be interesting when Squadron 42 finally drops, and I assume sooner or later they'll hit a persistent beta stage with SC where it's not feature complete (or only has placeholder prototypes for a lot of things) but they promise they won't wipe player's progress anymore; two years later they'll go back on that promise as they move into a refactored second persistent beta; the game never actually launches, it just goes through an endless cycle of betas and incremental revisions and additions.
Yeah the art pipeline that came out of it is pretty neat. I think it was only seen in Alien: Isolation before, and wasn't used in that nearly to the extent in star citizen.
There's tons of ways to create environments and props for a game. So it's hard to explain without already knowing some of the most common ways for contrast. It was a pretty good shortcut for artists to create a more detailed environment without as much time spent, or took the same amount of time but was used more efficiently to produce more. It also looks great.
I always feel bad for all the artists who work on crappy projects. They legit do good work and this case helped push the art side of games into a new technique yet their work will likely just end up being put on ice when/if this never gets release.
Other games' falling through the map issues are but a shadow on the platonic cave compared to Morrowind, which itself is a pale imitation of Daggerfall, that pile of bugs somehow bolted together into a game.
That said, there just isn’t any other game that is quite as good at space combat. Which is annoying.
Yeah, I bought in back when there was just Arena Commander because my friends at the time were very enthusiastic about SC and even in that rough, limited state it felt good to fly in, despite the interface being kind of shit. I got Elite: Dangerous for free on Epic and played a lot of that, but the combat there is just bad so I spent most of time my time mining, which was actually enjoyable. I definitely missed SC's flight model in E:D even years after having last played SC.
CIG objectively has very good artists and software engineers who have created and accomplished some really impressive things (including a lot of bullshit like "ok guys time to refactor cryengine to use bigger floats so we can have coordinates on an accurate astronomic scale that maintain millimeter precision, instead of just keeping things in local coordinate bubbles like literally every other game that's looked at this problem in history" which they shouldn't have been asked to do in the first place, but successfully did).
The downside is that the executive leadership has an impossible, ever-shifting vision for it which means a lot of that work is wasted when they decide on a whim that they want to go in a different direction, and through all of this they've been incredibly vague about actual gameplay mechanics instead of pure simulationist stuff, and I'm not sure if they've even managed to solve the problem of NPCs just t-posing on chairs instead of doing anything yet. I haven't downloaded and played the alpha for four or five years now, and I understand that they've added a lot but definitely not as much as they should have in that time frame.
It is kind of interesting to watch development hell play out in real time and in full view of the public, though. Usually this sort of thing happens behind closed doors for a decade before the funding dries up and they scrap it or shove out a half-finished wreck following last minute revisions to scale it back, but here they've managed to capture the imaginations of enough well-off middle aged PMC types to secure a constant flow of funding.
It'll be interesting when Squadron 42 finally drops, and I assume sooner or later they'll hit a persistent beta stage with SC where it's not feature complete (or only has placeholder prototypes for a lot of things) but they promise they won't wipe player's progress anymore; two years later they'll go back on that promise as they move into a refactored second persistent beta; the game never actually launches, it just goes through an endless cycle of betas and incremental revisions and additions.
Yeah the art pipeline that came out of it is pretty neat. I think it was only seen in Alien: Isolation before, and wasn't used in that nearly to the extent in star citizen.
There's tons of ways to create environments and props for a game. So it's hard to explain without already knowing some of the most common ways for contrast. It was a pretty good shortcut for artists to create a more detailed environment without as much time spent, or took the same amount of time but was used more efficiently to produce more. It also looks great.
I always feel bad for all the artists who work on crappy projects. They legit do good work and this case helped push the art side of games into a new technique yet their work will likely just end up being put on ice when/if this never gets release.
Npcs still t-pose, though mostly just before a server crash. Sever meshing will supposedly fix it any year now.
They've finally completed the first system, 3 years behind schedule.
That said, there just isn't any other game that is quite as good at space combat. Which is annoying.
I hope I some day program a game with glitches that iconic.
Real Morrowind falling through the stairs vibes.
Stairs are jank in every game though.
Other games' falling through the map issues are but a shadow on the platonic cave compared to Morrowind, which itself is a pale imitation of Daggerfall, that pile of bugs somehow bolted together into a game.
I'm still smiling about this comment a day later, but I never did think of a clever response.
Yeah, I bought in back when there was just Arena Commander because my friends at the time were very enthusiastic about SC and even in that rough, limited state it felt good to fly in, despite the interface being kind of shit. I got Elite: Dangerous for free on Epic and played a lot of that, but the combat there is just bad so I spent most of time my time mining, which was actually enjoyable. I definitely missed SC's flight model in E:D even years after having last played SC.