Literally every bit of that is either not novel or is something that isn't done because it's a bad idea. Like NPCs have had fluid terrain traversal and climbing tech for I don't even know how long - I know it was already established enough that L4D did it 15 years ago, and the whole "but what about stopping in the middle of it to do something else?" bit is just a "literally why bother" sort of thing. Full NPC simulation is also a thing in everything from The Sims to Cities: Skylines, and doesn't get done in MMOs or shooters because "literally why bother." Even the procgen tool stuff is just industry standard at this point - they might be good tools, but they're not novel tools.
Everywhere Star Citizen set out to be cutting edge it's been beaten to the punch by other games and engines. And I've said this before, but I'd swear the actual devs responsible for doing real work at CIG are just doing whatever pointless bullshit they can to avoid having to deal with the management's ever-shifting and inane gameplay mechanic ideas, when they're not being made to redo a system that turned out to be a bad idea from the start. The fact that they've managed to fix the shambling shitheap that is CryEngine to the point that Star Citizen's silly real-scale simulationist bullshit works at all is an amazing technical achievement, and I can't help but wonder what those engineers would have managed without being undermined by the bizarre and constantly changing demands of CIG's management.
Even the procgen tool stuff is just industry standard at this point - they might be good tools, but they’re not novel tools.
Even as a hobbyist and the small time I had with Unity a few years ago and the procedural/random stuff is everywhere, with tons and tons of assets that you can buy(conveniently) from their asset store. I'm sure such tools exist for Unreal as well.
I mean you can go on YT and type "procedural [anything] Unity tutorial" and who knows how many videos you'll find.
And that is for amateurs/indies at a relatively very small price. The actual professional AAA industry is probably wasting millions on this stuff a year and I'm sure all the studios have varying degrees of this tech available.
SC is the definition of sunk cost fallacy, they keep going because the can't turn back around(rationalization, not actual truth).
Scratch everything and start over 3-4 years ago using Unreal/Unity, the game would've been done already and they'd be selling DLCs/expansions right now.
Scratch everything and start over 3-4 years ago using Unreal/Unity, the game would’ve been done already and they’d be selling DLCs/expansions right now.
Honestly not even that, if they went with established methods for doing "good enough" instead of reinventing the wheel to do things in a pointlessly simulationist way (like I don't know if they ever gave up on it, but one of their big stumbling blocks was trying to make ships that flew through physicalized forces generated at their thrusters with the idea that then if one was destroyed it would "realistically" fuck up its maneuverability directly, instead of just abstracting this into a few numbers and then moving the ship directly by controlling its vector of movement based on the fact that faking it like that would yield indistinguishable end results from their absurd simulationist approach) they could have shipped the single player game with working systems and gotten the "MMO" side of it into a beta with all its core gameplay systems working and in place.
Literally every bit of that is either not novel or is something that isn't done because it's a bad idea. Like NPCs have had fluid terrain traversal and climbing tech for I don't even know how long - I know it was already established enough that L4D did it 15 years ago, and the whole "but what about stopping in the middle of it to do something else?" bit is just a "literally why bother" sort of thing. Full NPC simulation is also a thing in everything from The Sims to Cities: Skylines, and doesn't get done in MMOs or shooters because "literally why bother." Even the procgen tool stuff is just industry standard at this point - they might be good tools, but they're not novel tools.
Everywhere Star Citizen set out to be cutting edge it's been beaten to the punch by other games and engines. And I've said this before, but I'd swear the actual devs responsible for doing real work at CIG are just doing whatever pointless bullshit they can to avoid having to deal with the management's ever-shifting and inane gameplay mechanic ideas, when they're not being made to redo a system that turned out to be a bad idea from the start. The fact that they've managed to fix the shambling shitheap that is CryEngine to the point that Star Citizen's silly real-scale simulationist bullshit works at all is an amazing technical achievement, and I can't help but wonder what those engineers would have managed without being undermined by the bizarre and constantly changing demands of CIG's management.
Even as a hobbyist and the small time I had with Unity a few years ago and the procedural/random stuff is everywhere, with tons and tons of assets that you can buy(conveniently) from their asset store. I'm sure such tools exist for Unreal as well.
I mean you can go on YT and type "procedural [anything] Unity tutorial" and who knows how many videos you'll find.
And that is for amateurs/indies at a relatively very small price. The actual professional AAA industry is probably wasting millions on this stuff a year and I'm sure all the studios have varying degrees of this tech available.
SC is the definition of sunk cost fallacy, they keep going because the can't turn back around(rationalization, not actual truth). Scratch everything and start over 3-4 years ago using Unreal/Unity, the game would've been done already and they'd be selling DLCs/expansions right now.
Honestly not even that, if they went with established methods for doing "good enough" instead of reinventing the wheel to do things in a pointlessly simulationist way (like I don't know if they ever gave up on it, but one of their big stumbling blocks was trying to make ships that flew through physicalized forces generated at their thrusters with the idea that then if one was destroyed it would "realistically" fuck up its maneuverability directly, instead of just abstracting this into a few numbers and then moving the ship directly by controlling its vector of movement based on the fact that faking it like that would yield indistinguishable end results from their absurd simulationist approach) they could have shipped the single player game with working systems and gotten the "MMO" side of it into a beta with all its core gameplay systems working and in place.