Star Citizen

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/gx1of4/squadron-42-star-citizen-trailer

Kind of looking forwards to this one - loved the Wing Commander series when I was younger, hopefully Chris Roberts still has the touch when it comes to creating deep, immersive worlds to play in. WC/Starlancer/Freelancer were good fun.

http://robertsspaceindustries.com/ is counting down at the moment with details in a couple hours time. Ironic, considering i had Wing Commander flashbacks half an hour ago and started googling as i was getting nostalgic.

 

Good stuff, what was the fan made Wing Commander that came out recently, did you give that one a go?

 

About time!

Been itching for some good space flight game

 

Yep, had a play of it for a little bit but then reformatted the PC shortly afterwards.. unfortunately haven't reinstalled it and gotten back into it again. That work/life necessity really cuts into my gaming time these days... sadly, it was just after a major system upgrade as well.

The fan-made one was 10 years in the making i think!

 

LOL I remember Wing Commander... Will be keen to look at this one...looks impressive!

 

Can't wait.

The live stream of him flying around was awesome. All the individually articulated thrusters, the ultra detailed cockpit, weapon systems etc.

Being able to walk through the big carrier's decks into its hangar and climb into a fighter then fly out into space in one seamless game world - so nice.

The discussions about the economy, trading, and combat game mechanics all sounded interesting as well.

Once their website recovers from the overwhelming rush of traffic I'll gladly join his "ship pre-purchase" scheme

 

Star Citizen - Chris Roberts returns (Freelancer, Wing Commander)

Chris Roberts, the guy behind Wing Commander, Privateer and Freelancer has decided to make a new game.



Space combat in a persistent open universe

http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/ <- longer Vimeo based trailer/interview

Star-Citizen Announcement panel from GDC <- even longer game announcement + comments apparently

From the long trailer and GDC Announcement Panel, i'm getting the following points;

* Single Player, story driven campaign mission - you enlist in the Space Military, kill dudes, do your tour/campaign, then you are released from service... and/or
* you get open world (you don't *have* to enlist). Earn your ship, then move about Space in a persistent open universe. Move around 50 or so star systems, mercenary/pirate/trader etc.
* Focus on Multiplayer combat as opposed to AI combat
* Think Freelancer/Wing Commander on a larger scale
* Trailers rendered real-time on a GTX670 - this is a PC game, not a tablet or console.
* He wants to be Multiplayer - no idea if we're talking massively or not - but he wants people to interact with each other, exploratory, trading and combat wise.
* Funded/driven by a Kickstarter style community funding
* Community can submit assets during development (and live i'm gathering)
* Micro updates - he wants to be pushing new small amounts of content weekly/fortnightly - e.g a star system one week, 5 pack of star missions somewhere else - think D&D content packs.
* Crazy attention to detail/visual fidelity - fully working, animated cockpits.
* Physics engine is directly linked to the performance of your ship - Player makes inputs, maths is done to deliver to your thrusters and it will try to get the desired result - if you're missing a thruster from a fight or whatever, this directly affects your ability to pitch/roll/turn/etc.
* He's drawing tons of ideas from World of Tanks - Combat is instanced; e.g if 2 players flight paths intersect, the galactic server will spawn an instance for those players. Everyone who is close by and friends with these players can join in (he was talking 60-100 players in a space combat instance - the idea is that he wants ALL of your available friends to be able to join in if it makes sense) and that instance persists till shit is done.
* No leveling. Money + Assets defines your "strength"
* He can drive high visual detail because space is cheap - it costs almost nothing to have ships fly around in space, compared to say BF3 where the environment chews through tons of resouces. Ships also have a fixed volume, thus its difficult to crowd heaps of them on a screen, which keeps poly counts under control. From what i'm gathering there is no FPS player character combat.

 

Good news, I was a big WC fan when I was a kid.

 

Buying a game 2 years in advance? I was by far the biggest Wing Commander geek of all my friends, and am quite excited about this, but I might wait and see how it pans out - I don't really get the whole pay $$$ to beta test thing...

 

It means he has no commitment to a publisher. No overbearing presence that says "get this game out, no we don't care that its broken".

On top of that, its the kind of project that right now would probably not receive the funding it will need - mostly because its not a war based military fps shooter or a wow clone - nor is it on every console platform known to mankind, facebook, the twitters and whatever else.

 

Friend got me onto this, gonna have to check out the videos when I get home.

Wondering about ship specs, etc whether it's better to commit to a fighter or trader first then work up.

 

Yeah I get the motive, and you're right - this wouldn't work any other way than crowd-funded - I'm just a little iffy about alpha/beta testing a game - would I want to play it once it's finished, if I've already been playing it whilst it was broken?

Same here - would be good to know if there is much benefit to buying a ship up front, or if you can quickly get one in the game without much effort?

 

You've a couple of years to ponder that. In the mean time, keep throwing money at the screen, I am.

Finally a good reason to buy, wait for it, a JOYSTICK!!!

 

I must say, this game looks really awesome... Some people are calling it a cross between Wing Commander and Freelancer, never played WC, but loved Freelancer.

 

It will probably be a personal choice thing.

Just remember, there is no leveling - your power is dictated by your wealth and equipment. So any short cut to wealth you can get, will ultimately drive you ahead.

Combat effectiveness is a combination of how well you can pilot and what you have to pilot.

If you get caught with your pants down and a bajillion credits worth of cargo by some guy with a fighter and a freighter buddy - you end up worse off.

Then again, if you make the pay day, then well you win big.

Insert character/equipment/galaxy wipes. A known healthy staple of every alpha/beta testing phase. Essentially you never really get to experience the whole game at any one time.

Sure you've got to want to play that genre - and put up with shitty bugs etc - but essentially this is like pre-ordering but you get something apart from a receipt (something tangible actually, in-line with the final product you want) to play with whilst you wait.

The way i interpret the media out so far, the ultimate purpose of the SP campaign is for you to end up with a ship.

No word on campaign length or anything like that, but Freelancer was 12-18 hours.

Freelancer, Tie Fighter, X-Wing - were all games that played PERFECTLY fine with keyboard/mouse.

 

I'm fine with the two year thing, I'm also more than fine with another space sim

 

Fuck yeah. <3 WC. CONTRABAND DETECTED!

 

I loved Privateer... I played that game so much back in primary school!

Found out about Freelancer a few years ago and I loved that too.
Just found this thread today and wow, this looks amazing!!!

Definitely going to back this one

 

im backing this as soon as I get payed.

 

The lighting/textures and all the 3d models, immersion, just everything looks so well done and all being early in the development cycle things will only get better. Really looking forward to it even if its just for the impressive visuals. Just started watching the hour long vid and so far really impressed with his vision and direction and giving PC gaming back the edge it seems to have lost.