Star Citizen

[Phinnway]

Star Citizen has a free trial until Oct 30th if anyone is interested in trying it out. Send my a PM and we can find a time to play together.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/promotions/Free-Fly-Fall-2016

edit: Forgot to mention, the trial ship is the Super Hornet, which is a tier 1 dogfighter.

Spoiler

I have also saved up some in-game currency in case people want to rent more ships. I have enough for 2 - 3 other ships depending on how expensive they are.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

They are releasing schedule report now: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report

No word on Linux there yet.

 

[Phinnway]

Here is what a Vanguard looks like without its skin. The attention to detail in this game continues to astound me.

 

[schinderhannes.999]

 

[Phinnway]

First glimpse of the FPS module (in restricted alpha right now).

Also.... remember all those promises CiG made back in August? Well, they're still working on the patch they promised for October. And the patch they promised for December (with planetary landings) is nowhere to be seen. I don't expect it to arrive before next June. Hopefully they release something in between. =\

 

[Garrison72]

Yes it's alpha but that's not very impressive stuff. It looks like a COD ripoff with slower movement. Why not get more creative with the guns?

 

[Phinnway]

Played some Star Marine. Only noteworthy thing was zero-G. I'll be impressed when they add more weapons and release a map on a capital ship

On another subject. Star Citizen switched engines from CryEngine to Amazon's "Lumberyard", which is an iteration of CryEngine.
https://forums.robertsspaceindustrie...cussion/364217

This could be a huge boon to Star Citizen. Networking has always been Star Citizen's biggest obstacle. There always was a distinct chance the MMO component would never come together. Now, CiG doesn't have to write their own networking code, because Lumberyard is integrated with Amazon's servers. This will save them time. Transition was quick and painless too. Only took 2 days.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Kind of strange, since they claimed then had to modify CryEngine so much, that they couldn't use upstream version anymore. So no idea how Lumberyard will benefit their graphics / physics aspects of the engine. Network will be tied to AWS, which isn't necessarily a good thing, since Amazon can pull the plug on DRM-free single player version or any other such nasty stuff like requiring always on-line connection or buying the game through Amazon only. Amazon has a bad reputation for a reason.

 

[Garrison72]

First glimpse of the FPS module (in restricted alpha right now).

Also.... remember all those promises CiG made back in August? Well, they're still working on the patch they promised for October. And the patch they promised for December (with planetary landings) is nowhere to be seen. I don't expect it to arrive before next June. Hopefully they release something in between. =\

Let me rephrase my comment. The fact that an FPS of even that quality existing in a space sim is impressive. But what of the role it plays? Are we going to land on planet hubs and do missions that are created by the dev team? Or is the FPS/planetside aspect mostly for multiplayer?

 

[Garrison72]

Well I fucked that edit up, lol. Anyway, here's some gameplay.

 

[Arvuti]

So no idea how Lumberyard will benefit their graphics / physics aspects of the engine.

It won't.

Crytek is crashing and burning, by the time Star Citizen will be released I am sure they have gone bankrupt. Safer and quicker to switch right now than having to do it later.

 

[Phinnway]

Garrison72 The purpose of Star Marine is to test the FPS mechanics. When Star Citizen releases, Star Marine will exist as a standalone "min-game." I don't know whether CiG will support Star Marine as a standalone competitive FPS or not.

Gilrond-i-Virdan Arvuti is right, it won't help graphics. Star Citizen switched engines to Lumberyard because Crytek stopped updating CryEngine around a year ago after Amazon bought the license. It's really the only move that made sense for Star Citizen. The fact that Amazon already rewrote the network code was just an added bonus.
The transition was quick and painless (only took 2 days). All of Star Citizen's changes to CryEngine were seamlessly integrated into the new engine.

As for DRM, Chris has said SQ42 will be playable offline. I doubt he'll go back on that promise.

 

[AutumnalWanderer]

Garrison72 The purpose of Star Marine is to test the FPS mechanics. When Star Citizen releases, Star Marine will exist as a standalone "min-game." I don't know whether CiG will support Star Marine as a standalone competitive FPS or not.

Gilrond-i-Virdan Arvuti is right, it won't help graphics at all. CryEngine hasn't been updated in over a year. Star Citizen switched engines to the only version of CryEngine that is still maintained--Amazon's Lumberyard. The fact that Lumberyard already rewrote CryEngine's network code was just a bonus.
The transition was quick and painless (only took 2 days). Lumberyard is based on the same iteration of CryEngine that Star Citizen is based on. All of Star Citizen's changes to CryEngine were seamlessly integrated into the new engine.

As for DRM, the devs have said SQ42 will be playable offline. I'm sure Chris negotiated that part of the contract with Amazon when he made an agreement to use their engine.

I am pretty sure that now this project won't fail. It cannot, because SC is the "posterboy" for Amazon's gaming engine, so i don't think that Amazon would allow that, also this change means long term thinking if you ask me.

I am pretty surprised overall with this patch. I didn't planned to give it too much damn, because the star of the show was the 3.0, so I didn't expected to spend so much time playing SC again. I love Star Marine, the new flight mechanics, the new soundtrack...and I could go on and on.

 

[Phinnway]

Star Citizen's latest ship - the Hurricane. TBH - I don't this one looks as cool as the others. In fact, I'd say it almost looks downright lazily designed.

In terms of role, it's basically a slow, poorly armored dogfighter that packs a !@#$ ton of firepower.

Spoiler

 

[Sardukhar]

I've found Star Marine clumsy, "janky" and not very fun to play. FOR NOW.

Gameplay for SC is still a thing for me - and I haven't really had a lot of fun in the different arenas. Just hasn't felt right.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Star Citizen decided to ditch DX12 after all, and use Vulkan across all their target systems, including Linux. I'm quite glad about this outcome.

Years ago we stated our intention to support DX12, but since the introduction of Vulkan which has the same feature set and performance advantages this seemed a much more logical rendering API to use as it doesn't force our users to upgrade to Windows 10 and opens the door for a single graphics API that could be used on all Windows 7, 8, 10 & Linux. As a result our current intention is to only support Vulkan and eventually drop support for DX11 as this shouldn't effect any of our backers. DX12 would only be considered if we found it gave us a specific and substantial advantage over Vulkan. The API's really aren't that different though, 95% of the work for these APIs is to change the paradigm of the rendering pipeline, which is the same for both APIs.

I wish CDPR would have same attitude, but alas, they seem to be too much MS dependent.