Realistic Star Citizen Update – February 13th, 2018
From reader comments: These guys are really lost, its just tech demo after tech demo without any actual integration.
I’d attempt to make some sort of counterargument about how CIG just has a bad habit of showing us prototype systems that may not make it into the final game and that its an unfortunate by-product of CIG’s semi-open, self promoting, development.
But really I can’t try and keep a straight face trying to pass that shit off to this crew, we are in fact six years into a game that looks like it’s trying to go for the record of longest pre-alpha and is still just throwing features at the wall to see what sticks without a focused plan for release.
Here’s an example that comes from one of CIG’s update shows today.
I actually watched this one because it’s short, shows what the developers are actually working on, and I didn’t want to ignore SC for weeks and then have to go through the septic tank that is the SC Reddits last few weeks of news like I did with the last update.
Here’s what’s new. With cynical comments included.
CIG’s Webteam is working on stuff.
As per usual CIG is working on a bunch of shit for their webpage that most of the community won’t give a shit about.
This time it’s org/guild forums, having public guild forums for randoms to come post on, and some other features that appear somewhat useful or neat.
It sounds good in principle but then you remember that most actual guilds play multiple games together, are not just SC guilds, and also living in a world where you can set up your own forums and comms if you’re even a half serious group.
Still a nice feature, not totally shitting on it.
The magboot feature is dead, now CIG is developing some sort of system that has your E.V.A pack align you to a surface and keep you stuck to it.
That’s great to hear that the magboots functionality is dead, I kind of assumed after not hearing about it for three years that was the case, but the fact that many years later, and over a year since the FPS module released after massive delays, CIG is only starting to work on one of the fairly key features to their zero-gee FPS isn’t confidence inspiring.
CIG isn’t even working ship docking, at least in cases like the snubfighter that attaches to the Constellation.
Instead the engineering team is working on optimizations, the cockpit experience, and cargo/mission functionalities.
The technology to even do this won’t be in place until mid year, it will allow for better damage models though (so that’s nice).
Still, once again CIG is working on making the shit that is already years behind schedule work and with the tech for other core features from years ago still months away from having the base code in place to even begin work.
Here’s what the engineer showed off that he’s working on instead.
That’s cool and all… but super slick landing gear isn’t exactly a core feature that’s holding the game back.
It’s something that needs to be done at some point, and maybe there’s nothing else more important that the engineer could have been doing, but I find myself wondering given just how many more important task I see needing work currently with SC.
I’d actually be more impressed if he’d shown a system that allowed boarding ramps to actually lower to ground level properly.
Last time I landed a large ship on uneven terrain the boarding lift ended up a meter off the ground and I was unable to reboard the ship, I had to log out.
SC has some very fundamental usability issues with how some parts of the game just don’t work well with other parts.
So y’know what? I’m just going to go back to reading the SC news less frequently and in less detail because at this point the more I know the more I wonder about CIG’s ability to even deliver on aspects of SC inside this decade, let alone the entire project.
At this point they’re making CCP and the Dust514 project look like a well thought out and organized operation that delivered a highly focused product.