Realistic Star Citizen Update – April 21st, 2018
Update post, with apologies to Barry because this one won’t be short.
Barry, just take all of Ellesser’s stuff and add a year or three until there’s enough content to be worth logging in for.
Calling All Devs
Around the Verse
Reverse the Verse
Calling All Devs
-CIG has some “plans” for landing assistance but nothing specific other than hopefully fixing the old landing pad marker system that they broke like a year ago.
-CIG is still working on a system so not all planetary location markers show when near planets, not ready to be talked about too much apparently. Must be really hard to not show beacons on the other side of the planet.
-Some talk about persistence, clear as mud what the long term objective is at this point but for now it saves your state like a normal MMO would. If that MMO was buggy and sometimes shit the bed.
-CIG isn’t developing the rovers or fighters they sold packaged with other ships, those are developed separately so if it isn’t on the schedule for the coming year than you can expect to wait a few years for CIG to get around to finishing off your package. CIG’s kind of like a bad girlfriend that ends up giving up half way through.
Around the Verse
-Reworks of older armors and costumes “coming along well”. I should hope so, CIG has only been talking about them for like five months.
-CIG is working on quality of life improvements, but it’s just that stuff from the poll a few weeks back.
-Shopping kiosks are being improved. Lame as that may sound it seems you may be able to buy ship fittings Soon™.
-CIG is implementing wear and tear so weapons will malfunction if they’re low quality or worn.
-Stuff on mining. More on this later in thread.
-Super long talk about the character customizer but fundamentally the character creator works by taking premade items/faces/skins and bolting them to the model. There are some major pros to this but unless CIG adds a lot more options, and burns some client memory on this, the face options are going to make Eve’s character creator look hi-tech.
Reverse the Verse
-Yet another talk with the audio team about how amazing the Star Citizen audio is going to be, it’s just around the corner guys, for real this time!
-I actually just skipped this episode, skipped through a few areas but it appears to be just dudes talking for like an hour about how sweet SC’s audio will be some day.
BUT HEY GUYS, THERE’S SOME AWESOME INFORMATION ON MINING!
Quote:Mining presents players with a variety of challenges requiring skill and intelligence, whereas mindless repetition of a task and idle drudgery are explicitly avoided. There are no aspects of mining that allow a player to simply press a button and wait without concern for a result, or that require players to perform an action repeatedly without some element of thought and/or dexterity coming into play.
Coming in 2016 2017 2018!
As you can see CIG has really used those extra years of development time to really push their game past the “blow up rocks, collect parts, sell rock parts” gameplay that we’ve seen in all those other generic space games coded by smaller development teams.
CIG really is pushing the field of space sims forward with this one guys!
Updates to Production Schedule
3.2 – Not much progress and not really much to say.
3.3 – Added mission modularity and racing missions to tasks, here what CIG says.
Quote:This feature includes a number of improvements to the existing mission system. One task will transform the logic setup for missions into modular pieces, allowing designers to quickly string mission types together into a single mission. This also includes the introduction of a new style of race mode called a Scramble, where pilots race to destroy beacons. Finally, this feature includes the introduction of the scanning mechanic to the missions.
Good to see CIG is making it more efficient to produce hordes to “go here and get thing to take here” type missions, was running out of those.
3.4 – Added interdiction and salvage missions. NPC planetary landing was removed to be replaced with FPS stealth mechanics, AI quantum drive use, and AI strafing flight.
BUT WAIT GUYS! THAT’S NOT ALL!
There’s also details on patch 3.5 so you can see what’s coming in SC’s next exciting year of development!
Quote:-Refineries : The design, creation and implementation of locations where players can go to sell unrefined ore that they have mined. Players can also visit these facilities to purchase refined minerals to sell elsewhere.
-Comm Array Revision (was previously in 3.3.0) : Creating and implementing revisions to the CommArray stations positioned around the universe. These not only facilitate the ability to transfer data but also provide ECN coverage to report any security violations.
-Liquid / Gas Exploration : This feature includes all the tech and gameplay work required to allow players to search for, identify, and extract deposits of liquids or gases on planets as well as in space.
-Expanded Cargo : This feature will increase the sizes and types of cargo containers that the players will use to transport commodities and goods. The current size is a single SCU, these crates will cover larger sizes and shapes.
-Data Running : The ability to transfer data between locations, but this system also includes the creation of data packets/tags to points of interest in the universe that allow it to be tracked. For example, a prospector identifies a vein of nickel. The location of that discovery becomes a piece of data that the prospector can transfer or sell.
-Long Range Scanning : The system required to allow a ship to scan wider areas of space, find points of interest and travel to them. This will feature heavily with prospecting and exploration ships.
-Combat styles for FPS and Flight AI : Work on this feature will introduce a variety of Combat styles that can be applied to NPC AI. Some of these initial personalities would range from untrained fighters to trained military, allowing a variety of flavors to an encounter.
-Origin 890 jump : Building, implementing, and balancing Origin’s luxury ship, the 890 Jump, as a flight ready ship in the game.
-Banu Defender : Building, implementing, and balancing the Banu fighter as a flight ready ship in the game.
-Kastak Arms Coda : Designing and creating Kastak Arms’ Coda ballistic pistol for use by characters in-game. The work includes asset creation, passes by numerous teams, and Design input on weapon balance.
-Klaus & Werner Lumin V : Designing and creating Klaus & Werner’s submachine gun for use by characters in-game. This includes asset creation, passes by numerous departments, and Design input on weapon balance.
-Kastak Arms Firestorm : Designing and creating Kastak Arms’ microwave cannon for use by characters in-game. This includes concept completion, asset creation, passes by numerous departments, and Design input on weapon balance.
Glad to see CIG has set out such and ambitious path for Star Citizen in it’s coming years, truly we can look forward to rapid ongoing development that puts Star Citizen up there with DayZ, Rust, and Half Life 3.
Banner goes here