Realistic Star Citizen Update – April 30th, 2018
It’s time for another weekly roundup. Sure it’s technically “next week” already but fuggit.
-Non-combat AI, like traders and miners, are estimated for 3.5 or 3.6. So about a year to year and a half range.
-Primary focus right now is on combat AI having different “styles” of flying/fighting. Could swear I’ve been hearing CIG talk about something like this for years now…
-There’s some talk about weapons racks and lockers and how they’ll work with the standard RPG wrist computer inventory. CIG offers some answers then undercuts those answers by saying work will hopefully start at some point, so in other words years in an no solid plans for the inventory system.
-CIG tried making race tracks for 3.0 but since the moons keep changing the tracks break. Fixed track planetary racing is shelved for now and instead both space and planetary racing will be RNG placed checkpoint based.
-CIG needs to hire teams for Star Marine, Arena Commander, and Racing. Because a near 400 person studio can’t find the manpower to manage those somehow.
-CIG has worked on new tech for glass, so you finally won’t have to deal with blinding canopy glare in your fighter. Maybe.
-CIG is working on tech to render malfunctioning UI interfaces (static, corruption, etc). So now the players interface with the game world can be fake glitched in addition to real glitched.
-CIG is expanding the art scope of the primary mining station in SQ42 to be fuckin yuge. Not content with just feature creep CIG needs to overstretch their art team too.
-CIG is working on new tech to examine guns while in your hand, allowing you to rotate them and fully inspect them. Because this was a good use of the animation and programming teams time.
-The rest of the show is some dudes talking about how amazing immersive the cutscenes will be and how NPCs will say different things based on player choices. Groundbreaking stuff right there.
-It consists of tons of talk about graphical amazement but zip gameplay details.
-Animations will likely remain uninterruptable so once you start an animation sequence you’re stuck doing it even if someone shoots you.
Considering the game is just filled with long animations to fulfil the most basic gameplay functions like getting into your ship I certainly can’t see this being detrimental to gameplay in a multiplayer environment.
-This a long video. I ain’t fucking watching these nerds ramble.
Rant – AKA: A TL;DR for those that have short attention spans
Man, CIG’s shit is starting to look skunked. The answers for the past few weeks point towards a game that is years away from having even the basics down to make it viable to call it a beta/EarlyAccess product.
The product CIG sold people on, the one that has you cruising across a hundred star systems and visiting alien civilizations just isn’t going to viably release at a forseeable point in the future.
CIG’s development pace is so slow I’m not even sure they’re going to be able to come close to keeping up with the players inevitable manipulation of game mechanics, let alone expanding the game and finishing up what they sold people on.
The fact that CIG is saying they need to hire more dudes to manage a couple of arcade games inside the project is more than a little concerning, CIG is a fairly sizable studio yet it can’t even keep up with weapons balance or keeping an eye on basic gameplay viability.
Yet again this week I’m watching shows all about visual spectacle and visual concepts for a game that’s six years into development and still has the actual gameplay releasing on a multi-year trickle feed.
But hey, if people keep funding them CIG can just keep going like this for another five years and maybe have a basic game out.
Personally I’m starting to wonder if SC is already past its peak and it’s just going to have all the impact of a wet fart past this point.