Good god, Chris can't even spin the illusion of SQ42 progress anymore to a sympathetic reporter. The idea that they've "got the chapters blocked out" as some kind of major achievement is just ludicrous. What does that even mean?
It means he has S42 storyboarded.
However...as I understand the development of S42 and SC, S42 and SC will be sharing quite a bit.
Same engine, same graphics, same netcode, same worlds. Its why they can develop two games at the same time without breaking the team....ok, they do that but the point is there is AIUI a huge amount of crossover in the codebase of the two.
Upside....its going to save a lot of money. They develop large chunks of S42 for free. There'll be differences but siming for minor.
Downside...S42 can't be ready until the engine, flight model, netcode, etc is ready for S42.
Based on the show we got yesterday...not a total disaster but it really should have been much better controlled, tested and stable for a PUBLIC demonstration...I saw lag and sync issues (assuming all parties were on the same network segment and used best PCs possible for performance optimisation, that's quite a feat and speaks to low quality code) as well as graphical and animation issues, not to mention THE crash....the foundations still need a lot of work.
And they should be doing THAT before cosmetic work such as eye and head tracking, lip syncing and more. I'm not certain how their plans for VOIP are going to come about given bandwidth considerations either. FOIP is a system that strikes me as something that should be added much later in the development cycle, once the netcode is nailed down and they have some idea of how much free space they have to play with. Right now though, it seems CR saw it in STBC and said "I want THAT in SC" and shifted resources from the important stuff. The engine...animation and graphics....flight model...netcode....
That stuff just runs the game. FOIP means they get to sell webcams!!! See? No need for ship sales
