Star Citizen – General Discussions
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“<span style=”box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.992157);”>Word is, there no longer ANY (that we know of) experienced producers in the RSI/CIG US studios who have ever shipped a game.”</span>
Now Derek, yot even you can deny that Chris Roberts 1) works in RSI/CIG US studio and 2) has shipped a number of games, as everything from programmer to producers. Sure it was a long time ago, but that statement is just not true.
And I’m sad to see him go, I liked that guy. He seemed to be perfect combination of serious/not-so-serious. As usual we’ll probably never get the full story behind the departure, maybe it was just another case of “focusing production to LA and he didn’t want to move” like WingMan, which was a much harder blow i.m.o. From what I gather the reason they built that huge new office location in LA was to take in the people from Austin, like Sean Tracy for example (going back to your statement that Austin is getting shut down).
Also, a question regarding your statement in Twitter that it “<span style=”color: #292f33; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 22px; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: #f5f8fa;”>would be hilarious to even consider that the collapse of a $100M+ project was down to one person.</span>” – in that discussion that one person was you. But couldn’t that argument just as easily be made about Chris? Your attacks are mostly on Chris and blaming him for the demise of the project and he’s just one person? I totally get what toy meant by your comment though and one would like to add “one person, not even employed at CIG” to your statement (Twitter char limit I guess).
im reading the thread that you linked, and im seeing people now questioning the game and being skeptical. the white knights are there of course to defend and justify what is going on. meanwhile a few posters have warned the naysayers they may get banned for being “toxic” lol, this is becoming an interesting read
Yeah, as I have been saying, 2016 is going to be a very interesting year for this project. Even most loyal supporters are starting to question what is going on now.
WHY EVERY SENSIBLE STAR CITIZEN BACKER SHOULD BE UP IN ARMS RIGHT NOW
Yesterday I reported that the last remaining experienced producer, had exited the project.
Today, TenTonHammer has a new article up. What Happened To Star Marine.
Back when I said it was canceled, most looked at me funny.Then I said this was just another money making hack job within the confines of CryEngine editor. Well, it went sideways pretty quick.
Remember this?
The reason it’s “canceled” is a lot more ominous.Simply put. It was a different module designed as a SELLING point. A premise that has now run its course. That aside from the fact that practically none of what was in this module, is currently in the Persistent Universe (aka Star Citizen). Why? Because:1) it was designed/developed using a different engine build2) it can’t be merged into the 2.x (current) kernel because; well, bad decisionsSo they scrapped it. And when you’ve got over $106M of OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY, you can trash a $20M+ portion of a project and not bat an eyelid.Aside from that, the Shitizens keep trying to pin the blame on Illfonic, the studio originally hired to build Star Marine module (it remained a glorified tech demo). They’re trying to blame this indie studio for a project they had zero control over and which was suddenly taken away from them. And instead of Chris coming clean – on the record – and clearing the air, he’s busy peddling bullshit and watching the rabid fan base harass and blame Illfonic. And since they can’t defend themselves – something that’s bound to have far reaching consequences (NDA notwithstanding) – that’s the narrative now being peddled, that this was all their fault, that their work couldn’t be used in the PU etc.And they’re about to do the same shit by ramping up production on Squadron 42 (the Wing Commander type game that Chris is well on his way to ruining according to sources), which invariably is going to put the PU development into a “maintenance” mode because they’ve already tapped out on the money grab from people who are paying for JPEG ships (MOST of which can ONLY be played in the PU) for a game that still doesn’t exist.Why? Simple. Most backers of Star Citizen are entitled to SQ42 for free. Which pretty much limits the financial potential for that module. So what option does an exec on a money grabbing binge do? I’m glad you asked.You ramp up production on your Hollywood comeback wet dream by putting the majority of resources behind SQ42, so that you can sell it to additional people.Which is why this month they are going to split Star Citizen and Squadron 42 into TWO separate products. I kid you not. Wait.All the while ignoring the fact that the MAJORITY of backers don’t give a damn about SQ42 because they backed the project SPECIFICALLY for Star Citizen (aka PU) so they can get an open-world, massive game promised. SQ42 was just another freebie thrown in as part of the money-grabbing bum rush (aka stretch goal).And if nothing else, this Star Marine fiasco is continuing to shed light on what this project has now become and why the whole thing is completely FUBAR.And aside from their ToS shenanigans, we’re $106M out and still NO financial accountability for this crowd-funded project.Meanwhile, key people keep jumping ship or being laid off as a cost cutting measure.
RE: WHY EVERY SENSIBLE STAR CITIZEN BACKER SHOULD BE UP IN ARMS RIGHT NOW
Reading some of those comments are troubling, some are logical and rational criticism – then immediately attacked. Reminds me of the cold war paranoia that there was a Commie under every bed, except instead of a Commie it’s a Derek Smart post. Not saying that for comedic value either, some of the responses to criticism on the official forums sound non-compus mentis and very paranoid on any criticism of CIG or Chris Roberts.
The twisted thing is here; they are driving away a large portion of their own community by allowing, showing the attacks of forum members raising criticism. Effectively it’s getting out of hand and the forum thread doesn’t appear to be getting moderated. A self fulfilling prophecy.
To be absolutely honest, I was skeptical on “the white knight” parts of your argument originally (always look a gift horse in the mouth, verify sources, critical thinking etc) , however based on those forum responses I am struggling to disagree with you on many of your points. The more I am seeing, the more troubling it gets, it’s beginning to look probable that this project will fail. Also I get the feeling for every thing we see that is visible, there could be three or four things happening internally which are not visible.
STAR MARINE – A TIMELINE OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS
A goon put this together. It’s brilliant.
“Alright gents, this is a bloody long Effort Post that remains, despite considerable time spent, incomplete. But I figured it would be worth putting some of the key Star Marine dates into a single hyperlinked timeline. Forgive me in advance for minor errors. I know most of this isn’t news to the Regulars here; my hope is to enlighten the casual visitors, particularly those who are skeptical of our skepticism. I may be overestimating the power of deductive reasoning here.
If so, damn you hopelessly irrational nerds!
Okay, here we go!”
PAX AUSTRALIA – November 5th, 2014
Chris Roberts debuts promising footage of the upcoming FPS shooter component of Star Citizen to a rapturous audience. Later in the presentation, he introduces Illfonic, the contractor developing the game.
STAR CITIZEN PAX EAST PRESENTATION – March 6th, 2015
Chris Roberts shows improvements made in the last quarter to the FPS component. He explains that the FPS will release in “3 weeks time”, as soon as they finish transition animations and finish modeling trickier elements like Zero-G combat. He then states that CIG’s goal is to have “the best playable soldiers on the simulated battlefield“.
Not long thereafter, he introduces the in-game fiction name of their combat module, “Star Marine”, apparently unaware that the trademark has already been registered by another party for use in video game and film properties.
INTERVIEW WITH REDBULL.COM – June 4th, 2015
In an interview with RedBull.com, Chris Roberts says of his FPS ambitions that “Star Citizen has to be as good or better than anything out there.” He later speaks of his plans to add a procedural system for destructible environments, to improve upon Battlefield 4’s scripted events.
POLYGON, OTHERS REPORTS “STAR MARINE” MAY BE DELAYED INDEFINITELY- June 30th, 2015
Seizing on either ill-chosen or confessional disclosures in the latest “Letter from the Chairman“, Polygon reports:
“Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen, the spiritual successor to the Wing Commander series and unprecedented crowdfunding success, has encountered serious technical and gameplay issues that will indefinitely delay one of the game’s key modules, a first-person shooter called Star Marine.“
These rumors generate consider alarm in the fanbase.
BEN LESNICK POSTS “SOME THOUGHTS ON CONCERNS!” IN THE RSI FORUMS – July 2015
Seeking to dispel the alarm of backers, and to take shots at those promulgating them, Ben Lesnick writes a lengthy missive at RSI. It opens with an update on the status of Star Marine:
“What is happening? The weekly updates from the team will give you a better idea, but the short story is that Star Marine was not ready for launch when we had hoped (and planned.) We spent several weeks expecting that resolving a then-current crop of blockers would allow a PTU publish. When this didn’t happen, we conducted a full review of the module lead by our top technical folks from around the company. What they determined was what you read in Chris’ letter two weeks ago: we need to rebuild several ‘boring’ backend pieces and we need to fix serious animation issues before there would be any benefit to a release.
It would not be my place to give you a timetable, but with the number of people I’m seeing who genuinely believe that we somehow now aren’t doing the FPS module I will say that we are talking about a delay of weeks and not months/years/decades.“
GUIDE TO STAR MARINE – July 2015
This is a well-made, fan-generated overview of the game from July of 2015. Note that there is no speculation here; the fan has simply condensed material (video, lore, weapons, interfaces and gameplay info) that had been previously disseminated by CIG since they debuted FPS gameplay at PAX Australia in November of 2014.
Introduction
Game Modes & Maps
Customization
The Armory
Advanced Mastery
Access
The Firestorm: Microwave Cannon (Don’t mind this; it never existed!)
DEREK SMART PUBLISHES “INTERSTELLAR CITIZENS”- July 6th, 2015
Game Developer Derek Smart offers his first lengthy critique (resulting fallout which led to an all out war -ed) of Star Citizen. It is notable for a variety of reasons, including the fact that he writes over 4000 words (not kidding) of preamble before finally addressing his concerns with Star Citizen and commenting on the rumored setbacks with Star Marine.
“The RSI devs have all the same insurmountable problems that I have encountered over two decades of chasing this whale, and which have not only led to their delays, but also the recent announcement that the first person module was on hold came as no surprise to me.
I have it on good authority that it’s not even on hold, but that they’re probably not going to finish it both because it won’t work within the current framework and it wasn’t in the original design as spec’ed, since it has ballooned to what it is today. So naturally, it’s the first thing to go, or put on indefinite hold while they figure things out.
Remember: the game, first and foremost, is a space combat game, not a first person combat game.
At least you will still have your hangar (which is completely and 100 percent detached from the game framework, by the way), in which you can still walk around in first person mode to look at your ships. And Arena Commander.
Why wasn’t I surprised that they’ve started cutting things out, starting with this? Well, because after spending over two decades making a game like this, you pretty much know what to expect.
Right from the start in 2012 when they said that they were using CryEngine3 as their baseline, I was skeptical. But if they kept the scope, and scene sizes manageable, I felt that it was totally doable.
Once the feature creep and increased scope started to unfold, I knew they were in trouble.“
In response to the chaos caused by his first strike, the over decade long love/hate cycle between Derek Smart and Goons sees the first flowers of Spring bloom.
GAMESCOM 2015 – August 7th, 2015
One month after that fan video was released, Chris Roberts shows a live, multiplayer playthrough of illfonic’s “Star Marine”. In an attempt to rebut rumors that Star Marine had been cancelled, Chris Roberts states:
“Just to show you basically its not cancelled, that its in development, it exists… We’re hoping to have that to you guys before CitizenCon.“
Later in the presentation, Chris Roberts states that Star Marine v1: The Battle for Gold Horizon will be available at the end of September 2015.
This was the last build of Illfonic’s now-scrapped game that they showed at a Citizen event. Janky though the player animations were, it appeared to have more weapons (including grenades and an electric shotgun) that have since vanished.
(It is mildly interesting to note that CIG has left their low-res Gamescom presentation on Youtube as their master– but they deleted their Twitch master. A note on the Youtube account promises, “In cased you missed it LIVE on Twitch, here’s the entire, uncut, raw Gamescom Presentation. May take a little longer for the 1080p version to process with YouTube, but we wanted to get this to you as soon as we could. – Thanks to everyone for making this possible!”)
CITIZENCON – October 10, 2015
Curiously, there was a much-derided, hype teaser for Star Marine right before CitizenCon 2015. The chilly reception of fans (and open mockery of critics) prompted CIG to table discussion of “Star Marine” at the show.
STAR MARINE STATUS UPDATE – October 17th, 2015
After weeks of openly frustrated progress reports by (recently departed – ed) Jason Hutchins, the last entry in CIG’s ongoing series of Star Marine updates appears on the RSI site. It is here that an early conflation of “Star Marine” with the PTU Alpha begins, though it’s worth noting that even at this date, “Star Marine” was still being referred to as a module akin to “Arena Commander”.
“Meanwhile, work on Star Marine proper continues. Some of the deeper features are taking a back seat this week we roll out the basic movement and gunplay that will be available to all players on the Crusader map. This allows us to focus our attention on making the time players are outside their ships a good experience. What’s not included in Star Citizen Alpha 2.0? Game systems such as the score screen and Star Marine lobby UI, as well as some gameplay engineering and design work that is needed for Headquarters game mode. Have no fear, though, for Star Marine will return and your appetite for first person combat will be whetted by the action on Bravo station in the Crusader map. We will continue developing features and gameplay modes that are ultimately for use within Star Citizen, and we will continue to use Arena Commander and the Star Marine modes as a test bed for them. For now, and into the future, the FPS experience will be an integral part of Star Citizen Alpha, and we can’t be more happy about that!”
10 FOR THE PRODUCERS – November 23, 2015
“Just stick to the script, Jason”
In an interview with Jason Hutchins (don’t forget the name), he describes Star Marine as “a test bed for new features, new game types, new mission objectives and maps” and later, a means to roll out “new enemy AI behavior for certain monsters or other NPCS out there“. The point, he notes, is to allow upcoming FPS gameplay additions to be tested in the module before they are added into the game proper (the PTU).
Jake Ross adds, “And Star Marine is also used like ‘Arena Commander’ is used, like a simulation to practice your dogfighting skills. This is a simulator to practice your first person shooter skills.”
10 FOR THE CHAIRMAN – January 25, 2016
Aside from discussion by Jason Hutchins in 10 FOR THE PRODUCERS, and despite ample opportunities available during both CIG’s Anniversary and Holiday Livestreams, little attention was paid to “Star Marine” in the months of November and December.
Chris Roberts finally addresses the elephant in the room during his first “10 for the Chairman” interview of the year.
“So yes it is still in the pipeline. I do actually kind of like to say something because I sort of get annoyed sometimes when I see this pop up in comments like “Oh Star Marine is cancelled or Where’s Star Marine!?” Star Marine was just a game mode for people to play the FPS elements of Star Citizen until we could combine everything together: Flying, walking around, shooting, doing all the rest of the stuff, all together, that is what is in 2.0, that’s what it’s 2.1.
With SC Alpha 2.0 onwards, you have basically what we were planning to do from Star Citizen and from the very very beginning. If you could back and look at the original pitch we didn’t say “Hey we’re doing Star Marine,” We said we will have FPS and Board, well you have FPS and you have boarding right now and so what’s really happening is there will not be features that will only be for Star Marine outside a sort of competition match and scoring that isn’t going to be in the game and so we’re actually rolling out the FPS features.
So 2.2 will have some more features on the FPS side and 2.3 will have some more and so on until we sort of what we consider the basic functionality. 2.2 has cover and some other things in it and we’ll obviously have future, there’s things like vaulting and sliding and different kind of stances that we have and there’s a lot more weapons that we have and they’re all getting rolled out and honing it and you guys are going to be able to play it in 2.2 and 2.3 and 2.4
When we’ve got that basic set together we will sort of turn on the map for Star Marine because all Star Marine is, is a game mode. Basically allows you to play a game, have two teams, have some points and so you can just sort of have a Arena Commander style match, but for FPS. That’s useful for you to hone your FPS skills without sort of being in the mini PU and risking some other stuff, but you already have FPS in the game so it’s not like FPS got cancelled or anything like that.
It’s definitely in and Star Marine was originally our idea of how to get people to play the FPS before we could put everything together, but since that obviously took longer than we expected to get FPS to the level that we are comfortable with. By the time we got it to the level we said ”Okay you guys can play this.” Well we already had all the other things combined with the Large World and the 64-bit coordinates and the zone system so that was it. So there you are, we will have Gold Horizon, we will have Star Marine, but that will come online once all the basic FPS features are out in and live in the mini PU.”
In the span of only a few minutes, Chris Roberts introduces a revisionist fiction that completely contradicts literally hundreds of public statements made by him and other members of CIG and Illfonic over the course of the last year. There will be no Star Marine module, and there need not be one, as the features formerly promised are now available in the PTU. Deal with it.
(As an aside, it’s worth noting how this eerily parallels his wife’s (that would marketing director, Sandi Gardiner – ed) recent act of historical revisionism . After going to pains to deny that she was the wife of the founder of the world’s most successful crowdfunding campaign, after demanding employees do the same, she acknowledges a once unspeakable fact and declares (after Derek Smart forced their hand by making the connection public in his blogs – ed) it as widely known. That the two most powerful figures in the organization both easily engage in public acts of brazen dishonesty should, for a fair-minded individual, be cause for alarm. Yet for many believers, hope springs eternal, even in the face of outright lies.)
DEREK SMART REPORTS THAT CIG PRODUCER JASON HUTCHINS HAS RESIGNED – January 26th.
If Jason Hutchins has truly left CIG, I don’t take any joy in it. He seems like one of the good guys and had a thankless role. Frankly, it seems like most all the roles are thankless when all successes are claimed the work of the Roberts, and all failures declared someone else’s fault.
A very upset backer sums it up nicely:
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