Star Citizen – Scoops

[dsmart]

I keep track of all this stuff, so you don’t have to.

[dsmart]

THE CHRIS ROBERTS THEORY OF EVERYTHING

Last week, Gameranx wrote a massive article, The Chris Roberts Theory Of Everything. It chronicled previous patterns of conduct related to the handling of his projects. It’s an incredibly well sourced read.

A Swedish magazine, LEVEL, did a similar article back in July, and which, last we heard, was picked up by a leading English media outlet for re-publication; with the Swedish author doing the official translation. As that has been some months now, some are of the opinion that the article may have been bought and buried. But as these things go, there is an unofficial translation floating around from back in July.

SQUADRON 42 DELAYED (AGAIN)

Then, just a few days ago, it became official that Squadron 42 wasn’t going to be released in 2016 – as I have said in four previous blogs – it’s clear to see that neither of these games is likely to see the light of day. At least not in the form promised.

The latest fiasco started over the weekend with the #1 Shillizen media, Gamestar in Germany, posting an interview with croberts. Lots of arguments (1, 2) erupted over that one; forcing the writer to acknowledge his error and confirming basically what most of us already knew. SQ42, like Star Citizen, is not a 2016 release. In fact, someone translated the entire article.

Naturally, the media have started reporting (1, 2, 3, 4) the same thing, while using Gamestar as the source.

Here’s the thing with this. BOTH Star Citizen and SQ42 games were supposedly to be created with $6m as per the stretch goals for this project. He says so right here and here.

This is the SQ42 breakdown by itself.

• $2m, 30 missions
• $3m, 35 missions
• $4m, 45 missions
• $5m, 50 missions + pro voice over
• $5.5m, pro mocap sessions
• $6m, mission disk for all backers up to this funding point

Ignoring the year (2011) in which croberts claimed that the game was already in development prior to the Q4/2012 crowd-funding, that means, four years and $123 million (as of this writing) dollars later, they still can’t build a smaller game, for $6 million. A game for which they’ve not only removed some features (e.g. drop-in/drop-out co-op), but also in the aforementioned Gamestar interview, it is now revealed that croberts also increased the scope of SQ42; just like he did with Star Citizen proper.

Note that the website still says that SQ42 is coming in 2016. They didn’t announce any delay at the recent Gamescom event; and with CitizenCon 2016 barely a month away, he may or may not even discuss a release date. Sources already say that SQ42 doesn’t even exist as a game; and that they’re busy working on a presentation, similar to Gamescom2016 for the show. And if even croberts is quoting a Q1/Q2 2017 release date, it’s safe to assume that it probably won’t release until the end of 2017. If ever.

Not to mention that the likes of COD:IW, Titanfall2, Mass Effect: A etc, are all scheduled for Q4/16-Q1/17 release dates.

UPDATE: They gave PC Gamer a non-denial-denial.

GAMESCOM 2016 INTERVIEW (ITALIAN MEDIA)

While we’re at it, I want to share something else with you guys so that those of you who aren’t up to speed on this train-wreck can have another glimpse of the ridiculousness of this whole thing.

After the staged Gamecom 2016 presentation which was riddled with R&D (I wrote about that here), croberts did an interview with an Italian media.

And it’s mind-boggling. Truly.

Not only was he clearly lying, the whole time, but he was talking up tech (VR, 10 million multiplayer clients, procedural generation etc) which he clearly doesn’t even understand, and features (base building!, colonization!) which were never – ever – even part of the game’s original design. This amid the fact that, thus far, five years + $123 million later, they still don’t have 15% of the Star Citizen game done; let alone SQ42.

Below is a transcript (courtesy of Goons) of that interview.

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Chris Roberts Interview Gamescom 2016 SCIC
26 Aug 2016

Q: Organisation 2.0. When will (it) arrive and what gameplay features can we expect?

CR:

Uhhh OK… so… CITIZENCON we’re gonna… we’re gonna SHOW and TALK about some STUFF. So… now is too early to talk about it, but we have… we have our WHOLE THING there I think everybody’s gonna like at CITIZENCON. It will be VERY COOL.

Q: Modding. What are the future plans for modders, have you envisioned any tool to support the community?

CR:

Ehhh no no we’re definitely gonna do TOOLS to allow people to like do CONTENT CREATION AND STUFF, so… again that’s sort of uh… the FIRST LEVEL is like our… we’re still building our TOOLS to like… like… build out like… the… like… PLANETS… and the STAR SYSTEMS… USING NEW TECHNOLOGY WE’RE USING… so eehhhh…. once… uh, we get… those WORKING then we sort of work on USABILITY AND STUFF and then… we’ll be able to… PUSH the tools out for everyone… so it’s NOT gonna be… you know… unfortunately in the next few months or in the next YEAR but uh… but after that it is… you know it is part of our PLANS, it’s like… we gotta get our internal tools at a level… uh… good enough for our guys to use and then… make them sort of more USER FRIENDLY and then the SYSTEM that we could like have people create STUFF and then we could CURATE it and put it in the main game or allow people to run sort of their own sort of limited version of the game.

But… I will say that… the LIMITED… the PRIVATE SERVER ones are, you know… they will not be able to do what the… like our FULL CLOUD THING will do cos… that’s got MULTIPLE MULTIPLE SERVERS running at… and we’re gonna have them MESHED TOGETHER so there can be lots of people in the same instance so… that part’s gone more… it’s become BIGGER since when… when… they first started it. So. But you know you should be able to have… you know… like a… like the way FREELANCER did, you can run a server, you can have A HUNDRED PEOPLE ON IT OR SOMETHING and you can go around… uh… you know… uh… eh…. AN AREA YOU DESIGN OR WHATEVER.

There you go.

Q: A lot of people want to know how Virtual Reality will be implemented, have you got any issue with the animations?

CR:

NNnnn….. NO ACTUALLY SO…. aahhhh…. on… on the VR front we’re… it’s pretty EASY for us cos we… we UNIFIED everything so we don’t have like you know, how a lot of games will have like first person view… but they’re not really first person right? But they… you know, it’s two hands floating in front of it… so we just have one… one animation, one character, one… RIG… that runs in first or third person… n-n-no cheating for it at all… ah… in the first person view we stabilise the view the same way that your brain stabilises the images coming from your eyes… yeah like you turn here it’s still UP and if you had a GOPRO on your head and you went like this it would actually go like that and we do all the… yeah we do all the same stuff like your EYE LIKE FOCUSSING ON SOMETHING and… ehrm… so… that’s actually… us for VR’s very eas… it’s like LOOKING OVER and you see, you know… the person you’re flying with DOING STUFF and you can actually see him and it’s all the right… and then if you’re in his point you can see it too so…

Yeah yeah and then also we’re building like all our displays, our UI… uhm… we’ve gotta REFACTOR the UI longer term but… the whole goal is everything’s (inaudible) in the world in 3D which again is more natural for VR… so we did have a VR… we had… early… before everyone changed their SDKs… and we just… like the ENGINE… like the ENGINE GROUP are the ones who would change it and they’re actually some of the guys that wrote uh… VR support for CRYENGINE before they… the guys who wrote the original engine they also did all the VR stuff… that IS in Cryengine now that they were using before they joined us but we just haven’t had time to implement to the most recent SDK and get it working… takes you know, maybe a MONTH’S time for someone? And they’re all very busy doing things like… the PLANETS and stuff like that which EVERYONE can experience.

Q: A game like No Man’s Sky is using procedural generation of planets, how will Star Citizen be different in that aspect?

CR:

EHHHH WELL because we’re not… we’re not… we… we have a TOTALLY DIFFERENT APPROACH… so uhhh… star… there… there’s like… I’m not interested in having a BILLION or a QUINTILLION or EIGHTEEN QUINTILLION star systems that are all RANDOMLY PUT TOGETHER so… all we do… so the PROCEDURAL… PROCEDURAL PLANETS is a BAD WORD FOR IT, what it is is… they are ARTIST AND DESIGN DRIVEN PLANETS THAT USES PROCEDURAL TECHNIQUES TO EHM LIKE BUILD OUT AREAS QUICKLY. So… but in terms of the planet like specify… like HOW YOU BUILD it… like where the mountains will be where the oceans will be where the desert will be where the forest will be… that’s all SPECIFIED by an artist at a higher level… and then they build, ehm… sort of TEMPLATES COMPONENTS where procedural tech can take all the higher level, uhm, like… kind of WORLD… and the WORLD HEIGHT MAP… and it applies the SETS of like ‘OK, here’s the… here’s like a FOREST BIOME or here’s a MOUNTAIN BIOME or here’s a DESERT BIOME’ and the it puts them, paints them in areas somewhere the artist has specified…

So what it really is, we’re using procedural tools to allow an artist to build something at a fidelity of CRYSIS but at a PLANETARY SCALE very quickly. And then they can… they can… DECIDE, ‘Oh, I’m making these areas like THIS’, or they can ZOOM IN to areas and change and edit them around to how they want.

So essentially we’re using the tools to allow artists to RAPIDLY GENERATE really interesting locations so all the locations we have, we’re not hitting a button that GENERATES RANDOM NUMBERS… Wow! That planet! Or that planet! So it’s completely different from NO MAN’S SKY which does it that way, which is also kind of the same way that ELITE does it too… so ours is specifically built to construct and design the worlds and we’re just making it so an artist with the right… with all the TEMPLATES DONE RIGHT can create a world IN LESS THAN A DAY… then… then it’s just a matter of how much time he wants to put, like, certain areas he sort of wants to really CRAFT or just leave it the sort of the way it was sort of done

And that’s what we use, that’s what we’re using the tools for… the IDEA and that’s I think the DIFFERENCE between like STAR CITIZEN and the OTHER GAMES is that like… you know I’ve always liked WORLDS and STORIES and that’s how you know WING COMMANDER sort of you know… felt GROUNDED and… you know the old ORIGIN MOTTO was WE CREATE WORLDS and so… uh… that’s important for me, we already read now that STAR CITIZEN’S got lots of LORE, we’ve been writing lore for it for FOUR YEARS, the systems are… you know… you know have a quite a lot of DETAIL, PLANETS have quite a lot of detail, we have LOCATIONS, CHARACTERS, all spread through our UNIVERSE that we’ve been working on, uh.. not… I mean you guys haven’t even seen a whole bunch of this stuff, but that’s so we can build out the world where it feels like it’s a… a REAL WORLD THAT YOU CAN EXIST IN and go out ADVENTURING

And it’s all gonna be in MULTIPLAYER and see a… you know DO THINGS TOGETHER and ADVENTURE TOGETHER and… you know… it’s… it’s… it’s… so… it’s quite… it’s quite a bit different that way.

But you know… we still gotta finish it so you know… they’re already shipping and out so… I mean I have to say that NO MAN’S SKY’s a pretty impressive technical achievement and… you know… so…

(CR is asked a question which is inaudible on the recording)

That’s… that’s… that’s… DIFFERENT from being a technical achievement… so I mean I’m just… you’re just… you’re… you’re… the ISSUE that you’re having is the general issue that you always get with procedural generation, because it”s… at some point you’re gonna see the patterns and it doesn’t seem to have a rhyme or a reason, uh, and… you know I think maybe… maybe one day? There could be some super formula that could move away from that, but it’s just HARD to do that so… technically it’s pretty impressive and it’s a pretty small team that did it, eh… so, you know, it’s pretty cool, but we’re going in a totally different path which is much more a constructed world with a much more level of detail but I mean, in MY OPINION, we’re gonna try to get the STANTON SYSTEM FOR EVERYONE AT THE END OF THE YEAR with a big release at the end of the year… and you know that’s got FOUR MAJOR PLANETS and a bunch MOONS and secondary areas like OUTPOSTS and stuff, like FORTY SPACE STATIONS and a HUGE AMOUNT OF AREA… and that I think is plenty… HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF GAMEPLAY going between… just because of the amount of DETAIL and… you know, the THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO versus otherwise… just go to STAR SYSTEM after STAR SYSTEM it’s just kind of the same thing again and again

So uh… so YEAH… I mean you’ll see we got… we got… we’re gonna… SHOW… a… like a little bit of a TEASER of some STUFF on Friday at the EVENT, ahhh… ahhhh… so ahhhh…. ahh… you’ll… kinda see a little bit of what I’m talking about and hopefully you guys will like it, sort of like the NEXT STEP, or the EVOLUTION.

Yeah it’s gonna be PRETTY COOL.

Q: How will gameplay differ from single player, from small sized organisations up to bigger ones?

CR:

Eh I think we’ll just… we’re… we’re… DEFINITELY… gonna be DESIGNING gameplay that’s like… SINGLE PLAYER STUFF or YOU AND A GROUP OF FRIENDS or you’re part of a BIG ORGANISATION… and it’s just DIFFERENT THINGS you can do so one of the nice things with the PROCEDURAL… tech, ah… the… that I was thinking… ah… that we wouldn’t be able to do for quite a while but now we’re PROBABLY gonna do is, we’re now gonna have a lot more sort of… PLAY AREAS and since we’re planning to put everyone in the SAME INSTANCES so they’ll just, there’ll DEFINITELY be a case where you and your organisation could like pull off… find a place you like on one of the planets and then bring in some HABITATS and build your own little BASE and then SHIELD, put a SHIELD so it can’t really be seen by other people and then give out LOCATIONS for them to JOIN YOU and then some OTHER ORGANISATION will be cruising around and will be scanning stuff and then will find your PLACE and there could be a BATTLE…

I mean that’s the kind of stuff that… because we’re now letting you go… it’s not… ‘Oh! There’s a planet and now I’m gonna do an automated landing to go down’, there’s just a whole bunch of more gameplay that opens up in terms of… TERRAIN that you can go on and you know whether it’s other players or… you know, AI ENCOUNTERS you can have, you know… whether there’s, you know… PIRATE CAMP spawned down on the planet and you go down and VISIT or there’s a pilot that STRANDED and you gotta go rescue him or whatever

There’s a whole OPTION of different sort of content and gameplay beyond sort of what you would normally be able to do just with SPACE

Q: So will we be able to colonise planets, asteroids, moons, and make our own little settlement?

CR:

Depending on where it is, YES.

So there… there… the… SO. With the tech that we’re DOING, uhm… that’s much more POSSIBLE now than it was before, and we’re also TRYING to have this MESH OF SERVERS so we can have a lot more people in the same instance, so it won’t be so INSTANCED as we were thinking before, so… uh.. the… the goal is… that we’re gonna have a lot of… that’s what I was… I mean if you think about like EARTH, there’s seven billion people on EARTH, there can be areas you can walk, you can walk and never see another person… and… you know… in our WORLD… if we have… TEN MILLION PLAYERS, ten million people that have bought STAR CITIZEN and will play it, then you’re likely to have about a million people concurrent, that’s sort of a TEN PERCENT… so that’d be amazing cos WORLD OF WARCRAFT has done that… ahh… but a MILLION PEOPLE and you’re spread out across hundreds of star systems which each will have multiple planets so you’re talking three, four, five, six hundred planets, the MOONS, there’s a HUGE, MASSIVE amount of TERRAIN so there’s… I think there’s an opportunity and plenty of places for people to sort of make their BASES or set up

So that’s kind of one of the COOL THINGS I’m set about because of the planet stuff that we’re doing… increase the… the PLAYSPACE, the PLAY AREA, now you have these worlds that you can go DOWN ON as well as SPACE.

So YEAH, we’re GONNA DO IT

End title:

A big thank you to Chris Roberts for his kind disposition and David Swofford for his professionality and all the rest of the great staff

[dsmart]

LATEST MEDIA STREAMS/INTERVIEWS

16-09-06 The Great Game Debate

16-08-23 Cranky Canuck – Coffee with Derek Smart

ON-GOING LAWSUIT AGAINST CIG/RSI

This has been in the works since last year, and I even mentioned this building in my “Star Citizen Year Four” blog (search for ‘building’) where I said:

Through all this, the wasteful spending of backer money continues. Ranging from repeated iterations of once completed game assets and tech, to relocating teams to more expensive States; building new offices; spending millions of dollars on the same tech (MoCap, fps module) which bears very little relevance to the game being made; paying late filing fees for UK studios financials ( e.g. Foundry 42); spending money on investigators and legal in taking actions which amount to intimidation and harassment etc. It is a very, very long list we’ve compiled.“”

So earlier this week, a Gameranx writer uncovered the public case filing, and got up to speed with the latest case filings. Last year, sources had told me that CIG/RSI were building a new location in LA in order to move. That location was to have a custom made entrance and/or foyer which would depict one of the larger ships in the Star Citizen universe. Apparently there was a dispute over the location build-out with the builders, electricians etc. In the end, it all fell apart. And as these things go, it looks like the builders ended up suing CIG/RSI, as well as the owners/investors of the building, over payment for services.

Lawsuits are sometimes the unavoidable costs of doing business. So on the face of it, this isn’t such a big deal. Except for the fact that CIG/RSI is a company funded partly by crowd-funding (to the tune of $123 million to date), investor money, as well as various investor/bank loans – all of which make that $123 million public number way higher if you believe (most of us don’t) that it’s accurate.

This, in addition to the on-going marketing and other frivolous expenses, is all part of the money that’s not going into “game development” as promised by CIG/RSI. For a company that’s rumored and estimated to be burning approximately $3m per month for it’s four worldwide studios which have over 350 employees and contractors, you would think that saving money would be a key goal. But hey, if you have an average of 2000 whale backers still funding an on-going train-wreck, you can basically do what the hell you want with their money. Especially if, despite promising financial accountability, you have thus far failed to provide it; and to the extent that you remove such promised accountability entirely from a ToS.

But look on the bright side; backers eventually paid for a makeshift space door (completely unrelated to this legal action) at the new location.

It’s interesting to note that amid all the controversy, the first lawsuit against CIG/RSI, comes from builders who, aside from wanting to get paid, aren’t even part of this on-going train-wreck.

UPDATE (16-09-09): Gameranx now have more details about the lawsuit.

LATEST CHRIS ROBERTS STRAIGHT UP BULLSHIT

It never ends.

Yet another German interview from this past GamesCom 2016 event has surfaced. If you thought the last one was bad, wait till you watch/read this one. Here are some choice excerpts from 26:24

See his response about financial accountability? Yeah.

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Gamestar.de interview with Chris Roberts
Sept 7 2016

Q: Just playing the devil’s advocate a bit there in the last question, there’s been some criticism by some people, some from shady sources, let’s not talk about that, about you spending your money for different things and nobody really knows what for… I don’t know… um… Now there are some Kickstarter projects who kind of put a price tag to anything they do for people to know what their money is being spent on, have you ever considered doing that for Star Citizen?

CR:
Ehrrr no, that just sounds like, that sounds like a… a NIGHTMARE… I alre… I… I already have… you know… a lot of ARMCHAIR DEVELOPERS and all the rest of the stuff and ARMCHAIR CEOS… uhm… and yeah, you know… the input’s appreciated and good but you gotta… you gotta… run a project and you… you know… you can’t have a committee of one point four million people DESIGNING STUFF. We… we… put all the money we raise into the game, I mean we have three hundred and thirty people around the world, there’s four studios… aahhh… you know we do… I mean… hell we did VIDEOS where you walk around the studios!

I mean… THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY PEOPLE, they all need to be PAID you know, it’s like, ADD IT UP, like it’s going… it’s going in the GAME, we’re contantly adding STUFF and building STUFF so ah… I think some people… like ATTENTION and so like to… say things… ah, but… ah… you know… we just… we focus on what we’re doing, we care about making the best game possible, and every dollar that we raise goes to making the game better, and that’s KINDA the pledge I made, I said that until the game’s COMMERCIAL we’re… all the money we’re raising is essentially going in and getting reinvested into the GAME and we sort of DETERMINE, ah… you know… how POLISHED and how BIG and how AMBITIOUS and EVERYTHING IS based on THAT and that hasn’t changed

I mean the… you know… we did last year, you know, better than we did the year before despite, apparently, you know, having some CRITICISMS ah… so… I… I think the MAJORITY of people are… are HAPPY with eh… what we’re doing because, you know, they just want… I… I think MOST people got into this because they wanted something that wasn’t gonna be they’d play for a week and put away. I think most people got into this to have something that they could play for YEARS and so they’re like, ‘OK if you’re gonna build something build it RIGHT because I wanna play this for YEARS’, and so I’ve… for me that’s kinda what I hold true to… errhh… and that’s important for me…

Because I also wanna play this game, I wanna be in this UNIVERSE and I want it to be RIGHT and you know you can SEE it when we were showing you the DEMO and I’m calling out to Erin, ‘THERE’S THIS THING AND THIS AND ALL THESE LITTLE DETAILS’ and then maybe on your side you’ll be like ‘alright, I didn’t… I don’t… I didn’t notice that’, but you know for me that’s kind of IT, it has to be this VISION so that’s… ummm… what I’m focussing on and uh… it’s the best way and the COMMUNICATION that I talked about SHARING what we’re doing goes on and the rest of it’s up to the PEOPLE but I don’t really wanna get into a situation where it’s ‘DO YOU WANT THIS FEATURE FOR SO MANY DOLLARS OR DO YOU WANT THIS FEATURE FOR SO MANY DOLLARS’, because I think at that point you’re gonna loose control of a singular vision and a really cohesive world ah… and ah… you know…

I can tell you there’s a… you know… ah… there’s NOTHING SHADY WITH US, we’re straight up, I think… people that say things like that, they… you know… people was it… look in a mirror… something like that
Q: Well I am looking forward to seeing where the game is going to be in one year, and if the HULL CLASS has not been released I’ll be bringing a certain UNCLE and we’ll talk some more
CR:
I actually think there’s a… there… there… there’s a GOOD CHANCE by… NEXT YEAR that there… could be a HULL CLASS… because we’ve got the MISC SHIPS, we’ve already got the STYLES and the basic, I mean once we’ve built one or two of the ships at SCALE like the STARFARER’S a big scale MISC ship, it’s much quicker for us to build the first, when we build the first one because there’s a whole STYLE and MATERIALS and SHADERS that you build for the different MANUFACTURERS… so the MISC… so the ahh… HULL CLASS is uh… I think… by the next time… by next GAMESCON… will be… you know… it… whether it’s FLYING right then it’ll be VERY CLOSE TO

So…

SANDI IS BACK ON SOCIAL MEDIA

So a few weeks back, Sandi, the controversial CIG/RSI “VP of marketing”, posted that she was quitting social media due to harassment. That was odd. Especially considering that nobody had then seen any evidence of social media harassment. To the extent that I even wrote two (1, 2) blogs about it. Serious stuff.

Amid all that, she was actually still on social media, liking and re-tweeting (mostly the same stuff she was apparently decrying) on social media. Not finding any such evidence, in what we believe to be a False Flag op, some idiots (1, 2) with new accounts (which I was instrumental in having yanked by Twitter) decided to start Tweeting her threats; no doubt in order to give the claims legitimacy – after the fact. But as these things go, I put a stop to that in short order. Harassment, real or imagined, is not cool. Period.

But no worries though, the “Mother of Star Citizen” and “Leader Of Shitizens” is apparently back on social media. And that reminds me of an old Rodney Dangerfield joke he used to tell:

“To give you an idea how well I was doing at the time I quit [he had given up on show business in 1949], I was the only one who knew I quit.”

I get death threats from Shitizens all the time; but that’s not important, right?

SHITIZEN #1 IS HELPING WITH SECURITY FOR CITIZENCON 2016

Because of course he is. Makes perfect sense.

Yes, you read that right. Wulf Knight aka Dick Wulf aka The Wulge (that’s him in the back!) a married man, who was said to have been caught (and reported to CIG/RSI) sending inappropriate images (read: dick pics) to a female member of the Star Citizen community, while engaging in questionable chat conduct – and manipulating the game’s ship sales, is now somehow helping to organize the security for the upcoming Oct 6 event.

That went over as expected; to the extent that following the outcry (which probably fell on deaf ears back at CIG/RSI, seeing as him and Ben Lesnick are buddies from back in the day), he protected his Twitter feed.

Then there’s this gem. And then there’s that.

Naturally, it didn’t take long for the veiled threats to materialize once I jokingly posted that I was going to attend the event.

Just read this shit. READ IT! 

I even once wrote an entire blog about him; so I’m guessing he’s still pissed at me.

This incident is just another fine example of how CIG/RSI simply have no control over their own community’s messaging; and that the toxicity that is now widely known and written about, comes from within, due to the very people who are the direct link to said community. But don’t worry though, before long, none of this will matter. Wait and see.

[dsmart]

LATEST CITIZENCON 2016 RUMORS

With GamesCom 2016 over, it’s time for CitizenCon 2016 on Oct 9th. This is the annual fundraising event that CIG/RSI claims is a “fan” event and not at all marketing (LOL!!). In fact, if you look at their Q4 earnings year on year, it’s easy to see how their fundraising revolves around bullshit, lies, false promises – and scripted content. Last GamesCom, it was all about Star Marine. That’s since been shit-canned; though, clearly for liability (and broken promises) reasons, it’s apparently coming back soon in the 2.6 patch. This despite Chris Roberts claiming that it was already in the game backers were playing. Yeah.

With that, an insider and denizen of the SA forums who has provided some accurate insider info in the past, posted this about 24 hrs ago.

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Prepare for Shitcon

• Bare witness to a star studded sq42 trailer with lots and I mean LOTS of cool explosions
• Observe your citizen landing on a hand crafted proceduraly generated planet, buy some land and initiate farming mechanics.
• See an epic space battle with 4 cap ships and up to 16 citizens engaging in zero gravity combat.
• Buy some new trousers in a space trouser shop .
• Explore the Grim hex , be careful of pirates though !
• And if thats not enough for you , get saving those space dollars for a new JPEG

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If the above is true, then clearly they are repeating what they have done in the past, and as recently as GamesCom 2016 whereby they create a staged proof-of-concept demo in order to rope backers into giving them more money under the guise of it all coming soon.

For my part, I have long suspected that they will have to show something of SQ42 before the end of the year, seeing as I said over a year ago that sources had told me that the game was never coming out in 2016. And since it was last seen at CitizenCon 2015, nobody has seen much of it since; let alone any game play videos. Like Star Citizen – which Chris promised back in 2015 was coming in 2016 – there is no way that SQ42 is coming out in 2016. So them doing a glitzy playable presentation – which I think it highly unlikely – or a trailer (likely), is probably the best that backers could hope for. And if rumors of them actually trying to release a playable prelude to EP1 is true, well then, the backlash is going to be fun to behold, given insider reports that it’s just sub-par.

Then again, back in Jan 2015, he proclaimed that Star Citizen would have raised $100 million before release in 2016.

STAR CITIZEN / Squadron 42 (2016)

Right now, for a five year, $123 million project, the pre-Alpha PU 2.5 build is complete rubbish. I present, Exhibit # 999999

Basically, the first PU version which was released over a year ago, has hardly made any progress, other than bug fixes, a new base, and the ability to buy clothes or run around naked. That’s it. Most of the gameplay promised for Nov 2014 release, isn’t there. No mining. No trading. No exploration. No cargo manipulation. No planets to land on. No multi-crew position/skills. No mission/quests etc. All there is, right now, is a repetitive “go flip a switch” mission with horrid NPC pirate ships. That’s it. Oh, and player ship PvP if you’re into that sort of thing.

And since the Gamescom 2016 presentation, they’ve been touting PU 3.0 (aka the Jesus Patch, and which was previously touted as 2.7) which they’re threatening to release by year end – complete with ALL of this:

• Procedural planets featuring an improved version of what was shown at GamesCom
• Player professions which include mercenaries and pirates, trading (which includes cargo transport), as well as bounty hunting
• Implementation of modules which include Subsumption AI, mission/quest giving, improved items (Items 2.0) system, as well as improved networking (which some backers think is going to solve all their current problems)
• Completed Stanton (one of the hundred promised btw) system which is to include a twelve (!) moons, four more areas (adding to GrimHex, Arc Corp, Crusader) and over thirty (!) space stations

Yeah, we’re still laughing when we look at the calendar, and notice that it’s already September and the current 2.5 patch is just plain broken; and if 2.6 releases with Star Marine as promised, they’d be pulling the same stunt they did last year when they released a horribly broken PU 1.0 which backers foolishly assumed would be the start of great things to come.

This was the GamesCom 2015 presentation. Yeah.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, what CIG/RSI are doing now is basically checking off boxes in order to not run afoul of promises made – and which they have received money for. After receiving over $123 million based on promises, any non-delivery is subject to legal action. It’s completely different from when a project removes features for whatever reason.

WISHFUL THINKING GONE AWRY

Yesterday, a backer (aka data miner) found some legacy scene files lurking in the game’s distribution. Despite the fact that these assets have been in the game for years (backers currently download this, and other useless files with each patch btw) now, some sites (1, 2, 3) decided to make news items out of it.

Sources say that this is one of various assets built to showcase parts of the game in a promo trailer, but which later proved to be “impractical” for completion, due to the game engine limitations. Which rings true, seeing as the engine is still struggling under it’s own weight and will never – ever – be able to render even a quad of that scene, let alone the whole thing, complete with texture assets, NPC entities, players etc

Yes, you’ve probably seen that scene concept somewhere. In fact, here is an album showing all of them.

…MEANWHILE, OVER IN THE NOT-MARKETING, MARKETING DEPT

So this popped up earlier today.

That’s not marketing though, right? RIGHT?

[dsmart]

STAR CITIZEN CUSTOM GAME ENGINE

So yesterday someone pointed to a video interview that Brian Chambers, Development Director, gave at GamesCom 2016 this past August. At the 6:15 mark, he was asked about the progress of the game engine. He stated that the engine was “over 50% modified from the base CryEngine“.

What follows below is my comment (posted on Frontier forums) following an exchange in which one person said “They needed to make their own engine, but it’s too late for that now” and then a Shillizen backer said “Considering that they stated they changed more than 50% of the engine Its accurate to say that they already did just that.”

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I already knew that they were using CryEngine3 as the basis for the game. In fact, I wrote an entire section in my July 2015 blog specifically about that, and why the engine they chose simply wasn’t up to the task.

Here’s the thing, when you use middleware engines, they are as-is. You rarely ever have to modify the source engine. In fact, back in the day, you would need a very expensive source engine (e.g. ID Tech5, UE, CryEngine etc) to even do that. Why would you need a source engine license? Simple: if the engine isn’t adequately suited for something that you need to support. And more often than not, it’s usually better to build your own engine, than to try and modify a middleware engine, because depending on how far you want to take it, you’re better off doing it from scratch if you already have the expertise to modify someone else’s engine using their source code.

That’s why, even today, anyone licensing engines like UE4, Unity etc, rarely have to mess with the “guts” of the engine. They use them as-is; and if you want extended features (e.g. network, UI, scene management), you can find plugins which augment (are built on top of) the underlying engine without you ever having to mess with the engine’s source code. e.g. anyone wanting advanced networking/multiplayer in Unity5, will probably buy the Photon plugin. Similarly there are hundreds of plugins for it. So, more often than not, someone else has already done the “targeted” work for you. Want larger scenes? There’s a plugin for that. Want a better scene editor? There’s a plugin for that. Want better audio, networking, UI, matchmaking, shaders, progen terrain etc – you have so many options that you simply do NOT have to write ANY custom code for UE4 or Unity5, unless you want to, or have no choice.

Similarly, when we licensed Trinigy (later bought and renamed to Havok Vision Engine), we didn’t need anything in the source license as we had no intentions of modifying the source because we already knew that the engine (bare metal, with very little fluff and/or useless features) was capable of doing exactly what we wanted. In the implementation of other middleware to “overload/replace” the built-in HVE implementation (e.g. Triton for water bodies, Silverlining for sky, clouds, atmosphere etc, FMOD for audio, Iggy for UI etc) we made minimal changes to the underlying engine in order to build our custom engine that powers Line Of Defense.

So, our revision of HVE, coupled with the augmentation of third-party middleware which worked better with the built-in HVE versions, became our “custom game engine”. We didn’t even make .01% mods to HVE because the engine was quite capable of supporting the game I was building. In fact, it was because I was able to find such a C/++ engine, that I halted development of yet another in-house game engine for this game; as I felt that we were reinventing the wheel. We lost a little over six months of dev work on that; and which I wrote-off as R&D. CryEngine was a non-starter due to scene sizes and other limitations; Unity was C#, UE4 wasn’t out yet, and though I already had private access to it, I was advised (by Epic) not to use it for production work at the time, since it wasn’t ready and too many things could change along the way.

In contrast – hence my alarmist warnings from last year – once it occurred to me that the new game scope CIG were trying to build could never be done on CryEngine3, I said so; right off the bat. I also stated that such a game needed a custom engine.

Then it came to light that they were in fact using CryEngine3 as the basis for such a custom engine. This despite the fact that once you embark on such an endeavor, the further you go, the more you realize that you could’ve just written your own engine from scratch to build the exact game you wanted.

In this interview that you linked, Brian says specifically: “over 50% modified from the base CryEngine”. Note that would be CryEngine3. And (just as I said in my blog), they stopped taking updates from CryTek awhile back due to the fact that their code base had forked so far off, that it didn’t make sense. Also they only have source license to CryEngine3. Which, btw, is why VR will never come to Star Citizen unless they go back in and bring up the now legacy (and broken) VR support they have in CryEngine3, up to the current standards. The game will never support VR anyway; so there is that. But I digress.

The reason that I went back and quoted (the forum trims multi-quotes) the entire comments (from you and Soliluna) in what you just now responded to with Brian’s comment, was because

i) when you say they already did just that, I stated that it’s false. why? well because they did not make their own engine

ii) when you say they changed more than 50% of the engine, I asked for cited sources because to my knowledge, nobody knew just how much modification they had done to CryEngine3 in order to come up with StarEngine

Now we do. And it not only looks even more bad for them; but it also – again – proves me right when I stated last year that the game they were building could never be built with the engine they chose. Ask any tier 1 engineer, and they will tell you that no dev goes and modifies a source engine by 50% unless they are a) out of time to build a custom engine, or don’t have the expertise to do so b) out of time to switch to another engine c) have game assets which have slaved them to the engine they’re stuck with

So, from the start, they thought vision 1.0 of the game could be done with CryEngine3. They were right. Then Chris increased the scope; which then put vision 2.0 of the game outside the scope of CryEngine3. They kept going with the CryEngine2 mod, until at some point, they reached “zero barrier” and could no longer turn back (port to an adequate engine such as UE4 or even CryEngine5, or build a custom engine from scratch).

Now, according to Brian, in Sept 2016, they have modified CryEngine3 by about 50% in order to come up with a custom engine for the game Chris wants them to build. And it’s still a freaking mess.

The problem is that even if they get to 90% modification of CryEngine3, it still won’t be possible for it to power the game that Chris wants because, not only will they never – ever – get to a 100% modification to make that happen, but that would also imply that they have completely replacedCryEngine3 with whatever abomination that is Star Engine. With all their resources and money, they could have built a custom engine – from scratch – in under two years.

And they will still fail to build, let alone deliver the Star Citizen game promised. Since SQ42 doesn’t have all the ganky nonsense that is in SC, they stand a good chance of delivering on that, as I’ve stated time and time again. Unfortunately, not only are a multitude of backers already entitled to that game for free, but unless SQ42 knocks it out of the park, it’s never going to earn the income required to keep buying them time to continue with Star Citizen.

In closing, I welcome folks to ponder this: They are using a heavily modified version of CryEngine3. CryTek are now on CryEngine5 (free). And even Amazon’s Lumberyard is built on CryEngine5 (free). So ask yourself this, how is spending all this money and dev resources to modify a source engine by 50%, a good thing – under any circumstance? It’s not. It’s a waste of time and money. Which is precisely why they are coming up with all these tricks to keep raising money; even long after they quadrupled the money they were originally asking for.

This is the sort of thing that should make any reasonable and/or sensible backer, absolutely mad.

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“So, I get your point that if they had simply written their own custom engine it would have saved them a lot of time and money, rather than going the long way round and rebuilding another engine a piece at a time.

But why, in your estimation, would it not be possible for them to re-write Cryengine 3 to the point where it CAN support the kind of features a game like Star Citizen needs?

Am I wrong that it would simply take more time and money (which they seem to have plenty of) or would this (shall we say less efficient approach?) present other obstacles that would make the task Sisyphean?“

1. Think of CryEngine3 as paint mix color # 1234
2. You are building a house; and you already know what color you want it to be. That being color # 1234-drywall (note that paint is texture specific)
3. You continue building your house, still intending on using color # 1234-drywall
4. At some point, the owner has decided that the back of the house will use a different kind of wall texture (e.g. drywall vs concrete); so 1234-drywall isn’t going to work there
5. The builders, with instructions from the architect, continue with concrete for the back of the house; even as the painters, having bought loads of paint # 1234-drywall, continue painting other parts with it
6. Several months down the road, painters tell the architect that 1234-drywall simply isn’t going to work on that concrete back wall
7. Seeing as there is no way to make 1234-drywall work on a texture which would require 1234-concrete, the painters set out to create the closest thing to 1234-concrete as possible, by doing their own mix. Not unlike how you can walk into a paint store and ask them to color match (they have computers for this) as close as possible 1234-concrete, derived from 1234-drywall
8. The end result is that, as drywall (vision 1.0) is totally different from concrete (vision 2.0), the chances of that concrete back wall painting ever matching the drywall used elsewhere, are close to zero
9. So the builder and architect decide to mix their own paint in order to meet with the owner’s specification. Along the way, they decide that the best way forward is to probably rip out the concrete wall or plaster drywall over it so that 1234-drywall works. There’s your MVP (drywall for the back of the house, instead of concrete).

At the end of the day, as I mentioned in my missive, in order to come up with a custom engine which would make it somewhat possible to build vision 2.0 of the game, they would have to modify CE3 by a whole lot more than 50%. And even so, the underlying CE3 architecture is still going to be there because things like scene management, 64-Bit positioning, networking etc, are all the things they would need to either rip out and replace, or build on top of. And the time it takes for them to be doing all that, could have been spent building a custom engine which specifically does what they want.

It is hard for a none programmer to quite grasp how horrendous it is to go back and modify someone’s code; let alone an engine built by several people. Which is why, last year when people were saying that opening F42-GER with ex-CryTek engineers was going to be the magic bullet, most of us who know better, just laughed. It’s been almost 18 (?) months since; look at what they have now.

To be clear, I don’t envision there ever being a time whereby their CE3 FrankenEngine ever powers vision 2.0 of the game. I simply don’t see it happening. For that, would need to modify CE3 by 90% or more. Well, therein lies the rub.

Let the record show that in my very first blog back in July 2015, I did say that it would take at least $150 million to build vision 2.0 of the game; assuming they had the tech, talent, time, and money. We’re at $124m and I have no reason to believe that they will ever achieve the promised vision 2.0 using that engine; even with $250 million.

And that’s the reason why Chris declared the MVP. As I understand it from sources, he has been advised time and time again, that vision 2.0 is simply not possible with what they have. And the best they can hope for is to ship “something” (in this case an MVP, and/or SQ42) in order to buy more time. However, the risk there is that, given their burn rate around all these studios, contractors, overhead etc, there is no guarantee that they are going to keep this charade up for much longer. Once they ship whatever he thinks is an MVP and/or SQ42, it’s going to immediately change everything for better or worse.

btw I don’t believe that Chris will ever come out and say that any version (e.g. 4.0) is the final product, hence MVP. He has thrown the MVP word out there simply as something that he can fall back to in the event that he is ever accused of never shipping the finished product. Just like he did with Star Marine, where he said that “it’s in the PU”, he will simply say that he already indicated that they will first ship an MVP, then build on top of it. That notion of “building on top of it” is the part where he gets to justify more time and money in order to bring his vision 2.0 to life. The fact that he made a bunch of promises, while not delivering on even 50% of them even with all the money, is going to get lost in translation along the way. Especially if he ever ships the SQ42 promised; which, as I understand it, is on just as much shaky ground as Star Citizen, seeing as – this point – they still don’t even have a complete “game” with everything promised in the stretch goals.

The upcoming CitizenCon on Oct 9th is going to be more of the same. Neither Star Citizen nor SQ42 is going to be released this year. That’s already a foregone conclusion. Whatever shows up at CitizenCon is going to be of the same smoke and mirrors vein. If they ship any aspect of SQ42, we’re hearing from sources that it will be tagged as a “prelude” (most of us call that a demo btw) in order to keep the backers at bay, gauge interest etc. It will succeed as far as the hardcore backers are concerned; but most of us won’t care, as it won’t be the promised EP1 game.

At the end of the day, none of this will matter. As gamers, all we can do is wait, watch, dissent, speculate, argue, fuss, fight etc until they either ship as promised, or fail completely. Those who are trying to quash dissent are the ones helping to spread the ludicrousness of this whole thing.

[dsmart]

DEALING WITH LEAKS & SOURCES

“You mention quite often about having “insider reports” – what is the veracity of these reports? Are they reliable and proven so?

I’m not needling you here. For info I was a backer since 2012 and recently got a full refund on this thing (thanks to your site).I used to be a fan but the progress and other things just wasn’t sitting right with me. I’m not cat calling for them anymore but I’d still like to see them succeed at some point before my retirement from the mortal plane.”

My blogs and blog forum are littered with all the information that either flows to me, or which are based on my opinions and speculation as a seasoned developer. The people that I know who are either still part of the project, or who have since departed, have proven to be trustworthy. Even when I get anon drops to my Lockbin account, I tend to vet them via several sources before saying anything because on more than one occasion, I have received “bad intel” which the person intended for me to use and look foolish in the process. And I have actually spent quite a bit of money in vetting and/or researching material e.g. that whole Mae Demming tickle porn videos (btw, those videos have now been flagged as private on most sites that had them) issue had me paying for that information to be vetted that it was Sandi Gardiner. Same thing with a host of other similar materials in countries such as Australia, Germany, UK and here in the US. Which is why I’ve always maintained that the single worst thing that could happen to CIG/RSI, is for them to sue me; or for them to be involved in any lawsuit that brings me in.

Those other guys, actually have an entire site dedicated to “documenting my predictions”. A site that not only contains a bunch of pure and utter nonsense; but material either taken out of context, or completely ignored because you know, anything short of telling the truth is them “losing” to me. And by all accounts, their worst fear is not that croberts was wrong; but that dsmart was right in any regard.

Here is one of their examples of me being “wrong”: “CIG does not have the tech for seamless FPS transitions 14 november 2015”

Note that I made the comment in Nov 14, 2015. They didn’t have the tech at the time. The first anyone saw it in action was GamesCom 2016 (Aug 19, 2016). In a scripted demo running in a controlled environment.

And how did I know they didn’t have the tech, without me being there? Because a source told me that it was non-existent, that they were making stuff up etc. And that was after Nyx (which most of us took apart), running in the CE editor, was shown on Aug 28th, 2015. And which we all saw they were fabricating stuff. To this day, and since then, nobody has seen anything of Nyx.

All this despite the fact that, since last year, I have – in no uncertain terms – stated that the game as pitched could never be built, that neither game would see a 2016 release etc. But they ignore this and pretty much everything else, even as features are cut, non-existent, talk of an MVP is actually a thing etc; all simply because it goes against their narrative.

The good thing about this industry is that when companies fold, NDAs become null and void, that’s when word starts going out in more places. While most won’t risk their livelihood by going on the record, they still talk; and the people they talk to are the ones who end up spreading what went on. This happens every single time. The stuff that I know, and which hasn’t even been made public due to the risk it poses to people still on this project, is the sort of thing that is so completely unbelievable that even if posted anon, nobody would believe it; even if it didn’t come from enemy #1 (yours truly).

I’m not in this for kudos or any of that. I’m not in this because I want them to fail. I’m not going to post blatant lies, knowing they are in fact lies, or knowing that it would only leave me exposed to a lawsuit, regardless of my liability insurance coverage. I’m only in this because they made this personal, made it about me, and decided to wage a war with the one person who never saw a fight he didn’t like. And the more they try to harass, attack and/or discredit me, the worse it gets because like them, I’m simply not going to stop; nor can I be intimidated. And when the end comes – as I am 100% certain that it is – I’m not going to be jumping up and down rejoicing because the only thing that will be in it for me, is vindication (even though the fact that they can’t build the game as I stated, is already vindication enough)

[dsmart]

STAR CITIZEN 10 FOR THE CHAIRMAN (16-09-21)

After a long absence, the 10FTC program is back, featuring The Chairman himself, Chris Roberts – with a different format. This one was all about characters; specifically about scanning of character heads for the actors in the Squadron 42 interactive movie, and also having player head/face character customization.

It’s all the usual bullshit really.

The most important takeaways from this video are the following:

1. Chris completely forgot that, back in 10FTC Ep19, (14-05-05), over two and a half years ago, he had promised character aging (1, 2).
2. There has been a lot of talk about how CIG/RSI, despite the work being done on the “game”, continues to use a lot of movies, scripted demos etc in order to show work that’s coming soon. Most of that stuff over the years, has never made it into the game; either because it was just a promo, or because the R&D simply didn’t pan out and had to be trashed.The most recent of this was the GamesCom mission demo (16-09-19), which while being heavily scripted, staged and full of R&D stuff not in the game, helped them raise $4 million. Before that it was things like the Star Marine movie (14-08-19), the Pupil To Planet (15-12-16) movie, the Nyx base (15-08-28) on a procgen planet etc. In fact, their Vimeo and YouTube channels are littered with this stuff going all the way back to 2012.So now comes the kicker. In this segment (starts at 16:40), Chris now tells backers to “forget about The Morrow Tour” which he now basically admits (just as I reported back then) was put together, rushed etc. For those of you not paying attention, The Morrow Tour gameplay segment was from Squadron 42. It was shown in Oct 2015 at the CitizenCon 2015 event. They raised over $3.5 million during the month of Oct based on that presentation, and JPEG ship sales.
3. The $22 million dollar stretch goal promised a facial capture mechanism which would import backers facial image into the game. At the 11:30 mark, Chris now pretty much says that’s off the table due to fidelity of the system they are now using.

Yes, games in development evolve over time, things change, are improved upon, tweaked etc. That’s not the issue here. The issue here is that time and time again, we’ve seen this happen whereby they spend resources on creating these assets in order to continue raising money. Most of the work ends up getting trashed because they can’t be used in the actual games being made. Heck, they once trashed an entire gameplay module (Star Marine developed by a third-party contractor, Illfonic). And just a few months back, amid major outcry, not to mention the legal liability issue, it’s apparently coming back. This despite Chris – falsely – claiming in 10FTC Ep85 (16-01-25), that the long promised, and much touted Star Marine, was already in the Star Citizen game backers were playing at the time.

So, with all this time and money wasted, it should have come as no surprise when in 10FTC Ep83 (16-04-18), Chris declared that the first release of the game wasn’t going to be the full game promised (for Nov 2014), but rather a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

By all accounts, most of us believe that this whole thing has evolved into an elaborate scam which goes beyond just a simple case of broken promises in a video game.  It has all the makings of a massive engineering Ponzi scheme designed to unjustly enrich the execs in charge of it, under the pretext of making the games promised. This is why they need to keep raising money using these tactics. The pattern is easy to see:

1. Wind up backers with wild promises (mostly lies) and unachievable objectives
2. Take the money raised as per the aforementioned
3. Later, walk it all back, or ignore that the promises were ever made
4. Rinse. Repeat

And according to metrics, even with the suspicious nature of their funding chart, there appears to be around 2000 backers still putting money into this train-wreck. It’s mind-boggling to say the least.

ABOUT THAT VISUAL STABILIZATION BULLSHIT

This one is particularly hilarious to most of us. The “head bob” issue in the fps part of Star Citizen has always been a problem, and a major source of complaints. So a week ago, CIG released a video segment in which they were touting the implementation of something they were calling “visual stabilization”. Pretty much the same horseshit they come up with when making up names for tech that already exists, and which they’re pretending to have created.

Basically, as most of us had already said, they removed the “head bob” from the animation. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less.

So yesterday, in an AtV segment, the Lead Animation Engineer confirmed this. The segment starts around the 11:22 mark.

THE OPEN-BUT-NOT-SO-OPEN DEVELOPMENT

A few months ago, CIG/RSI introduced a new layer to their testing protocols, dubbed Evocati. We had a laugh with that one, and I covered it in my April blog. Basically, it’s been going on since then. With the current 2.5 patch being a horrid and largely unplayable mess, with backers aching for the upcoming 2.6 patch which they hope will bring much needed fixes and stability, it comes as no surprise that details about that upcoming patch have now leaked. Again.

But that’s not the issue here.

The issue is that some of the more toxic members of the community are up in arms about Evocati backers breaking the NDA by leaking patch details. To the extent that there is now a Reddit discussion going on about how to deal with such leaks. Oh the irony.

Here’s the thing, nobody should be encouraged to break an NDA they agreed to. When you think about an NDA as a contract, the only circumstance under which those can be broken and details leaked, is if the leaker is either a whistleblower or a concerned person passing along info about fraud, wrong-doing etc. Thing is, even the media, bloggers etc, all encourage this sort of thing when they accept info from anonymous sources at companies where they may have either a specific NDA, or a contract with an NDA section. But stuff still leaks, regardless.

It’s interesting to note that most, if not all, all crowd-funded game projects in development, tend to give access to alpha and beta builds to their backers. Star Citizen has been in a perpetual state of Alpha (according to CIG/RSI who are redefining the terminology; in our books it’s a pre-Alpha aka tech demo).

Anyway, this Evocati NDA represents an interesting conundrum for backers. As a backer in the Evocati, you already have access to the game you paid for. Just like the other backers who were not selected to be in the Evocati. But then, being in the Evocati for a game you already paid for, you now have to agree to an NDA which forbids you from sharing any details about it. So why would someone choose to break the NDA and share the patch details? One person in a discussion, told me:

“It’s wrong for them to be doing this. We all payed (sp) for the game, and yet some have access to it, while others do not. They claim open development but we have no clue what is going on with the project most of the time. A friend of mine pledged over eleven hundred dollars and is not in the Evocati. How is that fair?“

While it does not absolve them of the liability of breaking an NDA, it’s easy to see why it makes sense to the people doing it. Especially in light of the fact that this latest leak has clearly shown that not only is the 2.6 patch most likely not coming in Oct; but that given that the test pattern has a lengthy period from “limited Evocati –> wide testing –> live“, it means that it probably won’t be out until sometime in the Nov/Dec time frame. And that, my friends, all but guarantees that the much touted 3.0 (aka the Jesus Patch) which Chris was heavily promoting at GamesCom as coming by end of the year, is not being released this year. At all. Yeah, I know – shocking. Note that there isn’t even a 2.7 patch. It was once talked about, then came GamesCom and Chris saying that after 2.5 (current), there will be 2.6, and then it’s onto 3.0 – the Jesus Patch which fixes everything, and includes all of the latest promises.

So much for “open development“; and one in which backers have no clue what’s going with their game, how the money is being spent, let alone how Squadron 42, which is rumored to have now cost over $30 (!) million to develop, is coming along.

STAR CITIZEN vs LINE OF DEFENSE. AGAIN

Yes, they’re still doing it. As soon as someone says something negative about Star Citizen, one of two things is likely to happen. i) Derek Smart is evoked ii) Line Of Defense is crap becomes a point of discussion. Happened again within the past 24 hours; I’ll just post excerpts from the exchange. It’s just amazing to us how it is that these guys truly think that attacking and slamming me and my game, will somehow make Star Citizen a reality, a better game etc. It’s mind-boggling.

“Mr. Smart – Do you want to know what really the funny part is? The maintenance mode you claimed the project was in earlier this year shows astonishing progress. I hope that your own project will also enter such an maintenance mode at some point.“

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Usually when people call me out in a thread, when I respond, it tends not to work out so well for them.

So, for your sake, aside from the fact that it’s a violation of the forum rules (look it up), try not to do that. There is nothing to be gained by singling me out. Just post; and anyone who cares enough will respond.

My indie game, like it or hate it, is coming along just fine; and the people testing and helping us out with it, are perfectly happy with it. Our changelog shows steady and meaningful progress; our bugs list isn’t even noteworthy, our roadmap remains focused, straightforward and informative.

Meanwhile, 500 people + five years + $124 million later; Star Citizen has no clear focus nor objective or roadmap; has over 29K (!) documented bugs – most of which are 2+ years old; and the changelog for each patch shows even more issues, while not fixing the majority of what came before.

And the “game” is very much in maintenance mode seeing as NOTHING tangible (unlike you, most of us actually pay attention to the changelog) has been done to the game since I made that comment earlier (Mar 30th, 2016 in post #2805 to be exact) this year.

Despite the fact that you guys think that by obfuscating facts, you’re going to convince anyone of anything, the reality of the situation is that all of this material is actually out there. Anyone who knows anything about games, can look at the SC changelog since Mar to now, and clearly see that, outside of shops, one new location (GrimHex), as well as some new weapons and ships made flight ready, NOTHING tangible by way of meaningful progress outside of bug fixes and tweaks, have been made to the game.

No, I am not going to explain to you what “maintenance” mode means as it pertains to software development; go look it up and add it to your MS Word document, so you can copy and paste it wherever you guys post.

Comparing this multi-million dollar game with a triple-A budget, to an indie game with a small team, isn’t going to make Star Citizen any better, nor increase its chances of ever being released (even as promised), or make it a good game. And the more you guys do it, the sillier and more desperate it looks. At the end of the day, just like all my games, LOD is in no danger of not being released.

As we’ve all stated, the people like you in the community, are the worst thing that could ever have happened to this project. So no matter how the game turns out in the end, it is forever tainted, and will forever remain the laughing stock of gamers and game devs everywhere.

[dsmart]

NEW INVESTIGATIVE MEDIA ARTICLES

In the vein of the recent The Chris Roberts Theory Of Everything article, comes a Kotaku UK article which delves into the Star Citizen fiasco. It’s quite a lengthy read. Read Inside the Troubled Development of Star Citizen

Several mags, including PC Gamer are also covering it, while adding their own commentary. Read Eight-month investigation lifts the lid on Star Citizen’s troubled development

PCGamesN now also has a Former Star Citizen devs claim impossible standards wasted months of development, Roberts responds article, as does Rock, Paper, Shotgun with Roberts Acknowledges Some Of Star Citizen’s Woes In Tell-All Investigation

A Swedish magazine, LEVEL, did a similar article back in July, and which, last we heard, was picked up by a leading English media outlet for re-publication; with the Swedish author doing the official translation. As that has been some months now, some are of the opinion that the article may have been bought and buried. But as these things go, there is an unofficial English language translation floating around from back in July. UPDATE: That outlet was in fact Kotaku UK; and they have now published the article on 09/26/16.

BREAKING NEWS! EXPLOSIVE NEW LEAKS!

So TheAgent, who frequents the Goon enclave, and who has posted leaked info in the past, and which were correct, has posted a new slew of leaks. Some are pretty explosive.

What’s interesting is that just yesterday from the 2.6 Evocati leak which I wrote about (see below), I had extrapolated that there was no chance of the much touted (at GamesCom 2016) 3.0 patch (aka Jesus Patch) coming out in 2016. Heck, it’s bad enough that neither Star Citizen nor Squadron 42 are coming out this year. So if TheAgent is correct, that’s pretty hilarious. Then again, as they did with the completely disastrous (it was rushed out) 2.0 patch from Dec 2015, they may just rush out a subset of 3.0 at some point this year, just to prove us wrong. We’ll see.

The bottom line is that, as I previously wrote, Chris has done it again. He went on stage, made false promises, raised money as a result, and once again is probably not going to deliver.

Printed verbatim from TheAgent :

---

• no 3.0 this year (duh), release date is now “after [a significant portion of] SQ42 is released”
• ship sales will continue
• there’s yet another new studio involved (most likely contractors/outside dev pool) for planet artwork/maps
• “The Squadron 42 [Prelude] has to hit its [Q1 2017] goal. No more excuses.” unsure who, just listed as “top exec”
• a lot of mocap issues with translating them directly into the game, mostly due to character and players size (?? not sure what this means)
• “Expect a lot of cutscenes.”
• mocapped characters are fine stationary (sitting, standing, etc) but currently anything involving complex animation makes the models freak out, mostly clipping and clothes problems (still)
• certain characters have several (reported up to six!) different models, as certain scenes had to use entirely different models for the same character due to model size, lod and poor mocap translation
• specific reshoots using stand ins for A list actors are ongoing, mostly animation, actions and poses (still occurring as of q3 2016)
• FPS AI still murders everything through walls, doors, whatever
• certain departments continue to pump out work at an incredible rate while others snail behind, causing back up and necessary “refactoring” when certain elements do not work or had scope change
• heads of department told to “turtle” and avoid outside influences (?? )
• they can’t get the intricate damage model to work in SP/MP at all yet, ships continue to randomly jumble themselves to death

Also…

CitizenCon 2016 (Oct 9th)

• crunch time continues for all studios, many people are working seven days a week for the citcon showing
• companion app with $ to ingame currency purchases, chat, etc (design phase only, citcon slide)
• new A list cutscene, wrapped shooting july 2016 (majority of overtime is spent working on this)
• touting multiple SQ42 endings on one citcon slide, also says it directly affects SC world/player character
• FPS purchasable classes still a thing and one of the major things they are revealing
• SQ42 prelude still listed as march 2017
• ^ “no way we’ll hit that deadline” ^
• Roberts: 2.6 should be playable at Citcon
• nothing playable at this time, live streams still using 2.5

Follow up…

the hope is to release SQ42, which will retain players and continue to grow their base while they work on the major problems of SC. SC ship sales and some single player sales (models, skins, ships, va packs, etc) to continue to bring in revenue

they will be pushing a new subscription thing at citcon too, btw

it supposedly rewards sub only campaign missions, fps classes, certain ships, etc

[Author]

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