Star Citizen - down to its last 1600 alpha slots

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Canterbury, Apr 13, 2014.

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  1. Canterbury

    Canterbury Avatar

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    I think SC is treading a really good line because, in the end, you can procedurally generate anything for the rest of eternity and claim to be the biggest and baddest and, on some levels, that can be interesting and fun. But in a universe that people have been living in for a long time (remember there are alien races besides the humans in SC), it's nice for the devs to also be writing lore and explaining things about the inner core of planets at least. It leaves a lot to explore "out there" in the procedurally generated stuff, but ensures there's a sizeable base of stuff closer to home that is more "designed" and "stage managed" if I can call it that, which you just don't get with procedural generation alone.
     
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  2. Sir Bradley White

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    True, which is why I want to see what they do with the tech as far as procedural generation goes, and also see how they work everything into that generated world. It is a tough thing to wrap my head around overall. They have to build the world to include things that fit into the 'lore' of the world, while also taking into account a ton of other things I can't really think about. I hope they get it right. Only time will tell.

    I was a backer for SC when they had the KS campaign. I just never really kept track of it. I have so many projects I back that it makes it hard to keep track of them all. A lot of things have been added since I last checked in to it. Last time I checked in was for the launch of the Hangar Module. To come back after so long and see the new ships, ship designs (Corvette to Frigate!), systems, this new tech they want to introduce... Hard to wrap my head around it all.
     
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  3. Silent Strider

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    Never saw anything about players being able to go to fully procedurally generated systems. Do you have a link? (Legitimately curious here, as I'm certain this wasn't in the game scope back at KS or for the first few months after the KS finished.)

    Unless you count the fact much of the 100-ish star systems will be created using procedural generation, and then tweaked by hand. Which ED will also do; the difference being that, to the best of my knowledge, Star Citizen won't allow players to explore fully procedurally generated star systems, while ED will allow that (and that SC seems to want to dedicate way more effort into hand-crafting things than ED, thus while SC should have less content, it's expected that whichever content it has will be of higher quality).

    And, of course, each star system in SC will have multiple points of interest — planets, asteroid fields, star bases, and so on. The comparison back during KS was that, at 70 star systems, the game universe would be at least as large, at launch, as the one from Wing Commander Privateer — which was quite large indeed. After some more stretch goals reached it should be one and a half times the size of Wing Commander Privateer at launch, and that doesn't take into account hidden systems that players can discover or systems that will be added after launch.

    Deeper pockets, yes. Though not as big a difference as many seem to think, given that ED will have private funding.

    Superior features, it depends on what the player wants, since the value of a feature is often subjective. They are different games and focus on different experiences. Expect SC to be more "gamey" and ED to be more realistic, for example (not saying that one is automatically better than the other, that is just how those devs do their games and how their previous games played; different players have different preferences about that). Also, some features might be actually downsides for some players; like I said earlier, SC will force players that want to get the greatest rewards for themselves to risk PvP — which, for me, is a huge downside, but for PvP-oriented players is a large upside — while ED will allow me to play single player online while still able to earn the best rewards and influence the game world — which for me is a positive feature, but many players will see as a flaw.

    It's why I've spent about 5x more on ED than on SC; for me, ED's feature set is a better one, despite SC having a bigger budget. I expect that for most players the opposite is true, though.
     
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  4. Canterbury

    Canterbury Avatar

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    It was a stretch goal, probably announced in the high 30 millions, coming true around 40 or 41 million, so a million or two ago. It should be fairly easy to Google up.
     
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  5. Sir Bradley White

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  6. Canterbury

    Canterbury Avatar

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    Well, indeed. It's not like they're just going to make one planet using the process then declare 'mission accomplished' :)

    And as they make more and more planets those planets will, by default, start creating systems. That's how I see it, anyway.
     
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  7. Silent Strider

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    Not sure about applying it to create star systems. CIG doesn't seem to need it, and allowing players to spread across such a large area would have the potential to spread players too thin around the game world universe. It works for ED because of the type of game ED aims to be, but for SC it would dilute the kind of player interaction Chris Roberts is aiming at.

    The procedural systems are needed because hand-crafting over a hundred planets — which is what would be needed to allow planetary landing in SC with just the 100-ish systems available at launch — would already be impractical, likely far more costly and taking far more time than developing the procedural tech from scratch.
     
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  8. Mercyful Fate

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    Hah! Just found out that SC will indeed support Linux: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY2NDg

    I guess I better hurry up and get that SC pledge in, eh? :)
     
  9. enderandrew

    enderandrew Legend of the Hearth

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  10. Sir Bradley White

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    That is good news for Linux users. Gives them a whole new spectrum of users to now get pledges from. And even more people to play with. :)
     
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  11. Mercyful Fate

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    Didn't know that. Do you have a link to it so I can read about it?
     
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  12. Mercyful Fate

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    Indeed! Linux users are anticipating the release of a slew of AAA games for Linux during the next few years. We will no longer have to dual-boot to Windows just to play games! :cool:
    Personally, I can't wait to reformat that Windows partition and mount it as a Linux data partition. ;)
     
  13. Numa

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    253 slots left and going fast, it won't even last till this weekend.
     
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  14. Time Lord

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    "Well, this is a heads up for RG & Portalarium!" :confused:

    Dear RG & Portalarium, I love your SotA game. I do hope you can show us the Benefactor Lord's and Baron's Homes soono_O

    Because I already own a Star Citizen, Constellation Ship Pledge for $275.00 and that $2700.00 Fleet Pack Pledge Upgrade, is becoming very tempting :D

    Also A Star Citizen;
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:

    Flight Handle;
    Time-Lord :cool:
     
  15. Sir Edreamer _MGT470

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    121 114 Slots left now. They'll be gone within a couple of hours at this rate (that many went in the time it took to post)
     
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  16. Rufus D`Asperdi

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    22 slots left.
    14 left, five minutes later.
    And, the site's down 15 minutes after the original post.
     
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  17. Sir Edreamer _MGT470

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    And now they're all gone....moments later the site seems to have crashed - lol SC fans are good at doing that.

    Must have been a lot of eyes on that counter...either that or Star Citizen's equivalent of the Millenium bug ;)
     
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  18. Canterbury

    Canterbury Avatar

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    Well, I hope at least some of you who saw this thread took advantage of getting an alpha slot while they lasted. My work here is done :)
     
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  19. Time Lord

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    It reminds me of the ending of Darkstar the B movie SiFi:D





    The resemblance is amazing...
    ~Time Lord~:eek:
     
  20. Sir Mike Dragon

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    Speaking of that, I'm a fairly new backer of SC so I'm not up on much (325a ftw :) ). But I didn't see any way to get the crossbow, was that only an early (earlier) backer thing?

    As far as ED, I've been fighting the urge to pull the trigger on that one (which means I will end up giving in). I burned so many hours on the original (C64) that I did make it to Elite and think I got all the side missions. E+ on the Atari ST was better graphically but by then I was too burnt out I think.
     
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