Every time I think Chris Roberts’ gorgeous crowdfunded space sim couldn’t possibly get any better, the folks at Roberts Space Industries release teaser videos for things like spaceship racing and first-person shooter modules.
Most exciting for me is the upcoming racing module for Star Citizen, which adds what looks like planet-based competitive racing to the already extensive list of things to do in your pretty spaceship.
Kind of a Wipeout vibe going on there, which I really dig. Racing will be available in game version 0.9. As reader Sig Ra points out, you can catch a live -ish demo of racing in action over on Twitch.
Then there’s this.
Yes, the space sim is adding first-person shooting. During his presentation at Gamescom this weekend, Chris Roberts named Illfonic as the studio working on this particular module, which we’ll learn more about at PAX Australia this year. Shooter fans may remember Illfonic as the studio behind Nexuiz for the Xbox 360 and PC.
That’s a lot of gameplay being packed into a single title. But wait, there’s more!
New hangars!
And a commercial for the coolest damn ship I’ve yet seen for the game, the Constellation.
You can keep up with all the new reveals over at the official Star Citizen website. I swear this game is going to kill me.
Comments
18 responses to “Star Citizen Teases, Racing, First-Person Shooting”
I still feel like they are aiming too broadly, just get ship to ship combat going, and make it work as a game and I’m in. Add all the other stuff once you get that sorted and released.
Have you played the dogfighting module yet? From all accounts I’ve heard it is pretty solid already
Yeah I have, and it is okay, but still full of problems and not really a game as yet. I’d prefer to see resources poured into one aspect of the game and get it finished before burning up the cash and time reserves on an insanely broad approach.
I like a project going this ambitiously, these days it’s uncommon for big budget projects. It’s like Shenmue – it’ll probably ruin them, but it’ll either make a great game or a great platform for other games to improve upon.
Yeah it’s a worry – They might have tonnes of cash but I’d prefer if they just focused on being the best at one thing rather than taking on lots of other mini-games that have no hope of competing against other dedicated games in those genres.
Well considering they’ve got another developer working on the FPS module, it doesn’t look like it’d be hampering the spaceship part too much.
Star Citizen is what I call a real game. Can’t wait. Lookin great!
More focus is needed, or at least better clarity about timeframes and what they are working on.
I’ve been playing Elite: Dangerous and it has nailed precisely what Star Citizen promised in the first place, and its only in beta.
Instead of seeing plans- “Now we’ve got the dogfighting module, the next module will be the open world trading and combat module” we’re instead seeing:
1) FPS module
2) Racing module
3) New ships & New variants of ships
4) New hangars (when we already have them)
5) Hangar & Ship bling
I have real concerns that everything I’ve seen from Star Citizen is smallish maps. I’ve yet to see them scale to large scale with small to minimal transitions between them. The much vaunted engine at this point is doing precisely what it is good at (small maps). I’ve yet to see it do what nobody else has been able to do with it.
I should point out, my wife and I invested- err strike that- spent a great deal on Star Citizen- to say we’re worried is an understatement at this point.
The “smallish maps” are an engine limitation which will be fixed in a future version. CryEngine only supports single precision measurements on maps which limits it to 4km x 4km x 2km. Star Citizen’s developer is implementing double precision for CryEngine which will support the size they need for the game.
According to the kickstarter, the game was meant to have the ‘dogfighting module’ out by December last year and the persistent universe alpha by October this year. They missed the first by over 6 months and the persistent universe alpha is looking like mid to late next year.
While many of us are very frustrated by the ongoing delays, they do seem to be making steady progress now. We’ll see if their “two weeks” ETA for the v0.9 release holds true before we start getting depressed.
Delays are natural.
There is no valid reason these guys should be doing crunching because that will make CIG burn through money way faster. Crunching costs money in overtime and we all joke that Star Citizen is printing money – it could all dry up tomorrow we never know.
And come on Capt Undies – stop pushing the line about Dogfighting – it was well known that the original Dogfighting module was just going to be a dumped product, but the backers would have demanding CIG kept updating it and tweeking it while working on what is now the AC.
Releasing a Dogfighting module in December would have been way more disastrous you know it and I know it because we’ve both been on the CIG forums for a while now.
No, delays are not natural, just common.
The reason I highlight the delays is that it is what a lot of people focus on. As an original backer, I’m unhappy with the delays, but do understand the reasons behind them, which is why I made the point that they appear to now be making steady progress.
Even if your point is correct about DFM, how do you explain away the delay for the persistent universe? The kickstarter says 20-22 months after the end of the kickstarter (Nov 20th 2012) we would “get to play the Star Citizen Beta, adventuring around the huge open galaxy, well before the general public”. That works out to between July 20th and September 20th 2014. The most optimistic estimates put it at no earlier than mid next year with the most sceptical saying 2016.
I don’t want to discourage new people, I have high hopes for the game, but I do want them to know what they’re buying into… unlike many like me who have experienced disappointment after disappointment. To this point, CIG has never hit a delivery date so I’m hoping that 2 weeks from now we will have v0.9 of ArCom, but I’m not holding my breath.
Don’t want to get too deep into this argument because you know a lot more about these specifics than I do, just wanted to address the delay issue being natural.
It’s actually a recognised psychological trait that people will always underestimate how long it will take them to complete a task.
Generally people trying to make accurate estimates or timelines will take this into account and attempt to overestimate to compensate (Of course they will then likely underestimate the extra time too).
With experience behind people can overcome this and become very accurate with estimations, but naturally we would tend towards there being delays of initial estimates.
That doesn’t even account for unexpected issues causing delays.
Software development is particularly bad for estimates. If you’ve planned your software project to the level of detail necessary to account for problems, you’ll have put the same amount of work in as it would have taken to build the project in the first place.
Scope creep is the business term and it’s ruined more projects than anything else.
It’s not scope creep, first person combat (eg. ship boarding) was part of the original Kickstarter scope from the start.
holy shit they got 4k res on youtube
This game is just going to be ridiculous, I can’t wait
I’m mostly just impressed that they’re holding back info for PAX Aus. As fun as it was last year it didn’t feel like anyone brought anything newsworthy to the table.