Star Citizen Alpha 3.3 Update Is Out

After seeing M.H. and the overall tone in this it just makes me wish they'd make a modern Wing Commander and be done with it. Good times :)
 
Watched and listened to almost the entirety of the presentation, and no surprise to see another flaming dumpster fire of bugs, broken AI, dispersing npcs or heads. But its only been in dev since 2011 and you can at least drink coffee with only 200mill in funding I would call that progress. He's now moved to releasing a minimum viable product, I just hope the whales keep him funded to the tune of 30mill a year so maybe they will see the base ks goals finished.
 
This most recent CitizenCon focused primarily on "soon to come" features instead of long term ones and, as promised, Alpha 3.3 was quickly released! While it is still an alpha, I hope may are beginning to see not only the game itself really taking shape, complete with some of the features that seem small yet take a lot of under-the-hood engine work which is why they're not present in most games. Elements like all the full mo-capped item manipulation , like the whisky demo at the bar - liquid + solid physics, the ability to not only interact with the item, but to pick it up and put it down anywhere, to drink from it, to turn it about in your hand an inspect it as the liquid within moves, or even totally upend it and dump the liquid onto the floor! This, and something like the monorail system, all without zones or "no go" areas (ie you can see real ships, player and NPC taking off from the monorail, you're actually passing the city by etc..) are just a few examples of systems that were not in previous builds! There's so much more to come, as well - in 3.3.5 there will be an entirely new atmospheric flight model totally different from the simple one currently and how spaceflight will feel! There is so much new content created in-game and out - every week on the CIG site there are TONS of lore and in-universe story posts for instance; I highly suggest anyone interested in linguistics check out the Xi'an Language Primer - its a fully realized written and spoken tonal language designed for one of the non-human races in the game, and there's a "diplomatic corps guide" of sorts explaining it!

Oh and regarding some of the celebrities in Squadron 42 - Chris Roberts has tons of connections in Hollywood; he produced many movies including the Wing Commander movie itself, Lucky Number Slevin (I think), and perhaps most famously the Nic Cage starring Lord of War. Some of the celebs are those that run in sci-fi circles and are good friends - as others mentioned Mark Hamill was the star of the Wing Commander games back in the 90s and I think its awesome he wants to be part of things now. It should also say something about the quality of mo-cap and rendering they're doing that Andy Serkis himself (ie the actor who voiced and portrayed Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, as well as ton of other mo-cap performances) signed on. Many of the other stars are sci-fi enthusiasts too and I'm certainly looking forward to SQ42.

I've been a backer since the literal beginning - yes, 2012. When they didn't even know what kind of game they were going to be able to afford to build, had only a handful of people and had to built it all - game and studio alike - from scratch. I"m glad they're making an uncompromising title and don't really care about how long it takes, so long as they push the envelope and there is evidence of progress. I signed on to back a project trying to do something on a scale of immersion never-before attempted ; I think many of those disappointed thought they were pre-ordering "a space game" instead of backing an ambitious project with a non-zero chance of failure, yet a unique venture within the sphere of gaming.

Edit: I've always found it laughable that, watching the stream and comments, whenever things were going smoothly detractors called out "OMG PRE RENDERED RIGGED ITS NOT LIKE THIS FAKE FAKE FAKE" yet whenever there was a glitch or bug showing things were indeed live and not fully scripted they turned just as quickly as "OMG WHAT GARBAGE LOOK AT THE BUGS!". Damned if you do, damn'ed if you don.t I really can't seem to understand the actual hate, the near desire to see this game fail that relatively few other titles experience.
 
I don't understand the polarized love/hate of the game. It's a freaking video game. If it doesn't come out, and you didn't spend any money on it, why do you care? If it does come out, and you didn't spend any money on it, why do you care?

If you spent money on it, and it doesn't come out, hopefully you spent less than you could afford to lose. If it comes out, great, you got a game to play (an expensive one)

Why people feel the need to come in and crap on people who back the game baffles me.
 
Eickst said:
I don't understand the polarized love/hate of the game. It's a freaking video game. If it doesn't come out, and you didn't spend any money on it, why do you care? If it does come out, and you didn't spend any money on it, why do you care?

If you spent money on it, and it doesn't come out, hopefully you spent less than you could afford to lose. If it comes out, great, you got a game to play (an expensive one)

Why people feel the need to come in and crap on people who back the game baffles me.
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Because it supports a business model in gaming that I abhor and believe is an absolute cancer in the industry. SC has become the poster child for everything wrong in modern game development.
 
Eickst said:
I don't understand the polarized love/hate of the game. It's a freaking video game. If it doesn't come out, and you didn't spend any money on it, why do you care? If it does come out, and you didn't spend any money on it, why do you care?

If you spent money on it, and it doesn't come out, hopefully you spent less than you could afford to lose. If it comes out, great, you got a game to play (an expensive one)

Why people feel the need to come in and crap on people who back the game baffles me.
Click to expand...

I really love what they are doing so far and what the game could be like if it comes to be. What I hate is how they are going about it. And the bad thing IMO when there is too much exposure and game play from backers is by the time a game actually is released, people are bored with it. And people own whole fleets of ships, thing isnt even out yet
 
Something interesting to note was that a gunship class corvette known as the "Aegis Hammerhead" will cost 21 million UEC (the in game currency) if purchased in game. To put that in perspective, a mission in game that takes roughly 1 hour can earn anywhere between 1000-10000 AC credits. (AC credits are being used for now in Alpha and get reset every now and then.) Yes... it will take a damn long time to grind even a corvette sized ship.

As mentioned earlier in thread, I bought into the madness a few years ago, and my logic then was that I was soon to be starting a new family and would have very little time to grind for several weeks to buy a nice ship, etc. A friend and I make fun of each other constantly for spending thousands of dollars on virtual spaceships. LMAO. It's silly AF, but ehh.. Not the worst thing I've ever wasted money on.

In retrospect.... RTX 2080ti for $1200 > 2 Virtual Spaceships

The way things are going I don't expect there to be an actual game until 2025. XD
 
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Eickst said:
I don't understand the polarized love/hate of the game. It's a freaking video game. If it doesn't come out, and you didn't spend any money on it, why do you care? If it does come out, and you didn't spend any money on it, why do you care?

If you spent money on it, and it doesn't come out, hopefully you spent less than you could afford to lose. If it comes out, great, you got a game to play (an expensive one)

Why people feel the need to come in and crap on people who back the game baffles me.
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Because many of these people are satisfied with the hope that such a game exists (Religion). Whereas others (like me) want an actual game to play (Not Religion).

You can't have it both way here. Those Drunk on Hope (TM) don't ask questions about the actual Long-Term-Plan. If all you have to do is say it's "God's Plan," then you're never held accountable to anyone, and the game is POTENTIALLY never finished.

I'm posting here because I liked the sales pitch from the Kickstarter. It has since not lived up to the plan, and part of that problem is the religious worshipers keep sending them tithes.

You can't expect them to stand on heir own two feet if they keep getting Trust Fund payments form their Dear Aunt Sally. And Chris Roberts has boasted on the record as having more than enough money to finish Star Citizen, so let him do it.
 
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RanceJustice said:
This most recent CitizenCon focused primarily on "soon to come" features instead of long term ones and, as promised, Alpha 3.3 was quickly released! While it is still an alpha, I hope may are beginning to see not only the game itself really taking shape, complete with some of the features that seem small yet take a lot of under-the-hood engine work which is why they're not present in most games. Elements like all the full mo-capped item manipulation , like the whisky demo at the bar - liquid + solid physics, the ability to not only interact with the item, but to pick it up and put it down anywhere, to drink from it, to turn it about in your hand an inspect it as the liquid within moves, or even totally upend it and dump the liquid onto the floor! This, and something like the monorail system, all without zones or "no go" areas (ie you can see real ships, player and NPC taking off from the monorail, you're actually passing the city by etc..) are just a few examples of systems that were not in previous builds! There's so much more to come, as well - in 3.3.5 there will be an entirely new atmospheric flight model totally different from the simple one currently and how spaceflight will feel! There is so much new content created in-game and out - every week on the CIG site there are TONS of lore and in-universe story posts for instance; I highly suggest anyone interested in linguistics check out the Xi'an Language Primer - its a fully realized written and spoken tonal language designed for one of the non-human races in the game, and there's a "diplomatic corps guide" of sorts explaining it!

Oh and regarding some of the celebrities in Squadron 42 - Chris Roberts has tons of connections in Hollywood; he produced many movies including the Wing Commander movie itself, Lucky Number Slevin (I think), and perhaps most famously the Nic Cage starring Lord of War. Some of the celebs are those that run in sci-fi circles and are good friends - as others mentioned Mark Hamill was the star of the Wing Commander games back in the 90s and I think its awesome he wants to be part of things now. It should also say something about the quality of mo-cap and rendering they're doing that Andy Serkis himself (ie the actor who voiced and portrayed Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, as well as ton of other mo-cap performances) signed on. Many of the other stars are sci-fi enthusiasts too and I'm certainly looking forward to SQ42.

I've been a backer since the literal beginning - yes, 2012. When they didn't even know what kind of game they were going to be able to afford to build, had only a handful of people and had to built it all - game and studio alike - from scratch. I"m glad they're making an uncompromising title and don't really care about how long it takes, so long as they push the envelope and there is evidence of progress. I signed on to back a project trying to do something on a scale of immersion never-before attempted ; I think many of those disappointed thought they were pre-ordering "a space game" instead of backing an ambitious project with a non-zero chance of failure, yet a unique venture within the sphere of gaming.

Edit: I've always found it laughable that, watching the stream and comments, whenever things were going smoothly detractors called out "OMG PRE RENDERED RIGGED ITS NOT LIKE THIS FAKE FAKE FAKE" yet whenever there was a glitch or bug showing things were indeed live and not fully scripted they turned just as quickly as "OMG WHAT GARBAGE LOOK AT THE BUGS!". Damned if you do, damn'ed if you don.t I really can't seem to understand the actual hate, the near desire to see this game fail that relatively few other titles experience.
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Ordinarily, I'd address this point by point. Instead, I'll concentrate my energies on a huge post somewhere else on the forum. However, I'll say that the reason why everyone screams "OMG PRE RENDERED RIGGED ITS NOT LIKE THIS FAKE FAKE FAKE" as you put it is simple. With over a hundred million dollars and over half a decade in development, SQ42 and several other missed milestones should have been reached. The company still pushes the sale of JPGs for a fuck ton of cash. Much of what has been seen has been little more than a glorified tech demo. Anything they show that's not in the actual releases we can "play" is suspect. There is this thing called smoke and mirrors which is common in various financial schemes. Like it or not, much of the time Star Citizen has often seemed like a Ponzi scheme. Some of the detailed crap you mentioned is fluff that could and should be added after core game play, settings, and other things are fully developed. The development of this project has often seemed illogical and backwards from how it should be.

The development of the project has always seemed to be a total cluster fuck. The seemingly aptly named "CitizenCon" often seems like a fund raiser and a tool for pacifying the naysayers. Then you have CIG refusing refunds to backers and even going so far as to secure a bank loan since the cash isn't coming in like it used to. Much of the "game's" development and the news released about it has eroded the credibility that Chris Roberts used to have. So now, we naturally distrust anything we see until its in the actual playable alpha releases. Frankly, a game that's been in the works for over five years should be out of the alpha stage. The super detailed crap like picking up drinks and what not aren't done in other games as that level of detail is untenable in the short development cycle usually required to keep a game relevant technologically. Developing some of the game's features at the expense of an actual games is costly and even foolish. Ultimately, I want this to succeed but even the most staunch of supporters should acknowledge that there have been some serious red flags thrown up over the years concerning this.

To be honest, the Squadron 42 trailer was the first thing I've seen in years that leads me to think a legitimate effort has been made to produce an actual game. However, the pessimist in me believes this was probably started recently in response to the many criticisms the project has faced and the lack of continued crowd funding. Its almost as if a conversation at CIG went like this: Chris Roberts: Why don't we have any money coming in? CIG Lackey: Because no one trusts us and we have yet to produce an actual product, much less the products we said we would make. Chris Roberts: I suppose we will have to produce an actual game now so people will start giving us money again. In truth, I've never felt like Chris Roberts and company set out to mismanage the game and defraud anyone. I felt like the cookie jar was not only too tempting, but that the game was overly ambitious with no one having any idea how to actually get it done.

Many projects from TV, film and video games are lofty at first. Once they get deep into development what's too costly or untenable tends to get dropped and the project scaled back to fit timetables and budgets. This is what CIG should have done. Star Citizen and SQ42 could still have pushed technological boundaries and been absolutely epic with some of these features scaled back, eliminated or built after the actual game launched. If the persistent universe were a success, adding these features over time would have been the more sensible route. We see this happen in MMO's all the time. As I said, many of the decisions of CIG don't make sense and look suspect. This is why there is always so much doom and gloom in these threads. No one wants the space combat / sims of old to return like I do. They were my favorite, even over FPS games back in the day. I backed SQ42/Star Citizen with the minimal $45 in the hope that would happen. However, its hard to be optimistic with what little we've really seen and all that we've heard.
 
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Darunion said:
I really love what they are doing so far and what the game could be like if it comes to be. What I hate is how they are going about it. And the bad thing IMO when there is too much exposure and game play from backers is by the time a game actually is released, people are bored with it. And people own whole fleets of ships, thing isnt even out yet
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Also... Something that really threw me off was when I started joining "orgs" which are an equivalent of clans. I was told that if I were to continue my affiliation with "Test Squadron" (by a mega org) I would be kicked out because they condone piracy in game. In my mind I was like.. "WTF??? lol the game is years away from being finished..." Test Squadron guys are actually quite hilarious and good people. =/

The community is weird AF, because everyone is so hyped/pent up about each incremental release.. The official forums are to be avoided because it's just a bunch of people who are backseat developers constantly moaning about how things should be, etc.
 
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I would much rather have a picture of a penis on my resume that anything that mentioned I had something to do with Nic Cage's Lord of War.
 
All Chris Roberts had to do was make a current gen Wing Commander. Noooooooo... he's got to build a whole freaking persistent MMO universe. Sighs.

The graphics look great and from vids I've seen of Alpha gameplay don't look bad at all.
 
relapse808 said:
I would much rather have a picture of a penis on my resume that anything that mentioned I had something to do with Nic Cage's Lord of War.
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Hey I liked that movie. Most of it anyway. I like when Jared Leto's character was holed up in the shithole and he was making a Ukraine out of coke. And the passed out coke whores on his bed.

 
Burticus said:
Hey I liked that movie. Most of it anyway. I like when Jared Leto's character was holed up in the shithole and he was making a Ukraine out of coke. And the passed out coke whores on his bed.

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I actually think that’s the best sub plot in the movie.
I truly don’t understand why some of my friends can do drugs and be totally fine and others do some and literally end up with a ruined life. Nic Cage has a good line about it.

“I never understood what separated the recreational drug user from the habitual, but for the grace of God it could have been me snorting lines as long as the Bell Parkway, however I wasn’t entirely free of the grip of addiction myself.”

Life’s mystery.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Because it supports a business model in gaming that I abhor and believe is an absolute cancer in the industry. SC has become the poster child for everything wrong in modern game development.
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Exactly. Long term this kind of crap is not going to be beneficial.

Also how many legitimate Indie developers are now never going to get a chance from people who got burned by this serial con artist?
 
defaultluser said:
And Chris Roberts has boasted on the record as having more than enough money to finish Star Citizen, so let him do it.
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He can't. He is incapable of it - it's just not in his personality. And that's fine, everyone has strengths and weaknesses; being a starter and visionary can be valuable skills, as long as you are partnered with someone who does know how to close.

The problem is Roberts has intentionally surrounded himself with people who are NOT like that. It doesn't help that people keep throwing money at them with zero accountability either. Might as well be shoveling crack at a crack addict at this point.

People are free to spend their money any way they like. I'm also free to comment that I think it's stupid and unhealthy to the long term game ecosystem too.
 
Krazy925 said:
I actually think that’s the best sub plot in the movie.
I truly don’t understand why some of my friends can do drugs and be totally fine and others do some and literally end up with a ruined life. Nic Cage has a good line about it.

“I never understood what separated the recreational drug user from the habitual, but for the grace of God it could have been me snorting lines as long as the Bell Parkway, however I wasn’t entirely free of the grip of addiction myself.”

Life’s mystery.
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I have found that those that only use drugs on a recreational basis have other addictions that supersede the substance addition. Money, power, control, sex, exercise, games, etc.

All drugs are is an escape from the moment, when you have other addictions (call them passions when they are positive like exercise, projects, work) you get that 'escape' from them, thus diminishing the power of drugs and alcohol.
 
He should have released a minimum viable product and then iterated from there. These could all be dlc's or expansion packs whatever but it would have been a better PR play for him. At this point it will never be good enough to release.
 
RanceJustice said:
This most recent CitizenCon focused primarily on "soon to come" features instead of long term ones and, as promised, Alpha 3.3 was quickly released!
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Apart from all the stuff that was supposed to be in it, but which was pushed back to a separate 3.3.5. Stuff like everything in the CitizenCon demo, for example. Their schedule has been a joke ever since they first started publishing it.

Oh and regarding some of the celebrities in Squadron 42 - Chris Roberts has tons of connections in Hollywood; he produced many movies including the Wing Commander movie itself, Lucky Number Slevin (I think), and perhaps most famously the Nic Cage starring Lord of War. Some of the celebs are those that run in sci-fi circles and are good friends - as others mentioned Mark Hamill was the star of the Wing Commander games back in the 90s and I think its awesome he wants to be part of things now. It should also say something about the quality of mo-cap and rendering they're doing that Andy Serkis himself (ie the actor who voiced and portrayed Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, as well as ton of other mo-cap performances) signed on.
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He didn't sign those people because he's a major Hollywood player and they were desperate to work with the fabled director of the Wing Commander movie and founder of the Ascendant Pictures, a company most notable for being sued by Kevin Costner. He got those people because he threw literally millions of dollars of backer money at them. Hitting the big time with the SC crowdfunding inspired him to try and claw back his failed Hollywood career on the backers' dime. Note that his only creative input was in the WC movie (which was almost unwatchable). He was just a small part of the money on everything else.

I've been a backer since the literal beginning - yes, 2012. When they didn't even know what kind of game they were going to be able to afford to build, had only a handful of people and had to built it all - game and studio alike - from scratch. I"m glad they're making an uncompromising title and don't really care about how long it takes, so long as they push the envelope and there is evidence of progress. I signed on to back a project trying to do something on a scale of immersion never-before attempted
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I've been a backer since the 2012 Kickstarter too, that's nothing special (nor is it, by Roberts' admission "the literal beginning", because that was 2011). But I'm very glad that i haven't given them a penny since. And you clearly didn't sign on for what they're doing now because, as you said yourself, back then not even Roberts knew where it would end up. People backed it based on what was pitched: a modern, spiritual successor to games like Wing Commander. Of course that pitch featured media that Roberts claimed was a work in progress build of the game but which turned out to be a cinematic created by Crytek. And it was all downhill from there.
 
MavericK said:
Uh...what movie cred? He did the Wing Commander movie, which was absolutely terrible. And I'm a huge fan of Wing Commander.
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Simply having made a movie and making a successful movie are two entirely different things. That Wing Commander movie is probably one of, if not the worst films I've ever seen in a theater. During the film people were talking about how bad it was and laughing at the more cringe worthy parts, or terrible special effects.
 
Dan_D said:
Simply having made a movie and making a successful movie are two entirely different things. That Wing Commander movie is probably one of, if not the worst films I've ever seen in a theater. During the film people were talking about how bad it was and laughing at the more cringe worthy parts, or terrible special effects.
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I saw it on DVD rented via netflix, but still... that's 2 hours of my life I will never get back. At the very least they could have tried to make the space fighters look cool, but those were lame AF. They probably would have done better with hiring an animation studio and making it into a cartoon or something. XD
 
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