[Akalabeth Angel]

How often do they promote things in-game, like for example environments, which cannot be immediately sold online?

[Akalabeth Angel]

So Alpha 2.0 goes on public test server today

CHRIS DETRACTORS ON SUICIDE WATCH

HOLY **** DUDE YOU ARE GETTING SCAMMED!!!

I missed the last half of the livestream and checked it out after it ended. Skipped around a bit and what are they talking about I see?

Selling a new ship
Having a contest to design marine armour, which will likewise get sold online
Selling a joystick/keyboard periphreal
Selling another ship

Where's the ****ing game? Seriously.
This livestream is a shopping channel.

Do you know what a proper game development stream looks like?
It looks like this:

Skip around the video.
Notice art development (concepts, models, sourcing)
Game development. (values, spreadsheets, planning)
LIVE gameplay demo at that stage (onspot demonstrations of mission, overworld), which was done every week as the game got better and improved.

That's how you livestream a game under development.

Not streaming for 3 hours talking about new **** going on sale without showing any new gameplay except for some crafted trailer showing all the "best moments".


Seriously dude, if you want to ride the project out whatever but don't put any more money into it that pit.

Total scam job. I will be surprised if you ever get a real, honest to god released game.

What's the current release? Alpha 2.0? You know what Alpha 2.0 is called in the rest of the gaming Industry? Beta. And after Beta, comes the release game. People are celebrating the fact that after 90 million dollars the best it can offer is "more alpha"

[The E]

It's not even an Alpha. Alpha means that most major gameplay systems are implemented, and SC is far, far away from that particular milestone.

[AtomicClucker]

It's a Virtual Ship Selling Simulator after all.

[Aesaar]

So Alpha 2.0 goes on public test server today

CHRIS DETRACTORS ON SUICIDE WATCH

So we've reached last year's claimed combined Spring/Summer 2015 milestone.  Truly, this invalidates every problem with SC.

Meanwhile the module is crashing every 5 minutes, according to people playing it.  Seems fairly obvious they rushed it to remove critic ammo, but what they released is nearly unplayable.  Not joking about that.  I watched a stream where the 'game' crashed so much that the guy stopped trying and quit before he even managed to get into his ship's cockpit.

Which, now that I think about it, explains why CIG hasn't shown any actual gameplay of 2.0.

[TrashMan]

Do you know what a proper game development stream looks like?
It looks like this:

Tim "3.4 million dollar man" Schafer
Tim "The Scam Man" Schafer
Tim "Scokpuppet" Schanfer

Of all the people...you use him as an example?

But Tim's most legendary failure has to be Broken Age.
After asking for 400k in KickStarter money and collecting a record sum of 3.35 million, with an additional 100k donated off KickStarter, Tim Schafer took that money and created.......... Nothing.

The project fell through almost completely. Despite receiving roughly 9 times the money he was asking for, Schafer inflated his plans for the game and, as a result, was unable to complete even half of one half of it, announcing that the game will be split into 2 chapters but he only has the money to complete half of the first. This might have something to do with him blowing a chunk of the budget on hiring voice actors that include some of the most well known (and most expensive) in the industry, the creator of Adventure Time, the returning Jack Black and ****ing Elijah Wood.

He went on to beg his fans for more money, tell them he would not be asking for money from a publisher because he doesn't like them and because that would be "against the spirit of KickStarter" (unlike outright stealing the money you were given and then begging for more), and finally put what little of the game was already finished on early access to gather more funds, telling the people who donated money and expected a full game: "Just don't look".

Over a year and a half later Schafer finally released the second part which made everyone wonder what took him so ****ing long, considering the plot (of both games) makes no sense and everything is solved with bombs and deus ex machina, while the puzzles feel like "Babies first adventure game". But what made it obvious that the entire thing was a con is that he didn't change anything. The entire game is made out of preexisting assets, no new characters or locations are added and the two heroes who live in separate worlds just change places and solve almost the exact same **** as the first half but with the locations reversed. Writing the story was literally the only thing Schafer had to do to complete part 2, and it still took him more than 18 months, cost him an extra 50k and ended up being **** that feels like it was written on the fly.

All of his is made even more hilarious by the fact Tim responded to the success of his fundraiser by posting numerous pictures of himself eating, trowing around, burning, blowing his nose and wiping his ass with the money.

[Admiral MS]

Wow... I really wonder if I should finally try to get a refund. Probably too much effort for money I considered lost the moment I pledged it.

And the worst part is that no alpha module they actually released is playable on my computer cause it seems a lot more than the minimum hardware requirements is necessary to run it :/

[Mikes]

Wow... I really wonder if I should finally try to get a refund. Probably too much effort for money I considered lost the moment I pledged it.

And the worst part is that no alpha module they actually released is playable on my computer cause it seems a lot more than the minimum hardware requirements is necessary to run it :/

Mh ... my work computer with a GTX960 with an old i5 runs it quite decently already.

Time to upgrade? ;-)

So Alpha 2.0 goes on public test server today

CHRIS DETRACTORS ON SUICIDE WATCH

So we've reached last year's claimed combined Spring/Summer 2015 milestone.  Truly, this invalidates every problem with SC.

Meanwhile the module is crashing every 5 minutes, according to people playing it.  Seems fairly obvious they rushed it to remove critic ammo, but what they released is nearly unplayable.  Not joking about that.  I watched a stream where the 'game' crashed so much that the guy stopped trying and quit before he even managed to get into his ship's cockpit.

Which, now that I think about it, explains why CIG hasn't shown any actual gameplay of 2.0.

Now don't take me wrong ... I'm quite sceptic about the project in it's entirety myself.

However, we are not getting "AC 2.0", but rather what they call the Persistent Universe Alpha or Baby PU nowadays.
How good or polished that is going to be is of course another story. But anyways, that nitpick on your post appears valid.

What is still Mia is Squadron 42. But when/if they release the Baby PU this year then that part would actually match the roadmap.

/shrugs.

[Aesaar]

It's not a persistent universe though, is it?  There's nothing persistent about it.  There's nothing that makes the persistent universe different from a bigger map.  There's no economy, there's no jobs, there's no trading, no significant customization of anything, and there's no meaningful player interaction beyond what was in AC already.  It's a bigger map for Arena Commander, and they finally managed to wrestle CryEngine into a "workable" FPS.

The Baby PU, they claimed, was meant to basically be one system from what would be in the final persistent universe, with all the necessary gameplay systems in place.  None of them are in ATM.  Some of them (like ship customization) don't even have a finalized design document.

It's a combination of Star Marine and Multi-Crew.  What they said they'd have Summer 2015.  Apart from the bigger map, it isn't significantly different from what Arena Commander already was.  You could already land your ship, get out, and shoot a pistol at things.  Well, there's zero-G EVA now.  That part is new.  So's multi-crew, but I've yet to see a streamer play the "game" without it crashing before the Constellation could turn on, so...

Sure, they released 2.0, but it's nearly unplayable.

[666maslo666]

"Bigger map" is a big deal. Converting Cryengine into 64-bit coordinates took a lot of effort and is crucial for the game to work as advertised. In addition to that, there is a rudimentary missions system, FPS mechanics and quantum travel between different places in the system. What is released cannot be considered "Persistent universe Alpha" yet, but it does surely go beyond just "Arena Commander 2.0 multicrew ships" goal.

So right now we are located somewhere between their summer goal and end of 2015 goal. And indeed, that is also current calendar time. So technically they are not late yet when it comes to persistent universe development. In reality, they probably are, but not by much.

Squadron 42 is another matter, it is already late and I do not believe first episode it will be out anytime soon. The game systems are just too intertwined to be able to release Squadron 42 while persistent universe is still largely unfinished. Claiming that they could release it before PU was a mistake, IMHO.

[MatthTheGeek]

So right now we are located somewhere between their summer goal and end of 2015 goal.

When in that timeline were they supposed to implement game mechanics? Because they still haven't even roughly pinned that down yet.

[Aesaar]

Game mechanics?  What?

How are game mechanics supposed to sell more jpegs?


Quote from the SA thread

I saw someone get in a turret and operate it. The ships seem to have problems with more than one person on them at a time. I saw a guy phase out of his ship when someone else flew away with it. Then it hung there over the pad, he jet packed up into the bay, and when he tried to enter a crew door the center of the screen pinched like it was doing the warp drive, then the ship ejected itself from around him and appeared over the opposite side of the pad.

Someone had a description of this release last night that completely nailed it. It's an object viewer. You can "fly" around, there's hints of neat things hidden about, the individual assets look good, but it's almost all "look but don't touch". You could have nearly the same experience zooming around in a model viewer.

Going by videos, seems accurate.  Every attempts to actually play ends with a crash in very short order.  Like, within a couple of minutes (which is of course nowhere near long enough to finish a fight with AC's glacial pace).


EDIT: So Reddit notices issues:

So, in my brief unstable time in the PTU, the biggest thing I've noticed so far is that the weird shaking you used to get from flying far out in Arena Commander is back now. It seems to be fine as long as you're near a point-of-interest, but if you go to cruise and travel off the beaten path just a bit, things go all to hell and you're disconnected shortly afterwards. Does anyone have an idea as to why this is? I thought the 64-bit conversion and camera-relative rendering was supposed to fix this. It does make me a little worried for exploration and such, since I can't even really fly around Port Olisar without getting this issue.

Current hypothesis is that they didn't change to 64-bit maps, they're just loading 32-bit maps at each point of interest.

Also apparently trying to repair or refuel a multicrew ship crashes the whole server.

EDIT2:

[Akalabeth Angel]

Do you know what a proper game development stream looks like?
It looks like this:

Tim "3.4 million dollar man" Schafer
Tim "The Scam Man" Schafer
Tim "Scokpuppet" Schanfer

Of all the people...you use him as an example?

I use it as an example of a proper game development video. The best company I've kickstarted is Harebrained Schemes but they didn't have team streams like this.

Also your comment tells me that you don't really know what you're talking about because despite being a Double Fine production the game's director was Brad Muir. Tim Schafer was barely present, at least publicly. The game itself is also fairly successful, has a few mixed reviews but also full marks from reviewers like Tom Chick.

The one black mark I count against the production is that they went into early access before release and I voiced my disapproval openly when they did.

[AtomicClucker]

Well, screw TIm Schaefer and Double Fine. Harebrained, Obsidian and other companies have actually made proper products and such.

And once again, screw Tim Schaefer. That guy rides politics more than he does actually making games - and while I may take a flail to bad examples, Tim Schaefer is a good example of all that's wrong and evil about Kickstarter.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Sounds like someone kickstarter Double Fine Adventure.
I only KSed Massive Chalice so have less of a problem with DFP.

[666maslo666]

New patch is out, fixing many crashes and increasing player count to 15000. I got an invite too, but I dont have time to test it today. Will post my thoughts when I do.

[Deathsnake]

Vaporware, ey?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC17567Zg8Y&feature=youtu.be&t=2m

[Aesaar]

I don't think anyone called it vaporware.  No one here questions Croberts' intent to deliver the game, just his ability to.  I've watched a lot of footage of 2.0, and I'm no closer to believing he can do it.  The game is plagued by significant gameplay issues that have gone unaddressed since AC first released (and we've gone over them in this thread a lot, so I'm not going to go over them again), and there are still massive challenges, both technical and content-related, still ahead.

And the livestream confirmed that they still haven't pinned down their most essential gameplay systems (like ship customization).  The dev team itself is extremely talented, but the upper management people who aren't Erin are incompetent.

I mean, people are acting like 2.0 is proof that the naysayers are wrong, but hell, I expected 2.0 at CitCon.  CIG failed to meet even my expectations.  And it's still a year late.

Like I've said repeatedly, I expect CIG will successfully deliver SQ42.  Or at least the first part of it.  I doubt it'll be very good, but I think it'll get released.  Star Citizen as promised?  No. 

Look at E:D for an example of a well-run project.  It may not have SC's funding, but it clearly doesn't need it. Without having 95M USD, they've managed to deliver an actual game, and now they're adding content to it.  They have a far more competently run project and a far clearer (and more achievable) idea of the game they're making.

[Akalabeth Angel]

New patch is out, fixing many crashes and increasing player count to 15000. I got an invite too, but I dont have time to test it today. Will post my thoughts when I do.

15,000 Invited
1,035,528 people still waiting

[Sushi]

Eh, no rush. SC is the type of game I'd rather wait until it's a bit more polished and de-bugged to play.

Which I suspect may be quite a long while. Plenty of other stuff to play in the meantime, though!