Walter

Chris Roberts' new space combat sim

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I fucking loved Freelancer, for the record. Then again, maybe that's because I'm young enough that it was the first one of those games that I really dug into, going back into earlier stuff afterwards.

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Well Freelancer was one of my childhood games so it has definitely made an imprint on me and i adored it. For someone that has never really liked a joystick, i thought the mouse controls were a good compramise. For all the game this pitch is spitting, i am very interested in it.

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I'm super upset that I slept through this panel. But it was billed as something ridiculous like "Space Press Conference" so I didn't feel too bad until I found out what it really was. I should have known you can't go wrong with Space.

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while i was reading Maths and Physics at college I came to terms with the fact that a galactic community a la star wars or the Culture is probably impossible

hearing chris talk about simulating one is invigorating; how marvellous to overcome our physical bounds in a virtual space

I think christmas presents will be scanted a bit this year

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This looks pretty cool and I liked the old games (including freelancer), but by all accounts this is going to be pc only and will require a heftier video card than my laptop has (or for that matter any newer laptop I'd upgrade to is likely to have). Barring something like the mythical Valve steam box, I don't see myself getting another desktop pc ever.

I suppose if enough awesome things come out that require it, I might change my mind eventually, but one title is not enough to get me to do it.

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He's specifically designing this for hardware that is top shelf now, but affordable/mid-range two, two and a half years from now.

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This looks pretty cool and I liked the old games (including freelancer), but by all accounts this is going to be pc only and will require a heftier video card than my laptop has (or for that matter any newer laptop I'd upgrade to is likely to have). Barring something like the mythical Valve steam box, I don't see myself getting another desktop pc ever.

A console gamer! GET HIM!!

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A console gamer! GET HIM!!

Yikes! Easy there with the torches and pitchforks. In the last couple of months I've gotten more games for pc (xcom, torchlight 2, guild wars 2, ftl) than console (sleeping dogs, borderlands 2).

I just know the limitations of my laptop's vidcard is all.

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This project is just great for so many reasons, but I think the biggest draw for me is his approach to story. The idea of the devs being dungeon masters who can react to and guide the overall narrative is exactly what this genre needs. I try to play a lot of these games and they all seem to be either "play our prefabbed story" or "make your own story" and neither are satisfying: the predetermined story undermines the promise of scope and freedom, but the total freedom approach lacks direction and results in analysis paralysis or a lack of interesting goals.

MMORPGs have this awful problem where other players break immersion all the time by talking a bunch of shit about TV and lolcats in the middle of a magical forest. In the past I've thought a lot about how AI trickery could be used in single player RPGs to capitalise on the player's creative interpretation of simple or random systems to give them a sense of narrative that is "all in the mind" and totally personal to each individual player. People have a tendency to overlay human characteristics on opaque systems and I think this maybe hasn't been fully explored in games where the AI is usually too deterministic. Games like Stalker and Far Cry 2 go some way towards implementing this.

The problem with this is it's difficult to get the player invested up front or direct events so that they aren't turned off by bad dice rolls up front, and it also doesn't work in a multiplayer environment where players can confuse eachothers interpretation of events. Roberts' idea of treating players like a participating audience is a neat way of solving these problems in the multiplayer space while maintaining a gentle authorial control over the narrative.

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http://www.shacknews.com/article/76287/star-citizen-adds-kickstarter-as-crowdfunding-option

So yeah.... I dunno the whole "we need 2 million to get 14 million" seems really weird to me. Did they ever specify what the "triggers additional investments" means?

$16 mil for a space combat game seems a bit high too, but what do I know.... seems like a pretty large goal for relatively "indy" studio.

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http://www.shacknews...dfunding-option

So yeah.... I dunno the whole "we need 2 million to get 14 million" seems really weird to me. Did they ever specify what the "triggers additional investments" means?

$16 mil for a space combat game seems a bit high too, but what do I know.... seems like a pretty large goal for relatively "indy" studio.

He's stated that he needs to raise $2m to prove that people are interested and get the more traditional investors on board. I think this was in the GDC Online talk linked above. Seems understandable to me. The $16m thing does sound like a lot, but I guess it's in-line with the size and scope of this project - most indie games are small 2D affairs, seems like he's going for a grand 3D space opera with a ton of very high quality meshes, textures and animation to build which will cost big bucks.

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http://www.shacknews...dfunding-option

So yeah.... I dunno the whole "we need 2 million to get 14 million" seems really weird to me. Did they ever specify what the "triggers additional investments" means?

$16 mil for a space combat game seems a bit high too, but what do I know.... seems like a pretty large goal for relatively "indy" studio.

I'm not sure this is any "Indy" studio. He's talking about already having a team, using Cryengine 3 for a quasi MMO. That's definitely not "Indie" in the traditional sense. I take this as a way to prove that there's interest for something investors and big wigs had written off a while ago. A chance to use crowdfunding to prove out the idea for investment.

It's definitely ambitious and a new strategy, which I like automatically. Why should kickstarter be "indie" only? It all sounds great to me.

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"Indie" means independent of a publisher. Given that he's getting his money from us and from other investors, he's a poster child for indie development.

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I pledged my share for this the first moment I heard about it and saw the videos and interviews.

Roberts is back, hell yes. Wing Commander series and Strike Commander were awesome games, I never really got to play Freelancer. I don't exactly have a computer to run this with all the eye candy turned on, but in a few years I will surely have so bring it on Chris.

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I was a huge fan of Wing Commander growing up, so this was a no-brainer for me. Honestly, this is a genre that is ripe for an MMO atmosphere anyway. I know Roberts even name-checked Eve Online as taking a lot of the systems of Freelancer and creating a viable MMO experience, so I'm very interested to see what direction he is going to take it.

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I thought the only people who didn't like Freelancer were crazy grognards who just couldn't let go of their joysticks. The interface/controls in that game were a stroke of genius and a bold step in the right direction for space sims. The way it let you effortlessly switch between flying your ship, freely aiming your guns at any point on the screen, and controlling functions of your ship's computer like targeting and the autopilot all from the same interface, without the need for an expensive hunk of plastic or a keyboard overlay with labels for all 101 keys was brilliant.

It's just a shame the game had no actual content beyond the canned story missions in the singleplayer mode. All of the space sims to come after it have either stubbornly refused to use an interface that goes beyond Tie Fighter, or tried to do what Freelancer did and missed the point so badly that they might as well have not even tried (I'm looking at you, X series).

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without the need for an expensive hunk of plastic

You're a straight nutter.

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I wouldn't say it's the 'right' direction, rather that it's 'a' direction. It's a similar kind of difference between playing Arma 2 and Call of Duty. The former has a higher barrier of entry and way less mass appeal, but the experience that it gives does not really compare. So I'll be whipping out the ol' joystick the moment I get a chance to take a ride in mah spaceship.

With my joystick and Oculus Rift, I'm gonna look so cool.

So cool.

5CHei.png

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