Star Citizen: Chris Roberts returns to PC Gaming

I haven't seen anyone mention this yet so I thought I'd bring it up. Chris Roberts, the guy that brought us the Wing Commander series, Freelancer, etc. is back and working on a new space sim called Star Citizen. He's trying to get it funded via crowdsourcing on his website instead of Kickstarter, but also some through private investment. Lots of info on the website to read along with a nice video or two.

2012-10-27: A good 2 part interview with Chris on RPS - Part 1, Part 2
2012-10-18: Chris Roberts decided to put SC on Kickstarter after getting alot of feedback.

Chris' Presentation at GDC 2012 where he's going around in the game's prototype - http://youtu.be/7vhRQPhL1YU?t=23m51s

Added vids from NinjaPirate's Post:

 

Excellent!

CryEngine 3 driven even. Wow. Pretty ambitious. I hope it succeeds. Not sure if I'll have time for this type of game but I'll try to make it.

 

Thanks for the link, +1! First I've heard of this but Wing Commander is still one of my all time favorite series.

 

Very easily the game I most anticipate at this moment in time.

I loved WC series, Privateer, Starlancer Freelancer...
(although Starlancer and Freelancer had very odd advancement limitations)

From the information I gathered the baseline product has two modes.
Single player is a squadron-based millitary game more similar to WC or Starlancer. (Squadron 42)
After the single player, you can retire from millitary to civillian life which is then an MMO similar to Privateer/Freelancer. (Star Citizen)

The visuals are stunning... but I hope they can keep the fluid gameplay.

I also hope they do not weigh it down with silly restrictions like Freelancer. In Freelancer, there were pilot "levels" which determined where you could go and what you could do. At one point Freelancer forces you into endgame instead of allowing you to continue to explore and collect the best ships and equipment. As an MMO, I hope they leave it as open as possible. Sure, you can go to that pirate system... you may be blasted into subatomic particles 10 seconds after coming out of the jump gate, but you can go there and try to survive. Maybe you tough it out. Maybe you run some hair-raising gun runs with nothing but the smallest margin of armor left before tasting the cold void.
I'd like the chance to test myself.

I was one of the crazy people in Privateer who sold everything, bought the best thrusters and did nothing but run for the first few missions until I could afford a freighter. Then I equipped that freighter like a gunboat and stomped anything which even thought about trying to steal my cargo.

In Freelancer, I actually left planets in my freighter (Dromedary FTW) with nothing, went to a pirate base and filled my cargo bays by tractoring in parts of destroyed pirate vessels. This actually rivalled the best trade routes for money/period of time and resulted in fairly quick faction building/changes.

 

I LOVED freelancer. My experience with the WC series is limited to Prophecy, but that game was fantastic. I really would love to see space sims make a comeback.

I do have one suggestion for Chris Roberts though. He needs to scale up the capital ships. Both WC and Freelancer had dinky cap ships. They need to be more along the lines of Freespace.

 

100% agree with the cap ship size.

Furthurmore, the cap ships should be more difficult (not impossible) for a little fighter (even a heavy one) to kill without torpedoes. Even with torpedoes, it shouldn't be easy.

I get annoyed when the same "fly to X spot, kill Y(and maybe Z) turret, pound on shield/hull until dead" works every time.

If you stand still the cap ships should have all-too-potent defenses for sitting ducks.

Also, I'd love to have the option of a co-pilot. (turrets maybe?)

 

For now I'm hoping the single player doesn't require players to be online since there'll be a GW2 style MMO portion. It'll also have private mp servers, but it sounds like it's limited to PVP practice so I doubt there'll be much in the way of AI interaction like in Freelancer.

Agreed about the capships. It would be great to see massive ones like EVE Online. The potential to fly in the same ship as friends who can man turrets will be interesting. It's going to be cool to see what a big ol' capship can do against a bunch of player pirates in fighters. A two player fighter/bomber would be cool too.

I'm pretty psyched about the potential for exploration. So far something discovered gets named after the player, but I hope there'll be more opportunity to exploit this sort of thing like selling coordinates for resource rich asteroids or hidden bases.

 

My god this game looks good. Sad face that we won't see the finished thing for another 2 years at least probably.

 

I hope they release a benchmark/tech demo to see how it performs on our hardware. If it is in 2 years, time to buy an SLI setup then.

 

I don't think you'll need new hardware for this game.

 

Yeah, from the looks of it I think it'll run fine on today's high end mobile gpus. Things could definitely change in two years, though

 

New system specs listed in this article Star Citizen clarifies its payment model, required specs - Destructoid

Minimum: Dual core CPU
GTX 460
4GB of system memory

Recommended: i7 2500, 2600, 2700
GTX 670 or better

 

That's actually pretty good. When he said he was going to push it, I was thinking he meant like a GTX 870 or HD 9950 released in the future.

 

It may end up that you need something like that to max it out, but I think with those specs it will run fine on today's hardware. Most of us will have upgraded by then, too . I'll keep my laptop as long as I can, but I know I'll upgrade cpu/gpu in the future.

 

I just found the game on Kickstarter...and wow. This is the first project I'll back on the site, from the beginning of the video I kept trying to collect my jaw from the floor, but I didn't manage to do it until the end.
This game will be amazing if they can really manage to squeeze all these features in it (as when someone has such a huge project planned what usually happens is they have to keep dropping features because of time/money/hardware constraints).

 

Fortunately, this isn't a Peter Moleneaudsfidsajzx project lol. I've got faith he can pull it off with the right funding. Expectations are through the roof

 

Looks like the game's met its $2 million goal! Also added links to a 2 part interview in the OP with some good information on SC.

 

Seriously, you couldn't be more wrong, lol. This game will take use of ANY unused resource it can, it is specifically programmed to do so. It will load more and more , use more cpu use more graphics ram etc... you WANT the best you can afford late year 2016. I recommend those interested in all aspects of Star Citizen, to start saving. The game is also not optimise at all, and will be much much further optimised. But loads are like 2-3 minutes on my samsung 850 pro's. my FPS goes low as 20-15 at 4k resolution with SLI 980m...

 

There's your problem

 

No idea at this point where this money grab is going to end up ha... I was excited way back 2.5 years ago but watching how it's progressed, not nearly as much now. Anything with $300 digital ships is a bit silly personally. Raised over $70+Million USD and still milking the diehards... seriously?

I backed it for the minimal $30 or so way back on 2012 but they won't be getting more here. Hope it pans out, but all I wanted was a genuine fun Wing Commander follow-up. I'm not even sure what it has become now.

Hardware wise though, I tried the "module" that lets you fly for about half hour before getting bored and it ran just fine a month or so ago.

 

woodzstack, go easy with that signature

Ho... Lee... Bejesus! 70 mil... Wonder if most of it went to EA/Crytek for licesing CryEngine 3... With that kind of doe he could open up a game development studio and hire people to do work for him.

 

/s

 

yeah, I play at 2560x1600 to be stable-ish in high 20's-30 FPS.

 

Yep. I just checked it out, and was like

I can't believe the cost. You can easily spend hundreds of dollars to get these ships. I'm sure you can work your way up to them (I hope) but still, it's a bit intimidating.

I would love to have a Wing Commander followup, but this is some way too overly ambitious Sims in space kind of thing it seems.

Visit starwraith.com for games similar to Elite and Wing Commander that stick to the best gameplay formula.