I don't know the story behind it, just that it was started in 2007.
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Star Citizen's single player campaign will miss 2016 launch date
- Thread starter Chobel
- Start date
I don't know the story behind it, just that it was started in 2007.
The devs have admitted that it ran like absolute ass on the PS3 which is why they shelved it until better hardware arrived.
It's not even just that. You can also ask why the fuck Roberts is still adding features to modules like SQ42 when theyes keep on missing their deadlines.
I remember so many gaffes who were sure the SP portion of the game was releasing by end of year 2016.
Has it not been? That's news to me. I was under the impression that it has been in development throughout most of that period.
Pie and Beans
Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
I'm sure one day they'll finish it but it'll still be the jankiest unoptimised piece of shit possible as thats how these things always go. They know their base is fanatical enough to justify absurd rigs and "teething problems" throughout, so why bother. People put up with and made DayZ a wild success, so same principals here.
PandaShake
Member
I'm guessing sq42 was s kickstarter thing, but I rather it never existed if it means pushing the production or more builds of star citizen proper out sooner. I'm absolutely in love with star citizens playable universe as it is right now where I'm with other gaffers. I can continue waiting.
That's what I thought as well, even the wiki page seems to state that it got shelved in 2011 but then was moved to PS4 development in 2012.
A game cant be in full production that long. The publisher would have already euthanized it. Now if its just like 5 people working on it then sure, it can probably work. But any mid to large sized team would have already been moved on to other projects.
In two years we are going to have people claim that actual production of the game started in 2016, after Chris got all the kinks out of his production tubes and he stopped asking his artist and developers to remake everything they've done before.
Stiler
Member
They realized in development earlier on that it would be better for them to make them in tandem because of the technology and newer gameplay features that ended up being added to the game, otherwise you'd get a single player game that wouldn't have all the features or polish that the newer content would have.
Which is part of the problems that Elite: Dangerous has been running into when making their newer expansions and not having the same quality from release content compared to the newer content or having to even re-do things they done in tihe past because things changed or needed to be reworked.
They talked about this in a recent video, gamescom I think or might have been on an around the verse or something.
I mean sure people need to manage their expectation, but let's not act as if people expectation only come from their own wishful thinking. Without speaking about people who keep in mind the original estimated date from the kickstarter, let's forget the SQ42 in 2016, a demonstration of it this year is now not even a sure thing, when CR himself did set the expectation a few weeks ago that we would see it yesterday.
How can people be surprised that many backer/consumer etc.. have wrong expectation, when the helm of the project does too ?
Given that the game director left then came back, I would presume that they did put it on hold for a while.
It seems that the best description is probably this:
- FF versus XIII is a game that spent 6 years in development from 2006 to 2012.
- FFXV is a remake of FF versus XIII for next-gen consoles, and spent 4 years in development.
The oddity is that FF versus XIII was never released.
It was rebranded of course, but I'm pretty sure some work done in the Versus game was probably moved into the new one. I still think of it as 10 years.
Hohoho, as a dev there's a ton of layers to answering that. But the short version is it heavily depends on your management, because the're ultimately the ones setting the dates.
First, there's a sort of imperative to give short dev times to please your boss. This is true of your boss in regards to his boss as well.
-Hey mr Dev, how long is this gonna take?
-Based on previous projects I'd say two months, sir.
-Oh but we would like to get it out next month.
Well, you can keep telling him the true time it'll take and he'll keep asking, or stop inviting you to meetings so he can set his own time and look good, and blame external problems once it takes longer than planned. Or you can tell him what he wants to hear and do the same, blame external problems. Or maybe you've got that rare jewel who'll listen to you, and then his boss will be unhappy, possibly because a competitor said it'd take only a month and got the contract instead. By that same mechanism, if in 2012 they'd said it'd take until 2017 to develop, less people would have given money. But once they're in, there's momentum and getting the money back is a hassle compared to waiting for it to eventually release.
(There's a funny middle ground to that choice which is to say one month dev, one month testing, that way they can axe the tests and the eventual delay can be blamed on all the bugs. They never think testing is important)
Second, there's the matter of estimating such a delay in the first place. How reliable your estimate will be is entirely based on prior experience, so if you don't have similar projects to help you judge (either because you don't have that many projects under your belt or because, like many cutting edge videogames, there's heavy R&D necessary), it won't be very reliable. The best way to keep that under control is to reuse as much as possible, either middleware or stuff from previous projects. But you can't have your cake and eat it too: if you buy middleware only to reprogram its guts, you cancel the predictability benefit from buying middleware.
And Star Citizen *is* heavy R&D. For example real time planetary rendering has been well documented since 2011, but unless one of your programmers has the specialized knowledge you're gonna run into problems you didn't even know exist for quite a while, and just slapping 64 bits on it isn't gonna change anything, which is why it took them so long to sort that out.
It also means, in combination with the first point, that such an estimate will only be reliable if made by someone who knows what's involved in it. Don't let a non-programmer estimate the time needed to program something, they'll always fall prey to dunning-kruger effect and underestimate it.
Third, unless you added extra time for unplanned things in your planning (which is the first thing your manager from the first point will ignore and remove), that estimate is useless if your scope changes. No retakes, no new features, only then will your estimate made by an experienced guy be accurate. The problem for creative types is it directly conflicts with the drive to create the perfect thing. Well, you have to choose between sticking to deadlines or approaching the perfect game. Can't have both. In fact you'll probably also need a guy who can do the reverse, call him a party pooper or executioner, the guy who will look at the planning and axe planned features whenever you're getting late. When the dev hell hydra rears out its heads, he's the guy with the axe. Not a popular guy, but necessary.
In game dev that's the role usually filled by your publisher or your banker, but hey here there's no publisher and tons of cash so unless you've got exceptionally strong willed producers that the big boss can't override, that role isn't filled.
Kawazu is known for being that guy at Square-Enix for example, the guy who keeps his games on budget and on planning and who you assign to projects you want to finish.
Anyway, long story short, estimating release dates is not a science but an art, and it's strongly contingent on a desire to enforce them once they're set, or they'll keep slipping.
But posters keep telling me that there has been zero scope creep. Not a single new feature has been added since SC's announcement!
Clarkus Darkus
Member
Reminds me of cowboy builders, Get the money upfront, Do half a job, Then quit because the money ran out and need more to finish it.
During the time that FFvsXIII was in "production", the director/producer was credited in almost 20 games. That tells you how much "production" FFvsXIII was really in. This is 2006-2012. Way more if you count all the way to the present date.
Just like this election has proved - you can fool some people all the time.
Well, we call them stretch goals nowadays. And to be fair SC fans have been saying time and again that the scope has indeed changed. But I'm also thinking of the multiple graphics and motion capture retakes.
Outrun
Member
Yeah, keep on taking time... and money....
As impressive as the fundraising has been, the money will run out at the pace that they are working.
*Psst!* Don't take the convenient scam strawman away from them.
All of us doubters think this is a blatant scam!
Outrun
Member
Scope creep can also occur when the deliverables have not been precisely defined.
I think that this is what is happening. People are citing years old documents with perhaps a couple of lines devoted to a particular deliverable.
Each item needs to be detailed. For example, you can claim that your game will release with 10 ships. But unless the size and complexity of these ships are locked down, the goal is useless in terms of project management.
Yes. This *is* what is happened. Clearly pithy one liners whether scope creep has or hasn't occurred don't paint the full picture.
From the perspective of backers when talking about the broad strokes of scope and basing it on stretch goals, the one can say that scope is only increasing according to what is being promised to the backers. So it depends on whether you consider promised features in or out of spec.
There is a second dimension here in that a line description of a feature doesn't necessarily describe how it is implemented and the work that goes into it. Saying you're going to have x amount of ships doesn't necessarily tell you what the features that go into those ships are, nor the quality at which they have been produced. But that particular aspect also cannot really be nailed down before work has started.
There are some stretch goals that punt investigative projects for possible implementation into the future. The planetary tech is one such aspect that developed much more quickly than they initially expected but at the same time they felt that the benefits are worth delaying other things.
Then there are ill defined areas but you can definitely point to scope creep, namely infrastructure that comes as part of supporting problems that weren't initially predicted but are absolutely necessary for core gameplay, like for example netcode.
So the problem in discussing it is one of perspective and people talking past each other. This obviously doesn't countenance whether the extra features are worthwhile or not, that can only be evaluated when the game is released, but even then we're going to get divergence in opinion where some feel that the delays weren't worth it, while others will feel that the features enrich the game vis-a-vis the original pitch.
Here's what I think about scope creep in regards to SC
If you say you are going to have mining in a space game, the first thing people imagine is EVE, Elite, NMS, or even Subnautica and minecraft. Pretty simple you hit stuff, get materials from it which you then use for crafting. People buy the game expecting this.
Then announce their actual plans for mining and its way more complex that you could have ever imagined. That ship they mentioned that was specialized in this, its massive. Bigger than anything you could have imagined, its also worth hundreds of dollars. You are hooked, you want to play this thing when it comes out because mining alone could be its own game.
Same thing with salvaging. Same thing with farming. Same thing with scanning
If you say you are going to have mining in a space game, the first thing people imagine is EVE, Elite, NMS, or even Subnautica and minecraft. Pretty simple you hit stuff, get materials from it which you then use for crafting. People buy the game expecting this.
Then announce their actual plans for mining and its way more complex that you could have ever imagined. That ship they mentioned that was specialized in this, its massive. Bigger than anything you could have imagined, its also worth hundreds of dollars. You are hooked, you want to play this thing when it comes out because mining alone could be its own game.
Same thing with salvaging. Same thing with farming. Same thing with scanning
They didn't run off, they still selling digital ships and people are buying them. For thousand dollars!
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
Expected, the other game we have seen as little of its single player campaign as SC is Mass Effect Andromeda, and who would even think that was coming out in less than 6 months.
thelastword
Banned
Wasn't this game suppose to release in 2014?
One thing I'll defend SC on, it's only 25GB now. Quantum Break is 67GB without ANY of the videos...
c'mon, the topic title alone tells you this was not the planned date anymore.
Given they are still working on basic AI, I can't see this releasing in first half of 2017. By the time the levels come together, get polished and '>20 hours of gameplay' becomes fun, I feel that we are a year out.
On the bright side (for me), that would be in line with my GPU upgrade plans
Whatever... the tech is mighty impressive. Let's hope, for everyone's sake, that the gameplay turns out ok
On the bright side (for me), that would be in line with my GPU upgrade plans
Whatever... the tech is mighty impressive. Let's hope, for everyone's sake, that the gameplay turns out ok
adversarial
Member
Did customers not "expect" that because that's what the studio said was to be expected? or did they pull the 2 year expectation out of thin air? Genuine question as I've not been feverishly following the Star Citizen progress (or lack thereof).
RubberJohnny
Banned
Star Citizen "Squadron 42" Singleplayer Campaign Delayed Indefinitely
Haha, they did the Star Marine headline!
Haha, they did the Star Marine headline!
The ones calling this a scam have not shown any proof but keep pretending it is a scam . This will be released but the ones saying it won't come out. When there has been proof showing that its coming along
I don't blame people for being abit miffed to be quite honest. There's a big difference between, say, Skyrim's development and SC's.
Yes, Skyrim was made by an already established studio and had a big budget from the off.
However SC had still raised about $6 million after its initial crowdfunding. They should have taken that and built something properly playable with it. Something to give their loyal backers that was an actual game rather than a very barebones tech demo / alpha.
Then they could have expanded gradually. What they didn't instead was grossly over stretch themselves - it was a classic case of a designer simply being wildly over ambitious. They then proceeded to milk a ravenous fan base using utterly LUDICROUS pricing systems. I don't care if it's an option, I disagree with the whole "no one is forcing you to pay to dollar for ships" argument. Selling virtual spaceships, some of which don't even exist outside of JPEG form yet, for literally HUNDREDS of dollars, is insane. If they want to sell ships for real money once the game is done, and playable to all (and no, that alpha does NOT count) then fair enough, ok. Even then, at least charge reasonable prices for them.
So they have created their own massive problem - with vast amounts of money poured into the game, and many, many people now involved in its funding, CIG have got to start giving people something real to show for it.
Bethesda didn't start work on Skyrim then, a few days after work started, begin selling in game horses for hundreds of dollars each. No one had any investment in Skyrim.
People have serious investment in SC. if CIG don't start really cracking on and showing people some actual, far along gameplay then people are going to get more and more annoyed. If they don't release something which is actually recogniseable as a game, and soon, then that annoyance is going to start turning into real anger.
As people have said, if this goes tits up and never sees the light of day, or if it comes out and is like Duke Nukem Forever, then it is going to be an absolutely vast story. It could fundamentally change the way people approach crowd funding. It could almost destroy it as an option for some developers as more and more people become wary of trusting developers.
That's why people are getting angry, in my opinion. I'm all for not rushing developers, but SC is very different from saying to Ubisoft: take your time over the next AC game.
Yes, Skyrim was made by an already established studio and had a big budget from the off.
However SC had still raised about $6 million after its initial crowdfunding. They should have taken that and built something properly playable with it. Something to give their loyal backers that was an actual game rather than a very barebones tech demo / alpha.
Then they could have expanded gradually. What they didn't instead was grossly over stretch themselves - it was a classic case of a designer simply being wildly over ambitious. They then proceeded to milk a ravenous fan base using utterly LUDICROUS pricing systems. I don't care if it's an option, I disagree with the whole "no one is forcing you to pay to dollar for ships" argument. Selling virtual spaceships, some of which don't even exist outside of JPEG form yet, for literally HUNDREDS of dollars, is insane. If they want to sell ships for real money once the game is done, and playable to all (and no, that alpha does NOT count) then fair enough, ok. Even then, at least charge reasonable prices for them.
So they have created their own massive problem - with vast amounts of money poured into the game, and many, many people now involved in its funding, CIG have got to start giving people something real to show for it.
Bethesda didn't start work on Skyrim then, a few days after work started, begin selling in game horses for hundreds of dollars each. No one had any investment in Skyrim.
People have serious investment in SC. if CIG don't start really cracking on and showing people some actual, far along gameplay then people are going to get more and more annoyed. If they don't release something which is actually recogniseable as a game, and soon, then that annoyance is going to start turning into real anger.
As people have said, if this goes tits up and never sees the light of day, or if it comes out and is like Duke Nukem Forever, then it is going to be an absolutely vast story. It could fundamentally change the way people approach crowd funding. It could almost destroy it as an option for some developers as more and more people become wary of trusting developers.
That's why people are getting angry, in my opinion. I'm all for not rushing developers, but SC is very different from saying to Ubisoft: take your time over the next AC game.
Iced_Eagle
Member
They are building up the Persistent Universe over time like you suggest. It's in people's hands today, and they gave the updated roadmap at their convention. Backers have something to look at and play and see progress.
Squadron 42, the single player campaign, is different though. It makes no sense to push that out in an unfinished state and build it up over time. For the vast majority of players, they will play through the single player campaign one time, and then move on to the persistent universe portion of the game. That's why they are being much more cautious about releasing it, because with S42 first impressions are all they will likely get.
As a backer to the game, I will say that I'm not particularly surprised or disappointed by the delay. I'm in this for the long haul with them. The only thing I'm disappointed is that they didn't even show a preview of one of the missions. I know they're working hard on it, but it really would have been nice to actually see even a bit of a preview.
Fair point. I wonder how long people are going to be patient for though - I mean if SQ42 doesn't emerge next year there could be uproar...
Huw_Dawson
Member
On the one hand, this is disappointing.
On the other hand, it's not remotely surprising. There's not even a vertical slice of the game present yet.
On the other hand, it's not remotely surprising. There's not even a vertical slice of the game present yet.
Woo-Fu
Banned
They don't get a free pass from anybody except those doubling down on their dreams.
Stratosphere
Member
Bold prediction: Diablo 4 will release before SC proper.