"All encompassing" games are really f**king hard.


And yes this is also about Star Citizen.

Yeah? Does it have nude mods, or jiggly physics...?

You know I was thinking about this today.

So far Kerbal Space Program has been the only game to successfully have flying in space, planetary landings and walking about with your pilot. And if you like combat there are mods for that too. Oh and not to mention a pretty realistic newtonian physics flight model which other space games say they have but really don't.

Have the devs of KSP finally made the impossible possible where others have failed?

Lunar Lander by Atari in 1979 had newtonian physics.

Oh, man. At this point, Derek Smart simply wants to be trolled.



edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD
"Before publisher Take-Two Interactive released Battlecruiser 3000AD in September 1996, it had generated one of the longest and largest flame wars in the history of Usenet.[16] This flamewar lasted for several years, garnered over 70,000 posts, and yielded a series of sites that documented and parodied its history."

edit2: "Usenet" is what we had before the World Wide Web (e.g. graphical browsers.) Reddit is probably the closest thing to Usenet, but Reddit lacks the content and strength of character provided by usenet posters.

"Walking in Stations" and World of Darkness suffered from the problem that nobody knew what their scope actually was

Yeah they dumped the fps module from it. I'm sure most people that followed and were in tune with EnB and SWG development already had an idea how this was going to turn out. Yes just like the complications with WiS. Of course that was doomed to failure from the get-go seeing how even continued development of it effected WoD with just purely the bipedal play. It's just not something technically achievable in a good way, either bipedal or spaceships are going to suffer, can't have both in the same game client, not to full potential.

Almost makes one wonder if SC Online'ish was just a huge scam, I mean how could seasoned developers have not known with so many examples of failure and/or limited results? In the end though, it's just damages the genre. Belittle every other existing game for so long with the hype machine while they grab cash. Not delivering on the promises. Then leaving players who interested for years in the mmo space-sim genre just discouraged and bitter now looking for some other genre to pursue as they give up on space of which they are all still convinced by the past hype is all just worthless and boring.

I don't believe it. Venturing in the new areas must be made with preparations, one must ask himself what he wants to achieve. Diving head first in murky waters is a dangerous thing.

CCP risked microtransactions bundled with WIS and they were scolded, so they went back to fixing EVE endlessly while making other games on the side.

"All encompassing" games are really f**king hard.


And yes this is also about Star Citizen.

Yeah they dumped the fps module from it. I'm sure most people that followed and were in tune with EnB and SWG development already had an idea how this was going to turn out. Yes just like the complications with WiS. Of course that was doomed to failure from the get-go seeing how even continued development of it effected WoD with just purely the bipedal play. It's just not something technically achievable in a good way, either bipedal or spaceships are going to suffer, can't have both in the same game client, not to full potential.

Almost makes one wonder if SC Online'ish was just a huge scam, I mean how could seasoned developers have not known with so many examples of failure and/or limited results? In the end though, it's just damages the genre. Belittle every other existing game for so long with the hype machine while they grab cash. Not delivering on the promises. Then leaving players who interested for years in the mmo space-sim genre just discouraged and bitter now looking for some other genre to pursue as they give up on space of which they are all still convinced by the past hype is all just worthless and boring.

I don't believe it. Venturing in the new areas must be made with preparations, one must ask himself what he wants to achieve. Diving head first in murky waters is a dangerous thing.

CCP risked microtransactions bundled with WIS and they were scolded, so they went back to fixing EVE endlessly while making other games on the side.

I wouldn't either, but go ahead and look it up. CSM 5 spent its entire term trying to get any kind of answer from CCP about what the gameplay would entail, to the point of open revolt (the "little things" fix-it list drawn up by CSM 4, and largely implemented years later in Crucible, was another sore point). There used to be some amazing videos on YouTube of CCP talking about licensing WiS out for virtual runways to be used by high-end fashion designers, and that's pretty much the only concrete feature--it's why every avatar walks like a runway model and every CQ has a runway. Everything else was pie-in-the-sky stuff about how it would be better than reality. That's not to say that there could not be any gameplay. the earlier effort, Ambulation, had some good ideas. Walking in Stations was just supposed to be "awesome," I guess. That, and the development methodology was so terrible that I'm sure the art department gets hives every time someone mentions avatar gameplay.

World of Darkness made it to alpha three times (alpha in the technical sense, meaning feature complete but slow/buggy) only to be discarded and clean-sheeted three times. The third time, they just threw their hands up and gave up on the project. The only rational explanation for that is that they waited until a full workup just to determine if the game satisfied some nebulous and unquantifiable standard, instead of working the game up in advance and then developing it.

At a certain point, early on, you have to say, "this is the game we're making" and then commit to making it. The alternative is, well, World of Darkness. Or Star Citizen. Scope creep is death. No scope is stillbirth.

One reason I believe... believed SC can be successful is the quality of the developers. When you get talented people together, the rate of progress over a team of checkbox degree holders is immense. I haven't heard about the types of management problems that can cause those types of team compositions to fail.

Except for the stretch goal promises thing.

They have a lot of work ahead of them, but the $150M figure for a typical studio isn't automatically damning. That could be for a shipped game, with pre-existing staff, with conventional investor funding. I'm willing to believe the devs working on SC can manage to release playable portions of a game with their budget.

I want to say the prediction that the game will not be made is a bit much. Derek Smart might not be able to comprehend it, but that could just mean he's not the caliber of individual like those working on SC. Talent, creativity, and problem solving are very real skills that are not conferred with degrees. Or experience.

Walking in Stations was just supposed to be "awesome," I guess.

every avatar walks like a runway model

Yeah. The thesis of the article should have been about caution in committing to too much at once.

I was taking into consideration not only ambulation that was to be scraped because of the engine change as I remember it, but also the avatar exploration concept with demo. They had concept, but these concepts were troubled by technology that was to be updated and this greed thing. EVE spaceship part being in a state of neglect as people were thinking, but it was to be solved by little things, double way thing, fixing EVE and making WIS simultanously, all fuelled by you know what...

Someone in upper management was completely parted from gaming