Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games has said Squadron 42, the single-player portion of its controversial space sim, is finally “feature complete”, over a decade after it was announced.

Over 10 Years After It Was Announced, Star Citizen’s Single-Player Squadron 42 Is ‘Feature Complete’ - IGN::Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games has said Squadron 42, the single-player portion of its controversial space sim, is finally “feature complete”, over a decade after it was announced.

  • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    95·
    1 year ago

    Maybe if they didn’t spend a ton of their budget hiring random big name actors to be in a video game, they could have been done much sooner.

    • Flambo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      1 year ago

      it’s such a wild example of feature creep, and yet it’s not quite the wildest example of Star Citizen’s feature creep. When Roberts’ funding exceeded his wildest dreams, he should’ve changed nothing from his original pitch and simply delivered that. For reference:

      Original funding goal: $2 million US

      Funding by end of Kickstarter campaign: well over $6 million US

      If they finished the project with a $4 million surplus, great! They’d have ample budget for post-launch support, and maybe even for some free post-launch content updates to improve goodwill. If that’d gone as planned, the dude’d be sitting on a whole new generation of goodwill.

      Oh, and we’d have a game like this:

      Pick up jobs as a smuggler, pirate, merchant, bounty hunter, or enlist as a pilot, protecting the borders from outside threats.

      A huge universe to explore, trade and adventure in

      Wing Commander style single player mode, playable OFFLINE if you want

      Actions of the players impact the universe and become part of its history and lore

      Fully dynamic economy driven by player actions

      If caught alone in an online ambush, send a distress broadcast to your friends and if they’re nearby they can jump in-system to save your bacon.

      You wanted proper Newtonian mechanics. You got it! Spaceships adjust their trajectory and orientation just like the real thing.

      10X the detail of current AAA games (as measured in polygons)

      Range of scale never seen before in a game - ships from 27m to 1km scale, all at same level of detail

      Support for Joystick, Gamepad, Mouse, Keyboard, as well as HOTAS, flight chair, rudder petals, and VR

      the cardinal rule regarding “in-game purchases” is: Players who spend money purchasing in-game credits will have no advantage over players who spend time!

      Instead they immediately pivoted to a pay-for-ships funding model and let the scope grow to seemingly every one of Roberts’ wildest whims

      The tech demo is cool. Realization of no-loading-screen transitions from surface -> atmosphere -> orbit -> microgravity -> docking with another ship is wild. Being able to watch your pilot and gunner do a space battle from out the window, while you go walking about the ship is wild. But having it be only a tech demo for this long is so disappointing, and having the focus pivot from singleplayer-with-online to online-with-singleplayer are significant disappointments.

      funding timeline: https://starcitizen.fandom.com/wiki/Crowdfunding_campaign

      original pitch/campaign: https://web.archive.org/web/20121015042706/http://robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/