Chris Roberts and team announced that they’ve passed the 20 million dollar mark establishing a new record in crowd-funding for Star Citizen, their upcoming space trading and combat simulator game for the PC. And first-person shooter. But more on that in a second.
“It’s especially fitting to me that we reach this goal today, on the anniversary of the release of the original Wing Commander. Thanks to the support of this incredible community, Star Citizen embodies everything I dreamed of doing with that series, and opens up the potential for so much more.” –Chris Roberts (Cloud Imperium Games CEO)
The $20M mark unlocked a new stretch goal: first-person combat on planets. “Don’t just battle on space stations and platforms … take the fight to the ground!”.
But, Chris doesn’t intend to stop here. If they reach $22M they already have another stretch goal feature in mind, a Facial Capture System. With this new toy they intend to capture real heads and import them into the game. This would be a mobile tech they explain, so, they could “capture” faces on the go (fans at events, for example). More about that here.
In a recent presentation at an AMD event, Chris Roberts presented a trailer of Star Citizen footage where according to Roberts Space Industries, everything was rendered in-engine. Wow, looking good! Now, prepare for the most probable scenario of having to upgrade your computer for this baby :) Star Citizen has an estimated release date of Q4 2014, early 2015.
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I can’t help but feel that this is a counter video to Elite: Dangerous’. Still, it’s looking nice and it can only mean good for both games. :)
Nah, most of this footage had been shown in other trailers before (mainly the original reveal and the 300i commercial, plus little preview bits they’ve dropped here and there). There is actually very little new stuff to see here. I watched the whole AMD conference and every developer there was showing a new trailer; I’m pretty sure Roberts was asked to bring one as well.
That Elite trailer looked really good, but with SC just blasting past the 20 *million* mark, I really don’t think the guys at Cloud Imperium are loosing too much sleep about it.
The truth is I’m mystified by some fans’ reactions in comparing, sometimes in a hostile way, the new space sims (Elite, SC, X-Rebirth, Eve Valkyrie). I thought the space sim community was above that crap. I mean, this isn’t like the Call of Duty vs Battlefield debate where both franchises have a ton of games, more coming no matter what, and a dozen same-y modern shooter clones in the background. We are FINALLY getting a bunch of lovingly made AAA or near-AAA space sim titles coming out. I’ve been waiting for this crap for like a decade and I *will* go out of my way to support ALL these games (and a few of the scrappy smaller devs, too!).
I couldn’t agree with this comment more! We have been waiting 20 years for this, I can’t for the life of me understand why the fact that SC looks amazing would make people bash X Rebirth and the like.
Fact is they are ALL starting to look pretty impressive, and what we don’t get out of one, we may get out of the others.
I for one will not hesitate to buy all of SC, X Rebirth, Elite and EVE Valkyrie (already bought the first 2). For god sake, I’ve been waiting 20 years, I can’t possibly have too many space sims!
Hell, I plan on owning all of them.
Hell, Chris Roberts himself mentioned the Elite crowdfunding effort on the Star Citizen Website when Braben and company were struggling in the middle part of their campaign (like most crowdfunding campaigns the it goes through a slow patch before the final week when funding usually picks up significantly). Hell, I believe (and correct me if I’m wrong) he’s backed both Elite and Limit Theory himself, so it’s not like Chris and CIG don’t want to see any other space sims out there other than Star Citizen.
For some reason some fans get this very strange competetive and possessive attitude towards games they’re invested in and then make the jump to considering everything else a threat to their chosen game as the “One True Game To Rule Them All And In The Darkness Bind Them”. We space sim fans have been starved for choice for a decade. Don’t see more games a a threat. See them as a wonderful thing bringing a genre decreed dead by the publishers back to the limelight it deserves to be in.
Hell Yeah!
All of these new space sime trailers are really taking me back. To a time when I had to upgrade my computer.
I would trade it all for a modern, 1920×1080 version of X-Wing and TIE-Fighter.
In a heartbeat.
I’m hoping we get something like that when JJ Abrams ruins the next Star Wars movie.
You mean the one where Micky Mouse plays Jha Jah Binks?
The only thing that worries me is how taxing Star Citizen is going to be on computers… I have heard rumors about the hangar Module alone MELTING some video cards. And it requires DX11 compatible cards, as well.
Come near release I bet it will scale down quiet nicely! Chris is no fool why only release a game for the few who can play it? but to play it the way it should be played will probably require a Direct X 11 card.
Considering the full release of the game won’t happen til 2015, I find this perfectly acceptable. By then the “next gen” consoles will have been out well over a year and will be DX11 compatible. I can already run the hangar module very smoothly with my mid-tier gaming PC; by the time the game launches a good-enough card will be $100 or less.
SC is meant to be absolute cutting edge. Chris has said he’s known to be a guy who pushes tech and keeps PC gaming moving forward, and thats what he’ll be doing here. Given that I have time, I’ll be saving up a bit of cash to build a much stronger PC before the game comes out.
It will require DX11 compatible cards (which means I’ve no choice but to upgrade my old dinosaur of a rig), but do remember that the Hangar Module has not gone through any sort of optimization. It’s far more brutal on the hardware than the final game is likely to be because there is no scaling. Even things so far away they’re only a pixel on the screen are rendered with every polygon as if they were right there all up in your face. That’s bound to tax any system.
The Hangar is pretty much a pre-pre-pre-pre-(insert any number of pres here)-Alpha product. It’s a release of code so early that Chris has said himself it’s the earliest he’s ever shown anything to anyone. With a regular publisher development model he wouldn’t even have shown such an early product to the publisher or investors, but because they are going for a totally transparent and inclusive dev model with the backers we get to see things way, way earlier than anyone ever would with the normal development method.
Seriously with the 20 million? Is this really necessary? I mean, it’s a computer game. Made in a small office space.
Actually this is not an uncommon amount for big AAA games these days – Mass Effect 3 for instance is estimated to have cost EA & Bioware around $40 million to produce.
Also, it should be noted that CIG (Cloud Imperium Games) the developers, began as a team of less than 10 in a small office, but are now more than 80 employees spread across 3 locations – this is not including the additional external teams they are contracting to work on certain sections of the game (including a significant amount of work on building the 300,000 to 2,000,000 poly ships).
Additionally they have also built their own motion capture studio to allow for better in game animations and to capture full facial performance of actors for use in the single player campaign (Squadron 42).
So, you can see where the costs would start piling up…
My computer has an i7-3770k CPU and a GTX 560 Ti video card. I figure the CPU will still be plenty for the game, but I’ll have to upgrade the video card. Still have plenty of time for that, though :)
I look forward to these games giving a shot in the arm to the space sim genre in general. I can’t understand how some fanboys of Eve online really feel threatened by all these new crowd funded heavy hitters. In fact some are even hoping SC and ED are going to fail. This is sheer lunacy, more choice is better than no choice at all.
In my mind I am looking at these games as the necessary step forward that will allow future games even a glimmer of hope in existing. Can you imagine the success of these 2 new games ushering in a new renaissance for Space Sim games everywhere? Together with the advances in VR tech, namely the Oculus Rift, I can only see good things coming from this.
Hopefully this will usher in a revival and games like a VR enabled Star Trek MMO directly inspired by Star Citizen will make its mark in coming years. I think without the success of these new games, anything beyond what is available now is a pipe dream. So heres to hoping better games become reality all because of the future success of SC and ED!
errr, ummm, better make that 22mill!