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Star Citizen Pre-Alpha: 'Arena Commander' Dogfighting

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D

Dictator93

Member
From Ali Brown @ CIG:
The Windows 10 announcement is certainly very interesting for us as it suggests we might get a better take-up of DX12 than we'd otherwise have expected (as DX12 is locked to Win10). Adding DX12 support is no small task for such a large and fully featured engine & game, however it's also an extremely high priority for us because everything about our game design seems to increase the number of objects we need to deal with and one of the main benefits of DX12 is to significantly reduce the per-object CPU cost of rendering (often the bottleneck for games). Of course there are other funky effects and features we could implement with DX12, but how much time we spend on R'n'D for DX12-only features will be proportional to how many users are running DX12, and this latest announcement gives me more hope we'll be pushing DX12 features sooner rather than later.
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w00t
 
Zalusithix

Zalusithix

Member
Dictator93 said:
From Ali Brown @ CIG:


w00t
Click to expand...

Seriously, I have a hard time believing that any significant portion of the people backing Star Citizen won't be on Windows 10 by the time the game is released. The game has pretty high system requirements, any anybody in the mid/high end PC gaming scene is going to be on Windows 10 within that first year freebie period.
 
E

epmode

Member
Oh good, I was wondering if Star Citizen would be moved to DX12. Now that we know about the free upgrade to Windows 10, they should totally do it.
 
D

Danthrax

Batteries the CRISIS!
Dictator93 said:
From Ali Brown @ CIG:

The Windows 10 announcement is certainly very interesting for us as it suggests we might get a better take-up of DX12 than we'd otherwise have expected (as DX12 is locked to Win10). Adding DX12 support is no small task for such a large and fully featured engine & game, however it's also an extremely high priority for us because everything about our game design seems to increase the number of objects we need to deal with and one of the main benefits of DX12 is to significantly reduce the per-object CPU cost of rendering (often the bottleneck for games). Of course there are other funky effects and features we could implement with DX12, but how much time we spend on R'n'D for DX12-only features will be proportional to how many users are running DX12, and this latest announcement gives me more hope we'll be pushing DX12 features sooner rather than later.
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w00t
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I wonder if DX12 will help get the number of players in one instance up. That would be nice.

Considering Chris Roberts' philosophy of making this game demanding, lowest common denominator be damned, I think he should put forth the effort to DX12-ify it. Hell, make it DX12 exclusive
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
Danthrax said:
I wonder if DX12 will help get the number of players in one instance up. That would be nice.

Considering Chris Roberts' philosophy of making this game demanding, lowest common denominator be damned, I think he should put forth the effort to DX12-ify it. Hell, make it DX12 exclusive
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If they refactor the engine to be DX12-exclusive, DX13 or DX14 might be out by the time they get it working. :p
 
kutthoat5150

kutthoat5150

Member
Danthrax said:
lol @ persistent universe alpha at the end of 2015, retail release in 2016
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At first I thought we were getting 5 systems for the PU alpha but today on RTV it sounded like we're only getting 2 according to Ben; Stanton and Terra. Hopefully they'll clear that up otherwise I'm with you that there's no way they're building all 5 systems by the end of the year.
 
D

Danthrax

Batteries the CRISIS!
Blizzard said:
If they refactor the engine to be DX12-exclusive, DX13 or DX14 might be out by the time they get it working. :p
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Sweet! Then they'll have a great excuse to scrap all their hard work and start from scratch again!


kutthoat5150 said:
At first I thought we were getting 5 systems for the PU alpha but today on RTV it sounded like we're only getting 2 according to Ben; Stanton and Terra. Hopefully they'll clear that up otherwise I'm with you that there's no way they're building all 5 systems by the end of the year.
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Maybe ... we're getting just Stanton and Terra for the planetside/social module? We'll have our choice of which planet to be on? I mean it sounds like both planets are pretty much close to finished and they've started work on two more. You'd think they could get three planets done in a year when they basically redid the first two over the previous half a year. They need to do the entire systems, too, of course...
 
K

KKRT00

Member
epmode said:
Oh good, I was wondering if Star Citizen would be moved to DX12. Now that we know about the free upgrade to Windows 10, they should totally do it.
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Yep. I dont see people sticking with WIN 7 or 8, when WIN 10 will be free upgrade.
The sooner they start doing conversion the better, but i'm also pretty sure that Crytek is already porting CryEngine to DX 12, why wouldnt they be? :>

Danthrax said:
Hell, make it DX12 exclusive
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Yep, my opinion as well.
 
D

Daedardus

Member
KKRT00 said:
Yep. I dont see people sticking with WIN 7 or 8, when WIN 10 will be free upgrade.
The sooner they start doing conversion the better, but i'm also pretty sure that Crytek is already porting CryEngine to DX 12, why wouldnt they be? :>
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Because they are nearly bankrupt or so :p.
 
-tetsuo-

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
Geist- said:
Found a youtube video of the broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ej6u1h7ZEg

And here's a slide of the expected module release schedule:
lFnU8Oy.jpg
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Add 6 months to everything there.
 
D

Daedardus

Member
Zabojnik said:
Still on schedule for 2018, no complaints here.
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I'm actually wondering if they will ever deliver a 'final' product. They'll most likely say 'this is not a beta anymore' and move the stuff they planned out from the beginning towards updates after that instead working on all-new ideas.
 
Z

Zabojnik

Member
Daedardus said:
I'm actually wondering if they will ever deliver a 'final' product. They'll most likely say 'this is not a beta anymore' and move the stuff they planned out from the beginning towards updates after that instead working on all-new ideas.
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I honestly don't care when the PU reaches a 'mature' state, as long as they deliver with S42 and keep working on future (mini) single player campaigns / 'mission discs'.

In for the SP, everything else is a bonus.
 
D

Dictator93

Member
S

Sax Russel

Banned
Dictator93 said:
One thing I wish is that they would also drop the test ships in the hangars. I like looking at the ships in a non-combat state.
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You can try landing them in free flight mode and then just looking around. Same access to the interiors + walking around the exterior.

Although I think I botched my landing.

starcitizen2015-01-23ynuwk.jpg
 
kutthoat5150

kutthoat5150

Member
Social/multiplayer hangars coming in March/April, which one of you guys is hosting the Idris launch party because I'll be first one in line
 
F

Fuzzification

Member
Apparently at PAX South Chris Roberts briefly mentioned that a variant of the Avenger, called the Warlock, will be the first ship/variant shown off as an electronic warfare specialist, capable of jamming distress calls.
Pirates just got a new toy.
 
D

Danthrax

Batteries the CRISIS!
Fuzzification said:
Apparently at PAX South Chris Roberts briefly mentioned that a variant of the Avenger, called the Warlock, will be the first ship/variant shown off as an electronic warfare specialist, capable of jamming distress calls.
Pirates just got a new toy.
Click to expand...

no

I've already given too much money to this game

stop tempting me
 
D

Dezeer

Member
Dictator93 said:
In case you guys were curious, I tried out the pistol released through voyager direct. Holy hell does that thing have some big kick and a great sound.

Webm:
http://a.pomf.se/nsdxqz.webm
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Man, a game where guns don't sound like peashooters. Hopefully CIG is working on the sound engine, I don't really know how it is currently, but to hear that echoing in the corridors of space stations or larger ships.
 
K

KKRT00

Member
Dezeer said:
Man, a game where guns don't sound like peashooters. Hopefully CIG is working on the sound engine, I don't really know how it is currently, but to hear that echoing in the corridors of space stations or larger ships.
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Yeah, they are doing quite sophisticated stuff with their audio engine
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14278-Monthly-Report-October-2014
For those into the audio tech: it might not have been obvious from the livestream, but in-engine reverb wasn’t quite sufficient to sell the sense of different room-types and spaces when high energy impulses (guns etc.) were fired off. So especially authored content was added that modified the weapon sounds when they were triggered in different rooms, thus these spaces are more clearly defined in-play. This is a basic approach at a system we want to build upon much, much further, looking to ground the player in the world as much as we can and give them that sense of differing materials, space, and variation. All affecting the audio to reinforce immersion – this is very much what we’re all about. Sound should have meaning and be integral to the gameplay, and those systems that do this are so important to us.

Other sounds we were proud of included the personal shield, the area of denial gadget and the electric shotgun. We have electric arcing elements in the tail-off phase of the electric shotgun sound, which may seem like a little thing but is something we found satisfying! Plus it was fully ‘wet’ (100% mix) on the reverb side to really sell the energy and space-occupying quality of the weapon.

We found it cool to explore some of the UI sound scheme for the suit and helmet. It’s fair to say we’ve only scratched the surface of this, but it’s exciting to us to think how the suit/helmet HUD might differ from the in-ship HUD/UI elements.

As well as the sound design side of the FPS demo, we had some truly great and polished material through from Pedro Macedo Camacho, whose music contributed hugely to the mood throughout. He worked tirelessly, as did everyone, and we all hope it gave a good first impression. We’re aiming high (pardon the pun!) and it’ll only get better as we progress.

We’ve talked previously in these monthly updates about the ‘simulated sound’ concept of Star Citizen, which is the mechanism whereby sound in space is justified. Something we’re thinking about is whether a standalone suit would do as good a job of audio simulation as a ship would, when exposed to space directly. Perhaps considering it might have less processing power than the ship, it might be lacking somewhat? Or perhaps sound isn’t simulated when in the suit, at all, or it picks up a data stream from the player’s ship which attenuates/falls off over distance? The aesthetic and practical implications are many, so we’re curious as to what you might all think about this.

Ship damage is something we want to look at soon. We have so many ideas in this area; the different ways the ship might perform sonically to reflect its state, right from its smallest parts to its largest constituents. There are some great opportunities to go to town with detail, almost to the extent that the player can close their eyes and know just what’s wrong with their ship at a given moment – that’s what we’re aiming for. Again, any ideas that you have here will always be welcome!

In terms of the back-end side of things re. audio. I’m sure it’s something you’ve heard before, but we are moving to Wwise from FMOD – there are some technical hurdles to overcome with this, and taking our assets from FMOD and incorporating them into Wwise and eventually going live with it, is honestly no trivial task. But doing this properly will set up our foundation for the future of Star Citizen audio and it’s truly not something to be taken lightly. We’re taking a ‘measure twice, cut once’ approach, we want to minimise any ‘audio downtime’ and ensure a smooth transition so that no-one’s enjoyment of the game is affected. Once it’s done we can really push onward!

Incidentally, I’m the new Audio Director on Star Citizen, Lee Banyard. Feel free to address any questions regarding audio my way. My background – I’ve been lucky enough to have worked on the sound design of the Batman Arkham series of titles (including Asylum, City, and most recently Knight) for Rocksteady over the last six and a half years. I’ve been involved in game audio for almost my entire professional life and I consider it an absolute honour and privilege to be where I am right now on Star Citizen. There’s a lot I’m pushing to do behind the scenes to maximise sonically the Star Citizen experience. I’ve more of an emphasis on sound design than music, I think that’s fair to say, but I have a deep appreciation for all aspects of the audio experience and as we build the team here, I hope our push for quality becomes more and more evident.
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