Chris Roberts | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Mon, 10 Oct 2016 07:48:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png Chris Roberts | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 Star CitizenCon had lots to show, but not much is coming soon https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizencon-had-lots-to-show-but-not-much-is-coming-soon/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizencon-had-lots-to-show-but-not-much-is-coming-soon/#comments Mon, 10 Oct 2016 07:48:23 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=308208 The big Star Citizen CitizenCon 2016 show certainly had a lot of exciting new technology to tease the player base with this year, giving them a look at new planets, mission types and enemies to combat, but none of it is coming soon. With a delay announced for the Squadron 42 single player content and …

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The big Star Citizen CitizenCon 2016 show certainly had a lot of exciting new technology to tease the player base with this year, giving them a look at new planets, mission types and enemies to combat, but none of it is coming soon. With a delay announced for the Squadron 42 single player content and much of the new features not coming until sometime in the future, Star Citizen still has a long road ahead of it.

Following a lengthy introduction of back patting and continued comments on the dreams being made reality with the creation of Star Citizen, CitizenCon dove straight into timelining past and future events. One of those future events is the Squadron 42 single player campaign. According to Cloud Imperium, although much of the core tech is in place, there is still a lot that needs to be done.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIiMqVdbHqo']

Pathfinding, finalised animations, better combat and flight AIs, all of that needs to be completed before it's ready, so we won't be seeing Squadron 42 until at least 2017 and potentially much further. As it stands, the developer has yet to bring even one chapter to finished quality, so the final version is going to be a long time yet.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPQeNoJYJCc']

Moving away from concrete dates, CEO at Cloud Imperium, Chris Roberts, outlined when various features would come to the main Star Citizen Game. Trading, Cargo and Piracy would all show up in the next big, Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 update, though again, it wasn't clear when it would be released. Mining and refuelling would come after that, followed by salvaging and repairs and farming and rescue in turn.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuDj5v81Nd0′]

But the big content update that will be required to get the sandworm planet into the game is not coming until Alpha 4.0, which will come after all of the above has been completed. Only then can players expect to be able to travel to more than one star system.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: As much as I love the scope of Star Citizen and really admire what the developers are trying to do, it seems like a game destined to be forever in development. The longer it goes on, the less impressive it is graphically, the more the engine becomes outdated and the more other games and experiences begin to catch up.

If ever released in its idealised, finalised guise, Star Citizen will be amazing, but if the journey there is too long, it's hard to imagine it ever being finished. 

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Updated: Cloud Imperium denies Squadron 42 delay https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizens-single-player-wont-be-ready-until-2017/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizens-single-player-wont-be-ready-until-2017/#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2016 10:20:40 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=305247 Update: Despite many publications (ourselves included) publishing yesterday that the single player component of Star Citizen, Squadron 42, has been delayed, developer Cloud Imperium has denied these claims. While it wouldn't be drawn on when the campaign would be unveiled, it did say that no delay had been stated by any member of the team. …

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Update: Despite many publications (ourselves included) publishing yesterday that the single player component of Star Citizen, Squadron 42, has been delayed, developer Cloud Imperium has denied these claims. While it wouldn't be drawn on when the campaign would be unveiled, it did say that no delay had been stated by any member of the team.

The original comment that was claimed to come straight from company founder Chris Roberts himself (via GameStar), turned out to come from the interviewer. A mis-translation of the German claimed Roberts said there was a delay, whereas apparently, the more accurate interpretation was that the interviewer simple claimed Roberts said this, rather than recording the quote directly.

This was backed up by Cloud Imperium when PC Gamer got in touch:

“It appears something may have been lost in the translation,” a spokesperson said. “Chris spoke to multiple reporters at Gamescom who asked about the status of Squadron 42. We have been feature locked for a while and things are coming along nicely. In every case he told them that we are hard at work on the game and are focused on making it great but no official launch dates were discussed.”

No more details on release date were announced, but we were told that more information would be coming in October, so we may need to wait and see how far things are along.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

Original Story: Star Citizen is a monster project, backed by more than $120 million (£90 million) of fans' crowd funds and an extremely ambitious feature set. Perhaps that's why more than two years late from its original projected release, the release of the single player campaign, known as Squadron 42, has been pushed back until next year.

When Star Citizen was pitched on Kickstarter back in 2012, it hoped to have the game finished and released by the end of 2014, despite promising a lot. However it quickly became clear that wouldn't be a date that could be honoured, as more money and features rolled in to the development pipeline.

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Unfortunately for those still waiting on the full game, that's something that's happened time and again in the past few years and now it looks to have happened again, with project lead Chris Roberts, stating in a chat with GameStar (via Kotaku), that he doesn't think the single player portion will be ready until at least 2017.

Although this is a pretty official line to the core of Cloud Imperium Games, the actual official release date is still slated as 2016, so it's not clear if the developer is still trying to make that date and some inside don't feel that it can be achieved, or whether someone just hasn't updated the site yet.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8YkjRs-S8w']

We'll have to wait and see, but even as mammoth as Star Citizen is, with a lot of features that gamers are excited about, if they never get to actually play the finished article, it will certainly lose some of its lustre.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: How much money have you guys put into Star Citizen? For me, fortunately it came along around the time I swore off Kickstarters since I tended to forget I'd even backed them. I'd probably be smarting if it'd put much into this and it wasn't going to be ready until nearly five years after the campaign began.

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Star Citizen releases Alpha 2.0 as $100 million threshold passed https://www.kitguru.net/professional/development/jon-martindale/star-citizen-releases-alpha-2-0-as-100-million-threshold-passed/ https://www.kitguru.net/professional/development/jon-martindale/star-citizen-releases-alpha-2-0-as-100-million-threshold-passed/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2015 08:47:24 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=278100 What does $100 million buy you in game development? So far it's purchased the fans of Star Citizen a second Alpha, as with the continued expansion of the number of backers – now over one millon – and ever increasing pledges, that astronomical total has now been reached. The celebratory Alpha brings a lot of …

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What does $100 million buy you in game development? So far it's purchased the fans of Star Citizen a second Alpha, as with the continued expansion of the number of backers – now over one millon – and ever increasing pledges, that astronomical total has now been reached. The celebratory Alpha brings a lot of prevous releases together, to give a much better representation of what the final game will really be like.

StarCitizen

In this second Alpha, players find themselves aboard a space station orbiting the planet Crusader. From there they can explore on foot, go on EVA where they use their spacesuit's small thrusters to control their position and orientation, or head to the hanger and jump in a ship. If players choose that last options, they can climb aboard alone or with friends and head off to do much, much more.

There's random encounters to discover, involving exploration and combat; quantum, high-speed travel; the planet Crusader to investigate, as well as it's three moons; three distinct space stations to look into; a repair station to utilise and a number of comms arrays that may be hiding something worthwhile (thanks PCG). There's also first person shooter combat that can take place just about anywhere.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf4zCCjBwOA']

There's also a few newly flyable ships, including the Constellation, the Retaliator and the Vanguard, the former of which is perfect for those looking to explore the system with their friends. This will also likely be good news for those that paid for those ships previously and haven't been able to do much but look at them in their hangar until now.

The Alpha is however, an Alpha, so it should come as no surprise that there are some known issues with it. For those wishing to furnish themselves with that knowledge, there's a full list of known bugs along with the feature list.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Did you guys put much money down for Star Citizen? As much as I think the game looks great, I can't bring myself to splash out on some of those ships. They're very pricey.

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Digital security expert banned from flight for tweet https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/security-software/jon-martindale/digital-security-expert-banned-from-flight-for-tweet/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/security-software/jon-martindale/digital-security-expert-banned-from-flight-for-tweet/#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2015 10:33:02 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=246030 Tweets have been getting people in trouble for a while now, whether they were intended as jokes, or legitimate statements, but often it's because of perceived ‘offence.' Not in this instance however, where digital security expert and founder of One World Labs, Chris Roberts, was barred from a United Airlines flight after tweeting that he …

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Tweets have been getting people in trouble for a while now, whether they were intended as jokes, or legitimate statements, but often it's because of perceived ‘offence.' Not in this instance however, where digital security expert and founder of One World Labs, Chris Roberts, was barred from a United Airlines flight after tweeting that he might be able to hack into its system to manually deploy oxygen masks.

However this sort of sentiment wasn't much of a threat, but a reference to recent research he and his company have been partaking in. As the BBC points out, Roberts' spent much of his time in recent weeks discussing with various publications about the possibility that airplane internet could be used to hijack certain systems on commercial flights. He has also expressed despair at the lack of interest from aircraft manufacturers with regards to digital security, perhaps prompting his rather public outing of potential issues.

“Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? “PASS OXYGEN ON” Anyone ? :),” reads Robert's tweet which had him thrown off of the plane last week. He was then questioned by the FBI for over four hours, who also took his laptop for further investigation.

roberts
Maybe it's the company he keeps?

When quizzed why it contacted authorities and had Roberts removed from its plane, a United spokesperson said:

“Given Mr Roberts's claims regarding manipulating aircraft systems, we've decided it's in the best interest of our customers and crew members that he not be allowed to fly United.”

They went on to add that they were confident the company's digital security systems could not be breached by outside sources.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Joking about anything related to airplane security still makes plenty of people pretty jumpy, but this seems a little ridiculous considering the man's profession, no?

Image source: Sidragon1/Twitter

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Fans compare Star Citizen rentals to freemium games https://www.kitguru.net/professional/development/jon-martindale/fans-compare-star-citizen-rentals-to-freemium-games/ https://www.kitguru.net/professional/development/jon-martindale/fans-compare-star-citizen-rentals-to-freemium-games/#comments Wed, 18 Feb 2015 09:12:31 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=236251 If there's one game that has elicited nothing but love for a long time now, it's Star Citizen. Despite the large price tags on many of the game's biggest and baddest ships, some of which still aren't in the game yet, over three quarters of a million people have helped contribute more than $70 million to its development, …

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If there's one game that has elicited nothing but love for a long time now, it's Star Citizen. Despite the large price tags on many of the game's biggest and baddest ships, some of which still aren't in the game yet, over three quarters of a million people have helped contribute more than $70 million to its development, despite it still being nearly a year off from release. And yet some of that good will may be fading, as some fans have turned on a recent decision to add ship rentals to the game, a system which they say, reeks of freemium mobile titles.

While obstensibly designed to give less financially equipped players (in the reeal world) the chance to use some of the game's fancier ships, by earning in-game currency and spending that to try a ship for a limited period of time, the problem lies with the fact that the currency is earned through combat in Arena Commander, the game's released dogfighting module. While that might sound fine on the surface, the problem the detractors have, is that your performance is linked with the currency pay out and there's no matchmaking, so those with better ships are earning more currency, perpetuating the cycle of people with more money performing better than those with less.

In this way they claim, Roberts Space Industries is encouraging people to spend real money, in order to earn more in-game currency and skip over a large, somewhat luck powered grind, much like freemium games do.

arenacommander
Arena Commander was the first bit of ‘real' Star Citizen gameplay 

Fortunately for those worried about the game's future, none of this seems likely to be malicious. In his original community address about the ship rental system, RSI founder Chris Roberts stated that he does “not want to make a game where you feel compelled to spend anything but time to continue playing.”

Still, that doesn't help people who are frustrated now, suggesting that PvE content should also reward the in-game currency, even if it was at a reduced rate. That way people would be able to earn the currency without having to face off against better equipped players. This is made doubly worse when the rate of currency earned is low enough that it would take some players over six hours of gameplay to afford the rental on even the most basic of ships.

Chris Roberts said that he felt a little exasperated at claims that the game was turning into a grind-fest, or one with pay to win mechanics, but reminded everyone that Star Citizen is still in-development and needs lots of testing. The in-game currency, was also designed to drive people towards parts of the game that needed testing more and various ship matchups in Arena Commander were a big part of that he said. However, he did agree that a matchmaking system needed to be put into play, to avoid players simply being “put into the completely open bear it that is ranked AC games.”

That feature won't come until after the 1.1 update though.

This leaves the community in an interesting position, as for the first time people aren't quite as pleased with what RSI is doing. The Mittani makes an interesting point, that it may simply be people reacting to others being able to earn in-game the ships that they spent hundreds of dollars are on, and that lack of exclusivity annoys them. It could also be that people are simply starting to see that the final game won't be entirely what they envisaged it to be all those months ago when they first dropped their money on the unreleased project.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru says: It was bound to happen at some point. No developer can be entirely criticism free for years, especially when there's real money involved in its development. Still, what do you guys think of the rental ship move? 

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Star Citizen to support 4K, 8K UHD resolutions, won’t run on consoles https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/star-citizen-could-support-4k-8k-uhd-resolutions-will-not-run-on-consoles/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/star-citizen-could-support-4k-8k-uhd-resolutions-will-not-run-on-consoles/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2014 17:15:30 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=219722 Star Citizen, an upcoming space trading and combat simulator video game that is developed by legendary Chris Roberts, has already become the highest raising crowdfunded project of all time and is the first AAA crowdfunded video game. Apparently, the title could also become the first video game that will natively support both 4K and 8K …

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Star Citizen, an upcoming space trading and combat simulator video game that is developed by legendary Chris Roberts, has already become the highest raising crowdfunded project of all time and is the first AAA crowdfunded video game. Apparently, the title could also become the first video game that will natively support both 4K and 8K ultra-high-definition (UHD) resolutions.

At the PAX Australia 2014 event Chris Roberts, the founder of Cloud Imperium Games, which develops Star Citizen, revealed that since the game is a PC-exclusive title and is not developed with video game consoles in mind, the company is working on ultra-high-resolution textures, which may indicate that the game is designed for future UHD displays.

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According to Chris Roberts, who spoke to TweakTown web-site, the development team is working on 4K and 8K textures and is “pushing the boundaries of the DirectX 11 and Mantle application programming interfaces.” By the time Star Citizen hits the market, DirectX 12 and improved Mantle APIs will be available, hence, what sounds like extreme today, will be more or less mainstream in 2016 or 2017, when Star Citizen hits the market. Cloud Imperium Games has no plans to make Star Citizen available on video game consoles, therefore, the company has a lot of flexibility when it comes to system requirements.

“I don't care about consoles,” said Mr. Roberts.

While many titles today are designed for beyond 1080p resolutions and some are developed with ultra-high-definition displays with 4K resolutions in mind, Star Citizen will likely be the first title that will also natively support 8K displays and will even include textures that do not magnify (i.e., get blurry) at 7680*4320 when a player gets up close to surfaces. In a bid to do that, game developers need to use the largest possible texture sizes. For example, for textures where the player can get close enough for 1:1 texel to pixel ratio (walls, floors, asteroids, extremely large objects, etc.), 4096*4096 or 8192*8192 textures provide the highest quality on ultra-high-definition displays.

star_citizen_1

While a number of games today use ultra-high-resolution textures in certain cases in a bid to provide additional details on modern monitors, 4K, 8K and 16K textures (such high-resolution textures are supported by multiple contemporary video game engines, including CryEngine 3/4, id Tech 5, etc.) are really needed for next-generation titles that will be played on UHD displays. The fact that Cloud Imperium Games throws in a number of 4K and 8K textures that is worth talking about may indicate that this is done for future PCs and for ultra-high-definition resolutions, such as 4K (3840*2160 or 4096*2160) and even 8K (7680*4320).

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: It is really nice to see that one of the most anticipated PC titles of our days is not only developed to be a good game, but is also designed to take advantage of the latest technology. Since UHD resolutions require a lot of graphics processing power, you will need a good graphics card to play this title.

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Here’s what Star Citizen looks like in an atmosphere https://www.kitguru.net/professional/development/jon-martindale/heres-what-star-citizen-looks-like-in-an-atmosphere/ https://www.kitguru.net/professional/development/jon-martindale/heres-what-star-citizen-looks-like-in-an-atmosphere/#comments Mon, 13 Oct 2014 07:56:31 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=216217 Star Citizen is a game of many things. It's a super crowd-funding success story, it's an ambitious pipe dream and it's an epic space adventuring game. However as empty, and as vast as space is, sometimes you need to head down to the surface of a planet and for the first time, we now have footage …

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Star Citizen is a game of many things. It's a super crowd-funding success story, it's an ambitious pipe dream and it's an epic space adventuring game. However as empty, and as vast as space is, sometimes you need to head down to the surface of a planet and for the first time, we now have footage of what that looks like in-engine.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gGLE3USB2U']

In-case you can't (or won't) watch the above video, the sequence begins with Roberts Space Industries' Chris Roberts, guiding us through the atmospheric entry procedure, which involves getting clearance from the local populace. The player on-screen then goes through a transition into the atmosphere, before touching down and being sent out into the warmth of an industrial starship dock.

The player is given access to their hold while on the ground, so if this was a ship packing an exploration vehicle, it could potentially be driven about if needed. However in this instance, he simply goes for a walk out of the spaceport and into what is essentially, galactic immigration. The area beyond is a small shopping centre, which the player can wander around in, buy goods above and below the counter, though most of that functionality still needs to be added.

rsi

While the demonstration continues, Chris Roberts explains some of what's going on and takes a swipe at the Xbox One and PS4, suggesting that the area being rendered is far too detailed for either console to handle. Even the PC the demo is being run on judders around a bit, but he explains it as needing optimisation.

Much like Skyrim and Deliverance: Kingdom Come, NPCs in the game are also planned to have a day-night cycle for their AI, giving them jobs, tasks and goals for each day.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: It's a very impressive demo, even just from a graphical stand point. It's a very pretty game. It still doesn't make me want to spend a few hundred quid on spaceships that I can't play with though.

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What if Star Citizen was sold to Facebook too? https://www.kitguru.net/professional/development/jon-martindale/what-if-star-citizen-was-sold-to-facebook-too/ https://www.kitguru.net/professional/development/jon-martindale/what-if-star-citizen-was-sold-to-facebook-too/#comments Tue, 01 Apr 2014 09:18:30 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=185317 Even though most seem to have come around to the idea, there's still a few of you that are pissed Oculus VR was bought out by Facebook. But what if other beloved companies, like the one behind Star Citizen was also bought out by the social network? Don't worry, it won't. In-fact founder Chris Roberts has …

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Even though most seem to have come around to the idea, there's still a few of you that are pissed Oculus VR was bought out by Facebook. But what if other beloved companies, like the one behind Star Citizen was also bought out by the social network? Don't worry, it won't. In-fact founder Chris Roberts has said that Cloud Imperium will never be sold to any big corporation.

This comes out of an open letter to the Star Citizen community, where Roberts opens up by saying that he doesn't think Oculus sold out in the move, and that's because he understands what Oculus needed to push itself into the mainstream: capital, lots and lots of capital. Introducing a new, innovative technology takes huge amounts of cash – Microsoft spent over a billion dollars on the development of the Xbox One – and now he hopes it'll have more than enough.

rsi
“Tell Mr Zuckerberg to call back, I'm busy.”

“My hope is that Facebook’s funding will let Oculus compete with much bigger companies and deliver an attractively priced consumer headset at the scale needed for mass market adoption without the loss of the incredible passion that convinced me to back the project,” he said, offering a slightly different view to the snubbed-feeling Notch.

However, positivity aside, he wouldn't ever go the same route with Star Citizen and Cloud Imperium, as it just isn't necessary. “To mass-produce hardware like the Rift, you need an outlay of hundreds of millions of dollars. Luckily our ships are digital so we have hardly any cost of goods, just the cost of developing the universe of Star Citizen and running servers that Star Citizen’s universe will be simulated on,” he said. “Thanks to the generosity of the Star Citizen community we have these two things covered.”

Oh and they just hit $41 million in funding and have started work on procedurally generated content.

KitGuru Says: The writing is on the wall at this point. Without financial backing, Oculus could very well have been overtaken in the VR race by the likes of Sony, which while having the silver VR medal, isn't too far behind. 

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Star Citizen breaks $35 million, introduces new ship https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizen-breaks-35-million-introduces-new-ship/ Mon, 23 Dec 2013 09:46:42 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=168883 It seems like only a month ago that were were talking about how Star Citizen had broken its latest monetary milestone (less than, actually) but today we're doing practically the same story, as the game from Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame, has now hit its next crowd funded stretch goal, introducing a new information …

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It seems like only a month ago that were were talking about how Star Citizen had broken its latest monetary milestone (less than, actually) but today we're doing practically the same story, as the game from Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame, has now hit its next crowd funded stretch goal, introducing a new information based transport craft.

The latest threshold is $35 million, though it's already $20,000 passed that at the time of writing. However this doesn't just give extra dollars for Mr Roberts to line his pockets with, it means more features and a bigger game, thanks to the introduction of another ship, known as the Drake Herald. This class of ship is designed to be all about knowledge, coming with EMPs, heavy data encryption and a powerful main engine for staying ahead of the law, pirates or whoever may be after the crucial data your ship carries.

stellargraveyard
Nothing to see here… just star dust

It might be the coordinates for a hidden space station, or the citizen ship records of an entire planet's populace. Either way it's important which is why you need a specific ship to look after it.

The next stretch goal is for $37 million, with a new system known as the Stellar Graveyard being added when (not if) that one's broken.

Robert's Space Industries recently announced a delay of its dogfighting module, but the community seems to have mostly accepted it.

KitGuru Says: It continues to be really impressive how much money Star Citizen has been able to pull in. It's not stopping any time soon either. 

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Star Citizen breaks $25 million https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizen-breaks-25-million/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizen-breaks-25-million/#comments Mon, 28 Oct 2013 08:26:47 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=159474 Star Citizen is a behemoth at this point. Not only is it the most successfully crowd funded campaign ever, but it continues to blow even its own estimations out of the water. It's been over a year since the space-sim's original Kickstarter campaign and it's just earned another $1 million in the last week. Announcing …

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Star Citizen is a behemoth at this point. Not only is it the most successfully crowd funded campaign ever, but it continues to blow even its own estimations out of the water. It's been over a year since the space-sim's original Kickstarter campaign and it's just earned another $1 million in the last week.

Announcing this threshold breach on the official Roberts Space Industries website, founder Chris Roberts said that this made October the biggest month of funding the game has ever had – which with a game like this, you know is a big deal.

What's perhaps more impressive about the developer though, is that despite continuing to add features, items, ships and areas to the game, RSI is still sticking pretty closely to its initially announced release date. Likewise, it's moving very steadily towards an open Alpha in 2014. Compare this to other games that have gone over budget, like Double Fine's Broken Age, and you can see that over-funding was seriously detrimental to having the games release on time, even if they do end up bigger in scope than was originally planned.

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However, Star Citizen too is growing, with this extra $1 million going towards an enhanced Alpha phase:

“We will use additional funding to build a wider alpha test than we had originally intended for the first phase of Star Citizen’s launch,” said Roberts. “The initial plan was to first launch servers in North America and then expand to areas such as Europe and Australia to decrease latency in these areas, perfecting the game as we improve the experience around the world. This funding will allow us to invest in a wider infrastructure for our early testing, spinning up remote servers earlier. Hitting this goal will also allow us to increase the number of remaining alpha slots. Extra alpha slots not only means more Star Citizens will travel the ‘verse at launch, but that we will receive more feedback and more stress testing. This in turn will allow us to better balance and enhance the Star Citizen experience!”

But it isn't stopping there. Already Roberts is already taking about the $27 million stretch goal, which considering the game has over a year to go until its official release, seems like it will easily be surpassed. This one will offer a “Banu Merchantman,” a specialised trading vessel, but it will be an alien craft, so will be quite different to what has been seen so far from the Earth based ship manufacturers.

Roberts signed off in his address with the following: “Thank you for your continued support of and trust in project. You have empowered the team to make Star Citizen something truly special… the Best Damn Space Sim Ever!”

KitGuru Says: Every time I see Star Citizen I get more impressed – I'm just not sure I like the idea of some ships costing $70 + of real money.

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Star Citizen’s next stretch goal is incredible facial capture https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizens-next-stretch-goal-is-incredible-facial-capture/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizens-next-stretch-goal-is-incredible-facial-capture/#comments Fri, 27 Sep 2013 09:33:47 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=154734 Star Citizen just gets more and more exciting. A new trailer recently released during an AMD conference drew the attention away from even a new generation of GPUs and it looks likely to happen again. Having hit $20 million since its original campaign (which only ‘required' $500,000 for completion) project lead Chris Roberts has announced …

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Star Citizen just gets more and more exciting. A new trailer recently released during an AMD conference drew the attention away from even a new generation of GPUs and it looks likely to happen again. Having hit $20 million since its original campaign (which only ‘required' $500,000 for completion) project lead Chris Roberts has announced a new feature for the game and a new stretch goal which could give Star Citizen the most realistic looking faces in gaming.

“Thanks to the support of this incredible community, Star Citizen embodies everything I dreamed of doing with the [Wing Commander] series, and opens up the potential for so much more,” begins the Roberts' announcement. He goes on to describe the $20 million, suggesting that now first person combat would be possible on not just ship board actions, but on certain lawless planets as well.

“Join an ongoing battle on a contested world, launch an attack on a pirate base, come to the rescue of distant colonists and fend off Vanduul raiders … the possibilities are endless,” he said.

There was a bit of thought recently, that this might be the last stretch goal offered by Roberts Space Industries, thereby ending funding and refocusing on all current features instead of adding more. However, when asked about its feelings on the matter, the community voted by an overwhelming margin, to keep the counter going and keep adding features, so that's what's going to happen.

If $22 million is reached, Star Citizen will get facial capture technology from Infinite Realities, which might sound like a lot of money for a minor improvement, but just look at what these guys are capable of (warning, some highly realistic, digitally captured nudity):

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBZxDMfL44Q']

See how real that looks? You've seen similar stuff to this before I'm sure, since Infinite Realties had a big part in the 3D body and facial scanning behind some of the best looking cinematics of the past few years: Dead Island, Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Mass Effect 3. The idea is for Star Citizen to leverage this same technology for faces in the game, delivering a wide variety, of near reality looking people. There is also the hinted possibility that certain fans of the game will be able to win a chance to become in-game characters themselves.

Of course with several Kickstarter projects failing or being delayed for long periods, there is a slight worry that Star Citizen will suffer from “feature creep,” where too many things are trying to go into one game in too short a time span. Even with extra money, is it doable? Mr Robert's has addressed this, saying his team wouldn't put forward anything that they weren't capable of doing within the postulated year and a bit it needs to get the game ready for release.

His team carefully considers each goal before announcing them and all of them fall in to one of two categories:

“The first are goals that involve features we already have planned or have implemented, but we couldn’t create content because of budgetary constraints. The first person combat on select planets is a great example of this type of goal. We already have FPS combat as part of the game in ship boarding, and we already have most of this already functional thanks to CryEngine, as we essentially have Crysis3 functionality out of the box,” he said. “But creating all the environments and assets to fill them is a huge task, so we were planning on not doing any planetside combat initially, simply because of its cost, with the idea that we would slowly roll it out once the game is live. But with the additional funds we can now afford to create some of this content earlier rather than later.”

The second type, is like the facial capture technology, where applying it would actually save time, because models don't need to be created from scratch within the engine – they can just be scanned in and applied. It also makes it easier to add more facial types in the future to remove double ups.

Star Citizen is currently set for a end of 2013 closed alpha and a final release, sometime in the close of 2014.

KitGuru Says: Star Citizen is shaping up to be a truly stunning game. I don't want to get my hopes up too much and I won't be kicking in anything myself – I'm still waiting on 3-4 things I kicked into, so I'll wait for those to arrive first – but this is looking like the game of many people's dreams. 

[Thanks Eurogamer]

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Star Citizen ships will give you gunner seats https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizen-ships-will-give-you-gunner-seats/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizen-ships-will-give-you-gunner-seats/#respond Mon, 01 Jul 2013 07:19:26 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=140470 That title might sound like an odd part to highlight of the ten minute video of Star Citizen's live stream below, but it's my favourite detail of the whole thing. Why? Because it means when you're under attack, you'll need to physically get out of your co-pilot seat and move to the gunnery position. That's …

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That title might sound like an odd part to highlight of the ten minute video of Star Citizen's live stream below, but it's my favourite detail of the whole thing. Why? Because it means when you're under attack, you'll need to physically get out of your co-pilot seat and move to the gunnery position. That's badass.

The reason this is possible with the ship in the video, is because it's a pretty big one, known as the Constellation. It's nothing like the giant in the background, but there's space for you and your pals to run around in – and there's things to look at and use while you do said running too. Not only are there functional turret chairs, which slide up and down a vertical shaft when deployed, but there's a working airlock system for entering the ship as well.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76UF2gnLKho']

Other dynamic parts of the ship design include flaps and engine thrusters that will move to position when required and make the ship look almost organic compared to the comparably static offerings in other space sims.

Take much of what you see however, with a pinch of salt, as the ship hasn't been lit properly yet, the animations are all standardised to get them working in time for the video. Lead designer, Chris Roberts, also pointed out that none of his movements will be in the game either, as for the purpose of the video, he was using the editor's flying camera.

KitGuru Says: As PCGamesN points out, the chairs even swivel on this thing. It's completely unnecessary in a conventional sense, but it looks great. This is going to be a game worth keeping an eye on. 

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Star Citizen is most crowd funded project ever https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizen-is-most-crowd-funded-project-ever/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/star-citizen-is-most-crowd-funded-project-ever/#respond Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:32:50 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=139876 Star Citizen, the space faring sim set to come out out Cloud Industries sometime in the latter half of 2014, has passed the Pebble Watch for smartphones, making it the most funded project since the concept of crowd funding hit the internet. Of course Star Citizen didn't do it in a few weeks like the …

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Star Citizen, the space faring sim set to come out out Cloud Industries sometime in the latter half of 2014, has passed the Pebble Watch for smartphones, making it the most funded project since the concept of crowd funding hit the internet.

Of course Star Citizen didn't do it in a few weeks like the Pebble product, it's done it over several months. It initially raised around $2 million during the Kickstarter campaign but went on to raise a further $8.5 million through the official website which has all the usual stretch goals and funding targets that you'll find in the average campaign.

It's raised the last million and a half in just under two months as well, with us reporting on 1st May about it passing the $9 million mark.

Headed by space sim veteran – and creator of games like Wing Commander and Freelancer – Chris Roberts, Star Citizen has managed to get nearly 200,000 people to pledge. The count at the time of writing is 194,112 “space sim fans.”

lensflarehooo
Gotta love them lens flares. 

To commemorate this occasion, a post has appeared on the RobertsSpaceIndustries site, stating the company's excitement and thanks.

“Your support isn’t just making Star Citizen a reality, it’s changing the face of game development,” it begins. “In fact, you pushed the project over an important milestone: over the weekend Star Citizen backers officially passed the $10,266,844 pledged to Pebble Watch, making Star Citizen the number one crowd funded project of all time. That’s a record you should be proud of. But we’re just getting started!”

It then goes on to clarify some of the details in the recent video which showed the above space shuttle. It explains that the ship was debuted in-engine with game-spec textures and models. This is no “high-poly fake created for cutscenes and good PR. What you’re seeing is what you’ll play.”

KitGuru Says: As excited as I am for this game, I'm done backing projects that over a year away. I just can't be bothered to wait. I forget they even exist before it's released. I'd rather be reminded close to launch and get into it then… like the good old days.

[Thanks Eurogamer]

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Star Citizen dev. opens new studio in Santa Monica https://www.kitguru.net/channel/jon-martindale/star-citizen-dev-opens-new-studio-in-santa-monica/ https://www.kitguru.net/channel/jon-martindale/star-citizen-dev-opens-new-studio-in-santa-monica/#respond Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:22:39 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=132938 The man behind one of Kickstarter – and crowdfunding in general's – biggest success stories, Chris Roberts' Star Citizen, has announced he's opening a new development studio in Santa Monica to focus on publishing and development of the in-game elements. He also said the new team would be working on “high end creative elements,” which …

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The man behind one of Kickstarter – and crowdfunding in general's – biggest success stories, Chris Roberts' Star Citizen, has announced he's opening a new development studio in Santa Monica to focus on publishing and development of the in-game elements.

He also said the new team would be working on “high end creative elements,” which combined with the other two sounds like there isn't much they aren't doing. ““Each studio is working on key features of the game. In Santa Monica we’re working on some of the high-end creative elements, the structuring of our game engine and publishing. Other studios are working on technology, game design and production, customer support and web development.”

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“We couldn’t be more pleased with hanging our shingle up in Santa Monica. It’s an incredibly creative community here already with a lot of game development and art resources all around us. We’re reaching out to fill positions for the new office already.”

Despite making over $2 million in its Kickstarter campaign, Star Citizen made a big splash with the gaming community by drawing in a further $6.5 million from further funding efforts on the official website. On top of that, early impressions of the graphics fidelity in the game have been jaw droppingly impressive.

KitGuru Says: Shame the game isn't looking likely to be ready until the end of  2014.

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PCs already more powerful than Xbox 720, PS4 says developer https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/pcs-already-more-powerful-than-xbox-720-ps4-says-developer/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/pcs-already-more-powerful-than-xbox-720-ps4-says-developer/#comments Mon, 05 Nov 2012 12:16:13 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=114469 Despite many developers moving away from the PC platform in the past few years due to claims of high piracy rates cutting into profits, some believe it's the only place for their games. Star Citizen developer Chris Roberts, has said that his game will be a PC exclusive, because contemporary machines are already more powerful …

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Despite many developers moving away from the PC platform in the past few years due to claims of high piracy rates cutting into profits, some believe it's the only place for their games. Star Citizen developer Chris Roberts, has said that his game will be a PC exclusive, because contemporary machines are already more powerful than what the next-generation consoles will be capable of.

“What I was showing [in the teaser video] you can’t do on a current generation console,” Roberts said while speaking with ArsTechnica. “You can do most of it on a next generation console, but I can promise you a top-end PC now is already more powerful than what a next generation console is going to be.”

He explained it in simple hardware availability terms – memory capacity being one of the biggest problems. If you're looking at a current gen machine, there's only around 512MB to work with. PCs he said, you know you can set a minimum requirement at 4GB and not worry about people not having enough. While next-gen machines will likely bump things up to at least a couple of gigabytes, the price of memory now means that it will only be a couple of years before everyone is sporting 20+ GBs.

Star Citizen
Its pretty, but is it next gen beating pretty?

“I’m looking at the high-end [hardware] today being the ‘Normal Gamer' level in two years time,” he said. “It'll be kind of like Wing Commander used to be. If you had the extra memory, if you had the 386, it was a better experience, but you could still play it on a 286.”

Ultimately, Roberts said that he hoped Star Citizen would help show people it was still worth it to have a high end machine. While console ports were fine, they aren't what the PC is designed for.

Along with its Kickstarter campaign – that has 14 days left – so far Robert's company has managed to generate over $2.7 million in funds on the official site. Star Citizen is set for release sometime in late 2014.

KitGuru Says: Nowadays CryEngine games are commonly used as benchmarks for what a high end system can do – though they're certainly more understanding of contemporary hardware than the first Crysis was. Do you think we'll be using Star Citizen for the same, in a couple of years time?

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