'Star Citizen' Devs Switch To Lumberyard Game Engine, Add 'Star Marine' First-Person Shooter Module

[heirdeux]

The new update also includes Pirate Swarm, where you and your friends must fight waves of computer-controlled pirates for as long as possible.

'Star Citizen' Devs Switch To Lumberyard Game Engine, Add 'Star Marine' First-Person Shooter Module : Read more

 

[Jeff Fx]

With Crytek in trouble, moving to an engine that won't require their support seems like a really smart move.

I see that Lumberyard supports VR. I'll have to check it out.

 

[clonazepam]

Looking forward to playing the release version in 2021! ;-)

 

[problematiq]

Looking forward to playing the release version in 2021! ;-)

You mean Beta release?

 

[Honis]

"...a new mode called “Pirate Swarm.” "

When was this added? I've been playing what's being described for quiet some time... Did they add new features to swarm and gave it a new name?

 

[John_561]

This game is so screwed. I heard they were actively trying to sell it to other companies from a dev pal in Austin as the donations are shrinking up. This is gonna really hurt crowdfunding big games.

 

[unwanted]

They are still essentially using their own StarEngine (their modified CryEngine) and just using Lumberyard for it's online features.

An exert from this post by CR https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/364217/lumberyard-for-those-interested

"Lumberyard and StarEngine are both forks from exactly the SAME build of CryEngine. We stopped taking new builds from Crytek towards the end of 2015. So did Amazon. Because of this the core of the engine that we use is the same one that Amazon use and the switch was painless (I think it took us a day or so of two engineers on the engine team). What runs Star Citizen and Squadron 42 is our heavily modified version of the engine which we have dubbed StarEngine, just now our foundation is Lumberyard not CryEngine. None of our work was thrown away or modified. We switched the like for like parts of the engine from CryEngine to Lumberyard. All of our bespoke work from 64 bit precision, new rendering and planet tech, Item / Entity 2.0, Local Physics Grids, Zone System, Object Containers and so on were unaffected and remain unique to Star Citizen."

So it took 2 guys a day to move the game over to it and all the stuff they spent years modifying on CryEngine is still there and being used, it's just now they have these additional online features from Amazon that they don't have to spend time and money on to develop themselves.

So hardly a problem, all it's done is speed things up.

 

[rantoc]

I still find it fun that peeps keeps on crying about a future release date, sure most of us want the game today but i rather wait and let the dev's get time at it and do it properly than rush it out the door.

By the looks of all vids/screenshots/techdemos that's simply amazing when a PC is fully unleashed rather than just run some poor un-optimized piece of garbage software...

 

[Malibutomi]

John_561
Ditch your pal then as he is whispering stupid thing to you.
2014 - 33million
2015 - 36 million
2016 - 36 million

 

[NightLight]

3 years, still a tech demo, and a crappy buggy one at that.

 

[Malibutomi]

3 years, still a tech demo, and a crappy buggy one at that.

Please make a comparison with another MMOs you played in alpha at half time of development. You don't know how those looked in alpha, so why spewing big words without anything to back them.

 

[John_561]

John_561
Ditch your pal then as he is whispering stupid thing to you.
2014 - 33million
2015 - 36 million
2016 - 36 million

Well, she worked for them, ergo she was inside, but it was too much of a pressure cooker for her and left. There's a LOT more to what she's told me but I'm not going to feed the rumor mill other than to say rip SC if they don't pawn it off on some other company with deep pockets. They have people on the payroll that come into forums like this to both troll and apologize/explain. They're like politicians in that respect. Their legal tactics are slimey af, too. Big software projects like this one shouldn't be crowdfunded. It's the gaming community that takes the brunt of it when they fail, as this one probably will. But, someone may buy it. But if someone does, they can also change the TOS to make it so everyone who pledged has to buy it again. That's actually in the TOS. Most likely they'd charge again at discount to avoid alienating the community.

 

[Malibutomi]

John_561
Ditch your pal then as he is whispering stupid thing to you.
2014 - 33million
2015 - 36 million
2016 - 36 million

Well, she worked for them, ergo she was inside, but it was too much of a pressure cooker for her and left. There's a LOT more to what she's told me but I'm not going to feed the rumor mill other than to say rip SC if they don't pawn it off on some other company with deep pockets. They have people on the payroll that come into forums like this to both troll and apologize/explain. They're like politicians in that respect. Their legal tactics are slimey af, too. Big software projects like this one shouldn't be crowdfunded. It's the gaming community that takes the brunt of it when they fail, as this one probably will. But, someone may buy it. But if someone does, they can also change the TOS to make it so everyone who pledged has to buy it again. That's actually in the TOS. Most likely they'd charge again at discount to avoid alienating the community.

Well, with all respect, i'd rather believe them (especially as the journalists like kotaku - who wrote in depth articles about the project - could not find anything big problem), than the rumors that a random commenters may or may not real "friend" said.
Also if your friend (if she exists at all) wasn't a top dog at the company then with all respect she most probably doesn't know jack shit about the companies financial status, just like at any other company the lower level (or even mid)workers don't know about it.
Also the sole thing that they are constantly hiring, shows they don't have much trouble with money.

 

[John_561]

Right. Well, the dev community in Austin is pretty small, as compared to other businesses. And they're constantly hiring because people are constantly leaving, LIKE she did. lmao. I'm not gonna feed trolls here. And no other gaming community EVER ANYWHERE, except maybe LoL's trolls on forums as much as people who are invested in SC do. Their community has a hella bad rep with other gamers, journalists etc because they knee-jerk attack everyone. But how many of those people are supporters and how many are paid to do that is unknown by me. And as far as the financials there is such a thing as higher-ups talking to and confiding in lower ups. Especially if the lower is female, and attractive, as is my friend. XD But hey, hopefully it works out, right? Morale is low there, at least in the Austin studio, again part of why she left. And their exclusivity contract is/was rough. They need to outlaw that stuff, imho. One thing is for sure, if it tanks, Roberts might get away with a lot of bread, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a class action lawsuit....And he would NEVER have cred as far as a big project again, anywhere, ever, except maybe as a producer (under a pseudonym) of android apps. Their community does need to change its image as far as how they respond to critics and people on forums. They act like psychos.

 

[Malibutomi]

Right. Well, the dev community in Austin is pretty small, as compared to other businesses. And they're constantly hiring because people are constantly leaving, LIKE she did. lmao. I'm not gonna feed trolls here. And no other gaming community EVER ANYWHERE, except maybe LoL's trolls on forums as much as people who are invested in SC do. Their community has a hella bad rep with other gamers, journalists etc because they knee-jerk attack everyone. But how many of those people are supporters and how many are paid to do that is unknown by me. And as far as the financials there is such a thing as higher-ups talking to and confiding in lower ups. Especially if the lower is female, and attractive, as is my friend. XD But hey, hopefully it works out, right? Morale is low there, at least in the Austin studio, again part of why she left. And their exclusivity contract is/was rough. They need to outlaw that stuff, imho. One thing is for sure, if it tanks, Roberts might get away with a lot of bread, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a class action lawsuit....And he would NEVER have cred as far as a big project again, anywhere, ever, except maybe as a producer (under a pseudonym) of android apps. Their community does need to change its image as far as how they respond to critics and people on forums. They act like psychos.

Ok, that's your saying, i take that, and respect it,still its just hot air nothing more, and nothing beliavable.

 

[John_561]

Well dude, I'm guessing you can check me out on forums here via my posts and helping others as far as what kind of person I am. But my opinion is based on my friend's experiences - as far as "hot air" goes. GL! SC's pledgers are gonna have to straighten the fuck up, though...Its fanboys DO come off as delusional psychos. As Duke Leto said: "This all men know." Their community members need to clean up their act on forums and elsewhere. Hell, EVE is a shark-fest but the community is tight af...They treat each other, noobs, and the press with respect. In SC only the tiniest portion of the community seems to do that...In the end analysis it's only a space sim. There aren't many so it had a core audience of supporters right off the bat (along with the WC crowd). But with "No Man's Sky" being one of the biggest shams in the history of gaming, people are going to be pretty gun-shy to invest money in another one from here on out until the genre proves itself again. SC, if it tanks, is going to further that to a huge degree, and not ONLY that but crowdfunding in general, as well as indie games. It's gonna ripple through ALL of gaming and crowdfunding, there will be feature-length documentaries made on the failure/scam, but only IF it tanks, but bro, it ain't looking good from where I'm sitting. But no pressure RSI! lmao

 

[coolitic]

Actually Lumberyard is just mostly CryEngine with amazons new networking tech, removal of some features, and poorly documented coding (it IS still in beta). Crytek still makes a profit out of Lumberyard and I imagine Lumberyard will still be kept up to date with changes to CryEngine.

 

[StrepRadna]

A small correction: 2.6 added only a couple of ship designs; many are still in development. According to the project plan ( available on Roberts space industries.com), about 85% of the designs will be playable by the end of 2017. But the are a lot of models already in play.

 

[Geef]

From what I hear this is just Vaporware at this point so we can always hope that switching engines will make this game finally happen...

 

[John_561]

I saw the downvotes, my first ever on Tom's. Keep it classy, Star Citizen fanschmucks! Now I'm gonna happy dance when this tanks in YOUR honor. XD I don't get joy when something like that happens. It's a lose - lose for someone like me who has played in that genre most of my life. I played and loved Privateer, but not any of the WC's. But when feature bloat started creeping in with all those stretch goals and fancy eyecandy commercials to get people to invest more my spidey sense started to tingle. Then a pal picked up a gig there and my first thought was "Free stuff!" - but she was treated pretty badly. If it does come out without being sold to a big studio then I will be very surprised, but I don't think they're going to pull it off by themselves from what I know. Don't feed this game anymore money, if you were thinking of doing before it's theoretical release.

 

[photonboy]

Any more trolls who haven't spent time reading about the game development like to comment?

The game has ZERO chance of failing. It's going to be awesome and will CONTINUE to be worked on for years to come.

About 300 people currently working on the game.

 

[John_561]

Then why won't they let outside reviewers come in to see what state the game is in and then report on it? I mean with 150 million plus in pure donations it would seem like the fanbase itself would want outside agencies like Tom's, PC Gamer, basically everyone else in the industry to come in, see what was actually going on, then report on it. OH, they HAVE asked to see it and been turned down. I just looked this stuff up, btw. Chapter one of Squadron 42 is THREE YEARS LATE as of this month (January 2017). That's just chapter ONE. Not the whole game. Not the persistent universe. You can get 300 people to work on a piece of coal...That ain't gonna turn it into a diamond. They really should let people in to see what's going on, though. They've missed every stated deadline for actual release repeatedly, but not before they change their TOS to keep people from getting refunds because they miss their stated RD's. If it's cool I'll buy it. Until then I suggest that everyone not feed this bloated beast any more money. Try it when it's free and make up your mind yourself. They have more than enough money, and they've had MORE than enough time. DON'T BUY THIS UNTIL IT IS RELEASED!!! Which, if they don't sell it, will be several more New Years from now, if at all is my bet. XD