Honestly all playing Starfield did was want to make me turn it off and go play Star Citizen, i wanted to get in to it, i really did, i tried, but i put it down one day and just never went back to it, i've been playing SC instead.
******Official Star Citizen / Squadron 42 Thread******
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Honestly all playing Starfield did was want to make me turn it off and go play Star Citizen, i wanted to get in to it, i really did, i tried, but i put it down one day and just never went back to it, i've been playing SC instead.
TBH never understood why they were even compared in the first place. It's like gamers latch on to something similar between two titles even if it's completely apples and oranges.
It does matter.
Typically an alpha isn't meant to go on for more than 6-8 weeks or a few months to iron out basic bugs, and is typically in house testing..
The last time I worked on a large title, we had an 8 week alpha with private access for invitees, then we went to an open beta and release within 12 months.
If you're still in the alpha stage after 11 years, the whole process has completely broken and no longer makes any sense and is beyond repair, at which point you can give it whatever name you like - it no longer matters.
I don't really believe anything they say because of their previous track record.
You can make up any sexy idea - but implementing it in practice, at scale in a way which solves the original problem it set out to solve, is a different matter entirely - especially when applied at scale in a live environment.
Yep. If SQ42 delivers then money well spent I say. It looks so much better than Starfield it's unreal. But I will try and keep my expectations low.
Just get SQ42 done and move most the dev team on the sequel I say. They can still have a small team working on SC to keep you guys happy and keep those ship sales up
Yep indeed, agree and as I've barely touched SC I dont feel any burnout or boredom with it all so will go into SQ42 fresh and ready.
I did love Starfield (though admit I'm a Fallout fanboy) so wasnt really ever going to dislike it as its essentially Fallout in Space but I dont think it will have the longevity for me that the Fallout games have. There's just something special for me with mix of old vintage stuff mixed with silly future tech so I still play them all to this day and havent touched Starfield since I finished it.
It also goes from looking lovely to fugly as hell in the flick of your mouse like no other game I've ever seen and it also reminds me why 30 fps can go do one on my not exactly weak PC because it runs like a 1 legged spider in treacle.
Caporegime
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LOL
Think you are confusing alpha with beta tbh. Alpha is the bug riddled mess that can last ages, beta is nearing release when you have a viable product that just needs tweaked and triple checked.
Either way they are late, it’s annoying but it is what it is at this point but I don’t think it’s insane when you consider the next Bethesda game is at least 4-5 years away, GTA 6.. other huge titles, they all take an age.
Yes there are. Can see this on various website showing the definition of what alpha is.
Unfinished, not feature complete, may contain bugs, testing. Literally as Star Citizen is right now.
What there isn't as far as I can see, is a strict defintion on how long a piece of software can remain in alpha as you seem to be implying.
The fact it's been in alpha this long is irrelevent to the definition of it stil being in alpha. It's been like this for so long as it's still in development, still full of bugs and still lacks a bunch of features. Absolutely fine to be annoyed that the game is taking so long to progress, but it's the nature of the beast here. It's a crowdfunded game, they needed to open up access to the backers to meet their end of the bargain and keep the money flowing in. I think bashing that as an approach is fair enough, it's undoubtably got it's downsides. But I'd say it also has it's upsides, what other games have the scope that SC is attempting? Then go compare to all the triple A titles being released and including all the same sort of bugs you see in SC and other pre-release games because they've either rushed it out to hit a deadline they're not ready for, or been forced to by a publisher. CIG have the luxury of being in control of their own destiny here, as much as this could bite themselves in the ass if they don't ever deliver on it.
The original game didn't have this scope, its was meant to be more like Starfield is now, the trailer video for that was a connie (RSI Constellation ship) landing at Area 18, it was a cinematic cut scene.
All of that game was scrapped, development on the game as it is now didn't start until about 2016, we got the first, very limited version of it in 2017, 3.0 and iterated on since then, adding the planets, space station, gas clouds ecte... the last planet to be added was Crusader, 2021 i think it was.
Its been neglected somewhat since then, all the rescores are on SQ42.
The thing about developing a game.
First you need to make the engine do what you want it to, in CIG's case that was basically building their own engine while simultaneously making what you do have work because they are building it in a live environment.
Then you build the tools that you need, again in CIG's case that meant inventing a lot of their own. Because these tools don't exist.
Then you build an asset library.
Then you make the game environment (the stage we are at now)
Then you create the mission loops with in that environment (some place holder mission loops are in)
Then you create game mechanics, like mining ecte... (quite a lot of that is in)
Then you bug fix it all (no point in bug fixing while building the game because you fix one thing, add another thing and that breaks the thing you fixed, Star Citizens know this all too well from experience)
And finally you polish it (where SQ42 is at now)
Look, the technology CIG have achieved here is phenomenal, yes its quite often broken, and it doesn't have a lot of mission loops, but at least now you understand why, it will get there and when it does it'll be an awesome game.
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Underboss
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sorry if this has been poosted
I don't think it has thank you
Edit no its just the same SQ42 thing, i though someone might pick it up and talk about it...
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Point 1 in discussion.
What you are describing isn't alpha at all though, that would be beta. So I'm just going to stop right there on reply cause something is getting lost in translation to you but that is not alpha is software development. This is coming from without with AutoDesk for two decades with their software Devs. We do exactly what you describe at beta, and with that it's around 3-6 months depending on software in question.
Point 2 in discussion.
You can not believe anything you like but the principles have already been shown and demonstrated with it working at CitCon, yes at smaller scale but that was both a) make the principle easy to understand to backers and b) I know for fact they have already tried it with 200 simulated players internally.
Permabanned
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Yeah during the live stream, SaltEMike had one of the lead developers, Richard Tyrer in his chat answering questions, as he is like the top dog below only Chris Roberts, his info was pretty reliable. Said they already have tested it at scale, but it needs refining before it can be released. He also confirmed that most of the team have now all moved over to Star Citizen, with only a handful of developers/artists etc staying with SQ42 to polish and bug fix before release. I would bet money that we will get a release date within 6 months for SQ42. What was shown looked extremely good and already pretty well polished, certainly much better than most AAA games that release normally.
Soldato
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Starfield sufferers, like almost all action RPGs, from dumb down, stupid, statistic based mechanics, while Chris is trying to push thing organically. Cyberpunk, Fallout (including the much loved NV), The Witcher, etc., all fall within the same template of simple, "looter shooter" habits and leveling, which translate into a soulless gameplay that's falls flat if you're not following the path design by the studio...Yep. If SQ42 delivers then money well spent I say. It looks so much better than Starfield it's unreal. But I will try and keep my expectations low.
Just get SQ42 done and move most the dev team on the sequel I say. They can still have a small team working on SC to keep you guys happy and keep those ship sales up
Soldato
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A joke, essentially. It needed at least 3-4 more to have it in a decent place.
Underboss
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is this looking like a 2024 release ?
Unofficially yes, late 2024.
Not really, developers have muddied the waters somewhat in recent years - as almost everything is early access or live service, which hasn't helped with peoples understanding of game development.
Generally, an Alpha shouldn't really last more than a few weeks or couple of months absolute maximum, ideally in software development you're looking at 1-2 week cycles to iron out any serious problems at the alpha stage. If you get stuck in the Alpha stage for a long time - then the whole thing has gone terribly wrong and you need to go back to prototype/pre-alpha and iron out fundamental issues.
When I worked on both multi-billion dollar games (in infrastructure) our alpha tests were 6 weeks each, at that point the games were playable but had lots of bugs and we're basically relying on trusted players to report them and give feedback via private channels. After a 3-4 month break (from memory) to iterate, we go to open beta (more maps, more characters, more guns, better textures, much closer to final) and then to final release.
The state you're describing as "a riddled mess that can last ages" is generally, the prototype stage, or it might be pre-alpha, in that stage the game typically won't even have textures almost everything will be a placeholder, and the "look" of the game won't exist, as most of the work up until that point would be on game mechanics, netcode, etc.
If it's an agile project though with an as of yet undefined scope and requirements, how can you narrow it down to a set time? Especially considering one of the fundamental principles of it is change is inevitable. Granted activities are timeboxed but you seem to be talking about the whole package here and not iterative development/modules.
Plus with prioritisation it could mean certain features stay in alpha because resource may be spent elsewhere on higher priorities.
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