Vision For Star Citizen Remains Unchanged – Dev Response Special
Welcome to a Star Citizen Dev Response Special… I’ve gone through all of the recent spectrum / forum responses from CIGs devs and compiled relevant ones here, answering various development questions.
Do developers actually read/respond to anything said here anymore?
YogiKlatt (Star Citizen’s Principal Vehicle Programmer) Responded – There is a dev tracker on the RSI pages where you can see when devs post something and this is usually quite active. In general though we devs are not required to reply here and the volume of questions would be too high to handle anyway. We also avoid spending time replying to things which have already be answered in the past either in Spectrum or as part of Jared’s videos.
The Original Poster talks about YogiKlatt replying to a user saying that often things change in development and just because a dev has said something doesn’t mean they are the ultimate authority, they are typically a snapshot or plan of development at the time be this dev blogs or posts. The Original poster wanted clarification.
YogiKlatt Responded Directly to this – everything that any developer says here (except for rare cases where execs like CR make an appearance) should be regarded as it is … a developer talking about their work. We only talk from within our small dev boxes … if you ask me what is CIG’s stance now you are practically pulling me across all other boxes we have.
I cannot ever speak for other departments or CIG in general. I only speak as a developer in my own box.
Now specifically for the stuff I am involved in (space combat, FM, etc.) I will remain on what I said before but that does not mean that the overall vision for the game has changed. We are still making the same game, we still want the same feeling in it. The exact details how to get there though constantly change (again that is why we have disclaimers) but that is just the normal engineering process.
Master Modes Squadron Battle is way overdue – You’ve already got players flying as teams in free flight. We need squadron battles asap (battle royale can die where the sun doesn’t shine imo).
TheDJButin (Lead Gameplay Programmer for AC at CIG) Responded – Master Modes: Squadron Battle will feature in 3.22 with an increased selection of ships (+ Multicrew!)
AC Free Flight suggestion – There is a party system in free flight, but there are no markers.
Can this be added? Would help for training and realistic to the PU.
TheDJButin CIG – We’re working on improving player markers in AC right now, I’ll see if we can squeeze this into that. For other modes we likely wont show Party Markers as this is a separate grouping system that AC does not necessarily care about because party members can be here there and everywhere (PU, Frontend, your team, the enemy team); however, we do want to show your Squad members and possibly your team members in team modes. But for Free Flight i think showing party markers would make sense.
CIG, please add another Team Tank Battle period to AC testing schedule
TheDJButin CIG – We’ll be releasing an updated schedule as we get closer to 3.22’s release. You’ll be seeing more tanks do not worry.
Why can’t we choose a map in AC?
TheDJButin – With the AC3.20 update we experimented allowing map selection in Online play during Evocati/early PTU, we learnt the current matchmaker takes the selection as more of a “preference” which it only takes into consideration if there are _zero_ matches active, the matchmaker will always try to put you into a match that requires more players. Perhaps when we update our matchmaker we’ll explore this option again. But good news, like @UdonMan mentioned Custom Lobbies (aka Private Lobbies) will come with the option to select map which will help in instances like yours!
Should note that Map Selection is enabled for Offline play, so if you want to go check out or practice on a specific map that’s your best bet! (if you dont mind playing solo!)
Follow up suggestion – A map vote at the end of each match that excludes the map just played would Be a great feature to change up the maps.
Which received the response – For 3.21 we added a change to Match Cycling which makes it very rare for you to match into the same map as you were just in. The _only_ case that will happen now is if theres another match active in that map that requires more players, otherwise it’ll find you a new map
And yes we’d love a map vote too! Just blocked until we get the new matchmaker.
Question about the new recoil system
Why does the laser rifle/mg have recoil?
Its not like it shoots anything with (significant) mass, and its not a plasma weapon (we have plasma weapons, they’re a separate category.). so…. Why?
Zpreece (Ground Combat System Designer at CIG) Responded – There is an in-world lore reason and response I can give you but
Guns without recoil are not fun.
These was another comment on that thread responding the zpreece:
Quake Lightning gun and Railgun would like to have a word.
No recoil can easily be balanced by range and damage.
Blanket saying “no recoil isn’t fun” is actually pretty concerning, because it means all your weapon designs are going to follow the same strategy.
That seems incredibly limiting in a futuristic environment.
And zpreece responded again – Quake is an arena shooter, not a grounded FPS game.
The skill in quake is tracking a high movement target as well as weapons have vastly different power levels because of how they are aqquired.
Ignoring all the other contexts to what make these weapons work in their respective games is disingenuous, fidelity has gone a lot further since quake and to have a weapon stationary whilst firing makes it look broken and uninteresting
This is an apple and oranges comparison
There was a thread going over the details of Rivers and details of Hjulstrom Curves (the relationship of river velocity vs rock particle size.
Realistic erosion and depositional features. And how rivers can be taken to the next level.
Figwig (from the Planet Tech Team at CIG) Responded – Thank you for the detailed write up, this is awesome. I’m on the Planet Tech Team and I did the river system you see in Star Citizen. We’re currently planning some planet upgrades for the next year or so, and I think we should be able to use these concepts once we’re done!
You’re absolutely right that we don’t do anything right with our rock particle size in relation to rivers – they’re scattered fairly evenly at all positions. This is due to some of our scattering logic just not being set up to deal with geology very well – we actually treat vegetation and geology as one in the same…. Very bad! The new system we’re working on entirely separates geology and vegetation – and we’ll be mapping out bedrock aggregate size according to erosion parameters. This will allow us to make far more specific decisions when it comes to which rocks go where. You can bet I’ll be referring back to this post when adapting the river spawning code to work with the new spawning system!