The $2 Million Return of Chris Roberts : Star Citizen: A New Hope for Space Opera fans

Crowd sourcing has started for Chris Roberts Star Citizen, 30 days to make the $2 million needed to fund the game ... here's how things looked when I added  my $40 worth:currently the Roberts Space Industries site is  down from over use and a back up site is trying to cope ...!

This will be a day long remembered, it marks the possible  return of at least one of the brothers Roberts, to what the Roberts brothers , Chris and Erin did best : S-P-A-C-E O-P-E-R-A-AAAAAAAh! with once great acting talent and a space faring race of tiger muppets... (with whom perhaps Big Bird can seek refuge once he/she has been Romnied) ..starring in games so strong in the power of force feedback they shook the very retainers of a generation of  bedroom/cellar  PC gamers. T`was a generation to whom the word joystick truly meant something totally innocent....really..

This announcement is also seriously significant in that PC gaming is now so powerful that it binds millions of casual gamers together ready to transition from their feeble old hokey cokey console religion... no match for a PC Rig and good Soundblaster at your side kids.. to the full blown PC gaming experience. 

And that experience, part of that experience is the Space Opera Genre .. and so it has come to pass that Chris Roberts ( the movie directing inclined Roberts brah)  has chosen to return ... and in style... the web site asks you question, the answer to which any Douglas Adams fan or binary geek will have already. 

As Chris says he is the legendary creator of the Wing Commander , Privateer and later Freelancer series and has grown up designing and releasing these games .  And we have grown up playing them, have we not ? There were many reasons PC gaming tanked in the 90s:  the overblown development teams of 100s of coders ( Origin were not so much creating worlds as employing them), over ambitious design briefs and 5 years of previews of cgi game action that was never going to possible in game .. just trace the dev of Freelancer to see what I mean.

I cannot wait to get my hands on the new game, but I remember the experience of watching Freelancer devolve from epic space opera to mouse controlled dumbed down follow the coloured vapour trail sub par Elite clone...

Which is the reason my Force Feedback Pro Sidewinder whatever (the one that jumps into your hand and gives good shake) has gathered dust ...waiting ... waiting for HAT happy genres that are now returning : Space Opera with Star Citizen and Mech Sims with Hawken  

Now the question remains will we see the return of space tiger Muppets and which B grade actors is Chris taking pity on this time? 

The Wing Commander series itself is amongst the most revered of PC game series, get the cheapo versions on GOG. The actual physical boxed versions of the games are also amongst the most collectible and valuable PC games, particularly the Wing Commander Kilrathi Saga of which very few exist to day of the original limited run. 

It is great to see Chris Roberts back, let's hope that all those years of experience have led to a leaner meaner design and coding ethic and that video really is in game action as claimed and not some mock up ... 

Has Roberts Space Industries over estimated the numbers of space sim fans out there?  ...of which ... like the Riders of Rohan ...there were never many ... who knows may be they are legion like Fremen waiting for Muad`Dib... we will find out in 30 days : For all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.

Remember if Chris fails ...there is another hope ....Erin... ! And failing that it is only a matter of time before some bright soul starts Kick Starter-ing Freespace 3... Come on Volition! 

Hawken ( which I cannot talk about except to say WOW!) and Star Citizen (silly names are mandatory for PC game classics ... it helps when mis translating them for the none existent Japanese market) are just two signs PC gaming, traditional pre core flight sim joystick and full keyboard in hand are alive and kicking :the audience never went away, it took an evolution of free to play, the rise of independent gaming,crowd sourcing and improvements in Internet speed for game delivery, the removal of obstacles like physical retail stores who refused to stock pc games and the ongoing exodus of now grown up console gamers from their dying white and black plastic toasters to the illuminated Windows 8 Quad SLI hex cored rigs they have in front of them now ..but only currently use for facebook and twitter...heck even iJustine has one now that is evolution! 

Let the good times role....the way of gaming is changing and it is nice to see a hero like Chris Roberts returning.. 

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Chairman Roberts Unleashes the fabled HANGAR of Star Citizen : I take a look around with Cinemizer OLED head tracking

So this may be the first play of Star Citizen with head tracking : The Chairman famously supports the Rift and talks of in game changes that head tracking will bring. But right now the finest head tracker there is the Cinemizer OLED head tracker and as Oculus fans struggle with a new layer of lag in software mouse emulation in Tridef the Zeiss just works .. and  does it all in hardware, so it moves as fast as your gaming machine or engine, towards the end of this video you will even see me slow it down by half..  Here is my first test. 

 

So Chris/RSI check this out. And if I can reach past the Rift trolls I would like to talk to the game developers about full integration of head tracking and supporting 3D hmds like the Cinemizer OLED,  smd ST1080...and yeah I am a backer too... 

Colour me sort of excited, for whilst other crowd sourced projects 90s coding legends are breaking veteran gamer//backer hearts and biased press keyboards as they struggle to put up reasons  for what were inevitable issues ... our Chairman Roberts has pulled a blinder ...gone and done it , not only is Star Citizen a game I am looking forward as much as the third coming of Freespace ( once Saints Row tanks for Volition) but if you are a backer currently everything is shiny for this project. 

Of course it's the kind of thing that got Origin and many other studios canned .. a long delay and then a tech demo ..followed by a long delay... Still we now have a hangar with a couple of ships , if you wish to buy them Rise of Flight style , starting price $55.. 

don't be fooled whilst these are 5120 by 1600 res shots the game currently moves around 5 fps at this res strange for the Cryengine...though at 1080p it flies ..this is pre alpha code after all we have to wait for hi res optimisation

With RSI though I have hope of better things to come , for starters you get great updates every week almost it seems, trolls are present on the forums yes, even some prominent Rift trolls but overall it is  a great community to be part of.

 

when Star Citizen launches phones will have higher res than this so don't worry your future PC GPUs will cope ..just like they did with Freelancer!

Contrary to popular belief the space combat /opera scene never died , in fact it is one of the most active mod and total conversion scenes , with people working out of love not crowd source pressure over a decade of time that our Chris was courting Hollywood.. It has always been a cool scene , from total conversions of Freespace 2 , to getting the old Wing Commanders working on today's hardware ..and Privateer for that matter .. or hi res mods for the X Wing series... it's all out there and free ... just check out places like  Wing Commander CIC ..    

as you can see I am fairly relaxed about Chairman Robert's crowd sourced game

So then , yesterday the Hangar module launched , launched on time people  and I don't know if this was deliberate humour on RSI ( not the injury) part but the download is a paltry 16Mb whilst the patch is  3GB .. can you imagine the size of the patch for the real game?

just enough room for a friend to fit in there with you .. what to do you think will Star Citizen go the ways of Mass Effect?

Just like old times ...classic PC gaming ... the Patch is bigger than the download... this has to be some kind of in joke ..

The downside of us  backing all our 90s coding heroes  currently crowd sourcing games development, is that we know them, those of us born before the Internet that is... we know what happened with the great Tim Shafer at Lucasfilm, we know what happened at Origin (the " we create worlds" one) and great 90's space opera developing schism of the brothers Roberts..That's all game lore, but two things utterly destroyed the space combat genre in the 90s and these may also threaten the space opera genre's resurgence:  .. delay ...and funding ... 

For fans there are long  delays like that of Freelancer, which I believe holds the record for appearing in pre release form(s) at consecutive E3s .. without releasing ...although this may have been bested by the Oculus Rift ... I shall have to do some sums and check with JC ..go go Reddit trolls...

For publishers , the old money, as legendary as Tim and Chris are to us ( I used to ring up the publishers and tease them about losing Shafer) , it is just about profit so delays lead to funding issues :  So these artists , who need time, often get side lined for more popular and profitable gaming fare ..or canned along with their games.. Thus at a certain time in the evolution of gaming both point and click and space combat sims became irrelevant to publishers. That is why young Padawan you know Volition for  Saints Row and it's brand of insanity ..and we veteran gamers stare in shock at the coders of the finest space combat series ever Freespace ..now creating alien anal probe weapon controversy... 

Crowd sourced games thus face a double whammy of angered fans facing delays and the same fans also acting like the publishers used to in the good old days expecting delivery by deadlines...hence the chaos around Double Fine's announcement of delay and funding issues ..that our Tim has moved quickly to attempt to calm down...with a very long piece by a friendly journalist type .. Meanwhile our Chairman has deftly countered such issues ..for now..

But true artists do not bend to publisher or critical opinion, they rise above it and that's were Tim Shafer and Chris the "Chairman" Roberts shine ...  so rest easy the game Tim will release is the game(s) you have always wanted as an adventure game fan similarly RSI and Star Citizen is in rude health right now as can be seen by the release of the Hangar module which for me is exciting because we are one step closer to getting the combat module... Can you actually do anything ...not really (see the video above) but it is an excellent way for RSI to reach out and touch it's backers .. 

So keep the faith because otherwise, one day our Tim and Chris may be pwned by some games publishing leviathan that forces them to churn out absurd open world cliche ridden (though quite enjoyable) "popular" games on time and under budget... 

Now that , that is just not rock and roll... as I am sure Volition  currently short listing insane weapon combinations for Saints Row V and not Freespace 3 ( hint hint) ..would agree... 

Log on now and download your Hangar and people support your friendly global neighborhood game developing legends.. 

I need to find a way of making this 3D .. should be possible as this is Cryengine 3 : NB this is pre alpha code so expect the expected..... 

time to dust off that old Force Feedback Pro....almost ... 

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Worried your 30K Rig won't run the Star Citizen menu screen? Well why not buy and play EVERY Wing Commander and Privateer game for around $12 ?

Bored polishing your Star Citizen ID card ? Nonplussed at the delayed " Combat " Module ..? Sick of duct taping toilet roles together in an effort to win Chairman Roberts latest space ship design-a-thon?

There is as the cliche goes another hope...


Back in the day Chris and Erin Roberts would require the utmost devotion from Space Opera Combat Supplicants  ... the first thing above all would be the purchase of THE most expensive and beige PC hardware existing at that time ..  then only then once you added in the cost of a flight stick or two..not forgetting to hook it up to your Soundblaster card .. would you be deemed worthy of playing the technical marvels I am about to promote the sale of to you ...

this is not the view from a T 800 but a red filtered poignant intro shot .... I like to call the calm before the storm ...

For today  only (till the next sale ) you can OWN the entire Wing Commander Series on PC .. at 75% off  .. that's around $12 in 2013 money .. and this includes all your favourite PC game FMV stars ... like Biff from Back To the Future , him from Episode IV V VI ( and maybe IX ..or is it XI?) and the ever crazy Malcom Mcdowell as well as of course a very young Clive Owen ...Brian Blessed, Jurgen Prochnow , John Hurt and Christopher Walken .. and that last lots' just some of the cast that Erin Roberts got together for the FMV of Privateer 2 ... you see some shots of here 

Marvel at the power of Erin Roberts ... who got Clive Owen to wear eye liner... in a PC game FMV segment something which the great Spike Lee could not make him do .. .

Today of course we can run all these classics on our phones or the most humble of smart fridge displays ... 

These are pieces of collective gaming history that no gamer should be without , not least because, their production  costs alone destroyed what passed for PC gaming development at that time ... with hype and over blown dev team and media Pizza consumption and spiralling private investor costs rendering such games design unsustainable and eventually the 100+ strong developers with their ever expanding Pizza consumption.. unemployable... until ...that is until 20 or so years later they surfaced with Kickstarter backed projects... of which Star Citizen is the most anticipated and well backed ... by fans at least if not publishers..

Privateer 2 is a game where John Hurt gets to be your bar tender .. don't worry in the game you will see him in close up.. 

All very interesting  .. as our Chris has us dreaming/saving up for  18K triple 4K display PC Rigs and Virtual Reality headsets ...for Star Citizen the spiritual successor to the Wing Commander series ... 

the game runs depressingly slowly on my 10K rig .. just what do you have to do get a Roberts bros game running ? ..only kidding... all these games need slowing down ..

The causes of  the Wing Commander series, of which I include Privateer here ...  great successes and failures, which were to be honest not entirely due to an ever expanding lunch time Pizza budget,  rest in the series you can now pick up from Good Old Games... 

I hope the team at Roberts Space Industries ...many of them  like the rest of us now with PCs and smart Fridges able to run these games ... 20 years on ... take some time to reflect on the lessons that can be learnt from re playing these games .. 

Perhaps ...in their lunch breaks ... waiting for the pizza  to be delivered .. hopefully not as long as we are left waiting for our Star Citizen combat modules ... 

this content is © and originated from thegameveda http://the-games-veda.blogspot.com/  if you are reading it from any other site that has not provided a link back it has been leached