How hard could it be??

So Derek Smart had issues making a Space-sim cross FPS shooter,
Chris Roberts is facing the same issue..
But seriously how bloody hard could it be??

GTA has the ability to switch between FPS/TPS shooter and Car simulator, why is it so much harder to do it with spaceships??

I mean space is just an empty box with a few sphere's and models in it to make planets and space stations.
It couldn't be a poly count issue holding Chris and Derek back,

Is it the transition from space to foot causing the issue??
and why is it harder than disembarking from a car and swapping physic's engines over to suit the model like in GTA???

Seriously i have little to no up to date programming skills and i know fk' all about current IDE's but even i could probably make a darn space shooter that allows for boarding and disembarking from the ship to interact with things on foot!! (using Unreal SDK 4 and Blueprints .. lol)

Heck i might even give it a go..
If i can do it then "SHAME on Derek and Chris" for being shown up by a nobody with absolutely no skills what so ever <-- jokes
But seriously , i'm going to give it a go , and i'm going to make a basic greybox single solar system freelancer with the ability to leave the ship and explore on foot.

The issue with star citizen is network related, and quality (chris R wants to beat the big fps games, er 'at their own game' so to speak).

Now you mention it though. There is a big difference in how star citizen handles its ships and every other game with vehicles: in gta, battlefield et al, you go from being a person, to in a fixed seat in a vehicle at which point the physics transfers to the vehicle movement system with no account if physics inside.

In star citizen, due to the scale of the larger ships, you retain the full ability to move around independently, whilst the ship is in transit, which requires independent physics environment to co exist, seriously clever stuff. That said, that already works in star citizen

Not to mention the sheer amount of planned content in Star Citizen and the depth of said content makes GTA V look like NotGTAV.

What about "Space Engineers", i see that kind of game-play where you can roam around a massive ship (which you can build in a minecraft like fashion) freely and then pilot the ship without any issues..

But i guess it be another of those bit off more than they can chew issues..

I seriously don't understand why they don't make the Bare-Bones of the game first, then add in the kick-arse graphics later when everything works as it should...

I really think a lot of Indie and even larger game company's need a good kick up the arse to get their crap sorted before spouting crap to the public to score a part of our hard earned cash by overstating what the company is capable of..
Isnt that called "False advertising", and as far as i know false advertising is Illegal in most country's, yet the video game industry seems to be able to "False Advertise" freely without repercussion from the law..

But all in all.. I call "Bullshit" on the topic of it cant be done.
It can be done , just not the way they want it......

Star Citizen is a tad more ambitious than Space Engineers.

I understand that , that's why i said it's another of those "bit off more than they can chew issues.."

How have they 'bitten off more than they can chew'? The tech to allow *simultaneous independent physics* both in and out of a ship is in and functioning. Out of interest, in space engineers, is it possible to be walking around on a moving ship, which has it's own gravity? As far as I'm aware Space Engineers doesn't support that (so the ship is stopped you can fly around it, the ship is moving your in a seat piloting it, you can't move around the ship *as it's being piloted* however).

Star Citizen is building up the game in a 'bare bones' fashion imo- yes they creating things in high fidelity, however they're releasing it in stages. The game is in development so it's hardly surprising there are some delays on what is a very ambitious project. I don't really understand your point at all? Ok the FPS module has been delayed whilst the rework the network back end of Cry Engine to support the number of players they want, that has bugger all to do with inside / outside ships / vehicles, the fidelity of the models or anything else. What happened was they thought they could use the existing network tech from CryEngine, they found out more recently that it simply isn't up to the task hence the rework of that system.

They have the money and developers to sort the problem, what's the issue?!

I might offend some peeps here, but as a developer myself I think that non-developers shouldn't argue about software development because 95% of those people have zero clue what they are talking about.

Well I'm a mechanical / electronic / product designer and I do a bit of embeded software development (although nothing on the level of 3D games), I'm also a Star Citizen backer and I can't really see what the fuss is about. If they'd declared "we're ditching the FPS" then people have something to moan about. I just don't see what the problem is with an interim project goal getting delayed due to a technical hitch. So many projects I've worked on have had similar problems, sometimes aspects of a design have to be significantly reworked if not up to par. The point is, they *are* reworking it.

As an aside I'd be interested to hear your thoughts as a software developer....

Oh I am completely with you here - my comment was more aimed at the OP and the "space is just an empty box with a few spheres".
I simply cannot understand anyone complaining about delays in such a huge project. The only difference to other game projects is that people get informed about it.
During a development project unforeseen problems will arise, and there is nothing you can do to prevent that, no matter how much you plan.

When Uber had a preliminary release date set for PA people were begging them to delay the game simply because it was in a bad state at that time. And it was a good decision to delay PA.

No amount of money can prevent these kinds of problems or accelerate the process of eliminating them once you have reached a critical mass of code base and developers.
The people complaining about these delays would be the first to scream if they released the game in an unfinished state. And that is what is really going on my nerves.

I do like the fact the Mr. Roberts has hired the CryEngine team to rework the engine it'self,
But it doesn't assure me that it will fix the issue..
Just because the team who made the engine is working on fixing the engine i honestly don't see it working to well for them, it should have been planned for from the start.
They should have tested and tried before stating features that are not possible with what they have.

As an electrical engineer who works with Embedded Micro-processors quite a lot i understand limitations of hardware too.
Overstating what is possible with our current tech is the biggest way a company can "shoot itself in the foot".
I'm not saying its "impossible".. BUT how many games and software have you seen that has been reworked with extra features at a late point in development ever turn out the way it was originally intended too.

LOL, i have A LOT of coding/programming experience it's just not up-to date with the current windows IDE's...
I can demo code like no other on an amiga .. lol
And i can make my own sub-par quality Triple core processor out of 8-bit micro-processors... hahaha

To be honest I think the press reporting (which is obviously looking to generate as much fuss as possible) have made the reaction to this a lot worse.

They took the note released by Chris Roberts (which is pretty reasonable when you read it), picked a few choice quotes and added a headline of 'FPS Delayed Indefinitely' just to cause trouble. Adding that one word makes a lot of difference as 'Indefinitely' infers something very different to just 'delayed' which is what CIG actually said.

To show that i do actually have programming skills and not all talk
Here's my current project...
https://fpvracing.tv/blog/fpv-lasertag

edit..
I'm making real life "Quake" or deathmatch..
With Guns that can be "Buffed" with power-ups from a power-up box, and color changing flag's that change to the color of the team that shoots it.

double edit..
It can also be controlled remotely, the aim of the project is to make LaserTag capable of being carried by the currently popular 250mm FPV racing Drones...

My basic "Tech Demo" for Thrust vector based Physic's to make a FPV racing game..

edit..
there's no sound or anything special, because i abandoned this when i heard ImmersionRC was making a game called "Lift-off" which is also a FPV racing game.

That looks a neat project man

I think you're being a bit harsh on Star Citizen though- I mean we know they have reasonable networking in based on AC (which is playable now and runs pretty well for an Alpha build in multi player). The FPS is the same engine, I think the issue is they could make do with what they've got but CR doesn't do 'good enough'. They want to improve the system. I mean I've played some of Roberts' earlier large scale games (e.g. MS Freelancer) and the networking on that ran superbly even with a full server so I don't doubt they can do it.

I also don't think they're quite as far on with the core development as it'd first appear. Due to the way they're building the game (in about 5 separate streams) different aspects are all at different stages and they are most definitely still working on core engine components (the last '10 for the developers' mentioned there approaching the stage when the engine work is all in and once they pass that point, then they can go full tilt on assets and really start adding content). The point is *now* is very much the time to make changes, rather than after they've released the FPS, Multi Crew and PU Alpha modules.

That already looks better than most of the games made by 'Digital Homicide'

did you see the floating tree.
OMG i fail as a game developer .. hahahaha

"I backed you on kickstarter and you gave me a floating tree..."

Edit: Backer 2: "floating trees are awesome! More floating treez plox"

@ace63
It's obvious that a space sim is more than sphere's and models..
I totally forgot texturing... LMFAO <--- jokes

But seriously..
The amount of visual culling planes required to do what Roberts is doing would be immense..
I mean there must be some sort of culling going on or your PC would be rendering the internals of each ship and if you were inside it would be rendering the outside world still which is probably a bit much to ask with the scale of what they are doing...
But that's the magik of a video game, it isn't possible to render millions and billions of tris so there has to be a way to cut back on what is rendered and or even processed by the GPU and CPU..