Star Citizen's Spaceships Are Ridiculously Expensive

[Fanghawk]

Star Citizen's Spaceships Are Ridiculously Expensive

According to Chris Roberts, Star Citizen's fighters are so detailed that their real-world cost is in the thousands of dollars.

Star Citizen recently became <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125381-Star-Citizen-Most-Successful-Crowfunding-Campaign-Ever>the most successful crowdfunding project of all time when its combined donations <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124843-Star-Citizen-Breaks-10-Million-in-Crowdfunding>surpassed the $10 million mark. Some of you may have looked at that number and wondered how Chris Roberts could possibly spend it all, considering that most of Star Citizen's gameplay occurs in an empty void. To help answer that question, Roberts broke down the development cost of Star Citizen's spaceships, and you'll want to sit down because this one's a doozy. Roberts estimates that a single finished in-game fighter would be worth approximately $35,000 in real-world currency, while large carrier ships rate even higher.

"[A single ship] can be anywhere from $35,000 to $150,000," Roberts explained. That figure accounts for everything from time and money spent modelling the item, to making sure each component part functions realistically. According to Star Citizen's campaign page for example, one fighter can consist of 300,000 polygons, while carriers can use up to 7 million. For comparison, the average character model in a Triple-A game uses 10,000 polygons.

These numbers certainly aren't insurmountable, given Star Citizen's new budget, but it's still pretty shocking to learn how detailed the finished game might be. And that's just game models, without taking into account details like physics, ship interactions, lighting, or multiplayer servers. Here's hoping that Star Citizen's donors, including 35,000 Kickstarter backers alone, notice the difference their money made when the game launches in 2014.

Source: Joystiq

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[ZeroMachine]

... Well I won't be able to play this until I get a new computer.

Don't care though. Money well spent for the sake of such an awesome project.

 

[Agayek]

That explains why the pledge ships cost upwards of $70

 

[lacktheknack]

Mein. Gott.

This is getting completely out of hand... and I love it.

 

[Revolutionary]

Holy hell, that's one expensive ship. Can't say I'm particularly interested though.

 

[Mark D. Stroyer]

PC Master Race represent!

Yeeaahh... I also really need a serious computer upgrade, seeing as mine is, well, solid but from 2009.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Well, I'll say that money was well spent.

... Well I won't be able to play this until I get a new computer.

I suspect this will be the new Crysis.

(rather ironic considering it runs off a modified Cryengine 3)

 

[Evil Smurf]

That's a shitload of emotions.

 

[neppakyo]

*wipes a tear* The 300 commercial was beautiful.

I'm looking forward to this game.

 

[CJ1145]

Wow, I'm impressed. Hadn't heard a damn thing about this game, but between the buzz and the "commercials" I'm actually getting kinda hyped.

 

[Saulkar]

That's a shitload of emotions.

This is easily going to be the most emotional game ever released. The world will dehydrate in tears!

 

[Kajin]

Not sure if my computer will be able to handle this...

 

[Strazdas]

Now, that you have justified my 2014 computer upgrade, can you please get on to make gameplay actually good instead of using the crysis route of "graphics is everything"?

 

[Rob Robson]

Now, that you have justified my 2014 computer upgrade, can you please get on to make gameplay actually good instead of using the crysis route of "graphics is everything"?

They are working very hard on this game, and the people working on art and animations are only a small part of the team. The reason we're hearing about models is that simply it's the easiest thing to use to generate buzz from words. Go watch their live streams for gameplay answers.

 

[oldtaku]

You need artists, designers, modelers, animators, scripters, and you can figure an average of $60-80K a year. It's not surprising at all that quality content will take a lot of man years.

This reminds me of when everyone was so shocked about how much money it took to make a new Skullgirls character. Unless someone's doing it for love, quality content takes money.

All they need is 2000-5000 people to buy it to make back the money.

 

[Veylon]

are we going to have an incredible advanced a.i. of space fish traveling in the opposite direction of your ship whenever you get close to them and risk a collision?

Don't be silly. With these kinds of ridiculous polygon counts, you'll be lucky if there's enough things on the screen for there to even be a collision.

But seriously, 300k polys is insane for something that, at normal view distances, is nearly indistinguishable from a 2D sprite. I can understand throwing a couple hundred - or even a thousand - at the carrier itself, but fighters are basically expendable specks. You'll zoom in on them maybe once to see how detailed they are and never again because you'll need to see the whole situation and not just one ship.

 

[Strazdas]

Now, that you have justified my 2014 computer upgrade, can you please get on to make gameplay actually good instead of using the crysis route of "graphics is everything"?

They are working very hard on this game, and the people working on art and animations are only a small part of the team. The reason we're hearing about models is that simply it's the easiest thing to use to generate buzz from words. Go watch their live streams for gameplay answers.

Fair enough, im jstu simply afraid this is going to be all graphics and promises like so many other games resulted in.

 

[Agayek]

Don't be silly. With these kinds of ridiculous polygon counts, you'll be lucky if there's enough things on the screen for there to even be a collision.

But seriously, 300k polys is insane for something that, at normal view distances, is nearly indistinguishable from a 2D sprite. I can understand throwing a couple hundred - or even a thousand - at the carrier itself, but fighters are basically expendable specks. You'll zoom in on them maybe once to see how detailed they are and never again because you'll need to see the whole situation and not just one ship.

You realize that the game is a space sim and not an RTS right?

As in, you play as a single pilot controlling a single ship. As in, your camera will either be in the cockpit or right behind the ship you are controlling, and as such the ship (fighter, carrier, transport, whatever) will take up a significant portion of the screen real estate at all times. You'll never be in a top-down/"RTS-cam" view at any point in the game[footnote]With the possible exception of a couple crew spots in the carriers. There might be a radar station or whatever that simulates that.[/footnote].

The poly count here may well be excessive (I'd have to see performance details before making that call, CryEngine3 is supposed to be really good at this kind of thing), but it's for a good reason at least. The ships are the primary visuals of the game, and the thing people will spend by far the most time looking at. Making them as good as can be will only help.