Of course it can, but thats not real modeling, rather just using smoothing algorythms and they dont even come close to actual handcrafted polygons. yep, some companies cut corners doing that and the models end up looking bad. they however are making it the right way.MercyMike said:Polygon count can be easily upped to impressive numbers by any 3d package without actually adding workload, to make curves smoother for example. And like in any game, space games too , assets are reused. Think about things like textures, external weapons, little ship details, windows, tailgates, exhausts. After designing a few ship you will end up with a nice part bin that makes building each next ship less and less time intensive.
Ok so they don't use full time hired designers but pay per project, that will reduce the costs even more because you can fish in a larger pool and save on things like medical plans, pensions plans and so on. My calculations might be wrong but they are a lot closer to the truth than the 150,000 dollars per ship quote from Roberts.
Some assets are reused, sure, but ship designs vary grealty. cant just take a unit and reskin it.
you dont.... yet. its not released yet. this is a kickstarted-like funding project and the game is still in developement. there is a small demo for large pledges but thats it.pearcinator said:in what way do you actually purchase the game? It looks like there are different packages to purchase (from $40 US up to a mega-fucking-whopping-omgwtfbbq $15000 US! Seriously!). So does actually buying a particular package limit you to how much of the game is available to you? I am confused.
ALso if you pledge enough to get the game copy on release you get full game. the extras are tacked on acessories that do not affect your gameplay at all.
the 15000 donations and the like mostly come from famouse people/companies that support ir rather than regular individuals. For example i believe Notch pledged a huge sum.
cant answer you how many, obviuosly. i know im not one of them. i prefer my flying eve style - telling the ship where to go - rather than SC style - piloting on your own and i dont plan to play this game. still it is interesting to see how the market i like (space sims) gets reignited with such passion.Karadalis said:Yup.. thats the big question. Star citizen is filling up a niche that has been left empty for a while and it could become something akin to the WoW of space sims.. but i wonder how many sales are left out there. How many of the people interested in the game havent allready invested into it?
I cant imagine that the market for space sims is that huge or else the big publishers would jump onto the oportunity.. And it is fact that they will be "missing" out of 50 mil in sales.. that money was allready paid.
Personally i dont believe that there are many sales left... "many" in sales numbers mind you, it could still reach 600k - 1 mil+ sales after release.
ech, big publishers were blind before. just look how square enix was "surprised" by a game in abandoned market selling millions of copies, even though the fans were saying it will sell for years but bigt publishers just didnt want to try it. just look how they abandoned horror genre - one of the most profitable right now. big publishers arent always right.
thing is, it does not matter if there are sales left. since the budget was crowdunded, even if they sell exactly 0 copies they still broke even. they dont have to repay loans or investors. So i wouldnt be too worried about that. and games like these, especially ones oriented into still looking good a few years down the line, tend to pick up steady pace later in thier lifestyle.
except that this game is 100% audience funded so they do have the audience.Rawbeard said:STOP MAKING GAMES THAT NEED HIGHER BUDGET THAN BLOCKBUSTER MOVIES!
You do not have the audience, you will never have the audience, to make that work. all you do is kill your industry. *sigh*
first of all, what Robert said was:drakonz said:im sorry but 150k dollars for single ship (unless its suposed to be map size of skyrim with similar atention to detail) dosent make any sense regardess of how you calculate it. Grand Palais turned into 3d model costs 3500 dollars its fully mapped and got 3,4 million polygons and 3.9 million vertices. there is limit how many polygons game can have on screen before it stats slowing down computer so going for insane numbers of polygons on single objects simply makes no sense (+ for this kind of project you hire artist itself and do contract work only on smaller things. simply because hiring artist and paying monthly salary ends up being cheaper) and every single game including space games reuse assets because it makes no sense to remake assets for everything just to make them look sligly different (not to forget you usualy just edit aready done assets most of the time instead of making compledly new ones expelialy for smaller objects)
"That cost includes the time used to make the model as well as to model realistic functions; it includes a number of moving parts and animated dashboards."
So its more than 3D model. Its basically getting the ship ready to be playable.
Secondly, a carrier/drednaught class ships ARE the size of skyrim. the smallest ship in thge game - fighter, will have 300,000 polygons. the large ones have 10 or more times that.
And yes, large polycount requires more graphic power, hence the high system requirements for the game. also why the game will have low quality settings for people with older GPUs/CPUs.
The base game is not even on the table now. the base game+stretch goals is the question. they want to release with all the extra features at once since they got the money they didnt expect and was planning to put these features later after sales.MinionJoe said:These statements should concern the ever-loving shit out of the current backers. They should be asking, "Forget stretch goals. Is there enough left in the bank to even finish this thing?" Because if the "continued development" of Star Citizen is dependent upon additional and continuous crowdfunding, then this thing is doomed to fail once that funding source dries up.
And it will dry up.
Also the game IS A MMO. all MMOs do continuous developement, which costs money.
you answered your own question - importing better paint is a good example for painter. for the film - making better props and buying better CGI is a good example - both has been done by the way. and it didnt result in clusterfuck, for example the second hobbit film wasnt a clusterfuck (at least in my opinion).briankoontz said:In what other artform is this a good idea? Should Picasso have worked by this model? So he has a vision for a $1,000 painting and if he gets $10,000 then he has another vision for what that means? What if he gets $100,000 - he then imports rare paint?
How about the closest comparison - film. So during the production of a film that film gets an ever increasing budget. What a clusterfuck that would result in. Actors could be swapped out for more expensive ones, additional editors could be hired, more expensive shooting locations could be used, etc. While this in some cases makes the film better, it's terribly inefficient at best and deeply artistically corrupting at worst. Artists have a *single* vision for the outcome of their art - it's insane to expect them to have multiple visions depending on their funding level.
Art needs constraints, and it needs to understand what those constraints are. Star Citizen is laboring under the terrible situation of not knowing the parameters for it's own creation.
movies get re-edited ALL THE TIME. thats why you have cinema cut, directors cut, ect.
Btw, AVGN movie did afford mroe expensive shooting locations and changed a lot of CGI into practica effects only after it got over-funded too.
this model WORKS in other industries.
No, the LAST thing art needs is constraints.
I dont do beta either so i can understand perfectly. No release date is set as far as i know. Not sure about physical distribution. It is a MMO-like game, however they claim there will be singleplayer mode and you could host your own servers, meaning you could run your own server and be the only player too or just invite a few friends. Sorry, i cannot answer the rest, hopefully somone with more info will.pearcinator said:Right ok. I don't really buy into the whole alpha/beta phase of games. Is there a release date for it yet? Will there be physical copies of the game sold in retailers or will it be on Steam (or some other online distributor)? Is it an MMO-like game? What does the 'insurance' mean on the package plans (are they like subscription fees?). Is there a story/goal of the game or do you just explore space/raid shit etc. (i.e. is it like a sci-fi space-sim version of DayZ? Or is there an RPG-like story behind it all?)
I have too many questions about this game...it looks really cool but I don't fully understand what the game is like.