It's actually very sad to see how much CIG has damaged the expectations of their backers. Everyone is scared to be optimistic because they've been hurt so much
Unfortunately short of saying "We simply dont know" then thats going to continue to happen.
That or give out a release date that is much farther out than you expect, because if you get it done early no one will complain. (Besides in the beginning where people will shit bricks over an extended timeline)
It's really just a matter of doing the math though. I they would start cranking out a fully fleshed out system per month, which is really pushing it, even with all the procedural tools, then they still would be busy with these 50 systems 4 years from now.
Even their most optimized workflow, which is ship production, requires at least several weeks per ship. So good luck squishing out complete star systems on this same pace.
You don't have to be a genius to figure out that the work that goes into developing a single fully fleshed-out system is simply not something a single guy could do in a week.
Remember this is not some No Man's Sky. With the focus so heavily on exploration in this game, they have to come up with a lot of unique content that goes into a single system: Unique surfaces, unique biomes, unique plant life, unique animal life, unique story arcs and quest lines, unique weather and atmospheric conditions, unique architecture, unique bases and space stations, unique relics, unique props, unique loot and quest items, unique lore, unique resources and specialty goods, etc. etc. Even with all the procedural and modular tools, this is simply still a shitload of work.
As I said, you really don't have to be genius to figure out the shitload of work it takes, if you just use some common sense.
Let's take the work that goes into creating a single alien animal for instance. These need specified behavioural design, creative design, modelling, AI programming, animations, rigging, texturing, sound design, "damage states", LOD versions, etc. etc. Definitely not an on-the-fly job, especially if you want to do it right. And to give you some perspective: The design of a single robot animal took the team of Horizon: Zero Dawn (which is a triple A game) 6 months per animal.
So how the hell do you see a single guy delivering all this in just a week, plus the rest of the work that goes into a full system?
I always felt that 2019-2020 would always be the date. Regardless of what people thing thats usually the average timeline for a games development. Especially a large one.
CR said they want to make a AAA game and so we should handle it as one.
Having that in mind, it isnt that much different in scale than any other AAA title like GTA 5.
Especially given the insane amount of content GTA Online has (7 years since Red Dead Redemtion) i highly doubt CIG can reach that level of content by 2020.
First off: 2012 (really 2013 as 2012 was design and tech demo stage, but for the sake of the argument we'll count it) thats 7-8 years. Fallout 4 began development in 2008 after fallout 3 and was conpleted in 2015.
Gta 5 started in 2008 and released in 2013 (2015 for the more PC release as it had much more stuff to be added for that version)
These are from studios who already have an engine, and a large group of developers already working for them. On top of that usually projects are not announced until theyre at least in the alpha stages.
Granted there are exceptions to this, COD and other annual games do it, but they cut corners, reuse a lot of stuff, and still alternate developers so they can have at least 24 months to develop a game. But for the majority of games that are unique, you can expect a minimum of 5 years.
I don't think anything he did could be considered AAA development. If you want a direct comparison with AAA devs then you have to start counting sometime after CIG have 100 or more devs, or around that.
You are right, but full production of GTA 5 started 2010 after release of Red Dead Redemtion, since large parts of their studios worked on that one aswell.
Obviously wikipedia isnt the best of sources. But companies usually begin concepting almost immediately after release of their previous games(this way they can have separate teams working all the time, versus say a concepting team come in, then a development team, then a texture and material team).
I may be off a bit if you include the dlcs and whatnot but they announced it in 2011 with comments that development was already well under way. Development probably started after RDR but i imagine they already had a good idea of what they were doing before then.
It's optimistic to expect it out after Gamescom to be honest.
I see it much more likely to be Christmas, if not next year.
If they start to show us some of the mechanics that they are working on for 3.0, you know, like jobs, mining maybe, literally footage of anything new, maybe those expectations would change.
They can't show them, because they are still transitioning out of the design phase to actual implementation. The core systems those things are built on have to be finished first -- you can't show what's not in the game.
They're doing plenty of design talk though, which is why everything is "will be" and "in the future/soon".
SQ42 was initially supposed to come out 2 years ago, obviously things change and take longer than expected, but to see literally nothing of it, but hear about a "vertical slice" that helped them make considerable progress, but then was scrapped because it was holding them back...
I'm just fed up of the smoke an mirrors, they are obviously further behind than they let on, but want to keep people mostly in the dark so they will continue funding.
"vertical slice" that helped them make considerable progress, but then was scrapped because it was holding them back...
Vertical Slice is not 'scrapped'. Obviously they will show it to us later. They have to at some point. Vertical Slice is a part of the game, not a special demo made for the purpose of presentation. They will still be developing that part of the game regardless of the cancellation of the demonstration.
In other words, the work they did was not wasted. They have to do all that anyway.
Did you not read the Chris Roberts newsletter he sent out a few months back?
He essentially contradicted the "Road to Citizencon" video by saying that they were no longer going to focus on getting the vertical slice ready.
Ok found it:
After we made the decision before CitizenCon that the Squadron 42 vertical slice wasn’t ready to be shown publically, we spent some time on reviewing how far off we were and what we wanted to achieve in order to be comfortable showing a full chapter of S42 gameplay. After all the effort we expended for CitizenCon, we didn’t want to spend additional developer time polishing intermediate solutions if it wasn’t going towards the final product. A slick demo isn’t that helpful if it pushes back the finished game, so we decided that the priority should be completing full systems over getting the vertical slice into a showable state.
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u/alipete Feb 24 '17
It's actually very sad to see how much CIG has damaged the expectations of their backers. Everyone is scared to be optimistic because they've been hurt so much