Star Citizen Switches Game Engines

@monkeytonsils: "just because of... slightly prettier rendering?"

No...

"Lumberyard provides ground breaking technology features for online games, including deep back-end cloud integration on AWS and its social component with Twitch that enables us to easily and instantly connect to millions of global gamers."

"Because we share a common technical vision, it has been a very smooth and easy transition to Lumberyard. In fact, we are excited to announce that our upcoming 2.6 Alpha release for Star Citizen is running on Lumberyard and AWS."

@megakoresh: It's not actually a game yet. It's essentially an alpha preview of a game still under full development. "Alpha" meaning features are still being implemented. Your complaints are essentially the same as complaining about a birthday cake that hasn't been frosted and decorated yet.

If you look at even just the near future roadmap most of the community features that actually make the persistent world into a game are still in the future, to be implemented after they nail down the tech. They also have Squadron 42 as a single player story which they are keeping under wraps to protect the story telling aspect.

Recently they seem to have finished up most of the infrastructure so features should start coming a bit faster than they did in the first 4 years. I would say we really shouldn't complain until sometime in mid-2018 if things still don't seem to be coming together. i.e. I still believe the game is right on schedule considering what they are trying to accomplish.

The biggest difference with Star Citizen compared to other games is that we get to see them making the cake from scratch, or even better, since this is one of the biggest cakes ever created we also get to see them building the custom ovens, the custom pans, and mixing up and testing a few batches before they bake it and decorate it.

@joshuafrothunder: Let's be honest...The hardcore fanboys of this game are delusional, and will drink the Robert's kool aid even after they're eventually told the game will never be released.

@esqueejy: Star Citizen's singleplayer campaign, Squadron 42, will have a compelling story focused on the UEE's war versus the Vanduul. Here's a video of a terrifying Vanduul Carrier that players will be going up against. Chris Roberts hired 15 famous Hollywood actors (including Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, Mark Strong, Andy Serkis, Ben Mendelsohn, Rhona Mitra) and has already filmed their mo-cap and voice performances for SQ42's story. Check out the Squadron 42 teaser. So having a great story for the game is something that Chris Roberts and CIG take very seriously.

Star Citizen has also released a fair bit of lore already, such as video tours for the star systems wherein a CIG staffer talks about the planets and includes historical lore, which will reflect opportunities in the persistent universe. For example, the Leir system is home to a breakaway human colony of cultist isolationists called the Outsiders. Their official stance is they don't import anything from the UEE, but there's a black market for their luxury exports. So Leir is a prospect for bold players interested in smuggling. That's the sort of lore that CIG is establishing for the PU.

@bigdegs: yes, it was just a clickbait article from Polygon. The made it sound like the whole thing has been ripped apart and and being built in a new engine.

@reavern: I am a detractor of SC, I won't lie. My question is this: That video was run on a machine tuned and tested to optimize that moment of gameplay....How is it going to look in a real furball with dozens, if not hundreds of spacecraft, missiles, torpedos, and rounds, flying through the air on a customer's machine made...let's say today? With someone's laggy connection cause they share a BB with the rest of the house, or someone whose graphics card is glitching out a bit?

My issues with the game are not it's admittedly good looking graphics in specific moments. Every game looks good when you highlight and polish a great moment. Look at Watch Dogs, AC: Unity, A:CM....there's an entire list of bullshot video games that sold quite well on high resolution video moments. But that computer, isn't the machine the average person will play it on. Very few peple are planning to build or buy a machine specifically to run SC. It's going to be running on current tech, two or three years from now when it's released.....and it won't look as good THEN, as it does NOW.

@reavern: It's not that impressive. Space Engineers features user-defined concave geometry too, with real time deformation and block by block destruction. Now ramp it up to a 100 clients doing it at the same time, this is an MMO after all, does it hold up?

If you want impressive space battles online, Eve Online. They've had a thousand people involved in a single battle. Can Star Citizen do this?

@reavern: Yep...that's officially crazy.

@hillelslovak: comment of the year, 2016. lmaoooo

@aldiggy: With Trump tweeting about a nuclear arms race, and the recent fake news story between Pakistan and Israel, you have a good point.

@thegoodhustler: I hope you're right in your flippant optimism. I've got some money tied up in this and more so enthusiasm, yet I've waited 4 years and they are still switching out engines. There is no way thats just NBD.

@ratchet_ph: I do not see +$100 million work of work being done other than the art/level design (not Star Marine module). Those are fantastic in what is available for Star citizen right now and by far, the best i have seen in a sci-fi space game. Amazing is an understatement. I would imagine that's where the bulk of the funding is going to, smh.