Star Citizen Creator: You Can't Do That On Consoles

[Twilight_guy]

PC elitist and graphics whore developer makes comment about superiority of PCs and how great his game will be. Here's me not caring...

Until you point out exactly why either of those things are bad for the game, here's me not caring about your opinion.

Because all I see now is two buzzwords strung together in an attempt to have, I don't know, some sort of high horse to ride around on.

Okay... if a developer puts too many resources into graphics he'll neglect the other parts of the game and as a result you will get a very pretty game that plays like E.T. combined with Superman 64. There you go, why too much focus on graphics is bad.

Why being a PC elitist is bad is because its a self imposed limitation on the functionality of your game. Different platforms are better options for different games. Cut the Rope would suck on a non-touchscreen platform. Being an elitist means the person has such an affinity for the thing that he'll/she'll likely pound a round peg into a square hole, as it were, when it comes to issues.

Of course I have no idea why I'm bother as you don't care. Maybe I just want to feel superior by posting a reply and trying to win. I should work on that.

 

[Candidus]

I'm glad that Star Citizen won't be watered down to mediocrity just to shoehorn it onto irrelevant hardware.

 

[gardian06]

snip...

Who really wants to watch movies on their iPhone?

to paraphrase "Gaming Consoles have limited capabilities..." (starts stroking self) "...to the pinical of perfection that is PC..." (begins to moan) "...gaming in all its glory. that should be revered as a..." (spurts across the desk) "...god of gaming"

and now Chris Roberts is done. I think that I might go play my Wii game console.

Don't let the door hit your ass on your way out.

a perfectly good first post dig at how the person is literally just masturbating about the PC as he is saying these words, and that is the best you can come up with. besides the majority of his argument/statement was that "PC is the best, ans will always be the best" if you take something different from his statement then really. I'll tell you something else PC has that consoles don't exponential QA time-frames because of the requirement to test potential builds of the given game even if you are using an established engine you still might need to modify it to make it fully functional to the given game.

Is it me, or does this guy come off as a bit of a wanker?

Anyways, I prefer the PC myself and am looking forward to this game but it will all be for naught if those shiny graphics make it unplayable for those lacking the most elite gaming computers.

And again I must ask, is your only role as a fighter pilot or do you get to command the mothership as well? And in this mothership can you walk all around it?

If pointing out how absolutely shit the current consoles are is being a wanker, then facts are jizz.

*cough* Scalability. The original Crysis, contrary to the misinformation spread by people I wanna fucking strangle, was perfectly playable (and still looked better than anything else) on mid-level PCs the day it released. Considering how much progress has happened since 2007, and will inevitably happen in two more years, I see no reason for that not to be the case again.

Yes and yes. You'll get to land in the big ships, walk around them, there will be shit to do inside them like manning the turrets, repairing stuff and calibrating the weapons. I think you'll even get to do boarding parties. Don't expect a sim of the type the X series or Eve are, but if this game follows through on its promises, it's going to be glorious.

no what makes him a wanker is that he not only was talking about current consoles, but even future consoles, and your statement about Crysis yes it was a very pretty, and playable game to play on most mid-range PCs... until you purposely/accidentally destroy a building, and then it made all but high end systems cry.

You know if ya go to a PC gaming forum and politely point out that someone else's HP/Acer/Dell/Gateway/etc setup is too outdated to play bleeding edge games, the second person rarely gets defensive at all...it's just an accepted fact and both parties move on unoffended by one another.

Politey point out that the Xbox 360 & PS3 are becoming outdated hardware setups and you will be called out as some sort of elitist prick. Microsoft and Sony have some serious brand loyalty going on. The innards of a console are largely the same as a PC, slapping MS or Sony on the exterior doesn't transform it into anything special that should be kept around for decades. Console gamers who oppose progress simply because they do not want to pay for a new console have a legit argument, but they shouldn't get all huffy when a small handful(!) of devs stop catering to machines that restrict their their creative vision.

Anyways, from what I've seen so far Star Citizen looks f-ing awesome!!!!!!

Problem is, most people don't ask politely. They TELL you that PC is how gaming is supposed to be played, and that consoles are for "Corporate schills that couldn't make a decent rig".

If most people act the way you say they act, then how about you pull out the elitist card when people are actually saying this, instead of fighting windmills? Has there been anyone in this thread who actually said something to that extent? And how many people have been whining about them?

Here's what most people say. The hardware of the current gen of consoles sucks balls and its limited as hell. The only reason you, and people like you, think most PC gamers are attacking you is because you have attached yourself emotionally to the hardware you own.

Nope. More along the lines that there is this constant stigma within the PC gaming world that "I play games on the PC therefore I am better then those that play on consoles" simply because they can change out a component when a "better" version comes out. yes there is something to be said in flexibility, but at the same time there is also something to be said for standardization, and having single benchmarks to target. then you have to consider when developing for the PC having not only multiple graphics, and processor capabilities for the end user, but also having to be able to implement additional settings (level of detail count, particle generator intensity, and even audio steaming) to allow the user to optimize for their setup; while on a console there is a single target to develop for, and little need to tinker past that unless you want to give the user preference options.

I have played games on the PC, and consoles, and your whole argument of "money they have invested into their consoles" I have actually invested about the same if not more on my gaming PC to keep up with "required" components for games then I have on buying a brand new console (pre price drop). So I would actually say that the reverse argument holds more water then yours.

then if you realize the funny part: when he is playing the game to test/demonstrate it on the videos he is not using a joystick and/or keyboard he is using a fucking 360 controller.

 

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Oh FFS, this might be the most pathetic thing I've ever seen.

"WAAAAH, the big, mean man said something bad about my console, mommy! Make him go away!"

Pointing out that consoles have terrible hardware is like pointing out that the Earth is round. Everyone with a brain that's even remotely connected with reality knows it's a fact.

The whining in this thread sounds like the Flat Earthers trying to convince themselves that the Earth is actually flat and all the evidence to the contrary is a conspiracy to fool them.

Console hardware sucks. It's a fact, get over it. It doesn't mean that good games can't be made for the consoles, it just means the dev teams have to spend an inordinate amount of time optimizing the code and making concessions, like streaming textures. Chris Roberts doesn't want to do that. That doesn't make him an elitist. Space sims have pretty much been a PC thing ever since the genre was first introduced.

 

[Knocker]

Go ahead and mark this down. I will be back in 2 years to check up on this game. I am totally prepared to drink in tears of sorrow. I must remember to bring my straw.

 

[Joccaren]

I can't wait for star citizen... but I do not at all appreciate the MMO qualities of what he wants to do. I don't know why people think this is the only way games can be. I know there is a SP campaign (Squad 42), but maybe I want to fly around as a trader and not worry about other actual people. But the cheapest AI there is, is the guy who is bored and just wants to blow shit up for the hell of it.

From memory there were also private servers you personally could host, which you could use for just solo-play in the non-campaign sort of thing. You wouldn't get the persistent universe updates I wouldn't think, but you would be able to mod your server with whatever tools they provide.

 

[Twilight_guy]

PC elitist and graphics whore developer makes comment about superiority of PCs and how great his game will be. Here's me not caring...

Until you point out exactly why either of those things are bad for the game, here's me not caring about your opinion.

Because all I see now is two buzzwords strung together in an attempt to have, I don't know, some sort of high horse to ride around on.

Okay... if a developer puts too many resources into graphics he'll neglect the other parts of the game and as a result you will get a very pretty game that plays like E.T. combined with Superman 64. There you go, why too much focus on graphics is bad.

Why being a PC elitist is bad is because its a self imposed limitation on the functionality of your game. Different platforms are better options for different games. Cut the Rope would suck on a non-touchscreen platform. Being an elitist means the person has such an affinity for the thing that he'll/she'll likely pound a round peg into a square hole, as it were, when it comes to issues.

Of course I have no idea why I'm bother as you don't care. Maybe I just want to feel superior by posting a reply and trying to win. I should work on that.

Define "too many resources". Then explain why you ignored the fact that in space there are vastly less models to worry about or what I outlined in the beginning of my post, namely kicking the need to go through insane amounts of downscaling and optimization out the window.

There is some validity to what you're saying, but it has nothing to do with the game playing like ass, and it's not even remotely absolute. The gameplay that was showcased seemed like it played tightly enough for a completely bare-bones proof of concept. What actually can come at the expense of graphics is the amount of content you can dress up with those graphics. And again, it's not absolute. For example, the dev may have an efficient approach to modelling, they may be in a better position or have a better plan than some other developers resulting in far less of what they create getting cut in the process, or the graphics may, like I said earlier, indeed be easier to create than you assume.

They promise us a universe as big as Freelancer's - a space sim of a similar kind, which by the way looks like complete ass - but as evidenced by everything that was shown, featuring vastly increased visual fidelity, physics-based movement, ship interiors and so on. Even if they didn't, let's say they said it was going to be half as big as the aforementioned game from 2003, this game is going to be getting content updates for a long, long time, eventually resulting in something far better and far bigger.

Do I sound like a PC elitist to you, from what you've read so far? If not, I want you to walk me through how you arrive to the conclusion that someone is elitist (namely Chris Roberts, in this case) without them actually describing themselves the way you describe them, i.e. as people who can't see the flaws of their preferred platform or things to that extent.

If I do sound elitist, what does it say to you about my elitism if I tell you that, indeed, consoles are clearly better fit for some types of games, like brawlers, God of War types, Heavy Rain types, platformers and racing games? That's on the consumer side.

On the development side, looking at the bolded statement, I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say. Are you saying you want this game to be multiplatform? Or is this a general principle? In the case of the former, the statement literally makes no sense. When making a game for any few platforms simultaneously, unless those platforms are identical, the weakest link forces compromises for all the versions of the game, and any meaningful functionality in a specific platform as opposed to the others ultimately gets either not exploited at all, or just barely.

If you're talking about it as a general principle, why do you assume that this is Roberts blindly (key word here) pigeonholing himself into a single platform? Do you have reasons for it not to be PC-exclusive that would indicate that, indeed, there are flaws that are not being looked at? Can you name some of the functionality that is being lost by this game being PC only?

I don't care when all a person's point consists of are buzzwords. When you're actually trying to string coherent arguments together, it's hard to make me not care enough to stop replying.

You asked for a reason why those things could be bad, I gave you an explanation. I didn't say that they applied to this game. I didn't say this game would be bad. I made a comment about a dude and then explained why certain things could be bad for game development.

Resources generally mean time and money. If a developer spends 90% of his time making his shader better and neglects, say making models or levels, the game will suck. I don't care about how few models you need or issues of optimization. This isn't about specific numbers its the fact that an over-focus on one ares can consume a disproportionate number of resources and cause other area to suffer. It doesn't matter how little work needs to go into each area, not managing your resources effectively kills games. Being too focused on one area, as a graphics whore would be, leads to too much focus on one area.

You sound less like an elitist and more like an angry forum goer who has to try and fix the internet by yelling at people and spends hours of his life correcting other he'll never meet. I'm probably the same way though. How I arrive at the conclusion of elitist is generally if a person shows a strong affinity for one particular thing among other similar things and claims it is superior without real evidence of such or does so in an obstinate, obnoxious or mean way. I found his description of the situation to be obnoxious, and I found his lack of addressing other issues involved with PC vs. Consoles, aside from raw hardware, to be very willfully ignorant. There are lots of other issues that are not address yet he seems fairly certain that this issue is the only thing that matters and that seems to be a lack of good evidence. I also find his over-focus one aspect of game development top be annoying and ignorant. That's why I call him dumb.

The bolded statement indicated that being a PC elitist means that a person will tend to want to make games for PCs and only PC, regardless of what the game is and if it might be better to put it on a different platform. A PC elitist will always answer the question 'what platform is best for this' with 'PC' regardless of all factors, or at least will have an affinity for that, since they believe it to be clearly superior. Thus, this is a self imposed restriction, assuming that people chose to be PC elitists, that could hinder a game if it really would be better for a different platform but the developer was blinded to that fact by his own PC elitism.

Funny, I can easily be driven to not care for arguing. Usually it happens when someone makes an argument so incredibly stupid or offensive that I have to let it go and move on or when someone appears to be so angry that I won't even bother trying. (Also, you bother to quote my post int eh first place, clearly you cared enough to be offended/make a response).

 

[Joccaren]

no what makes him a wanker is that he not only was talking about current consoles, but even future consoles

He's actually making a pretty accurate statement. Next gen consoles won't be as powerful as the gaming rigs of today. There are a few easy reasons for this:
-Size. Consoles have to be small, a full tower can be big. For this reason my mid-high end PC that has 16Gb RAM, 2 graphics cards, liquid cooling, 3 SSDs and plenty more won't be able to be compressed into a console. Well, maybe you could, but that would lead to massive problems with...
-Heat. RROD Original Xbox 360 models. Heat problems. Modern day components produce a lot of heat, especially if they're high end. This heat will cause constant crashes and hardware failure, meaning its not viable for a console that can't have good cooling thanks to its size.
-Price. Microsoft and Sony originally lost a lot of money this gen, and that's thanks to them trying to be powerhouses. High end tech is expensive. If you sell it for a high price, people aren't going to buy it. Sell it for a low price, you're losing a lot of money each sale.

Now, come the generation after next, consoles might be able to get to where PCs are now, if not a little further. However next gen, which is what he was talking about, which is only a year or two off, they won't be able to. Even when they do reach this stage though, a PC will still have better hardware thanks to its size, cost and heat management abilities, plus the fact that its getting new hardware updates each year.

That is the way things are. If knowing this makes me a wanker, W.E, its not me with the problem then.

Nope. More along the lines that there is this constant stigma within the PC gaming world that "I play games on the PC therefore I am better then those that play on consoles" simply because they can change out a component when a "better" version comes out.

Honestly, this is simply BS. The majority of PC players, especially on this site, think nothing along those lines, and its simply you coming up with that.
The stigma is "I play on PC therefore my games look and run better than the versions released on a console, and I generally have a more enjoyable time because of it". There is nothing that anybody says outside of jokes that actually attacks console players like you seem to think PC players do. Some people will attack the hardware for limiting what games are able to do, which is a legitimate criticism - low RAM especially cuts out a lot of what is possible in games, and forces companies to spend lots of time and money making sure the game can actually run on a console.

yes there is something to be said in flexibility, but at the same time there is also something to be said for standardization, and having single benchmarks to target. then you have to consider when developing for the PC having not only multiple graphics, and processor capabilities for the end user, but also having to be able to implement additional settings (level of detail count, particle generator intensity, and even audio steaming) to allow the user to optimize for their setup; while on a console there is a single target to develop for, and little need to tinker past that unless you want to give the user preference options.

Each of those settings will exist in the game anyway as part of the engine. All that needs to be programmed in is a GUI to access these settings, and even then only a few options are added with many being simply left in a config file that the player can access and edit if they want.
With consoles, you probably have to tinker more TBH. You have to impose FPS caps, and toy put time and effort into memory management, figuring out a suitable FoV, making things not render when they're hidden by another object, then implementing tricks like having massive weapons to hide assets so that not as many need to be rendered. You need to work hard simply to have a game display on a console with modern graphics.

I have played games on the PC, and consoles, and your whole argument of "money they have invested into their consoles" I have actually invested about the same if not more on my gaming PC to keep up with "required" components for games then I have on buying a brand new console (pre price drop). So I would actually say that the reverse argument holds more water then yours.

This all depends on how intelligently you upgrade, where you live, the time that you do things, and an ungodly number of other factors. Neither argument truly holds water, as it all depends on the person's circumstances far too much.

then if you realize the funny part: when he is playing the game to test/demonstrate it on the videos he is not using a joystick and/or keyboard he is using a fucking 360 controller.

And your point?
So this person likes 360 controllers. Good for him. Know what though? This is where the PC hits one of its fortes. You can easily use a 360 controller, Joystick, M&KB, touchpad, touchscreen, handheld clicker or any other number of peripherals to control it, so long as the program supports it. Anything you want to use on a PC, you often can. There is nothing remotely hypocritical or ironic about using a controller for a PC - its just a control scheme you prefer.

 

[Hagi]

Hrm...

Seems to be a bit of a misconception in this thread that RAM is only used for graphics...

Sure, graphics take up a lot of memory. Especially since in most games the ratio of graphics to other data is huge.

On a Space Sim that ratio isn't quite as big though since there's relatively few graphics, most of space being kinda empty and all, and a huge amount of other data, simulating an entire universe and all.

If they're designing this game to be very light on loading screens then that means you can only swap a relatively small amount of data from hard disk to active memory at a time, meaning you'll have to have a lot of stuff ready in your active memory just in case the player needs it. You can't pop up a loading screen to get that data ready.

A PC with multiple gigs of RAM can easily do that without any problems. If this game is simulating a truly huge universe with a vast and complex economy and other systems then a console's RAM might actually fall short in smoothly running that simulation, even without any graphics. And they did say they wanted to be ambitious, so my guess is that it's not just the graphics that are going to need so much memory.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Sniped for space

You can infer all you want, I answered your question in general terms because I don't know the guy or the game enough to make any valid argument about them. I made my original statement based on the news story and what it indicated. I'm not going to be drawn into that argument.

I didn't say anything about console because it had nothing to do with my reasoning. You asked me to show why being a graphics whore or being a PC elitist is negative, not why developing for consoles is better. Making a positive statement about an alternative is not necessary to prove that a certain option is a bad one. PC elitism being bad can be argued regardless of whether or not developing on a console is good, bad, or indifferent.

Ah, so you admit you do care! Yes, I win! I win! I... wait what do I win? Nothing?! Ah, this internet is boring. Also, I find your comment about 'instant victory' kind of pathetic and sad. Anywho, I gotta go to bed and I don't want to get penalized for a mod coming in here and marking this as a flame war, so I'm signing off. If I respond again, it's not going to be for a while.

 

[grammarye]

Okay... if a developer puts too many resources into graphics he'll neglect the other parts of the game and as a result you will get a very pretty game that plays like E.T. combined with Superman 64. There you go, why too much focus on graphics is bad.

Why being a PC elitist is bad is because its a self imposed limitation on the functionality of your game. Different platforms are better options for different games. Cut the Rope would suck on a non-touchscreen platform. Being an elitist means the person has such an affinity for the thing that he'll/she'll likely pound a round peg into a square hole, as it were, when it comes to issues.

Your logic is entirely backwards, and demonstrates that you haven't worked on actual software development, or alternatively you're grossly misinterpreting Roberts' statement about hardware as to be about graphics specifically and only.

Development resources required are reduced when you have a platform that has oodles of RAM and heavy GPU availability and so on. The technical challenge today isn't making good games (and whilst your point about graphics not making a game is a valid one, there are terrible games for pretty much every environment, so it's something of a non-issue). It's making them run on a toaster so that no matter how low-end the hardware is (and that can also be a PC!), you the player still get a good experience. See above for a long list of compromises that low hardware budget forces on the developer.

That effort hits you more reliably when working with a console because you have a relatively poor hardware budget, but it's fixed & unchanging - nobody is going to have some wacky setup. You can reliably make sometimes bizarre optimisations that you know will carry over into launch & be safe regardless. The converse is also true - that because of that fixed hardware budget, your game cannot soar into wild unknown areas or take advantage of new features if they're present - new features that might well make the developer's life very easy & time to launch earlier (or more features). I've lost count of the number of times I've come across algorithms that go 'if X is available, do this, if not, do this very complex workaround that requires lots of extra testing'.

Consoles are different beasts to PCs. Roberts is making a perfectly valid point that you just can't do some stuff on them. That does not mean he is 'pound[ing] a round peg into a square hole' - quite the contrary - he's saying he's picking the platform that works for what he wants to achieve. That is not console hate. That is reality. It does not stop consoles having good games that do work on their hardware budget.

 

[Sunrider]

Is it me, or does this guy come off as a bit of a wanker?

It's just you, if you ask me.

OT: I honestly don't see what all the fuss is about. He's just stating how things are, and the fact is that gaming PCs are FAR ahead of consoles in terms of power, and it would limit what he wants to do with this game.
Please grow some thicker skin.

(I own all the current gen consoles, I've been a console- AND a PC user since the NES came out, so if you want to call me PC elitist, spare me. I love my consoles. I'm just not being silly.)

 

[DonTsetsi]

Why do so many people keep harping about the graphics? It's not about them. Gameplay can be hampered by low RAM. Of course you would be able to do a bare-bones Space Sim on a console, but they aren't doing that. Realistic movement is one of their biggest selling points and it would be very hard to do with the limited resources of a console. Another important selling point is the ability to go from space combat to the inside of a ship seamlessly, the game being an MMO and all, pausing it for boarding is not an option. This means that a lot of assets that are invisible from outside the ships have to be pre-loaded in memory. You can't cram so much into half a gig of shared memory.
A similar example would be Crysis, it ran on cheap laptops at low settings, but it couldn't run on low RAM consoles, because two of its main features were being able to interact with enemies from huge distances and not walking through a corridor the whole game. And it rarely exceeded 2 GB of RAM usage between the processor and video card.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

Holy dogshit. This thread devolved into a turdslinging fest, just cause this guy pointed out that consoles are old? Geez, what is wrong with you people?

OT: Seems like Space Sims are starting to become a 'thing' again. The more I hear about this game, the more I want it. (And the more I dread it's release since I know my current system won't be able to max it out... But I got plenty of time to upgrade.)

This looks like a game I won't want to miss out on. I hope he'll be able to deliver the experience he promises, because I'd love a badass Space Sim with equally badass graphics and physics.

I wonder if it'll be like Shores of Hazeron, in that you can go from standing on the surface of a planet, climb into your ship and manually ascend into space, fly across the galaxy, and descend into a different planet - Completely seamlessly with no cutscenes or loading points. That would be awesome.