Gather Your Party

Chris Roberts is looking to bring Space Sims back to the PC gaming community. His new series, named Star Citizen, is promised to be a game by PC gamers, for PC gamers that includes higher poly-counts than what we see from console ports these days, as well as much more expansive environments. From the video on the front page of the games website I’m seeing a game that is what I wanted EvE Online to be. A massive space sim with enormous ships that would give me a ton of freedom. Unfortunately, in EvE you are confined to your ship, and recently to your dock. In Star Citizen, however, the video shows you moving about a fully functional Space Cruiser that houses your fighter. There are spaces beyond the flight deck or docking bay, and while Chris didn’t explore them in the video, we were shown that they at least exist.

This game also looks absolutely beautiful. The opening to the video promises a game that will use PCs to their full potential, and then proceeds to show the detail already achieved.

Most current gen “AAA” games have around 10,000 polygons for a character and 30,000 or so for a vehicle. In Star Citizen, the characters are detailed at 100,000 polygons, the fighter at 300,000 and the Space Carrier 7 million! This allows unparalleled detail, making the visuals more immersive than has ever been achieved before.

These are not wild claims either, he already has video to back up this statement. I can’t speculate on the required specs to run this game, but I can imagine they are pretty steep.

Along with the visual detail, the game also boasts a dynamic ship navigation system. In the video he demonstrates how everything on the ship that should move to make your commands happen does. He also describes how this affects combat. The game takes your input and feeds it to the computer, which calculates the trajectories and vectors necessary to make this happen, and then the ship reacts and does what it can to make this happen as fast as possible. In combat your systems could be damaged, however, and this is also included in the dynamic navigation. If one of your engines is damaged, then you may have trouble turning in one direction or another, the same with the other systems on board your vessel. Once again, this isn’t just some wild claim he’s making either, he actually has video to back up the statement.

Another thing that has me excited is the support for an Oculus Rift, along with other high end gaming peripherals associated with other sims like rudder paddles and flight chairs. Everything will be supported, from console controllers to keyboard and mouse to the most advanced peripherals out there. The idea of having that Oculus Rift on while flying around in space is pretty exciting.

First time I thought VR was a good idea for a game

Beyond these main reasons there is a lot more to look through on the site. Just to name a few, the universe is dynamic, and constantly changing, the game will be updated bi-weekly, offline single player, dynamic economy, and even more. I’m pretty skeptical about the whole thing, there are a lot of big promises being made, but from what I’ve seen (which is a nice change from a crowd funded game pitch) this game is very possible, and is already on its way.