Star Citizen boss: it's the 'best damn everything sim'

Chris Roberts says Star Citizen isn't just the 'best damn space sim' anymore, but the 'best damn everything sim'

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We all know Chris Roberts can say some pretty crazy things, where during my exclusive interview with him at PAX Australia 2014, Roberts said "I don't care about consoles" when it came to Star Citizen.

The guys over at Gamers Nexus recently visited the CIG offices, talking with Roberts where he said: "Right. It's not even 'best damn space sim' anymore, it's 'best damn everything sim.' Especially with the way the procedural planets [...] we were able to do that with everyone's support, which allowed us to open up the Frankfurt office and hire up people that are incredibly talented".

He continued: "That's the iterative way that Star Citizen works, because I wasn't thinking we were going to be able to do what we are going to be able to do now, but the additional play possibilities that come with it and what players will be able to do by themselves, it's really exciting. You've opened up a much bigger palette of things you can do because you have planetary locations, you can do things, recover things, rescue people, create your own little place - whatever you want to do.

"Whereas before, we were more limited to space and landing areas that were just a certain area, so it's - from a game designer standpoint, someone making games - it's super, super, super exciting, because it means the world is going to feel bigger and more alive".

The gift keeps on giving, with Gamers Nexus talking to Roberts about the weather systems in Star Citizen, as well as the solar positioning changes in the game. Roberts continued: "A visual FX artist could create a flow map for clouds, and it would look pretty cool and everything, but then you'd have to be creating flow maps for every single planet you do".

Star Citizen boss: it's the 'best damn everything sim' | TweakTown.com

"Whereas this way, if they create the planet and the biomes [go], 'OK, this is a hot area, this is a cold area,' and then the simulation just simulates the wind and weather patterns, which would generate the cloud patterns, then you just don't have to do anything. It takes more work to do that upfront, but longer term [the weather system] allows for a greater range of gameplay and fidelity, and also less work needed down the road".

Roberts added: "A massive change we did which people may not think about is that - every 3D engine I know moves the sun. So basically, the sun moves. Well, the sun doesn't really move in our solar system - it stays in the middle and we move around it. It was a massive change in the engine, where the sun is fixed in place, and so it depends on where you are relative to the sun, [that's] where the lighting is. It's not that the sun's moving, you move".

"That's a fairly fundamental, base rendering and shading change. So that was an example of something that we had to do because of what we're doing with our star systems. Night and day cycles on a planet for us will not be because the sun's moving, it'll be because the planet's rotating on its axis. [The system] will also be able to rotate the planet around the sun."

Check out the entire article at Gamers Nexus.

NEWS SOURCE:gamersnexus.net

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

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