Ohayo INNies!

Gamescom 2016 is happening and here is our summary of the event.

This page will contain our latest Gamescom coverage, with information that gets dropped during the streams from the show floor. We will also include links to Articles about Gamescom, from our liveblog of the Friday event, to impressions from our reporter on the show floor, Des Owl.

Complete Coverage

By NYXT, Shiver, Erris, CanadianSyrup, Nehkara, Des Owl

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)

We’ll update this with the key points at the end of each day.

Day 1

[Will there be DirectX 12 or Vulkan support?] They are investigating future-proofing with DirectX and Vulkan – undecided whether they will go with one or both.

[Will we see anything regarding Star Marine?] They will not be showcasing Star Marine during the five-days stream on the showfloor. It is on track for 2.6. This doesn’t rule out it appearing on the Friday night party.

Disco has just shown off the PC Guru magazine front cover that has a photo of Mark Hamill in-game on it.

The Starmap is NOT complete. There are systems that have not been discovered and are not on the Starmap.

Day 2

Disco is teasing that he saw something amazing for the presentation and that we’ve never seen him this happy.

Day 3

Old description (may no longer be entirely accurate): A figurative tough nut to crack, the Terrapin is the most heavily armored of the base-priced spacecraft on the market. Originally designed for long-range survey missions in dangerous star systems, the Terrapin’s design philosophy involves wrapping the ship in additional layers of armor and reserving a significant amount of engine power to host the largest shield generator in its class. Terrapins are popular among private miners, with an equipment mount and a small storage hold that can be converted for valuable minerals.

Gamescom Presentation

Dessicant Owl was present at the event and his personal summary of it and an interview with Tom Hennessey can be found here

Star Citizen Alpha 2.5.0 will have another PTU before it goes live. Could be tonight, but definitely next week.

Star Citizen Alpha 2.6 will feature Star Marine, the long awaited FPS combat arena that allows players to get into action quickly without worrying about losing their stuff. It will also feature two flyable ships: Aegis Vanguard Hoplite, and the The Drake Herald. Arena Commander is getting some love with 2.6 that will feature optimisations, new additions, and tweaks to the game modes to make them more enjoyable and fluid.

Star Citizen Alpha 2.7’s name is no more and has been renamed Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 due to the features it holds. The Stanton system comes online with Hurston, Microtech, Crusader, Delamare, Arc Corp, a dozen moons and over 30 space stations to explore. Procedural Planet tech with seamless Space to ground transitions(What was shown in the demo was only v1.0 and v2.0 will be in SC Alpha 3.0 Basic professions become a reality with Trading, Cargo Transport, Piracy, Mercenary, Bounty Hunting. New technologies come online such as: Item 2.0, StarNetwork 1.0, Subsumption 1.0, Mission 1.0. Interaction system will replace the USE button and allow you to do different actions with the same object, Grabby hands also will be in.

They performed a live demo of Star Alpha 3.0 showing space combat, ground combat, space to ground transitions, cargo system, interaction system, mission system, and new sounds and effects. During the demo we saw the Drake Dragonfly and Ursa rover in action and fighting. Dragonfly WILL fit inside the Freelancer, very tight fit though.



Day 4

During the Gamescom showfloor presentation today, Chris Roberts sat down with Bad News Baron and Captain Richard, here are INN’s key points:

They only added the Dragonfly in the box in the last few days he was in Wilmslow – before this it was always sitting in the cargo area.

The engine team in Frankfurt are amazing – in the editor, the planet alone renders at 150+ frames per second.

At Citizencon, the planets will have vegetation, oceans – more like Crysis – it will look like a skybox but it will be real.

[What is the ring that you pass through to land on Delamar?] It was a lower entry space station – they are still working on the ideas for 3.0 layouts – but on most planets with landing areas like Delamar or ArcCorp they will be used for quantum drive targets.

On rocky planets like Delamar they don’t care where you land but in ArcCorp which is mostly covered in city – they don’t want you flying the ship into things – it’ll be an entrance to a flight tunnel – but you still have full control of the ship in the tunnel.

If you deviate from the flight tunnel then the ship will automatically return to the tunnel.

Many planets and areas won’t have limits but some will to make it fun for everyone.

Not all the areas are in right now – there is a large team working hard to make them now.

In 3.0 there will be more duplication of modular space stations – they are working on a modular space station building set.

In a fully realised system like Stanton you should be able to spend hundreds of hours – for a normal game that’s a lot.

Quantum travel is at 0.2c so the systems are scaled down for fun reasons – the tech can handle 1:1 scale but the travel times become too long.

Systems are 1:10 distance between planets because it felt right about time investment with travelling.

Planets are 1:4 or 1:6 for the same reason – time to travel and get down from orbit.

With those scales, it takes 40 mins in quantum travel to travel from one end of the system to the other.

In the new item systems there are things that require consumable items – this provides things to do for people in the ships.

After 3.0 there will be mining, search and rescue and salvage. Mining and salvage go together – collecting resources – that is the next tier of stuff in 3.1, etc.

[Will Jobwell come in these updates too?] Jobwell will be. It’s one of the simpler things to do – essentially a mission board. The beginnings of the Jobwell will be in there.

Authored missions were shown in the demo, in each location there will be shady (or not shady) characters where you get higher-level, more constructed missions.

When Chris finished SQ42 shooting they shot a bunch of PU footage – there was lots shot that we didn’t see. More 3.0 stuff will be shot in a month or so.

What we saw was shot on July 21st – it was turned around really quickly, two or three works.

Age and wear is a component of all items, as you wear something from a long time it will deteriorate and need maintenance.

Like in real life, if you have a ship you need to maintain it. Wear will cause malfunction – to break or misfire. Age and wear can be mitigated by maintenance.

The same applies to characters – they will age, you will see yourself get older.

[Does Austin have the ability to do motion capture?] Not currently, the equipment was shipped to the UK and used when shooting in the Imaginarium – they didn’t use the Imaginarium equipment.

They have the stage in Los Angeles which will be set up for motion capture stuff and they will have smaller motion capture sets that will be set up in each studio.

If everything goes well then he wants constant content – new mechanics, enhanced mechanics, new narrative story once a year, new missions, new ships.

Next episode of SQ42 will happen probably two years after Ep1 will come out because they are such large experiences.

If someone plays it they won’t feel cheated.

You can watch the full clip here.

Day 5

Crash Academy were able to get a quick interview with Chris Roberts the day after below is our summary of the interview

They are discussing the pricing of what ships will be in game at the moment.

Chris compares how much a real life gun, jet or aircraft carrier would cost from hundreds to billions of dollars. Chris expects there to be more disparity between ships in game. As you expand your crew in the game you are able to get better paying jobs, which will allow you to get bigger stuff.

Bigger things will cost more to maintain

The Constellation for example could cost a lot more in game with just credits than it currently sells for in the pledge store.

A large amount of your interaction will involve NPCs due to the expected high AI to player population

The target being 90% of the population is AI the other 10% are players

AI will be battling AI regardless of player interaction

There will be areas in space setup where players can attack each other without repercussion though you may still gain a criminal rating or bounty which another player could claim

There will be areas of space where PvP can happen but if it does you will probably be taken out fairly swiftly

Conversely there will be areas that are entirely unmonitored and be a free for all

There may still be a slider implemented for in terms of being attacked by an interdictor for example and it being a player or NPC character

VOIP status?

Check at Citizencon

2.6 will not include SATA ball in the first release

It’s more about the flow of combat, the FPS level has been refined

SATA ball will release in a later patch

Any idea which star system will be next?

Terra to come at some point but unsure about what system will come next.

They are currently working on different architecture sets that they can use in different locations.

It would be logical to assume they would work on the systems that you can jump to from Stanton next

Source

credit goes to Crash Academy