Dreaming of a Home on a Planet Far Away…
As we all saw, with plenty of excitement and some sad disappointment, CitizenCon came and went. What we got was thirty awesome minutes of procedural planets v3.0, from ship, to ground, to vehicle, shootouts with sand people, jacking a hover bike, exploring the wrecked hulk of a Javelin, surviving a sandstorm and finally… Dune sand worm as icing on the cake! Unfortunately, what we didn’t see was the Squadron 42 first mission demo. Support systems weren’t behaving un-glitchy enough to unveil to the world and Chris had to make the hard decision to pull the plug. As sad as this was, it allowed them to finish the other demo and show us something amazing. A lesson of “trying to do too ambitious a show”? Most likely. Honestly, I don’t mind. I’m not even sure I want to see the first mission of Squadron 42 played through by anyone but myself. I learned over the years I enjoy surprises.
As a kid, I used to sneak downstairs and peek at my Christmas presents. Over the years, I got damned good at it. To prevent my little brother from telling on me, I invited him along. We trained sneaking down those steps, handling wrapped boxes without making a sound and sneaking peeks at what toys we got. We even began to find the “treasure trove” before Christmas. Hell, I played some of my Commodore 64 games for weeks before the big day. All these shenanigans though, and I realized I was getting bored of the actual day. Knowing what was coming spoiled the thrill of the reveal, and just like that, I decided I was going to stop. I would never intentionally sneak a peek at my Christmas presents again. I learned to value and love the act of surprise.
This is why I’m glad I didn’t get to see the Squadron 42 demo. I don’t want it spoiled for me when I play it through myself. What I did see in the presentation though, was something much more impressive… I saw the content creation editor for the planetary content. With these planets come near infinite real-estate to do whatever our imagination desires. One of those thing I hope to see are player bases, factories, shops, hanger, and org run bases and facilities for hundreds, or even thousands of players. With the creative placement of multiple pre-fabricated structures, whole cities could be built by the players and they still wouldn’t even account for even 1% of the surface area of one of a hundred plus worlds! It’s my hope, all this real-estate gets put to good use. Sure, mission points-of-interest are a nice thing, but to be a truly dynamic universe, I believe Star Citizen needs the ability for it’s own players to permanently alter the faces of the worlds in the game.
What’s this got to do, if anything with SOD? Structure defense. The ground will be just as important as the stars. Everyone in the org will need ground training. If there’s the possibility of a PVP aspect to any of this, base defense systems will have to be explored and exploited. When I first heard Star Citizen was exploring procedural generation technology, I never anticipated the ground game becoming such a huge part of gameplay. Personally, I can’t wait to give it a try, and between my excitement and my love for surprises, I’m stuck bouncing in the middle helping my personal hype train’s wheels going round and round. Maybe some of you are the same. Demonseed out!
