The crowdfunding thread

[John]

There is one week remaining in the Star Citizen funding drive, and new information is flowing out. Chris Roberts has a lengthy explanation posted on how instancing will work in multiplayer and single-player games. The system he describes should make it easy for friends to meet up and take on challenges. It will also allow players to determine if they face off against AI or human enemies. Very interesting stuff!

Stretch goals are getting ticked off, too. Every $100,000 adds another star system to the game. Bigger upcoming additions include new ship types, a smuggler base hidden in an asteroid belt, and cockpit decorations. At $4M, we'll get professional mod tools, plus a larger single-player campaign with more branching storylines. If this sounds enticing, click this link to get in on the action, but make sure to make your pledge before the 19th!

[John]

Star Citizen has passed $3.5M in funding! This milestone comes with three new development unlocks. There will be a 45th star system in the universe, and one more will be added (up to 50 total system) for every $100K of funding here on out. You will now be able to customize your cockpit with little knickknacks like bobbleheads, stuffed dinosaurs (a nod to Firefly?, and fuzzy dice. Cute.

But the real cool addition here is the new ship-to-ship boarding mechanic. That's right: Players will be able to board enemy ships (be they manned by AI or humans) and fight corridor to corridor for control! Here's a portion of the description of the system in action from today's announcement (hit the link for much greater detail):

Once a ship has successfully tractored in a target vessel, it will dock at a pre-determined location on the hull (ie, you will always dock at one of the same doors on the Constellation.) There will be a 30-second period where the attacking player cuts open the target’s door. The defender can use that time to set up to fire back. Think an interactive recreation of the opening scene of Star Wars, with the Rebels nervously waiting to defend the corvette from Stormtroopers.

Players will have access to a variety of upgrades to help/hinder boarding operations. Armored space suits, hand scanners, explosives, more powerful (or functionally different) weapons and so on will be available to players on both sides of the equations.

Defending players will have upgrade options that can help put the battle in their favor: a self destruct process, a dead man’s switch, automated miniguns they can position in the cockpit and so on. It’s going to be a challenge to get onboard a targeted ship successfully, one that you’ll need to work with your friends to accomplish.

The next (and perhaps final) funding tier is $4M. Here's what to expect if that total is hit:

• Free professional mod tools for players
• Melee & Heavy Weapons
• Zero-gravity Simulation
• Suit HUD Options
• Increased Customization
• Outside-the-ship combat (magnetic boots on a hull; think Moonraker)
• A new ship type
• Squadron 42 (Star Citizen's single-player component) will get a richer storyline and more branching missions
• Monthly development team webcasts

You have through Sunday the 18th to donate! Click here to make a pledge. Not only will you be securing yourself a copy of the game when development is complete, but you'll be helping it become bigger and better!

[Apollos]

I have to say that Star Citizen isn't necessarily my type of game, but the heavy sales job has got me interested I'll be following this one closely.

[John]

When it passed the $4.2M funding mark yesterday, Star Citizen became the highest-earning crowdfunded game of all time (topping Project Eternity, ironically). As I write this, there are 27 hours remaining in the campaign and Star Citizen is sitting at $4.65M. The surge in funding has unlocked all of the stretch goals listed in my previous post, and then some. Here is a rundown of recently unlocked stretch goals not previously listed:

• Three new ship types, including the Caterpillar and the Destroyer, the largest playable ship type in the game
• Extended hardcore flight sim control support (including multi-monitor support)
• A new base type (Vanduul Trading Post)
• A new alien race: the Kr'tak
• There are now a total of 61 star systems in the game

Things are really going to heat up in three hours, when the countdown to the last 24 hours in the campaign begins. Here are the details, and here is a quick summary:

We will be live-streaming the end of the campaign live from Cloud Imperium’s temporary offices in Austin, Texas! You’ll watch Chris and the team broadcast the final hours of the campaign telethon-style until this is all finally over. We’ll be answering fan questions, giving away prizes and generally having a great time… and since we’ll be in Austin we’ve arranged for some special guests from the old days of Origin and developing Wing Commander to stop by and swap war stories!

We’re also going to be offering several limited-time special-offer ship packages. We want to stress beforehand, though, that these are ONLY to support the game. Every single additional ship we offer for sale in the next 48 hours will never be sold for cash again… but they will be available through gameplay. If you decide to pick one up, it should be because you want to support Star Citizen and not because you’re worried it’s a ship you’ll never have otherwise. Check back soon to see the new ship options!

If you have been sitting on the fence, you're almost out of time. Get your pledge in before 2 p.m. ET on Monday!

[John]

Here is a super-early, pre-pre-Alpha Star Citizen video showing off the AI attacking and defending an enormous Bengal-class carrier. You'll note some bugs (texture issues and slow-moving laser blasts), but of course, this is all way early. It's just nice to see the game looking this awesome so far in advance of its anticipated late-2014 release.

[Steel Dragons]

I like the way thing look and have finally backed it

[John]

Star Citizen's funding campaign has concluded with a total of $6,259,387 pledged, a record for a crowdfunded game!

The pledges just kept rolling in before today's 2 p.m. ET deadline, and because of the generosity of almost 90,000 backers, we're going to see a fully maximized game that includes the following extra features in addition to all those previously listed:

• 100 star systems to explore, defend, and/or plunder
• New ship type: the Bengal-class carrier, now the ultimate largest playable ship in the game
• A new base type (alien derelicts)
• Full orchestral soundtrack for both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 (the single-player component of the game)
• A tablet companion app to track your inventory or commission, find missions, and get the galactic news feed
• Monthly town hall meetings with designer Chris Roberts
• Extra perks for Squadron 42:
  • Celebrity voice acting (including one veteran from the FMV Wind Commander games... Mark Hamill, maybe?)
  • 50 single-player missions
  • Backers will receive a free copy of Behind Enemy Lines, a 16-mission campaign expansion, upon its release

See today's "Thank You" from the team. Of note is that backers will be able to upgrade their pledges for up to a year at the current prices and will receive lifetime insurance on any ships they purchase.

What about pledges? Good news: those of you who got in on the ground floor are covered. Your ships have lifetime insurance policies and for the next year you will have the ability to purchase further tiers or upgrade existing ones at the initial prices. That’s not true of everyone else: if you want to back Star Citizen and participate in this amazing community, you still can… but it’s going to cost you a little extra as of now, and you aren’t going to have as many extras (no lifetime insurance, for example.)

$6.25M sounds like a lot, but it's a fraction of what most AAA studio-produced games cost to make, so it's understandable if there's some skepticism that Roberts can deliver on everything he's promising. Bear in mind that Roberts has an ace up his sleeve here. After he left the gaming biz, he became a Hollywood producer. When he was ready to return to game development, he convinced some of his contacts to invest in his project. They agreed on the condition that Roberts prove there was sufficient interest in his dream. Their threshold for proof was $2M. Obviously, that was shattered. These investors will be kicking in over $10M, so Roberts will have more to play with than just our donations.

Now it's time to sit back, relax, and wait for Thanksgiving, 2014, when we'll supposedly see both Star Citizen and Project Eternity!

[John]

Kickstarter recommendation: Limit Theory

Category: Computer game
Pledge goal: $50,000
Current pledges: $187,865
Current backers: 5,449

Minimum pledge required to receive game: $20

Pledge deadline: Dec. 22, 2012, 8:00 p.m. ET
Status: FUNDED

Limit Theory website

Limit Theory early gameplay preview video[/b]

Artist's Project Description: Space can be cold, dark, and lifeless. But not here. Here, in the many universes of Limit Theory, space is luminous, vibrant, and rich with opportunity. Step into an open-world, sandbox universe in which you can explore, trade, pirate, mine, escort, hunt, defend, build, and more.

In brief, Limit Theory is:

• An open-world space simulator / RPG
• A sandbox game: No story, no restrictions.
• Completely procedural: A completely new universe is only a button-click away.
• Infinite: The game universe has no boundary.
• Third-Person or First-Person: Command your ship from within or without.
• Deep and intelligent: Engage in far more than just combat or trading.
• Twitch-Based: Aim and fire weaponry directly, as you would in a shooter.
• Approachable: Intuitive controls and slick interfaces ensure that playing will never feel like a job.
• Strategic: Command an entire fleet when you amass enough cash to purchase more ships.
• Extensively-Customizable: Outfit your ship, fleet, and space stations with whatever equipment you choose.
• Single Player: A universe built just for you, that no one else will ever get to see (unless you choose to share it with them!)
• Beautiful and Atmospheric: Gaze in awe at a universe as diverse, vibrant, and uniquely-atmospheric as your dreams.

John says: Why am I pitching you on Limit Theory, an Elite-style game, instead of Elite: Dangerous, which is being pitched by the guy who actually co-created Elite? Part of it is because this co-creator, David Braben, has a history of failing to show something for his promises (Elite IV, now Elite: Dangerous, was originally to be released in 2008). Incidentally, over-promising and under-producing is why I'm not pitching Peter Molyneux's new Kickstarter, the Populus-inspired Project GODUS.

The other reason I'm pitching Limit Theory and not Elite: Dangerous is that Limit Theory actually has something to show for itself, and after just three months of coding by a one-man outfit! Josh Parnell studies computer graphics at Stanford and still finds time to spend 40 hours a week designing Limit Theory. He's pretty good at that graphics stuff, too; in fact, he won the grand prize at the 2012 Stanford Rendering competition by writing a GPU-accelerated renderer (using MC path tracing) from scratch. Take a look at his winning entry:

The kid has ambition in spade, but he's also promising a lot, and he's promising to deliver it in just 14 months. That seems a tall order, but to his credit, Josh seems pretty down-to-earth about things:

Limit Theory is a large undertaking..I won't deny it! I certainly wouldn't blame you for questioning whether a single young programmer could fulfill what may seem like a AAA-grade promise. But the key difference here is in assets. Limit Theory has no assets - they are procedurally generated - which means all I really have to worry about is algorithms and gameplay.

Since Limit Theory is totally procedural, I don't have to spend day after day modeling new ships or painting new background textures. When I spend a day working on a procedural algorithm, not only does it enhance the quality of one asset, it enhances the quality of EVERY asset of that kind in the game. This is really an incredibly efficient development process. The problem of building an entire game of assets becomes the problem of building an algorithm to construct a single type of asset. It's this sweeping simplification of game development that allows me to work quickly enough to build Limit Theory as a one man team.

Now, you might be skeptical. You might think that everything will look the same after a while, perhaps because you've seen poorly-done procedural content before. But that's not the way it has to be. That's not a fundamental property of PCG. Procedural algorithms can be as complex, diverse, and varied as the author allows them to be. Since they are at the heart of Limit Theory, you can rest assured that I will be spending countless hours advancing and tuning the algorithms to make sure that they produce high-quality yet diverse content.

So there you have it. At the risk of sounding ludicrous, my claim to you is that building Limit Theory is easy. I build an algorithm for planets, ships, background nebulae, asteroids, stations, etc...and then I build the gameplay. I recognize that the latter, in particular, is quite a complex task, which is why I have allotted over a year for it.

With procedural algorithms and an endless supply of coffee by my side, I will face the challenge of building Limit Theory, and I can't wait to show you the result :)

And once again, he actually has a fair bit to show for just three months of work. As he says, if he can get this far in three months, imagine what he can do with 14 more?

I admire people who have the guts to pursue dreams, even when those dreams seem unobtainable, and Josh strikes me as a "doer" who will make this work. I've dropped a $15 pledge on him, and I'll be watching his progress with interest. If things shape up well, that pledge may increase. If you like what you see here, consider making a pledge of your own!

[John]

Josh Parnell, developer of Limit Theory, has posted a new, very preliminary gameplay preview video. I have to say... for a game so early into its development, this looks simply amazing! All of this done by just one college student? Whoa. Josh does note a few issues that need ironing out:

• The background music is a work-in-progress. It's just an "idea" loop, not a fleshed-out composition. Still, I think you can get a sense of the kind of feeling that I'm going for with the LT soundtrack. Ambient, electronic, and minimalistic. I think that's the right way to explore space :)
• The cursor (the tiny white cross) is placeholder, and will be replaced with something more appealing
• There's no HUD yet. Sorry!
• At the very end of the video, you might notice that the explosion caused by the large ship's pulse hitting the small ship is a bit odd, and flies off at an alarming velocity. Indeed, I need to fix it, there's just a small mistake in calculating the explosion velocity. Sorry about that :)

You can still color me mighty impressed, and I'm not the only one. Limit Theory has almost met its goal of $50,000 in pledges just four days into its pledge drive. The $15 early-bird tier is already sold out, but keep an eye on that... sometimes people upgrade their pledge and an extra spot becomes available in the cheap tier. You can still get the game for a $20 pledge. I note that three individuals have made $1,000 pledges, so it's clear that there is a great deal of interest in what Josh is creating. I'm looking forward to the revelation of stretch goals beyond the $75K in-game ship/station editor.

[John]

Congratulations to Josh Parnell for his Limit Theory project meeting its funding goal in just five days! Josh has announced the second stretch goal, Mac/Linux support, will trigger at $100K. Looks like our Mac friends might have a chance to play this promising game! Finally, there is a Q&A with Josh over at Space Game Junkie. Here's a snippet:

Brian: Now tell us about the universe itself. Even though it’ll be procedurally generated, will it be comprised of the same races, factions and so on each time, and if so, how can the user interact with these groups, if at all? Can we take sides in a war, for example? Will the player be able to join a pirate faction, for example, or enlist in a trading guild?

Josh: I’ve still have a lot to work out with respect to race and faction details, but I can talk a bit about factions. Factions will be a large part of the social interaction system in Limit Theory. They will, like all other content in each universe, be procedurally generated. That means that you will indeed find a different set of factions vying for control of territories in different universes.

Factions will be one of the primary mechanisms for allowing players to form relationships with NPCs in the game. Joining a faction will result in a quick gain of favor with NPCs aligned with the faction, as well as a quick loss of favor with opponents. This opens up some interesting gameplay potential. For example, it’s entirely possible that you could get better deals on equipment and goods in a certain system by joining a certain faction, but doing so may come at the cost of being able to travel through another system safely, if the other system is controlled by an opposing faction. On the other hand, a player that prefers neutrality can stay out of faction interactions altogether, possibly avoiding conflict, but also not reaping the benefits of membership.

Brian: ...missions are one of my favorite things about open space games such as these. Could you tell us what kind of missions the player will be able to undertake?

Josh: I, too, love missions – and I’m particularly excited to see quality procedural missions. You can expect to see all the mission types that you’ve come to love (or hate?) in space sims – trade, escort, courier, bounty hunting, smuggling, and so on. In addition, I hope to introduce some mission types that are not commonplace in the genre, for example, surveying, spying, patrolling, and more!

My goal is for the missions to arise naturally from the AI in the universe. For example, an NPC decides that he wants to make a trade run between planets X and Y, but notices that security along the route has been dubious as of late. As such, he posts up a request to hire an escort at planet X to help him get to planet Y. If you happen to land on planet X in the interim, you’ll have the opportunity to take the mission. Or, perhaps a faction notices that too many traders are getting attacked in one of the systems they hold. The faction might post up a patrol job on a space station in the dangerous system, in an effort to improve security so as to not lose trade business.

To me, this system makes the missions feel a lot more real and meaningful – by accepting a mission, you are actually interacting with the universe, facilitating or impacting it in a very real way.

[John]

First, a few Limit Theory updates:

• The first stretch goal - the in-game ship and space station editor - was reached when funding passed $75K. Check out a video of the editor in action. I keep saying this, but... impressive!
• As we rapidly close in on the second stretch goal (Mac/Linux support @ $100K), the third stretch goal has now been announced. At $133K, you will gain the ability to own planets. Heck, I don't even own an iPad yet.
• Limit Theory designer Josh Parnell did an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Second, I found this article on the statistics behind successful and unsuccessful Kickstarter campaigns very enlightening. One big takeaway is that if you want to get funded, it pays to build up a social network before your Kickstarter campaign goes live. One of the findings was, "...for every order of magnitude increase in Facebook friends: from 10 to 100 and from 100 to 1,000, the chance of a project succeeding increases hugely." Is also seems that shorter campaigns with more modest goals do better. The article ends with an enlightening infographic that I include below, but hit the link for the full-size version:

[John]

Limit Theory has passed the $100K funding mark, which means we will see Mac and Linux versions. Up next is planetary ownership at $133K and faction creation and ownership at $167K. The latter sounds particularly exciting, especially after you read Josh's latest update on how NPCs interact with you.

You can do favors for NPCs to gain favor with them, which is cool but nothing we haven't seen before in this kind of game. However, Limit Theory also turns this around and lets you ask NPCs for favors. It's called the "proposal system." Josh offers an explanation and an example of how it could work in actual gameplay:

A proposal consists of some number of conditions and some number of rewards. A condition simply stipulates something that must be achieved in order for the proposal to be considered complete. For example, a condition might be to destroy a certain target, acquire a certain quantity of a certain good, report scanner details on a certain location, or defend a target for some amount of time. Rewards indicate what happens in the event of the fulfillment of a proposal. Of course, the most common reward is a transfer of credits. Other rewards, however, can include transferal of cargo, information, or even property such as ships, stations, or planetary buildings...

Suppose you’re hauling some valuable goods through a system with which you’re rather unfamiliar. You’ve just come from a station where you met a few freelancers and, for whatever reason, decided to add them to your contact list. While traversing this unfamiliar system, you come under attack by a small squadron of pirates. Unfortunately, your ship isn’t adequately equipped to deal with them, and the pirates quickly take out your weapons and main engines. In the meantime, however, you’re able to pull up the contact interface and shoot off a message to the freelancers that you met on the station. You offer a hefty lump of credits in return for them escorting your ship for some duration. Shortly thereafter, you receive confirmation that they've accepted and are headed to your coordinates.

The pirate leader hails you and, not surprisingly, demands a cargo drop. You’re in no position to refuse, so you open your inventory and start releasing cargo. Naturally, you take your sweet time doing so. The pirates start tractoring the goods. Just as they’re finishing up, however, the freelancers pop out of a nearby acceleration lane. Just in the nick of time!!! They immediately identify the pirates as hostile, and the fight begins. The seasoned professionals have no problem converting the pirate ships into large plumes of debris. In the end, you lost some of your cargo in the explosions…but you made it out with your life, and many of the goods were salvageable. Perhaps more importantly, you made some new friends!

If that's not enough to entice you, maybe this lengthy article on Limit Theory will do it for you. I'm particularly excited to hear Josh talk about his passion for the exploration side of the game:

Exploration is a huge part of the game, and I’m excited to see it implemented as a real, playable career rather than the usual cool-but-not-functional role that it tends to take in space games. One of the critical components of exploration in Limit Theory is the sensor system. Players can purchase and outfit their ships with sensor equipment of varying grades, which enable the player to record ‘snapshots’ of various game entities.

Sensor logs can have inherent value based on the contents. For example, a log that records the location of a yet-undiscovered wormhole holds a great deal of value, as does a log of a particularly ore-rich asteroid. Through the use of this sensor log system, the player can convert discoveries into tradable commodities. The faction in control of the system containing the undiscovered wormhole, for example, may be willing to pay top-dollar to purchase the information.

Two weeks left for you to get in on this exciting one-man show!

[John]

Congratulations to Josh Parnell for his project, Limit Theory, completing its successful Kickstarter campaign! Josh set a $50,000 goal and backers blew that out of the water, supporting this one-man show to the tune of $187,865. You can understand the enthusiasm when you see what Josh has accomplished in so short a time (and because Josh has been so diligent about posting updates and tech demos, you really can see the evolution of the game).

Crowdfunding projects are always a bit of a gamble for backers because you never know what (if anything) you're going to get for your pledge. In this case, I think backers are going to come away very satisfied. Sometimes you just get that feeling. Limit Theory has that feeling. And I'll say the same about Mr. Parnell: I sense that this kid has the ambition and talent to make his name known.

Of course, we have another year before we can judge the fruit of Josh's labor, so now we wait (im)patiently.

[Neil Thomas]

Next I will be playing too many space sims for my own good. Star Citizen, Limited Theory. xD

[John]

I thought I was done talking your ear off about Limit Theory and its creator, Josh Parnell, but I just had to share this last development with you. People talk about chasing dreams, but how many actually do? There's always risk involved. Some dream chases entail more risk than others. For instance, would you take an indefinite leave of absence from your studies at prestigious Stanford University in hopes that your one-man video game that's in its early stages of development will launch you to fame and fortune? Well, that's just what Mr. Parnell is doing:

When I embarked on this project, I told you all that I would be working 40 hours a week on Limit Theory while continuing my studies at school. As LT continued to gain momentum, I began to realize that, although I might could pull it off in parallel with my studies, I simply can't take the risk and jeopardize the product that you all have given so much support for. To that end, a few weeks ago, towards the end of my fall quarter at Stanford, I arranged to have my official leave of absence begin immediately.

What this means is that I won't be going back to school until the game is released. Now, for those of you who might be concerned about my studies, rest assured, this is not the same as dropping out! In fact, Stanford makes it incredibly easy to put your studies on hold for a few years, because it's a rather common thing to do around Silicon Valley. And that's what I'm doing, but I'll be going back as soon as I finish and release Limit Theory.

More importantly, what this means is that the intense development of Limit Theory has already begun! With over a year of nothing but LT to work on, I'm confident that I can deliver every bit of the vision that I pitched to you all. As you can see, I'm already tucked cozily into my coding cave, and won't come out until I have the game in hand:

Best of luck to Josh! I find myself inspired by the courage he is displaying by striving to turn a dream into an actual product.