I was wondering what happened to wing commander because i remember Wing Commander Prophecy being really good as a kid. Well it turns out the WC guy is the Star Citizen guy, so I guess they shelved their successful IP so he could grift kickstarter for 20 years
Squadron 42 coming out next year is supposed to be a “spiritual successor” to wing commander, made by the same guy.
It’s actually Star Citizen that is struggling to be born because the WC guy wants to make another WC lol he’s using the Star Citizen funds and personnel to make SQ42 which is hindering production of SC, but they’re pretty much done with SQ42 now, just polishing before next years release so here’s to hoping it’s good!
is it 2014 again?
They’ve been saying that for years lol
They only said it once in 2014, I remember being like “fuck 2 years is a long wait!”
… little did I know lol
After that though they never promised a date, it was always just “in production.” I’ve spent entirely way too much time following the SC project lol
“Star Citizen will release in 2016, about 2 years after S42” - Chris Roberts, 2012.
Everything this guy touches has been perpetually “coming out next year” for a decade and to date they’re all half-games at best, and slot machines/grifter-mobiles at worst
SQ42 was the original pitch, with the MMO stuff as a stretch. Like it was something along the lines of SC:SQ42 and then a Star Citizen Online to accompany it, but the latter turned into a cash cow the same way GTAO turned into a cash cow and killed the GTAV expansion/DLC plans (which IIRC were repurposed piecemeal into GTAO updates).
The big problem is that they’re using a dogshit engine they had to build an entire engineering team to try to rebuild from the ground up to actually work, they’re still trying to do system-scaled world spaces with all the math problems that causes the physics engine (instead of splitting it up into properly sized instances that don’t have these problems and faking the scale with their fast travel mode like Elite: Dangerous does), they’re still trying to do overly simulationist handling of how everything moves and handles (instead of just faking it like every other game in history), they don’t have any actual game design vision for how systems should work apart from an ever shifting set of goals that swing back and forth between hyper-simulationist fetishism and somebody’s attempt to actually make workable gameplay, and they have a ludicrously dysfunctional internal culture that’s just easily distracted by anything and everything other than trying to actually make the busted core designs actually work.
Like they’re struggling with the most basic game dev elements in a way that says the actual devs are being asked to do impossible things wrong and invent an all new wheel to do it instead of using established, correct solutions or good-enough replacements until someone finally manages to sneak in actual gameplay as a “placeholder system until the real thing is ready” and it sticks forever because the “real” solution is never going to happen.