Chris Roberts' upcoming single player magnum opus, Squadron 42, now has a Steam page, the company's focus on optimization will allow the game to run on early 2010s era CPUs such as AMD Bulldozer and I
Minimum Requirements:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 11
Processor: Quad Core CPU - Intel: i7 (Sandy Bridge or later), AMD: Bulldozer or later
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 11.1 compatible Graphics Card with 8 GB VRAM
DirectX: Version 12
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 150 GB available space
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4045720/Squadron_42/Open linkView original on piefed.world
84 replies
i should fucking hope so, those were state of the art when they started development.
I'm not sure you could get an 8GB GPU in 2012 - could you? And 16GB of RAM wasn't really a consideration for most.
You're correct. back then the standard was still 2GB with some cards offering 3 or 4 GB. 2014 the first 8GB was released, but that was one board manufacturer going beyond the chip manufacturer specifications. Another 2 years later, the RX 480 and GTX 1070 came out with 8GB.
Sapphire 290X VaporX 8GB
I have one :)
no, i was mostly talking cpus.
For sure. And while the CPU comment is valid (and funny), I'm suggesting that it's also being carried by required minimum hardware that didn't even exist during that CPU's production run.
Yeah, I believe this Chris Roberts guy, he seems to be very trustworthy.
Yeah, fucking what?
Star Citizen?
Optimized?
Its notoriously a horrifically buggy and unoptimized branch of literally the Crysis engine which was famously memed into oblivion as being quite hardware intensive.
... on the very hardware specifically mentioned.
That's made basically no progress in terms of optimization for about a decade now.
This is delusional.
Like did nobody see the recent 'hey guys this is our dev branch you can see how much more optimized it is - woops its buggy laggy and crashes all the time' live stream?
You don't get it. It wasn't buggy. Sure, they delayed the game again, but that was totally because of GTA6. Trust
this isnt star citizen the multiplayer game but the single player story. no network code. star citizen has been more if a test bed fir thus game
Also, Windows 11 minimum. On a Bulldozer. That doesn't sound quite right.
It’s not optimization if you just never upgraded the hardware you started production on
Idk man...Star Citizen is a famous resource hog.. and i dont think they reinvent the wheel with SQ42
Last time they had a free weekend and I checked it out, the game still ran like doodoo on my machine built in 2016.
I looked it up and I backed this thing in October of 2012. I've played 0 minutes of this game. Talk about return on investment.
For him it seems fine 😁
Oops, same, I paid 37 dollars back in 2012. I did NOT remember this at all, though I occasionally watched news about Star Citizen, thinking what idiots would buy the game lol
That was star citizen, the mmo, this is squadron 42, the single player game
Squadron 42 is included in whatever I backed.
I'm not believing it's coming until it's out. It's been too long and Roberts gaslights people every few years to keep the money flowing.
I really don't think this is ever going to release.
Even as someone who is legitimately excited for this game to come out, this reaction is so completely justified. CIG have only themselves to blame for all the skepticism at this point.
Of course, they're also continuing to make money hand over fist, so I guess they don't really care...
Can't say for certain, but I think voice acting contracts with famed actors were already announced. So the money has likely already been sent out and something will be released, one way or another.
It would be incredible if they're able to pull that off.
I hate the trend of just pushing more and more graphics through up-scaling technologies. My electricity bill isn't too happy either.
Considering the game still requires a minimum of 16gb of memory and an 8gb graphics card I wouldn't say it's not pushing more and more graphics. All that the specs imply is that the bottleneck will be the GPU.
Funny enough in SC its definitely the CPU in many cases
That makes sense. If they set up the pipeline for Star Citizen, then cut out all of the processing needed for networking, then you end up with a lot of headroom on the CPU. However, some of this will obviously be consumed by AI (as in video game AI).
I imagine the 100+ fps crowd will complain that the game's hard.
i imagine the 10fps crowd to be quite mad as well
Minimum 8gb vram is not 2010 level...
Yeah at the time I had a Radeon HD 5850, which I think was a decent price-value balance, and that had 1GB.
I'm sure you could fit 150GB of uncompressed assets on a CD though right?
(Hmm, I do not understand what the comment meant to say. The game is not coming out in 2010.)Edit: Never mind, I missed that in the long title of the post.
Considering the persistance and severity of bugs in Star Citizen I would expect this one to be delayed about 5 more years. There is no way they get this out the door in a working condition any time soon.
They let around 100 people play the game throughout the weekend.
All reviews where very favorable.
So,.I think sq42 is pretty close to release
Just a bit more polishing everything is basically ready any day now trust
A list of things that will happen before this game actually comes out:
Plot twist: Crackhappy converted after bitch ex wife and is now happily married to his husband
Considering how bad his financial management is i doubt he has money left to finish his "magnum opus".
Game will probably cost 100$ for base edition and 500$ for day one dlc and 50000$ for ultimate edition and in game store of course.
There are so many things to actually criticize CIG for that it seems weird to come up with something like this out of nowhere. When they were last selling SQ42 as a standalone it was $40. Despite all of the entirely justified memes about expensive ships you can still buy the complete Star Citizen game for $45 and unlock all those ships in game. While CIG have zero problem shilling $5000 ship packages to overly eager whales, they've always kept their base asking price impressively low.
They are getting more money each year...
For background I've been a backer of Star Citizen since 2018, and am currently Concierge level.
Since CIG did the gameplay Livestream (the one where Ollie made his debut with the company), I'm not holding my breath with SQ42. I know, 2 different games, but if that was the best case scenario showcasing Star Citizen, then how does SQ42 look?
Here's hoping it turns out to be an amazing game and a true spiritual successor to the Wing Commander series though!
The people that were allowed to play the game were very happy with it this weekend...better than anticipated actually.
Oh cool!!
I'm more than happy to be completely proven wrong by CIG! So it's good to hear there's positive feedback! Thanks
In what way? Genuinely curious? What was the expectation and why was it overcome?
Just go to Youtube and find the latest Squadron 42 videos.
Basically, great story, compat and overall very playable game.
Allegedly the new trailer on Steam only shows actually in-game graphics.
Mind you that properly means a beefy CPU and a 5090 but nevertheless
So you've played it?
How can you trust PR contractor output? This is not even a Star Citizen thing, one does not take advertisement and press releases literally.
I think it will start and "run" but won't be playable...
It will run surprisingly well.
Like Cyberpunk 2077 on the PS4.
"Focus on optimization" = normal people can not get close to affording shit beyond their existing 10 year old hardware.
Q2 2027? So they're finally admitting it won't be this year. Or 2016. Probably not next year either.
Holy shit finally. I was one of those idiots who pledged $40 way, way back when Star Citizen was first announced, solely because I wanted Squadron 42. I've maybe logged into Star Citizen twice.
Will be extremely surprised if there's a playable game next year but I'm into it.
Me too, though I was dumb and also bought a ship in one of the first ship sales. I kinda wanna load it back up and see what it looks like now
Yeah, you'll find a person who runs Bulldozer with a 8GB GPU. /s
I am actually a big fan of Chris Roberts' Wing Commander movie. Freddie Prinze Jr., Matthew Lillard, Saffron Burrows :) ; trash sci-fi, the space bulldozer, weird cat aliens, hiding your spaceship in an asteroid while getting hit by WW2 era anti-submarine bombs, this is top class stuff if you are a connoisseur of sci-fi b-movies.
I still remember catching the movie on TV (I wonder why it was available on TV even in my country so close to the release), I tuned in during the scene in the early part of the movie where they were flying through some gravitational bla bla to get on the Tiger Claw. Fun times.
Unfortunately PR contractors report that just the intro is 5 hours of cutscenes. I don't know if I will have the patience to watch 50 hours of cutscenes even in second monitor mode. 50 hours of scifi b-movie trash in video game cutscene form is a whole different proposition from 2 hours of laughs.
I honestly wouldn't mind if investor types were duped into giving Chris Roberts money for a Wing Commander II movie. I would even go to the cinema to watch it.
I see you're not familiar with the Hideo Kojima method of storytelling. He's still got the Guinness Record for it.
My goodness
The most common way to get a Guinness record is to do something so stupid nobody else has done it before and nobody else will try to beat it. I think it applies here.
Also for most people it involves paying a very substantial amount to Guinness. They sell ego trips on one end and books on the other.
You've clearly never played a Kojima game, long cutscenes are just Kojima's style.
Very little, but I've played through Twin Snakes, it certainly doesn't go anywhere near that length for cut scenes.
Not saying Kojima didn't enjoy making that, just that there's a reason nobody is disputing that record.
I dunno - Wing Comander III and IV with Mark Hammill, Malcolm McDowell, John Rhys-Davies - that's a top (bottom?) tier trash sci-fi cast.
I preferred them to the movie even just as a movie - well the story was probably worse, but at least you got to fly space ships in the gaps, and that was the first time I'd seen erm ... "heavyset" middle-aged luke skywalker
These two were how i revised for my school exams - without those, i dunno, I might have had to revise.
Thats not what they reported.. they said its a lot of things to do and people did play at different speeds.
Which means you can influence how the game plays out
50 hours of b-movie cut scenes it just every AAA game these days. Regardless of what some people really want to believe, no games are ever really on par with actual A-list cinema. That's not to say no game has a good story. Being interactive provides cover for a lot of mediocre storytelling, but the reality of the situation is that actual Hollywood grade production, direction and writing simply isn't making its way into game development. This may change as gaming becomes bigger than cinema, but I still thing the medium presents a lot of challenges.
Some games beat out the vast majority of Hollywood. A small selection (with a focus on more indie titles, because that's I play):
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream Citizen Sleeper I (and to a lesser extent II, albeit if II was released first it would beat I) Lone Survivor Cloudpunk Don't Escape Consortium Age of Decadence Roadwarden
So 600 years into the future and the Earth's army sounds exactly like the US Army of today, but looks a lot whiter? wow there's been some ethnic cleansing in this Empire
Yes, I think it would be way more fun to play if they spoke some language I don't understand or at least said "frak" a lot.
The actual setting is much more nuanced than what you're getting from the trailers.
The UEE (the guys you're signing up with) was, until quite recently, fully the villains of the setting. A fascist dictatorship under the rule of generations of mad emperors. We straight up invaded and genocided other species.
The present day of Star Citizen is exploring what that world looks like after the revolution that restores democracy but ultimately fails to truly address the rot that created that dictatorship in the first place. The "democratic" UEE still has serious problems with alien rights, kowtows to corporate power, and is in a constant internal push-pull over security vs freedom.
Literally one of the main reasons to join the military is to earn full citizenship, a la Starship Troopers.
I feel like you're misreading what I wrote if that's your takeaway.
Ignoring the political context (which I actually agree with), Roberts has always had those pompous militaristic themes in a space sci-fi setting posture. It's almost what makes Wing Commander the movie so good (it's so bad that it's fun sense).
Chris was forced to make the first three Wing Commander games that way. His original pitch was much darker, explored the idea that the Kilrathi had legitimate reasons to be fighting, and basically ended with you doing war crimes.
Wing Commander 4 was much closer to his original vision, and involves you going rogue against the Earth Navy after learning that the conflict you're in was started by a false flag operation.
Things only get worse once you flip sides and start digging into the truth on the frontier.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler The villain has his own Gestapo in unmarked fighters who are live testing a eugenics bomb on fringe worlds and were the ones behind the false flag op. The GenSelect bombs are designed to purge weaker genes and ensure mankind has a standing army of “warriors” who will be ready to face future enemies. His plan was to reveal the Gestapo as heroes after being appointed to the head of the fleet by the United Nations equivalent.
Your counter play is to use a stolen stealth fighter to break into the vote on declaring war. The final boss is saying the right things to not get kicked out of the room and turn the crowd by revealing the baddy has gone full fascist.
https://youtu.be/XFcLRYYtHgA :::
There’s a reason why he got the initial backing that he did. Unfortunately the side of Roberts that the fans had minimal exposure to was his penchant for development hell. (see: development history of Freelancer)
Star Citizen is basically what would happen if Hideo Kojima was given infinite budget and no external deadlines.
Didn't know about that.
That being said if you look at any of the advertisement videos released by CIG; It's all very vanilla. More so considering that their video advertisement budget is almost certainly very substantial even in a relative basis.
The adverts are very vanilla, but the conversations with the creators have definitely hinted at a lot more going on. I don't want to say too much because it's a) potential spoilers, and b) stuff that has only been hinted at, never confirmed, but their plans for the game definitely seem to be more in a Heart of Darkness kind of direction.
Obviously, wait for reviews, see what they actually end up making as opposed to what they might or might not have planned at any point, but from everything I've heard the writers say I don't think the story is worth writing off just yet.
You're saying SQ42 will be like Heart of Darkness?
I find this difficult to believe. What makes you say that?
From my perspective, just a mere dark and foreboding presentation doesn't mean anything. Wing Commander: The Movie was supposed to be serious, but it transforms more into an unintentional comedy for trash space sci-fi and b-movie nerds.
No, I'm not. Let me absolutely clear about that. I'm not saying anything about what SQ42 will be like, because I haven't played it, and I haven't had this confirmed by anyone who has.
What I am saying is that those comparisons were brought up by the writers early on in the development. Whether that has any bearing on the finished product remains to be seen.
Take a look at the discussions of Wing Commander 4 elsewhere in this thread if you want a better idea of the kind of stuff Chris Roberts likes to do when he's not beholden to a publisher. If your only yardstick here is the Wing Commander movie, you're really not looking at a very helpful data point.
But, again, I'm only talking about hints and intimations. I don't have hard facts about the game and I'm not claiming to.
This...all his games were like that.. dont except something else.
I believe it when I see it.
I mean, I am a bit excited for the release. I am totally aware it might move or not live up to the hype, but star citizen has so many cool things that might just be easier in a single player setting.
I VERY much doubt this game will run well on anything but a somewhat recent CPU.
We already have angels fall first Fuck Roberts
Recent reviews: mixed 64%
And not even the same genre.
Meanwhile, I'm over here playing Space Rangers HD like its 2013