Try Star Citizen’s Alpha For Free Until The End of the Month

[Megalith]

If you want to see how Star Citizen runs on your PC but don’t want to chalk up $45, now’s your chance. You can check out the alpha for free until the 30th with a promo code.

Cloud Imperium Games announced today that Star Citizen‘s alpha will be free to access for everyone starting today and until October 30th. The alpha includes a large chunk of content, from dogfighting to free flight and a glimpse on the persistent universe in the Crusader system. While it’s by no means content-complete, it’s a good way to give a look to what Star Citizen is all about if you never had a chance to see it running on your own PC. All you have to do is to create an account on the official website, insert the code “FALL2016” in this page, download the client and you’re good to go.

 

[SomeFknGuy]

I bought the alpha a while back. I'm guessing I haven't gotten the control scheme down yet because once you get into a zone with things to blow up you know they are there but I never could tell where. This game has potential I juts don't know for sure when that potential is going to be implemented...

 

[Wildace]

It's still a little early to really worry about how it runs.

 

[MavericK]

It runs far better than it did in earlier builds, that's for sure. Seems like progress is being made.

 

[evilsofa]

Are ships that you can't fly included in the free alpha?

 

[STrAYeR]

That's one of the things I didn't like from the last free alpha test. You can board ships but once the person that can fly the ship leaves dock the game crashes. The textures were not amazing either. They were blurry and the game felt lifeless even with real people running around. Just another MMO clone with a space look. I am going to give it another try this time. I do not have high hopes though.

 

[thesmokingman]

Man, what is the eta of this game?

 

[wrangler]

Game crashes all the time for me.
Especially if ship gets blown up.
Not a good idea.

 

[dvsman]

Anyone have a referral code they want me to use? I'll give it a shot before dropping any cash.

 

[Traciatim]

Man, what is the eta of this game?

It will be delivered in November 2014, fully complete and ready to play. That is... at least according to kickstarter. Good thing it's a half put together tech demo in 2016 with no end in sight.

 

[thesmokingman]

It will be delivered in November 2014, fully complete and ready to play. That is... at least according to kickstarter. Good thing it's a half put together tech demo in 2016 with no end in sight.

I'll have to complete my time machine by then?

 

[Exavior]

they really should have put the tutorial in this. Sucks jumping into a battle with no idea how to do anything

 

[Talyrius]

Anyone have a referral code they want me to use? I'll give it a shot before dropping any cash.

Become a Star Citizen using my referral code (STAR-PXVQ-B9SW) and we'll both receive 5,000 free credits.

 

[auntjemima]

How the fuck is this game still an Alpha? How long can they possible keep calling it that lol

 

[STrAYeR]

Well I flew around for an hour. Never noticed how huge Jupiter is last time. Looks like the game is set to have to buy everything on the ship. Didn't give me a crash message until I left the game. Less crashing is the only thing I see different this time around. Next time I try I am going to see if burning up in jupiter's atmo is possible. The people online are pretty friendly and helpful. The game has that going for it at least.

 

[Exavior]

Well I flew around for an hour. Never noticed how huge Jupiter is last time. Looks like the game is set to have to buy everything on the ship. Didn't give me a crash message until I left the game. Less crashing is the only thing I see different this time around. Next time I try I am going to see if burning up in jupiter's atmo is possible. The people online are pretty friendly and helpful. The game has that going for it at least.

Is that the planet just below the first person section of the game where you can get a ship and go fly around from the space station? if so I tried to fly down to it, after a certain point if forced me to reverse and sent me back toward the space station.

Had the same issue where it crashed when exiting to desktop.

 

[STrAYeR]

Ah. oh well. Burning up in the atmo would of been fun.

 

[ryuen]

they really should have put the tutorial in this. Sucks jumping into a battle with no idea how to do anything

The Arena Commander module has flight and dogfighting tutorials iirc. Check those out before heading into the persistent modules.

 

[Xinmosni]

It's still a little early to really worry about how it runs.

The game has been in perpetual Alpha for many months now, with millions of dollars in funding.

The hell with you and so many others supporting this with your blind submissiveness. It's completely valid to "worry" about how a mega scam like this runs, infinite delays and superfluous amounts of DLC notwithstanding.

 

[grifter_66]

The game has been in perpetual Alpha for many months now, with millions of dollars in funding.

The hell with you and so many others supporting this with your blind submissiveness. It's completely valid to "worry" about how a mega scam like this runs, infinite delays and superfluous amounts of DLC notwithstanding.

You're obviously not very bright and that's ok because we can never have too many ditch diggers but the fact that you think someone attempting to scam people would take the millions already made and use it to open up multiple studios which are staffed by hundreds of people who are actively creating a tangible product just makes you fucking obnoxious.

Given the scope of the game four years of development time really isn't that unusual, of course you probably know less about game development than you do how to spot a scam so your tantrum is no surprise.

I wouldn't start worrying about the state of the game until around the 6 year mark, especially considering how they are developing the game in pieces so their backers can better see how the development of the game is proceeding. This method, while great for transparency has a tendency to slow down overall development time.

 

[CombatChrisNC]

Become a Star Citizen using my referral code (STAR-PXVQ-B9SW) and we'll both receive 5,000 free credits.

Is that a lot? Can I create a lot of accounts and we both make out like bandits?

 

[Milkman]

Is that a lot? Can I create a lot of accounts and we both make out like bandits?

Ha, no you only get the credits if you buy a package. Until then neither gets anything. As for how much 5k in credits are... great question. No alot known about how the econ will be once live. 5k can get you some flair for your hanger currently. In-game credits are called UEC and can be spend here. Voyager Direct - Roberts Space Industries I would just sit on the cash myself until there is more stuff to buy or a better understanding of how the econ will work is available.

 

[M76]

I signed up for the game in the original kickstarter campaign in 2012. And I haven't tried it once since. Didn't even download it. I don't want to be an alpha tester, and I definitely don't want to get bored with it until it's fully functional. And frankly without an economy it's very easy to get bored with a game like this. It's pointless now.

 

[Krazy925]

You're obviously not very bright and that's ok because we can never have too many ditch diggers but the fact that you think someone attempting to scam people would take the millions already made and use it to open up multiple studios which are staffed by hundreds of people who are actively creating a tangible product just makes you fucking obnoxious.

Given the scope of the game four years of development time really isn't that unusual, of course you probably know less about game development than you do how to spot a scam so your tantrum is no surprise.

I wouldn't start worrying about the state of the game until around the 6 year mark, especially considering how they are developing the game in pieces so their backers can better see how the development of the game is proceeding. This method, while great for transparency has a tendency to slow down overall development time.

Transparency that's rich.

They've objectively missed all the dates they've set.
CR hired his wife to manage the PR, reports have been less than stellar.
Only tantrum I see here is from you being a fanboy and attacking someone because CR isn't very good with deadlines. I can show you historical data of that.
The only person here who isn't bright is the one saying that about other people. Calm yo tits.

 

[Milkman]

I signed up for the game in the original kickstarter campaign in 2012. And I haven't tried it once since. Didn't even download it. I don't want to be an alpha tester, and I definitely don't want to get bored with it until it's fully functional. And frankly without an economy it's very easy to get bored with a game like this. It's pointless now.

I would say its safe to try if your looking for a basic flying while shooting game just playing the 'arena commander'. It is stable enough to enjoy i think for the masses. The persistent world though.... unless you enjoy bug testing(expect a crash every 15min or so?) stay away. If you don't mind testings things or seeing new stuff that is subject to change, it is enjoyable. The multicrew ships are fun, the FPS is making some progress, and jumping around doing 'missions' can be fun when your not crashing.

As for the other drama... well its drama. Both sides have valid points and concerns. In the end: the game has promise, the game is taking too long to make, i hope they finish it because i really want to play it.

 

[grifter_66]

Transparency that's rich.

They've objectively missed all the dates they've set.
CR hired his wife to manage the PR, reports have been less than stellar.
Only tantrum I see here is from you being a fanboy and attacking someone because CR isn't very good with deadlines. I can show you historical data of that.
The only person here who isn't bright is the one saying that about other people. Calm yo tits.

First, games miss dates, it happens to almost ALL major titles, they are still actively working on it and it's coming along nicely. Like I said I don't give a shit about missed dates as long as the game is moving forward. Game development is a very fluid thing so until an unreasonable amount of time has passed given the scope of the game or game updates come to a halt I have better things to do than throw tantrums and claim it's a scam.

Second, who fucking cares if he hired his wife as head of PR? What are you, 12? Sounds to me like you're just being a drama queen now. That being said it's her profession and she's obviously doing a great job. His brother works there to, are going to cry about that? Who he hires for his PR department is irrelevant to the situation and none of your concern. It's his business and transparency only applies to development of the game.

Then again I'm not a child who needs to blow everything out of proportion so if crying about game delays and Chris's hiring practices makes you feel relevant then have at it princess.

I can't say if the game is going to be any good or not but I can say that nothing is happening within RSI to make me worry about the game's future and every update has been pretty substantial.

 

[DocSavage]

After the No Man's Sky fiasco, I don't think anyone wants Star Citizen to be released too early. I'm not sure why people have such unreasonable expectations. Go play Elite if you need a decent space sim right now.

 

[Shotglass01]

Chris Roberts just needs to rename Cloud Imperium Games to 3D Realms and call it a decade.

 

[grifter_66]

Chris Roberts just needs to rename Cloud Imperium Games to 3D Realms and call it a decade.

The only reason we continue to give 3D realms shit is because they never actually finished Duke Nukem Forever and when Gearbox finally did it was still a piece of shit. If Starcitizen ends up being as bad as DNF (or worse) then they'll deserve all the shit they can swallow, but, if it's good then no one will care how long it took to develop or how many dates they missed.

Also, I don't think we can start comparing them to 3D Realms for a couple more years

 

[M76]

First, games miss dates, it happens to almost ALL major titles, they are still actively working on it and it's coming along nicely. Like I said I don't give a shit about missed dates as long as the game is moving forward. Game development is a very fluid thing so until an unreasonable amount of time has passed given the scope of the game or game updates come to a halt I have better things to do than throw tantrums and claim it's a scam.

Game development is all about milestones. And if you miss all your milestones then you're clearly doing something wrong. After missing one or two you should re-evaluate what you actually want in the game, and what you can actually put in the game. It might not be a scam, but the end result is the same, we never get a fully functional game, that is stable enough to have a good time with. We can marvel at all the features all we want, but we'll never get to play it. Because eventually backer money will run out. And seemingly they're not much closer to a finished product than they were 2 years ago, they're still prototyping things and want to implement new features instead of getting the ones already created to work properly.

Second, who fucking cares if he hired his wife as head of PR? What are you, 12? Sounds to me like you're just being a drama queen now. That being said it's her profession and she's obviously doing a great job. His brother works there to, are going to cry about that? Who he hires for his PR department is irrelevant to the situation and none of your concern. It's his business and transparency only applies to development of the game.

You're right nobody would care if she was doing a good job. But apparently she made a terrible mess of it, they then tried to sweep it under the rug and bully people into silence with threats of lawsuits. Lawsuits that of course they didn't went trough with, because they knew it'd be thrown out before getting into court. Also AFAIK she's head of HR not PR. Or at least she was HR at the time of the scandal. And what do you mean it's her profession? As soon as someone is put in a job role it becomes their profession.

Then again I'm not a child who needs to blow everything out of proportion so if crying about game delays and Chris's hiring practices makes you feel relevant then have at it princess.

Sure, complaining that they don't have a single chapter of the 28 in SQ42 in a state to show it to the public in late 2016, when they promised a 2014 release for the game is blowing it out of proportion. If they can't show 1 chapter in 2016 how the fuck can I expect them to put 28 down in 2017? It's a lie again. And they'll keep lying until the backer money completely stops flowing in, then they declare bankruptcy and fuck all, that's what is going to happen. And if we're lucky we get half a game which is a buggy mess before that.

 

[Shotglass01]

The only reason we continue to give 3D realms shit is because they never actually finished Duke Nukem Forever and when Gearbox finally did it was still a piece of shit. If Starcitizen ends up being as bad as DNF (or worse) then they'll deserve all the shit they can swallow, but, if it's good then no one will care how long it took to develop or how many dates they missed.

Also, I don't think we can start comparing them to 3D Realms for a couple more years

Yea, when all this first started, all I wanted was a nice updated Wing Commander. Little more simplistic, easier to finish and push out the door. Now he went all retard and created Second Life. It'll be too complex for most people to get, and they'll probably wind up passing on it.

 

[WorldExclusive]

Man, what is the eta of this game?

The official name of the game will be Start Citizen Alpha.
Stretch goals means they never really counted the cost for completion.

This is one reason why DLC exists. Big pubs establish a cost of completion for the base game and then extend funding after completion with DLC.
Star Citizen is trying to make an entire game at once which most people would be fine with the base features and buy additional content later.

 

[defaultluser]

After the No Man's Sky fiasco, I don't think anyone wants Star Citizen to be released too early. I'm not sure why people have such unreasonable expectations. Go play Elite if you need a decent space sim right now.

Yes, I agree, wait until it's done.

The only concern here is that Chris is burning through millions a month running a 250-man gaming studio, so the lack of solid progress over the last year (still no economy, still limited to a single unfinished system, etc) is troubling to backers who can actually do the math.

This is the reason people are touchy on the subject., Chris may burn through all the remaining goodwill he still has, and may burn through the last of that ship shoppers cash infusion BEFORE THE GAME EVER SHIPS COMPLETE.

You know, Duke Nukem For Never style. It happens if you suck at managing all those millions of dollars, and won't listen to recommendations. And Chris just happens to have a history of doing just that at Origin.

 

[Burticus]

This thing will never ship.

 

[Krazy925]

Did they ever actually confirm it was his wife. Also big up to M76 for saving me from having to respond

 

[rgMekanic]

Fanboi about this game all you want, it "stretch goal'd" its way out of existence long ago. I'll try the little weekend demo tho and see whats up

 

[Axehandler]

IF you like what you see and want to buy the game, we both would get 5000 uec to use in the game with the referral code.

STAR-R6GS-XR6S

The 2.6 thats about to come out, is suppose to have star marine in it.

Axe

 

[Exavior]

The Arena Commander module has flight and dogfighting tutorials iirc. Check those out before heading into the persistent modules.

nope, that option can't be selected. There was two modes and a greyed out tutorial option under Area Commander. That is what I jumped right into and had no clue how to do anything other than die again and again. Figured that out quickly

 

[drakken]

This is what the original kickstarter said...

The people who pledge for their spaceships will get to test-fly them long before the general public. 12 months in, we will allow the early backers to play the multiplayer space combat Alpha, and then 20-22 months in they will get to play the Star Citizen Beta, adventuring around the huge open galaxy, well before the general public. We are going to limit our alpha slots to 200,000 as we want to stress test the game with real users, but will not be ready for the full load until we have finished Beta.


Milestones are something in a design document that says you have the engine built to the point it can render a sky box... then dynamic lighting... then moving objects... etc... the thing to really think about is that even in the kickstarter they decided to let feature bloat happen at the rate people were willing to throw money at them... meaning in normal development the design team starts building the upper management's vision of a game, as they come up with ideas they have to sell the idea to that group who says we can alloacte this much more money but it has to be done by this day. That is called a milestone, rsi decided to let the backers fund the feature bloat before they had the design in place to say how long it would take to actually build it. So they are building a game that has far more work than they had idea how long would take to build. Yet if you look at what they have in the sand storm demo, can you really say you would be happy with another forty hour wing commander game built in crysis? It likely would have been fun for a week then you go on to something else.

Eve Online has five thousand start systems and originally they were all sprites... meaning they were two images you always saw the face of. Then they built them for the playstation game... rsi is trying to build one hundred at high resoltion... of course they have no idea how long it can take because every other studio said start simple and build the rest later... and usually never get around to later. Eve Online keeps up rezing the quality of the ships but you can not walk around inside them, the captains quarters was planned to happen along side world of darkness... that is real studio that makes money they are throwing a lot more money at upgrading eve online that rsi has access to but development takes time. I liked blizzards answer years ago, when it is ready... though they were a self owned company with number of games that people paid to play. Now you have to fund development with a mix of free to play area and value added content... which depending on the studio may or not be value to everyone...

There are four types of mmo right now. fps shooters paid for with cash shops that are free to play and vary from fun to being zinged every couple of seconds to pay for something else to play the game. rpg games that use fps engines they have modified paid for with a base sub and cash shop, lord of the rings was built on ue2 that switched to ue2.5 half way through the beta. rpg games that built their own engines like blizard's wow and eve online. they likely spend more updating code of the engine to deal with new things like direct x versions and new video card features. They also to stay current have to update the graphics since most were built before Epic's unreal licensing was as affordable as it is now. have of turbine's budget in 2004 went to paying for their licensing the game engine. But it is why the water looked so great in 2006... it was a fluid shader on a piece of geometry. I was looking at the sand storm and cyrsis had snow flakes that melted in some levels so clearly it was a good starting point. The thing is turbine licensed ue2 in 2002... the game came out in 2006 and the alpha/beta tests were six months a piece. the last group of mmo are a huge funded games like war hammer based on the hero engine... that last two years then have up surges and down surges in popularity. good example is star wars the old republic.

The point is if you only want to spend a year and thousand bucks building a game, I hope it is just a pin ball machine in your garage. I keep looking at what is happening in the industry because rsi managed to raise a staggering amount of money from normal people. Not angle investors, not venture capitalists, but normal people who want a fun space game in addition to eve online. I like playing eve but it is more like a strategy game like risk than a space sim. They keep trying to upgrade the game but they have four races and millions of people that have sculpted the faces of their characters each faction has over twenty ships... and thousands of star stations which might have to exist in the code some where if all of them become living breathing areas where players can hang out... remembering that in each system most of them don't look the same... so that is forty space stations that likely would have to have hundreds of areas... just think jita with two million people in what fifteen space stations at one time those might be instanced the way jita is but that is still fifty thousand people walking around one space station. Think dalaran with fifty thousand people on it... I think I have seen a thousand people in an area and watch the game crawl to stop... thus eve online still limits people to being on their own captains quarters at this time.

I thread the needle in the flight training when the controls were set to act like about hundred thousand feet physics. That was fun. They are trying to use physics which means that if you understand how the physics work even if only from trial and error of playing, you know how to win at pvp most people spend months trying to figure out spread sheet balance issues, in star citizen it is can actually fly and shoot?

 

[buhbuhfet]

How the fuck is this game still an Alpha? How long can they possible keep calling it that lol

cause it's a huge game, and they want to make a good game, so it takes time