BREAKING NEWS: Roberts Space Industries: Big Announcement Coming In October (September 10, 2012)

KrisV

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The website for Roberts Space Industries came to life today. The major headline is that Chris Roberts' new project, having been in the works for around a year, is set to be revealed this October 10th! As many commentators have pointed out, this happens to coincide with the Game Developer Conference in Austin. Right now, it's not known if this will be a new title in either the Wing Commander or Freelancer franchises, or a spiritual successor. Be sure to sign up and explore the RSI website for yourself, and check back throughout the day for updates and analysis. In case you missed it, we also ran a piece on Chris Roberts' new venture yesterday.


Until the project is revealed, the website aims to bring together fans of Wing Commander, Privateer, Starlancer and Freelancer. It has the following sections:

  • Special welcome message from Chris Roberts!
  • Bits of concept art and renders all around the site! (also collected below)
  • Comm-link: primary method of RSI staff to reach out to fans.
  • Forums: Discuss previous (Origin / Digital Anvil) Roberts titles and speculate about the new game.
  • Time Capsule 2075: First fiction teaser!
  • RSI Museum: Meet the team behind the Wing Commander and Freelancer games. Currently has a Chris Roberts bio.
  • Golden ticket: Sign up now to receive a Golden Ticket. Promises to let you participate during the development phase. No details right now. What's interesting is that it mentions a 24-month development cycle.
  • Polls: The current poll wants to know if you like to see cockpits in your space sims. Vote now!
  • The secret code is 42, a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.[/URL]
These sections are currently unavailable:
  • Engineering: insights from the dev team
  • Possibly a overall game description section
  • The Holo-viewer: "attend a screening of the latest space epic" - possible trailer section?
  • Galactapedia: in-universe information?

AD has collected the concept art from the website.


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Original update published on September 10, 2012
 
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Any information as to how to get on the site? The three times I've been there, it's asked me for an access code.

EDIT: Never mind; code's on a different thread. 42 for those of you who don't want to go fishing.

The countdown is definitely set to terminate at 14Z on October 10th; 10 AM EDT. 101010. Says as much on the site intro, so that's what I get for posting too early. Again. I know it says standard time on the site, but DST doesn't end until November 4th this year...
 
This all looks very interesting. Makes me wonder just how much money I'm going to have to sink into my PC box to play this game...

I wonder if there's any significance to any of the binary numbers that pop up just before you log into the site, or if it's just decoration. 10010110000000001100 - that's the last sequence before the date comes up.
 
I honestly am not sure. I know some of the other numbers have meaning but I'm not sure about that one.
 
I wonder if anybody that's played Freelancer can take a look the shots and be able to tell whether or not they appear more 'Wing Commander Universe' or 'Freelancer Universe'...I can't really see anything that jumps out as being familiar from Wing Commander, but hey, who would have looked at the Prophecy promo shots and been able to link them to anything from the other games - actors aside.

At any rate, this is an outstanding update and excellent news. If this IS a new WC title, everybody here can be damn proud for keeping the interest alive - especially all the CIC staff themselves.

Edit: 'Croshaw system...?'
 
I don't imagine it will be a WC successor, given that Roberts has previously made it clear that EA still own the rights to Wing Commander. I imagine a new franchise is what we will see.

I do wonder if the little starmap with the 'Croshaw' system is a reference to Zero Punctuation narrator Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw...
 
It looks more WC to me than Freelancer. The architecture's about the same between P2 and Freelancer (at least IMHO), but there's some clues on that landing pad shot - a bar, the word "exchange", the word "merchant", an "m" with a police badge...it strikes me as New Detroit, to be honest. Then there's the bridge shot - someone's already pointed out the file name, but it also reminds me of the way the bridge appeared in the Academy cartoons (with the big windows). And if you look at one of the displays, there's something there that looks like a Yorktown-class carrier on one of them. So, yeah, my money's on a Wing Commander title at this point.

Which proves I'm probably just seeing things...

Now if I could just get that damned activation e-mail to come up...
 
Try to get the concept art of the CARRIER! It's a full-ship landscape-format shot. I saw it briefly on the /start page just after the personal note from Chris.
 
Try to get the concept art of the CARRIER! It's a full-ship landscape-format shot. I saw it briefly on the /start page just after the personal note from Chris.
I do have that one... I Just forgot to attach it. I'll have anther update soon that will include that one.
 
I wonder if there's any significance to any of the binary numbers that pop up just before you log into the site, or if it's just decoration. 10010110000000001100 - that's the last sequence before the date comes up.
101010 is the date of the big reveal, but in binary "101010" = 42, the password of the site.
 
I do have that one... I Just forgot to attach it. I'll have anther update soon that will include that one.

Not sure when I'll put up the concept art update but here she is...

carrier-concept-art.jpg
 
I just registered on the site. I encourage the rest of you to do the same. TBH, even if it isn't actually "Wing Commander", I'll be very interested to see what he produces.
 
Any of you have problems activating your accounts? I still haven't received the damn confirmation e-mail; I'm wondering at this point if AOL just junked it - didn't even bother with my spam trap...
 
Any of you have problems activating your accounts? I still haven't received the damn confirmation e-mail; I'm wondering at this point if AOL just junked it - didn't even bother with my spam trap...

The response email came pretty quick to gmail.
 
Any of you have problems activating your accounts? I still haven't received the damn confirmation e-mail; I'm wondering at this point if AOL just junked it - didn't even bother with my spam trap...
It took a couple of hours to come through to Yahoo. I HOPE fans of Chris Roberts' work are flooding the site...
 
This all looks very interesting. Makes me wonder just how much money I'm going to have to sink into my PC box to play this game...

I wonder if there's any significance to any of the binary numbers that pop up just before you log into the site, or if it's just decoration. 10010110000000001100 - that's the last sequence before the date comes up.

I converted that binary number into decimal (614412) and hexadecimal (9600c), and didn't see anything interesting about them. Then I converted it to octal: 2260014. Did a Google image search for that number and the first result was this:

http://t1.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/02/26/00/400_F_2260014_ieYwQ3IzTI3xvC5RcWvKNUk0dteuWZ.jpg

I think we all know what that means!
 
I converted that binary number into decimal (614412) and hexadecimal (9600c), and didn't see anything interesting about them. Then I converted it to octal: 2260014. Did a Google image search for that number and the first result was this:

http://t1.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/02/26/00/400_F_2260014_ieYwQ3IzTI3xvC5RcWvKNUk0dteuWZ.jpg

I think we all know what that means!

That's nothing new. I know the cats have been in charge for years. I pay humble respects to our feline overlords, who have so well prepared the planet for conquering by the Kilrathi.
 
Any of you have problems activating your accounts? I still haven't received the damn confirmation e-mail; I'm wondering at this point if AOL just junked it - didn't even bother with my spam trap...

While I got the mail instantly the link doesn't seem to work...
 
Still haven't got it...gonna have to try a different account, looks like.

EDIT: I'm in. Thank you, Gmail, for not automatically assuming the activation e-mail was ultra spam.
 
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