orcinus posted:

Sunswipe posted:

A while ago, I offered to be the Ben Lesnick to Solar Plebeian's Star Citizen. As part of the gag, I said I'd obsess over Space: Above and Beyond, to mirror Lesnick's obsession with a fairly crap piece of 90s sci-fi most people have forgotten about. As if to prove that any joke you can make about Star Citizen eventually comes true:
https://twitter.com/banditloaf/status/734795747279900672

Daztek posted:

G0RF posted:

Popped in to the most popular Twitch stream. Literally the first thing I saw.

G0RF posted:

Popped in to the most popular Twitch stream. Literally the first thing I saw.

Daztek posted:

Beet Wagon posted:

Man, looking at some of this concept art it's loving staggering that CIG went with the "G36 with no barrel and an alarm clock taped to the side" instead of the other concepts. It's really interesting how close a "future gun" can look to a modern day weapon while still being interesting simply due to subtle changes in the silhouette. If you look at these concept pieces for example (and these are arguably the most boring ones out of the whole bunch), you can pretty clearly guess which modern day weapons they are based off of, but the concept works themselves aren't insultingly bad. In fact I actually kind of like some of them. That's because on each there's at least one major feature that distinguishes the silhouette from that of the modern day version. The role of the weapon is immediately recognizable based off of knowledge the viewer already has, yet the weapon itself is clearly different and new in some way to the person looking at it. They're not offensively cartoony, they look reasonably useable, and while they're frankly incredibly boring, they certainly wouldn't seem out of place in a futuristic shootman game.



So why is this thing such an offensive piece of garbage?



A lot has been said about the fact that it's completely unuseable and covered in widgets that make little to no sense, and that's true. But there's two main things in my mind that make it one of the most offensive design decisions I've seen come out of Star Citizen yet (and that's saying a lot). The first is that the snub-nosed barrel combined with the oversized scope, stock, and grip make it seem cartoonish. It's a gun that looks like it should come as an accessory to a 90s action figure, and it's actually a little bit telling that I had to go all the way back to the 90s to find an example of such a dumb looking gun accessory. Modern day GI Joes and whatnot often come with accessory guns that are far less stupid than this piece of trash. The second main thing is that there's nothing (really) differentiating this from the silhouette of a gun we already have. Sure, the proportions are wonky and it has some kind of giant future scope, but those small details don't do enough to separate the basic shape from that of a modern day G36. In movies, shape and silhouette are important, but in games they can be the foundation of good design, and that design can go on to effect gameplay significantly. Possibly the best example of this is Team Fortress 2, where Valve's art direction led to some instantly recognizable (and fairly iconic at this point) characters. That wasn't an accident. Character design was purposely pushed towards those drastically different silhouettes to feed players instant information about who they were looking at and what they should do. Distinct character shapes were combined with distinct weapon shapes to make it an almost instant read and let players know whether the person they were looking at was someone they should fight or run from. Weapon design was based around setting the highest contrast between the weapon and the character at chest level - where other players would be looking - so that loadouts would be instantly recognizeable. It's bad enough that CIG's armor isn't inherently identifiable, but this gun has no basic features to distinguish it from either a modern day gun or any of the other weapons in CIG's nonexistent arsenal. Put together, it's such a horrendous design decision that it seems impossible that it was billed as sort of the "flagship weapon" of CIG's FPS experience, but here we are.

Danknificent posted:

which is to say

voltron's willy

Danknificent posted:

which is to say

voltron's willy

G0RF posted:

Meanwhile, in Elite:

I wonder if Max Leandre gets time-and-a-half for overtime, because the Frontier forums are on fire and he's doing his level damndest to piss them all out.

I'm not sure there's enough Star Citizen Koolaid left to pull that off, Max-- but best of luck!

Ayn Marx posted:

MoMa I'm genuinely curious, why do you even bother? Even the posters who don't think you are "Toast, CIG paralegal and shill" don't trust you. You're not changing the narrative of the thread in any way and the only consequence of your posting is the occasional "lol, toast is back" comment in Discord. Why do you bother lol?

Lime Tonics posted:

http://i.imgur.com/XImI6Lk.gifv

Beet Wagon posted:

Ayn Marx posted:

MoMa I'm genuinely curious, why do you even bother? Even the posters who don't think you are "Toast, CIG paralegal and shill" don't trust you. You're not changing the narrative of the thread in any way and the only consequence of your posting is the occasional "lol, toast is back" comment in Discord. Why do you bother lol?

Achamp posted:

I don't think this is going anywhere:

Option 1: He's Toast or another CIG employee

He'll never admit it and continue to grasp at any defensive handhold available.

Option 2: He's a troll

He'll likely never admit it and will continue to enjoy playing a fake CIG employee with poor reasoning/communication skills

Option 3: He's a sincere Star Citizen fan

He's already spent somewhere between $1,000 to $20,000 on a pipe dream. This is how he justifies that sunk cost, by fighting the good fight as a lemming for the Crobbler. In 3 to 4 years he'll still be talking about the Best drat Space Sim Ever when the game releases with graphics that are 10 years old, and a very limited feature list.

I desperately hope that it is Option 1, because at least then he's getting paid for this poo poo. Additionally, he probably knows how terrible the game is and hasn't dumped money into Chris Roberts' fidelitous adventure: "Pledge Commander".

KiddieGrinder posted:

This is a great example of why artists should never render things on a black background. You can't see poo poo, and it messes up the balance of light/dark and even colors.

Neutral gray is where it's at, or maybe a low contrast gradient. I thought CIG artists knew what they were doing. Or maybe they do and they're trying to hide their work, I don't know.

Tijuana Bibliophile posted:

Someone on the Frontier forums linked to this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTs9-jMwHqk

Some disillusioned backer voices some very reasonable concerns about Star Citizen's development. The comment commandos do their thing of course

Tijuana Bibliophile posted:

Someone on the Frontier forums linked to this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTs9-jMwHqk

Some disillusioned backer voices some very reasonable concerns about Star Citizen's development. The comment commandos do their thing of course

Tijuana Bibliophile posted:

Someone on the Frontier forums linked to this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTs9-jMwHqk

Some disillusioned backer voices some very reasonable concerns about Star Citizen's development. The comment commandos do their thing of course