Dante80 posted:

revmoo posted:

To catch up:

- It was discovered that CIG was tagging users on their support site in a not-nice way and publishing that data as JSON in their support HTML page.
- CIG immediately took notice from reading this thread and pulled down/broke the site, failing to touch the mobile version
- CIG then put up a 1990s-ish "under construction" page with stolen artwork
- When the stolen art (seems to be a trend here) was pointed out on this forum, CIG removed it, additionally they removed the mobile version access as well, again from reading the forum thread. It was also pointed out that the tagging data was still available on the "under construction" page if you looked at the source code, so they screenshotted the page and replaced the page with the screenshot

This is all kind of out of order, but it's the basic gist. CIG has been basically playing a cat and mouse game with themselves and it's been hilarious. Also all of this basically 100% confirmed that they are monitoring this thread, practically in realtime. Hi!

A Neurotic Jew posted:

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/332008/comm-link-schedule-june-6th-2016#latest

G0RF posted:

It was a great discussion, Brian-- thank YOU for offering your perspectives on the game and the genre. I sincerely do believe there is a great deal Chris Roberts could learn by seeking your counsel. We decry and make light of CIG's wasteful spending, particularly in LA, but real talk -- if they put you on a $200/HR retainer, set you up in the Beverly Hills hotel, and let you white board feedback on the game in front of Chris Roberts for a week, I'd be in this very thread clapping up a storm declaring their genius.

As an aside, there are a great many folks here who share your adoration for Starflight. I am one of them, as is Tippis. It remains, for me, the standard bearer for the space game genre. Soaringly ambitious, sparkling with wit and surprises, so much to discover and do. We've still not seen its equal, decades later.

Hope you'll pop back by after the Andromeda reveal, Brian. Everything I've heard has me hopeful it'll at least conjure up hints of Starflight's spirit. I've been waiting for THAT game for a long, long time!

Brian Rubin posted:

And I'm sorry, what's Andromeda?

Meridian posted:

It's me, I am the CIG thread reader. AMA.

Toops posted:

Solar Plebeian weekly update is up! I managed to pull off my first big test of the great engine swap of 2016. I ported assets into Unreal Engine 4 (had to completely re-texture them), and was able to reproduce the Flight Model I wrote in Unity over in UE4 fairly accurately in a weekend. I also took a crack at the particle system which is the superheated debris flying past the spaceship you'll see in the video below. It's still wonky, and not connected to ship speed yet, but it's there.

In terms of visual quality, rendering pipeline, there's absolutely no contest. UE4 looks fantastic. As for the code, it's C++ man. It's the official programming language of the Stimpire. I poo poo you not, I literally ruined my project due to a simple syntax error in C++. I made a change, hit compile, and the compiler crashed, which then caused Unreal Editor to crash. Then whenever I tried to re-open the project, it would crash. Corrupted the project files due to a loving syntax error. That was a real new one.

But, all in all, I think the results speak for themselves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awb0COi6cJw

Dante80 posted:

There is a new Mass Effect coming out. We will learn a lot more about it in E3, but most info that we have now points to a pretty good open world space game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG8V9dRqSsw

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

I'm sure five days of live streaming will go off wonderfully without a hitch.

A Neurotic Jew posted:

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/332008/comm-link-schedule-june-6th-2016#latest

Brian Rubin posted:

Ohhhh, I hate to admit it, but I never could click with the ME games. I tried both 1 and 2 and got bored 30 minutes in. :/ I worry that makes me less of a Space Game Junkie, as it were...

But open world space game? Definitely has my interest.

Thank you!

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

I'm sure five days of live streaming will go off wonderfully without a hitch.

Brian Rubin posted:

Ohhhh, I hate to admit it, but I never could click with the ME games. I tried both 1 and 2 and got bored 30 minutes in. :/ I worry that makes me less of a Space Game Junkie, as it were...

But open world space game? Definitely has my interest.

Thank you!

TacticalNecromancy posted:

I have to agree there. Several things about those game just didn't gel with me, but the MP combat in 3 was actually pretty decent with friends so who knows? This one's definitely on my 'I'll probably get dragged into it by friends' list.

CrazyLoon posted:

quote:

D_Smart posted:
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, nobody is going to prevent or ban you from posting. Just because you have some seriously questionable opinions, doesn't make yours any less|more valid than the standard poo poo-posting that goes on here. So yeah, have at it. And this isn't Reddit; so nobody is going to down vote your much laughed at crap. It's all about the lols; never forget the lols.

Lol...I'm honestly impressed that loving shill still accuses you of that crap, especially considering the state in CIG forums brown sea right now, when I see you probate Tophat for a month while this shill is allowed to add his ignorance to the thread freely.

Like, a lot of poo poo can be talked about Derek Smart, but the one thing people can't knock him on anymore in my mind is that he's actually a far better 'community manager' than anyone CIG has put in a similar position to that in their entire existence. AND he's being moderator here mainly as a lark too lmao...like, drat Man of Many Anuses...this must be your weakest loving argument yet, and I gotta say...that's an accomplishment for you.

Eldragon posted:

Jesus Christ stop trying to replicate the cadence of the speech and just use complete sentences. This is unreadable.

Dante80 posted:

bla...blasphemy!!!!111

Just kidding. The truth is though that there are a lot of space games coming out this year and the next. We will have a lot of cool games to play I think.
Among those, this little jewel is coming to early access tomorrow. Would love to hear what you think of it, if you ever pick it up.

Cheers..<3

D_Smart posted:

If he come back and continues, well, what comes after will be all on him.

Scruffpuff posted:

We've done more to dictate CIG's direction than anyone paid to work there. I say we take the honorary position they've granted us de facto and start helping out. G0RF has done his part from a marketing perspective (if Sandi doesn't take his advice, that's on her - Martin Shkreli has better PR than what she's done for CIG) so it's up to the rest of us to help with roadmaps and design documents.

CIG, please take a look at the work Toops has done. A single person has not only created a game in a fraction of the time, and without $114 million and four studios, but in a single weekend has also managed to swap out the engine, because he was not happy with his first choice. Granted, Toops isn't trying to do the things in the engine that you're reaching for, but that's part of the problem, isn't it? To paraphrase a great man, when asked his opinion on your space MMO with flying, FPS, landable planets, and local physics grids: "Your developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they should that they didn't stop to think if they could!" Understanding your goals, and making sure they are achieveable, is the first step on the road. Then you start deciding the next steps towards those goals.

I realize that creating realistic, if uninspired, ship assets and having the sunlight glint off their metallic frames is what gives Chris a chubby in staff meetings. I get it, I really do - I've worked with autistic employees as well - you help people out as resources allow. Now try to keep up with me here, because this is going to get somewhat technical, but your ability to create these ship models does not automatically mean that you have made a space game.

I realize that this information might be new to perhaps 500 or so of your current employees, but it's really something you should bring them up to speed on.

Once your staff is on board with the concept that they have not, in fact, been building a space game, then they'll be ready to tackle the challenge of actually doing what the backers have paid $114 million dollars for. I sympathize with your situation: it's not easy to make a game, and it's far more fun to just crank out pictures of ships and take money for them. It's particularly difficult when you're spread across several studios in multiple countries, and the difficulty cranks up to 11 when you have no leadership or vision. Unfortunately, that is the situation you're in, so you've got to make the most of it. Talk amongst yourselves during staff meetings about the things you've seen and enjoyed about space games that existed and functioned. Did they have mining? What did you like about that? What didn't work? Do you have workable ideas how to improve the experience while maintaining the parts you enjoyed? Talk about these things, and come up with a plan. Designate one person to take a greatly simplified version of that plan to Chris Roberts, preferably written in crayon, and have them describe it to him while waving their hands around, making whooshing noises, and saying SHOULD, COULD, STUFF, and GONNA BE PRETTY COOL as much as possible. When Chris provides his feedback, write it down very carefully, making notes of his advice and his concerns. What does he like? What does he dislike? Keep it all on a single sheet of paper.

On your way back to the rest of the staff, shred that page, and then proceed with the plan you made in the first place.

When dealing with Sandi, take a page from Greek hero Perseus and keep a mirror handy. In this smartphone era, we all have cameras on us at all times - this is also perfect. Ask her what she did with her hair, compliment her shoes, or just say something like "you look different today" with a sparkle in your eye. Remember, toxic employees can be a menace, but they can also be a benefit. Pick the viper up like Steve Irwin, and point the business end elsewhere. Mention that the donut delivery guy has been slacking. Tell her the immersion-door installation team said she looked old. Wonder aloud why nobody is using the prepped rehearsal room when there's all this unused film just sitting in there waiting for someone to do an impromptu audition. Keep her busy.

Setting up some priorities is also in order. Wearing space-boxers is usually near the top of the priority list when any development studio sits down and starts spitballing about the features in their new space game, but try to resist the temptation of following the establishment, and consider a fresh approach. You don't have the leering eye of a publisher watching over your every decision, so use that to your advantage and start thinking outside of the box. Consider an unconventional approach such as knowing what you're building, discussing what the plans for the game are, even going all the way through the looking-glass by deciding what some of the game mechanics might be. It seems counter-intuitive, but those kinds of considerations give you a framework during development that can pay dividends down the road. Instead of giving players time-outs in their bunk because they rammed a ship, for example, you could instead make the ships function in space. Instead of having space boxers for your clone spacemen to wear, you could have the players stop clipping through geometry.

Don't be afraid to use contracted resources for some of the bigger challenges. A first-year computer-science student could help you cobble together a functioning patcher, for example. Don't make the mistake of thinking you have to solve these seemingly impossible problems all yourselves.

I hope some of this helps.

Mirificus posted:

Tarkaroshe's Cabinet of Curious Citizens profile. was brought to his attention. Befittingly, he did exactly what I said about him in in profile: "For reasons unknown, they are quick to attack a poster's motivation and who they associate with."

Mirificus posted:

Tarkaroshe is bringing it up in other threads while continuing to offer assurances that he is not angry.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

Squadron 42 better have multiplayer. Co-operative play was a core gameplay mechanic, and while CIG pulled the drop-in/drop-out portion of it they then confirmed there would be isolated missions with co-op. That's not say anyone should expect CIG to actually follow through on a basic mechanic that's been promised from the beginning. They've already demonstrated a willingness to ignore anything said in the past.

Brian Rubin posted:

If it's open world I'll definitely be more interested than I might if it was more a straight up, story-focused sequel.

ManofManyAliases posted:

Nothing wrong with taking my stance and defending it. I'm of the opinion that, although they are claiming open development (at least more open than some other projects we see), there is still much under wraps that won't be shown.

quote:

In the long term, we're neck deep in preparations for Gamescom in August. That's taking a fair bit of my bandwidth these days as instead of one 3-hour presentation one evening, we'll be broadcasting live from the showfloor booth all five days of the event. We'll still working out the details of what we'll actually be showing: mostly gameplay and live interviews, but we'll have a few surprises mixed in there (these surprises will also be uploaded to YouTube for those who can't spend five days watching us on the showfloor.) This'll be our first REAL gaming convention showfloor booth, so it's a big responsibility and I'm hopeful those able to attend will enjoy seeing it in person (and those watching at home will see it on Twitch!)