Neltharak posted:

Speaking of phylacteries what if star citizen's phylactery is chris roberts and that's why the game refuses to die ?

Hav posted:

Natural outgrowth of the Idoru was to attach a mocap frisket to a performer and have them do the actions while the vocaloid (natural language synthesis) does the 'singing'. It's the collision between anime and idoru to provide a frankly bewildering intersection. That is not anime.

Bofast posted:

Imagine being the one doing the mocap for those shows. "I do sold out shows all the time, only no one knows it's me".

Drunk Theory posted:

Not saying it wasn't funny, and you aren't clever. But damnit now I've got that in my rap sheet.

peter gabriel posted:

G0RF posted:

He is the chief emitter of this distorted view, though, due to his amoral character and his myopic biases towards Assets against Mechanics. He’s pathologically addicted to the game loop of selling high poly ultra-fidelity in game assets and robbing his own artists of their design agency by micromanaging even the most trivial details to the Nth degree then telling himself “I am the Master and by my touch I have elevated what began as mundane object into priceless art.”

It’s not that he believes his sycophants, its that he demands conformity to his narcissism and micromanagement impulse and organizational survival demands obedience. It drove guys like Jennison out, it’s driven lots of talent out. The talent that remains like Paul Jones or Dearsley or whoever is willing to indulge this fiction of Chris’s transcendent artistry but it is a fiction. The same is no less true of Sandi, who is even less competent — a figure of the highest symbolic power yet utterly inessential to her high station. So inessential that this VP of Marketing for a $180 million dollar gaming studio doesn’t even know basic details of the demonstrations her husband is presenting at their biggest externally-facing marketing event of the year! If only prickly Pete Hines had it so easy!

Utterly inessential, yet it goes without saying inside CIG that anyone in the organization who might cross this personified hood ornament is out the door. Sycophancy is demanded by Chris and Sandi both and the history of the entire project is a testament to just how malformed organizational processes become under the nepotistic rule of unhinged narcissism.

The fact that lower ego artists yield to Chris’s vanity and engage in a mutually agreed upon act of collusive fiction that in turn justifies the incredible wastes of dev time and backer money is one example of how the pathology of Chris is systemic inside Cloud Imperium Games. It is now and has always been one of the biggest taxes backers pay and just as “The Road To CitizenCon” glamorized one set of pathologies Chris should be profoundly ashamed of, so too “The Origin of Spaceships” glamorized another set. They are proud of that which they should apologize for because it has been demanded of them for so long that the dysfunction has been normalized.


If 2017 has kept a steadyish pace month to month I’d have believed the Tracker reflected natural ongoing demand, even if it was difficult to believe. But we saw a turnaround miracle in the span of the last 5 weeks that really does suggest manipulation even while an unplayable 3.0 was dumped at the 11th hour. While it’s possible the most far gone of the whales might account for it the sums are such that it’s far easier for me to imagine yet another pathology — an invisible one — very rooted in Chris Roberts precedent (misallocating development money for film FX in the good old days). It would be perfectly in keeping with organizational deviance already made visible elsewhere through close scrutiny.

I can only assume the scoffing from some of the silent observers always in our company that we might posit such a thing. Madness.

There is infernal, nearly invisible machinery guiding logic and action within Cloud Imperium Games in accordance with the indomitable will of dishonest, vain people. The backers only rarely see it not because it can not be seen but because they do not wish to see it — for once it is fully stared at in all its ghastliness, it cannot be unseen. So too the metronomically grinding gears of this machine, a crunching easily mistaken for some ambient hum of room noise, are made distinct from it with cautious ears and they can not be unheard once discerned.

Do you silent lurkers want to see it? As you sit there shaking your heads, closing your minds and telling yourself it’s not really true, it’s too harsh a view. We can show it to you, but do you really want to see it? Hear it?

If you do, watch this. Closely.

Watch a man laugh to tell a brazen lie he does not believe and ask his brother to confirm it for an audience of thousands. Watch the reflection of his wife’s head as she turns in surprise to hear that request for confirmation go out to the brother, and hear their chuckling as that confirmation is given. See the faces of a team of developers who mostly know it can’t be so — they are half a year from even shooting the motion capture and God knows they haven’t got their AI working nor their missions fully built and there are assets required that haven’t yet been begun and will not for the entire year ahead.

See the discomfort of some, the knowing smiles of others? And hear it conclude as Ben Lesnick of all people blurts out “No more dates!”

Why, you might wonder, did he do so after a room full of people jointly smiled their agreement with the Boss’s ambitious claim for an audience of thousands in the very season of goodwill towards men?

Because he knew it wasn’t so. They all knew. They knew it was wrong and they nodded along anyone because it was asked of them and to defy it would be subversion. And Lesnick knew it was wrong, he knew it wasn’t so, and while he could not defy it he could at least plead for it not to be repeated.

This was but a glimpse of the machinery and it is hidden everywhere in plain view should you wish to see it. It is not hatred or trolling to call it what it is for it is monstrous. It is wrong and you know it’s wrong and to root for that which you know is wrong to succeed for the sake of the game you desperately wish to play is to become yet another gear in a hellish machine yourself. So lurk silently if you must but don’t delude yourself that this is all some chattering sophistry from losers who can not see the Grand Design. We see it better than you think, only we call it what it is, and if you can’t you’re a fool and if you won’t you’re a liar.

Drunk Theory posted:

Not saying it wasn't funny, and you aren't clever. But damnit now I've got that in my rap sheet.

Toops posted:

I agree with you until your 3rd paragraph. An alpha is supposed to be feature complete. Period. And what I mean by "feature complete" is "core gameplay systems are all present." Not a few. Not most. ALL. Now, maybe you only have a couple levels done. Maybe your boss fight mechanics are overly simplistic. Maybe your art assets are placeholder. Maybe you need to hire some hotshot to write genius-level shaders to bump the graphical fidelity, or pull in top-level artists to build production-ready models. But the purpose of an alpha is to experience the philosophy of your game and answer one question: "Is this fun or not?" Is this gonna work? Will this foundation support the weight required for a memorable experience?

If Chris Roberts truly was the visionary he says he is, Star Citizen would be fun already. It would be obvious.

But Alpha isn't a terminal state in development, and that's why the term is confusing. If the answer to "is it fun?" is demonstrably "no" or even "not quite," you need to figure out why and iterate. That might mean tweaking existing systems, scrapping some, adding others, or (most likely) some combination of those. But when you say "We hit alpha!" you are saying "This is the game! It will be longer than this, but if the game is to be good and fun, you will feel it, now."

This is where your code, your process, and your culture dictates your game's success or failure. If you have talented managers and engineers, they will have already designed the game in a way that's iterable. Changing code is destructive. Re-doing models is destructive. These activities all have a time-cost. If your code is a messy, incomprehensible, tangled, panic-ridden, crunch-driven, tightly-coupled acid trip, where "everything's like, connected man!" and touching one tiny part breaks the whole machine, you will fail. Straight up, you're done. What you got is what you got. This is the point at which publishers pull the plug on failing projects. Your first shot at it was way off, and it's clear that starting over would be faster than fixing this mess. And I'm telling you right now, Star Citizen is a perfect diamond bullet of engineering failure in that regard. You're seeing it play out in real time. That fact was evident to anyone with experience in this industry as early as 2015.

When I heard Illfonic on ATV, visibly and audibly dejected, week after painful week making no progress after months-long merge-hell, I knew that Star Citizen was a complete failure, because how did they get there? I knew CIG would go dark on Star Marine, because how could they possibly be honest about their complete project management incompetence and uphold "the vision" that fueled their very existence? And whaddya know, CIG went dark.

I'm saying this as a means of strengthening your thesis that CIG is doing things backwards. It's very evident to me that CIG still has absolutely no idea what the game called "Star Citizen" is supposed to be.

The tragedy for me, and what makes this so hard to stomach, is that CIG is literally exploiting every heartless technique in the book to trick people into giving them more money, just so they can continue to fail at everything they attempt.

Edit: I think most of the confusion around the term "alpha" comes from this era of "early access." If you're playing an "early access" build of a game, you are playing a pre-alpha build, by definition. It's just that "pre-alpha" has a slightly negative connotation that roughly approaches "early" which, in turn, implies "we're not quite sure just what the hell we're doing yet." This is not a scary word for developers, because they spend almost the entirety of their professional lives in this state. But it's scary to paying customers. I love early access, because to me, it's fun to participate in the process. When I worked in this industry, I was a part of both successful and horrible games, and from that vantage it's endlessly fascinating to watch the humanity (of both developer and consumer) behind the immensely complex process of building a technological work of art. When it comes to Star Citizen, the entire endeavor: manager, engineer, HR rep, executive, backer, fan, media representative... ALL of them, almost without exception, are worthy of ridicule and scorn. This is, beyond any doubt, the worst game development project I've ever seen.

Sunswipe posted:

Sandi could be a successful actress if she just stuck to emotionless robot roles. As the next Terminator, she'd be terrifying.

SpaceCurtisLeMay posted:

Except there hasn't been any imports other than the PPK/22 in several years. PPK in .380 or .32 are hard to find these days.

Edit: I approve of my avatar....

biglads posted:

Could someone make a video of glitchy SC 'gameplay' with Crobear popins using Bear Necessities from the Jungle Book film as the soundtrack but played on an airhorn?

I have neither the talent nor time. Thanks

BeigeJacket posted:

Dear Americans,

Gun chat is very, very, very dull.

Yours,

Rest of World

Jobbo_Fett posted:

I'm Canadian but thanks anyways

quote:

Canada is a country located in the northern part of North America.

Wuxi posted:

BeigeJacket posted:

Dear Americans,

Gun chat is very, very, very dull.

Yours,

Rest of World

JugbandDude posted:

As a big fan of Bond, I definitely approve the ppk.

Thanks for the tips, guys.

quote:

Fallout 4's Modular Level Design

in like a normal workflow each one of those things it could have been a custom asset someone goes into ZBrush for like two weeks you get a custom texture; looks great, that's awesome. But that takes a long time and using this setup John was able to make 400 machines we wouldn't been able to do that otherwise so think about how you can use the modular workflow

Neltharak posted:

I'd watch the poo poo out of that movie.

peter gabriel posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQUlA8Hcv4s

Bofast posted:

Imagine being the one doing the mocap for those shows. "I do sold out shows all the time, only no one knows it's me".

boviscopophobic posted:

MyRadar Weather Radar has contracted a case of the Star Citizens.

Hav posted:

"Please stand for the national anthem of Birmingham"


I had a vague suspicion that Clifford might be one of the performers, thus providing a more logical and reasonable reason for taking on the persona, or at least hairstyle of a non-anime vocaloid. Then I realize that I'm guilty of trying to normalize the world, again.

Flared Basic Bitch posted:

There almost 40 bucks in add ons for this loving thing.