Larz posted:

Star Citizen: I can literally confirm Vulkan, VR, raytracing, server meshing, hand-tracking and other exotic new technologies

Mirificus posted:

Hav posted:

Be fair, they've had to start from scratch three times. That whole outsourcing experiment took a while to go to poo poo. And it's hard hiring when the entire industry is so jelly at your progress that they can't stop laughing.

Mirificus posted:

Popete posted:

lol, love to have 11 open senior programmer positions.

Mirificus posted:

TheAgent posted:

there was some people round these parts that went totally gaga for that moron

I have no idea why, the dude is a grade-fuckin-A idiot

Mirificus posted:

quote:

I want to see an alien race where they still have boobs but they are in a weird place. Maybe on their back or between the legs like on horses. Something a little bit weirder than what you could do with good make up.

quote:

i'd like to see an alien hermaphrodite race.

quote:

Velociraptors never had mammaries

quote:

As a grown-rear end man of 30, I don't need alien boobies to keep my interest and frankly it causes me to switch off: it's pandering and patronising. It's like someone jingling their keys in my face to get my attention: this is not the way to communicate to me if you want my respect. It ends up as an assault on my suspension of disbelief, and I think narrows the appeal of the game.

Zazz Razzamatazz posted:

I love this one. Chris himself admitting that he needs a producer/publisher to keep him on schedule/budget and reign in the scope creep.
And all the cultists crow about the lack of publisher as if that was a good thing...

Bumble He posted:

also a classic roberts when he says at the end “if i made the movie today it would be 10x better“. he is constantly pulling random numbers out of his rear end. in every context he will just add some numbers (be it poly count, dev time, money, or like in this case “10x better“).

i'm nitpicking i know but what do you expect after 7 years

Quavers posted:

Roadmap Roundup November 15th 2019

trucutru posted:

Quavers posted:

Roadmap Roundup November 15th 2019

Notable Changes for November 15th, 2019

Persistent Universe
_________________

Prison Missons SCOPE CREEP
This card introduces various missions set within in-game prisons around the universe and has been added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.9.

Klescher Automated Prison SCOPE CREEP
This card introduces the Klescher Automated Prison, which is owned and operated by Klescher Rehabilitation Facilities, a private corrections provider. This fully automated corrections site includes housing, security, and work release opportunities to allow prisoners to be productive while paying their debt to society. This card has been added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.9.

Prison Uniform SCOPE CREEP
This card introduces the Prison Uniform wearable, which has been added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.9.

Rescue Hijacked 890 Jump SCOPE CREEP
This card introduces a new mission that takes place on an 890 Jump that has been hijacked by ship-jackers intent on hacking into the ship’s computer. Work on this mission is nearing completion, resulting in the Rescue Hijacked 890 Jump card being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

Law System v2 – Fines
This card introduces the ability for you to be able to pay off your fines at a terminal in your own time, rather than automatic fines. Work on this is nearing completion, resulting in Law System v2 – Fines being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

Vehicle Look Ahead Camera
This card introduces revised look ahead camera implementation that allows you to look towards the direction you are moving for both space and ground vehicles. In addition the mode can also look towards selected targets to keep them in view and provide some horizon levelling when in atmosphere. Work on this new camera functionality is nearing completion, resulting in the Vehicle Look Ahead Camera card being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

Vehicle Third Person Camera
This card introduces improvements to the third-person camera system for vehicles to provide a more immersive experience by ensuring the camera can orbit cleanly around vehicles, snap towards your movement direction, and react to collisions better. Work on this new camera functionality is nearing completion, resulting in the Vehicle Third Person Camera card being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

Mining Heads
This card introduces 5 new mining lasers to the game, all with different stats ±. Some will transfer power faster but induce a lot more instability into the rock, while others will make mining more stable but slow down transfer. Some mining lasers will reduce the resistance levels of the rocks, making them ideal for cooperative gameplay, or will be incredibly powerful but more expensive. Work on these new components is nearing completion, resulting in the Mining Heads card being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

Planet Tech v4
This card introduces new planetary improvements: improved tools, workflows, planet surface blending, objects scattering and transitions, generation driven by climate data, and more. Work on this new tech is nearing completion, resulting in the Planet Tech v4 card being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

microTech Moons: Clio, Euterpe, Calliope DELAYED
The team working on these moons is spending additional time polishing the v4 Planet Tech, which will debut in Alpha 3.8. This additional time will result in Clio, Euterpe, and Calliope moving on the Roadmap to Alpha 3.9.

Death Animation Improvements DELAYED
While great progress has been made on this feature, and it’s still on track to be completed by the end of Q4, it will just miss the cut-off date for go/no-go reviews, resulting in this card moving on the Roadmap to Alpha 3.9.

NPC Healing DELAYED
After re-evaluating priorities, the team working on this card will focus on improving the Personal Inner Thought and Personal Interaction System before moving on to improving medpens, grenades, and throwing t1 functionality. This shift in focus will result in this card moving back one quarter to Q2, 2020.

Player Status System v2 DELAYED
After re-evaluating priorities, Tier 2 EVA functionality has been prioritized over the Player Status System v2 that’s currently slated for 4.0, resulting in this card temporarily moving off of the Roadmap until discussions wrap up and a new target date is decided upon.

Cockpit Experience DELAYED
After re-evaluating priorities, the decision was made to shift focus onto the previously mentioned camera improvements, which we feel will deliver more impactful improvements. The result is that this card will be temporarily moving off of the Roadmap until discussions wrap up and a new target date is decided upon.

NPC Improvements: Shopkeeper & Bartender DELAYED
After re-evaluating priorities, the decision was made to temporarily remove these off of the Roadmap until discussions wrap up and a new target date is decided upon.

FPS Combat: Weapon Types DELAYED
The developers focused on this task were pulled to assist with AI Perception for Squadron 42. Additionally, the development work for this card involved more feedback and adjustments than originally anticipated. For both of these reasons, after additional evaluation, this card has been moved back on quarter to Alpha 3.9.

Procedural Asteroids DELAYED
This card has since become fairly legacy as it contained a lot of general subtasks that have since been duplicated into new tasks. The Graphics team is still looking to make further progress on this in the new year, however that would be subject to planning in Q1. For these reasons, this card has been temporarily removed from the Roadmap while we work out the best way to represent the work that will be completed.

Planetary Ground Fog Tech and Improved Terrain Shadows DELAYED
While great progress has been made on these features, and work will continue on them both, they will not be ready in time for Alpha 3.8; therefore they are temporarily being removed from the Roadmap until discussions wrap up and a new target date is decided upon.


Squadron 42
___________

Body Dragging
Now that previously mentioned discussions have concluded, this card has been re-added to the Roadmap for Q1, 2020.

FPS: Realistic Firing v2
After re-evaluating priorities, this will now be completed one quarter earlier than originally planned, resulting in the card moving up to Q1, 2020.

Cockpit Interaction DELAYED
After re-evaluating priorities, the team working on this card will focus on improving the Personal Inner Thought and Personal Interaction System, before moving on to improving medpens, grenades, and throwing t1 functionality. This shift in focus will result in this card moving back one quarter to Q2, 2020.

Locomotion v2 DELAYED
This card consists of general improvement, polish, and tweaking tasks for locomotion, which is lower priority than previous tasks which still focus on core locomotion functionality and needs. In an effort to put more focus on core functionality, this card will move back one quarter to Q2, 2020.

TheAgent posted:

god knows what kind of devils bargain they made with that billionaire and his son,

TheAgent posted:

they've pissed away a lot of that calder money and have almost nothing to show for it

they can't keep people because the entire company is toxic as gently caress, can't hire anyone besides entry level dudes (sometimes in senior positions), are wasting at least $15m a year on outside companies to produce art assets and fix their mocap animation issues, don't have a whole lot of people with 3d engine programming experience left, and pretty much the entire mocap/cinematics dev group has been churned and refreshed in the span of 24 months

god knows what kind of devils bargain they made with that billionaire and his son, but Q2/Q3 2020 is going to be an absolutely fun time. not only will you get your intrepid reporter here at space court, but it's also 24 months since the calders gave em an entire years worth of operating expenses. I'm guessing "we've refactored basic loving movement to Q2 2020" isn't going to fly when the investors want crobbers insane promises finally fulfilled

https://mailchi.mp/cloudimperiumgames/squadron-42-update-141477 posted:

Both Dave and Will spent most of the month visiting the UK office. That time was spent not only reviewing the latest progress on several chapters, but on capturing a few additional pickup performances needed for the completion of the game. This included recording tests for the female player character to ensure the pipeline is working correctly before the team proceeds with recording all of her performances.

One in the Bum posted:

Chris Roberts is like a time capsule from the 90s that we opened and gave $200M to make a video game just for the lulz. Unfortunately, took it seriously.

Dark Off posted:

this is from this year alone and with fairly quick discord search on it, pretty much shows that they have mocapped in all quarters of this year.

Mirificus posted:

mjotto posted:

I wonder if Sandi cleans up after a facial capture?

mjotto posted:

After all, she's known to love a money shot!

The Titanic posted:

Not to fault CIG any but when it comes to female designs it seems like video games tend to go easy on the girls. Like the males of a species could look like hideous monsters of a freakish nature, but the same species female looks almost normal except they have like green skin and a slightly weird face but not too bad.

trucutru posted:

https://www.oglaf.com/dimorphism/

It's oglaf so apparently it's not safe for work and poo poo (I work at the anime titty company so I dunno).

Popete posted:

Quit it with the creepy poo poo.

Kosumo posted:

I'm pretty sure he means like how she had those fake tattoos on for ages when she was doing some 'acting'. I could see her walking around for a few days with facial motion capture dots all over her face just so she could bring up her recent 'acting' to people she meet.

What where you thinking?

The Titanic posted:

Never mind. It's not a CIG art. Doesn't matter anyway.

I never understand the hate for boobs and such. Yes, women look different slightly. They have boobs. Adding boobs to a character is just making them female like. It shouldn't offend you so much you hate something because it has a girl in it. That makes you something else entirely.

Boob physics though can be going into silly territory but it's up to the game and the clothes I guess but I won't stop anybody from liking bouncing boobies in their video games if it makes them smile or something else entirely. You be you!

Kosumo posted:

I'm pretty sure he means like how she had those fake tattoos on for ages when she was doing some 'acting'. I could see her walking around for a few days with facial motion capture dots all over her face just so she could bring up her recent 'acting' to people she meet.

What where you thinking?

Kosumo posted:

I'm pretty sure he means like how she had those fake tattoos on for ages when she was doing some 'acting'. I could see her walking around for a few days with facial motion capture dots all over her face just so she could bring up her recent 'acting' to people she meet.

What where you thinking?

Quavers posted:

Roadmap Roundup November 15th 2019

Notable Changes for November 15th, 2019

Persistent Universe
_________________

Prison Missons SCOPE CREEP
This card introduces various missions set within in-game prisons around the universe and has been added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.9.

Klescher Automated Prison SCOPE CREEP
This card introduces the Klescher Automated Prison, which is owned and operated by Klescher Rehabilitation Facilities, a private corrections provider. This fully automated corrections site includes housing, security, and work release opportunities to allow prisoners to be productive while paying their debt to society. This card has been added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.9.

Prison Uniform SCOPE CREEP
This card introduces the Prison Uniform wearable, which has been added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.9.

Rescue Hijacked 890 Jump SCOPE CREEP
This card introduces a new mission that takes place on an 890 Jump that has been hijacked by ship-jackers intent on hacking into the ship’s computer. Work on this mission is nearing completion, resulting in the Rescue Hijacked 890 Jump card being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

Law System v2 – Fines
This card introduces the ability for you to be able to pay off your fines at a terminal in your own time, rather than automatic fines. Work on this is nearing completion, resulting in Law System v2 – Fines being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

Vehicle Look Ahead Camera
This card introduces revised look ahead camera implementation that allows you to look towards the direction you are moving for both space and ground vehicles. In addition the mode can also look towards selected targets to keep them in view and provide some horizon levelling when in atmosphere. Work on this new camera functionality is nearing completion, resulting in the Vehicle Look Ahead Camera card being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

Vehicle Third Person Camera
This card introduces improvements to the third-person camera system for vehicles to provide a more immersive experience by ensuring the camera can orbit cleanly around vehicles, snap towards your movement direction, and react to collisions better. Work on this new camera functionality is nearing completion, resulting in the Vehicle Third Person Camera card being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

Mining Heads
This card introduces 5 new mining lasers to the game, all with different stats ±. Some will transfer power faster but induce a lot more instability into the rock, while others will make mining more stable but slow down transfer. Some mining lasers will reduce the resistance levels of the rocks, making them ideal for cooperative gameplay, or will be incredibly powerful but more expensive. Work on these new components is nearing completion, resulting in the Mining Heads card being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

Planet Tech v4
This card introduces new planetary improvements: improved tools, workflows, planet surface blending, objects scattering and transitions, generation driven by climate data, and more. Work on this new tech is nearing completion, resulting in the Planet Tech v4 card being added to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.8.

microTech Moons: Clio, Euterpe, Calliope DELAYED
The team working on these moons is spending additional time polishing the v4 Planet Tech, which will debut in Alpha 3.8. This additional time will result in Clio, Euterpe, and Calliope moving on the Roadmap to Alpha 3.9.

Death Animation Improvements DELAYED
While great progress has been made on this feature, and it’s still on track to be completed by the end of Q4, it will just miss the cut-off date for go/no-go reviews, resulting in this card moving on the Roadmap to Alpha 3.9.

NPC Healing DELAYED
After re-evaluating priorities, the team working on this card will focus on improving the Personal Inner Thought and Personal Interaction System before moving on to improving medpens, grenades, and throwing t1 functionality. This shift in focus will result in this card moving back one quarter to Q2, 2020.

Player Status System v2 DELAYED
After re-evaluating priorities, Tier 2 EVA functionality has been prioritized over the Player Status System v2 that’s currently slated for 4.0, resulting in this card temporarily moving off of the Roadmap until discussions wrap up and a new target date is decided upon.

Cockpit Experience DELAYED
After re-evaluating priorities, the decision was made to shift focus onto the previously mentioned camera improvements, which we feel will deliver more impactful improvements. The result is that this card will be temporarily moving off of the Roadmap until discussions wrap up and a new target date is decided upon.

NPC Improvements: Shopkeeper & Bartender DELAYED
After re-evaluating priorities, the decision was made to temporarily remove these off of the Roadmap until discussions wrap up and a new target date is decided upon.

FPS Combat: Weapon Types DELAYED
The developers focused on this task were pulled to assist with AI Perception for Squadron 42. Additionally, the development work for this card involved more feedback and adjustments than originally anticipated. For both of these reasons, after additional evaluation, this card has been moved back on quarter to Alpha 3.9.

Procedural Asteroids DELAYED
This card has since become fairly legacy as it contained a lot of general subtasks that have since been duplicated into new tasks. The Graphics team is still looking to make further progress on this in the new year, however that would be subject to planning in Q1. For these reasons, this card has been temporarily removed from the Roadmap while we work out the best way to represent the work that will be completed.

Planetary Ground Fog Tech and Improved Terrain Shadows DELAYED
While great progress has been made on these features, and work will continue on them both, they will not be ready in time for Alpha 3.8; therefore they are temporarily being removed from the Roadmap until discussions wrap up and a new target date is decided upon.


Squadron 42
___________

Body Dragging
Now that previously mentioned discussions have concluded, this card has been re-added to the Roadmap for Q1, 2020.

FPS: Realistic Firing v2
After re-evaluating priorities, this will now be completed one quarter earlier than originally planned, resulting in the card moving up to Q1, 2020.

Cockpit Interaction DELAYED
After re-evaluating priorities, the team working on this card will focus on improving the Personal Inner Thought and Personal Interaction System, before moving on to improving medpens, grenades, and throwing t1 functionality. This shift in focus will result in this card moving back one quarter to Q2, 2020.

Locomotion v2 DELAYED
This card consists of general improvement, polish, and tweaking tasks for locomotion, which is lower priority than previous tasks which still focus on core locomotion functionality and needs. In an effort to put more focus on core functionality, this card will move back one quarter to Q2, 2020.

quote:

"The way it works is that the persistent universe server, which we’re calling the Galaxy Server, keeps track of all players’ assets, group relationships and locations inside the Star Citizen universe. As the Galaxy server isn’t handling any realtime action it can handle our complete player base, which right now would be about 45,000 players, but is designed to be able to scale to millions if need be."
[...]
An illustration of how this would work is like this –

I start out planet side on New Pittsburg. I decide to buy a few tonnes of steel to fly to the shipyards of Terra. I’m currently in the hands of the galaxy server that communicates with my client and handles my purchases and interactions on the planet as these are not real time in the manner that the space action is. We render these in the manner of Freelancer, as detailed 3D environments where we see a third person view of our character in a location and we can click on Non Player Characters (NPCs) or terminals to buy / sell, upgrade your ship, get gossip, hear about a mission and so on. You’ll also be able to interact with other players via a chat interface. We haven’t fully worked out the player avatar handling planet side but the bar or private clubs will be where you can meet / chat to other players. Besides populating the bar with NPCs, the game will also populate the bar with other players. If there are more players planet side than there are slots of avatars in the bar the ones visible to you will be based off your friends list and then it will be based on relevance to you – a player looking for a wingman, one from a similar group, or maybe someone that you’ve been given a mission to find or hunt down. You will also be able to see the full list of players in the room if there are more players than there are slots. Default would be a drop down list for this, but as I hate anything that breaks the immersion, we’ll probably come up with a better in fiction way of seeing the list of players – maybe you tell the bartender who you’re looking for, maybe you can look at the door list for the bar.

Having bought my cargo I launch into space. If there are players already in orbit there will be an orbit instance already created. If it’s not full then I will be placed into that. If it is full then a new one will be dynamically created. All orbit (and battle) instances reserve slots for friends and persons of interest (POI), which can be NPCs or other players, so if you’ve launched and there are multiple orbit instances and you have friends already in orbit you should be placed into that instance. This is also the dynamic that will be applied if you want to follow another player – you can “tag” them as a POI and then the game will do its best to place you in the same instance as your POI. For instance if you tagged someone planet side and they launch your PDA with its future version of Siri will notify you that your POI is leaving, giving you a window to launch into space too.

Once in orbit I can pull up my Navigation computer and set a course for my destination. If its several systems away like Terra, the nav computer will chart a course through the relevant jump points. You will be able to adjust this like on Google maps, so if you click a different jump point on the system map it will then re-route you on the shortest path to your destination with that jump point as the first “jump”.

Once I’ve plotted my nav course I would then engage auto-pilot and head towards my first “way” point on the path to my destination (a jump point, an interim space feature, like an asteroid belt and so on). At this point I’ve been handed back to the Galaxy Server, which is determining whether I will encounter a hostile, someone that has tagged me as a POI, or a predetermined encounter on the way, or if I’m going to run across ongoing battle instance that is relevant to me (some members of the instance are aligned against or with me). These encounters could be with an NPC or a live player(s) and are sorted on skill level and also – which is important to all of you that like a more single player experience and don’t want to deal with griefers – based on your player versus player (PvP) preference. So if you’ve set your game settings to be low PvP and you’re in a relatively safe area, you’ll likely have an NPC (PvE) encounter as opposed to a PvP one. Of course your ranking and any reputation you earn won’t be the same with a PvE encounter versus a PvP. My hope for this dynamic is that it will allow people to first play Star Citizen in a safer more single player open world style, but as they grow in confidence and want to test their mettle against other real players they can take the training wheels off and get into battles with real players. There will also be areas of the universe that no matter what your PvP setting is, will be PvP. These will be systems that are on the fringes of the policed galaxy and will be notorious for pirate and other illegal activity. They will also be the most lucrative areas – if you can survive.

Now if you’re flying with your friends, who you can link to via the game POI “tagging” system, they will be with you when you’re pulled into a battle instance, whether it is against NPCs, real players or a combination of both.

Once the Galaxy Server has determined that you will have an encounter based on the above criteria it either dynamically creates a battle instance, or puts you in one if one already exists at the encounter point, and that instance has room for new players. To exit this instance you either have to resolve the hostilities by defeating who’s targeting you, negotiating an exit or just outrunning them. Once in an instance you can put out a distress call to your friends. There are two ways people on your friends list (or squadron as we’re going to call it) can help. We save slots in all instances for friends to warp in to fight. To do this they need to be in the same system. If they are they can autopilot in to your rescue and will be dropped into the instance. If they’re not in the star system, if they can get to your system before the battle is over then they can join (but will only be able to join once they’ve reached your system). The second way for your friends to help out is by “dropping in” on your ship. This only works if it’s a multi person vehicle like the RSI Constellation. In this scenario they don’t need to be in your system, they just will drop in inside your ship and will be able to move around in first person, climbing into a turret to man it, or jumping in you P52 to fly it in combat while you fly the main ship (or they could fly your main ship and you pilot the fighter)

Once the hostilities or the event (sometimes you could be pulled into an instance because you came across a derelict ship or space station and we want to give the player a chance to explore) that triggered the drop out of auto-pilot has been resolved, you can hit auto-pilot again, get handed back to the Galaxy Server and go about your way on the nav course you’ve plotted.

You will always drop out at jump points and planets, where you will need to either make a jump to another system or land.

This process is continued until you reach your final destination, which in my example would be Terra, where I would use my comm system to negotiate a landing slot, which would take me down to the planet’s surface via an in-engine cinematic. Once planet side I’ll be able to sell my cargo, replenish my supplies and look for new opportunities via the third person planet side interface.

[...]
The same instance system underpins the single player Squadron 42. If you’re playing off-line, your computer will be acting as the server and client, there will be no opportunities for friends to join and everyone will be an NPC. But if you play Squadron 42 through the Galaxy Server, even though your missions and space areas are pre-determined (you don’t get to pick where in the galaxy you are flying if you’re in the military) we will allow your friends to drop in / drop out to take over NPC wingmen and if you want extra skill ranking you can allow other players to drop in and take over enemy ace characters. "

Mr.PayDay posted:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/12770-Chris-Roberts-On-Multiplayer-Single-Player-And-Instancing


November 11th 2012

drat, 7 Years ago! How close are we to his scenarios after 300 Million Dollar sunk?