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Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer
Well, the paywall's up and I've finally decided to stop freeloading. Also, Shitizens keep shilling on r/pcmasterrace and I figured I'd let :pgabz: know his videos are very helpful in combating that particular annoyance. Finally, I don't know if any of you are aware of the site Popehat, but this excerpt from a series about tracking down a scammer seemed relevant:

"I have prosecuted, and defended, and sued or represented civilly, drug dealers and bank robbers and child molesters and child porn possessors and extremists and members of a designated terrorist organization. In my experience, nobody is as chilling as a career con man. The level of sociopathy — the extent to which everyone is merely an object to be manipulated — is difficult to grasp. So is the sheer relentlessness and remorselessness of the conduct. Imagine if the terminator was programmed to defraud you rather than kill you. There's no stopping or curing or rehabilitating such people — there's only notifying law enforcement, helping past victims, and trying to warn future victims."

from https://popehat.com/2011/10/04/anatomy-of-a-scam-investigation-chapter-eight/

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Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

his nibs posted:

Welcome. Do you like cats?

I do. Unfortunately, I suffer from allergies so horrific I can only view them through the screen of my computer lest my lungs collapse and my eyes swell shut.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer



Cat?

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Posting from the past a wee bit, but yeah, it's terrifying to think someone will kill themselves because Crobberts wanted to be a director and Sandy wanted to be a movie star. I know the regulators in all the various countries are underfunded, understaffed, and can be completely toothless, but I'm still constantly shocked they haven't jumped on this. By the time any official action is taken, I'm fully expecting the head organizers to be in South America or something.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Jobbo_Fett posted:

They already tried this, it was called "The Stanford Prison Experiment"

Posting from the past but THAT THING WAS FAAAAAAKED

Faked along withother experiments cleverly concocted to prey on people's insecurities about all the bad poo poo in the world.

So just like Star Citizen, I guess.

nice meltdown

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Y'know, the District Attorney crest is round too...What would we use to represent steamroller?

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Morris posted:

I wonder what the Stimpire's punishment for tickling is, not to mention the punishment to jerking off to tickle vids.

I am certain someone made that joke already but I can't keep up with this thread and wanted to get one in before the next hilarious misstep relegates this to the drama archive thread with the door and Ben's news anchor girlfriend :colbert:

The skin is flayed from the bones and feather dusters are applied to the bare muscle?

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer
Ben Lesnick, Developer, Master of Ships

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer
I'm surprised CIG doesn't have a Montreal studio to get those sweet, sweet incentives

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Matlock Birthmark posted:

^^Very well, phone tax.



It amazes me that none of the backers ever stop themselves and wonder why development of three releases of an alpha are in concurrent development. Is that how it's normally done?

What possible benefit could there even be to something like that? Some sort of 'monkeys with typewriters' thing? Are the devs just making random changes and at the end of the term they'll release whichever version seems the most fidelicious?

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Berious posted:

I thought you were talking about the kitty with the phone for a while.

Also think it's been mentioned but while we were enjoying ticklegate, Chris has been making wild promises again. Apparently he plans to have everyone in a single instance, like EVE Online. Except EVE does 1 tick a second which would be laughable for a game with FPS and twitch combat. Also CCP have worked on their poo poo for years, has invested in some ridiculous hardware and use tricks like slowing down game time to make it work. I wonder if this pie in the sky poo poo was Chris' latest round of seagull management that TheAgent referred to recently.

I missed those wild promises. We should take bets on what insane thing they'll say they're adding next. Also, the kitty with a phone has a clear point, it's so the kitty can make phone calls.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

I feel grief

Seriously, every time that thing goes up by another million I get more depressed. Think it's gonna hit 120 million before it crashes and burns?


edit:

Felynesnipe

Pilz fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Aug 7, 2016

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

phosdex posted:

If we guess poo poo won't really start going bad with the diehards for at least a year they'll probably be in the 140 range.

And as much as I don't want to admit it, as much as my mind screams at me to just shut up and believe that CIG is two weeks away from having some combination of the feds, the IRS, local authorities, and scoop-hungry reporters pull up at their door, there's a little voice that tells me they could totally drag this on for another year, even two. I'd be mad, but I think that might be the same voice that prevents me from buying in on bad kickstarters.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Fat Shat Sings posted:

despite derek's bluster there is no way for anyone to know how much longer this can continue.

It comes down to how much money they have to keep funding the game. If they play their cards right and tickle whales in just the right way during the anniversary sale they might limp along to a mediocre release of squadron 42 which might let them limp along to another PU release to milk the whales.

It's not a sure thing anymore, they will need to release actual content to cause the whales to drop another 5,000,000+ month, and Squadron 42 has cost probably 50-60 million at this point with them already promising it to hundreds of thousands of people.

If they can release a 'beta' 'episode one' of S42 that's even remotely playable, that'll go a long way towards keeping the money flowing in, I think.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

flyboi posted:

Yours I get so many faxes with that font and my fax to email processor just falls over

Pastposting but font 12 TNR has ended up as a bit of an academic standard in some places. It can end up being the standby font for anyone who's studied in SRS BIZNZ schools and had to write a lot of papers. I have to force myself to use anything else, and I only had it forced on me in junior high.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Wrecked Angle posted:

Lazy Sunday effort post/rant.

Is it just me or does this look like completely the wrong way to mo-cap for a computer game?

To my mind, motion capture exists for two purposes:-
1. To accurately capture the subtleties of human movement during specific animation phases.
or
2. To allow you to map the motion capture data to something that you cannot actually film.

Now, in the first case. Yes, absolutely mo-cap someone performing a perfect salute or reloading a weapon, that way when you then map that data onto your in-game character you will get a drat near perfect animation. You can capture 3 or 4 versions and mix them up among characters for variety and your game will look kickass fidelitious and not canned.

The second case make perfect sense for something like Avatar or Gollum in LoTR. You can't film a scrawny goblin creature or a big blue alien so you get a human to act out the movements then move the data across, saving you having to animate every single movement you want your creature to make.

So back to Star Citizen/Sq.42. Why would you not just film the drat actors doing the exact drat thing you want them to do in costume and then use CGI techniques to put them in the scene in the actual game? Ah, because then you would have cut-scenes and not in-game animations, BUT the way CIG are doing it gives you the exact same thing! The type of scenes they are showing mo-cap for are going to have to take control away from the player and lock them in place in the scene.

Take the short clip above. Let's assume that is two crew members being disturbed by the player entering the room, the player walks through the door, the animation is triggered, all looks good... Only the player didn't stop when they walked through the door, they ran straight past imaginary-gun holding guard one and jumped up on the table. Now your maximum fidelity animation looks dumb as gently caress as the guards completely ignore your actual position and look menacingly towards an empty doorway.

They've wasted all this time and money on doing something which will either a. look poo poo and dumb or b. make the game really loving horrible to play by taking your control away every 20 seconds. What they should have done is scan the famous actors faces, got proper body-language actors to mo-cap specific movements and then let your loving animators and programmers do their drat jobs.

PASTPOSTING TIME

The whole way Crobberts seems to think reminds me of GMing tabletop games. You can spend hours ahead of time planning out specific events, all under the assumption that your players will react in certain ways, only to have it all fall to poo poo the second a player goes "Nah, going to the demoncave sounds dull. I'm gonna go shake down some criminals for a percent of their profits instead." Obviously, as a GM you could railroad the players into doing what you want, but they're not gonna enjoy that and most will probably see it as you being a baby. Crobberts is so focused on directing a movie he's not thinking in terms of player agency - the player's just another scripted character, not meant to react or give feedback. You might as well call the PC 'Fourth Wall."

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer
Can I just ask something that's been bothering me for a while? What the everloving gently caress does a "good" space sim look like? This isn't even a matter of programming or performance, it's a matter of game design. Star Citizen and Elite:Dangerous and other people wanking over EVE were talking about how you'd have to mine asteroids, except you could be a pirate, except people needed to mine or they wouldn't get any money, but once you HAD money you could build a giant ship and be a god unto the miners, and also have massive space battles that were fun and it's all just complete bulllshit. I just don't see how that gameplay loop or structure is anything more than ,having a core group of early adopters/whales, and then a shitton of marketing to constantly coax in new players to act as targets to be pushed around. It reminds me of how fans of the multiplayer in Dark Souls laugh when new people complain about getting shat on by low soul-level builds or even just guys hacking the poo poo out of the game, pushing it off with 'oh we all just went through the same thing' like it's some sort of cost of entry and ignoring the fact that retention is gonna be poo poo. Maybe that's a bad example, but my point is that I've wracked my brain over how this sort of gameplay is supposed to be attractive to everyone involved, how the miners are supposed to be having as much fun as the dudes zipping around in fuckoff-huge capital ships.

I don't think it's impossible, I've had some ideas myself. A simple attempt at introducing interplay between miners and pirates would go a long way - but nobody talks about it. People who want to mine act like pirates don't exist, and pirates act like miners are eternally helpless before their might. I've barely even seen discussion of how massive spacefights between capital ships will be fun, just a dumb acceptance of the fact. It's this sort of lovely approach to thinking about games that's made star citizen so successful: people don't think about how star citizen will be fun because they've seemingly never thought about it beyond "Star Wars looked neat and is thus fun."


Edit:

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Fair 'nuff.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Damnit I can't get Tie Fighter to play on my PC. Doesn't help I don't have a joystick.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Good Dumplings posted:

Also Pilz please tell me about your design ideas or PM me if you don't think it's right for this thread, I've always liked the ol' pirate/miner debate and reasons why the miners shouldn't be guarding unmanned drones instead

Eh, doubt anyone will mind if I just dump it here. I think the best idea I had (i.e. the one I remembered) was to ditch the idea of mining vessels as slow but heavily-armoured, while pirate ships were fast and had huge guns but were made of paper. Mining vessels have a tiny crew space and a large area of non-pressurized storage, as well as massive engines to move all the poo poo around. Pirate ships try to cram everything into one small, stealthy ship but can't fit enough power generation to run everything at once. If a pirate wants to raid a miner, they have to get as close as they can on their engines, swap to weapons, turn on radar cloaking, and try to sneak up on the miner. If the miner sees the pirate before the pirate gets close, they'll just gun their engines and be gone. If the pirate manages to get within optimal weapon range, the Miner's going to get shredded and the pirate'll get paid.

The issue with this is that if a server is overpopulated, mining sectors will get too swamped with people for this sort of interaction to function well. Best-case scenario is that it's a chaotic mess, with pirates randomly opening fire on whatever mining vessel happens to trundle near them and mining vessels constantly panicking and darting away when it was just another mining vessel come to visit. Worst case, Pirates overpopulate the server and camp almost every available mining spot in such numbers that there's no point in even trying to mine. This kills the game.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Ghostlight posted:

Like I'll agree with aspergers, but autism is definitely a mental illness.

"Wikipedia" posted:

Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a developmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.[1] As a milder autism spectrum disorder (ASD), it differs from other ASDs by relatively normal language and intelligence.

It's basically just 'you have autism but aren't quite as hosed as most people who have autism'. If it makes you feel any better, Psychopathy and Sociopathy have never been in the DSM. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is though.

I'm kind of horrified it seems they got a backer to try and help them implicate Smart in abuse. One of these days they're actually going to manage to fall afoul of some sort of slander law. That'll be quite the feather in their failure cap.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Hav posted:


It's a spectrum from high functioning through to low function. My nephew is autistic, but he's going to university; no interest in computers other than catching pokemon. There are people that are highly systemic but don't hit the markers for asperger syndrome...it's like people who claim OCD or other attributes that waters down the whole thing.

You'd be surprised how loving cruel some people can be, as well.


I'm not trying to diminish Autism by calling Aspergers a mental illness, and OCD being a mental illness separately diagnosable from Autism isn't meant to diminish Autism either. Unless you're talking about how people go 'oh I'm so OCD tee hee' in which case ignore me I was misunderstanding what you were saying.

People can be idiotic dicks.

Let's laugh as they buy jpgs.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Hav posted:

what's up with airlines selling you a box of snacks these days?

Back in my day, when you asked for a can of soda on a plane the stewardess would give you a plastic cup with ice and the WHOLE drat CAN OF SODA.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer
I hate life, it means I can't post when things are actually happening.


CryEngine can't really be called good at visuals because its solution to achieving obscene levels of fideliciousness is just 'throw more hardware at it'. I'm pretty sure the only reason Crytek games are used in benchmarking is because they're something that the hardware will never max out on. It's why new 1080s only barely hit 60 fps at 1440 ultra for Crysis 3, optimization is a dump stat. Meanwhile, the Witcher 3 is sitting at 80 frames/second and people rave about how pretty that game is. With Unreal being free, there's not much of a reason to touch CryEngine.

With the death threats thing, AFAIK the common wisdom is that it's all bluster, the issue is that it doesn't really matter. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the laws against threats don't necessarily look at the likelihood of the threat being carried out, they're more concerned with whether the threat was meant as an attempt to control someone through intimidation. The sad thing about death threats online is that you drat well better believe that law enforcement could trace most of them and at the very least let the recipient know whether the person issuing the threat was even in the same country. They just don't see it as worth the minutes of time it would take them to ring up an ISP.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

RedTonic posted:

Am I the only one who thinks that major publishers like Sega and Sony setting up crowdfunding/absorbing studios who just completed crowdfunding to develop a game is real gross? Because I think that poo poo's real gross. Those companies have the capital to fund development. It's slimy to shift the risk over to the consumer.

Okay, resuming shitposting position.

It's the grossest. It makes perfect business sense, it could even lead to them taking more risks, but it's all kinds of ew

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Propagandist posted:

:same:

Think about those dudes that can pull off those crazy intricate helicopter maneuvers. No, I'm not talking about some Apache doing a mid air flip or roll. Like the guys that work on active power lines. You get RIGHT up close to the power line so Joe Shocky can work on it without dying, and you can't move for fear of everything going to poo poo.

Or those dudes who land in the middle of nowhere in between trees to rescue some guy in a car crash. Mad respect.

My rear end in a top hat would be clenched so tight I wouldn't be able to squeeze a string through there.

e: look at this loving poo poo, this is what I'm talking about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fll3eURV9zY

Pretty sure back in the day some pilots figured out they could land sea kings on smaller-than-usual-ships in roughish seas by using a 'hauldown winch.'

It's exactly what you think it is.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Colostomy Bag posted:

Beyond words. Looks like somewhat of a big multi-unit they are living at. How the manager doesn't have a key strikes me as odd.

Probably does and is just too lazy to care. Also I'm gonna pretend their OVEN was broken, but not their STOVETOP, and they've been cooking wholesome meals using that.


If I pretend hard enough, maybe it'll happen.



























like Star Citizen

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Cigstomper58 posted:

thats 205 furries in the members with wolf avatars. Please helpme mine them for lolz

I thought we were supposed to NOT touch the poop?

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Orions Lord posted:

Just got this from CIG.

Following a review of your request, we have decided at our discretion to refund your account. When this process is complete your account will be permanently closed.

Congratulations on pulling out in time.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Exinos posted:

After reading a bunch of comments I had to post a comment to rant a bit.

Maybe it's just me, but I thought we had all come to the conclusion that "release dates" were an artificial construct created by publishing companies because they are greedy. And also very greedy.

For me, CIG's emancipation from the publisher-based system, thanks overwhelmingly to the community, meant that there would be no release date, ever. Regardless of what press releases say, because no one with game-breaking authority is breathing down their necks.

So no one should be shocked by a "release date" passing with no release. It is mystifying that they even quote dates at all. I am positive I remember early in the Kickstarter days CR saying that it would be ready "when it's ready."

Which is, quite literally, the perfect release date.

I can't say I'm happy every time I hear there is a delay of some sort, but I can say I'm happier hearing that than playing (or not playing) a broken/unfinished, "released-on-time" game.

Sorry, I know it was a bit off topic, but it needed to be done.

/rant

Really late reply, but you have to remember that these are self-set dates. It's one thing if development overshoots a date set by people who don't have a goddamn clue what game development entails, it's another if it misses a date set by an external publisher that actually knows how game development works but is still outside the development house, and still another thing if they're missing their own deadlines routinely. If it was just one deadline they'd missed I don't think people would care, but what we're seeing here is a pattern.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

starkebn posted:

yeah, but not everyone has the obsession to surround themselves with totems of nerd poo poo

Yeah, but no calendar? Pictures of family? Personalized tools of the trade? Not even a nearby box of crackers or some sort of snack food? Doesn't have to be nerd poo poo.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Lladre posted:

I guess I am old. But what the hell is verified and why should anyone care?

In case nobody answered yet, that little checkmark symbol next to his twitter name means that the twitter company has confirmed that he is, in fact, ben lesnick. It's a big deal because you have to be a bit of a celeb or important person for it to happen to, sort of a status symbol.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

XK posted:

lol

Jeezus:





There are so many responses in the comments from people who absolutely know how the game will work, explaining their head cannon of the mechanics, it's just mind boggling.

Really makes you understand why so many businesses scoff at the idea of being honest or open. Fake it 'till you make it, there's enough desperate people that someone will latch on to your brand and defend it with their life.

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

XK posted:

Many years ago (2005 ish), AMD was cool and good, but they are near dumpster fire status right now. They were worse a few years ago, and managed to pull up just enough, but I would only build anything with Intel and Nvidia right now. I had to toss an AMD vid card a few years ago when I made the switch to Linux, because their drivers were so garbage it kept hard locking at random. I think they are currently kept alive by under bidding everyone else for the XBOX and PS4 chipset contracts.

I really do hope they get their poo poo together enough to be a real competitor again.

Nah, I'm sure Intel and Nvidia won't use their newfound monopoly to act in anti-consumer ways, let alone using vicious and often illegal tactics to gently caress up potential competitors.

Speaking of, is Nvidia sponsoring Star Citizen yet in place of AMD? Or has crubbers discovered to his horror that the only reason they got that deal in the first place was the relatively early state of the trainwreck and AMD's ignorance and lack of jurisprudence?

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer
God loving drat these morons like christ almighty they're being scammed to poo poo and they're loving over everyone else in the process:

1. The whole thing collapsing fucks over kickstarter/crowdfunding, even though kickstarters could easily get their money back at this point and crowdfunding in general can't really be blamed for the people who exploit it
2. Their creepy cult is making people who dissent miserable and reinforcing harmful patterns of behavior among its members
3. The entire industry is no doubt watching this and drooling at the realization of how many loving rubes there are, and how much they can actually get away with while staying 'legit'.
4. Meanwhile, 120 million dollars has been siphoned out of projects that might actually get finished, or will never get made without the money that is currently being continually dumped into the shitter.
5. This was honestly probably the space sim nerd's best chance at getting the game they wanted. E:D is a lake a mile wide and a foot deep, NMS was a meh exploration/crafting/survival game thing, EVE is, well, EVE, Space Engineers is difficult to run and has nothing to do with the things you build, KSP is neat but it's a very focused game and not the wide-spanning universe that the Star Citizen backers clearly craved, House of the Dying Sun is apparently amazing but is focused on smaller ships, PULSAR is in development, that other space ship bridge sim is meant only for LAN games. The new CoD looks nice but I don't really expect it to be more than another CoD with some railshooter segments and creative movement options in 3d environments. Dreadnought is awesome, but it's just a 5v5 arena shooter using capital ships. Dual Universe? I haven't looked into it, but does anyone think they can actually meet their goals or are they just trying to grab some of that sweet, sweet, desperate space nerd dolla? I haven't really looked into LoD so I'm not sure what it does, but I get the feeling it isn't trying to do the same thing at all.

Pilz fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Sep 20, 2016

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Fatkraken posted:

5600 is a milestone now?

Milestone enough.


Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Fatkraken posted:

motherFUCKER

git rekt nerd

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

spacetoaster posted:

OPSEC violation. Stop it.

Fuckin' leakers amirite?

Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer

Nuclearmonkee posted:

80k a month bandwidth costs because you don't know how to write a patcher.

"Well, we were trying but all the formats refused to work over dial-up so..."
"You think a substantial number of your customers are using dial-up?"
"No, no, we are."


Deep in the bowels of CIG, there's a room you can't enter without ear protection lest the incessant modem-song cause permanent damage to body and soul.

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Pilz
Jul 25, 2016
Grimey Drawer
wwait, just post or post justly?

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