Baxta posted:

But their auth server...

big nipples big life posted:

shouldn't the fart be in the winter pants instead of the coat?

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Winter in Australia is rather warm, so it would probably require more information before it can be judged.


Or maybe they just don't like wearing pants, I dunno.

Mne nravitsya posted:

Yeah, sometimes we refer to this method of development as the “lightning strike”. It’s definitely the absolute worst way to do things and have any level of predictability for your game. Essentially you make a poo poo ton of hi-res art to wow the publishers and buy some time. Then, behind the scenes in the studio, designers are ripping their hair out, having nervous breakdowns, or quitting because they can’t find a way to shoe-horn design loops into finished art - and are being blamed for everything. And meanwhile art is screaming about not wanting to redo all their assets, so, design better figure this poo poo out with what they have.

All the while, the product director or EP is yelling at design that they better hurry up and figure this poo poo out, because they are now blocking the (too many too fast scaled) art team from moving forward on the schedule and the games phase gate dates are starting to slip, and the burn rate is hovering at 2-3+ million a month.No pressure lol

Why it’s called lightning strike is because on the rarest of occasions - the designers find something that suddenly feels really good and then the game is saved by that hail mary/lightning strike moment.

Perfect lightning strikes are ridiculously rare, and hence when you see studios shut down all the time: They most often went this route, and never got the magical bolt they were hoping would show up. Or, they hit a lightning strike early, had massive success, and could never figure out how to repeat it. Rovio comes to mind, along with a handful of other places that are trying to make a followup to a single smash hit, but have yet to repeat their original strike.

iospace posted:

Also, I do want to give some faint praise among the damming. Arena Commander was a good idea. A small, limited area box to test the flight model, collision detection, damage effects, and weapons of the ships by the play(test)ers? Ok, that's actually a good idea. Done by everyone else, but it's the one good development idea they had for this entire giant shitshow.

a cyberpunk goose posted:

I credit this to good management strategy—a lot of publishers or execs will get mega nervous when they aren’t seeing sizzle reel ready content in the first two years of development, so they will push the team into delivering polished mile stones well before they should be, this slows development even more when you are playtesting semi polished content and have to redo it or NOT redo it and duct tape a fix together something suboptimal and move onto the next milestone.

Overwatch’s development team clearly put the time into getting a good networking model together for a very complex shared game state before going hogwild on polish, this is hard to convince anyone to let you do in any software project without sympathetic or experienced management.

iospace posted:

I'm going to say Chris had one, arguably two, lightning strikes: Wing Commander and arguably Starlancer (though how much he had to do with Starlancer is up to debate). Every game after that he made, with the exception of the Wing Commander games, turned out to be delayed messes. Hell, look at Freelancer, it only came out once Microsoft kicked him to the curb.

Fast forward to now, he tried the same poo poo he did back then, with shiny new graphics and poo poo, and look what happens. Same poo poo. He's flailing to have a lightning strike again, but it's not coming.

Bootcha posted:

Crusader/PTU is just an advertising platform. Considering all the work that still needs to be done, the PTU shouldn't exist. The only reason it exists is to show "look how far we've come". And to find ways to prevent pgabz from clipping through the airlock.

Bootcha posted:

Considering all the work that still needs to be done, the PTU shouldn't exist. The only reason it exists is to [...] find ways to prevent pgabz from clipping through the airlock.

Quavers posted:

Squadron 42 is CIG's priority once again, because their funding relies on it. They know Star Citizen needs at least 3 more years, and the crowdfunding will dry up enough long before it is ready; they need retail sales to survive their own development running-costs.

What amuses me most about Squadron 42 is that by almost every metric it's highly-probable to be rubbish:

• Graphics by CryEngine = great
  
• Story by Chris Roberts = bad
  
• Broken flight model = bad
  
• 15 minute flight times = bad
  
• Janky first-person = bad
  
• Tiny, barren moons = bad
  
• Bland stations/towns = bad
  
• Zero personality = bad
  

Compare all that to CoD:Infinite Warfare's great single-player campaign - which does all of the above really well - and Squadron 42 will get ruined, despite releasing years later. Poor reviews. Poor sales. No funding to finish Star Citizen.

CryTek's legal team having a crack at them is like a cavalry unit flanking the disorganised remains of a pinned, broken, starving army.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVLGwTggO8U&t=221s

Awesome Fidelity posted:

This random Derek Smart meltdown quickly explained:

The man who portrayed Winston Churchill on his way to a best actor win has several projects in the works or coming up.

First, "Hunter Killer," an action thriller starring Gerard Butler, is out later this month and centers around a kidnapped Russian president and the American mission to save him.

He's also in post-production for a film called "Mary," about "a family looking to start a charter boat business, buys a ship that holds terrifying secrets once out into isolated waters," according to IMDb.

But that's not all, Oldman will be voicing Admiral Bishop in two video games, "Squadron 42" and "Star Citizen," both out in 2018.

G0RF posted:

Hey, looks like Star Citizen & Squadron 42 are both coming out this year...

G0RF posted:

Hey, looks like Star Citizen & Squadron 42 are both coming out this year...

[url=http://abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/Culture/2018-oscar-winners/story?id=53562886]

G0RF posted:

Hey, looks like Star Citizen & Squadron 42 are both coming out this year...

[url=http://abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/Culture/2018-oscar-winners/story?id=53562886]

G0RF posted:

Hey, looks like Star Citizen & Squadron 42 are both coming out this year...

ABC News posted:

The man who portrayed Winston Churchill on his way to a best actor win has several projects in the works or coming up.

First, "Hunter Killer," an action thriller starring Gerard Butler, is out later this month and centers around a kidnapped Russian president and the American mission to save him.

He's also in post-production for a film called "Mary," about "a family looking to start a charter boat business, buys a ship that holds terrifying secrets once out into isolated waters," according to IMDb.

But that's not all, Oldman will be voicing Admiral Bishop in two video games, "Squadron 42" and "Star Citizen," both out in 2018.

Golli posted:

Ahh - the old IMDB release-date doxx

Meridian posted:

Can we all agree that Mass Effect 2 was insanely good even if it didn't "really contribute" to the story? This is important to me.

Sunswipe posted:

Given that the story of Mass Effect was complete arse, I'd say ME2 not contributing to it is a major factor in why it's the best one.

Hav posted:

Mass Effect 2's crown was only toppled by the Witcher 3, for me. I have yet to have a similar sci-fi experience.

The end was a bit pants, though.


It was a gaming The Empire Strikes Back.

D_Smart posted:

Well that's new.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_9zIDwjVx4

ps: The more they claim "it's never been done before", the more likely it is to come true.

peter gabriel posted:

Well I for one think Star Citizen has already been a resounding success if you go by the metric of 'Has this game provided you with fun' then the answer is a loud and clear HELL YES

D_Smart posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_9zIDwjVx4

ps: The more they claim "it's never been done before", the more likely it is to come true.

quote:

On the night of February 24, 1978, a group of five young men from Yuba City, California, United States, all with mild mental or psychiatric issues, attended a college basketball game played at California State University, Chico. Afterwards, they stopped at a local market for snacks and drinks. None of them was seen alive again; one, Gary Mathias (born October 15, 1952[1]), has never been seen again.[2]

Several days later their Mercury Montego was found, abandoned, in a remote area of Plumas National Forest on a high mountain dirt road that was far out of their way back to Yuba City. Investigators could not, however, determine why it was abandoned as it could easily have been pushed out of the snowpack it was in, and was in good working order. At that time, no trace of the men was found.

After the snow melted, in June, four of the men's bodies were found, in and near a cabin used by backpackers as shelter deep in the forest, 20 miles (32 km) from the car. Only bones were left of the three bodies in the woods, a result of scavenging animals, but the one in the cabin, Ted Weiher, had apparently lived for as long as almost three months after the men were last seen, starving to death despite an ample supply of food and heating materials available in the cabin. He was missing his shoes, and investigators found Mathias' in the nearby woods, suggesting Mathias, too, survived for some time beyond the last night they were seen alive.