Zombie Squared posted:

I encourage all the lurkers to post so that this page is more broken up and takes less time to scroll through.

Known Lecher posted:

^^^^^^
Edit: Happy to be of service



Echoing that this thread is an amazing piece of work. I saw it and thought, “cool only two [now three] pages, it won’t take me long at all to catch up on all the Star Citizen insani...”

Known Lecher posted:

Echoing that this thread is an amazing piece of work. I saw it and thought, “cool only two [now three] pages, it won’t take me long at all to catch up on all the Star Citizen insani...”

Known Lecher posted:

^^^^^^
Edit: Happy to be of service



Echoing that this thread is an amazing piece of work. I saw it and thought, “cool only two [now three] pages, it won’t take me long at all to catch up on all the Star Citizen insani...”

Mario death mask posted:

The reason I Tanepost itt every so often is to move this particular thread along, because as every other post on this page indicates, the content posts are absolutely massive and with their accompanying embedded video and image links take a long time to load, and the further down you go on the page, the more judder you get as the stuff above pops into existence

Yeah yeah, I'm a pleb without 64gb of memory to play SC read the SC thread

Scruffpuff posted:

Star Citizen is inexcusable at any stage of development.

I think people willfully miss the point that "pre-alpha", "alpha", "beta", etc. are just labels. Even though they have fairly normalized use in the software development world, there is no governing authority for their use, so you can claim your "game" is in whatever stage you feel like calling it. So that's one aspect - that calling it "alpha" doesn't really mean anything.

But it goes deeper than that. "Alpha" is supposed to denote relative progress, not be a catch-all excuse for anything and everything that is wrong with a project. "It's in alpha" doesn't explain why Star Citizen is a complete top-to-bottom piece of complete industry-destroying poo poo. The lack of quality in Star Citizen is an empirical observation that doesn't stop being true because the game is "in alpha."

Star Citizen is really loving bad. Even if all of what they're generously calling "bugs" were miraculously fixed it wouldn't make Star Citizen good, or game, and it would not make Chris Roberts less of a fraud, or CIG less incompetent. Star Citizen is pure steaming poo poo, and no categorical label can save it, or excuse the state of its existence.

Foo Diddley posted:

TheAgent posted:

its just nuts watching the alpha prototyping for horizon: zero dawn and comparing it to star citizen

the combat was absolutely nailed, the rest of the game looked like something from the ps1 days, but the combat, discovery and all major mechanics were in and functioning as the rest of the game was built around it

Anyone who actually understands game development knows that you do all that stuff first, because it is fundamental. Without gameplay mechanics, you don't have a game. So you get them working first, you make sure they're solid, and then you do all the rest once you're sure that you're not wasting your time

The fact that Chris and friends don't understand this tells me, more than anything else about the project, that Star Citizen is never going anywhere. Six years in and they don't even have a prototype. No one knows whether all these planned gameplay systems will work at all, on their own or together, because apart from crate fetching (which is loving broken), they haven't been implemented in any way. Not even on paper, if the developers' rambling about them is any indication

But gently caress, this is probably the billionth post about how CIG is doing everything rear end-backwards. It just constantly amazes me, is all

Virtual Captain posted:

Step 1: Motion capture
Step 2: Motion capture
Step 3: Motion capture
Step 4: Motion capture
Step 5: Motion capture
Step 6: Well earned vacation
Step 7: Motion capture
Step 8: Work on art assets for several years
Step 9: Nail down the flight model and combat, Add MMO features
Step 10: Emergent gameplay

trucutru posted:

Broken promises don't even register anymore unless they have something to do with ships. 3.0 is not even a shadow of its former promised self but, if you ask, this is because it contains much more than what was offered first, it just so happens that it's "foundation stuff" you cannot see. Rational thinking left the building a while ago, if it ever was there.

But watch them change some weapon mount in chariot from a size 7 to a size 6 for the fireworks to begin.

tuo posted:

1st Rule of Thumb: You do not talk about Derek Smart

2nd Rule of Thumb: You DO NOT talk about Derek Smart

3rd Rule of Thumb: If anyone says "stop" or goes limp, that doesn't mean the crunch is over!

4th Rule of Thumb: Only two releases per year

5th Rule of Thumb: Actually, gently caress that, only one release per year

6th Rule of Thumb: No consoles

7th Rule of Thumb: A sale goes on as long as it has to, to pay next months fees and wages

8th Rule of Thumb: If it's your first day at the cult, you have to pledge!

Toops posted:

There was some 10 for the designers where a new guy was describing his job, which included using an internal CIG tool to "build ships", which was literally an xml editor. I almost fainted.

Ayn Marx posted:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2018/01/11/42-video-game-predictions-for-2018/#2ade9f925b1f

quote:

9. Star Citizen won't launch in 2018. In fact, Star Citizen will continue to just be a weird meta-game that we're all supposed to puzzle out. Why are people paying thousands of dollars for digital ships that can't even be played yet? What's up with the feud between Chris Roberts and Derek Smart? How come a game that hasn't even released has its own convention already? These questions are all part of the puzzle---and that puzzle is the actual point of Star Citizen.

Shots fired.

G0RF posted:

Man, that Relay episode...

YOUTUBE: Relay outlines CIG’s Plans for 2018

They discuss the fact that CIG is now fast-tracking their Land Claim in-game protection racket scheme. In fact, it’s expected to be brought online before Stanton itself is complete. Erris, confronted by a gigantic flashing warning sign that reads “PAY-TO-LIVE MECHANICS ARE NOW MORE IMPORTANT TO CHRIS THAN BASIC KICKSTARTER PROMISES”, seems briefly troubled. As does Nekhara, who expresses his surprise and that of many others.

But the moment passes, the outrage prompts not anger or despair, just a moment of hopeful bargaining, which then leads to Erris concluding Beta by 2019 because they’ll surely get so much other work done this year.

Did you guys not see and transcribe Tony Z’s ATV appearance yesterday, Relay? With Tony saying Mining was slotted for 3.2 in 6 to 9 months, and even that was described conditionally so as to create a fallback position when they miss it? (Because they always miss it?)

Relay? More like ”Delay”, amirite?

Seriously just rename your show and discuss this week’s news in CIG Delays, Historical Revisions, Outrages, and Warning Signs. Stop apologizing for CIG and start demanding them from Chris for playing the community like chumps and marks. Get on the right side of History and off the wrong side of His Story. The view is so much clearer from over here, Erris. (Read my letter again and see just how reasonable it was along all!)

TheAgent posted:

"I plead the 4th"

"the 4th? you mean the fifth right?"

"nope. the 4th. as in 4th stimpire"

*deskeletonization teams burst into the room*

G0RF posted:

The silent lurker population here varies but over the course of a given month but includes:

• CIG folk like the thread intern, who feels like an old pal or pal-ette at this point (Raises glass, nods understandingly.)
  
• Foundry folk with complicated feelings
  
• Relay folk and other streamers who mostly despise us and believe we are all of one mind controlled by Derek
  
• Friendly Heretics silently monitoring for laughs
  
• Denizens from /SC picking up “intel” from Behind Enemy Lines because LARP!
  
• Exiles from /DS who make screaming at their monitors a part of their daily therapeutic routine
  
• Free-ranging skeptics from other SC discussion hubs like Frontier, MMORPG, 4chan, etc. who carry s back to their preferred SC homes
  
• A few game journos/bloggers
  
• Game industry folk picking up water cooler chatter (“You hear “you can fit all of Skyrim in there” crap? The nerve of that guy.)
  
• LAZRIN!!!, the legend
  
• Ex-CIG folks just having a
  
• If Coutts and Crytek don’t have minions paying $10 yet they probably will once they figure out how much easier the research gets.
  

And more. Not all at once, not all the time, but regularly enough. Thread is, like Star Citizen, still good.

Scruffpuff posted:

quote:

It's a competing engine because you buy the license from Amazon and not Crytek.

Amazon bought a full license from Crytek, added value to the tech and sell licenses on the value added engine.

CIG bought a limited license from Crytek.

That's my understanding.

Correct. That people are even questioning this amazes me. It's a license, and a license indicates a relationship between two parties, in this case CryTek and CIG. Amazon does not figure into it. CIG jumped ship to Amazon specifically because it was nearly the same engine with a better deal, but I don't think the technicality that some stupid cultists have latched onto (i.e. "It's the same engine so they didn't breach license checkmate goonies") is anything CIG expected to argue, and I still don't think they'll try it. They bet everything that CryTek would dissolve, and they did everything they could to accelerate that event. CIG never intended to honor that contract, like everything else they do. When CryTek pulled a "RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE" CIG was put on the defensive.

The only way out for CIG is to use the same tactic they've used on every aspect of this project from its inception: fraud. Expect them to use lots of attempts at Hollywood courtroom tactics that don't actually exist in the real world ("gotcha" moments in the fine print, "getting off on technicalities", a surprise witness has something to say right before the gavel drops, etc.) whose hilarious dismissals will fuel this thread for another year at least.

Combat Theory posted:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/217905283?t=35m22s

This is the bit where Erin talks about Space Combat.

oh my... where to begin where to begin...

So first of all he doesnt even talk much about the issue. he just adopted Chris way of filling time with words without actually giving out information. What he does give out though is enough to redeem that CIG has learned absolutely 0, Nada , Nothing from the disastrous combat experiences following 2.6.

Notice how Erin, after strolling around the main issue, brings up that the only point he wants to adress in the combat experience is the "shooting at pixels" bit. That is quote on quote the same poo poo that Chris ruled down in 2.6 and that ruined the little bit of consistency in Combat design that was left at the end of 2016.

As i wrote last summer, the Dynamics of Space combat in regards to good gameplay are one of the most complicated and technical topics and require excellent knowledge of both vehicle dynamics and gameplay mechanics as well as game experience. What Erin did is just closing the Circle to 1 1/2 Years ago. CIG, as a company, has learned absolutely nothing on the matter. And whatever comes out of the lawsuits, it is absolutely clear that this company does not have the Quality in house that is needed to even design a good combat model and experience, let alone balancing and porting it into an open world MMO enviroment.

Notice how Erin fills this obvious lack of understanding for the matter with regards to his "former Games" which are all but meaningless for the matter of Space combat and vehicle dynamics especially in a multiplayer enviroment.

Again, just like in 2.6 all they can think of regarding vehicle dynamics is speed. that there is literally hundreds of parameters going into the IFCS to create just the basic flight characteristics (let alone the high order combat characteristics) seems to be not only a complete mistery to the one guy who is supposed to make a game out if this, he seems to be completely unaware of them. And this is 4 Years after the initial release of the spaceflight and combat module. Its like time is ticking backwards and the more we progress the less CIG understands about basic gameplay and design. Amazing

A first step? the team keeps on working on it? this is the same team that couldnt do basic vehicle dynamics... feck... high school physics at the end of 2016 and judging by the state of 3.0 and especially this RTV, they have not learned a singe bit.

G0RF posted:

Not to pile on here, but I think they may want to reconsider their camera positioning and Erin's posture, too. Didn't exactly project confidence.



Get on that, Thread Intern. Tell Chris it was a directing failure. He'll know exactly what you mean.

Beet Wagon posted:

Wait, hold up, is that an actual screencap from ATV? I assumed someone had photoshopped it. That's loving terrible lmao

Trilobite posted:

Everyone making fun of this picture is incapable of appreciating the art of filmmaking.

I mean, just look at how this shot was framed: the lack of depth echoes the state of the game. As does the complete absence of any sense of perspective (is the man in the foreground enormous and Erin very small? Your eye cannot reveal the truth: you can only trust your heart!). And then there's the way that vague impressions of exciting imaginary space combat scenes exist all around, and the subtle clue hidden in the way the logo for Star Citizen is halfway out of the shot as if it has been caught trying to sneak out while no one was looking.

And then there's the acting! Erin's entire skeleton is slumping, taking on the appearance of an abandoned scoop of ice cream melting on the sidewalk (symbolically linked to a childhood joy ruined carelessly that no one will ever even attempt to save). Even in a single frame, the drama is almost too much to take.

Five stars. Almost as good as Wing Commander. Needs more space bulldozers.

thatguy posted:

boviscopophobic posted:

I watched that "gameplay" and the main source of any interest was the guy worrying that he'd lose his ship and real-money weapons due to bugs. When he returns to Olisar he worries that he hasn't done a good enough parking job to keep his ship, so he makes multiple auto-land attempts which all try to kill him. At the end he reveals that he bought two M7A weapons for real money, lost them both to bugs, and has now bought a third.

$15.30 * 3 = $45.90

MilesK posted:

I've been wearing 3 jackets because of Star Citizen, and I've been pretty warm this winter.

Phi230 posted:

Nothing personnel, kid, as streetroller bludgeons croberts with lawsuit paperwork

SelenicMartian posted:

AP posted:

https://i.imgur.com/NuXy9OO.jpg

Chris has his spot as close as the disabled one. Makes sense.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

That was really nice of Chris to verify that the Limited Edition Porsche is his and that he's had it for over a year.

The parking space next to the door is labeled "Chris" and I believe that's the spot where we've seen the Porsche.

G0RF posted:

https://twitter.com/discolando/status/677222716408131584/photo/1

Ding!

Galarox posted:

with thanks to Bofast and thanks to the others who responded, but Bofast's was perfect imo.

Dark Off posted:

Dark Off posted:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/217905283?t=46m46s Just listen beaten man talk as bonus it talks how star citizen is the new second-life.

not only piece of new info.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/217905283?t=49m07s female characters still MIA
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/217905283?t=37m38s combat balance is dictated by streamers
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/217905283?t=34m51s accidental slip talking about how rescue costs 500€ instead of UEC.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/217905283?t=27m26s and finally talking about date driven model. features will come hopefully, but it wont happen every time.

quote:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/4/thread/i-have-been-cursed-as-a-ball-disappointed
I have been cursed as a ball :disappointed:
When ever i re spawn i am this small ball i can't interact with anything i am in fact trapped in my room that you spawn in.I am aware that i am no special snowflake in this issue and was wondering if anybody knew when i would be cured?

Virtual Captain posted:

Hey it looks like OldSchoolCmdr is posting again. All day it seems.

OldSchoolCmdr posted:

There are 4 specific and highly damaging causes of action in this complaint.

From my reading of the complaint and the response, I can safely say that even though CIG never responded to two of them - which itself are sufficient grounds for the motion to dismiss to be denied - CIG isn't likely to prevail on any of them if this goes to a jury.

It doesn't matter if CIG were to use CryEngine exclusively or not, the crux of the matter is that the GLA was never terminated, and thus, all its conditions and warranties, remain in full force and effect. What remains then are how many of the conditions were breached, and what damages can be awarded for each breach. The most damaging breach would be IP infringement if it is found that SQ42 was sold as a separate title, as it's not covered as such in the GLA. This is the same as Microsoft giving a corp 10 enterprise licenses for Windows Server, then through an audit find that they have 15 copies installed. Each of the 5 excess copies is an infringement that is subject to fees and costs.

Even if CIG owns a license they decided not to use, it doesn't release them from the other obligations in the GLA. Those being the other causes of action such as providing code changes, displaying the Crytek logo, developing more than one title etc.

The case will not just hinge on the disputed exclusivity of their use of the engine, nor on whether or not SQ42 is a separate project. It will hinge on the spirit and intent of the GLA. The courts are used to seeing these types of disputes all the time, and when the wording is ambiguous or confusing, the judges always tend to defer to spirit and intent.

As per the GLA, SQ42 was never agreed to be a separate title. It was defined as being a feature of the "GAME" (see 1.6 & Exhibit 2). That's all the court is going to look at. What is in the preamble isn't important, in much the same way that Space Citizen is the name in the preamble, but Star Citizen is what is defined in the definition of "GAME".

After the GLA was signed, modules like Star Marine, Arena Commander, ArcCorp, Hangar were never planned to be separate "features" or they too would have been listed. They came about as per the increase in scope of the project, and the way they later decided to develop those parts separately and as "features" of Star Citizen.

The GLA is going with the spirit and intent of the original campaign which talked about a persistent universe (Star Citizen) and space combat (Squadron 42) features of a single "GAME" that was pitched. This is what makes SQ42 a feature of that game, just like the others. If they decided to sell Star Marine separately, even though it would launch from the same launcher as Star Citizen, that would be considered a breach of the GLA. They are only allowed to sell a single collective set called the "GAME" which includes Star Citizen, Squadron 42, and server mods. Neither Squadron 42, nor the server mods, were described as being the primary component like Star Citizen. They are features of the "GAME".

In my opinion, all of Crytek's causes of action have some merit, and for that reason, the motion to dismiss is going to be dismantled by the judge, and the case going to be set for trial shortly thereafter, if not in the same ruling. This will give Crytek the ability to start depositions and discovery, as this is a fast track case filing.

The judge may decide not to give an opinion ruling on the "exclusivity" issue because there may be issues of intent which can only be revealed and explained during discovery and deposition. I say this because section 2.1.2 isn't as ambiguous (I believe the wording requires that CIG exclusively use CryEngine for the "GAME") as people think that it is. And that's why cases go to appeals, and in some cases all the way to the SCOTUS. To me, even 2.1.2 is less important than 2.4 because without the termination (see 8.1, 8.2, 8.3) even if CIG decided to switch engines, it could be said that they breached the GLA by that section alone. Plus they already went on the record admitting that they switched to a competing (there is no argument that any engine other than CryEngine could be considered as a competing engine) game engine, Lumberyard. So even if the judge ruled that CIG were not required to exclusively use CryEngine in the "GAME", it doesn't mean that they can then ignore the other conditions of the GLA - which remains in full force and effect, as per the strict termination conditions.

Whether the case goes to trial or is settled, depends on the ruling of the motion to dismiss. I don't see how CIG would take this all the way to a jury because any ruling against them for any of the causes of action, can lead to millions of Dollars in damages and attorney fees. So it would make sense for them to settle if they can. The down side of that is, settling a case from a position of weakness, and against a firm like Skadden, is not the best position to be in. Plus their liability insurance company is likely to deny their claims if there is finding that they intentionally breached any part of the GLA. And that could make things worse for them in terms of how much they can settle the matter for. Plus, most business liability insurances, have cap limits.

Toops posted:

quote:

Computing physics and collisions for other ships and players when the server could just tell you were they are (the server just disagrees with you, anyway, which is why debris jitters so much, or hoverbikes spaz out if you're not the rider). Computing anything at all when these players and ships are not visible to you.

In bold is the most mind-blowing one. I couldn't believe it when I saw the IFCS code in that bugsmashers. With a straight face Bugshmasherman casually mentioned how his client has to calculate the real-time physics of every other player on the server. I thought I was gonna poo poo. Does he even know that physics processing is usually the most computationally taxing part of a game?

Then again, this is CIG. They break all boundaries. I have no doubt their "Atmospheric Fluid Dynamic Argon Processing Engine" is orders of magnitude more expensive than dumb old physics.

Dementropy posted:

Dusty Lens posted:

That pretty much settles the debate between the incredulous "who would buy that" and "lol they'll be gone in two seconds" camps.

big nipples big life posted:

I'm glad there are at least between 350 and 1150 complete idiots still invested in dreams.

Streetroller posted:

... and I'm getting worse in private
This is one hosed up community.

Man I gotta be honest.
I don't even think I can take the hate of this poo poo.

TheAgent posted:

here is the thread's Not-So-Secret Santa Streetroller Giveaway

no, no we ain't giving away streetroller. keep it in your pants ladies

say something nice to say about our friend to cheer him up! I mean we're already kinda doing that anyway but whatever shut up just let me have this.

Colostomy Bag posted:

Not-So-Secret Santa Streetroller Giveaway
PO Box "That Star Citizen Thread"
Beverly Hills, CA
90210

Dear Streetroller,

You may not know me, but I'm sure you've heard about me from a manifesto that seems to see the light of day from time to time in this thread. I'm the Stimperor, and it is with a heavy heart (and a few amputated fingers and blood) that I pen this letter to you. You may have preconceived notions of me that may make me look unfavorable to a few people. But don't let those stories of torture, vivisection, liquid skeletons and other atrocities cloud your judgement. I'm actually an okay guy. It isn't easy ruling trillions of people.

The reason I'm writing you this letter is to say that the comments horrified me and sickened me in ways I never thought possible. In light of this I might review some of my own procedures of rule and adjust if necessary.

If you are ever in the neighborhood of the 4th Stimpire, stop in for a visit and be my guest at a banquet featuring civil meat. Unless you were born on July 14th and then I suggest we remain pen pals.

Respectfully yours,

The Stimperor, esq

vocaroo

Toops posted:

Not-So-Secret Santa Streetroller Giveaway
PO Box "That Star Citizen Thread"
Beverly Hills, CA
90210

Dear Streetroller,

To me, Star Citizen has always been about ethics. If CIG wants to comprehensively fail at making a video game, that’s fine, so long as it’s on their own dime. But they compulsively misrepresent their product, and openly lie and misdirect the public as an intentional marketing strategy in order to lure prospective customers. They continually manipulate existing customers with false promises, high-pressure sales techniques, and aggressive retcon with the sole purpose of upselling. I share in your disgust with CIG’s predatory marketing and sales tactics. We all do.

But you have shown the courage, intelligence, and determination to put your ethics into action as a means to promote positive change, and that makes you a great person. Your story is inspiring, and nobody can take that from you.

One thing I’ve learned about shitizens: The ugliness of their response is directly proportional to the perceived threat you pose to their delusion. You know you have a physical disability. But the fact that they would stoop so low as to exploit that as a rhetorical technique is a perfect expression of their intellectual impotence and the deep subconscious anxiety that subsumes their brittle belief system. It’s an indefensible indictment against their character. It can’t feel good, but whatever the outcome of your lawsuit, you’ve already won. Their flailing insults, their ignorant rants, are but roses thrown from the cheap seats during your victory lap.

All the best,
Toops

Raskolnikov posted:

Not-So-Secret Santa Streetroller Giveaway
PO Box "That Star Citizen Thread"
Beverly Hills, CA
90210

Dear Streetroller,

The terrible people commenting on your video are some sad, hurt people. They would think they're powerful because they're getting in some sick burns on the internet but they are largely losers playing life on Easy Mode.

You wanted to hold CIG to task. We all shitpost here for giggles but you want to actually do something to hold Chris Roberts to account. You've shown actual character as a person putting yourself out there in front of a largely toxic cesspool of fanatics. If you weren't you, or what I know from your short video, I would worry. But by minute 20 I knew that you've got this. No matter the outcome, you're going to grow from the experience. People are telling you not to read comments but that's your choice to make. Your feelings on this matter of CIG, accountability and self are your own and I think they're pretty cool too.

The reason the lowest scum are commenting on your disability is they're so threatened by you. They're willing to throw everything they've got at you because they are just so loving scared that you're going to hold their precious multinational corporation to the fire if even a little bit. They're coming at you, and what they're bringing is largely hot air and garbage. You're going to do you. The court system will sort things out with CIG, and they will continue to be tiny people because that's the limit of their imagination and skill set. Really I just wanted to say

Keep doing what you're doing.

shrach posted:

Not-So-Secret Santa Streetroller Giveaway
PO Box "That Star Citizen Thread"
Beverly Hills, CA
90210

Dear Streetroller,

What you need is a nice hot tub to soak away all your worries. I think it's in the Constellation spaceship. Or will be. One day. I mean maybe. It probably won't. It was never a promise. If anything, it was the opposite of a promise. The hot tub was never meant seriously, it was a parody. It was always going to be emergent gameplay, you don't really need the hot tub to enjoy the hot tub when you think about it. So yeah.

Boomshanka.

Sunswipe posted:

Not-So-Secret Santa Streetroller Giveaway
PO Box "That Star Citizen Thread"
Beverly Hills, CA
90210

Dear Streetroller,

Your hair is fantastic. As someone who thinks their hair is beginning to thin, this is a very grudging compliment.

On a more serious note, don't let these bastards get you down. They are terrible people. You know that. You're better than them. You're better than most of us. Most of us see Star Citizen unfolding and think "This is going to be good for a laugh" and settle down to watch the car crash. Some people who fell for the initial spiel are getting their money out, and good for them. A few people are doing something to help others, like Beet running r/starcitizen_refunds. You are the only person I know of who has said "This is not acceptable. I'm not going to play by their terms, I'm going to hold them accountable to the morals and laws to which they should be held accountable. I am going to show that their refund policy is bullshit and that Chris Roberts is a liar. By the time I'm finished, Roberts being a con artist won't be a joke, it will be legal fact." Keep doing what you're doing.

Oh, and I find it interesting that straight away, they've assumed your penis doesn't work. I've found bad people generally project their worst failings onto others, showing in this case how Citizens really are a bunch of useless dicks.

Lladre posted:

All kidding aside, please probate people who start making GBS threads up the recap thread.

Beet Wagon posted:

The last time OSC was posting heavily and backers were enraged I requested an alt check because there were enough discrepancies between the post styles I figured it was a pretty safe bet they weren't the same guy. Of course if I was wrong it would have been a blue on blue incident to rival that of Leonard Skinly, but that's just more lols for the thread. Anyway here's what I got back (I have no idea why Hogarth mentioned rules-breaking, since I specifically told him that the poster was abiding by the rules):

Scruffpuff posted:

The one glaring thing from all of these attempts at gameplay is this: even if the game worked flawlessly, it would suck beyond description. I never hear the streamers, for all their protestations of "It's in Alpha!", address this in any way. No amount of fidelity, no amount of bugfixing, and no amount of polish can hide it: there is no game here. It is a joyless romp through generic nothingness - go to this point, aim at a box, and push a button. Congratulations CIG, the best-case scenario of a 100% functioning game still can't save it from the dumpster - where it can sit next to Sandi's excised film debut.

Sorry Chris, I know while you were pretending to be a director you heard this phrase a lot, but it can't and won't apply to your game: some things just can't get "fixed in post."

Scruffpuff posted:

His rant at the end gloriously missed the point as well. He's obviously upset at the whole thing, and he's ranting at CIG about how the quality of Live is lower than the PTU etc. Just ranting and raving and not having any of the "It's just an Alpha" excuses slow him down. While I enjoy the salt, I'm still blown away - absolutely mind blown - how much he's missing the point. And it's not just him - every streamer, every backer, missing the procedurally-generated forest for the high-fidelity trees.

It doesn't matter that CIG released the game in this state to the Live environment. The frame-rate doesn't matter. The patch cycle doesn't matter. This guy needs to get something through his head - he can't treat CIG like a game development company because CIG is not a game development company. They are a company creating digital assets for sale, and they're attempting to cobble together an online world in which to use those assets. The company is led by a non-game developer who is not qualified, and in fact uniquely unqualified to do his job, and the company has produced nothing, has no history, and no path forward. Holding them to the standards of a game development company is unbelievably stupid.

That's one part of it.

The next part is the assumption that CIG gives a flying gently caress about what they release to the PTU or whatnot as if it's all part of normal game testing and deployment. It isn't. Every single byte of code that lands on the PTU, or anywhere else, is done for purely optic reasons - not to do anything for backers or the people who have funded this. It's to create gaming journal headlines like "Long-Awaited 3.0 Patch Goes Live" just in time for backers to spend their Christmas money on Chris's lies again. It's so they can create a false narrative of progress (like how 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, now 3.0, are all numbers going up hence progress and not a scam at all guys). So when this guy rants and raves about the relative quality of what's released to "Test" vs. "Live" my stomach actually hurts as I realize how naive he is - going into this with the belief that the "Test" and "Live" environments are being used as if Chris understands them, how they're used, why they're used, etc. It literally hurts to listen to.

Dear Streamer: if you haven't already, please take a few hours out of your life and go watch The Truman Show. Then come to the realization that Chris Roberts is doing the exact same thing with Star Citizen. That's why there are so many videos which they are peddling as "open development." It explains why the highest possible fidelity assets were built before the engine was done. It explains why they don't patch properly or test properly. Or do anything properly. I realize the awakening to the fact that Star Citizen has devolved into a scam is a painful one, but that pain is worth it. Once you get past it, instead of banging your head against the wall trying to understand this project, you will actually be able to predict its course.

Example: soon there will be a concept ship sale. No matter the state of the game at the time, no matter the bug count, no matter the lawsuit status - there will be a ship sale. Anything and everything CIG can do to move dollars from your bank account to theirs is their #1 priority all day and all night, 365 days of the year. Stop throwing yourself against this brick wall - there's nothing on the other side.

SPERMCUBE.ORG posted:

AP posted:

(tweet: in a few years I bet any StarTrek episode could more or less be re-played live in Star Citizen :P)

Dusty Lens posted:

In about three years we'll either be able to convincingly recreate pretty much any episode of Star Trek or be able to take off from our 2013 hangars.

It's a coin flip at this point really.

We can already do at least one!

Sillybones posted:

What could sour the perception of this project for the remaining cultists? Is there any depths left to dredge besides them publicly running off with the money?

Toops posted:

No. Nothing will. There’s no word in the english language to describe their perfect blend of stupidity and delusion. Over the years, the process of Star Citizen has bled out all rational thought, all meaningful discourse, and like the slow meticulous pruning and root binding of the bonsai, so has Star Citizen painstakingly cultivated a perfectly impotent caricature of an adult human with free will.

Enchanted Hat posted:

Chris could make Derek the new ship design director today and the backers would start rationalising it tomorrow.

"Derek was never really against star citizen, he was just an outside observer offering valuable critical feedback"

"Derek is an industry veteran who knows everything about designing giant buggy spaceships, he'll be a great addition to the team"

"I actually LIKE Derek's balls!"

SPERMCUBE.ORG posted:

Finishing anything at all would probably do it. Remember the golf swing scanning incident? The backers think they were upset because a golf swing mechanic is bad and dumb but I'm pretty sure they were actually upset because it was a mechanic at all. It came dangerously close to pinning some design detail down and that cut off whole avenues of theory crafting. Suddenly Star Citizen was supposed to be a video game again rather than the cyber-rapture for hyper-suckers which they paid for.

Virtual Captain posted:

I think the tracker and perhaps even my posting have subconsciously been led by some desire to highlight how bad the foundation and current state of the game is. Thinking that at some point backers would start demanding real progress. Yesterday I saw a thread titled "Frame rate a “major” focus for 3.1! Check latest ATV." and that's when it hit me. The thing could crash instantly for the entire playerbase and they'd be absolutely fine as long as their belief session shows still air. Some people ITT tried to play last week and of the three people that got past the loadscreen, I think one managed to get in their ship, so by my count this has basically already happened. Many backers fully admit they do not install new patches, as they prefer dream crafting with their favorite streamer over playing what actual gets delivered. I finally got it, these people are absolutely in a belief cult.

Loxbourne posted:

I posted about this upthread, but something that unmistakeably without a shadow of a doubt destroys their faith in Chris Roberts personally. We're not talking " a dead girl or a live boy", something that demonstrates outright contempt for backers or backer funds and cannot be rationalised away.

A meltdown blaming the backers for not pledging enough might do it. CIG's accounts could certainly do it if they reveal shocking extravagance. Turning up drunk or high to the Whale dinner and stammering out what he really thinks of them. Maybe a revelation in Sunk Cost Galaxy if it's big enough and embarrassing enough and easy enough to understand.

But it's gotta be personal and it's gotta be aimed directly at the backers, and it's gotta be from Chris himself. Anything else will be dismissed as lies or FUD or a goon plot, or will garner sympathy for "coping with the stress". Evidence that Sandi has spent millions on funding personal film projects wouldn't do it (too remote from the backers). Evidence that Chris used backer money to buy his house and his annual Porsche might do it (but I can hear "Chris is successful and deserves to be paid big bucks!" arguments now). Ben breaking down and revealing that Chris wipes his rear end with Issue Council bug reports while dictating memos about how to price the new Double Idris to bring in more suckers, ha ha these fucks will buy anything, hey Ben bring me another box of Wing Commander manuals I need to dry my hands would do it.

peter gabriel posted:

You have to understand that we are dealing with people with either solid rubber brains or a single piece of sawdust in their inch thick skull where a brain usually resides.
Chris was outright caught buying Sandi upgraded airline tickets and saying 'the backers don't need to know'

Ask the backers how much money in bandwith they think was outright wasted due to no delta patcher for years, it makes them go into an error state and they can't answer, I think it either turns them off or blue screens them.

It's a real puzzler and you can't work it out because normal rules do not apply. It's like 4 + 4 = telephone

Aramoro posted:

I'm not sure why people listen so closely to Leonard J Cr..French. He worked for 9 years as a Software Developer, picked up a Law Degree from a second tier University, did an internship at a Civil Law Clinic before striking out on his own. Which has proven so successful he panhandles for dollars giving out legal opinions on Youtube.

MinorInconvenience posted:

Just had to correct something really quickly. French went to Widener University Law School. That's a bottom of the barrel, "Tier 3 Toilet" school (in fact, that school's current ranking almost makes it a clown-college-worthy 4th tier law school). Not even second tier. And his masters degree in IT is from a loving for-profit online school (University of Phoenix).

Otherwise I think you are spot on.

Pixelate posted:

Nothing can stop this game.

quote:

Dragonfly spawns flipped most of the time. Back doors in cutlass black are sometimes missing after spawning, even claming doesnt fixes that. My friend is a ping pong ball. Mobiglass is play and pray so it doesn't crash. Equipping items needs to be done many times in order to success(not always). Struggling with delivery missions to Olisar.

quote:

I was getting frequent freezing, especially during landing and takeoff. I found a partial fix - the bug seems to be related to audio. I turned off music and changed music dynamic range to 'medium' and I turned ship verbosity to 'low' and my crashes have been MUCH less frequent. Thought I'd share.

quote:

Oh, you're asking me about issues? The game is unplayable. I get 0.7 - 4 fps on average (that is not a typo), the airlock doors don't open, EVA thrusters don't work and the game can't even close itself, so I have to use the task manager every time I play. I have 8 gigs of ram, but I didn't expect the game to run this badly even with a massive page file to compensate for the lack of ram.

Also nothing can start it.

quote:

No. Nothing will. There’s no word in the english language to describe their perfect blend of stupidity and delusion. Over the years, the process of Star Citizen has bled out all rational thought, all meaningful discourse, and like the slow meticulous pruning and root binding of the bonsai, so has Star Citizen painstakingly cultivated a perfectly impotent caricature of an adult human with free will.

NLJP posted:

You are an insane person for spending an hour or two for every post on this bullshit but thank you.

Galarox posted:

Thanks for this suggestion who-ever it was (I think it was Gorf)



from left to right Sean tracy, Calix Reneau, Tony Z, The Crobbles, The succubus, Matt Sherman, Dave Haddock

The Titanic posted:

The best thing is that it seems like SCs worst enemy has always been SC. Nobody knows what’s happening, and nobody seems to actually be thinking about these things. It’s a lot of times like the first time they’ve heard some of these questions, even after they were probably vetted out for being answered. There’s nobody that can just start rattling off the designs these guys should be in the know about.

Also, about the Inner Thought thing, I hope this ends up scaring their role playing crowd. Those guys and girls I bet are a silent majority hiding in the wings already playing sc and preparing for their timely entrances to the game proper as all kinds of people ready to dive into the Second Life aspect of the game.

At no point in my entire loving life has one of my inner monologues been “stay frosty”. Imagine how ridiculous it will be to know that inside your characters head, they have the brains of Chris Roberts and his amazing writing talent.

Stay frosty.

The Titanic posted:

The next jpeg is the Most Important thing. It’s not the game. It’s just the money flow that everybody wants. SC is a money tree and until it’s uprooted somehow, probably legally, the whales will be an endless source of falling fruit from that tree.

Say enough to make it look genuine, but never enough to stop the possibility of wild speculation.

I’m sure they learned their lesson with the (very logical iteration of the) golf swing sensor mechanic.

That mechanic was pretty much ideal for a game. It had nothing wrong with it, and it would have been functional. The only problem is they sold this system as some kind of insane space ship with a $300 telescope attachment piece or something stupid, along with a huge diatribe about sensor mechanics and how it will all function and people felt like they could just make a game career over mastering the sensor suite. When they dared to imply that any loving idiot could do it by playing a stupid game of “raise the bar and let go of the mouse when it’s in the sweet spot” like Gears of War gun reloading, people flipped out.

People actually believe CR is somehow going to recreate real world science and limitless possibility and discovery in his already hugely overburdened game that can’t even get basic combat working right, nor flight mechanics for his space ships in his game about space games.

Galarox posted:

Star Citizen: I wore out a mousepad waiting for this game

G0RF posted:

I probably enjoy Batgirl’s videos more than most people. Batgirl, like Clifford, fits neatly in the Evangelist camp and while I think they’re a little, uh, “batty”, they also seem pretty guileless. I don’t understand how it’s possible for Batgirl to retain the hopes she has for the project in the face of what she’s seen and experienced. It was a little easier to understand in the prior years because her “friends” Sandi and Ben gave her privileged access and she reciprocated with softball questions and an abundance of praise.

Yet Ben seems marginalized if not gone completely, and Sandi hasn’t given a new interview in quite some time.(Wise move, really, given how many regrettable things she’s said in past interviews.) Her “friends” have shut her out every bit as sharply and unexpectedly as her NPC mission giver did in SoTG. I’d assumed maybe some distance from CIG might clear the fog but no, she_still_trusts_in_cig and believes in the game.

Depending where you stand it’s either heartbreaking or hilarious that her video ends with her still hanging on to the Cargo she scored in a half hour of planet jogging. It can’t be redeemed yet can’t be discarded, either. It’s empty, pointless, a gag gift consolation prize for her time lost to a parody of a gameplay experience, yet she’s attached to it anyway. She’s assigned the meaning and worth to it that the game failed to provide or reward and I’d not be surprised if she retains it as long as persistence will allow. It’s pretty much a symbol of her faith in the dream and like hell is she going to let anyone take that away. (At least until some server wipe does.)

CrazyLoon posted:

I tried to imagine what it'd be like for CIG to be my dentist, but realized it'd probably just be some dude putting me on a neverending waiting list while sending me breath mint to help with the stench of my already compromised teeth as I slowly die from bacterial infection or somesuch.

But at least I'd die with the dream of the most perfect and painless evah dentist procedure!

Amazing Zimmo posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyGr-ZUYE30 (video: Flagship quest NPC floats mid-air)


I'm so glad they spent so much time on Miles Eckhart and did so much promotion of him. I mean the fidelity is really showing when your star quest giver still can't work out where the table is that he has to sit down at, so decides to just start levitating.

quote:

https://giant.gfycat.com/PartialNeatAsianelephant.webm

Virtual Captain posted:

Yo Toops CIG is saving incomplete player data straight to the persistent database:

quote:

How to Avoid Ping Pong Ball of Death Bug
Basically, it seems that the account-bound bug happens when you try to spam the "Save and Equip" button when the mobiglass UI is not fully loaded in. It also happens more easily on crowded servers. So to avoid it, wait a few seconds after any loadout change (for the mobiglass to fully load in), and then only hit the button once.

This is straight up some Timmy droptables level incompetence, lol

Henry Scorpio posted:

quote:

In an all new "Bugsmashers!", Mark shows us what goes into creating the framework that will allow multiple ships to spawn in-game with little-to-no lag.

I'm the mixed tabs and spaces warning on every module. Horrifying use of lambdas. I like how the engineer is just turning synchronous calls into asynchronous to try and get rid of a hitch. I'm sure all other Star Engine systems are cool with more than one ships spawning and initializing at the same time, vs. the one at a time it's been doing for half a decade.

Quavers posted:

LOW FPS IN CRUSADER
Can reproduce = 1386/10
ACTUAL RESULT = Spawn in Crusader. Preferably wait for server to fill up a bit. Notice heavy FPS drain and stuttering. FPS, when the server fills up, starts to become unplayable with bouts of slideshowing.
EXPECTED RESULT = FPS in Port Olisar should be a bit more reasonable.

big nipples big life posted:

reddit posted:

reddit posted:

Are you guys ever thinking of switching to Lumberyard in the future, or is it too much of an hassle cause Lumberyard is based off a newer Cryengine fork than your mod?
CIG, the devs of Star Citizen, has a close relationship with Lumberyard, sharing tech with each other. No doubt they will share most or all their new netcode tech once they figure it all out: Range-Based Update Culling (coming soon), Physics Serialization, Serialized Variables, and other all to reduce the amount of data that gets sent through the servers and to reduce the client's CPU from processing all that data.
In the future, you could possibly benefit from the code that CIG shares if there's a new Lumberyard update that significantly improves netcode performance. With the latest Star Citizen update, they were able to increase player count from 24-50, but there is still a lot of work to do as we gone from stable 30fps to unstable ~24fps.

And then have our game run at barely 10 FPS even with just few players running around? Hahaha, no, thanks, we care more about gameplay and performance rather than fidelity and immersion.
Also, our team is pretty small, and it's a non-profit project, so noone is getting paid, meaning that noone is working full-time here. An engine switch is not a thing you can do in 2 days, despite what some people may claim.

Brutal takedowns are back!

Ghostlight posted:

I have a degree in brutal takedowns and that was only classifiable as a knock-about tussle.

TheAgent posted:

wondering if they are preparing to jettison turbulent as a whole after the redesign

patcher is workin okay, spectrum is up, no more need to track funding, CIG has been taking turbulents marketing ideas for years now

might as well stop paying them and move a single intern up to website production coordinator

G0RF posted:

I mean, I like to believe myself a reasonable and objective person and yet here I am in a multi-volley psychological assessment of a minor personality with a parasitic attachment to a major catastrophe. It’s crazy, really, yet here I am writing about objectivity even as the little OCD arcana nerd in my head is running around yelling, “Hold on, hold on — there’s that, that, that Batgirl / Wingman interview from back then where he talks about...”

It’s nuts, really.

G0RF posted:

Yet another ship design needing revision so that the player can actually fit in it...

Come on guys, it’s year six. Ship sales are your money printer and presumably your core competence. Can you not add a design requirement earlier in your vaunted pipeline? Before the modeling starts?

“Player must fit in ship.”

boviscopophobic posted:

I wonder if the leaderboards are bugged somehow, because the latest usage numbers are disastrous.

Star Marine average concurrent users: 9.8
Arena Commander average concurrent users: 7.8
Murray Cup average concurrent users: 2.5

Total for all EA modes: 20.0

That is lower than the end of 2.6.3 while 3.0 was in PTU, and represents a roughly 50% drop from the numbers at the start of 3.0 live.

This report covers the 6 days from Jan 13 to Jan 19.

TheAgent posted:

hello

quote:

Turbulent Media dba Turbulent
Marketing, Online Media, Games, Coverage

2011
Est Employee Count < 50
Est Revenue in USD $2,000,000 to $5,000,000

2012
Est Employee Count < 50
Est Revenue in USD $2,000,000 to $5,000,000

2013
Est Employee Count < 50
Est Revenue in USD $2,000,000 to $5,000,000

2014
Est Employee Count > 50
Est Revenue in USD $5,000,000 to $10,000,000

2015
Est Employee Count > 50
Est Revenue in USD $5,000,000 to $10,000,000

2016
Est Employee Count > 100
Est Revenue in USD $10,000,000 to $15,000,000

2017
Est Employee Count > 125
Est Revenue in USD $20,000,000 to $25,000,000

interesting stuffs

TheAgent posted:

and I know, you're saying, BUT THEAGENT, TURBULENT IS JUST THE WEBPAGE, they don't do demos or videos or anything to do with star citizen oh wait holy poo poo

quote:

Turbulent - Job Opening
Lumberyard / CryEngine Capture Artist - 6 months (Temp)

We are looking for a Lumberyard / CryEngine cinematic artist to join the Star Citizen project! If you have a creative spirit coupled with expertise in Lumberyard / CryEngine, we want to hear from you!

The candidate will be required to supervise and capture the Star Citizen game sequences that will be used for advertising purposes and the creation of game trailers. Primarily, the candidate will act as director and director of the game within the game, applying real world cinematographic principles - such as image selection, depth of field / field of view, camera movement to get the best possible images. We need someone who can push the boundaries of the game, accepting specific instructions when necessary.

I'm hearing that they did the entire sq42 vertical slice

lol holy poo poo


they also do all the "lore" posts (I don't know why there's like 6 people in the lore office section at CIG), the copy editing for sales, the artwork for almost all concept art/concept sales, videos, etc

they are basically star citizen at this point

lol

TheAgent posted:

lol so when disco is going "oh um its just taking a really long time to get up on youtube guys" he means "oh uh we haven't gotten it back from turbulent, the only company involved in this loving mess that actually does anything. and by anything, I mean absolutely loving everything"

Nicholas posted:

Turbulent isn't listed as an authorized 3rd party developer in the GLA lol

TheAgent posted:

hmm basically

original kickstarter demo: actually made by crytek
original crowdfunding platform: actually made by turbulent
slick lookin spaceship sale videos: actually made by crytek (ever wonder why they stopped doing them lol)
marketing: actually made by turbulent (unfortunately not from the best marketer since she was a little girl)
"in-game" demos/trailers: actually made by turbulent
swag: actually made by CIG, sent out to china/taiwan

the one and only thing I can find CIG actually does, in house, is the merch for star citizen. everything else is handled by outside companies

jesus christ

Virtual Captain posted:

A Neurotic Corncob posted:

https://as.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/7rcw8q/star_citizen_around_the_verse_the_origin_of/dsvz1lv/



[time passes]

Youtube videos, the only thing they are good at. Can't even follow up on their promises on those.


But I'm sure they'll deliver on totally immersive landing zones for New York, Moscow, Shanghai, etc.

Sabreseven posted:

Webpage designers doing a better job of making games than CIG, does not surprise at all, but gets a 10/10 for the sheer insanity of how the whole thing is slowly being torn apart and placed into the public eye like a blue cheese dish, with pineapple on.

The hilarity with SC does in fact, triple every millisecond.

Virtual Captain posted:

Dusty Lens posted:

Blue On Blue" posted:

I'm the cadet fresh on board ordering a steak for dinner

I promise you there's a line in there about how bad the food is while they go to pick up their steak with maybe an egg on the side.

Because it's a war movie so of course they say that.

Actually its the first thing out of an NPC's mouth in the vertical slice video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHR1aEdTA4M&t=125s

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Hello,

My name is Frank and *long sigh* I am a Caller. I've been a Caller for a number of years and I am ashamed that it has consumed so much of myself. At first I was just calling simple stuff, like when the pizza guy would show up or when my toast was ready. After the addiction started to set in, I knew I had a problem, but I couldn't fight it.

For a time, I suspected my family knew, so I tried to make it a part of my personality. I tried Calling my kids grades, or their high school crushes. It worked, I think, but the reality was that I was simply feeding it. I was always wanting more and more to get my fix.

Eventually, I got to a point where all I could do was Call outlandish things on the internet. My wife and kids shunned me and left me a broken man. "They're through!" I'd shout at the heavens. "90 DAYS TOPS" I yelled... *long pause*

I just... I needed it. It needed ME, and I was obliged to answer its Call.

But, one day, I did it. I finally Called my Moby Dick and it was like *sobs* like a great weight lifting from my wallet. *weeps openly*

G0RF posted:

These are such interesting times. Quietly and with few obvious tweening points, the last two years have seen a turnaround in consensus about crowdfunded gaming. Even when the story about a particular project isn’t about Star Citizen, it’s about Star Citizen.

I know very little about Camelot Unchained or Mark Jacobs besides that it’s late. But man, what a refreshing thing to see a guy acknowledging “it’s late, backers SHOULD be mad, it’s on ME to deliver not them to forgive because Miyamoto-san / ‘muh Games Development’ / ‘Diablo 3 took 10 years’”. Maybe he’s a slicker con man but his tone is so starkly contrasted against the duplicitous, revisionist moneygrubbing of the Roberts and Garriott types out there.

This guy is explicitly positioning himself to be on the right side of a future reckoning. The potential collapse of Star Citizen (and lesser giants) is clearly a big concern.

EUROGAMER: Why the people behind crowdfunded Camelot Unchained won't sell spaceships or castles

AP posted:

According to Crytek, CIG got a cut price license deal for Cryengine, they could make SQ42 as long as it was launched from the Star Citizen.exe and not sold separately, had to keep Cryengine code under NDA, sought approval for third party contractors to use Cryengine (which Crytek had a reasonable duty to grant), had to use Cryengine for Star Citizen, with splash screen/logo and give Crytek bugfixes (which would just have been the changes CIG made to Cryengine, so a copy of the game code).

CIG dispute some of that but both sides agree that there was no more money due to Crytek.

So instead of just chugging along in their normal inept manner, Chris Roberts pisses Crytek off by refusing to call it Cryengine, "it's StaRenGine", sells SQ42 separately, removes the splash screen/logo and says they've moved to Lumberyard.

What do CIG get out of all that? Selling SQ42 separately as a $15 gamepack won't bring in much money as all the existing backers had it already, you could have just increased the price of the existing combined starter packages. They get some publicity from (press release only) move to Lumberyard, but the media see it as an engine change which historically isn't great, so that's not all positive coverage. They get to appear at Twitch events, Amazon give them a stand each time and promote them in a few videos.

Engine support switches from Crytek, who they paid for support, to Amazon who they didn't. They hired as many Crytek engineers as they could in the past so support shouldn't even be an issue. It's been a year since the public change so they've maybe been in contact with Amazon support for ~two years. This is Chris Roberts so he's probably fallen out with Amazon management by now and their engineers will not be bending over backwards to help.

If they'd just stolen Crytek staff, shown code on bugsmashers and forgot to get (rubber stamp) approval for a third party, Crytek would likely have just thought they were dicks and certainly not gone to court over it.

It was all pointless, pissing off Crytek far beyond stealing their staff didn't gain CIG any real long term advantage that I can see, none, ok maybe they have a cheaper game server cost deal but even that's doubtful. So now they have to settle with Crytek or discovery will open Pandora's box.

Virtual Captain posted:

Top voted post on r/sc:
CR's signature and handwriting for the Crytek GLA is absolutely exquisite

On a scale of 1-10. How cultlike is this MoMA?

Galarox posted:

This one was fun to do:

Mr.Tophat posted:

Quavers posted:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/220671107?t=02h06m21s

Bowtie wants in-game STDs. I didn't make this up.

The ultimate virgin fantasy

Sarsapariller posted:

RSI: You can't sue us because it was CIG who signed your stupid deal!

Skadden:

3. If RSI Is Not A Party To The GLA, Then Crytek's Claims For Copyright Infringement Are Even Stronger:

Defendants' suggestion that RSI is not bound by the GLA igores the implications that holding would have for Crytek's claims of copyright infringement. If the Court determines that RSI is not bound by the GLA, then RSI was not authorized to obtain Crytek's code: RSI is not included on Exhibit 3 to the GLA, which lists the "[a]uthorized third party developer(s)" who are entitled to receive access to Crytek's technology pursuant to Section 2.6 of the GLA. (GLA Ex. 3 at 19). If RSI is not a party to the GLA, then CIG had no license to distribute Crytek's technology to RSI. And a fortiori, RSI had no license to (for example) publish Crytek's source code through the "Bugsmashers" videos hosted on RSI's web site.

Beef Hardcheese posted:

Dogeh posted:

Leonard French has already not read it and ready to stream about it on Youtube

XK posted:

I liked this part about Skadden not including the GLA in the initial filing:

quote:

Defendants suggest that the Court should draw negative inferences from the fact that Crytek did not file the GLA as an exhibit to its initial and amended complaints. (E.g., Defts.' Br. at 1-2 (accusing Crytek of "conceal[ing]" the GLA from the Court by "deliberately omitt[ing]" and "hiding" the GLA); id. at 9 (describing the GLA as "the hidden document"); id. at 18 (arguing that "the entire FAC should be dismissed for failure to state a claim particularly given the lack of candor by Crytek regarding the GLA."). The GLA contains sensitive business information concerning Crytek's licensing practices and Crytek was not obliged to attach it to a public filing. In any event, the terms of the GLA contradict Defendants' contentions here.

This is what a professional filing looks like.

Propagandist posted:

"All rise," bellowed the bailiff.

A tired, annoyed judge, hunched over, walks in. He doesn't look at the defendants, nor the plaintiffs, nor the audience. He knows how this is going to go. He just has to get through it, he tells himself.

"You may be seated," he says, his voice tailing off into a sigh. Exasperation had gripped him for a week, and he saw no use in hiding it today.

"Now, we begin today wi-," he starts, but an airhorn blows from the back of the room. His temper had already risen all morning. He was just waiting for one poke to push him over the edge.

"THE COURT WILL BE IN ORDER!" he shouts, slamming the gavel down again and again, tripling in noise with every slam, every second.

"ya whoa," someone mutters from the back.

The judge's eye quivers, a vein protrudes from his temple. "Excuse me?" he asks, incredulously.

"ya whoa did ehp did eh woah did," said the timid voice again, but louder. Giggles are heard from the general area.

"ORDER, ORDER, I WILL NOT HAVE THESE DISRU-!" he tries to exclaim, cut off by a short burst of another airhorn, from a different corner.

"LET HIM loving FINISH!" growls Derek Smart through convulsions of laughter, tears streaming down his face.

VictorianQueerLit posted:

quote:

Is Leonard French a backer or just a bad lawyer?

He is a backer. He shows the same faith based reasoning that the stereotypical "true believers" do except he is either dishonest or delusional enough to try and pretend he is some blind justice weighing the scales of this lawsuit while having an extremely clear bias.

"I'm impartial on this subject. Speaking purely neutrally. I'm speaking as an experienced lawyer who is not taking sides to give a fair look at this subject and be impartial


.......so obviously every possible outcome in any possible conflict is the best case scenario for Cloud Imperium Games."

Backers eat this poo poo up because it's an "authority" reinforcing their views. That "authority" asserts itself as neutral and unbiased so therefore when it takes their side that means they are really, totally and truly in the right.

XK posted:

quote:

Defendants' interpretation of the word "exclusively" in Section 2.1.2 is that
18 Crytek gave only Defendants — not some unrelated third party — the right to embed
19 CryEngine in Defendants' game Star Citizen. (Defts.' Br. at 9.) That is absurd: How
20 could Crytek license a third party to do anything at all with Defendants' software?
21 Defendants admit: "Obviously CIG could never have a document that even remotely
22 suggests Crytek could grant somebody else the right to embed the Engine in the
23 Game." Accordingly, Defendants' suggestion that the
24 parties added the word "exclusively" to prevent Crytek from allowing some third
25 party to develop Defendants' software is nonsense.

Now I'm rubbing.

XK posted:

quote:

Second, Defendants reiterate their argument that the GLA authorized them to
develop Squadron 42 as a standalone game. It did not. See supra Part II.B.2.
Accordingly, Defendants' development of Squadron 42 exceeded the GLA's scope
and infringed, inter alia, Crytek's exclusive rights to copy, distribute, and prepare
derivative works with regard to CryEngine. Here, however, the GLA authorized the
Defendants to embed CryEngine in only one game, not two separate games.

Skadden is so on the ball it's nuts.

quote:

Even if the Court determines that Defendants were permitted to switch
engines and did in fact do so, Defendants' argument fails to account for the full year
of infringing conduct between Defendants' announcement of the separate, standalone
Squadron 42 on December 16, 2015, and Defendants' eventual engine switch on
December 23, 2016. (FAC ¶¶ 22, 38.) In any event, notwithstanding Defendants'
representation that they no longer use CryEngine in any way (Defts.' Br. at 15-16),
Crytek alleges that Defendants' use of CryEngine is ongoing. (E.g., FAC ¶¶ 25, 51,
66.) Crytek should be permitted to obtain discovery to test the truth of Defendants'
assertions that they have completely abandoned the use of CryEngine.

This is why Skadden is so expensive.

kw0134 posted:

Every time someone quotes reddit I'm going ughhhhhh you're not trying to litigate the merits of the case you loving SC morons, you're trying to argue there's no controversy to litigate all you're doing is proving to the court that there are significant issues begging for the court to decide shut up shut up SHUT UP and go buy another Idris you goddamn idiots and leave the law to people who didn't receive a full frontal lobotomy with a completionist pack

thatguy posted:

French is thinking there will be trial and discovery. Open the lolgates.

Dementropy posted:

From 2014
GamesBeat: They’ve changed their licensing policies some. Does that help you at all? Or do you have a more general license?

Roberts: Yeah, we bought it out. We’re building this game for the long term. It’s an MMO. Hopefully it lasts as long as something like EVE or World of Warcraft. We need to have control over it. So we basically had to buy it out and control the source and everything. We still get updates from them. We work very closely with Crytek. But their new licensing deal doesn’t factor into what we do.

G0RF posted:

PC Invasion: Crytek hits back at CIG’s request to dismiss Star Citizen legal case
__________________________

quote:

The Crytek vs CIG Star Citizen court documents are still going back and forth, and following CIG’s request that this case is dismissed, Crytek’s lawyers have hit back with a response and it’s firey.

This latest response from Crytek holds no punches and they have outlined clearly in this document why the court should not allow CIG to dismiss this case. The preliminary statement sums it up:
[quote]Defendant’s Motion seeking dismissal and other relief is without merit. Rather, that Motion is a blatant effort to impose delay and burden Crytek as it seels to vindicate its rights under its contract with Defendants and its copyrights.

The facts here are straightforward: Plaintiff Crytek GmbH (“Crytek”) granted Cloud Imperium Games Corp (“CIG”) and Roberts Space Industries Corp (“RSI”) (collectively, “Defendants”) a license to use Crytek’s powerful video game development platform, CryEngine, in the development of Defendant’s video game called “Star Citizen”. Pursuant to that Game License Agreement (the “GLA”), Crytek agreed to provide technical support and know-how to Defendants and licensed CryEngine to Defendants at a discounted rate, in return for certain promises from Defendants.

But after accepting Crytek’s assistance — and after raising record-breaking amounts from video game consumers in a crowdfunding campaign — Defendants began to break their promises to Crytek.

- Defendants promised that they would develop Star Citizen with CryEngine, not any other development platform. But Defendants now boast that they have breached that promise, and are promoting a competing development platform.

- Defendants promised that they would prominantly display Crytek’s copyright notices and trademarks within Star Citizen and in any marketing materials for Star Citizen. But Defendants have admittedly breached that promise.

- Even though Defendants had licensed Crytek’s technology to develop only one game (Star Citizen) they later separated Star Citizen’s feature “Squadron 42” into a standalone game without a license to use Crytek’s technology in two games

- Defendants promised to provide Crytek with any improvements or bug fixes that they made to CryEngine while developing Star Citizen. Defendants never made a good faith effort to honor that promise.

- Defendants promised that they would maintian the condidentiality of Crytek’s valuable technology, But they published excerpts if Crytek’s source code unilaterally and shared Crytek’s technology with a third-party developer without Crytek’s approval.

Defendants say this action should never have been filed. Indeed, if only they had kept their promises, the action would never have ben filed. But now Crytek seeks to enforce its contractual rights and copyrights. Defendants deny any enforceable obligation to Crytek and move the court to dismiss Crytek’s claim entirely. Defendants’ argument simpy do not withstand scrutiny, and certainly cannot meet the demanding standard required to obtain dismissal of Crytek’s claims as a matter of law. The court should deny Defendants’ Motion and permit Crytek to proceed so that it may vindicate its rights.

The full document is lengthy and goes into more detail citing more references to specific areas of contention with links to forum posts made by CIG and other cases that may set precedent for copyright infringement. Whether the court decides in favour of Crytek remains to be seen, but if this case is heard in court, it’s going to be one to watch because as more documents have appeared the more confusing it has become.

At this stage, it is starting to look like there will be a fight in court which is not good news for CIG. It’s money that would be dripped away to lawyers and not into the game. Backers will not be pleased if this goes further.

peter gabriel posted:

Lol this guy is literally:

Virtual Captain posted:

https://nofrag.com/2018/01/21/106587/

quote:

We thought the Star Citizen developers' response to Crytek would have baffled them. But Crytek has just replied, and their arguments are equally convincing.

Recall from the previous episode: Crytek accused CIG of developing two games when the original contract stipulated only one. They also complained that CIG broke the contract by changing the engine, so they did not use the CryEngine any more. CIG pointed out to them that the two complaints canceled each other out and that the case was therefore irrelevant.

Crytek's response: CIG was offered a preferential rate on the CryEngine in exchange for multiple promises they did not keep:

• CIG was to use CryEngine and promote it, but today they support a competing engine;
• CIG had committed to go back to Crytek the improvements they could have made to the engine, as well as the bug fixes. But after publicly boasting of improving the engine, they never shared their work with Crytek;
• CIG violated certain confidential aspects of Crytek's technology by publishing excerpts from the code.
In summary, Crytek believes it helped CIG in the early development of Star Citizen by offering them their engine at a preferential rate. The contract specified then that CIG had to return the same to them by ensuring the promotion of the engine and by sharing the improvements that they would have brought to him. But as soon as the developers of Star Citizen started to raise millions, they paid for a massive gold toilet, they printed the contract with Crytek, and they went to sink a monumental bronze before blowing themselves with it.

D_Smart posted:

This is the unroll thread of my take on the latest Crytek response in the CryTek v CIG lawsuit.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/954724633344913408.html

PederP posted:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15666-Bugsmashers

At 2:25 there's some code on screen, which looks very much like CryEngine code and not Lumberyard. CE uses scaleform UI, which is basically flash. LY does not have this, does not come with a scaleform license, and uses a different UI system. So 2.6 was CryEngine, and not Lumberyard. The switch never happened. Called it. They just cherrypicked network stuff from LY onto their codebase, keeping CE specific stuff, essentially still being CryEngine.

Called it.

SomethingJones posted:

quote:

didn't they get Amazon engineers on site? seeing as how cig appear to have no competence at any aspect of game development and can only deliver when outside contractors do all the work that would be an advantage going into the switch.

Amazon on site was an Agent leak/rumour

Brian Chambers said they were getting zero support from Crytek and moving to Amazon would fix that and give them access to new tech.

My issues with that explanation are:

1. Crytek's support only covers what the engine is documented to do (ie not spaceships and planets)

2. Crytek's support is limited to training and standard tech support for the engine as documented

3. Lumberyard is an fps engine with basic networking, wtf are Amazon going to be able to do if someone tries to make a space mmo with it?

In other words there was nothing to be gained apart from "access to new LY tech" which I have not seen any evidence for and which makes NO SENSE as CIG have claimed for 2 years they consider the engine to be Star Engine as it has been so dramatically customised.

Nothing these guys have been saying regarding the engine change stands up to scrutiny.

trucutru posted:

-Everybody else is just a pre-investor!
-Your investment will grow with the galaxy, right now we have 1/9 of a system... out of a hundred! That's a 900% growth-chance.
-Generations from now, people will see your name attached to the greatest game in history
-Chris would only extend this special one-of-a-kind offer to his most trusted friends.
-And so does Sandi, if you know what we mean.
-Opportunities to invest into a C.R. game have not happened since the 90s.
-Bezos is a fan and wanted to invest but we feel indebted to our real supporters.
-Get this... Citizencoin!
-If you can convince another 2 people to invest, and they convince a mere other 2 people, then, thanks to your upline, you'll be getting more than enough after a mere 17 levels.

-Finally, a qualified investor will be allowed to buy a (ahem), sorry, I am not allowed to disclose this information until the next meeting.

Pixelate posted:

Ships Alone, Sorted by Class:

CAPITAL CLASS:
Total: 11
Flight Ready: 0
Percentage Complete: 0%

LARGE:
Total: 13
Flight Ready: 6
Percentage Complete: 46.2%

MEDIUM
Total: 16
Flight Ready: 5
Percentage Complete: 31.3%

SMALL:
Total: 45
Flight Ready: 35
Percentage Complete: 77.8%

SNUB:
Total: 12
Flight Ready: 4
Percentage Complete: 33.4%


***ANALYSIS***
Those big Capital Class fuckers ain't ever happening.

G0RF posted:

quote:

Openly selling shares to backers is one of the things that will split the community in half and turn on Chris. It is one step below a EALE (Electronic Arts Level Event). Bowtie is mad about spending $35 on shipping, how do you think he will feel about 'profitable' shares after they have already spent thousands on jpgs.

I don’t disagree that it would be controversial but it didn’t stop Garriott. Roberts has never minded splitting backers down the middle or favoring new money over old. Erris of all people would hock his possessions to get in on the action without a second thought. He’s incapable of any persistent course correction and there is no indignity or betrayal he will not happily endure and eventually defend. He would chomp at the bit to put even more money where his mouth is and consider it an opportunity of a lifetime — a ground floor investment in the workd’s first Quadruple A Studio.

I don’t assume it’s happening, but if more attractive alternatives weren’t available to Roberts he would surely escalate his panhandling efforts and wave off any backlash as just so much noise. It is the whales who are obligated to him, to let him make the game he wants to make and run the operation however he sees fit at any given time.

Scruffpuff posted:

As much as I love your charts, I've always had a slight issue with this one for two technicalities.

1) The description of "flyable" for a ship. What that basically equates to is: can you move the model around the map. The flight model is still not technically functional. I know there is some debate, but take a look at the .gif a few pages back with the ship jittering around nose-down on the planet. Take a look at literally any video of SC ships in action. Play the game. The ships - none of them - are attached to a space game flight model. There is no mass, inertia, thrust, or anything that gives each ship heft and a unique feel. So to say the ship is "flyable" is making the game look much farther along than it really is. In a sense, none of the ships are flyable until they put in a flight model.

If the "flight model" in the game now is what they're keeping, then loving - no amount of "tweaking" will fix it. This game is a model viewer at best.

2) Just an extension of #1 - the chart farthest to the right mentions game mechanics, and space combat is complete. Without a flight model, is it really space combat?

So I think your chart is actually exceptionally generous and doesn't actually reflect the true state of CIG's progress, which is essentially none.


That's the hardest thing to explain about this game to the uninitiated - even the parts that are there aren't there. It's smoke and mirrors where even the smoke and mirrors are fake.

Sillybones posted:

Worth Clicking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tffX3VljTtI&t=2115s (video: Warren Spector: Setting a creative box is not telling people "Make that pixel blue, not green")

Probably posted before, but watch a bit to see a dig at Chris Roberts.

The Titanic posted:

No engine could have allowed Star Citizen to exist.

Chris Roberts could have taken anything and destroyed it.

In face, CryTek built the pitch demo. Chances are better than odd they also have that code to Roberts as a groundwork. CryTek was in trouble at the time, but that’s a pretty drat good thing to start with.

Imagine going to an engine company with nothing but an idea for a game you think would be cool, and they are all “Yeah we totally see that! Oh, you don’t know how to program and have nothing but your idea? Well well just build it for you to get started!!”

CryTek might suck, but without them all Star Citizen would be would be the fever dream of some 13 year old kid for his “totally awesome rpg space game where you can live in it and do everything!”

It was real dumb of CR to slap away the hand that fed him, but he’s good at that. You could say he’s got a long history of taking advantage of people and not knowing when to stop.

Virtual Captain posted:

Beet Wagon posted:

I'm the dudes talking about how this is good gameplay on reddit lol

https://clips.twitch.tv/PlainPlausibleNigiriPoooound (video: Commando's ship stolen with high value ore on-board. Reddit calls this a glimpse of future gameplay)

his nibs posted:

In your face goonie cuniflas

It Kind Of Looks Like Crytek Sued Star Citizen Developer By Pretending Its Engine License Says Something It Doesn't
"At face value, it's difficult to describe this whole situation as something other than Crytek's legal team stepping directly into a bucket of poo poo, comically hopping up and down while shaking its fist for a moment, and then simply falling over backwards. I'm hard-pressed to think of a bigger loser of a suit than this, assuming CIG's documentation is correct."

SomethingJones posted:

Calling All Devs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNZwjLSPZMc

Q: How many land claim licenses will fit on a planet or moon?
Dave Haddock:
Uhm... that is a... very good question, uh... we have... when we were actually doing the um... sort of, the... the BUILD to the... um... the... the ANNIVERSARY SALE like that...


Q: The inner thought system and player interaction in general, is that it? Are we done?
Calix Reneau:
Yeah, as usual, as usual we're finished from the gate... no, that's, ah... so much of... of this is coming together still, um... we're... we're ITERATING ON IT and doing all kinds of things and doing a whole other ASPECT to it, basically, ah, the interaction system is really good for finding things in the world to click on and... and... interacting with them in bespoke ways, just... go out there and see what you get, um...

Q: I don't suppose you want to answer a question about dance emotes do you?
Todd Papy:
No

Q: Tell us about 3.1, what are we looking at for 3.1?
Todd Papy:
Well... I think... haha... well, for us... uhm... we saw 3.0 and... and... as Erin stated and... and, um... there... basically we stated in development letter, that... you know, in order for us to move over to this, ah, DATE DRIVEN RELEASE, you know we needed to get 3.0 out the door.

But 3.0 going out the door there was a lot of stuff that we felt, um... WASN'T UP TO SNUFF and... and we needed to get optimisations better... ah... uhm... just because the overall frame rate, ah... then there were other, ah... I think USABILITY, ah, aspects that we felt we needed to improve... uhm...


Q: The 300i, where is it, where's our rework? What's happening, when?
Eric Kieron Davies:
It's a GREAT question, ah, the REWORK is... I believe the last of our original FIVE PLEDGE SHIPS and from what I understand it's one of the most owned ships... so there's a few people interested in what's going on with the 300i, fair enough...

So, the 300i... I'm going to have SO much information for you, ah... is DEFINITELY ON OUR RADAR, it's definitely one that we wanna REWORK, it is on the AGENDA to work on as you'd expect

SomethingJones posted:

Calling All Devs
Jan 22 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJcfJOj1-a8


Q:
Is buying ships with uAEC still a planned feature for alpha 3.1?
Todd Papy:
It is a planned feature, however with our current OPTIMISATION PLAN and everything like that I don't think it will be hitting in 3.1.

Q:
What are the plans for adding uAEC transfers between player characters?
Todd Papy:
So, ah, we actually already have that in the... in one of the DESIGNS for SERVICE BEACON, um... we understands... like... you know... if you go out on a mission with multiple characters... or multiple PLAYERS you want to be actually able to, ah... um... be able to go through and... and say, 'Hey, you know, I will give you a CUT of this', and... right now... we know you can't do that... the plan is... is to be part of the SERVICE BEACON design, whether or not that is the... the first TIER that ROLLS OUT, that's... that's... something that, um, basically Tony and I are still discussing.

Q:
What about plans for a traditional MMO trade window?
Todd Papy:
The... the... that is basically be a MOBIGLASS, that is... that is kinda SERVICE BEACON DESIGN of you know, hey, with the MOBIGLASS this is how I, um... basically, ah... create CONTRACTS, so on and so forth, we call it a SERVICE BEACON but it's... it's part of the MOBIGLASS and... and how that would work were, um... it's PLAYER INITIATED CONTRACTS so if you, um... are a HAULER and you want to hire a bunch of MERCHS or you're a PIRATE and you wanna be able to PAY... you know... basically people for a day's work... you know, that's... that's what will... we'll be WORKING TOWARDS



Q:
Will we see hotfixes between 3.0 and 3.1 and 3.2?
Jeffrey Pease (DevOps Engineer):
Ok, ah... to answer that question probably the first thing we need to do is establish what we consider a hotfix because different software companies and even different videogame companies have different definitions for what a hotfix is.

For CIG typically we consider the term HOTFIX to be for something we apply to an ENVIRONMENT that's already been DEPLOYED... but where the fix isn't something that's normally included... that... for the build that environment's hosting... so like in a worst case scenario if... if we were to RE-DEPLOY the exact same CHANGELIST that our backers can see in the LAUNCHER for the version of the game, those fixes wouldn't be included for a re-deployed version of that game because they were added after the fact...

What this tends to mean is that... the fixes can go into the game without players actually noticing that they've been added UNLESS we specifically tell them... ah, to answer the question as to whether we will SEE any hotfixes... the plain fact is that we have already hotfixed a number of problems that were encountered over the holiday break, Ahmed and Bryce as well as Tony and some of our other engineers and programmers were looking into several issues that... were happening with... the DIFFUSION GATEWAY and... our SHOPPING SYSTEM and... the PROBABILITY VOLUME SERVICE because we had a bunch of problems where... gameservers weren't recovering their ability to list items in the SHOPS... we had a bu... a problem where... the PROBABILITY VOLUME SERVICE was spawning a mission that was causing the gameservers to deadlock, uh...

We had... a really strange issue where the gameservers were causing the SHIPS to become PARENTS and CHILDREN of OTHER SHIPS which caused the CIRCULAR REFERENCE... and then when the CACHE tried to clear the data, because it was a circular reference, the cache would DEADLOCK because it was just keep going ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND and uh...

And then... uh... another one that actually... some of the hotfixes for the PERSISTENCE CACHE that we did were to put in additional LOGGING so that we could figure out what was causing it to deadlock and then TOM SAWYER ended up figuring out that the deadlock was being caused by that CYCLICAL REFERENCE and then we also did a hotfix to the GENERAL INSTANCE MANAGER because I discovered that it was trying to matchmake people into matches... that weren't supposed to let people in once they'd already started... so for example for VANDUUL SWARM and um... PIRATE SWARM and... RACE MODES... once the game would START, people can't join, but it was trying to put them IN and it was telling them, 'you can't join that because it's already started', so another one of the hotfixes we put in was to make it so that the GIM would stop doing that...

And uh... we also have... this... new FEATURE... for 3.0... for the BACKEND SERVICES where we... have... a DEDICATED PROCESS that will take all of the items that people have purchased on our PLATFORM... and... add them to their ACCOUNT in game... originally the servers that would do that would be the same servers players were ON and if one of those servers CRASHED it would cause problems with items being missing and stuff

So now we have a dedicated process for THAT... that... because it's not shared with instances that players are playing on we don't have to worry about it crashing in the middle of someone getting the items into their account... one of the GIM hotfixes that we added was to exclude those specific processes from the ROLLING RESTARTS THAT WE DO TO THE GAMESERVERS... uh, I think that covered most if not all of the hotfixes that we did.




Q:
What is the plan for our Freelancer variants?
Kirk Tome (Lead Tech Designer):
Ah, the FREELANCER, ahm... OK well, uh... it... it IS one of the original five ships for Star Citizen that were planned, um... and we do know that backers are waiting for them, uh... ah... for the... for them... so for that we do apologize... uhm... I do know that they are scheduled to BEGIN WORK, uh, in the LATTER HALF OF THE YEAR, um.. by the... uh... UK TEAM, um... this... um... doesn't, uh, GUARANTEE that they'll be DONE by... by the end of the year but... uh... we are STRIVING to make that happen... um... and... um... we do... we do know how much the um... the ah... the (mumble mumble mumble) so we... we ARE working on them and we, ah... DO (mumble) to get them STARTED... and we'll TRY to get them COMPLETED um...

Unfortunately as you know um... we do have a lot of ships that we're uh... MAKING and a lot of FEATURES that need to go in the game that also require artists and design and engineering work, so... things do get pushed back but um... but they're on the SCHEDULE so uh... we'll... we'll... TRY to get them OUT, ah... by... by the end of this year

Um... also uh... something that in OTHER NEWS the 300 SERIES rework uh, is also on the schedule for this year and uh, that will be done by the team in LA so um... we'll um... we'll be working on it here locally



Q:
Is the current way we spawn ships and vehicles in game the FINAL implementation? IE, using a terminal and popping them in?
Luke Pressley (Lead Designer):
Um, there are definitely further plans for development, ehrm... So, the TERMINAL probably, like... the notion of going to a TERMINAL probably won't change, eh... ehm... the TERMINAL will definitely change, the UI on there will get major improvements... ehm... and the kind of FLOW of it... but... as for like POPPING IN AND OUT? I guess the reason you're seeing so much popping in and out is because places like OLISAR and GRIMHEX... ah... it only has landing pads right now it doesn't have the HANGARS... Erm... URH!

You see these things pop in and out on these landing pads it SHOULD be a hangar.

It... wuh... lak... eh OLISAR is like a LEGACY kind of thing we just build on and build on until we finally get like the TRUCK STOP and uh, you know, we'll get a... a FINAL HOTEL eventually and it'll have some HANGARS and that means that all of this popping in and out will happen AWAY from the player, you know, he won't be able to go in that hangar before he has access to the ship and then he'll be granted access to the hangar and he'll go in... now, that's not to say that we can ever completely get rid of popping in and out, ehm...

I mean for instance when a player logs out, you know, his ship hangs around for an amount of time and then it has to go somewhere, ehm... and then a player logging in, I mean obviously that ship has to come in... some... I mean... where he parked it before, if he left it, up... you know... on his... um... NOT STORED

So I don't think we'll get rid of it entirely, we are a game after all, but... we, you know... you won't be seeing them popping in and out on the landing pads as often as you do now.

OLISAR is a MONSTROSITY, I mean, you're about to see something that's about to get even WORSE because you know, the RECLAIMER is HUGE, it's... it's almost the size of the IDRIS and... eh... that's coming soon, so we've had to just... the LARGE landing pad that is already like a football field is now gonna be like two football fields on there...

So I mean it's good because we don't, we don't WASTE like final art or anything like that, we just, you know EXPAND UPON this thing until we've got... until we KNOW all the things that it needs to do, ehm... and then... and once we've got that we can build this thing PROPERLY, knowing all the pieces

AP posted:

I'm shocked, apparently the ability to buy ships with game credits won't make 3.1

G0RF posted:

SPOILER THAT SURPRISING NEWS: And don't get your hopes up for 3.2 either. There's absolutely no rush on that particular feature. No rush at all.

THE OLD WAY CIG LET BACKERS DOWN: Give dates, profit, miss dates,

THE NEW WAY CIG LETS BACKERS DOWN: Give features, profit, miss features,

SomethingJones posted:

This is the second Calling All Devs I've done and I've not seen a single hint of progress from either of them yet. It's all in the future, coming soon, right around the corner, just as it has been since 2014. These answers were not off the cuff this time, you can take my word for that. In fact you can see Kirk Tome reading his points off the screen. I'd love to know who sent him those points...

Honest feedback to Jared (yes we know you read the thread) - why not get one of these guys to talk about what HAS been achieved, what IS progressing, something, anything. That's what would separate these things from marketing, that's really what you should be at.

And what's happening to the questions about networking? That's been the elephant in the room for so long that the loving elephant has had baby elephants and is now a small family of elephants

Blue On Blue posted:

Hmm I skipped through that mostly, but half the people look surprised to even be there, the 2nd to last dude Hobo has to ask him 2 or 3 times if he is ready 'remember we spoke about this... do you have time for me now?' like gently caress guys, get it together

If you're not going to tape things a day or two in advance, at least get everyone on board

It's funny how their production quality has gone from wannabe AAA studio now it's sliding downhill to crappy webcam videos with a hobo sitting 2 inches from the camera

The Titanic posted:

CR had an idea. He didn’t have the skills to even build himself a baby demo to show off. He relied on the shoulders of CryTek to make his dream come true. But he lied about it all. Even showed videos of himself “programming”, had his wife talk about his late night power coding sprees (while she herself not joking talked about her multiple degrees, hilarious marine biology and shoes and marketing stories the likes of which were hugely unbelievable).

So, there you go. A company built on lies from day zero. With CRs hubris and complete lack of appreciation, he decided it was a good idea to piss all over the people who got him where he was.

SPERMCUBE.ORG posted:

While I understand and agree with your point, claiming that Chris had an idea is a little generous. He had an inkling, at best a notion. The rest of this mess was just a perfect storm of people, at every step along the way, failing to rein him in. Like a giant toddler who finally gets to dress himself and ends up choking on a sock.

Rabelais D posted:

These are the ideas Chris Roberts has had in his life:

Cinematic space sim
Cinematic space sim 2
Cinematic flight sim
Cinematic space sim + Elite
Cinematic space sim + Elite 2
Cinematic space sim 3, 4 etc.

with Microsoft:
Off-brand cinematic space sim
Off-brand cinematic space sim 2


And now,

Cinematic space sim + multiplayer

Where does he get all these ideas!?

quote:

TheAgent posted:

I just had a summons for jury duty in march

if I somehow end up on the skadden / fkks jury selection, my life will finally be complete

Scruffpuff posted:

There are so many vectors converging on that single point in time known as the Collapse of Star Citizen that it's nearly impossible to track them all, but here you touch on two of them:

1) The game is already boring, and it's already old. People are tired of Star Citizen. No matter what they try to add, it will be the same non-game generic garbage (non-game generic high-fidelity garbage to be sure) and the game is already doomed to the scrapheap, regardless of completion status. Just not enough people give a gently caress. I'd compare it to Second Life, a game so niche and so insular that I have to check Wikipedia every few years to find out if it's still a thing. Star Citizen is consigned to the same fate at best. There's just no remaining interest in this title outside of the people who are already enslaved by it.

2) Related to above, too many excellent, functional, infinitely superior space games for those players who might have been interested in what Star Citizen promised, if only Star Citizen hadn't simultaneously promised everything and nothing at the same time. "You can be a space farmer!" "Cool, how?" "Buy this module!" "How does it work?" "No idea. Buy it." Star Citizen would be poo poo if it existed in a vacuum - but in a crowded market, it's an industry-wide joke, poised to become an even better-known joke far outside the industry.

I can't possibly stress this enough, and the evidence backing this assertion is literally everywhere - in every CIG broadcast, in every fan stream, in every screenshot: Star Citizen is not a game in development. There is literally not even the basic starting building blocks of a game or a plan for a game. Star Citizen has nothing but graphical assets and motion capture. We're 6 years in and nobody on the planet, least of all at CIG, knows what this game is.

The Rabbi T. White posted:

https://twitter.com/Crane6251/status/956278351555067906
(tweet summary: As a one-time courtesy and the get you back into the 'Verse, we've reset your account. You should now be able to log in and continue playing as normal. You will have lost any progress you've attained)
"As a one time courtesy for our buggy as gently caress game loving your character, we've decided to take pity on you and allow you to play. Notice we said one time - meaning if our poo poo fucks up again, tough titties.

P.s. All your 'progress' in our 'game' has been wiped. Lol

Virtual Captain posted:

What the fuuuuuck? "one-time courtesy" You know this is impacting hundreds if not thousands of users right? You're going to fix them one at a time if they beg enough as a one-time favor? HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Take the google form feedback and triple the absurdity every second.

G0RF posted:

Revisiting the run-up to 3.0's launch, there is just so much bullcrap in the public record. Some good transcript potential here and there.

YOUTUBE: Live from the Gamescom Showfloor, Day 2

Erin Roberts gets asked about the depth of subsumption in 3.0 - Myre from Fortnightly Frontier poses a theoretical about his Bounty Hunter mission to assassinate a bad NPC who might be on a day night schedule of activity. Will NPCs be persistent? Or will they spawn to missions? Erin gives his "so on and so forth" as the handwavium begins.

Deejay goes further with questions about NPC assassination missions. (Drop a box on their head, DJ, that's the preferred kill.) If he kills an NPC, will another shopkeeper come along and replace the deceased? Basically, yes "and so on and so forth" involving sheriffs and wild west towns and serious marines that will take you down for your crimes.

Erin Roberts says Mining will be the first thing they go for after 3.0.

Erin Roberts says players will be able to buy ships with aUEC in 3.0, er, 3.1 - Watch Lando nodding after Erin explains you'll be able to buy ships with aUEC in 3.0. Then Erin and Lando both back off the claim with Lando making it explicitly clear that you will NOT be able to buy 3.0 with aUEC. ( Voice in headset - "No no no we're not making ships purchasable with credit in 3.0 guys!")

Classic.

Thoatse posted:

This hits to the core of why I want to punch Star Citizen in the throat -it was exclusively supposed to not be another one of these generic pieces of poo poo for the unwashed masses and that is 100% the flag crobbler and co wrapped themselves in that got this project off the launchpad in the first place. 'dust off ur joyticks' 'no guns follow the ship' 'no freelancer controls' 'no point and click', 'controls agnostic!' and such were all actual answers given in official capacity to early worriers with enough foresight on the subject to ask specific questions to suss out this issue.

Around the 50-60 million dollar mark though they threw out all that 'niche game to revive a niche genre' talk and entered the 'too big to fail' territory and started selling mutually exclusive ~dreamz~ to the much wider/generic FPS crowd once sim whales were running out of milk. They have maintained the illusion they will one day make that flight sim (just wait till beta!) they sold to the delusionals still hanging on, all the while cementing everything in place that will prevent that from ever happening just like they did with VR.

As far as I can see, it's literally the biggest bait and switch in the history of making games, at least to my autistic brain

The Titanic posted:

The best parts will be the briefing rooms where you know there will be like 12 pilots in there, but nobody will ever comment on the fact the ship can only launch 2 fighters.

Thoatse posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H15Zq72lu3k


Climb upon my claimed land deed,
Then we gonna pledge
gonna smoke some dweeb.
Climb upon my big-rear end deed,
And pledge, pledge, pledge.

Weeee-eee-eee-eeeee-eeeee-eee-eee-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee,
What's the name of the contract,
Exclusivo!
I am not a lawyer,
But it's good to go.
What's the name of my spaceship
I don't know,
But she's built like some poo poo
And she's good to go, no,
She's good to go?
Not good to go.

We are fuelled by Ortwin,
Yes we're schooled by Ortwin.
Fuelled by Ortwin!
Writin' those tasty checks
just as fast as he can.
Schooled by Ortwin!

We were the investors
of the cosmic rear end in a top hat code.
We've come to blow your wallet,
We've come to blow your dough.
We've come to fuckin' crow,
We've come to shill the show.
We've come so fuckin' slow,
You know it, you know it!

Weeee-eee-eee-eeeee-eeeee-eee-eee-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee,
What's the name of the contract,
Exclusivo!
Don't know what it's about
But it's good to riddle-ah!

[spoken]
I am not one of you. I come from an ancient time.
I am known as The Kicker of FUD. I am also known as The Derek Crusher!

Exclusivo.

Tippis posted:

What

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/7t5uxm/i_was_having_issues_with_the_rsi_site_when_i/


What what.
Motherfucking WHAT?!

Chalks posted:

The whole password in the url thing is testament to the quality of CIG's programmers and their code review process. loving highschool level programming mistakes on production systems, a class act all round.

hardycore posted:

legatus is still less than my student loan balance after 8 years tbf

Viktor posted:

quote:

Jacopo Top Hat & Monocle: As part of their Dafne collection, Derion is proud to present their Jacopo line of accessories. Perfect for an elegant night on the town, this diamond-laminate monocle with tungsten chain and gossamer-lined top hat was commissioned in honor of the Port Retanus Metropolitan Opera House Quincentennial and features the latest upgradable optiVis interface for unmatched comfort.

Still amazes me they have a monocle reward tier.

I guess it just the ignorance of every party involved.

Tortolia posted:

I really appreciate the titles given to the different backing tiers. It's like being able to self-select your level of mental illness in the DSM without needing professional diagnosis.

G0RF posted:

YOUTUBE: The Redacted Crew braces for yet another betrayal being telegraphed by CIG

reddit posted:

We know that Star Citizen isn't pay to win, but to an outsider it may appear that way. When someone hears that you get what is suppose to be the best heavy fighter in the game when you spend $10,000, it sounds pretty P2W to an outside third party.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

Years ago the F8 was a ridiculously secret ship, intended to be some kind of ultra-badass top tier endgame for Squadron 42. Now it's just another punchline in the great joke that is Star Citizen.

posted:

7 Days Ago
More like CIG responds to Wild speculation with a terse comment that there is nothing to comment on. The F8 should never be sold for cash. I won’t elaborate further because there is no reason to believe they would do that.

8 Months Ago
I agree that the F8 is a little much of an I win button and shouldn't be sold, but unf that ship is sexy and I want it.

10 Months Ago
The only information we do have, is that backers will never be able to buy one, or own one.

1 Year Ago
Obviously. from the wiki: Very little is known about the Anvil Aerospace F8 Lightning Heavy Fighter, other than that it will feature in Squadron 42. It won't go on sale on the website, and neither will it be easy to obtain in game since it is a military ship.

1 Year Ago
if they do put it up for sale, we know they are desperate for money, because that was an outright promise they made.

1 Year Ago
They're not selling the F8. He clarified since then.

1 Year Ago
CIG, I don't know if you got the memo about the F8 Lightning...but please listen to us.

Today, everything is fine.

Let this be a lesson to all of us. Err, someone help me out with a lesson here.

FailureToReport posted:

AHahahahah, I'm so loving happy they are "selling" the F8 Lightning as a Wing Commander perk. That's such a genius way to push their whales up to 10k a piece.

The only thing better is all the Citizen Cultists who are now defending it with "Oh well it's not selling the Lightning, they are giving WC's a civilian variant, it's not the same at all".


Right.......like the Super Hornet not being a military variant. Hey which ship has absolutely dominated the game now since it was flyable? I loving love fanboys.

Beet Wagon posted:

Lol, F8s are coming with LTI, which the Sabre Raven didn't get because gently caress you you only bought a hard drive.

reddit posted:

But my sabre raven couldnt have LTI for "balance purposes"

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

trucutru posted:

Lol, just go there an click on the "Core Tech" features. They are so hosed, sooooo hosed.

Let's see, so at the end of Q1 2018 they're going to...

Have Customizable Characters (100 tasks)
Polish Helmets (13 tasks)
"Improve" Planetary Generation Tech (1 task)
"Improve" the Flight Control System (1 task)
"Improve" the Personal Manager (1 task)
Balance Weapons (2 tasks)
Overhaul Ship Damage (4 tasks)
Convert Ship AI to Subsumption (62 tasks)
Implement Aegis Reclaimer (56 tasks)
Implement Anvil Terrapin (39 tasks)
Implement MISC Razor (39 tasks)
Implement Tumbril Cyclone (38 tasks)
Implement Ship Weapon: Preacher Distortion Shotgun (29 tasks)
Implement Personal Weapon: Gemini R97 Shotgun (29 tasks)
Improve Netcode (10 tasks)
Optimize Performance (36 tasks)

Let's be clear about this. They've put more thought into laying out how to polish the loving helmets than they have for improving netcode. It takes the same number of tasks to implement a glorified off-road golf cart than it does to implement a multi-crew ships. They have 100 tasks to implement customization of characters but only 3 tasks combined to improve planetary generation, improve the flight system (their core gameplay element), and improve the user interface.

At this point anyone who reads that and doesn't immediate register that it's a giant pile of steaming bullshit deserves to be loving scammed.

reddit posted:

I was confused while reading the roadmap on the new website.

Any gameplay additions like mining, salvaging or repair are only described as "scheduled". It is strange that no progress has been made, especially since mining was at some point even planned for 3.0. Do we have any more info on this because I find it really curious that they are just starting now

Virtual Captain posted:

Tokamak posted:

Star Citizen in 2016 2017 2018
Winners: Ships
Losers: Everything else

No wonder:


Prepare for denied refunds.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

Of all the things CIG has done, this is the most significant. It indicates that what you are getting now is what you are paying for. No grand vision, no MMO, no amazing immersion into a massive open space opera. Just a lovely, barely functional arena shooter and an opportunity to buy more ships. 3.0 is the MVP.

CrazyTolradi posted:

Alpha PU is clearly being lined up as the MVP in this.

CIG/RSI: "But we've delivered it, you can use it NOW in the PU!"
Player: "But my character is stuck as a ball of light, I can't do poo poo!"
CIG/RSI: "That'll be a $5 fee to restore your account, thank you."

Pixelate posted:

Star Citizer is the best game ever.

Enchanted Hat posted:

The frames per second in Star Citizen are PILED HIGH!!!

AP posted:

Sandweed posted:

Anyone seen this:

Worth Clicking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAX1rJv0X9k&t=1764s (video: TwichPAX parody featuring "Chris" talking about keeping kickstarter open indefinitely)

G0RF posted:

PC Invasion: Star Citizen gets new website and a trailer that’s not entirely accurate

quote:

In other news, CIG has kicked out a new trailer for Star Citizen covering different aspects of the game. It’s eight minutes long and it’s not exactly a fair representation of what new backers will find. First of all, the alpha looks relatively smooth in the trailer but that’s not what you’ll get in the game currently. They’ve managed to avoid showing it running at 10 FPS, although you can see cutting away quickly from dodgy looking segments. It also looks super exciting and stacked full of content that’s ready to go, but let’s face it, the Alpha is still a shell of a ‘game’.

It’s actually a shame CIG have released this, while I understand they need more money, it’s just not a fair representation of Star Citizen currently. Considering people have to pay to play, it could be considered false advertising. Take a look…

Meow!

Full story here.

Also...

REDDIT: No RSI booth or presentation at Gamescom this year



A genuine shock. Sounds like pulling cinematics guys off actual game development to work on dazzle demos is not in the cards this year. Very curious.

G0RF posted:

I’m very curious what the reactions will be from the chattering classes. Redacted, Captain’s Table and Relay all will surely have things to say. I suspect we will hear lots of resigned sighs.

I am very excited about Chris being Lando’s guest on RTV tomorrow. It’s been too long since we’ve been able to gather at the knee of his Excellency and bask in his benevolent wisdom.

G0RF posted:

How telling that Chris is paying such close attention to various discussions in the community right now. He used to ignore it and considered complaints “noise”.

SomethingJones posted:

Reverse The Verse Jan 26 2018
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/222623015?t=32m11s

@32:11

Chris Roberts:
YEAH on the VR FRONT, um, you know, the game's very much built to be VR FRIENDLY because, you know... like al-um... almost all the UI is DIAGETIC and the stuff that isn't we're putting more into being DIAGETIC and we wanna improve the whole DIAGETIC FEEL... ah... so... ahh... you know... our biggest HOLDBACK on the VR is really just we're still doing so much base level REFACTORING and the ENGINE and the RENDERER will, you know, be starting on you know, the X... the VULKAN, the X12 kinda REFACTOR as well, a-and we're doing so much OPTIMISATION that we sorta feel like, 'we've gotta get that done... FIRST', and... get the base level engine stuff more like FINISHED, not constantly working REFACTORING

And then we'll... we'll PUT VR...

Cos we had actual, you know, VR support quite a while ago but again as we CHANGE stuff it BREAKS and then your engine team, you go, 'are they gonna go fix the VR stuff? Are they writing that new... that new... you know like the PROCEDURAL PLANETS that EVERYBODY can experience', and... so that's always been... that's kind of what's happened in those situations

But once all that stabilises of course we're gonna go and get that supported and when we're building things, you know, we're aware of like I said the DI... putting everything in the world itself, ah... which is quite friendly for VR or... you know... and moving your head around and TRACKING the same thing it's like... we track... ah... your HEADLOOK and actually, you know, I... I'd thought that we'd turned it on in 3.0 but it will be something that you can disconnect your LOOK from your AIM... as a PLAYER... ah, you know the AI can already do that...

Cos that's also something that's potentially useful where you're... you know... you're a CERTAIN way, you don't have to look around to like move your gun to look at it



‘Star Citizen’ to Refocus on VR Support in Early 2016
https://www.roadtovr.com/star-citizen-to-refocus-on-vr-support-in-early-2016/

Chris Roberts:
The status of VR integration is that we’ve been pretty busy with getting [Alpha] 2.0 [out] and we’re trying to get 2.1 so I would say we still have some stuff to integrate from the most recent CryEngine drops. They’ve been actually doing quite a lot of VR, I’m pretty sure you guys have noticed that they’ve completely doubled down and they’re all VR now.

So there are some updates on VR that we need to integrate in. It’s a little more complicated because we’ve changed the engine so much, we’ve changed the rendering pipeline to enable us to do a lot of things that we need to do so it’s not very easy. Nowadays we’ve diverged from CryEngine where we don’t take regular updates from them any more although we will cherry pick certain features that maybe we’re not working on that we think would help out well and VR is a good example of that.

So it’s really just a matter of getting some engineering time in the Frankfurt team. The Frankfurt team… [includes many of] the guys that originally did the VR work at Crytek so they know it pretty well but I would be expecting it to get up to speed with the most recent [VR] stuff sometime early next year.



TL;DR:

2016:
Frankfurt team will be up to speed on VR integration after we integrate new CryEngine updates into the base engine.

2018
We'll put in VR after we integrate Vulkan and X12 refactors into the base engine.

Pixelate posted:

I've transcribed Crobert's mind during that interview:

Martman posted:

Reading some Reddit comments from citizens reminded me of a pretty classic experience I had with this type of person.

I met this guy who told me he had been spending months designing a game. It was gonna be like Oblivion (this was before Skyrim had come out I think) but way more detailed, skill-based, other jargon (think "fidelity"), etc., i.e. the most Perfect Open World Sandbox Game Ever. He was super into the idea that every single action would be based on and/or influenced by your stats. So, for instance, a character with high Strength would probably open doors faster or something dumb like that.

He finally showed me the stuff he had actually written, and.... it was just pages and pages of lists of actions and the stats you'd need in order to do them. Like, your character can do a Cartwheel! It'll require 10 Strength and 12 Dexterity! There was nothing about what a cartwheel would do, why you'd want to do it, or anything like that. Nothing about what your goals in the game would be. Just hundreds of random actions and some made up numbers next to them. In his mind, this was the real meat of designing an epic game. It just needed some graphics and stuff slapped on.

Like with shitizens, I couldn't deny he had clearly enjoyed his time "designing" that game. I'm just glad he wasn't paying anyone to enable his fantasy.

Foo Diddley posted:

Posting on page 3600

D_Smart posted:

Star Citizen - The Fall

Quavers posted:

The gradual walking back of promised features and gameplay continues:



Phew. All those ships bought with real money are a lot safer now. Pay2Win hype!

XK posted:

Hahahahahahaha

That one post wrecks countless space dreams.

I expect that admission to be explained away shortly.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

This is amazing.

Original Promise: Persistent Universe (hosted by US)
New Truth: Stolen ships will disappear when you log out.

Virtual Captain posted:

Just wow. There should be riots going on all over spectrum right now. Stick a fork in persistence, it's done.

XK posted:

Even GTA lets you keep stolen vehicles. As long as the garage doesn't eat them.

Stolen ships disappearing. That's a fundamental change in so many game mechanics.

It's actually a pretty wild admission. It blows apart persistence.

Colostomy Bag posted:

The whole absurdity of this project (and of course more recent events) never ceases to amaze me.

I like how reddit is coming up with ways to keep the stolen ship "alive" by having members of your org never signing off. Like passing the torch.

The problem is from a simple standpoint, how does the server know who "possesses" the ship in the first place? You and 10 (haha) others board and fight your way in while you rape and pillage. Does it know that the ten of you in the physics grid are the owners now?

They try to solve one problem which pisses backers off and it creates ten more what-ifs. It's just a loving laugh riot with their total lack of understanding of basic game mechanics and what can happen when you have an idiot at the helm waving his hands.

Dusty Lens posted:

Give us more money and we'll both be able to add more and build the game faster.

Or remove even the hint of all those wild dream features we suggested you were buying in addition to never delivering on even the most basic form of the game.

It's a flip of the coin really.

XK posted:

lol, the PvP slider

CIG dev: What's the PvP slider?

Mr Fronts posted:

Oh, snap...

Tortolia posted:

Maybe if you're going to be answering questions for a hyper obsessed fanbase that literally has had nothing of consequence to do but theorycraft and slave over game design/features for 5 years, you should have actual knowledge of the subject instead of telling them "if that was a thing".

quote:

It's like millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and then perished when they realized that their default lovely anti-p2w argument just got destroyed by CIG themselves.

Android5 posted:

Will Maiden is a loving genius. And CIG, as usual, is proving to be 2 steps ahead of the game. The tactic is simple.

1. Dev/Community Manager makes an obscure offhand comment that clashes with the insane imaginary game mechanic that the whales have dreamed up for themselves (egged on by Chris).

2. Massive shitstorm blows up on reddit with heated bickering between the backers over mechanics that are impossible to implement anyway.

3. CR steps forth, addressing the masses. "Good people, you have spoken and I have heard. That offhand comment by that Dev was taken completely out of context, OF COURSE we will be implementing that insane impossible mechanic that whales are losing their poo poo over. It's totally part of our "subsumption/Item2.0/Insertbuzzword" system. What that Dev was trying to say is that we are aiming (no promises) to have only the foundations implemented in 3.0/4.0/5.0 etc. It is an organic and iterative player driven system that will grow in complexity over time once the game launches. You've trusted us to develop the best drat space game ever and we're holding up our end of the bargain, we need you guys to continue supporting us so that all your dreams can come true. (Insert shameless plug for the latest concept sale).

4. Backers fall over themselves praising CIG. Mass reddit threads appear "Thank you CIG / CIG Listens to us / This is already the best space game ever OMG". Backers start mass buying the latest concept in shame over ever doubting CIG and the vision. Any additional dissent is quickly shouted down by the zealous fans.

5. CIG continues to walk back on any "promises", defended vehemently by hardcore backers as they do.


Its loving genius. Textbooks will be written about CIG in future.

Virtual Captain posted:

PCGAMER: You cannot keep ships you steal in Star Citizen, Cloud Imperium Games says

quote:

Who cares, the game is in early development, devs are busy doing a spin-off already. They already spent all the money, SC never coming so who cares what you can or can't do.

quote:

This tells me they don’t know where to take true persistence or how to develop it.

trucutru posted:

Ok, let's talk professions!


Pirate: You cannot truly steal ships anymore.
Explorer: 5 systems at launch, golf-club.
Trader: Lol, your computer cannot handle the load caused by the physics-aware cargo
Bounty Hunter / Combat: 7-12 FPS during dogfights
Mining: Delayed to 3.13.23.3!
Repair: See mining, add a year.
Information Specialist: This one is fine!
Passenger Transport: This one is too!
Space Paparazzo: Working as intended.

So, obviously, you want to infiltrate passenger transports to take photos of famous people drinking hairy roberts to sell to information specialists.

Everything seems fine, it'll be an engrossing game.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

It's a perfect example of how the worst thing that could ever happen to Star Citizen is for it to come out. Statements like that are incredibly damaging because there's no way to handwave it away as an alpha problem. If you don't like the flight model, or the game is boring, or you've spent ten minutes trying to get out of your ship and you can't because you've t-posed into the floor, you can always tell yourself that the game is still in development and then spend more money maintain enthusiasm. On the other hand if an actual developer says that something will be a certain way, and that particular way flies in the face of literally years of promises and lies marketing, then that shakes the core confidence and forces the backer to question what else about the project might not be what they paid literally thousands of dollars for. Some might have an epiphany and desperately try to squeeze what they can out of the refund process, others will accept the change and find a way to reconstruct their illusion so that this is a good thing, and meanwhile we'll keep laughing.

Toops posted:

quote:

I don’t understand why they didn’t copy Eve’s mechanics for ship theft and replacement. You’d have to tweak it to reflect Star Citizen and it’s lack of manufacturing, sure, but it seems like a reasonable starting place. Grandfathered early backers have lifetime insurance on certain hulls, everyone else has to pay each time, everyone has a delay for ship replacement to impede abuse. Less-secure space has a longer delay to deter abuse by pirates, lore it up by saying its more dangerous and therefore less trade there. Hell, copy Eve’s system security and space cops too, add real teeth to theft in high-security space. The mechanics don’t seem insurmountable and makes me wonder if the real reason for the theft change is that they can’t get it to work.

Bingo. They lack the will and/or the ability to actually get persistence designed, let alone working. I mean fucksake, they still can’t figure doors out. And ramps? Not even remotely imaginable. I mean they just now started trying to figure out how to respawn in your ship when you die.

Quavers posted:

The moment on Saturday when WTFOsaurus found out about the piracy change:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/223042709?t=01h39m40s

Quavers posted:

Virtual Captain posted:

Instead of disavowing the stolen ship despawning or saying its an iterative progress like they always do, Jared doubles down. Are you kidding me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7tkmc3/star_citizen_dev_you_cannot_collect_ships_by/dte0j2i/

quote:

Disco Lando: Not for nothing, but the information you won't be able to keep stolen ships indefinitely has been out since November 2017.

thatguy posted:

There's always more, it's always worse, and you always double down.


The Star Citizen Triad.

SomethingJones posted:

G0RF posted:

YOUTUBE: On Today’s Relay, Erris does the math...

Erris:
Everyone will have noticed that playable female characters are not scheduled until Q4 - the END of Q4

That on its own is BAD but what that means in the larger scheme of things... female characters are required for Squadron 42

Virtual Captain posted:

'Squadron 42 is... maybe... going to miss 2018.'

G0RF posted:

Oh Erris... You poor bastard.

quote:

"One of the things that always made me most excited about Star Citizen... It is... Chris Roberts answering questions. That's what gave me faith in the game, it's that person in charge of the game willing to sit there and talk for literally hours about his plans, and answer questions. And so, I was really really happy to see Chris on RTV this week for the entire hour he answered questions, I really, really hope that they do this more often and I'm hoping everyone pushes them to do that more often because -- I know Chris is really busy... And I know that his team need him a lot, and he does a lot of work, BUT, when it comes down to it other backers are kind of part of the team, too, and WE need Chris, too. Chris honestly gives faith in the project, in my opinion."

boviscopophobic posted:

Never forget that someone actually posted this in earnest and called the thread "Every Time I Listen to Chris Roberts Talk for 20+ Minutes":

The Titanic posted:

1: Make networking mesh like i want
2: do it again
3: do it until 10,000 people can play my twitch shooter together with massive fleet battles with tv ships live streaming to YouTube and face over ip works and I can do it over my ship comm to another ship while also taking a dump in my space toilet while outside NPCs are fighting over which virtual but full length movie they want to watch while another player is mixing a drink and the shadow of our ship hovers over players on the ground having a war in a tunnel created by a passing sandworm and the lands defense mechanism is automatically seeing them and calling the space police to come and start fighting them all while the situation is being broadcast to the landowners ship somewhere else so it’s piped into his mobi glass thing and I want all this at 80 FPS and it’s also VR enabled because you guys do that part too I think
4: refactor all of 3 because I just changed the skeleton
5: redo 3 because I want the AI to see and smell and react to people dynamically
6: I want the AI over network to be indistinguishable from human players
7: I just had an awesome dream from this cocaine so we’re restarting at 1 again today but this is 3 years into 1-6 so I’m planning for it now on the roadmap
8: hey hey, demo coming so I need all you dumb fuckers to stop everything and work on this cool space station that’s full of Giger Aliens for my awesome idea demo I just had, we’ll finish up networking in a few months after citcon but I need this loving demo
9: the demo was loving poo poo and everybody laughed at me and it’s your fault
10: alright let’s look at this again we need to get over 6 players in an instance at 14 FPS so we’re going to start at 1 again and this time I don’t care if you have a paper due for your college classes you fuckers will get this poo poo right or I’ll destroy your career before it begins and I swear if you gently caress ups can’t build this “network mesh” that I came up with you’re all fired. These ideas will make it happen but you need to try harder if you want to be on my team I have no time for your excuses and your ignorance

G0RF posted:

YOUTUBE: Disco talks Game Dev with the Space Bros

Paging SomethingJones: I’m only 2 minutes in and already slack-jawed.

“There’s no deadline. This goes on forever.”

XK posted:

Sectopod posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDEYHlN0qUM&feature=youtu.be&t=1958

SpaceBros: "So where is Ben at?"

HoboLando: "Uhhm, aaah, he's got his work." *starts to immediately derail the conversation by joking about his own ego, and hey look there's syphilis in the chat!*

Ben's out.

Spatial posted:

Toops posted:

Why. Just WHY the gently caress to these rabid fans spend their entire day rationalizing CIG's incompetence and blatant misinformation? I will never, ever understand what's in it for them.

That's what happens when you tie your identity into a product, into the dream. Insults to the dream become insults to you. Criticism becomes self-criticism. People are very bad at that and nerds who love space games are the worst of all.

They're also invested financially and emotionally, and worse still this is often to get a social advantage over other backers by having the biggest spaceship. You can't admit fault or you lose that status.

Combine this with misplaced reverence for the Crobber and you have a recipe for utter and complete idiocy that will rationalise almost anything.

G0RF posted:

Lando talks about another start of year Big Summit...

Jake Ross spoke memorably of the CIG LA Big Summit that set that year’s agenda and priorities. There doesn’t appear to be a bigger plan than what gets worked up each January to last them until December.

Later quote:

“We’re trying very, very hard not to get you guys’ hopes up.”

Lando laments the burden of meeting backers expectations (that Chris helps set...)

(but at Ubernerd’s hilarious reaction... He looks like Orson Wells performing Donald Sutherland’s final shot in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.)

Oh my lord this is just insane. Insane that he’s bristling about this. You can’t profit from selling the hope and then cry foul when you deliver the ‘nope!’ and people call you out for it, Lando!

It’s called basic accountability and if Chris had a conscience about your ill-gotten gains you'd feel shame for it. I mean get serious man— you’ve raised a Rockstar Level budget, you talk smack about AAA publishers and say “come at us!”, and then you want to bemoan people judging your delivery record against your own stated targets? Get over yourselves. You want the freedom to be haughty, bold and ambitious, right? Then how on earth can you expect to be measured gently, tenderly, cautiously?

Chris Roberts — YOUR SPOKEMAN — set the unrealistic expectations you chafe against. You’re mad because people are parsing your newer content for features some Dev said would be in 3.2 when it might not be? Guess what? Chris set the original 3.2 expectations a year and a half ago. And you reaped a fortune from that, remember? And then you guys delivered 1/4th of Chris’s 3.0 a year late in an unplayable state and 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 all got pushed back and they’re still getting pushed back because you keep changing your targets and have no fixed plans. Maybe you should give back 75% of the money you earned off the back of that Hype before you whine about being held accountable for falling short.

Yes it’s a double edged sword Lando, maybe Chris should stop gripping it by the blade and then complaining when you cut yourselves swinging it.

Listen to him talking about how they want to be judged on style not just substance. Don’t take my summary of it for granted — hear it in his own words. He’s complaining about things being lost in summarization and via subjective parsing. Hear it for yourselves and make your own judgments.

A Neurotic Corncob posted:

This is a pretty incredible showing from Lando. He's more or less making an impassioned defense of emotionally manipulative agitprop, seemingly without a touch of self-awareness. I always thought Lando was a bit more of a pusher than an abuser but it seems like he's been saving a few punch bowls of kool-aid for personal use.

Virtual Captain posted:

DiscoLando posted:

'The summaries and "recaps" that parse our information the way that that person understood it and then passes that information on to others and then people say "I don't want to watch 17 minute Calling All Devs I'd rather watch a 1 minute summary"'

lol wow is 2018 going to be the year CIG starts throwing shills under the bus? You backers and your expectations!

So petty that Lando is jealous the "So called recaps" stealing all his youtube views holy poo poo this section is unbelievable. Wait till I get the Goon recap youtube going we'll see how much that ruffles his feathers.

Toops posted:

This is classic cargo cult nonsense. Lando, in his obvious inexperience, doesn't understand what iteration means. He doesn't know what planning looks like. He's never been a part of the design process. He's repeating words he's heard and/or read a blog about, and the way he mis-uses them belies his absolute rookie status in game development.

Agile development doesn't mean "don't plan." It means plan to the best of your ability given the information you have now, but understand the plan will change as new information becomes available and plan for that too.


CIG is stuck in a Sisyphean hell of incompetence. Case in point, I know of a guy who was working on the ship's damage states. He spent the better part of a year working and re-working the same problem because Chris kept changing the poo poo up. He worked diligently on this single feature for nearly a year before quitting, as there was no end to the re-works in sight.

no_recall posted:

Hmm some other interesting stats












Star Citizen delivered more game shows than many other game devs.

Salt n Reba McEntire posted:

Quick reminder that they think grey boxing is not creating and testing gameplay loops with primitives as placeholders, but is instead not texturing models in a scene that does not do anything.

See this box? It's grey! We're grey boxing!

Moxxis Endowment posted:

Star Citizen: If you pretend to build it, they will come.

FailureToReport posted:

Chris & Co are like "Oh man, this concept is really cool so it's going to be like this!' and then "Oh this other mechanic is really cool, so its going to be like this!" and they just keep spitting out "really cool ideas" to every person who asks a question, and eventually you have this loving mountain of concepts and ideas that completely clash and will not work together........but Chris has been on "the record" as saying "We are totally doing this" about a dozen times already. So when they finally get to that point (assuming they ever do) that implementing core mechanics comes due, everyone is going to be really pissed when they start realizing how much of "The Promise" isn't going to work, or that THEIR version of Star Citizen they were pitched by CIG isn't going to happen. It's going to be awesome.

I honestly sort of hope CIG manages to stay afloat and release Star Citizen just so I can see the out rage from all the different kinds of backers when the dream palace comes crumbling down.

VictorianQueerLit posted:

quote:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starcitizen_trades/comments/7u0hcq/wts_my_whole_account_27_vehicles_23_rewards_land/dtgthob/?context=3
You can get a full refund by contacting CIG. Tips and guides can be found at /r/starcitizen_refunds. as opposed to losing 40% here.

Jester "Nazi Propaganda" 86 isn't this altruistic so he is probably just trying to eliminate some of the grey market supply to keep his profits intact now that he got caught signalboosting himself on alt accounts.

Although if the Grey Market really is at 60% or less value then CIG should be worrying. That's a direct barometer of the desire for their spaceships and the last time I checked it was still at 80% value. This is a big "LESS POTENTIAL SALES" sign if the confidence and excitement has eroded so much that the secondary market is having to have almost 50% discounts to move their jpegs.

Virtual Captain posted:

My Future For SQ42, The PU, And My Channel

"I don't feel the writing is done very well at all it's kindof rudimentary, you spend a lot of your time just walking around talking to people. That doesn't interest me at all"

"There is just nothing about the vertical slice that excited me in any way"

"I'm just not personally enjoying 3.0 right now"

'I have been actively looking for a job' 'I have an internship program that I'm going to contact'

Sarsapariller posted:

reddit posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/7tq05q/hope_cig_can_pull_off_ocean_effects_like_in_sea/dtevchf/?context=3
OP: Hope CIG can pull off ocean effects like in Sea of Thieves
Beet: They're mocapping the oceans right now OP, don't worry it's gonna be great
: Are they really?
Beet: Yeah, did you not see that ATV? They basically use a bunch of tiny and extremely lightweight beads to sit on top of the water and a top-view camera records the micro-changes in height as waves come through. It works really well in contained areas but CIG had to build a special rig to get it to work with actual segments of ocean.
:Holy crap, i hope this is real. It sounds amazing.

This is the company that mocapped the act of mopping the floor. That spent hundreds of hours mocapping a cafeteria.

I'd believe anything at this point.

Beet Wagon posted:

Oh agreed. That's kind of the point - the fact that "Chris Roberts is mocapping the ocean" isn't immediately obvious as being loving ridiculous speaks volumes about where we are today and why we're here.

XK posted:

If CIG sells a submarine, I might have to tap out.

Lladre posted:

"Legacy" armor....

How do you have legacy armor for something that's not even been in the game to be legacy?

DapperDon posted:

Hi, it's me. The super comfy metal straps holding your space soccer pads together behind your knee.

Ghostlight posted:

I'm the lipstick bandolier.

Brazilianpeanutwar posted:

Antman's first try at a helmet (which he threw away because he was embarassed by it) an old curtain that someone pulled out of a skip,some laser tag armour and a pair of designers wellies and office pants with poo poo stuck to them.

GORFisTYPING posted:

quote:

As far as ship sales and chris roberts goes i’d make the argument that a lot of what we’ve seen so far is the results of attempting to make a game in technologically uncharted territory and announcing it the day development starts.

I think the biggest reason we’ve only seen ship sale after ship sale is due to how damned ridiculous the technological requirement of this project are, and how little they have had to build off of.

Well, I’d characterize the history rather differently but I appreciate that others are less cynical than I.

In my opinion, the urgency of metronomic ship selling has on many occasions misallocated developer brainpower and time. The Road to CitizenCon shows that on stark display as developers (even at the Director level) were crunching for a month or more, losing sleep, stressed out of their minds to produce:

1) One demo they didn’t show for a 3 year late game.

2) One demo starring sand nomads and a giant sandworm in a game that still lacks basic enemy A.I. five years on.

All of that work was obviously quite costly yet found its logical justification in the imperative to maximize ship sales out of the event. Lest the point be lost on us, the same event that didn’t produce even a slice of the 3 year late Squadron 42 still gave us a lovingly detailed “War Bonds” commercial that most of us actually thought was going to be a Squadron demo. A month later, we got a procession of Galactic Tour videos which were themselves commercials for ship manufacturers.

The financial claims made by so much time spent producing disposable media to maximize asset sales are highly atypical by industry norms. When people claim “CIG doesn’t spend money on marketing” they ignore that several months out of any given year are spent by CIG’s own development staff in the production of (marketing) media for ship sale purposes.

Does this make business sense? Well, it’s certainly been effective as the majority of the $180 million raised thus far have come from ship sales not game sales.

But has it all been to the benefit of the game itself? That’s a harder case to make when fundamental, first year gameplay concerns like core mechanics and satisfying game loops remain embryonic or not yet even conceived five years in.

An enormous amount of work has been paid for and thrown away over the years as well. Sean Tracy said as much on Reverse the Verse a couple years back when talking about the waste issues. Some examples of waste are tacitly acknowledged in CIG’s own videos, as with Road to Citcon. Other examples, such as the Illfonic subcontract, had to be extracted like a rotten tooth from Chris’s own mouth by Kotaku UK. 9 months after Roberts chewed critics out for raising a stink about Star Marine, he finally had to concede the specific project mismanagement failures that ultimately binned the project.

(In the interest of disclosure, I provided minor research assistance for that effort at Kotaku UK’s request and was only too happy to be asked.)

We see only too clearly also that the technological requirements have themselves been in constant flux in the absence of rigorous upfront scope work and design docs.

To have heard Brian Chambers share the story of just how PG came about is both exciting and disturbing at the same time. Exciting because it’s pretty cool tech — disturbing because the skunkworks effort that produced it happened outside of Roberts awareness or sanction yet once fully prototyped and demoed for management it meant the entire plans for Squadron AND Star Citizen changed to not just include PG but require it. It’s pretty amazing that a 400 person Game Studio’s entire development plan for two late titles could be completely upended on the spot as a result of an off-the-radar experiment by a single developer.

Am I against PG? Not at all.

Is it incredibly thrilling to see a cool breakthrough at an indie studio? Absolutely.

Did that radically alter schedules, introduce entirely new delays, and highly complicate / overburden the development going forward? Most certainly. It meant much more time would be needed and much more money required, to complete both games.

What is the solution to this new set of problems? Ship sales, of course.

Now, I’ve clearly gone on at great length about this so you understand my own point of view on this. It might seem by having offered so much detail that I have an axe to grind about it all. But the truth is, the stuff that bothers me most is not that Chris Roberts has unbridled ambitions. He always has and in some respects, I admire it. What bothers me isn’t the ambition, it is the abuse of backer trust that has been deemed a necessary evil in order to fund those ambitions.

I have seen others, like some of the guys at Relay, who agree that it is wrong to keep overpromising and underdelivering, wrong to be so consistently abusive of backer trust, yet still express the hope that the ends might eventually justify the means. I for one can’t agree with that. I’m old fashioned enough to believe that the trust of your customers is too precious to be taken for granted or abused, even if one can somehow justify that “they’ll be happy in the end.”

Discomfort about some of Roberts excesses is shared by many devs at CIG, some of whom have openly stated it. Neither the scope nor the ambition is the problem; indeed, it’s a thrill to work on huge scope, big ambition projects. The issue is simply that there are honest ways to fund soaringly ambitious projects and there are dishonest ones. The latter may make you more money in the short term but it always, always, always costs you more in the long term, and in the end those costs aren’t just financial, they’re reputational.

(Whew, well, now at least you know why goons turned “GORFisTYPING” into an SA joke.)

quote:

I think in the coming year or two as new core features start coming online and back end networking and engineering tech is put in place you and me both will get our wish of seeing more focus on gameplay.

Yeah, I hope for the sake of the enterprise at large that gameplay design commands high priority if/when they put the networking issues behind then. Gameplay design has languished for years and the Squadron slice seemed to put that on full display, yet sometimes it seems like Roberts forgets that all the fidelity in the world are not sufficient to make a beautiful game good. So godspeed to Todd Papy and anyone else at the company with their fingers in game design challenges. Even if Chris has forgotten it, there are people there who know most essential ingredient of gaming itself is the beautiful, invisible soul of Play itself, Fun.

EDITs: I corrected some grammatical errors (my eyesight is terrible) and added hyperlinks to reference material in case any of it was unfamiliar.

G0RF posted:

One thing I didn’t notice until now is that Pioneer owners are granted materials to build 1 (and only 1) structure for their $850.

So will construction materials for that second outpost you want to build be purchased from CIG for cash?

I know it’s all routine to us. It is to me to too, yet every once in awhile it just hits me in a new way. The Mercenary mechanic was in the game from day 1; it is actually Chris Roberts core mechanic and primary game loop.

G0RF posted:

Just listen to Lando pre-hype the “brand new game mechanic that’s taken the Star Citizen community by storm” on a video with 1000 downvoted. Then later to the Roberts Brothers and Haddock talking through it all. It’s worth watching it all as preamble to what is surely aimed to be their biggest revenue diversification pivot.

Roberts prattling on about its legitimacy as an honest-to-goodness game mechanic glibly, as if the fact that charging players real money for protecting their security and then subjecting them to an in-game bureaucratic red-tape marathon somehow elevated a dirtbag cash grab to respectability. On and on he goes.

So much time, forethought and preparation has gone into this that of course it’s not just a pitch for cash purchase of the claims (and protection.) It’s The Next Great Star-Fleece.


It wouldn’t bother me half so much if all the other space sim gameplay pitched in the Kickstarter were behind him. If he’d built a great game then wanted to sell housing rather than subscriptions to cover operational needs, it would be at least a defensible rationale. But doing it before even his first star system is complete? Before Squadron is released? Before his flight model is perfected? Before combat is fun? Before AI gives “life and danger” to the world beyond your fellow players?

G0RF posted:

There are probably artists and modelers at CIG LA and elsewhere working up the next great monetizable pixeldream - player housing. Hideouts for pirates, mansions for the 890 Jump types, and a wide variety in between. Chris can’t grow the revenues outward right now — the market too small and brand damage to dire. But he can count on the Errises and Mikus and other Concierge Level whales, even if they’re cash strapped, to be ready, willing and eager to buy themselves a little plot of land, a place to park their ship, a dwelling to call home.

I assume Chris will ape Garriott’s model shamelessly and squeeze even more oil out of the super whales. Structures don’t have to deal with physics grids and flight models yet can command prices commensurate with ships. A little hideout might be $50 (plus your protection racket land claim fee). A full scale, multiroom luxury villa with the works and a view might be $1000.

However he does it, Chris will squeeze the whales as hard as he can until they can get Squadron to a releasable state. It’s a tall order that hasn’t had any urgency after the cessation of work in early 2016 but it’s clearly the front burner for Chris again. He sees that as a windfall that buys them the more time to try to figure out all the stuff they ignored for five years. You know, the Game part.


I think that’s why CIG is tiptoeing around the particulars for now. Now is the time for prepping soil, planting seeds, and shoveling heaps of bullshit atop it all. They started it with Homesteading at Gamescom 2016, it will only fully flower when they finish get the cash extraction mechanisms in place. They say Q4, and while it’s normally a safe bet to ignore dates, of all the priorities Chris has right now I suspect this one is the biggest. He just might hit the target for once!

G0RF posted:

STATE OF THE GAME - Q1 2018

Despite the claims of the funding tracker, I think parties at the very top of CIG see themselves looking at the downward revenue slope of a saturated market. A couple of years ago, and before many joking embellishments followed, I put up the old bell curve model:



No real inputs — I just grabbed a traditional bell curve off google images and made a guess where things were in late 2015. It was a little premature because I think the blowoff actually hit in 2016...

2016 - THE YEAR CHRIS LOST THE PLOT

The fictive miracles of Gamescom / CitizenCon that year probably gave them the last truly meaningful boosts to organic new demand and deferential hype amplification from the gaming press, even as Roberts himself planted seeds of his own credibility destruction during that same critical period.

How interesting that the Streetroller refund controversy (July 2016) broke a month before Gamescom and “Inside the Troubled Development of Star Citizen” (September 23rd, 2016) broke right after. If nothing else, that series sent signals far and wide to others in the gaming press that this project about which there had already been much hype and controversy was at the very least struggling, perhaps mightily, under Chris’s chaotic leadership. Kotaku UK’s inclusion of the Level story translation framed the controversial elements (Derek Smart, Beer, “goons”, War) pretty fairly as well, and sent signals via new sourcing that perhaps some of the smoke coming up from The Escapist had some fire under it after all.

The net impact of that exhaustive series — coming as it did between two gollywhopper megahyper CIG events — was a very loud signal to the more serious writers at the more serious publications that perhaps the era of fawning deferential coverage of this Hype Train needed to slow because perhaps there were serious organizational/developmental/ethical problems still challenging it.

One can see the impact of this starting in 2017. Coverage didn’t stop, but it certainly slowed. A new caution and sometime snarkiness started creeping in to the coverage . Kotaku UK made it much safer to call Chris’s project “troubled” and “mired in controversy” and all the other qualifiers so common to stories nowadays. Even Charlie Hall does it, though usually as buried lede.

Yet the greatest blows to CIG during that incredibly consequential period of both hype and controversy were new self-inflicted wounds inflicted by the master himself.

Chris Roberts, with the note perfect timing of a Savant Self-Owner, helped confirm the “Troubled Development” narrative of Kotaku UK’s coverage at CitizenCon 2016, when the long-awaited, much-hyped Squadron 42 demo was a last minute no show after months of build up. Instead we got a ginormous Sandworm as the biggest, baddest symbol for hope yet. It was as fictive as phallic yet for some neither were enough to compensate for the MIA Squadron 42.

The Road to CitizenCon was quickly released as a palliative for the faithful, yet a deeper reading of the work shows only too clearly how damning it is of the development itself. In fact, it is one of the most inadvertent self-incriminating pieces of self-congratulatory agitprop since Sandi Gardiner’s disastrous Sunny’s Diner appearance years prior.

The purposefully manipulative “documentary” showed key developers losing sleep, highly stressed and enduring up to two months of constant crunch to deliver two demonstrations for CitizenCon. The Squadron 42 demo was meant to update fans on the actual progress of the two years late game yet could not be completed in time. The “Homestead” demo was crafted expressly as a fiction starring a fake sandworm, fake enemy NPCs and fake combat, was CitizenCon’s redeeming ‘triumph.’ How perfectly appropriate.

—A BRIEF TANGENT

(This will read as bridge too far for some, yet I have trouble shaking the sense there’s truth to it.)

I am cynical enough now about Roberts vanity to believe that the Squadron demo never really stood a chance and that Chris and a trusted few knew long in advance he would not show it at CitizenCon.

Yes, that’s pure , and I’d never fight to defend it, yet the circumstantial case is quite suggestive and it’s hardly unlike Roberts to craft fictions with cynical intent. That is in fact one of his only proven talents and has been key to their stratospheric fundraising (yet at this point of waning appetite for the game even that fundraising itself appears partly a work of manipulation.)

So it’s very worth asking ourselves, ”why would CIG be filming a mini-documentary weeks in advance of CitizenCon 2016, one so maudlin, manipulative and expressly framed as a ‘it’s for the best’ so ’sorry not sorry’ about a demo they fully expected they would show up until two days before the event?”

It makes no sense to christen so dramatic a production so far in advance absent foreknowledge that you were going to need it. And indeed they did need it, as the CitCon 2016 rage was real for many until the opiate of “The Road to CitizenCon” was administered and all was forgiven.

It is more plausible to me that Roberts decided well in advance that Squadron would not be previewed at CitCon because he genuinely feared further humiliating comparisons with Infinite Warfare. It’s Wing Commanderish campaign was as slick, bombastic and cinematic as you’d expect from a AAA powerhouse, the motion capture was often near photoreal, and the prospects of either the media itself or “the anonymous hate campaign” juxtaposing clips from his Squadron demo for a game he himself once described as “the equivalent of huge AAA Call of Duty but better” legitimately worried him. Even the Fanboys had taken to reddit that summer to praise what they’d seen at E3 and chide CIG using Infinite Warfare as rebuke.

Roberts was fortunate that COD futurism fatigue and a bumbled multiplayer launch kept Infinite Warfare from being a franchise triumph, but the single player campaign itself deserved the ample praise its ‘World War 2 story in space’ received and oops, Infinite Warfare even delivered the emotional payoff Roberts thought was only his to deliver.

(BTW- if his RTV claim about touching emotional territory rarely reached with video games was not Roberts telegraphing the self-sacrifing death of ‘Old Man’ at the end of Squadron 42, I’d be amazed. You have to wonder if that’s what Lando is referring to here. It’s the easiest, most obvious possible way to emotionally manipulate the Wing Commander nostalgiacs, so I’m calling that big mashing of the FEELS button here now.)

—END OF

The absence of a Squadron slice denied the media and his mockers a chance to put his “Call of Duty but better” claims to the Trial by Memes Roberts rightly feared. The ‘presciently’ sanctioned documentary about its absence turned the legitimate anger about the no show demo back onto the victims, provoking yet more guilt they shouldn’t feel for Roberts’ sins. HE was the one crunching devs on show demos. HE was the one demanding that ‘not a joke’ sandworms be grabbed from the sci-fi trope box and inserted into his fundraising fictions. HE was the one selling things not in the game.

With refund dramas and “troubled development” narratives competing directly against Roberts increasingly tiresome flyboy swagger at Gamescom and CitizenCon, it was Roberts who proposed the final test to determine whether a deluded bug mouth or a brilliant visionary helmed the enterprise.

Could he or could he not deliver the whole of Stanton by year end? 4 planets, 12 moons and a handful of new mechanics that could finally give long-suffering backers renewed faith in his competence, his genius, or trustworthiness?

He said he thought they could, even though he’d never bothered consulting his Devs on that possibility and indeed, many were horrified to see him once again throw a gauntlet down they’d never be able to lift. Yet would this time be different? Was he just a guy with chronic mismanager with a runaway mouth running a Troubled Development, or might Chris actually deliver this time?

No, he could not.

No more than he could deliver Squadron 42 at the end of 2015 as he’d said they do. No more than he could deliver Star Marine in “3 weeks time” as he said that same day he’d do.

As with nearly all things but disappointment, Chris Roberts delivered much less, much later, and in the case of 3.0, even upon delivery, he delivered mediocrity at a fraction of the originally promised scale.

Let us remember, too, that Chris had justified the long wait of his all important 3.0 patch because it needed extra polish and bugfixing. It needed to be friendlier than any patch prior because so many new users would be signing up. Yet a year and a half after it dazzled the crowds of the faithful, it finally arrived in the classic tradition backers had miserably come to expect — broken, empty, lifeless and stuttering.

With 3.0, Roberts failed the test he himself inadvertently proposed.

In so doing, he confirmed for all but the most devoted faithful that his critics were right. The dichotomy that prompted so much uncertainty and debate in 2016 was over. It was not the cynics who bested Roberts, it was Roberts, and he did it as the cynics expected he would, by being himself.

2017 - THE YEAR OF LIVING DISSAPOINTINGLY

If 2016 was the zenith of years of cumulating hype and expectation, 2017 was the year of diminishing expectations and growing outrages. Until the “miraculous” turnaround of the anniversary sale you could see it in their own reported numbers. You could read it in the growing number of full combat comment fields under any Star Citizen news story. New voices of skepticism on the Star Citizen subreddit were sometimes catapulted to the top of the charts not with memes or praises but with criticisms, warnings, frustrations. The widely read /Games subreddit saw skepticism about the project flourishing amongst the mainstream gamer population.

In 2017, CIG’s efforts to bolster the faithful at the usual venues only compounded the damage further.

Gamescom 2017 delivered cringe so real it hurt, reinforcing further still the “Troubled Narrative” claims and sending the “Chris Roberts, Savior of PC Gaming” myths up in glorious self-parody.

CitizenCon 2017 delivered this year’s model Sandworm, a planet covered in buildings melding the newly released Blade Runner with the prequel’s Coruscant signifying little beyond “Chris Roberts Fever dream hype demo, 2017 edition. Was it cool to watch? Sure. Was it coming soon to the game? Not a chance, and even the Believers know that. It was simply the latest in a long line of golden calves Roberts erected before the people that they might worship false divinity as he lead them once again in circles through his wilderness. That some will still do it though they know the calf wrought of their own melted wealth speaks more to their desperation than true faithfulness. Yet what other choice has Roberts left then?

2018: CAPITULATION TO THE OBVIOUS FOR ALL BUT THE OBLIVIOUS

Though the year-end numbers managed to mask it, 2017 was the year Chris Roberts faced down his mortal enemy — himself — and lost.

Those looking ahead in 2018 for truer hopes to cling to than bygone show buzz and the 100th rewatch of the Imagine video will find an emptier horizon line than in prior years.

That we’ll see no Squadron release in 2018 is obvious already. Chris Roberts is unlikely to explicitly state the infuriating obvious and instead will just show clips and progress on a monthly basis like the carrot on a stick it has been since 2012.

The decision not to attend Gamescom this year is itself a telling sign, yet lest we risk missing it, CIG explicitly stated their reasoning; they don’t want their developers distracted with all the preparation work such an event demands of them. That this concern never stopped them before and was glorified in “The Road to CitizenCon” suggests a deeper reading, and that reading is capitulation.

What good might such an event be when they’ve saturated the market and hype fatigue plagues even the faithful? When the very game itself has become so unplayable that marketing it courts frustration and mockery? There is too little to be gained this year in so exhausted a marketplace with so damaged a brand, so tired a narrative, so broken a game.

So with Squadron and Gamescom off the calendar, 3.1 aiming for performance improvements only (if they can get them) and the features of this summer’s 3.2 so uncertain that Community Manager Disco Lando scoffs at community attempts to nail them down, what else might we expect this year?

SPECULATIVE: Player housing for sale

Cash purchasable player structures may be a high priority now, though Chris has said nothing recently to explicitly affirm that. Land claims were the thin end of that wedge and Lando’s very first question on the very first episode of Calling All Devs was about Land Claims.

How curious that something which earned them bad PR and a fan backlash goes to the front of the question line. Stranger still that Dave Haddock was the one being asked as he will have absolutely nothing to do with its implementation. The cynical reading would be that Land Claims (and later structure sales) are a Chris Roberts priority being fast-tracked out of LA at his insistence for financial reasons. Roberts himself went into his rationale for Land Claims and pitched it as the protection racket it so clearly was designed to be. Land claims bore all the hallmarks of a new feature made urgent priority not because the game needed it so much as because Roberts wants new revenue lines ASAP.

Since he employs a gigantic army of modelers and artists it would not be surprising if a subset is already working up models for shacks, hideouts, condos, bases, rest stops, whatever... I’d also not be surprised if he’s bent Garriott’s ear for tips but even if not there is a lot that can be gleaned just from playing SOTA and exploring their cash shop. Where Garriott sells castles, Roberts would sell space mansions, and the rationale would be “you don’t really want to park your 890 Jump at just a sad little outpost, do you? Poorly matched AND unprotected? Well have I got a deal for you!”

SPECULATIVE: For Sale By Owner, a piece of the Dream Factory itself?

Similarly, it wouldn’t be surprising if Garriott’s seedinvest experiment hasn’t been studied for replication by Roberts as funding sources decline. It wasn’t a barn burner but they hit their minimum target, and Roberts being Roberts, he’s probably doing napkin calculations already to map out worst and best case yields.

These aren’t explicit predictions so much as cynical hunches, and the cynicism is rooted in seeing last year defy worst case scenarios. There are obviously some big fires they need to put out too this year, not the least of which is basic playability.

As much as it probably hurts Chris to put player needs ahead of his own wants for a change, until they fix their networking / performance issues, they’re pretty much in a tar pit unable to get back to the good work Chris prefers; selling things, redesigning things, polishing things. It remains to be seen if and to what extent they can clear those obstacles.

Even assuming they clear the Stability / Performance hurdle, a hurdle they’ve given little confidence they can overcome, the next hurdle before them remains no less vexing — can they start to design a game worth playing? Roberts himself is no ally to such an endeavor; indeed, he has proven only too clearly how much it disinterested him, for during the six years he could spent designing and refining The Best drat Space Sim Ever, he instead was focused on an entirely different game and still it consumes him. Selling an unbelievable future at an unjustifiable price to anyone still foolish enough to trust the industry’s biggest underdeliverer will somehow deliver it.

G0RF posted:

YOUTUBE: Redacted - 1/31/2018 - Highlight Reel

Twerk & WTFOsaurus don’t care about ships anymore...

WTFOsaurus expects Bind Culling to add 3 to 5 additional frames per second.

Twerk played other games this week, the. Came back to Star Citizen and felt nauseous.

3.2 is discussed, particularly the new clothing options. Twerk, “They’re redoing Legacy Armor for the third loving time.” Later, “I’m starting to feel like... am I being negative? Or have we wasted time.”

Discussions shift to the impossible laundry list of 3.2 gameplay features supposedly coming. Twerk asks Bored what they should name their Mining operation. Bored, “I don’t know — I haven’t even thought about it. I can’t imagine gameplay.”

Boredom and theorycrafting until they take a question from voicemail from a player called Commander420. He seems to make a subtle joke about being one of their weed dealers. The voicemail is actually in a goofy, committed way and worth listening to.

A boring theorycrafter’s voicemail follows, and then TheOperator calls bullcrap on CIG and aUEC ship sales. He thinks starter ships may be purchaseable via credit but that the ships people want will remain cashmoneysales only because CIG is too greedy to do otherwise. He expects Land Claims and player housing / buildings / apartments will be aUEC purchasable (an interesting alternative option) but the good ships? No way. WTFO agrees short term, but for launch CIG surely won’t go back on that promised feature.

They take a write-in question about Haters who spam theories of doom regarding the Crytek lawsuit. They recommend French & YoutuberLaw videos.

CrimsonFire: “Why are they making Shipjacking Armor if we can’t properly steal ships?” Boom! They all crack up because whatelseyagonnado?

—

There is more I skipped but this is a decent highlight reel. The best moment was Commander420’s call — I ’d.

G0RF posted:

Lando has clawed his way to the upper ranks of the “Most Annoying People at CIG” — I find him insufferable to listen to at this point.

I actually was pleased to see an appearance by “Good Sean” on the Livestream earlier this week. “Bad Sean” showed up on that Newegg stream in Q4 to repeat Chris Roberts bullcrap about hundreds of star systems blah blah blah... but Good Sean was actually talking openly about some of their development dysfunction on the livestream which I appreciate hearing confirmed. The talk about Asset Rot evokes Star Marine familiarity, only this time its internal not with a contractor. (Though of course that can’t be possible because Chris said those days were behind them!)

The talent at CIG is stymied and undermined by abject stupidity and hubris that “filters from the top” as they see it. Anyone below them sees it as just more bullshit rolling downhill.

G0RF posted:

YOUTUBE: Batgirl’s State of the Game - MFDs, Are They Useful?

(Just a quick summary of the latest video from the ever entertaining Batgirl.)

Batgirl down and out about the game; still bitter about losing access to Ben.

She makes her way to her ship because she wants to talk about MFDs, grousing further about frustrations with being shut out of the CIG loop. (If I recall she at one time spoke of an upcoming interview with Eric Davis which ever seems to have fallen through, as well.) She also notes the crappy frame rate she’s dealing with but plans to power through it so she can offer her critique of MFDs in the game.

BOOM! ”What the hell was that?”

BOOM! “That just doesn’t sound right.”

BOOM! (She ignores it.)

BOOM! (She ignores it.)

Batgirl gets to the heart of her frustration — the game is a labyrinth of unintuitive menus and interfaces that make little sense and produce too much confusing navigation work on the player. Batgirl being an honest to goodness pilot pleads the case for using real world aircraft as a reference point in design.

Batgirl switches to a Flight Sim to show a Cessna 172’s pilot interfaces and use them as a talking point.

Back to Star Citizen. She’s in a Freelancer now.

BOOM! Not long after, she’s in combat, and the flood of battle music completely drowns out her ongoing narration about MFDs.

”But all in all, I think that CIG is doing a great job.” She’s eager to see the next 3 releases this year and glad female models will be in by Q4. (Or so they say, Batgirl.)

Some wrap up comments follow, along with yet more carping about not being able to interview employees. (Legitimate complaint Batgirl, after all, Lando happily joined the Space Bro show for an hour and a half just this week.)

Batgirl adds an emotional postscript. She gives her viewers more context about her withdrawal from the community and recent general silence about the game. Yet even as she does this, she serves up as classic a Batgirl moment as past hits like “death by door button” or “Batgirl the Pilot tries to land a ship.”

It’s the perfect ending and makes me only too happy she’ll be returning to regular broadcasting about the game after this period of understandable hurt feelings along with a testing of her project faith. I look forward to the continuing adventures and musings of Batgirl in the months ahead.

GORFisTYPING posted:

The scope that was described in general terms in the Kickstarter has changed quite often, and the absence of anything resembling a hard design document that defines the more specific vision for gameplay mechanics was never set in stone. The architecture itself changed radically midway through the work necessitating the wholesale purge of a prior vision of the Verse itself.

quote:

Basic gameplay IS in and the more basic among those HAVE been in since the very beginning. FPS, space flight and combat, basic cargo. In SC, that much itself is a pain to do.

Yes, basic gameplay. No FPS was not in from the beginning. As you no doubt know FPS was outsourced to Illfonic, just as AI was outsourced to Moon Collider, and both were ultimately paid for and then thrown away as CIG decided on bespoke solutions instead.

But no company that has prioritized gameplay from the start would still have basic gameplay from the start. Game companies usually put gameplay first and use basic assets so they can test and known that the “play” of the game feels right. That has not been Chris Roberts approach and that is why as year 6 begins we have basic and incomplete mechanics (with most of the Kickstarter professions as yet not implemented) while the spaceships in game look retail release ready.

I’m more familiar with the specific historical details of this project than you apparently understand, and have had conversations — not always encouraging ones — with multiple parties connected to this project.

quote:

The core tech that they have been telling us about for so long is all about gameplay!

Yes, they’ve been telling us about it forever. And selling beautiful spaceships all the while, many of which have as yet undesigned mechanics they told us about in their various pitches and commercials. Drinking mixing mini games for the Starliner, the myriad new mechanics associated solely with the Endeavor. So much telling has taken place and people assume that this means there’s a specific action plan with developers right now at Cloud or Foundry working diligently on refinement passes of mechanics like space farming and deep space telescope hunts and the Root Beer Tapper equivalent for keeping those hundreds of passengers on your Starfarer happy as you fly them between various systems.

There is a tendency on the part of many to assume that CIG’s processes are entirely normal and in keeping with the best practices of traditional software development. Any person who has read Kotaku UK’s Inside the Troubled Development of Star Citizen (a series I provided minor research assistance to) knows that project management under Chris Roberts has been chaotic, with many do-overs, much waste, and time and money wasted due to a disregard for the virtues of proper scope planning. You can’t implement a plan that is perpetually in flux because its leader had a fever dream and saw a competitor feature he wanted to ape.

I harp on this point a lot but the very fact that PG itself was a skunkworks project out of Foundry Frankfurt that went from side project to “the thing we must implement as soon as possible” after Chris saw it tells you everything about how fluid the project plan is and has always been. The switch from providing discreet landing zones on planets to “go anywhere do everything seamlessly” was a disruption of three years of prior soft planning and effectively amounted to a complete restart in many respects. You surely recall just how plagued with difficult Alpha 3.0 has been, but on the off chance you don’t, here is a summary of 3.0’s record for the first half of 2017.

100 Star Systems cut to 5 or 10. The first system supposedly due by end of 2016 reduced from 4 planets and 12 moons down to the 1 planet they already had in and 3 moons + 1 planetoid borrowed from Nyx. (That was because so much work had been done on Nyx in the pre-PG period and they at least wanted to redeploy parts players could see today.)

quote:

If you take the gameplay mechanics Star Citizen already has now Star Citizen already has way more mechanics than many other games.

What, iPhone games or something? There are more mechanics in Microprose’s Xcom, an ancient turn based strategy game, than there are in Star Citizen. Star Citizen is bereft of playable mechanics and that is why so many people aren’t playing it. You want to see a game with mechanics, play Overwatch. Every character is a wonderland of distinct movement and combat mechanics which show the diligence of constant polish and balancing.

No, Star Citizen has an unsatisfactory flight model — one which pleases very few who actually enjoy either dogfighting games or flight sims. It has a Cargo mechanic that literalizes physical pickup and delivery. If you want to see what 20 minutes of that looks like in 30 seconds?, click here.

Elite Dangerous, for all its flaws (and I’m overfamiliar with them at this point), has robust mechanics of play. They started at the same time, put their mechanics first, and have. space sim that serves up the entire suite of specific professions Chris Roberts pitched in his Kickstarter. Do the planets look as good? No, they don’t. Can you get out and walk around? Engage in primitive FPS combat? No. Is it cool that Stat Citizen allows us to do this? Yes. But aside from frustrating space combat, mundane cargo transport, and rudimentary FPS, there just isn’t much Play in the game yet. Why? Because Mechanics took a backseat to Assets and Chris Roberts never met a project plan he wasn’t happy to throw away midway through work due to some new set of priorities he seized upon impulsively.

I know all the excuses “They had to build a company first”, “Illfonic screwed up”, “PG is better than landing zones”, “Erin had to take over when Mayberry left”, “Behavior didn’t do (x)”, “game development is hard”, etc.

There was a time through much of 2017 when we heard “CIG can’t show Squadron because of spoilers!” Remember that? It was the constant claim after CIG pulled their vertical slice 2 dats before CitizenCon 2016 and focused on a demo about nomads and sandworms and other things they still don’t have in the game 1.5 years later.

Yet just yesterday we saw the deep dive on The Coil in Squadron. And the Holiday 2017 livestream was lengthy and specific. And all those prior excuses about spoilers melted away as CIG opted to show what formerly could not be shown.

This is all testimonial to the chaos under Chris’s leadership. It did not stop after Kotaku UK’s coverage and it will not stop because of Chris’s contempt for process and constraint and his impulsiveness that can not be restrained. I promise you he has spent far more time thinking about what exactly the helmets of Star Citizen should look like than what Mining should Play like. If that sounds extreme, watch The Road to CifizdnCon again and watch him tell Hannes Appell he doesn’t mind if they put in some sort of scanning mechanic overly for the Homestead demo, though it’s clearly just being worked up for a demo. Roberts himself says that “I just want to sell the narrative” of gameplay, even while he fixates on the movements and cinema of a fictive Sandworm his Foundry guy described in Jump Point as “a joke.”

That is exactly what I’m talking about. That’s Roberts as a Game Designer in a nutshell. Fixated on visuals trying to sell a narrative with trailers and demos so he can focus on Assets, Lighting, “Fidelity”. He fixates on Assets like Miyamoto fixates on Play Mechanics and while nobody ever claimed Super Mario Galaxy was the highest fidelity creation of its time, it was a wonderland of satisfying gameplay, clever physics, a perfectly designed skill curve and ironically gives players far more fun “in space” than a pre-Alpha that has costs several times more to make yet still hasn’t figured out the particulars of the gameplay Chris has been talking about for years while polishing his lovely Assets to a mirrorlike shine.

Daztek posted:

https://i.imgur.com/cARufvo.gifv

Galarox posted:

Combat Theory posted:

i raise you this older creation from a good friend of mine

TheAgent posted:

AP posted:

https://twitter.com/Charlie_L_Hall/status/958725601485049856
(tweet: Elite: Dangerous Twitter - People playing the game and doing things together. Star Citizen Twitter - Twitch streamers giving away ships, ship raffle entries.)

I mean c'mon charlie, even chat doesn't loving work in star citizen

what else do you expect them to do

Toops posted:

The only bug-free program is one with zero lines of code. Star Citizen already has more bugs than any game I’ve ever played so how could it be a scam lol wiggle your way out of that one, Goon bitches.

boviscopophobic posted:

Another leaderboard update, and the numbers are dropping faster than Bitcoin. I almost don't trust these numbers and feel like something's wrong, but I haven't changed my methodology and CIG's leaderboard code also hasn't changed as far as I can tell. We report, you decide.

Total concurrent players for Jan 29 through February 1:

Star Marine: 4.5
Arena Commander: 4.3
Murray Cup: 1.6
Total: 10.4

Dark Off posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMQH25mEMw&t=2416s CR aint happy about the piracy poo poo storm.

Mr.Tophat posted:

Brother, can ye spare me some cutter?

I aint got no jpeg to fly, not since the lawsuit

Combat Theory posted:

quote:

Hello again commandos. Performance Theory back again, drawn by the siren song of this lovely screenshot.

Full disclosure: I have not seen all of the source material. I'm basing this off of what I know from this screenshot and from what I have witnessed in past displays of CIG's code. I could go into even more detail about minutia, but will endeavor to keep this brief and focus on the major pain points.

if (abs(speedA) < 1)
speedA = 0;
if (abs(speedB) < 1)
speedB = 0;

This is what is called a kludge. Some bit of functionality which is added in order to fix a separate issue. A band aid, if you will. It has the short-term benefit of solving whatever the problem is. Presumably, the root cause is that their physics engine runs into issues with near-zero velocities. The correct and proper solution would be to resolve whatever issue is causing that unwanted behavior.

Instead, they kludge it.

This may solve the issue in that specific instance. But, odds are, someone else will eventually try to do something very similar and will run into the same issue. Hopefully they communicate well enough that the known fix is shared and simply copy and pasted in that new area. This is a poor design practice as it leads to code bloat and makes the codebase less maintainable, but at least not too much time will be lost. Unless it's someone else who runs into it who has not been over this particular piece of code where the kludge is stored, and/or the right person is not asked, and/or any of a thousand other scenarios in which the developer is forced to spend a bunch of time debugging until they discover the same kludge.

I could go on, but you get the idea. This type of practice is not good for Star Citizen.


if (!IsBlame(speedA, speedB))
{
return;
}

I saw some discussion from people who seemed to think that this was a really bad thing. They were right, because it is a really bad thing. But perhaps for slightly different reasons.

There are actually two issues hidden in here. The first is that it relies upon the function being called twice. This is actually okay in the very specific context of collision response code. A properly designed physics engine would create an event for each collision, which collision objects could then handle. Every collision event would logically have at least two participants. There isn't actually anything wrong with this approach.

The second issue is function control flow which begins here and continues in the next conditional statements. In other words, we jump out of the function and skip the rest in some cases. This design makes a lot of sense.

Except it leads to the inevitable creation of enormously bloated superfunctions which contain arcane sets of complex business logic.

In enterprise software, business logic frequently changes. Perhaps the way an interest rate is calculated, for example. A naive approach would be to have a function called GetInterestRate() which returns a hardcoded mathematical function. This makes sense and works well. Until it changes, later on.

Then, you have to decide what happens when you change GetInterestRate(). What if you need to interact with older data sets which rely upon the original function? Are you going to just create GetInterestRate2() and remember to call that if older data is detected? What happens when it changes a second or third time? Etc. Probably best to just put some conditional logic inside of GetInterestRate() which checks what formula we need to use.

But what happens when you now start doing business with Elbonia, the land of waist-deep mud? Their interest rate is calculated based upon the square root of the width of the shadow cast from the nearest village's oldest pig at noon. Sounds like we need to add yet more logic to GetInterestRate() in order to handle that edge case.

A few mergers and acquisitions later, and GetInterestRate() is one thousand lines of code long and you can never fire Bob, because he's the only one who remembers how it all works.

Now, games are different than enterprise applications. Game developers cheat a lot, especially when it comes to performance optimization. But poor design practices can be universal, and bloated superfunctions like that are incredibly common.

A better design would involve a proper refactoring of the codebase so that you don't need a mountain of brittle conditional checks. Most physics engines utilize an event-driven paradigm, wherein objects simply subscribe to certain types of events that they want to listen for, such as OnIsCollisionBlame, OnVehicleHostile, etc. Encapsulating each of those conditions into a collinion information tag, which the physics engine checks once and assigns to the raised collision events, is a fantastic way to support that very same logic in a much more robust, easier to use, and less error-prone manner.


---

But, game developers are only human. Humans make mistakes. Humans get tired and sometimes even want to go home after working 12 hour days trying to do the impossible. We love it, because doing the impossible is exactly what we signed up for, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

But sometimes that means that we end up writing superfunctions instead of painstakingly redesigning the way in which the physics engine communicates.

Sometimes it works out okay. I wrote my fair share of code that makes the above look like a paradigm of amazing design. Sure, I was working 16 hour days at a time. Sure, the deadline I was under was impossible. But it worked out okay in the end.

I genuinely hope it works out okay in the end for Star Citizen, because I have enormous respect for those who are in the trenches and trying their best. Maybe they simply don't have the experience to recognize these design pitfalls. Because I am quite certain that the average Joe Programmerdude is just trying to do his job and collect his paycheck, and maybe do something cool in the process, rather than sitting back, rubbing his hands together, cackling and muttering evilly about how he's going to do the worst hack job he can get away with.

That said, we should ask why after $175,000,000 and 7 years, core engine features fall victim to this.

Foo Diddley posted:

ManofManyAliases posted:

LOL you loving pansies are so scared of risk. I had money when I bought into SC. I have money now. Little dip in crypto is not affecting me - trust me.

When a kickstarted belt is the least of your stupid financial decisions

spectrum posted:

It's been one month after the premature disaster launch of 3.0. Ignoring that most of what 3.0 was supposed to be was pushed to 3.1, it is simply unacceptable on all levels that nothing has been done about it. That there is no visible effort to address it. You may say; 3.1 will fix it. And I say; when? This should have been fixed yesterday. And why should I believe that 3.1 will help? They have never delivered in the past. Not one single deadline has ever been met. And most releases have been lacking compared to what they said they would have. So why is 3.1 any different?

I was patient when they missed the original November 2014 release date. I thought it was too optimistic from the start. I was patient when Squadron 42 Episode 1 failed to materialize. I was patient when 2.0 released full of bugs and with nearly no content, thinking they would deliver on their promises for monthly updates. I was patient when Star Marine failed to materialize, thinking it was just a testing module. I was patient when 3.0 was delayed for weeks, then months, then more months, and then a whole year. They said it was almost nearly done in December of 2016. Yet they talked about just having started developing basic features for it in October of 2017. How can both be true? They were blowing smoke up my rear end for an entire year. So why should I believe anything they say now? I don't want to hear any more lies. My patience has run out. I want action now.

You give people poo poo for calling it a scam but that's exactly what it looks like. Give me one good reason not to pursue a refund.

quote:

Guard Frequency Episode 199
1:08:20 - 'Even before [Derek] latched onto this thing. We were here calling out CIG. Mr Smart dialed that up to 15 where we were more around a 6. We were saying a lot of the same things, he was just saying them in a lot less nice way. A lot of what he was saying was hyperbole and some of it didn't check out; as time has gone on a lot of what he said have come more or less true, and so as time has gone on it's harder to dismiss him as being uncredible. He has gained credibility over time in my view.'

monkeytek posted:

The one thing that really makes me laugh is the response "no one is making you spend the money they aren't forcing you" thus that means it can not be a scam. Scams are predicated on fooling or otherwise taking advantage of a person to gain something of value from them willingly. Taking something from a person against their will is theft\robbery not a scam.

TheAgent posted:

crytek and cig decide to settle this by a one on one jacking session where the first person to shoot a burly load loses the case

cig picks ortwin, whose dick hasn't worked for anything but barely legal vietnamese sex workers

skadden choses derek smart, who has no penis or a huge penis or something with his penis because every backer can't stop fantasizing about his dick size

"I'm almost there," Ortwin pants, clutching his hard cock and the right side of his legal pad. "I can't help it."

"Think of your blonde, big-titted ex-wife, Orttie," Jared delicately whispers into his ear. "Wasn't she successful? Didn't she challenge you? Wasn't she one of the only female directors in Hollywood?"

Ortwin relaxes. The sweat on his brow fades, his face calmer, more serene. "Thank you, Jared. Thank you."

"Don't worry, buddy. We'll win this."

Jared glances over at the plaintiff's table.

"Just let me finish!" Derek Smart screams. "Just let me loving finish!"

Jobbo_Fett posted:

ManofManyAliases posted:

Ok, honestly? I thoroughly enjoy this genre, and there isn't quite anything out there like what SC aims to accomplish. Yes - we have Eve, Stellaris, Homeworld, Kerbal, E:D, etc, but none of them give you the sandbox, open-world, mmo feel that SC will. It's niche, but something I (and apparently, over a million others) wanted.

mfw I'm loving retarded and have to have blind faith in a living thumb accomplishing one of the most complex sets of requirements to fulfill a literal dream game that I write about cause I'm some sort of turbonerd, except even dumber. In 7 years of work CIG has come nowhere near their end goal and even conservative estimates would place their gold release being closer to, if not after 2020. Meanwhile, other companies have or are building games that do some, most, or all that Star Citizen is claiming it does.

Keep in mind the "does" portion, because my high-functioning 200IQ brain that subsists on dreams, lovely salads, and endangered animals keeps forcing me to say poo poo like "CIG is building the game of my dreams and has all these things included!" except it loving doesn't and most of the features that would make it "complete" are months, if not years, off of their initial implementation. I have to force myself to forget that games like Starpoint Gemini, X 4 Foundations, Kerbal Space Program, EVE, Rebel Galaxy, either don't exist or can't fulfill every last one of my impossible demands, and which Star Citizen is no closer to it either.

But I'm sure Star Citizen will get there, eventually. There's no reason to believe that the constant incompetence shown through their forums, twitter, and various video release platforms would ever shake my faith in a videogame that has received over 180 million in funding. Anyways, guess I'll give them another thousand dollars or whatever because I want a better ship that the company I'm buying it from is telling me will be the best of them all to support development of the most ambitious thing ever even though nobody working on the game has had any amazing breakthrough within the gaming world for over a god drat decade.

G0RF posted:

Massively podcast #156: Downfalls & Uprisings.

MassivelyOP’s latest podcast discusses the Star Citizen Alpha subscription controversy starting about 40 minutes in.

Good lady Bree was bemused but on point as usual:

Bree posted:

“I feel like it was probably a bad move given all the folderol from the last the couple of months with Star Citizen but... it’s been years of folderol with Star Citizen so if you’re in it at this you’re gonna dismiss anything.”

Methinks the lady doth protest just fine.

Beet Wagon posted:

I wonder if he realizes the full implications (and how accurate he is) in painting CIG LA as a mismanaged hellhole like the company from The Office

Lou Takki posted:

That Office GIF is gold.

Bumping for a new page, this one is bloated, much like the SC codebase apparently....

kw0134 posted:

Annoying effort legal post incoming!

The motion will get denied, as it is being filed under FRCP 12(b)6. This particular rule in the charming Federal Rules of Civil Procedure handbook states that a motion can be filed in defense "for failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted." This denial is indisputable and inarguable because the standard for a dismissal under FRCP rule 12(b)6 is "In appraising the sufficiency of a complaint for failure to state a claim is that a complaint should not be dismissed ...unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." Conley v. Gibson (1957), 355 U.S. 41 (emphasis added). That's a SCOTUS ruling; this binds all the courts in the Federal system, including our little district court.

That is to say, the standard is to weed out the cases that are either totally incompatible with the legal system -- alleging a witch put an evil eye on a child, say. Or asking for declaratory ruling that you're the God King of Arrakis. As the rule says, there's no "relief" available to such a claim in the law or equity; we do not recognize the outcome or we do not recognize that this is a "thing" for which you can sue someone over. Really technical analysis of the claims can be very hair-splitting if the elements of the law that support the claim are complex. But if you read that tiny excerpt from the ruling (which is part of every 1L's CivPro syllabus) then there's no objective way to grant the motion, because Crytek's claims are pretty straightforward: there exists a contract, CIG broke it, Crytek was harmed, give us money.

See, whether or not we get to the actual merits of the claims in the response, CIG has already severely hosed up by trying to substitute Crytek's facts with their own. "Unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim." CIG does NOT get to do that. You do NOT get to say "well if my version of the facts are right, then you must dismiss!" NO! That's what 1L students gently caress up and civpro professors have to hammer that in to their thick skulls. You dismiss if you look at it under every possible angle and can't find a way to proceed. The standard is so high that it's almost never granted when a cause of action is brought by an actual trained lawyer since it's for obvious losers and they should be getting laughed out of the attorney's office, nevermind at the stage that you're reading your rubbish case in front of a judge.

I looked at the table of contents on the response, saw that CIG was trying to argue on the merits and closed the PDF. If you have to argue the very facts of the case, guess what dumbass? You've got an actual "case or controversy" ripe for judicial intervention! You've proven to the court that procedurally it should hear both sides because the one side where Crytek's facts prevail, CIG is hosed. On the one hand if the response is true, CIG is not hosed. And the only way to do that...is to go through the entire process of holding a trial and evaluating evidence! Congratulations CIG, you forgot basic CivPro. I'm hope you're happy.

(I am because this is hilarious to me)

kw0134 posted:

The preliminary injunction will certainly be denied. There's no irreparable harm that cannot be remedied by a liquidated judgment (i.e., cash money) at the end if Crytek prevails.

The injunction may or may not be granted at the end of the trial if Crytek wins, to which Crytek is entitled to if there's a copyright violation. If it is, then it takes effect at a time the court deems appropriate, which may be immediately once the judgment is entered. This can be stayed pending any appeals, so if and when the poo poo truly hits the fan there will be long notice of it happening. How it'll be enforced is going to be crafted by the court with the plaintiffs strongly advising -- Crytek can basically write the order for what they'd like to see to ensure satisfactory behavior, and the judge can sign off on it or modify it. Remember, at this point CIG has had an open and fair opportunity to show no wrongdoing and if the injunction takes place well they've hosed up in the eyes of the court and under copyright laws they're not entitled to any real benefit of the doubt. This can be pretty drat invasive, and as we've seen before in other cases the fact it's fatal to them is of no import to the court; after all, the law itself wants the consequences to be heavy and painful.

I wouldn't be surprised if CIG is forced to allow Crytek to audit the whole thing top to bottom and Crytek is allowed to go "this is mine, this is mine, this is mine, this garbage is not ours, eww, this is mine..." until there's naught left but T-posed commandos and jpegs.

Also discovery and stuff like getting all the hearings in place before setting a trial date should start kicking into gear once the initial handshakes finish. If CIG stalls, then the court can get real cross, especially if the other side is ready. The court will be content with delaying things if there's serious settlement talks going on though; getting out of actually holding a trial is job one in the court system given how many cases are pending on a typical docket. Both sides seem dug in and are lobbing grenades o'er the top, but that could be just a front while serious talks by adults are being held in a conference room somewhere, it's happened far too often to dismiss. CIG probably has no adults in charge though.

AP posted:

I just hope Chris Roberts is watching the French videos going, "yes, um exactly, he's er, ummm, he sees it too, I can win a multi million dollar court case this time".

Colostomy Bag posted:

Feb 9th will be a day of infamy, where us goons feel grief.

Scruffpuff posted:

The answer lies in Chris Roberts irredeemable garbage soul, and Ortwin's blind greed. It's really that simple, and no more complicated than it needs to be. Chris Roberts thinks - no, he knows - that he's making a game. Similarly, Ortwin knows he's a mighty untouchable lawyer who equates making a demand on a conference call with unilateral acquiescence of said demands. Neither cares about anything else - they don't see anything else, and they don't understand anything else. Chris has been instructed to act as if the lawsuit is a foregone conclusion, and Ortwin is prepared to save his own skin if the game doesn't go his way. Discovery is "irrelevant" for similar reasons - Chris doesn't think he did anything wrong, and Ortwin won't be the guy directly responsible for the undead horde of financial skeletons discovery will reveal.

This is nothing more than blindness and arrogance. To search for deeper meaning is pointless. Chris can't see what's in front of him, backers see things that aren't there, everyone else sees what is there and doesn't see what isn't. The courts are in the last category. It's unlikely the members of the first two will ever wake up.

Scruffpuff posted:

Watching all this poo poo with CIG is like watching the helicopter footage of a police chase. You know it's a foregone conclusion, but it's not only impossible to tell how the chase will end, but it's impossible to tell moment to moment what will happen. Will the criminal get on the highway? Off? Will he speed through a school zone? Will he stop the car and run on foot through an abandoned building?

No idea moment to moment, so you sit transfixed at the spectacle. Oh, it will end. You already know how it will end. Maybe not exactly though - a bullet to the head? A suicide? Gunned down by cops? Arrested successfully? Car going off a cliff?

When they march Chris Roberts into the courtroom I want the Bad Boys song playing.

Zzr posted:

Judge : "So where is the so-called video game Star Citizen and all its progress ?"
Chris : "Sorry my Ben ate it."

D_Smart posted:

It's all pure arrogance and hubris. Those have been the guiding principles of this poo poo-show for as long as anyone can recall. And as been proven time and time again, it's going to continue being their undoing.

After the judge rolls up the MtD and shoves it up Ortwin's rear end without lube, they have to setup a schedule for discovery, depositions etc. During that time, they can still be talking settlement, though as I've written, I don't expect that to be on any friendly terms, given the very public arrogance, hostility, and unprofessional conduct exhibited by the Ortwin-led CIG onslaught.

But attorneys who are in the middle, even with problematic clients, tend to have calmer heads during settlement negotiations because nobody wants to go to trial. And regardless of what Ortwin writes, I have to believe that FKKS should have already seen some the writing on the wall by now that their client stands absolutely no chance of prevailing on any of the accusations. Also, once the MtD fails spectacularly, that's when FKKS is going to have a "Come To Jesus" discussion with their clients, briefing them about the loving minefield they're about to step into, asking them if there is anything they need to know beforehand etc. Since clients lie to their attorneys all the time, it stands to reason that Ortwin will lie to their attorneys, concealing the more egregious things likely to expose them. Then it shows up in discovery, and all hell breaks loose.

The biggest problem they have, and which Ortwin has to know by now, is that this lawsuit has immense scope and there is no way they are going to be able to stifle things from depositions or discovery, without running afoul of the court. I'm sure we're going to be seeing lots of filings from CIG disputing certain discovery requests, all of which will ultimately fail. Why? Because, right from the onset, by going after Ortwin's conflict, Skadden set the "reputation + pattern of conduct trap" for Ortwin, ensnared him in it with deadly precision, and set the stage for credibility & reputation to get a front row seat in the proceedings. They're going to want to establish a pattern of conduct that shows that CIG behaved dishonestly etc. And THAT is how things like their personal lives, expenditures, Ortwin's involvement etc are all going to be open season for discovery. If they were dishonest enough to breach the terms of the GLA, discovery is going to be the path to establishing that pattern of conduct which is what is going play before the judge and the jury (if it goes to trial).

They have to settle. There is no other way out of this for them. But given the amount of money involved, even with whatever the liability insurance ends up agreeing to pay - if anything - they're going to find a way to raise that money because my guess is that Crytek isn't going to risk any long term promises, knowing that CIG is run by a pack of lying, thieving, scumbag scam artists.

Anyway, none of this matters because this pales in comparison to what's currently developing behind the scenes and which I am certain is the actual final nail in the coffin, regardless of how this distracting lawsuit plays out.

And I still maintain that people are either going to jail, or taking plea deals, over this fiasco.

Loxbourne posted:

With goons expecting a huge feast of hilarity from discovery (and some already warning that we're going to be disappointed), I think it's worth pumping the brakes a little and realistically considering what we might see in the disclosure process. Due credit to Latin Pheonix for her assistance proofreading all this.

For a start, here's the current US Federal court Disclosure and Discovery rules. As stated before, I am NOT going to give specific opinions on this because I'm not that specific kind of lawgoon. Smart lawyers (not naming any names) know when to refer a matter to people who know what they're doing. But I do have experience of discovery processes and I know what litigators look for and ask for.

So that all said, here's what we might get. Bearing in mind that as noted by kw0134, this stuff won't be uploaded the way the court documents have been and will instead be exchanged between the parties. We'll see the bits that get specifically cited.

1. CIG Financials

Let's tackle the thread's holy grail head on. We're not going to see a line-item for "Mr Roberts' cocaine dealer". That's as much a dream as a fully-functional Javelin. Even a more realistic comedy extravagance like a personal masseuse or executive barista can quietly be shuffled into a "facilities" budget alongside the $14K coffeemaker. The great joy of this lawsuit is that Crytek are certain to want accounts to assess damages, and are very likely indeed to cite points from the accounts that will require attaching them to court documents, but us seeing the complete set is by no means guaranteed. If we're really lucky perhaps Derek's sources might quietly do us a solid here, BUT those sources are risking contempt charges so let's not get our hopes up.

Also, any accounts will be prepared by cynical professional accountants, who are more than familiar with how to keep embarassing financial information quietly buried in a 10-page statement of travel costs. Anything really damaging will be several pages deep behind a phalanx of polite accounting euphemisms. If accounts do appear, expect them to be bland at first sight with the really delightful secrets in the terms and definitions. Areas to keep an eye on:

- Office furniture. Bear in mind this will be high for any technology company; entertainment value will come from just what was purchased for whom.
- A massive executive travel budget (NOT broken down into tickets, just a big number)
- Executive salaries and bonuses (again, unlikely to be listed individually)
- Details of inter-office money and rights shuffles. Any double-dipping? Which company holds what, and when was it transferred? Who's being paid by multiple companies at once?
- Other licensing and IP points. What was paid to Illfonic to break their contract? Who else has Experienced The Chris? What licenses have CIG themselves taken out?
- Who's pulled the ripcord on their golden parachutes.
- MOCAP and expenses associated with the film shoots. In particular, check to see if Director Chris and #actress Sandi were paid seperate salaries to the CEO of Cloud Imperium and the Head of Marketing.
- Debt and who holds it.
- Details of investors.
- Genuine refund amounts.
- Genuine funding figures (this will be plenty embarassing enough if they don't match the funding tracker).

If something shows up big and obvious here, expect the media to pick it up in a frustratingly simplified form ("Star Citizen accounts show Chris spending $X,xxx,xxx,xxx.xx on flights to Monaco!"). Likewise, don't expect the shitizenry to be too shocked; anything requiring reading more than a single layer is too easy to dismiss.

2. CIG/Crytek correspondence.

Whatever communications were exchanged between CIG and Crytek execs, and CIG and Crytek staff, and especially CIG and Crytek staff who went on to become CIG staff, are going to be utterly crucial to both sides. No question about it, this WILL be dug over again and again. Comedy here will be of the "I'm a big tough executive with no self-awareness whatsoever" kind. The chances of a good old CIG unforced error will be at their highest. If we're lucky, someone will express their contempt for the backers. If we're really really lucky, we'll see someone discussing how he's totally going to screw Crytek.

But now I've whetted everyone's appetite I have to deliver the bad news. This area is the most likely to be heavily locked down by ALL sides. Crytek themselves may have a few embarassing skeletons in their closet, or just not want their negotiating strategies discussed in public, and the judge isn't going to want to wade through page after page of chest-thumping. Expect a lot of cut material and tantalising hints of other documents; entire sheaves of AMD Letters that we'll sadly never see without a leak. The real hilarity in the Ion Storm meltdown came from leaked internal emails, but they were leaked rather than disclosed.

The most likely outcome: Both sides seize on one or two email chains apiece that shore up their case and rely heavily on those. The thread curses as we are teased with references to "the X settlement" or "the unfortunate events at Y's offices" that remain forever sealed.

3. Pre-action correspondence.

The most likely source of thread entertainment. Whatever correspondence was exchanged before Crytek filed their lawsuit will probably show up in the trial bundle, and could contain some entertaining examples of how Chris & co treat servants peons contractors. Crytek will probably posture just as much as CIG here. Expect chest-thumping roars and much flinging of excrement right up until Crytek hire Skadden whereupon the quality of discourse will probably shoot up.

Not likely to be anything shocking here unless one party did something provocative to the other in the run-up. Probably a lot of CIG delaying tactics, hoping to reach the next big sale or that Crytek will just go bankrupt and stop bothering them.

4. Insights into CIG's internal power dynamics

Keep an eye on what CIG say isn't relevant. What are they insisting is nothing to do with Cloud Imperium as a company? Which servers are they trying to refuse access to? What's suddenly been declared to be sold to Ris Choberts? This is where CIG will gas up their internal firewalls and I expect Skadden to have to file motions to compel access.

Likewise, watch the email trails. Who holds which company offices? How does a message move around inside CIG? Does everything go to the Head of Marketing who in turn forwards it on the Chairman? Does Chris actually have any control over his underlings? Does he rage directly or passive-aggressively? Whose opinions are consulted, and for what? Who doesn't CC the Chairman on their emails?

5. Details of who CIG's been courting

Who pops up unexpectedly in the emails? What's suddenly redacted? Any institutional investor will have done due dilligence including checks on pending legal action. If this has been pending for a year or more, some entertaining organisations might have stuck their heads around the door during that time (and then Noped out). Does Chris threaten anyone with his big scary new friends? For that matter, who threatens Chris?

6. The Dates and Times of CIG's largest payments, in and out

This is like signal analysis of encrypted traffic. We won't be able to see, e.g. how much was paid to Gary Oldman. But we might be able to infer it from sudden lump-sum payments, especially given the rumours of executives demanding their royalties with the release of 2.6. I'll be very very curious to see how much left their accounts (and which accounts) on 2.6 and 3.0's release dates.

Was there a large lump sum payment about the time Ben stopped appearing on ATV? To Lando about the time he was rumoured to be leaving? Were there payments to a certain film studio responsible for internationally famous horror epic American Satan - and what else has been paid out of that budget? Who paid what for the rumoured private detective agencies involved in the leak hunt after the AEGIS Potato incident?

I'll also be interested to look into when CIG leased various properties, and which shell company owns those properties. Most commercial leases terminate in the event of bankruptcy or receivership, so what are Chris & co preparing to sacrifice? Also, comparing the dates of any inward investment or tax credit with the funding tracker may provide considerable comedy dividends. Were any large payments made around the times that, say, Coutts might expect a loan repayment?

and lastly...

7. A Spectacular Unforced Error That Makes Us All Collapse Laughing.

Hey, it is CIG we're talking about. For that matter it's Crytek we're talking about. There's going to be something totally off the wall that we've never ever imagined in a million years, count on it. It might be an unexpected asset (holding a lease on a house somewhere, or a yacht, or a private train car), a hilarious euphemism for payment structures ("enhanced performance dividend"), or something even sillier. But it's gonna be there. CIG can't help themselves.

My personal bid is "evidence of an attempt to sue American Satan's producers using backer money". I'm sure the thread can think up other possibilities. The reality is probably going to be exponentially more insane than anything we can think up.

Phi230 posted:

So lemme muse about the fated MTD, the Friday of pain foretold many months ago.

Citizens have absolutely convinced themselves through their own ignorance and delusion that the Crytek suit will be dismissed on Friday. I'm a way, they've projected all their feelings towards this little scam into this suit. Packaged neatly into this hearing is simultaneously the total confidence and zeal behind SC and oddly enough all their fears and doubts.

The dismissal of the suit will happen simply because it MUST, because I the backer believe everything I believe about Star Citizen. Crytek in this way represents all the FUD. If the MTD is denied, that both validates the FUD, and brings bubbling to the surface the idea that the backer himself may be wrong about SC.

In reality the 12b6 MTD will be denied because even a layperson can see that there is a claim stated and that claim is a matter for the courts. That's all this in reality, a relatively minor procedural first-step in any non-frivolous/meritorious litigation. It doesn't really mean anything yet in the larger scale beyond that there is a case to be heard here.

BUT a citizen sees this as an attack on Star Citizen, and through narcissistic rage sees the lawsuit as an attack on the self. Even a simple MTD hearing is a titanic struggle of truth vs lie, faith v FUD to invest emotion in.

For these reasons if the MTD is granted it is a massive validation of the product itself for the citizen.

If the MTD is denied basically the sky is falling and it will cause backers to rage so loving hard. Monumental amounts of fear and doubt and anger. We will see every comments section, every subreddit, every thread explode in activity. That means for a weekend we will get to chase that schadenfreud high again, for the last time for a while, until trial at least, inshallah

TLDR Friday

Toops posted:

lol you must be new to backer logic.

If MTD is denied, they will fall back to the next in an infinite queue of rationalizations. Next up: Assume that CryTek will get trounced in court and CIG will enrich themselves from the counter-suit.

Goredema posted:

The network optimization we're implementing on page 3.1 should solve all the slow loading issues with this thread.

pokie posted:

Thanks. Also, what's FUD? (I know, I am really out of the loop on some thread axioms)

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. It's not a SC-specific term.

Shadowlyger posted:

So apparently the first page has some of those huge fuckoff gifs that eat certain GPUs alive. I'd appreciate it if there weren't any of those.