I said come in! posted:

quote:

Either that or you can pay 10 dollars (Yes, it costs 10 dollars to join their club. Not making that up.) to spoon with the one with beets in his trunk and/or his companions in their fuzzy feline, holy beer & pirate themed pajama party (NO GIRLS ALLOWED) while making erotically charged fingerpaintings of Chris Roberts as a hot bear.

Pixelate posted:

I've got the solution to 890J gameplay.

Just let the crew pick up local songs from every port they visit, like Black Flag.

I'm sure the alien language guy can cover this.

eonwe posted:

whats this game about

Quavers posted:

This would be hilarious if CIG try to claim it as a vertical slice

Where's the gameplay Crobear?

Dark Off posted:

so latest RTV had tons of FUD
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=156 why swap to staggered development
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=564 can we focus less on ships and more on gameplay? lots of umms and errs in this answer and awkward pauses
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=789 why are long standing bugs not been addressed in every patch? tldr refactor will fix it
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=1085 why was the latest pillar talk poo poo.
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=1177 where did the design documents go?
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=1268 current status of Server Side OCS
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=1739 server meshing
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=1818 they are considering removing content to make room for new content
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=2100 lando talking about roadmap
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=2598 the design documents gets asked again
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=2865 lando says that design documents were wildly inaccurate

https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=3636 4.0 first vertical slice of star citizen

Agony Aunt posted:

So, i'm having a robust back and forth with one of the more stauch supporters of the game.

Its certainly been challenging because he's avoiding actually discussing the topic a lot and instead focuses on making personal comments and casting shade on my motivations.

Occasionally he does deem to actually try and make an on-topic point, in between making personal comments.

I've been avoiding sharing the discussions because i didn't want to be accused of brigading, but this one is pure gold.

Note, not providing link or including their name for the aforementioned reason.

PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE POOP!



This was in relation to me talking about how Chris, live on video, said SQ42 would be out later that year (2014) with SC to follow the next year.

But apparently they are not dates and mean nothing, poo poo happens apparently, and this is absoloutely fine and normal. Now, i'm happy to agree projects get delayed, things don't work out, but when the man in charge keeps revising it year after year, and then goes silent for a couple of years, then shows off an hour long demo, and how it just needs more polish, then more silence for a year, then announces they have scrapped it all and redoing it... well, it does make one a tad concerned about the honesty of their communications.

TheAgent posted:

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/oct/02/revealed-global-video-games-giants-avoiding-millions-in-uk-tax-sony-sega

yeah, you can find CIGs/F42s stuff through that website they listed

https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/competition/transparency/public?lang=en

roberts just found another tax haven scam after the germany movie scam stuff got a little illegal and I think the program isn't long for this world (this is the 3rd major report on it in 6 weeks)

quote:

Regardless, the British Film Institute, which runs the test, has strongly backed the relief. It commissioned a report last year which claimed that for every £1 invested into the games industry via VGTR generated £4, based on employment and other economic spillover effects.

G0RF posted:

TWITCH: SaltEMike’s Day Off

I’ve been so busy these last couple months I haven’t bothered to check a Twitch stream in ages. But I figured I’d briefly sample Twerk’s (SaltEMike’s) tonight to see what he thought of 3.7.

With caves added and a big new patch to show off, he apparently took a workday off to stream. He expected ~600 viewers, given the newsworthiness of the release.

Less than 200 showed up.

“I’m not taking off work tomorrow. And I’m not taking off work for a release ever again.”

Hestogen (in comments) “PtU view count has gone down with every release.”

HansYolo (in comments) “People don’t care about a new patch because 3.5 and 3.6 were so bad.”

—

I don’t pay close attention to SC Twitch these days. After the Rexocalypse, things seemed to be getting dismal for the old guard. We hear tell from CIG that sales are better than ever, yet their own content has been cut down to nearly nothing. CitizenCon is, what, a third the size of last year? Squadron, the theoretical source of their next big cash infusion, keeps getting pushed further and further back. Streamer audiences for the old guard have been gutted and it’s unclear how many human viewers Rex has. 3rd party forums like MMORPG are like ghost towns compared to the old days. And Chris and Sandi are MIA.

Where is the proof of life? Backers were several times more engaged — with streamers, with social media, with CIG video content — three years ago. So where’s the pulse? (Aside from Bar Citizen hangouts and screenshot upvotes on the subreddit, I mean.) If this is the best year of their 7 year life, why does it feel so much deader than 2012-2016? Three years ago news of a new show demo could seize headlines across all the game rags and induce ecstasia in general gaming subreddits like /Games or /PCgaming. It’s just surreal that we’ve seen contracting engagement and interest everywhere yet the financials claim “biggest year yet!”

It does make me wonder if Calder money might be being used to boost revenues artificially. If they can show big growth numbers, then attracting the next investment wouldn’t be so hard. Maybe it’s too cynical to assume they’ve gone full Ponzi at this point, but it’s not like Chris, Ortwin & Friends are above it. Or above much of anything, really. Maybe there real demand out there and I’m just missing it?

CitCon is right around the corner. Devs are working as we speak on demos showing wormhole traversals to Pyro, on slicker than ever SQ42 moviegame clips, on exciting new volcanic biomes and other more-of-the-same “game changers” that change quite little for the thing that ain’t a game.

But who, besides the hangars on, cares?

quote:

Catnip Games was established by Chris Spears, who served as CTO of Portalarium for over 6 years and was appointed President of Portalarium in 2019.

Commenting about the acquisition, Richard Garriott noted “We’re immensely grateful to the community who has built this game with us. The community’s support and participation remains strong and growing, and Starr and I plan to continue being involved in the community and within the game.”

Starr Long, the executive producer of Shroud of the Avatar, also commented on the acquisition; noting that “Chris has successfully led the design and the team for many years, he is an all-star A player.”

quote:

So are the SeedInvest backers with Portalarium or with Catnip Games?

quote:

With this change, can we expect that Catnip Games will honor the existing, open deliverables paid for by Kickstarters backers, such as the signed book and pre-sold access to episodes 2-5?

quote:

Chris, now that the salaries of Richard and Starr are gone, let's hire a programmer and do Episode 2!
(I know, you're not the story freak, Chris, but someone like Puuk in support of Sannio would raise all our hope for an awesome Episode 2 story ...)

@Richard: We are still excited about the sequel to "Sword of Midras!" - We really would appreciate if you could announce when it gets finished

quote:

Shroud of the Avatar finally admits the Kickstarter book is not happening, offers in-game items instead

Rookersh posted:

Actual barista here. 10 years, working in Seattle. So many loving thoughts on that goddamn tweet. So many I had to reactivate my loving account I'm so baffled by it.

First off, YOU SHOULD NEVER. EVER. CHANGE THE loving GRIND. You change the grind with temperature, not by "what kind of shot you want.". Consistency and quality are going to deviate depending on how much moisture is in the room, and what kind of temperature range you are in. "More like a Ristretto" and "more watery" are both loving absolute lies. You are saying switch from fine tasting coffee, to either a super acidic or super bitter cup which is nearly undrinkable. Even worse, it takes almost a straight minute of grinding to reset the grinders from where they were, so you are wasting tons of coffee here for no real reason. Sucks if you came behind "Ristretto" guy who just switched it to 20 and then pulled a normal cup, and you get his super fine pull he left for you.

You shouldn't be doing 1 or 2 shots off mug or cup. It's not size based! It's what you are grinding for. If you are grinding 20 grams you want 2 shots. If you are grinding 14/16 you want 1. If you want a single and it's set and dialed in for 20 grams, just pull a double and then DROP THE OTHER HALF OF THE SHOT. 20 grams pulled at 1 is going to be WAY DIFFERENT then 16 grams pulled at 1. Ahhhhhhhhhh. Also if you want a Ristretto, just pull a 20 gram shot for only 20 seconds or so, until the dark brown starts disappearing.

30 seconds or so? WHAT. Is this automatic or manual? If it's automatic, the average shot should be 27-29ish for a double, or less for a single. Are you pulling 30 second singles here? What the hell is going on.

Milk foam starts coalescing instantly. It's why baristas pull shot first, then start steaming, so the shot finishes as the milk finishes. That means you have the most glossy easy to pour milk and the foam works with here. Here you've left the milk to the side for a few minutes so it can all gather up on top and clump up, then you can pour only liquid through it.

Also like I've taught people milk theory, and it takes like a week of practice to stop completely blowing milk all over the room, getting nothing but foam, or scalding the milk. A happy go lucky printed guide.....isn't going to fix that. You've got literally two spots you can steam into, you need to have the tip just right, and you need to basically play a minigame to keep the tip in the right spots to get great milk. Anything else is watery, blownout, or scalded. I'm sure people are getting great coffee here. The whole point of steaming is to rip apart the proteins so they flood the milk with sugar. At this point you might as well just have them microwave their milk.

I have so many loving questions about this thing. Are they backflushing the machine? Beans are an organic material mixed with water, they can't just be sitting inside a machine or they'll start molding/rotting fast. You have to actually backflush the heads daily. Are they taking out the excess grinds at night? You can't just have a bag of beans sitting around overnight, because it attracts tons of bugs. Where is all the milk going? You can't just pour it down a drain, it'll clog the drain extremely quickly, milk grease is a thing. Are they purging the Steam wands with dairy puro every night? Even purged some milk will stick inside the wand, and it'll rot inside there if you don't clean it out.

Are they loving cleaning the grinders? Beans are covered in oil, they'll clog the grinders incredibly fast if people aren't cleaning them out.

I'm dying. Literally dying. I'm sure this isn't super unusual for most office jobs and nobody cleans this poo poo and it's all moldy rotten hellholes, but this, this I can challenge.

trucutru posted:

Milk theory.

e: somebody post the picture of the CIG counter with their coffee machine. You know, the one that looks like someone took multiple shits on it.

Dreadwroth2 posted:

Is it me, or does it seem like the True Star Citizens are getting crazier lately?

TheAgent posted:

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

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

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

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

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

Spiderdrake posted:

So the game's frame rate can tank even more?

Tech Jesus mentioned in the GamersNexus news for today that his site's interview of Roberts back in the day was cited in Crytek's case against CIG.

no_recall posted:

ITS TIME FOR THE ANNUAL ShitizenConned 2019 Raffle!

Top 3 Prizes: a month of Humble Monthly!

SO. Lets get to it.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tMAP0fg-AKScI3S3VjrDW3OaLO4zgBA1RSYoQOQoNSI/edit#gid=1694467207

Current Funding.
2019-11-19 $241,227,605

GUESS THE NUMBER ON THE FUNDING TRACKER BY 1st DEC.

GO.

p/s: Please quote this so I don't have an excuse accidentally exclude your participation.

e: Participation closes the minutes before the Con. Nov 23 1PM GMT. (or when the Stream Begins).

Communist Thoughts posted:

When's citizencon? Me and my partner always try and watch them even if we can't keep up with the drama day to day.

Also did the star citizen thread recap go off site? I loved reading that but I appreciate its a lot of effort

o7 commandos

Colostomy Bag posted:

lol, ice sculpture.

G0RF posted:

They raised $46 million to market the launch next year. But they don’t want to give away spoilers.

Big takeaways?

The first completely Sandi-free CitizenCon. Blame Forbes and Bootcha for doing Derek Smart’s secret bidding. You bastards! Now she’s left only with millions upon millions to show for all the work she pretended to do. Her next mission? Become Hollywood’s most aggressive stage mom as she and Chris push the kids to follow in her footsteps. (That Chris didn’t even mention it seems especially strange but I’m not sure her absence will be mourned except by the Boo Huxleys out there...)

Chris’s wrap-up. Have you ever seen him so gracious? He went to greater pains than usual to thank employees and customers. Unlike last year, which saw the Level Documentary and a lot of costly hype at their biggest venue ever, this courted outsiders not one bit. Cherish what you have, Chris — they got you further than you deserve!

No Squadron. No mentions. No updates. No nothing.

The Adventure Ahead Some beautiful stuff, truly, but drat this is the sloggiest gameplay vision ever. The verse just feels big beautiful and dead. Despite what Tony prattled about it feels like the AI you’ll be experiencing in game is just other players doing whatever they want. Sometimes. For those who want a high fidelity, low fun simulator built around macrotransactions, this sorta might fit the bill one day. But drat what a wasted opportunity.

This was a pretty dull year of treading water. Targets constantly missed and fun still in short supply. They doesn’t look like it changes with the addition of Pyro, whenever that happens. Seeing the wormhole navigation actually sort of following Chris Olivia’s mockups from 2014 only reminded one that “try to not to fall out of the tunnel” is only slightly less boring than 20 minute travel times.

I don’t believe their linear customer growth modeling at all. Still feels like 2016 was the peak of customer growth and maybe Chris figured that out by 2018. They’ve at least stopped using gimmicks like Sandworms to juice the excitement. Now it’s “if you drop a coffee mug on a planet and leave it’ll stay where you left it for a long time.”

This felt like a desperate and defeated fan hangout. Even if those attending had a blast.

ATP_Power posted:

God it would kill me if their tree tech was Speed Tree, a product I was introduced to almost 10 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw6_47sabKg&t=55s

skeletors_condom posted:

$275,301,250 - Dark Off (@1.1 FX)

Dark Off posted:

249 million euros (250 million euros was already taken)

skeletors_condom posted:

249 million euro = 275 million USD, no?

I am not running the contest, just doing it for fun.

Quavers posted:

Chris Roberts Star Citizen dream: the "multi-crew" module that's not Wing Commander. Star Citizen director Chris Roberts went to unusual lengths to explain this idea. Roberts showed off a simulation of that system in the 2012 Kickstater video, but to this day, there's no way to purchase the module and have it play itself. There was also the attitude that Roberts didn't believe in the product, and he was planning on kicking the KS back and forth until everyone lost interest in it. Maybe, he just didn't want you to have a receipt.

Sarsapariller posted:

Okay, credit where credit's due: the aerial version of the blizzard tech looks pretty good. Still some technical challenges and it's not really game mechanics, but I'd be suitably impressed if I flew into this in my spaceship. This is the kind of atmospheric effect that makes planets feel a bit more alive.

https://streamable.com/ik7e1

Sanya Juutilainen posted:

If anything, people agree that ED improved over time - there's better credit balance now (allowing you to reach end game ships within days, if you want to), the mining and exploration mechanics have improved drastically, PvP has issues, but it's still solid and didn't need big changes/fixes for some time now. There are still things that could be improved further without content creation spurt (PowerPlay, exclusive modules, etc), but that's always there in any MMO, there's always stuff to improve.

I believe the ED discontent people come from several points:
- discontent with the pace of development, expecting unrealistic speed of development (and SC will disappoint them as well)
- discontent with the bugs (not an issue with me, but heard some people come across more serious ones, and boy, will SC disappoint them)
- discontent with the scale

The last point is a bit iffy - it's in general people who don't follow the development and then complain that FDev doesn't tell them future plans; or people that for some reason believe that Elite has been put into background over other titles, not knowing how much of a preferred child Elite is to David Braben.

tl;dr: "This game has so much potential, but FDev isn't improving (fast enough) what I personally see as the potential (while leaving other thousands of players discontent with lack of progress on their "potential" ideas)"

Sanya Juutilainen posted:

I beg to differ. Also if you purely PvE, you don't need engineering, like at all. If you PvP, you're gonna grind anyway.

Quoting myself: There are still things that could be improved further without content creation spurt

Content is expensive and takes time, thus you are, quoting myself: discontent with the pace of development, expecting unrealistic speed of development

Sanya Juutilainen posted:

But why would you do that? As a proof of concept, one time, maybe? Like, you can dig a hole in concrete with a spoon, but it'll take weeks, why not use a drill hammer?
I think it should be tough to defeat Corvette in Eagle. Possible, definitely (and it is possible, because of its agility). But should it take quite some time? Yes, definitely! From both shield and HP point of view.

I'll end this part with a question: Why do you think it should be easy to solo kill Corvette (167.8m x 87.2m x 28.3m ship) in an Eagle (31.2m x 29.7m x 7.1m , 60 times smaller vessel with smaller shields and weaponry)? And how easy should it be if it shouldn't take 40 minutes, should it take 30, 20, 10, 5, 2, 1 minute, 30 or 10 seconds?

"and there used to be no grind to do for PVP"

There used to be A-ranking grind (and rebuy grind), because the credits were much harder to get than these days, which is also why PvPers were swarming every "gold rush" back then.

Dynastocles posted:

Ah yes, a mere trickle of an average of $2.9 million a month. How could anyone develop anything on such a meagre budget!?

TheAgent posted:

the last tweet from swafford about star citizen was June 11th 2018

Guess those checks stopped coming in

Guess what he's hyping now

https://mobile.twitter.com/DavidSwofford/status/1186685474108301314

Lol

G0RF posted:

“Tom Hardy Chat (formerly Monday Munch Reborn) (Sarah ruined it again.)”

Line #4 “Sorry citizen” ?

Whatever it says, that screen was a great catch, Inacio!

Not surprised if the U.K. team is worried about the BBC piece, and definitely not surprised if they talked to LA marketing folk not U.K. But who aside from Chris would be asked anything? If they put a mike in front of Lando he’d say “the game will come out when the game comes out” and other canned bullcrap.

It still seems too much to hope the BBC will throw a punch, especially not with a puff piece factory like Click. If they let Chris frame the narrative again, he’ll do what he always does, say what he always says, and in the end it comes down to “early days”, “more ambitious than any game ever made” and “I absolve myself.”