I listened to this for a minute or two and that bald dickhead went and said that if Star Citizen lives up to 20% of the hype it has built up, it would still be one of the best games ever…
LISTEN UP YOU THUNDERING MORON, IF WHAT THEY HAVE PROMISED YOU IS A GAME THAT WILL BE FIVE TIMES BETTER THAN ANYTHING THAT IS CURRENTLY OR WILL EVENTUALLY BE OUT THERE, THEY ARE DEFINITELY LYING TO YOU.
Scruffpuff
I’m filling out paperwork for a surgery, and there is a question that says “Do you have an internal nerve stimulator?” I asked my wife what that was, and she said, “Apparently this clinic gets a lot of patients from the Stimpire.”
So the funny thing about seeing commandos pinning so many hopes on subsumption, while claiming SC is never-done-before cutting edge stuff, is that subsumption is something I first learned about during an undergrad robotics project course.
That was about 20 years ago. And it had already been around for some time when I read about it, because it wasn’t new material you had to scour just-published papers for, it was in the class textbook.
Subsumption AI research was about building swarms of individually-stupid micro-robots that would collaborate to accomplish some slightly complex task by mimicing a computer scientist’s understanding of how individual ants work together in an ant colony. Each ant-bot was programmed with a set of several primitive, simple behaviors. The idea is that only one of those canned behaviors gets to control the bot at a time; selection of the active behavior loop was determined by sensory feedback and comm messages from other nearby bots. Inactive behaviors are ‘subsumed’ beneath the active one, hence the name.
They used this concept to successfully do things vaguely similar to an ant colony. Let the worker bots roam free in a little environment, and some of them would fall into gathering behaviors to move “food” (crumpled up balls of aluminum foil) to a staging area while others settled into moving it from the staging area into the “nest” for storage. Stuff like that.
The theme was trying to make simple individual rules create more complex, emergent herd behavior, and it was all MIT Media Lab as fuck, that being the lab which invented it. For those not in the know, MIT’s Media Lab is an academic compsci research lab which gets a disproportionate amount of publicity and funding due to a combo of friends in very high places and a focus on doing wacky, press friendly things.
So that’s the revolutionary AI tech which is going to make SC NPCs behave in a super fidelitous lifelike fashion: something invented a quarter century ago as a crude way of emulating ant brains. But not real ant brains, ant brains as understood by a bunch of compsci grad students and/or profs whose grasp of insect behavior was probably poor. And (so far as I can tell) this super advanced thing has not seen much use outside of pie in the sky academic research, because most real world robots are automated welders and CNC milling machines which just need to mindlessly repeat a control program over and over.
On that last point, don’t get me wrong. It’s cool and good to spend a little bit of society’s wealth on goofy stuff that has no immediate use irl, and you are always going to have to accept that some of it won’t have any use ever because it’s tricky to figure out which is which ahead of time. It’s just - lol no, cultists, subsumption is not gonna make the game good (or a game). It’s not the right way to make NPCs behave like people, or in a way that is fun to interact with.
It’s also easy to guess how this idea became a big thing at CIG. Junior grade AI programmer is told to figure out how to make lifelike NPCs, finds this One Weird Trick that seems to make cool stuff happen out of extremely simple base rules, doesn’t realize that maybe it’s not quite so easy to make it generate convincing human behavior or that those apparently simple rules may have needed a ton of tweaking to get right, sells it to Chris, and pretty soon it’s on the list of gee whiz material used to milk whales.
TheAgent
(video: Old wingman’s hangar visits Moon Collider, talks about AI, 2014)
This old video does a fairly good job at showcasing just how long CIG has been spinning these plates.
I love how CIG has seriously fuckin burned every single motherfucking company they worked with from 2013 to 2016
Oh jeez Chris at the end you really gotta pick a look and stick with it man.
so star citizen, the ‘game’ that exists, is a bunch of assets poorly imported into the demo crytek made 5 years ago right?
every time i find something out about how they make the game it amazes me. just all the travails they’ve had with getting single ships to not lag the servers out. it’s crazy. they make design and coding mistakes that like, amateur modders don’t make in other games.
if the crobblers made the matrix
I was wondering what Chinese gamers think about Star Citizen so I found quite a popular “ask” thread with someone wondering how people view the game. Here’s a quick and dirty translation of the most recent reply (from a month ago). I don’t think i quite understand the final line but it’s funny anyway.
谁特么在乎这个啊…
3.0 ptu, pu will be out by March 2018 at the earliest, one year later than predicted…Squadron 42 [release] doesn’t even have a timeframe. At the moment bugs are everywhere, the dragonfly tips over as soon as you start it and infinitely runs into the ground, there’s all kinds of clipping issues , the Aquila is just the Andromeda, the carrier-based p52 is still unusable, the Carrack has been worked on for 3 years, and there’s fuck-all to show for it. Although you can say it’s an alpha, but you’ve been fiddling around so long (five years now) and all you have is this to scam people, there isn’t even the framework of a game and you spend all day worrying about character models standing on an inclined plane, who gives a fuck…?
Look, we can’t on one hand claim that CIG habitually lies, then turn right around and take “We have 400 people working for us!” as fact. We don’t get to pick and choose what data are reliable. If they lie, then we need hard evidence to form a working theory. If CIG’s word is no good, then we don’t really have much to go on, as evidenced by literal years of this thread “calling” CIG’s bankruptcy, and yet here they are.
Let’s all agree on this right now: We don’t have any actual visibility into their balance sheet. We’re gluing crumbs together and trying to make a cake. As an abridged list:
We don’t know how many people CIG has employed, currently employ, or will employ in the future, nor their pay scales, benefits, etc.
We don’t know their CapEx or their OpEx.
We don’t know their cash position.
We don’t know anything about CIG’s lines of credit outside of “some” dollars from Coutts.
We don’t know how many wild-eyed people whose parents recently died and left them the house have privately invested.
According to Goon estimates, CIG should answer the bankruptcy filing in 201520162017 2018
Yes the biggest cost now is salary, last time it was Ben’s food allowance
peter gabriel
If GIG admit to using cryengine then crytek win because CIG are idiots
If CIG say they used Lumberyard crytek win because the exclusivity clause
It’s a classic catch 42 situation and Chris has a thumb for a head
My magnum opus is done
MoMA
At the absolute worst, a 10m settlement and CIG goes about its business. So far there have been a dozen pages about speculation, the end of times as we know it, and parp. Yawn.
Someone called it earlier: a nothingburger.
I’m not willing to bet $3k on the result.
MoMa stop it. I mean just stop it right now. This is embarrassing how stupid you think we all are here. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING at all in the lawsuit that has a damn thing to do with if CryTek was negligent in any way, shape, or form. If so then the there would have been mention of it just out of a sense of Covering the Corporate Ass and don’t think for one moment that Chris or Ortwin would be posting that shit to every outlet on the internet to defend their ass like he did when the Couttes loan was discovered. Do you think a firm like Skadden is going to chain themselves to such and embarrassing turn of events like defending a client that nuked their own contract by negligence? Any paralegal on planet earth would destroy their lawsuit with prejudice by responding to the complaint on day 1 with that little termination clause on the very contract they are disputing. That would be devastating to a firm of Skaddens caliber. Now I am convinced 100% that you are not in the legal profession nor are you a part of CIG in any way. In fact, I am really leaning on the possibility that you are in fact a shared account from those brainwashed fellows over at Relay. Because your post here reeks of Erris’s defense bulletpoints. Stick to talking about kickstarter belts and booze because as of now you lost all the little bit of cred your little gimmick here was giving you.
Chris is inviting backers to have dinner for $350
act now on this rare opportunity to give us 350 bucks for nothing.
They must be in great financial shape if Crobbler will do tours of the dream factory for $20k.
This kind of tour isn’t to bring in the participation fee, which barely covers the costs of arranging this. The point of the fee is to weed out backers who don’t have open wallets. The point of the tour is to get them to spend more - it’s a way to build confidence, create a feeling of belonging to a special inner circle, talk to high-spending backers about what they want, etc. I’ve seen the exact same kind of thing in the financial sector. Brokers, hedge funds, wealth managers, etc. do these events on a regular basis.
It does not reek of desperation, but is a tried and true way to increase revenue by activating existing clients and bringing new clients into an environment ideal for trying to turn them into loyal big-spenders. I would be surprised if they didn’t have special deals for them on-site. If they’re ruthless enough they can even use aggressive sales techniques during such an event.
Were it one of my friends or relatives going to such an event - unless they were confident, strong-willed and difficult to manipulate (which are not common traits among space sim nerds) I’d do my very best to talk them out of it.
Derek Smart
WAIT!!!!!
What if the May invite is to sell those dedicated 60 concierge shares in F42-UK?
They already laid the ground work by splitting shares last month.
How fucking insane do you have to be to sell tours of a game dev studio that has never released a fucking game for the fucking ridiculous price of $350 a pop. Yeah, great idea Sandi. You’re a real fuckin’ marketing genius.
Hey remember when EA flew out a bunch of Youtubers or whatever as part of a “Gamechangers” program for Battlefront 2 as a promise to listen to their feedback and make the game not a steaming pile of shit on release?
>! It was a steaming pile of shit on release.
Alright, now what if we made those people PAY for the privilege! To be shuffled around a computer farm of tired, fresh out of college devs who have no real insights or stories trying to jerry-rig a crazy Hollywood bigwig wannabe’s fantasies of what a space MMO is together over a feature creep from hell, and theorycraft a shitton of all new game mechanics for our team to maybe try and implement without crashing everything on launch!
Its actually 3 payments of 350 if you are concierge lol. I came here to lol at the as seen on tv pricing.
Star Citizen dinner and tour with Chris Roberts – Only $350 if you’ve backed enough
This evening CIG mailed Star Citizen Concierge backers to announce a special event which will take place on 4 May. Concierge backers are the die-hard backers who have pumped more than $1000 into the project so far.
This special event will include a tour of the L.A studio, a dinner and a sit-down with Chris Roberts and “key members of the dev team”. CIG will be filming the event which will be shown at a later date. Tickets for this event are going to be limited with only sixty being made available.
CIG will be charging $350 for this special event which I have to say is quite astonishing. You would think that with the 170+ million in the bank they could invite some of the really high paying backers for a free tour and a meet and greet. What is truly sad is that some backers will likely pay for the ticket and all the costs to get there.
“Ahhhh! Lovely dinner guys. Now you pick up the tab”
Is CIG now going to start charging for absolutely everything despite the huge support the backers have already given? It’s starting to look like that.
In the past, I have personally been invited to studios for tours, with flights included, as a fan of a game (this was prior to being a member of the press) simply to say thanks for the support. It was always greatly appreciated. I was certainly never asked to stump-up cash to attend.
Bootcha
okay seriously
you true believer citizens reading this thread
I was an investor, like I could have made money off of Star Citizen, if it didn’t turn into what it is now
owning a share in CIG is just throwing money away
part of my deal was not having a say in the creative development of the game
do you really think with one or even ten measly shares in CIG will entitle you to some kind of expression of your dreams
if CIG offers you a share, get a refund
DO NOT BUY A SHARE WITHOUT SEEING THE FINANCIALS FIRST
Now that Alpha 3.0 is out, we wanted to give you all an update on our plans for this coming year. As we discussed before the holidays, we now have a delivery schedule based on dates rather than features.
We are doing this for several reasons. First, thanks to the huge improvements to core tech, we can be more predictable about delivering our patches, as we are building upon and refining existing tech. Second, we want to get more build iteration, which gives us more opportunities to get feedback from the community going forward. Finally, this new approach provides more flexibility in our development. If a proposed feature takes longer than anticipated, we will push it to the next release, rather than delaying other new content.
We plan on delivering new builds once a quarter, starting with our first drop at the end of March. After that, we aim to deliver again at the end of June, September, and December of this year.
Our first release will pull together all the great work that was completed last year with a focus on optimizing the server and client. We also intend to include one or two new features which will enhance gameplay around Crusader.
3.1 is about enhancing performance and polishing the gameplay systems and UI, including ships, system traversal, a large balance pass of our economy, and improving AI for spaceflight and combat. All the great data and feedback from the community over the holiday period is really going to help us with these tasks.
Although 3.1 is our focus for late March, several teams will also be working on our long-term goals for this year, in which we plan to deliver the vast majority of systems and mechanics so players have a variety of options to lose themselves in the ‘Verse.
For our end-of-June release, we plan to implement the initial tier 0 versions of mining, salvaging, mobile refueling, and repair into the game, as well as give the player the ability to create their own missions like hiring mercs, transport, or refueling missions. On the AI side, we plan to improve both ship and FPS AI for both missions as well as general activity on space and planetary bases.
Our next delivery in late September will introduce another major long-term tech goal: Object Container Streaming. This technology will allow us to start expanding the Stanton system with additional destinations, while managing our memory usage much better. In this delivery, we would also like to start introducing the mechanics of how you stake and file land claims and the gameplay that comes with this feature. This release will also continue to consolidate and polish all the new features in the past milestone.
That will leave our final build of the year in late December. Now that our streaming tech has been tested and can support the huge amount of new data content introduced(), we will continue to expand the Stanton System, allowing players to explore, fulfill their career choices, and do many different types of missions, either with friends or on their own.
Stay tuned as the new Star Citizen Production Roadmap will come online along with the new RSI website later this month, with more development and release details.
See you in the ‘Verse (literally),
— The Star Citizen Team
In the meantime, head over to the launcher page and download the 3.0.0 patch to see the universe for yourself. You can also visit our Spectrum thread to leave your feedback.
So they are literally going to deliver NOTHING this year.
Object container streaming! Wow that so exciting. Sounds like a Tupperware party.
Virtual Captain
This is pathetic even for CIG.
Exciting new features coming this year such as:
• Object Container Streaming
•
•
Buy a tank!
Thoatse
Thoatse
Nothing Works on PTU
It’s been five years and fifteen days
Since you took my pledge away
I stream every night and sleep all day
Since you took my pledge away
Since 3.0 I can do whatever I want
I can clip through anywhere I want
I can eat my dinner in a fancy wankpod
But nothing
I said nothing can take away these blues
‘Cause nothing ever works
Nothing works on PTU
It’s been so lonely without your patch
Since the netcode’s wrong
Nothing can stop this framerate from falling
Tell me CIG where did you go wrong
I could play many games on Steam
But they’d only remind me of you
I went to Chris Roberts and guess what he told me?
