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
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 fucking 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
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 fucking 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.
Star Citizen: I wore out a mousepad waiting for this game
G0RF
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.)
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!
(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.
Virtual Captain
Yo Toops CIG is saving incomplete player data straight to the persistent database:
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
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.
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.
:f5:
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!
I have a degree in brutal takedowns and that was only classifiable as a knock-about tussle.
TheAgent
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
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…”
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.”
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.
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 shit**
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
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 fucking mess that actually does anything. and by anything, I mean absolutely fucking everything”
Turbulent isn’t listed as an authorized 3rd party developer in the GLA lol
TheAgent
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
