Bootcha posted:

You're Wolf, Derek's Chains, KC's Dallas, I'm little brother Houston. And Legal is himself.

Don't act dumb.

Bootcha posted:

The one thing that struck me funny was the accusation I was simply a mega-fanboy who spent money for attention that turned sour after CIG snubbed me.

To be honest, it's not a bad analogy.

I was already a mega-fanboy of WC, and spent a lot of money VC'ing Star Citizen, and I did this at a point where funding was sub 500k and slowing down (back when the goal was 2 mil, so yeah while I was a mega-fanboy, I was also being a bit SMART about when and how to become a part of the project). The Austin office was just off the UT main campus, and I was a 30 minute walk away from them. During the early days, I provided the monthly beer runs, monthly because I wanted to make sure they were working but also could relax at some point of the month. Peterson actually cursed me for bringing beer in early one month, this was about the time they were pushing for AC. But I did this for about a year.

I also provided a fuckton of food and snacks for one of the 24 hr livestreams, the one Gegil and I were at. That was about... $300 of food and snacks, ranging from chips to meats'n'cheeses. At the end of it, it was all gone. Scattered memories of that one, there was a lot of booze too. I was holding the camera for the interview with Chris Olivia, where Skelton told me to zoom in on the Peterson cut-out head on the wall that had a penis drawn on it. Sandi wasn't a fan of that. Skelton and his dicks, Olivia and his art. Loved those two.

The move to Bee Cave wasn't a snub, it was a welcome relief, because that basement was a sweatbox. As convenient as it was for me to swing by, it was a relief that the guys had space to actually work. I could still swing by and chat up with Eric/Skelton/Pete/Smith/etc whenever, it was simply a 20 minute longer drive, and I couldn't stay until rush hour because I'd be stuck in traffic till the end of days. I'm not going to make myself unwelcome, because at the time I was still set on maintaining a good relationship with the Santa Monica chapter of SC (they were calling the shots more and more often).

No, the snubbing started with the constant crunches, before PAX Boston's event. Eric simply had no time to spare, and everyone in the pits were crushed with work. I ran into a few CIG workers at Fry's, one of them on a week's vacation. They looked ragged as gently caress. Again, as I've said before, this is part of the industry and it isn't all fun all the time. But we're talking about a crunch in the middle meat of development, one that was obviously making GBS threads down on everyone. Inexplicable crunchtime for a loving external show demo. At the event, away from the other Goons (Drewjitsu,B4tBG, Stalkrr, Darth, etc), I talked to Ortwin center back on the balcony, talking about money and progress. We disagreed on shutting off the fund-raising, I saying that we need a hard limiter on what we can do, and him saying cutting off capital to spite the project is ludicrous.

After that, Eric's exit. Rob's exit. Olivia and Jason's exit. Forrest's relocation. The ex-Blizzard replacement could not find time to talk to me because, in his words, "I have no time for one of Roberts' moneybags to be looking over my shoulder." You can imagine I completely understood his position, and I left the man the gently caress alone. Then that guy left.

Tony Z was a last chance to figure out what was going on with the project from a high view. The man was always on a call from Santa Monica whenever I came by. Without fail. Always talking to Santa Monica on video skype or phone or something.

And I guess that's when it hit me. Everyone was working on something that had been done before. Smith was on the Connie, the art pit was redo-ing interiors for hangars, Skelton got to show off maybe 1 new thing, like the door security scanner particle effects, but ain't going to find it's way into the game for a long time. Everyone was repeating work done a year before. There was nothing new to talk about.

THERE WAS NOTHING NEW TO TALK ABOUT.

Ben wasn't saying poo poo, Pugh was quiet but honest, CR and Ortwin didn't say a drat word to me. The project stagnated.

Then Derek started shouting, and you know the rest.

So yeah, I think I was a mega-fanboy that felt snubbed, and quit SC when it was cool to do so. That's a simplified, but still apt, version of it, yeah.

Also 3000 Miles to Graceland is KC's best masterpiece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Z-4X4z564

Maybe Derek's master plan is to go into CIG and get those millions back with KC, myself, B4tBG, and Legal the Dog a la the casino heist.

jaegerx posted:

Lol at the bee cave office. If you've never been to Austin bee cave is the rich part while still kinda staying inside Austin.

quote:

DL: Give us a better idea about what you do as an animator for Star Citizen.

VL: Well here at Star Citizen in particular we do motion capture most of the time. That’s markering up actors, and getting them ready to do performances for us to use in game.

DL: Yeah?

VL: Yeah. So that’s what I do. I actually run the local motion capture system here and I also solve the data and I also bring it on to our Star Citizen characters that we have right now.

DL: You just said solve the data. What’s that?

VL: So when we have a motion capture shoot, we shoot our actors performance with their markers on. The cameras capture these movements with the markers and the data gets translated into something that we call a C3D data and then we bring that into MotionBuilder and do what is called a retarget and we do that to the characters that we are given and then we start the fun editing.

DL: I’ve seen a lot of emails about retargeting animations that seems, I don’t know much about it but from the emails that I’m CC on that seems like quite a task.

VL: It is when you have a vast amount of animations to do so whenever there is this change to the skeleton we need to do constant retargets and so that’s what the all the emails are about sometimes.

DL: Recently we changed the skeleton front model. So you had to take all those existing animations that have been recorded for the previous skeleton, retarget them for the new one?

VL: Yes that is correct

Toops posted:

G0RF posted:

I keep returning to The Escapist's depiction- particularly CS3's- of a CIG workforce that struggles with feelings of guilt about the reckless spending habits of some of their backers. Yet empathy for these deluded souls stops at the middle management layer of CIG. Chris and Sandi don't lose a wink of sleep worrying about marriages falling apart over misspent family funds-- they think they're making people's dreams come true and consider it a fair exchange if they wear a cleavage baring outfit to dinner when dining with VIP victims of their scam.

Sorry for so many -- I just get pissed off thinking about the wholesale dysfunction profiteering that's behind all this.

EightAce posted:

FROM CLOWN IMPERIUM'S WEBSITE


Reptile Blackdeath
Reptile_Blackdeath
Posted: November 26
Well, I think I should let people in on a condition in the referral program that I missed.

I though it would be a great time to try and get some more people in if they could get a $30 pack, and I might get a chance at these referral rewards (I had most people I knew invested before the referral program)

One person got a $30 pack.. but they still came up as a 'prospect' on my account details.
I though it just might be a time delay.. checked again later... nope... still in Prospects...
I'm confused at this point, as I can see from there that they have enlisted...

Reading more... and I see "whenever one of your recruits becomes an active player by purchasing a Game Package (with minimum value of $40 USD)...."
Sooo... short story.. if you want to get a referral point.. DON'T ENCOURAGE YOUR FRIENDS TO JOIN NOW.
I guess wait and make them spend more... meh.. pity as I though this would be the time to do it..

Be aware.. I missed the fine print.



Oh really ...........

quote:

Yeah same here....at least a dozen were my efforts to bring them in. Half a dozen got one of the aurora packs out of the "double citizen package" or how it was called.
Still have some, but... I will never reach any higher ranks and I have most of this stuff already. And I wont start ranting over golden miniatures to become a special snowflake. It would have been nice, but yeah....I am more angry about how much advantage for pledging early we have lost during the course and on pressure of mostly teens, that join the game currently.

quote:

Simple... I've been buying mine a $30 Starter and an LTI Archimedes for CCU insurance. If they like what they see they reimburse me and I give them one of my old FREE MR->Mustang Alpha CCU's (remember those days? ), if not they gift me the assets, either way I've gotten the referral point and given someone a chance to try the game for themselves.

Too bad there are only two people I'm on those kinds of terms with that do PC gaming of any kind... stuck at one away from the next Recruitment level forever.

quote:

I feel your pain. Most of my guild and clan were on back then too. I wouldn't care that much about the $40 limitation if they could retrospectively add people we had already brought into the game. I'd be past my 10..
I just find it a bit sad, it's not enough to bring them in even if they are more of a casual player range.. It's hard to compete with Steam game prices, and even convincing some people $30US (and that more AU I can tell you....) is worth doing for any game..
I'm no stranger to throwing money at this game, but feel a bit jibbed if recruiting someone at any level doesn't count as recruiting...

Toops posted:

What the gently caress are they all talking about in there? About "recruitment levels" ????

Chrissakes this game has literally gone full loving ponzi scheme.

Unreal.




This is NO JOKE straight up MLM ponzi-scheme talk. I mean what the gently caress.

G0RF posted:

Fixing customer service-- so they stop having 4+ week trouble ticket queues?

"Screw it-- that would mean hiring more people. Let the current employees suffer with never ending backlogs and pissed off backers, and let the backers think that lengthy delays are actually normal rather than a complete embarrassment..."

Fixing our slow-as-hell, pathetically subpar and disorganized China-based merchandising / shipping operation so the fans can get stuff more quickly?

"Screw it-- who cares if it takes a month to deliver things, and our shipper loses loads of inventory often, and fans who get broken / misprinted / subpar merch end up having to wait 3-5 weeks to get through the support queue, after waiting just as long for delivery, whereupon they'll wait yet another month to get a replacement? Let them think China is actually a brilliant solution delivering higher quality stuff than America or Europe can match and it's worth the wait. Because that means we can squeeze even more bucks out of their sperg asses."

For Sandi, the only measure of CIG's success is cash in the bank and furnishings in the Santa Monica office (and surely the Roberts home / life). Screw quality of support, product, or game or workplace experience. Keep the money rolling in at all costs. Everyone else -- backers, employees, other offices -- can suck it.

AP posted:

The delay on refunds make sense as if you want to drag any refund process out for a month or longer, people might change their minds or will be more likely to accept a lowball offer.

EightAce posted:

So basically:
They hook some patsy to get involved in the cult
The Patsy then has to buy a JPEG not less than $40
Then the referee gets some sort of points reward which enables them to unlock more JPEGS?

Is that about right

Michaellaneous posted:

I wanted to tell you that I read your post and am happy for you and fuzz that you got out with - surprisingly little - problems.

Ghostlight posted:

Karl is a German auditor Star Citizen fanatic who was posting in the thread in defense of Star Citizen.

Beyond that it is easier to tell you who Karl is not. He is not the German auditor Star Citizen fanatic on the official Star Citizen forums that happens to share a name with the twitter account Karl posted here as his own - this is verifiable because that poster has spent thousands of dollars on Star Citizen while Karl's ships were all gifted to him by his brother. He is not the German auditor Star Citizen fanatic on reddit that posts extensively about how unfairly Karl was treated by SA, because that is a woman. He is also not her father who happens to be a German auditor, just in case you were thinking that might be the case. In fact, every redditor who is German and an auditor and interested in Star Citizen is definitely not Karl, nor the obvious sock puppet accounts that jump to the defense of any German auditor Star Citizenite posting in r/DerekSmart.


All we really know for sure about Karl is he can go gently caress himself.

Chalks posted:

Making it only count for more than $40 when the game can be bought for less than that seems like a really lovely thing to do. I'm sure it's hard enough getting people interested in this disaster enough to buy it without some how getting them to spend more money than they have to to gain access.

Toops posted:

--------------------------------------------------------------
Re: Chairman Review: Animations
Hey Chris, Ben here. You fired our entire animation team yesterday while you were geeked on coke. I told them all you were joking. Were you serious about redoing the rigging... again?

Your friend,
Ben


--------------------------------------------------------------
Re: Chairman Review: Animations
What?

Cheers,
Chairman Chris Roberts

Michaellaneous posted:

I wanted to tell you that I read your post and am happy for you and fuzz that you got out with - surprisingly little - problems.

Toops posted: