Hav posted:

We’ve been calling it’s demise for years, but it shambles on, undead. The thread has become a kind of Hotel California, or Flying Dutchman of the many, many reasons why publishers exist.

Fake Edit: Fig got acquired.

Bofast posted:

One could also ponder that intelligence does not lead to wisdom,

Agony Aunt posted:

D&D had this figured out years ago.

Also why whenever someone rolled a wizard and used WIS as a dump stat i made sure there were plenty of WIS rolls and that the clever but not too wise wizard learned the lesson to not use WIS as a dump stat.

Agony Aunt posted:

Meanwhile funding tracker continues to show thousands of dollars per hour being pledged.

Dementropy posted:

TheBombPhilosopher posted:

Woah, if HL:A is so immersive that it actually induces trigger jerk then that's incredible! Does it also actually mimic sight alignment on the weapons? For those of you unawares, trigger jerk when discharging a firearm is when you "jerk" the trigger back sharply instead of a nice, smooth, slow, even pull. This causes the barrel to "flinch" downwards and for bullets to veer wildly in that direction. The "flinch" response is an automatic response your brain has to the loud, sharp, and sudden "bang" of a firearm. Your brain doesn't like that at all. Inexperience shooters tend to just jerk the crap out of the trigger to get it over with rather than going through with the unpleasant suspense of a good trigger pull where when the weapon actually discharges should be a "surprise" (if your finger is on the trigger of a firearm then your intent should be to destroy whatever is opposite the barrel - the "surprise" should be in the timing of the weapon discharging, not in the discharging of the weapon when you didn't mean for it discharge). Defeating the flinch response requires training, acclimation, and intense focus, and even then even professional shooters can still succumb from time to time. If the game is so immersive it engages this reptile part of our brain then that's amazing . I didn't even realize that was possible - the "bang" of a firearm is more than a loud noise. There's recoil and pressure/blast to it. Odor, too.

Sarsapariller posted:

I want to talk about HL: Alyx and I'm going to do it in here instead of the HL: Alyx thread so I'll do a bit of compare and contrast to make it relevant:

shrach posted:

So what is going on with the bartender? I thought the established story was that it wasn't really a bartender, it was years of work creating an AI so radiant that it would outshine the Sun. Once they had completed this bartender AI it would be introduced to all NPCs and they would spread forth into the 'verse filling all the jobs and becoming sentient entities like an episode of Star Trek where the holodeck has gone rogue (again).

Agony Aunt posted:

One thing they always fail to address is that its not 8 years to develop the game. Its 8 years to develop what exists right now, which is till many years away from release.

We can look at it and see that its not 8 years in devleopment in total, its going to be well over 10... for a minimum viable product, not the magnum opus that exists in their heads.

Sarsapariller posted:

What's really getting to me is how a well designed game can do so much with just a few assets. HL:A has, basically, three guns and three consumables. It only has maybe a dozen enemy varieties. Up through Ch. 5, the entire setting has been some variety of "Alien infested, overgrown Eastern European block housing city." It is less FPS and more survival horror, in a creeping, rising-tension sort of way. You'd think that creeping through crumbling tenements and fighting zombies would get boring after a couple of hours, but HL:A knows exactly when that boredom would begin to set in, and constantly stays one step ahead.

Looking at Star Citizen alone you'd think a game needs 500 weapons and 100 types of spaceship or NPC to be interesting. But it's just not the case. HL: A has wonderfully polished movement, levels that are a masterclass in how to direct player attention to the next objective, and well designed encounters that are almost always teaching the player some interesting new trick or adding a twist on existing enemy types. The amount of care and craft they've poured into the three guns you can use makes each one stand out far more than any generic Star Citizen pulse rifle. And just when you're bored of the pistol, you get the shotgun. Just when you're bored of them in combination, you start getting grenades. Every weapon builds on the last and instead of becoming the new thing you use all the time, becomes another tool for your arsenal.

shrach posted:

So what is going on with the bartender? I thought the established story was that it wasn't really a bartender, it was years of work creating an AI so radiant that it would outshine the Sun. Once they had completed this bartender AI it would be introduced to all NPCs and they would spread forth into the 'verse filling all the jobs and becoming sentient entities like an episode of Star Trek where the holodeck has gone rogue (again).

AbstractNapper posted:

I have not played this Digital Combat Simulator World (DCS World), but they've just announced a free for all month until mid May. Supports VR and multiplayer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=732Y62VZIGc

It's full of DLCs (aircrafts, maps, campaigns) but it seems to be in active development according to the changelog on their site.

The site for this is here: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/
And there's a Steam version here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/223750/DCS_World_Steam_Edition/

It might be interesting.

No space legs.

Or space.

Bubbacub posted:

The cool thing about DCS is that you can play it from full MilSim tactilol tryhard skywarrior all the way to drunk stunt flying. The flight models have meaningful differences between them, so you can nitpick your plane performance and button pushing to a level that shitizens have been dreaming about for years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT95cLlPTWo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPbxFQ9b7hA

TheBombPhilosopher posted:

Woah, if HL:A is so immersive that it actually induces trigger jerk then that's incredible! Does it also actually mimic sight alignment on the weapons? For those of you unawares, trigger jerk when discharging a firearm is when you "jerk" the trigger back sharply instead of a nice, smooth, slow, even pull. This causes the barrel to "flinch" downwards and for bullets to veer wildly in that direction. The "flinch" response is an automatic response your brain has to the loud, sharp, and sudden "bang" of a firearm. Your brain doesn't like that at all. Inexperience shooters tend to just jerk the crap out of the trigger to get it over with rather than going through with the unpleasant suspense of a good trigger pull where when the weapon actually discharges should be a "surprise" (if your finger is on the trigger of a firearm then your intent should be to destroy whatever is opposite the barrel - the "surprise" should be in the timing of the weapon discharging, not in the discharging of the weapon when you didn't mean for it discharge). Defeating the flinch response requires training, acclimation, and intense focus, and even then even professional shooters can still succumb from time to time. If the game is so immersive it engages this reptile part of our brain then that's amazing . I didn't even realize that was possible - the "bang" of a firearm is more than a loud noise. There's recoil and pressure/blast to it. Odor, too.

Pixelate posted:

Playing 3.8

colonelwest posted:

Yeah they love to find other examples of long dev times and count every second back to when a game was first discussed in a meeting somewhere. But no one can explain why after 8 years and 300 million dollars, Star Citizen doesn’t even have the basic foundation of an MMO built. The question of “how can we adapt CryEngine to support an MMO with space battles between hundreds of players?” should have been definitively answered back in 2012 or they should have switched engines. There’s no solid technical base to the game, just whatever assets they can manage to shove into their broken CryEngine mod and have it still chug along for a few hours without crashing. It plays like someone tried to mod space combat into Skyrim.

People claiming to be CTOs and senior software developers can write as many galaxy brained theses about “delays are ok and you’re all ignorant sheep” on Reddit as they want. But the 8 years isn’t really the issue. It’s that 8 years have been wasted on what is in the game right now today, which is around 1% of what Chris has cumulatively promised. I’m sure whatever companies these geniuses work for are fine with a project missing it’s projected release by 6 years, having a scope that can be summed up as “everything”, having no release date in sight, and most of it’s key systems not even being designed yet. I’m sure all they would have to do is shrug their shoulders and say to their bosses “it’s agile!” and the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme would play as the scene fades to black and the end credits roll.

shrach posted:

So what is going on with the bartender? I thought the established story was that it wasn't really a bartender, it was years of work creating an AI so radiant that it would outshine the Sun. Once they had completed this bartender AI it would be introduced to all NPCs and they would spread forth into the 'verse filling all the jobs and becoming sentient entities like an episode of Star Trek where the holodeck has gone rogue (again).

trucutru posted:

The official excuse is that all the AI functions require SSOCS to work.

So they have to finish SSOCS first.

But, at the same time, they are doing everything in parallel and that's why they cannot show it to you on the roadmaps.

Popete posted:

Didn't they already release some version of SSOCS and it seemingly did nothing?

colonelwest posted:

It’s amazing how every white knight has some job that puts them in an unassailable position of expertise.

Hav posted:

He’s not entirely wrong, but he is skating over a lot of the more glaring problems. He also manages to call out ‘networking’ three times in the list of things. He also applies the corporate model to the lifecycle, but misses a couple of salient points.

When you pitch a prototype, you already have a level of funding, and you got that by having a good specification, so you’ve identified the problem, propose a solution and an estimate of the value. This works for regular effort and capitalized labor, the latter being a way for the company to budget better by managing lifecycle outside of normal operational costs.

CiG had a fairly good pitch and specification, but they completely hosed the scope when they thought they’d more money than they’d ever need and got spendy before they had a working flight model. Seriously, if I totally changed course on a project in the first year, a discreet word would be had and I’d be pushed someplace else. None of that ‘you’re fired!!!1!’ bullshit, but you don’t get to tell people what to do anymore.

The kickstarter was the pitch, the initial backers were the initial approving committee.

The other big glaring thing is that anything you pitch will have a completion date. Sure, you might sail past it, but after three or four, it’s time for the serious conversations about how ‘we’ get back on track and how much more is needed.

He’s right about the scaling, but again, what are those six hundred people doing? During the last ‘introduce the ship team’, they had around 25% of the staff working ships. How many are simply marketing now?

CiG’s only indication of lifecycle is the constant development/sales and a tentative beta date for SQ42 that is next quarter, which _everyone_ knows they’re going to miss.

They’ve not overdelivered once. They underdeliver, and do it late every time, unerringly. And they’ve had 7 years experience. Another three years and they’ll be *experts* at underdelivering late.

quote:

The moment my bro was sold on the game - "Are we watching Planet Earth?"

Agony Aunt posted:

Some of the comments defending CIG are really amazing. They are using Agile as an excuse for nothing getting delivered in line with the roadmap, as though by using agile you naturally fail all your targets.

No you fuckwits, this is not how agile works. Agile does not excuse you from cutting features every release. You absoloutely can publish a roadmap using Agile and hit most of your targets if your estimates are half decent.

If your estimates are a bit poor, ok, you'll miss some items but perhaps finish others early.

The only way you will consistently fail to hit targets is if you are consistently underestimating everything.

This should not be happening any more, since CIG, especially Erin, said they were going to stop being so aggressive with estimating tasks. It appears that is a load of rubbish.

peter gabriel posted:

I don't know much about Minecraft but I have the RTX Beta and I can say in 100% honesty that after playing around with it today Minecraft has better graphics than Star Citzern now, and that's frankly hilarious

Agony Aunt posted:

Same as with everything else. A massive disconnect between what CIG say will be delivered and what they can actually deliver.

What they promise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvKS70FDZV8&t=23s

What they will deliver:

peter gabriel posted:

I don't know much about Minecraft but I have the RTX Beta and I can say in 100% honesty that after playing around with it today Minecraft has better graphics than Star Citzern now, and that's frankly hilarious

TheBombPhilosopher posted:

These faces fill me with existential dread. They make me hate being alive. If I buy an Idris will they stop? I'm open to black mail at this point.




WHEN did this come out? 2019!?

How in TYOL 2019 can these abominable faces be in video game trailers when THESE....



came out in 2018!!?

.
.
.

Y'all thought I was going to go for a Death Stranding face didn't y'all? Nah, too easy.

Dementropy posted:

A succulent barbecue of meltdown drama as Star Citizens are told the first star system's completion is delayed 8+ months (yet again)

]somethingToDoWithMe [score hidden] 2 hours ago 

The groverhaus of video games.


[–]lemmingsnake [score hidden] 2 hours ago 

Thank you for reminding me of groverhaus, pretty great analogy for SC development

The Titanic posted:

This is a perfect summary.

Goes into technical details of staffing and planning behind the coding and development. There's considerable accountability, and different milestone avenues to meet as well.

Is CIG was guilty of anything, it would be missing the piece where a publisher is filling those shoes.
1: Identify the MVP
2: Ensure resources are aligned to constantly be moving toward that MVP, this is the capital project resourcing
3: Identify clear milestones to show progress to stakeholders
4: Organized delivery, this isn't just coding, but it's documentation, marketing components, training internal support staff, receiving bug reports and scoping them and prioritizing them into some release, managing the releases, etc

Going into any of these is a lot of work. Getting to the point where you start writing code is in itself a tremendous undertaking as well; and it also seems to be another area CIG skimped on.

The way the project goes, it seems like CR is either unaware of all of the myriad of pieces that have to happen behind the coding for a successful project to happen, or is aware of it but doesn't enjoy it so he's been trying to basically skip, or pretend he can run a massive project without this level of administration.

It might work with a tiny project, but anything like a video game where multiple devs are working on it and inevitably you're going to screw this up without these layers of administrative responsibility.

My bet would be he saw this later controlled by a publisher, saw it as "the enemy" instead of filling a critical role that his company otherwise would have needed to staff themselves, and basically cut that entire segment of a successful company out. He didn't staff it himself, and just left it out.

Star citizen is the result of these missing layers. Nearly a decade of development, a roadmap nobody believes in, releases constantly under delivering and being delivered far too late and way the gently caress outside of any normal development budget.

Can you save it? Probably not without a complete restart of the project and getting the right people to fill all necessary roles and ensure accountability from all levels of development.