Star Citizen: $48,000 is only $334/month for 12 years

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Star Citizen: $48,000 is only $334/month for 12 years

Mirificus: Oct 29, 2004; Kings need not raise their voices to be heard

My Eyes Are Open posted:

I used to be apart of the crowd that hated this game and called it a scam. Tbh, part of me still thinks it is. But at least its more of a reality than Chronicles of Eleria sooooo...

Besides the point.

I was wrong. I started watching a few videos about the game here and there which grew a healthy curiosity. I wanted to see what the hate was for with my own eyes instead of just being spoon fed bullshit... and it was bullshit.

I bought the Avenger Titan when it was on sale for $65. Flew it and started flying the MISC Freelancer which still hasn't been taken back but hey, its better than the Titan for sure.

I enjoy the game. A fair amount honestly. I've played EVE off and on for years, but this game tickles something that EVE didn't. Its the immersion, the (sometimes lovely) gameplay that actually exists and isn't just smoke and mirrors. This game has a gameplay loop and that's awesome.. it exists.. just not fully.

I get that itll probably never "finish" (as much as MMOs can be "finished"), and im ok with that.

I'm working on convincing my friends to give it a try and see it for what it is. They may like it and be pleasantly surprised like I was

quote:

Really nice analogy, which inspires me to expand it just a bit;

First we had no car we could actually drive, but we could see cars we owned in our garage. We could start them up, but we couldn't drive them an inch. We knew at some point that we would be able to drive our own cars (and other cars) once everything was ready. Thankfully, we all had driving simulators in our garages, but only for some small cars.

Finally, the 'world' was ready and we got the first generations of drivable cars and one simple test track. The tarmac was not laid down all that well. The car would break down a lot, and the unresponsive car with the poor track made things feel slow, bumpy, difficult. There wasn't a whole lot beyond the test track, though a nice lady named Tessa Bannister used to ask us to run errands for her in the car. We could also visit a nice garage (CryAstro) for repairs or fuel, but mostly people hung out at the test track.

We started getting different cars to test. The track grew, and eventually we had a few roads going out to a city that was under construction. The cars became more refined with each new model release. The road surfaces started improving. Some people thought the cars turned TOO well, but we enjoyed it all the same.

In 3.0, they released all kinds of new places to go in your car. Mountain passes, forest lanes, super highways, desolate places. The world really opened up here.

In 3.6, they changed the driving model so you had to drive with your feet whilst facing backward as a capuchin monkey slammed cymbals on your ears. This was an attempt to make driving seem more 'realistic', but people mostly hated it. They killed it as of 3.7. Some loved it, and urged us all to 'GitGud'.

Current day: Cars are slick and amazing. There are single-seater F1 style cars and huge touring party buses that cost a mint. We've noticed that the more modern cars are better made, and visibility has improved. The tarmac is gorgeous. There are lots of things to do with your cars such as ride-share driving, delivering packages, picking up lost or stranded people, ferrying supplies, etc. You can get lost and enjoy a picnic in some remote hilltop location or enjoy the twisties in the local mountains, or just park it near the beach for some amazing sunset shots. And, we're all awaiting the new State is opening up soon, Pyro.
ROADTRIP!

quote:

Yep. Cyberpunk has been in development about as long as Star Citizen (Look at the date of the trailer). People rave about it, but few have actually played it. At least I can play this game. I've been playing it for years now watching grow and evolve.

People have more ships than they do crew. So you can always ask in chat to take a tour of a big ship. They'll show it off like a proud father shows off their baby. It costs nothing, and you can experience the same gameplay.

You can rent to earn more money (once you learn the controls and the basics). It takes less than an hour to earn enough to rent a better ship. That guy bought his favorite ship in a week.

Even in an Aurora starter ship you can earn 200k aUEC an hour. Using that method and playing 3 hours a day, you can get the best fighter in 3 days.

One thing to keep in mind with the expensive ships is the big ships are designed for a lot of people. Flying one by yourself is like piloting an aircraft carrier by yourself. It kinda defeats the whole purpose. A Valkyrie costs $375, and that's expensive! But it's a drop ship. What good is a dropship without troops? It holds 20 people which is $18.75 per person. Still expensive but more reasonable & it's funding the game. Earning it in game (with just a starter ship) will take about 8 days.

If money making is what you want, this guy earned 5.7 million in a day (475k/hour). It's riskier (server crashes and you all your cargo). But if you can put in hours like that, even the most expensive ship available in game takes 4 days.

Star Citizen like many MMOs will never truly be 'finished' as long as the interest is there, but they have their plans to release the game. It's in the video Road to Release.

There's some crazy action if you join an org, Players are fighting together, recreating stuff like D-Day, having giant dogfight battles, and taking out capital ships.
Good luck! Remember it's still an incomplete alpha that's years from release. They can potentially wipe things if they need to. There will be bugs and missing features. Bugs can be annoying as hell...but there's a ton of fun to be had.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 19:15

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# ? Jun 6, 2024 16:40

Kosumo: Apr 9, 2016

Blue On Blue posted:

This quote doesn�t even need changing. It already says SC

Good job Chris you�ve managed to replicate your idiotic management mistakes continually for the past 20 years , to a T

But he said it had never been done before! I don't believe it but it seems that Chris Roberts lied to me

# ? Jul 7, 2020 19:25

Dwesa: Jul 19, 2016; Maybe I'll go where I can see stars

Mirificus posted:

I used to be apart of the crowd that hated this game and called it a scam. Tbh, part of me still thinks it is. But at least its more of a reality than Chronicles of Eleria sooooo...

Scam me once, shame on me. Scam me twice... but at least this scam is more of a reality than the first one sooooo...

# ? Jul 7, 2020 19:27

BumbleOne: Jul 1, 2018; by Fluffdaddy

so...

this game will be the greatest game ever, right?
what do you think will be the average score on metacritic.

and were is sarsa by the way...

# ? Jul 7, 2020 20:20

Zazz Razzamatazz: Apr 19, 2016; by sebmojo

Quavers posted:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citizens/17677-This-Week-In-Star-Citizen

On Wednesday, we�re kicking off the Foundation Festival � celebrating humanity�s coming together by honoring the wonderful Star Citizen community and all the incredible things we�ve built both in the �verse and here on Earth.

Another ship sale?

The "Foundation Festival"?

OooOOooo... someone saw that Foundation trailer a couple of weeks ago...

# ? Jul 7, 2020 20:24

Mirificus: Oct 29, 2004; Kings need not raise their voices to be heard

quote:

I'm the lead network engineer for a software development team at a well-known enterprise ISP, and from what I've read about their server meshing strategy, they're on the right track. I've read everything Chad McKinney and Clive Johnson have said publicly on meshing, and they appear to know what they're doing.

Frankly no "top network engineer" is going to magically have the answers for this implementation because this has a very unique set of technical requirements and requires a lot of R&D and prototyping. Software-driven networking is hot right now and the irony is that it's the fresh faces in the industry that are advancing the technology since the old guard tend to still be stuck in hardware and lower-layer protocols. You want cross-discipline engineers and college grads working on this stuff.

Lastly, CIG/CR doesn't have a "rep" in the networking industry, lol, that's utter fabricated bullshit. There is nothing that would prevent any of my colleagues or other skilled professionals I know from working at CIG. At the end of the day, if they have an interesting challenge and the budget to afford the salary requirements (and I think it's safe to say both are true) then there's no reason not to work for them.

So, scuttle off to your hole, you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

quote:

quote:
I have no idea what the comment you replied to said since it was removed by the mods

u/gottagutfeeling told Chad that CIG can't obtain any "top network engineers" to pull off any of the things he's describing since CIG and CR have an "lovely reputation in the industry" and CIG's team consists of "rejects, has-beens, and students". I may have paraphrased slightly but that's pretty close to what was said.

quote:
And what is it exactly that you do?

My work title is "Engineer III". Ultimately I'm a network solutions engineer, formerly a network engineer. I work in Agile, (using Scrum) and JIRA, leading a development team where I design automation solutions using subsumption architecture which support and maintain over 100,000 enterprise network devices for a fairly large enterprise ISP, which includes routers, switches, servers, load-balancers, firewalls, etc and encompasses everything from security and standards compliance checks and remediation to performance monitoring and automated troubleshooting and resolution.

But that's not really even the point. In order to fulfill my role, I'm a SME on software-driven networking solutions which I've been trained and certified on by multiple vendors, where I'm responsible for some 17,000 meshed nodes (and rising). These devices balance load between themselves, exchange ownership of data flows and sessions, access shared databases, and analyze network traffic in real-time in order to optimize performance, performing much of the behavior that CIG is looking to employ in their own server-meshing design.

I'm not a game network programmer, but it's a hobby interest of mine and something I've studied for some years. My first gold on reddit came from a dissemination of the deterministic-lockstep network model of Heroes of the Storm and why it impacted game frame rate. I read just about any document on game network programming that I can find and when a game network programmer shows up at GDC and does a talk, I'm always eager to hear what they say.

Additionally, I'm a member of a group of modders reverse-engineering Star Citizen as "the network guy" on the team. I've done a fair bit of packet capture and analysis of Star Citizen's network traffic and I have access to a few things from various leaks that I really cannot admit publicly to having, giving me some first-hand knowledge that isn't widely available to the rest of the community. I know it's arrogant and presumptuous of me to expect anyone to believe that without any further detail, but that's as much as I can say, so take it as you will.

So, there you go. It's funny, when I just mention my work role, it's an "appeal to authority", but when I explain what it is I do, it seems self-centered. �\_(ツ)_/�

Either way, I believe I'm qualified to say that given what I've heard out of CIG in terms of their plans for meshing and what I've seen first-hand indicates that they have a sound technical strategy and are pursuing perfectly valid solutions. There are other well-qualified individuals on this subreddit (almost certainly some with greater qualifications than mine) who are free to share their own conclusions on the subject, and I'd be interested to hear from them too.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 20:24

The Super-Id: Nov 9, 2005; "You know it's what you really want."; Grimey Drawer

Bumble He posted:

so...

this game will be the greatest game ever, right?
what do you think will be the average score on metacritic.

and were is sarsa by the way...

1 point for every star system that makes it into the game. So I'm betting on a score of something like .9

# ? Jul 7, 2020 20:28

central dogma: Feb 25, 2012; Come to the Undead Settlement in the next 20 mins if u want an ash kicking

I get irrationally annoyed every time I see " 'verse ". Especially from Croberts. That got popular on Firefly right? It weirdly doesn't bother me when they say it there.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 20:34

XK: Jul 9, 2001; Star Citizen is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it's fidelity when you look out your window or when you watch youtube

Mirificus posted:

Additionally, I'm a member of a group of modders reverse-engineering Star Citizen as "the network guy" on the team. I've done a fair bit of packet capture and analysis of Star Citizen's network traffic and I have access to a few things from various leaks that I really cannot admit publicly to having, giving me some first-hand knowledge that isn't widely available to the rest of the community. I know it's arrogant and presumptuous of me to expect anyone to believe that without any further detail, but that's as much as I can say, so take it as you will.

So, there you go. It's funny, when I just mention my work role, it's an "appeal to authority", but when I explain what it is I do, it seems self-centered. �\_(ツ)_/�

Either way, I believe I'm qualified to say that given what I've heard out of CIG in terms of their plans for meshing and what I've seen first-hand indicates that they have a sound technical strategy and are pursuing perfectly valid solutions. There are other well-qualified individuals on this subreddit (almost certainly some with greater qualifications than mine) who are free to share their own conclusions on the subject, and I'd be interested to hear from them too.

[/quote]

My family uses *brand* laundry detergent, because the special formula micro encapsulates grime while protecting your fabrics.

That's right Barbara! *brand* scientists are brilliant geniuses. Everything they say is amazing and revolutionary. All data indicates their plans are perfectly sound and valid.

I consider myself an expert in this subject.

XK fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Jul 7, 2020

# ? Jul 7, 2020 20:44

HorseBodyInspector: Dec 14, 2018

Mirificus posted:

...
...
work in Agile, (using Scrum) and JIRA, leading a development team where I design automation solutions using subsumption architecture which support and maintain over 100,000 enterprise network devices

I am lost, WTF is "subsumption architecture" in networking solutions ?

# ? Jul 7, 2020 20:49

ggangensis: Aug 24, 2018

central dogma posted:

I get irrationally annoyed every time I see " 'verse ". Especially from Croberts. That got popular on Firefly right? It weirdly doesn't bother me when they say it there.

Never heard it consciously in Firefly, but now you're mentioning it (well, and I googled it) it seems to be true. *sigh*... is there anything Chris came up with himself?

# ? Jul 7, 2020 20:58

The Super-Id: Nov 9, 2005; "You know it's what you really want."; Grimey Drawer

ggangensis posted:

Never heard it consciously in Firefly, but now you're mentioning it (well, and I googled it) it seems to be true. *sigh*... is there anything Chris came up with himself?

Space bulldozers.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 21:01

Snazzy Frocks: Mar 31, 2003; Scratchmo

pretty sure its all an attempt to appeal to the blueballed firefly nerds

# ? Jul 7, 2020 21:01

ggangensis: Aug 24, 2018

Mirificus posted:

There's some crazy action if you join an org, Players are fighting together, recreating stuff like D-Day, having giant dogfight battles, and taking out capital ships.

That D-Day clip is totally awesome. But why is it just 30 seconds long? Did he have to cut it because someone fell through the map? And what is this, even? Some people running towards nothing with some explosions going on. Great. Does anyone remember the Return to Castle Wolfenstein (rel. date: 2001) beach map? A match on this map doesn't look half as stupid as this video. And you know, the players have actual goals there instead LARPing towards nothing.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 21:12

ggangensis: Aug 24, 2018

The Super-Id posted:

Space bulldozers.

Touch�

# ? Jul 7, 2020 21:12

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

Snazzy Frocks posted:

~~pretty sure~~ its all an attempt to appeal to ~~the~~ blueballed ~~firefly~~ nerds

# ? Jul 7, 2020 21:16

Foo Diddley: Oct 29, 2011; cat

ggangensis posted:

That D-Day clip is totally awesome. But why is it just 30 seconds long? Did he have to cut it because someone fell through the map? And what is this, even? Some people running towards nothing with some explosions going on. Great. Does anyone remember the Return to Castle Wolfenstein (rel. date: 2001) beach map? A match on this map doesn't look half as stupid as this video. And you know, the players have actual goals there instead LARPing towards nothing.

Dude, I used to punish at Enemy Territory. It had the same map, I think. What a great game; obviously no star citizen ever played it or they'd know just how weak this poo poo is

# ? Jul 7, 2020 21:17

marumaru: May 20, 2013

central dogma posted:

I get irrationally annoyed every time I see " 'verse ". Especially from Croberts. That got popular on Firefly right? It weirdly doesn't bother me when they say it there.

the problem is that they're ripping it off Firefly. shamelessly.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 21:25

Jobbo_Fett: Mar 7, 2014; Slava Ukrayini; Clapping Larry

ggangensis posted:

That D-Day clip is totally awesome. But why is it just 30 seconds long? Did he have to cut it because someone fell through the map? And what is this, even? Some people running towards nothing with some explosions going on. Great. Does anyone remember the Return to Castle Wolfenstein (rel. date: 2001) beach map? A match on this map doesn't look half as stupid as this video. And you know, the players have actual goals there instead LARPing towards nothing.

Problems with the D-Day video:

-Main protag looks like he needs to take a poo poo.
-Forgot how to run like a normal person.
-Doesn't shoot, ever
-Survives random explosion 4 feet in front and 2 feet to his left.
-If there are physics somewhere, I can't see them.
-Rocks look like poo poo.
-Main protag doesn't shoot the idiot with the box.
-No sense of scale until the end, and we're looking at a canyon.
-THERES NOTHING IMPORTANT IN THE CANYON

# ? Jul 7, 2020 21:29

Dwesa: Jul 19, 2016; Maybe I'll go where I can see stars

Mirificus posted:

My work title is "Engineer III". Ultimately I'm a network solutions engineer, formerly a network engineer... yadda yadda yadda

Yeah well, it's all cool and nice, but I would like to know amount of money he spent on spaceship jpgs to estimate size of his sunk cost regret.

Dwesa fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Jul 7, 2020

# ? Jul 7, 2020 21:58

queef anxiety: Mar 4, 2009; yeah

I last played on one of those free fly events when they announced a mine layer ship or something because croberts had snorted the last 3 months jpeg sales. Is game out yet? Is that alien trader ship that's been sold for years a real thing yet? Is his wife still doing weird news report announcement videos? I've missed so much

# ? Jul 7, 2020 22:11

Contingency: Jun 2, 2007; MURDERER

XK posted:

My family uses *brand* laundry detergent, because the special formula micro encapsulates grime while protecting your fabrics.

That's right Barbara! *brand* scientists are brilliant geniuses. Everything they say is amazing and revolutionary. All data indicates their plans are perfectly sound and valid.

I consider myself an expert in this subject.

Not that you guys would know any better, but I've got a year of Cisco ACI under my belt and being able to spin up a virtual switch is no different from writing netcode for a FPS MMO. I've looked at some packets with Wireshark and all CIG has to do is spin up more servers. Checkmate goonailures :smug:

# ? Jul 7, 2020 22:14

Thoatse: Feb 29, 2016; Lol said the scorpion, lmao

Zazz Razzamatazz posted:

The "Foundation Festival"?

OooOOooo... someone saw that Foundation trailer a couple of weeks ago...

lmao this is almost certainly exactly what happened

# ? Jul 7, 2020 22:37

ggangensis: Aug 24, 2018

Thoatse posted:

lmao this is almost certainly exactly what happened

Must be hard for Chris to be blacklisted from Hollywood. Seeing all these good Sci-Fi films coming out, while he is forced to watch from the sidelines with Wing Commander - The Movie being his magnum opus. Well, at least he can shoehorn some ideas ripped from those movies into his rotting carcass of a game. Better than nothing I guess.

Hope we see the conclusion to this mess sooner than later, though. Since Chris and Sandi went dark the entertainment value of Star Citizen deteriorated rapidly.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 22:56

SpitefulHammer: Dec 27, 2012

Can anyone explain to me why they are so obsessed with 'Bartender AI' that they've Sunk years of dev time, and probably millions into it? What does it have to do with flying spaceships?

# ? Jul 7, 2020 23:05

Fashionable Jorts: Jan 18, 2010; Maybe if I'm busy it could keep me from you

SpitefulHammer posted:

Can anyone explain to me why they are so obsessed with 'Bartender AI' that they've Sunk years of dev time, and probably millions into it? What does it have to do with flying spaceships?

IMMERSION

# ? Jul 7, 2020 23:09

shrach: Jan 10, 2004; daylight ssssaving time

SpitefulHammer posted:

Can anyone explain to me why they are so obsessed with 'Bartender AI' that they've Sunk years of dev time, and probably millions into it? What does it have to do with flying spaceships?

The real answer is funnier than any joke answers. They believe the Bartender AI is going to be so sentient it will become self-aware and want to better itself and leave its job as a bartender and fulfil all the other AI roles in the game. They will become the traders and the pirates once they have earned enough bartending to venture out into the 'Verse. Then they will just spawn more bartenders until the game is rich with a diverse population of sentient AI that populates the 'Verse in a 10:1 AI:Human ratio.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 23:12

colonelwest: Jun 30, 2018

SpitefulHammer posted:

Can anyone explain to me why they are so obsessed with 'Bartender AI' that they've Sunk years of dev time, and probably millions into it? What does it have to do with flying spaceships?

Chis saw the first Star Wars movie and is obsessed with seedy bars. He thinks every space adventure has start in a bar, where you go up and order a drink and then go exchange quippy dialogue with some shady character sitting in the corner booth. So of course that whole experience has to be as fidelitious as possible and require millions of dollars and thousands of hours of labor and MoCap footage, even though it�s completely peripheral to what is supposed to be a space game.

colonelwest fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Jul 7, 2020

# ? Jul 7, 2020 23:26

Nicholas: Mar 7, 2001; Were those not fine days, when we drank of clear honey, and spoke in calm tones of our love for the stuff?

Pixelate posted:

Other ones worth trying if anyone fancies:

Twin Brothers Production Inc (CA)

Going by Derek's old list

vgdc lienholding llc (CA)

The affiliate used to engage Firesprite / Icesprite to make a game etc.

Checking this against the +150k loan data, there are results but the businesses are almost certainly unrelated.

code:

  /roberts?\W?space/i
  /cloud\W?imp/i
  /\Wcig?\W/i
  /gemini\W?42/i
  /twin\W?bro/i
  /vgdc/i
  /firesprite/i
  /icesprite/i
  /ascendant/i

Nicholas fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jul 7, 2020

# ? Jul 7, 2020 23:28

ggangensis: Aug 24, 2018

shrach posted:

The real answer is funnier than any joke answers. They believe the Bartender AI is going to be so sentient it will become self-aware and want to better itself and leave its job as a bartender and fulfil all the other AI roles in the game. They will become the traders and the pirates once they have earned enough bartending to venture out into the 'Verse. Then they will just spawn more bartenders until the game is rich with a diverse population of sentient AI that populates the 'Verse in a 10:1 AI:Human ratio.

You know, the bartender AI forms the basis for all other NPCs, be it pirates, traders military guys, civilians. If the bartender is in place, everything else will come automagically.

In reality: Their AI tries to follow a "one size fits all"-approach. You know, they could implement different decision trees and pathing for different NPC-types in different scenarios. That would be the sane thing to do. However, they need something to explain why another 15 millions went down the drain while hypnotizing the remaining backers with technobabble along the way.

The goal of using the same AI code for every NPC in the game is indeed one of the more idiotic goals CIG set for themselves. This is limiting, overly complicated and the end-result will be worse than multiple well tested and well thought out decision trees. Add a bit of randomness and you get your "unique" AI behavior, like, you know, other games do it.
If anyone has a bit of spare time on his/her hands and is interested in the topic, the TU Delft has the Thesis of Jan Paul van Waveren (the guy who wrote a lot of the AI and pathing routines for Quake 3) available. Ch. 6 is interesting, and 9.3 (bot preferences!). This was pretty advanced stuff for 1999 (afaik in UT, the mapper still had to layout bot paths for each map) and is probably still common place.

tl;dr: It doesn't make sense to take CIG seriously. I believe them that they can pull off an advanced AI when I see a design document with at least as much depth as the MrElusive-Thesis. Also, I'll buy an Idris when their AI ever reaches a state where it is comparable to, let's say Quake 3 bots. I don't expect Alien: Isolation or Last of Us AI, but at least something that's not braindead and buggy. And you can quote me on that Idris.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 23:40

Nicholas: Mar 7, 2001; Were those not fine days, when we drank of clear honey, and spoke in calm tones of our love for the stuff?

its extra stupid because term "AI" in games is a very limited use of the general meaning. It's just behavioral selection, decision trees, or state machines, with little (if any) actual "learning" involved.

Focusing on the bartender as the basis for all other AI makes zero sense because they have the most limited set of interactions and path finding requirements, and their environment (standing behind a bar) is completely static, without even other NPC's to interact with. They don't use weapons, or fly ships, or uh, do anything really.

A bartender is literally a dialog tree, and a buy (not even sell!) interface. Maybe it can "mix a drink" which is just a canned series of animations.

If their AI was whatever great thing they are claiming it is, it'd make a lot more sense to show it off as an AI companion / pet that could assist you in the actual game, wherever you went and were doing. Again, like flying, mining, gun-fighting, bounty hunting, even just following you around and saying contextual things, like a soft tutorial.

It's like making wheel and claiming it's the "basis" of a formula 1 car. They haven't even gotten started yet.

Nicholas fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Jul 8, 2020

# ? Jul 7, 2020 23:56

SpitefulHammer: Dec 27, 2012

colonelwest posted:

Chis saw the first Star Wars movie and is obsessed with seedy bars. He thinks every space adventure has start in a bar, where you go up and order a drink and then go exchange quippy dialogue with some shady character sitting in the corner booth. So of course that whole experience has to be as fidelitious as possible and require millions of dollars and thousands of hours of labor and MoCap footage, even though it’s completely peripheral to what is supposed to be a space game.

This sort of makes sense - but he's not making a movie, and I doubt most players will spend any time there just like most people ran through the clubs in Mass Effect. Also, from the clip I saw the bigger issue was the complete lack of any ambience or atmosphere in terms of immersion - flatly lit, empty, sterile room with a Bethesda-level animated npc.

In terms of using Bartender AI for everything, I'm expecting ridiculous glitches where enemy pilots bug out mid-combat and fly across the galaxy to make cocktails.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 00:06

AbstractNapper: Jun 5, 2011; I can help

You'd think that with 500 employees they would have them play as the NPCs, 24/7, and be done with this AI business they keep failing at.

Just fake it in the worst way possible. Not like the backers are likely to wise up to it.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 00:06

Nicholas: Mar 7, 2001; Were those not fine days, when we drank of clear honey, and spoke in calm tones of our love for the stuff?

A convincing bartender NPC takes just slightly more dev effort than a vending machine, and it's taken CIG over 3 years to do it.

edit - if there were a famous Hollywood vending machine I have no doubt that Chris would have tried to hire it for mo-cap sessions.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 00:11

Popete: Oct 6, 2009; This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs; Grimey Drawer

9 years in and they can't even get their NPCs to not t-pose and we are being told they are working on ground breaking life like AI, lol.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 00:16

Spiderdrake: May 12, 2001

The important thing for CIG is to find excuses and stories their dumb-dumbs find agreeable. We're not in the fold, so it all looks like nonsense to us.

Imagine yourself in the shoes of like, a person that thinks Ready Player One was a good movie and what would appeal to such a brain.

Nicholas posted:

edit - if there were a famous Hollywood vending machine I have no doubt that Chris would have tried to hire it for mo-cap sessions.

Oreo bot wouldn't lower itself to such a trash production.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 00:18

Blue On Blue: Nov 14, 2012

AbstractNapper posted:

You'd think that with 500 employees they would have them play as the NPCs, 24/7, and be done with this AI business they keep failing at.

Just fake it in the worst way possible. Not like the backers are likely to wise up to it.

you must have forgotten one of the live streams they did where it was all scripted action sequences conducted by employees

i think it was when they were trying to hype of star marine, might even have been before star marine became it's own thing and everyone thought it was a part of the 'sc world'

all i can recall is the cringy dialogue like 'stay frost and check those corners!' while the players moved into their pre-planned positions and then shot at the walls and ceiling where the other player team was supposed to be

# ? Jul 8, 2020 00:24

colonelwest: Jun 30, 2018

SpitefulHammer posted:

This sort of makes sense - but he's not making a movie, and I doubt most players will spend any time there just like most people ran through the clubs in Mass Effect. Also, from the clip I saw the bigger issue was the complete lack of any ambience or atmosphere in terms of immersion - flatly lit, empty, sterile room with a Bethesda-level animated npc.

In terms of using Bartender AI for everything, I'm expecting ridiculous glitches where enemy pilots bug out mid-combat and fly across the galaxy to make cocktails.

Oh yeah it�s not logical at all, but it�s how Chris thinks and his obsession with making everything �cinematic� and his puerile conception of what that means seeps into every facet of the game. In an MMO you want a streamlined mission system, and not be forced to land on a planet, take a train to a bar, talk to an NPC, take a train back to your ship, and then fly 20 minutes to the mission location.

All of that would be fine enough as a one-off experience in a single player game, but in MMOs people will have to do these things hundreds or thousands of times. Then of course all of this tedium is compounded by CIG�s horrible incompetence; to the point that even the tedious �cinematic� minutiae that they�ve spent years on while the core of the game rots, is hilariously broken and amateurish.

All of the �bartender AI� nonsense is just a smokescreen for the backers that tries to handwave why they�ve spent so much time and money on pointless bullshit. Even the braintrust at CIG doesn�t actually believe that any of it will translate to other parts of the game.

colonelwest fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Jul 8, 2020

# ? Jul 8, 2020 00:28

Thoatse: Feb 29, 2016; Lol said the scorpion, lmao

The Titanic posted:

The bestest black ferrets

Here's some more doing their best Chris Roberts impersonations, hopes the bilge pump goes brrrrrr and you're back to shipshape soon

https://i.imgur.com/UFAv96k.mp4

https://i.imgur.com/yNjduNR.mp4

https://i.imgur.com/8vCpFuH.mp4

...some general ferret cuteness

https://i.imgur.com/8hdi1IP.gifv

https://i.imgur.com/BuZSexN.gifv

and a flying ferret to lift your spirits :v:

https://i.imgur.com/kiaLdmV.mp4

Thoatse fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Jul 8, 2020

# ? Jul 8, 2020 00:43

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 6, 2024 16:40

cmdrk: Jun 10, 2013

Contingency posted:

Not that you guys would know any better, but I've got a year of Cisco ACI under my belt and being able to spin up a virtual switch is no different from writing netcode for a FPS MMO. I've looked at some packets with Wireshark and all CIG has to do is spin up more servers. Checkmate goonailures

I'm no John Videogames, but I'd love to do some packet/network analysis of SC to see just how bad it is. I think what you _could_ learn is things like:
- just how hosed is their wire protocol? I assume they either completely reimplemented TCP from scratch but with FIDELITY or they've purchased some really miserable JSON RPC middleware for it. or both. or its just generic cryengine networking with absolutely nothing done to it and server meshing and uint42 is a scam (surprise!)
- how much information is leaked to the client? again I assume there is MUCH ~~extraneous~~ fidelitous information sent to the client that someone could use to get the very personal inner feelings about the T-posed AI bartender standing on the bench over there.
- how many servers are they actually running? given some of the CIG's comments about AWS/EC2 from earlier in the thread, i'd be really surprised if they've actually tried to scale anything. my guess is everything jammed into is ONE BIG rear end X1 instance with no firewall whatsoever.

okay i'm interested. what's the bare rear end minimum i need to pay for a greymarket game account?

# ? Jul 8, 2020 00:44

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Star Citizen: $48,000 is only $334/month for 12 years

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