Snazzy Frocks posted:

at this point i dont know why they dont just sneak in a bitcoin mining subroutine to take advantage of all these expensive rigs people built for this game.

Kosumo posted:

Santaballpitworm is not a joke!

Best Bi Geek Squid posted:

now announcing servermesh coin

by pegging your processor at 100%, it uh...makes the servers go better

ZekeNY posted:

And you're allowed to play for two hours a day, but you have to leave your PC on and connected to the servers 24/7.

ChaseSP posted:

They would not only accept it, but lambast anyone who doesn't keep the client idling for 24/7 as people who wants Star Citizen to fail.

The Hunter and the Child posted:

quote:

If they hadn't added that stupid loving penguin in 3.10 noone on this subreddit would have any reason to post screenshots of 3.10.. It's incredible how much they gain from adding all these mascots or dumb memes even in supposed "early alpha". You'd expect this stuff from a full released game, but no..

quote:

Pico is not only cute it is also very useful to test persistence as players move it in many different locations.

Screenshots do exist before Pico in case you did not noticed.

colonelwest posted:

I’m really enjoying the sudden appearance of all of these senior devs, project managers and CTOs giving their galaxy brained defenses of Star Citizen.

I rarely post on of the SC sub or anywhere on Reddit, but every time I see one of these, I always have to stop and ask how they’re ok with a project that is 5x over budget, 5 years late, has no defined scope or goals, and has no release date or even clear concept of what constitutes release? Like I’m sure some manager or executive would look at that kind of dumpster fire and just take a puff of their blunt, shrug their shoulders and say “it’s just like... Agile development man.”

Shockingly, I’ve never gotten an answer.

Project manager weighing in on the timeline hate I'm seeing.

Will probably get blown up for this but I wanted to talk about the idea that the dev team should know exactly when development will be complete. They shouldn't and they won't until it's nearly done.

I know the first argument is going to be "but I paid and they said it'd be done at a time. They should tell me when I'm getting it."

What you're referring to is called Waterfall methodology and is an outdated concept that assumes you can accurately predict a timeline for a project that is as complex as a development project. Marketing teams use dates because people like you won't buy in without them. Yes, it's morally dubious at best but it works.

The fact is, people absolutely suck at estimating things until they've gotten far enough to be able to accurately estimate the effort. At the kick starter stage, very few companies have ever gotten far enough to provide timelines that are reliable. That's the point. They don't have the funds and want to fund it, but you learn a lot in discovery phases and that includes the actual size, scope, and duration.

An effort the size of star citizen most likely will have dozens of small discoveries around features, professions, etc. Scope is constantly being defined at more and more granular levels, revealing more effort as they go. A 4 year effort easily will balloon into 8+ once all discoveries are held.

At best, you can create burn down charts for each team that are a simple calculation based on a complex model. They give you a date range but the larger the effort is, the exponentially worse the date range becomes.

They work like this. The team estimates that in order for them to complete "mining" it will take 120 points of effort. They complete 10 points a week, so it should take them 12 weeks (3 months). However, due to human error we slap a delta of +100-200% in the early stages - especially for a first time entry (like mining in this case). Our final range becomes 3-9 months for completion.

However, from a marketing perspective posting something like "mining will be here in 3 to 9 months!" Gets met with "omg they can't even narrow it down to a month. At least give us the quarter." So marketing in turn pressures the PM or team to give a better date, which will 100% be wrong at this stage and most likely the 3 month number.

As the agile team progresses they will add more points as new scope is uncovered, and remove points as tasks are completed. Roughly half way (5 weeks) into the effort, they should now decrease the human error delta by at least 50%. So now we should know within 50-100% of the current date range estimate. So if during the sprint cycles we added another 80 points, our new date would be 5 months with a +50-100% delta, our new date range would then be 5-15 months. But wait, didn't we say at most 9 months originally? Yes we did, but you always base your human error on current estimates, not where you started. At this point we can also start including a negative delta, meaning it might complete earlier but these models start getting more complex than I can type on reddit.

What started as a 3 month estimated, changed into a 5 month estimate with a potential of up to 15 months. If they made a roadmap of this, they'd get blown up on reddit over it (and have in this very thread). An agile roadmap is really a prioritization based roadmap that adjusts over time - and actually looks like what they have in their post.

This is why we often see something getting pushed out further and further, it's a standard part of the process and why I genuinely hate burndown charts as a "date range." Agile isn't intended to hit dates, it's meant to provide a consistent amount of production that is predictable. Features are meant to slip in an agile environment.

Anyway, the cycle keeps repeating and eventually our error delta will drop below 20%. This is when it's actually safe to start announcing a date, 20% is still a very large delta mind you but this is where crunch comes in. Crunch happens to make up that difference to ensure a date is hit, so consumers that demand exact dates to be hit can be happy. Side note, if you want to stop crunch stop demanding delivery dates.

Tl;dr: Highly experienced project managers couldn't accurately estimate a date for a portfolio this large, and don't expect them to any time soon. It's fine if you want to demand dates but you're directly fueling things like crunch and bad practices like misleading dates that you dislike by doing so.

The Titanic posted:

Sounds good.

Though as a PM when you're faced with not being able to estimate you have to dig in further and find out what the root cause of the issue is.

In this case, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that nobody knows what the heck Star Citizen is or is supposed to be. What is the mvp? Do we already have the mvp?

That alone, as a highly experienced project manager, should probably throw all of your red flags. Don't even worry about estimating anything, the project itself is a capital disaster that is irrecoverable without serious help and scope-check. Not to mention delivering to people what the hell it is they have to look forward to in the mvp release.

Mirificus posted:

Mirificus posted:

Mirificus posted:

quote:

Pico is not only cute it is also very useful to test persistence as players move it in many different locations.

Screenshots do exist before Pico in case you did not noticed.

Bubbacub posted:

Did people get bored of moving those stupid vending machines around? Can you still do that?

The Titanic posted:

Sounds good.

Though as a PM when you're faced with not being able to estimate you have to dig in further and find out what the root cause of the issue is.

In this case, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that nobody knows what the heck Star Citizen is or is supposed to be. What is the mvp? Do we already have the mvp?

That alone, as a highly experienced project manager, should probably throw all of your red flags. Don't even worry about estimating anything, the project itself is a capital disaster that is irrecoverable without serious help and scope-check. Not to mention delivering to people what the hell it is they have to look forward to in the mvp release.

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

I mean this is just manager Agile taken to extremes, but considering the Crobber changes his mind every 2 minutes about what's going to be in the game that should alarm anyone who's ever been near the software industry.

Popete posted:

Roberts is no longer in charge of this ship. What we're witnessing is development being done without a leader. No one can decide where to focus their efforts which is why they can't even agree on what to put into their roadmap. They're flailing hard and pushing out only the most basic content such as ships and new guns cause that's all they know.

Fargin Icehole posted:

Can anybody tell me the story of "That's him, in the wheelchair"? I feel like i missed that one.

Scruffpuff posted:

Same as when Roberts was in charge, TBH.

Popete posted:

Only difference is when Chris was running the show he was constantly promising ever more absurd and unattainable features. At least now they've staunched the bleeding and only have to get up off the couch and climb Mt. Everest.

Experimental Skin posted:

Do we have a realistic roadmap for this "getting off the couch" phase? I feel the "Ben gets off the couch" tech demo was somewhat unwieldy, and need more fleshing out.

Foo Diddley posted:

Okay, so some redditor said some poo poo about Derek that Derek considered to be legally actionable. He was gonna sue the guy, and in preparation to doing so doxxed the poo poo out of him. Posted a picture of a group of people, said "that's him in the wheelchair" and it's some loving kid. Some crippled kid, no less. Derek's like, no, no, he's 18, he's sueable. Half the thread is going, "Jesus Christ what the gently caress is wrong with you" and the other half's going "Oh yeah, do it, trip entirely over your dick, it'll be hilarious". I don't think Derek understood that absolutely no one agreed with him, but on the other hand he never did sue. Probably his lawyers talked him down. He has entire legal teams (yes, plural) whose only job seems to be talking him down from poo poo like this

Ffycchi posted:

I have cancer. The fact that I'm betting that I'll die before this game comes out says a lot...and that's with a prognosis of 5 years.

colonelwest posted:

Sometimes I think these people really are PMs, senior devs, CTOs etc... and that Star Citizen is a sort of wish fulfillment for them. They love to dream about being handed 300 million dollars by their boss or client and told “go gently caress around doing whatever for 10 years”.

NoMas posted:

Hi is the game coming out soon I Need to know immediately

Foo Diddley posted:

He has entire legal teams (yes, plural) whose only job seems to be talking him down from poo poo like this