Bofast posted:

Gynovore posted:

I think Cracked was always all freelance, not sure. I know Seanbaby used to write for them but not anymore.

Sometimes this community surprises me... did you miss it? posted:

I rarely make new threads because there are plenty of others who are observant and like to get in there first and I'm happy to join their discussions.. but the watchers seem to have missed something monumental this time... when it arrives it's going to be a true game changer.



Deformable structures in the game, ships that bend and deform with damage/impact. No more 'auto breaking off' of a hit point pre-determined damaged part, the structure itself will have material properties that persist. Soft body deformations. Wings, engine nacelles and landing gear bent, mangled and hanging off. The ships hull actually deforms and affects the structural integrity. Ships with cracks and holes in them.

In an online MMO!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGIKKpZJDeg

quote:

I stopped being excited for this kind of "feature talk". I want actual results. This is nice and all but if I can't see it in game it's pointless. At this point in time I ask myself when, way before any other question.

Mirificus posted:

Rotten Red Rod posted:

Man that structural damage will be a GAME CHANGER in a space shooter where most of the time you can't clearly see the other ships you're fighting to actually notice the damage they're taking!

Don Gato posted:

I'm pretty sure noted flop MMO all points bulletin had that kind of damage way back in 2010.

quote:

Erm.. sorry. Help me out... which of those games has billion kilometre cubed play space? Millions of square kilometres of open ground play space? Fruit trees? I have played all versions of ARMA and I have never seen soft body deformation in it. I haven't even seen a tree damaged by a tank shell explosion outside of mods, I know they have damage states for vegetation, they are listed here: https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3:_Vegetation_P3D. I know there is a guy who made a fire propagation and building destruction mod for ARMA 3 but it is not in the released game. Do any of the games you mention have an NPC background cast of 9 NPC's to every player - or more if you happen to come into a system all by your lonesome - 9 NPC's would make the place look a bit deserted no? Mag stripping? Volumetric clouds and dynamic weather? Millions of cargo boxes that get scraped and dented?

You mention GTA - that's interesting because I've played all the GTA's for hundreds of hours and I know that after thousands of millions in sales and decades of iterating on the same game and engine that you have a loading screen to go into a building. You have to go to a full screen menu to use a computer, no way to see anyone come in behind you in multiplayer mode - but of course no-one can, can they? Electrically driven belt fed machine guns on helicopters and rocket launchers can't break plate glass windows, or even leave a mark - which is OK since you can't see any player through those windows. Despite decades of central locking and remote immobilisers in the real world you still smash a car window (which magically disappears) and there is no interior to the cars to move around in so you don't miss the lack of glass fragments anyway. There is no bending and squashing in any GTA at all, there are fairly low detailed models and there is a set of damage state models that spawn in on impact which is why there are so few car models (because each has many damage state versions of it) and as soon as you hijack one you suddenly see dozens of the same model around the place because for every car you see on the street there is about 10 - 20 damage state cars for that model loaded into memory ready to instantly replace the car that get's 'damaged'.

Just saying, this is not an e-peen thing, each is their own unique entity... it's just... like for like? Apples to apples?

I'm not sure that you understood real time in engine soft body deformation and the difference between it and pre-made damage states. Soft body deformation means that when you go lie down in your ships bed an imprint is left on the sheets and pillow, and it remains there until the next time something deforms it.

Otherwise I agree, if they say they can and will do it, they will... but the scope is a little different to all the ones you mention. Also 'destructible' is not the same as 'deformable' - does War Thunder put you into the game with planes that were damaged in your last play session, in the same state you left them? Can you walk around inside the bombers? Games have multi-damage state models that load instantly so fast you think it is the actual damage occurring in real time. They can do that because their models and environment are so very simple and low detail.

When indeed? I prefer to look at it this way - no matter how long, if not CIG who would even try at this scale? Of course we don't know because no developer has created a first person universe at this scale before.

...
[EDIT] I didn't know anything about War Thunder but I went off to do some digging. Watched Youtube gameplay videos - comparing it to Star Citizen level of detail is kinda laughable. I found this: https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/397449-spalling-damage-and-armor-deformation/

quote:

Among all the differences between WOT and this game, the most fundamental one in ground battles is that WT doesn't use HP system (vehicle-wise at least), but relies on (arguably) realistic model of ballistics and damage factors one would expect in a tank battle game.

However, I think that the game as it is now, has ignoring all else, two flaws.

1: There is no spalling damage.

Near penetrations should yield at least small damage to crew and components as spalling was, and still is, a real concept in armored warfare. For the unknowledgeable, spalling, is an effect where, due to partial or near penetration, the armor material in the area where the vehicle was hit is sent flying, propelled by the force of the projectile, turning your greatest ally, your armor, into your undoing as your crew gets covered by fast flying shrapnel torn off from the insides of the armor. The determinant factor in this is armor steel hardness (the harder the armor, the more difficult it is to penetrate, but this also means more frequent and severe spalling), and the caliber, and force of the projectile hitting the vehicle.

The reason I believe spalling should be implemented is to give people who get uptiered (as do often I in my panthers, one tiger II is usually enough to lock me down and render me utterly impossible to fight back). Spalling should cause damage to the insides that is, I have already mentioned, dependent on armor hardness and how far, and with what force, the vehicle was hit. I believe this would make the playerbase much happier as the battles wouldn't simply devolve into the contest of luck determinant whether you got favorable, or unfavorable matchmaking.

2: There is no armor damage/deformation.

Hitting several times in one place should make the armor yield, depending on what area was hit. This is not really a difficult concept and I am sure everyone here understands that a metal plate bulged out of it's shape will have it's AP resistance severely diminished, as tanks often rely not only on the thickness of their armor, but also it's shape. Again this would provide players with unfavorable matchup a fighting chance and would even out the spikes between different vehicle BRs.

War Thunder has no geometry inside any vehicle, there are no player manipulated controls, it is just simulated. There is no player model avatar animated. It is basically a painted shell. In the planes you have a dashboard for a cockpit, that's it. There is no superstructure modelled under that skin.

...
I've searched and there seems to be no released game that has a real time in engine soft body deformation system in an open world environment. There are addons for it in Unreal Engine 4 and 5 but they are limited in scope and aren't used in any released game. Here's a demo of it in UE4. Notice that the demos are all very small scale, with very simple models... yet this is what John Crewe was talking about them putting into Star Citizen. Imagine your ship behaving like the white car, imagine being inside it when it does crumple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZdHC2XYlG4

Mirificus posted:

cmdrk posted:

star citizen: imagine the poople, living life in grief

Mirificus posted:

quote:
I stopped being excited for this kind of "feature talk". I want actual results. This is nice and all but if I can't see it in game it's pointless. At this point in time I ask myself when, way before any other question.

cmdrk posted:

star citizen: imagine

quote:

If Interested in SC or space themed mmo experiences. Would you appreciate extensive content that elaborated more on gore/nudity and displayed visually further w/elaborate medical play, wounds/dismemberment, drug use etc if there was a menu filter available & done appropriately w/out excessive use?

Thoatse posted:

lmao full circle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJ9TcGxhNY

Blue On Blue posted:

remember when for years they had the stupid space station ring as a massive bug, it would clip through stuff, jitter and stutter like a clock with palsy, or rotate on the wrong axis, and the time someone figure out how to enter it like a cockpit and pilot it around

Jonny Shiloh posted:

Here's the first one she mentions, enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxxlrKlLO9g&ab_channel=GamersNexus

pisshead posted:

Why can't you swim in zero g? There's air to push against, that's how birds fly.

akkristor posted:

you 'can', but not well.

Air doesn't offer enough resistance to 'push' off of. It's not nearly as thick.

At sea level, water is about 1000x denser than air.


Birds are incredibly light for their size, and have a MASSIVE surface-area-to-weight ratio of their wings; which lets them push a lot of air around to get much thrust.

akkristor posted:

you 'can', but not well.

Air doesn't offer enough resistance to 'push' off of. It's not nearly as thick.

At sea level, water is about 1000x denser than air.


Birds are incredibly light for their size, and have a MASSIVE surface-area-to-weight ratio of their wings; which lets them push a lot of air around to get much thrust.

punishedkissinger posted:

War thunder does actually model the superstructure and components though, just not in the insane way Citizens seem to want them to.

DigitalPenny posted:

I really hate the excuse that excuse that they had to build a studio, setup a company and are working on two full AAA games so you cant compare CIG to those sucseful companies.

Its defending what a terrible idea that is.

Having no experience what so ever I'm going to start a company building fusion powered submarines and helicopters. After I decade and nearly a billion dollars I have nothing to show for it. That's ok because I had to build up the company and starting off by making something simple is lame. Look at those other trash companies churning out crap petrol powered choppers for a quick buck.

Rotten Red Rod posted:

I can't find the exact quote, but I believe what it was is that every car in Need For Speed needed to have an invisible gun object inside it or the vehicle wouldn't be "accepted" as controllable by the player by Frostbite. Battlefield games mostly have vehicles with guns, so they don't have that issue (or if they do, they probably used the same workaround).

Now imagine trying to use that engine to make an RPG and you get an idea of what the Bioware devs went through to make DA:I and ME:A. Dragon Age had more time and the better team so it came out ok (although the load times are loving awful on console). Mass Effect... Didn't.

Chronojam posted:

It even models the crew, too. You can watch the little guys wrangling the turrets and equipment internally/externally and it does model fragments inside that may hurt or incapacitate them if they're behind various qualities of armor and components.

It's really neat and, importantly, contributes to gameplay! If you're in aircraft your flight model is changing substantially as you lose pieces and rough maneuvers can overtax sections of your plane and damage/break them. If crew get hurt, vehicle operations start to suffer!

I didn't read all that guy's bullshit but SC will never, ever approach the level of modeling that WT did the last time I played years ago.

stingtwo posted:

What backers will mention is CIG may have had 6 employees when the kickstarter launched, but they ignore the tidbit by the 12 month mark, they had well over 100 employees accross 2 studios, that is more than what respawn had when they made titanfall.

Sandweed posted:

Also remember that the amount of dev time you got from the frostbite team was decided by how much money your game earned, this meant that anytime the FIFA team wanted better sweat particles or something the frostbite team dropped whatever stupid poo poo Anthem needed like a workable inventory ect to make the best sweat tech in the biz.

It's also notable how Respawn bargained an exception to this rule and made Apex in the source engine and Jedi Fallen order in unreal.

Tippis posted:

They also overlook the fact that, from the very start — before the funding campaign — he made heavy use of contractors, and has continued to do so to this day. How many people were employed at CI¬G proper at any given time is an almost completely irrelevant data point.

It was never a scrappy little team; it was always more guys than he could really afford, and he's a serial company-former as the various company registrar data dives have shown. “Building a company” is probably the only thing Chris has ever had a knack for and is something he does in his sleep.

Fidelitious posted:

I'd like to add on that using Frostbite was Bioware's decision. They could have used Unreal if they wanted to.

quote:

Ashes of Creation is the only other big MMORPG I have any hope for whatsoever. If you're interested in PvP, Mortal Online 2 is releasing soon. I could not agree more, though. I hear a lot of talk on here about whether or not Star Citizen will be "the one", but the reality is that Star Citizen is the only hope. I was getting ready to quit gaming altogether until I got back into Star Citizen earlier this year. There is nothing else, and there may never be. This is it.

CIG is the only company in the last 10 years to actually attempt to push the MMO genre to its true potential, beyond the now-antiquated themepark MMORPG formula. Long live Chris Roberts.

quote:

CIG is producing my ultimate game. Whether they succeed or they not, no one has ever been closer to delivering anything of this caliber. This project has been a ray of hope throughout the lockdowns, and following it has continuously given me something to enjoy and look forward to in a hobby that I have been unhappy with for the better part of a decade. Anyone who knows me will know that there is no game that I am not very critical of, including this one, but I've already gotten my money's worth out of Star Citizen, and it will continue to be part of my life for years to come.

Given that, does jokingly wishing Chris Roberts success in his endeavor seem so absurd?

quote:

Of course Star Citizen doesn't have a good reputation. It was supposed to release 7 years ago, and it's still in alpha. You know what else didn't have a good reputation in the gaming community?

• FFXIV
  
• Sea of Thieves
  
• No Man's Sky
  
• Battlefield 4
  
• ESO
  
• Rainbow 6 Siege

The gaming community is quick to forgive these days, when developers put in the time and effort to deliver a good product.

I wouldn't say that my expectations are too high. I do not expect to see a finished product for another 7 years at least, and all I expect is half of what has been promised. Will Star Citizen be life changing? Maybe so, maybe not, but it's the only game that may even have a chance. I haven't enjoyed a multiplayer game in 5 years, and God knows I've played every new release, but Star Citizen is the first one that made me feel like I was back in the golden age again. This game has character and ambition unlike anything else.

I understand your cynicism, but you have to realize that I am not blindly hopeful for Star Citizen, so much as I am militantly pessimistic about everything else. I just finished quitting my 27th failed multiplayer game this year. After every crushing disappointment, Star Citizen is the only thing I can fall back on and enjoy.

At this point I've just accepted that there will never be anything else. It's the same every year, trying to fill the void left by the games I used to love with garbage that can't hold my attention for more than 50 hours. Funny thing is that I know dozens of guys like this. The majority of my old gaming friends just hop from new release to new release, never really committing to anything or feeling satisfied. That's just the reality of gaming now, it's trash. The only constant in this never-ending cycle of disposable games is Star Citizen. This isn't just another MMO, this may be the only game that can set an example to guide the entire industry.

...or gaming may never recover, and we'll all be locked down for the next 20 years watching bad Netflix remakes and reminiscing about a time when we at least had hope. For now, I will enjoy that hope.

Popete posted:

I have a massive back log of games I really want to play and ever more are coming out. There is a lot of great stuff being produced by small studios and indie devs right now but yeah sure I guess Chris Roberts is going to save this $150 billion dollar industry.

cmdrk posted:

yep, AAA games suck. big publishers like ActiBlizz and EA suck. but SC and CI!G is so far past AAA development time and budgets that they've become the exception that proves the rule.