Fidelitious posted:

No kidding. "Someone like Tony Zurovec". His most recent experience on Crusader (20+ years ago) makes him about as qualified for his job as any random mid-tier game developer. Maybe less.
Absolutely the only reason he has a job right now is because he worked with Chris in the 90s. I don't think he has a clue what he's doing.

It's funny, as I see more posts like this I'm reminded of the forum thread for investors in GT Advanced Technologies. Regular people who had poured millions of dollars into this company because they were set to supply the sapphire for Apple phones. The thread is full of rapturous posts about how much money they're going to make when the contract comes through, how the execs are geniuses for getting this deal done.
And then trading is stopped.
People start making GBS threads themselves but there are still the true believers shouting them down as naysayers, that it must just be some hiccup.
And then the actual news comes out that GTAT is bankrupt. Apple called a loan because they failed to deliver on time and they have no cash on hand to pay it back.
The shares are now trading at a few cents each and hundreds of people have lost their entire life savings as reality sets in.

This won't be as bad of course because very few people actually "invested" in Star Citizen in terms of expecting a financial return. I just get similar vibes.

Sandepande posted:

When it first happened, it resembled (in a perversely enjoyable way) amateurish, heavy-handed GM railroading, where stupid players refuse or don't realize they need to be taken captive.

It unexpectedly helped me to deal with the stupidity.

NumptyScrub posted:

Once was fine, twice was irritating, it happening multiple times for each of the main antagonists was Just Bad Writing

monkeytek posted:

Question: Has there ever been a game released with such an outdated engine? I know the current version of cry engine is 5.6.7 isn't SC based on a version of 3?

Sandweed posted:

The way they implemented it was loving stupid, I was ambushed by a spec op squad, hit with a tranquilizer and taken to the bad guy base while flying a helicopter. This happened like 4 times during the story.

monkeytek posted:

Question: Has there ever been a game released with such an outdated engine? I know the current version of cry engine is 5.6.7 isn't SC based on a version of 3?

monkeytek posted:

Question: Has there ever been a game released with such an outdated engine? I know the current version of cry engine is 5.6.7 isn't SC based on a version of 3?

JugbandDude posted:

Yeah but CI stole most of the Crytek wizards, so the current engine is way superior.

In fact, my reddit friends told me CI will eventually sell their magic tech and makes tons of money. This is the evidence for that:

I attacked someone, but was able to give them a criminal stat when he killed me? posted:

Hello,

I was wondering if there is an explanation to this, or is just a broken mechanic.

To make things shorter lets cut to the important part of the day. I targeted a player in his ship, launched missiles (so I am the aggressor), then we started to dogfight, I shot at his friend too but when I was destroyed, I was given the choice to give them a criminal status while I woke up at the med bay with no criminal stat. They didn't even get given the choice to give me any from what I could tell.

This seems wrong to me. Can someone explain the logic here if there is any?

quote:

sounds about right. The crime stat mechanic is broken. Its like a game of "I'm not touching you".

Even with "A Call to Arms" I've found that shooting Players that are red targets will get me the message "Caution , Friendly Fie"
A lot of people when shot at will just kill the aggressor. ... (which is what I found myself doing until I realized I was the one ending up with a crime stat)

I've found that I can shoot at people and end up giving them the crime stat if they kill me

quote:

"Aggravated criminal damage" has been removed in 3.16 and replace with aggressor timers.

So you can now shoot at someone, and all that will happen is you will turn red to everyone but won't get a crime stat. The first offence you can commit to get a CS is destruction of vehicle.

Now you can let them shoot you and you wait for the timer to run out so you are no longer an aggressor. If they are still shooting at you, they will turn red to everyone and be free to kill. If after you became blue and they are now red, you can shoot back and become red to only them again, so unless they paid close attention, they are now the aggressor without knowing it. If they kill you now, they will get the CS.

This is such a broken mechanic and I don't know how that made it past QA or even an internal meeting before they started programming it. In atmosphere, you can even kill another player with distortion by letting them crash while disabled and never get a CS.

Had some fun moments while observing a friendly jump town. Some player must accidentally have shot someone, and a few other players started shooting at him. The chaos that ensued and the confusing in global chat why people switched between being blue and red as the timers ran out was priceless!! In the end they were all shooting at each other. There were even accusations of other players hacking to switch between red and blue. :joy: 

If players can switch between being friendly and aggressor it needs to be clearly indicated when they become friendly again (flashing red/blue for 15 seconds, as an example). And if you can be red without a crime stat, CS needs to be indicated separately with a small icon next to the label. Disabling a ship with distortion needs to be a separate CS, like interdiction.

In my opinion a players should remain aggressor until they leave the area (exit the object container of the other players), i.e until they jump away or exits their ship (ship no longer red if the player lands and gets out).

marumaru posted:

TheDarkFlame posted:

There is nothing more annoying in an open-world game than having something in the game require you to talk to Some Dude, who is not in Some Dude's spot in town on the second left turn, or in Some Dude's shop, so you've got to go find them. It doesn't add more to the game if you have to go and figure out where they are instead, wandering around the town, tending to virtual business, living their virtual life doing virtual things, whatever. Having to do extra faff and busywork is not gameplay.

Play posted:

dass dat booty!!

ngl I actually think the correct stair walking is kind of cool. laughable in the overall sense in terms of where the game is at, but still cool

quote:

There are those who truly think that everything they are working on, have worked on, is on the Roadmap - it isn't a complete listing. Nowhere near. You can tell this easily, look for Banu and Tevarin stuff on the roadmap, do you see any? The information about the Vanduul falls way short of all we know about them and how they operate. They have done massive amounts of animations already.

I wouldn't like to predict how long it will take to reach the full level that they intend, but what I do know is that they are taking a novel approach. They are using tools (AI being one of them) - I don't mean scripted NPC AI, I mean true AI, to create tools that will make huge amounts of NPC's without needing an army of developers using scripting language to create them. They will be generated 'on the fly'. When you say the majority NPC's will be virtual on the background simulation this is partly true, but it ignores the potential for what they have developed. When t-hey say there are no background characters it doesn't mean that there won't be characters in the background as you go around, it means that any character can become a tier 1 character - on demand.

It works this way (TZ did explain it):
The universe simulator will simulate a character going about it's business in the backend simulation. Random things will happen to it according to where it is and what is happening around it - these are probability volumes that are tied into the overall universe simulator. The backend simulated character also has a basic set of personality traits and basic history that governs it's responses to any events - it has also memory and life goals. Look on the Roadmap you will see natural disasters are planned, solar flares for example, there will also be crop failures/famine, pandemics/epidemics, wars among factions. Boom and bust economic cycles affecting regional migrations.

If the simulated character is anywhere where it could potentially be in contact (this includes scanning etc) with a player it becomes a virtual NPC and is now controlled by the NPC scheduler. They refer to this by the term 'instantiated', it's activities are still recorded to the backend persistence database and universe history logs. It's backstory is further fleshed out - this may be needed for comms traffic etc, it will have a ship or be part of a crew suited to it's role, it will have clothing assigned that fits it's role, history and affiliations, weapons and armour that match it's wealth status etc.

If you get to the point where you can physically see that virtual NPC it will be given a physical appearance and that clothing/armour assigned above will now become a part of that NPC's inventory. It's physical appearance will be randomly assigned but there will be aspects that are not random, some facial features will predominate in certain regions or races for example, it's birthplace and parentage can be taken into consideration. As you interact with this now present NPC it will be given more and more dialogue options,more and more personality traits and backstory 'on the fly' right up until the point you could potentially hire that NPC as crew - that background NPC has become a tier 1 character on the fly. Every single NPC entity in the game has this history log, they remember what happened to them, they have basic traits and loyalties that govern their responses. They have the same progression with factions and other characters that you do.

Once that NPC is no longer interacting with players it reverses the process and goes back to being virtual backend simulated, but it retains all the information about who it is, what it looks like etc and a memory of all that happened to it, so that if it ever becomes instantiated again it comes back as it was the last time a player saw it, unless events in the virtual universe made changes (scars, prosthetics, hairstyle etc).

How are they going to write the billions of lines of dialogue for scripted NPC's? They aren't.

They are going to do what they always do, they make tools that do the basic grunt work and only the high level stuff is left for actual people. The same way they make tools to create space stations from modular units, one developer can make dozens of them, rather than dozens of level designers creating one space station. It's CIG, it's what they do.That's the whole point, they are not using traditional methods, they will make the background AI generate dialogue that is personality aware, location aware, events aware - the plan is to have the computers (AI) simulate a person to such a degree that you can't tell it isn't another person, that's what Chris means when he says he wants it so players can't tell the difference between other players and NPC's. He's not talking about whether an NPC bunny-hops everywhere, he's more talking about an AI that can approximate passing a Turing Test.

When pressed on the subject of NPC dialogue Chris said (a long time ago) that they were considering synthetic speech production from text which was auto-generated from look up tables. That's what you are in the game as far as the universe sim is concerned, a series of look up tables - you have a history, you have an inventory, you have a DNA profile for appearance etc. NPC's are the same, they are made up of look up tables, but they can change according to what is happening to them and the universe around them.

For example an NPC is assigned the trait that he is initially 90% law abiding and moral, he is basically non-aggressive and backs down if threatened. Never misses a days work and will do boring work for low pay. He gets attacked often because crime levels in his locale are going up and so his trust level goes down, he is more likely to attack first now if cornered. If the local area economy is bad, he loses his job at the pizza place because it goes out of business and he has no money - he knows he will lose his home if this continues, that 10% ability to become lawless is becoming the dominant feature now and it might change, he will take more risks to get the money he needs to get out of the dire situation he now finds himself in - none of this behaviour is the result of any human input, only the basic starting information was randomly assigned at the NPC's 'birth'. NPC's with forward planning, goals, needs, environment aware and self preservation tactics is what they are making, it's all AI controlled. You are going to see NPC's doing things you've never seen before, behaving in ways never seen before and most if it was never planned or scripted, it just happened because of what was going on at the time and some random variables thrown in.

The huge expansion of the offices at F42UK and F42DE as well as the offices at Montreal and Derby are not related to Squadron 42 production as the gaming media would like to think CIG have done perfectly well with existing staff and infrastructure for that, they are about the coming expansion of the PU. Why are they expanding in the UK, Canada and Europe but not in the USA? It's simple economics, it's cheaper outside the USA, they get better tax breaks in the UK and Europe and property leases are cheaper. They are gearing up to expand the PU.

Popete posted:

Wikipedia says 40% but also

dieselfruit posted:

source: my butt lmao

Mirificus posted:

They are going to do what they always do, they make tools that do the basic grunt work and only the high level stuff is left for actual people. The same way they make tools to create space stations from modular units, one developer can make dozens of them, rather than dozens of level designers creating one space station. It's CIG, it's what they do.That's the whole point, they are not using traditional methods, they will make the background AI generate dialogue that is personality aware, location aware, events aware - the plan is to have the computers (AI) simulate a person to such a degree that you can't tell it isn't another person, that's what Chris means when he says he wants it so players can't tell the difference between other players and NPC's. He's not talking about whether an NPC bunny-hops everywhere, he's more talking about an AI that can approximate passing a Turing Test.

precision posted:

is there a TLDR on the last couple of years somewhere?

alternately: drat it bootcha

Mirificus posted:

nawledgelambo posted:

why do citizens write dissertations on why star ciitizen is good

Khanstant posted:

lol tranq me once shame on me, tranq me twice shame on you, tranq me three times... wait no stop

Azubah posted:

Crowfall?

Colostomy Bag posted:

It's great that you have this dumpster fire to learn from as you go through your studies on what not to do. You pick any part of SC and it is a treasure trove of incompetence. That is not news to any of us here. It is when you start to learn the finer nuances of project management one begins to really appreciate the sheer level of ineptitude involved at every conceivable level.

This farce of a "project" will be in case studies in the years to come along with the other inevitable collapses in this shithole industry.

Gynovore posted:

Like I mentioned earlier, this whole ''living breathing universe " thing was probably poo poo out by some intern in five minutes, then forgotten. There's no code.

Bethesda already tried the whole "NPCs have lives" bit with the Radiant system for Oblivion and Skyrim. They chopped it because players want NPCs who stand around the store all day and say "Times are tough".

nawledgelambo posted:

why do citizens write dissertations on why star ciitizen is good

Rotten Red Rod posted:

"It's what they do!" after describing something they have not done

Christ this poor bastard seriously thinks CIG will make NPC AI that can pass the Turing test for their janky space MMO. Imagine the server load required if they actually did...!

a cyberpunk goose posted:

star citizen could learn a lot from the now-defunct obscure MMO "Face of Mankind"

The Rabbi T. White posted:

Does anyone remember that name of that PvP MMO that had permadeath and player owned islands and castles and poo poo that pubbies were getting all ginned up for but in the end it turned out to be a pile of horseshit? I thought it was called like 'Daggerfall' but I can't for the life of me find it.