Scruffpuff posted:

Not sure this is an epiphany so much as a honey trap; note the following:

Dwesa posted:

Eh, guy posted it on the refunds sub and is hoping to sell his fleet on the greymarket. I don't think he is trying to promote the game, he even calls it "game".
I know from my personal or friends' experiences that sometimes people become passionate about something that they retrospectively view as silly and not worth the investment, whether it's time or money. And sometimes games are designed to elicit such 'passions'/addictions. I am sure someone's job in CIG is just that.

taxxe:


https://i.imgur.com/rZLEn0z.mp4

The Titanic posted:

It's even more funny because Chris is spending millions and millions of dollars and over the course of ten years and counting we have games coming out now that look like the Callisto Protocol, which pretty much looks like a real movie (I haven't played it, and saw it has technical issues though..).

Star citizen:


Callisto Protocol:


I'm sure there's better pictures but I just grabbed some most recent stuff according to google.

Enjoy competing with 10 years of advancements outside of CryEngine.

4th Stimpire Queen posted:

Your daily insanity aka Star Citizen, the game with transparent financials and infinite money that pushes the envelope until no game can compare.



And while CR and Sandi were supposed to bring something big to the Bar Citizen there has been no write-up yet, so have this picture.

https://twitter.com/SandiRoberts42/status/1599119550762864640?s=20&t=RXSJYSq7TNKvwEFPJ46aLg

Enhance!

Boatswain posted:

I've been following this thread for a while but now it's just sad

Also, is the quote-cat one person or an amalgam of idiots?

Beet Wagon posted:

one incredibly stupid and dedicated guy

Colostomy Bag posted:

Vibes of nicholsons pic at the end of the shining.

Kosumo posted:

Off Topic .....

.... Please Beets, can we have some Kayak for Christmas?

Toxic Mental posted:

I am a citizen of star

Thoatse posted:

https://i.imgur.com/Q9yv8YH.gifv

Thoatse posted:

https://i.imgur.com/Q9yv8YH.gifv

Mirificus posted:

octal

Thoatse posted:

The Smartening

Potato Salad posted:

One guy, but in the sense that the master from Fallout is one guy

Thoatse posted:

https://i.imgur.com/Q9yv8YH.gifv

quote:

Some of us do try and talk about it!

There are reasons why this gets drowned out, why these types of threads often get locked, it is intentional and planned - which is why Cloud Imperium community team call it noise!

The team used to talk about these things with us but since the advent of the acrimonious group who take any discussion of any possible addition to the game experience either as 'FEATURE CREEP!' or 'BROKEN PROMISE LIES!' Cloud Imperium have stopped talking about anything beyond the near future. look at the Roadmap, the reason we have nothing for 3.19 isn't because they have no idea what might make it into that patch, it's because of the 'noisy distraction' reaction to the planned release candidate features some in the community whipped up.

The noise makers are NOT holding CI to account at all, they have no intention to do that - they simply want to diminish the backer enthusiasm to engage with the project because that is precisely what drives it's growth, this is why you hardly see youtubers talking about possible future features, they are too susceptible to viewer action it is not hard to grief streamers. Unfortunately too many people have been swimming in this pollution and they don't know the difference between encouraging the community to engage with CI and the talking points of the trolls and FUD spreaders anymore. Many very experienced members of the community with good insights and enthusiasm have simply given up with the constant battle with these trolls.

On to more positive things!

There are amazing things coming to this game despite those who poo poo any suggestion that it would even be finished. What isn't really appreciated is just how interconnected these features really are. They seem small and sometimes hard to understand why all the effort in isolation, you hear people ask 'Why are they doing that!' it's only when you put two and two together the penny drops. The big picture is so complex few can see it and many don't even want to see it.

Most other games have a population of NPC's that are basically the same set of 20 or 30 characters repeated. The way to make it look like there is more variety is to dress them differently, change the hair colour and eye colour, scale them up or down etc. you don't really notice unless it is a character you get up close and personal with - game designers rely on this. Traditionally creating huge population variation in the game involves massive amounts of developer time creating these characters, hence it is prohibitively expensive. There's a reason uniforms feature so much in games.

Cloud Imperium have a unique approach to this volume grunt work - we won't do it - we'll find a way to make large volumes more efficiently even if it means doing the R&D while we build the game. We'll delay putting out a 'grunt work' game to take the time to do it better because we know we are going to be doing this for many years to come. This is radical, there are no games of this size and scope that do R&D on a live project. This is why so many are critical of it.

The Gene Splicing tech (part of the DNA system) to turn a few dozen, or even a few hundred real scanned heads and bodies into many millions of unique looking NPC's is, in military jargon, a force multiplier. Because you have that done that work to make a new tool you get far more for each unit of work. If someone doesn't know this they would scoff at the idea of having millions of unique looking NPC's you can recognise individually in the game universe, no other game has ever needed it! they will say. If you then also tell them that there will be such a thing as facial asymmetry for all game characters (absolutely NOT in NPC's in other games that aren't hand made!) they will roll on the floor laughing.

It's like trying to explain colour to a blind man - you've never seen it before in another game, it's hard to grasp the impact it will have on your experience of this game universe...

....but remember I said things aren't really so clear in isolation. 'So what!' you say 'They all look different... after a while who cares!'

Now factor in full persistence for NPC's - all of them! "There are no background characters in Star Citizen" is what the team keep saying, and it might mean nothing to you until you fit the puzzle pieces together - they have a memory, not just a memory of what has happened to them since they were 'born' but of every interaction they have ever had with a player. They have a back story, yes every single one of them knows who they are and where they came from.

Have you ever played a game where the NPC's talk to you about what they did with another player last year?

The writing team have been creating thousands and thousands lines of dialogue for NPC's that are location and event specific. Think of other speech production AI 'response bots', imagine that type of natural speech from NPC's all that dialogue can produce. In order to create variety they turn voice captured artists in banks of text to speech API. If one artist does 10 characters and you vary that by changing the register (pitch of the voice) you again have a force multiplier. A few expensive paid actors can produce hundreds of different voices which now use the text from those lines of dialogue written by the lore team.

The more astute among you may realise there is one more thing you need, a talking NPC who has no facial expression or mouth movement that corresponds to the audio you are hearing is not very immersive.. so guess what they need.. It's on the Roadmap.
One more of the 'automate it for me in volume' tools that Cloud Imperium do so well. Procedurally generated speech animation. Like the text to speech API this animation from audio isn't new, no-one is re-inventing the wheel here, you just don't see it adapted to work in games.



You see how it all comes together now?

DNA tech, gene splicing, facial rigging for animation that allows any facial animation to play on any NPC rather than scripted only for specific NPC's or NPC groups.

Look IK that allows them to intelligently respond to things in the game around them just like you do.

Personality traits that make each of them unique in their reactions to their environment and to players - asymmetry is just a by-product.

Solving the attachment problem for wearables for variance in NPC dimensions.

Full Persistence!

It's all a part of the same thing - an experience of game characters you cannot get anywhere else because this project doesn't do the easy answers.

We will know these characters like we know our own friends and family, we will see them do things you never see in other games because they react to the universe they live in and they have a complete memory of the events of their lives... the fact that they change, get old, suffer injury just adds to it all. New Babbage or Lorville become a different experience entirely when it is full of these unique characters you can engage with on a one to one level and return to again and again.

This is what they are doing. This is why it is taking longer to make than your average game. This is why some of us support the project to the crazy levels that we do, because we know these things and we want to change the paradigm. Remember.. you are guaranteed to miss every shot you never take. The games we can play will never change beyond what the money men in suits want to give you if no-one is willing to try, they are risk averse, how un-gamer-like is that!

No-one is going to catch up to this project.

Azubah posted:

Is piss cat chris roberts?

trucutru posted:

PEScat is just not well in the head, and not in a nice way like that dude who really likes astroboy (col azama?)

colonelwest posted:

Piss Cat has to be the absolute last believer in the “millions of life-like NPCs” promise. CIG itself has been walking that back for years, and the dream pretty much died among citizens years ago when they put Hurston in the game and Loreville turned out to be a tiny area with a dozen NPCs t-posing and standing on chairs. The NPCs in Oblivion are light years beyond what CIG currently has in SC.

Mirificus posted:

colonelwest posted:

Piss Cat has to be the absolute last believer in the “millions of life-like NPCs” promise. CIG itself has been walking that back for years, and the dream pretty much died among citizens years ago when they put Hurston in the game and Loreville turned out to be a tiny area with a dozen NPCs t-posing and standing on chairs. The NPCs in Oblivion are light years beyond what CIG currently has in SC.

Dwesa posted:

AI is already smarter than average backer

Dwesa posted:

stolen from refunds sub

I asked GPT3 to tell me the story of Chris Roberts. It did not disappoint



AI is already smarter than average backer

Mellow_ posted:

if this is actually an ai and not a hoax i am sufficiently freaked out