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Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Somewhat first:ish.

Also, more topically. Ooooh. I remember those banners. How many silly missteps ago was that? A billion? Five? How many months? Oh… not even a year and a half.

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Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Archer:ing myself from the FDev forums

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

No Really This Looks Awesome!
Do not spend a loving dime on this project. Do not fund it. Do not support it. Do not waste your money. The game is being mismanaged into the ground by a narcissistic "visionary" who is strangling the entire project with his utter inability to delegate or share creative control. CIG is hemorrhaging talent thanks to a toxic work environment and terrible business practices. They already have multiple times the original asking price and have only provided excuses. At this point any money you spend will not be refunded and there's no guarantee that anything you purchase will actually be playable.

To wit, this is not Chris' first rodeo, and I'm not talking about Freelancer — it was evident a decade earlier than that. Let's have a look at how he chose to describe one of his previous manga opera: Strike Commander.

Let's start with Chris' version of the story in full:

Strike Commander manual p46-47 posted:

Recently, I watched the film Heart of Darkness, which chronicled the tremendous struggles that Francis Ford Coppola went through in crating Apocalypse Now. In many ways, the creation of Strike Commander has helped me identify with his plight.

It was two and half years ago, just after the release of Wing Commander, that I started out on what I then estimated to be a one-year project. I set out to create an industry shattering flight simulator that would encompass a revolutionary new 3-D system, a system that I planned to use for Wing Commander III and hoped would form the basis of a whole new generation of ORIGIN games. This system, which we later named RealSpace™, became the heart of Strike Commander. To make RealSpace truly revolutionary we decided to gamble on two major graphics techniques: Gouraud shading and texture mapping. Both of these techniques are used extensively on high-end military flight simulators costing millions of dollars. Their application gives rendered 3-D images a much more realistic and fluid appearance. Because of the power needed to implement such a 3-D system, nobody had previously dreamed of doing so on a PC. For us to pull off this software, we knew we had to make some risky assumptions. First, that the power-to-price ratio of PCs would continue to decline, thereby delivering affordable PCs of adequate speed to our target market. Second, and more importantly, that the same forces that had created a demand for Wing Commander — those power-hungry 386 owners — would generate a demand for games that exploited the next generation of PCs, the 486. When creating Wing Commander, there were many who doubted the game would sell because of their lack of faith in the high-end PC market. This time, however, everyone believed in the market and, as time went on, the doubts revolved around our ability to create the engine.

In the spirit of wanting it all, we set out to design a game that would have more realism than the best flight simulator, better storytelling, more fun and more accessibility than Wing Commander, and the best sound effects, music and graphics of any game ever created. Our biggest mistake was thinking that we could achieve all of this in a single year. Our biggest setback was the realization that it would take more than two. But our journey had begun and there was no turning back. Perhaps the greatest heartbreak came months after the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991. Believing ourselves to be a few months from completion, we showed a demo of Strike in front of the press and our competitors. Months later, we were little closer to completion, but a subtle change had come over our competitors’ development plans. All of the sudden, parts of the technology we had shown at CES were showing up in their software. It wasn’t as if they had stolen our ideas — after all, the techniques we used to make RealSpace revolutionary for PCs are very well known in the high-end graphics field. The trouble was that nobody believed it could be done on the PC. With a single ill-timed demo, we had changed that belief and inadvertently given our competitors a heads-up on where we wanted to take the industry a full year and a half before we arrived there. During these revelations it was difficult to resist the temptation to push Strike out early and prevent our competitors from stealing any more of our thunder. But to stop short of our vision would have been unacceptable. We were in the middle of our journey and were determined to complete it, regardless of what lay ahead. And what lay ahead was the hardest part: long hours, short tempers and huge expectations.

In hindsight, knowing what a truly Herculean task Strike Commander turned into, the heartache and disappointment it created when its release date was constantly pushed back, and the amount of time from our personal lives that it consumed, we probably should have designed it differently. We wouldn’t have tried to do quite as much or shot quite as high. In our arrogance we had set out to create something that was not only better than everything else, it was several orders of magnitude bettre. And it was several orders of magnitude more expensive as well — in fact, the most expensive game ORIGIN has ever developed. Like Francis Ford Coppola and his film crew on Apocalypse Now, we knew we were in way over our heads, but we also knew there was no turning back.

And now, a little humbler, we’ve reached the end of our long and arduous journey. We look at Strike Commander and see a game that every member of the team can say, “Yes, it was two years of hell, but at the end of it we’ve created something that is very special and I’m proud of it.” I have never seen such selfless dedication from such talented individuals as the team that created it. Strike Commander is the game it is because of them. Each time I think about the dark circles under my eyes, the unshaven beards, the late night pizzas and the neglected spouses and girlfriends, I wonder what it is that makes us do this. One reason might be that the entire Strike Commander team , which has grown to as many as twenty people, are all avid computer game players. We buy and play our competitors’ games, looking forward to the latest developments in our field. If we weren’t writing games as a profession, we would be hating our day jobs and writing them at night. I hope this makes us as demanding and discriminating as anyone that plays our games. Although it sounds clichéd, for us it is much more than a job. I can think of no greater pride it would bring a team member than to have someone approach him at a computer store and tell him that Strike Commander was the best game they’ve ever played.

We hope you’ll agree.

This little nugget came out in 1993, and as we can see, true to form, Chris wants to paint it as revolutionary, industry-changing, unprecedented, and best ever. But, again, it came out in 1993. I harp on the year because it is a rather special year in computer gaming. It was indeed a seminal year for games, and especially for the PC gaming scene, but none of it had to do with Chris — hell, it didn't have anything to do with the actual production-value powerhouse that was Origin Systems.

What came out in 1993?
Doom. The game that, while it didn't invent the 3D first-person shooter genre, defined it, with audiovisual quality that was through the roof, to say nothing of the networked realtime multiplayer fighting that is a multi-billion (or is it trillion by now?) dollar industry today.
Myst. One of the most popular computer games ever, irrespective of genre or format. Along with 7th Guest, also released in 1993, it was the killer app that sold the CD ROM as a format and a peripheral, and much like Doom did for the FPS, defined the concept of multimedia gaming.
X-Wing. Take the space shooter concept that had been popular for a couple of years, make it actual 3D, throw a huge IP behind it, and focus on gameplay above all else. Again, it did not invent the genre, but it absolutely defined and nailed what works and what does not.
Virtua Fighter. Take the well-established and still popular fighting genre — Mortal Kombat II came out in 1993 as well and the Street Fighter series was in-between games — and make it 3D, thus setting the stage for where they will all go in a few years.

While they weren't seminal in and of themselves, a number of other games came out that pushed their genres ahead and set the stage for the future:
Daytona USA and Ridge Racer for the kind of 3D arcade racers that would be the new standard from there on.
Day of the Tentacle, Gabriel Knight, and Sam and Max probably mark the peak of the adventure gaming genre, pushing it into the realm of CD-based multimedia.
Masters of Orion and Syndicate. I mention them because some people will hurt me if I don't.
And that's not even mentioning such absolute classics as A Link to the Past, Star Fox, Super Mario All Stars, Aladdin, Sonic CD, Eye of the Beholder III, or Alone in the Dark II — games that, in spite of being spectacular or critical components in what would be genre-defining games a few years down the road, still paled in importance in comparison to the actual revolution that was going on at the same time.

As for Origin, they weren't exactly sleeping, but they were focusing on add-ons, spin-offs, and tried and trusted product series: Ultima VII-2, Privateer, and Ultima Underworld II. None of them offered anything new.

Hardware-wise, we had a generation shift with the Sega Mega CD, Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Amiga CD32, and — perhaps most interestingly — the Sega Model 2 system. It is interesting because of one particular feature: its hardware-accelerated texturing and shading, supporting among other things… Gouraud shading of polygonal models. No matter how much Chris wants to strut his stuff over the '91 CES demo, no, Sega did not look at what some niche-genre dev on PC did and invented custom hardware to do the same thing in the year and a half between the expo and the system release. This was a parallel process that was happing industry-wide, all at the same time because the time was right.

Oh, and a tiny little chip manufacturer that was probably not worth mentioning released something called the “Pentium”? And across town in Santa Clara, a bunch of upstarts got together to form a company called nVidia…

So yeah, 1993 was an insane year as far as pushing the games industry forward. For all his bluster, Chris Roberts was not relevant to that development. He was doing his own thing, breaking budgets and being second (or third) on the ball like always, way out in the periphery. This would also be the only sensible explanation for the downright obscurantist idea that PC hardware might not continue on the trajectory set by the 386 (from 1985) and 486 (released in 1989).


Now, here we are, almost a quarter of a century later, and he's still offering the same spiel; the same ignorance of the industry; the same ignorance of the technology; and the same utterly, completely, boneheadedly ignorant excuses for getting in way way over his head. The man does not learn. He is incapable of learning. He is incapable of improving. Add in his ability to make games, make movies, sell cars, breed horses etc. and there's only one conclusion: he is just flat out incapable.



e: More rant and a correction…

Tippis fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Dec 2, 2016

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Also, continuing the discussion where we last left off…

DancingShade posted:

Realtalk: Logitech is the only brand of mouse you should consider unless you have a specific reason not to get one.

Realtalk: Never buy Razer unless you like terrible firmware, bad software and a high failure rate.

Microsoft peripherals were amazing back in the day and some kind of silly brand loyalty to them is the only sensible reason not to go to Logitech. It would still be silly, but at least understandable.

Kakarot posted:

yay! 6666 :toot:

Kakarot posted:

quote that for me on 6666

Ok. Only 6664 to go.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Hav posted:

They were preceeded by Voodoo and S3 who broke hard into 3d around the time of wing commander prophecy. Voodoo never managed to break away from the limitations of Glide and S3 Virge cards were really loving variable; but they were cheap enough for LAN games of Quake Arena. gently caress the Longest Yard.

I believe that the release of Tie Fighter coincided with the launch of 3d hardware, mainly because you had the dos4/gw executable and a brand new windows client that used a new API called Direct3D.

Yeah, I only bring up nVidia because of the 1993 connection and what we've arrived at today in terms of market share — the GeForce 256 didn't come out until, what? '98-'99:ish, and that was the end of the old 3D add-on cards — on-chip hardware T&L had arrived.

TIE Fighter was essentially the 2.0 of X-Wing: take everything that worked, refine it, and make one of the best games in the genre for a long time. However, the initial version didn't use any of that tech, iirc (although the first Voodoo was released that year). They made a (significantly) updated version for the Collector's CD Edition in 1998, running on Windows, and I think that's when they squeezed in 3D acceleration and all the other good stuff. So it may have coincided with the GeForce launch, if that's what you're thinking of?

The other important year would otherwise be 1996 (but then I'd have to rant about Wing Commander IV instead): the year of Quake, Duke 3D, Civ II, Super Mario 64, Diablo, Warcraft II… aaaand Tomb Raider. Why does TR get a special mention? Because it is commonly credited as the first major title to come with 3D acceleration support built in from the start rather than as a later patch or addition (which is why I'm curious about the details of TIE Fighter… but then, Descent (1995) didn't have acceleration either so the TR claim is probably accurate). Even Quake had to wait a year until GLQuake was released.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Hav posted:

That's very possible - the era coincided with my discovery of ecstacy, so recall gets fuzzy for a three year period that I just recall being awesome.

I remember picking up Carmageddon Max Damage, then going back a week later to splurge on a Voodoo 1 and wing commander prophecy; the Voodoo 1 was the piggyback card where you took the output of your normal graphics card and fed it through the Voodoo with a little lead.

After initial problems with the drivers, I was blown away because gourud was all we had until that point.

While I'm fairly certain that I downloaded an executable at some point from a BBS that updated Tie Fighter to 3DFX, your recollection of the time might be better.

Could be both, tbh. A lot of games scrambled to update for 3D once the cards started to gain traction — Lucasart weren't exactly lazy so they probably did so too. I just remember that TR got a lot of press, not just because of the game itself (which obviously spawned a side-genre of its own) and because of Lara, but because of how they managed to ride that wave perfectly right from the release version.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Charles Get-Out posted:

What mouse is best for fidelitously tilting my character to space poop in the space toilet across the room while manning the space gun for multi space crew battles?

Apple Mighty Mouse or the Magic Mouse in a pinch.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Inkel posted:

Holy crap, is this the actual letter that Chris sent to The Escapist? I guess I never actually looked it up since it was before I started following this disaster. This is the ramblings of an insane man.

Yes. And yes.
There's a reason why we sometimes claim that no-one made Derek such a central character in the development of SC other than Chris. Derek's own efforts to do so were minute in comparison with how thoroughly and effectively CRobber did it.

Tippis fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Dec 2, 2016

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Acquilae posted:

when it's all said and done, this will be crobbers' greatest work involving star citizen

He certainly put a lot more thought into it than anything else. To bad the thoughts are just as ignorant and incompetent as every other time he's tried his hand at it.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Colostomy Bag posted:

Color us shocked.

What PANTONE® Coated number is that?

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Meridian posted:

They don't walk much at all, I imagine.

Hence the frustration. It's not at all like those harem mangas, which is terribly unfair.
Also, given how many of them will suffer from the now-familiar t-rex arms, chances are they'd need that kind of help to even touch themselves.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Meridian posted:

Don't worry, there are multiple in game ways to fix your mistake in game.

…which funnily enough is almost the exact opposite of what's going on at CIG, where there are multiple games in which to make mistakes.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

TheAgent posted:

wtf is the point of even having deadlines if you're a month or two late on them?

Calibration data.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Wrecked Angle posted:

For old times sake, here is when I first learned of Star Citizen nearly a year ago...



Happy not-quite-thread-not-birthday.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.


Look like someone running their private dentist practice out of their back room…

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Jason Sextro posted:

the fighting fantasy gamebooks finally figured out how to do sci-fi

Ooooh. I need to dig out my copy of Citadel of Chaos. It's not sci-fi, but it's pretty darn good silly.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

TheAgent posted:

I will say this though, I'm 100% certain they will put out these games

I'm also 100% certain they gonna be p bad

but hey, I'm sure some people will love them

So basically, one day, SC will be the Bad Rats of that year's Steam thread gift train? How horrid.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

PhallicPhalanges posted:

What is all that poo poo under the barrel supposed to be?

Extendable tie rack.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

trucutru posted:

You can bet you rear end the ray-tracing algorithm they use to figure out which surfaces are closer to the camera is hosed-up beyond belief and cannot deal with their 64-bit implementation. Add to that artists who are given carte blanche to throw a billion triangles into everything and the poor algo must have developed self-awareness and killed itself.

I remember one patch for EVE that was wonderful in that regard. They were updating the rendering to accept more complex models and shaders, but screwed something up pretty badly.

Somehow, the reference coordinate system got inverted, so all ships that used cached model data flew backwards, and all (predominantly) structures that used cached surface and texture data would be rendered “inside-out” — all polygon faces were pointing in the wrong direction, so you'd see the backside of the station being rendered on the inside, and the front of the station not being rendered at all.

It was a very confusing day in space until they emergency patched that one. :D

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Pogue Ma Hoon posted:

Uh, is that Leo loving Mcgarry in some sort of space navy?
I would watch that for ten space dollars.

No space-Margaret, though, so he's kind of lost.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

KM Scorchio posted:

Why is an evocati like a writing desk?

There's a lot of crowing about both.

e: wtfspelling

Tippis fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Dec 4, 2016

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Godmode Enabled posted:

Edit: I did like the massive gun in the concept though
Edit2: Was also hoping I could hide a massive planet destroyer gun in the hull :allears:

Those are some grade-A parking sensors.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.


Zero-g reindeer polo.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.


I wouldn't be at all surprise if CRobber went back to his nonsensical quasar ideas. The SC universe is 100 connected systems, right? Not 100 galaxies, millions of lightyears apart… because if it's not that, there won't be any quasars. And I don't think you'd want to explore one from closer than 10 galaxies away.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Fat Shat Sings posted:

When you say "You" are you referring to my forums name or me as a person? Because *I* never said literally. Let's fight about the technicalities of this for the next 50 pages accomplishing and resolving nothing.

I approve. How else are we going to get to page 6665 again?

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

TheLightPurges posted:

This guy is gone forever though

Yes. Suffering is indeed the only option. Taking a step back and assessing the situation, and figuring that, hey, maybe they're right is the way of D Smart. And D stands for TEH DEVIL!! Salvation will surely come some day.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.


Finally! Something that at a long distance and with both eyes swollen shut could be confused for almost replicating a dumbed-down and much less realistic version of a very basic capability of KSP.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

D_Smart posted:

Well at least Shitizens can't cry foul when the same overzealous mods they keep ripping on /r/DS pull the same stunt and ban others.

I just got banned for this post (probably deleted) which is quite puzzling to say the least.



Amazing how something like that can get you banned.

You called them “lying shills” and telling a liar they lie will get you banned every time. :D

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

I.N.R.I posted:

I'll read all these 10000 word long posts later. in the mean time, I want to remind everyone to call or visit their parents wherever possible. They raised you with love and care and would like to hear about the things you're getting up to in life

Nah.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

A sign of things to come…

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

POOL IS CLOSED posted:

the most fabulous wine is lambrusco

i drink it while browsing jpegs

Philistine. At least browse TGAs.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

POOL IS CLOSED posted:

how am i going to feel fabulous if i don't look at something as lowbrow as possible while drinking my fizzy booze

Oh, well if that's the goal then put that jpeg down and feast your eyes on this!

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

The Titanic posted:

I am enjoying this line of thought. :3:

"Bro, totally accidental! I totally just slipped in there!"

We should combine forces to write a horrible erotic Star Citizen experience story.

I think there's a thread on r/sc about citizens' dream-meeting with Chris that already does this. Perhaps not intentionally, though.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

TheAgent posted:

please please please crobberts make lesbos IV a planet I can explore and capture xi'an lesbians so I can teach them how to love my penis in my cargo hold

tia

…and then have Cronenberg take over the project, at which point it turns out they really love it, especially when roided up like a Belgian Blue, medium-rare, with a side of xil'antro and rad'ixes.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Sabreseven posted:

(Purely out of internet tradition though, I'm not actually polishing one up)

What's wrong with you?!

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

POOL IS CLOSED posted:

Wait, wait, this can't be left at the bottom of the last page. What the poo poo is going on here? Is this supposed to be a kill-wraithy in a CPAP mask and a ... neck warmer tube?

It's a fairly faithful reconstruction of how Hobbes looked in WC2, to be honest. At least if you take some liberty with what the pixels are meant to represent.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Phi230 posted:

whats the actual context behind sandi's look

You mean aside from her believing she's no longer on camera and therefore doesn't have to maintain the act?
The context is probably that she's working on the stupidest project ever and it's not doing her career any good, and she knows it.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

40 minutes, huh? So these immense star systems will about on par with the orbit of Saturn.

For comparison, in our middling star system, the sixth planet sits ~10 AU out from the Sun. The Kuiper belt extends to out to 50 AU. The scattered disc and solar wind goes out to ~100 AU.

Tippis fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Dec 8, 2016

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Beet Wagon posted:

And because there are so few of them it will only take two days to see all of them, supposedly.

For some more comparison, I'm trekking out to a far remote outpost in Elite, and from there to the centre of the galaxy where I'll putter around for a bit. If I get a session in every day, I expect to reach the station some time around New Year's Eve, and be back in regular inhabited space by February…

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Beet Wagon posted:

But if you wanted to go somewhere in a system you could get to most places inside of about 10 minutes, if I remember correctly. And you can initiate a jump to another system without literally flying all the way across the one you're in. CIG have literally got "fun space travel mechanics" totally loving backwards...

For most systems yes. Except Alpha Centauri, or more accurately the station orbiting Proxima Centauri, which you reach by supercruising across the system… 6,784,404 ls (13,500 AU or 0.22 Ly) away. By curious coincidence, this takes about 40 minutes. :D

…but I'm not sure anyone actually makes that trip unironically any more.

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Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Rocksicles posted:

Who's the fox?

Of the thee? Lando, obviously.

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