Star Citizen Megathread - Star Marine isn't doomed after all! - Games

[QUOTE=BANNED USER;50095925]Dunno, I'm sure the SA thread will give you an answer you will approve of.[/QUOTE] What exactly do you mean by that?

The actual situation that is being referred to in the stream, for the record without snark, is that Disco Lando (the defensive one being picked on) tweeted some photos last Spring of the fps module's zero-g level (pretty much the arena from Ender's Game, as an intentional homage). He was trying to do a cool thing and show off the sweet map to excited backers (when it was still planned to be released "pretty soon" before they folded fps into the baby PU and went six months with almost no updates) in his role on the community team. What a bro. Unfortunately for Jared (DL's real name), behind the game window was a console window with the complete URL to a torrent file on a public-facing unsecured Amazon CDN. This torrent file was actually the configuration file to set an internal version of the launcher up to download the build that Jared was playing. But the torrent tracker info was standard-protocol BitTorrent and worked with any torrent client. Whoops. The torrent swarm/seeders were also public-facing and unsecured, allowing backers to pull down copies of this internal build. And not only was the internal build there, all sorts of extra shit came along with it, including a concerning number of Crytek proprietary tools and 3DS MAX/etc. plugins, the program used to sign and verify Cryengine .PAK files (but not the private keys, lucky them), and fuckbuckets of previously-unseen spoiler Squadron 42 assets: Enough info to reconstruct the basic plot and the initial mission setups, plus a fleet of Vanduul ships in advanced stages of 3D modeling. Lando was of course not the one responsible for the build's torrent file or seeds being on unauthenticated public-facing servers, and was merely the final step in the chain of bad decisions and mistakes that caused the leaked build to escape into the wild. However, because it was leaked through him and he's on the community team and part of the public face of the project, the public blame (by the community, not corporate which didn't comment at all besides asking people not to spread the build around due to all the shit in it that shouldn't be public) was laid on him. In the immediate aftermath of the leak, Lando was... in a bit of trouble for not performing proper sanitization on photos of dev environments, but it was apparently not nearly as severe as the community hyped itself up to think (OH HE'S IN BIG SHIT NOW I HOPE HE DOESN'T GET FIRED). There were also likely uncomfortable talks with IT and whoever was responsible for designing their internal deployments, because the real issue was ultimately an IT failure. It's been a running gag ever since to tease Lando about the leak. Ben was particularly vicious and persistent about it during this stream and may have actually made Lando a little bit uncomfortable, but I'm pretty sure he was hamming it up for the stream some as well. Lando does also lament that he can't say anything about what really happened to defend himself because that means throwing other people under the bus -- the professional response.

[QUOTE=Hezzy;50095947]What exactly do you mean by that?[/QUOTE] I didn't know anything about a leak and I thought SA would've given a better/funnier answer, and it turns out I was wrong about that. Face it, the two forums are so vastly different in the handling of Star Citizen it's like watching a soap opera half the time. I'm watching this for the drama at this point, I'm sure the game will be fine in whatever state they release it. From what I've experienced so far, their goals in what they say they can accomplish seem reasonable. I wonder what they're gonna do with all the super expensive props on their set, after Lando destroys it all. [editline]8th April 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=elixwhitetail;50096009][Holy fucking shit Lando] It's been a running gag ever since to tease Lando about the leak. Ben was particularly vicious and persistent about it during this stream and may have actually made Lando a little bit uncomfortable, but I'm pretty sure he was hamming it up for the stream some as well. Lando does also lament that he can't say anything about what really happened to defend himself because that means throwing other people under the bus -- the professional response.[/QUOTE] Jesus Christ, I'd say he's earned it though.

Final point is - don't pay attention to the peeps buying in for over a thousand bucks on a game - it's plastered all over the site and store, that if you decide to do this, you are doing it for funding the game - and NO other reason. In fact, they even discourage it themselves saying that everything is gonna change in the long run. There's gonna be some angry people when they find out their capships are nigh useless without proper handling or crew, but they asked for it when they bought one instead of getting one in-game. So yeah, we understand you Hezzy, but it seemed at first that the DS crowd had gotten to you - made you unreasonable, or even worse "the we-hate-everything-and-we-love-hating-everything SA goons"

ship models extracted from the leak are featured in this video, as well as a lot of content that was the FPS maps for star marine that people managed to piece back together in their own copies of cryengine. A lot of models are old content that had been updated/replaced well before the leak even happened, but it showed a lot of things that nobody had seen word of prior to the leak [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLvpaYD0GYM[/media] on the earlier points, I spent about $150 (and did a [I]lot [/I]of wheeling and dealing with the more fanatical lot to earn a hangar of ships worth over 1300 total). Even if I spent that total myself (to be fair, a combined set of people did spend it on my behalf), I'd say I've had entirely more fun dollar for hour than I did with elite dangerous, after paying into that beta when it had just dropped from $300 to $90. Launch was a disappointing mess and I wanted a refund for it falling short of advertised expectation [i]at launch[/i], but being a great proof of concept platform for the oculus made it worthwhile to come back to now and again. Haven't tried CQC yet but it looks more like what I was initially sold on, so I should reinstall sooner than later in the end space sims are games occupied by older more dedicated gamers who more often than not would consider it a hobby, and spend a lot more time with it than other people might on costlier passing fancies. Like I can go to the mall and spend 80 bucks on some plastic helicopter and fly it for 20 minutes in my back yard before it needs a 4 hour recharge, provided I don't land it funny and break a blade. Alternatively I can invest well over a thousand dollars on some nitrous RC car and join a club of people in my town for some fee, to go racing at their little dirt track by the skate park, and even then it'd sound really fanatical if I had spent as much time with RC cars as I have with a few PC games that I frequent [editline]e[/editline] I'd like to add that buzzing around the concierge ($1000+ backer) subforum, it's clear that while there's a handful of entitled idris babies who seem to act like they'll be flying an entire fleet at once (????), most of the people in there are chill and often cite that they work cushy tech jobs and they did it to fund an interesting game, not because they wanted ships

I have a video of me walking around Gold Horizon (the fps map in the leaked build) that I've never uploaded. (It was boring tbh, plus I got lost and looped around a bunch, but I could edit it down.) Would there be interest in me uploading it? It's been long enough since the leak that I don't think anyone would care. I previously had posted these few short videos of the zero-g map, which were fucked up by the fact that parts of the map did not have collision and the zero-g mechanic was not properly working in the gamemode I'd hamfisted in to make the map load without missing server match triggers. I also put up two ArcCorp videos but now that ArcCorp is live and the real version looks way better [I]and[/I] has better performance, they're just a historical curiosity at this point. [video=youtube;TChOt_iUhIc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TChOt_iUhIc[/video] [video=youtube;DzFCmQFCttc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzFCmQFCttc[/video] [video=youtube;lYxGCrwZcxk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYxGCrwZcxk[/video] I know one reason to hold the zero-g arena/game mechanics back was that, until now (and even now we're not 100%), player models in EVA didn't ragdoll properly, or really move properly at all. (EVA sync was so bad at one point when 2.0 was on the testing server that me and Korro were navigating outside a space station in EVA together and each of us looked like we were just standing upright and violently vibrating up and down by 6 inches in either direction on the other's client. :v: So, no surprise that they didn't rush to throw this arena station bit into the map yet. Hopefully they might sneak it in soon, as a free-roam arena (not a timed round gamemode, yyyyyet, not unless they're ready to release Star Marine officially. It'd just need a tweak to the armistice zone rules to only allow the grapple-and-stun pistol to be used (and also have respawning supplies in each locker room) inside the map.

[QUOTE=Hezzy;50095859]If it is a pledge or charitable gift, then why do we pay tax on our purchases?[/QUOTE] because CIG isn't a charity? really though buying ships is definitely an odd situation, it's no surprise many people find it off-putting people say its to support development, but I think it's pretty obvious that they wouldn't have raised a fraction of what they did if it wasn't for all these ship sales so it's a bit of a grey area, do some people spend more than they should? probably. but I don't think it's CIG's responsibility to make sure people don't spend too much, and as long as they use the money on an honest effort to deliver what was promised (as opposed to some scam) then it's not a big deal but if you look at the total amount raised over the number of backers, you end up with an average of about $85 per person, which isn't much more than a AAA game. so it doesn't reek of people being taken advantage of to me

[QUOTE=Hezzy;50094668]Everywhere else I can think of is an echo chamber that can't stand any form of criticism of their hundred dollar jpegs[/QUOTE] But your current source is an echo chamber where they can't stand any form of praise of their Number #1 guaranteed failure of a game

[QUOTE=ScottyWired;50097458]But your current source is an echo chamber where they can't stand any form of praise of their Number #1 guaranteed failure of a game[/QUOTE] Actually I read the subreddit more than I read the SA thread. Please don't presume things.

[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/z7tq28knsktlnr/source/LA_Header.jpg[/t] [url]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15285-Monthly-Studio-Report[/url] i'm surprised elix didn't bother posting this since we've been talking (mostly) about it on the discord for the last 40 minutes [media]https://youtu.be/ZpTOMNzIvmc[/media]

[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/b97et9vsqtvxrr/source/BHVR_Header.jpg[/t] Some of us like to digest the entire magazine-length post first before posting the highlights. :vs: Hangar-ready Reliant is all I needed to hear, though. [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//15286-Star-Citizen-Alpha-231"]Also, yo, 2.3.1 is live.[/URL]

[QUOTE=Hezzy;50097635]Actually I read the subreddit more than I read the SA thread. Please don't presume things.[/QUOTE] I thought it was a pretty good presumption since derek is banned from reddit and you didn't call dai out when he said this [QUOTE=dai;50094654] if you're taking anything he's putting out seriously you might want to find a few sources outside of him and the SA goons that keep goading him[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Hezzy;50097635]Actually I read the subreddit more than I read the SA thread. Please don't presume things.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=ScottyWired;50097712]I thought it was a pretty good presumption since derek is banned from reddit and you didn't call dai out when he said this[/QUOTE] I wasn't going to call you out on it because it wasn't worth posting about, but you also said this: [QUOTE=Hezzy;50094752]I have no idea where Derek gets his money from. [B]I'm thinking he probably made megabucks with his first couple of games (they were pretty great for their time)[/B]... Likely he also works as a "consultant" in various IT sectors as he has quite a lot of experience even if it hasn't exactly translated to modern AAA blockbusting games[/QUOTE] hahahaha [URL="http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/battlecruiser-3000-ad-review/1900-2538148/"]are you kidding[/URL] [QUOTE]Battlecruiser 3000 A.D. is now out, and as one of the games with the longest development periods in computer history (seven years), it will go down in legend as the most bug-ridden, unstable, unplayable pieces of software ever released. (And, yes, I'm counting Falcon 3.0 and Patriot.)[/QUOTE] And now comes a minor wall'o'text about Derek and his ugly past. TL;DR I don't think Derek's games have made nearly as much money as you think they have, nor were they received nearly as well as you seem to think. Any google search for Battlecruiser 3000 reviews that are datestamped 1996-mid2000s should reveal just how "beloved" Derek was. However, I also give Derek his fair due where appropriate, because he's not a cartoon villain. In fairness to Derek, his publisher Take Two Interactive forced a release of BC3K. The deeper story behind that was that Derek had been missing deadlines and Take Two was getting impatient. When Derek missed yet another deadline, Take Two took the build they had (which wouldn't even successfully [I]install[/I] on some customers' machines) and shoved the abortion of a release through gold master. It's worth noting that Take Two was Derek's [I]fourth[/I] publisher before his first game shipped. BC3K was abortively released after seven years in development, during which time Derek had hyped it up as well as spent an unknown amount of hours waging one side of what became the largest and longest-running Usenet flame war in Internet history (>70,000 posts), the topic being Derek Smart and (still-unreleased) BC3K. Derek is also on record as saying that he would've worked on BC3K for another 10 years before releasing it if he hadn't been forced to publish by Take Two -- pretty much confirming that T2 had every right to get impatient because Derek seemed content to keep accepting their checks with no expectation of a marketable product in the forseeable future. In fairness to Derek again, he continued working on the game after it was forced out and he slaved away at fixing the crash bugs for two years and then released the game for free as an apology to all of the fans he'd disappointed. Most of the releases of "new" games that he's made since then have been re-releases of the same game with suffixes added to the name and bugfixes and content patches -- the justification is that they're basically previous release+expansion. His latest game, Line of Defense (announced in 2009, supposed to launch in 2011, added to Steam Early Access in 2012 with a trailer video that [I]still[/I] says it'll launch out of Early Access in 2012, the game server crashes if more than 5 people are logged in at once, check steamcharts for the TL;DR of how LoD is doing, or just look for any video of it) reuses assets from the original BC3K. In reality he's released about 2.5 distinct games, generously speaking, and there's not really any way of making this sound less harsh. In fairness, I've heard from people who've taken the time to untangle how to play Derek's Battlecruiser series of games (every screen has a different keybind design sensibility, practically) and they say that once you get used to the difficult UI/UX, there's actually a lot going on in the game -- it's hard to see but there's some real deep simulation happening. Which makes it all the more tragic, because Derek's real problem might be that he was incapable of working with someone else having the authority of project management. His games are marred by one-man-developer-army syndrome and basically most of the flaws can be laid down to programmer art extended to every facet of design and technical decision, in places where he can't access a reliable middleware or library. I don't hate Derek, I feel empathy and pity for him, because he's got lofty dreams and obviously [I]some[/I] computer development skill (even if it doesn't look like much outwardly), but he's got these crippling flaws that keep him from being able to work with game development industry practices and team environments. Dude's publicly acknowledged that he has anxiety and even that alone can make you unemployable if the panic attacks are bad enough, and Derek's issues definitely don't end there, but I'm not here to talk shit about legitimate mental problems.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;50097848]I wasn't going to call you out on it because it wasn't worth posting about, but you also said this: hahahaha [URL="http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/battlecruiser-3000-ad-review/1900-2538148/"]are you kidding[/URL] And now comes a minor wall'o'text about Derek and his ugly past. TL;DR I don't think Derek's games have made nearly as much money as you think they have, nor were they received nearly as well as you seem to think. Any google search for Battlecruiser 3000 reviews that are datestamped 1996-mid2000s should reveal just how "beloved" Derek was. However, I also give Derek his fair due where appropriate, because he's not a cartoon villain. In fairness to Derek, his publisher Take Two Interactive forced a release of BC3K. The deeper story behind that was that Derek had been missing deadlines and Take Two was getting impatient. When Derek missed yet another deadline, Take Two took the build they had (which wouldn't even successfully [I]install[/I] on some customers' machines) and shoved the abortion of a release through gold master. It's worth noting that Take Two was Derek's [I]fourth[/I] publisher before his first game shipped. BC3K was abortively released after seven years in development, during which time Derek had hyped it up as well as spent an unknown amount of hours waging one side of what became the largest and longest-running Usenet flame war in Internet history (>70,000 posts), the topic being Derek Smart and (still-unreleased) BC3K. Derek is also on record as saying that he would've worked on BC3K for another 10 years before releasing it if he hadn't been forced to publish by Take Two -- pretty much confirming that T2 had every right to get impatient because Derek seemed content to keep accepting their checks with no expectation of a marketable product in the forseeable future. In fairness to Derek again, he continued working on the game after it was forced out and he slaved away at fixing the crash bugs for two years and then released the game for free as an apology to all of the fans he'd disappointed. Most of the releases of "new" games that he's made since then have been re-releases of the same game with suffixes added to the name and bugfixes and content patches -- the justification is that they're basically previous release+expansion. His latest game, Line of Defense (announced in 2009, supposed to launch in 2011, added to Steam Early Access in 2012 with a trailer video that [I]still[/I] says it'll launch out of Early Access in 2012, the game server crashes if more than 5 people are logged in at once, check steamcharts for the TL;DR of how LoD is doing, or just look for any video of it) reuses assets from the original BC3K. In reality he's released about 2.5 distinct games, generously speaking, and there's not really any way of making this sound less harsh. In fairness, I've heard from people who've taken the time to untangle how to play Derek's Battlecruiser series of games (every screen has a different keybind design sensibility, practically) and they say that once you get used to the difficult UI/UX, there's actually a lot going on in the game -- it's hard to see but there's some real deep simulation happening. Which makes it all the more tragic, because Derek's real problem might be that he was incapable of working with someone else having the authority of project management. His games are marred by one-man-developer-army syndrome and basically most of the flaws can be laid down to programmer art extended to every facet of design and technical decision, in places where he can't access a reliable middleware or library. I don't hate Derek, I feel empathy and pity for him, because he's got lofty dreams and obviously [I]some[/I] computer development skill (even if it doesn't look like much outwardly), but he's got these crippling flaws that keep him from being able to work with game development industry practices and team environments. Dude's publicly acknowledged that he has anxiety and even that alone can make you unemployable if the panic attacks are bad enough, and Derek's issues definitely don't end there, but I'm not here to talk shit about legitimate mental problems.[/QUOTE] You're forgetting both Battlecruiser Millennium and Universal Combat. All of his games were reviewed favourably in the UK. I remember because I read every issue of them and remember seeing his games in PC Gamer. I even remember trying to install the Battlecruiser (AD or Millenium, I'm not sure) demo. It didn't work, though. You have to remember that this was over a decade ago and the market was a lot different than it is now. You'd buy games based off of what a magazine told you, if that. I would've bought a game if the packaging looked cool. User interface and experience wasn't a factor back then. You'd play it and figure it out; that's how it was for every game. Just because something has bad reviews doesn't mean that people didn't buy it. It wasn't the age of information back then, if a game flopped it did so after everyone had already bought it. Just looking at the revenue stats for BC3000AD, Take Two's filings state they received about $618,000 for the game. In 1996, the money would be roughly equivalent to $1,000,000 today. 18% of that went to Derek. The subsequent games were self published so presumably he took all the revenue. I can't find any statistics for that. It's not implausible that he made some good investments and has been living off of the proceeds of his early games ever since.

Battlecruiser Millenium and Universal Combat are retitles/iterative releases of of BC3K, and [URL="http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Combat-PC/dp/B0000A345M"]the Amazon.com reviews for UC (all but 3 of which are within 12 months of the original release date) are fairly unflattering.[/URL] The last major project Derek's seen to completion is Alganon; rather in that he staged a hostile takeover of the project by getting himself hired on as a consultant and then spinning a narrative to the board of directors, who weren't paying any attention to the project while the devs worked away, that the head of the project was misusing funds and wasting development time unproductively, and then talked them into putting him in charge as the framed bastard's replacement because he'd do a better job on a thinner budget in a faster amount of time. Under Derek's leadership the scope of the game was narrowed considerably, and what came out the other end is a shameless, uninspired WoW clone F2P. [URL="http://steamcharts.com/app/350660"]The stats speak for themselves.[/URL] Whatever Derek had, be it early beginners-luck talent, the lag between release date and word spreading that XYZ game was shit, or enough outside supervision, it's gone missing by now, and it's sad.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;50098084]Battlecruiser Millenium and Universal Combat are retitles/iterative releases of of BC3K, and [URL="http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Combat-PC/dp/B0000A345M"]the Amazon.com reviews for UC (all but 3 of which are within 12 months of the original release date) are fairly unflattering.[/URL] The last major project Derek's seen to completion is Alganon; rather in that he staged a hostile takeover of the project by getting himself hired on as a consultant and then spinning a narrative to the board of directors, who weren't paying any attention to the project while the devs worked away, that the head of the project was misusing funds and wasting development time unproductively, and then talked them into putting him in charge as the framed bastard's replacement because he'd do a better job on a thinner budget in a faster amount of time. Under Derek's leadership the scope of the game was narrowed considerably, and what came out the other end is a shameless, uninspired WoW clone F2P. [URL="http://steamcharts.com/app/350660"]The stats speak for themselves.[/URL] Whatever Derek had, be it early beginners-luck talent, the lag between release date and word spreading that XYZ game was shit, or enough outside supervision, it's gone missing by now, and it's sad.[/QUOTE] So what you're saying is that Derek was working as a consultant initially, earning money. Then he took the project over, presumably earning more money. And you're still wondering where he is getting his money from? I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here mate. I'm not defending Derek Smart. I'm saying where he likely got his money from. You can slate him all you want but it makes no difference.

If you wanna just overlook that he essentially ran a development project into the ground and is milking it for money, sure, I have no questions, officer. [editline]8th April 2016[/editline] That being said, the details of the deal aren't public; what's known is that Quest Online pays DS a license fee, and also apparently hosts LoD's servers for him (and they crash if you click the wrong thing or just for no reason). But, anyway, never mind Derek. Moral of the whole digression into Star Citizen's #1 anti-fan: there are valid criticisms for SC, but starting with anything DS says runs the risk of bringing unwanted baggage along. The problem is that his FUD campaign's managed to disseminate a bit into online discussion, masking the source, and people end up hearing all sorts of (unjustified) negativity about Star Citizen that ultimately sources back to DS FUD but isn't noticeably suspect at first glance. And that's what he's hoped for since he began his crusade last summer. It makes it difficult for discussion on both sides, because it's hard to separate discussion of real, legitimate criticism with rational (or hell even irrational, opinions are opinions) supporting arguments beneath from shitposting trolling by Derek/goons -- but also, often times people have unknowingly absorbed a bit of Derek FUD in the ambient Internet about SC, and then they come to here or some other place where people discuss SC a lot and keep up with everything (and get trolled by shitposters a lot) and, without intending to, they go "so, I heard that SC has a problem, _(Derek Smart talking point in perfect form)_". Poor newbie gets jumped on by everyone as a Derek drone and now the SC community's a pile of shitlords. This has kiiiinda happened here today, a bit, if we take Hezzy's words at face value (rule #1 says I should). I wasn't intending on painting labels on Hezzy but I want to apologize for any perceived aggression or pigeonholing over misunderstanding your arguments based on the unusual mentions of Derek sprinkled among your comments, along with the non-trivial number of DS talking points that surfaced among your posts (but not exclusively -- again, this is about NOT labeling you a Smart drone). That's kind of a nice side benefit for Derek, causing internicine drama among fans, and it hurts to unknowingly perpetuate his goals even a bit.

These two past pages were sure interesting to read. Keep it up if you like, it's interesting to see what people think about current state of Star Citizen. And you actually somehow manage to not turn this discussion into flamefest. I just want to mention that everything you pay for Star Citizen above the ~50e price of the starter package goes to funding. You really don't get anything worth your money when you pay for more than the game itself. The only thing you will have is maybe a bigger ship for some big bucks at the start, but soon enough everyone will be able to afford one. I wouldn't even want to start with a big ship, considering how difficult it could become to maintain. And on the other hand, i want to carve my path from the rock bottom like i did with X3 games for example. tl;dr people who paid more than 50e will get angry once game is in "release" state, if they think they paid for ships.

Why has this evolved into a full blown national debate It's a video game about spess and ships Pay 50 bucks or don't problem solved

Pretty much. It's kind of stupid to claim anyone's being 'taken advantage of' if they only have to spend a small amount of money to get access to everything, and can earn other flyable ships in-game anyway.

[hd]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpTOMNzIvmc[/hd] not sure if I'm watching a game, or porn.

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aN-3bD0fX8[/media]

Remember my explanation of the leak and why Lando was defensive when Ben mercilessly teased him about it on yesterday's RtV? Witness Derek engaging in Kremlinology: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Y8K7D7g.png[/IMG] I think he's high on his own supply at this point. [t]https://i.imgur.com/OBzjgUy.jpg[/t] Shameless reddit content scrape. I want to get off Mr. MISC Freelancer's Wild Ride. [URL="https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4dtm93/lets_have_an_unpopular_opinions_thread/"]The SC subreddit had an "Unpopular opinions" thread and invited constructive criticism to counter hugbox hivemind swarming.[/URL] It went actually pretty well and might turn into a regular event to bring rational discourse back to the largest non-RSI backer community forum. Guess who presented it as if this was somehow a bad thing, and you get three guesses in hopes of summoning him. If you like watching two obese guys geeking out on livestream all day, with random special guests (Toast running chat duty and sitting on second string to replace Ben/Lando so they can have breaks on the 8-ish hour stream, possibly Sandi, maybe CR if he's in town no idea), [URL="https://www.twitch.tv/cigcommunity"]Ben and Lando are streaming Wing Commander: The Secret Missions 2 - Crusade to mark its 25th anniversary.[/URL] Secret Missions 2 was particularly hard compared to WC1 and Secret Missions 1, so there's probably going to be lots of failing.

the sabre has something to say [t]http://i.imgur.com/BFdUFwU.jpg[/t]

The last update made SC pretty much unplayable for me, and I can't figure out why. It will be fine until I get enemy contacts on screen and then suddenly its super laggy, even if I quantum to another port.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;50100842][URL="https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4dtm93/lets_have_an_unpopular_opinions_thread/"]The SC subreddit had an "Unpopular opinions" thread and invited constructive criticism to counter hugbox hivemind swarming.[/URL] It went actually pretty well and might turn into a regular event to bring rational discourse back to the largest non-RSI backer community forum. [/QUOTE] The Star Citizen community needs that thread. The subreddit passed critical mass sometime last year when it reached a point where there was nothing worth reading on it anymore. The subreddit has both become too large for its own good, and a massive circlejerk where it's not worth even trying to discuss anything with those fanboys. I don't read the subreddit anymore. It's not worth my time to sift through all the garbage to find something interesting. I'm just tired of this whole thing. I hope this game ends up not feeling like a janky, poorly planned, [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGjWavtSaQk]ambitious, but rubbish[/url] mess. As time goes on, the more I'm starting to think that's the inevitable fate of Star Citizen. There's just too much bloat, and I know some gets their panties in the biggest bunch ever when you say Star Citizen is bloated, but it is. It really God damn is. I want to get off Chris Robert's wild ride. I want to be wrong. I want this game to come out in 6 years and actually be good, but I don't think that's realistic to expect anymore. I'm not sure that was [I]ever[/I] realistic to expect, especially with what the game has become. [editline]10th April 2016[/editline] You want to know my unpopular opinion? I think if CIG were to sell out, it'd be a good thing. I think it would be beneficial to the game for some big publisher to buy out the company and then for Chris to either be reigned in or ragequit the industry once again. Then, for that big publisher to tighten down, start making cuts, start polishing the game, and then release an actual game that's playable and not just a hopes and dreams collection of ill fitting prototypes. It's what happened to Freelancer, and Freelancer ended up being one of my favorite games of all time. Star Citizen feels more like somebody's science project, an experiment in going against conventional wisdom and doing things people thought were stupid and unrealistic. On one hand I admire that. It's like the most glorified tech demo ever and it's hard to deny the technical accomplishments of CIG, but that's not a game. Chris Roberts has too much control of the project. He's a George Lucas type. He's a dreamer, and that's important to have, don't get me wrong. You don't get your Wing Commanders, Starlancers, or Freelancers without somebody wanting to make them in the first place. But you can't let him micromanage every aspect of the project or else it'll all get completely out of hand and nothing satisfying will result. He needs somebody to tell him "no", and I fear his cult of personality will forever stunt anything he works on.

When will player/ship interaction not be shit?

[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;50106138]When will player/ship interaction not be shit?[/QUOTE] As far as I know soon, they've started tech design on the rework for the interactions system, which will hopefully make all interactions not shit. [QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;50106240]Also, is the current animation system in the PTU the same one that was coming with Star Marine?[/QUOTE] It seems like it was improved since then, but again, everything is constantly being worked on and improved. Though atm, if the FPS was a little better, the animations would feel really nice (though some movement speed tweaks are needed)

Also, is the current animation system in the PTU the same one that was coming with Star Marine? [editline]10th April 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Korro Bravin;50106152]It seems like it was improved since then, but again, everything is constantly being worked on and improved. Though atm, if the FPS was a little better, the animations would feel really nice (though some movement speed tweaks are needed)[/QUOTE]I ask because I remember seeing it look incredible during demos, and while there's definitely an improvement, it's nowhere near as smooth as I remember in the videos.

[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;50106240]Also, is the current animation system in the PTU the same one that was coming with Star Marine? [editline]10th April 2016[/editline] I ask because I remember seeing it look incredible during demos, and while there's definitely an improvement, it's nowhere near as smooth as I remember in the videos.[/QUOTE] Looked over the gamescom footage, and yeah, it does look smoother there, in third person. In first person it looked rather janky, so the changes could have been to fix that. I also think they may have done a change to the player skeleton though (plus branch divergence from Illfonic might've caused some stuff to get lost when they reintegrated). When I get the game updated I'll see about recording some comparisons 'n whatnot.