Star Citizen Megathread - Star Marine isn't doomed after all!
5,001 replies, posted
Has there been any news at all about when 2.4 might be pushed to live, or at least opened to a wider PTU audience? I'm a little irritated about them breaking their promise of monthly updates without a word of acknowledgement of it, though I'm sure they'll be forgiven if the content coming in 2.4 is of a magnitude to justify the delay.
[QUOTE=archangel125;50333170]Has there been any news at all about when 2.4 might be pushed to live, or at least opened to a wider PTU audience? I'm a little irritated about them breaking their promise of monthly updates without a word of acknowledgement of it, though I'm sure they'll be forgiven if the content coming in 2.4 is of a magnitude to justify the delay.[/QUOTE]
When has CIG ever keep time-based promises? I'm just glad that 2.4 is coming soon.
given it's '2.0' levels of change I don't mind the bigger wait for this particular patch. Sucks it breaks the "yeah every patch is just determined by a monthly cutoff instead of raw milestones that could halt other progress" explanation but it should return to regularly scheduled chunks after this
[QUOTE=archangel125;50333170]Has there been any news at all about when 2.4 might be pushed to live, or at least opened to a wider PTU audience? I'm a little irritated about them breaking their promise of monthly updates without a word of acknowledgement of it, though I'm sure they'll be forgiven if the content coming in 2.4 is of a magnitude to justify the delay.[/QUOTE]
2.4 has been described as being as big a game-changer as 2.0 was, and from the things CIG has themselves confirmed are being tested by Evocati (hangar item port system, mobiglas replacing the holotable, shopping and persistence, the Starfarer and Gemini), I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. 2.0 took longer than usual to get out of PTU because it was a giant step forward and not just your average "new ship in the hangar, new ship in Arena Commander, balance passes to screw the Hornet even more" patch.
Adding persistence is no small thing, and I'm sure there've been all sorts of zany bugs like killing a pirate gives you -2,147,483,648 Alpha UEC.
On RtV on Friday, Lando said that Evocati has been an amazing success, with 93% participation (only 7% of the people who were invited didn't bother to download the client) and a vast increase in the quality of Issue Council posts: fewer duplicates (meaning people are searching) and many reports with 10+ reproductions. The stated reason for the NDA turns out to actually be to force everyone to post about the PTU in one place where it's easy for CIG to find, rather than randoposting bug videos and descriptions of bugs on Reddit and random forums everywhere.
On the other hand, for 2.0, there was no chance of them keeping things under NDA and everyone was all over the place. CIG also got crap quality on Issue Council reports when they opened up PTU to hundreds of thousands of people, and the PTU 2.1 that was open to all. Big surprise, you let everyone in to test, and you get issue council reports filed by morons, in the wrong place, with a misleading title.
Avocados be more organized than a mongol horde 300,000 strong, news at 11.
I'm guessing that CIG might be keeping the Evocati PTU going for so long because it's working so well and is so much more effective than throwing the doors open and letting every stupid like me who's going to file maybe two bug reports/supporting contributions to reports and then spend the rest of the PTU taking screenshots to show off to the thread and joyriding like it's the live build. I admit that I don't put a ton of effort into bug reporting most of the time, but part of that is due to how difficult it is to test when every idiot is allowed in. I'd probably be a better bug tester if I was in the closed Evocati group, but I don't put enough effort in to be considered, so, that's karma. :v:
[editline]16th May 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=Intoxicated Spy;50333593]When has CIG ever keep time-based promises? I'm just glad that 2.4 is coming soon.[/QUOTE]
1.2 with Area 18 came out before end of August as promised at Gamescom, and we were like HAHAHA fuck no that's not happening and then it did; on the other hand AC 2.0 and Star Marine did not happen in September and October as also promised because CIG instead went all hands on PU 2.0 instead and brought multicrew and fps into the unified baby PU instead. So, oops. 1 for 3 for Chris there.
PU Alpha by end of 2015 - tick, as long as you allow CIG to redefine the PU Alpha to be Crusader instead of the five star systems that had previously been set as the PU Alpha target. In fairness to CIG, Foundry 42 Frankfurt and the massive engine wizardry they were able to bring to the table at the start of 2015 changed a lot about what CIG thought could be possible in the initial PU platform. It would've been fuckbuckets of wasted work to create five star systems worth of content when one will do and would've made bugtracking that much harder.
Patches every month under the new patch methodology - yes for 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3. 2.4 not so much.
Chris stated the Starfarer would be hangar-ready about two months before it actually was added to a public build. But in his defense, the SF is fucking [I]huge[/I] so it's kind of not surprising that CIG underestimated how much work it'd be to get it ready for public consumption. And going from hangar-ready to flyable-in-limited-PTU in one month is :ok:
So... CIG's not been utterly unreliable with time-based promises lately, but everyone knows they've fucked up royally with (suggested, taken by some backers as promised) deadlines in the past as well.
[editline]16th May 2016[/editline]
[video=youtube;PbTQWmXFuM0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbTQWmXFuM0[/video]
[QUOTE]00:57 – Style Guides
01:54 – Clothes Layering System
04:32 – CIG Careers
08:49 – Realism
10:14 – Personal Lives
13:29 – Innovative Contributions
14:53 – Character Creator
16:43 – Loose Clothing Physics
18:17 – Evolution of SC
20:32 – Favorite Cloth[/QUOTE]
Weekly schedule this week is the same as always. Vault update and lore post Tuesday, Bugsmashers on Wednesday, AtV and a Jump Point rerun on Thursday, RtV on Friday. Wider PTU on ???? if this week at all (I would be worried if Friday passes and it's still Evocati no matter how good they are).
[URL="https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/329778/comm-link-schedule-may-16th-2016"]While posting the weekly schedule, Lando says,[/URL]
[QUOTE]2.4 is still progressing on the PTU with the Evocati Test Flight. We're working towards a build that will go out to the next wave of testers, soon. Some fun stats on using a smaller, more focused and committed testing group:
- 87.2% of ETF accounts logged into 2.4.0-353268 a total of 4,243 times.
- 90.6% of ETF accounts logged into 2.4.0-352849 a total of 4,618 times.
- 725 bug reports have been entered in the PTU Issue Council.
- 87 bug reports have ten or more reproductions.
It’s a great example that sometimes less is more: we’re getting the same volume of bugs reports from the larger past waves, but with higher quality and repro rates, and with less noise and administrative headache. I know many others want to jump into PTU and help, and we certainly appreciate that. We get closer to that each and every day. [/QUOTE]
Frankly, the design of CIG's bug tracker sucks the big one. They've acknowledged it themselves, and said they'd change it eventually. Just like they've promised they'll eventually have actual account security via authentication and the like, you know, since people have sunk thousands of dollars in some cases into this game. I'm also very annoyed they haven't made something like THAT a priority either.
They've addressed that, sort of; "org 2.0" is now pretty much "RSI website overhaul x.0", with redesigned forums, chat, and extending into the rest of the features community touches on, including the Issue Council and the hub. That's also why org 2.0 is an outstanding promise still.
And it's being worked on, but they're trying to tackle the various limitations all at once. No more jackbooting outside forum software into the RSI experience, no more relying on XMPP and the typical XMPP bugs and systemic faults for chat, all custom stuff by Turbulent. This could be good or bad, but I can't blame them for at least trying to improve on what we already have, because it's not that great even when you ignore the posters themselves.
I wouldn't be surprised if 2-factor auth could've been in sooner but they'd rather roll it out comprehensively with the big revamp rather than do it twice. They're doing some things partially right already, though, since your handle isn't your username, and if you're smart your username and your public handle have nothing to do with each other.
[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/15339-Congress-Now"]The week's lorepost is up.[/URL] It's an excerpt of a transcript of Senate hearings on an appropriations bill to fund ongoing UEE-wide security services. The senator from Green, Ellis system, suddenly tries to tack on an amendment that would deny Senate voting rights to any elected senator that is not of human birth -- most importantly, the newly-elected Tevarin senator, Suj Kossi of Jalan -- on the basis that setting the precedent of allowing xeno votes is a slippery slope. [sp]it fails[/sp]
Sandi posted this behind-the-scenes shot of the Idris' utility ship, the Argo, on her facebook.
[t]https://i.imgur.com/hL3lP8W.jpg[/t]
This week's subscriber Vault content is more WIP concept art of the Prospector as it was being developed to the concept-ready state. This is the third pass revision.
[media]https://imgur.com/a/egEgw[/media]
Today, Bugsmashers and the JP rerun are due up.
Next week's 10ftD is going to be with Mark Abent and Randy Vazquez.
[URL="https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/6662179/#Comment_6662179"]Lee Banyard, audio director, answers why Star Citizen doesn't have arbitrary music streaming planned in the near future/already implemented:[/URL] it's not the technical hurdles, it's the licensing with the music industry and all that shit.
For subscribers, Alexis confirmed in the Subscribers' Den that the sub flair is still happening this month; the space cactus will be allocated to everyone's hangars this Friday, and the actual model is in 2.4.
And here are Tuesday's AtV segment rerun breakouts.
[video=youtube;-rOlvSNYcR0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rOlvSNYcR0[/video]
[video=youtube;jROoiKxXx-c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jROoiKxXx-c[/video]
I know like 99% of you don't care about this, but DS is writing a book/script(?) on Star Citizen
[t]http://i.imgur.com/QMT06Nq.png[/t]
[QUOTE=Intoxicated Spy;50347368]I know like 99% of you don't care about this, but DS is writing a book/script(?) on Star Citizen
[t]http://i.imgur.com/QMT06Nq.png[/t][/QUOTE]
He's writing a book just the same way as LoD is going to be ready for release before the end of the first half of 2016. (In case nobody noticed, it's not for sale on Steam anymore, and is just as crap as before.)
That's the poster for a HBO movie about Scientology titled Going Clear (GET IT IT'S A MONEY CULT); goons photoshopped the Pilgrim Cross from the Wing Commander movie over the E-Meter needle and changed a few of the words. HBO would sue so fast, and that's how I know he's completely lying when he claims his "publisher" sent it over, which pretty much reveals his entire claim to be wrting a book about SC as almost certainly false as well.
If Derek actually publishes a book about Star Citizen and it isn't just his blog posts jammed together and slightly re-edited, I will buy (if not free) and publicly stream myself playing at minimum four hours of the latest available Derek Smart game on Steam, kicking me over the refund deadline by far, for the debased amusement of the gathered crowd in the freak show tent. I will also buy the book (if it is not free), read every word, and provide the thread with a chapter-by-chapter summary. He has to publish at least 80 pages for it to count. No publishing a newsletter or pamphlet and calling it a book. :toxx:
[QUOTE=Intoxicated Spy;50347368]I know like 99% of you don't care about this, but DS is writing a book/script(?) on Star Citizen
[t]http://i.imgur.com/QMT06Nq.png[/t][/QUOTE]
How can a book be directed by someone?
[QUOTE=nightlord;50347444]How can a book be directed by someone?[/QUOTE]
That was my first thought.
I really wish CIG would get over their management problems. More than that, I hope that their poor management doesn't lead to the failure of the project in the long run. They don't have unlimited money or time, and their rate of growth has slowed again since the launch of Alpha 2.0.
What management problems are those?
[QUOTE=archangel125;50347611]I really wish CIG would get over their management problems. More than that, I hope that their poor management doesn't lead to the failure of the project in the long run. They don't have unlimited money or time, and their rate of growth has slowed again since the launch of Alpha 2.0.[/QUOTE]
I haven't seen any serious management problems so far.
I think when a company repeatedly makes promises such as being able to push out monthly updates, and repeatedly fails to deliver on them, it's indicative of some degree of failure on the part of their management. They've got fantastic talent at CIG, some of the best people in the market to help realize their dream. But if they can't get their shit together in the leadership department, they'll be in trouble before long. A large indicator of their success will be the trust their backers have in them, and when they mess up like this even after acknowledging that they've been bad at keeping their past deadlines, it's sort of disappointing.
when 2.4 was billed to be the next '2.0 compared to 1.3' step I didn't expect it to be a base monthly cutoff gig. I didn't expect it to take 2 months and for PTU to be in the dark either, but we weren't promised this was just a routine ship added to the hangar
if one thing needs better management it's their ability to advertise what's going on in one coherent message instead of playing 20 questions with random forum questioning hidden across several weekly videos. I appreciate the subscriber videos at their intent but they REALLY need to make the output palatable for the average schmuck who doesn't already know which episode disco made an offhanded comment about X schedule and Y component
I'll agree to their information dissemination problems. I shouldn't [I]have[/I] to be the local wiki and RSS feed for the thread.
2.4 is on the PTU; the only difference between this and 2.0 PTU is that this time around, CIG didn't invite 158,000 people in and slapped an NDA down to force them to keep their feedback where CIG devs can see it all. With fewer people (and a consequent reduction by a fuckton of bandwidth costs), they've achieved superior Issue Council performance and, one would hope, real bugfixing performance.
Turns out carefully curating your QA testers and keeping their feedback confined to at most two locations is more effective than holding an open house for an entire city and distributing comment cards and hoping they come back with decipherable words on them.
I've already addressed your concern regarding the patch release schedule and how 2.4 is an exceptionally major patch and not just new-ship-new-item-balance-changes, and dai said everything I would this time around.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;50347816]I'll agree to their information dissemination problems. I shouldn't [I]have[/I] to be the local wiki and RSS feed for the thread.
2.4 is on the PTU; the only difference between this and 2.0 PTU is that this time around, CIG didn't invite 158,000 people in and slapped an NDA down to force them to keep their feedback where CIG devs can see it all. With fewer people (and a consequent reduction by a fuckton of bandwidth costs), they've achieved superior Issue Council performance and, one would hope, real bugfixing performance.
Turns out carefully curating your QA testers and keeping their feedback confined to at most two locations is more effective than holding an open house for an entire city and distributing comment cards and hoping they come back with decipherable words on them.
I've already addressed your concern regarding the patch release schedule and how 2.4 is an exceptionally major patch and not just new-ship-new-item-balance-changes, and dai said everything I would this time around.[/QUOTE]
The promise was a live release - PTU doesn't count, especially in this case, because it's available to only a tiny fraction of backers and furthermore subject to an NDA. Ergo, it's not a monthly release. So it's really no different from an internal build for all practical purposes. Point is, they keep breaking their word, and that's going to hurt them a lot more than it already has if they keep it up. Don't get me wrong, I get that 2.4's a huge release, and I don't expect them to work miracles. However, coming out publicly and saying "Yeah, we're going to have to hold releases back for maybe a couple of months because we've got this coming down the pipe" would've been much better than the way they've handled it.
[editline]18th May 2016[/editline]
The problem with not being able to meet your own deadlines isn't that the backers don't expect there to be delays. I'd say all longtime backers of Star Citizen are very well aware of the challenges of development now. The problem is it calls the competency of their leadership into question, and even calls the grand vision of the whole project into question. The message it sends is that the devs keep underestimating the work required because they don't have good direction and someone with an eye on the big picture. Which ultimately raises the question of "Can they really make a game as grand as the one they're trying to make? Do they have any idea what they're getting themselves into?" Like I said, bad overall.
For me, as a backer of Star Citizen since 2013 and someone who's put a lot of faith in the project, all I need to be assured is to feel that the devs have a good idea of how long making this sort of game is going to take. Right now, it looks like they don't have a clue.
I don't think it's a leadership problem if they are unable to accurately predict how long it will take them to do something nobody's done before. I believe your expectations are slightly too high about the devs' powers of prediction.
I don't understand why it's a big deal that they did not make an explicit Comm-Link post saying "sorry, 2.4 is so huge we're not taking it out of PTU yet", especially when that decision is revisited on basically a daily basis to see if they're ready to move to the next step.
They have a roadmap, they're just not public with it anymore because backers demonstrated that they lose their shit whenever things change and they aren't informed immediately -- and considering the amount of info CIG already puts out, such a thing is already bordering on unreasonable without them completely overhauling their entire work process (which would add even more delays while the website gets rebuilt [I]again[/I] and dev reporting flows become more nagging).
Sandi posted this to her fb:
[t]https://i.imgur.com/67a8e1P.jpg[/t]
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;50348837]I don't think it's a leadership problem if they are unable to accurately predict how long it will take them to do something nobody's done before. I believe your expectations are slightly too high about the devs' powers of prediction.
I don't understand why it's a big deal that they did not make an explicit Comm-Link post saying "sorry, 2.4 is so huge we're not taking it out of PTU yet", especially when that decision is revisited on basically a daily basis to see if they're ready to move to the next step.
They have a roadmap, they're just not public with it anymore because backers demonstrated that they lose their shit whenever things change and they aren't informed immediately -- and considering the amount of info CIG already puts out, such a thing is already bordering on unreasonable without them completely overhauling their entire work process (which would add even more delays while the website gets rebuilt [I]again[/I] and dev reporting flows become more nagging).
Sandi posted this to her fb:
[t]https://i.imgur.com/67a8e1P.jpg[/t][/QUOTE]
Being unable to accurately predict things doesn't necessarily indicate a leadership problem. Making promises they're not sure they can keep is, and this is the third time I'm saying so. In the minds of a lot of people, that doubt extends far beyond the promises concerning playable build release dates.
[QUOTE=archangel125;50349290]Being unable to accurately predict things doesn't necessarily indicate a leadership problem. Making promises they're not sure they can keep is, and this is the third time I'm saying so. In the minds of a lot of people, that doubt extends far beyond the promises concerning playable build release dates.[/QUOTE]
In fairness, many of the things that are perceived as promises are actually stated more like "this is what we are trying to do", or, "this is what we want to do".
[QUOTE=archangel125;50349290]Being unable to accurately predict things doesn't necessarily indicate a leadership problem. Making promises they're not sure they can keep is, and this is the third time I'm saying so. In the minds of a lot of people, that doubt extends far beyond the promises concerning playable build release dates.[/QUOTE]
I don't think at any point they've promised anything, though. There's a difference between a promise and an estimation of when someone should be done. An estimation is subject to change and is not a guarantee of anything, if they had outright promised something and then didn't do it that would be bad, but from what I've seen that's not what they've done at all.
It's not as if they throw out a random date for something and then realize suddenly it's far too much work to get it done by then. They obviously have things planned but some unexpected complications causes delays. There are reasons the dates they give aren't always entirely accurate, it's not just "We guessed wrong".
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;50347388]He's writing a book just the same way as LoD is going to be ready for release before the end of the first half of 2016. (In case nobody noticed, it's not for sale on Steam anymore, and is just as crap as before.)
That's the poster for a HBO movie about Scientology titled Going Clear (GET IT IT'S A MONEY CULT); goons photoshopped the Pilgrim Cross from the Wing Commander movie over the E-Meter needle and changed a few of the words. HBO would sue so fast, and that's how I know he's completely lying when he claims his "publisher" sent it over, which pretty much reveals his entire claim to be wrting a book about SC as almost certainly false as well.
If Derek actually publishes a book about Star Citizen and it isn't just his blog posts jammed together and slightly re-edited, I will buy (if not free) and publicly stream myself playing at minimum four hours of the latest available Derek Smart game on Steam, kicking me over the refund deadline by far, for the debased amusement of the gathered crowd in the freak show tent. I will also buy the book (if it is not free), read every word, and provide the thread with a chapter-by-chapter summary. He has to publish at least 80 pages for it to count. No publishing a newsletter or pamphlet and calling it a book. :toxx:[/QUOTE]
[video=youtube;fDzAmjYncQk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDzAmjYncQk[/video]
[QUOTE]01:50 – Intro
07:03 – News from Around the Verse
17:46 – SHIP SHAPE: Caterpillar II
38:34 – ATV Rewind: The Orgin M50
42:24 – Loremaker’s Guide: Tamsa & Min
53:25 – [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWcQt5IQi2o"]MVP[/URL]
54:36 – ATV Fast Forward: Piping System Part II
[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxHIj8_44Dk"]Gameplay Bumper[/URL][/QUOTE]
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKalr7SjFQo[/media]
the cat whitebox was pretty neat, view from the bridge was exactly what I was expecting up top, and it's neat seeing some of the stuff we only saw as pieces before-
Nav seat (and enhanced for bridge)
[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/p5j9qlwj9wuqfr/source/CockpitChair.jpg[/t][t]http://i.imgur.com/OfVdlpw.jpg[/t]
back of the bridge
[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/fpujaetofrcdtr/source/Caterpillar-Interior-Cargo-Concept.png[/t]
engine
[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/zvwalg47nmzc4r/source/Engine-V01.jpg[/t]
engineering+fuel tank
[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/l9d39dfoza4sar/source/FuelTanks-Engineering.jpg[/t]
Cool seeing some concepting in progress for the consoles and ship map UIs, was hoping to see something easy to read/control once we got to larger ships with a lot of doors and personnel to keep track of. Hopefully that map will also show up on the starfarer
I wouldn't worry too much about things being easy to read. If anything I imagine that Mobiglas will pick up the slack where visual design falls short and highlights/color codes/shades/labels registered ship components and stuff for you. Maybe an upgrade to your Mobiglas functionality if you pair your ship with it. Who knows, lots of options.
I can see a Mobiglas Clippy saying "I see you're trying to re-route the power distribution hub, would you like me to pull up the users manual?" on your HUD now.
Lol I like how the engine has cylinders arranged like a car.
[QUOTE=Mbbird;50353641]Lol I like how the engine has cylinders arranged like a car.[/QUOTE]
have some Napier Deltic
[t]http://www.oldengine.org/members/pml/Graphics/Napier%20Deltic.JPG[/t] [t]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Napier_Deltic_Engine.jpg[/t]
known for use in locomotives and marine application, including navy ships
[t]http://i.imgur.com/0Pukf8C.png[/t]
I wouldn't be surprised if they used ships like this for their references for the barebones industrial look
[QUOTE=dai;50353699]have some Napier Deltic
[t]http://www.oldengine.org/members/pml/Graphics/Napier%20Deltic.JPG[/t] [t]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Napier_Deltic_Engine.jpg[/t]
known for use in locomotives and marine application, including navy ships
[t]http://i.imgur.com/0Pukf8C.png[/t]
I wouldn't be surprised if they used ships like this for their references for the barebones industrial look[/QUOTE]
True, but ships use screws which are shaft-driven and so can use pistons. Spess ships, on the other hand, are presumably using nuclear engines.
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