STAR CITIZEN: JEU PRÉFÉRÉ DE VOMKRIEGE

[Great Rumbler]

They've probably spent more on actors/mocap than anything other part of the game.

[CatsCatsCats]

Don't people just want space game?

[Great Rumbler]

Yes, but Chris Roberts wants MOST AMAZING space game EVER.

[Kara]

Don't people just want space game?

EVE is an ARG and Microsoft Excel tutorial, so I guess not.

[nudemacusers]

I want to believe but this stuff reeks of mismanagmennt and scope creep. Missing targets like this over and over again would get any regular PM sacked immediately or have the project get shredded. Hence why oversight cough ahem is useful sometimes.

Don't people just want space game?

Of course.

But why stop there when you can be a space bartender?

[chronovore]

I want to believe but this stuff reeks of mismanagmennt and scope creep. Missing targets like this over and over again would get any regular PM sacked immediately or have the project get shredded. Hence why oversight cough ahem is useful sometimes.

Don't people just want space game?

Of course.

But why stop there when you can be a space bartender?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Alternately:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[close]

[VomKriege]

They've probably spent more on actors/mocap than anything other part of the game.

I'd be curious to know the budget. It could be anywhere between a 7 and 8 figure sum. 120m$ would probably be fine to cover the development expenses of 4 to 6 years at their current size (which I why I speculate they'll start hurting for money next year or so if they can't release anything substantial), but the mocap thing could be a serious dent in their finances. I guess we'll only know if the whole thing ends up in court.

Otherwise, Derek Smart found his way to the SC thread on the Elite forums with in his wake a handful of new users defending the dignity of Star Citizen. I'm sure Smart will ultimately find the way to The Bore...

[Trent Dole]

Will he show up if we say his name three times like Beetlejuice?

Derek Smart
DEREK SMART
DEREK SMART

[bluemax]

They've probably spent more on actors/mocap than anything other part of the game.

Didn't they say they were building their own mocap studio only to fly everyone to London to use Serkis' studio a bunch of times?

[Great Rumbler]

I think they did both, actually.

[VomKriege]

Yeah they did both.

[–]therealdiscolando 29 points (11 months ago)

Pretty much what has been said a few times: our own mo-cap studios have their uses, but for a massive, motion-picture quality story in Squadron 42, we needed a bigger boat, hence Imaginarium.

I'm certain it's true that Imaginarium provides top-tier tools that you couldn't match without extensive investment but the stretch goals were described as such : "Professional motion capture for the Squadron 42 cutscenes." at 5.5m and "Cloud Imperium Games will build their own mocap studio to improve the quality of Star Citizen and Squadron 42’s cutscenes." at 10. Reads like the requirement for cutscenes were massively underbudgeted...

Expect some fine clothing tho :

May Report

(...)

Focusing on designing additional phases of ‘Try On/Inspect Mode’, each clothing asset will have a specific camera record that ‘zooms in’ to specific parts depending on what you’re trying on

    Ex: trying on shoes, camera will zoom in to your feet
    Also specific ‘Try On’ animations for the character as well


Rob and Robert have been working with Character team to create briefs for/schedule in additional assets for future releases

    The goal is to have new clothing assets ready for every new release
    Sometimes just material/texture variants of existing assets, sometimes brand new assets from all new clothing line/manufacturers
    Focus for 2.5.0 will be to have some more grungy frontier clothing

[nudemacusers]

Old but just read

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3uknz0/spoiler_the_beginning_of_squadron_42_and/

My god they can't help but try to include every possible feature even in single player. Pick a lane and stick in it. More I read the worse it gets, especially with the last minute e3 bail and delays.

[VomKriege]

Latest drama, an early backer filled a support request and discovered there were some interesting tags attached to his profile, apparently :

Hi everyone,
I've recently raised an issue with CIG via Customer Support and when I logged into my Request I was quite surprised to see that my account is flagged as the following:
Grey Market Trading
High Maintenance
Snowflakes
Here's the zendesk access to monitor progress of your Request history: https://cloudimperiumservicesllc.zendesk.com/hc/en-us
If you're interested in seeing how CIG has labelled you in their system it will be clear when you access any open Request. Here's a screenshot of my latest one: http://imgur.com/5S1NIYE
EDIT: Another image, showing the dropdown box when I try to create a new Request http://imgur.com/ZmRBxAQ
Enjoy!
Cheers,
BH

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starcitizen_trades/comments/4mmg4y/psa_cigs_blacklist_categorization/
BrownHornet is an early backer (upwards to 40,000$ according to some dude on the Frontier forums  ) and apparently not the joking type, so people are inclined to believe it's legit. Some other tags people report on in the reddit thread : "dereksmart","dont_send_feedback","goon". The snowflake term was allegedly used by Sandi Gardiner in an email exchange with a goon backer a few months back.

EDIT : BrownHornet already had a bit of a fencing fight with Sandi Gardiner who labeled him "a difficult customer" because he wrote CIG to complain that they were starting to put back on sale "limited editions" of ships that were supposed to be exclusive to Kickstarter backers.

[Trent Dole]

You Won't Believe This Game in Development Hell That's Funded by Whales, and Hates Them!

[VomKriege]

Well, in a weird coincidence, the CIG's customer support page was "under construction" this morning. 

[VomKriege]

...and now, it's about swiping some art and stock photos in their own illustrations :

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sop5hj

That's just petty shit but that's testament to how amateurish the project is handled.

[Kara]

Only Derek Smart could put a Twit Longer link in a Twit Longer post.

[VomKriege]

BrownHornet guy, the guy I mention a few posts up, got a cash refund and is telling Australian backers that they should be able to with no fuss or bring the matter to consumer's right institutions.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starcitizen_trades/comments/4mmg4y/psa_cigs_blacklist_categorization/d3ysk6g

Plenty of "you can't leave the cult !" dudes in here...

[thisismyusername]

I have no idea what is going on.  He's pissed because they secretly tagged him with things to make sure they could ignore his shit and he found out because they couldn't secure their hidden tags on him?

[VomKriege]

I have no idea what is going on.  He's pissed because they secretly tagged him with things to make sure they could ignore his shit and he found out because they couldn't secure their hidden tags on him?

Pretty much, final nail in the coffin for him. Unless CIG really has a single player game to actually release and substantial progress for the multiplayer title, I'd expect more of the same unrest to flourish by year's end.

All the more since the game is made with Cryengine 3* and shouldn't be possible to be upgraded to a newer iteration because of the heavy rewrites they made, so each year that pass by will make it less and less of the graphical showcase and programming marvel it is supposed to be.

* Fun fact that CIG itself told : it took them several months to understand that the weird ship handling below 0 on the Y axis was not a bug but just that the CryEngine is programmed with a default value of it being below sea level and thus with underwater physics.
 

[benjipwns]

Plenty of "you can't leave the cult !" dudes in here...

[–]dante80 3 points 3 days ago
I don't really think it is a coincidence. I am happy though that CIG is addressing this issue properly. Customers should not have been able to see those tags.

[–]alluranRSI alluran, Trader, Trades: 57 0 points 15 hours ago
and I don't think you or anyone else can offer a sound explanation.
Shit changes. Circumstances change. Third party vendors take more or less time to penetrate new markets than expected. Hell, even if they'd used Windows Azure, which HAS AU datacenters - it would have been a pain (or possibly impossible/illegal) for them to use AU datacenters.
I understand that CIG has changed it's tune on a few things, and I understand the frustration that can come from that. I just don't think NOW is the time to be jumping up and down about it.
If we were live, and SC was a massive hit, and there were hundreds of people constantly playing it, sure, I'd be right there with you saying "this sucks CIG - fix it". But it's not. We're in super-early alpha. NO countries have servers except NA right now, which is just as much a design decision, as it is a business decision.
It's hard to get good metrics, if everyone is sitting on a different server. It's hard to engage people in the game if everyone is in a solo instance. Could CIG spin up AU servers right now? Yes, absolutely. Do I think they SHOULD spin up servers right now? Not a chance.
I'd much rather the money I've spent (which is also in the 5 figure range - so it's not about the amount invested here ) went to completing the game in a timely fashion, rather than spinning up spare servers that hardly anyone is going to be playing on.
As for the other tags like Greymarket Trader? You and I both know you were undercutting CIG by a good 10-15% due to the exchange rate / tax loopholes that they recently closed. Plenty of people did it - was a nice perk of having Aussie credit cards. It's also pretty easy to ascertain just by looking at trade logs. Has the person bought and sold ships (especially at prices below market value via the EU tax/exchange loophole) repeatedly within a short period of time? Have they got a large volume of trades? Hell, you mentioned you had 59 tickets - chances are some of those are related to the graymarket themselves, I don't know.
At the end of the day, it seems to me like you have made a big issue out of these flags, which clearly weren't meant to be public, and instead of informing CS (seems you were already at the page anyways), you created a forum post and reddit post about it, causing a bunch of PR work for CIG. I think that would fall under "High Maintenance" pretty well, don't you think?
Does it suck that they were publicly visible? Sure.
Should CIG have issued an apology for allowing you to see those tags? Probably.
Was there anything wrong with CIG having the tags in the first place? Nope, not at all.

–]Beer4TheBeerGodRSI Beer, Trader 16 points 4 days ago
Turns out that I'm a Snowflake after all!
Also I just realized that they added "aka Beer4TheBeerGod" to my handle, which is actually "Beer" on the RSI forums.

[–]aTrillDog 7 points 3 days ago*
collecting info about non-affiliated browsing habits
it's not isolated to Beer here, other goons got their forum names sleuthed out and added as well, and all labeled as goons.

[VomKriege]

From a recent video

Sean Tracy:
Well there's a lot of LITTLE STUFF but there's some BIG TICKET ITEMS and some of the BIG TICKET ITEMS all centre around SQUADRON 42 so we've got AI and CINEMATICS... and a lot of people would think that they're not necessarily related, but within STAR CITIZEN they absolutely are, because we NEED to be able to SIGNAL these AI to transition into the very CINEMATIC MODES that we've got... we've got SO MUCH performance capture that we want to ahhh... allow this player to experience... we've got these HUGE NAME ACTORS, we want you to be WITHIN THAT STORY but at the same time we don't wanna just cut out to a... DECOUPLED CUT SCENE where a camera's flying around... we want you to be LIVING in this world...

Brian Chambers:
That's the one thing, I mean the... I was answering some questions earlier and they were like 'oh, are you gonna do a TRANSITION and then it's a... just a BIG CUT SCENE with no interaction and the answer is IT'S ALL OVER THE PLACE, there's so many things that we're creatively doing seamlessly... sometimes the player's on rails... sometimes you cut away but only for CERTAIN REASONS if it helps with the STORY and all that... and all that with AI in it, that's just... MESS

Sean Tracy:
That's right and we... you know... we... we got them REACTING to you, we need them having CONVERSATIONS with you, we need them giving you MISSIONS, we need... ah... all level of... all levels of different INTERPLAY between it... and then... we've got so much CONTENT that we HAVE TO GET IN so we have to figure out the BEST WAY to get it in because... uhm... SURE we can do these... the... the kind of OLD STYLE WAY were actually plugging in very bespoke scripted sequences... but AGAIN when we've got HOURS AND HOURS OF CINEMATICS, when we've got... hours and hours of GAMEPLAY that has to play between the two... we have to be very intelligent over how we actually implement this... this WORK

Brian Chambers:
And in part of that process, at least that I've been involved in, I mean, we're creating a system that from the foundation is going to... allow for all these different TYPES of events, behaviours, the different WAYS we want them triggered... all the VARIABLES we want them to do and not do... and that I think is what a lot of that focus has been on, is 'OK, what is that SOLID FOUNDATION' and get the rest of those, just FEW QUESTIONS that are UNANSWERED, get those SORTED.

Sean Tracy:
Right and when we have so many questions like that... it's a lot easier for everybody to get TOGETHER, uhm... because... like... LIKE YOU SAID we... we... we COLLABORATE really well across the STUDIOS... BUT!... Ah... There is something to be said for ALL OF THE PEOPLE being in ONE PLACE because you get this one little question HERE, this one little question HERE, before long you're DEATH BY A THOUSAND PAPERCUTS because... ah... if you've gotta wait a few hours for that answer you can't just really quickly COME UP WITH A NICE DESIGN PLAN so... there's things we're ADJUSTING like the ANIMATION PIPELINE to make it so we can accomplish all these AI AND CINEMATICS

They spent over two months doing performance capture in a top tier studio, but don't know yet how the story is delivered in game. 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

Also they're selling a concept ship for 35 bucks tomorrow, but there's not even a .jpg for that one.

[Barry Egan]

2.4 is Live!!

...Also, they've updated the ToS!  There are some significant changes:

"You acknowledge and agree that the Game and the pledge items delivered to you may differ in certain aspects from the description of the Game and those pledge items that was available on the Website at the time of your Pledge."

"However, you acknowledge and agree that delivery as of such date is not a firm promise and may be extended by RSI since unforeseen events may extend the
development and/or production time."

"you agree that any Pledge amounts applied against the Pledge Item Cost and the Game Cost shall be non-refundable regardless of whether or not RSI is able to complete and deliver the Game and/or the pledge items"

"YOU AGREE, THEREFORE, THAT YOU WILL NEVER ASSERT OR BRING ANY CLAIM OR SUIT AGAINST RSI, ITS PARENT COMPANY, DIVISIONS, SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATES, OR ANY EMPLOYEES OF ANY OF ABOVE, WHICH IS RELATED TO OR BASED ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO; (I) A CLAIM THAT YOU “OWN” ANY VIRTUAL GOODS IN THE GAME, (II) A CLAIM FOR THE “VALUE” OF VIRTUAL GOODS IF RSI DELETES THEM (AND/OR TERMINATES YOUR ACCOUNT) WITH A REASONABLE CAUSE AT RSI’S SOLE DISCRETION"

Sounds good, where do I click?

[CatsCatsCats]

Yeah I'll stick to Elite, thx

[Kara]

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3773372

[Trent Dole]

Holy shit that TOS, is that even legal?

[VomKriege]

Holy shit that TOS, is that even legal?

Probably not*, but I suspect the plan is more to discourage isolated users from litigation than having a sound chance of standing in court.
For all the ill one can think of Derek Smart or Goons, in case of a lawsuit they might be a blessing in disguise because the probably compiled of a lot of the actual important stuff that might otherwise have been lost in the insane signalling shuffle and obfuscation via means of noise that is CIG modus operandi. It's been very effective at partly detering constant scrutiny from the media, if you haven't followed it it's just so overwhelmingly confusing to get any straight info that it is probably not worth the effort of being harassed by a bunch of sockpuppets (Like it just happened on the Frontier board and a couple of other ones before) to report on this unless the die is cast for good.

Anyway CIG is clearly showing its hand now : I'd expect an hot mess of an abortion to be released as a "minimum viable product" with nominal indefinite & broken support in the coming two years.

I really hope, if that is what will happen, that Croberts is making serious bank with this because he will probably be done for in the videogame business and have to deal with a raging fanbase, at best.

As a side note, PayPal has announced that two weeks from now they'll now longer accept chargebacks in relation to crowdfunded projects.



* I mean, just the first paragraph :

PLEASE READ THESE TERMS OF SERVICE (“TERMS OF SERVICE”) CAREFULLY. BY CLICKING THE “ACCEPT” BUTTON AT THE END OF THESE TERMS OF SERVICE BELOW, OR BY USING THE WWW.ROBERTSSPACEINDUSTRIES.COM WEBSITE AND RELATED WEBPAGES (THE “WEBSITE”) OR RSI SERVICES OR ANY OF THE CONTENT MADE AVAILABLE VIA THE WEBSITE OR THE GAME LAUNCHER. YOU AGREE THAT THESE TERMS OF SERVICE ARE ENFORCEABLE LIKE ANY WRITTEN CONTRACT SIGNED BY YOU.

Unless I'm misunderstanding it, it's saying that you agree to terms just by visiting their site or viewing a hotlinked official image from it, regardless of if you're aware or not a new ToS agreement is being brought forward. IANAL but that doesn't sound like something that could be acceptable in court anywhere, save for a couple of ridiculously backward or specific interpretations featured in outlier cases. I'd also be genuinely delighted to see them try to convince judges that everything was just non binding pledges and donations, including the stuff that CIG itself label "sales".

[Trent Dole]

Derek even has a goontastic discord devoted to all these shenanigans now http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3773236&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
https://discord.gg/0sasVA7SRFEX9raG

[Kara]

I can't believe Derek Smart is going to win brehs.

Maybe I should have played 3000 A.D. instead of Wing Commander.

Maybe then I would appreciate true art (video games) instead of legacy "arts" resting on reputation. Like sculpture is even art, right?

[VomKriege]

Someone in SA :

The biggest bug they patched in 2.4 was the ability for people to get their money back.

[nudemacusers]

2.4 is Live!!

...Also, they've updated the ToS!  There are some significant changes:

"You acknowledge and agree that the Game and the pledge items delivered to you may differ in certain aspects from the description of the Game and those pledge items that was available on the Website at the time of your Pledge."

"However, you acknowledge and agree that delivery as of such date is not a firm promise and may be extended by RSI since unforeseen events may extend the
development and/or production time."

"you agree that any Pledge amounts applied against the Pledge Item Cost and the Game Cost shall be non-refundable regardless of whether or not RSI is able to complete and deliver the Game and/or the pledge items"

"YOU AGREE, THEREFORE, THAT YOU WILL NEVER ASSERT OR BRING ANY CLAIM OR SUIT AGAINST RSI, ITS PARENT COMPANY, DIVISIONS, SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATES, OR ANY EMPLOYEES OF ANY OF ABOVE, WHICH IS RELATED TO OR BASED ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO; (I) A CLAIM THAT YOU “OWN” ANY VIRTUAL GOODS IN THE GAME, (II) A CLAIM FOR THE “VALUE” OF VIRTUAL GOODS IF RSI DELETES THEM (AND/OR TERMINATES YOUR ACCOUNT) WITH A REASONABLE CAUSE AT RSI’S SOLE DISCRETION"

Sounds good, where do I click?

the pledged items and game will differ because they are making it better and more epic, duh 

edit: I've also read they removed a clause stating to release their financial info if the game was not delivered by 1 June 16... I can only imagine their burn rate vs forecast is appallingly bad.

[VomKriege]

I've also read they removed a clause stating to release their financial info if the game was not delivered by 1 June 16... I can only imagine their burn rate vs forecast is appallingly bad.

To be fair to SC defenders, they are actually right that it was a misconception. In April the 12th 2016 (as pulled from the wayback machine), it reads like this :

However, you acknowledge and agree that delivery as of such date is not a firm promise and may be extended by RSI since unforeseen events may extend the development and/or production time. Accordingly, you agree that any unearned portion of your Pledge shall not be refundable until and unless RSI has failed to deliver the relevant pledge items and/or the Game to you within eighteen (18) months after the estimated delivery date.
(...)
In the unlikely event that RSI is not able to deliver the Game and/or the pledge items, RSI agrees to post an audited cost accounting on the Website to fully explain the use of the amounts paid for Pledge Item Cost and the Game Cost.

The audit was only in case they would fail to deliver, and it's worded the same in the version of terms before that as well, except the period for official refunds opened 12 months after the "estimated release date". Audited financials in case of failure are still mentioned within the new terms, in a pretty similar manner, what's changed is that refunds would only open if development has ceased without delivery and no longer at some defined date.

There's a version highlighting changes floating around and the language has not changed that much (the most extensive reformat is everything pertaining to fan sites and user generated content, with some pretty crazy stuff as far as I can tell). Dropping any pretense of a release date do have large implication though. Beyond the terms themselves, the sleaziest part is that TOS change is happening pretty much at what you could argue was "eighteen (18) months after the estimated delivery date" as per the kickstarter promises, just like the preceding change occured just a handful of months before the original "12 months after estimated date". Basically, CIG is shifting goalposts constantly to deny an official refund policy & admission of failure. At that point, they are not acting in good faith.

[nudemacusers]

Ah I see... Can't shake the feeling they're gonna run out of cash in 5 months tho. Pulling out of e3 last minute just smells of a reactive cost cutting Hail Mary

[VomKriege]

It's not all bad though. With Alpha 2.4, the ability to "rent" other people's ships was disabled and the respawn timer for each ship has been set to 20mn. If you're a single ship peon having a rough time bathing in the action because of griefers kamikazing themselves on your spacecraft or stealing it on spawn, luck has it that there's a new sale with 3 different models at the store.

They collected 70.000$ in revenue today.

 

[VomKriege]

Amazing footage from the upcoming game !

[bluemax]

Amazing footage from the upcoming game !

Should've posted CoD:IW, that games has star fighter combat and seamless transitioning to space marine combat.

I wouldn't be surprised if Infinity Ward pillaged a lot of the people who jumped ship from CIG.

[VomKriege]

That CoD:IW trailer really did indeed shock a couple of faithfuls :

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4o1qtx/lets_talk_about_call_of_duty/

I think it's likely that it's not lack of funds (which are difficult to estimate, anyway) that will do them in, but the increased pressure of SQ42 and SC becoming obsolete, because of stiff competition from actual game developers. CryEngine 3 will probably show its age more and more as time go by and it is one of the biggest tellsign that they fumbled their development and their timeline. Elite, Mass Effect, CoD, No Man's Sky and a plethora of indie titles... Lots of titles in a busy market overlapping with an unfinished project.

Also a story reported on SomethingAwful (serve yourself two tons of salt, probably bullshit) on how and why CIG pulled back from the PC Game Show at E3 they were invited to (at less than an hour of road from their offices) :

AMD dude who is part the AMD game promo thing posted:
We're partnered with them [CIG], of course. We are. It's four months before E3 and we're getting our PC showcase set up. We're reaching out to get demos, sizzle reels, all kinds of different promo stuff. We hear back from a lot of people; there's some new stuff, new games, new partners, all that. Absent is a response from CIG.

Someone else here handles all that, she's calling and calling thinking there's some mistake or she's not getting through to the right people. It's now three months until the PC Gamer showcase and there's nothing on the table from CIG. She's trying to set up a conf call or a face to face with CIG and there's nothing solid set up.

She finally talks to someone over there and is assured we'll get a slice of scripted gameplay and some cutscene stuff with the big name A listers on the project. E3 is what, six weeks away? Maybe seven at this point.

A week later what we get a package with a disc, no explanation, table of contents, nothing. On it, there's nothing new, [its] a mashup of all their previous trailers. It's not even cut differently. We have the Hamil one, the Oldman speech, some fighters shooting things and some FPS segments that were lifted straight out of the last con they did. They're all just dumped into a "Promo" folder on a blu-ray.

She's thinking this is a mistake, they sent us the wrong material -- easy mistake to make, you throw in an old disc instead of the one you just cut, it got handled differently, an intern misunderstood what we wanted, whatever. So she calls them up again, no response, emails, nothing.

Two weeks later we get what is referred to around here as the "Letter." Capital "L" letter. The email is addressed to everyone high up at AMD, not even the gaming guys but the chip designers and the heads of departments. The PDF attachment is a rambling statement from Chris about how we're pushing him into something he doesn't think is necessary, he has a vision and that it's "too important" to be disrespected like this.

The decision was made to drop them from the show after that. Probably from our partnership as well, but that's above my head.

Otherwise some decent speculation on SA about why the physics in SC are so fucked up.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3748466&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=4189#post461034034

[bluemax]

Oh god, I just read that post about the physics stuff. That's exactly the kind of stupidity/arrogance I can imagine that is happening.

[VomKriege]

Well, guess they had time to stop by E3 after all. Just not "time" to actually show anything on a panel they were invited to ?

https://twitter.com/SandiGardiner/status/742853960927563776

[VomKriege]

From the latest infobulletin :

So we’ve now got the network guys doing a really good overhaul of the network code to make sure it really does do what we need it to. Not 100% sure just how long that’s going to take yet, hopefully it’ll be out in the next couple of patches. We want to make sure that it is stable and we don’t have the issues that we have now plaguing us in the new system – so we’re going to make sure we really stress that properly.

For how long have they been overhauling the network code now 

MW: Yeah, it’s going to start making itself into the PTU towards the end of the year – it’ll be well, it’ll feed into SQ42 as well – it’ll be, for example, a Bartender won’t just stand there as a rigid NPC, won’t just dispense missions, it’ll go around and talk to various other patrons of the bar – it’ll pull the drinks, it’ll have a conversation with you if you’re not getting directly getting a mission from him – just to try and flesh these characters out and make them really rounded and feel like they’re really there and they are a proper person.

So NPC AI maybe for end 2016 and the phrasing imply that SQ42 is defo not before that.
Also at the usual AI goals.

Local Physics Grid is being improved and refactored

[VomKriege]

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/06/20/star-citizen-changes-terms-of-service-to-make-it-more-difficult-to-get-a-refund

I contacted Cloud Imperium Games four days ago to clarify the impact of this change to the ToS and to ask for comment on why the change was made. We have yet to receive a response, but in the meantime, potential new Star Citizen backers are advised to exercise caution.

The reaction by the most vocal backers will surely be reasonable and lovely.

EDIT : They are...

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4oytmd/star_citizen_changes_terms_of_service_to_make_it/

[nudemacusers]

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/06/20/star-citizen-changes-terms-of-service-to-make-it-more-difficult-to-get-a-refund

I contacted Cloud Imperium Games four days ago to clarify the impact of this change to the ToS and to ask for comment on why the change was made. We have yet to receive a response, but in the meantime, potential new Star Citizen backers are advised to exercise caution.

The reaction by the most vocal backers will surely be reasonable and lovely.

EDIT : They are...

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4oytmd/star_citizen_changes_terms_of_service_to_make_it/

Not as bad as I thought tho.. A lot of comments would have been downvoted into oblivion not too long ago... Only a matter of time before the tides turn and the townsfolk get their pitchforks.

[VomKriege]

In other news, a SA member who claims to have been a CIG intern back then has said that the funding ticker was reflecting pledges but also  loans (he mentioned a "Nat West 8m quid loan") used to spread more evenly revenue over the months. Bullshit or not, the fact is we are often citing the public figure as accurate when CIG hasn't really elaborated on what it represents (does it include the video subscriptions they also sell ? Refunds ? Private revenue ?). They've also been pretty cagey about the number of actual, pledging, backers : they refuse to give a number while happily communicating on how people have an account on their website or the number of ships sold (recently went over a million).

Anyhow, in the latest "10 for Space Brother One", in an answer to what he thought about the games presented at E3, Chris Roberts teased that the FPS module Star Marine could be released soon. It's the same Star Marine that was two weeks from release a year ago before going MIA except CIG supporters were adamant it was all there folded in the alpha. 

Roberts also alluded that they will be present at Gamescom but without a presentation of new footage planned at this point. CitizenCon in October it is then for seeing just how slow can progress get.

[Yulwei]

Call me sadistic if you want, but I kinda want them to stick with this glacial pace of development. I want to see how many years it would take for the average drone to really turn on lord roberts and this project as a whole 

btw thanks for the continued updates, VomKriege.

[Sho Nuff]

“Several years from now, when you are surrounded by your loved ones, and they ask you what did you do during the battle for Space Sims and PC games, you can look them in the eye and say; I helped make Star Citizen.”

I have a lot of loved ones and that topic has come up a total of um, zero times

[Tasty]

“Several years from now, when you are surrounded by your loved ones, and they ask you what did you do during the battle for Space Sims and PC games, you can look them in the eye and say; I helped make Star Citizen.”

I have a lot of loved ones and that topic has come up a total of um, zero times

Obviously you don't have enough, then.

[VomKriege]

Official promo art for the new "bike ship" they just sold. With a lovely image on the left overlayed with a ton of watermarks from a stock photo company  Fucking hacks

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/zdos7corc4lk8r/source/Dragonfly_Before_Vehicle_Class.jpg

(Imgur for reference since the original will be promptly deleted... http://i.imgur.com/3vG3edk.jpg )

Meanwhile

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/265264/happy-birthday-chris

Shanghai party for Croberts's birthday

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

"Robert need more gold" 

[Joe Molotov]

You think after they got busted for using watermarked stock images before, they'd be more careful.

[Sho Nuff]

You think after they got busted for using watermarked stock images before, they'd be more careful.

Oh FFS if you're going to use stuff from a stock site like Dreamstime just get a subscription, it's so cheap!

[CatsCatsCats]

Well, but, mo-cap

[VomKriege]

Guy in charge of VR for Star Citizen is leaving...

https://twitter.com/Trevote/status/745904830917517312

Best wishes at your new job. Who is taking over VR in Star Citizen? Can't wait for VR in the Best Damn Space Sim Ever!

Thank you! I'm not sure who will be taking over VR duties, we're still figuring stuff out. Probably someone in Frankfurt.

The HOTAS stick has been in limbo and is not shaping up too well either :

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4pfory/can_we_discuss_the_sc_hotas/d4kluyl

Found it! Monthly report June 6th:

Saitek was gracious enough to provide us with a Saitek X-56 Rhino H.O.T.A.S. peripheral so we were able to put the controller through its paces after a very short fight over who got to use it first.

So they didn't get a prototype, they got a free stick that's already released to consumers. Sounds like the whole idea of an SC HOTAS is essentially scrapped. We're going to get a rebranded version of the barely iterated upon version of the seriously flawed X-55.

And I think you're right, the high end stick is not going to happen if that's the case.

Chris Roberts in the latest video also said :

Our other “big” focus is the full Stanton system, which will be about a billion kilometres across, with procedurally generated planets. CryEngine was never built to simulate so many object so we’ve been working on full rewrite of everything in CryNetwork to get everything in place

Well... 

The fans are getting a bit mad down there :

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/334619/i-feel-so-sorry-for-all-the-hardcore-scifi-fans-who-got-refunds-or-will-never-try-the-game

It really doesn't matter though man. When the game comes out, if it is objectively good then those people will come back and play it if they love sci-fi games.

And hopefully at an increased cost. I backed this game early because I thought it would be a better deal, financially.

Depending on how long and glorious SQ42 ends up being, I wouldn't be surprised if it goes up in its exclusive price. It may end up being 75 for the cheapest package with just an Aurora (45 from either SC/SQ42, and 30 instead of 15 for the other game). We can't say that CIG didn't warn us that the price would go up, and I wouldn't be surprised about this increase in price for both games due to SQ42 being a massive game.

It's not a clunky Matrix wargame, you fool 

I kind of want RSI to rub in in there faces with success upon release when all the review sites say 10/10.

Personally I would love to be there and see the expression on the face of people who refunded, the moment they realise that they shouldn't have refunded as they worried for nothing. I would just laugh in their face.

[CatsCatsCats]

Shun the nonbelievers!

[Rufus]

Engine re-writes. The final act has begun.

[Kara]

This sounds a lot like DUST 514 now. (They had to bodge UE 3.5 to get it to do all their over-promised features.)

[The Sceneman]

The whole stock photo thing.... just, wow.

[VomKriege]

Engine re-writes. The final act has begun.

There's a catch though : they're claiming they're rewriting the engine, we don't know if they are doing it for real. Checkmate !

[nudemacusers]

Engine re-writes. The final act has begun.

When has rewriting an engine at this stage of development ever signaled a problem?!

[bluemax]

Re-writing a SEVEN year old game engine as well.

[VomKriege]

Star Citizen now resorting to subtle viral marketing :

http://community.failbettergames.com/topic22331-star-citizen.aspx

"Boo" Huxley has long been joked to be a Sandi Gardiner's alt account. Whatever the truth is, she sure loves to sign up to other forums (like Frontier recently) to shill for Star Citizen.

EDIT : Also harassing people

Subject: "Why don't you just leave?"
It's sad that you sign up for this forum, just to be a filthy goon and ruin the reputation of a great game, made by a great and visionary developer.
Chris and His team has delivered more content in 4 years of development than most developers does in a lifetime. And much much more is coming!
Let those of us who have faith in His vision enjoy our game in peace, please.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/259596-The-Star-Citizen-Thread-v5?p=4164512&viewfull=1#post4164512

[VomKriege]

Majestic.