[Phantom Hoover]

* It's another 20 minutes waiting for the really obviously fake and scripted demo to spin up. It's awkward silence. Sandi wanders on stage in her weird clown outfit to give Chris a rum and coke

It was actually a vodka and soda. Who the **** drinks vodka and soda, the tasteless drink with the tasteless mixer?

[Axem]

I think that fits Chris Roberts, plain white middle-aged guy out of touch with any developments in his industry in the last 10 years and wears nothing but black long-sleeved shirts, to a T.

[Buckshee Rounds]

My sides hurt from laughing. First the thing crashes in the middle of the presentation, and now their little buggy clipped through the ramp and all wheels fell off. It's a perfect analogy of the whole project.

Got a link to the highlights? I don't want to sit through all the waffle.

Copy/pasted from SA:


BYE MOON!: https://clips.twitch.tv/HorribleThankfulElkBrainSlug
STAR CITIZEN IS NOT RESPONDING: https://clips.twitch.tv/StormyObservantBeeM4xHeh
PUT HER DOWN: https://clips.twitch.tv/WittyRichOrangeBloodTrail

RAMP FAIL:
https://clips.twitch.tv/ConfidentDreamyEchidnaJonCarnage

As a bonus, here's Chris yelling not to show the loading screen: https://clips.twitch.tv/SoftDeterminedRaisinPupper

THANKYOU!

SC has the best bugs, the greatest. It's gonna be huge.

The game didn't crash. We've always been at war with Elite Dangerous.

[karajorma]

Actually, I drink vodka and soda all the time. It's a good thing to have as the last couple of drinks when you've been drinking heavily as it hydrates you more than pretty much any other combination.

Now why someone would be drinking it unless they are already drunk is more of a mystery. Unless he was drunk, which would explain a lot actually.

[Colonol Dekker]

I find soda makes me feel kind of worse.  I miss our nights out !

[Mikes]

Freespace 2's retail capital shipcombat just looks better by leaps and bounds.
And it honestly made me feel proud of WoD's combat, I generally tend to be a bit more humble, about my own work but ****damn I feel like WoD looks like a damn masterpiece compared to starcitizen's excuse of space combat.

WoD, Blue Planet, Retail Freespace 1/2, X-Wing/Tie Fighter, heck even f***** Wing Commander Saga all have shown us how it's done. Freaking hilarious that the "unofficial" Wing Commander remake has better gameplay leaps and bounds better than what Chris Roberts himself is offering.

And they show that Idris Battle off like it was something to be proud off and it makes me wonder how few backers even played a proper space sim before that they still cheering and not turning away in disgust.

Because you know what looked about as pathetic as this? Retail Wing Commander 3-4 capital ship combat. Don't take me wrong. I liked Wing Commander back in the day for the cinematic story and movie feel ... but combat was always pathetic in comparison to heavyweights like Freespace 2 and Tie Fighter. And now years later ... we have a game running on Geforce 1080 GTXs that still has graphic effects that look as pathetic as the original Wing Commander 3-4 games running on a 486er CPU.

I mean seriously, if you take out the ship models there would really  not be much of a discernable difference between Star Citizen with it's (barely visible/noticable) weapon effects and Wing Commander 4, a DOS Game running in software 3d on a 486. Kinda hilarious when you think about it.

Remember this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFnlnFG2ptE ? Yeah the actual shot models look worse up close... but look at those wide shots with ships firing at each other where you barely see a thing at all except the occasional miniscule flashes and the UI. Pretty much Star Citizen, eh? ;-) LOL.

[Grizzly]

Mhmmmm, Deutsch...

[FrikgFeek]

You seriously underestimate the power of self delusion. When you're desperate it's easy to make yourself believe in ideas and "concepts" rather than reality. So when you see a rather dull SC presentation your brain can just fill in the gaps with your dreams and suddenly it starts looking way better than it would if you looked at it with a clear mind.

Right now there are still enough people who believe in the Star Citizen dream for the project to keep going, but that won't last forever. DNF was considered a promising 'best game ever' before it became a joke. I think SC is right on that turning point at the moment. If(actually, when) 3.0 disappoints everyone we'll see another big wave of refunds.

[Spoon]

WoD, Blue Planet, Retail Freespace 1/2, X-Wing/Tie Fighter, heck even f***** Wing Commander Saga all have shown us how it's done. Freaking hilarious that the "unofficial" Wing Commander remake has better gameplay leaps and bounds better than what Chris Roberts himself is offering.

And they show that Idris Battle off like it was something to be proud off and it makes me wonder how few backers even played a proper space sim before that they still cheering and not turning away in disgust.

Because you know what looked about as pathetic as this? Retail Wing Commander 3-4 capital ship combat. Don't take me wrong. I liked Wing Commander back in the day for the cinematic story and movie feel ... but combat was always pathetic in comparison to heavyweights like Freespace 2 and Tie Fighter. And now years later ... we have a game running on Geforce 1080 GTXs that still has graphic effects that look as pathetic as the original Wing Commander 3-4 games running on a 486er CPU.

I mean seriously, if you take out the ship models there would really  not be much of a discernable difference between Star Citizen with it's (barely visible/noticable) weapon effects and Wing Commander 4, a DOS Game running in software 3d on a 486. Kinda hilarious when you think about it.

Remember this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFnlnFG2ptE ? Yeah the actual shot models look worse up close... but look at those wide shots with ships firing at each other where you barely see a thing at all except the occasional miniscule flashes and the UI. Pretty much Star Citizen, eh? ;-) LOL.

Hah, so true.

You seriously underestimate the power of self delusion. When you're desperate it's easy to make yourself believe in ideas and "concepts" rather than reality. So when you see a rather dull SC presentation your brain can just fill in the gaps with your dreams and suddenly it starts looking way better than it would if you looked at it with a clear mind.

Right now there are still enough people who believe in the Star Citizen dream for the project to keep going, but that won't last forever. DNF was considered a promising 'best game ever' before it became a joke. I think SC is right on that turning point at the moment. If(actually, when) 3.0 disappoints everyone we'll see another big wave of refunds.

It's especially easy to fill in the gaps with imagination, if you can't see what's actually suppose to go on in that demo presentation.

Additionally, the citizens still love deluding themselves with the "it's alpha" bull****. "It'll be good in 2020, AAA games all take 9 years to develop."

[Firesteel]

I finally watched the Idris thing. Wow does it make retail Clash of the Titans look like a ****ing fireworks display and it's just 2 bigass ships moving slowly at each other shooting blob turrets. Oh wait, there's bombers. With bombs. That have some kind of impact.

[CT27]

I heard the next solar eclipse is 2019.  Maybe CR will set a new release date for then.

[666maslo666]

You seriously underestimate the power of self delusion. When you're desperate it's easy to make yourself believe in ideas and "concepts" rather than reality. So when you see a rather dull SC presentation your brain can just fill in the gaps with your dreams and suddenly it starts looking way better than it would if you looked at it with a clear mind.

This goes both ways. A 100+ page thread circlejerking about how bad SC is with multiple of SA forums readers is inevitably self-deluded quite a lot. Actual reception of the demo outside of this echo chamber was neutral to positive.

http://www.pcgamer.com/star-citizen-expressive-faces-space-fashion-and-boldly-going-beyond-30/#comment-jump

My impressions: game is slowly but surely getting there, overall the demo wasnt anything new, just more mature form of things we have already seen, I like that the demo was almost all actual gameplay instead of pointless videos, there were some bugs and crashes but that is not important and to be expected, facial animations tracking is long overdue in online games and it is great to see a serious attempt to implement them, combat looked good, flight model would probably benefit greatly from a slowed down landing mode, space battle had too dark lighting

Still waiting for that 3.0 release to really form an opinion about the future of this game, Gamescom demo didnt really change this for me.

[Aesaar]

It definitely wasn't all actual gameplay.  It was super scripted and yet was still buggy and clunky as ****.  Ship still move with zero inertia, it took them half an hour just to leave the station to go on a fetch quest, which was capped off by an extremely tedious "dogfight" and the most boring capship battle I've seen since the last WC game.  Even FS1 capship fights look more interesting than the one they showcased here. 

Like Spoon said, even ignoring the scripting, this game doesn't look fun.  Every aspect showcased in the presentation looks tedious and uninspired.  The RP was cringe-inducing, yet it's perfectly representative of this game as a whole.  It's creatively bankrupt, from backstory, to visual/sound design, to gameplay.  There is absolutely nothing they're doing that hasn't been done much better by other games.

Also, PC Gamer has been gushing about SC for years.  They're either getting paid (wouldn't be a first for CIG), or the person writing these articles is a Citizen.  They're definitely not unbiased.

[Cobra]

My impressions: game is slowly but surely getting there, overall the demo wasnt anything new, just more mature form of things we have already seen, I like that the demo was almost all actual gameplay instead of pointless videos, there were some bugs and crashes but that is not important and to be expected, facial animations tracking is long overdue in online games and it is great to see a serious attempt to implement them, combat looked good, flight model would probably benefit greatly from a slowed down landing mode, space battle had too dark lighting

I'm just gonna say right now, "matured" tech wouldn't be running at <10FPS for a goddamned presentation. Or let a client crash so catastrophically that the entire demo needs to be restarted. Oh, and ramps wouldn't be traps.

If what you're showing to the world as "progress" is so violently unstable and unplayable even on computers with the appropriate high-end hardware, you're doing it wrong.

[Colonol Dekker]

I fail to see why online games would benefit from "facial animations tracking" 666maslo 666.

[The E]

The only piece of writing that approaches neutrality on SC that I've seen was the Kotaku UK series months ago.

And yeah. CIG rolling out yet another shiny new tech that is completely ancillary to the actual game they're supposedly trying to make, them not showing off any of their single player content that, just a year ago, they couldn't shut up about because of the high profile actors they hired, them doing a stage demo that was as scripted as it possibly could be and it still didn't run smoothly? Those are not signs of a game undergoing healthy development.

And above all, we've been here before. We've already seen the barely functional demo and the painfully scripted play twice, when they demoed Star Marine (remember that?) or multicrew.

CIG is not well. SC isn't even close to being a minimally viable product yet, over half a decade and over 150 million dollars later.

As a comparison that has to hurt: Bioware is very definitely not well either. When they unveiled Anthem, they even did a painfully scripted demo thing. And yet? Despite all of that? I trust them to deliver a game that is at least competently made and fun to play some time close to their intended release date.

SC was supposed to be the grand epic of crowdfunding. The proof, above all, that big good games do not require EA or other publishers, just a strong vision at the helm and competent people below. For a time, CIG even managed to pull off the look of succeeding at this.
Instead, it has become a laughingstock. Instead, it took Ninja Theory, of all people, to show us what a modern game with a strong vision and without publishers interfering looks like.

[The E]

Oh, and about that face thing.

CIG can't even have more than a few people in the same space or have vehicles interacting cleanly. But hoo boy, it sure is a good thing that they want to let everyone see the face you're making when your character dies because the game couldn't resolve colliders correctly.

[Firesteel]

Oh, and about that face thing.

CIG can't even have more than a few people in the same space or have vehicles interacting cleanly. But hoo boy, it sure is a good thing that they want to let everyone see the face you're making when your character dies because the game couldn't resolve colliders correctly.

But how will we lay claim to being the greatest PC game if we aren't accurately modeling human muscle structure and mapping it in real time to web cam footage?

[Scourge of Ages]

I've been thinking, "I only pledge 65 bucks, 5 years ago. I think it's worth it to keep just to see the game when it's out."

I have too many good games in my backlog and wishlist, and already not enough time to get to them all. I've finally started the refund process.

[666maslo666]

I fail to see why online games would benefit from "facial animations tracking" 666maslo 666.

Interacting with other people is important in online games and obviously face is an important part of human interactions. So the benefit is obvious. I mean, it probably wont make or break an online game but it is a nice detail.

However as an owner of a VR headset I am also looking at it from a VR perspective, too. Face tracking is part of the whole package along with body tracking and finger tracking. Sooner or later all these complimentary tracking technologies will merge into a pretty realistic and immersive online avatars for VR games. These are just the first steps into that direction, and it is good to see CIG being pioneers in this area.