Author Topic: Wing Commander 6: The Undiscovered Release Date (Star Citizen Thread)  (Read 589065 times)

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Offline Aesaar

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
you have poor judgment.
You have poor taste.

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
And how can you tell you are not the one with poor taste here? :) Maybe in a decade, Starlancer will be rediscovered and hailed as a refined classic of videogame writing (don't worry if it doesn't have deeped meanings, they'll find some to tack on)? :)

I don't know about Starlancer, having never got around to playing it (gotta finally find that disk...), but I know Roberts' games are enjoyable if you can appreciate his style. He's no Dostoyewsky, sure, but both Wing Commander and Freelancer were fun experiences. That a story isn't fit to be analyzed in school (or in academia) doesn't mean it's not worth reading.

 
Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
i agree that chris roberts' writing is being sold short by elitists like aesaar, for instance if you examine the backstory to star citizen closely you can pick up hints that it's actually a subtle metaphor for the fall of the roman empire
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Luis Dias

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
Are you suggesting Star Citizen is smart enough for its writing that it's giving everyone of us subtle hints of its own impending implosion?

Regardless, that's not a signal of good writing, it seems quite bland and unoriginal. Even the Napoleon imperator thingy reeks of cheesy ****.

 

Offline 666maslo666

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
Its not even subtle, Vanduul = Vandals. I bet there will be a sack of Earth or Terra by the Vanduul, either in Squadron 42 campaign or later on.
"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return." - Leonardo da Vinci

Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics. Even if you win you are still retarded.

 

Offline 666maslo666

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
Actually, once you have the "walking around your ship" part done, I would suspect that a full FPS expansion would be more a matter of adding assets.

This is not an insignificant obstacle. Witness the fact EVE Online was unable to overcome it.

EVE Online Walking in stations is still a small room after what, 10 years of development?. So I dont think they ever made any serious effort to overcome the obstacles before giving up on it. They are content with point and click gameplay. On the other hand, first person perspective is a core feature of SC. FPS gameplay in SC will be merely an expansion of something that is already an important part of the game. And I think with $90 million in funds, some expansion of features is warranted.
"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return." - Leonardo da Vinci

Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics. Even if you win you are still retarded.

 
Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
Posts like this make me wish it wasn't an abuse of moderator power to warn people for having poor tnd wrong opinions.

Frame it as you cracking down on people who are aggressively pushing their own opinions in an attempt to troll others :p

 
Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
I haven't played Starlancer, and I know very little about Freelancer's development, but I think Freelancer is a fine game. Even with the dated graphics, the environments are often beautiful.

 

Offline IronBeer

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
I have an eternal thirst for open-world space games.

In the past, this void was filled by, in chronological order: Battlezone 1998 (not because hovertanks but because other planets), retail FS1, Starlancer, Freelancer, EVE, FSO, X3, KSP, and now Elite Dangerous.

I bought into the Star Citizen kickstarter.... what, was it 2013 still? I haven't been closely following the dev cycle, but what I've been reading and hearing on the "idea" front has not been lining up with where development has actually gone. A couple months ago, I could load up the hangar module and play with my pledge Aurora, but not actually do anything. Not long after that, E:D backers could actually go out and sail the black and do things.

Consider me a fallen Chris Roberts fan. I played the **** out of Freelancer; for all its flaws, I still got a big kick out of just cruising space and causing trouble. Starlancer struck me as markedly flawed even when I was a kid, but I had limited access to new games and it let me explode things in space. Watching SC's development shamble forward against numerous competitors while showing no meaningful milestones of its own has drained any confidence I may have had. (Preemptive: step off, I'm not talking arena commander, I'm talking about the core gameplay experience of going out into open space and, you know, *being* a Citizen of the Stars.)

I know I'm not breaking new ground here, but I wanted to add another perspective to this conversation. A perspective that really tries hard to find the best in things and really tries to have fun in spite of flaws. Christ Roberts' fumbling is making me seriously consider rescinding my backing, if I can. Maybe I can upload a video of me burning my citizen card...

While Christ Roberts blows millions of dollars on deciding how impactful a Player-Character's blinking needs to be on gameplay, I'll be busy Elite-ing it up, hurling Kerbals at distant worlds, or plowing through FSO's endearing bugs and quirks. Thus sprach IronBeer.
"I have approximate knowledge of many things."

Ridiculous, the Director's Cut

Starlancer Head Animations - Converted

 

Offline Ghostavo

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
This might explain where a large sum of the money is going to...
"Closing the Box" - a campaign in the making :nervous:

Shrike is a dirty dirty admin, he's the destroyer of souls... oh god, let it be glue...

 
Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
Yep, we were just making fun of that on IRC. If CR wants to make games as a substitute for his failed film career he should just found a studio with David Cage.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Falcon

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
CR would have been better off just focusing on SQ42. I would have just liked single player space sim with a good story like Freespace. It not like he couldn't have done a second crowd funding campaign to add multiplayer if SQ42 was successful.

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
Agreed. Especially with all-star cast that he promises. Really, say what you will about WC3, but you can't deny its FMVs were excellent. They even had friggin' Luke Skywalker. :) This continued into WC4 and (to a somewhat lesser extent) WCP. Squadron 42 should be the focus, with "old-timey" FMVs (made with modern filming technology, of course), story as good as that of WC4 and pretty in-game graphics. Remember the original Wing Commander 3 CDs that were labeled "Origin Interactive Movie"? :) That's what I would aim at.

I really hope that all those famous actors will be actually seen in cutscenes, instead of just providing voiceovers. FMVs gone out of fashion except for C&C series, but maybe its time to bring them back.

 
Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
I really hope that all those famous actors will be actually seen in cutscenes, instead of just providing voiceovers. FMVs gone out of fashion except for C&C series, but maybe its time to bring them back.

Tex Murphy already did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fubvpa5w0ps

 

Offline Aesaar

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
And how can you tell you are not the one with poor taste here? :) Maybe in a decade, Starlancer will be rediscovered and hailed as a refined classic of videogame writing (don't worry if it doesn't have deeped meanings, they'll find some to tack on)? :)
Because by this point, Trashman is pretty much HLP's meme for bad taste, and he never ceases to demonstrate how warranted that reputation is.

As for you?  Well, you said this and actually meant it:
It's the amount of ways you can misinterpret a work times its length. It's good for measuring how much time a given work can sustain a literature major. Generations of them made a living off "analyzing" such classics such as "War and Peace", for which this value is highest. :) Scales linearly with length and complexity, so FS2 and Planetscape: Torment are good candidates, while more straightforward (and more enjoyable) works such as WC3 rank low.
It singlehandedly invalidates your opinion regarding creative writing the same way being a young-earth creationist would invalidate your opinion on evolution.  I've never met anyone who takes pride in their ignorance the way you do.  It genuinely astounds me.

Starlancer's story is a lazy, cliched transposition of the WW2 Pacific theater (IN SPACE!) while treading no new ground and managing to say absolutely nothing interesting with its narrative.  TBH, that describes WC as well, but WC, for all its faults, at least had ok characters. Starlancer doesn't even have that.  It's a boring story coupled with endless escort missions and four-point patrols.  It takes the worst bits of CR games and none of the decent bits.

i agree that chris roberts' writing is being sold short by elitists like aesaar, for instance if you examine the backstory to star citizen closely you can pick up hints that it's actually a subtle metaphor for the fall of the roman empire
I love how no one recognized PH's sarcasm here.


Agreed. Especially with all-star cast that he promises. Really, say what you will about WC3, but you can't deny its FMVs were excellent. They even had friggin' Luke Skywalker. :) This continued into WC4 and (to a somewhat lesser extent) WCP. Squadron 42 should be the focus, with "old-timey" FMVs (made with modern filming technology, of course), story as good as that of WC4 and pretty in-game graphics. Remember the original Wing Commander 3 CDs that were labeled "Origin Interactive Movie"? :) That's what I would aim at.

I really hope that all those famous actors will be actually seen in cutscenes, instead of just providing voiceovers. FMVs gone out of fashion except for C&C series, but maybe its time to bring them back.
Nope, pretty sure CR already said SQ42 is mocap the whole way.
« Last Edit: September 30, 2015, 10:37:58 pm by Aesaar »

  

Offline The E

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
Yeah, going full FMV on cutscenes is a seriously stupid thing to do these days. Even if you spend millions of dollars on it, the best you can hope for is some sort of Star Wars Prequel level thing that looks kinda phony and out of place; Modern motion/performance capture rigs are so good at reading the actor's performances and translating them into mocap data which can then be used completely in-engine that the costs associated with doing FMVs in terms of costume and prop design is just not worth it.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
As for you?  Well, you said this and actually meant it:
It's the amount of ways you can misinterpret a work times its length. It's good for measuring how much time a given work can sustain a literature major. Generations of them made a living off "analyzing" such classics such as "War and Peace", for which this value is highest. :) Scales linearly with length and complexity, so FS2 and Planetscape: Torment are good candidates, while more straightforward (and more enjoyable) works such as WC3 rank low.
It singlehandedly invalidates your opinion regarding creative writing the same way being a young-earth creationist would invalidate your opinion on evolution.  I've never met anyone who takes pride in their ignorance the way you do.  It genuinely astounds me.
Here's where you're wrong. I didn't mean it. You even quoted a smiley I put on into of this comment! What you quote is a sarcastic jab at people like you literary critics who consider everything that is not a bizarre philosophical tract to be utter crap (I do not believe I got a chance of responding to that properly in that thread). Being deep and thoughtful is fine, but it doesn't mean a work is well written (i.e. actually fun to read). In retrospect, I probably should have gone ahead with my original idea of defining literary value as the amount of Jesuses in purgatory that you can find in a given work, but I didn't want to count on you frequenting TVTropes. People who grade books on "literary value" are the people who miss out on a lot of genuinely fun reads.
Yeah, going full FMV on cutscenes is a seriously stupid thing to do these days. Even if you spend millions of dollars on it, the best you can hope for is some sort of Star Wars Prequel level thing that looks kinda phony and out of place; Modern motion/performance capture rigs are so good at reading the actor's performances and translating them into mocap data which can then be used completely in-engine that the costs associated with doing FMVs in terms of costume and prop design is just not worth it.
I haven't seen a single in-engine cutscene that would truly capture actor's expressions, motion and "acting" in general (though some come close). SW prequels had a somewhat silly plot and way overdone FX, but good actors can get you a good FMV. Anything that would require flashy FX should be done in-engine anyway, with player actively participating, IMO. Actors should be used where we see the characters interact and emote.

 

Offline Luis Dias

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
This thread should be renamed to something like "Star Citizen: This Week in Stupid", where we discuss the latest facepalms and laugh at them.

I mean, I don't like to see money burn, but at least I can laugh at it. And no, I didn't recognize PH's sarcasm. He's refined his art. (although I'm smugly smiling at Aesaar's jab at our lack of sarcasm detectors working properly next to Dragon's reply above).

 

Offline The E

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
Yeah, going full FMV on cutscenes is a seriously stupid thing to do these days. Even if you spend millions of dollars on it, the best you can hope for is some sort of Star Wars Prequel level thing that looks kinda phony and out of place; Modern motion/performance capture rigs are so good at reading the actor's performances and translating them into mocap data which can then be used completely in-engine that the costs associated with doing FMVs in terms of costume and prop design is just not worth it.
I haven't seen a single in-engine cutscene that would capture actor's expressions, motion and "acting" in general. SW prequels had a somewhat silly plot and way overdone FX, but good actors can get you a good FMV. FX should be done in-engine.

I'll wave Crysis 3 in your face then. And The Last Of Us, Uncharted, GTA 5, MGS 5, Red Dead Redemption quite a few other titles. The problem FMVs have, always have had and always will have is that the actors will always be disconnected from the surroundings they're bluescreened into. If you keep everything in-engine (even if you use the engine and in-game assets to prerecord it), you get a cohesiveness that is far more valuable to the overall feeling of a game than tiny nuances of an actors' performance ever could be.

See here:



Now, compare those cutscenes, which all integrate very seamlessly into their respective games and which do not drag you out of the flow of the game's storytelling because suddenly everyone's gone all real human, with this:



See how the lighting on Hamill, even in this static shot, seems disconnected from the background?
Sure, we could do this better today. But consider this: SC is supposed to be a seamless experience, or at least as seamless as they can manage. The NPCs you're going to interact with will all be 3D modelled. Everything will run through CryEngine's lighting model. Adding a few NPCs which are FMV limits everything. You can, for example, never show them actually interacting with you, or else it would become immediately apparent that you're not as real as they are. You can never put them into a 3D space that the player can navigate.

Now, if you're just doing a remake of Wing Commander 3, with static screens playing the role of the ship you're supposedly living and working on, sure, do FMVs. The limitations of that form won't be as relevant there. But for Star Citizen, that is not going to work. Think about it: Here's Star Citizen's crown jewel, Squadron 42. Play as an intrepid space pilot, an elite fighter of the Empire ... who can never move around on the carrier. Who is apparently carted around to stand in a few select places and forced to look in one direction while people talk at him.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline Aesaar

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Re: Derek Smart might be taking legal action over Star Citizen
Here's where you're wrong. I didn't mean it. You even quoted a smiley I put on into of this comment! What you quote is a sarcastic jab at people like you literary critics who consider everything that is not a bizarre philosophical tract to be utter crap (I do not believe I got a chance of responding to that properly in that thread). Being deep and thoughtful is fine, but it doesn't mean a work is well written (i.e. actually fun to read). In retrospect, I probably should have gone ahead with my original idea of defining literary value as the amount of Jesuses in purgatory that you can find in a given work, but I didn't want to count on you frequenting TVTropes. People who grade books on "literary value" are the people who miss out on a lot of genuinely fun reads.
Here's what you don't get: just because I can differentiate between a good story and one that's fun but mindless doesn't mean I can't appreciate the latter.  It isn't a black-and-white "the only stories worth reading/watching/playing are the ones that are smart and able to actually say interesting things about the themes they address".  Hell, I genuinely like WH40k. 

I draw the line when the story happens to be boring, predictable, and poorly written, and that's where you'll see **** like Starcraft 2 and Starlancer, and to a lesser extent, the Wing Commander games.  At least the Wing Commander games were among the first to handle storytelling in a modern manner, but Starlancer came after Freespace 2 and the Star Wars sims and had no such excuse for its mediocrity.  Neither did Freelancer, but at least it did something new in places that weren't story.

I know what you meant with the blurb I quoted.  I remember that thread.  And your attitude there and here are exactly why I say that the pride you take in your ignorance is something I'm powerless to understand.

This thread should be renamed to something like "Star Citizen: This Week in Stupid", where we discuss the latest facepalms and laugh at them.

I mean, I don't like to see money burn, but at least I can laugh at it. And no, I didn't recognize PH's sarcasm. He's refined his art. (although I'm smugly smiling at Aesaar's jab at our lack of sarcasm detectors working properly next to Dragon's reply above).
I picked up on it because mocking SC is a common group activity in #bp, and PH is as merciless as I am.  He also enjoys taunting me into ranting about how SC is a really ****ty look at the fall of the Roman Empire because I've got a history degree and that's my area of expertise.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2015, 10:00:34 am by Aesaar »