Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

LittleAnt

L
VR Golgot said:
Ant, are you gonna reply to this post now? :)

Should they be treating this alpha product as a released one, and taking dividends & ROI payments from the monies raised?
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The alpha is an alpha, not a released product. CIG say "playable alpha" not "released product".

For the "dividends & ROI payments" I'm not enough fluent in english to understand the report.
So I will quote you Disastrous-Pie-4205 of the refund
Unfortunately, the cunning fraudster is teetering on the brink, staying within the law.

The report shows that over the years, about $ 60 million was spent on marketing. Money from subscriptions and other income is also around $ 60 million, and this money does not count towards the funding counter. Calders' money was also counted as marketing money.

According to the financial report, it looks like CR did not spend a cent of the crowdfunding money on marketing.
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So your "Calder problem" is out.

True, a million pounds disappeared from the meter last year, and no explanation was received. Later it turned out that it was a dividend payment. But this is a completely different topic about the misuse of funds.
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I've no opinion on the dividend payment. In France you can give them when a company makes a profit but also when it has distributable funds. I don't know if CIG have "distributable funds" or not so I have no clue.
 

LittleAnt

L
Surefoot said:
He means it's not the whole game engine as everything (animations, how the ships and characters move, etc.) are not using the actual SC main engine loop. It's using a pure render loop on what's probably a base CE for quickness of execution, also they can afford using a more recent version so it looks better (particle effects and lighting are quite telling for example).
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Those videos are made with this tool
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68WbTT_2hWg&t=1810s


Which seems to be part of the global tool used to make the game
Source: https://youtu.be/Cqt1fl56BlE?t=295


At 30:24,the guy seems to say he can jump in "game mode" in his animation and shoot people if he wants (not sure, I'm not good to understand spoken english)
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
LittleAnt said:
The alpha is an alpha, not a released product. CIG say "playable alpha" not "released product".

For the "dividends & ROI payments" I'm not enough fluent in english to understand the report.
So I will quote you Disastrous-Pie-4205 of the refund

So your "Calder problem" is out.


I've no opinion on the dividend payment. In France you can give them when a company makes a profit but also when it has distributable funds. I don't know if CIG have "distributable funds" or not so I have no clue.
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If those calculations are correct, then it means that the dividends were paid out money given by pledges. This means that CIG are breaking their statement that all pledge money goes towards development of the game.

Its also worth noting that over the years i've seen backers argue that the Calder money was only for marketing and also that it was for marketing and development, depending on the argument that needed making at the time to defend CIG's virtue. And in both cases they used statements from CIG to support their points of view.

It is quite amazing how CIG can make statements which means two mutually exclusive things at the same time! I thought only big bad publishers did things like that.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
7w7i8xb2w3b81.png
 

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
LittleAnt said:
For the "dividends & ROI payments" I'm not enough fluent in english to understand the report.
So I will quote you Disastrous-Pie-4205 of the refund

So your "Calder problem" is out.
Click to expand...

That guy's argument is incoherent to be honest. What point do you think he's making?

LittleAnt said:
I've no opinion on the dividend payment. In France you can give them when a company makes a profit but also when it has distributable funds. I don't know if CIG have "distributable funds" or not so I have no clue.
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It appears CIG did not have distributable reserves to cover the ~$1m dividend. Which is why they used this technique. (More context here).

--

But ok, let's simplify: There are two potential problems here. A legal one, and a moral one.

Let's imagine everything is fine legally speaking:

Let's imagine they have found a way to designate some cash as profit at this point. Such as using leftover subscription money alone, on the grounds that a product has been provided in the forms of videos, Jump Point magazines, etc. The ~$4.5m ROI has been drawn from that.

The dividend itself was achieved via the above mentioned technique. Which is legal. If clearly also a loophole ;)

My specific questions to you here would be:

  • Do you think it's ok for an extra ~$5.5m to have been taken out of the company in 2020? Given that the money could have been otherwise used to further the game.
  • Do you think CIG had hit the kind of milestones that warranted this bonus remuneration to Chris (as majority shareholder), and the minority investors?
  • Would you be happy for comparable bonus ROI payments and dividends to occur annually?

Cheers for answering :)
 
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Ebob

E
VR Golgot said:
Always best to wait and see with Citcon demos. Loads of gameplay features from past ones still aren't in the game.

We were just discussing the other day how 2019's NPCs on ships and stealth routines etc are still nowhere to be seen.
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True, however these homesteads were already on the roadmap once. Plus, it's a major thing for the pyro system, you won't have neatly made container outposts there.
 

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
Agony_Aunt said:
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Oh Tony...

We're now in early stage testing to allow Quantum to start pushing the first few bits of simulated data out the door and start impacting the game, and we expect to go live with these efforts later this year. The first stones in the virtual AI foundation were laid long ago, but it's only been within the past couple of months as engineering resources rolled off of some other major initiatives that the implementation efforts really started to take off. This technology will allow VNPCs the freedom to operate and evolve independently of player actions and open up all sorts of new gameplay possibilities. Bounty Hunter v2 will be the first feature to exploit virtual AI but it's really just the tip of the iceberg.
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Tony, Tony, Tony

wwQO4GX.png


That iceberg sure is buried deep...
 

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
Ebob said:
True, however these homesteads were already on the roadmap once. Plus, it's a major thing for the pyro system, you won't have neatly made container outposts there.
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I'm not sure 'this got pushed from the roadmap' is actually the greatest endorsement for them B ;)

Guess we'll see. (Are you expecting the type of functionality shown in the Pyro demo? Stealth AI, noise detection, clothes recognition etc?)
 

Intrepid3D

Intrepid3D
LittleAnt said:
Those videos are made with this tool
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68WbTT_2hWg&t=1810s


Which seems to be part of the global tool used to make the game
Source: https://youtu.be/Cqt1fl56BlE?t=295


At 30:24,the guy seems to say he can jump in "game mode" in his animation and shoot people if he wants (not sure, I'm not good to understand spoken english)
Click to expand...

First Video is the making of this, All these videos, ship ads, Jax McCleary ecte... are done in engine, its an interesting thing but some CGI and and animated short films are done in game engines, not like most people seem to think some specialised movie making software, no its the same thing as the game its self.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPJA54sWAec
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Intrepid3D said:
First Video is the making of this, All these videos, ship ads, Jax McCleary ecte... are done in engine, its an interesting thing but some CGI and and animated short films are done in game engines, not like most people seem to think some specialised movie making software, no its the same thing as the game its self.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPJA54sWAec
Click to expand...

We cleared this up a few pages back.

Basically i expressed myself badly.

My point was most of the marketing videos couldn't be reproduced only using what the game allows, something extra, custom work, has to be added, and its not done in game but in engine (probably, or it could be done in Unreal or Unity, but i'll admit, that's just speculation).
 

Intrepid3D

Intrepid3D
Agony_Aunt said:
We cleared this up a few pages back.

Basically i expressed myself badly.

My point was most of the marketing videos couldn't be reproduced only using what the game allows, something extra, custom work, has to be added, and its not done in game but in engine (probably, or it could be done in Unreal or Unity, but i'll admit, that's just speculation).
Click to expand...

There is nothing in that which you couldn't have in game, the question is whether you should, for example would bloom and depth of field effects in the cinematic be appropriate for an open world live action segment, its simple effects like that which give it that cinematic quality but shouldn't be used in a live action scene. yet its all in engine, you could have it.
 

[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
LittleAnt said:
The alpha is an alpha, not a released product. CIG say "playable alpha" not "released product".

For the "dividends & ROI payments" I'm not enough fluent in english to understand the report.
So I will quote you Disastrous-Pie-4205 of the refund

Unfortunately, the cunning fraudster is teetering on the brink, staying within the law.

The report shows that over the years, about $ 60 million was spent on marketing. Money from subscriptions and other income is also around $ 60 million, and this money does not count towards the funding counter. Calders' money was also counted as marketing money.

According to the financial report, it looks like CR did not spend a cent of the crowdfunding money on marketing.
Click to expand...

So your "Calder problem" is out.
Click to expand...

What Golgot said. The quoted post is mostly babble. You've used a random forum poster's vague opinion with imprecise timelines like "over the years". Sorry, but you can't use this to say 'So your "Calder problem" is out'.
 
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