Indeed Amazing how a simple deadpan statement can be completely indistinguishable from what the backers actually believe. Almost suggests that the entire Star Citizen experiment is just one big sarcastic commentary.
I'll give Star Citizen this: framerates have improved. Slightly. When moving, I'm now getting a solid 30 FPS for the most part, rather than mid to high 20's! On a rig that can run another game in VR at ultra high quality settings. Well done!
The evening's session started so well...
You'd think that with a major event and freefly, CIG would ensure there was enough server capacity. This is worse than last time. Correction… last time took me two days to get the frelling game to work. A seven minute wait seems like peanuts in comparison.
Since there'd been a wipe since the last time I'd played, I had to redo my character's appearance. Rather than waste my time fiddling with options to get the look I wanted, I just settled on a pre-set head, and then I found myself once again getting frustrated by the lack of long hair. You'd think Chris Roberts' focus of fidelity would have a better options than this:
Once I entered the game and started to refamiliarize myself with the game's controls, I promptly got lost in Area 18, looking for the space port. Many of the NPCs I encountered were just standing there, staring blankly in the same direction.
Area 18 is as bad as New Babbage, only instead of looking for shops to buy starting equipment, I was looking for a way off this rock. Why did I choose this area? WHY??? Eventually, I found what looked like a directory, so I could know where I was going.
Only it turned out to be something else. I soon found a proper directory.
As you can tell from the clip below, the directions were as clear as mud. But I persevered among the maze of twisting passages, all alike, and made it to the space port.
And this is where insidiousness of Star Citizen’s funding model takes hold. In what would in another game be the starting ship, Star Citizen starts you out with your choice of two crap-tier ships, barely capable of combat, let alone delivery missions. Instant access to this ship it would normally cost you $45 on top of the $60 starting package you'd already bought. But during Invictus Week, for a limited time, you can get buy it as a starter package for the low low price of $45! What a savings!
Once I was in flight, I made an incorrect assumption about which LaGrange point to travel to, and ended up in a ridiculously dense asteroid field at what is the gravitationally unstable L2 point. Along the way, I decided to test the point of ship interiors, by getting out of my chair and walking to and
After deciding to have a bit of fun flying among the asteroids, since I was there anyways, I figured out the L1 point was the one I wanted, and set out for my objective for the evening. But because this is Star Citizen, I couldn’t have the pleasure of free flying there manually. Nor could Star Citizen’s autopilot navigate around a planet. So I had to fly to the planet, do a few short hops between “orbital markers”,
I did enjoy all the mimes pretending to walk on treadmills, though.
Mission accomplished, I decided to “role play” renting a room, and logged out for the night.
For those who are masochists or have more curiosity than common sense, the complete 80 minute quest to avoid respawning in the “new player starting area” is below. There is no commentary, plithy text, or memes. Just me struggling to remember how to play this game. I did add bookmarks for what I consider the most interesting parts of last night's session.
I'll give Star Citizen this: framerates have improved. Slightly. When moving, I'm now getting a solid 30 FPS for the most part, rather than mid to high 20's! On a rig that can run another game in VR at ultra high quality settings. Well done!
The evening's session started so well...
You'd think that with a major event and freefly, CIG would ensure there was enough server capacity. This is worse than last time. Correction… last time took me two days to get the frelling game to work. A seven minute wait seems like peanuts in comparison.
Since there'd been a wipe since the last time I'd played, I had to redo my character's appearance. Rather than waste my time fiddling with options to get the look I wanted, I just settled on a pre-set head, and then I found myself once again getting frustrated by the lack of long hair. You'd think Chris Roberts' focus of fidelity would have a better options than this:
Once I entered the game and started to refamiliarize myself with the game's controls, I promptly got lost in Area 18, looking for the space port. Many of the NPCs I encountered were just standing there, staring blankly in the same direction.
Area 18 is as bad as New Babbage, only instead of looking for shops to buy starting equipment, I was looking for a way off this rock. Why did I choose this area? WHY??? Eventually, I found what looked like a directory, so I could know where I was going.
Only it turned out to be something else. I soon found a proper directory.
As you can tell from the clip below, the directions were as clear as mud. But I persevered among the maze of twisting passages, all alike, and made it to the space port.
And this is where insidiousness of Star Citizen’s funding model takes hold. In what would in another game be the starting ship, Star Citizen starts you out with your choice of two crap-tier ships, barely capable of combat, let alone delivery missions. Instant access to this ship it would normally cost you $45 on top of the $60 starting package you'd already bought. But during Invictus Week, for a limited time, you can get buy it as a starter package for the low low price of $45! What a savings!
Once I was in flight, I made an incorrect assumption about which LaGrange point to travel to, and ended up in a ridiculously dense asteroid field at what is the gravitationally unstable L2 point. Along the way, I decided to test the point of ship interiors, by getting out of my chair and walking to and
After deciding to have a bit of fun flying among the asteroids, since I was there anyways, I figured out the L1 point was the one I wanted, and set out for my objective for the evening. But because this is Star Citizen, I couldn’t have the pleasure of free flying there manually. Nor could Star Citizen’s autopilot navigate around a planet. So I had to fly to the planet, do a few short hops between “orbital markers”,
I did enjoy all the mimes pretending to walk on treadmills, though.
Mission accomplished, I decided to “role play” renting a room, and logged out for the night.
For those who are masochists or have more curiosity than common sense, the complete 80 minute quest to avoid respawning in the “new player starting area” is below. There is no commentary, plithy text, or memes. Just me struggling to remember how to play this game. I did add bookmarks for what I consider the most interesting parts of last night's session.
Kind of - only on the 486 DX was the full fat 486 model. SX had the FPU either not present or physically chopped off. FPU was "added" by the 487 - which was a full fat 486DX which simply disabled the existing SX.
386 DX was the full fat 32 bit, still with no FPU. 387 added to the board brought this functionality. SX was basically a 16 bit 286 with addressing addons and also needed a discreet 387 FPU.
Things were, confusing, at that time - and the marketing borderline malicious.
Good point, well made. It does make me wonder why external investors would invest, how do they profit from this? As we have seen they get their dividends, but this is nowhere close to the magnitude of their investment.
Technically speaking, IIRC from CIG UK’s public filings, only 10% of those dividends went to actual investors. The rest went to Chris Roberts, his brother, his (once secret) wife, and his good friend and long-term business partner. Calders were also allowed to sell back part of their initial investment, at a profit, no doubt.
Love to know what his graphics settings are...or what hardware he's running it on. Even at Orison with everything on max at 1440p on my mediochre PC, I'm getting 20-30 fps minimum. Perhaps he's trying to run it at 4k or something?
Technically speaking, IIRC from CIG UK’s public filings, only 10% of those dividends went to actual investors. The rest went to Chris Roberts, his brother, his (once secret) wife, and his good friend and long-term business partner. Calders were also allowed to sell back part of their initial investment, at a profit, no doubt.
There was no evidence that Calder actually sold anything back. They got 5 million (IIRC), but nothing to say that wasn't payment for investing. I'd be interested to see if anyone has any up-to-date info on whether any of those shares were actually sold back to CIG and what percentage of shares were sold, if any.
Love to know what his graphics settings are...or what hardware he's running it on. Even at Orison with everything on max at 1440p on my mediochre PC, I'm getting 30 fps minimum. Perhaps he's trying to run it at 4k or something?
If i were to take a stab at it, my guess is its just one of those random things that can happen, and that he normally would get reasonable frame rates there, but SC client or server was throwing a wobbly.
There was no evidence that Calder actually sold anything back. They got 5 million (IIRC), but nothing to say that wasn't payment for investing. I'd be interested to see if anyone has any up-to-date info on whether any of those shares were actually sold back to CIG and what percentage of shares were sold, if any.
I thought I read somewhere that the $5m was a shares buyback by CIG. But that could’ve been speculation, given that there still isn’t a new CIG-UK filing.
If i were to take a stab at it, my guess is its just one of those random things that can happen, and that he normally would get reasonable frame rates there, but SC client or server was throwing a wobbly.
Even so...on the worst of worst busy servers during this current free-fly...I was nowhere near drawing the frames on the monitor with crayons like he was. I dropped to 17fps at one point near the space whale statue then it picked up again... I haven't been on there this evening though...been playing Ghost of Tsushima on the PS4
Yeah, that was quite probably a factor. All those fidelity calculations the game had to do, as well as having to animate and calculate all those subsumption driven NPCs!
I thought I read somewhere that the $5m was a shares buyback by CIG. But that could’ve been speculation, given that there still isn’t a new CIG-UK filing.
I don't recall them saying it was a buyback, but maybe i missed that.
I'd like to know either way. One way is Calder cashing out, thanks to backer money given, the other way is Calder slowly getting back their investment money without reducing their stake, also thanks to backer pledges.
I just popped in to the PU and flew back up to Orison to see how my framerates fared...it was night time when I got there with Orison on the dark side of Crusader so I had to do a night approach, not always a comfy experience...but the red beacons around the spaceport that are visible from high atmosphere got me headed in the right direction. It's always easier when you know what to look for. I don't envy a random newbie trying to land there at night for the first time...
Anyhoo, I took the space taxi out to the expo for a quick look-see, frames at the worst briefly dropped to around 20-ish in certain areas, nothing less, but averaged high 30's which is decent for Orison at the best of times...I didn't have a C2 mating with the furniture though. All in all a fairly smooth-ish experience for a free-fly week despite a few black hole of doom first call elevators (old bug from 3.16, always call another elevator) and a really sluggish inventory...even had NPC's milling about in groups at the expo like gangs of Latvian pickpockets
Video to follow once YouTube has finished butchering it back down to 1080p...
Read that as pooped into the PU. Part of my brain accepted this because its SC and for sure will eventually have pooping mechanics. Part of my brain tells me its late and time for bed.
I think i'll listen to the latter part of my brain and hit the sack.
