News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising... by wlesieutre on Thursday May 11, 2017 @05:39PM (#14319763)
They've fairly recently published a schedule for the alpha 3.0 release (first public access to the procedural planet tech, among other things), along with a video about estimating timelines for the project. The folks who develop software for a living might not find it as interesting as I did, but it's a decent look at where the project is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOjXfNnhxf0

I've gotten some fun out of the alpha game itself, but also quite a lot of value out of these videos and other info they put out. It's a fascinating look into game development, which is something I'm interested in but not looking to pursue a career for myself.

Thursday is "Around the Verse" day, so they should be releasing one of their status update videos tonight. These are rotating through the four studios and covering what a particular studio has been working on over the last month, followed by a deeper dive into some particular subject.

Last week was the Austin studio update and touched on growing the studio's build systems. Previously they've covered subjects like QA testing, ship designs, procedural planets, procedural space stations, and a lot more. It's usually really interesting to watch.

I think this week is the UK studio. They're the ones working on a lot of the bigger ships, so I've got my fingers crossed for a look at the Aegis Reclaimer. But they were late in getting the video up last month, so we might be waiting until tomorrow. It's already 11 PM over there.

Re:Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising... by megablast on Thursday May 11, 2017 @08:11PM (#14320532)
I am not sure if that video is meant to be impressive. The first guy talking about how hard it is having to work with designers, developers, audio etc, um ok. Like every single game out there.

I just see so much cruft, so many useless people such as producers, talking a lot but not doing a lot. Taking all the credit, but not actually working apart from meetings.

Re:Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising... by wlesieutre on Thursday May 11, 2017 @08:35PM (#14320622)
I don't think it's meant to be impressive, it's meant to give people a window into how large game development projects work. Maybe it's like every single game out there, but the point is I don't work at any game studios and none of the other ones publish their production schedules or host weekly studio updates.
Re:Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising... by megablast on Friday May 12, 2017 @02:11AM (#14321780)
Ok, but it is like every single project ever.

The PO comes up with an idea, we break it up and enter it into jira, etc...

I guess it is interesting for people who don't work in IT projects.

Re:Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising... by wlesieutre on Friday May 12, 2017 @10:25AM (#14324174)
Yep, that's me!
Re:Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising... by daxorid on Thursday May 11, 2017 @07:28PM (#14320356)
Around The Verse has always been a bit of a letdown, with their total focus on gameplay, art, ship/world design, modeling, etc.

I really wish they'd occasionally give even a cursory nod to the programming team.

Re:Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising... by acemarke on Thursday May 11, 2017 @09:33PM (#14320841)
"BUG-SMASHERS!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMcLjNW8-SA&list=PLVct2QDhDr...

Watching Mark Abent demo bugs in his "handy dandy test level", all the "shenanigans" that result, and then show us the code and what the actual issues were, has been pretty much worth what I pledged right there :)

Re:Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising... by daxorid on Thursday May 11, 2017 @10:12PM (#14320959)
Oh, very cool. Not sure how I missed this. Thanks.
Re:Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising... by screecwe on Friday May 12, 2017 @10:15AM (#14324088)
Re:Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising... by ehnto on Thursday May 11, 2017 @09:31PM (#14320835)
Bugsmashers is a fun series though! They get into the lines of code to fix bugs submitted by the community.
Re:Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising... by wlesieutre on Thursday May 11, 2017 @06:05PM (#14319903)
I linked the video about building the 3.0 production schedule, and then omitted the 3.0 schedule itself. Behold, the actual schedule! https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report