Like a water ballast system on a sailboat.
Captain, we’re taking on gravity! We canna pump it out fast enough!
To the lifeboats, men!
This sounds like quality design work for the next DLC for Oxygen Not Included.
I know I said in this thread but I continue to be shocked they did all the video work for S42 several American presidents ago and yet the game itself appears to be nowhere near done.
I’m sure it’s his incompetence at running a big project, but also smells like Chris taking big salary for many years despite filming work not needing to happen that far in advance. Or maybe he was taking more than one as project manager and film director?
He’s always been more interested in being a film director than a game designer. He wanted to hang out with actors and make them say stuff, and he had a bajillion dollars, so he did!
Yeah, I mean just look at Wings Commander 3 & 4 and to a greater extent Privateer (shudder) 2. In retrospect we must owe the originals’ cool little briefing bits, takeoff sequences and between mission conversations to Roberts’s burgeoning desire to be a movie guy.
Yep, exactly. Unfortunately, WC1 & 2 made so much money AND it was the height of the multimedia interactive-movie craze, so with WC3 Roberts jetted off to Hollywood to direct the film sequences and never really looked back.
If I recall correclty, WC3 had a $20 million budget ($40 million today), which was an absolutely absurd amount of money to develop a game at the time.
I wonder how much of that budget went to actor salaries? It couldn’t have been cheap to get Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, John Rhys-Davies, and Tom Wilson, etc.
I actually just read the Digital Antiquarian entry on WC4, and he said that Origin touted its $12mil budget, although that was probably inflated. So I assume WC3 wasn’t $20mil. But it was definitely huge for the time.
https://www.filfre.net/2023/04/wing-commander-iv/
Update: Looks like it got to $4 million, when most big productions were maybe $1 mil.
I mean, much as love them, none of those guys were exactly Big Names. McDowell did Star Trek Generations around the same time, which was really the closest thing to stardom any of those guys had in the 90s. All solid working actors (and Wilson is just a nice and funny guy personally; I got him to sign my copy of Wing Commander 4), but probably not exactly bank breakers.
Weirdly enough, all four of them made appearances on Batman the Animated Series.
Apparently they are currently hung up on trying to accurately model the moisture in footprints based on number of other npcs/players in the vicinity.
I vaguely remember one of the PC gaming magazines running a small article (it could have been an April 1 thing I suppose) around this time saying that the budget for WC4 was so large because Roberts had commissioned the space shuttle to do some filming out in actual space.
Don’t worry y’all, The Screaming Galsons aren’t forgotten!
TO: SQUADRON 42 RECRUITS
SUBJ: DEVELOPMENT UPDATE 05:03:2023
AI (Content)
Various AI blockout animations for janitorial tasks were created, such as placing and using the bucket and mop.
Animation
Last month, the Animation team worked on the spec ops and Screaming Galsons NPCs, Vanduul melee combat, and civilian walk animations. They also created blockouts for blanket use in beds, the janitor, and carrier personnel.Gameplay Story
After this, they progressed with minor updates across a wide range of scenes, including updating 20 scenes with either new poses, prop updates, start/end times, or general polish and maintenance.
“All of this was a considerable body of work and it felt great to accomplish so many updates.” Gameplay Story
At this point I have to think the people writing these updates are in on the joke.
Ah, yes, because that’s what the BDSSE needs: correct animations for janitors using buckets and mops. Because in a future filled with spaceships and awesome technology, why use a Roomba when you can just conscript a non-citizen, right? Right?
Oh, yeah, people will celebrate all those minor updates across a wide range of scenes centuries from now, when Squadron 42 finally comes out.
You are such an optimist.