That’s the thing about Ortwin Freyermuth. He may be a lawyer, but from his letter he’s acting more in the role of a co-founder of CIG. His notice was indistinguishable from the rant that Chris Roberts posted. Basically, they’re doing the equivalent of “Nuh-uh! You are!” Derek Smart at least has the piece of mind to hire an outside attorney and let them do the dirty work.
I have no dog in this fight other than a small excited and yippy metaphorical one that loves popcorn, but the tone in that lawyer’s letter was absolutely perfect. I could see him rolling his eyes as he explained to the other guy how to lawyer, or more specifically how not to lawyer.
No idea about the actual legalities, but my assessment of the lulz is that they are strong and virile.
mok
1564
I believe the CIG letter was mostly for marketing/public consumption.
There are so many rich layers to this whole thing on both sides. Like, for example, DS has to pay some one else to speak like an adult for him.
So here’s a summary of Derek Smart’s predictions concerning CitCon, which takes place this week.
[ol]
[li] They are going to parade all the A-List actors – all of whom cost a ton of money – for SQ42. This despite the fact that that stand-alone game is reported to be almost fifteen months away.
[/li]> [li] They are going to show the opening cut-scene sequence for SQ42 with Gary Oldman giving his speech, someone flying and landing, NPCs waving etc.
[/li]> [li] They are going to show Star Marine. Again. It’s still a mess – and nowhere ready for production release. Reports tell me that if it gets released before year end, it would be a miracle.
[/li]> [li] They are going to show multi-crew. Again. Problem now is that, as of the last report I got, it doesn’t run smoothly at all. And so they are now running the demo on super computers with 16 cores, loads of memory etc. Again, not production release ready.
[/li]> [/ol]
It will be interesting to see if they come true. Because if they’re correct, I can see a lot of people still unflinching despite the whole drama suddenly becoming more than a little preoccupied.
The last prediction, at least, seems crazy. Maybe they don’t have assets. Maybe its buggy. Maybe they’re going to script the hell out of the sequence. But why would running it on “super computers” help any of that? It sounds like weird, non-technical B.S.
Quaro
1567
I’d honestly be flat out impressed if CIG architected the game in such a way that it actually had dramatically better FPS with 16 cores versus 4 regular i7 ones. That would be genuinely newsworthy in itself.
JonRowe
1568
This is actually something that happens all of the time at trade shows. “We are showing off the Xbox One version, hands controller” Game crashes to a windows desktop in the background. It is pretty often that these gaming show demos end up being on super beefy pcs just to make sure things run smoothly.
I mean, to regain confidence, they are going to really have to knock it out of the park showing the game soon.
There’s a technical reason - optimization is the last thing you do in a software project (unless it’s trivial, in small pieces of code). So development versions tend to be demonstrated on beefier computers to make up for the lack of optimization (it’s also the reason why system requirements are usually defined in the very end of the development process).
Now, 16 cores is probably hyperbole in this case, but considering CIG is allegedly pushing the limits of the Cry Engine, it does sound very plausible that they’ll need beefier-than-normal computers to show anything at this point. But again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, since it’s honestly quite common in the game industry currently.
mok
1570
Well, when the lights dim for the demonstration, now we will know that it wasn’t preplanned…
That still doesn’t explain the complaint, then. Because everything you said is par for the course for development. Anyone doing demos at this stage would be expected to use beefy machines. So, where’s the beef in Smart’s complaint?
I had that reaction as well. Oh noes, they’re going to show heavily scripted vertical slices running on overpowered hardware! The horror!
That it’s all smoke and mirrors. Smart’s assertion is that it’s one of many things that added together paint a picture of a game that is built on fairy dust and rainbow dreams.
Unfortunately, all of his points about what CIG will show at the con could also be indicative of nothing bad at all.
If Smart is correct that about the release date (15 more months), that’s the real bomb. It’ll be interesting to see if CIS will actually pony up and announce some black-and-white timelines.
I think it’s realistic to not expect this game to hit 1.0 until around 2018-19. Maybe.
Smart seems to be referring to Squadron 42, which has always been supposed to come much earlier than the “main” online game (even if it is the main game for many backers).
I think his beef is that the multi-crew demo is already “heavy” while still being but a small part of everything it is supposed to become, and if that small part is having performance issues (optimized or not), it might be technically unfeasible to build the whole thing as promised. At least that’s something I (as a software developer) would be worried about.
The whole issue is whether CIG will survive that long.
JonRowe
1579
The game wouldn’t come out then, unless they got a lot more money. Running a development studio is costly, and they have already been going for 3 years. 6-7 years for a game to be released is expensive business. Usually only allowed by Publisher run studios with deep pockets for a prestige game, or somehow Hideo Kojima.
Yakuza money-laundering?
EDIT: Google says his dad was pretty high up in the Yakuza!
I said that because, 3 years on and we have barely anything beyond a couple of tech demos, and even those are suspect in quality. If this thing IS ever gonna happen, it needs a lot more time in the oven, I think. Does it HAVE that kind of time? We’ll have to wait and see. I hope it does.
