the mellow tigger's musings

Over the years, I've been the online leader for 2 different groups at Meetup.com. It's a great place to organize calendars of activity, and it's free to use for attendees. They charge meeting organizers for the service, but it's way too expensive for what it costs Meetup to provide that service. They charged US$150/year for each group, the last I knew a year ago. That's too rich for my blood, so I eventually stopped paying both of them.

Twin Cities Powershell Automation User Group is looking for a new leader, but it may not get one. It'd be a shame to lose it. I created that group back in 2014 October 14. (I got the date from the earliest copy at the wayback machine.) The powershell group had previously used EventBrite for RSVPs, but it wasn't reaching a large audience. Attendance definitely improved after switching to Meetup. I paid for that group for several years, before handing off the finances of it to Tim Curwick, the group president at the time. I hope it finds a new leader, but it seems unlikely. This group focuses on in-person meetings (with pizza!) rather than online meetings, which are available everywhere. There are probably more people like me who simply don't attend group events any more due to health risks.

Star Citizens of Minnesota found someone else to take over, which is good. I paid the bills for a few years, which is too much money gone. But I still haven't attended any of their indoor events since the pandemic started. This group is based on the Star Citizen game which has been in development since 2012, and still isn't in release yet, although some functions are playable (if you're on Windows).

I received the notice today that Twin Cities EcoClub is also looking for a new leader. I attended only one of their events. We listened to the person organizing the hydroponics container at the North Market grocery. (Aside: I know I edited photos of that event. Did I really never post it? I certainly can't find it now in Dreamwidth searches.) I remember that one was post-pandemic, because we stayed in a large spaced-apart circle outdoors to listen.

I know I've seen notices of other groups losing their leadership. Meetup will eventually delete the groups if nobody else steps up to pay the bills. It's sad to see the groups disappear, but maybe Meetup will finally stop "printing money" and reduce their rates (by a lot) to something more reasonable.

I took my first work vacation in 4 years. I went to CitizenCon 2948.

CitizenCon is the gaming convention for the Star Citizen (multiplayer) and Squadron 42 (solo) games. They held it in Austin Texas USA, the site of their first development studio. The game is set 930 years in our future, hence the current game date of 2948 (2018 + 930), which always changes with our calendar. And that's a lot of changing calendars, since this game first started crowdfunding back in 2012, which was game year 2942 as pictured in the quote to the right.

The registration process was slow. I stood in the registration line for more than an hour. Some kind staffer came out once to warn people against standing in the fire ant mounds. Luckily, the weather was good that day, unlike the storm on the previous day.



The outdoor plaza was very nice. There was a huge banner for the event, plenty of food vendors (one of them even game-themed as Big Benny's Noodles). They had some great Venezuelan food bowls, both spicy and gluten-free.  They took photos of people on a Drake Dragonfly, complete with sound effects.



Indoors, they had many in-game vendors giving out free swag. They had an area for in-game organizations. They also had a demonstration of their motion-capture studio. Many people were in costume. I don't ever harass people by trying to capture photos of them, but I had to take this photo of one person who was in full combat gear, since he was already being stopped for a photo. The suit was so large, he could barely sit in the auditorium seats.




The session videos haven't been posted online to their YouTube channel yet, but you can see the official trailers for new gameplay and ships. This new clip shows a lot of celebrity actors that people will recognize from movies:

• Mark Hamill (Star Wars)
• Gillian Anderson (X-Files)
• Gary Oldman (The Fifth Element)
• John Rhys Davies (Lord of the Rings)
• Henry Cavill (Superman)
• Mark Strong (Green Lantern)
• Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones)
• Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One)

What received the most cheers, though (and even a 2nd play of the video clip) was this announcement of the new capital ship from Drake Interplanetary, the Kraken.

I spent most of my time outside of the main stage, at the much smaller "second stage" room. It's a shame that none of those videos are uploaded yet, because a lot of amazing technology was showed there. The $195 million dollars that they have already crowdfunded has been put to very good use. It's not all in the test build for players to see yet, but it will be soon.

• Environment physics. They've got wind vectors that will affect plant life in the environment. They can point-source wind too, for things like jet exhaust. I'm looking forward to having a very realistic plant environment in my biodomes on the Endeavor.
• Cloth physics. This demo was just incredible. They've taken physics modeling farther than any other game I've seen. They can throw a tarp on any object in game and have it blow around very realistically, with no clipping. He repeatedly dropped a tarp on a ship, and it deformed realistically over any section of ship or box. He even threw it down over the engines, let it come to rest, then started the ship engines to blow it off. All amazingly real to view.
• Particle physics. They've also made huge improvements to performance since 2012 for other graphics effects. They can make frequent use of sparks and even small lightning bolts with little performance impact. The audience was appropriately wowed by the sight of a malfunction in an engine room. Impressive stuff. Again, not in the available test build yet, but it will be soon.
• Character physics. At the main stage, they spent an hour on the character face modeling. They've done it. They've really, truly done it. Star Citizen will offer character customization like no other game has ever offered. They can reshape the entire head in real-time without causing clipping of hats, eyewear, or facial hair, which all conform to the new head shape. It's just amazing. Again, it's development time (and money) very well spent.
• Economy. I was most looking forward to this talk by Tony Zurovek. He had to cut down on detail because of time limitations, which made it a bit of a disappointment. I didn't get any of the detail that I really wanted.

The economy in Star Citizen will be far more detailed than any other computer game. Each ship is measured in about 20 details to determine the "cost" of each ship system. They can determine the value that can be quickly salvaged (/stolen) from other ships, what resources are needed to rebuild a ship, and how ships compare against each other for resources needed to produce them.

All of this detail is necessary to know how to trigger the automated NPCs that will "fill in" the economic gaps when players are unavailable to meet those needs. When lots of ships are destroyed in battles, then resources will be needed to repair and resupply those ships. Pirating will likely increase as miners come under attack from opportunistic thieves (players and NPCs alike). As raw supplies become overstocked, then intermediate parts will become more valuable, so the crafters who build the subsystems will come under more intense scrutiny.  It all looks like player actions will determine the in-game economic system more realistically than any other game out there, even EVE Online, which is famous for its economy.

• Discovery.  I crowdfunded this game for the exploration.  It appears that they're planning lots of stuff to keep the explorers like me happy.  Derelict ships, comets, asteroid fields, commodity/flora analysis on land, intra-system wormholes, hidden pirate bases (of interest to security), geysers (of interest to scientists and tourists), nebulae (of interest to miners), and more.

So, the game still looks promising. Very promising. I'm impressed by their technical accomplishments. It still remains to be seen, though, if it all "comes together" to create a fun game.  I was encouraged that Chris Roberts himself said that the user interface is also recognized as a problem system at the moment, so it will get reworked. I've complained about it for years. This news is very good.

For the convention overall, though, I was a bit underwhelmed. I kept thinking throughout these presentations, "You know, this is the kind of stuff that we used to see on Wingman's Hangar." I once specifically asked the question about whether or not they were holding back information so it could be released just for special events, and Chris Robertson himself answered "No, we're absolutely not doing that." Yes, they absolutely are doing that.

Oh, well. Their game development work is still new game technology that is better than anything else out there. I'm happy to continue waiting for the final game.