Star Citizen: Around the Verse - The Banu Defender

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hello and welcome to around the verse our weekly look at the development of Star Citizen I'm Sandy Gardner and I'm Chris Roberts uh we have an all Banu show today uh a look at their law and the newest Banu ship and later we'll share how you can earn a trip to Gamescom plus some fun star Kitten rewards I wonder what star Kitten is uh but first uh let's go to our Los Angeles Studio update they've got some pretty cool stuff to show you hi everyone welcome back to Los Angeles I'm senior producer Eric Kyon Davis here with your monthly Studio update we've grown to 74 total employees across several disciplines with one thing in common making Star Citizen and Squadron 42 the best games possible now some of those new hires include talented Engineers which bring our engineering

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   team to about 12 all their vast and varying experience is quickly helping to bring more features to life across both games soon all of our new ships will have a heat and power component now that the team has finished designing pipes and begun implementing their basic structure this will manage the flow of respective elements to allow individual component contribution to ship Behavior so for example coolers now contribute to how much heat this system can handle rather than being statically defined by the heat sink anyway we're currently replacing the old system in the new ships with this new management system after this is done the team must implement the minute details of each component influencing one another for example coolers not only affect the

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   overheat temperature limit they also offer IR signature masking heat sinks will no longer simply Define the temperature at which components overheat and shut down the heat will ramp up to its desired temperature rather than being generated instantaneously now we've talked about shops in our last update and now the purchase transaction system has been reimplemented with our new replicated function system called remote methods this system will decrease the amount of calls to the server which in turn should make purchasing things a bit more responsive next we'll be working on improving the Tryon mode and the client side update to your persistent data after purchases since the previous update about the ultimate light switch the Light Group entity also has several

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   new features its light State can also be changed by track view which is very useful for cinematics it allows for individual directional lights to now rotate with a simple property the process was you know previously required flow graph the light groups can now replace the Antiquated prefabs that vehicle external lights have been using and now next the team aims to get the light groups on a vehicle to rely on the vehicle's power in order to control all lights as well as interior devices such as doors and lastly on the engineering team we've been hard at work on what we call the control manager this system will automatically give authority over items across the game and will allow players to dictate the control of an item and its sub items now in the past we've had a system prototype for vehicles that was hardcoded which meant that item connections would have to be

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   manually defined by the designer for instance a particular seat always controlled a specific set of items but now the control manager will be able to connect to any entity for example a designer would add a control manager to a turret and then weapons are added the turret that can then be controlled by either an AI module or by an operator seat the player this can also be added to the vehicle with either an AI module or again the operator seat the framework we've set up is universal so it can be used anywhere on anything and this isn't restricted to weapon systems if a player wants to control doors on a space station and terminals with an operator seat it will link you and you can operate whatever it controls now the the really exciting thing about the control manager is it will allow for multi grroup play depending on which seat you're sitting

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   in on our test ship the person in the operator seat controls the weapons but can switch them to the AI Control and then reclaim control again we've been we've now completed adding this to data Forge so designers no longer have to manually State what each controller does the system now knows what each control operates so with a set priority it would manage itself however if the designer still wants to get that extra level of control or just let the system function as it wants to they can do so now over on our ship team here in Los Angeles they've completed the white box phase of the Anvil tein and moved into the gray box phase which includes the final Geo on the pilot seat the cockpit the main engines landing gear and housing meanwhile the white boxes already up and flying for our initial tests we've also done some basic Rigs and animation on the landing gear and on the landing gear

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   housing the team is making steady progress on the RSI Aurora as well we're working on cockpit controls um MFD screens and the sleeping quarters they've also been through General polish such as Palms decals and lods it's starting to look like much more than the modern-day descendant of the X7 spacecraft and is heading to The Landing Pad at maximum thrust now our QA team has been quite busy they've been testing our new ships in the pipeline and started working on our new animation pipeline also so one of the biggest projects they're work undertaking is testing the new planetary Tech on moon such as dayar the team has had so much fun testing this new tech that they really don't want to go home we're really looking forward to getting this for to you as soon as we can in the upcoming 3.0 release

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   our Tech content team has been uh very busy supporting building improving and assessing all of our processes and pipelines to increase performance reduce Dev time and help deliver every aspect of Star Citizen and Squadron 42 for instance with multiple asset pipelines one of our biggest challenges is maintaining consistency across every asset this means that the tech art team is constantly evaluating and auditing our materials to achieve the best and most efficient result to ensure such consistency all the asset Dev teams really need to create and maintain a shared use of a single unified Library maintaining such a library for a universe full of assets requires vigilance and maintenance our most recently completed audit included sound tutorials and clear documentation for

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   all of our best practices also uh animation is a lot like any other asset it has a certain memory footprint that needs to be streamed in and out of the game think of an animation database like an object container but for animations the DBA or database of of animations is an optimized animation container comprised of hundreds of animations compressed down to a fraction of their typical size on the disc splitting them up logically is important because the speed of streaming will be affected depending on the size of said DBA for example a um Locomotion set can be fairly heavy as it's comprised of hundreds of animations from walking running turning idling everything in between causing streaming of a large file to take a few frames perhaps you've noticed your character sliding prior to

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    the animation beginning which is a product of a DBA that's just too large so Tech animation developed a tool to create manage and sort these animations within that DBA our goal is to ensure that while you're streaming seamlessly through the star syndicon Universe your animations will be streaming right along with you another Boon on performance are asset errors these can be quite difficult to identify when the only way to find them is parsing through a 200 megabyte text log line by line so this month engineering Tech art and devops teamed up to automatically output and track errors and warnings associated with certain assets for easy assignment better visibility and quicker turnaround in everything from needed fixes to undefined behaviors that could negatively impact the overall gameplay experience with the implementation of

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    item 2.0 Characters within Star Citizen will become fundamentally different than the characters in our base engine so to manage them we needed to create a specific Loadout editor tool and now that that editor tool has been used in production we've made some major improvements that allow for more developers to get up to speed quickly on the usage of this tool with new icons documentation and general workflow improvements we are now expect the loadouts to be easier and faster to create now our new skinning tool also handles more complex rig setups and lods it takes our CGA format which is a hierarchy of animated meshes collisions and constrained Pistons to become a unified set of skins with lods that are bound to an animated skeleton with physics this tool also red reduces our

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    turnaround for skinning complex setups and improves the overall process now a critical feature required for our characters is that the weapons move to their designated positions accurately when players switch armor uh Tech art worked within the confines of the skeleton extension system to develop an override technique to utilize the correct helper position based on each asset this means attachments will now inherent positions in real time as you attach and detach armor pieces you don't want your gun hanging off the wrong part of your armor Not only would it look silly but it can slow you down when switching weapons after you run out of ammo on your trusty sidearm and also in terms of attachments the most complex character we've set up to date is the heavy Marine a fully

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    equipped heavy Marine has the most physical attachments or weapons than any of our other characters this presented you know some pretty unique challenges trying to fit four grenades eight magazines two Med pens two gadgets one sidearm and two weapons onto a single character makes for quite the game of Tetris the heavy Marine has now been completed and is ready to hit the battlefield fully equipped now the character team is making solid progress across handfuls of different outfits uniforms and Aliens opposite of the heavy Marine is our heavy Outlaw which has completed its in-game mesh and will move right on into texturing rigging and implementation so it's not going to be too long before the heavy Marine will have its potential match out there in the verse now in Squadron 42 we're cranking through various characters from

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    major and from the minor background roles and this one has now passed to the high poly stage and move right on into in-game modeling and texturing the OMC unders suit has completed its high pass making it ready for in-game mesh and for texturing the Marine BDU has move moved through texturing and on to its final stages we have a Medical Rep who has finished up her high polyphase and soon will be in-game modeling last but not least concepts for the Shan and Banu are wrapping up and our newest Quest givers rudo and miles ehart are getting ready to meet you in the verse in the very near future well that's it for us here in Los Angeles thank you as always for your support and we'll see you again soon thanks guys watching the QA guys Tesla Canyon runs looks like a lot of fun and as Star Citizen grows the persistent universe will expand to more

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    than just the Crusader moons yes and definitely so not only will there be more environments to explore but another important aspect is other alien species that you'll be able to interact with and one of those alien species is the Banu which is the first alien civilization that Humanity discovered they might be known as Traders and Merchants but there's so much more to their culture than that take a look so we're here to talk Banu yeah you were here when the Banu were first thought of like from conception right uh yeah they were the part of the original Time Capsule they were Humanity's first contacts from like a meta perspective was it just you were just trying to think of who Humanity would encounter or was there a need particularly for like a

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    trading group or early on there was sort of in the very rough conversations with with Chris it was I think it was just trying to figure out like what are the sort of Paragons of kind of creatures and civilizations were we going to deal with and there was always this sort of image I remember from early conversations about that sort of Morocco in the 1940s like very vibrant colorful Lush you know but with that sort of intrigue and danger and mystery and the back alley type thing and going off of the the allegory of the uh you know decline of the Roman Empire if the Shian were sort of the influence of China and the vandals were the vizos and the tavar were sort of feudal Japan then the Banu would be sort of the Persian Empire that was sort of their initial initial role

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    so when it comes to the look of them the older designs that we had had lots of ridges on the face and they kind of a little scarier so what I've wanted to do with them is kind of try to bring some color into them uh I really think that it's a place that we can explore some color in the Star Citizen Universe especially with our aliens uh so right now we're kind of getting into exploring skin tones exploring uh you know why they would have different skin tones why those things would exist but then also some of the things that I liked about the old design was all the lines on the face I think that's an interesting uh design language so I've tried to pick that up again and run with it a little bit more Humanity's first encounter with the bander was sort of a mixed bag there was a it was our first Contact ever they we discovered jump points we were able to terraform uh but we hadn't run into any aliens yet

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    and so jump points at the time obviously still are sort of that big you know uh Holy Grail of for exploration so people are very protective of areas that they're scanning and the story was that there was this guy Vernon tar who was out scanning this patch of space uh looking for jump points and he saw another ship show up on his radar and was like convinced that someone was trying to Horn in on his territory and uh so he he took a shot at it and then realized far too late that it was a alien spacecraft and uh freaked out and called the cops basically and yeah and that was it and they ended up forming the first Intergalactic treaty basically but we found out later that the reason why he was so happy to be found by us is that he yeah that Banner was a fugitive from the law it was on the run so our first Banner that we encountered was a

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    criminal he had upset one of the guilds and they were chasing him down so this Banu who was on the run from the law basically became I weirdly enough probably kind of a hero of his age something that I've been wanting to get across is features that the players can connect with that we can associate with so there is a little bit of a human element to the to this design uh you know some a lot in the eyes a lot in some of the general structure of the face um but I do want to get across some of the more creepy elements so their skin is a little shiny and it's a little almost Fisher eel like um you know there's all the they're breathing the way that it looks like they could breathe is maybe in lots of different places uh some crests on their head like things that are just not really natural things that aren't you know but also balancing the human parts to that uh you know in the clothing that they're

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    wearing it's going to be very uh decadent right it's going to have lots of different types of patterns in it it's going to have lots of different um colors in it and that's to show all these different places that they've been that they're not just pulling from one influence from one location uh you it should show a little bit of their history just when you look at them you should be able to see where they've been or or who they are and where they come from we've been really getting invested in who the Banu are as a species and something I find that's really interesting with the Banu is that they're very specialized so you know if they're a soldier they've been trained to be a soldier if they're a merchant they've been trained their whole lives to be a merchant if you know whatever they are they they have specialized in that and they're very specialized that's not very typical in a lot of cultures you know for for interest sake and for having it be more fun we try to set up

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    all the cultures kind of opposed to each other and the farther away they can get the more interesting it is so when we were looking at this Trading Group we started asking like all right what what makes them really interesting as Traders and then part of this use of like um Reliance on a barter system and and that having be the main value of the wealth and and what do the do with etic rule of wealth and kind of that's where it started developing the idea that that was the important aspect of their society of the very real and physical you can see what I'm worth because it's right here with me now Look Around that's how important I am yeah because material things are very important to a Bandu to signify their position and

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    station and life like their ships tend to reflect this kind of artisanal quality to it of of having really nice nicely etched flooring stuff like that because it's more impressive and you know their ship that they're most known for currently is the the merchantmen which is a massive massive reiterate that uh yeah cuz that's not really like just a ship to them used for transport that's that's their home and that's why it's on such a big scale that has all their belongings aboard that they travel around with and that kind of idea of that traveling bizarre that they would come visiting with people is you know kind of taking some inspiration from early like BWI nomadic traders that they're moving with everything they own and it's important to them in that way the background of the band new is very tricky because we we circled in on this idea that uh they

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    have no real sense of History like that that's never really held a lot of importance to them so you know they don't you know they don't care who invented the merchantman they just care that the merchantman is a ship that works and is effective at what it does and they'll retain the sort of instructional Manual of how to design and build one but they could care less that so and so built it in whatever year on this place because of this reason they have holds no interest to them the what is important is this is a ship that is built that's that's built for transport and cargo and is and is effective and so that's that becomes the uh the primary thing for them yeah like if they were viewing like American history they the walkway for them would be America as a country they wouldn't care that it used to be part of Britain

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    because that doesn't matter anymore it's not part of Britain anymore and they wouldn't care that this was the Independence year because it's independent what difference does it make when it happened so so long ago boiling it down to the important facts that they pass on so you know their history is more like a series of manuals than it is kind of like a timeline recording and and because of that it's been very difficult for humans to have pieced together the Bandu history before they met them the big aspect of you know thing is about ACR stuff so ACR stuff means you've lived a full life you've been a lot of places you've met a lot of people you've done a lot of things and that's it so people it's it's very much about living in the present so because the Banu are so heavily in trade uh one thing that's also interesting about them is that they don't necessarily look friendly right they could be a little

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    aggressive they could be a little awkward um so what they try to do and this is part of why they put all their stuff out on display is to show you that they're friendly right because in the ships they're going to have rooms you know their greeting room and when you come into the Greening room this is all their stuff that you you can see and maybe Behind These closed doors it looks totally different but put everything out in display for you their costuming and their clothes should also be impacted in the same way so maybe they're carrying lots of little trinkets or maybe uh the types of clothes they have are from all different places in the universe where you know it's going to show that they pin to all these kinds of places or something that's very rare and very valuable from somewhere far far away they're trying very hard to come off as appealing even though they naturally aren't you know they should be a little

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    creepy they should be a little awkward they should be it's kind of the judging a book by its cover thing where they you they probably wouldn't be the person you're going to come up to and say like this guy's going to be super friendly I really want to trade with this guy but as soon as you get to know them you can see that they're you know very friendly and that they're willing to to do business with you and that they want to make you as pleasant and as comfortable in their in their space and around them uh and I think that's really interesting so it is a difficult balance to say I want to you know when we're designing this race that they need to both come off as a little awkward a little creepy a little uncomfortable um but also friendly also appealing um and that's I think the balance that we're trying to capture right now with these guys developing the Banu culture is

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    important because it also helps us create other aspects of their civilization like their ships language design choices and many other things and since the Bano are known for borrowing technology from other species that idea was actually used in their ship design yes so up next we'll share a look at our newest spacecraft the Banu Defender so the ship is called the defender uh and it literally is that you know it's not it's it's not an aggressive ship I mean it's a very unique looking ship we needed to link up with the writing team in La so David and will to find out what the banner about if there are any specific things that we needed to take in mind when we made the ship we knew from the beginning that if they had like a fighting ship it would

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    probably be an escort ship primarily cuz what would they want to do with it they would want to protect their valuable trading ship what we generally do there is we take the requirements for Ben and Chris and we look at ships similar to that role to see kind of where it fits in in the universe and I think initially there was about 18 initial initial ideas of just different configurations often with like the two you know the two pods that's been a major feature uh and also taking into account you know um you know on the merchantman we've got the you know there ramps feature heavily um and trying to sort of just tie that in as well so on this one I think Chris picked three that he liked and then we kind of just rifted on those um little more in 2D little more in 3D just super blocky it's almost what looks good first and

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    then we can sort of come back from that and go okay well how do we actually make this work as we've learned more about not only our game systems but as the the race itself that's also been slowly being brought up to date and adjusting yeah and we just had a conversation with the UK guys about like room assignment what room does what and stuff like that and and it's really opening up some really interesting like some really fascinating unique things about how how a band new crew works and then compared and contrasted with with a human crew it's very very different and very weird the Banu quite interestingly have a uh kind of like a social system where very specifically trained in a field unlike the uee ships where it's just one man in a fighter they have possibly a fighter and a Gunner and instead of the Gunner

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    being in a turret they're actually Manning the main ship weapons alongside the pilot so they're trained to work in tandem rather than like a generalist role which is why there's a dual cockpit system going on with it right off the bat we did like a typical sort of human configuration uh you know things in racks and it was it was instantly obvious that that wasn't going to work uh it was out of place the whole rigidity and the structure was um complete opposite to what we're sort of trying to get for the interior and so that there was a lot of there was a lot of drawing a lot of line work just to sort of again it was all about flow FL lines you know curving from the roof down to the floor so after a little more chat with Nate and uh Jay Brushwood like

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    we decided to really go for like a sort of uh almost it's like a vertical horizontal shutter system basically so this whole thing will just like open up and just go and just reveal all the components and they'll be they will be in a sort of structure but um the facade is still very sort of our no Novo sweeping organic um and it it'll make quite a nice experience I think should be there you'll push the button you'll have this reveal um and you know then you can change out your components or you know change your fuses or whatever it is that you want to do so The Defender as an example has a bigger Shield than most of the fighters we've got in the game uh especially of the same size however as a counter point it's got a very weak hole

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    so the second you get through that Shield you're in trouble you know the the defender has a Shon engine on it and at a certain point they were like oh this engine's much better suited for this ship than the previous engine that we had on there so they got the engine design they retro engineered it they figured it out theyve started manufacturing it and now it's a Shon engine incorporated into their Tech it kind of comes in two configurations as like a flight configuration and a landed configuration um you know I really like the landed configuration it just creates a really nice silhouette and you and you know you'll know straight away that's the defender when you see it on a landing pad there's just no way you'll mistake it one of the things that we've been talking about internally was the idea that they as a culture they don't have art Fine Art but the idea being that that that kind of Creative Energy

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    goes into the manufacturing of the thing so that's why they like all their stuff has really beautiful kind of quality to it and also the way they build their ships you can see the pride in how it represents their own personal worth in the art Artistry behind it the in intricacy like it's just beautiful to look at and that's because of how much it represents who they are both me and Nate and design have been uh heavily involved working with a concept artist for a pallet that sort of invokes a richness basically so muted Golds uh you know pale Golds there's you know there's hints to sort of gemstones integrated in a very functional way so they're sort of used as light accents while flying is quite involved so is the shooting especially when you've got the gimbaled weapons on the front you're not waiting

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    for the pilot to line up a shot directly you'll be able to have a little bit of movement there yourself so while the Pilot's trying to track the target the Gunner will be able to shoot within a nice range of that the Dual seats kind of came about because we also wanted the seats to eject and we really didn't want to force the pilot to eject the Gunner as well but you also not restricted to this pilot Gunner thing either because this ship is a Bano ship produced for humans you will be able to get in there flight on your own be the pilot and the Gunner but if you want a friend to pop in there with you they can do some engineering work they can jump on the weapons if they want to so you're a bit more free and this is uh this has been quite exciting I think the whole team is pretty is pretty sort of uh pretty excited to work on it it sounds a bit of a crazy mix um but when you know when

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    when people see the images you know it all it all comes together and it's very obviously not human and hopefully obviously Banu but I think yeah it's going to be it's going to be good I'm I'm looking forward to seeing it sort of uh come through the production process and and then turn up on people's screens the Banu Defender makes a great companion piece to the merchantman by protecting valuable cargo that many Banu Merchants depend on or cargo that you have you depend on too yes and starting tomorrow you can get your very own Bano Defender this sale ends May 1st so don't miss your chance to add this special ship to your hanger yeah we've also put together a helpful guide to interacting with the Banu on our website complete with travel tips for anyone planning a Voyage to the protectorate it's really cool and I definitely recommend checking

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    out up next we have a special announcement regarding our Star Citizen referral program and referral contest yeah not only have we added new reward levels to the program you can also now earn a special trip to this year's gamescon take a look hello citizens I'm Sandy Gardner welcome to the million mile high club I'm here with Tyler Nolan to discuss our new 2017 RSI referral contest and updated referral program if you aren't familiar with Star Citizen referral program it's a way to earn in-game rewards by recruiting friends to Star Citizen we're now adding new levels to referral ladder which you can see on the referral program page and now on to the really fun part the new referral contest any new citizens you recruit from the start of the contest until August 8th will get

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    you additional in-game rewards it only takes one new referral point to get an in-game star Kitten t-shirt that your character can wear in the verse and you can also get a star Kitten pink dragonfly by gaining 10 new referral points before the contest ends but remember to receive these fun star Kitten prizes you have to get these referral points during the contest you might be asking yourself what's star Kitten star Kitten is our new in-lore product line Sally is the first member of the star Kitten family you can learn more about her on the referral program page so it doesn't matter whether you have no referrals so far or 1,000 once the contest starts your next referral gets you star Kitten it's the perfect shirt to wear in the verse that's not all the referral contest gets even better the first person who has a lifetime total of 2942 referral points

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    by August 8th will receive a free trip to games come plus whichever other backer has the highest lifetime total of referral points at the end of the contest will receive an Idis M the Gamescom trip will include an event ticket airfare hotel stay for one and a chance to meet with Chris Roberts and other members of the cig development team while the interest M will include a chance to blow a lot of stuff up woohoo again to earn a free trip to Gamescom the magic total to reach is 2942 points using Star Citizen referral codes we already have some great contenders vying for the Gamescom package let's take a look uh man I heard about the game you know really when it first started up when the crowd funding pretty early on and for me it was about finding something that wasn't out there I think the thing that I'm looking forward to most is just supporting organizational operations you know so if we're doing

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    mining or if we're doing transport or anything along those lines um not only just acting in a defensive manner in my combat ship but also coordinate the coordinating the other ships on our Fleet I think that's something that's going to be really exciting for me there's so many other things that I wanted to get involved in you know data running escorting VIPs um going to on attack runs to the vendal home worlds um really trading and exploring and Mining those type of things um there's so many different professions and Star Citizen that I'm interested in and I hope to have the opportunity to really delve into the mechanics the game Mechanics for those particular professions to help one of these top contenders or your friends get to Gamescom just use their referral code simply click on the link in the description below for more details on

40. 00:32:24

    the contest and if you want to follow the contest leader board you can find it on the Spectrum announcement page thanks for watching and we'll see you in the verse the new referral contest starts today learn how you can earn this trip to Gamescom by clicking on the link in the description for more details yeah speaking of gamescon subscribers and concierge members can purchase Early Access tickets this Saturday and on Sunday tickets will be available for everyone to purchase check the RSI website for details yes they go quickly like last year we'll have an interactive Booth live show and opportunities to meet the cig team so we hope to see you in Cologne Germany yep it'll be great to see you as always in uh Germany uh that's all for this week's episode of

41. 00:33:11

    ATV please join us tomorrow uh at noon for happy hour Game Dev where Jared huckerby Eric karon Davis and Sean Tracy will create a production schedule live very exciting and answer your questions about the recent 30 production schedule report released last Friday also just as a reminder next week is the last week to purchase store merchandise with shipping included in the total after that shipping will be added at checkout right now everything in store is being sold at a discount so make sure to get your dragonfly poster set your Connie model or a deck of playing cards while there's still time I a new deck of playing cards I think I'm missing a few in the one I was trying to play poker with the other night uh anyway as always I'd like to thank our backers for your continued support you make stares impossible every day yes you do and we're also very grateful to all of our subscrib tomorrow subscribers will receive the

42. 00:33:59

    next issue of jump Point yeah and the Gladius Valiant free flight is still available to subscribers through the end of the month so don't miss your chance to test fly this great spacecraft and if you're interested in learning more about our subscriber program check out the link in the description so thanks for watching and we'll see you around around the verse thank you for watching so if you want to

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    keep up with the latest and greatest and Star Citizen and Squadron 42's development please follow us on our social media channels see you soon for