Star Citizen: September Subscriber's Town Hall feat. Austin Developers

28 September 201601:02:031,705 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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hello everyone and welcome to September's edition of the subscribers Town Hall I'm your host Tyler Witkin Community manager in the Austin Texas studio now originally we were gonna have Pete Macky on the show today but he got sucked out of an airlock again so sad yeah but we are privileged and honored to be able to hang out with 3D artist Josh Coons again Josh how are you doing good be one of these just like last time oh yeah let's do that Cheers Cheers so for those of you who may not be familiar and you guys as well what we're going to be doing today is we are going to be taking questions uh from two channels from our subscribers live on the uh website you can go to robertsspaceindustries.com click on community then chat make sure you are in the subscribers tab we will not be taking questions from the general Tab and then additionally we started compiling questions uh that were submitted on our website on a Q&A Forum thread that was excuse me submitted
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earlier this week um so let's kick things off and let everybody get to know who you guys are in the best interest of the subscribers um kind of knowing what kind of questions would be good to ask so let's start on the very end Brian Brewer Your Role at Star Citizen your title and uh kind of some of the stuff you've been working on lately uh yes I'm uh I'm Brian Brewer I'm lead animator here at ATX I'm kind of over the persistent Universe for animation right now uh I've been here since the very beginning so some of you might remember me from wingman's hanger back in the day uh back when we had that web series going on Old School uh oh very old very old school I I remember all this stuff from the beginning awesome very cool very cool and so you have a you have a whole team here right uh I have a small team yeah one of our animators just went out to LA but uh Vanessa yeah Vanessa went out to LA but uh uh you know I've
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still got David and uh we got the ship team here so pretty much all animated animation for ships comes from ATX okay cool and so what is some of the stuff you've been working on lately uh specifically for persistent Universe it's been background animation NPC animations uh trying to get the environment to feel alive U so if you go to some place you'll see NPCs doing little NPC tasks like fixing things or doing things or a lot of animations for the Pu lots and lots of animations it's solving technical hurdles and uh trying to put in thousands of animations that we've done over the years which you guys haven't seen yet but hopefully soon you'll see the labor of what we been doing you guys have been working
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with the designers and AI team to hook up the animations you guys have been doing through the usable system right totally yes cool so before we move on to Jake Ross really quick I just kind of wanted to to follow up with what you said you said you've been here for a long time very long has a lot changed with the development pipeline I mean you've seen the company growing yeah I mean I being the first animator on board here uh at cig I set up the initial pipeline I came in and I worked with some there actually some of the questions uh that were on I think the form I I kind of like glanced at things that we were working on way back then I can probably answer yeah that's awesome it's like your baby the the animation pipeline yes I remember that yes yes that in Works uh we'll get to that in a little bit but awesome very cool and uh immediately to your right Jake Ross I'll
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let you take the stage introduce yourself yeah I'm Jake Ross producer here in the Austin studio um I primarily oversee the development team here and uh also manage the live release process on the uh us side of things um so that's kind of my my gig here so it's kind of like a you have your hands in everything all the all the various teams so you kind of have like an overseeing eye of of what's going on yeah kind of to an extent um you know if it touches something here in Austin I am am supposed to be intimately aware of it so uh you know anything related to the ship pipeline for these guys and then the ship animation team and then um the animation pipeline in general AI because a lot of these guys are doing animations that will hook up with the AI system um you know design in general um he keeps
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the ship running the ship ship running no pun intend so what have you what have you and the teams that you've been working with been focused on lately um well right now as as Brian mentioned we're working a lot on the um working with AI system uh AI team to get the animations hooked up for the persistent Universe background animations um a lot of working towards citizen con um to show off something at citizen con it's be awesome and we're also working uh very Vig vigorous vigorously um to 3.0 um the design team here specifically is working on a little bit farther out future future um work for planning for that for that release so fantastic well it's all good and then of course uh you guys don't really need an introduction you just saw him on RTV recently uh 3D artist Josh Coons so Josh you recently
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got involved in a Reddit threat about the cutless yeah yeah so are you working on that now or tell us what's the scoop with the cutless uh right now technically right now I'm doing the lods on the Herold which is just something that has to be done that's like one of the final phases right yeah but uh while I was waiting on uh a little bit of back and forth between Tech uh Tech design hookup on the Herold I was like yeah I'm just going to go ahead and start the cutless so I started white boxing that out and it's uh it's got me all excited and yeah the the Reddit thread as you mentioned before uh there it seemed to get you amped like I saw because I read it all the time and I saw uh your name popping up all throughout that thread yeah I
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like to answer like questions and when people are on there and they're saying what they want and when I see that it's lining up both uh when It lines up with what we want what we were going to do we're like oh yeah we know that's messed up uh it keeps us on track with the public uh and inous and it also brings to light other things that we weren't even thinking about that uh uh the fans and backers want with with this ship so it gives me a good uh a litmus test on uh the cutless what it should be what you guys want out of it um and yeah I've been i' I think I've read every single Post in there yeah no I at first I thought maybe you didn't
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know how Reddit worked and like you had to reply to every single message well okay well then that's fair I'm a Reddit Noob but uh no it was it was really good I think that you made a lot of people uh cutless owners specifically um really feel at ease and know that the ship's in good hands and I mean I can tell you guys firsthand just from talking to Josh um about working on the cutless uh he's really excited about it and so I think it's going to turn out turn out really good well yeah I mean it's it's the fans fault yeah they uh they put down what they wanted so I was all like yeah yeah I want to do that too yeah awesome yeah a lot of good info in there yeah keep keep going it was you and both Matt I think it was in and Matt Sherman were commenting I think Matt went on the forums as well so getting a lot of love Matt did Matt did get on the forums yeah uh so for you guys that are watching the stream um again just to re just to reiterate robertsspaceindustries.com
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Community chat make sure you're in the subscribers Den go ahead and get those questions flowing in uh we also have questions as I mentioned from The Forum thread that was posted by Alexis earlier in the week um and so I got those printed out right here so while the questions go ahead and start flowing in let's go ahead and and kick off with some of the questions from the forums um so uh here's one I've kind of condensed what the question was but we hear a lot about the importance of using metrics and so Brian this one's directed at you because I know we've talked a lot about this um with animation can you kind of go into detail what it means uh when you say that uh using metrics is important I I'll use a very simple explanation of this if if you have a chair and your character has to sit down on that chair and you have one chair that is like you know 25 cm high and one chair that is 50 cm High uh you can't have an infinite
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number of animations that sit down on all these different chair Heights you need one chair height so that in our in our game it's it's 0.5 so half a meter okay 50 centimeters so every animation where of a character sitting in a chair is going to sit down at at that and everything in the game needs this everything from going through doorways getting into ships anything that the character or the player can touch or interact with needs some sort of um defined measurement so that we don't have to create an infinite number of animations which has kind of happened in the past uh because ships would come in and they'd be like all over the place because we're in such a fast development but over the last year we've really been able to sit down and we've been able to define a lot of these metrics like ship C cockpits how to get in and out of
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ships uh elements in the universe that you want to interact with and come in contact with so kind of just unifies everything so where if you if you set a character to lean on something you know that his elbow is going to rest in the right place exactly otherwise you're can to be like hovering over issues clipping through it or like even in a situation like this where if you had you know four guys sitting in a bar like ordering from the bartender and we're they're this close chances are you're going to be like clipp through the guy next to him you need to uh you have a little bit of space there because what happens if some guy wants to come up and sit down you know he's going to start clipping through the the bar stool next to him that sort of thing I guess that that's that same thought kind of goes even Beyond just animation right so Josh with ships you probably have to utilize a lot of uh standardized metrics as well uh
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just to make sure that characters can fit through proper doorways I know we have a we have a few bugs right now with uh some of the Mustangs that have interiors and with the Avengers I think uh Matt mentioned online that that they were getting those ironed out but I guess a lot of a lot of uh metrics are used when modeling ships as well yeah oh absolutely and that plays into uh a question right here um sure which one you want which one would you like to to for me to ask so that one was on the design the look of the heral computer station yeah and what I was going for um so so they were asking which one was it just so we can say the full question right there it's uh when designing the look of the heral computer station what were you going for um so what I started off with was literally a brewer had done a block out the metrics we have a sitting
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console metric yes sitting console the chair how the chair moves the console that the character sits at the actual volume that the character will come in contact with for pushing buttons and what have you that's like the first step so the bla that was there wasn't on Brewers metric so I dialed that in first and what I was going for um cramped and uh I wanted lots of wire exposure Drake has a lot of everything exposed yeah like you know they don't they don't spend extra money to buy a panel and welded in there so all the wires are covered up so it's very I don't know kind of feels very aliens alien uh industrial Tech pipe field that's what I was going for yeah it
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turned out really good um and then the fact that you guys just started kind of going back and forth with how you guys work together feeds perfectly into one of these other questions somebody was asking um how frequently do you know C how how frequently does one discipline work with another discipline right and so like does an artist often have to work very closely with an animator or whatever we talked a little bit about this with Chris Smith and uh when he was doing the new Hornet and how he had to work with design and make sure everything was in line if you're a good artist you'd always talking everybody else all the Departments so for animation and and art I mean you guys gave the example of of metrics right so are there other instances where you guys need to be in line yeah uh definitely fact I whenever I talk to students in school and they ask me animation questions like how important is it to know modeling and and rendering and all these other things I I always tell them the same thing whenever you're doing
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something whatever it is whether you're modeling a ship or animating a character or building a character it's always good to know what comes ahead of you in Pipeline and what comes after you in pipeline so as an animator I know modeling and rigging I I know I'm I'm kind of a generalist in a sense that I can do it all I know some people specialize in just animation they don't care about anything else just let me animate but I think it's very important to know what comes before and after especially in a production like this because if I'm handed a character and I look at the topology on the character and I can see if it's G to I can see if it's going to break yeah so I immediately send it back to modeling and say we have a problem here we have a problem there if it's something like a ship uh you know that we're getting ready to to work with kind of know the the ship pipeline side of things I know what is required of us from animation to
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get ships up and going or something in persistent Universe with a an NPC interacting with an object uh and because of that it makes people Downstream life a lot easier Yeah Yeah the more we communicate the less the less free work there's going to be done if Brewer sets up a metric for anything then I know what the r rules are what the spaces minmax has to be and it just makes everybody's lives easier and it makes getting the ship done way faster it almost becomes a like a Lego piece like a plug-and play like I've got this piece I need to fit it in all right now make it work within the bounding box of this in particular template and once it's established we don't have to ever
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think about that again so it makes it makes our jobs more fun because then we can just concentrate on making things look good there's less stress and worry about am I getting it right and then am I going to have to fix this later exactly so in the same vein so you guys are talking about how important communication is and uh Jake Ross you're more than just a handsome centerpiece at this table um so when it comes to communication and and you know and helping U as a producer for different disciplines I mean how do you facilitate these types of conversations I mean you know and actually let's let's back up a bit why don't you give us a little bit of kind of like a day in the life of what you know how does your how do your days look yeah well um pulls out the whip I sharpen my knives um you change yourself to your desk yet yeah exactly he's kidding or am I um so yeah like and I I
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actually think the Austin studio is best placed within within all of our Studios because we kind of come in it's nearing the end of the UK's day it's at the very tail end of the of of frankfurt's day uh so we can still communicate with European time zones uh but then towards the middle of our day that's when the LA folks start coming in so we're kind of in this centralized time zone where we can interact with and communicate with the other Studios a lot easier and a lot of that is is my day I have time to come in the morning and check my email make sure everything is is uh there's no fires to put out and then we have our meetings our Global meetings where we all get together and we we discuss as production like what are the issues for the latest live release um if there's a an event coming up like citizen con like okay uh are what we're preparing for citizen con how's that going what are the blockers there um I can hit up the the global uh pipeline producers which
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majority of which are in the UK uh the ship pipeline producers Luke Davis who's in the UK and and if there's uh something that uh needs to be handed off to animation or if there's something that is you know they found it as an issue like oh well the you know there was a issue with the UI screens in the heral that you we had to talk to the guys in the UK about um you know that that can I can help facilitate that if I need to um whether that's sitting starting up an email thread or actually getting everybody everybody together on a Skype chat and uh and and setting up a call uh I know like this morning just just this morning we're talking about um setting up these what we're calling usables where an AI kind of um goes up to an object and through the usable system uh the subsumption editor that that Tony Tony zerc designed um an AI can walk up play animation and interact
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with something and uh there were just this morning some some issues that we were running into um you know metric issu issues with or not metric issues but uh the bad animations that we were kind of running into problems with um just uh and and we can facilitate and and um talk to the people in in the in the UK to say hey there's an issue here uh what can we do to solve it what do we need to do in the morning to to try to solve this before you guys leave for the day so that we're set up for success for the rest of the day um a lot of that is is our morning here um yeah it's actually really interesting I mean we we talk about communication I think it's very easy to think that it's it's uh it's nearsighted where you're just working with the teams in your studio but we really do have a a follow of the sun approach I mean if you look at our build system we have our our builds deploying and kicking out uh in
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intervals so people have or the various Studios have builds at the beginning of their day um with all the the sync meetings we have it I mean it really feels even though we're all around the globe it's very unified and that's due to successful communication yeah and that's what production is primarily there for especially in in distributed development uh scenarios like this is that they uh make it so that uh if we're doing our jobs right the developers don't have to be uh enveloped in in email and Skype and meetings and communication as much as they they need to be so like you know if if we're doing our jobs right we're the ones who are confing facilitating communication and figuring out things um from various leads so that developers are free to to work a lot of scheduling and yeah so cool that's fun one where will we be at citizen con I am not
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needed for this J you got this are you going to Citizen con I am going to Citizen con are any of you guys unfortunately no not this year not making the schedu to go and I really really really really wanted to go but citizen con happens to be on my my child's birthday so that's a fair excuse it's his first birthday so I I really can't go I really want to go one better way to celebrate his first year than bringing him to Citizen is there an age limit I don't even know um Smith will be there though so Vin we'll go ahead and get these questions out of the way uh because they're in the middle of the show so maybe not everybody will be paying attention so I don't get you know killed uh is facial hair a pre prerequisite to work at the Austin Studio I think we're just working so hard I don't have time to sh Austin like the Hipster vibe in
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Austin I'm actually I'm lazy I'm just you know you'll see me shaved and trimmed every so often but uh I'm I'm just lazy it's just convenient I can't I can't really do it this is all I get I noticed in the the chat on the last one somebody pointed out my my neck goatee that's okay that's not so bad somebody called me a neck beard actually have a funny story about that the we have a candy store across the street it's a good one too it's a good one and uh and we are officially derailed go on hey I'll get I'll get us back don't worry don't worry uh I went in one time and i' never got in there it was my first time and I was uh I uh I got some candy I went the front and the lady working there looked at me and she goes do you work at the game company across the street and I was like yeah how did you know she's like you have a beard it's just uh yeah that's just IGN
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inside industry fact uh most of the students have ever worked at they usually have uh we'll have like a crunch time beard competitions that you guys might not know this but uh yeah every Studio I've been at um they did it at they did it at blizzard and it was it was called the diabl the diabl Diablo diabl it's like it's like movember like No Shave November but it's with your scheduled crunch time so it'll be like we're crunching for blank time nobody shave and then at the end everybody shaves and then all right I hope everybody at Inn got all of that on the on their transcript that was wonderful so to to get back on track uh somebody was asking you mentioned the constellation Phoenix uh when you were on RTV a few weeks ago yeah um has much been uh progressed on that I mean do you
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have what how's it going to feel like give us an update on the Connie Phoenix so I look through the old model and um so the the the Connie Phoenix is that's your baller Connie so that's my keyword is baller like top topof the line like Maserati Bentley luxury a lot of people have compared it to the million mile high club in game with just the classy wood finish and the yeah so I was looking at the wood finish and I'm all like uh this could be more baller yeah yeah like so what are you thinking so I was looking through um car concept designs for um I think Bentley had some of the best but um uh they they do use wood on the interior and I found a
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couple of wood patterns that I really want to use um I think there's uh too much wood in there and it should be more used as like a a nice trim and I'd like to bring in some more uh more baller materials really baller baller material I like the white and I like the wood but I'm going to do some research and find out like probably what the most endanger Tree on the planet is and then see what that looks like and then I'll use that cuz that's that's that's baller but in the game he's not going to cut down any endangered trees just for clarification no endangered trees were armed Star Citizen Canon world yeah in in Star Citizen you know this tree is probably already dead yeah it's gone and they genetically
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engineered it and that costs a lot of money which is that's baller yeah and uh and keep in mind you know it's important to remember that that a lot is subject to change and uh and that uh it's all because I'm going to change it's it's all kind of working out the details and stuff you know it all to go through design and you know just like we talked earlier there's a lot of hands in the bucket but uh I think that the constellation variants and the uh cutless rework is in very good hands I think a lot of people agree too I'm sure you saw that sentiment on the forums um I want it to look good I want it to feel good that's a good thing to strive for I want I want people to want to fly around in it feel good flying it yeah and be Ballers and be Ballers well for the Phoenix yeah I want you to feel like a baller when you're in that thing I appreciate that straight up just I'm trying to think of who the most ballerus
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person on the planet is I'm right here I we Jake's hair um so Jake you talked a little bit earlier about the release process and it's something that you're involved in so we've talked to the community about the release process from a devops standpoint um and even from a QA standpoint to some degree um what's it like for production I mean how do you guys figure out when you have a good build uh you know just how does that process look from a production side of things yeah I mean uh as per usual with production there's a lot of communication between uh the US and uh the UK or and who are Prim primarily the um the uh live release um uh studi so we have a a counterpart in the UK who kind of heads up their live release process for Europe uh and you know let's give
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for 250 for example we had a a long list of of blockers uh that we uh either Chris or or somebody says all right we can't release with these blockers they have to be fixed beforehand so okay all right great so let's let's identify all that stuff if it's not in jir let's get it in jira uh our sof or task tracking and Bug tracking software uh and then let's find resources for this for these for these bugs so uh lot of a lot of my job is making sure that um the blockers for any particular release are given um the most attention the highest Focus for the developers and uh resources they're they're assigned to uh and then you know at the end of each day uh we have a handoff so at the end of the European Time Zone day uh they send a hand off to the US say hey U these are the remaining
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blockers it's the progress we made on ours make sure you make this this progress on on um on yours and then if there's something that a somebody in the UK needs something for somebody in LA to look at during the day they'll make special note of that in their hand off and and that'll get looked at during the day at which point then if it needs to get handed back then I send out a handoff at the end of the day uh in the US time zones and say hey here's our progress um if there's anything for the UK to look at make sure I call that out specifically for somebody something to look at so that way there's no um kind of lapse in communication there's no there situations where a bug will sit uh on somebody for days on in without getting looked at because somebody hasn't been checking their their task list or bug list uh recently like it's always being picked up and the highest
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priority um issues are called out specifically for production to to focus on the most um so that is kind of the DAT a day uh and then as that Locker list gets Whitted down uh we turn our attention to the criticals and then as the criticals get Whitted down we turn attention to the high high priorities and at some point we say okay we feel like we're at a point where we have all of our musthaves uh we're working on our nice to haves um let's go ahead and set this as a our release date and then we'll work towards that and then uh and inevitably you know some things will crop up that we didn't foresee either because somebody fixed a blocker bug uh which peeled the the layer of the onion back and released you know three more bugs you know that we didn't know we there and so inevitably something like that will happen where we go okay well um you know we weren't we aren't where we wanted to be at this point in time
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let's go ahead and push that release date back um because you know the blockers have to be gone they just do and and sometimes you just can't foresee um or schedule for things that you know you can't plan for so um unfortunately it's just the the reality of of her live release process I know uh here at cig we're a lot more forthcoming with that kind of information where we say we let you guys know and keep you guys updated on a lot of the stuff that that's uh keeping us from from getting the the content in your hands um and uh you know but it's it's a it's a crucial part of that process and we want to make sure you guys are kept in the loop so open development it's finest yeah exactly so again I feel like the word of the day is communication everything just goes back to we have to talk to each other all the time I'm sure you I'm sure you get a ton of emails constantly constantly yes and then QA has their own flare threads
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where they have actual just email threads where they say hey here's these new blockers that have cropped up today um and then I'll take those and add those to the handoffs and make sure that the UK gets gets a hold of them the next day and it's uh there's a lot of email communication uh for live release that uh I have a very special folder for on in my uh inbox Jake is the living breathing schedule he's version of the schedule he's a sentient schedule walking calendar walking C's he's like Sauron he's like constantly just making sure everything that's written down is is being yeah that's big the big part of that comes with a lot of documentation we utilize Confluence and and jira at lassan so so how I mean how how do how do you manage I mean I'm actually curious myself with the amount of tasks
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but you also I mean on top of tasks that you're working on for stuff that still needs to be worked on you're also dealing with a a boatload of bugs that are coming in through QA so you have all these different channels I mean how do you keep up with it right yeah it's a lot of it's a lot of just being on email all the time I have a laptop I take with me to every meeting and sure that I'm constantly on top of the bugs that are coming in luckily we have uh a horde of of producers across the company who all have their own areas of responsibility so and QA has a a bug assignment page that you know okay if I get a sh if I get a if I get a a bug that comes in for a ship I know to send that to this producer because he's the one who's in charge of Distributing those and so not everything comes through me which is good because then I would never get through my emails ever and uh that's that would be my sole job would be to to do that but um so luckily it is
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distributed so we're not being overwhelmed uh at any one point um so it's it's a lot of kind of keeping up with that and then making sure that um the documentation is there for um you know things like QA testing specific things that QA need needs to test um you know if a feature comes online uh and it's ready for QA to test making sure that QA has proper information for what steps they need to take in order to fully test this feature uh what things aren't ready to test yet so that they don't bug up things unnecessarily um but you know making sure that okay um look for these things if these aren't working make sure we put in bugs for these so we can get them the correct developers so yeah it's a very complex system I mean coming from QA myself it was it was uh at first it was overwhelming because I I I wasn't used to having so many
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different things that you needed to pay attention to all the time but you know you get used to it like riding a bike one of the things is really interesting a lot of people don't realize is like when QA writes a bug it's not just fill out all the details and submit it um it goes back to our documentation so we have um specializations for all the producers that are covering different things like well Jake might focus on the Pu or Mark Hong might focus on ships or whatever um and so the QA testers need to know which producer to assign it to and then the producer needs to know which developer I guess has the time and and can and and whatnot can work on it and so it kind of travels through a pipeline um which leads perfectly into this next question um and I think we've dealt with this kind of before but somebody says how much impact does it have when midday you have a blocker that requires interaction with maybe one of the European Studios and maybe they're
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out yeah and that happens um all the time all the time you know and it's it's just kind of uh you know it's a it's a um part of the the being distributed you know you just if people are already gone for the day you kind of just have to include it in the handoff and say hey uh we didn't weren't able to really diagnose this problem um we need somebody to look at it tomorrow um times we get to a point where said okay well I know the person usually works on this type of thing is in the UK or in Frankfurt but uh I know there is somebody in La who is at least familiar with this with this process or with this feature so let me ask them see if they can diagnose the problem so that way we have the diagnosis ready we know what's wrong and that way when that person comes in tomorrow in the UK they have the information they need already they
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don't need to go in and dig laid out it's all laid out for them and and granted we try to to be sensible that about that we don't want um you know LA to be the ones um the programmers in La Paul rell's team to kind of be the the people who spend there all their time during the day diagnosing things for the UK because they're perfectly capable it's funny mention Paul ryell because I he is like a wizard because he's so well-rounded and so a lot of the times that that specific uh issue happens you know it does fall on Paul rell's and he is he is my go-to guy a lot of the times for uh for for that kind of thing this same with Mark aan you know some these guys they're just really well-rounded so they can help out with a lot of different things ex and and as a producer it's also my job to know okay I know I could go to Paul and he get that information but the the cost of you know him diving into it and figuring it out
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uh may not be worth the time that he would lose on a feature he may be working on so that's a kind of a decision I have to make um during the day is saying okay um I don't want to waste not waste Paul's time but spend Paul's time uh looking into this issue when he's when he's working on this for this other feature of his own so I'm just going to go ahead and include that in the hand off and let them do the diagnosis tomorrow when they get in so so it's not just knowing all the tasks and all the bugs it's knowing who they need to go to who has time to do it who can do it efficiently who specializes and is good at one aspect of the job so it's it's a lot to take in so that's that's impressive um so speaking of efficiency um you know I I think I may contribute to this answer as well um what tool has increased productivity the most um slash blown the most mind um so I'll kick this off just for for me from
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when when I was in QA it was a tool that we use called copy build which back in the day when oh copy build back in the day back in the day at the beginning of the day when you needed a build to test or to work on or whatever um it was a very manual process way back in the day like you you would you would connect to our network drive and be like okay I need a I need a b 64 I need a data folder a tools folder make sure to grab the exe um and so you know it's a it's it's it's easy to grab the wrong thing or you know it's just um and So eventually we we got a tool called copy build which is um is awesome and it's just getting better copy build is basically drop down menus I need this build with this Chang list number um you know I need a profile version or a release version which is like a Dev
00:33:17
build or the same kind of build that players get um it just made the whole process a lot easier and then you know you heard we would talk to Mike Jones recently with the Delta patching um that things will be a lot faster even like improvements coming to copy build just with not having to recopy a new build every day but being able to just grab what's new incrementally um so that's it for me I me what about you guys you guys have any proprietary tools or anything that's made your life easier or it's uh yeah I mean tools specific that we built for us or like tools that we use I suppose any tool really just something that came online that made your life you know a lot the best tool that I've ever used and I I found it a few year years ago actually uh is a program called direct folders it's a way of bookmarking anything on your computer and it works in browsers so if
00:34:06
you want to go to your whatever program you happen to be in doesn't matter open it up and you want to navigate to a specific folder they have a bunch of Assets in you first of all you've already bookmarked it right so you just go right up you know right click drops down amazing direct folders is absolutely hands down makes me so much faster doing my work I'm never h having to hunt back when I was at ID it was like nested folders within folders within folders I could never remember I need look they see my desktop that was a good pitch by the way and guys remember if you order in the next 30 minutes and it's free oh that's awesome free anybody can go and download direct folders make sure you don't get one with like worms and Trojans in make sure you get a legitimate copy of legit one but uh for
00:34:54
20 bucks uh which I the studio actually bought me a copy for 20 bucks you get the pro version where you can actually make nested folders within your your folder it it is absolutely amazing that's that's tool number one and Tool number two is this ex this Excel plugin that I found called C tools KU Tools c q tools I know if I'm saying that right uh and it does a lot of things but the thing the the feature that I use hands down all the time is it's a way to go into a folder and whatever files are that folder or uh hierarchy of folders you can set it to hierarchy it will in an Excel sheet give you every single asset oh nice and you can like say I only want fbx files and it will give you every fbx file within a folder structure
00:35:42
or you can say everything I want every every folder or every file in this and it will give it to you I use it all the time anytime somebody comes to me and says I need to know what we have in our motion capture Library I just go boom regenerate a new one because we've probably added a bunch of stuff and all the time I was hey what are the names of the such and such animations C tools Fold It Up delete the things I don't need send them the Excel doc with all the animations yeah that set of tool seems like a really it also includes hyperlinks too so not only does it put it in there say I want hyperlink so you can click on it and it will send you how much are they paying you for this how Brian's very excited about these tools these tools are absolutely I I mean before like intricate answer and then Jake's just gonna be like coffee coffee we'll see Brian in a commercial
00:36:31
later this month fors Co tools actually cuddles cuddles yeah they're going to reach out to you for the ship team it was when the damage Shader system came online so uh and that answers a question that uh like why we redo ships because we used to do uh the damage model like completely different and it was complet hell for the artist you had to you you build out this big beautiful ship and they're like okay now do the damage and it took yes or what ever and I like so you'd have a piece the nose of a ship that's that's a part in the game you'd have the pristine then you'd have damage version one two three four so it' be 25 damage State 50%
00:37:23
damage 75 100% means it's just it's blown away and then for each one of those pieces so replicate that across the whole ship so if there's 37 pieces to a ship you had to do all those tiers for each one of them and then you had to do LOD tiers for each one of them and when the damage Shader came online not only did it make it to where if I shoot at a ship it literally puts your Bullet Hole in the ship and you can you know paint smiley faces on somebody's hole but it also made it to where we don't have to make damage pieces like that ever ever again and that saved us like I I don't even know how long it would have taken to do the cony like all the damage in that in that hierarchy would
00:38:11
have taken so so long I can't even fa it could take a year it could take a year to do all the different damage States yeah those the damage State system and the way it was set up back in the day was uh I mean it worked so it's just a testament to how the pipeline evolves it was a it was just a better way of doing the same thing which gave us even more detail and for Less work those are the best tools when they come out are the ones that let us go oh we don't have to do that anymore and it looks better sweet yeah that's benefit of time right as Tech comes online um as we as we do things we learn you know what could we do better there's a lot of post morm discussions uh after an event after a release after pretty much everything you know we like to analyze you know here's how it went here here's what we did how
00:38:58
could we do better and it just you know caters to that reiterative process that game development's all about um so Josh to to backtrack a little bit so we talked briefly about the cutless um do you have any updates on maybe kind of a vision of where you guys are going with it any changes that may be happening to the ship and of course uh this is all extremely subject to to change um you know you're just starting to work on the cut lless and so um don't assume it'll stay this way but so when we're doing when we're doing these Chang is so I usually get assigned a a designer and then that designer and I we both Chris Roberts at the top so what we do is me and the designer will kick back and forth and this is why I like that Reddit form so so much is because we can
00:39:46
go in there and go hey that was really cool you want to try that and they're like dude that's that's exactly what I was thinking so we will kick back forth ideas now if those ideas deviate from the original plan that's when uh this just happened the other day uh we had like a list of features we wanted to do some of which would simplify uh the pipeline for the cutless and all the variants and then some of them are just like yeah we'd really like to do this and then uh we run those by uh CR and then CR is either hands up or down on those and the last one we went through he was he was cool with everything that we came up with except for like like one little bit but um yeah the proportions are looking a lot more
00:40:36
like the concept now like it's I don't want to be doing the damage dates on the Herold I want to go back in there and work on the cutless yeah no it's funny I'm having so much fun working on it I saw when when that Reddit post came up Josh messaged me and was like Hey I don't know how to use this website but I'd like to answer people and so I walked him through it but it was like he he was working on the heral he was he was getting started the Connie variants and all this stuff and uh I walk over to his desk in the the next day just to say hello and whatever you know shoot the crap and uh and he's sitting there and he's like blocking out a cut list in in in 3ds Max or my whichever one you use and uh I was like man you're you're really getting amped about doing this ship aren't you and you know it's it's it's the same reason that we love going to Bar citizen events it's the same reason we're excited about citizen con it's the interaction with all of you guys is what recharges the old battery I like fixing things I like
00:41:23
when people are like I don't like this or I'm I'm unhappy about this can you do something about that and then yeah and then uh you know polishing it up and then people are like whoa where did that come from like I love doing that that is the most satisfying part of my job it's why I like the I like the Reddit page yeah totally so you guys give me a lot of good feedback and uh I just I like answering people's questions because game industry cool it's secretive it's why I like this studio because we're allowed to talk about most things yeah totally one of the reasons that I other game studios one of the reasons I interject and remind people that this is very subject to change is because it's very easy to fall into the pattern where you know we say the the constellation is
00:42:11
going to have just wood as a trim or something of that nature and then change it and then people come back and they're like you know oh that's not what Josh said on on uh the town hall but it's I mean it's all it's all when we talk here I hope everybody understands that it's um this is kind of where where our are at where we're thinking where the Visions lie but a lot of it changes over time because that's the nature of iteration that's the nature of of game development that's actually exactly what I said like back in the day like episode three of Wan's hanger whatever it was that I was my very first like interview or whatever it's people who are not in the game industry this is like a great you know inside look at what kind of goes on behind the scenes because people who are not in the game industry don't realize when you start a game there's all sorts of things that you want to do
00:42:58
there certain objectives you want to have but over the course of however many years it takes to make a game it changes yeah totally and you know your scope changes you figure out what you can do what you can't do and uh and that's just kind of pretty much what we're going through here it's like does this work no not so much even though it's maybe a great idea how can we do something similar to it yeah or no totally and and it's one of the it's we go back and forth not only internally but like with the backers like that Reddit post was an example but like for those of you who may not be familiar with our website I mean we do have a a whole slew of forums uh dedicated to various ships and stuff and and one of the things we're actually starting to do and has kind of been happening is um you know blocking out a little bit of time here and there for for developers to go in there and really interact and engage with people and um I think Jake I think some people on Jake's
00:43:46
team are going to be doing that soon and and so check those forms frequently they've been pretty active lately I think the audio team jumped in there uh I know Matt Sherman likes it in there so um so you know ready great our forums I mean all these different channels we're kind of spreading out and just trying to to connect and get feedback as much as possible I mean that's the beauty of iteration right it's just like communicating like us communicating me with animation and design and stuff communicating with the public as well is is important just as much as it is uh inhouse because absolutely you guys helps steer things in in a cool Direction and a cool direction is the direction that people want so I try and try and keep be mindful of what it is people are asking of individual ships
00:44:36
and stuff yeah and of course exactly that's what I was just going to say we can't everyone you don't want a ship to have everything you want a weird Transformer yeah arms and leather shoes yeah you want you want you know specialized roles and stuff and um yeah there so many so many good ideas is there was a I think it was a C130 pilot posted on that Reddit thing and he posted Co some pictures and he was like pointing out like that's what this is see that thing up there it covers these types of cables that connect up here and I was just like oh man this is just this is just good info yeah just helps me understand that's what's cool about our our community we have a lot of we have a lot of veterans we have a lot of pilots in our community uh because of the the simulator aspect of our game drawing
00:45:24
them in and so it's I've seen a lot of posts like that you know uh recently there was one on our forums where a pilot was going into detail about know now that we're doing an atmospheric flight you know let me explain to you how this feels and that and it's really cool just be able to get that level of of resource from from the community itself so it's it's really cool um so Brian there's a question I wanted to ask you earlier and uh so I scrolled back up to get to it um animations so when it comes to animations do you ever think we'll have intricate uh detailed animations like um one character interacting with another character like player playable characters like high-fiving each other um and then and then to follow that up um or detailed stuff like will your or guy actually flip a switch on her off or stuff like that uh yeah I believe that's all in the works the biggest hurdle that we have to solve with our in particular game is the
00:46:15
Master Slave relationship of when I initiate handshake or whatever it is the other character has to you know play the same animation you got to line them up and there's all sorts of things to do looking into with NPC yeah with NPCs it's it's a little bit easier because there's a little bit more flexibility they're going to encode navigate to a certain spot and line themselves up exactly and shake the shake each other's hands got more control yeah where when it's a player who goes up to another player and let say me and Josh are in game like we want to high five each other because we just like kick some serious ass on a a map or something it's like hey I'm going to highfive you then he'll probably have to go Okay I accept the whatever I accept you accept this high five and then the
00:47:02
two characters are probably somehow align themselves to to to high five but I mean it really um there's a the gameplay element that a lot of Animation you know we have to think about is how much control is taken away from the player and that sort of thing and something you have to it's a balancing act right you don't you want to have it look nice and look good but you don't want to take so much control away from the player they feel like they're at you know it's a it's now no longer in game it's a cinematic you're watching now it's a cut scene it's a cut scene I'm watching this like crazy cut scene of like handshakes it's a quick time it's actually press feed to handshake yeah it's actually really funny you went that route with it because there was a followup question that you kind of perfectly walked into which was uh you know about the camera taking over and stuff A lot of people are wondering um when and you know this is more ship related um when you walk up
00:47:49
to a ship and let's say you see the use prompt and you use it that it kind of snaps you in front of the ladder and then has you climb it do you know if there will ever ever ever be um some type of like more Blended animation that is a design that's a question for code so what happens is there's a node in every single spaceship that sits at the ladder or wherever the Connecting Point is that a player walks up so if you ever watch an NPC when we by the way this is broken game we got one of the bugs we have to fix is getting the characters to line up correctly with the node so that everything lines up as they because tell if you're a little bit off and you're climbing up big ladder big ladder you ship the character's going to be like way off yeah but um which is part of the snapping problem is getting getting things in there but um uh as far as NPCs if you're ever watch an NPC go up and
00:48:35
use a usable uh code is going to direct them into lining up with that so they they're in place when the animation transition starts okay to to use that object uh when it's a player a player can like walk up right up to the couch or the the bar stool or whatever and like hit use and he's going to snap into play to get into the bar stool so we're solving that issue which right now it looks like it's code side of like how do we blend into this how what's the best way to do this so those are like little problems but it's on the radar basically definitely on the radar stuff that's being talked about yeah the the biggest bug is just that alignment just try to trying to make sure that the characters line up with that align toally it's a polishing thing and and kind of touching back on the other part of the qu
00:49:23
question of like flipping switches and buttons uh yeah I think that's from at least last I heard it's it's totally on the plans we used to be able to do if you remember you used to be able to get into the ship and go around and like touch panels and you you'd see this kind of Animation reaching out and touch the panel uh and it worked you know pretty well so that technolog is there it's just we need to develop it a little bit more before we put it back in but yeah we did a full set of like you know flipping switches and hand scanning and other various activities that you would do swipes left right I got to I got to get in the shower we've seen something like the 3.0 demo he swipes and and then in in uh when you pick up a weapon there you grab it and stuff like that a lot of that would continue actually I saw a thing in in the in the chat kind of about that talking about uh grabbing and
00:50:10
picking up objects I I think yeah yeah it was it was one of the questions um from the uh the forums let's see where was it it was I can't I remember what it was I can't find it on this list but it was um in the 3.0 demo we showed them picking up a crate so it actually kind of goes back to the metric stuff we about yeah kind of kind of like I remember the question now it was can you pick up any and look there there's a mouse here on the table let's see if I you pick up is this going to control the monitor the stre just went offline I'm just kidding oh no uh but you know you want to pick up an object and this object can face in any direction right yeah he's he's trolling us it's that's Jared that's Jared J's running the tech on the back end no that Mouse controls the computer over there so you can just make screwing something up you want to come up you want to pick up this
00:51:00
mouse and this mouse can be cuz you're a player this mouse can be at any angle to to to you as you walk up to it so how do you pick this up and grab it yeah we had a system called grabby hands and I worked on it with one of the guys out in La for a while and then we polished it it was really cool we kind of did like this this kind of I I hate to call it faking CU we're not we're kind of Faking but we're not Faking It where he reaches down kind of do this little swipe yeah and it puts it in your hand there's there was something code that they they had that would as you passed in front of it it would attach at a certain point and like blend right into your hand right now you have it in your hand you can walk around you could set this is this is really cool when I was watches you can walk around you can set it uh down on a on a box then use the jack
00:51:49
lift and pick up the box and the box and everything like goes and you can walk over to your sh set down you got like a tray of stuff all on top of it could totally you could totally do that which is you know if you want to fill a crate up with weapons or something you you'd be able to do that um and now our 2.0 version of that is a looting system and the Looting system uh has slightly more defined metrics like before if you let's say you picked up a pistol and you're you know you're not picking it up the right way it's like backwards there was a little animation I kind of like did this which kind of faked getting it into your hand the correct way so you could pull the pistol and that would happen with any object you pick up the object and it you you kind of like manipulate it with the with the new looting system uh you have one-handed and two-handed kind of pickups or you coming in and you can pick up a two-handed object of a certain in particular size and that goes
00:52:38
back to the metrics right that kind of goes back to the metric there be a wide array of shaped objects but there so the objects have to stay within those parameters yeah and there there there will be a little bit there could be a little bit of fudging with that with ik and what have you but primarily we want to try to stay within whatever that metric is yeah so we have right-handed and left-handed you're going to have things for in your hands like data pads so because holding a data pad or like a tablet or a file or some files from a filing cabinet it's going to be way different than like grabbing can of Coke or no totally or a a beer a coffee or something mes zart holding is it look like orange soda in the 3.0 demo so we've already established a lot of the metrics for usables in the universe uh as far as I'm walking up to a console to use it or I'm going through a door or
00:53:26
I'm grabbing onto a railing or going to the bar and the bartender and the patron are talking to each other and doing things but we're also starting to get into the realm of metric props that you actually pick up and carry around and after we get out of um citizen con we're going to be that I become the the metric Guru the company so I'll be going through and I'm going to be grabbing objects and saying every object that's in within this class whatever this this is uh it's a mouse size two size two object right uh I'm gonna put it in the character's hand it's gonna look good Steve Bender our animation director we look at he goes I like that pose when that gets signed off we're going to create a little um uh node inside that object so every object that fits this level two object or whatever
00:54:16
it is it's going to get that node that so when the character you the player me goes goes and picks up that object he's going to have an animation where he actually reaches down and picks it up there'll probably a little bit of code kind of like floated into his hand just a little bit yeah but then he's going to have it in his hand and it's now expanded it's no longer I'm picking something up and putting it down you can sit there you can inspect the object cool that you're looking at similar to the weapon inspect Cur game so like a great example is let's say you're wanting to put on a piece of equipment so youve space helmet I got to get in my ship I got to go fly you see the helmet in your whatever space pants I don't know about pants but space helmet uh you uh yeah you you're going to R you know go up and you're going to grab it you're going to look at it it be a little in you know examine or inspect animation of
00:55:04
like which well let's say you're wanting to buy the object out of a store you now have the option of being like this is looks cool I like it and you can read all these little stats on your screen and be like yeah I want to buy this so then you can like purchase it or however however it works you have to ask design that question I don't know this I don't know these answers but you you say I want I want this object so maybe maybe you got off a Dead Soldier in combat right I want this object that's messed up man you have the option I want his space boots right I want this guy's Helmet or I want this helmet that I've grabbed out of the environment uh now I got option I can walk around with it I can like in case of a helmet I can put on my AR under my arm and like walk around with my with with the helmet and then when I'm ready to like Drop it or equip it I can like pull it back out I'm back in the examine
00:55:53
and like oh I want to wear it all right so I'm going to put it on and now I've equipped uh that helmet or whatever it weapon could be a pistol rifle whatever uh and when you're done with it you like I want to unequip it take it off look at it maybe you go to your your hanger and put it in the locker I have no idea so do you have a favorite animation just ever that we' that we've put in the game well my my personal favorite animation this was not planned my my personal favorite animation is I forget which demo we were doing it was but it was the helmet flip yes yeah that's mine that that seems to be like everybody's favorite so the story behind this this is this is funny so your helmet your helmet your animation yeah I
00:56:43
I redid that R hel this is the culminated efforts that created the helmet flip helmet helmet everybody yeah that's so so the story goes um we had this demo we got a word at the last minute Chris Robert says I want to put the helmet on it's very important to get this helmet on our character because we're going to go show uh dog fighting for the first time oh yeah I remember this I remember this epic this epic demo now uh so anyway so uh we're like oh my God how can we do this which actually leads to another question on the list yes we do have our own motion capture Studio we got it at the $10 million Mark it's an optitrack system and we had it here in Austin for quite knowing the just tells me that he read The Forum through which actually impresses me I did read The Forum so that was
00:57:33
the East 2014 all right so anyway we have to wrap things up here in just a few minutes just yall know no no worries so anyway uh so we got this last second so we had a we I Rush called St Elmo Sound Stage is where we set up to do all of our motion capture this is on a Friday into of the day Friday this coming in hot last minute yeah and I like are you guys available tomorrow on Saturday we need to come in and shoot and like yes we are so me and Vanessa and David we all got together and we loaded up all of our our map gear because we were storing it in our studio at the time and we drove Friday evening to start getting it all set up we then came in the next day Saturday yeah we came in the next Saturday captured like five animations that are necessary for
00:58:23
for this in particular request so there was a map helmet flip there was a mo i who who flipped the helmet I put on the mo I put on the moap suit which catch which was a question in here yes I did put on the motion capture suit you really read the for I'm impressed I did read it uh so yes I did I did put on the motion capture suit I knew exactly what I wanted which is kind of cool when you're an animator and you have this ability to throw on a suit I know exactly what I want so I'm going to do exactly what works exactly what it works I'm like so I sat down in a you know a mocked out layout The Hornet some FPS put it on I did very I just did straight put on I did flipping put over time went on throughout the day you found the courage to start throwing the helmet and then you Incorporated the flip and you were like this is gold so I sat down and I
00:59:11
put the helmet on but then I also go H we should probably capture some other things so I did some standing versions of it as well taking it off the podium um so we do that literally like we're there for like 30 minutes doing this and then tore everything back down by the way it takes 4 hours to set everything up and 2 hours to tore it down and we spent 30 minutes just capturing stuff but it turned out last minute yes that chant made it all worth it though yeah yeah so so so I get it in I spend all this time putting on then I pass it off and then Jay Brushwood uh who was in LA at the time did a little bit of more polish on it just kind of make fine tune a little bit uh I think he I I did this too fast with the visor I was putting it down and
00:59:58
he slowed that down and it made it feel much nicer awesome um so anyway uh then the demo comes up and the guys come out and comes up and everybody's like who guy flips and throws down was like yeah and then Chris is like doing the thing and then thing crashes and people he's like oh hold on let me reboot I was really hoping that you would finish this story with anyways that's the time I made the helmet my favorite animation is uh probably when you sit in the chair but uh you know then we reload it and he gets back to that spot and everybody's now anticipating this this helmet flip and that's when you hear the crowd CH they chanted and then they did the the the Latin American soccer game they're like so on that note awesome I I hate to cut this off I'm having a blast we could
01:00:45
probably do this for another two hours I could do this all and um it is it's good times I really appreciate you guys coming uh means a lot to me I know it means a lot to our viewers um a lot so thank you very much is there any final words or any last comments you want to make before we uh cut this off yeah um just wait there's a lot more coming and it's G to look fabulous um I want to thank these guys you guys watching um if without you guys we wouldn't be able to sit up here and uh wax philosophic about helmet flips and beards and beards so uh really appreciate you guys yeah same thing thanks it's not any fun unless there's somebody there to you know enjoy it so yeah it's why we do it yeah and thanks for me as well thanks to all of our subscribers who make all of this content possible just a reminder around the
01:01:33
verse will be eminating from the UK studio tomorrow and then fast forward one more day on Friday we will be right here again twitch.tv/ Community uh where we're going to be sitting down with some of the staff from the UK studio so thanks again everyone for all of your support and we'll see you in the verse

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