Inside Star Citizen: Dock of the Bay | Winter 2021

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:07

   We took a lot of inspiration from sort of real life docking UIs and procedures, and we distilled it down into what was really important. The process as a whole feels very satisfying to go through. Docking is actually an easier experience than we thought it would be because of how useful the UI is in explaining what you need to do. With our implementation as we have it right now, you would target like what you're wanting to dock with. So, with this case of a ship to ship, it's you're targeting the Constellation. Making the Merlin attach to the Connie has been an interesting challenge of tech that we've put in. We've kind of pushed forward the physics grid uh tech.

2. 00:00:55

   We're one of the first features to use the new ability for us to connect two physics grids together, which is a feature that had been in development in sort of lower-level engine tech for quite some time, but we're testing that on a real gameplay feature. We've made a new airlock that lets you properly airlock at the back of the Constellation when you're going through and opening the little doors underneath the Constellation. We've also worked a lot on the sort of transition between the two ships, so getting out of the Merlin, getting back in, making that experience really smooth. Let's say we're starting from you've gone out down to a planet on your Merlin, and you've decided that you're going to come back up and start docking again. You will target as if you were targeting to fire on your ship, but instead of attacking it, you press For

3. 00:01:45

   now, we have it as set to a key. It's currently as the same as the landing key. That will essentially send a request to your ship, at which point your docking doors will start opening, and you'll get some fancy little HUD coming up of the docking alignment. You have two options. Um you have an automatic mode and a manual mode. The landing button is what you would use to to dock, but if you hold it down similar to auto landing, you can get an auto dock feature, which will fly your ship up and then connect it for you. It's much quicker and I guess more satisfying to use the manual docking, which you'll have to align all of the values yourself. And so, we've made this thing where there's like a ring that shows you how aligned you are. So, it has these three little dots, one around the outside of the ring, and then two in the middle. And then, as you like

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   align your Merlin with the back of the Constellation, these dots will line up in the center, and then you know that you've then aligned your ship. And then, there's a little box that you as you move your Merlin around relative to the Constellation, this little box moves around, and the goal is to get the box in the center, and that's when you know that you are like pretty much matched up exactly in the right place. You'll be able to get out and be straight into your Constellation. If you don't own the Constellation, it's a little bit different. If you're trying to dock with a Constellation that's not yours, then the owner of the Constellation will get a a message saying, "Hey, Dave's trying to dock with your Constellation. Are you okay with that?" If you press no, then they'll get turned away. If you press yes, then the docking doors on the Constellation will open, and then you're free to to go and dock. An exciting part of this uh is that this

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   will be the first version of ship in ship spawning that we release. So, when you go to your ASOP menu in the station, spawn a Constellation, and you have set that on the docking port, you have a Merlin there, you can set that in your VMA on your in your MobiGlas. And if that is set, then when you spawn the Constellation, there will be a Merlin there. And equally, if you unattachish or remove it from the docking port in your VMA, and then despawn your Constellation and spawn back again, it won't be there. We don't quite know when we will expand this to other ship and ship spawning situations, but I'm pretty confident that this is a a good first step in this direction, um and certainly going forward it's going to be easier and easier for us to do this kind of thing. Ship to station docking is quite a

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   different process to Constellation and Merlin docking, but we've tried to keep it as similar and consistent as possible. The first two ships that have ship station docking will be the Hammerhead and the 890. With the case of ship to station, you're targeting the entire station as a whole. If you have the right docking ports, and you have permission to dock there, it'll kind of search for the docking ports that it has, and if it has docking ports free of like the right size, it'll begin the docking process. And very similar to ship to ship docking, it'll be a nice little HUD showing up. Once you are accepted docking permission, you'll see this arm animating out to reach some points, and you'll be guided to the point where the arm will be when it's finished its

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   animation. So, if you manage to maneuver in place before the arm finishes its animation, then it will just animate and connect. Otherwise, um it'll be there and you can you can fly up and connect to it. And once that's happened, you're pretty much then joined with the station, and you can walk out of your ship, open your doors, walk through the docking arm into the little lobby area that we've built. We've got a docking port relative mode that will basically let you kind of change view so that you're like looking as if you were looking out through the docking port. Um and we'll also change the control scheme as well, so that if you're trying to align and you find it difficult to do it by looking through the cockpit, you can do it by looking

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   through the docking port. We've been really trying to make the experience pleasant for the players. I think long-term we would really like it if there's some kind of like docking management MFD screen in your ship. So, you know, if you're in the Hammerhead, there's like a little terminal where you can pick the docking port that you want to attach to on your ship and similarly you'll make requests to the air traffic control to to dock on on the station. I'm just pleased with how smooth it can feel. Analogy I'd use I guess would be like doing a really good parking job. This feels really similar. That moment where you kind of align perfectly and the square goes green and all of the little indicators are telling you that you've done a good job. It's just really satisfying. When the first version of docking comes

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   online in the upcoming Alpha 3.13, it'll be an exciting next step in realizing the full potential of some of Star Citizen's largest and smallest spacecraft alike. But up next, what do space plants, explosives, tapioca dumplings, and government fines all have in common? Well, would you believe they're all a part of this week's sprint report? They are. Let's get to it. To start things off this week, let's jump into the terrestrial depths of caves as members of the planet content team continue to explore new and varied caverns and entrances suited to ground vehicles and spacecraft alike. What you're seeing here are early designer experimentations used like concepts are for anything else. Now, these traversable concepts are made using incredibly rough debug art and are

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    presented to directors in this rough early state so that everyone involved can determine which direction is best to take further visual development in. The focus of this sprint was to explore new traversal options for ground vehicles like the Greycat Rock. Now, these new options are necessary because designers want to add a variety of new mission and mining opportunities for players exclusively with dedicated craft way down in the subterranean depths of Stanton's planets and moons. They're also exploring creative traversal options for spacecraft where skilled pilots will need to navigate their ships carefully through the claustrophobic terrain to deliver themselves to some of Star Citizen's most difficult to reach prizes. Now, as you might have imagine, it's really important to explore these

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    extreme ideas and determine which ones are suitable to take forward through development in this early debug state seen here. This is so that artists don't end up wasting their time bringing something to a final look that ends up being impossible for players to actually discover. And we'll check in again on these exciting upcoming additions to caves in the coming weeks. Now, while those folks are working on caves, other members of the planet content team recently completed a sprint developing some of the new harvestables to be found in the upcoming Pyro system, like this Foteo scrub, a plant that actually relies on solar flares that would otherwise char the planet's surface for its reproduction. And the Pingala, a unique plant of its own where nearly every aspect of it

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    follows the golden ratio as it grows, which ends up making it highly sought after by plant collectors wanting to cultivate them. Now, with the final concepts approved, the next step is to move into production so that one day these two will find themselves dotting the landscapes of Pyro's planets and moons. For those who remember Calix's look at the interaction zoo last year, the weapons content team just completed an art pass on bringing the shape charge device from bearing to life, a tool to be used for the breaching of locked doors in both the persistent universe and Squadron 42. Returning to the world of logos, several new brands were recently introduced for review by directors, including Tip Top, the bite-size tapioca-wrapped dumplings

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    from Terra Mills, Fishringers, the deep-fried fish ring that started life as a popular beach snack in a converted donut shop on the planet Cassel, and Pyrotechnic Amalgamated, the now-defunct mining company responsible for the original discovery of the Pyro system and the abandonment of Ruin Station. As for which ones will make their way into the persistent universe, well, we'll all just have to wait and see. As work on the colonialism-style homesteads continues, the props team, hungry to join the fight, has jumped in with a variety of food-related items designed to populate one of the principal social areas found within. Now, social areas like this will be essential to making the NPC settlements throughout the persistent universe feel

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    simultaneously alive and lived in, while also serving as potential mission hubs, drop-off points, and general meeting areas for players. And lest you think food is the only thing on the props team's minds, they also broke out into the world of chairs, tables, lights, control panels, plants, shelves, and more. But outside of homesteads, the props team took an early sprint looking at

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    ways to revamp some of the kiosks found throughout the Stanton system, with a specific look at these official fine kiosks from the office of Imperial justice. Sure, paying your due to the man isn't the most fun thing in the world, but it doesn't mean you can't look better while you do it. And finally, we have a very quick look at one potential layout for the currently unnamed reputation manager app for MobiGlass. With the first iteration of reputation going out recently in 3.12, this early exploration is an exciting next step in the development of this long-awaited feature from the USPU gameplay feature team. So, what did we learn this week? Well, we learned that in the upcoming Alpha 3.13, one of Star Citizen's oldest dreams will become a reality with the addition of docking to the persistent

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    universe. That coming up, there's going to be new ways to explore even newer caves beneath Stanton's surfaces. And that fish rings are a thing. I'm going to go ahead and blame Will Weissbaum for that. For Inside Star Citizen, I'm Jared Huckaby. We'll see you next week.