Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - Chris Roberts on Development

29 June 201801:13:361,861 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

00:00:08
welcome everybody to another episode of reverse the verse live the only show on Twitch where chris roberts sits just off to the side as i do my thing never knowing precisely what's going to come out of my mouth next like what am i saying right now how long am i gonna keep this gag going with him sitting right there waiting for me to get on with it is it the wrong time to ask him for a raise yeah okay I'm your host Content Manager Jared Huckaby on the show this week we've got founder and CEO Chris Roberts here to discuss the development of alpha 3.2 what our quarterly release schedule has been like so far perhaps some chat on the future of ATB and other broadcasts and I'll see if I can squeeze any details about alpha 3.3 out of them ahead of any updates on the RSI roadmap but up first but week in review now last week we had Caleb's
00:00:56
Renault Spencer Johnson and Ken on here to discuss their work on the recently implemented party and group system and I'm gonna say I spent a good deal of time watching about 50 of you cram your way into an origin 600 I this week and I couldn't have been more proud this first iteration of the new party and group system is yet another way we're making star citizen a more enjoyable experience for backers and if you haven't checked out how easy it is to play with your friends now alpha 3.2 is available to everyone on the public test universe now Monday was another episode of our weekly question and answer series calling all debts which this week featured such backer submitted backer voted on topics as FPS weapon attachments ship items sub components how large ship weapons are meant to deal with smaller more
00:01:43
maneuverable fighters and a great discussion on the differences between piracy and griefing with Dan Ruffin now if you missed it that in all 24 episodes of calling all devs so far are available now up on YouTube Street rhythms once helped the young girl survive but now that she lives with Mother Superior mother super her eyes are open to a wider world what the heck am I talking about I'm talking about the knowledge of good and evil part 2 of the four-part Laura story that went live everyone on the Roberts space industries comm website this Tuesday so go give that a gander if for any other reason then it makes Adam wiser happy when you do and throughout the week Alpha 3.2 has been an open P to you for all backers and the clips have been amazing a watch from Captain Richard mining his fellow players to twerk 17 capitalizing on the
00:02:33
folly of those who push mining to unfortunate and dangerous extremes to the few who along with 49 other players filled every nook and cranny of the resplendent origin 600 I and of course the hot cocoa who showed us why the aegis eclipse is great for a lot of things but maybe not counting to ten come on you guys have helped make this P Tyr the most fun in recent memories and if you've been waiting to jump into alpha 3.2 and experience all the new ships the new game systems and the new quality of life improvements why get in there then finally on Thursday we saw the release of another squadron 42 centric episode of around the verse this time focused on the core technologies at the center of this unique first-person experience and one of the highlights for me personally was seeing the most recent work on the Bandula stetic which includes Johnny energy Lance's I love
00:03:21
those now that's it for the Week in Review so we're gonna take a short break but when we return I'll be sitting right over there with Chris Roberts to discuss all things alpha three point two and more so stay tuned we'll be right back [Music] life in the city comes at you at a
00:05:05
thousand meters a second according to a recent study the average city dweller is subjected to over 60,000 forms of stimuli on any given day that much information be used into your brain it's not surprising that some people can react a little differently Desmond Flay known as des to his friends and family was by all accounts of quiet and respectful young man which made his actions on March 8 29 38 even more surprising it was described as a joyride like no other a high-speed chase in the skies that covered several hundred miles in dense
00:05:54
urban airspace within an hour he had thousands of adoring fans who watched the authorities scramble to catch up but death saved his best surprise for last when captured local police asked why he
00:06:54
did it des reportedly took a look around smiled and said I just wanted some peace and quiet see your local ship dealer for financing options certain restrictions apply now a lot of requests with blue and red component lights of people in case what the Matt a lot of police lights on my Avenger welcome Chris how you done I'm doing all right how you doing I'm doing well thank you for returning once again this is this is in all the years I've been here and I'm going on four years is the first time we've had you three times in a single calendar year I'm sure ah okay well I just I'm just happy my arms twisted there may be some
00:07:47
violent scenes machinations getting in there all right so verse the verse live it's our show where every Friday is where we have to be take questions from the community we answer them live no no - no time for equivocation and stuff like that fancy PR answers right from the source we've got Chris Roberts for anybody who doesn't know who you are and what you do what you tell people who you are what you do for star citizen well I'm the best the project director for both star citizen out squadron 42 and the CEO of cloud Imperium games which now we have about 500 people spread between four and a half studios or fire we have a small one in every book have we actually crossed over that line now I was just asked me that the other day I always ask people to describe what they do and I'm like I've never asked Chris to actually describe what he does it was curious
00:08:34
what he was gonna say alright so we're just gonna jump right into it because we know we don't get Chris very often I know you guys have a lot of questions we take questions from three places so you got a couple options for some of your questions one you can do so right now in twitch chat by submitting your question with the word question surround capital letters surrounded by brackets that's gonna help our lead community manager Tyler wick and pull it out from all the other conversation you can also submit questions in spectrum chat which is our bespoke communication platform available now on Roberts space industries com same rules apply question capital letters brackets helps them pull it out additionally for folks who couldn't be here and join us live we did collect questions over the last 24 hours from a thread and that also had the benefit of letting people vote up some questions so we're gonna start with those questions while you are live questions come in and right off the bat I want to start before we move into future and so like that let's
00:09:22
talk about 2.2 because we're pretty close well three point six three point two what I say two points to it that's a good patch it's alpha three point two right off the bat what were some of the what were some of the the big wins of alpha 3.2 well I mean I well obviously mining that's that's a huge one and I think that sort of creates a gameplay loop that is what you know people I mean there's a certain amount of you can run missions you can take cargo and sell it and trade it but you know we don't have all the other stuff that we want to do mining is another pretty big chunk of that so I I've seen that people are having fun with the first what we call tier 0 implementation of mining there's still a lot more stuff to go and offer you'll be able to mine now and asteroid fields and all the rest stuff but yeah it's it's so it's really nice to see
00:10:10
that I mean you know rolling these out is very important to the overall sort of pu plan because you know essentially we want you to be able to it's a big sandbox and and also should be up to you to do what you want to do in it and we don't want you to have one way to play it if you want to be sort of a miner or you want to be a trader or you want to be a pirate you want to be ministering you want to be a bounty hunter you know all those you want to be a farmer or something all those things are possible so you can be you know someone that's more focused on non-combat someone that's focus on combat basically it should be like the real world you should have the options to do all the kind of things you can do in the real world and you know it's up to you to decide what you consider fun and what you consider success now you said of course mining is the big temple feature it's not the only features quite a lot of cool stuff well the grouping stuff is important I mean
00:10:58
that's again tier zero so there's there's still a level of implementation that we'll be continuing on and the subsequent patches but it's very important you know I think everyone voted on it when we had the survey and it was actually one of the things that when we you know got you know three one out there we were like okay looking at quality of life we said you know there's some things would like to improve right now because we want people to be playing right now and experiment me because you know in some ways we look at the game as a live product that's happening right now and yes it's still got bugs and crashes and it's still missing a lot of content obviously and listening missing features but it should be a whole game cycle and everything thank you so I got stuff second style I'll get right through but you know all of all all of you know
00:11:47
those aspects it's important for us to make the experience of getting in getting in with your friends and you know in some ways some of the funner content that I see is sort of all you know player driven right so like those are you know damar rally that they were really doing and so having tools for people to be able to you know get their friends in easily communicate with them and do it always really important so and also some of its foundational for the VoIP slash face over IP stuff that's going to come in 3 3 3 so that's a big that's another big win and of course is the new ships and there's some new weapons and items you can have but you know those are good and now we've been working on things
00:12:33
like I'm not sure if we've cracked it properly yet but we've been trying to make the currents better because they they need a lot of help we were fixing some issues on the ifcs that you know we're just broken from before I think it's not all done yet and you know just thought some other sort of kind of quality of life stuff and laying some of the groundwork that will be four three three because three threes of what we're doing this year that's the big one because that's the one that's bringing a whole bunch of critical tech that will allow us to sort of go beyond where we were yeah well we'll get to three three you know in a bit but four four three two now we've had we've been open we've been open we've been in open PTU all week we've seen this the twitch streams we've seen the YouTube videos we've seen improvements like the dragon publishers
00:13:21
watching some this morning about the dragon fly so smooth on the grain I'm 11 having a penis it's not corporate I think it looks great hey this is a weird question but I'm curious right are you happy with what we're seeing so far happy with the first iteration of mining you're happy with how people are using the the tier 0 implementation of group well yeah yes for what we had the time to do I mean so for instance there's there's quite a bit more stuff that we want to do have more variety some more nuance and obviously allow you to mind not just having the prospector but for what we've done yeah I mean I guess I think we've done a nice combination of a you know it's visually quite cool and there is you know I don't know whether you want to call it a
00:14:07
minigame but there is a certain amount of you know management you can do as you're mining that makes it more than just holding a spacebar for a certain period of time and take the resources and I think as we sort of fill out you know like we've got plans for refineries and stuff in 3-3 and beyond so as we fill out the sort of whole supply chain that will happen with that and have more roles I think there'll be some really cool stuff where you know people can be focusing on mining and their friends can be taking what they've mined off to the refinery to get it refined into the various materials that then could be sold on somewhere else and so I think it's a good foundation but yeah there's there's a lot more that we wanted we want to do because we would sort of want to build out pretty much all these professions we've talked about to a level of you know sophistication that perhaps you don't normally see for
00:14:58
me when I was jumping in one of my favorite things to see and maybe I'm just a weirdo it's flying over the surface and would see and seeing the surface scattered with prospectors all doing their thumb is very very frontier like you just go there and you like everybody trying to make their own you know way in the world in their ports and then occasionally watching one explode it's like you pushed it you got greedy well I think we're also I mean there's some UI likely the the overall UI needs a better unification we've just had all these different like here's the mining UI here's the scanning UI here's the HUD stuff so that's a longer-term thing that we will fixing up and moving more to sort of 3d which I kind of prefer but you know yeah it's our biggest problem is just pulling all these things together even with the
00:15:45
amount of people we have it always seems to take longer and it's more difficult than anyone ever conceived of thought you know I think the agile method that we'd be using is definitely helping out where people you know we're sort of having groups that feel like their own little team and the chief stuff we're still you know getting used to that it's definitely you can see the benefit like going from three zero three one absolutely and having a cadence is also good I think you know the three two and when we first went to PT you it was in a lot better shape than for instance when three zero first went to PT you and that was partly because you know we're not taking as long between releases and so we have to put the chaps in a better state and people like I said getting used to the cadence so I think as we go
00:16:32
forward you'll continue to sort of see benefits remain that's again if I'm allowed to have an opinion that's not see IG shill here this seems like a look like people are having it seems like a really good P to you it seems like people are having more fun it seems like there's there's some great stability there there's a lot of good improvements I've been it's a part of me that can still be a fan of the project I've been very pleased personally with that oh he's saying yep he's saying you got the krinkle thing to telecrib cheese Ulster I'll tell you about it later alright so the group system then the we had a party system in place this is the new group and party system folks in the spectrum chat i chat asked why it took
00:17:22
why was through why did it take 23.2 like why wasn't a more easy way to get in there with your friends prioritized earlier in our development you know I mean it's hard I mean like the every single feature that we I mean basically we have a hundred things to do at the time the time and the resources to do 10 of them and so you just have to make calls on which one at that particular time you felt was more important and in you know and so the sort of grouping and friends was less important earlier I think you know we've we've increased the player count right you know we went to 50 with 3-0 and I you know hopefully when when you get some of the new stuff that will be coming in the object container streaming and the ban culling will be
00:18:09
able to go beyond 50 we also have some physics optimizations that were working on longer term that should bring up the ability to us have more players in on one server and decent framerate so yeah I mean it was you know when we did it if kind of felt like we've gone to the point where there was enough people playing or stability and we should sort of focus on that and also sort of focus on the experience now so I sort of feel like until we got to that 3-0 level of stuff it wasn't enough of a you know a game or world to go and explore and do if you're friends now it sort of feels like there is and we're starting to been using with the mining and like with 33 will open up a lot more stuff and so then it really sort of feels like yeah
00:18:56
okay let's get a device or a mechanism a system in place for people to get together at a talk have their various church in the game and you'll just see that getting improved as we go forward like I said four three three well you know we'll bring in the voice and a fight but also you have more of the spectrum side of it so you can also be doing the chatting and spectrum and you know you'll be seeing it in the game and vice versa and stuff like that so it felt like the right time I mean it's always you know all this stuff you know there's a whole list of things I see it on the forums all the time where people how they do this oh my god that's you know they're crazy or they're idiots so they don't know they're doing and you know it's like we're you know mostly were you know we're we're pretty much all of it and it's honestly it's a it's a matter of priority and it's it's it's always a hard decision to make so for
00:19:44
instance you know there you know quality of life improvements you know like some of the things I've just mentioned like making the UI or the hood better or whatever you know that takes time to do but then it also takes time to do a new feature like mining and then it takes to do the you know debugging you know making sure the games running what like when we're going to PT you there's a whole bunch of bugs that come out that you'll have to fix and so it's really just a matter of allocating the resources and time to that and sometimes you have to make you know difficult or hard choices I mean I love to get new content I love to get new features in but if you're always doing that then you know the other stuff sort of drops by the wayside and so that was a conscious decision we made that's why we did this four three two we said okay going forward you know and partly the quality relief stuff does that as you know force
00:20:32
us to do that but we said going forward we need to spend time improving the quality of life improving the stability improving the performance so the experience playing now is fun and you know can be something that people are interested in versus always like thinking about what's going to be tomorrow you know always about like oh well when it's finished it will be all this great stuff but you know right now it's all a bit of a mess because we haven't finished everything so we've made a conscious choice to that we're still doing that I mean it does mean that there are some hard choices I mean I you know we have a road map which you know we have this whole thing that you have to agree to read with the caveat arts about how it moves and all the rest of stuff specifically because we said we're going to be more date driven than feature driven or content driven and then the moment we move something from
00:21:22
it like yeah there's a whole bunch of people don't believe it they're really yes they don't know they're doing the incompetent managers or whatever and you know that's just the choice you have to make because you'll come to these things and someone say well do you want it do you want to get rid of these bugs or do you want to get the performance better or do you want to have the experience playing it now better or do you want this feature yeah and you know sometimes there also be features will come along there you go okay well you know we really need this other feature to make this feature work properly that one's not gonna be ready for this release so we're gonna have to move both of them out and we said that in our caveats so can't we move it it still does but that's just the nature of the beast I mean I actually feel like I guess that the majority of our community sort of get it and and you know it's it's the you know I kind of view the the the modern Internet is the is the sort of
00:22:11
yeah Tale of Two Cities kind of the best of worlds and the worst of worlds at the same time so the best of worlds allowed us to make this game and have all these people support it and you know pushes forward and you know do something at a level no one can do the worst part of it is that of course everyone has you know they can all say whatever they want to do and you know the filter of civility isn't the same as it would be in person and you tend to focus on you know the blab people and allow people aren't always everybody you know and it's just the nature of each so you have to know how to filter all those but we just you know ultimately on our side we say okay this is what we want to do long-term is where we're going and you know we'll make some of these choices some of these decisions I know some people are gonna get upset about but you know it's all in service of trying to make this game as
00:22:58
good and fun and meet the vision of myself and everyone working on the game and also of the community itself but you know it's it's a journey it's not something that like tomorrow is magically going to be brilliant and and so yeah so you know you just you just got to learn to you know sort of yeah put a peach shield on one yeah actually go to the forums you know it's a it's it's a struggle for you for me for the whole community team to always kind of filter through that feedback because because even when somebody you know not every way that yells is a bad person not everybody you know some passion is a good thing passion is a good thing there's good information in the yelling and well I think I think I think what's really useful is like like yeah the stuff I appreciate what I reek I look
00:23:47
through the stuff and I appreciate when people are like constructive they're like okay I have the problem here here's what my solutions are and do that and a lot of ways I'll respond to that much better than our respond to someone shouting over everyone else covering them no this is why everyone thinks you're wrong the majority thinks this sucks it needs to be this way and you know I mean we're an online game we know our metrics right so we take a look at it and we know very well when someone's saying oh yeah everyone's like this and we're like well that's not actually what the numbers show us you know but it doesn't help you write it much better if you're saying what and there are I've seen quite a few example and we've changed some stuff where people have like put forward good arguments and and actually and sometimes they'll be good argument so I'll be out there and sometimes people might think oh well they're not you know they're not
00:24:34
listening to me that's not true it means that that's actually affected maybe some of the stuff that we're thinking about but we can't you know change it right away because of course everything is planned and you know all the all the issues I just talked about and you can't turn on a dime yeah well with the resources and what they're working on because the worst thing that can happen on development is when you keep switching contexts so like you're like do this no do this do this do this do this and then that drives developers crazy because like I just want to finish one thing so there's a lot of times where people will be making suggestions about stuff that like will go okay yeah you know that's actually something we want to do and we will get to it just may not happen for six months or yeah but that that is that there is a nature but we do value the feedback and if it's nice and civil and constructive it's even better
00:25:20
we actually a good conversation spectrum I guess it was a couple couple days ago about the virtue of one very well constructed and thought outpost versus a thread a petition with I we just want that botany but jailing a bunch of learning it's like it's like the power of one just one well-thought-out constructed post if you make it you make your point it's anyone backer can affect oh yeah look I mean everyone that's on the tea I mean everyone yeah like they're all human being so you you you know to reach someone to change so on or to give them an idea to do something it's much nicer if you're you know instead of calling them an idiot or incompetent and you make suggestions and go from there
00:26:08
because they're more receptive to it I mean it's it's just a sort of personal management 101 and the same applies in forums and an Internet in general I mean I know that there's a certain amount of you just can never get away from it I mean I kind of like it a little like you know sports teams right I'm yeah I grew up in England I'm a big football fan and you know hopefully my England will and we'll see what happens in the World Cup but but you know it doesn't matter after a match there's always you know they'll always be that the tactics are wrong that player was an idiot he didn't add IDs I mean actually the nature of the beef people are kind of venting because they have passion and that's okay but I am saying if like effect design changes works much better when there's like here's the issues here's what I see is the solutions and I put forward and even if it doesn't necessarily end up changing stuff it does a lot of times make people think
00:26:57
about it and consider and I know you know all you know you know all our designers you know and everyone else is sort of involved in kind of design and creative decisions you know they do read our forums and other various feedback you know venues and you know it does affect their thinking so you know it's good all right I do want to say let's put some EPS in chat for our Frankfurt studio after Germany's terrible no good very bad day I didn't want to talk about it Joe no no no the Skype chat went dreadfully quiet for a little while there it was like I didn't that's how I knew something was up because I don't follow it so I'm just like what how Skype chat he just got weird I eventually found out why all right so that's that's it's a great conversation but the you know I know folks I can see
00:27:46
the chat feels like right so we're getting where you can get back to some some def questions we do have some questions coming in from the live chat how do you feel about the the quarter releases you're still glad that you committed to them are you regretting deciding to do the no no no I think the quarterly releases are really good they're they're great for discipline and cadence on the production side you know sometimes it's tough because you have to move things out and you know that people are going to be upset I mean yeah every time my colleagues move there's like those pitchforks are out and I'm not playing well screw this I'm not playing til three three or three four or wherever they think the next feature is going to come into but no I think it's I think it's good I think it's you know and and it is actually something
00:28:34
consciously that we started last year after sort of taking so long with 3-0 and you know we just said we don't want to do this again so we said we you know it you know this is this is not a short distance race it's a long distance race and you know we've got a lot of stuff still to do and we're building a universe to the level of detail I never thought that we would ever build you know in my wildest dreams when we first started this project we you know things have happened to enable us including the support we've had for everyone and some of the technology or cold breakthroughs that we've had and just a general sort of power of PCs that are allowing us to do that and and so I think it's really important to focus on giving gameplay and content regularly to the community to play and you know we sort of view
00:29:23
star citizen that you play right now as a live product yes it's missing loads of stuff and it's and it's you know going to get all that stuff but we need that experience to be good and there's a discipline that comes with that that I think ultimately will make a much better final product so so yeah I think it I think it's really good it's good for the teams it's a game it's a cadence to getting used to and the date doesn't move so they have to they have to make it and it causes people to be realistic about what they can and can't do and then you know we have to make tough decisions if it looks like the team's trajectory isn't going to deliver the feature that we said and then then we'll move it but I think I think it works really well for starters Anna and also even even if we said okay we this is what we consider is the full final game
00:30:11
it's the kind of cadence that we would want afterwards anyway I mean I think you don't want to go a year or two years between updates like you can say on something like World of Warcraft I think if you want to have these quarterly content and feature updates where the the universe the game is evolving all the time absolutely all right you mentioned Bank culling so I'm gonna hit you with an object container streaming question you open the door for it after container streaming has been pushed back several times now with Hurston scheduled for alpha 3.3 does that mean that object container streaming is a must half of that patch it is must have so we will not be able to deliver Hurston and the content with our object container streaming because there's no one unless everybody's got 32 gigs on their machines you you don't we don't have enough physical memory to
00:31:00
on the smaller memory machines to have all that data there so it is a must-have it's a something that you know we've made a massive focus which means that some other things may move out of three three so we can deliver object container streaming but you know for us we won't be able to deliver because you know three three is going to have her stone and Louisville and some truck stop space stations there's a whole bunch of extra stuff that goes into it so it's a big content and four moons so it's a big content expansion for us and it needs the object container streaming so we you know we're making a big focus it's a the biggest priority on the tech side it has our top people on it so to speak yourself man top med but now it does so it is the you know a most senior of the
00:31:50
engine folks this is this is what that we're focusing on so there's quite a lot of stuff that's still out there to be done but we're making very good progress but the nice thing about that is that you know once it's all working hopefully that kind of store when new ships load in will be there because it'll all be asynchronous happening in the background and that's actually the biggest issue with the streaming is we have to make all the code thread safe because we have to age synchrony load everything in the background and then it just turn it on when it's there and so that means that there's you know years and years and years of code that wasn't written to be on other threads that need to be converted across so we're essentially it's as big of a endeavor which we've been working on for quite a while since
00:32:39
last year I was moving to 64-bit we have to change like you know vast amounts of game systems to work in the and the new sort of component thread safe manner that you know the old crayons and stuff didn't used to we had an immediate follow up on that and the aggregate interesting pieces if we have 32 gigabytes of memory will that improve things more on top of object near stream you know I'd I'd have to go and I mean we discussed the you know like basically it's like a scratch this as you load things in if you have more memory may not discard them as quickly and then of course you just reactivate it so that would be usually the benefit I don't know if that's going to be in the 2-0 object container implementation but
00:33:26
that is what we've talked on a longer-term so if you have more memory it basically keeps things around longer rather because what I'm - the object container stream you can only keep so much in a container you know think of it as a box and you put this stuff in and then oh it's too full I have to get this other stuff out while I'm not close this other stuff so I'll get rid of it so basically if you had more memory you just have a have a bigger sort of memory allocation for that I'm wondering if I've given Ricky a heart attack hey you say Abdul Qadeer extreme user must have for three point three of Ricky's no no Ricky's fully aware of its must-have everyone is aware that's because we won't I mean we can deliver some of the three three stuff as well me I'll deliver the the expanded content because they just won't be enough memory that's that's one of the reasons why we don't already have some more moons a hearse and stuff because we just don't
00:34:12
want to you know we're already tight on the memory so we need we can't just preload everything and just have it say that and that's a not to bury the lede but it's not just Hurston as you mentioned it's for additional moons yes with Hurston and a whole bunch of truck stops so it refinery it's a lot it's massive it's it's it's a much bigger content drop than three zero was yeah well that sounds like that does mean that some of it may not all make it in there because it's so big but it's a massive state is our biggest drop for the year yeah and that of course you everybody knows that we update our road map on Fridays and wanted that that's the place where you'll see stuff and we'll talk a little bit more about ATV in a bit and about how its project update form and stuff so we'll be communicating those changes I think we do a pretty good job now but I
00:35:01
think we I think we can do even better with that stuff and we planned to going forward as far as the changes and why the some of those things happen on the roadmap that's three point three because it's so big I think it's going to record it when we talk about priorities we talk about decisions that have to be made in some of the tough decisions I think that's a there's probably a couple of those in the future oh yeah definitely well because basically if we're ensuring the object container streaming that may mean some engineering resources that would have been doing something else may not have time to do that and that's one of the that's that's an example of you always have to take you make hard resource decisions and you have to say okay what's my priority and you know so that sometimes will mean okay sorry we won't be able to deliver this when we thought we would because we need to make sure this happens yeah and of course if
00:35:49
that happens in those decisions are made of question art a TV in the roadmap it's willful community nothing to say about right now those decisions haven't been made it's just prudence all right what when we started talking about object container streaming chat exploded with one unified question does object container streaming mean that we can get capital ships like the address and the PU well I mean obviously the capital ships and the PU is possible a competent container streaming makes it easier the idris still has a few things to finish off before it goes into PU and that i think was missing the missile room and it sort of needs to be sort of made non squadron right focused as so much of the working why do you so that i
00:36:38
mean that is on our roadmap but we're not planning on doing that for three three or three four so sorry guys but we I do wanna I do want to get the bigger ships in there we have some other tech things that we're working on that will enable because a bit of a push there's some other optimizations we need to do besides object container streaming in terms of the bigger ships and making sure that they're lod incorrectly and we're not updating too many of the attachments if we don't need to attachments so that's some stuff that will also some part of that will be in three three and some part of that will be in three four now this question is a bit out in front I'm gonna ask it because you're here and because it not only shows up in this thread that's actually showing up in are calling all Deb's threads for a while and I'm I'm curious what your answer to it is you
00:37:26
can hate me afterwards this one from the point when the standard system is is finally fleshed out let's just go into the future we've got the we got the four mega Earth's we've got all the moons and whatnot how do you envision the production of our solar systems our planetary systems from that point on I mean it does once we've done staunton is a lot of the groundwork done and it'll be faster to make systems after that so so yes that's that's part of the plan one of the big pushes we have because obviously if you look how long it's taking us to do stanton and you figure out your star systems we have you know I want to be alive by the time we get them done and I think most are the backers do too so no we it's really it's a it's
00:38:16
kind of a tool issue and it's a it's a bit of a Content issue so the more sets that we build and was you know fleshing some about Santa but we still got more to do and the better the tools get and that's one of our issues is that you know we just don't have enough tools people we don't know we don't have enough engineers and even though I told you we have 500 people it's like everyone wants more people and we don't have enough to get all this stuff done but we're we're making a sort of long-term focus and investment not just on the tech that enables this but also then the creation and the tools and so we're because yeah we need to be in a position where we can turn around a moon in a week not you know in two months or three months and the same on planets so in terms of you know so so longer-term
00:39:04
you know we will be looking at you know we are looking at tools that would be much more like you know you know unity and you know kind of city building or RTS building kind of stuff where you can sort of paint and do stuff very quickly and build prototypes and then once we have a whole set of biomes so like for instance the four moons that we're doing around Hurston utilize some of the biomes that we've done for our current three moons right and we've created some new stuff as well but the more more of that you have the bigger palette you have like the quicker and turning around so we actually on three three have set ourselves I'd have to check with him but I think he was trying to get all four moons done in like a month with his his team so that would be way quicker than we did the previous stuff absolutely and so we're working towards so we're very aware that
00:39:51
you know the trajectory needs to be much faster on this but it'll take a while so I mean I think you know that sort of stuff you'll start to see the impact of it you know next year not so much this year I think one of the things that folks that have followed the project from the early days the very beginning because one of the great things about star citizen is a project and experience is this true behind the scenes yeah yeah iiiii joke that if you if you followed us from the beginning and you're here with the end you're gonna have like a 400 level college court you know course and in game design by the time this is all said and done is I think we've demonstrated a facet that's exist in all game development and that's exponential growth it's it's if you produce this much in the first year that allows you to produce this much in the second year
00:40:39
that allows you to produce this much in the third year and so forth so and and yeah you see that just born out in a TV I mean remember what a TV used to be you know nearly days and then as we hit content phases when I was waiting on its hangout we basically showed nothing of the game and it was just you know it goofing around so it's it's a very it's a very different I totally I totally agree and also we've grown as an organization and we got more of the processors now so yeah it you know we have a plan I think we have a plan to get there I mean it's I'm gonna lie to you and say oh it's gonna be done in you know a year's time or two years time but maybe not but but but yeah I mean it is on you know but the first thing is you gotta get the tech and then you start working on the tools and you start working on the kind of pipeline
00:41:26
and workflow and then you can kind of get it down to something that works quite efficient so you know our ship production pipelines gotten pretty efficient compared to what it used to be in the early days especially on the size and the scale of all the stuff they're doing and longer-term we we definitely want to you know we need to get the planets and the moons and environments all there and you know and also tough get wood you know the it's all changed because you know it used to be oh well you were just asked for landing and then we'd have a little cinematic and then you land down in a very sort of constrained area that you could go and talk to a bartender or buy something but now it's like a whole planet and it's a pretty big plan or a pretty big moon and so now it's like okay what are we gonna do to make that so it's not just well there's gonna be one landing error so I go well how are we gonna get little towns around here how we going to get you know fauna
00:42:14
and and and an ecosystem and resources you can do so we're starting to lay all that stuff in that's all in our minds so yeah I mean the look as a player you should be able to just hang out on one of the worlds and do that forever yeah you know ever if you wanted to so we are going for that level of detail that we never were going for before and obviously that requires a lot of tech a lot of tools and obviously more content I'm gonna go ahead I'm gonna go ahead and hit you with another big one ai-jen I'm gonna do two parts here first we know one of the big things that slipped out of a that deferred out of 3:2 in the 33 was the FBS AI yeah I talked about it a little bit and on our TV a couple of weeks ago but what can you tell us about
00:43:03
FBS AI where it's at now and what we're thinking in the future well so I mean we're making a big push to get it into three three I mean you know we were looking at it in three two I just personally felt like we weren't there I mean the you know the AI side of things in general is a also an issue on squadron is gone slower than we'd want to it's partly because we've sort of re-engineered this big system because we want to well you need something that's like dynamic on a level that you wouldn't normally because normally a lot of games your area is pretty focused it can be fairly scripted around sort of the trajectory you're taking through that story of those levels but for us we need a much more systemic and you know we've got these we got this jewel kind
00:43:50
of master of you know we got the PU which really needs to be systemic and is has all these different things and then we've got squadron which we want an incredible sort of like a level of like detail in what they're doing both combat and the sort of social passive side so they really feel like alive and characters and your worth is there's crew you know really feeling them as sort of real characters and people and so there's a complexity that come but getting it all trickling down to the final functioning in with you know fluid transitions and animations and all that sort of stuff his has taken longer and we you know and also even though we have a lot of people it doesn't mean that we have a hundred AI program is we have three AI engineers would like to have
00:44:41
more so if there's any great I engineers out there we're actually looking at taking games well yeah well I mean we're we're looking at taking you know gameplay guys and saying you know what your gameplay you're working on say I but you know it's you know and there's a certain amount of you've got to get the system and the infrastructure in place get done so that's just sort of be moving a little slower than we want it both for the ship stuff is you know I'm starting to I think we may have fixed some of the stuff in the there was some broken recently in the PTU but there's I know I've seen on a internal build that we've we fixed them like not like be more challenging anyway but have some longer-term thing as well and so yeah it just it felt like the experience we didn't want to put in the
00:45:28
experience it was a bit too rough around the edges so we want to spend a bit more time to make it a bit more fluid and a bit more polished I mean ultimately you know I you know like everything on star citizen or squadron I want that to be as good as any know you look at the last of us you know last of us two and you go how it did an awesome job on you know their animation and the fluidity of it and it's like that's the kind of stuff we look and say yes we need to be doing that in in in in our game and and we will so but it yeah it's just taken a bit longer than we thought we've like put together a pretty focused strike team to make sure that we get it four three three because it's also quite critical for the stuff that we need in squadron so I you know optimistic about not like having its be in three three
00:46:18
versus a but I you know alright the second part of that FPS AI to ship to ship board companion hey lots of lots of questions in the live chat and the threat and again in our weekly calling all Deb's question thread if you wondered why I've been waiting on some of these because why call somebody being able to have our companion iya is being able to put an AI in the turret being able to have an AI co-pilot being able to put an AI on an engineering station that's that's a super point to us it's it's you know you know fundamentally part of what squadron has because it's just you and everyone's AI and their crew members so you know
00:47:08
that's dependent on us getting the squadron stuff to the point that we're happy and then we sort of bring you in for you which is kind of the same thing that happens though FPS happy because it's another level right it's the it's the it's not you have the multiplayer aspect we have to make sure it's synced over all the clients and the server that you don't need to worry about on the single-player but yeah now that isn't I mean you know we have design we have you know we're starting to build the structure for that I you know I I couldn't tell you where that's you're gonna get your first AI companion on the roadmap I would suspect next year you're going to see that well be this year but that is definitely you know it's important because I we need to just on the PU fill out that world I mean I you
00:47:57
know I've talked about this 9010 sort of ratio where you know you want to have about 90% of the world be you know NPCs AI and about 10% be players and that's what it allows you as a player if you don't want if you want to play single it's solo even weekly groups but you want to be PvE or whatever you don't have to it's not all about fighting another group of players to fight against or do things with you could interact with the world at large which is you know whether it's you know NPCs hanging around a you know Louisville or you know flying on a ship and you know you're a pirate and you you know you decide to liberate some goods for them or some AI parrots are trying to do the same for you because I mean ultimately as as a game there is a certain amount of wish
00:48:43
fulfillment that comes in the game whereas I no one wants to be the shittest pilot in the world or the shittest dog fighter and so therefore they don't have a choice Chris well I know but but when it's a player versus player there will always be one player that's a loser in one player as a winner when it's player versus nai then you know there's a lot more chance for the player always to be a winner and so you know one thing that AI does is sort of provide yeah I get my ass kicked by other players but yeah I can go whip up some and you know AI am AI pirates myself and feel kind of good about it and so you know we that that is quite important to fleshing out the world and having also crew that would flesh out some of the bigger ships for you especially if you don't have a whole bunch of friends to play with or they are not available in that particular
00:49:31
time so it is important but it sort of depend on some of the squadron stuff we're doing which you know so I would say you know it would be roadmap wise more will be this year it so being actually honest yeah so won't be this year the roadmap is your place to look for that kind of stuff though you know like I said we do an update every every Friday it's like that uh the big updates happen quarterly young that will be your place you know keep an eye on that when when we have a better idea of remotely where we are when we expect that to be that's your place to find that out since you brought up the roadmap and she brought up the roadmap and and and there are two things I can ask you here that that one's about the character I'm not
00:50:19
going to do that the other one I'm gonna ask you about is where is the squadron 42 roadmap okay so the school so well we're working on it production at the moment does not feel comfortable sharing what we have I'm not going to surprise anyone say it's corn 42 isn't this year but we still have some aspects to work I mean the biggest issue we have with the squadron roadmap besides the fact that we've got to figure out some ways not to sort of give things away yeah but that's solvable the the biggest issue is you know when we have the coyly roadmap on star citizen you know we from the beginning we're like okay well if this feature doesn't make this then it'll go to the next quarter and it's sort of
00:51:05
this revolving thing so it's it's not quite the same as BAM here's the final schedule and roadmap for it and with the release at the end with the release to the end and so yeah on the production side you know without feeling like every single things buttoned down you know I mean trust me I'm on that case too they they're very reluctant to release something that may change because they feel like they're going to get Tulley pilloried for it I know I've been criticized for promising stuff so so it's it's so essentially it is something that will work in progress we've also had to adapt to the new agile process which is very different than the old kind of waterfall scheduling process and
00:51:54
we're using you know a new thing called portfolio which is part of the JIRA thing which is sort of a long-term planning and scheduling thing we're trying to roll that out for squadron and the live stuff which helps give you sort of the longer-term visibility because the the agile development process is quite good for shorter term iterative something like we do these quarterly releases it looks very well for that but if you're doing a longer term thing that has a whole bunch more in dependencies of features and there's a vast amount I mean the squadron as a game is insanely big and ambitious and has a level of fidelity and content that I'm probably if I start we started a while ago I would have said maybe maybe we should have done this
00:52:41
much but this one we've we've got it committed to and so so yeah so that's that's really the reason it's not it's not necessarily that we you know don't want it like no we got it but we're not going to share it with you it's more just that you know from a confident standpoint no one wants to put something out there that they feel like will change again and they'll get criticize you know cuz they do get everyone gets said I mean all our production people get very sensitive when they read all the things about how we can't manage our way out of a wet paper bag I get all this stuff you know even though they've worked at you know whatever blizzard or rock star or Activision or EA or whatever which we have you know everyone's worked on them but I'm a big project you've played we've got people here that have worked on all those that pretty senior levels but it's just you know it's it's a
00:53:30
nature of the beast I mean I think if anyone's brittle like the you know I thought was quite interesting in the III they you know the cyberpunk 27 in 2077 you know they sort of came out of hiding after all these years and you know everyone I was really excited and the journalist got to see it behind the scenes were excited by what they saw but you know I mean nothing has been around for you know well as long longer than us and it sort of went down and you know the the head of you know the CD Projekt RED was talking about you know how they you know you know did they stopped here they refactored this they redid this they iterated they did that because that's just that's not in development that is game development it's also game developing when you're reaching really high any one of our high quality bar and you're not sort of locked into oh we've
00:54:17
got a release for the Christmas quarter because that's what our shareholders need and it is part of the process to make something really good and you know you can see it in Red Dead Redemption - which is like it was going to come out now it's gonna be latex they need a bit more time you know Rockstar does this a lot Blizzard does it a lot we want to make a great game so it it takes time and that is kind of one of the reasons why you know that we we haven't shared the road map yet because the there's some aspects were very confidently and some aspects are still up in the air they need a little better break down and planning on some of the longer-term stuff because again like I said the agile process is very good for the short-term planning but when you're asking someone to sort of plan something that's six months out yeah that becomes more difficult and then people tend to be like well I don't
00:55:04
know what my tasks are and and then if you plan it properly you're literally taking your whole team and they're doing a proper breakdown and they're doing that for days versus creating things or fixing bugs so then you have this other issue do you take some of your team away from what they're delivering right now to do the planning to get you a proper thing for later on or do they fix that bug so we can get through two out there so there's just it just it never happens as quickly as you want so it is in process when there is something that production feels comfortable if Aaron feels comfortable with then we will share it I you know I'm I'm over like being blamed for being optimistic and over-promising and you know you know people feeling like I lied to them because I was
00:55:52
totally not my intention I mean I am an optimist by nature you can't be a game designer you know try to do things this level without being totally optimistic because otherwise you just couldn't start the journey and I would say that you know most most creators tend to be optimists you generally won't find a pessimist that's a creative type because you have to be kind of automated to do that so I'm not the best person estimating my time or other people's time because I always feel like I could do it quicker than you know ultimately would be so there you go so I I don't I'm solve myself of that and then let let the other people who were maybe a bit more realistic or pessimistic I adore you sometimes that was that's the Chris that I came to work for almost
00:56:41
four years ago that's why I came here all right we've had all the big points I want to talk about one last thing before we let you go cuz we're almost out of time okay we're actually gonna go a couple minutes over because we did actually are out of time a TV this week I'm sure folks notice that a TV was only about 11 minutes long it was it was it was it was it was hosting and then just a project update you know status update on squadron 42 and then we were out is that indicative of a continued trend for a TV are we are we shaking things up iured know the answer I feel like I'm asking a question I really answer what can you tell us about a TV going forward what's going on here okay so we're I mean we're not quite ready to announce it every single preempted it but and I think we've been sort of looking at our format
00:57:28
and feeling like we want to shake things up I mean things that I've noticed right which I find quite I mean first of all I think we have probably three types of people that we need to have content for so you know one type is super diehard completely knows everything about star citizen obsessives about his on spectrum unready watches everything then we have the you know sort of more casual check in occasionally what's happening but you know it's not there 24/7 obsession and then of and then we have sort of hey I watch this star system thing it's kind of cool tell me a little bit about it I'm interested and I think you know say some of the a TV problems that we've had is that we just like mash too much stuff together because you know in the today's
00:58:20
world YouTube you know I know myself when I'm washing I mean it's it's a different format it's not the TV format where it's like a half-hour show or in our show it's like oh I've got a few minutes yeah I'll watch this video and you know the moment that video becomes ten minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes so then it becomes a bit of a viewing commitment and it hurts you know and so you don't get as many people so that you know part of what you know I feel and I think it's not just me it's everyone's part of the team is that we would be better served to sort of break our content up more appropriately because it's really frustrating you work on a 30 or 40 minute show everyone jams it to get it out there and then you know there's people going I just want to see the dopamine cook show me the pretty pictures from five minutes I don't want anything more what's the summary of the show I don't have time to watch it it's like okay so so I think what we're what we're thinking about doing is taking the
00:59:11
featurette stuff and you know and and making those bigger more in depth better higher production quality but not try to force one every week like let's do a feature at let's do a deep dive we finished mining let's go into mining let's go and how we did it while the challenges were like it's sort of behind the scenes really slick behind the scenes like a little mini dock or something that would happen and that's for you know your your subscribers your diehards and the people that really want to know everything about it but it's also in a way that can be accessible if someone sighs I just wanna know about the the main but it's but that's a different thing then you're sort of weekly update which is like okay here's a weekly update is kind of like a quick snapshot of what's what's been happening in star citizen and you know here's a you know like the studio update
00:59:58
in a sort of brief format where you see some really cool stuff but it's not really going into the details but you get a sense of what's happening what the progression is and it's you know digestible in a in a nice easy non massive amount of time required way and very visual and fun and then we'll also want to be doing some content that's more applicable to people that like hey I want to know about star citizen and so we're sort of thinking about instead of like trying to jam a whole bunch of content into one show why don't we take you know not do less content but break it up break it up and be more targeted and spend a bit more time to increase the production quality levels I mean we've been you know we're actually actively sort of hiring up on the video what we call gvp general video production so we just brought in you know a new senior editor and we're
01:00:47
looking for showrunner and so we're trying to up you know and and you know we'll we'll probably set up in such a way that you know yeah we'll we'll have the capacity to do things and and and you know do them too a little higher quality and also doing with maybe a bit more because the other big problem that we have with the content generation is you know getting the developers getting them to interview them getting the b-roll for them it can be a heart attack every single week as well sometimes where things were late in the past just because you know they're busy they're trying to ship something or you know they've got a they've got one of their sprints that's due and they've got to get it done and so with a bit more time bit more planning a bit more staffing focused on the on the on the video side
01:01:36
and not being beholden to oh we need one feature or two featurettes a week and we need the studio up there and all this sort of stuff all crammed in I think we'll be able to to deliver it more consistently in quality and do a better job with the development side so they feel like they're not just getting harassed like on the twos Wednesday for some b-roll for the show on Thursday and and and and you know it's an ongoing challenge but we're trying like like in everything we try to do we want to improve every aspect whether it's the game you know how we interact with the community how we do our video press so we're always looking to make it better and do it and so this is this is kind of what we think would be better so like I said it won't be less content it will just be more targeted and different different sort of
01:02:27
kind of content for the appropriate people and then if you want to see it all of course you can see it all but you know yeah I just because otherwise like what's the point is like all that you everyone slaves over there a TV and you know now there's like this so I made a five-minute cut of it because they could they don't want to watch that it's like well we should be doing that five-minute cut not the you know we the community doesn't need to do that for us we should do it and so the people like that could have that and they could have the you know the people that really want the in-depth piece and they really want to get behind the scenes and see what's up in there that I think that would all be better because then it will be you know because sometimes we've had features that we haven't finished the feature on right and so it was sort of talking about what they're gonna do and I find that kind of frustrating because we don't have the final imagery we don't have the final or like graphics people are still talking about what they're going to implement so right for me I'd much rather it we we do a feature at
01:03:15
like okay we've done this thing and now we can like do a nice making of and stuff not the similar we had these you know we've shifted around on the commercial side so you know we've now got we've sort of with the quarterly cycle and we've staffed up on you know the video product so instead of having to grab cinematic artists or other people to try to capture a gameplay or do some of stuff we've actually hired some you know I think some from the fan cam really broken have some community but bring them in to help us make some of this stuff that we can we can you know create say some of the like they have you know the the warlock commercial that we just had or the the eclipse one so anyway yeah I know so so we're we're
01:04:07
try to improve on all these of like a thing you know we just may be a bit slower than you all guys want us to be about it now we're not announcing any specific plans right now which is what Chris mentioned we're not saying that this is gonna be on this stand this we're still working on a step out we're gonna take the next couple weeks next couple months to experiment with like with a couple things you might you might see certain things on this day or certain things on this day but the idea here is to basically make our content into smaller easier to just easier to share with your friends yes yeah less of a continuous bombardment I mean you remember the days we used to do a YouTube video every day of the week Monday through Friday every single that is a new thing and it starts to become kind of we never want to be a chore so so we're looking at well yeah and you don't want you don't have filler right
01:04:54
because like you know I know everyone yeah everyone always has rose-colored glasses about the past so they'd go but you know like in the old days I mean you know last year we it was quite nice we had our we used to cycle between the studios and then we had the future ads and stuff and it was a bit easier because we haven't had any releases so you know there was a bunch of stuff everyone's dying to know about but you know even then it would be like you know there'd be like ah this Austin one they don't have anything screw that that's boring they're talking about this stuff that most boring episode ever you know and so it I think it would be better to you know it's not so much about quantity it's about making the quality higher and then making it sort of targeted appropriately so that's that's that's what we've been saying we've been you
01:05:42
know working you know we're working towards that we've still got some infrastructure to put in place because we're trying to solve the issue of how to keep everyone totally up to date on what we're developing so you feel like this progress not show everything because otherwise when you go to citizencon there's nothing to know or you know what place quadrant you'll be like well I already know what's going on and also not drive our developers crazy because they've got like you know multiple deadlines autumn because you know that's that's not fun for them either so when we're trying to find a good cadence for that but you know ultimately I think you know our goal long-term is to is to give you higher higher quality content more targeted
01:06:32
so just to assuage any concerns right now we're still doing a TV you're still doing calling all des I'll still be here on Fridays doing whatever the hell it is that I do like this ship ship shapes not going anywhere we're still a new ship ships although it might break out into its own things so it's easier to just you know have it and sure okay I mean that's what I think I mean I think like like at that point I should make the ship shape shouldn't be why would it be with a TV it should be about okay is it we're ready to talk about a ship you know and that should be it show it should be the focus because because otherwise we've got you you're sort of like you've got people that either skipped I mean like we can see it on the YouTube metrics it's you know not everybody watches the whole show there's like a much smaller percentage of the people that watch the whole show a lot of them watch just a portion of it you know usually the studio update or
01:07:19
whatever or maybe if there's a ship update they'll go and skip to that one so I think yeah it's better to be less this is about this is about the hurricane this is you know okay this is about mining this is you know this is what the studios are working on this week that's and so these changes start with a TV again I'm not going to tell you what it's gonna be we're still working that out and stuff but you'll see you see an ATV this week that was a little different than you used to 11 minutes long it's like that you know HTV next week will be something a little different than maybe the week after that we're gonna we're gonna try to experiment a couple different formats a couple different technical things you're actually gonna see the development of our mark of our video content messed up in the same way that you see the development of our game content so uh so uh look forward to that and if you can keep the pitchforks at bay for a little
01:08:06
bit while we experiment I would appreciate that that's just for me there'll be some pitchforks there's always pitchforks okay all right Chris that's it I'm gonna let you go alright and there you have your schedule is every time I think my schedule is crazy I open up Chris the schedule and I look I'm like all right I'm not so I'm not so bad so I'll let you get back to work thank you so much okay now we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back we'll do the wrap-up [Applause]
01:11:24
well that about does it for this week's show a special thanks to chris roberts for putting up with me for nearly four years and letting me do my thing I'm empowered by every time he shakes his head at me some housekeeping before we let you go the Alpha 3.2 flyable ships promotion launched yesterday now it's your chance to pick up the stealthy eclipse that devastating hurricane the newly revised Avenger the dangerous vanduul blade or the opulent 600 I I bought a thesaurus additionally I'm proud to announce that we've added the prospector to the pledged or permanently in honor of alpha 3.2 edition of mining to the star citizen universe so now there's something for everybody additionally we have two brand new promotions going on over the next couple
01:12:11
weeks first we're gonna have a nice 4th of July fireworks screenshot contest now the full details for that will be found up on spectrum but from what I'm being told by Tyler it's probably going to involve some insurance fees to be certain and then also beginning next week we have a contest to create a new commercial for the origin 600 I now we've already seen some impressive work by citizens when they didn't know there were prizes on the line but now is your chance to help us celebrate origins most recent addition to the galaxy so full details and submission rules for that contest will also go up on spectrum next week but you can go ahead and start your brainstorming ideas with your friends now and what do you hope to see from the six hunt I was gonna ask him to watch for reverse the verse live in Content Manager for global video production Jared Huckaby
01:12:59
we'll see you next week everybody you thanks for watching for the latest and greatest in star citizen squadron 42 you can subscribe to our Channel or you can check out some of the other shows and you can also head to our website at www.uvu.edu/library

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.