Around the Verse: Episode 2.03

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] all that and more on the next Empire report at 2200 SE this video made possible by the ICC Stellar surveyors and subscribers like you hey everybody Welcome to a very special episode of around the verse I'm Sandy Gardner and this week we are coming to you from Foundry 42 in Manchester

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   England and I'm joined by a very special guest hi I'm Ben Lesnik no actually I'm Aon Roberts and um I'm glad to be here and this week we talk to Foundry 42's senior project manager Tom Johnson but first let's talk current events Erin what did you do this weekend uh we had a party this weekend and it was actually kind of fun we did check it out I would like to thank for from the

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   bottom of my heart our whole team and all of our fans for sharing this opportunity and experience to see our shared dreams come [Applause] true cool it was fun yeah no I actually had a lot had a lot of fun there meeting all the guys from the community and uh and actually what was really great was for the team because they managed to um you know actually meet all the community guys they could talk about a bunch of stuff and and you know and actually for our guys and there's a lot of us there like 130 now is just to be there and to and to you know mix the guys who are playing the game and get that feedback is is always brilliant for the team yeah so we hope all the guests who went got some special attention and had some great conversations with our staff because they were all there and everybody seemed to have a really good

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   time I I really enjoyed myself it was great no no it was it was fantastic I I I I kind of uh I do what I usually do in the demos is I I quite enjoy doing the work to get the demos going but when the demos start I tend to go hide so uh I went around and so when it when it kicked off I kind of come around the back and I actually joined the audience and just watched it it's a lot of fun just to see the reactions of everybody so it was great yeah from the event organization side I always get a little stressed right before because you just want everything to go well you want everybody to have a good time um but everything went really smoothly and so about halfway through the show I was like oh great I can relax a little bit yeah no it was fantastic and and the U you know the passion of the guys in the community and supporting this is just always it's great to see yeah it's awesome a lot of Cosplay yeah and also it's just it's just for for the morale of the teams here when

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   they see you know the reaction it just makes a huge difference it really drives people on so it's fantastic and gifts we said no gifts but I got this this is cool yeah I've got one as well I'm I'm going to try it on later I might have to see if it'll fit because in case I have to lose some weight to get into it but um they they're gameing the right size I just think I've put some weight on lately oh okay thanks to everybody for coming thanks to all everybody who was online we had like a record number of people on Twitch and uh we look forward to next year's event and the entire presentation is now online so you guys can check it out and um hopefully you enjoy it you know as much as we did and you can also check out the ark star map which is available now and uh also the referral program is launched um so check it out and in introduce uh star CI to some friends and if they're on the fence we are running a free fly promo which

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   goes for two weeks and I'm pretty sure that's all ships that we have flyable right now so that's pretty cool MH yeah anyone who's interested can download the staron alfha and play Arena Commander for free through October the 24th um details are available below and finally for those who were concerned the fuselage from the stream was a Concord Jet and not a full-scale agis Retaliator we don't make real spaceships yet yet the weekly star Marine update and the September monthly report also went live over the weekend check out both for an in-depth look at the work that we're doing yeah now it's back to work for our teams around around the world uh you're going to be hearing more about uh Al about Alpha 1.3 which is the next build coming out and of course um you know the um Crusader system which we showed which is going to be the large world and also

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   we'd like to thank everyone uh who's made Endeavor launch a huge success science science yeah science and if you're interested in picking up a ship that's more brwn than brains a selection of limited military ships is now available and with the new CCU system you can upgrade any ship in your inventory without losing insurance or early backer benefits we also introduced a new ship over the weekend uh that's the um s the age of saber uh it's actually designed and will be built here in Manchester and so that's kind of the guys are looking forward to doing that and um it's available as concept ship now it is the the ages potato that's right AKA sa but wait there's more we also have an array of new physical merchandise in the store including Squadron 42 mugs and shirt and

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   a set of cloth patches for the subscribers there is also a special subscriber patch which is very cool that's a lot of updates um anyway let's check in with F Studios on news from around the verse hey everybody and welcome back to Santa Monica I'm Eric kyen Davis with Daren vck and we've got a few updates for you this week um one of the things we're working on uh our own Zan Bean he's working hard on the um UI for all of our large World ships so we just demoed that those at citizen con this last weekend and uh he's just got some things to tighten up and button down and and we're going to have some really awesome UI in these big ships for everybody to interact with and play with they are pretty complex yeah uh on top of that uh actually sitting right next to us is our our writing and Arch

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   archist team Oh Sherry hyberg had been working on our starm map which I think you guys saw at citizen con and is looking pretty darn sexy if you I may say so myself yeah uh it was a pretty wow filled kind of presentation to show how some of those Trad routs or how actually some of how the wormholes work on different size class sh um ships yeah so hopefully we'll see more of that in the near future and finally um constellation thank you yeah there's so much going on we don't know what to go over uh the constellation last week was a bit of a blur uh we've got the constellation being made flight ready so we've got a lot of our guys Kirk Tom Dan Tracy uh a lot of these guys working on getting getting the interior ready also getting a flight capable working on and tweaking some of the balance behind that so it's one of our oldest multi Cru ships and so we

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    felt it's been it's kind of due to be flyable and make make it something that people can fly together with their friends and everybody got to see it this weekend right so they got to see it flyable but that wasn't fully finished that was really really close being done and we're almost there so it's going to be uh it's all coming together it's going to be really cool and I think that's it that's it from Santa Monica so again thanks I'm Eric I'm Darian see you next week hey guys Jake Ross here associate producer of the persistent universe and I'm here with you this week to talk a little bit about social module V1 um hope you guys enjoyed citizen con I know I did uh one of the things that was announced was yes the buggy is going to be an art Corp so uh we heard your cries uh and your uh your your want of the uh the buggy to be uh able to drive around our Corp and run over people and we're

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    going to give it to you so uh For Better or Worse we're going to have the buggy driving around it has uh explosion effects on it it's got uh damage uh the ability to take damage so uh if you die while in the buggy or if you get run over by the buggy you actually uh die and respawn in the medical unit so uh we've got quite a little uh quite a bunch of new uh features associated with that thing so we hope you guys enjoy driving that thing around our Corp so uh that's one of the things I got for you the next thing um female Locomotion our animators now are working on the female uh Locomotion sets we've got a lot of lot of the male stuff done um so we're going to hopefully try to get the uh the female character in the game here for you guys to to play with um in the near future so uh look for that in upcoming

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    releases um so the next thing is uh art Corp optimization so um one of the things that we are doing uh with the addition of the new uh construction area for art Corp Area 18 um and we're trying to get the uh player count to increase as well so with that comes a lot of work on the optimization side we got court s heavily involved in that um our global environment Tech art lead um and he is doing a fantastic job with that so hopefully we'll get that thing uh running pretty smoothly on on everybody's machines it was running very smooth last time um from what I hear but uh this time it will be uh we'll work on a little bit harder to make it even more optimized so we can increase the player count so we'll have not just 25 people but we'll have a little more than that

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    so that'll be that'll be fun to see as well so uh look for social module V1 uh to come out here pretty soon um can't give an exact date but uh it should be in your hands uh fairly quickly so uh lots of cool stuff uh in that in that release so we'll look forward to seeing you guys playing around with it there so all right that's all I got for you guys this week thanks see you L hey y'all Mike here from Foundry 42 coming at you live from Sunny whims slow here in Manchester and with another the update from the studio with me today is Chris new to QA crashing games crashing ships and fighting around the world it's I don't know I mean can we start using that do you think that sounds good I think so yeah fighting round the verse fighting round the verse there we go oh God why didn't I think of that straight away anyway um we as as you can imagine uh the weekend has been pretty crazy for

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    us we had a great time with citizen con uh you guys saw all the cool stuff uh but just because that's been and gone doesn't mean that our work ends here at Foundry if anything our work becomes even more um kind of intense um what have you guys been looking at lately we've been focusing on 130 uh playing with the new size four gun it's uh really interesting to use going to have some good Dynamics to fight um and also the additions to arop it's going to be a little bit bigger and has boogies which I'm sure you will be able to have plenty of Mischief with yeah it sounds to be like trolling opportunities are plenty are going to be yeah yeah AR cor's going to change for the best um well once these guys have been looking at 130 obviously we've got another team looking really intently at uh Crusader trying to get that in the

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    best shape possible for you guys obviously no ETA on that at the minute uh we're just trying our best to get it as tight as possible so that it's enjoyable for you guys when it when it is available when and if yeah you know how it is with we with dates and stu um but yeah that's that's coming along greatly we're really enjoying that um yeah haven't really got much else that we can go into really without getting into crazy spoiler territor so I guess we better keep our Gob shut about that and yeah just kind of say yay citizen con everything was awesome Squadron 42 ah Water cast um so yeah um I guess we best leave it there more than anything and crack back on with it because the game's waiting for us out there um so anyway I've been Mike I've been Chris and we'll see you all around the verse

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    hey Brian sham from Frankfurt again um back this week uh citizen con so I'm glad you guys finally got able to see stuff the Cinematic team was working on here I know we kept saying that they were making stuff and you'll you'll see some of it so you see the the cast is pretty nuts it's pretty crazy we're all excited here um about the cast it was great working with them facial animations coming in line as you saw um and the stuff we did in citizen con 4 Cinema as well as everything else has really created that Foundation to be able to allow us to build on and push things out and even improve the quality from what you saw um this week I have Todd papy you've seen his face here before he's a game director I know they've done other

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    interviews with him but uh let him chat about design and game and kind of what they've been pushing on this last week and so so we've been looking at Eva um for the large World our basically kind of the baby puu what we call it and how that translates into s42 then we've also been looking at prefab for levels as well as what we can do from a character standpoint so that when we spawn in this level it has uh the proper characters associated with it as well as the proper um building set and so on and so forth then we've also been looking at the ship and FPS weapon Pipeline and breaking that down to see how we can pump out more content and make sure that the manufacturers across the board uh

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    basically when you see a bearing on the ship that translates into a bearing in the FPS realm yeah so you're working with with Toby our lead guy I think I mentioned Toby's name every week but uh yeah so you guys working with him got some new cool stuff coming in line yeah so you've seen the bearing cannon that was shown at citizen con and and same with the apocalypse arms um Mass driver so expect to see more along those lines that's cool awesome short and sweet as always uh thanks for watching and we'll see you next week I am sweet as always a big thank you to our Studios from around the world yes thank you and Tom Hennessy had a chance to sit down with our senior project manager Tom Johnson Tom meets Tom who filled Us in

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    on what our UK team is working on thanks guys I'm here at Foundry 42 in the UK talking to senior project manager Tom Johnson Tom hey Tom Right Tom how you doing yeah good thanks yeah so senior project manager that sounds like an important job can you tell us a little bit about what what what that means I guess to the L person for me it's just supporting the team you know we got a lot of guys here and uh making sure they've they've got everything they need and uh the project can be very demanding at times so we always got to stay on our feet um and

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    just make sure we can kind of adapt to what's needed and yeah I guess my my role is just making sure everything is uh going okay kind of like uh for the citizen con where you were the guy that was running around kind of making sure that we had all the video we needed for the presentation we had all the PE you were just you were the you were making things happen yeah exactly uh so I mean the the role in production can can change uh quite dramatically so for this instance citiz and com was coming up and had more of like event planning to do and actually sort of go from game development into what we needed to get ready for the actual show um so there's actually some Logistics involved and uh we working right up to the wire and making sure we getting the actual uh game content uh ready as well as sort of stuff for the marketing side of things

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    with the videos and and I was working with yourself on the day and uh it was a lot of fun and very rewarding and it was really great to sort of see all that come to fruition on at the actual isn't isn't that just amazing like that feeling being in there the energy and everything is pretty cool yeah so specifically you know when we're not when you're not event planning and wearing all those other hats uh what what what are you what's your main area of focus as far as uh the big picture of Star Citizen yeah uh so big picture wise Squad 42 uh is is kind of my area of focus um but with the way that we develop with Star Citizen there's a lot of the core systems are going to be built Four Star Citizen and Squad and 42 so the team is is very much a a cohesive

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    unit to build all these systems together uh make the content and and make uh a project that can really s of grow and expand out into the persistent universe and so we don't just make a a single player campaign game that um doesn't have any systems that can be uh built out towards the persistent universe and actually um make the you know the bigger uh end goal of the large world and and all the different uh systems around the universe so you know we've we've always had that in mind and it takes a little longer to make these things modular but um that way we can split the game up and have our different areas of focus like Squadron for myself and there's the FPS part of it and space combat and so on and that way we can get them all to come together and actually um have a solid

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    foundation to make make the game on sure so that can that be frustrating sometimes or challenging where you know you're focused on a single player campaign and you know you need this this and this to make this happen but the big picture calls for that to be more than you needed to be but you have to kind of wait or you're depending on other people to kind of do their thing so you you guys can come in and do yours yeah it's it is a very challenging project but we've we've got a great team and we've always been um very creative in the way that we solve our problems and it's um often been a case of um trying to really plan a few steps ahead and we've really managed to do that to to a point where we you know we're really confident on what we're building now it's just a matter of getting it done we know the the tech that we need we know the content that we need and we just need the uh the Manpower which we've kind of

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    got up to speed with now which we didn't have um when I started a couple of years ago it's uh certainly ramped up now to a point where we can actually feel confident about really kicking some ass and getting the game done yeah so Squadron 42 for the most part you know Chris talks about it it's it's the single player campaign he kind of talks about a little bit what it is but for the most part has been kind of shrouded in a lot of secrecy up till this point yeah and you've been working on it and you guys have been working on it but not really talking about anything or no one knows what's going on so what does it feel like finally now that citizen citizen con has passed to finally reveal some of what's going into it and seeing the kind of reaction that people have had to it yeah the I mean the reaction especially was great uh to see that firstand at citizen KH actually being

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    amongst the fans there and hearing them gasp and like just see the the cast come through and the reaction to the marot tour and you know we've got a lot more to deliver on on what we actually showed with the maror but um it's great to actually uh finally have the the kind of content out there to to start showing people what it is we're going to produce cuz it's it is going to be right up there so yeah it's it's a relief for me to be able to talk about it a bit more freely it's nice Rel for nice for all of us it's it's great because we've all been kind of you know hanging on to this information for for months and months and months now and it's like you want to talk about it but um well Tom I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me pleasure it's been great being out here for the week I've had a great time and you guys have been amazing I hope to come come back and do some more pieces soon so once again Tom Johnson senior

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    project manager back to you guys all right so while I have you here Erin let me ask you a few questions um I see that Ben is trying to get me on one of his puns and we're not I'm not going to go there on that one um but uh you and Chris in the games industry how far back are we talking oh uh on the games

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    industry said uh Chris and I first worked together I was probably about 12 years old when he first started working making games in Manchester and that's one of the first games I worked on which would have been uh wow probably wizor or something or maybe before that an old BBC micro game wow yeah so tell us what does a global head of production do what I've been doing is um and I sort of took this role on in June um which is basically I've visited different offices and what I've been trying to look at is how we can improve the efficiency within the organization and so uh what we did um you know uh when we started we went to where a lot of talent was to build these offices up as well so now we've actually got the offices going we've built up a different offic I spent a lot of time building the UK offic and the other offic been doing the same and what the the next step for me was to make

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    sure that we're actually focusing each office on what their strengths are and make sure that we we are um keeping the core core people who work together putting them in the same office because it creates great it creates large efficiencies so over the last few um you know months not only have I obviously been coordinating with all the production guys around the around the um organization but we've also been making decisions about where we want development to happen and what type of development so for instance we have a we have like a lot of UI guys who work in the manager office but there's also UI guys spread all over the rest of the organization so what we've actually done is we've Consolidated now so we actually have people who are coming from the other parts of the organization who are moving to Manchester so the all the UI guys are together working together because it's much more efficient it's faster it's better and also it means that the the it's the the UI we're creating um you know is is it's

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    basically you know in one um the words of my my vocabulary falling down but it's basically we're trying to make it uniform so it doesn't look like one piece of UI from some place looks completely different to another place and so for and things so it's all these kind of things we've done this on development as well it's important that we have you know the right people together in different officers uh because this is that this is absolutely 100% you know the way forward to actually get you know to basically produce the game we want to produce hats off to Zayn from moving from Austin to LA to now to now to the UK yeah he is coming over next month which will be fantastic U we also have um also we have the graphics group here as well which is under Ali Brown and also ARA's moving from the LA office to work with them here as well which would be great um so we already have the audio group in the UK which is fantastic as well things like that so we just basically a lot of

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    stuff is just you know focusing which offices you know do what and so and and making sure there's people together and there there's a number of people who from from Austin who are moving to LA to basically work closer with Chris you know such as like Tony Zur and sha Tracy and other people and so so basically we have everyone together who are making these sort of decisions and stuff and so and then making sure the different officers don't focus on what their strengths are mhm yeah I remember taking uh Ben Lesnik and and Alexis around uh La just showing them around and getting them accustomed so you're going to have to have a couple of your staff take Zayn around and ARA around yeah to the the sunny streets of Manchester yeah they they'll arrive just in time for snow yeah yeah but to be fair uh the citizen K this past week it's been outstanding we been actually the last um yeah just do a sales job and the last six weeks it's been fabulous had the Sun out you know it's been it's

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    been great yeah it's all you staff who would like to transfer to Sunny Manchester that's right um right so what is the studio here in Manchester focused on I think we kind of well I mean obviously Squadron 42 um is is is our huge Focus um and as well as we do a lot of other support and things but basically um you know um that that's kind of why the studio was built up in the first place Y and we did have a ship schedule meeting not that long ago so we do we have a large ship team here and we're working for all the Squadron 42 ships um as well as you know which are used both in Squadron 42 and in the persistant universe as well yes so can you tell us what ships specifically ER yeah so we are working on let's have a look uh right now in in full production we have the um the Avenger variant um which will be coming out um soon we have um the uh we're working on the um staff era uh which is

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    a a huge ship uh actually I think um it's like you know you guys have bought star fair you're in for treat um it's like it's pretty amazing um you know the scale of it and everything like that and and and also the uses of it because we now have um obviously uh when in the um the uh the large World stuff we're showing is now all the sort of fuel is in the working in the game as well so the star when that comes online is going to have a lot of purpose immediately which is going be great for the gaml um the Vanguard is in full production as well um so and that's looking great um that's you know in that kind of level and stuff as well um potato you have potato yes that's going to production um um because we want we want to have a we want to have a second ship to balance up um with the The Hornet where's the Hornet is much more of a sort of hard you know sort of tank and well armored the the um the um the potato is

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    basically uh is you know it's it's got high Shields but very low armor it's a little faster and so forth it be a nice balance of the way people like to play and so forth and things like that um what other ships we working on uh freelancer we're working on full production with us right now all the Retaliator um module um actual modules are all complete um uh which they're all finished the only thing we're waiting on is a little bit of code so we can swap them in and out so you get that soon as well there there's a lar of ship team here uh wow what else have we got CP others uh yeah I'm just trying to think oh obviously the Idis is is we're working on you guys saw um over the weekend um and then um uh am I missing anything the Jean the Jean Scout will be worked on that's out of la oh yeah yeah those are the ukes basic the moment

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    and we're actually still building the ship team we've already got another couple of ship guys coming on board um because obviously we the other thing is we've got a lot of the ships on Squadron 42 to finish off as well as well as get you know help on the on the Pu side of things cool that's a lot of ship information yeah it's a lot well basically we we we just you know add a bit more information we're we're splitting off the different manufacturers by studio so we want that consistency that's what we talked about before and so if you're basically having if you're talking about a an AIS or a sort of a misk or um you know sort of ship or or or that sort of then those are those are lines of all those ships which will be built out the UK office for now we're probably going to take another line as well once we get a few more staff and that way we have that consistency between the Styles and what they look like but also we build up large libraries of you know the materials and everything so we can actually then produce the ships a lot

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    faster and get them out so hopefully you know you guys will see the the rewards of that because you'll start see the ships happen a lot faster now we've built up big material libraries which allow us to do all this sort of stuff and we can't forget about GP drum roll please here we go all right the envelope not quite as good as Alexis is that's okay cuz Tom did it this time we make do and the award goes to Reddit user dogs of knowledge who recreated the Vanguard concept art in the unreal 4 engine in a very impressive video check it out and of course it wouldn't be proper to leave you without an art sneak peek sounds very proper when you say

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    it be sure to tune in to reverse the verse tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Twitch where the guys back in Santa Monica will discuss the art sneak peek and all events of the last week I never get to say that you know it's the first time I've said that and also uh just as always thanks to all subscribers who actually make this happen and allow us to do this show and um it's um you know this is actually um fun y I enjoyed this kind like ca you you won't see me again for a long time thanks Aaron we will see you guys next week on around the verse bye bye