Inside Star Citizen: Race Chase | Fall 2022

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:00

   so have you uh you've seen uh have you ever seen the ISD videos before whether we do QA yes uh what what did you think about previous QA videos um yeah it's been really cool and like it's been nice that the users have been able to highlight what QA does have you ever looked at the comments I think um I think the comments were a bit um interesting to say the least are you saying people don't like UA videos I hope so I hope they enjoyed the upcoming content that's coming um no uh it's been a long road since 318 but um I'm sure people are really going to enjoy all the uh new content that's coming

2. 00:00:48

   [Music] the difference between embedded QA and general QA is that we work closely with the development teams we provide direct feedback to locations and features that they are working on so for me that's the lighting team and the interactables team I work hand in hand with the various different content teams so sandbox one two eul1 eul2 yeah because the lighting team is kind of one of the teams that work on things right right at the end Tuesday the case where I'm kind of jumping on a location just before the rest of the QA Department up on it we look out for specifically art related issues that could be things like missing

3. 00:01:37

   materials replace me textures with a normal QA they would have to put in a bug report it gets sent up to production and they send it over to the appropriate artist or designer whereas for me I'm essentially cutting out the middleman I can just directly go to a developer or an artist or designer and say hey I've noticed this issue is this intended or just giving them real-time feedback and bugs the idea is that we find and iron out any of the issues before it is delivered directly to the QA department so they can then get out to The Wider why the the backers and The Wider public right now I'm working on the iae Halls the drink into planetary kind of Taken hold this year they're running the show theme wise it's it's very different that's not just sort of simple color

4. 00:02:24

   changes it's kind of the overall feel of the event the floor layouts have also changed so the lights that are going to be lighting up the ships are going to be all different basically I need to make sure that well the events are aren't dark to begin with lighting the ships on display correctly the various environment probes around the area reacting correctly to their environment color grades working correctly you know the atmospheric fog that's placed in the area by the team is present and racked into lights properly I think the lighting team have done a great job I think the environment teams in general have done a great job but because I sort of am speaking for the lighting team I really like what they've done yeah looks awesome because we've had a bit extra time we've

5. 00:03:13

   been able to actually bring out these outposts um they won't initially meant to come up for 318 when 317 came out we had just initially five directly outposts on Microtech but now we're time's not by seven so when 318 rolls out they should be 35 Darling outposts 10 on Microtech 10 on Hurston and between one to six on various different moons throughout the standard system well the players can go through and explore the environment they can look for loot boxes so they can get a Munch or maybe find a multi-tool or just things that they could sell at kiosks there are also delivery missions as well similar to the ones that you've seen in where the players will go to a daily

6. 00:04:01

   Outpost which is occupied by nine tails uh take them out get the delivery box and deliver it to wherever it needs to go so some of the issues that we've seen so far with the daily Outpost are related to AI as you might have seen in citizen con um there have been some updates to the combat Ai and it's kind of slowly making its way into the Pu so there's a few lot of teasing issues there just to make sure that the AI are actually working correctly within the daily outpost on the planets and hopefully not walking into walls because 318 is have it's got a lot of content coming um with would say like Pez for instance um it has been a bit more of a challenging release just because obviously the new issues that are coming

7. 00:04:48

   up because of Pez but I think that the teams are tackling it as quickly as they possibly can we're thankful that we're getting the extra time to kind of really flesh out and make sure that it's a quality release for The Players currently I am working on the new rest stop stations that are going to be found in the Pyro system once we release that in the upcoming 4.0 patch because these stations are lowerless and there's going to be no um like green zones to govern your behavior on the stations we're going over it just to make sure that the locations are fun for the backers to engage in combat so we've been covering stuff like sniping spots combat routes violence against facing AI

8. 00:05:36

   um you know also identifying issues potential issues with the environment that might hinder the gameplay experience such as potential issues with lighting and fog potential bottlenecks and choke points in the station layout that might cause problems for players and end up getting uh bottlenecked by another hostile group we found some issues with some of the environmental puzzles currently there's a bit of desync if I was to disable say an electronic trap it would not show up for the other player so we've been working like getting some debug and stuff to make sure that the devs are fully aware of what the issue is and they can Rectify this before a wider release there's a dramatic difference between these stations and the ones that are found in the Stanton system they're very uh dark and oppressive in

9. 00:06:26

   nature and very run down and they offer a lot more gameplay opportunities for players and also um a lot more possibilities and overall experience that the current rest stops just are not capable to cater to well I want to try to emphasize to the community is just how important and respected a QA is within cig you constantly looking out for issues and ensuring that the quality of the game is as high as standard as possible once we've been through a stretch and we've got a new patch out to see how the back is responding to the new content and to see how they're enjoying it um it's it's always a highlight to see just how many people uh enjoy what we're doing I'm sure there's people out there you

10. 00:07:17

    know some of our backers that would want to get into this this industry and and the you know QA is a good levels entry level position yeah but right in this conversation we're hiring we're hiring that's it quality assurance teams are an essential element of any video games development and embedding them right there into the pits next to the designers next to the artists next to the programmers allows for a synchronicity of purpose and an acknowledgment of necessity has been a Hallmark of star citizens development for years and while technical teams continue to put Alpha 318 through its Paces ahead of its now scheduled December release the delay from its original publish has provided a number of limited opportunities to content teams to afford them chances they might not otherwise have been able to utilize

11. 00:08:05

    and for members of the EU sandbox one team that means getting to continue an initiative started earlier this year to research Community created race tracks in the Stanton system and find new ways to incorporate them officially into the very fabric of the persistent universe so the yellow raised track was taken inspiration from one of the race tracks built by the community which was the Grim prospects racetrack on the Star season racing Discord I believe so there are someone there that are exact uh we've taken you know direct copies of those tracks but the yellow one is a little bit different because we've moved it slightly away from grimex into an adjacent asteroid field so our designer indeed Antoine fovel he's taken um you

12. 00:08:54

    know a course and he's made it for the players to play I think it's just really nice to have more space pris we have you know attractions like Grim hex but we need more in the surrounding vicinity so you know it might be a case of where you're just flying through the asteroid ring in yellow trying to get to the planet's surface and you come across something like this and we've really built up the structures with Refinery modules and cargo modules that we've used before so it's a nice point of interest and also it looks cool you know we're using lots of the natural formations of the Rocks themselves in austro Asteroid tethers and stuff like that that are already in the game those are our natural checkpoints for the race I think it's really cool that we have a community that we can take inspiration from and build something of Our Own as much as we play test as much as we spend

13. 00:09:41

    time in the engine the players are the ones who are spending hours and hours refining their skills and thinking of new activities to do so for example with the Grim prospects racetrack it was quite bare you know they were just racing around a pre-memorized route going around all of these asteroids but now we can really delineate that race and you know we can art it up and make it look pretty as well so people have more memorable moments to talk about from Gila named for the oldest of three siblings featured in the now classic 24th century children's morality tale a gift for Baba which you can read in its entirety on the robertspace industries.com website shout out to the narrative team we moved to terpy named for the ancient Greek Muse of Music the smallest and perhaps most Barren of microtech's three moons

14. 00:10:31

    well I'm currently working on now is the racing track on Utopia it's called Icebreaker yeah I believe it's actually from the community originally and what we did is we took that initial bad burn structure and we basically created using the Microtech prefabs and assets is we actually created like a little research facility based foreign we've kept the path as close as we could to the initial Community race track but what we've done is we've added bits of flavor in um from structures to fly past structures to fly under and then we've done a bit of a a lighting pass to kind of help navigate the player around this space but without feeling like the intention beforehand

15. 00:11:21

    was meant to be for race and it was meant to be this kind of large up and front sea kind of facility with like lots Long struts coming out and kind of good there's good Vantage points as well for like when the players come together that we have little Landing Pad spots that where you know you could you know group up get together you could watch the you know your teammates flying around you know trying to beat one another kind of competitively on Utopia there's not actually um tons of pris and I think to be honest this new space this new location is going to be one of the key locations on this Moon now these two new race tracks on yila and uterpy make up only a third of the community Creations being canonized in

16. 00:12:10

    the upcoming Alpha 318 and we're going to be showcasing even more being created by our partners at turbulent on Tomorrow's Star Citizen life but before before we leave the topic this week here's a brief visual teaser of EU sandbox one's third track this patch on the surface of our Corp on the outskirts of area 18. so what did we learn this week well we

17. 00:13:03

    learned that like the developers sitting beside them embedded QA are often found working on patches for next week next month and next year all at the same time that the number of outposts and race tracks in the stand system are expected to explode in the upcoming Alpha 318. and that we're always going to look to the community for inspiration when it comes time to add additional content to the Precision Universe now don't forget that tomorrow we'll be talking with our friends at turbulent about even more Community race tracks coming online in Alpha 318 and then of course next week is the start of our annual Intergalactic Aerospace Expo 2952 where almost every single ship and vehicle in the Star Citizen Universe gets its moment to shine you can learn all about it up on the robertspace industries.com website we're inside Star Citizen I'm Jared Huckabee and we'll see you all here next

18. 00:13:51

    week