Inside Star Citizen: Dynamic Range | Spring 2021

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:05

   right now we're in the process of improving zeno threat one of the reasons we want to do this event again is because we've always known our community is fantastic they need a chance to play together and that's what we try to do with this dynamic events are things that draw people into the game they could be large they could be small it's also useful for testing core systems like the law system spawn timers the cargo system ship to ship communication your hud ui the possibilities are pretty much endless the remaster of the xenothread event has so many improvements based on the feedback from the last event there was a kind of reaction to the way

2. 00:00:53

   the phases as we call them the resupply phase and the showdown phase which was previously broken into two pieces you were ramping up to a big fight and then it just repeated the resupply and then you moved to showdown and it was just a big fight and it was a big for days on end what you'll get now is that basically you are resupplying the javelin that will then take you to the battle and should you do a really bad job of keeping its health up what you'll end up with is a smoking javelin on the other side so that's the major um like i'd say the headline change to the event itself but we've made so many of the fixes we have made changes to the hostility

3. 00:01:44

   system the ai would remember that you'd done something bad to them and even if they were busy saver javelin was busy fighting xenofret it could be like 15 minutes half an hour later that it remembers you know that you're someone who shot it and starts attacking you and you have no idea why now we've put this decay in what it means is if you do go above a friendly fire threshold you will turn hostile but that the the length of time you will remain hostile will depend on how many times you you know did you sustain fire on them we've also massively reworked the way friendly fire works because previously there was just one set of friendly fire for everything in the game now it's split into

4. 00:02:33

   ai which we're much more lenient with and players which we obviously have to be a lot less lenient with one of the other ways we'll be improving xenofret is with new dialogue we had players who weren't quite sure of what they had to do from moment to moment the game is so deep but maybe people aren't understanding that like it's the first time we've done it like you can scan these wrecks and you can see that there are still cargo aboard and that there are enemies aboard before you even go on because that was one of the big complaints like they'd get to a wreck and find it empty so there's now dialogue lines reminding you you can scan these things before you're even anywhere near them one of the main um like criticisms we got was that there were no rewards

5. 00:03:22

   we're now going to be giving rewards uh based on reputation because we've added reputation to zeno threat with the um you know addition of reputation we're able to start using that to um build reputation with the cdf the civilian defense force and like the more missions you do or the better you do within missions with these in these events um the higher you'll go up through the standings with them and depending on what standing you're at and when the event ends you'll get various different rewards so we're really looking forward to having uh the event uh work alongside all of the new systems we have coming online plus all the

6. 00:04:10

   things we've added to the event itself so we have alongside we're gonna have the capacitors we've got uh new scanning and pinging it's not just an event it's not just a week event that we then throw away or anything like that we have continued to work not to improve zeno threat but to improve the next fleet battle so our next dynamic event is going to be nine tails lockdown in ninetales lockdown the ninetails criminal gang is going to lock down a space station under the control of crusader security and both sides will then recruit players to help them to either end or continue the lockdown that's actually going to allow us to do

7. 00:04:57

   some really interesting stuff with combining pvp and pve content and seeing how you all kind of interact with each other and honestly fight against each other in a more controlled ring nine tails basically breaks down into four phases in the first phase which we call prologue we're basically trying to get players online and let them know that something is about to happen [Music] eventually after phase one has been running for long enough it kicks into phase two in phase two uh basically crusader is aware that something is causing a quantum blockade around a station and is making it so that it is quite dangerous and time-consuming to get to and from that station they recruit players to protect ships that they will send out

8. 00:05:44

   to scan for whatever is causing that quantum blockade however on the other side of things ninetails is going to be recruiting to have players go and destroy those ships and seeing those two sides kind of collide with each other is where we're hoping to get a lot of the interesting game play in that stage we've seen some really interesting stuff in uh phase two uh just from player tactics and such that have been very enjoyable to watch um for some of our qa testing actually they employed at one point because the scanning ships are somewhat fragile a hammerhead is almost a shield wall physically blocking missiles and fire against those scanning ships and deploying chaff and such in order to reroute the missiles which made for some very interesting tactical discussions right before

9. 00:06:32

   they would test for that day we're hoping that players will begin to develop similar strategies in order to counter each other in this more sandbox style of pvp as for phases three and four i'd love to give you more detail but jared won't let me um we want to leave some things for you guys to discover and there are little pieces of content scattered throughout the event that aren't going to be explicitly handed to you or told to you in a mission description that i'm really excited to see you guys discover as you're playing through this over and over it is a smaller event it is only going to last for about three to four hours most likely be completed over the course of an afternoon and it is the first of many events that we're hoping to kind of build into a stable of these smaller events so that we can make it so that this weekend is that one and the next weekend is the next just to

10. 00:07:20

    keep players coming back to the game ninetails lockdown is slated for release with 314. we hope to run it several times throughout the course of that patch and in future patches as well we're really excited to see you guys play it we're excited to see which side you pick be a crusader or ninetales and coming up next jumptown too so keep an eye out for that perhaps one of the biggest additions to the star citizen universe this year has been the inclusion of our new dynamic events system where teams are continuing to work improving old returning favorites as well as developing new adventures alike and yeah we're going to talk about jump down 2 when the time is right don't you doubt it but before that and up next it's sprint report time so let's get to it let's start things

11. 00:08:08

    off by jumping back into the world of brand recognition and logo generation with this review of several new corporations making their way into the persistent universe alongside the related gameplay systems like eclipse mutual the high-end personal health insurance designed to allow for a wide range of features covering everything from the number of times you can be cloned to a robust choice of replacement limbs and all the way down to preferred hospitals to maybe even waking up in your own hab and for those who want to know more be sure you tune in next quarter ahead of player healing scheduled release in alpha 315. there was also a push on further developing the tax collection bureau a branch of the uee government in charge of tax

12. 00:08:54

    legislation accumulation and regulation but don't worry if you can't pay the uee is always looking for volunteer service as a means of squaring your debt to the emperor now at review time it was decided option 4 was most in line with existing uee branding and will proceed further into development then we've got cousin crows which specializes in customizing ships with paint jobs and special modifications as well as crew uniforms and accessories to deck your ship out with now some of you will no doubt recognize cousin crows as the group responsible for the original kraken modification but this logo was in the pipeline at this time for all the other things that we just mentioned and at review the thinking was that we'd go with option number one

13. 00:09:44

    moving along to vfx news the team has been working on an update to the thruster dust system that converts the existing particles from a radial effect to a new directional one that's actually based on the thruster direction to any surface normal that it may be hitting at any given moment now what you're seeing here is the effect changing not only by the raycast angle being perpendicular or parallel to the surface but also by the strength of the thruster output and soon by the type of the surface itself and the force of the surrounding wind volume now as they continue to push this tech towards its gold standard this means the overall effect will be far more accurate to what players expect and is one more way systemic systems are used to author the star citizen universe at every opportunity

14. 00:10:33

    in other vfx news let's return to the current progress of shipboard fire in the verse oh i've missed you with this look at directionality and how it can help inform the player about things like the spread or or how it's being affected by the universe around it now in this sprint the team was looking into adding more dynamics and interact-ability to both the fire and smoke allowing it to be impacted by the various forces that may occur within a ship what you're seeing here is a vector field being used to bend the fire in the direction of whatever force we want to apply here switching between a simple radial force that comes out from the middle to a more spiral force and then back again now the idea for these vector fields is to be spawnable from the particle system

15. 00:11:21

    itself making anything from fire extinguishers to to full-scale room decompression act upon the flames in a realistic and expected way we also have this brief look at sign distance fields being used to direct the venting of flames and smoke throughout the hall of a ship and speaking of ships work has begun on revisions to the aegis retaliator bringing it up to the gold standard including changes to the internal metrics needed for successful npc traversal moving the docking caller adjusting the lift dimensions and more work also continues on the aegis redeemer grey box interior with these looks at the remote turret bay further changes to the habitation section

16. 00:12:20

    and development of the internal machinery that keeps this floating gunship up in the air we also have this look at the continuing gray box progress of the airy starfighter from crusader industries a ship that's coming together rather quickly based on all the previous work completed for the mercury and the hercules next up with work on converting all flyable ships to the canvas sliced hud in 314 continuing designers and artists have begun concepting out additional manufacturer-based heads-up displays like this proposal for drake interplanetary ships seen here in several color variations now we're still pulling together other proposed layouts and color schemes

17. 00:13:08

    but it's another exciting step forward in diversifying the flight experience of our spacecraft made possible by our ui tech team tomorrow on star citizen live we'll have dan truffin and members of the eu persistent universe feature team on the show to answer questions about their work and one of the new aspects they're currently working on is loot generation seen here in testing on correa station now we'll talk more about how it works what can be found inside and how it interacts with the upcoming advances to player inventory tomorrow so check that out and wrapping things up this week with a look at some environment work we have this look at potential prop placement overlays for the exteriors of our colonial

18. 00:14:00

    outposts an early look at whitebox progress of the hospital being built out for grimex as well as white box progress on the smaller clinics that will populate several of the various space stations found throughout the stanton system and lastly a look at the continuing lighting pass going on throughout horizon the upcoming landing zone for the gas giant crusader now we'll be talking more about everything that goes into bringing auras into life

19. 00:14:48

    from the lighting to the vfx to the npc costumes the signage and the iconography and even the music next week in our quarterly season finale so stay tuned for that so what did we learn this week well we learned that dynamic events are not only a fantastic way to add activity and conflict to the players in the persistent universe they can also move story and features forward for development and provide much needed and essential testing opportunities that may not arise as frequently on their own that they come in all shapes and sizes from both weeks long to a simple afternoon and that their effects in improving the overall persistent universe as a whole persist long after the events themselves conclude

20. 00:15:36

    now be sure you keep an eye out for the results of all the various alien week festivities that have been going on and remember that digital citizencon is on its way at the end of next quarter for inside star citizen i'm jared huckaby see you all next week so you