Inside Star Citizen: Throwing Shade | Spring 2020

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:03

   what is a shader oh that's uh that's a tough question Oh have another graphics code hey there is a little a shader well I I don't know exactly what it does make things look cool I'm sure Ellie gave you a good answer as well god I hope I'm right a shader is the tiny program a very small program just usually just a few hundred lines of code that converts the geometry into pixels on the screen so it will decide the colors combine them in whichever way we think is relevant for that particular object and then yeah figure out what color it wants for that pixel on-screen one of the things that we're really proud of is the way the

2. 00:00:55

   vehicles look in stars and just to having untextured or flat shaded models that you can have the best model in the world it's not going to look great where it comes to life is the materials and since the star the project we've just been adding to our base shade up she called the alum shader but we didn't build it from the ground up so it was type of the decisions that were made and building that we couldn't really change without breaking existing assets we decided to build a suite of new shaders and more specific purposes and that shader is called the hard surface shader any new features we decided to add we just add to our new shares now we don't find bolt-on onto the old shaders that already had quite a lot of features things like clear coat well inter we know you guys like your

3. 00:01:42

   ships theme but we also wanted to feel like a more realistic and sitting environment better and they'd wear overtime iridescent sand paint so we can get collar ship depending on the angle you're looking at it there's obviously a lot of ships in the game and converting them over to a new shader is not a trivial task but it is something that we are doing patch by patch every patch there will be some more ships that will be using the hard surface shader the biggest feature for hard surface was the intuition layer library which this type of a more hierarchical way of building up materials rather than ever attempt to start from scratch every time they make a spaceship or whatever it might be they can type of bill libraries and pull from libraries of existing type of things that other artists have built and

4. 00:02:29

   combine them in a more intelligent way so that layer life was a crucial part of workflow to speeding up our workflow in the engine and standardizing it as well and the big thing from being converted to that hard surface shader is it allows us to do tint variants very easily for each one what we wanted to give controllers is to be able to tend to them layers and control them layers so we can then present more options to the design team and the end user each layer we use on our hard surface shader can't be tinted one of three different colors and then three colors are defined and what we call a tint palette if you look any of our ships in-game you can probably see this already so they will have for technical IDs for example it has mostly green there's a dark gray section and there's like a gold accent so there's your primary secondary tertiary well the thin system will allow the designs to do is once they work out

5. 00:03:18

   usually with love what the colors are for safe action like even Microtech crusader are ninetails then you can set those colors up and then save that as a tint and then that can get by to initiate them by easily can just quickly make ship and then apply the tint and then you've got these different factions or paint schemes so the hard surface shader has been coming for a long time it looks a huge amount of potential for the vehicle team we're really excited to see what we can do with it what can push but what does that mean for you as players especially in regards to customizing your vehicle we're going to have a nice post on the website in the next few days probably next week it's going to detail what you can and what you cannot do both in the shorter near term so I highly recommend that people check that out one of our 43.9 s biggest

6. 00:04:08

   new features was the introduction of prisons the first step in building a risk versus reward system for those who will choose to pursue a lifestyle outside the law now this week we took the opportunity to chat with Luke Presley about that first drop and talk about the next iterative patch the next quarterly patch and maybe just a little bit beyond that for me like you know space is like the Wild West and I think for most people it is like this kind of lawless like idea so it makes sense that prisons are awful like even worse than now or even more capable of being brutal and keeping you in I think everyone just wanted to explore that straight away obviously it's in its infancy and

7. 00:04:59

   there's a lot more to come we know experiences vary with some persistent issues with mining and infinite transition screens but on the whole feedback has been quite positive even people who are criminals have been saying this has changed the way they play the game and improved it for the better like strangely now there's an actual I don't know meaning I guess everyone who works on it is extremely proud of it like oli especially who made for escape route is loving it and I think people can see how we are going to improve it in future and how that will make it a lot more interesting to be down there like when we had mission givers and things like that you'll actually maybe want to go

8. 00:05:46

   there so 391 our main focuses but fixing obviously there's been speedruns but I've got out in three minutes which was late the way they did that was quite embarrassing for us like we left in a Ledge but definitely shouldn't have been there it was there to kind of break people's fall and actually slow them down the main fall you you drop into his lake is quicker if you don't hit anything on the way down in the next patch I just blocked up to like I think quite ingeniously like blocked up the two main paths that we didn't want them to take I'm sure they'll find some more and I'm really looking forward to it but it's something I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life kind of passion home we are looking at the things for get you into

9. 00:06:47

   prison that shouldn't there's a few things like misdemeanors given you like crime stats and that obviously isn't the way it should work so you'll no longer gets crime stat for running glowing by the police and not stop in so for free 10 our focus is on finding new ways to earn merits and new things to spend them on in 3 9 you'll notice there's a commentary machine and that gives things out for free but our focus is on kind of turning that into our prototype a real vending machine that you pick and choose and pay for the items the way we are trying to like introduce content that gives merits is through like the prison itself giving out jobs so every now and again you'll find for one of the oxygen dispensers

10. 00:07:37

    deep in the caves breaks down we put a marker on it and then like the first player to get there and fix it gets a load of merits so beyond 310 will be looking into more missions for get players into the prison like make them want to go there and that can include lawful players you can imagine in undercover role and we'll be expanding the prisons over there's new areas that you haven't seen before the kind of behind the scenes and that'll be an extra step on to escape in and then they'll just be more ways to earn merits once you're in there like more jobs more illegal and legal jobs when you're in there so what we learn this week well we learned that no matter how well we think ships look now there are still going to be ways to improve that going forward that the hard

11. 00:08:26

    surface shader won't just make it easier for our designers to create color schemes and more vibrant paint jobs it's also the next step in that dynamic wear and tear we've all been looking forward to and that the future of Prisons may not be restricted only to those with criminal intent for inside star citizen and I'm Jared Huckaby we'll see you there you