Star Citizen: Calling All Devs - Weapons w/ aUEC and Automated Turrets

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of Calling All Devs, the new weekly Q&A series where I take questions from you, the Star Citizen backer, call up our fellow developers, and pose them directly to them over Skype. It's a short, it's sweet, it's moderately to the point. I I do the best I can. I'm still me. Uh let's just get right to it, shall we? All right. So, for our first call of the day, we are calling somebody I don't get to call quite often enough, quite honestly. Uh Rob Rinehart out of our Austin, Texas studio. Let's see if he picks up. Rob. Hey, what's up, Jared? How you doing, man? I'm doing pretty good. How are you? Good. I I I want to say I'm still not entirely used to you without the long hair. I know it I know it's been a long time since since since you cut it now, but that's It's been a bit, yeah. It has been a bit, all right. I'm still getting used to not having the the big thing here. All right. So, this your

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   first time on Calling All Devs? Welcome. Uh we take questions from the backers. They they they submit their own questions, they vote on their own questions, and we try to answer the the most uh voted upon questions uh each and every week. Your question a question that we have this week that I think you're perfect for, it says, "What is the status of buying ship weapons with Alpha UEC?" Yeah, so we tried really hard to get them into 3.0. Uh we we basically spent about 3 days. Uh the the ship weapons are unfortunately part of our old 1.0 item system. Um and they had a level of inheritance that none of the other 1.0 items had, which was causing a lot of interaction problems uh in the shop. So, uh it was unfortunately a stretch goal, and we we had to get a bunch of other stuff done for for 3.0 uh first. So, it was basically the last 3 days of

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   of right before we went out uh of me trying to just jam it in at the last second. Um we were close, but it just required too much programmer support. So, um basically what's going on now is that we've got all of our ship items or ship weapons being converted to the 2.0 system by our um UK and LA ship teams. And so, once that happens, we'll be able to not only put them in the shop physically, but also uh we're going to get the kiosk working as well, which is not just going to be ship item related. That's going to be accessible for all shops at that point. So, shops could potentially have additional items in them um you know, that that maybe couldn't be displayed um you know, you it's it's what we wanted to get in last year, but just didn't have time.

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   Kind of sounds kind of like a mail order catalog. There's stuff that we have in the shop and then you can order from uh from our special orders catalog and have it delivered to the store. All right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, totally. All right. And so, are we I'm sorry if I missed this there. Are we are we still targeting for 3.1 or Uh so, the the conversion for item 2.0 uh ship weapons is towards the end of March. So, it is more than likely going to be a 3.2 thing. Uh that's I I haven't seen that on the schedule, but I believe that's where it's going to be. Yeah. That's what that's what we're shooting for. Yes, that is what we're shooting for. me on that. That's No, no, no, no, no. That's that's that's fine. That that is our target, but of course with our with our new date-based release system, of course we are not going to hold the release for this. So, it is so it does have the possibility of slipping to something like like like 3.3, but we are currently shooting for

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   3.2. That is correct. So, all right. Rob, thank you so much for your time. No problem. Yeah, thanks for coming. Also, um I can see myself in the reflection on the whiteboard. You know how many people actually say that? I can watch it I've been watch I was like I was like going to try to do all right. Sorry. I'll let you go. All right. All right, take care, man. Thank you. All right, bye. Cheers, bud. All right, thanks so much, Rob Rinehart. Now, for our next question, uh we are calling uh Matt Sherman here in our Los Angeles studio. I got a question about turrets. Matt, how you doing, man? Hey, Jared. What's up? Not much. Uh another week, another question about turrets, man. Okay. Uh this question says, "What is the status of us being able to either slave turrets to pilot control, use AI components to operate them, or hire NPCs to man them?" Uh basically, I

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   think they want to know when are we not going to have to have other players uh in our turrets one way or the other. So, an exact timeline, that's something that that we can't really give right now cuz all things with iteration uh the the biggest roadblock actually with any of that is getting the actual man turret gameplay into a really good spot first. So, uh I mean, we've put these cool turrets on a number of our ships. We we've got a lot of gameplay plans for making multi-crew matter uh e- even if it is just like a hired NPC even compared to anything like a a slaving rig or an AI blade. So, it's it's getting that man turret gameplay where it needs to be first, and then start giving the other options to be like, "Hey, you don't have to have all your friends online all the time. So, here are these other options

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   that that you can, you know, triage things down with." But, it's it's making sure that the core experience is fun before we start adding those in because otherwise it'll probably just short circuit that whole experience. Yeah. Yeah, and of course, you know, we we want we want as many people in the turrets as possible. Now, that's how we're going to get the feedback we need. That's how we're going to get the metrics we need and stuff like that. Exactly. them right now, this very moment, would actually undercut our efforts in making them and uh a turret gameplay uh better. Yeah. Well, thank you. Sure thing. Yeah. Wha- what What else are you working on? You doing anything cool? Uh yeah, yeah, actually. Give me 1 second. I'll give you a quick look. See, the re- the reason I'm asking is cuz snowpocalypse has hit has hit our our our UK studio and and like half the people I need to call for this show aren't available right now because of

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   the trouble. So We hit a dread California winter. I mean, it's it's hit the whole like mid to high 40s a couple evenings this week. That's just the weather machine's broken. That's that's a frozen tundra here for for Socal. So so what so what are you working on? Give me give me some Oh, you got Oh oh. That was not what I was expecting. Can I can I just say I've said this before, but I hated the Terrapin at concept stage. You know, it's okay. You know, what you know, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I did not like the concept. It just did not resonate with me. But seeing it in 3D and in engine, man. Oh, yeah. It It It looks fantastic. Uh So Dan Dan Kaminski has done a ton of work on this ship. So As you can tell, there's so few glitches

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   that we're working out. Go go go go go inside it. I We We just did a feature on the Terrapin on on Ship Shape today, but we didn't get to see a whole lot of the inside. Yeah, yeah. Um so this is really cool. I've I've only recently jumped onto this ship. Uh Kalex has done the the bulk of the heavy lifting with like the design and plotting stuff out for this ship. I'm just coming in to do some like help and clean up just getting seats and stuff set up. But probably the coolest thing uh even even when he was getting me up to speed on is just the the start of these component panels. That one did not function how we were expecting it to. Um but just having this this first step of okay, well, here's here's this panel. And we may need to thin down how thick the panel is, but it's like, yeah, I can

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    walk up to this housing. It lists cooler 01. I can pop that open. Boom, there's my cooler. Uh same on the other side. Here's my other cooler. So it I mean, right when the ship comes out, it won't all be fully interactive to the point where okay, now you're physically ripping that cooler out or you're doing the manual repair work, but it's that groundwork for when we get to that point. So, it's really cool to see and he's got like all the the core components. So, over here uh these sort of got passed by a bit quicker in the uh the update video, but you know, you you've got your life support, your jump drive, uh radar, and the exceptionally glowy power plant. The exceptionally glowy power plant. Okay. One of the One of the things uh folks pointed out in the ship-shape

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    section uh uh segment is that the uh the interaction system that the prompts now align with the surface of the uh of of the item. Yes, that was a a recent thing, but and also this is just how bright that thing is on the inside. Like you you see it everywhere. I turned the lights back on. All right. Uh Scared of the dark. There you go. I see So, what are you doing? You're working on the You're working on the chair probably, right? Yeah, yeah. So, I've been working on the just getting the the pilot seat and the support seat set up. So, uh give me a quick second. I'll just jump in the pilot seat. We're still getting a couple timing things uh cleaned up. One of the the cool things with this ship is it's like a a lot of the design process is intelligent reuse of assets. So, if some

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    of this animation uh looks similar, it's actually because we're using uh the Constellation pilot and co-pilot seats sort of as our template to build this stuff out. So, it's that same kind of a Okay. Seat'll turn, you'll jump in, it turns you back around. The the timings are a little bit off, but we've got, you know, all the all the great screens lining this thing. Yeah, when it's fully lit up, it's really cool. Uh and so, you know, getting that going. And then, basically going to be working to get this support seat going. to the the remote radar and scanning station. where we sort of got the end goal of yeah, you'll drop down this and then

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    you'll be, you know, turning around inside on this pivot uh with the scanner up top sort of dialing in on your target. So, it's going to be really cool. Well, thank you so much. I I obviously, you know, this was more than I I hoped for. So, so I am happy to help. All right, man. I'll let you get back to work. Cool. You take it easy. Yep. Bye. All right. Well, thank you, Matt Sherman, the the Terrapin man. Oh, fallen in love with that thing. Okay. up next here we have a we have a a bit of a problem here. Snow bog lips has hit our Manchester studio and the questions we had lined up for today and the guests we had lined up for today working in our Manchester studio and they unfortunately are not able to many

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    of them are not able to actually get to the office the moment they are working from home. Not all of them have webcam setups at home. Not all of them have proper audio setups at home. So, some folks had to type their answers out and give them to me. So, for our next question, we are going to do a little bit of of reader's theater here. We are we are we went to Steven Tuerfield from our from our Manchester studio. His question was on the ship matrix, it appears the Freelancer Dur lost 62% of the cargo space that it used to have instead of only 25% less cargo than the base model previously listed. Why was that? Is that for a ground vehicle like all the expedition ships have? All right. So, so he's trying to so he's trying to social engineer us a little bit and be like, "Hey, is is

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    there a new ground vehicle on the Dur or something like that?" You know, that thing that that sitcoms do like, "Oh, yeah, you said that you know, whatever." Um I know, the Freelancer Dur does does have a new exploration vehicle or anything added to it. Uh Steve answer was simply that the values listed on the ship matrix for the Freelancer DUR, the DUR, the MIS, and the MAX variants are all based on the existing model that the pre-rework model that's available in hangers now. You remember that those variant models were built out as hanger ready quite some time ago. They are not using the scaled value of the much bigger rework base model for the Freelancer. Basically we we went through and we measured the models that we have. When it come which is why it appears to have less cargo now, so much less cargo now than the

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    base model. When it comes time to build out the DUR, the MAX, and the MIS which you can see on our public road map is scheduled for the latter half of this year. We will have the improved cargo numbers for the Freelancer variants. So So yeah, so basically what you're seeing right now is as the actual measurements of the model that's in the hanger right now which is why they're so much smaller when it comes time to build them out. You'll get the better, bigger, better numbers. Okay. So thank you of course to Steve Turberfield for the answer. Our next call is to the illustrious Shawn Tracy. I did. What's up? You know, it's busy man. What's going on? Hey Shawn. Calling all devs. Remember that thing

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    that I told you about? I'll tell you. I'm video. Yes, is this a good time? For you it's always a good time. All right, what's on this what's on the screen behind you? Actually for for for for community it's always a good time. The screen behind me, this is Forest stepping in the screen. We've been doing a bunch of work this week with graphics programmers on massive improvements to the skin shader which I know people pretty happy with the faces right now but uh we weren't. So we're we're pushing them further and further and further. Um All right. Well, It's looking pretty damn good. So, I'll I'll get clearance to show that after this. They'll see it soon. I hope it's not an actor uh that we haven't announced. Well, if if if people if people are watching this, then I got permission. So,

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    They'll figure out who it is. Uh cool. So, your question, I understand that you that you might not be the perfect person for this. We were trying We're going to try to call Eddie Hilderbrand from in our UK studio, but they are under a snowmageddon at the moment. So, I I figured you're the you're my best shot for people who are available. Congratulations. Uh will there be underground caves, tunnels, or underground cities uh in Star Citizen? Yeah, no. I'm just kidding. I I I can't say yes or no right now. So, I'm going to give kind of a sort of a roundabout answer on that. Like, the the most important thing for us and and for the next little while is to get all our uh a little more standard a little more standard biomes set up. So, you know, we've got we've got deserts, we've got sort of toxic ones, we've got to set up

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    we've got timber that we have to set up, we've got a bunch of different ones, and we've got enough area kind of to cover without even, you know, delving into caves and things like this. We've already got enough content that we need to add to these biomes before we yet sort of move on to that. But, I'm pretty sure this is going to be something that we're going to look into. But, as of as of right this moment, I can't say yes or no whether we're going to have those. But, of course, if time allows and we get to the place where with our biomes and and on the surface itself is acceptable to us, then yeah, that would be something to look at. There's of course, you know, as with any of my answers, it always goes a little bit longer. But, there's other ways to accomplish this rather than you know, fully boxelizing terrain and

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    making this fully dynamic because we can we can place points of interest very similar to how the outpost get placed. You know, if we wanted to go the route of yeah, we've actually modeled this sort of you know, into the side of a hill or whatever then that's not beyond the realm of possibility. So if you know, design ever comes up with the need for that or or a given landing zone needs that then that might make sense. But as of right now, I can't say either way. But it's it definitely something we want to look into I'm sure. All right. Well, thank you. You're welcome, man. did it. Is that is that Starfox art behind you? That is Starfox art. Very very well. Now, I'm not sure if you can see it, but there's the there's the low poly ships. It's funny because you know, I just remind myself by looking at them.

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    They're they're they're really literally like 10 to 50 triangles. So just lets you know, but yeah. All right, man. We'll let you go. All right. Thank you. Talk to you later, Joe. Bye-bye. And last but certainly not least, we are we are going back north of the wall as he said in our previous Calling All Devs with Benoit Beausejour. Oh, man. I had it. Benoit. Benoit, how you doing, man? Hey, man. I'm doing good. Benoit Beausejour. Yeah. You have it. I think I had it and I thought I didn't have it, but I did. You had you had it. It was perfect. I you know, I'm good I'm good for a lot of things. Pronouncing people's names. Next time it's finesse. More finesse. Yeah. We'll have it. Yeah. I wasn't even going to try. I was going to try I was going to get myself into more trouble. Hey, how you doing, man?

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    I'm good. I'm good. So, I got another question for Calling All Devs for you. You ready? Okay. Yeah. Your question from the backers submitted by the backers voted on by the backers. What is the status of the Star Citizen mobile app that Turbulent is working on and what features are still planned for 2018? Now, there there's a there's a little bit of a of misnomer there, a little bit of misinformation there. Sure. We we've never planned the mobile app to come out in 2018, right? Let's get that out That's right out of the way. Correct. Correct. And so, the well, if I if I'm to try to answer the question as truthfully as possible, the like you'd mentioned, like the the a Star Citizen mobile app as mentioned is not planned for 2018, unfortunately, cuz we still have a lot of work to do to

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    get to something that's acceptable. Uh there are also a lot of things left to define on the you know, game side, what services we're going to be made available through that. That doesn't mean we're not working on improving the mobile experience for Spectrum, which is a very important piece of work that we're currently recycling back on. And so, this this means responsive support, better responsive support on mobiles. Uh specifically, we're looking at the uh shrinking the size of our build, which is still pretty large. Uh and so, loading it on an on a an older iPhone and I was just going to suck. We've done some work in 2017 on the mobile keyboards, which turned out to be a huge can of worms, huge can of worms. You have no idea. Uh and so, at least now it's it's potent. We we're

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    keeping uh you know, a lot of effort in trying to improve that. But, the and though it's the most of the mobile related work for 2018 is focused around improving the mobile uh Spectrum uh support. Got you. Now, of course, the Star Citizen mobile app is was one of our old uh crowdfunding uh stretch goals. Correct. Way back in the day. So, that is definitely something that is on our list. It's definitely something that will be developed at some point in in our future. But, we want we want that to have some kind we some gameplay interaction and not just be a social app. And so, there's more to that. All right. So, yeah, that's all I got for you, Ben Wroe. That's that's pretty cool, man. That's uh That was a tough one, but it's a good one. I mean, uh you know, you didn't ask me about voice, so that's good.

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    Well, what about what about voice? What What about voice over IP, Benoit? What about voice over IP? Okay, so we're we're working on voice over IP, and uh it's uh it's uh it's a lot of work, and we're, you know, working on it. We are totally working on it. I can tell you that. The Okay, so the main focus on voice over IP work currently is on how the game communicates with the launcher. Right? That's the where That's where we're at. Of course, there's server-side stuff happening, and APIs, lobby creation, stuff like that, and voice transmission, but the bulk of the effort right now on, you know, at this date, is really on on how we exchange data and the API between the game and the launcher, which is which is key to get it getting all of this

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    working. Got you. Are Are you having an earthquake now, or are you just hitting your desk a lot and bouncing your camera? I'm I'm hitting your my desk a lot. Calling all devs, the best production value of any Star Citizen internet video, absolutely. All right, so so thank thank you, Benoit. Thank you for that. Good luck reversing the waterfall as it was where we were talking about before. You know, you have your work cut out for you, but I have no doubt that you'll you'll get it done. That's right. Thank you very much, calling in. See you guys. Bye. Well, that about wraps up this week's show. A special thanks to Sean Tracy and Rob Rinehart and Steve Turberfield and Matt Sherman and Benoit Beausejour for appearing on the show this week. Remember, you can submit your questions for consideration each and every week up

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    on the thread up on Spectrum, and don't forget to vote. That's the important two-pronged plan. You got to submit your questions, you got to vote on your questions, that way I know which ones you want to see addressed most each and every week. So, for citizens of of the stars, no, that's the wrong show. For Calling All Devs, this has been a day, guys. Trust me, it's been a day. I'm content manager for global video production, Jared Huckaby. We'll see you next week, everybody. Thanks for watching. For the latest and greatest in Star Citizen and 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

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    www.robertsspaceindustries.com. Thank you very much for watching.