10 for the Developers: Episode 06

22 February 201600:52:231,318 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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[Music] hey everyone welcome to this next episode of 10 for the developers I'm Daren borck production coordinator here in cig at Los Angeles and I'm lead technical designer Kirk Tom uh so first we wanted to thank the subscri ders for being able to make content like this possible without you uh we would not be able to put forward uh such inform informational interviews and content as we as such as this so from us thank you guys thank you guys so let's get started with the first question Kirk you got one okay uh the first question comes from Far Seeker uh since you are working on the xan Scout uh which from its initial concept had a set of movable thrusters
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can you update us on the technology depart development to support this as well as any effect it might have on other ships with rotating or otherwise articulating main thrusters specifically any comments uh on the cutless the freelancer and the Reliant will be deeply appreciated um yes we we certainly talk about that uh just to start on um a few comments about the um about the xon Scout which I'm currently implementing uh for the uh hanger ready in um in the uh in the hangar um the actual name of of the vehicle is the uh o Ooa car2 all it is the u g the uh manufacturer apoa's conversion of this the xon Scout uh for human use um it
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currently has a single seat um and no ejection capabilities I just wanted to put that out there uh we decided that for a um light fighter of this size uh the current single seat Arrangement worked best for it um in the future we may have a variant or perhaps another um opoa manufactured ship that may have multiple seats but um the current iteration of the car2 all is single seater um the uh the Thruster questions on it yes the uh the car all will have four articulated thrusters um they the thrusters themselves will uh Orient themselves to uh actually be able to completely turn turn 90° up to 90° uh for the outermost axes of each of the um
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thrusters themselves and will include uh the uh retro thrusters in the front so they they'll be they'll be dual-sided thrusters which will uh greatly allow the the cartto all to have a lot of Manu maneuverability so that the main thrusters can actually contribute to uh horizontal and vertical thrust as well the Vector thrusting right um the way we're going to do this is we're going to allow the main thrusters to um contribute to sideways thrust without actually animating them um as quickly as they need to provide that thrust um one issue that we had with the cutless and we still currently have with the cutless um is that having the large thrusters um provide thrust in the actual Vector that
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they're facing um makes the thrusters so that they're really Flappy and so from the rear when the when the Cutlass is flying should we provide any type of vertical thrust uh to provide stability for the for the ship we found that it they're just simply too floppy and it it just looks awful um so the way we will do this is to provide that thrust uh and actually um throttle the um the speed at which they rotate so that we'll have a ship that has this type of nice nice floaty motion without having four uh long wings that simply flap in the wing wind that which will make it look awful so um we're still developing that and we will um of course have that
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available for the engine and for future ships uh so that that will be become available um in the in the near term we're considering making the cutless uh thrusters rotate only for VTOL uh take off and Landing uh the same is may be true for the freelancer that way they still will have joint rotation uh without that that wear Flappy um animation and uh some other technology we we will need to develop is the the car to all is one of the first ships that will have a uh a landing and a flying um mode which are vastly different uh you'll notice that it is very folded up when it's landed and will expand out like a flower when it's in flight mode the same will be true for the Reliant um so what we'll do is we'll
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um create States for the ship landed or in Free Flight that way the thrusters know uh how they're going to behave and um will allow things like turning them off when it's it's in uh it's in landed mode or for the Reliant because of the vertical orientation of them uh we will know how the Threshers are supposed to actually affect the ship uh because of those two states that the ship is in now how does something like we have our flight engineer John pritet who works on the ifcs and uh SCM how would his inter how how would his engineer how does how does this change what he needs to do with as far as flight Control Systems so that's a great question we would discuss with him how uh we would need to Signal uh the the ship it so that it knows which orientation it's in um I think a
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simple a simple um uh variable in in the ship uh will determine um when it's not in landed mode or when it's in flight mode and then uh John can then recalculate what the actual thrust from each of the thrusters will needs to generate in order to maintain proper flight based on that orientation of the thrusters that was a mouthful let complicate the ship next question this one comes from Andy goodstar hello Kirk andaran are alien races treated as one manufacturer each or are there different brands of Shion Banu vuel ships and what is the specific signature of the Shon Scout manufacturer I fig we kind of tack this one on since we were just discussing uh the Scout uh so right now you know Shan Banu and Vandal are kind of their own I don't
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want to say brand but I guess species brand in themselves sure uh we may in the future look to expand those but at this moment we're kind of looking at just as single manufacturers correct uh correct the vanuel uh components were implemented as Vu components the uh Shon components will not they will actually be uh as we're doing as we're doing a um component refractor the um the Shon components will be actual manufacturer components um so we'll have we'll have human components that are on the ships uh so that you can upgrade them um exchange them out Etc uh in the future uh I think we will um work with the writers and then come up with the um alien manufacturers and have their own
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each with their own uh components and their capabilities so that we can do things like have um gon specific uh components or whatnot um for now we are currently going with the human uh components one of the things if you actually you guys watch the 10 for the developers with Sean Tracy and Steve Bender uh one of the things they talked about was human to alien analog components for example you know if a vuel is how X feet taller than a human um you don't want a human wearing a vuel t-shirt because it's going to be you know a lot bigger so we also have to take that into consideration as far as when we create these alien manufacturers we can't really just you know take an alien t-shirt and throw it on a human and say hey we're done I mean we have to take into consideration what the human sizes are what their dimensions are whether it's compatible with human um ergonomics at all uh so
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looking at kind of just rather than just you know creating a bunch of alien manufacturers we want to make sure that something that actually is realistic fits into to the store and actually fits into the game uh mechanically as well right and that's a a consideration for the the car to all the um control scheme are these two uh spherical control components that humans will put their hands on uh it's just a prototype at the moment uh we'll refine how that actually works but um one the early example of that was the on the um on the what are the Vandal ships of the side in the glaive they had uh their own custom UI that were um that had an alien flavor to it um same thing would be true for the xan um type of ships and that's
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why zanen our UI guy kind of he put you know static across the UI as it trying to show that we're trying to translate alien technology into human use so still a little buggy in games a little flavor to that kind of cool but in the future yeah we may expand it uh so you never know um speaking of you know components uh you had a component question I think it's kind of nice tail tail into that uh yeah so the uh well we'll go to the there's a there's a three-part question here uh these came from Daz halber and Tommy train um great name um in regards to the component system can you discuss uh some of your recent accomplishments with this also do you expect we will be able to get uh a component stack page similar to the ship stack page we have
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now that's a great question um have you considered adding a shi designer page to the website so we can tune our builds before committing uh will changing the components of the ship have a noticeable effect on its performance and capabilities are there plans to have uh multiple viable upgrade pads in order to prevent everyone gravitating toward a single build are you considering a balancing mechanic for upgrading so that improvements in one system come at the expense of another and finally how are gameplay Design Concepts of modu components and compon component tuning materializing themselves in design of the components for the latest and future Ships coming off the pipeline that's a long sentence are they interacting as these components become real things with size shaped mass as well as output forces effects and corresponding draws on the components which provide energy
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cooling compute Cycles Etc um these are this is a a big topic um we are currently tackling each of the components uh one system at a time um I'm sure you've noticed that we recently just um refactored the coolers um that it did involve actually sizing of the components because we do intend for these components to uh be uh re to have actual um uh there'll be real components in the game on the ships that you can yep and they'll they'll they'll be uh sized appropriately for the capabilities be placed on ships with ships uh that Interiors um such as the constellation or the future Idris or any any of the larger ships we will have access to uh
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to them from the interior so that when we Implement damaging gameplay um which we're still designing at the moment uh you will be able to uh access them um and have a crew member run down the hall go down to the uh power plant that has been damaged and then actually repair that um by accessing the component from a panel say in in the hall that contains that that particular component so there will be real physicalized items that are in the game so very very Scotty from Star Trek type of thing where you know someone needs to go down and fix their a shield generator or fix the warp core or something like that exactly so if you if you the engineer does notice that hey we got uh the cooler damaged now we don't have cooling on the right side of the ship you can't send the engineer down to physically fix that component or perhaps even uh trade it out for a brand new
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component and get instant access back to uh the cooling capabilities that you just lost so just hope you don't have to run a full kilometer length chip yes uh so uh that may be a possibility um the so what does that entail well we're refactoring all of our components so that we um actually keep in mind the capabilities the positives and negatives of each of the um functions of that particular component I did mention cooler so uh cooling capability power draw signature um these are these are things that are going to be integral to how the coolers will work um what we need to do then is get that system in and then uh take a take a balance pass to figure out okay so we have a size one um say um Drake um I don't if they
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actually create a a cooler at the moment but uh Drake uh cooler well uh where does that sit as far as its capabilities is it a c-grade item what does CGR mean we Define that and then um we we can um Place those on ships that would be appropriate for that part a size two or a medium size um cooler would go on one of the largest ships um it has its own detriments and its own positives which you can um decide um how you want to outfit your ship by by either purchasing uh the component or when we have future gameplay in which you can salvage components perhaps you can actually pirate one off a larger shipping and discover hey this is way better than mine I'm going to go ahead and um place it on the hollow table and include that on one of my loadouts for
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for one of my ships um also in the future we may we may allow the capability of uh particular um like Craftsmen to hone certain uh components so they can actually improve them maybe they get better at uh improving a certain manufacturers um coolers clocking type stuff yep and so that would be that would be great uh it' be a great career for someone to be a specialist in or ship mechanic yeah and then you can earn your credits or do whatever you want to do and and um become become that that go-to person in the uh Star Citizen Universe to uh get better at that particular skill um what else do were the questions oh oh um so the tuning what do so what does tuning and balancing mean well uh it means
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different things for each of the components What It ultimately does mean though is that we figure out what each of the components do what Their the range of capabilities are for their particular stats and then we make um realistic uh ranges for those particular values um we are in the middle of uh we we've done a pass on coolers we are in the middle of doing power plants and we are in the middle of refactoring shields as a as a system entirely so we will have um Shield emitters on the ship that are powered by Shield generators so when you upgrade uh The Shield generators by purchasing a new one um you will increase the shield capabilities of your ship um things like um well number of faces will will most likely be tied to the ships but the Regeneration rate of
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the ships the absorption uh rate of the shields rather the um the uh how how many uh how quickly it can uh shunt power from uh the uh the primary face that you set onto the ship these will all be things that you can upgrade by purchasing new um Shield generator components about like someone in Middle combat you want to redirect further energy to the front or to the AFT right or it's from the you know poor starboard side right and so if you have a a a lesser performing Shield generator for example um it may take longer for a completely um uh a shield face with zero Health to recover and get back any Shield capabilities um so you may consider P you know purchasing or finding a better Shield generator to
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upgrade that particular capability that may mean more power draw so you actually have to purchase a uh power plant that is capable of powering all the components that you decided to fit onto this ship um so that that's what uh balance entails um we currently uh all of our most of our components uh are outclassing their capabilities so uh power plants generate more power than you'll ever need coolers can cool uh more heat than you can ever generate what we we need to do is as we Implement these components we need to step back and and and take a look at um what the actual uh values uh for the components that we've created what are those ranges now what what are those extremes how do
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we figure out how these components fit within those um those extreme ranges and then figure out okay this is this is the sweet spot for that particular component and this is where it sits um as as a player you decide by mixing and matching the components onto the onto your ships how they actually work and whether they um provide the desired functionality that you want to implement while still maintaining usability and functionality yep um I'm trying to remember correctly I think Matt Sherman explained it to me you know for example if a ship had two Shield emitters um it could be you know if there's one in the front one in the back or one left right I mean you pretty much have just two halves of a shell correct right and so but if one has four you've got much more control because now you've got them in quadrants so those are faces so uh you do you do have uh
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four and I I I want to create six because to me four doesn't quite make a lot of sense front back makes sense got top and bottom as well right so so bubble makes sense uh front back makes sense I think six is the the next logical step um but that is uh a function of smaller ships now when we get to Capital ships well ultimately want to do is you will want to have say four um Shield emitters one that controls the front quarter the the second the second quarter the third quarter and the rear quarter each of them controlling their own faces that way we'll have gameplay in which if you destroy the shield emitter or the generators that are connected to the front four faces you actually have a chance to now infiltrate the ship from the front and give you an incentive to um go after that sweet spot in the front
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that you've dedicated so much time to destroy with a squadron a small fighters let's let's say you got a long carrier like a Bengal or Pegasus or even Idis I mean you got something that long you're going have even mid bulk emitters so if one of those gets taken out you have still an opportunity to have something sneak in while one of those Shields are still done before it pops back up right exactly and create some really cool missions and I think it'll it'll uh allow players to figure out strategies not only to attack ships but defend themselves if you find that that you frequently outclass in the front well let's get some Shield gener generators uh and upgrade them on the front side because we know that that's our weakest uh SP type of attack mhm or you can you know lower one of them trying to lure them in into it knowing that's where your main guns are yeah eventually we'll get to actually um
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figuring out how the engineer can do things like shunt power or priority to those Shields um and so you know this is a this is a big discussion on just one of these systems and we're doing this for each of the components as we go down the line it's pretty exciting stuff this next question is is kind of a much more production related question from Perry hope it goes do you guys specialize on game aspect or do you need to know everything about that game uh that's an interesting question uh one of the goals of what production is is we basically try to make sure that designers like Kirk have the resources they need to make the game possible so uh while I was the production coordinator for the tech design engineering team it's not my job to know how to do coding or how to do engineering or necessarily even do how
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to do Tech design I just need to make sure that they have the resources they need make sure the information is being correctly funneled to them now ultimately what can cause a bottleneck is something like lack of communication or what what else would you consider that is is uh the priority number one communication is the most important thing that a producer can provide any employee uh in development um we need to keep those channels open and ensure that everyone knows what they need to do and are expected to do that way um we don't have issues where hey I didn't know that Jimmy over here was supposed to be doing this uh I've been waiting on him to finish this other task and uh which prevents me from implementing the thing that I wanted to do so um communication is absolutely number one and I mean a good producer will be able to keep their
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team in the loop at all times an excellent producer will be able to preemptively predict what obstacles are coming down the road be able to foresee you know what things down the road are going to bottleneck such as knowing what the other teams are working on uh for example we have Mark Hong who is our art and animation producer so if if I'm working on a particular feature uh as a producer my goal is I want to be able to talk with Mark to find out what he's working on see how what he's going to do is going to affect what what Kirk's team is coming or what is doing down the road so if we see that a ship Kirk is working on a particular component for a ship uh if I find out from Mark early on that that ship is going to be delayed or the Art's not coming along as quickly as possible um it's my responsibility to provide that information to Kirk say Hey you know we've got a little more cushion time uh as far as that particular ship so if you want you have something else
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that you need to work on some low hanging fruit that you want to complete in the meantime that's where the producer comes and lets these guys know that's what's available um as far as specialization um it's it's useful to be able to talk to those developers at an educated level uh like I said before you don't need to know how to program but at least know what those programmers are doing and what they're working towards uh same thing with tech design uh we necessarily don't need to know everything about game balance we just need to know what their objective is and how do I help them or how to producers help them complete that objective right and from a developer standpoint uh it is my responsibility to uh inform um producers as far as the things that they do need to know about that particular test so that they can make an ed educated um choices about uh scheduling uh and task priority Etc um at the same
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time when I do need to talk to say one of the artists or the animators directly uh it should be part of my duties to inform um the uh that the the producer in charge of that particular individual that that is happening there that way they can um uh ensure that U maybe a higher priority task should take precedence or that they know to follow up on that task um in the near future and then we can all figure out hey where are you in the um uh along the that timeline are we getting close to being done because this person is waiting on that and so juggling tasks and figuring out what priorities of things um is uh the um is the resource that we use um from from the production team so it's
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it's kind of a you know nitty-gritty kind of behind the scenes look at up ging it's not the most romantic or glamorous type of question but it is one that that's important so uh that's why we wanted to address that there are things that go on behind the scenes that help streamline a lot of these things other than you know just making pretty ships and cool levels okay so this next question comes from Sloan Warrior U how did you decide on how the sizes of the components for the component systems work uh we've heard that ammo bins might be able to hold fuel when they're not being used for ammo is this a uniquely interchangeable system or might other components also Grant storage space for one resource or another when you removed great question so like hidden panels things like that a fake fuel cap y smuggling is is uh a a topic that has come up um for piracy or just being able
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to to Stow equipment safely for you uh on your ship um that is a topic that that we're in the mid of discussion for um components were uh there was a pass on components for each of the components uh types and they were mostly done um by uh they're spearheaded by by elwin um who took um the uh metrics that we use for the ships and for any of the buildings in fps um the uh about mention like volume length right so these are the standard uh minimum doorway sizes that we have in the ship the standard uh minimum walkway path that we need uh things like seats uh turret sizes uh weapons um any of these components we took a look at them
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and decided okay a size one small component should be roughly uh this size and no bigger than that size so what we did is we took the B the maximum allowable size for the component and ensure that all those components that uh fit that size um fit neatly in that box right so everything's box box shaped uh that way we can ensure that when we build a ship um that has a physicalized component when we swap out a size one um say uh radar then we can actually Implement another size one radar in the same space without having to have custom Geo just for that enclosure um and that ensures the swapability of components and allows us to make um components that are unique enough to uh to uh make you
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want to get a different type of component to suit a different need so so it's actually something that we've discussed in the past we're finally starting to see a lot of this fruition or come to fruition is these standardized modularity uh you might have heard some of us talk for previous 10 for the producers 10 for the designers that we've been looking at trying to create standardization for these sizes for a long time right and that was something that was spearheaded by eloin so by creating standard Bounty boxes you you create a template for every single size one or every single size two because now we have a a range of measurements that we can utilize to put those components right and that's important for us as designers because when we're implementing a ship in white box we can take these uh bounds that we create for the ships and we know okay well this is going to require a size two component of this type um we need to ensure that it is uh placed in the ship
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roughly around here um well we'll need access to it because it does the ship does have inter so we can uh communicate to the artist that there needs to be a corridor or some kind of wall in which there's a panel that we can access this so when we go to actually repair it or swap it out or Salvage it if you're pirate um that there is the capability to physically access that that object what's also interesting about that is uh when we um eventually have the ability to damage these components from the outside so we have game plan you're shooting up a ship from the outside you know you can Target The Shield generator because you can take the shields down well you know where that is roughly in the ship you can start shooting around it and uh you will know that it does embody a physical location of the ship and you know where to target um that particular component U on the converse when it is destroyed you also know on
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the ship uh the engineer can tell you hey go down to hallway a and repair the um the shield generator that crew member will know exactly where to go which panel to pop open and which component to repair or you know in your cargo hold you could have a whole crate full of different shield generators your engineer runs down take one out go run back to the cargo grab the new one and SL throw it in there so not just fixing it but actually replacing components as well right so that's part one of the question part two was uh what are the are we going to allow interchangeability of uh components in general no so most components components will uh be in a specific spot slot for that particular component some of the component uh the component types though such as ammo fuel um I think there is one more I don't remember off the top of my head but uh
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there is a category of components in which you can choose to um fit any one of those types um that fit in that particular uh range of components in that slot so if we do have say a smuggling um hole that is um placeable on um our kind of pirate theme ships um that is a component type you can you can choose uh to fit onto that ship if however you really want to on the same ship fit it for um longer Quantum Quantum travel or further distance U maybe you you'll choose a Quantum fuel or a regular fuel canister instead if you really want to fit out um a ship with a lot of Weaponry well let's put an ammo box in there instead so so that is a category of
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component types that we are um implementing uh in the near future um however for the most part uh for the most part components will fit into their actual design slot I just thought of it's like ship USB systems yeah not quite that modular but but at the same time like let's say you know you have one labeled as a fuel tank and in technicality it's actually a cargo hold um if you know let's say someone a play our back or or player is a police officer who's you know trying to investigate this pirate ship and you know he sees a fuel uh tank there but he knows you know Pirates tend to use these as as cargo holds um I remember hearing someone discussing about being able to scan them and be able to trick scanners as well uh that is something that we'll have to uh
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design and implement but yeah some way down the road yeah we can uh we can also design say a cargo hold that does disguise itself as a fuel tank and actually has that when we Implement that actual scanning gameplay perhaps there's a way in which that um mimics the act the component that it's trying to pretend to be that way you can um smuggle uh or use it as a smuggling um um canister because you know um we're only going to make a finite number of ships and so there's no way that we can uh say that hey we can randomly generate these these smuggling hold so each ship if you take a minute to study you'll know that hey there a capability of it having the smuggling hold so let's
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figure out gameplay in which you can make use of that item and um still get away with with um that that gameplay by giving us the capability to fool up the um whoever's trying to scan that particular item mean if you look at use a car analog I mean no matter how many Ford Mustangs you look like look at you're going to know where the engine is every single time right this one's kind of a more of a discussion topic uh this one comes from Sultan U we just had a big step in Star Citizen uh do you feel more pressure now than before uh that the next big step step will be more impressive than the last uh essentially asking you know with every release do we feel pressure to uh outdo ourselves every time and I think it's a kind of a ubiquitous unanimous
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yes uh you know when we released 2.0 that was M with much great f fair that we finally released you know multiplayer multi crew technology uh but we already had our sites on 2.1 and now we've got our sites on 2.2 and every time we release one of these patches yes the the pressure is there to deliver but we're always confident that we can always deliver more and more that's kind of the it's kind of what we try to do every single time if we try to release you know inferior content every time um we want to make sure that we're wowing you guys with every new release that's why we're constantly showing you guys new ships new technologies we have discussions like this to kind of keep you guys up to date on what we are working on so is there pressure absolutely uh but we're pretty confident we can now do it each time yeah and as just like any other company um the more
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and more we do this the better and better we get yes um this includes things like planning for the future um may not have been so great at that in the past but as we uh get to um you know overcome more and more hurdles and get to uh get to each goal we get better and better at planning for what we'll need um and ensuring that we can achieve these things without Simply Having it as a as a line item um in in email hey we we know what we're going to do but how do we get there um figuring out the steps that we need to take and incrementally improving on each of these each of these processes is something that we're getting better and better at every day and this is actually where a lot of production work comes in being able to pre-plan what those objectives
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are uh we may you know let's look at you know 2.3 or 2.4 and Beyond we may have a rough idea of what we want to be in those patches and ultimately Chris is going to dictate what we want in those patches what content we want to deliver so it's up to production to be able to pre-plan all these schedules out and this is where a lot of our tools like jira Microsoft project uh what we're starting to do is uh standardize a lot of in fact as Kirk mentioned as we do this in fine tune that standardization of our practices is going to help us accomplish those goals and be able to make them higher quality each time uh because we're looking at what what tasks have we done in the past what have we completed before and how can we apply those same practices in the future uh so I guess I guess just as long as we're keep on trucking it's going to get better okay so next question comes from Raven what are your thoughts on
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massively increasing the hull and shields on All Ships equally across the board currently I feel ship battles are over quickly and this gives little time to respond to system failures and larger ships I would like to see this as battles would be longer and more immersive allowing you to repair systems and H breaches for more of the decisions matter effect right now by the time you take on damage the fight is over before you can finish the chair animation what kind of nature of the smaller ships though right uh yes and no I mean this this is a very fair criticism of uh some of the uh especially the arena Commander battles um what we need to do is when we are refactoring each of these systems um Shields is being refactored as we speak um we then need to take a balance pass and figure out um what we need to do to change the um the basically the uh Min
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and Max ranges of each of the um values in the system so for example with the shields we are going to introduce gameplay in which you can do things like give priority to a certain Shield or change the way it can repair faces faster or do um Shield face hardening or the um the way in which it can either faces can absorb damage or um um deflect damage away so once we Implement these systems and and uh get that gameplay into the game then we uh need to go and sit uh with each of the ships and um start shooting it you know shooting shooting at the ship figuring out okay well ships of of this size with this particular
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Shield can withstand this much damage for this amount of time time and um put that all in a big chart and then figure out where each of the ships lies and if we need to tweak any changes um so to answer your question we do need to do uh better um balance passes for each of our systems um making hulls and shields across the board larger may not be the best way to do that we want to have more tactical combat rather than just overall Buffs sure um and so what we can do is uh we can take a look at each of the systems in ually Shields Hull Health Mass uh damage per second uh by weapon type Etc and figure out okay where in the realm of of um the things that we want to look at like like DPS for weapons where does that particular
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weapon sit um where should it sit if it isn't sitting in the right place we figure out okay we need to tweak these particular values and make sure that they do um fit a role uh for that particular component type um so yes we want to make gameplay more interesting um we will do that with with balance I think this will um definitely come into play as we start making larger and larger ships because uh as we do Implement um ships that we've or ship types that we haven't before we need to figure out okay how do we do this without breaking what already exists so if we make a say a like the constellation if we made it impossible possible to destroy with uh a couple of hornets wouldn't be very fun so um
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figuring out where again the ship lies where the capabilities of each of its system types should lie and uh ensuring that those values are correct is part of our jobs and we need to be better at that at the same time let's look at real world analogies or comparisons like me know if you have two people on motorcycles that crash into each other at high speed chance are they're both going to get wrecked pretty quickly um you know if you have a car hit a motorcycle chance are the car will be pretty you know a little dented but the motorcyle going be pretty total yeah that's true we still need to as as game designers we still need to figure out a way in which that's fun yes absolutely so so you don't want it to be over quickly but you still want to add an element of of adrenaline pumping with tactical uh strategies right and so that that also comes in a game into play when
00:38:22
we're designing ships uh we we can't make a ship that is is uh just op and in which uh playing any other ship types is just no fun so we figure out okay how is it better than other ships uh yet um consider if you have a fleet of smaller ships can it take it out let's figure out a way in which we can do that so ultimately establishing is a really good strong meta for the for the combat yep so this one comes from Minion Soldier and this is kind of an interesting one um how do you coordinate efforts between game play feature implementation and relative ship completion uh for instance if mining was being brought into the client would you automatically put the Orion into production or would you shelf mining until the Orion or other small mining vessel was done this is where a lot of strategic planning and
00:39:11
communication with between production to design comes into play and this also where a lot of good direction from management as Chris or Ben uh also comes into play so when we release a feature or a ship thematically for example if we wanted to do a Solage feature um ideally we want to have content for players to be able to take advantage of that so uh you know a salvage specific ship would be a good example of releasing when we've released the Shel mechanic same thing if we want to uh release a repair mechanic you know having the was it the Endeavor mhm having that come out at the same time would also be a good sense I mean if we created a a mining mechanic using your example here if we created the mining feature but we don't give players a m a ship to do mining on it's a feature that's basically sitting there waiting until we have that feature
00:39:58
completed or a ship that can take advantage of that feature so ultimately this is where planning and pre-production and and communication comes into play right and so none of these things are coincidental when we do decide to create a ship and then decide a release date for it uh we need to ensure that the systems that that sh that make that sorry that are unique to that ship uh actually exist are designed out and are implemented um from code and Tech design so that those systems are in in play by the time the ship is actually created good example is quantum travel me if we release Quantum travel without any ships that can Quantum travel right doesn't make a lot of sense um and so there's a lot of design that goes into that uh for Quantum travel is a great example we needed to decide what Quantum davel travel was how uh it
00:40:47
realized itself in the game uh what component um how the component interaction for Quantum travel was standard things like the distance of quantum travel time for Quantum travel Quantum fuel is a thing now so we Implement Quantum fuel as part of quantum travel that's a system that needed to be designed before we created the ship that um or a bunch of ships that were capable of doing Quantum travel it's excellent question but yes it is not coincidence that we released days like that okay this last question from my side comes from ezrael U with regards to increase in ship sizes I.E the Edris are some of the smaller Capital ships still going to be capable of lining Planet Side if they can when will they be able to actually walk around walk in and around them uh I've been joning to see what the address has become since its transformation I've
00:41:35
been waiting for this question this A cool one that's a great question um we are discussing that now however for the most part uh the sh we are deciding which ships are Planet Side um lining capable or not when we design the ships um one interesting topic that came up was uh for some of the snub NOS or smaller Fighters um we are are deciding to either make them Quantum uh travel capable or um uh atmospheric Landing capable as a uh a trade-off between um for having such a small ship you need to pick one that suits the needs um that uh you are looking for this is especially important when we have uh ships that are capable of carrying smaller ships uh the
00:42:24
Connie is is a u an example exle of one though the U the Merlin doesn't actually function on it yet but when it does um you'll get the capabilities of what the Merlin um is able to do when that comes online for other ships that have uh snub no Fighters for example or a carrier ship uh you can decide well you know what I really want to park this uh carrier outside of a of a planet and then um go down to the planet surface using all these these smaller um atmospheric Landing cable ships or what I really want are a bunch of say like taxi taxi style uh vehicles that allow to shoot across the Galaxy and then meet up with other ships very quickly um you'll need to make that decision so as
00:43:12
we design each ship we are deciding whether or not they are um U Quantum travel capable and Atmospheric um Landing capable so these are things that we're exciting and it's on a ship by ship basis um when will we get to see this well that's a great question um we're still we're working on these we're we're making uh these ships as fast as possible however um all of these ships that are um medium Siz or larger are definitely um going to have interiors that you can walk around with and walk around in um I discussed earlier things like being able to access the components from the inside that's going to be a big thing and so uh yes there will be um interiors that you can walk around when uh walk around in and then um interact with other crew members interact with
00:44:01
components systems um there stand of things that we have like beds and um bathrooms Etc we want to give people players a reason to walk around these these these large ships a reason why you want to walk down this hallway and open this door other than just besides having reason of just having a large ship um want to give you guys a reason to you know walk down that Hall open the door access this panel apart from just being able to do it for just that reason right and then we'll need to make decisions such as um how do we uh make modular components for these ships so uh at least on a ship level um for uh well when we we create a ship like an Indus we we it's impossible to fill every square inch of that thing with um with custom Geo so we need to figure out what a standard hallway is what a standard room is like um what the engineering
00:44:50
station is going to be like what the if there's an engine housing room if there's a cargo cargo um area that we can we can make modular and place on several parts of the ship if there are landing P you know if there's Landing uh areas for that ship how do we figure how do um we make um choices so that we can uh make a ship that's functional and is within reason uh schedule-wise because um we we want to create the best uh content as quickly as possible and so these are things that we we consider when we're designing and ultimately um building the ship from nothingness to to something that we can actually see in the game let me give two examples and I mean for for those who are anime fans let's look at the Cowboy bbop anime
00:45:37
series you've got the bbop ship that carries you know spikes uh swordfish um and you've got also Fay and and jets smaller ships and you know they use the bop to travel through warp gates carrying those ships and even though that that bbop can land trans atmospherically it still has smaller ships that it can carry with it uh but if you look at something like Battle Star Galactica where they have giant fleets of ships and some of them are you know orbital space stations that are jump capable but something that shaped like a ring or or like an orbital station is not going to be able to land so you want to have you know shuttles and and lighter shapes called well they're called lighters that can go you in between ship to ship or trans atmospherically up and down um or even have you don't have orbital docking yards where you know you get out from there and and take a taxi or or a shuttle back down to the surface so it's ultimately going to be decided by you
00:46:26
know what that game game plays need is what those ships functionalities are going to be and what that ship what that role that ship is going to fill so ultim there's going to be an ultimate large size of what ships can land um I mean something like I don't think we've made that decision yet uh we are um I think we're going to decide on uh those capabilities based on the role of the ship what is it what is that ship made for what what what's the reason to own that ship and then we'll make a decision about um those particular uh characteristics at that point right I can figure something like a Bengal carrier trying to make a landing would cause major atmospheric problems so this last question again is the discussion piece uh this comes from Aragorn BH and this is what is the most useful suggestion you have received from a Star Citizen backer and did it change the way in which you value feedback this
00:47:15
is a very you know subjective question and and we filled you with a lot of technical details today as far especially as far as you know a lot of components information um we get a lot of input from from all around uh because of you know this is a crowdfunded game uh we get a lot of input from players on where we should see where they'd like to see the game go what ships we should create and ultimately while we are following Chris's Vision we still like to solicit feedback from from the backers and from audience the most interesting one that I got was a possible cultural faux PA I did uh back in one of the original tent for the producers where I kind of made a joke and what I thought was a a pretty SA safe joke um it did end up offending a couple of backers from a particular geographic region please do tell
00:48:04
um it was I didn't know about this someone someone asked me how did I meet Travis or what's it like working with Travis and I said had met Travis in a uh I think I said a Serbian prison camp and he took a knife from me once and I've been indebted to him ever since um it was it was said you know just offhandedly there was there's no int I could have said you know a Japanese prison camp or Antarctic prison camp it didn't matter the joke was regarding the prison camp itself that he took a knife from me once and so I've been indebted to him ever since that was the joke uh but because I used a certain uh country's reference that does have a history of political turmoil a lot of viewers from that region were really upset and and I know this it sounds very superficial but it actually did change the way I present information and the way I think about
00:48:53
certain answers and uh the way I actually approach certain individuals within the company as far as of being more not necessarily being politically correct or culturally aware uh but it did remind me that we have a very wide audience and uh while trying to walk a neutral line is an impossible thing um ultimately there's a way information could be presented in a very humorous way and while still being able to maintain a a I guess an objective conclusion sure staying professional is pretty important right anything from you uh I can't think of anything um specifically what I will suggest though is that we do get a lot of feedback from
00:49:41
the community and it's terrific uh Keep It Coming um we do we do read everything and we do consider everything um some things are simply impossible to implement or um it's not feasible within the the um either the design or the scope of of the um systems or the the theability yeah yeah the world we're creating um however you know we we do enjoy all the ideas any idea that comes from uh the the backers in the community is welcome so let us know your feedback because without um you voicing your opinion we don't know what you guys are thinking so continue that and um we we welcome on yeah we could have we could be working on a great idea from our
00:50:29
perspective looks absolutely amazing and kickass but we put it in game and realize you know a lot of players aren aren't using it because they might find it boring or may not fit the original Vision that we had for it so this is where a lot of feedback from you guys comes and so kind of I want to amend my answer a little bit uh while that one instance I gave is is something that changed my perspective uh we do look at everybody as Kirk so we do look at everybody's suggestions and now those suggestions are what helped mold the game we got these questions from from you guys yeah absolutely so again it's been a very very technically oriented uh tent for the developers with Kurt giving us a lot of information as far as the component system and how a lot of that kind of fits into the game system so hopefully you guys enjoyed it uh we try to keep it as entertaining as possible but again we wanted to thank the subscribers for being able to make this kind of content possible without you
00:51:16
guys uh none of this would be able so from us it's a very humble thank you for making this capable so once again I'm production coordinator Darian borick and I'm Lee technical designer k uh so thank you again thanks for watching this 10 for the developers see you guys next time hey guys thanks for watching um 10 for the chairman uh if you guys would like to uh see more episodes go here if you guys would like to subscribe to our YouTube channel and always keep up to date with all our video content go here and uh if you guys would like to watch episodes of around the verse go here please and I will see you in the verse [Applause]

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.