Wingman's Hangar ep056 . February 12, 2014

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:07

   hey everybody Welcome To wingman's Hangar episode 56 if you're new to the show this is kind of an inside look at everything cig it's Chris Robert spacebase Adventure game we'll give you B behind the scenes look at what we're doing we'll meet some of the cool people and we'll take you along for the ride what do we have coming up today well we have the vuel scythe and PBR which was physical B rendering with for Stefan we have form feedback with your questions and videos and an interview with Chris Olivia Chief visual officer and he's going to give us an update about the Scythe Concepts so let's get to the weekend review we've got a new Sound Stage can you hear me now yeah last week we were kind of in the art pit and um it was about a 60 deel hum that never went away we can't control the air condition conditioning there so we've gone and we

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   found a Sound Stage so hopefully we sound a lot better and you guys can get better sound from all of us we have the animation Summit going on this week with Brian Brewer we've got people from all over the world in for animation uh work from Denver from Manchester from Santa Monica from all over all our animators are here and we're going through um how to properly animate characters ships and and objects inside the game now that's going to be next week we'll give you a little inside peek at what that means and how that all works so stay tuned for that next week it's kind of a little tease we have oo new hires Paul Wagner and David lman now Paul Wagner is going to be our tool art tools programmer he's sort of a technical artist he's going to help uh help us on the art side get everything going and and make sure that we have tools we use shotgun for visual

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   representation for people to look at things and then we use and we use jira for tasking and so we're trying to get those two married together and he's going to help us with that and Dav lman is the guy that's been behind jump Point magazine all you subscribers that pay for this show thank you will recognize him he's the he's the genius behind that he's actually joined us full-time now to help us work on economy and the design side he's going to be giving Rob Irving and Chris a lot of help uh and David's an old pen and paper guy and and Chris is really big on pen and papering things out to make sure they work first because if anybody's ever made a game before you know how important that is uh we also want to welcome John shim Shimmel he's our linear media producer he's new to the show and he's uh he's here to help us expand the reporting from around the globe so now we're expanding our our video operations and give you an ins look at everything going around at all

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   the different Studios and that'll be our job to make sure we get that to you less fluff more stuff uh oh and as ever you guys are amazing check out these fan gifts come on you big weers dude that is sweet there's got to be a note in here right so it looks like it well it's from the we got all the stuff popcorn oh it looks like it's from the aha I can say this the oldtimers Guild what do we say [Applause] guys hey everybody we got another gift and this one looks it's from Germany so I I could just scratch my right

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   cheek that's let's open the gift oh what could it be who hey cool actually look at this ni awesome awesome check I can I could do the uh juggling act with says Dear C team he says we know you're busy making the bdss we all know what that means right um they made some toys for cig to have fun with um and they give us a list of people who we have to give the knives to so everybody need to put them back and it's from from Gregor Masher so uh oh look who it's it's from all the contrib members of

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   this it's from Sun from the systems United Navy thanks guys want to thank the oldtimers for the popcorn gift and Mark Skelton for getting so close uh Hey if you didn't get a chance to see it the next great Starship had episode two season 1 episode 2 last week and they eliminated a couple more people and they've got some really cool designs remember all those people that have been eliminated are also in the wild card so you'll get a chance to save them later on and I really like some of the designs from last week and maybe we'll get a chance to talk to Mr Chris Olivia later about you know his efforts on the show that's pretty cool um this week's Studio report is all about [Music]

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   PBR we've had a fun time uh trying to set up the base materials that we wanted since we knew that we're going to have kind of repetition and kind of our consistency throughout the entire our material Library we know we're going to have gold we know we're going to have titanium we know we're going to have aluminum so uh one thing that we really wanted to do was uh with ships we wanted kind of damage or um grunge over time we basically have the ability to have like the material in a 100% condition and then we can slowly drag it down into more of a uh deteriorating kind of dirty look and have that very custom to what particular type of material we're actually using um another thing that we've had uh some fun with is working with our writers to kind of create these kind of fantasy metals that are going to

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   be in the lore and whatnot which is uh kind of cool so uh kind of Define what type of materials are going to be for the different alien races and for you know the uee maybe you know 900 years in the future what we're going to kind kind of modified versions of what we have now this is kind of more of a final look of what it's going to be when you guys actually get it so the reason of the teapot it's kind of an inside joke in the rendering Community it's kind of started in 1975 they needed an object that would render complex surfaces and it kind of just stuck uh ever since it's kind of similar to like the hello world of like the computer programming world you guys can kind of see the work behind

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   all that and how important that is to us and how much that how much difference that's going to make on all the ships and you know what time it is now it's time fored so hey are you ready I'm ready what do you think of the new the new digs this is comfy it is comfy it's pretty cool right let's get right to it then from seir alpen Wolf will organizations within the persistent Universe have more of a role SL function to the Daily contribution of the overall running of the universe or are they to remain just a shell or name for players to gather under that's a big question mouthful yeah it was that was not easy for me to get through that's a lot of words that's a lot that must be lots of words so so organizations I mean by Nature they're collections of players and we've already said players can affect the Universe I mean in in little ways and sometimes in

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    larger ways uh as far as the organizations you'll never be able to necessarily like completely break the system yeah you're not going be able to do St an entire system no the simulation's going to be too big for that but you'll have some impact on things like individual systems maybe you could like blockade an economic portion just by handling one system maybe maybe you become a monopoly on iron or something in a certain sector or something of that nature something that that's pretty cool all right right o from beer for the beer God we've had his questions before and that's an excellent Name It is an excellent what is the latest on instancing and how will it impact the game is the cap going to be ship based or player based and do you have any idea how big the cap will be that is a tough question that could be the topic of an entire novel all by

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    itself um but the actual cap size we don't know yet obviously there's a lot of technology to come there's there's a lot to be done there but as far as what we do know and what we will figure out with you as we go through the dog fighting module process is that there will be a combination of player and ship effect on that cap right because for instance you take a n's Corvette there could be a bunch of players in that Corvette but they don't all count the same as those same players in Hornets flying around right because while they do have communication back and forth with the server they don't have all of the impact and all of the movement controls and everything that right because to the guy in the other Hornet that's just another ship exactly so you'll count a little less but you'll still count some and so there there will be a balancing process there's there's a lot to it though we have to figure this

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    out as we go right and that's kind of one of the reasons we're doing this modularly modularly I know so that we can get their input on how to do it and we can figure out where that cap and where that slider is so you guys will help us with that from oh man Spar Vero I think I got it right Spar Vero what is the status of the Voyager direct store revamp I recall seeing a snippet showing the Montreal Studios work on this before the anniversary yeah turbulent does good work so they do excellent work yeah yeah so what what's the what's the status of Voyer direct store So the plan at this point is to release the Voyager to direct revamp shortly after the dog fighting module releases after the dog fighting module you don't say after the dog fight well so the obvious question then is Rob when is the dog fighting module coming out everybody asks that question

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    yes I do well here is the plan as it currently stands and that is that we are going to do an unveiling of the dog fighting module at PAX East MH check your calendars real quickly MH um just like we did the hanger last year if all goes as planned then we will release it to the public shortly after that reveal now there's a lot of moving Parts we're just bringing on the the world servers the universe servers so this week in fact this week this is a big deal this is a huge thing one of the reasons we pushed it back was we're getting what's going to power our entire persistent Universe online now and getting started testing that as we go so it's going to take a lot of of iterations to get that running properly and get it ready to host what's going to be you know half a million people potentially by that time so right so essentially this week we've built the universe the uh system cluster

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    and we're just now starting to test that and that is going to while before the dog fighting thing module we showed you guys in December was over a land right and now we're getting the cloud-based system in place the back end and we're now going to be able to test between offices and have those dog fights I mean we're all testing in our own individual space but now we're going to be able to test and then and that'll help us determine lag how many ships all that the question earlier about the instance size all that stuff's got to be determined and we're just getting that in this week so to recap dog fighting module plan subject to change is we're going to reveal PAX East and I know the date you might catch a clue on that if you look at the website and try to look at um when is a poll for a certain event going on there so we'll be a reveal sort of like we did with a hanger right and

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    then we will um a few days after a little bit after that when everybody gets back if everything's ready to go we then if you know have that big dog fighting module release if it's not then it'll be dang close to then because we're working hard and everybody's cranking and and we're ready to get it out to you guys and I know you by God I know you're ready to see it so there you go um from Zack he says I was wondering about the logout mechanic on Multi crew vessels for example if you log off on a friend's constellation and then he logs out of the game before you come back where will you be when you log back in that's that's a good question that is a good good question we had some discussion about that today now if you physically put your character as opposed to jumping in as an AI Gunner physically take your character onto a ship you're pretty much signing up for the duration

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    now explain that a bit now you you okay so you have a choice right you can physically get in I can get in your ship and be a crew member or if you call for help I can jump in and take over an Ai Se for tur so what this is talking about is when I'm when our characters are together and I'm in your ship so I'm there I got on board at the last planet you were at we are going wherever we're going so if you're if you're getting on for that ride you're signing up for the whole ride it's not like you can just jump out in the middle of space and go poof I'm back home so if you log out prior to your friends logging out and prior to you getting to your destination then you should expect to come back on that ship now if that ship is parked in space for instance there there's still some gray area there and maybe that will end up letting you if if he's given you permission to fly we may let you fly the

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    ship the rest of the way or we may put you back on the last planet you docked on so right and we we're still working out all those details we just had a design meeting today about that very thing with all with Chris and all the studios working that out so all right and this is a related question a fan video not too many but this one's really good alpam maker take it away hi wingman question if I'm piloting a multi crw ship and I get disconnected as Ari replacement do I maintain control and Return To Hangar oras his buddy can I take control from from the AI and continue the mission signing off for alpam maker see you in the verse wow that was a cool video and you know we want more videos but we want to make sure that they are of good questions and good quality so that was a good one Rob so what's and it's related

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    to the one we just took so what is the answer there so very very pertinent so continu on what I said before one of the things we talked about is your friend giving you permission to fly so you know there's there's a possibility that someone could get on your ship you don't want to fly it so partially it's dependent on whether they they've let you fly but the sequence of events as as we understand it right now is that if you disconnect and you're flying a ship the AI will take over your ship and attempt and it's possibly not entirely super awesome way to get you to a safe to your destination right to your destination so your ship is still around and can be you know damaged destroyed but if you get back on then you can pil it again if a friend is on board who has permission to fly that ship then that friend would supersede that AI pilot and would be able to take control of the ship so essentially a hierarchy right

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    the the owner of the craft is in position one or the number one and then the any friend that has permission will be position two and then AI or you know NPC would be position three so whoever is there left can pilot it and then when the guy comes back on his ship still his ship right so he drops back in the body of the NPC becomes a you know whatever and takes back over cool from giden he says how will discovery of jump points be handled once it's discovered is it automatically uploaded for the verse to use or will we be able to share it with organization members first then upload the jump point when we get back to civilized space and we've had that question before but it's always good for the new people to get some questions about that fresh things right especially where explorers are concerned because a lot of our fans or explorers absolutely so you can hold that information for yourself or for your friends and then when you're ready

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    give it to upload it to the universe as it were that's that's a good way to put it um Go pass that on to people who will then disseminate others but now what happens if you give the the clan some information and and me being a clan member decides that uh Hey I want to name that jet point after me what goes on then if someone else gets there before you do before I get kicked out of the clan I get a jet point named after exactly then right right before your your last day in the clan right you you can take that yourself yeah so if somebody else finds it while you're keeping the information to yourself then that person will end up getting too name the jump point so that's just kind of a risk they take right cool from Divas will there be medical oriented services that players will have the opportunity to provide could we for instance turn an Idris into a Mobile hospital that's very cool that

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    is cool um so that is one of our big topics we talk about that today again yeah we we actually this came up in right after that and we decided that was an excellent time to answer it so we do have mechanics around rescuing players from combat and and and uh helping them heal um in fact there may be a situation where if you were able to drag your friend out of a fight where he's seriously wounded you may be able to keep him from dying right so what we don't know is exactly what ships will be medical ships but we do want to have ambulance ships medical ships right so we can't particularly say that the Idris is a Med medical ship but we do know that that mechanic is important and yeah um and it's something particular I love playing a medic so that's really interesting to me is as far as either I'm a medic or a drug Runner you know

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    but they're kind of related in a way we want to support all these different play types absolutely that's important from Ninja Knight GB during the first few iterations of the dog fighting module will we be able to use power to systems management controlling how much and where power goes well simple answer to that is yes we're bringing those systems online um while we won't have the full system online for the first iteration of dog fighting because the capital ship Power Systems are very big and complex um we will have some form of that and you'll be able to move power from Shields to weapons to engines uh at at launch it's a balancing issue it's one of those things we want them to help us with and it's one of the reasons the dog fighting module was kind we delayed it a little bit because we wanted to get that system in place in a working manner that made sense and allowed the game mechanic for

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    people to enjoy so um yeah give us your feedback when uh when you find it get to play from flashback we've seen spaceships and the buggy but will there be other types of vehicles Machinery in the game like automated cargo loaders hover buses in the cities or Ship Repair Bots amazingly enough yes we uh we already have for instance we're we're getting concept done for um a cargo sled of some sort maybe even some Eva mining equipment um we also promised quite some time ago that there would be a repair bot so yeah I think anybody under I think it was 20 million everybody got a repair no repair was like three and a half was it three and half that's back in the day okay so definitely that that's lots of things design is ongoing

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    right from riken yep will the owners of the Scythe because I keep wanting to say Sith I say it so often as a joke that it almost comes out will the owners of the Scythe be able to fly them as soon as a dog fighting module is released so the Scythe you shuddered the Scythe is initially planned to be an AI opponent in the dog fighting module now there are a lot of systems that have to come online for it to be fully playable which mostly internal systems the cockpit the HUD all those different pieces animations that go with it um so initially we plan to release it as an AI opponent and then as it comes online as with the other single player ships first we will then bring things on as they're

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    ready so not right away but at some point right and you guys saw a little bit of the uh Scythe earlier in force thing and if you hang around to the end of the show I think you're going to see a lot more let's just say PBR Scythe PBR side I think you'll be worth the way all right thanks Rob I appreciate it and now it's time for Mike Morin with this week's most valuable post hi I'm Michael Morin standing in for Ben Lesnik and this week's most valuable post this week's MVP goes to cryo for his post if your gunship were an animal what kind of animal would it be well predictably people had a lot of great answers including honey badger here's a snapping turtle ouch a coconut crab what

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    what what and of course well a Care Bear you know that guy's going to be nurfed before he even gets out of the hanger congratulations cryle you're our MVP this week thanks Mike looking forward to having Ben back no offense but I kind of miss him on MVP and now it's time for this week's fan Focus thanks this week's fan focus is Phil he's actually taken one of our 3D models in the game broken it out pieced it back together and created a printed 3D model take a look at this that's really really really cool I want one of those in my office thanks Phil you're Focus wow wow that is a really really cool model did you did pretty neat what

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    fans do when they take it out and that's awesome I want one yeah I know right hey send it to us he keeps pointing me at cameras never sure which one to go to send it got to get used to that folks you're going have to get rid look who's with us Chris Olivier Chief visual officer So today we're talking a little about the the scythe and SC yeah and you've been is sky or Scythe yeah you know it is right yeah whatever yeah exactly so you know you've been involved and you you've concepted and made the vanuel yourself I mean you kind of the character the character and you you've been involved in the look and feel of all that the whole way so um how did the original Scythe come about well um well that was way before me um that was during the original uh trailer and and sort of fan funding um 2012 right um Chris Roberts had an artist named name

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    Jim Martin come up with a bunch of different designs um and it was sort of it we knew it was going to be our main bad guy um and I think that the original inspiration was if I can say it kill wrathy inspired right but new prove cooler better different um so he came up with great designs um the model was built CG bot built the final game asset it was in the trailer um looked great that was a long time ago though before we all kind of got into the GR groups right right and so we're making a lot of changes and it's sort of an interative process so why don't we explain to them why we're updating the Scythe now right well it's an evolutionary process so um as we all started we got into sort of developing the look and feel of what the vanuel sort of culture is um and so part of

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    that is is getting various concept artists to sort of help develop the look of the um characters the world based on sort of what um the fiction is MH um and so we we got a great artist name um John Dickinson coming up with just brilliant sort of like sort of alien biomechanical but very different from like alien look um so it's like a really really great interesting unique look that um everybody's happy with so as that's moving along and he's sort of developing the look of it we're having to sort of revisit kind of the original first Vu ship to sort of bring that into what the look and feel of the of the style of the vanuel is and now what does that mean now what is the process for doing that I

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    mean how do we how do we update those materials um once we get to a certain point with sort of the look and the the feel um we took one of our our best um artist Nathan dearsley Nathan dearsley hello Nathan who was amazing um he's in England I don't wish he was here but he so he took on the job of basically updating the scythe and and it was for a variety of reasons I mean a lot of it was because uh the original model was made for the trailer um as good as it was um it needed sort of updating on sort of uh detail because we knew that we're going to be fans are going to buy this and and look at it in their hanger and walk around it so it needed to hold up from a very very close range that's a good point because when you're looking at something from distance in space you're shooting at a very tiny object it can look great there but when you're in the hanger and you're physically

31. 00:24:24

    climbing into the cockpit or you're walking around it's got to hold up it's got to hold up can't sort of look at anything and say oh that's not really looking realistic right The Closer I Get the worse it looks so you want to be able to like walk around it and get in it and and touch it and enjoy your alien ship yeah go sorry no no so it's um so part of it is just detailing out like extra detail extra geometry I mean we have with the cry engine there's there's we have the luxury of high poly counts so we can sort of like really push that um Nathan really spent a lot of time sort of balancing detail in certain areas not getting too overly busy though sort of going on the style guide that um that we developed with John Dickinson and so it sort of like developed you know feedback for myself and Chris Roberts um sort of pushing it

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    into more of a uh look and feel of kind of um the way the the alien race um sort of evolved and and part of that also is updating functionality making sure everything works making sure everything animates correctly um way they get in much differently than humans do right there's it's a different way of getting into the cockpit flying the ship all that kind of stuff so right and these are 8ot tall aliens so um you know we need to figure out you know how they fly the thing their their technology sort of going to dictate you know sort of like how they're flying it we also have to consider human flyability eventually um I don't know if that's sure no no I me there are people there are folks out there that have one of these and not in their hanger yet but fairly soon I think they'll have so there's a lot of to think about as far as the interior of

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    the cockpit that was really never developed and and so Nathan is really thinking about this stuff hard as far as like getting um the proper alien technology in there but also being able to make sure that it can be retrofitted for human flight right and that's then that's crucial because I mean obviously there are humans that will be flying that yes there's not a lot of Vu that are going to be flying that right not real ones no no well right wait what I don't know did you say something no okay I'm just sitting here right well thank you Chris for the big update I don't which camera am I on Mike that one over there okay cool I want to thank you for coming by and giving us the update and we got to see some of those images and you know it wouldn't be cool to talk about the vanuel Sith Scythe Sith scyth scyth scyth well are they real yes okay yeah wouldn't be nice to talk about him unless we actually got to see him take a

34. 00:26:49

    look at this so man that was really cool I mean

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    that's we get to show them a little bit now Nathan did that right right and that's that's PBR PBR it's beautiful stuff it's going to really push the the look of what we're doing to a whole new level um and what he's done with sort of updating the Scythe in general with the the the uh sort of the details and the feel of it pushing it more towards sort of the organic quality that we're wanting it's really sort of um um sort of emulating what what the character is as far as sort of the sort of the bio mechanical organic feel so yeah and you can see the thing I like about pbrs too is I mean things you would do normally in texture where you know you you we just talked earlier about how when you get up close to something it this holds up because it's actually physically there in which is why it's called physical based rendering right is that what it's called

36. 00:30:01

    I think so PBR I don't know it's it's very sort of like you can it's it's has a tangible feel to where it feels um very realistic and and so it's like the the lighting reacts very very well to it so it's it's going to be nice yeah it's like the hoses look like hoses the I mean it's just yes it's a big deal and so that's and it's also a big switch for us because we have to go back through and touch every single asset we've done right and make it right it's a big it's a big deal but it's worth it and it's going to look great and we're starting that uh like now so you know we'll be that that's another point we'll be there'll be a hanger patch coming out hopefully this week and then um then we'll probably won't be one for a little while while we update everything to PBR but in the end it's going to be worth it right well that's kind of our show I want to thank subscribers and pledgers

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    particularly subscribers for allowing us to do this and bring this show and bring all these things about cig to you uh coming up this week we've got more on the animation Summit we'll give you the scenes look at that um we'll have some video footage we'll try to walk you through how to animate things in in the game um back in servers up we talked about that earlier and we're beginning the testing so by next week hopefully we'll have played against Los Angeles and let me just say the Dakota will be kicking Mavericks but so also on Friday next great Starship 1.3 is out make sure you check that out Sandy Gardner hosting and with you also

38. 00:31:59

    man you guys are doing a great that's fun to do isn't it it's awesome yeah I mean you guys are it looks like you guys are having a real good time and can we burn markk shirt uh no no it is sort of the icon of what it is now so that's it looks like Hugh Hefner's pajama top or something and he doesn't wash it so we smell it yeah yeah I can smell I can smell him down the hall for me as well um subscribe to our YouTube channel come on out check it out you when we when we put something up you'll be the first one to know submit your question on the RSI Forum we're going to be taking some harder hitting heavy questions for you going forward because we get the answers from the man himself and submit your uh oh how could I almost forget we got an informal wingman's hangover that's 15 minutes after the show just join us on chat roll and we'll interact and talk and you can tell me what you liked and

39. 00:32:47

    and what you liked about the show and if you didn't like something well you keep that to yourself but anyway it's just kind of a fun thing on chat roll we get together answer questions take Skype calls it's um 15 minutes after the show show it's called wingman's hangover and it's actually before there is any actual hangover and remember if you want your stuff featured on the wingman's hanger send it in we just might use it where are we going to see him Chris in the verse the hey don't touch

40. 00:33:48

    me don't touch me oh hey hey hey don't D me don't