Around the Verse: Episode 2.36

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] that is some pretty impressive flying pretty slick fly lying it is congratulations

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   darkar not Dark Star Dark Star CU I was thinking Dark Star but he is a very good flyer way better than me I need to take some lessons are you that good no I I don't think I would uh I think I would get motion sick flying like that that's true welcome to around the verse your weekly look at star citizens development I'm Sandy Gardner VP of marketing I'm Ben Lesnik director of community engagement Star Citizen Alpha 2. . 4 is now live and on the live service we patched the 2.4 over the weekend yes uh you know we know this has been long awaited uh Star season Alpha 2.4 is our largest update since the move to uh 2.0 earlier in the year um as persistence flyable Capital size ships uh shopping uh in-game

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   economy all sorts of cool stuff and we absolutely would not be here without the tireless devotion of our uh volunteer bug testers folks in the evocati um all the subscribers who helped out everybody else who tested on the PTU thank you thank you thank you for your tireless devotion and we have a little bit of footage on the very cool flyable starf farer here it is the Reliant is also in the hangar yes the uh the base Reliant core is now in the hangar so if you are a reliant owner you can uh go and explore your ship and just to add to what Ben said about 2.4 we found um issues that we wouldn't have found you know just on PTU so basically

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   we had to go live uh so thank you everybody for jumping on because that really helps us out yes one thing to I guess we should stress is that it's still Alpha you know the PTU is early early Alpha it lets us kind of control the testing parameters know how many people are impacting the server at one time it lets us Focus test particular things we're worried about but uh it's all part of the testing process so when it starts as in module or update is live that just means more testing so you're going to Rend up plenty of bugs out there we know about it we want to hear about your experiences and it's all just going to help us make this a better game I know I had some ship spawning some item duplication I got all excited I've got like 10 ships but no I remember Thursday we were uh we were almost ready to launch and they were like okay we we

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   fixed the ship spotting bug for every ship except the auroraa that's the one that everybody owns yay I had 20 of them and I have seen some ARS are still like dancing on the pad but they're they're very close to to stopping that stop the ship dance 2.4 isn't our only big launch this week tomorrow we will be offering star Citizen's first dedicated space motorcycle the Drake dragonfly yes the Drake dragon flly is what you might call an ultra light snub it's a perhaps our flest ship yet but it has just such a cool experience where it's it's only your helmet separating you from the vacuum uh we're really excited about some of the gameplay this one's going to add and what can we do with the dragonfly I know that's probably obvious but well um not so much because there's uh I think there's more that meets the eye to this one it is usable not just uh

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   in space as this sort of disposable pirate fighter of course it's a drake design so we we imagine all sorts of pirate battles uh caterpillars carrying them and so on uh but it's also going to be used on planets um so you'll be able to you know travel around planets the same way you might in a gray cat and travel around space itself if you're a development subscriber your monthly hanger flare has been delivered all subscribers should have a model saber fighter in their hangers now so take a moment to saber the moment I no our our development subscribers are the folks that make shows like this uh t for the chairman all of our other community outreach pieces possible and uh we can't thank you enough but here's a saber now let's go to our Studios from around the world

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   to see what's happening in news from around the verse hey guys welcome to Los Angeles my name is Ry Vasquez I'm here with Vincent Sinatra um we're go ahead and talk about what's going on so in La we just helped wrapped up um 2.4 so you guys should be seeing it out there and we still have a couple things here and there we're going on but the most part La has been working on item 2.0 we've had our heads down on that for a while now and we're going to continue to have our heads down on that so we've been actually working on the controllers so that way um some of the flight controllers some of the weapon controllers so that way people can actually have specific items on their ship actually do the job it's supposed to be doing so working on parameters adding all those things the engineers

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   are really excited and we're getting pretty far along I can't wait to actually show you guys more stuff but till then so what are you guys got going on uh QA we've been uh looking at 2.5 and all the new features that are going to be rolling out uh some good stuff there uh not for 2.5 but still very exciting is the uh procedural planets we've taken a very early look at that it's pretty cool it's it's very cool we love we love flying around there uh and also we've been Gathering uh some great feedback on the Vanguard from the forums when is the Vanguard feedback Clos out did you guys close that out already um I'm coating the feedback now so it's getting pretty close to closed out all right cool well see you guys thanks again this is how nice signing off hey guys Jake Ross here producer in the Austin studio and I'm here with you this week to talk a little bit about what's going on here in Austin so uh 240 went live on Friday yay so uh really

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   excited to finally get that out in you guys' hands um we've run into some issues some critical uh crashes and blockers uh that we're experiencing with the persistence cache so we've got our server team here in Austin uh updating that and fixing those problems and uh hopefully we'll be putting out a patch here pretty soon that will fix up those issues we're not experiencing uh some of those some of those issues you guys are guys are running into U with service crashing and and uh and not being able to log in and that kind of thing so um so yeah that's great there uh yeah animation implementation is the next thing I wanted to talk about so um I mentioned previously that we're working on animations and that we've uh we finally gotten some support um from technical animator Eric link out in LA to help us uh hook up the animation assets that we've been working on here in Austin into game so um finally

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    getting those in and uh more importantly we're actually going to get some focus on getting those animations hooked up into subsumption which is our AI system so pretty soon you guys will be able to see animations we've been working on uh hooked up in game and working within our AI system um so that way we have to have NPCs running around for olsar and our cor to give that place uh those places a little bit more life so we're excited to see that come online here as well um that's all I got for you this week guys thanks see you around hi everyone this is Mickey over in the UK and I've got Matt Webster here with me today who is one of the producers in the studio and um so 2.4 went live this week it did um and a lot of people have noticed uh as well in the PTU as well um

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    that there's been a lot of server issues it's been one of the major problems yeah uh we are aware of this um it's part of the reason why um 2.4 took a little while to come out the we're right on the very edge of what we can probably do now with the network code as it stands with the way that we uh have persistence and the way that items get um bound and Unbound from the network when they're created or destroyed it it doesn't do them the way that we would like them to do them in order for us to then proceed forward in how we we have our plans laid out yeah um so we've now got the the network guys doing a really good overhaul of the network code to make sure it really does do what we need it to um not 100% sure just how long that's going to take yet hopefully it'll be out in the next couple of patches so it we

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    want to make sure that is it's stable and we don't have the issues that we have now plaguing Us in the new system so we're going to make sure we really stress that properly yeah yeah cool um and as well as this uh we're hoping to see eventually a new AI system yeah um it's going to start making its way into the PTU towards the end of the year all being well uh will feed into Squadron 42 as well uh it would be for example a bartender won't just stand there as a rigid NPC won't just won't just dispense missions he'll go around and talk to various other patrons of the bar he'll pour drinks he have a bit of a conversation with you if you're not directly getting a Miss Mission from him just to try and flesh these characters out and make them really rounded and feel like they're they're really there they are a proper person yeah yeah cool should be really really good that does

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    sound good yeah right uh I that's all we got time for so we'll see in the bus see you later bye everyone Brian Chambers from Frankfurt office uh this week I'll run through a lot of what tech has done um maybe not all the bits but hit on some of the top stuff uh first of all we did a lot of uh performance and optimization work for 2.4 um good to finally get it out there in everyone's hands lot of work went on it across all the teams all the offices all the studios um and and Frankfurt definitely had a hand in that so uh glad that you guys actually have your hands on it uh procedural planets continuing to push stuff playing with new terrain um areas where there's multiple planets and so on and and we're getting

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    some really awesome results um areas that we're also working on uh tags and zone system um we push it on some tech there and saw some issues so we're always fixing stuff before we actually put it into our main branch um so we created some stuff broke some stuff and fixed it and got it working uh on the animation Tech side head stabilization it's an ongoing thing to make sure that um it's as stable and as nice looking as possible so it's not disruptive to the player and and feels good uh always pushing on facial Tech as well um the different tiers of the head heads you see from afar heads you see up close how those lods are blending together so we can get the best results uh physics uh

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    using uh look at local physics grid taking starf far as an example um and refactoring what we need to get it solid and to get it where it should be um AI there's a lot of work on AI as well um a lot of discussions in AI as we talked about there were a lot of people out here last week um going through looking at kind of what the next steps are are taking an idea of where we're at making sure that we're building the foundation um with that the guys have have touched a little bit of everything over the last week from the the local nav mesh uh zone system subsumption uh different spawning functionality and so on so shorten the suweet this week uh thanks again for all the support and see you next week

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    tell us about how you hooked up with Chris how did you get involved with Star Citizen you know um I got an email from Chris while I was working on uh the RoboCop reboot and I I was working in Hollywood and um and I get an email he was looking for a concept artist to to uh do some ship design for him and um and he was putting together a uh kind of a a animation pitch to to go for a crowdfunded idea for called Star Citizen and and I I met with him and and um he talked to me about his idea sounded awesome and um would I would I want to do some designs for the bad guy ship so of course you know I would love to and I did I did the Scythe is that Scythe Scythe yeah pronounced correctly yes

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    scythe and um and I did concept stuff for it uh you know we we worked out the design and um and Chris oversaw like the the growth and the journey of that design and then um and then eventually I saw it actually put into the animation I'm like wow there look what a what a great what a great pitch that very first pitch at a game GDC 12 in Texas yeah yeah so you started with the scythe and now uh starter citizen has been announced and we have to start working on our five starters the five ships that are going to okay the five starters are going to begin Star Citizen and you get you get tapped for the freelancer right so tell us about working on the freelancer so um they you know Chris and the team contacted me again and uh would

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    you like to do another ship and of course I love to do another ship and um and they they gave me the brief for uh for the freelancer it's kind of a unibody ship design as opposed to you know the Drake stuff which is very utility it's very like putting pieces together you know for for the design we've got the freelancer now uh crowd is going great we're expanding beyond the five original ships and we create an entirely new company outside those five Drake interplanetary and the first ship for Drake is the cutless so tell me about working on the cut my father's favorite Ship by the way again uh Chris and and the team uh asked me to get going on a pirate ship called the cutless mhm I remember the time frame was short I immediately sketched

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    out some stuff and sent it back in the whole idea of it was tough little ship you know what I mean like a cargo capacity but not pretty more uh more like a bulldog okay and um kind of The Germ of the idea landed pretty quick of the of the those kind of outboard engines in the back you know the the kind of two front two back layout with a with the front uh canopy from there uh I think next was the caterpillar caterpillar it's still kind of a pirate ship yeah they tell you we're doing another pirate ship kind of a bigger more cargo ship it's called the caterpillar how does that influence your your design right there CU I know it does look very different than all many of our other ships in the brief it was definitely the caterpillar is called the

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    caterpillar because it looks somewhat like a caterpillar and then you go okay you want me to make a spee that looks like a caterpiller but I mean what what does that really imply you know long sectional ship and so I think all the that uh that first pass was like doing versions of that did did the first pass have a 100 landing gear along the bottom no I no landed in the first pass just uh I I usually do a drawing and it's like a three quarter shots you know okay yeah caterpillars have 100 legs I think how many your landing gear did it end up with uh actually we're still working that out cuz uh they're in the other room right now still tweaking the exterior design based on you know actual gameplay needs and stuff like that so uh from the caterpillar to the Herold also

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    Herold started as an asymmetrical ship right it has since been un asymmet or it has been symmetrical symmetrical symmetrical I'm really not good with English apparently which I didn't I would it's okay with English we're good all right so uh The Herald are information Runner uh any stories about the herald the heral um that had a very big sketch phase to it like the I know the initial brief was this thing it's really fast it flies somewhere it opens up to send and receive information store it and then fly out of there as fast as you can so then the it ended up being you know big engines um some kind of of uh

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    transmitting and receiving rig or uh you know receiving devices and um and a kind of cramped cockpit because it shouldn't be it isn't roomy it's all about um get there and get out like most Jake ships utilitarian yeah purpose right Jake ships have an abundance of purpose it's one of the things I like they utility first yeah all right so uh next we move back into MK right and you work on the whole series correct now that that start when we started it was just going to be the whole C right right they tell you five so tell me about working on the whole series and how you differentiated a from E you know what it actually started off seeming like pretty straightforward simple um design the the

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    uh company had already worked out a uh kind of a framework of how they wanted everything laid out and it looked like the assignment was to go in and put some kind of flesh on the bones and just make that into um into the hole and uh that's how we started and it it um then the conditions for the hull started to change from there like well you know now there need to there should be three and then it went to five and then it the final thing was there should be an open condition and then a closed condition for for um when it doesn't have any cargo so I think I just remembered what that ship was the Endeavor the Endeavor did you work on the Endeavor I did the Endeavor the Endeavor with the the science exploring

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    ship we were before this we were trying to we knew we eight ships and we had seven in our head and we couldn't remember that the Endeavor was was the next sh again with MK right and a a um unibody yes you know with a lot of flow so the Endeavors are science our reship ship uh uh looks like uh uh did you Sil how many times did you watch Silent Running a lot like at least 30 times okay yeah so tell me about working on the Endeavor besides watching Silent Running 30 times um the Endeavor that had uh that started off with um with a core design that that had already been worked out here and um and you needed me to kind of style it up and um and make it uh fit into the MK family

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    family and then it then it ballooned into um needing many particular specific modules yes to to fit on that ship and then needing to have a uh a landing Bay yeah and so it got it got tricky but that's what we do right yes yeah Ben let or Chris let Ben off the leash with the Endeavor you know uh Ben plays a big part in the design of many of our ships uh at least the the top level meta design what not so you started I remember Ben and I had this meeting where we sat there just he and I with a whiteboard started coming up with science modules and whatnot so uh uh he didn't use any of mine no he used one one or two of mine what was what did you have I'm trying to remember what they were what they were I think the landing module may have been mine but honestly I can't remember at this point every day just blurs here I don't know what your

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    day is like but my day is just there's so much star citiz and just compacts so that was that's seven right as I haven't been County as we go along and that brings you to the buccaneer the bucer uh now uh before this airs actually there'll be a part we're recording it after we're recording this but you'll see it first you're going to sit down with Ben Lesnik and you're going to talk all about the buccaneer so I won't so I won't take up to much your time on the buccaneer stuff like that so we'll let we'll let Ben talk about the buccaneer you bet and these people will have already seen it before this SS so that's that's basically a top level view of your stuff for Star Citizen uh do you know what you're working on next they they have they said you know hey Jim after the buccaneer we we want you for I never know until I get get that email it says Hey we've got another ship would you like to take a pass and I and I always say yes cuz um you just can't beat this

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    job yeah you know what I mean it is a dream job I do know yeah and um and to do eight ships for for one project is um pretty great but let's not talk about me let's talk about you enough about me Jared all right so so Jim before we let you go any final message you want to give to the Star Citizen Community um Star Citizen Community um thanks for for looking in on our discussion and um it really is great being able to do all these ships and uh it's a dream job and hope you like them and thanks for having me come in Jared appreciate it for coming in man so Jim Martin concept artist and extraordinaire

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    maker of Drake ships and M ships and one vanuel ship Jared hucke Community manager for Star Citizen Squadron 42 back to you guys we kindly ask that guests exit airlocks as soon as it is safe to do so for welcome everybody to another edition of

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    ship shape I'm your host Community manager Jared Huckaby and with me today is special guest technical designer Mr Matt Sherman Matt how you doing man doing good good now tomorrow we are putting the Drake dragonfly on sale and so we thought we'd take a few minutes to talk about the Drake dragonfly uh its Origins and what our initial plans for it are yeah now the Drake dragonfly was originally a voting option for our wave three or four ships it would have helped to look that up ahead of time wave three sh it was the wave three starter so it was in the same vote uh so in the end that's the vote where the Reliant one out uh and became you the the new starter ship uh but then also I want to say the the Terin the hurricane can the dragonfly uh were all some of the other options um and so there there was just enough Drive

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    between both internally where it's like oh yeah space motorcycle this would be pretty damn badass uh and then just from you guys in the community saying hey uh we we want to we want a badass space motorcycle so we decided to uh try our hand at making a badass space motorcycle gotcha now in that original vote the dragonfly was to be considered as a starter vehicle yeah but it's no longer what we consider a starter vehicle it's more in the lines of of a of a snub craft like a Merlin or an Archimedes yep I why don't you tell us a little bit about what we can expect from the dragonfly tomorrow yeah so one of the biggest things that we wanted to have with the dragonfly is a rapid entry exit onto the ship so uh one of the first things you guys will see with that is uh there is no canopy around this ship at all uh the Riders are fully exposed to

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    the elements um so bring your helmet yeah bring your helmet you need to make sure your suit has life support built into it uh you're not going to have a lot of the accommodations of you know a life support system or a gravity generator to help you out um but the nice thing is that's only going to be while you're riding the dragonfly in space uh and one of the big things that we wanted to make sure the the dragonfly has is also a full ground vehicle operation so this is a multi mode vehicle here correct uh so so uh uh we have the diagram on your screen right now you're looking at three modes we have compact mode space mode and ground mode so you take us through the three modes yeah so compact mode that's where the ship is going to be starting out so uh it's really small a lot smaller actually than we initially envisioned so

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    you know your freelancer uh constellation a lot of the ships that people like oh will it fit odds are there's a chance it's going to fit uh and it's going to start off you know rolling out of that ship in the compact mode um so that's really going to be just you know till you've cleared the line of the ship and then the the dragonfly can sort of pick out it's like okay am I in space or am I on the ground and that's going to convert to the appropriate mode for that gotcha so because we may have buried the lead here a little bit this is a ship that can actually function in space and on the ground of a planet yeah so in its ground mode uh I tiet it flies a bit above the ground yeah it's going to hover a little bit off the ground so uh when we even sorting out the the tech and what's going to drive this we actually wanted to make sure that you know we're

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    justifying it with the same you know conventions that we're already planning into the other systems for our game so uh it's going to be using these gravity levitate or grav love plates uh very similar to what we're planning for how you'll move cargo around because you know you're there's some mechanical apparatus helping you move cargo when we get all that in so we want it to to have that same rationale for and this is why why two tons of metal is hovering over the ground gotcha uh another feature folks may not uh have been expecting there's a second Rider on here yep so tell us about the second Rider on the back yeah so because we want this to help with boarding with rating with just fast actions uh you know from point to point uh we didn't want you to have to just completely leave this ship alone

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    because as you can see from the size it's not the most durable Beast out there uh so we winded from the ground out up to make sure you can have a second Rider on it uh and that they're going to actually have a full rear firing Arc uh because they'll be sitting back to back with the pilot of the dragonfly and they'll be able to pull out any of their FPS weapons that they've got available to them and just be firing off behind them uh that's going to really play out a bit more once we've got uh you know the procedural plants and the surfaces in place because now you know before we we were just going to have a gray cat well no now got something with a little bit of teeth that can Dart around that can just you know fly about the surface and hopefully not have as much trouble with handrails is The Great Cat and in space it has all the same uh components and stuff that

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    like you would expect on a Merlin in a in an AR it's got a shield generator radar stuff like that that Shield generator extends to the pilot uh it'll encapsulate the whole ship so like the the pilot and the rider would technically be Pro uh guarded by it uh is not the most most potent Shield out there I mean this is a a very small uh we actually made a new scale of components uh that were considering vehicle class components uh so these are separate from normal Shi components but it would be the things that you'll find you in the graycat in the dragonfly in our Rovers uh and that's what's giving that you know much more compact space but still delivering the power and the functionality that each component you know demands gotcha and since this has a space on a ground mode can it transition from space to ground and vice versa not

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    of its own power it it cannot do uh safe for pilot or passenger atmospheric takeoff or re-entry uh you will burn to a crisp yes all right well I think that about covers it uh the Drake dragonfly goes on sale tomorrow for $35 and there may be a bonus pack or or something to look forward to so keep an eye out for that um Matt thanks for taking the time to talk with us about the Drake dragonfly was a pleasure and of course we'll be doing the standard Q&A post we'll do two next week so look for that thread that opens tomorrow and post your questions for Mr Matt Sherman thanks than to you guys hey there Tyler Witkin Community manager in the Austin Texas Studio here to bring you this week's MVP a huge

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    congratulations to Eon moon for creating the stunning image Sunset Buccaneers as I was browsing through the community Hub on the RSI website it immediately caught my eye I am confident that it has inspired many of our artists and we're all really excited to see what you create next so congratulations to you you're this week's MVP back to you guys proximity alert head proximity alert a danger system overheating

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    thank you to uh Jim Martin and Matt Sherman for coming on the show to talk Drake for Life yay Drake for life thank you for all of our subscribers for making this show possible be sure to tune in to reverse the verse tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Twitch we'll be talking about uh the the Drake dragonfly of course and 2.4 and all sorts of other stares and news so check it out and check out the com link tomorrow for the new Jump Point thank you for all of our subscribers for making this show possible as always we will see you next week on around the verse around the verse he

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    did you know that many of star citizens developers are on social media if you would like to follow Star Citizen on Facebook you can find us here or on Twitter here and even Instagram here and for a full list of developers personal accounts they're willing to share with the community check out this link you can find out uh what I bought at Amazon this week Star Wars stuff it yeah it was probably Star Wars stuff [Applause]