Inside Star Citizen: One Fifty

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:01

   foreign as the first quarter of 2023 comes to a close we're hitting a few Milestones here for what we call internally the Evergreen content team that's the folks that are dedicated to the creation of weekly recurring some might say Evergreen video content for inside Star Citizen Today's Show represents the completion of our fourth year and 150th episode since that first evolution from around the verse in 2019 and when you factor in the legacy of ATV and wingman's Hangar before that we're now just passing the 450th episode of this continuing behind the scenes series unlike anything you'll find from any game developer anywhere else and yet somehow still we never show anything good

2. 00:00:55

   it also marks the personal completion for me of eight years shepherding over 1 200 videos showcasing the creation of this project even even that one holiday live stream we don't like to talk about anymore this quarter before we go about our regularly scheduled Hiatus we're bringing back an old favorite that grab bag of tiny looks at various aspects from all over development the Sprint report now for those of you who maybe have never seen one of these before a Sprint is what we call the internal two-week Cadence where developers go off on a task come back to check in see everyone's progress get some notes and then either move on to something else or go back for another two week Sprint on

3. 00:01:43

   the same feature so what that means is what you're going to see here this week is actually internal developer art the kind they don't usually make to be seen publicly it's not the flashy and somewhat mentally unstable work of the ISC gameplay capture team who have been on quite a strictly recently possibly because we changed their medications so without further Ado let's jump into the inside Star Citizen quarter 1 2023 Sprint report and clam bake Showdown I'm assuming that editorial will put a nice subtle title on screen right here also there's no Clambake Showdown I don't know why I said that let's start things off with some spacecraft and vehicles where there was recently a small onboarding task for a new hire to update the remote turrets

4. 00:02:33

   for the 600i from origin which you can see here I think we can all agree it's a noticeable improvement over what's in the game today and if you watched last week's ISC on the upcoming changes to tractor beams in Alpha 319 and Beyond you might have noticed the Argo SRV flying around in that Beyond section here's a closer look at its progress as it currently makes its way through final art towards a scheduled release later this year now for those who follow the progress tracker on the public roadmap here are your first looks at three vehicles currently making their Journeys throughout the pipeline starting with the RSI Lynx Rover companion Sojourner to the famous urza we all know and love an often found package with the luxurious constellation Phoenix it's

5. 00:03:20

   currently in gray box phase and it's nice to see the RSI styling continue to evolve especially with those tires I mean I'm not usually a Packers are cool dude but those those are cool tires right and as we move inside we can take a look at the cockpit coming along and then there's the rear which is out the back and which is already far more fancy than its Ursa Brethren okay I thought the tires were cool but can a chair also be cool because that looks like a comfy ass chair okay can I say that no no I just headed it out yeah yeah we're fine good job there's also the Crusader Spirit which

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   just entered greybox phase recently you can see here early work on the exterior making certain every part of it matches the metrics laid out in the white box phase before it then popping in through the rear of the ship which like the lynx is also in the back and then into the cockpit that's looking well a bit contrasty at the moment but that's not uncommon for graybox phase as this period is mostly about defining shape language and material breakup before everything gets refined later in final art phase and then let's take a look at the gray box Bombay for the bomber variant that's being worked on in tandem with all the others finally let's look at recent gray box progress on the apoa santok yai the alien Shion fighter where you can see

7. 00:04:56

   the exterior coming along pretty well the thrusters are being modeled out [Music] and they've started exploring how the landing gear will work experimenting with the shade language a bit to make certain they're beefy enough to believably hold the mass of this entire ship when all is said and done and as for when you're gonna see the 600i turret the lynx the SRV the spirit the santokiai and more make their way into the persistent Universe I'd recommend as always keeping an eye on the public roadmap for details when they become available now let's move from ships that fly to winged creatures as astute readers of the monthly report might already be aware one of the many things the AI team

8. 00:05:44

   is currently working on is pushing Boyd's development in the persistent Universe now Boyd's are the algorithmic behavior of small creatures that can populate the planets and moons of the persistent Universe with a test here of condors slowly learning to to avoid flying into mountains or drowning in the oceans beneath them done nobody huh just me and then some work on ocean fish here completely totally and utterly unanimated it's just a it's just a test of behaviors here people without all the emotion parameters that'll make them look good one day now I'm including this as a test if I

9. 00:06:34

   see all you out there on the internet it's like these Star Citizen fish look great I'm gonna know you don't listen to a word I'm saying my feelings will be hurt meanwhile the interactables team formerly known as the props team have been running through and physicalizing a bunch of assets for the persistent Universe like these weights for gyms like the ones you might find in new Babbage similar to The Fish we just watched this is also before animation has had their chance to contribute so let's not judge the throwing form being displayed here it's nice to see even the littlest things in the verse behave naturally with realistic mass and physics whenever possible this effort to make things behave as you'd expect them to also extends to the coffee machines of the verse with a pass recently done to go through and repair

10. 00:07:23

    their broken functionality now I did consider turning this section into an update on either bartender or mess hall features Just For Old Times Sake but someone who will go unnamed stopped me just know that there are heroes out there looking out for each and every one of you also it looks like the team developed a few new coffee mugs along the way well just let this video play for a bit see a couple coffee cups in action and think about how much bartender stuff I'm not talking about right now also speaking of bartenders if you want some interactables of your own there's this new set of Star Citizen pint glasses up for pre-order on the on on the web store I I asked if they wanted me to promote them and they said no because you'll

11. 00:08:11

    probably do something silly and stupid with it and I said leave it with me and they said what no we said no and I said no problem and here we are back to the interactables team they've also been prototyping a new way to hang a variety of posters on the walls of the player halves and spacecraft with these new expanding electronic devices that could let you decorate any space that's marked up for them the prototyping here is using common adverts for in-universe events but the possibilities of this feature become apparent very quickly in allowing players to not only decorate their spaces but to collect and memorialize important moments from their time in the persisting universe to take missions to set up flyers for in-game shops or events post bulletins for Bounty

12. 00:08:59

    missions and much much more and this last bit is from both the interactables and Mission feature team who have been developing the next dangerous new Contraband to sweep its way through the persistent Universe grasping Weevil eggs this is this what's the file name oh no that's what it is huh let's switch on over to the environment planetarium lighting teams work with these images of updated atmosphere progress for the planet Hurston which adds a stronger layer of pollution much closer to the planet's surface that helps suck light out of the atmosphere at a richer gradient and really just makes the place seem dirtier overall

13. 00:09:47

    which we can expect to play very well with the upcoming loreville 2.0 and Alpha 319 some of which you can see here I'm just gonna let these images speak for themselves a bit and we'll take a deeper look at how light atmosphere and the new cityscape all come together in Alpha 319 when ISC returns from Hiatus in just a few weeks and while the atmosphere of Hurston is

14. 00:10:37

    getting a little love so too are The Verdant forests of Microtech as part of a greater overall overhaul we'll be discussing more of in the coming months the forests of Microtech are receiving a performative refresh that will make the environment seem richer and denser visually while providing more gameplay opportunities for cover during missions racing and other activities Galore yeah The Landing Zone teams have also completed a Sprint adding additional Mission locations scattered around the planet Crusader in the style of resort hotels that can utilize overlays for Pleasant in-use active businesses as well as those taken over by the ever-present and vile nine tails each new cluster is designed to be a procedural home for a variety of mission types and looks to draw players out from aurizon and into the Far Corners of the

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    gas giant and down on the surface of Hurston work is underway on early white box phase of local law enforcement offices a place for players to utilize the next evolution of bounty hunting gameplay we'll discuss more about later this year to collect or in this case drop off the captured bodies of criminal Outlaws collected by players now the drop-off here is right up front because in early test it was getting kind of weird just walking through the hallways pushing bodies deeper and deeper into the facility unless you're into that sort of thing moist noodle you can then also check out the Bounty boards to collect New Missions here or go forward into the shop and resupply as needed

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    purpose for meetings but who needs more of those in life and then we bring ourselves to the detention area where a number of cells can vary from location to location I suspect that many of you will be looking forward to spending your time anywhere else besides kleicher even if it's just a jail and not a prison also in white boxes the pre-production blockouts for a variety of building interior modules that will fit inside the Towering skyscrapers of new Babbage on Microtech being developed and tested in situ simultaneously to work out and discover anything developers might not have considered or recognized as necessary in the original mandate the idea here is that once the player lands they would enter this particular interior from the very top encountering

17. 00:13:09

    a Lobby and expected elevators then after a brief trip down emerge into a number of different interior modules such as block of player Apartments seen in the example here and speaking of modular Interiors the Montreal tools team continues their work refining the very process used to make locations for the persistent Universe including several sprints on something called the Pu locations tool a plug-in that artists and designers can use to build and iterate modular locations quickly for the various star systems of the persistent universe what you're seeing here is the Pu locations tool fully integrated into the

18. 00:13:57

    game editor where this person has decided they wish to create a space clinic in pyro no doubt a location Players will visit quite often in the Lawless Frontier that awaits next let's cook the first module which is the lobby and includes the relevant connectors necessary so that the player can Traverse from one room to the other without falling through into the cold depths of space it's important players feel safe in their space stations at least from the environment art legal note this does not extend to elevators which are a unique curse upon players and developers alike next is What's called the universal room which is a super fancy programmer term

19. 00:14:47

    for hallway they know it's true we can even change the seed if we don't like that particular hallway and generate another and another each one creating the various connectors needed for us to continue building and then some side rooms or in rare cases a rear room which is usually at the back some shops like the pharmacy oops in assert I'm gonna leave that in there for solidarity with developer pain now let's go inside and start cooking some overlays which is basically everything involved in the set Decor that will further distinguish one space

20. 00:15:35

    Clinic from the next things are pretty generic at the moment so we turn on our Vis areas check our tags start the cook and whoa nice we move forward looks like we forgot to cook a container easy enough We're not gonna put rooms here so let's uh go ahead and start closing these connectors off and then we can cook us up another overlay for this side room here and this process is repeated in all subsequent rooms and overall it's another terrific example of how game development is exponential and absolutely non-linear in progress now as asset libraries are built and grown and tools are conceived and iterated on the progress you can make at

21. 00:16:22

    one point should be exceeded by the next and overall becomes a continuing reminder that the struggle of what comes before is necessary and right to birth the improved Technologies efficiencies and general effectivenesses of everything that comes next including a new version that does everything you just saw in one click that recently became available to Developers and while we're talking new technologies let's wrap things up this week with some work from the Pu character art team which had a small Sprint working to convert some of our older Legacy assets to newer resources that have been developed over recent years including layer blend V2 and the ability to spawn items with specific levels of wear and Decay so this means that not every version you find out in the verse is going to look exactly the same the team is also using the opportunity

22. 00:17:11

    to discover more chances to further modularize existing armors like The Nomad and light Outlaw you're seeing here as well as many more will be showcasing later this year it's part of a continuing effort to add more customization of what you wear in both the new stuff that's coming down the pipeline and what's already there in the persistent universe and that customization also extends to a variety of tints that can be used for spawning armor variants within the universe which you can see in some early Explorations here this will allow Mission and location designers to specify specific variations of components and tints for different areas or use procedural tools to randomly generate dozens and dozens of variations for each outfit and when that gets extended to many of the outfits already within the universe this will get us a

23. 00:17:59

    far greater variety of things within the Precision Universe than we have today and oh heck I know I said we were going to wait until our last big segment on Louisville in just a couple weeks once we return from Hiatus but let's go ahead and leave you with just a few shots of the absolutely fantastic work the lighting team is doing bringing this new Louisville 2.0 to life yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna shut up and let several thousand words of images do the talking instead thank you this week well we learned that there are

24. 00:19:04

    as always a lot of ships and vehicles in the pipeline all scheduled to make their way to the persistent Universe throughout the remainder of this year that work to bring fauna to the persistent universe is back on the menu that grasping Weeble eggs are a thing as is the continuing work to physicalize as many aspects of Star Citizen as possible that locations new and old continue to be iterated on and improved upon as do the tools our team members use to create them and that boy howdy G willikers I'm pretty certain we're just gonna Park the only constant outside Louisville at night for all of Star Citizen live next quarter now as we're at the end of this quarter ISC is going on its regularly scheduled Hiatus but the work doesn't stop there next quarter we'll be back with our final looks at Louisville 2.0 before it goes live in Alpha 319 we're going to

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    take a deeper look at the vast changes and improvements coming to Arena Commander after that as well as the new derelict settlement towns new player experience tutorial a sequel to the buggy racetrack in Oregon but for Microtech explorations of the new ships and vehicles arriving at this year's Invictus launch week a discussion with Superstar concept artist Gavin rothery about envisioning more ships for Star Citizen than anyone else alive uh we're going to look ahead to a whole bunch of new features coming in Alpha 320 and then of course continuing our journey to 4.0 here and there along the way it's been one hell of an eight years and the last four of them bringing 150 episodes of this show to you has been a blast and we're still getting better at doing so each and every week now I can say that because I'm not talking about myself I'm referring to the talents and work of will Dave Alex Casey Jill

26. 00:20:40

    Stephanie Amanda Caroline Tom David Luke Justin Jake Vicky and now Mercy welcome who have all made this last year the best one yet thanks for putting up with me and here's to another 150 more oh and if you've noticed and liked the 10 different memes that have been here on the screen all quarter will be releasing into the social media later this week I can tell you they make great phone wallpapers for inside Star Citizen I'm Jared Huckabee thanks for watching thanks for 150 episodes and we'll see you back here in about a month