Around the Verse: Episode 2.14

14 January 201600:40:48923 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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this video made possible by the ICC Stellar surveyors and subscribers like you [Music] hey everybody welcome back to around the verse I'm Sandy Gardner and I'm Aaron Roberts and I'm still in my thermals by the way yeah and I'm obviously on a t-shirt because actually it's quite warm in England this is it's only about two degrees it's pretty good for this time of year it is absolutely freezing did you miss the cold snap weather report
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you probably that's that comes in tomorrow it's only get down to about minus one should be fine there there there's colder places yeah yeah this week in the ATV interview Jared sits down with associate producer mark Kong to discuss his recent transfer to the LA studio and Paul Jones and Gary Sanchez are going to return and show us some some the Jean Scout and where we're going with that in ship shape but first 2.1 continues its testing on the PTU yep we're um getting very happy with what we have out there we've we've released um a few more um versions up on the PTU to you guys and it's great all the feedback we're getting we feel like we're getting a bunch of um better stability on the um on the service side as well as the client side we've been putting fix them for that and also um we are you know um working on um performance issues and so we've been some of the benchmarks we're
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doing showing so we're actually get better performance as well so so time we're spending in I think it's really paying off and also just getting um fixing up some of the other sort of smaller issues as well to give everybody a better gameplay experience that should be with you guys really really soon and the monthly report came out yesterday with another in-depth look at the development of Star Citizen yep but guys check it out um you know and give it a read and as always we really enjoy just putting together all the information let you guys uh you know get a bit of insight into what we're doing and um you know we always kind of enjoy reading your feedback as well now let's check in with our Studios from around the world for news from around the verse hey everyone here we are in sunny Southern California Los Angeles Cloud Imperium games office with this week's
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update I'm Daran vorick I'm ready Vasquez so for this week we've got three new items for you uh first off a lot of the players have been talking about some of the constellation performance issues uh when a player will walk near Connie some of the frame rates tend to drop and this is something that we are putting as a high top priority right now uh we in fact it was the main discussion of our production meeting this morning so it is something that we're addressing so hopefully we'll have a fix in for it soon um and the second one is regarding the Retaliator not being able to take off after being repaired so this is another bit of feedback that we've been getting back from our players QA has been able to produce it as well so that's another high priority issue that's being addressed U hopefully for 2.1 Y what you got Randy well one of the things the designers has actually working on is they're doing some component work so that way they can make
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the components either you know more efficient as well as just work better with the new features coming on one so hopefully you guys can see all that stuff soon is that done being done by uh it's been done Sherman and I think KX and Kirk actually working right now so three of us kind of working together yep and the other reason why Randy's here with us today is he is now part of the production team here in Los Angeles going to be overseeing some of the engineering and Tech design stuff so we've got an awesome addition to the production team out here in California so hope you guys welcome him aboard I think that's all we got for this week yep again I'm Darion see you guys hey guys Jake Ross here so producer of the persistent universe and I'm here with you this week uh talk a little bit about what we got going on in Austin so um shopping prototype uh well my first
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update will be actually be something that's going up on up at behavior that we're managing out out of Austin so the shopping prototype uh we reviewed a couple weeks before the break um you know the actual go process of going into cassaba outlet and uh pulling up your mobiglass and uh interacting with it and purchasing an item trying things on and uh the Prototype it turned out really really well so we said go ahead and Behavior's been working on the actual functionality for that and so we've uh we had the first little little bit um to look at last week and it turned out really well we're really happy with the direction that we're going so um you know uh there were some tweaks here and there uh that we throughout that process but now we're we're rolling smooth on that and we'll have something even more substantial to see here at the end of this week so looking forward to that yeah so that's going on let's see and
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the last thing I'll mention is uh we finished up U emmer Switzer finished up his uh his pass on the hanger expansion that's right we're expanding The Hanger uh to make room for the starf farer uh because our current hangers don't fit that thing it's massive so we uh created a new uh section of the hanger and with that came uh came a new lighting pass so imra has uh finished his lighting pass on that expansion and uh we'll look to see the starf far in the hangers sometime soon uh so yeah that's all I got for you this week I'll see you guys around thanks bye hi and welcome to the UK and this week as I promised last week I've brought someone else along with me uh to keep you all entertained so this week we've got Luke Presley the uh lead designer on Star Citizen live so he's
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going to tell you a little bit about what he's been working on recently Okay so we've been doing a lot of planning since Christmas on um one of the new huge features we're going to be implemented in the next kind of coming months and uh that's cargo um so obviously it's to give cargo ships like the freelance that we've been introducing yeah give them a proper role because obviously the the game play so far is very dog fight Centric and um we know that implementing cargo is just going to open up a whole new side to the game uh definely like roles that Beyond like just heart calling cargo you're going to be um Scavenging it you're going to be there's piracy involved now you can attack players um and like escorts you know if you're going around
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it takes time to collect this stuff so you you know need someone to watch your back um and we without new technology like the we're waiting on the object container system yeah yeah we're like hitting the limit of what we can add to Crusader so we've been very clever about how we do this and that we're kind of um using all the resources that are currently there so for instance Pirates you kill Pirates they'll drop um cargo now you can go out there with a sole purpose of killing Pirates and collecting cargo or you can kind of hang around the edges what other players do it and then sneak in and scav um you want do that there right yeah that's what do um or there's the other option which is piracy so once the
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players have got this on the on board the ship they fly off you just fly after them take them out scaven it yourself drop it off at a cry asro and you rewards yeah all right that's about it for this week I hope you enjoyed that thanks very much for joining us and we'll see you in the verse as always a big thank you to all the studios around the world Jared sat down with our new associate producer Mark
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Hong to discuss his work on Star Citizen in this week's ATV interview take it away guys thanks guys this week on the ATV interview we're sitting down with associate producer Mark Hong Mark how you doing man pretty good how about yourself I'm dude I'm good man look at our new set I love it it's awesome it's very breathtaking I like it so associate producer now a lot of people have a lot of ideas about what a producer is especially for video games since it may be different than from the music industry or the movie industry uh in the broadest sense start us off what is a producer as far as video games it's kind
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of a loaded question it's a really long answer I wanted to start you off in trouble yeah um it it means different things at different Studios and different teams uh it means a lot of things uh Team man management project management uh scheduling uh making sure people are on track making sure the team is Happy following what the directors want us to do but that people are uh not overworked and that they're excited about what they're working on um it's managing Communications is kind of my big uh pet peeve making sure that uh you can keep track of all the emails and Post-it notes and people walking up to Skypes uh there's a lot of communication going on especially since we're so distributed across the uh globe that being able to keep on top of that and
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and juggle uh and prioritize the different things and follow up and not forget about anything is one of the key things that you need to be able to do absolutely I know a lot of people are are tend to get worried about the distributed development because we have Studios all over the world uh you mentioned that part of your job is to make sure that that communication between the studios keeps flowing correct what besides Skype and email is there anything in particular that we do to to help with the distributed development uh well it's it's largely that um sometimes we will require some uh in-person meetings things you can't really do over Skype and um Summits yeah we'll have Summits we'll have people uh fly out and get everybody in a room together so you can be looking at the
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same uh diagram on a chart and uh drawing on it in real time and talking about it uh a lot gets done and it also is just um there's some team building that occurs and that is lost uh through Skype and emails so and we also use tools like Confluence and yeah yeah yeah that that as well yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of miscellaneous tools out there that that we use so and and they all work together with our you know our producers utilize all of them to to make sure that the communication is Flowing between all our Studios sure yeah um now when you started a cloud Imperium game you actually started in our Austin Studio yes and it wasn't as an associate producer it was as a production coordinator okay uh for the engineering team in particular one of one of the things I found here is that your title
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is really where you start it's not where you end with your responsibilities uh we're really great here about if you can do a thing you get tapped to do that thing it doesn't matter what your what your title was what is it's is this something Mark can do then yeah then give that to Mark kind of thing definitely yeah the main difference is I was with the engineering team over there which was is awesome it's a great team all of Austin is awesome uh I miss you know the team but it's exciting to be here uh on a different part of the game so I'm working with the art team uh mainly right now I'm working on handful of other things but that's uh I'm mainly working with the ship art team so it's a it's a new uh pipeline which um there's a few uh aspects of it that we're working on improving uh but it's it's kind of exciting to be learning a different uh
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part of the game the prod from the production C side like the pipeline now I know you were brought here originally to to help out with the ship with the ship art but you you've been tapped again where your position your your your your position is where you start you've been tapped to help with the characters and and some of the tech design yeah there there's a few other uh things that I'm uh supporting on uh right now so uh Sean Tracy moved out here from Austin as well and he uh actually just got out of it yesterday officially and um he's going to be heading up the uh tech contest team which is we did a little bit of a reorganization and that's uh kind of a new a new team so I'm helping support that uh I'm also and that includes like Tech art I'm also working with uh Forest on um some of the uh the character art
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clothing art um production for that and some Outsourcing and I'm also working with their UK team on that uh since they're kind of heading up the global character production pipeline and I'm also working with the design team here for the ships so with Kirk and his team so you got your hands in a lot of pots here yeah yep that's keep me busy and it's fun it's exciting I mean every day is a little bit different and uh there's never a dull moment absolutely I can attest to that and that's part of what game development is it's con it's it's you don't just do the same thing you did day one throughout the entire thing you're constantly evaluating and re-evaluating and taking the things that you learn and you know reorganizing things to be more efficient so that's a lot of what we're going through now with the with the revitalization of the ship Pipeline and
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stuff now before Star Citizen you you had you had quite a history through a couple of different video game companies you worked for and seesoft yeah I was at and seesoft uh immediately before or prior to uh to coming here and then um a few other companies before that uh WB Games Robo Moto in Chicago was my first game job uh where else was I at um Nintendo was yeah I was at Nintendo for a little while and I moved around too I was following the work um uh trying to get uh on the path I am now so I it was started in Chicago uh coming out of game school and I had different jobs in QA and in production and I moved out to Seattle
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for a bit and then I was in Austin and then um now I'm here it's pretty typical in the game industry to move around yeah yeah especially when you're uh you're green and you're trying to uh work work your way in and get your foot in the door um sometimes you can just walk right into something and other times you you got to work for it and uh go where you need to go to to make that happen so that's kind of what I what I had to do I'm glad to be here it's awesome yeah well we're glad to have you here we were we were excited when you first came over and you're like I got to find a place to live and we were like well you find a place to live and then yeah I remember that was I remember we were in the on third Street promad and you're like yeah we we'll help you we'll go look at the place for you he did it without us he did it without us he found a place to live on his own uh yeah I I've like I said I I've moved around a bit so
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um uh it was a short timeline but um I was ready to call you guys in if I if I needed to help well before we let you go uh just a couple quick questions uh we're building Star Citizen here what your favorite ship in Star Citizen it's it changes a lot especially now that I'm working with ships I'm looking at the different ones um previously I would have said uh the Hornet I I like the looks of I'm basing it on looks mainly and I I like the Hornet and the ghost in particular the black one and it's kind of stealthy but now that I'm I'm working uh on the uh the Scout with the team I I really like the more I see that I really like the looks of that it's pretty unique and something about it appeals to me so um even though I you know haven't played it or anything the the Scout but I really
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like the looks of it so go with the Scout cool and viewers stay tuned uh coming up next you're going to see Gary Sanchez and Paul Jones take you on a look through the style guide of the Shion Scout so keep watching uh Mark thanks for coming on hey thanks for having me it was awesome thanks for taking some time to talk to us and uh thank you back to you guys thanks guys um I hope you guys enjoyed
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them checking that out next up Paul Jones and Gary Sanchez are back to take us through the style guides of the Shion Scout in ship shape so in when we're developing these ships um you know obviously this this is the first iteration of the Scout uh it's already been it's already been sold um and in the past you know we may have we may have just ran with this design and just built it um but you know obviously now we've been doing this for two years and we're sort of more familiar with the process and and the kind of things that we we can change and sort of and improve upon uh you know the things that Chris
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Chris are happy with um so basically we've taken this um original design and sort of um you know this is this is basically being built by um the in Texas in Austin um but you know in in this studio we've also been working on the Jan transport ship um so we've already had to you know start taking uh you know starting our journey basically sort of working out some of the style guide for that ship so basically it made sense um before the guys in Texas start building this you know we we gave it a proper second pass of concept and solve all you know a lot of the a lot of the problems that we know will exist and also Advanced the style so um
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luckily or unluckily for Gary uh this was basically his first task um and uh you know because because of Gary's uh background in automotive design and and what he has in his portfolio it seemed like this was going to be a really good sort of fit for his style um and so you know today we basically was just sort of talk through uh the ship and and you know the sort of the thought process of Gary because a lot of this work has come from Gary's head uh you know generally what will happen is that I'll set an initial style guide sort of um you know you know generally the way I work is we you know sort of set a cone of vision and as long as concept artist bounces
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around in that then they get their creative freedom I get what I want we hopefully deliver something that Chris is super happy with uh and and you and new fans as well and then you know and then we move on from there so uh this ship you know we definitely wanted to keep the verticality um but you know the areas that you know we were Keen to improve upon was um basically the Hightech feeling of the ship so uh it's form more you know advancing its form language a little more um working more with its materials um I mean I mean take it away Gary I mean what's you know what was you know what was the first uh the first thing first area really that uh was also to reive uh uh a
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Spirit uh of the culture ofan through their shape language and so uh we have go back to the silhouette that was designed on the original concept looking a little bit like insect and some b b uh inspiration uh so uh it's inspired by the nature but also by some uh surface and surfacing of uh new cars and to work a lot on the on surface that catch the light in a good way yeah because the it was one of the sort of founding things was always that it was sort of based off a Lotus kind of like a lotus flower wasn't it yeah uh that was you know and that's you know sort of part of the
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history given to us from the writers so we've been you know we've been obviously this is still you know it's got that sort of petal feel um you know that's an important thing that we want to keep and also feature in some of the some of the language and also we put uh we introduce a little bit some polygonal design that is more used in the design field uh for advanced technology that xan will have also inspired by supersonic flight developed by famous supplier who are making uh new wings so we try to introduce this kind of component with some all in wings uh to make a remember of uh this kind of new supersonic ship uh to show an advanced
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technology uh we work also a lot on the cultural and history of Zan through some old marks and uh some signature of their culture uh and also some fractile texture pattern to show that uh we are going into a negen uh game and uh futuristic yeah so there's hints of there's hints of 3D printing you know sort of getting those impossible forms um you know because the writers have always been very keen on having this sort of high you know the Jan high tech um so you know it's it's just about you know how do we how do we differentiate them from say the UE or the Banu um so this is this has been
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this been a really good exercise for us and to sort of really sort of push what we deliver for Concepts especially for the artists when they when they get to when they get to build this stuff that hopefully uh We've answered more more of the questions than we may have done previously so uh there'll be less you know there'll be you know basically by the time the artist gets to build this they will have pretty much a a design Bible so it will it will list all the materials the graphics the decals the construction the theory the color of the engines the color of the lights um you name it so and you know in the past a lot of this work has been done to to a certain extent but um I've been really I've been really
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been happy with what we've been delivering for this this next sort of round of Concepts so you can see here that um you know we've been in you know we've been sort of also investigating um so basically with the Jean Tech we've we've basically got this sort of essentially a triangle um shape which will sort of signify sort of a maglev technology um and so we've been sort of building on top of that for for this as a race we've also been looking at sort of very sort of visual language sort of um that combine uh tribal feeling and electronic uh feeling so we try to make a new uh uh
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Language sign uh to define a little bit the culture of Gan it's not it's not fully developed it's this is more more this is more something that we can work with with the writers on and Chris and just sort of say hey here's here's some ideas so you know in this case yes we you know we haven't finalized the language but it's you know it's taking a step towards uh you know a direction at least then people can sort of go yeah that's cool no I hate it uh and then and then we can move on from there uh We've also been looking at again a similar sort of um uh like holographic style for the UI for the cabin for the for the cockpit sorry and that's um again sort of tying in oh
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tying in with this more organic feel uh whether we you know chances are we don't really have the tech in place to do this and you know but uh it's it's something to strive towards you know we can't always do what we want but you know at least we we're sort of creating inspiration and then you know it's always a case of shoot for the moon uh and if you know if you can get close to it then great um I mean generally we do try and make make our stuff as as um as easy as possible to implement basically um so here is this is basically uh what is this what we called it it's a style sheet essentially material it's a research also on
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material to try to find uh something used in the last prototype in design industry uh to show the advanced technology of xan uh so playing with some carbon with some uh fractal pattern uh some material coming from xan system planets and uh to to make a real storytelling through the material and get an immersive concept for the game and again you can see here you know just some some of the essentially the Triangular Motif and just as experimenting with how we can maybe um Implement that as either button technology or um or basically we I mean we moved on from that essentially
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that most of the xan cockpit is holographic um but we've taken some of this and sort of given it um kind of made turn it into more of like a maker Mark isn't it essentially like a like a hall Mark if you will um I mean we haven't fully sort of figured out how that translates across different ships and different manufacturers you know which ships it will be on and how it changes but again it's just that delving a little deeper into the theory of the ships and giving the artists more inspiration so what do we have here it's a a remember of the allmark Spirit uh so we work also on some little component uh and through this component
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we try to create a new game play with some sliding propulsor uh that will be integrate uh in the ship so we reflect also about integrating new game play uh through the design uh in this kind of uh of board yeah I mean in this and in this case it's you know often you know cuz obviously Gary's Super Creative so these ideas are coming out of his head um you know he's you know he's got ideas about all sorts of things and it's and these things not always get implemented but it's something that we can you know we chat to designers about you know find is is there a way that we can use this uh you know and at the very least you know it gives a little more um direction for the artists again on sort
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of how to build the thrusters the maneuvering thrusters um and again just defining shape language so this is this is as some of you will know this is the interior of the Scout it's this is first round concept and we've stuck pretty close to this basically you know we've wanted to keep we wanted to keep that open feel basically sort of a minimalist um interior essentially so you've got a high amount of visibility um but then G Advanced then we try to differentiate uh more the the design between civilization through the shape language uh to make something more pronounce in terms of culture and
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different technology so we use some different shape and uh material to to make a difference uh between the civilization technology and manufacturer uh to go a little bit further on the spirit of of genen so you can see here you know we've we've you know we've basically implemented the Hallmark system we've started to factor in some of the uh script uh you've got elements here of um sort of the 3D printed uh materials um and sort of you know really working uh with the with the PBR you know with the physically based shaders so you know you're getting really good um glossy surfaces right next to matte
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surfaces um and really just having a like a good experiment you know that like you should when you get into this thing you should feel it should feel like I mean there are obviously there are there are hints of Lamborghini in this but you know we're sort of we're pushing for that highend that high-end feel so when you get into this cockpit you know it should feel Hightech should feel uh it should feel foreign basically and you can see from the control system um that it is it is different from traditional sh different UI and trying different things about that uh there is also a um a work that is behind all of that to get the more immersion as possible with making some split line and
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screw and all these little details that are more specific toan so there is all this kind of work that we are doing behind uh so the these sheets are super helpful because um you know if we can have one of these for every ship then um it's a lot easier for us to figure out you know are we Crossing too many you know our ship's looking to similar to each other uh you know what what makes this manufacturer unique and um this is something that uh Dan had started doing for like the iris um and this this is some of his work this is some of his work here as well that he did for the transport ship and so it's about sort of taking
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elements from this and then working them into into the Scout um but it just again just all it's all building on the brown essentially uh so this basically all helps to define the brand to define the manufacturer makes it just makes it clear for the artist um makes it clearer for people people like me you know we've got a lot of ships we've got a lot of there's a lot of panel lines going on so uh anything we can do to help differentiate uh makes makes our lives a lot easier um what do we got next so this is as you know as we're developing um this ship you know the guys Josh and Chris had already done a good job of
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sort of fleshing out I think maybe elwin had done a first pass on this um so you know we already had the animation or the basics of the animation of it Landing um so originally uh I believe the idea was that the seat would come out along this front piece uh which basically um didn't really work for us and it still you know if it was if you were landing at um like like a custom built um Landing platform for this ship then probably you would have some platform here but chances are you wouldn't be at something custom built so really you still need to get the pilot somehow down to the ground so uh we're changing it basically so this is just an example of you know some
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of the theory that we're going through um in terms of the cockpit the you know it's going to be you're going to be entering from the side now um again the glass is going to rotate and then and then peel back and again it's got that sort of uh floral feel it's got like a it's got like a it's like a bud opening so it's kind of still working with that lotus flower feeling um and also we've um we were we were really struggling to sort of figure out how to get a Hightech way of getting into the into the cockpit weren't we like I think how many examples how many variations uh we have done a lot maybe uh more than 20 but we we are searching to to make more
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than the shape language and the surfacing and the texture to have cinematics that looks or fit are fitting with the technology of each civilization so to respect also the way they manufacture their ship how to access to the ship uh how to land uh so all this kind of uh so we're basically here we've we've um ended up on um using the maglev system or sort of Technology basically behind that theory um you know because what we wanted for the um for the steps is to be fully integrated so you wouldn't really know they were there um and so basically what will happen is a little panel will reveal the steps will will all essentially float out and
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then expand and create uh dual purpose foot plates and handholds essentially that's the theory so this is just a this is a rough guide and it will change probably by the time it this gets released but it should still be the similar sort of theory so this gives us really nice uh animation opportunities you know we can imagine when when the steps come out there's a slight Bob you know when the when the Pilot's climbing up there's a there's a reaction and then when his foot comes off they they settle again uh I still I still need to speak to Steve about this but uh I guess we'll figure that out um so these this is uh all the kind of theory that goes behind it and this is more to show that there is also the work that is presented as a
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pure art work but there is also all the work that is done behind as real manufactured object so there was lot of problems that we are trying to solve uh through a design process uh established in the society to to make some iteration as fast as possible to adjust the surfacing the split line the volume uh the texture uh and solving also the functional problem so there is lot of work that is done be just the final image that we see cuz this is a this is a pretty complex ship um it's small it's compact there's not a lot of areas where we can hide um any of our mistakes essentially so the whole ship's going to have to be
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pretty tight um so this basically is just a sort of working with the modelers you know when they get to white box or sort of early gray box you know we're looking at looking at their work just sort of um checking that the sort of you know and it's not like it's not like we're like it must be built like this it's just that we my my job as a director and Gary's job as the concept artist is to basically try and achieve the vision you know it's not always possible sometimes it's only 90 or 80% but you know we're always working with these guys and sort of you know giving extra information on the sort of um the the volume volume yeah the cross-section of these areas um how
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things are the sort of the way things should rotate um and it's just you know it's just constant backwards and forwards basically and that's that's what we've been that's what we've been doing on this ship so basically this is this is being worked on um by Josh and Chris in the states um and so I'm really looking forward to this one you know we're going to have a lot of new materials um you know it should look it should look pretty alien like I think this one will be really really cool I can't wait to see it in the hanger um and so you know you guys should probably you know fingers crossed you'll see at some point this year yeah I really appreciate to work on the on this ship because of it really special shape and I think a lot of player are waiting this
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kind of also alien ship uh that looks also interesting by the difference and we are looking forward to see what will be the final result uh done by the US Studio thanks garyan Paul for taking the time to um um show everybody that and now it's time for this week's MVP ER in the envelope please of course we don't have time to make an envelope here we have this week's winner is graye headed gamer for his continuing contrib butions to the Star Citizen Community and I think you need your dialogue I do thank you ghg is video and streams for the community which we we watch and really appreciate here as well so great job grhe headed gamer you're this week's
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MVP and finally here's your art sneak peek tune in to reverse to verse tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Pacific to check out more about that sneak peek and also have the community team answer some of your questions and of course as always thank you to all of our subscribers for making this show possible we will see you next week in LA on around the verse around the verse sorry d

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