Inside Star Citizen: To Play in Pyro

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   at citizen conon 2953 the first version of a playable pyro made its debut allowing citizens for the first time to travel beyond the reaches of the stand system and experience the Lawless chaotic Frontier that awaits them just around the proverbial Corner this pyro playground then migrated to the newly implemented preview Channel where it opened to players worldwide to experience just a glimpse of what's to come and so this week because it was a giant milestone in the deel element of our project that happened entirely while we were all off on our citizen con Hiatus and because we have lots of shows in 2024 scheduled to follow up on all those other things you first saw at citizen gone here's our look at the Pyro playground who wants Noles you want some noodles hey Miss do

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   you want some noodles noodles who wants noodles hey do you want some noodles come and enjoy some noodles who wants some noodles these are the best noodles ever no one else has done noodles like this this before noodles best noodles around right here I don't want any more noodles for as long as I live thank you it's very kind of you to ask again and again noodles and again who wants noodles and again best nood [Music] around pyate playground was really just a snapshot of where we're at in the process we didn't want to release all of pyro so it was really just pyro 1 2 and three we didn't have all of the content

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   or features but it was a pretty good chunk of it it contains a certain subset of locations to go visit a certain subset of missions that we want players to partake in and it's just a chance for players to experience a cross-section of where we're at currently with the Pyro system it allows us to have a look into the new Unique Systems we've built for pyro things like the solar flare it things that make pyro feel more unique to Stanton instead of us always showing players we wanted players to be able to play it and see what we're seeing and test it out and then also allow us to get one step closer to an actual release the tech preview channel is a way for us to test out different content or different Tech initiatives so the

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   idea would be that you're playing whatever is online plus um this little snippet or shelf of content or feature that allows us to try it out and make sure that it works before we take it to larger audiences a lot of times when we use the just the PTU build there's so many different layers of bugs and issues that we're trying to work through that a lot of times the feature that we're trying to highlight or to really get a lot of feedback on is behind all of these other things so this allows us to test out it's just a very very specific thing when we put things on the tech Previa Channel it'll never be permanent it's really just a way for us to gather information or test things out and see how it's going and then from there it will always be pulled down and then

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   follow the proper pipeline which would be going through PTU environment then finally being released on live when we've done Demos in the past there is a golden path but with this we wanted it to be like a golden sphere if you wanted to do cargo or mining or salvaging or racing or piracy whatever you know there was something there for you the Pyro playground gave players an opportunity to get a feel for several planets pyro 1 2 and three they do have LW names Bloom which is pyro 3 and monox which is pyro 2 and Pyro 1 itself doesn't have an official name because it's such a Barren Wasteland so there's never really been any mining or industrial commercial Enterprises on it

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   pyro is a lawless system so therefore at its heart we've got some big differentiating factors like Stanton should feel almost like a business park because of all the different corporations that it has there versus pyro should just feel completely Lawless I really enjoy that feeling that we are in a system that is completely different from Stanton you feel less protected you feel more vulnerable it becomes much more about careful planning but there's also that freedom there as well so you're free of consequences for a lot of your actions so it becomes more of a freefor all playground and I think as time moves on you'll see certain people gravitate towards that and certain people move away from it the interior of the power station

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   where designed with modularity in mind which means each rooms can be separately transformed into to either a run down or an abundant state so this give like more opportunity for game plays and new atmospheres for the players just having a new Sky Box just having a new star field just having new color Scapes for the space scaping etc etc I think is really refreshing to see from a Content standpoint we can take um a lot of the stuff that we've done on Stanton already and actually adjust it and get it ready for pyro pretty quickly just because we've already built the foundation of it so a lot of it was a little bit more about sightseeing the locations there's still a lot of mission and like interact

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   ability content to put into the locations but there were certainly missions to be done missions that would drive the player to them so the player can mine they could Salvage they could do cargo runs they could do delivery they could do all sorts of different missions Go and Kill An nris you could go and do a bombing run on an outpost there's a couple of new missions such as destroy the fuel tank Mission actual name is fuel to the fire that sees you destroying these massive gas cylinders that you can do with ship weapons or by dropping a bomb and destroy the server Mission which are two sort of parts of a similar Mission type but offer very different experiences these were all just different things we wanted the players to be able to experience and again make things feel different than what it does in Stanton

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   while I was involved in the development you only get involved in certain aspects so you don't see it all as a whole so when we did internal playthroughs and I hopped on with some members of my team we decided we was going to play one of the missions that we hadn't played the mission was amazing it was very atmospheric the AI were reactive uh we barely got out alive and then we had this warning of solar flare and we didn't know what this was so we was like oh this is cool so we stood on the ground and stared at the sun wondering what it was because I believed and I had told my team that it was more of an EMP completely forgetting that it's more of a deadly dose of radiation when the solar AFF flare happened everybody on my team fell to the floor instantly dying with an intense hit of radiation and it was an amazing experience it affects the

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    players in various ways we're hoping probably to do some changes to that with how it affects the AI as well and how that will affect the player in general what they have to do to protect themselves the solar flare on the floor was tuned up a little bit more just because we wanted everybody to experience it at least once in the future we'll do adjustments so that it's not quite as annoying as as it currently is one of the cool things that we got to experiment with pyro we basically taking consumables and props to the next level as a team interactables took charge of creating all the new food items that you've seen basically we had to reinvent the way props have always been done we've had to create kind of a new style which is the improvised style CU

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    everything in pyro is you know scrap it's trash it's things that been repurposed we didn't have any of that stuff so we had to do a lot of development to do a lot of prototyping on what would work we made a lot of kits so it's all brand new stuff that we've had to create to fit this new aesthetic one of the things we thought would be really really amazing to do was harvestables consumables that actually move so originally we created the stone bug which was like a small kind of experiment on a creature that animates you know but we wanted to take it to the next level and create something um disgusting we basically created a bunch of grubs that you can eat and also yeah you can find these grubs you know around in the vents and stuff if you run around Checkmate station or any of the stations that you can actually find them kind of flopping by vents next time you're going around pyro and looking in some vents

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    and stuff yeah you might find some some tasty sustenance just watching people do food reviews uh about grubs is awesome now you'll be able to experence like new Mission game play and new locations like Planet Outpost or even P stations when a player just travel to this location it can be seen from up close but as well from a far so yeah every details really counts like decals textures or even geometry so we had to make sure that there was a visual consistency it was kind of a challenge because it was kind of a large scale station and we had to make sure that every details really matters you can

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    access the station through multiple locations so it depends for where we come but some areas can be completely like in a rundown State and some of can be like completely abandoned these are stations that are decommissioned these are stations that are you know run down and and and broken you know the atmospheric controls don't work you know the trash compactors and and the janitorial stuff none of that's going to be working so we needed to really kind of demo and show that off right to really like make the stations in power really shine and be uh completely the opposite of ston we implementing like new parts like the damag parts that you can see on the exterior and they are FY with a lot of asteroids and debris all around the Pyro gangs are not going to be worrying about where the trash is going they're just going to be shoving

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    it in a corner and it being done with so a lot of the props Exploration with trash was building massive trash bags and enabling the environment artists to then go and place them and create these massive like trash piles in the corners of stations which is really awesome with the rown environment you feel like everything is completely destroyed falling apart but still kind of occupied by the AIS rather than in the abundance there is like less movements it's just like a space for you to to make discoveries and explore the stations players were able to explore the space stations explore all the alternative pathing within the space stations but go to all the derel outposts solve some of the puzzles have combat in The Outpost as well so yeah you can really feel the sense of danger coming from pyro it's

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    not we're building a tech preview or anything like that we're just building pyro and so everything that you're experiencing on the tech preview channel is what pyro will become there might be slight modifications from there but the outposts where they're placed the space stations where they're placed what incompasses all of those stations and and content is what pyro will be all we did was we just held back four five and six and it really was just making sure that it feels like our live product for all of siton and Pyro preview Channel like I I think the

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    reaction has been pretty positive I think um having them be on the floor and being able to play it at least for me that was one of the highlights for us after putting in many months of work it was really good to get that sense of valid it's really really heartening to see how positively everything was received I mean particularly with the Outpost we wanted to give an entirely new experience so it's always gratifying to see people playing our content I know our teams specifically like we've been working really really hard to to bring these new interactive items and lots of people have been posting and and talking about it which makes us super super happy we we're always sharing the Clips around and just motivates us to to want to continue and do even more cool stuff to see people play it and have a lot of fun experience the New Missions

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    experience the new content when we build our modular systems like the eliminate all mission where you're just sent there to kill 10 people pyro has a nice way of adding a new spin onto it that makes people feel refreshed the implementation of power system is going to make Star season grow as a game and finally opens the gates to new possibilities in term of gaml so what happens going forward is that we'll continue to harden and continue to get ready for the actual real release of pyro and get all of the content in and make sure that it's working with all of the different AI aspects or systems that are coming online and do more tuning

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    passes and then there's the actual technical aspects of getting server meshing ready and in order to make sure that it's the best experience when we actually do the full release of 4.0 a lot of the things that we know we still have to work on is performance particularly optimization and performance for the locations there's a lot of content streaming in and out all at once particularly it's ship speeds when you fly super fast over an outpost and we're really really wanting to expand the AI experience within each Outpost so that it's more of a fuller seaming people are doing logical things in these outposts and it's not just lots of people wandering around with pyro being an unlawful system a lot of people have been experiencing spawn camping ganking however you want to phrase it it's not fun but it is a part of being in an unlawful system there are a few

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    sort of key puzzle pieces we are missing to sort of have the intended experience there which are we need AI to be there we need them to be reactive so they can see what you're doing and be able to help the players who are just trying to get out we also need reputation reputation really matters you don't have the uee doing any kind of patrols if someone is sat there uh ganking people coming out it get to the point where Rough and Ready are that sicken you you're not allowed at their stations anymore you're not allowed to refuel there land there rearm you go anywhere near it and they will shoot you down you can gain and lose reputation with the gangs and they own various locations now you're going to be able to go to the station because you've destroyed an entire settlement where Rough and Ready work you know you kill this person how's

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    that going to affect your long-term reputation what you really impacts where you can go and people's response to you these kind of things will not stop that game play but will heavily discourage it basically the goal is that it does feel like a a lawless experience compared to Stanton so what did we learn this week well we learned that the preview channel is a great new way to do smaller more currated experiences that don't require the entire persisting universe builds of the PTU leading to a direct release that the playground allowed players to experience a slice of extra legal life in the actual pyro system and that the results of this test are being used now to inform the direction of your next pyro experience so for inside Star

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    Citizen I'm Jared Huckabee thanks for letting us share the process of game development with you and we'll see you all here next week