10 For the Chairman Episode 28. July 7th, 2014

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hello everyone welcome to another episode of 10 for the chairman for those of you who haven't watched this before this is where I take 10 questions from our subscribers and answer them to the best of my ability for those of you don't know who our subscribers are they're the members of our community that uh contribute uh money every month to allow us to do an extra level of community uh reporting feedback so uh this show things like the jump Point magazine round the verse and a bunch of other stuff that we're working on and in general just having uh a pretty large community involvement and staff so thank you all to subscribers for allowing us to be able to afford that extra level of interaction with uh the community um and uh so let's uh let's get to it although

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   at first I wanted to uh sort of say thank you we had uh well several things the valanor era space um organization was by uh last week and they dropped off some very nice gifts so we had have uh a uh a letter opener or something to stab program with if there's too many bugs no just kidding uh a really nice little uh kind of colorful uh I don't know plaque thing or or monument or whatever that would be and a uh a cool um business card holder so anyway there were a great bunch of uh guys and girls and uh they came by and visited us and we had a nice time so uh thank you to Valor Aerospace very much and then one other thing which is kind of cool we uh have this sci-fi uh novel

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   that's uh I think on our forums he goes by uh tibs so I guess that's like Mr tibs or something uh by arti Romero which is modulus so uh it's h haven't read it yet U but Ben has a copy and I have a copy and uh uh looks like a cool science fiction tale Steve hollbrook is a Lawman and a defense reservist on the Planet Perry an unidentifiable star Cruiser attacks and somehow destroys his Planet by unknown means but Steve and his defensive Squadron survived to be recovered by the life pods by an Al deari warship the Jade Temple hollbrook must seep out the criminal behind the attack learn how the planet was destroyed and hopefully learn why anyone would destroy a simple agrarian planet on the edge of human space there you go sounds pretty cool anyway so thank you for sending that in too so that was that pretty cool um we got a whole bunch of talented members of our community all

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   right so having done all that let's uh let's get to the questions hey uh so uh the first question comes from monk uh who asks is it possible for a human to gain citizenship in one of the alien civilizations or vice versa will we see uh perhaps Jean Banu tarian serving in special capacities within the uee military or government either in Squadron 42 or in the persistent Universe in terms of the alien civilizations uh in sort of V 1.0 of the of the game uh uh you will interact with them but we're not really going to uh have the ability for you to sort of go deep into the civilizations those are sort of areas of expansion that we're thinking once the game's up and running that we would kind of concentrate on and eventually allow you to actually even play A different race rather than just a human race uh so at the beginning we

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   probably wouldn't have those abilities but as the game progressed you know up and running and every's having a good time and hopefully we're doing well uh those would be the kind of things that we will be adding down the road um because it'll be pretty cool I mean you will definitely see uh tarian uh around the uee universe you'll see some Banu and you'll see some Jean but they will be sort of more in an NPC capacity and uh trading with uh there is uh involvement with the Jean as well as the vanel in Squadron 42 so that's pretty cool and the story I think is uh pretty uh fun and interesting so I think you guys will like that all right next question comes from Mohawk or mooh Hawk I guess would be the way to say it m o h o c uh who asks what has been the biggest technical challenge for you guys that you have not yet overcome Map size moving at multi cruise ships or

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   something completely different well there's a lot of stuff that we're working on so um uh one of the biggest things that we're doing is moving from single Precision which is 32bit float to double Precision which is 64-bit float uh so we can have uh much larger scale maps and deal with much larger scale objects uh in a firstperson shooter which most 3D engines are built for cry engine definitely unreal Etc everything's in 32-bit floats which is fine if you're on Ford or in a limited space say 4x4 kilometers or whatever but we're obviously out in space with ships that even though uh they're not flying you know at the speed of light they're still flying pretty fast and can cover hundreds of thousands of kilometers uh easily uh in the game time session or even more so uh 64 bit just allows us to

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   have a much bigger address space but uh it's it's a fairly big change because the whole engine is in 32bit so it touches pretty much most of the engine uh and we also have to sort of work well within the rendering pipeline because the gpus tend to not they tend to be on 32 bit uh so so that's in progress so I wouldn't say that um it's something we don't know how to do but it's t it's we're working on it so we haven't overcome it yet but we're not worried about overcoming it just as a lot of work um multi cruise ships sort of Falls in a little bit with that where we have a whole local physics simulation that happens inside the ships which we're in the process of uh so yours truly is doing some work on that and a few other people including some uh talented Folks at kch that are helping us out on that um but we're sort of add we've added functionality to the physics system that allows us to have

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   local physical Wheels inside ships and now it's just a matter of integrating into the game so that's also in progress uh and later this year we're hoping to show you uh all that kind of working which will be pretty fun um and then I guess the other biggest technical challenge we have on the project is the overall sort of server structure so right now we're playing multiplayer on Arena Commander but that's the sort of local game server that just handles the frame by frame updates between the ships in in the area but then there's a couple other levels of servers that we have above that which one is the system server which handles the matchmaking and coordination and and sort of uh runs what's happening inside the system in terms of which which MP ships are happening to where which players will see who when they uh go across the certain area uh and then there's a universe server which keeps track of your uh your St your equipment where you

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   are in the overall universe and uh so they're all in they're all in progress uh you know we've made a lot of uh uh progress on the actual backbone the technology the communication protocols all that so we have uh skeletons of a bunch of that and some stuff's more fleshed out than other stuff but we're in the process out so those I would say those are the three big uh technical challenges that we're uh you know working on and uh if there's any network programmers out there we're hiring because uh you can never have enough uh network uh uh and backend guys so uh give us a shout if you're out there all right next question comes from the Snowman who asked what kind of mission design can we expect for the persant universe will there be a linear Mission design go here do x uh we have to follow or can we choose how to progress in a mission uh so the

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    persistent universe is going to have sort of a combination of a whole bunch of stuff so one it's going to have sort of the procedurally generated stuff that comes out of the economy uh a factory needs Goods uh and you know you take the the mission to bring the goods from the planet to the factory or um you know you know the factory could be asking us some want to protect the shipment of goods or the local law enforcement uh Authority could be putting out a you know an amber alert or a you know a bounty on a certain criminal you could take that mission so there's a lot of sort of missions that will be generated by the economy and they are in sort of uh created uh in reaction to what the MPCs are doing or what the uh what what the uh players are doing in the universe and then also in addition to that we'll have some more sort of scripted linear missions sprinkled in there for flavor and character uh and those ones will

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    tend to be maybe multi- Mission ones where you know there's two or three parts to the mission and you know you have to track someone down and go to a place and get some information where it is and that will take you somewhere else and and eventually track down your target or do something or or you know take some uh smuggle some information from point A to point B so we're going to sort of combine some more sort of scripted missions with sort of procedure generated missions and and then also we allow players themselves to uh create uh jobs or missions for other players so I think between all that it should be pretty vibrant and interesting uh uh Mission and you know and then it's kind of up to you what you want to take so uh you know you don't have to do this thing first and then do that thing afterwards it's sort of like you could have maybe two or three or four missions on the go of course if you take a bunch of

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    missions and you don't complete them that would knock your rating with the people you took the missions with and so they wouldn't necessarily want to hire you down the road so you have to juggle all those things but I think I think there's going to be some pretty uh you know a lot of options let me put it that way a thorus asks when Planet Side will the night Stars constellations be a proper representation of one's location in the universe for example while on Earth if you look up will you be able to spot the Moon Mars and Big Dipper Etc likewise will we be able to spot larger cities on planets while in Space by observing higher light pollution and certain areas on our side we've been sort of playing around with the idea of the star systems and sort of building them in a bigger sort of simulation that we we wouldn't necessarily render in real time but use that to sort of build the background uh uh space sphere you may want to save for when you're inside the system that shows the stuff off in

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    the distance and if that's the case it uh that will probably show um the relative sort of positions and starts and constellations as as you would from that system around our our um our setup um and then also when you're looking down on planets uh we actually do model the planet so we will model if there's a city or light pollution would probably uh put that into the planet um not so sure about like being on Earth looking up and seeing sort of the Big Dipper and all that sort of stuff um crayon itself actually has that model for Earth itself for the first person stuff uh the issue for us would be modeling like what the Stars would be looking like from various planets we can visit hundreds so uh we haven't necessarily made a decision on what that would look like um we probably will be sort of using sort of sky or

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    night box on the different um locations and then they can probably be done in such a way that they would generally represent what would be in that area so if you're like near a nebula and you're looking up from a planet you should you know maybe potentially kind of uh uh sort of see the star constellations that you would see from that planet and stuff like that um but that's sort of all in progress we're still trying to figure out exactly how we're going to do that the best uh best as possibly can uh to put you in the universe all right next question comes from cloud dragon who in regards of the rating system role playing as a mechanic in a car repair shop has been mentioned numerous times as an occupation in the persistent Universe due to no level up of the player Avatar how would the Avatar skills improve would the Avatar skills improve over time similarly to Real World Experience would the rating system

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    be the main Benchmark of the Avatar in various roles so for me I mean obviously there are different roles you can play in the game but I'm uh kind of a big proponent that like how good you are or what you do is is more formed by you as a player and then also by the equipment you've collected and and how you learn how to use it so uh you know with sort of a hybrid between what would happen in a like traditional sort of uh fantasy RPG where you know in those you progress when you get better equipment but you also increase your stats so for us we don't really have player stats but we do have equipment that you can find better tune learn how to use better and then as a player um you know hopefully you can do things uh quicker or better than you could when you first started so it's sort of a it's a combination it's sort of more driven by the equipment that

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    you've got or the equipment you found or the equipment you fixed up NPCs themselves will have their own internal rating system because we have to have some level of sort of learning and progression from but for players it's based on your skill and then based on the equipment you've collected um okay next question comes from Sly Fox who asks I know you talked about this a bit but will we be able to enter a planet in free fly mode let's say I'm exploring an unknown Planet I don't want to just land could be attack maybe a little SC first right or if I was looking for stuff to salvage and just wanted to enter the planet to do a fast fly over to cover more land without Landing it's a great goal but it's not going to be in the initial version of the game so uh you know longterm um you know we're actually doing some procedural uh research and we're investing some money in a small group of people to sort of look at doing

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    all that kind of stuff but we've got our you know uh a work cut out for us let's say in just building out the systems we have building out locations you can land on building out the characters the story cuz you know we're essentially building this universe and and and sketching it out in a pretty detailed level and it does have some procedural elements where you know building out certain locations are partly procedural and partly designed but it's still a huge huge huge amount of work so um uh being able to fly down on any one of the planets and fly over them and do all the rest of the stuff uh would be super cool but uh you know right now we're sort of not ready to be able to do that that sort of again one of those girls once the game's out there we're on version one then uh you know those will be all things we'll be looking about how we can actually you

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    know create a planet uh you know in these cases to be able to do it at this level you sort of have to be able to create a planet mostly procedurally um transition from atmosphere the planet's actually fairly uh that's actually the least of the difficulties I mean there's a bunch of uh you know uh pretty easy you know go down go through the atmosphere and then boof and and then down on you're down on the planet um uh but uh you know creating a planet big enough that you can fly over that has lots of Interest feels like it operates um holistically you know the different cities communicate with each other they have their own businesses doing all that so huge amount of work mainly because of the level of detail we're sort of simulating the world at um so that will not be a v1.0 um goal but it will definitely be a longer term thing we'll try to work

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    towards um because I do agree it would be very very cool uh all right next question comes from Jester who asks on those ships that tend to sit more than others is my insurance going to be used up at the same rate I.E real time or will it be uh for like only played actual time and ship or maybe even something totally different so the ship Insurance uh goes by in game time so uh we don't like if we say it's 3 months of uh time on your insurance or 6 months or a year on your insurance that is game time not play time uh so if you play the game for a day and then don't come back for 6 months uh you won't have like your insurance won't have run out basically it's basically uh all the sort of uh

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    things that happen in the universe are in the time of the game so it's uh not real like real lifetime it is real time in the universe so if you're playing and you're not flying say one of your ships and you've gone through three four months of game time then yes you would have to keep up uh you know the insurance on them um just like you would in the real world okay next question comes from commodora fly who asks I just had a question to reaffirm what the possible roles of the car2 ow will be it is listed as a light fighter but in its description it says it's commonly used as a dedicated Scout Explorer would it be safe to assume that we could use this craft for applications other than just combat most ships you can use in uh Star Citizen don't necessarily need to be all about combat uh thing with a car2 Al is that it's uh uh very maneuverable has

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    great visibility from the cockpit um so it doesn't NE it's not necessarily uh as sturdy as something like a hornet of course but it um has the ability to you know change direction pretty rapidly and um and be fairly quick uh so you could I think use it as a uh you know a sort of uh Scout would be probably a good idea I mean I'm not sure about long range exploring because obviously it's not equipped to to necessarily be as long range as some of the other stuffs like the freelancer duration or some of the other ships that we're looking as more dedicated explorers uh but you could definitely use it for most things probably other than um hauling cargo because it's not really built for that and doesn't really have a cargo hold um okay next question comes from black dog

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    who asks how deep will the universe be simulated will we be able to see some black hols pulzar neutron stars and so on and how would they affect gameplay you definitely we'll definitely have some of these things that you'll be able to see I'm not so sure about uh simulating it uh all the way uh but we sort of we we're playing around with the ideas of certain areas in space that have like an environment that is affecting like you know your Communications how you fly and obviously you know like maybe being close to a black hole uh would be one of those environments or you know into a uh you know a deep uh you know a gas cloud inside uh the rings of a planet or all those kind of things so uh we are looking to see what kind of interesting sort of uh

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    astrological uh aspects or you know uh physical um effects that would come from various different elements in space could affect the game playay could affect your ship all the rest of the stuff uh but it's it's sort of too early to sort of say well you know definitely black hole will do this thing or a neutron star will do this thing uh but that's all stuff that we sort of debate and we're trying to think about how to sort of fold in uh to the gameplay experience last question comes from Villa devier who asked my question is about Shields and how they currently work in Arena commander and in particular on the Horner right now if you fire your weapons or even maneuver very much it drains your Shields is that the intended operation if so do you anticipate modifying this design so that Shield levels can be maintained during routine ship Ops couple answers to this question um first off The Shield to

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    maintain their Shield level need a certain amount of energy uh so if a ship is unbalanced I.E you're pulling uh you you basically have too many items pulling too much energy like your thrusters your shields uh you know general standard operation stuff um then your Shields will not be able to hold their their top level uh right now we have a problem on our ships in Arena Commander because we haven't really done a very good job of balancing sort of the items on the the first three ships you have and so some out of skew like the 300i has like way too much power coming from its power plant um you know there's some issues on the Hornet because there's not enough power so there's going to be a balancing pass that goes into 12 the 125 patch and then longer term more balancing that goes into 13 uh but the way the shields are Mentor work is that they need to

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    maintain their level but there will be some level of capacitor in the shield so it doesn't mean as soon as there's a if there's a spike and energy use like say you fire an energy doesn't mean the shields go necessarily down it's just that if your overall energy energy output is lower than what you need to maintain the shields over time the shields will drop down uh to whatever the equilibrium level is um based on the energy output so this is actually one of the aspects that we're still uh tweaking and turning but longterm we actually make for like really interesting gameplay is that like how you set up your ship so uh you know you have to balance like your energy like you know what my power plant is and what weapons I've got so you make sure that like your entire setup on the ship isn't going to be uh compromising your ship like you know the example would be okay well I've got too many things pulling too much

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    power so I can't maintain my Shields well at that point you may not need the shield generator that can have two you know 200 level of shields versus 100 level of shields um so I guess the answer is yes it's kind of intended there is going to be some level of sort of capacitor on the shield so it doesn't instantly drop down or up like it will just sort of over time drop down to whatever the equilibrium of what the energy has so when you have a power Spike uh it won't be fluctuating your Shields as much but if you aren't supplying enough energy over time to keep the shield up at its level then it will it will not be able to hold that level um so you know one of the longer term things is you know energy management and balancing uh on your ship which is you know things that we're working on the the HUD interface um you know there'll be won't be in 125 but

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    probably in 13 there's going to be a much cleaner way of accessing and interfacing all that stuff so you can control and move between different profiles but you know I kind of like you know in longer term combats especially when we're going to roll out um you know you know the Squadron battle which we just rolled out and some of the later stuff where you actually start to work as teams together I think you're going to see a lot more um smart use of uh weapons when they're off when they're on when we're using them you know putting all our power into a Shields or putting our power into the thrusters and that's kind of the idea of the combat and the system design of the ships still very early days that's why we're still balancing we still got some things that are broken in the system that don't let you get to appreciate that as much but once uh everybody can multiplayer uh and also multiplayer in something that isn't like a free-for-all death match because

28. 00:21:36

    that really doesn't give you an opportunity to to to sort of show off combat because basically what happens everyone spawns in and someone's shooting at someone else and they're not looking at you and you shoot them in the back I mean it's it's it's just uh it's Madness basically so uh you know when you're playing team versus Team it's a lot different and some of the other game modes we're going to have will be uh different and then allowing people to alter and change their sort of settings you know okay this is my one power configuration in this battle mode and this I'll have this other power profile when I'm doing this or you know I'm running away from someone I'm going to put all my power to my back Shields so we're going to allow you to have all that there's already the infrastructure for there in the systems uh the interface is uh you know broken in some ways to let you do that but that's what we're working on and when we get all that balanced and doing all that I actually think there's going to be a lot of like interest and depth uh to come about especially when you don't have

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    people spawn on top of each other so you know there'll be definitely cases where people can go sort of Silent or dark and maybe surprise someone or hide against someone or you know move up sneak up on someone um so there's a lot of possibilities I know that um uh answered a lot more than the question about the shields but sort of gives you the the idea of why all these things are in Connected um so anyway that's the end of our 10 questions uh thank you all for listening thank you for your time thank the subscribers for um you know contributing money every month to allow us to do this extra level of uh Community involvement and feedback thank you to everyone that's back the game out there because uh without all you I wouldn't be sitting here wouldn't be making the game of my dreams and I hope your guys' dreams uh and uh I will talk to you next week goodbye