Around the Verse: Episode 1.30 (2015.02.05)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:11

   [Music] hey everybody Welcome to episode 30 of around the verse I'm Sandy Gardner and I'm B Lesnik we have reached $72 million just incredible I I always give a speech about how thrilled and excited and happy and uh how much we owe everybody I will skip that this time but uh thank you so much you didn't sound that excited didn't that I'm very excited it's it's one of those things that it's just at this point it's wow how did how did this happen right right we have a new international store so you can buy all throughout Europe local currencies yep uh if you're paying in uh British pounds or Euros uh no more currency conversion fee and uh check out

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   the interview with ortwin from last week for some more details on why this is going to be good news going forward PX East and South by Southwest tickets went for sale South by Southwest tickets are actually free so come join us on Sunday night if you're going to be there Saturday night we also have a little award presentation um at the show and also Friday night we have a gaming geek panel so come join us for that and a little booth as well I'm not to forget the booth stop by that and pick up a little uh coupon probably a free fly weekend maybe some in game flare I'm not sure what we're going to do but something something cool yeah we always like to do something special for you guys uh at these events we we like it when Star seon backers come out in person we get a lot of great feedback that way PS East are you going to come Ben I hope so we'll see if my schedule allows I love Boston our event went last

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   year was great and I know it's going to be incredible this year you and uh you and Jessica have been just going above and beyond this time so we have been working quite hard on it we have a booth this year that we're sharing with Logitech we're going to have a nice little for by4 setup so come stop by that and then on the Saturday night we have the party where we're going to do a presentation and hopefully give away some cool prizes as well if you come join us please and speaking of our events the uh pack South Town Hall videos are now available in the RSI website you can watch through all five or six hours of presentations there's some crazy details about the persistent Universe in there I learned a lot personally I also saw a nice article written by Gamespot on our South Town Hall so that was kind of cool yeah it's always cool when we see press That's not oh star C making too much

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   money it's a scam they're out to get you um and uh speaking of articles in that vein there was a fantastic piece in Kotaku earlier in the week where they shared a video of someone playing Arena Commander just they were trying to show off how pretty it was but everybody in the development team was so excited because it was an aurora pilot flying with a hot ass setup and just kicking ass which goes to show you that you you do not need to buy the most most expensive ship to win you do not need to use a mouse to win we're getting there yeah it is very impressive and you should check it out here and now it's time for news from around the [Applause] verse let's do this one module at a time starting with a reading Commander several new ship Skins are almost

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   completed how almost you ask uh so almost that you will be seeing them tomorrow we've we got two of the Skins promised during the campaign the pirate and uee and then we're adding a third one in honor of our favorite fan initiative project Pitchfork they all be available in the pledge store at this point these Skins are only for auroras uh but if you have one of the existing ones they'll be on your account and we'll be expanding to other ship types as we go forward a tutorial map is being prototyped the tutorial is one of our big priorities for uh future editions of AC um it may in 1.1 or it may slip a little but we we want to bring new players into the game and kind of teach them to play the power throttle in the Aurora hood has been implemented this is a great example of how we are continuing

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   to expand the various uh ship subsystems in Arena Commander the game is uh it's the test bed right now and we're bringing in systems like shields uh armor uh scanners and it's just going to get more and more detailed you're here for the ride imagine what our Aurora pilot can do with that he seems seemed Unstoppable as it is Squadron 42 the sky do is going through its second iteration of the concept phase that's one of the big uh set pieces we'll be seeing in the first chapter of Squadron 42 the ship stretching warp in effect has begun visual effects you saw at the uh Town Hall some of the uh previs we did for the jump Point effect from Chris Olivia he's also working on the uh Quantum travel effect that we need both for squadron 42 and the persistent universe

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   speaking of persistent Universe foot and headwear options are being explored that was actually one of my favorite things to see in Austin was walking around to the different character artists and they would have like a whole page of boots up on their screen or uh lots of pants I like it have you see cargo pants no cargo pants no cargo pants that's the rule in Austin right now the repair drone models have been completed these are going to be used for many of our ships that uh will'll do external repairs during space flight or uh surveying Mine Fields uh and also tie into our research system that we are developing right now the Marine model has received concept and model revisions and the first place you're going to see him is likely in the firstperson shooter module do out later this year ships The Avengers Thruster malfunction is being addressed if you can believe it we uh keep breaking Arena Commander but we

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   will keep fixing it until it is absolutely perfect the 350 R's indestructible issue is currently being investigated sorry about that 350 Pilots constellation turret neck and cargo areas are receiving additional work we're actually kicking off a pretty big revision of the constellation right now essentially preparing it for arena Commander 2.0 where it's going to be uh flight ready so we need to kind of lock down how you walk around and flight all sorts of things that we hadn't necessarily thought through until now FPS module animations have been added for zerog G crumpling Zerg is going to be I think the big selling point of the FPS module it's going to be something nobody has seen before tracers and impacts for the combustion pistol have been cleaned up one thing that's interesting to note is that uh

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   just like the ship weapons they'll be different uh types of ammunition so you have uh lasers you have combustion weapons ballistics all sorts of things and uh that's one of the cool things about a Sci-Fi setting for an FPS game is sky the limit for coming up with cool weapons what's nice about this week's episode is that we have a lot of stuff in the can from Austin so let's go over to Mark Skelton and Jenny Varner for a tour of the Austin office let me uh note that this was actually suggested by a backer while we were there they said of course you you guys are going to walk around the office and show us and we're like well now we are so here you go hey guys so we had a request today during reverse the verse to get a Austin Studio tour in while we're here for pack South and uh we're here with a special guest can you introduce yourself uh my name is

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    Mark Skelton internet sensation everybody knows me and loves me everywhere thank you all right can you tell us a little bit about where we are this thing right here is uh came off the wing Commander 4 set believe it or not and it's made out of wood so stop it it's supposed to be made out of metal and she just completely gave it away so all right well this now we're now we're standing in a piece of in a piece of wood so can you explain a little bit about the artwork that are on the walls here well of course so uh a lot of this stuff is probably stuff you guys have seen before it's concept art that has been done throughout uh the few years that we've been um you know doing concept work for Star Citizen here's our sweet uh TV that plays all the commercials and everything that's

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    awesome that Neta gets to see every single day this is our awesome uh kitchen oh dude we got the old-timers Guild gave us a popcorn machine which is amazing makes Fantastical popcorn here's our sweet boardroom this is where the magic happens here's the the belly of the Beast programmer programmer section try not to get over here too much cuz uh every time I do I have to take a shower it's gross over here but it's okay we've got they've got a nice sense of humor though as proven by some liony Richie on the side of the left that's pretty awesome here we'll move that's pretty amazing oh look I found sea Tracy here he is right here in the flesh here is the designer pit got you can you can tell look out of a hole

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    of the pit there is two designers here designing away that's what they're doing there you go working away that's Rob Pete you guys know Pete the weatherman all right so now we're getting into the art now we're getting into the fun part the the beauty of it all this is the art uh pit right here normally pretty dark we had to turn the lights on for the shoot yeah it gets pretty dark but you know we're all cave dwellers over here we like our Darkness oh yes I um this is Megan she's one of our concept artists she's working on shoes at the moment and boots oh my God shoes yeah so we're doing a bunch of boot designs for um characters and stuff um that you know we're going to eventually use for the character customization system and this is just concept artwork that I've been

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    going back through uh again persistent Universe Centric um Planet Side stuff um a lot of the stuff that I'm working on right now I'm putting up on this board uh we're kind of going through it and making sure that uh you know everything is accounted for uh this is the aror section which you guys have have seen and are uh familiar with um we're going to be releasing it not too far in the future so fingers crossed we're just kind of wrapping it up and making sure it's all good to go here's more more artists this is uh Court he's our Tech artist he amazing Lee are oh look he's doing what he's doing he's doing actual particle stuff which is what he does which is amazing very very nice that's

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    Ken over there he just started not too long ago ooh he's working on some cool stuff he's working on some paintovers for The Med Bay which you guys I'm sure will be familiar with since she'll be dying quite a bit and reappearing here so here's the animation pit in here this is where all the magic happens this is Brian and David what's up guys you're on camera we're doing aour see the cool thing oh I'm sorry the cool thing about Brian is he got all these he's got all these weapons over here that he uh that he keeps the are sweet oh here's the uh the two ship guys get out of here the ship guys Chris Smith you know we're shooting we're just walking around talking to people Josh Coons you may or may not know both of

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    these guys are uh are ship builders all right so here's the uh the QA Corner we like oo that's a cool shot look at that they get to play the game all day that's pretty cool stuff that's kind of neat what are you guys up to today bugs bugs really Andes and Nifty bugs bugs and more bugs thanks to whoever suggested that we do an Austin Studio Tour uh during reverse lse today thanks to you for uh scoping it out with me I appreciate it thanks for having me thanks for walking around with me I appreci it was it was my first video segment that I that I somewhat LED but you took the reins and you did good you did good I'm proud I'm proud of you

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    Jimmy thank you proud that you got through this alive fantastic thanks guys all right thanks citizens we'll see you in the verse I like it and while the guys were in Austin they sat down with some origin royalty to talk about the new Kickstarter underworld here's James Pew talking with Richard Garett Paul nurth and star long I'm here in Austin at Fort Arium and I have some very special guests why don't we go and introduce ourselves sure hey I'm Richard garet uh one of the co-founders of origin and the creator of a little series of games called Ultima I'm Paul NRA and I created uh the original Ultima underworld and now working on a new Underworld my name is star long I was the director for Ultima Online yes we're here talk about their new uh underworld Kickstarter

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    project so why return to underworld after all this time and I always wanted to do new Underworld I never imagined that the franchise would go dark for the next two decades the plan was to do you know continue the franchise forward only now have been able to bring it back and and take it forward it will be very familiar to people who are fans of the original games we really looked at player choice as being foremost and enabling player choice and enabling player authored experiences it's been under development for four months now we've got a prototype running on the PC so on February 4th we're launching our Kickstarter campaign so you know this can only happen with the help of our fans uh we want our fans to we want to reach out and have them participate and

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    give us feedback uh and help us craft this game as we're making creative decisions and and and flushing it out so you know we're reaching out to fans to help us and so it's really uh you know keeping our community together keeping our communities talking uh with us about it is really the number one thing I think we can all do for each other thank you guys so much the kickstarter for underworld ascendant starts February 4th there'll be a link on the site and we'll back to you guys thanks guys underworld looks like a really cool project uh there's a lot more to learn about it uh we're going to put the full version of james' interview on the Star season YouTube and uh next week we've got a a full length RSI Museum it's finally back uh it's going to talk about underworld with uh the guys of poor larium and Paul now let's go over to will for this

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    week's MVP hey everybody I'm assistant Community manager will here to bring you this week's MVP this week's MVP goes to anti squeaker for his infiction post about how Drake interplanetary is going to be suing origin jump Works according to Drake the cutless has been misrepresented in Arena Commander as it's not maneuverable enough and it's way too slow so thank you very much atie squeaker this week's MVP thanks will now to James who is interviewing our senior design coordinator Rob Irving thanks guys I'm here with Rob Irving Rob how you doing I'm doing all right how are you I probably didn't need to do an intro but it's just force a habit it's okay and there are some people out there who have not actually met me never met you or

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    never seen you that's the thing either no I don't think so anyone watching this is definitely seen you I hope so well no it's good to be out here with you guys now like this studio is awesome Welcome to Austin isn't it great I love it I was really impressed when I walked in I was like oh wow they used to have Sunshine out on this patio but we turned it off for you well we had it yesterday apparently you were late in turning it off cuz I had it for two days and now it's gone it gets it's a very up and down here all right so I'll start with a very hard-hitting focused question oh okay what have you been up to since the last time we saw you wow that's very focused right well let's see I've been working and uh actually since we've shifted the focus of this studio really um it used to be kind of all over the place and now we are really laser focused on on the persistent Universe

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    specifically and in my case what that means is watching all the parts of what all the different studios are doing and making sure they're going to fit into what is the final game really because I mean we're working on all these different systems all at the same time and Arena Commander is really part of the persistent universe so what I do is I monitor what's going on at every studio in every facet of the game and make sure that it's going to fold in neatly and add the feedback we need to give to make sure that we get what we need for persistent universe so just kind of hanging out yeah mostly read a lot of email yeah i' I've seen you you just got back so how many emails did you have I had well I was only gone since I was out Friday and through yesterday so I only had 400 emails when I got oh that's it you know pretty low I had like 900 Skype messages that was a little exciting so since since the focus of this studio in particular changed how

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    has that kind of affected how your job has that changed your job a little bit it has a little bit I am less immediately involved with the local design team which is what I really was more involved with before when we were pretty much all of design yeah but now it's it's more about me being globally focused and them being globally focused so making those connections with Travis out in uh Santa Monica and making sure they stay on track I have to know what everybody's up to I mean I I I'm constantly interacting with all the designers at eonic or at in La when Dan and the guys out there uh or or the UK guys so we're actually very heavily involved with the UK guys you guys are kind of working together because while you guys are kind of doing the same thing they're taking a different oh yeah and we we take different pieces because a lot of times it's what does Squadron

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    42 need first what do we need first so they'll start working on one feature and we'll just follow along and make sure you know that we're we're dovetailed on what we really need need to do together to get both of our pieces done and you guys are getting input from every one of our Studios every single one so is it difficult to kind of take this piece from El phonic no longer redacted which what two months later and I still can't believe we can say their name taking this piece from Al phonic and this piece from Santa Monica is is it make it more difficult or is it just is a challenge that you enjoy it it I do enjoy but it's it's I mean it's insane really it is one of the most complex development process it is the most complex development process I've ever been involved in but yeah I mean it's pretty exciting but it it does make it there's a lot more Logistics involved how's the feel of the office changed I think it's kind

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    of I would say it's sort of settled down a little bit it's year year one was kind of crazy Garage Band now it's more we're a part of the hole and so things are a little more even keeled I guess is the word so you and Tony kind of feed off each other on ideas and how things are supposed to go well a lot of times Tony will grab one specific thing that's really important to us right now and he'll go running off with that and he has very he's very good at the kind of tunnel Focus so while he's doing that he's expecting that I'm aware of everything else yeah so it's like one system Tony's got it everything else in the game if he has a question I better know the answer that's that's basically what it comes down to or you better know who you can get the answer from which is one of the main parts of my job is

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    knowing who exactly is working on this thing right now that must be hard to keep track of I just see our I see our guys in Santa Monica and just see all the we need this who has it and then it's just a scrap shoot to try and figure out who it is so I can imagine a global scale it is it is crazy but I mean one of the things that helps is since we've extend extended the production staff makes it so much easier because those guys are a constant source of information of okay well who is working on this right now and if they don't know then we have a problem it's like Tony we need to be working on this thing right now cu no one else appears to be how's the how's your how's the community changed around you have you been keeping up with it and seeing watch it in really part of it that's changed is that I don't get to spend as much time with the community or with

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    following up on what we're doing with the community I mean I keep an eye on what's going on but I don't get to watch everything we do or read everything we write although fictionwise all the lore comes across my desk so I keep track of it and know what we're talking about am able kind of step in there and make sure we don't say anything too extreme cuz a lot of times writers want to make their story really stand out so they'll come up with something really dramatic that doesn't fit at all in our universe and you know it's like oh today we're going to do little robots that take over people and make them into aliens sounds awesome no oh okay never mind no it does not never mind then sorry I thought it sounded problem it sounds awesome for somebody else's Universe not no not welcome here please take it elsewhere what about Space Magic any sufficiently advanced

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    technology it's enough to think look like magic right that's that's how it works you delivered that pretty well yeah well I I stumbled on the end I tried so we had a uh we had a thread on the forums asking for questions for general questions about you oh about me about you and the the Austin studio in general one of the questions was what's something in MMOs that you particularly don't like that you don't want in Star Citizen I know one off the top of my head let's see if you go there oh no well my my biggest personal pet peeve is actually the whole I want to offline earn money thing mhm that's that's one of the ones that tends to make it more difficult for us to monitor how money comes and goes and keep the economy stable I I think the one you were probably thinking of was crafting which yes crafting

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    crafting but yeah that's the either of those too it's like we but we can't really think of ourselves as like other MMOs just because we're so far departed from most of the standard recipes we are close in some ways to something like e but even that there there are big gaps yeah but I think that the the thing that I like about ours as opposed to what I stay away from is the idea that every single facet somehow is something you can be more skilled at than the next guy which that's that's really a great idea and we'll take a lot of development time but we we'll make the game fantastic in the long run so one thing I know you've been working on something I know people are really excited for is a star map can you give us a little can you can you give us a little something about that well yeah I mean that's actually one of the perfect examples of exactly how this game and its development has changed as it's expanded in that what we originally

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    envisioned more than two years ago to now has changed because we've had to accommodate new gameplay that we've added like for instance Chris talking about the differ size jump points well we hadn't really Incorporated that when we first built the star so given the needs for the persistent universe and given that we wanted to get that folded in we took the star map and sort of shook it up I guess is the the right answer move things around made it fit a little better got some new organic gameplay out of it and so we're going to unveil that at some point I don't know when that will be but it it'll be really exciting because it I I to me it feels a lot better it feels a lot more like it reflects what we're building as opposed to it's an idea we came up with before we had all the answers yeah I'm really excited to see I mean i' see the fans hate this but I've seen a little bit

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    more of it I'm really excited for when we can share more this is like the worst thing you could possibly do that is the best thing you can possibly do so it's like hey I know about this and you can't that's well dude it's been great talking to you uh it's good to see you again good to see you out here in Austin oh I'd love to come back out come out when it's warmer all right well we said we'd hug it out oh oh yeah coming for you oh where are you where are you man eat lasers here we go here we go off off just you wait ah Brandon I need you to teach me how to

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    fly Ben keeps kicking my butt can you teach me how to fly what are you doing the man who can catch a dart with chopsticks can accomplish anything all right give me a shot at that yes beginners luck all right let's go this stick is just plug and play you don't need to select a different preset or anything mhm so I can just plug in my joystick and way I go Yep this is the default control layout for the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro uh but the important things for this lesson are that the Y AIS which is uh forward and back are is pitch and the uh the x-axis which is left and right is yaah and the we've got

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    a throttle down here with the uh slider one couple and go into third person so we can see what these controls do so the first thing is pitching if you move the stick back towards you uhhuh uh it'll push the nose of the ship up y if you push it away from you push the nose the ship down yeah for yawing you move the stick left you'll move your nose left move the stick right move your nose right the sensitivity uh can usually be adjusted in the joystick itself and eventually should be adjustable from the options menu as well I think it's set pretty well right now I'm just moving slowly for demonstration purposes when I pull the stick back to raise my nose you can see the thrusters on the back of the ship are pushing down and those at the front are pushing up just uh spin us

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    around the center of gravity and if I hold the uh pitch steady the thrusters mostly stop firing because in space there's no air to slow you down once you start moving so once you're once you're pitching like this you should keep pitching like that and if I release the stick thrusters will fire again to stop my uh my pitching and if I do nose down the opposite will happen with the top thrusters in the front firing and the bottom thrusters in the rear and if I do this too fast right standing standing still like this you should be fine and with gsafe on which it is by default you'll be fine as long as you're not boosting but if your g-s saafe is off or you're boosting and you pitch too quickly you can easily block yourself out by uh forcing the blood into or out of your brain your pilot's brain in any

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    case fancy now for yawing it's more or less the same principle left s left front Thruster is firing forward back rear back right Thruster is firing forward and that's pushing us around the center of gravity and same for Yang the other way how quickly can I turn when I'm going really fast you can turn pretty quickly without blocking yourself out and you can sustain very high G forces for a short period of time so then the last control for this lesson is the throttle which will control your speed uh whatever you have the throttle set to from 0 to 100 there on the left it'll attempt to move you forward at that percentage of your maximum speed where is it showing that it's here on the left of my my heads up display you

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    can see my Vel my actual velocity on the left and my throttle setting just to the right of it okay so as you can see as I yaw left at full speed it takes time for me to actually get going in that direction because because I have inertia that's going to continue pushing me the way I was already heading as I turn you can see the thrusters on the right side pushing against my previous direction of travel to straighten us out so if I keep just keep yawing I'll keep having part of my throttle pushing or part of my Thruster is pushing me forward and part part of them pushing to keep me from sliding in the direction I was previously going so basically no matter what Joys to I'm on there'll be the pitch and the aw obviously yes which this one does have a rooll but I've

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    disabled it for this uh lesson but they'll also have the all have a throttle as well most do have a throttle some have it as a separate controller which is what we call the hotas the hands- on throttle and stick this is enough to do to basically fly yourself anywhere in Star Citizen all right aren you y your right y to your right all right now nose up nose up I feel like I'm shaking why is that that's the terraformer beams effect oh of course it's disrupting the space around you okay oh oh my gosh there's there's there's asteroids those are just to tell you your speed basically they're just little pieces of space dust what happens if I try and go through the you will die I will die yeah okay let's not do

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    that all right now why don't you try flying in a circle around it keep it on your left so so turn your speed up a little bit I can totally see me taking my wing off okay my gosh where did it go there it is okay so that's good for lesson number one just keep practicing this and you'll be ready for lesson number two weapons all right are you watching this Ben I am taking you down sure sure sure he's going down believe it when I see it going down baby check back tomorrow when we have both the monthly report and a

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    design update on Shields we've also got a uh cool sale this weekend adding some items to the pledge store and Voyage direct that includes uh not one not two but eight Shield generators a new ballistic gun and three orora skins I like it amazing what can happen when we poke and prod production is yeah they're really getting there right it pip line up and running they are it's exciting and now it's time for something else that's exciting which is our art sneak peek check it out all right guys thanks for watching and for all our subscribers for making this show possible we will see you next week on around the verse okay okay oh my God oh my God Jesus

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    Christ