Around the Verse: Episode 1.52 (2015.07.09)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] as the Senate campaign heats up Taran candidate Su kosi from elisium joins us for a candid conversation about his plans for the UE if elected and what he thinks his victory will mean for the future of all Taren ship scanning where does the need for security end and our privacy begin Donald Joseph talks to both sides of this hotly debated issue Argent down if you have teenagers you've probably been hearing that expression a lot recently but what does it mean we'll take a look at Helix the tradable game that's sweeping the Empire's youth all that and more on the next Empire report at 2200 SE

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   hey everybody Welcome to episode 52 of around the verse I'm Sandy Gardner and I'm Ben Lesnik the monthly report went out last week with lots of information about our progress monthly report is one of my absolute favorite things we do here this is just more information than I think any Studio anywhere puts out uh you you you get to hear from the heads of all of our worldwide Studios our outsourc it's got an insane amount of detail Star Citizen uh is in full swing with Arena Commander 2.0 uh star Marine FPS persistent Universe Squadron 42 they're all being developed at once and the monthly report is the best place to see the nitty-gritty details definitely worth the read we're also doing weekly reports for the starmarine FPS module until it hits tracking the various blockers and technical issues that we're

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   facing um Chris put out a letter two weeks ago we put a report this week and it it really is coming together and you're going to watch it happen we issued a small Arena command patch on Tuesday to add several promised flare items and that is just the first Arena Commander patch uh we know a lot of people are probably not interested in flare items but we are working on bringing a lot of the content that we've been working on the last two months back into the arena Commander Branch so we can start patching first to the PTU and then to the live servers sooner than later so there's another Arena Commander patch which is uh 1.1.5 uh in development right now we will begin external testing very very soon it had some it has some uh long awaited features and we uh hope you enjoy it the performance capture shoot for squadron 42 has just finished shooting so Chris Roberts will be back

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   here in Santa Monica after a short trip to Foundry 42 and also to our new offices in Frankfurt speaking of Frankfurt we have new offices in Frankfurt uh the folks at Foundry 42 Germany have moved into their new offices and we will be sharing the footage of that with you very soon but the word is they're they're very happy and already hard at work now let's throw it to the Spectrum for news from around the [Applause] verse hi everyone welcome back to well very overcast California today uh I'm Darion borck and I'm Eric kyen Davis and

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   we are here for a weekly update from Santa Monica Cloud Imperium games so uh first thing I want to start with last week we talked about how we were working on getting and compiling feedback from from you guys actually where our designers Matt Sherman and KX Renault were going into the forums and on to the chat rooms and kind of soliciting to play against them get some feedback and we're kind of ready to move on to that next phase um and the next logical step in that is kind of polishing off that feedback seeing what is applicable and getting it into the actual test environment and then we start launching on onto our our PTU so you you guys hopefully see uh an updated version that with your guys' feedback uh and hopefully from there we can gather more feedback from you guys and kind of find tune it even more so it's a very logical process but just want to keep you guys updated on that next part since you guys were very much involved in how this balance is happening yeah and then the

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   other thing that we've been working heavily on are the Merlin and the Scythe two ships yeah we're super excited to get these in your hands to play around with these things and just kind of again like Daren said give us your feedback we're really excited about it we're in the final stages of Art and implementation and we're almost there so we we're super excited if you guys check out these ships and let us know what you think oh I'm I'm looking forward to the side yeah me too I'm looking forward to the Merlin together we'll fly yeah in separate ships hand in hand hand in hand all right that's all we've got from Santa Monica so once again thank you guys and see you guys next week see you hey guys uh dve Lang layers here again from IL phonic senior producer um couple things this week uh so the sniper rifle

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   the energy rifle that we have in the game uh we're adding a charge shot to that so if you're scoped in the longer you stay scoped in and hold down the fire button the more energy it will release um and so it's sort of a risk reward thing you know you can get off a quick shot that won't do a lot of damage or if you you take your time and uh charge the shot and hone in on your target you're going to do a lot more damage and probably get them in one hit uh another thing we've added is a practice mode for FPS so this is very similar to the free flly mode that you see in AR Commander uh it's basically players can jump in um don't really have any penalties or uh you know effect on the leaderboard or anything like that but allows you to jump in play around with whatever weapons you want um you can do this with a group of friends or

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   uh go find a match automatically through the matchmaking system but just a no pressure zone for testing out all the different mechanics all the different weapons in the game uh lastly I have um we've been investigating different ways to communicate damage to the player uh which direction that damage is coming from uh traditionally in fps as you'll notice you have these damage indicators that show up on the side of the screen I know that's something where in uh Star Citizen you may not always be wearing a helmet and so so some of these indicators don't really make sense um but we are working with the design team in uh Frankfurt right now on different ways of communicating damage to the player and also communicating to the player when they've done damage to another player um in addition to little

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   blood Splats or Sparks or anything like that that's coming off uh off the other character um one last thing I want to talk to you guys about I noticed on the forums uh there was a thread somebody's uh concerned about my well-being and some burnout I sure you I'm absolutely fine uh just been a little bit on the weather you might hear them a little stuffed up and everything so uh yeah don't worry about me doing just fine here all right thanks guys talk to you next week hey guys Jake Ross here associate producer of the persist universe and I'm here with you this week just to give you a brief update about what's going on here in Austin uh we're working on testing uh the generic instance manager or for short uh it's in test testing phase right now but we're wrapping that up

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    that you'll see uh the underlying structure of that here in the next release um which should be coming on pretty soon um the uh asteroid field tool is also beginning work uh we'll be using that uh along with some of the mining prototype uh gameplay that we've been working on to kind of to um create asteroid Fields uh quickly and efficiently um so that's that's in the works uh we're also so working on the next layout um blueprint Dock of the next Landing Zone uh in the Stanton system uh we're kind of tossing ideas around about huren and crusader and Microtech um one is kind of this best bin Cloud cityes um environment that's kind of up in the clouds and and uh one is is kind of Refinery world it's all uh

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    fiery and it's got mines that that NPCs will go to and and then one's uh cold um snowy planet um so all of those are within the Stanton system um so we'll be working on one of those next if you if you've got one that you'd like to see more than the others let us know um we'll be taking uh that that into consideration so that's uh that's all I got for you this week thanks see you hi guys my name is Ben Curtis um I work over here in the UK in Foundry 42 I am prop Le and this is Sarah I'm I'm a concept artist here at The Foundry uh yeah it's good yeah um so we're here to talk to you today a little bit about props um you know we have the the environment team that are kind of doing like an

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    amazing job at creating these worlds we have the ships teams that are you know making everything that you guys want to fly out in space and it's our job to kind of put the you know all the little kind of finishing um items and and objects into game that are kind of really going to help to sell the story and kind of um you know guide you guys kind of through the levels and and help just to make everything feel a little bit more alive um we're kind of at a point where we're doing a kind of um trying to bring the quality of our work up to the quality of the guys that the you know like I say the other kind of art teams are doing um yeah that's say we get our like I say we got them off red H hot CG um in like a raw format and then it's my job to make sure that it matches uh the the what the environment team are doing like in terms of quality

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    and like sorts of like sense of feeling and atmosphere and H make sure that Paul our leads art director happy with them as well because we want this to be as high quality as possible don't we yeah yeah that's it so Sarah does kind of like you know our kind of Polish pass in house with the concepts they kind of then come back to us and come back to me and and you know Paul does a review of them we then get the kind of like 3D team to make them and hopefully kind of you know match what what Sarah's done in concept and then they then get populated throughout the world and like I say just just help kind of really bring some of the the um environments to life at least that's what we're we're aiming for yeah I say we want want you to make feel at home and you know want to be totally immersed in the environment and stuff and you know just go up to stuff and be

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    like oh what's that and you're excited yeah that's that's it just just yeah like I said kind of keep keep you immersed in game and I mean yeah we we've been on it um it's a relatively new team we kind of put together in the UK for the prop stuff we've been on it about six weeks um so you know hopefully kind of soon we'll have something a bit bit more exciting to show you guys yeah definitely can't wait exciting all right cheers guys thanks bye bye the leader is simply out matching everyone it's like they're on a whole other level check point warning Collision four one down complete scan initiated War Collision St contact warning thanks to all our Studios from

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    around the world and now it's over to ship shape with Lisa Ohanian here hello everyone and welcome to ship shape this week we're going to be talking about ship components so I brought on our ship lead Ellen bachier he's going to be uh talking a little bit about the ship components that we have going on he's done a lot of work on him so I figured he'd be a good guy to bring on and share with you guys so to start off Ellen why don't you tell us a little bit about components and what they are in the world of Star Citizen uh so briefly components are actually the meat and potatoes of the

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    game essentially everyone loves the ships cuz they're exciting and they look cool but ultimately our game really is about components and the ships are just the thing that you put the components on so components would be things like power plants uh coolers even weapons are considered components every component affects the ship in a different way and so customizing your ship is all about choosing the right components for the task right great so I know that it's still work in progress right now but I think we have about nine different types right now is that right uh that's still flux but N is a good a good number to go off of like I mentioned before we have coolers power plants Radars we've got um Shield generators we've got ballasts um ammo boxes all kinds of you know a lot of them off hand was going to list all

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    nine of them for a second there so I know you've done a lot of work recently with helping our concept artists making sure that these designs come out the way we want them to can you tell us a little bit about uh the three concepts we have here today sure I I'm briefly I'll just mention that uh what we're trying to do is establish a general shape language for each component type so that way when you go ahead and look at a component you can immediately identify what it is right so that way hey I know that's a shield generator I'm going to shoot that thing or hey I know that's a power plant I'm going to shoot that thing um so the three that we're kind of working on right now is the power plant The Shield generator and a cooler M and they do what you expect they would do so a shield generator generates Shield a power plant generates uh electrical energy for you to distribute across all

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    of your systems and the cooler helps you dissipate heat as you use weapons or thrusters and things like that right and we'll get into sizes for a minute but the concepts that we're we're showing today are they're the smallest size right for smaller ships right right right yeah so we have uh previously we had a spread of about uh I think it was about 12 sizes yeah which is quite a bit and if you go ahead and then multiply that by number of component types you've got 12 * 9 time however many manufacturers we want which then means we have to create a huge number of components and because of the way uh ships were separated previously in terms of what components they could use it meant that a huge portion of that would never get used by a single player so we decided that the better option is to still create a huge number of components but

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    bring the categories down to four instead of 12 which now means sizes right four sizes yeah so I mean they we're basically treated them as classes so you have small medium heavy and then Capital class component sizes can you give an example of like um what I mean I'm sure most people know already but like what ship size would fall under each of those like some example ships uh so those are still kind of those those lines are still being kind of drawn now cuz all the ships are kind of getting redefined in terms of how they use the system right but a real quick example is you would have a hornet would have uh light size components a constellation would start going into like medium an Idris would start using uh sorry not an Idris I think maybe a starf far might start going into like heavy and then Idis would be Capital class gotcha yeah so with the new system because we broke

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    it down and now ships end up using more smaller size components so a hornet would have multiple light power plants for example whereas previously it would have a single size three or something like that so this is great for gameplay because it means that now not only the components that we have this huge list of components which players have more access to so all the hard work we do actually gets used but in addition to that it also means that all the ships have greater customization so you can go ahead and have different power plants on the same ship they don't have to be the same type so you can you have more granular control of performance wow that's great it sounds like a win-win oh yeah it's great it's perfect we we wanted this for a long time so it's it's all still work in progress the system is

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    the system that we want to uh move forward with right but it can still change so we'll see how that goes well thank you so much Ellen for joining us on ship shape today it was great to hear a little bit more about some of the component changes we're making back to guys thanks Lisa now let's go over to James who is interviewing one of our newest writers Adam Weezer thanks guys I'm here with associate writer Adam Weezer Adam how you doing man good glad to be here thanks for coming on yeah absolutely absolutely so what you been working on recently uh I work on basically anything lore related whether it's coming down to uh writing the the uh kind of like updates for the News Post online the dispatches the dispatches yeah they come out every Tuesday I help with those uh with Squadron 42 coming on right now there's

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    some side work for NPC dialogue or or different things like that that needs needs help with um there's when it comes to defining systems to defining ship manufacturers weapons all that kind of language um I'm basically just there to help Dave and will uh kind of like just just get stuff done uh that that just keeps backing up there's so much to get done so when they needed a hand when they need a first pass at something a lot of times I'll I'll be given that so I can go through and do a first pass and uh kind of get the ball rolling on a lot of different things so what's your favorite Spectrum dispatch to write o favorite one um popw watch right the well the uh the booty call is always a little fun because that's the the actual kind of like pirate dispatch so that that that's fun little play with language and a different kind of spin on things um I also like the uh the

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    journals like the that we have a series uh called the dispatches and journals of different Explorers so the idea is that there are these kind of like almost like capsules uh that have the journals of these different explorers and the adventures they go on and this series basically just it it's it's fun because you're able to actually you know kind of like how get inside the head of the person that's doing the exploration and I really think that aspect of the game is is a lot of fun to to to dig into from a story perspective how hard is it to get up to speed with all this cuz I imagine when you started I'm not certain how much you knew before but once you got in you see how vast it is yeah I I mean I had read IID read all the dispatches before coming in I I tried to educate myself as as much as possible I read the entire writer's guide a few times to to kind of myself professional I I tried you know and uh then when I

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    came in I I I still feel like there's there's stuff to be learned every single day there's still stuff to be digged in and I I do think that's still a key element a big part of my job is is researching then writing is researching what we have internally the the lore the documentation the understanding then looking at what we've published uh to the public so that I know a perspective of what the audience is going to be bringing what information they're going to be bringing into it also so it's it's always it's always a work in progress but I think that's what also makes us really interesting really exciting for a project is the fact that the lore is so deep and it is it is so varied also that it gives us a lot of different opportunities to explore very cool stories or or interesting characters so have you touched Squadron 42 at all uh yeah yeah I helped uh uh I helped with them there was a lot of especially in

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    the early stages as they're beginning ready to shoot a lot of planning that needed to be help in in kind of like figuring out what we had on the page versus how we were going to figure out the time to shoot that um like I said there's also a lot of kind of like random lines that you'll you'll get from certain characters on the ship um that they needed done so I would go in and just kind of like do a few pages of if you bump into somebody or if you do this or you do that like how are they going to react to you oh that's really cool so it's like situational dialogue exactly exactly yeah and each one needed to be kind of like modified through the lens of that character too so it was about understanding that character in the story and maybe throughout all Squadron 42 they've had like 10 lines but you still needed to try to in those kind of like small situational moments try to infuse life into what they were saying too so it wasn't just another hey watch

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    out or what are you doing or you know kind of like the same it's really easy to kind of get in that again so yeah uh there were there were definitely some moments in Squadron 42 where they just need a little a little help like that so I'd come in and do a first pass on stuff and then pass it off to the guys to go from there so have you learned any tricks about how what type of dialogue of writing Chris likes um I I I think I actually um i' I've learned a little bit more about about what Dave likes and what will likes too which is which are the the first people that that immediately read and respond to to everything I do so um and I I I do think it's it is great because Dave is very conscious about making sure that uh we can bring out as much character as possible and that they we're not just rote kind of like if it's a marine it's not just another kind of like basic

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    marine like let's go run you know like try to stay away from from that to to a certain degree he always he always holds aliens too in high esteem as being like the quintessential genre movie that basically you have the Marines that are that are saying their dialogue and getting and getting across that that the point but they all come from a certain perspective they all have their own view on things and striving to kind of make sure that fits into the Star Citizen universe is is important and is is something that I've really tried to focus on after after working at them for a little bit so you become so ingratiated in the story what is one aspect of it you find intriguing on a Sci-Fi level because I imagine you've read a lot of sci-fi we've all yeah been experienced that but what is it about this particular that makes a different or a single aspect I guess well I what I what I really like about this and I think why the the journals kind of

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    dispatches are some of my favorite is is the exploration aspect of this game is the fact that it's a big universe it it's it's populated by billions of billions of people and and aliens and and all those different things but at the same time you can still be one character or a series of characters going out into the the dark other regions of a world trying to find and explore something new so I think uh I think that's what really makes it exciting is is kind of like being able to write characters that have that ambition or are willing to be like the first explorers that put together a boat and we're like Let's cross the Pacific because why not let's let's see what's out there so uh from a science perspective a Sci-Fi perspective the the opportunities that pop up when somebody discovers something for the first time whether it's a planet or a a different kind of space phenomenon or something like that I think is is is pretty cool

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    of the main races which one are you most interested in writing about vanuel Jean benu um it's uh I've been doing a lot of uh you know looking uh Research into the tavar recently which I think is is pretty interesting just based on their history yeah that's my favorite race as um yeah so I think from from a storytelling perspective they have they have the the greatest distance to travel basically because where they are now at this point is that they're really starting to to feel like you know they can they can be proud to be Taran again and they can make a name for themselves and they can try to integrate themselves into the uee more thoroughly so I I think that makes for a really good interesting story and uh it'll be fun I think to explore some of those aspects and some of those characters that come from that over the over the next uh little bit awesome man uh one last question who are the cathak I'm not sure how much I can say

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    about that I from my research I I know I know a fair amount about him but uh yeah uh just wait all right man thanks again for going all right yeah pleasure back to guys thanks James now let's go over to Alexis with subscriber Corner hey everybody welcome back to subscribers corner today I'm going to be chatting with some more of the folks over at behavior and they're going to tell you all about flare hey guys hi Al why don't you introduce yourselves for everybody and tell everybody what you do there okay I'm uh Gom I'm game designer here at the behavior I'm Ryan mlan a 3D artist at Behavior awesome well thank you guys for joining us today uh today we've got some questions from people on The Forum so

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    I'm going to start with those riek would like to know in May's monthly report you mentioned that you're working on personal lockers where players will be able to store and display weapons gear and gadgets can you tell us more about those the Aesthetics designs um you know what you're considering for those lockers yeah I can give a bit of information about the the personal Locker basically we're still in the design phase for uh those uh those lockers basically as we're moving forward with the uh the shopping experience we know that that uh we're going to acquire some uh weapons and there's going to be an inventory and we're going to need places to to start those weapons so that's where the personal Locker idea uh came from right now we're trying we're still trying to figure out

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    the metrics for the the weapon to decide how big is going to be the uh the locker where is it going to be is it going to be in in inside angers but inside the ship as well we we need to be able to do that and then how many weapons and what type of weapons we'll be able to store in those things and what kind of uh functionalities that will come with those like uh creating load out saving loadouts quick loadouts using those uh those lockers and uh and then what's going to be our needs in terms of interface to be able to do that and if we're going to reuse those interface for different type of uh uh storage uh system like for wardrobes for clothing for example we might reuse some of this those systems uh so we're still in the design phasee for that but it's uh it's

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    basically in the pipeline so there's going to be more information as uh players are able to uh to have an inventory active inventory and personent inventory in the game mhm great um CA would like to know what your favorite challenges are when creating art for Star Citizen and what kind of problems you get to stve I think the best part and challenge with it especially with flares is that it involves so much more than just the art side it's UI 3D it's programmers it's designer so I kind of liken it to if you would have watched like a cooking show we all have to have our pace and we all have to finish at the same time and constantly communicate so it's always a challenge but it's always the best

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    challenge because we get to work with everybody and see the faces we don't normally get to see on a daily basis how do you guys pronounce the is it pugy it's it's it's py py py yeah okay no l o oasy poo easy all right I know I know last time people were like you said it wrong you said it wrong [Laughter] so all right um Aragon BH would like to know what we ever have a chance to receive an artifact from a historically significant event in Star Citizen lore uh the examples they used were a broken laser pistol or a spaceman's helmet that

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    was used in a uee war uhhuh well it's a good question actually all the pisy collection items are artifacts uh they're basically replicas of object found uh TR the universe basically they're they're uh like Not Museum of collectors but they're Gathering those object precious object one of and they're creating replicas putting in cases to distribute to uh to to the people so each of them are are are unique and very rare uh ask for what type of object because just the the question where we uh I was thinking that at some point uh we might introduce object that have uh gameplay values like like if it was a weapon might be might

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    be become usable if it's an helmet maybe it's be wearable right now it's only for display and and showcase but uh there's definitely a possibility at some point to have other type of objects as well but right now the py collection is really about showcasing uh rare and artifact objects all right and following that up uh Nostromo 1977 asks speaking of the puy collection any chance we will see an alien creature fossil or alien tablet with language inscription on it yeah well actually there's a very good chance of that uh just to give a h uh on the qu runes I think it's pronounced on Terra uh there's an ancient civilization that uh Someday live there and there's a

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    fragment of stone that was uh found like uh after like hundreds of years and uh I think uh the poy collection got a end of that uh fragment and there's going to be some work done towards that and maybe that's going to be shared with the uh the the subscribers uh we got to stay tuned for to uh to know more about that so yes in a few months perhaps we'll see something like that yeah there I think they Enlisted the uh master scor and the uh Ed chair of linguistic uh Institute to uh to to work on that great um so speaking of that do you guys want to introduce this month's flare for everybody go ahead uh okay it's the uh vendel armor plating so basically it's a

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    naand ship an next2 vendu carrier ship that was uh found and sold in pieces uh the prey collection got an end of one of those pieces and created uh a perfect replica to uh to share that Discovery with uh with everyone so this is what uh the backers uh and the subscribers is going to found in their their anger this month yep all right well thank you guys so much um thank you to subscribers for your questions uh if you are a subscriber you will get this month's pisy vanuel flare in your hanger on Friday uh if you become a subscriber over the weekend we will be giving those out on Monday as well so you have a chance uh thanks everybody we'll see you

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    time thanks Ally as we mentioned earlier the content has already been patched into Arena commander and subscribers will see it in their hangers starting tomorrow that's it for around the verse but Star Citizen continues we'll have another status update on Star Marine tomorrow from the folks working to get it out and we're unlocking the 300 series for free flight for the next week these ships will be undergoing a significant Revision in the future this is actually uh one we need some real testing on we are working on a rebalance and update to the 300 series and uh we'd like your feedback one of the things we want to make sure in the future is that how they perform in the game matches the way they were announced so uh check back to the original brochure uh remember why you might have picked up a 300 or a 315 in the past and uh let us know what you

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    think of them today does that include my 350r it does uh 350r will certainly be included in that very good and with that here's this week's art sneak peek be sure to tune in to reverse the verse tomorrow at 11: a.m. Pacific on Twitch we'll be answering your questions about that sneak peek and all other aspects of Star ciens Development are you gonna be on this week I hope so all right maybe

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    Sandy will be there thank you to subscribers for making this show possible and we will see you next week on around the verse he