Around the Verse: Episode 1.06 (2014.07.17)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:02

   [Music] hey everybody Welcome to episode six of around the verse I'm Sandy Gardner and I am Ben Lesnik and Ben Lesnik what did you do this weekend I went to my brother mother's ex-girlfriend's Star Trek theme burlesque act that is where you were on Friday night right yes because I kept emailing Ben and Ben always emails me back like lightning from everything from everything basically and then Dennis Daniels comes downstairs and he says oh I'm going to the Star Trek burlesque thing with Ben Lesnik I'm like what so that's what you were doing if you're

2. 00:00:51

   going to go to a Star Trek burles guy bring your it guy right so what what did you do this weekend what did I do this weekend for the third time in the row I watched the World Cup and I had to cuz it was the final what else happened we passed the $48 million mark this weekend congratulations to all of our backers we couldn't uh we couldn't do anything with anything like this without you guys it's it's just incredible support we've had uh and we have a cool new $50 million shetal that I'm very excited about we're going to bring in an actual linguist to come up with languages for the the vanu the zyen and the Banu so uh you may be speaking xen sooner than you know it okay well it is your very last chance to pick up a Gladius light Fighter the concept cell ends tomorrow at midnight you got one I did get one they're going

3. 00:01:39

   to be a really cool way to play Arena Commander cuz they're they're honestly a dedicated dog fighter uh rest of our ships are kind of Jack of all trades uh do a little bit of everything the uh Gladius is going to be for dog fighting I did not get one because I was trying to get a dog tag I bet that didn't go so well no it did not because I missed out I guess you'll have to be in the second Fleet second Fleet exactly well I was looking at the feedback for last week's show and some people noticed something a little different about you I I didn't personally but uh you want to fill us in on what was going on I was overtaken by Eva she is going to be virtual assistants for the new online store on the website it's pretty cool so so you're doing like motion capture or video some motion capture and some liveaction green screen so very cool I look forward to seeing more of Eva as do

4. 00:02:26

   apparently all of our fans Chris Roberts is's back from Montreal where he sat down with Tony zurc Alex mabery and others to plot out our Star Citizen persistent Universe yeah we're calling it The persistent Universe Summit basically they sat down got all their ducks in a row for the uh next couple months of uh star C of production work continues on patch 12.5 rubber banding yes we know it's been a while we are uh we are working this issue it's it's been lots of dead ends but we we're very very close in fact by the time you see this it may be out which is good news because in addition to fixing the rubber band the latency issues it also adds the jbox I've been waiting for the jig boox hanger dance party got a little over excited about that and there'll also be the new vuel ace fighter which for you

5. 00:03:13

   to uh discover so as long as 12.5 is out there's some interesting stuff for you to do in the Star World our writers are going to Comic conon David lman and David hadock will be at the San Diego ComicCon next week to review submissions from potential Star Citizen writers yeah if you think you have what it takes uh go find out now let's go over to Alexis and Chelsea for the Cs report hi and welcome to the customer service report my name is Chelsea and I'm Alexis and this week we have a merchandise update for you we have some new t-shirts for sale this week starting tomorrow we will have the Anvil t-shirt which will be $25 including shipping and we will have the arena Commander t-shirt which will also be $25 including shipping uh and we're also going to offer this three patch set which is the the UE patch the advocacy patch and the

6. 00:04:02

   Navy patch and that will be $19 including shipping for those of you wondering about a cross chassis upgrade for the Gladius we'll be offering that once the ship is flyable in Arena commander see you next time guys thanks ladies those t-shirts look great and now it's time for news around the [Applause] verse Arena Commander art and audio have been working on Textures and effects for several new game modes including New Horizons and there have been plenty and plenty of bug fixes along with the uh hopeful fix for the rubber banding and the lag issue should be in 125 very very soon meanwhile design has finished

7. 00:04:50

   forther plan for the lobby and is moving to expand the ship component system last but not least we're doing some serious balancing on Arena Commander we're changing uh the impacts of the weapons have the effect uh missiles have on Shields just all these uh little balanced things that start to create our ideal flight model Squadron 42 call the ball the team is working on the manual Landing prototype and the artists over there are working on character animations uh this is Chris Roberts game so we have all sorts of characters just in the first couple missions of Squadron 42 and we want to get them right while the designers are getting the conversations up to speed and the team has completed their reviews of the first three missions of the game and uh Mission four is hop behind persistent Universe we need more parts the team is working on expanding the components Pipeline and on integrating what we've already developed into the

8. 00:05:37

   plan for the persistent Universe our technical designers in Austin are working on nebula effects designers completed gdds on cargo repair and jump Point Transit this week and work is Ono on an Eva prototype which is going to take the uh stuff you've seen in Arena commander and uh let you do all sorts of other things outside your ship ships woohoo the Edis bridge is complete and the f8 lightning is ongoing meanwhile we have started animation on the Gladius and what that means is hanger animation so we're already bringing the ship into the hanger animating how you get in how you get out how you put your hands on the stick in the throttle uh so it's a lot further along than people may think you

9. 00:06:25

   may be seeing it in your hangers sooner than later all right you might have a Gladius before I have a dog tag that seems likely gray boxing continues on the Gladiator Javelin Panther and Retaliator the 890 jump concept is done and we've moved into white boxing cig Austin has made some fixes to the arin's 350 RS hardpoints and completed a revision of the super Hornets cockpit damage and collision work on the constellation and the M50 are ongoing that's a in engine stuff CG bot has made great progress on the constellation variants with delivery of damage states and variance expected soon finally we've seen the concept art on the vanuel torpedo bomber and the new collector ship Hangar the big news from the hangar module is that the team at behavior is going ahead and completing the conversion of the original Three hangers

10. 00:07:14

    after that they'll work on polishing and refactoring I can't wait to see my hanger in the multiroom system well let's go over to William for most valuable poster hey everybody I'm Le Moder will here to bring you this week's MVP this week's MVP goes to palad donic for his threat about 100 ways to die in space a couple in my favorite are a malfunctioning cutless toilet driving a 6000 sux and of course being attacked by an angry MAA Pirates so thank you very much palad donic you're this week's MVP thanks William so this week we have another little sneak peek Ben oh what's that check it out he that's pretty cruel cruel you mean

11. 00:08:32

    cool you'll see the rest of the ship this summer now let's go over to Matthew antier to learn a little bit more about how we build ships at RSI hey everybody this is Matt intrieri I'm the tech artist at the LA Studio working on Star Citizen uh today I'm going to show you some things about tools and how we automate the processes of creating these spaceships and you might recognize the Hornet when we build a spaceship it's comprised of many parts there's like say the wing but we have to build the damage versions of the wing and then each damage version has to have an LOD for performance reasons so when you think about a part of a ship we're really talking about 16 plus models and I'll show you what that looks like here this is a hierarchy and you can see very

12. 00:09:21

    quickly these ships can get extremely complex each part has many sub Parts which represent uh effects and lods for performance and damage what we do is we represent that in the code as well though and to up to this point this has been all typed in by hand this is what it looks like when a part is added to our uh code so now what I've done is I've written a script that analyzes the ship and puts the code into the game automatically so I'll just run that for you right now and this is a huge timesaver so I'll go ahead and run that and you can see it over here it is

13. 00:10:11

    updating those pieces if I were to change the hierarchy right now it would update over here and it's hard to see but this has now been updated all these parts have been stitched together this is a child of this these effects nodes have been put under the parts say we want to change the way the damage works or things that fly off the detached bits well now we can just move those pieces around and hit the button before it was move those pieces around then go and edit those pieces of text and it's very complicated when you when you have about 600 pieces to deal with and that's on the little ships that was pretty I could never do

14. 00:11:00

    that I could never do anything approaching that but James Pew could and he's here to ask Kix your questions thanks guys I'm here with Kix Reno KX how you doing I'm doing pretty good you're rocking a pretty sweet hat there thank you where do I get me one of those uh you have to fight for it you have to pull it from the cold dead hands of crazed Millers that's a way better answer than I thought you were going to give me thought you're going to be like go to the Gap I guess you can if you if you have to you want to get in some questions yeah sure sure first one is from Mr Bump do some learning which ships have given you the most problems to work on so far and which ships have you enjoyed working on the most uh as far as most difficult honestly the Aurora was surprisingly difficult to work on it turns out it's a hefty little beast it's got it had so many bones and

15. 00:11:49

    it was this really intricate complex structure that uh even though it doesn't particularly look at it from the outside it took a lot a lot of work and troubleshooting to get that thing to fall apart correctly like I we had issues of the Interior moving over there while the exterior move was over here or having sounds like an awesome glitch yeah it it was uh it was kind of a nightmare to get all those pieces to line up together um and we even actually had trouble exporting it at one point because there were so many debris pieces and and they would just not export and so I I brought it in at one point and there was no ship but it wasn't that way with like the Hornet or anything else uh the Hornet um I just find odd how it's a three it's like the Aurora like well for for one

16. 00:12:37

    thing the Hornet had already been sort of this this work in progress at the time uh and so the Aurora was this whole like let's dive into damage it's worked so well last time and so we really kind of went crazy on it and there were just so many little pieces like I think can't remember the exact number but it was above 2,000 different pieces on the Aurora dang and the system was like maybe that's too many maybe you don't need that many right now uh and so uh eventually we agreed and we decided especially since at the scales that we were working at you couldn't really see like the the pieces that would come off were these tiny these panels that would come off the top of the Wings and come

17. 00:13:25

    off of the side of the ship and you couldn't see them um and so it wasn't it was it was a real pain to get to function it wasn't satisfying to see happen um so we we went back with that one and sort of massaged it to get the larger chunks that break off in more meaningful ways and and that actually has really done a lot to inform how we have approached our damage system Now with uh the the larger ships and and with trying um to refine our process is do the meaningful shapes first uh and we can kind kind of deal with the little panels later cool well I guess second part is which Shi have you enjoyed working on the most uh probably the cutless I haven't uh I haven't had the chance to finish with it yet we've been piecing together things and but it was

18. 00:14:14

    the first time that I got to I got to do my white box I got to uh build the whole thing out in this terrible we showed it we took this terrible box form and tear it to Pieces tear everything about it apart um and it's really nice to be able to have that complete control so it's that's probably my favorite so far so next question from Liberty Marine when you implement the double Precision system will we be able to just fly with our ships into any direction for as long as we want to without reaching an immersion breaking border well the simple answer is yes that's that's this experience that we are trying to build MH uh and part of that is the double precision system being able to to go far enough in a map that we can stream in

19. 00:15:02

    the next part uh but there's a lot more that's going to be involved in that than just the double Precision system so simply yes and we will be working on that very thing all right next question comes from Arman til can you explain to us the difference between a white box and a gray box in your ship modeling workflow uh well the white box is basically where I start the process uh which actually isn't true okay uh we start we actually start by by going in and taking um wait did you just lie to us I mean you can't believe a thing I say we take meticulous screenshots of of the ships we've got all these uh reference and then we go in and we paint all over them um as if my my ruining of the ships was not enough

20. 00:15:52

    we go in and we draw out exactly what we want like how what are these shapes that we want to pull apart um the to start defining what the ship is going to be and from there we go into the white box now that I have a plan of attack I know what I want from the system uh I start building out the white box which is simply boxes no uh NE no necessary textures no necessary lighting art is not even an issue like whatever it takes to get it in engine and functional okay Gray box is the First Step Beyond that to start integrating the art back into that functionality and again not really focused on Textures not really focused on lighting just focused on form now that we have the function Okay cool so

21. 00:16:41

    that's where it starts coming back together so you go white box then gray box yeah awesome and what do you do first lie next question comes from gundam so I was wondering how do you wow sorry it's written weird next question comes from gundam he says so I was wondering how do damage States work on larger ships in say the capital ship range when they are at least okay when they're at the last give me that go ahead work on larger ships in say the capital ship range when they are at the last and final damage States you didn't ask the question you just said the end well what else do you need all right question is what's the difference in damage States uh for Capital ships as opposed to smaller ships when they're at their basically the last gasp well there's a lot of that question we have

22. 00:17:28

    not answered okay uh but we're beginning to and part of that is our our Exploration with uh the constellation uh which I believe I can talk about and uh sort of piecing together um a new way of dealing with these immensely sized ships part of that is uh combining the cgas for the interior and the exterior CGA is our data set for our models okay what's that stand for uh something something animation okay cool uh I I don't I don't quite well for people who don't quite understand it I want them to know they're they're animated uh models yeah um they come complete with joints and animation alongside the geometry and we are setting up uh the new ships to have an interior CGA an interior model and an

23. 00:18:17

    exterior model and we are combining those in engine we're stitching them back together um and part of the advantage of that is that when we do our uh our separate physics areas for interior so as not to die uh an exterior so as to be able to fly around and do the things that you kind of expect of a space game uh we can combine those things by setting up each physics section to have its own geometry okay and then we combine that geometry and engine so that when these things tear apart they pull apart the the interior along with the exterior they have matching damage States oh cool because it kind of goes back to last week we were talking about the different like physics the a different physics for like inside of a ship which is outside the normal physics engine of like the environment or space exactly so it's they kind of making sure

24. 00:19:06

    those two damage States come like yeah and this is actually how that works is that we again we build it out as a separate thing and we stitch them together in engine cool uh because at that point we have all this data to pull from and we can associate the correct uh like this floor with this outer hole and then tear that away and now you have what you would expect of they H breach and you'd have that big hole there and I'd expect that we'll be able to get a pretty robust system of being able to tear them pretty much completely apart uh one of the other questions that we have to answer is uh how do we deal with these things when they become totally separate entities uh do they how will they act uh how will they interact with each other MH um will they will they

25. 00:19:54

    spawn something new it's it's definitely something we are actively solving still okay cool last question comes from Karma this is personal question you strike me as an artist do you see what you do as cig as art do you wish you were more on in on the design process well without getting in trouble why not why not I mean I actually I have a a fairly varied background when I wanted to get into game design which I've wanted basically my whole life congratulations thank you thank you it's it's worked out nicely uh but I I felt completely that uh game design is the Hub of game development it's where the art and the animation and the sound design and the programming and

26. 00:20:45

    everything comes together and forms a cohesive experience if we're doing it right yeah and so I spent a lot of time learning how to do each of those things I've done animation I've done 3D modeling and 2D illustration and concept design and I do music and I do really everything except for it which I am no longer capable of doing now that we have our helpful staff thanks Dennis thank you Dennis uh saving me on a regular basis but yeah I kind of feel like uh game design game design is an art because it's it's certainly not a science you have to try things you have to uh go in there and experiment and see what you see what you

27. 00:21:32

    get see how it feels everything is guessing until you go for it and as far as uh feeling cut off from design I feel like I'm in a pretty good place I get I get to I mean I get to tear apart ships which is pretty fun I'm not I'm not going to lie anymore um and I also one of the nice things about my position is that uh I have the opportunity to work with these great people and I'm I'm doing all these little prototypes to figure out where we're going and I don't necessarily know all the answers to what we're going to do when we get there or what our final Solutions are going to be for any given thing but I get to try it I get to see and then I take it to the design team and they say well this is something interesting this is something

28. 00:22:21

    we can work with and we can respond to and we can move forward with and that is really fulfilling to me awesome man so well thank you so much for coming on certainly and back to you guys thanks James what is a Kix anyway I don't know but he's pretty cool and now it's time for bug Smashers bug Smashers hey everyone welcome back to bug Smashers I'm here to show off one of the most depressing bugs I've come across on this project so far bug species this week's bug has to deal with the player standing up when he initially spawns into the multiplayer match um it was pretty much a very hard

29. 00:23:10

    bug to replicate um here at least in the LA team the Austin team and you know UK team were able to get it quite frequently but uh anyway the bug when you initially spawn in the player will basically be standing up and His Hands still have ik so he'll be like this holding the controls and if you go in first person your head is like popped up inside the um the ceiling of the ship so all you see is just like this gray blob in front of you but yeah it only happens in multiplayer and it was just a pain in the butt here is the bug um pretty much the player as you can see is standing up

30. 00:23:58

    and freaking out if I go into first person you can see my head is popped up in the ceiling and the camera is just going wild as you can see here on the screen I have a bunch of like debug information and that's pretty much um some Network information I'm actually simulating Network lag between 200 to 300 milliseconds and 1% chance of packet loss the reason why is because it's bug it has to deal with multiplayer and how and when you get certain packets it was because the player was Reviving after he gets inside of a ship and the revive code will reset all of his animations I can show you something real quick let me kill

31. 00:24:48

    myself and then my player will spawn in a brief moment you'll see that I'm inside oh it freaked out even worse if you move around you just see the guy's hands go like this and then his feet go up and down it's kind of funny what is happening is the player will respawn inside the center of the map and that causes him um to like bounce around and stuff and then when you get the packet to revive you get positioned way off somewhere else that's why in multiplayer you'll see sometimes you'll be somewhere else and then instantly teleport well during this time the players is already in the seat and then he gets the revive call and in this sequence of events um The Players animation just

32. 00:25:38

    goes wild one aspect of this bug was it was actually really really hard to replicate uh me and another guy from the redacted Studio were working on this thing for about a week and a half trying mostly to get it you know replicating and we heard from both UK and Austin mostly UK because they have a higher latency that this was happening very frequently for them but when we go

33. 00:26:26

    and try it through the launcher it we didn't see the bug so then we tried it on our local machines I would connect to my own dedicated server didn't see the bug all right maybe it's latency issue we thought so I put in some debug console variables to increase my latency and provide random packet loss still not getting it we're like what's going on is this in you know a phantom bug does it really exist cuz we can't replicate it and then they start sending us videos saying look this is actually happening we're like no so we took another step further and I

34. 00:27:17

    actually got this laptop baby right here and I moved my dedicated server onto it and I still wasn't getting it even with the Laten so then someone I think it was Jason Spangler who sent out an email suggesting that we use another application which will actually simulate any type of network um ADSL 56k modem you name it so I pop that on uh ADSL setting and connect it to my laptop and what did I get I get the standup bug and not just that every time I connected to that server I was getting it like like all the time so the ability to get the bug changed from like once in the blue moon to now I get it all the time I can

35. 00:28:06

    start debugging it start figuring out what's happening now when the player responds into the ship we make sure that his animations don't re U Get reset because that actually has already happened on a different uh respond call a revive call and everything seems to be good in order and we have a future task to look at you know that little hack to see if there's a better way of doing it but at least for now the players won't be standing up and flipping his arms out all weird like when he spawns in multiplayer count to 10 one three 9 7 2 8 10 5 6 4 that wasn't very good you missed two I said two did you it was the fourth

36. 00:28:56

    number well that's it for our show this week next week you'll find out who won the 10 for the chairman logo contest and our guest next week will be Rob Irving because I will be in Austin Austin well who's going to host the show with you a very special guest oo you'll have to tune in for that one see you next week guys see you next week on a round the verse we didn't have any 4K monitors we only had 1080p monitors so the 4K monitors were a waste because I didn't even ask for them so I'm not sure why that was even hello hello God damn it stupid phone hello God where's that light switch damn it somebody didn't pay the

37. 00:29:45

    bill again or something stupid God damn it n