10 for the Chairman: Episode 36 (2014.09.08)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hello everyone welcome to another episode of temp for the chairman uh for those of you haven't watched this before this is where I take 10 questions from subscribers and answer them to the best of my ability subscribers are the subset of our overall community that contributes some money every month uh to enable us to do an enhanced amount of community content so this uh video show that I'm doing now around the verse that we uh do on the Thursdays uh behind cig um video pieces we do when we sort of show sort of some of the you know making a ship or designing a system out of various different Studios and also jump Point uh which we do once a month which is about 50 to 70 pages of really

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   in-depth how things were built and made and and also combined with some fiction um so thank you to subscribers for um kicking in the extra money to allow the people and crew and time to do this stuff so there's always someone behind a camera right here that's uh uh that um you know is enabled by uh by your contributions um and so uh well let's get to it so at the top of the show there's a we actually got a really uh cool gift um this is the uh 1919 edition of fighting the Flying Circus by Eddie Rickenbacker um who was the uh top American Ace of uh of World War II um and this is from uh uh Steven Baron kobashi and the Flying Circus Squadron here so uh so they think thank Dear Mr

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   Roberts as you embark on making history with Star Citizen we're here at the Flying Circus Squadron would like to impart you a small piece of aviation history we present to you a 1919 edition of The Flying fighting with the Flying Circus written by American World War I Ace Captain Eddie rickenbacher may it inspire you to continue the great work you have been doing with the bdss best damn space Sim ever uh in progress uh that in turn will inspire generations of space Sim fans to come on behalf of the Squadron thank you and your crew for making dreams come true and there's a whole bunch of people in the Squadron here um too many to probably name out here but thank you guys it's awesome um I mean this is amazing uh I mean well it's it's a lot older than me but just to have such a great old book it's it's fantastic so um it's really cool I've actually got a

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   couple I think I showed him quite a few episodes uh because World War I is actually one of my uh uh interests AV World War I Aviation and there was a film project that I uh wrote and maybe one of these days I will direct uh that is um based around sort of World War I Aviation uh and the Red Baron and and various other historical figures um and so I've actually got quite a few historical books but I don't have this particular one and this is fantastic so thank you very much um so let me put this down uh and be very careful with it since uh it's significantly older than me in fact it's almost 100 years old which is pretty crazy um okay let's go to the uh first of the questions um so this uh very first question comes from uh well I don't know how to say this correctly so it's either uh no get

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   soon or no jit soon uh so I probably totally mangled that but salv uh who asks can data stored on your ship's computer such as Central core Bank Account Details cargo manifest and jump Point navigation be lost due to object destruction or compromise by a hacker would such a hacker require physical access to your ship's computer what do you envision the hacking cyber warfare elephant element of star systens look like a great question uh you know I not something that we've done a massive amount of thought on but it raises some really interesting uh uh uh you know issues I mean we we've been thinking primarily for the Drake heral and the sort sort of info Runner business about how uh you know you would protect data and uh sort of transmit it and then also people

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   would want to block and uh you know and try and intercept stuff so there's a certain amount of um sort of Electro uh you know sort of uh uh computer um hacking Warfare that we were thinking that we would probably do and we'll probably have some of that on the big ships um that's I know one of the designs that we we've been talking about for the capital ship stuff is you know you would even have one station where the other person's trying to you know disrupt uh the other ship's uh uh systems and potentially um you know Jam them or even maybe try and get a virus aboard him um so there definitely will be some level of that um I don't know so much about hacking U you know personal details and all the rest of the stuff uh that would still be a sort of Tob determined sort of design feature but we are certainly doing uh quite a few

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   things that will sort of make the kind of um you know kind of hacking Warfare uh an aspect that can happen in the game uh because it'll definitely be part of some of the sort of big ship combat and some of the Squadron 42 stuff and it'll definitely be part of the info running stuff and so you know who knows maybe we'll sort of do a little bit of that on the player side although you wouldn't want to get to the point where you know someone can get complete identity theft and screwed over in the game because it's not fun in real life so we don't really want to do uh you know it to anyone in the in the game to a to a level where it's sort of devastating uh although maybe as small amount of stuff could be interesting but um that's still a to be determined aspect but thanks for the uh thanks for the question uh no gets soon if that was said correctly all right next question

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   comes from uh light speed um spelled lyt uh speed once the Pu persistant universe is live will we be able to take jobs on board NPC ships I want to be able to learn as much as I can about the Jean the Vandal and other species that are out there as I can and one of the best ways to do that might be as crew on a ship well you'll definitely be able to take jobs uh in the persistent Universe um you know the initial thinking was you would take jobs for people uh in your ship they ask you to oh we need you to take you know this many tons of goods from this planet to that planet um and uh you know also you could get hired to be a pilot of a ship uh so not sure we whether we're necessarily thinking about letting you sort of be okay I take a job as a gunner on a ship

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   uh but it's kind of a natural extension of sort of being a pilot of a ship so that potentially could probably happen I mean the MPC Ai and intelligence has been sort of set up in a way that you would you know you could be a player on a ship and you know the pilot of the ships an NPC so that's not ruled out it would really sort of determine how our sort of uh Mission uh and job hiring board would happen and then also how we would sort of control The Meta AI of uh of the MPC so you know if uh you know a ship itself has its own sort of persistence and it goes from planet to planet back and forth um you know and it would have a crew and maybe you could crew it so um that would be also kind of a question um that I would be sort of flushing out with uh Tony because uh we are right now in the middle of doing a

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    lot of the uh sort of uh more fun aspects of the high-end AI uh design for um for the position Universe okay next question comes from Shadow Knight who asks since we have Rovers for some of the constellations and maybe other ships as well will there be different sizes say hover bike for other options how also how big an area do you foresee in game we will be able to use these Rovers to explore or if you don't want to give a rough early ballpark how do you foresee us players using them well I definitely think there'll be different kinds of uh sort of Transport ground transport options so obviously there's the um uh you know the buggy that we've seen in the hanger there's the Rover that we unveiled when we showed off the the Aquilla version of the uh constellation and I definitely think there would be some smaller ones

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    uh and some bigger ones and some luxury models um and yeah kind of the idea is in a longer term basis uh you know we want to build some areas that you can land and you can explore that aren't the same as like Landing in a you know necessarily Landing in a sort of busy City Spaceport and then you walk around so like you know perhaps you land in an sort of open area of Countryside and there's maybe some ruins off in the distance and you get in your buggy and you can drive around and do some Explorations so that's sort of the longer term plan and that's where some of the sort of procedural work that we doing some R&D and would would help come into uh play uh so I don't know how much of that will be in you know sort of the very first sort of complete version of the persistent Universe um but um it would be something that's in the development Pipeline and we would try to

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    get up and running as soon as possible because having um various areas or some PVE uh exploration and combat down on planets or in sort of derel out in space or in you know abandoned asteroid bases is something that's kind of a high priority for us because I think it'll just add a lot of texture um to the world itself so it's not just about flying around and space combat there's other action that's happening uh and I think you guys will also be pretty happy with the way Squadron 42 is going to show turn out cuz it's uh pretty epic and uh you know more than just win command of sty flying missions um okay next question comes from terara Opticon who asks you have talked about the slider in the persistent universe that will given whether you prefer more

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    PVP or PVE encounters but I was thinking how will this work on a multic crude ship EG what if some of the people on board have it set to more PVE and others have it set to more PVP who will take precedent uh well that's a pretty uh easy one essentially the owner/ captain of the ship uh settings or ratings would be um the determining factor of the encounters that ship would uh come across when it's flying around space um so if you uh don't really want to be fighting other players uh you better not be getting on a ship where someone just likes to fight other players um but um yeah that's kind of I would say a pretty obvious answer to that hopefully that's a one that you uh you like uh okay next

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    question comes from a ail Azazel uh who asks with the recent addition of racing many questions have come up one of the biggest concerns uh the lack of a jump drive on the known dedicated racing ships with racing taking place in multiple systems across the verse in the Pu how will the M50 Mustang and 350r owners get their racing from one system to another um okay well so certain things the 350r definitely will be able to have a jump drive Um Mustang um also like the aora would be able to have uh sort of an upgraded jump Drive the M50 is pretty small so it's likely not necessary to have a jump drive but uh we're going to also have you know that's kind of the idea why you have bigger ships um so you know if you think about racing in today's world if people go around racing uh you know they have um you know big 18 wheelers that

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    they put their race cars in the back in and drive around the country or even in the case of you know high-end stuff like Formula One they put them on planes and fly around so uh we will definitely sort of have um you know transporter uh ships that you'll be able to take your smaller uh you know something like an M50 in so for instance you know if you have an 890 jump and you're cruising around in style and universe you could have an M50 sitting in the cargo bay and race it at various races um you know just like the super rich do in today's world um so um you know we'll definitely have ships that can transport them around or if you didn't have a ship you want to do that you could probably hire someone to transport your ship to the next race location um okay okay next question comes from uh fails Cal Ator so fails Cal Alor you guys are coming up with like crazy

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    names to trip me up on this particular t for the chairman um and I'm sure I've butched most of them will we be able to see our alternative character slot NPCs in our Hangar as a living breathing entity not just as a character slot we can customize yes so uh I think you're talking about the uh character uh you know the where we've talked about um if you have multiple game packages you can sort of change one of the packages into an an a customizable NPC uh for you to have on your crew as opposed to sort of a generic one you would hire and yes you would definitely have them as a uh as a character hanging out in your ship or your pad as it were like a hanger or something so you know if you have you know you basically put together your crew think of it like uh you know Serenity or something um and you would

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    see them hanging out goofing off you know doing their various Idol States and then you go off and and fly and they're doing the same on the ship uh so yes they would they would be NPC characters going about uh you know maybe they would uh you know have some generic conversational lines uh I mean that's to a certain extent will be fairly challenging because there'll be a lot of different potential NPCs and characters but um um you know we'll try our best to make sure that they're all they have some sense of personality and they're kind of fun uh okay next question comes from uh tabis covid maybe Ben's just deliberately doing this to me uh or you guys just have lots of really interesting names but Tabasco ask the Murray cut racing

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    Dem at games con showed us flying structures and Holograms that were used to indicate the course of the racetrack will it be possible for players to rent to buy these devices later in the pist Universe to build our own temporary racing tracks through asteroid fields for example I don't know that's a that's a pretty good question I don't think we were really planning on that um uh you know to to rent to buy these devices uh for the persistent Universe I think we would probably have most of the RAC trcks be sort of preset or predetermined in the in the universe I mean I could see with the system we have you could probably have uh the little Hollow projectors and you could Eva and place him around in environment uh but uh you know the problem is that that wouldn't really have persistence um the way that a proper racetrack would

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    because you'd be in an instance and as soon as you left it it wouldn't happen so um you know even if we did that it probably wouldn't have the sort of permanency that the racetracks have uh okay next question comes from Smart a it's a little easier to say who asks do you rely on any guiding principles when making game design decisions you've referenced this is what would happen in real life a few times so I take that as one but do you have any others that guide your problem solving well quite a few I mean obviously real Life's a really great example and and you know past you know history uh are good examples because it's you can see sort of how something works uh and also people that are playing the game can also really relate to it because it's something they they have seen every day in real life so you know the idea of say Insurance on a spaceship you can relate

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    to because you have insurance on your car and and for the same kind of reasons that we would have in in in space uh so definitely having some level of real life inform the gameplay but of course you want to make the game fun um so that's a big guiding principle so it's sort of focusing on much more of the fun aspects and less of sort of the boring mundane aspects because I think most people um you know even glamorous people um you know a lot of uh their day-to-day stuff is fairly mundane and of course you're not playing a game to uh you know to do mundane things uh maybe if you're playing something like the Sims but even the Sims is sort of kind of very sort of abstracted kind of more fun version of real life um so you know I would say that you know the the real life's part of it uh part of it is uh you know

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    making it fun sort of the bit where you sort of feel empowered and you sort of feel special and you can do cool stuff that you can't normally do in real life and then also to a certain extent making uh it be you know easy at the beginning sort of draw you in like one of my big principles is you know I really like immersion and uh imers I think is really facilitated by really rendering um the environment the world the characters at like a very high fidelity uh and even though um you know you could say well the game mechanics aren't particularly different when you render something and put a little extra care and attention to detail in it it makes that world seem more alive I mean a really good example is um you know the Uncharted series that Naughty Dogs done and you know if you look at the base gameplay mechanics it's not that different than what Tomb Raider did a long time ago but the difference

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    is they added so all these little details and moments you know like Drake's going up a staircase and he reaches and touches the banister and it sort of all makes it sort of feel a bit more real and alive and the same the last of us had a lot of these touches too and so the the same gameplay mechanics that maybe in another game don't feel quite as connective do in something like an Uncharted because um the attention to detail sort of pulls you in and so all of a sudden you start you start putting yourself in that world instead of you know always thinking you're playing a game so you know having having a high amount of immersion is a big principle for me to really just you know pull you into um the game because you know even if we look at what we're doing as Star Citizen a lot of the core game mechanics aren't you know that much different than what we've done in the

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    past on things like Wing Commander or privateer or freelancer I mean there is a lot more sophistications a lot more stuff but some of the core ideas like the whole idea of um traveling between planets and earning money so you can upgrade your ship or buy a new ship is has been around for a long time and it's a very satisfying sort of play path and and so we're just sort of doing that with a half Fidelity we've got a lot more tweaks and of course there's a multiplayer and the Cooperative aspects and so there's a lot of things that are going to make it really rich um but you know it's still the same basic core game mechanics which you know if you look at a lot of games the core mechanics tend to be tend to have been very similar for a long time and a lot of it's about implementation and then nuance and and uh and sort of accessibility for people so so I would say for me you know my game design principles are you know

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    about immersion uh they're about accessibility um they're about adding depth to a game uh beyond the accessibility right so you know there's a very famous saying which is sort of like you know easy to learn difficult to master and I think that's a very good Paradigm for games I mean it's much easier said than done but in general it's uh something that you uh you know want to uh have in your game so you know someone can just pick it up and have fun but they don't feel like they they mastered it and bored with it right away it takes a long time so you know I would say uh something like a you know Starcraft or something like that had a very good sort of you know easy to learn difficult to master thing where you know you could play it and you know you could just play it with the mouse and but if you really wanted to get good at it it just took a lot more um time and attention and you know you had to be a

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    whole different level of player and so that's kind of one of the things that we want to do in uh in Star Citizen and then you know in general just you know create this really big world where I'm you know really going for a Sandbox to allow people to do what they want to do um and sort of live out their their fantasy life in space I mean it's a fantasy that I've had and I think most of you guys out there have had so um those are all aspects that go into uh the design um so you know I wouldn't you know not saying there's any sort of Silver Bullet I mean a lot of it also is you know sort of instinct and intuition of like what seems to make sense to me versus uh anything else um and it just happen I think to a certain level to have uh a sense of uh gameplay and style that um you know a lot of other people

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    sort of agree with so um um but there you go there there's my principles um if that helps at all okay uh next question comes from vasta halex who ask my question has to do with weapons and damage scales will there be physical limitations the effectiveness of Weaponry against VAR levels of armor IE will snub fighter cannons be ineffective against larger scale vessels yeah I mean I mean to a I mean it's pretty logical I mean it's sort of the way uh things work in real life um you know if I've got a cult 45 and I'm shooting an M1 Abrams um I'm probably not going to do much damage uh and the same sort of thing will be uh true in Star Citizen so um you know depending on you know we haven't really implemented

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    armor in the in Arena Commander yet but that's one of the things that sort of stubbed in and will be there um but armor will obviously affect I mean we have we have whole damage but we don't have sort of levels of armor Beyond it so that will have some impact and obviously we have the the Nuance of ballistic weapons versus energy weapons and obviously uh they you know in our world they have different setups so like ballistic weapons aren't really stopped particularly well by Shields so they tend to go through Shields but our armor is really built to sort of deflect or stop ballistic weapons whereas energy weapons are deflected and absorbed by Shields but you know armor isn't so good against them and also there'll be the size and the scope of the power of the weapon like so if you have like I said a handgun and you're trying to shoot a hornet with it you'll probably a lot less successful than firing a bulldog repeater um so um I would say yes to the

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    answer okay last question comes from Captain rot now uh who asks will planets have varying gravity if I visit a planet with a greater or less gravity than that of Earth Earth will it affect how I walk on it will it slow me down or will or let me jump higher how exactly will this affect combat I'm pretty sure we're going to use gravity I mean we haven't explicitly sort of designed oh this this planet's got half gravity this planet's got full gravity but I'm pretty sure we will because it's a pretty big gameplay element that we're building for sort of the firstperson shooter aspect and it's certainly very uh prominent in the use in space so on space stations asteroid bases uh boarding other ships I mean there's going to be gameplay where you can turn off gravity turn on gravity uh and that will affect you differently um and so uh I you know we would be kind of

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    silly not to use all the code and support that we're building for that down on some Planet so you could potentially be on a you know a big heavy gravity planet and some ones would be you know like the moon uh much lighter gravity so I would I would assume that we would probably do something like that in a couple of places I mean most places will probably more like earthlike gravity just for uh you know for familiarity but occasionally we would definitely have places like you know maybe there's a moon Outpost or something and that would have a lower gravity and then that would just rely on all the FPS um sort of uh zero gravity or zero uh you know low gravity mechanics that we're building right now in the FPS um all right there you go that's the 10 questions uh thank you guys for tuning in hopefully you found the uh my aners uh interesting uh thank

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    you to subscribers for um you know contributing uh that extra money that allows us to do these kind of shows uh thank you to everyone out there that's backed the game uh you know we couldn't be making this incredibly ambitious game without your support uh so myself and the team really appreciate it um you know we've been having a lot of fun recently the games con event last month was uh great and it was great to meet and see a whole bunch of people um we're here heads down hard at work um trying to get you release 13 uh v0.9 out which I hoping touch I guess there's wood made out of this thing this week um and um I'll catch you next week bye hey guys thanks for watching um temp

31. 00:24:14

    for the chairman uh if you guys would like to uh see more episodes go here if you guys would like to subscribe to our YouTube channel and always keep up to date with all our video content go here and uh if you guys would like to watch episodes of around the verse go here please and I will see you in the V