Star Citizen: Calling All Devs - Practical Behaviors

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:11

   Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of Calling All Devs, our weekly Q&A series where I take questions from you, the Star Citizen backer, and pose them directly to our developers, usually over Skype. And this week, uh because our studio is full of brim with CitizenCon uh crates and stuff that have come back from Austin, I'm at my other desk here in the marketing department where I normally pretend to work. Starting us off this week, we are going directly to Todd Pappy, Star Citizen Live Game Director, for two questions uh submitted by you and voted on by you. Todd, how you doing, man? Good. How are you doing, Jordan? Uh I'm doing okay. I took almost all of last week off to recover from CitizenCon. Were you sick? No, I just I just needed I needed to decompress. I needed I needed the break. time.

2. 00:00:58

   Yeah, you know, it's it's the it's the it's the biggest 3 months of my life, but the most rewarding 1 week of my life. So, it all kind of worked out, but I just just exhausted afterwards. All right, I got two questions for you. Uh submitted by the backers, voted on by the backers. Uh right off the bat, this one's very topical considering our demo at our play through, rather, at CitizenCon. Uh with big cities like we showed in Lorville, how will players be made to to behave in a realistic manner in these city environments? Cuz it would be rather the strange to see people jumping off bridges in oncoming traffic to get to Dumper's Depot just like 20 seconds faster than if they walked around the other way. Well, I guess if they jump off, they're going to deal with the consequences of of dying.

3. 00:01:44

   Um but as far as them running around doing bunny hops, whatever, it's it really is just going to be based off of stamina, you know, and that's the only way that we're going to gate the players. The otherwise, they can run around do whatever they want to. Uh I'm as as a game maker and as a as a player, I'm not going to enforce my stance of play on anybody else kind of thing. Mhm. But uh you know, maybe uh something like a three three bunny hops in a row really hits your your your stamina hard kind of thing. like exactly. So, it's it you'll and then at that point in time, you'll have to wait for a little while and then you can jump again. Uh after you which it will be introducing bunny hop cardio routines in the game.

4. 00:02:30

   Yeah. Yeah, I can see the Star Marine mode now. All right. All right. Well, I hope hopefully it'll be like goat yoga or something like that. Star Citizen yoga. It'll happen. It'll happen. All right. Uh next question I got for you. Uh pretty sure I know what the answer for this one is, but we're going to ask. Will players have the ability to carry a {quote} portable hab or a sleeping bag while traveling in land vehicles that do not currently have any beds to log out? No. Not right now. Not right now. Uh something And to I and not in the foreseeable future right now. So. But you you you just don't like camping? Uh no, I'm I actually I'm not a camper. So, um my family will attest to that one. But uh we feel like the ships and then

5. 00:03:18

   also just proximity to either outposts or other uh you know, cities, towns, like it would just be go stay there. Fair enough. That's one one way to drive people to the POIs. All right, man. That's it. I'll let you get back to work. Take care. Thanks. Bye. Bye. All right. Thank you so much, Todd. Now, moving just I think it's like a row down the office uh a CIG developer in exile. No. Steve Bender. Steve, how you doing, man? I'm doing fine, Jared. Yourself? I'm doing all right. I miss you. You're supposed to be in the studio. That's so That's so nice. I'm out here for meetings, making sure things are moving along smoothly. I know. Life of an animation director. Tell me about it.

6. 00:04:07

   Uh do you remember we calling all devs's? I should probably ask you beforehand. It's been a while since we've done this. Anyway, I got questions for you or a question for you from the backers from the photo moment backers. Inner thought. Are there plans to add animations to inner thought functions such as when you click the flight ray button in your ship and having a character character's arm reach out and actually push the button? Absolutely. So, one of the things that that um is really important for us in in Star Citizen is giving you this this holistic feel of of being within in the in the world. Um in the case of as as was described in the in the cockpit, um

7. 00:04:53

   being able to when you look down and you you you turn the the engines on or you're manipulating the joysticks and your your your fingers are moving. You're about to fire the the missiles and you're you're going to um you know, pull the trigger and fire your weapons. All of those will have um tactile interactions. Wow. Uh is that a challenge with all the different cockpits that we have and you knowing where those buttons are? It Well, it can be. I mean, you have to deal with it smartly. So, um we use a a IK system for and you you may have seen this in in um Citizen Con when we were actually picking up glasses and and putting them down and stuff like that. That allows us to smooth a animation position that is

8. 00:05:43

   authored for one location to another. And the same sort of concept would be used here. So, if I'm in a cockpit and let's say I do an animation or I capture an actor going over here and in another cockpit that's actually over here, what happens is as the animation plays, it retargets its position, it blends its position into that higher location. All right, I I I actually knew that. It's just 6:00 in the morning right now. So, I forgot I forgot. But, it made for a better answer. So, I'm glad I asked anyway. Sure thing. All right, Steve. What else you working on? Anything fun? Yeah, a lot of stuff I can't talk about

9. 00:06:31

   right now though. But, we're also looking at the combat AI, looking at what the next steps are, looking at what we have right there, trying to tighten that up, give it more of a sense of um of action, of urgency, looking at how they react to certain certain things that you do and and how they counter those or or being able to give them more of a feel of enemy combatants and less of a sort of you if you will a gamey or AI result. Cool. That's that's exciting. I know a lot of people combat AI, you know, some version of that's been in place since you know, Arena Commander first launched with the the original Vanduul swarm, but I think

10. 00:07:20

    we're all ready for for it to progress and for it to continue to evolve to be everything that we know it can be, especially with Squadron 42. Well, from our side what we're really focusing on right now is the ground-based combat AI. So, that would be your your enemy pirate characters that you saw in in SitCon and and things like that. Um and those bring a uh those bring across different challenges um in dealing with with the various animation systems, how how characters uh duke and jive, how they start, they run, they they they go up and down things um that are unique to characters in a say a ground-based environment or a a skeletal

11. 00:08:08

    environment, you like a human or something like that. Um that don't exist on the ship AI, which has its own particular challenges. Well, I'm I'm I'm excited for the ground stuff because I'm not very good in spaceships, but I'm much better on the ground side, generally speaking. I'm a shooting machine, Jared. Shooting machine. Uh finally, before I let you go, I I David David Pang with you know the the animation, the emote stuff that we did at CitizenCon, by the way. Yes. I I I tried very very hard. I couldn't get away with all my other CitizenCon things. I tried to get my own emote added directly Chris Blaine {slash} Chris Blaine. Just Just just with the guys like like like like like just to do a to do a to do a Chris explanation, and I didn't get down there. And I'm just I'm just I I felt bad I I couldn't make

12. 00:08:57

    this happen. So, if I'm just going to put it out there, maybe you want you want it. I'm just putting it out there. It's free. Just Hey, maybe the next time you're in Austin, we can we can capture that. All right, man. I'll let you get back to work. All right, thanks a lot, Jared. It's good seeing you. Bye-bye. All right, thank you so much. And now, finally, last but certainly not least, because we did two questions with Todd Papy this week, we can't let him fall behind in his lead, vehicle pipeline director John Crew. John, how you doing, man? Hello. I'm good, thanks. How are you? I'm all right. Finally recovering after CitizenCon. It's uh I was ill immediately straight after that. I I wasn't I didn't I didn't get sick this year. I I I I Zicam worked wonders, but I was just

13. 00:09:46

    exhausted. So, I just I just I just came back and I came back and it freaked everybody out and I'm like, I need to take some time off. I'm going to take days off. I'm like, yes, I am. No RTV this week. No. So, I just you know, it's important important What is it they call it? Personal health day or taking care or treat yourself or I don't know know what any of these things are. I just hear them being said. All right, let's get into it. I got two questions for you from the backers. One's a follow-up to something that you mentioned a couple weeks ago about interplay or potential interplay between the Banu Defender and the Banu Merchantman. Is there anything that we can say about that at this still relatively early point in their two developments? So, there's nothing I want to commit to publicly at this point. We obviously we the concept did that the

14. 00:10:36

    Defender in the UK. We're building it in the UK. Oh, sorry. No, we're building it in Austin now. We're building the Merchantman in the UK or we'll be building it. So, the designs of the two we've we built in some nice features that both physically and sort of gameplay-wise tie the two together and we've got some options there. we need to build the Defender first before we lock down which of those options we go on, but when we do, we'll talk about that probably in a ATV about the Merchantman. This is one of those times This is one of those times where we don't want to get anybody's hopes up. We're we're we're we're we're pursuing a couple different avenues. I'm going to take this on me here for a second. You

15. 00:11:25

    know, we're looking at doing this, looking at doing that, looking at this. And anytime we share in the past, you know, all the breadth of those things, and then we only pick one of those three, we've disappointed 2/3 of the audience who, you know, were hoping for the other two. Guys like that. So, we'll share that stuff with you guys when we have a better idea which direction we're actually going. And of course, the only constant game development is change. It's it's it's still it's never going to be 100%, but we do try to be responsible with the information the state that the information is in before we do share it. So, it's still a little too early to share that, but I did want to address the question cuz it was a good reason to good way to share that kind of information, remind folks that that uh all Star Citizen information has to hit certain kind of milestones of reliability before we we do share them. All right. Even though they are still

16. 00:12:13

    subject to change. We're trying to But at the very least, it's like the the Defender is it's designed to defend the Merchantman, clues in the name. So, it's there is like it's specific to defending that ship. I'm trying to figure out who All right. So, last question for you. Uh it says, "We were told that when Item 2.0 is fully implemented, we will be able to directly access and interact with ship components on our ships without using something like MobiGlass. What is the current state of that tech, and when can we expect it in the PU?" So, current state of that is we are going to internally this next quarter, so quarter four, uh we're going to be using the Terrapin, uh which people probably played around with

17. 00:13:01

    in game, seen that behind the hatches there are components. So, those are just hand-placed brushes at the moment. They're not the actual physical components, but this quarter we're going to be replacing those with the actual live working components, and then hooking them back up. There was a bit of technical issues we had meant we couldn't do it before. Uh we're now sort of getting on top of those, and the the US vehicle feature team are going to be going through the rest of those hopefully this quarter. So that's step one of physically putting the items in the ships and connecting them up to the ships. Then the next step is using all the the interaction and carrying stuff. We saw that at CitizenCon picking stuff up, rotating it around. That's the next step for physically

18. 00:13:48

    taking those things in and out. And because they'll be on item ports in the ship, when you disconnect it, it it disconnects it from the ship, so you get that gameplay. And then if you've got spare ones, like you've decided to buy one and carry an item around, for example, and just left it in your ship, you'll be able to swap them out in there. It's probably that's sort of like a running repairs sort of gameplay. In in reality, most people are going to try and limp to a port to to use the the proper UI interfaces. But we will be like we're going to actively be working on that in the next quarter. It's not going to be ready for a public release in the next quarter. It'll be sometime next year. But yes, we're we're starting to look at it. And

19. 00:14:35

    then once we've done that single use case on the Terrapin, that's where we can go wide. We want to get that one ship working properly. Prove out all the tech, prove out any of the the niggles that we need to solve before we go and do it on something like the size of the Reclaimer. I I If I can make a recommendation, just just make Hosmer do it. Just all the next for all of 2019, all Hosmer does is stick components in ships. I I think he would enjoy that a lot. See, he's not here yet. We're still early. He's not here yet, so. Yeah, I I think that'd be more than more than he can do for a year. I just like volunteering him for crap. work. Thank you so much. No problem. Cheers. Later. Well, that wraps up this week's show. Special thanks to Todd Pappy and

20. 00:15:24

    Steve Bender and John Crew for taking the time to be here on the show with us this week. Remember that you can submit your questions for consideration each and every week up in the thread up on Spectrum and don't forget to vote. That's the two-pronged plan. So, for Calling All Devs, I'm content manager for global video production, Jared Huckaby, and I'll see you next week, everybody. Thanks for watching. For the latest and greatest in Star Citizen and Squadron 42, you can subscribe to our channel, or you can check out some of the other shows, and you can also head to our website at www.robertsspaceindustries.com. Thank you very much for watching.