Around the Verse: Episode 1.53 (2015.07.16)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] on the next Empire report the Terra gazette's Riley Ruden finds herself in hot water did she really visit spider before filing her report on its underground biological Goods Market or is there more to this story than meets the eye our investigation has uncovered new details citizen versus civilian a recent report reveals that the economic gap between the two has increased yet again Courtney Trevor hits the streets to see if people's personal spending has taken a hit are you a mobiglass addict Dr Shirley Wood's new book claims that using it too much could be ruining your life stay tuned to learn The Telltale warning signs all that and more on the next Empire report at 2200 SE

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   hey everybody Welcome to episode 53 of around the verse I'm Sandy Gardner and I'm Ben Lesnik Chris Roberts is back the Squadron 42 shoot is over and after a brief visit to Foundry 42 Germany Chris is back in the cockpit in Santa Monica good to have him home very good to have him home in fact we've got a couple pictures of his a visit to Germany if you guys would like to check them out um if anyone out there is ever wondering how hard Chris Roberts really works it's plain landed at LAX at 4:30 and then he was here at 600 pm on Saturday working on the PowerPoint for Comicon with us that is correct the 300 series free fly wraps up tomorrow and we are always looking for feedback so please let us know what you think we see some great comprehensive threads in the 300 people are really uh putting it through its Paces Arena Commander 1.15 is coming if all goes as planned we will launch 1.15

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   to the PTU this week hopefully later today um we shoot this show on Tuesday so um if it's not going to come out today the disclaimer goes right here and there's going to be two flyable ships in there yes the uh the Merlin will be available for everybody and the uh Scythe will be uh unlocked for those who have uh pushed it in the past or earned it through their subscription credits oh I'm excited about that one development of star Marine continues check out Friday's Comm link for the latest update from Jason Hutchins and uh there's there's a poll in there to pick out your favorite of the gun sites in the module which one will be the kind of stock Gun Site check them out there's animated gifts showing them all uh pick your favorite and let us know my favorite is the ghost one oh that's uh I

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   think it's winning right now is it as of right now but uh you guys can change history finally we closed out comic conon on Sunday and we had a very fun panel yes um it was very uh Chris dominated as such things should be uh Chris and Dave had kind of walked us through the lore of star s the background story of the universe that we set up before we told any particular story um basically how we got to hear from there uh Sandy and I didn't really get into word in edgewise but it was great to see backers we had a a very good time uh we did have a very good time it was nice to actually see some backers in person because at bigger events it's harder to get time so now let's go to the Spectrum for news from around the [Applause]

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   verse hey everyone welcome back to not so sunny Southern California at Cloud Imperium games in Los Angeles in Santa Monica uh my name is Daren vck bringing you the news today for this week flying solo well everybody else is meeting getting ready for the next patch uh so with the next patch coming up there's not too much to update that we haven't already said already uh right now we're working on the getting the vanuel side out the door flyable for you guys I got to kind of take a sneak peek at that and we've got some really cool features for it uh in store for you uh same thing as well as the finishing touches up on the Merlin so it's turning out to be a pretty sweet pretty slick vehicle I think you guys going to love that one as well uh finally uh last week I mentioned that one of our Tech designers Matt Sherman was working on incorporating a

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   lot of the balancing feedback from you guys so we've Incorporated that presented it to uh Chris Roberts and the next step is getting that approved I believe most of it has been approved so we're just doing a few tweaks here and there maybe possible a couple more balance meetings just to make sure that when it goes out uh you guys will be happy with those changes uh and just keep in mind that as we make these tweaks it is an iterative process so even if they're not perfect on day one uh we go back to the drawing board see what else we can tweak for that so after that uh we just keep on iterating from there so that's all I've got for Santa Monica today's once again I Daren vorley signing off hey guys uh dve lingers here again uh senior producer

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   atonic couple things I wanted to talk to you about today uh the first one is the changes we've been putting in for the Hologram Gadget so you may have seen during our I think it was our packs Australia presentation we had a hologram Gadget where you can put it down and it makes a little hologram of the player um similar to what you seen in like uh Total Recall uh so we made some changes to that as far as making it retain the stance that the player laid it down in so if you're crouched when you lay it down it's going to show up as crouched um we've also made it so that it can if it gets hit by projectiles like bullets it will will phase in and out so there's a small visual read that it's not actually a player when it's getting hit um so that's another change that's gone into it gadgets and grenades overall have been there's been some work

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   on there where before you had to select them in your hand before you could use them uh now it's more of a quick throw action so uh if it's a grenade you're just instantly you know pulling it off and throwing it if it's a gadget you're throwing it down on the ground you don't have to walk around and find a way to place it um in addition to that cooking is in for grenades so you can take a grenade hold on to it uh click the button it'll start counting down and then so you can throw it like right you know right as it's about to explode uh you know the the risk for that is if you hold on to it a little bit too long you're going to blow up with the grenade uh or if you get shot the grenade will fall to the ground and and blow up after you die uh last changes we've been I wanted to talk about this week are changes to the shotgun so the electric shotgun that we have uh we've been putting in some animations between sh

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   shots for one we found that the weapon was a little bit overpowered with how fast it could fire so we've been slowing down the timing on that um but we've been adding in some animation to uh support that so in between shots now there will be a cocking animation on the shotgun even though it is electrical um and also some vents opening up on the side and dispelling energy uh so just a couple things to communicate to the player that the the weapon isn't ready to fire yet uh for the next shot so yeah that's pretty much it for this week guys thanks again I'll talk to you next week hey guys this is Jason Hutchins senior producer here in Austin Texas uh I just got back from uh Denver working at IL phonic uh on the FPS uh module that we're doing and uh I'm just now getting

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    back into uh into the groove here in Austin talking about what we're working on for uh Gamescom demo what we're working on for um our various uh other things for the persistent Universe uh and a lot of the guys here are helping out with the FPS helping out with Gamescom demo and just our other work uh with me day with me here today I've got Justin Benford from quality assurance hey guys so tell them a bit about what you are up to uh so we're spending a lot of time right now uh testing the new 115 that's coming out soon and um with the new 115 we got the uh the new ship the scythe and the Merlin so we're giving a lot of feedback um when a new ship comes out there's a lot of back and forth uh sometimes to uh get it right so we're giving a lot of feedback on that there's

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    also some balance changes coming down the line so we're giving feedback on that and uh mostly just trying to check everything to make sure it all uh comes together smoothly um and then we're also testing the Gamescom demo which includes the large world map the uh the local physics grid SL um multi crew and it um it also includes the uh the new Quantum Drive and so uh we're uh going through the new features for the Gamescom demo as well as the um we're of course we're going to be continuing to be testing uh firstperson shooter uh with our companywide play test uh that's coming up this week and a note about those those internal companywide play tests that we're doing for the first- person shooter um those aren't all fun and games right like this kind of testing is really just making sure that the

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    backbone is working and our net net code issues are are being addressed rest and uh so what that means is a lot of times we'll have eight or 12 or 16 guys just waiting around to kind of join a match and then getting into a match and then not being able to kill each other because we got to get the metrics you know for the servers and see how they're going uh it's not a lot of fun um after that sometimes we do get to one around and shoot each other in the face which is fun uh but really this is kind of the the boring stuff that we have to do to make sure that the stuff is right before we get it in players hands yeah there's a lot of focus testing where we have to make sure that uh any blockers that claimed fixed are for sure fixed uh but yeah there definitely we're seeing a huge Improvement uh as the days go by yep all right I think that's it for us thanks a lot guys hi I'm John Crew lead technical

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    designer here at Foundry 42 we're camped out in one of the audio booths that was mentioned in the monthly report so it's all all colorful uh very sound absorbing which is quite weird to be sat in here because it's it's very quiet and you don't hear any Echoes uh this week I'm joined by I'm Johnny seiches I'm another technical designer here at Foundry 42 cool so I'm going to talk a little bit about FPS which is what I'm looking at here pretty much fulltime now uh I'm dealing with the the balancing of all the weapons the gadgets the armor the grenades uh something we're really looking at at the moment is pushing the difference between the ballistic and energ um weapons in in terms of recoil how much they deviate when you're firing them the damage type they're doing

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    rather than it just all being solid impacts obviously with lasers you don't have mass behind them so we're doing little things there to make it feel different from both you shooting and being hit by them uh tweaking the new grenades that have come in from milonic so they've got interesting behaviors so it's not just default to a frag grenade every time tweaking the gadgets so they're quick to use fun to use have uses in in the levels and really just nailing down the the armor and the breathing um between light medium and heavy armor so each has a good a good use and role and you're going to talk about vandor stuff um I've primarily been working on the Vandal ships uh mainly the capital ship so I've been sort of working with art to make sure we all know where weapons are going to be placed what size the weapons are how many weapons they have uh we don't want

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    the Vandal ships to come in and completely blow the uee out the water uh so we want them to be fairly balanced between the two um I've also been working on the uh stinger and the void bomber which are the equivalent sort of of the Retaliator in the f8 so we've got the heavy fighter and the bomber uh so we've been doing basic flight setup on those just to make sure we know where all the thrusters and weapons need to be placed and just make sure everything's working properly uh and then we've been doing a bit of setup on the Argo which is Squadron 42's industrial Workhorse um and that's coming along quite nicely uh I've been working with another a technical designer on that uh very recently so I'm sure you'll hear more about that soon y cool uh so yeah we'll we'll hopefully show lots more of that soon both the Vando and the FPS that's it for us bye see you see you big thank you to our Studios from around

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    the world we had a chance to sit down with zaye and talk about the Merlin UI take it away Mr bien hi I'm Zan bienen I'm a UI designer here at Cloud Imperium games and I'm here to take you through the process in uh designing the Merlin Hut in UI uh as well as implementing it when we redesigned the Merlin we we kind of gave it a a pretty Sleek shape uh there's there's a lot of sleek kind of sports car inspired shapes uh to this ship so on the interior we have this cool looking screen and I wanted to do something cool with it I wanted to make it look feel fast and and you know not not like completely utilitarian like you know modern fighter jet but more like a a high-end sports car that's what I was

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    kind of going in the direction of with my UI design so here here is the Standalone version of the UI you you guys have seen this in the um sneak peek but this was uh designed to kind of fit into that console dashboard as well as the HUD screen uh and I wanted to give it a very kind of Unique Look to it you know it feels like it's a it's a it's a whole different HUD so all all of these components are you know functional and it's all functionality wise takes pretty much everything that you see in the current HUD and remaps it and reskins it onto the screens in the Merlin and conforms to their shapes and and and sort of design language so you can see kind of these lines have a really uh

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    they they they follow the geometry so in this design like you can see sort of these nice lines that kind of flow along the edges or the bezel of this console and I think that just that really gives it a a cool look so after I kind of completed this uh sort of Standalone based design I've kind of I wanted to make a uh a mockup of how I would like to have it look in game so here it is kind of in situation you know kind of with these cool effects and everything so these are Photoshop mockups and then from here I went ahead and I implemented it so here's what we can expect to see in game so as many of you already know um the Aurora was our initial test case into getting a a unique diagetic UI um into the ship so I wanted to take what I

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    learned from that and apply it to uh the Merlin just because uh you know the interior looks so cool and I want it to really feel unique so this kind of is represents what our next evolutionary step is in this process of getting each ship their own um unique UI you know some of it might will probably be standardized for manufacturer so uh as you go between manufacturers they'll have similar looks and and similar design languages uh so I think you know that's that's it's really cool so I hope you guys enjoyed this uh sneak peek and I look forward to hearing what you guys think about it thank you Zane that UI looks very slick I think everything that zann does is quite slick though really isn't it yes he's the he's the real wizard behind

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    the Merlin very good at what he does what thumbs up thumbs up to that James also had a chance to talk to Chris Smith while he was here in Santa Monica take it away James thanks guys I'm here with very special guest I have principal ship artist Chris Smith Chris how you doing man hey man how's it going it's good to have you on yeah it's good to have you back on I think you are the first person we've ever had two interviews with really yeah the second one wow I'm in the two-time club now are you honored say that I think I honestly think that might be the case so since we saw you last what have you been working on well since i' since you seen me last which is I don't know months ago six months ago yeah I've been working on Constellation this whole time believe it or not but yeah so it's um start on

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    Constellation earlier this year and uh Josh Coons and I we've been um you know just plugging away at it uh trying to get it in uh with our new ship Pipeline and you know using that to our fullest advantage to get it out like pretty quickly MH and you know the goal was to rework it you know basically make it look better than it has uh you know bring it up to the uh visual standards so we have all the other ships now and also like the big thing was like integrate it into the proper Pipeline and go from the start to to the end properly with the ship I imagine it's kind of a test case for how we're going to revamp or remodel uh future ships looking at how we can take this iconic ship like the constellation and try and bring it up to speed is that is any of those processes you're seeing are permeating throughout the rest of the ships yeah I mean most of the new ships

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    so far have have you know have gone through that treatment the constellation is one of the only ones uh so far that we've sort of like we worked uh because it's going to be one of our main multi crew ships besides the retaliators it's supposed to be like a proof of concept thing you know like multi crew ship wise right so the reason that's why we had to basically redo this one um I think in the future with like older ships maybe uh we might be leaning leaning in towards the direction of instead of a redo uh more like an uh an evolution M so we'll basically keep like an old ship you know and then we'll make a new ship you know that is better and more efficient for a game and it'll be like the 2016 horn or something like that yeah I've heard that that's pretty smart

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    yeah so the way I look at the Connie uh it's sort of the what's going to lead us to AC 2.0 multi crew right we have to make sure that one's good to go first and then we can expand from there yeah yeah definitely uh like I said the Retaliator is a little bit further ahead as far as you know getting it flight ready and everything for multi crew uh we're we're basically getting the constellation up to that you know standard like and we're doing it in a quicker time you know that's the goal and uh yeah we hope to be done you know very soon you with this guy so is there any sort of uh AC 2.0 features that you're having to kind of design your redesign around if that makes any sense so far no I mean a couple of design design features uh you know like the big thing will be you know integrating all the modular pieces uh you know Shield

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    generators all that stuff and making sure there's place for that and design uh there's just a couple of things um that are outstanding design wise that won't be in the 2.0 I think but uh everything else uh should be there and we're building the Connie out to where it's just going to be ready you know for all the next versions and everything so so you went from doing tngs straight into the Connie no not really uh there was some uh Mustang variation time I think you know we had a there was a there was quite a few uh months on uh you know reworking ship pipelines and working together with with UK and those guys and and getting everything you know just focusing on

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    instead of making a new ship right away you know take a step back and then reevaluate what we need to do to make these ships come out better and uh faster so I was spent some time with that you know working with uh the guys in the UK and then I started the cony you know then it was you know discussion like oh we need to rework this and that so and then we got thrown in that and that was early this year so there wasn't too much when was the end of tgn I don't I don't even know when that ended was that the last not a year that's over a year ago at this point it's over a year ago yeah wow yeah I remember that was one of the first things I had done here yeah God it's so long seems like two months ago no I mean yeah I think most most of the things I was doing uh was like the the Mustang variances um and getting that on on the road and all the racing

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    versions and all that stuff mhm so what's next what's the next ship you're going to be working on after you get the Connie out the door that is a good question I don't know myself actually I guess I sort of have a pick if I wanted to but uh once we get this out you know yeah I really have no idea you know I'll make sure to pick out some cool myself all right man well thank you so much for coming on thanks back to you guys thanks James I guess you could say it's beginning to look a lot like Chris Smith let's check let's check in with Lisa Ohanian with this week's episode of ship shape hello everyone and welcome to this

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    week's episode of ship shape this week we're going to be talking a little bit about our damage Tech now we've mentioned our new damage system before but we haven't explained it in a lot of depth so on this week's episode I want to feature it I want to tell you guys a little bit about what we're doing differently what that means for us and then and then show you guys some images of how it's going to look different for you A lot of people ask us questions you know why are you redoing all of those ships and most of the time it's either for modularity or for damage Tech we're aspiring to eventually upgrade all of our ships so that they have this new damage system now the first thing to understand in order to understand our damage Tech is UV layers UV layers are essentially the mapping of 2D textures onto a 3D model the model itself you

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    guys have seen images on the show of gray boxes and white boxes the first UV layer is the finished layer it's the colors it's the text it's decals anything you normally see when you look at a finished ship the second UV layer for us is what shows damage when the second UV layer is showing all the way through this makes the ship look battle wor warn we also make use of vertex colors in our new damage system and this is sort of a a mapping on to our model of which areas can show certain types of damage for example we've got an image of the Merlin and the vertex colors for this ship here to show you guys you'll notice that the pink areas of the ship tend to be more substantial they have more strength to them they tend to be at the core of the ship the blue areas on this map this this tends to be a little

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    bit more peripheral or a more sensitive section that might take different or more damage or show it more easily for example if you shoot the ship in one of the pink areas you might see a bullet hole Mark whereas if you shoot it in the blue area that same hit might actually make a hole in that area of the ship one of the things we're most excited about with our new damage system is the degree of detail when you're inflicting damage to other ships for example if you used to shoot the wing of another ship you'd seen the wings Start to take damage and maybe some particle effects come off with our new damage system when you inflict damage to another ship you will see Scorch marks or a punctured hole in exactly the location exactly the shape of the weapon you use to inflict it now we're going to show you guys some video

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    examples of our old damage system versus our new damage system this as many of you know is the M50 interloper and this ship still has our old damage Tech you can see as you shoot and inflict damage to it that it doesn't react in a very detailed way you'll still see some particle effect effects you'll still see the damage happening but it's not the detailed level like I mentioned before it's a little bit more like an old school boss fight where you hit a certain bar and everything about the ship in that area changes next up is the Merlin which has our new damage system if you look at when you shoot and do damage to this ship you'll see that now it shows a lot more customized damage it depends on the weapon you're using you can see that the burn marks left are correlative to that gone and shaped just

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    like it in exactly the location that you're doing damage to the ship as opposed to the whole old school boss fight example from before this is a lot more realistic and can add layers of strategy as players decide what they want to Target and how it might affect the ship that's it for this week everyone hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about our new damage Tech and seeing the Merlin in action back to you guys thank you Lisa um Star season may be the only game where you actually want to see your ship horribly destroyed the Merlin is coming it will be available as a $20 add-on ship the uh Merlin will patch with 115 uh will make it available for sale and Rental with wreck once uh once it goes to the live server not the PTU um it's a cool fast little ship

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    we're looking forward to see what people do with uh racing and uh just general dog fighting should be pretty interesting um if you already have any variation of the constellation except the tus or the uh Carrick or the 890 jump you will get a Merlin attributed to your account um either to keep or to test depending on what you're waiting for in terms of thear ships we need your Arena Commander footage for around the verse you can submit cool video on the forums to use as bumpers for the show subscribers can look forward to a brand new episode of jumpo this week um jump point it's what's for dinner eventually that's going to make sense but not now we like to thank Aris for sending us in a bunch of Star Citizen coasters yes he made these himself um they are cool hand cut hand decorated starches and

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    coasters which he uh made quite a few of we uh thank you very much Aris we have uh coasters probably for the rest of the project now next week we're bringing MVP back feel free to submit your choices for the very best RSI Forum thread and post yes and uh Sandy and I will be announcing MVP so uh be nice to us and maybe you'll win we will I just found that out and of course we'll leave you with an art sneak peek here it is it's just picture coasters and be sure to tune in to

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    reverse the verse tomorrow at 11 Pacific on Twitch we'll be answering your questions about that sneak peek and Star season in general thank you to all the subscribers for making this show possible we will see you next week on verse I love that you're making a meth mess of that Sandy sand right Sandy no but see no but you're actually supposed to walk with them that would be the trick don't you're like a human Jenga oh yeah now some now you have to you have to take one of The Coasters out somewhere in there o o hold on oh oh hello I'm Ben Lesnik I'm here to deliver

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    an important message to our world leaders Deliver Us uh I don't know cheit or something and and we won't destroy the camonica appear I like how your important to Le wor something