Star Citizen Live Q&A: UI Features 3.23
Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment
- 00:00:06
oh that's the wrong camera there we are hi now just Gabe start the show hello welcome to Star Citizen live who are you I'm Gabriel Hector and what do you do I'm a systems designer at the Manchester office for cig and you're going to host this week's show yeah that's the plan so Jared who are you and what do you do at Cloud Imperium games W thanks Gabe uh I'm Jared I'm I don't know what I'm in charge of uh hi everybody Welcome to Star Sisson live uh we're by ourselves today um uh David who you sometimes hear me shout out to uh uh is feeling under the weather today so we've we've set up uh we literally moved
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the control stuff over here so I have to do everything for the show so we'll see how it goes the last time I did it last did it like this was the um the big and victus all vehicles Round Table last year and I managed to pull that off there was more people so it should be fine uh hi welcome to Star live I'm Jared this is the show at the end of the week where we grab a bunch of our developers and we take your questions we put them to them and they answer their question your questions and we learn all about this wonderful project we're working on Star Citizen joining us on the show this week are esteem members of the UI feature team we've got Gabe we've got bone we've got got Zane and we've got Emily hi everybody hello hi so Gabe you've already done your intro yeah you're not technically on the UI team but you you know you're a designer system designer on the on the
- 00:01:43
on the Pu and Squadron teams you know you help yeah and I have a lot of focus on UI features all all over the place I I've got my finger and everything and I'm annoying these guys a lot so uh bone we'll start with you uh tell everybody who are and what you do for Star Citizen hello uh I'm David bongill uh everyone calls me bone as I may have mentioned before uh I'm a technical director for the UI on Star Citizen and squading 42 okay uh zann tell everybody who you are and what you do hi I'm zann um I I'm a UI developer programmer designer and I guess I don't really know really what my title is at
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any given time I'm supposed to be on core Tech but I not really haven't touched that in a while so I just do everything and I've been lately working working on the map system yeah I'm pretty sure you and I are in the running for the most number of titles that we've had in in the time here that is constantly trying to figure out exactly where we fit in it's just it's just our ambition to want to do everything so bone tell us who Emily is oh blind me no Emily who are you and what are you yeah uh I'm Emily I'm a UI programmer um predominantly at the moment working on the star so yeah that's pretty much me yeah we are we are out of cameras we need more cameras to for for more people we're going we're going we're going to try to upgrade the show here in a little bit um all right so we took questions from the community we put them on or we
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put a thread up on Spectrum we gathered questions we let you guys go through and pull the questions we're just going to jump right into it uh because it's really hard for me to do all the multitasking stuff all right so right off the that first question uh yeah this one yeah will we be able to select start Zoom we will be able to select start Zoom of map okay if I'm a p if I'm in the pilot seat I would like it to start zoomed out in the in the system map but if I'm standing in my ship I would like it zoomed in on the world map so basically can they set different Zoom levels as default based on what situation they're in I think we agreed so much with this yeah yeah yeah I've actually been working on this this week um yeah so now you will be able to uh sit in the ship and you're open the
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star map and it will open to the star map and if you are anywhere else it will open to the interior map if you have an interior map um we've also um started the star M out further now so when it will like Zoom back out so you get like a view of the sort of system that you're in a little bit more rather than being like face up with a planet texture um another thing I've added is a keybind so that if you're in the star map you can just press that and go straight into the interior map we don't have the other way yet but we have that way um so yeah so it's hopefully going to work a lot more smoothly now and you can be in the context you actually want to be in that sounds very cool um I think I think before we jump in here there's going to be a lot of conversation about you know iterative development there's
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this assumption that when a thing comes out it's everything all at once and anybody who's been paying attention to the development of Star Citizen over the years knows that that's not how how it works this is the next group of things the group of features next functionality we can do and then it will continue to evolve and iterate on subsequent patches so we'll hear some variation of that answer quite a bit uh tonight uh question two do you plan to add filters on the interior maps and star Maps so we can easily find specific POI so yeah this is obviously something that we do want uh so it's it's in the designs it's in the in the documents uh but it it's not maybe the top priority right now uh we we need to get this stuff just working as good as possible
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and then then we'll just have to prioritize after that um obviously not an extensive list but uh what kind of filters off the top of your head were we thinking about so it's essentially what you see as the amenities so for anyone who's been playing the PTU uh you've seen that now that when you use the star map you can click a location and then you get a list of amenities there so you can see oh I can buy ships here so essentially we would reverse that and you could say I want to buy a ship where can I do that rather than having to go through every single place and then see oh I can buy a ship there so it's it's going to make it way nicer uh but yeah I mean the other thing for like the interior Maps like it's pretty much just showing like like uh like room labels and stuff but uh like in the future we're going to have a
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lot more uh amenities that are pointed out on it like icons depicting uh like here's where you buy weapons here's where you you know retrieve your ship or whatever it is that's going to be useful then you know we'll have filters based on those categories um but that's that's in the future we need to uh do some um more kind of back end work for that yeah I imagine you know many of these features that are coming in 323 were first developed for squadron and then are being brought over to to to the Pu and there's the Pu requires a lot of additional functionality that perhaps Squadron you know you know doesn't you know squadron's you know this big sprawling single player game but it is a single player game in a massively
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multiplayer persistent Universe with multiple star systems and stuff there are far more consideration that that need to be taken so so yeah this first version will go in it'll have a lot of limited functionality and then it will continue to evolve yeah yeah so there's a lot of stuff that we've added on as part of this process of Bring It bringing it over from Squadron where it was this thing that was suited for squadron specifically and then it goes into Star Citizen and it immediately needs so much more so what started out as just move it into Star Citizen has become quite task but I think I guess in that respect it's also accelerated uh the um like the robustness like for the maps for example it's it's uh the fact that we need to get pu and and and working all all
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properly with all all the different systems is it's also going to go back into Squadron as well it's not just Squadron going into pu it's also very uh like all the stuff that we've done is very general and so it'll also benefit Squadron as well it's good that's not a that's not a point we often oh look wow David why don't we use this sorry just disc I just discovered a toy usually it's David of this thing um no you make a good point uh uh the work on these features you know like I said all the work for squadron serves the Pu but like it had did before and like it will continue to do this work will still funnel back up the stream back into Squadron and stuff so so B discover technology says I I discovered fun thing look at this look at
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this hey there's nothing wrong with being easily amused those people are generally happier than most others um okay we've got uh several questions about pins one of the more exciting aspects uh that we revealed is that you can finally you know set pin pin pinpoints markers on the verse um first question is will our map pinpoint markers uh that we drop be persistent if we log out and log back in the next day that's definitely the plan yeah but there's a lot of backend work that we need to look into and especially with server meshing coming in so a thing that happened for the 323 work that we've been doing is that we started talking about okay we want to get these pins in as part of the star map now and you should be able to place them and share
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them with people and all of that jazz but then we looked into it and well it was quite hard to do and we're getting server maching so everything's going to change and it just wouldn't work with yeah with the future the technical challenge is immense it it like the pin itself like drawing a pin on the map fine yeah uh persist in it and on in this sort of super complicated uh structure that we have um is tricky tricky to say the least that's not to say we won't work on it just oh no we're working on it yes it's just uh uh it's not that straightforward no okay sorry um will we be able to
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share the locations that we save from the star map with other players yeah for sure that that's part of the vision again um so you should be able to share the so we can see in 323 you can place the markers in on the area map and in the future you should be able to place them on the star map and those should be the same kind of thing you have a list of all your markers that you placed and you should be able to share them with your party and so on uh but it will as I just said we will need to look into the tech of it and see how that actually works out um and then last of the oh that's bone see playing with the toys uh will we be able to set pins in space I think that's kind of answered
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now but yes so star map area map Place depends wherever you oh like like in like an arbitary bit of space yeah yeah and yeah hopefully it doesn't break gameplay if we allow players to just actually Quantum travel there that's something we'll also have to look into but that that would be kind of neat place a marker Builder spring a trap meet up all right um okay I'm going to play a little bit sorry listen to the words the words what matter uh what progress has been made on UI elements to assist with Landing ships from the firsters uh pilot seat view for example have we considered holographic extensions of landing pad or hanger door
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boundaries ATC flight tunnels Landing cameras directional proximity sensors alerts radar Light Art scan mfds Pilots visors like we've had a couple different things over the course of our development where are we going yes look right into the camera and say yes yes do you want to elaborate oh no I think Emily might have some answers I was just stealing her Thunder a little bit Yeah so um there are a lot of like plans and a lot of uh thoughts that we have we obviously want to have like uh use the AR space for markers um have like if you're going into a hanger have like a gate bracket so that you sort of know the bounds of where you're trying to go um a like ladder sort of system so you have like a guide to where
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you're trying to go uh and then also we want to make use of the um the radar display that you have as well to um actually utilize the area maptac again to display your ship and like the ground underneath you and then obviously if you have a land landing pad it will show you your landing pad and if you don't have a landing pad and you're just trying to land anywhere it'll have like a line with a shadow kind of thing and it will sort of guide you to whether you can land there you know whether it's flat enough that kind of thing um so these are the sorts of things that we're thinking about doing that and and that'll tie into um how we want to show terrain and things like that on in our map system because that's you know I I want that to be a thing are there any are there any uh challenges with that presented by um by the server meshing and everything
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obviously most times your Landing stuff will just be there where you're at but is there any you like how far out can you go is there other concerns that you know you won't be able to read Parts in another Shard whatever no you don't want to you want to like no they're like okay that's the thing we always find out in the last moment well I mean I mean like the the geometry for planets and stuff is is streamable but um yeah when you start talking about being able to see other players other locations and stuff and whether they're exactly on your server and all this kind of stuff that that's the stuff that gets complicated but the actually the interesting to thing to mention is uh when we do account for like in our map system when we do
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account for uh things not always being streamed in and you know maybe the space for on the other side of the city isn't streamed in so you can't like really see it or what not and if when we make that work across the board regardless of streaming the map should work regardless of whether things are being are streamed in or not it should be totally independent of the entities that are existing it opens this up to like look at maps of far away places anywhere that we've cataloged them so if you're on another planet you can see you know you might be able to see the map of what you've explored and not even be there okay cool so that's a that's an interesting like byproduct of that but uh that it opens up but you
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know two benefits in uh in one so sorry Chad has noticed yes I'm I'm playing let me have this I don't usually have the control um all right so we had six questions important questions but you know relatively soft balls if you will the big question here that I think most people have wanted to know um I'm going to suod it what's up with the UI being so holographic it can become unreadable at times what's up with that what's going on more who wants more more more holographics just put it all on there make it make it worse I hope everyone saw the saw the my phone 900 years in
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the future future meme that was a good one it's it's it was very holographic yes uh so I I think we have a line to tread yeah so we want it to look cool right but we want to be able to use it at the same time um so there's a balance to be had like we we're not going to release something that looks like a vanilla web page you know that's just black on white black text on white background for all the UI for sure see the there's the extreme where you've got all this chromatic aberration and Bloom and uh fog and effects and stuff going on um and it's not particularly readable and it's difficult on the eye so we got to find a balance where um it looks cool
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and it's diagetic and it's in the world and it looks futuristic But ultimately very usable like you got to be able to use it and it's not got to um not got to be bad on you eyes no and I think with the mob glass in particular because I think that was maybe the the worst offender in this case it's it's supposed to be this holographic thing so it got a bit over the top and uh we got we got over excited yeah yeah exactly it can look even cooler um but uh no we're we very much appreciate the feedback and I think everyone's very happy with the result that we've got now and it's yeah coming out really well but we're still dialing that in so yeah yeah for sure to get the get the tone right it'll be continuous process and and there's also
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some graphical fixes that we've fixed recently as well like I think uh on some of the low reses run the texture stuff it's uh uh there's actually some color correction uh weirdness going on that the the graphics seem fixed so that's probably going to uh increase uh a little bit like the the brightness of some of the elements cuz the now the colors are consistent between low res full res uh render to texture and there's also some sorting issues that we need to uh work out into the system uh with regards to 3D planes and and 3D objects there's sorting issues that so you know we've sort of fixed but uh in it there's a proper solution we're going to do Post 323 looking at so it sounds like some of it is technical some of it is bugs things not working the way that
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they're intended yes and then some of it is style some of it is is is pushing to to find this happy meeting yeah finding a balance of like good good good art but good usability because if if there's a uh uh a 3D plane in the world that's behind another like the thing that's trying to render a drop shadow over or whatever it's it's the thing that's over it and when it's sorted incorrectly is you're going to null out any of the the benefits of the the the backdrop or the the drop shadow or whatever we put in so and some of the uh some of the diet tic uis in the are in the world so they receive the same world post-process effects so like chromatic operation and the bloom and all these kind of things so it's it's trying to combat them sometimes to make make things perfectly
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readable but um they they because we're doing a diagetic game because these things in the world you can't can't just sort of say hey don't apply these effects because it would look really really strange it would look really out of place and like a game rather than um like a game is in like just putting stuff on over the top of the screen after you've rendered the game World we're we're not really after that kind of look it's meant to look like it's part of the scene so these you know uh kiosks or even the mob glass are part of the part of the game world what I'm looking at the chat here why your folks are talking I want I want to stay on this topic for a little bit longer um some of the folks in chat and not just chat today but you know I've I've seen YouTube comments and Spectrum
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comments stuff um the the the common suggestion is why don't you just start with readability and then add style later you know and dial up well it's this this idea of of start with a base and then build on top of it instead of the sculptor approach which start with all this and then start peeling back um there are there are benefits to both ways why do we do it the way we do it I think we do start with readability but it's internally right that's not what the players get to see first because we make our wireframe designs and we make it like okay this is what this mobile ass app is doing and this is how we want to interact with it and that's all fine uh so let's move on
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to the art pass and then it's more where where can we get the coolness factor into this and I think it's good that we're not like ashamed of that and also that we can dial it back when when we've done something wrong when we've gone overboard but I think we we do have a strong like visual identity with with all of these different sci-fi Styles and different brand Styles and so on uh and yeah we are doing a good job of really pushing for that for keeping that consistent and making it feel like a coherent world world where all of these things exist and yeah sometimes it makes for a lesser user experience than that that's obviously not great and we want
- 00:22:09
to improve that and that's why we're super happy to get this feedback from players but we never want to end up in a place where we just remove all the different styles and everything and just go okay here's the most legible font in the world let's just put that right there in the in in the best size in the best place like yeah we we it's always a a balance and I think a lot of times it it it actually can start out like very uh having like a high level of contrast we've done a visual like an initial visual polish pass on it and then we'll get very focused on actually doing all the functionality and you know like the hollow volume changes to a window and and then you know we're doing all all all the uh functionality based on that
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and we just haven't had a visual polish pass until you know the end because we're focused on sort of the back end the code and the functionality like all the really base foundational stuff and then and then you know pretty much just near the end we're we're starting to finally do much more of the visual polish pass again so there's this thing that happens um I don't think I'm telling any sto I don't think I'm I'm going to I'm going to say something I don't think it's going to be any surprise to to folks who have who followed the project for the decade and so um we work to the last minute and then beyond and that that's kind of in the RSI cig DNA at that point you know there are lots of
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projects where you work on a thing and then you you you stop and you kind of go gold and then it just kind of sits there for a while you there bug fixes and stuff marketing gets to come in and do this stuff we we put these things out you you know uh while they're still being worked on that's what iati is that's what PTU is what players are playing right now even the live Alpha is still Alpha it's still an unfinished uh a product and I think a lot of times just because I've seen the reaction sometimes it's it's a lot of times this thing goes out and it's like couldn't we have just another week or two to to dial that in before it goes out and stuff um does that does that drive you crazy does that is that just part of of of who we are
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and and Stu like this we're going off the reservation here a little bit but but talk to me about this this is a very real phenomenon it affects everything um talk to me about how you deal with this no it's it's for me it's I guess it's really it's quite exhilarating in a way but I always wish there's just one more week just let me play around a little bit more with the materials let me uh Let Me Maybe put some animation like animation in make it a look more polished uh or you know more more feedback like like right now I'm I I I need to put in the uh the routing feedback so when you press R right now it silently fails and you're like why isn't it doing anything uh or um so if you have that then it's like that's just
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a little bit like a small bit that makes it feel a bit more polished yeah it's and then when you fix that there's another thing you think exactly be cool if we put this in issue right it never ends there's another thing you can always keep improving and and that's just the process of design right so if we kept adding this one more week all the time we would just be nothing would ever release driven insane and nothing would ever release so change who's battery oh my batter's out oh hold on everybody I see the thing so they hear me through somebody else yeah just that's Pete say hi to Pete here Pete
- 00:26:21
hello oh wait I have a scene for this hold on [Music] oh who who is that who is that uh L Donal Liam Donnelly says good riddance oh I'm sorry I'm back back sorry um all right so let's stay on this topic of readability um obviously the Hologram stuff we just got talking about
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uh one of the forever discussion points is uh color stuff you know color blind uh um uh uh stuff just um uh the you know everybody in chat type drop shadow all at one time right now press f for drop shadow you know one to drop shadow just fix everybody fix everything talk to me about readability um what are we doing what what what's going on here oh my God yeah the well readability yeah it's it's not as straightforward to solve as we thought it would be um and we have a constant battle with this um partly to do with uh exposure compensation I when something's super bright your eye adapts
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to that brightness and changes the brightness levels of the scene um obviously there's the the problems of drawing a some colored text onto a black background I.E a starry night and then all of a sudden you're on a snowy backdrop how do you compensate for that um we've still got a few more irons in the fire especially on vehicle hoods about what we're going to do to solve this and not um just drop shadow I think what we've got on the lens now um on the AR stuff is really going in the right direction it's it's still needs tweaking but we're we're we're we're pretty happy with that but we've still got issues with like the head-up display that are on vehicles um and the exposure
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compensation on mfds um we still need to look into but yeah it's it's it's weirdly tricky um the more diagetic you are the more you sort Buy into the idea that these things are in world and you're not cheating and you're not just drawing over the top of the screen with some um flat UI like you do for like like I used to work on um driving games years and years ago and like you you draw the world and you draw the car and then you draw like a hood flat over the top and that would like crystal clear and you could see your lap time and stuff whereas this is this is entirely different and the the fact soon as you put stuff in the world obviously it's like it can be at angle and the sun can shine on it or a big shadow goes across it and you know even even your mobile
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phone has a lot of exposure compensation to compensate not your your eyes have exposure compensation but phones have exposure compensation so if you bring it out in direct sunlight it's super bright if you get it out like under the covers in bed it's it's all dark and stuff um I don't know why you'd be getting out your phone under the covers in bed but maybe that's just me might serve away from this conversation but in the future things yeah we do want settings for color blindness and we do want settings for being able to set font sizes and so on uh but that's still yeah accessibilities are completely uh offshoot of this where yeah I mean I think is it one in 12 males uh have some form of color blindness and some of the
- 00:30:23
colors uh We've chosen that don't really work with uh people that suffer in certain types of color blindness problems no and again we have all of the different manufacturers and so on different styles for every ship so it's like oh yeah this ship works great and then in another one you didn't at all understand that you were dying or whatever well you know I blame the manufacturer um but in all seriousness yes we're going to put the settings in that will um uh combat that problem uh but also accessibility options for changing the font sizes um this obviously has an impact on the sort of graphic design look that we initially have but essentially it will become usable for people that have um issues reading the font sizes or the uh
- 00:31:15
the particular colors that that maybe that manufacturer uses so yes uh yes yes and yes again for um options to help with people with color blindness or for font size access accessibility options as well and in addition to that like as we as we start uh really converting all of the Legacy UI into building blocks our new tech um all of the it's all fully data driven now so we can just you know that makes it much easier to just like transform values uh where we need to where we need to like in you know inject a scaler if you you know if you want to have bigger F fonts are lower lower size fonts and and also colors it's all data driven so it makes that
- 00:32:03
much easier I feel like it's not static anymore I feel like we've been talking about billion blocks since 2018 maybe we have to stop calling it our [Laughter] new just at the chat what what what's good about it is we're we're not talking about building blocks to we we are happy where we're at with this right biling BLX itself has has grown is basically what you're say Bing BL continues to evolve you continue to add new function oh we need to like optimize it greatly there's still a lot of optimization work um that we need to do I that that's kind of down to uh weirdly it's like a victim of its own success this this happens a lot with uh our game where we go oh we've we've optimized like entities like we we someone puts a thousand entities in and it's running slow okay well we've made it run twice as quick or whatever
- 00:32:52
oh that's great we've now put 3,000 entities in and then you know within within a couple of years right it's now 300,000 entities in because it's a it's a battle battle a bit negative but it's it's it's a virtuous circle like we we speed things up you can do more stuff we speed things up you can do more stuff and it's the same with the UI so we speed building blocks so we started off with a you know tens of nodes and now we talk about hundreds of nodes and we're looking to do thousands of nodes in you know in in like a millisecond so um yeah there's lots of optimization but doing the optimizations just means we can do more and more cool stuff and like lots of little widgets and stuff and all moving and animating and stuff like that a virtuous circle I like that a virtuous circle
- 00:33:41
I've been a bit more positive made Pete laugh um citizen Scott says forget readability I just hate blue that's what c um all right uh so yeah so it sounds like you know just a I'm not going to sit here and try to sum all of that up but it sounds like the the the biggest factor of many factors is the is the fact that R UI isn't just drawn on top of the game like it is in so many other games it is a fully diagetic in Universe component because that's what we've chosen to do we' we've CH we've chosen to to do that so that we can so all the environmental effects and everything the things that seem like a bug or actually a feature in some ways we we still need to you know account for that stuff and still need to to that so like um is
- 00:34:30
there like if you I can't remember the effect but like there's a desaturation effect right where everything sort of goes black and white and everything goes a bit hazy like the UI goes black and white with it like because it's in world like so at that point it loses its color so it's the same thing or this things where you get this extreme post-process effect I think it's like when you uh when you're to Thirsty whatever the word is for Toth thirsty dehydrated dehydrated thank you yes uh like we get this like really chromatic aberation and it affects the UI because it's in the world like you're trying to read your phone and you really need a drink and as you've seen in the for the shopping now we moved the UI to be in world as well and that just made it for such a big challenge to implement it's just it is a
- 00:35:20
tough thing to do I think that's the bottom line but we uh we are adamant about this is our way this is how we do the things and it should should feel real it should feel tangible and yeah I think that's the bottom line Revan Z says show us some teasers that's the other show the other show we just did a whole thing about all this stuff we're talking about it was on the other show watch the other show um Moby glass uh what other mobiglass apps can we look forward to uh any hints of integration uh with something like Spectrum so for the mob glass you uh if you've seen the new one anyway there are some apps that we obviously didn't update so for the future we will have that the the
- 00:36:11
coms app will be replaced by something helping you do your org stuff instead maybe so that will be be playing into a lot of social things and we'll be updating uh knicknacks will also get well it will essentially be replaced by a new app coming sometime in the future uh but it's going to be a a better user experience to keep track of all of your things oh J is going to beat me up now you said org stuff what or stuff all the secrets what or stuff Gabriel nothing I didn't say anything that that's that's all we want
- 00:37:02
man it's been so long it was like sayon 2013 when we introduced or stuff it's still not in game well you heard it here first what did I hear tell tell tell us what we heard orgs you're gonna you're GNA have an dedicated app to do all your or Communications and well there there's a lot of things that we have grand plans for but uh yeah I don't want to say more than that at this point this isn't this isn't the place we're going to we're going to share them but yes folks you've been patient I know just a little while longer I'm not even going to say a little while longer just some point some indeterminate amount of time
- 00:37:51
longer all right uh is there a plan to avoid HUD clutter uh such as you know when all the markers end up overlapping each other and stuff like that yeah so uh we are currently designing looking into a design for how we want to solve this uh so there's a a lot of different issues at once and I think the short answer is just yes there's a plan uh we still have things to figure out so it's in the future but we are for sure getting it and you can already see that we have improved the quantum stuff for 323 way less Quantum markers you don't get this massive circle of just a 100 markers everywhere
- 00:38:41
you look uh so that's that's a start so we're we're doing things but it will get better I'm just going to go ahead and ask why did what caused that and why did it take so long to resolve like we we've we've had that we've had had the screen surrounded by Quantum markers for what seems like at least half of our playable game time here what what took so long and what what caused it and and and and how did we fix it I think I might have caused it sounds about right I I might have dropped myself in it but yeah we talked about I show other points of interest we show other points of interest it turns out there's a lot of interesting points in the universe um yeah it was about filtering right so uh
- 00:39:31
filtering what you want was really tricky so um it just didn't happen for a long time so uh because you can't filter by distance because you obviously want to go to places far away um so yeah it it it it was it was an extremely tricky problem to solve again uh and um it's taken this long to actually get to a usable solution like if we talk about the markets like we we we've had long discussions about well let's merge markets together when they start overlapping so well do you have enough information you know if you merge um uh one of your friends with a planet like like do you get the information about
- 00:40:22
that kind of stuff like yes it's not you don't have the information where you just get a a blood of overlapping text that's no good right so how do you you know do you make them avoid each other or do you make them like hey your friends here and also there's a planet here how do you describe that as a bit of UI it's all deep deeply tricky problems to solve in a sort systemic way everything needs to be systemic we can't just say oh right here's just the rule set because the rule set is is endlessly complicated because we have an endlessly complicated game yeah no you you hit it right there that's that's actually you you you've said the thing I've been I've been I didn't know what I was waiting to hear but you said it the systemic Solutions are what take are what take so long like it would be easy enough to go in there and stick a proverbial patch on
- 00:41:10
something and just stop it you know stop it temporarily but everybody knows the most permanent solution in any the most permanent thing in any video game is a temporary solution and it would end up just blocking and breaking a bunch of things down the line it's you know we always look for these these broader systemic Solutions that can keep solving these problems as we add new things and when we don't we always get tripped up like if we sort of cheat like say oh well let's just you know and come up with some Budgy rule right uh we always get tripped up by it because something else comes on and again when I've worked on more traditional video games let's say driving games like we you would only draw a way you if you going to draw the world you only have to draw the enough
- 00:41:57
of the world away from the track whereas in Star Citizen you can go anywhere and all these things interact with each other in a systemic way um you have to find a solution that works correctly all the time and um yeah we've really made a a challenge for ourselves to do yeah but we are wor love it though I think if you ask the same question about other things why it is it been there and taking so long and it's been there for years uh it's because of s an old system we don't want to touch it with a 10-ft pole you know it's a waste of time flash because because we we we have this new system that we're working on and all the focus ideally should be directed towards that we're in the middle of development yeah and for this question specifically like the marker system has
- 00:42:45
now been reworked we have a new marker system so it's no longer in Flash we can we can actually start looking into this we we now know exactly how things are done and we have have yeah good we have our best man it uh the bearded blink uh in chat in chat says search bars and scrollable chat anything search bars and scrollable chat scrollable chat for sure that's the thing that's in in 323 as as far as I'm aware maybe I'm misunderstanding but yeah and uh search bars in general we're uh for most new designs we're looking at adding search functionality Emily I don't know you you
- 00:43:34
did some stuff for the star map yeah the star map has search um obviously cool I mean I know the chat was just it's we basically just reskin the chat but I think the I mean the long-term plan is to overhaul that system has some changes I think there's some there's some changes to the chat I worked on like a very early version of it to have like different tabs I assume that yeah yeah the new chat is very nice to use uh I think people are going to be very happy with that but it it will also be improved down the line the content of the chat notwithstanding yeah exactly that's up that's up to you people um Arc VR says FPS Compass needs help uh let's talk to our about our next question um the new latitude longitude altitude readout in the map is amazing
- 00:44:23
although altitude is given as a distance from the center of the planet question mark and latitudes are inverted from the North Pole at the bottom the compass is pointing towards a point at the equator not to any of the poles is this an intentional choice to confuse us or is the North Pole merely on a temporary summer vacation Sounds like our job is done there right or I think I think I think even the question explains complexity yeah so uh yeah we do have a new design for this stuff and um it's it's been simmering in the background but it's not been the top priority thing when we're looking at bringing all these new cool features like obviously we now do have a the compass strip on the HUD and everything but uh there's still
- 00:45:12
tuning to do and yes all of those things are are the goal that's the end goal like we we have decisions have been made on how this should be implemented but they have not been we're not just supposed to have A Beautiful Mind to to figure this thing out well so far but not forever okay um why does the circular quick interact menu I think it's pipus why does a circular why does the circular quick interact menu look so different to all the other UI elements we didn't have time I think that's the bottom line isn't this because it's not effectively in world right well I also think it's that we didn't
- 00:46:00
have it's in your head yeah yeah not your head it it's it is in your head but um it didn't we do have a a new restyle version of it so I think my suspicion is that since we do have the the style mockup hopefully we'll get that style in game it it should fit with the other UI that's but you do make a you do make make a good point it is we just got T talking about all these diagetic in Universe elements but the personal interaction system is not that is actually a that is actually a visualiz a Sci-Fi visualization of of a choice Matrix in your head so like I I suppose it should look different yeah but makes sense it maybe it doesn't have a brand at
- 00:46:49
least my mind is branded by ages oh now now I'm thinking now I'm thinking um all right are there plans to make the uiux of the cockpit view be as good as the external Starship view so this is someone being a bit funny I think the external Starship view has no UI at all it's it's very yeah that's it uh but I don't think there's a plan to do that we don't go that far but we are uh we are working on the HUD experience for ships for sure that's that's a big one uh and it's going to be cleaner and we're going to add more
- 00:47:40
options for people to turn off things that they don't want to bother them when they're flying around also just looking at the new uh flight mode that we're getting in 323 it's a very clean experience it's very nice to just fly around and flight mode and enjoy that so that's not Quantum because then you get the markers still less markers than before but then you can go into flight and just do the thing that it's clean it's nice I'm glad you figured it out I was sitting the around I'm like there is no UI in the thing what is he talking about and and Gabriel's like he went he's trolling or she I don't want so I was thinking the other way around which is can you see the UI from outside the ships which we we also no no no we are that's not diagetic no no no as in you
- 00:48:31
can see through the cockpit and see if someone's flying a ship and you're like Eva behind them you can see their UI right oh that thing like cuz that's like being on the bridge of a ship right you can walk around and see what people are doing on their various consoles and stuff so you could Eva and like take aak PE check out what you're doing doing there on your Mobi glass yeah I see you writing those messages on your Moi uh okay we got we got time for a few more questions will will planets in the star map be an actual render from the real ones as then zoom in on any location and be able to to some degree see the terrain as it is on the real
- 00:49:18
planet yes this is something that I really want to do and it's basically a uh yeah I mean we should have like a like a planet view you know I think I and it's basically like almost like Google Earth you can scroll in and see any portion of the terrain and um but you might not see all of the like things that you've discovered right like off the bat you can see the base terrain but like as you you know find things darl licks and caves and Mining resources and things like that then they'll start showing up kind of along with that and integrated into that map um um and that's also probably also going to tie into the The Landing stuff as well so you know you want to be able to see terrain as well so we got to make that work um with the map
- 00:50:09
system okay um the current the current animation for opening the Mobi glass is rather slow I was trying to think of the whole thing uh uh rather uh now that we have great things like interior Maps is there a potential to quickly check Mobi where you are instead of having to wait for your character to raise their arm push the button have it pop up such has there been any thought or consideration about speeding that process up we've got the new mob glass but I think and you guys tell me if I'm wrong that animation has been there for yeah it's a it's a really old animation we've we've updated the UI but we need to also update the animation at some point um it's probably something that we're going to to be in discussion
- 00:50:58
with the um technical animators about like how exactly that should work there's we probably want uh like a minimum time spec um so like you know make it look good as long as it's under X seconds so it should be should be pretty quick um but we just need to update that cuz it's just basically like like this right so so it's got to be it's got to feel more organic um our whole thing is like he's got to make it feel diagetic in the world and grounded in the world and that really that kind you might as well just have just put it in 2D at that point so that animation needs to be needs to be um updated but it requires it's going to require some work from from the coordination with the uh
- 00:51:47
some other teams to do that yeah it's it's it's it's very yes uh Papu in chat says it's very pit boy like know we but we have you we have phones today that have gesture controls and stuff like like you know the question I think the first question there it is is you know when you pull it up do you would you actually have to hit a button or or can it tell like hey I'm doing this you know I'm not a shield Ma and you know I'm trying to trying to get my mob that so could it just pop up you know with that does it need does it need to have the push those questions that are probably you know to be discussed and stuff yeah I don't think facial recognition that that's not going to exist in 900 years in the future that wouldn't work yeah no there's probably room to speed that up um but we're not s but not making promises that we're going to speed up
- 00:52:33
he's saying we're going to look into it and it probably it's due for some review um all right I don't know why I switched back to you uh here we switch back to me uh why does pathf finding not work between several rooms or even several planets um so this is actually one of the things that I fixed recently you couldn't route between zones um I had it working on it but it turned out that it didn't work on a server environment because again things aren't streamed in and and those entities that I need those Transit entities don't necessarily exist so um we do have a temporary solution for that so it should work as so long as the zones that you need to route between are streamed in uh but there's a longer term plan to make that work totally
- 00:53:22
regardless and much more reliably um the uh I mean I think they're doing a Transit refactor yeah so there's some dependencies as well on some systems as well so uh it is the routing within in the last couple months has gotten a lot more robust so it's a lot more reliable uh but there's still quite a ways to go and I'm at kind of at the point where I'm kind of starting to depend on some other systems and I got to wait until they're further along and and then that's going to benefit the map um because it uses Ai and then if it doesn't if that doesn't find a path then it's got to use Transit so those are two different sort of systems that are being developed um at least for the interior map I don't know if you can comment on
- 00:54:09
the star map routing but yeah I mean the star routing I know we want to like refactor that as well um cuz there are some issues at the moment obviously like because you set a route and then you go there and it's moved since then so it blocks things um and that gets really frustrating um so we obviously need to look into ways to handle that in the future so that whenever you go anywhere your route always exists you can always do it you don't have to like reset it and all of this so yeah there's a lot of work still to be done on that but when it comes specifically to this it's also a bit of design right it's a decision was made that you can root from your ship because it's it's the hardware in the ship doing the routing um but from seeing Fe feed back like it it
- 00:54:58
discussions have been started like it's starting to yeah we'll see what happens in the future with this one uh might be something that we uh want to implement where people can do it from the surfaces of planets and so on I think like the main reason it's in the ship at the moment is because the system is tied to like checking whether you have enough fuel right and if you're if you don't have that ship available it doesn't know whether you have that fuel so we need to like account for that and consider that if if we're going to allow you to do that from just standing anywhere and uh for the folks in the chat that are picking up on Transit refactor it's not anything super sexy or amazing just consider that when server meshing and you have to be able to divide all these areas into into different servers and that includes sometimes Landing zones if you guys all decide to go to to one stuff and the trains need to work across servers it's
- 00:55:48
just some code stuff uh they Gom on to everything that Transit refactor just some underlying Tech stuff just just code stuff yep uh will there be a means of locating our ships further out than just 20 kilm away from us uh either the current ship that we have or former ships lost ships wrecks ships we had to abandon um this easier way to find our litter I suppose what they're asking yeah so what happens now is really that the ship will stream out when when you don't see it when it's behind something maybe it's just too far away um different situations will stream it out anyway and then it's it gets
- 00:56:37
harder to find I'm not I'm not sure how the data is stored and so on but I think that's uh like we could store that position that the ship had when you left it but obviously then someone could take it and you wouldn't know because it's streamed out on on your end so uh the bottom line is in the the future this is something that we would want because with a lot of changes that we're getting in yeah for future patches it's going to make sense to keep track of more of these things so yeah but currently it's uh it's a short distance thing but you can do it you you you do have it now on the Mobi you locate your ship and uh we got time for just two more questions here um
- 00:57:26
first one's about widescreen Ultra widescreen weird aspect ratios that's that's obviously um it's no secret that that the Star Citizen Community tend to be early adopters of a lot of a lot of different Tech you know VR and stuff like that so it it's there's a lot of folks who have super insano wide monitors that wrap around them and stuff um what can what what what can you tell them about any support any work being done to to help alleviate some of the weirdness that happens when they have these super weird monitors I suppose the most straightforward answer is the slider the slider which goes from uh the standard 16 B9 uh aspect ratio that you'd get on a one regular monitor uh and then you can slide it to whatever aspect ratio
- 00:58:17
you're running at so if you've got three monitors uh you're going to be 48 by9 effectively right so if you've got the corner piece like the interior map or um and the thing in the top right and the health bar you could effectively put them right to the corners of monitor one and monitor 3 and like be like this all the time but it's on a slider so you can choose somewhere between 60 min9 and have it like on your Center monitor if you got a 60 min9 Monitor and then move it all the way out to however many many monitors you have uh or if you've got like a 21 B9 it's probably just going to be a small change but it it's user defined that thing yeah and that's in already that's in already yeah so okay
- 00:59:05
um the last question I want to add is uh this this is one of those forever questions I'm looking at the list here and there's at least three I'm looking at that are all the same thing here customiz uh customizability it's we talked about you know readability issues we talked about accessibility issues um we talked about the one guy who just didn't like blue um what about what about the ability to I don't want my mini map up there I want my mini map over there I want how our answer to this has changed over the years I've been here long enough and followed the project even before that to know that our answer is changed as as as as as different regimes have come and as different schools of thought have come as we've learned more about how diagetic we want to make things which limits
- 00:59:54
certain options so I'd like to get the answer today today's version of this answer and it's only today's version you know keeping in mind that we are a game that is continuously evolving continuously in development stuff and the answer may change later on but what's our thoughts today about the possibility of customization being able to move these widgets wherever we want and stuff so I before Gabrielle replies I'll just sort of give you my opinion which is our first this is sort of our first drop of and obviously we're going to do the vehicles as well we've got the first drop of the new visor visor and lens layouts and what we want to do is make that as good as possible uh for everyone as much as possible right so in an Ideal World
- 01:00:44
nobody you would want nobody to want to customize it because it's perfect but we don't live in an Ideal World so um you know we're open to design decision from there I suppose but that ideally we get to a position where uh the Design's good for uh absolute majority of cases and it's not like people going I I just hate this thing I want to turn turn off the interior map or I want to turn off my health bar or whatever um if the health bar is not as intrusive or health bar I'm just paraphrasing but you you have a you have a thing that just comes on and just notifies you something and goes off then maybe it's not not so intrusive that you going ah I must turn this thing off um if we get as much right then you sort of reduce the need for that much
- 01:01:35
customization yeah but presumably the the customization question is still open-ended yeah I guess to a degree right because I fully agree like we are working on this UI actively this is always improving and we are making it as good as we can but bottom line is it's always nice with customizability and I think that would be again for the farflung future really we we need to uh to make sure that we have all the UI at its best and then we can start looking into okay now now it's worth giving people the power because we've done our best now and uh let's let's allow them and also let's allow
- 01:02:23
ourselves to take the time to look into something like this because it's yeah also which which is equal on the sort of accessibility options as well if you if you get it right then hopefully a lot of the accessibility issues uh are not as strong but you still we will have all these accessibility off um options for changing the text side and stuff but it it takes you away from them you know the best the best version but you you might make it more usable for uh certain individuals oh sorry there certain aspects like you know um turning the mini map on on or off like people you know you you want to you want to allow for that cuz maybe you don't want to see a the map all the time you want to use
- 01:03:10
the signs you kind of want to play more of um like you you want to let let yourself discover the environment without tools it's kind of like letting go of technology in a way like going off in a forest or something um but having that there at least uh like initially that allows us to kind of gather a lot of the testing like is it going to break on a specific machine or a setup um and so we can gather more data initially and then you know we can figure out um maybe like a like a hardcore mode for for the HUD like where you don't have certain things it's just wipe everything away yeah turning things off is certainly
- 01:03:59
something that's going to be easy I feel like I would want to play under that mode sometimes it's a lot easier to turn the mini map on off than it was to write it in the first place all right well uh folks that's it you survived uh you did another star seon life thank you so much uh for taking your time to uh you know be here uh at the end of the week and and talk to us and answer folks questions um hold on to do one more hi look at that look at that I'm just playing we just do a little hi oh look I'm in two places um I'm just going to leave it here because just what am I doing oh I'm ending the show I I looked over there the person usually tells me what I'm doing they're not there uh so yeah that's it that's this week's show uh thanks for hanging
- 01:04:46
out with us uh thanks for watching if you haven't check out yesterday's ISC uh it was a great look at some of the the new Arena Commander features that are also coming their way in the upcoming Alpha 323 um uh next week's shows are um patch dependent the next week's shows are uh will be one thing or it'll be another thing depending on uh if 323 goes the live or not so uh keep your eye on the robertsspaceindustries.com website to uh learn more about that about any announcements or or whatever for that uh for this week's show uh thank you to I got to do this this way there we go thank you to uh bone to Gabriel to Emily to Zane for taking the time to be here on the show thank you to
- 01:05:34
Pete for changing my batteries out in the middle of the show uh we knew we were going to get Pete on the show at some point today was this today was the day uh and then of course uh thank you guys uh for watching us and keep coming back and and keep supporting us and stuff and I don't know I'm I'm but I'm butting crazy now here watch this hold on was this can I can I do can I do bone let me see if I can do bones head on my there we go no no okay no thanks everybody take care bye bye bye bye they're never going to let me do this again
Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.
