Star Citizen: Calling All Devs - Pipeline Delivery

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:11

   Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of Calling All Devs, the weekly Q&A series where I take questions from you, the Star Citizen backer, and pose them directly to our developers, usually over Skype. Joining us from Manchester, United Kingdom, technically it's Winslow, United Kingdom, but no nobody ever knows what I'm talking about when I say Winslow. John Crew, uh winner of the current Calling All Devs scoreboard that we found that we found online this week. Congratulations, John Crew. What was it, 22 questions so far? I think it was more than that. It was 26, 26, 27. 26, 26, wow. 26 and now's time to extend it even further. We're going to extend it even further with two more questions for you. Uh let's just jump right into it. Uh components and subcomponents, you know, uh we players have been patiently waiting for the full breadth of the component system come online so we can

2. 00:00:59

   tweak and modify our ship. So, so my Hornet will be different than your Hornet, will be different than Rob Rinehart's Hornet. This question asks, can a component or subcomponent randomly fail regardless of condition or health? For example, they give like, is it possible to just buy a cooler that's a lemon right out of the box? Uh yes. Just like reality that we want that to be a thing, but uh unlike reality that the chance of that happening is going to be tiny. Incredibly likely. Thousands of a percentage chance of that happening. Um it just simply needs to be there for that value to get bigger over time. Like even if something started at 0%, it's going to start ticking up as soon as you start using it. So, there's always going to be a chance.

3. 00:01:47

   It's going to be incredibly tiny. And if we if that incredibly tiny chance is still too much, then we'll adjust that. We just don't want it to be um if lemon straight out the box is not fun. That we want there to be that that very small chance that occasionally happens. Um realistically, you overpowering, overclocking, overheating your items is where those failures going to come in reliably. At the same time, you want that one in a I mean, I'm using the phrase one in a million. That's not what the actual ratio is cuz we're still figuring that out and setting this stuff. But uh you you want that infinitesimal up chance for something to just go catastrophically wrong. Like all the

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   best laid plans and and and being done by a component that that will fail you. So, yes. So, I I I I think you you said it very clearly. Um that's not something we anticipate happening a whole lot. Now, we say that and it will happen three times to me in a month because that's just the way my luck runs. But Yeah, it just depends on the item you buy as well. If you if you go cheap and buy cheap items, that tiny percentage is a higher percentage than if you it spent much more money on something. Got you. All right. A second question for you. probably the most ideal question for you, Mr. Vehicle Pipeline Director, we've ever presented to you. It is a literal question about the vehicle pipeline. Uh at the 2018 Pace of Ships, the pipeline appears to have a backlog of

5. 00:03:24

   about 7 years. Which Okay, well, I'm just going to say that doesn't quite seem right by my math, but what Let's see what John says. Is there a plan to increase the pace of delivery or should we expect current concepts to be released in 2025? Uh I I'd be interested to find out how they they worked that. Mhm. Time scale out cuz uh from last time I looked at the schedule, it is significantly uh shorter time frame than that. Um it's not 7 years worth of stuff, even factoring in all the known future ships. Um, it's it's nowhere near that. Um, this year gives the like the idea that it's sort of slowed down, it's because we've had a lot of big ships going on in the background.

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   Um, there's only so many people when you put a lot of them on one big ship, there is a big lull in releases. So, I think this year is probably one of the the most productive Yeah. Um, certainly for for a while. Um, we're we're making a good effort to try and tackle those long-standing ships that have been kicking around that not had the love. Uh, they've they've moved up. Everything has priorities, the priorities change depending on the needs of the project at the time. So, we we had a big push this year for getting stuff for squadron needs. Um, which is why a lot of things like the Hammerhead filled the schedule. And every ship is different in its scheduling. So, while we do have blocks for X months for this size ship, X months for this size ship,

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   within that, those can grow or shrink depending on can it reuse a lot of assets from another ship like the Hammerhead. So, the Hammerhead, if it was a brand new ship, it would be this long. But, because it's uh, reusing a lot of the Aegis stuff with material changes, it goes you put an extra artist on it, it goes So, Yeah, the exponential growth the same thing across the board for them all. The exponential growth is is a is a is a thing that's uh, applies to all video game development and it's the hardest thing to quantify and to demonstrate, uh, you know, in those early days. It's that every ship you build makes the next ship just that much faster and faster and faster and faster. So, they they be they begin to, you know, the the progress compounds and and your ability to turn these things around faster and faster

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   increases over time as as not just as our artists learn more and more about how to do it and how to build these one one spaceships to the scale and level of fidelity that we need here but I as our pool of shareable reusable resources improves and we can start for lack of a better term kit bashing these these ships together. So yeah so yeah so while we're not going to sit here and put in a specific year or a date guys come on who are you talking to? I'm not going to sit there and say oh the ships will be will be done by this point and of course while we are still continuing to add new ships to to the pipeline through through our concept promotions. I I I think we're going to do a little bit better than 2025 we'll we'll we'll leave it at that. Just a little bit.

9. 00:06:37

   Just a little bit. All right John I'm going to let you go man I'll take care take care of it. Cheers. Bye bye. All right thanks so much Johnny now moving just a little down the way to our own I just said Johnny but this guy is Johnny. This is Johnny Jacevius. The real Johnny. The real Johnny owner of the coolest name in Star Citizen. How you doing Johnny? I'm great thanks Jared how are you? Yeah I'm doing well it's it's uh uh uh Citizen Con this episode will air after Citizen Con so it went great. Yep it was fantastic. Everyone's super happy. And I didn't almost kill myself with months of of prep. Okay uh I I have I I have to say uh I have to comment to you on your choice of double headphones Johnny. Yeah my apologies.

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    probably this part this microphone's bust it's gone. But the headphones are still really comfy so I'm still making use of them. I have no you get no complaints from me I you know it's Well the audio quality is there then. Yeah. All right I got a question for you about ammunition. Personal personal weapons and stuff like that. Like actually I I guess that applies to Well, they say mag Well, we'll get into it. I think it's FPS weapons specifically. So, this question says, "Will ammunition for personal weapon Okay, it says it right there. So, I don't know. Will ammunition for personal weaponry be realistically accounted for in that reloading with a partially full magazine forfeits the remaining animation or ammunition or will that magazine be banked for future use?" Okay. So, short answer is they'll be banked for future use.

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    Long answer is well, we've got two different types of magazines. So, we've got magazines for ballistic weapons and we've got magazines for energy weapons. So, obviously those two are going to work differently because we have standard kind of, you know, typical ballistic ammo uh that you're putting into your magazines yourself and you've also got the batteries which are powering your energy weapons. So, ballistic weapon-wise, yes, it'll be banked for later use. So, if you finish shooting and you have 21 bullets in your magazine and you've got magazines with more on your person, you'll swap out as you do now. Um and that magazine will still have the 21 bullets inside it. They're not going anywhere. They're going to stay exactly where they are. Uh something that we don't have at the moment is the way like a way to manage your ammunition. So, currently there's nothing you can do about that. So, you might end up in a situation where you've got like two magazines left with one bullet in and you think you've

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    got two magazines remaining. Um and you pull one out and you you you've basically got nothing to use in there. It's just like bang click click click. You know, you're kind of done. uh down the line we'd want to add a way for you to quickly strip the ammunition out of your remaining magazines and condense them down as best you can into uh the magazines that you've got. So, if you've got a couple of half-full magazines uh you can completely fill one of them and uh either get rid of the empty magazine you've got or save it for refilling later. Um quick time mini-game where you pull bullets out of one magazine. No. Don't know what the information's going to be uh uh uh people might get a bit sick of a mini game if they've got to do it every time they want to spin the mag. I wasn't being serious. Um and then yeah, energy magazines work a bit differently. Obviously, you can't

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    really strip power out of one magazine and put it into another one. That'd be a little bit odd. Uh but down the line we do want to we had kind of it's very similar to ships. So, I think we've talked about this before. We we do want your suit to be powered. So, when these are these magazines are placed on your suit, we would like them to very very slowly start to recharge. Uh which makes energy weapons a bit more versatile. There should be some other down points there like if you Uh but yeah, they're kind of built for longevity in the field but don't expect to go into a firefight you know, reload, put your empty mag on your suit, empty the other one, and that one to be ready. It might have only regenerated a couple of bullets in there. So, or a couple of shots worth in there. So, Um but yeah, um those should be rechargeable and there'll be no stripping between those. But yeah, the uh the ammunition on both should be banked for later use. It's not going to go

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    missing. Oh, that's very cool. I wasn't I wasn't I I I I you said it and I knew about the I knew the answer, but I'd forgotten it. Like as you said, I was I was like simultaneously surprised and oh yeah, you've heard that before. It's weird. I don't usually have that, but Thank you. I'm I don't know. I'm I'm All right, you can get back to your game. All right, man. Take care. All right. Bye. Bye. All right, thank you so much. Now, last but certainly not least, somebody new to Calling All Devs from our Foundry 42 Frankfurt office. We're going to give this a try out here. Michelle Cooper. That's great. You don't understand. I'm a stupid American. I want to go Michael Cooper is is what my instinct wants to say. But

15. 00:11:27

    but but All right. One for disco and I I like that one as well. All right. So, uh how you doing, man? Pretty good, pretty good. Uh getting all excited for for what's coming next week. I know. Are Are you one of the ones going to CitizenCon? Uh yes. You are You are You're on the presentation list. Yeah, we've got a I've got a back I'm working on the rehearsal schedule for you, so I've got a I've got to send you an email in just a couple of hours. Uh this was recorded before CitizenCon, but it's airing after CitizenCon, so uh Hollywood movie magic. All right. Your question. We actually see this quite a bit. Uh since the advent of procedural planet generation and things come online, uh we often see questions about whether or not will it will be able to have uh

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    tall mountains and deep abysses. This person's last incoming, can we have them just kilometers deep like the Mariana's Trench and stuff like that. Uh do we have does our current procedural generation system uh have that capability of just going miles up in the sky or even miles deep into the ground? in a certain way, yes. So, short answer, yes. Uh we can do it. the problem lies with uh making it look good. So, um right now if it depends on how steep it is. If it's very steep, then uh you will see a lot of stretching because we're you we're using a height map to offset the terrain up and down and it's basically pushing the the the triangles up and down and if it's a very steep up or down, then it's only has a few triangles to cover

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    that space and it will stretch it out and you might have seen this before in in in other games or in in some of the areas where we've gone a bit too bold, the textures will stretch out and yeah, we need to find a way to cover that up and and uh ideally, we would add more assets in that area or um increase the resolution of dynamically increase the resolution of those steeper areas. Um but this is uh yeah, stuff that that might come down in the future. All right, so that's not any limitation on the actual height or whatever the inverse of height is. No, from a tech point of view, there's already uh like very high mountains and very deep areas. Um but it it the issue comes when you go want to want to get this this drop where you look down and go "Whoa!" Like making

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    that look good um that's still still a challenge. Well, thanks, Mike. Uh see, I almost did it again. Thanks, Michelle. Thanks, Michelle. I'm I'm I'm I'm really trying. Uh how how was CitizenCon for you since this airs after CitizenCon? I I imagine I'm I'm I imagine I'm going to have a really really good time. I think uh the venue is it quite impressive and being in front of so many people was was yeah, quite kind of overwhelming, but I think uh I think we showed something really cool. I think people uh will have enjoyed what we what we shared. And did people love your presentation? I think so, yeah. The reactions were really good. All right. Well, in in in in about 2

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    weeks, we'll see whether this is really embarrassing or not. All right. All right, Michelle, I'll let you get back to work. I'll see you in Austin. Thanks. See you in Austin. Bye. Sup. Well, that about wraps up this week's show. Special thanks to John Crew, Johnny Descent, and Michelle Cooper for being on the show this week. Remember, you can submit your questions for consideration each and every week up in the thread up on Spectrum. And don't forget to vote. So, for Calling All Devs, I'm content manager for global video production, Jared Huckaby. We'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

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    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.