Inside Star Citizen: Taking Inventory | Summer 2020

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:02

   Inventory management uh at its core is player experience. We focus a lot on the usability and how it felt. Game development is definitely an iterative process. There's no one who writes a design doc and then a few weeks later produces a finished feature or game and says, "Oh, that worked, guys. Great. What's what's next?" A couple of releases ago, we released inventory uh its first iteration. When we come to release things, it's not always at stage where we're ready to go 100%. Uh it's not 100% polished, uh but we still need to provide something so that the basic functionality of that feature that we requested is provided. But the the benefits of it may not be obvious to the players at when they're playing it, but it's it's immense for us

2. 00:00:51

   because we get feedback. If you guys play something um and you hate it, then us knowing that early on is so much better than finding out, you know, a year down the line when we've put a year's worth of work into it. In the next iteration, the feature is being attached on to allow players to interact with inventory outside of themselves, uh and that's going to be with a new user interface. So, the inventory is still accessed the same way as it was previously. Uh the player can either go to the personal inner thought and click on the the inventory slot or then press the key bind that the spy default is Y. And that will bring the inventory screen. On the left side of the screen, the player will see the different containers that currently has equipped. This containers can be equipped through the

3. 00:01:39

   PMA like the before. And then every times an item is stored, uh this will be a they will be stored on this containers. Within this screens, the player can see the the current capacity with which currently um container is being used because previously you didn't have access to that. And then the player has access to all the inventory management functionalities that being drag and drop between different containers. You can stack items of the same type. You can split because by default an item of the same type is stuck together. So you can split some of them, switch part of them to another container.

4. 00:02:27

   And then of course you can access to the contextual menu of the item and then have the the same interaction you had previously that are available for that item that being carried, drink, equip and so on. The tech that makes this feature possible is building blocks. I'm sure you've heard a little bit about that in the past few months. It really has revolutionized the way we develop the UI and I think it's been quite a bottle language we've had to develop which is great. In terms of one of the things that we're not quite happy with yet is the holo shader. It looks great on some of the objects. So some of the commodities look okay but there are others say like a bottle of water or what not it just really doesn't pick out the detail enough. So that's something that the graphics team and the UI tech team are working together to give us an improvement on. When it does

5. 00:03:14

   I think it's going to make a a big improvement. So with this iteration of the inventory you can also have the possibility to access inventories that are external to the player. So in currently the use case we have is the green rock. The intention is to allow you to interact with things that are side your character and then interact with the inventory within that. So if you're wandering around with your multi-tool lasering rocks and your inventory is getting full you can just go and the contents of your backpack into the back of your green rock instead. Future releases we're definitely going to see a lot more um using this feature. What I'm personally looking forward to is I already enjoy making corpses, but at some point I'm going to be able to start

6. 00:04:01

   rifling through them and seeing what's in their inventory as well. And that's that's really exciting. Having the right tool for the job and being able to find it effectively and quickly among your inventory will become more and more important as the variety of locations and situations a player can find themselves in continues to expand in each and every patch. And to continue this theme of of oh, the places you'll go, here's another locations themed sprint report. Let's get to it. While cargo decks will arrive with the upcoming Alpha 3.11 and we'll be taking an in-depth look at what went into building them next week, let's jump ahead now to the current progress on their industrial sibling, refinery decks. Now currently in gray box phase, the team has recently completed a first

7. 00:04:49

   pass sprint on what we refer to internally as world building. That's where artists go through and begin to set dress the location with anything appropriate from our existing library of assets. While at the same time making a shopping list of desired items to be created by their very best friends, the props team. Along the way, they also took a look at the smelter drums, one of the key visual reads within all refinery decks. They were reading a bit simplistic before, so a pass was done to improve them with a few soft surface elements used to create a nice discernible breakup in the overall shape language. Jumping back to Alpha 3.11, public roadmap watchers may have noticed the recent addition of several new feature sets to our existing locations,

8. 00:05:37

   including updates to our geology library so that they'll use the new organic shader, updated ground textures using enhanced scan data, improved tessellation and displacement of scattered objects across the surface, and as we've discussed in the past, an overall general advancement of the painting tool that utilizes all of these new features in newly dynamic and interesting ways. What you're seeing here is actually the beginning of a sprint where an artist has begun repainting Daymar with these new tools to update the rock sets and remove some of the more, let's call them potato-looking rocks that could be found before. And for these new rocks, conversion to use of the new organic shader means they'll look and feel more natural than ever before.

9. 00:06:28

   Now, below the rocks, nearly a hundred new scan terrain surfaces have been implemented for use on all the planets and moons of the Stanton system. Seen here through the increased detail found in the sand and gravel of Daymar. Now, once each area is repainted with the new tools, the process of validation begins where folks will have to comb through the various terrains to make certain all the blending is as it should be and the material assignments are correct. Overall, it's useful to test these new features out on existing locations that everyone involved is super familiar with before they're eventually integrated into the new planets and moons of the upcoming Pyro system. Speaking of which, it's been a while since we've checked in on the team's progress. So, here's a look at some explorations currently

10. 00:07:16

    underway on one of the moons orbiting Pyro 5. Now, these explorations are typically done to see how far we can push current tech and asset packs before anyone goes and makes something new that may or may not be needed. And what you're seeing here is a second pass exploration like that. Now, after the initial round of feedback, there was a feeling amongst the team here that it it seemed a little too much like red Daymar, which is understandable as early work in this phase is done expressly with existing asset libraries and tech. So, the specific efforts of this second pass here were a push to bring out more of the dried, crumbly volcanic aspects of the moon's surface while adding a few new additions to the asset library here and there.

11. 00:08:05

    Now, once the new painting tool improvements have finished their trial runs on Stanton's existing planets and moons this quarter and been put through the paces by players in the upcoming Alpha 3.11, and after first passes have been completed on all the other planets and moons of the Pyro system, the team will return to this moon and continue to push it in new and exciting ways. Even in these early states, you can bet we'll be back to check in on its continued evolution as it makes its way into the Star Citizen Persistent Universe. Finally, several weeks ago we showcased some initial concept explorations for homesteads, frontier housing to be found out in the wilderness areas of undeveloped planets and moons, and there were a lot to choose from. So, the next

12. 00:08:53

    step has been to turn some of those 2D sketches that we really liked into 3D sketches in Blender to further explore the shape language, to see these things from as many different angles as possible, and to begin to build out a library of kitbash options for us to play with. At this stage, one of the main things we're looking for in fleshing out this colonial architectural vibe visually is that it looks like it can survive in many different climates. Perhaps with a a patching motif that indicates generations of use instead of the outright replacement of components that could keep them looking newer. As far as shape language, these efforts will also be used to help us land on a specific direction of cubical, conical, spherical, or some mix therein.

13. 00:09:42

    Like most concepts, these visual explorations are just as important in figuring out what we do want as determining what we do not. Also under consideration are the materials that would be used to make these structures as there's a desire within the team here to make the materials found in the walls or rooftops appear as if they were sourced from the planet where any homestead is found whenever possible. Overall, this is one of the most enjoyable periods for any concept artist. A time where it's more about exploring primitive forms and building shape relationships between core elements, researching traversal options and how they'll settle within the environment around them, and perhaps most importantly, working hand-in-hand with system designers to identify all the necessary gameplay components and

14. 00:10:30

    the relational hierarchy necessary between them so that when development of this feature really kicks into high gear, we'll all be creating something from the ground up that can build upon and utilize the full complexity of the resource generation and item control system we discussed last quarter on Calling All Devs that is currently in development for ships, vehicles, and space stations alike. So, what did we learn about this week? Well, we learned that with iteration, it can be used not only to solicit player feedback, but to support the simultaneous development of features between content teams. That the next

15. 00:11:20

    stage of inventory management aims to open up the boxes and pockets of a lot of things around you. And that you'll have new and improved places to find all those things around you in the upcoming Alpha 3.11 and beyond. For Inside Star Citizen, I'm Jared Huckaby. We'll see you next week.