10 for the Designers: Episode 01 (2015.02.09)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hey there everybody Welcome to a very special edition of 104 so it's actually 104 the designers a very special edition uh myself I'm Dan Tracy lead technical designer here at Cloud Imperium and we have KX Forno I'm the technical designer uh here to be the new Dan the new Dan W to be WN to be Dan at this point being being selectively bred he's getting there he's taking my job no don't let him anyway so we had uh 10 questions here from you guys I just wanted to go through and answer some of them uh see if we can actually answer them in a reliable fashion so uh first one is uh sorry if I butcher these names

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   uh it's USI uh will player organizations be able to advertise through in-game newspapers or billboards uh it could also be helped uh to add immersion and make player orgs seem like they're part of the uh pu actually funny enough with that uh we're looking at uh doing uh the hull uh series concept and one of the uh setups that's actually going to be uh shown to you guys uh uh later on when we actually do the the whole concept sale is going to be these external panels that are actually going to be set up with a section where we're actually going to be applying build boards and like clan tags to it so one of the things for pu that we wanted to do was actually allow players to take on these particular jobs where they can say hey you know what uh I'm traveling from you

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   know maybe uh from Tera crazy system Pirates all the way to like Stanton so I I I'm going to go through several systems and because of that whole Transit I'm going to be spending like let's say few hours in space so we're thinking that uh some advertising firms are going to be like requesting players to be posting particular banners on their on their ship for certain periods of time so they can actually use this uh to place certain uh uh advertisements from in-game uh kind of uh organizations and place them on their ships and we're thinking of even applying that similar to like you know uh the racing and we're actually working on a paint system right now that's going to like accommodate that stuff uh whether like Chris has said in the past that we wanted to include like custom decals from you guys

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   so so we're looking at including like all that kind of uh setup for the for the actual well mainly for uh starting with the whole series but expanding that further on for a lot of the other ships yeah you should be able to represent your org with your colors and also get a little bit of that sweet ad Revenue going so exactly perfect uh next question is from uh sorry if I mispronounce this it's uh a or act h a sorry guys uh yeah I am making a little bit anyway it's all that parkour that we're doing now yeah uh so the question is uh I'm wondering what you guys are going to be planning to do uh for new players as in tutorials what we're actually looking at uh setting up for uh Arena commander

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   and this will be coming out pretty soon uh believe is for 1.1 I think it's for 1.1 that is 1.1 yeah that's right so we're actually uh having the UK designers set up uh a tutorial level that's going to be helping you in introduce you into like free flight mechanics and Arena Commander so this is actually something to look forward uh mainly from the the UK side as they're going to be trying to set you guys up with uh baby's first steps into Arena Commander so then that way it's not just like throw you deep into the into the deep end and try to U um expect you to know everything to do with signals and how to actually lock your missile and and set up multiple firing groups those are all the things that we wanted to kind of help you uh get into and and even for those who are veterans of the game maybe this is

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   something useful for you guys so then that way you could jump in and fly and be like oh I didn't know about you know all the all these extra menus for like signal and and power distribution how do I actually set that up so these are things that uh we wanted to really show you guys and then that way we can have uh even new players coming on to the to the field and like have them do this tutorial for a couple minutes and even then they'll be probably as good as a few of the veterans that are out there so I'm really excited to to see you guys uh try that out and for for the veterans who are out there you don't have to worry that this is this isn't a forced step into it uh when you load up the game you'll have the option of going straight into normal Arena Commander but you'll also have the extra option of this tutorial so it's it's it's there anytime if you've forgotten uh if you

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   come away from from the game for a while you come back and you're like I don't remember anything uh you can you can just take jump right back in and and it'll help you through it exactly so this this is a lot of stuff that um uh will be actually probably adding more and more features as we as we build out further into like 1.1 even 1.2 uh there might be some mised functionalities in there uh so we'll we'll definitely let you know as to the full extent of it as soon as we get to uh the release of the tutorial uh so tiger Hart has a question uh so this discussion always comes up in the forums and what we are wondering is if planets moons Etc will have properly simulated orbits in each star system do you have an answer for this I do do you I I have no idea I have been I have been deep deep stuck inside the ships I have

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   not been able to see out the windows I don't I don't know what's going on ship shipped without Windows oh that's yeah no I'm I'm like I'm like buried inside the wings and I know where you're buried you're buried in cargo oh that's true there's so much cargo all up in my cargo so to answer the the real question was uh as as some of you might have known I actually developed the the early bit of this uh star map back in the day for uh some of the uh like original prototyping of pu and this was something that was uh shown actually at the 24-hour live stream the first one that we did that still gets linked around sometimes I know it's just crazy I can't believe that still floating around so the the prototype's there and is completely broken now but so the idea was that this prototype was to kind of just show uh a

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   simulation of like the the planets all in orbit uh around the particular star system now we've talked a lot about this actually uh with Austin and pu and how we're actually going to instance out uh certain sections of star system so then that way you have like a local uh area that's actually instance out to a particular server so this is like Stanton Landing Zone on this side of the planet uh cuz we're still trying to uh set up the realistic scale of a Planet uh in relevance to that so what we're looking at doing especially uh in terms of like reverse engineering the uh aspect of how cry engine utilizes like the sun as just a point star reference what we wanted to do excuse me is to kind of extrapolate from like the star

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    system to make sure that we had like a a representation of the like a top down view of of the star itself in the center and then the orbits around of where every system is going to be so if you're actually wanting to travel from like Stanton a or Stanton Prime to Stanton 2 then that way like in its kind of yearly cycles for everything actually kind of orbiting we wanted to change the paths that you needed to actually accommodate for so this is something that's going to be a giant headache to make but we're we're hoping to actually prove out this system since we actually are going with double Precision we are going with this large World setup uh but this is something that's going to take a long time to actually create so we're hoping that we can do it and we'll we'll

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    definitely let you know as as soon as we have more information on it right now it's a lot of uh setting up a lot of the backend servers for the basics of pu uh but we haven't actually been able to thoroughly test uh beyond that because we're also working on on jump points uh as well so that'll be something that uh you guys will need to uh check out as well so that from from that particular standpoint it's I don't want to say it's theoretically possible I just want to say that we're we're definitely looking into it and we're definitely prototyping it so definitely keep in t uh keep in touch and we'll we'll definitely let you guys know on what's going on with that I like hearing the word prototype something else to jump y you should make that in phph yeah yeah make everything else a photograph

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    T-Bone man asks are you guys planning on doing anything with gimbaled weapons class 2 weapons and the like in regards to using the joystick right now it seems like the weapons that are considered Class 2 or class 4 are stuck just straight ahead for joystick users yeah yeah we're we're definitely looking at this one um I've actually been looking at this one for quite a while uh back I don't know even as like. N I started working on a a prototype with John pritchet uh to try to give uh joystick users direct control over gimbaled weapons it was this uh this crazy idea to take the um the the Hat on on top of the joystick and use that to uh guide your cursor around less for like normally when you use a mouse you are

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    aiming for a a uh a one particular spot on a regular grid but if you think about it instead as a radial movement uh that's what I was hoping to do and make it be about getting the right angle and then you could get the right distance I actually I actually got it working uh but I wasn't able to get it in in a reasonable amount of time I wasn't able to get it so that you wouldn't feel it and that was really critical for what we were going with and and any of the a assists and any of of the systems for turning your input into Arena Commander into into uh Star Citizen action is that you need to you need to to feel only your own action um because all that stuff that about translating it you

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    don't you don't want to feel that that makes it that makes it wrong so uh that that prototype ended up not making it in uh and since we've been looking at alternative ways of doing it uh one of which is uh is the look ahead mode and the and the look I um which we we are are thinking of like trying out uh hooking that up with the joystick and as you fly around you'll be able to in a similar in in a similar way manipulate both flight and the gimbals uh but it's something that we just need to need to get you know three whole minutes of time together to actually do because it's there's so much going on we we have time to do stuff what no no I invent time to do stuff and I still

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    can't get it done where where where's that time machine can can I use I don't know when I put it oh maybe we should go back in time and find out oh wait oh wait I do not know so but really like uh the the the basic implementation of that uh to move that over the joystick is kind of relatively trivial we just need to cuz really like if you think about it it's very similar in terms of the uh XY AIS that you have on even the the game pad and we we would want to translate that to any of the XY or any of the axes that you would want to put on any of your joysticks like even the Hodes if we wanted to actually put that on a ulterior joystick or even if you wanted to uh we could have that map but that that again is something that we need to provide uh like the the customization of the the the the controls and again this

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    is something that since we're trying to tackle everything at once it's just a matter of scheduling this in maybe that should be a 10 for the producer questions when will you be able to schedule this for the designers to make oh okay yeah awesome but yeah this is this is something that we needed to actually just thoroughly vet out and uh controls is also like a big big concern of ours and we we're we're addressing each one of your guys' concerns one at a time it's just an over overbearing amount of work that we're trying to slot all this stuff in and then even with the Prototype as we're trying to put all this stuff together it also requires a little bit of code time uh we because we don't want it to come back to bug Smashers do we yeah no Mark gets enough exactly you broke his legs with your bugs

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    shattered them completely you bad guys cool he doesn't even have any legs anymore he just FL he just floats around mysteriously he's now Professor X uh so Spike Oz asks given that as described in bug Smashers missile explosive damage is being absorbed by the shields to various degrees as the weapon is apparently activating on contact with the shield does this mean that the damage from explosive Cannon rounds is or will be mitigated by the shields also uh very short answer yes uh I mean shield shield behavior is we're we're doing a whole pass on those uh and and one of those is is setting up your Shields to accommodate uh Splash damage versus direct damage versus uh physical damage versus energy damage and all all

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    permutations in between and and yeah this is this is a thing that will pretty much directly affect it uh although the the missiles uh is it's implied that they explode when they contact The Shield uh that's only if there strike missiles proximity missiles explode when they get close enough and start to lose range so it depends on the missile and of course actually in uh the further patches you'll actually see some more uh weapon types and uh damage types that will have different effects on uh the shields as well so definitely uh check back and we'll uh let you know with some of the new features for 1.1 uh you might see a cool new gun come into play I don't know how to pronounce this name so you get

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    it Fen Fen reel Fen re oh man I'm not even trying uh Fen re re what if I shoot a at a missile while it's still not launched does a missile targeted by the shooter uh have a chance to explode uh on its own ship so I'm assuming that this means that uh the missile is armed and activated versus it would need to be right so what what we were looking at doing and this is something that uh CR really wanted as well which was the when the missile is actually unarmed or not even activated not even hot um that if you actually like shoot at it and and um basically deal damage to the missile uh

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    it's not going to explode out of nowhere since it's not actually primed or armed so it's just going to like just disintegrate so that way it's like uh basically like a an inactive uh kind of missile or torpedo if if you guys have ever seen like red October when you close the uh torpedo range before it even arms then it just breaks apart harmlessly that's the same kind of idea that that Chris really wanted uh so we're definitely actually looking at doing that implementation so but when it is armed and act uh like activated um of course what we wanted to do is uh have visualizations where the the front of it actually kind of like brightens up or there's a light that's activated so you can kind of see that it is activated and armed maybe at like a close distance so um and then you also like for example with the The

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    Hornet you definitely know that those are being armed because the doors are coming down since that weapon group is activated they come down and if you're actually shooting and hitting that exposed locations granted if you bypass the shields uh and actually hit those missiles when they are armed then yes they will cause an explosion so I mean as much as we love explosions and I love explosions like don't don't get me wrong here uh it seems like like it would be a pretty pretty well recipe for disaster to uh fly a miss a freelancer Miss if uh if an explosion near all those missiles could cause a chain reaction that seems like a short flight so uh this there are there are safety measures in place to to prevent that for your hard points don't put in

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    missile launchers next to your power plant just just saying just saying cool uh next one is from space of hopefully that is not Spacey off or anything space of space of how do you guys plan to address uh the way the turrets act uh in a lot of other games if a tank ship airplane isn't stationary uh using turrets becomes a real hassle now add 6° of freedom and how do you guys plan on making the turrets uh effective fun to play uh it's uh frustrating to not hit anything you know so I guess in a roundabout way uh you're asking that if I'm riding on let let's take a tank as a simple example if if

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    I'm in in the turret and and my driver is kind of well if my driver's kind of rotating around and I my turret kind of has to follow him him um there was actually a setup in crisis that allowed you to have the turret uh keep its rotation relative to the world so that means if I'm riding around in my tank and my turret's up at the top here when he turns to the right uh it actually would retain its forward direction as much as uh as much as it can calculate and possible uh cuz this is actually something that we ran into uh same way in when we first implemented a lot of the the basic uh turret setup for Gamescom when we did the the constellation turret so when we were

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    actually uh piloting around when the the constellation pilot was actually uh flying around in all 6° and and all those different axes it was a huge huge pain in the ass to actually try to actually track your targets while I was moving around and doing the piloting aspects I heard Paul like yelling and and cussing and he's like no no I'm going to fix this right now I think I think it was like four or five days between getting turrets working in the constellation and uh I think Chad got the first kill that's right that's right took it took days before anybody was able to hit anything before we got this that's right that's right and then as soon as like Paul got a hold of it he was like no I'm going to change this right now and even actually

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    he he had to pass this off to Mark so Mark was actually the one doing the the implementation of the uh the turret set up so then that way we can actually uh retain since you were tracking a Target and like the constellation would move kind of sideways like this but it would always point in the in in the world direction that it needed to in order to kind of accommodate it so uh uh best example actually from another game uh is very similar to the uh Halo warthog if you're actually riding around on that particular warthog and the guys like driving around and back and forth you're always going to be kind of pointing in the same direction so makes it a lot easier to to sit and and uh focus on that particular Target so that that's something that we've already looked at but we're improving the the turret system uh even further now uh since

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    we're actually doing a little bit of refactor on the the seat code but that yes that is something definitely that we're that we're keeping in mind as we as we go forward uh so the next one uh dalon I hope that's correct uh can you turn off your ship in space and park it on an asteroid for example and make it non-detectable except for like visually so this probably signals uh essentially yeah uh so we've got our signal uh our signal system set up so that uh it it if you are not emitting uh any em emissions or IR emissions uh you then you only have your cross-section uh which yes if you are in very close proximity to a large cross-section emitter such as an AS asid uh it will it it will increase

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    the noise like it'll be more difficult to differentiate between your shape and the craters next to you which you would expect if I'm if you look over there and you're like there's a lot there's there's an asteroid it's bumpy yeah as expected uh then you you could easily Miss if there's a ship there and and this exact this exact scenario can happen um and that's that's that's an extension of the the ability for uh things between you and the target to affect it uh to affect noise uh for your radar and for things Beyond to also affect it so yes resounding yes easy one not as long-winded as the other ones uh that

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    okay that's got to be that's got to be dstro doo do dstro yeah okay dstro is a is clearly a the the final boss uh or it just it just sounds like like a boss a boss name yeah no we're going to we're going to have to we're going to have a dread Pirate dstro no I didn't say that oh shoot I'm wondering if there are any plans on iterating on the thrust power of the maneuvering thrusters I miss the sliding about and dislike that there's a magic button that allows me to turn on a dime instantly I miss the old concept of being able to rotate the ship and then use the main Thruster to truly affect a quick Vector change there are definitely some changes coming to uh thrusters maneuvering thrusters uh ifcs all all

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    these things I mean constant flux anyway that's just kind of a given at this point but those things in particular are are being looked at um bring them more in line with uh with with the way that our our component system is shaping up um now that we've started actually getting it out into into players hands and seeing players swapping around uh the weapons and and the load outs that happen um and reexamining our old systems for flight and looking at how are those how are those systems going to hold up to that sort of uh experimentation and Chaos utter chaos uh and one one of the the things that we're thinking of um is is to have maneuvering thrusters derive the majority of their

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    power from the main engine uh and so there'll be these thrust pipes that will will uh move it so that if if you lose your main engine uh normally in order to have any sort of uh controllable spacecraft you have to have fairly comparable uh thrust capacity on all axes uh forward and back and and otherwise you know you can if you you can get up to speed but good luck stopping um and and so to make up for that and we've we've made the maneuvering thrusters much larger than you would expect their thrust capacity to be uh based on looking at them uh and and a consequence of that is that when you

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    lose your engine you can still fly pretty well uh the I mean the Hornet The Hornet has uh four or is it is it is it can all six of those uh reach yeah there's six of them six that can that can push you forward uh which vastly outpaces their main engine you never needed the main engine um which is obviously a flaw and so we're looking to rectify that by making the main engine be where all this power is coming from you lose that main engine these maneuvering thrusters are going to only have the power that they naturally have and you're going to experience a lot more of this Driftin uh and we and the the the core of this question is about uh getting some of that you know 3D

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    Asteroids game play uh and and yeah we're we're looking at like we we set up our our flight capabilities and as we move forward I think I think honestly you're not going to have to worry too much because uh because of cargo um I think I think that cargo is going to very much much change change the way that this this feels and you're going to you're going to reexamine how you want dog fighters to fly relative to cargo ships because they're not they're not going to be the same and since now everything is actually adding Mass to your ship right it's it's really going to matter where where you're wanting that Center Center of balance right so very much like tuning your car yeah so if you're actually going to be placing

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    your your heavy cargo uh setups on the one side and we're also going to be setting up like ammo boxes to contain the actual physical represent well not with the the actual individual bullets but the weight in volume uh is going to be represented so if you're actually storing all that ammo and you're you're heavily weighting that to one side so let's say a hornet you're putting uh like you're Gatling gun on the right wing and then maybe you know a repeater on the left wing well that's going to throw you off right so that that's something that's definitely needing needing to be considered especially when you're flying with this yeah yeah uh and and symmetry symmetry is going to matter because these these engines create so much torque that uh I

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    mean that's that's actually a an issue that we're seeing now is the 350r there's a there's a bug uh in which the 350r loses an engine sometimes uh at which point it it accelerates terribly because that other engine has creates so much torque that it has to it has to operate at like 5% capacity to keep you from spinning out of control immediately mhm so so yeah ICS is saving you it's going to be it's going to be very important to keep track of these things MH um totally so Sam Corwin asks our final question of currently the weapons in each weapons group fire in a linked fashion s multaneously will there eventually be an option to unlink the weapon firing so

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    that one Cannon fires and then the other for example in X-Wing you could fire one two or all four of your lasers at a time basically this this comes down to your to your weapon grouping uh really if you wanted to actually set them up so they are in a particular like Chainfire fashion really like you uh Zane is looking at setting up uh the weapon grouping so that we can have more customization to it so with those particular setups you can if you wanted to have everything in all these different groups so then that way you can uh put on uh fire on weapon group one and two so that you can fire them at whatever interval that you wanted to right but the other one was uh with these particular weapon groupings that you might have a chain fire or uh like semi fire on each individual weapon

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    group so then that way you can have an alternate fire on weapon group one if you want to and then linked fire on weapon group 2 so these are things that are actually being looked at and expanded upon as we go uh but it's all about setting up the the usability uh for the weapon groups and we're we're we're looking at expanding on how you're actually going to be dealing with these weapons how you're going to be firing these particular weapons and then possible additions on top of that is like how how do I access uh my weapon or individually activate or deactivate certain uh aspects of my weapon or even components on my ship so then that way we have more control and even uh aspects that we're looking in into which is um add-ons and hardpoints on your weapons such as like additional

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    batteries uh additional like camera system so then that way if you wanted to you could switch over to that camera system it's it's not directly now linked to the ship we wanted to move that over to the item itself so in that way I can buy like an additional upgrade Say Hey I want this thing to have like this particular camera system here and then I wanted to link that into uh my firing group so that I can see this thing fire and Alternate fire and I can have some uh cool uh camera locations maybe I want to record this video and and post this and uh have people watch me as I actually use this uh uh kind of side on kind of camera on this thing as I as I destroy my target right so with the the the weapon groupings yes we're we're going to expand upon the the system and how a lot of your firing Mechanics Work and this also goes with uh with missiles too so there's actually going to be a

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    lot more done with the missiles going forward with uh especially linking to your avionics uh and this actually with the the weapon groupings we we might expand upon that based on uh what available uh avionics packages that you have actually in your ship so some of the military ones might have uh like more weapon groupings that you might be able to tie into uh and further uh setups with how you're actually going to be dealing with uh your weapons on on locking onto targets and and having um your your your ability to have them uh like the automated uh defense turrets actually track certain uh different targets as well that about sums it up guys so thanks a lot for your questions and I hope to see you guys really soon thank you