Star Citizen Live: Todd Talk - Alpha 3.6

3 May 201901:06:161,842 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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Hey everybody. Welcome to Star Citizen Live. Welcome to Welcome to my Todd Talk. I'm here with Todd Pappy. Todd, how are you doing? Hello sir. We don't often get to have you here in the studio. So why why are you here this week? You walked into the studio this week and I'm like, hey buddy. Like a dog who sees it's your owner for the first time and like, what are you doing here? I was sinking. So just sinking with Shawn, Josh, the design team, the writers. So it's it's always good to see everybody kind of face to face probably every 6 months or so. So Yeah, yeah, it's I get I get one trip to Europe every year and basically it's like a week in each studio and and I
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build it helps build an entire year worth of of video content off of those important things, those face-to-face things. Right, but it's I guess from my standpoint it's when you get new hires in, it's good for them to actually meet people face-to-face and understand their sensibilities you know, even um things that you normally pick up in conversation versus also in you know, exploration versus just in a meeting kind of thing. So There's a word for that, it's called exploration. exploration It's all the intent and and inflection and substance of a conversation that doesn't get passed through like text or something. Yeah, but but you I guess with us when when we do teams or when we talk on Skype or teams, so then
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you get a lot of that intent and you can explain what you mean there, but it's also just good to you know, be able to go out and have lunch with somebody or get to know their their life outside of work. Absolutely. All right. So, on today's show we are talking about Alpha 3.5 and Alpha 3.6. Alpha 3.5 of course is playable now on our live servers and 3.6 is the patch that we are currently month into developing here of our quarterly patch. We did put a thread up as we usually do collecting questions ahead of time. Unsurprisingly, most of them had to do with 3.6 as opposed to 3.5. So, that will definitely be a focus of today. You can also submit questions live in either the Twitch chat where we're broadcasting now. Just preface your question with the word question surrounded by brackets and
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or on Spectrum or bespoke communication platform on robertsspaceindustries.com. And that just putting that question before things helps cuz there's a lot of conversation that happen happens in both channels and it's a it's it's a helpful thing to for us to see the things that are meant for the show and pull it out from the conversation. Um so, right off the bat, we've got a question from from the live chat about VOIP. Mhm. About VOIP. It's It says quite frankly, it's in the game but few people use it or maybe it's or is that because it's not working properly yet? What's what's what's your take on this? Um I think from our standpoint there's always things to improve on it. Uh I think from my standpoint, I don't use it because I don't want to use it. You
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know, but I I don't use I don't use mics in other games as well. So, it's just my personal preference. I don't want people to hear me breathe or or even if I want to talk to somebody, I don't want to have to hold down a button. I would I just I prefer that I prefer chat, you know, and being able to do that. Now, you mentioned that I'm actually much the same way in a lot of games. If I'm playing in a party with people that I know in real life, I'll use I'll use a headset and what not. But when I when I when I personally play multiplayer games, if I'm in a group with a bunch of strangers and what and what not, I don't generally turn my mic on. I will not talk. Now, granted that with going back to just VOIP in its progress, we'll be maintaining this and improving it as we go. So, I I can't remember the specific issues that the guys are
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tackling right now, um but I know that there are some VOIP and VOIP things that we are working on for 3.6. Yeah. It's definitely a cool system for the for the for the folks in the situations that would that that that are inclined to use it. And stuff like that they the positional audio and stuff like that is really cool when you see it in effect. Stuff like that. So, yeah, but as with most things in Star Citizen, continuing to work on it, continuing to iterate on it. Yeah, there's just maintenance. Maintenance now. Um from the from the thread that we're collecting, one of the most voted up questions was shareable missions. Mhm. Uh will these will this be something in 3.6 or is this still something a little further out in 3.6? Right now, it's something a little bit further out. I think from from because this will be in fallen Tony's pillar. And if I
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remember correctly, there's still some some baseline stuff that they need to take care of first and then and there's a lot of edge cases that we need to think about how that's going to work. You bring up a good point with the pillars. Let's talk a little bit about that. You are of course the director of Star Citizen Live or Star Citizen Live Game Director or what not. But even with a with with such a high-level title like that, there this this game this persistent universe is so broad, it's so multifaceted. There are there are other folks like like Tony Zurovec and what not who work on different aspects and who have those aspects as their focus. Right. So, as we go through today, while you're you're certainly be able to talk to many aspects of Star Citizen, We're going to find some things that might be better suited for other guests, might be better suited for a Tony, might be better
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suited for a Shawn, or a Nick, or a Josh, or something like that. Well, that's always the case on on Star Citizen Life. So, we will absolutely do our best. Uh that's my way to lead into the most voted up question that came in through the through the through the week is actually one that we can't talk about today, and that was how would the new law system of black markets function in their first version. And the reason we can't really talk about today is twofold. One, that is like the one we just talked about in Tony's Pillar. So, it's one of those things where I can give very broad ideas of where we're going, but I can't definitively say this part will be in 3.6. Gotcha. Well, maybe we'll ask you for some broad things when I finish the disclaimer here. But, it's Tony's Pillar. Additionally, we have we're we're in the process of producing more
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in-depth segments on those for Inside Star Citizen. So, that would be a place where you'll hear about that stuff. What can you tell us on the highest level about the law system? So, I mean, right now, basically, we have the solar solar and then at that point time, we'll be able to say, "Okay, here is the law for the solar system." and then be able to have positive zones or negative zones which add more laws or take away laws based off of the overall arching solar system. Um and then from there, right now, we're just going through and and talking about the edge cases of things. So, if if you bump another ship, you know, is is that really an infraction? Or if it is an infraction,
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how much is it? Um and then from there, uh it's going into making sure that we have the ability to flag what we consider illicit goods because right now, there there was no concept of that. It was just there's goods, you know, whether that be widow or whether that be, you know, gold or any of our, you know, any of our commodities. So now it's it's being able to have those things flagged and then have the AI understand those flags and go to the appropriate responses. Right. So make making it so the AI can tell, you know, when when they encounter you whether you're carrying a cargo full cargo load cargo load full of tungsten or a cargo load full of widow. Their reactions to you will be different.
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So if they ask you to stop and they scan you or scanning is in progress kind of thing and if they find something then they will act accordingly. Uh let's look back at the live chat here. What else we got here? Um This this one might this one might obviously a a lot of folks are asking about our travel time. We are building while we're not necessarily building at 1:1 scale to to an actual size of a we're building much larger than most games would have attempted in the past. What kind of ideas what kind of discussions are we having about how to fill that time and make it compelling so it's not just people sitting in a ship watching star lines go by for 50 minutes. Well, I think it really it depends on also what type of ship you're in. So if you're in
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a multi-crew ship, you know, if you think about the Millennium Falcon when they're doing these long hyper jump they get up they do other things on the ship. They check on how it how something's working. They go and do other things. It's the same thing from a capital ship standpoint. What they never show is Luke going to Dagobah. Right. And so from a single-seater fighter and even from multi-crew ship what's we're talking about different possibilities. I've I've pitched an idea where um like along the way that you're going through probability volumes and for example uh you haven't done something for X amount of time. You haven't had a a story mission. You haven't had um
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a combat. You haven't had anything else and instead of it being like interdiction where it wholesale, you know, pulls you out, it's I'm getting an anomaly up there. Do you want to go investigate it? And so uh basically if you think of open world games, a lot of the a lot of the fun of it is is going from point A to point B and I think you from our standpoint, you know, quantum travel when we first were looking at it um obviously it was around uh Crusader and and basically around Alice and and and and the moons there. And then when you take it up to now you're traveling from Crusader to Hurston there needs to be a time a time it could be construed as penalty but it's it's basically a time travel that
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Yeah. that it it it takes a certain amount of time to do that. Um just because again if you're traveling with goods, we want you to basically have the ability to possibly be interdicted and and you know You want to build that level of suspense. If if it's too easy, if you can just zip zip zip between everything Yeah. then you know, there's no challenge. There's there's there's no there's no anxiety to it. There's there's no Right. Exactly. There's no danger to it. Uh I like the idea now you did say one of the things you're pitching so I would want to clarify that that's not an this isn't an official No, no. Well, it's it's basically something that Tony and I have talked about um and even Chris is aware of it but basically we're not planning on acting on it right now. I do like the idea if if I'm allowed to
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have a personal opinion on that of not just the interdictions that force you to come out, but by providing sensor data, the anomalies by enticements to come out. You know, where you have to make that call like, "Oh, that you know, I I've heard I've heard people find great things in these anomalies and these cool things like this. It's like, I really want to check that out, but I've got perishable goods or valuable goods. And if I pop out, you know, well, somebody can see me." I mean, it it it could be it could be a good Samaritan thing. It could be a trap. It could be, you know, all these different kind of I think we call them ECM missions, but they're they're basically just different missions that show up in front of you. And and sometimes we use them during interdiction, but it could be other, you know, aspects where you you're coming across and
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maybe there's some asteroids there and and you want to go and mine them or you want to go and and do something else or or scan them and then be able to sell that information. So, but that's that's where I would like us to go. If we did any sort of adjustments, you know, I I think Chris basically wants it to be like movies where you see the the hyperspace, you know, jumps. And then when you take like the the jump points, you know, then that's a different type of gameplay. That's more like white water rafting or something where it's it's it's it's a lot more active. Okay. Um one of the the questions from the thread was about harvestable entities spawning which we've talked about. Is that coming in 3.6? The tech the tech will be there. So, um basically
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uh Paul Brookhurst and Marco have been working on the tech um to allow us to do that. So, if you think of like trees or plants, you know, that are scattered around the universe. But, this will also be for for crates that we want to do or if we want to um do any sort of gems or any anything that's basically we want it to be able to randomly spawn um in different areas. So, the tech is there. Um now it's actually getting it so that's like we spawn it on the plant and we can pick it up and then from there it that also goes into personal inventory. Just because we want to make sure that you know, it you can carry it. You can like if you go and pick up an apple, you
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can carry that apple. and it doesn't just go into like a global inventory aspect. Right. All right. So, unlike the the UGFs, the underground facilities that are all, you know, designed and laid out and these are areas around the moons that would that would just that would be collection of entities that can be collected. It it it it really allows us to spawn anything. Like if if we wanted to do a a deeper nested object container, so like a a derelict, we could spawn a derelict. I mean, we need to do a little bit of work, but but basically for our our single object containers um or our like plants or gems or or other very quick easy things that we can pick
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up, we can do that. But if it's if it's more like a a nested object container, that will come on a little bit later. But we need to see how this base works first, and that's what we're going to be working towards on on 3.6 or sorry, we'll be working towards it on 3.6 as well as 3.7. Um so, and then once we have something internally that we we feel good with, then that's when we'll we'll go wide with it. Okay. Yeah, it it's it's a common misconception that when you don't see something on the road map that it maybe it's something that's not being worked on and whatever. The road map is a is a collection of anticipated release dates, not a a a and accounting of everything that's being worked on. Oh, yeah. No, no. In fact, you from an AI standpoint, you know, we put up like one for FPS, one for ships,
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one for social, but there's a whole lot more that happens, you know, in there. So, but uh basically to to make sure that these things the team feels comfortable with in in making sure that, you know, if priorities change within the company and what we're talking about it would be, let's say, uh we're working on something towards an AI. Okay, but we need to do some optimizations or we need to do some other things that um basically pop up in just normal development of oh, we need to do this real quick. What's on the road map are things that we feel comfortable with enough saying, yeah, we feel like this is locked in for that. Um you mentioned priority. I want I want to talk about that.
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Often times in questions when we do these things that the word priority comes up. Why isn't this a priority? Why isn't that a priority? And I think there's a misperception that priority is equates to something that's going to be released next. It's It's like some some like server meshing for our server side OCS. Let's talk about that. Server side OCS or even server meshing. Because that's that doesn't have a bubble on the 3.6 road map or the 3.7 road map, people think some people may assume it's not a priority. Oh, no, no. We We We've We've guys allocated to that right now. And in fact, you know, if we have our feature team hubs, um basically key guys on those feature teams have been pulled to work on server basically server side OCS because of the tech that is needed for it in order to
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get it working. They They need to lay the foundation for those things. The other thing is that, you know, we have things that's are not are on the road map that might have a lead time of, let's say two quarters. Um and then there's also things that we don't have on the road map that are you know, we like to surprise um and then also it's just uh you know, we feel like we'll let this one work and without the pressure of it has to go on the road map right right in right there kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, you basically said what I what I what I was hoping you would say. Priority doesn't doesn't mean this thing is coming out next. It it's it it it's it's being worked on. It's continuing to be worked on. It means it's it's it's getting the resources that's necessary
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to do it, but it may be a task. It could be a high priority and still be a task that takes 6 months to complete, 9 months to complete, 12 months to complete. Making something a priority doesn't suddenly make something capable of being finished in 3 months. Yeah. That's not how priority works in game development. No, it and and for example, like take OCS for example. Mhm. I mean Steve was kind of the Steve Humphries was the main backbone for that, but there were other guys that were also heavily involved and their priority, you know, could have been working on feature or it was supporting server-side OCS. Mhm. And so there was a lot of tech and a lot of coders that went into that and you know, worked towards those things
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I think for Chris Chris likes a lot of balls in the air and he likes to make sure that, you know, these things are being pushed forward. Um and so it it really is some things move forward at a snail's pace. Some things move forward very very rapidly. Yeah, when you have a team of over 500 people around the world, yeah, it's important to keep them all engaged and all working on something and not everybody has the expertise to work on server-side No, no, no, I I mean if I think if I no, no, no. I think if I could have day, but it just it didn't work out that way. Uh let's talk about the shield effect. One of the questions that came in it just now asks if the new shield shield tech
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effect will the new shield tech will affect the size of the bubble around our ships. Uh well from what I've seen and maybe it's adjusted, but from what I've seen it was very sleek and form-fitting versus the bubble effect and uh in reality the way that we did our hit collision and stuff like that was it was actually the surface of the the ship. Um so this will mimic that much closer. And we we've we've done a we've done a quite a few iterations on shield tech over over the course of our development, you know, trying to with different styles and and different approaches that over the years. It's been one of the more interesting things to to see develop over the course cuz it's
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that and the damage states themselves we attempted several different forms of damage states, you know, early on, but it's such an important aspect of combat Yeah, feedback in combat and stuff like that and you know, you you try a thing. This is game development. It's not you know, game just construction. You try a thing, you see how it works. And then if it works great and it works how you want it, awesome and then you move on. And sometimes you try a thing and it goes that's not really what we want to do and you you pull it back and you I think it's also just there's things okay, this is something we could do 2 years ago. Now that we have different aspects of the engine in place and um also the the graphics team have adjusted in the way that we do our ships have adjusted. You know, there's there's things that we've done in the past where
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like, okay, we need to go in and update this. Uh one of the questions from the live chat at is asking about the the an odd film grain that was added to the game 3.5. Okay. Uh they guess Yeah, why why was that added? Is was that something for an artist? Would you would you think that there might be a way to for players to disable it? What are they talking about the film grains? I haven't noticed the film grains. um basically with our with our RTTs, so our renders to textures, our com calls, our those types of things. So, whether that be um when things pop up um and uh so if you get a coms call and pops up, okay, well we want to be able to have something when it actually spawns, you know, so it doesn't feel like it it comes out of
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nowhere, something when it despawns, um and then be able to make sure that when we're doing things, uh let's say you're inside the coil or you're inside something that is very disruptive, then you get the that kind of spattered um look, you know, that happens. So, it it's and from our even from our UI development, like we we have things that we would consider low-tech versus some things that would be considered high-tech um or alien. So, it's just figuring out and and from an art standpoint, what feels right for these things. And so, the first um the first thing that we're working on is is basically just creating those gold standards for the coms calls. Um if so, the the lighting that happens with the pilot, the RTT, how things come in,
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making sure that the um right now uh that the AI will take um GeForce reactions in the past they haven't There were There had been no need for them, but now, you know, when you're in a coms call with somebody um and then they're flying, you know, you want that kind of movements. And so, we have the face animation and then we need to see what it looks like later on top of their their body. Uh chat's talking about how some people are noticing the film grain across the board in the game. Like it's it's not to the it's not just to the RTT stuff. They're actually noticing it in the game play. Now, I haven't seen it, that's why I wasn't I I haven't seen it either, so um basically, if Tyler sends comments to Tyler or send comments to Bear and in particular like a video grab of it and we'll look into it cuz I
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I I don't know what it is. Sure. All right. Uh let's see. What else we got? There was another cool question here. Um live chat's on fire today. Mission payouts and general income. Uh what are your thoughts on that? Are are are missions paying out enough? Are we paying Are they paying out? No, we know we need to adjust do adjustments and in particular um we're looking at some some tech today um that's being worked on to to get better ideas of how we do these things um and then also we know in particular right now one of the comments regarding player feedback was a lot of times, okay, hey, I'm at
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Delamar and then I have to travel to Hurston and then I have to travel, you know, back to Olisar to complete the mission. Right. And um versus it being kind of encompassed around those areas, so we cut down on QT times, but then it we also need to adjust mission payouts and um that to me is just a kind of constant balance thing that that we will be going through and doing. Same with the um same with uh the items and how much they cost and how they work. That's one of the great benefits of of the way our development is working, you know, having a live environment in the middle of our development. We're not forced to figure those things out and commit to them early on. We can put a version out there and let our backers themselves tell us, you know, Well, in in an ideal world, what I want
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to be able to do is get that so that we can just hot fix it. So, in particular for mission payouts, it right now I believe it's done at sub-sumption and it's being done for, you know, basically kind of baked into the the sub-sumption nodes for that versus I would prefer to be on the the server so then we can do hot fixes. Hm, some about player HUDs. One of the questions that came in in the end of the thread said, "Will player HUDs continue to be attached to helmets?" This person remembers seeing an old lore post that said something about MobiGlass being connected to contact lens displays. So, we actually have five I want to say five or seven different layers. one of layers is basically when you don't have your helmet on, you you just
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wake up and that would be considered contact lens. And so, you'll see a different HUD layout associated with that. Another HUD layout would be when you put on a helmet and then that contact lens goes away or the information is adjusted accordingly. Um another thing would be like when you actually get into a ship and how the visor brings up different things, you know, in particular like your your target information. Um and then from there it'd be any other casting or or when you we talk about MobiGlass or those types of things, those those would be kind of another layer. So, from our standpoints, um we are actually doing passes on this right now saying, "Okay, what is relevant?" And in particular, um what is relevant from a FPS
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standpoint as well as when you're sitting down in a ship, what what relevant associated with that. So, for example, we're we have widgets and or what we consider widgets and and we're working on cleaning that stuff. So, it it moves moves in and out, but for example, if you're sitting there in a ship and you get shot, none of your you don't know that you're getting damaged. You know, there's no health associated with that besides, you know, just effects of you bleeding out. versus like if you take your helmet off right now, you you only have to do you have to do chat via mobi glass, which we're fixing, by the way. Um so, that would be on all the time. And then if you think about going into, you know, third-person camera and stuff like
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that, any HUD associated with that, then that's yeah. Which is entirely Exactly. All right. So, if I if I understand Sandy correctly, it almost kind of sounds like the way Bluetooth devices pair with each other. Yeah. In the wise. So, when you wake up, there will be some level of HUD available to you on your contact lens. Correct. I yeah, or or implants is 2948 49 at this point, whatever. Whether it's a lens or an implant or whatever. So, your player character without a helmet will have some aspect of HUD. Yes. And then when you put the helmet on, that pairs with either the contact lens or the implant or whatever, and then they go, "Okay, well, we don't need this on this level. Let's just here on this level." Well, and yeah, and then it also depends on the type of helmet you put on. So, for example, if it's combat helmet, then that would give you information on, let's say, your weapons. Um versus if
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it's an explorer helmet, maybe it gives you information on temperature or atmosphere or things that would be relevant towards that. Um that career. So, that's the way that we'd be kind of I don't want to say hard deeming these, but that's in essence kind of what it is. It's pushing these things towards being combat or utilitarian. Got you. And then when you get in your ship, if if because some ships have hard display, some ships have holographic displays, stuff like that. And then of course it pairs there, too. So, now you got three levels of potential UI and it's got to balance. That's the difficult part. So, I mean right now Simon and Rich and I think John Crew, John Dowdly are going through um saying, "Okay, like we we just bring up all the HUD and we bring up FPS, we bring up ship and
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then we overlay it and we make sure that every everything kind of has a safe zone and then a a safe spot and place to live. And then from there, you start talking about manufacturers, you start you start talking about uh how these things need to come in and out and what's important, what's really important to to us or and even to the players. Yeah, it's it's cool that the the UI team the UI work applies to every aspect of Star Citizen. Like I'm I'm trying to think if there's any aspect of Star Citizen that the UI team doesn't have to have some input, some And and to I guess from our standpoint, we we have everything implemented right now and it's not sexy. It's what we consider functional. And from a UI standpoint, a lot of times it's it's it's clunky as well. Um and part of that is just the iteration. Uh
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and then from there, now we're going through and fixing things and that that to me is where we can actually start making it sexy. We can see, "Okay, we tried this on the MFDs, it didn't work. You know, it's very hard to read, very hard to use. You got to zoom in on something and doesn't give you the pertinent information, what you need right then and there." And so, it's us looking at the MFDs saying, "Okay, how can we fix these?" Um or even uh basically the information that's your ship versus the target ship. Okay, what you know, when you're scanning, what is the relevant information there? So, it's it's us working through those and just cleaning a lot all of that stuff up. I imagine there I'm thinking about the um the the interesting outlier scenarios like when you're panicked and rushed to get into
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your ship and you you don't have a helmet on and stuff and and where where the MFDs that are in the ship suddenly become way more important because you don't have the Well, in some helmet aspect. I mean, again, from like a Connie standpoint, you know, we want you basically sitting in like a normal flight suit or something like that for versus You don't want everybody in a big bulky armor suit sitting in a Connie. Yeah. Got you. Um all right. Uh there was a question that came in the trying to find it. Uh somebody asked if any of if there's any any news on being able to spawn in different locations instead of Port Olisar every time. Uh you can spawn in different locations. You just have to travel to that location and land, you know, correctly. You have to, you know, make make make a successful landing on on a pad and your spawn location changes to Lorville or to
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uh Area 18. or Area 18 or or GrimHEX or Yeah. So, I so I'm assuming they're asking about the default like when the when the player first starts. they're talking about the initial spawn I mean, the plan for us regarding like new users and all these things would be they choose that initial spawn spot and then at that point in time, you know, that's that's their home base and then from there they go out and they rent different areas. So, like you know, my home base is in in Germany, but whenever I come here or to Austin, then I'm staying in a hotel, you know, and that that would be kind of the idea behind it. But, um right now I I think for us it's it's basically it's it's working
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okay right now. It's working well enough for us to focus on other issues and and then once we actually get, you know, some of our new user experience in a better spot, then that's when we start talking about So so something we're looking at for the future, being able to choose your initial spawn stuff, but not a 360 No. thing. Okay. from the thread uh question a player a player asked about player carryables 2.0. Uh basically, what does player carryables 2.0 mean? It's It's a It's a pretty long question, but essentially what they're asking is what is player carryables 2.0? I This This is a pillar under Shawn, but as far as I know, it's it's basically cleaning up some of that code, cleaning up how we pick things up, and then also
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kind of expanding a little bit. Um and then from there, uh like in the future, that that's going to be starting to get into uh what we consider local inventory, that kind of stuff. Okay. Yeah, uh going through the the question in their own words, uh one of the things that they pointed out was the ability to put on or remove a helmet without having to go in through your your PMA. So that goes into like personal inner thought in the way that we want um or Chris Chris really wants it so that uh the idea of you know, behind like radial menus or those types of things where you you'd have, okay, I want to dance or I want to take off my helmet, I want to pull a weapon, I want to interact with this door.
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Um all of these things would be you know, in these person in this personal inner thought menu, and we have the code to done, but we don't have the UI aspects of it done. Um so that is uh on the backlog and for them to do, um but right now it's they're going through and they're fixing the ship HUDs and and focusing on that. Okay. Uh one of the things on that 360 roadmap is weapon attachments. Mhm. Uh what what's that entail? So um, from weapons we consider that we have four different attachment spots. Sights, barrel. Yeah, so sights, barrel, under barrel, and magazines. Okay. And then from there it'd be extended magazines or basically any sort of grip um
00:34:51
you know, vertical or angled um and then it reducing uh basically recoil or or whatever other parameters we wanted to adjust. Um then barrel would be compensator or silencer and then sights obviously um iron sights versus red dot versus holo versus sniper scope kind of thing. Right, so it's customization for FPS weapons. Yep. Uh, how's that come? In progress. I've yet to see it functioning the way that we can right now well, here's the thing. We could always go through and and from a design standpoint like an XML standpoint like we could build the weapons with those those things there. It just wasn't available from player
00:35:39
standpoint. And so when you start doing uh let's say you have a sniper scope on something and you change it to iron sights. Well, we need to move the gun around. So, we need to make sure that everything still lines up perfectly with the center of the screen um when you're in ADS. So, it's working through those issues and and doing it and live. I imagine things like the uh grip changes would would affect that quite a bit because you know, we we we we we don't fake you know, where the weapon is and so if we change the wea- the weapon grip and it's going to come lower or higher. it really is the left hand. So, the left hand would So, instead of it being like this then the left hand would be like this or angled. Fine. next question about the road map comes in ship rentals. Uh, we we see a we see a
00:36:27
an option for ship rentals in 3.6. We've been talking about ship rentals since CitizenCon Yeah. last year. What's the scope of this in 3.6? Uh this is to allow players to go try out new ships. You know, and without going and purchasing them with UEC. So, this would be We haven't decided on how many days, meaning if it's a one-day, three-day, seven-day rental. I mean, we want to be able to give those different options. Um but then there's also the the figuring out how the edge cases, meaning let's say you rent a seven-day you do a seven-day rental. Okay, is it seven seven days in the real world or is it seven days in the game world? And then also what
00:37:14
happens if you have cargo on that and then it it it runs out, like all these kind of edge cases that we're working through. Um but it really is just to allow players try try different things, you know, maybe somebody wants to try out a Reclaimer and before they actually save up to to purchase one with a UEC. Now G, I've seen some folks uh wonder if that means renting ships out their ships out to other players and stuff like that. No, it's It's about taking them from the kiosk. Like the rental Exactly. Okay, cool. Next question that came in through Uh wow, I'm having some dialogue issues today. Next question that came in through the thread multi-tool. Mhm. Anything new for the multi-tool in 3.6? I Well, getting the attachments working. So,
00:38:03
the idea behind a multi-tool is is basically just a I want to cut, I want to weld, I want to be able to possibly mine, I want to be able to possibly salvage. So, it's it's getting those things working and then from there it's making sure that the gameplay systems um are built in so that we can actually have that work. Um, right now, uh, Thorsten and JJ are really focused on the weapon attachments. And then, just because that hits everything. And then, from there, we'll go into multi-tool a little bit later. When you say JJ, you mean Johnny Lesavoy's name? Our JJ here. Yes, JJ. Hi, JJ. Uh, question in the from the live chat about the mission system. Uh, any Is anything being done to improve the mission
00:38:51
system? Specifically, the one when they point out here, the ability to see exactly where a mission takes place prior to accepting it. We've talked about it, you know, showing up on star map, kind of seeing roughly where you need to go, uh, in you know, the best information of saying, we think it's around this area. Um, I think us also trying to fix, you know, showing where you're at, you know, what are where you're at, what kind of information can we show in the start basically in the mission selector, um, what's what kind of things you need. So, I mean, there's so many different aspects of Like filters almost. Well, like okay, do you need a a ship that can
00:39:40
transport cargo with this? Is this a multi Do you need multiple players for this mission kind of thing? Um, this is stuff that we've talked about in the past. Uh, but that is one of the issues that we have in the back of our mind when we're working on these things. Mhm. Uh, let's talk about misfires. Uh, misfires are on the the road map for 3.6. Uh, the question that came in says, uh, "How degraded will our ship items need to be before they start to misfire?" And, uh, let's just start there. What what What are we thinking? Is this Is this a Is Is Is this a thing? I mean, it's hard to I know it's hard to like put an actual quantifiable number on it. let's Let's Let's say you start getting minor misfires at 50%. Okay. And if you keep on using it, then maybe that increases into what would can be considered a medium misfire. And then that include
00:40:28
then from there that could cascade into a high misfire. Um whether that happens at 50%, 70%, 30%, that to me might depend on the quality level of the item. Mhm. Um as well as uh the user interface and making sure that we actually give the player proper proper feedback, you know, on it. So know why it's happening. They know what it is. Yeah, exactly. So showing that, you know, if a misfire happens, then you know, it's brought to your attention right away uh um either through uh annunciate annunciator panel, through an MFD, or just straight up, you know, in the center of the screen on the HUD. Uh what about repair options? Like when you when you notice something starting to misfire and you you see a component degrading, uh do we just have to wait
00:41:18
until that component dies and then replace it or So I mean, the equivalent would be Let's say without completely replacing a part, you can never fix it to 100%. you know, is it's that when you repair it maybe it goes to 99 or it goes to 90 um These are things that we've been talking about like we we just we don't know yet. We we do want some concept of you know, if if you abuse it, then you know, you're not going to be able to repair it to 100% or you won't be able to repair it to
00:42:06
maybe if you if you've had a lot of misfires, then maybe you can only get to 75% versus if you have if you've only had one or two misfires then you can get it back to 99. These These are all If you run it into the ground before you try to repair it's you're going to have a hard time. And it's fine. Yeah, basically. And you know it mirrors the real world but like you have factory refurbished items that they don't sell for they don't sell for the full market value or anything because even even though it was sent back to the original factory that made it and they do a refurbishment they're still like yeah it's good it's ready to go but we're we're not charging you full price on it because they're not quite as willing to and even with that like we will be some of our stores will be like refurbished items not brand new items but then it would it would be it's
00:42:55
good enough for right now kind of thing. Gotcha. So so if you're if you're if you haven't managed your money well you're short on cash you need to make some money right now and your ship won't fly because it's got a a bad cooler you can't afford to you know spend for the a full replacement cooler you buy a refurbished one. Correct. Get your ship up and running get going. You know how much I want a junker ship? Like I've I've from the day I started here I've wanted a junker ship just a an old jalopy you know not anything that you can ever pledge for anything something that just lives inside the universe that's just a smoke coming out the back. Like what we were drawing earlier? Yeah like what like what I was drawing earlier. You know something that something that just gets you from A to B and you wouldn't necessarily want anybody to ever see you flying it but you but you're trapped you're in a bind you need
00:43:43
something for right now you need something that's good enough for right now. You know a jalopy ship. You can call it the jalopy. You can call it the disco if you want I'm good. But I I I've been a proponent for for that just an all around you go to a used car lot and like just give me the Ford Pinto. Let me let me get back home. question about the the the the quantum travel effects. Right now when they when folks travel the quantum uh the ship interiors and exteriors vibrate graphically. Are are is is that something you're happy with? Is that something we want to continue with? Something we might tweak later on? We're we'll be focusing on combat ex- or sorry, not combat experience. We will be focusing on combat experience, but it's also um the cockpit experience. So, how um
00:44:32
how much power is drawn with when you go into QT, uh basically what happens to the different light states, um also the the feel of that movement, um how I I mean, like right now when when you get interdicted, there there's a definite kind of slam on the brakes mhm feel to it. I might think that it can be improved. It was it was very first pass. Um when we do the cockpit experience and then, you know, get the smoke effects and and other things sparking in the cop- cockpit, like that's something we would be one of the states we'd look at just because now that we have these different kind of bespoke states, meaning we're in quantum or we're in we're we're flying or um
00:45:23
basically uh this thing is being interdicted, you know, these are kind of what we consider or scanning or mining, these would be considered kind of bespoke states that we switch between. Um so, making sure that those things work the the cockpit experience works across all of those. Mhm. There's also might be room to explore, you know, we have all these different components, all these different quali- qualities of components and grades of components and stuff and and even uh uh types, industrial and and grades, things like that. You know, maybe you know, certain quantum drives have different effects or achieve the same goal through through different means or slightly different means or one's a smoother ride with less visual distortion or
00:46:10
something like that. I I'm spitballing here. This isn't This isn't approved design or anything. I'm just I'm What Todd was saying was making me think about about ways to What ways we might be able to change that or affect that later with just different components. safe zones, no-fly zones. They They used to term safe zones, but we call them no-fly zones. Uh this person just freaked No, no. Well, I guess to me there's safe zones which are The green zones. Green zones. Green zones, we call them. Okay. So, no matter what, no-fly zones or what we would consider restricted areas will be there um just because of griefing purposes so on and so forth. So, um now as far as green zones and basically what they're asking. Yeah. Can Can I pull my weapon or can I not pull my
00:46:57
weapon? Um and I'm sure that this has do with law and basically the goal for us is yes, to be removing green zones in the future. Now, in order to get there, I think that basically you need to have the law in place. And then you also need to have security of some type in place. So, whether that be automated turrets within the areas or some sort of punishment if that happens. so, basically if one guy starts shooting, then this is what happens to you and you get knocked out or you get, you know, killed and you get punished. So, that's the part that we need first is law and then it's basically the subset of that would be security and
00:47:46
then then at that point in time, I think we start playing around with removing it and and seeing what it really feels like. Yeah, I know Chris is a a big proponent of of real world of of intrinsic uh, uh, trying to think of the word I'm I'm looking for, but things that are as they should be in in the in the universe if it were live. And a magical zone that prevents you from pulling your gun out of your holster, you know, isn't isn't I indicative of of what we want to do. No. No, but I guess at the same time you you want to know that certain areas are safe. So, when you go into ArcCorp or you go into these areas you know, that there is there's security areas. So, the idea would be that you
00:48:33
need to holster your weapon or you need to basically drop off your weapon there so that you're not you're not bringing in something that somebody else can. Yeah, I I find that much more diegetic there. You know, you hit a customs thing it's like, no, no, you don't get to go into ArcCorp. You don't get to go to the in the area 18 with your weapons. You know, just like the Old West when you had to take your your iron rod when you enter the town, you know. You stow your things in a in a cubby and get them back when you leave. And and now everybody is in area 18 safe because they're they're not unarmed. Correct. In that regard. And that's the And that's that's the direction that we want to go. And then obviously from there, if somebody does somehow smuggle something in that maybe we don't know about or or um, or we open it up somehow there are ramifications in place
00:49:22
almost like the Hurston security right And where they pop out and and They're a little aggressive. Yes. We we we know we need to fix that. I I I I will admit I don't get to play the game as much as as I want to, but the I went I went to when we're prepping for the other thing for for the stream the other week, I went to Hurston and I was not I had I had a greeting I I was unexpected. I was it was very vicious. Um, that was that was green zones, but and I mistake them for no fly zones, but let's talk about no fly zones. Because no fly zones are not going away. They're they're a thing that exists in the in the world today. You can't fly any ship you want over over the White House. You can't fly any any plane you want over downtown Los Angeles. Whatever. This this is a real
00:50:11
world diegetic thing that exists today and 940 years from now when everybody has the equivalent of Assassin's and what it would only it would only make sense that this improves and continues. So, the way that we have it right now, um, it's a first pass, meaning we have the ability to to section off certain areas and then from there we also have the ability to have the IFCS force you out. Um, the next step from that is basically creating a dome, saying, "All right, I want to land here." And then us opening up spline paths down to where you land. Um, and then from there if you get off that spline, you know, because it what it will be is basically an AR showing
00:50:59
you how you get to what your what landing zone you need to go to, whether that be a hangar or a landing pad kind of thing. Um, once you actually get off that path and you start going to the extent, then IFCS will take take it over again. So, it basically is making sure that we don't get people dive bombing or or basically griefing other players. Yeah, we we talked about uh obviously you can't just fly over anywhere in in downtown Los Angeles that you want. ArcCorp is an entire planet covered in downtown Los Angeles extent. Well, and also, I mean, the way that we build things, um, you know, from from a lore standpoint, yes, that's that's why we have our certain hard deck associated with with with ArcCorp. Um, it's also just the way
00:51:48
that we build that you know, from from a design stand or from an art standpoint, the way that we build the palms and everything, you know, associated with building a city planet, you know, there we have to I don't want to say cheat, but we need to we have our our our working pipeline for that and sometimes maybe it doesn't hold up as well as this Sahara or something like that, but it's not built that way, you know, it's built differently. So, so there are gameplay reasons, you know, from a development standpoint of also why we don't want them landing, you know, in ArcCorp in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, like flying a plane in the middle of nowhere 18. Correct. before I move on from it, uh
00:52:38
no fly zones, are there anything you'd like to change? Anything Where do you Where do we want no fly zones to to go? In the future. What What are we This is Well, it's difference between plans and what you want. I I mean if for me, I I want to finish the initial design. So, basically, you know, in our development, a lot of times we do things via iteration and then we say, "Okay, it's good enough for right now." Um we haven't finished the the initial full design of it. So, I'd rather finish the initial full design, get some of the the visual aspects out of there, make sure that we are giving proper information regarding UI, getting the getting the AR pass working the way that we want them to work, getting the ATC
00:53:25
and basically the people interacting with you, the voices associated with that, getting all of that stuff polished. Right now, it's not very polished. It's it's I wouldn't consider it polished at all. It's it's it's basically, let's slam it all in, let's start seeing what's working, what's not working, and then do adjustments from there. So, I'd I'd rather us finish off all of that stuff first and then be able to really start taking a look at and say, "Okay, was the initial design, um now that we have all these things in place, was that good enough or do we need to adjust, you know, how this feels getting in?" I like that. It's obviously no-fly zones are are have been a hot topic since they were introduced being It's it it's I mean, we we were when I mentioned it, the chat lit up with with questions. So, so I wanted to spend a little extra
00:54:13
time, you know, getting your thoughts on and where we're going and uh yeah, I I I'm interested in at least for me anyway, I'm interested in seeing the full complete Yeah, I I guess from there, you know, where we really see no-fly zones would be around major landing zones, you know, towns and those types of things. I don't think we'll have those or um it you know, kind of any any sort of outposts. I I don't see us doing it on space stations or anything like that. It really is just kind of these bespoke landing zones and obviously also when you start thinking about things that are are like Levski Levski, it doesn't need it because it's not open, you know, we really needed it once once we built Lorville and then obviously with our
00:55:02
area team being open as well, then you know, it's we just we need it in order to make sure that the players there don't get some random shots, you know, or some random missile um because the gameplay experience that we want for that area. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, that that's really what it's meant for, you know, whether we look at ArcCorp and we say, "Okay, the hard deck right now is 300 m." Um and we we take that down to let's say 100 m, that's something that we can take a look at and and and do. And that was me opening the drink. Very slowly. Yes. All right, we are almost out of time, so let's do some let's let's let's do some rocket questions here to just see if we can get a couple more of these in before we have to let you go. We talked about the customs that the
00:55:51
idea that you could check in your your guns that we see custom stations in in areas like Area 18. Uh are customs going to be functional in 3.6? No. Okay. Uh will there be any competitive PvP missions in 3.6? Um no. The way that we build our missions are are basically we would consider them like ecosystems. Um so if let's say you need to go to a down satellite, I need to go to that same down satellite. So that's the way we pull players together versus um me saying uh in the future it might be that there's a bounty on you and then I need to go and get that bounty, but right now you know, but it could be that you log off. I you know, these are the edge cases that we need to talk about and and figure
00:56:39
out. So we prefer to kind of pull players together in different ways. Uh will it be possible to have a ship that was stored in an outpost relocated to a place where it can be retrieved uh with the cargo intact? No. Okay. And the reason for that is because then people shortcut. So cheat. All right. Uh let's see. Uh Right now the degradation of ship systems don't really have any noticeable effect gameplay-wise. Uh is that something we can expect improvements on? That's missile like the misfire aspects that we're we're working towards and and making sure that's uh you can actually repair those things. Okay. Uh automated landing This one might have come from me. It didn't though. Automated landing currently forces you to fly down to the docking ports before you're able to to activate. Are there
00:57:28
any plans to increase the distance that this feature can be activated allowing for easier landing in some of these tight tighter situations. We haven't talked about it internally, but to me I I would I would have to see if we can try it out and see what it looks like and see how it feels. Yeah, when when when we were playing we were playing ArcCorp on last week's last week's show when we were arriving there before the start of the show for me personally and it just speaking as a player when I was approaching ArcCorp and I I called the ATC and I got the the clearance and when I and I saw the pad that they wanted to there was a point where I thought like I should be close enough to trigger the thing and it kept wanting me to get closer and I was getting closer and I'm like can I not trigger it now and it kept getting kept getting closer and closer for me
00:58:15
personally. No, no, I I I I I I I I I I I It seemed like it should be triggerable farther away than it was. Basically we've we've adjusted some of the the way we do things internally like a a lot of times um like when we're doing releases we get a lot of bugs that are criticals and and and um blockers and those get the love. Um we've created like a gameplay review aspect and that to me would be under that gameplay review. So if there's any QA um we can we can talk about that and we can get that entered in just to talk about it and and see see what kind of adjustments we can do. Uh and last uh before we let you go uh what player feedback do you believe has been the most pressing thing from 3.5 that still needs work?
00:59:02
Like obviously there's still a lot of things but Combat. I mean combat in general whether that be the way that convergence works um missiles I I mean there's it's not just one thing. It's usually a lot of things and in particular with combat it could be that um basically servers in a bad state um the way that we're doing our um um interpolation um is is off. Um in some cases we've also had some ships that have invulnerable spots um that we uh found out and are fixing. And then um even just the convergence or the way that the pips work, you know? And so there's a lot of things that go into play like when we start talking about combat. But right now the biggest the
00:59:51
biggest kind of overarching one is combat um just because I think that's what people use the most. And then there's other things like hey, I put my box down and then all of a sudden I lost my box or it didn't work on the cargo grid or So there's Bear and I and um production basically do a sync and we go through and we talk about these these things with Chris or or myself or other game directors and go through and say you know, these are things that are the community have brought up or these are the highest voted issues and then we talk about it and we say, "Yep, you know, let's move that into development." or we know this needs another piece of text so let's hold on this but let's put it on our backlog. And so that's the way that we we deal with a lot of this feedback. But
01:00:38
you know, part of it is um re- reactionary after we go live and then there's other things that we know, you know, are are going to be an issue and we just try to work through those bugs as much as we possibly can. But then at the same time there's there's the release schedule and and when we talk about things whether it be 3.5 or 3.5.1 or those types of things. Um usually when we talk about these point patches a lot of times it's you get a lot of quality of life improvements on those. Um and then but like if you're dropping new things like IFCS or playable female characters or or ArcCorp, a lot of these features are coming in so hot um that they don't have the polish that they need. And so, that allows us to sweep through in subsequent releases or
01:01:28
in point releases to fix a lot of that stuff. Yeah, it's uh we talked about the advantages of running a live environment in the middle of your game development. There are also obviously challenges to running a live environment in the middle of your development. it's it's it's basically some of these teams have 6 weeks to build a feature, and then then they got 6 weeks to basically get it stable, get it um basically working the best that they possibly can, and then get it out to public, you know, based off our 3-month cycle when we start doing feature locks, and then there's content locks, and then there's okay, when we go to Evocati, you know, that's still roughly in an ideal world, that's 3 to 4 weeks before we go live. And then from there, there's there when we go to wave one, that's a whole different, you know, set where basically myself and other directors are are a
01:02:17
little bit more um hardcore on what we allow out. Um and then uh but if you're talking about 6 weeks for a feature, some things work well in that, some things don't. And then um it really feels like you're building a railroad track while the train's going. Yeah, but would would you would you change would would you trade it though? Would you trade the experience of being able to have this live environment in the middle of development, being able to have Evocati, being able to have our backer community right there testing things in intermediate stages, and giving you immediate feedback on this? Depends on the day. In all honesty, um after this stuff gets released, no. After I want to change a thing, uh obviously when we're trying to get it out, maybe. You know, there again, there are
01:03:05
positives and negatives for for, you know, the the other form of development, you know, that that I've done and everybody here has done in previously. And then obviously, this is we're we're off road. We're we're we're going, you know, on on a road that nobody knows and and um basically part of it is learning as you go and um I think uh us switching to obviously quarterly releases um from a team morale standpoint, from uh even I I think a community morale standpoint has been an absolutely positive thing and I and I I like this quick feedback. Um obviously, when we're starting to talk about other features and and when you're just trying to get things through there's these kind of hiccups that will
01:03:52
happen with the development um where things don't always go right and then you're like, "Okay, but I got to do release." And so, I need you to stop, you know, what you're working on for this feature because um the feature that you did before is bringing the frame rate down, whether it be the amount of AI or maybe um something is running at a a certain milliseconds that needs to be optimized. And so, there's it's basically just kind of juggling all these balls in the air. And so, sometimes, you know, as a somewhat OCD person, I just want to be able to focus and and be able to say, "Okay, you know, this is done." And then, all right, time to move on versus, you know, having all these things in parallel and trying to jump between everything and do context switching. Sometimes really is difficult, but I
01:04:41
mean, at the same time the opportunity that we have here, like, yeah, I want to change that part, but the way we do development sometimes, maybe. That's an honest answer, so. It is an honest answer. It is an honest answer. Thank you so much. Uh that's it. That's all all we got for Star Citizen Live today. Uh Todd, thank you so much uh for taking the time to be here. I know you've got a plane to catch going back to going back to Europe. Going back home. I won't see you again until the second half of this year. Yeah. Well, I Yeah, I don't know. um I figure I'll come out probably again the beginning of next year, but I don't know if I'll be out again before. Cuz Citizen Con being in somewhere. I don't know. You were blinking at me,
01:05:30
so. I stopped them. Yeah. Nick, I stopped them. Thank you. All right. That's Todd. That's me. This is Star Citizen Live. 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 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.

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