10 for the Chairman: Episode 61 (2015.07.27)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:03

   [Music] [Applause] hello everyone uh welcome to another episode of temp for the chairman it's my second episode this one's going to be uh shorter than the the last Mega epic we did um but hopefully there'll be some uh uh interesting answers for you guys in this one uh wanted to say thank you very much to uh the subscribers that uh make 10 for the chairman possible so in case you haven't watched this before this is uh where I take 10 questions from the subscribers uh and answer them to the best of my ability about the game and

2. 00:00:52

   what we're planning to do uh the subscribers are the the uh subset of the community that contribute money every month to enable us to do extra Community content cont this show around the verse U bug Smashers all these extra little video shows we do plus the jump Point magazine which is usually about 50 to 60 Pages along with behind the scenes information detail about how we build ships systems game design mechanics uh and um you know subscribers very much keep uh us the our ability to keep investing into uh greater uh Community interaction so thank you very very much uh for all that subscribers and speaking of back in some subscribers um uh while I was gone um obviously there was quite a few people that came by and visited the LA office uh but the group came by including with nigh Hawk here who left

3. 00:01:40

   these two rather uh nice presents which I was just unwrapping when we started this uh about aircraft which I quite like so that's the world's greatest aircraft I guess there would probably be some debates about who necessarily should be in here and who shouldn't be in here but there are some good ones like the Spitfire which is obviously a pretty good one I'm sure there's P-51 Mustang would also be in here at some point uh as we get there there's a uh wealth 190 lucky P38 Lightning which was actually the inspiration for the Vanguard um so very cool um so thank you for that and then the Skies of W uh World War II uh courage battle and victory in the air very nice thank you for these books I'm you know I think I've not made any secret of the fact that I'm a big uh uh military historian

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   uh so when I grew up I was making model tanks and model planes and all that sort of stuff and you know I have a rather large collection of Miniatures Napoleonic Miniatures I used to war game um so uh you know a lot of my love of military planes and all that sort of was obviously one of The Inspirations of wing commander and we're definitely carrying that through into Star Citizen and Squad 42 um so anyway enough of a pre- ramble um like I said thank you very much toight n Hawk for um uh these wonderful presents uh but let me get to the questions so the very first question uh comes from uh Fazil cowl so k u l who ask what's in the in-game banking structure going to be like not much has really been mentioned about it or I've missed it do

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   we get in-game statements how do you wi credits to other citizens dot dot dot um well well it's the future you don't need in-game statements I mean you'll have your IC balance as uh you know part of your um sort of characters uh mobiglass app so it will be definitely one of the um we probably branded under some uh some form of a you know future Bank in the star citiz and Universe um but you know you would be able to look up and see what your balances in credits and all that kind of stuff um so that would be your equivalent of ingame statements uh wiring credits to other citizens uh we uh are going to allow some level of transfer of money between players but it probably be regulated and limited like it would be in uh the real world here so you can't just bully nearly wre lots of

6. 00:04:08

   money to people without having documentation for that and you know there are things like wire fees and all the rest of stuff so uh we're going to um uh we haven't fully figured out uh the mechanics of uh players trading Cash between each other because we you know there are some ways that the system can be abused if people abused if people are trading or giving each other cash um uh and also the transfer of cash itself in the game system is going to be um based on sort of the reality of the system so uh it's not like you you instantly transfer uh an asset or money to someone and they instantly have it if they're on the other side of the Galaxy like for instance if I was going to uh trade one of my ships and it's an in-game ship um I would actually have to get my ship to the person I was giving it to or he

7. 00:04:56

   would have to come pick it up and uh we're hoping there'll be gameplay revolving around that where you know people will be transporting other people's ships or they'll take a job to fly someone's ship to to deliver it to the person that's buying it uh and so and on some levels uh I think uh cash and money transactions would be slightly the same so we have 100% uh like I said figured out all the mechanics of that but um we're going to try and sort of take some leads from what happens in uh the real world to sort of and also use that to help sort of uh create some gameplay so uh uh early days and I'm sure Tony zerik has quite a few uh ideas on that I mean he's a big um you know got one of his side jobs as he or not side jobs one of his side passions as he does he likes investing and day trading and all the rest stuff so uh he's actually one of

8. 00:05:44

   the reasons why he's really good at uh building the persistent universe and the economy there um okay next question comes from Moonraker who asked I'm wondering how the imminent release of Windows 10 will affect the community with regards to playing Arena Commander or um star Marine will we be able able to install win 10 and just roll and as we have or should we be waiting for some updates um it's early days yet so we're testing uh some Windows 10 stuff with our it departments I think we've got a couple of um issues that are sort of making us not want to roll it out to all our uh you know to our sort of Dev level um I think we may we have some that will be sitting on people's sort of laptops and desktops uh but we definitely will be sort of working to make sure that we're compatible for from on Windows 10 from the beginning so I'm

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   not aware of any major problems if someone upgrad the Windows 10 but don't hold me to that but that obviously is something that we uh will make sure won't be an issue um okay next question comes from Admiral shemen I think that's how it's pronounced I wondered how the implementation of virtual reality is coming forth now that cry engine is native support frus riff any progress or plans on this topic um well so we're uh uh you know there is some enhanced cry engine support and actually one of the key people that was working on that at krych is now actually part of our team in Frankfurt um and uh we're just sort of waiting to integrate um 37 and then we'll integrate 38 which are the two

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    most recent releases of the cry engine side of stuff uh it's always very complicated with us because we've modified the engine so much that it's not as simple as just getting it and putting it in in a day it takes actually quite a long time to integrate them properly um but those Integrations are sort of holding off for um us to sort of finish the star Marine work and uh the stuff that we're doing for gamescon so we're planning to do the sort of integration after gamescon and then it would be in one of the patches that would be sort of in the development branch that would then go into a release Branch so I think you could sort of look to using uh or seeing some of the results of the 37 integration into our code base probably towards the end uh of August I would guess or the beginning of September um but yes so we you know

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    we'll definitely take all the updates they've got for um virtual reality in uh cray engine and put it in uh we still want to do some specific custom stuff on our side uh and that's really a matter of sort of engineering time we're also waiting for some stuff to sort of settle I mean there's some pretty cool new stuff like the valve headset as well um so um that was sort of on our longer term road map but right now are really focused on um getting all the large world and the zone system working um uh you know the arena Commander 2.0 really wish is a multi crew and then sort of after that's where we sort of get back on to you know focusing on some other stuff um and virtual reality will be one of them um okay next question comes from nosto 1977 who says has cig ever considered adding a hunting profession to stares

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    and which would allow players to travel to Wilderness Landing zones and hunt dangerous alien beasts um well we uh that is very cool and it's it sounds a lot like uh um evolve um but uh and which was also built in candra by the way um so you know we've you know longer term we are planning on doing some exploration style stuff where we generate sort of patches of procedural planet that you can go and explore um so that's some of the R&D we're doing we're actually doing some of it um longer term in Frankfurt so that's some of the tasks that they're going to be working on after we've um got the sort of large World Zone stuff multi crew stuff going um and that would obviously be one of the things that you would do because you would essentially create these areas that you could explore where you could go maybe find some minerals or maybe find some alien artifacts or maybe there would be some

13. 00:09:43

    alien beasts that could attack you and you could you defend yourself or uh you know you could go and find them in specimens or even hunt them as is suggested here so that is actually something on a longer term will be kind of sort of a fun gameplay I mean our goal is to sort of build this world out and add the features as game is existing and and so there should be as I've said many times uh you know I want to have a very rich varied amount of gameplay so it's not just about um dog fighting in space or not just about hauling cargo between location A and B which is what you've normally seen in space games so we're really trying to embrace a whole bunch of different play eras and styles and so long term this would be definitely something that could be would be kind of a fun one and probably not too difficult to do because you know if you you play Far Cry 4 that's a whole

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    game mechanic in there and it's again Far Cry 3 Far Cry 4 they're all essentially on the junior engine which came from the cry engine so um a lot of the stuff that we have um would as long as we got the time to build it that's going to be doable of course we've got a lot of other things to get done first so it's not happening tomorrow but um longterm yes um okay next question comes from uh ma um who says my question is about worms no it's not my question is about the history of life in your ship will your ship be able to be uniquely named and carry a history with it that would be attached to that ship's particular hole number or serial number that would be reset or lost upon complete hole or ship destruction um well we're definitely going to let you name your

15. 00:11:19

    ships uh in in the sort of persistent world uh we're definitely going to have your ship sort of age and wear and tear and you fix up um and much like your character that you would have we want you to sort of have a reason to hold on to your character um just like you know so have a reason to hold on to your ship instead of um just have it blown and get a new one um and so uh you know one of the uh you know there would be an idea that you would name it there would be an idea that maybe it would have that would be associated with the kills that it had and stuff like that uh and I think it would be cool you know you would uh you know and there may be you know longer term uh there may be some smart ways to um incentivize players to keep their ships rather than sort of trade them in um so those are all things that I would actually be pretty uh uh

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    you know pretty keen on sort of doing um sort of stage two because uh again I you know the whole the whole thing with uh the pic universe is you know you want to hold on to your you want to you want to continue living you want to hold on to your ship you so kind of want people to play the game in a in a sort of um measured manner you know so Arena Commander right now you respawn when you die so you go you fight around you fire your missiles and then yeah I might as well respawn and get my ballistic ammo back get my missiles back well in the persistent world you don't want to do that because uh it's going to be a real pain in uh the butt to go and then have to you know wake up in a hospital room on some planet and go and collect your new uh you know insurance covered but it's missing all the customizations you've done so uh and you know we we're you know we've got a ship uh that's uh you know in the in the works the Anvil

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    Crucible which is a repair ship and that's all about getting out there and repairing up the ships that have been damaged say in battle in space and so we we definitely want to have gaml around uh keeping your ship uh fixed up patched living and uh you know so having a history associated with is a is a one of the very good ways of doing that um okay next question comes from Lee ad or maybe Adam Lee I don't know uh who asks what will the spoken interaction with NPCs in Squadron 42 be like will it be more like a tradition game from the past where one would pick an answer a to d in a popup window um and I would assume normally there would be an or there but there isn't um so we're trying something very different on Squadron 42 in terms of the conversation I uh you know we've gone with this whole idea of

18. 00:13:44

    your inner first person world the universe and uh so uh the conversations you get into are from your point of view in first person um they're not limited as in you know typically say if you play something like a BioWare game like Mass Effect or uh Dragon's Age you know you click on someone and then you go into sort of this conversation mode where there's your character and the character you're talking to and it's kind of traditional third person uh and it cuts back and forth between what people are saying and then you sort of select a b CDE e f and you have this sort of Wheel of uh conversation options and so uh one of the big uh concepts of tenants of of of Squadron 42 and we're going to bring that across into Star Citizen on the assistent world side is that the conversation should be fluid like it is in real life also your actions that you

19. 00:14:34

    do your body language whether you keep eye contact uh is also important as well as what you say and so if you're you know uh you know when you look up at someone and you catch them in the eye they look at you and go oh hey hi and then maybe you can approach them and then a conversation would start and if they're talking to you and you sort of turn away halfway through the conversation they'll be like hey what are you doing and then you know if you Don't Turn back they'll sort of stop or wander off you turn back they go oh as I was saying um and uh you know there'll be various options for you to influence it so we have the moments where um we what we call your inner thoughts so you there'll be a point where someone says hey uh you know what do you think of my flying and you could and then you know your inner thought uh and we're going to be using a technique that's very much

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    like Sherlock the BBC series I don't know if you've uh any of you guys out there seen it I'm sure some of you have uh but sort of your thoughts almost sort of float uh out in in The Ether 3D space and you'll also hear it as you sort of highlight one so it'll be like yeah n his flying really sucks so yeah he's a pretty good flyer and those are all sort of in and inner thought and then when you pick the one you be like oh no you you really kickass flying I mean I really enjoy flying on your wing uh you're the best wingman I've ever had um and uh you'll be able to sort of guide yourself through the conversation that so convers between having sort of the branches that you can do that are cons seexual and it's not you know it could be um left or right or you know not left or right but one you know two branches three branches four branches the system will support all that or you can even um have contextual interactions like look

21. 00:16:11

    around and uh you know someone's boring you uh in a conversation and there's a glass of water well you know this is not something we have as Squadron 42 but an example of it would be um you know I could see that while he's talking I could go oh you know I want to take a drink will be one action that be the used action or you know it be take a drink or throw water in person's face and I throw the water in the person's face and that would be potentially contextual if you had like someone was insulting you in a conversation so we're going to allow you to interact with things around you items that could have context and meaning to a conversation and also thoughts that you would have talking to people and you can walk in and out and you can move around and it's all fluid from first person so it's very different from a locked off traditional ABCDE e f kind of branching conversation that you've seen before in uh you know sort RPGs or adventure games and uh I think it's going to be really

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    cool I think it be very fluid um you know is about eye contact and you know you you know paying attention if you're doing stupid things like bouncing around and nodding your head and everything the other characters is going to say hey what are you doing and you know pay attention and then just give up on you after a while and then they'll become more annoyed with you and then their uh approachability and sort of friendliness to you will decrease um so it's really going to be about managing relationships uh and moment and about who you decide to interact with in Squadron 42 and make the friendships with uh will affect things down the road and how they react to you um so I'm hoping that that sort of very fluid immersive conversation uh system will pull you into the world better and then also if you spend time interacting with people talking to people getting to hear their back stories or you know what the

23. 00:17:45

    hopes and dreams are then later on if something happens uh you know as it always does in single player stories uh and you know maybe the person you've been talking to that invested time in gets killed then it will be pretty emotionally impactful for you uh and so that's that's it I think uh you know it's uh it's definitely something I've been thinking about for a long time um it's sort of the next stage for me of some of the stuff that I want to do uh so hopefully you guys will really enjoy it um okay next question comes from Aragon BH who asks will the number of players allowed into an instance change depending on location for example would it be possible to interact with more players on a station or Planet Side since there are no ship assets to render um it sort of all depends uh I would say that uh the you know we haven't quite uh

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    you know this is something we're actively working on it's very possible that the number of players uh in any one area would potentially be dependent on the kind of uh location they're in and also the kind of uh you know who you're uh uh sort of networking so like to give you an example uh you know we're on the FPS um you know we pretty sure that we'll be able to have 32 players in uh some of uh the aspects of it and that's because it's just a player and a character versus the ships are much harder because the ship is first of all you have a player inside each ship but then the ship itself is very complicated has lots of moving parts and all those all those moving Parts require some level of network synchronization so more complicated items or objects like spaceships are really good examples take

25. 00:19:24

    up more Network bandwidth and so if it's just people running around on F on a planetary environment the odd are odds are that we should be able to have more of them than we would once you're in space and people are dog fighting and that's not to say that we're not trying to push it to get as much as we possibly can we're playing around with I I think I've mentioned this before but the possibility of having sort of um servers in the same data server all working together on the same area or instance and essentially sharing the workload of simulating that area and sharing the workload of telling their the clients they are resp responsible for for where they are in the world and uh you know doing that will potentially be able to have more um players in an area than one server can simulate this is that's this is still very early uh but that's one of

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    the the the sort of approaches that we're looking at um so uh it's definitely um the case that there's probably going to be more players in certain areas than others I know that when we do the social module Tony's uh you know aiming for a lot more players than uh we have right now out in space and actually more than they have in uh you know the top end of what they think they're going to do in the FPS so so yes we we'll see um okay next question comes from squirrel uh who asks what designates a short- range ship from a longrange ship is it the presence of quantum jump drives a certain number of jumps without refueling uh so I would say that yeah things like whether you've got a a jump drive or a Quantum Drive would affect I mean most most ships definitely have a Quantum Drive only a very few wouldn't have a Quantum Drive so you know an

27. 00:21:01

    example of an absolute short range ship would probably be something like the Merlin where that's a snubnose fighter that's sort of carried with um you know something like a constellation that can Quantum Drive and jump drive uh and then you've got the next level of of of a ship that would maybe have Quantum Drive but doesn't have a jump drive or maybe hasn't got a jump drive installed so they can travel around the star system pretty quickly but if they want to go to another star system they would have to uh you know travel or be put in the hold of a bigger ship or get a jump drive installed and then uh the you know the bigger most star airing ships which you know at a certain level most of the you know our bigger ships have jump drives um they um you know can jump between systems and then you have different levels of that because you've obviously got ships that could jump to another system but they couldn't sort of head off into open space and jump many system after many system because they just

28. 00:21:49

    don't have uh fuel or life support reserves whereas some ships like the Carrick was made for deep space exploration so they've got extra fuel tanks and extra range and capacity and could do multiple jumps without having to go back and restock and replenish um so I think those are the various sort of tiers of stuff um we haven't really made specific classifications maybe we should do on that but that's kind of how they sort of Stack Up in and how they go um all right next question comes from beer for the beer God who asks quite a few questions and uh and likes to write um uh uh interesting summaries of my my temp for the chairman um so he asks uh aside from the Aesthetics what is the benefit

29. 00:22:37

    to the player of merging first and third person animations um and I was just debating whether I should answer it in beer for the beer God's voice or not uh but I'll decide to be straight laced and then he can interpret my answer however he chooses um uh well I me I think I tried to explain uh the benefit uh which is mostly to do with the fact that you're going to be playing and interacting with other players in multiplayer and they will be interacting with the world around you and the ship that you're flying and so therefore uh the interactions and action that you do with the environment is going to be visible from my view in first person with another player playing a multiplayer and I'll see him doing the stuff in third person and I think I've pointed this out before but typically

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    you when you play Call of Duty and you see all those wonderful first person anim when they open a hatch and do all this stuff from first person that is all specifically choreograph from first person there is no um third person for that and actually where the hand is and where the camera is is not really where um the hand or the arms or the or the head or the eyes are of the actual character and so it's fine when it's only from your point of view but the moment that some other player is doing that from his point of view and you're watching him do that U what you will end up happening is his third person animation will have his head and arm and everything in a different position than it is to him in first person view which you know normally if there isn't um combat or something involved maybe it's okay but if you have a lot of heavy interaction with environments and stuff um then it's going to be a problem and you know you can have things like hey

31. 00:24:12

    the arm in first person's up here but in reality it's actually down here and so you've got Collision issues that the the where the Collision proxies are and first and third person don't line up um they completely cheat in in uh first person and most games so like most first person games it's all faked and that little Center Crosshair where you move is where they shoot and if you actually went out to third person and looked at where your character was shooting and where the bullets were going you would actually notice that the bullets actually were not firing in a straight line from where the gun was pointing they were probably an angle because they're all being gravitated towards that Center crossair that you have in first person and of course again we can't do that in our situation because I'm a player U looking at another player and you know you expect where his guns points where he's going to where he's going to fire and it's because we have the heavy heavy amount of interactions um between the environment uh outside of

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    the combat and normally most third person sorry firstperson Shooters they you know they really reduce the Fidelity of the animation of other players versus Ai and uh we really didn't want to do that um so that's the advantage is basically where your hand is where you're looking it's consistent between first and third person you don't have to cheat you don't have to do special special fix-ups because because you're in first person versus third person and vice versa um so long long term if you get it to the base stuff to work it makes your life a hell of a lot easier um which for us is pretty important because we have a massive massive massive game and so we have massive amounts of Animation so if we have to do both first person and third person animation for all the motion sets it's

33. 00:25:51

    insane I mean we're already you know thousands and thousands and thousands of Animation assets and we don't really want to double up on them uh and again uh in a normal firsters shooter you don't really have that same issue because you know you're not doing something that has the variety of the number of ships you can enter the number of things you can interact the number of different things and you're not really thinking about how you're going to be building this thing over 10 years and have you doing all these different things and we do so trying to simplify it to not have two parallel systems um is something that's I think uh long-term definitely important shortterm makes it hard because most people that work on first person stuff and have tried to unified first and third person will say it was a and they normally given up and cheated um so maybe I'm just really stubborn uh which is probably true it also means I make decent games

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    because I'm I don't give up until I get it right um but I I think long term it's sort of the right call so I hope um that answered the the the question um and the last question now coming from charman um is how do you handle the sometimes harsh criticism and take care of that team doesn't lose the motivation uh uh well uh it's hard sometimes um but at the end of the day I would say that the fact that we're building a game that we've all wanted to build that we've dreamed about building for a long time and we're move we can see it coming together uh is a big motivation yeah it's totally frustrating to uh see everyone out there second guessing uh you know decisions you make or wondering why you late or you know

35. 00:27:29

    godamn they should or they incompetent they're not professional they should get this thing out and uh you know it's it's it's hard because development is a very uh you know very complicated thing this is a very big project there's a lot of people we have on it uh you know as long as I've ever made games um you know it's very hard to um predict stuff very accurately especially in the early days because there's always so much R&D there's a lot of uh things that you try and experiment maybe it works maybe it doesn't work and uh you know and and anyone can tell you that manages big projects even not software projects just say a construction project the bigger the thing you have with the more items or elements that have to be done that just means there's more chance of some of those things you know getting messed up or not coming out the way you expect and you're having to redo them um and so

36. 00:28:17

    anytime you've got big huge projects there is always a level of uh uh you know difficulty and unpredictability so um and then it's sort of frustrating to sit there and you know have people uh you know wonder why you take you so long and stuff but um at the end of the day uh we're getting to build a game in a way no one else has ever managed to build it uh you know and that isn't the majority of people anyway and yeah and to be honest with you I'm perfectly fine with it because yeah I'd be frustrated if I was waiting I want to play this game too so I'm kind of frustrated I mean I give people internally uh when things are late or they say oh it was going to be here and it comes in later I'm like you know I give him the same sort of abuse that uh some times we get back from the community um and uh but you know I I I think that's sort of

37. 00:29:03

    the price you pay and the fact that we're building something that we really care about that the rest of the team really cares about I think is the most important thing uh and uh you just need to develop a certain level of uh you know either pigheadedness or a thick skin uh because you have to realize when you get a large group of people you're never going to please everybody all the time you can please most of the people uh most of the time you're never going to please everyone all the time so what what I tell everyone here on the project and I do this myself is I say listen it's really important um to go with what you believe in now listen to what people are saying uh take it in and if someone says something that resonates with you that you agree with then that's worth considering and putting into action and doing something about so so anyway I think one of the problems with um say

38. 00:29:52

    development in sort of the more sort of button- down public company publisher world is that a lot of uh there's a lot of second guessing where people don't really uh trust their own instincts not necessarily the key people on development team but then there's always a lot of other levels of on the marketing or the publishing side where they're like well we we got the right feature set is is this what is this what the kids want today and but I saw this other game doing this maybe we should have that feature and that's the sort of noise that hurts I think a game so being true to yourself is really really important and I emphasize that the team and I think if you manage to do that and you take in uh the input from the rest of the community whether it's good or bad and just say Hey look it's input and it's really great to get input and don't let it become uh affect you personally and and use it for the for the benefit that it that you can get from it then I

39. 00:30:39

    think it's fine which is one of the reasons why uh you know I'm perfectly fine with everyone arguing uh on forums about the you know like controller balance or um you know whether you know they feel like the flight models ride or all that sort of stuff because you know people are passionate enough to really care about it and they're putting their views out there and putting the views out there strongly challenges you know myself and the team to make sure that you know what we believe in we're doing um it doesn't mean that we're going to agree with whoever's the loudest or anything like that it just means that I'm fine with the debate as long as obviously people are fairly civil about it right it's not it's not fun to be name calling or putting people down but you know you should strongly uh sort of put forward your argument of why you think it's it's right and I'm telling you that you know even though some people feel like they don't have any UT have any effect that

40. 00:31:28

    you know everybody here definitely pays attention to what everyone says in the community and we do listen and we take on things that we think are valid and we try to uh adjust and fix them it's an ongoing process um and that's they are that's how we don't lose motivation because we're building the game we want to build uh and we know there's a lot of people behind us doing it uh supporting us and have having us make that game and even if they don't vocalize it in the most supportive manner uh we know that their heart's in the right place so um so having said that I would say thank you guys and thank you this is the end of uh 10 for this episode of 10 for the chairman and as always thank you to subscribers for making it possible thank you to the backers uh for making the game possible in first place um you know

41. 00:32:17

    it's um you know doing this is a dream come true uh and uh I will see you uh next week goodbye hey guys thanks for watching um temp for the chairman uh if you guys would like to uh see more episodes go here if you guys would like to subscribe to our YouTube channel and always keep up to date with all our video content go here and uh if you guys would like to watch episodes of around the verse go here please and I will see you in the verse