10 for the Developers: Episode 14

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hey citizens welcome to another episode of 10 for the Developers uh my name is Forest Stefan CG supervisor and to my right I am the archist Sher hyberg and uh we're going to be answering your questions today and we would like to uh personally thank all of the subscribers to make the show possible because without you uh we would not be able to answer some such awesome

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   questions thank you thank you very much you're awesome why don't you kick it off Sher okay um our first question is from Quantum eclipse the question is when fleshing out a system do you work individually or in teams do you determine the physical properties of the planets or solar masses or is that carried out by game designers this is a complicated question um there are a lot of steps in the system design process at the start it definitely originates with the lore team and we work together to do this we uh all sit down together and we discuss what kind of system that we want we we start usually from the Star and we work our way out with what kind of planets we want how many planets are going to be in the system whether there's a cool science thing that we've read about recently that we want to record we want to include in it um what's going to make the system fun

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   for the players like Landing zones different kinds of attractions how it ties into the lore um we all participate pretty equally in this process we all have suggestions that get shot down or accepted in pretty equal measure uh Dave hadock is the final Arbiter of these decisions and once he gives a yes or a no then we have something solid where we can start as far as a system um once we've had that discussion it's my responsibility to get that all written out and I send off this information to our astronomers who we work with and they go over the information that we provided them and they provide us with actual cool math that someone with a huge amount of experience and education can do someone who is has been an astronomer for a while um they do things like they take into account orbital

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   resonance uh resonance and solar masses and spacing the planets out uh axial tilts perhelion F I'm just trying to figure out how to do that in the actual game well and and and that's the fun part right is once you get everything down and then you implement it into the game and we're building a lot of tech to support all that awesome stuff yeah exactly um and once we get this astronomical data back I usually I not usually I always go over it and see if they have followed the specs of the system that we want if they haven't I'll send it back and we get a correction but this is never anything that's done on Pur purpose it's usually like a misund miscommunication sometimes and uh the astronomers will also suggest things to us that we haven't thought of for example gone is the first planet in the Oberon system that is based on a dead

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   Stellar core it's a dead Stellar core right that's really cool because there has there have been recent discoveries in the past 10 years of dead Stellar cores orbiting neutron stars and we wouldn't have come across that idea if not for our one of our astronomers brilliant idea uh once we have the final numbers this is just what you were talking about we we generally work with uh design or the tech artists and we try to find a way to get all this math and all this this information into the game and so that it's that it's fun for the players and design and Chris Roberts are the final say on what does and does not go in the game and I would say uh a lot of us are super excited about the procedural Planet stuff that we see coming online and then flying around the Pu with the large world but this brings a whole another excitement value to those Texs because that is actually

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   what makes this stuff possible so for you I'm sure you have a whole another appreciation for that awesome Tech that's coming in and to get actually to start testing this stuff in the game environment is going to be super cool and getting it uh out of paper um cool awesome anything else is that no that's that's the process of creating a system that's an excellent answer hope you all enjoyed that I know I did all right so we have a question from uh raining light any plans for a hornet visual pass it's showing age particularly in its oddly small size I imagine it will need to be updated for squash 42 so I imagine it's got to be on the docket I'm not asking for a date just a confirmation when one is planned it is also lacking the new damage Tech and whatnot excited to see that implemented so I do know the answer

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   to that question so I will go ahead and answer it uh in fact I will broaden the answer a little bit the Aurora the $300 um and the uh and the uh and the Hornet are going to be getting new versions um they're not going to be revamped they're actually going to be uh new versions and I know the Hornet specifically is very much already underway and it looks awesome um our ship artist Chris Smith over uh in our Austin office has been working on it I've seen the sneak peeks and it is super cool looking it's pretty red it's super slick uh super excited because you know one thing that I think that we really wanted to do um or just kind of happened uh naturally is you know it's like when you have like a like

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   a Mustang from like 1969 you know it's kind of a classic right and then you have like the new Mustang right right and I think a lot of people would kind of think it would be cool if like you know you had the order War you had the old 300 you had the whole Hornet and instead of trying to spruce up all the old chips constantly and continually be like we have the one hornet and it just keeps getting better and better and better as far as the models go to keep up with all the other games to be able to say that is the Hornet from that year and then come out with a new one later that's kind of has more bells and whistles that's a little Slicker or whatever right um would be pretty cool you know cuz then you see like in the Galaxy you're flying around they're like oh they're flying the new Hornet or they're flying the more classic Model classic yeah so might be uh I love I love I hopefully it kind of works out that way um then also the uh cutless black is being revamped as well the only

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   thing that's going to be uh revamped on the hornet 300i in Aurora uh the current gen is to just make sure that they have the uh damage States and whatnot that was mentioned in the question yes all right very cool let's move on to the next question all right this question comes from Rufus Ultra and the question is I was hoping you could explain um what I've seen on War makers here and as the Dos they're wondering about um how big the star systems are with au numbers after their research they found out that the saw system was around 51 Au and most of the star syst systems were smaller even as small as 8 Au and they wanted to have an explanation about star system size well like I said before star

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    system size is something that we do decide on during the initial uh low process when we're coming up with the system we want our star systems to to reflect both real word phys world physics and playability so we want something that that takes both of these into account so that you actually you know enjoy yourself when you're playing the game um the systems themselves are designed to stay within a rough range that keeps them small enough so that they can fit they can like work with the technology that we have but they're large enough so that you can actually enjoy being in them and exploring them so we kind of have a little balance between fiction and reality which is something we've done with systems in the past like Vega for example there is a real star Vega which is an A type main sequence star in the Lyra constellation however our star Vega an in-game star

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    that's made up completely for the game is a gtype main sequence star much like our own Sun so that I feel like that's a really good example of the balance we strike between what is real and what is in our game but takes inspiration from reality and I think that that also kind of that's one thing that's kind of this game's Niche that I think it does so well m is the consistency that it keeps between pure simulation and pure game and it has this beautiful in between um kind of towards the simulation but it still has so many of those game aspects that makes it fun to play and that's what kind of makes this game I think it's going to be pretty special and awesome so to answer the core of your question our a our systems are a wide range of sizes um but they they generally like some are very small some

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    are very big uh generally we go between I'd say like between 5 and 15 Au on average but they can range far outside of those MH uh let's move on to the next one and that is from Daz what concept ship are you most excited to hear to enter the pipeline and why is it the Banu merchantmen so I love the bonu merchant men but I am going to go with another ship I am most excited about the Polaris Corvette and I call it a Corvette because it is a Corvette but it's really just the RSI Polaris M which is gorgeous it is big and like kind of chunky but kind of slick it has that just like that that well mechanically engineered feel uh it's bigger than the

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    constellation and it's kind of taken my fair because I love the constellation was kind of my favorite and now I'm like oh this this this Polaris is super awesome smaller than the Idris so it has kind of The Best of Both Worlds uh so it's just a super cool looking ship it's being art directed by uh Paul Jones and uh Nathan over in the UK studio and it's just looking awesome um so I am super super excited to see that um enter the pipeline I I cannot wait it's kind of already getting there so um really excited about that next uh question from Daz I just threw two you threw two together you just like combine the questions why not you know why are the next ships expected to hit Hangar ready what are the next ships expected to hit hanger ready so uh I'm going to try my best to answer that question for things

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    that I I kind of know right because I know people always want to have answers of you know when things are going to come out stuff like that but um in general uh as far as my knowledge goes the Reliant is going to be the ship that's going to be coming up in the hanger next which is my favorite small ship um and the r is just so cool it was concepted by David hop and it was passed over to uh Ellen and Dan kimki and um the ship team here to uh flush out that ship and they just did an awesome job and it's so cool looking it's just super uh uh the way that it flies and like you know the the cockpit turns and the thing and it's just it's going to be super cool and I can't wait to uh get that in the hanger and even more so that's just going to be so like I want to want to fly it as soon as I see it in the hanger just bust through the hanger doors and I'm going to have

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    to stare at it for a while so uh but I can't wait to fly that thing and then uh next up I think uh is probably going to be and it's and it's we're talking more down the line we're not talking tomorrow we're talking more down the line um will be the caterpillar which is also a super uh awesome ship uh and it's one of the first ships that is going to be um from an art Direction standpoint is a little different because it's built very uh a little you know it's chunky but yet it's you know it's kind of used parts it has like you know elements of it that are like um almost like painted on top of of paint and uh they're just like kind of welding metal on top of like um on wiring and stuff and they're not just like you know it's not just like perfectly encased and built it's kind of been like you know just welded together and just like taken parts that they

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    hadn't built on it so it has this very cool uh industrial kind of red um look right and it's just super cool looking and uh things are exposed and it's just kind of heavy and you're like oh I couldn't even lift one of these panels off the wall it's just too heavy it's you know it's not made out of that slick material uh and so it is just so cool looking um so I've I've seen lots of shots of what that looks like inside in the game already and so that's uh super cool so that's going to be I haven't seen this why have you trying to we'll take a look at this after afterwards [Laughter] Sor further down the road even further further uh is going to be uh The Herald MH uh and that'll be uh later this year and um I think that's safe to say I think it's a safe bet uh later down this year and that's uh being worked on um also um in Austin by uh um by Josh um so

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    that's going to be um I'm excited about that ship as well because that's that's definitely a little different it's kind of a little more interesting looking has a little satellite things that pop out so uh Josh Coons is no doubt making that thing amazing so um hopefully that answers that question yeah that's good good thorough answer I like it all right all right next question is by bacon of War who asked me something that appealed to the less glamorous side of my job but I like talking about it because it's a lot of what I do around here um it is have you caught up on the organizing I know putting new stuff in is an ongoing process but as a benchmark has most of the old stuff been archived have you found any gems yet that you have had to run to the art Department and ask why it wasn't in game yet that's a great question well I have actually caught up on most of the

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    organizing I've reached several major benchmarks one is that we are much much much better off now than we when we started and this is something that is you know obvious through use of confence and you can you can tell me yes yes what's funny is the uh when uh Sher actually first started uh one of the first things I said is uh the artists need help we need help on the organization side uh for our wiki page Confluence yep and I said the artists have made an absolute mess in there can you help and so she calls me over and says by artist do you mean you uh how many pages did I have in there that were just oh at least 200 yeah like at least 200 created by Forest Stefan last edited by Forest Stefan like so it turned out it

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    was actually me making the mess in there so in the artist section at least yeah but other major Milestones I've reached is uh I've archived over 2,000 Pages they are still preserved in our system they are out of the search results so they don't mess up if someone is looking for the latest documentation they don't pull up something from two years ago and it doesn't mess up their process because it just doesn't appear anymore but it is still preserved and it is accessible if someone wants to reference it so that they don't make a mistake someone made in the past or take a take an old idea that has been disapproved you know that kind of thing and um our current documentation is kept organized by team or asset depending on the needs of what is being done which has helped the organization of Confluence by many miles yeah and you and and you mod moderate um

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    monitor it as well I monitor it I know for a fact that Sher has archived pages that uh specifically say do not touch in giant red lettering because they are archived um into the you know non-accessible Zone that's right and I found pages that I've tried to edit and bring back into the Wiki page and I get a message within about one minute editing the page saying why are you editing that page I'm like am I not supp to and she says do you see the giant red letterings on top says do not edit so that's super helpful too cuz I will still get into trouble if uh no one's monitoring it yeah and I think what's most important is that because I'm moderating it I'm always available for questions and so people don't have to dig for hours not knowing where anything is because I know where pretty much everything is and I can find something

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    within about 10 minutes because I'm familiar enough with the system yes and I have found some cool things in the game documentation but I am not at Liberty to speak about them unfortunately yes yeah we have a page that is things we have seen it's quite interesting full of character Bugs which is wonderful maybe we'll share it one day not today though all right so excellent let's move on we have another question for bacon of War which is oh interesting one of my favorite forum names that I've seen so far let's see how hard is it to Wrangle assets and minions from multiple sites and time zones what systems do you use to keep track of it all that's an awesome question because

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    working with multiple Studios Frankfurt UK M us um two offices in Us Austin Los Angeles and Los Angeles is a great Challenge and you it requires Great organization it does um I personally keep the directory up to date which is very important so everyone can recognize everybody else we've got little pictures next to the names that kind of thing yeah and then for art assets um we use a software called perforce and within perforce it allows everybody to submit their art asset or art assets to the same location and then uh we also use shotgun software which allows us to um keep track of all of our Concepts and all the feedback and uh so on and so forth everyone has access to the same systems it's not segregated

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    whatsoever including Confluence and that allows us to work work as one studio uh n uh um internationally internationally um across time zones as far as wrangling each art asset we have art managers and art leads and art directors um in each studio so uh you kind of have your local art managers that manage each team kind of locally um so we don't have to cross manage too much because we are in different time zones yeah I mean and as to that we do have Global sync times that we try to stick to for meetings that are known throughout the studios right yeah totally and and uh you know it nowadays with Skype and the internet and the ability to share data um over uh online it's really not as hard as you think it would be it's almost sometimes you could be it could feel like you're

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    working in the same Studio yeah as far as U managing art assets I mean you know what's the difference if you're not besides walking over to the person what's the difference between being on one side of the building compared to the other side of the building or being you know on one side of the building to another building in another country there's really no difference you know to some degree other than the walking over and talking to them to some degree although I I would love to deid the time difference I would love to to walk over to someone in the UK office and just shake the back of the chair and say hey look at me yes yes that's that's what I really want I just want to be obnoxious it's good times should secretly fly you over there and you can shake everybody like I work here now yeah all right uh so hopefully that answers your your question all right um and next we have a very good question from Daz which I am very happy to answer can you explain how work on the galac

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    toeda is processing what is the look and feel of the system that is being designed and will we have access to this both in game and from the website the answer to that is everything is spiraling outwards towards the SP star map the star map is basically the Cornerstone of the galactia and we are planning on releasing the first barebones version of the galopa very soon actually we uh have been in meetings with turbulent we've made uh they have made wonderful mockups of how they want the galac Topia to look um what we're going to do is first Define all the in lore terms that we have used in the starm map you will be able to click on those terms and you will get a definition or a barebones uh encyclopedia entry that's meant to be a foundational text that will be built up as we are able to populate each page to

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    the extent that we are satisfied withh you'll be able to access this both in the star map and from a UI that is not the star map like from our website right and there will be a Search tool that you can use there will be a glossery that you can click so you can see all the terms that we have yeah yeah that's so amazing yeah it's it's wonderful I'm very very excited to be able to give you this news and to share the mockups that turbulent has given us um some of the design is still subject to change but we are very close to being able to release something that is accessible to you and that we can take care of there's just so much data and so much lore and to have a way to easily access it all um and in a in a way that's organized by the time that it all takes place it's just super exciting to I'm very excited to be able

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    to do this and to be able to share this news with you and I'm sure you all will also love this cool well thank you for sharing that that is that is wonderful news I love that um all right next question Fang of Asgard how does the character creation pipeline uh how goes the character creation pipeline any light the art can share on what we the players will be able to change on future citizens I know it's still impractical to hope for different height character skeletons but I Can Dream we can all dream dream on we all Dream Dream On Any designs for pressure sealed Hood masks designed instead of the traditional helmets for spacewar I love that I love that question space it's a great question so let me ask uh answer

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    the first one we are still heavy heavy heavy in developing the tech for customization so I do not have any direct answers however what I can say is we will support the ability to get facial recogn uh facial reconstruction and to change and customize your face yes and we all know that you will be able to customize your clothes um to barely no end yes I have seen you customizing your clothes it's coming and I talk about all the time and we've already seen a taste of it now yes so there will be the ability to customize your characters without a doubt in regards to different heights for skeletons that's a whole Tech that we have not solved yet and there's lots of different ways that games solve the ability to scale unfortunately with cry

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    engine the way that the animation system was built it's a significant task it is not built into the engine there's significant code that needs to be Rewritten to support different heights for characters and it's something that we will eventually have to tack but it's a much bigger um task than it may seem you know or maybe it doesn't seem but uh it's it's tough and It's Tricky um but it's something that we do eventually probably will need to solve um but hopefully we get that in the near future any designs for the pressure sealed Hood Mass designs so I don't know if this exactly falls under that category but we are currently designing the MC's so we all know um or maybe we don't know who MC's are um but they are a uh they are a organization um in the Squadron 42

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    universe and I don't know how much people know so I won't say anything else but one thing that I will say I just said I wouldn't say anything else but I can't stop talking they have very cool outfits and their outfits are slightly different than the uh Marines and in fact the OMC will be similar to when you currently play the persistent universe and your running around with the Marines and you see those other characters that are the Pirates the Pirates okay those are actually temporary characters that are getting replaced with the real characters which are the OMC and so those characters will have Hood Mass designs that are slightly different from the traditional spacewar because a lot of the art Direction kind of goes in the uh goes in the direction of you know

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    they don't just have brand new armor they have taken previous armors they have uh done some Scavenging where they've gone different parts and stuff and they customize everything so maybe you don't have a full helmet maybe it is uh they built it you know it's handbuilt and it's pressure sealed hood mask and they they've created it and it's not something that you just generally would pick off the Shel and get maybe it's something they got multiple things they picked off the shelves and then created and that's kind of the visual direction that the OMC is they created they did it themselves DIY DIY very DIY and I think that you will see some pressure sealed Hood MK designs that are slightly different than um traditional helmet spacewar and that's a great opportunity to implement those designs so I think we will see that and it's going to be super cool we already have some Concepts in the works that are in the um art Direction phas uh and uh right now being

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    looked at by Josh Herman our new character art director and uh Chris Roberts obviously who's driving uh the vision and they're kind of going through the concepts and designing them right now so um and they're kind of heading towards that direction so um you should see something very cool uh in regards to um that question so uh our next question is from aled and the question is I love the L makers guide section you and the other lawmakers have been doing will we eventually see a lawmaker's guide for every system have you found any holes in the galac opedia which required additional lore written and if so can you share any examples and have you specifically written any lore the answer to that is yes we are absolutely trying to do every system uh there are quite a few systems that we still have yet to cover so we should be

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    doing this for a while now um we'll continue to take turns giving our own perspectives on the systems you know I usually like to cover the sciency angles uh will and Dave and Adam like to cover the lore aspect and Adam weol often sneak in some good science stuff and we we all I think we work together very well as as a unit being able to discuss all these systems um and we we just want to do this until we're satisfied that the systems are as fleshed out to you as they are to us I specifically have written some lore um I was part of the team that created the descriptions that are currently in the star map as there are hundreds of descriptions I can't say off the top of my head um which ones I did write because there's just so many of them but I can

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    say that I wrote all the descriptions for the moons of Tera and the moons of the calaban system because those are something some things that I did very recently so you can look that up and know that that's that came from me that was me and I've also had some hand a hand in some lore that has yet to be released oo very so interesting and um you say that you're the hand of God uh the galaxies well in the galaxies I I am akin to that um and not all systems have been fully developed also there are systems that we have yet to create and there are holes that remain to be filled to answer that part of your question black holes there is a black hole awesome TSA fantastic mhm it's good what's your favorite like thing in space black holes

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    stars planets moons what do you like if you have to write a description for something what's your favorite thing to write a description for I really like talking about stars stars stars in general General like the life cycle of stars and what's your favorite type of star I really like the red dwarfs because they are everywhere they're the most popul star that we know of they last as far as we know forever we've never seen one burnout um they're very small and they try very hard and they're good candidates for life and the cool planets that can be around them like like Horus for example I I was big in pushing for the the creation of Horus as a system that had a a planet that was tily locked to the the red dwarf so there was life around the solar

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    Terminator right yeah that was pretty cool I just like so many things about I like nebulas and galaxies I like black holes I like um the cool diamond planets that we've been finding which are kind of related to the the Stellar cores that I was discussing earlier oh man I like that there's there our solar system as far as we know is very different from almost all the solar systems that we've seen I love that we are in the young childhood of the exoplanet Discovery Planet uh exoplanet discovery phase of of NASA like Kepler is doing such a great job thousands of exoplanets have been discovered through the persistent efforts of a very very few people it's just a really wonderful time I can't believe that the first exoplanet was only confirmed like

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    in 1995 that's absurd that's such a short time ago yeah we have so much left to discover it's it's wonderful yeah so that's that's fantastic that was a bit tangential but thank you for asking me that question that was really fun no thank you for the answer that was that was wonderful oh all right um is that the rest of is that all of that question oh yes absolutely now it's your turn you can U answer this question and then we'll be done all right yeah Lex tour this is an easy one I saved the easiest one for last uh will there be a new Sky Box and that's uh from lextor lextor lextor will there be a new Sky Box lextor there will not be a new Sky Box because we have procedural Sky Skies now oh so we're going to have a fulltime a

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    day system right um I'm not sure how the planets and here's what's exciting right and here's what we still need to figure out if this is a thing if this isn't a thing but it's something very cool to dream about and I think could be doable is and I'm sure you have the same question if you're on a planet um and that planet's relation to the star does that affect the sky on the planet itself if you're on the back side of the planet is it nighttime if you're on the uh side of the planet facing the star at that particular point in the orbit is it uh daytime you know is the star and the position of the uh the planet going to affect uh the sky and the reason that we don't want to do the Sky Box is we want it to be a fully a real you know like a

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    real simulation we want it to react as much much uh to real life as possible and in order to do that we didn't want to do a Sky Box solution and we do have the numbers to support this from the astronomers that's one of the things that we uh came up with was realistic day night cycles on planets so we know how long the solar day is and we know how fast the planet moves around the star right it's we got this these numbers available we just need to I think it's just a matter of tech if we can write the tech and if we can implement the tech and um one thing that I learned about this project is uh Never Say Never And it's amazing what's possible so U we'll see how that turns out all right well I think that that wraps up yeah uh Today's Show uh thank you so much Sher for joining us thank you so much for us for joining us your

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    uh your awesome answers are uh I'm sure everyone loved them I know I did um and all right so thanks again to the subscribers yes thank you so much for all that you do we really appreciate it all right so uh and see you next time 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 of around the verse go here please and I will see you in the verse

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    [Applause]