10 for the Producers: Episode 13

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hey guys welcome to another episode of tin for the producers Texas edition yeah um yeah so welcome to uh another special episode we would like to thank subscribers first of all uh for making this video content like this possible we wouldn't be here uh making this video if it weren't for you guys so thanks for that uh I'm Jake Ross by the way associate producer of the persistant Universe I am Jason Hutchins senior producer for Star Citizen and uh we're here to answer some questions from the forums we got 10 questions here that we've kind of gone through thanks to those of you who submitted questions we could only get

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   through 10 of them so apologies in advance but um yeah with that Jason you want to ask I will take it away take it away all right our first question is from grais uh with so many gameplay mechanics and system content needing to be developed for the persistent Universe how do you make prioritization decisions on what is developed first yeah I'd say uh first and foremost the priorities come from Chris and Tony like uh those are the guys directing the project so uh you know they they kind of pave the way for how we're supposed to prioritize our features so that they decide okay we have an upcoming release what do we want to show um and then once they decide what we want to show we'll U Break those features down into critical priority high priority and moderate priority um and what that really means is that a critical feature is something

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   that is an absolute must have for that release um a high high priority uh feature is is a nice to have it's something that's not essential but it's it's something that we'd like to have in the release and then a moderate is a wish list item so it's something that if we get to it great if not no sweat um and so for example we have um you know for the first social module release we had art Corp the environment itself was a um critical must have feature so it you know without AR Corp there you wouldn't have had an environment to run around with run around in so it had to be there um so that's that's a critical feature we also had emote text descriptions that was like a high feature we wanted um everyone to know kind of when you did your emotes uh what was happening um as you did them so that the text would show up in the chat chat chat box but uh so that was a nice to

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   have um and then moderate would be the critical or uh the uh moderate would be the chat of critical oh so critical uh moderate would be the chat additional extraneous chat features like the abil ability to minimize windows and customize chat just a little bit and uh that didn't end up making it in but you know stuff that we want to do eventually but we don't need to do right this second for this release exactly and and then those features that don't make it into that release they'll either waterfall into the next release sometimes at higher priority sometimes at not uh not higher priority depending on what Tony and Chris want uh to focus on um or they'll go into a backlog for later review yeah a little Peak behind the curtain too we're trying to standardize what we're doing on the production side as far as using the same kind of nomenclature for features that we do even for bugs right so we've got

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   critical bugs high priority bugs and moderate bugs right like if it's a critical bug we're not we're not going to ship a patch with it just like if it's a critical feature or how that relates to task we're not going to ship the patch with the patch without that being done um also there's a Focus Shift to kind of prioritize features here going forward that are needed for both the persistent universe and Squadron 42 and Star Citizen as a whole so we're trying to look at it uh kind of holistically rather than kind of being split up across various modules yeah cool all right uh next question is from foyble Chris Roberts has stated that his it is his intention that after the Pu launches his vision is to see a continued roll out of content as long as there is interest in the game he sees his releases to be as frequent as a few times per week do you envision these releases to be a progression of the

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   story arc or just a technical expansion of the universe in other words will there be a progressive story arc that will unravel with time in the Pu yeah that's a really interesting question um the persisting universe is first and foremost an an open world style of firsters universe uh and it's a Sandbox really um there will be story yes uh but it's the same kind of story that you have for settings like World settings right um rather than a story arc missions will have stories characters that you run into will have stories um but for big sweeping story arcs though you'll get those in Squadron 42 uh and the persistant universe will support and kind of live around that story and that uh dovet Tales nicely with the next qu yeah yeah it's actually a nice segue into this question from nahima

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   Darkstar will there be a storyline in starmarine to be a little like Squad 42 with some rendered cutcenes or is starmarine just a first- person shooter like Unreal Tournament Quake Wars Etc uh will there be some FPS in Squad 42 or maybe in the next part of the single player game uh yeah so there will be FPS in Squadron 42 um the thing I want to talk about here though is star Marine is a simulation within the first person Universe right much like Arena Commander is a simulation within first person Universe right it's it's a game within the game now starmarine is going to be a test bed for new features for new game types for new mission objectives and Maps right uh we even plan on rolling out a way to do white box testing of environments that we expect to use in the pers universe or even a part of a

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   level for squadron 42 um perhaps maybe we'll even roll out like new AI enemy behavior for uh certain uh monsters or other other um other NPCs out there that uh we can test within that environment right and get that working right and tweaked get feedback from backers and then put get that into the game itself the game proper right um but the other question is like will there be a story and and yes some modes will have a story and again it's like the setting rather than a story right so it's like Pirates are attacking the station fight them off right that's a story but it's not a big story right uh so again it's it's not a story like you like you'd see in Squadron 42 that's where the big the big story arcs are going to come from yeah and star Marine is also used for like

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   actually you know if if you're like ear a commander is a simulation for practicing your dog fighting skills it's a simulation to practice your first person shooter skills if you don't want to jump right into the game gho with a weapon and not only that not only your first person shooter skills but just your first person maneuvering skills right like it's a safe place to learn kind of how the character interacts with the environment so I got a question from Mr Noak starts out with cheers to the Pu team thanks yay with the recent ongoing restructuring of the company what has been the most challenging aspect that this has brought to your work as producers how do cope with organizational change when you have a system in the workplace yeah I'd say um you know the most challenging part of any kind of restructure is just keeping team morale up right so nobody nobody likes to see

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    friends uh leave the company or move to other parts of the project or um you know other you know they like to kind of keep the status quo so to speak and sometimes when that shifts um you know there's team morale kind of takes a hit so part of the job as of a a producer is kind of the the mama bear factor that you like to call it so it's it's that support and encouragement that a producer can Pro provide and and uh you know when team morale is high productivity is high and so it's really crucial to our our our job to to make sure that that happens and uh you know communicating um what the new structure is to the entire um Team uh making sure that there are no questions and if there are questions to make ourselves available uh for those for those developers who have questions about the new structure um you know just being just being aware of of kind of the the

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    feel of the team and and and interacting with them whenever we need to to kind of um update them on everything that's going on so yeah yeah Jake and I we're also kind of adjusting our roles here so there's a bit of a learning curve that we're in the middle of so really ask us again once we know what the new normal is yeah the normal is always shifting yeah next question is from am monato assuming it's kind of that am Monti might it might be aato a monato the two L's throwing me off um what's one of the accomplishments that your team has achieved thus far that you're most proud of Jake um I you know it's a tough one there's a couple things that stand out namely the just the social module release in general the first

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    release was just a huge um kind of success story for our team uh you know it was one of the one of if not the only Star Citizen release to actually hit the the deadline that we set out to hit and um you know partnership with behavior and Austin was uh has been really great so far and and that I think is shown with the release of art Corp um you know the community can now see evidence of of that partnership and and the U the art Corp environment is just amazing it's it's really you know beautiful to look at even though it's supposed to be the Super grungy environment um you know it went through several design iterations over the over the past um you know I don't how I don't know how long but they've been working on it for a while so um you know we tried to get it just right to to suit what our game needs were and as those gameplay needs evolved we had to switch them things up so uh Tony and Mark Skelton went back and

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    forth with Behavior Uh to make sure that all of those um needs were taken care of iterating and polishing and that kind of thing so uh the emotes were a fun addition as well you know getting to see um you know some of our animators here in Austin actually captured a lot of those uh of those emotes with motion capture and um so seeing them work on those get those in the game with the tag teaming with the designers and stuff so um yeah it was cool to see those in the community's hands as well yeah you know we've done so much in the past year uh since I've been here uh that it's hard to choose just one so I'm not gonna answer this this is a Rosemary's Baby question and I I'll have no part of it all righty then next question from Drew skyer Drew dufer I hope it's dufer yeah I think it's dufer you're right uh how

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    much time is spent on average by individual functional Personnel nonproducers project managers is providing content for all these regular updates that we give to the community how do you all prevent status reports from interfering with Personnel doing their jobs most of the status content we're seeing looks like it takes a while to put together and that it would really get in the way of actually creating the universe as such when I stop seeing something like around the versus Ship Shape during a given week or several weeks straight I'm assuming the Personnel are refocusing on actually getting the ships out uh is this accurate or are those folks just on vacation so uh your assumption is correct cor uh ju drucifer they all go on vacation until the camera rolls really um no they don't um they do in fact get back to work on their

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    respective pipelines right um it certainly can be a big distraction uh not that we don't love spending a lot of time with Thomas here uh or or writing letters for the community um it's important thing though so the community updates we do they're written kind of as a partnership between the senior production staff uh the developer leads that that they work with closely and the community team right so um senior producers are in a position to have kind of a big picture view of the project uh which makes them uniquely suited to kind of be able to write this kind of report right um one montra of production is protect your team right and that's protect your team from distractions protect your team from things that keep them from doing their job right um so a good producer will take this to heart and kind of keep the impact of

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    these kind of reports reports to a minimum um try to keep it to no more than a few minutes per developer per week right on these on these kind of reports uh it's the collating of the report and the Gathering of the necessary materials right and the writing it down and editing it that really that takes the time like I personally have spent the worst was probably like a day and a half total spread out over a few days um like writing some of the bigger star Marine reports that I was working on um but I would say that the average time for me has worked out to L than four hours a week right that's a chunk of time um but you know if I work a 40 hour a week which would be awesome uh it's less than 10% of my time um so I'd say that the average the average time is is not that great yeah and uh you know it's important for a producer to know

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    kind of what his team is working his or her team is working on at any given point right so like you know we have weekly scrums here we have leads meetings we have just the day-to-day interaction with Developers is at any point like I know what my team is working on at any given time so you know making these reports um like I know you do those the star Marine reports and stuff and I'll I'll chip in on the monthly report that you guys see but uh with any of these reports it's like um it's it's um with any of these reports it it's easy for the producer to to kind of take that information from his head and put it on on paper because he already just kind of knows what his team is working on in some instances it's not that's not the case you have to actually reach out and get detailed updates for um for things that you don't have the

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    information on but for the most part you should be able to kind of pull a lot of that information from your head already so the important thing is to keep like you said protect your team from that time and a lot of a way a good way to do that is is just to pull it from your own head so yeah sure um I should point out though that like we're we're not doing the starmarine reports anymore right like we're our focus is shifted so that it's it's specifically kind of a report on the progress of 2.0 uh and ultimately that'll be a report on the the progress of our Star Citizen releases in general right so um I've been partnering with Tom Johnson uh in the in Manchester uh on those reports now so we're kind of splitting the burden which makes it a both easier and harder for both of us right uh the other thing I wanted to point out was that like developers like uh Zayn bienn working on the user interface or Mark aent who does the you

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    know the the Bug Smasher um those guys obviously spend more time right but I think uh those are important updates right the communication with with our backers with you guys um and getting that feedback from the community really kind of keeps the team going and allows us to make course Corrections where we need to which uh it's it's great and and it's almost a unique situation kind of in the industry um we should go to the next question yeah um this next question is for doc from Doc what's up doc how do you even keep track of all the small things up to the big uh for example the sheer size and difference of such things like uh one creating modular assets of new designs that can be used for new systems stations Landing points

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    uh two bug fixing and adding important content to AR Corp uh another examples subsumption update for AI Behavior net code buggies uh and three all of the as yet secret economy systems simulations deep designs etc for all the far away multi-stem PR um oh that had an Intero bang on it that that's important uh do you prioritize all of those things on a daily or weekly basis yeah um there are a lot of requests that come in from Chris and Tony for all kinds of things and and uh you know I know speaking for Tony Tony's General philosophy has told me several times is that he only really has a 12-month Horizon meaning that uh he only really cares at any given moment about what's what's on the horizon for the next 12 months what's on the schedule

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    for that time um it makes things a little easier to manage on my side since the amount of content in the game uh planned right now takes us well beyond uh 12 months from now so um you know things that don't fall in the next 12 months they usually fall into a backlog for later review so we're not like things aren't falling through the cracks or anything we have we document everything make sure it goes in a backlog but um you know that backlog grows and grows and grows but the 12 months um you know just kind of every time something gets finished or completed we pull something else out you know that's kind of how a back backlog Works um and there's never a shortage of good ideas no never and a lot of those good ideas come from the community so thanks that's true um as far as keeping track of all the features uh in the next 12 months um goes usually it's a matter of just pulling features from the

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    backlog producers Gathering estimates and dependencies on the for those features uh from the leads it's a lot of times it's a it's a relationship between the producer and the lead um talking about a feature figuring out okay what's required how do we break this down into of individual tasks uh and then taking those those tasks and documenting them in our in our um software uh task tracking software we use J here so um and so that's kind of how that whole process works for me at least also as I as I mentioned earlier like our new Focus will be on looking at the backlog to kind of see what features are needed for both the persisting universe and Squadron 42 so we can focus on Star Citizen is a holistic product right if if something is persistent Universe only it'll probably go back back into the backlog right for for the year for the next for the next time we review the

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    backlog uh we'll build those features for the persistent universe as we get closer to you know rolling those features out and rolling out different uh patches for the person sen Yeah so basically you know if Squadron 42 uh needs something that is also beneficial for the Pu those things will get prioritized higher than something that's only beneficial for the Pu yeah uh here's a question from lock ostri I'm sure I pronounced that poorly um how do you plan on building out the persisting universe are you planning on prioritizing the Stanton system and then work out from there or are you planning to finish up building out systems that already have content for them for things like Squad 42 or is there no real plan set for building out the Pu at this time yeah our uh I would say our midterm

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    plan um is to flesh out an entire system U so almost like a a vertical slice of what a system in the Pu entails so yeah we I think we'll be focusing mostly on the Stanton system for the foreseeable future getting it to a gold standard quality um you know we're focusing on the four Landing zones in Stanton AR Corp um or ar Corps Area 18 Hurston Microtech and uh Crusader so getting all those Landing zones fleshed out um making it so where you can actually visit those Landing zones so we'll be working with other teams across the project um who are fleshing out the the space portion like the spaces in between the landing zones starting with uh Crusader in 2.0 um so basically getting a a gold standard system is going to be our our immediate kind of near to midterm priority and then I remember

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    when I when I first joined the team uh a little over a year ago now uh the idea was kind of to to be designing the first five star systems uh but what we did not know at that point was how long does it take us to make a single star system yeah or even a a single Landing zone right so so over the course of the year we've we've really fleshed out a single Landing Zone we've uh done most of the work needed for a second Landing Zone um and we've you know just recently added different points of interest around the Stanton star system itself so this is teaching us how long it's going to take us to do it uh even though I would say we're not 100% complete with the landing Zone yet once we have that it'll give us an idea of how much more we need to do right so we've shifted our Focus from instead of the first five complete star

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    systems to like the first five Landings zones right so we we currently have four Landing zones in Stanton um and then those are landing zones right and it's not like I'm going out to a space station to make a quick repair and then getting back on that's not really a landing Zone it's a like a mission right so we're adding those as well so this tells us what we need to do um then from here we'll be able to kind of move on to the next one was Nicks right which is the leski landing Zone a much less populated system um but that's going to need a lot of activity in it as well right because you don't want like a single star system with one Landing Zone and that's it right how are those going to work out so this will tell us kind of what a mediumsized system takes to build what a very small system takes to build and

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    then we can look at our processes and see how we need to tweak those processes and see how we can go forward with making a lot of content because because that's what we need to do it'll give us actual metrics which is something that we don't have U for some of the areas of our project so once we get those metrics we can actually calculate okay we know this takes this long uh if we want 20 systems by this time uh we know it'll take this long for us to make and that'll give us information as like do we need to ramp up more resources or Outsource a little bit more um and how can we make changes to the system to make it better or faster or more procedural or what have you yeah yeah um the next question is from Zio do you have different team members who are really excited to work on certain parts of star citizen that aren't in the pipeline yet for example maybe a team member is dying to work on

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    minable asteroid Fields but the work isn't there yet uh do you have any examples of what team members are excited to work on as we progress into 2.0 and Beyond well like I you know this is kind of already in the pipeline it's in pre-production Phase but I know Mark skeleton is super excited to get his hands on the uh the um additional Landing zones for for Stanton so Hurston Microtech and crusader uh you know we've got one Landing Zone out there we've got another one almost almost finished Nicks and and so moving on to these the these next three there's lots of opportunity to create new things and and uh new Aesthetics that we haven't seen yet in Star Citizen uh you know Crusade or microtex kind of a cold you know snowy planet um Crusader kind of a bespin kind of cloud city Cloud City Cloud City and

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    uh and then huron's like a Refinery type type atmosphere so um I know as an art director that's a that's a lot of things to look forward to um we've already kind of we're already in pre-production Phase there as we enter white box phase we'll get some of those um white boxes back which is basically just a designer taking these uh 3D objects and building out a space uh rudimentary kind of space um we'll get that back and then Mark SK we'll put our concept artist to work on doing paintovers to actually what is the space actually going to look like and that's really exciting for him I know so uh my I myself am excited to see the uh the first uh iteration of character customization cuz I'm I'm one of those guys who will spend hours just customizing my character and and making him just perfect and before I even start the game so I'm excited about that I don't even want to talk about how much

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    time I spent trying to make my Fallout 4 character look like Pam poie last night that uh it's a little embarrassing yeah it's also embarrassing that I failed I didn't really do oh man that's a bummer um also I just want to mention that this this might seem out of character for me because I'm one of the leads on the kind of the first person gameplay but let just put this out there I'm most excited for the opportunity to work on game systems that don't involve combat um you know the way you interact with mining uh or the way you can be as Todd papy calls it a uh space trucker right where you really you don't need to shoot anybody at all and to kind of make your way through the universe and earn a living like that's interesting to me yeah um when I see people play you know some of the other games especially some of the

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    MMOs that and try to do it like as a complete pacifist and the links that they have to go to to um to kind of earn that as an achievement for themselves we're making a Sandbox and that just really kind of Geeks me out the fact that we're making this sandbox for people to plan and you don't have to kill anybody if you don't want to I really I'm really looking forward to seeing how that shakes out yeah not a lot of games kind of reward the pacifist lifestyle so it's kind of nice cool I I got another question here from Lock austri uh which makes him MVP for this t for the producers outside does that's right um congratulations on your Victory and your bragging rights sir there are no other prizes no other prizes uh here's the question in the last monthly monthly report it was said that casaba Outlet was wrapping up in order to get ready for the shopping release does this mean the persistence

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    update or at least parts of it uh has already been folded into 1.3 or 2.0 or is persistence and shopping now part of the same release so I'll take that one uh persistence in the traditional sense of the word of the word is not folded into 1.3 which is live or 2.0 uh in any kind of meaningful player facing way um though we are working as we speak on kind of the backend require to support persistence player persistence uh that being said uh our partners at behavior and a turbulent are working on some really clever things uh that allow us to be able to kind of customize our character and have that state stick when you're going from one map type to to another map type um we're ways off from having traditional persistence and and

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    by that I mean like an inventory system that allows you to pick up an item drop an item sell an item trade an item with a friend uh have that thing and then have it persist between play sessions so like if you log out with the session log back in uh we're gonna fake it right now and then we're gonna have real persistence coming up um I'm going to go with the soon TM um I think that was the last question wasn't it yeah and and last thing I'll I'll add to that is that um you know the uh persistence as with everything we that we put out we have um iterations right so like we'll have the first iteration go out to you guys um you know that and then as we kind of release you know um 2.1 and 2.2 uh we'll put in more kind of functionality surrounding persistence

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    and that kind of thing so we'll have like hanger storage somewhere in there you know actually being able to buy something and send it back to your hanger um you know potentially even um you know as you as you have clothing in cassaba Outlet or something like picking clothing and then uh being able to kind of persist that across uh play sessions as well so it's it's an iterative process as with as it is with everything so uh so just be patient and you'll get it in Du time so uh thank you all very much for joining us for this very Texas edition of of 10 for the producers I forgot to where my cowboy at oh man sorry uh so Jake thank the backers and subscribers for making this possible thank you so much good job thanks guys hey guys thanks for watching um

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    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 around the verse go here please and I will see you in the verse [Applause]