Wingman's Hangar ep060 . March 12, 2014

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] there you go hey everybody Welcome to wingman's hanger episode 60 did you catch the new beginning good job Morin good job Morin hi thank you if you don't if you're new to the show or you don't know what's going on this is everything about Chris Roberts epic space adventure Star Citizen we take an inside look at what goes on on a week- toe basis across all of our Studios from Santa Monica to Austin to England to Montreal to can all over Canada actually and Mexico we're spread out so we got some cool stuff stay tuned you'll get to see what do we have coming up this week well Moon collider and the catha system it's an AI system we're going to get an inside look at how that's going to work in the game we have a perform feedback with your questions and videos and an interview

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   with Chief technical Officer Jason Spangler what went on this week well we hit 40 million we got a big thanks to all you folks out there that did had it but be sure to check out that letter from the chairman Chris thanks everybody as ever but also make sure you get your votes in on what you want to see going forward it's very important that that we get your feedback as we know we're all doing this together so thanks a lot to all of you uh dog fighting update what's going on with that well lots of lods damaged States created well what's that mean well lods are kind of like when you get farther and farther away from ships or vehicles or things of that nature it takes out some of the details so it allows us to render more objects on screen at once and damage stes we did last week so you kind of know what that is lots of that happening this week Pedro kamacho is composing the battle music that's kind of like musical change

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   based on what's going on in your game at a certain time if you're coming up in a dangerous situation you'll notice it with the thrilling kind of music kind of thing probably not exactly the thing but something like that much cooler I'm sure uh Martin gay and team are creating all the sound effects for thrusters and bitching betties and pretty much everything in the game that's going to really enhance the experience John UR and turbulent web team is building their leaderboard that's right we can't have the dog fighting module out there without knowing who's really good at it and of course lots of testing we are testing the bers out of this game and uh soon we'll be opening that up to you guys and so you'll get to see what we're up we're seeing and it's kind of fun can't wait to see it uh also David Jennison and Brian Brian Brewer visited infinite

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   realities over in IP switch flew into norch England and went to IP switch what this is is kind of a capture of body and facial capture system which allows it to put likenesses in the game this was a $22 million stretch goal of ours which you may remember we're going to get that camera system hook it all up and put folks in the game we're going to put real looking people in the game photo realistic the way to go Star Citizen yay and it wouldn't be a week at cloud and pum without the generosity of some of the fans got the we got we got what do we got here package from Mar what what a package from Mar yeah specifically me does it have my name on it watch out what's in it my God it does have my name on it tick tick

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   tick here you go Eric security of it all right well it's already she's already kind of let's just get in there yeah see what we got here all right peeps I'll read I'll do the reading you want to read all right you it's my b all right go ahead go ahead he's getting away from you yeah hurry up all right in clothes you'll find homebaked molasses cookie made fresh with eggs from our very own free rage chickens you'll also find a small box for Mark Skelton we figured anyone who can wear that gold shirt with such pride and deliver hazy Thoughts with such perfect haziness uh would appreciate some homemade fudge that IND Interstellar trading thanks

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   guys all let's see what you got man check it out yes oh my God they get on their this better have all right Mark man take a bite and make sure all the crumbs fall back in that was delicious thank you very much always good to get fudge and cookies and those were like what they call them free roam free pre range hens or something that's that's pretty cool um this week we have episode 1.6 came up last week of the next great Starship uh Sandy and the crew got to look at a bunch of new cool concepts for ships and some of them got eliminated some moved on don't forget to get your votes in for those who want to bring back in the competition in the Wild Card vote speaking of Sandy she was in the UK for customer service training we hired two

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   new people Alice Coker and drwood dun Keeley Drew mood man if I'm what's your name my buddy I am apologizing now because dear mud dun Keeley I think that's as best as I can do anyway Sandy was in the UK pulling double duty because she was over there training them and when she was over there well we got her to help us take a look at Moon collider and the AI system hi everyone welcome uh to another edition of inside Cloud Imperium uh for today's uh show or Edition we're going to uh take you behind the scenes and

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   what we're doing in AI in Star Citizen like everything else in Star Citizen we're going to try and push the boundaries of um what we can do and what's been done before so we've actually partnered with a uh a new uh middleware company um and their middleware is called kther hi I'm Sandy Gardner and I'm here with Matt Mike and Ben three guys from Moon collider um and these three I'm actually sitting with three very smart people all three of you are from Cambridge originally we originally met at University we were all studying various different courses there I was doing physics uh yeah I was doing maths and uh Matt was doing computer

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   science yeah I was actually doing programming as part of the course whereas I think these guys spent most of their time programming instead of doing their course but I think the first Contact I had with uh Moon cider was through Matthew Jack who's uh you know the main uh founder or principle of it along with uh uh Mike Bell um and he'd reached out to me over email he' basically said you know I I used to work at krych and I was the one of the primary AI uh programmers there and helped develop the the cry AI system and you know now I've done independent I'm building my own middleware for AI that's going to be sort of The Next Step the Next Generation I still do Consulting for krych I know the engine really well and I love what you're doing and is there a way maybe we could talk because I'm pretty excited by Star Citizen I'd love

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    to help out and you know I was like okay that's great because you know anyone that has cry engine experience is obviously a big plus for us and someone that actually programmed uh a large part of the AI system already in cray engine was obviously someone that we were like very interested in kythera is uh middleware which runs with multiple engines we chose cry engine partly because um it's such a fantastic showcase um especially for AI characters there's a certain amount of roleplay initially you know um we kind of decide how we would want a wingman or a pilot to um behave or a certain race you know if we're looking at the Vandal we think about you know what's involved in that process though you know we kind of played out a little bit different species the different attitudes the different types of P and all that stuff yeah yeah we kind of get an over

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    overarching idea of you know what makes a v or Vandal when they're in a ship when they're flying around how would they attack you that kind of thing uh and what what you know what makes uee them kind of more regimented militaristic type formation kind of thing that's a big part of it I think is getting personality across because 90% of the time you're going to be seeing not a pilot we going to see him in a ship so the ship in a sense becomes his Avatar it's his it's how you see him in the world so to real really get a sense of Personality we need to make the ship have a a personality you know the ship needs to move in a unique way for each wingman for each person for each race when a when a Thruster fires on a an AI ship it it's actually a Thruster firing it's it's part of the physical world that the ship is in and it will affect

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    the way that the ship functions this kind of game has uh so many different aspects um so I think if you're an AI programmer for instance it's incredibly f fasinating and interesting cuz it's solving a lot of problems um on a lot of different levels it's it's like a much it's a much more complicated task it's like doing a dive off the top and a triple cork screw whatever and you know it's a difficulty of 10 not a difficulty of three or four and and some people like to do that and luckily I think the moon collider folks are those people as an astrophysicist I was working on simulations of the universe so running large simulations and supercomputers around the world trying to understand how the structure and how Galaxy formed so I've gone very much from working on one type of virtual Universe to a very different kind of virtual Universe with Star Citizen one of the big things about

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    kythera is that it's Dynamic what is dynamic navigation so Dynamic navigation is a feature for the first person combat where AIS will react to the world changing so if you got a a ship Landing in a hanger then um the characters know to Route around it instead of walking straight through where the ship now is whenever stuff changes it's recomputed on the flight um and we try and bring that Dynamic approach to everything we do we don't want the AI to be too controlled we want it to be to react sensibly to the player so we can't designers can't specify every single thing this AI will do we just give it these are your objectives do them in an intelligent way and react to the player itself we we draw these these things out we come up with them so that uh we can

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    have sort of distinct Maneuvers distinct looks to each of the different species and the different types of Pilots capabilities and all that stuff so you really get a sense that all of the different AI across the the whole game are are real people that their actual characters piloting ships and walking about and doing all sorts of things um and not just the product of you know some computer program that's ticking away in the background um one other key system there is just uh the avoidance when dog fighting is basically about uh shooting at other ships and getting close enough to shoot them then uh pretty quickly what you end up with is ships colliding which is good fun but avoidance is an interesting feature and it's one that we hope people don't notice you notice when it goes wrong when as Matt said ships glide with each

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    other but it's actually quite complicated to make sure that ships avoid each other all the time and and we've also got things like moving asteroids and things other other bits of the environment that are moving around we have to avoid those as well yeah with star syst with such a dynamic large world you can't hardcode all the things you have to avoid so we needed this system which automatically would work out how a ship should turn to avoid something and make sure yeah collisions don't happen we needed a new AI for Star Citizen because it's doing so many things that say cry engine actually doesn't do it I mean because cry engine is specifically a firstperson engine for running around first person combat and it kind of handle some other cases but in Star Citizen we have travel uh you know between planets we fly around in space we have dog fighting in space so

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    we need race sophisticated um sort of space-based AI or flight AI but we also need the meta AI which is kind of what does that NPC do during the day you know is he you know he a pirate he gets up in the morning brushes his teeth goes to work grading some innocent Traders and then after he's gotten his ill gotten gains he goes and fences them and then goes to the bar and has some drinks and celebration and goes to bed and what is that pirates's life goal what's he trying to do is he trying to build a pirate empire or is he just wants to be a solo operator and so there's these different levels of IIA that go from sort of the basic sort of tactical okay how do I get around a corner or how do I navigate somewhere to like what am I doing today or what am I doing this week or what am I doing this year they're the guys that have really written the bulk of the system that we're actually using it's just really been up to us to uh to run with designs ideas internally and

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    work with the um kythera guys to uh to actually get the end product into the game Star Citizen uh really has a unique set of challenges and I think a lot of people might have dreamt of one or two of them but putting them all together is pretty bold um and I think it's really only because of the the backers funding that uh that that's possible I think uh with a publisher model um it would be very hard to achieve um but I think with uh the support of the backers we can really get there for us that's a fantastic opportunity because there are so many different features that we might Implement for different games different genres um and they've really all come together in this one project so it's

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    very exciting all right I hope everyone enjoyed the uh look inside what we're doing on the AI in Star Citizen so we'll catch you next time on inside Cloud Imperium games goodbye J hey Eric I think it's time for feedack okay well now it's time for form feedback awesome wow I I'm sorry about that was spectacular I'm sorry about the name there I'm not sure very nice might be dermit oh dermit it might be could be because it yeah okay we'll just move on right let's get right to it from Mark kempt he says are there achievements yes

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    or no achievements so I'm not talking about like Xbox 360 Achievements right where it's just a you know ding you just killed your 20th guy or something right um the way that that Chris looks at achievements is more in the sense of you can do unique things that nobody else does um like you know you could find a jump point and navigate it you could uh kill a certain bad guy that kind of thing The Dread pirate Roberts dread pirate Roberts for instance yes it's an excellent example but and those kind of things would show up in the galopa it's like you did this thing and you're the one who did that um as far as like other types of things you would think of as achievements in other games there are going to be things you can collect if you travel around the the universe the verse the verse like fish like fish exactly cool though that's a

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    good answer I appreciate that from droptune you've been testing a dog fighting module across all the studios who is the current Top Gun well technically well we have been testing the dog fighting module at all the studios at yes that's that's that's the correct uh what's the part of speech I'm looking for I know vernacular I guess that's that's better vernacular I like that word um so yes we have been testing it at different Studios um there is not an official Top Gun yet although whenn pressed Chris did say he is not the best pilot yeah I knew that but the truth is we are not we're not

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    playing across all the studios yet right we're not yeah we're not we're not completely there yet we I think we've got um and we can ask Jason about this later but I think there's one big blocker bug that we're trying to get like with the spawn issue that's stopping us from testing but the server is up that close that close just close very close all right from from snorky snorkel schnor snorky what are hanger fees and how will they work um so basically for all you people out there who already have your ships we're going to give you hanger space we've already said this before um so hanger fees are for when you need additional hanger space so if you're visiting somewhere where you're main hanger is not for instance you're v um right so when you go to land on a planet then you

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    pay your Landing fee and then you can leave your ship there temporarily It's Kind like a docking fee or something exactly and then you you can leave your ship temporarily run over to the the store and grab the guns you want and leave again or if you need to store something on that planet then you could actually rent a hanger space for more permanently so you could have hangers all over the place but you'll only pay for ones after the first one so how's it hanger in ah get it in sorry from Angelus it doesn't get any better from Angelus Rex damage States and all one ship is for instance in a severe wreck from a battle the current owner being an NPC or player Di and kicks the bucket is salvaging that wreckage considered stealing no of course not I mean if if they've already died and their pieces of their ship floating in space free game

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    fair game fair game free for all fair game um but don't do any premature salvaging that's that's when it's considered steing if the guy's floating around in the Ava Su the guy still flying around in the ship that would be considered a stealing right right all right we've got a video question this week from from parias take it away [Applause] that's cool raming speed cup raming

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    speed buggies what I'm not sure that's what they were trying to accomplish with that yeah they clear buggy bums oh it's a buggy Invasion are we going to allow that to happen in the game though well of course since we're not starting out with free roam of planets then you know it won't be as exciting to to bring your buggy to another planet but eventually you'll probably get drive your vehicles around another planet and that was a really cool video that's that was really fun and we had to put that in there from scramble legs direct X12 is on the horizon are there any early thoughts of if cig will utilize this technology yes um actually we are sending several of our programmers out to jdc specifically for to go to two sessions on that among other things and so they're obviously going to be

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    evaluating the tech we intend to stay up with current Graphics technology so I I can't see why we wouldn't um plus I mean we're also supporting mantle so right exactly we're we're we're right so absolutely definitely from Solaris since the Sith Scythe SCA Sky model is done why don't you suckers add it to the hanger why why don't we add the Scythe to the hanger how many ways have you come up with it I don't know I'm just I'm just going all over the place for that so um it's done on the outside but there's a lot more to it than that I mean we need to get HUD in there we need the animations for opening and getting into the ship um there's there's still a little bit more to be done on the interior plus like the lighting and things like that so when those things

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    are done you will see the Scythe in your hanger it's not like we're holding it back on you just cuz we don't feel like putting it in it's right we'd like to put things that are a little that you can interact with in there rather just jumping up and down right exactly from Jazz arrow in the movie Titan AE they use zero g scooters to get around the wrecks will there be something similar that we can carry in our ships and use for Salvage and docking or just plain old joy riding that is actually really cool like G scooters um scooters I'm not sure about scooters per se um but a you have you're going to have Jets on your space suit so you can jet around out in space just in your suit um there's such a joke there that I'm

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    leaving alone know I I know and I I I was seeing it coming and I'm glad that you you held back um so you're going to actually get to see a preview of that in the dog fighting module there might be a cargo sled too as well yeah yeah we're also GNA eventually we're going to do some cargo carrying sledy things cool all right well thank you Rob appreciate it and now it's time for Ben Lesnik and this week's most valuable post hey everybody Welcome to MVP most valuable post I'm Community manager Ben LK and I'm here to tell you what the best post at the RSI forums was this week but first i'm joined by a very special guest Mr William Lewis our uh newest cig employee hello why don't you to tell us about yourself William uh my

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    name is will I'll be the new lead moderator of the forums I'll be there basically taking care of any questions any problems anything that comes up on the forums and uh I'm always open to hear any questions or comments you guys have and what is your what is your username so they can PM you all their problems that'll be W Lewis DCI awesome well let's move into the MVP uh this week we're giving it to failen for his great thread what you may not know about cig developers this uh has interesting facts about everybody on the team so if you want to know what Roberts was into in the'80s uh it's the place to check it out uh in fact William selected this as our MVP this week I'm glad to have helped so now that now that you're going to be moderating the forums responsible for Banning everyone I guess it is time for me to hand over the Ben

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    Hammer ah thank you very much great power great responsibility but uh don't you all worry uh son has me covered thanks guys see you next week this week's fan focus is pretty Innovative and very current take a look at Aurora crash by test Squadron here we go come on let's we can do this ah jeez is this thing always is fr son of a all right good job test Squadron so if dog fighting is delayed we'll know who to blame for that issue with that

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    Aurora crash thing well everybody look Jason's here with me to talk about Ai and moon collider so how you doing good good so you've been working with moon collider for about a year now right yes now what um what's so special about what they're doing that's like different than any any other kind of AI um it's very Dynamic and that it will adjust to situations that change such as in the demo videos how you s where the crates fell and the characters uh moving actually changed where they were moving and changed where they walk to use different things for cover so it'll give itself a new hierarchy all the time based on to what's going on in the scene that's pretty cool and that's also what's going on in space as well like I saw the bit where they'll avoid each other like there'll be a collision

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    situation that they'll be able to avoid and yeah that's pretty amazing so how has it been working with those guys oh a lot of fun I mean they really know their stuffff and they're experts and we get lots of cool AI features out of it so I think the fans are going to really like playing that now I believe dog fighting is going to have some of the AI stuff implemented is that correct yes um the current plan is it will have where you can fight AI but we won't have a mix of AI and multiple players together right because that's something still to be done over the course of the year of development on this project I mean those guys are really really amazing though and so now have you been over there to visit them or I know they've come over here we've met with at GDC and office visits I haven't been there yet but I I

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    really I'm looking forward to a trip to the UK sometime when maybe in the summer when it's a little warmer that's a good idea but no so you uh you've been working with them a year now and and you've they they've come from krych or they started their own company and they've got um their own technology called CA right CA yes catha and that's going that developing that as a middleware product as well mhm so we're getting some benefit here because we're helping them develop this and they're going to be able to use ca for other things yeah so it's like a a nice mutually beneficial Arrangement a symbiotic relationship but we get it first uhuh and it's nobody else has had it and so what other types of AI do we have we have obviously the flying in the ships AI what other kind of AI can the people expect from from uh from our game oh in the future they'll see the character-based AI with characters on

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    planet side and moving around but then they'll also get to see it in the firsters shooter aspects like with boarding actions and such where you have like Squad based AI with uh uh uh and multiple characters uh in combat and reacting in a realistic manner during the Ship boarding cool will there be crowd AI or AI Planet Side and stuff they'll be handling that kind of stuff too yeah that's amazing you don't really realize that there's a lot of artificial intelligence in every game and the better that is the more we can make it less like computerized pattern oriented the more realistic or the more fun it is I mean everybody's played the the original Nintendos the Marios where you just got the pattern down you know right and we always figured out how to do that kind of stuff

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    in these kind of situations this is an AI that is changing and it's going to adapt to how you're playing the game so it might not be so simple to get through all those puzzles M we even have it where as like the economy of a planet changes the characters who you might see on the planet and the different jobs they're doing will change based on the changes to that economy so then you'll see you might have a different AI or uh controlling that character uh because they're they have completely different profession or the economy of the planet is going up or down that's very cool now Rob I see you shaking your head over there you've been having a lot of thinking about that right oh very very very much so it's but that that kind of stuff is going to be really cool right the as the economy changes the I mean you that makes you want to go back as a player to Planet later on or as things change in the verse right to find out

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    what's going on it kind of keeps the game fresh because every time you land on a planet it might not be the same exact thing and I know Chris is big on that well listen I'm looking forward to that it's it's going to come out we'll have time A Taste of it here coming up with the dog fighting module assuming that you know we're all not stuck playing the Aurora crashed game for next no no I've tried it I've I've only I've only gotten two but I did I did a very short try did you try it Jason did you yes I also didn't I tried a short try I got to three 22 designers fair enough designers but Jason you kicked my butt too you were a whole 50% farther than me so I'm going to have to go back and try a little bit of that later so listen I want to thank uh subscribers and Pleasers and obviously Jason and and Rob for joining us today um thanks to Sandy and Chris for that great uh Moon collider AI thing

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    out in uh Glasgow Manchester it was actually in both places so I don't feel too bad about saying that um coming up at cig this week well we've got the next great Starship 1.7 coming up this Friday can't wait to see that on the next great Starship uh I think this is the final one before we start voting for the wild

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    card so get your votes in on that uh coming up next week on wingman's hanger full performance capture we've talked a little bit about it we shot it it looks really cool we're going to talk to you guys about the challenges it takes to do a full performance session and how cool it is for uh the game itself subscribe to our YouTube channel find out exactly what happens when it happens you'll get an email um get on the YouTube channel join our join our crew submit your questions on the RSI Forum there's always a forum feedback question and answer session or question session on wingman's hanger get it in there post your question up there and we might pick it for the show about 15 minutes after the show we'll have wingman's hangover so an informal look at uh what went on and we'll talk to you guys about what you liked what you didn't like maybe take a Skype call here and there and just have some fun and remember guys if you want your stuff featured on

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    wingman's hanger send it in we just might use it where are we going to see him guys in the verse are Waldo and Carmen San dieago trained by ninjas