10 for the Producers: Episode 04 (2015.03.16)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hi everybody and welcome back to another episode of 10 for the producers I'm Travis day I'm Daren borck we're two The Producers here in the Santa Monica office of cloud Imperium games uh so thank you and welcome to the show and a special Thanks goes out to all of our subscribers that make shows like this possible their donations every month uh make us able to put on programs like this and and so we really appreciate that cuz we love interacting with you guys so thank you and then Chris's he just left for South by Southwest so we're filling on this this episode big shoes to fill absolutely flopping around on my feet right now um anyway so we should get going with the first question Daran I think it's what all right first one is from our our good friend and regular submitter beer

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   for the beer God in a recent episode KX and Dan said that scheduling is your domain how do you prioritize one bug or feature over another and does the inclusive nature of star citizens development change what gets tackled first that's that's actually a pretty interesting question because what part of what what production does is be able to prioritize what those tasks are for example we we're on the cusp of of 11 so when we have several critical bugs come through we have to look at all right is this something that we can bump towards the next version is this something that can be tackled right away and also we have to look at the risk is if we put this in we have one of our guys fix this is there a risk that this could cause further problems down the road um or just in the relase that we're working on right now yeah well it's very it's you know organic contextual really it's like

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   okay so we're putting in 1.1.0 contains a couple new features one of them for example is the Retaliator in the hanger so if there is an issue with the Retaliator any issue it kind of raises it to a higher level because at this point this is a feature that we're putting in the game this a new ship this is something that people spent money on they want to look at they want to have it be awesome and we want it to be awesome for them so automatically any Retaliator related issue kind of in my mind at least ra raises up a little bit if there are balance issues that something's clearly out of whack or if there are uh you know kind of crappy user experience issues we would tend to prioritize those pretty highly um because the whole point of Arena Commander is to get things balanced and get things fun uh that's the idea about this modular release schedule is that we can have space combat pretty well locked down and fun to play and engage in uh long before the release of you know say

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   Squadron 42 or the persistent universe so that's a a big priority for us because that's the whole point of what we're doing it's also an iterative process in that we may not address a certain particular bug in this particular patch but and it may be a high priority bug that we'd like to address we either we just don't have the time or there are other higher priority issues that require our attention first so we may know knowingly let a bug go into the game see if it's something that maybe some a p or a fix that someone else is working on May subsquently fix that as well so it's kind of sometimes it's whacka sometimes it's just strategic I guess letting damage come through every now and then just knowing that it's going to be addressed later on yeah like one of the things that Daren brings up and this is usually when you do that is uh the idea that the fix may be worse than the actual issue So currently

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   there's some problems on Landing mechanic right and the landing mechanic is great we think it's cool some ships will come in and land and they'll tip over on the landing pad it's not exactly what you want to do when you land your nice new ship is have it sit back on its engine now there's a bunch of different issues on underlying what's causing that why the center mass is off why these things are being counted for the risk being if we with one day two days left try and fix these and say change the center of mass for all of these affected ships well that will change the flight balance and flight Mechanics for all of these ships so then you got to weigh it out it's like hm do we really want to do that and risk breaking the flight of every single ship just because it might land on its butt when it lands or do we say okay we'll let it land on his butt when it lands and take the next next patch say 2 weeks from now and then we'll do the rebalance of the new center

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   MK we can focus more time on it exactly next question comes from Spectre NYC the Mustang recently saw performance changes in Arena Commander 1.0.2 how are these changes achieved in an engine that physically models ship movement uh do these changes affect maneuverability across other ships this kind of ties in what we just with Travis just mentioned about Center of mass and how there's other factors involved when how ships maneuver yeah so I mean different ways that that you can affect a ship's maneuverability ility right as you affect the the power available so the power plant itself uh servicing the power request the power draw of the individual maneuvering thrusters the thrusters themselves are all unique individual items so to to the point of your question of would changing them on one ship affect another no they will not um each item has its own properties and its own stats and so the things that you

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   can modify you can modify the power plant you can modify the cooling uh it's kind of separate from the Thruster system uh then you can modify the thrusters themselves their power output you can modify how quickly if they're articulable thrusters how quickly they can articulate so say if they have a positive negative 90 so 180° you can say okay we only let it Traverse at 30° a second or we let it Traverse at 90° a second and that will affect the performance characteristics of the ship as it pulls all the thrusters and how quickly they can articulate to the position they need to be in so those are kind of the primary things that we mess around with uh sometimes in the case of the Mustang it's multiple right so it's the power it's a little bit of the cooling it's it's the actual output of the thrusters it's the range of the articulation of the thrusters and the speed at which they articulate so the Mustang was a pretty extensive

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   modification and these are things with the tuning kit we want be able players to be able to actually tune their own um for future customization and one of the stretch goals is the tuning kit that's uh we haven't really established what it's supposed to do just yet but the idea is we'd like to be able to allow players to be able to actually tune those parameters down to the minutia yeah exactly so some of the parameters will be uh basically derivative of the item itself right so maybe on the Mustang you have four different types of thrusters that you can equip the four different types all kind of you know one's the really quick articulation one and one's the really wide range but maybe it's slower and one's the super powerful but only goes in One Direction one or more fuel efficient one yeah exactly and then within that you can kind of that that establishes the range for that Thruster or the behavior of that Thruster a lot of our our designers and our design team thinks about different items kind of categorizing the

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   behavior of that item and then anything that you can do operates within the behavioral range of that item so then you can modify within that that Spectrum a good example of that or at least a comparison be you know taking your favorite compact car and dropping a a Ford Mustang engine or a Corvette engine that's going to change the performance specification parameters of that particular car because one it wasn't designed to for that engine in the first place um therefore you're going to need to upgrade the suspension bushings the transmission um any other parts that require modification to support kind of performance so the idea is kind of like you know if you're the kind of Grease Monkey where you like tuning under your hood over the weekend on your car the same idea applies here yeah and you actually may want to take some things back right like uh for example if you were to upgrade your maneuvering thrusters in your main engine but not

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    your power plant or your cooling you may actually want to tune them down to say 60% of their full operational potential cuz you don't want to be constantly overheating and losing all your power draw not a will shoot your weapons anytime you throttle up so this next question comes to us from Murray PhD AKA Dr Murray yeah yes as producers you are the keepers of the schedule but you also each have pet projects of your own parenthetical a reason guest on my behalf parenthetical will you tell us a little bit about these projects you're most excited about yeah uh we do have our own little pet projects um they're not very exciting it's not like yeah it's not like we want to cast our daughter in the game or anything like that like a classic producer like idea for a Hollywood producer um so Darren what are some of your pet projects oo Mine mine's really exciting I'm coming up with a way of automating how we invoice our outsourced

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    artists if you are a project manager or producer type this actually may sound a little more interesting we do a lot of Outsourcing work um a lot of contractual work and um I'm trying to come up with a a method at least a job numbering system where uh every time we get an invoice we send an invoice out that I can keep a digital archive complete with job numbers on what kind of project what cost center it comes out of who it went to what date it was and uh I have a number system that I've used uh before so and I think it's applicable here uh and it's something that I'm trying to get the ball rolling on and I'm actually pretty excited about it yeah I don't know if I have any pet projects really uh I guess my my biggest like most exciting pet projects would be reorganizing jira adding new components to jira I did a recent update on the fix

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    versions in jira fun stuff like that that's exciting production pet projects yeah well Welcome to our hell no I'm just kidding it's actually well for me it makes our lives easier and it organizes the team which is the most important part our next question comes to us from hate Fury not sure if you hated the movie Fury the idea of Fury but anyway that's one from the producers it's been discussed in the Pu that if convoys keep getting attacked then a mission would be potentially generated for a player to provide an escort is it possible for the Pirates to the side getting the extra Manpower in is worth the cost at the same time generating a mission for a player to assist in an attack and at the same time could these two Miss interact causing a PVP engagement to happen yeah so I mean the uh not to be GL the the idea behind the economic system right is that this will be the driver for what you encounter as

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    you fly around so I think uh Chris talked about this a little bit of PAX East and some of the interviews he gave I talked about it at paxis some of the interviews I gave but basically the economic system is what's going to be driving what is happening in the in the space between planets right so it's going to be establishing where the trade routes are going what those trade rots are carrying so you may see increased pirate activity if all of a sudden a commodity becomes like a let's say ore is mined on this one planet and it's uh unobtanium and all of a sudden the demand for unobtanium throughout the Galaxy goes through the roof driving an increase in the price that will increase the amount of pirate activity trying to obtain on obtainium so this organic way in which things will flow back and forth driven by the economy will help to inform what things you encounter as you

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    fly so example of thean example to take this way too far if the price goes way high and supply and demand dictates that people will be coming to that planet to try and make money off of it so the supply will increase and the trade Lanes will be populated with it which means that if you were flying in between the planets that are attached to this planet via jump points and systems you would see much more Freighters that would be what you would encounter um you will probably also over time see more Pirates coming in that pirate activity who are impacting such a valuable resource will then be seeing a bunch of job boards generating missions to protect these convoys so it's all very organic and as a pirate if you're attacking these convoys and there's going to be NPC AI Pirates and then there's going to be player pirates that are there for the exact same reasons um you may then end up in a situation where somebody who has

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    a job to protect this Convoy is the same Convoy that you decide to attack voila you will be in PvP combat or you know a job comes up uh to protect this Convoy which generates a an opposing mission on let's say an infamy pirate board where hey this Convoy is going to be coming through the system uh you know this this crime syndicate is offering this much money for you to snag this this payload um think of the gold rush in California during the 1800s where you know someone fell in gold and then suddenly people flocked all over to California in San Francisco area to mine all this gold which meant increased amount of traffic people coming out in and out but also meant an increase amount of bandager that went on on those those and from yeah also kind of like the idea that that like say a pirate Syndicate or anybody could could give a mission and say

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    intercept this shipment of or and that you might not be the only guy who's there to heed that call you know what I mean you may end up penniless because you missed out on it which happened during the Gold Rush a lot of people died broke and you may end up fighting fighting with a guy over who gets to actually take that payload who Stakes the claim on that particular rock yeah exactly so I think it'll be a fun dynamic system that will really provide a lot of uh variance in refeshing experience for players which I think is why we're so excited about it this next question comes from Zach iroll zachar roll I guess wouldn't it be amazing to have space waves radio player career- driven with factual live updates on what's happening with conflict Commodities or even specials uh this could be a systemwide with many operators across the persistent universe or just one group with time slots handling the lot and product will be

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    when you tune in and have a live broadcast with advertisements announcements sourced from either from players or system generated uh music and just rambling on for conversation keep you entertained for those long trips or jobs wouldn't be complete without ratings also who has the best show that's kind of a fun idea it is I would like to be like the the Michael Savage or the rush limbo of our universe like fear-mongering about the imperator and alien races that' be kind of cool way too many potential political discussions um probably shouldn't get into that the the reason why I I actually like this question and it's because it's an ongoing my own I I I guess was this would also be considered a pet project referring to the previous question uh when we did the first 10 for the producers everybody thought that I should be flying around in 890 jump as a bond villain oh yeah that's right yeah and I my my personal goal and if I can

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    make it happen that'd be cool if not oh well I want to take an 890 jump gut the inside and turn into an interplanetary nightclub that just traverses star system to star system with with my DJ character floating around on an anti-grab DJ booth whether if we have the tech to stream music through it if there's you know no licensing problems or whatever um or you know we have our own in-house orchestra that creates a a soundtrack that can be streamed through there but I wanted you have like celebrity guests like come and and work your party yeah absolutely and it could be you know just every no every year it goes from or every whatever week it goes from one planet St system to another and just does this large circuit where it's this giant flying nightclub that just makes its tours through the Stars so every time it comes back around it's a big media deal like hey this this part come back into town buy your tickets and

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    you know everybody has fun in the ho of the ship dancing the night away I like this I always wanted to be like Lord British cruising around as an advocacy agent and just like solving people's problems like basically just answering customer service tickets in game I guess I could get a job in customer service but for some reason that's really that's really appealing to me yeah through this you I sell ad space to help fund the trip to the Stars I like that idea oh but so this guy uh wants to have a radio show probably not an initial launch but definitely infiction radio hosted by real life people is something that I've heard Chris talk about something in interest to him it does come with a whole slew of uh we'll go back to the rush limbo and Michael Savage thing like a whole slew of kind of content management uh precautions we'll have to have in place but uh yes but yeah it is something that would be cool I I'm

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    totally on board with the idea uh this is by radiant flux how is your take and view on decoupled flight how far back is it in the pipeline and how important do you see it as if flight method equal to coupled flight are there adjustments of for example the HUD planned specifically for it okay so I guess he's because we have decoupled flight now as a as a mechanic but I guess he's asking for like deeper dive features and I think one of the things he mentions on the HUD that is important is we we do have this goal of in the long run having you know call it sixed off strafe mode or decoupled flight would come with a different a different Huds up display to better help you fly if you are decoupled right so you'd have like maybe more prominent total velocity indicator showing your actual direction of drift you probably want to see your axial thrust these are things that we've

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    talked about that said it's not super high on the priority list I think we want to we want to manage uh coupled flight and we want to you know have strafe mode and make strafe Mode work well within the flight model and kind of build build new ships perfect the flight mode and then after that it kind of goes back to the priority question earlier about like how do we prioritize bugs and features uh and then after that start offering like a deeper Di set of features for one particular subset of the flight mode right so that would be that would be the longterm plan yeah and keep in mind we are in this for the Long Haul so that's why it's such an iterative process it's why we kind of do uh pre-production production at the same time it may when it launches it may not be perfect right from the start is because we rather get it in the system get your guys's feedback making sure we're heading down the right path with it our next question comes to us from aont lato will there be Co-op versus AI

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    for the FPS module when it releases no uh so what we're going to do is we're going to add that at some point uh it is definitely very high on the priority list we see how many people in the arena Commander Community are very very focused on single player and adding you know we're focused on adding new single player modes to support them I think the last statistic I had seen was that 80% of our backers right now are engaged in Arena Commander single player or Vandal storm Co-op so we know that this is something that's very important to the community it also provides us a great test bed selfishly to test our FPS AI and our ship AI so what we're doing is right now is we're working with moon cider and the UK Studio Foundry 42 uh in conjunction with honic to get a think of it you know Marines on gold Horizon versus endless waves of Outlaws or vice

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    versa endless waves of out of uh Marines against Outlaws that are holding out as well as actual more uh I would say scripted scenarios where it's uh think of like counter- strike CS Siege where you supposed to get into a location stealth mechanic come into play and is basically to use that as a test bed for all of these features that you will be seeing in Squadron 42 and this is a good place and opportunity for us to test them with the community ahead of time like the zero the zero gravity yeah just like zero gravity exactly so like zero g yeah sure it's fun in the FPS module it's Unique in the FPS module but it will directly impact how Zerg flight works for when you get out of your ship anywhere in the persistant Universe um so the answer is yes we're totally going to do it just not for the initial release so this next one comes from K cravener cravener Craven ER with all the

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    detail Back stories and economic models you are putting in the game for various corporations will there be some type of stock market where players can invest in these corporations earn dividends or just buy and sell stocks for profit I actually had a conversation with this with with Dan uh Tracy and a couple of the other guys where we have these large corporations in the game that are selling ships uh it would be really cool to you know be able to invest in these corporations if they you know publicly traded on the UE stock market or something where you can buy shares and whether the stocks crash you know let's say going back to unobtanium that means you know mining ships are going to fetch an all-time premium therefore if you invested in those those mining ships that corporate manufacturer your stocks are going to rise oh dude we can engage on some sick insider trading because we would know what ships and where the economy was

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    saided that' be great and that would be one of the reasons why we wouldn't do it oh right right yeah yeah that would yeah that obviously there's a lot of risks for how do you keep it fair and balanced with when you have employees who play the game and if you even Implement a rule like you know employee accounts can't invest in it what if I jumped on a personal account so there there's a lot of tricks to it and different things that we' have to negotiate but it is it is an idea that I've heard tossed around and it would be kind of fun just to have that that extra level of immersion oh totally it'd be fun to be like you know come in and collect your dividends from origin jump corks or whatever I mean it's it's a cool idea but yeah it's um definitely something that would have to come with time our next question comes to us from muddy Grimes greetings with the FPS combat having weapons like assault rifles pistols laser weapons Etc can we also expect to have be able to improvise

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    with Salvage mining tools say a handheld plasma cutter and other types of power tools for the occasional Pirates boarding your Orion or reclaimer situation so you know I can't tell you the depth to which this will go like are you going to be able to have a power drill in the game at all I I don't know probably but will you be able to use that as an FPS weapon yes if you can you have a power drill and use it to drill things you could drill an enemy same thing with the we talked about the Paw the personal arc welder this is something that yes would be used for repairs and used for opening doors ceiling doors all this kind of you know normal welding type stuff so there a heat factor to it yeah exactly and then if you just take that and you apply it to a person that would probably hurt them so yes absolutely that is uh and I always enjoy using like in games like using the the not the not good approach to kill is like much more fun for me and

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    I'm imagining the scene from Chronicles of Ric where he has the the Tin Cup on the table and he I will kill you with this cup and the couple guys attack him he twists the end of the cup stabs it into the guy's heart or uh equalizer did something similar yeah I like that movie but yes answer is yes next question is from Crimson Hawk moth I know that there have been multiple questions regarding sticking on your org logo decals on the Hall of ships however will there be an option to put up logos Etc inside your ship I like to personally put different logos inside my ships example on the entrance door to the cargo hold I like to put a personalized sign that says no entry or anything for that matter or even your or logo on the bridge of your ship like the way some Navy ships have their name sake on the ceiling or

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    somewhere inside of the bridge m one of the stretch goals that we have and that we're currently uh evaluating is uh cockpit decorations so we haven't really fleshed out what those cockpit decorations are whether they're going to be you know certain you can just simply select from a a pre-designed set of decorations like fuzzy dice or you know a leather covered steering wheel Chris Rober bobble head yeah I want a Travis bobble head that would be weird just kind of sit there it's all Bobble no head yeah uh but as far as customized uh internal decorations I I think that's something that we has that come up at all I don't remember yeah so one of the things we're talking about is like you know the classic image of guy in his bunk on a Navy ship and you got like the pinup girl like you on the side of the bunk and so when we talk about uh we've been talking about exactly what Daren

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    said is the the cockpit decoration stretch goal and we've been thinking about a more holistic system that's much more like what he's describing or Desiring which is a ship decoration system right cuz I mean the basic idea of having a you know four slots where you could put four different things on this table or four pieces of art slots on the wall that would all use the same system under the hood so we really should just Define these points and metrics for these points throughout the ship so I want to write down no fear you know as a reminder of you know as I go into combat yeah that'd be kind of cool you like put it on the little uh uh what do they call the knee knockers the top of the knee knockers on ships anyway yeah but that would be a cool thing to like put up stickers like that little sayings put them on the outside of es skap pods like like oh or something that would be kind of fun thank you guys very much for joining us for another episode of 10 for the producers I always

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    say this but this may be the last one so thank you for having us and thank you again to the subscribers to uh who who support us and who make it possible for us to do a show like this it's really I think a valuable service to the community and so we appreciate you making that possible uh so once again I'm Travis day I'm Daran warock and thank you for joining us on 10 for the producers and we'll see you in the verse hey guys thanks for watching um temp for the chairman if you guys would like to uh see more episodes go here if you guys would like to to subscribe to our YouTube channel and always keep up to date with all our video content go here and uh if you guys would like to watch episodes of R the verse go here please and I will see you in the verse