Around the Verse: Episode 2.10

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   This video made possible by the ICC stellar surveyors and subscribers like you. [Music] Hey everybody, welcome back to Around the Verse. I'm Sandy Gardner. I'm Ben Lesnik. This week in the ATV interview, part two of our sitdown with Tony Zurc, where he talks about 2.1 and beyond as senior technical designer Rob Ringer sits down to talk about level design in Star Citizen, including an early look at NYX. But first, it's all about live streams. Live streams. Live streams. And

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   more live streams. Live streams. Yay. live streams. Um, no, we we've been streaming day in and day out for the past week or so. Uh, on Friday we had RTV. Then Saturday we did the Wing Commander 25th anniversary live stream. Um, and how long did that go for? Went on for about 10 hours. Uh, Secret Missions one is very, very hard. Chris stopped by to uh say a few words. Check it out. What do you have against the Vega system? Nothing. Oh, they were just not noting earlier that if you live in a Chris Roberts universe, don't buy a house in Vegas. Don't buy a house in Vegas. Yeah, it just happens to be one of the closest systems and I think we sort of fictionally put um uh you know, sort of a lot of what was happening in Wing Commander there. And then of course we had to do the same for uh Squadron 42.

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   Yay. I was busily cleaning up in the background. Yes, you guys should. It was very impressive seeing Sandy's handiwork. And of course, we had another live stream on Wednesday with the Los Angeles design team answering questions for subscribers. And tomorrow, we'll have another RTV. And then next week is the uh Big Potato, the uh holiday live stream featuring all sorts of exciting reveals and new information that we are looking forward to sharing with you. Where are we shooting ATV today? Did you forget where you are? I did because um no, this is uh we're here in Studio 42 in Los Angeles. Uh sets are still under construction as you can see around us. They are coming together very well and we are looking forward to showing them off once they're done. We are. And of course, Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 continues its testing on the PTU. Uh we have had

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   several other iterations on the PTU patch. Folks are helping us locate and squash bugs and it's uh it's going very well. We're hoping to go to live very very soon. If anybody would like to crew up with me, I will crew up with you anytime. Yay. And did you see that there are two polls on MMOs.com that Star Citizen is a part of? I did. Um there, you know, it's that time of year where everyone picks their various best of lists and MMOs.com um is running a uh poll for best MMO, best our most anticipated MMO, most anticipate best crowdfunded game. Um and you can uh please vote for us. Uh, let's get the word out. With that, let's check in with our

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   studios around the world for news from around the verse. Yay. Hey everyone, here we are at Cloud Games in Los Angeles. I'm Darien Borlick and I am Owen Bachelor Jr. and we are here with this week's update. So, starting with the technical content team, we've got our guys like Matt and Cherry, uh, Patrick, uh, Serno working on fixing up the constellation, giving its final polishes in preparation for 2.0. Uh, so we're kind of doing some final passes, making sure everything is nice and shiny and hail on it. So, once you guys get it, it's going to look pretty awesome. So, what we got for the art team? Uh, on the art team, we've got everybody all hands on deck on the Reliant. We're trying to get that hanger ready for our

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   next release. Uh there's quite a bit of work going into it. We've got some areas when you guys finally see it in the hanger are going to be clearly a work in project uh in process, but uh it'll give you a really good idea of what the final is going to look like. So, and which part are you working on specifically? I'm working on the pilot chair. So, redoing that, but we've got Daniel Kaminsky um who did a lot of the interior parts of it and um Gage Hullman who also did parts of the interior for it. So, we've got a lot of people, you know, putting in effort to get that done. And finally, on the tech design front, uh we've got Kaix doing final uh balance passes for 2.0, especially on the EMP. So, we've been kind of looking at some of the feedback regarding how players have been using it, and we see some some tweaks that need to be made, but also we've started on uh plotting out what we're going to be doing for balance on the next patch as well. So, definitely keep that feedback coming in.

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   It is very, very useful for us. Uh so, I think that's all we got from Los Angeles. So, once again, I'm Darren Borlick, Ellen Bachelor Jr., have a good one, guys. Hey guys, Jake Ross here, associate producer of the Persistent Universe, and I'm here with you this week to give you a little update of what we got going on in the Austin studio. Uh, so this week we are u and last week we are doing animation work on various ships and ship weapons. Uh we've got Jay and Daniel um Jay Brushwood, Daniel Craig working on the uh Vanguard and the Freelancer and uh the Jean Scout. Um along with a few others I won't mention, but uh so they're they're working hard on getting those uh various states of of hanger ready, flight ready. Um so those will be coming online here pretty soon

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   in uh in different stages. Um, and also some a couple different ship weapons that'll come out here pretty soon as well because uh weapons need to animate as well. Uh, so uh we also are iterating on the uh shopping design. So we had a pretty good idea of the direction we were going. We started off in a in that direction and uh we decided to we wanted to add a few different things here and there to uh to get it closer to what Chris is envisioning. Um so u we're all we're all on the same page now over here. So we're design we we're just iterating on the design as as uh we are constantly doing making the designs just bigger and better all all the time. Uh so uh we're now headed off in in the same direction just a little bit more uh fine-tuned. So uh behavior will be working on uh the uh front end side of that. Um and we will have that out in a

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   future release. Um yeah, so uh another thing that we're doing is we are a establishing uh our tech content team uh headed up by Sean Tracy. So what this is is basically just an effort to kind of consolidate our uh our tech artists, our tech animators, um into and and our riggers into one um big team across the company. We have uh various uh developers in LA, in Austin, the UK, and Germany um that all kind of fall under that banner, but have always kind of acted as islands like in their own little studios. So, Sean Tracy's heading up a new technical content team uh where he will kind of combine join forces with with all these with all these guys and kind of give them a little bit more um trajectory that that kind of um aligns

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    with with everyone else. So, they're not just islands, but they're a force that moving in one direction. So, it's exciting time and uh so we're we're developing a road map for those guys so that everybody's kind of on the same page there. So, um yeah, I think that's that's all I got for you this week. Thanks guys. See you around. Hi guys. Tom here and this week I've got Ricky Jutley with me. He's going to give you guys an update on 2.0. Thanks Tom. Um with 2.0 right now we've been pushing a fair amount of builds to the PTU. um been watching a fair amount of Twitch streams and um it's really good that we've made some progress on the performance. Um you guys have kind of highlighted on that which is cool. So thanks very much. Um do you understand that the game server issues um the game server crashes are still you know live

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    and rife in builds at the moment. Um we've actually made a decent amount of progress on those with fixes coming in today. Um a few of the guys worked on a few physics issues. Um and that's in test with QA right now. So hopefully we get a a lot more of a stable build and you guys can see that soon. Um with the Twitch streams at the moment um been really impressed and um really enjoyed a lot of the videos that we've seen. So you guys have been using a fair amount of the new mechanics. Um Thor guys using the Avenger for instance and EMP taking out a fair amount of of the other ships in that proximity and then traving up and absolutely obliterating them. Um and also you guys have been showing off some of the multi crew ships. So, been watching people demo through their crew station, the different crew stations in the constellation and um different

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    turrets and the engineering panels um in the Retalia as well. So, it's uh been really enjoyable watching those uh videos um and we'll hope to get you guys more stable builds soon, but we can go to live soon. All right, that's it for this week. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you in the verse. Hey everyone, Brian Chambers from Frankfurts. Uh let me run through some of the main points that guys covered this week on AI front. Um had two main areas we're looking at. First one was uh ship AI and specific issues that have been reported back for 2.0. We've tackled most of those. Got a really good grasp on them and they're continuing to move forward on them. Um couple more left to to tweak. Um, the second sprint

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    that's running was the first version of FPS, AI, and counter communication. Um, allows AI to respond to each other, one spots an enemy, makes the others aware. Um, also other detail like when they hear a fire, you know, hear hear gunfire, something somewhere, they they start hanging out, they know what direction and so on. So, that's that's pretty cool. It's good to see that progress. On the design side, they're continuing to work on smuggling career, uh, weapon designs, um, some new ones we're playing with, and prefab missions, uh, for PU. On the weapon side, Toby's been finalizing work on LODs and textures for the S4 size Apocalypse Arms Gatlin gun.

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    Um, it's always a mouthful to say. Um, on cinematics, we're continuing to refine the overall pipeline. Um, always pu pushing things a little bit more to help improve quality, get things in and out of uh, mobile, Maya, and so on. And that's going well. We're also starting to tear through the cinematics a little bit more now on a granular level to start lining up dependencies a little bit better so we can work more efficiently. Um, on the engine side, a lot of focus around stabilization at 2.0 0. Um the new things that we're pulling in and and rolling out to you guys. Obviously, as you do this, you encounter new issues. So, um we have a good process in place right now with um all the testers. It's been helpful for us to

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    be able to co go in fairly quickly, identify the issues, and get those addressed to get back out to you. Um we've also been working on some other core elements that you guys will see shortly. Um can't say exactly what they are when but it's going to be very soon and I think people will dig it. Um overall as far as the office goes good amount of candidates are coming in. Um ton of resumes are flying in recently in the last week. Uh I think last week we had a few on-site interviews. So staffing up really to hit the other main areas that we need for for Frankfurt to be able to take on the responsibility that we're we're kind of handed. So, it's about it. We got other people obviously with VFX doing stuff, our environment, uh, artists doing stuff and

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    so on. We'll go into more detail week after week, but thanks again for all your support and see you next week. Hello. As always, a big thank you to all of our studios. Things are looking good. And now, let's check back with Tony Z in the second part of his interview from last week. Thanks, guys. In this week's ATV

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    interview, we're sitting down with the director of the Persistent Universe, Mr. Tony Zurich. Tony, how you doing? Uh, pretty good. Now, when we when we dropped the social module, one of the things that surprised a lot of folks is we gave them a sneak peek of the upcoming Nyx Levky landing zone, and that blew lots of people away. It was it it was a great look at what was coming next. Uh, is there anything more you can tell us about Nyx? Yeah, Nyx um Nyx will likely show up in the milestone uh immediately after shopping. Um, Nyx is it's uh interesting in that Nyx has actually been largely done for quite a while. There was one particular area, this uh bizarre area that still had a lot of, you know, design details and artistic, you know, uh, issues that needed to be worked out. Um, but with those now resolved, uh, production is,

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    you know, uh, proceeding, you know, at full speed on it. And we expect to have that done, you know, uh, fairly soon. And so we should actually be able to uh spend quite a bit of time refining and tweaking and you know ensuring that the performance is at the level that we actually want before we release it to the community. In other words, the actual build out of the level is uh going really really well at this point. Very cool. And and when that time comes, do do you have do you have any thoughts about how people will access it? Will it be another destination on the elevator? That's for for the short term. we're just going to cheat and basically you're going to have the magical elevator that you can access from you know from area 18 or from your or you know or from your hanger. Obviously that will change you know as we get a little bit farther along and you're you know gain the ability to go out in space gain the ability you know to uh you know to

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    travel to different systems and stuff. Um but for the short term we will just allow players to go in there and it will just be another destination you know on that elevator. Um, it's actually Nyx is really interesting uh from my perspective for a variety of different reasons. One of which is that it actually gives us the ability to have three uh completely distinct functional areas. And what I mean by that is when you first land in Nyx and you come out and you go through customs and you basically go down to the main uh the main area, there's law and order, there's security, it's all well-maintained. you know, all the lights are on, there's security guards, there's, you know, civilian, you know, civilians, you know, going about their business. There's, you know, shops in which you can do business, you know, uh, etc. There are, you know, hints, you know, internally that you're within an

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    asteroid. Um, that's, you know, you can see that from windows that give you these beautiful, you know, uh, views of the outside. Um, you can tell because, you know, some of the ceilings there was no point to basically building, you know, uh, to building, you know, dedicated, you know, roofs and ceilings and all that type of stuff. Um and so you can actually see big, you know, huge chunks of still exposed, you know, uh asteroid, you know, stone, um rock, metals, you know, etc., um just hanging throughout various areas. Um but in general, that area actually looks, you know, uh it looks, you know, very it looks very modern. It looks very built out. It looks like what it's supposed to be, which is an area that people, you know, did a lot of business. They actually, you know, uh conduct a lot of business in that area. as you start to move, you know, down various, you know, corridors and passageways away from that

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    central area, um, you'll start to encounter what we call, you know, uh, it's it's more it's a more dangerous zone. Basically, it's an area that's no longer officially utilized by, you know, by the political and, you know, civilian classes of this planet. And it's been overtaken by, uh, you know, more questionable types. lots, you know, lots uh there's much more crime there than you would ever see in the central area of the city. There's no security to discourage it. Um there are obviously, you know, just some, you know, some hard luck cases out there. Um, you'll see things along, you know, uh, stuff that's fallen into disrepair, lights that are flickering, not working, control panels that, you know, no longer operate, doors that are, you know, half stuck open, that type of thing to where it looks very similar, you know, conceptually to

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    the central area except it looks like it hasn't really been, you know, uh, properly maintained for, you know, for a decade. Then if you continue proceeding even farther, you'll get into what we call the excavation areas. And this is where once upon a time, decades earlier, when this was a, you know, a an area that they thought was going to be a a a booming mining area, they were clearing out all sorts of, you know, new caverns, drilling them out, etc. And the idea was they were eventually going to put in, you know, all these control rooms and storage facilities, etc. And all of that construction, you know, stopped very quickly. Uh when they decided that, you know, given the, you know, uh the surveys that they were doing that the it was going to be way more difficult to extract, you know, sufficient value to warrant all the investment being made. And so the original inhabitants of Nyx took off and all of the, you know, the

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    the whatever you want to say, construction equipment that was left behind. That was all left behind. And then basically these this more politically oriented, you know, population gradually moved in. And basically what you wound up with is a a populist that tends to be a little bit more, you know, uh, radical in their, you know, overall, you know, political beliefs versus the mainstream. And this, you know, manifests itself in a number of different ways. you know, some of which is the fact that they're they're not willing to basically, you know, uh go and try to make a concerted effort to clean out crime in the distant areas of Nyx. They'd really rather just, you know, cordon it off and prevent it and keep it over there. It's not their, you know, it's not their problem to solve. Um, and so these back areas, these excavated

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    areas are really particularly interesting because there's no, you know, there's no infrastructure within there at all. There there are no ladders, there are no stairs, there are no lights. It's really just you're going through uh caverns. There's lots there's a very organic feel, fungus on the walls, dripping water, things of that sort. And one of the things I find mo most interesting about that is as a playground where we can put everything from wanted felons that are hiding out um the most, you know, nefarious, you know, uh you know, criminals and stuff. That would be basically, you know, the the zone where they, you know, operate from, farthest, you know, away from the security forces and things of that sort. Um, this is where you'd find uh your a lot of elicit, you know, trading activity and stuff um would be centered back in those areas. So, a lot of there there's a lot

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    of potential on nicks for players that don't want to, you know, uh necessarily, you know, adhere to, you know, to the law that are willing. So, so when Nick ships, you know, whenever that is, no dates, guys. Uh what else can we expect with that? Uh well, one of the other more interesting uh features that will come online most likely with, you know, with the same milestone uh as Nyx will be the ability to route uh purchases to areas other than on your person. And what I mean by that is kind of like what we were talking about earlier. Um, when I go into a shop and I find a t-shirt that I like or I go to, you know, you know, a souvenir shop or whatever and I have a list of items, what do I do with it? Um, obviously in the case of clothing, you can just replace the one you have. But what if you actually want

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    to keep the clothing you have? What if you want to, you know, buy, you know, a vase, but you don't actually want to carry it around and you don't want to take the multi-minute journey back to your ship to stow it away. And so with Nyx, we'll be uh incorporating features within the user interface so that when you're buying or selling for that matter uh items, you can specify as the source or destination depending upon which one you're doing um where you want these items to go or be pulled from. And so if I purchase something, I can basically direct its delivery for a nominal search charge back to one of my uniquely named ships, back to my hanger or back to my million mile high club. Uh, and then once I'm back there, I can decide, you know, what I actually want to do with them. We spoke to Rob earlier today and he mentioned there's a number of shops in Nyx, uh, uh, whose names escape me at at the moment. Uh, what can you tell us

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    about our shopping opportunities in Nick? Uh Nyx has a really interesting mix of shops because not only does it have the more formal uh commercial shops like you might see on area 18, the more established four, you know, four walls, ceiling, floor, that type of stuff, uh lots of inventory, clearly a commercial vendor, you know, um with uh with with a good number of, you know, goods to be sold. But it's also got what we call this bizaar area, and that's where much smaller, you know, local merchants. Um well, actually, I wouldn't call them local merchants. I'd say they're more nomadic merchants. Basically come and sometimes they're there for a day, sometimes they're there for a week, sometimes they've got a very, you know, set amount of inventory and that's it. And these are guys in this one central bazaar area where you can pick up a variety of, you know, uh, odds and ends

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    that you don't often see within, you know, the, you know, the the larger, more established stores. So, what kind of things can we buy in this? What was it? A bazaar? Yeah. Grand bazaar. Yep. Yeah. So, in the Grand Bazaar, you'd be able to buy anything from uh cases of liquor to uh seeds that you can plant, you know, assuming you're a farmer and interest in that type of thing. Um there will be all sorts of decorative items, uh plants that you can place, you know, either within your million mile high club or, you know, within your hanger, things of that sort. There's going to be food for just general consumption. Uh there's going to be a variety of, you know, souvenir, you know, uh souvenirs, you know, unique to that area and that they've imported from other areas that you could pick up. Um just a wide variety of smaller items of much more limited quantity than what you would

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    typically see in the larger, more established shops. And not just things to customize your hanger or your shop, but also yourself. Uh that's that's not only not only that, but I'd go uh even farther in so far as there's actually information you can purchase that can lead to missions. There's maps that you can buy. And so really anyone that goes to Nyx, you really should make the rounds through all these guys and they it will vary. It's not always going to be the same guy selling the same stuff and see what is actually on offer and whether it's of interest to you, you know, on that particular day given what you're currently doing. Wow. It's fantastic. Um we've taken up a lot of your time here. Uh and thank you for it so much. Uh can you give us uh one more thing before we let you go beyond mix a quick top level look you know uh uh

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    Hursten you know the rest of the sand system just just what what's what's down the line for the persistent universe. Yeah, in general uh not much has changed in regards to the overall order versus what I kind of mentioned, you know, on the website, you know, uh you know, two or three months back, which is the next planet after Nyx um is going to be Hursten. Um that one is already, you know, starting to move, you know, fairly quickly. Um following that will likely be Crusader and then Microte. And that's going to complete all of the uh you know, the areas that you can visit within the Stanton system. And what this does is it basically gives us the reason why we've adopted this approach is it gives us a lot of different uh areas within the same system to where we can get the balance the you know the balance of trade, the balance of combat, the balance of missions, all of this

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    stuff perfected, refined um before we start to expand out to some of these other you know uh to to some of these other systems. Um it allows us to try to get you know the formula um narrowed in enough so that we minimize the amount of wasted effort as we basically start to go really really wide with the implementation. Um and uh in addition to the landing zones, the next big thing uh post the next milestone is going to be uh AI and AI there's still going to be a very dedicated discrete milestone to where you'll see a you know a quantum leap in terms of you know uh in terms of advancement but I would say that I now believe that the AI will appear in small bits and pieces prior to that and then you'll see one big leap. We're not going

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    to wait as we've kind of, you know, added additional detail to some of these uh intermediate milestones. We don't want to hold back on all of the AI, you know, just for this, you know, so-called dedicated AI milestone. We'd rather roll out bits and pieces and these will be testing specific things. Uh, you know, uh, in particular on AI, uh, how many MPC characters can we actually put within a map? um without you know starting to affect performance in terms of the pathline in terms of the collision detection in terms of you know the logic how well is the multi-threaded you know uh you know the you know AI you know uh code actually you know working so there are a number of technical reasons why we want to get out even you know uh the you know the the earlier versions of this and get that you know working really rock solid and then once we go you know with the full-blown AI

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    milestone that's where we would try to show uh not only uh what we can do with the system but we would you know we would like to put 80 90 100 you know plus NPCs into a single landing zone and still have the performance you know uh be such that you know players on uh good if not absolutely state-of-the-art machines and still have a completely enjoyable you know experience. And that actually brings up one other thing um which is we've made loads of progress um with regards to uh some of the problems that we were facing a while back and I think that very shortly possibly with the million mile high club we're going to wind up uh kicking the 25 player limit of area 18 up to 40 players. Right now it's very close. I don't know if

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    we'll flip that switch for the 2.0 you know for the 2.0 0 million mile high club one or whether we'll hold that back for shopping. But one of those two milestones will uh include an you know a fairly you know significant a 60% increase in the number of players that we're going to allow walking around in those environments. Um it's you know on on our side right now it's it's looking amazingly good um in terms of how much progress has been made in a relatively short period of time. We've got people, you know, from all over, you know, from all the different SIG studios touching different pieces of this. And it's really been amazing how quickly, you know, some of, you know, some of these very large scale technological changes have come together, uh, to allow us to basically start ramping that up. And I would expect the focus on that to just

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    continue so that by spring, by summer, etc. like we want to just keep iteratively, you know, increasing increasing increasing the number of players and NPCs that you're going to be able to put into one single map. It's exciting. There's no other word for it. It's really exciting. Uh Tony, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us. Is there anything else you want fans to know before we let you go? Uh actually, the only thing I would say is just uh I always appreciate like all the kind words and the constructive criticism that you see within the forums. I think uh I've read so many you know emails in there twerve you know you'll see somebody uh stating something along the lines of and I don't think a developer or whoever is ever going to read this d and I've read so many of those I don't usually respond but I actually but but I do read a whole lot

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    of them yes I can attest Chris and Tony and Aaron they read the forums they read the Reddit they read everything because they send us stuff I'll get an email 2 o'clock in the morning Chris go this is a pretty good link and I'm like Chris why you're reading the forums at 2 o'clock in the morning and you're sending me links so yeah It's it's fantastic. I'm certain our community appreciates it. Yeah. I I I I I love the constant involvement of the community and basically at times, you know, uh there it's funny because sometimes you're doing stuff in an intermediate fashion just because that's the way the technology, you know, comes together. And so, you know, that this is just a temporary solution. And you'll have people calling on and going, "Well, this is not going to work for this reason." It's like, and there's been so many times where just like, "I agree. You just got to wait a little bit longer and we'll be getting there. Yeah. Well, Tony, thanks so

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    much. And uh back to you guys. I wonder who talks more, Tony or Chris. I I am scared to talk to either of them. So, I certainly know that Chris says, you know, quite a lot. You know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [Laughter] Next up, Jared sat down with senior technical designer Rob Reiner for a behindthescenes look at the creation of Nyx. Are we still doing this? I thought we nixed it. Oh boy. Thanks, guys. On this week's ATV behind the scenes, we sit down with senior technical designer Rob Renegger, who's going to take us on a brief look at the

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    next landing zone. Rob, how you doing, man? Good. How you doing, man? Good. Now, you work on a lot of things for Star Citizen. Uh, a few. Yeah, just just a few. Uh, I I see your name in my email quite often. Uh, but today we're going to take a look at some of the early layout stage, layout planning stages of the NYX landing zone. Yeah, absolutely. So, you got the wheel. Take us into it. All right. So, Nyx is obviously a very big place, but uh what we're showing you right here is really the focal point of the landing zone. Um, every every landing zone's got a landing pad, you know, got a got a customs area. Um, you know, some of those those core elements, but this is what you see outside of that, right? So, we need to figure out what all that stuff is, how it's laid out, you know, um, whether or not it it's going to feel

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    good, uh, before we actually spend, you know, millions of dollars actually building it out. So we start here in Vizio where uh we kind of create a grid um that represents our actual world space you know. So in this case we each square here equals 4 meters as you can see. Um so we just start laying out things that we think will be cool you know. Uh in in this case, this is kind of like the the the main, you know, reveal as you you know, every every level has this kind of moment where you turn a corner and you know, there's there's the level uh in all of its grandeur. And so this this is that that point in this level for us um or for Nicks. the um this is like a multi-ter um it was a hollowed out you know place that that uh they used to work on like

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    really big machinery here and uh it's been over the years kind of you know rusted out and and broken down and and over time people have you know populated this once abandoned you know kind of mining station that's on an asteroid out in space. So there's a lot of remnants of that stuff left in this area and uh they've converted it into kind of their central hub for their shopping, their you know uh kind of uh meeting places for um just general everyday life that you know see bustling city. This is you know that part of that. So, um, what what this area is, you know, down below is going to be a little more of like a flea market kind of feel where it's, uh, we call it the bizaar area. Uh, just cuz there there's a bunch of carts that

41. 00:32:27

    people are, uh, kind of manning, you know, they've kind of set up shop and and they've taken their local goods. A lot of this stuff, you know, is touted, you know, made here locally and homegrown or or home brewed or uh, homemade type thing. So, um, they've bring those brought those things to sell to the rest of the people that that need, you know, whatever goods and services they provide. Somebody here brews their own liquor. This is true. Yeah, there there's there's always, you know, the crazy guy that's making stuff in his garage. You know, there there's definitely a few of those people here. Um, but yeah, this is this is kind of um as you come in, you know, see to the lobby here, right? You come in, you get this cool little overview where you're you're up top and you're going to be seeing down into this cool little busy market where lots of NPCs are kind of

42. 00:33:17

    walking around looking at stuff and buying things. Uh you'll get the the cart salesman's, you know, kind of um you know, hey, come over here. We got the best of this or that and you know, it's really fresh or you know, whatever whatever it is they're trying to sell people as they walk by. So, uh, it's just it's we thought it'd be a really cool vibe and feel to to kind of just get this overview of of that scene, um, and highlight that in the level. And then to to top off, you know, the shopping that you have down below, uh, we have, you know, a lot of our a lot of our main shops will be kind of connected to this area to a certain degree. Um, things like medical facility. um you'll have the ability to go buy your, you know, your healing kits and your bandages and your stimpacks and and uh other medical supplies. If you rez,

43. 00:34:06

    that's where you'll kind of come. So, you kind of dump yourself out right into the the world here. And it's it's kind of a thing that we try and, you know, think about when we're laying the stuff out. Like if it's, you know, off in the boonies and and you have to run for 5 minutes just to get back to civilization or kind of get back to, you know, what you really care about, then that's kind of a bad design. We'll we'll say uh it makes for an awkward, you know, experience, right? You're just kind of like, "Oh man, I I just want to get back to playing the game." And, you know, so those those kinds of things are are things we try and consider at this level. uh as a as opposed to building it all out in 3D and be like, "Oh, that didn't work." You know, let's let's move this or that. Um it's much easier to do your explorations here in Vizio then. Very much. Very much. Yeah. So, um

44. 00:34:54

    another another shop on the bottom level is going to be conscientious objects, which is personal items. Um you know, it's a if you've seen Cubby Blast in area 18, it's you know, similar types of things. uh maybe not the you know higherend you know military type tech where you know this will be more refurbished um personal type things. Uh the u cordre uh is a FPS armor um you know components augmentations um upgrades for your for your armor suits. So, you might be able to buy like um a oxygen, you know, extender or, you know, a speed uh mod chip that that you can plug into your armor. Uh that kind of stuff will be sold up here. And then um other than that, outside of this

45. 00:35:44

    area, we've we've got um like a maintenance place. So, you come in, you need to refuel, get your ship repaired, uh all that'll be real close to the landing pad, which is unfortunately not highlighted in this area, but uh yeah, it's it's pretty busy. So, can we take a look inside one of these shops? Absolutely. Absolutely. So, this is Cafe Musain. Uh, it's the local bar. The um it's kind of hollowed out. Um, again, a little background that NYX is on an asteroid. um, space is kind of a premium, right? So, they they just if it existed, they're going to use it. They're not going to, you know, spend a lot of time and energy to carve out new places. So that uh this is kind of themed inside, you know, a hollowedout cave. Um a little more of a a natural pocket of

46. 00:36:34

    space where they they've kind of thrown up walls where they could, but uh um a little little area down here. It'll be kind of like in this small little secluded, you know, cave area. So it's like a little personal seating back here. They've got little open bar, a couple lounge areas. Uh this back area back here was uh originally storage, but uh they little crime element might be, you know, hanging out back there and kind of owning owning that space, right? Uh we get conscientious objects. Uh so this is, you know, entrance. You come in, there's display counter. So we've got uh all the different, you know, weapons and and you know, grenades, ammos, uh kind of displayed around the shop. Uh you see the multi-tier element uh the stairs

47. 00:37:23

    here. So you get kind of that height difference which is another thing that we try and incorporate into the uh into the areas that we make. Um flat is boring, right? Um cordre uh this was the original design for it and and this is a good example of how we kind of revised things before we um really try and go to 3D with them where you know that was the original layout, right? Well, we didn't think that was very interesting. So, we've come up with uh a few additional layouts since these are quick and easy to make. Uh we've come up with some more interesting things we think uh that will kind of help sell the the feel of, you know, um carved out asteroid, you know, thrown together, you know, did what they could with what they had, but didn't

48. 00:38:13

    have all the supplies you'd normally have on a normal home world like Area 18. Uh so this is this is a good example of where we go uh when we get something that that we're really not happy with. So uh the theme of cordries again is the armor shop. Um the uh the maintenance is you don't need a big place for you know some guy to to basically you know tell him to go fix your stuff. Um you're not going to be putting your ship in here. So they're going to go out to your ship and do it. So you just need to come and order the thing. So that just needed to be a small little kiosk, right? Not everything has to be big. Um, some may argue with that, but uh medical facility, you know, you get your back rooms where you kind of uh respawn in wake up on a bed or, you know, depending on how you got there,

49. 00:39:01

    right? You get your front area with uh, you know, the vending machines that have uh, all your medical supplies. And, um, from here, we kind of go down and, uh, here's, you know, some props that we need for the bar. We need the hero prop, the the the booths, the tables, the um the dividers for the booths, bar stools, the bar top, um you know, bar top corner piece. So, we we try and build things in a modular set where we can kind of, you know, mix and match match our Legos together, right? Um, so just just calling out a lot of these things that um, you know, we think we'll need and and these get paint overs, you know, once they get kind of white boxed in the actual u in the actual engine and and a lot of props, you know, environment

50. 00:39:49

    props get called out from those. Uh, but this is the stuff that I, as a designer, care about, right? Mhm. Uh, so and this this this grows and grows and grows. Like it's somebody's got to build all these animations. You have to record all the animations for everybody using each prop. Do you need ships? No, I don't. Uh, do I need characters? Yes, I do. Uh, so it's it's just a good um it's a good way to kind of get a a really fine understanding of what you need to make this thing work before you actually try and make it work. Got it. Well, Rob, that's great. Thanks for taking the time to take us through this. Uh Nyx is our next landing zone after our Corp 18 or area 18 rather. Um no, we're not going to tell you when you're going to see it,

51. 00:40:36

    but uh it it'll be it'll be there when it's ready. Uh Rob, thanks so much for taking the time to take us through it, man. Absolutely. All right, back to you guys. Thank you. System is on. I really like Nyx. You will see me there. I will look for you. Add color. Add There's some color. Uh, no, we're really excited with how that's looking and we can't wait to, you know, we're kind of intentionally holding off on showing you a lot of the really cool

52. 00:41:23

    details of Nick because we want you to explore it, uh, much like you did with Area 18. Last time you said orange, so come on, give us orange, red, orange, yellows. There, the monthly report for November arrives tomorrow. Uh, yes, as long as I finish editing it. So, uh, soon TM soon TM. Yes. No, monthly report will be up tomorrow. It'll show you everything we did in November. And uh it's it's hard to believe we're already midway through December. It's time to start kicking off our December monthly reports. It is. But now it's time for this week's MVP. Well, here you go. This week's MVP is Yay, Jim. Hooray, Jim. Um Jim made a fantastic Star Citizen commercial for the P72

53. 00:42:10

    Archimedes. Uh our most recent concept ship. Check it out. Okay. P72 minus P 52 = uh 02. Carry the P. It's a Wait, 20? It's 20 more than the Merlin. That doesn't even make any sense. There's no frame of reference. That does. It's fine. But you know what? Okay, never mind. Let's just do this. The P72 Arimedes. Fly yours today. And finally, here's your art sneak peek. Be sure to tune in to Reverse the Verse

54. 00:43:19

    tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Twitch. We'll be talking about those freelancer images and more. And of course, thank you to all our subscribers for making this show possible. We will see you next week on the holiday liveream. Hooray. Yay. streamers and party poppers. Whoosh! Santa may come. Yes. I can't believe that's even written

55. 00:44:12

    there. I did your joke. Merry Christmas, Disco Lando. Merry Christmas. Oh my god. [Applause]