Star Citizen: Calling All Devs - The Road to Salvage

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   Hello everybody welcome to another edition of calling all devs our Q&A series where we take questions from you the Star Citizen community and post them directly to our developers in sort of a long form in-depth chat. Now this month's episode we've got well you guys you guys spoke very clearly in the question thread so we're going to tackle this one head-on we're going to talk about salvage and a couple game systems that are related to salvage involved in salvage twisted up inside salvage. We're going to start the conversation off where most things design related start with our own Todd Pappy. Todd how you doing man? Hello sir. How's it going? I'm doing well thank you for talking to me from your palatial office. If you remember Yeah the camera adds some depth to it. It's

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   You have you have to read YouTube comments to get that joke and we don't we don't recommend it. All right Todd let's let's talk about salvage here. Let's talk about the basics. Um how do we see overall how do we see salvage working in the persistent universe? Uh we really break it down into four different types so there's whole scraping which would be actually removing um whole you know or or basically the paint off of the whole um then there's components basically salvaging taking out the components that are are placed actually within the the objects so coolers power plants computers so and so forth. Then there's the mall which would be actually crunching up the ships and

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   disposing of them that way and then there's actually siphoning of difference oxygen or fuel um data that kind of stuff. Yeah we've talked about some of those aspects before that the whole scraping is like the inverse of repair, the last time we talked about it like uh Yeah. a repair beam would be shot at the ship and like put it back together and then a a hull scraping would be the reverse of that. Yeah, I think I think of it almost like you're applying bondo, you're taking away bondo, you know, for like car repairs and stuff like that. So. Okay. Uh and then a component retrieval it's like FPS, you you fly over, you you go inside the wreck, you pull the components. Um uh ma I'm guessing is the reclaim or something like the reclaimer? Yes. Uh siphoning was the one that I'm not that I'm I'm not familiar with. Uh

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   talk to me a little bit more about siphoning. Siphoning what? Well, I mean, for example, we have tanks, you you know, so like quantum fuel tanks, uh hydrogen fuel tanks. Um obviously in the future we'll have data associated with computers and and you know, so if you scan something, then think of it like a hard drive. You're you're taking information off of a hard drive. So, um or you're siphoning out oxygen or you're siphoning out, you know, uh basically the fuel so then you know, you find these wrecks and and to me oxygen is is going to be oxygen and water are going to be the two one of the two, you know, kind of most useful things in space. So. It's mega mining all over again. You're right. So then you want to take those and

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   and so then in the future you're not having to pay for these things or or, you know, Okay. Um get them for free, then why not? Oh, absolutely. Now, uh I understand that, you know, all of these, you know, aspect different aspects of salvaging, uh they all have a number of uh uh prerequisites. Uh thing things that are being worked on right now that will make salvaging possible. Uh talk to us about some of the prerequisites that are that are being worked on right now. Well, so so for hull scraping we've got the the damage tech that Ali had done a long time ago and there would there's some persistence that would need to be done with that, you know, in order to make sure that we're we're spawning the ships the way that we need to spawn them and because right now we don't save out

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   all of that information. Uh so there would need to be some thought process and some work done on that. For the whole scraping, obviously, we need to create the weapons or items that you can use to actually scrape. Um and then for component retrieval, it's actually getting the items in, getting them placed within ships, getting power running, getting pipes working the way that we need it to work so that um so you can take it out of ships, but at the same time when you're actually in the ship, you have the multi-crew gameplay of actually removing those items or switching them out on flying if you're flying around or or even if you're in battle. Um the maw, that one to me is going to be based off of the way that we break up our ships anyways and kind of then figuring out, you know, do we need to have smaller detonators on

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   those to blow up those things and then create different shards or like there just needs to be some real thought gone gone into the maw and how we're going to crunch things up and and get that. Um and in siphoning, it's it's basically at that point in time making sure the room system's working the way that we need it to work so that we can actually pull things out. Um making sure that we can actually put things in too. So like getting our life support working the way that we need it to work. Um for the fuel and those uh tanks, it's basically just making sure that we have a uh entry point so that we can actually pull things out. Okay. And I understand a couple of things are actually being worked on right now. The uh obviously we've talked to we've we've talked about the the conversion to the physicalized

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   components and everything uh but before and we're going to talk to John Crew after you about where that's at and and and how that's going. Uh but power would also be a pre-req and I understand that we're working on our revamp of power system right now as well. Well, yeah, it's it's basically we we got power system to a certain point and it was workable for, you know, so long, but now that we're really getting into the multi-crew ships and and, you know, getting into the thought process fundamental things that's just need to be finished off in order to make sure that it will work right, you know, so that's let's say a power plant, you know, or a a fuse in in the in the ship goes down, you know, a player need to go and replace it, but so we need to get that working, you

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   know. Um we have pipes where power runs anyways and and we have that, but we also don't have in all the ships we don't have the physicalized components in there. And so that's one of the major factors that we're going and doing right now. then with the power working the way it needs to work, we're making sure that it works in ships, but also in environments, so like space stations or or even, you know, on the planet in our outposts and um items like that. So that's you know, it's just one cohesive system. So when you understand, oh that's a power plant, if I take that away, then things turn off, you know, we want that to be very very clear to the player. Got you. Well, I think we're going to put a call into uh John and Dan to talk

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    a little bit more about the the the current work on the power system, the current work on the the ship component system. Uh is it okay if I call you back if I have any more questions when I'm done with them? Yes, sir. All right, man. I'll see I'll Well, maybe I'll see you in a few minutes. Uh take care, man. Later. All right, thank you so much, Todd. Now we're going to vehicle director John Crew to find out what's going on with our physicalized vehicle components. John, how How doing? Hi, good thanks. How are you? I'm doing well. We're talking salvage this month. We know that vehicle components are an integral part of the of the component retrieval aspect of salvage. So, tell us where we're at. We've been hearing about this for a while now. Yeah, so lots of bits in motion on the vehicle content side and the vehicle feature side. First up, the props team have been working on all the components. So, you

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    would have seen them in all the shops. So, there's literally hundreds of vehicle items being made or have already been made and they're just doing the the work to make them all fully release ready because obviously it's one thing seeing them in the shop, it's another thing seeing them all embedded in the vehicles. On the actual vehicle content side, any vehicle that has been released in the last 18 months 2 years, players will have noticed that they have all these hatches and component cupboards for lack of a better word popping up in their ships. So, we build them in production point now or concept phase. So, we know where they all go. And then we're going at the same time we're going back through the older ships like I think one of the first ones we we went back to was the Retaliator to to carve out the spaces for them in the jump seat.

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    If you look at the Retaliator now, you see all these items in the ship. Um So, there's props is one bit. The vehicle content is the other and then the last bit is the engineering side. So, at the moment if you see a component in a ship, take the Retaliator for example, those are not the actual items. They're just brushes placed in there to validate that the space is all correct. It's all going to work. You've got enough access to it. Some ships such as the Carrack actually when you open some of the hatches, they do have items in there. Those aren't brushes. They're the actual items attached to your ship. But because of various limitations that I'll get on to in a second, um those are actually attached to the exterior of the vehicle because that's just how all our systems work So, whilst they're inside the ship,

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    they're actually outside the ship. And when you're inside the ship, you can't interact with anything outside the ship and vice versa. So, we solved that. So, scheduled for next quarter, the vehicle tech team are going to be working on a way to place those items physically inside the object containers of the ships, and then they will all automatically link up to all the external systems we need. And that will allow us and allow you to change your items inside the ship, see them visually change, and actually will be hooked up, which is, of course, a precursor to salvaging because you need to salvage stuff that is inside the ships. So, yeah. That Those are the three big areas that are sort of in progress on our side. Imagine those are all in progress while other teams are working on the power systems and everything. The

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    the pipe system that will make all these components actually function and make removing them and putting them in actually mean something and change something to the to the ship. John, thank you so much. We're going to go ahead and we're going to move on over to Dan Trufin and learn more about that power system now. So, I'll let you go. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much, John. Now, we are going to a man who needs no introduction, but we're going to do it anyway. Dan Trufin, designer extraordinaire from from Frankfurt. I don't know. Dan, how you doing, man? Uh we're doing really good. Doing really good. Working from home, so Aren't we all? All right. So, we're talking salvage today. We've talked We've talked to Dan. He's given us kind of the overview. We've talked to John who's talked a bit about the the the physical ice components in ships and and stuff. And now we're talking to you about

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    a power, but I have a feeling from talking to you before that what we're going to talk about is more than just power. What what What are you working on right now? Uh yeah, it's definitely more than just power. So, when we started building our ships and building our environments, we started building with what we call the pipe system. And this system, while it did its job pretty well, it's already a bit old, and we're only using it right now for limited things. What we're trying to build is a system that encompasses all the resource generation and how you control items. So, when we're talking resource generation, I'm talking power, I'm talking CPU, I'm talking fuel, I'm talking coolant, I'm talking any type of other resource that we'll have in the future, ammo, and all the stuff. So, we're we're trying to build stuff in one component that rules them

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    all. There's like any item will have that component and knows how to use any resource it needs and how to generate other resources that other items might need or transfer them from one resource to another and generate heat and all the stuff. So, it's it's all going to be built into one place rather than having multiple different systems that handle it differently. So, it keeps stuff cleaner. It allows us to to work faster, and at the same time, we're going to try to make this work a lot better with a what you see is what you get editor, so people can actually link all of these connections for for resources in the actual visual editor of the ship rather than making it in the dry XML database somewhere or in a in a data tool, which is very hard to imagine how the thing will actually function. So, all of this stuff is going

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    to is going to be made in the editor. It's going to speed up production for ships, and obviously, the ships are going to start becoming way more alive cuz now once power once let's say you don't have fuel, you can't generate power, and you don't have power, you don't have CPU, you can't generate shields. So, all of these things are just you're going to start having cascade failures, and you're going to have to run there, repair the item, turn it back online, or route power through a different different relay nodes. So, all of this stuff is pretty much going to bring the game alive. It's going to make the engineer profession be a valuable thing on the ship. So, without an engineer, how we call it is if you don't have a good engineer on your ship, you pretty much it doesn't matter how good your ship is, you're going to have issues. No one can fly an Idris without a good engineer or you're going to fly it for a bit until you get some damage and then you're

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    screwed. So So, if it's not So, if we're not calling it the power system cuz it sounds like it's more than that, what what what are we calling it? Uh right now the running running name is resource generation and item control. Okay. And and and and and what stage of that work are we are are you in right now? So, right now the design has been done. All of the directors are have seen it and they're okay with it. They think it's going to do the job. We did a bit of prototyping and probably going to do a bit more prototyping later on, but right now we're in a phase where we we usually do the technical documentation. This is where the programmers sit together and try to imagine all the classes they need, all of the structure of the code, all of the architecture of the code. Since this is a system that's going to affect so many things in the game, this needs to be done properly and done properly from the beginning. So, the coders are building this, then that

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    goes to all the all the lead programmers, all the technical directors, then they read all of that and approve and try to make alteration to make sure it touches it doesn't change stuff and it's scalable in the future and it's efficient to run. So, this is where we're at. Once this gets done and gets approved, we we move move over to actually building this thing properly. Cool. So, it sounds like you got quite a bit of work ahead of you. Oh, yeah. Quite a bit. All right, man. Uh thank you so much for your update. Uh I think we're going to go back to Todd and and get a get and get kind of an overview of how this all fits together. So, thank you, Dan. Well, thanks. Bye-bye. Bye. All right, so we're calling Todd back. Todd, how you doing? We talked We talked to John. We've talked to Dan. Uh you laid out the basic tenets of of of the the the four aspects of salvage. Um without

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    putting a date on it or a time on it, I want to see uh maybe lay out this the the salvage road map for us. What's uh how How does this how do how do we see this going forward? So, right now, uh we're working on power and we're basically getting that working the way that it's supposed to be working. Um so, it's scalable. And then, from there, we're working on uh getting all items placed in in uh the ships. And obviously, with our with our catalog of ships, that that takes a while. Um so, those things are working are being worked on in in tandem right now. And then, from there, we'll we'll figure out, you know, okay, is with hull scraping, you know, when do we

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    start on that? And kind of work through a lot of those things. So, with that, you know, those have always been kind of in Chris's mind, my mind, Tony's mind. Those are really the first, you know, ideas of what salvage is. So, then it'll just be, okay, do we want to release the components, you know, aspect first or do we want to, you know, uh release hull scraping, you know, with the components um and say that that is salvage as a whole. Um but, no matter what, I think it'll just be us figuring out, okay, hey, here, this is our base salvage and then we'll continue to iterate upon it. Much like we did with mining where we put out, you know, uh an idea of, hey, this is salvage or this is mining and then we introduced

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    FPS mining from there we you know, we've done other adjustments to like all this mining so and so forth. So, it'll be kind of following the same cadence that um or salvage will be following the same cadence that we've done in mining. Cool. Uh so, those sounds like a lot of dependencies, but things are in motion right now then. Yeah, we are we are working on aspects of it, but you know, it's just saying, okay, hey, that team is fully focused on it. You know, that team is fully focused right now on basically getting power working the way that All right, Todd. Thank you so much, man. We'll let you go. All right, take care. Bye. All right, so that uh basically wraps up this month's Calling All Devs. Uh remember you can submit your questions for consideration on topics that we

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    cover on the show up in the thread up on Spectrum. And I want to thank Todd Pappy, John Crew, and Dan Trevino for taking the time to be here on the show with us uh this month. So, for Calling All Devs, I'm Jared Huckaby. And uh until next time.