Star Citizen: Calling All Devs - Friends With Missions

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:00

   you hey everybody welcome to another episode of calling all Deb's our weekly Q&A series where I take questions from you the star citizen backer impose them directly to developers usually while hitting my desk and shaking the camera joining us on the show this week is andreas Johansson a lead level designer at Avaya Frankfurt studio andres how you doing man I'm doing quite well how are you doing anyway so we got two questions from the backers these are submitted by the backers and voted on by the backers before we get started I want to compliment you on your choice of attire today so thank you it's a bit awkward because it's the same t-shirt I kind of

2. 00:00:46

   wore in the last day to be that's no problem but I swap t-shirts in between so don't worry everybody knows every game developer has five shirts that they cycle through every day is all right let's get started two questions for you the first one are there plans to open the Grimm hex hangers soon we get this a lot of people people want people want that people want to so long now I don't have yes we plan on opening the Grimm hex hangers maybe not soon it depends at the moment we have other things which are of high priority in the schedule things like Laurel and everything we need to do there space stations and other soon to be announced things but they are on the backlog which is a very big backlog but it's on there and moving forward I did general idea is that most

3. 00:01:37

   locations will use hangars over landing pads for landing and landing pads will more convert over to for refueling and other things so grim X needs hangars gotcha what is grim X opening the hangars get get for us well it's more of a convenience thing first of all we can we can land ships and we can have more traffic going into grim wrecks because as you land you can move you to another hangar and it opens up and more people can land that's pretty much it really I mean it's it's kind of a fancy landing pad with walls in a way but it's it's it's a better way to handle traffic alright I get that second question this one was it was this one this one's people have been asking this one since we first introduced our Corp in the social nah

4. 00:02:24

   so many years ago now are there plans to connect all the large landing zones of planets with a train system allowing players to take the train hundreds of kilometers to a different landing zone basically like I can act like a train running from area 18 to area 17 they even mention arccorp see it's like trans-siberian railroad kind of things yep or the Orient Express well I mean yeah I guess it would be pretty cool to have that you know everyone I guess everyone want to do this Firefly train hijacking where you have a train across the countryside and you fly with your gliders above it jump down cut it open steal some stuff but right to the heart probably I mean I would love to do that I like Firefly it's possible that we do that it's it is quite time-consuming to

5. 00:03:11

   build those because our plans are huge which means that these networks will be huge so someone has to build them across the terrains and mountains and everything so at the moments it's easier to just jump in your ship fly there takes 15 minutes versus a three hour train ride across the planet so it would be cool and it might be something to look into but it's not on the schedule right now yeah I think it also has to be a little difficult because the terrain of the the of the moons and presumably hjerson can change between patches you know we've noticed that before ever ever since the first movements were put in ever since 3.0 that the terrain of one of the moons is not exactly the same between every single patch because

6. 00:03:58

   they're refined as new tune I just come online so if you were to lay out a track along you you probably want to be pretty confident that that terrains not going to that terrain is not going to change much it's a lot of maintenance to keep that stuff going as well I mean ideal at some point we stop iterating on the planets and the moons and kind of have something of a smaller final version and then it will be more cost efficient to dedicate that work because it's going to be a designer spending a couple of weeks putting down kilometer after kilometer of train tracks you know so I know it's Luke press he's talked in the past about that why that's one of the things holding up planetside racetracks and stuff is that was that is they they want the terrain to kind of settle a little bit

7. 00:04:45

   yep well weren't that all them in here did yeah exactly okay so but absolutely it'll be super cool I would love it and my face sunk into okay you wanna make sure you're not confirming it's gonna happen just before it opens out I'm just I'm just sayin it's cool it is cool that's that's pretty much it right now we got spaceships to get us there so yeah I mean you can jump on a train going from Frankfurt to to Beijing or you can take an airplane moment we rely on two plates so alright man well thanks a lot a pleasure okay we'll get John again sometime in the new year I hope so alright take you through bye bye see ya alright thanks so much now moving on to well the man who kicked my butt dice thrown last night mr. Kirk Tomei Kirk

8. 00:05:35

   how you doing man hey Jarrod great that feeling is pretty awesome well the third one was great okay and Cory's we haven't done the okay so you Enquiry the only undefeated one so okay no one nobody knows what we're talking about let's move on we got a question from the backers it's about scanners it says I'd love to have more details on the different scanner types and if they're links to the hull or not meaning how much flexibility are we going to have to select a scanner for our ship also how do scanners differ from radars okay uh this is a pretty deep question so let's talk about the different systems to start with so radar on ships are the items that allow you to detect entities

9. 00:06:28

   that are within your radar bounds and so they they become active targets that are on your radar and so everything is based off the signatures there's EMI R and C S which is not super it's not in great shape right now anything you need some work ium and i are our primary signatures that were used to detect entities from that are within a certain distance from the ship then there's a new signature type which is RS which is resource that's where you used to find my nipple targets so what the the radar generally does is that there is a there's a certain radius from your ship at which you can detect certain levels of those signatures and then anything that is around your ship that generates signature is like ships or people or

10. 00:07:18

    things like power plants or anything that that is tied into our signature system generates those signatures to a certain level so say there is a spaceship that is generating like a thousand a.m. and 500 IR wants to be pretty pretty tiny one because our senators fall off at a rate of one unit per meter that means that it generates enough eeehm to be detectable at a thousand meters away from Nick because the Ian level was a thousand now your radar se has a radius of 5000 and it's set to you at that 5,000 level detect any e m that is at a minimum of one so 5,000 meters away from your ship so you

11. 00:08:05

    have this big big radius R under ship if that if that other ship that was generating 1,000 a.m. is just under six thousand meters away from you because it's generating 1,000 and it falls off at a rate of one per one meter so at five 1000 meters away from it my signatures decay down to one and since your radar can detect at a minimum of one 5,000 away at about five thousand 999 meters you'll be able to detect it because it's because those two circles intersect when you get without that that distance is when they fall off the radar or if the signatures drop at a point where you can't detect them and so we need to do some tweaking on that on the radar to make sure that our distances and our sensitivity levels are more in

12. 00:08:54

    line with the gameplay you want we should be able to take a bad set yet bones once we do that you'll see some more like fine-tune distances we should get better also at displaying what those values are true that to the planner because they're completely invisible right now so we need to do something I work on that that's our radar works and so when everything is active and right now that's when you see it on your HUD and as a our markers and that's when you see on your on your radars so ping ping is a big item on all ships they're not too different right now again we need to do a pass on making different flavors of them but what ping does is it acts as a multiplier to the radar so if the radar distance is 5,000 and the thing is like a strength level of two times then it can ping out to a thousand or 10,000 kilometers or absurd meters away and it

13. 00:09:45

    has the exact same minimum detection values for for EMI RCS and rs well what that does is if you do a ping and you the same way that we do the radar detection for the minimum signature values if the item or if the entity is detected by the ping radius but not by the radar radius so it's farther than you can you can see in your active radar but it's it but it's within the distance of a ping so you get these these signatures on it then we collect all those entities that you get from without your radar but within the within the ping bounds and then we generate blobs with them so the blobs are collections of entities that give you a vague info as like as far as what direction

14. 00:10:34

    they were in and right now we do have at least a readout on the blob to tell you the distance of the block because it's really hard to tell but the scales of those blobs are but the those blobs are pretty massive and they're pretty far away from me but they gave you a general indication of of signatures that you're detecting at a distance that's outside of your radar we want to do some work on again the UI for that so you can actually get some more info about like exactly like what the strength levels of each of those signatures are that way in the future when we do a ping and then if you're specifically looking for mind resources you'll look for those those blobs that have a lot of my noble like RS signature like hey I'm gonna go for those over there so that's how the pink works and then finally scanning so scanning is

15. 00:11:22

    a different in that what's guiding does is when you move your when you go to this scan mode and then you move your cursor over an entity that can be scanned so far it those are spaceships and other vehicles and my novel resources then holding holding that your scan cursor over the item will give you a readout about what type of enemy is so for ships we have like the owner the pilot faction the blue we have its hit points cargo cargo that's on it and flick that's it for ships for my noble resources will tell you the levels of the amount of resource that's available

16. 00:12:11

    for that rocky that you're looking at and we are just about to expand that right now to other space stubble entities like the right now they're they're gonna be associate at that point so so planets and space stations and the like we'll give you some some info about what your what you're scanning at when you again are pointing your ship at at that item so the question is what are we gonna get as far as a flexibility for the radar the ping and the scanning items so once we kind of solidify these behaviors we can play around with the again the sensitivity of the radar so not only how far it can it can search up or seek out and look at and put active

17. 00:13:01

    entities onto your HUD and the radar and again we have we have those four signatures to play with so we can vary how sensitive they are and also what distances they can live in search for being the same way so the pink again because that's the multiplier of the radar how much better at at influencing a radar they are how sensitive they are to getting those signatures and during those balls for you may be getting more or maybe some of the pings aren't so good at distilling exactly how much signature is in a blog but maybe others are so we'll have be able to play with those values and give you some different behavior for that as far as scanning we haven't really done a lot of stuff on the scanning yet so that's to be

18. 00:13:50

    determined but I imagine some things we can do is simply maybe determine what types of entities that you can scan so far because we don't have so many we can't really play with that but once you start adding the ability to scan a whole bunch of different types of and these done in universe me and maybe some are really good at penetrating ship holes maybe some are great at telling you like the population of some kind of calling of the planet maybe some are like for you your pirates out there it some are really gonna tell you how much cargo and exactly what type of cargo is on a ship and give you that info it could be some defensive ones like some some scanners can tell you hey exactly what type of armament does this guy have that's

19. 00:14:38

    coming to attack me and you know down to how much how much DPS do they I have like just how powerful are they so there are those things that we can play with then once we get those that gameplay in there it's as simple as making sure that we just generate each items that can modify those parameters and then give players access to those items like it's a it's a very strong so the short answer is the scanners are not tight to the hole and it'll be a component that you can swap out and upgrade correct yep just like anything we make as long as be tired to an item and then it's simply a matter of all we do is you know we're

20. 00:15:28

    really just reading parameters from that item and then as long as the gameplay gameplay is just pretty enough for those parameters we just adjust them all and percent right thank you let's talk to Luke presidency when you've got take care man I see you bye all right thanks so much now moving on to truly a calling all dibs all star I wouldn't be the last show of 2018 without a visit from Luke Presley persistent universe Grand Poobah Luke how you doing man I'm good thanks Jared Yeah right yep I don't remember what you said or what I am so it's fine we got a question this this is a question ever

21. 00:16:20

    ever since the party system ever since the group system this is a question that has permeated every calling all that thread and I'm glad we finally get to talk about it sharing missions everybody knows you can pick up a mission the persistent universe you can join in a group with your buddies in the president universe what can we what can we tell folks about the ability to share that mission with our party members okay well so we had a meeting Tony Tod's myself Dan you know all the guys and figured out this right you ready tr0 yeah T is zero here zero yeah not the end design but what we're working on first but an amazing like it's a very well fleshed out thing okay well I guess yeah so missions can only be shared it

22. 00:17:12

    with your party members the way you do that is the party leader will be able to see everybody's accepted missions so they're the missions but they they picked from their available list and actually accepted and he'll be able to then share that with the entire party which so it's a bit imagine you know I I'm a pirate and you're not okay you can't even see these missions but I'm like hey Jared I've got a really cool mission here would you like to play it with me yeah yes yeah sure okay right I'll accept this you're the party leader you can then share that with everyone else I bring em over glass I can see your pirate mission

23. 00:18:01

    and then my name even though I don't have the mission I can see your mission and I can choose to share it with everybody in the group yep that's right right at that point everyone in the party will receive an auction and it'll will be to either accept that mission there by like Oh it'll become the you know over up right in kind of a mission yeah it'll be your active mission you want all your other missions but you have active at that time those will still be taken away you can still fail them if you run out of time but you can't get back to those like you can't set them back as active you'd have to leave this party so your other option is to leave the party for a while you know until they've done this the reason for that is just because you can only have

24. 00:18:48

    one active mission at a time visible and this should be the most important you know you imagine you can have multiple missions at once and see all the markers it's gonna get through the confusing but you know you're in this party to play this mission at that point and so yeah you're either in or out and if you want to then leave later on obviously you just leave the party and you can see all the markers that the mission only sees you can you're a mission owner almost just like him as in you can complete objectives but when it comes to things like you know making a decision talking to someone and picking a decision that will only be the mission owners you know only he'll be able to do that ghazal

25. 00:19:38

    yeah yeah so everybody else becomes kind of like a mission renter I guess yeah he's the party leader he's the one junior ownness okay my junior partner so but for instance if a decision is to let someone live or die and that's you know on a trigger then one of your friends can just pull the trigger now that's your you know permission own decision in allowing that person to come in for this mission alright but you know that some of them they'll all share in the rewards and that that's also the reputational rewards so you know if you're a goody two-shoes tagging along you know getting your kicks by proxy with this pirate you'll still take the reputational hit

26. 00:20:26

    for that so it's not you don't get away scot-free and but I think so now I mean yes but it's kind of up in the air but I think we'll probably forty a zero just split the rewards down the middle for everyone and monetary wise yeah and and everything else just works like the party does if you were not happy you leave the party you can pass leadership of a party I'm pretty sure it'll have to be if the mission owner leaves a party he takes his mission with him as well so if he's not happy with you guys you know can just leave and keep backing himself but you lose it and if I've gotten the mission through the share and then I leave the party do I lose the mission yeah so you must stay with the mission owner gotcha so that there's alright so

27. 00:21:16

    allow me to recap just to make sure that we have a this tier zero you know initial implementation of party sharing you join a group and the party leader can see everybody's available missions in active impactive missions okay so everybody's active missions they can choose to share one of those active missions with the entire group at that point the person who still who originally owned the mission stays the mission owner it stays the mission owner everybody else becomes what you refer to as junior owners they can participate in the mission they could see all the waypoints they can complete objectives the only thing they can't do is decisions and conversations that is still the prerogative of the mission

28. 00:22:04

    owner so that the mission owner is the one who can talk to to the NPC the embassy mission giver or whoever the NPC the mission giver wants you to talk to a stuff and make the make the decisions but the as they are a true party leader that in that regard they're there they're still making the calls while everybody else can do everything else to influence the decision when they complete the mission their rewards at least in tier zero will probably be split evenly just for simplicity's sake and if you leave the mission if you leave the group at any time you lose your shared mission and if you if you were the part of your the mission owner and you leave the group you take your mission yeah there's always gonna be caveat like for instance if you won't see invites for instance to mission givers it's only when you get to

29. 00:22:54

    that mission giver and accept one of their missions that you'll be able to share that other caveat could be that you might not be able to complete objectives such as checkpoints you know if you're all in a race together in you have to take the mission owner to that place you know you'll be able to be you'll be able to see all these markers so you'll be in the vehicle shooting and you know you'll see who's in the lead or whatever so you'll be able to participate that way but it has to be the players body you know the mission and mission owners body forgets right and it could be that the mission owners has given a virus to upload now no it's not all of a sudden everyone has a virus but they see where to plant it and they can protect him they have to get into that location okay so this is what might work slightly different depending on the

30. 00:23:42

    type of mission involved exactly yeah so so no no no play can't answers for almost anything it's just like in real life yeah all right that's exciting that's exciting I'm excited I've been looking forward to this for so long like we've been building missions but kind of cooperative you know but you have to you have to all be at the same place at the same time and you know it doesn't really work out without this kind of connective tissue but yeah and of course for though for the the obvious follow-up question of when they answer the same answer to that one question is the same answer to all one questions keep your eye on the public road map as the feature continues its development and we have a better understanding of when it will be implemented the game of

31. 00:24:30

    course that will go up on the public road map so so keep your eye there for any and all when related questions Luke that's it man last of 2019 or 2018 jeez Marty your head you think thank you so much for taking the time to be here on the show man all right I look forward to seeing you again after new year yeah I'll see you next year man yeah and well that about does it for calling all devs in 2018 I hope you enjoyed it this was a one this was a this was a great experiment for us this year you know every year we kind of we reinvent ourselves last year it was happy hour and and citizens of the Stars this year we brought back a revised format reversed the verse and a new calling all devs which was a revision and an evolution of the old 10-4 format I hope you enjoyed it if you did let us know in the

32. 00:25:18

    comments on the U on YouTube let us know on spectrum on reddit where whatever communication platform you choose I'll find it it's been a pleasure serving you guys this year I look forward to coming back in 2019 and doing this and more and continuing to provide you with the best star citizen and community content that I possibly can so for calling all Deb's I'm content manager for global video production Jared Huckaby see you next week everybody no habit see you next year thanks for watching for the latest and greatest in star citizen squadron 42 you can subscribe to our Channel or you can check out some of the other shows and you can also head to our website at

33. 00:26:08

    www.uvu.edu/library