Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - Two-in-One Special

8 February 201900:58:041,634 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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[Music] hey everybody welcome to a very special edition of reverse the verse now what makes this special is that earlier we had chief development officer Aaron Roberts here in the studio and if you know me I wasn't about to let an opportunity like that pass me by so we got Aaron to sit down for a few minutes and talk about a whole host of things like the star citizen roadmap the squadron 42 roadmap we even dabbled in a server meshing evocati test flight plans for 2019 the works I think is a pretty good conversation I hope you enjoy it and when we're done we're gonna be right back here with members of our Lord team to answer your questions live so enjoy the public roadmap yes we started this process of calling our shots if you were like the big Bambino you know saying
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that we were forecasting our releases a month's quarters even a year ahead we started this back in 2016 we revamped it last year yeah and it continues to evolve we recently added the squadron 42 roadmap looking back at it now do you do you think this was the right call yeah I actually think it's great I think it's great putting this putting out there and everyone can you know see it I think the process of sharing exactly what kind of we would like to do in the moment you know on that side compared to actually what gets achieved it's you know one of those things and then you know I kind of like the fact that people see that because what we what what what's happening is basically what happens in every company just behind closed doors and so you set up a very aggressive schedule you basically work very hard to hit it you things come along that change
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stuff in the wave and and process you know you evaluate you change stuff around because basically you want to go a different direction and then that of course reassess the roadmap so so in terms of that kind of stuff the roadmaps change because you might say well actually want to go do we do this we're going to make this feature we make this feature and then as we did in the beginning of last year we looked at this and we sort said well okay but actually we want to do these features but I actually want to put focus back in I'm making the game fun a bit more fun now because we're trying to get through a bunch of features to deliver to the community but you know we wanted but we knew we needs to get like honestly improving the frame rate we needs to make features we created and maybe go back and some more time on to make them you know enjoyable and fun to get the better user experience and so that's some of the stuff we then change around we made the change to do that which meant that we pushed out some future work to
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basically make you know the experience better and I actually do feel it was the completely the right decision because if you look at you know the play experience now and compared to you know a year ago it's it's fundamentally different absolute and because of that that's absolutely trajectory that we're continuing on is we are still focusing on improving the frame rate on improving and focusing on the gameplay of the features we put it with we didn't finish stability all that kind of stuff to really make sure what we have and what's working down this so much stuff you can do already but making sure that that is a great experience while at the same time then plugging in the features as they come along to basically fit within that you've mentioned a couple things I want to unpack a little more you mentioned that what we put on there versus what actually comes out because there are some changes even with all the caveats at the top you know you can't
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access the roadmap without agreeing to the caveats you also mentioned an aggressive plan we do plan very aggressively and a lot of sales in petrie yeah I mean the biggest impart of that is it comes down to when we make a plan beginning a year it we also include when we believe we're gonna get new headcount on or where we can build teams to make that plan work and so we basically go and put we create this roadmap and say okay well right now we have these resources and then cost you and then you have to take into account well actually you know and you get if you I think we can manage this but then of course we have it we're trying to deliver ball away or you know and then it takes some people out to fix bugs and so forth and see don't actually get some work but on top of that if we don't hire the people we need you know to create the features we thought we could later on the obvious that features not at work on and so that's when I say aggressive this is yes we we we try and
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be sensible about you know okay you know how long will this feature take and does it feel like there's some some period of time but if if resources get reassigned because something that becomes more important or we just don't have the resource we fought we're going to then those features then will get pushed back or drop out and then sometimes as I said we'll just look at where we are and I think that's one thing I'm actually really proud of and chrome Imperium is we we actually don't just march relentlessly in one direction I mean we basically look at we go back we look at the feedback get from the community we look at what's fun what's working we I mean the whole team really spends a lot of time checking out all the cool videos looking at what people are really enjoying doing and then we go then we reassess and we sit down and we like to be really agile about this is he okay no actually we're going to change direction here because actually doing this and this and this is gonna actually get us to a situation where people are really enjoying the
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game a lot quicker than if we just carried on then what you would sometimes do in a you know traditional thing is you try and get a bunch of features in and then you try and pull it all together and then you've really spent some time trying to polish it and just fix it off and so forth I think that that ability to reevaluate our progress every quarter every happier every year is one of the hallmarks of star citizen's development I mean famously we started when the PU development first started we were pursuing the terrace system for instance and then we we realized that the stanton system would actually give us the vertical slice for everything we need in star citizen so when we made we had that revelation realization rather a lot of people might have been too timid to switch gears at that point but not us we we switched gears and the results of yield of the device you make the right decision so this kind of stuff you know does it you
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know is it painful sometimes because you know no one likes letting people down but then I do feel like because of what we're doing we actually are going to get to where everybody wants to be much faster because you know work to end goal of having this incredible experience you know in this huge precision universe as well as actually really helping squadron and really become an amazing um you know worm game you mentioned squadron that this at the end of last year we release the squadron roadmap how is that process affected the star citizen roadmap there there's there's things that appear on squadrons that don't appear on stars so so we now as I mentioned on the resource side we the one thing we as a company are really focusing on is is making sure we push squadron and to get squadron out as soon as possible you seen the roadmap working very hard towards that it does
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mean however though that resources that we would have used on the PU now plug you know areas and squadron where either there's a shortage of resources or let's say you know one or two people leave then basically we then we then use resources from the PU on squadron to make sure that they we're going full speed ahead of that in terms of what it means to star citizen is we can have one thing we wanted to do is we hope you have this focus on making it fun and want to keep on doing that so we're keeping up the polish on you know the user experience from that kind of stuff but it means that a few of the features that we may plan to do on the PU get pushed back slightly no you know some some slightly some a little bit more well we've done focus RPG resources on making sure that it's a fun experience is fast and so for from then we look at what squadrons working on and as the features come online with squadron we then take those features and
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movements the PU so then we sort get led slightly by you know cool sort of features a squadron they come on we use an appeal where we can weed and then also the other side of it is because we do have a lot of people still working the PU but a lot those people work on stuff like you know making sure persistence is really nice really getting there because that's the big things we want to get to the stage where people load into game and they start and then that's it and then they're playing their characters and there's no reason resetting so persistence getting economy working properly really getting this sort of proper economic system working there so when you go to places it's like it's on supply and demand that's work that's going on right now and and also you know with that you know the you know the side of the degradation all that kind of stuff that goes with it as well as obviously the big one for us which is when I feel the game's gonna be ready for primetime which is when we get a server meshing in when we can put a
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bunch of people in one system it's one of those things I think that gets lots of names even with 500 plus employees spread around five studios around the world and and you mentioned hiring and still upscaling those teams there's still a finite amount of resources you can only work on so many things at any given time and that's like there's this constant juggle between priorities you know working on this and and this thing is a prerequisite for this thing and all these dependencies it's a it's quite a juggling act and it's huge and also we're not I mean the the quality level that we know we require to work on this game and that we you know that we we expect and if you want you know we won't hire people is you know unless that level is very high and so you finding those special people or you know around the world to come up with code studio takes a lot of time to you know to bring
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them in get them in and then get them used to the engine and also and get them working and productively as well so you know you sometimes you said like oh I think we can find Oh couple of these people are moms and so forth now sometimes you don't sometimes a busload come through and one in one load not very often unfortunately but the point is you know this sort of happens and so we are yeah I mean in terms of what we're doing we've got loads of you know lots of work to do we've got you know large might open the head counts travel because of stuff and so every day would make a decision calling priorities and how we're going to use that so a big part of your responsibilities here is is coordinating these production teams around the world keeping things like keeping development on schedule we're not famously star citizen originally said you know release 2014 we're in 2019 why is it taking so long I mean you know adds this
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question a lot I mean basically you know when when the scale of what we were trying to do at the beginning and you know what Chris was trying to do was very different and I mean the main the main driver of that was actually the was because of the amount of back in support we got from the community and the amount of the people really want to know have that amazing sort of firm you know not only got the sort of squadron sort of you know single play experience they had the Wing Commander but also with universe they could live in as it was became very everything quickly you know that you know there's much much support in that and also a huge amount of money came in and support that it just became very obvious that you know you know we weren't going to be building the game that you know I think Chris thought originally we're gonna do something we
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should be much more kind of like the old school stuff you know I've seen nice story and so forth but not the sort of full f first-person dynamic universe I mean come and I wouldn't even talk about the you know the planets and the procedural so I said which were now is in the game of people are loving and stuff like that and and it becomes it's a matter of trust I mean I mean because if we we believe that every single penny that comes in as we spare and development and we that's what one deal will bill this incredible experience and it became obvious that we need to build something you know to support something that is going to be groundbreaking and change the way I feel changed about you know games in the way you know and not only how we funded it now we built it and everything that I've had so far and that level so it just came to that we had we had to basically go and make something better now what comes
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with that is you can't just something go okay well I'll just you know I will build a few more ships so we'll do this over here you actually structurally have to then change the way that all the tools and tech what happened very early on is we said right well if we're going to support doing this we can make this incredible first-person universe which you can do all this all these different things you need to then go in and really then spend a bunch of time doing all the work which the community sat free with us I mean you know the guys know people know we went through and changed the physics system we went to you know we've got the local physics quits working which is a big huge deal we changed a 64-bit I mean you know you the things you probably forget but there's so many huge things and then of course then they'll just contain this treatmen came in last year as well and you've got all this work that goes on behind the scenes that you need to do because you because you can't just do something and say okay it's kind of ready and then when you want to get
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more dynamic and make it better it just won't work it won't scale the only way you can make it scales by having you under group the underlying technology and atill support that and so we basically said all right screw it we're gonna go and invest in the tools in the tech we're gonna do this work and the beautiful thing for me now is it's paying off and yeah there's been as you said a few years people of people have stuck with us yeah but the beautiful figures because of all that work now we actually fundamentally pretty quickly now and the think people can see it now for the quarterly releases we're getting more content out we're gonna get into the feature stuff you can see how the game moves along and it's not just a normal experience it isn't like a cool you know sort of like old-school sort of like you know you know space combat simulator it's like something which is completely immersive it's a huge world you can see how it's all gonna come
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together I think was very easy to see somewhere around mid 2016 quarter 3 2016 we definitely hit content phase like we had built and we were we weren't done building tools by any means we're still building total absolute help us make the game but we got to a point where we could where we could really start cranking out a game an actual tangible game that people play and you the experience that you see on on YouTube on Twitch you know whatever a mixer is a vastly different today than you would undergo and it goes to you know squadron as well as the same thing when you make those choices then you you know you you you the same technologies and squadron is in the persistent universe and so you know I'm sure there's the same discussions about well squadrons well it's the same deal is you've got to get a technology you've got to get the tools and stuff to make that sort of work so even though we went through and you know and Italy I'm
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actually having a bunch of the missions working once we actually went since she went and changed up a lot the tools until we actually weren't then revisited those things actually and actually you know remade them we're here to talk about this the star citizen roadmap but you mentioned squadron 42 so I have to take the opportunity how is squadron doing now I mean it's going really well I mean we've got the you know they've got their roadmap we've we're focusing the resources on it you know there's always gonna be the on issue and stuff we go through but basically you know we as a group we meet two times a week we look at that we look at the progress so the journal base I mean you know everyone company what's that kind of stuff and then it's just about really working through all the issues trying to get like you know you know artwork coming in and then getting that sort of artwork through working through the AI issues we haven't so for
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to me that look Bennett's like as you see and the great thing is like we talked about talking about before about you know as we're falling what squadron does as the AI gets better with squadron also people then start seeing that the PU as well in the different missions and so for example one of the main features we take across and so because we I want to be in the P you know in the PU you know I want to be I want to I want to have you know when we have like you know green zones I want to be green zone because there's a bunch of security there he'll shoot you if you do wrong things not just like you can't use your weapon and so forth and that's the sort of things I'll start coming in over the next you know next few quarters where basically we have oceans it's like it's on that yeah exactly you just can't have you got a sofa there's got to be you know are you do criminal life okay these guys and come after you and that's part of the law system that's gonna start coming in as well you know the next record this one work was quite an
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important question before we get back to the star citizen roadmap back in forgive me if I'm lyin was 2015 at Patten 2014 we said that squadron 42 was all levels were in gray box well whoever's wearing gray box and now with the publishing of the squadron 42 roadmap we can clearly see that many levels are not in grey box anymore what been there we went back in and we designed them I mean simply I mean we know we had we had been attacked we have the other things what to do system came I mean exactly I mean there's so many different things so forth and you know and and you know we didn't feel like the levels where we wanted to be and so we went back and so many of the stuff and went through and you know some of them were changed some of them were well you know moved around so forth but it was
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basically just a decision because you know we squadron is not coming out until this it's needs the perfect game I mean this for me is I'm getting over to fear and this is this is this is my you know this is a lot probably the last thing I am probably will work on and and I know you know you know few people like Chris it'll feel feel the same as when we do this it's gonna be absolutely amazing and with us and so if it's not right then we're gonna make sure it's right yeah I think one of the one of the things that I really enjoy in educating our backer community is that game development is not a linear line it's it's not a to B to C to D to e all the way to Z and you're done it is there may there are there are review gates there are points where you go back I you know most famously I think one of the Metroid games just recently announced that they're going all the way back to the
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beginning you know starting over we're not doing that by any means but it's it's evident it's a good analogy to the type of review and step back and reevaluate that happens in all game development and so when I went to when squadron was in gray box in 2015 you know that was that was the it was a different was a different game I mean that's were saying we went back we'd look at the tech we look support we haven't so forth and when you were pushing it and so we really looked at well to do we we changed up a lot of in terms of the tools and the shades and the stuffs where we do the arts I mean there's a lot of different things we can do so we want to change that up in terms of the characters the way we do the way we live and all that kind of stuff how we want to make certain events play out all those things I'm a big a big effect and stuff so you know and you either you know we know we're not here to make something average if it's not amazing
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then it's not coming out of the studio I can't say it better all right so we'll go back to the squat the star system roadmap here before I have to let you go 2019 that's we've talked about all the considerations all the work that we put into these roadmaps what are some of the big ticket items we can look forward to in 2019 well I mean we've got obviously we're gonna have new locations coming through we have some of this quarter I think also we're going to spend a lot of time on creating more detail on the planets we already have we have cool stuff like tunnel systems coming along we're gonna have more we can have more locations in space like you know places to visit I mean that's what weigh stations and so forth and and also in terms of like gameplay sign feature side we're gonna have obviously got a new flight model
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coming very soon which is really exciting it's gonna be really cool it's not only cool because it's just better in terms of just like you know for you know flight that was free and final space and so for the most part it's actually another cool thing is it's a lot faster so it doesn't it's very quick which means that actually it's a big performance win as well so people should see that when they start looking their stuff because when you've got a number of lot especially you've got a bunch of ships and they're all using a system and that system is expensive it all multiplies up and this systems a little bit there's much much much quicker and much simpler system and the great thing about is is simple to use for design as well to get the work and standard change they want to do out as well we also have the female characters coming we have the ability for characters to to actually create their their look and feel they look in the game and we're going out you know and then once again we'll be taking
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a bunch of features through front from squadron likes have improved AI will be coming through I mean it's just it's like you know with this release of the roadmap I have very much made sure that's the team that what we put in there is what we can achieve with what we have right now okay specifically with also you know the fact that people may be pulled on squadron and you know and we know that you know that the space that's work so this this although there's a really good set of stuff in there my hope is we'll be able to add some stuff to the roadmap but what I what I've done this time Robin last time the last time we said we think we can do this we have it in the roadmap this time we put in what we are freed I'm sure we can do okay so I'm signing up for this
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and then all we're going to do is now hopefully if we do bill to get more people then what we'll do then is we'll actually be able to add stuff to robot so for a bit look then towards the other you'll be be able to actually start actually adding stuff for it might run taking it out which would be great so it sounds like a little bit of a change from what you said earlier where you said some of the scheduling in the predictions and but involved staff that had we we try and learn so believe it that so we so yeah that would mean that we got aggressive we do the stuff for my civil this time let's just put it in the roadmap which is people feel is completely doable you know and then you know with what we have right now and rather not sort of say okay yeah but we should have another team built by this time this time so we've got to get this in a feature and so my hope is we will get some of the team's going and then that will actually be able to mean that
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we can push them more stuff in okay just so when the roadmap is updated for a quarter three and quarter four of 2019 yeah it it may seem less aggressive than it has in the past yes but I think this loads in there I mean I'm not I'm not worried I'm not worried about it's lots of cool stuff people to do but but my feeling is this is something that people should be able to get I mean unless we get to the end of q2 and we take a look at it go you know we're actually we need to change direction through this or change stuff around I feel very comfortable with that roadmap because it's basically it's it's you know that was my explicitly want to say let's just get it there and then like I said I'd rather surprise people some new stuff rather than disappoint them are taking stuff out now you mentioned surprising people a stuff that's a good way to showcase that just because it's not on the roadmap doesn't mean we're not
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working on it or that the roadmap is these some there are yes sometimes yeah I mean there is some stuff we keep off on purpose because we want to surprise people to little things that go in there there is a lot of work that's going on behind the scenes which means act as you said is like I say right now serve a machinist is you know a lot of prelim work is starting and will be working on for the rest this year even though it's not showing on this although it's not showing on schedule right now it's not showing court reporters I mean working on and what doesn't mean that there might not be some mill officials weren't able to get it some stuff there's a lot of longer-term features that we're working on in terms of optimizations as well in terms of that kind of stuff going on all the time which may not show that and then once we get comfortable that they're coming to fruition then we made then that you know we will put them in the red mouth you know we did this road map at two years ago and we've evolved it and
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iterated on it last years and now we've seen many game projects out there doing similar things you know and it's very you know it's because this I can I have opinion I think it's a great idea but it's very easy to look at it and think that that's all that you're working on yeah and that's absolutely not the case there's so much more it's just that these are these are more sort of year round I mean typically it's the more rounded feature that we feel people understand and also like you know oh this is a feature release here this is a piece of content here and so forth but but there's a huge amount of other work that's going on under you know behind the scenes also and which you know sometimes we don't put on because I'm not sure it's gonna make it and then we'll make the decision to put on later and like I said some of it we just we're gonna keep because we'd like to keep it a surprise and so yes but yeah it's really important that you know people stand
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there's a huge amount of the work going on there so going back to the two road maps the squadron 42 road map and the stars in road map there are shared features but they don't always align like you'll see a feature being developed for squadron first and then coming to star citizen later on or vice versa coming to star student first and then being implemented and squadron later why that disparity what why is it not just the same time I mean the main thing the main reason is the difference between single-player multiplayer so having having a system which I mean having the system which works you know for squadron which is a single-player game and will have will have a multiplayer element of it that people got to play but but but there but you know it's basically that's what it's one big story you know which a single player is getting that working is usually much faster and also the specific needs that
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squadron has it's a military game so it may be a piece of technology with military technology which we may not make available to PD straight away and so forth for things so so that's the main one it's like so you know I mean stuff like AI when AI works for the squadron then you can go for the pu but you need to make sure that all them that all the network calls are in there and so forth and stuff and so that's kind of stuff you have to make sure that the proper stuff going on and so basically when in single play you know the I stand over there because it because it's on your clan if I'm playing multiplayer do me and you see the see the same way if we are more variables exactly if we know if he's not if it's not gain if the callback so I'm going to save it back to us and so forth then you know so that's the main reason besides the roadmap one of the really cool innovations that we've implemented in star citizen's development is the use of our evocati test flight our deputised
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group of quality assurance testers around the world that all coming with with different skill sets all coming from different locations they can test a variety of things that we can't test internally how how has that affected our development I mean it plan for that well I mean I mean to be honest it's it's a blessing because I mean we don't we we have actually quite a large internal test Department lots bigger serve but they cannot manage you know demote test we need to do I'm not just the other katia with fantastic but also when everybody joins the PTU and we get that massive surge on the servers and I tell you sometimes we think that we think the game stable and we've gone forever Katya feels pretty good and then we just go to a big open PTU and then everything just falls flat and I know some of the guys have seen there been and seen that it's having that is
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amazing resource to work with scale is the one thing you can't tell exactly so having people that are willing to come in and help us do that is brilliant I mean ever cutting and especially and what's really great on the other because they're they're actually willing to get in when the games it's literally slightly more broken than usual and so you know or test like some features which actually interesting is one of the things we actually do this time around as well is we're gonna give ever catty this with the flight model we're gonna basically open up to have a kotti probably a number of weeks before we even go to proper testing just so they can go and it's fly and give us feedback on that because we want as much - we don't do flight models going in so we don't want to have the one more time fit right I want more feedback and if we put it in for the last four weeks you know then then we want to make sure it's
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balanced well because there's a big new thing so that'd be kind of cool and that's the great thing that it does again as well it's like they're gonna go in there we're gonna give them a drop with a bunch of the flight model stuff and they can go to fly it and we can get their feedback and we'll get to tweak on that so by the time it gets to you know the mass of people and PTU then it should have been a good few number of changes with a suggestion from overcast help do this but without that group I mean yeah it would make our jobs very very difficult I mean we're close to impossible because you know you don't release a game this size of this many people with you know about 60 internal QA guys spread over like you know you know these regions are so forth and so now we're just incredibly lucky to have the support we have I'm going to add for those who may have be hearing the term we have a copy for the first time you that and wondering how you can join it
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it's through use of our issue council in issue council which is our big queue a platform where our backers can find bugs submit bugs that verify the bugs submitted by other backers and help us narrow down the court the sources of bugs that crop up during the course of development so you mentioned server meshing this is one of the the last big technical hurdles towards making the star system precision universe everything that we all dream it can be talk to me about server meshing what is it and how important is it so I used to attend I don't know I mean basically the the server machine is going to give us basically a nutshell so he was ability to put everybody one instance and what happens is is is rather than have one server could right now we have a server which basically controls and we have
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about 50 people in in one area and that's about as high as we can go we can we'll be able to get a bit higher once we do some optimizations but otherwise you get you know you get into problems with latency and a lot sort of later but the but the server's get so slow that basically it causes problems everything out so the server machine means that we will be allowed to dynamically have service control anything from a room to a system depending how many people are in there so you can imagine once we optimize it and then the server can actually control actually you know a few hundred people and we know that a few hundred people have all decided to go to you know to a bar right then we can have one server that all that cares about a few hundred people in the bar that's it and that means that you suddenly get this big feeling of oh we're all pushed
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in here but service controlling that as soon as you walk out a bar they transfer to another server which is controlling maybe the the alleyway outside or whatever and that's the way the that's the way we basically get everybody in one stuff and then they then talk up to a system server which then talks up to them to a big old database server and so forth which then scales back and so they go oh there's there's 200 people over here let's put like five servers on that oh there's only there's only one person out here just one server for the whole system and then it's dynamically just scales how many servers controlled depending how many people in there and it basically date and they basically use the power you know jointly to basically try and get people in there so that's kind of how the server machine stuff works and obviously there's there's levels of this so that's where you want to go to this beautiful dynamic system it basically brings servers on and offline depend how many people it's very neat it's very
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efficient but you know at first you know the first iteration will be you know which is what we've moment will in planning phase right now and the work will start soon afterwards and we'll be working on this year and I'm you know obviously what lucky and I said before I'm not gonna get into this is one of the things that we got to talk about a date that will come live until the closer but the idea but the idea would be you know is that once we have the first iteration which would be actually we now have the service talking to each other they're not dynamic but you know you know we have like our ceiling is going to manage this area space the civils most ISO space the cylinder this planet the serval do this location and then all of a sudden when you've done that then you can get a bunch more people in you know and so the first test for me and we'll be involving a lot of people if a cat even feed you is you start with that stuff and so the first
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one is be more rigid they possibly serve as passing people to each other when they when they go through zones that will get loads more into an instance and then the next and that with the first one we play and then at that point I think people start having a pretty damn good experience because we're not talking 50 people you'll be talking like hundreds of people playing together in areas then or in one instance and it's all systems you know passing back and forth and then the dynamic side will then be built on top of that as well so it's a process I want to clear something have you said and then work will start on this it's not that it's not that work we haven't begun the work of server measuring things like OCS were were precursors yeah all the all the work that be we talk about stuff has all been done to make sure this works without this it doesn't work and so so yeah if you want to say if you want you know if you wanna start three years
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ago maybe this has been a plough long and doing and so you have to do all these optimizations and make all these changes to code and then and then as you said object test room is a big one because the service of has to time with that because we know what's been lower than when depending where you are and that custom as well so all that works up and what's happening now is its winner at that stage now we're finally we can start we're doing we're doing the last assessment so we can actually start the implementation of actually the service talking together for the stuff and then that is the process which is gonna start very soon which will start and when we work on this year sure I can't convince you to give me a date and unfortunately no dates but you know II will push on but about what I just want to know what's gonna be nice no surprise and of course the public roadmap is we're gonna find information on the win and aware of features in the star citizen Aaron mmm-hmm thank you thank you so much no
00:32:08
problems there's good being over here oh I'll be back again in two months that when you come over here do you dread like hot air it's gonna grab me for one of these things that's always always lots of fun I appreciate you say that on camera Thanks plan that was chief development officer Erin Roberts Erin thank you so much for agreeing to be kidnapped for approximately 45 minutes and answer my questions as you could for the second half of our show our first two-in-one special we have members of our Lord team here we're already halfway through the show so I'm going to skip past most of the normal intros this is Dave that's Adam that's will we are taking your questions live from the chat you can submit your questions for the Lord team
00:32:56
by submitting your question with the word question in capital letter surrounded by brackets that'll help us journey toward the Lord team for today's our TV and bracket yes hashtag blessed now now of course the Lord team you touch many aspects of star citizen scored 42 but they're still only certain types of things you can talk about so as an example lore wise when it's the caret coming up well that's interesting you ask that from a lore perspective actually it's been out for quite some time yeah I'm pretty sure more wise all of you are already flying your character [Laughter] the one questions gameplay mechanic questions those aren't going to be the
00:33:45
types of things that we can talk about here you are the you are the DNA of star citizen and squadron 42 that the backbone that everything else is built on it if I may I really appreciate the work you guys do we're just one anything that of the power triangle narrative so the question has come in live we did pregame some questions on spectrum where folks were able to submit questions and vote up which questions they want to see taking the time to do that it's pretty awesome and sorry for the people who didn't make the cut off but still appreciate reading through also yeah the the the most voted up one was was a surprise to me when we talked about this we're like okay we have some ideas what we're gonna cover them I could not have predicted the most voted up question the brokes voted up question was we're gonna
00:34:32
jump right into it now all the intros are done are there any natural disasters in star citizen Lord such as a tsunami an asteroid fall disease insect invasion and is it planned to have them in game as a dynamic event ah historically we've I mean we have the aura Tony jump point collapse which is technically kind of any natural event disaster to because they're trapped people back there I have to redouble check the history I think we had talked about in the early days before we terraform Mars that there was like a couple of natural disasters that happened on earth right that's sort of during the overpopulation era where it was like really starting to get get dangerous but you know we've had not like massive like plate dust storms affecting whole planets we've had
00:35:21
insects like this the cator like which I'm forgetting the specific guy it's in over on I think they were they were brought there because a lot of the the residents have oberon lived in the passages underneath and it was brought there as a food source but it ended up turn to be turning into invasive species that has kind of wrecked that planet tale is all this time we do want certain planets to be riskier to travel on and these kind of natural phenomenons would be a big part of that these two we actually called out a couple of diseases I think in the sort of threats of pandemic and some of the news updates it was like a lynch fever yeah we were talking to the character team the Susan to say this is in the works right now but about the potential down the road in the future of doing like shaders for when people have the space measles or whatever and that we want to push
00:36:07
forward of being able to like turn that on your character so you can get sick that way which is a fun potential for way down the road but and then I know we showed a case like we had the tough storms in the Lear three yeah they're sad worm demo so that was our first kind of lush at like playing around with that is something that we wanted clearer than half his gameplay yeah I think it's very easy to say that we would like to have the dynamic events like these urban remember yeah the the plague that swept through World of Warcraft back when you know we'd love death row stomach dynamic events it may be too early in our development still to commit to them and there's always that thing to where it's like we have the that distinction between like what's happened to historically and that doesn't affect the game right so to set up kind of the the background of the
00:36:56
universe of cool in which a lot of things can happen but you know we always run a weird gambit of like not waiting to imply that some of the historical stuff could be in-game so we have to kind of ride that line you know with like because we have a couple worlds that have had like bad terraform and where the terraforming hasn't quite like stuck all the way and they're having problems so it'd be kind of cool to figure out how we can show that ongoing rather than just having the planet itself looking kind of messed up is that like and ongoing thing with Microtech had a head of terraforming issues yeah yeah there's other ways to like there there are certain planets also that may have some from drought or just there not be a an abundance of water there which may be reflected in not seeing massive lakes or oceans on the planet but also in being able to haul stuff in so it
00:37:44
might affect the economy in that way where yeah it may be not such a big thing or yeah this planet just doesn't naturally have a lot of water but it then it so you won't maybe necessarily see it directly in game but it'll affect gameplay or how you want me to want to run your routes or those kind of relief missions and stuff yeah so the second most voted question was the one that I kind of assumed would be the first most weighted question it says are the vanduul the only major threat in the game or will we see of it I mean the biggest threat right now is me trying to handle playing no I mean it feeds right into humans are a huge threat to game everyone's flying around with like massive weapons on their willing to
00:38:32
just like mess people on when we showcased the vertical slice for squadron 42 I think one of the most surprising aspects of that was that there wasn't a vandal in sight and you know the the the the antagonist of that level at least were humans were other humans people people the danger of people change it's like the what it's like The Walking Dead you think that you think the zombies are the antagonist but it's not alright we're definitely focused a lot and when we're talking about like you know what are you gonna come up against just this idea facture there's so much smaller kind of playing we have the Vandal as this big Imperial level threat and there isn't many things that come as that blanket level of scale but there are the much smaller more faction threats that you're gonna encounter system-to-system and stuff like that like we you know on the micro level you have the ninetails operating
00:39:20
out of grim hacks and they're a major threat when you're in that area and we're working on developing the more and how it's gonna go and how you interact with the other games that you might run into a flying around Stan so as far as the introduction of like you know another big like group that's just gonna swarm and cover everything the Bourget C's degree yeah so I we're not necessarily gearing up for that per se on a on a day to day mission scale it's gonna be more about like getting your reputation and how you interact with these local factions from the live chat in capital letters right off the bat when we'll test a banister be back I don't think we've had any one of you on any show where there's question hasn't come up yeah I'm not sure I mean we're still it's again I think I was on asking
00:40:11
calling all the calling all devs and talked about it because there was absent Jet Li's there was some there's some technical considerations that are hampering Tesla's triumphant return so I think it's just it's a question of what once we were able to address that as we will probably the better sense of the timeline for but you know we all love every want to get her back it's just a question of this is almost the well the first one was about threat this is a necessary about threat but in the same vein during development and actor will we see new civilizations coming to the game or are all the ones that we're gonna have already present it's hard to say that at some point in the future you may not you decide to add it's so tough for us to answer this cuz it's the kind of thing if we didn't wanna tell everything we would want it to be a surprise that's not saying we are doing
00:40:59
it or not doing it but it's kind of like we don't want to answer let's he had we actually this has been a common question I'm not sure we can answer this yet but we're gonna try how much de squadron the squadron 42 campaign affect the PU how much will of it will be felt in the PU whether that will there be memorials museums will the coil make its way to the that's more a game design question then but I mean uh are you building connective tissue between the well I mean you know the the coil is a thing you know that exists in Odin systems so it's you know it's not you know it's a locale it's an environment so when you go to the Odin system and the PU the coil should be
00:41:47
there yeah you know I'm you know as we kind of did when we did the the citizen count a few years ago I mean it's the attack on Vega 2 will probably be reflective you know that there will be a remnants of that attack you know rebuilding memorials at that type of thing it definitely is going to have an impact on yeah the PU and you know we have some fun ways on a on a smaller personal level how that's gonna be reflected in your travels in the pu if you finish squadron 42 and you go through the campaign how that will change your as well as like kind of more of these universe Empire wide-scale things of you know are the people in the game changed by the story in squadron 42 I'm pretty sure this question came from tyler
00:42:38
witkin and he's sitting here posing as a there's always at least one or two every episode this is is there any lore Saran the addition of Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops no we're not even going to spend any time on that we know about you ee currency have we considered any other types of alien currency for the game like Bitcoin like banner point yeah like how are you see yeah I mean that's we've we've had that conversation before I mean the tricky thing is right now we're trying to build the economy for a human economy for a human economy and then because then you're talking about a completely separate economy on top of that so I mean we've we've talked about it obviously it seems like it would make the most sense but it's just a question of like
00:43:25
lore why is we like the Xian have their own currency the use they don't use UEC outside of u-e space but it's more of a further design discussion that because it impacts things greatly whether you as a player are going to be able to operate using the xi'an currency and the same thing with the banner the banner have their own currency and who knows what the vanduul do it's a good it's a good it's a good distinction between lore and game design yeah I'm sure if it were up to storytellers absolutely there'd be a hundred different currencies out there in the galaxy but from the perspective of making a game and game design it would be that would be something yeah I'm an economy Japan you are a trading species so of course they have to have some kind of I mean unless it's purely barter like they have to have some kind of currency yeah we've lor wise we
00:44:12
talked a bit too about how the band new currency might be preferred on kind of the fringes as being a little more flexible and having a little more options to it versus the UEC which is tightly controlled and regulated and traced every transaction after the live chat any updates on the collective pedia yes yeah yeah well there have been certain pieces that are appearing in jump points which are being done so it's there there are a little deep dive every jump point the monthly subscriber magazine available to all subscribers yeah that's right it was a new feature that we introduced last year I believe near five yeah unless you know was a 20-18 was in the rebound yeah we started doing switching
00:45:00
between Galacta PD entries and Whitley guide entries yeah so those have been really fun and and hats off to Sheree for her work on those as well as Ben who's running all of the yeah but yeah we've done we've been sort of working on building up our sort of entries and trying to figure out how we want to tackle it it's a again it's one of those things that's like it's it involves decisions outside of our department so we're trying to get our ducks in a row and get people kind of resources allocated for it so it's just it's a question of you know we meet up with turbulent a bunch on it but you know they keep having bigger higher priority projects and it's all about balancing that backlog of tasks so it's still ticking away in the background yeah that's something we can slowly chip away
00:45:47
at and just kind of start to start working on and when it's ready to yeah we're building it we're actively building it on the backside when it's going to be accessible as the bigger there's a question in chat about the lor builders you know back when we began we published a series of lore builder kits with everything called board builders not yeah yeah yeah with with kind of signposts and milestones to help fans develop their own lore you remember those they called the lore kid the chaplet yeah yeah the thing we did it was a another feature we did where that was the more like we were sourcing kind of stuff with the community like Santa
00:46:33
bowls would be that a ball Mike meant the question chat was are there are there is there anything for fanfic writers is is there a light at the end of this fanfic those riders the writers good it's we have to do a pass and it's been one of those tasks that's been sort of I've been pretty shuffling around for a year now of having to just sit down and finally go through and kind of bring it up to speed it's mostly it's still there the flavor of it is really still the been the core guiding principle I mean I still go flavor it's salty with a hint it I I mean I still refer back to the writers guide in my weekly writing and it's really impressive how well it's maintained but there's a couple more detail like little facts that it hits
00:47:21
the broad strokes so if you're sort of looking for for a resource it's it's probably a good place to go you know I mean that like the ban you start like the alien culture stuff we've done dov'è a lot deeper into but the sort of broad stroke things and even kind of how to approach them writing writing them as characters is actually still kind of holds true so if someone wants to be nice and include a link to the writers guide in the and the chat go for it oh we can throw in description yeah this person would just get her into it you guys why does stanton have such a small historical time frame 30 years or so to build a city planner like arccorp come on and destroy an environment for another person get off yourselves no we will get on ourselves so what's what's
00:48:14
the deal with 30 years to cover a planet entirely in the city yeah I mean they're they're fast builders yeah right aggressive development you say I remember we also learned on last week's RT that there's no mountains or in the so I mean the planet wasn't just a perfect sphere for me actually was it maybe no what happened sure yeah I mean it was you know I'm trying to think of when actually we got into the nitty-gritty of like when the system was discovered yeah I mean it's it's sort of a it's definitely a weirdness factor of how how quickly they did I mean it we the one thing we've kind of been saying justifying it at least to myself is like you know cried sleep at night that a lot of its factory production facilities so it can be very expensive but not require
00:49:02
a lot of people it could in presumably at this point because we're settling a lot of worlds hopefully that like they've up their game as far as like building dropping outpost down and dropping factories down yeah it's a little I mean again yeah the timelines a little a little funky but I swear half the time it sounds like you guys just make this crap yeah the the expansion of it was a very hard aggressive push by our Corp to cover it up it's like to to build out and build these things we we've talked about with art about you know kind of the development of this world and how we're gonna see it and we go and and as you seen with the other moons like it's a really awesome how much things keep improving and changing with it so I'm looking forward to the release of the
00:49:52
rest of the system and to see how it grows over there and also to be fair person hasn't completely destroyed their environment that's if they've really screwed it up yeah and another point to add is that the these planets are owned by the corporations itself not technically the the UAE so there are no environmental regulations where you need to make sure there's a planning and you have a few years you can just go and do whatever you want because that's that's their problem so if you want to lean into that we can lean into that it kind of fits with our core personality that like this they're super aggressive about getting people to move in there and set up like their production facilities in their corporate home like headquarters and all this stuff so they're really like actively going out to try and get more people so they can make more money and assume them so chad is asking what's all that loud background noise it's
00:50:40
lunch an hour here so the commissary is on the other side of that wall and obviously there are a bunch of people having a very good time they must be learning they're trying so much just cheering on our antics I'm here dog barks and it's a doctor only Jay Lee if you're interested in working in such a fine and enjoyable place I've got a cloud imperium games comm slash jobs and look at all our openings I think there's like a hundred tells Jarrod's saying were still trying to get hired we are almost out of time yeah no it's going to pass another feet to the fire here because if interest frigates are named after solar systems and Stan you already know where this is come I was discovered in 2903 how did the u EES stanton get its name if it was
00:51:28
built in 2872 time travel I didn't ask that part yet yeah what's the deal there spoiler alert no I'm just gonna rebranded it they gave the ship a new name yeah I got it got resealed yeah right like like the enterprise a was originally in the USS yorktown that isn't when they renamed it to the Emprise a I'm here for you guys you get let's see what more we can fit in before we have to let you know what is the Lord team's thoughts on all the action emergent gameplay going on right now it jumped down oh it's fun I loved I tried to find it I think last week and I crashed into a mountain I was close i was super close and then i crashed but
00:52:16
no I think it's awesome it's one of the most exciting things to see people kind of like using the systems to build their stories which is you know really exciting yeah cuz part of it is we're providing this narrative backdrop for this stuff to happen on on top of so it's really cool to see the interplay between what we do and what the players do and how that all comes together to create this awesome course yeah and yeah it adds that little bit of extra resonance too it's like everyone's going there for the widow so it just kind of like deepens the the connection to Widow as as a part of the game versus just being some random supply or there's commodity with this of that so it's nice to see that be able to tie back through and to have people ganging up on both sides to make it happen I mean I saw somebody like selling like escort services to get there like I'll be your
00:53:05
personal bodyguard to get there I mean yeah it's really fun stuff yeah alright so we're just about out of time I wanna do some lightning around it drag as many questions that he as possible before you run out of time how much room is available for players and orgs to make it into Lord operation pitchfork is already a part where they guys the game anyway you guys never look at that kind of stuff they play yeah I mean we've been sort of talking about like the sort of news aspect I mean we have the the reliant variant which is behaving a news thing and again how we can kind of plug that into our news services in a way I think we need you know organizations fully implemented in the game first before we if we did incorporate organizations into lore we want it to be based off like with their actions and what they do we don't want
00:53:54
to like take control of your org and say this is what you're doing and establish your Lord so like Dave saying with the reporting and stuff this will be once once we're we're going you're going to do stuff and that's how you're going to become part of it you become part of the interview by your actions rather than us it's kind of just going we're gonna grab that award and we're gonna throw them in as we're sure the archivist probably in the commissary having fun with everybody else how how well different alien languages be handled when dealing with other humans it's probably gaming with it I don't understand I think I think what there's every alien in the universe gonna speak basic or is there a universal translator or there there will be some translation stuff they won't be as good I don't think every alien is gonna speak common by far yeah I mean we're yeah we're building the languages
00:54:45
so I mean that's right we've got the Cheyenne language we working on any other no fans will work on mandolin madrina yeah and we're more flow pets like the shi jian i I believe in cuz they did we did a a breakdown yeah there's definitely Xian pets because I think there was one that was called out in the right right a backer cotton yeah yeah it looked like a little yeah and I was desperate to try and motion-capture a pug because I wanted to be on pet I think ban who just have food that they're friends with for a while alright that's about it guys I promise that I'll
00:55:38
be out here at 1:00 thank you so much for taking you guys have a trip ahead of you your head into your head into your up to do some pickups at these pretty reasons they don't like us to disclose our travel plans ahead of time right I'm staying here as the designated narrative so that's it for this way to reverse the first remember there's that cyclone commercial I do think that wrapped up today or wraps up at the end of the today check spectrum really amazing start some follow-up information if you check out yesterday's around the verse if you haven't already a lot of you folks are really excited about the ASL I wanted to add one quick thing that well we're just as excited about adding ASL emotes just to prevent you everywhere
00:56:27
from going to real crazy with it we're probably not going to be able to have the entire ASO library of emos in there we are afraid you're cherry-picking we are we're looking for the most valuable phrases to add in there so take the spectrum let us know what do you think the most valuable phrases you would want in there because we are going to have to curate a list because there's only so many things that we can do with our time and yeah and for those of you waiting for the public roadmap that is coming later today I don't know specifically when I've been in here for a while but keep your eyes out the public roadmap with updates 2 3 6 3 7 and 3/8 should be out later today to everyone enjoying the private roadmap thank you for keeping that say yes always it alike alright so for reverse
00:57:23
the verse that's Adam that's Dave that's me that's we'll see you next week everybody 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

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.