10 for the Designers: Episode 02 (2015.04.13)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] Hey there. Welcome to 10 for the designers. Uh I am your host Dan Tracy and this is Kix Reno. Uh hey guys. We uh we've had to do a little reshuffleling of the staff to get our exact roles right, but uh Matt Sherman is was kind enough to step in for the role of Kaix and and obviously I've moved on. Uh so uh we have some questions and we'll go ahead and get into that. All right. Uh so let's start. The vigilant one asks, "What kind of experience does the design team have in

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   maintenance that you are able to use in designing a repair system? How important is the repair system when designing a ship? And how in-depth will ship engineer gameplay be?" Uh, the first half of that is super easy. Uh I have none basically. But uh thanks to our uh incredible backer community and our uh world spanning team uh I have loads of reference and uh people that I ask about how the repair system are intended to well how repair works in the real world. Uh, and I'm actually the one who is doing the design for uh, doing field repairs. Well, what are some of the uh, some of the things

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   that you are using as a reference so everyone out there has some idea on what to maybe expect? Well, I mean, in terms of the actual gameplay loop, um, I was thinking that, you know, there there's actually some pretty good ground tread already. uh and you know we have we have a few uh military folk to sort of bring it back into reality but the the loops that I'm looking at are more built around having really small discrete uh actions but having a wide variety of them so that any given problem is going to be very dynamic and you'll have a lot to react to and so it's not going to be a big deal to accomplish repair so much as to figure out what needs repair how to do it. Uh so I'm sort of taking cues from uh the car mechanic simulator 2014 uh which uh came out at the perfect time

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   for me to to get inspired by that uh trauma center. Um again really uh really simple uh mechanics really simple interactions but the layers of them is what really drives having a dynamic experience. Uh, and I've also been taking cues from uh, Penumbra actually to have uh, you know, the the direct um, interaction with the the the world and with the objects that you're plugging back into your wartorrn vessel. Yep. Uh, so that's that's how repairs going. Uh, and I've actually got a pretty cool uh, prototype of that that we we've got going and uh, hopefully we can we can sneak that one out sometime pretty soon. So, our next question comes in from Solo asking, "I've heard and read a lot of

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   the principal game mechanic is based on the individual skill of a person, dog fighting, mining, FPS. So, I was wondering how are people able to play and enjoy the game who are mentally and/or physically challenged. In other MMOs, they're able to level their characters, which helps them being able to enjoy more of the content even in the confinement of their own abilities. I'd love to know that Star Citizen is also supporting those citizens that have already had that already have a hard time socializing or participating in social events. Are there plans to support this group of citizens? And if so, how do you think their unique requirements can be met in game? So, uh, one of the biggest things that we've got uh right now to help with this kind of accessibility is uh just our our level of support for input devices. So, if you

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   want to play with the keyboard and mouse, if you want to play with the joystick, uh if you want to play with a game pad, and then also the full remapping. So, people if they have any challenges with accessibility, they'll be able to make sure that whatever device they're using is going to be really suited to their needs for how they're able to enjoy the game. Yeah. And also, I mean, one of the core elements of of Star Citizen is having these these specialization roles. So, uh, anytime we're making a new system, it's about, uh, you know, how deep can you go and how deep do you have to go? And generally, we try to answer that is you can go pretty deep and you don't have to if you if that's not if that's not you, you know, you don't have to ever fly a ship if you don't want to. We have a, you know, a full FPS game. uh

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   and you know based on your play style, also based on uh your needs as a as a player. Uh I think that that that philosophy of uh focus on specialization over uh a a more traditional progression system is going to allow people to to find where they're comfortable and where they are are challenged to the game that they enjoy of. you know, if it's the repair mechanic we spoke of a minute ago or if it's uh turrets or shields or comms, all these things. Yeah. Yep. So, Squirrel asks, "I was curious about some aspects of gameplay with multi- crude ships. Uh, will the pilot be able to shut down and restart individual engines while in flight? For example, if one was

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   piloting a constellation on a long exploration trip, would it be possible to shut down two of the main engines, allowing the constellation to cruise on the remaining two engines to conserve fuel, and if needed, uh, you could restart the two cold engines to engage in the fight? Yes. I mean, that's like the entire point of multi-crew is the taking taking the the flight game and splitting it up among multiple people, encouraging teamwork. Uh, and part of that is that not everybody has access to all of the ship systems. And a consequence of that is that not everybody needs access to all the ship systems. So, you have a lot more opportunity for granularity in the systems that you do have access to. uh you know, one of the ones that uh comes

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   up a lot is is radar or shields. Uh those systems are going to have a lot more granularity, a lot a lot more ability to dig into exactly what they're doing when you don't have to also worry about the weapons or uh you know the targeting or not crashing into that asteroid in front of you. Yeah. Which is generally pretty important if you have to do it all at once. But in multi crew, you don't have to. If your shields get shot up or if your weapons get shot up, we're going to have to give you some way of managing that in the ship. And yeah, turning off different power sources, turning off different engines. You need to reroute your power somewhere to to get somewhere else. You'll have to shut some stuff down to accommodate that. Yep. So, Milton Freriedman asks, "A question regarding the overclocking system. In Star Wars Galaxies, we could

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    experiment on the items we crafted to get a better design for that item. This resulted in people being able to make a better version of that item. Though this or through the system, people would become the best crafters on a server and we become server celebrities. People would say, "Go to this person for the best armor. Go to that person for the best plasma blaster." Is there something similar planned for overclocking your production in Star Citizen? This is something that CR has been bringing up in meetings for for as long as I've been here. like this is like those words of being able to uh strike out and make a name for yourself by playing the game uh and doing it well. That's Yes, absolutely. That is uh the mechanics are still being determined for exactly how that's expressed. Yeah. The biggest difference we're going to

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    have over something like Galaxies or a traditional MMO though is that instead of having, you know, a a weaponsmith skill that you're you're building up or an armor smmith skill, it's going to pretty much be how many toys did you break to figure out what the right formula is. Um, very much like real world computer overclocking, you have to test your system a few times and occasionally you may break something. But once you've really mastered how to make that those parts do what you want, yeah, you can definitely make a name for yourself with that. I know that the goal is to have it be uh fairly equal parts art and science to to getting that exact right overclock amount that's going to, you know, get get the full performance without burning it out too quick. ZR ZR writes, "I've seen a few posts

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    complaining about strafe fighting. Uh, has there been any thought in observing aerodynamics in a nebula to a point that strafe dog fighting would be nerfed with denser clouds of gas? Any movement other than pro provided by main engines would not be enough to dodge to the side fast enough. So, people who expect space combat to be full throttle dog fighting could still have some fun. Uh, so the the heart of this question is uh does the environment affect flight? uh and it does not yet uh but it is absolutely intended to um not to the extent of certainly not for uh you know the initial roll out not to the extent of atmospheric flight um more on the lines of of things that would affect

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    player behavior. Uh you would have things like an ion storm for instance that you're going through that's going to affect your power plant or your shields. uh or you could be going through a nebula that is highly volatile and uh if you're using your thrusters too much could just blow up around you. Uh so yes, we are looking at having it affect the flight mechanics directly. Um but the the lowerhanging fruit and uh the much more immediately attainable version of this is things that would make you rethink your strategy in this area. I I think at least to me one of the best ways to think of this is actually the end of uh Star Trek 2 when they're fighting against Khan and the Nebula

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    because it they're still flying their ship normally but they're they're having to make those considerations for the environment which really changes up the tactics and changes up the gameplay a lot. Yeah. Small Caps asks, see, and I can do it with turning in time. Uh, Small Caps asks, "Are we able to use the redundant systems on the Vanguard interchangeably on the fly?" A Vanguard could be configured with low emission shields in a power plant with the secondary system configured for high performance in combat or possibly having both splash and direct damage shields installed. So, one could change configurations mid-m mission phase. Thanks. So this is a this is an interesting one that that you can answer because uh Kaix was the one who did the Vanguard and Matt was the one who did

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    the shields. So you are in a very good position I think. Yeah an unfortunately good position. Um, in short, absolutely. Uh, for the exact mechanics of it, of course, that's all still being worked out. But, uh, just with the splash damage and direct damage shields, one of the coolest things at least would be you could put the full force of your direct damage shield to the front of your ship, the splash damage shield to the rear of your ship. And so, when you're making a strafing run in on a capital ship that's your target in a vanguard, Yeah. You've got the the protection against their big guns from the front and then missiles from the guys they're sending after you from the back. Yeah, the the Vanguard is definitely built to

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    be versatile. Uh that the redundancy that it has allows you to make a lot of quirky decisions that you might not be able to do with other ships. Um you know, at the cost of not being able to go quite as as uh large with those components as you would with a similarly sized ship. But yeah, that that redundancy is going to be able to play in either in in any direction that you want. Uh if you want it to be just uh I have an extra component that does the same thing or I'm going to sacrifice that for a little bit broader protection that doesn't quite go as deep. Uh, so Rock Glenn writes, "If a pilot spots another ship, will they be able to project the target's vector and send that to other players or will we have to describe the targets vector?" Uh, I

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    would love to hear you describe the targets vector. Um, that's, uh, please write in again. Uh, that is fascinating. Uh, I don't know how to do it. Uh, so not in in the 3D spaces that we deal with. And that's actually one of the things that the the Hornet tracker is particularly well suited for. What's described here is two different systems. It's your targeting system and also your comm systems. Um your targeting system on the the Hornet tracker is going to be able to gather a lot of data uh and is going to be able to transmit that data through the comms to other ships. So if you have this ship on your target on your radar and I do not, uh you can fix that. you can send it to me and I'll be able to track that as you follow it. Yeah. And and then

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    like you're saying with communications, the the tracker may not be able to send that signal out to as many ships, but if he's playing with a friend, say, who's piloting a Herald, that's going to be a much bigger communication ship. And so you would almost want the tracker, he'll send that position information to the Herald, and the Herald's going to send out to the rest of their buddies. So then everyone in their group or in their fleet starts getting that information relayed. And it's just one other way that we want to try and build some really good uh crossplay between both the ships and the roles for for what they fill teamwork. Oh yeah, it's nice. So Rodan asks, "Is there a plan to get rid of the non-emersion use icon? If not, why? If not, is there a plan to have an animation of the hand and finger pushing buttons?" In short, yes. We we

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    definitely want to get this cleaned up to make it feel much more immersive and and at the bare bones, you know, almost just changing use to tell you what you're doing. If you're opening a cockpit, if you're opening a canopy, let's tell you that. Yeah. The So, that that use prompt is pretty deeply ingrained in Cry Engine. It's uh it's it's in there. Uh it's gonna it's actually going to take a fairly surprisingly significant amount of work to get it out because there's there's all these redundancies. Uh I was uh following up on this recently actually and was very surprised to hear how difficult that this particular use button is going to be. Uh we have a few uh designs of uh what might replace it. Um although nothing is set in stone yet. So uh we're still we're still playing

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    around with it. Uh, well, I mean, one of the obvious weak weaknesses about the current system is that it doesn't even doesn't even localize. You know, the French version says use like I don't I don't know what use is in French, but I feel like we should we could we can do better. Um, and everything is animated. So, I I would expect to see that we'll be able to to get um the player doing animations to interact with with the objects in the world. Uh but like like we have that's one of those things like we have this working in a vacuum. Uh and it's it's to be seen what this is like when we put it all together. I I would definitely like to see that that used key changed. Yes.

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    Corin Avatan writes, "A question is, say I find a derelct or something that has a lot of value, but it is beyond my capabilities to take it all home, so to speak. How long will that derelct persist in the universe for me to sell the positional data to another player without them hauling out there only to find that it's gone or that its instance is closed?" So, right now, uh, we're still getting the exact details of our salvaging system worked out, but in short, we definitely want to make sure you have enough time where if you find a big prize that you're able to uh take advantage of that somehow, be it uh sending a call out to your friends and have them bring a big ship into your instance while you're still in there. uh making sure those instances have enough

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    duration so that you know maybe a couple hours could pass by and you'd still be able to get your friend into that location to start salvaging the big ship or if it's a a repable ship, you know, bring something in to fix it up and probably take it home. Um but again, a lot of this stuff is still in the works, but it it's definitely along the road that we want to take everything. Yeah, there's there's a lot of questions still about how the servers are going to decide when to school up or down, but uh it will be difficult to play this type of thing unless we can figure that out. So, it's definitely a priority. Yeah. And so then our last question of the week comes from Phoenix Rising who asks, "Will there be a system implemented that assists with formations like in Freelancer, you could form up

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    and jump at the same time with other ships and be locked into an escort position when teamed up with a capital ship?" This is another one of those really timely questions. Uh got a got a good batch here. Um, I was actually just talking with uh John Pritchette a few days ago uh about something similar um about being able to to pick a a flight leader and uh set your IFCS to treat them as as uh the relative frame of reference. So when they move, your IFCS will track that and move to accommodate. Uh it will require uh a friendly IFCS handshake. Um so you're not going to be able to use this to make dog fighting disappear. Um but what it will do is

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    that you can do complicated uh formation maneuvers by moving relative to your squadmate uh rather than relative to the universe. Um I'm sure that that will make uh interacting with the universe difficult. Uh but I mean we actually we have a fairly broad spectrum of exactly how it's handling uh that frame of reference. Uh and it's something that that we're hoping to try pretty soon and see exactly how that feels and if that's a good way to go about it. Formations are definitely an interesting thing and especially with something as big as Star Tis and taking into true threedimensional space and managing all those positions at once. It's a It's a big challenge, but one that'll be good for us. Well, even to the point of being

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    able to communicate formation. Uh we had a a a proposal for just just having, you know, here are my wingmen spots. Uh and that positional data is going to stream to you so that you know where to fly in order to fly with me. Um, and so we can, you know, cooperate a little bit more and take advantage of some of the emergent things that happen because of our our simulated systems. Uh, so yeah, I'm I'm excited to to try that out. I'm always I'm always the one just try it, see what it's like. All right. Well, that's it for this week. Uh, I'd like to thank the subscribers uh who who help to make content like this possible. Um, it's really nice to be able to to take the time to share things like this and be as

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    open as we are able to do. And so, thank you very much uh for for being a part of this. Uh, as always, I am your unreliable narrator, Dan Tracy. And I'm your other unreliable narrator, Kaix Vernon. Good night, everybody. Hey guys, thanks for watching um Temp for the Chairman. Uh if you guys would like to uh see more episodes, go here. If you guys would like to subscribe to our YouTube channel and always keep up to date with all our video content, go here. And uh if you guys would like to watch episodes of Round the Verse, go here, please. And I will see you in the verse.