Star Citizen PAX East Presentation

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:03

   Hey everyone. Hopefully you've had a good time having a few drinks. Um, and so welcome to our, uh, PAX East 2015. Hopefully it'll go a little better than last year's PAX East. Uh, so, um, awesome. Uh we're going to uh be uh showing you one of the new uh game modes that's going to be in the FPS module that will be out later this month and also talk a little bit about what will be coming out in the next few days. Um so let me get to it. So uh a few of you I think may have already downloaded um the 1.1 build. We're sort of switching over to calling things Star Citizen now instead of Arena Commander because well essentially it's having uh more than just Arena Commander. just go the FPS

2. 00:00:52

   build is is coming on and it just keeps increasing and it is called Star Cizen.exe. So our normal cage is actually sh switching over to Star Cizen 1.1 which is now on the PTU. Okay. So uh one so one of the features in Arena Commander 1.1 is multiplayer free flight. There you go cuz you guys wanted it. Uh, so you can you can fly around in in uh free flight with your friends, which is kind of fun because you don't have a competition, you don't have a timer, and you can try to do all sorts of crazy stuff uh in space flight, like EVAing out and getting into each other's ships and all the rest of the stuff. Uh, which you guys managed to do anyway, which is pretty awesome cuz you see all those videos. Uh, okay. So, here's another uh change that we're uh making. It's actually something we've been planning for a long time. I know there's

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   a large uh debate uh between, you know, who uses a mouse to aim and who flies around with a joystick. Uh and one of the intentions actually was always that uh if you had gimbbled weapons, there was a sort of downside to them, as in you couldn't necessarily have as big of a powerful a weapon. So, as of the 1.1 build, the way it works is most gun mounts, as long as a size two or above, will uh be able to have a gimbal mount attached to it. But if it's a size two gun mount, then you would put a size two gimbal mount, and it only accepts a size one gun in it. So, your your sort of trade-off is either you can have a fixed gun that's size two or you can have a gimbal gun that's size one. So, you sort of have a trade-off between fixed guns, more power, or uh better precision,

4. 00:02:28

   better aiming, but less power. So, it's sort of a I think a fairly we'll see, but I think it'll be a good trade-off between people that are flying with joysticks and people that are flying with ma mouse, but that's something that we're doing with 1.1. Um, and so you can sort of outfit the ship to how you want, which is more about sort of aiming and accuracy or more about raw hitting power. So, um, electronic access is the place you can spend your wreck. Um, so quite a while ago, Electronic Access was uh bought out by Original Systems uh and they shut the company down and now they just use it as a digital storefront. So, so that's the digital storefront that um

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   you can uh spend the wreck credits that you uh play, you'll earn playing arena commander and also uh later on earn playing the FPS. Um and so that's where if you play more, you earn the wreck and then you'll be able to get different weapons or unlock different ships without having to sort of pledge or pay for them. So, it's sort of the system that we talked about that's going to allow people to, you know, just have their base ship and still try out a whole bunch of stuff in Arena Commander or try out a bunch of stuff in the FPS without having to pledge for anything extra, which is uh something that we wanted for the final game. And we sort of felt like we need to bring it up ahead of schedule to make sure that uh you know, no one feels compelled to uh you know, get an extra gun or pay for an extra gun. Uh, not that we hate that because it helps us make a bigger and better game, but um, you know, everyone should basically play the way they want.

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   So, if they want to spend the time or they want to support the project, it's completely up to them. And you can do that at your at the EA store. So, uh, one of the other big improvements that's in the 1.1 build, and, uh, we were hoping to release the 1.1 build today, but, we still had some fairly, uh, like niggly bugs. So, we're probably going to be releasing it on Tuesday. So, we're going to have one more day of full testing on Monday and then release it on Tuesday. Um, there's what's that? Still love you. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh well, you know, uh there's a couple of nice things that which we'll show you that's going to be in the 1.1 build. Uh one of the biggest ones which I noticed that people already on the PTU had shown some videos of is the new damage system

7. 00:04:52

   that we're rolling out with 1.1. Uh so our old damage tech was pretty cool. We modeled a whole bunch of different damage at different states. But um you know, we had discrete models for each different one of the levels. So we basically had pristine 25% 50% 75% 100% damage. And each one of those damage levels could have multiple pieces that were breaking off. And so there's a lot of work that the artists did. So in fact, to give you an idea, you know, a base hornet is about 15 megabytes as a pristine. And if you added on all the damage state modeling and all the LODs that come with it, it was 100 megabytes on disk. And so one of our concerns outside of the fact that there's a lot of manual art creation was that you know with a big sort of online multiplayer game and us delivering the data over uh you know over broadband is that you know

8. 00:05:41

   how you know how much data are we going to deliver uh and can we actually fit it all in memory. So, one of the other problems is when you have that much geometry, even if you have a lot of memory in your on the CPU side, your GPU, say if you only got 2 GB on the GPU, you've got to shift all the mesh memory over like the vertex data and everything over to the GPU. And so, even if you have a lot of CPU memory, you can get sort of um holdups in the gameplay because it's shifting from like normal system memory over to GPU memory. And so one of the things we thought is okay, we're going to have to be a bit smarter about this and not have as much uh you know uh mesh data because we already have a lot because the ships themselves are incredibly detailed and complicated. Um so uh you know and they all needed LODs. They all had vast amount of parts. So you know 250 meshes per ship is quite

9. 00:06:30

   a lot. So and that's kind of what we were doing on the old damage tech. You can sort of see the hornet and broken up pre-broken up into different pieces. There we go. choose I'm clicking here. Um, so the new Yeah, I know. We've got some nice videos to show. The new damage tech. Um, so we basically uh procedurally model like when we hit on a surface. We model whether it's a ballistic, whether it's a laser, whether it's an energy blast, whether it's explosive blast. Um, we have defamation, thickness, temperature, and burn in it. It's all very cool. So the actual effects are where you hit exactly on the ship. You'll see. um we don't need the predefined states anymore or the LODs. We basically take the pristine mesh, we have it pre-cut into all the obvious sort of breakable parts and then everything gets procedurally modeled and then if there's enough damage at a seam

10. 00:07:18

    point then we'll break off the uh the part of the ship which is quite cool. Um and we use DX11 and direct compute to enable you know the more complex damage model improve visuals and we'll longer term be using um sort of DirectX12 and OpenGL next. So, here's a little video of it. [Applause]

11. 00:09:18

    Anyway, that's the damage tech in in um action. So, as you can see, if you're really good, you could write your name on someone else's ship in combat. So, I think that would be the ultimate form of uh I don't know, teaagging and humiliation the other person. So, I'm looking forward to seeing the first community video where someone manages to write their name on someone else. All right. So, the the the last big thing um is the retaliator is going to be hanger ready and uh we're working pretty hard on getting it flying, which is going to be pretty awesome. Um the thing's a beast and so uh we have a little video for

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    you. Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Come on.

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    Hey, hey, hey. Heat.

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    Hey, Heat. Woo! Uh, so we're pretty proud of the Retaliator. I think you guys are going to like it when it's from the hanger. It's sort of the new high standard of ship modeling that we've done. The techniques that

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    were built to use it are the techniques that are going to be used on all the ships. We're doing a refactor of the constellation and the freelancer for the multi crew. Uh, we will be uh bringing it to the level that you've seen on the Retaliator. I think when you get in the hanger, the the few of you guys that have the Retaliator will like it cuz it's uh it's really a pretty awesome job. It was done by the Foundry UK guys and Nathan Deersley was the artist on it. Um so, and that will be in the 1.1 release, so I guess on Tuesday probably. All right. So, the next thing uh it's kind of what we're here to show parts of and will be coming out very soon is the ground war. So, um, first of all, we're just going to sort of give you a bit of an animation update because one of the things, uh, that, uh, has put us

16. 00:14:27

    slightly behind is that we decided at the end of last year to redo the skeleton and rig on our base character and add a lot more to it. So, there's a whole muscle system now, and we've uh, actually went and scanned uh, you we went and selected a bunch of different uh, you know, male models and female models and scanned them. So, we've actually got like real proper scan data and and uh and built them. It sort of it took some time. It took a little more time than we thought. So, it actually we were hoping to release the FPS module right here at PAX East, but that's one of the reasons why we're going to be releasing it in two to three weeks time depending because there I know the animation the animation side just takes a lot of tweaking to get right. So, uh it's one of the things we're doing, but um so basically uh our

17. 00:15:16

    um yeah, we re revamped the entire animation set for FPS. Um so to have a lot more sort of um rifle and pistol, uh realistic handling, right? I think there's quite a few people that backstar citizen that have military or law enforcement experience and uh yeah, and so you guys are always the first to say, "No, that's not the way you handle a a gun." Or um so, you know, we actually went out and we actually did this at Imaginarium. um at the end of last year and we had a couple of uh um uh fairly badass uh uh military advisers that were there for the motion capture and doing the motions. Um and so you know reloads and all the rest of stuff which um I don't really have a great uh we were going to show some of that but that was part of our build prompt but uh there there's little bits of stuff that I that you'll see here. Um but it's a lot more

18. 00:16:04

    realistic animation set which I think uh ultimately everyone's going to to like. So, um, you know, hopefully kick ass and all the rest of the stuff. Um, so, uh, here's a little video we did, although this was we had some issues with our glitching stuff. So, here we go. This sort of shows you this was PAX Australia, and then we'll sort of cut between sort of PAX Australia and kind of where we are now. So, the the gun position's a lot better. So, the gun modeling's uh fairly better, I think. Uh let's see if we So, I thought this looked good last year, but uh

19. 00:17:14

    Yeah, I think this video doesn't have any sound by the way, just so you know. We'll make our own. And that's the old walk which you could or the old sort of semi road where you could say, well, he's a bit stiff. Uh, so you can see him strafing left and right. And then here you'll see him moving and his motions a lot better. Um, So there's more weight, there's more secondary u sort of animation. We actually have a full muscle system which there's a silly little video at the end that kind of demonstrates it although it's uh fairly short,

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    but generally we think the animation's much better than before, which was one of the bigger complaints. And it still got away. So this is a this is a silly this the old mesh on the left. The guy in the middle is in the is the new one which has the proper deforming skeleton system. And if we go to uh there you are. The red is the muscle system that you see for the different stuff that happens. So anyway, there you go. That's a quick animation update. Uh so we still have some work to do which is one of the reasons why we're not giving you the FPS um this week. Uh, but we we're we have a whole bunch of extra sort of, you know, the difference between going from here to stopping and all the rest. There's a lot of uh transition animations that need to happen. Um, so that's all stuff that's going in right now. We've done all the

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    animations. We just have to work it into uh Cry Engine. Um, the cover system is going to be a fully um really kind of cool cover system. You'll also be able to slide into cover and do stuff like that. um you know the hit death reaction like where you get hit in different places. Uh that's all the stuff that we're working on and finessing. Um we've got some pretty cool crouch movement. We got pro movement as well. Um and uh we're also going to have sort of three stages of movement. So there's sort of like a off position, there's an alerted position, and there's sort of your your iron sight or ADS position when sort of running around with the weapon out. Uh so there'll be sort of more fidelity of animation states. And that's pretty much what the Alphonic guys who are sort of sitting down near the front here. I think there's one there. David is the producer and Kedran who's creative director and Chuck who's uh sort of

22. 00:19:47

    combination uh programmer and CEO over there in the far. They've been working really hard on uh with Steve Bender who's our um animation director. Um and uh give them a few give them a few more weeks. I think it's going to be looking really pretty awesome. Um, so our goal is basically um, well to have pretty damn badass um, soldiers running around. Uh but no to really sort of like we want to complement the realistic exp like so a whole bunch of the idea of Star Citizen is sort of make the world feel real and so you know we're not have this isn't going to be sort of a respawn battle where you would get in a maybe a more typical run and gun FPS because there's sort of perma death to a certain extent in the world and there's a there's a whole level of persistence and so we're

23. 00:20:34

    trying to make things more realistic and and have a combination between fun and realism and so that's it zero g uh which we are going to be showing you uh people are actually going to get to play and uh play on zero g here in a little bit. Uh it's pretty cool. That's still got a bunch of uh animation and programming we've got to do to get that sort of full style of if you've seen the film Gravity in terms of like, you know, grabbing and pulling and pushing. We've got the basics of that system in, but it needs a lot of finesse. Uh but that's one of the big goals. And when those two things are there, that's really what's um gonna be making that's what's preventing us releasing the FPS right now and what we plan to release in about three weeks time. Okay. So we uh as everything we like to do in fiction stuff. So interdimen interdimensional software um

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    uh is this uh there you are. It's a little startup with a couple of uh um you know folks like James Romangh and James Van Djk. Um and uh well they've created their new household realistic submitter which is called Star Marine. So and that and that um is a available to be played in your SIM card in the hanger of course available from electronic access. Uh so uh this just a a quick um go over the various different armors. So each side there's three levels of armor. There's light armor, uh medium, and heavy. So this is the marine light armor. And just as a note, all our character models. So we're not um we're working on a new sort

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    of modular armor system. And so we're actually doing a full rework of what the armor will be for and the and the base models will be for the Marines and the outlaws. So on the first release of FPS, you're going to get these models, but um not that you know down the road um within a few months, we're going to be switching them out for um the new future what Star Citizen, which is a higher level of character modeling. So right now we sort of feel like these are okay, but they're not good enough and they need to be better because everything in Star Citizen has to be, you know, as good or better than anything out there. Um so um they're not quite there yet. All I'm going to say, uh this is Delight Outlaw. um uh who I think is actually the weakest medium uh you have a medium marine outfit fit medium outlaw heavy marine

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    and the heavy outlaw is kind of like a fat Hellcast at the moment I think. Um and then there's a selection of weapons that you have. I mean you have a combustion pistol. Uh this is the laser pistol which I think you saw in the video there. Uh, the Devastator, which is a electric shotgun, which I don't think anyone's shown off or used yet, but it's pretty cool. Um, the bearing, which is what you've seen in most of the the videos, which is the ballistic sort of submachine gun. It's a laser assault rifle, uh, which was I think the outlaws were using this in the demo we did in PAX Australia. This is a sniper rifle and there's a shotgun and a few other things. Uh, and, uh, there's other thing various different kinds of grenades. a

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    frag grenade. Uh there's a sort of force propulsion grenade which pushes everyone back. And there's the EMP grenade which is pretty cool because it takes out all the screens and people's HUDs and sort of disables your view if you're relying on electronic stuff. Um there's uh various different uh items to use like a personal medkit to fix yourself up, personal sheet, a hologram which will dup you are and a sort of well aerodynal system. Okay. So um you can choose two types of the base FPS module that gets released has two game modes. So the first one is what we demoed in PAX Australia. So it's more traditional combat. It's more like Counterstrike or something. Uh that's on the Gold Horizon space station. Um and in that uh we'll have 8 versus 8 um uh player combat and

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    it's Marines versus Outlaws. You battle earn new weapons, armor, all the rest of stuff. uh the whole environment's damageable. Um you know, disable lighting. You can also turn the gravity off and on uh of the station. So that sort of changes the playing field when you're in in a combat situation. Um and here's a little walk through of the environment. You can sort of see the different locations because we didn't get a chance to do this in in PAX Australia. Um, so you can sort of see because I the uh it's a kind of a really detailed and beautiful fun environment that I think will be a lot of fun to uh to blast each other in. Can I get a

29. 00:27:18

    What's next? All right. So, that's that's a tour of

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    the uh so that'll be the playing field. We do. And then the second game mode, which is the one that we're going to do live here and let people play, uh is uh Zero Gravity. So, if anyone's seen uh Ender Game and uh the the battle mode, it's pretty much that it's uh you know uh in Astro Arena. Um it actually is going to be 16 versus 16 uh up to not necessarily have to be 16 versus 16. Um, and basically it's going to be something that people can use to sort of train zerog movement mechanics and also have a sort of fun um, I don't know like infiction. So ultimately in the world of Star Citizen, this would be something you could form teams and compete with just the same way that we're going to

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    have racing competitions. So there'll be uh, you know, leagues and championships and everything else like that. So it be be kind of fun. Um, so, uh, one thing that you use is the, uh, the laser pistol, which has a grappling beam on it. You'll see it in action, but basically as you go around in ZG, you can fire out the beam and you can use it to, to pull yourself around. Um, and uh, here's some views of action Astro Arena, which we will see. That's the team starting area. So, now we're going to do it. I don't know. Are we Are we Are we guys ready? All right.

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    There you go. Okay. Well, I think it's whenever they're ready to switch over. I believe I believe the game is uh I think it's best of seven. Uh, and the rules are is the first team that immobilizes all the other members of the team or gets a player through the enemy gate. The enemy gate is there. Yes. Excuse me girl.

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    You bastard. Best of seven. All right. One. One to the Angelero team. Go in. That's

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    go. Here we go. Another one. Do a barrel roll

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    behind you. Get him a goalie. defensive under faster with the knife.

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    I think he's dead. the head Hallelujah. Go for the base.

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    hero. Let's go team people who have never played this game before. Stays in it. Everybody's at the base.

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    Camp the base. First, go for the There he's going. Oh, it's tied. All right, this is an exciting match, I think.

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    Hey, by the way, we Who is team Jata here? Can you put your You don't know who's on which team? Arrow is yellow. yellow. All right. So, uh I think we're letting

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    people come and play down here afterwards, right guys? Um so anyway, it's got it's still got a bunch of polish. There's a lot of little glitchy things. Like for instance, it's meant to be a different color visor depending on what team you're in. Not everyone's going to be auto Nick as a name. It'll come through the lobby. It's mainly because we we're doing the internet here isn't robust for us enough to sort of go back up to our PTU. So, we have a local server and um our lobby and naming system all goes through our like other services. So, we kind of had to hack it. Um and then there's going to be a lot more fine tuning on the um the sort of zerog motion and animations. And you probably saw some glitches there. But I think ultimately long term it actually could be kind of a fun thing to do in Star Citizen besides fly spaceships. Uh so

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    so after what uh 1.1.1 comes out which is the FPS module which will be in uh probably by the end of this month uh the next thing we're going to uh do which we're going to show a preview of at South by Southwest next week uh but it will be in early April is the social module. Um, and that's where you get to leave your hanger, walk around the planet side. In the case of the social module, it'll be uh Stanton uh our corp in the Stanton system. Uh, and uh, that'll give you a preview of sort of interacting on a uh, planet side basis when you're visiting planets. Uh, so that should be cool and we're going to demo that in a week. So hopefully you guys will like that. And then this is the uh, sort of schedule for this year which we've talked about before. So, the first person shooter module by the end of this month, social module, uh, next

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    month, um, we'll be delivering it. Arena Commander 2.0, which is a multi- crew stuff where you'll be able to fly the Retaliator and the Constellation, all the rest of stuff. That'll be uh sort of summertime. Uh, and the end of uh the end of this year is going to be uh squadron 42. So, uh, I think right now it's looking to be, uh, about 20 hours and about 70 missions in what we're releasing the end of this year. So, we've sort of decided this big, we have this big overarching storyline. And so, in uh, you know, sort of is a nod to the sort of Wing Commander trilogy. We're going to have this overarching trilogy of Squadron like the story. Yeah. So, be won't be Karathy Vandal, but it'll be very similar. Um and then we're going to have

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    the uh sort of very early build of the full persistent universe. There'll be limited number of systems, but you'll be able to take off, fly, land, trade, interact, um do um some of the professions, not all the professions, and that'll be the end of the year. So, uh I think that is it for me on the presentation. Um so, come and play all this stuff. Um hopefully you liked uh what you saw. Um, I mean, I have to say that we have the best community anywhere of any game. And, uh, we couldn't be doing everything we're doing without all your guys' support, right? So, we got everyone on this team um, is incredibly passionate about making the best damn space sim ever. Also, the best first person universe ever. Um, and, uh, we couldn't

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    do it without your support. I would like to thank like the Ilonic guys. So, I've called out a few of them, Chuck and Kedan and David, but there's a whole team back in um Denver that's been crunching on the FPS. They're going to continue to crunch on the FPS um till we get it out. Um and uh you know, there's a fair number of people in the rest of the company that also work on the FPS, on animations, on characters, and they all work really hard towards it. The ship team work really hard on things like the Retaliator and the damage stuff that you saw. Uh but generally we've got an amazing uh set of developers around the world uh you know Los Angeles and Austin and Manchester in Frankfurt and then we've got great partners like Alphonic in Denver and Behavior in Montreal and Turbulent who do our web stuff. So all those guys are making all

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    this happen for you guys and also for us because we want to play this game too. Uh and I'd just like to thank you for continuing to support and uh have some drinks and try a little bit of uh Astro Mart out. That'd be great. Bye, guys.