Around the Verse: Episode 2.27

14 April 201600:59:281,376 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

00:00:15
[Music] This week, part one of our chat with Viking hair god Brian Chambers about his career in video games. In the ATV interview, lead writer Dave Hatock explores the origins and design of the Ferron system in the lore makaker's guide to the galaxy. And we look at the continuing development of EVA and Star Citizen in the ATV Fast Forward. All this and more in this week's Around the Verse. That's right.
00:01:15
Heat. Heat. now. That's the one that I would want at my side. Yeah, pretty cool. The explosion VFX just keep getting better and the action looks really neat. We should really saber the moment. Oh boy. Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of ATV. I am Sandy Gardner, head of marketing.
00:02:03
I'm Ben Lesnik, and this is our weekly uh community show where uh those of us here at Cloud Imperium Games tell you what's going on with Star Citizen and Squadron 42 and Squadron 42. And Ben, what is the latest on Star Citizen? Well, we pushed uh Star Citizen alpha 2.3.1 on Friday. That's a mouthful, but it uh is essentially a small update to address some uh bug issues, some balancing, some performance uh stuff. We're just continually improving. And what are we working on right now? Uh the team is working on Star Citizen alpha 2.4, which is our next major patch. Um we are on uh content lockdown right now, and QA is starting to test builds that have uh all the features we want to put out. Once we're confident of what we'll actually be releasing, we'll let people know some more details. But
00:02:50
the hope is that this is going to be the build with the the very first inklings of persistence. So with persistence, does that mean that everything's now permanent? No. No. We'll have a ways to go before we have our kind of kickoff of the universe starting and growing, but uh you will start to see individual elements get carried over between play sessions, such as uh your reputation when you're off causing criminal mischief or um your weapons loadouts between uh ship spawns. Um, and it's just going to continue growing from there as we build more and more of this technology as we get it online. Uh, just like the rest of Star Susan, the monthly report of March is now up on the comm link. You can check out and read the comprehensive updates from each of our studios. The report also included a pretty cool video showing off our new EVA transition system, which is uh, how we're hopefully
00:03:40
making our kind of transition from zero gravity into like walking around the ground uh, seamless. U, it's a lot more natural than it was before. Check it out. And much to Ben's excitement, there was a Wing Commander live stream on the weekend. How did it go? We had a great time. Uh we played
00:04:28
through all of Secret Missions 2. Thanks to uh Jared and Toast for coming along and listening to me talk for eight hours. Um, check out our clip. Scottish guy. It's okay to Scottish. I'm glad you had a good show leave, lad. I thought I'd be flying downside for a we stay, but they've canceled all shore leave. I like visiting planets. Maybe that's what I'll do when I retire next month. Buy a small ship and spend more days flying from planet to planet. But I have a Oh my god, you're going so fast. Now you doubt that. Why is it going so fast? Good idea, James. Looking forward, we are kicking off a freefly this Friday in honor of the PAX East event that is starting on this Friday.
00:05:14
And we're also going to have a small uh tax day sale on Friday where we'll be bringing back some uh surplus military ships such as the uh Gladius, Gladiator, Retaliator, and Super Hornet. Actually, Ben, the Super Hornet is a civilian variant based on the military F7A ship. Ah, yeah. Kind of like how the Hummer is to the Humvey. Ah, well, it'll be in the sale anyway. See, I can do me some splaining. And if you were fooled by our April 1st career pause, check your email. We've sent every backer who clicked to buy a Big Benny's Reliant a $5 coupon. You can pick up a skin or a ship or whatever you want. Have you ever thought to yourself, "I'd love a Star Citizen track jacket, as well as a notepad, some cards, and a pen." Well gosh, Sandy, I can wonder that all the time.
00:06:03
No, to be honest, we actually just received some track jackets in the office because we're going to do a new staff photo in this office and we also have them on sale and you get a little freebie notepad, pen, and cards with it. The cards are actually very cool, right? So, it's a discount on the track jacket plus free cards. Yay! We should play card games. All right, he's up for it. Finally, we are very excited to announce the next Star Citizen concept ship, which will be, drum roll, the Mis Prospector. The Mis Prospector is our so-called small mining ship, and you'll be learning all about it in about a week. Um, wanted to go ahead and give you a heads up on the price. It's going to be $140 for the concept pledge, and uh, it's looking really cool. It's been
00:06:51
developed by the folks in the UK. Um, if you love the lines on the Freelancer, you're definitely going to like this one. It's a a mischief through and through. Cool. And now, let's check in with our studios around the world to find out what they've been working on in this week's news from around the verse. Hey everyone, welcome back to Cloud Imperium Games Los Angeles. I'm production coordinator Darien Borlick and today I've got with me Eric Vietro QA. So, uh, here we are with this week's update. So, uh, on the LA end as far as tech design wise, we've got the tech designers. We're actually working on getting the Reliant Flight ready. Uh, so that that's something that's looking pretty pretty awesome. So, hopefully you guys get to see that soon. Uh, on the
00:07:39
engineering and tech design side, we've also got them refactoring the uh, component system to be functional with the new item system 2.0 know that Mark Avent and uh Paul Rindell have been re-engineering for the game. Um so that's on the development side. What we got on your end for QA? A lot of regression. We're going through like a flight balance right now. Quantum jumps working on the EVA system as well. Um just a lot of sweeping right now getting ready for 2.4. So uh if I remember correctly, you said you have 1,500 bugs that have been fixed that need to be regressed. That's right. And we're trying to get through that as quick as possible. It's a lot of bugs. So uh we'll get back to work here. Just take a little bit of your time. So once again, I'm Darren Borlick. I'm Eric Petro, and this is Los Angeles. Signing off. Hey guys, Jake Ross here, producer of the Austin Studio, and I'm here with you
00:08:26
this week to talk a little bit about what's going on here in Austin. Uh first things first, um the I'm going to talk a little bit about what something that's not going on here in Austin, but still relates to what we're doing here is uh the Port Olsar changes that we're making. So, the team in the UK um and the team at Behavior are working together to update the uh um Port Olsar Station, like I've mentioned previously, uh it's coming along really nicely. We have a new commercial galleria area that we're going to be housing our shops in uh in Crusader. So, not only will our shops be uh available on Area 18, but we'll also have them on Crusader, which is cool. We'll have to do u probably some rebranding on some of the shops because uh fictionally uh there are some shops that are that are completely local to area 18. So um we've got Dave Haddock meeting with their environment team and
00:09:15
kind of come up with a different option there. But um yeah, so that that's coming along really nicely. We've got um that out of white box and into uh gray box. Uh final art is in progress as well. We've got a VFX and lighting pass coming up. So it's a really cool looking area. We're excited to to show that off. Um we got a brand new elevator that'll take you to it. Uh it'll be cool seeing players walk around Crusader buying stuff. So um we also have uh the new flight suit um which is in and done. The uh character team has been working on uh updating the SATA uh costume that you guys may have seen in a few promotional materials to uh be the new flight suit. So we have uh or undersuit rather. Um, this suit will will be the kind of the preliminary layer underneath all the armors uh for the future. So, uh, but
00:10:04
we'll be selling those. We'll be uh putting them up on mannequins in the cubby blast um shop uh or equivalent on Port Olsar and uh the those will be available for sale. We'll have different colors and variants you can choose from. Um, so that'll be kind of one of the options uh as part of uh the the switch to this new kind of item 2.0 0 that you probably heard about uh that we've been working on. Um the old uh legacy armors which is the the light medium uh heavy marine, the light medium heavy outlaw uh and the flight suits will all be ready and to be sold and used uh in Crusader. So you'll be able to kind of u to mix and match however you you like. Uh which is cool. Um so with that comes along the um the ability to switch between
00:10:52
civilian and armor loadouts. So, the flight suit is technically part of the armor loadout. Um, there will be these new kind of u valet. They call them um a uh easyhab valet clothing storage is is kind of a mouthful, but it's kind of what it's what we're calling it is going to be like this little valet kind of clothing storage locker uh area right next to the airlocks in Port Olsar. So that you actually will be able to before you leave the uh the the the airlock, you can go to this easyhab um valet system and uh access it and it'll swap your load out from civilian to uh armor so that you can actually go out into space without dying. So that's cool. Uh the um it's it's nice that you'll be
00:11:41
able to kind of do this because you'll be able to come in after landing on Portal OSR. You'll be able to go through the airlock after a busy day of of completing missions and uh finding uh killing wanted wanted people uh and be able to kind of kind of take a load off, take your armor off, put it in this uh easy hab clothing storage and switch to your civilian loadout and just hang around Port Ulsar with your friends uh in a t-shirts and shorts and pants and jackets and uh just normal normal people clothes. Uh, and then when you're ready to go out on another mission, you can go through the, uh, through the airlock to the easy hab, uh, clothing valet and, uh, switch back to your armor and go back out in space. So, uh, it's kind of this cool little feature that we've got, uh, in place just to kind of give players a little extra little something if they want to switch between the clothing and the and the and the armor. So, that's in progress as well. Uh, we
00:12:31
have the port modification uh, UI in place finally, and it's uh, it's really cool. We got Simon White and Zayn over in the UK uh who kind of helped out with this and they uh they created this new UI for the sport modification um app in the Moby Glass. Uh it's some of you may remember the the ship works app that we kind of advertised way back in the day. Uh it's kind of the first little foray into this this new app uh for ship works. And you'll be able to access the UI. Um it'll have a nice pretty list right there for for putting things in different places. is and I've talked a lot about the port modification app in the past uh few weeks, but it's a really um exciting new thing that we we're having a ball playing with. We hope we're excited to put that in your hands as well. So, um yeah, I think that's that's really the big updates for this
00:13:20
time, guys. Um running out of time, so I'll talk to you next week. Thanks. See you. Hi, everyone. Tom here and welcome to the UK again. This week to spice things up, I've brought along Mickey Oliver, a QA tester who's just recently joined Found. So, wanted you guys to all get introduced. And um Mickey, do you want to tell us a little bit about what it is you're going to do here? Yes. Um I'm Mickey and I am QA here at42 and I'll be working on the community feedback sort of side of things. So, you might see me in the forums and on Discord just chatting to people, trying to get feedback for the new PTUs and um just new patches that we're going to bring out and things like that. An awful lot of feedback out there. So, we do definitely need
00:14:07
Yes. more eyes on the forums. We want to hear things. We want to hear what's going on. So, what what about what have you kind of been working on so far then? You've only been here. Um Yes. Well, I've been used getting used to the game itself and um get used to all the control changes and stuff and I've been looking at a few ships. Uh which uh which ships have you got your hands on? Mainly the Star Farer at the moment. Exciting. Yeah. Um yeah, just uh just getting used to to the place. Quite a big ship. The Star Farer. It is. Yeah. I don't think I've been in a room with that. It is pretty big. Okay, cool. Well, thanks very much for joining us, Mickey. Hope you guys enjoyed that and yeah, look out for Mickey on the forums in the near future. So, thanks very much, guys. We'll see
00:14:55
you in the verse. Thank you. Bye. Hey everyone, Brian Chambers from the Frankfurt office. Um, I will jump right into it and tear down what the team's been doing since you heard from me last. Um, on the game code side, uh, focusing on bugs as they do, um, been working on phase two of the player health system, um, and adding debug functionality into that or additional debug functionality, um, to help us quickly go down and break down if we have any issues. Um, they're working also with design for feedback on what's been implemented so far. So, they get it their hands and they get to play with it. uh level design um shopping district for Port Olazar and pirate base
00:15:45
for PU um and also some on-site interviews. I believe we had two. Those take up pretty much like a full day almost um of the team's time. Uh system design, AI characters and perception um reputation 2.0 know and interactors and inner thought on AI um working with interactors as said uh the first version's up and running that's what allowed us to give it to designers to play with and start giving feedback um they're doing some work on how to disable collisions on characters for if and when needed in any case scenarios um ongoing work and discussions with subsumption subsumption is fairly large.
00:16:34
So that'll be going ongoing for quite a while. Uh bug fixing for both live and S42. Again, something that'll be ongoing pretty much across all disciplines. Uh the moment you put something in locally, you need to test it across everything else and uh modify what you need to make sure everything works as it should. Um, and they're also working with design um, on how to integrate subsumption into combat and documenting stuff on there that would make the most sense on how to use that. On the engine code side, um, we've done some code work to expand the support for water volumes. Um, that's not only for procedural planets, but also for other things we have going on. uh working with build ops to roll out
00:17:23
try build uh for the team uh server performance and client performance debugging and work um editor debugging um the editor is is place where large majority of the team does work. So constantly going in there to make sure that it's as efficient as possible is performing as quickly as possible and has the functionality is huge for us. Um, in that they also implemented a new freeflight camera control in the editor. Um, with Marco, we continued pushing on procedural planets. Stuff's going good. Terrain's looking good. Things are progressing step by step. Um, bug fixes for live and gamedev. Uh, improvements uh, and bug fixing for
00:18:13
track view. Again, I've mentioned that in the past. That's for Hanis and the guys there get the functionality they need to be able to put together the cinematics as efficiently as they need. Um well on physics I'm just rattling it through my head. On physics um worked on fixing projectiles to function with the local physics grid. Um also did some refactoring on the physics grid. Again, once we implement new things, once you see how it all starts working together, we have to go through and debug. It's common practice with what we're doing. Um, also worked on fixing a few audio related issues. Uh, we also had a new engine programmer join our team last week, Anise. Um, we started him off or the engine team started him off with
00:19:03
giving him some bugs for him to go in and get his chops up on the engine a bit and specific areas that we want him to handle in the coming future. Um, on weapons, we've since we've talked last, we've finalized two weapons and we started two new weapons. Uh, cinematic side, progress is going good. can't give away details of what they've been putting together, but um they're definitely making progress. Um Judith is on board now, our cinematics producer, senior cinematics producer. Um and we're starting to wrangle some stuff for an upcoming mocap shoot. So, starting those discussions on on pre-pro to make sure that we're we're prepared as we need to be. Um I think that's pretty much it for the team. Um I've tried to jump on the forums this week and answer some
00:19:52
questions. Uh, keep them coming. If you got questions for me, you got questions for the Frankfurt guys, whether it be design, cinematics, uh, engine, I'll try to pass them out and get some answers, uh, as quick as I can. Cool. Thanks again. See you next week. Now, let's jump back to Frankfurt for the first part of the interview with Foundry 42, Frankfurt's design director, Brian Chambers. Is that uh, Justin Chambers brother? No. Did Jared write that joke? No, I wrote that joke. Oh, boy. Well, he did get a haircut, so maybe made me stupider. Yeah, I do like your haircut. Thank you. I like your haircut, too. I did get one, but I'll take it. Well, you had one at some point. I did have one at some point. Oh, Lord.
00:20:42
I like the current state of your hair. Thanks, guys. On this week's ATV interview, we're sitting down with development director out of Foundry 42 Frankfurt, Mr. Brian Chambers. Brian, how you doing, man? Good, good. How you doing? I'm doing well. Uh, we feel like we know you from the news from around the verse segments. And when is we do we do these news from around the verse segments, we tell people, yeah, give us a minute. Give us 90 seconds. whatever. Talk about the stuff you want, what not. And then Brian Chambers comes in like a like a Viking warrior and he's like, "Here's five minutes of everything that we're doing here in Frankfurt." Hey, but do I don't I don't put fluff in there. I hit the point. I go, "This is
00:21:31
what we're doing. This is what people want, right?" No, no, we we love it. Thank you so much for doing it. Absolutely. So, I'm glad we got some time to sit down and chat. Um we couldn't do it in person, but we're making do here. Y uh so you're Brian Chambers. You're the development director at Foundry42. uh start us off real quick. What does a development director do? Um development director directs development. All right. Well, that's been your ATV interview for um really my position here is a lot right now is uh getting the the office up and running. Um you know, uh we'll talk in a bit. We we kind of started with nothing and built up and here we are today. Um, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes to make sure it's transparent to the guys on the floor. Um, at the same time, there's a lot of
00:22:20
stuff I'm doing focusing on hiring to bring it in and build up the team, get the right talent, the right skill set that we need. Um, and on top of that, I'm now looking also at, you know, kind of at a high level and mid level on what each department's doing to make sure that we're on track and we're nailing what we need to nail. All right. So, why don't we start at the beginning with Brian Chambers? Tell me how you got started in video game Um, it was too long ago. Makes me feel old. Um I I have been working with digital stuff for just about 20 years now. Um I went to art school um a school in California called California Institute of the Arts originally started
00:23:08
by Disney and Shinard Dance School and so on. So I went there for fine arts. So I was painting, sculpting, doing the whole bit. Um after there I ended up in an effect studio and we were doing special effects. I did special effects for about six years. Um, and for for movies, for television, yeah, for for movies and TV. So, um, worked on a lot of a few different seasons of Star Trek, Star Trek Voyager, so on and so on. Um, uh, lots of TV shows, lots of kids animated shows and so on. Um, when we were doing the practical effects, that was old school stuff, right? you really didn't have the power to create particles and stuff as you do now today. Um, so we were blowing up stuff against
00:23:57
green screen and high-speed film and copied it in, right? It was you were getting splinters in your hands at the end of the day. It was pretty cool. Um, and then we turned I turned more and more and more into digital and digital. So from building stuff to then actually building stuff digitally. Um in school I had done a lot in animation um as well as kind of part of my fine arts. So then I fell into animation at the studio. Um they had a very very old motion capture system. Um there was before optical was really used for uh any entertainment value. It was more in the medical field. Um so we had an old system. I learned it. So, it was only me and one other guy learned uh that knew how to run the
00:24:46
system. Um, in a short amount of time, the studio landed an animated show called um, Rough Necks, the Starship Troopers. Um, I ended up working on that for two and a half or three years. Um, that forced us to use mocap and it was me and one other guy in the studio that knew how to use it, right? So, it was sinker swim. Um, so I pushed more on the animation side. Um, again I was there for about six or seven years. The studio finally went under after a bunch of ups and downs. Um, at that point I switched over fully into games. Um, when I was at the first studio, we were doing some outsourcing work kind of for for studios. game studios would come in and
00:25:34
use our motion capture services and you know so I'm cleaning up data and shooting stuff for in-game moves but I I still wasn't fully in games. Um after that studio though I jumped into a place called Shiny Entertainment um and that was run by David Perry. Um they were working on Enter the Matrix which was the first Matrix game. Mhm. Um, so I worked there for a couple years. Um, uh, working with the Wowski brothers on all of the cutscenes or the cinematics they had. Um, and that was a chore because I think there was three and a half hours of cinematics in that game. Yeah. Um, so I go from doing effects to then basically being kind of a lead cinematic animator. Um after that I left uh there
00:26:25
for a few years and I worked at Rockstar San Diego. Um I was an animation director there for a few years. Um worked on a bunch of titles over there. Um after that me and a few guys decided that we wanted to do our own thing. So we kind of took a leap and started our own company. Um own company. We probably got up to about 75 or 80 people at one point. Um, we immediately when we started, we immediately got acquired by a publisher, uh, THQ. Um, we were all still pretty young, but we had mortgages and stuff to pay, so it was a little too risky to do it on our own. And you really didn't have the concept of crowdfunding or anything at that point, right?
00:27:13
Yeah. Um so we uh we started up our own company. Um after about two years there they decided that our company should kind of disperse and so they let some people go and other people they wanted to retain. Um for myself at that company I wore a tremendous amount of hats. I was basically animation director. I was art director from my background of being within art. Um I also ran a lot on the production um basically being the development director there as well and working with budget working with marketing and so on. Um at that point they said I could THQ was cool and said hey you have the option to look around look around within
00:28:02
THQ let us know what you want to do. And at that point I I remember looking at the the VP that was telling me that and I said well you know how much time do I have? What are we talking here? He's like well you know if you don't find anything within six seven months we should talk right and that was an o an awesome opportunity because you know that showed me that they they believe that I was at least of value right? Um I looked around and I ended up going to their corporate headquarters and working out of their corporate office. They had just acquired the license for UFC, MMA, a bunch of punching and kicking and rolling around on the ground. Um, and they were struggling with animation. Um, I'm one to usually take on projects um that are fairly ambitious.
00:28:51
Um, and I thought they're going for realism, thinking of two guys independently controlled going out at chaining, rolling on the ground. That was pretty ambitious. So, I took that gig. Um, I was the animation director partway through and then they said, "Well, how about you become the art director as well?" So, um, important to point out in that part was um, at the publisher level, we had basically all the leads and directors there, right? Um, so we had a team of probably 12 people. Um the main development happened in uh Japan um in Osaka, Japan. So for about four years of my life, I was in
00:29:41
Los Angeles for 3 weeks and would get on a plane and go to Japan for a free for a week. And I did that for about four years, which was pretty nuts. Jeez. Yeah, it it takes its toll, but I I earned my my miles in the process, I guess. Yeah. Uh you said you worked for uh just before we move on too far, you said you worked for Rockstar San Diego. What what games did you work on when you were there? Um we had finished up the original Red Dead. Mhm. The original original one that I think at that point had been in development for like six years or something. Um worked on some Midnight Club. Uh pulled in, worked on some GTA stuff with Rockstar North. Um, and then we had our own game that we were pushing that was under code name agent, I believe that
00:30:31
ultimately went away. I heard it was almost resurrected a couple times, but um, I I've heard that it comes up and every once in a while you'll see an article about it. Yeah. Yeah. And it was cool. They actually pulled in mechanics and little bits that we could see in further GTA when I look through them and play them. So, Gotcha. and and and what did you work on at THQ before you decided to go to corporate? Uh THQ, that was another big openw world game that completely got killed. Um but it was a big openw world. The working title was revolution and you kind of work through these Mexican or Mexican and Spanish fllas. Um using propaganda to kind of build up people around you and build up followers
00:31:18
to help overthrow areas very much kind of a risk. I take this area then this area and this area. So it was cool. I still actually have the design docs for that. I I worked on that for a good amount of time. uh learned a lot about drug cartels over that time. And I was certain at that point that, you know, if if there's any hit list on crap that you look up on the internet, I'm on it because it had every propaganda, every conspiracy group, every, you know, that was my gig, just doing that research to get, you know, pulled into that world. all right. Well, when I come out there in August, I want to see that stuff. That sounds interesting to me. All right. So, you're at THQ Corporate. I met THQ corporate. Um, give you some of the a bridge version of that then.
00:32:05
So, I'm on UFC. UFC blows it out of the water. We sold like over 4 million units at the time and that was big. Um, they said, "Hey, Brian, you're successful. Thank you. How about you take on these other licenses as well?" So, I it was the fight group we were called and they also own the WWE license. Um, so now we go from punching and kicking to more wrestling, right? Um, but that was cool. That was fun. Um, working with the WWE. The developer for the WWE franchise was also in Japan. It was a sister studio of the other one. Yep. So now I flash forward, we're using all of these outsourcers to help build characters and build environments usually all throughout Asia. So now I'm
00:32:53
going to Osaka to work on UFC for 4 days. Then I would jump to Yokohama to work on WWE for 4 days. And then we jump over for a few days to China or to Korea to, you know, be face to face with vendors that we're working with. So yeah, it was it was a pretty nast few years. Um, in that process, we also I think we we put out three separate UFC titles. Um, I was at THQ for a total of I think seven years. Um, so a few UFC titles. Um, WWE title every single year. Um, we had um other I think there was some Facebook titles we put out there. We put a UFC fit title once that was a Wii game,
00:33:41
right? I look back at some of this stuff and I'm like, eh. So after Yeah, it is. After I did that for a little bit, then they made me um which was a little silly, and I can say this now because THQ no longer exists. I I was art director, but they gave me all these additional responsibilities, right? Um and they wanted me to be in more of a global position looking at other things. Um and so they basically started giving me more and more responsibility and they wanted me to go to the other sister THQ studios, which at that time they had like 12 of them. They wanted me to go to these studios and work with the guys and and help direct stuff to make sure it was on point of where it needed to be. Um, but they didn't want to give me a title. They didn't want to give me a title from art director to director,
00:34:33
art, because it meant two things. It wasn't a change in salary at that point. It meant that I got a parking spot and they were short on parking spots and it also meant that I could travel business class um if I wanted and they knew how much I traveled and they went oh crap if we do that his budget's nuts right so finally after I think another four or five months they did change my title and I still flew economy because at the end of the day and it's similar to now you know uh we want to spend our money as wisely as possible. And I go, look, if I fly economy and that means we save a,000 bucks, then, you know, somebody else gets an extra monitor in the office or right, it's it's all a balance.
00:35:21
Um, so yeah, so then I was at I I kind of since I was at THQ for so long, I was in all of their their corporate meetings and for me the writing was on the wall. I had been there through three separate sets of VPs. Um there were decisions that were being made and so on and and that really put it kind of in a bad financial situation. Um so I decided to look around. As I decided to look around um Krytek was one of those options in in uh Frankfurt and which I ultimately took. Excuse me. At that point they were working on Rise. Um it was just starting to get some more momentum. um it's going to be a launch title. It was fairly ambitious what they were
00:36:09
trying to push. They needed help with animation. So I came in was helping with animation for a while. Um and while I was there there was a really really strong team. I kept asking questions saying well I'm you know where's this? Where's this? Where's this? Based on my experience and seeing it from a publisher level and down in the trenches I kept asking a bunch of questions. Well, after a while of me asking questions and and kind of raising flags, um the the kind of the studio director at the time, um this guy by the name of Nick pulled me aside and said that um Shiobat wants me to help finish the game. Um and so then they made me uh senior producer. Um and before I agreed to it, I said, "Well, what does that
00:37:00
mean?" I said, 'I can't just be a yes man and run around and go crazy. Um, and they said, "No, no, you're the final call and stuff. Obviously, you'll work with the owners and so on." So, the next week, uh, Shabbat Yearly moved his desk right next to mine. And for the next 6 months, we worked our butts off to finish Rise as a launch title. Um, and it made it out there and looked pretty cool. Um, uh, then I was still a kitech for about another 12 months or so. Um, until I started to, you know, just personally, for a bunch of different reasons, thought it'd be time to to look around elsewhere. Okay. And that brings us to you discover Star Citizen.
00:37:51
Yes. Um, so tell me what that was like. Get out. One thing I'd like to point out here is
00:38:46
we have the $10 million um stretch valve for the motion capture. um set up. Uh thank you very much. We we hit that and we got the system and um you're actually seeing the uh first um results of the motion capture. We got about a week a month ago and we um 3 days of capture. We're like walking around and here's and here's what the really cool thing is is that we forgot to capture crouch and we went back and got this last week and I thought this cuz we got the system set up in the studio. [Applause] Now, it's it's not really a great hire unless you can get inside and check out your
00:39:34
So, here we go. Hello. Welcome to another edition of Lore Makaker's Guide to the Galaxy. Uh if you're unfamiliar with this segment, this is basically we take some time with
00:40:23
uh a member of the lore team to to dig into some of the the systems that you see on the star map and ultimately we'll be able to play and visit and have it in the Star Citizen universe. Um and so uh we'll just get started. So today, um, we are actually going to start with kind of a smaller system, but sort of a personal favorite of mine, cuz Will took Allesium, which, uh, I love the Tavarin, and so I'm a little upset about that. Anyway, uh, so we're actually going to do, uh, Faren system. Um, now there, if you remember some of the, uh, if you are subscribers, uh, you saw a jump point galactic guide that that sort of highlighted far system. Uh, gave you a bit of an idea. So, we'll we'll go into the sort of overall sense of the systems or the planets themselves and a little bit into the sort of the
00:41:11
backstory and kind of what's fun about them, but they're they're they're kind of a sneaky one because I I really like them just because visually it's a very feels like it's a very rich world. Uh but okay, so let's jump right in. So, this is not fair system that we're looking at now. This is a planet called Earth, which I'm sure we'll get into at some point uh and talk about. Uh I don't know what happens there off the top of my head. Uh so we'll go ference system and bookmark. So uh ference system actually you know what actually let us before we dive in let's actually go a little bit more macro. So we're going to zoom out here. Um so you can see it's sort of proximity to saw uh system here. So earth there far in here. Uh let's turn on jumps.
00:42:00
So you can see it's very close. So it's you know uh Crochaw which famously was the first system that u that uh Nick Crosshaw discovered which led to this idea that oh wow we can actually we don't need to you know physically burn our way towards these other star systems. We actually have these sort of these tunnels that we can use to to get there. Uh which completely obviously revolutionized kind of thinking as far as astro travel. So um basically the idea was once once that that happened and and people started to realize that that that this this happened once so it's a good possibility that could happen again it it sort of created this new culture of uh uh nav jumpers explorers and and and sort of inflamed this sort of notion of like we
00:42:50
need to kind of start re-examining our galaxy and and and with this new understanding and see what we can find out. So uh in the year 2460 uh basically uh fren system was discovered out of coming out of Croch uh right there and uh so the funny thing about it the way it was discovered was discovered by a guy named Pi Lamett who was part of a uh Saul astro exploration society and it was sort of a if you think of those sort of classic um you know if you read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Alan Quartermain you know explorer type things, these sort of gentlemen that would, you know, uh, go out and be exploring the galaxy and stuff like that. That was sort of the the impetus, the idea behind them. Uh, so he was in char, he was captain of a
00:43:37
ship who was out looking for, uh, potentially new jump points. And so, uh, they were sort of at the end of their tether, they were about to run out of supplies and stuff like that. And basically, one of his crew named Darcy Faren ended up discovering that there was a weird anomaly with their gas. basically like their their their fuel was was not adding up. And through exploration, they ended up discovering that it was basically kind of getting drained. And so they they started scanning and they ended up discovering that it was actually a jump point that was sort of causing this sort of weird um fuel anomy anomaly. Uh and that's what ended up leading to the discovery of ferret system. And so as sort of uh compensation which uh for for discovering this you know he decided to name the system after uh Darcy. So and then of course being part of the the
00:44:27
solstro exploration society uh it was all for the benefit of humanity's advancement and stuff like that. So they they donated the system basically to the at the time it was the UNE united nations of earth and uh for basically expansion into so far system was then born. So uh one of the things we always sort of discover when we when we kind of work this stuff out is is when a system is discovered basically there's a period where the reigning government which in this case was this would be the UNE uh would sort of analyze and assess the system and so they would they would take time before kind of opening up to the public where they would look at the planets and they would kind of do a sort of surveying gig to see uh what the system held. was there I mean
00:45:14
potentially any dangers you know all that type of stuff and once things start to get a little crazy as they do in the next few hundred years once this sort of rapid age of expansion starts uh they started to slip a little bit on on that kind of stuff but uh so when they got into Fen they basically looked around and started scanning it and they basically discovered that it was uh four planets and we zoom right in here to the star which is very big and Okay. Uh it is sure as all of you can see it is a main se F-type main sequence dwarf star. So uh basically you have fen one as you can see right here is very very small uh although it doesn't like to say that uh
00:46:05
but it's it's technically it's a mop planet uh and uh basically it was sort of uninteresting you know a lot of these planets just turned out to be sort of like meh you know uh we can take or leave it they couldn't they couldn't terraform it so it was sort of yeah but it was very very close to the star which was sort of the unique as you can see here uh aspect to it. Uh so you have then next in the line you have fen 2 which uh is a terrestrial coreless planet. So there's no atmosphere on the planet uh and uh soil samples basically determined that there was no real uh minerals there to harvest. Few minerals there were there they ended up kind of cleaning out rather quickly. Uh the big thing with Farah and sort of the the immediate association with it uh
00:46:55
when sort of approaching the system and breaking it down was sort of uh sort of thinking of a of a once thriving popular very rich resource-heavy system that suffered a complete and total economic collapse. So it died but it's still trudging on type thing was sort of the idea. So we have uh uh basically fen 3 which is somewhere on here assura. So assur was basically uh heavy heavy heavy heavy heavy resources tons of stuff to mine. So it was mining became immediately like the number one thing to do there. Uh and so uh as such basically they were able to
00:47:46
extract a lot of minerals extract and make a lot of money and so a lot of money like industry moved in there started building up the city the main city and the or sort of landing zone that we're sort of thinking now is called tram uh was sort of this massive industrial mega city effectively uh and and it was like that for a very very very long time uh basically uh you know tram and fen uh fueled the economy of of the UNE. And so they when they were first looking at the planet, they realized like that there were so many resources there that they had to be smart about how they divided it up. They couldn't just do a land rush because it would just get too crazy. And so uh the idea was that basically they they were trying to mediate the the the the uh basically the land rights and the mining
00:48:34
rights and stuff like that for uh for the planet. And it was so messed up and they kind of screwed the pooch so badly on it that uh the government ended up because at the time bear in mind that this was still the United Nations of Earth. So uh Earth was the was I mean very much the center point of of the universe and the expansion. So you know Croshaw system didn't necessarily have much representation. They were represented by nations you know of Earth type things. So, uh, what ended up happening was was once this system basically came to be and they were trying to break apart this planet to to assign mining rights, uh, it got so screwed up that some people actually claimed that or believed that it's what triggered the transition into the United
00:49:23
Planets of Earth, which became the sort of now planet is sort of the early foundation framework for what would ultimately become the UEE. So, uh, planets would gain equal representation along with Earth and stuff like that. And so, uh, so yeah, so it basically on on one hand ended up pushing humanity forward in a way that they probably didn't necessarily anticipate. Uh, so um, so yeah, so basically just think massive development, massive mining operations, tons of money. uh I mean you know uh gold rush type you know that type of tone to it. So just a lot of money in there and a lot of and presumably probably a lot of crime moved in along with it because that that kind of tends to go hand in hand. Uh but it was on a fast track. So it basically got
00:50:12
it it was one of the the big boys if you will of the UPE uh because it was such a massive economic force within within uh the planets. And uh I mean this went on for for centuries literally. And so uh basically even through most of the Messor eraser once they rose to power it was still they they they sort of they probably gained kind of a reputation that they were untouchable because they they came from such a position of power uh and and resource that they were almost untouchable. But you know these being kind of fanatical family of desperates you know they will they will find a way. uh and but they didn't manage to last until the last Messer uh uh Messor 11 who was uh Linton Messer if I remember correctly
00:51:02
uh who accused basically falsely accused the system of housing dissident uh and tried to tried to uh put them on lockdown. uh it was obviously very untrue because he was kind of a lunatic, but uh scared enough people that thought that the sort of the hammer of the messers was coming down that they ended up uh the some of the wealthier citizens and people just started fleeing the system because they just didn't want to be a part of whatever kind of bad stuff was about to go down there. Uh and and there was a whole thing if you've read the story about the 78th squadron there was got orders to kill civilians and they refused and it was this sort of big to-do. Uh and then luckily you know the messers were overthrown the next year so you know yay. Um so the system managed to kind of limp on but the the sort of
00:51:53
mortal strike had already kind of happened and it was starting to falter. Uh and then it wasn't until the sort of mid 29th century where they started sort of the unthinkable was happening where they were running out of stuff to mine. There was only so much that they could do. Uh so uh basically they started the system started to dry up. Whatever money that was still there was starting to realize that they were taking losses by trying to you know strangle whatever minimal resources from the ground that they could. And so companies started leaving and then basically uh they had nothing lined up, you know, that that could offer the type of uh income basically or export that that their mining stuff had. And so the system
00:52:40
basically just sort of completely collapsed and fell on itself. So, uh, which leads to the thing I love about it, you know, uh, tram as a city, you you sort of imagine these sort of massive, you know, I I was kind of was thinking of like, you know, early 1900s like Chicago, you know, um, Detroit, you know, like these sort of massive just buildings and just beautiful structures of industry and stuff like that that are now just abandoned and falling apart and uh, and stuff like that. At the time I was actually reading a a really fun book. Well, not reading, but I had a fun book called uh Detroit disassembled, which is a urban exploration uh photography book that's just these beautiful pictures of of downtown Detroit. Uh and just sort of the the state of sort of urban decay and stuff
00:53:30
like that. And it's really beautiful. Uh I mean sad and beautiful and you know uh but that was sort of the thing that whenever I think of tram is what I kind of think of these sort of like huge beautiful buildings uh that just sort of represented that at one point sort of the pinnacle of of you know uh human industry and and and commerce and stuff like that that are now just these sort of shadows of what they used to be and stuff like that and this sort of the people that are still there and and stuff. So, it's it's one of those places that, you know, if I'm if I'm ever trying to work out a character and I kind of want them to give them an inherent edge, uh to me, Tram is always the first place I think of of like, oh, they should come from Tram because they've had a real they've clearly had a really hard hard upbringing. And also, actually, if you look at the Jen Gallon, uh I believe the in the the news updates who had been caught trying to as a a spy
00:54:21
in Shian Territory, he was he was from Tram. So that's sort of a uh kind of that sort of background. Um so uh okay so that's that's a very long description of Assura. Uh and then way out there we have Fen 4 which is a gas giant. Uh and it's a gas giant. You can't live there. Uh presumably you have fuel that you can grab from it but yeah it's pretty much just a gas giant. It just kind of hangs out. That's what they do. so um so yeah that's basically fair in a nutshell. Um I'd like to thank all of our subscribers who u kick in extra money every month to support content like my rambling about uh decrepit
00:55:10
cities. Uh and uh yeah we will see you next time on loremakaker's guide to the Thanks guys. And now, let's throw it over to Tyler Witkin, our community manager out of our Austin studio to find out who this week's MVP is. Tyler, who's this week's MVP? Hey there, Tyler Witen here, community manager in the Austin, Texas studio, here to bring you this week's MVP. A big congratulations to Haskaha for his weekly Star Citizen screenshots. MVP was a pretty easy choice this week once we got finished discussing the stipulation that you would need to stop tagging us on Twitter so much. No, in all seriousness, your screenshots did an amazing job at capturing the thrill and adventure that makes Star Citizen what it is. My personal favorite
00:55:57
being the Shien Scout duo that you posted on April 4th. Uh, in addition to posting screenshots, Huska also runs a YouTube channel jam-packed with Star Citizen content that's definitely worth checking out. So, congrats to you. Great work, sir. You're this week's MVP. Back to you guys. That Mr. Huskaha certainly shots a good screen. I've seen you retweet him. He's actually really good. He is. He's really cool. Yeah. And speaking of future art, let's see what's on the way in the ATV Fast Forward. Heat up
00:56:57
here. Heat. Be sure to tune in to Reverse the Verse
00:57:49
tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Twitch. We'll talk about that fast forward and all other aspects of Star Ciss's development. I really wish my voice could get that low, but it can't. I'm glad it doesn't, honestly. With that, thank you to all of our subscribers for making this show possible. We will see you next week on Around the Verse. Did you know that many of Star Citizen's
00:58:43
developers are on social media? If you would like to follow Star Citizen on Facebook, you can find us here or on Twitter here and even Instagram here. And for a full list of developers personal accounts they're willing to share with the community, check out this link. You can find out uh what I bought at Amazon this week. Star Wars stuff. It Yeah, it was probably Star Wars stuff.

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