Around the Verse: Episode 1.31 (2015.02.12)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:00

   [Music] Coming up on the Empire Report, breaking news. A daring daylight abduction has left officials stunned and a panicked empire asking which citizens next. The Lynch fever outbreak continues to spread through Goss. We'll have a live update on the travel restrictions to the system. Plus, chicken saté for Satabal opening day. Our Gia Mumbo stops by with a few party planning tips to make sure you start your SATA ball season off right. All that and more on the Empire Report at 2200 SET. Hey everybody, welcome to episode 31 of

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   Around the Verse. I'm Sandy Gardner and I'm Ben Lesnik. It's Valentine's Day weekend. That's right. And in fact, I have a Valentine here for you. E, that's quite disgusting. All right, moving on. I get that all the time. That is very weird. Moving right along. New items in the store. Shields, skins, and more. What's the more? The more is a gun, the tarantula, which uh people seem to be enjoying. Shield generators deep document dive is up. We didn't want to just let shield generators out into the wild without telling people how they work and how they're going to work in the long term. So, the guys upstairs, guys in the UK, guys, Delonic, all got together last week to put together a deep dive on shield generators. And it's

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   absolutely fascinating. I love these deep dive documents because they're always this last minute where's the deep dive document? Where's the deep dive document? And it keeps our Fridays fun. It does keep our Fridays fun. And the monthly report for January is also up. Yep. Uh if you're wondering what any of Cloud Imperium's various studios did in January, uh it's the place to find out. PAX East and South by Southwest tickets are still available. So come join us. We hope Ben is going to come join us for South by Southwest. I'm still trying to coax him to come down. I tell you, I love I love going to Austin any week except South by Southwest, but it's going to be a good time. Uh tickets are free if you're in the area. And I know there are a lot of passionate Star Citizen fans in Austin. Uh absolutely come out. Chris will be there. We'll have some cool stuff to show. Uh maybe a reveal or two. So definitely pick up a ticket. Winner of the Terra Rap contest

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   is Zorn Coff with Cosmic Companion, a pet store located in Nyx. I I like how you were able to say the word Zorncoff cuz I I was looking at that over and over and just praying that I wasn't going to be the one to have to read that name. Right. Well, you can read the runners up cuz I can't read those. Oh dear. So, the runners up are Gualin with the uh bestit and lethality store and uh Abel's music and meta. CI will be hosting a US Dev versus the community on Monday, February 16 at 4:00 p.m. PST. We'll have the devs from Santa Monica and Austin, including Chris himself, online. So, come join us. I will be out there flying myself, kicking Ben's butt. Yep. QA wants to try to get as many people into Star Citizen at one time. So, we're uh we're picking Monday as the

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   time to try it. If you are an Arena Commander player, please come out and join us. Um and hopefully this will be the first of many such instances. In the future, we'll have times for European backers and backers from other parts of the world as well. Tomorrow, the RSI Museum will return. Yes. Uh when James and I were in Austin, we shot an interview with uh Dallas Snell, Richard Garrett, and Paul Nur about uh not just their new game, uh Underworld Descendant, but their classic games, Ultima Underworld 1 and two. Um it's about an hour long. It's a really cool video. Please, uh check it out. Now, we're going to try a new way of doing the news, right? Yes. Uh when we started this show, one of our main objectives was to share more and more of Star Citizen's development with you. So rather than just having one or two co-hosts uh talking to you, we're going to throw it to the studios around the

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   world, they are uh reporting in on what they've been working on. So I will now uh throw it to the Spectrum. Hi, I'm Darren. and I'm Travis and we're broadcasting from upstairs in the attic of Cloud Imperium on the second floor up here in LA. Uh so we're here to cover some ship information. Yeah. So one of the things that have been worked on this past week is the bottom turret of the constellation is currently being reworked. I think that was for visibility issues. Is that right? Yeah. It's actually being done in Austin by Josh Coons and Chris Smith. They're actually reworking the entire constellation, but right now they're

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   especially focusing on the turret. So that entire thing is being redone. Um, and I think you guys are going to like what they're working on. Um, we've also got the what formerly was called the Bulldog is now called the Vanguard being concepted. Yeah. And I can't keep those two straight. So the the Vanguard uh the white box is done by Kix Renault and Germakbasin is working on the uh concept of the ship. So right now we're going through a lot of different shape passes and iteration for Chris to to look at and approve. It's progressing well and we hope to have something to share with you very soon. And you mean you know got a concept guy. They do make some awesome ships. Oh yeah. So other than that, we've also got the Orion in the works as well. Yeah. The RSO Orion is something RSI Orion is something you guys have all been looking forward to. So if we It's kind of our very first bespoke mining ship. Uh so it's out for concept right

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   now with George Hull, who you may know from Jupiter Ascending. Did some of the ships in that ships in that movie. Uh anyways, the white box has been done by uh Dan Tracy here on the inside and the concept is being done by George. and we're really looking forward to sharing that one with you. It's going to be a very cool ship. Ah, and uh last but not least, sorry, is the P-52 Merlin. So, we're redoing the constellation, and that means we need to give a little love to the P-52. Uh Elwin's actually doing the modeling on that. So, he's about 20% done right now. They're working on refining the surfaces, which means, you know, adding all the little vertices, the details all over the surface. Um, from that point forward, they've pretty much got the the UV unwrapping, the texturing, um, making sure that everything's standardized, so it's that a pilot can fit in it. The thrusters are the right size. So, you're looking at least another few more weeks

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   before it's anything even remotely testable. But, it's it's looking pretty awesome. Very sleek. What you brought up is actually a really good point is that we've been uh updated our character rig and our character model, and as part of that process, we've kind of changed the metrics a little bit. So, we've had to go back through all these old ships and make sure all the characters fit where they're supposed to. They sit where they're supposed to. Their arms are the right length for everything. So, it's been quite a process. Yeah, we're standardizing a lot of our stuff. Mhm. All right. Uh, thank you very much for joining us here in the upstairs of Cloud Imperium Santa Monica and, uh, see you guys next week. Hey, my name is Michael Barkley. I'm

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    lead level designer at Cloud Imperium Games, working on Squadron 42. Hi, I'm Luke Presley. I'm working on Arena Commander. I'm the lead designer on that. Um, at Foundry 42, just now we're looking at mostly the tutorial for Arena Commander, landing mechanics and some cubing gray boxing. So, you're looking at the landing mechanic in a tutorial, right? Yep. Yep. So, you're finally going to get tuto tutorial. Um, we teach you how to fly if you don't already know. Um, but we'll also teach you how to land as well, and it's a brand new mechanic. So, uh um yeah, you need help. Yeah, we're doing really well. We're improving on the current system, which is just to slam your down onto the Chris Roberts style. Yeah. So, um Yeah.

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    and we're going to get um pre-flight in there, multiplayer pre-flight. We're going to introduce a um a hanger, an asteroid hanger that you and your friends can land in. Um that's where you'll, you know, you really need to learn all the the styles of landing for vertical horizontal kind of hanger bay landing. Um so you're not scraping your friendships up as you're going. Um, but you can still uh the landing's been split up so that we can actually have, you know, the full hardcore uh manual landing so that you can still land manually. But there's also one or two things that we're looking at, I guess, just to make the process a bit easier. If you see a firefight going on on the ground, you don't want to spend five minutes trying to land your ship. Yeah. you know, we can maybe

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    there's an assisted level to it that's, you know, halfway between hardcore and then there's a full full automated thing. So, if you really care about your ship. Yeah. And um yeah, one of the places you will be landing is um Schubin. So, Schuben Mining Colony um that's come along uh well come a long way recently. We've got the full interior gray box uh on the way now. So, if anybody knows about our level process, our level design process, the first thing that we do is do a white box pass and then we do a more detailed gray box pass, it features quite heavily in um you know, some of our campaign levels. So, we're uh you know, pushing ahead with with the gray box and getting the atmosphere just right, nice level of fidelity that the game's become accustomed to. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that's it from the from the UK, you

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    know, and glad to catch up. Yeah. Thanks very much. See you later. See you. Hi, I'm David Langalers. I am senior producer here at Alphonic. And I'm Rodney Wool. I'm the lead designer at Elonic. So, over the last uh week, month, uh we've been trying to get FPS in really good shape for you guys. Uh coming up soon for the release. I don't want to give you an exact date yet, but it's coming really soon. Um, one of the things we've been working really hard on is the new armor system. Uh, so we have light, medium, and heavy types of armor. And depending on what type of gun is, uh, hitting that armor and what type of round is in that gun, the damage will

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    get applied based on whether it's an energy weapon or a ballistic weapon and what type of armor it's actually impacting. Um, so yeah, that's added a lot to our gameplay um, over this last week. Yep. And uh we've also spent a lot of time working on the weapon sway. So it's how the how the player holds the weapon and it moves in their hand. So it's not like perfectly aimed after you uh are sprinting for a while. There'll be a lot of sway in your weapon. Yeah. And that that comes into play uh with all the weapons. Um and the player can actually calm down their breathing uh and you'll get like a little bit less weapon sway. But yeah, the more you're running, the more your weapon will sit there and sway back and forth and back and forth. Um, and if you guys saw PAX Australia, uh, the system that these guys have, um, actually makes the gun

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    fire where it's pointing. So, not always the center of your screen, um, but wherever you see the animation and the gun pointing, that's actually where the round is going to hit. So, the weapon swipe plays a lot into that. Um, the last system we kind of wanted to talk about was the pushpull system for zero gravity. Uh so when you're in zero gravity uh you can have thrusters but if you are without thrusters then we have a pushpull system that allows you to sort of grab onto nearby surfaces and this is all done procedurally and your hands will push off the surfaces. You can crumple into a surface, grab onto it and then release and float off like in the opposite direction. Uh really cool. We think you guys are going to like it. Yeah, it's a very complex system that has um a lot of IK hand placement that you know the player's hand gets aligned on the surface and then the other really

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    fun thing is when your legs compress as you're landing on a surface and then you're able to push yourself off of it and uh float into space. It's pretty great. Yeah. So, that's pretty much it. Um look forward to it soon and uh yeah, we look forward to seeing you guys online. All right. Hi guys. My name is Jake Ross. I'm the um associate producer of the PU here in Austin, Texas. Um got a little update for you guys on what we've been working on. Uh we're working on right now concepting out some of the mining game mining gameplay mechanics. Uh Tony's got this big vision of how mining will work in the PU. and um you know he's got ideas for the different

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    roles players will will have you know on one of the mining ships per se. So that's not boring for for for everyone except just the pilot. So you know there's there's scanning systems, there's drilling and mining and refineries. So lots of different um features that go into into that system. And so to help Tony flesh out that vision, he's got we've got one of our in-house concept artists, Ken Fairclaw, helping to concept out some of that uh some of that stuff so that Tony can better um explain what he's going for to the programmers and to uh to Chris and then to others. So um that's mining. Uh we also have um a redesign of the of the Nicks um Nicks Delomar Levki landing zone in in progress. um you know, our third landing zone out of our our first five. We we started with Art Corp, um

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    the Area 18 landing zone and we're now got we've now got Terra uh Terara Prime in progress and uh Nick's uh Levki is is going to be next. So, it's going to be cool. It's going to be like on this asteroid kind of u abandoned mining facility. You probably guys have probably seen concepts of that u out on on our our monthly reports and things like that. Um, so now we're just trying to lay it all out and make sure that um all the shops have homes and um figuring out where the NPCs are going to be and and all that stuff. So that's currently in design phase uh right now. So there's that. And then our last thing that we've got is uh we're starting concepts on uh clothing sets for our NPCs. Uh right now we've got our our white collar business clothing set being uh concepted by our in-house concept artist Megan Chver. Say

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    hi, Megan. Hi. uh she will be um concepting clothing sets uh from here uh for the foreseeable future and um that will help you know when it comes to things like shopping and character customization u we've got to have lots of clothes to fill the PU with. So um we're going to we're we're uh concepting that out right now and that will go off to our character modeling team after the social module launches in March. Um that's it for Austin. See you guys around. Thank you to our studios around the world. And now we're back over to Mark for the return of Bug Smashers. Hey everyone, welcome back to Bug Smashers. Nah. Hey everyone, welcome back to Bug Smashers. I'm so sorry I couldn't make it here last week. Uh, you see, I was touring with my band Maroon 5

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    and I just couldn't make it. Hi everyone. I just got a most exciting bug. Apparently, the Mustang has no physics. So, if I hit my little uh F10 button here in the editor, it will toggle physics visibility for anything that has like physical meshes. And as you can see here on the left, the Hornet has physics. And when you see on the right, the Mustang has no physics. And my player has physics as well. As you could see, the pink boxes move. So, we're going to find out what happened and why. So, this bug came actually um a couple days ago. It was

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    discovered on our new 11 one branch, which is not going to get released for a little while. After I did some bit of code to change how the vehicles physicalize, um that's when this bug popped up. And what happened here and why the vehicle had to get physicalized or how we had to change the vehicle physicalization was because of the way uh the current cryine or the previous cryine way of handling this. the entity itself would call physicalize and that would create the physics object and then in the vehicle code because we need to change mass and density and do some other things it would refacize that slot. So our vehicles would essentially physicalize twice because when it gets

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    to this part it removes the physics and then creates the physics again. So the vehicle would create the physics and then we would come back here and create the physics one more time. So that was changed. So uh this bit of code just does the preset and creates everything you would need before you create the physics. And then it would come right here to the parts and then this little immediate create each of the little physics meshes. Now, I should have kept in the game, but we could go back in the game and do and see what was happening on the Mustang. All right, so we are back in the game, and I am going to set a break point on this guy.

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    So, we're going to reload scripts, and this will recreate the physics. And what was interesting when we were trying to figure out what was going on at this point, we didn't look at the code right away. We looked at the actual uh mesh in Max and seeing if there was something funky that we saw in the script or in the uh Max scene. And um the other Mark was looking at it and found out that everything looks fine and was only affecting the Mustang. And what was interesting, if they were pulling in that model, not as a vehicle, but just as the model itself into the scene, it had physics. So once we established it was a code issue, I went immediately here to this little

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    physics block, put down a break point, and I noticed if I capture Oops. Capture. Where' it go? the shared params and we go to is physicalized it is set to false. So what happens is the CGA or the or the vehicle I should say will skip physicalizing. So none of this actually happens and the funny part is if we open up we see something troubling in the actual script it says to disable physics on this part. So this part which is the very root and has the CGA

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    will never physicalize. So that means when it gets here it skips and then when we continue on it has no physics. So fun little fix and a great little fix was literally change this one to a zero. Reload the script and bam, physics. So, one little change and the best part was this has been in there since the release, but it would didn't develop until this code was refactored. So, there you go. A fun little dangerous thing that

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    yeah, fix. All right. So, as you can see, the fix was just a oneline edit in the XML. Um, the bug didn't show up until after we changed the physics code to only physicalize the vehicle once instead of twice. And it was just a simple fix that we didn't know that was an issue until after, you know, that refactoring of physics code. And we're probably going to get bugs like this all the time. you know, you you fix one thing and then sometime later another thing that was broken doesn't show up to be broken until that other thing was fixed and that's just a fun game development. Thanks, Mark. Uh, we should clarify Sandy's Flight School will be back next week. We're going to be going uh one week on, one week off, switching off with Bug Smashers. I'm doing weapons, I think. Weapons. Nice. Who's going to teach you about those?

27. 00:21:06

    Watch yourself. I don't know yet. I'm hoping Forest or Zayn, but we'll see. Now, over to Will for this week's MVP. Hey everybody, I'm Assistant Community Manager Will here to bring you this week's MVP. This week's MVP goes to Fenish Feather for his thread and video called Pieces of Eight. The video tells a story of a couple of pirates who are trying to take down a constellation. Take a look. Get the deck spacer. There's no heroes on this ship. You know the drill. Swim the deck. I forgot to bring a door. So, thank you very much, Fenish Feather.

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    You're this week's MVP. Thanks, Will. Now, let's go over to James who interviewed Ken Faircloth, our environmental concept artist. Thanks, guys. I'm here with concept artist Ken Faircloth. Ken, how you doing? Good. Nice to meet you. Oh, thanks, man. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. So, why don't you start by just telling everybody what particularly you're working on? Uh, so I uh primarily do environment concept art and uh also props as well as uh stuff for the tier system. The tier system. Uh so the tier system is the modular system that we'll uh we'll be using for the PU for building uh tons and tons of environments off of uh predetermined sets and stuff like that. How does that differ from like your other the other stuff you work on? That seems like it's a little more specialized. Uh well uh as far as like concepting stuff out for

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    that uh there's a lot of things you have to keep in mind as far as like modularity um and tiling. Uh the big thing that I have come across so far is uh with for example like walls. Um if you design just one section of a wall, you know, it might look cool, you know, on its own, but once you start to tile it, then it starts to look repeated. So you have to do it in a way that uh that looks interesting on its own, but will also look interesting tiled so that uh it doesn't stand out like a sore thumb that it's just the same asset used over and over again. It's not the Flintstones thing, right? the same background over and over again. When you're given the object of creating an object, is there a certain style guide you have to go by or is that were you able to make that up on the fly or? Uh there's definitely uh strict style guides uh you know involving the the different architectural styles. Um right

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    now we have three. We're going to be kind of expanding on those and kind of going a little bit more in depth uh with those. Um but yeah, absolutely. for you know for each individual environment uh or like civilization there is a specific style guide and you know uh aesthetic that is associated with all of that artwork that we have to you know uh keep referencing to to maintain uh consistency yeah consistency exactly yeah team work man yeah thanks what type of environments can we be looking forward to coming from you um so I have uh worked uh as far as regarding the uh the tier system I worked on some previs stuff uh for uh NYX uh which I don't know if we have shown anything off of yet, but maybe sometime soon. Okay. Yeah. Um say soonish. Yeah. Um but uh

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    that that's kind of like previs stuff. So we might see a little bit in there. It'd be kind of more maybe a flavor of it. Um and uh some other stuff that uh we haven't really talked about at all yet. So, oh, the fans love that when you mention stuff you can't talk about. Yeah, some really really cool stuff. So, when you're you're given a something to concept out, what do you like to bring to it that you think is a little different than anybody else? I I guess I can't speak for anyone else, but the definitely the thing that I always try to approach any design uh regarding environments is um uh making it feel as though it's like a small part of a larger world and something that's lived in and feels like it has like a history um and like a story behind it. Um, you know, so even when designing like walls or like crates

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    and stuff like that, you know, adding unique scratches to them or, you know, you know, different kinds of decals or you something to kind of add character to them and look like it's maybe been beat up a little bit or, you know, uh, make it look like it's it's been handled. It's it's been uh, you know, uh, treat it treat as if it's like a character in its own, you know, so it's been through something. Exactly. It feels like it's an actual part of a universe and not just a perfect, you know, wooden crate like frame. Exactly. It's not sitting in a display window on sale somewhere, you know. So, it's, you know, it's in a dingy factory on the in Nick somewhere. Exactly. Yeah. I I always try to approach um environments or the details that make up larger environments as if they are characters. So, in my head, I'll kind of make up

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    like a backstory. uh or crate. I mean, maybe not that in-depth, but yeah, I mean, I I I I definitely try to think, you know, okay, where is this crate? Who's been using it? Um what is it used for? Um how old is the crate? You know, stuff like that, you know, and and those little details, I think, um uh really add a lot of life to um a crate or any other kind of design. Yeah. You can tell because you start to care about it. I mean, no matter what it is, you start to care and you start because it's the story behind it is what you're interested in. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a lot of overlap with like other um concept artists and other studios or anything? Um this is just me thinking that's a good question. Uh I not so much. I mean I've uh so for example those tier stuff that I did for NYX that was sent off to behavior. Um and they're

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    going to be kind of riffing off of that. So that's why I said like those designs weren't necessarily final concepts but kind of like previs stuff for them to kind of pick pieces out of. And is it different than how you've ever worked being part of such a multi-studio process of like Well, this is actually my first uh professional game gig, so I don't have too much of a point of interest. That might be cool if you brought up though, cuz you you're like the young kid who's getting the job. How old are you? Yeah. Uh 26. Me too, dog. Yeah. Hands in. He's old. [Laughter] So, is there anything specific you want to like create? Is it whether it's a ship or some sort of environment? Is there anything you're really looking forward to? Um, well, I I'm definitely I I am in love with doing environments. Uh, so I I look forward to kind of

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    working on some of uh the future environments and uh kind of prevising that out and kind of it's the early stages in the concept development that I I that I enjoy the most. you know, kind of uh that blue sky kind of, you know, open-ended let's kind of really get down to like what this could possibly look like because I think that's when all the ideas really happen and uh and that's when all the exploration happens. Um so yeah, we there's there's so many awesome worlds that uh we have planned. Um so just thinking ahead and thinking what we might possibly be working on sometime soon is what really excites me. So you're just waiting for someone to give you a world? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what I'm working on right now, I mean, it's uh even though they're they're they're smaller parts of a larger world, it's it's equally exciting to me. Um cuz like

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    I said before, it's those smaller parts, those smaller details that kind of make a larger world feel lived in and and feel really believable. Um but uh yeah, designing designing those whole kind of larger, you know, set pieces and stuff like that is is uh that's kind of the dream job. So, I'm I'm glad to be here. We're glad to be working on that kind of stuff. Awesome, man. Well, again, thank you so much for coming on. Absolutely. Thank you. All right. And back to you guys. I tell you, when we were there, we didn't know his last name. We just called him nice guy Ken. So, ah, nice. Nice guy. Thank you, James. Now, let's check in with the ladies of CS. Hi, and welcome to customer service. My name is Chelsea and I'm Alexis. like to update you that we are still backlogged from all of the holidays sales and goings on.

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    We're about two weeks behind. We're receiving around a thousand tickets every week. So, we've decided to open a new position in the UK for customer service. If you're interested, take a look at the job postings at cloudgames.com. And I've got an update for subscribers. You should expect to see some new flare in your hanger this week. You'll be receiving the Gladius model. We'd also like to thank some people who sent gifts in during our trying times here in customer service. We received jerky from Moses Family Jerky. Ern Brew from Trap Jaw in Scotland and Marley Coffeemon from DAO Jones. Thanks so much guys. We really appreciate it. So that's all for this week. Chexis out. Thank you ladies. There were a lot of giggles going on today shooting that episode. Well, I hope Mark has not

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    smashed your appetite for bugs because here's our top 10. Number 10. Number nine. Number eight. Number seven. Number six. Number five. Number four. Number three.

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    number two. And number one, those pesky bugs, right? Art sneak peek. What is it? Here you go. Heat. Those

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    are uh concept art, very early concept art for what we are thinking may replace the hollow table. So, um, spread those around the internet. Very cool. PTU 1.0.3 will go live if all goes planned for tomorrow. We've got a pretty good schedule uh rhythm with the PTU now. We get uh the PTU releases the week before the uh proper releases. So, uh, if you want to test out a new unstable version of Star Citizen, tomorrow should be your day. Tomorrow, a design deep dive on the upcoming AC credit or wreck system. As you know, we uh we're going to introduce the system to Arena Commander so you can earn credits to rent ships and equipment. And we're going to detail how we think that's going to work tomorrow and hopefully get your comments on it. Don't forget to pick up your 350R or your M50. I've already got my 350R. I

41. 00:32:44

    might just see you in game on Monday at 400 p.m. PST. And happy Valentine's to everybody. Thank you. Yes. Uh, please pick up a 350 or an M50 for your loved one. We're also unlocking the entire 300 range to test for the next week. So, uh, if you want to try it before you buy it, this is your chance. Thanks everybody for watching and for subscribers to making this possible. We will see you next week on Around Around the Verse. Hey, hey, hey. Thanks, Will.

42. 00:33:52

    Thanks, Will. Thanks, Will. Thanks, Will. Thanks, Will. Thanks, Will.