Star Citizen: Around the Verse - Pirate Swarm

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   Hello and welcome to the first regular episode of Around the Verse in 2017. Last week, we featured a special ATV which unveiled a first real look at our alien languages, specifically the Vandal and Shian, or Jean, as we learned that's how the military pronounces it. Definitely worth checking out if you haven't already seen it. And I'm Sandy Gardner, and with me is Star Citizen's game director Chris Roberts. Thanks, Sandy. Uh, and happy new year, everyone. Hope you've all been having as much fun with Alpha 2.6 six and Star Marine as we have especially the new players who may have gotten Star Citizen as a special holiday gift. Welcome. Yes. Uh speaking of gifts, look at this. This is amazing. So, this is a uh fairly large Caterpillar model that was 3D printed

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   and painted and assembled. Has a really cool cutaway back over here. You can even see like one of the crew members I think moving cargo around uh like different moving parts. So this was done by Mark Deadweight Fig and his son who did it for us as a present. So thank you so much. And also they not just did this larger model which luckily enough is for me. So that'll have a pride of place. Thank you very much. Uh but there's also smaller 3D printed caterpillars and uh Cutlass and even a Buccaneer which is actually really cool. It even has like its little guns on the bottom and everything. So uh awesome. Thank you so much. Uh the smaller ships are for the ship team who I know will be incredibly excited to see this. I mean they love building the ships and seeing how everyone gets excited by them and doing their own sort of 3D modeling of them

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   and uh printing of them and uh so it's totally awesome and this is one of well one of the many reasons why I think Star C is because we have such an amazing community that's like so into the universe in the world uh and u you know do cool stuff like this. So yeah, it's really awesome. Thank you so much. Um and um anyway, very happy. Uh so anyway, back to uh business as it were. Things are already well underway in our studios as we focus on our next milestones and up andcoming patches. After any major release like 2.6, we make sure we take all the information we learn and properly adjust our production moving forward. So there's a ton of discussions and postmodms going on right now. directors and producers from all our studios have been here in LA this past week in the beginning of this week uh meeting and planning and working through

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   our whole schedule for this year. So, um we got some a lot of work to do, but a lot of cool stuff to be done. Also, for the new year, we began making adjustments to all the content we create every week to incorporate a lot of the great feedback we've been getting. Old favorites like lore makers and bug smashers will be sticking around, but we are experimenting with adding a few new shows to the lineup. Uh yeah, so last week saw the premiere of our new Friday live stream show, Star Citizen Happy Hour, where various team members and streamers will play and discuss the game, which I think is the important bit is they're discussing the game. So you get sort of developer insight in why things are the certain way they are. The first happy hour had design director Todd Pepe and senior producer Alex Marshall answering questions from the backers and providing some great info on Star. It was definitely a great start and I'm looking forward to seeing what community managers Jared and Tyler will

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   have in store for us tomorrow. Yeah, it'll be pretty cool. Yeah. Also, since our community has grown so much, we decided that our coverage of it needed to grow, too. The community update portion of ATV will be moving to its own show on Mondays called Citizens of the Stars, which will be premiering in the upcoming weeks. Yep, I saw a pilot of it and it was looking quite fun actually. So, that's great. Uh, ATV has a few other changes as well. While we still provide detailed behind-the-scenes insight into the game's development, uh we're building our feature stories with a more global approach to better represent how our team works together rather than focusing on one studio for each episode. So, we'll still have a studio update per like local studio, but the background feature isn't necessarily going to be from that studio and it'll be more sort of in-depth, you know, 10, 15, 20 minute piece instead of the shorter four or five minute pieces we've

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   had. So, let's first go to the LA office and see what they have been focusing on. Yep. Happy new year, everyone. I'm senior producer Eric Kron Davis here with your studio update. We're cranking through some really exciting things out here in LA. So, I want to give you a quick glimpse into what we're working on. Filling a universe with unique clothing is no easy task, and as you'd expect, clothing and outfit production is in full force with our character team. One example that's currently in production is our Explorer flight suit. You may rem remember early concepts of this suit from a while ago, but the idea being that different suit types will offer customizable options, each providing advantages and disadvantages for ultimately enabling different styles of gameplay. We're also deep into the polishing process for different head

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   options as well as hair, and they're going through some thorough rounds of feedback to put them in your hands at the highest quality as soon as possible. We're also diving deeper into production on the Drake Buccaneer, which if you're following along on the ship pipeline steps, we've moved into the gray box phase as we last talked. As of today, we've already completed the fuselage, engine, wings, and front landing gear. We'll be moving on to the nose, cockpit, and the rear landing gear before going onto our final art pass. Now, engineering has had a lot going on, such as radar 2.0. The main reason we're revising the radar system is so that it can easily take advantage of item system 2.0 know and also provide us an opportunity to clean things up and redesign things just slightly. We're also far far into the mega map code, specifically loading and unloading of object containers, which will open up a

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   universe of options in the PU and beyond. Well, that wraps us up for this week's update. Thank you for joining us and see you soon. Love seeing those new hair options. Seems like everybody came back. Thank you. Seems like everybody came back to the office ready to dive back in and it feels like we've already started making some great progress. Uh definitely. I'm also really excited about the Buccaneer um coming together. As we can see, there's a really cool little Where is it? Buccaneer. Look at that 3D printed one. And uh I you know, we're building it and it's looking really good. So, uh Jyn and uh I think Daniel are both working on it and making it going to be awesome. So you guys will like it using a lot of the stuff that um we've developed in terms of materials and feel and look that we've done for both the Herald and the the Caterpillar. So that should be uh very very cool. Should be

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   very very cool. And the mega map code that's going to make a noticeable difference uh when it comes online, right? Uh yes. So uh definitely the mega map is basically us retrofitting all the Arena Commander and Star Marine content to take full advantage of our new object container streaming uh system. So once in it will significantly reduce the loading times uh for players getting into the game and that's a big key for us because we sort of want to let you sort of play a match with Arena Commander or jump to a match with Star Marine with the minimum amount of loading. We did do a lot of optimization for 26. So getting into a game is much quicker in 26 than it was in 25, but we're still working on and making that um better. Yes, for those of us that don't have patience like me, that is a great thing. Yeah. Speaking of Arena Commander, our special feature this week takes a closer look at Pirate Swarm and

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    the design and tech it took to bring this game within a game to life. Hey everybody, my name is Ben Lesnic. I'm director of community engagement here at Cloud Imperium Games. With Star Cizen Alpha 2.6, we introduced a pretty exciting new game mode called Pirate Swarm. Pirate Swarm is essentially a gauntlet mode that throws you against wave after wave of enemy planes. Unlike our previous gauntlet mode, Van Duel Swarm, Pirate Swarm has a whole variety of different ships, ranging from the M50 Interceptor to the Constellation Multi Cruise ship. Now, Pirate Swarm is not just a great new challenge for the community to take on. It's also a central test bed for the future of Star Citizen and Squadron 42. What uh Pirates Swarm has let us do is create new AI behaviors for the

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    different types of specific ships. It's let us introduce new technology for our artists that allow them to update ship art rapidly, skin interiors, all sorts of exciting things that we've been working towards. So, a lot of what you see in Pirates form today is what you'll see powering Star Citizen in the future. Now, to make Pirates form possible, it took the efforts of developers from all four of our studios around the world. Let's check in with them now to see how they made it happen. Pirates worm has been like, you know, an evolution of Bando's worm as well. So, we wanted to give kind of a bit more unique uh kind of feeling uh for the players. So, they would still play against a swarm or enemies, but not feeling the same as with a Vanuel faction. What differentiates Pirate

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    Swarm from Vandal Swarm is not just the enemy um and the ship types. uh we focus very much on the archetypes. Um and what I mean by that is not we don't just look at a ship, we look at the whole package, the ship, its weapon load out and its combat personality. This is also a consequence of the fact that for Pirates Swarm, we try to uh close up a bit the the combat environment. So instead of being uh really far apart the spaceship and try to always have this optimal combat fight uh approach they we try to have more a bit of tailing so the player has a bit more kind of story uh chasing one of the spaceship and being able to see a bit closer the enemy and you know shooting from uh from a closer perspective. Uh so of course the eye has

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    to be able to escape from you in uh in that environment. So if we look at what archetypes are present in at Pirate Swarm, you'll find the backbone is made of Gladius, Saber, and Vanguard. These are our vanilla kind of light, medium, and heavy fighters, and they mark your progression through the waves. When we came up with the more unique archetypes, we started with the Aurora LN. We wanted this to be our brawler. Something able to get up in the face of players and worry them if they were inexperienced, but something that was such a poor shot that it was just foder in the easy on the starting waves. Um, next we wanted to make a sniper

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    style ship. So, we chose the 350R. Um, this is because whilst being fragile, it's also extremely quick. So that meant that it could keep a distance from the player and be a struggle to hit if you did manage to get close. One archetype I was extremely um keen to get into the game was the kind of nuisance ship. The natural choice for that is the M50 because it's so small and so maneuverable that it's it's by far our most frustrating frustrating ship to fight. Anyway, on top of that, we added sucker punches, which are our distortion weapon that completely take out shields, which means it on its own, it's completely harmless,

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    but you add in some fighters with it and suddenly it's an extremely worrying little ship to have around. And on top of that, we just to give it a sting in the tail, we added um a couple of marksman missiles. So, you know, it it once you've killed all those fighters around you, it's still, you know, there's a little danger there. Obviously, we couldn't make a pirate themed game mode without including the cutless. Um, this is our gunship. It is armed to the teeth. It's got pyro burst shotguns, tarantulas, and long swords. It's You don't want to get in front of this thing. Now that we had our close-up monster, we needed our long range Punisher. For this, the

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    natural choice was the Gladiator with its huge array of missiles and torpedoes. Finally, we wanted to give those players the opportunity to fight against a fully manned constellation. For us, the intention was this would be our battleship. Something that would hang on the edge of the battlefield and and pound the player with its cannon. And if a player did manage to get close enough, it would open fire with its turrets. There were mostly, let's say, two parts we have been worked on. Uh, one was making sure that the blind ships would use some of the functionality that was already available for the player. One we can discuss about is for example the after burner. So the after burner for the player has passed through several iterations and also the high has used it

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    in a different way. So it was trying to use it you know to accelerate over specific spline or uh specific areas of the environment. Now we changed to be a bit more conscious decision of the behaviors itself. So when the pirates try to escape or break out from the player chasing then they can use the after burner and get this kind of extra travel boost uh so they can let's say uh be a bit further away from the player and try to occupy some space that allows them to attack the player in a bit easier and safer uh way. Another one uh has been the usage of the of specific new behaviors that we we tweaked especially for the for escaping and break. So we we try to make it a bit more dynamic.

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    Subsumption work is our you know big goal and we try to have all characters driven by activities and sub activities. So they have jobs. So a pilot will will have a pilot job or you know a guy that controls a turret or the shields of a specific spaceship will have their own activities to do that their jobs. Um so the idea is that even Venus worm and Paris swarm will benefit of all these uh improvements we will we will do in the future. So eventually we will try to create more coordination in the in the crew of each ship so that uh a pilot can you know try to chase one target while one turret is attacking him but maybe the the spaceship is is composed by different turrets. So some other player that is in the level can be also attacked by the same ship and so on. So it just creates a bit more natural uh

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    feeling. So with a lineup sorted for 26, what we're going to be focusing on for 261 are the aces. Now, notionally, these guys are the best pirates there are. So, they should have the best weaponry on their ships, and that's what the route we're going to take. We're going to give them the most overpowered weapons that their ships can handle. So, in conclusion, 261, get ready because Pirates Swarm is going to get even harder. So, that's how we teach our characters to think and fight. But, uh, that's not much good if we don't have cool ships for them to fly. And for Pirates Swarm, we wanted to update our existing ships with uh some of the new technologies that are coming down the pipeline. Um, a lot of the updates we've done are showing off technology you're going to see in

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    Squadron 42 and Star Citizen in terms of ship customization and uh just our ability to rapidly update ships for particular purposes. Let's uh let's go over to some of the artists who worked on the mode to see how they did it. For the pirate sworn, we went ahead and made custom pirate skins for our ships. For the pirate skin, it was decided to go with a crimson red and black scheme, which gives the ships a little bit of a menacing look, which is good for a pirate ship. Then we go into the material and start tinting the main color channels for the hole. The scheme that was chosen should also make it easier to identify a pirate ship amidst all the other ships out there, some of which will have colorful custom paint schemes and such. The crimson red is also supposed to stand out against other red colored paint jobs that will be out there. When we create the materials for

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    the ships during the build process, we go ahead and carefully plan out the main three to four submaterials that will be applied to the main hole of the ship, giving us the ability to later on change or tint the color for various custom paint schemes. So, what's cool about this skin is that it changes the colors a bit and it comes with a nice pirate emblem on the wing and a couple of tick marks on the side of the ship. My favorite part about the change is actually that all the raw metal parts on the ship, which are very reflective and easy to see in space, have been painted over with black. So, you've got a little bit of a stealth element going on now with the pirate skin. And that's how you form a swarm. Um, we're really excited about the fact that Pirate Swarm is now in our backer hands and we are very eager to have your

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    feedback. Um, what do you like? What do you not like? Uh, how is the new flight model treating you? Let us know on the forums and uh we are eager to get your feedback. Be sure to tune in tomorrow when uh Jared and Tyler will be taking on the swarm themselves live on the Star Citizen happy hour. Until then, back to you guys. Thanks, Ben. And thanks to everyone for shedding a bit of insight into the process that went into making Parrot Swarm. the archetypes and the AI behaviors have added a lot and I know the team is eager to keep expanding and growing Arena Commander with new modes, ships, and levels in future patches. So, sort of we're going to be doing some fun stuff coming down the road. And it was fun seeing how all the different studios contributed. While they all have their own specialties, it's a nice reminder how the entire team is really just one one big dev family. Yeah, great to have

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    a couple of different accents mixed in there. So, you know, you got the English and the American and uh Australian Australian on your side. Yeah. Well, that's all for today's show. As always, we'd like to thank our subscribers for helping us produce all our extra content and behind the scenes shows. Let us know on the website what you think of the changes and all the new shows as they come online. Yeah. Or let us know on Spectrum uh if you're some of the testers helping us try out our new social tools. Uh, you know, back testing is a big part of what makes Star Citizen what it is, and we could not do all of this without your help and support. So, thank you. And Spectrum, we would like feedback on because that is going to be our new platform coming forward. So, have fun with it. And to start your weekend off right, make sure to tune in tomorrow for our new live stream, Star Citizen Happy Hour. Also, Squadron 42

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    hoodies and Drake Dragonfly posters will return to the store tomorrow on sale. So, don't miss out your chance to grab one. Yep. It's just in time for the cold weather. So until then we will see you around the verse. [Music] Thank you for watching. So, if you want to keep up with the latest and greatest in Star Citizen and Squadron 42's development, please follow us on our

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    social media channels. See you soon.