Star Citizen: Calling All Devs - Dirty Ships, Modularity & UI Updates

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:10

   hey everybody welcome to another edition of calling all Deb's our weekly Q&A series where I take questions live from you the star citizen backer and posed them directly to our star citizen developers usually over Skype and it usually with a minimal amount of chasing it's it's like why the coyote and the roadrunner half the time and I honestly don't know which one I am at any given moment Ahlan show this week we are getting started with star citizen live game director mr. todd papy out of our foundry 42 office Todd hey you doing man hello sir I'm doing well welcome back to week zero two weeks in a row I got I got questions for you I got I got UI questions usability interface user and afferent usability in front questions for you

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   basically how we interact with the game how we find people in the game how we I can identify the people the game your first question submitted by backers voted on my backers there are no floating name tags above heads like in other games how do you intend for players to identify each other will there be a difference between identification within star Marine the video game within a video game or than the persistent universe in this regard so will to answer the star marine versus PU standpoint I think we'll need to look at you know what we're gonna do there and how we're going to identify it we used to have them one of the reasons why they got turned off is because of planets and basically we in the past it's always been a set up environment

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   and with planets obviously you have a non setup environment and that was causing a lot of issues where the players were walking and in the nametags were you know kind of stained like that so yeah so it's on the backlog to fix it's it's something that the team will tackle it's just they've been you know working on higher priorities as far as like the kiosks go the PMA VMA and then obviously the ship HUD you know rework okay so is is is that is that your would you say the difference restart marine and versus in universe now we know the precision universe has the planets they're they're round and that's obviously I does that mean that we're considering bringing the nametags back for the person yes yeah yeah it I think we'll look and see how it how it looks

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   part of it is just gonna be players and maybe it's it's one of those things where we show more friendlies versus versus enemies and I think that those are some of the discussions that will we'll have just because I know players will be able to you know kind of differentiate between AI as well as players but when you have that big sign above your head and somebody doesn't have that big sign of a bubbler head then you know obviously that's a very very quick just distinction and and we want to see at least I want to see how much we we blur the lines all right your second question this week has to do with the overall readability of the HUD to include a specifically a Moby glass a

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   lot of folks have trouble with the the the brightness or the Gamera of the display against you know bright backgrounds or dark backgrounds this question asks will we ever be allowed to adjust the brightness the gamma the stroke around lettering will be able to be able to adjust the UI to help those of us who see things differently see things so yeah so one of the things that's that's also on our EU feature team one which is basically our UI team is is redoing the front end so one of the first things on there it would be you know the getting the gamma so that you can actually shift between light and dark and actually do proper game account calibration that's that's one of the

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   things I really want to get and then from there it's talking about with MOBA class like in 3-1 we we actually did a darkening you know of the actual screens when you pull it out it makes it much much clearer so hopefully this question I don't know when this question was submitted but hopefully after they played 3-1 you know they they can see it a lot better even in bright and dark environments Zayn has has mentioned that you know that is something that we want to look into as far as the brightness adjustments you know and in HUD and overall and then the conversation actually diverged into like the ship HUD and and the legibility of that and and you know the issue that

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   people are having in really really bright environments and so him and Ali are still in kind of technical talks of how we want to fix this and do we want to do kind of like a little fog glass or something like that so then it it outlines the whole thing verses and drops out and drop shadows or a stroke outline so it we're still in in kind of discussions about that and then I think some tech will need to be developed in order to to really clear that up I think I think the most important aspect of this is that we're aware and we've got our we've got our we've got our top people working on it yeah top people right sorry all right I'm gonna let you go man thank

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   you for you sir thank you for taking time to be on the show today all right take care bye all right thank you so much todd papy now moving over to our own Los Angeles studio and Senior Systems designer lead systems design it we'll find out Kirk Tomei Kirk how you doing man hey good are you doing good is it leader sitter senior lead I can never mind it's becoming a it's starting to sound like a recurring joke but I really am just that clueless as far as the tiles go finally we got a lot of people ya know King we're fast approaching 500 now so I can maybe I can be excused for forgetting here as well I had a question for you from the backers voted on by the backers a pretty sure I know what the answer is but we're gonna see if you've got what you got for us the question is is there an ETA

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   for development of the caterpillar section modules and overall modularity it's kind of two questions but all allow it as was shown in 2015 with replacements of the cargo modules with medbay is living sections other in other functional compartments ok so while there is a plan for them there is no ETA it sits on our backlog and fortunes not it's not on the upper tier for parody's at the moment and so we're not precisely sure when we're gonna get to them but we do plan to still incorporate the modularity in things like the caterpillars so you can have the deployment phase the habitation modules instead of the cargo bays they're there now and allow us to do things like to retaliate err I'm sorry no yes Elliott

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    ER and the endeavour for the for the bomber sections and endeavour yes another place where if I use it is in the Pioneer when they plop the ship down on a planet surface and create the outpost the modularity in being able to specify what parts of the opposite you create and how you know the fabricate and position them will most likely incorporate that system and so I imagine it'll be something like almost like you know like cartridges and them in a in a gun or like you know like Lego Lego pieces like it so about soft out sections and put them in unfortunately it's not quite as simple as just a lot again you know one entity because we do need to do things like hook up the in

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    the interior or the object containers for them hook up all the connections for all our pipes like for power heat and damage that might have to hook up the lighting system anything like doing the portals for going in and out of that section it's particularly gonna be interesting for the caterpillar because those have huge side sections in which those are transitional portals form on the exterior to the leadership which are two different zones and solving that challenge along with being able to accommodate you know I think that most interesting thing is gonna be when you have a section that you can put in and it looks different not only in you know just visually but you know we should be able to change things like the

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    in the caterpillar like this high walkways on the side you know there's no there's no reason why you can't complete change it to be stairwells or ladders that go down or have a different network of like walkways in the top maybe make it one big section or three three being able to accommodate all that connectivity and the really the way that you're going to be able to transition from one of the modules to the ship or from one of the modules to another module is gonna be a challenge there yeah lots of things on the driver we've talked about lots of things over the years as far as the different modules go but yeah like I said it's not it that the we have the internal modularity you hear us talk about that on ship-shape

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    all the time it's how we build off the different variants but the player facing modularity is a whole is a whole nother kit and kaboodle as my grandmother would say also I just want to reiterate with when you're talking about the Pioneer before people start running off and saying pioneers gonna have modules he did say probably he did say most likely we are still exploring that option also what we're talking specifically about using the tent for that yeah yeah so so don't just before anybody run store it's like the partners gonna have modules it's it's not this not the same way and not confirmed or anything we haven't built started to build it out yet wait so alright Kirk I'll let you go man okay thank you so much Heidegger alright thank you so much Kirk now we're going to Austin Texas and our very own Rob Reiner Kerr big systems designer super

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    dude not even gonna try anymore Rob how you doing man lead systems designer senior systems designer okay you're the guy I go to when I need information that's what I'm going to call it we're gonna change the title down the guy all right so we got a question about Kwan travel bass basically this question has to deal with the distance between planets and Crusaders Mazar right now in the in the game we have some pretty we have some pretty hefty but there's some heft at least to the travel times between Crusaders moons obviously the distance between planets are gonna be even more than that and then eventually you're going between planets into the far reaches of a system looking for hidden things like like jump points and stuff

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    like that well right now we are trapped in our seats while we quantum travel is that the forever intention or do before see a day when when our players might be able to get up out of the seats during quantum travel and go to form other actions on their ship yeah no that's definitely something that Sierra's talking about quite a bit like he wants to be able to get up and walk around and do other things while you're in quantum travel he's you know talked about you know messing with your cargo you know wants to fix items you know like things break down maybe on your trip or you know something starts to overheat so you got to go and you know deal with that like so it's definitely something that we want to do in the future is just not that the current focus but yeah like said the the distance between the planets are you know enormous compared

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    to you know just just the moons of Crusader so we're doing things right now with quantum travel to try and you know reduce some of those times with like the quantum splines and they're the the planetary supply and stuff and then and all that but it's it's still going to be substantial between planets so it's it we have to fill that gameplay with you know something a little more interesting than just sitting in your seat and we understand that so it's it's definitely coming I'm not sure exactly when but it's it's it'll be there at some point yeah when I think about it I always think of that scene in Star Wars you know after after at the money Falken gets away at Lightspeed and and Han comes walk into the back you know bragging that you know I told him I'd lose him like that so yeah those those moments and then of course you know fixing and also it's it's it's it's integral do

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    this kind of thing so yeah you know it's like you gotta sleep you gotta you know do some of these other things to take care of your your person as well right so it's it's it's definitely not gonna be just a static sit in your seat and kind of watch the stars go by it's just not not interesting so but there is interdiction stuff exactly people pull you out so that's when you leave Chewbacca and the copilot see Bank alright man thanks so much I'll let you get back to work yeah all right take care see you all right and last but certainly not least we come right back here to where are we lost Angeles California and a lead vehicle team ship artists Elwin oh and how you doing man what's up man how's it going good it's your title still the same if we've

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    been I can't give up anyone's leads always artists lead ship artists they ship our dog I I appreciate I appreciate you look right now what is this is this a this a dart Cygnus by way of epic ambient fitscher no this is a I need tunnel vision so I can finish my 13 ships judge it Oh fair enough fair enough fair enough well ships are what I'm calling about we've got a question here from etre by the backers put on by backers it's an interesting question I've actually gone around to several developers to talk about this you're the one that gets lucky enough to get recorded the question rates so many of our ships come used beat down worn down in another word dirty why is this and will we ever be able to clean our ships

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    sure so I'll take that as two different parts part one why do they come dirty so we're not intentionally at something to make dirty looking ships but adding wear to them and sort of dust gives all of our vehicles a sense of it being lived in and use but that also lends to the making it more of a realistic experience right so it helps us make the asset as a whole feel a little bit more real and it gives it a little bit more vol as well because you get a lot more variation across the materials on the surface right so it's just it just looks better it's better to do it that way but the way we're setting up the materials are in such a way that we have a slider that we can pull you know from zero all the way up to one and that'll change how

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    much where you're actually seeing on the material surface so right now I can actually go into CryEngine and go ahead and slide that back and forth and see the wear you know become worse and then sort of recede a little bit and the intention is that in the future when you use a ship over time that slider will be programmatically moved in engine in order to sort of simulate that you've been using this ship for a long time and so it's getting dirtier and dirtier and you should be able to go clean that up and then bring it all the way back down that way you have a cleaner ship now there are some vehicles where it just simply doesn't really make sense from a visual standpoint whoever give you a perfectly pristine version one of those examples would be something like the caterpillar or the reclaimer even a brand-new version of those ships it just

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    probably wouldn't look perfectly right if it was completely clean so there'll be some level of wear and dirt on that even at its most clean version but then you'll have ships like the razor or the m50 where it makes absolute perfect sense to have a perfectly pristine paint job and so once we've got those mechanics hooked into the actual gameplay the goal is to allow that slider to move back and forth programmatically and so a lot of players who you know get a cleaner ship if they want and then see a deteriorate over time go to a car wash is it work yeah exactly you answered both parts I don't have anything to add I do want to make one suggestion though you got a slider that goes from zero to one let me submit a slider that goes from lando de Haan I'll talk to the programmers I'm just

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    saying I just it's right there it's right there all right man I'll let you get back to work all right cool ticket later bye well everybody that wraps up this week's edition of calling all Deb's I hope you enjoyed it remember you can submit your questions for consideration each and every week up in the thread up on spectrum and don't forget to vote for calling all Deb's I'm Content Manager for global video production Jared Huckaby we'll see you next week everybody thanks for watching for the latest and greatest in star citizen squadron 42 you can subscribe to our Channel or you can check out some of the other shows and you can also head to our website at www.uvu.edu/library