Inside Star Citizen: Flight of the Talon | Fall 2020

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:06

   chris was talking with paul was like let's just go full bird with this a lot of people's favorite things about the ships is you know when you're in combat you know this ship's a light fighter you should be getting in there and blowing stuff up but for me when you walk out on on your landing pads and you see this ship you want that to be an experience for the player and that's why we pursued it the talon and talon strike are a pair of fighters by isperia they're light fighters so they prize agility over raw firepower and durability the difference between the two is the talon doesn't have great missiles but has great guns the talon strike has great missiles but not great guns so you have your two choices there depending on how you want to play the tunnel itself is a very elegant design i remember talking to paul at the

2. 00:00:55

   very start the concept can look super lightweight but whether or not we can deliver that you know so many of our ships once we get them have that issue of um oh we didn't take into account that it needs a size two power plant or it needs three size one shield generators or whatever it might be with the talon we didn't get any extra weight added onto it and it was as sleek and as as elegant as what we wanted it feels fast when you see it like it doesn't have to be moving but it just looks fast it looks agile i love the animation on the ship when it's in landed mode the wings kind of fold in and the shoulders kind of hunch back and you get these underlying feathers that open and close depending on which flight mode you're in i really like the landing gear as strange as that sounds um i think it's

3. 00:01:42

   got that hawk foot look to it i think the way the player enters the ship and go you know the chair comes right out towards you and the whole thing opens up getting the dashboard to animate out the way there's a few things i really like about the interior of the dash you've got this framework that runs all around the ship so when you're sat in that pilot seat you feel like surrounded by this nest you know i love when it opens up and you you see out the first time you power the ship on it took some iteration to get it get it right but i kind of i do like it just the overall stance of the ship when it's in flight it's a really nice feature of the terrain ships for release we knew we wouldn't have the full ejection pod mechanic so we worked around this

4. 00:02:29

   by adjusting the ejection seat parameters to support ejecting in any direction we wanted so for the talon at launch it will have ejection capabilities more than other ships so you will still be able to simulate that sort of last ditch forward eject want to do one final strike um with my fps weapons or melee or board onto a ship via it but you don't remain in the ejection pod it comes with you for a point and then it carries on to get out of your way the talon introduces a new technology to star citizen which is the iridescent shader from the very start of the concept we wanted to really push the visuals of their ship and our existing shaders really just didn't give that sort of bird avian like iridescent shimmer to

5. 00:03:18

   the shaders so we weren't sure if we were going to get it and we reached out to the graphics team and they said it was something that you know they can push towards doing um and and they came in and they delivered it i had some concerns over it would work for what we wanted for that initial paint job but obviously we want to be able to support a lot more variation but luckily once once robin started experimenting with other paint job the shade just works and it opens up a lot of possibilities for future ships and other assets in the game [Music] it's really important for us to develop the talent in the talon strike because it not only increases the amount of ships that the tavarian race has in the game but it also gives players more

6. 00:04:06

   choice than the light fighter group of ships not only that that they actually provide a very visual difference which for a lot of people is is a huge thing the talon and talon shrike are scheduled to make their flight ready debut in the upcoming alpha 3.12 building on the popular light fighter experiences of the gladius and arrow with an added avian style and colorful flare but before we let you go this week let's go ahead and see if we can squeeze in one more sprint report before the holidays arrive let's get to it we have a few updates in the world of fps weapons starting with this look at the new bearing fs9 light machine gun coming to the persistent universe in the upcoming alpha 3.12 while the vfx artists are still tweaking and things

7. 00:04:54

   may look a little different by the time you see this one live one of the directions the team is pushing for is a smaller but more realistic muzzle flash that's good for a spray and play player like myself after all if i'm lucky enough to hit anything when i shoot it's nice when i can actually see it happen through the flash at the other end of the spectrum is the gemini a03 sniper rifle that is about as marksman as you can get now the a03 is perhaps the smallest caliber rifle offered in alpha 3.12 and feedback during review was that while it is intended to be small we may still want to upscale the effect all the same like most things in game development there's a delicate balancing act of adjustments and fine-tuning before we find something

8. 00:05:43

   that seems just right looking at something a bit farther out the weapons concept team recently completed a pass on the shroud of the avatar crossbow from manufacturer ultiflex now this low ir low em stealth weapon has a very slick carbon fiber-ish look and you can see how the cartridges load from underneath now these cartridges carry the smart ammo arrows that will expand the full length once they're pulled up and chambered above now it remains to be seen what kind of physical damage and visual effect this will have on fps gameplay but you can bet that we're going to check in on this very unique weapon again before it makes its way into the persistent universe let's talk ships first up we've got a look at perennial test bed the aegis

9. 00:06:31

   gladius now getting its component pass where they add things like the coolers and the jump drives and whatnot it's important items that not only have to be accessible for players in the persistent universe but also completely usable by the ai deck crews within squadron 42 we also have a real quick look at fan favorite the aegis redeemer as it continues early progress through white box phase now using a modular system similar to the vanguard series we can already see things like the living areas and remote turret stations starting to come into their own but the biggest ship news perhaps is that we've got a very work in progress look at the sdf shield tech currently in development what you're seeing here is a test mock-up with temporary damage

10. 00:07:20

    values and intermediate colors used for demonstration purposes only now shields on larger ships are intended to be fairly powerful so there was a concern during development about how players would actually know they were doing any damage at all this led to an idea seen here where we're testing an easily readable wear effect the attacking players could be causing to the shields across these larger ships the javelin used here for demonstration purposes just because it's really big it's important to state once more that everything you're seeing here is work in progress and done for testing purposes the colors and the damage modifiers and the time to trigger the changing effects will all be tuned in further passes i mean look at this pistol that's not a normal pistol give me that pistol

11. 00:08:09

    alternate tests also include using different patterns for distributing the damage effect across these new sdf shields like this hexagon pattern which always just looks really sci-fi and futuristic as for which patterns which colors and which tunings will be used when sdf shields come online well we're all just gonna have to wait and see in environment news the team is finishing up a series of daily passes updating many of the aspects found across stanton's planets and moons ahead of the upcoming alpha 3.12 now these polishes are part of an ongoing effort that started earlier this year to bring these existing areas in line with new technologies as they've been developed things like the new organic shader the height map improvements updated ground

12. 00:08:57

    textures using scanned elements a newly robust geology library and more the planet team has been working on developing ocean buoyancy on a per entity basis and generating the rule sets for creating procedurally placed items derelicts and more out across the ocean's surface now there are a number

13. 00:09:44

    of exciting possibilities here including advanced traversal for the recovery of resources or mission items submerged exploration and more now obviously the shader work you're seeing here is very work in progress as this is a test of tech and not visuals but it is an exciting look at the ongoing explorations exploring what's possible also here's here's henry on a duck going going up and down sometimes you gotta take the bat with the good we've also got this look at the current progress of touch bending which will be used to provide a more realistic experience when traveling through areas like the hurst and savannah the team has made some good progress since we last showed their efforts but some of the ways they still want to improve on what

14. 00:10:32

    you're seeing here is to get a bend that's not quite the complete crumple demonstrated here while also getting a much slower return to upright so that it's then possible to visually track players or creatures through the tall grass beyond these challenges the team also needs to develop an effective way to apply the various level of detail versions necessary for a massively multiplayer game of our scale it's one thing to get this looking good up close but it still has to work for those far away and the team is looking forward to tackling that challenge in the new year finally if you've been watching isc weekly you've seen that we've been following along with the continuing evolution of our colonial homesteads intended to be found throughout the persistent universe and in our last sprint report of the year let's go ahead

15. 00:11:20

    and take a look at just one of the earliest internal white box layouts for a communal module now is this a bar a hab a kitchen an activities hall we don't know yet that's part of the fun of game development because these homesteads are meant for the far-reaching frontier areas of something like pyro the team is exploring things like storm shutters to protect from the elements outside as well as vertical traversal options to allow players to get wherever they need to go for a variety of gameplay opportunities overall these homesteads are still in an exploration phase and haven't fully entered production just yet but homesteads like these are just chock full of potential in what they can add to the overall star citizen experience so what we learned this week well we

16. 00:12:16

    learned that the talon and the italian shrike are ready to claw their way through the competition in the upcoming alpha 3.12 that sdf shields are the next step in making ship combat a more robust and rewarding experience and that things like touch bending a buoyancy homesteads and more aim to bring new life and possibility to the surface of star citizen's planets and moons in the coming year for inside star citizen i'm jared huckaby don't forget to tune in tomorrow to learn more about alpha 3.12 on star citizen live and we'll see you all right back here next week you