Around the Verse: Episode 1.15 (2014.09.25)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:02

   [Music] Hey everybody, welcome to Around the Verse. I'm Sandy Gardner and I'm Ben Lesnik. And there are two of us as you can see. Yes, we we tried out single hosting last week. Some people liked it, some people did not like it. Uh, but the fact of the matter is Sandy could probably pull off a single host herself. She's a professional actress. I am not a professional actress and would have certain professional actress that we we figured we should have a little bit more energy. So, he dropped he What did you do? Rockstar before this. So, woo.

2. 00:00:51

   I don't drink Rockstar. Racing sale went great. So, we hope you are enjoying your M50s and 350Rs. I have not had time to fly mine. Have you? I have. I've played a little bit. Uh I haven't gotten out there with the community yet. So, I'm not on the scoreboard. But, uh it's really hard. I think it's really hard to get on the scoreboard. But that that's what's really cool about Star Citizen is it's it you feel accomplished when you do something in the game, even as simple as just making it through the race. Uh it's it's a sort of game design that we haven't seen in a long time. It's it's pretty neat. Well, I bet you Chris crashes pretty well. I I would not take that bet. I would lose a lot of money. We are going to try and discover that tomorrow because we're going to do a new campaign video. Yeah. Um we've noticed that a lot of people who come to the RSI website who do not know about that campaign are just

3. 00:01:40

   a little confused. You know, it's so polished like where's the game? What what is this? Is it a cult? Um so we're going to make a new video, new front page experience, and that all starts tomorrow. Meanwhile, we hit $54 million. Yes. Uh it's incredible what citizens can do. Um, beyond just 54 million, we also have this. Yay. Look at that. Yeah, we made the Guinness Book of World Records for uh most crowdfunded thing. Most crowdfunded thing. Most crowdfunded project overall. It's pretty It's kind of cool, actually. Yeah. Can Can you I never would have thought that I would be in the Guinness Book of World Records for anything other than like pie eating. Pie eating. Yeah. I can't imagine what I'd be in here for. But um it's very cool to be in it. 39 million it says in here. So they did that a little bit ago.

4. 00:02:29

   And uh it's not just world records and crowdfunding that citizens are making happen. We also hit 10,000 votes for the Lego Hornet. So um now LEGO is going to review the set and decide if it's appropriate for their product line. We are eagerly awaiting that and we'll do anything we can to make it happen. Oo, that's very cool. Yeah. Uh, I love when we're having achievements other than just making money. It's pretty cool seeing the community come together. The networking summit is on in Los Angeles and it it is very boring. I know there are people out there who love networking and it is absolutely essential to the game. We're talking, you know, the way way backend server setup cloud structure, but oh god, I can't sit through those meetings. Uh but they are everybody who works in

5. 00:03:16

   networking around the company is here in LA this week and uh they're getting a lot of great work done. PAX Australia tickets also went on sale and there's half of them are left right now. Yeah. Um all you Aies, come on. Show your Star Citizen pride. Get out there. It's going to be a cool event. You're going to see FPS, maybe some other surprises. Meet Sandy. So get those last remaining tickets. Meet Sandy. Exciting. Um, yes, get yourself a ticket. It is going to be a lot of fun. We're also having a little barbecue fan oriented thing Friday. There's a there's quite a few things going on. I know it's Melbourne Cup after that week, so maybe that's preventing a few of you guys, but I'm sure you can all like share rooms. And and meanwhile, get ready for Citizen Con. Uh, two weeks from now, we will be at a uh club in Hollywood presenting the latest and greatest for Star Citizen.

6. 00:04:05

   We're all very excited. Everybody here is working around the clock to make sure our demos and videos are ready. Uh, and we invite you all to check it out via live stream. And we hope things aren't coming in as hot as they were last year. But it's Star Citizen, so we kind of know they will be. It will still be Chelsea's birthday again, but do not sing. Yes, no singing. No singing, please. Uh, speaking of birthdays, tomorrow is actually the 24th birthday of the game that started this all, the original Wing Commander, uh, Chris Roberts Ultimate Classic. So, which I still haven't played, but I think I need nostalgia for it or something. I tried to get my wife to play it a couple weeks ago, and Chris actually came up in back of her and was watching her play, which is an interesting way to have your first Wing Commander mission.

7. 00:04:52

   Did he comment? Did he say anything? Yeah, he asked he asked about the music. Uh, so happy birthday, Wink Commander. We're not going to sing for that either. LTI is back. Ah, LTI. Um, no, we we can explain this a little bit further. Um, LTI is coming back for concept sales. One thing CS hears over and over again, whenever we announce a ship, mention a ship, or sometimes don't even create a ship, they they write to us and say, "How do I get it with LTI?" So, uh, we're bringing back LTI exclusively for the concept sales for the wave three ships that were not available prior to, uh, now. So, these are ships you wouldn't have been able to get with LTI in the original campaign. They're going to be available each for a week only. And, uh, hopefully that'll satisfy folks who want a full collection of ships with LTI. U, we

8. 00:05:41

   maintain as a company that LTI is not going to be a big deal. It's a minor convenience. Don't worry about it. I know, but I like how our fans are very optimistic. You see, they think the game's going to be around for centuries. That's pretty cool. Or they think we're lying to them all the time. We Okay, that's not so good. And we have a winner for last week's contest. Yep. We asked everybody to come up with their ideal Mustang commercial. And the winner is Not Dagger, who wrote this script. A horse is being chased by a mountain lion. The mountain lion catches him. Then it says, "Next time, make sure to get the right mustang." The Mustang is then chased by a Hornet and a 300i and gets away, which is pretty cool idea for commercial. Um, it's not going to be the one we make because we're not going to render a Mountain Lion, the Star Citizen

9. 00:06:29

   engine yet. Mountain Lion's not confirmed. Uh, but we do have another Mustang commercial in the works. It's going to be pretty cool. I had to read that like two, three times again. I didn't quite understand it. And now it's time for news from around the verse. [Applause] Let's do this module by module. Starting with Arena Commander. Broken Moon size has been increased and is currently being tested. That's right. We're still working on the uh double precision which will allow us to build truly huge maps. But uh in the meantime, we are increasing the size of Broken Moon and hopefully the other maps which you'll see shortly. I don't know why that reminds me of Despicable Me. You know, the moon. Anyway, Ciga has continued to work on the Mustang variants.

10. 00:07:18

    That's right. The Mustang's totally out of concept now and uh the guys upstairs are putting it into the engine. Every variant. Aurora and 300 series refactoring of the old hanger variants is completed. That's right. That's the, you know, the 325, the Aurora LN. We are we're getting close to putting them in the game. Squadron 42, the landing system has been polished and a few bugs have been fixed. That is to say, these ships no longer crash when they try to land. Art for the Schuban gray box has also been completed. Yay, you're not going to hear about the Schuban gray box anymore. FPS AI has had their first scripting nodes functional in the game. What that means is that the uh the guys at Foundry 42 are integrating the work that's been done at Redacted on the FPS and it's uh it's functioning in their uh early version of episode one.

11. 00:08:08

    It's not still redacted, is it really? playing that game. I don't know. All right. Well, let's just play that. Persistent Universe Video FX has been finished for entry into the atmosphere. That's really cool. We we wanted the transition from space to ground to look really impressive and they're doing some great work. Concepts for turret props have begun. And most excitingly of all, the texturing of cargo containers has begun. Very exciting. Ships damage states have been completed on the Mustang model. That's the base Mustang model. Um, it's basically ready to go as far as damage states are concerned and they'll move on to the uh upgrades next. Carrick is undergoing some additional work in the concept stage. That's right here in LA. Germach is uh doing that concept work

12. 00:08:55

    and the component concepts for the Gladius have been completed. Woo! Gladius is getting real close. And now we have another piece over at Foundry 42. This time it's with the UK environmental artists. Should I stop? Do you want to start? Yep. Okay. So, Jake, go on. I'll try that again. Hi everyone. I'm Ian. I'm the lead environment artist at Foundry 42. And I'm Jake. I'm an environment artist at Foundry 42. Also, and we're here to talk about our new map. Yeah. New Horizon, which is the New Horizon. Yeah. Yeah. You guys got to see it for the first time at Gamescom, so I think it'd be interesting for us just to talk a little bit about the process of making it, which would be cool. So, Jake, so are you. How's it go? It went pretty well. Yeah, I think um you know it was kind of by the pants of uh by the pants by the pants by the seat

13. 00:09:44

    of our pants. You know, it was it was development in was it 6 weeks? Eight weeks. Eight weeks. Eight weeks of time. In that time we had to put then it was like a new map and we were putting kind of like a new focus a new spin on the whole thing whereas previously we'd done everyone had been in space. We wanted to do something slightly different with this, didn't we? Right. It's never easy, you know. Um, I mean, the easier thing would have probably been to kind of go into space and do something new with that, but I think we really wanted to show something new there, didn't we? So, let's reel it in a little bit. Yeah. So, the whole rating kind of came across was the the capture the core asset, the ring that got placed around a whole bunch of times in space and then people saw it and thought, "Hey, that's kind of cool. I'd like to fly through that." That's where it came from.

14. 00:10:30

    That's where it came from. So, Gamescom is coming up. Yep. Eight weeks away. Let's make a new map. Let's make a M Cup race. That's what we did. That's what we did in 8 weeks. Now, 8 weeks isn't like a lot of time when it comes to make an entirely new map from scratch. No. No. So, we had to kind of pick our battles a little bit. You know, we'd made two uh space maps so far and we wanted something different. Well, broken moon and uh Dar star. Yeah. And it was nice to do something completely, you know, the polar opposite to that. Sure. Planet Services in there bright nice and bright kind of feel and also to show off PBR kind of looking in full sunlight, you know, which we haven't had a chance

15. 00:11:17

    to do before. Well, we've made these two maps, Dian Star and Broken Moon, and you know, the they're the quite atmospheric. Mhm. And but you don't really see the artwork too much. It's in space, right? Well, it's in space. Space. Space is black. Space in. So, we had an opportunity to really get closer to the planet surface. We wanted something bright, something clean. Uh, and something that felt quite exhilarating to fly through. Mhm. So, the art director was keen on making like a bright time of day, just afternoon, blue sky, green grass, big mountains. Yep. Yep. I know about those mountains. Yeah. I mean, well, it was it was nice to do something that different. And, you

16. 00:12:04

    know, a lot of the ships as well, I think they really sung in this new map. But hope hope people when they come to see it and look at it, they'll appreciate seeing like the 300i in the scene in full sunlight. Seeing the new M50 in the scene, full sunlight. Obviously PBR, physly based rendering, the shaders. Is that what it means? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think you say PBS. You say PBR. I said PBR. I say PBS. Yeah. Why do you say PBS? It's always been PBR, man. Usually a Wednesday thing. Wednesday thing. Yeah, I suppose it is. Maybe you can convert me sometime. You're the boss after all. You can pull rank to say I kind of pull rank in many ways. Well, I mean it was a challenging it was challenging to to make the stuff in PBR actually. Well, it was an interesting process on the transition. You know, we transitioned when we was doing the

17. 00:12:52

    broken moon the first map. Yeah, that's right. Didn't we? Cuz we were non we were on PBR and then we went PBR, didn't we? This was our first time to create a map entirely from scratch. Yeah. Yeah. No, that was really cool, wasn't it? Because previously we kind of I wouldn't say we lost time, but like halfway through the development process, we suddenly had to switch from going from like old school game art to to the PBR stuff, you know, and kind of we didn't really understand PBR and what it was and what it can do and how it can benefit the game. By the time we'd finished with Dogfight maps, we were all completely sold on it, you know. And then to get the chance to do that from scratch on a brand new map in sunlight, that was pretty cool. It was good. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. One of the big challenges that we came across was we needed to make architecture on such big scale and that was a really big challenge for us because we've never really made anything that big before. No,

18. 00:13:40

    I mean Cap's going to be much bigger than this. So that's right. Yeah, it was a good chance for us to test the water with some of the scale in the game. I mean, one of the big things people tend to say when they come into the project and certainly since we started, one of the things we've always talked about in the past has been the scale of everything. Everything is so much bigger than what we've been used to in game development before. And that is true true in this map as well. Sometimes you can forget the scale of these things and like the spires in the New Horizon map for instance. They're like the size of a small city effectively, aren't they? Kind of floating in that area, you know? And sometimes you can forget that as you're whizzing past there at like was it 300 mph, 200 m hour 300. Yeah. So, so I mean getting used to that scale as an artist and building it. It was another chance I think for us like you say to to do that in New Horizon. Um and particularly because of the short time frame you know

19. 00:14:29

    uh making assets on this scale in such a short period of time the architecture has to you know adapt to those time frames definitely. So we went for something really clean, modern, you know, sexy. Yeah, I'd say it was sexy. Yeah. I mean it's up to the people at home, but I'd say it was sexy. Yeah. I mean I think it was sexy. Yeah, definitely. Well, I mean, also like the because of the scale of them as well, like and because of the time frame, we would probably like to have done more detail in there. I think some of the more smaller details, but this is stuff we're learning all the time as well. And hopefully when we come to do Squadron 42, which we're kind of really kind of keen to get back onto, we've learned our lessons there, you know, we can go straight into it. Now, you'll probably notice as you fly around, there's little balconies and

20. 00:15:16

    there's little housing pods. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, there's nothing to stop putting some people on there. No, no. You saw that in the trailer. There's there's a little guy there kind of watching the ships go past. Did he have a martini? I think he might have done. Yeah. And if he didn't, he should have a martini. Yeah, definitely. Well, I mean the the I think what it was your idea, wasn't it, that these pods would be kind of bought by some of the affluent people in the Star Citizen universe who pick up the pods and then buy them to go and see the race. It's kind of like a yacht or something, isn't it? I suppose, you know. Sure. I mean, the concept was going for was like the Monaco in the sky. So, this is like a billionaire's Playboy retreat. Where you would park your ship on the surface, you'd rent a little vehicle for the weekend. Oh, for sure. And you'd just zip around to the pods. So, you'd you've got these beautiful

21. 00:16:05

    little habitation pods. Yeah. So, you go there for a little massage. Yeah. There'll be a bar there, a restaurant, you know, fancy stuff. Yeah. I mean, I imagine that it would cost a fair bit of money to get into a place like that as well. It would be, you know, you could afford it, I reckon. Yeah. You reckon? Yeah. You've not seen my car. I have seen your car. No, it's cool to to work on stuff like that and kind of create a backstory for it as well. Like, you know, I think it really helps, you know, to make it believable. U you know, I think that would come across. And I think, you know, this is the sort, you know, this is the first iteration of the map. Mhm. As we go forward, we're going to add more details. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we can get some more of those details in. Maybe like restaurant chains and things like this. Although our 2D guy, he did think about stuff like that, didn't he? He created

22. 00:16:53

    brands and even a whole language or something, didn't he, for this stuff, you know, which is pretty cool. We've got a very talented 2D artist here called Gavin. Yeah. Hi, Gavin. Hi, Gavin. And he was coming up with advertising brands, that sort of thing. And we needed a font set that kind of worked. So, you know, just created a an entire language. Yeah. Which is pretty cool. It's cool as an artist to have that stuff as well, isn't it? Because if you have that stuff there, it's so easy to make like interest within a map. Like you watch something like Bladeunner, for instance. Bladeunner wouldn't be the film it is with that first sequence going down there with all the adverts up and things. Same for our stuff as well. Like you can create these beautiful habitation rings and all the spires and stuff like that. They really come to life when you start adding in those little details and the adverts and what

23. 00:17:40

    have you. Absolutely. What were the challenges? What did you find most challenging on this map? I think the most challenging part was probably the trailer at the end which was done in two weeks and was started by you prior to to the actual final version going ahead. But getting that together in two weeks for the Gamescom event to try and showcase what we can do and what our studio is capable of and also showing the game type and what's there as well. That was What was I doing in those two weeks? I'm not too sure. I think you I think you were living a kind of life of a hobbit. Maybe holiday. You were on holiday, right? Yeah. Yeah. It was an interesting kind of final run up to it. But to be fair, up until that point, we'd pretty much kind of sust out and got the the scene in a good form. Nathan came in and did some work, Nathan Dersley, and uh was able to kind of like improve

24. 00:18:28

    some of the lighting and what have you in in the map. It's good to have someone of that kind of experience to come in and kind of give an oversight on things. Um but but effectively, yeah, that was um that was a challenge in trying to get that get that ready for Gamescom, you know, ship it out there. It's always it's always uh tight when you've got a uh hard deadline. A show the show's going to go out at a certain time. Yeah. Yeah. Which is something we've never really done before in game development, right? Because you work on something and it's like a year or two usually before you showcase your work. But this project is so unique in that sometimes you can do something and then like two weeks later it's kind of going up on the website and it's got to be kind of a finished quality and look good, you know, and that that's that's unique, isn't it? And quite cool in some respects. And we had that certainly with Gamescom, you know, 6 weeks, 8 weeks, you say, and

25. 00:19:16

    then we were showcasing the environment to the world. Hopefully we get longer next time. Hopefully we'll get longer. Yeah, I'm hoping we get longer for Squadron 42 anyway. Not 8 weeks. Not 8 weeks. Yeah, we can have eight weeks. I don't know what we could do. Could we do shin in eight weeks? So guys, I hope you enjoyed that. It wasn't too boring hopefully. Um, so from Jake and me, we'll see you around. See you. Thanks guys. And now on to Mark for another installment of Bug Smashers. Woo! Bug Smashers. Like your deeper voice. Thank you. Hey everyone, welcome back to Bug Hunters. It's Bug Smashers, isn't it? Bug Smashes. Survivors, where the strongest bugs

26. 00:20:06

    don't survive. Back in my favorite level, and this bug has something to do with our engine, specifically flares. So, if I hop in the game, puts me in M50. Going to rotate camera around. And our artists have this cool particle effect, but when we boost, we're supposed to see a lens flare. Kind of think of Star Trek where they popped a bunch of lens flares, just we use it under some cool cool effects, and this time they're not working. Oh no. So, let's spawn out and head to the entity and let's pop down. This is our little database view where we have uh we call

27. 00:20:55

    them entity archetypes which is good thing of it is we set up a bunch of entities and we templatize them. So if we set up this light in this unique way I could pull it down it will always be looking like however it should be. So in this case this is a flare light that should emit an orange glow along with a lens flare. And as you can see, um, creating as an archetype, it does not work. And if I pop down a normal light entity and give it a lot of space, the same flare. Here we are.

28. 00:21:44

    Oh, you can see the flare. Little subtle. There you go. like kind of weird. So if I make a light source and give it a flare as a normal entity, it works. But if I make it an archetype, doesn't work. Oh no. And we like our um archetypes because we could basically define a whole bunch of entity properties and settings and then just say create this archetype and bam, it creates that light with all the predefined settings. And we could use this for not just lights, but for all sorts of entities, models. So, we need to get this working so our the artist could reuse this and let me show you how I fixed it. All right, we're going to go into the

29. 00:22:31

    code. And the first error, well, there's actually two problems with this. So, one, it's not showing up for ships, and two, it's not showing up through the editor, creating a new entity. And so, we'll fix the first problem. And inside here is we call it an entity object, which is in the editor. When I pop down an archetype, it will create a new class called entity object. What's the name of that survivor? I'm going to call it bug survivor. where the strongest bugs never survive. All right. So, this is where it will initialize uh our entity and it will fill it in with a bunch of options and properties.

30. 00:23:20

    Ah, I should also note that uh let me open up our lights. Uh Lua is something we use for a few of our entities. most of our codes in you know internal and C++ but we do have some Lua scripting and so happens our lights are Lua and what that means we have a bunch of logic in here specifically uh flares you know flare enable flare v that gets set uh through here in which the code looks up to turn on some information. So, part of the problem is if you notice up on the top, we have this property thing uh with uh options that define our light

31. 00:24:11

    information. And what was happening is when I pop down a new entity, specifically an archetype. Does Chris like this kind of like throw this here? Throw it. Let me delete him. Then I throw one down. Yeah, it will go up. I have no previous entity it skips basically all this code. And what this code does is if it has a property, it will clone the settings and the property is basically all of this fun stuff. So if there was a previous archetype, it will copy all the settings. But since there was no previous one, we're creating a whole new archetype of that type. It has nowhere to copy any

32. 00:25:00

    properties. And what that also means is if I copy or if I make a new entity, it will try to copy the existing properties from the previous one which doesn't have anything. So you get nothing. So you get nothing when you first spawn it and you get nothing when you spawn it again. So if I go down to where uh in here, so after I initialize uh sometime later it will eventually call this function which will try to update the properties again. So when I get here I am a prototype which means I'm archetype. Uh the editor names things a little bit differently and I have default settings and this is not null. So guess what? It skips all of

33. 00:25:51

    this again. So even in the second time where I could set up my property tables, it never happens. So we want that to happen if we were prototype. So let's add some code here and go, oh my gosh, I am a prototype. I want to clone properties from the prototype. Come on. My IntelliSense isn't working. So, what I'm going to do is open up the header and just copy and paste get prototypes. So, what I'm doing is I'm saying, hey, this is an archetype. That's what prototype says right here. And if I don't go through this path, which you will never because you're archetype, just copy the proto uh the properties from the archetype and

34. 00:26:41

    just set yourself up. So now when the code runs through, it will go to the init function, it will skip all this the first time and then it will go to the get scripted properties. It will set up the very first archetype. uh editor object with a property settings. So we'll get all this lovely light information which also gets filled in. So these are the properties and then the archetype information which is all this stuff will fill in that property tables with all these values and this will make sure that we actually get those values loading brought to you by Star Citizen. your trusted leader in science. All

35. 00:27:32

    right, back in the level. And now see our bright little lens flare which I increase resolution so you can see it. So if I set this back to 90 now I could see it. Such lens flare. All right, let's just crank this 360 so no matter where we are, we can see it. Move that guy over. So now when I enter my M50, I should see lens flare, but I don't. No. Why? I I swear I'm not doing this on purpose just so I can keep

36. 00:28:21

    shooting this. No, no, not at all. This is the second part of the bug. So, the first part was actually um you don't see it in the editor when you drop down, but now that's fixed. And the next part was because of this silly shenanigans prototype engine material. If you don't have this in the uh in database view and it reload doesn't you don't save it, it won't load it the first time. And if you create a new basically a new archetype of for lights, it will never ever fill this out. So if I reload the editor right now, it will actually show up. But since I put it in there and saved it, it won't do it now. Good old

37. 00:29:09

    editor. Now artists aren't going to know that they're going to need that. So what I'm going to do is go into our little code that sets up our entity effects. all and say, "Hey, if you're going to create a light dumping, which this code is, let's we're going to set the default material name to the optics." And in case someone decides to basically change the script and read or write over it, it will set it up to whatever they pick. This value is there, it will override it. Otherwise it will keep the default one. All right. So let's compile mulate. And if you notice here in our thruster

38. 00:29:57

    flares only it did not set the additional properties. So this will not uh set up lens flare. Now if an artist does set something here, let's override this like so. Then it will appear here. I'll override that one. This code will basically set up a new archetype for light and then it will set up certain properties depending upon our fun little code here. In this case, it will just create a lens flare. But we can control some fun variables like this where we could change the nozzle glow based on

39. 00:30:45

    the thrust. And on here we have sounds that change depending upon how fast the thruster is moving or thrusting out. Same thing if you're boosting. And that will directly change some of these attributes if we wish. So we could have the HDR or bloom out the particles some more or the light. So, now that we have the material set up correctly in the archetype and in the code, just in case the artist doesn't set it up, we should now see our thrust flares. So, let's try our light again. It should work instantly. Hey, it works instantly. So, we'll pop in another one. Now, we got two lens flares. Yay! Two

40. 00:31:35

    lens flares. Trying to aim the constellation. And to verify, unless they're like the same size, you're not chasing anything and shooting anything in front of you. Slight lens flare on your turrets. And then when we go fast, bigger lens flare. Such awesome. Woohoo. All right. So, as you can see with our little lens flare bug, we actually had two problems. first was anytime we plop down an archetype into the editor, you will never see a flare. And that was because um since it is an archetype and we're spawning it through the uh as a light but as an archetype and because it's a Lua entity where a lot of its logic is in Lua.

41. 00:32:24

    Uh had to shoot James there for a minute. Uh anyway, because it is an archetype, a Lua entity, and being spawned in the editor, we had some special crazy code that was breaking. Just had to make sure that the property tables were getting set up correctly for this light archetype so it could send it to Lua so we could see that lens flare. And it was a lot of little fidelity to make sure that worked and was able to track it down to one specific area in the code that was like not setting the property tables. I was, as you can see, it was like a simple one line, actually two line fix. And I did make a little mess up in the video where I forgot to check to see if the property table existed

42. 00:33:14

    because we don't want to overwrite it if it didn't if it did exist. The second bug relating to it was if I have a lens flare and I spawn the archetype through the game code, it wouldn't render because we weren't setting the correct material. Um, in this engine, you have to have a flare material set up to set up the flare shader. So, the engine knows how to render this thing. And um just had to make sure in that little um archetype very bottom the prototype material was set up to use that shader material. Uh by default when you create a archetype um it will not set that value to use the flare. So artists when they create a new flare they'll be like oh my god why isn't this working? So the quick code was to make sure that that

43. 00:34:04

    prototype lens flare gets set by default unless someone specifically overrides that property. So now you'll both be able to see the lens flare in the editor when you plop it down through the um archetype and in when we spawn it by the game code. So our thruster effects, shield effects, and all that could have some flare. Mr. Flares, the tribe has spoken. Well, I think I shot Kix in the eye. And here's Will with this week's MVP. MVP. Hey everybody, I'm lead moderator Will here to bring you this week's MVP. This week's MVP goes to NEZ for his thread about funny things to find in your

44. 00:34:52

    in-game locker. A couple of my favorite are a World War II pinup poster of Mark Skelton and Half a Slinky. So, thank you very much, Nez. You're this week's MVP. Thanks, Will. Now, on the forums, we had taken questions for the UK's new super producer, Ricky Jutley. Unfortunately, he was too busy every day he was here to uh sit down for the interview, which is understandable because his job is crazy. Um, so we'll catch up with him in the future. We've saved your questions and instead this week uh I got to sit down with David Ladyman who was also here to uh talk with Chris, show off the new brochures and make sure in the right direction for the next uh year or so. Let's uh see what he had to say. I'm here with David Ladyman and we are talking what he does best, publications. We are talking what I do best. Obviously talking is not what I do best.

45. 00:35:42

    Me either. And yet I have a show and I do publications. I'm not sure I do it all that well, but uh I get paid to do that also. You did a fair site better than anyone else in the company and you've been doing it a long time. It's I've been doing it for a while. Yep. It's 30 years something beyond that. So D, tell us what what are you out here in Los Angeles for? I am here to work on seven brochures that uh that need to be done in the next two months to three months. And the pattern was that a brochure would be need to be done and it would have a deadline and two or three days before that deadline we would be frantically trying to decide what the brochure

46. 00:36:29

    looked like. And we decided maybe we should do that a little earlier. maybe. So, we uh put the schedule together. We saw that we had about half a dozen of these puppies to work on and we have been putting together templates, talking to Chris, talking to the writers, deciding what the brushers are going to look like. And basically, by the time I leave, by the time Ryan and I leave, we're hoping to have something solid for all six, seven of those brochures. And how's it going so far? We've got three done. Almost halfway there. Halfway there. Uh and we're trying to get another couple done today. Maybe one or two tomorrow. We'll see how that works out. Uh but so far so good. It's they're approved. We have We know what

47. 00:37:17

    we're going to be doing for those. Now, you don't just do our brochures. Uh tell tell us a little bit what else you do on Star Citizen. I do jump point. And by doing Jump Point, I put Jump Point together once you and a lot of other people give me the materials for it. Oh, so at the last minute. All at the last minute. Yep. Uh, and I work with design some and the specific task I have there right now is to help get the three alien languages put I know everybody's really excited about that. Can you tell us how that's going? The uh the three linguists will tell you that it is going well, but frustratingly because they're getting things done and I'm not getting back to them with feedback. Uh it's did I mention seven brochures in the

48. 00:38:05

    next couple of months? My uh the the paper on my desk has about doubled since we started doing the language stuff and so I'm behind on it but uh we're getting some good material out of the three folks who are actually doing the language creation. Now how does the process for that work? We've gone to actual linguists. Is that We have gone to actual linguist. Uh, all three of them, in fact, I'm I won't say volunteered because we're paying them, but all three of them said they wanted to be involved. And, uh, Rob Irving and I sat down and and looked at those three and said, you know, let's go ahead and talk to them first before we go out and and try to find anyone else. If we're lucky, we'll get one, maybe two good good candidates out of that. And we talked to him and at

49. 00:38:56

    the end of the third interview I turned to Rob and said I think we have three keepers and he said we do and so we have three linguists each of them is working on one of the three languages the Vandul Shian and Banu it's um they're working on the grammar on the sound systems uh on how the languages came to be and stuff like that. Now, how do you see these languages being used in the Finnish game? That's a good question. Uh, good on you for asking that question. Uh, let me see if I can give you a good answer. The definitely informally they'll be used. the the question that we're still working on is

50. 00:39:45

    to what extent a player needs to know the language to be able to to get along in the game. And and the bottom line is we cannot require players to know the language. I got it. So, so there needs to be ways that they can get along in the game when they run into an alien without knowing the language. But we also want the alien alien language to be there because it's fun. It It's part of what the world would really be. I I actually did get a couple of uh nervous support tickets from people who are worried that they were going to have to learn three alien languages to play Star Citizen. So, you heard it here first, folks. Uh you will not need to speak Van Duel in order to have fun with the game. Absolutely. So, uh jump point brochures, uh game design. How did you become involved with

51. 00:40:31

    Cloud Imperium in the first place? I got a phone call. Not a phone call. I got an email from Chris. Uh, and he asked if I was still doing this, which was a legitimate question because it'd been 20 years since we'd had anything to do with each other. Fortunately for me, the answer was yes. And the first that first step was jump point. And the others have sort of come along after that. I seem to recall with that first jump point, you had about a weekend to finish it. The email came 12:30 Wednesday night and Jumppoint was due 5:00 Friday afternoon. No, it's also your fault that Jump Point is not the uh 6 to 8 page booklet originally promised. Oh, you cannot say that. Uh the material that was handed to me for that first day

52. 00:41:22

    and a half stretch. It was far beyond 6 to8 pages already. And you know that because you were the one putting it together. Uh but yes, it's uh as there has grown things to say, we've added the pages and you uh you stay in touch with the fans both in the letters column and then the subscriber form. That's right. Subscriber forum somewhat. Uh most of my talking except for opportunities like this. Uh most of my talking I do in the uh in page two of Jump Point. Um, now you've gone to a couple of conventions recently and that's sort of an interesting addition to what we're doing with writing in Star Citizen. Can you tell us what you were doing out at uh Dragon Con and Comic- Con? Comic-Con, I was talking to folks who

53. 00:42:11

    were interested in writing for Star Citizen and that's one of the things that that I do that's sort of wrapped over from Jump Point. We have fiction in every jump point and now I am responsible for managing that fiction and also the weekly fiction that shows up in Spectrum Dispatch, the uh orbital supermax story that just ended for example. Uh so I was at Comic Con looking for writers and talking to folks about what it is that we're looking for in a writer in a story for Star Citizen. Very cool. So it's sort of almost an open submissions process. It's very open. That means unfortunately nine times out of 10 or more we'll be saying thank you, no thank you. But yes,

54. 00:42:59

    it's absolutely open. We're happy. We're happy to see samples from anyone. Now, let's go back in time a little bit. You you've been working with Chris since uh Wing Commander 2. Is that right? Since We'll step it back just a touch before that. Uh the secret missions I was uh helped with a little bit for wing commander one uh but not wing one itself. So you wasn't claw marks. I I did not do claw marks. I've been credited and with claw marks and Aaron Alustin is the person who gets the credit for that. Um now how has this process changed since you were creating documents like this? How has it changed? Um, we right now, okay, first let's see what

55. 00:43:50

    this is. These are the official guides to Wing Commander 3 and Wing Commander 4. Uh, both of them my publications team put together. Uh, this is the guide to the game. This is telling you uh not so much what keys to press, but what strategies to use. Uh, here's some mission flowcharts. So, it tells you what you need to do to win the game. Uh, I suspect at some point we'll be doing something like this for Squadron 42, if not for uh Star Citizen itself. But this is a different publication from a jump point which talks about how the game was made for example. Uh and I suspect when we do something like this, it will not

56. 00:44:39

    be 220 pages printed because printing is just more and more expensive. What about the physical process of creation? Do you use the same sort of tools you would have back then or um actually we are pretty much using the same tools. Back then uh it was Cork Express. Uh, now it's Adobe Inesign, but it's desktop publishing. I I remember growing up with these. I I had especially the manuals you did. You did Victory Streak, uh, Voices of War, all all those great Chris Roberts Wing Commander manuals other than Clawarks. Um, I just remember memorizing this stuff when I was a kid. Like I I know where you call it a heavy destroyer instead of a light destroyer and

57. 00:45:26

    accidentally in here. That's you probably spent more time with them than we did putting them together. But yeah, they were uh it was it's we do technical writing. We we tell people which keys to press to play a game. When you write about a game, it's it's fun anyway, but being able to write about what to do to win and the stories behind the game and things like that, that's that's the most fun part. So, you have a favorite of the things you do Star Season? Do you prefer jump point to updating the Arena Commander manual or Well, you didn't tell me you were going to ask that question, so let me think about that just a moment. Uh I I sort of like the stories the most. And that's it. It it depends on what day it

58. 00:46:17

    is and which one's being more frustrating and and not so. uh the creating the language I haven't spent enough time to decide whether where it ranks on that list but seeing a new story unfold and I get to see it before everybody else does uh but seeing a new story unfold is a lot of fun especially one that's well written and we have been very fortunate to get a lot of well-written stories stories that we've been able to run uh both in Jump Point for in that's where subscribers see things but in the weekly Spectrum dispatch stories as well. Well, I won't keep you from your uh Chris Roberts time too much longer, but you shake your hand. Thank you.

59. 00:47:06

    It's an honor working with you. It's it's absolutely it's it's a childhood dream come true to get to work with David Lady, honestly. So, thank you for coming out here and now you're going to have people looking forward to seven brochures. So, that's pretty cool. Yes. So we have very carefully not said which seven. Thank you much. Thank you for having me here. At seven, that's got to be about every other ship. So that's true. Thank you, sir. Thanks, David. Every time I see you, I think it's Game of Thrones. He does. He does look like George RR Martin. And now for our art sneak peek, which is the ship that we are going to have on sale tomorrow. That's right. This one's a pretty big deal. Tomorrow we're going to have our first wave three concept shell for the uh reclaimer. Uh wait, what? Yeah, rec. Oh, it was formerly the surveyor. Um we had a long internal

60. 00:47:55

    discussion. It was almost the collector. Um the we went to dragon names. There was the wyvern and the drake. Um there was even a point where Chris Roberts suggested the magpie since it collects uh bits of things. And we we ended up with reclaimer. Hope you guys like that and it'll be on sale tomorrow. There'll be more art. Uh, look for it. Next week we will be interviewing Elwin Bachelor from TNGS and he is now a 3D senior artist here which I'm really excited about. I really like seeing him around. It it's really cool to be able to take people from the community who are doing outstanding work, bring them

61. 00:48:42

    into the company, and have them make Star Citizen better. It's It's one of the benefits of this open development process. I hear he's doing really well. I actually asked Chris about him the other day, so Oh, no. You've been giving up on him. Good for you. No. Well, that's it for Round the Verse this week. We'd like to thank everybody for watching and uh subscribers for making the show possible. Thank you. See you around the verse. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.