Alex Mayberry

We've got our executive producer here, who can kinda give a better definition of that...

Sure. Producers are certainly project managers - that's part of our job. I don't know that we use whips and bullhorns! But we do help set deadlines. We partner with all of our developers to make sure that they know what they need to do, they know when it needs to be done by, and that there's nothing stopping them from doing those things. When it comes to a green light process, ultimately at the end of the day it's Chris Roberts who decides whether we release something, but we all take part in it. It's a big project in a big organization, and there are a lot of voices that need to be heard to make sure that the game is ready to go out.

Yeah.

A kinda nice thing here - we've got different stratifications on who oversees what, where you've got Alex who oversees everything on a global level, and you've got me down at the bottom who just sees little small side-projects, or smaller scope of projects, and Travis is kind of right in the middle.

Mmhmm. Yeah, how apropos. [Gesturing with arms that he is sitting in the middle of the trio]

We're like one of those Russian dolls that you can stack them on top of each other, or within...

Yeah, nesting dolls.

Nesting - thank you!

Yeah, and you know, it's not just about whether something's ready for release - we also make sure that if we're crunching people are fed, that if we're travelling people have their itineraries, and their flights booked, and their hotels booked, so we try to make sure that everybody has their needs met, and that's also part of the job.

Yeah, definitely. Actually something you said that's a really good point, cause a lot people have this idea that producers are like taskmasters, and that could not be farther from the truth. It's like, yes, we deal a lot with task, but the interest is not, "Hey you! Where are you at? Why aren't you doing this?!", it's more like, "Hey! Here, look - I'm organizing your life, I'm organizing your day-to-day. This all, you know, it gives you clarity," and it's really a partnership.

Yeah, and our responsibility really is to get things done, but we're not the ones who do them. And so, it's really not effective to run around with whips and bullhorns because that doesn't really inspire people to do great work. Instead, we need to partner with them and make sure that they know they can count on us to line everything up that they need.

What we can do to support them and make sure they can get their stuff done.

Right.

I think it was you [Alex] that said, "if you have a room full of producers then there's probably not a lot getting done in game development."

I have said that many times!

So in this particular case when we're talking about double precision, yes the goal is to update the map size. Basically with single precision what you end up running into a lot of times is precision errors, meaning that in world space - and that's what we're talking about when we say "double precision" is world space double precision - it is like increasing the fidelity of your grid. And so, when you normally in single precision have a whole bunch of different things attached, like for example the helmets - have you guys noticed if you really far off to the edge of the map your helmets and your visors can start to jitter and shake a little bit? The reason you're seeing that is because they are are only about, I think it's 8cm from your face, so as you are out, say 5000m from the origin of the level, it's now trying to calculate your world position but then maintain accuracy for something that's only 8cm from your face. And as it starts to round things - since it only has so many bits that it can store the number in for your position - it starts to introduce more and more error. And it gets compounded when you're doing things like, especially on the visor where it's the origin of the ship, then you do a bone transformation to find the pilot seat, then you do a transformation to find the characters head, and then you do a transformation to curve the shader of the glass... and all of those math problems are just compounding the error more and more, and then every frame when it does that you get a slightly different result which gives you the jitter. So that is what we're trying to do, and then with double precision you get maps that are potentially so large that it's never gonna be an issue.Now, when we talk about allowing the game to use more memory, that's more of a Windows thing, and how Windows sees the game. So currently we compile the game in 64-bit so it has the memory capacity of a 64-bit game, so it's not limited in that capacity. But that is a Windows standard, not a "we're doing that in the engine" standard - that's how you compile it.

Yeah, I'd say anybody that's done a lot of modding, let's say Unreal or Quake, you know the hall-of-mirrors effect you'd get when you compile a map - that's a precision error. That's a case of a vertex not being exactly where it should be because it's been rounded, and it creates an error and you get that kind of effect.

Yeah.

I got nothin' ...

You got nothing. Alright! Next question!

I think it's both!

Yeah.

We certainly have a weekly leads meeting where all of the studio heads and department leads meet. We meet over Skype we discuss what we're doing and we discuss ideas and those get kicked around. But then we also have, Chris will come up with ideas and tell us what his vision is, and then we'll carry that forward. We have a design council that kicks around ideas, and then we also have the players in the community - we constantly read the forums and listen to ideas that are coming from the players. So, it's a little bit of everything.

Yeah. I was gonna say, one thing I've observed at this company is like, way back in the day when I was starting in QA it was always kinda frowned upon to put in your suggestion bug, but I would say that this company is super open. Like, Chris especially is super open to QA feedback, and he's always trying to get QA reports, QA feedback. What's the balance like? What's the feel like? So, I think ideas come from all places.

I agree. I've always had that philosophy through my whole career - a good idea can come from anywhere. You don't have to just be a designer to have a great idea.

A lot of our stuff just comes organically anyway, and right in the middle of a meeting we're always like, "you know what? Maybe we can tackle it this way instead?" or "We found that this didn't work, so why don't we come up with this type of missle, this type of gun." So, there is informal process to it.

Well, and there's just the process of playing the game itself.TD & DV: Yeah.

I mean, we have company-wide play tests where everybody jumps in and plays, and then afterwards they give feedback and from that feedback we come up with more ideas.[Everyone nodding in silence]

Killed it.

Alright.

Indeed.

Everybody is looking at me, so...[group laughter]

You gotta have the most tribal knowledge regarding the modular system, I think.

You are the ship producer!

Yeah, so it is a good question. It is something that we talked about with the Cutlass variants, immediately following Cutlass-gate, as you might remember. The idea of making modular ships is both-... well, it's more fun for the community, right? 'Cause you can kind of buy one variant but then go find, or collect, or otherwise purchase the component parts to make it into another variant, mix and match, and it kinda allows for a lot of custom options. So the Cutlasses are undergoing that treatment from Foundry 42 right now. When we talk about larger ships like the Constellation, it's funny 'cause, well, I don't know that we'd actually talked about that, but that kind of the system that we're wanting to move to for a lot of the, umm... I called them "sub-capital but bigger than a single-seat fighter" kind of a ship - where they'll have larger interior spaces with form and function - so that as long as all of them subscribe to a similar layout on the interior space, we should theoretically be able to swap out different functional areas. So like, say if you have a med-bay that is a certain size and has this number of sleeping pods, maybe that's exchangeable for a bounty hunter holding cell area with similarly shaped logic there. So that kinda the next step of the room system, and the idea of the room system for the hangar is to eventually be used on capital ships, but it's kind of a baby version of that for sub-capitals.

Well I would say that our patcher / launcher technology right now is really still in it's infancy.

Yeah.

That's a very polite way of saying it![laughter]

We certainly want to continue developing it so that it is a smart patcher, and gives you the data you need - not just everything. I mean the fact is, if we just did a-... the game is huge right now and it's going to just continue to grow, so the data footprint is going to be massive by the time we get to the Persistent Universe. So we don't want everybody to have to download the whole game every time, but it's a work in progress, so it's something we're still building upon.

So, looking at other technology, like streaming, things like that..?

That's being handled by dev ops team in Austin, so they have a lot of plans to continue to upgrade and evolve the launcher and patcher, so that as we continue to add to the game it gets more streamlined.

That's Jeremy Maskers group?

Yep.

Yeah, I mean ideally I would love to see us have a system like a game I really love, which is World of Warcraft...

Ahh, I'm familiar with that.

I might've heard of it...

Yeah, I think it's a game that a few people know if it... yeah... But no I mean, I love the idea that it is so much more targeted and intelligent about the data that it's giving you.

Right, and if you go back in time in WOW's history, it didn't start that way.

Nooooo.

You know, it was pretty ugly in the early days, but with years of development time you find better processes, and we'll do the exact same thing. And fortunately we have a lot of experience in the company, who have been there and done that, and so we're not exactly starting from ground zero.

I think a good reference to look at is the Cutlass commercial. Here we see a pilot taking on a Vanduul Scythe, and when she blows them up she comes and lands in the hangar, takes off her helmet, and you realize it's a woman piloting it the entire time - showing that she's pretty kick-ass. So I think that right there's a good indicator of he we want to keep things... I guess... I don't wanna say "gender equal" - that sounds so politically correct!

Well no, but I mean almost just like reflective of the real world, 'cause that's immersive right? Women are lawyers, they're doctors... I mean, it sounds weird when I say it, but it's like, it would seem odd if you have a bunch of women running around scantily clad or... you know, some games it kinda breaks the immersion when you're like, "that doesn't make any sense, that doesn't look right," so...

I'd rather see a bunch of kick-butt warrior women.

I think realistic is what we're shooting for, right?TD & DV: Yes.

We don't want our females to be portrayed as fantasy avatars. They should be an extension of who you're playing and they should look like they belong to the world.

I figure, how many hundreds of years in the future? I think difference between- or any perceived difference - imagined or real - would be negligible at that point.

Yeah. So, yeah, we're trying to keep it real. In fact, we are right now finalizing our female base-model that we're going to build upon, and players will have the option to pick their wardrobe, and swap costumes out, and environment suits and all that. So a lot of the way that the female will be portrayed will be up to the people playing the game.

Yeah. And realistic because it's a scan - not just an artists interpretation of the female body, I guess.

Exactly.

Keepin' it real.

Keepin' it real.

Yeeeah.

Ah yes, this is that idea that you could have like your... what is it Microsoft call it? The "second screen experience" or something?

Right.

Yeah. So you could have your iPad there, loaded in, and it knows you're in a Constellation. So, there is definitely a plan to do a companion app.

It was one of the stretch goals.

Exactly, yeah. What the extent of that is, and whether it goes as far as to have awareness of what you're piloting at the time in the game, and be hooked into that level, maybe. So yes, would it be possible? Absolutely possible - anything's possible with enough time and engineering. Are there plans? Well, we think it'd be cool...

It's a goal.

Yeah. It wouldn't be the immediate-... uhh... I don't think we need it tomorrow.

I think the answer is it's not being worked on right now.

It's not being worked on. Yeah.

But it's a goal we would like to- you know, it's something we would like to develop, and it's on our list of stretch goals, and it's something we'll look at.

And what details that kind of companion app would have is still kind of up in the air.

Yeah. I mean, it needs a designer to design it.

And by the time we do work on it, we don't know where tablet or mobile technology is gonna be at.

It would be super cool, have you seen the videos of some of the people that have converted their living rooms into like a Constellation bridge deck... and yeah, having those and being like [twiddles fingers on imaginary touchscreens], having your guys next to you're all- ahh man that'd be so much fun.

I actually saw someone on the forums made a companion tablet app that could actually change their equipment, and actually I believe they were inputting in-game commands to like shoot their guns while they were in Broken Moon playing against the Vanduul, I coulda swore I saw them actually using a tablet to actually enter commands.

Huh!

So, the tech is there, and...

You sure he wasn't just updating Facebook or something?

He could've been... [laughter]

Well, maybe we should rephrase the question then. Are there plans? [points at the screen] Are you guys working on it?[more laughter]

Well, I like the idea of running it like Montessori.

Hahaha.

"You have this many math assignments for the week and if you get them all done by Friday you can go outside!"

I went to Montessori school.

Me too - in third grade, yeah. [chuckle]

Well...

I think a little bit of everything.

I think the first thing to understand about any development schedule is it's not written in stone, right? You don't just make a schedule and then it all just works. It moves around, it shifts, it changes every day. So, you know, when it's time to get something out to the players we have to make decisions, and then have to decide what's more important than something else. And we have to say, "yeah, I know you're working on this thing right now - we need you to stop, and we need you to focus on this. Get that done, and then when you're done with that you can get back to this other thing."

Yeah, and I guess that goes back to another thing that's kind of, well, nice and unique about us, is we're not shipping a disc. So, just because this person puts this on hold for the final push to a patch, doesn't mean it's never getting done ever, and it's cut from the game forever, will never happen. It just means, "hey, until three weeks from now, table this, and then we'll come back to it."

Yeah, we have a backlog of things that people would like to work on, or things that we'd like to see implemented in the game. And on top of that we try to at least gear towards people's specializations anyway. I mean, we're not going to give a UI design to someone who maybe want to program missiles. So we want to make sure the people who are actually working on the project are invested emotionally and mentally in that particular aspect of the game.

Yeah. Yeah, you want 'em to be passionate about it. And the other thing... it kind of dovetails nicely with the other question about where and how do design ideas come about, where, you know a lot of people-... We talk about peoples' pet projects generally to me, in this context, would mean like a prototype for something, a design for something, and Calix is I think famous around the office for coming up with all kinds of crazy prototypes - there's illegal racing, and he created that test level, ship graveyard, where he has his own call-sign insignia.

I think uhh, didn't Murray Cup come up this way?

Yeah. Murray Cup is one of those things that was initially an idea that was bandied about. It was a piece of thing in the lore, and somebody was like, "ahh, racing would be cool,"...

I thought I recalled- I don't know who did it, but I thought I recalled seeing a very simplified version of race map, that then was kinda the genesis of what Murray Cup became, but originally it was sort of a test piece. Like, "hey, I built this to sort of test the ships and fly them around," and then that sort of evolved into "hey, we could make that a thing!"

Yeah. I dunno if you've seen Calix's hologram city? It's so fun to fly around, and it makes me want to do a racing map in a city.

What this hologram city?

It's like, literally it's one of the backdrops for, I think it's ArcCorp, and then you can just fly between all the canyons and valleys of the city skyscrapers.

Ohh, I wanna fly through that!

It would be incredibly dangerous...

Yeah! [laughs]

That's a ubiquitous, unanimous, yes. Uhh-Travis Day: No, it's working fine! [straight face] As intended. Never getting changed.

We like the way fire and forget missiles work, period.

Missile-gate - you heard it here.

I think you guys are joking.

Haha. That's actually one of our big priority tasks right now is getting missile system tweaked, and balanced enough where it's a lot more enjoyable for players to use, and it's not so one-sided.

Yeah, it's definitely not balanced yet. I mean, we put out 1.0 right before Christmas knowing that it wasn't balanced, but the idea was we wanted to get an update into players hands, so that you'd have something to play over the holiday. But right now we have people on the floor working on balancing the system and improving it, so the next patch it will definitely be updated.

Yeah. Specifically in multiplayer there is definitely an issue with them being spawned on the client but not on the server, which makes it really hard for the missile to get attracted by something it doesn't know is there.

That's true.

So, it is one of the top priorities.