Everyone is alive and well here. We have sunny skies. Most of the crazy stuff going on was south of us. We just had a lot of rain. But yeah, our thoughts are out with everybody down closer to the coast that's having to deal with it.
Matt Sherman has talked about this a couple times in Spectrum chat. Basically, in fitting all the gameplay that they want the Cutlass to be able to handle, toilet gameplay was low on the priorities. So it's one of those things, you can't have everything. It's like specking out a character in an RPG. You can't have 50 strength, 50 stamina, 50 intelligence, 50 charisma. To put something in, you have to take something out, and the toilet was the unfortunate thing. Consequence of the improved gameplay for the Cutlass.
And I would say that kind of dates back to just the very original concept of Drake. They cut corners to make a ship that, and I hate to say this, but everybody say it with me together, to make a ship that punches above...
Very, very, very soon. I want to do a live stream of Special Ops 1 and I want to do another museum as soon as we possibly can. One of the absolutely fantastic things about recovering from surgery: it turns out I haven't been able to see for two or three years. The thing that happened to my eye was slowly happening over the last several years and I just put it out of my mind. I don't want to deal with this. So I've been literally flying blind on all of the previous streams.
We just didn't do one this year. That's all. We had a lot going on. This year, it's just because, when you do something every single year, it kind of loses its charm, I think. It's not a unique item at that point. I like when we shake things up, personally.
Well, we were also between flair teams at the time. I remember Behaviour did the previous ones. When we do a trophy or something that has to be in the game at an event, it gets planned eight months before and done in advance to impact the game. So in this case, I think it just worked out that we were making the transition from the team in Canada to the team in Austin and it just didn't happen.
Remember that there is a Subscriber section in every Monday's Citizens of the Stars where Alexis tells you all the latest subscriber information. So if you are a subscriber and you're wondering what's up, I recommend checking that out every Monday.
TL;DRHow long oxygen lasts in space isn't fixed; the first version will be adjusted over time based on tester feedback, so the current value is not the final one.
It's basically the same answer as the Idris question. Whatever it is today isn't necessarily what it's going to be tomorrow, isn't necessarily what it's going to be when it comes out, isn't going to be what it is three weeks after it comes out. That's a thing where we will put our first iteration of it out, and then you guys will test it, you guys will give us feedback, and then we'll continue to adjust. It's all part of running a live environment during testing. So how long the oxygen will last in space is a fluid concept that will be tweaked and changed as time goes on.
But let me tell you exactly why I'm really excited about running out of oxygen and dying in space. In 20 years, I've killed thousands and thousands of video game monsters and giant crabs and evil knights and so on. But the stories I keep coming back to in my head after all this time are when you run out of food in the Ultima games and your companions have to starve slowly. It's cool to see that again.
No, it's exciting. I only had that small sliver of 3.0 gameplay for the four days on the show floor. But as DJ and Gamble and Meyer showed, we're building the tools, the crazy things that you guys are getting to do with these things. That's what excites me most about 3.0, is watching the emergent gameplay that you guys invent with the tools that we give you.
I'm confident we will overcome any issue. As with anything in Star Citizen or game development in general, it will take longer than we would like, but it will work out. And that's the positive side of all this, is we have the time to do it right.
If you want to see a very, very, very early look at the physical design process of it, you can check out images that were taken from our Dragon Con panel just last weekend.
Yes, they will. Not for everything. The five or six ships that are becoming flyable will go up a little bit. And we'll add a couple more permanent ships to the store.
One of the things that often gets asked of us is, what is the value of pledging early? What is the value of buying these ships at concept stage? And that is one of the biggest things that we can do for people, is offer them the lowest price at concept stage. So some of the ways that we add value to that is through this.
Yes, it's the single-player component of Star Citizen. It allows you to be an enlisted officer and fight against the Vanduul in a thrilling single-player adventure.
For those of you asking more Squadron 42 questions, my answer was my polite way of saying that there's not much we can talk about for Squadron 42. It is the one aspect of our development process we can keep spoiler free. So it's very important to us that we don't spoil any of that for you. So generally speaking, we're going to stay away from Squadron 42 questions.
TL;DRSpectrum 2.6 is independent of 3.0 but development is slower than normal because Turbulent's limited resources are focused on the Delta Patcher, with the next two patches already designed.
No. Spectrum 2.6 is completely independent. It's just that right now a lot of Turbulent's resources are spent on the Delta Patcher and getting that up and running. Like all things, there's only a finite number of resources. Even with 500 people across five studios in the world and then Turbulent on top, there's still only so many things that we can work on at a time, and a lot of Turbulent's focus right now is on the Delta Patcher. So the next two Spectrum patches, they're all kind of designed, they're all kind of laid out with the features that they want. It's just development is slower than normal while resources are attached to the Delta Patcher. We all know how important the Delta Patcher is. So it makes sense why their focus is there at the moment.
We're really looking forward to it. It's basically like any late 90s space sim where they figured out they could add a layer of complexity by having three different power settings and you have to balance between shields and engines and guns. So we're all on guns right now at Turbulent.
Yes, it's my fault that it's not out yet, because I'm supposed to write an article for it that David Ladyman has very politely been on me about. So I'm going to do that this weekend and then we'll get our sample and the process will continue on. But it is 100% my fault that it's not done right now.
Yes. If you CCU to the Aquila, that comes with the Ursa and the Merlin. So the Aquila's at a terrific value at the moment, and one of the ships very likely to go up in price for 3.0.
TL;DRThe new ship matrix is intended to come with the website update, with a second data pass under way, and it won't be perfect on release and will need further work.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is being worked on, and they're currently doing a pretty large revamp to our website just to make it more intuitive and upgrade it. And the ship matrix, I think, might be coming with that, right?
The new matrix is far more complex than the old matrix. That's why the old matrix that's currently available on the website has gotten so far into disarray. With the implementation of Item 2.0 and the ship component system, there was just no equivalence between the old system and the new. So he is helping us out with Turbulent to make sure that the new system covers all the various ship components that are necessary to fully describe to you the capabilities of a ship. We had Kirk Tome first. Kirk Tome did a great job going through all 103 of our ship variants and collecting all that data. And then even after that happened, there were still discrepancies, because it's 103 ships all with 30 to 40 different components and stats and stuff. So John Crewe has made another pass. We will go and do a sanity check with that. If we need a third pass after that, we'll keep going. But yeah, it's a lot of work and we know how important it is to a lot of people. So we're taking our time with it to make sure it's as good as it can be when it rolls out. It will still need work after it rolls out. It's not going to be perfect when it comes out. It will be the first iteration of this new system. But top men are on it.
We have seen your threads on Spectrum requesting it. We have forwarded that feedback and we have followed up with that feedback, because we want it just as much.
TL;DRYes, ships are built independently of patches and slotted into whichever patch comes next once they are ready, rather than being scheduled for specific patches.
Yes. Ships are built independently of our patch system. In fact, one of the most common questions we get is, will this ship be in this patch? And the honest answer is, basically, they work on ships until they become ready, and then when the ship is ready, it goes into whatever the next patch is. So it's not that this ship is scheduled for 3.1 or this ship is scheduled for 3.3. The ships are actively being built at all times. And when they become ready, that's when we slot them into a patch. Like, for instance, when 3.0 was first announced and planned, the updated Aurora was not in 3.0. It wasn't until the development of 3.0 took longer and went on through months that the Aurora became ready. And so now it goes in.
Yes, they did. They did that real darn fast. We thought the Aurora was originally going to be a 3.1 ship, and they got their work done quickly, and 3.0 development is taking what it took, so that's how it goes. When it's ready, that's the patch it goes into. So when we say when it's ready, it's not that we're being sly or coy with the answer. It's the legitimate truth. When it becomes ready, it goes into the patch that's there for it.
The 300 series rework has not begun. It is currently scheduled for the end of the year. However, that's a schedule dependent on other things. Like the artist that's going to be doing it, he's got things to do before that. And how long or short those take will determine when he gets to go to the 300. So we're thinking it'll start in December. That's what's on the schedule. But honestly, it's like all other aspects of development. It depends on everything that's got to happen before it.
Yes. Two weeks from today, Josh Herman will be returning for another Happy Hour Game Dev. You create a creature. So, yes, we are going to try this again. So that's our next Happy Hour in two weeks.
Same deal as the Carrack. It's not actively worked on right now, so there's no information. When its time comes up in the schedule, you can be certain we will let you know. So I promise we're not going to keep that a secret. When work on the Carrack or the Merchantman begins, we'll let you know.
Yes, what I'm happiest with about our output in the last year or so is we share the ships when they go into production rather than, the first two years or so we kind of kept it until the ship was totally ready, and now we share the process more and it's great.
It's one of the virtues of having our more in-depth studio reports in ATV and stuff like that. So trust me, when it goes into production, we'll let you know.