TL;DRHugo Silva got into UI from frustration with games lacking helpful interfaces and from business application work, and wants UI to be part of the world, such as interactive holographic volumes.
So I guess I figured this out some time ago. I was always interested in how we actually get to interface with, let's say, applications, with games. Sometimes we play a game that looks really nice but doesn't quite give you all of the hints that you need to play the game properly. And I got really frustrated at some games that didn't have, for example, a nice UI that would actually lead the way and actually make you play the game easier. So during my career, I actually worked a lot in business, basically making business applications easier for customers to interact with, reach objectives faster, basically analyzing the behavior of the customers to try and make shortcuts so the applications would actually be more efficient. And of course, all of this also translates into games. How do we make UI more interactive, more appealing, so to speak? How do we actually make it part of the world? Not just something that you see on a screen that you have on a ship. No, how do we actually make it exist in the world? Can we have holographic volumes that you can interact with, that you can look at from multiple perspectives? Just basically making stuff look cooler, basically.
So currently, the process of the item kiosk is very focused on per-item selection. So let's say you would pick some 50 caliber ammo for your gun. You would be able to actually pick the quantity of ammo that you want to buy. But we don't have the experience of a shopping cart. We are not expecting you to buy some ammo and then go to another section and then buy other stuff and then only do the purchase at the end. No, you would probably pick the ammo, equip it or send it to global inventory and then actually move forward. I'm not sure how this in the future is actually going to be, but for now, this is the application that we have for the item kiosk.
So this came out as a safe place that we can actually put all of the items that the player has. You always have the option of buying an item and equipping that item to, let's say, a ship or a slot on your character. But we also may have duplicates. We may have large quantities of items, and we use this global inventory to actually just have a safe place that we know belongs to player number X. And every time that he wants to browse his wares, we just redirect him to the global inventory and we know everything that he owns.
Actually, this question is very interesting. We didn't talk about it, but we can see it, at least in my opinion, as a really nice opportunity for role play, as we currently have with the shops where players can physically go to the items, look at the items, inspect the items. It would also be very nice to go to, let's say, an NPC in that store and actually do a traditional buy. Currently, there's actually no plans, but it is something that we would consider maybe in the future.
TL;DRItem kiosks matter because physical stores have limited space and can't display every item, so kiosks present all items normally while the rest sits in a storage facility out the back.
So one of the things that actually came to make the item kiosks very important is exactly as you say, the limited physical space that stores have. Let's just imagine that a store could have the thruster of a Reclaimer. That's like half the store right there. You're not going to walk in and go like, "Oh, I really like that thruster." "Yeah, don't worry. It's right there. You can't miss it." So it got to a point that we want to have a way where we can present all of the items that we want to sell to the player in a normal way instead of having a pile of coolers in the store. That would just not work. If you want the cooler on the top, well, you need to platform there. That is just not usable at all. So this is going to enable us... In reality, stores that have displays, sure, they show some items, they show clothes, but they also have a storage facility in the back, and we can store those items there like people do in reality, of course.
TL;DRKiosks are not meant to replace diegetic shops but to augment them and address bottlenecks, as a parallel option so players can still walk up to items and buy them.
And I think anybody that's been following the project since the beginning, we can probably attest to this. We're so committed to keeping as many things diegetic and as many things in the world, from transferring cargo to having storefronts, that I don't think anybody needs to worry that the kiosk will replace the tactile sensation of walking into a Casaba and seeing all the clothes. It's meant to augment and to address certain bottlenecks.
Yeah, the item kiosk is going to serve kind of like a parallel option that players have to buying stuff, basically. You can still go up to the item that you want and you can still buy it as, well, right now. So the item kiosk is just a feature that we have that will enable you if you really want to... Let's say you're in a hurry, or, for instance, you don't like to role play. You don't like to go to the item. You can go to the item kiosk and buy the item that you want. On the other hand, if you still want to feel the experience of going into a shop, looking at how cool my new quantum drive is going to look before I put it in the ship and don't see it again. So there's always that option. So we're not taking it away from the player. The player has the choice.
TL;DRKiosks aim to feel realistic and customizable, carrying each shop's theme and branding so a Casaba kiosk looks familiar without copying the shop exactly.
So we try to keep it as realistic as possible. Even nowadays we have places that have kiosks in the shop and people can go in, probably interact with a tablet or a kiosk and make the purchase and then pick it up from the counter. We try to make it as customizable as possible. You would get a feeling when you enter Casaba that you would see the theme in the item kiosk. Everything would look kind of familiar. It doesn't need to be exactly a copy-paste of everything in the shop, but you would immediately go like, "I know this. This is part of Casaba. Okay. I know this is going to give me cool clothes." Again, this is what in reality stores do as well. They keep branding and theming to keep everyone kind of like, "Okay, I went to this shop, but I know the shop's name."
TL;DRKiosks are currently split into character and vehicle types, and the vehicle ones let you pre-select a ship and then browse and buy compatible components for it.
So in terms of item kiosk separation, we currently have separations between vehicles and characters. So imagine you go to a Casaba, you would expect to find a character item kiosk. So it's only going to deal with character items. Let's say you want a pair of new pants? Yeah. You want a new helmet? Okay, you can find it. And then if you go to, let's say, a store like Dumper's Depot, where it's traditionally vehicles, okay, you could find, "Okay, I need to buy a new quantum drive." Okay, you're going to find it there. And you're going to find it because you can pre-select, at least in the case of the vehicles, you can pre-select the vehicle. So "I need a new quantum drive for my Gladius." Okay, no worries. Just go in, select the Gladius, browse the quantum drives they have available for you. Buy it, as simple as that.
Okay, so currently we have two options. It can go either to the global inventory, which we talked about. It's kind of like the safe space where we keep all of the items for the player. Or we can directly equip that item in a valid ship. So let's say you were browsing information about the Gladius, you see a cool quantum drive, you want to equip it immediately, you would do that selection.
Honestly, I can't tell. I really don't know. In my opinion, it would be really cool to have that and maybe it's something that we could move towards. But it depends on the feedback that we get from the players and the sense of direction that we really want to move forward. I mean, technologically, we have the option now. It will depend. Does it make sense? Does it not make sense? Will it bring benefit to someone? Probably yes, probably no. Let's see.
TL;DRThe current design has no search option, but it's a first implementation, changes may follow player feedback, and filters are a safe bet as the item count grows.
So currently in the design, we do not have a search option. But again, like what we were talking about, this is the first implementation. We are going to gather feedback. According to the feedback that we get, of course, changes might be made. We may move towards that. It just depends on basically what the players tell us. And of course, if they're going to say like, "Oh, I really hated going to this store. This store has like 5,000 items and it's horrible." Okay, that's a pretty good motive.
Yeah, like I said, that's also a design question as opposed to an implementation question. Hugo is our programmer who implements these things, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that as the game continues to expand and as we add more shirts and more pants and more weapons and more ships, yes, there will be filters in that sense.
Yes. So for the item kiosk, we'll have comparisons. Currently for Tier 0, this is going to be a simplified comparison. Again, this is an evolving system. This is the first implementation that we're going to do. It is possibly going to get much better in the future. But until then, we'll have comparison, but a simplified version, a lot like we have currently, where players actually browse through the items and need to pay attention to its description to actually get the values they want. But in the future, we're moving towards having a more, how should I say, visually appealing way of actually comparing stats.
So the test setting is actually based on Casaba. It's a modified version of Casaba, actually. As you might understand, we have test scenarios, test levels, and we just put a Casaba with all available clothes and all available vehicle parts. And it's a massive store and it basically allows us to test both the player items and the vehicle items in the same level, which in terms of development is just amazing. Of course, parallel developments are being done for the other brandings as well. But our main focus, well, at least my development main focus, was on Casaba. As you can imagine, we also have artists who are creating the themes for the UI assets, and those guys are always working on new templates, new branding schemes, and those guys are the guys who actually know all about this.
Well, currently, we don't have any plans for some kind of buying history. It does seem like a really interesting idea. Maybe that's something that we can consider in the future. Currently, we focused more on just making it available for players to go into the store and buy the item. We didn't consider the records being kept through all of the transactions that went along. But again, it is a nice idea. It's something that we can discuss. And thank you for the feedback.
TL;DRHugo Silva doesn't have enough information to say whether kiosks will get inventory counts, though Systems is working on quantity balancing, and Jared Huckaby says counts will come eventually but probably aren't in this first version.
So I do know that Systems is working on this. There's actually a balancing of quantities going on. I do not have enough information to talk about it, but there was a conversation, and it seems to be being worked on. Of course, now with the item kiosk, we just make it available for people to buy high quantities of items on the go. So of course, something is being done to correct this kind of behavior. Unfortunately, I don't have enough information to actually say yes or no.
And just to clarify where I was going with that, of course there will be inventory counts in the full, complete operating universe. Inventory counts are one of the ways game design encourages players to travel and to explore the galaxy. You don't want every single truck stop, every single space station, every single planet to have an unlimited supply of everything that they have. We want that to be part of the gameplay, where you and your org mates have to track the quantities and the availabilities of certain items. Maybe not necessarily a red jacket, but quantum drives and stuff like that. So I was speaking primarily of this first iteration, about whether there were inventory counts in this T0 implementation. I don't think there are. Not in T0. We'll see.
Yeah, but this is exactly... we're adding the system exactly to wreak chaos. We're going to bring chaos to the system. And let's see the changes that this is going to bring in the future. This is actually fantastic to mess the economy up, which we'll then fix. Exactly. Balance it out.
TL;DRA kiosk object dragged within a store's radius automatically picks up that store's inventory, which is meant to make it easy for designers to add kiosks to stores.
Okay, so in terms of technology, what I can tell you guys is that we have a concept of a store. Let's say that this store has a radius of about 200 yards. We created an object that we defined as an item kiosk. If we drag that object within the radius of the store, it will immediately pick up all the inventory that that store has. We created this system to be the easiest way to allow designers to create new item kiosks, to have a concept of a store, to have actually an easy way to manipulate all the information related to that store. This is going to be in the future when designers want to actually put the item kiosks inside of multiple stores, may that be the ones that we have available now, may that be the ones that we're going to put in the future. As simple as dragging and dropping that object into that store and everything should work. Of course, there might be issues, but I'm expecting those. No, they don't happen.
Basically, we're defining kind of a trigger that says everything that is inside of these 200 yards is still inside of a shop. So every, let's say, item kiosk that we put inside of the map, if it's inside of those 200 yards, it will detect, "Okay, I belong to this shop." So the 200 yards isn't set in stone. It can be determined by the designer. He can specify how big, how small he wants the store to be, so that everything that is inside of that store counts as inventory, basically.
It is possible, although it should not be configured that way. Let's say that we had two Casaba stores next to each other. In the middle, exactly in the middle, they had an item kiosk, and both stores have a radius that expands and covers that item kiosk. That item kiosk would then show items for both stores. Of course, the configurations done by the designers would probably never allow that to happen.
TL;DRCurrently kiosks are physical objects you walk up to, and whether you could use them remotely through mobiGlas is an undecided design question that they neither promise nor rule out.
Actually, I believe I did see that question in Spectrum, was it? I believe so. That is a super good question. Currently, we perceive the idea of using the item kiosk as actually going to the physical object. It would be, in my opinion, super interesting to actually have some kind of way to switch it up instead of going actually to the item kiosk, like having the concept of a digital app. That would be, at least to me, it seems like super cool, but currently, we have the idea of going to the item kiosk and doing all of the purchases there like you would do in real life, right? Some places even have like four or five tablets that people go to. Sometimes they need to queue to use the tablets. That's just reality as we see it now.
So ultimately, to follow up on that question, it's actually a design question. I was asking Hugo to see if he was aware of any conversations. I don't want to rule anything out, guys. I don't want to commit to it that, yes, you'll be able to do it, or no, you won't be able to do it. I can tell you just from almost four years of talking with game designers here, these systems, the kiosks, the physical locations, unlike the real world where it's perfectly normal to just sit at home and order everything, in a video game, you want as many things to drive people to different locations as possible. Because there's going to be people, I can already see it in the chat, saying you can do that today, why wouldn't you be able to do it 930 years in the future? And that's one of those things where you take it to the point of realism and then you have to bring it back to the point of video game and making a video game work. So we're not going to say you can do it, we're not going to say you can't do it. It's a design question; neither one of us are designers at the moment, but it's definitely a conversation I think is worth having. So I expect there to be a thread either on Spectrum or on Reddit or both, and when you guys have that conversation, remember that we'll be watching.