Developer dossier

James Pugh

Community Manager

All 16 answers
16answers
2014–2015active
Reverse the Versemost heard in
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2014 · 6
2015 · 10
20142015

Recent transmissionslatest 16 of 16

When will the ship status thread get an update?

Ben LesnickCommunity / Lore

That's due for an update any time now.

James PughCommunity Manager

As soon as production helps us out, though.

Ben LesnickCommunity / Lore

James, why don't you chase that next week, see what you can find.

Reverse the Verse›September 18th, 2015·
Published on this date.19 Sep 2015

Are you aware of any progress on getting rid of the use icon in the middle of the screen that's embedded in CryEngine?

Ben LesnickCommunity / Lore

No, I'm not.

James PughCommunity Manager

Actually, they've been working on that for a while.

Jared HuckabyHost, Community

It's baked into the core of CryEngine. It's a hard thing to replace. Luckily, we have some CryEngine experts. It's ongoing.

Reverse the Verse›September 18th, 2015·
Published on this date.19 Sep 2015
EpisodeUI & HUDFPS combat

How often will we see [this ship's] Ship Shape updates?

Lisa OhanianShip Producer

I try to mix up what ships are there, because everyone in the world has a question: how often will we see [their ship's] Ship Shape updates? So it's obviously based on what people are working on and what's interesting.

James PughCommunity Manager

There's a lot of moving parts, so it takes some time to actually schedule it out and have something that we can show.

Reverse the Verse›September 18th, 2015·
Published on this date.19 Sep 2015

Will there be patches again?

James PughCommunity Manager

Yes, we will have those again soon as well.

Reverse the Verse›August 28th, 2015·
Published on this date.30 Aug 2015
EpisodeRelease schedule

What happened to the FPS update last week?

TL;DRThe text FPS update did happen late on Friday; the video version was replaced on the show by internal studio content, and Illfonic is still working on Star Marine.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement

There was an FPS update last week. It was on Friday, late in the evening, but it did happen.

James PughCommunity Manager

For clarification, I don't know if he's talking about this, but there is no more Illfonic update on ATV because we have the FPS update. It just made sense.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement

I've seen some conspiracy crafting about this. Illfonic is still working on Star Marine. We now have a fourth internal studio that can do videos. They're all set up to share what they're working on in Frankfurt, and we just swapped that out for them, because you still get the FPS update on Fridays, the text one. So it's not a case of Illfonic being kicked to the curb or anything like that.

James PughCommunity Manager

There was no slight. It just made sense.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement

Because we have half a dozen outsources: Moon Collider, other ones, Behaviour, Turbulent. And we generally don't require they do video updates. So we're going to focus on our internal studios for the news from Around the Verse on Around the Verse.

Reverse the Verse›August 28th, 2015·
Published on this date.30 Aug 2015

Where is the Xi'an Scout? Is it alive?

Jared HuckabyHost, Community

It is alive.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

It's on our schedule.

Jared HuckabyHost, Community

For those of you who haven't seen it, there is a ship status page started by our own James Pugh in the official announcements section on our official forums.

James PughCommunity

And that will be officially updated soon.

Jared HuckabyHost, Community

We're rejiggering our ship pipeline at the moment, so they have to finish that work before we can do our updates.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

But it's good news that we're rejiggering it. It means we're getting some more resources off Squadron 42 to deliver some of the pledge ships sooner. It's all good stuff.

Jared HuckabyHost, Community

So all of your ship status questions, we don't have answers for you at the moment.

Reverse the Verse›August 21st, 2015·
Published on this date.22 Aug 2015

Are the 2,000 players [for the social module test] picked by citizen number?

James PughCommunity

No, the 2,000 players are not picked by citizen numbers.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

No, they're not by citizen numbers.

James PughCommunity

They are pre-selected.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

It has to do with locations and how far they are away from particular servers. It's all sorts of scientific QA stuff we don't understand.

James PughCommunity

Like Ben said, it's a very specific stress test to begin with.

Reverse the Verse›August 21st, 2015·
Published on this date.22 Aug 2015

When are we going to see anti-aliasing implemented?

Jared HuckabyHost, Community

I can't answer that. Probably not anytime soon. That's an optimization type thing that usually happens towards the end of development. It's just the game changes too much right now as we're building it.

James PughCommunity

That's something to keep in mind. I know people want us to go through the polish and stuff right now, but it's kind of pointless if we're not feature complete yet.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

And it's always a struggle. You're like, why isn't the game out? Why isn't the game out? Why haven't you polished your stuff? And it's a constant battle we have to fight. Never going to please everybody.

Reverse the Verse›August 21st, 2015·
Published on this date.22 Aug 2015

Why was the tutorial locked out of the Gamescom free flight code?

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

That is a strong we don't know, but we're looking into it now. I got another message about that this morning. I don't think it was intentional at all.

James PughCommunity Manager

Unless it was like a last minute fix.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

Yeah, maybe it broke some other thing. We'll find out.

Reverse the Verse›August 14th, 2015·
Published on this date.16 Aug 2015
EpisodeCommunity & events

Is Chris actually good at coding?

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

Yeah. Chris is amazing at coding.

James PughCommunity Manager

He made games on his own for a while.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

I mean, that's how he got here.

Matt ShermanDesigner

Yeah, he's the guy who comes up behind you and redoes everything.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

No, Chris, one of the stories I've heard about Chris over the years was kind of the generic, oh, he just wants to make movies, he doesn't care about making games, he didn't do anything on Wing Commander III or IV or whatever. Couldn't be further from the truth. He loves making movies, but he is a coder at heart also.

Reverse the Verse›August 14th, 2015·
Published on this date.16 Aug 2015

Will you update the YouTube channel now that YouTube allows 60 frames per second?

James PughAssistant Community Manager

I'll look into that. So me and Brian and Ben will try and figure out the best way to get that done.

Ben LesnickCommunity Manager

Whenever there's something new like that, we'd love to find out about it and try to take advantage of it the best we can. One of the things that I think has made Star Citizen so successful is the fact that we will do things like work with the Oculus Rift, just technology that's a little bit out there. So we want to be on the cutting edge. In fact, Chris insisted we do a 3D version of the commercial recently because YouTube allowed that. And we did. Definitely we'd like to show these things off in 60 frames per second.

Reverse the Verse›Star Citizen - Around/Reverse the Verse Live Edition!·
Published on this date.30 Oct 2014

Does that imply that the status of these planets can change as we go along [with Terra only initially being PvP-free]?

Rob ReiningerLead Systems Designer, Product Owner of the US PU Feature Team

That totally implies that.

James PughAssistant Community Manager

Or maybe is that just on Prime? So, on Prime it would be PvP-free, but on another landing zone, maybe not.

Rob ReiningerLead Systems Designer, Product Owner of the US PU Feature Team

Yeah, we definitely want to push that, right? Where it's like, okay, you're going to expect if you land on this planet that you're not going to be able to shoot your way, but on other planets it's a lot looser and it's just kind of Wild West. I think it'd be interesting to have both extremes. And we'll have space stations in the initial Persistent Universe stuff at some point where you can fight all the time. Think about it: as the plot of the game actually evolves, who knows what could change about different planets as time goes on.

Reverse the Verse›Star Citizen - Around/Reverse the Verse Live Edition!·
Published on this date.30 Oct 2014

Once a player is docked at a planet, will it be easy for you to steal his ship, or will there be security measures?

Rob ReiningerLead Systems Designer, Product Owner of the US PU Feature Team

No, no. Nope.

Ben LesnickCommunity Manager

Sorry, prospective ship thieves. So if you only backed Star Citizen for like $5 because you're like, I'm just going to steal another player's ship from their hangar, it's not happening.

James PughAssistant Community Manager

So once you land on a planet, your ship is safe?

Rob ReiningerLead Systems Designer, Product Owner of the US PU Feature Team

That is the plan, as far as I know, in almost every place. There may be cases where it's not. For instance, if you're doing a boarding action, no, your ship is not safe, but that's different. But as far as landing on the planet, so far as I know, that's been the plan all along, and I haven't heard anything to change that.

Reverse the Verse›Star Citizen - Around/Reverse the Verse Live Edition!·
Published on this date.30 Oct 2014

How diverse are you looking to make the environments planetside? For example, can a city planet also have a forest or a marsh?

TL;DRPlanet environments are planned to vary with population, wealth and economy, from lush parks to dense industrial cities, plus other planet types, with basics first and procedural development being a long-term effort.

Rob ReiningerLead Systems Designer, Product Owner of the US PU Feature Team

From one planet to another?

James PughAssistant Community Manager

Yeah, I think he's saying, will a particular planet, is this a city planet? And can that city planet also have a forest or a marsh or what have you?

Rob ReiningerLead Systems Designer, Product Owner of the US PU Feature Team

We definitely have plans for how diverse a city is. And it's according to, again, how many people live there, how opulent it is, the economic state of any given system. That's all going to dictate it. Obviously Terra Prime is probably super lush. Parks and forests and beautiful views because, again, it's opulent. It's the highest end. And you probably have a lot of space between buildings and people. We were just talking about this today. Then you have other places like ArcCorp that's definitely [not]. And there's going to be all kinds in between. There's definitely tons of planets for different, even like maybe glacier planets or water planets or volcano planets. We're even talking about stuff like that. We're going to focus on certain parts first, and then as we go, procedural development is going to be really important to get planetside laid out for more exploration. So that's a long-term thing. We're getting all the basics down now, making sure all the structure is there before we move forward and start to get crazy with the environment side of stuff, but it's definitely planned. It's definitely going to happen.

Reverse the Verse›Star Citizen - Around/Reverse the Verse Live Edition!·
Published on this date.30 Oct 2014

Since it's the first time the Herald is being sold, will the concept sale come with LTI?

Ben LesnickCommunity Manager

Yeah, you've got LTI, you'll have the model and the picture once those are ready in the hangar.

James PughAssistant Community Manager

And that will be available from tomorrow.

Ben LesnickCommunity Manager

Through the following Monday.

Reverse the Verse›Star Citizen - Around/Reverse the Verse Live Edition!·
Published on this date.30 Oct 2014
EpisodePledges & business

What is next month's hangar flair?

James PughAssistant Community Manager

Next month's hangar flair is a fancy liquor cabinet.

Ben LesnickCommunity Manager

And in fact, if you follow the lore builder stuff, the backers selected a brand of liquor in the Star Citizen universe they created, and it will appear in the liquor cabinet.

Reverse the Verse›Star Citizen - Around/Reverse the Verse Live Edition!·
Published on this date.30 Oct 2014

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