Tyler Witkin

So we've been thinking a lot about the roadmaps lately, and ultimately we want to improve how we communicate in a variety of ways so we can basically provide a better idea of what's being worked on, why something may have changed, et cetera. So more specifically, we're looking at some creative ways that we think we can better illustrate our progress that ties closer into how we're blocking out our time internally. We're already well underway with exploring some creative options for how we can visualize that and how we can share that with everybody. But of course, it's going to take a little bit of time. But I think we're heading in the right direction. We think we're working on some stuff that you guys are going to like.

As far as blocking out time, some of that stuff we already do on the dev side as well. We block out sprints that guys are working on, and you can see their completion progress. So we even talked about, could that be existing information we have that pulls in, again, as long as it doesn't give away spoilers and so on.

Yeah, absolutely. We also recognize that as we're developing Squadron 42, much of that content ends up making its way into the PU, which is something that we feel we can track and also illustrate better. And so that's another thing that we're working on. But in the short term, obviously you can still look forward to the monthly reports. You may have seen recently we did an AMA on prisons. So we would like to continue doing those AMAs more regularly and actually talk Squadron 42 when we can. Like Brian mentioned, we don't want to spoil the game, but as often as we can, when it makes sense, if we can do some AMAs surrounding different aspects of Squadron 42, we'll take those opportunities. One of the favorite parts of Inside Star Citizen is the Sprint Report. We're going to start leveraging the Sprint Report for Squadron 42 content again as often as we can. You probably see the pattern here: we just want to start injecting more Squadron 42 content into our regular communications, but also getting creative and seeing if we can introduce some new stuff. For example, we might do some fun regular video check-ins with Brian, with you, and the Squadron 42 team. We've been talking about some fun ideas. I think that you guys are going to like the direction we're going to go with that.

No, we're exploring everything. We're looking at it from all angles. We've even had some discussion, as we've said, and everybody knows that a lot of the things that we do from Squadron make it to PU, or PU to Squadron. So could we even have some type of shared map that calls out which ones are shared, which are unique and so on? Because a lot of stuff you see in PU, although we're not loud about it, absolutely makes itself into Squadron, right? So by nature, it already starts showing some of that progress there. It would just be us calling it out.

And then of course on the video side, opening up shows like Calling All Devs to host Squadron questions when appropriate. Maybe even an Inside Star Citizen segment here and there related to Squadron. Again, where we can find stories to tell that don't spoil the story being told. Basically, what it sounds like is we're going to pull back the curtain, we're going to push open the closed door as much as possible. It's going to be slow at first. We've got to be careful not to spoil anything.

Yeah, I'd say the key takeaway is that we recognize that we haven't been able to share progress as effectively as we would have liked to with the way that we've been set up. And so we're in an area now where we're willing to experiment, we're willing to tweak things and see what we can do to ultimately give more information. And I think one of the big parts that I'd like to note is that we're going to be looking at Spectrum for y'all's feedback. We'll start a few feedback threads. And we want to hear what you think of the direction that we're taking it. We want to hear your suggestions, and we want to keep that conversation open so that ultimately we can give you guys as much information as we can.

I'm confident that we'll find a way that's informative and gives people a good idea of what we're doing on a regular basis.

Aside from obviously giving us more time, by doing it as a six-month or longer block, you strip out those multiple planning and, not testing, but preparing for releases. If you're doing the feature in a quarter, you lose time for planning for that quarter and for testing that quarter. You string them together, you can strip that middle bit out and spend that on development instead. And it helps move away from developing features as a checklist of features, like 'we want to do X and Y in the game'. If you do it in this very specific order, knowing these caveats, you can do it, but that doesn't make it a fun and exciting experience. And we've got a huge amount of features in the game that, if we tweak and polish those, will just work together so much more nicely, and then the whole overall experience becomes a lot better.

When we put new features in now, we don't have the time and things break and it's frustrating; we want to get away from that. Now when we deliver, my huge drive is to make sure that from now on, every time we deliver, it is better than the last quarter you had. We felt like the last quarter or two, because we pushed some stuff in, it wasn't quite as good as we'd like.

And some of this comes from the community, some of it comes even from the developers internally. A lot of times we do a lot of postmortems, we do a lot of feedback gathering, and we ourselves know these things, but how can we make the experience good for the developers, for the community, but then also get the game to where we feel like it should be?

Like I talked about earlier, you're moving away from just ticking off a feature and saying technically it's done, that feature works, but you have to work around it by doing this, this and that. It allows people to have more pride and just a great feeling about doing this thing: this is a feature that I've worked on for six months and it works great, so now I'm happy for people to play it. Rather than: I was told I had to do this feature, and this is what was provided in the time, and I know it's not... this is all I could do at the time, we wanted it out.

And a lot of that is about getting stuff in. There'll be a lot of different cool stuff: getting the economy working properly, getting a bunch of missions working properly, getting the AI working properly, getting lots of locations on the planets with all the different feature sets we have for creating. We've got this wonderful planetary tech, which allows us to basically just create everything on the fly, and the locations on the fly. Get all that stuff working. If we get that stuff working, then we have an amazing gameplay experience, and then we can provide features and content and gameplay for years to come to really make this incredible universe we're doing.

Okay, so that's a really good question. One of the things we like to do with our communication style is to be adaptive to some degree. What that means is while Spectrum has a lot of good information, announcements, Ask a Dev, or even frequently developers hanging out in the live chats discussing mechanics or accepting the latest feedback, we also work to provide information on a variety of other platforms that our community uses as well. Now the reason we do this is because everybody absorbs information in different ways. While one person may prefer a text post, another prefers a video, and another may prefer something more interactive like a livestream. So what we try to do is utilize all the tools that we have in our belt to be as accommodating as possible for everyone in our community. And so what this allows is actually some really cool things like getting to send developers to community-run events like BritizenCon, Bar Citizens, getting to do a cool article in a magazine, just to really reach everyone in our community in a variety of ways. So yeah, we do a lot of cool things. For example, a lot of our developers will take the time to actually go on our community's podcasts and videos. And so that's really what it comes down to: it's not that we don't use Spectrum. It's not that we don't use Facebook or Twitter. It's that we try to use a variety of ways to communicate. For example, a number of shows like this one. So information is everywhere and we try to be accommodating.

Yeah, and a lot of the information that you see on Twitter or Facebook is repurposed information that was presented elsewhere, either in one of our videos or on a Spectrum post. So it's reaching out to as many people on as many different platforms as we can. And I think it's served us very well over the last couple of years. And of course, for anyone that's like, you don't spend time on Spectrum, talk to Matt Sherman, Phantom of Spectrum.

I was about to say, that's who comes to mind as soon as you think about Spectrum chat.

Living up in the rafters of Spectrum, waiting for somebody to say something and then rappelling down and saying, ah, here's the information.

And it's funny, you mentioned information coming from Reddit. Well, we're not actively posting information on Reddit. A lot of the information that you may see on Reddit comes from places like our videos, our streams, Matt Sherman on Spectrum.

So our community is such an important part of disseminating our message. And a lot of the stuff gets repurposed to all those things. So we use everything, in every way and every shape that we can. And I think we'll continue to do that in the future because it's served us so well.

Oh, yeah. I think now's a good time. So in the past, we've had opportunities given to our developers and to CIG staff to appear on various YouTube videos or livestreams for members of our community. Now, as our community continues to grow, so does the need for us to streamline this process. And so this is actually really exciting. So in the past, the way it's worked is people from our community would tweet at us or send in a support ticket or try whichever avenue they could possibly get through to see if they could get somebody from CIG to appear on their show. And what we've realized is that we love that we're getting invited to do these things. We want to do them more. So we're going to help facilitate an organized process to do just that. So coming soon, TM, to the website is something we've been working on, which is an Invite a Developer form. And what this basically is, is an opportunity for you to fill out a form that says, hey, what's the name of your show? What are you guys all about? What's your scheduling like? Because obviously scheduling is super important. Our goal is for this process to not impact the game's development in any way. So much so that a lot of our developers are going to be doing this in their free time after hours just because they want to, which is really cool. But in this form, you'll also be able to request things like, let's say that your livestream is going to be all about environment art or procedural planet technology. Well, you can actually put in the type of discipline that you're hoping to get from CIG to appear in your show, and we'll take that into consideration. Now, of course, as a disclaimer, I have to say there's no guarantee that we're going to be able to accommodate every single request that comes in. But I will say that our goal is to be more accommodating than we were before. This is going to help us by taking all the information, all the invitations, all the requests, being able to put it in one place for us to really evaluate how much can we do, how frequently can we do it, and for us just to make this process better so that we can get more involved and be more engaged with all of you.

Yes, thank you for putting that disclaimer in there. Of course, always the highest priority has to be their work on the game. But I think it'll be a good step towards reaching even more communication platforms than we currently do now.

So, for those of you who have watched ATV yesterday, you'll notice the camera jumped around quite a bit. This actually happens in every ATV. It's how we get rid of the ums and the ahs and the pregnant pauses, because our developers are fantastic at making video games, but they're not always the most comfortable or experienced on camera. So if you remember ATV back in the olden days, there used to be lots of ums and ahs and you all would make plenty of fun of people who would do that. In recent months, we've gone to cutting those ums and ahs out. We usually cover that with a variety of B-roll. B-roll is, of course, the gameplay that you see that goes over when a person talks. Because the stamina system segment was a whopping 30 minutes yesterday, there was not enough B-roll to cover all the cuts. So basically, you're faced with two options at that point. You keep the ums and the ahs, in which case the 30-minute segment becomes 35 minutes or whatnot. I'm just pulling numbers out of the air. Or you cut them out and you get a more comfortable flow with the conversation. So that's what happened. Basically, it's the cost of doing business. It happens in every single ATV. It's a perfectly normal thing. It's just normally we try our best to have as much B-roll to cover those cuts as we can.

Yeah, and seriously, this is one of the side effects of having such open development, where we're really showing you the raw and genuine side of the project. These developers, a lot of them, they know how to program, they know how to do art. They didn't sign up to be on camera to talk about stuff all of the time, but they're more than willing to, and that's just in the effort of trying to uphold our philosophy of being open. And so with that, you'll get some ums and some ahs.

Basically, the Evocati Test Flight is not just a, we don't just release it to them and they just get to play things early. We release it to them and we have specific test instructions. We want all of you to jump into this game mode with these ships and try to do this. We want you all to fly to this moon in these vehicles and go to this point. That's what he was referring to. There are several specific things that we know that we're going to need a large group of people to test, far more than our QA teams in four studios around the world. So that's what he was talking about. We're creating the list of specific tests that we're going to assign to ETF in order to do.

Yeah, and it is very common for there to be structured test cases. Obviously not everybody has visibility on exactly what Evocati is doing, but a lot of it in the past, we've had Ahmed and BeardedCIG go in there and just sometimes it's like, nobody fire your weapons, everybody line up, right? Everybody should fire your weapons at the exact same time. And then they're running debuggers in the background just to kind of see performance and stuff like that. So a lot of it's structured and organized. And so, yeah, just what Jared said.

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?

That's the intention. In fact, John Crewe, I think, this week is taking another pass at how it all works. It's very close.

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.

But as we say, we are aiming for it when the website gets updated.

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.

Well, let's give some credit to the Aurora guys, because they actually beat their timeline on that.

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.

There's actually quite a few things that came online earlier than intended.

You'll see that not just in ships, but in all other sorts of development. There are folks working on things that are for later patches right now.

If their work gets done earlier, then it can get slotted in.

The Carrack is on our schedule for next year, if I'm not mistaken.

That's correct.

So until its time on the schedule comes up, there won't be an update on the Carrack. Of course, the ship schedule, you can see that as part of the production schedule. It's up on our website. You can see the ships that are scheduled to be worked on this year. We'd love to work on every single ship. Like I said, we have 99 ships, and we have quite a few resources. We're over 400 staff across four studios, but that's still a limited number. They can still only work on so many ships at any given time.

But find comfort in knowing that the Carrack is my favorite ship and I can be very annoying.

And honestly, a truism throughout Star Citizen ship development, we get better as we go along. Every ship we make is better than the last one. So I know there's a lot of impatience. I want my ship now. But honestly, the longer it takes for us to get to that ship, I think the better you can expect the ship to be. I think history has proven that.

And I think it proves that we eventually do get to the fireworks factory and deliver pretty cool ships.

We did a tease for the 600 in the last Eclipse.

Are you willing to confirm that that was the 600?

I'm willing to confirm the 600 is the thing that exists.

I think it was the one before the Eclipse, actually. It was at the end of the Banu Defender brochure.

There's nothing we can say yet. It is super, super cool, and it seems mean to tease it like that. I will go ahead and say it's not the next one you're going to see. We're taking a lot of time. This is a really, really special one, so it won't be the next ship you see, but it'll be soon after that.

I see it comes up a lot. In ATV it was mentioned that the 600 is concept complete. That is just one stage of making it ready for sale. There's still all the marketing requirements and stuff like that.

Iteration.

So it is concept complete, as they mentioned in ATV, but now it's to us and now we're creating all the marketing materials and designing the sale. So it does not mean it's ready to go to sale right away the second it's concept complete. But when it's ready, you'll see it.

Well, one great thing that we're actually doing with these sales now is we've learned to do the additional marketing stuff and the game work in parallel. So we now know that we don't need to make some high-res image just for the sale. We do it in such a way that the ship is starting to be integrated into the game already and we take those assets and work with them. It's made the whole thing a lot more efficient. As I think you guys saw with the Nox, we were able to show it in Bug Smashers in the engine the next week. It's so smooth now compared to years ago. It's great.