Calling All Devs - A Wilmslow Odyssey

Eddie Hilditch · Environment Team

So, yeah, I got this question. I was like, it's a very good question. It's a very big question. I think it goes beyond just sort of scale, obviously, with something like Earth. Earth is a planet that everyone is familiar with. Hopefully. So doing a planet as complicated as Earth in terms of the amount of biomes and the amount of variety within a single planet, we can't do it with our tech right now. There's too many different variables in one planet if we go from the deserts of the Sahara to Antarctica to vast urban landscapes to fields and farms, jungles, everything about the flora. We think about the variety of biomes. We think about the urbanization of Earth and the sort of human-made infrastructure on top. We think about the number of animals. Think about the flora. There's a huge amount of things that could keep us going for a very long time. So we are not where we need to be to create something as complex as Earth with the tech yet. That being said, every improvement we make to the tech gets us closer to that. And it's about at some point being able to have the tech to be able to do something as complex as Earth.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

To do it justice, right? I think it's safe to say that every moon that we work on, every planet that we introduce, and all the new biomes that are created for each and every one, Hurston is adding oceans, for instance, each of those that we do is another step closer to the tech that we'll need to make Earth a reality in the Star Citizen universe.

Eddie Hilditch · Environment Team

Exactly. And Hurston's also where we're sort of making our first tentative steps towards huge cities integrated onto the planet's surface and things like that. Everything we do adds complexity and diversity to the planets. If we take Hurston where it is now, it's much more than, say, the current moons are in terms of variety of things that you will see on the surface. And it's also a much bigger planet than the current moons. So we are getting there. We are not where we need to be yet to be able to do something that is a step more complex than somewhere like Hurston. But that is the dream, for sure. And it's something we are working towards. The best answer I can give at the moment is that we don't know yet, but we are working towards it.

Eddie Hilditch · Environment Team

It's something we've discussed. It's something we talk about a lot. And yeah, it's an end goal at the moment. But a distant planet, let's say that.

Jonny Jacevicius · Lead FPS Systems Designer

So we've got two sides to non-lethal weaponry at the moment, or at least that we've got planned. We've got things that still do damage to systems, so like distortion weaponry and all that good stuff. So we've got some examples of that in the game at the moment on the ships. So we've got those distortion scatterguns that are in live at the moment, so they take down shields, disable ship systems. We've also got the little EMP burst things. So we've got examples of that. We want to bring that over to the FPS side of the game at some point as well. So when we get more robust systems in the suits and everything, we want obviously that to tie in the same way it does with ships. So you can turn people's visors off and all the important information that they want to view. So that's a, I guess we would call a non-lethal way of disrupting someone's gameplay.

And then the other side, like you've mentioned, tasers and tranquilizer rifles. We don't necessarily have plans to do those very specific things, but we know bounty hunting is something that we are going to want to do down the line. So we are going to need weaponry that enables you to do that without killing people. So we've quite robustly built up our actor status system, which allows us to tap into that constantly. I mean, you've seen people passing out from lack of oxygen. That's just an example of one of the things that we do with the actor status system. So it's not completely out of the question that we would have tranquilizers or tasers that can knock people out. And yeah, even the tranquilizer rifles, we even have consumables. So the MedPen at the moment is a consumable and, I mean, down the line, we can foresee putting all sorts of things in something like that to give you different effects. So yeah, our options are very open.

Jonny Jacevicius · Lead FPS Systems Designer

So, yeah, this is something we've not fully locked down yet. I've talked briefly, but our priorities lie more on focusing on the core gameplay, like the FPS movement and all of the weapon handling and everything. So we want to get those core mechanics down and locked into a point where we're super, super happy with them. So this is one of those systems that is not so much on the back burner, but it's on the list of things to talk about. We're quite open to what we can do here. We can have a completely separate gadget for helping you navigate your way around planets because, my God, our planets are huge. You're really, really going to need something to help you out there. So you could use a separate gadget. We could integrate something into the mobiGlas. We could even integrate something into your tactical visor and your scanner. So our options are basically endless here. So we just need to talk further down the line and lock down and hone in on what we want to do there.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

There's definitely going to be something. We're not going to just leave players out in the cold without simple functionality that exists today on my phone. I can bring Google Maps up on my phone right now. So we know it's something that we need. It's something that's definitely going to make its way into the game. It's just the manner in which it manifests is still open to discussion and debate.

John Crewe · Vehicle Pipeline Director

I guess that's a very long multi-part question. Let's start with a single question. So to talk about interior customization, we sort of have to touch on exterior customization. So we've talked about how you'll be able to do multiple colors. So we'll provide the ship in its default state and you'll be able to customize a couple of colors or a couple of areas with colors on it to do it how you want. So that includes the glass. So the glass will naturally impact the inside. We can do that on the exterior to an extent because it's just one material, but the interiors of the ships are made of multiple materials. So it becomes technically a lot harder to do. I'm not saying that we're never going to do it. It's just not on our initial plans for doing it. So stage one will be exterior customization and getting your name on the ship and changing the numbers on the ship or all the stuff like that.

Interior-wise, there's the lights as well. So we're, again, not planning on letting people customize every single light's color purely because they are, again, tied to the interior materials and they're done together to create the final effect. But what we do want to do is let people choose the different light states. So at the moment, there's multiple light states that systemically happen, so you've got auxiliary when the ship's spawned but not turned on, you've got your normal power, you've got your emergency. Those react to game states at the moment, but we want to essentially have a controller or a light switch that you can go, oh, I've jumped into a dangerous area, I'm going to turn the emergency lighting on. Now everyone in the ship knows that it's a dangerous bit, and you're not getting the emergency VFX. So at the moment emergency VFX and lighting come on together, but you wouldn't want to turn that VFX on all the time. But having the red warning lights on gives you that state. So we're going to provide base states and let you choose what light state you want your ship in.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Red alert, yellow alert.

John Crewe · Vehicle Pipeline Director

Yeah, that sort of stuff. Dirt and wear. So at the moment, those are two different things. So dirt is cosmetic, essentially. You can have a 0% dirty ship and 100% dirty ship. There's no gameplay consequence. It's just visual. That's set at a predefined level that doesn't change currently. Wear is what degrades the functionality of the items and the ship's performance. Obviously, that does impact gameplay, and to reverse that, you need to repair your ship. Wear is something we have on items at the moment, but we don't have it on ships. And dirt is something that isn't driven by anything in-game at the moment. That's why all the ships look a certain way, they stay that way till the end of time. When they get hooked up to their systems, everything will start pristine or clean, 100%, or 0% dirt, 0% wear. And those two values can be completely independently changed. You could have 100% dirty, 0% worn ship, or vice versa. You could have a 100% worn ship, but it looks clean, but under the skin, it's completely worn out. And that's really up to you, where you want to leave it at, dirt-wise and wear-wise. Is there anything else?

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

The final part was furniture. Being able to change the sheets on the bed in the Phoenix or something like that.

John Crewe · Vehicle Pipeline Director

We do plan on allowing customization of certain aspects of the ship, like the Phoenix has a conference table, but also there was a piano option and stuff in the 890, where we're perhaps going to have a certain set of tables and chairs, but you may not want that set, so we might provide an alternative set that's a different luxurious styling. There's different ways to skin a cat in terms of luxury styling, and down the line, we'll provide options, and that extends to bedsheets. I know everyone loves the Starfarer captain's bedsheet with all the cartoony space stuff on it, and there's no reason to not let people equip their beds how they want.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

So basically, let you set your own light states, but maybe not necessarily tweak the color tints and everything. Some minor furniture customization options somewhere down the road. Being able to affect your own dirt levels, certainly by cleaning your ship, not cleaning your ship. Wear is something systemic entirely separate from that. And as far as internal paint stuff, a little more difficult than doing the exterior, but not something we're going to rule out, while not something that we have currently in the plans.

John Crewe · Vehicle Pipeline Director

The exterior stuff is in the plans. Yeah, the exterior stuff is where we see most people investing their time in customizing their ship because you see it in third person up close. Other people see it up close. So that's where the big returns are on you spending the time making garish color skins for your ships.