Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse - July 1st, 2016

Tyler Witkin · Co-host, Community Manager

While we can't go into detail about 2.0 and what all it will contain, it's actually going really well. John Erskine in Austin has been traveling and working really closely with Turbulent. And it's going to be awesome. As you guys know, it went from one thing and now it has encompassed many things. But it's on track for when it's planned to come out so far. And it looks awesome.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

What I will tell you now is that it's not called Org 2.0 anymore. Org 2.0 was an idea that was this big. That's where it started. And when they got into it, they realized that all these things that we wanted to build for Org 2.0 would benefit everything. Because we wanted to give orgs their own forums. We wanted to give them their own chat. We wanted to give them proper friends lists and stuff like that. And then we realized, well, it would be really cool if it all synced with the game and stuff. And you'd be able to talk in game and through the website. So it started growing. We realized this isn't just a thing that we want for orgs. This is a thing we want for our entire game. Communications platform. So it's now what will eventually become the entirely new communications platform for the Roberts Space Industries website. It means new forums, bespoke forums that our friends at Turbulent have created themselves, not repurposing an existing thing like Vanilla. The forums we use now are based on Vanilla. The chat is based on an XMPP client, and they're drastically modified, drastically. Turbulent made so many modifications to Vanilla that Vanilla started buying their modifications to add back to Vanilla from them. But again, there's only so far using something else can take you. Star Citizen is such a bespoke, unique project, and there's so many things that we want to do, and Chris is, God love the man. He's just like, why don't we do that? It's like, well, nobody does that. Nobody has that. It's like, well, then we should be the first. It's like, I love you.

Tyler Witkin · Co-host, Community Manager

It's really cool, and you'd think that there may not be something to get actually hyped about, but there is. It's cool.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

So Org 2.0 is now a global thing that will affect everybody, whether you're in an organization or not. It still has everything that we said it was going to do for the organizations, but it's a new chat. It's new forums. It has similar functionality to Discord in a lot of ways. Again, if we get half the stuff that we're shooting for, it will be amazing. So that's why I'm not sitting here listing off a bunch of details, because you shoot for the moon and you try to land as close to the moon as you can. So we are shooting for Saturn on this. And if we land on the moon, it'll be fantastic.

Tyler Witkin · Co-host, Community Manager

And we already have working prototypes that we're testing. So it's definitely coming.

Tyler Witkin · Co-host, Community Manager

2.4.1 was our last patch in the 2.4 stream. Of course, that could change. If everything goes to crap, then yeah, it's possible if we have to recover something. But as of right now, we're going full force towards 2.5, and everybody's really excited about it. We had our champagne toast to 2.4, and all are looking forward to the next patch.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

The plan right now, the thing that we're considering right now, it's not finalized yet, is that all the segments will just be broken out into their own things now. So in a way, yes. It's gonna be hard. You're gonna have to see it as it rolls out, because again, it's one of those things, we have a lot of ideas in place and we're trying a bunch of things, we're gonna see what works. So that is definitely something that's on the table. But I can't tell you for certain.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

Yes, we'll be broadcasting for five days, from when the doors open to when the doors close. We're going to be broadcasting, barring any technical mishaps that happen. But yeah, we'll be going through every aspect of Star Citizen, playing all the game modes, going through all the missions. We'll have the latest build, and we're hoping that we'll have a build beyond that so we can show you some of the upcoming stuff. We'll be doing giveaways and doing interviews as folks come by. We'll be sitting down and talking to them about their work on the game. We expect it to be a lot of fun and very different from something we've done before.

Tyler Witkin · Co-host, Community Manager

That's not true. If it is, I'll check after the show, but we do have an Ask a Dev section. I was actually just talking to Jake Ross, producer in the Austin studio, yesterday, who said whenever the developers in Austin are waiting for a build to compile or have any downtime, they're going to go in there and answer a bunch of y'all's questions. And I think the UK has already been in there recently answering questions. So yeah, that's an untapped resource that a lot of people don't know about. But yeah, the Ask a Dev section is active on our forums.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

And it's not based on patches. There's no 2.0, there's no 2.4. It's based on disciplines. So there's an Ask a Dev section for programming, an Ask a Dev section for design, an Ask a Dev section for audio, an Ask a Dev section for AI, stuff like that. So it's about disciplines. So it's not tied to any one specific patch, because we're moving too fast for that kind of stuff.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

It hasn't started yet. Basically, there are things before it that need to happen. It's on the schedule. It's just the things that are before it. Some Squadron 42 stuff. Some stuff that Gurmukh's working on already. Gurmukh's playing with space stations right now, actually. It's really cool. But it's basically when things align, we're ready to move on to the next phase. But it has not moved on to that phase yet. So the Carrack is right now in the same place it's been for quite some time. It's just waiting for resources. We've got a team of over 300 people working internally now, not counting all of our third-party resources. And that's huge, but that's still finite. There's still only so many things that somebody can work on at any given time. While the Carrack is super important, it's more representative of mid-gameplay or end-gameplay, and we're still building the beginning gameplay stuff, so it's not the super huge priority at the moment. But it's on the schedule, and I don't know when it's going to start. It'll start when it's ready, basically. It's the best I can give you at this point.

Tyler Witkin · Co-host, Community Manager

We are not feature locked for 2.5, so I don't want to give specifics about what type of additions will come with the pirate station, if it's even in 2.5. We're still ironing all that out. But the pirate station is being worked on. And it's gorgeous. It has a very similar vibe to Nyx. Very dark and gloomy. You might find a murder scene with caution tape across it. And yeah, so there is definitely grungier clothing that is being worked on. And so we'll see what goes in in time.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

We hope so. It's one of those things, it's again, nobody else is doing convention appearances at this point in development for a game that's at this point in development. So we did a lot of them early on while we were still spooling up. One of the more common things that gets thrown around is how long Star Citizen has been in development. And it was announced November 2012, and the team was five or six loosely affiliated people under whatever the incorporation was at the time. And then we had to build. We had to build a company as well as the game. But we had to build the company before we built the game. And that included building out Austin, building out LA, building out Manchester, then building out Frankfurt. And I think you see this with the amount of output that's come out this year, since December. It's only been recently that we're now up 100%, with a full head of steam and going. When I say recently, I'm talking about the last year and stuff like that. It's all about perspective when you say soon and recently and all that stuff. So what I say might be different than what you'd say, but to me, in the overall scope of things, it seems like it's recent, but it's been well over a year now. Now I've lost my train of thought. But yeah, so we've been splitting this stuff up. So during those times when we were waiting for a lot of systems to come online, it was easy for people to take off and go to these different events and for us to do these parties and stuff like that. But now that everything is firing and everything's got a full head of steam under it and everything is chugging along, it's a lot harder to break away and do parties and events like this, because they can be pretty disruptive. So that's one of the reasons we're not doing a giant Gamescom presentation this year like we have in past years. For CitizenCon it's a little easier because it's right in our backyard. So CitizenCon will be more in line with the type of events that we've traditionally done. But I just can't tell you. It's one of those things we hope to do. We did a Bar Citizen up in Canada with the Behaviour and Turbulent teams. And they live streamed it. It was six months ago, eight months ago. I don't know.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

For ATV 100, we had these three videos of the Caterpillar set up: a habitation module, an engine room module and a cargo module. And that's what you're gonna see in the first three parts of ATV. You saw the habitation module this week, and next week you'll see the cargo, and the week after that you'll see the engine room. When we were putting together the Dragonfly sale, we realized that there was a lot of tie-in potential with the Caterpillar, so we cut a much smaller version of each of those videos together as one one-minute thing. So you've seen glimpses of each of these modules, but you haven't seen the full reveal. When the Dragonfly sale went up, I think there was 28 seconds of the habitation module, and I know because I cut that video together, and then in the Fast Forward yesterday I think there's almost two minutes of it. So there's actually more. So basically it's an extended look at the habitation modules that have been built out in CryEngine by our team here in LA: Elwin Bachelor Jr., Justin Wentz, Dan Kaminsky, and Ariel. Ariel's the fourth man on that team. He just didn't want to appear on camera. He's shy. But we love you, Ariel. But yeah, so it's an extended look at the habitation module for the Caterpillar being built in CryEngine now. And then next week, you'll see the extended look at the cargo. And the week after that, you'll see the extended look at the engine room. And then we're hoping if there is a part four, maybe we'll have another module in time. It's just too early to tell.

Tyler Witkin · Co-host, Community Manager

I didn't want to give specifics, but I'm going to just throw a bone here. It is embedded in the side of an asteroid, and it is much larger than you would expect it to be. You're going to think it's like this big. No, it's huge. There's parts of it where you can EVA. There's parts where you can't, parts where it was incomplete. It honestly is my favorite destination. That will be in Crusader and it'll be located in the Yela asteroid belt.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

Well, normally on RTV, we have the Director of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships. We don't have him this week. So again, it's one of those things where we know a lot, but certain people are better suited to deliver certain bits of information. So we always try to get the closest to the source on these things. And if you can hear about it from me or you can hear about it from our director of spaceships, I think the choice is obvious.

Tyler Witkin · Co-host, Community Manager

I mean, the generic stuff always applies. Obviously Josh is still working on the Herald. Chris is still working on the Hornet, but you guys don't want to hear the same stuff as last week, and some of the goodies, Ben will know more about than us.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

Everybody's going to have an opinion, but we are shooting for about half an hour. And that's, of course, if ATV sticks around. So that's what we're shooting at, probably even shorter. Like I said, we're gonna break the segments out and it's all gonna be shorter, more palatable things.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

If you mean the show, until we feel our replacement is ready. If you mean the person, until his filming is done, I honestly don't know how long that is. I learned a long time ago that there's no tracking Chris Roberts. I just can't do it. He is all over the place. He's not the only person, but he's one of those people where I can respect his work ethic, as hard as I work. So there's just no trying. So I don't even.

Tyler Witkin · Co-host, Community Manager

2.5 has been in testing with QA for a little while. We have not branched yet. So for those of you who understand exactly how it works, they are testing in the game dev stream. They've been testing what we have in there so far. We're not quite feature locked, but it's going really well.

Tyler Witkin · Co-host, Community Manager

I'm sure we'd love to do that. He's a very, very busy and passionate guy. And you know that when you schedule Tony Zurovec for something, it's going to be a long segment because the guy is very passionate. So I'm assuming, and maybe you know something I don't, Jared, but I'm assuming whenever we can, because we love having him on too.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

Those things are entirely up to them. Like I said, we don't force anybody to be on camera. Most people, when they got into video game development, didn't do it because they were social butterflies. So it's why community teams exist in most cases. So it's not uncommon to see a lot of the people here working in the dark, lights turned out, lit only by the glow of their monitors, working for hours on end. That's the typical video game developer kind of thing. So we don't force anybody to appear on camera. But when he feels comfortable, and when he wants to, and any time he wants to, we're happy to have Tony Zurovec on any show he wants to be on.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

No, just the one. It's not to say that you can't swap them out with something different in the future, but right now we've got enough ships and enough variants already declared and stuff that we've got to build through. We're not trying to create anything else right now. So it will be the standard command bridge module for the time being.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

Absolutely. One of the things we're also doing when we're at Gamescom, while we will be broadcasting during the day, at night there will be some version of a Bar Citizen every single night. So we're doing a meetup every single night. For the first three nights, it'll be informal. Just watch us on social media. It is basically when we're done, we're going to go find a bar somewhere or a restaurant somewhere, and then we're going to tweet out, hey, guys, we're here. If you want to meet us here, we're going to be here for the next two or three hours and hang out and chat and be very low key, and a great chance to interact and mingle with the team. The kind of thing you wouldn't get at a big Gamescom event, quite honestly. And then for the last two days, we're doing a much bigger beer garden type thing. And we'll have the location of that. We're still working on the location. We know where it's going to be, but we haven't signed the papers yet. So anything can happen. But there'll be a bigger beer garden event, the kind of thing that we've done in the past where you see a couple hundred people around. So yeah, there will be lots of opportunities to meet and hang out with people, even if you don't have a Gamescom ticket. If you have a Gamescom ticket, come visit us in the booth. But if you don't and you're near Cologne for that week, you have lots of chances to meet up with us at night. For the following week in Frankfurt, I imagine there'll be at least one or two nights probably where we go out, but I'll be dead. So we'll see. Maybe other people will be more alive. I expect to be absolutely wrecked.

Tyler Witkin · Co-host, Community Manager

It's not necessarily a secret as much as things are very fluid and they change. We don't have the privilege of not having a publisher here. Because of that, we don't have hard deadlines that we have to meet. So when it comes to the feature lock, we set a goal and then we look at what we can get into it, what we can't get into it, and all that jazz. But we will be branching extremely soon, and 2.5 is already being tested in game dev, as I said earlier.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

Nope. Hasn't even started yet. We love the 300 series, too. Chris Smith loves the 300 series. He's excited to revisit them. I think it was the first ship Chris Smith did. He's got a personal attachment to it. He really wants to get at it. Again, it's on the schedule. It's just, so much of game development is prioritization. And when you have the choice between getting a new ship out there and redoing an existing ship that works, that you're just not totally happy with, you go with the new ship. So it'll happen. It's on the list. We got devs chomping at the bit for it.