The developers explain the art style guide kept on Confluence, then answer fan questions on clan decals, jump gates, hangar sizes, Avenger and Ghost Hornet variants, LTI transfers, cargo mass and volume, and unarmed ships. They also cover multiplayer lag, voice chat and facial mocap.
A style guide is basically a visual bible of all the different art assets and basically how to follow, from an artistic perspective, the different cultures and races that we're dealing with, the different ship manufacturers, so we're on a consistent basis with all the different companies.
TL;DRThe style guide is a company-wide Confluence page organized by race, covering environments, weapons, vehicles, color palettes and silhouettes, useful for outside vendors and developed in a back-and-forth with the fiction writer.
Well, basically we have a Confluence page, which is a company-wide page that everybody has access to, and in these pages we decided to go big and then small, so we're starting with the bigger races. And then under the races, we have their environments, the weapons they use, the vehicles, backstory on them, the different things. So if you go to the Banu section, there'll be character, environments, weapons, different things specifically about them that make them who they are, like color palettes. If you look here, we have silhouette examples of the different styles of silhouettes for each of the races, what makes the races unique to themselves. This is really super handy for working with outside vendors and us, so that we can just hand it off to them, they can read it, they can get backstory on it, they can get instant visualization of what they're supposed to be working on.
We don't want to clutter it up too much with back fiction, because that's what other pages are for, but we work very closely with Dave Haddock, our fiction writer, as we're developing the reference and the artwork and as he's writing the backstory. So a lot of times what he writes will alter where we're going to go visually, and a lot of times stuff we come up with will inspire him in the writing, so it's kind of a back and forth process.
And this is kind of important because we have a lot of outsourcers or people around the world working on stuff. So if they're going to build, say, a Banu ship or something, they need to know what others have done and what look and feel you've set for them as Chief Visual Officer.
So there's two different sides to it. One, we are working right now on a new decal and paint system. So the technology should be there. Then it's just a matter of how we set up an approval process for that kind of a decal, because people will try to sneak in some stuff that shouldn't be there. It's not just a decal. People put all kinds of stuff in their decals, and we have to make sure that it's... yeah, I think you guys know what we mean there.
Well, here's the thing. These systems are very, very far apart, so the jump gates are necessary. Otherwise you'd be flying for hundreds of years, which, I don't know if the servers are going to last that long. We'll try. As far as jumping into random locations, no, jump gates go to one place in each direction. And we're not rendering the dark matter between systems, so if we could just let you drive, I guess we could procedurally generate dark matter, which is not interesting.
Empty space, empty space, empty space, empty space.
Empty space for 30 hours until you reach the next jump system, so no, that's not gonna happen.
The asteroid hangar is designed to be at least as big as the deluxe hangar. So it can hold any of the ships that are in the deluxe.
Well, we know we're going to have shuttles and buses. We're definitely going to have shuttles.
But I think he's just talking about mercantile, unarmed. Just wandering around in an explorer vessel with no guns?
Sitting duck.
So are we going to have them out there?
Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, they're not first on the schedule. Right now we're working on the things that are more important, which are ships for the players that they've already pledged for, and then ships for Squadron 42. But yeah, there's a shuttle involved in Squadron 42, I believe.
I think some of the fans out there have actually shown us how we could actually do that.
Yes, something like that.
Because the answer here says, you betcha.
TL;DRNo Freelancer variants will arrive before the LTI cutoff, but LTI is meant to transfer from the hull when buying a variant upgrade, so holding a Freelancer hull should cover it.
Yeah, that's a good question. We get a lot of questions about that kind of stuff. And unfortunately the answer is no. But we would not leave people hanging. If I understand this correctly, the way we're going to deal with this is when the variants come out, you'll be able to buy a badge or an upgrade for any type of ship, and your LTI will transfer from the hull. So if you had a Freelancer that was sitting there and we bring out a variant for it that you really, really want, you can buy the upgrade on that particular hull that has LTI, and that will transfer over. So you'll still be able to get it. Just buy a bunch of, have 10 Freelancers. Just in case.
Redact that, because there's not going to be 10 variants of the Freelancer.
Maybe we'll be able to tell them how many variants there are before the deadline. But that's how that's going to work. So you don't have to worry about not being able to get that on the variants, because you just upgrade your hull and there you go.
Okay, so the cargo hold goes in the ball turret hardpoint on the Hornet. So since the Ghost currently doesn't have anything in the ball turret mount, it's just got a lid, basically, they could put the cargo hold on there. Now, the only cost stealth-wise is your profile increases slightly with that cargo hold on top. But other than that, no, it wouldn't take away any of your other equipment.
So yeah, a ton of feathers is obviously a lot more bulk than a ton of lead, for instance. So yeah, the cargo descriptions on the ship stats are giving you a general idea of how much that ship can add to its mass before it struggles. But yeah, the volume matters as well.
The mass matters, but he was also asking a question about size, as far as the volume of the containers. So it'll be both, right? So there might be some containers that only can be carried by the larger ships?
Yep. So size and mass matters.
Hauling weird space critters?
I don't know. Depends on if the artists want to build weird space critters and animate weird space critters. Well, we already have fish. Fish hauling.
Fish hauling. Confirmed. And by the way, I don't think you could have a cargo with air holes for the poultry to breathe in space.
No. They'd have to rely on the system that you also use to breathe in your ship.
So they're actually, we are working on a hangar update that will allow you to see the upgrade packages applied to the ships. So yeah, it's coming.
Yeah. I mean, the economy is meant to be a simulation. So if they can't get what they need or they can't sell what they produce, then eventually, like any other business, they'd go under. So yeah, then you can have a nice cobwebby factory building sitting around for someone to buy.
Are you sure about that? We're not going to have to redact that later?
Maybe.
TL;DRWhether squadron members across continents can dogfight together is undecided and depends on multiplayer testing of lag; social activity may work across regions but dogfighting might be tough.
So the answer to that is TBD. I mean, essentially, that is why we're doing the dogfighting multiplayer. We want to work with you guys and find out just how many people can dogfight and where and what lag times you need to effectively have a dogfight. And that's some of the stuff you guys are going to help us figure out. So whether you can be in England and then have a friend in Australia, not seeing any English and Australians get along, maybe over a match of rugby. But that may not work because of the physical distance, but that's to be determined based on the testing we'll be doing going forward.
And some of the less ping-related items might work better, like social stuff might work better across the pond. Dogfighting might be tough.
Chris has always said it's a skill-based game, so it's going to be important that we keep people equal, at least on that level of things, to where then their skills matter. We don't want somebody with a lag trigger being able to have an advantage in their instance.
TL;DRConcept art in hangars might eventually happen, but hangar personalization has to wait for client-side persistence, which is coming; merchandise suggestions are best posted on the forums.
So two sides to that question. The hangar decoration stuff, I mean, that's an interesting idea. We're always looking for new things to put in there. There are things that we're working on that lead up to expanding the hangar stuff. But yeah, we might eventually put some concept stuff in there.
Yeah, I mean, we talked a little bit about people being allowed to put their own, like having a slot or two to put their own artwork or something in there, and that might be a way to do it. Also, what's happening with that is any type of personalization of your hangar at this point, we're waiting on what we call client-side persistence. Because right now, the way it works is you log in, you put your account name in, it goes to the database, grabs your data, what you have, and it populates your hangar based on what ships you have and what stuff you have in your account. And it's all set up in a preordained manner. Eventually, we're going to have it to where you can move stuff around, probably through the mobiGlas or some other interface that we're going to allow you to set your hangar and personalize it. But right now, since every time you log off it just vapors, and then it pretty much does it every single time, we need client-side persistence. And that is coming. And by the way, if you want anything to be sold, like any of this cool artwork, physical goods, the best place to put that is in the forums. We at Cloud Imperium read those forums. Our marketing department's all over that kind of stuff. They're always looking for your feedback. So the best place to have that answered is probably on our forums.
TL;DRQuestions needn't be reposted for video submissions, but forum questions should go in each week's new thread; only about 10 to 20 get answered weekly, and very big ones go to Chris.
We kind of answered that earlier: with video questions, there's no need to repost those because we grab them, but you can repost your...
We open a new forum thread each week.
Yeah, that's the way it works. Every week we drop a forum thread out there and say, hey, what questions do you have? So if you want to get your questions answered, then put it in there. Now if it's been three or four weeks, there's a lot of questions. To be honest, there's like 150, 200 questions. And we really only have time to answer about 20-ish a week, 10 to 20, somewhere in that sweet spot. So it takes us a while to get through them.
And some questions are so big that they need the man himself to answer.
Exactly. And so we push those over to the big man's desk. That's generally where a lot of the Comm-Links come from. Chris will take those and write a big post because they're just really important to what we're trying to do. And then Ben will put it together and put it up online. And that's where a lot of the Letters from the Chairman and Death of a Spaceman, all that stuff is generated from, your question. So if we don't get to your question here, you'll probably get it answered eventually. So keep putting them in there.
I mean, I honestly cannot think of much that we would do differently. Okay, not show related, but I think honestly, part of this process that Chris has put in place is that we want to engage and work with you guys in building this game. And so it allows us to make the right decisions earlier in the process, so I'm not sure we'd change much of anything.
No, I mean, I wish I had been here sooner, that's all. I missed out on the first party.
Now, we're going to stub our toe a little bit along the way, but you'll help us correct it, and we'll go from there. And so I think we just keep doing what we're doing, and I think that's kind of the fun part of it.
So basically we're still designing some of the mechanics of personalizing locations and space stations and things like that. But as far as defending it, you'll certainly be able to have your friends there to defend it, or hire NPCs to defend it, and maybe we'll let you float some platforms out there on the perimeter. You don't want to clog up an instance with a bunch of defense platforms so no ships can get in there.
It would happen. It's realistic. Yes, one of the things we do when we're defining a system is talk about its star. So we are aware of that. We're aware of the different colors and everything, and we keep that in mind. And of course, we have all these experts who do lighting and effects and everything. So yeah, you put a star out there that's a different color, you betcha it's going to change the lighting.
And we're going to set dress. I mean, we just showed the style guide earlier. That's one of the things that the style guide is for, to help planets and everywhere else be set dressed correctly, to where it fits into where it's supposed to be.
So it might not just be based on the manufacturer, but yeah, we're going to have a lot of variations in the effects for the weapons, shields, all of it. You'll have some idea of what's coming at you. Mostly the different technologies change the shape of the effect as well as the color, but the different companies will have some differences.
So you'll be able to see some residual shots and maybe know what's being shot at. What kind of trouble am I in?
Yeah, exactly.
The more astute people out there that are playing will get to recognize that stuff.
Well, there's still a lot of discussion to be had on that. We've discussed VOIP. We certainly have talked about things like LiveDriver and all that, where you can see your face talking.
The avatar, yeah, that's going to happen. So your avatar will be able to look somewhat like you.
Mimic your face, right. Plus we've got the face scanning technology, so characters may even look like you.
So this is one of our headcams we do facial mocap with. And we just got it in, so we're kind of playing around with it.
We record the actor's face during his performance, and we give that data to another company, and then they help us with the facial acting in cinematics, for example.
So when we're doing our cinematics, in essence, we can block out a scene in real life, and then we're also capturing the eye lines and everything else in real time at the same time as capturing the motion.
Yeah. I mean, that's why we get the good actors, right? So we can get the facial animation, too.
Well, because I speak German. I talked it over with my special lady friend and made sure we could handle it, because I was making pretty good money where I was at, but it was not industry related whatsoever. So I was trying to get into the industry and this QA position popped up.
Oh, you came through QA.
Yeah, and because of my German language skills, that's what kind of got me in. And then I worked my way up from there. But yeah, it was like a 60% or something like that decrease in pay.
Pretty much. It's one of the things. Handling a lot of the mocap studio, setting it up, running the stuff, recording, handling the shots, dealing with actors, just working with Brian a lot.