10 for the Producers: Episode 01 (2014.12.08)

So what lessons DID you learn about that? [directed at Darian in a humorous tone]

Well, by distributing that workload around it at least frees up a lot of our resources to start focusing on other things. With 1.0 coming up pretty soon, we've got our hands full of... there's all these kind of new components that we want to integrate into the game. The Foundry 42 guys were pretty anxious to take on extra stuff, and I have absolute faith that they're going to do a kick-butt job.

Yeah, and-... [to Darian] nice censoring, that was good! ... One of the other things about the Foundry 42 guys is, that ship will be making an appearance or two, or three... or a ton... in the Squadron 42 campaign. So it's very important to them that it meet their needs, and they do a very, very good job - shout-out to Andrew Ley on their 3D concepts. So they've been doing a great job so far. We really like what we've seen from then, and so I think they're gonna do a fantastic job on upgrading and altering the variants just slightly. As for the lessons learned, the feedback, we learned that you guys are very interest in having modular ships - that was something that was a big take-away from that. You're very interested in being able to swap out the internal components of ships, so rather than just exterior components, being able to say, "hey I want these crew quarters to be 'this' now," so that's something we've been exploring and hopefully we'll have more information on soon.

So, my first recommendation would be to go back and watch every episode of every piece of content that we've ever released, so you don't run the risk of asking the same question somebody else has asked. Absolutely paramount importance! If you DON'T have hundreds of hours on your time, I think that probably the easiest way to contribute to the community is to jump into the forums and the RSI Chatroll. That's probably the two most common places where developers go to interact, to read, to lurk, to troll... sometimes! But, you know, probably some of the better ideas and the better theory-crafting that we've seen is in the forums and on the chatroll, so getting in there, participating in conversations, opening up threads about things that you're concerned about, or even just things that you're happy about, or excited to see would be very much encouraged! Because it is something that all of us read. There's 280 of us around the world - it's a lot of eyes on the forums, not as many as there are people on the forums, but... that would be my recommendation.

I'd say my recommendation is, looking on the different forums you can see regionally what players are from your area, and if any of them have any organizations or get-togethers. One of the interesting things I've found about Star Citizen is that there are a lot of community-based events that players throw, backers throw. So find some like-minded individuals who are within your region, or at least within a reasonable amount of travel, get to know them, contribute to discussions on the forums. A lot of people have seen me making contributory posts commenting on other peoples' sometimes humorous, sometimes serious questions. So, it's highly encourage to interact, and we try to interact with you, so it's a good way to get yourself immersed into the game, find out more about it, and see which aspects that you are going to be looking forward to the most. But most of all, I don't think there's a direct plan of attack that we would recommend specifically to, like, "hey, you need to do this". Come up with your own! Find out an interesting way - if we like the idea we'll see what we can do with it.

I'm going to repeat an answer I said in a previous interview, which was, I'm looking forward to capital class ships the most. It's got the most interesting aspect that I look forward to in space combat. Massive kilometer-long ships, blowing each other out of orbit. Being able to do this in a multiplayer scenario just... I find it incredibly exciting, and it's something that I can't wait to be a part.

FPS. Probably ON a capital ship. I dunno, I like playing games where I get to point at what I want to die, and click. And so, I'm a huge FPS gamer - Counter-Strike, Battlefield, [muffles voice with hand] Call of Duty, ummm... I play them all... Medal of Honor, back when it was good. Anyway, so no I really enjoy FPS gameplay, and that's probably the thing I'm most looking forward to 'cause it the most unique thing about our, I think, is the addition of FPS to these giant capital spaceships. Combat events and being able to go onto the bridge of a ship and kill all the bridge crew and then call my friends to say I've taken - I dunno, that just sounds kinda fun!

I'm not much of an FPS person. I've played a lot of Borderlands, Left4Dead... but I never got into the hardcore FPSes, and I think it's been because I prefer using a control pad. For me, I feel more accurate with a sniper rifle when I'm using a control pad. Mouse and-TD: WHAT?!

Yes! I know! ... Mouse and keyboard, [shakes head]. I can do consistent headshots with a gamepad, and I can't do it with a mouse and keyboard. So, but, this is one of the first times I'm actually really looking forward to an FPS. Watching the demo that was at PAX when they, you know, disabled the core and then all of a sudden the gravity shut off - that looks exciting! I'd love to see boarding missions when you storm the bridge, as you said. Taking over and commandeering the ship - adding it to your fleet, or just turning it against that fleet's own ships.

I always liked the idea too of like finding a guy mining, and he's floating there, and then you come and you EVA over to his ship, put on your mag-boots, walk up to the cockpit, look down at him and headshot him through the cockpit!

Okay, that's a good question, 'cause yes I hear this a lot, and people are worried about the designs, the art styles, and whether it's gonna end up like the ISS or something, where you have the Foundry 42 modules strung along to the US module, and the Canadian module. In reality-...

Interesting analogy!

Heheh. I would say the thing that we spend a lot of time on, and Chris is very adamant about, is making sure that we have one consistent design that works for everything. So (just because it's top of the mind for me, it's recent) the FPS for example having been heavily designed out of the Illfonic office - huh, that's weird I can "Illfonic" now and it's okay! I'm used to saying "redacted". Being heavily designed by Kedhrin and his team at the Illfonic office, one of the things that's always been very important to Chris is making sure that that design is thoroughly reviewed by the Squadron 42 designers, and by the Persistent Universe designers, and making sure that those designs work for them. And if there are things that don't work for them, or need to be changed, or added, making sure that's all part of the conversation at the inception of the FPS modul, so that it's all going to be consistent throughout the entire game. He does not want to have things that play differently in single player versus multiplayer versus the PU, and so that has been a very important thing to do, and we do that basically by constant communication between all the studios. I would say a large part of our job is basically communication of information and dissemination of information.

I mean that's pretty much the job of a producer, is maintaining open communication between department. Whether it's nightly hand-off emails because everybody's in a different timezone - when the UK is getting out for the night we're just getting in, and vice versa, so there's always this constant overlap of duties. With a constant stream of communication that makes sure, "alright, here's where we left off. This is what we need you guys to pick up on," so there's always some kind of consistency in everything that we do.

Actually that's a good point to bring up too is that, even though this is "10 for the Producers" this is really "10 for Two Producers". It is a global team effort - we've got producers in Foundry 42, in Austin, Texas, in Montreal at Illfonic. We've got a lead programmer that works as a producer at Moon Collider. I mean there's people all over the world who are involved on the production side, so big props to the whole team on that one, 'cause its an ongoing effort.

On top of that, if it was "2 for 10 Producers" it'd be really crowded.

Yeah. We'd need a bigger camera.

But more to point, also, it's asked that "when different producers working on separate modules-". There is a lot of responsibility overlap. We don't have a producer who is dedicated specifically just on "this item only". We have the luxury of being able to be involved in various projects, so for example, my contribution is Arena Commander and also the spaceship missile system, and a few ancillary responsibilities here and there. But those responsibilities overlap with some of the stuff that the UK is working on, and what Austin is working on, so we have our fingers pretty much in everything. So on top of that it also helps kind of maintain that overall consistency between the different projects and different modules.

Travis, you want to start with that one?

Yeah, so first of all I would say that from a production standpoint, I would probably scope your question, immediately, so that we can make it for launch 'cause it's very long! Haha, sorry...So, "given how many features are planned for the product, how do you make your choices on what will be in launch and what will be in a future patch?" ... Basically we have product roadmaps for each of the modules, and that lays out our plan - in addition to teams like the core tech team, the graphics team, so I would say "non-module teams" that are working on maybe the core engine technology - we lay out all of our roadmaps for each of these teams. We kind of line up these nexus points where there are things we'll be releasing at the same time, there are features coming online at the same time, and as for which features are attacked first, it's kind of the same way that you'd build a house, right? So you build a foundation first, and then you start putting up all of the... uhhhh... oh I've never built a house before... but you start putting out the outside, and then you start building the inside - you know, it kind of follows the standard paradigm. And to that end, I think when you start seeing the base and the core gameplay come online, then you start adding the additional features. It's like, "okay, you can move now! Where do you move? You can shoot now! What do you shoot?" and things like that - it's just kind of organic. So while we will not have ALL features that we've been talking about, and all the stretch-goal features that we've talked about, at launch, there's a pretty long-term plan in place for getting all of these things along the way.

Even though we have roadmaps laid out for each of these different features, it's also good to understand that these things are moving targets sometimes, based on and adapting to the needs of the company. We may push back a feature based on whether we suddenly encounter an obstacle that we realize that requires more resource and more attention, or we realize that it's a feature that the players may not want right now, and therefore they want something else instead. So we have the ability and the luxury of being able to move these around based on the needs of the game, and what the players are gonna want, and what we'd like to see in the game.

That's a good point too, about the constantly changing nature of it. Alex has something he's very fond of saying and is very true, which is "by the time that you've taken the time to write your schedule, it's out of date and it's wrong." So the schedule, the roadmaps, everything is a constantly evolving process - which is good, because it keeps employed!

And in a perfect world these are the goals and timelines we'd like to meet, but we don't live in a perfect world, and things require changing on the fly sometimes - and sometimes by the seat of your pants! Sometimes we can-... or at least... a good producer would like to be able to forecast problems down the road, but you know, real life happens - Murphy's law likes to show it's ugly head every now and then, and we need to adjust things on the fly. Sometimes a feature may make it, and sometimes we may absolutely scrap what we started with and realize it just wasn't the direction we wanted to go.

Actually I do have something for that. The main-... I won't say "the main"... One of the objectives we want to keep our eye on is that we don't want to make superfluous ships that just serve no purpose. So we're not going to be popping out ships just for the sake of pumping out ships. We want to make sure that any ships we do make and design serve some kind of functionality.

Or serve a particular play-style... yeah, exactly.

Right. And that way, I wouldn't say that it's going to increase or decrease. Like I said we have a roadmap for what ships we'd like to introduce, and we're going to hopefully continue building more ships. Whether that's going to increase or decrease is going to only depend on what the needs of the game are. We may find that we may need a mid-sized ship, or some kind of corvette, or a battle cruiser, or one that's a large capital class ship that's designed specifically for exploring. We may find the need for that. And then based on what variants we can base or find off of that. So it's a question that I don't think really has a solid answer, because we have a lot ships already in being designed and having been in the hangar. I think it's gonna be based purely on what the needs of the game are.

Yeah. And to the follow-up question point-... that was well put, Darian... "Do all the alien ships follow the same pipeline or are you expecting some shortcut in some way?" Uh yeah, some of the Vanduul ships for example, and some of the ships that are planned for Squadron 42 exclusively (at least at first) are going to be designed without player-piloting capability. So they don't have to have fully fleshed out interiors, they don't have to have fully functional cockpits - 'cause for a lot of these you're only going to be seeing them as you blow them up or they blow you up, from the outside.

So, how do we handle the extremely high standard? Well, I'm actually indentured to Travis. I met Travis in a Serbian prison camp, and he took a knife for me once, and I've been indebted to him ever since. So I promised that I would uphold and champion his standards.

[Laughter]. It's a similar story for me, except just with Chris and Serbia, so I really don't have much to add there.

I thought it was a Turkish prison camp>TD: Oh, that might have been it. Yeah I get this all... kinda that region... my geography's bad. My buddy is having a wedding in Costa Rica, and I thought "oh, what part of the Caribbean is that in?" then I looked at Google and I went, "oh, Travis, your geography!" [shakes head].Um, okay. How do we handle the breakneck speed? So actually, yeah lets say that the development does happen very quickly. One of the things that I think a lot of people don't fully appreciate is that during the development of this game so far, we've been building a company, doing pre-production on a game, and developing something that we're shipping to the public. So all 3 of those at once would normally happen, well at least where I've worked before has normally been a company that exists, and is a thing, and is large. The product that we're working on has 6 months to 12 months of pre-production before any real production takes place. And then we move into starting to develop what is known, the concrete plan, metrics, standards, everything. But with this we're kind of developing it along with you guys as we go, so you're getting to see it from even the very basic foundations. So that has been an interesting challenge - it also is kinda what makes it a lot of fun. I would say with that in mind that we are developing extremely quickly. I'm constantly impressed by the sheer volume of patches and content that we put out to the community. It's gonna be a long ride, so I think it's good to get as much as we can out there along the way.As for the "CR" level of quality, yeah, there are times I think that people have been frustrated or disappointed that they work on something for a really long time, and it's, you know, "oh, it's gonna be great! it's gonna be great!" and Chris looks at it and he has a whole bunch of critiques of how it could be a little bit better. You know, that's always disappointing, but then you come back at it, and you look at it and you go, "oh my god, yeah - it really does look better," and you kind of implement that feedback, and it's always, for me at least, has helped me to push my standards higher for what is acceptable in a game, what I'm proud of. And I really enjoy the emphasis on quality, 'cause I've definitely worked on games where quality is not the emphasis - the emphasis is getting it shipped - and so I think that for the community, well, you're really privileged to have somebody that cares that much about quality.

That, and we are just as committed to it. We have an incredibly talented group of developers, artists, engineers, programmers. And to kind of echo what Travis said, it's hard not to be impressed with the speed that these guys and gals turn out content. They're incredibly talented, incredibly skilled, and they do it under a lot of pressure. And so when Chris gives his feedback it's because we all have that same perfectionist attitude, that we wanna see this thing not only surpass your guys' expectations, but our own. And like I said before, we have just as high expectations for this project as you guys do, and as Chris does, and we want to see all of us have that same unified vision come to fruition. If it's something that when we release it to the public, if we're not all on board then what does that say about us? We want to make sure that that quality is there, so when it is released you guys can enjoy it, we can enjoy it, and we can point at it proudly... "yeah, WE worked on this! We did this."

Yeah that's actually... that's a good point. Like there's so many times I'll be sitting at my desk and I'll turn to Chris, and I'll be like, "can we just take all the crowdfunding money and invent a time machine, so we can go to the future and play this game with everybody?" [laughs]

My favorite part of this question is the idea of a size 5 cannon on the Avenger. Spoiler alert! It's not gonna stay a size 5. It looks RIDICULOUS when you put one of the size 5 guns on there. So how robust is the plug-and-play system for ship pipes? That's a great question, 'cause I love answering, "it's very robust!" Basically the item pipes are something that flow between all the nodes on the ship. They carry CPU power, they carry "power power", and they carry heat. The pipe system then references the data points for each of the XMLs which define what that item either contributes or removes from the pipe system, and then that flows into the pipe system organically based on the setup of the ship. So you can, if what you're asking is, attach a soda can [holds up soda can] to your class 1 hardpoint - and maybe it's aluminum so it vents heat - versus putting a weapon on there. As long as they can accommodate the size of the can, the size of the weapon, anything can be attached anywhere, and it can work in that slot, and it will update the pipes dynamically as it's all a data-driven system. That's something that's super important to Chris was making sure it was a data-driven system, so we could do just that. So you asked specifically about putting a size 5 sensor cluster onto your Avenger instead of a size 5 cannon - so, "yes" would be the answer, as long as the hardpoint supports that size, you would have a gimballing sensor. Because, you know, what could make a sensor better? Gimbals!

But a key thing to remember is that, the sizes-... we want to make sure that any size mount that we put on a ship is going to at least try to adhere to some modicum of game balance. So we may adjust the sizes as we see fit, to maintain balance, but we also want to maintain a certain level of aesthetics. So if we find that a mount is either too large or too small for a particular ship we may take it down a peg or bring it up one.

Yeah, so maybe rather than managing a size 5 sensor cluster, it's a size 2 sensor cluster. Something like that.

So, I guess there's going to be more than a few dozen automatically. I don't know if football is still a sport in our universe or not - I'd have to check with Haddock on that. But the plan at least initially has always been for, I think it was the base 105 star systems, each with an average of 4 landing locations, which would vary in scale and size from a large sprawling city to something that's more of a remote outpost. So I do think there are going to be, if nothing else, plenty of places to go and land, and explore, and walk around. Now to answer you question about-... like, I guess specifically you're talking about the ArcCorp demo... So first of all, that was a demo - that was the first area of ArcCorp. There are other planned areas that I think you guys have even seen concepts for, for different parts of ArcCorp. Another good example is Terra - so Terra for example has the large central city, and is kind of the upper-crust Abu Dhabi feel, Rio de Janeiro feel, a very high end technology. There are also other parts to Terra though, that are more like the favelas, say, in Rio de Janerio - where everybody who works in the city lives. So there's areas called "the blocks", and so you'd be able to take the monorail to traverse to different environments within that same landing location. The idea being that if we have these kind of sequestered areas you can introduce, say, one area during patch, and in the following patch we may unlock another part of ArcCorp, another part of Terra, and we can just additively... add to the content that's in the game.

There isn't really a square-footage... or I guess, square... astronomical unit. It's constantly going to be growing, so there's always going to be new content to explore. At what rate we release this at, again we do have timelines for these development channels, so as more things come up the universe is going to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger. So I don't think there will be any shortage of things to explore and places to visit, and all kinds of new mysteries to unravel, because we do want exploration to be a part of the game. But we also want people to visit established continents on planets, space stations... that is all going to add to part of this dynamic experience, so it's an ongoing process.

Good question. So Arena Commander currency is something that a lot of the community has requested since the inception of Arena Commander. The ability to have credits earned that you can use to try out other pieces of equipment that you may not own. So this is something that is definitely on our roadmap for the beginning of next year. So it's coming to a patch near you, pre-Arena Commander 2.0, and it will basically allow you to earn "Arena Commander bucks", "moon buck", a new form of currency that can be used for the purchase redemption, otherwise obtaining of items for Arena Commander. So they will not carry over to the Persistent Universe, but within Arena Commander you will be able to use items that you do not own if you've earned them using Arena Commander currency. The ship component upgrade system, I'm not actually entirely sure what you're specifically referring to, but the components themselves you will be able to purchased with Arena Commander currency just the same as the ships. So if that's what you meant, there's your answer.

So with the Arena Commander currency you're saying... "I like the way that laser gun looked on my opponents ship, and it really tore me up" ... I can just rent one? And, you know, pay for it and pay a monthly fee, or some kind of ongoing fee to keep it on my ship?

The exact design of, like is it a recurring fee, or is it a one-time fee, or how that's gonna work hasn't actually been fleshed out yet. But that is something that we'd probably actually like to hear community feedback on.