The developers describe the asteroid hangar for lawless space and its role as a test bed for the room system. They also cover Dogfighting Module HOTAS support, private servers, cheater handling, the Person of Interest bounty system, UEE law, Squadron 42 episodes and the art director's job.
So it's a hangar that will be found on some of the lawless locations that we're building, so mostly lawless space. They're built so that they're really small and they feel like you can hide there, basically, as a pirate or not.
A team in place. It's something we're discussing right now. At launch, we don't really need to worry about that as much. But yeah, that's definitely something that is on a long-range roadmap and close to the Persistent Universe. But we're aware of it and we're very concerned.
And again, a lot of these things are going to be worked out. That's why we're doing the dogfighting module, and they can help us discover those. And not saying we want you to cheat, but we'll help discover those cheaters, and we'll do what we have to do.
So we're starting out with HOTAS support. Not necessarily every package up front, and we'll be adding over time. But we'll have some profiles set up, I'm sure, and we'll let users customize them as well.
So it's more Freelancer style. You set up your own mini persistent universe with a smaller player set. It's not the same scale, but.
Yeah, we don't want them out there competing with us. We want the big universe to be home with us, so everybody else gets there.
B. So there is a thing called the Person of Interest system that we are working on that will enable you to actually hunt people down rather than just bumping into them accidentally at the mall. Star Citizen's most wanted.
TL;DRDoesn't confirm either feature: Jump Point shows work-in-progress ideas that may change, the finished approved ship is what counts, and variants might leave room for such ideas.
So what you see in Jump Point, and part of the reason for Jump Point, is you get to see what happens, the work in progress, that you're seeing the designing of a ship. And so a lot of these notes that you see at the beginning are the ideas that come out during that process. But at the end, what the artist builds may change along the way and as further feedback happens. What you see at the end, though, is the finished, approved version of the ship.
But perhaps there's always room for variants. So who knows what's going to happen there. But I mean, that is a good point. The point is, we're showing them the process of how these things get designed. And we throw a lot of spaghetti against the wall, and most of it falls off. But the one that Chris gets at the end is what we really want to be on.
Well, Squadron 42 is going to finish before the Persistent Universe goes on. So basically the reason we're pushing out episodes is so that we can get content to you people as quickly as possible. But yeah, that won't be a problem.
Well, in the UEE, there's one rule set. It's a unified government.
It's kind of like the world, isn't it? The United States has one set of rules. Germany has little variations of it.
Sure. So like the Xi'an might have different rule sets. And then there may be locations where they have their own local rules to add on top of that, but if you're in the UEE, the rules are consistent.
So if there's some area that's the border worlds and there's some zany people at the head of it, they'll have their own rules. There might be some wackos out there.
So no, we're not going to let people steal ships in that way.
Yeah, planets, we've talked about this before. Planetside is a safe environment. It's a place to go down to get missions, to meet people, to talk, to hang out. It's, yeah, relatively. Most planetside environments are safe environments.
Let's be honest. It's not fun. It's just not fun to have to do that stuff.
So we're making a game is what you're saying.
It's like they never stop and use the bathroom on 24, and there's a reason for that, because it's not interesting. So if you want to use those things, we have those in the game for immersion's sake if you really want to interact with your ship. But we're not going to force you to do that.
Right, it's interactive environments, it's things people do for fun, but you're right, that's not something that gameplay-wise is crucial.
TL;DRThey hold roughly hour-long Skype meetings twice a week with remote studios, walking through the asteroid hangar, which is at a gray box stage with textures and lighting being added.
Usually we have Skype meetings with them twice a week, which you know.
I do. But I'm pretending not to.
Yeah, you sit in on them. You know how good they are. So usually what we do, especially with the asteroid hangar, which is what we're currently working on, it's usually about an hour meeting-ish, maybe sometimes more, maybe sometimes less, depending on what we're doing, but we usually do a full walkthrough of it with them and just point out things that could conceivably be better about it, maybe things to consider in the future when they're working on stuff. Currently, it's what we call a gray box stage. There's a white box stage, which is straight white boxes, and that's just mostly for design. So design can figure out the pathing, and they figure out if there's going to be a firefight in here, then where's the cover? What's the cleanest way to get from A to B? And then after that it goes on to a gray box, which gets a little more detailed. The boxes become higher detailed, higher resolution for the model, and then they start putting textures on. Actually I think they're a little farther than that. Yeah, they actually have textures on them, and they're starting to light while they res things up, so it's really cool, man. It's been a great process with those guys because they're talented. So every time I see it, it's just like, whoa.
TL;DRThe asteroid hangar is the test bed for a room system letting players add rooms like a trophy room off their hangar to store items, with the firing range to move there and more functionality later.
So the asteroid hangar is actually their test bed for the room system. Now the room system, what that's going to do, which is really cool, it's going to allow the user to add on different rooms and be able to place things in those rooms and fill them up as they will. As you guys know, we have posters and flair stuff that we put out there. And obviously, if we just keep shoving them in these hangars, it's going to be like Sanford and Son pretty soon. It's getting a little crazy. So what we decided would be good is if you have rooms that show up off of your main hangar, like a dude cave, or a trophy room, residence. And it's not just that. There's a lot of stuff that we're going to add later as far as different functionality and usability for these rooms. But one of the big things is, where are you going to store your crap? And that's a good place.
Well, the firing range will eventually move?
The firing range will move back there. Yeah, that's going to be moved. So all that stuff is going to be compartmentalized, where you don't have it all in one big hangar. You can move from room to room and expand on your rooms.
I handle a lot of different things, actually. I put out fires. I manage the internal art team. So I walk around desk to desk and see what they're doing and give them art feedback. What I do is I will take concept and then I will analyze it and then have it built, and then while it's being built I'll retool it and make sure that it fits within a 3D world, because there's a lot of times that you've got really talented concept guys, but unfortunately when you start breaking it down and putting it in the real world, sometimes things just don't work. That's one of the things that an art director does, is make sure that that stuff works in real time, in a real world, and make sure it's coherent.