The developers cover Oculus Rift support in the hangar, a new launcher and patcher build, and multi-core CPU use. They discuss airlock size ratings, the LTI Aurora-to-Mustang upgrade token, and Squadron 42's branching, episodic story and website fiction.
Well, it's very exciting. I'm excited to get it out there because it's really cool. It's definitely an early version of Rift support; it's going to be a pretty ongoing process, I think, to get it going. But right now you can walk around the hangar, you can look at the ships, and it all works pretty well. You can sit in the pilot seats, check everything out. But there's definitely some issues with it that we want to iron out.
Well, we're updating the patcher and the launcher. I'm taking over all those processes, so this will be a good first test for some changes that are coming down the pipe in the launcher, and it'll be my first patch to put out to the wild, too, so that'll be fun.
Right, and with a lot of other games that isn't such an issue because you have some kind of point of reference on the screen, like a gun or something, so you kind of always know which way your body is facing. Or games, in some cases, will have some kind of head steering, so you'll actually walk which way you're looking rather than your head being detached from your body, so that's another thing we can look into as well. I mean, Oculus is early technology right now. Everybody's kind of figuring all this stuff out. It's very cool to get it out there and see what feedback there is.
Well, they've beefed up the hardware on that, and it's higher definition, of course, so it's a little bit cleaner. You don't have as much swimmy stuff as the original one. What else am I missing on that?
No, I think that's about it. One thing in particular about our game is that all the textures, the models, everything is so high definition. When you're looking at it on such a low-resolution screen as the original dev kit, there's a lot of pixel flickering and blinking just because of all that aliasing. So it definitely looks a lot better on the high-res one.
They seemed like they loved it. They were really excited and thought it was really cool. They were testing it out. We've been testing it around the office.
Yeah, it was time. We had the time available on the engineering side to really fix these last few issues that we thought we really needed to before releasing. We have our high-def dev kit prototype so that we can see it at higher resolution.
TL;DRSpider miners are too big for small ships or an Idris; they would probably already be on-site, owned by corporations, though bigger transport ships might possibly come later.
I mean, the scale on that demo of the guy running across the platform, it's like a Hornet is very small compared to one of those things. I saw one. They had one on a test level in the dogfighting test, and so I flew up right next to it, and it was just sort of like staring up in awe.
No, we can't fit one in an Idris. There's no way. It's just too big. And they'll already be there, so there'll be corporations that own those, and they'll be there on the things that you can then get when you're there.
And maybe there's bigger ships that transport them later. I mean, we just showed a Destroyer the other day. We just showed that off to everybody, so that's kind of cool.
To answer the question in all seriousness: meetings, meetings, and more meetings. We do a lot of coordination between all the studios, all the offices. My job is primarily to manage the Austin studio as well as check on the integration. The Austin studio is responsible for integrating all the bits and pieces into the game itself and the persistent universe. So there's a lot that's going on. We manage the teams in Austin. We work with the teams in Montreal. We support Chris in dogfighting in Los Angeles and Erin in Foundry 42. So it's a lot. It's a many-hour-a-week job that is way beyond the 40 that we're supposed to work. But it's also a passion. And that's what we do. So I manage the Austin studio, is the short answer to it.
TL;DRThe popularity of organizations hasn't changed the plan to support solo players, small groups and large groups alike, with things to do and reputation to gain at each size.
Quick answer: no, it hasn't changed that focus. It's something we've planned for all along. So we're still planning to support that whole range: soloists can go out there and wander around and do their thing. And small groups, we really want to support small groups as well. And while they may not be able to do things as epic as the very large groups, there will still be plenty for them to do to gain a reputation. So we're supporting all of that.
And it's exactly right. If you ever played Privateer or Freelancer, you'll know exactly what kind of game we're designing for people. If you think of it like buckets, there'll be things to do for the big ones, there'll be things to do for the mediums, and there'll be things to do for the smalls. I personally like to group play with people, but I also like to sometimes go out and just play by myself.
So another quick answer: yes. In fact, we already do. But the engineering team has plans to further support that, to extend the capabilities of the engine to use it better.
So we'll be taking advantage. That's one of the things that Chris has always said, that we're going to be supporting those very high-end machines because nobody's out there doing that now. And that's part of our core message. So you bet your BIPI we'll be supporting that stuff.
Dave was on a plane, so Dave missed the design meeting. Yes, airlocks are going to be different sizes, and that means not every ship can dock with every other ship. That's the theory behind it, at least. At the same time, we're not going to let you buy a giant space suit and fit in an Aurora, so you aren't going to have trouble getting out of that airlock, because you can't get into the ship in the first place. So the armor is also a scale thing. You have to have a ship that supports that level of armor.
I believe so. That's the understanding that we're sort of moving forward with: yeah, you're going to hear your character speak. As to how many variations we have, I'm not sure; that's TBD.
Yeah, that's exactly right. And again, this is one of those things that the audience will help us determine. Maybe they come up with some ideas on how many they want or what kind of things they want. And there'll be different reactions in Squadron 42 to different people. They'll have multiple levels of answering questions from folks. So maybe somehow we put that in the persistent universe. We'll see how they go. So TBD is an answer there.
The way we're doing it right now is there's going to be a token that allows you to flip your LTI Aurora to an LTI Mustang. And then for the more expensive variants of the Aurora, if there's a price difference, we'll give them a refund and store credit, I believe.
Piece of cake. You know how to make an artist cry? Tell them they have to animate a horse. But see, it's already been done. But no, we really think their horse technology is awesome. That's very cool. But no plans for it in our game.
Yeah. I mean, there's a lot to account for. It's a pretty sprawling, epic story. And then mixed into that is all the wingmen and the personalities that you have to kind of manage while on board the ship. It's a lot of variations, a lot of characters, a lot of stuff to keep track of.
And you can have variant answers, or what happens in the story can actually change the direction it goes. So it's got to be like writing multiple stories at once.
Yeah, it's really crazy. I had no idea. You play games like The Last of Us and Call of Duty and stuff like that, and it's kind of a very linear, progressive thing. So you think that it's a very straightforward method of storytelling. But even those, it's a really complicated medium.
That's the idea at this point. I think with the serials that we've been doing on the website, we've already kind of established that as our fun way to tease the fans. And we actually just recently have been discussing what exactly the episode breaks are for all the missions and stuff, to make them manageable and to have the stories feel contained but still building towards a larger story. But yeah, I think you've got to end on that sort of cliffhanger, so you're dying to get the next episode, to keep on pushing forward.
Yeah. Actually, weirdly enough, what I surprisingly find a lot of fun to write is the Congress Now ones, where it's just the transcripts of congressmen yelling at each other. I don't know why, but for some reason that one is so much fun to write, because you just get these personalities and they're always just bickering and sniping at each other. But as far as the fiction goes, I like Kid Crimson a lot just because I love that type of pulpy noir novel. And the Tanya stories I actually liked a lot as well. Everyone's got kind of their own appeal.
That was the thing. It was actually the best way possible to start tackling the universe, because those were coming out. The Cal Mason and Kid Crimson stories were coming out during the crowdfunding. So it was kind of being able to stress test the universe, what we already had, to see what needed work, what we needed to flesh out, and what still needed to be explored. So yeah, it was a great opportunity to test the limits of where we wanted the universe to go.
Yeah, we have a new serial that's posting right now, and of course there's stories in Jump Point and stuff like that. So yeah, there's a whole slew of characters that are progressively coming out to keep everyone entertained as they wait for the game.
Yeah. There was a question I was answering in the Ask a Dev in response to the news update about the stretch goal system. Someone was asking whether we'll be able to be part of the lore and such. The idea came out of it that it would be a lot of fun to write a news article interviewing a backer who had discovered a system, and then release that news article to the public as a news piece or whatever, but with sound bites from the player.
I have nightmares imagining the stacks of paper that this script is going to be. Erin actually had a very good point about keeping the branching contained, because the more you branch, the more diluted your story gets. You have to make everything make sense and stuff, so everything starts to feel more episodic and not have as much dramatic weight. So I think we've kind of been able to keep it contained. There's still choices. There's still consequences. But we keep it focused so there's a real threat, there's a real villain, there's real cost and real stakes and stuff like that. So the player hopefully gets engaged by that.