The developers cover the Persistent Universe and the dogfighting module's planned PAX East reveal, including instancing caps, power management and the Voyager Direct revamp. They also discuss multi-crew logouts, jump point discovery and medical ships. The Scythe's origin and redesign close the episode.
So organizations, I mean, by nature, they're collections of players. And we've already said players can affect the universe, in little ways and sometimes in larger ways. As far as the organizations, you'll never be able to necessarily completely break the system.
No, the simulation's going to be too big for that. But you'll have some impact on things like individual systems. Maybe you could blockade an economic portion just by controlling one system.
TL;DRThe instance cap size isn't known yet, but it will combine players and ships, with players aboard large ships counting less than those flying their own, to be tuned through dogfighting module testing.
That could be the topic of an entire novel all by itself. But the actual cap size, we don't know yet. Obviously, there's a lot of technology to come. There's a lot to be done there. But as far as what we do know and what we will figure out with you as we go through the dogfighting module process is that there will be a combination of player and ship effect on that cap. Because, for instance, you take an Idris corvette. There could be a bunch of players in that corvette, but they don't all count the same as those same players in Hornets flying around. Because while they do have communication back and forth with the server, they don't have all of the impact and all of the movement controls and everything.
Exactly. So you'll count a little less, but you'll still count some. And so there will be a balancing process. There's a lot to it, though. We have to figure this out as we go.
Right, and that's kind of one of the reasons we're doing this modularly, so that we can get their input on how to do it and we can figure out where that cap and where that slider is, so you guys will help us with that.
TL;DRThe plan, subject to change, is to unveil the dogfighting module at PAX East and release it shortly after, depending on testing of newly brought-online universe servers.
Well, here is the plan as it currently stands, and that is that we are going to do an unveiling of the dogfighting module at PAX East. Check your calendars real quickly. Just like we did the hangar last year. If all goes as planned, then we will release it to the public shortly after that reveal. Now there's a lot of moving parts. We're just bringing on the world servers, the universe servers. This week, in fact. This is a big deal. This is a huge thing. One of the reasons we pushed it back was we're getting what's going to power our entire persistent universe online now and getting started testing that as we go. So it's going to take a lot of iterations to get that running properly and get it ready to host what's going to be half a million people potentially by that time.
So essentially, this week, we've built the universe, the system cluster, and we're just now starting to test that. The dogfighting module we showed you guys in December was over a LAN, right? And now we're getting the cloud-based system in place, the back end. And we're now going to be able to test between offices and have those dogfights. We're all testing in our own individual space, but now we're going to be able to test. And that'll help us determine lag, how many ships, the question earlier about the instance size. All that stuff's got to be determined. And we're just getting that in this week. So to recap, dogfighting module plan, subject to change, is we're going to reveal at PAX East. You might catch a clue on the date if you look at the website and look at when a poll for a certain event is going on there. So we'll be able to reveal, sort of like we did with the hangar, right? And then a little bit after that, when everybody gets back, if everything's ready to go, we'll then have that big dogfighting module release. If it's not then, it'll be dang close to then because we're working hard and everybody's cranking and we're ready to get it out to you guys.
TL;DRIf you log out aboard a friend's ship before arriving, expect to return on that ship, though what happens if it's parked in space is still undecided, with details being worked out.
We had some discussion about that today. Now, if you physically take your character onto a ship, as opposed to jumping in as an AI gunner, you're pretty much signing up for the duration of the trip.
Okay, so you have a choice, right? I can get in your ship and be a crew member, or if you call for help, I can jump in and take over an AI seat for a turret. So what this is talking about is when our characters are together and I'm in your ship.
I'm there. I got on board at the last planet you were at. We are going wherever we're going. So if you're getting on for that ride, you're signing up for the whole ride. It's not like you can just jump out in the middle of space and go, poof, I'm back home. So if you log out prior to your friends logging out and prior to you getting to your destination, then you should expect to come back on that ship. Now, if that ship is parked in space, for instance, there's still some gray area there. It may be that we'll end up letting you, if he's given you permission to fly, we may let you fly the ship the rest of the way, or we may put you back on the last planet you docked on.
Right, and we're still working out all those details. We just had a design meeting today about that very thing with Chris and all the studios working that out.
So continuing on what I said before, one of the things we talked about is your friend giving you permission to fly. So there's a possibility that someone could get on your ship that you don't want to fly it. So partially it's dependent on whether they let you fly, but the sequence of events as we understand it right now is that if you disconnect and you're flying a ship, the AI will take over your ship and attempt in its possibly not entirely super awesome way to get you to your destination. So your ship is still around and can be damaged, destroyed. But if you get back on, then you can pilot again. If a friend is on board who has permission to fly that ship, then that friend would supersede that AI pilot and would be able to take control of the ship.
So essentially a hierarchy, right? The owner of the craft is number one, and then any friend that has permission would be position two, and then AI or NPC would be position three, so whoever's left there can pilot it, and then when the guy comes back on, it's still his ship, right? So he just drops back in the body of the NPC and takes back over.
So you can hold that information for yourself or for your friends, and then when you're ready, upload it to the universe as it were. Go pass that information on to people who will then disseminate it to others.
Exactly, right before your last day in the clan, you can take that yourself. So if somebody else finds it while you're keeping the information to yourself, then that person will end up getting to name the jump point.
So that is one of our big topics. This actually came up today and we decided that was an excellent time to answer it. So we do have mechanics around rescuing players from combat and helping them heal. In fact, there may be a situation where if you were able to drag your friend out of a fight where he's seriously wounded, you may be able to keep him from dying. What we don't know is exactly what ships will be medical ships, but we do want to have ambulance ships, medical ships.
Right, so we can't particularly say that the Idris is a medical ship, but we do know that that mechanic's important. We want to support all these different play types.
Well, simple answer to that is yes, we're bringing those systems online. Well, we won't have the full system online for the first iteration of dogfighting because the capital ship power systems are very big and complex. We will have some form of that and you'll be able to move power from shields to weapons to engines at launch.
And it's a balancing issue. It's one of those things we want them to help us with. And it's one of the reasons we delayed the dogfighting module a little bit, because we wanted to get that system in place in a working manner that made sense and allowed the game mechanic for people to enjoy. So give us your feedback when you finally get to play.
Amazingly enough, yes. We're already getting concept done for a cargo sled of some sort, maybe even some EVA mining equipment. We also promised quite some time ago that there would be a repair bot.
The Scythe is initially planned to be an AI opponent in the dogfighting module. Now there are a lot of systems that have to come online for it to be fully playable, mostly internal systems, the cockpit, the HUD, all those different pieces, animations that go with it. So initially we plan to release it as an AI opponent and then as it comes online, as with the other single-player ships first, we will then bring things on as they're ready. So not right away, but at some point.
Well, that was way before me. That was during the original trailer and the fan funding in 2012. Chris Roberts had an artist named Jim Martin come up with a bunch of different designs. And we knew it was going to be our main bad guy. And I think that the original inspiration was, if I can say it, Kilrathi-inspired. Right, but new, improved, cooler, better, different. So he came up with great designs, models built, CGBot built the final game asset. It was in the trailer. It looked great. That was a long time ago, though, before we all kind of got into the groove.
It's an evolutionary process. So as we all started, we got into developing the look and feel of what the Vanduul culture is. And so part of that is getting various concept artists to help develop the look of the characters, the world, based on what the fiction is. And so we got a great artist named John Dickinson coming up with just brilliant alien biomechanical, but very different from the Alien look. So it's a really, really great, interesting, unique look that everybody's happy with. So as that's moving along and he's developing the look of it, we're having to revisit the original first Vanduul ship to bring that into the look and feel of the style of the Vanduul.
TL;DRAn artist updated the Scythe, whose trailer-quality model needed more detail, functionality and animation to hold up close in the hangar, while considering alien cockpit design and eventual human flyability.
Well, once we get to a certain point with the look and the feel, we took one of our best artists, Nathan Dearsley. He was amazing. He's in England. I wish he was here. So he took on the job of updating the Scythe, and it was for a variety of reasons. A lot of it was because the original model was made for the trailer. As good as it was, it needed updating on detail because we knew that fans are going to buy this and look at it in their hangar and walk around it, so it needed to hold up from a very, very close range.
That's a good point, because when you're looking at something from distance in space, you're shooting at a very tiny object, it can look great there, but when you're in the hangar and you're physically climbing into the cockpit or you're walking around, it's got to hold up.
It's got to hold up. You can't look at anything and say, oh, that's not really looking realistic. The closer I get, the worse it looks. So you want to be able to walk around it and get in it and touch it and enjoy your alien ship. So part of it is just detailing out, extra detail, extra geometry. With CryEngine, we have the luxury of high poly counts, so we can really push that. Nathan really spent a lot of time balancing detail in certain areas, not getting too overly busy though, going on the style guide that we developed with John Dickinson. And so it developed with feedback from myself and Chris Roberts, pushing it more into the look and feel of the way the alien race evolved. And part of that also is updating functionality, making sure everything works, making sure everything animates correctly in a realistic way.
Right, and these are eight-foot-tall aliens, so we need to figure out how they fly the thing. Their technology is going to dictate how they're flying it. We also have to consider human flyability eventually.
Yeah, so there's a lot to think about as far as the interior of the cockpit that was really never developed. And so Nathan is really thinking about this stuff hard as far as getting the proper alien technology in there, but also being able to make sure that it can be retrofitted for human flight.