Developers answer fan questions on the Starfarer hangar release, patch 2.1.2 and the 2.2 plans, the Reliant, Cat and Idris, Squadron 42 motion capture and characters, the package split and unmelt tokens, plus the HOTAS, holotable, shopping and multi-crew.
TL;DRThe Starfarer in the hangar will come in one of the next patches with no release date, while patch 2.1.2 goes up today and 2.2 is expected next month.
Starfarer in the hangar will be one of the next patches, but we don't have a release date. Although that does remind me of another small piece of news. We have a patch going up today. 2.1.2 should be going live. It has a couple bug fixes. It's nothing terribly exciting, but still patching. Essentially the way the patches are going to work for the next couple months is you'll see a bunch of PTU patches getting to the next... We just did 2.1 this month, we're going to do 2.2 next month. So it'll be essentially like a very active period of iterative PTU patches until we get a live candidate. Live candidate goes up. Some of the team will be working on patching essential bugs on that branch. And then there'll be a little lull while the team puts in the content for the next one. So 2.2 will go out next month. We'll have a bunch of PTU patches. You guys will help us perfect it. And then there'll be another little lull for a week or two while the development team is putting in whatever secrets are in 2.3, and so on, 2.4, 2.5, and so on.
No, nothing in particular. Maybe we'll do a promo or something in the days leading up to it, but nothing too exciting. It's more accounting on our end than it is an event, but we wanted to let you guys know in advance.
Yes, we're going to make that happen. It'll probably be something of a kludge, like you'll see the wrong one on your account for a couple weeks, but we will make that happen, because once the Starfarer goes live, we want everybody to be able to explore it.
Probably not in the near future. Not a lot of people watched it and it kind of got stale. So we're working on a way to make it more interesting before we would bring that back. In the meantime, consider the ATV interviews your chance to meet them.
It was just episode one, but that's a qualified 'just' because we're not talking about three episodes of a Telltale game. We're talking about three totally separate full-scale games. I don't think it would have been possible to do a mocap shoot... It would be like saying, oh, did they make all three Star Warses at the same time? Where maybe I shouldn't think so big of ourselves.
TL;DRThe player count was raised in a recent PTU test that went well and taught them a lot; they expect more such tests and aim to keep pushing the count higher.
I know that's been discussed a lot, and I definitely am not the expert on the answer to that, but you guys saw that we recently tested that on the PTU, right? We increased player count. And that was a good exercise for us on the production side. A lot of times when we do things like that, it's for us to really get a good litmus test of how much more we can add and how much higher we can push it. So Crusader, we upped it, and it went really well. But we also learned a lot of things from it. And then we also are trying to do more global gameplay tests here internally, so we can see what the player count increase will do before we even roll out to you guys. So thank you for doing that test for us, and I would expect more of those, because I think the goal is to get as many as we can, right? Up we go, that's what we're shooting for.
Well, I should stress the way this works is we have goals for each of these patches, but they don't all have to be met to go out. We do hope for the Reliant to be in next patch, but if it takes a little longer or if there's some issue when we put it in and start testing it, it might not. So it's not something we can promise today, but it's something we're working towards.
And with all of our ships, that one is looking really, really good. Elwin's been working hard on it with Daniel, and just from the art side, obviously on the tech design side and the gameplay side, there's a lot of things that go into each one of these ships, as you know, if you've been paying attention to this game at all for the last few years. But exactly as Ben said, we try to overachieve as much as we can, but we do find things when we get moving. So we'll get that thing in there to fly, we'll play with it, we'll see how it feels, and then we'll have to balance it, and then if it doesn't feel right, we're not going to give it to you guys until we feel like you're going to be as happy with it as we are. Or sometimes we go, hey, we could do some extra testing on this, hey, go play with this for us. So yeah, we definitely are trying to get it in the next patch for sure, and it's looking good, but as Ben said, we've got a lot of things that are still dependencies before we feel comfortable with that.
That's entirely by choice. Squadron 42 is built in the same system, so if you want to know what a dogfight in Squadron 42 looks like, play Arena Commander or Crusader. But we're not releasing footage of the specific missions we're building right now because we consider that to be a spoiler. But it's going very well. And in fact, we did show a little bit of gameplay at CitizenCon, we did the Morrow Tour, which is actually in-game, live, walking around the Idris that you start the game around. And you'll see more of that as we get closer. I think Squadron 42's rollout is going to be a very traditional game compared to Star Citizen. Nothing is normal for Star Citizen. Squadron 42 is going to be very much more, oh, here's a teaser trailer, here's a trailer, here's the big game for you to explore.
Can't give a time, but I can confirm that the folks in Germany just recently finished a pass at the design for how outfits and items are going to be changed, so it's in progress. And it's starting to look good.
It is. We talked about it actually in the Ten for the Developers recently. It was Forrest and I talking, we actually talked a lot about characters, evidently. And one of the things was customization and the amount of clothes and options and features and stuff. And those guys are working hard at making some really cool tech. So it's going to be very interesting. And how they integrate that into Squadron 42 and then ultimately Star Citizen is going to be really cool.
I believe it is a Hornet, an Aurora, and a Mustang Delta. Just kind of the base ships, so people can see how you would start the game. And it should all be fun.
TL;DRShopping is in active development but still being researched and worked out technically, since the system chosen now will underpin the whole game; no timing is given.
We're very excited about all the clothes and the shopping aspect that go into it, but there's a lot of technical aspects that go into shopping that, since we're ironing this out for the entire game, we've got to identify, right? We're kind of R&Ding how that's going to work, and everybody has a feeling about it and a perspective on it, and we're making good strides, and it's cool to start seeing some of it coming together.
It just feels like kind of a weight on you. The system we launch now is going to be the one that's the whole... Everything will be based on how we attach pants to characters right now.
That's exactly right. The tech that they're identifying now, that we're putting actively into what you can play with soon, is very abnormal for game development, right? You usually make a system, you scrap that system, you make a new system, you scrap that system about 15 more times, and then you kind of get to the system that you put out in the game. And we're going to try to do that quicker because of the kind of game that we're making. So it's a challenge. I think we're very confident in the tech that we're putting together right now.
We've been talking to Saitek and so on about the schedule. They have their manufacturing schedule down now. We said, oh, we would rather do the pre-order a little closer to when it's going to ship, because it's not one we control. They're handling fulfillment for this. So we had talked about doing it end of January. It's going to be a little bit later now. We'll update you when that happens. Normally when we do merchandise, like a Constellation model or the boxes or anything like that, we kind of oversee the whole pipeline and we know what's coming where. But since there's a little bit more air of somebody else doing it this time, we're erring on the side of caution.
No projection on the when, but the how. The holotable is something that I know we're actively, everyone's very passionate about internally. We've got it scoped out. We've got a good layout of exactly how we want to improve it, what we want to do with it. The when is not established yet, but it's definitely something we're thinking about a lot, all the time.
So yes and no. Since I was a designer and I was doing some development before, when certain issues come in, I actually sometimes will go through and go mess with the engine real quick just to see like, oh, okay, yeah, this is going to be tech design, this is going to be engineering. So I kind of have that perspective. So it's a little bit different than, I guess, a majority of the producers. So it is kind of cool. Like I have an issue that I'm checking right now where some of the item parts weren't going, so I was just looking at item parts and seeing if they were hooking up properly and all that.
Definitely keeping oversight. I really love the Cat and I've actually passed it off to Calix now. So Calix is the Cat master. We've been talking with Gurmukh, we've been talking with Elwin, we've been talking with a lot of people just to get the Cat up and running. I mean, it has a lot of interesting tech going on with it.
TL;DRThe developers say trolls don't really get to them, they've learned not to take harsh feedback personally and look for the valid points, though trolls make it harder to pick out serious concerns.
Not really. I was thinking about this recently. The first time you kind of encounter the experience of trolling, it's like, oh my god, why are you thinking of me so much, what's wrong? Sometimes when I'm stressed at work, I read the Reddit cats forum, and I clicked on new instead of top recently, and I noticed there are people who dedicate their lives to trolling the people who post pictures of their cats. There's like a guy who every day posts a picture of a cat with poop photoshopped onto it with the comment, 'I pooped on this cat.' That's this man's entire life. It's not us. It's not the people who have a problem with us. We're just jerks.
I think it took a lot of getting used to, working here, because you do have a lot of people and you have to find a way to not take it personally, because people can be vicious.
It's a learning lesson. Especially different parts. When I was still doing art, people would just trash your art, and people could do it in a nice way, or they could do it in a mean way, and half the time you're just in the corner crying in a little fetal position. But you're like, I'm not taking it seriously, I'm not doing this. And then other times, design the same way, just poking holes in designs. Some of my favorite times working with some of the lead designers was you give them a design, and then the whole entire paper is just one big red mark. But it's really good feedback, and that's the thing. Some of the forum, even the trolls, they still have points. So you just have to push past the trolliness and just look at the points. Okay, this is the point they're making. And then once you start collating all that feedback, it's no longer about troll this person or troll this, whatever. It's just like, okay, these are the points they're trying to make. It's just looking past that.
In fact, I think the one really negative thing about people who are dedicated trolls is it makes it a little bit harder to say, here's the serious concern. Because there are lots of people with actual concerns, and sometimes they are passionate to the extent that they seem like trolls. They're not. We know they're not. But it's just kind of filtering that is, I think, the most difficult thing about it.
We do a bunch of different styles. Each studio has their thing. We're consolidating a bunch of little things here and there so that way we can keep consistency with it. So we're using bug tracking software. We're using a lot of Excel spreadsheets. We're using a lot of just tracking in general. It just depends on what we do, like a light agile scrum, so we do have some scrums here and there, but we're not really adhering to one specific format. We have whatever works for the team and the people that are using it. We're trying to be as efficient as possible, right?
I actually haven't heard the word scrum in quite a while. Early on in the project it was scrum everywhere and now it's much more agile, in terms of just words I hear around my head.
The new item system is coming along. People are still working on it. We have a lot of things. Hopefully, we'll be able to share more of that when it gets to a better state. And I think some of the main engineers are all working on that.
Still, it's multi-crew. Every time I'm asked that question, I'm so excited about multi-crew, making sure all the roles upon a ship are spoken for. If I'm the captain of the ship, then I basically have plugs into everything. I want to be able to see what my crew is doing, and if I'm going to be the pilot, then the only thing I care about is piloting, and then the tactical officer or whatever else. I want to see those roles come alive within the ship. Flying the Idris, or when people start flying these huge massive capital ships, multi-crew is where I'm actually really excited. I can't wait to be like a soldier and be like, yes sir, I'm on this. And they see me just go run and repair something, or then jump in a gunner seat, shoot everybody in the face.
I'm not aware of any official presence. I know some folks take off to go to GDC. And in the past, I know we've sent folks for recruiting, but I don't think we have plans for this time.
No, no, we're throwing money all over the place for no reason. No, we're going to be taking some more of the forum management here, and just the fact that everybody is overwhelmed. I mean, we've had as many as three community managers at a time, and right now we have one, so it absolutely makes sense to have another one.
If you didn't catch it earlier, there will be a new one every quarter. You'll get four a year, basically. And if it becomes an issue down the line, we can re-examine that.
For the Mustang Omega, for downgrades, upgrades, sidegrades, melting, there's some contractual issues that prevent us from doing everything we do with the other ships, just because it's part of our deal with AMD. When we are able to do more with it, we'll let you know.
Concierge flair just had some concept art done last week. I think we're looking at April for that being ready, so we'll have more info when that's closer.
Yeah, people from Behaviour and Turbulent will be there. We sent some giveaway stuff, so there will be some swag. We will give you more info on that next week. I believe it's next weekend.
TL;DRBoth are working on Squadron 42 characters: one has finished character art for one known actor's character, and the other is working on Marine concepts, with the Marines getting a full revamp and the Heavy Marine coming soon.
Well, obviously, Old Man, Colton, is not Gary Oldman, but Mark Hamill's character. It's the most confusing thing when we're naming files. I'm like, oh, I've got to open this one. Oh, wait, that's the wrong Oldman. But so far we've completed the character art on Mark Hamill, he looks pretty good, so he is going to be looking pretty sharp in Squadron 42.
Yeah, I'm working on... So in the monthly update, we had my Medium Marine concept up. And there were a little bit of notes that I was given from Rob McKinnon. And I did the cardinal sin, which is I jumped on Reddit and I started answering questions. I took a break for lunch, came back, I had like 200 messages in my inbox. So I spent 30 minutes, and then Gurmukh was sitting next to me and looked at it and was like, what are you doing? He's like, you've got to just answer not all of them, just the important ones. But I just had a meeting with the lead design team, with Steve and Rieger, Forrest and Rob and Mark Skelton, regarding the Heavy Marine. And so we have a really solid, legit gameplay design spec. And also the Heavy Marine will be coming soon. So that will be in the pipeline. So it will look a lot, a lot better. The Medium Marine looks a lot better now, I think, personally, compared to what we have in the game. And so the Heavy Marine will be getting that same treatment. In case people didn't know, the Marines are getting a complete revamp so that we can actually start fitting form and function to them and see about their gameplay mechanics and that kind of stuff.
That is a railgun. No, that is like a shoulder-mounted anti-spacecraft weapon, and it's going to be really cool once it's in. So imagine sitting on Port Olisar with this big missile-packed railgun thing.
I think a lot of times what we do is we'll have multiple concept artists create something, and then we'll see, okay, this is how the mass driver works, this is how this kind of weapon works. So it's kind of hard to say exactly who designs what, because someone might design a look and then that person might take that exact look and then kind of form-fit it to be a handheld weapon or something like that. So Jeremiah sometimes works on concepts of Rob or Rita's old ones. So there's a lot of artists involved in the art process. I think more often than not, it's a team effort.
No, no, we'll do Nyx when it's ready. In fact, I think one thing you'll see in the future is we'll kind of expand... Crusader is just part of Stanton. You'll see it come together in chunks.
Certain helmets have different functions. I do know that we're doing a deck crew EVA suit that has almost full glass visibility. So if that's what you're looking for, then yes, that does exist.
I know we had kind of a get-together early on, shared some knowledge and tech sort of things. I think we've gone our own pretty distinct way at this point, so we're not really using their stuff, but we're still fans.
That is still happening. One of the pieces we needed to fall into place for that was Sean Tracy. And now that we've sucked him into the LA office, he's going to be involved with the setup for that. In fact, you were in a meeting this week with Turbulent about it, weren't you?
So Turbulent has been tasked with setting up the site for entries and so on. We don't have a specific date yet, but we're aiming for March-ish, so stay tuned there.
I don't have an update on that, but it will be a segue to mentioning that if you happen to be at PAX South, David Ladyman is showing off his new board game, Star Traders. Stop by, check it out, it's a fun game, and ask him about the alien languages.
TL;DRCharacters go from a prioritised shot list through concept discussions with design and animation, sketches and callout sheets, then sculpting, retopology, material passes and optimisation with engineers so many characters can run on screen.
Well, normally we would have the writers... We have a shot list, we call it a shot list, so we have a list of characters that are in the entire game, or outfits. And then we have the producers and the leads kind of figure out which one's the higher priority, so we get a priority list, and so we just pretty much go down the list. And what we'll do is the concept guys will talk with the animation team and the design team and also the art director and the lead, and we'll discuss kind of what the visual look and also the function of the character would be. So we'll talk about, will the players have access to them, or is it an NPC character, or is there a restriction on visibility or movements, all that type of stuff. And then once we lock down on a direction, someone like myself would come do a bunch of sketches, take them to final and then get approvals. And then normally I'll do a callout sheet for a character artist like Omar. Oh, this is the gloves, the front, side, and back. And this is what the helmet looks like from the side.
Well, then once he gives me a drawing, I will sculpt it on our characters, and depending on: is this going to be PU, does the player have access to it, what kind of rig is it on, is it custom, each one of those has its own set of issues and problems to solve. And then we sculpt the character, get the sculpt approved, it matches the concept as much as we can. And then once the high-poly sculpt is approved, we retopo it and we do a lot of stuff to optimize it for the game. And then we find out what kind of metals, what kind of materials, we do a material pass, we talk to the engineers: how can we make sure that this character is running as smooth as possible? So that, hopefully, if all our characters are optimized to the best of our ability, we can have more and more people on screen, so we can have a better MMO experience. And that is usually when it's completed.