The developers cover 2.4 testing and its first persistence, which moves hangars onto game servers, plus procedural planet generation and the Buccaneer sale. They also discuss ship loaners, cargo work shown with the Caterpillar, Orgs 2.0, ground vehicle handling and the Ursa Rover.
TL;DRThe F7A Hornet isn't shown because it's still too early in exploration, and they only show things once reasonably confident they won't change, to avoid upsetting people attached to designs that later change.
Because it's not ready to show. Most video game companies do this thing where they don't show you anything until it's final. And then you get an art book after the fact where it shows you all the iteration. We do it a bit differently where we show you a lot of the process. The problem is we have to strike a balance because we don't want to show you things until we're confident they're not going to change. Now that may still change. But we have to feel at least reasonably confident that we're on the right path before we show you something. Because otherwise, we're just playing with your emotions. We show you something that is likely to change. You get attached to it. And then when we change it, people get upset and whatnot. So there's a balancing act. So we show plenty of things early. Like you're going to see the white box of the Caterpillar early and whatnot. And it's even different than the last white box of the Caterpillar that we showed. But we always do try to be responsible in what we show. We have to have a reasonable level of confidence that this is going to be somewhat indicative of the finished product. So it's not always the case. Sometimes changes happen late in the game, but we always do try to do our best. So at this point, it's still too early in the process. It would be irresponsible to show it because it would set off half the community, 'oh, I hate this', and the other half, 'oh, I like this'. And then it may not even be anything near that. So he's still exploring it. So we're just talking to you about the current exploration.
TL;DRThe question isn't answered: Buccaneer details, including cargo transport, will only be shared at the concept sale because the information is still being worked on and kept current until then.
All Buccaneer questions, guys, are going to wait until the sale. Basically, the sale is when we talk about all the bits and how it works and stuff like that. So designers write us up a brief and we include it in the sales page and stuff like that. So I don't have any of that information at this point because it's all still being worked on. So if anybody has this idea that we do all this stuff and then get it all ready and then just sit on it for a couple weeks, that is not the way it works. We iterate on this stuff until minutes before it goes live. What's our most current thinking on this stuff? So we get the most accurate, most up-to-date, and most current information available because in game development, like they say, the only constant is change. So we wait until the last minute and get the most recent current thinking on that stuff. So I don't have answers about how the Buccaneer does anything right now because we won't have that stuff until the day of the concept sale.
Probably not in the near future. It has nothing to do with sales. The pledge process is to support the development of the game and we give you a ship in return. Ships will all be purchasable in-game at some point through UEC. It's just a question of when we're comfortable enough in persistence and shopping and all that stuff to make that stuff happen. 2.4 is the very, very first iteration of persistence and shopping and stuff like that. So it's going to be a while before we're confident enough in everything that we move something as important as buying ships into the game. But it will happen.
It's a hard question to answer. What do you mean how far along? It's like 42% along. It's not really a quantifiable thing because you build it out for one type of ecosystem, then you build it out so it can properly populate forests. Then you've got to do deserts. Then you've got to do tropical climates. Then you've got to do oceanic climates. So it's going to be a long, long process. But the stuff that I've seen recently, we've got full planets now that are rocky and gravity and physics are working. You can get into a Greycat and you can drive around and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's coming along. Doesn't look too much differently than what you've already seen before.
No, actually, this was older work by Emre Switzer. Both of our backgrounds are lighting explorations done by Emre, or Emre, as I say it. So it's kind of older, actually, if I'm not mistaken. I just thought they were very pretty. I liked them a lot.
It's going. It's going well. We're trying to crank things out as soon as we can. 2.4 touches a lot of things, a lot of interconnecting parts, so there's, of course, a lot of things that can break. So we're hammering those out for the most part. Persistence, good times.
We're going to do a segment with Paul Reindell here soon about persistence and what exactly persistence is, why it's so important and how it lays the foundation for everything going forward. I think we're filming that on Tuesday next week. So look for it in the week after probably.
We're still talking about it. We had plans to, and then we expanded our Gamescom trip to three weeks so that we could hit the Frankfurt studio and the UK studio, and then it ran over DragonCon. So we're still working it out. The tentative plan is to send Mr. Tyler Witkin right there. Maybe. But we don't have anything definitive yet.
TL;DRHangar invites weren't possible because hangars ran locally; moving them to the game servers in 2.4 makes it possible to start working on inviting friends, and it will come.
Because that relies on persistence. Because the hangars up to this point have worked entirely on your local computer. And part of what happens in 2.4 is we move the hangar up to running on our game servers. After that, we can start working on bringing people into your hangars. Plus, with the addition of ArcCorp and Crusader, it became less urgent to invite to hangars because everybody pretty much had the same hangar. Everything was in the same place, a couple different ships and whatnot, but for the most part, it's the same thing. Now with 2.4 and persistence and your ability to arrange your hangar how you want, your hangar will start to have its own personality. Then it becomes worth it to take the time to start inviting people to hangars. So it'll come. It just hasn't been possible up until now. And now that it's starting to be possible, we can start working on it.
I have no price information on the Corvette. Basically, if you noticed in our official announcements forum, we have a thread with ship prices. The second we know, literally, like the second we've decided what the price on something is, I post the price up there, which is why the Buccaneer price is up there now and there isn't a sale next week. That's how we're doing it now. When we know, I'm putting it up there. So if the price for something that isn't out yet isn't up there, it's because we don't have it. We don't know what it is. So I can't tell you.
TL;DRThey won't publish the loaner chart because it's currently wrong; loaners should be a Constellation for multi-crew or a Hornet for single-seat ships, unless a ship from the same line is available, and fixes are being worked on.
No, because the ship loaner chart is all messed up right now. Basically, the way the ship loaners are supposed to work is if you have a multi-crew vehicle, you're supposed to get a Constellation. If you have a single-seat vehicle, you're supposed to get a Hornet, those being the two kind of iconic trademark ships of Star Citizen. The times that that varies is when there's another version of the ship in your series that's available. So if you have an Aquila, you're going to get a Constellation. If you have a Vanguard Sentinel, you're going to get the Warden. So if there's a ship in the line that's available, you're going to get the ship in the line. But if there's not a ship in the line, it's going to be either a Hornet or a Constellation. That's not the case in some places, but those are bugs and errors. So we're working with Turbulent to get those squared away. Again, it's just in the list of priorities. There are more important things. But that's what it's supposed to be, Hornet or a Constellation, unless you have a ship of that line that happens to be available.
Actually, the current Greycat is using the default CryEngine settings for ground vehicles, and it's going to be reworked to handle significantly better. The first time I drove a Greycat, I was pretty frustrated.
Yeah, look for that to change mostly when we start working on the first ground vehicle, which is on the calendar for this year, actually. I've seen it. I'm not going to tell you when because I honestly can't remember when. But let's be real. If I could remember when, I'm still not going to tell you when because I don't do when questions. But it's on the calendar for this year, the Ursa Rover.
I've been asked a lot, what is the Evocati going to get as a reward for what they're doing? Do we get a badge? Do we get a shirt? Do we get a whatever? But just a reminder, they're not like an elite group that's better than everybody else. They're just contributors that have been helping out and earned their way to help us more.
TL;DRThere is no answer on the number of systems by the end of beta, because it's too early and development is unpredictable regarding resources, breakthroughs and roadblocks.
No idea, man. We're still in alpha. We're still building out the alpha. It's a horse before the cart thing, man. Who knows how big the company is going to be, how many resources we're going to have, how many breakthroughs we're going to have between now and then. We didn't think we'd be this close to procedural planets until well after release. That's what game development is. It's not game construction. You lay out a plan. You have to have some kind of goal and whatnot, but ultimately, there's no predicting inspiration. There's no predicting when somebody on some team somewhere is going to have that breakthrough and some part of the game is going to leap forward, or when the exact opposite is going to happen, some part of the game is going to hit a roadblock and we're just not going to be able to find an answer for this thing for some time, so it has to be deprioritized while we work on the stuff that we do have answers for. So it's just way too early for that kind of thing.
Very, very, very, very close. Very close. We can still use a few more video clips to replay. Basically, we have it done. We're just not 100% happy with it. So we're hoping to get some more better footage to kind of replace some of the other clips we have. And it's not just the video. It's coming with a couple other things. So we're waiting for the other things to get in line.
Yeah, Mark, you want to come over? You want to hang out? We'll play the game with you. I know the actor who plays Morrow. I know he plays because I just set him up with an account the other day. Actually, at like 1 o'clock in the morning, Chris emails me because he's in the UK. So Chris emails me, hey, can we set the guy who plays Morrow up on the account? And I did it. I rolled over and got the email and rolled my happy ass out of bed. Set him up. I could have waited until the morning, but I was like, yeah.
TL;DROrgs 2.0 is a full redo of the communications platform (chat, forums, community hub) being built by Turbulent; it is approved and budgeted, with no timeline given.
Basically, Orgs 2.0 is more than Orgs 2.0. It's an update to our entire platform. It's an update to our entire communication platform. We wanted to do all these cool things for orgs. And then when we got talking about, hey, we're going to do this and orgs should be able to do this and orgs should be able to do this, we're like, well, yeah, we want to do that on the whole website, not just in the org section. So Orgs 2.0 is a full-on, blown-out redo of our entire communications platform. Our chat system, our forum system, community hub. It'll even hit Issue Council a little bit. It is a top-to-bottom redress of our entire communications platform created by our guys at Turbulent. No more repurposing Vanilla for our forums. No more repurposing XMPP for our chat. It is a bespoke solution for Star Citizen. And if we get half the stuff that Turbulent's talking about, we'll have more than any game has ever provided their people.
So it'll be very cool. So it's approved, it's budgeted, they're building it now. Like anything else, how long does it take to build something you've never built before?
No info on the Next Great Starmarine. That's been put on hold a little bit. We're trying to get a specific sponsor for that to help pay for it and get cool prizes. Part of it is when people do these competitions, we want to be able to provide them with cool prizes, and we had a lot of cool sponsors for the Next Great Starship. We want to do that. So we're still lining up sponsors and stuff. So I have no information on that yet.
TL;DRCargo is being worked on and described as awesome, and some of it will appear in an upcoming Caterpillar video, though it is a work in progress and parts don't work correctly yet.
Yeah. Not going into details, but in one of our recent show and tells, we had an epic video that was put together by Calix showing the stuff he's working on. And yes, cargo is being worked on. And yes, it's awesome.
And you'll see some of that in the Caterpillar Ship Shape next week. A little bit. Tractor beam and all that kind of stuff. Some of it doesn't exactly work correctly, so there's a part where the Caterpillar just opens up and spills all its cargo out. It's pretty funny.
Well, we're not showing that video. It's a live version that we did with Calix, where nothing exactly works as it was supposed to. But we'll intercut bits from that video in for the parts that didn't quite work. It's all a work in progress.
Yes, we have a mini game for the Buccaneer sale that we've been working on for the last two weeks. It's not quite Hyper Vanguard Force or anything like that, but it'll be a fun distraction for a little bit. Even though I'm intimately involved in the design and the creation of it, it's one of those game types that I'm not necessarily about. So there are people who will love it though. And then there are people like me that will stare at the people who love it. But it's like those farm games. I don't get the farm games. So it's not a farming game. I was using that as an example of a type of game; it's not a Star Citizen farming game.
Yes. Work on the Drake Caterpillar will directly influence later work on the Cutlass. So the Drake is a much bigger test bed for figuring out all the style guides and the Drake personality and stuff. So it's one of the reasons the Cutlass is not in a revision right now, because we're learning all the lessons we can on the Caterpillar and the Herald before we do it.
I don't know all the details, but I know that knives will be a thing. I know that there are some interesting Vanduul weapons. And in Star Marine, you could have pressed X to melee someone, which was hitting them with the butt of your gun, or if you didn't have one, punching them.
It's the same principle with VR. When you've got a thing that affects this many people and a thing that affects this many people, you have to prioritize the thing that affects this many people. I think you'll find that's true in just about everything, not just video game development, just in life. It's literally a personification of 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few'. So it's just what has to be. So VR will come, Linux stuff will come, or not; we have to prioritize what affects the majority of people first.
No news on the Phoenix. Generally speaking, we're trying to do all the base models of every ship first before we go back and do the variants. There are a couple notable exceptions because a particular variant is necessary for some other aspect of the game. But for the most part, we are focusing on the base models before we go back through and do most of the variants. Again, with a couple notable exceptions.
That's a good question. I also have that question. I don't know the answer to that. I have asked and didn't get an answer. I think they're holding on to it to make it part of a bigger thing.