The developers cover Alpha 2.0 and PU plans: starting locations, voice commands, ship start-up, G-force effects, escape pods and Crusader landings. They also discuss persistence of purchased items and UEC, modular FPS armor, and the P-72 for the Constellation.
TL;DRRoberts hasn't decided whether the P-72 can be swapped in or bought separately for the Constellation; carrying a snub fighter and docking won't be in 2.0, but hopefully 2.1.
I haven't really decided, we've just finished off. Gurmukh who is one of our internal concept artists and has done some really great stuff. He did the Vanguard for instance and the Carrack. He's done the P-72 which we're setting up as a racer. So we may have the ability to upgrade it or buy a P-72 separate from what you get with your Constellation Phoenix. But we haven't fully made a decision yet but they're all going to be cool and I can't wait to see the Constellation flying out in space and you have your Merlin or Archimedes and you can take it from your Constellation and fly around and come back and dock. That's going to be pretty cool it won't be in 2.0 but hopefully will be in 2.1 we just have to finish up the final bit of binding one vehicle to another and dealing with the physics grid. But when that happens it's going to be pretty awesome and it's a whole other level of cool gameplay stuff we're going to do.
TL;DREscape pods will not work in 2.0 and probably not in 2.1 but later, intended to let players seal in and eject from a dying ship, tracked for rescue so they avoid losing a life.
So the escape pods will not be functional in 2.0. Longer term they will but probably not for 2.1 but I would say after that. The idea will be you should be able to... especially for the PU you should be able to get into the escape pod, seal it up and get out of there which is sort of your escape when the ship's going down. So the bigger multi crew ships when they're about to blow I think we've sort of previewed some kind of warning and damage states that you got only so many seconds to get out before the thing blows and that will be either getting into your EVA suit and trying to EVA far enough away so the explosion won't hurt you or getting into an escape pod and escaping away which will eject you and probably keep you more safe.Generally if your ship is about to ready blow in the PU especially you would get into your escape pod and the escape pod has a tracker or tag on it, so that's how you would get found and respawn and go back to sort of the last friendly planet you were on. That's how they're intended to work so if you obviously do use the escape pod that's one of the ways to save your lives so to speak otherwise when your ship blows up, then you'll have lost one of your lives and you'll wake up in the hospital after they found your almost dead body and charred and brought you back to life, so yes use escape pods when we have them working that is.
TL;DRInitial 2.0 and Star Marine only have temporary full suits of light, medium and heavy armour; the long-term plan, still being concepted, is mix-and-match pieces with protection by hit location, likely around 2.2.
For the initial 2.0 and Star Marine we just have the light, medium and heavy which are full suits of armour. That's just temporary the actual long term plan is actually in the process concepting is to have the armours be very much pieces. Almost like the medium armour is heavier pieces on the same base suit the heavy would go one step beyond that. You could mix and match say breast plates or shoulder guards or armour padding on the legs and that absolutely will be based on physical hit location and the density and strength of the material you're hitter there that will come with the physically based weapon damage stuff that we will be working on. It's not going to be in 2.0 it will come when we bring the newer refactored items to the table which is likely to be probably 2.2 I would think. Because 2.1 is going to be fairly close to 2.0 so we may not have time to get in. It's a pretty big refactor but I think it will give a lot more flexibility and fidelity and should be pretty cool when we get proper physical damage and physical characteristics for projectiles.
TL;DRRoberts says he sees people in the industry taking to heart community-driven development and crowdfunding, notes other campaigns follow similar processes, and expects publishers may eventually embrace engaging communities early, though he gives no concrete example.
Okay... Just trying to think. Presentation at the game developers conference because I don't think I've made a presentation at the game developers conference since I did one at the sort of GDC online that was here in LA quite a while ago? But I haven't really done one at GDC. Maybe I did one like at gamescom not this year but the year before I did one and I guess that's a European GDC? I'm not sure whether.. We definitely are doing, I think I made my points fairly consistently about what we try to engaging the community and sharing the work we're doing and by doing that and also having the ability to iterate and make things better because you have a community involved and giving you feedback on a level that you wouldn't have with a sort of internal development team or internal testing.I definitely see people out there that are sort of taking to heart the more community driven development process. We're not the only ones that do that by the way. There are people who have been community driven in the past as well but I certainly think that the fact that we've managed to mount a project this ambitious with the support of everyone out there has opened a lot of eyes because it's a totally different way.Before people dismissed crowdfunding and doing things the openway has been a small niche thing to do but were not small or niche, were competing with the biggest projects out there and it's all because of you guys and that's pretty good so I definitely see when I talk to people in the industry on the gaming side, there's a lot of people that have paid attention to that and understand the power of it and like I said I don't think we're the only people that have ever done that, it's not unique to us. I just think we've sort of committed it wholeheartedly and that's helped out. I do think that in some ways we are helping sort of change things slowly, crowdfunding has done that as well.So, there you go.. I mean it's kind of hard to say giving an example, you can kind of see some other crowdfunding campaigns and they do sort of follow a lot the processes we started. I definitely know that even in the case of Shroud of the Avatar quite a while ago I was tellingRichard: "Hey you should go and crowdfund" and when they were starting it perhaps Richard would tell us. We had some chats and I'm like yeah this is kind of what worked for us and they've been doing an amazing job themselves. I'm always impressed how consistent they are, how they're constantly pushing out new content, how they're engaging their community and there doing a great job and to be honest with you there are a lot of other crowdfunding campaigns that are doing a good job of that too.We've shouted out a view of them and backed a few and I think you'll also see longer term even publishers sort of embrace the model of engaging the community early, giving them access, giving them an opportunity to feedback and make them feel like they're involved with the process.
TL;DRAlpha 2.0 will have landings on space stations rather than planets, with planetary landings expected next year, similar to CitizenCon 2014 but probably better, and not yet shown.
Well CitizenCon 2014 we showed landing in ArcCorp but we're not going to be landing in ArcCorp in 2.0. We don't have planetary landing we have landings on various space stations then we have three main space stations and six or seven communication satellites scattered around the Crusade gas giant. We're not going to have the planetary landings this year. It will be next year. It will definitely be like the CitizenCon we saw in 2014 but probably much better.We've got some pretty cool stuff we're working on. Not ready to show it yet, but I think people will be very pleasantly surprised when they see what we're working on cause it's.... Anyway, we're going to do something I didn't think we were going to be able to do for quite a while so i'm quite happy with that but again like I said we'll wait to show you that we got a bunch of stuff to do first, I think there will be more freeform from space to planets and than we were originally saying and it will all stream and be pretty cool. There's a bunch of tech that's coming together towards the end of this year/beginning of next year that will enable that and we'll be showing it to you guys some time early next year and hopefully you'll like it.
TL;DRThrowing unstrapped occupants around during violent maneuvers in multi-crew ships is a longer-term goal that is not easy to prioritize and will not be in 2.0.
Longer term in the multi crew ships I would like you to be able to do more violent maneuvers and in development even if you're not strapped into your seat you're going to get kind of thrown around a little bit just like if you are on a ship or aeroplane and if you're in a violent maneuver you get thrown around. That will not be implemented in 2.0 it's actually not particularly that difficult to implement it's just we've got so many things to do there are lot of things that are a priority above that. I'm not sure we'll be able to ever have multi crew pull the kind of extreme G-forces that a high performance fighter could it's going to be very similar that a passenger jet airliner would be compared to an F-16. An F-16 is built for much more aggressive maneuvers than a passenger jet liner but you should be able to maneuver your multi crew ship fairly violently and throw people around ultimately. Like I said it won't be for 2.0 but it's absolutely part of the goals it gives you a reason to strap in in combat and if you had boost boxes they would get moved around and stuff like that. Coming but not in 2.0.
TL;DRComponents bought with UEC or real money will carry over into the PU, though items may still be rebalanced, while any temporary currency would be wiped.
If you actually purchased components using UEC which we've given you by default with your account and occasionally give additional ones and you can even buy some UEC. Those will all be permanent and will carry across into the PU anything you would purchase with a temporary currency. We're debating doing a temporary currency for the baby PU that we're working on now that would allow you to earn some money. That would obviously be wiped and obviously REC which is the rental equipment stuff which we may also carry across into Crusader the baby PU. It's obviously temporary it runs for a period of time.Essentially if you've bought some stuff with hard cash then yes you have it in the baby PU and you would have it all the way to the proper game works because that wouldn't be very fair if we didn't let you do that. I will say that it doesn't mean that some of the items and components may not get balanced cause obviously as you've seen as we put out there occasionally stuff needs to be re-tuned or rebalanced based on new features that come in or gameplay or maybe we've just made a weapon or a component too powerful and maybe we need to adjust it. But if you bought it you'll be able to get it and obviously once we get UEC working properly in the game you'll also be able to earn items and sell them to get credits back to get other stuff inside the game system.
TL;DRStartup sequences stay short for now, but longer term interactable cockpits with switches are probably coming for bigger ships, while keeping the game accessible with automatic-style starter ships.
Well I mean you'll get into the ship, you'll sort of turn it on and you'll get the HUD booted up and then after thrusters have spooled up you should be able to fly it. Longer term we're actually working on the stuff that will be a bit more involved. So having an interactable cockpit where not just having the screen interact with but turn switches off and on and so more old school ships you may have to click stuff off and on and some more modern ones maybe just touchscreens or holograms.We'll probably make some of that more involved later on; so there's some new stuff that's coming with our usability and item refactor that will allow us to sort of look around the cockpit and I think you've seen a preview of what we're doing with the interactive screens but that will all extend to also: "Oh look here's a switch I can turn a switch." So interact with buttons and everything in cockpits. So you get in and turn your powerplant on and turn your HUD on and those kind of things. We will probably add some of that.We don't want to go too crazy on it because we want to make this game accessible. We're already fairly... I know some people think we're a very simple game but if you compare us to say even the past Wing Commanders, I've done the Privateers, we've got a lot more knobs and dials you turn, modes you switch between and I mean just moving between the flight modes that's already four flight modes where in Wing Commander there's just one flight mode.So we're adding this extra complexity for when you get into the game you can really get the most out of it but we also need the kind of basic "Oh I'll get in my basic starter ship, it's an automatic, I don't need to tweak anything and I can just easily fly and take off" and then as you get more into it and you want to sort of get better performance or more control then you would go into a more manual state. So that's kind of like the analogy between having a car that's automatic and a car that's manual. Right now our startup sequences will be short to allow you to get into the action but longer term we will make it more involved for the bigger ships and make it generally cool.
So right now I know our community has been pretty active, there's been a bunch of really cool Voice Attack profiles that have been put together by people. So you can kind of do that on a community side, people have been sharing their profiles and set up for that.Longer term that is absolutely on our audio roadmap: so it is one of the things that I will have on the audio roadmap is basically building in voice command into the game itself. I mean it's pretty appropriate, we're a sci-fi game; you already have voice recognition engine on Windows which is pretty good, which is what Voice Attack uses. So it is one of the things that the Audio Department have on their long term roadmap to implement, but of course we've got quite a few other things like the VOIP, the situational voice that people could do whether they are behind you or talking to you over your helmet. Stuff like that.But long term, yes that's the plan. Short term, you can do this right now just by setting up Voice Attack and getting some of the profiles set up by the community.
TL;DRIt's too early to decide which planets players can start on; there will be multiple starting choices, likely a small number at first and expanding, but counts and locations aren't determined.
It's actually too early to make a call on which planets will allow players to start. We are going to have a selection of planets that people could start on when they start the game so we don't have player crowding in one location. We haven't made a decision on how many there will be and where they will be located. It probably wouldn't be all the places we have. It probably would be the bigger or more likely candidates in UEE space. Whether it's we give an option of four starting locations or ten starting locations we haven't determined that yet that will iteratively be decided as we grow the universe. Right now obviously there's one starting location in Stanton but that's going to change as we add more places with content.It's too early to say we will give you a choice and maybe it will be related to some of the preferences you want to do. Like if you're more keen on being an outlaw or on PvP then you probably don't want to be in the heart of UEE space, so things like that will also factor in. It's early days yet so we haven't fully decided what that's going to be. There will be multiple choices, we don't know how many of them and whether we'll have some small amount at the beginning and roll out larger options as we go alone which I would suspect would probably be the likely route we take.