The developers answer community questions on CitizenCon plans (livestream, Manchester, patch set), the Community Hub and Issue Council, and upcoming flyable ships including the Constellation, Retaliator, Herald and Endeavor. They also cover patch 1.3 multi-crew, the "Baby PU", module passes and subscriber flair.
I don't think we're going to make it out to Paris Games Week. We had wanted to, but the realities of development have prevented it. We might do a Free Fly. For sure. We'll do something like that. I know Sandi's trying to do something, but I don't think we can guarantee it right now. We're working on the game.
This is for the marketing manager. So if you'd like to apply for that job... By the way, there are many positions available on the Cloud Imperium Games job site. So cloudimperiumgames.com, apply for a job there. You never know.
Maybe. We've had those discussions. I think more importantly, we should give something special to everybody.
That's due for an update any time now.
As soon as production helps us out, though.
James, why don't you chase that next week, see what you can find.
It's not all going to be Chris. I mean, it's going to be a lot of us being goofy idiots still, but we have locked down Chris for an appearance. And we're looking to do that every month. Not always with Chris, but basically give subscribers a little bit of a voice on shows they make possible. We didn't want to limit the existing AtV, so we're going to start doing these monthly pop-up ones as an additional livestream.
And that's Wednesday the 23rd at 11 a.m. Double check if it's the 23rd, but it's Wednesday at 11 a.m.
TL;DRBen Lesnick declines to hype anything, saying the Endeavor is hopefully a week or two away without guarantee, a possible patch PTU has no guarantee either, and CitizenCon is where to look forward to.
I can't. I don't want to over-promise anything. I hate hyping people up, as fun as it can be. We're working on the Endeavor. Hopefully in a week or two. Can't guarantee it because I haven't seen the latest [revisions] yet. CitizenCon is going to be fantastic. You should definitely start getting hyped for that. I think they're working on a 1.2.1 patch, but it's not... Maybe PTU end of next week, but no guarantee there. So it's going to be status quo until CitizenCon, and then we're going to hopefully show you some really cool stuff.
One of the things I'm most pleased about with the way we do things here is that the sale dates don't dictate when these things go on sale. They go on sale when the ship is ready. So it's annoying to think, oh, they said it was going to be last week or the week before or whatever. I love it. I absolutely adore it. They take the time to make sure the ship is how Chris wants, how the team wants, before we go forward with it. So I'm really happy.
The FPS report will be later today. So there's not much for us to say on the FPS right now. We're getting the report in from Jason Hutchins. That'll go out like it has every Friday for the last couple months now. Now, I think the FPS report will probably be more minor today. I think Jason Hutchins is getting tired of saying the same thing. Our folks all over are working on the aftershock of the merge. It's taking a bit longer than expected. In fact, we should put together an AtV segment about what that means, because it seems to be impacting all aspects of development right now. It would be good to get that out there so people can see how the sausage is made.
Yes, our intention is to livestream CitizenCon. In fact, we brought our honking, loud livestream box computer to Germany on the plane, and instead of flying it back, we put it on the truck back to the UK. So we saved $75 in baggage fees by planning ahead. Who says we're not fiscally responsible?
Everybody wants to do it. We just want to do it when there's something interesting happening to do it about. Although I have heard that Chris has an idea for a second episode. We basically leave it up to Chris. When the mood strikes him, he can do a Game Commander, and he says he's working something out right now. So fingers crossed it'll be soon for another one. We'd rather them be few and irregular and awesome than try to mass produce them. Plus it gives me time to embed more gags in the intro, which I haven't done yet.
No plans to sell the 890 Jump again. I mean, we may someday, but not on the near-term forecast.
It should be open to all backers right now. Community Hub, and the other thing, whose name I forget because it's stupid... Issue Council. Issue Council, yes, are both available now. It sounds like they were judging things, but it's actually the bug submission mega thing. I'm just making fun of the name for no reason. I don't actually hate it. If you're a backer and you don't have access to the hub, let us know. Unless you're a backer who was banned from the forums and you don't have access, in which case we know and we don't care. If you've been banned from the forums, you've been banned from the Issue Council and the Community Hub. So be more nice.
Well, we're looking at the multi-crew stuff actually coming in next, the Constellation, Retaliator, maybe a Cutlass update. And then the Herald will be the next single-seater. Those are all battling it out for which you'll play next. But my guess would be the Constellation and the Retaliator at this point. But I can't say when, or why, or how, or to what degree.
The hub is iterative. There's a 1.1 in development. We've already got plans for 1.2 and 1.3. And one of the things on there is alternate viewing modes. So like all the other aspects of our development, it's iterative. We wanted to get the first version out to you so that you could see it and we could get your feedback before we keep iterating and whatnot. So yeah, just keep on watching.
No, we talked about that earlier in the show. They're happening. We just don't have any other info right now.
1.3 is the multi-crew explosion, I believe. Large world map. Large world map, multi-crew, test bed, mess around in a Constellation, Retaliator sort of a thing. But no date for that, no specifics yet. Just that they're hard at work. Or it's 1.3 FPS now. One of those things. We have a lot coming. That's basically what it comes down to.
I'm waiting for some [paint-over] art right now. In fact, I think I have an email from Chris Roberts about that that I have to read right now.
You know, we haven't heard from Pirate Wong in a long time. He's been quiet, and I hope he never makes his return.
Do you want to tell folks what Pirate Wong was?
We had some issues last year when we were shipping the Constellation models for the first time. It appeared that they were all intercepted by somebody named Wong. And it was a very tense few days while we figured out what happened. But we got it all worked out. So that became a joke. He has all of our ships. Apparently he took Josh's mouse pad. Sometimes he gets the mouse pads. He's got some of the dog tags too.
So Pirate Wong status, still outstanding. If you see Pirate Wong, contact the local authorities immediately.
TL;DRNo, ship status won't go in the Community Hub, which is meant only for community-made content; ship status has instead been added as a blurb on the ship pages.
No. The Community Hub isn't about us. It's about you guys. The ship status has gone into the ship pages. They now all have a status blurb. [They] did that without even asking us. It was very cool. But the Community Hub, however it iterates, will be about you guys. Not about us. Not about the project. So you won't see us posting episodes of Around the Verse in there. There won't be ship status in there. There won't be FPS status up there. It's all the stuff that you guys make. That's what the Community Hub is for. So it has a home on our website. I don't know if you guys remember, early on we used to spend most of the time when we've been hanging out sharing community videos and such. Which, confession, we did because we had nothing else to show. Now we have a little more to talk about and we spend most of our half hour here in the studio, and we wanted the Community Hub to basically let you guys get your stuff out there to the widest possible audience again.
I cannot. Just that it has a concept artist assigned. He's busy on the variants for another ship right now, and once that's finished, he will start prowling.
No, I don't believe we're going to do it this year. Buckle down and focus more on the game. We're thinking of doing more livestreams this next year rather than going out to events. We try to avoid using dev time in general for these events, and we're going to do that next year. But we'll still do Gamescom, DragonCon, hopefully we'll do more DragonCon this next year. But I don't think we're going to make PAX.
TL;DRArena Commander will continue and get multi-crew, while mining and exploring mechanics will be prototyped in a separate persistent "Baby PU" space rather than inside Arena Commander.
So this is one of the things that I think there's been some confusion about since Chris tried to explain it. Arena Commander will continue and we will be adding multi-crew to it as time goes on, so we'll have AC 2.0 with multi-crew arena battles. We're creating what does not have a name yet. Chris referred to it as the Baby PU. Tony's been calling it the Exoverse. Basically a big chunk of giant space where we can start prototyping stuff for you guys. That's what you're going to see in the multi-crew launch. So a big universe that's persistent and you fly from place to place. And that's probably where we're going to prototype most of the mechanics. So you'll go to the Baby PU, Exoverse, whatever, and we'll have the mining chunk in, the exploring chunk. You'll do it that way rather than kind of interrupting the Arena Commander world. Arena Commander is supposed to be a specific type of game inside Star Citizen. So that's how we're doing that.
We're not going to tell you what to expect at CitizenCon because we want it to be a surprise. Tune in and find out. You won't regret it. Expect Chris Roberts, expect a PowerPoint presentation, and expect some cool stuff interrupting that PowerPoint presentation at various points. There's also going to be a Concorde. It's in the lovely hangar in Manchester where they house a Concorde. So there's a Concorde in there. That great monument to mankind's failure to advance himself in the last 20, 30 years.
No, as of right now, I will not be at CitizenCon, for the person who asked. It's mostly the Manchester folks who will be running CitizenCon. We're letting them star in this one. Also, they already live there and don't have to fly in a tiny metal tube around the world. Fiscally responsible.
Still in the works. In fact, I believe they sat down with some of the guys who did the fan-based Pirate Swarm and they were integrating some of their stuff.
TL;DRThey find it hard not to share things and wish they could show everything when it's done, but say they already show a lot and have increased how much appears during the episode.
It's so hard.
He's right. Our immediate reaction to anything is, oh my god, I can't wait to show everybody that. That's why we do stuff like work up the nerve to ask Chris Roberts if we can show the Endeavor early at DragonCon. Usually I have to have an argument for it. Even though it is tough, I wish we could show everything as soon as it's done. I think we come closer than pretty much anyone ever in the history of anything. We show tons of stuff. There have been some minor complaints lately. It's been a series of things. But we're doing that for the Sneak Peek, but we've also increased the amount of stuff we show during the episode tremendously. We've got the Caterpillar and Avenger. The Sneak Peek used to be the only place you saw something, and now you can tune in throughout the episode and expect to see all kinds of things from time to time. So it's de-emphasized the importance of the Sneak Peek a little bit, I think.
I hope so. Those two things aren't connected. Hopefully we'll have working shields in the next patch. It's one of those things that's hard to predict, given that trajectory. So I will say that the workingness of the shields on the Mustang is not connected to whether or not it's 2.0. But we should fix it real fast.
TL;DREpisodes work from an outline, usually made by James, with Ben adding the news from the weekly leads meeting, while the hosts ad-lib the rest, including puns and singing.
Well, AtV... in fact, is there a script around here? I can show you guys how it works. See how terrible our printer is, too. We essentially start with an outline. So it will say stuff like very basic lines that we kind of ad-lib over. Like, here's the next segment. Thank you for that segment. And then Sandi and I fill in from there with our sparkling personalities. Usually James puts together the basic outline. I will go in and I will add the news, because, back up a little bit, I attend the weekly leads meeting Monday morning with all the other directors and execs and bigwigs, and so I get an idea of what's actually happening in the week. And I distill that into the news, what we're going to do in the intro and the outro. So I kind of write those segments. James puts together the general outline, although Jared did it last week, and he actually specifically wrote jokes into it and stuff for us, which we ruined because we are ruiners.
I learned why writers drink.
Yeah, so it's just an outline. It's not verbatim. So we work from that outline. Sandi and I just have fun ad-libbing. The puns and the singing are all spur of the moment. I will confess that I drink one or two sugar-free Monster energy drinks before the episode, which genuinely does make me more personable. Sandi is just always like that.
These past two episodes, I feel like, have been full of life, to be honest. It's been a good time.
Yeah, we shot the last two at night instead of in the morning. And it seems to be working. All except the part where we're here at 8 o'clock at night.
It still sucks. But yeah, a holotable revamp is coming, but it's one of those things where we know it sucks, and let's wait until we know all the things that need to go in the holotable before we build any.
That'd be great. Put it on there. Hub it up. Let's get the first contest we have lined up going, and then we'll look into doing that next. But I like the idea.
There's no reason why not. I would think so. I don't think there's a technical limitation to it. And these guys take their fidelity very seriously. The level of detail in ArcCorp right now is astounding. And it's only getting better. I've already seen plans for revisions to half the buildings in there because they're still not good enough. They want to make them even better.
No information about a season two of The Next Great Starship yet. I would think that's something that would be closer to or after launch. We definitely want to do it. I think everybody involved had a great time except for Mark Skelton. We'd love to do it again.
Stay tuned for anything about module passes. That's all being discussed. But tending towards no, you probably would not need one. They're probably going to be more of a thing of the past. They make us a chunk of money, but the reason for them to exist is really no longer here. So we're trying to figure out exactly how we'll do that in the future. Stay tuned for an update.
TL;DRNo date is given; the UI director only just did style updates for many ship HUDs and is on vacation, so timelines may come when they return and the speaker hasn't seen details yet.
I was talking about this before. To recap, a few weeks ago I was talking about how we have Zane over in the UK, and he was actually promoted from UI artist to, I forget his new title... UI director, something, very well-deserved, so I'm very excited about this. And as part of that, he went out to the UK for two weeks, and they did a bunch of style updates for a lot of the HUDs, for a lot of the ships. And then he went on PTO for two weeks. So he's on vacation right now. Also much deserved. Very few people deserved that more than he did at that time. So when he gets back, which I think is in about another week, I'll be able to get some more timelines to you guys. But I haven't even seen details of what they've been working on yet. So I'm excited too.
But he's actually going to be working out of the UK for a while, I believe, with the UK UI guys there. So we're losing our Zane to the UK. He's still with the project. We just don't get to peek over his shoulder at all the cool stuff he's working on anymore.
No, I'm not.
Actually, they've been working on that for a while.
It's baked into the core of CryEngine. It's a hard thing to replace. Luckily, we have some CryEngine experts. It's ongoing.
TL;DRYes, a patch set is planned around CitizenCon, including Squadron 42, Star Citizen and RSI patches plus a special subscriber patch, sold on the website rather than at the event.
Actually, yeah, we are doing a patch set. We're going to have some stuff coming out for CitizenCon. One of those things will be... it's going to be the Squadron 42 patch, Star Citizen, RSI, and we have a special patch that will be available for subscribers that will come with that set. You know that logo that you've been seeing? The ICC Stellar Surveyors. We're going to be doing that as a patch. And we have some lore that goes along with it, which we can delve into a little bit deeper.
Yeah, so basically, if you have not figured this out already, we are saying that our subscribers, those who are making all this possible, are all members of the ICC whatever, and that you're making the universe possible in the same way. So we're kind of working that into the lore. And thank you. And you'll all get patches and whatever.
And to clarify that, we won't have them for sale at the actual CitizenCon. We'll have them for sale on the website. We're going to be launching some stuff to go along with CitizenCon. We're cooking something up over here.
TL;DRThe LA office is still working on the same ships, with a few people temporarily redirected to help a final push on one ship's next milestone, plus pipeline-alignment work with the UK.
That's too vague, but I'll tell you what comes to mind. So we don't have anything super fancy new going on here. We're still plugging away on the same ships, and people are actively working in the LA office on the Herald, the Reliant, and the Constellation. Although we are going to be redirecting a few resources for just a week or two to help with one of the final pushes toward the next milestone stage for the Constellation. So we have a few people that are pulling off onto that. It shouldn't affect anything too big. And a lot of stuff we're doing now is not super exciting to talk about, but we're trying to globalize a little more and make sure that our pipeline is exactly the same as the UK pipeline. So a bunch of meetings to bring our practices into even more sync. Not very exciting, but that's what we're doing.
Possibly. We just met with Behaviour yesterday to talk about subscriber flair, and we're kind of ramping up, talking about what our next series of things is going to be, so who knows?
Actually, let's involve our subscribers in this. Somebody want to start a thread in the Subscribers' Den with ideas for flair? The less floor space a flair uses, the better. The less movement it has, the better. But any ideas you have, post them to a thread. We'll look through them as we put together our next year plan.
I will start a thread in the Den today, so you guys can give us your ideas.
I try to mix up what ships are there, because everyone in the world has a question: how often will we see [their ship's] Ship Shape updates? So it's obviously based on what people are working on and what's interesting.
There's a lot of moving parts, so it takes some time to actually schedule it out and have something that we can show.
It doesn't matter anymore. There's a whole world now. The room system is not a thing anymore. Forget you ever heard of the room system. You can walk into different rooms in ArcCorp right now. I think they're referring to things like the racetrack, the firing range, the add-ons to the hangar. It's still all in the works, but the system is done. We can add stuff whenever we have it done. So those things are still coming. It's just not the room system anymore. No racetrack. We nixed the racetrack many years ago.
That's actually a good question. When multi-crew comes out, I'll almost definitely do an episode or two based on the tech and the cool stuff behind it. Maybe some of the ship updates that we made for it. So that'll definitely come when that happens.
We have some other priorities before the end of the year, so you probably will not see that before the end of the year. But that is something that I was discussing this morning, actually, about when we're going to try to fit that in the schedule. So if I had to guess, sometime first half of next year. But I know that's super vague, and that could change, and it's not my decision.