Will Weissbaum, a Star Citizen narrative writer, answers lore and writing questions. He covers Xi'an food and taste, the Hurricane as the next concept sale, the Carrack schedule, Squadron 42's 1,200-page script, the Artemis, Nine Tails and branching mission writing for 3.0.
Some of it. It's a taste thing that we've been exploring more and hopefully will have come out further. We've mentioned on some of our lore posts a really potent fermented drink that humans find almost unpalatable but that's really popular with Xi'an.
So one idea, well, maybe I won't get in trouble for this. Something that we're leaking out is that they taste food a little bit differently than we do. So one of their big things is different texture of food more than flavor. This is because they tend to eat more fermented and rotting foods by nature. So their sense of taste isn't quite the same as ours. So they like foods that tingle or numb or feel prickly and stuff like that.
So I'm going to not talk too much about this. We're still working with design. Design is basically figuring out what the most fun gameplay is going to be, and then we're going to be catering our lore to emphasize that. So we work in conjunction with them and we talk about some of the things that we've been thinking about. But the actual specifics of how the weapon is going to work is definitely being led by them to make sure that it's really cool, awesome gameplay. So we have some stuff cooking, but I'm going to leave it very vague right now.
Have you read any of our Starwatch short story pieces of fiction? We have Starwatch as one of our ongoing series, which gets into the pop stars, the music, the celebrities of the universe. And so there's a lot of characters that we've been creating there. And we have some bands, figuring out the backstory behind the band that wrote the theme song for Galactic Tour, that kind of stuff, which I'm blanking on right now. But we do have a write-up lurking somewhere on that, and all that's going to be out in the world. Right now in 2.6.1, you can actually see in Echo 11 some sweet band posters that just got added in for Los Imperators, which is one of the bands, a punk band.
Current Carrack status is that it's on the schedule. It is not in active development at the moment, but it is on the schedule for this year, for 2017. As far as when it gets adjusted based on the other ships, sometimes the ship before it will take longer, sometimes the ship before it will go faster. But it is on the schedule for this year, but there is nothing new to report on the Carrack right now. Trust me, when that goes into production, we have heard enough questions about it. We will let you know on shows such as this. We will tell you that Carrack is in production. But until it enters production, there is no new information.
TL;DROperation Pitchfork's timing is still a long way off; the narrative is being built around giving players options and seeing how their collective actions affect the universe, with no specific writings detailed.
Oh, about when that's going to go down and the effects of that? We are still quite a ways away. And it's been fun watching the Pitchfork community develop and change and grow over my time here and thinking about how that's bundled into all the ways that we look at how our players are going to be able to affect the game universe on a larger scale. Outside of their individual actions, when groups of players band together, what kind of change can they expect to effect, on the economy, on resources, on military action. And so as we're building out the narrative for the persistent universe, we think of it not like a linear story, but we give these options on what might happen and then we see how the players might react to it. Recently we just had a Tevarin run for Senate for the first time. So taking that as an example, if we applied it to the PU, it would be like, how can we let the players influence an election like that? Would they be cutting off reserves to one side or the other? If crime goes one way, does that affect the candidate somehow if there's all these outlaws performing in the system? And how does that all tie into the awesome procedural managers that Tony Z and his team are building out in Subsumption? So there's a lot of fun, complicated discussions happening.
TL;DRFor 3.0 he works with design: they propose settings, design supplies mostly mechanic-based mission ideas, and narrative adds story context and angles, such as playing the outlaw side; mission specifics are deferred to another show.
For the 3.0 stuff, we've been working pretty closely with Luke Pressley and his team on figuring out that round, and Todd Papy, the design director. So we have the setting and we pitch what would be appropriate in that area. And then design comes up with a bunch of ideas, usually more mechanic based: hey, we want to do something where you have to go to these three stations and touch them all in their parts. And we then take that and we try to skin it: that would be really cool, we know we have this gang that we want attacking in this area, so maybe they've taken it over and then you have to go set it free or reset it, or what if you're on the other side of that and you can be hired by the outlaws to be the one who deactivates it. So we like to be pretty involved in not only providing ideas but taking the mechanics and trying to add some sparkle on top of them.
As far as any specifics as far as missions in 3.0, I'm going to encourage you to tune in to Citizens of the Stars on Monday, where in Quantum Questions our guest is Will Weissbaum here and he was asked just that question.
Wouldn't that be interesting? For those not in the know, the Artemis is part of the lore. It's a ship that was equipped with an AI pilot, and it was sent slow boating out into the universe. All the humans on board were put into deep sleep, and the idea was that this AI would fly them to a neighboring star system. And unfortunately, things went wrong, and we haven't heard contact from the ship. So it's gone, and that was one of the big reasons why AI hasn't taken off quite as a popular means of control in Star Citizen. So, yeah. It's out there.
Always single. That was a fun example of us working with design: we had the idea that there were all these wrecks that you were supposed to explore and we were like, all right, how can you find out about them? And we wanted to leave it open in order to be able to find other interesting things. And so we created her as this fun character to give a little bit of flavor to finding these black boxes and exploring these wrecks. So it ended up working out really well, and the actress did a fantastic job.
TL;DRCultures are partly shared and partly regional, with some information lag between systems; NPC variety is being planned at a broad archetype level first, with more location-specific detail coming in a later version.
It's a little bit of both, actually. We have pretty good communication across systems. Even when systems are remote, because we don't have real-time interstellar communications, you have to send comm drones in order to talk to someone through a jump point. There's a little bit of information lag and isolation that way. But for the most part, there's a lot of commerce going back and forth, and so information does get spread. So no one is living in pure isolation. And we all came from the same diaspora of Earth, so there is some stuff that people have in common. But like you said, living in different environments, dealing with different local situations have given that. We have been working a lot with the character art team on setting up how the different looks of people can be changed based on where they're from. And so we have some interesting ideas from the character art team on that, so that you might be able to look and see someone in a particular jacket or a particular style about them and be like, oh, that looks like they're from Goss III. Right now, with our NPC behaviors, we are looking more at higher-level stuff before we get into the specifics of differentiating, like this guy on this planet talks differently than someone on that planet, because it starts getting very specific. So right now we're focusing on our initial first pass, which is populating the universe on a grand scale: getting the frontier type people, the rough, gruff people you might expect to find in a mining station, and then the more urbanite people, and the outlaws versus fancy pants, and all those archetypes that could be applied across the empire first. And then we can populate all of it at once. And then from there, our next V2, as we like to say in development, the next version, then we'll start getting more specific. Like what is this guy on this station talking about, how the ice cream used to be better three years ago. And getting really narrowed-down content after we can do the whole thing.
So, yeah. Ish, we're still exploring how much that's going to be effective. The idea is that as you build your reputation, more people will be likely to trust you and give you better deals and maybe recognize you on sight. It starts getting complicated at the scale we're talking about for NPCs to be able to audibly mention you by name. So that's a tall order when we're talking about as many players as we are. But being impressed by you and speaking on a more generic level is definitely something we've talked about. What does it mean when you become the best hauler out there? Everyone wants to give you the contract or offer you a better deal, or you can charge more for your services.
I'm going to go ahead and confirm to you that the Hurricane is the next concept sale and that it is coming a week from today. So the Hurricane will go on sale a week from today. I don't have the price yet, so I actually can't give you the price because I don't know the price.
I will also say here today that the narrative team has been working on the brochure. And it's pretty cool.
So the process of pricing these things is above my pay grade, and it gets quite a few people involved and stuff like that. So when that is hammered out, we will share that with you. The Hurricane is the next concept sale and it will go on sale next Friday.
TL;DRFrost lines already exist in the setting: they've calculated reasonable distances by star class with consultants and place planets accordingly, but he knows of no further dedicated lore beyond that.
We have mentioned the Frost Line. I specifically used the term Frost Line in this month's Galactic Guide coming out in Jump Point today. I don't know if there's something more than, do you mean do solar systems have frost lines? The answer is yes. We've been working with our consultants to calculate what is a reasonable distance based on which class of star is in a system, and so we have the green zones and the frost lines, and we try to make sure that the planets line up with where they're supposed to be in a system, because of science. Something that's been interesting happening to me as I started working on this project, getting more invested in space news, is seeing how every week a new story comes out of, hey, that thing that we all said was impossible? Well, we found it. It's here. It's not impossible. We were wrong.
TL;DRIt's too early to say whether player-made news will feature in the lore; they'd like to investigate it and hope to try, but it depends on time, resources and technical capability.
I think it's a bit too early to say. As far as intentions go, that's definitely something we'd like to investigate and look at. In game development, you have all these ideas, all these things that you'd love to do. It's a question of time and resources and technical capabilities.
Yeah, will it be featured on TVs in the verse? Will it be the kind of thing on your mobi where you get to see people posting in the local area? There's a couple ways it could go if we can pull it off. There's some neat stuff. So hopefully, we have the awesome news van, so it'll be great to see how we can actually use it.
It's not a question that can be answered until we cross that bridge. But of course, as with everything, we will endeavor to do all that we can.
But maybe you're going on your stream on Beam and using your Reliant to cast there.
If you subscribe to our weekly newsletter that goes out every Friday, maybe it was two weeks ago, there was some brand new interior concept art of the Banu Merchantman. And when I mean brand new, I mean it came in and we went right into the newsletter. It is brand new. So you can check that out if you missed it in the newsletter. It was in there two weeks ago. It's since been taken and put on the forums and Reddit and stuff like that, so you can find it if you search for it. But sneak peeks, for those of you who wondered where they went from ATV, they are in the weekly newsletter. So check out that weekly newsletter. Check your spam filters. There's lots of fun stuff that goes out there.
I'm debating how much to say right now. The reason why we're always quiet on some stuff is that, as much as it's fun to read about this lore, when we start planning on revealing this information in the game, we want that fun of discovery. So I'm going to be mum on all of that. Right now, we have you being able to ancillarily do jobs for the Nine Tails through your contact, Ruto, who sends you those fun messages in the game right now when you play in the PU. So we can hopefully expect some more from the Nine Tails and Ruto. It's fun seeing their stuff in Grim HEX, taking over that station.
Oh, no. I cannot. Hello, everybody. My name is Will Weissbaum, and I'm from Cathcart. That's kind of Australian. That is a toughie. That is not something I've mastered yet.
No. That is a studio location thing. A lot of our VO talent is from England. We do a bunch of recording over there, so sometimes that ends up being our talent pool. We do have our fair share of American accents. We have a bunch of other additional voice packs that we're hoping will expand our outlaw pool, coming out in 3.0, to start mixing up the voices you hear a bit more. It's more a logistics thing than anything else. We're going to try to have an even spread of a bunch of different kinds of voices for you to hear.
Ah, yes. A bit. The flora and fauna has been coming along as environment has been working more on the procedural planets. I think we just showed off some sweet cacti recently. That's been pretty cool. So a lot of times, that's spearheaded by the artists for a majority of times, when they're creating a look and a feel for a planet. But we've had some discussions for 3.0 in terms of populating possibly some of the worlds there, and what are we going to do, and trying to figure out, all right, what makes sense in this ecological bubble? So we help spawn ideas.
I'm going to go ahead and say no, because I have the best job. Allow me to be a little touchy-feely here, but getting to go to events, getting to go to Bar Citizens, getting to meet most of you people, I won't say all, let's be real, but getting to meet most of you people, I wouldn't trade this job for anything in the world. I think I have the best job at CIG.
That is also going to be determined heavily by design. We have been waiting for the melee stuff to come online before we start diving into that specifically that much.
Are you going to be able to come across people in distress and decide what to do? Yeah, I think that's going to be a big part. It's something we talked about. One of our characters, Old Jaeger, who writes Far From Home, talks about that community of people who are out in the black and how important it is to help each other out there. And that's a nice sense of community about these people who are maybe running along the less populated flight lanes. And if you get in trouble out in the middle of space, you're really in trouble. So it's one of those rules of the road: you should probably stop and help if you see someone in need.
We have a repair bot that's one of the stretch goal rewards. AMX-1.
So yeah, we have repair drones, and other menial work has been tossed around as possibilities, like cargo handling. An important part is the hand artisanal floor cleaning, so we don't want to lose that. Mopping by hand is important. But maybe some places don't care about that level of craftsmanship in getting their floors clean, so maybe they would have an automated floor cleaner.
The military is still going to have janitors and stuff because you don't want to rely on technology too much.
Well, aren't sometimes the janitors also the mechanics?
They do basic internal service functions as well as the custodial staff. So it varies on ship and crew size how specialized they get. The fewer people you have, the more roles they would be expected to pull.
Yeah, that is a really good one. I think I'm leaning more recently towards writing for good guys. It varies with what I've been doing recently, but we have a lot of stories with high action and shooting and outlaws and stuff like that. So trying to find these moments of hope and inspiration, like we were talking about with Far From Home, that's fun for me, putting that role-playing spin on stuff.
I think Dave answered bad guys.
Yeah. He's really good at it.
TL;DRThey can't predict which character players will fall in love with; they try to make every character interesting, note one was a surprise hit, and hope players find characters to attach to.
We'll have to just wait and see. I would say there's no predicting that. There are certainly characters you're going to hope people fall in love with.
That's the thing. A lot of times, it's really hard to predict who is going to hit home. We try to make every character fun and interesting. Tessa, for example, was a surprise hit. I think there's going to be a lot of room for people to discover the characters that they have fun with. And I think there's also going to be a lot of times in the game this focus on seeing the difference between the micro stories and the macro stories. Like, who is this guy, a big operator in the Stanton system who has this small territory under control and he's a big shot there, but if you go a system over, no one really has heard about him. And that's different versus the more empire-wide figures, like Imperator Costigan or something, that you'd be seeing news about across the whole thing. So I think there's hopefully going to be a lot of people that players can attach themselves to and enjoy and meet.
TL;DRDay-to-day writing is driven by whatever priority is most pressing, alongside long-term planning, plus short stories and news pieces for Jump Point, which the narrative team has recently kept in-house.
Well, on the day-to-day, it's often a bit of a squeaky wheel thing: our priorities are constantly pulling us in different directions, and it's about just sitting down, like, this is what I need to write now. But we do long-term planning and high-level planning, and try to get the stuff that we're passionate about out quickly into the verse for people to enjoy. And there's the difference between working on the specific gameplay stuff as well as all the fun short-story-type stuff we get to do with the weekly news updates and the Jump Points. In the past we've had Jump Points where we've brought in outside authors to do short stories for us, but as a narrative team, we decided to take it in-house for the past several issues. So Adam did a great story about the Second Tevarin War. And then we got to do a fun in-house universe lore piece about a TV show called Law Squad. So that was fun. And then Dave just started a new story called Drifters. It's great to have Dave back writing one of these longer pieces again because he's really good at it, and he's my boss, but he's really good. I feel like I'm upselling Jump Point a lot. Jump Point is awesome. But these stories are a great way to flesh out what we hope the game's going to feel like once you get into these worlds.
TL;DRHe has little structure, going wherever he's needed across video, livestream, writing and artwork, because the company is still small and no two weeks have been alike.
One of the things that I've referred to myself as, besides the Swiss Army knife, is human Fix-a-Flat. Basically, I'm just the guy. They spray me into a situation. I go where I'm needed. So if it's video production, it's video production. If it's livestream stuff, it's livestream stuff. If it's a sales post, it's a sales post. Yesterday I was writing up our big 2.6.1 post for when that releases, and working with Turbulent and writing up Spectrum how-tos and stuff like that. It's wherever I can help. There isn't much structure. I've done artwork for our game box and stuff, so the box, when that comes out, will have artwork that I've created. I go wherever. We're still a small company. For 300 and some odd people, we're still a young, small company, so we don't have everybody for every single thing that needs to be done. So a lot of working here is filling in in other places. In the two years I've been here now, there hasn't been a week that was like the week before it, or a week that was like the week after it.
TL;DRWriting for procedural or branching mission chains is very hard; they group lines by player action, decide how much branching to allow, and are exploring procedural snippets driven by the manager system for 3.0.
Oh, very, very hard. That's one of the big challenges that we face in Squadron 42 and the PU content: covering a broader situation. It's always a balancing act. You can think of thousands of things that might happen, but you can't write that many lines and expect them to get recorded and implemented, and do it for multiple voices. So then you try to categorize them together. So, oh, when the player does this kind of thing, these four lines would be appropriate responses to it. And then the more branching you have, you have to decide whether you're going to allow different outcomes or whether it's going to feed back into itself, so that you can guarantee that players will wind up back at the same place. And then we start getting more into the procedural snippets, which we've been exploring a lot more with the 3.0 development: taking pieces of character and dialogue that can work in a system where our manager system is telling what is going to happen next. Like, we are creating a piece of cargo that needs to be taken here; when that mission is created, what are the lines that cover you being informed about it, and the puzzle pieces that go into creating that. It has been a real fun challenge and hopefully we will get to show that stuff off more coming up.
I mean, we're still growing. One thing that we've been working on now is on-screen text needs for Squadron 42, which is a whole other can of worms: all the text that you'll be able to read in your mobiGlas and mission text and all that kind of stuff. So we're organizing that right now. But we were over 1,200 pages at the last count. And that page a minute, that average is based on having action and dialogue on the same page, so it changes a bit. We have a lot of pages when we get into these wild lines or branching where it is just all dialogue for a solid page, as someone says 'where are you going' or 'come over here' a couple of different ways and times.
Yeah, filling in some of the NPC stuff. And as we do playtests, there's invariably these little holes that you'll discover that you didn't quite think of. And so it's figuring out pickups, patching in: the player needs this extra bit of information, it's a little confusing, how do we smooth that out for them and make the experience better? Can we do that in dialogue? Do we do it in text? Can we do it with environment art? That's a lot of times the best solution, letting the players figure stuff out themselves but just giving them hints. So it's looking at that sort of stuff now.
And just to confirm, that 1,200 pages is just episode one.