The devs discuss bringing back the voice-only NPC Tessa Bannister, who would need facial and animation data for planned video comms. They also cover audible proximity and depressurization alarms on ships, and candidate first jump points (Pyro, Magnus, Terra, Nyx).
TL;DRThere's no date; the team definitely wants to bring Tessa back but must first decide what to do with her original voice-only lines, which have no facial or animation data.
DH
Dave HaddockDirector of Narrative, Star Citizen and Squadron 42
Yes, Tessa. We've talked with Luke a bunch about her. We know that there's a lot of love out there and a really exciting cartography community among our pilots, which is outstanding. We've definitely been talking about Tessa and got some plans for her. We have some initial challenges that we have to address, because the initial line set that we recorded for her, that everyone is used to, was just recorded in a VO booth. We basically had a long session where we got a bunch of the pirate lines and the Crusader security lines, and we got Tessa in that batch. So currently it's just voice only. We have no facial data, animation data, anything like that. So whatever the plans are that we have for her, the one hurdle that we have to address is: what do we do with those original lines? Do we re-record them? Do we have the actress lip sync to the lines? Stuff like that. So there's some weird technical stuff that we have to address before we can really go one way or the other on Ms. Bannister.
Dave HaddockDirector of Narrative, Star Citizen and Squadron 42
I'd hoped that she would be popular. So it's nice that other people found her, and once you heard the actual line readings, the actress was so fantastic. She nailed all the jokes. She got the humor. She really tapped into the character really quickly. Because there's always that thing where something on the page can be one thing, and then as it continues through a performance and stuff like that, you can go, oh, actually that line is not hitting the way I thought it was and it's not sounding right. And so you workshop it and stuff. But she was kind of turnkey. She keyed into that type of humor very, very easily. She sold it really well. It was really good. So yeah, we're very excited that people like her as much as we do.
Dave HaddockDirector of Narrative, Star Citizen and Squadron 42
The thing is, we're working on video comms. So if we're starting to have video comms in communication chatter, you have to address the question: if you're not seeing her, then it becomes a question. And if our system is that if you're sending a comm to somebody, you see a picture-in-picture of them, then to keep her alive, so to speak, she has to be brought up to that spec. So theoretically, that would be part of it. But will it lose that ethereal quality to her, that she's just the voice in space? I don't think so. I think her performance was so good that when you see her, it's going to add a whole other dimension to the character, and that'll be equally fun. So I'm optimistic.
TL;DRThe team wants this: they plan to make the ship computer's contact alarm audible throughout the ship and add a security MFD for controlling doors, atmosphere, gravity and alarms, with no timeline given.
Yeah, so that's something we want to do. As you say, if you're in the pilot seat, you get that alarm already. And just by pure chance I was talking to some of the audio guys the other day because they were complaining about how they couldn't hear their alarms. It's because it moved from being a 2D sound to a 3D sound, so it was actually playing out of the seat. Instead of it just being piped into your ears, it was playing out of the base of the seat, so it was getting quite quiet because it was cutting off. But essentially, you just need to expand that so it plays out of multiple points in your ship. You have that feedback from the ship computer to go, "Contact detected," no matter where you are on the ship, and then it's going to tell you. That and more; it probably won't stop telling you things.
I know one of the things we've showcased before, very early on in one of the early prototypes that Calyx was working on a year or two ago with the Caterpillar, was a series of render-to-texture screens throughout the ship that could display status reports from different areas of the ship.
That's something we want to put on essentially a security MFD that allows you to control all the doors, lock the doors, open the doors, vent the atmosphere, refill the atmosphere, turn off the gravity, turn on the gravity, set alarms, etc. That's all going to go on a big MFD that the security officer or a nominated person can control from their station.
TL;DRShips need an alarm before events like cargo bay depressurization, which can be switched off from a security MFD (e.g. to vent on boarders), but basic depressurization is all that exists now and there's no known date for that MFD.
Yeah, definitely. We've got very basic depressurization in-game at the moment with the room system and our doors. As people have probably noticed, if you're in the staff area and you keep opening and closing that back door, the air runs out and it doesn't refill at the moment, which is something we need to fix. But yes, we need to ensure that there is an alarm of some kind before big events like that happen, unless it's specifically turned off; there are going to be people that want to surprise people by doing it. For normal everyday use, just opening it, it's going to give alarms. If you want to turn off the alarms and vent it yourself to repel boarders, you don't want to let them know what's going on. Again, that will come back to that security MFD: alarms off in this room, open the doors.
TL;DRThe first jump point isn't decided; the team has discussed options (Terra, Pyro, Magnus, or Nyx with Levski already built) and wants whichever delivers a new system fairly quickly while tech and features keep progressing.
We do have thoughts. Nothing definitive. It's something that we've talked about internally. Obviously, we have Terra, Pyro, Magnus. And then the other caveat is that we do have Nyx, because we have Levski already built. And so we have that major landing zone that eventually will be moved out of the Stanton system. So for us, it's just looking at what we can do fairly quickly, what will basically allow us to still continue to build our tech and move forward on features, but still deliver another solar system to you.
Now, those are just the systems that are connected to Stanton by the star map. That doesn't exclude the possibility that we might decide to start with another system and then just connect our own, just like we do with Nyx.
Exactly. Nyx isn't connected technically, but it's something that if push came to shove, if CR said, yeah, let's do it, then that's what we're going to do.
TL;DRPyro offers pirate land and the Dying Star map, Magnus offers Drake's headquarters and three planets, but the choice isn't made, and the team is focused on finishing Stanton locations first.
Well, basically Pyro's pirate land. In reality, most of that stuff has been strip-mined out there and it's pretty void. But that's also where the Dying Star map for Arena Commander is. And then with Magnus, what that gets us is Drake's homeland, or Drake's headquarters, and then also three planets there as well.
Yeah, it was one of the hardest, but Stanton is also that thing that gets us everything. When Stanton is done, we've got almost everything that you need in the Star Citizen universe.
Yeah, we won't have liquid hot magma, which is needed for Pyro, I believe. So we'll be missing some things from a biome standpoint, but we will have the majority of things.
No, but again, we have talked about it. Tony, Chris and I, we've discussed it. Ian's been involved, so it's definitely on our radar. And right now, we are focused on getting Lorville out, and we know what we need to do with Area18. And then it's basically moving on to microTech, and so New Babbage and Orison, so it's getting the gas giant and all of those wonderful things. But as soon as we really start moving on that, that's when we're going to be looking at the next system.