Reverse the Verse: October 30th, 2015

Not quite yet, but soon I can probably reveal it. And that'll start in March of next year, we'll have a new series.

It's definitely not sitting around and playing the game all day. As new features and new content come online every day, as the developers check them in, we're constantly getting new builds, making sure that things are working. We do a lot of performance testing, a lot of functionality testing, for anything that comes online, just to assure that it's of a high quality and standard. We'll be submitting issues, but it's up to production to decide whether they want to release with those issues or not. Yeah, we break things. It's kind of a similar process to what a lot of you are getting to experience in the Issue Council. A lot of trying to repro issues and decide their priority. And we can always entertain Jared with our funny ones.

We hear that a lot, that the contact list doesn't always display properly. But we know they're definitely working on it. I can check the bug. There's a lot of bugs. We'd have to go look at it and pull it up. I don't have it in front of me.

The bug with SLI causing issues internally, they've figured out a fix for it. Obviously it's not live yet, but hopefully in the next patch that will go with it and that will no longer be an issue.

I guess that's really up to production. Right now, we're basically focusing on 2.0. So I think we're really going to try and focus and get that out. And if that comes out, then any fixes for a patch would just be rolled into 2.0.

So it's possible.

It's possible, but I would say unlikely at this point because we're focusing so much on 2.0.

I would say there's one. I do a lot of the testing for the FPS module. There's one with weapons that has come and gone several times where the stock on the gun disappears and when you aim down sight the back of the gun just goes invisible, and it's just like a culling issue. That's one that we've had to deal with for a while. It's just because we have different builds, a profile build and a release build, and it's only happening on the release build and not the profile, but the developers work in profile builds, and so it's kind of hard to reproduce. But they're finally making headway with that and knocking that out. A bug that lasted way too long, you guys are probably all familiar with the broken hand in the buggy, which is now no longer an issue, which is really nice.

If you try to land on a planet, first you'll get a message saying you're entering the gravitational field, and then if you fly far enough, you'll end up dying, and then you'll have to respawn.

Give an emphasis on the amount of time it takes.

Yeah, it takes a long time. You'll get the message, and then you can keep flying for, I don't know, 45 minutes or an hour. It'll take forever. I think Robert in ATX was doing the math that if you used your cruise speed, which is very fast, it would take like four and a half days to get to the point where you actually hit the planet.

Yeah, it's big. It's very spacious. We expect some of you to try and record that video. Four and a half days' worth.

So the Crucible, the concept phase is essentially locked down now. We're moving on to what do we need to show people when we offer it for sale, which means basically Sandi and I sit down, we come up with a list of things like we need to make sure we do a concept image of it picking up a smaller ship, we need to show it working with a capital ship, we need to show it landed, and so on. We need to produce this blueprint, that blueprint. We need the design post to hit on this, this, this to explain to players how repair works. And it's going very well. So in the not too distant future, you guys should be seeing the Crucible. It's a very cool design from Ryan Church, and I'm pleased to show it to you.

We try to get a nice variation, so we get a good mix of AMD GPUs and NVIDIA GPUs and also AMD processors and Intel processors. The IT team here in Austin and LA and also in Manchester and Frankfurt are really good about making sure we have all the machines we need. We also have a good selection of HOTAS and controls.

Do you just swap between a bunch of preset computers, or are you actually swapping out hardware within the computers?

We all have preset computers, but we just make sure we all have a good selection and everybody works on different setups.

No, we haven't quite done that.

That goes with persistence, right?

It goes with persistence, but the ArcCorp area, Area 18, is basically a multiplayer hangar, so I don't think it would be too far off. It's just that we haven't been touching it. There are people working on it. I don't think it's that far off at all. But not in the first drop of 2.0. Basically, if you're wondering what's in the first drop of 2.0, it's what we showed you at CitizenCon.

No new commercials coming up immediately. Commercials were used as a great test bed for our cinematics team while they waited for work on Squadron 42 to spool up. Now that Squadron 42 is in full effect, they're working on that. So eventually we do want to get back to commercials. Just at the moment there's a bigger priority.

Oh yeah, that's a big one. We definitely added that to our must-fix list. Hopefully it'll be fixed for 2.0, but yeah, it's definitely on everyone's radar, to hopefully get those dead zone settings back in the game as soon as possible.

Someday. Probably. And of course, remember, you can get it in-game.

We just got an update from our friends at Foundry 42 today that they made some good progress. There were some issues, if you watched the live version, some Z-fighting and stuff like that, things they want to fix before they do a really nice polish. I mean, what you're going to get still isn't going to be full release. It's still very much work in progress. But there were some very obvious things they wanted to fix before we put another version out. So they've made some good headway on that, and we're hopeful for next week.

We need to finalize the list of loaners for 2.0. We'll do that after the show. It's one of those things that's been on our list. But yeah, you will get a loaner. If you don't have a Retaliator or a Constellation, but you do have a larger ship, there will be a loaner for you. We just don't know which one yet. We're going to figure that out. But they'll look awesome.

It is actually something that we have been discussing. There's some ideas being thrown around for it. It won't be a free thing. It's absolutely going to have a direct cost if you're using it. So they could happen, but don't expect to have the same level of potency on something that has any sort of auto-tracking.

More than likely, yeah. One thing that we really have to get more squared out first is just what are all our controls really going to be, like for scanning, for salvage, for mining, for trade, all that stuff. Once we really have that action map built out and working, then we can really do more with controls, with dialing that stuff in and really making sure the customization and the parity is where it needs to be.

No new mini-games in the works at the moment. We usually pair those with sales that have some sort of new concept with them that we're going to get across to the players. But I think we're pretty good for the rest of the year, at least. Lots of work on a very large game.

Yes. I believe next week, I haven't locked anything down yet, I believe we're going to start selling the special card that we're doing for you guys. We'll have those available for sale. I think we're going to keep them open for a few weeks so that everybody who wants a chance to order one will have a fair chance. And we're also talking about Concierge Flair. That'll be something that comes in 2016, so stay tuned.

They are still on hold. If you have one in with us, don't worry. We put the ticket on hold. We'll get to it when we can, as soon as we get through the rest of the queue, which we're chipping away at. We appreciate everybody's patience.

It's not the easiest thing in the world running CS during development of a video game, but our guys make tremendous strides doing it. It's impressive what they accomplish.

I don't know. Possibly. You will probably see a variation on it. It will be much fancier. Onward and upward. We know folks like their old hangars, their old suits, their weird Cutlass model. But we're just improving stuff.

That thing was tilted on the stand. I remember when that was in the hangar. It looked cool, but it was funky.

Nothing coming in the next few months. I believe we'd like to do an alien mousepad as our next design, so again, that'll be something for 2016. We do have new merchandise. We'll have some new pre-orders coming up in December for our December livestream. So I hope we've talked about this December livestream and I didn't just say something I shouldn't have.

Well, we've had a holiday livestream before. I don't think it's a big secret. In addition to our anniversary livestream on November 19th, we are also doing a holiday livestream on December 16th. Time to be determined, but it will probably also be an 11 to 2, I would imagine. So mark your calendars: November 19th, anniversary livestream; December 16th, holiday livestream.

For those curious, the Constellation that you'll get in the 2.0 drops is the Andromeda. The Andromeda will be the only version of the Constellation available for some time. So you'll still have the older versions of the Phoenix and the Aquila in your hangars, but the new revamped Constellation, or Mark 5, I don't know what we're calling it, that will be just the Andromeda for a while.

When it's approved. We always run the risk of showing something that isn't approved, because you don't want to get people hyped up for a direction that we're not going to go in.

It's mean. Hey, look at this, this is cool, and people get attached to it, like, yes. That's not the direction we're going to go in.

So we try to wait until we know exactly where we're going before we start showing this stuff. It's just responsible and nice.

We're working on something for the Cutlass for you. John Crewe in the UK is helping us put together a Q&A with questions crowdsourced from you guys. Should be good. And we'll have more on that shortly.

Not in the first drop. Basically the features that, like I said, you can expect for 2.0 are what you saw at CitizenCon. With a couple of surprises, but nothing as big as a whole new mechanic. But 2.0 is definitely our bed that we can expand on as we go. So eventually you'll get mining, you'll get salvaging, so that's the place where we can test those things. Just not in the first drop.

We've been hashing some stuff out just because we've had to plot a few other things involving snub ships and doing some work on the Merlin as the Constellation is getting flight ready. Right now I'd say highly unlikely. There will be other cool stuff you could swap that out for, but one of the other issues is if we say a snub dock can be interchanged with a turret, then we're going to get God knows how many other people asking, well, what about the other two turrets on my Constellation? Why can't I just launch three Merlins off this thing? It's not really a one-to-one tradeoff, sadly.

Yes. That's probably going to be one of the things we have coming up in December for sale. I believe we're going to do the UEE patch set that we've done in the past.

So it'll have a UEE patch, which is the blue circle. What else?

We've done two different versions. We've done a three-patch set and a five-patch set before. I'm not sure what we're going to go with this time. It was UEE, Navy, Army, Marines, Advocacy.

And the three set was the UEE and...

It was just three of the UEE patches, not all five of them.

And then next year we're going to look at some new patch ideas. We know you guys want more ship patches, manufacturer logos, all that stuff. So we'll be investigating that in Q1 2016.

No, not yet.

I believe that is us, but I'm not 100% sure. I know the UK has a Vanduul. I think they have the Xi'an too. I'm not sure. There's a big board upstairs where it's written out, but it's upstairs and we're here. We write it down so we don't have to remember.

I talked to Kirk Tome after we had that question last week. He said it's still something they're exploring, but right now it won't make it into 2.0. They said they just have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

Basically, the question and answer about the currency for 2.0 is we're not ready to talk about it yet. But we're leaning towards just using REC for now. And we're going to be using it to prototype economy, missions, all sorts of cool things. We just have to get it out and stable first.

Still an idea.

No, nothing yet. We are waiting for some resources to clear up, but once the Reliant variants are done, we will kick off serious development of the Prowler.

I was talking to Tyler. They just got one in Austin. I don't know if they've started playing with it yet, but it's one of the tools they're using, or will be using. It looks interesting. I haven't actually played it before.

In 2.0, there's no persistence, so if you lose your ship, you don't actually lose your ship. And there's no reputation system in the first drop of 2.0, so you'll get to go around stealing people's ships if you can. You won't get to keep them. When you log out, it's gone. This is not the kickoff of the persistent universe. This is a great big playpen that we're all going to break over and over again.

The other Connie variants, they haven't started working on them yet. We're still working on the Andromeda right now. Get the Andromeda right, then we can pretty easily build the new components to have the other ones. One thing I find in game development is people overestimate and underestimate the amount of time it takes to do things. So getting the base Connie built with all the systems in place and getting the modules right, that takes a considerable amount of time. Going from there to Connie variant, Connie variant, Connie variant, multi-crew ship two, multi-crew ship three, multi-crew ship four is actually increasingly fast as it goes along once you have everything locked down. So we're excited to get to that. It's a mountain in and of itself getting the first one out. And after that, it's a lot easier.

Pretty well, I believe. I'm seeing people getting into it.

I know our one millionth citizen was a member of the referral program. Numbers are great for the referral program. We're going to announce some more tiers once folks have reached the ones we have right now. Bigger, better rewards. I think there's going to be a 25 and a 42 and a 100 with valuable prizes.

No, you will not be able to create a private instance of 2.0, not in the first drop. Too early. Although one of the functionalities they're pushing for is you should be able to see which instance your friends are in and join them. So if that doesn't make launch, it should be pretty soon afterwards, I would think.

We're not going to tell you when 2.0 comes, guys. It will be when it's ready. And I would just stress, it's because we don't know. We're not holding a secret. It could be 10 minutes from now. It could be three weeks from now. It's a matter of getting it into a position where it's of value to have the community test it. And we want to get there as quickly as possible, but we can't rush it. They're pretty much almost, almost content complete. It's a matter of bug fixing and internal testing until we have it ready for the PU. And when we're sure of that decision, we'll tell you guys.

Oh, no, no. Different ships, different processes.

It's in the plans, but not a sure thing.

It lost the vote.

It did lose the vote. We gave you guys the vote. You guys voted, you guys picked the Reliant, if I remember correctly. Our goal right now is to finish the ships we promised, and then we'll look at the next wave. But discussions on those have started already.