The developers discuss the Starfarer sneak peek (new rear observation window) and its return to sale, plus work on persistence, shopping, EVA, HUDs and character models. They also cover merchandise, the Endeavor and new Corvette, Turbulent's task backlog, QA staffing, and the 2016 convention schedule.
Yes, we're planning some cool merchandise. We're looking at a new mouse pad design, which is pretty sweet, and Squadron 42 dog tags. Hoping to have those up for pre-order by the end of the month.
Not close. It'll be a little bit further down the line. It's scheduled out. I think they take it up later in the year, but it's not one of the priority ships right now.
No, I don't think we have any specific food-based stuff. We talked about this early on, and yes, it's realistic that you have to eat in the universe, but also it's not fun at all, as anyone who played any of those early Ultima games can attest. I remember in Ultima IV, I think it was four, you had to feed your party every hundred steps or something. And the most efficient way to do that was just to buy a bunch of sticks of butter. And you would just give your companions butter. And that satisfied them.
TL;DRThis week's sneak peek showed three Starfarer images: level-of-detail work, an interior shot, and a newly added rear observation window in the cockpit, with the speakers also musing about other uses for the ship.
Yes, this week's sneak peek on Around the Verse was three more images of the Starfarer, including a look at the LOD work that's going on, as a follow-up to last week's LOD segment. Another shot of the interior, which is looking fantastic. And a third image was actually a look out the rear window of the Starfarer. So when you're in the cockpit and you walk back in the cockpit, there's actually a rear observation window. And that's what you see. You actually look over the rest of the ship there.
Well, not to undersell the rear window, but that is actually what makes it a sneak peek, a thing we've never seen before, because the window is new. It was added this week.
I love the Starfarer so much.
I love it too, and I think we're going to have to talk about doing some other things with the ship's design, because it should be more than just a tanker freighter.
It definitely has that Starbug, Serenity vibe to it. What I'd like to see people do is when it becomes flight ready, when it's in Crusader, you load up at Olisar, you load like eight people on the ship, you let them all find hiding places, and then you fly the ship out to non-protected space, and you have your own little flying FPS level in space, and you let people fight each other until the last man's standing, and you win some kind of prize. Starfarer FPS combat.
So we're going to be starting a space plant series. The team from Behaviour went through the suggestions thread that was up in the Subscriber's Den. We sort of all looked at what we thought would be a good series, and that seemed to be the coolest one. So along with the space plant series, we'll also be releasing one of the stretch goal rewards, which was the space plant, basically. So we'll have a new subscriber flair next month, and at the same time we release that, we'll also have the stretch goal for anybody eligible for that. So it's a pretty cool series.
No, I just checked with Turbulent about that. I don't think it'll be too long. I'm sure it'll pop up. They have quite a list of things they're doing.
The downgrade, can you do it if it's of equal value?
There's cross-grades and downgrades that I think are both on the list of things they need to do.
Yes. Let me talk to Steven. Make sure we've got the contract done.
We have to sign some papers and then it's done. So we'll let you know after that.
Yes, yes it will. We'll bring it back when it comes hangar ready.
I see a few questions about model kits for ships. Potentially down the line, but nothing at the moment.
TL;DRThe persistence schedule is being adjusted and they're still deciding which parts come online when, with several teams involved and older early code needing updates, but no specifics are given.
About persistence, let's see. We actually are in the process of updating the schedule a little bit there. We have 2.3 coming out here fairly soon.
2.2 is coming out soon. 2.3 will be after that. 2.4 will be after that.
So we're kind of in the process of figuring out what parts of persistence we want to come online and when. We have Jason Ely and Jeff Zhu in Austin who are working on that, along with Turbulent helping us out on the platform side. We also have Wyrmbyte helping us out in Denver. So we've got lots of fingers and hands involved in making persistence work.
I saw an email I really liked from Jeff Zhu. It was like, "fish persistence issues."
There's a lot of stuff we have to change in the fish. We're having to revamp some of our old code and the stuff that came in really early on in the project, like the crab and the fish. There's lots of stuff we have to go in and update, because we've changed the way a lot of the things in our game work from a foundational level.
TL;DRThey're still deciding which parts of shopping to release and when, want buying, selling, remote storage and inventory, and have a working prototype they might show in future.
So we're doing the same thing with shopping, trying to figure out, okay, we have a design owner for shopping. What parts of shopping do we want to release and when? We want, obviously, buying and selling. We want to complete that cycle of remote storage and inventory. So we're trying to figure out all that. And shopping is one of those things that we also have lots of people from around the company working on. We have people at Behaviour working on UI-related stuff. Zane Bien is overseeing that, who worked on the interface itself. We've got back-end functionality being developed in Austin as well as Behaviour for that. We have a pretty good prototype working right now that we can show off, maybe in the future, on Around the Verse or something. And we're working on the next little bit of that, so turning the prototype into an actually functioning feature in-game.
Yeah, absolutely. So the cool thing about Star Citizen is we have all these logos and brands that have been created for the game. All of that is usable, and we've created little polos for Cubby Blast employees. They've got Cubby Blast logos on them, so I can imagine that we'll have plenty of apparel in Star Citizen with lots of different branding and logos, including the Arena Commander shirt.
In fact, we've been talking about a system where you buy an actual shirt, and then you'd also get one in the game. A little digital extra.
Yes. It's one of those things that's on the list for Turbulent. There's just a lot. Turbulent does more than just the website. That's the important thing to know. They actually do a lot of work with the backend, with the launcher, with the star map. They do a lot for us. And they don't have infinite resources, just like we don't have infinite resources. So it's about prioritizing. And while we know everybody wants ship status, and we want ship status, there are other things that we want just a little bit more sometimes. But it'll get there.
Oh, we've got that in the works, too. We just have to figure out how to sell real posters, which has been an issue with our system in the past.
It's the same thing, it's on the list. Although when Benoit was here two weeks ago, I got to see a mock-up of the organization forums and stuff. A whole brand new bespoke system, not based on the Vanilla forums that we're currently using. So it's in the works.
I feel like we've shown it before. I think you see ships taking off and landing during the Morrow tour.
I think if I had to assume what the person's asking, it's whether you'll have full control over it, manual control, or whether it'll be auto-assisted. We talked about having an option, basically, because landing on a carrier is supposed to be incredibly hard, so there's an ACLS system like in Wing Commander, but we've also talked about having manual for badass super pilots.
TL;DRNo Canadian convention is planned soon, since this year they're focusing on finishing the games, and they say they'll do a world tour of conventions only after release.
Well, we had a Bar Citizen in Montreal last week, actually.
Yes, that we forgot to mention on Around the Verse. We'll do it in the next episode. We'll show off some pictures from the event. But we'll hopefully do that again soon. It was a nice-sized Bar Citizen, 30, 40 people, it looked like. That includes the people from Turbulent and from Behaviour that were in attendance. Did a couple ship giveaways. We Skyped in and took some questions from the live crowd. It looked like it was a lot of fun.
And the long-term answer is, this year we are buckling down, not doing so many conventions, because the big deal is finishing things up. After that, once Squadron is out, once Star Citizen is out and there's a whole universe for you guys to explore, then we will take some of the money that comes in from that and we'll do a world tour and attend all the conventions people keep asking us to go to.
I would love to do Toronto Comic Con.
I think we'd have to build the Caterpillar first. I can't say if the Argo will fit in the Caterpillar, but I was in a meeting about ships that fit in the Caterpillar yesterday. It was a meeting about a ship, and then at some point it became crucial that we figure out during the meeting how many of them will go in the Caterpillar. It's the new one.
TL;DRThe speakers answer personally: one jokes about retiring, one likes the idea of being an info runner, and one expects to keep working on the games and hopes to make linear in-game content.
I'm going to settle down somewhere in North America and stay out of history's way.
That's the First Contact answer. What about you, Jake Ross?
I've mentioned this a couple times, but my favorite ship that we've designed, concepted out, is the Herald. And for some reason the prospect of being an info runner is kind of cool to me. Like you've got some secret intel and you've got to get it somewhere before pirates catch up with you, or actually you're probably a pirate at that point, so the authorities are catching up with you. That I think would be really cool, and I think we could have some really interesting missions around that gameplay.
I look at it, there's Squadron 42, and then there's Star Citizen, and then there's Squadron 42-2, and then there's whatever expansion for Star Citizen, and then there's Squadron 42-3, so this is just like a never-ending cycle. I expect to be doing this for a long, long time. And then eventually, I'm sure we'll do anthology stories. Now, once the game's out, I probably look forward to creating some linear content. Stuff that you would view inside the game, kind of like broadcasts. I hope to be able to get into some of that.
We could do that. We've actually discussed doing something similar to that. I started pricing out some streaming gear and stuff to maybe do some more gameplay-focused segments. And this plan actually involves Freddie Prinze Jr., by the way. We'll tell you more about that later.
It's actually not a sticker. It's one of the patches that we just stuck on the laptop. And it is available in the store, isn't it?
No. We can bring those back this year. They were part of a patch set for subscribers last year. It was the exclusive patch. Yes, we can bring those back.
No, not yet. Let's get the base one out, and we'll get the base one and the Gemini, and then we'll...
I know I want to see a Starfarer racing week, personally, but with stock Starfarers. That doesn't require a separate ship design. I want people to race the stock Starfarer.
We planned to do it at the end of the month, and we weren't ready to do it, and we just picked the next time that seemed...
No, that's not entirely accurate, because we were like, what about the 14th? And Sandi was like, that's Valentine's Day, it's perfect! And then we made lots of jokes about that.
TL;DRBen Lesnick wishes fans would argue less with people who misunderstand the project and be more welcoming, while Jared Huckaby says he prefers passionate fans, even disagreeing ones, over apathetic ones.
I would say that the thing I wish people would do less is...
Make fun of us?
No, why not make fun of us? That's no problem. It's fighting with people who don't get Star Citizen. Be more welcoming of them. This is some tiny percentage of the population that actually does this, but whenever there's some clickbait article or some misinformation out there, just take it in stride, have a sense of humor. We're going to prove them wrong with an awesome game.
They're your future wingmen, whether they know it or not.
Yes, I prefer inclusiveness to divisiveness. And this is probably something that can never happen, but we wish there was a third option, a way to defend Star Citizen without getting into internet arguments with people who don't understand the project. Because it's a pretty dense project and a very easy project to misunderstand. We have a big budget. We've shown people development that they've never seen before. They don't understand that. It's a kind of game people haven't seen in a long time. People who follow us have this IV that gives them all sorts of information that people who see one article about Star Citizen a year don't. Just put yourself in their shoes. I would say that would be my advice to the community. But I have very few complaints in general.
No, I adore our community. They are incredibly passionate and vigorous. They're robust, vigorous and passionate people. And I would rather people be passionate and disagree with something that we're doing than apathetic. So I really enjoy that about our community.
Nothing since the concept. It's at the back of the line because it was the most recent big concept ship. And it's my absolute favorite ship we're doing. It's my favorite ship I've worked on so far. And if I could, I would prioritize it, but it doesn't make sense to do it now.
No decision on that yet. We want to see how it turns out. But I will say we've had some good talks about it this past week. It's getting kicked off. It's getting its formal go from designers working it out on paper to an artist next week. That'll be exciting. I don't know who the artist is on it yet.
We're the new quality assurance team working under Vince right here.
So our job is to make sure we help the developers, everybody in-house, as well as to lend support to our Austin and UK teams.
We've got QA spooling up in the three studios, and we're getting ready to put one together in Frankfurt, right?
Oh, yeah. Melissa Estrada's going out there.
We had a flight manual when AC first dropped. We haven't updated that in quite a bit.
Yeah, so in addition to Turbulent having many, many things tasked to them, David Ladyman and Ryan Archer also have many, many contracts outstanding. One of which is basically a Star Citizen 2.0 manual. It's not the first thing they're doing. I think David just finished laying out Jump Point Volume 2, which is going to go to print soon. They're also doing the ship blueprints, the five printed blueprints. And then I think after that, in addition to the monthly Jump Point and everything, they'll be working on both the making-of book, which is to go to press in the not too distant future, and the next manual. So lots of stuff for those guys.
TL;DRChanges to all ship HUDs, not just the Vanguard's, are still in progress and none are finished, as nothing in the game is locked in.
They're asking specifically about the Vanguard HUD, but changes to the HUDs for all ships are still in progress. None of the HUDs are finished. We carpooled with Dan Kaminsky. He was just talking about work he was doing for the Hornet HUD this week. You guys probably remember, for the first two and a half years of the project we had one Zane Bien who did, super perfectionist, every single element of every single UI, and now we have sent him to the UK to lead a whole team of Zanes for the many UIs we're working on.
So nothing in the game is locked in, finished. We're always iterating. We're always making things better. We're actually going to have a segment on ATV here soon, as soon as I can get Sean Tracy to stop moving.
They're even working on improving the Bishop Senate speech, as if that wasn't already awesome enough.
I do not have an update on female models. You may have seen them in Shotgun, but I don't know how close they are to the game.
I know we haven't seen them yet. All models are being completely redone since that was announced.
When he says all the models are being redone, he's talking about the character models, because of the new updates to the skeletons and stuff. He's not talking about all the ship models being redone. Although they are all going to be redone to some degree or another.
I haven't been counting. But that's game development, it's iterative. You're constantly iterating and revising, making things better. The only constant in game development is change. The situation is always fluid. There's a good quote by Tim Sweeney at Epic Games: the first 90% of game development is easier than the last 90%.
I have not seen any kilts specifically, but I don't think they would work well in EVA.
We're shooting for 2.2. It's in testing now, and we'll see if it works.
No, no PAX Australia this year, sorry. I would love an excuse to go to Australia, but I also don't want to fly there.
There certainly will be energy weapons you can equip for the Freelancer in the future.
Not necessarily at launch, but it is something long term, yes.
Yes. We are headed to Germany later this year. We're going to be in Europe for about three weeks. We're going to do Gamescom. We'll be on the floor the whole time. Then we're spending a week in Frankfurt to shoot video for Around the Verse. And then we're going to Manchester for a week. So it's like the European tour, our grand tour.
Yeah, we're looking at doing a new mouse pad design. We were just talking the other day about something new that we could do that we know people would like, and mouse pads are one of those things. And I know we need some for the studio as well.
The Greycat is on sale.
Oh, but we were going to lower the price.
Oh, we talked about possibly lowering the price. So what is it right now? 15,000 UEC?
Yes, 15,000 UEC, which is about $15.
So let's lower it to half price for this weekend only. Half-price Greycats this weekend, we could do that.
Assuming we can get a hold of Turbulent and make it happen.