Now you just got back from the UK. What are we working on over there?
TL;DRChris Roberts says the UK visits focus on foundational engineering, including a new cloud-based back-end for scaling game servers and AI work for Squadron 42 and the Persistent Universe, plus in-person collaboration.
Everything. Well, so now this year I'm spending a lot of time... When I go over to Europe, I spend a week usually in Germany and then about two weeks in Manchester. And then I'm back here for two to three weeks. So next week I'm going to go to Austin for most of the week. And then I'll be back here for another week. And then I'll be back in Europe. So generally it's more about spending time with everybody face to face, and really this year the focus is trying to pull all the elements, the foundational engineering parts. So the back-end server, how we scale the game servers so we can have as many people as possible. So there's some ongoing engineering that hasn't debuted into the live environment that will make it much better and more efficient and more reliable than the current system, which is some of the stuff that we've redone, but it's also some of the old stuff. And so a lot of it's held together with gum and wire and tape and all the rest of the stuff. And so we have a completely new foundational system that we think is going to be a lot better. It's very next-gen in terms of cloud servers and everything that we'll do. So it's pushing that, pushing the AI stuff. There's a lot of AI work that we need to have working for Squadron 42 and then ultimately in the Persistent Universe. And yeah, just spending face time with everyone. That's why I'm back here, spending time with everyone here, because you can do Skype meetings all day long and all the rest of the stuff, but actually being there and having that one-on-one iteration and conversations makes a big difference.