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Speaking of boosts to our user experience, let's talk about the new attachments UI.

TL;DRThe attachments UI uses an inspect mode reached via the personal inner thought system, showing a grid of fitting attachments to swap on a weapon, and is described as a building block toward more tactile, physical inventory.

Sean TracyTechnical Director of Content

So the attachments UI, it's pretty straightforward. You go into a mode through the personal inner thought system. You can go there or there is also a shortcut to it where your weapon comes up. It's basically like the inspect mode that we had when you were going shopping for the weapon. So you could take a look at it and you've got attachment points on it. And within those attachment points, you've got a barrel one, you've got an underbarrel one, then you've got the scope one. As you mouse over each one of them, you'll get a list, or actually not a list, it's going to be a grid. So within that grid, you can select the actual options and then you just go.

Chris RobertsCEO / Game Director

Of the things you have that would fit on that weapon.

Sean TracyTechnical Director of Content

And it was, we went from a list and now the grid looks great. That works a lot better because you can kind of see what it is rather than seeing NV-TAC 18X whatever. So you can see the scopes. You can add them right on there. You can swap them out as you go. And you can also stow your weapon, which will keep those on it, with an option for later that if you pull out another weapon, you can pull that attachment off that weapon and put it on the other one.

Chris RobertsCEO / Game Director

And also, like I said, when we shift to physical inventory and just be more tactile, this is a necessary interface because pulling up your character as a thing, that's like a paper doll, like an RPG paper doll thing. We want Star Citizen to be much more sort of in-situ, tactile. I see things, I interact with them. Hey, I need to put a scope on. I put a scope on. And so we want to shift towards that. And so like you've been talking about in this session, a lot of the stuff are building blocks towards cooler and bigger stuff that's coming down the road. It's got benefit and it's cool, but it also enables some of the other stuff. Without this sort of functionality and features, we wouldn't be able to do some of the other stuff that we want to do that I think ultimately will give you a pretty cool experience.

Sean TracyTechnical Director of Content

And it's a great point because all the features that we just talked about, all three of these things, the unified friends, player interaction system, personal inner thought, as well as the attachments UI, it's all done through building blocks. We couldn't have done it without building blocks. Actually, there was one little thing that came out of the attachments. When you're holding the weapon like this, it doesn't do it as much justice as it should. When you have inspect mode, it was cool enough, but really the pose of it, oh man, the guns are cool. It gave me a new appreciation for the way the weapons look because you get so used to seeing them. And also to understand the modularity of it.

Paul ReindellOnline Technology Developer

They spent all the time to break them up properly, to fit all the sniper scopes properly and all the stuff. And now you can actually see that swap in real time.

Sean TracyTechnical Director of Content

I hate admitting it, but I stopped seeing it so much. But then, oh, yeah, that looks so good. I'm really happy with how they all turned out.

Pillar Talk›Alpha 3.9·
Published on this date.6 Apr 2020