Hello there fellow Citizens! Check here for our coverage of the Anniversary Edition of Around the ‘Verse (Episode 48)!

Around the ‘Verse

Sneak Peek [Courtesy of Star Citizen News Radio, /u/SCNR-Stardust]

This one is all about the audio so make sure your sound is on!

Images/GIFs

Which Glitch?

Transcript by Erris

Happy Anniversary AtV!

– A one-year retrospective by years1hundred on Around the ‘Verse starts this week’s show. It’s a touching look back at some of the ridiculousness of AtV, and the characters that make it so entertaining. You should go watch it.

– And now, for Around the ‘Verse!

4:35

Ben

– Welcome to Episode 48! Ben is joined by no-one, as Sandi is back in London filming more SQ42.

– This is the first anniversary of Around the ‘Verse. Thanks go out to the community, not only to subscribers for funding AtV, but to everyone for providing feedback, on the forums, on Reddit, everywhere.

– May 2015 monthly report went up on Friday. Longest yet monthly report, includes the first report from the new team in Germany. Monthly report, it’s what’s for dinner.

– Citizencon 2015 are now…. no longer available! Sold out 15 minutes before AtV went live. Check out the post for details about it.

– Continuing to push for the PTU release for Star Marine internally. Check out last weeks AtV for details on how it will be rolled out.

– No release date yet, and the team are as frustrated as we are, but it’s not ready for release yet, but they will let us know as soon as it’s ready to go.

– Chris Roberts has kicked off the last month of the SQ42 performance capture shoot. Everyone in Santa Monica misses him, but SQ42 will be great.

– Keep awesoming Chris!

– If you haven’t picked up a military ship, why not? Limited military ships are on sale this week, ends tomorrow.

8:30

News from the Spectrum

8:45 – Santa Monica – Travis Day and Darian Vorlick

– Mark Abent, Bugsmasher, he’s also a feature developer. This week, he’s wrapping up development on shared vehicle parameters. Means that shortly, our PC’s will only load, and put in memory, things we’re actually doing. Cuts down on time to load hanger, cuts down time to load AC, etc… This will reduce load times, basically.

– Also working on GOST, Game Object State machine. Idea is to create a series of triggers within ships. Right now, its all hardcoded. Running it through GOST, the game will be aware of what state an object is in. If you tried deploying the landing gear by pressing a button, pressing it again won’t interrupt a functionality. This is being added to seats, to lighting, etc… Lets CIG step away from hardcoding everything, lets them work in triggers to help streamline the ships.

– A lot of ships are now going through the pipeline for the new damage states, which are easier to work with, less demanding on performance, and better looking. Big win for the new damage system, so some ships are being converted over, which will again improve framerate issues and load times and such.

10:50 – Illfonic – David Langeliers

– Talking a lot lately about jukes / starts / stops system. System to play starts and stops at the ends of certain directional running, and to play jukes when you switch directions. Gives more weight to characters.

– Problem has been getting it to both look and feel good, and not have to be fighting the controls. Early in the week, they had a call with Steve Bender and Todd Pappy from LA and Frankfurt, and worked out a system where the jukes and starts and stops, instead of being a full animation, they’ll be cut in the middle of the animation during the weight shift. Helping make controls more responsive and make things look better.

12:15 – Austin – Jake Ross

– Art updates – ArcCorp Area 18 landing zone is undergoing a performance optimization pass, got a few changes and tweaks to the layout, updated materials, etc… to bring up the performance, so it’ll be smooth sailing when it’s released for social module.

– Updates to the SataBall character model – high res model for the character is done, helmet is almost done, so that’ll make an appearance in FPS.

– New lighting artist starting this week, Emery Switzer, will tackle shop locations and do a beauty pass on Arc Corp.

– Looking at the animation list this week, to find what’s missing to add for the Social release, they’ll be scheduling another local mocap session to get more animations for Social soon.

13:45 – UK – Michael Dalston and Luke Davis

– Luke’s favourite ship is the Retaliator, which is currently getting its LOD’s added, will get its damage states done, then LA will have a look and get it flight ready. Then it’ll go back to the UK, the VFX team will do a pass on weapons and damage.

– QA can’t wait to get their hands on the Retaliator, flying it around and blowing it up.

– Luke is working on something for the Capital ship as well. He’s working on the interior for the Idris, making sure each individual room matches the Aegis art-style, lots of time goes into making the art directors happy with it.

Where will you go? Meridian Transit

– Rihlah System.

16:20

Alexis and Behaviour talk about Subscriber Flair

– New faces from Behaviour, Guillaume Bourque and Etienne Beaulieu.

– Guillaume is helping create blueprints and whiteboxes for planetside levels, helping do some design for mobiglas, shopping, etc…

– Etienne is a UI designer, mostly working on mobiGlas for the past year, doing visuals, integration, animation, etc…

– This week there will be a new subscriber flare, which will be the Aegis Avenger, the second in the series of Aegis models. The ship was in-game already, so the artist just had to take the full-scale model, bring it to size, and optimize it. Same amount of work to build the model, if it’s new or a model already flyable.

– Takes a lot of work to scale down the ship.

– The Takuetsu series – it was approached to have a nice branding to it, something you feel would be sold in high-end stores. They come with a nice box, open it very delicately, etc… They’re collectibles.

– Behaviour made the actual boxes, to make sure everything would fit.

– Guillaume’s favourite model so far is the Mustang series, because it comes in a different case. The stand is vertical, instead of horizontal, and it stands out.

– Etienne likes the Khartu instead, as he really likes alien ships.

– Subscribers will get their avenger model tomorrow.

22:00

Ben

– Thanks guys, you deserve some time off… for good behaviour.

22:10

James Pugh, with Eric Keiron Davis.

JP – Hey guys, I’m here with our senior producer here, Eric Keiron Davis. How you doing?

EKD – Good, how are you doing?

JP – Very good, thanks for coming on.

EKD – Thanks for having me.

JP – So how long have you been here? About two months or so?

EKD – Just shy of two months. I’m starting my eighth week, yeah.

JP – Where’d you come from?

EKD – Previously Blizzard entertainment. That’s where I was most recently, and previously some smaller studios in Austin.

JP – Probably quite a culture shock coming from Blizzard to here?

EKD – It’s different, definitely different, but for the better. It’s, we have different unique challenges that we didn’t have at Blizzard.

JP – So what are you primarily working on right now?

EKD – My main focus has been on art. The Senior Producer title means many different things at many different companies, as you’d expect. Even here, we have producers that do different things, that focus on different things, like Modules or the FPS, or AC in general, and then myself I’m focusing more on Pipeline. I’m working with the art team to try to unify how we act, and how we get things done as a global team, which is very tough to do when you’re across so many different studios. So I’ve been working a lot on that. The other one has been the Shotgun software, trying to bring Shotgun into the studio in a way that makes sense, cause we have a lot of different outsourcers.

JP – Do you want to explain Shotgun..

EKD – Sure, Shotgun is a production tracking tool used within feature film, commercials, visual effects, video games, it really just, you can bring your assets and your shots into this tool, and then you can track them throughout production, and then you can… get them out at some point, that’s the goal.

JP – Yeah, whenever we say Chris had comments on something, that’s usually where we’re seeing those.

EKD – Yeah, Chris loves using shotgun, it’s wonderful, makes our job really easily. We can get things up there, he can review it, we can kind of keep moving fluidly, I like it a lot. Right now the studios’ kind of using more of a Facebook wall, so it’s just a place you submit against, and kind of watch it stream. Which is definitely A feature of shotgun, but it’s this much of the massive thing that is that tool, so it’ll be cool to implement those. We’re starting to implement them very slowly, with the playlist and stuff, we’ll get there.

JP – So I assume you’re working a lot with Lance, and Steve Bender, and guys like that?

EKD – Yeah, exactly, so I’ll be working with Lance a lot, heh, Lancelot

JP – Well done!

EKD – Yeah, I’ve been rehearsing that line, I thought about it… and I’m out of here! I’ve been working with Lance quite a bit to help us work with each of the region’s’ art directors, so each location is kind of focusing on a module or focusing on a portion of our massive game, and Lance is there to help guide that with Chris’ creative vision to help this all look cool, and get something that makes sense. So I’m partnering a lot with him on that side. And then with Bender, Mr. Steve Bender, I’m trying to work with him on the same thing on the animation side, to try to put some more formal processes in our animation pipeline, so he can see things, we can get things reviewed quickly, we can get quicker turnaround, and ultimately get this thing out faster.

JP – I mean, that’s the aim, right?

EKD – That’s the aim.

JP – So you do a lot of work with Travis?

EKD – I do, I work, Travis has been great to work alongside. He comes with a lot of tribal knowledge, he’s been here a long time, and so much of this game is in his head, and it’s fantastic to be on threads where he just drops some knowledge and ppssshhh, so it’s been nice but yeah, I work alongside him. We’re trying to divert a little bit, where he can focus more on design and engineering, and I can stay on the art side, so I’m trying to take some of that from him, which is hard, cause he’s got so much in his head, but it’s been great, great partnership so far.

JP – Awesome, what do you want to work on next? Once you’ve got this stuff off your plate, what’s next?

EKD – Wow, I wasn’t ready for that question. What am I excited to work on next…

JP – Try to keep you on your toes…

EKD – yeah, this is great, honestly? I think I’d love to partner with the team out in the UK, some of my background is cinematics and film, I did a lot of film back in the days, and the team out in the UK, I’d like to help them, kind of get shotgun ramped up for them, and also get the pipeline smooth so that Hannes and the group can really make some cool SQ 42 cinematics and stuff.

JP – Awesome man, thanks for being on, it’s been a pleasure.

EKD – Thanks for having me!

JP – Alright, back to you guys. Do this. There you go. Nailed it.

26:25

Ship Shape, with Ship Shape (also known as Lisa Ohanian)

– Obstacles being faced with modifying the Vanduul ships for human uses.

– They’re updating the Scythe, trying to do three things. Upgrading the damage states, which isn’t Vanduul specific; they’ve been doing that for all the old ships.

– Creating the HUD for the ship

– Refitting the cockpit for human usage.

– When figuring out how to do the HUD and the cockpit refitting, they had to figure out who was actually making these changes. They decided it would work best with the fiction if it was done by a company such as Anvil, and it’d be more likely for the Military to capture a Vanduul ship and refit it.

– So the aesthetics for the HUD and Cockpit come from Anvil.

– Previously, there weren’t any humans flying the ship, so they didn’t have to make a HUD. One of the first things they did was change it to red, to give it a very visually distinct look. There are also some symbols around to make it feel packed and alien.

– There’s more symbology and design around the center of the ship; gives it a jailbroken feel.

– Cockpit was also a big challenge. Had to be modified to fit humans.

– Lots of art about how the cockpit has changed. Adding button controls, etc…

– Humans would have modified the cockpit, to make sure it’s something they can fly without large beams getting in the way.

30:15 – Meridian Transit – Where will you Go?

– Terra System.

30:45

Which Glitch?

– Tyler Whitkin, Andrew Hessey, Melissa Estrada, and Jefferey ‘Bearded peas’ my beard will eat your cats.

– Bug number 5 – The helmet is being affected by G forces, but the character isn’t. Looks awesome.

– Bug number 4 – A retaliator has… really weird colours, and the pilot inside is… naked. And having fun. By himself.

– Bug number 3 – The character just… disappears and basically turned into a Roomba. Bug that would happen anytime the character crouched.

– Bug number 2 – Human catapult. Two people in an Origin, and then someone else got inside when someone was in the bed, and… it freaked out and went crazy. Pretty awesome.

– Bug number 1 – Every time you melee, the arms would stretch out further. Looks… interesting.

34:15

Ben!

– That’s it for AtV this week. Check out the comm link tomorrow to see the first footage of the Scythe being flown by QA testers. The scythe will be included in the next big AC patch, which is currently in development.

34:35

Sneak Peek

– Gravity Generator Audio Example.

– Really cool sounds of the Gravity generator booting up, and then powering down.

35:20

Ben!

– Tune in to Reverse the ‘Verse tomorrow at 11am PDT on Twitch.

– Until then, Ben Out!

See y’all Around the ‘Verse.