Watch Around the Verse , and check the Relay.sc homepage for the transcript!

Watch Around the Verse , and check the Relay.sc homepage for the transcript!

Happy Hour: February 17th, 2017 Summary Written Friday 17th of February 2017 at 12:01pm by CanadianSyrup To ends things off for the week, it's Happy Hour with guest Will Wiessbaum answering questions. As per usual, anything said during the show is subject to change by CIG and may not always be accurate at the time of posting. Also any mistakes you see that I may have missed, please let me know so I can correct them. Enjoy the show!

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

Today's guests were Senior Writer, Will Wiessbaum, QA Tester, Michael Falkland, and Streamer Clifford aka Miku

The Xi'An apparently have different tastes when it comes to food, some of it would be considered not edible to humans, but delicious to Xi'An. Also the Xi'An favour texture more so than flavour. Also Will couldn't go into detail, but they seem to be planning some gameplay around how the Xi'An hold things in comparison to humans

Artemis was referenced in the show, asking if it'll ever be findable. Artemis was a ship that was piloted by an AI which held a crew in deep sleep. They lost contact with the ship and it's been missing ever since, if you can find it, that's a question you might have to answer yourself.

The next concept sale is the Hurricane which goes on sale next Friday. Price is unknown.

If Imperator Kastigan and Messer were pitted against each other in a game of BopIT, Messer would win says Will.

The Squadron 42 Script is hovering around 1200 pages and is still being tweaked.

Summary

The show is live! Tyler is on vacation so it's just Jared hosting today. Special guest today is Writer, Will Weissbaum. Also joining the stream is QA tester, Michael Falkland from Austin. Today's guest streamer is Clifford Aka Miku!

Clifford streams Star Citizen as well as other games. He broadcasts on the new streaming site, Beam which has gained popularity quickly.

Today they're playing 2.6 live as they're expecting another PTU patch today and that might cause the stream to be interrupted if they tried 2.6.1

[What does a Senior Writer do?]

Everything Dave Haddock does, just a little worse. He works together with the other writers to create the narrative for Star Citizen. Anything from voice lines heard in game, to lore of the universe, to narrative props you will see in 2.6.1 in Echo 11.

[Is Xi'An food edible to humans?]

Some of it. Xi'An's have a drink that to humans is almost inedible, but Xi'An's love it.

[How do the Xi'An feel about spicy food?]

One thing they're looking at with the Xi'An is how they taste things differently. They might pay more attention to texture rather than flavour.

[Are the weapons and everyday items that they use in terms of grip is similar to humans or different?]

That's something they can't talk about as they're working on some gameplay designs that involve stuff along those lines, but there's stuff in the work.

[Who are the popstars of Star Citizen? The famous people]

Starwatch is one of their ongoing series which goes into the popstars of the universe and famous singers, bands, etc.

In 2.6.1 you'll see some artwork involving band posters in echo 11 to see as an example.

[Operation pitchfork, are there any special writings involving it in the universe?]

It's been a unique experience watching it grow into the community it is now. How it will affect the game is still something to be determined, but in some form it will be reflected in the universe.

[Can you describe your level of involvement on mission design?]

For 3.0 they've been working pretty closely with Todd Papy, Luke Presley on pitching settings and idea for the designers to work on. They like to be involved on not only writing the ideas for the missions, but how to use the mechanics in a unique way as well.

[Artemis, will it ever be findable?]

Right now it's lost in space, will it be findable is unknown. This is one of the reasons why AI has a main control isn't as popular due to the Artemis accident in which an AI pilot with a crew in deep sleep was flown out into space and contact was lost with it.

[The Galaxy is huge, but how is the culture broken down in it? As in oh this person is from Stanton, etc.]

There's definitely stuff like that going on. People aren't in the dark about what's going on around the universe, but it isn't instant as drones have to be sent through Jump Points to relay information. The initial first pass won't be as complex as having someone speak a different dialect as someone, but having groups like miners, civilians, etc and populate the universe and then later on they'll add more flair that defines them based off where they are from.

[Will players be able to build a name for themselves in the lore of the game?]

They're still exploring how much a player can affect the universe. They'll have it where people will get to know you by your reputation, but having it go on a larger scale of people knowing you by name where you haven't met them yet starts to get pretty complicated.

[Next concept sale?]

Hurricane will be on sale a week from today. Price is not known yet.

[Will there be any lore about Frost Lines?]

It was mentioned in the Jump Point that comes out today.

[Will players news make it into the game? Such as news vans broadcasting?]

It's too early for that, but it's something they'd like to do down the road, but that's far down the line.

On the newsletter, a brand new image of the Banu Merchantman

[What is the lore behind the 9 tails and can we join them?]

He's not sure how much to talk about it because they want players to find out more about groups in game, but you will be able to do jobs for them in the PU.

[Can you give an example of Cathcart dialect?]

That is a tough question, Will isn't confident in his ability to talk in Cathcart.

Working with the linguist is a lot of fun because he always asks questions that they may not have had answers to previous or thought of and have to come up with something.

[Why do all the bad guys sound English?]

It's just what they have available at the moment, it's more of a logistics thing and that they'll have more soon.

[What's the deal with so many Maloy family members?]

He's not sure the relevance of that name.

[Will there be a big universe secret?]

Maybe

[Do you write about the behaviour of the flora on planets?]

They do! They figure out what plants should populate certain areas on planets or environments.

[Do Writers have the best job at CIG?]

Jared says his job is the best because being able to go to events and meet the backers is the best. Will was neglected from answering this question. RED ONE, RED ONE.

[How has Martial Arts evolved in SC]

That's more of a design question.

They've discovered multiple Maloys and Will and Jared will try to figure out the reasoning.

Also there's about 15 Chris's between the four studios

[Are you going to be able to come across people in distress and figure out what to do?]

Yes you'll be faced with scenarios like that.

[Will we see robots in the universe]

There's currently repair bots. Perhaps some cargo bots

[Do you prefer writing for good guys or bad guys]

Will leans more towards writing for the good guys, although it does depend on what he's writing about.

[Is there going to be someone prevalent like Darth Vader that we'll fall in love with in the universe?]

They don't know because it's hard to predict exactly which characters people will gravitate towards because what one person likes may be different from another.

[How do you go about writing?]

They do long term planning and high level planning. They also see what's needed ingame in terms of mechanics or lore, etc and working from there. Jump Points and the short stories on the site help a lot with getting different ideas out there.

[Who would win in a fight? Imperator Kastigan or Messer?]

Messer because of his military experience. If it was a game of BopIT it would be Messer again.

[How many pages did the Squadron 42 script end up at?]

It's still growing actually. One thing they've been working on now is onscreen text needs for Squadron 42 which is another can of worms, but they were over 1200 pages at the last count.

They're also filling in the wildlines such as backstory for characters that aren't necessarily apart of lore, but stuff you'd encounter through other means such as stuff on a wall, in conversation, etc.

That's the end of the show, Clifford will be streaming after the show at https://beam.pro/Clifford_aka_Miku

Will Wiessbaum will be on Quantum questions on Monday so tune in then to see him there.

CanadianSyrup Director of Transcripts A polite Canadian who takes pride in making other peoples day brighter. He enjoys waffles with Maplesyrup, making delicious puns and striving for perfection in screaming at the T.V. during hockey games.

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.