Hello fellow Citizens and welcome to INN’s coverage of the 56th episode of Around the ‘Verse!

Around the ‘Verse

Images and GIFs

Transcript by Erris

Empire Report

– Advocacy sued – did Agents plant neon after an arrest last week?

– Julio Fong – Though his title may be only honorary, Julio, the so called ‘mayor’ of the marine on Helios, is looking to shake things up.

– Kids call it the hydro-froz headrush, but how dangerous is the popular frozen treat?

Around the ‘Verse

– Ben is alone. Sandi’s on a secret mission in the UK that we’ll hear about next week.

– Welcome to all the new citizens joining from the Gamescom presentation.

– Around the ‘Verse is the weekly news show talking about the development of the game.

– Alpha 1.1.6 shipped on Friday. Fixes and balance changes to the game. Also, the Vanduul Glaive is now available for any citizens able to get to wave 18 (to rent)

– First pilot to complete the feat was Silon, aka beardlessthundergod. As a reward, he will get a free glaive on his account.

– Gamescom event was a huge success. CIG could not be happier with how it went.

– SC is truly coming together, and they demonstrated that this week.

– Video plays with highlights from the show, getting the presentation setup and such.

– The video they shows has some angles that weren’t seen in the original gamescom presentation, so check it out!

– Everything came together great on the show. Ben wants to stress that these were live demos. It would be easy for the team to come in and put in a pre-vis, but this was live, showing that it actually is working. Especially with AC 2.0, lots of technologies were shown coming together and working together for the first time, and Chris was 100% certain about wanting to show it done live, to prove how well it works.

– CIG also revealed the first details of the CIG / Saitek details. It’ll include mice, flight sticks, keyboards, etc…

– Right after the show people started with questions. Left handed? Manufacturer issues? etc…

– No answers today, but there will be answers going forward. Saitek want to do open development on the joystick.

– We will get to see how they produce the joystick, and will be developped much like Star Citizen is being developped.

– Gamescom swag. Members of the audience received a Constellation pin, as well as an Aegis Gladius ‘throwable’ plane, and a physical copy of Hunter, and a limited production of a poster of Cologne in 2945.

– More than just gamescom is going on! The July monthly report went up on Friday just before Gamescom.

– Star Marine weekly update went live on Monday, and there will be a bigger update on Friday. Animation issues will take a bit more time, but it’s looking good.

– New video created for backers just joining, that many of us have never seen.

– I am Star Citizen. And I am a PC game.

– Gurmukh was a subject in a magazine article in 3dcreative magazine. Magazine is free for anyone interested in checking it out, there’s a link in the description on YouTube.

– There’s a fly free code for Gamescom, which is Gamescom2015

– And now, news from the studios!

News from the Spectrum

10:15 – Santa Monica – Darien Vorlick and Eric Kieron Davis

– Back from Gamescom, which was intense and fun.

– This week is cleanup from Gamescom. Rebuilding all the gamescom stuff back into one of the standard streams.

– Working on Vanguard variants, working on the Herald, lots of work this week.

– Want to keep the momentum globally, as well as in LA, trying to keep the energy focused towards AC 2.0.

– A few patches in between now and then to release some new technology though.

– One thing is the GOST system, game object state machine, as well as fleshing out multicrew in anticipation of 2.0.

– Lots of large milestones are out of the way now.

11:45 – Illfonic – David Langeliers

– Animators are retargeting FPS animations to a new rig. Another new rig has gone into the game, which puts back some of the things the stock SDK had, so that some things can be achieved in CryEngine that they haven’t been able to do recently.

– Piling through animations to do that.

– Austin folks put together a tool to help with this, going much quicker than the last retarget process.

– Engineering team are working through cover, adding some new features to it. Cover system is procedural. If you get behind an object it perceives as cover, it’ll auto put you in cover. When you aim down sites, it’ll pop you out of that cover. Also, if you press fire, you’ll pop out and hip-fire.

– Doing art reworks on all the weapons based on manufacturer style guides. Weapons guy is going back over all the weapons and making small changes to make sure they fit the style guides.

13:20 – Austin – Jake Ross and Pete Mackay

– Here this module to talk about Social Module and beyond. Got to see a little bit of it at Gamescom.

– Wrapping that up. Polishing up emotes and chat, doing some revisions to the UI, and working out bugs.

– Really proud of how far it’s come in the past few months, happy to push it out before the end of the month.

– What’s coming down the road – last couple of days, Pete has been hitting the commodities list.

– Pete did an original commodities list a long time ago, going back to that now, doing a second pass on that. Working out the Star Citizen periodic table of elements. Lots taken from the real world, reorganizing and regrouping it to make sense for gameplay.

– Things like, ‘tier 1’ things – root commodities like Iron, Copper, etc… stuff you’d mine out of asteroid.

– Those would be later combined into other things. tier 1 are the ‘raw materials’ of the economic simulator.

– Down the road, you’ll be able to mine asteroids and see what Pete’s talking about.

15:54 – CIG UK – Mike Snowdon

– Lots of effects went into the Gamescom demo. From small details like steam and general ambience all the way to the Quantum effect. Quantum is on going, but it’s not where they want it yet. Still working on spool-up, spool down, etc…

– Connie explosion, which is something they’re very happy with. They’ve been working hard on getting it to the state where big ships feel epic when they explode.

– Demo gives an idea of where they’re going. Not 100% there yet, but they’re on their way.

Ben

– Big thanks to all the studios, they’re doing a great job. People see Ben, Sandi, Disco, treat them like rockstars, which is fantastic, but their job is to represent the blood, sweat, and tears of 100s of developers around the world, and that’s necessary to make something like Gamescom come together.

17:48 – Behind the Scenes of Gamescom

– Eric Kieron Davis

– Set out to do something unique and different. Started with what they wanted to show at Gamescom; what had they been working on, and what were they ready to show off.

– Concept came from Ricky Jutley. Started with ‘what do we want to show’, which came from Chris and lots of people. Deciding what to show off from tech and art.

– Gamescom drives the multicrew aspect a lot.

– Step 2 was laying the demo out. Design team built a massive document showing the flow of the presentation.

– Wake up, get in ship, go to another ship, dogfight, bring it back, etc…

– Figured out all the systems needed to do the demo, got all the tasks driven out of the design document that was built.

– Outwardly, they were excited. Inwardly, they were scared.

– Darian Vorlick

– One of the biggest challenges was getting everyone across the world synced, making sure there was a handoff between each region. As soon as UK would finish, they’d get a status update in LA. Then when LA finished, it’d get handed back to LA.

– Challenge was not only maintaining energy in LA, but also in the UK.

– Randy Vasquez

– Some of the EVA stuff was challenging to get in, but very important for the demo. Sometimes people were rotating around different axis, or on their feet, etc… Went through three or four iterations of EVA and EVA controls.

– Kirk Tome

– All the components that had to be set up on both ships for the battle were a technical challenge, but it’s a good example of what we’ll be able to see in future ships.

– Zane Bien

– Had to implement a lot of the UI in both the Tali and the Connie. Also the Quantum hud, selecting target pulsing circle to the 3D tunnel that activates when you spool up, that’s all in the HUD.

– Forrest Stephan

– The helmet kept popping off. Sometimes it would shift up. Sometimes it wasn’t there at all. The helmets. Bane of Forrest’s existence.

– Patrick Salerno

– Damage system – ships have to be designed from scratch to work with it. Ships like the Tali were designed to work with it from scratch. Ships like the Connie and the Cutlass were not, they’ve gone through multiple design iterations to work well with the new system.

– Eric Kieron Davis

– They’ve talked a bunch about multicrew since the last gamescom demo, but it was just what they wanted to do. This showed what it is.

– Randy Vasquez

– Multicrew is part of the dream of what Star Citizen is.

– Darian Vorlick

– Up until this point, what they wanted for multicrew was more of a vision. Now, releasing it to the Gamescom demo, it’s what they’ve been working on. Gives the core meaning to what Star Citizen is supposed to be.

– Randy Vasquez

– It’s what’s excited me about SC, and i hope people can look at it and see, hey, this is a taste of multicrew. Dream with us, give us feedback. Lots of things are still being designed, and we want multicrew to be fun.

– Eric Kieron Davis

– The difference with this demo is, it’s all real. Went into this prepared for it to be as real as it could be. This is how you’re going to play this game. It’s how it’s going to work, going from interior physics grid to exterior physics grid, how it’s all going to work into one game. So cool to see it. Show people that, we’re doing this, we’re doing it for real.

– Darian Vorlick

– Seeing everyone cheer watching the demo, especially at moments that were challenging… finally being able to deliver the core tech that’s going to build Star Citizen. Everything to this point has been hinging on this demo. From this point, we can start to see what Star Citizen is truly about.

– Forrest Stephan

– I think I heard everyone in Germany from here, a loud, thunderous roar. Love that you guys love it, we love it too.

– Kirk Tome

– Really proud of our accomplishments.

– Darian Vorlick

– Thank you guys, the backers, without you guys this dream wouldn’t have been possible. None of us would be here without you guys and your passion around the project.

– Eric Kieron Davis

– That was an incredible thing, getting everything ready for Gamescom. Thank you for letting us do this. Without you guys, we couldn’t’t make this, we couldn’t have fun making it. The demo was just a beginning of what Star Citizen is really going to be. If you see it, cause we see it, there’s a really cool future coming your way.

25:40 – Subscriber’s Corner

– Lots of new subscribers since the last update.

– Subscriber flair for this month is being released Friday the 14th. Starfarer model from Takuetsu. Not the same model included with the Starfarer Gemini. Gemini owners will receive another model further down the line.

– The Scythe is now unlocked for all Imperator subscribers.

– Released a special variant of the Gamescom trophy to all subscribers. Will be doing this in the future for all ticketed events.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEXIS!

27:00 – Ship Shape, with Lisa’s replacement, Darian Vorlick!

– Welcome to this week’s ship shape. Lisa’s going to be covering something incredibly special with the Design team. For Gamescom AC 2.0 and so forth, GOST. Game Object State Machine. With GOST, everything is organized into states.

– What each does is determines the specific aspect of a particular state. For landing gear, might have three states. Retracted, deploying, and deployed.

– Allows designers to set parameters as far as how the ship will recognize what state the landing gear’s in when you press a specific button.

– If you press a button that deploys landing gear, GOST will recognize that the landing gear are now deploying. If you hit the button again, it will not interrupt the deployment.

– If you have a locked door. It could be locked, unlocked, so walking up to the door, it will scan to see if you have a key to open that door. If you do, it will change the system to unlocked. If you don’t, the door won’t be unlocked. If you try too many times, the door might switch to a ‘broken’ state.

– This allows devs to play with things. Someone tries to break into your ship, if they don’t have a matching key, they could end up breaking the door. These are not features they’re looking at, but how the system will work.

– GOST system is done completely through flow-graphs. Allows designers flexibility with how they design things, how stuff reacts to different situations.

– Saw this in the Gamescom demo, when someone from the Red team turned on the power in the Tali derelict.

– A lot of gas started venting, lights started blinking, etc… this is done through GOST.

– If you’re flying a ship, if you take 75% damage, GOST will recognize that, can start switching to warning lights. If you take more damage, 25%, 10%, whatever they decide to set it up, you’ll get critical warnings, sparks, etc…

– This was previously hard-coded into the system. By removing that code, it makes things more seamless and streamlined, it makes it less processor intensive as well.

– Should see more implemented as more ships are developed.

– Lisa will be back next week!

30:30 – Ben

– Ah, the GOST system. Spooky.

– New items in the pledge store. Retaliator Modular system is one.

– In the past, variants have been pre-formed. Medical cutlass, Police cutlass, etc…

– New process for some ships is, get the base model, and swap out the interiors yourself. Retaliator is the first to do this, and CIG have created some cool interior options.

– Standard Tali available a long time ago came with two bomb bays. Now there are 5 modules that can be swapped out in their place.

– Just the start too. The five modules today are cool, and there are another half dozen coming down the pipeline.

– 2945 gamescom trophy is now also in the store.

– Pre-orders for track jackets also available.

– Contest for character designs is still in the works.

32:16 – MVP!

– This week’s MVP is Gamescom volunteers.

– All volunteers are listed in alphabetical order.

33:00 – Art Sneak Peak!

– Clothing designs. Fancy gentleman in a sweatshirt with a collar. And a google glass.

– Tune in to Reverse the ‘Verse tomorrow at 11am Pacific.

Ben – ‘Speaking of extremely square livestreams, I’m going to be joining the crew at INN on Friday at 6pm pacific for a shared viewing of the Wing Commander movie. I fancy myself something of a Wing Commander historian, so I’ll be there to provide more trivia and background and commentary than you probably think is necessary. Feel free to come along and join us, it should be a good time.’

– Another Fly Free event! All current AC flyers can try out the Merlin.