This post is a transcript of Reverse the ‘Verse: Episode 94, material that is the intellectual property of Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) and it’s subsidiaries. INN is a Star Citizen fansite and is not officially affiliated with CIG, but we reprint their materials with permission as a service to the community. INN edits our transcripts for the purpose of making the various show participants easier to understand in writing. Enjoy!



Reverse the ‘Verse: Episode 94 – Full Transcript

The intro’s a bit jazzed up today. Lots of horns in the music, and some cool shaky drum bits. Ooh, and some like… secret agent-like strings and stuff. Good intro music.

And it’s on. We’ve got Disco and Tyler, and there’s fancy graphics and stuff.

Gonna start with the Week in Review, talk a bit about 2.4, some spaceships, take some questions, etc…

Tyler’s week – Went to Dreamhack last weekend, met up with Captain Richard.

Disco got the date wrong on the stream. It’s the 13th. He put the date up as the 12th.

Tom Hennessy visited the Austin studio this week, helping Tyler get a hang of the equipment he’ll be using.

Tyler’s being doing lots of social media stuff, and some stuff with the Evocati, just been a busy week.

One of the side effects of Ben and Alexis being gone the last two weeks has been Disco finding out how much they do. It’s been busy on their end.

There was a 10 for the Devs this week, art and lore answers this week. There was a Loremakers as well. Next week there’ll be a Ship Shape for the Herald.

Disco shaved his beard cause this morning he tried to trim it while he had hiccups.

They filmed a Ship Shape for the Caterpillar this week. That’ll go out next week. Get a look at the updated features and whiteboxing of the Cat.

Disco started a diet this week, one that he can’t waffle on. Disco’s on the ‘get fit / healthy’ train.

in 2002, the FDA reclassified potatoes, to reclassify them as breads / starches, rather than vegetables. Knowledge from Disco.

Ben and Alexis were out this week. Justin was busy editing video stuff, but yeah. Busy week.

And now we’re moving into Where’s my Spaceship. Ben, the Director of Spaceships isn’t here, but the Cat is being worked on.

One of the habitat modules for the Cat has been built out in CryEngine. It’s being put into engine, working on the interior modules while concepting some minor changes to the exterior. It looks like the standard Cat we know and love, and the command module is back to being 2 levels.

Work on the Herald is continuing in Austin. That’ll come sooner than most people think. No dates though.

Reliant is coming in 2.4. Go read the Monthly Report (or INN’s summary thereofhttp://imperialnews.network/2016/05/april-monthly-report-summary/)

(or INN’s summary thereofhttp://imperialnews.network/2016/05/april-monthly-report-summary/) Chris Smith is working on the F7A – a new 2946 version of it. It’s the milspec Hornet, still working on shape language. It looks sleek and futuristic, but still identifiable as a Hornet.

It’s like looking at the new Dodge Challenger compared to the old ones. ‘Sleek’ is the perfect word for it apparently. More organic and rounded.

Tyler now has glasses, and has no idea how to keep them clean.

They’re not going to show off the F7A yet because it’s not ready to show off. It’s not ready yet.

They try to be responsible in what they show off. They have to be reasonably confident that what they’re showing will be representative of the final product.

At this point, it’s too early in the process to show off the F7A.

The Gemini will be included in 2.4, it looks pretty cool. It’s a milspec variant of the Starfarer. Wont’ be huge visual changes. Aegis buys it from MISC, and retrofits it a bit. It’s not prettier or anything.

Concepting on the Buccaneer is going well. The concept will be 110$. It won’t be next week. It looks cool apparently. Not ready to show that yet, cause they’re still locking it down, and that’s what the whole concept sale reveal is for.

Evocati! – It’s not a pre-PTU, it’s PTU. It’s always had limited access. With the exception of once where they blew open the PTU to test how many people would jump in. Short of that, it’s always had access in waves. The Evocati are just a first-wave of PTU testers. The only difference is they’ve got a funny name now, and an NDA. And they have that NDA because they’re trying to keep the feedback focused. They don’t want to have to track it down on Reddit, or in Youtube videos, etc… they’re trying to get more focused testing.

The Evocati so far have been extremely effective. They’ve put out 5 patches for 2.4 so far. 94% of the Evocati testers have actively played in the first week. 94% is an incredible number for them. They’ve had 1100 bugs submitted, which is on part with a much larger group, but they’re getting the results from less people. 140 of those bugs have over 10 reproductions.

The amount of duplicates has also been reduced. People are taking their time when submitting bugs. Their plan is to continue the Evocati, then add in another wave of PTU testers, and then the NDA will disappear.

Because the Evocati is so structured, the guys from Turbulent are flying out to Austin, they’re going to be improving the Issue council.

Most common question is how to get into Evocati – It’s not an exclusive playtest group. It’s not jumping in to see content before everyone else. You have to be patient and willing to play a very broken build of the game. Being active successfully on the Issue Council will get you added. There will be intervals where they’ll update the Evocati / the PTU waves. They’re looking to do that this summer.

Live is for everyone. PTU is a test environment. It’s meant to generate feedback and bug reports etc… When they let too many people jump in, the overwhelming majority of people jump into PTU once, see the new content, and then log out. Which means CIG have to pay data fees for it.

Evocati, and more focused PTU’s, let them be more efficient. It costs money for data to be downloaded, and the amount that were downloading the game and never logging in cost a lot.

Will Leverett is in, interacting with the Evocati every day, which is only possible with a smaller, more focused number of people. Eventually it’ll expand, they do need stress testing as well later, but the Evocati are a smaller, more focused group. They’re a scalpel, the general PTU is a sword. And Live is an elephant. This analogy brought to you by INN

The guys doing the publishing stuff for 2.4 – everyone’s putting in insane hours, and it’s all by choice. The passion in the project, especially with this patch, is incredible.

Check in next week for possible updates. It won’t go wider this weekend. Doom is out. Go play that.

The Overwatch beta happened in the middle of Ben and Alexis being gone, so Disco didn’t get a chance to play it.

Tyler and Disco both are really excited for Overwatch as am I I NEED MORE OVERWATCH!

And now, it’s question time.

[Buccaneer – how does it transport cargo?] Buccaneer questions will wait till the sale.

[Ship shopping in the near future?] Probably not in the near future. Nothing to do with sales, the pledge process is to support the development of the game. In-game, it depends on when they’re comfortable enough with persistence to iterate in ship-shopping. They have to be more confident in persistence, since 2.4 is just the first iteration.

[How far is Procedural generation?] How far along? It’s like… 42%? It’s not really quantifiable. You build it for one type of ecosystem. You build it for forests, then you have to do deserts, then tropical, then oceanic. It’s going to be a long process. But the stuff Disco’s seen recently, there are full planets now that are rocky, they have physics, you can get in a greycat and drive along.

It doesn’t look too much different, they’re working on technical aspects right now.

[Prospector QA part 3?] It was a 2 part comm-link.

The backgrounds in the show are older Emre work on lighting. It’s older work.

[Favourite overwatch hero?] Disco likes the whole ‘man with no name’ – Mcree. Tyler likes Junkrat.

[AtV fast forward?] That’s part 1 of the piping prototype, done by someone in the UK. It’s an example of different mechanics that can be included in levels. Multiple ways of opening doors and disabling security etc… In part 2 you’ll see early hacking, etc…

We’ll see some of the mechanics in SQ42 as well.

Vinnie is here. 2.4 testing is going well, it touches a lot. There’s a lot of interconnecting parts.

They’ll do a segment soon with Paul Reindell about Persistence, and why it’s important. Filming that Tuesday next week, so probably in AtV the week after.

[DragonCon this year] They had plans to, but then they expanded the Gamescom plans, and that runs over dragoncon, so they’re still working that out. Tentative plan is to send Tyler. Nothing definitive yet though.

Hennessy went on a diet, so they haven’t had cheesesteak friday in a while.

[What do you have against polite Canadians?] ‘nothing I don’t have against any Canadian’

Sean Tracy is the only Canadian Disco’s met in person. Also WTFO, but Disco forgot about that.