(Citizen Star News) - Gerald Evans - 2015-04-30

42. The answer to life the universe and everything. Also a very special episode of Around the Verse. Lots to see here. Skip ahead at your own risk.



Hitchhikers Guide to Star Citizen

2:21 – Intro

4:33 – News from Around the Verse

15:19 – Arena Commander Video by JagerSaus

16:01 – Hull Discussion with Dan Tracy and Ben Lesnick

22:47 – Squadron 42 Interview with John Schimmel

30:38 – Ship Shape with Lisa Ohanian

32:18 – Outro

33:13 – Sneak Peak

34:45 – ATV Behind the Scenes

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters at the unfashionable end of Western spiral arm of the galaxy was a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant, little blue-green planet, whose apr-decended life formes are so amazingly primitive that they still think console games from big publishers are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has, or rather had, a problem which was this: Most of the people on it, weren't playing space games. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of big video game publishers; which is odd because, on the whole, big video game publishers weren't making very good games. And so the problem remained: Lots of the people wern't being space pilots, and most of them were miserable. Even the ones with game consoles.

This is the story of a game. A game called "Star Citizen." Not a console game, and not one seen or heard of by any publisher. Nevertheless, a whole remarkable game. In many of the more relaxed civilaztions in the outer Eastern rim of the UEE, the "Star Citizen" has already supplanted the great "Wing Commander" as the Best Damn Space Sim Ever. For though it has many modules yet to be released, and contains much that is still in Alpha, or is at least wildly incomplete, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects: First, it is slightly larger, and secondly it has the words 'PC GAME' inscribed in large, friendly letters, on its cover.

Welcome to Around the Verse, Episode 42: The talk show at the end of the Universe."

2:21 – Intro

Sandi and Ben welcome us.

They never thought they'd get this far or to 80 million dollars.

The Hullapalooza concept sale is ongoing and they're posting the answers to your questions as they can through the Comm-Link.

A design post on cargo and interacting with it via GrabbyHands(tm) is available.

4:33 – News from Around the Verse

CIG: Santa Monica - Travis Day and Darian Vorlick

They're working on the shared item, shared vehicle parameters. Currently, in order for items to populate your holotable and AC list, they're spawned in the world at 0.0 so you can't see them but the game code can interact with them.



The new system doesn't need to spawn them , which means it greatly decreases load times and saves video memory and time to copy.



TL;DR: Getting into the game quicker.



Working on wingman commands, so they have better abilities to assist you.



Defend me, check out that target, taunt, etc.



S42: With the reveal of cargo, Calix is taking all the concept models and game models and figuring all the SCU figures.



Illfonic: David Langeirs and Chuck Brungardt

They're working on breathing.

It's been a thing for a long time, and is a very complex system.

So many of the systems are interconnected, and movement, gun movement, stamina, breathing are all tied together.

We've gotten everything in there so that now the feel can be balanced.

The system drives home the feeling that you're really in the world, and that your decisions actually affect your body.

CIG: Austin - Jake Ross and Evan Manning

The Star Map

The old map is being redesigned so that the 100 systems that are going to populate the universe from the beginning can be discovered.

We started by taking into account the polulation, the story arc of S42, trading routes, pirates, and likely anomalies.

Once we had a 2D layout we put that in CE and turned that into a 3D layout, and creating a tool so that we can easily export the data we want people to see while hiding the system data that players haven't discovered or shouldn't see.

We won't have the full map leak again (hopefully)

We don't have a date for the release of the public map, but hopefully you'll see it soon.

Foundry 42 - Michael and Andrew Nicholson

The new Star Wars Trailer!!

Q/A Stuff

The PTU went live Monday, and we're looking at the issues like the door being locked shut in Gold Horizon.

In QA we solve problems by creating more problems!

The Astro Arena has been a challenge because the collision is missing on most of the map so you fly out of the world.

We want to shoot each other in the face! (In the game, that is.)

15:19 – Arena Commander Video by JagerSaus

16:01 – Hull Discussion with Dan Tracy and Ben Lesnick

Ben invented them as a rip on David Niven's general product hulls, and then Dan and team designed them.

It started with the external cargo placement, which has it's own inherent side effects such as exposing your cargo to fire. If you're in UEE space or with suffecient escort you don't have to worry about it. With each one of the series of the cargo holding more than the last, you're looking at ships that can hold much much more than the other types of ships.

I see that a lot of people have concerns that we have the wrong metrics (we did, they were based on Freight Units before) . Those were in a very small cubic dimension but we're working on internal item placement nodes. So each node is 0.25m3 but for a lot of ships that doesn't make a lot of sense. Also we wanted the containers to have a height of 1.25m for taking cover behind.

Regardless, we will give you all accurate figures, and we'll make the HULL series just as capable as the Freelancer MAX or the Banu Merchantman.

Dan has measured the ships again so that we will have all the data. (Which was published here: Hull Q&A B)

Ships ferrying ships!

22:47 – Squadron 42 Interview with John Schimmel

James interviews John Schimmel (Head of Linear Content)

What does Linear Content mean?



I started out as a story consultant and then got moved to linear content. Most recently I was tasked with producing the motion capture shoot for Sqaudron 42.

You just got back from the UK?

I just got back from the UK Saturday and I'm going back Saturday. We're shooting at Ealing Studios so we're sharing the studio with Downton Abbey. We have a corridor that says Lady Edith Crawley / Squadron 42 makeup which is pretty funny.

How is going? How does Chris feel?

Chris is born to be on set and loves directing. He's really good at it. The shoot is going great and we have an unbelievable cast. We're making our days and are into our second week of shooting.

What makes it different? Performance capture compared to what you're used to?

I come from the feature film business, and Chris has asked us to shoot this performance capture as if it's a feature film. Traditionally you shoot one character individually and then another and drop them into the scene digitally. Chris wanted the energy of shooting all the actors on set together. So we're trying to shoot as if it's a feature film, but there are profound differences because most of what we're shooting is first-person. That means you can't cut between performances. You get one giant performance. You yell 'print' and that's what you're using for whoever is on set. There are moments when I feel I'm in a nursery school play yard, because the folks at Imaginarium which is a giant piece of PVC which they're playing with and messing with it, but because we're shooting in-engine we can see it as an incredibly beautiful piece of artillery. It's one step more make believe than most sets.

It's like a kid with a play set and his imagination, taking a stick and it becomes a sword.

It literally becomes a sword, or a piece of wood becomes your MobiGlas, and it's fascinating. And the actors get into it, which is what makes them actors.

How's the team doing over there?

We're having a very good time. We rented a house very close to the studio, so Chris and myself and Dave Haddock and the cinematic director are all living in this house together. Which is kind of slightly empty.

It sounds like the worst season of The Real World.

We're mostly well-behaved. But we're a four minute walk from the house so we can go back at lunch. It's a strange four story house, and in the basement we have the face scanning equipment and we have the cast flows in and out getting their face-scanned. We've turned the garage into our living room, so it's sort of this college garage band experience.

Since you've started and this is what you were brought in for has it changed?

Yeah. The game is in this constant iterating process of getting better andgetting bigger, and we're all taken aback as far as how that manifested in production size. We have a giagantic cast and our production crew has gone enormously. We started with a two room office and now we have a couple of spaces just jammed with people. We're keeping up but it was something of a race to get up to speed with how big the production really is.

Do you want to give the people a little sneak peek to hype up the game a little bit?



I think what people are going to find coming out of this shoot is Chris has not only insisted on shooting this in a cinematic way but he's insisted on a cinematic story. We like to think there's a really compelling story we're telling through this shoot. So we're shooting it as a story but at the same time it's a game which is alive. So we have these really interesting background conversations and characters to be discovered. I think people are going to be knocked out.

I'm sold! I want to play it now.

Well, I know where you can pre-buy.

Ben thinks John Schimmel looks like Mark Twain.

Some graphics played during the interview:

Thank you Redditor

And more from this reddit thread:

30:38 – Ship Shape with Lisa Ohanian

Welcome to the inagural episode of Ship Shape. I'll be talking to you about all the ships in development, and hopefully highlighting something at the end.

Most of the guys are working on the Constellation and the Freelancer which are looking pretty awesome.

The P-52 Merlin is coming along and with the new tech we have we can make things look a lot better.

Next week I'll tell you a little bit more about the Constellation.



P-52 for the win!

(Looking AbFab! -Ed.)

32:18 – Outro

That's it for this week.

The team is hard at work bringing 1.1.2 live, but we're not expecting to publish it this week.

1.1.2 adds the tutorial and sets the stage for Star Marine

Thanks subscribers!

33:13 – Sneak Peak

Thank you, StarCitizenNewsRadio

See Also

COMM-LINK

RSI-Forums Feedback Thread

Reddit Discussion

StarCitizenBase Discussion