Posted 21 February 2014 - 12:02 AM

PGI owns a version of the CryEngine, but did not elect to get support from the CryEngine company to help it evolve along with their work. Cheaper in the short run, but puts all the work on the engineers who both have to learn how to change/adapt the CryEngine AND progress MWO itself.

Original Podcast can be listened to here:Disclaimer: I do not work for PGI or NGNG, and while I attempt to stay informed like the majority of you reading this, I may make mistakes in my interpretation (which is in parenthesis.) [Any words in brackets are my editorial notes, and not the words of PGI or NGNG and are signed. - Peiper] This is not a word for word transcript; it is a summary, paraphrased and the like for maximum information sharing with minimal reading. I transcribe this for the hearing impaired, or those who are reading this at work or whatever and can't put on a headset/broadcast the podcast. -PeiperDuncan Fisher talks about why we love battlemechs so much.4:30 Bryan 'truly loves' the Ember, and is glad to see lights are back in a fun way. The NGNG guys like it too. It's truly a love-fest over there at NGNG.8:30 Any more changes to game modes before new game modes are introduced?(short answer, no) PGI is watching. Assault and conquest are MORE PLAYED than skirmish right now. They are going to wait and see another week or so before they make any decisions based on their data. No data collated yet on what mechs weight-wise are preferred per match type.9pm EST/6pm PST is often when the most competitive/organized people play this gamePhil coins a new word: Exspecially.11:00 How have the queue buckets been affected by the new game mode? It slows down matchmaking because there are three game modes instead of too, but not too much, especially because many people like to drop on 'Any Mode.'11:50 Will there be a toggle option for game modes (like drop in conquest and skirmish only)?PGI is exploring that, but since they're so close to launch module, they're holding off working on it. Launch module is more important.12:30 New game modes? All design team is working on the launch module, been working on it a month or two, then they're going to work on base-assault, which will be a community-warfare/planetary capture ONLY type game mode. [In private queues too? - Peiper]UI 2.0 discussionInitial thoughts? Are you happy? Yes, happy with what we achieved in 6 months, still early, still features missing, still bugs and optimizations but happy with the looks and overall reception from the community. Bryan still thinks they have to address their core audience, and in the next 60 days there will be some features that will address their concerns like smurphy and mech detail panes, things that were discussed/suggested from playtester feedback (test server feedback). All in all, very happy, bottleneck is now open, every patch they do is going to be new features, new content, whole studio excited now that the floodgates are open. [And now they know Microsoft extended their contract? LOL – Peiper]18:00 Takes awhile to address feedback from test servers, which they have been working on through January and should be out in March. Bryan is super-happy, and super-excited.Phil noted with the old UI, reloading the mechlab took many seconds, but now it's instantaneous. Social tab now takes forever if you have a massive friends list. [Phil had 1700 friends, and myself and my officers had several hundred. I had to remove at least 150 to get my social tab to function in a timely manner – just a heads up for those whose social tab takes forever to load. - Peiper]19:45 Do you bring fresh/newb eyes into see the game during it's development to get neutral feedback as you create features? Yes, they do. The mandate for UI 2.0 was to create a mechlab for new users to understand every part of a mech and what they were doing. So yes, it takes many more clicks to trick out your mech, but every screen is contextual and you're only looking at one thing at a time. The problem for the 'expert' players is that they don't care about the mechs, they just want a spreadsheet and fill in the blanks, and that was always on their radar to be done after they had it set up to help the new users out first. (interpretation: Old users could adapt, new users don't have the tools/reference to know what they were doing to begin with with the old UI 1.5.)21:00 How do you deal with having new and old players in designing mechlab? Well, they look at every screen individually and see if it serves a function for all users, but the old and new users will always be at odds over which version of the mechlab is better. They are designing screens specifically for the veteran player (mech overview/smurfy look) so that both new and old players will have the world that works best for them. (dual mode mechlab?)22:20 It's not easy for the engineers to move parts of the mechlab around, it is Flash driven, UI 2.0 was dependent on rewriting the CryEngine in the first place. Bryan references this post: http://mwomercs.com/...history-lesson/ -Peiper] Adapting and or changing mechlab is easier than it used to be, but still not easy. UI 2.0 has been built with the lowest (technical) common denominator in mind -1024 x 768 DPI screen resolution. That means 4:3 ratio screens, which means that all the stuff has to fit into a conventional/tube type monitor. However, they are working toward making the game have a second mode, which caters to wide-screen monitors, that would give more information on one screen. Bryan says that this is basically why there is so much unused space in the current mechlab for most players. [Perhaps why the font is so small too? - Peiper]Daeron points out that website designers have the same hurdle.Lessons from UI 2.0 moving forward?: The impact a live population has on the servers/game caused users to be kicked from the client, because SO MUCH information was being sent through the servers and it was overloading them on a per-client basis, so they had to shut off the dynamic pricing function for awhile until they can hot patch it. Always unanticipated stuff slips through, example: studio alarms and emails went off because SO many people were accessing their 'inventory' in the mechlab. They knew it would happen, but they didn't anticipate the scale by which it would. Advanced (video?) option problems were a Q & A process oversight (fixed last patch). Notes that PGI is only 60 people, not a big company like EA where their test department is a thousand people!27:20 How big are the teams? Mech team (think he means MWO team) is 45-48. Live operations is 12 (Server team). Mech team is 12 (working on clan mechs), map team is 7.28:00 More test server sessions in the future? Yes, many in the pipeline. (Phases include) Process tests happen in the studio, Stable tests happen online with mirror hardware. Stage tests happen last. [I think that's public test -Peiper]29:55 Overall public test feeling? Some have lower turnouts [lack of advertizing? -Peiper] UI 2.0 tests had between 900 and 1500 testers which gives them a good baseline and metrics. PTS is here to stay, so they will be pushing any major features through the public test servers in the future. Setting up a PTS session takes about a week or so to put up, and the PTS is a mirror of what we have in the live servers, so it's a big expense. They have to weigh that expense against the data. All players like patches and to try out stuff before it comes out, but it's very costly to set those up and they aren't just for our preview entertainment. Even monitoring the stuff in the study for the 3 hour windows they've been using takes a lot of effort and work so they don't want to spend extra time in the servers if they can get the information they need more quickly than that. They also have to keep the live servers going on at the same time.32:40 Cockpit glass is transparent Ferro-Fibrous armor, for the nerdy technobabblers out there. And info-moment from Phil and Dearon.Part II should be out tomorrow (so, in a few hours of my transcription).EDIT: I was mistaken regarding PGI's and Crytek's relationship, and 'struck through' my error. I was victim to an old rumor, one saying that PGI didn't work with Crytek, causing many developmental problems for them. Heffay asked me about it and in all my research, I couldn't find a reliable source. So, I asked Sean Cove, and he asked Matthew Craig to vindicate - or correct me - if needed. He corrected me in a post below, which I very much appreciate. I also edited the posts below to include an admission of falsehood, but left them up as an example of how a rumor can ripple out. In my case, I was victim to a rumor which changed my understanding of PGI and their practices, which then found it's way into an editorial comment I presented as fact. I don't mind apologizing for or admitting my mistakes, but I wouldn't have to if people were honest in the first place. Please don't spread rumors. They hurt good people.

Edited by Peiper, 21 February 2014 - 12:31 PM.