This post is a transcript of Around the ‘Verse: Episode 2.20, 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!



Around the ‘Verse: Episode 2.20 – Full Transcript

Intro

Jared Huckaby (JH): This week, Star Citizen Alpha 2.2 goes to the Public Test Universe.

Los Angeles Quality Assurance Lead Vincent Sinatra talks testing.

And Community Manager Jared Huckaby returns to The Wonderful World of Star Citizen to chat with twitch streamer: DeeJay Knight.

All this and more on these weeks Around the ‘Verse.

Pilot 1: Oh man this is somebody new,

Pilot 2: No that’s the guy with him presumably.

Pilot 3: Yeah yeah, that’s the pilot, I mean that was his gunner.

Pilot 2: I think he went to 275 this time

Pilot 3: That’s a possibility.

Pilot 2: Yes he did.

Pilot 3: Holy, did you just blow him up?

Pilot 2: Yes

Pilot 3: Oh, I just jumped through the explosion.

Pilot 2: Dude, like, I’m glad I recorded that, let me just put it that way. God I hope I recorded that and that didn’t **** up somehow.

Sandi Gardiner (SG): It takes some real luck to follow someone through Quantum Drive, I’m gonna try that

Ben Lesnick (BL): You might say that Constellation got ‘Quantum Leaped’

SG: Oh boy … Anyway, hey everybody, welcome to this week’s episode of Around the Verse I’m Sandi Gardiner

BL: And I’m Ben Lesnick. Sandi and I have been working with Star Citizen ever since the star of the project. She is the brains behind our marketing campaign.

SG: And Ben makes some pretty cool spaceships and has a very long title

BL: For those of you who are new to the show, Around the ‘Verse is your weekly update by the Star Citizen team about the Star Citizen team and our incredible community. We show you how the games being made and introduce you to some of the great people who have been supporting it.

SG: But what can you play in Star Citizen today? Our current live release is Star Citizen Alpha 2.1 which includes the Arena Commander dogfighting, the ArcCorp ground side module and the nucleus of our Persistent Universe, Star Citizen Alpha 2.1.

BL: And the team is hard at work on Alpha 2.2 which is gonna include physicalized EVA, flyable Sabre, hanger ready Xi’an Scout and the new reputation system among other new features. That went live to PTU on Monday night and our community bug seekers have been having a field day with it. Meanwhile, the team is fixing all the issues they find and were on course to go live in the very near future.

SG: The Xi’an scout actually looks pretty cool. Have you tried the Sabre flying yet?

BL: I haven’t flown the Sabre yet, but every single … I was following reddit and every single post was “Look how cool the Xi’an scout is, look how cool the Xi’an scout is.”

SG: It is pretty cool. The PTU is being rolled out using a new wave system aimed at getting the build to the backers who’ve done the most testing. So if you want to be the first for future PTU then get in there and test as much as you can when it becomes available.

BL: The latest issue of Jump Point our monthly subscriber magazine is available in your subscriber areas. It follows that the development of the Xi’an scout from concept to hanger readiness. It introduces you to the team behind our modular space stations which are already exploring in 2.1.

SG: And the ship team have kicked off two long-awaited ships, the Drake Buccaneer and the RSI Polaris Corvette. Matt Sherman who is heading up the Buccaneer design has requested backers help us collect reference art work, so head over to the forums and let him know what you think the next part fighter should look like.

BL: Buccaneer is going to be really cool. This is the ship a lot of people wanted with the Cutlass, a super maneuverable pirate like fighter. Everything I’ve seen so far is really cool and we’re going to do a good ship here.

SG: Thanks to the subscribers who came out on Wednesday to make this month’s RtV bonus round a success. Star Citizen’s Writing Team was really happy for the chance to talk Lore with the backers and I think it was Vice Versa and here’s a clip

JH: We haven’t talked about the Galactapedia in a while and we’ve added several hundred thousand Star Citizens since we have. Why don’t you tell us what the Galactapedia is for those who may not be familiar with it

CH: It’s the Encyclopedia for everything in Star Citizen. Think Wikipedia, but better maintained.

[Laughter]

AW: Shots fired!

CH: No not shots fired, I love Wikipedia!

BL: I could listen to those guys talk lore all day, but instead let’s listen to our studios from around the world who are hard at work on Star Citizen, lets check in.

SG: News From Around The ‘Verse.

BL: Around the ‘Verse …

News From Around The ‘Verse

Los Angeles

Randy Vazquez: Hi guys this is sunny Santa Monica. My name’s Randy Vazquez; Associate Producer and this today with me is:

Jeremiah Lee: Jeremiah Lee Concept Artist

RV: Extraordinaire. So this week in Santa Monica we’ve actually been working a lot on panelling some of the live stuff, for me in particular, to try to get PTU pushed out as well as set playtest up and get all those bugs and all those crashes and stuff, given out to my team. I know Paul and Kirk have really been focusing on 2.2 stuff trying to get everything ready for the patch, as well as all the PTU pushes and then the other part of the team, we’ve been working on new features as well as as everybody’s just been pitching in for 2.2 I know that components and everything’s going to be refactored and Sherman and Calix have been doing some things. Also Callix is also working on the Caterpillar recently, so i’m actually really excited about that. What have you got on your side?

JL: On the Art side we have Gurmukh working on the Caterpillar concept with Mark Skelton and also Elwin. They’re trying to make sure everything fits together and runs perfectly in the game. On the character side i’m currently wrapping up the heavy marines and we got the undersuit and the medium marine approved.

RV: That’s all Omar’s work isn’t it?

JL: Yeah. So Omar’s working on, he’s building the undersuit. The notorious suit that Chris has been talking about which we’re super excited about.

RV: Nice! Ok can’t wait to show you guys everything if anything. See you in the ‘Verse have a good night guys

Austin

Jake Ross: Hey guys Jake Ross here Associate Producer of the persistent universe. I’m here with you this week to go over a little bit about what’s going on here in Austin. Last week I was in the UK as some of you may have seen. I got to sync up with the guys out there and talk about production practices and workflow and things like that. A lot of kind of not really tangible things but things that are important none the less so it was a very successful trip. This week we are working on getting 2.2.0 out to, into your guys hands.

So we just released a PTU and with that we released a public crash handler. So now you guys have access to the public crash handler whenever things go sour on your end and you can let us know exactly what happened and when. It’s first iteration so we are improving on that tool to count for things that are more like adding repro steps and things like that but it’s a pretty good first release I think. I hope you guys are able to get some good use out of it.

We are also talking on this side about persistence first release and what exactly we are wanting to persist. We talked about shopping already and persisting what you buy in Casaba Outlet and things like that. But we’re also wanting to talk about persisting things like player health, item health, ship health. We have the new Hostility System out there. So we want to b e able to somehow persist the reputation that you gain through the Hostility System. If you’re trolling people we don’t want you to just be able to log off and log back in, and just have a clean slate, we want consequences to persist and we want that to kind of help gameplay as well. People who are actually trying to track you down if you do a bad thing.

It’s all things that we’re discussing on this end that we want to persist in the near future but we don’t know exactly when that near future is just yet, so we’re road mapping that stuff out. Last thing I’ll mention is that a couple of months back Emrah our Lighting Artist here in Austin updated the hangar lighting for the Selfland and Revel and York Hangar, we had to pull him off the other two hangars to help out with Crusader and things of that ilk, but he is back on to updating the hangar lighting for the Aeroview Hangar and the VFG Industrial Hangar I think it’s called, the Asteroid Hangar. So hopefully those other two hangars that have not been given as much attention and love will be up to the same quality as the other two. That’s all I got for you this week guys, thanks see you around.

Foundry 42 UK

Tom Johnson: Hey everyone welcome to the UK this week I’ve got the pleasure of Nick Elms the Creative Director here at Foundry 42. So Nick’s going to give us a quick run down on the coolest things that are going on here at the UK at the moment, so Nick do you want to take it away?

Nick Elms: Thanks Tom. I’ll give it a go it’s my first time doing this so you’ll have to bear with me a little bit. Just wanted as Tom said, run down a couple of things that we’re looking at as a priority over here at the moment. The first being the New User Experience really. We got a lot of new users coming in and we’re very aware we got a steep learning curve into this game so we’re putting a bit of effort into simplifying the controls system, making it a bit more consistent across space flight, EVA, FPS.

We’re simplifying the HUD as much as we can so if you want to drill down into the more complicated things you can do, but initially, it will be a bit more simple. We’ve got someone on ship balancing full time now. So where we’ve just been duplicating stats for components and things like that, that’s going to change. Things are going to start to get a lot more stable on that side. We’re building a bit more solid foundations to actually get the game

TJ: Yeah, there’s a lot of ships!

NE: There is yeah! We’ve got the Idris in there which is quite exciting for some of the guys who’ve been doing playtests

TJ: In there as in, in-game?

NE: Yep. Flying around shooting people in turrets it’s quite good fun. It’s still a way off release but we’re starting to be able to play around with it. Which is really encouraging. It’s certainly big as cap ships going in there and actually seeing what they can actually do is fantastic. We’ve worked a bit more on player traversal. So hopefully you’re going to be able to do more complex moves like vaulting, mantling some prone stuff, prone to events all that kind of thing hopefully will work a bit more smoothly. Mobi-Glas is another thing. For Squadron 42 we need to have a military skin a Mobi-Glas so we’re zeroing in on the apps that we need for that and getting the consistent layout for Mobi-Glas so everything works in it.

TJ: So you and IT are pretty busy

NE: We absolutely are.

TJ: I think that just about wraps it up for this week. it’s a lot to fit in so hopefully you enjoyed that guys. And i’ll see you in the ‘Verse!

Frankfurt

Brian Chambers: Hey everyone Brian Chambers from the Frankfurt office. This week I’m alone today. I will give a breakdown, try to remember what everyone’s been covering since last we spoke.

AI: there’s been a big push on AI we had meetings, a good amount of meetings about the AI with a bunch of people including Chris and Erin and Tony from Austin. Recently we’ve been working on AI assignments. Those allow Design to have character AI doing some very specific things. Like defending an area, patrolling, patrolling a specific way and so on. So it allows them to define things but gives variables in there so we have some differential between them. Worked on audio perception. Allows AI to hear things from the player. Any type of noise that’s going on and react differently to different types of noise. They’re also pushing on bugs for Crusader and Arena Commander maps. Sorry.

Level Design pushing on piping prototype. That’s coming along pretty well. Still working on that but it’s getting down to some of those final stages. Also started building out a new landing zone.

System Design you can imagine is those closely tied with AI, they’ve been doing a lot AI work themselves. Behaviour prototyping, implementation of different AI, designing different AI archetypes. Really seeing what archetypes are needed in a more defined way. We obviously have the high-level ones but now it’s drilling in and saying ‘Ok what specific stuff do we need here? What does the world need?’ Also accuracy design for AI. System Designers also working on looting prototype, designing player oxygen consumption. Which should be interesting. I guess they have some pretty interesting ideas there. Also designing quantum and interdiction.

On weapon art: recently we were saying how they’ve gone through and did a pass on all the metrics to define those and get the weapons all where they need to be. So basically index all the ship weapons so now they’re all properly listed and detailed out internally with the correct metrics so that now will allow the team to build off of those. We’re exported that process we exported all the ship weapons with their new size based on those metrics to make sure they’re all lined and that gives us a level base where we can then tune if needed from there.

Started work on a new railgun, it’s come through the concept phase and so on so now it’s to a point where the guys can actually start working on it. Finished work on an improved rail system for all weaponry to accommodate attachments betters. Again building up these base foundations that allow us, as we progress to make things more efficient and do things easier. Also started working on updating grenades. Using new material system and so on, based on new budgets we’ve created including the LODs.

On the engine side they focused a bit on bug fixes for the live releases. So it’s important for us to dial those in. Players have more of an opportunity to have fun. This is definitely still alpha but we want to dial in as tight as possible so we make sure that what’s out there is the best experience we can and we’re always building on something that’s solid. Continue working on the physicalised EVA, controls and collision detection and also pushing more on the procedural planning tech. And the procedural stuff it’s interesting cause we’re currently improving how the different layers from height maps blend into each other so they form good nice terrain. And also looking at the height maps and maybe having height maps for some of the procedural stuff and so on.

On Cinematics we had a new guy start Michel. He’s working with one of our other Cinematic Animators; Oscar, and they’re jumping into one of their chapters and starting to sort out some of those scenes. Cinematic Designers; the guys that put all the parts and pieces together they’re currently working on two other chapters in parallel. And the stuff that’s interesting about that is they’re working on some chapters right now that they have featured mostly in cinematics in those locations. So the Cinematic Team has the ability to go in and help create the mood and the feel for those areas so they’re having fun with that.

And we’re also pushing on tools with one of the engine guys to get Track View tools up to a point we need where Hannis and the guys can be more efficient. Also from there VFX continuing to push on stuff and so on. So I think I’ve already run over my normal time. Next week i’ll try to bring in one of the guys, still trying to bring in one of the tech guys to talk to you but they’re always so busy. But yeah thanks again and see you next week.

Back in the Studio

SG: Thanks guys. Around the Verse will be visiting our European studios later this summer, right after GamesCom. And we’ll be going to Frankfurt and also to the UK to do some filming and get all of those folks that you haven’t seen on camera.

BL: I’m looking forward to our European adventure. Meanwhile, closer to home, Jared has an interview with CIG Los Angeles’ new head of our QA team, Vincent Sinatra.

ATV Interview with Vincent Sinatra

JH: Thanks guys, on this week’s AtV interview we’re sitting down with Los Angeles’ QA lead, Mr. Vincent Sinatra. Vinny, how you doing man?

VS: Doing all right, how you doing?

JH: Can I call you Vinny?

VS: You can call me Vinny.

JH: I’m doing well, thank you for asking. Now, you’re the Quality Assurance Lead here in the Los Angeles studio.

VS: Correct.

JH: What’s that do? We’ve had a couple QA people on the show before but just give us a top level run down, what’s quality assurance?

VS: Quality assurance we’re making sure the game is fun and that it’s working properly.

JH: We use the fans for a lot of our testing, it’s part of our crowdfunding but before it gets to them there’s still a large amount of testing that has to go one…

VS: Correct.

JH: Internally before we even get the builds out there.

VS: Correct.

JH: If a ship is showing up as a giant red blob or something there’s no reason to push that out to the fans.

VS: Definitely, we don’t want to hand them anything like that.

JH: So, you’re our first line of defense for that kinda stuff.

VS: Yeah, pretty much. We’re the ones who… we get into the dirty code and hopefully it’s clean by the time it passes through us and gets to the fans but obviously, you know they’re going into certain things every now and again.

JH: Now I know we have QA teams in three of our four studios and we’re building a fourth team in Frankfurt right now actually.

VS: Correct.

JH: Do the teams focus on different things?

VS: Yes somewhat, you know the UK we have a great team out there, they do a lot of the Squadron 42 testing. They also overlap and tag team a lot of the Persistent Universe testing as well. ATX we have an awesome team there as well, who primarily focuses on live deployments or PTU deployments but also sweeping all areas of the code.

We like to have our QA people become specialized in certain aspects of the code so we know we have an authority on sort of each aspect. There’s a ship guy, there’s someone who’s doing first person shooter stuff, there’s other people who are handling the editor tools. That way both devs and other QA people know who to go to when they need to ask certain questions.

JH: One of your focuses is the ship stuff?

VS: Most definitely, here in LA since we’re primarily an embedded test team kept small and focused. We focus on the ships and make sure we get those out on time.

JH: People may have seen you in the forums posting in the shipyard forums M for…

VS: Mayo Famatto, yeah, yeah.

JH: I’m sorry, Mayo Famatto.

VS: Mayo Famatto it’s a misspelled Japanese word so it doesn’t really exist.

JH: But Mayo Famatto.

VS: Mayo Famatto, that’s my handle.

JH: I got it, you didn’t think I was going to get it. Mayo Famatto that’s you.

VS: That’s me.

JH: When people see you on the forums. Primarily focused on ship stuff. Recently you were gathering feedback on the 300 series and was it the Aurora?

VS: The Aurora, the Constellation, the Gladius, the Gladiator… we had a whole bunch.

JH: Now that doesn’t mean we’re doing a remodel or a remake right away, that’s just part of the process.

VS: It’s part of the process, a lot of it was part of my own edification, just to kind of get the history of ships cause I know they’ve been around a long time and I kind of wanted to see how they changed. Get the public’s feedback on it, that way I can jump into the code myself and say, “hey, you know what, they’re really right about this. I should probably turn this into a bug or something like that”.

JH: Gotcha. Now a lot of the work lately must be 2.2 focused.

VS: Yeah, we’re all over 2.2 right now.

JH: Now, we’re filming this on Monday, so there’s no telling whether 2.2 will be out by the time this is viewed but take us through some of the things you guys would be testing in a lead up to a release.

VS: Primarily stability. That’s one of the things we’re really focused on when it comes to the PTU and the Live because if we’re giving broken code and people are crashing all the time or the servers are coming down, we’re not going to be able to get any decent data from the PTU. The players are just going to say, “hey’ it crashed’.

We really want things like performance, trying to go from 16 to 24 players or something like that so stability is definitely number one. Then again there’s also those new features we’re rolling out, we want to make sure those are at least in a testable state for the public before they get their hands on it. So you know, we definitely have a lot of things to look for but we hit it…

JH: All right, so take me through that. We’ve got a new ship that’s becoming flyable with 2.2, the Sabre…

VS: Correct.

JH: What kind of steps do you have to take when a ship is becoming flyable for the first time?

VS: Well, when it’s just in the hangar it’s really easy, you just go and you sit in all the chairs and you get out. Ok, it looks fine, it’s good for the hangar. Once you’re able to fly the ship there’s just a whole big battery of tests we have to do.

Between checking the SCM speed, checking the slide times, making sure the countermeasures are firing, making sure the coolers are cooling down all the weapons, making sure the weapons can get swapped out on the holotable. Testing it in dogfights against other ships to make sure it kind of fits its role it’s supposed to be in. You know, if the Sabre is all of the sudden getting schooled by the lowliest Aurora something’s wrong there and we need to work on it.

JH: Time to kill and stuff.

VS: Exactly. Time to kill and the ship’s armor and all that.

JH: Now you mentioned the coolers, one of the new features in 2.2 is that we’re adding the coolers and power plants as usable, functioning items now. Take me through a little bit of that, what do coolers do and what do power plants do?

VS: Power plants generate power for your ship and it’s getting it to all your different systems. If something is wrong with your power plant systems aren’t going to get power, weapons aren’t going to fire, shields aren’t going to work. Coolers are going to be cooling down everything that could possibly overheat. So when your weapons overheat, you see a little gauge starts going up, goes into overheat mode, coolers are what makes it go back down.

JH: Gotcha. And you’ll be able to upgrade your power plant to be able to supply more power to these things or to allow you more time before you overheat?

VS: Correct.

JH: In addition to the Sabre and the new items, we’ve got the Xi’An Scout that’s going into the hangar, you’ve already talked a little bit about that, the tests, make sure you can get in, make sure you can get out.

VS: Pretty much, make sure it stays flat on the plane, doesn’t jiggle around or end up below the ground plane or anything like that.

JH: Doesn’t jiggle around. I remember in the very early days the buggy would be bouncing around.

VS: The first time the Scout was in there, it looked like a land shark, one fin was above the ground, kind of dancing around there and it was kind of hard to find, but we got that tricked out.

JH: Another new feature in 2.2, the hostility system…

VS: Yes.

JH: What can you tell us about that?

VS: Well, if anyone’s played any sort of games like GTA or stuff like that, you get the usual, where you get stars, we have a similar system, not exactly the same, where if you carry out hostile actions in a safe, monitored zone, we have little icons to tell you if you’re in a monitored zone and if you carry out any hostile actions there, what’ll happen is you’ll get a hostility level, 1 through 5, the more you get, eventually you’ll get a bounty put on you, and that’s where everyone on the server gets a mission to hunt you down because of what you’ve been doing and how much trouble you’ve been causing around Port Olisar. And you’ve got a way to lower your hostility level by going to Security Post Kareah, so we kind of focus the trouble makers got to go to the PvP area.

JH: I really like how we put the terminals to lower your hostility into the FPS area.

VS: Yeah, because then the people be waiting there to hunt them down.

JH: Gotcha, and we don’t want to give any specifics there, but we might want to give a reward or two…

VS: Definitely.

JH: …if you capture some bounties. So hostility system, Sabre flyable, Xi’An Scout’s going into the hangar and we’ve got coolers and power plants. This seems like a pretty big patch.

VS: Yeah.

JH: Alright, let’s go back and talk about you a little bit more, where do you come from to Star Citizen?

VS: Well, I have a long experience in the industry in QA, I was at Activision for about a decade working on various titles, working on a bunch of movie titles, Call of Duty, and that sort of stuff. And then I went and did a little bit of freelance QA, working on a lot of smaller things like handhelds, I worked for the biggest of the big and the smallest of the small, and now I’m really happy here to be here at Star Citizen where I finally get to work on a genre that I know and love and that’s true to my heart, Space Combat.

JH: Space Combat. What other space combat games have you played?VS: Oh, I’ve played as many as I could get my hands on. I’m an old-school X-Wing, XBT fan, of course the Wing Commander series, I geeked out hard the first time I met Chris Roberts, because I played all those games as well. Pretty much anyone that I could get my hands on, be a stick jockey, I’m all about it.

JH: How long you been here now?

VS: Only about four months.

JH: That it? It seems like you’ve been here longer?

VS: Well I have that kind of face.

JH: You have that kind of effect on people, that makes time seem like it slows down.

VS: Yeah, drags down, yeah.

JH: Vinnie, I think that’s all we got today, thanks for coming by.

VS: Thanks for having me.

JH: Vinnie Sinatra, Los Angeles QA Lead, back to you guys.

VS: Back to you guys.

ATV Rewind: The Starmap Revealed

[Video]

The ARK is proud to introduce Starmap v1.0.

Once you have loaded the starmap you will arrive at the Galaxy View which shows all known systems in the Star Citizen universe.

You are now in System view. You can right-click on any celestial object in that system.

The Starmap will let you keep up with its pace directly from the site.

The Wonderful World Of Star Citizen

DeeJay Knight (DJK): No, no, no. I was right there, only get two ghosts. C’meer. Wait, you weren’t supposed to actually c’meer, what are you doing right now? You weren’t supposed to actually wait up for me right now, it’s against the rules, this is not parlay, you’re not supposed to wait and be kind and be gentle. Get it. Hahaha.

JH: Welcome everybody to the Wonderful World of Star Citizen. I’m your host, Community Manager Jared Huckaby. And if you’ve never seen the Wonderful World before, this is where we take a look at the Youtubers, the Twitch Streamers, the Podcasters, the Fan Art Makers, the Ship Creators, basically, anyone that creates original Star Citizen content for the Star Citizen Universe. Now on this week’s show, we’re having a chat with Star Citizen Twitch livestreamer, Mr DeeJay Knight, how you doin man?.

DJK: I’m fantastic sir, how about yourself?

JH: I’m doing well, thanks for coming on.

DJK: Happy to be here.

JH: Now DJ, you stream live on Twitch, how about you tell us how you got started?

DJK: Well I started around 10 months ago, a friend of mine had been bugging me for months, like “you need to be streaming” and I started and didn’t know how much I enjoyed it until I did, and I’ve been at it ever since. Started a schedule in March, I won a contest to go to Twitch Con in August, and I found Star Citizen in mid-December of last year. And after getting into it, I’ve been having so much of a blast, it’s crazy pants…

JH: So you’ve been streaming Star Citizen since December, we have quite a few Star Citizen streamers out there, what can people expect to see when they tune into your channel?

DJK: I’m a big fan of information, so anytime somebody comes into my stream and asks a question about any of the base information you can find about Star Citizen or anything more than, I try to give it. I do tend to go into the important parts about Star Citizen, for instance, like the fact it’s a crowd-funded project, the fact it’s in alpha and that there’s really two games going on behind the scenes, Star Citizen and Squadron 42, so I spend a decent amount of time talking about that and kind of getting amp’ed up about the ship to planet landings.

JH: We were all pretty amp’ed up when we saw that one. You said you take a lot of time to help explain things, quite a lot of our newer backers are discovering Star Citizen through our Youtubers and Twitch livestreamers so we certainly appreciate you taking the time to help explain with what can be a pretty dense project.

DJK: It is pretty dense, but that’s the joy of it, is that it’s pushing the boundaries and a lot of people don’t understand that until they start to hear the things that are coming and the things that are already available that they may not have known about. So I’m stoked to be a part of it.

JH: We appreciate it, tell us a little bit about yourself as a person.

DJK: Oh ho.

JH: On the spot, huh. Who is Deejay Knight?

DJK: I started a gaming website back in 2006 called Gaming Truth.com. I ran that site for over a decade, in addition to that, I’ve worked in the gaming industry, I’ve worked in Electronic Arts, I’ve worked on a couple smaller Indie titles and I’ve do have a fair knowledge of game design itself, I actually teach a game design degree. I’m fairly well versed in how game development works, I think that gives me a little bit of a unique perspective in informing people on how amazing the status of Star Citizen is right now, especially being in alpha.

JH: It definitely shows when folks look at your stream. You brought up Star Citizen Alpha, what’s your favorite thing to do in the alpha right now?

DJK: Covalex Shipping Hub, I’m a big fan of that hub mostly because the missions, just the mission itself, it’s so well done, the voice acting, the atmosphere, it just feels creepy while you’re going through it and it’s a fantastic example of how such, you would think that atmosphere doesn’t play a big part, but it’s huge, and that mission shows it off really well. In addition to having a Big Bennie’s vending machine that caused a whole lot of ruckus recently.

JH: Yes, folks have been taking that vending machine to all sorts of exciting places around Crusader.

DJK: Yeah, the Big Bennie’s Summit challenge is essentially taking the Big Bennie’s vending machine from Covalex Shipping Hub into your ship and all the way back to the room you spawn in, in Port Olisar, which can be a fairly lengthy journey.

JH: Yeah, I’ve logged in once or twice and seen folks doing personal barrel rolls on the floor trying to get the machine up over the last step and into their starting location.

DJK: It can definitely take a bit, but it’s a blast to get it done.

JH: Now besides Covalex Shipping Hub, I’ve noticed you play a lot of Arena Commander, what’s your favorite ship to fly in Arena Commander?

DJK: Easily, hands down right now, my favourite ship right now is the Aegis Avenger Stalker, I’m a big fan of Aegis as an Air Force veteran, for me it’s a huge, huge deal to find more fighter-like ships and all of their ships have that kind of design language, but the thing about the Avenger Stalker that gets me is that it fact that it has the bounty bays in the back which leads heavily to what I want to do when the game starts, which is be a bounty hunter.

JH: Well, there goes my next question, what do you want to do in the PU? So, thanks. Wrapping up, is there anything, any special message you want to give to the Star Citizen community?

DJK: The biggest thing I have to tell to the Star Citizen community is thank you. I just started streaming in December and even with the issues I was having with my computer just keeping things running smoothly in the beginning was different but the entire time, from then to now, the fans, the community, the streamers, everybody has shown me nothing but welcome and support, and I immensely appreciate that, which is why I’m extremely happy to be a part of the Star Citizen community and I look forward to seeing everything that’s coming up soon.

JH: Well we’re glad to have you a part of the Star Citizen community, and thanks for taking the time to livestream Star Citizen and help those along who discover the game through your Twitch channel. And that wraps up this episode of the Wonderful World of Star Citizen, we hope you enjoyed it. And coming up in upcoming episodes, as it were, we’re going to be focusing on other Youtubers, Twitch Streamers, fan art creators, so post your suggestions in the community hub, upvote the guys you like, and we’ll be contacting those people, that we want to feature here on the Wonderful World of Star Citizen. DJ, oh, you’re over here, thanks for taking the time to talk with us on the show. Ben and Sandi, back to you guys. Say back to you guys.

DJK: Back to you guys.

Back in the Studio

SG: We have some pretty awesome streamers.

BL: We do. And nothing sells Star Citizen better than Star Citizen. So the folks out there who are showing off the game and exploring it and having adventures in the alpha. And introducing it to all new people via Twitch and YouTube it’s really incredible and we appreciate all their dedication.

SG: I think I’ve caught on to watching other people playing video games. I never got it before. I’m like “Why would you watch other people play?” But it’s actually kind of cool.

BL: It’s kind of relaxing. I remember growing up, my parents didn’t let me have video game consoles so I’d have to go watch my friends play. So I guess I’m kind of used to it.

SG: I guess I missed that part. But however this week’s MVP, who does that go to?

MVP

BL: Why here’s the envelope.

SG: This week’s MVP goes to … Josh Kbosh! Josh went and collected videos from a number of our Star Citizen YouTubers like BoredGamer, STLYoundblood, DemoMan0351, TodaysMarriedGamer, and Alysianah to create what he calls the “Complete Star Citizen Tutorial”. Congratulations Josh Kbosh.

BL:: DemoMan0351: that is my favorite number of DemoMan. No but our folks out there that are creating tutorials are equally as important as our streamers. One of the elements of our developments is that we have to conserve our resources and continue moving forward with new mechanics, new features and so on. That means we don’t alway have time go back and teach people how to play each iteration of the game. So we truly, truly appreciate the amount of effort and skill that our community puts into sharing that information with others.

Sneak peek

SG: And for this week’s Art Sneak Peek … what is it?

BL: Here it is!

SG: Yay!

[Ben gesticulates wildly]

BL: That was it.

SG: That was it. It was Ben’s hands.

[MISC Reliant – greybox phase (work in progress)]

Outro

SG: And we are going to talk about that tomorrow.

BL: Yes we are on Reverse the Verse, our weekly informal livestream with the Community team and anyone else here in LA who wants to join. It’s 11am on Twitch … 11am Pacific on Twitch … and we essentially just have a good time; we try to answer your Star Citizen questions; share with you the spirit of the team; and, of course, we’ll be talking about that Sneak Peek.

SG: Thanks as always to all of our subscribers for making this show possible. We will see you next week on Around the Verse.

BL: Around the Verse.

Blooper

SG: Is that? Okay.

BL: Yeah.

Tom Hennessy (TH): [off camera] Yeah.

SG: Thanks guys. Around the Verse … no … yeah … Thanks guys Around the Verse will be visiting our European studios later this summer right after GamesCom. We’ll be going to Frankfurt and also to the UK to do some filming and get all of those folks that you haven’t seen on camera.

BL: I’m looking forward to exploring Europe with you. That sounded weird.

JH: [off camera] No, no, no!

BL: Sounded weird, sounded weird.

[Sandi explodes with laughter]

BL: Sounded weird, sounded weird.

TH: Sounded weird if you make it weird.

BL: No. No.

JH: That was weird.

SG: Nope.

[Ben signals “cut”]

BL: We’ll use that take.

SG: [with tears of laughter] I’m looking for it.

[There is a large crash off camera]

SG: Oh my god!

JH: Ow!

BL: Oh, are you alright?

SG: Oh my God are you okay?

[More crashing and banging]

SG: [laughing] Oh my god

[Disco says: I fell out of my chair]

BL: [triumphant] My acting has finally killed someone.

SG: [laughing] Oh, oh, oh my god are you alright?

JH: [off camera] Yep, I’m okay.

SG: What happened?

TH: Yeah he is. His ego is bruised more than his elbow. If only the camera had been pointed at him.

SG: [picking up her script] Okay so you can do … [dissolves into laughter again] … Do you want to get closer to home? Jared just fell off his chair.

JH: Nope.

BL: Let’s see where …

Outro 2

SG: Join our social channels if you are just new to Star Citizen and you would like to keep updated. Beside the Comm Link and the forums we have … we’re on Facebook, we’re on Instagram, we are on Twitter, join this YouTube channel, and that’s also for Squadron 42 as well as Star Citizen.

BL: Yep, all these things. Just more ways to keep up with the team.