Welcome Citizens, one and all, to INN’s notes for episode 50 of Reverse the ‘Verse!

Reverse the ‘Verse

Video

Notes by Erris, Me, and LegoRobotDude

Notes in bold are important. Notes in italics are our own comments.

– SOON™

– RtV is live! We’ve got Jenny, Ben, James, Disco Lando, Chelsea, and Alexis!

– 50th episode!

– James, Jenny and Hennessy went and saw Entourage. Toast, Ben, and Lando went to Toys r Us to buy toys instead.

– Chelsea ‘looks business’

– Disco bought toys and wouldn’t say what. James told him to leak it.

– Sandi got the last doughnut.

– Sandi’s watching a movie, and they’re all trying to guess what. Top Gun!

-Jenny enjoys SpaceJam mashup threads on Reddit

– Ben frequently goes to Reddit /cats to look at cats.

– Jared made all the postcards.

– Lisa Ohanian is here. Or, as James says, ShipShape is here!

– Alyssa tried to get Lisa to change her name on social media stuff to Ship Shape.

– James is “Mr. Sony”

– ‘Disco Lando Snowden’

– James is being called a console peasant in chat.

– James has a new sport coat and baseball cap look. It’s… interesting.

– Ben asks for some SC questions.

– Travis’ update is the newest information about the FPS module status.

– Getting ready for PTU release, not locked until it’s on the CDN

– Until then, we have to wait.

– CitizenCon details? Tickets will go on sale next week, likely on Wednesday. They’ll put it in the weekly schedule on Monday. 700 tickets, it’s at an air museum – Runway Visitor Park. Going to be a good time. 130 devs from the UK will be there. Swag, presentations, announcements, looks-back, etc…

– Ben, Sandi, Chris, Travis, James, lots of people going to CitizenCon as well, they’re working out logistics.

– First set of ship pins being given away, little foam (maybe) flying ships, special postcards for each event

– Same design NASA uses [little foam maybe flying ships]

– Sandi’s getting concerned that the maybe flying foam ships may or may not fly because apparently Disco put the wings on backwards for the test one they had, and now they don’t know if it flies or not.

– [Has FPS module affected social module release?] Different teams. They tie together, but they’re different teams. FPS coming out won’t affect the release for the social.

– Social module is more interesting in the development process. It’s the long march to the PTU. When it gets put out there, it’s just a matter of when there’s enough there to be tested. It doesn’t have a very set feature-set like AC or StarMarine do. If Star Social comes a week after FPS, or a month after FPS, it’ll have different things in it, based on what they get added in.

– Military ship sales going on, got a lot of requests to add the ships to the store again (I’m flying this ship and can’t buy it, lots of people complained apparently.)

– Sale will be 7 days

– [Question] As a pilot you can black out, say you have passengers on board, will they also pass out? Yes, confirmed from Ben. Physics are physics.

– No updates on the HOTAS, things are moving along very nicely

– As soon as the deal involving the Star Citizen HOTAS is complete, they’ll announce it.

– Most ship resources are working on SQ42 stuff, which is bigger ships. A lot of those won’t be flyable anytime soon. There are 2 ships that are in different stages of legitimately close. One is being cranked away on right now, should see it in the next few weeks, and another they’re trying to finish up.

– Lots of people working on SQ42 stuff, but they keep a few people working on new stuff for hangars too.

– They need Star Marine to happen first

– Once Star Marine happens, things will start heating up for AC again as well.

– They have ships are coming soon but they have to get to the point where they can put them out.

– [Cargo scanner for police ships?] – Yes, it’s been thought about.

– No one actively working on the Freelancer, focused on SQ42

– Probably no updates on the Freelancer for a few weeks.

– A ship status page is on Lisa’s radar. She’s thinking of how to do it best. Should it be done as an episode of ship shape, or just talk about it or post it or something.

– Lisa will work with Ben in the next week or two about having a list of ship statuses out there for us to see.

20 Minutes

– Lisa was taking care of a cat but then she almost stepped on it and it’s not happy with her anymore.

– Ben’s brother has a neighborhood cat named Twist Moonpie.

– Now they’re talking about Blank Cheque.

– Lando, Ali, Ben, Ben’s Brother, and Toast are taking a roadtrip to a collectibles collection to meet Mark Abent’s dad and buy some star wars trading cards from him.

– Lisa wants to talk about Star Citizen. (but everyone else is talking about star wars trading cards)

– [Question] What’s the vibe in the office? Sometimes it gets stressed around deadlines but otherwise it’s chill. Healthy balance, good people. No stress about people, stress about pushing quality and making things as good as they can be. Some late nights but people help each other (get food) and go out for drinks and stuff. Lots of camaraderie.

– Ben – It’s a fantastic place to work. A lot of everyday is probably more similar to our jobs than we imagine. Big source of frustration is the forums. When the forums are frustrated, they’re trying to find ways to fix it, and it gets them frustrated too.

– There was a boy band at the mall yesterday.

– There’s also a homeless guy that gets offended by the posters in the mall and boxes them.

– Lando saw someone that looked like the female gremlin in Gremlins 2, dressed like kurt cobain.

– Endeavor is being worked on right now. They got art from guys upstairs yesterday and they’re doing feedback on it. They originally had some outsourcers, but they took it in house.

– It really has a MISC look to it, and they’re happy with its shape, but they’re talking about an observation here, and a shuttle-bay here, and such.

– Constellation – still actively working on it. Chris Smith and Josh Coons @ CIG Austin. Nothing specific.

30 minutes

– Crucible – someone’s actively working on it as the past week or two. Toolboxy ship to do interesting things.

– James will push to get more FPS updates from Travis on AtV.

– Carrack is not being worked on right now.

– No sales next Friday, don’t want to sell something every week

– [Will the retaliator be reworked?] Lisa doesn’t know. She’s not ignoring the question though. There will be changes from the last time it was seen. It’s an ongoing process for every ship. There will be some changes, especially on the single seat in the cockpit. Probably not specifically whatever issue people have, but it’s not final.

– They are actively working on the Merlin, don’t have anything to share

– Questions don’t get answered sometimes. Dont’ get mad that they can’t see everyone’ questions.

– There are two chats they’re looking at, plus the website. Be patient with them.

– Matt Sherman – people asking about missiles. A hotfix wouldn’t be doable in the near future. A hotfix right now wouldn’t be viable because of how patching is set up, though they want to change that in the future. Missile balance is something they’re concerned about and looking into, but they have to do balancing on it, so they don’t know when it’ll get solved. They’re looking at ways to address the issues without it just being nerf this, buff this, want the gameplay to support what each missile type does.

– A few of the guys in the community have made good posts about it. Each missile has different evasion to it. Can’t evade a CS missile the same way you avoid an IR missile. Keep that in mind.

– They do know the problems with missiles right now though, and they will be working on it.

– [Does the new CCU system include ship downgrades?] They don’t remember. They’ll find out and let us know.

– Once the new CCU system is ready, there’ll be a large post about it outlining how it will work. They’re happy about never seeing CCU’s again.

– Ben has a meeting about currency region lock today. They will update the community.

– They’ve had lots of requests for more hats, they might do it down the line.

– Travel mugs are coming, should be done soon

– Idris – lots of people in the UK working on it. No exact timeline though. It’s a huge ship, so they’re checking in a lot to make sure and see what the timeline’s going to be, but it’s huge. Hard to give details about.

– Working on Vanguard Variants, very early, but one of their concept artists is working on them

– Turbulent or Behaviour will be on news from around the ‘Verse eventually (the spectrum dispatch I believe). Ben sends much love to Turbulent and Behaviour, as they’re the backbone of the project.

– Monthly report will be going out today. They’re working on staging it, going to do grammar pass, videos, it’ll be later this evening.

– [Is the Frankfurt office going to be in AtV?] Yes. THey’ll be in the monthly report this month, and they’ll have a segment in AtV soon. Next week or the week after

– Avenger variants – no one working on them right now, but they’re getting concept art resources opening up soon, so some designers are sitting down the next few weeks to solidify variants for ships that don’t have variants nailed down yet.

– Not sure what those ships will be yet, but they’re going to be having a better idea on variants in the next few weeks, and they might be able to give us more info soon.

– DragonFly – Lisa was trying to get it started this week or next, but it won’t be that soon because it’s a really unique ship with lots of unique features and functionalities, and they can’t do it justice yet. They’ll do it as soon as they have the bandwidth and can do it well, work’s being done on it though, but yeah. It is being worked on.

– [Controller Balance questions] Generally industry standpoint – since SC is still in alpha, controller balance is a concern, definitely, however it’s not as big of a deal as getting the rest of the game made yet. Once they get into beta, that’s where all the assets are in, it’s a whole game, and then they’ll worry about balancing it.

– One of the big issues right now is because not all the core systems, especially for the pu, there’s no complete key map for what they’ll need for what they let us do. They need to get that resolved first, then they’ll have to revise the keymap across all devices, to make it more logical, and so they can get to a point where they stop keybindings getting lost from patch to patch.

– Jenny says it’s like trying to balance a scale except you keep throwing stuff on either side

– Controls are going to be an ongoing thing, and it’s just getting the big pieces in place first, and then they can work on getting a better system in.

– The way you’re playing AC today, is not the way it’ll be at the end of the process. It’s part of the process. Ben says Please stop hijacking every single thread on reddit or the forums, regardless of what it’s about, mentioning controller balance.

– Overall, big picture, for the most part, large portions of the game we’re seeing right now, controls, assets, design, UI, may all be completely different by the time it’s fully released. Does it work, do people like it, is it balance, there’s a zillion and one questions to ask and answer by having us play the game and then measure it. Even in huge games that have already been released, StarCraft, WoW, etc… they have weekly hotfixes, and then one patch a month or so, that’s a massive overhaul and rebalance. IT’s a living rebalance.

– Toast: “I have a personal opinion on Project Management. One thing that we’ve said that we try to embrace here for our game development is Agile. Agile is something that is used on a lot of companies doing web products but there is one very great danger to Agile that we always have to try and discipline. With Agile it’s a very reactive development process. Bugs come up, you deal with them, you tweak things. But the thing about web companies is that they often don’t know what they’re building in the long run so they just keep building a product and building that same product and modifying that product and it just… you know, they have a lot of features that they feel that they would like to do in a year or two and never, ever, ever get to them. Because they’re constantly trying to refine that one feature that they built relatively recently. So, if you let your Agile process be completely reactive and hijack everything else, you never get around to your big picture. You’re always tweaking that small product.

So… I mean, I do try to play Arena Commander… and I know the controller balance bothers ME. I get shot down by Tempest II missiles more than anything else. I’ve nearly broken a joystick. But it’s all the same things that all of you worry about also. But, there’s a forest. There are trees. You can’t get completely dominated by the reactive nature Agile development.”

James Pugh: “WORD.”

– James says, “You just got Toasted.”

– #Toasted

45 minutes

– WWOSC – episode 3 is coming. They’re making it professional and fancy and stuff.

– They’re gonna do a Wing Commander podcast thing soon.

– [Will there be an SC beerstein?] – They break a lot in shipping, which is why they’ve had so much trouble with the coffee mug. Possible in the future, and they’ll add it to the list of things.

– They did shot glasses for citizen con last year.

– [Do Xi’An lay eggs?] Ben doesn’t know.

– People are asking about the Herald – Lisa has three very high level statuses – Actively worked on, Slated to be worked on (on the near-term schedule, and will be done soon), and not on schedule (on the radar, not a priority). Herald is in the middle category. No-one working on it now, but it’s next on… someone’s… list. Probably won’t be on Ship Shape in the near future.

– Lisa had said she’d try to do the Freelancer on Ship Shape, but it’s also in the second category. They needed more resources for SQ42 than they thought, Freelancer’s on temporary hold. What they have right now isn’t very cool to show. It’s like a half-built lego kit. Probably no Freelancer on Ship Shape next week, cause she wants to do it justice.

– As soon as the Freelancer has interesting stuff to cover,

– PINECONES

– HI JENNY! (Jenny works with INN to get the INN transcripts on RSI, and she’s super awesome for it)

– W – Thursday – 42 munch munch 16.

– Jenny is the office clutz. Her foot fell asleep, and she fell.

– (CIG just referenced our transcripts, and Ben wanted to say silly things to screw us up and it didn’t! – Erris)

– Lisa is whispering sweet nothings into Alyssa’s ear. They’re besties.

– They tried to go buy Splatoon yesterday, but it was sold out.

– Ben is a Pokemon master

– Travis is here!

– Says lets the waves of discontent begin

– Travis lays eggs – Yes, thats how the species reproduces

– CR wants prison ship versions of… things. There will be prison ships.

– [Is the FPS rollout expected to take weeks or months?] ideally faster than the AC rolout, so hopefully weeks.

– [How will ships and FPS interact?] They won’t on initial release, but they will in AC 3.0, which is the merger between the two.

– [How close or far from a whole system-sized map with at least two planets to fly between?] They are in the process of testing the large world work, will be in a good place to perform testing soon

– One of the things that the PU guys are doing is talking about getting a single-system gameplay loop, and using that as a test bed.

– [Can we use enemy players as shields in FPS?] Yeah if you stand behind them.

– [What weapons will be in FPS first release?] Check out the PAX East release, it’s in there.

– [Can you push people into the line of fire?] Right no they don’t have a push mechanic, theoretically would be possible (maybe in future basically)

– [Is there collision?] There’s no walk-through people.

– Can’t use physics on other players yet.

– [Blocker update for FPS?] Generic Instance manager is being integrated right now, is the new matchmaking backend

– You can join a game by yourself, and another person can join, a countdown starts, when it ends, it kicks both people. They’re looking into that.

– [Will there be a smaller dedicated mining ship?] Yes. The goal is, for every profession, you want to have a starter ship.

– [FPS badges – who gets them, how does it work?] The rollout is being done by citizen number.

– James – Hi Mom.

– Start at citizen 0, then go up and add people. It’s frustrating, but they need feedback. If 800,000 people try to play it at once, it’ll break.

– Chat is going too fast.

– [Will decouple mode have main thruster throttle access? AKA No atmospheric flight but 6 DOF and main thruster throttle.] Yes. There will be a change in the future with how thrusters work with thruster shunting. It’ll be approved by Chris soon, it’s being looked at by him.

– DirectX 12 is being worked on by Frankfurt, since it’s a free update

– [Is customization going to allow a change in character height and weight? Will there be a downside for hitboxes and stuff?] Same physical rig will be used for all, and the variations will be within that rig to make things even.

– Waffles or pancakes.

– Someone says eggs.

– James says pancakes.

– Someone says pancake stuffed waffles.

– Now someone says eggs benedict. And someone else is saying crepes.

– Ben – Breakfast Mac and Cheese.

– [One more good question – can you be hurt by debris in the FPS?] Yes. There was a bug where you could walk into a propane tank and you could walk into it and it would explode.

– And that’s it for the day.

Bonus video: Revenge the ‘Verse