Gamescom interviews

MaxBacon

Just a resume of 4 more relevant interviews during SC's Gamescom, touching a variety of topics. The resumes are not in full and just touch most relevant questions in a short matter.


Chirs Roberts (video feed)

Is it possible to stealth hijack a ship so all the oxygen goes out?

CR: You mean decompress the ship? Yeah, it will definitely be possible. If you blow a door open, then all the atmosphere inside will go out

So everybody dies?

CR: Well they need a suit on, if they have a suit on they won't die. But if they don't have their helmet on, they better get one on very quickly. Depending on the scale of the ship you would probably be able to vent the ship from the pilot's seat. That won't be in 3.0, but in 3.0 you will be able to blow doors and atmosphere will go out of the ship.

And is player stealth going to be possible?

CR: Yeah we're definitely going to be modeling stealth in terms of if you're quiet you can also keep your signature low. Certain suits, light armor, they'll be much better than medium or heavy armor which would have bigger EM signatures and also worse for trying to keep quiet. So yeah, stealth is definitely part of our plan. It's not going to be fully in 3.0, but after 3.0.

How does the Reclaimer processing room work? Is there a minigame to salvage ships or is it automatic?

CR: No, we're gonna have actual gameplay. First of all if you see wreckage you need to go out there and separate the items. Like a gun attached to a blown up wing you'd have to detach the gun and recover it as an item you can sell. Then you can salvage the actual debris and turn that into the equivalent of iron ore and then you can go sell it.

How about docking? Is it still there?

Yes, we are planning on doing docking. I don't know if we showed on the Idris but there's a whole docking airlock and docking collar. Like if you have an Idris and you park at a space station, it's too big to park at an actual pad. So like an airplane at an airport, you have an air-bridge, we have a version of that.

Are you working to expand Star Marine?

CR: We're working on an additional Star Marine level that will involve planetary combat. So that will be fun. We're always working on FPS features. Our goal on the FPS side is that you can try out Star Marine in competitive matches but also so it works in the the PU is to have the FPS we're doing equivalent to even what a dedicated FPS does. But on a slower more tactical/realistic side. As in [?] all the way to ARMA or something, but it's not just straight Call of Duty. That's why we're having stamina, suit punctures, stealth.

Is Death of a Spaceman still accurate for today's plans?

CR: Still the same plans. We're gonna do that.

Can we still hire NPCs to help man our ships?

CR: Yes, there will be, not in 3.0, but we are planning that. Like we showed the Idris which had 12 players and it was 6 on each ship and it was nice and close. In Squadron we have 18/19 NPCs just on the ship manning it. I suspect for the bigger capital ships like the Idris and above, and even the smaller ones, you'll have an NPC crew as well as your friends playing with you. So yes, you will be able to hire NPCs.

MaxBacon

Eric Kieron Davis

Will Character Customisation and Female Characters be in 3.0?

First iteration of Character Customisation will be in 3.0. Female Characters wont be in 3.0 because the Rig isnt done.They want to complete the Male rig first, so they dont need to do the work twice.

Update on the Delta Patcher

The last Build Eric saw was about 40 gigs. Dont hold him on that, he isnt sure. You will need to do a fresh install with 3.0 because they totally rearranged the Filesystems. After that there will be incremental updates.

Will opening Helmet Visors actually be a thing? 

They are looking at it at a later time, but the helmet needs the design to do it.

Whats the most exciting things that got fixed lately? 

They are very proud of fixing the performance. Normally the optimisation would happen after alpha, but they want to make sure the backers get a decent performance. FPS should be better even on weaker machines

Are there any plans for personal beacons (for example to find a player in space or on the planetside)? 

Beacons need to happen because they are a great part of the multiplayer gameplay. They aim for a better teamplay experience. they implemented quantum linking, so you can quantum travel with your friends.

Will we be able to trade Items or UEC?

Not part of this patch(3.0)

Will other players be able to see what you are doing on your mobiglass?

As it is right now in the game, the answer is yes. will that stay? he can't tell.

MaxBacon

Erin Roberts

What can we expect from what we have in the Gamescom demo versus 3.0 release?

Gamescom demo is one moon - they deactivated Quantum drive as well several systems disabled just for the demo. 3.0 is the whole Crusader system plus space stations. There’s a huge amount of work that has gone into bringing all of the systems together. Trying to get 3.0 to everyone as soon as possible.

What have been the biggest blockers in the development of 3.0?

There’s a few. Getting all of the systems into place. Re-writing the entire multiplayer infrastructure - allowing server transfers so we can get more players in. Object container streaming is a huge piece as well and not all of it will even be in 3.0, some will come in 3.1. Pick up & carry and trading. Also, getting all of the character customization and weapons in. Getting ship items working. Getting all of it to work together is a big thing.

Can we expect 24+ players?

You can expect what we have now upyards.

You can now focus on parts of your ship you want to interact with by pressing the F key. Will there be more added to this system?

You can press F and see what you can interact with. This ties in with the AI interaction system as well. They have routines - if they’re a maintenance person they will maintain the ship and fix things. You can follow an AI and watch them go through their daily routine - work, eating, sleeping, etc. Working towards the living, breathing world. As a player you can do a lot of the same sort of stuff.

Proper oxygen system in leads to inherent gameplay - you remove oxygen from a room and anyone not wearing their helmet may die. Also, you can kill power and affect life support systems.

Missions involving other players – counter missions, how will those work in 3.0?

Because they know what missions they create, they know what other missions to create to push players against each other. They know company has hired player X to protect a cargo run, but then on the seedier side a mission comes along saying there’s a cargo run, take it out, creates the mass PvP and PvE gameplay.

Can use lore to do this – pirates that dislike each other, etc… even at that later, can have group 1 protecting cargo, group 2 trying to take the cargo, then group 1 (in 3.1) will be able to do an APB to offer money to bring other people in to help out, completely player driven. Can affect the economy based on the local situation. Supply and demand. If a base needs materials, there’ll be missions created to get those.

3.0 has procedural moons, the birth of survival mechanics in SC – oxygen, stamina, etc… - what else is planned for survival? Food, water?

Not for 3.0, but players will, as they go forward, be as immersed as possible. You will need to eat food, if you don’t, your life will go down. If you go without food you won’t run as well, you’ll lose health. Same with water. If you don’t shower, NPC’s will react differently. 2-3 days of real life playing the game, not 2-3 days game cycle. No timelines, yet to test, won’t be so much of a chore that it won’t be fun, but there need to be reasons why you need food, why you have dinner, etc…

MaxBacon

Erin Roberts pt.2

Right now, everyone’s spawning into Daymar, everything has finite fuel. How will that work when planetside?

Call a friend with a Starfarer, etc… there will be stop off areas to get repairs and fuel though, and on some of the moons.

What’s the most impressive ship to use so far?

Bengal is huge. Nate Dearsley’s team showed off some Bengal shots, it’s a hugely impressive ship. It’s 1km long. There’s a station in SQ42 that’s 12km long, fully fleshed out. It’s a large part of the SQ gameplay.

Careers. No mining at launch, but what will be in 3.0?

Cargo running – buy & sell cargo, missions’ll be created about that. Buy it, steal other people’s sell it, etc… Also bounty hunting, find and retrieve missions, and mining will be the next thing they work on after 3.0

When 3.0 comes out – players are used to spawning in Olisar if they’re good or Grim Hex if they’re wanted. Can we choose spawn points in 3.0?

3.0 is the first implementation of proper persistence. Ships and items will persist, also where you stop. If you fly to a location and log out there, you will reappear at that location. Where you end up and where you want to be, if you don’t have a ship you need someone to take you places. Also ship damage will persist. If your ship blows up you’ll need to get a new one from insurance. Players need to start being precious about what they have. For respawning, you’ll respawn in the last location with a medical station that you were in. Lots of work to do as systems start working, people will start to play the system, then they’ll find ways to fix that (cheats and such).

3.0 is a huge implementation

Huge undertaking. When people see what’s in there, systems, mobiGlas, everything, Gamescom are just wandering in 1 planet, there is much more to it and things to do.

How is netcode coming along? Can we expect a framerate improvement?

They’ve torn out everything they had before. It wasn’t built to do anything to scale, so the network team have been rebuilding the core tech. Lots of that’s in. There’s still more to do, but lots of the work isn’t just that they have to rewrite things, it’s also about making sure that what happens is the gameplay programmers have to take that work, and make sure gameplay is calling the proper routines. Network team rewrites everything, then engine team and game programming team move over to it. They’ve been doing this for months. Should notice a lot better latency. At launch there’ll be bugs, but things will be much faster. Everything they’ve done is the basis for the server transition stuff. When a server can control anything from a room to a system and they can transfer people from server to server, then everyone can be in one game universe. If 500 guys want to be in one room, that whole room will be one server, and when they leave, they’ll be passed on to other servers. They want everyone to play in the same universe, without instances.

How multiple people trying to use a quest giver be handled?

There’ll be a queuing system in place. If there’s a lot of people going to the same guy in one go, whoever takes the seat next to him, they’ll work on that. They don’t know what the load will be like; right now there’s just one or two mission givers, so it’ll be busy, but when they have more they’ll see how busy they get, and work on that there. They want to work out something where, say Eckhart is there, you can click on a seat next to him, and wait for the person to leave and then switch over to that seat. That’s how it works now, might be changed later.

Mission sharing?

You’ll be able to share missions yes. In 3.0 you can link to your friends when you’re quantum driving so they all jump at the same time, and more work on getting friends into games together easier. Work is ongoing now, but it will be in 3.0, being able to get in with friends more easily.

Homesteading?

Currently, you land your ship at a landing, and your ship is cleared away till you need it again. There’s air traffic control that’ll tell you where to land. If you want to go buy commodities, you put them in the ship, and they’ll be there for you when you need to leave. Hangars will be instanced, not in 3.0, but you will eventually be able to go to instances of your own hangar.

When you die in space, you spawn at the last medical facility. Temporary? Can you get your ship ordered there?

Yes, you can get a ship ordered there, but if you’re flying in an Aurora you can get one quickly. If you’re flying in an Idris, they don’t make them every 5 seconds, but there will be a time before you get a new one. Lots of players might need more than one ship to fly various ones as they’re being rebuilt.

Costs and challenges of operating a Cap ship?

Fuel will be big. Idris is a ship that you need to fly with friends / guild. It requires so many positions. One person could pilot it, but they couldn’t do weapons, turrets, if power systems go down you need an engi to fix things, etc… if you turn off the power, the power’s down. If the power doesn’t go through a conduit, if fuses get blown, you might need to reroute power to get shields back, or to go a fuse box and put a new one in to get the shields back online, etc… when people first get on their Idris, they’ll probably want to do training drills to get good and ready. People will go around repairing stuff, there’s weapons, shields, engines, system hacking, so you need people who can defend against that…

Vehicles – electronic access REC. Will there be a way in 3.0 to rent a ship?

You’ll be able to buy it using Alpha UEC. If you have a ship to fly, great, but you’ll be earning money in 3.0, so you can buy items for your ships and ships themselves. Might not make 3.0, might be 3.1, but yes. System’s still being explored.

What’s the intention for people who own large ships but only want to play singleplayer?

AI you can hire, though they won’t be as good as a human player. Not planned for 3.1 yet, but they’re working n that.

Octagon7711

If they keep talking about rebuilding stuff from the ground up, this is going to take a really really long time.

MaxBacon

Octagon7711 said:

If they keep talking about rebuilding stuff from the ground up, this is going to take a really really long time.

Well the net code stuff, most necessary though.

Like is the amount of stuff and design that has/is materializing so there are way more proper answers to things. Also confirming the death of spaceman design docs as still accurate, something many were wondering seeing how old that design was.

azarhal

They keep redoing the netcode/server infrastructure, because
A ) The CryEngine original netcode wasn't up to the original "low cap instances with loading screen" design
B ) they are adding features that affect the backend like persistence, player communications, larger map, seamless planets, etc.
C ) they changed the scope from A to no instances* and no loading screen

*I suspect hangar will be instanced, otherwise they will need a lots of them on the major hubs or players will wait a lot in space doing nothing to dock.

MaxBacon

azarhal said:

They keep redoing the netcode/server infrastructure, because 
A ) The CryEngine original netcode wasn't up to the original "low cap instances with loading screen" design
B ) they are adding features that affect the backend like persistence, player communications, larger map, seamless planets, etc.
C ) they changed the scope from A to no instances* and no loading screen

*I suspect hangar will be instanced, otherwise they will need a lots of them on the major hubs or players will wait a lot in space doing nothing to dock.

It all falls to this: "Everything they’ve done is the basis for the server transition stuff. When a server can control anything from a room to a system and they can transfer people from server to server..."

That's is the engine tech work, what they call of object containers, 3.0 is still a single server supporting the PU, once the tech achieves the point they call roll multiple servers to sustain the game world that currently and in 3.0 is just one server with multiple, that's SC's MMO setup and when we will see jumps in the pop we can find in the PU.

Then you are right, the scope of the game's network model has changed; before it was all meant to be instanced and now it's a single-world approach.

But it would be logical to have "regions" under a single-world approach, say able to jump between US/EU PU with no locks or anything, it seems crazy to me to even attempt to have everyone in the same place, even if the servers can scale to handle it, it would still kill performance on the player's side not to talk how bloated it would be.

MaxBacon

Also, a bit missed in the network from Erin Roberts, the game servers should now run at 30FPS, they have been running as low as 6-10FPS pushing the frames of the clients down with them, this is also one of the points required to get 3.0 released.

VorpalChicken28

I wonder how much the FoIP and VoIP is going to impact the netcode viability

MaxBacon

VorpalChicken28 said:

I wonder how much the FoIP and VoIP is going to impact the netcode viability

From what has said it runs outside the actual game server, going through the spectrum service instead, so this would be a layered approach to not have the game server taking that load.

Layered is, say in MMO's where you are in a specific server/region yet the chat, friend lists and such flow through other servers.

MaxBacon

C.R.A.S.H Academy overview and info on Citizencon. the Idris. FOIP and VR:

CitizenCon
Squadron 42 is planned to be the main subject at Citizencon 2017 (this is not solid). 
In my Interview with Erin as few weeks ago he told me that SQ42 is likely to use some traditional advertising, so expect to see it in magazines BUT also that it would go on the Schedule Report, I assume that will be the next big thing after 3.0 is Released. CitizenCon 2947 will be held on Friday 27th October at Capitol Theater in Frankfurt. The Presentation will be Live Streamed on Twitch.tv/StarCitizen the times are yet TBC but I expect it around 6 - 9pm UTCish.

GamesCom Idris Info
GamesCom’s Presentation was heavily affected by 3.0,if 3.0 had been released before Gamescom then the presentation would have been more Squadron 42-centric.

For the Idris Battle at GamesCom the Shields were disabled for all ships involved, this is because during testing there wasn’t enough DPS to take down the ship's within a reasonable amount of time. The railgun also requires a lot of energy and at the moment you can’t fire the railgun and keep the shields up due to those energy restrictions, you have to choose. But even using the Railgun against another Idris’s shields was not enough to drop them and it makes more sense to keep the shields up, this is not the intention going forward tho.

The Idris is still in balancing phase and the internals are not completely finished either.
The shields of an Idris have a 1.5 minute charge time to activate. This kind of mechanic is roughly what they want for so that in the final game. Your Idris will be vulnerable when switching back and forth between the Railgun OR other power needs. Disabling power OR the shields even briefly will then also cause Capital ships to be vulnerable for a much longer time too as they have to reboot the system.

The 2nd Idris Battle shown some of the damage and critical hits that can happen, the Pirate Idris suffered a direct hit with the railgun to its power core which caused it to explode much faster when compared to the 1st battle. The Idris’s in that demo being crewed by 6 players each and in SQ42 this would be 18/19 NPCs crewing one. The Idris will not be in 3.0 BUT could potentially be in 3.1 or 3.2 BUILDS. There is an internal discussion within CIG whether they want the ship open to the players as soon as possible and or waiting till after Squadron 42 Ep 1's release.

FOIP & VR
The FOIP and VOIP systems in Star Citizen will be optional BUT any webcam and any microphone can be used. The VOIP can drive lip movement and the FOIP will 

better express your facial animations & reactions as well as improve the lip movement.
They are currently finishing what they call phase 1 of the FOIP & VOIP systems and they are busy with bug fixes. Future phases will deal with hair, beards and glasses on cameras to ensure those do not cause any issues for the system and improve the overall quality allowing more people to use it with less issues.

The 2nd phase of will also include Work for VR & better head tracking. Phase 3 will look at finalizing VR support and Eye-Tracking.

There are constraints of the headsets for VR that mean currently they are not appropriate to track eyebrow and the parts of your face that are covered by them, we will have to see in the future if there are other ways around that BUT it’s good to know they will be supported to the best standard they can be. Phase 2 is a way off and Phase 3 is a long long way off at the moment so just bear that in mind.

Azaron_Nightblade

So much good stuff there. I really hope they make it all a reality.