Gadgetory

hey everyone i'm steve from gamers and access dotnet and i'm joined by chris Roberts from cloud imperium games hey everyone how you do it and today we're talking about the FPS module so we we spoke about a few times now have gone in depth a bit and I think the initial launch window was a couple months back I saw your letter from the chairman you cited technical and gameplay issues so one is sort of the networking aspect of it and you know various kind of player like issues that were sort of dealing with because if the FPS were trying to have 16 verses 16 to 32 so it's a lot more than we have in the arena commander which right until now is only I think being a 84 vs for the new version 1.1 5 which we're going to put on the PTU at the end of this week will actually be 16 players now a v8 so we've actually made some pretty good strides and fixing stuff but we've you know the the FPS is always plan to have more I mean basically the issue is the spaceships are so complicated they have so many different moving parts that are much heavier in network traffic and say an individual person running around so that's why you know we can have more on the the FPS i but we're still having some sort of network backend and sync issues although I think we're in the we're doing pretty good and ironing amount and then the other aspect is just the the animation and the smoothness and the responsiveness of the animation so we're trying to do something with stammering there's a little different than you normally do with most first-person shooters because most post person shooters really keep you in first person and then if you're fighting you know a lot of times you're fighting a I so they're not the players they do their own different animations and if you notice in a lot of first-person shooters that do multiplayer the fluidity of the animation of the other players is not actually as good as well the AI players are and that's partly because first person for most games is kind of achieved the cameras base is you know like the arms are right in front of the eyes here and the guns there and but because because that like with star citizen it's different normal FPS because you it's essentially a whole world simulation so it's not just running around with a gun it's interacting with stuff it's you know flying around and shit and it's also doing with other people cooperatively so if you're sitting in your consolation you look over to the person sitting next to you and he's in the controls you need to see him that he's in the controls and so some cheats that you can do in the first person game where like it's all different I think you know people have all seen like they've had like what crisis really looks like if you get outside the first person view and you see the guys all stretch it covers all faked and stuff so we made a conscious decision very early to do it correctly so we don't unify I mean we don't we don't separate between first and second it's all unified it's essentially the third the proper animations the third person animations drive the first person so when we are looking around in first person that is actually where your eyes are looking where you see your hands that's actually where your hands really are if you look down and see your legs that's where your legs really are and so it makes things harder because you can't cheat in a lot of different ways and and then you and we also want sort of a fluidity of motion so like a lot of light games would be like you go straight left and strafe right and you stop you instantly stop where you know we want to have this kind of sense of like what has you really do if you're moving you kind of it used to be our foot stuff so it's like you don't instantly stop you just have a bit of a nourishment come back if you were sprinting really fast you're not going to stop on a dime you'll probably have a bit of an ocean come back so there's a lot of sort of transitions that we've been working on that we call Jukes which means going this way and I drew back it's sort of like did this on the FPS f but so if I got the gun and I'm going like this it's like back so my feet stepping back over each other and you don't normally have that level of fidelity in the first because you don't need it the first ones you just move it back and forth and it's all pretty procedural but we've we've been working it so like in third person view Washington character you'll see this fluidity and you'll see it for other people the downside of that is that there's a certain amount of like responsiveness that that effect because obviously we're cheating in first person and you go to go right immediately you can start going right whereas with us we've got to make sure the Fox in the right place and the animation starts playing backwards and there's lots of bridge and transition animations to do that and those animations getting all that working fluidly getting that to be as responsive as part as possible and fighting you know general things inside the animation system CryEngine which is a really powerful animation system but is pretty complicated have just been sort of taking a fair amount of time for us and it's mainly because we're trying to do it at a fidelity that you haven't really seen before and blend the sort of you know unify first and third person so we're pretty you know we've made you know when I did the update you know I didn't give a day because well we didn't we did an update in May which we didn't hit hi there and when we showed it pax east we said we hoped it was going to be out sometime towards the end of April but don't hold me to it was actually what I said because nobody bets before I quoted that and and so you know i think uh you know everyone's being fairly and we do the update in May and now you know obviously people have been waiting a long time for it we are mean there's a large amount of the you know company especially now is helping working on it like all the animators are really working on it and we've got some extra help from the German studio which is a bunch of CryEngine experts that we you know joined us recently to to get it out so we're trying to get it out as quick as possible ever build up my machine over here of both the FPS and what we're doing for games car so I'm actually in there doing helping out with some of the coding stuff but we didn't want to give a date because well you know sort of don't get burned by that because if we promised a day when they say no more gether so but for some reason this last round everybody someone said it's been delayed indefinitely the next thing you know people are saying oh was it canceled that no it's not council then and you know in reality would probably know weeks off so we're shooting to try and have FPS on the PTU roundabout games carnal slightly after the games gone and based on where we are I think we're kind of close to there there's just some polish stuff so whether it's plus or minus a week there but you know we're really talking about people getting to play around with FPS in you know a matter of three four maybe five weeks we're not talking to this cancelled that it's delayed definitely or any of the other stuff and and really you know the other thing is it's about trying to make it as you know we want people to play it and give us feedback because that helps make the game better arena commander to be made better by people playing giving feedback and that's an ongoing process that is part of our goal but there's always a point where there's no point in sharing it until you think internally that it's got enough of the base bits working that the feedbacks going to be useful right so if you've still got bugs or glitches in the movement going left to right and it's kind of annoying when you're playing it's just going to be annoying experience to play so those are can it so so just because we're open development doesn't mean that as soon as one programmer get something up and running that we instantly share it because we sort of need to go through make sure a whole bunch of different things work and then we go yeah what this is in now this is in a state that we want to have a larger feedback and we do that internally anyway like we don't share our stuff with QA right away like the song working on the game system works on it for a bit i think this has been the fucking let's have QA test there and then really we have the next level is ok let's have the backers give us some more feedback so once QA has gone through and got rid of we've banged out a bunch of the more annoying bugs and glitches and we think the experience is still going to have bugs it's still going to need feedback it's probably not me balance right but it's not really annoying right then we when we share of it and that's kind of just the process and I think unfortunately the you know you know the delays and the aspect of having to wait for that for everybody backers or even us internally it's it's it's sort of the nature of having such a kind of open raw development process because we don't we don't have any buffer we basically sort of tell people where we're at you can read our monthly report Watson you can see you know everybody reports on exactly what they're doing we get more detail than I ever gave when I was working you know an origin or EA are you know working in digital anvil and doing stuff for Microsoft and is so we don't really have any kind of room to maneuver in the way that a publisher won't give a date until it's got the game to a certain level and I think that's fine i think most of our backers understand that but you know occasionally some people don't and and then you occasionally you know people you know can read things like delayed indefinitely and think things that council which it is it so I mean we're working hard and it's going to come out and I think it's going to be you know I mean it's going to be the first stage but I think it'll be something that you know p it's definitely going to be different than say call of duty or something like that right but it's definitely the sort of fundamental one of the major glues of star sister because you can wander around the first person you can get involved in combat on ships you can either a across to them and do all that kind of stuff so so with the some of the changes you're talking about from a traditional FPS like the viewpoint of the camera is that stuff you're having to go onto a CryEngine and sort of rework some things to implement all that I guess it's yeah i know we've actually done that I mean we because that we've been working on the FPS for quite a while so we showed it back at pax Australia and we were working on it for we started working on sort of the beginning of that you know the well just before so in 2013 towards the end of it we started working properly on the FPS aspects and then we showed the first iteration of pax Australia which was believed November first or something in Australia last year and then we showed sort of an update to it pax east which was in March so we've been doing a bunch of work under the hood to the system because inherently CryEngine is sort of built to be separate between first and third person so we've done a lot of work to unify it we've also done a lot of work to add these sort of extra sort of bridge animations in there in a way that you know I mean they didn't have you know like the Jukes and all that kind of stuff hasn't been in crisis and stuff like that so there there's a lot of work that's gone on the hood so and hopefully when people get to play they'll sort of appreciate and see there but yeah it's a big challenge and then the other issue is we have to do that in such a way that I mean the systems not stand alone so it works inside the game so when you get star marine it's got arena commander and flying around in space and all the stuff of moving around is the same stuff that's used for when you're in your spaceship and get up and walk around your spaceship or get out an EV a so it's all one system so it is always more complicated because whenever we were doing the FPS stuff we also have to make sure that it's not breaking the other stuff like this space flight stuff and it does occasionally because stuff you say we do it the characters can then affect the character say in the spaceships and then we have to fix that so it just it just it just takes time but you know with most of the technical stuffs being done now and now it's really sort of the polished level and the polish level is very much that's kind of a feel thing and that's kind of that's hard to sort of say oh well we can polish it in two days or five days because sometimes you get a rate on the animation and the feel of it and you know you can have something that you know you solve in a day and then you have something that takes you weeks to get the feel right because we're sort of at the point now where it's a bit subjective so you know once what's the blend between sort of realistic movement inertia and play a responsiveness right you don't want the player to feel like they're you know sort of drunk because of you hang around and so those are all the things that we've been sort of focusing on so but you know I mean our goal is to make you know make it as good as we possibly can and you know like everything in star citizen it's not you know it shouldn't be a second-class citizen it should be you know up there with anything else that's a sort of contemporary of it so those are all the reasons why star marines taking a little longer than we wanted to but at the end of day I think it's you know I'm hoping it'll be worth away especially once yeah down the road we get you know all the rest of the elements the game in the persistent universe stuff squadron 42 and all comes together I think you will ever will see the results of getting these different modules out and then iterating on a man doing it better because even when we really start worrying that still that's like the zero and we've got lots of work and feedback and we'll keep on improving and making them better it's just the it's just a process and we're building a really big game it will take a long time to get all working properly and to everyone's satisfaction and probably longer than I would like and you know a lot of our backers would like that one wants to play it now but the end of the day if it works well yeah and the other thing at the end of the day if you want to you want to play a good game right he's usually back something and you know so yeah that you know i think you know there's a pretty famous quote says something like you know adelaide game will be eventually good and the rush game will always be bad as yeah but yeah i mean that's the that's you know that's the fundamental you know goal behind is we want to release something that we like that we think is going to be good and other people will like and then we can build on it from there right it seems fair to me so but the immediate future it looks like you're a couple weeks out in the least and then obviously there's no hard date right now I kind of going through everything and trying to get it fine tuned so that it works though you want yeah let me wait like as I wish we're shooting to try to be on the PTU which is our sort of pre release publicly to everyone so backers can't get on the PTU but it's basically a more unstable version sort of you know enter your own risk sort of in the game's con or slightly after games con time frame and that's kind of where we're we're looking to track so if we r plus or minus there by a week too that's kind of where I would expect us to fall out and that really just depends on you have trying to knock out some of these last sort of polish issues that we're trying to do for the base FPS right so that is the FPS module update will have another video on a multi crew and so the headline could be now FPS is back up FPS is not indefinitely it's not definitely delayed yeah FPS is in progress so there's the headlines written for me check the channel for the next video on multi crew and of course thanks as always for your time Chris you're welcome we'll see you all next time you guys