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00:15Hello and welcome to another episode of Around the Verse, our weekly look behind the scenes at Star Citizen's development.
00:22I'm Sandy Gardner.
00:23And I'm Steve Bender. In today's episode, our designers will discuss how we're implementing atmospheric flight and differentiating it from
00:31space travel.
00:32But first, let's check in on the development team and take a look under the hood in this week's Burndown.
00:39Welcome back to Burndown, our weekly show dedicated to reviewing progress on the release of Star Citizen Alpha 3.0.
00:45We're getting close to live release, so let's check out how things are going.
00:50So we're on target now with the issues we've got. We're getting quite a few of the issues fixed up.
00:58And the ones that are cropping up are more feature-related issues, which are a lot simpler to fix most
01:06of the time than code issues.
01:08So it's good to see that we're moving into this transition of feature issues rather than code.
01:14For the rest of the team, we're now into bug fixing and polishing mode for 3.0.
01:19So the remaining issues after we've gone through and moved the tasks will leave us with any outstanding bugs for
01:263.0.
01:26Obviously, the mode will come in as some of these features are tested a bit more heavily.
01:33And QAR focuses more on hammering those.
01:40So the mission givers, they went through a full QATR.
01:43I did my review last week.
01:46However, that was not in the game.
01:50It wasn't multiplayer.
01:52So now we have a review set this week for the full in-game.
02:01And basically, Bean will switch between all the different reputation and virtue variables so that we can see all of
02:08their lines.
02:08And then once that's good, that will be signed off.
02:13But we're basically in the final 95% of it.
02:17On the mission giver side of things, we are turning attention to the feedback that Todd Pappy has given this
02:22week.
02:23He's given some feedback in relation to the animations having issues where the character is looking off a certain direction.
02:29And then we'll snap back and look at you when he's delivering his lines.
02:33We're also making sure we're putting the final finishing touches on Ruto to make sure the overall effect of Ruto's
02:40coming out of the hologram looks really, really, really good.
02:44So we're getting those final details locked in and should have those characters ready to go soon.
02:48One of the strange issues that popped up last week was all AI and NPC ships were spawning in without
02:56pilots.
02:57They were spawning in completely empty, which meant that none of the missions that involved those could be completed or
03:03you couldn't play Vandal Swarm.
03:05The ships just didn't do anything.
03:06So Rob Johnson spent some time and he was able to fix that one up again before we went to
03:12PTU.
03:12So we received this bug regarding holo-objects from DE where basically shadows from holo-objects were being cast onto
03:19the main scene.
03:21Holo-objects are basically invisible to the main player camera and we resolved this bug by basically during the shadows
03:28zone query we have a bunch of flags that we can say ignore these types of objects or take these
03:34types of objects.
03:34And we basically resolved it by saying follow the shadow zone query, ignore holo-objects from coming through and therefore
03:42it won't render in the shadow pass and you won't get a shadow appearing in the main scene.
03:46Today I'm going to show you the bug that we're calling the ghost of Grimhex.
03:52This is the room where we meet Ruto, one of our mission givers, as you know.
03:58It looks nice and empty.
04:00Everything is fine.
04:01Look what happens when I turn on the flashlight.
04:05There's a ghost.
04:08It's not a shadow.
04:09It has a volume.
04:12What it actually is, it's actually Ruto himself.
04:18To create this hologram, we are putting invisible NPC into the world.
04:24Then we animating it and projecting to the to the hologram.
04:29And apparently this this invisible NPC can be illuminated with a with a flashlight.
04:35At the moment, bug is on the graphics programmers.
04:38We're hoping to fix it soon so you could have Grimhex without any ghosts.
04:43So the NPC admin officer I reviewed last week.
04:48And that's from a behavior standpoint was good.
04:52Now we are doing the final step of that, which is integrating that into the actual missions.
04:58And so once those are done, I will review it from start to finish in an actual mission and then
05:04it will be signed off.
05:05We have just started balancing the environmental missions.
05:13So these are the probability volumes that you may have heard of that Tony Zorovic has been working on.
05:19So these are in our dev builds.
05:22So you'll be like, you know, quantum traveling along and be pulled out.
05:27You know, there's an asteroid, kind of rogue asteroid floating in the path of a thing.
05:31And maybe it's caught a few other people involved, you know, in there as well.
05:36And it could be pirates.
05:38It could be something smashed into it.
05:40So there's a little to explore or interact with while you're quantum traveling.
05:45As I say, these are not obviously released yet because we're trying to balance these.
05:52So it doesn't feel like kind of Final Fantasy, constantly being pulled out to fight a bad guy kind of
05:57thing,
05:57as you're trying to get from A to B, which it currently does.
06:01So, yeah, we're tuning those until we get something that's kind of rare.
06:07But like, so it kind of shocks you when it happens.
06:10Our admin office worker, our designers are still continuing to work on that.
06:14And we've pretty much closed that out now.
06:16We're just now implementing those into the mission flow so that you're able to interact with them
06:20and that you get mission markers specifically denoting them.
06:24And one of the issues we've noticed for a while, as well as been raised by some of our best
06:29pirates in the community,
06:30is an ESP bug where ESP was not being able to pull you onto target.
06:37After several of our team looking into this, this actually seems to be part of a bigger issue with IFCS
06:42and IFCS oscillating, so slightly moving around and overcompensating and undercompensating in particular circumstances.
06:51Both John and David have been looking into this this week so that they can get to the bottom of
06:55it.
06:55We fixed one of the bugs with this, which should improve it slightly,
06:59but the team will continue to work on this so we can make sure that ESP and IFCS is as
07:04good as it can be for our 3-0 release.
07:08On the ship setup side, we are just in bug fixing and polish mode now.
07:13We are fixing bugs left and right, bugs to do with 300 series animation issues
07:18where the player is getting up into the 300i and being shoved out through the bottom of the ship somehow.
07:23We are fixing up landing gear issues on the glaive, the glaive is not really landing properly and tipping over.
07:31We are fixing up issues with the herald atmosphere.
07:34There are certain parts of the herald where if you stand at the specially right spot, you can suffocate and
07:39die.
07:40So that is a problem. We are fixing that up also.
07:43We are also turning attention to some balance things as well.
07:46We have shield balance in QA testing right now.
07:49We have four sided shields where you can actually divert power to various parts of the shields and stuff like
07:55that.
07:56So we are testing to make sure that looks good and feels good for each ship.
07:59We are also doing that across a number of different ships as well and items to make sure that the
08:05balancing effort is going smoothly.
08:07We will be doing some final work on the EMP to get that ready and for the most part, it
08:15turns off everything in the ship already.
08:18It turns off the MFD, it turns off the power.
08:19However, there were some still 2D layers of the HUDs that were not being turned off.
08:25We'll get those turned off and so I view that those as kind of minor bugs, but that should be
08:33good to go as well.
08:34So this week I have been working on a lot of ship issues. They have been multiple and numerous.
08:40We have a lot of issues with the doors coming in.
08:43You have noticed the Caterpillar doors slamming shut and a wall of collision preventing you from getting out.
08:50We have also had problems with the Constellation cargo bay, culling and lighting issues.
08:56A lot of this is because we've now separated the doors as items now to better communicate and do damage
09:03in the future, the systemic damage work.
09:06So this is going through different processes, some art-related, some technical.
09:12Sometimes I'm passing it to an engineer. Sometimes I'm fixing it myself and there's also rigging issues.
09:18So there's numerous issues going on caused by the itemization, but we're working through those problems.
09:25So we've made updates to the shields. The real update that was made was that we have actually balanced all
09:31the shield healths.
09:33We didn't have an opportunity to do that in the past and so I'm sure a lot of players are
09:36frustrated with how difficult it was to take down ships.
09:40So what we've done is we've taken all of the vehicle and the size 1, 2 and 3 shield generators
09:47and then balanced the health so that they're a reasonable value for the four faces on each of the ships
09:53that we have so far.
09:54The recharging time you'll notice is much more reasonable too in that it'll take some time to charge all four
10:01and this results in each individual face taking some time to take down.
10:07And without allowing them to charge at too rapid a pace so that it's impossible to take down a shield
10:16that you're hitting with your guns.
10:17The shield screen consists of indicators for your power, your regenerate, the actual amount of health in each shield face,
10:27the distribution of the shield health across the shield system,
10:33as well as the status of the hardening system, whether it's active, how much cool down time there is, and
10:44also it lets you know when your regen is broken.
10:50When you hit zero health it has to recover from that so you also have a standby button to let
10:58you trigger that.
10:59So this week I've been working on overall damage and debris. There's been some changes on the engineering side for
11:06how our ships break apart.
11:08So I've just been going through all the ships with a fine tooth comb and making sure that all the
11:12pieces break apart in the correct order and you know the overall ship dies and everything flies away correctly.
11:18There's been some ghost debris that kind of hangs around afterwards and we have various issues we're working through to
11:24make sure all the ships look as cool as possible and actually work correctly.
11:27With insurance integration there's just minor bugs right now where it's just not showing the player's balance or how long
11:36it has to remain.
11:37As soon as we get those bugs fixed then everything will be good to go.
11:44And this week in our burndown we've fixed some issues with Gravlev. So one of the issues that we've been
11:50seeing on the PTU build is the bikes dragging across the ground.
11:53We've severely reduced the amount of times this happens although there's still a few user cases where this is still
11:58occurring and we'll continue to investigate these.
12:02So with item 2.0 balance as well as the atmospheric flight tuning we've finished what we consider kind of
12:10first pass on those.
12:11With the balancing and everything that will continue until we actually ship 3.0 as far as the atmospheric flight
12:19we feel that's in a pretty good place.
12:21We've just recently checked in some new fixes for that and some new balancing for that as well.
12:30But with item 2.0 we've gone through and we've done some more fuel adjustments and we're getting that to
12:38the place where we see.
12:39So it really depends on how the players hammer on the boost button and if they're flying conservatively then the
12:52fuel will actually last longer and it's getting to the place where from a design standpoint we feel it's right.
12:59Then going through and adjusting the power of the shields those will be kind of a constant ongoing thing until
13:06we actually ship 3.0.
13:07We've gotten some more atmospheric flight issue fixes in which include fixing turbulence when the ships are stationary.
13:14So one of the things you may have seen in some of the previous PTU builds is even when the
13:18ships are stationary they'll still wobble as if they're being impacted by turbulence.
13:22Which most of you will know that that isn't even vaguely realistic so we fixed that.
13:31The ship item UI integration we're on the second of three QATRs so ideally Bone gets the third one in
13:44today and then once those are all in we should be good to go.
13:48And at that point we'll set up a review to look at it make sure that you know everything is
13:55ready for the players.
13:59Then from there with the PMA that is finally entered in QATR we have the categories the way that we
14:07want them to be.
14:08We were finalizing the highlighting so ideally once that finishes the QATR then we'll be ready to flip the switch
14:19and say that that is feature complete.
14:21The VMA is being worked on right now as we speak since most of the work that is being done
14:29on the PMA transfers directly over to the VMA.
14:32So then from there we'll probably need to do some minor cleanups and the way that we sort through the
14:40list of the items that are on the ship but that's pretty minor.
14:45Personal Inner Thought went through an impromptu desk review with Chris yesterday and that is basically in designers hands now
14:54to implement it the way that Chris wants it.
14:58And so I think from a feature standpoint that there's just minor fixes on that one.
15:06We've had loads of work going into the persistence warning. Right now in the PTU people can use the beds
15:11as a save point to log out and then come back to.
15:17They can use a personal inner thought to do this when they get into the bed and we've been having
15:22some great feedback about that already.
15:24As for performance we made some good progress especially now with the feature lock in place.
15:30So the features are locked and now we as a performance team can go in and really see okay this
15:35is the set of features we want to ship with.
15:37And we can go in and see okay where can we improve even more because prior to that of course
15:41new features were coming in and we had to go over and over again.
15:44Because new features might of course cause some more performance trouble for us.
15:50So but now with the feature lock we can really go in and see okay where can we improve.
15:56On the other side what helps us as well is people now stop working on new features and do have
16:03the time to go in and actually fix what we point out to them.
16:07So instead of working on features we can now work on performance and actually polish what we've already got.
16:12Last week we had David Colson working on the ranged based serialized variable update culling.
16:19Which is an amount of work that should improve performance quite significantly across the board.
16:27Especially with larger player caps going up to 40 and 50 player caps.
16:32He checked in that work on Friday but it has created a few issues which QA highlighted in a test
16:40request that they were doing for this work.
16:43So since then we've had David Clive on the network team and Chris Bolte over in DE all working together
16:51on trying to resolve these issues.
16:53And some of them include things like desync, performance spikes, issues where you're spawning incorrectly.
17:02So things like that they've been working together to try and get them all fixed so we can get that
17:06out to the public and test it on the large scale that we needed for.
17:09Last week we've been fixing issues.
17:13Probably most notably there was a bug where if a server had been running for about 6 hours, physics time
17:19would start going backwards.
17:21One of our network guys spotted the issue, put a fix in and now time always goes forward which is
17:27good to know.
17:28Personal Inner Thought has passed its final review now so that's also in the PTU for people to use.
17:35We've been getting some great feedback about that as well.
17:38There are still things we want to change and to polish as the final pass before we're okay with it
17:44being the final implementation for 3.0.
17:47But this is very, very close now.
17:50Stress testing the game with thousands of people playing continues to throw off tremendous amounts of information regarding both performance
17:57and stability.
17:58Daily updates using our Delta patcher are allowing us to charge ever closer to this live release.
18:03As of filming this, we're at 176 must-fix issues for our live release candidate of Star Citizen Alpha 3
18:11.0.
18:12The team has checked in over 518 updates to the branch and closed dozens of issues every day as leadership
18:18continues to hone in on what's absolutely necessary to address to go live as quickly as possible.
18:24See you next week here on Burndown.
18:27Don't forget to check out our weekly production schedule report on the website for even more insight into the development
18:34process.
18:35Now as many of you have noted in the forums, piloting a ship in space should of course feel very
18:40different than flying in a planet's atmosphere.
18:43That's right. Aside from gravity to contend with, wind and weather will eventually be factors while flying planet-side.
18:50Our team has been fine-tuning the functionality that will help make atmospheric flight feel convincing and distinct.
18:57Let's see what they have to say about the unique design challenges associated with introducing these new mechanics.
19:12So I'm Mike Snowden, the VFX director.
19:14I'm David Coulson. I'm a junior gameplay programmer here that sort of ended up specializing in flight control and IFCS
19:21sort of tasks.
19:23I'm Andrew Nicholson and I'm a tech designer at Foundry 42.
19:26My name is John Pritchett. I'm a senior physics programmer here.
19:30I specialize in the vehicle control systems, flight model, I work with missiles, you know, any place where we need
19:38control systems.
19:39When you talk about the atmospheric flight, we're talking about the long-term goal and implementing a short-term goal
19:46as well.
19:47Long-term goal, we want to have thrusters performing differently in space and in atmosphere.
19:53In space, you've got way more thrust to use and it's going to be like an impulse effect.
19:59So you have these really high accelerations at a very short length of time, so the pilot can manage them.
20:06They're not really high g-force, but for a very short length of time.
20:10And the opposite to that is sustained thrust.
20:12And that would be what we use in atmosphere.
20:14So you have to always be firing these thrusters to stay above the planet, say gravity.
20:20You're fighting gravity with these thrusters so you get much less performance.
20:23And so that being the long-term ambition of how thrusters work, in the short term we're trying to implement
20:29how would that feel.
20:30So when you enter atmosphere, come to any of the planetoids in 3-0, the ship is using what would
20:39be sustained thrust, which means lower acceleration.
20:42And to do that, we're kind of switching to a different state, like an atmospheric flight state.
20:47Which means you cross the threshold, you enter atmosphere, and now you've got less acceleration to play with.
20:54There's more to do there when we want to do the asymmetrical effects of drag on stop times and performance.
21:00But right now, that's not there.
21:02So my role is taking the numbers that we have for space flight, looking at the performance of the ship,
21:08and then translating that down into atmospheric, which as a general rule is like, I see it as being two
21:15and a half times less performance.
21:17So you've got less acceleration.
21:19So I basically take the space flight, run the numbers in a big spreadsheet, and then translate that into what
21:27we need for third order motion.
21:29So we've got the velocity and the stop time, and we need a jerk value for that.
21:36And so I have to put all these numbers into a spreadsheet, get the jerk value out, and then put
21:40these into a ship XML,
21:41get them into the lumber yard, and then run like an output, which gives me all the tuned parameters.
21:49And then I use those to put back into the ship XML.
21:52It's kind of a laborious process. The fun side of it is the back and forth play test.
21:59You know, you get these numbers, and then you go, oh, this ship is way too sluggish, it's too slow.
22:04I'll tweak them here, I'll raise the accelerations here, and do the retune of the ship.
22:09In some cases, with the larger ships, you have the problem of, all right, now you switch them to this
22:16atmospheric tuning,
22:17they've gone below, in some cases, below 1G acceleration, so they'll start to fall in atmosphere.
22:23So then it's a case of, all right, I'll shunt, I'll take power away from some of the maneuvering thrusters
22:29and power them into just the thrusters on the bottom of the ship for Zed.
22:34And once you've done that, I mean, then they can enter atmosphere and not just crash into the ground.
22:40I had that problem with, like, the Starfarer, the Caterpillar, they just plummet.
22:45And you just siphon it off from the other thrusters, basically, to get that performance.
22:48In future ships like the Starfarer, they'll use VTOL thrusters.
22:53We don't have them set up to do that just yet.
22:55So it is kind of like, let's just take it off the maneuvering thrusters and make sure it flies okay.
23:00I get to basically design the physics, you know, the flight model itself, and implement that into the game.
23:09We develop a system that allows the designers to tune the ships to get the behaviors that they want out
23:17of them.
23:17In our game, all of our vehicles will be spaceships, but we want to have the ability to bring those
23:26spaceships planet-side into atmosphere.
23:28And when we do that, we wanted to include additional forces in the flight model to include drag, lift, some
23:41turbulence from wind, and different factors like that.
23:44So previously, the atmospheric model was, like, counteracting for gravity and drag.
23:48So it would just use the thrusters to basically balance out gravity and balance out drag.
23:53Which is, you know, if you were making a spacecraft or a fighter plane in real life, that's what you'd
23:58want to do, because it makes it fly really precisely.
24:01But what it means is that it sort of feels like you're flying in space, because you just can't feel
24:05the gravity because the flight system is just trying to counteract it.
24:09And we got a lot of this sort of feedback from the Gamescom presentation particularly.
24:14So the new model tries to use gravity and drag to help it.
24:20So, for example, if you are trying to slow down downwards, you can use gravity to help you and you
24:26can use less thruster force and it will come easier.
24:29So you've got gravity to help you when you're going, when you're trying to slow down going upwards, you'll slow
24:33down slower.
24:34And so what happens in the end is that you sort of have this, like, asymmetric imbalance in the ship
24:40that you can feel.
24:41And so, say for example, if you're, like, if you're trying to slow down with your pointy Gladius ship going
24:46in towards the wind,
24:48you're going to slow down a lot slower than if you angle your thing up like this and try and
24:52fly like this.
24:54And so you can really feel, like, it feels like you're in the atmosphere and it feels like there's air
25:00that's pushing on your ship.
25:01So we've been working on that pretty much since Gamescom.
25:04But our immediate goal for the PTU release is a little bit more of a turbulence simulation.
25:11So what we have now is turbulence and wind that sort of affects the stability of the ship, I guess.
25:20So if you get, if you start flying really fast, the ship sort of shakes and bustles about and you
25:25can sort of feel like you're right at the edge of, you know, the aerodynamic limits of the ship, which
25:29feels really good.
25:30And it, again, separates it from feeling more like you're in space when you, you know, you can't really feel
25:36anything because you're just in nothingness, pretty much.
25:38So this is what we have now and it's pretty much in the game now and running and it feels
25:43really good.
25:44You can feel a lot of difference between like aerodynamic ships, like say the Gladius can go quite fast and
25:50it's sort of just a little bit shaking around.
25:52And then, you know, something that's shaped like a brick, like the Aurora is like shaking all around.
25:57You can't really control it super well and it's really hard to fly, which is good.
26:01Some of the, the tuning that Andy's been doing has like been trying to find this line of what's too
26:10uncontrollable and what feels good, but is uncontrollable.
26:14Like uncontrollable is too, too strong of a word.
26:17It's more just that we want you to feel like you're at the limits of this ship.
26:23And if you push too hard, you're going to lose control, but we don't want it to be that you
26:27can't control it in the atmosphere, which is just not fun.
26:30We actually have had some of those issues with really small ships like the Merlin and the Gravlev bikes, because
26:39they can now fly in the atmosphere as well.
26:41And they're really small and light and you really get pushed around a lot in like, you know, in high
26:46winds and you're moving really fast.
26:48It feels really strongly that you're not quite in control anymore, which feels really good.
26:53And it makes, it really separates the flight from being in space to being in the atmosphere, which is what
26:59the goal was.
27:00The way I approach that actually is, is more through the control systems, which is what interfaces the, the, the
27:05player or in real life, the pilot or whatever with, with the vehicle.
27:10That sets limits on what they can do with the vehicle and how the vehicle performs or whatever.
27:15So you can still have realistic physics while at the same time creating more of a traditional gameplay experience through
27:22the way the controls are interpreted and, and the vehicle response to the player.
27:27We basically have this, this ability to specify goals in position or velocity or acceleration and the ship will try
27:35and achieve those goals.
27:36So the most complicated one is position, which isn't used for general flight. It's more used for AI and stuff
27:41where you say, I want to get to this goal.
27:44And the system will try and figure out how much to power each thruster and everything to actually achieve that
27:50goal.
27:50We use the velocity goal and the acceleration goal for when you're actually flying around, you know, you are controlling
27:56the ship.
27:56And those controllers now basically include drag and gravity in their predictions.
28:04So if you say, hey, I want to get to 200 meters per second in this particular direction, the algorithm
28:11will look through all of the current forces that it has available and go, okay, hey, gravity is, is helping
28:17us in this particular direction that we're trying to accelerate.
28:20So we don't actually need to give as much thruster force or maybe if you're going the other, other direction,
28:25you need to give extra gravity to counteract the other side of gravity, um, which maybe your thrusters just don't
28:33have enough thrust to actually, to give enough force to counteract gravity plus what you actually want to move in
28:38that direction.
28:39Um, and so that's now included in that core model, um, which is the one part of it.
28:44And the turbulence stuff is a second layer that we have on top of, uh, the flight control system.
28:49So, you know, we have the, the control logic, which is you or an AI give input into the system
28:54and the system will try and figure out how to get to that configuration.
28:59Um, and then after that, we have all the extra stuff, which is things like turbulence, um, just random error
29:06and stuff like that, that gets added on top, which is, you can think of it as like the external,
29:12uh, forces that are moving or attempting to move the ship that you are not in control of.
29:18And so obviously turbulence and wind is the big part of that one.
29:22So when you're flying around, you'll have your control input and you'll say, Hey, okay, I want to get to
29:27this configuration.
29:28Um, and then on top of that, the turbulence system is going to calculate some turbulence based on the atmospheric
29:34density and the wind and everything.
29:36And it's going to say, Hey, I'm going to add this extra force, which is going to move your ship.
29:41And then the ship will obviously have to react to that.
29:43You will have to react to that.
29:45And the, the reaction systems will try and kick in to keep you on the goal that you want, but
29:50it, you know, sometimes the ship just won't have enough thrust to do it.
29:53And you'll get off course or, you know, the ship will be bustling around or something like that.
29:57We dynamically calculate the cross-sectional areas for, for each ship.
30:02So, um, the amount of surface area that comes into play in drag, uh, will be unique for every ship.
30:09And not just for every ship, but based on the state of the ship.
30:12So if it gets a wing blown off, that's going to affect not only the amount of surface area that
30:16it has for drag, but also the center of drag where that is relative to the center of mass on
30:20the ship.
30:20And that'll, you know, result in torque based on, on drag and things like that.
30:25So it's, it's a very accurate, uh, drag simulation.
30:28So the thing about atmospheric flight specifically with the effects is there's always going to be a transition.
30:34Um, when you're on a planet or a moon that's actually got atmosphere, that's when we're going to get the
30:39contrast.
30:39Contrails instead of engine trails.
30:42So the key to it is it's, it's a visual thing.
30:44So it gives people a sense visually that there's different things happening here.
30:49And obviously that's just backing up the actual, what the ship's doing and how people have got to react to
30:54that.
30:55Um, so yeah, contrails, you're going to see other players contrails.
30:59So if you're chasing or if you're in a park or if you're in a dogfight, you're going to see
31:02these contrails based on the fact that you're inside this atmosphere.
31:06We take a little bit of, uh, unrealism just out of practicality.
31:10Like for example, in real life, the atmosphere doesn't really end.
31:13It just sort of extends ash arbitrarily into space, getting thinner and thinner and thinner.
31:18But we actually have a line where we're like, past this point, there is no atmosphere, past this point there
31:23is.
31:23But the atmosphere below this line is really weak.
31:28And so when you get into that sort of part of the atmosphere, you'll, first of all, you'll start seeing
31:33the atmospheric reentry effects, particularly if you're coming in from like orbital speeds.
31:38As you get lower and lower, you start to feel it more and more and more.
31:41Um, and when you start to get really low, it actually, we're still sort of tuning this, but, uh, what
31:48we would like is for right on the surface, um, you actually feel it less.
31:53You don't have the turbulence of, of wind blowing over hills and mountains that you have a little bit higher
31:58up in the atmosphere.
31:59Um, so when you get lower, it's actually a little bit, a little bit safer and a little bit more,
32:05uh, stable than if you were to try and fly a little bit higher.
32:08We actually had some issues, uh, when QA were testing the system where they reported that you could fly at
32:14like extremely high speeds in Yela's atmosphere.
32:18And immediately we were concerned that this is an issue.
32:21And then we went and actually looked at it and realized that actually the atmosphere on Yela is like 1
32:25% of Daymar's atmosphere.
32:29Um, and as a result, there's pretty much no air resistance.
32:33Um, there's nothing to slow you down, which is completely realistic.
32:37So we were like, well, in this situation, this is not a bug, this is an actual feature.
32:42And so we have that already.
32:43Um, we're still working on things like, uh, weather and, and storms and stuff.
32:48Uh, I think we saw that at last year's CitizenCon with, uh, the sandstorm.
32:53Stuff like that, uh, will affect the, uh, handling and stuff, but we're not quite there yet.
32:59But we already want, particularly the atmospheric density effects, the handling, um, and then,
33:06weather changes will also affect it.
33:09But that's a future goal that we haven't quite got to yet.
33:11So the, the flight model that we have today, I took the approach, uh, where it's basically the same control
33:18system that you have in space.
33:19But then we have the addition of drag and, and turbulence and gravity forces.
33:25Uh, so IFCS will actually work to remove those forces, you know, allocating thrust to, to countering gravity and countering
33:34drag.
33:35And then having removed those, uh, forces, then it, it, it uses the same, uh, motion profiles that it would
33:42use in space to control the ship.
33:43So the result is you, you feel like you have, uh, you know, less thrust available because it's being used
33:48for other things.
33:49Uh, and, and you've definitely feel the turbulence, but overall it's still the same flight model that we have in
33:54space.
33:55Whereas the, the new model, I've, I've actually already, um, worked, you know, worked out the calculations for it.
34:00Uh, just need to get into the engine, uh, will actually include these additional forces, lift, drag and gravity, uh,
34:09in, in its calculations to carry out whatever actions that the, that the, you know, player is, is trying to
34:15achieve.
34:15So for example, if, if you're sitting here and you want to go down rather than countering gravity and then
34:21pushing you down, it'll just generate less upward thrust so that it just drops gently down, you know, uh, using
34:28gravity to your advantage.
34:29So that's the main difference. The player in the game will be able to start taking better advantage of those,
34:35uh, additional forces of lift, drag and gravity.
34:37It's been developed pretty much to separate, uh, the, the feeling of flight from space and atmosphere.
34:44And it's, it's partially, you know, a gameplay decision that it's nice to sort of have your, your general moment
34:51to moment gameplay be refreshed.
34:53So, you know, when you're playing the game and you're in space, you, you sort of are inclined to get
34:58used to flying in a certain way.
35:00And then when you get into the atmosphere, we would like you to sort of feel different and we would
35:04like you to, to change your gameplay style and to, to feel that, you know, this is different and you
35:09need to adjust your gameplay.
35:10Which is sort of like, you know, you can take the analogy of, you know, when you're watching a movie
35:15or when you're writing a movie, you pace it so that you have moments of like this high intensity and
35:20then we're going to give the audience a break for a minute and do something.
35:22It's sort of like that, but with gameplay. So you're going to be flying around and then we want to
35:27change it up a bit and just, you know, give you some different experience for a few minutes, which keeps
35:32the, keeps the gameplay a bit more interesting.
35:34But on top of that, um, it's really important that this, uh, meets the expectations that a player would have
35:40about flying in atmosphere.
35:42And this is where the feedback from Gamescom came from. People would see the ships flying in atmosphere and they
35:47would be like, this doesn't really look right.
35:49You know, like the ship is just like, it's like a fly just darting around and moving around like this
35:54in atmosphere.
35:54I mean, it's realistic. If someone were to make a spacecraft in real life that had the power that our
35:59ships do, it would behave like that, but it doesn't look good and it doesn't feel good.
36:04And so a lot of that is to also make it feel better and make it look better. Um, so
36:10that, you know, players get into the atmosphere.
36:12Maybe you're like sitting on the planet and you see your friend fly in with some ship and you see
36:18it like bustling around in the wind and everything.
36:19You know, it looks really cool. Um, that's also what we're going for.
36:23I think most of the challenges have been figuring out where the line is to, it's sort of like less
36:30of a technical challenge and more of a design issue of where's this line between being realistic and being suitable
36:39for gameplay.
36:39Um, that's really difficult to do. Uh, it's really easy to, to make this perfectly, you know, hyper realistic simulation,
36:47but that's just not fun, unfortunately.
36:50Um, and so we have to like, you know, we do things really realistically and then we go, Hmm, this
36:57might not be the best way to do this.
36:58Um, we have to actually go back and, and try and, you know, adjust the system to be more fun
37:04and to consider how we can accommodate the players, you know, needs and wants out of the system.
37:10Um, we've had issues as well, particularly where say QA or Avocati are testing the game and they have some
37:18feedback that isn't really specific.
37:21Like they'll just say, Oh, say Gravlev bikes, for example, they don't handle well. And I'm like, what does that
37:27mean? Like what it, why, why? Um, can you, can you not turn quick enough?
37:32Are they losing control too much? Like there's so many things that could potentially contribute to, it doesn't feel good.
37:39And in the case of Gravlev, you know, it's, it's usually lots of things. Um, so we have to sort
37:45of try and figure out, uh, what in this system could actually be giving you the behavior that you have
37:52and how can we fix that.
37:54Um, and that doesn't sound like too much of a technical issue, but from a design side, it's really, really
37:59hard to do that.
38:01Um, and it's a thing that we're constantly sort of learning about as people play the game and test it.
38:07Uh, we're figuring out, you know, this isn't working or this isn't really fun. We need to try and reconsider
38:12this.
38:13Um, and then we have to, again, convert this like fake, it's not fun feedback into actual like hard technical
38:21feedback of, Oh, this bit of force is being applied too much.
38:24Or where, you know, we're rotating the ship with a fraction too much here or whatever it is. Um, and
38:30that transition is hard. It's really hard.
38:33One of the main challenges we had was the afterburner deceleration.
38:38Yeah.
38:381200 meters a second when you hit the upper atmosphere and you need to be able to slow it down
38:44before you crash into that planet.
38:45When we first put this upper afterburner speed in, everyone in QA, including design,
38:52were just flying into the planets, crashing, exploding, being furious with the whole thing.
38:57So we had to come up with another approach. The initial idea was you'd have less acceleration, but you'd be
39:04able to hit higher velocity.
39:06So when you went into cruise up through, um, normal SCM afterburner velocities into cruise afterburner, you'd have less acceleration.
39:15So it would slowly push you up to the high velocities. But we found with that, that as soon as
39:21you hit the crossover threshold from an SCM afterburner to, uh, the cruise afterburner, you lost control of the ship.
39:30It became too hard to move because everything was scaled down to lower level acceleration.
39:34You'd cross over and then you'd try and turn and you'd feel like you're just drifting forever.
39:38So that we, we, we wanted to fix that immediately. I mean, that, that wasn't the intended goal.
39:44We wanted to have it slower to get to the velocities, but still keep control.
39:48So I had to play around with all of the, the different scaling values to make sure that the maneuvering
39:53thrusters weren't affected,
39:55but it was just the main thrusters that were affected. So it would take longer to get there.
39:59And then also give like a buff to the, to the retro thrusters.
40:04If you imagine you were shunting all the power or the thrust capacity to the front to stop you faster,
40:08that's kind of the idea we're going with here.
40:10So when you cross into the atmosphere, you'll, you'll feel like you've got more control to stop.
40:16And where, whereas the terminal velocity and the max save speed will also restrict your velocity and slow you down.
40:22It was also the afterburner scaling that would, that would help you get there faster.
40:27So while big ships like the caterpillar will still have an issue coming into atmosphere and stopping in time,
40:33if you're pushing it because it's got such limited control once you get into the atmosphere,
40:38smaller vessels should be able to get in there and stop and not have an issue.
40:42But finding that right balance was the challenge, not making them too powerful, not making them too weak.
40:48We had to have a lot of back and forth with QA on that and probably more with PTU to
40:53come.
40:53Future plans, we do have things that we want to do.
40:56So even things like the thruster effects, which we've had long standing thruster effects in our game.
41:02We want to bring in some visual differences to them when you're in the atmosphere.
41:07So one example will be, we've got shock diamonds in some of our thruster effects that you actually see in
41:12space.
41:13Now, technically speaking, you wouldn't see shock diamonds when you're not in atmosphere.
41:17So for a long time, we've wanted to actually play around with that and actually have little details that only
41:22appear when you're in atmosphere.
41:24So not necessarily really clear, like really obvious things, but just subtle differences.
41:28So there's all kinds of things we want to do along those lines in the future.
41:32At this point, we don't have the full atmospheric simulation, which includes weather systems in place.
41:38So I've put in a placeholder system that simulates wind.
41:43I actually had storms for an earlier demo, but I pulled that out for the 3.0 release. We won't
41:48need that.
41:49But we will have some variation of wind based on altitude and wind direction,
41:56which is consistent based on your location, you know, within the sphere of a planet.
42:00So everyone will have the same wind as well as wind gusts, you know, that can reach, you know, fairly
42:06high velocity.
42:08So if you're flying along and, you know, wind is going in one direction, you're going to feel stronger drag
42:14in that direction.
42:15But if you're flying with the wind, you'll feel less drag.
42:17The ship won't be working as hard, you know, in order to fly with the wind versus against the wind.
42:23There definitely is wind turbulence.
42:25And so the more the wind blows, you'll kind of shake the ship, kind of push it around a little
42:29bit, you know.
42:30And when you get into really high wind or high gust conditions, which you can at places, you'll feel it
42:35more.
42:35Now, this is all based on the kind of the pristine state of the ship.
42:40So a ship, when it comes in, it's designed so that its center of drag is fairly aligned with its
42:46center of mass.
42:46So there's not a lot of drag that comes from, a lot of torque that comes from the drag on
42:51the ship.
42:52But if you blow off a wing or whatever and it shifts the center of drag relative to the center
42:56of mass,
42:56then you have this moment arm, right, so when the drag force is applied to the ship, it tends to
43:02push it, you know, to torque it around.
43:05You know, we have thrusters, which aircraft don't have.
43:08We have thrusters available and so they're always countering that and it'll try to keep you as best as it
43:12can.
43:13It will keep you from spinning around and just going out of control, which is what you would do if
43:17it was just an aircraft.
43:18But at some point, when you've taken damage, your thrusters, you're not going to have that ability.
43:23So if you fly slow enough, you'll be fine.
43:25But if you fly too fast, you'll find yourself just completely, you know, spinning out of control.
43:30Chris really wants it that you can basically hit aerodynamic limits.
43:35Like if you take a plane in real life and you, like, fly it at high speeds toward the ground
43:39and then pull up,
43:41the wings eventually will reach a point where they're like, no, we can't do this anymore and they'll just break
43:45off.
43:45And I think that's what Chris wants us to get towards.
43:49It's quite complicated to try and work out where those forces are,
43:54because we don't have, like, a full-on fluid simulation that you would have in, like, a professional flight simulator.
44:00And in simulations like that, it's quite easy to be like, well, you know, there's force here on this point,
44:05but we can't really do that.
44:07So we have to still come up with a solution for how to do that in a realistic but also
44:13suitable for the game
44:14and suitable to fit in with the rest of the game.
44:17And then we'll have, we'll pretty much have that aerodynamic, like, failures where parts of the ship just can't take
44:25the pressure anymore.
44:25They'll just break off.
44:26Right now, we're kind of in between with the atmospheric model.
44:31We did a first pass on it that got the ships flying into atmosphere fairly quickly, but it's not as
44:36accurate a flight model as we want.
44:40After 3.0 is out, I'll be introducing a new flight model, which will improve it quite a bit.
44:45I think right now the main thing that players will feel when they're flying is the difference in the amount
44:52of acceleration available because of drag and things like that, right?
44:55And the turbulence that's applied to the ship, but it still won't feel as different from space flight as what
45:02we want.
45:03And that's coming next.
45:06As you can see, the physics and control systems are going to make for a very visceral, in-atmosphere experience.
45:13That's all for this week.
45:15Next Thursday, tune in to our holiday ATV special focused on Squadron 42, streaming on Twitch at 12pm PST.
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45:56ever.
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45:59Around the Verse!
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