Logistics and Industry Division Report 11-4-2947

Jabbers October BDO update

October 3, 2017

Oddysee Gear Design Contest

November 5, 2017

Logistics and Industry Division Report

11-4-2947

I know I didn’t write last months report, we’ve had quite a bit going on and I got a little busy myself and dropped the ball on that. Going forward that’s going to change so bear with me. This last week has been pretty exciting in the star citizen world. I watched the live stream and then watched quite a few content creators watch it so I’ve pretty much hashed most of the content to get an idea of where we are, where we’re headed and what the implications of the reveals could mean moving forward.

This is going to be a long article so feel free to scroll to whatever interests you. Lets begin:

Motion Capture Enhancement with Look IK

First up we’re going to go over the procedurally enhanced motion capture animations. Let’s begin with the “Look IK” system. This is a procedurally generated tech that intelligently lets the actor, or NPC, look between two points of interest in a realistic way. In the olden days when the NPC’s in most games look in a certain direction, they stay rather fixed on a point in that same direction. A fixed camera if you will. Static and boring and we’ve all seen it. Then the tech got a little smarter and would track the player as the player moves around, essentially fixed on you. Nice but CIG has went and taken things a step further.

This trick has the NPC able to focus on what he’s talking about (if it’s within eye sight) or possibly even something the NPC would be worried about, like someone rounding a corner behind him, so essentially he’ll keep eye contact with the player as the head turns until the head reaches zero IK at which point it’ll look at whatever it’s interested in, and it’ll keep glancing back as the conversation continues. It’s scripted of course but this could be done dynamically to have amazing effect and add more immersive realism in the star citizen universe.

Procedural Animations

Next up is something just as exciting. Player and NPC walking animations! So to get this topic knocked out in a nutshell we’ll use an example or two we’re all familiar with. Feet floating or body clipping. Feet floating off stairs or raised objects, and again with the ground not having the correct physics so the character sinks down into the terrain. Lastly the issue where a small object keeps the player from moving forward because the physics hit the lower legs and they animation isn’t smart enough to know that it’s small enough to allow the player to step over.

They’ve setup the IK system to be able to line up the feet with the terrain, and also a new ray scanning technique to check what’s coming directly in front of the character, so that if it sees that something is coming to step on or over, the animation can intelligently plan ahead so the leg or foot moves in a natural movement to deal with the object. This ends up making the player smoothly walk and maneuver around the environment. The result looks absolutely amazing.

Introducing The Outlands Consolidated Pioneer!

This one is going to have larger implications for LID. This allows players to fly and land a mobile outpost builder. This isn’t quite a full on base builder per se but it’s close enough for now. One unique twist that’s going on here is that the outposts will not only be built on player purchased (or stolen) land claims but the type of outpost that you build will determine what it can do on a profession level. Now you cannot “steal” land but you can mine or harvest things from other players, though the authorities will be notified at some point as they patrol around. Failing that private security or even motion sensors could keep track of people squatting on land claims. In unsecured space, you just need to bring your own security and fend off others from a valuable plot of land you’ve discovered. The intro video started out with a good speech by a guy that some clever fellow in the twitch chat labeled “Elon McConaughey”.

As you can see, the Pioneer is a hefty craft, weighing in with a 200m length. It dwarfs the caterpillar in pretty much every aspect. We’ll get back to that in a moment, first lets check out these land claims. According to Tony Z. (bromance happening), he said that information about a claim will determine it’s value, is it rich in mineral deposits? Is it near a wealthy city with an ocean view? Does it sit near a sun with unusual solar activity? Is the soil and atmosphere good for plant life? All of these factors and more will play into what the plot is worth. As the information becomes dated, so does the price, so it would be best to keep a plot you would like off the net and a plot you would like to sell as up to date as possible. This will really create a player made real estate market. This is one interesting gameplay mechanic that I never actually thought about when I imagined the SC universe.

There’s actually quite a lot of information here. Lots of different options on not only what you want the outpost to be for, but modular options on what else it can do, I see landing pads and turrets as an option. Storage can be a thing. Maybe it’s a trading post, or a forward base with an armory for ground troops. Maybe it’s a resupply or minor repair facility (speculation only on that last one). Medical station is definitely an option. So the gist is that once you land, the center of the craft will open, materials will be brought to the ship (or also out of storage on the ship) to help produce the outpost. This opens up lots of possibilities for essentially players buying up multiple plots next to each other and making small player made settlements. There really are some interesting possibilities with this. I don’t want to veer off what they’ve actually said but in my head at 3:30 a.m. I can envision a scenario where as you build up facilities, maybe NPC’s want to set up shop nearby, with the tech I’ll mention later on, this could open up a whole new dynamic on a magnificient scale, the likes of which gaming has never seen before. Anyways, back to what we know. As you can see, the ship has quite a few different modules itself. From the bridge, the habitat area, the manufacturing areas, landing pads and internal storage, this ship is a behemoth. We’re not sure how it will work once it’s landed, if it can take off again or will have to be salvaged, there was a little bit of haziness for me on those details, it could very well be they were talking about salvaging older outposts and not the ship. This would make good sense as the materials would age like everything else in the verse and need repair or reclaiming as time went on. very cool.

As you can see from these shots, there are definite possible ways to generate income from these outlying outposts and as far as LID is concerned, we’re going to be very interested in the mechanics and logistics of making this a lucrative venture. Not only can we turn a profit in most of these cases but in the event of a turf war we can have arms, storage, and medical facilities strategically placed and potentially even fairly hidden from common knowledge, though I suspect it’s hard to stay hidden indefinitely in the SC universe. Which is a nice introduction into the last recap I’ll be doing of the 2017 Citizencon presentation.

Procedural City, Interior Tech, and the Future.

The Keynote Address. Sounds like a new action movie doesn’t it? This was the meat and potatoes of the entire event and it looked amazing. I knew they were coming along but I didn’t really know how much until this was over. It wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen before but everything was kicked up to an entire new level. When the character walked out of Astro Armada I was like yeah, this is what I see in my head when I think about this game, and ArcCorp specifically. This really brought the blade runner influence to life and I was completely impressed with the demo as he walked around the area. Again, we’ve seen this before but not on this level. They walked right through the glass doors (no glitching needed) and parked outside was a Terrapin. I was happy to see it on the pad but wasn’t shocked when they took out the reworked Aurora instead.

The takeoff gave us a taste of what’s possible with the tech. Not only was the aurora flying around and “through” the city, but the city stretched into the horizon. It wasn’t all as detailed as it might otherwise be but it did show us that the ability to create an urbanized planet is possible. After an impressive tour of the city and a view the the Area 17 skyline we turned our gaze upward as the ship climbed out of the atmosphere. As it was arching up into space we got a glimpse of the Pyro System with it’s ruddy red gaze in the background. Part of me is wondering if that was truly rendered from the system or if it was just a bit of trickery, either way it looked very cool. They did show the orbital station exterior and we got a fantastic view of City 18 from space which looked exactly like you would expect it to look from the night side pictures of our own planet.

Once again we see the mobiGlas. I haven’t been playing Star Citizen as much as I would like for a few reasons so I don’t know how much of the interface is new or not but it looks great. It’s got your balance, criminality, atmospheric composition, suit stats, health, etc. I like how much info you get at a glance, I also like the background blur effect they added a while back, makes you lose focus on the surroundings but not entirely. It pops up a nice map, essentially the mobiGlas version of the star map from what I can tell and lets you select the destinations available to you in system. They selected the planet Hurston and made the jump into quantum travel. This trip was 8 minutes long and Chris said they tweaked the fuel values to allow the trip to happen in one jump. Presumably there would be a fueling station or other point of interest out there.

It is pretty slick to see the Stanton star hanging out there. The new quantum travel effects looked fantastic, the screenshots I managed to pull for all of this doesn’t do it justice and I can’t wait to see this myself in the near future. Of course with 3.0 looming and lots of implications there, we’re going to have a busy time moving forward and I can’t wait.

During the 8 minute trip we got another treat, they showcased their interior procedural generation system. This tech lets them generate the inside of the buildings the exact same way they do the buildings themselves, it intelligently puts together different combinations of shops and habitation areas, all based on a random seed value. As best as I can tell, this tech, along with the network culling, meaning that if you can’t see something, the network servers don’t bother to send you information about it, they could theoretically allow an entire planet to be procedurally generated, with complete building interiors done as well. The devs have stated this will not be the case, and it makes sense that it would depopulate the important areas or make bounty hunting or item finding a bit of a nightmare. Not ultra realistic but fun is the goal at the end of the day. Personally I hope they do somewhere in between.

So here’s a scenario to imagine: You build an outpost, you provide some service or product to sell. NPC’s take notice and start to move into the area and build their own outposts, when enough of them are established it tells the server that a new building can be created there using the existing structures as a ground floor, and allow you to choose where to place interior and exterior doors. As the place gets more popular, the more NPC’s come, the larger the settlement gets and eventually you or your org has it’s own settlement, town, city or metropolis. I think a spectrum forum post is in order. It may never happen but it won’t be because I didn’t say anything!

Coming out of quantum travel looked just as good as going into it did. The effects were very well done and the ship dropped out quite a ways off from the planet. We then got to see a nice mobiGlas view of the planet, with available jump points around it, this is a miniature quantum jump that just lets you get around planetary bodies a little faster, the jump lasted less than 10 seconds as it leapt toward the planet and then dropped out again and entered the atmosphere. The entry effects looked great, the heat shielding lighting up with fire as the friction of the air increased and finally dissipated further down as the craft leveled off high above the ground. We got to see some green vegitation on the mountains below and even a nice peak at the water on the planet Hurston as the Aurora made it’s way towards Lorville, a mining industrial city that’s been stripping the planet of it’s resources and polluting the place in the process. The “Tyrell Corporation” type building looked great as did the flavor of this city as well. You could see various landing platforms and even a monorail going around the city.

Once the ship touched down and the pilot got out we saw what the terrain and flora looked like up close, it’s not anything ground breaking in gaming but it was nice to see the variety contrasted to other planets we’ve seen before. The area is dusty and dry, cacti are growing and stunted trees litter the landscape. You can see the weather, which isn’t quite dynamic yet, but it’s something they’re looking into, blowing in the background as dust gets carried by the wind. We got footage of the Nox, which seemed a little bit unstable but otherwise performed nicely with a slight physics bug there at the end. We saw an NPC populated storage depot with armed security walking around. LID hype! At the very end of the stream we got more than a sneak peak at the new fauna roaming the planet and they don’t look friendly at all. Not every place you land is going to be safe in the verse. With everything coming along, the internal build times decreasing from 4 hours to 1 hour, the delta patcher coming with 3.0 and the promise (fingers crossed) of quarterly releases moving forward, this is going to be a very exciting release when it hits and we can’t wait to see you all there to get organized and start training.

Under New Management

So I was pleased to get offered a promotion within the Oddysee Star Citizen community, in the Logistics and Industry Division specifically. I’m grateful for the confidence placed in me by everyone else in the command structure and I look forward to continuing to contribute to the community outside of the Community Management group. I have numerous plans on things I’d like to introduce moving forward, a video addition to these newsletters, weekly updates on what’s going on out there in star citizen and how that translates directly into the LI Division itself. I’m a rather busy guy but the more things pick up in the verse the more i want to contribute to the Oddysee community. Hopefully I’ll have more information for you shortly and maybe even included in this update before the letter goes out. I appreciate everyone that reads this and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.

-Odd man out. Lord Corwin.