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Preview of 2.6 features -- Star Marine, Arena Commander improvements (asteroid slolam game mode, changes to missile rearmament, etc.).
Concept sale is the Anvil Terrapin, a search and rescue ship, heavily armored with scanners and such.
Now they're highlighting Alpha 3.0. Was originally going to be 2.7, but they decided the content jump warrants 3.0. Targeting an end-of-year release. "Hopefully not December 19th this time."
Debut of "Planetary Tech" which will be previewed here as the v1 version of the tech, v2 will appear at CitizenCon. 3.0 will expand the Stanton system to include ArcCorp, Hurston, Microtech, Crusader, Delamar, and more space stations and asteroid belts. Delamar will eventually move to the Nyx system, but they're putting it in Stanton for variety while they build out. Chris is hammering home that their procedural generation is "artist driven" rather than completely driven by a "superformula". Trying to draw a distinction between No Man's Sky and their curated approach to using procedural generation as a toolset to help them build detail to fit their designs.
"Basic Professions" are bulletted on the slide, too. I see Trading, Cargo Transport, Piracy, Mercenary, and Bounty Hunting. So.. trading and cargo transport will be added in 3.0, I guess?
3.0 also gets the "very first iteration" of Subsumption AI, which they're touting as being behind day and night cycles, increased mission complexity, and economy-driven missions.
3.0 will also add in "Item 2.0," "StarNetwork 1.0," "Subsumption 1.0," and "Mission 1.0." Item 2.0 brings in contextual interactions instead of a blanket "Use" prompt. He's using Hornets as an example. Walk up to the side of a Hornet, and you'd "Deploy Ladder" -- then, you could either "Retract Ladder" OR "Enter Cockpit." He's suggesting that it'll kick into systems startup once you sit down in the cockpit, starting power, sensors, and whatever. Item 2.0 will also be the gateway to more detailed and interactive repair systems on multi-crew ships.
StarNetwork 1.0 is the next iteration of netcode. Increased performance and throughput to "process more complicated scenes, have more players" and so on.
Mission 1.0 is built on top of Subsumption and will allow missions to be built procedurally on templates.
Now we get a 3.0 gameplay preview. It's going to show us what a more in-depth mission can look like. They'll have several characters per system that can give more narrative, story-driven missions. Shady characters in bars, etc.
We're starting on Port Olisar at the spawn point. HUD prompt that a Journal Entry has been added. It's a video message. NPC leaving a video voicemail. The lip-synching is pretty awesome, face looks a little less detailed than we saw last year when they were doing the actor reveals. Walking around Olisar, now. Out the airlock, meeting up with another player's Freelancer. Getting into the side door on the Freelancer, which is new. Both players sit down in the cockpit. This is using the new 2.5 landing UI, I think. Switching perspectives to the pilot. Pilot pulls up a Starmap holo UI. Super-simplified compared to the web Starmap, it's just the Stanton system -- bunch of planets on orbits, zoomable to see moons and such. Double-clicks on Dalamar to initiate quantum travel. This is a longer quantum travel trip than we're used to, but not agonizing.
Arrive at Dalamar, which is a white planet with a small space station hanging above it. Chris tells us about Dalamar. Selecting a nav point, quantum travel to that for a couple seconds. Now we're close enough to see some of the textured surface. There's no draw distance, so the horizon line is actually the planetary surface. Entering atmosphere, nice bow wave effects as the friction burns against the shields. The flight model changes to start modelling drag and maybe some slight lift depending on your ship -- the Gladius flies more deftly in atmo than an Aurora. Descending to the surface. The co-pilot gets up, walks to the back of the ship, and opens up the cargo door to watch out the back. Steps out after the Freelancer lands. Entire thing looks seamless from that micro QT to low orbit.
The Freelancer kind of landed on the crest of a hill -- the loading ramp is too far off the ground, lol. It's kind of comical watching him try to adjust to a new landing spot -- the Freelancer looks really floaty and weightless. Probably needs some better thruster/ground interaction effects, like kicking up dust or something. Time to go land at Levski, a "free" port town where kind of everything goes. Pilot's cockpit screen gets permission to land via a video call with the air traffic controller NPC.
Pilot flies off, co-pilot go out onto the dock and through the airlock (this is an asteroid-hangar-y vibe place). There's a lift down. The interaction prompt is "Call" and then "To Lobby" thanks to Item 2.0. Flavor is pretty nice. There's a window, so we must be on a cliff face. Oh, look -- the pilot flew the ship down to look back in at us. You'll be able to pay some money to move your respawn point to different ports by purchasing a room. The Freelancer is following us around outside to demonstrate that all of the moving around we're doing matches up physically to the exterior of the planet. The co-pilot walks into a bazaar, wanders around 'till we find our contact from the video mail at the beginning. He's hanging out in a cafe. We sit down to talk to Miles. Voice acting is okay, a little stilted. Writing's better than a lot of video game quest-giving that I've seen. The expressions and lip syncing are great and this is in-engine not pre-rendered, because we've still got the background all around us and can look around. He uses his mobiglas to send us a text mission briefing. We're gonna go retrieve a lost ship's black box. We make our way back to the airlock and out to the ship.
The co-pilot's manning the Freelancer's turret, since we'll be heading out into unmonitored space. Flying away from the planet, same seamless deal. Spin up the quantum drive for a quick jaunt to the last known location of the Starfarer. Some pirates show up, get shot down. Chris points out that the music has been changing dynamically -- this is the first version of their contextual music system that should make it into patch 2.6. We find the Starfarer, copilot/gunner opens the back door and EVAs, rifle at the ready. There's sparking and smoke coming from the Starfarer. And as we get closer, there's some serious geometry missing from the model. It looks good. Enter the ship, and there's floating debris and enemies! And bodies of dead crew floating in zero g. There's no power, but we've got a head light. We find a computer in the Captain's quarters, and download the black box info to complete the mission. Video message comes in, along with our cash reward. There's a follow-up mission that continues the mini-narrative.
On our way out of the Starfarer, we come across a Drake Dragonfly in the cargo hold... and decide to fly it out. I'm guessing that's not a standard feature of this mission... The ground mission character flies the Dragonfly inside the hold of the Freelancer. It's a very tight fit, but it does it -- and disappears from the pilot's screen when it moves inside the Freelancer's local physics grid, amusingly enough.
We arrive at the pirates' base and now we've got the Dragonfly fighting the pirates in an Argo rover in a ground battle of sorts. Amusing. Now, however, I've got to go home. I'll have to catch the rest later.
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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades
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