Hope I'm not stepping on Sryan's toes here but I'm sure people want this as soon as possible.
*disclamer* German isn't my first language and I didn't translate everything literally. But I tried to follow what was said as closely as possible. If I misrepresented anything Bernd said please let me know and I'll fix it.
[PART3]
0:00 Starts by explaining they received questions via Facebook and that he'll ask Bernd to answer.
0:24
[Interviewer] First question, is there a third person view?
[Bernd] No! At first we'll only have the cockpit view. We have other perspectives, we can control drones in first person, at least in version 1.0 there's only the first person view. If we hear that people urgently want this feature we may add it later in an update. There are a lot of things already on our wishlist. This is something that really depends on the fans whether this will make it in. But something that's somewhat related, is support for Oculus Rift, we can attach a kind of free look perspective. This is a possibility for an update, Rift support together with different viewpoints.
1:33
[Interviewer] This question was also frequently asked, so that's a possiblity. About the plans for the future, what is your top 5 of things you'd like to add after release?
[Bernd] Well, the Oculus Rift support... It depends how you want to sort this "top 5".
[Interviewer] Talk about the stuff YOU want. Be selfish.
[Bernd] Well, selfish..
Oculus Rift support because it's great! We have one of those things and it's extremely fun. We're really looking forward to including it but it's not a "must have." And at the moment we can only manage "must have" features. But the probability we'll include OR support is very high because WE want to make it. But third person view is, for fans who might not yet have an OR (the number of people who have one isn't that high) so maybe more important.
[Interviewer] Well the OR are VR glasses so if you..
[Bernd] Yeah if you press the button you'll have VR glasses inside VR glasses. (joking about the drone view)
[Interviewer] In 2014 we'll probably get the HD version that they'll offer for this kind of game (not sure here?)
[Bernd] Yeah, then you can look around the cockpit with the OR and control the ship using your mouse or controller. It detaches looking around from the control of your ship, that's the difference with a shooter, it will function much better with X than a shooter because it causes problems with aiming.
3:27
[Interviewer] Something that I noticed, I'm playing with a gamepad. You can of course also play with keyboard and mouse. You can then for example simply click on objects to get information. But when it's possible to play with a gamepad, of course the question arises: what about next-gen consoles. Of course not the old consoles but the new ones might be more suitable.
[Bernd] Welllll maybe. We'll see.. It's not a priority for us but it's possible. I don't think the hardware would be a problem, but most of all the ability to use a controller to control is the main thing. (note: not sure I understood this right since the game seems to be 100% controller accessible?) That's the defining difference between a PC and console game and for us it was a priority because it's becoming more important due to Steam big picture mode. I think it's great that this is making PC games bigger again and bring them to the livingroom. The Steam consoles coming, we want to be a part of that.We wanted to be prepared for the Steam box. And (maybe this will be on your list too) we also want to make Rebirth possible on Linux and Mac. And people who buy the PC game will get these version free.
5:15
[Interviewer] I'm trying to force a bit of a fight but somehow...
[Bernd] You have a very high reputation but just shoot at the station turrets a bit. It depends on the relationship between the faction and the ship. Factions don't really care too much if you shoot at other people. So whether they protect strangers or not that depends a lot on whether they have their own police force (not sure if he meant "belonging to the faction of the other ship" here.) In this area for example, the Argon region, they have some police and they won't tolerate this. [Interviewer starts shooting "Big Bertha"] Oh, oh! Ok try shooting the little guys below. Now everything is turning red. Now you have to make sure you get away. This "Big Bertha" - as we call it sometimes, it's not the official name - [Interviewer] He can't really catch me right? [Bernd] Yeah, but those little guys [Interviews] They're not exactly thrilled with us either.. [Bernd] Maybe it would be smart to get away while you can still boost because that shield energy is also your boost energy and if it's gone you won't be able to get away so easily..
6:50
[Interviewer] Here's also a capital ship that isn't so friendly to us anymore. We have another couple of weapons. Let's get back to the questions. The next question you probably be able to answer.. Will it be easier for new players. How well will it function when you..
[Bernd] Well I already mentioned the "tutorials", we now have a giant tutorial: the first chapter of the game. Well, it's not a tutorial like a school but the first chapter of the game will gradually show the various features of the game and will introduce new players to them using tooltips and explaining how the game works.
7:45
[Interviewer] *mumble mumble*
[Bernd] Now we can also show a cool feature: that when you get closer to a cap ship you'll start moving with it, which is essential if you're trying to destroy features on its surface.
[Interviewer] Maybe I can motivate it to start moving a bit.. Ah there it goes.. We're in the gravity well of the ship. Of course this is a gameplay mechanic, a small ship like this of course wouldn't really cause this much gravity.
[Bernd] Well yes it's not really an actual gravity field, but it's your combat computer that automatically compensates. Gravity wouldn't be very believable here of course. But the point is that you as the player can strafe and attach the surface elements. And that makes it possible to have believable small surface elements. The alternative is to have these giant exaggerated turrets that you can shoot with rockets but that would be boring. This of course isn't a very big cap ship, you can take a look at that transport ship in the background. Although there are certainly still bigger ships. But this one has an opening in the front you can fly into.
[Interviewer] Ah so this is a transporter. I recognize it from the Gamescom demo and I thought it was one of the biggest ships but..
[Bernd] It's about a mid-size. You'll see.. Oh that's a drone launcher which will launch little..
*drone launcher explodes*
[Bernd] Bomsch..
[Interviewer] Hopefully they'll be a little less friendly to us now. Finally. Very good, reputation gone!
[Bernd] And now you've destroyed its drone launcher so it it can't reinforce which is very clever, if you now fly to its rear and destroy its drive you'll have the tactical advantage. Best to use these dumbfire missiles. Now you've selected the drive as a target. Just fire, you have them. They're cheap.. Price is always a factor!
10:33
[Interviewer] Mouse keyboard, but another question: joysticks?
[Bernd] Of course we also support joysticks. We worked on getting the gamepad working first, because there are thousands of different joysticks. And with most models you also need the keyboard. You always have the ability to use keyboard shortcuts. For example '.' for the sector map, ',' for the galaxy map. We tried to keep this compatible with the previous titles but that's nothing new. Also the mouse controls are very similar to previous titles. Although then you had a 'hard target' that wasn't lost when you stopped tracking it. So the controls in general are very different.
11:30
[Bernd] You just shot a torpedo which you can control for a while into that ship.
[Interviewer] I'll fly back a bit I have another one I can control for a bit longer. This ship apparently doesn't have any more defensive measures. This brings us to the next question: how can you build these ships. So can you build the modularly and determine "how will it be armed"? How does this look?
[Bernd] These are indeed partly modular. Similar to the stations they have "build trees" which are in most cases a lot simpler. Not as many modules as you saw in the menu of that station, where you really have a complex build tree with may have many dozens of modules. But what is similar between capital ships and stations are the surface elements. So these turrets that you're shooting at, you can equip on your cap ships using a slider. For for example you can say "use 50% of elements for missile launchers" "make 20% smaller turrets" "build me a better drive", so that way you can improve your ship modularly.
13:00
[Interviewer] Trying to destroy this ship..
[Bernd] Well this is a food freighter, it's not terribly exciting as a target. If you attack one of those beautiful destroyers, armed to the teeth, that's more exciting, but you choose one of these food freighters.
13:20
[Interviewer] Another question from someone who probably doesn't know the X series that well... Multiplayer?
[Bernd] No. Not for now. Sure it's an interesting theme and certainly we'll think about it, it's something we've thought about for a long time, but for now it's more than enough work to finish single player and as I said we have so many plans and ideas still to add. We want most of all to reach the point where we can hand this game over to the community and get feedback. This is for us the first time we've worked on a completely new project for this long without getting any feedback. With the X series it's always been that we can hear what people like and what they don't. I know that multiplayer is wanted by many but not yet.
14:30
[Interviewer] Ah these are the swarm rockets
[Bernd] Yeah those really need a soft target.
[Interviewer] Ah he's finally shooting at us!
[Bernd] Well there is only one turret left and this ship was pretty poorly armed. If you select that turret you can use your swarm missiles.. Oh he shot them down..
[Interviewer] ...
[Bernd] There's a shield generator
[Interviewer] That blue one? Well talking about community and support, a big part of X is of course moddability. Oh shit!
[Bernd] You took a little explosion damage (?)
[Interviewer] How does that look? Mod support? Do you have it, will it come later?
[Bernd] The game is much more modular than the previous games. This is also to made with the thought to make the game much more open. There's a scripting language we tested with Albion Prelude, that you could use for making missions. We expanded it here, you can program AI, missions. You see it in all areas of the game. We want to document this very soon, although this will be lacking at release time as we don't have time right now to spend on documentation. But our goal is first of all to make everything available for modding.
16:30
[Interviewer] We just used a superhighway and jumped to another sector. Just to finis the topic, you said "build your own missions", will the game then also support for example Steamworks, so you can install these mods without any problems?
[Bernd] Not at first, supporting Steamworks is desirable but maybe later. It's not so simple. Oh this is a bit narrow, usually you'd fly through here with drones.
[Interviewer] Oh finally there's a fight. Well that was a huge fight
[Bernd] Here there aren't so many 'bad guys', what happened there is that an enemy ship attacked and it was responded too. This was a weak attach, bad guys were taken down very quickly. This happens all the time, encouters between factions, you see in the right bottom part of the screen the indication which faction this is. And what your standing is with them, the same thing happens with NPCs. This can develop and change during the game.
18:15
[Interviewer] This game needs DX9, do you have the final requirements for this game?
[Bernd] Yes you can find them on Steam.
[Interviewer] Well then I'll leave it at that.
[Bernd] It's DX9 because we can accomplish anything we want with it. Maybe we'll update it later but we didn't see a need since we could achieve what we wanted with DX9. There are some nifty things we can improve on but what priority that has we'll see.
18:57
[Interviewer] What do you do when.. (Sorry couldn't quite make this out, I think something about getting lost?)
[Bernd] You can set a target on your map at any time. So if you have a mission you always have a guide, and it'll show the way to the next highway automatically, when you don't have it like if you don't have a mission or you changed it or aborted it, you can simply set a target yourself and say "give me guidance to this station" and you'll get the indicator.
19:33
[Interviewer] I flew into the middle of an ice field. Very appropriate since someone asked, how about resources? Mining? I have a mining laser, but I haven't seen if I can collect anything. Do I need more equipment?
[Bernd] No you need another ship that can collect these things. Even small rocks are still far too big to collect yourself. You can break up asteroids by yourself you can tag the parts you want to collect but you need another capital ship to collect them. Because this isn't item trading but massive trading. And there are specialist mining ships, for example a ship that can ONLY collect ice crystals that are bigger and faster at these tasks but there are also hybrid ships which can collect any kind of ore, well ice isn't an ore but resources.
20:50
[Interviewer] Well then how long does it take from when the game starts if you follow the campaign until you get your own ships, your own little fleet?
[Bernd] The first trade ship you have after 10 minutes. Very early in the game. Because you may need to trade but also because the game will teach you about these game elements. How much you do with it is up to you but that you get another ship and that the game teaches you about the basics of trade that happens very early in the tutorial. And building your first station, that also happens in the plot maybe one or two hours in. But we'll also explain the basics of stations in the plot.
21:42
[Interviewer] (again a bit mumbly but asking about building an empire)
[Bernd] Define an empire
Well when you keep playing the game, let's say you've put in 100 hours, you have many ships and stations, you've assigned managers, then you become more and more well known. This transition is more believable, the people you meet on platforms react to your becoming more famous. At first you're nobody but at the end you're the famous Ren Otani, the great mogul. Maybe won a big battle in the fight against the giant Plutarch corporation.
22:50
[Interviewer] So you really are your own faction, your own empire. Can you also name your own empire or rename things?
[Bernd] No, there's is just one player character, Ren Otani, this is who the big story is about. There's not the possiblity of playing with other people, that's not part of 1.0
23:25
[Interviewer] To the last question: We see planets. Very pretty but are they just background? Can you interact with them or does everything take place inside stations?
[Bernd] Ah well they're not so relevant as gameplay objects but they're not just backgrounds. They are 3D objects, you can fly into them, this was already in X3. Ok you'll be burned up in the atmosphere so it's not the most interesting interaction. But even so that's what happens. That hasn't changed. But they have an effect on the economy. In orbit of planets the economy is different than in deep space. We've tried to make the different systems more believable. Some have a very tragic history after the closing of the gates. For example a system like we've shown here, Omicron Lyrae that has a home world or a world like DeVries that was mostly used to produce energy or acted as a transit station, but where noone really lived, and that was then cut off from the universe, that's developed very differently and tragic things happened there.
25:25
[Interviewer] Do you need to have played the previous games to follow this?
[Bernd] Well of course you don't need to know the previous games. It's a bonus but the goal is for this game to have it's own story.
[Interviewer] Shooting at police >)
[Bernd] It used to be that you could get into trouble too quickly so we made the game a bit more forgiving. Also now if you shoot at a station you build up a short term reputation first. After a while they may forget they're angry at you. There's a short term and a long term reputation. Like with GTA, the police stars. When you cause trouble near a station first you get one, two, three "stars" and the police will then try to protect them. If you stay away for a while, you're still Ren Otani, and if you were identified as someone who caused trouble, you're reputation will slowly decrease. These are two separated systems that are presented in the same way.
[Interviewer] I'm not sure where I jumped into the highway and where I'll pop out but let's say we'll let the game surprise us. I think we can make one more episode about X:Rebirth and then the Rebirth week will be done. Time for a break! Bye!
