TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

Summary

• The show is live! Today we have Turbulent with Benoit and Benjamin. Benjamin is a strategist at Turbulent and Benoit oversees all things involving Star Citizen at Turbulent.

• Spectrum has been out for a little over 6 weeks officially and Spectrum is designed to replace communication platforms currently involved for Star Citizen. Chat, Forums, VOIP and integration with the game will all become standard with Spectrum in the coming months/year.

• [Polls? Where are they?] To be able to launch Spectrum they had to make some tough choices at what will get put in the first iteration, but they have plans to do polls. However their goal isn't to copy everything forums have done, but iterate on them that makes them unique, but polls in some fashion will be on Spectrum.

• [What's next for Spectrum?] The most short term thing that they're working on that is slated for 3.33 is nested threads. This allows people to make a "Reddit" style thread and to give people the option of what type of thread they'd like to do instead of just the classic one.

• [What's next for Orgs?] What Benjamin would like to see soon is having deeper integration of the things they already have for orgs such as being apart of multiple orgs and hiding which ones you're apart of for Spectrum, but feature wise it's mainly everything an Organisation would need. There isn't a specific feature that's slated first, but they want public forums within orgs so that orgs can have a recruitment thread or area for people not apart of an Org to communicate with them.

  • Roles within Spectrum are also something they're keen to get out as soon as possible which is needed to make those public forums for orgs possible. Invite links are something they want to have in there as well to streamline the invite process and make joining different roles or just recruitment easier.
  • Also Benjamin pointed out a question that they're both Frenchman and Benjamin clarified that Benjamin is French and Benoit is Canadian.

• [What does the update for the launcher entail with 2.6.2?] It's nothing special, it's just for bugfixing and giving them more information on troubleshooting.

• [Delta patcher progress?] From Turbulent's standpoint the actual patching process is progressing very nicely. The engineers working on the project are patching the game with the new method, builds are being produced with the file system and they're ironing out the kinks. On Turbulent's end they've received the patching library and they're integrating it into the new patcher application which doesn't look any different, but underneath is completely different and allows them to bring Spectrum into the launcher, but the launcher will come first and then Spectrum integration into the launcher. So right now they're at the stage of internal testing and once they're happy with it then they'll release it to all the developers and once it's good from there, then it'll go to the Evocati. The timeline isn't distant anymore, but there's still some work to be done, but it's a lot closer than it was before.

• [Fleet view?] It's still in holding because they're determining how to best implement it because some people may not want their ships being shared with the org or have only some shared with the org. It's something they have to get more feedback on, as well as let the game build a bit more before they can really dig into that.

• [Which codec will you use for VOIP and will we be able to stream data from Spectrum into the game like for example opening the forums with MobiGlas, receiving private messages in game and will it be secure?] Opus. The goal is to make it so you can access stuff in game, but not inside the game. It may break immersion a little bit, but they need Spectrum to be an overlay in the game because it would be tedious to go into MobiGlas and then go into a separate window and then so on and so forth. Think of it like a Steam overlay or a better example is the Curse overlay, but deeper.
  • The advantage they have with Spectrum and Star Citizen is that they are the game and instead of slapping an overlay on top of the game they can go deeper. Some elements of Spectrum will be used as backend services from within the game, but don't expect you'll be able to pop your MobiGlas and you'll see Spectrum in it, that's not where they're going, but you will be able to pop certain UI elements that use Spectrum behind the scenes. So for example the ability to use channels that are shared in game and out of the game.

• [How do you intend VOIP integration to work?] The idea is for players to create voice lobbies, switch between them and be able to do that quickly. This is stage one which is within Spectrum.

  • The next stage is if Spectrum is on and the game is on, you'll hear what people say based off where they are in the game from you that are in that lobby with you.
  • For Orgs they do want to have a nesting feature to allow for command structure VOIP like Teamspeak has.

• [Mobile app?] Currently the resources for making the mobile app are tied up at the moment, but the way they've built Spectrum will allow them to create it fairly quickly when they are able to work on it. Currently the priority of on VOIP and players would rather have that than the mobile app first.

  • VOIP for the mobile app is unknown. Their focus is on the desktop VOIP for now and if they can do VOIP for mobile they will, but it's unknown.

• [Why can't you just work on everything at the same time?] It would be awesome if they could do that, but they don't have enough desks or enough people to do all the tasks at the same time. You have three options: money, time, quality, pick two. They wish they could get all the awesome things out right away, but there's only so many hands and some of those hands are working on making builds to release to the backers weekly/monthly instead of a traditional software.

  • They also have two other projects for Star Citizen they're working on that aren't Spectrum.

• [Will a dev tracker be added to Spectrum?] They've talked about it, but want to go about it differently from the way the old forum had it integrated and use the role functionality to allow players to see a dev reply to a specific thread or have a notification feed on when a role has posted. They want the functionality of something like that be applicable for orgs which is their goal with all features is have them work not just for one thing, but other areas in Spectrum and the community.

• [What's next for the Starmap?] Their goal next is the Galactapedia which is a much more indepth wiki that allows you to search for things based on a phrase or specific word that will pull up info and also have that integrated with MobiGlas.

• [What is the Issue Council and what plans are there for it in the future?] It's a place for players to submit their bugs, and have others try to reproduce the bugs and give feedback by replying directly, or upvoting or downvoting.

  • What's next is having deeper integration within Spectrum and enabling more ways for people to share their reports with each other.

• [What's up with the ship stats page?] The ship stats on the website were made a long time ago and their stats are there to reflect what the design goal of the ship is. The issue isn't tools as they have the tools to change them, but that there are lots of changes that happen that may or may not be permanent and they don't want the stats page constantly changing because of a bug or testing.

  • They do have a plan to go over the stats and make sure there's no discrepancies, but also that they have changed how some stats are reflected.

• [API] API stands for Application Program Interface and is a way for people to write their own program, but use the services provided by the API. They plan to have an API for Spectrum, but a dedicated machine API so you can write your own APIs that aren't using your credentials.

  • They have to be careful though as there's a game involved and Spectrum will be integrated into the game and they don't want to allow people to gain an advantage by creating APIs that give them an advantage.

• [Can we have the ability to type in our native language and have it automatically translated to what other people can read, Google has something like that.] Maybe. They have a couple ideas that they'll try to pursue.

• [Custom Emojis?] It's one thing they're wanting to have as soon as possible. 0.35 is a possibility for when you might see it. 0.33 is subreddits and thread types, 0.34 is more than likely Org quality of life improvements.

  • Jared wants to see a RedOne Emoji and wants to know how much the community wants one. This answer may or may be true.

• [Ingame states] They're working on expanding the current states, but that will come in time as the game grows so you'll eventually be able to see where a person is or what they're doing.

  • Friends list as well is something they're working on expanding, but they're building it in a way that allows them to use it in a variety of ways such as friending someone without needing their permission, but then maybe you can't see certain details such as where they are or what they're doing until they add you as well. Or having multiple characters and having isolated friends lists where one character may have a different list of friends to another.