Boy Sichterman

I mean, it starts with level design. People, for example Andreas and his team, start, together with lore, they create a white box, so a very simplified version of the landing zone, to make sure it hits all the beats in the right order: the walking isn't too crazy, not too long, it plays well, the navigation, you can find your way through the landing zone, basically. And it has all the common elements in the right place, like the security, the hangars. And it's basically watertight, right? Then we have the white box, and that's basically where the artists jump in. And they take the white box to grey box and then to final art. I say it really fast, but of course that takes quite a while. It's a very big place. I guess it's maybe the biggest. It took us quite a while, of course, because we'd never done something on this scale before, I think. So it was also talking a lot with technical artists, getting stuff like, how do you drop a flat city on a curved planet? That's something we also never did before. So we needed the tools to support that, for example. We call it the planet dropping tool, I believe. That's what I call it anyway. And it just takes all the art we make, and it aligns it to the surface of the planet. And it was all going back and forth on that front. This was something new, so that took a while to figure out. But we knew how to build all the basic beats and implement the common elements, because we did it before, right?

Your involvement was a lot there, Boy, wasn't it? Boy's being modest. You did quite a lot of the actual making of Lorville, didn't you?

Yeah, so I was involved. I did the HD building, the big chunky boy. Then I did the, what was it, the Leavesden Square, the metro station, the Transfers in CBD, and the lower hab lobbies, basically, at the bottom of the [unclear]. So yeah, Lorville is my baby, together with a couple of other artists.

It was also one of our first locations where we had a landing zone that was in the middle of a huge city, where we had to develop the transit system of how to bring the players in and out of locations and travel through those very long distances. Those trains are very fast. But yeah, that was one of the challenges as well, because you have a big city that's located on a planet, you have the landing zone in the middle, and we had to add all these gates because maybe they come from a different direction. We actually timed it once: we had one gate to start with, and if you came from the wrong side, it would take you like 65 minutes or something to run around the city to get to the gate. And we were like, oh, we need more gates. This doesn't work.

I remember testing that. I just went to the editor, and I just walked from one side to the other side of the city just to see how long it took. It was something like that. That's pretty insane.

That's kind of when you start realizing the scale of everything, right? When you get on foot and start walking.

I remember talking to one of the artists a while back too about the whole scale thing, especially when it came to where the clusters of the city finish, and how we can have a player at the base of basically this massive city and get that scale feeling correct and make it feel tangible, and how they had gone over a whole bunch of iterations and designs to make it work. And it's pretty successful what we have now, but we learned a lot of lessons in that and have brought it through with the rest of our landing zones as well. But that was kind of the first time that we had run into that issue, because Levski is more of a localized location, but this is a huge city. So you have kilometers' worth of blending the city into the environment, right?

Besides, it's not like the people from Lorville want to keep everyone in or anything, but it's a city where you can't traditionally just slowly make suburbs and then a few houses are left and then farmland starts, etc. It's this very... Andreas, I think you quite like the Hurston policies there, but it's very walled in.

Like Andreas said, it was the first time we did a transit system outside of elevators. I remember conversations about this, and most people, to be honest, were like, do we really need to do an actual physicalized train that would run on tracks? Can we not have it go underground, or can we have it spawn and then go across and then go into a tunnel and then teleport to the next area? And to be fair, a lot of us were just like, come on, Chris, do we really have to do this? This is such a technical pain. And he was always adamant, like, no, I want it to be physicalized. And we did it in the end. And it was challenging. It was very hard to do. It did work out in the end. It does give that feel. And each landing zone has that interesting, whether it's a train or a flying shuttle, it is quite interesting to have, and it isn't fake and all that kind of thing. So that was one of the biggest technical challenges with Lorville, apart from the scale as a whole: trying to get the first working train.

I can remember Dan Trufin in those Tuesday meetings, just week after week showing the next version of the train, and Chris just being like, no, it needs to be a real train. It needs to be a physical train. It should hit people.

Just a small side note as well: I know there are some people who aren't necessarily super enthusiastic about traveling times, sitting on a train for one and a half minutes, like, I just want to sell my pistol, come on. But because they are physical, we do have to traverse those distances, and even though we try to make those trains as fast as possible, it's going to take time. That's just part of the scale of the universe, right?

And one thing that Lorville introduced, which is a pretty key part of the PU and everything, is the common elements. It was the first time we put in the hangars, the habs, the transit, security checkpoints. I'm trying to think if there was anything else. But the UK team was heavy at work on the common element part, whereas the German team was heavy at work on the actual Lorville side of things. So my involvement there was a bit of work on the hangars. Actually, I did the big gorilla head, as we call it, as you come into the hangar and it looks out. That was always a name of contention, but that's what it's called here. I also worked on the habs, the hab lobby at the top of the big crane-looking building, and the transit where the train actually comes in and out. And just on the subject of trains, I think honestly one of my most fun tasks here was that transit platform, because it was an opportunity to really look at reference of transit platforms around and make something that's very oppressive. I think my favorite part about it is, as you come in, you've got the gate and then you come in and you look up, it's nothing but pipes. And let me tell you, I spent like three to four days just dressing pipes on the ceiling of that entire platform. The rest came out much faster, but the pipes, I was connecting things from one side to the other going, oh yeah, this makes sense. And then you look up and it's just this network of pipes because you're below the plates. It was one of the most fun tasks I had here because it was the first time we were doing something really quite like that. So it was a lot of fun.

We have actually planned for public restrooms in most places, to be honest. So they're there. We just don't have that gameplay feature yet. So when that arrives, we will swing open the doors.

On a more serious note, like Andreas said, that would just be another common element. And we build our landing zones with a lot of future-proofing in mind. So we don't just have the shops and the hangars that we have currently. We always look for opportunities for a doorway, a corridor, a back alley, or whatever, where we'd say, okay, this is where a restroom could be. This is a door to there. So we know there's space for it behind that door. So we say, okay, in the future, when we get restroom common elements and we get pooping tech or whatever you want to call it, then that can be slotted in. Just like we were saying, Grim Hex did need a bit of rework, but from Area 18 onwards, there's a lot of extra space and potential and doorways and things like that to have all these kind of things, not just restrooms, but more stuff than that. Because we always want to future-proof a location. I know we're talking about reworking things like Levski, but we don't want to break it up and start from scratch and go, oh, we've got to redo it. It's more like modules that slot into a vanilla landing zone, as it were. And you can connect, hey, we can connect the hospital one here, we can connect more stuff on there. So that's always been our aim for a while now.

Many times when you walk through a city in the game, you might walk through some very boring place, and it's just a flat wall or a weird section that is just there as a temporary cover, that might turn into a shopping street at some point, or a public restroom.

Yeah, I was going to say, a couple of ways you can see how we telegraph what we're doing in the future is we'll either add a door that goes nowhere, or a really big empty space like Andreas said, like a corridor or something where you may think it's a bit weird, this area here. But there's usually some intention to expand, because we can't build that thing being tiny and then be like, okay, we've got to add this toilet, and now where the hell do we do it? I think actually, Boy, you added a nice toilet door somewhere in New Babbage, right?

In the Aspire Grand lobby, yeah. We have two restroom doors, so maybe sometime in the future.

It's the same with the transit tracks in New Babbage as well. Boy, you worked on that. There's the main one that goes to Aspire Grand, but there's a lot of other ones that sprawl out from that main one. And not all of them are perfectly connected up with the transit, but we aim for some to potentially go to another point of interest or somewhere in the future. It's always there. Sometimes we know, okay, we're going to put the hospital here, but sometimes we don't, and we're just like, okay, maybe in the future we'll put something there, but we don't know exactly what it is. It's just planning ahead, and even the foreseen and unforeseen things in the future we try to plan for, if that makes sense.

Favorite aspect is the utopian atmosphere.

For me, it's the plates. It really is that feeling of being under the plates most of the time. They're so oppressive. I think we really managed to put that through, right? And I think that's what makes Lorville so special. What I would change is, I think we've learned so much from building cities. I think there's a lot that we can go back to and do to the feel of the scale, either by improving materials, improving meshes. But even if we keep it within the same boundary of Lorville, I think there's a lot that we can do to the visuals to make it feel even bigger without changing much.

Yeah, I would double that. I think also the buildings especially. We learned a lot doing buildings. I would love to go back and do a pass on them and make them hold up from a lot closer, which would allow the player to get closer as well. So I think that would be a great thing. And I guess what I love most about Lorville for me is actually the CBD area. Because I was just doing low tech for a pretty long time, the grimy art style. Then we suddenly went to do this super shiny marble, this golden utopia. And that was super fun for me to work on.

It was refreshing for everyone, right?

It was a shock when you entered there from the rest of the city. You were like, damn.

I did panel materials for as long as I was here at that time. And then suddenly we had requests for marble and gold, and I was like, I don't even remember how to do these organic materials. What are we going to do? That was fun. It was a really good time.

I think that location in the CBD is probably my most favorite location. The brutalism, the sense of oppression that you get from just standing in that lobby is immense. And the only thing that I would change about it is a selfish point, and that is that I wish I did work on it, because it's fun.

I love the aspect when you get out of your hab and you see the dirty windows, and then you take the elevator down to the L19 Plaza, to the balcony, and watch all the spaceport and you see the dust and everything going off. I think that's really cool. What I would like to work on in the future is maybe expanding the outskirts, the suburbs of the city, more, adding more shanties in and populating it more with life.

Actually, Manuel, isn't your favorite part of Lorville, and my favorite part together, the restricted areas? He tells me every day, he goes, man, we should really make some more restricted areas.

I can't get enough. So we worked a whole lot of time on that last year and did some changes and reworks on that. So that was a fun experience, right?

To return to a previous question, I didn't really answer properly, right? My answer was a bit jokingly, but it's also a little bit serious. I do find the dystopian atmosphere of Lorville one of my favorite points there, because it lends itself to a lot of environmental storytelling. You can do a lot of interesting scenarios there: Hurston family versus people who are against them and all that kind of stuff, all the suffering of the small people versus the absolute decadence of the rich. So that's also something that I would like to return to work on in the future, because that is something that's really missing there.

I have one. And it's pretty surprising coming from an artist. You probably think it's going to be art-related, but I think it's actually, for me, the sound design. I think that sound makes up a big chunk of the experience, right? And we look at the art a lot, so we get used to the art. And it's super refreshing when the sound designer submits their stuff. You go in the editor and it's like a whole new place when the sound kicks in. It's pretty awesome always to hear.

It's often one of the last things to come into the landing zone as well. When we've done all the art, well, most of the art anyway, we don't hear much of the sound, they've got to compose the music, and it often comes in quite near the end of production of the landing zone. So it is really nice to boot the game up and go, ah, there's either music or actual sound around, and it sounds like it's part of the location. It's really nice. I think Area 18 is quite successful in that.

Area 18 is my favorite for that. And I think for that exact reason too, the mood and vibe that you get in Area 18. There's a lot of other games out there that do it quite well, but Area 18, I don't know, for me it has that feeling of, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I can second that actually. It's the whole mood and all the neon signs and the city vibe you have around. I think Area 18 also has a lot of potential for further expansions, with all the rooftops we have and all the things we can potentially do more with the city. And I think it's probably the location I would like to do more stuff on.

I agree, the ambience of Area 18 is by far one of my favorite aspects. It's just this sensory overload when you walk around, all the music. You walk around in the city, and after a while you get used to it, all the ads playing in your face and everything, and then you do your stuff and then you leave the city and go like...

Quite successful, I would say. The word diegetic is when the soundscape is coming from the environment. For me, I think New Babbage is my favorite landing zone, partly because it feels like the most realistic landing zone. It feels very grounded as a city. It feels like a realistic city. I know it's all sci-fi and everything, but the way it's structured, the transit route, talking about the navigation again, going around the domes, as well as flying around the actual city, it feels the most grounded in reality, which I've really enjoyed. And I just love snow as well. So I like seeing all the snowy dusting over the whole city, I think it's really nice.

I'm going to cheap out and agree with Boy. I used to have a career in audio before I did this. I think audio is one of the things that's the most important to me in almost any piece of anything. It drives the emotion, it drives the feeling. There's a particular moment that I find quite memorable during my time here, and that was my second CitizenCon that I was actually on location, which is when we showed off New Babbage. And there was something so incredibly special about the Carrack coming in, and the music just hit all of the right notes, and you'd see the landscape of New Babbage and you hear the wind and you hear the thrusters of the Carrack firing and the music is just swelling up. And that in an auditorium probably amplified the feel of it, sure. But to me, the music and the audio is such an integral part of the experience. And it's sad that we see it so late. It's totally understandable why it's so late, but we often just put on our own music that inspires the feel of the location. And sometimes we send that to the audio team to send to Pedro for some inspiration. So many playlists. But yeah, that's it for me.

The amount of times I've listened to the Blade Runner soundtrack while working on this game, it's insane, many, many, many times.