Brian Chambers

As Jared said, I'm Brian Chambers. When I first started with CIG, my title was Development Director. So it was me and a handful of guys starting up the office here in Germany. And so I spent a few years really focusing on getting that team solid, and working with Erin on global development and looking at teams and seeing what we can help and push. Mid last year, roughly, we restructured a few things within the company with our growth. It just made sense to look at that and see if the current structure we have still works for everybody. Part of that structure was to pull in studio managers for each office so they could work on the day-to-day stuff that it takes to keep the lights on, and general admin stuff and everything, right? That allowed me to then come and focus more on dev. So at that point, I became VP of Development, and I now work really, really close with Erin on a daily basis to drive the development team globally. Come November, December, me and Chris and Erin were talking and looking across the projects and seeing how things were structured, and we said, okay, with Squadron, the size it is, and what we want it to be as far as expectations, it absolutely needed some more dedicated focus. So I am now primarily focusing on Squadron 42. Erin's now primarily focused on the PU. We both have visibility and say on either side. A lot of stuff crosses the boundaries per se, right? So one call actually works for both. So my primary focus now is Squadron, working with the team every day, seeing what's going on with schedules and with progress, and it's going to be good.

And this kind of reorganization is a normal part of video game development. It happens in projects all over the place. It's not necessarily because of issues or problems. We usually do it at the end of one year, the beginning of another year, to take a step back, to reevaluate how things are going and to find ways to improve, to make things more efficient.

No, it wasn't due to any deficiency. It was just that now we have a studio manager there and they can handle all this other stuff that I needed to take care of, and that now frees up my time to go back to my roots, which is game development. And if I'm free and Erin's free, let's split that focus so we can get some more of that dedicated attention. It's definitely a positive thing. And I'm excited about it. Working with the team, you see progress every day. It's good stuff.

No, the roadmap, honestly, it's one thing that I've looked at more and more recently, and other people on the team, and we were scratching our heads too, going, wait, hold on, what's going on here? The roadmap as it currently exists, starting chapters at the top, going to the bottom, and just spreading out horizontally, it doesn't make sense. There's so many things that we do; a majority of what we do crosses all chapters, right? When you talk about mechanics, when you talk about technical work and so on, when we're working on characters, whatever it might be across most disciplines, it touches all chapters. So in theory, if you were to leave it as it is, all chapters would basically be done all at the same time, right? We've got every little thing, excluding a couple little bits that are going to be very specific and very unique. So due to the nature of the development and what you push on, if we call it AAA or quadruple A or whatever it might be, it really doesn't work. I think when we first started it, it was just logical. It was like, oh, let's put all the chapters down and we're cool.

Follow a linear progression. It's easy to understand. It's not like we had an example to look at. There aren't other AAA games out there with a publicly facing development roadmap during their development. So we had to figure this out as we went. We tried for a linear presentation, but as you're saying, development runs parallel.

Yeah, and I actually scrubbed through stuff, maybe a couple of months ago, looking, okay, what other AAA games are giving the level of detail that we do? And I think some had some roadmaps, but they're just very chunky. Like, hey, we're a quarter of the way done or halfway done and so on, right? A big key thing for us, though, is we don't want to give away spoilers. It's incredibly important to me and it's incredibly important to Chris that we hold that stuff tight, because we want that experience when we get it into people's hands, that they play it and they experience it new. I'd rather not give away, although we may have already most of them, I'd rather not give away any more characters, locations. And it's actually hard when we do monthly updates and so on. A lot of stuff we get from the team that I'd prefer to publish, that is awesome progress, has so many spoilers in it. I'm like, no, can't do that. Can't do that. Nope, nope, nope. So it's a chore. However, the current format doesn't work to show the progress the way that we think is the best, or in a format that makes sense for what we're doing. With that said, we're currently in the process of investigating new ways that we can provide information. Progress is being done every single day. Awesome stuff. We have global reviews with the directors and leads and Chris Roberts every single week where we go over and see people's progress. So progress, really cool stuff, is being done. So it's up to us to find a way that we can present that to everybody publicly. And that's something that we're actively looking into. Absolutely.

Right, so it's not all doom and gloom. We recognize that the roadmap for Squadron 42 isn't as effective a tool as we were hoping in conveying the information without spoilers, mostly due to its linear nature and our parallel development, not just between all the chapters, but our parallel development between Squadron and Star Citizen. It's very hard to present that to backers in graph form and lines without the context that we can't give, because the context is all spoiler-related. But we do have a couple ideas, and we're still looking for more, about how we can be more open about Squadron 42's development, how we can convey more information on its progress.

So we've been thinking a lot about the roadmaps lately, and ultimately we want to improve how we communicate in a variety of ways so we can basically provide a better idea of what's being worked on, why something may have changed, et cetera. So more specifically, we're looking at some creative ways that we think we can better illustrate our progress that ties closer into how we're blocking out our time internally. We're already well underway with exploring some creative options for how we can visualize that and how we can share that with everybody. But of course, it's going to take a little bit of time. But I think we're heading in the right direction. We think we're working on some stuff that you guys are going to like.

As far as blocking out time, some of that stuff we already do on the dev side as well. We block out sprints that guys are working on, and you can see their completion progress. So we even talked about, could that be existing information we have that pulls in, again, as long as it doesn't give away spoilers and so on.

Yeah, absolutely. We also recognize that as we're developing Squadron 42, much of that content ends up making its way into the PU, which is something that we feel we can track and also illustrate better. And so that's another thing that we're working on. But in the short term, obviously you can still look forward to the monthly reports. You may have seen recently we did an AMA on prisons. So we would like to continue doing those AMAs more regularly and actually talk Squadron 42 when we can. Like Brian mentioned, we don't want to spoil the game, but as often as we can, when it makes sense, if we can do some AMAs surrounding different aspects of Squadron 42, we'll take those opportunities. One of the favorite parts of Inside Star Citizen is the Sprint Report. We're going to start leveraging the Sprint Report for Squadron 42 content again as often as we can. You probably see the pattern here: we just want to start injecting more Squadron 42 content into our regular communications, but also getting creative and seeing if we can introduce some new stuff. For example, we might do some fun regular video check-ins with Brian, with you, and the Squadron 42 team. We've been talking about some fun ideas. I think that you guys are going to like the direction we're going to go with that.

No, we're exploring everything. We're looking at it from all angles. We've even had some discussion, as we've said, and everybody knows that a lot of the things that we do from Squadron make it to PU, or PU to Squadron. So could we even have some type of shared map that calls out which ones are shared, which are unique and so on? Because a lot of stuff you see in PU, although we're not loud about it, absolutely makes itself into Squadron, right? So by nature, it already starts showing some of that progress there. It would just be us calling it out.

And then of course on the video side, opening up shows like Calling All Devs to host Squadron questions when appropriate. Maybe even an Inside Star Citizen segment here and there related to Squadron. Again, where we can find stories to tell that don't spoil the story being told. Basically, what it sounds like is we're going to pull back the curtain, we're going to push open the closed door as much as possible. It's going to be slow at first. We've got to be careful not to spoil anything.

Yeah, I'd say the key takeaway is that we recognize that we haven't been able to share progress as effectively as we would have liked to with the way that we've been set up. And so we're in an area now where we're willing to experiment, we're willing to tweak things and see what we can do to ultimately give more information. And I think one of the big parts that I'd like to note is that we're going to be looking at Spectrum for y'all's feedback. We'll start a few feedback threads. And we want to hear what you think of the direction that we're taking it. We want to hear your suggestions, and we want to keep that conversation open so that ultimately we can give you guys as much information as we can.

I'm confident that we'll find a way that's informative and gives people a good idea of what we're doing on a regular basis.

It's due to the complexity, and their desire to have everything as accurate as possible. Publishing the Roadmap is their ability to be transparent about what they're doing, to show their progress and what they plan to do in the future. Their end goal is to give everyone the most up-to-date information, but they also want it to be accurate. So when something on the Roadmap comes in early or late, it has a knock-on effect with something else, so they take the time to verify what impact the change has had, which itself takes time, and then once everything's verified they go through and give an update. What they've realised is that it seems like too much of a gap in between. They've already discussed this internally, and moving forward they're going to change the frequency of the updates, which will mean smaller updates more often. Some of the backend stuff might not be as 100% accurate, because they haven't gone through the entire process yet, but it'll give a clear glimpse of how when they know something moves, they should update the Roadmap to reflect that so that people know what the expectations are. This is also true on the flip side, where if something is finished sooner, then that should be updated as well.

Yes and no. A portion of the team will probably roll over fairly quickly, although Brian's hoping a handful of them take a few days off because they'll have been working really hard. Others will go directly on pre-productions and probably some forms of production for Chapter 2 (Episode 2? The 2nd Squadron 42 game anyway, because Squadron is intended to be a trilogy). It's also important to note that some people, or some disciplines, won't be needed all the way to the end for Squadron - they're working now but they'll roll off, so before Squadron gets officially released, they'll be able to roll over to the PU. So as they get further along they'll constantly evaluate where they are, look at the resources, see the status of everything, and most likely update the Roadmap accordingly as to whether that increases their progress on what they can provide for the PU, while the rest of the team readies themselves to jump onto Chapter 2.

Well, it does. But I think one of the things that we've always strived for is making it look as good from far away as it does up close and personal. And so that was a comment that Chris called out when we showed off the Lorville stuff. We showed it off from the player perspective, but what does it look like from a ship flying above? And how does that hold up? And those are all things that we're working on and working towards.

Absolutely. And even on top of the new stuff that we're working on, which is chunky in assets and flora and populating with more and even new planets, we're also constantly working on updating and maturing what we actually have. We recently did a pass on the textures to get seams to blend even smoother. We're looking at the LODs and how things fall off and how the LODs are blending together. Even though there's some things that may not be as substantial as, 'hey, here's a whole new moon with a whole new look,' we constantly have a group of guys that are pushing the existing tech we have to get it as mature as we want it to be.

No, it is. It's also introducing the new fog into it, and that basically wreaked havoc, I think, with the old lighting. So now it's doing a pass on it now that we have all the new fog in place.

But once we give it more attention to detail and we've defined even more the art style we want and the tools mature, we start pumping in, as Todd was saying, more atmospherics, and the guys are getting even more used to the tools and so on. And I'm absolutely with you. You'll see something that I looked at a month, two, three months ago, and I'll see it now, like on Chris Campbell's desk, our lead lighting artist, and you'll just go, wow. You'll just look at it and go, okay. It's a clear indication that lighting and the atmospherics absolutely breed a feel for the environment and can push it drastically one way or another.

Well, I think there's times that we can say that. And then there's other times, at least for me, as a game player, I want very clear signage. I want to understand where I'm going. I want to not look at a mini map all the time to work out the 3D layout of an area to understand where I need to go. So if it's selling a mood or selling an emotion, then I think it's good there. But if it's too much fog, or if it's actually obscuring the way that the players can find things, then that to me is an issue.

I read a few of those comments as well. Some people are saying it was too much. Some people said, no, it's perfect. But as Todd said, each planet, each area is going to have a certain amount of density within the atmosphere for certain reasons. And what you see today doesn't necessarily mean that's it. We may come back and look and go, you know what, we need to dial that down 10% for one reason or another. So you'll see a whole mix of atmospheres, and some will be pretty dense that will be hard to see through, but maybe that's for a reason.

Yeah, but for me, I want to make sure that there's gameplay associated with that.

Absolutely. That's when the bad dudes jump out.

We haven't built it yet, but I know Chris wants to be able to swim, and maybe in the future we talk about doing an underwater vehicle if there's a lot of water prevalent in all of our areas. But I'm sure that in order to add life to that location, that's going to be one of the things that we look into, adding flora and fauna.

I like the way you just casually dropped 'we've been talking about underwater vehicles' there.

Well, we haven't. Well, we've kind of discussed it, but it really depends on how much water we have in the universe. And I think on Reddit I saw, was it a Javelin or a Bengal, sitting on the water? Somebody did concept art.

If you think about the level of detail, though, that we're putting into everything, bodies of water, you would assume further down the line they would absolutely need to have something in order to match the quality of immersion that we've put into everything else.

I believe those are general plant explorations. The idea, I think, in particular for the Hurston family, is that they have these compounds that are very lush and have these areas that don't look like the rest of the world. But it's more about: this is the family compound, and since they run the planet, they can water the area. Think of like Las Vegas and golf resorts. Basically they water the grass there, and if they didn't, it would just be dead and be just sand and die. And I think that's kind of the concept for these compounds with Hurston.

So you could argue that some of them stay within that family, but I think they could definitely be used as assets elsewhere if needed as well.

By the time all is said and done, I'd be amazed if there's a biome we haven't explored in some way, shape, or form.

Well, in the future, if you ever get Ian on, you need to have him show you the power triangle where he's worked out the different biomes, and where it goes from dirt to snow to overrun by jungle, as well as other things. So it's pretty interesting.

So the service beacon is a way to create a contract. And that contract could be 'help me, I'm being attacked,' so like a distress call, a 'mayday, mayday' kind of thing. Then there's something like refueling, or 'I want to be taken from point A to point B,' so like a taxi or Uber. Then there's like a mercenary hire, or like a bodyguard: 'hire me and protect me while I'm traveling from point A to point B,' or if I'm mining or doing something. It's a way for players to create contracts as well as transfer funds. That for me is one of the main goals. Right now, let's say you, Brian, and I went out on a mission and we did something, and I was the owner of the ship, and then I go in and I basically turn in the cargo that we got. There's no way for me to pay off the two of you guys. So from a usability standpoint, from a player standpoint, this is one of my main goals. And I think Tony and I would need to talk a little bit more about how we're going to actually do it, just because right now we're focusing on distress as the first one, but one of my main goals after we finish off the distress would be a way to actually transfer funds between players.

If you're trying to track down your ship somebody stole, you could use the service beacon as well then, right?

No, that should be... well, I guess if you want to put a bounty on somebody, then that could be.

I mean, we've talked about stun grenades. We've talked about basically taser aspects, to knock players out. So it's something that we've talked about. And right now we're working on Weapons 2.0. So basically refactoring all of the weapon system and switching over to Item 2.0, and getting everything to work the way that we feel we need it to work and get it so it's scalable. So once that's done, then we have a list of projectiles that we want to be able to create, so that we just don't have laser and distortion and ballistic. If we can get the dread hotshots or armor piercing or those types of things, those are the ways that we're pushing towards. And then non-lethal would be another venture into that. And then it's also making sure that the players actually have a stun or some sort of reaction to that. And then the other thing that we'd have to tackle is basically, as a player, if you were ever knocked out, what do you do? Because as a player, me watching somebody drag my body to their ship, that's not going to be very fun. And so is it basically, do I sit there and kind of wait? And are there ways that I can alert my friends to come and help me and save me? Or is it that at that point I give up that life and then I respawn, and then they take their bounty and get paid out?

On that topic too, an interesting thing to just point out and to highlight. Let's say we have assets done and the base design of how a non-lethal weapon X should function and look and so on. Let's say you have the asset built, the effects, the audio and all that. Well, you also need the animations associated with that. You also need then the feedback, the player feedback, and the design or the UI elements, so on and so on. There's a tremendous amount of stuff that we work on, but it doesn't get out there until it has all the parts and pieces, right? It's not enough just for us to put out one little thing and you can kind of see it and go, 'oh, look, this kind of would stun people if the animations were there.' So a lot of our work, we have to wait till those other parts and pieces come together globally, to where we can then really stand back and look at it all and play it and go, okay, cool, this is working. And that's when things get closer to release for us.

From a bounty hunter perspective, we do want to do it. It's just we haven't started yet.

You already said, Brian Chambers, development director in the Foundry 42 office in Frankfurt. But what does a development director do? I do a tremendous amount here, actually. Overall, at the highest level, it's just to keep the office functioning the way that it needs to across all the departments, making sure that we're hiring in the way that we need to, that we're communicating out with the rest of the teams and the other offices on a regular basis. I meet regularly with the rest of the execs. We discuss what's good, when we approve stuff, where we make calls, how we ramp up, where we're focusing on, how do we course correct. And then occasionally, too, I'm also thrown things based on my experience, such as animation and so on, based on the different titles I've had. They'll throw something to me and say, hey, can you help dig into this and help drive that and sort that out? So I wear a lot of hats, but at the end of the day, just making sure that the team's here and solid, has what they need, obstacles are out of the way, so we can help make this awesome game and universe.

Well, the Frankfurt office, and I'm going to kind of visually run through the makeup of people just because it's easier. So we're running and owning AI. Now, I'm going to preface all this. When I say we own something or we run it, there's other developers within those departments typically throughout any of the other three offices besides Frankfurt. Big hand in AI, that's both NPC and ship AI. We have a large environment art team now, up to I think nine environment artists, primarily working with the engine team, sorting out all the procedural planets and tech and how those ecosystems are going to look and be built and so on. We have a small team of game programmers now that are built up. Fairly large design team. I think we have 12 designers now between level design and system design, focused on a mix between working on systems that will both be within Squadron and in the PU. We own all the core engine here. So I have two senior technical directors. So the engine tech, which is a huge amount. We own all the cinematics here for Squadron 42, with Hannes Appell, our director, and a team he's built around himself. A small handful of QA. We got our lead lighting artist here for the company. A couple VFX artists. We also own the weapon work. Weapons, both FPS weapons and ship weapons. So fairly decent spread across. We don't touch ships necessarily and we don't really touch characters. And we don't do audio. So I could probably have just worked in reverse and said, these are the things we don't. We do everything but audio and characters. And ships.

Well, if we think about the universe that we're building and the level of detail and the vision ultimately that Chris has kind of set forth and kind of ingrained in everyone's head, and now the directors and leads are taking this to where we believe it should be, there is this level of detail in this expansive universe that is incredibly important to us, for numerous reasons. When it comes to animation though, to get to your point, when it comes to animation and AI, it's fairly simple and fairly easy to give an AI a brain and say, hey, you're hungry, you should go to the kitchen and eat, right? There's going to be obstacles in his way, there's going to be other AI, there's going to be new things that are there, whatever. And he needs to navigate to that place and do that thing. So it's incredibly easy to go, okay, cool, go. But you don't want them to look like AI. I don't want him to go straight and abruptly turn left and then abruptly turn right and then go straight again and so on. So we really want the nuances to where it feels realistic. And with that, then characters need to have realistic weight. If you look at just a simple thing on the footsteps and the moving and turning, and I think two ATVs ago I did a fairly in-depth one on what our lead animation programmer Ivo had been working on. When you just see those characters turning in circles in different velocities and so on, the reality is that is a lot of under-the-hood code and a tremendous amount of animation assets that get pulled together. We want characters at any velocity, at any angle, with any condition to look and feel realistic. So if two guys are walking down the hall and they're going to pass each other, they're going to move around away from each other intelligently, right? Maybe even after ranking, if you think about it, if somebody's got a higher rank, maybe he doesn't move out of the way and the other guy moves around him. Or even based off that, he has certain conditions: is he saluting? Is he saying something? Maybe they're friends as they're passing each other. So then procedurally, they're going to do something to where they greet each other. We take all this attention to detail on the animation side to really make sure that there is this perceived illusion that the world is alive. The moment you have something where somebody's not going to move properly like a human, you lose that. You lose that completely. It's incredibly cool, though. I mean, yeah, I've been an animation director in the past, but to see what the guys are doing and what they're able to pull off. Some of the stuff, I go back a year ago or so where some of the programmers were like, no, this is not possible. We shouldn't do it this way. We can't do it this way. A couple of months later, they go, oh my God, I figured it out. Here we go. I did this. This is amazing. We get our own epiphanies as we go through things in order to tackle them and take it to the next level.