Guillaume Voghel

Well, how can we generate a lot of environments quickly? For example, the first mandate we checked was for the space station. So we want to create a lot of them. But if it takes you one month to do a space station because you assemble the different rooms manually, it will take years and years to do all the space stations for all the star systems. So what we are doing: we already have a tool, the procedural layout tool, that is a way to stitch those rooms together. You give some rules, you want the kitchen next to the bedroom, something like that, and it can generate different layouts. But the problem with that at some point was that it didn't give enough control to the user to define exactly what you wanted. And so we are designing a new way to do this procedural approach so that we can assemble those bricks more quickly and easily, and so that every artist can say, okay, I want that there and specifically that there, giving different rules, and so that we can generate a lot of them that are interesting and beautiful and fit with the fantasy of the game. And so for that we are integrating Houdini, which is a software used for procedural, into the editor, so that it can communicate between the two: the editor you normally use to create the levels, and this tool that is made for using those Lego bricks and making rules to assemble them. So it's mostly how can we do that.

One super interesting aspect to what the guys are doing is, in other companies, when you have the pressure of being on a two-year project or a three-year project, there's a lot of pressure to do tech and tools super quickly. And developing this type of idea that the guys are putting together, which essentially took a good, and correct me if I'm wrong, six to eight months of actually really thinking about it, looking at the architecture of the project and seeing how you guys can implement this, is not usually a luxury that we have on a project. So having CIG give the team the time to develop and think about a solution that can scale throughout the years was a godsend, essentially.

You've got to remember that one of the missions for the studio is to be able to create star systems. You can't create a star system by hand. The mission that Benjamin, Guillaume, and the rest of the procedural team have is basically to assist all these nice artists and level designers so that they can make more of the good stuff, in a way that keeps gameplay interesting and fun. And one of the things, you guys are a bit modest in your approach, is that it's also in the small things. Yeah, you can stitch a space station, and it's really great, but it's also in the small things. Let's say a small cable run or placing objects and stuff like that, and the ability to make that procedural so that every step is faster.

Yeah, because we think big at first with procedural, like planets and all that. But when we see our environment artists work, like if you see the books behind me, if you want to place them by hand in a level, you will have to place them one by one. You lose a lot of time, when you can say, okay, fill this shelf with books. And that's the type of tool we can do also with procedural. So we try to tackle the big stuff and also the small stuff to help them fill the world with interesting stuff.

So that Jason and Rainer don't have to spend all day placing Lego bricks.

Yeah, we can focus on the important stuff.

Yeah, placing books in a bookshelf is not always the funnest part of the day. So any procedural tools to speed things up and get into the more important stuff. And as I said earlier, the scope of this game is so massive. It's tools that we need to help us create content at a quicker pace.

I think we're doing really good. Essentially, what we want to create is a team that's somewhat autonomous but not working as a lone wolf inside the company. So we are connected with other teams. We have reviews with other teams. And just this morning, we had a biweekly art review in which all the teams were showing absolutely amazing content. But when we work on the day-to-day, that's when we want to have more proximity with the team so that, for example, when the people in the UK are leaving work, if we have questions, it's much more simple if we have someone here to answer them. So I think so far, the combination between level design and environment art was absolutely successful. Then adding the tools team, who not only are helping us sometimes to understand things better, but also doing quality of life improvements for the artists and the designers, was also super helpful. And it's essentially our base of growth, where we want to grow the entire studio by adding teams that are relevant to each other so that we support each other even more in that area. And to be honest, when we first joined one year ago, we thought it would be quicker to ramp up and, let's say, do a star system. And that was probably very naive of us. Now we see the absolutely gigantic amount of work a star system takes to develop. So that's in terms of the scope, but in terms of the team we have assembled, the luck we had of having so many talented people... the 37 people that we signed and are working with us are top, top, top in their craft. So in terms of creating an autonomous team that can work together, we're so, so lucky.

We're autonomous, but it's important to know that we still ask for a lot of help from other teams in CIG, in Europe and everywhere. In no way could we have ever shipped hospitals or even anything without the help of the level design team in Europe, and everybody from VFX artists to environment teams to lighting artists everywhere. I think on a daily basis we chat with the level design team in Europe, and all the time we're asking, what's this bug? How do I fix this? Because they have years and years of experience under their belt. So for them, the problem resolution is five times quicker than it is for us, because they've seen all these bugs 100 times and we're seeing them for the first time and we're a little bit clueless. So we try to be autonomous, but at the same time, the support we're getting from every other team in CIG is what's helping us ship these things.

The people were so welcoming. It was pretty amazing to see that. And to echo on your question, Jared, I think we're doing great environment-wise. It's been super nice. I think that the ramp-up's been great. On the gameplay side, we're still looking for more hires to be able to totally dive into complete gameplay loops. Though on the design side, like Neno was talking about, we're moving forward with puzzles and what we're able to action today. I feel like we still have ways to go to dive fully into new gameplay features, but we know which ones we're looking at. I can't talk about that. And as Guillaume was saying, the strategy is going to be to have a team that can complement the group here to basically iterate together gameplay, level design, design tools, art, concept, everything into one giant loop.

[These] are all things that are in the works, but again, as we discussed earlier, the game development side of Turbulent has been on for a year. Anyone who has worked in this industry knows that a year is nothing; it's a very short amount of time. So just to have been able to give to the community what we have so far, like the hospitals, and put all these processes in place, that takes time. It's insane the amount of stuff we have achieved in such a short time. And Guillaume can correct me, but about half of that year was just ramping up and finding the right people for the job. So all in all, it's six months of development. So it's very inspiring what we're able to achieve with these amazing talents across the board.

And going back to the gameplay side that Ben mentioned, can we do a shameless plug? If one of you is a lead gameplay programmer, drop us a line. We're looking for one. We've got some really great topics for you. Contact us and we'll talk.