The developers cover hangar module work (fog, dust, audio), engine types replacing max class, ship destruction in CryEngine, cargo recovery by boarding, jump point access, carrier combat, mines and limited ship production. An environment artist describes his career path.
We're putting fog in the hangar. Stuff in the air, dirt, particles. We're just showing them a few different ways of going about it. We were playing with the time of day, but we're thinking we might try a different way of doing it.
Sounds like a pretty good plan. I like it. Yes, Martin Galway is going to be very busy making lots and lots of different sounds.
That's a good point. We've actually added some more audio people too to that process because there's a lot to do. Not just the sounds for engines like they're talking about here, but also for the hangar, because that's essentially a small release. So that's coming up. We've got a lot to do.
We've talked about mines. The only concern with mines is the potential for them being used in griefing ways. So we have to be careful about them, but I'm guessing we'll probably come up with mines at some point.
Because, throw a bunch of mines in front of a jump point just to mess with the next guy who comes through.
Yeah, but the thing is, when you come through a jump point, you're not going to exit the same location every time.
I like mines personally.
I like mines too. But it's just going to matter how we handle it. And when you have something like mines, there probably should be a counter to the mines.
Yes, maybe a probe. Of course, the real genius we know is Chris, and he'll be making that call.
Possibly, I guess, is the answer for that right now.
The auto industry fluctuates in their production too. Things are going to shift up and down. We're never going to just take them away entirely. We are going to keep enough control over parts of the economy that we can guarantee a supply of some ships. But it can fluctuate up and down based on what players do.
And we are limiting some ships, though.
Yeah, absolutely. It's not going to be just get as many ships as you want. There are some ships that are limited.
TL;DRThey won't announce prices now, but say people will be told beforehand through a marketing-planned announcement, and admit they are still learning after the Corvette sale timing missed sleeping viewers.
So the question, though: will we tell them when we're going to be announcing a big ship or when it's going to be for sale, stuff like that?
No, we won't tell them right now. But we'll tell them beforehand. We'll be giving an announcement. And Sandy kind of controls all that anyway. She's the one putting the marketing plan together. And so we'll get the marching orders and we'll make sure that people get word.
To be fair, we are sort of learning as we go. There's a lot of new steps that we're doing here. And when we had the livestream, I think we sold some Corvettes. And they were at a certain time period where some people were sleeping and not part of the livestream. And we wanted it to be part of the livestream. But at the same time, we realized that, hey, maybe if we had announced or put that schedule out beforehand, they'd have been in on that. So it's a process. And again, this is a chance where the feedback from you helps make us better.
TL;DRThe restrictive max class stat was dropped, so there are now more engine types and sizes fitting different ships, with terminology to be clarified on the website.
I can give you a little more detail on that. So what we used to have was the max class stat. That was on the old, old ships document, which you may have noticed disappeared. What we've done now is Chris looked at that and said, well, that's too restrictive. It doesn't give us enough range for upgrades. And so we took that out and we said, okay, you're right, we looked at it, that's not going to work. So we took it out of the way and made it so things could get better. So now there are more types of engines, which actually that terminology has turned about too. So we'll clarify that on the website. And there are a bunch of different types and different sizes fit in different ships.
Now, this is typical also of the development process. And this is something that sometimes we get dinged a little bit for, because we change as we move along the pipeline, or as we move further into the game we find something that we initially thought of doesn't necessarily work as well as we thought. And so we have to make changes and adjustments all along the way. So you guys at least will be there as part of that process and hopefully you'll understand why we make the changes. We'll try to explain it when we do it and you'll like them.
Some things that look good on paper don't look right when you finally get them into practice. But the other thing, a little trivia: the max class, that came from Privateer. That's where Ben got it. We have a lot more ships than Privateer does and a lot more customization.
And that's going to be fun. We're kind of the spiritual successor to Privateer slash Freelancer slash nth level Star Citizen.
Nah. We'll do everything in our power to prevent that. It's just not helpful to anyone. It's not fun for anyone except, well, the people blocking the jump point. But generally that means 99% of the people suffer for the 1% who are having a good time making them suffer.
And there'll be ways to, yeah, locking that down is not going to work.
We have [given it some thought]. We've talked it over a little bit, and we're still fiddling with it a little bit, turning the dial back and forth. But what we'll probably end up doing is either using instancing to make the jump point entrances unique or something along those lines. We'll figure it out as we go.
And this is another good point. This will be something they'll be able to help us figure out. Because once we put all these different modules out, they'll be playing it and giving us feedback, and we'll be adjusting based on everybody's feedback. We're very fluid. We're very agile.
Board! You board the ship. Push that cargo out of there. You could blow it up, but can't guarantee all the cargo survives in that case.
But when some ships blow up, you will be able to get cargo there, too.
Some of it may survive, but certainly not everything survives.
A lot of it is just little artistic tricks that you do: put space dust out there so you see something moving past. Because space doesn't give you a lot of reference points that are close by. To feel speed, all the Wing Commanders have done it. There's always been space dust.
It's kind of like if you've ever been in the car as a little kid and you're looking out at the moon and you're driving, you drive 50 miles and it looks like the moon is just following you and it's not really moving anywhere, although you're moving. So it's kind of like that. The stars are so far away that you're not really going to notice a lot of that moving. But space dust, however, will give you that instantaneous feedback which we are required to give you. So that will happen.
If you think about World War II, the carriers were way over there and way over there, and then they send their planes after the other carrier, and in our case it would be fighters and bombers, but they don't actually get next to each other and punch.
Right, that's like the Pacific battles of World War II, the Japanese-US fleet carrier battles. And we're still talking a lot about how we're going to do all the big fleet battles and everything, but I don't imagine you're going to ever see two carriers next to each other. Now, as to them getting destroyed, yeah, it probably could happen. We'll see. You're just going to have to wait and play the game to find that out.
Indeed, CryEngine does allow that. In fact, our ships can break apart entirely. We break them into a bunch of little pieces, and you can blow a wing off of a Hornet, for instance.
That's really cool. That should be really fun to play.
Being an environment artist, I build everything from the 3D models, I do texturing, lighting, and then I put it all together and actually make the world itself.
TL;DRPeterson started in QA about seven years ago as a graphics-focused compatibility tester, aiming to move into art, and recommends QA as a way into the industry.
I got my foot in the door through QA, which was about seven years ago. I was working in the compatibility lab as a graphics guy. If there was something wrong with the game, I could see it and be like, okay, the normal map's flipped or the spec map's not working, things like that. And then I wanted to eventually transition over to an art role. So getting my foot in the door kind of let me learn about the business from the ground up. And what's great about that is when I'm making art for games, I pay attention to a lot of things like, okay, does this complement the design? Does this complement the play space? Would my artwork run in budget for this hardware that I'm developing for? That's one of the great things about coming in through QA. If anybody's out there trying to get their foot in the door to the game industry in general, I think QA is a great way to go.
TL;DRPeterson found Star Citizen through Chris Roberts' Reddit AMA while in a dental waiting room, emailed his portfolio though no environment artist role was advertised, and was invited in.
Actually, I found out about Star Citizen... I was learning the CryEngine myself, and I was wanting to go more of the indie route. And I was actually at the dental office, in the waiting room, and I was reading this AMA on Reddit, and it was like, I'm Chris Roberts, I did Wing Commander, and I was just like, oh, this might be interesting. So I clicked on the link, and I started reading it. And everything that Chris was saying was pretty much aligning with what I'd want to do. He was using the CryEngine, he was doing a Kickstarter fund, he was doing sci-fi, and I love the fidelity of all the graphics and everything he was using. He was bringing in the Oculus Rift and everything else. And I was thinking to myself, yeah, this is great, this is exactly what I want to do. So I found the website and they're like, if you want to work at Cloud Imperium Games, email us here. They weren't really looking for an environment artist or anything, but I emailed them, showed my portfolio, and they were like, we love your work, come on down. So here I am.
I am a huge fan. Battlestar Galactica is probably one of my favorite TV shows. Yeah, I am a huge sci-fi fan as well. Let's see, Star Wars, Star Trek.
I played Wing Commander 3, and it's been a while since that, but I remember I loved that game. It's been a long time since I've played it, but I just have fond memories of it. It had great gameplay, and it also had a great storyline, and I just love the cast of actors. I mean, Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, even Biff from Back to the Future, Tom Wilson was in it. Great game. I just love that game. I have fond memories of it, so getting to work here is great, because getting to work with Chris Roberts and getting to bring that magic back into Star Citizen, I just can't wait.
It's about time, isn't it?
Yes, it is about time.
I've been at Cloud Imperium for about two months now. And for the past month, I've been out here in Austin. About 25 days, roughly. Been working those full 25 days, 14 hours a day.
I am working on the hangar module.
In fact, everybody's working on the hangar module. It's all heads down here. And how are they looking?
They're looking good. We got the guys from Crytek out here. They're consulting us, getting everything running well.
That's fantastic news. And that's a big help. The CryEngine people, and that's one of the reasons we chose it, is that they are very supportive of us.
Through and throughout, man. Just been helping us with everything. Technical questions, everything being answered. It's been great.
Well, yeah, a technical environment artist. It goes hand in hand. You have to be technical in the games industry as an artist. You have to.
TL;DRPeterson's first industry job was as a storyboard artist for a San Antonio production company before moving to 3D graphics and then QA at NCSoft.
My first job in the industry, I used to work in television and film. I was working at some production companies in San Antonio, Texas. I was working with, I don't know if you remember that guy, Jackie Earle Haley. He was in The Bad News Bears. He was Rorschach in Watchmen. He had a production company in San Antonio and I used to work for him. I was a storyboard artist. And then I transitioned over to 3D graphics after that. And then when Jackie got bigger into acting and everything, I decided to just jump into games because that's where my true passion lied. And then I got a job at NCSoft about seven years ago and I was working in QA, which was a good foot-in-the-door kind of job, which is also great because I learned the business from the ground up.
A lot of us got our start in QA. And, to be fair, we're all in QA anyway. Even though you start there, everybody QAs and goes forward.
Yeah, that was very brief. I was in the news for like two weeks. I used to do the flying graphics. It was really cutthroat. You'd walk in and they'd be like, do this graphic by six. If you didn't get it done by six, you're usually axed. It was too intense for me. And then I started getting into just television commercials.
TL;DRPeterson says his hobby is modding and helping others improve their 3D and CryEngine skills, and offers advice once he sets up a forum page, though first he must finish the hangar.
Well, really, I do this as a hobby as well. I'm usually on modding sites. I get on Polycount, Mod Database. I work on some mods in my spare time. I help people out who are trying to get their skills upgraded.
So if they had some questions about some of that stuff in Star Citizen, they could go to you asking.
Yeah, if you guys are making ships or anything and you want some of my advice, or you're making environments or something like that, get on the site. Get on my blog when I set up my forum page. I don't have it set up yet, but when I do, just get on there, ask any questions you have, anything about 3D Studio Max, the CryEngine, I'll help you out.
We're not going to put him up on there yet for a while because we need him to finish the hangar.