Star Citizen: Calling All Devs - Bugs, Boids and Beasts

Todd Papy · Design

So we break it down into three different types. There would be insects or just VFX that play around trees or more things to give it life in that area. Then there would be boids, which are small creatures like a frog or a snake or a rat, whatever we'd consider to be appropriate for our universe.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Like those floating things we saw at CitizenCon a couple years ago.

Todd Papy · Design

Yeah, just like what we had in Lorville. And then from there, there would be much bigger creatures, basically herds or apex predators or sandworms kind of thing.

Todd Papy · Design

So we're going to be working on the Space Cow just to work out the new rig, and obviously it's a four-legged creature. So from there, we're just working on a new rig and basically seeing how that will work, and any sort of alignment issues that we might have on the planet versus IK, so on and so forth. And then also building usables associated with it, so its drinking, its water holes or whatever its 24-hour schedule dictates. And then from there, the next big one would be Space Whale that we'll look into.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

So you're confirming Space Whales? You ready to tell us where those will appear?

Todd Papy · Design

In Crusader. As far as I know, they are native to Crusader.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

No, that's the end lore name. It's just forever now going to be known as Space Cow from here to perpetuity. No, we definitely jumped on that one very, very quickly to make sure that it was not known as Space Cow, because those things tend to stick, obviously. But yeah, so we're calling it the Kazi Grazer.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Kazi?

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Kazi, yeah, named after the region on Terra where basically it originated. And yeah, so it's basically a pack herd animal type thing. I can read you the description if you want. These large warm-blooded herd animals were originally discovered on the vast plains of Kazi on Terra, most notable for their unusual method of carrying their young. The Kazi Grazer has become one of the standard seed animals and can be commonly found on most terraformed planets in the UEE. Aside from using their eggs for cooking, the grazers are also used for their meat and, in more remote sections of space, tanning their skins for heavy winter clothes.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Yeah, I mean, it was one of the weird things that we were trying to bake into the terraforming thing to save us some trouble in the long run. Obviously we had the Garron II incident that kicked off the downfall of the Messers, but the idea being that terraforming wipes out all the life on the planet, and so they reseed it once they're done with it. In the hopes that basically that would mean that we didn't have to come up with entirely unique biomes for every single planet in the game. We have naturally occurring ones, which would be like Terra; it's naturally occurring, we didn't terraform it, so it could have its own animals. But these animals would be migrating around the universe as people are settling on them. They would terraform a planet and they would have to populate it, so they would bring in space cows and stuff like that. So we could basically reuse assets and have a smaller panoply of animals and plants to work with. So that was sort of the idea with it.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Yeah, I'll save that. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but just say that they have an interesting way of transporting their young.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Yeah, apparently that's the thing. No, we don't have a name for them yet. We're actually still waiting on seeing them, I think, before we dive into it. But yeah, the idea is that they are going to be indigenous to Crusader, and not at-launch indigenous, but down-the-road indigenous. They sort of exist within the clouds in the deep, highly dense parts of the planet, but will basically breach every so often. So they'll come up to the surface and hopefully get to the point where players can actually see them. One of the things we're talking about, and I really hope we can pull it off, because we've been talking about this idea about tour guides, because obviously tourism factors very heavily into Orison. But the idea that there could be basically whale tours, space whale tours, where they basically go out and look for breaching space whales. And also, with a lot of the harvestable stuff that the PU is starting to implement now with plants and materials and stuff like that, part of the fun with these things, aside from coming up with the name and the history itself, is figuring out how we can incorporate them into gameplay. Is there stuff that you can collect off of them? That's what I talked about with the Kazi Grazer. You can harvest their eggs or harvest their skin, stuff like that. But are there gameplay opportunities for the Space Whale? Getting barnacles off of it, stuff like that, to make it more fun and give players an opportunity to get really up close to these things.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I was afraid you were going for whaling there for a second. But no, you're talking about being able to land on them and maybe scrape collectible stuff off of their surface.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

The idea that they're going under the dense parts and they come up and they brought stuff with them. It's a race against time to harvest stuff off of them if you can.

Chance Rowe · Character Art Director

Great question. Obviously, when you're making humans, you know what they're supposed to look like, right? And clearly that's a pretty straightforward process of making them look as photorealistic as we can. We have actors to go on and stuff. Now, once you start talking about creatures, it's kind of a wide open thing, right? Obviously we're not on Earth, so they could be really weird looking. Nobody knows what these things might look like. But one of the challenges, though, is that you want some ability for the player to understand what they might do. And so that's kind of why you start with archetypes of things you might think of on Earth, whether it be a cow or a bear, and not necessarily just in visuals, but also in behaviors. And so if I see something as a player, I'm wondering, is that thing going to eat me or am I okay to walk by it? And that's where we really have to start. And you just got to keep that balance, because we don't want to make something too Earth-like. It's just going to be a little on the boring side. But I think it's something that many artists love to get into, making creatures, because the nice thing is you've got so much freedom. What does a space cow look like? I don't know. I've never seen one before. So go ahead and make it something cool. So really, it's the fun for us. Most of the artists are very, very excited to get more creatures into the universe. And just the idea of being able to land on a moon or a planet and it'd be teeming with life. That's a very exciting thing we haven't got to see yet. And me personally, that's one of the things that I can't wait to get into.

Chance Rowe · Character Art Director

Yeah, that one's a little earlier on than a space cow, just an initial concept phase. But that's a very exciting one in that it is much more different than a cow. What's a space whale? What would something like that be? Something this massive that would be in a gas giant like this? That's many, many considerations for us to go over. Even just from a technical side, how do we get something like that to be in the world where we can get all the way up close to the thing and it's got all the detail on and everything? So that's a much bigger discussion. Very, very exciting thing to imagine going into. But early days on that, we're just in the concept phase, so we'll definitely have more in the future to show that's a little more towards something that you might actually see in-game.

Chance Rowe · Character Art Director

I know exactly what's next. And these groups of animals are getting much more dangerous, I can tell you that. But they are already being concepted as we speak. So very exciting stuff. Definitely our worlds are going to get a little more dangerous. I can say that.