Happy Hour Interview w/ Brian Chambers

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.

And for the record, I think that was awesome on how we just kind of went, bam, here you go. And not only did we put together an awesome video, but then you had Sean and Chris playing it live, and you're just like, wow. It comes down to the background and technical abilities of the guys that we have here. Marco Corbetta was the one that really is owning that technology and driving that and building it up. He's getting help from others, of course. But when we first joined, that was something that we knew was kind of on the ultimate list of what we wanted to do. If you think it all the way through, the technology that you're going to build for that is going to inform potentially how assets are created that need to live on it, how textures are created, to the point where you'll have an elaborate tool set that will allow the designers and the artists to manipulate how things are procedurally put on there, in an efficient way. So in thinking it through and understanding what impact it was going to have, Marco, in a sense, basically said, look, I need to do this now. It wasn't the highest priority at the time, but we really knew and understood what impact it had. A lot of the guys here have crazy work ethics. He took it on as a personal challenge, I would say. And next thing you know, we're standing around Hannes' desk, and we see this tiny little dot in the distance. And we start flying to it and flying and flying. And literally 10 minutes later, we're like, okay, come on, really? And then we sped up the ship a little bit and we literally flew straight onto it. And we all were like, what did we just see? What is going on here, right? And that was very rudimentary. But I think it was maybe a week or two weeks later, Pupil to Planet came out and we just said, awesome, let's show this to people now and let's show them that it's not just a little video and here is a pretty little standalone thing we did. It's actually a functioning game, it's a functioning engine. The tech is still in its preliminary stages, but it's there and it's solid. And I think Marco, not only did he prove it out, but now it's matured and designers and the whole art team's playing around with it and pushing it where it needs to go. And before you know it, it's going to be in players' hands, which we're excited about.

If I say yes, then it's no longer a secret or an Easter egg, right? It's kind of hard to answer then. But if you say no, we'd be lying. Maybe. But at this point, I think, yeah, you're definitely going to find things within these planets as they mature that are going to be awesome and somewhat random as you explore. The nature of the design and the way things are built in, you'll be able to combine multiple things together to get different outcomes and so on, and just with other players in there at the same time and doing things a certain way, it's definitely going to create some unique gameplay experiences. I think as it gets further along and matures, and knowing developers, and hundreds of planets, I'm quite confident that there's going to be some stuff that goes in that will be maybe horrific and comical, but in a good way, right? And I know the moment it goes out, how crazy, in a good way, players are. They'll find it and beat it up and exploit it and so on.

Yes, they found Benny's Henge much faster than we intended. There was a whole quest kind of line that was supposed to go and lead you to it. People were like, hey, blinky light.

And we were joking about it a couple weeks ago that that light was just maybe a little too bright. Maybe if we had just dumbed it down just a little bit.

It's like choosing between your children. I can't. And it always seems like I give the soft answer when some people are like, oh, how do you want to play the game? They're all incredibly unique. But the answer is Daymar. Could be. No, they're all incredibly unique. And when I sit here every single day, I'm fortunate where I come in and I see the guys working on stuff and iterating, iterating. And we tried to show a good chunk of that on the ATVs. But you look at each one and each one has its own mood and its own feel. And it's fun to actually see them start maturing as well, right? Some start getting some unique atmosphere and unique particles and slightly different lighting. So they start separating from each other a little bit. So each one kind of starts building its own character. So I really have no favorites.

That would be for design. It's more of a design question. I know there was talk of that, but I don't know where it's settled. I've been involved in conversations which are incredibly deep and interesting, even as far as weight and mass and how you're coming in from the atmosphere and how you're coming down and the difference between the volume you have and the weight you have and the speed that you've started at and so on. So there's been a lot of detail and discussion that's gone into that, but I'm not sure on specific gravity if they'll differ.

And of course, these are the first three moons out of hundreds of moons that we have. So even if there isn't a tremendous variation on these particular three that are all orbiting the same gas giant, as more and more come online, I think if there's 100 star systems, there's probably somewhere around 325, 350 planets.

That's right around the number that I've read a couple times across design.

And that's just planets. So then you add the moons. There's going to be plenty of variation, even if it's not in these.

Absolutely. And then think of the future ones, too, when you get some more of the alien types and some of the even further out ones, the gas planets and this and that. The differentials that we're going to have will be fairly drastic, I would imagine.

My game career that I'm interested in playing is a person who hunts for time to play the game. I plan to be a time hunter, constantly looking for five minutes, ten minutes here in my day to actually play the game. I adore the Reclaimer so much. It's been my favorite ship design that we've released, and I prefer to do things that are not what you're supposed to do. I want to start a Reclaimer Racing League. I want to try to swoop planetside and pick people up with the claw. There's going to be plenty of bounty hunters and smugglers and pirates and people doing what you're supposed to be doing. For me personally, I find much more pleasure, because I'm not a very good player, to take things and do the things I'm not supposed to with them. So I guess that's my profession.

I'm kind of the same way. And again, some people are like, oh, don't give me a soft answer, Brian. But because there is so much to do, I'm not necessarily the type that wants to invest in one. Although some people are, and that's awesome, because the world needs those people that are specializing in those things. But I want to be able to come in and for an hour play this thing and then realize, well, this is awesome. And the next month, I can't put it down. And next thing you know, I jump to another career and I play that for 20 minutes. And then I have 20 minutes free before dinner and try something else out, right? So giving the opportunity that it keeps it fresh and it keeps it unique, to me, that's ultimately what I'm looking for the most. It opens your imagination and lets you play all these different roles at any given time for any reason. But to your point, I'm going to be that guy too. I'm going to do the thing that I shouldn't do because I can. What's wrong with a little Leroy Jenkins every now and then, right? Keeps the heart strong.

Well, it's not really any secret when you look at what we're doing on procedural planets and the tool sets we have, and you think about what we've talked about on design and how we're making our design as modular as we can and having these modular pieces, right? So the ultimate goal, or at least a portion of the goal, is in a sense to be able to combine those two with the tool set that we have to where we can lay out a city fairly quick. And imagine laying it out with base geometry within these modular set pieces. But then maybe on top there's, rough numbers, 10 to 20 percent of bespoke items that are around there that help break it up. So yeah, that's ultimately where we're going with it. And it's not even because we think it would be cool or like, oh, this is what we want to do. We have to do it that way if we're going to have 300-plus planets. And if these things are going to be populated in a way that is going to promote people to go and explore and play and shoot and mine and craft and blah, blah, blah, we need the ability to quickly generate these cities on the terrain and also to quickly give them their unique flavor. Progress is going good. Designers are working every day. I think some of the first that's going on that is in its preliminary stages was reworking Levski and everything onto the proper procedural moon that we just showed some images of in ATV. So the design team here looking at the modular pieces, working with the environment artists here, looking at Levski, boom, and that's exactly what they did. Put the parts and pieces together, take another 15, 20 percent of bespoke items on top of it, and all of a sudden it feels and looks like it lives there and it belongs there, which is pretty cool.

There's a portion of it that's obviously the same. We're making a game, we have disciplines, we're organized, we're driving things, we have schedules. There's also a tremendous amount that is incredibly unique. I've been doing this for over 20 years, and I am continuously amazed and surprised at the support from backers and fans and viewers. I do stuff like this on a much more regular basis than you would with any other type of game. And sometimes I feel silly repeating myself. However, I've said in the past that typically we're locked in a room or our building for six months or a year or 18 months, sometimes three years. And the only visibility we have out to the public of what we're working on is we put out a trailer for a show or you do a demo at SIGGRAPH or a Gamescom or an E3 or something. For us, we are so public and so open with what we do. It's amazing. And the feedback you get from the work that you do on a daily basis honestly helps feed the team and keep the team pumped and alive, which is awesome. The interaction with the backers and the fans, I truly, when I come to work every day, I see the backers as our publisher. That's how I personally view it. So when I'm sharing material, it is me updating, hey, publisher, look, this is what we've done so far, right? When people ask questions, we answer as much as we can and so on. But it's an awesome experience. It's an incredibly ambitious game, but we have a world-class team. I mean, we're over 400 people now, right? We're up to 72 now here in Frankfurt. And we've handpicked each individual person that has a certain skill set and honestly, truly enjoys the genre of game that we're making and is hyped about it. So not only are they world-class in what they do for their specific discipline, but they believe in this project wholeheartedly and they can't wait to get it to a point where it's out to the public and getting that reaction.

I guess the question honestly then would be, what is the max elevation? As far as procedurally and what we can pull off, there isn't necessarily one. So I think we would probably base it off of somewhat realistic values. So could there be an Everest? Absolutely, right? We're not confined, if you think about it, obviously, to the planet's surface for this game and the universe. You see something way up there on the top of Mount Everest, and it's not going to take you a week to climb up. You're going to hop in your ship and go up there.

Assuming you're not stranded surface-side.

Yeah, but think about that. If you are stranded, that could be pretty cool: a week of gameplay to actually get to the top. So there hasn't been a tremendous amount of things that I've looked through on the design side in regards to elevation, but knowing the programmers and the art team, I'm sure there are certain limitations they've given it right now, but we could also easily override those limitations in a heartbeat.

I think it's that we have a vision and that we're putting the energy and the attention, level of detail into it in order to get it 100% where it needs to be, right? That usually takes more time. And we put the pressure on ourselves in order to get things done as quickly and as efficiently as possible. But in that process though, we also are not cutting corners, as we talked about earlier, when you talk about getting all this detail on both the code side and the tech art side and how things are rigged and how assets are generated on the animation, to really get the most fluid. To have a company be able to support those disciplines to work together towards that common goal is incredibly cool. The pressure is on us to get it done, but the pressure is not on for us to cut corners, in a sense. I think just having that support and knowing the level of fidelity that we're aiming for and that we're slowly achieving each day, to me that's the most exciting, because you could then apply that to anything as far as movement within the game once that base core tech is solid.

No. Usually with a lot of things that you have within games, you'll focus on an area to use as a testbed to prove out things, right? So if you think about a mess hall and you think, okay, I want guys just to be able to navigate the room and not bump into a table, get in and out of the door, cool. Okay, now I want somebody to sit, and now they sit properly and it looks nice. Now once they're in that sit position, I want them to eat. And now I want them to eat so it looks good. And then I want them to talk to the guy across the table. And now I want them to put their tray away. So there's so many things within the usable system on design, on AI and how characters are moving, on the AI brain and how they're interacting and showing their behaviors, that for us that was just a testbed. And I don't even know if anybody consciously said, okay, the mess hall will be the testbed. I think the cafeteria or mess hall had progressed a certain amount and somebody just started using it and we went, awesome, this makes sense because we can test out so many things in there. But I'm laughing because I totally agree. So many times I walk by the system designers and I'm like, oh, hey, he's drinking out of a different cup now.

I think it was cool. There was a good turnout of people. Met a lot of new people for the first time. They had a whole dogfighting competition and a trophy that somebody had made that was way cool, made out of wood. It was awesome. We did a panel on design. It was primarily all of the Foundry 42 UK guys and then me. I was kind of the odd man out, but it was awesome. Good people, good time. Again, talking about the uniqueness of this project, to have the community organize events like that and then invite you, it's way cool. You walk in there and people are like, oh, I dig what you do. Again, it pumps you up. You're excited about it. The sense of community that you feel as well when you're at these events. People are coming on their day off, right? On their free time to come together and talk shop. They're coming with similar interests in a genre of gaming or space or a combination of both and so on. Complete strangers hitting it off and geeking out over stuff. It's incredibly cool to be part of.

No, but with the level of detail that we're putting into physics, we know that they would be tunable to be able to handle that. That would also, though, mean other properties, right? Do you have some buoyancy properties and so on? I know we'll have water. I know that you will be able to go into the water, but the extent that it goes beyond there, I honestly don't know how much it's been designed yet. If it has been designed, it is just that. It's just on paper, which I haven't looked at.

At this moment, it's not necessary for Cellin, Yela and Daymar.

Yeah, it's step by step, and we're building up on all these things. And the moment we get to something where we go, okay, we've got to sort this out, it's kind of all hands on deck from that discipline until we sort it out, make those calls, the appropriate people sign off, and there we go.