Adam Wieser and Omar Aweidah discuss the character builder, female character models, NPC variety, and clothing styles. They also cover lore topics: alien languages, the Galactapedia, the UEE election polls, supplying local groups, and possible novels.
TL;DRCharacters will reuse some scanned heads at first, but varied clothing, hair, eye colour and voices should avoid a clone look, and face customization is a goal not yet worked out.
So it's a great question, and then ChadTheGeek was talking about the procedural generation for characters.So really how the characters work is the fact that we have a set of scanned actors and that every head that we get or every person that we get requires quite a bit of work. So that's something that will continuously build. So as we might release 10, 12, 15, whatever that will always grow. So maybe in a few years that pool of characters to pull from will be larger. So I think in the very beginning we're obviously going to have to reuse assets because we don't have necessarily a character, if there's going to be a giant city of a thousand people, that would be a thousand unique heads. So there will definitely be some physical assets being reused.But in the sense of "Will they look like clones?" I think the variety of clothing that we have, and the colour and the style, and then the hairstyles that go on top of that, and then the eye colour, and then the voices: I think when that's all put together to create a series of characters ... and a lot with the manufacturers that you guys have developed and what kind of clothes people wear in certain locations: all that kind of stuff. I don't feel, I don't ... well I'm pretty confident that it will not feel like this person over here is just that person over there with a different shirt. I think that it's going to look much more different than that.So, no I don't think there's going to be clones. And on top of that we're looking into some technology that we could use, and some techniques, that we would be able to actually customise their faces: like the shape of it. And that's also something that's very difficult to do but that is a goal we're shooting for is like an actual ... instead of picking a head or picking a person or a character you would be customising that and building it for yourself, for your experience. But that is something that's growing that we may introduce over a period of time but as of right now we're still trying to figure out how we want to do that and the actual control of that.So procedural generation maybe we could write some code or some code will be written to populate the planets and take assets that are properly categorized in the right folders and mix and matched together. But as of right now we have enough people where we can create those assets by hand and place them because it's actually really quick with the the new Item Port system that people are working on. It's going to not be a ... it's not a giant task to populating the world with unique characters.
And that all sounds great because from a lore perspective, from a strictly lore perspective, clones are going to be a "no go" in the game just because ... so it would be really great have that integrated and to have the clothing and other ways of being able to make it feel like very ... a very diverse landing zone or location that you are visiting. And the clone thing is simply just ... it's not in the realm of the kind of universe that Chris wants to create. He wants to keep things ... again realistic but they also need to be fun. It's a ... he thinks it's a little bit more interesting when it's more like players or the story's humans on humans and then the alien race is there. Otherwise if we had clones that were so ... such perfect replicants of ourselves why would we be fighting the Vanduul when we could just make an army of clones and send them off to go fight our wars.
TL;DRMany clothing styles tied to regions are planned, and they'd like NPCs to react to how you dress, though the speakers aren't sure how that will work.
So to loop back into that. Yeah we've actually already started to break down from a lore perspective many different varieties of clothes. I'm sure you've heard of this mentioned before, stuff like Earth blue collar, Tera fashion casual, Frontier fashion, stuff like that. So we have all these different companies and all these different kinds of looks that we'll be able to give characters in certain areas. So you'll be able to be walking around Tera and see people in very kind of sleek and futuristic clothes with very clean simple lines and then right next to them you may see somebody in a leather duster with kind of like boots and straps and stuff like that, which would definitely fall into more of the Frontier fashion type category. So I think that'll be a way to help the different landing zones, the place you visit, feel more even more diverse just based on the clothes, the wear on that clothes and everything like that as you were mentioning before.Now when it comes to the mission system, from what I believe and again I have to caveat this because I'm not 100 percent sure on this... We would like the way you present yourself as an outer way to be something NPC's can respond to. If they don't like the fact that you walk into their bar in like this sharp three piece suit, that bartender may not give you a certain mission, even if you may be a criminal or do some pirate activities, just based on the look of you, they may not be able to do that and I know one of the goals is to make it so NPC's aren't necessarily omniscient as to all your actions and that's one of the ways to do that is providing a variety of clothing and clothing styles and then that becomes a very simple way that you're telling the world how you want that world to respond back to you.
That's a really good point. I think from a design perspective I really can't, again from a game design perspective, I don't know exactly how that works, but what we are doing is we are planning for some of that kind of different styles of the jackets, trench coats, that kind of thing and also make sure that they match so you don't just look ridiculous because then everyone... it's gonna be like Christmas hats and green slippers and stuff, so we do really try to stay within the manufacture and find a nice style for that manufacture and then make sure that we provide a colour palette that works really with that and where that is. How the NPC's interactive with that or the AI interact with that, I really don't know as of right now, but I mean you guys are looking into it as well as some of the game designs.
Yeah a lot of these things, we set this in place so the designers can pick it up and run with it, but for us to being able to be so specific will help that and give it that kind of give that diversity.
TL;DRThe team is still working out the best way to bring existing male character assets to female characters, sharing pieces where possible, so females will follow once a method works rather than being rushed.
Well, this has been a quite an interesting topic, because what we're trying to do we're obviously going to make female characters, but the hardest part right now is kinda figure out what is the best way to take all of these assets that we are doing for all the males and then bring them down to females. Can we move a low poly geometry back around the female characters and will that suffice or do we need to have a resculpt of everything in like, there's just so, so much we need to create.So, what we're essentially trying to do is what is the best use of techniques that we can use to address the problem. The problem is clothing all of these females. We can go in one way, which is like manpower and actually go in, sculpt all the variations of clothes, which we might have to do, and then there's other things, "Well maybe they can share boots?" and then we're going through and there's so many pieces that were like, "Okay well we can share hats. We can scale the hats down. Alright, now what about hair? What about this? What about that?" and then we find a way to really nail down the male and then find out all the parts that comprise a male character, which we already have, then we could use that immediately and go and say, "So this worked for this character, now let's go to the female character."So it's not necessarily the fact that like oh we're not making female characters. It's just a fact of well, once we find a way that works and this like... is 100% the way we want to go. Then it'll trickle down to every other character in the entire game even alien races talking about armor classes you know and this kind of stuff, 'cause we're all still figuring out what's the best way performance-wise. We have to figure out how all these people are going to share these things. How many gigs is the game going to be. These kinds of things that we're taking into consideration and the more things that we can share, the better.So, really it's just the fact of, we're looking into the best way to make the females use the most out of what we've already made and bring them to you in the best way possible, rather than just throwing something together and sculpting it and being like, "Here she is" and she fits awkwardly in like a male's clothing. You know?
Yeah, you know I, can't really speak to, the tech behind the female character, but I have seen some of the female clothes in engine. You know, just kind of hanging up the, on the fake racks or on the fake mannequins and stuff like that. And the female clothes look awesome.
They look really, really good. Like the, whoever put that together and did all of that work it looks, it looks really, really fantastic. So it's, it'll be exciting to get those integrated into the game, because there's already been a lot of care, a lot of thought put into that. So, yeah. Once, those hurdles are over there ... there's already a bunch of stuff that's, there and ready, to be populated and help make the world even look better than it is.
Yeah, it's really, it's really important to get those, to get those things down. I mean 'cause really it's like there's, there's one guy right? There's the bald white dude.
That's what our character is, bald white male, but we have a variety of characters. What we want to do is we want to find out, "Okay here are the costumes" and then with man hours we have to work on this kind of head, we fix this, we find out, "Okay well maybe we need to tweak this in the texture maps and this kind of stuff". So then all of a sudden instead of getting like one head that you can choose from a week, why don't we just implement ten so you have a variety and when we introduce those ten why don't we also introduce the female at this time. So it's just, a tech and time thing. I mean there's not I don't even try to make a raceAW: Slow and steady, just yeah, just slow and steady.
TL;DRThe poll results are not tied to a specific vote outcome, but the team says it does take player votes into consideration and some things have been adjusted because of them.
Now for those, I know not everyone stays up to date with the lore but this past, recent Tuesday May 3, is the official election day in the UEE and the weeks and months leading up to that we've been kind of running a snippet of a campaign that was occurring in the Elysium system, where Suj Kossi who it was the first Tavarian to ever seriously run for a senate position in the UEE. So , we were kind of tracking that over the past few months, dropping hints about it and over the past month we've kind of gone pretty hard on showing everyone the ins and outs of that race and the different candidates in it.That includes a poll which was I think a few weeks prior, it was just supposed to... it was written in kind of like this is a poll you would normally send to kind of citizens of a world and asking them their thoughts on a wide variety of questions. Many of you did vote in that and to be quite honest, much like the poll we did on the Polo Initiative a few months ago, we did absolutely take into consideration the way everyone voted and it's something we plan to continue to do and hope to continue to do.We love the participation that you guys give in your responses or in the kind of like role playing that sometimes occurs on the forums or even in the comment thread of the post. So yeah, it's not just something we're doing for the sake of doing it, we're actually looking at how you respond we're taking that into consideration and I know some things have even adjusted because of the way you have voted. Sometimes we have ideas of where we want to take something but we see how you vote and we're like, 'huh, that's interesting to see people concerned about this or kind of focused on that or arguing for this'.It's definitely something we like to do and it's definitely something we want to more because anytime we can get you coming in and, you know, being a part of this world with us, it just makes it a better and richer environment for us to create in. So, it's pretty cool and lot of fun to do.
That's the best part is like talking to everybody and seeing how everybody interacts and kind of making the universe live with the actual citizens, you know, and the subscribers and everything. It makes it fun and it makes it a world.
This process it's something where no one person is creating this, we're all a part of this and it's all bigger than what's immediately at your hands. So, you fans are part of that process so having your input in polls and votes is from our perspective just extremely valuable and awesome on our front.
TL;DRScaling up characters causes clipping and art problems, so physical presence will mostly come through armour, clothing and quality animations; skeleton variation isn't a current priority and may be revisited if it becomes an issue.
Yeah. I mean... That's an interesting question. Let me think of a way to respond to that. Okay, so you have two characters, they're two different heights, they have a series and sets of animations right? We make a character super big and be able to make him buff and huge, we have to say, "Okay what's the benefit of that?" Well you get to have a little bit more variety, but now this character is going to start clipping through his seat that we had in something else or his holster might have to be pushed out or something like that and then there's some art considerations and time considerations. So, do we want to have bigger characters? Yeah, Of course, but then if we start to do much larger characters, what is the downfall and what's the benefit and do they outweigh each other?So what we're doing right now is we're getting a lot of this portrayal through different clothings and armour times. Like the heavy armour, I'm sure you guys have seen the concept, maybe if it is out or isn't out I'm sorry, I apologize, but it's huge and massive and that's a good way to symbolize your presence. You want to be like really skinny and frail and maybe a quicker character and you want to be able to zip around in combat, you might be someone who wears the light armour with maybe a higher end jetpack right? There's ways where you'll be able to customize your character, now talking about scaling up the rig and all that kind of stuff, it creates a lot of difficulties. So we decided that maybe providing you with better animations would the best thing to do rather than providing you with less quality of animations, but more variation because then they have to be universal and work together universally.Once we find, once we start getting more into the game and seeing how the players work and seeing some of these ships and all this kind of stuff and maybe we're like "Well if we do this, we might not have to do that" and then all of a sudden there's this new way by using these bones to expand our characters now that CryEngine can take more bones then maybe that's the best way to expand characters and we're like, "Okay, perfect, this will solve our problems". So really it's just time, so right now we kind of want to nail down what we have right now and get that tech looking good and I guarantee you there'll be a large amount of variety and personalization into your characters, but on their most basic physical skeletal level, that's not really the priority right now. I think there'll be enough variation as it is, but down the line I think when it becomes an issue, than we'll of course and address and respond to that issue.
TL;DRA novel about earlier history is only a possible ambition way down the road, far from a focus now; fan fiction is encouraged, and Jump Point fiction counts as in-universe fiction.
Yes, to a certain degree we do want to explore times in the UEE or in the history of this universe that came prior to the current date in the game. Novel format...that would maybe an ambition way down the road after we have a very entrenched universe and we have a game you guys are playing and fully involved with.
There's enough stuff there and I think there's enough prime real estate of events in the past we can go back to and give a fuller treatment for. Right now, it's far from a focus, just trying to get the current world set out, Squadron 42...
There some pretty good fan fiction. There's stuff on INN, there's even some specific subreddits that focus just on role playing or fan fiction and stuff like that. If you have any interest in that, you should definitely check those out, you should contribute. I know every once in a blue moon too if you do like fiction, if you like writing fiction we sometimes look for people interested in writing fiction for us. For Jump Point and things like that, so always keep an eye on our website too to see if that pops up.
Do you incorporate official fan...or like fan fiction into the official lore of the game if someone has a good idea, would you guys ever sit down and be like, 'I think we should incorporate what this person was talking about cause this is pretty dope'.
There are a lot of really great ideas that pop up on fan fiction forums. We always need to take it with a step because we know so much more about the universe and kind of where we want to go with it and what is kind of planned for it. So, sometimes that has to fall online. A lot of the fiction in Jump Point that you read has been written by other authors and fans of the game. I think technically we haven't ironed this out for sure, like technically we're spinning it as that's fiction that exists in the universe at the time.
Yeah, I think it's truly cool we're creating a world that has so many different possibilities to it but you know, novels out of it is down the road at some point but lots of good fan fiction and everything like that is already going. So yeah.
TL;DROmar would most like to wear the Navy Pilot flight suit, designed by others, though he built the clothes and concepted the helmet; the newer RSI flight suit was a team effort he didn't sculpt.
Well I haven't designed clothing for Star Citizen. The clothing was designed by ... well the clothing that I would wear was the Navy Pilot flight suit that ...
The one that Mark Hamill wears. I think that's my favourite so far. It was designed by Rob McKinnon and Jeremiah Lee. I did concept the helmet ... I guess I was a concept artist when I did the helmet for that. But it's mostly Rob and Jeremiah's design. But I built the clothes and put it into the game. So ...
No, the newest, newest flight suits we will have ... no the newest, newest flight suits I didn't ... I haven't touched. This is the Navy Pilot flight suit.
It's the one that Mark Hamill wears. With the tubes. And some cool stuff. And some dope lights in the helmet. Looks badass. And I like the jet pack that was designed for it. Think it looks cool. But this new, the RSI flight suit ...
I walked by his computer one day and it was up on his computer and he was looking at it and I thought he was doing some work on it so I just gave you the credit for it ...
Well that counts. It's the same thing. Like everything I write Dave and Will take passes on and do work on too. It's always team efforts around here. So ...
TL;DRSupplying local groups with weapons or goods is the hope and long-term goal, but exactly how it works is a design question; the team is building NPCs with allegiances and tensions.
That is the hope. That is an absolute hope that some of the missions and some of the systems that'll be built in will be able to run supplies, whether that be food or...
[Laughs]. Or guns or stuff like that to specific locations that might be in need or maybe specific groups at a location that can use it to their benefit. I know that's the long term goal is that you'll be able to kind of... as stuff comes on in like any economy we can see where stuff's going and how that may tip the scales of the balance slightly. How that exactly works down is way more of a design question, but I know us from a lore perspective are trying to make sure the landing zones are going to be populated with interesting NPC's that have perspectives, that have allegiances. Some which may be very apparent, some which may not be apparent, it could be pretty cool.
Yeah like maybe you're hired to do a job, but realize what you're doing the job for, wasn't necessarily what you told it was for and it may go against the interests you were working for. I think being able to work stuff like this or thinking about that is something we're already starting to do and that from our end, starts by creating interesting planets where there is tension, where there is stuff going on that you can be apart of and then populating that with people, NPC's that you'll eventually meet and kind of lead you down a path one way or another. So, yeah, hopefully how you guys interact with the world will be helped dynamically change it in some way, shape or form.
TL;DRThe character builder will start simple, likely choosing between heads in Alpha, and grow over time; shared topology and UV space may allow more customization sooner than expected.
So, customizing your face and the ever growing technology. I think in the very beginning probably in the Alpha phase when you'll start to get to choose it. You'll probably just choose between a variation of heads. After that I believe it's going to be, we're choosing heads, we're starting to maybe move some of the geometry around and creating more customized face. There's a lot of potential for major customization since our characters share the same topology and the same UV space.We've actually done a few tests in here which turn out to make these horrible monsters but sometimes hilariously funny and decent looking characters by taking the texture of one character that was scanned, putting it on like, we'll take Gary Oldman's face and put it on like Webster's, the female head and it's just this crazy amalgamations of characters.It's fun but I think we're starting to realize, the tech that we have, we're going to be able to create quite a lot of variety, maybe quicker than we originally expected. Especially by reusing a lot of the maps and maybe start to adjust with like skin tone and customization of hair and eyes and all that kind of stuff. So, I think at first, it's definitely going to start simple but like the rest of our game, it grows over time. So, we definitely have goals to make it extremely customizable in much, much different... and easily implementable in the future.
That sounds awesome. I know I've seen some of these missteps, they're kind of like weird faces or eyebrows that have mouths on them and all that fun stuff. I've had a few nightmares based on some of the images from them messing around with the characters and trying different things or things just kind of like getting buggy. So, it can be pretty entertaining but I've definitely walked by a few desks and almost spilled my coffee when I've seen what's on the screen.
A few people actually are putting together a page of all the terrible things that have happened. Like when we repathed someone's tongue onto Gary Oldman's face, so it was the shape of his face but this really nice detailed tongue texture going up the side with teeth. We were like, 'what the heck is happening'. It looked like burned flesh and I was like, 'oh my gosh'.
Especially when animation, it's crazy or something's not done properly and then all of the sudden someone's face just shoots out to the side and you're like, 'woah'. This is interesting.
TL;DRAlien languages and the Galactapedia are both long-term works in progress; the team isn't sure how languages will appear in lore posts, and the Galactapedia will start small and grow iteratively.
So, these are two long term projects that are both kind of being worked on right now. Alien languages are being developed. They're being used for Squadron 42. They're being developed for the other races at the moment also. So, I actually believe... I'm not quite sure how we'll handle that at the end of the day.I'm sure some of that will slip into lore posts, but again you don't want to make any lore posts so alien language heavy that it's going to turn somebody off and it's going to make it too difficult to read or somebody new to the game is going to be like, 'What are they even talking about?' So...
There's a right way to finding a right balance. Part of that balance might actually be integrating it into the Galactopedia which we're working on. We're starting to... I know Cherie is going through, especially the Star Map, and pulling out a lot of the keywords that you find in our little descriptions of all the planets and the systems on the key map. So that we make sure like pretty... we'll be able to have direct links for those places and those terms to kind of like help organize all of this information that this game creates.I know the lore can be a lot to jump into because there's so much going on and so much that's been written, but it's the same thing whether it's art assets or clothing or all those different things. There's just so much information going on that it can feel overwhelming. We've got some good things in place at the moment and the Galactopedia is going to probably be, like many things in this game an iterative process.Where we start, we give the basic of stuff, the basis of a handful of things and then just build from there, because... yeah again there's just so much going on and it's actually... it's just easier to start small and do it right and do it well...
It's like where I'm at the point where I'm sure there are a lot of people like, 'oh I tried to draw up reference'. At a certain point you just need a name and you just need to keep moving, because...
That's the least of your problems, you know, names are the easy thing. You can do winks here and there, but at a certain point you just want to get stuff down.
Pretty fun, yeah, the Turbulent guys that helped build the Star Map with us. We've been talking at them about the Galactapedia. They're super excited to get that going. So yeah, it's sounding pretty fun. It's going to be pretty cool I think.