Star Citizen Live: Turbulent Roundtable

The first thing I started on was the colonialism stuff. So that was kind of a challenge. I don't think they really had the whole look of it totally established at that point. So I was just sort of throwing out weird ideas for that. Also worked on some hospital stuff and also the Pyro stations as well.

I was literally just having a conversation with somebody the other day about the colonialism stuff, because we were showcasing it quite regularly on our sprint reports, and then we're holding back now because you might see it somewhere else soon that's really obvious and coming up. But one of the folks I was discussing with said it doesn't look like a lot of the other things that are in Star Citizen. And I was like, I think that's kind of the point. It's about pushing and expanding the look of Star Citizen. I think you've definitely accomplished that.

It's sort of retro sci-fi looking with big clunky buttons. It's kind of different from everything else.

I mean, a project of that magnitude is... it's hard not to be flabbergasted by whatever you're seeing. And the fact that it's already playable and out there in the world is something that most of us really haven't experienced. It's all hush-hush for years, usually. And now we're building it, and we can see people reacting to it as we're building it. We can see how it resonates with people. And I think that's something that not a lot of us have experienced in the past, developing those super long productions that we have to keep secret for three, four, five years sometimes. So I think it's an interesting way of developing games.

And sometimes forever. There are some games that we've worked on that got scrapped. So it's kind of sad to work on something that looks amazing, and then, sorry, can't show it. It's gone. So to work on something that has frequent patches, playable in alpha, it's very encouraging, motivating as well.

It feels like we're working for the players and not investors. It's a team effort. We're not the big money pocket guys. We're just working for everybody that loves the game and the whole community. So it's a very different feel; that's what attracted me the most.

And as artists, it's also just a really good looking game. It's a passionate thing for us too. It's kind of funny that we'll be able to update our ArtStations before our previous games get to ship. So that's how quick it moves.

But also, when we work on different projects, you're always asking yourself as a developer, imagine if this game was actually coming out on the next gen or on the next CPUs and GPUs. And currently, that's pretty much what we're doing here. It's hard to run this game even on high-end PCs. Being able to work on a game that's built for the future but that currently is in a little bit of a shaky state is very exciting as a developer, because you get to just constantly try to push those limits as much as you can, because you're expecting that eventually hardware is going to catch up. So it's exciting to not have those limitations already put in place on day one, and then you work on a game for four years, and when you release it, it's been four years of new releases of hardware. As opposed to right now, we're just constantly trying to push the limits, even if the hardware can't necessarily always keep up.

I liked also, to your point, Rainer, just before that, the hospitals were the first full levels that the team has put out in the patch, which is very nice, really cool. But it's the fact that you can actually read the feedback from players when they see them. Even though they're not completely available right now in 3.14, even just having the lobbies, I know you went in and you guys were taking selfies in game, like, look, we're in the game. And that's really invigorating, to be able to ship often.

And see positive comments, too. And just to see praise on your work so quickly, because I joined last December and already I get to see what I've worked on in the past six months is already getting better. It's nice to see comments already.

Yeah, so we're looking right now at where we're going to place those derelicts so that some are easy to find and some are hard to find. We're also trying to maximize the use of the new tech that you guys are bringing in, so the scanning and the loot crates. So basically, the way we're trying to build them is you have a crash site that's in three or four pieces, so you might have a crash site with one puzzle and three, four loot crates, or you might have a crash site with three puzzles inside and multiple loot crates with varying rarity. So our goal is to give those players who like to explore, gather, loot... it's always fun to open a chest and you get an epic or a legendary item and things like that. So I think we're trying to go in that direction for the explorers and add more gameplay puzzles and such things.

Well, there's us artists. We're still working on the hospitals. Jason and I are on the space clinics. That's going along pretty well, pretty quick too. We're approaching final. So I guess it was a small mandate compared to New Babbage. It was a lot of reuse, but it had its own challenges, since it's a map that we're using to also test out the procedural tools. So there's a bit of problem solving with that: how can we keep the thing looking interesting while being compatible with the procedural tools?

I was about to say that actually those modules that they are creating right now are a good element for us to play with for the new version of the tool they are using right now, because we are revamping that tool with our own proposal. And we are using the building pieces they are making to actually test it for the new context and this new way of setting them up. So hopefully we'll get to improve those [issues they] can have already using the previous version, because we are definitely expecting to have those solved by the next version.

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.

Do we really need it? We need a meeting to talk. Are you sure?

For an artist, what is it going to look like?

And then we need an Excel sheet to define all of the departments that are going to need to work on that door, and then ETAs, and then add a two-week buffer for that ETA because something is going to go wrong. Something is going to go wrong, for sure.

Tech art, what's your question when somebody says door?

Either you want it closed, either you want it open all the time. That's what you want. Do you want it to open and close? No, you never want it to open or close. You want it to stay open or stay closed. You don't want the animation part of it.

You don't want to have the detection part of it. It's so complicated, because how do you deal with the collisions? Do they move at the same time as the door? What happens if you attach a gadget to the door and the door opens or closes? Does the gadget fall on the ground? Does it explode? Do you lose your gadget? How do bullets react with the collision? How does the enemy react with the doors when a door opens or closes in front of the enemy? Does it cut the nav mesh or doesn't it cut the nav mesh? Do we have that check in the game? This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Now, the best one is: this door normally auto-opens when you get close to it, except during mission stage three, if the dude said the door is now locked. And then we start with a door, and then one month later there's a co-op door, and then a month after there's a double door, and then another month there's going to be a security door.

Then there's a breakable one and a metal one that's unbreakable, one that locks with a key.

And once you think that it's rock solid and that you've seen every possible thing that could go wrong, you give it to QA, and within five minutes, they break it.

He looks at it and it's broken. And then, what does concept do with a door, really?

It can't be a simple rectangular door. You've got to see how much detail you can fit onto this door, how many decals you can put on it, maybe a warning sign on your door, how many panel lines you can put on the door. It can't be a simple metal door. No such thing.

Warning, this is a door. It opens.

Brittany, what do you think Pierre-Luc would say in the concept door review?

He would say it's not door enough, it just needs to be more door.