Exclusive Star Citizen Interview With Sean Tracy & Eric Kieron Davis
Developers cover Item 2.0 componentization, which enables weapon attachments and armor weight effects. They also discuss the female character rig, clothing manufacturers, seamless atmospheric flight, planet landing, EVA thrusters, dense forests, random events and alien races in Squadron 42.
TL;DRClothing manufacturers are a property set on items, with dozens existing across different styles, and each is meant to have some backstory and tie into shop inventory and manufacturing systems.
For full disclosure, I don't actually even design any of the manufacturers in the end these are just a property, a setting or variable on the different clothing items. We already have, I think, something like 40 – 50 different manufacturers for the clothing and I mean it centers around a couple different styles of clothing, so we have things like Terra fashions casual vs Earth white collar or we've got combat wear vs earth couture culture.
So, these are sort of the styles that they represent and then there are actual manufactures within there. Some examples that are actually in right now, Virgil for example is an armor manufacture then we have Clark Defense System. We talk about these marine armors all the time or sometimes we even say CDS, they are the equivalent of a weapons manufacturer that provides the military with things but then on the clothing we have ones like Vapor Wear, they produce things like work out wear like yoga pants and things.
The fun thing about all these manufactures is the art, as we went through this process to evaluate things to get ready for, not just upcoming large amounts of clothes but even in recent releases it was really exciting to watch art and design narrative work together to go what does our universe look like and then look at each solar system how were they inspired over generations. We look at our clothes now you can map it back to some of the original clothes put on people's skin, it's the same thing the lore team has been doing on this universe from day one, it's an incredible timeline and back story and just a rich and full universe and it will be represented simply as manufactures of these clothes.
One last one that players definitely know already is City Lights. It is a low-end manufacture, the same way you would have an old navy or something to that effect and then the style is defined as very clean lines and they keep costs down by keeping construction simple. There is always going to be some backstory to these manufactures. To go even further to just make mention the economy and what Tony and I have talked about quite a bit, is how these manufactures operate in terms of not just the law but in the mechanics of the PU itself.
For example, the way our shops work there's actually a global factory or inventory for a certain manufacture of shops, so if City Lights has been selling a lot of blue T-shirts eventually they are either going to have to manufacture more which will create a request for the materials that are required for this and they will then have to be delivered and then that'll also be connected to their inventory, how much of this material do they have, then they can make more of these shirts and this will propagate down through them. It's not just filling them in terms of backstory it's also about making them relevant to the experience. You know what I mean?
Yeah definitely, it was interesting cause we talked about stocking and inventory and like honestly it's funny because we get a programmer writing something as if he was working at Macy's, like it's a real system.
TL;DRCurrently aliens and humans don't share clothing because of scale, and nothing is set in stone; whether alien-run shops would sell human clothing would depend on the economy, and no such shops exist yet.
That's a good question and it's up to design to answer and I've not seen anything written in stone for it. At the moment, no they don't share any clothing. The aliens don't share anything with humans the real big problem with that is one of scale a good example is the Vanduul who are about 8 feet tall, and he wouldn't want to share with a human anyways, but if he would the stuff wouldn't fit and wouldn't look right.
We don't want to do any of the hand wavey it just magically fits on the dude and all of a sudden you have human sized Vanduul armor it's not really going to be like that. Now whether or not aliens sell human clothing in their shops, I think that'll completely depend on the economy. If they have a lot of humans there they are going to want to sell human things in that shop. Right now we don't necessarily have a shop run by aliens so I can't really tell you if they'll sell human clothes but they could.
you got it, so it's not out of the region for possibilities but also going into character customization and how these guys have done such a great job setting up our tech and our characters it doesn't hand wavey magically work like that, in reality how would I make this work on this character and it's the same sort of process here.
TL;DRThe female rig has existed for some time and works in Squadron 42, but the player version needs more work, so they are finalising the male set first and say release is not far off.
Sure, and not even to give just an update but actually more of an explanation of where's the time going here; people are like "oh, can't you just whip up a female model and get that in game and be done?" and what is sometimes lost in communication I think is that we have a completely separate rig for the female and I'm glad that you asked this in this way because it is an update on the female rig.
So we've had the female rig online and the skeleton and everything for actually quite some time and we've had that working within Squadron 42 as that's an absolute requirement – we have lots of females within Squadron 42, tonnes of female characters within Squadron 42. So those had to work a long time ago and they have been working for quite some time.
Where the difficulty comes is in implementing a player character as a female because when you implement an AI, as any character for that matter, he doesn't have to do as much as a player does; if anything half as much as a player does in terms of animation sets, logic – he doesn't need to be dynamically updating his loadout, he doesn't decide to do these certain things. There's a lot of things the AI don't do that the player has to do.
Additionally you have to solve things like the camera offset, weapon offset, weapons have to fit in female hands nicely, it has to look the same from a first person perspective and then on top of all of that you've got to think about gameplay balance within the two. So hitboxes, ugh hitboxes, I hate saying hitboxes, the Physics of the skeleton that gets impacted need to be the same or at least balanced between the two sexes as we don't want anyone min-maxing. I don't want anyone selecting a female just for the sake of a less big target for example.
So we've had the rig online for quite some time now and what we've wanted to do was finalise our male set completely because conceptually you don't actually want to re-author 6000 animations for the female. But to be fair because we have a separate skeleton for the female we want to feminise a lot of those motions but there's so many motions that don't necessarily have to be feminised because a female won't necessarily aim down the gun sights differently than a male does for example. But, you know in walking we have different walk gaits so that should look different.
So what we wanted to do is bring the male completely finalised; everything is done so we never have to go back and keep re-working. And once we're really done with the male we'll run those animations through some tools onto our female, we'll feminise a few of them which make sense to feminise and then we'll release it. It's not far off by any stretch of the imagination, we've already been showing it quite a bit and again it's been in Squadron 42 for a while.
TL;DRItem 2.0 turns items into componentized game objects so functionality like geometry or animation can be shared across items, which makes content easier to make and allows performance optimizations such as update scheduling.
It's a really good question and I'm glad you ask because we don't communicate this necessarily as well as we could sometimes. Players have had some form of item 2.0 for a very long time. It's items that have been componentized vs entities that have a whole set of properties on them. So Item 2.0 is really is the componentization of functionality per item. Maybe that isn't a perfect way to frame it in one sentence but what it does is takes all the properties and generalizes them as much as possible so we can apply gameplay components onto them or any item regardless of its entity type.
What we are doing is taking the Lumberyard engine from being a purely entity driven engine to being a componentized system, meaning you can share components between different items or entities so you don't have to write bespoke code for every single entity.
An animated object within Lumberyard was an entity and that had a certain set of properties so of the big ones being a model, animations and some physics. All of these were written in terms of the item entity so instead to componentize that and move that entity from an item 1.0 to an item 2.0 you would have to decouple all of those properties from the entity itself. So you turn it into an item first of all but it cannot do anything by itself, we call it a game object, it's just a concept of a container waiting for components.
The first component I add is the geometry component, something which can be shared across pretty much any item. Then you might have an animation component which would be added to the same item and at this point we almost have the same entity in a componentized way. We have to write all those components up, so the conversion is a slow one as we have to slowly removing all the bespoke entities from Lumberyard and turning them into a componentized system.
Which allows for some really exciting gameplay implications because once you have things in this way there are more interesting things you can do with them. Which is a large part of the gameplay aspect of what we are making is, utilizing that level of granularity which is really cool.
It also just makes things easier to make, by far. The geometry component was the most obvious one right out of the gate, so that was the first one we wrote. Now we can assign geometry to any item through this one component, this one block of code that applies to everything. Rather than whole separate entities dealing with their things independently and if we change something we have to change it across 100,000 different entities, which creates too much work.
So one of the other things on top of this is the performance it brings us and the ability to optimize. When you have so many entities with so many different properties you have a hard job doing large scheduling updates. What we can do with these components is make an entity scheduler and make it update the component so many times per frame or if an item has a geometry component that's over 10 feet away say don't updated that one. It is these kind of optimizations we can make in a component based system that is the whole reasoning behind doing it.
TL;DRThere's no separate atmospheric flight model; the same one is used throughout, with external forces like drag, lift, wind and air density changing, so ship shape affects handling in atmosphere.
The way i have to explain it is that there isn't a separate flight model. It is completely seamless, at some point when you get into the atmosphere you are at 0.001% of hitting the atmosphere. The first reason of why we don't have a whole new flight model is when do you make that switch? It would feel like something is happening and that's not something we want. What we want to do is make our flight model which is made to fly ships around which aren't aerodynamic is still what is being used in atmosphere just the variables applying things to the ship have changed and pretty dramatically.
Those two things you've mentioned wind and air density are the more important things and everything that would affects those two really are the things that would do anything. Drag is affected by air density, the amount of wind from weather from all different places. What's going to happen when the ship hits the atmosphere they thrusters are going to keep the flight model the same except the external forces are still acting on it like drag and lift are now a lot more obvious but the model itself hasn't changed. We have actually have a guy with a Phd.
The complicated maths behind the newtonian physics and that model. That brings back to the simulation as much as we possibly can. What would actually happen if you take this ship into atmosphere.
So to answer more clearly, the shape of the ship will absolutely effect how it handles in atmosphere, but it's not due to a different flight model. More because those external variables are different, less drag because it's more aerodynamic, more lift because it has wings and more like that.
We constantly clash in terms of its a game thing that happens in game development of what happens in reality and what's just a game part of it. John hates the hand wavey game stuff. He's like "Noooo that's not how it would work" the the G-Force conversations are just none stop. There's a way we do it in games that is fun and feel s cool and then there is the reality of what it would do to you. You definitely have to come to a balance but it is nice to have the accuracy of someone that understands it in the real world.
It is nice to see that level of passion in each person's individual aspect of what is Star Citizen. Everybody you interact with in their field or thing that is exactly how the conversations go. The passion is deep and rich and it is a discussion you have to have and then ultimately we get to what you get to play but it is across the board with everyone.
Yes, absolutely. Since planets became a feature within Star Citizen, we have always wanted players to be able to land, take out their rovers, bail out of their ship letting it crash into the side of a hill and make their way through the universe. Where things are not as solidified is how we handle the mission areas and I like that assumption in the question that there is something we have to do there. How exactly we handle that that is what design is prototyping and they have all kinds of different things to try and in the next major releases we will hopefully some feedback from the community on this.
TL;DRThe question is no longer valid because a base set of weak EVA thrusters will be built into the under-suit or flight suit so players can't get stranded, with jet packs or augments making it faster.
Actually I can't answer it directly as its not valid anymore. Myself and character art have discussed this quite a bit and have got this signed off by design too. We are put a base set of EVA within an under-suit or flight suit. So right now if you put this skin tight suit you don't have any thrusters, you have to put a jet pack on to have thrusters. So we want to make even the base has a really weak EVA but it has some.
So that you can't put yourself in the situation where you bail out of a ship and can't go anywhere, as it's just a game breaker. It is a super weak EVA you're not going to use it constantly and is you put a jet pack or augment EVA it'll be a lot faster. So it is up to the player how strong the EVA is. That is something we haven't spoken about before so that's something very unique and exclusive!
So right now we are not in a position where we can tell you exactly if you will or will not see those other alien races, that will be something that we will be very excited to tell you about as we get closer to that release and as we get closer to those details a little bit later down the road. But you know we're always looking at all of our alien races and what makes the most sense.
TL;DRNot as a true light bounce or ray trace; a bright moon can raise the ambient level through real-time cubemap updates, but anything more physically accurate is only a maybe.
I love this guy's thinking, and you know the short answer is right now, no. We don't necessarily do a ray trace for our lighting we have all kind of different techniques for it but with that said there are things that we're working on like real-time environment probes and these things that will – when other planets are glowing or like the moon lights up our night if you've got a clear night and you've got a really bright moon you'll be able to see a lot more.
That's because the ambient level is increased and that would be represented in our real-time cubemap updates but this isn't an actual light-bounce coming from the sun, hitting the moon, hitting the dark side of the planet. It's actually more the sun is hitting the moon which is making the moon really bright and then when you're on the planet then you've got a really bright spot in the sky that's going to up the ambient level anyways.
So actually I guess even to kind of go backwards on my answer, I guess right now yes you would get that but not in the way that it's kind of described in the question because it kind of implies there is a real ray trace reflecting off that moon and then coming down into things – it's just the fact that the ambient level is much higher.
Now could we do something crazy like a ray march to move that stuff round and get shadows coming from it and all that kind of something? Maybe, but it would definitely be something that you've got to email your local graphics programmer about – Carsten Wenzel. And he could take a look at that, but right now it will actually affect it it's just not exactly how it's explained in the question.
Yes, totally. That is another biggest reasons for this item 2.0 thing so we can put these components into a weapon. A perfect component is a zoom component or a recoil dampener or something like this so absolutely. We showed on ATV a few weeks ago where I was upgrading the weapon on ATV and this kind of stuff so absolutely you'll be able to do this.
TL;DRYes, the speaker says players will encounter unexpected events like pirates, other factions, wildlife or dust storms, because worlds should be filled with life and danger without becoming frustrating.
Yes, yes! Absolutely. Now I don't want to butcher the quote from Chris but Chris said it once that "Worlds need to be filled with life and danger." So that's really what he wants. It's not just about vandal raid or anything like that. There's also… you got other wildlife or you've got other factions or you've got other NPCs there, there could be pirates around. So like we don't want anybody to have a boring experience, but we also don't want to make it a frustrating experience.
There is always in an open world game like this, a level of let's call it emergent gameplay or randomisation or something that will change what you're expecting to do in that next 10 minutes. You know what I mean? So yes there will absolutely be events that will happen to players, even though they're not looking for them. They will happen around them, for example a storm will kick off all of a sudden. A guy might just be minding his own business, mining away at a rock, admiring the landscape and all of a sudden a dust storm hits him and he's got to figure out how to get through, that you know what I mean?
TL;DRYes, dense forests are being worked on with procedurally assisted placement and will be as dense as can run well, but they are not in the next release.
Yes, there will be. This is still something we are working pretty hard on. Right now the focus is on the next major release, i don't think is beyond saying we don't have any dense forests stuff in the next release per se. We are absolutely working on it. At Citizencon we showed off some of the vegetation assets and we are seeing how dense we can make them. We are just finalising development on this. I like the term 'procedurally assisted' because a lot of people talk about procedural generations where they assume it is just a program that comes up with stuff and the the pure other side which is all art driven, we are somewhere in the middle where it is procedural assistance through tools. We have a procedural assisted placement of all the outposts or forests and we are getting that finalised and in a state that the performance is in a good place. Will we have forests? Absolutely! Have dense will they be? They will be as dense as we can make them and still run well.
TL;DRItem 2.0 adds a weight component, but whether armor weight changes weapon switching or movement hasn't been decided, and the open balancing question is where the zero point sits (currently medium armor).
This brings up something we have been implementing in the past couple months. With this item 2.0 stuff one of the components we created is a physics component which says how heavy something is. Now what game code does with it is really up to game code.do we want to change the speed of selection of weapons or how fast the guy can run we can do all of these things.
Whether or not weapon selection is slower due to the armour I don't think they have made that call yet. There are already weapon that take different times depending on their size. For example the big railgun shown on ATV it takes longer to equip as the animation is longer as it is huge.
There are more fundamental questions to solve first, the biggest when you have a system that will change gameplay variables based on weight where do you set your zero point. Currently it is at medium armour, so if you're in medium armour you are at 1:1 ratio for the animation speed so you are neither penalized nor are you rewarded, but does this make most sense? Wouldn't the zero point be a naked body and anything on top of that slows you down but how do you even begin to start balancing that.
TL;DRThe LA office is working on five ships in various capacities, two of which have been discussed recently, while the rest are in production or pre-production, some with UK partners.
So the cool thing is being a global company, we can't just say what LA is working because we are acting as one as best we possibly can with the time zones given to us and in LA currently have 5 that we're working on at different capacities. 2 of which we've talked about recently, but the other ones are ones we're either working on with our partners in UK on or are different forms of production or pre-production.
Ships are one of our biggest thing to working on so we're always having them flown in and out. We have what I call a subsect of our tech design team here and our ship team comparatively to our partners in the other region. So yeah touch quite a few in different capacities and they kind of flow in and out and it's the most exciting about being such a large, free flowing community of people making this game and product.