The Squadron 42 developers describe the design team's split into FPS, flight and social teams, then walk through level blockouts: interchangeable habitation modules, golden-path and hidden routes, interactive terminals, and AI reacting to light and noise. They also show NPC conversations on the Stanton, with interrupt points, break points and dynamic trigger ranges.
The Squadron 42 design team is split into three, actually. It's three teams that work very closely with each other. First being Ross's team, the FPS team, which works predominantly on the ground and gravity-based areas where combat and exploration are a focus.
Yes, all the pew-pew stuff is down to Ross. The flight team work on the space sections of the game, as you might expect. That includes dogfighting, exploration, landing, takeoff, all that kind of stuff, obviously working very closely with the various AI feature teams as well. And then finally, we've got the social team, and they're kind of the glue for all the narrative elements of the game, building the interactive experience, presenting it to the player cinematically with a focus on maximum immersion, as Chris has called out.
TL;DRYes, the habitation section can be extended quickly if more personnel are needed, and the team wants Squadron 42 locations to feel fully realised and explorable rather than just corridors to an objective.
Yeah, it is. And again, that's the kind of idea of just drilling down into the functionality of these spaces, is that this is interchangeable, and if this space suddenly needed more personnel to come and work there, they could basically extend the size of this quite easily.
Yeah, and this is one of the things that we're driving at, is that a lot of what we want to do in Squadron is have a lot of exploration and feel like you're basically behaving how you would behave in these locations, as opposed to just, this is a game, I'm obviously going to go in, kill some guys and get to the objective, I'm just going down a corridor, I'm looking for where the objective marker is taking me. We really wanted it so players can start to explore these spaces and see how people were living.
Yes, so we're doing that all the time. Despite what we're saying, obviously function is a very important thing for us in these blockouts. Another aspect is obviously making sure that it still feels good to traverse and that we're sticking to all the metrics and stuff, because the last thing we want is to have it make lots of sense but then not be enjoyable. So it takes a lot of time to get that nice balance.
TL;DRThey say it is planned that AI reacts to stimuli like lights switching on, and that environments should be as interactive as possible, with physicalized objects usable to distract enemies or as cover.
Yeah, absolutely. And we've also got the stimulus that the AI here are going to react to as well. If you're in an area where there's no lights and you suddenly switch the lights on, then you could draw the attention of the AI. And all that kind of stuff is planned at this stage as well.
Yeah, and that's something we can dig into in a little bit, where we basically talk about how we want as much of these environments to be interactive as possible. So we're basically going through them, and you see terminals and consoles. You should be able to interact with them and read the stuff in there, and a lot of the things are going to be physicalized in there, so you can pick them up, throw them around, move them about, do that sort of thing. And all those, again, will feed back into the sandbox environment. So if there's enemies in these spaces, you can actually use them to distract enemies or even use them as cover and that sort of thing.
Exactly. So we do actually have some that are effectively our main route, or what we craft as what we call a golden path. But the idea being that there are lots of routes, and we like the idea that a lot of players won't even know some of these exist until you see a video online or someone accidentally stumbles across something. And that's what we want to put into these levels, as much variety and stuff that keeps you figuring out and learning new things as you're playing it. And again, giving more replay options.
TL;DRChanges to blockout spaces are driven partly by gameplay not working as hoped and partly by art reference showing a shape isn't believable, and the narrative reacts to how aggressively the player plays.
Yeah, basically. I mean, that's a large combination of it. And in some cases, as I said, it's gameplay driven, and the fact that it's like, oh, well, this doesn't actually work for what we hoped, in which case we'll go in and we'll change it. And in other cases, it's just we've blocked something out, and again, when we're doing it very early on, the art guys have gone in there, and they've obviously got a lot more reference material and stuff. So there'll be some cases where a shape just doesn't quite work for a believable space. And in those cases, we basically say, OK, well, we need to change the layout a little bit to accommodate.
Narratively, we pretty much cater for what the player does as well. So if the player goes in there all guns blazing, then the whole base is going to be on alert. Maybe you get to pick up some bits of information here and there, especially if you're in a crawl space or something like that.
Yeah, so right now, this is just as it's intended from a visual and artistic standpoint. Obviously, the level is fully traversable and doors all work and everything. But one of the things is that AI is obviously an ongoing process, and obviously, live demoing at this point, anything could happen. So we're just trying to save ourselves a little bit of pain right now from showing too much stuff, basically.
TL;DRStill experimenting: a struggling enemy might radio nearby zones for help, and some locations may have dropship reinforcements, though this is undecided for this location, and players will get systems to gain advantages.
So that's something we're still experimenting with at the moment. But what might be nice, for example, is if, say, again, you're in here, you fight these guys, and they're down to the last man, and he's on his own, and he's struggling. Maybe he radios for support. And then in that case, we could say the nearest next zone, he's basically requesting help. And then something else, which we've not decided yet for this location, but something we may do in other locations, is if an enemy or a group of enemies are struggling, perhaps they call in dropship support, and then an extra wave of enemies could actually come to the location. And in that case, we can obviously make things more difficult for the player.
Exactly. And again, we're working on some of the systems at the moment, but there will be systems that also allow players to give themselves a little bit more of an advantage in tackling some of these situations as well.
TL;DRRoss Wilding says the team is getting excited because they are past the early unknowns of blockout, the spaces are known, mechanics are coming online, and the art looks great.
To be honest, at the moment, I feel like everyone's starting to get quite excited about everything, because in the past, when you're in blockout, especially when you're developing a new game, the tech is moving along with it at the same time. There's a lot of unknowns, and you're planning and setting things up with the assumption of how something's going to work. But we're past that first hurdle, and we're getting into the stage now where we know what the spaces are. We've obviously been developing them for a while. Now we know what the mechanics are, and they're starting to come online.
I mean, the art is obviously stunning. And the thing I'm most grateful for in this video is I can take all the credit for the artwork that's been shown.
Yes. Well, interrupt tech, that's a part of it. So then, for example, say you interrupt the conversation, then during that conversation you have break points. And that's points throughout the conversation where you can potentially back off. You can 180, just break off from the conversation, and they have to adapt to that. So then that's when the wild lines kick in, you know, oh, you've got somewhere to be.
Yeah, there's all sorts. But then the player's given an opportunity to rejoin or abandon. And if you rejoin, the NPC's got to pick up the conversation. And if you abandon, the NPC's got to go back to pretty much, they gesticulate and go, oh, what the hell? I guess you don't want to talk. Then they go back to what they were doing.
So this is Mauro, everyone's favorite engineer. He's like the ship's gossip; every time you stumble across these guys, he's gossiping about something. So in the start conversation, we have two interrupt points, which I spoke about before, that's breaking into a conversation. Then he turns his attention to you. And then during the following conversation, we have five break points, and that's pause, resume and abandon points. So you can do either of those. And then we also have the performance base to the left and to the right. So you can pretty much attack this from any angle if you want.
Yeah. So that was all done in first person, and it was all range-based. So you were backing off when you were doing the interrupts. This shows off the player in these examples. Here, I'll show you the video. So that was his focus trigger, realizing he'd seen you, and this is the player, can you see? Being fairly obnoxious.
Yeah, he's got an interaction trigger around him, and that's dynamically scaling depending on what the player's doing. So when the player 180s, it shrinks. When the player 180s again, here you can see it now, it goes back into it, increases, and then he actually picks up the conversation again.