How far are we thinking that [wear, dirt and age] might go? Can I start out looking like Jango Fett and then end up like Boba Fett?

Yeah, and that's actually how all of our assets are made now. The way I usually say it is they're on the showroom floor. So they're going to be super shiny, super pristine, no flaws in them. That's kind of how we build most of them. They can either get dirt, which is walking around in dirt or dust or soil or whatever like that, and that will accumulate dust on it or a dirty effect. Wear is essentially chips, or being used, or being dinged or banged up against something. That's what that is. And then age... sorry, just to go back, wear also usually shows materials underneath the layer. So think of car paint: if you chip off your car paint, it's metal or fiberglass or something like that underneath. So that is essentially what damage is. And then age is a separate element to that, which is, again going back to a car, if you leave a car out in the sun for a couple of years and it just gets sun bleached, it changes the color of it, but it still affects the same material. So all of our assets are already built to do that. But when it comes to the additional elements like burning or things like that, that's something we're not totally into right now.

And to that point, I'll say from a game code perspective, I've already worked on something called degradation, which is maybe not going in 3.0, but there's already been a significant amount of work towards it, where we can have things age over time and that will not only impact the way they look, but it'll also impact their behavior. So if you have a power plant and you use it a lot over hours of gameplay, it's going to be a less performant power plant than the new one that you bought. And if it takes some damage, it also performs less. It'll actually age faster if you overheat it and stuff like that. It's an active place in development that we're working on, and I think post 3.0 it's going to see a lot more attention.

It's important. Exactly what's happening here is that it's bringing the game code and the art together. On Josh's side, it is a single material. What's cool is it's all shader effects that they actually apply. It's not a whole separate material, it's all just parameters within a shader. So what these have got to tie into on the game code side is those parameters. So he's got to drive them from some sort of persistent game code function that's saying, how long has this thing lasted in the universe? All these sort of rule sets that go into that. So that's step one before we even consider doing damage on the characters, because we want to at least implement what we've done the art for already. And if we can get awesome stuff like UV2 shader damage on the character, that's great. But like Chad had described, that's a render target for every single one.

And essentially, as soon as you add a second UV set, it's almost doubling the cost of your character. So that's why we want to get the wear and dirt in first, because you already have that. And because it's all, like Sean was saying, in parameters, it's the same cost as the default character, so there's no difference in performance.

We want as many people to be able to gather in one place as possible. If the choice is between 20 people, I'm just pulling a number, with damage shaders that can gather, or 40 people with just the wear and tear, we're going to choose the 40.

Yeah, and that's a real thing we think about all the time. Every time we want to add a new piece of something on the character, or we want to add another attachment to the character, that's performance. So how do we maximize the amount of stuff that we can put on, increase the visual fidelity, the customization, all that kind of stuff, but also have as many players in as possible?

And workflow. Workflow is key. And again, because it's in one material parameter, it takes way less time to author that and then take advantage of it from the gameplay side. But we've got a lot in Star Citizen that we've not yet taken full advantage of, and it just takes time.

I think going back really briefly, it is cool because all of it is gameplay elements. Wear and age can all affect your items independently, too.

Yeah, it's a visual read on a gameplay element, which to me is always the most important thing. And we're using that on our outposts already. And to make it even better, what we want is different types of dirt and wear depending on if you've been on Daymar for a certain amount of time; then you're going to have more of the yellow sand stuff versus being on a snowy planet or something like that.

I think it's also going to add a really cool element to character customization, which I don't think a lot of other games have done, which is persistence with your item. So like you were saying, Jango to Boba: those items on Boba Fett are way more worn and they're way more aged too. It's two separate things. He's had that for a really long time. And so you'll be able to see players who have had stuff in the game for a long time, and it'll be a different look than even somebody who just purchased it from a shop, which will be super cool.