When thinking about the AI we will find wondering places like ArcCorp. What sort of variation can we expect in appearance? Should we expect to see a few clones perhaps with different clothing or will they all look unique?asked by ArmoredCitizen & ChadTheGeek

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.

That sounds amazing.

When has that ever gone bad? Right? I don't think that's ever gone bad. So ...

That's a great idea.

Yeah. Attack of the Clones.

I don't know if we can use that. Isn't that copywritten? Are we allowed to even say that?

I don't know.

Are we going to get sued.

I don't know. We're going to find out.

Oh god!

So ... alright. Again my name's Omar if you want to sue me. [nervous laughter]

Hey man.