Tell us how [the Homestead demo] started and how it became what it was.
TL;DRHomestead aimed to test how mature the planet tools were in artists' hands, so they picked an arid, savannah-highland landscape over jungle, which was held for later, and worked daily with engineers.
I think one goal was we wanted to see how mature our planet tools are when they are actually touched upon by artists, and they actually create something substantial with it that is actually playable. So this is where the idea for Homestead came from. And then we basically went, okay, do we really want full jungle already? And we wanted to keep this for later, because also our asset pool was basically not full jungle already. So we were like, first let's do lots of jungle and trees, and now let's move this to later. And then we were like, okay, what can we really do now that looks really great already, which would be an arid desert planet, but also savannah highlands. So we chose kind of like if you would go to Tanzania, a Kilimanjaro-style landscape. So we picked that, and from then it was basically working with the engineers, Carsten, Marco, Chris Bolte and Sascha, every day, making sure that the newest features are stable and make sense for what the artists need to do.