So many of the times that we see animation work displayed in Around the Verse, the animations are taking place in a kitchen or mess hall. What is so important about that mess hall? Is it the center of the Star Citizen universe?
TL;DRThe mess hall is not central to the universe; it simply became a convenient testbed for trying out many animation, AI and usable-system behaviors.
No. Usually with a lot of things that you have within games, you'll focus on an area to use as a testbed to prove out things, right? So if you think about a mess hall and you think, okay, I want guys just to be able to navigate the room and not bump into a table, get in and out of the door, cool. Okay, now I want somebody to sit, and now they sit properly and it looks nice. Now once they're in that sit position, I want them to eat. And now I want them to eat so it looks good. And then I want them to talk to the guy across the table. And now I want them to put their tray away. So there's so many things within the usable system on design, on AI and how characters are moving, on the AI brain and how they're interacting and showing their behaviors, that for us that was just a testbed. And I don't even know if anybody consciously said, okay, the mess hall will be the testbed. I think the cafeteria or mess hall had progressed a certain amount and somebody just started using it and we went, awesome, this makes sense because we can test out so many things in there. But I'm laughing because I totally agree. So many times I walk by the system designers and I'm like, oh, hey, he's drinking out of a different cup now.