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Recently, we identified a need for a change with Squadron 42, with the way that we've been developing Squadron 42. Talk to me about what we realized that need was.

TL;DRTo bring feature teams and level designers closer, Squadron 42's FPS level design and social teams join the core gameplay pillar, letting the creative director focus on flight and features be tested in real gameplay.

Richard TyrerSquadron 42 FPS Game Director and Core Gameplay Pillar Director

So the biggest thing is how I discussed that. You have the feature team and you have the content teams. The biggest thing is that we wanted to create a closer relationship between the people who are making the features and the content, and especially considering I'm the arbiter, or I'm responsible for the FPS experience. So when we had discussions with Chris and talking about it, we wanted to create a closer relationship between the feature teams and the level designers, who are basically the people who are using... they're essentially the client who are utilizing these features. And with Nick, who's the current creative director on Squadron 42, Nick Elms... obviously Squadron's a big project, and because we've got such a good delineation between the FPS and the vehicle side of things, there were two things that we identified. One is that Nick could use some support so that he could really focus on the flight side of things, which is where all of his experience has been, so that he can really hone down on that and really work with John on the vehicle pillar and that side of things and push that forward. And on the actor side was that we wanted a closer relationship between the technical designers and the systems designers, because the technical side can help more on the technical side of things with implementing AI and so on and so forth. So there were lots of these different individual reasons, like a closer relationship with AI in terms of the technical implementation with the engineers, with the level designers, and bridging that gap, which is usually a traditional pipeline. It's just something that, the way the pillars are set up, it creates this two-step process. So that's where I came in to come over. So essentially all of the FPS level design teams and the social teams on Squadron, essentially anything related to do with the character gameplay, they're coming and being absorbed onto the core gameplay pillar. And that's why I said I'm still doing the core gameplay pillar director. That's still a role that I fulfill. I just have a superseding role that encompasses that plus the level design aspect. So that's where I'm coming on to help out on the game direction for the FPS side of things, and skipping a beat, because what would happen is we go, okay, this is a feature that we want to introduce, like trolley push-pull or whatever, or any of the weapons or armor or anything. Any of the other mechanics we want. And then there'll be a step of teaching that to the level designers and what they need to do. But now they're going to be part of that process, which is a more traditional way of doing it. Generally, you would sit down and you would work with the level designers and the system designers and the technical designers. They work together alongside the environment artists and the animators and so on. And they'd work together to create a thing. So for example, let's say I take body dragging. If we were going to make body dragging, generally what you do is you go, hey, we've got a level. It's a stealth level. We need to be able to hide the bodies so that other people don't see you. That's part of the mechanic. And we go, cool, we'll implement body dragging for that level and make it work. And so what we're going to do is start doing that process. So we're going to start implementing these features within Squadron, but still taking into account the PU considerations, because that's still part of my responsibilities. And then they will go to the content teams. But they'll hopefully be more proven and more executed, because we've already implemented them into actual real gameplay scenarios rather than test maps or testing out theories and so on and so forth.

Star Citizen Live›Get Rich or Die Tyrer·
Published on this date.3 Sep 2021