Inside Star Citizen: Meet the Team - Weapon Content

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   welcome back to inside Star Citizen the only weekly Behind the-scenes docu series showcasing the faces features and forward progress being forged in the firstperson universe of Star Citizen I'm your host Jared hucke now with Alpha 323 recently out testing ongoing for the 3232 cargo and hanger patch and development turning its full attention to the upcoming major Milestone that is Alpha 4.0 later this year we're in one of those periods of ISC production where we like to experiment with the means and manner of the stories we tell because like the developers making the very game that we're covering we want to try new things and new ways of doing what we do so for the next 3 weeks ISC will be a bit different than you might normally expect that means we're going to spend a little more time than normal getting to

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   know the folks themselves as opposed to just what they're working on things like asking the UK networking team to film a sort of Dev diary on those major server meshing tests from earlier this year chat with the level design team to discuss their process and how they're taking all those things they learned in Stanton and applying it to pyro and this week getting to know some folks specializing in the Implements of firsters Destruction now of course the isc's that are driven by specific feature and content work will still continue after this short detour we hope that you'll indulge us once again in our effort to share some more personalized stories for the next few weeks and then of course we'll be back with the big flashy stuff soon enough and don't forget citizen con is is Just 4 months away 4 months away didn't we just do one so that's enough of me let's meet

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   the first of three teams over 3 weeks that don't often get the ISC Spotlight in a feature that we like to call meet the team weapon content team meet the weapon content team good old wct let's just meet them why have you avoided the Cameron Last 5 Years um I am me nervous how long ago did you start here 8 months ago almost nine yeah how's it been it's been great I like it how many of these do you think you've done at this point I can't get drag this is the fifth this is the fifth one do you like doing these yes cuz I'm an attention seeker there's definitely more lights than I was expecting to be fair but it's

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   very bright H little little nervous yeah I used to be a live model before I came here so just feel what life model so once you've had people draw you naked it's pretty hard to get awkward around um anything nervous at all not really now not too bad dep what the questions are how prepared are you for this um I have been in meeting since I walked in and I have done nothing up until today Phil Phil be quiet the microphone's right there the microphone's right there in front of your mouth [Music] aren't we a spaceship game we're

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   definitely a spaceship game but the core aspect that is definitely the um FPS side of it as well a lot of our players enjoy fly around the spaceships but they also enjoy the aspect of being able to be boots on the ground and exploring the world from the first person perspective the weapon content team are the team that responsible for any weapon you see in game pretty much it's the team that creates the artwork and animation for Star Citizen Squadron 42 we make really cool looking guns lots of guns melee weapons FPS weapons large Capital size turret weapons fire extinguishers multi-tools we're just a group of people that just I guess find Firearms is the

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   most interesting part of I guess the the 3D art space so it's called meet the team so let's start where content starts and meet Alberto tell me about Alberto I like spaceships he's not wrong I started in a mixed role in a little company in Germany kiosoft and there I was doing spaceships both 3D and both concept then I moved here because I was always very passionate of the universe of Star Citizen his pathway is just insane I think he designed I think luxury Yachts or something so yeah so Yachts planes everything that was not a car basically Alberto is an incredible concept artist the concept artist kind of facilitates the the development of

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   the idea we get the brief the words and we translate it to something visual in my opinion that's the most creative part Alberto is great I mean he's a pleasure to work with I've only had really good experiences talking to him he provides so little friction when working with him he's genuinely really good at what he does he does a lot of the problem solving for you what's your relationship like with albera 90% pranks 9% what pranks pranks yes like what flipping the screen from each other like changing sensitivity of the mouse uh when he just turn around something like that we really have to fight this guy is that a productive use of your time Samuel um if I do it fast Samuel's one of our newer concept

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   artist in the company he is very very excited about the project and very passionate about everything that we do as a company how do you think other people see San bro oh that's a great question I would say he have this positive wipe to him you know he's to talk to Sam is fun getting better and better he's super young super talented absolute bundle of joy from a different culture coming from Venezuela lots of interesting stories and really approachable and just overall the same things I say about Alberto I I can go to him I can talk about what he's working on and the concepts he provides are of an extremely high quality he's really Keen to kind of start working and get a little bit more involved with the weapon side of concepting rather than just the vehicles every time we mention

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   it he's like oh can I do it can I do it so yeah he's super excited about it which is great I always kind of think that the more passionate people are about the subject they're working on the better the results you're going to get we've got Alexi our weapons lead he joined us a year and a half ago I want to say he's been a great addition to the team I decided to work on a video games because I always wanted to help people not necessarily when they already ill because I have a medical degree but it never worked out for me because down the line I decided that I wanted to bring happiness and not cure the aftermath of it did you know that he got his degree to be a

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    doctor what no I didn't know I guess I'd like him to be my doctor I'd probably trust him I really enjoyed the video games like almost anyone but at some point it struck to me that real people do them and I just started to look around and see what I can do how I can start to make video games and that's how I ended up as a 3D artist very laidback guy has a really good eye for stuff that you can so easily Miss like he'll he'll pick out stuff I can't even see since he's joined in the optimization of our work has just flown through the roof he's a really bad member of the team and I definitely consider him a friend he's really nice guy he's created a quite a driving force for the team across both

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    our projects Alexi is okay at tle tennis just okay yeah he's okay we've got Talon I'm one of the key weaponers here so I work on creating the 3D models and creating the weapons the gadgets hand grenades and every other kind of thing you can think of that the player might use in the uh FPS aspect of the game talented what I say is is a super passionate weapons artist he um you know he's big into sort of Airsoft and M Sim and and that sort of things the Fountain of all knowledge when it comes to Weaponry I don't think there's anyone that knows more about guns than talons does it operate correctly where does it take its influences from and I think that's really important he's just great

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    person up on the team nice and approachable and always up for a bit of a laugh and joining him's Ben as well who's another rst too what do you think other people say about you I'm I'm very quiet so I you know I'm I'm not sure definitely the life of the party which you wouldn't expect noticing but after a few drinks he's definitely the the circle of attention he's been a great addition to the team he's our technically our newest member of the team but he's still been here a couple of years I'd say in some ways his hard work is quite sometimes better than mine he really knows his way around blender here have such a k ey for details on the wean you can just kind of throw anything at him and know that you're going to get a really solid result out of it we' got

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    Joel originally I hir Joel was a proper artist probably close to 8 years ago I create the artwork for FPS devices which includes weapons gadgets uh I also make ship weapons Joel's actually the the most senior member of the team and uh was there when I first joined he was an extremely helpful person to encounter very easygoing super knowledgeable always has a pun ready he has some really strange t-shirts every other day he comes in with a new T-shirt with something weird on it and I'm a bit jealous cuz every time I see them I kind of I kind of wish I'd had the idea buying them I uh I like t-shirts it's this one it's um It's The Simpsons Everyone likes The Simpsons right what about your producer oh yeah

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    don't don't let me forget Kieran he's Mr getting things done and getting things done on time so he's brilliant I quickly realized I didn't want to be an artist or a programmer I started out in level design and then I found out that my passion was the team without Kiran there wouldn't be weapon content because he's the guy who GLW it all together you know eats a lot of eggs eats like brings in about like four eggs a day or something like that so it's the only bad thing I can think about K so next up is our animator Jordan he couldn't make it into the office today but we love him and he's great I mean I've been working with Jordan for

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    years on the weapon since I took over he was always there Jordan is a have a really really shiny personality he's the one person that you can reach out with anything related to animation he is here to support you always has a lot of like stories and anecdotes he's also a little bit scary because he knows where everyone lives and it's it's unclear when he gets or how he gets the information he does does but when you join the team within the first few weeks maybe the first few months uh he knows exactly where you are on Google Maps and for that reason he is terrifying yeah he can't be here to film for this no Jordan you could have been here for this we really need you where are you Jordan and I'm Ben the art director and that's enough about me so

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    let's look at some weapons we've been working on so we got quite a few weapons um that are being worked on we can talk about a couple of them today so first up we're going to talk about the p p is a so trifle that is May fi the role of someone that wanted something bigger from bearing manufacturer up until now it's been a squadron exclusive rifle in fact I've had backers come up to me saying Please Release the p and we what we want to do is take that p8 base and do a version that we were kind of slightly more tailored towards a civilian Market a lot bigger and a little bit longer than the current P4 and personally one of my favorite weapons that we've ever worked on it is kind of more in line with civilian needs so it's had a little bit of lightning done to it it's had

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    some of the more aggressive visuals tided up a touch we did a redesign of the stock and it's had bunch of new skins and variants done for the the consumer Market why not just put the one from Squadron in the honest answer is we want to kind of hold that back for squadron I guess um it's you it is one of the main weapons you use um throughout the campaign and we still want that to feel uh unique and special it's one of the things that we do kind of want to hold back as a bit of a a hero experience you know it is the standard issue I think is the correct way of saying it military weapon the uee it's a Workhorse it's reliable it's functional and it just gets the job done so the Vault rifle is another new weapon that we're releasing in the Pu a brand new manufacturer for the weapon

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    content team Vol are a electric and beam ammunition type using electric batteries to power their weapons they're very techy they feel very professionally homemade it's not thrown together but also it's not professionally manufactured this is the manufacturer who relies on cheap produced Goods but they still wanted it to look cool and shiny but they are not really reliable in terms of long-term use we wanted a manufacturer where people could use these weapons and then they could also repair and upgrade and kind of they look like you would be able to strip them down and kind of field repair them or you know work in your Workshop in your your ship or you know in your Habs or wherever um and kind of really get into the nitty-gritty of of how these weapons work so there's a lot of visual cues to that with you know like how the screen

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    attaches all the little kind of fittings and screws and how it all kind of comes together that visually is something quite nice and exciting I think there's anything like this in a pu as of now this will suit more of the guys who wanted to show off rather than to be military style weapons you will have some shiny cool gun that you can show to your friends and say there I did it this is a really cool looking gun I've always been a little bit opposed to very big flashy lasers and electricity on Firearms I think it can drift away from my idea of traditional firearm but I think working within the confines of what va's manufacturer being a homebuilt kit that you could order online supposedly and manufacture yourself I think really fits into the

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    idea of it being more of a fun ammunition type this is still work in progress but you can see the direction where it's going so the power SMG this is something very different to any of our mainstream manufacturers a very small handheld uh submachine gun similar so I think a real world example would be a tech 9 and the whole idea with this kind of uh pyro weaponed theme is that these things have been made by just people living on the fringes of the Universe um they've used whatever they can get their hands on to make something that works for them imagine Mad Max type of gun that was scraped with everything that you can find around sort of break the art conventions that we've been working with for the last however many years internally we call them non because they doesn't have any manufacturer it's made

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    by a guy named Steve yeah you can say so the fact that it's very Compact and small allows you to hook very tightly on Corners giving yourself a very low exposure when peeking Corners peeking over cover and has an extremely high fight rate of fire so very good for those really close encounters but I I wouldn't be using it long range is due to the lack of a stock they're really quite cool weapons to work on and look forward to you seeing maybe more in the future where the hell is my crossbow um do you know what Chris bought across up recently he was like are we going to finish it and I'm like well it's kind of there there's just there was one I think there was one thing stopping us with the way the uh the bolts interact with stuff that that we couldn't couldn't do at the

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    time the fabled crossbow is net that we in the weapon concert team we've been trying to get pushed out for a long time now at the point of creation this Crow bow it was decided that the bolt needs to stuck when you fire them and not disappear like any other pull it and this prevented the release of the crossbow because we cannot consistently make the bolts stuck it's just a super Advanced cool looking crossbow it's got these really cool like deploying bolts in it because obviously uh yeah we don't really want to carry around these massive great big kind of quiver of arrows so it's got these really nice kind of compact little alts that load into it adding more unique firearms and ways to take out enemies silently is is something that the game would definitely benefit from and so seeing the crossbow come out in the Pu would be something

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    that made me extremely happy and I know a lot of the players have been asking me about this too not directly involved with weapon content but still working on the weapons audio guys and VFX guys we working with them directly and they make our gun shines and sings I'll have done my part of the artwork it'll have gone down the production line and a few months later I'll bring it into the editor just to remind myself of what I worked on and I'll shoot it and hear some incredible audio and be like oh wow someone's gone all out on this one they're a downstream team that much like animation it really brings to life this otherwise static and fairly boring object their work is incredible I've tried to tell them at some point I want to see them add the lead pip o1 sound

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    effect into the game but I've yet to get an approval on that one game development is a group effort when it comes out great is just a miracle at some point of a lot of people involved into it you know it is still a first person game and I think that you know the work we do is is important I hope we're a significant part of your interaction with Star Citizen I do enjoy it when you know I see people having fun and you know enjoying the weapons we've created and put into the you know the star CI Universe there a big community of uh people that take you know like in-game captures and screenshots and stuff and seeing people take uh pictures of your work is is really nice I would like people to know that the feedback they give us especially on our team

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    means a whole lot when we see a comment come up about something with the firearms that people might not like we do take that on board if it's not applied to the weapon they're speaking about we'll try and avoid it on future ones we're always learning and if there has been a weapon that you know you really enjoy using um or you know is your favorite weapon then please do let us know in the comments cuz the team would love to hear that sort of feedback with our recent releases you've seen a whole bunch of updates to how the weapons feel how they function and really bring some of those quality and life improvements to the the weapons as a whole and that's just taken a lot of hard work from the weapon Department as as a whole department in you know art design animation audio be effect like the whole the whole lot and they've not had a great deal of Limelight in in these sort of um events but they're super dependable and um I'm very happy

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    to kind of been able to get to talk about them today so what' we learn this week well hopefully we learn a lot more about the people that make up the current iteration of the weapon content team that there's a whole host of new weapons making their way into the persistent universe and that spaceships of course May dominate the conversation a lot of the time but there's plenty of other ways to bring damage death and destruction to the universe of the first person being built for inside Star Citizen I'm Jared Huckabee thanks for letting us share the people and process of game devel development with you we'll see you all here next week ah