Inside Star Citizen: Underground Playground

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:04

   Star Citizen is more than just a space game. As the work continues building out our first-person persistent universe of sundry stunning star systems with planets and professions and possibilities in profusion, one might suspect that the strive is set solely on spreading space-wise. But, for the tight team of dedicated developers on EU Sandbox 2, one of their maturing missions is to drill deep down, descending beyond and below the barren bottoms of the beneath, to originate an occasion ongoing opportunities for exciting and edifying experiences for everyone to enter, engage, and enjoy. Yeah. So, we're building a playground where

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   every aspect of the Star Citizen universe game is we're building a playground for the all of this not all there. We're building a playground for the I've forgotten it already. What is it? Well, we're iterating. Where? Can I maybe say it another way? Playground for potential every every aspect. We're building a playground where every aspect of Star Citizen gameplay can occur. Thank you. Nailed it. Hello, me again. Second time, but third time for this. Giving you a bit of an update on the underground facilities. So, the first time you saw them was at CitizenCon last year. And was going through all the concept art. Then, last time and first time you saw me, I was going through the planning

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   and all those riveting Excel sheets. This time, I'm showing you where we're at currently in production. We're midway through whitebox. And, you know, this for us is a good phase for locking down where we're at and where we want to go. It shows us that, you know, we can play the spaces and you'll see that they are quite big. But, our intention is to fill them and missions that we could have kind of go along the lines of, yes, you've got your delivery missions, but also, you know, maybe you're seeking out and protecting a VIP, maybe you're assassinating a VIP, maybe you're doing a bit of a heist, maybe you're just mining or resource collection. Basically, anything that exists currently in the Star Citizen universe and what's to come will also be

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   in here. So, try and keep that in mind when we're playing through the spaces. Um but, aside from that, yes, it's everything is uh work in progress, so things will change. Just want to get that disclaimer out there now. Um but, I hope you enjoy and uh seeing where we're up to. Okay, so here we are on Pyro 3. Now, we just placed the UGF here for the moment, just so we can test it um on a planet, not worry about it accidentally going into the game before it needs to. And I'm going to take you in. Now, please ignore my flying skills, they're not the best. I'm just here for doing environments. And as you can see, it's quite a large structure on the surface of a planet. So, there are hangars here. You can land

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   on landing pads. We're thinking about how, you know, the function of the place. So, as you can see, it's quite a formidable structure. Hangers on either side, landing pads, so you can move your cargo back and forth. But, for us, we're going to just land, hopefully, on the top. Oh my god, I'm really butchering this fight. Whoa, there we go. Okay, so let's get out of this Pisces.

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   Now, as we go in, there are going like I said before, there's lots of work in progress stuff. There's going to be things clipping in and out. Um, try to look past that and to what it is we're actually showing. Um, it is still work in progress at the end of the day. So, right now we're just dismounting in front of our lobby. Uh, if we're on a um, planet with no atmosphere, we've got these airlocks that you can use to get into the the main lobby area. And in we go. Okay, so we're in now and have our lobby we're getting to. Here it is.

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   So, this is when you first turn up to the UGF and your rep is, you know, rock bottom, you're going to come here first. This is kind of the introduction to whatever company is owns the UGF. And you'll be getting some missions from in in this place, but you can see it's quite a going for that brutalist structure, but having all this glass kind of makes it so you can kind of let the the outside in in a way. And you can see by looking out of these windows, we can kind of take a look at kind of again the expansive structure. And I think in the uh in the background over here, that's indeed that is another UGF. So, like I said, it's quite a big thing on the surface of the planet, which is awesome. So, in here, this is not just a through

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   space. We're going to have some offices on the back. And all of these, you know, there's going to be some alternate routes that you can take. But we're building up all these spaces like it's a living, breathing area. Definitely more corporate-focused on this top level. Now, let's make our way down into the UGF itself, because you know, that's that's what this thing's for. So, you get the limbo elevator down, and that brings us to this kind of pedestrian entry area. And this is where we've got we're going to find we're going to have some weirdness. And that it clips into our our main top of the elevator room, which you can see over there, which is lovely.

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   Let's just make our way through. So, there, this is the top elevator room. Again, there's kind of access to the outside. There's access to side rooms and other rooms from here. But essentially, this is where you're going to be in order to get upstairs. You have to come to a room like this. I'm just going to kind of walk you through it. Go to our our cargo office. A lot to do, lots of people milling about. Lots of space to, you know, to do things. So, in we go. So, this is our version of our cargo office. So, you'd get delivery missions from here. You could buy items.

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    But a lot of our rooms are going to feature this kind of door with pedestrians on either side. And that's just so that we've got that kind of functionality throughout the space where, you know, things will be moving around, and really the pedestrians want to be out of the way, that kind of thing. Let's just have a look into the space itself. It's Everything's controlled by this kind of observation tower. For us, we're going to head downstairs. And we can do that quite quickly on these kind of smaller pedestrian elevators. So, away we go.

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    Now, the depth of the uh you know, the first sublevel level is going to change in every wing, you guess. No, that's going to be procedurally generated, a lot like um a lot like the rooms as well. Oh, and the the elevator's just going to move it back up. Now, you could take the cargo elevator down, that's fine, but that's going to be fully automated, whereas these pedestrian elevators are going to be uh more independent, so and faster, as well. So, I can see that disappearing up to the top. So, this is our bottom of the elevator So, again, nice big space, very functional. There's going to be, you

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    know, things loaded on and off. And then this gives us kind of access to the rooms or the wings on either side, I should say. And so, as we release more content for this, you're going to get more expensive wings, different themes, that kind of thing. Now, the doors here are a bit misaligned. Again, work in progress. And this is a security checkpoint. So, hopefully you've got the right credentials. You're going to get checked, you're going to get scanned. But, what if you haven't got those credentials? Well, there are alternate routes in, you know, down here that you can see there's a uh little hatch uh hatch, so maybe you're sneaking your way under the

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    floor, or you're making your way over the top on piping. Multiple ways in. So, again, we're in a a bigger room now. In the white box, it's really good to just call out yes your alternate routes, yes your main path, but also where can you get on and off of those? What's rock? What's metal? What's a feature? What isn't? Cuz if we can call that out now, it means that we're giving people more information as they go into the next phase. And so, this is just an example of a kind of maybe a rock room, which kind of just links two rooms together. Maybe there's some storage. Now, can I just jump over this because I've got to put stairs in?

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    Where is the other side? And these are kind of our biggest doorways, but I'm not going to go down this, but we're having great have smaller doors into the space. So, in here, it's kind of like, well, where do these lead? We're going to have to wait for that, I'm afraid. So, that one up there, that's where you'd kind of navigate to each room through the ceiling. So, we're back in that big room from before. Now, when the rooms are this big, we can do a bit more with them. So, there's an area out back here. There's you know, rooms and maybe even some control points. So, what if this bridge, I know it's a little blurred over this chasm,

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    what if you could retract that back and forth? What if it's not even there? How are you going to make your way across? That's not for me to decide, it's for you as the player when you're getting in and out to decide. But, for the moment, we're going to make our way through. Yeah, if you fall down there, you're probably going to die. So, watch out for those kind of things. But, there's still, you know, hopefully you can find your way on these main routes. Some side rooms you could play, but then also you know, this bit's under construction now, but I wonder what it's going to be in the future. And you know, having all these spaces kind of to this level of detail is really rough, as you can see, but I'm walking around unhindered.

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    You know, I can step up and down this thing. I can see where kind of a building might be or where we could have mission spawners or maybe that's where you need to get to. You know, you've got this main room, but we've also considered the alternate route. So, if you're sneaking in, where can you go? And this is kind of predominantly Well, actually, having said that, there's pipes up there, so you could go from the seat ceiling or you could go underneath. And then, how do you sneak around? What if um people are down there and they they spot you? You've got to kind of contend with that. And then, this is more of a hero room at the moment. This is the warehouse. So, this is um same level of detail as the rest that we've just walked through, but the lighting's had a bit of a better pass on

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    it. We're midway through this white process at the moment. Things can change still. maybe the alternate route is where that guy in red is down there, but if you fall to your down that one, you might end up breaking your legs. You know, all of these containers, maybe the straddle frames are moving moving things around. Potentially, you could if you're on a mission where you want to steal something, maybe it's one of in one of those containers. Hopefully, a big, you know, working space sandbox within a sandbox, you could say. What I do like about this room is that you've got these straddle frames, you know, why not get on to the top of them and get to the um cabin? Also, when you're in the uh

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    the depths of the room, it's kind of like you've got these big piles of crates. Maybe you're sneaking between them. Maybe you're yeah, you're rifling through the contents of one and then trying to trying to get out. So, there we go. That's where we're currently at. Like I said, we're midway through white box. We've got a bit of time left to uh polish these rooms up and get our get the rest done. We're more or less at about 17 rooms, and then each of those rooms will have two overlays. So, plenty of content for this initial release. Hope you enjoyed it. So, what did we learn this week? Well, we learned that the new underground

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    facilities are making their way through the pipeline from concept to planning to white box with the intention of make their debut on the planets of Stanton and Pyro and beyond. That the procedural assembly of a multitude of room types will enable nearly every aspect of Star Citizen's current gameplay to occur inside them. And that even they even though they told me not spaceships, I'm never going to not bet on the Star Citizen community. I believe in you. Now, remember that Alpha 3.18 is available now to all players on open PTU. So, check that out for more on Star Citizen's next major release. For Inside Star Citizen, I'm Jared Huckaby. We'll see you all here next week.