Star Citizen: Behind The Big Guns of the UEE

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:03

   past few months there's been an awful lot uh going on in regards to not only the small ships but also the capital ships the should we say the big guns of the fleet for the uee that's the Idris the Bengal and the javelin You' seen the Javelin in a disarray of State in in the homestead demo [Music] the Idis has consistently been in development for a very long time now there's been an awful lot going into it there's there's so many kind of factors that you need to account for design art aesthetic cinematics does it play well

2. 00:00:52

   does it feel good there's there's there's all these kind of things going on the Idis was always the first of of that Fleet to kind of go through that motion so that's pretty much there now we've got one room I think that's just left uh left to do which is the missile room um but that that's going to be a fun good good task leave leave the best till the end as to say the history of the iris it really kind of started off as a much smaller ship and as we kind of do very well in the UK we make things bigger and bigger and bigger during the development of of of Squadron we kind of realized that really the ship wasn't going to be big enough to suit the needs of the story there was so many more kind of spaces that we needed to get get in there the hanger needed to feel feel bigger and and better and you know there there was there was a lot more kind of requirements being driven from from should we say the script so we've done

3. 00:01:40

   our best to kind of stay true to Ryan Church's original kind of pitch for that stuff um obviously when a ship gets kind of wider and wider and wider it starts to look a bit tubbier and tubbier and tubbier so we we lengthened it as well to kind of bring the overall kind of should we say the look of the ship back in toe um as mentioned it's slightly more Angler it's slightly more angular to keep it efficient in in the engine and you know as you can see it's just exponentially grown um it's not going to grow anymore the the beautiful thing about the iris is when you take the exterior shell away from the ship it it does genuinely look like an oil rig inside it is so packed full of of stuff it's it's quite crazy there's there's very little negative space every kind of square inch is used so we've beenish as

4. 00:02:30

   we can be we've also kind of you know we tried to make I've always kind of approached it in a way of it needs to feel like a really nice space to walk around um and it should feel it should flow you should never kind of you should never kind of walk into walls when you go through a doorway you should always kind of you Golden Roll is the pretzel design as I call it when you walk into a room you should see your exit or your entrance within 60° that's your F of view so there's all these kind of little things that we tried to take into account so when you're playing you know the big games like you know Battlefront and Call of Duty you study the level design they do that very well so that's something that I've always tried to push forward as well and also to try and try and bring in some kind of verticality where possible so you'll notice there's a lot more steps up and down you know

5. 00:03:17

   there's all these and it kind it is an absolute nightmare to Performance capture with this stuff but it it does genuinely feel a little bit more alive than just this kind of flat plane the javelin was always in a good place I was never going to sweat it it was always going to kind of take care of itself as long as we we kept the primary focus on the Idis which is your home should we say during the the the story of of of Squadron so and then we've got the Bengal which is the should we say well it's the first sh we saw massive challenge massive undertaking it's not as black and white as going in and going okay we're going to make this big ship it just doesn't work that way you have to you take into account budgets for your distance rati go uh can we l stuff efficiently to therefore squeeze more out of the engine the exterior the style

6. 00:04:05

   of it it kind of lends itself to this already it's very kind of polygonal in form um so we got a lot of plain ey surfaces that that are easy to work with for the engine and they're always going to light well so there there's a lot of factors that we play to our strengths when you study a fleet in in not only Star Citizen but if you go back through the history of very kind of successful sci-fi films and I think the film that executed it the best of all ever was the opening to Star Wars you know you you see the the runner kind of go across and it's got these soft forms and it's generally kind of very softly lit um for lots of cylinders lots of you know fillets should we say you kind of understood without even seeing the Star Destroyer what was going on and who was on board right and then you have this very aggressive angular monolith kind of come over you and you kind of understood instantly no

7. 00:04:55

   music cues what their role in the universe was and that's something that we try and Achieve with the design and and the execution of of the uee fleet right these guys are your friends they're not they're not here to kind of you know be be should we say like aggressive they are the human element of this story so when you study the form of of these ships they're very much in tow with that that very much educational first 30 seconds of Star Wars so you know and then of course you know you can roll into like vanor and stuff like that which which you will see further down the line that is the bipolar opposite of that so you should you know it works both ways if you see a ship and it's like a 10 pixel silhouette on your screen you should get who it is and if

8. 00:05:44

   they're friendly or if they're Foe and you should also understand if you're stood in a corridor and you've just spawned and you just look at a wall panel you should understand exactly where you are just through the basics and that's that's what we've tried to do so they they they're the kind of three big bad boys that are in production right now um and and are moving on at quite a rate