Star Citizen: August Subscriber's Town Hall feat. Audio Team

31 August 201600:57:361,528 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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to members of our development team uh we are live in beautiful whims low United Kingdom I was going to say sunny and rainy but it it goes back and forth I've been amazed at how fast the weather changes in this town uh it's it's I don't know if it's sunny or raining at this point but we're here in whims low UK with members of The Foundry 42 audio team so let's take a few moments to introduce yourselves and uh and let let the folks watching uh you know abroad a chance to get to know you and and and see what kind of questions they can ask so immediately to my left is Mr Graham philipsson uh Graham you are our lead audio programmer I am indeed all right so why don't you tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do for Star sism okay yeah so I'm the lead audio programmer I lead a team of four people um our main job really is to
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provide the services that are required by sound designers to allow them to get the sounds that they want into the game and to um make the sounds knit with the game and feel like they're really part of the fabric of the game um and also to provide any tools that they might require to facilitate what they're doing it's interesting a lot of times you don't think that audio needs to be programmed into the game you know these guys you know design it and create it and stuff but then it still has to be implemented into into the yeah it's it's inextricably linked to the uh the players movements for instance you've got um footsteps and Foley sounds that are that absolutely tied to the velocity of of the movement of the player and it really sort of helps to gel the whole thing together and to make it feel like the uh the player on screen is
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responding to the players impuls awesome all right immediately to his left is Lee banard our audio director here found year 42 how you doing Lee uh I'm I'm well thank you so why don't you tell folks what an audio director does for Star Citizen um I have it's a kind of single point of contact for everybody to try and kind of like a unifying force I suppose trying to yeah essentially hopefully provide a cohesive vision for how all the sound should come together really um when I when I started here I was essentially building up a team we just had Stefan Luke and Jason Cobb over in Austin and that was about it and it's it's pretty clear for a game of this scale and scope that that was I mean Stefan was like a broken man he had been
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acting audio director he's still he still yeah when I'm finish um but yeah it's it's and since then we're up to about I it's 10 or 11 people if you count all of us as people um so yeah and uh it's essentially yeah just trying to Reign all together I suppose is is Lely what I do yeah that's great uh and then immediately to your left at the end last but certainly not least Mr Ross trenza our senior sound designer I told you I was going to get it right on we go we go way back now we go way back uh Ross why don't you tell folks what a senior sound designer does uh well I mean that position covers a lot of things but because we have um a few of us on the team were're able to sort of semi- specialized so uh my two uh main areas are music systems uh working with the
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composers implementing the music or that kind of aspect of it uh then I'm kind of also the point man for squadron 42 uh so I I I talk to the various designers and stuff like that um and just act as a sort of a little focal point going on both sides there to the audio team and from the audio team awesome now I I I would be remiss if I didn't also add that you were the creator of the ballot of big Benes yes that's definitely what I want to be known for for the rest of my life so uh folks as normal we take questions from the RSI website uh for a special subscriber Edition Town Hall like this we take questions exclusively from our subscriber chat so if you'd like to ask questions of Graham Lee and Ross you can go to robertsspaceindustries.com
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uh and under the Community tab under chat uh you can join the subscriber Tab and of course that's if you're a subscriber uh for any reason you're not a subscriber and you're interested in becoming a subscri subscriber you can find that information on the website as well so questions in the subscriber tab please preface your questions with the word question in capital letter surrounded by brackets we have also had a thread goinging in subscriber Den throughout the weekend that's our dedicated forums for subscribers to to help get us started here so we'll go we'll start with those questions while the chat begins to populate uh first question in no particular order uh I'm wondering how you guys create the majority of your sound effects used in the game do you use mostly artificial creation methods like uh computer programs or do you record old school and wobble metal or Titan rope Etc and then
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record it probably one for you Ross I would suggest just a fight over who um it's essentially we're not really limited to any one particular way of doing things um so we use like syn you know software type plugins and stuff like that uh but we also record our own stuff um there's there's liing material in there as well because I think a lot of what sound design is essentially is you know combining all these elements to come up with stuff that you somehow haven't heard before necessarily um yeah I I wouldn't ever kind of think of limiting anyone or I really try not to tell people you know in in terms of that kind of dictatorial director type of how to do things um it's I think it's quite important our sound designers indulge in the ways that they feel they can express
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themselves properly hopefully that is that that's how goes so um yeah it's just a whole range of different ways of doing things yeah that's that's kind of seen throughout all of startis and from the artists to the uh to to the from concept artist to designers you use the tools that you're most comfortable with to achieve the goal that you're you're trying to hit you know so if that's physical it's physical if it's digital it's digital you know artificial as this as this person said right let's see next question uh obviously folks have been uh caught up in our star syst Alpha 3.0 demo since we unveiled it uh at Gamescom this question says can you walk us through the various sounds that will make up planetary re-entry and exit uh I.E is there wind
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Roar Burning uh ship shaking Etc uh also will the re-entry and exit sounds vary in length depending on how fast you're going through so this a two-part question let's do the first part and we'll go to the second part so what kind of sounds can can players expect to hear during re-entry or planetary exit um I guess it's uh Darren really that's that's been Darren lambor he fantastic by the way um amazing quite a few bits of video for I really wish you were here yeah yeah go sorry uh yeah he's he's put a lot of effort into that whole espe especially for Gamescom he he you know did a lot of a design for the atmospheric flight and um and the the atmospheric entry still
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um it wasn't probably quite a system sort of level where we wanted it to be for that but at the moment we're kind of converting it all so it all works that's actually probably something that you might know a bit more about where we are with the system side of things yeah but um yeah what was the actual specific sort of question like what sounds yeah what kind what kind of sounds uh do you anticipate would go into uh a re-entry and in a planetary exit I mean a lot of that ties I mean we have what I guess we're call it an excitation system or something for ships now in that uh there's various ways in which ships can undergo kind of impulse energy from external forces which includes re-entry or weapons fire and a lot of it is just trying to tie those in a way that actually makes sense um and balancing that and stuff so there's there's all sorts of stuff like bolt heads vibrating
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um yeah the actual uh of fiery effects that you got in in the Gamescom demo there there's always multiple layers that come together but they're all kind of they're all layers that sit separately from each other well um and all very parameter driven um we try to make it all kind of meaningful and systemic in that way if that's the right word Yeah you mentioned bulkheads rattling would would the sounds change based on the size or type of ship that you're flying generally we want to go to that level of detail yeah it's I think there's probably different materials we want to hint at different manufacturers of different styles and stuff you can even reflect that sort of you know those stylistic differences at that level it sounds like that's a bit you know how much differentiation you get between things but for the more militaristic type stuff you might have more loose
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rivet or you know just the general like an APC type kind of thing uh whereas more the luxury type stuff you'll get maybe less or the back you know you get something else champagne glasses ring yeah luy maybe in a nice origin ship it's a little it's a little quieter a little a little smoother sounding re-entry than than you would than you might get in a drake ship yeah I guess you're in for quiet so turbulent experience compared with being out in space so when you when you reenter and when you're flying in atmosphere there is a lot more sort of wind buffeting and things going around and that's a really good way that we can use to express the differences between the ships how well they handle that how well they damp that sound and how will you smooth out all right and this that the the second part of this is probably a question for our audio programmer uh will the ENT re-entry sounds and exit sounds uh vary
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in length depending on your acceleration into and out of atmosphere absolutely the uh the time to re-entry varies depending on how you fly the ship so we have to deal with how long it takes you to fly down there how fast you're going when you do it we reflect as much as we possibly can anything that can vary on the ship will try to reflect in audio because one thing that we're always fighting against is is um staying in the same place in terms of audio so we take every every bit of variation that the game can give us we try to pass on to the audio systems and use it to uh create variation that's one of the very cool things that would separate a video game from a from a movie or television show is that it's not just one pre-recorded mix that's going in and the game is actually creating that mix dynamically based on what you're doing yeah and in a way it's a big it's a big
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a challenge for sound design because it's not just saying um create some sounds that match this picture it's create some sounds that can deal with every possible situation yes I mean in that sort of way when you're talking about length that implies that well we we tend to kind of chop stuff up a bit more and resequence it runtime so that you hopefully you'll never I think the ear is very good at picking up on repetition like that and you you know the amount of times you'll enter into atmosphere and that is like you don't oh it's about sound again you don't want that you know you want enough variation that you it always feels like a fresh like this is the first time I've done it kind of thing we to make it also it's with with film you have you have the luxury of the fact it's linear and you you know that that time frame you can have a crescendo of noise that
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if it were to last longer would you know would just be deafening and awful but um you know it's going to end CU it's it's a film so you can build and build and drop whereas obviously we we can't have a sound buing to um you know a terrifying High Point and then staying there for another 30 seconds because you're [Music] cruising uh question from the chat uh I understand you've been doing your own sound capture work have any of you got a particular memory from these sound shoots that you'd like to share see what's particularly working with Mark Hamel yeah managed to avoid that stuff so I did uh yeah I did manage to um uh working with him to I took a panel off my uh my atat Walker for him to sign which is just so nerdy but I
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don't care he signed it we talked about atat it was wonderful I was I was shaking so wildly that I couldn't hold my phone to get a picture taken very very Pro but um no that that was a great experience though um did they let you go to the recordings or they they I've not been personally but uh they didn't let me go either man yeah I don't know what's up guys when do we get to go it Tes like a month out it's a while all right next question what are your plans and ideas this is another procedural Planet question a lot of our questions are focused on that uh what are your plans and ideas for the sounds on a planet will there be different sounds for different environments like Woods oceans or maybe even in caves and how do you go about creating
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different sounds for different environments tight is one um a lot of our discussion in terms of like how to deal with procedural Planet stuff it's actually it's not that difficult to Source like the environmental like the ambient stuff really it's you know you go to places or you you know you're otherwise Source For Stuff U but the big issue I guess we have is like how do we actually get it in in a way that doesn't require our sound designers having to essentially troll over the entire surface of the planet um cuz I don't want to inflict that on anyone it it seems like something that we we should be able to automate or at least semi procedur realize if that's if that's what worth it and I think that's what a lot of our discussion is I'm I'm absolutely confident we can get all the Ambiance and everything sounding right um it's it's still kind of slightly in in
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progress how we absolutely go about it because there's certain levels of fidelity I think at certain levels you want to be able to hear very just a general wash of stuff and then you kind of say land and get out and on foot and then you want lots of randomized elements that all very fitting it's a lot of parameter stuff actually was there's a load of that sort of querying the environment and then making decisions on what sounds to play depending on what's there I mean we We'll be asking lots of awkward questions of you know is this data here and if it isn't we need to somehow dynamically mark it up so that we can get the right sound playing any given like maybe attach certain things to like certain materials so that when an artist creates something using this material and then the player character interact with that material basically yeah yeah sure so it's all just um just context and information
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being fed to us is just what what saves us with these kind of things just the more data we can get pulled into the audio systems the more we can tweak and you know parameterize and just make it Dynamic and bring it to life then that that gives us at least a good base layer to start from so that we don't have to worry about a planet and then where we do have those pockets of bespoke you know bases and stuff we can go in zoom in on it go really kind of microscopic with the detail on those so sound designers aren't you know doing kind of you know like donkey work of all that sort of stuff but you know for once a better word it's like you're going in and sound designing those that really those areas that really pertain that really make themselves you know they need designing there's going to be a meme online about in about about 5 minutes of you going donkey work sound
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dony people know what that means I'm British I'm going see your sound donkey okay um will 7.1 be supported or only 5.1 those are surround surround sound setups uh is there and is there a specific sound card that the audio team recommends we have a lot of our players are are heavy Min maxers they want need the best memory and the best video card and and and the best audio card if possible so so I guess let's let's tackle the surround sound thing first and then we can talk about audio first that's absolutely our our job is to support those people who want the best of everything we you know if if they go out and spend a lot of money on Hardware 7.1 or even you know higher than that we want to be able to support that and offer them an experience that justifies their massively expensive
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purchase yeah and I'm hoping um you know don't hold me to this right but Dolby Atmos will be something that we look at um I mean which is funny Dolby Atmos has its roots in in kind of the objectoriented kind of games industry anyway looking at the way we look at sound um and having virtual object or whatever so I'm hoping that's something that we could relatively painlessly do I know Wise has that supported natively now so there should all everything else is kind of almost a subset of that so there shouldn't be any problem in terms of 51 you know I mean a lot of time I just listening stereo on PC anyway but uh yeah I imagine there are some people with wigs that put mine to shame and yeah I think it's fair that we support them as much as we can yeah all of our audio exists in 3D space so it makes a lot of sense that we should be able to
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pretty much make down to any speaker configuration from that point nice nice okay we have a question uh what process do you have in place before a sound is allowed in game release does everything have to go through Mr audio director do you have to listen to every single sound and be like good ship it he stands over us all day I do it's very diff it's a lot of standing um no I tend to think I mean we each have our kind of um it's a lot of Evolution I guess it's like you we all have different areas of ownership I've got this overall thing and we do playthroughs where we you know we sit together and we we have some sort of consensus I mean I I guess the last word comes from me you know if it has to but I think with the right people in place
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there's not so much of that needed you know it becomes a much more uh you know it's a joint effort really rather than you know I want this to sound like this which I would find slightly Soul destroying if you had to do that all the time anyway um so yeah it's not really that that rigid and I I think it it's for the benefit of this sort of project you know we get time to go back and iterate not enough time but that's that's the true is and that's true of what we do but um yeah I don't think it's it's not like one sound this must be signed off or anything like that it doesn't really I don't think it works we all kind of know when it's not right yeah is he telling the truth do you you guys need help just blink if you're in danger you can't see guns under but I think yeah and the thing with sound design is that you can make the
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most beautiful sound in the world in isolation that doesn't mean it's going to feel right when you get it into game and uh it's it's one of the nice aspects of sound design that once the sound is in there and working it's a very quick turnaround to iterate on that and and uh you replace the actual asset with something different so you can put your beautiful sound in no no no that's terrible that just doesn't work at all and you could have another one in there with you know however long it takes you to make a replace so yeah I mean it's fair to say we're not truly happy with how the game sounds right now um I get a lot of like questions I you know um when are you going to do this like uh that's diff that's more production for for them to say that's great pass but but you know it's uh we want everything to be great and it's it's tough with the the kind of
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release model we have to get round to doing everything um but yeah to doing everything right now doing everything this early in a project what needs doing I mean that's all I can say and we will get round to it and yeah it's it's it's it's like anything else in game development and star is no exception there's priorities you have to do the things that that affect this many before the things that affect this many true yeah all right uh here's a bit of a follow-up question uh maybe for Ram uh with with the scaling in whatever the things that 7.1 5.1 uh what kind of work goes into managing the low-end sound systems for the highend what if somebody's got measly onboard You Know audio with with with with only the two channels what what how does your how do
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you program for audio for something that scales to 7.1 down to well we're kind of lucky because most of that stuff is actually defined by standards by by the industry so um once we've got a 71 mix we know what the rule is to mix that down to a a two channel mix um the unfortunately there's not a great deal we can do about it if somebody's you know playing on the the the worst pair of speakers in the world but uh you know their expectation level I would think would match the quality of their speakers is there a message You' like to give to somebody playing this game on with onboard audio and Bud headphones well I mean I don't know do you want to take that one Le because my opinion is you know if if you're happy with it that's okay you know you're playing our game and we appreciate that but if you want
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to diplom I wouldn't go that way but what's the opposite um at least a good pair of headphones is I think that's a decent investment I find it difficult to listen or at least do active listening like working with headphones isn't something that I any of our sound designers have to do I like to think because I I think that has a sort of detrimental effect physically it's just hard to do that so I I've tried you know I tried gaming in headphones um and half the time I'm just paranoid that someone's sneaking up behind me and got to scar which I find slightly distracts me from the gaming so yeah I I tend to just um I would but if you have to if if you I know there's practical reasons why you might need to go with headphones but I think you can spend you know I know people spend whatever they like on
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things but I found you know 10 20 $20 whatever earbuds they really won't do it you you're kind of cheating yourself out of a better experience really if you go to over headphones I mean I I've got like a I can't remember how much I spent it's about £70 or something which isn't a ridiculous investment for how important say music gaming Etc kind of is um so you know if I I understand that you know people are on different budgets but um I see it as a bit of an investment especially what we do it's donkey work am I using that right I've never heard the phrase before so I'm GNA keep trying you know what it means right that sort of stuff mindless work you know you wouldn't know what that means no all right uh a couple week a couple weeks ago on ATV uh we showcased uh a nice Idris walkthrough
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with with with with a beautiful piece from the art team about the sound design for that this is a followup question uh he says nice work on the AG of sound walk through uh when a sound such as a sparkling a sparking cable or a siren is obscured by another object either it's a glass panel or a solid metal wall how does that sound alter to The Listener will will we and he follows up will we get sounds bouncing off walls around Corners so that the listener hears the source as if it was from the wall as opposed to the original Sound Source so that's actually something that I'm working on right now um we do have a few systems in the game already but it's it's definitely not where we want it to be um so I've started out from the the source of a sound working outwards uh initially when you're outside a room and there's a sound going on inside that
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room you expect the sound to come from the open door so that system is in but reflect isn't in yet um there's a massive list of engineering tasks that we need to do and that is one of them and uh yeah propagation is is really important to us because we think it sort of it it places you in the world um and makes the whole thing feel a lot more real and we we do know that we've got a long way to go on that but um we do have a really good plan for it and as with all of our Tech we're aiming to be the best and better than the best you're the best nothing yeah all right Thomas is cringing because I sang I told him I wouldn't sing on stream uh all right can you tell us more about the new Dynamic
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Sound System uh Chris mentioned during the Gamescom presentation that we have a dynamic music system that that that that kind of works as an on thefly composer um how does the crossfading of Pedro's amazing soundtrack get accomplishment yes this question is from Pedro super hey Pedro hey Pedro thanks for watching um yeah it's a a system that's been uh the thing I've been working on most for for quite a while now um it's uh it's been a a long path of iteration on it uh working with Sam Hall one of other audio programmers um we we started with a system that was just too chaotic and too crazy and we've managed to considering what it does it's a fairly
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simple but powerful system that we're really happy with now um what does it do well the core system it's reading um events from the game anything really from you getting killed the enemy getting killed all that kind of stuff it's being fed into this intensity number which is 0 to 10,000 just fairly arbitrary number that it gets fed into yeah it's really intense at 10,000 um and uh that um decays again as well so this number is constantly moving and if you can kind of picture it you have just a a sequence of blocks of music getting more and more intense that that it pushes up through as it goes up and down through this number so it goes from very fairly gentle ambient music at the low numers straight up to a crazy d da da da intense music up here MH uh and then on top of that we have a mood
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parameter so if if you're if you're if you're getting your ass kicked by all the enemies and you have your Shields are down and stuff and this mood number that moves into the Grim numbers down here which is a different scale like a on a y- AIS kind that's the grimmest number you say zero zero yeah no actually you know I think it's minus 200 that's really great it is more Grim than so that pushes down into this this Grim again with intensity but grim and intense and then you have heroic and intense so it's this X and Y thing there so that's complicated enough then on top of that if you get out of the ship into Eva floating around that whole system moves to a new set of music just for Eva and if you go into the ground in fps again a whole new set of again same numbers same intensity so it flows if that number is going up and you're
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changing what you're doing you're on the ground you're in Space the number will still be coming with you but the the music will be moving through these different types of music for the different uh activities that you're doing so and then on top of that we have special bits of cinematic music we can trigger whenever we want as well as this Dynamic evolving music we can say now it's time to really drop a Pedro bomb boom off it goes and is that unique for Star Citizen is that that that's something we've created here uh yeah we've we've created from scratch it's certainly it's not the first game to have Dynamic music by uh by a long way there's games like SSX Red Dead Redemption that they they've all been sort of milestones in evolving this kind of thing but just the requirements of our game are so vast uh that making a dynamic music system that's on its feet
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and dynamic and not tiring in any way for a whole Universe I think that puts us certainly pretty pioneering that area I'd like to think with what we've done on top of all of that entire system there if you go to another part of the universe we're all set up ready to go okay all of this is different again over here in another part of the universe alien space it can all be crazy alien music or and it's completely future proof already so what whatever we have in the future this system will stay on its feet and will'll just run which is just lovely awesome all right well I think we may have the answer to the next question I'm but I'm going to ask it anyway just in case it's different uh in every facet of Star Citizen the production team seems to introduce both evolutionary and revolutionary mechanics and features for things like graphics and lighting and physics Etc with this
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in mind what would you say is the biggest feature the audio department has brought to Star Citizen uh there's quite a few bits and pieces that were pretty proud of yeah it's hard to it's hard to pick one specific feature but one thing you done some yeah so many audio touches upon everything and it is really difficult to to pin it down on to one to one thing I mean the music system does stand alone and that's that's great but yeah that's a nice you know Focus I maybe I'm going just saying that because you just talked about it and you make it sound so impressive but that thing about it that thing about it um being future proof is something we try to apply throughout the game and and it's a big philosophy of Le is to make sure that we solve for every future case as well as the present ones so a lot of the code that goes in is attempting to
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create systems that can just support the sound designers without needing any further code support in the future yeah and a lot of uh the benefit that comes from that is is the freedom that the sound designers then get to create the sounds they want to get to to create and not worry about you know technical limitations yeah uh does the something like that that Dynamic sound system does that apply to Squadron 42 as well uh yes yes it's um it's it'll be a completely different set of music and uh instead of uh Pedro that'll be Jeff selli uh composer uh who's working on that side of the game uh so we're um we're getting our our first basics in in place at the moment actually I've just been working on it right now uh he's he's we have like a sort of a weekly delivery of new
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content and uh I pull it apart and try it out in the game and stuff um but we have many of the obviously the same requirements you you're you're flying you're shooting you're eving um and uh we'll be able to give the the designers the option to move this entire Dynamic music set not so much based on where in the persistent Universe it would be the area you're in they can use it in a more cinematic way to say okay we were on like a an epic music logic set but now we're going into some scary space exploration so let's change this for a the creepy uh you know more I say creepy and intimate no spoilers that's just you Ro says those creepy and intimate stuff but um yes so they can just they can swap it out and suddenly the whole
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music like it did in persistant universe will move just with h Jeff's awesome music well that was a good lead in for the next question what's it like working with Jeff zelli for squadron 42 I think I'm one question out it's like I've cheated on my homework almost like I do this on purpose I know how it's almost like I ask a question and then know the answer and what's it like working with Jeff it's lovely it's uh uh incredibly talented guy um he's yeah he he takes amazing Direction so we we can just provide him with just some sort of keywords and some some very general context of what we're looking for and he can disappear and just come back and go hey okay got some music for you and it's you know powerful cinematic I mean he's a real Hollywood guy so he's got that
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Punchy br and just that amazing Grand style to his stuff and yeah he's very very cool very laid-back guy just just a really nice guy yeah he just appears with this mind blown music great Skype connection as well really smooth Skype connection on this video it's great sound silly but it just that's the thing that sticks with you isn't it it really is uh as far as music that that our fans may have heard of Jeff's uh we used Jeff's music in the uh Bishop Senate speech video that's right yeah yeah so I think I think that's the only piece of of Squadron 42 music we've there was there was a couple minor pieces in um uh the the mor tour at citizen Comm last year but um that was that was a bit more um you scory as opposed to real stand up moments but yeah we're getting some great stuff
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coming in now okay uh question from our chat are you guys going to remove or dampen sounds that happen outside of stations when you're inside them there's been a we we we long had very persistent bug where you would hear sounds happening in in different sections of space so is what are the plans for when you're inside a spaceship and or station and something there's a battle happening outside how does that change for the person inside yeah so along with the uh propagation reflection I'm currently working on um figuring out where you are what material you're inside of and how enclosed you are in a space um so well to answer the question uh yes we have plans to fix that and very soon uh so I'm just putting the Finishing Touch is now to A system that can be used um to olude the outside sounds but also to do
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something a little bit more interesting with the internal sounds as well how they reflect it seems like such a simple human concept being inside and outside actually takes quite a lot of especially in a game that's quite flexible in terms of you know our ships to break apart and then you know you need to be able to parameterize if you like how inside and outside you are it's it's been quite a longterm B really of ours yeah and it's not a trivial thing to fix figuring out whether you're inside or outside it's it's one of the things that permeates throughout all of Star Citizen the things that seem most realistic are simultaneously the things that are hardest to accomplish and the least recognized or appreciated because they're what people are used to in the
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real world well there's this common thing about audio in games is if you're doing it right people won't know it and well that's obviously what we're aiming for in in certain aspects of the game uh and betties bitching betties that that that the the voice that's inside your ship telling you when you're messing up basically uh will there be any customization in regards to each manufacturer's and Betty ship audio so I guess I'll take this um there's a few I guess levels of customization I think we need to off the player mhm um ultimately we want to be able to swap out I think the voice packs I think what people want that level of customization at the moment we have you know kind of very manufacturer specific voices but I think for the longer term I
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can see us wanting to perhaps give us that give the players that flexibility to you know as as people customize their cars in the real world you know that sort of thing um we've also had a lot of discussion about how different roles especially on Multi crew type ships you don't necessarily want to hear um a lot of a bitching I don't really like to call bitching bety the ship computer stuff yes um that the pilot might be interested in so we have to take that into consideration um I think ultimately we we're going towards a I mean we're talking about it today actually yeah because it's a problem area it's actually it was one of those things that when it was started being built without much system based design really uh it made sense when you've only got a few different cues you know more and more content has been thrown at it um not so
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driven by by us not not just you know if were watching this they'd be knocking on the door right now what's up well it's it's just one of those things it creeps is you know creeps up over time the amount of feedback that you want from that and I think it we get too much at the moment um I'm sure you probably know about this and we want to thin it down um and ideally I think you need to be able to give a certain modium of control and configurability to to a player so that they can gear it towards their own ends um that's what we're looking to do it means making it all very data driven and it's it's you know I'm hoping that we we get somewhere with it uh pretty soon because it's it detracts me over all experience but for me at the
00:36:16
moment um on the topic of sound effects that's how the question starts we weren't talking about sound effects that's on the topic of sound effects will sound be perceived different ly between multiple players for example if someone punches you will like if Lee punched you would you hear a sound that's slightly different than what Lee hears which would be different than what Russ hears as a as a bystander like if he was in third person and you guys were in first person you punch each other would he hear it differently than you yeah how does that work absolutely so we we we have I mean the game's sort of based around three perspectives which is the first person perspective the third person but still the player and then the non-local somebody else in your game kind of perspective and using the punch example somebody punched me I'd expect a
00:37:04
real sort of visceral I can hear it in my head I can hear my body shaking that kind of thing did that would happen if Lee did that I wouldn't do that does yeah especially when I've just not finished my work on time and but for Lee that would be more of a sort of Point sound on the end of his fist so um we we have those differences we have those differences in the weapon sounds already um and again we have a a third sound which is a more sort of distant more filtered sound for and Russ wouldn't hear anything he'd be laughing Russ just be Ross will be recording it to using the game can you do it again louder hard sorry my mic wasn't on all right uh sort of as a follow-up uh with the introduction of atmospheric flight and re-entry and whatnot will there be a
00:37:53
sonic boom and will others be able to hear that player versus folks on the ground that is an interesting one because we have already talked about the difference that um the level of atmosphere like if we take Earth's atmosphere to be one different planets can have different atmospheric densities and how that affects the way sound propagates and the way it filters but it I guess it would also affect the point at which the the sound barrier would be broken wouldn't it aunion of waves that would be different depending on the that be an interesting one so yeah and that might actually depend on the atmospheric density as the it would happen so did I just create a bunch of extra this a bun oft work sorry guys but that's cool cuz we we love getting ideas from the community anyway we try to you know especially when the good ones uh all right uh here's an FPS
00:38:42
question we have lots of FPS players you know anxious for Star marine and 26 and Beyond uh will there be audible cues for the functionality I.E health of equipment like guns and and weapons will there be a way way like when you're in the thick of it and you're you can't look at every element of your of your uh of your UI like when a gun jams and you hear that click you and you know instinctively that your gun is jammed now I don't know if we have gun jams but will there be audible audible cues to let you know when your equipment his malfunctions it's it's a difficult one that I've I've um in previous games I've toed and froed with it because um you get very excited about the prospect of any and all feedback um when you're doing that kind of you know faster paced um sort of multiplayer experience with
00:39:32
with a lot of um gunfire and stuff you can find that uh too much feedback has suddenly kind of go the wrong way and if if if you're um if you're getting you know uh clicks building up here and beeps building up there and and um notifications and stuff it can it can get too busy like anything I guess and you you've got to kind of pick your battles when uh get the right feedback to the player but I mean having said that it's it's all all those kind of parameterized elements are always of Interest we have talked about degradation quite a lot haven't we yeah um I mean mostly for ship based stuff really was that you know you have that whole repair C with ships not so much for like you know handheld weapons I don't know how much there is of a you know drop it pick up another one and how really how how
00:40:21
degraded R yet over time really um it's something we can definitely look at we do have certain part of the weapon audio that you know it's it's slightly different depending on certain context but I don't think we've gone into that level of detail yet with those weapons I'm sure there be some weapons that Safeway overheat you might want to reflect that um so it's this is essentially whatever is kind of important on the gameplay side that we reflect it with the audio but until we get I mean we've talked about the possibility of reflecting some of these things independently but for that sort of thing which seems quite an intrinsic gameplay element we would need to like like a a physical projectile weapon when it runs out of ammo would sound differently than an energy weapon when it ran out of juice kind different audio cue that let you know you know if if you
00:41:08
haven't been looking at your your ammo counter you'd know instinctively by hearing it okay I'm out of out of ammo but there's some game Classics as well that I think um are there for a reason you know you get the the the heat build up on weapons that can overheat yeah some some games go for the like building up to a click on the ammo as you get closer to the end of magaz uh and yeah that can be great feedback it depends on the weapon I guess yeah uh is the is the work being done okay so there's let me see if I can rephrase this a bit so there's the FPS elements that are in the persistent Universe which now is the baby PE what we're calling Crusader what we build out as the standand system and then there's the upcoming starmarine which is a video game within the video game kind of thing so is there a are are you working on a difference in sound
00:41:56
design for what is essentially the real world of our game versus the Video Game World in our game Star C deception yeah yeah yeah yeah because starmarine is a video game within a video game will does it have a difference in sound design from what you would do in the Pu it's definitely a bit like the way that Arena Commander had those elements kind of subjective elements and stuff and yeah it will have some of those like game modes to Mark out as a simulation as opposed to you know I think we go for full different sets of like guns or anything but it's it's more about layer on top of it so that you're aware of you know score the framing I think isn't it like when you die in Star ring can it sound like when you die in Pac-Man because it's a video game definitely
00:42:44
don't we want to get seen for that so but um yeah I mean just for doing R and at you probably in trouble we would probably have the twitch stream muted now because I violated some copyright um I I know our ship gu is not here but uh uh ships are a big focus in Star so may maybe you can you can help us out with this Le how many Unique Sounds go into each ship and how are those sounds decided from engines to systems coming along to even the doors opening and closing behind you I can only imagine there's massive amount of Works work done to make each ship sounds sound unique yeah but I just said kind of the exceptional case in terms of how we're looking for this Grand scale stuff for the rest of the game will solve for anity I kind of see them as like these precious unique jewels that we need to
00:43:31
make very bespoke and yeah you know but we don't share very much between different ships I mean we we probably if we do it's kind of a temporary solution so like a Quantum Drive at the moment is pretty much common to all of them but I think we would like to make that you know differentiated for different ships and different manufacturers and stuff um I think it's it's a nice thing for you helps you to personalize it and you know have that relation ship with your you know ship and plus I think they all have uh as we mentioned about the degrading aspect before um we we've talked about what if this door opened and closed a million times how would it sound different that million time if you hadn't repaired your ship properly and stuff like that they lived in spaces and I think that's really important to refesh so so you're saying that two folks could have the exact same
00:44:20
constellation Andromeda but if they outfitted them with different enough internal components a different engine different Quantum jump that that they would sound different I hope so yeah I think you would you should be able to get that kind of if if there's enough stuff you can personalize um there's no reason why that shouldn't be the case if you know if we've got enough of if people can place objects that react physically in the world when that might resonate at a certain you know as you might have had in your own car or something when it's you get to a certain RPM you certain sounds and you but you you get used to that and I have a rattle in my C yeah when a ship gets worn down will there will there be a rattle like a like we want to parameterize that stuff so I think that's it just makes it more lived
00:45:08
in and it makes it yours I think it's quite Charming to think if if if something is rattling and if you get in if you drive someone else's then and then you're back in yours it's like I really must get that SC can you imagine trying to track down where the rattles coming from you're walking from one in one what what component is rattling what component I need to repair it's when we put in this mechanism so that it's always one step ahead of you and you can never catch up with it don't even know we really mess up your mind um uh just a just time for a couple more questions before we wraping up see it's going by fast I told you uh the Juke Box in the hanger that's present already allows people to play their own music in the game now uh will the hangar be the only place where something like this is possible and and if well we'll go to the second part is
00:45:56
will the hanger be the only place like something like this is possible I don't think so I I mean it's I think we've we've talked a bit touched upon this recently actually the whole being able to Port sounds out bya kind of you know speakers within the environment and perhaps pick those up and place those I think there's going to be quite a lot of leeway it's why is people out that stuff pretty much you know I'm not going to say for free there there some engineering there but but I think there's once got haveit working in in um the the hanger which took a while actually withs for some reason I think a lot of it was F mod work but got left um I can't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to stand that out so you have a system in your ship maybe bit okay yeah pretty much everything we do will be driven by the the fiction so like a lot of sci-fi treatments of things like this have put quite cold nobody listens to
00:46:44
the radio in a Sci-Fi movie right yeah but you know we're not really sort of going down that way we no I mean more accepting of that kind of thing yeah I mean music content thing is is like trying to we've talked about different ways we could actually get maybe a bit more Community involvement in terms of providing music which is totally separate from his question but I think no that leads into the next question see the screen we haven't rehearsed this yeah that's that's something that we keep wondering how to how to approach really I know that some Chris Chris is really invested in the music side of things so it's always a discussion with him whatever happens with music so avoiding this is the followup to this question not the next question but avoiding any of the the legal aspects is it technically for the music that that a player plays in The Hanger to be heard by another player who comes into their
00:47:32
hanger yeah it's a I don't say yes but I know it's well it's it's technically feasible but again I mean the legal question that it raises is not going touch the legal thing I just okay yeah it's it's just data isn't it so you know so that's that's something for other people to figure out yeah okay uh the next question Star Citizen has looked at projecting clothing architecture and vehicle design into the future has there been any thought to the music of 2946 and Beyond I me nothing think but Buck Rogers certain PR of the 70s disco Revival last at least 500 years so it's it's definitely something that that we're we're very intrigued about um uh bet it's um it's still uh very
00:48:22
conceptual and stuff but we we do love the idea of kind of maybe sort of sculp in some some future genres of music that you know have um are comparable to genres that exist today but just aren't those genres so maybe some new crazy mixes of disperate elements that that aren't really subcultures now but could be at that point so again this there's a lot of stuff we're very excited about but it's it's it's still very open-ended at the moment rap yeah interesting um I've already created enough new work don't don't put vandel rap into the Consciousness I think in terms of like rap with two A's okay um in terms of the ing game kind of music um something we want to I
00:49:11
guess kind of avoid is have just a very small static set of Music assets that people get tired of again because I keep factoring how much time people can plow into this game and we want to all the time all the the and that's why I kind of think perhaps for user generated content um or some variation of that or something is a nice way to go because we've looked at you know how to recycle or or change that base over time as if it was like a real world music charts and stuff and how some songs in our universe could fall out of your favor or come back in and you know it's yeah you can model quite a lot in our game is that sort of level of scope and so yeah there's a lot of thought going into it but it's going to be a tricky one all right which sort of leads us into our
00:49:59
next question have you got have you got any plan okay do you have any plans for an in-game radio station or radio stations something similar to like the Grand Theft Auto where they have in-game radio stations uh if so would it be just a loop of a large track or would it be updated periodically through just just what Le's been saying ready it's it's something that that we um we're definitely uh thinking about and excited about but it uh like I say it's it we'd need to see where people play the music and and how often you know how long a period but we'd want it to be dynamic and yeah also because there's a lot we can do with with sort of context of where you are and things like that we we could possibly have different channels have favor in different systems all that kind of stuff it's um if we know where
00:50:48
the player is we can say oh in this system this kind of music is more popular so I kind of want I know this is again a bit more Blue Sky type whatever but I kind of want musician or band or whatever to be a career type in the game potentially so that you could put on some sort of concert type thing you know I can tell you gra you probably just don't how do we do that then at all I just think it would be really interesting if you could go around essentially as another career type making you know money credits whatever from doing that sort of thing I think that' be musician was a career type in Star Wars Galaxies right back in the day well see it can be done there there was a number of of tracks in the game and you got you had to discover them you know throughout the world you could learn new tracks and then play them and and Cantinas yeah I'm wondering how how
00:51:37
much do we get people who actually have real world musical chops right to to somehow bring that into the universe see now we're creating more work for other people yes yes we are that's fine there's a more outside the door yeah I mean it's better than doing like noodle songs all the time isn't it Ross shade at your noodle song I write one noodle song in a spare time yeah it's not a spaghetti song from Yes it's my it's my followup it's my difficult second album uh uh here's a question about Tessa now Tess Tess banister Tess banister uh is one of the the the the characters that that are in Crusader she works at the ICC stuff is Tess really a
00:52:27
sentient AI trying to kill the player and crusader uh no I'm going to go ahead and just and save these guys Tess is not a Crusader uh she's just a a lonely ICC operator who who maybe gets distracted from her job a bit too much but uh but no Tessa is a person we we like Tessa here yeah a baru merchantman right yeah you went mer that's that's all that's all the chat will be about right now all right um and our last question or see we're already here at the end um actually this kind of links into what with the Tesla stuff uh can we expect to see different effects added to voice communication
00:53:17
depending on the ship that's transmitting or receiving them like like when you're listening to to Tessa's broadcast from the IC uh will a drake ship maybe have a more distorted lower quality sound whereas An Origin ship might have a clearer and high quality you know clearer sound and additionally will distance and Stellar phenomena play any role in the quality of transition Transmissions yeah I mean there there's nothing that again precludes us from doing that we can do a lot of real time effects which then gives us you know we can use the same basic content process it differently depend on where you listen to it from I think that's that's something I'm quite keen on um so yeah ABS no reason we talked about as as well modeling radio properly the Cen has has to sound on a different wavelength right
00:54:04
so you know instead of meters which we do for sound in the normal medium of the air this is like you know much longer so maybe if you tried to raise another ship at the maximum distance it might be broken up and staticky and you're playing what's that word you know but as you get closer you know the transmission could clear up yeah I think there only5 go with making like proper real signature elements because I think we got to have so many different ship types getting the differentiation between them it might be something you never really I mean we can differentiate between them but I don't know how much You' be able to distinguish perhaps over time that we can you know have a few little um you know like haling frequency type High stuff in there so that you get oh this is this class of that sort of thing which is is quite a nice idea yeah I think there's a lot of um exciting
00:54:53
possibilities with the idea of uh uh receiving radio transmissions in the persistent Universe from someone right at the edge of of the transmission range though it's it's quite a romantic sci-fi idea of you know that that that scratchy helped me call they can just about hear yeah turn away from nah not today I'm pinned under a vending machine it's making this music it's making this music I don't that all right uh well before we let you go uh any final words for the star s and Community anything you want to you want to share um not not really hi my name is Lee Bard is possible I couldn't do any of this without you no I I I kind of we're very much uh a team based sort of thing I I don't
00:55:44
really believe in taking credit for what these guys do really it's uh yeah I I I aspire to do nothing and it's it's going really well so yeah um that's prob cool how much you Grand well I mean you did just sort of lead me into saying this but I would like to say you know thanks for playing thanks for supporting us it's really important to us and without you we wouldn't be here now doing this we wouldn't have you know you know we we're we're really doing the the most fun job ever and it's all thanks to you yeah um yeah what these guys have said and um yeah it's just so exciting working on these music systems anybody with any cool ideas just you know get them on forums and things let us know uh we'd love hearing your ideas so anything
00:56:31
we can incorporate we'll be really excited to do that so thanks for supporting us all right and that has been our August subscriber Town Hall hope you enjoyed it this video will be up on YouTube later today if anybody joined us halfway through or didn't miss it and you're already watching this on YouTube then you already know that so look for this on YouTube later today uh that's Graham that's Lee and that's Ross uh thanks so much for taking the time out of your day to to sit and chat with us um around the verse is tomorrow guys check it out that's also emanating right here from the UK Studio this week and then we'll see you right back here on this channel twitch.tv/ cig community on Friday for another episode of reverse the verse with special guests um I already forgot it's Paul Jones and Nathan dearle so so again Ross uh lee
00:57:24
Graham I'm Jared hucke Community manager for Star Citizen uh take care everybody bye just hold it CU we might not be out

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.