The New Underground | Journey to 4.0 (CitizenCon 2952)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:03

   foreign and today we're going to talk about underground facilities now this was a presentation that we gave Chris internally a little while back and what we're going to cover is how we're going to take one of the locations we have in the game right now but actually really design it from the ground up to be the location archetype that we really wanted okay let's get started let's talk about the original underground facilities now the problem was we made these originally for the season com presentation demo and the time we have had wasn't enough to kind

2. 00:00:54

   of take the location where we wanted it to be now it kind of fits the current purpose it's fairly small in scale it gives a a multi-room layout opportunity for FPS combat but we always knew we wanted it to be able to scale you know small medium large to accommodate maybe 60 Minutes of gameplay time per location so how do we go about designing a location archetype from the ground up so what we do is we split the location into the core areas we want to visually develop now for underground facilities the first thing we're looking at here is what we're calling Zone one so this is the present on the landscape so what we're looking at here is a an example

3. 00:01:43

   key art shot of what a medium-sized underground facility could look like so dominant features that we're seeing here is a is a kind of a key Spire this is instantly where your player you should be able to navigate towards this could be like a a corporate Wing or an exact an executive Lander pad on the top now moving down it's very important to be able to get the landing pads or the landing hangers quite close to facility because we wanted that experience as the player lands they're not far off from the location they're actually quite close and you should be able to see a little FPS area where the plate lands also what we're seeing here is some visual justification at what might actually be going on so you're seeing you know um processing and tanks and supplies

4. 00:02:30

   actually on the landscape there now what I was saying before about it being a um a kind of a much braver presence on a landscape so we designed the silhouette primarily so you'd be able to recognize these um as a location to aim for also what we're seeing here is we thought it'd be cool to actually have surface entrances as well so we're actually thinking about primary secondary tertiary ways for the player to get into these locations depending on the mission scenario so like I said before you've got like executive pads at the top you've got the main hangers in the middle and surface entrances down there below now moving on to the inside so after the players landed through the hangers to be brought up into the main corporate reception now these are going to be quite interesting because we'll be able to Rebrand these depending on the

5. 00:03:19

   manufacturer of the location and that's where we'll get a lot of the variety but this is the the corporate presence before the play would go down into the bowels of the facility and what we're seeing here is you know just an example of what a bearing reception could feel like now moving into zone two with it being an underground facility the physical act of Going Underground that's cool right so we wanted Zone 2 to be about the logistics of the play going up and down and how we can make that cool visually but also interesting from a player experience so this is the the transit the elevator Network so we played around with a few different ideas into this and one of the things that we thought could be quite interesting is the elevator itself could be a mini play Space so

6. 00:04:08

   what we're looking at here is control room idea quite early what sort of scale Vehicles there could be now ultimately we didn't go with this idea it was um didn't really fit the art style that we wanted but it had some pretty interesting ideas so what we landed on here is uh something that we felt quite comfortable with internally now it's worth noting we're designing these as an archetype first in a utilitarian art style in the future we'll expand out and do other the art style variants so what we're seeing here is the control room overlooking the main Warehouse floor and then this elevator is should be big and clear enough for the plate to understand like that's where Logistics will go up and down and for the elevator itself we wanted it to be its own play Space so on the top

7. 00:04:58

   level that's where containers will be shipped up and down maybe underneath it there could be little nooks and crannies if we wanted to stealth into the location we'd be able to give opportunities for the player there and down below this is what the player would kind of see so now they're really starting to get into the bowels of of the facility so echoing of that control room down and Below but also this is where we'll present the player with an opportunity to choose the area they want to go maybe Cargoes to the left maybe processing to the right or maybe 10 nickels up above part of that process of how we design is we look at things about from the place point of view so what was seen here is pretty good indication about how the play would exfiltrate from the location so a lot of the lines are leading towards the elevator because we

8. 00:05:48

   want navigation to be as intuitive as possible moving on to zone three so this is the battles of the facility so these are going to be spaces that we've never really explored before a lot of the locations in the game tend to be quite residential but here we're going for Something Completely industrial as a play you want to feel like an ant almost to the location the primary purpose is not for you to be walking around so we dedicated spaces towards Logistics and we've put kind of personnel walkways almost as a secondary element so in this image you're kind of seeing where you know big trucks could kind of go but we've also got like little nooks and crannies for the play to kind of explore and go into now as it

9. 00:06:38

   being a location dedicated towards the moving of logistics we wanted to explore and have fun with vehicles right so here we see in the mule kind of coming and going on one of these walkways you know maybe there's elevators it's on the right we're seeing is in a ladder so with all of these play spaces as we would do having fun and Visually exploring we always kept in mind of different ways for the player to Traverse through the scene also as part of that we wanted to think about verticality so not just a linear direction of traversal but also ways in which we could go vertically so maybe there's the concept of a cargo elevator within the the corridor so kind of similar to how you'd see uh on a character be a little control room

10. 00:07:25

    looking at the flight deck here you could kind of see something very similar maybe this ties into gameplay puzzles about how you could bring Cargo in and out you know maybe as a player you're trying to steal some cargo out there's tons of potential for how we could do puzzles in that regard so looking at this image we we took loads of inspiration from Modern Day aircraft carriers about how you see pads on the flight deck go to the underbelly we thought this would already give tons of opportunity for not only core visuals but also ways in which you can reveal extra traversal opportunity so as that cargo deck goes down you'd see other ways to kind of Traverse through into the facility okay so what we're looking

11. 00:08:12

    at here is kind of an example Corridor now corridors in our game are quite important to us but they don't necessarily have to be boring now what we're seeing here is an establishment of a radial Motif now with this being Subterranean we wanted to always um imply that there's a weight kind of pushing down so this radial Motif is the best load bearing so as a design language instantly was feeling quite right so in this traversal chord what we're seeing is a few different things clearly there's a clear route for Logistics that's cool but also on top of that you've got these side Roots which is where Personnel would go split hierarchy so it would be pretty cool for um FPS combat you know for opportunities

12. 00:09:00

    there and then leading in underneath you're kind of seeing a tertiary route now um part of this could be this maybe is stealth root or maybe this is the upper area is blocked off so the player has to go down below so even within something as a concept of a corridor we want to design many different avenues for the play to Traverse okay so what we're looking at here is the underbelly of that concept we just showed so up above dedicated towards Logistics maybe containers going through shipping contains going through underneath here maybe this is just more towards the the processing of it maybe hydraulic cylinders for these elevators coming and going hierarchically it's a different mood so up above it's cleaner it's noisier but down below darker more

13. 00:09:49

    steamy and again that presents other opportunities for gameplay now we can't have these corridors going on forever performance wise would never be able to draw it then it wouldn't be they had the most entertaining for the player so we came up with the idea of introducing these bulkheads so these bulkheads are almost checkpoints so it enables us to break that draw distance but it also enables us to break the rhythm of traversal so from going from a corridor into a an Ops room or something like that that's a way in was to kind of checkpoint the progress through the location so inside these bulkheads we could maybe array like Ops rooms maybe these are scanning checkpoints um to kind of monitor um the movement of cargo to and from you

14. 00:10:38

    know also inside here you know there could be tea rooms or break rooms or offices so again we're trying to break the rhythm of traversals so the players going from a large space to a small space but also from one theme to another theme and what that will hopefully do is create a really good rhythm of play Space where the play is not getting bored of traversing through the space so what we're seeing here is a side view to kind of explain how that process so on the left we've come in from the corridor it's on the top we're seeing the primary route through and we're seeing the bottom route coming in as well so this is how again we're going to try and keep verticality as a traversal Motif in mind now going from a large Corridor set to

15. 00:11:27

    what we're considering here medium or small so these are the tertiary networks that will link into the primary traversal route so these again will be continuing the radial Motif that we've been team and these would take the player and Connect into the main spaces now from traversal networks to theme rooms now as the player is traversing through we wanted to chapter that experience with key theme rooms now what we're seeing here is an example of an industrial space maybe it's processing we didn't want to go too specific and just so the in the early development process we wanted to explore motifs that could work so here we'll see an example a processing room but there's a few key things that's kind of cool so right from

16. 00:12:17

    the bottom level there's a network of levels which will be dedicated towards processing you know pipes Machinery all of that sort of good stuff and then as we get higher up we're seeing that very dominant kind of technical control Wing suspended over the play Space as as an idea this creates a a plethora of interesting opportunities as a play Space to fight their way through or solve puzzles one of the things early on we wanted is cause and effect we wanted the player to be interacting solving puzzles but seeing that reflect into the space another theme room uh idea we came up with was processing so bringing in raw materials processing

17. 00:13:06

    them through ready for manufacturing so we had a bit of fun with uh ways in which we could kind of create these quite interesting set pieces so it's not all just industry in the underbelly of these underground facilities there's also going to be technical areas areas dedicated towards the control of the location so what we're seeing here is maybe it's the domain map room so this is where the control the networking of everything and also on here you've got the overseeing Executive Suite so it's not just technicians here but also executive wings and also as a bit of fun if the player does get access to these executive Wings then we're seeing another type of art style in here as well so we've seen industrial we've seen technical now we'll be seeing you know

18. 00:13:55

    more like the the corporate foyer we saw up above so meeting rooms office spaces that sort of thing and what we're seeing here is maybe this is the data processing of the location so as a quick idea we thought these data racks are actually submerged for calling in a base of water we thought also it'd be cool if there's a cause and effects of the player solves a puzzle to go from it being below water to above water so again ways in which we can kind of spark ideas or conversations with design about interesting opportunities and then lastly zone four now it wouldn't be it'd be a missed opportunity if we didn't go into some sort of organic locations as part of the

19. 00:14:44

    underground facility so this could be excavation zones or areas where it'd been abandoned this could lead into cave networks this was something we had quite a bit of fun with so how do we actually take the player from being in this fairly well established industrial location to a cave there needs to be some form of uh transition period so we came up with ideas about how we'd see excavation equipment or you know with the roads kind of Peter out and as part of the roads you you know maybe we can do some pretty cool layouts for the player to drive through something that's a a little bit more invested than just a straight line now as part of that transition period between heavy industrial to exposed cave the equipment needed to create further

20. 00:15:36

    ugf spaces you know maybe there's a large Boring Machine still there again maybe that comes into some form of gameplay opportunity for the player to Traverse over interact that's kind of cool also as part of that another opportunity to introduce a new element to the space could be as we're transitioned towards more natural spaces we can not only introduce different types of geology but maybe we're introducing some form of liquid so depending on the location maybe it's on a certain planet that could be like underground Rivers underground Lakes maybe it's lava maybe it's acidic and also if we're describing these locations as maybe some are more abandoned we could start to Showcase how nature slowly started to take over this

21. 00:16:26

    also would introduce some pretty cool opportunities so also another process we do during concept development is I like to start taking some of these ideas we're developing and get them in the engine as soon as possible and what this afford does is we can sit down with Todd and we can really evaluate how well an idea is working in terms of space size composition gameplay opportunities right from the early visual development process and what we're looking at here is very loose concept meshes brought into the engine quickly lit just for that exploration process facilities I'm quite excited about it

22. 00:17:15

    and hopefully you are soon and we look forward to showing you more in the future [Music] thank you