Star Citizen Live: Sounds of a Life in Space

19 June 202001:01:591,766 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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Hi everybody. Welcome to another edition of Star Citizen Live the sounds of life in space. I'm your host Jared Huckaby and if you've never seen Star Citizen Live before it's where we take a few moments out of our out of our Fridays at the end of the week to answer some questions to explore some gameplay process to basically chat and learn more about how we build this game that is Star Citizen. Joining us on the show this week are four esteemed members of the audio team but three esteemed members and Bob. Let's go ahead and meet the folks that are here that are here. I'm just kidding. Let's go around the table. We'll we'll start because I made fun of Bob we'll start with Bob cuz that's only fair. Bob, who are you and what do you do for Star Citizen? Hi, my name is Bob Rissolo and I'm a lead dialogue dude. I handle most of the
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dialogue in the game and from recording to just getting the assets in the game and making them sound nice and organizing and all that fun stuff. I am not part of am still part of the audio department. And you are actually you actually have your nice purple audio booth room here. You definitely have the best look of anybody here at the moment. I'm not at home. You're not at home now. You you went into the office for this. We appreciate it. Also I have because I made fun of you I have to respond with a comment. You have magnificent hair sir and I'm going to get there someday. I've decided to let it grow. We're going to we're going to see how how bad it goes if I come half halfway to where you're at. We'll be okay. This is my my pandemic hair. Let's see. Let's continue counterclockwise move up to Graham.
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Graham, who are you and what do you do for Star Citizen? So I just got to comment on Bob's pandemic hair because the the pandemic must have been going on for 3 years in your life. My name's Graham Phillipson. I'm lead audio programmer. So I kind of try to write some code that joins up all the systems and allows us to attach some audio to all the various systems we have in game. Got you. So so when other people want to do something like, "Hey, can we make this I want to do this thing. Can it actually be made to happen or be possible?" That's where programming comes in. Absolutely. Yeah. We we are the ones who say, "No." And then we have an argument. And then we say, "Okay, okay, then yes, we can." That's actually a fair That's actually a fair assessment. Yeah. Uh continuing along counterclockwise, uh
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a first-timer for Star Citizen Live, Kit. Who are you and what do you do for Hi, my name's Kit Chalice and I'm a technical sound designer. Um I spend a lot of my time hovering over his shoulder trying to get him interested in some new audio features that need to go in. That we want. So yeah, that's a bit of a theme in the audio department. That's fair. And uh last but certainly not least, uh a veteran of Star Citizen Live and and Inside Star Citizen at this point, Josh. Who are you and what do you do for Star Citizen? Hi, I'm Josh Bell. I'm a sound designer at Cloud Imperium. All right. Now, Kit is a technical sound designer, you are a sound designer. What's the difference?
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Uh sorry, what's the difference between technical sound designer and Exactly. Uh well, um like I'm more creating assets that go into the game for like a specific ship or a weapon or a location. Um and then not so much of the um like the mix or the the systems to make sure everything runs smoothly or you know, it's fast, that kind of thing. All right. Creative side of things. Is he right, Kit? Yeah, it's uh it's much more working with the sound designers and sort of looking at what they're doing and uh and making sure it all sort of jells together with all the other things that are going on and also trying to think of any of the numerous esoteric reasons why we can't
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do something or just try and get a heads-up on problems that may happen. If a tech does if a tech sound designer is anything like a tech artist, it it generally bridges the gap between people who solely who who who who who who who who who who who who who who who the content and the people that have to implement the content. It is it's sort of a it's it's it's it's sort of it's it's in a relay, it's handing from one to the other and making sure that that transition is as successful as possible. this is a Q&A show. We're taking questions from a number of places. If you are watching the show live and you have questions for the idea team, either design-related or programming-related or dialogue-related, you can submit your questions by prefacing it with the word question in capital letters surrounded by brackets. You can do so in either the Twitch chat while we're broadcasting
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live or in Spectrum. If you're watching the show later on YouTube, uh we went live at 8:00 this morning, so you're probably still asleep. And we're envious. Uh we also, as we are want to do, collected questions throughout the week on Spectrum and let people vote up which ones they wanted to see answered most. So, we're going to go ahead and start in with those questions while we start collecting them from the chat. Right off the bat, our most voted up question, we always like to get that right out of the way up front. Are the impressive and diverse fly-by sounds expected to make a comeback? First of all, are they gone? They're not gone. No, they're not gone. They're just mixed differently. They never went away. just I think I've I've I've seen the video that people
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always feel that like when are these ones coming back? I've I've seen that video around and those sounds are actually still in there. They're just mixed but the difference is back then we didn't really play anything in the build-up to the pass-by sound, and it was just as soon as a ship would go overhead then the pass-by one-shot would play in isolation. Um now we play a lot more stuff on the approach for distant ships and atmosphere. Um all this kind of stuff. Uh so, I guess the problem is that we I I'm I'm not saying we haven't lost something in this transition, but um I think we just need to mix it better so that when there is a ship flying directly overhead, you do still get that same experience that um you used to. But, I think from gameplay point of view it's better at the moment cuz you can
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actually tell where a distant ship is and if it's coming towards you or not. Whereas before, that was a lot harder. Um it was overwhelming before. Yeah, there's a bit of a cinematic element that's maybe been lost slightly cuz we're trying to tell the player more more about what's happening ships in the area, but yeah, it's always that balance between the two. So, would you say it's something worth looking into without committing to one action one way or the other cuz you even just looking in the chat right now, there's some folks who who like it and it's an improvement and there's some folks who are like, "No, we want we want the old sounds back." So, you know, it's just no way to please all people all times. Is this something worth at least taking a look at? It It should be possible to um I'm going to dig my own grave here, but
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it it should be possible to get both. It should be possible to with the proper mix and the proper ducking of things and you know, of the context, we should be able to get it so that if it is one of those situations where it's directly overhead and really close, you do get the old experience, but in the situations that benefit from what we were talking about where you can hear them more clearly at distance and you know, that kind of thing, then we can have that. It should be possible. Right. And for those of you unhappy, you can send your letters to Josh Bell care of Cloud Imperium Games UK. Uh Now, a lot lot of support for your statement there in the chat. So, I think you're right on. Uh let's move on to the next question here. Can we expect in the near future that NPCs talk with each other, even if it's using some default conversations,
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ambient sounds like whistling when mopping the floor, grumpy noises, saying hi to passing NPCs? Seems to be a quite basic but immersive task. Yeah. Yes, the answer to this question is yes. You will You will expect these to uh to happen. Uh we've actually recorded a lot of this content already. Um there's a ton of content that that that is meant to go in that covers this life aspect of our game. Um you know, the the hard part really is is that we've decided to take a really huge undertaking with our behavior in our AI and created this new system called subsumption. And um it is it is where we want to do these amazing things with it, but we need to, you know, learn to crawl before we run and and and uh fly. So, it's it's there's a
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lot of the basics that we're really working out with the AI and um and so, the player interactions are obviously first and foremost. So, the the life element is is definitely considered. Don't don't worry about that. We've recorded a lot for it. Uh but it's going to be coming in a a a bit later. So, definitely expect it as the AI matures and we can get uh more of that in, you will see that come in. Um also, I wanted to add this this this this talks about actual real NPCs talking together and things like that. We also do want to add a layer and you see this a lot in film as well, where there's just a a bit of a murmur, this this kind of this back It's more of actually an ambiance in in a in a background. It's called Walla. And it's very indiscernible and we we really want to add this into our game as well but we have a you know
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we want to do it a bit educationally with with considering the fact that you know this is a live world with not just a bunch of NPCs running around but also a lot of live players and and to be want to we want to actually dynamically change Walla depending on the volume and occupancy and things that are going on in the rooms and so that also is a is a huge undertaking that we're looking to do and you know you will see more of that start to kind of trickle in and even you know um it's it's this is all under consideration don't worry. Can you give me an example of Walla? Um Walla it Walla it's it's it's basically indiscernible so it's uh like you just background chatter that you can't really pick out words. I just want to see if I get you to do
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it. I was the only one that joined in. It's all right. See See so so Kid is at three points the rest of you are at one point. So we we keep score. We tell the score at the end of the show. Good job Kid. Uh when a ship's systems turn on all the sounds I usually hear are mostly coming from UI. There doesn't seem to be a noise of the engine turning on the pipes being fuel air energy computers and lights flickering. Uh is this planned as well? Uh right now it's mostly Aegis combat assist or welcome to Anvil or some beeps but no hardware sound that says oh okay the legs are retract. This this person really wants a lot more sound. They they literally just it just goes on for a while. You get the point. Uh I've I've spent half the day banging my head against the table trying to get
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this to work properly. Uh two two calls to Josh. yeah. On a base of all this Yeah yeah I mean a a lot of this stuff a lot of what we do is is built on all of the tech in the game. So, as we we we as a starting point, you know, somebody's designed a ship and there are a lot of systems that all come together to make that ship viable. And then our system kind of sits on the end kind of representing all those systems in audio form. And very often, you know, there there are little sort of niggles here and there that need to be dealt with that aren't so noticeable from a point from any other point of view than audio because as long as the ship moves when you press go, it's cool, right? But um from an audio perspective, we don't always get the messages we want. So, we
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end up digging into the code and finding out where those messages have gone and and yeah, it's with these systems where we're looking to improve all of this stuff. And again, the mix thing comes into it as well. I think, you know, we've got a lot of tech in the pipeline to improve the ability to mix based on events, which is something we don't really have right now. That's quite a long way down the schedule, but it's going to come eventually and we're going to have a lot more um ability to do more emergent things with the mix because it's one thing to providing a sound for the spaceship starting up, but it's another thing being able to make that take center stage. And additionally to that, we're also looking to improve the way that sounds transfer from physical media that maybe isn't necessarily there. So, if you fire up some loud thrusters on the outside of a
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ship, you want to hear a lot of metal rattles and things like that. And you know, we have systems designed but not yet developed to allow that. Cool. I I think some of quite a few of the questions we saw in the chat this week were about uh sound propagation from the outside to the inside of the ships. Uh so, we'll probably see at least one or two more of those before the end of the show here. as far as inside the ships, will there be an alarm sound inside the ships so other crewmates can hear about hazards? This question came up with several variations, not just alarm sounds, but customizable alarm sounds like an alarm for fire versus an alarm for decompression versus alarm for intruders, stuff like that. What can we what can we tell? I mean, we we'll make the sound for it
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if it's something design want to do. It's it's not an audio driven um feature really, but we'll make it sound really cool when we when that's asked for. Um That's actually an interesting point. It Obviously there the question would seem like it's an audio question because it's it's you know, it's a sound that folks would hear. That would be the final deliverable. But the actual origin of a feature like this would actually come from system design where the system designs have to actually, you know, create a create a multiple alarm system in the ship with different lights and the triggering mechanism and and you know, display panels and stuff like this. When that stuff is done, then they would come to audio as sort of a client of theirs and be like, "Okay, now we need three different sounds." And stuff like that. So while it seems like it's something that would originate with
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audio, it actually doesn't. It comes with the it comes from system designers. So maybe uh our job would would be more like to, you know, they'd say, "We we need these different sounds to differentiate different kind of alarms." And our job would be to design that language to be able to quickly tell what's happening. Well, maybe the next time we have the ship team on, we'll we'll pose that question to them. All right, actually ship team's coming up July 3rd if I'm remembering my dates right. So put bring that question back up then, guys. Uh let's see. Next question. Um Will you work further on entry and exit sounds related to quantum travel? For example, make them as noticeable as in Star Trek or Star Wars. Uh
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Yes, we'll we'll we'll we'll improve them at some point. Um we did a rework of them like a year ago, I think. That improved them quite a lot, but um there's definitely still a lot of work to do and I think there's a few bugs in there, as well, that means we're not getting the um you know, getting the sounds of other people entering and exiting quantum travel. Mhm. Which obviously isn't really cool and something we want. yeah, it's quite an interesting challenge with our QT mechanic cuz you know, they've mentioned Star Wars and Star Trek like the Star Trek warp jump is like a the ship's stationary then it's an instant into the warp bubble. Same with Star Wars hyper space jump. Uh it's just like a pretty much, you know, ship's stationary or moving at the speed it was and then space starts to distort and you're in, whereas ours there's like a long
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sort of ramp up where the ship's going very fast, but isn't yet in the tunnel. Um you know, it wouldn't it needs a bit of a different treatment. Yeah. Yeah, I'll hold my hand up here and say, you know, the the quantum travel exit sound, I've got a bug on me for that. So, yeah, hopefully that'll be improved soon once I've fixed that bug. I will wait. Well, you're obviously doing it now. Yeah. No. What's the I'm sorry. It also It also points out like the It's similar to the ship startup sounds. There's There's the problems with the different perspectives that people have on the ships, you know, are you in the ship coming out of quantum travel, you know, are you on a space station while another ship comes in off quantum travel to where you are? And then what
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if 50 ships all exit quantum travel around you in the same place at the same time, you know, we've you know, there's systems that we need to deal with things like that. Interesting. what's the oddest thing you've done or used for creating a sound effect? I just saw I just saw a video online from the Halo team. They were using uh like ultra sonic recording of of an of an actual Xbox itself. They're actually recording the sounds of the Xbox to use in effects in the next Halo game. Uh what what are some what are some of the weirdest thing I guess Bob with some of the weirdest people you've recorded? I don't know. I don't How does that apply to you? How can you say that? I mean you I don't
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know if I'm allowed I've thought about that. We'll just say it was Phil. I've certainly been aware of someone who added uh rumble to a a sound effect by taking a bass drum from one of their favorite heavy metal bands and uh just stretching this out with a a fairly well-known tool called Paul Stretch and uh that they sort of just wanted elements of of things they were fans of. I'm not going to name who it was or who the song was because we we could be sued. No, we couldn't, but um It's yeah. It that that was one example and certainly yeah, recording um electronic interference. That was something that we done quite a lot of. We have quite a a big library of that. I don't know how much of that you used, Josh. I literally live with our senior senior legal counsel, dude. You can't make me
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an accomplice to that kind of stuff. Um yeah, I've recorded quite a lot of that stuff myself though. Um I think we all use them a lot of UI sounds like a little It's like a telephone coil mic and it picks up all the electromagnetic Mhm. radiation from things. There's a lot of that in the game. Um There's a dolphin in the Vanguard toilet. There. Wait, okay. Wait a second. Hold on. There's a seal in the Vanguard toilet. Hold on. Let's put the brakes here. There's Go on. Uh I was looking for like a little like squeaky squeaky element to use in it for like one of the little
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tiny servo movements or something and just haven't put It says it made it in there. Hey, you know, we all is there's a seal in the Argo mole toilet as well. Hey, we all go to the bathroom with a purpose. This is true. I will say one of the most interesting actors I did get to record was for this this project actually. That's why I wasn't sure what's been announced, but it was for the squadron and it was for one of our aliens. So he just really amazing voice. Deep voice and just the things he was doing with his voice. Yeah, I'm just Let's leave it at that. Yeah. Will there be in ship
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will there be in ship speaker systems through which we can talk to any passengers, pirates, stowaways from the pilot seat of the entire ship. You know, like this is the captain speaking. There's a there's a dolphin in the This one actually I'm really I really like this question because my my my gamer geek is coming out and going yes because I've actually been wanting this for a while. Ever since we really kind of got the VoIP going and even a little bit before that when we were trying to really have the the ability for a player to be like for example of an NPC is talking on on a comms and you're sitting in the room with them. You're going to hear the dry signal of him talking into the comms. But then if you like let's say the the comms is like to the to the to the hangar down below. You also hear it
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coming out of the PA and into the speaker array below and hear that. So if the NPC can do it surely not the player can do it too. You know, we we we we would like to get to that point. Uh, there it will be a point. I think that that that the really maybe the bottleneck that's kind of stopping us there is we need to uh we need to talk with UI and and get at least a way for a player to actually interact with the PA obviously. Um, and then we also need to work out because every ship will need to have the that PA structure, speakers, or the the entities and all that stuff to kind of outline what what the ship is. Um, especially with our bigger capital ships. I mean, they're like little floating cities, right? So, it's uh it you know, we we want to be able to to isolate different rooms. You like if if you are really a captain and you want to
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be be able to talk to your engineering, you know, click on click on the engineering button go talk to Scotty, I need more power. You know, like uh It's also hard because I mean, through through the through the voice channels, I mean, there's already a ship wide voice channel. You know, but it but it but it but it's not a it's not a PA system in the ship. It is a it is a voice channel through like comms and everything. It's I It's I think what this question is is really touching on is that sense that it comes through positional audio in the ship. So, it's like you you can like if you're closer to speaker, you'd hear it louder. If you're farther from speaker, you're gone. Uh for for me, you know, my favorite ship's the Genesis Starliner and I absolutely need to be able to, you know, do a this is your captain speaking, you know, from from from the front or I don't even know why I would fly it. So, it's a I'm with you on this
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one, Bob. And uh it's it's definitely it it's it's different than the than the current in-game uh comms that are there. But, at the same time because that serves somewhat of that purpose already, this might not be the highest priority at the same time. Because it's using the same tech, too. You know, that that's the big part of it. It's it's using that same tech where you a character is speaking into a mic that's being trans, you know, and and then comes out of a speaker. Whether the speaker is your headset, your comm, or the speaker is a PA in a room, it's it's utilizing the same technology there. So, that we had to first work on that um and get that hammered out, and then now we can work on how do we get it into the hands of the players and and and through VoIP and and things like that. So. Uh being sound people, that's what it says, being sound people.
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So, congratulations you sound people. Uh how many of you sing or play an instrument? I I do. I do both of those things. Yeah. Hey. Yeah. We we probably should call him a band at some point. We keep talking about it. Really is almost every sound person I've ever known does something with does an instrument of some kind. There's a few oddballs there, but Yes, that's generally true. Uh this question comes up quite a bit. Uh it's in both the thread and in the live chat here. Uh any plans to implement a sonic boom to atmospheric flight? So, we have talked about this previously and uh um we there are a few barriers to this like
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you know, Mach 1 is is different depending on atmospheric pressures and uh you know, the spike on planet that you're on and you know, it opens up a lot of questions, but the biggest issue that it opens up is the question of whether you simulate the speed of sound as in when you see an explosion in the distance, do you hear it seconds later, which currently isn't the case. And it isn't the case because for gameplay reasons, it's much more important that you that you know what's going on actually now and and you know, this is again when the important thing is that it's fun to play. So, um there is a little bit of worry there if you go down the the route of talking about sonic booms, and that kind of implies that there is a speed of sound representation, too. but that's not necessarily the case, I guess. You know, we could kind of say um at a certain speed
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as, you know, as a function of what the atmospheric density is, we could maybe say, here, you know, we can provide a sonic boom sound in But, yeah, we we haven't done it yet, but because it comes up so often, I think, you know, we we would definitely consider it. We will What was the phrase? We will consider We were planning to think about it. We were planning to consider it. It it it It is the question that comes up every single time we we do a show with the audio team. It is the most consistent question. It's been there in the first episode, it will be there in the last episode, and until it actually happens, it's a it's it's very much uh a community-desired effect. But, as you said, um and I'm just going to paraphrase every version of the answer that we've gotten over the years, it's this the biggest thing, as you said, was
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the atmospheric uh density. It's It's different on every planet. It's still being developed in every planet. They're still being adjusted. It's the speeds of of of the craft are still being adjusted. Uh you guys uh folks are about to learn about all the atmospheric flight changes coming in Alpha 3.10. Uh you know, and stuff like that with changes to speeds and stuff like that. It's It's There's so much that needs to be considered before we get there. Uh I don't think there's anybody that doesn't want it. It's just a question of whether it's a reas- reasonable uh amount of work or request at this point. major uh visual and physical effect it has as well, you know, if thin plates of glass on smashing under the pressure wave and things like that, you know, if if trees aren't bending, you know,
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because of them, then it it isn't just audio. There's a There's a impulse thing going on as well. Yeah, if we're going to do it, we're going to do it. So. but, yeah, I think the short answer is everybody here wants it just as much as the folks out there want it. this person read somewhere that some of the unrealistic sounds that we hear, such as ships flying by by making huge noises in space near space station while in space are simulated by a sound simulator inside your helmet or cockpit. Uh we've mentioned that several times. Uh if you get EMP'd by say a hawk and your sound simulator goes does your sound simulator go offline with other ship systems? Basically basically we have the we have some version of this question several
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times here where it's like, "Okay, if we've got a simulator that simulates a lot of these things because they're necessary for gameplay so you can know about this, are there ways to turn it off?" There are questions about turning it off uh voluntarily. There are questions about disabling it through either damage or EMP. Uh what are our thoughts about that? We haven't had the time to work on this as much as we'd have clearly unfortunately, but um yeah, it's definitely something we all want to do. Like um I always think that the coolest thing we could do would be like you're in a dog fight and um you know, you can hear everything crystal clear. You can hear all the enemy ships are. You can hear your ship what it's doing. Um and then all of a sudden you take like an unexpected huge hit and it happens to knock out your sound sim module and suddenly everything just
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folds down to just you in the little cockpit and you just hear everything that is in the cockpit or you're like sat on basically. And then after a few more seconds it slowly comes back up and you're back to the full soundscape, but for that like four or five seconds you're you know, it's just you in the little cockpit in the in in space. That would just be the coolest thing. Um yeah, it needs a bit but we need to um So like what the sound of the ships now is pretty much what we'd imagine sound sim on to sound like. yeah, so everything and you know, all those stuff to do with ship sounds and ship combat sounds is yeah, pretty much sounds similar at the moment. We still we we need to creatively decide what
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what the creative direction is for sound sim off. How far do we take it? You know, what should it sound like? To be honest, that's kind of the biggest barrier at the moment. And then of course it needs to be physicalized into a component, which is actually something on the vehicle team. Needs to be physicalized into a component that can be you know, and then those game systems attached to that and then make it you know, puncturable, damageable through through through external stuff. So it's it's like game balancing considerations as well. We we need to like adjudicate how much the sound helps you in a dog fight. Um I hope it does. And then you know, we need to make sure that the I guess
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the impact of having it disabled isn't so great that it actually is a serious disadvantage. Or maybe we want that. I don't know. You know, that needs to be taken into consideration as well. It's similar to how accessibility's handled in computer games. You know, you can have you can have arrows telling you which direction certain sounds are coming from if people are deaf. But it if you switch that off and if you switch that on and you're not and you can hear then it turns the audio off. So you can't have both. You know, so it's I think this is similar to that. Yeah, yeah. Uh FPS footsteps have been awfully quiet for the AI regardless of the AI position being correct. Uh why are they not in sync?
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So the the short answer there is they're being called too aggressively by the cull system. So, um we have we have to set a limit on them because they're quite an surprisingly expensive part of what we do on the CPU. And we need to kind of limit how many how many players query the terrain to decide which footstep to play. But that said, you know, we have lots of tech in the pipeline that's going to improve the way that we cull, make it more intelligent you know, right now it's fairly it's aggressive but not very not very intelligent. So, yeah, I mean, I agree with the question. I think we don't hear enough of the AI's footsteps and we are looking at improving that. I have about three or four tasks on me to
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related to improving that. Right now, it's it's it's it's All right, so this is this is a follow-up question to that. Let's see if we have anything to add to it. Right now, it feels like steps are very generic. Can we expect more detail on the steps based on the terrain the players are walking on? So, I mean, we just talked about how expensive the steps can be but is that going to stop us from being able to change the type of steps that we hear? Um not necessarily. So, we we currently have quite a lot of tech available which describes the surface that we're walking on. We we can know the physical properties of it, we can know the render properties of it and we can relay that to the sound system and play different audio triggers based on what you're
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walking on. What we think is happening with this question uh is that maybe the detail's not coming through because we do have bespoke sounds for all the different surface types. Um so, you know, I think if if people are feeling that they're that they're all sounding very generic, then we're going to look at that and rework it and make sure that the the differentiation is really there because the tech's is there to support it. But then beyond that, we also want to improve the options that we have beyond just surface type, material type, or physical properties to go through um sort of sub-properties within a surface. So, for example, if you walk on a metal sheet, it will resonate much more in the center than it will towards the edges because they're screwed down to a physical frame or something like that. So, that's that's our next step is
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sort of improving the way that um footsteps vary because um varying footsteps is a really important thing. You hear them all the time, and if you they always sound the same, it gets fatiguing. So, um we know how important this is, and we do spend a lot of time on footsteps. Yeah, it so much of this comes down to the mix. It's It's It's, you know, everybody everybody does their individual efforts, you know, for making for making a sound and implementing a sound and programming a systemic system to bring it in and out at certain parts, and then but then at the end of this all, it all comes down to mix. And the the the mix the mix in a video game is one of the hardest things ever because in a movie or a TV show, you know where your audience is at all times. So, you
00:33:49
know you're mixing for this person right here at this angle, you know, wherever the camera goes, you know what perspective they're at, so you can change it. But in a game, you never know where the player is going to be, and then there's multiple players, so now you're mixing for multi- for multiple things, and it's just it is easily, at least from a layperson on the outside, the mix is the seems to be the hardest aspect of uh your Yeah, and you you make a really good point there, Jared, as well because um you know, in games, we don't have a director. Like, a director can sit there and and look at a scene and say, "I want to hear that, that, and that. I want the focus to be on that, and I don't want to hear anything else." And you'll notice that when you're watching a movie that that there are so many things that are seen but not heard. So, one of the systems we're working on, which is uh way down the line, is a a system to kind
00:34:36
of understand what the most important things in a scene are, depending on the game context. So, a particular scene will sound very different if you're uh chasing someone on foot and trying to, you know, uh get a bounty reward or something, compared with if you're um ambiently idling through the same area. You get a very, you know, hopefully we'll be able to make a system where you can get a very different mix in the same sort of very similar circumstances. Speaking of mix, this this what this wasn't done on purpose. Uh are there plans to support Windows spatial sound, like Atmos, DTS:X, Windows Sonic? Basically, they want they want to know are we supporting 5.1, 7.1 mixes? Yes, please. Uh 5.1 and 7.1 are already Um yeah, spatial, it's really
00:35:26
interesting and we're looking at it a lot. Um we need to work out exactly how we're going to use it, because you know, the height channels, are we going to use them all the time? Or are we only going to use them in certain context when we want the height there? obviously, without the height channels, you should still know, to a certain degree, whether it's coming from above you or below you. Um so, yeah, you know, things like spatial sound is going to help with that, but it shouldn't be the only way of um conveying that, but yeah, it it is really exciting and I've I'm more excited personally about spatial sound than I am going from
00:36:14
stereo to surround, you know, from Yeah. Well, they used to sell surround as 3D audio, right, but it's it's not it's a 2D plane. So, now now 3D audio is actually 3D for the first time. That's cool. Yeah. Um but it's have really important for our game, you know, we our game is is, you know, 3D degrees of freedom, you know, we can do up is wherever we want up to be, right? So, uh being limited to a flat plane of audio speakers is a limiting factor for us. So, yeah, we're absolutely looking at Atmos because it it will potentially do a lot for us. Not just Atmos, other 3D sound systems are available. Yeah. Yeah, and this person mentioned Windows spatial sound, but that's just one example. There are multiple spatial sounds. Yeah, it's not not to tie to a specific platform. It is a hugely complicated thing to
00:37:04
unravel about, you know, like delivery formats and, you know, how you listen to spatial sound and how you author spatial sound is. are there plans for adding more detailed crash sounds like hull buckling, ground scrapes, impact Foley, or even sounds to when you dive at the surface of a planet at full speed and you bounce? yeah, we we definitely need to improve those, but um you know, I would be hesitant to put too much work into it until um it behaves the way it's supposed to like the final version of how ships interact with the ground and other objects. It's like a bit
00:37:53
it's there's only there's only so much you can do with audio, too. Yeah, we don't want to do much work until Until the ships stop bouncing. Yeah, we don't want to fake anything basically because the whole philosophy of this game is to simulate everything and, you know, if we're simulating crumple, then we'll sonify crumple. And if we're simulating, you know, ships scraping on the ground, then we'll sonify that. Uh but right now they're not, so we need that there to to offer us those possibilities. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. Um one of the recent additions to the game has been weather. Now, we we've seen dust storms and everything. Uh this question asks, will we be able to hear atmospheric storms off in the distance so we can prepare before the storm hits? Uh yes, I'm just looking at Graham for
00:38:43
how we how we do this. Well, yeah, um I mean I a lot of it comes down to whether there's a visual effect at distance. So, because that's what we would generally generally sort of hang our audio off. Um if there's a distant visual effect, then yes, we can absolutely telegraph an approaching storm. And I would like to think there would be. So, I'm going to say tentatively, yeah, we would be doing Okay. We have like something similar for all of the different weather that we have right now, all of the like the the snow and microtech and stuff. But yeah, you you it has to have already reached you before you get it cuz it's based off if you're inside of the the zone of the weather. Um yeah, that would be a nice addition. Certainly, we're working on tech that kind of helps us to do things like
00:39:31
crowding distance sounds and kind of um allowing us to express a distant collection of sounds as a single sound and that kind of thing. So, you know, there's there's potentially a lot of tech that's you know, again, down the line, you know, months down the line that we could we could use to achieve that sort of thing. Uh there's always another hill to conquer. I've uh I've seen there's been a focus on the in the latest patches on atmospheric and re-entry effects. Uh so far, uh there does there doesn't seem to be much sound variation between flying in atmosphere and in space. I don't know if that's true, but nor during re-entry and exit. Is the plan Is Is this plan to change soon? So, let's let's let's let's talk about
00:40:19
the let's take it from step-by-step. Is there a difference in in the sounds between flying in space and flying in atmosphere? Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely a difference. We trigger So, in space you've just got the sound of the we call them ship-wide audio objects like the sounds of the cockpits kind of whining and humming and all the thrusters on your ship. And then when you enter any kind of atmosphere you start But actually you've also got vibrations in space, but you don't really hear that unless your ship's quite damaged. and then when you enter atmosphere you we bring in what you call what we call environment feedback. So, this is the sound of the like the air rushing over the frame of the ship. Um and that's reactive to how dense the atmosphere is, how fast the ship's going, all that kind of stuff. And this the environment feedback also
00:41:07
governs you know, if you're flying through like a snowstorm you should hear the hail on the windscreen and um Yeah, so we do have And from if you're on the ground looking up at a ship flying in atmosphere then it's also different. You get the sort of distant diffuse sound of the ship ripping through the air. If you hear a pass by in space, it sounds a lot a lot different, a lot more muffled, a lot more um I think maybe You It really depends at the moment what ship you're flying in atmosphere as to how much difference you hear cuz um Like a lot of the ships a lot of the ships that haven't had an audio pass in a long time have this kind of really really broad band sound design aesthetic to them like we you know, everything's really really really really
00:41:55
washy and covers the whole frequency spectrum. It doesn't leave much room for you know, the slightly more subtle sounds of wind and hail hitting the windscreen and stuff. But some of them ships who've come in the past recently like the that caused quite a stir the Cutlass blast first redesign um um a few others a few of the more modern ones like the Carrick and the Connie defender. They have a lot more of a far less mid-frequency content in the actual ship sound more bottom end and top end which frees up the middle which frees up the mids for you know these you know a lot more of the vibration and the you know all of the weather sound and wind sound against the ship. Hopefully, that's the plan. So it sounds like a lot of the the the sound design for the
00:42:42
ships are individual to each ship and what you're saying is that newer ships have have newer tech newer techniques and newer new features and and maybe some of the older ones could probably stand to to get a little more attention. Yep. It's just that you know all like um you know we kind of figure out what works and what doesn't over time and there's some ships unfortunately need to be revisited at some point. We call that tech debt. Yep. It's like the phrase painting the Humber Bridge. You know, you get to one end you know, you keep painting the bridge you get to the other end and when you finish painting it you've got to go back to the other end and start again. Didn't we the number of ships that we have. Right. Didn't we the last time we did the show Graham did did didn't we you threaten to
00:43:30
go and pull up your your tech debt list? Something like that. I don't remember. I I I I do sort of vaguely remember that yeah. Um let's not do that. No, we never did see it. People don't have big enough screens. See. Uh recently on ISC we saw a number of new creature concepts like the space whale, a space cow, and the microtech bear. Is that what we call Is that what we just call it space bear? It's They're all space. It's a space bear space do you provide concept sounds along with the concept art as part of the approval process or do you wait until the final uh creature is designed before you begin on audio. That's an interesting question. I mean, honest answer, this is new ground for us. So, um you know, uh I think the concept artists do have um
00:44:20
the final say over what's going to happen to the concept. So, we don't tend to input to that. Um and I think that makes sense because the visual really does drive what what you think a creature is going to sound like. It would be really interesting though to think about how a a future space creature could vocalize and whether there was any physiological specialty, you know, specialties to it that means, you know, maybe it's got a huge trumpet or something. And it might sound trumpety. Um And of course, being able to communicate in vacuum, if it's the whale, you know, or or or on a planet with thinner atmospheres, like that. Um I do want to stress that if you This is obviously referring to the IAC seventh
00:45:07
aired, I think it was a week ago now. Um we are at the beginning of developing this pipeline right now. Right now, it is characters, but we but part of what's going to happen over the next several months and maybe even longer is that characters will get together with tech animation, will get to you know, will get will get will get together with the actor status team, will get together, you know, with with with with all these other groups and and figure out how to make them because we do not have a pipeline for making creatures. We haven't made creatures yet. So, we have to figure out what this new pipeline is and what we can take from the other pipelines that we've built and what needs to be created bespoke. Like like just on this guys, like who makes the sounds? Does Does the sound of a creature fall under dialogue? Is Is that going to be Is that going to be Bob going out there and recording different animals to combine it? Or is it going to be the realm of tech
00:45:55
designer who's got to go out there and, you know, simulate something from scratch? It's It's It's Those are the kind of things that we we still need to figure out as we build that pipeline up. Me personally, I'm hoping that we send Bob into as many dangerous areas as possible with a microphone. I would like to say though it it it it does cover a very similar ground when we consider behavior and and you know how how as as a dialogue team we do um shine back and and and and work with design and a narrative on on the behavior templates and things like that. So, I would like to think we would have at least some some um collaboration there to figure out what they would do, how they would how they would um go about their day attacking, hunting, or um just milling about. So, you know, th- those things really you know, the behavior and the sounds those
00:46:44
really go hand in hand. Um so, yeah, I would like to I would like to you know, see that this becomes a collaboration just like it has been with dialogue. So, here's a question that probably applies to every show, but surprisingly it doesn't get asked very often. Uh how much has the current pandemic lockdown affected your work? Like for example, recording dialogue or effects and stuff like that. Yeah, well well firstly, I would like to give a hats off to CIG because as I've seen a lot of other companies and a lot of industries and different different from from friends and family and other colleagues uh CIG really we transitioned in like a week. Like it was just simple easy peasy. Everyone went home and stayed home and stayed safe and saved lives. Um and uh yeah.
00:47:32
there weren't there weren't issues, but it it was easier than I think we anticipated. Yeah. It Yes, uh There was there there are still issues and we covered those in ISC with the data transfer rates and stuff like that. But, Um but but but also I mean yeah, th- th- this is a very good question specifically for our team because you know, being audio professionals we we really do rely heavily on our our our offices and our sound pods to be able to effectively do our work. And so it's it's been a a a uh just really you know just like one of those one of those things you don't know you could do something unless you go out and actually do it. And I I didn't know that we'd be able to do this until we just went home and just did it. And we we've worked around the solutions a lot of issues with our rooms, you know, like everyone's different room, you know, we
00:48:22
we've been solving it through software and to work on headphones a lot and things like that, you know, and just just making it work and still churning out really good high-quality content. So just hats off to to the team for everyone, you know, working really hard and and just making it happen. Um as far as dialogue stuff goes, yeah, it's I mean obviously we've had to put a hold on any performance capture, things that require a group of people working together in a shared confined space, right? Um but we have been carrying on on VO sessions. I mean we did record some theaters of war dialogue where it was was actually quite quite astonishing to have like our director and you know and myself and the the studio and then the artist all in different locations working together
00:49:10
listening at the same time around the globe you know putting together recording some dialogue. So Um and also we we did do some some office talent. So like you I don't know if maybe you might recognize Phil and Darren's voice in the fleet week PA and adverts and stuff. So Um there's a little bit of in-house stuff going there. But um I didn't catch Darren but I caught Phil. All right. Darren was in the the Drake the the adjacent room. Darren's telephone voice is very different to his normal everyday voice. Yes. I I I do want to point out the irony of having the the primary speaker on our work from home question be the one person who's sitting in his office. Yeah, that's true. That's a speaker as a programmer the
00:49:58
whole lockdown pandemic thing has been perfect for me because anything that minimizes social interaction is fine by me. Yes, programmers. Socially distancing since 1963. Yeah. Uh, I hear you. I hear you. Not not much of a change on my end. Um, Let's see what else we got. Um, can we get cool ship voices like mother in Alien? The emergency destruct system has been activated. Uh, they they want more ship voices, Bob. Yes, yes. We we actually um, we have been doing a really big think on on ship design. I can't say too much yet cuz it it's going to be um, pretty monumental shift. But, one of the things that we've really been finding difficult is you know, we've had we have
00:50:46
a lot of manufacturers, right? And um, if you consider each one being an actor that we cast and we go and record like let's say for example just eight 10 actors. Uh, you know, and we want to incrementally improve our ship computers then we want to go back and you know, pick these guys up and record five more lines for 10 different people. Um, it the cost rack up rather rather quickly and it's just astronomical. It's not something that's really feasible and achievable really. So, we've been really trying to look at hard and looking at this for a long time of just you know, very humanistic you know, voices that we can um, actually go and capture an an actor and uh,
00:51:34
drive their their voice with text to speech and and to be able to to create a lot more computer voices, a lot more um, things that they can say, a lot more reasons for them to exist, you know, um than just being, um you know, your your [ __ ] and Betty. Am I Am I allowed to say it that sorry? It's fine. I haven't been called that in a long time. Yeah. Yeah, I know. That's old school. Yeah, pretty old school. Say that. Um but, uh you know, it's it's it's that that's the that's the idea though is we we want to step away from that. We we uh I know there's there's some lore in there that that we don't have AI or as the far as like that, you know, think for yourself computer, but that doesn't mean that they can't be uh um fun and engaging and and uh help you with your missions or or or the the
00:52:26
type of style gameplay that you like to do or, you know, um you know, there's there's a lot that I I would like to talk about, but I I just don't want to put, you know, hit too much at it, but the idea is there. We we we we know we have a problem to solve and it's it's in it's in the pipeline. You're afraid to say it, but I'm willing to say it. Uh Gilbert Gottfried is being recorded as a ship GPS and he will just berate you the entire time for making poor decisions. I TOLD YOU LOUISVILLE WAS THAT WAY. WHERE ARE YOU GOING? NO, I I CAN'T DO A GILBERT Gottfried impression, but think about it, Bob. To what extent will dialogue on mission givers be worked on? Uh are there any are there, for example, plans to do more than one dialogue for a specific type of mission?
00:53:14
Yes. Yes, please. This is this has frustrated me for a little while, but I I completely understand it. I mean, there there is the whole point of, um you know, I mean, I as I mentioned before with the the the background voices and things like that, subsunction AI, you know, we we really have to learn to crawl and and and and do the basics. And that's the same with the mission givers. These are first passes at the mission givers, trying to prove out, you know, their the concept of them and how how the player should interact with them. We we've recorded a lot of this content. There's so much content. I mean, I would say like, you know, it's like this much content and maybe this much of it has animation in in the game and maybe this much has has behavior put to it. So, it just gives you an idea of what's going on. There's There's a lot of stuff in there and and and we we're just trying to get at least one
00:54:02
variation in there just to prove that that this interaction works and then we can like go in and and really engage it and you know, we we predicted a lot, but there's not to say that there's a lot of holes or things missing. We don't know yet because we're we're putting it together. We're getting it in there and then we can we can look at what the game experience is and then iterate it, make our own better, take the feedback from from you guys, from from our our team, the play tests, you know, how how we all do it. We iterate, iterate, iterate. And and that and that's the kind of the concept here. So, what you guys are seeing is a base level implementation. We Once the AI matures and things get better, don't worry, we have replayability in mind. So, uh it will it will get better. Don't worry. Okay. Uh we are almost at the end of the show,
00:54:50
so we'll see how many of these we can squeeze in before we run out of time here. Uh what can you tell us about the status of sound occlusion in the game? Um I've actually been working I've just been scheduling some work for the next quarter and um the way occlusion's working is going to change massively as part of that. we have some work that I've done that that enables audio to propagate correctly through portals and through rooms and things like that and so accumulate reverbs as it goes through them and that Um but it's been kind of on a little stumbling block where we need some extra tech in the game's room system. So, um for a while we were kind of trying to figure out how that's going to schedule in and we've decided that, you know, rather than waiting on it any
00:55:37
longer, I'm going to do this work, which isn't strictly audio work, but it's it's it's stuff that benefits us greatly. So, yeah, it's getting scheduled in right now, and occlusion will be much more systemic and will make a lot more sense than it currently does. So, you'll be able to get a lot more of a a sense not just of the direction as the profile lies that the sound is coming from, but where you're actually hearing it from, and you'll be able to follow that sound and find the the object making that sound, or the actor that's making that sound. So, yeah, it's coming, and it's just a case of how long it takes me to do it. Fair enough. Any thoughts on using directional sound in ship cockpits to indicate incoming missile fire? See a lot of nods on that one.
00:56:30
You know, the Atmos thing is a good opportunity to test out how this works. I mean, maybe a good sort of first use case for that sort of thing. We we so we have all the information we need. It's just a case of how do we express it in a way that's easily understood by the player. Any plans to add background radio noise, like NPC chatter around planets, ports, landing zones? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That I mean, that that just goes back to to the to the previous you know, talking points there. You know, I mean, we we really want to to feel you that you can hear other people use the ATC that you when you when you approach a landing zone, you're hearing other chatter with with the ATC. We also want to throw in and this goes back to needing the the these real humanistic voices to to to be able to
00:57:18
produce this much amount of content, because these kind of things, these background chatters and and and and being able to list out weather, or what what the law system is on a certain planet, or you know, what are what are just uh just you know, things going on um you know, um current events or things like that that it that that's all needs to be done with a a voice that can be rendered to text uh so that we're not constantly recording um assets and and that that's all I do every day is record assets. but uh but the the yes, the answer is yes, there will be there's going to be a a lot of that coming around um when when the systems are available, but it's definitely in our our thoughts and and our plans. Okay. what's the most important piece of audio
00:58:07
equipment you use to develop Star Citizen? I like yes. Your hair? That gets in the way. It's not a slightly muffled representation of the soundscape. Anybody else? Um I think for for for dialogue I can say real quick I would you know, um iZotope is amazing. We love that that piece of gear. Uh we and and in essence sound design we we use that a lot of places. It's it's a great um great way to clean up and make things sound nice and pristine and beautiful. To go all artsy-fartsy about it, it's genuinely thinking about why we're doing
00:58:56
things rather than how we're doing things is I'd say more important than any technology or anything like that. Oh yeah. And uh what future sound designs are you most excited about implementing? Aliens. I I'm really looking forward to the the propagation stuff that Graham's working on. You know, that that will be, you know, really really exciting and well a lot of problems we have now will hopefully just fall away. But then it will unlock a lot of creative stuff, so it's not sound design, but it's audio. Yeah, and the the sound of ships with sound sim off will be a huge group group
00:59:44
effort. Uh last but not least, uh if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound? It actually Well, It It's likely to have been pulled due to server object container streaming. Doesn't exist. The spoon doesn't exist. That's fair. That's fair. All right, guys. I was I was expecting someone to say is there a Jira for it? Thank you so much, guys, for taking the time out of the out of the end of your week. Uh I know it's Friday, I know it's the end of your day. Are you ready to Well, I was going to say ready to go home, but maybe that's just Bob. Um Uh thanks so much. It's always a It's
01:00:31
always a pleasure for me to have the audio guys on. You know, audio is is is an aspect that's close to my heart given my own personal history, so thank you so much for being here with us. Uh for everybody watching at home, as normal as as is the normal now, we are going to throw the host to another Star Citizen streamer who is broadcasting on Twitch right now. I am told today's streamer is Der Kuma. Uh I'm told he is a smart, calm, friendly streamer that lives to talk with his audience about Star Citizen while doing some trade missions. And I want to add on a personal note that as someone who took several years of German in high school and has visited the country of its origin more than a dozen times, I can tell you that Der Kuma translated to English means the Kuma.
01:01:21
Okay, that didn't go as well as I thought. Anyway, for Star Citizen Live, that's Kit, that's Graham, that's Josh, that's Bob. I'm Jared. We'll see you next week, everybody. Take care. Thanks, guys. Bye.

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