Star Citizen Live: Turbulent Roundtable

20 August 202101:02:521,652 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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yeah you were too many people today right yeah there's too many people oh yeah our audio is live let's start the show hello everybody welcome to another episode of star citizen live the turbulent round table i'm your host uh uh creative content lead jared huckaby and yes i stumbled on my title there for a second i've had a few uh if you've never seen star citizen live before it is where we taken about an hour out of the end of our week and we hang out with many of our guests this you see benoit right there wave wave benoit hi everyone hello and uh with benoit who you all know from the turbulent studio from the times we've talked in the past we are adding a whole plethora of of developers from uh our recent expansion our recent
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game studio expansion i say recent and i realized it's been like what a year and it's been almost a year always yeah yeah already a year of since we started well we've we've we've had our one year barbecued one one month ago really recents are relative term because i still think last year is 2019 yeah like like like so uh anyway we uh this week's show is a little different uh we'll of course still be uh peppering in questions from the uh from the uh live chat here on twitch but for the most part this is a this is getting to know you it's like getting to know your stream we're gonna we're gonna take this hour and meet a whole bunch of people who have joined the team in the last year that we've never met before uh maybe dive into a little their uh origin stories as it were and you know see what
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brought them to the team and what they do and stuff like that so uh let's start off with the obvious person and get them out of the way benoit uh folks who have followed the project for a while uh may already know who you are and what you do but there's always somebody who shows the shows the first time so sure so introduce yourselves who are you what do you do for star citizen and turbulent all right so i'm ben i'm a technical co-founder at turbulent and so i've been on the star citizen project i want to say since the very beginning so the kickstarter era and uh you know the group that we have here today is really an amazing group of people that recently joined our team as part of a new uh game team that's dedicated to star citizen right and so um
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i'm super excited for you guys to get to meet them right and so uh the that's pretty much it i don't want to take too much space i'm just here as moral support for everybody now uh turbulent came on board originally as uh our our our web partner our platform partner right web is a little too simplistic uh you guys you know built our entire platform that the game sits on top of um now in the last year we have expanded to to a full-fledged game studio how many how many folks do you have there at the studio now roughly we're up to 30 right guillaume gum could give us the right the right seven now oh my god right yeah so it's already 37 brave souls that we've able to been able to coerce to join this this crazy ride
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so yeah it's it's you're right it's we started as a most of our implications have been on the web on uh e-commerce systems that drive this is the the game how you get your pledges in games stuff like that and and so this new expansion is really coming closer to the game making environments right and uh and building gameplay features uh so that's really the it's really exciting to get started on that stuff it's pretty cool all right so let's get to meet some of the uh some of the folks that we are less familiar with let's start with you pierre luke pierre look who are you and what do you do for star citizen he's not here piano look he uh he might be in is going to be here the next time yeah
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how are those ipas all right you take it who are you what do you do for star citizen okay i'm i'm guillaume i'm the production lead for uh for the montreal studio essentially my job is uh so we i was one of the first ones to set up the studio with essentially pierre luken and uh my job is is to uh accompany and support the team to really make sure that uh they have everything they need to to to be successful uh to coordinate with some of the key stakeholders at cig so ian todd ricky aaron brian and and essentially define how we can best help star citizen we can as best help cig and and see how we can actually uh uh set in place uh mandates and and
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build teams around those mandates to to uh to to help the game and and help deliver the game so uh that's what i do it's it means it means it's a whole set of tasks going from some that are more hr like some that are more production like like test tracking and stuff like that and uh and and so some are more like uh uh communication with with uh with some stakeholders inside cig okay and what's your position production need production so uh do we have any other producers in the group here does guillaume represent anybody thank god we only have two two let's go to you annie uh who are you what do you do for star citizen um uh so yeah i'm an associate producer working with guillaume to um
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help out the team uh plan out their workload and make sure that they're basically focused um on their job and and have everything that they need as guillaume said to uh you know be able to move forward and and have clear you know visibility on uh what we're going towards with this project to make sure that everybody communicates efficiently i mean it's a it's a huge production right um so it's a an international production between like a number of very big studios scattered across the world so you know communication is very much key in that context and uh guillaume and i are there to make sure that that goes smoothly and and everyone is kept happy and uh we are as transparent
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as possible with our people to yeah to move this thing along this beast of a project i can't say how happy that annie joined us two months ago she i was about to go crazy and now she's she came in did lots of awesome stuff stuff uh she's been clearing jira clarifying the tasks really supporting the team so the fact that she's here is absolutely amazing cleaning jira is not very glamorous but it needs to be done so that's actually i was going to ask is when did you come on board the with the team so about two months ago yeah it was two months ago on the uh actually on the 14th uh it was the exactly two months ago then and um yeah i mean it's been going uh really fast this team is
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wonderful we have a lot of industry veterans in montreal and we've uh we've been lucky enough to sign a lot of them with us um the artists are wonderful we have a great design team the our concept artists brittany who's here are mind-boggling they are wonderful like the stuff that they come up with is insane and so it's you know it's it's really motivating to be on a project with such talent like surrounding you you as a production team like we we do want to help them as much as possible we're not on the creative side but we can recognize like the insane amount of talent that uh is in that team i mean to your credit like any landed on the team and did not get overwhelmed right so that's
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that's you know a big achievement all right jason annie got singled out and you didn't how does that make you feel i'm fine fine with that a little bit about me so let's let's go to you next jason uh uh who are you and what do you do for star citizen i'm a senior environment artist i joined three months ago a bit more now i joined the team and uh i do all the arts rc fartsy stuff so walls and ceilings and lots of things that players don't really notice but all the environment settings and props and whatever you interact with uh i've been around right now we're working on some space clinics for the hospitals
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working on the space clinics now where'd you come from before star citizen i've been in the industry for like 16 years now almost i started actually like doing as a game tester doing a mobile so that i remember the motorola razer and like sony ericsson show and like the screens are like one inch by one inch so i was like 21 so yeah coming in the morning and working on a one inch screen by one end screen is but not always easy especially when you're young and sometimes you party a bit too much the previous night so i started there and then joined ubisoft and a couple other studios and uh i met a bunch of these guys at warner brothers actually several years back and we had like the the best this is stellar art team
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overall like it's really competent people easy to interact with and uh eventually like most of the gaming industry after a project ends sometimes a project like players dissipate and everything so we lose our friends sometimes and yeah the studio popped up here montreal and a lot of guys that i used to work with joined the team here so i was like oh man i'd love to get that feeling back again just working with some art focus guys that really are passionate about art in general so i think i i've tried applying actually with the guys at star citizen when i was at warner brothers but i think they didn't have a studio here and i was like do you mind if i work remotely and it was like it's not a possibility so i was like all right i'll put that on the back burner but i really wanted to join this
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team for a long time and eventually i moved off to another studio and then last year got poked by pia luke and guillaume and they're saying they're trying to get the team back together so i was like oh man let's go for round two and let's get the best get the band back up on stage so does it feel to be working with rainer again um other than rainer it's great but you know you go with it can you elaborate on that now raiders are great he's like a brother but we can look super well and work well together well let's let's touch on that a little bit more today's show is is all intro so for the folks who are in chat like what are we talking about today this is it we are getting to know some folks today but so so we'll we'll do some more introductions here in a minute but i want to touch on something you said uh
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the the previous relationship with some of the folks that you know how many of you let's just do hands here have worked with each other before somewhere else all right all right so let's hear a little bit about that past i i i know i know a lot of you came from uh ooby at some point right yes yes yep like a rite of passage for the city i think that's that's true that's true uh and some of you came from uh uh worked together at warner's i think if i remember correctly warner brothers so it was it just warner new and ubi or were there other connections that i'm not i uh i worked at idos for seven and a half year before uh moving on to turbulent those are the only two studios
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i worked with um so i started in the industry at idos in 2013 and uh i was there until uh april what were some of the projects you worked on tonight as uh well i worked on the two marvel partnerships uh that idos was in charge of so i worked on avengers alongside crystal dynamics for two years 2017 2018 and then i moved on to guardians uh which is coming out in october and a wonderful wonderful project with such talent in that studio too i was uh i still feel like they are a little bit my uh my industry family but uh you know at some point it's nice to move on and
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go see what other people are doing and then be you know uh sort of dipped into like this whole live process uh it's it's very interesting it's a very different way of developing games and i think i'm just a better producer for trying stuff out and be exposed to that i can't move on until uh we get the name of your cat who was in frame just a few moments ago i have two uh one is called the shiraz and the other one is called jill very unconventional names very quebec old and senile and uh jewels most of the time so i think it's fitting the perfect name all right rainer europe who are you and what do you do for star citizen so like jason i'm an
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environment artist um i've been working in the industry for about 13 years now uh started working back in 2008 uh behavior yeah sorry so uh yeah worked on um started working on a wii game it was a my sims racing game and then i moved on to triple a uh then i moved on to idos uh ub warner brothers back to idos now i'm here working on star citizen with these fine people yeah it was uh when pierre luke and guillaume contacted me to uh to ask if i'd like to join back and work jason and all the other guys again uh it was uh
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i guess it was an easy decision to make to get back with uh some old pals and yeah work on this massive game too uh it's uh like compared to all the other triple a titles the uh this game is just massive uh it's it's hard to it's hard to imagine like when you get in like it's the scale of everything it's it's pretty cool so uh yeah that's uh that's my short story okay uh annie who are you what do you do for star citizen i'm sorry not annie sorry brittany yesterday we just did danny brittany i told them beforehand that i was gonna
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slaughter the names i made it 15 minutes into the show before i messed up the names that's okay my name's brittany he's close enough yeah but um i'm a concept artist um i'm from toronto this is my first job in the industry i started back in november it's been a very cool ride it was definitely a steep learning curve at the beginning but i feel like i've learned a lot and it's been really fun everyone's been uh really helpful and supportive so and what are some of the things you've worked on so far um the first thing i started on was uh the colonialism stuff so that was kind of a challenge i don't think they really had a the whole
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look of it estab totally established at that point so yeah i was just sort of throwing out weird ideas for that um no no uh also worked on like yeah some hospital stuff and uh also the pyro stations as well i was literally just having a conversation with somebody the other day about the colonialism stuff because we were showcasing it quite regularly on uh our sprint reports and then uh we're holding back now because it's you might see it in somewhere else soon that's really obvious and coming up uh but uh one of one of the folks i was discussing with was it doesn't look like it doesn't look like you know a lot of the other things that are in star citizen and i was like i think that's kind of the point it's about pushing and then expanding you know what you know the look of star citizen i think you've definitely
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accomplished that so yeah it's like sort of retro sci-fi looking with big clunky buttons and yeah it's kind of different from everything else benjamin i'm a lead tourist programmer on star citizen so i joined turbulent last december and so i i work on the tools for these guys for artists and designers in the editor and in 3ds max houdini to help them produce some stuff for star citizen and mostly i'm specialized in procedural generation so that we can place more stuff in the universe and go faster for that so yeah and star citizen with lots of star systems in the the perfect place to to have a lot of do generation to to do
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in the universe so so uh when you say tools and stuff are you talking about specifically the the procedural stuff or or are there other tools that i'm not thinking of at the moment uh yes uh being on date is a procedural generation but also helping like every artist and designer work in the in the query engine editor to to to do to to do the the levels and the art and all that and do and so it's improving those tools and that new feature so that they can do more content for the game more easily and cool uh nano up who are you what do you do for star hey my name is neno uh i'm a level designer on star citizen so uh since we got here
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i worked on hospitals we did a few months of prototyping different uh gameplay ideas uh currently we're working on the derelict caterpillar puzzles anytime we have a chance to work with the procedural tools or level artists helping out here and there we just try to fix the bugs keeps everything under control before star citizen i worked at ubisoft i'm fairly new to the industry i've only been here for uh three or four years so i worked on for honor and rainbow six uh at ubisoft so i mean i had a great time there but the reason i joined the star citizen is because there's a few people with who
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that i knew were coming to the studio i knew their work ethics i knew uh who they were as team players so i mean it was also an easy decision for me just to make the jump and you know keep working with the people that i loved working before i think your evolution from ubisoft being on foreign as a camera specialist to design is a pretty cool story maybe that would be worth it expanding on well yeah i mean my brother worked at ubisoft i think for uh maybe 13 years now so i did like i changed my career when i when i was like 30 years old so i i jumped at the first uh i went to school in level design and as soon as i got an opportunity to work at ubisoft on anything uh i i took that opportunity so
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i worked as a camera specialist on for honor which i mean it was a crazy steep learning curve but i loved every second of it and i had to deal with all the teams from ui to game play to maps to level designers so you know it helps you break out of your shell and just be able to communicate freely with everybody and just it was a lot easier when we were in a studio so you could just get get off your desk walk up to somebody ask them for help but um obviously it's a bit different now but um i mean we're still having a good time it's albion yeah that's why your clips are so nice when you're doing like little gameplay clips i'm always like man that's like pretty good the camera work is amazing i understand now okay
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last but certainly not least uh other guillaume i don't know how we're going to separate the two of you you guys gave me two guillaumes uh yum what do you do for star citizen who are you all right so i'm james aldo i'm a technical artist i've joined turbulent december if i remember correctly and um yeah so i work closely with we are in the same team which is pretty not common i would say like having a tool team that can embrace developers and technical artists in the same group it's pretty pretty unique opportunity we had there to create such a team because right now we are really into creating a synergy between the users
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and uh the developers so i'm i'm really glad we we had this opportunity together uh we we used to work together at ubisoft for the past two years uh and prior to that i used to work on an open world on ghost recon in paris so yeah i tend to have this kind of vision of how to use procedural tools in the context of the projection at the same time i was a bit uh in a small case when we had to work on rainbow six extraction because that was more a game kind of a corridor game and procedural tools were kind of limited in their use in this in this context because they tend to be used for
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creating a lot of content and actually when guillaume came to me with the proposal of of star citizen and the the huge scale it represents like i jumped on the the occasion and i was like now we're gonna talk so yeah we're gonna unleash the power of houdini mainly because this is the the most important tool we are trying to bring into the into the editor of of star citizen and try to make as much tool as possible fastest as we can but at the same time making sure they they answer to real needs of users and uh yeah i can't wait to to reveal our first tool set to the to the developers and make sure they're gonna create awesome content with it
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yeah these these two are our procedural wizards so having a dev and technical artists paired together is just making magic basically it's pretty cool and they've been able to assemble a super awesome team of programmers and tech artists or hopefully that you guys can meet uh later on yeah i think we hit our limit with how many people we could squeeze into this one so so this is definitely most people we've had on seo before so if you're just joining us now as we approach the halfway mark we are we are meeting the team at turbulent this week uh we're chatting about who they are and how they got their work where they got their starts and stuff if you want to see a bit about uh the actual work that they've been doing uh you should check out yesterday's inside star citizen with a look at many of the hospitals that are coming online with the upcoming alpha 315.
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many of you have you know some of you like guillaume you know joined the project a year ago ben why you joined the project like like forever ago yeah but before color tv existed um but a lot of you have come to the project relatively recently so i want to do something that we don't normally get a chance to do here i would like to know why like like like you you've all moved through the industry you've all you've all worked at various places what brought you to star sorry oh i mean yes the project of that magnitude is is i mean it's hard not to be flabbergasted by whatever you're seeing um and the fact that it's
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already playable and out there in the world is something that most of us really haven't experienced it's all hush hush for years usually and now we're you we have we're building it it's okay you're back but yeah we can you know we can see people reacting to it as we're building it we can uh you know we can see how it resonates with people and i think that's something that not a lot of us have experienced in the past developing like those super long productions that we again that we have to keep secret for three four five years sometimes so i think that's
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you know it's an interesting way of of developing games and sometimes forever like there's some games that we've worked on that got scrapped so you know it's kind of sad to work on something that looks amazing and then sorry can't show it it's gone it's poof so yeah just to work on something that has frequent patches uh playable in alpha it's it's very encouraging uh motivating as well yeah it feels like we're we're like we're working for the players and not like investors you know it's like it's a team effort that we're not like the big money pocket guys we're just working for everybody that loves to to game and the whole community so it's it's a very different feel that's attracted me the most
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yeah and as artists as artists like it's it's also a it's just a really good looking game it's a it's a passionate thing for us too so uh yeah it's kind of funny that we'll be able to update our art stations before our previous games get to the ship too that's how quick it moves and so quick it moves here it doesn't always seem like it but but also when you when we uh work on different projects you're always asking yourself as a developer imagine if this game was actually coming out on the next gen or on the next cpus and gpus and currently that's pretty much what we're doing here like it's hard to run this game even on high-end pcs so
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being able to work on a game that's built for the future but that currently is in a little bit of a shaky stake is very exciting as a developer because you get to just constantly try to push those limits as much as you can because you're expecting that eventually hardware is going to catch up so it's exciting to not have those limitations already put in place on day one and then you work on a game for four years and when you release it well it's been four years of new releases of hardware as opposed to it right now you know we're just constantly trying to push the limits even though if if the hardware can't necessarily always keep up i mean i liked also like to your point rainer just before that the you know the hospitals were the first full levels that the team has
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you know put out in the patch which is well yeah very nice right really cool but it's the fact that you can actually read the feedback from players when they see him right uh you know even though they're not completely available right now in 314 but the like even just having the lobbies like i think nano you went in and you guys were taking selfies in game like look we're in we're in the game you know and i mean that's really invigorating right to be able to to ship often and see positive comments too um just to see praise on on your work so quickly because i joined last december and already i get to see like what i've worked on in the past six months is already getting
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it's nice to see comments already so which goes back a bit with comments right now i'm getting comments from all the people uh people are sharing the comments on teams and a lot of people are asking if we could say some things in french see leptin while [Laughter] no i've never tried poutine oh man oh you should you're missing out yeah you're missing out if if you're coming to montreal just for patina it's worth it yeah i would say it's even better if your first one is uh
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is consumed at three in the morning after a night out drinking it is the best context to have this food it's usually the rite of passage right yep the poutine and the axe throwing correct there you go it's a very canadian experience i guess there you go let's talk about let's talk about some of the things we're working on right now obviously for folks who saw yesterday's uh inside star citizen hospitals are probably the like the the first big tent pole uh release but they're not the only thing uh in development uh that's going so uh who can talk a bit about what they're currently working on i can talk i mean uh we're i think it's already on the
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timeline what we're working on it we're working on the puzzles derelicts so we're working on the crash shift the caterpillar crash chip because it gives us a lot of room to add in puzzles inside of the caterpillars and we're also trying to develop them in a in a way that we don't depend on art or missions or other you know teams in so bilan we obviously need help from all other teams but uh we're trying to be as self-sufficient as we can to ship them to bring in gameplay to bring in puzzles to bring in exploration uh whether it's on planets or in or in space um so yeah currently we're working on the derelict puzzles and we'll see what doors that opens and where it leads
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let's talk a little bit more about what that idea itself is many of the derelicts that folks know in the game right now are basically just points of interest it's it's it's a giant environmental you know art installation and that's about it you're what you're talking about is actually adding uh derelicts to the game that serve a gameplay function of some sort yeah so we're we're looking right now at where we're going to place those derelicts so that some are easy to find some are hard to find we're also trying to maximize the use of the new tech that you guys are bringing in so the scanning and the loot crates so basically the way we're trying to build them is you have a crash site that's in three or four pieces or so you you might have a crash site with one puzzle and a
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three-four loot crate or you might have a crash site with three puzzles inside and multiple loot crates with a varying rarity so you know our goal is to give those players who like to explore gather loot you know it's always fun to open a chest and you get an epic or a legendary item and things like that so you know we're trying to i think we're trying to go in that direction for the explorers and add more gameplay puzzles and such things any any dangers yeah you talk about you know loots and things to find and discover but yeah actually we stumbled upon this uh cool little gadget i think it was a mine that was prototyped so you know we're going to try to add dangers eventually we're also planning on revisiting those puzzles when we have
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things like fire in the game that's propagating and things like that and you know as soon as we get planetary navmesh and other things like that you know sky's the limit in star citizen nav mesh of course actually sky isn't the limit let's say the sky isn't the limit but a planetary nav mesh essential for getting npcs to be able to you know roam these parts uh what else are we working on who wants to talk you guys well there's uh us artists uh we're we're still working on the uh on the uh the hospitals jason and i are on the space clinics so uh yeah that's going all that's going along pretty well
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pretty quick too yeah it's a pretty far stage right now right yeah approaching final yeah um so it i guess it was a small mandate compared to new babbage it was a lot of reuse but uh it had his its own challenges since uh it's pretty much the it's uh it's a map that we're using to also test out the procedural tools so uh there's a bit of like problem solving with with that like how can we how can we keep the thing looking interesting while being compatible with uh modular tools uh the procedural tools let's talk about this oh good sorry no no no i i was about to say that
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actually those modules that they are creating right now is a good um good elements for us to play with for the new version of the tool they are using right now because uh we are revamping that that tool with our own proposal and we are using the bits and pieces they are making to actually test it in the in the for the new context and this new new way of setting them up so yeah hopefully we'll get to to improve those uh squeak you can have already using the the previous version uh because we are definitely expecting to have those solved by uh by the next version yeah let's talk about some of those tools uh maybe benoit benjamin uh you can fill us
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in what are the let's start with the scope let's start with the scope let's start start with where we're trying to go uh with this tool what are we trying to accomplish well it's uh how can we generate a lot of environments quickly like for example the first mandate we checked was for the space station so we want to create a lot of them but like if you check if it takes you like one month to do a space station because you assemble the different rooms manually you will take years and years to do the all the space station for the all the star systems so what we are doing like we already have a tool the procedural layer tool that is a way to stitch those rooms together like you give some rules you you want the kitchen next to the bedroom something like that and it can generate different
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layouts uh but yeah the problem with with that at some point was that it didn't give enough control to the user define exactly what you wanted and so we are finding we are designing a new way to do this procedural approach so that we can assemble those breaks more quickly and easily and so that the every artist can say okay i want that there and specifically that they are giving different tools and so that we can generate a lot of them that are interesting and beautiful and kick with the fantasy of the game and so for that we are integrating houdini which is a software used for procedural into the editor so that it can communicate between the two you we normally use to create the levels and this tool that is made for
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using those lego bricks and making rules to assemble so so yeah it's mostly how can we do that you know so it's mostly just how can we make the game that we're trying to make [Music] no small task one super interesting aspect to to what the guys are doing is in other companies when you have the pressure of being on a two-year project or a three-year project uh there's a lot of pressure to do tech and tools super quickly and developing this type of ideas that the guys are putting together which essentially took a good s and correct me if i'm wrong but six to eight months of actually really thinking about it looking the architecture of the project and seeing how you guys can can implement this is not usually a luxury that that we have on other under projects so having
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cig giving the team the time to develop and think about uh a solution that can stake throughout the scale throughout the years was was actually like a godsend essentially so you got to remember that one of the missions for the studio is is is to be able to create star systems right so i mean just you can't create a star system by hand right and so the mission that uh you know benjamin guillem and the rest of the procedural team have is is basically to assist you know all these nice artists and level designers so that they can make more of the good stuff right and so in a way that that you know that keeps gameplay interesting and fun and and one of the things you
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guys are a bit modest in your approach but is that it's also in the small things like you know yeah you can stitch a space station right and it's it's really great but it's also in the small things right let's say a small cable run or placing objects right and and stuff like that and and the ability to make that procedural so that every step is faster is you know yeah yeah because we think big at first with procedural like planets and all that but when we see our environment artists work like if you see like the books behind me if you want to play that by end in a level you will have to place them one by one but you lose a lot of time because you can say okay place me fill me with this shelf with books and that's the type of tool we can do also with procedural so we try to tackle the big stuff and also the small stuff to help them
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fill the world with interesting stuff speaking so that jason and rayner don't have to spend all day placing lego bricks yeah we can focus on important stuff yeah placing books in the bookshelf is not always the funnest part of the day so yeah any procedural tools that speed things up and get into the more important stuff and as i said earlier that the scope of this game is so massive it's tools that we need to help us make create content at a quicker pace yeah the scale is just crazy because every time i'm working i have like star citizen videos playing on youtube people exploring doing missions and i i feel like it i've been here for eight months and
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even now i'm still figuring out a lot of things and every now and then i'm like oh my god i had no idea we actually had this implemented into the game already working and i could just jump into star citizen and go play with it so i mean the game is just huge uh even after eight months i feel like i'm still ramping up to learn everything that was built so far yeah seeing and seeing the screenshots on the reddit uh page uh like some shots are just so incredible oh yeah like so many times i try to poke people on reddit and ask them where on what planet and where did you get the screenshot from because i want to put something there and like 99 of the time i never get a reply and then just gotta jump into the editor and cruise through the planet try to find it yeah with a project as big as we are and
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with as many studios around the world i won't tell you how many times uh i've received messages from developers who learn what other teams are doing from our programs the same as our backers do 100 so yeah it's actually hard to hold all this it's just it's just you know everybody's working on their you know siloed piece of the of the puzzle and it's hard to track everybody else's so it's one of the mission statements of our programming it's also an internal communication tool to keep everybody going one of the things that we uh talked about the the back when we first started chatting months ago was this mission of the turbulence team of the turbulent studio to attempt to be as self-contained as possible to to to be able to not just
00:42:05
create environments uh but to provide the game play for those environments and the and the feature sets for those environment stuff one year on now since taking that goal uh how do you feel about your progress so far want to go or no no i'm going to let you go all out dude you go for it i think we're doing we're doing really good uh it's it's essentially what we want to create is a team that's somewhat autonomous but not working as a lone wolf you know inside the company so we are connected uh with other teams we have reviews with other teams and and just this morning we had a bi-weekly art reviews in which like all the teams were showing absolutely amazing content uh but
00:42:54
when we work on the day-to-day that's when we wanna we wanna we wanna have more proximity with the team so that uh for example when when the people in the uk are going or are leaving work if we have questions well it's much more simple if we have uh someone here to answer them so i think the so far the the combination between level level design and environment art was absolutely successful then adding the tools team who not only are helping us sometime to understand better things but also uh doing quality of life's improvements for the artists from the designers was also super helpful and and it's essentially our base of of uh of of growth where uh we want to grow uh the entire studio by adding teams that
00:43:43
are relevant to each other so that we support each other even more in in that area and uh to be honest when i first joined and when we first joined the one year ago we thought we would be we thought we it would be quicker to ramp up and and let's say do a star system now and that was probably very naive of us uh now we see the absolutely gigantic amount of work as star system takes uh to develop uh but i'd say so that's in terms of the scope but in terms of the team we have assembled uh the luck we had of having so many talented people and like though the 37 people that we signed and that are working with us are a top top top in their craft uh so i like i mean in terms of creating an
00:44:33
autonomous team uh that that can work together i were so so lucky we're autonomous but it's you know it's important to know that you still ask for a lot of help from other teams in cig in europe and everywhere so i mean in no way we could have ever shipped hospitals or even anything without the help of the level design team in europe and i mean everybody from vfx artists to environment teams to the lighting artists everywhere i i i think on daily basis we chat with the level design team in europe and even all the time we're asking what's this bug how do i fix this because they have years and years of experience under their belt so you know for them the problem the problem resolution is a
00:45:22
five times quicker than it is for us because they've seen all these bugs a hundred times and we're seeing them for the first time and we're a little bit clueless so i mean we try to be autonomous but at the same time the support we're getting from every other team in cig is what's helping us ship these things yeah the the welcome the people were so welcoming that's pretty it was pretty amazing yeah i mean and to echo on your question jared in terms of uh i think we're doing great environment why is it's been super nice i think that the the ramp up has been great on the on gameplay side you know we still looking for more hires to be able to totally dive into complete gameplay loops right though uh on the design side like nano was talking about like that's you know we're moving forward with puzzles and what we're able
00:46:10
to action today but uh you know i feel like we still have ways to go for to dive full into like new gameplay features but uh we know which ones that we're looking at i can't talk about that uh you know and as guillaume was saying the strategy is going to be to have a team that can complement the group here right to basically iterate together gameplay level design design tools art concept everything right into one one those are all things that are in the work but like again as we discussed earlier like the studio is literally the the you know game development side of turbulent has been on for a year anyone who has worked in this industry knows that a year is nothing like it's a very short amount of time so just to
00:46:58
have been able to give to the community what we have so far like the hospitals and put all these process in place that takes time like it's it's insane the amount of stuff we have achieved in such a short time and i mean guillaume can correct me but like uh about half of that year was just ramping up and finding the right people for the job so all in all it's six months of development so i it's very inspiring what we're able to achieve with these amazing talents um across the board and going back to the gameplay side that ben mentioned can we do a shameless plug sure oh yeah uh if one of you is a leads elite gameplay programmer drop us a line
00:47:48
i'm looking for one that's right we got some really great topics for you contact us and we'll talk yeah that's how it goes because i mean all of the kick-ass and i mean britney's been very quiet right but she's such a talented artist all of the concept that brittany can put in you know is you want to be part of that if i can say it right talk to us more about your concepts brittany uh um let's see oh well it's been really cool because um i got well i'm from toronto and um uh well everyone else is in montreal but even more this is like a totally international team where we have meetings with people in the uk as well
00:48:35
and now as well um character concept artists in uh california so um yeah it's been really cool seeing everyone's work it's really inspiring we have meetings where everyone just sort of showcases their stuff and um it's fun how it's international with um you know we have all kinds of accents going on we have french american english accents um yeah it's uh super cool just seeing everyone's work like every week um it's definitely pushing you to just you want to try and keep up with everyone are you still working britney is a good example of uh like we have a couple of uh members of our team uh that it's you know their first job in the industry and their talent is
00:49:23
absolutely insane and then you have alongside of them you have veterans who have worked on a multitude of very eye-hand project so it's i think it's a good mix and i can't state enough how good a job benoit and pierre can guillaume did to find the exact right set of people to work together like it's it's really the name of the game you were asking jared why why move from another studio to here like this is a big part of it like this team is amazing and like thanks for giving credit but it's really credited the team because uh the team is is itself the biggest recruitment uh way and the biggest recruit recruitment argument i mean there's people who
00:50:11
like having the the people here talk to other people to their friends and recommending people is by far the the way we we've been able to assemble this team but you know one one of the things too that i find really special is is the the proximity between the different groups right and so for me it's been really key to get you know design level design art environment art concept working together and tools i don't want to forget tools those guys are important but the it's that they work together and they don't have these silos between them right because that's where especially in this project where we had so much ramping up to do it's key to be able to you know you know uh an environment artist needs some help
00:50:59
because he's not sure what to do at a specific area in a map concept can be right next to them going like oh let me sketch you something right and then boom boom boom that's unlocked we move forward you know then we put elevators in and then everybody's depressed so now we have to work on elevators then we get people to help in but it's it's a bit like you know it's this framework of support between the teams instead of creating the silos between the teams is to create one one team that's completely integrated and of course that includes like nano was saying everybody at cig right like this team is not even though we're we're trying to be autonomous we are part of the sig family in terms of everything that we do uh discipline uh between the disciplines right and so the that for me is that it creates this uh exponential
00:51:46
loop right between everybody and that's really that's really key to producing content quickly and and getting people excited about it it depends no matter what discipline they're working on so talking about discipline now and we have a we have a pretty wide collection we've got level designers and tools programmers and tech artists and producers and concept artists and environment artists and whatever the hell benoit is annie was talking about something during the pre-show before we started uh about how there was an article many years ago online about doors uh you also mentioned elevators elevators the greatest killer in the game development kingdom doors are one are perhaps the simplest thing that is actually one of the most
00:52:34
complex things in all doors and you were referencing an article about how uh different disciplines uh all approach something as seemingly simple as a door from a different perspective and i wanted to get your takes on it so for all of your different departments when somebody says okay we need to add a door here what what's what's the fracking how do you see you naughty shaking your head what's the first question that comes to your mind when somebody says we have to we have to add a door here we really need it we need a meeting are you sure for an artist is what is it gonna look okay fair artist is what it is and then we need we need an excel sheet to define all of the departments that are gonna need to work on that door and then etas
00:53:22
and then add a two-week buffer for that eta because something is going to go wrong something is going to go wrong for sure door never opens up spoken like a true producer never first try first try never happens all right check art tech art what's your question when somebody says either you want it closed either you want it open all the time that's what you want do you want it open close no you never want it to open or or close you want it to stay open or stay closed you don't want the animation part of it you don't want to have the detection part of it like how do you open it it's so complicated because how do you deal with the collisions do they move at the same time as the door what habits if you attach a gadget to the door and the door opens or closes the does the gadget
00:54:11
fall on the ground does it explode do you lose your gadget how do bullets react with the collision how does enemy react with the doors when a door opens or closes in front of the enemy does it cut the nav mesh or it doesn't cut the knife do we have that you see the it's like crazy this is just the tip of the ice cream now the best one is the this door normally auto opens when you get close to it except during the mission stage three if the dude said the door is now locked right which is yeah and then we start with a door and then one month later there's a co-op door and then a month after there's a double door and then another month there's gonna be a security door then there's a breakable one and the metal one that's unbreakable one that locks and once you think that
00:54:58
it's rock solid and that you've seen every possible thing that could go wrong you give it to a qa and within five minutes it breaks it yeah oh yeah he looks at it and it's broken yep yeah and then let's say what does concept do with a door really you just it can't be a simple rectangular door you got to see how much detail you can fit onto this door how much um decals you can put on it maybe a warning sign on your door how much panel lines you can put on the door just it can't be a simple metal door no such thing starting don't open it oh he would say it's not door enough
00:55:49
just need to be more door i need to adore it here luke is in the chat right now waiting to see his response um all right so so yeah uh uh one last thing um we never know when the next time you're gonna get to see the members of the star city community uh this week's show was was kind of a was attempting to do something on the side and we contriver reason to introduce uh so many of you to the community uh because i think that is one of the that is one of the better aspects of working for star citizen is this connection that developers can build with the community and you folks here at turbulent this this was my way of trying to make you feel welcome and part of the team so i
00:56:37
hope we've accomplished a little of that at least today um because i don't know the next time any of you are going to get to talk to them is is there some message some lasting thing you want uh the star citizens to know about you and your work before we let you go maybe i can i can just go super quickly then let the other guys is uh uh to the community like uh we've been it's it's really important to to us to to see what you guys are writing and to to see the post already post the forums uh so please continue to give feedback please continue to engage with us uh that i think the entirety of the dev team is looking at it and if they're not looking at really the other ones are sharing on our internal network so please continue please answer nano if he's asking you questions
00:57:38
oh gonna go there no your throw away don't do it no you have to do it you have to you have to do that incognito no but usually i just ask questions on youtube in the comment section where i poke because it's hard on youtube to actually poke the person that that posts the video so you have to like ask it in the chat but uh i rarely get any answer but we just keep searching on the planets we eventually find those spots but i mean for the community we do look at all not all your videos but most of them as much as we can we read through the comments we look we get we also get a lot of inspiration from your comments i mean it's crazy the amount of first of all you guys are super involved and creative so sometimes we're just going to comment and oh yeah that would be a cool mission oh yeah that's a good
00:58:25
idea and we just put it in our brainstorming board and it's there and it's in our back pocket ready to go when we when we have that feature good to go i know i read the a lot of comments whenever my engine crashes and i need to restart it i'll just read through a few comments watch a few star citizen videos are you saying the game crashes a lot on your machine i love everything about this game well i guess that's one unique thing for montreal is uh the engine because a lot of the studios around here use unreal or some other proprietary engines so i guess we're all in this at the same time learning it so
00:59:14
yeah that's cool like a new thing right any other lasting messages for the community guys besides you guys are as much uh part of that project as uh we are i think this is a this is a whole like we're we have the chance of working on this because of you guys so thank you and keep the feedback coming we always have a tremendous day when a video comes out and there's positive feedback we spend all day like sharing with each other and and posting in our internal communication channels so keep it coming and and thank you thanks for the support it's a beast of a project so yeah and every every day we're working thinking about your experience guys so we want to make
01:00:03
it bigger we want to make it better just to say the least so yeah don't don't don't think that we are not caring we are really caring that's for sure well at least then you become dead inside like me come to montreal we'll take care of you the official invitation has been submitted by the entire team jared so we're gonna have to arrange that uh yeah let's do it let's do it i i still need to go axe throwing all right folks that's it that's this week's star citizen live turbulent round table thank you for joining us remember that we are on the road to digital citizencon this year it takes place on october 9th there's a number of of contests and stuff going on right now
01:00:53
costume contest video contest the chances to win prizes of all manner and sort you should check out the robertsspaceindustries.com website for we're also really close to our next ship showdown if you remember ship showdown from last year a chance to vote you know a bracket you know tournament style voting for the top 16 spaceships in in star citizen and then the winners get fancy accoutrement in the precision universe so that starts real soon so keep your eyes and ears open for that uh and then of course we ship showdown then digital citizencon and then after that in november it's iae the return of so we're we're in star citizen's busiest quarter and somewhere in the middle of all that alpha 315
01:01:41
which we're pushing full steam ahead if you haven't checked out the segment in yesterday's inside star citizen on hospitals do that that paired along with the new player healing mechanics that are also coming online with 315 aim to be a pretty sizable uh shift to uh life and death in the persistent universe so four let's see if i can do this nano annie benoit uh guillaume benjamin guillaume bertani jacob rainer i really believed in it
01:02:35
i know it was the last girl you

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