Star Citizen Live: Behind the Dev - Sound Designers
Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment
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and that's all we have time for today thanks for watching blame somebody in the twitch chat it wasn't my idea hi everybody uh welcome to another episode of Star Citizen live I'm your host um Jared and if you've never you can use the walkie-talkie today and if you've never seen the show before uh it's definitely live because if it wasn't they never would let me put this out I'm your host Jared and this is the show where we take about an hour out of the end of our week my phone my don't use it right now baby can you hear me I would take about an hour at the end of
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our week and we chat with some of our developers um in a quasi semi-professional manner joining us on the show this week are two members from our esteem sound design team uh we got Dan and Corrington Dan quarantin welcome to the show hello uh question you've been on SEO before this you know what was the show we did before I don't I don't I've been here I just yeah I would say with graham talking about the ship experience stuff a few months ago yeah a few months ago I think it was like almost it's got to be almost a year now it could have been a year ago actually yeah and uh Dan uh you were the star of our recent uh that sounds like ship uh episode of ISC probably named I I remember coming in here I was like
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we were coming to your office like Thursday morning it's like hey Dan uh uh we're gonna rename the the show but I want to make sure you're okay with it before we do it he's like you just look at me he's like yeah like you're gonna be okay if we call it that this sounds like ship you're like yeah I'm like cool thanks in case you wonder how things happen here at cig this week's show is one of our behind the devs shows we have a couple different formats uh here on Star Citizen live uh sometimes we do our uh ask the dev show like we did last week where we take questions from the community and we basically uh just spend the hour addressing uh the questions that you have for our guests uh we have our SEO Game Dev shows where we bring somebody over and we hook their computer up and we actually watch them work for for about an hour to see a bit of their
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process and then we have our behind the dev shows we haven't done one of these in a little while uh and this is more like an interview type show uh we're gonna learn very very little about Star Citizen over the next hour so that's me just putting that out there right at the beginning if you're showing up there like wow I want to find out what the latest and greatest on this or whatever I encourage you to look at inside Star Citizen with a monthly report or any any other episode of stars in life on this show we're learning about Dan and Corrington because it's a behind the dev show so that's your warning hopefully they're interesting are you interesting guys I hope so yeah it depends who you ask someone thinks I'm quite interesting so let's let's just start off let's let's start off real real easy here see
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KB 3D was like see you in seven days by KV 3D uh damn who are you well I'm done I'm a sound designer here I've been working in the industry for seven years now and yeah that's me day to day when you say industry do you mean the audio industry or the video game Ministry or games games and games how long you've been in audio six of them oh so you so we started in video games not in audio then yeah I gotta fill an hour don't Garden who are you hello I am currentson and I am a technical sound designer here at cig I've been in cig for a year and a half now and this is my first job in the
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industry so just starting now what's the what's the difference between a sound designer and a technical sound design we have I have one word more than him no just open uh leave the bad jokes to me well the difference um is mostly I'm taking care of the implementation of the sounds Dan makes awesome sounds I take them put them into a into intricate systems that make them sound good in game that's my job basically so so so Dan makes a thing and then just hands it over to uses here use it somewhere pretty much yeah that's it that's not exactly we we designed the systems together and with that in mind we have I know what he's doing in terms of implementation
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could I do it mostly but I don't have the patience to do it and so we designed him with I know what I'm doing he knows what I'm doing and further on so we we work in conjunction with each other to build broader systems that we can both tackle head on at the same time gotcha so you're you're creation your implementation and and so your blue sky anything is possible and you're like well actually with this system the way that we currently is and this one we can do it like this so you can only do this so it's it's so so there there's a there's a distinct relationship here of of of as as Creator and it could be anything and then goes all right we got to figure out how to
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make this work and you have to tweak this or pull this back or reshape this because of the existing systems I hope I'm not that annoying for you but no yeah that's that could be described like this yeah um I'm I do have also my blue sky moments uh I think it's just before by designing the systems and as Dan said before we are working in tandem in creating these these systems so we really are it's really cool here because we have the freedom to really explore um I'm not going to say new ways but like nice ways of doing spaceships for example and we can Define the boundaries of what we want to do and then we can work out what sounds are going to be working well with these Within These systems that's always a
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a forever kind of struggle there I like uh Tech artists are some of my favorites a technical sound designer is basically the audio version of a tech artist it's it's taking this wild stuff that that that that that other people have made that sometimes they don't always think about how it's going to be implemented how it actually animates or moves what not and then finding a way to make it work you're putting a square peg into a round hole in a lot of cases but there's also you're also the people who make those new things possible often it's it's it's talk to me about that talk to me about that balance because one of the areas that I always like to people who have watched this show for any period of time when you do these kind of shows I'm always going to kind of gravitate towards this
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trade-off area of Game Dev because almost everything in game development is compromise in a weird way it's we like to think it's all creation we like to think that that we can just go in and make whatever the heck we want uh and then I say we I mean game developers I don't I'm talking about you know folks of Blizzard the folks that you know Activision whatever uh we just we just make whatever the heck we want but that's not really the case there's always this there's always this delicate Alchemy of what do how much time do we spend creating the ability and how much time do we spend creating the content for that within the ability how does how does that balance between the two of you
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well there's a design in the actual systems that we're going to be working on we can do that in a couple of hours of I was having a meeting and bashing our heads together um and thinking it's like theoretical physics versus actually doing something in a lab or to that end and you can come up with it in a in a final finite amount of time and then it's finding the time to fill out those systems with the content or something comes up and you you have to switch contacts really quickly and which is that happens frequently and so we're always wrestling with the oncoming tide of content that we have in this game and but coming up with the systems is very
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iterative so we might talk about something at length on a Monday and then I'll run over to corrington's desk on a Thursday and say actually I've had an idea and wouldn't it be cool if and then he says no and tells me why we can't do that now uh recently you know we first introduced the idea Claudius back when Claudius is is what we call this new procedural tool that we've been building here but I mean every game in existence has has its own Suite of tools and stuff that they create these new tools that are finally coming online you know through the work of Graham and his team and so then in the implementation in your stuff this is allowing you to to do a lot of things that we've been waiting kind of waiting
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in the wings to do all the systemic audio stuff that we showed on ISC a couple weeks ago is it easier to create for procedural stuff or is it easier to just make a thing it's bespoke it's there and then it's done and it's and it's going it's I I see a lot of conversations online you know when I'm watching um when I'm watching you know streamers and stuff like that you know um uh authy or the uh or or the soul uh soul friend soul soul City Soul citizens I got there eventually and stuff like this or or even salty Mike stop pausing just just watch the video salty Mike it's
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with the procedural things you often have to keep going back and fixing reiterating and like you think this thing was done but but it involves more going back and constantly keeping things upgraded and constantly keeping things uh uh bug free and stuff personally you like making the bespoke stuff more just forget about it that's it it's done or do or do you enjoy working in the in the uh procedural stuff for me I I love the systemic workflows that we're going for because it means that I don't need to open three or four ships and do some little tweaks on those ships it means we can do broad Strokes on hundreds of ships all at once and ships that don't even exist yet
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without even opening that ship in the editor and we can create that content that then exists within the ship and then we can move we can move in to individual ships and add the little touches afterwards that elevates them to a level that we wouldn't have before to use your example of the two different contexts you mentioned it is both of those things because it'll be here's a huge block of content for procedural systems and it's just his 50 Loops that we need to make for maybe Ambience or and I've got a big block of content for impact on me right now and that's I can make I can be making 200 300
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different little one shots for things impacting the ship and that takes a long time but once it's in unless we have a ship that's made of something else maybe it's made of jelly and I don't then need to make new content because reasonably all the ships are made of metal and so it's it's a good mix of we're making changes that will persist across all ship entities and then to set that to a higher level we'll be able to go and make those little touches and then improve ships one at a time subscribe to that I would say even that knowing how the system works and even like helping designing them as you as you're doing I think it brings up the excitement on working on these systems because
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if you if you're told okay you have to make yeah 200 sounds for this impact system if you don't know what the system is you're like well this is the 200 sounds that's a lot but when you know what the outcome the outcome will be this gets more exciting and you know where you want to go so I think this helps a lot when creating these massive asset banks for systems and we've seen that manifest as well um just yesterday we've been working on thrusters and different Vehicle Systems Corinthians started authoring um thrusters for just one ship in the game but it's a system that will after we throw the content at it it will persist across All Ships and by class and then they'll have it individual little um touches on top to make them
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participating because thrusters from that manufacturer kind of thing um yeah but then each individual ship will have its own Thruster audio signature and we're looking at doing things with Quantum travel exits so when a ship arrives so you're yo just floating through space and a really evil looking ship comes out of quantum you will hear like a big impact as it finishes traveling and it somewhat akin to how you know what an X-Wing set not an X-Wing a TIE fighter sounds like when it's coming and it's it's trouble that's what we want to involve with that and and we saw I saw a quick demo from corinthin yesterday of
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the thrusters and the we're currently working on and we went through some feedback together on how that system's coming along and versus what's in the game at the minute it's a resounding difference it sounds like you're bolted into the ship in each little movement that you make is Meaningful and you feel even just watching it rather than playing playing the game itself you feel like you're in that ship and it's really maneuver happy and it it really elevates the experience what does a TIE fighter sound like then I'm not gonna do it here oh I couldn't do it but I I was that what sound did they use again the uh it was a really strange it was like an
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elephant or something that was used it may have been it sounds like other layers of course but yeah it sounds like someone being dragged out of a basket that's pretty much it yeah you do it [Applause] not bad did that just fly past then it's one of those shows um all right so let's pull back let's pull back a bit and and and and and and talk about you guys where did you uh for lack of a better term where did you come from like I'm not saying yeah give us your home address or anything but but but where did where did this journey to games start for for you Corner you're closest to me we'll start for you let's go
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so where did I start um after University I had like an audio visual master's degree then internship like the natural flow I was doing a bit of everything um like an um sorry I worked on an audio fiction with like binaural techniques and it was it was really cool um a few bits of sound designs here and there some VR as well and then um kovid happened and it was really hard to find a job at first so I was working on my demo um every day it took me a while but finally I landed a job here at cig uh yeah and it's like I wanted to do games and so I'm very happy now to be here how would you do
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um do you want my resume yeah just give me the full CD okay you just give me the full CV um yeah I started out in QA at DT games and this was after University and I did my bachelors and I was working at a bar at the time and so I spoke to a family friend who said like if you want to work in the industry because originally I wanted to be a like a recording engineer like everyone that goes to audio University wants to be and to get in front of the desks and think this is me um I I thought when there was 60 people that all wanted to be music producers I thought well we all can't be so I thought I'll try this out instead um so I spoke to a family friend who at
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the time worked at Evolution studios in runcorn who have I think they're called Masters now and he said apply for a QA job in the industry so I I worked at TT games for a while and and then there was a there was a requirement of extra audio stuff for a game release so I I joined the team as a junior and for a short time just for the just for that game release and then it was like go after that and but then yeah John did Indie Studio as a composer and sound designer and so I was in charge of everything on the games it was mobile and digital card games and that kind of thing uh but that was really good in
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letting me be in charge of something which was dangerous and but yeah I've I really enjoyed having that agency of I come up with the solutions to the problems I caused some problems along the way and then yeah covert happened so out that that gig kind of come to a close I went self-employed and started as a contractor a audio Outsource firm worked for supermassive games on one of their last releases the Quarry which was great I worked on dialogue for that and so it was all the peak up data coming in and editing that on isotope RX and then it was coming in from the shoot hot like the the day after and it was already in in editor
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unedited and then uh just got it edited and it was back in game so I touched all the dialogue in that game and it was a it was a great experience but it was contract work so it came to came to a halt at one point and then now I'm here um some folks who were watching May wonder why we you know I asked these types of questions and stuff like this I think it's a my mission I don't know if it's anybody else's Mission but my mission uh for my time here at Star Citizen is to educate on the process of game development all aspects of game development and one of the one of the processes that don't really ever get discussed they don't ever get explored is our path through to the industry and through the industry and a lot of folks think you've got to
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have you know a four-year degree or you've got to be one of those you know weird you know you know you know coder Wizards you you just you you just pick things up super fast like the kid in the whiz the wizard remember the wizard anybody watch The Wizard they debuted the giant level for Super Mario 3. it's like a power glow film it was Power Glove film it's so bad uh but there's so many different paths into the industry uh I actually worked in audio way back in this is where we're going to date myself uh you're all talking about yeah I did this in the pandemic Avenue I'm going back to 1994. here we weren't born yet we cut that from the YouTube version please uh I I was doing A2 work for a live a television production stuff so uh
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uh professional baseball games Major League Baseball um uh National Hockey League uh NCAA stuff uh stuff like that and like you know just I'm the guy sitting up so did you hear the back crack you hear the bat hit a ball you'd hear the first baseman pitch something like this I was apprenticing under this an A1 the actual audio mixer the engineer who was absolutely at the top of the field like he he mixed the NCAA finals he mixed the Olympics in 1986 in in Atlanta uh the Goodwill games over in Russia the he did the the he did the Academy Awards and so I discovered there wasn't a path for me there because he was so good and so intimidating so and so capable and I was just this not and it was like as much as I enjoyed
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it I was like I'm gonna go and do something else because like I I can't be anywhere near the best of this he just had these things that I didn't have uh that set me spiraling that eventually actually sent me into the game industry earlier with early days of blizzard and stuff but the path that we take is always is always intriguing to me because it's never a straight line I think people assume uh it is especially with games and then once you get in people think you get in and you just stay yeah yeah and that's why I really want to hear your stories about that because this the revolving door of the game industry is a very real thing it's you look at the CV of a games developer and you'll see you you'll see far more you know gaps in employment than you might see in other Industries and that's a big reason for the rise of things like DLC and and game passes and
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stuff it's a it's an attempt by the industry to stabilize things and you know I'm sure that's going to generate some conversation points but it's I think it's important that we that we take these times when we can when the schedule allows us to explore these aspects of game development because I said you know you're going to watch these things you're going to learn about Star Citizen I'm grateful that but you know it's my personal admission that you learn about game development in its entirety and these lessons that apply to everything so you come to game development now did you you started in QA you said did you start in audio did you go right into audio what what was your first job in the industry like if it's bad don't name any names if it's good let's celebrate them but what was your first job in the industry like someone so oh that's right it's this one isn't it
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so it's pretty good not really my lie I'm not even lying my um my first job we can call that in audio was my internship well it was not in game audio necessarily it was a bit of everything um but yeah I had the I had the chance to start as a technical Sun designer straight away in an audio team so I know that is um that is very lucky and luck is whether you like it or not this is a factor in uh in getting into the games industry there is hard work but there is also luck a bit so yeah and so what is my job like uh it's great because I mean we are making a game and uh it's there is this feeling when you you design your sound
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um it's like oh yeah that's nice and then you put it into the game and like oh when I shoot that weapon it actually makes a sound there is I don't know for me works every time there is this excitement this magic that happens every time you implement a sound and it sounds good because sometimes it doesn't uh but uh yeah there is uh it's it's great I love it I think working beneath Graham For You especially in like your first industry job that's like Graham's amazing what he does the core Team all are and I think being underneath that pillar of our our audio core team um for your first jobs like amazing yeah don't wanna patronizing we're like didn't you do well but but yeah that's that gets me excited for you in that oh you're right you're right so I have a
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lot of freedom to do what I not what not everything I want to do of course but uh yeah I'm very free on my day-to-day job so that's very good I like it you do get a lot of you get a lot of opportunity here I think that's I think that's that's worth highlighting there's there's one of the things I like about this place we're not we're not we're not going to turn this into a CIS boom raw raw CID show we'll do this and then we'll move on but I like that we're we're never afraid of the better idea you know it it's and they don't really care where the better idea comes from it's it's if you're in a meeting and something Sparks and you speak up and everybody just kind of goes oh that that would be the better way to do that and whatnot say yeah yeah it's like you know you know thanks you know such and such from some other unrelated team and went on the move with that I
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really like that about this place all right that's it for the pro whatever uh what was the question again how did you get into the industry now what was your first job yeah your first audio job in the industry so you've done your QA stuff now you're starting your first audio job Ministry what was that like well I think that's less important because I think by that time you've arrived I think the work you do before you get your first job I think that's as important a story as any and I like I say I was working at a bar I was trying to get some sort of a Show reel together to apply for jobs and I was doing like online game jams with strangers and started working on um and I've got to thank my brother for this a metal gear solid remake game and which metal gets old was my favorite
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franchise growing up because it was something me and my brother shared together and so I started working on that obviously it's a it's a fun remake of a bill of property so it got cease and desisted by the by Konami the publisher but and met a really cool guy jaybo who is who used to be the head of communications at Konami and he got us down to konami's HQ in Windsor and said right you've got to stop what you're doing and but like have a nice day here um it is a goodie bag and then I thought we thought that was going to be the last we heard and then we got a phone call a couple of weeks
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later and said um do you want to come to Tokyo and to come to the HQ which is they didn't need to do that and and we we tried out the we were some of the first public people to and try out the mgs5 DLC and we got a tour of the offices which for me was amazing um and I I met the sound designer for my favorite game franchise which and that was what made me really think right I need to have a go at this now because it was the classic japanese businessman at large for everyone else in the building all black suits and standing up straight and then the this sound designer came out in a string vest
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um and shorts and socks and it was a crazy guy and he took us into his room where he had um all his shoes lined up for it's fully work he had a nice pair of high heels there and and yeah I was just like this guy's insane I wanna I wanna do this so that gave me an extra push and that that's when I thought yeah I want to get into QA and just through meeting people at that company and I met a friend of the senior sound designers the um who when they needed sound design help and he really helped me get into that position with probably what was in and out in India in adequate show real at that point so um yeah it's been
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it's been a combination at that point it was a combination of gaining skills in game engines and doing sure real things with strangers on the internet to um going out and speaking to higher up developers and making friends with them and then I ended up on as a junior there for a couple of months so it was it was really at the kindness of others largely and and me being really eager to get into the industry as well like I worked really hard and there was a lot of 12-hour shifts and hard work in between journey into the industry started with a bootleg remake a cease and assist letter it didn't get as far as being a remake it was like
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the design the designs of the there was Art the it was cool to do some stuff for it and then it it got shot down before it was even off the ground so it's a season assist isn't always the worst thing it's great for me sometimes it'll get you noticed all right so let's let's move into let's move into some sound design Theory and process now let's say a lot of what you guys are focused on right now is ship stuff so we'll stick and ship stuff since it's you know kind of fresh and everything the Mandate comes down there's a new ship uh uh it's a it's such and said it's a boat tank the the they've just John crew has approved don't look at me like that John
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crew has approved a boat tank uh to be made and you've got you've now got a you've now got to start your process where does this process start well for you for me personally we well I would say we don't have any bolt tank systems in the game so how does that how does that boat tank get through the water if we need to work on a system which tracks its water velocity maybe the viscosity of the liquid it's traveling through and how that plays against the traction of does it have tracks does it have Rodgers what and what what's it running on um and then me and corinson wouldn't argue about how that works for a couple of hours and then we would finally settle on how we're going to use do the content
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what does it look like and when you say something like bolt tank it makes me think of um I I'm really into like mechanical things and vehicles I I really like how countries got around things like World War II and there were there was amphibious vehicles for hovercraft yeah well the big inflatable not even not um amphibious wheeled vehicles for um the Germans in World War II okay so I would approach something in like a really heavy purpose builds and solid sound for everything not much resonance it's all really hard hitting and kind of percussive in a way and that that would
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be the style guide for me without even looking at it maybe it's maybe it's built by origin maybe it's Posh but with Usain Bolt tank that that makes me think of a really industrial sort of [Music] like Land Rovers the the big I'm not sure what the name of the vehicle is but the German big Mercedes I think they were unimogs and they built them to go through the water and I've seen I've seen um a lot of media of them before so I would go for that sort of aesthetic and it's a lot about looking at something and deciding how that sounds based on how it looks so a lot of sound you know we've been doing shows with the set with the audio teams and for years now I'm on year nine
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of this I've been I've done just about everybody at this point um audio work tends to be very Downstream what you just described makes it seem like okay do you need that vehicle to be almost a completely visually done before you can start your work I know in years past that's sort of been the case now maybe less that you needed it and more that you only got the opportunity once it was pretty much that uh is that still the case or has that been changing yeah that's still the case the we can start doing Concepts um early on we only need like very raw visuals um how fast does it go uh is it like flying hovering in the water uh but yeah we need we need it to be functional
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um in order to actually work on it because yeah as Dan said uh first steps are designing the outlines of what exactly does it do then how does it sound like and then my part comes in with like what do I what do I have access to in terms of parameters variables uh do I have access to the weight of the share of the not the ship the boat tank um yeah what what are my inputs and then I'm I'm working with our amazing coder Silvio um to for him to give him to give me access to these then create all the all the the framework in uh in our softwares uh and yeah and at the end even if this is already it's not hooked up to the game so we need a working a working tank
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boat to actually try it okay for real so I'm gonna give you a little more specific here let's take that let's take the Nova let's take the Nova and uh uh John crew and I were out drinking one night and I convinced him that he needed an amphibious version of the Nova made of jelly no uh I can't believe you confirmed the jelly uh no I'm getting sucked okay so the next variant of Anova is going to be amphibious so it's all it's pretty much there it's pretty much there like where does your work start here so so you know it's got Treads it's got it a rough Mass like that so so where's your work begin here I would say we work in parallel oh I'm sorry go on uh no you go first okay he
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said parallel talk at the same time oh yeah let's go no yeah we do work in parallel parallel hard to say um I can I'll start working on the um we have a middleware called wise where we have all our all our sounds uh I'll be working on that at the same time Dan is going to be working on uh well making the sounds we'll make it like a list of um exactly sounds we need how many loops loops for this Loops for that and one shots for this turret Cannon um and then uh when both when everything's ready I'll Port everything to wise and uh and we can try it in game and hopefully it works I think it is worth noting as well and recently we didn't take over but we were
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told to do a lot of the work on ships around um it came into place kind of May time didn't it but uh before then right we started doing designs and work from January but we'd started designing from six months earlier than that we we've tried to link with other teams I think more successfully than we have before I think we had meetings last year with the wider audio team and we found that one of the biggest issues that we faced was visibility with the whole department with the whole company sorry and and how we work because in a lot of places we're a service team and we're working on
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content for parts of the game that other people have worked on obviously we're a downstream team but we wanted to get ahead of the curve in terms of what we're aware of problems that we can detect early on so nowadays I'm much more integrated with the vehicle content team and as much as they like that or not and I have a lot of meetings with John and Ben and on every ship that's upcoming I mean vehicle concept meetings and because of our um component system that really affects how the ship sounds when you're in it and that's that's localized so that's at the control of the designer of the ship
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but we have the ability to say having those components next to each other from an audio standpoint is a bit tricky it's going to be annoying for the yeah it's going to be annoying for the player there's not going to be much that we can communicate to the play because it is just noise and when you put too many of them together so and part of the Concepts process process now with ships is um I can jump in and say can that be shifted around a little bit and that that has happened already since and since May and I got a component move because of that exact instance so I think moving further up Upstream in terms of representation and presence
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has really helped us veto any problems that we might come into contact with later down the line and because we would have had to solve that mix issue with one bespoke fix for that ship whereas whereas being able to say oh can you just move that over there a little bit that would work much better for the player and for us as a department and that's really helped us be more understood upstream and also I I don't think it was ever a case if we weren't thought about but because we weren't presents we couldn't make it make any noise about what might affect us I I I I hear you it's it's there's it's notice here that you know they're
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they're you know some of the some of the folks that I'm looking at in twitch chat here I've been looking at their names for years you know interesting you know we've been doing this for a while we've been we've been covering the development of of our project uh for a while now so folks who you know have tuned in for these and watched I think I don't think there's any secret that audio being Downstream as Downstream as it is has been challenging yeah in in a lot of ways and I think it's part of the continued evolution of the project that it's like you know we can't always do everything at at the same time I mean if there's one truth about anything so we can't always do everything we want all the same time so seeing you show up in these meetings earlier seeing you show up in these in in concept reviews
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and in on Gray Box review or white box reviews rather if gray box is a little too late at that point in white box reviews and be like you know you can move that you know you'll move that stuff on there it's encouraging it's it's a it's it's encouraging to me to see to see when when process can improve like that because it's just like always battling with the difference between what we want to do and what we can do there's always what should we change this but we've always done it like this but if we change this then we lose progress because we have to Institute the change and stuff like this so it's it's nice to see that we can still improve the process where we can um there are still areas where we can still improve I'm not gonna
- 00:41:31
there's there's still plenty of places where we can improve the process yeah in all things but it's it's still encouraging me to see us improve it here and there where we can um why are they saying my name in chat did somebody ask who the hell I was I don't know I'm a guy that added multiplayer to the hangar module in 2014 and they brought me in and I've just been making videos ever since is there is there a is there an aspect of your work that your particular particularly proud of one of the things that we don't often get to do here is just it's just to call attention to uh to the work as like we talked about in audio stuff if you're doing it right it almost
- 00:42:20
shouldn't be noticed it shouldn't stand out it should it should sound uh naturaling and then the other end of the spectrum you've got like that Inception Brom where it's like that and that that's not subtle at all but you know becomes a signature for every trailer for five years is there some element of your work that you've done so far here that you're particularly proud of that this is your chance to to shout it out to tell people hey you know go put on your seven one headphones and maybe you know you know check this out but you can give a little attention to this we're really proud of this you want to go first yeah okay I would say this is actually what I'm doing right now with the new Thruster system so story is we had to revamp the whole Thruster stuff to make it more unified and more uh responsive
- 00:43:09
uh but the problem is Dan is a busy man and uh Danny's on all front at the same time so after designing the system I needed content um to well just prove having good proof of concept Dan wasn't available so I just said I'm just going to do some um placeholder sounds and I get carried carried on carried away carry on carried away carried away um and then I ended up designing pretty much a whole ship for the system and I'm pretty happy with how it sounds and I got to do both parts and I think I'm I like how it sounds and I think this is really gonna be nice for players I hope yeah that would be one thing I would I'm kind of proud of now it happened it happens you you you step
- 00:43:58
into an arena that you're otherwise not involved you know well you know nobody else is doing it maybe I can you know on some spare time I can in there and then it ends up I once uh I once uh on a document the uh when we were working on the uh Vanguard variants uh the harbinger didn't have a name and I was reading the I was reading the the the reboot of the Valiant Comics line Harbinger was my was my favorite book in the series and I literally just in an Excel sheet I'm like Harbinger and I thought somebody would notice it and they did notice and it goes oh that's cool I was like I understand myself uh what about you Dan and there's plenty of things I'm not proud of and usually brought some by time constraints and I get a lot of flack online by the way I
- 00:44:46
watch a lot of the content from our community because I'm a I've recently become a father so when I'm up at night and I need something to watch so I um I tune into quite a lot of the content creators salty Mike morph and super Mac brother because I need something on so I don't go insane at night and so I do want to learn about the project as much as I can because I can't listen to every meeting that's in there so a lot of the information I get from the game is from um what the community's here um and the the one thing I'm not proud of that gets a lot of attention is the Corsa rear door and like you say about the Inception
- 00:45:35
Brahm before and that was the animation was finished very very late on before release and I had to get a sound in I said finished well it was it finished or was it pushed out the door it was pushed out and I I got the work like the the day or two before submission and and it just ended up sounding like some Transformers drivel um and I've promised myself that I'm going to fix that at some point but I just haven't got time to yet um but yeah the same one as Corinthian really listening it was only yesterday but listening to and it wasn't necessarily work that I've done much of um but we worked on the design together and we've helped
- 00:46:23
steer it in the way that we want to and hearing the change from the way ship sounded like when we joined the company because we we got here probably a month apart yeah yeah well you were here one month before me I think yeah hearing the change from how ships sounded then to how they currently sound on our computers um was a really proud thing for me as well because it's it's a case of this is where we were and this is where we're up to already and we're barely probably a quarter way through the work that we're doing on there so with with the ability to tie into all the new control surface stuff and ifcs and and all the new values that are offered up
- 00:47:10
to us we can were really making great strides into immersive audio and vehicles that I I haven't heard before in games and and yeah it's really sort of something to be proud of I think so I I'm I'm really glad to be working on what we're working on right now when does the uh Corsair door get s get its time as soon as I get a couple of days I just won this weekend then I've been doing too much all the time just every every developer has in a wapo there's a really obscure Steve Martin Martin Short and Chevy Chase
- 00:47:56
reference for those who get it uh uh this this thing that is just their kind of Nemesis this thing that's out there and you're like I I have to find this this time to to fix it to to get it to to address it I was actually just uh mentioning I'm not literally gonna show it here I was literally oh it's too it's too small hold on uh oh they're like whatever uh this new Babbage sign right here I was just talking to Adam Sanders about it like an hour before the show I'm like this thing is killing me Adam like it's killing me it's it's like it's been in there for at least six months it's it's just kind of slanted yeah at a thing it's a code issue it's not an art issue it's it's the art is fine it's just the code that's implementing the yard has got it like
- 00:48:44
this one I'm like we gotta find can we just find find a way to to slide it into a schedule you know it's not a it's not a game breaker it's it's it's not a mission critical thing but it it hits me for like 38 psychic damage every time I see it I just I I just I need to be free of it uh so yeah so we've all got those we've all got those those those moments do you okay so mine is that damn sign at that new Babbage yours is the door for the uh uh the Corsair that'll be fixed for Four Points oh by okay you look into this camera promise yeah but that doesn't say when 4.0 is coming out no but they can still hold you to that that will be fixed for 4.0 maybe sooner okay all right I'm not
- 00:49:33
promising anything I'll make it I want you you roast this man on Reddit if it's not they already do on the door so according to what what's your Whopper ah I would say it's Salvage that was pretty much my first big work for this company I I didn't make the sounds for it but I was responsible for um getting the whole system to run in audio site and it's most of my fault didn't communicate and not communicate enough and it ended up being very complicated to to work with things changed a bit uh well a lot actually so I had to redo some some work sometime but yeah it's something I I would love to
- 00:50:20
make a better system for not necessarily just Salvage but more for like beam stuff or you know um yeah I'm not I don't like how it's done it's even like the the back end is a bit messy and I'm not proud of I would like to redo it but time is precious so I like all things priorities it's just there are there are there are greater fixes there there are greater needs than you know some of these things so they these these little wapos as they were we're not making that an official Game Dev turn by the way I just uh but it's they follow us it's backers are the same way they they've all got they've all got something they've all got you know something that just that crits them for the 38 psychic damage every time uh the the they
- 00:51:09
encountered some of them are the bigger ones you know the you know the the the the the 30ks and stuff like that and some of them are are just the smaller like you know just that sign or the sound of the door and stuff uh it's not that they're not all important it's just as we said towards the beginning of the show it's impossible to work on all of the things at the same time and whatnot and if there's one you if there's one of the many Universal truths of game development is is priorities uh stuff like that so we're almost out of time here before we let you go this is uh these forums here are are are your opportunities to address the Star Citizen Community themselves it's you said you you watch you watch the you you watch the streamers uh the ones that are
- 00:51:57
independently in the ones that are paid by us secretly under the table if you haven't figured out that's a joke people I need I need come back like Mike I need you to um salty Mike's actually my boss don't do that I lost where I was going oh so you see these things you see the things the folks are saying you see the things that that that folks are concerned about that that folks care about the things that they want stuff like this now obviously you guys are sound designers so what I'm about to ask you doesn't apply to serve or stability or database maintenance or any of the other you know
- 00:52:45
things that are going on but with regards to sound design is there is there what would you say what would you say to these folks who were like who who who are patiently waiting for this or or that this is your chance to to look at these people and be like do you appreciate them do you want them do you want them to just stop commenting but of course not because the paying customers at the end of the day they've got as as much right to an opinion as anyone else good answer so yeah the the the the consumer they are who we are working for in terms of we want this product to be good so they can enjoy it and keep us in a job keep us feeding our families so
- 00:53:35
yet do doing work that they like is kind of the name of the game yeah if if there's anything I've done that people like I appreciate your kind words if if there's anything I've done that people don't like it'll get fixed at some point maybe um but yeah they're being being in games it's a weird job to be in because it's kind of people can have an opinion A lot of the time and there's just not much you can do about it sometimes so it's a weird one and everyone does have an opinion whether it's a man in the pub that plays mobile games when he asks you what you do and you say oh work in video games is uh or I don't know about them
- 00:54:24
video games and then he tells you about his high score on Flappy Bird or something but yeah it's it's great to be able to make a game that so many people enjoy and hope that people continue to enjoy in the future could answer that but you got going yeah I mean I don't want to say everything you just said again because I share your your opinion the thing is like audio is very often not commented that much we see a lot of comments for any game saying uh oh you ask someone oh how was the sound of this game like oh yeah the music was good yes but that's the sound did you listen to the sound so yeah when audio get gets attention usually it's it's good uh I see a lot of
- 00:55:14
comments uh very kind comments regarding audio so I really appreciate that and I think things that are good should be uh you know addressed and the things that are bad feel free to comment as well because we need to fix it and we really are trying to make sure that in all the new experiences we are crafting are going to be and any hands of the players the soonest DM but yeah we don't want we are really trying to go as as fast as possible because we also want the game to sound great because even just like playing the game in our own in in our machines uh we like playing games when this has a good sound so yeah sorry just
- 00:56:03
Tyler you can't send me messages during the show like that and tell me don't react it's not to say that you know obviously we like to hear the good stuff the criticism serves a valid and constructive purpose though when it's delivered constructively and it's like this it's like like every single thing anybody has ever said about that damn Coursera door is true valid and we're waiting down when's my time Dan but it you know it's it's always It's always important to you know you know to leave that stuff constructively uh to to to to whenever possible and this isn't always easy
- 00:56:51
remove emotion from from the equip from the equation uh because that that's when it's most useful to us when we see that it's coming from a point from a point of considered reasonableness and whatnot it instantly you know makes developers more open to it more more considering to it and stuff like this and it's essential to our experience you know one of the Hallmarks of Star Citizen and there are there are several but but one of the ones that is most pressing to my role and my job is that we're running a live service game in the middle of our development so we can't do that without the feedback we we we we we we wouldn't be where we're at now without the feedback so keep that it's important to keep I'm talking to them I guess I'm talking to you I don't know who I'm talking to keep it coming is basically what I'm saying
- 00:57:39
if I'm allowed to to speak on this continue the feedback continue the commentary share the praise share the criticism it's none of that is bad it's it's only ever bad in methodology it's only ever bad in terminology but but those messages are necessary they're they're useful we we take them in every single person that's ever sat in those chairs has talked about how absolutely necessary you know hearing this feedback is you talked about it just while you're watching you know twitch streams and YouTube videos and and seeing these things live and so we want to continue to encourage that we just I'm just this was on the agenda or whatnot but I'm just gonna we somehow we ended up on this I want to just remind people and encourage people to always consider the
- 00:58:27
manner and the methodology in your in your commentary uh because uh it matters it matters and and sometimes it's the difference between somebody willing to sit in that chair not or not Dan Corrington thank you so much for taking the time to to be here and do this uh we made it through the the full hour we only got sidetracked a couple times uh uh again it's it's it's not easy you guys come in you don't quite know what's going to happen it's like this but you guys did it like a champ thank you so much uh if you haven't watched it already check out uh their episode of ISC that aired just a couple weeks ago uh on the ship sounds lots of seriously cool systemic ship sounds coming that that are necessary for the
- 00:59:15
upcoming engineering and resource management system and overall just finally fulfilling that promise of our of our spaceships and vehicles so they can sound just as cool as they look uh and then uh the last two weeks of cargo shows what not and then uh next week uh we're back with a look at the mission feature team and some stuff that they've got in the pipeline including a new Global event that they're working on and then of course citizen gun which I think is only in four weeks I just got a hive behind my ear this I said it it was just like it's literally like a layer of sweat it says guns in four weeks it's going to be great it's just a lot of work so for Dan and Corrington and me Jared thank you so much for joining us here on starsism live uh behind the devs with our sound designers uh we're gonna throw it to a
- 01:00:04
raid I don't know who we're rating but we'll let we'll let uh Lenny our our CM take care of that so be nice say hi wipe your feet don't make a mess and uh yeah we'll see you next week everybody take care
Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.
