Star Citizen: Around the Verse - The Music of Squadron 42

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   Hello and welcome to Around the Verse, our look behind the scenes into the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Today we've got a special guest host joining the program, Josh Herman, character art director and star of last week's Star Citizens Happy Hour. He's filling in for Chris. So, thank you. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Uh these shows are a really unique part of Star Citizen's development, so I'm really lucky to be a part of them. Yes, they are. And since we have you here, anything you would like to share from the character art this week? Yeah. Uh this week we actually got through some of our character modularity system uh bugs and it's going to help us create a lot of really unique and distinct looks. So, I think we'll be showing a little bit about that in upcoming ATV episodes. So, look to that. Very cool. And that would be awesome. For now, though, let's head over to our Frankfurt office and Brian Chambers for this week's studio

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   update. Hey everyone, I am Brian Chambers, development director of Foundry 42 Frankfurt. Um, since our last update, the team's grown by additional six people across five different disciplines. We're glad to have them on board and I'm sure in the near future you'll meet some of them. Um entire team's been busy so I'll give you a quick update on a few of the disciplines. For the weapons team, they've been busy reworking some of our current weapons from the Klaus and Verer manufacturer. The gallant, the arrow head, and the arkite are all getting revamped to have a finer level of detail, as well as prepping them to work with our future attachment system. The Devastator 12 from the Ktoak arms manufacturer is also going through a similar process. In regards to ship weapons, the team's been blocking out

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   different type of weapon types, sizes, and upgrade levels for the Knightsbridge arms manufacturer. The QA team here in Frankfurt works closely with both the design team and the engine team on a daily basis to support them however they need. One bit of recent support uh was validating damage to players. They used our existing FPS test map to verify how much damage a player could take on each portion of the body, all at different ranges. They used all existing weapons at various distances, both online and off, and documented all their findings along the way. In the process, we actually found some discrepancies in the damage taken to player. So, we were able to tear those apart and rectify those for our 2.6 release. The environment team also works closely with the engine

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   team on a daily basis to be able to push our visuals for the planetary tech. They made some great progress on some new procedural moons, making sure they look good, not only from an extreme distance, but as well as close up to all the way to the point where you land on them and explore. They also made progress on new varieties of vegetation. Along with the new varieties, the engineers have also implemented the functionality. So we can now have bending tree trunks and branches as opposed to previously where we just had leaves that moved. Moving on to VFX. VFX team also works with the engineers and they've been recently working with them on some new tool sets for procedural particles. The tools allow us to spawn particles based on specific parameters to help the environment feel more dynamic and alive. parameters including such thing as

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   terrain elevation, angle, specific texture, specific ecosystem, and on and on. We also now have ecosystem based weather particles that are attached to the camera and procedurally play when you're inside that specific ecosystem, as well as the ability to group particles along with specific procedurally distributed objects such as trees or rocks. This will allow us to add more bespoke detail to items across the procedurally scattered items such as leaves falling from trees and dust blowing off rocks, etc. So that's it from Frankfurt. Thanks again for watching. Thanks for all the support and we'll see you next time. Appreciate the update, Brian. And of course, welcome to all our new employees joining us in Germany. It's great to have you guys on the team. How cool were those cactuses? Super cool. Cacti, I

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   don't know. Uh the ecosystems we're able to pull together are getting some more and more incredible stuff. Uh especially now that we're able to add the tech and additional animations as well as some new procedural particles. Very cool. And you and your team have begun working on creatures too, right? Yes, we have been concepting some fauna to go along with the environment team's flora. Uh I think we showed off some insect sculpts back in November that I did, but we've been expanding out there to make our biomes really diverse and immersive. Another big part of Star Citizen's immersion is definitely the music and tech that goes along with it. And we talked before about some of the dynamic music system and how it applies to the persistent universe. But today, we're going to sit down and talk about its use in Squadron 42 with composer Jeff Zanelli and lead sound designer Russ Tenza. I'm Jeff Senelli. I thought music was

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   like this thing that other people in other cities went and did. Didn't quite occur to me that it was a career path that I could embark on until I was a teenager. And soon enough, I started to realize that music can take all sorts of shapes and forms that don't necessarily exist on the radio. You know, I was a guitar player. I had a band. We were terrible. We, you know, we were an unsigned band. We weren't necessarily looking to go pro with that, but I definitely wanted to be in music. And it's, you know, really once I got a guitar, I stopped uh homework and athletics, which I don't know if I'm proud of that, but you know, it it took me somewhere, right? And so, and I guess um being in a band kind of format didn't quite fit with what I really wanted to do because

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   I was forever going like, how can how can this be bigger? Why does the song have to always be 3 minutes? Why is there always a verse in the court? You know, sort of inevitably leads you into music for media, for film, for television, for video games. Um where you know, you have a lot more I want to say options for the shape of things. So off I went to college. Um, and at that time I was really only a musician for about three years. I was a three-year-old musician when I walked into Berkeley College of Music. I was the best guitar player I knew. And then I walked into a building where I was like easily in the very bottom third, you know, all these guys that had come up playing their whole lives and um, which was a good and humbling thing for me, but I knew I was, you know, aiming toward composition. So I took a degree

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   in film music and also in music engineering and production. And um then when I was ready to kind of try to start a career, I banged on maybe 60 doors in Los Angeles uh or I should actually say I I mailed a resume to 60 studios in LA while I was still in Boston saying we'll work for free hoping, you know, to get 50 phone calls back and have a the horrible dilemma of picking which of studio will hire me. And it doesn't work like that. So I learned that quite quickly. Of those 60 resumes, I got one phone call and I thought, well, okay, this is uh this is a long road. Uh so but fortuitously that uh phone call came from the studio uh then called Media Ventures, the studio owned by Han

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    Zimmer. And I came out and I was an intern. So it really did come from like the absolute bottom rung. I knew nobody in Los Angeles, nobody in film, nobody in video games, no one. And I just never went home after that. Like they let me in the door and you know the session would be over and I'd go into the archives and pull tapes out and listen to them and you know I just wanted to be around it. My whole career has really been little steps. You know there was never there was no like huge breakthrough. There were these little steps along the way. So I was an engineer getting my orchestration education. Then I was an assistant to a composer named John Powell. And eventually he would start to ask me, hey, do you want to look at the percussion on this queue? Do you want to write a little tiny piece of music for

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    one little scene in the movie? And from there, you know, it just blossom and blossom. Uh eventually started writing on uh Han Zimmer's movies. And you know at this point that's um maybe 20 years ago almost when that started and that began that working relationship which has become uh you know just blossomed into something that uh I never would have expected. So the next thing I know I'm working on the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. I I wrote a lot of music with Hans. So nowadays I have my independent career. For instance, recently I just scored the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie which is coming out. So that was sort of the I guess the culmination of the sort of friendship and and you know relationship I had with Hans. My name is Lee Baniard.

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    I'm um audio director here at Cig Audio which is located here at Foundry 42 uh in the UK. Um I basically act as a focal point if you like um for all the audio disciplines uh which includes I guess music, sound effects, dialogue and code and I help to try to unify like a creative vision that's kind of comes through Chris and then through me um and make sure everyone's kind of working roughly the same sort of direction. Um uh yeah, try to unify things basically. That's that's kind of what I do. That's my main role here. Hi, I'm Russ Tenza. I'm senior sound designer here at Foundry 42 uh working on music systems for Squadron 42. Um I've been working with Jeff Senelli uh on the project over the last year or so. Um I came to the company well to backtrack I uh I started

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    as a musician back in the the '9s and slowly made my way into video games. Uh composed for the game Time Spplitters and uh became a more sort of long-term employee there. eventually ended up at Krytek and then uh made the move to this fantastic studio here and uh because of my background in music uh Lee Biard, the audio director here has been working on music systems which has been just phenomenal. The the scope of the game and what we can do with the music is utterly endless and uh that's been very exciting. I work quite closely with Ross in almost sort of day-to-day basis and helping um kind of we pin down exactly what musical needs are um for the game and that that includes PU as well as S42. Um and then we take kind of those requirements uh and then go to our

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    composers likes of Jeff Snelli for S42 and um Pedro uh Kamacho for PU. Um and Ross does a lot of the implementation like a real kind of detailed groundwork where that's concerned. Um but we kind of we work together just to communicate to the likes of Jeff or or Pedro exactly what we need from a creative standpoint. So they, you know, they provide us with the actual music that then we take into, you know, the game and try to make track work in an interactive context. Um, and yeah, we build upon iterate those accordingly. Uh, Jeff's worked, I think, mostly in film and TV. Um, he has worked in some game context as well, which I think also assists us. Uh terms of like I guess previous productions it's yeah it's like uh it's Outlander Lights of

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    Pacific series by for HBO and Pirates of the Caribbean is a big one that he's done recently. Um I think he only recently finished up with that and now he's got more time to devote to us. So we're quite happy about that. Um but it's yeah he's extremely you know into what we're doing. Um quite proud of it. They both are both Pedro and Jeff. So that's that's made it very easy to work with. Uh, and he's got a great line of communication with Chris as well as us. He makes it really very easy to work with. Actually, when the first two Wing Commanders came out, uh, let's see, I was in high school and that meant if I wasn't playing my guitar, I was playing Wing Commander. I so much so that I probably I may even owe an apology to my uh, teachers for not studying hard enough for a time. It was it was such a uh you know it was such a great game you

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    couldn't put it down. And the thing is at the time you know the attention to detail in that game was was just so far above like anything else that was out there. You know it was ubiquitous really. If if you were a gamer you were playing Wing Commander and if you weren't playing Wing Commander you weren't a gamer. It was it was really was that big. So I I met Chris Roberts when he was producing Outlander. Um and he had heard my score for Disturbia. I think John Shiml played it for him. And so the two of them and and Howard McCain, who was the director, called me in to uh watch the film or watch some scenes of it, see if it would spark, you know, inspire me. And it did instantly. I mean, you can see it still excites me to think about that cuz I was I was raised on these adventure movies and and

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    fantasy and sci-fi and just things that, you know, movies which are larger than life. Those are the movies I remember from my childhood, you know. So, it was easy to get excited about that. And then when uh Chris and I, you know, went through the process of writing a film score, which is usually over the course of a few months, you know, we got to the end of it feeling like we had a really good workflow, getting along really well. The relationship was symbiotic and you know by the time Chris was getting going with Star Citizen I think he thought of me as a as a you know a storydriven or a narrative composer cuz he remembered what I did for the for the story which was actually quite complicated in Outlander. So when he started to build the um you know the world the storydriven narrative elements

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    of Squadron 42 for Star Citizen, I think it was an easy phone call for him to make and an easy yes for me to give, you know. Yeah. So and I think that's, you know, that's sort of the reason why the the Squadron 42 uh component to Star Citizen is in my hands cuz it's it's something I've always done. I've been able to, you know, use use the story to build the architecture of the score, for lack of a better term. You know, that's um, you know, for me one of the fundamental duties of a composer that's uh, writing anything for a narrative. The very first piece of music I wrote for Star Citizen was for the Constellation commercial. I should say before I started writing that, you know, I looked at the footage and I realized this really is a commercial about exploration. You know, that's what the

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    ship is for. You know, knowing that exploration is an element of the game and it's certainly an element of Squadron 42 as well. I set about writing some music even just for a commercial that could transcend just that usage. You know, it's I think of it as um it's exploration music. [Music] [Applause] It may or may not make an appearance in Squadron 42, but it was at least designed to be able to do so. You know, for me, the the exciting thing about the commercials is that they exist in the

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    world of the game. It's it's not it's not sort of like this added layer on top. it's actually part of what's immersive about about the universe. So then the first piece of music that I wrote for Squadron 42 specifically was um Bishop Speech to me, you know, it wasn't just a self-contained video or at least I didn't think of it like that. I thought of it as, you know, the the catalyst for a giant plot twist in this huge universe that we're all immersed in. So, I'm writing a piece of music that's really meant to, you know, use the speech as a hinge to draw players, you know, into

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    this into this story that we're about to give you. So, you know, it's written in such a way that it actually applies to other aspects of Squadron 42, which we are yet to discover. Um it'll be uh certainly indicative of you know an approach to to what the music is you know for the for the game and um you know look I I think gamers want to feel immersed in this enormous universe implementing the gameplay music and it's a dynamic system that's um much more technically involved you know than uh than doing a cinematic queue. Um, but we're really looking for ways to be uh, you know, fresh and new with our approach with that. So, you know, for for me as a as a gamer, I noticed that

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    the standard way of handling music right now is you have sort of multiple layers of intensity and it responds uh, sometimes very roughly to what's happening, you know, in the game to the player. So something more intense happens then it will just sort of jump to the next level of intensity in the music and so often it starts that at the beginning or it's you know it becomes a a repetitive event you know for the gamer and I think it's um you know repetition in gameplay music because you're going to be playing the game for many hours can be a problem. So, one of the things, you know, I'm doing is looking for ways to avoid repetition in the music, you know, and certainly Chris Roberts would share that ambition, and so would Lee Baniard and

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    Ross Troenza in the in the UK audio department. It's a dynamic music system that that's a little more in-depth and grand in its scope uh than you get in other games really because our game is so massive. We want a system that's that responds to the player, but also because Squadron is such a fantastically cinematic game, we want the music to to respond in appropriately cinematic epic ways. So, um it gets fed into by what you do in the game. Uh things like, uh attacking people, explosions, that kind of stuff. But also, it's situational. could be uh if you're flying, that's a whole set of music with its own rules. Um that'll transition seamlessly into EVA music if you're flying floating

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    around or if you're down in ground combat. Again, a same universal system, but it handles what you do sort of elegantly and smoothly moving between these different aspects. And there's a there's a language that uh Jeff has defined musically that's very different. um you're in space, it has got a it's huge and it's epic. And then as you get down to the ground without any uh you know, it's it's seamless, but suddenly you know where you are. It's got a a whole different tone to it, a different feel. It's more personal and uh and visceral and right there in front of you. Um, so our real challenge, we we Sam and I have built this system, but there's the system here and that's a technical consideration, but we need to to bring Jeff's unique voice into that

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    system. Just in the past few weeks, we've made some breakthroughs in the gameplay music. There will be three um sort of main states. Like for instance, there's a whole engine for space flight. And this is music that's now um capable of playing uh you know calm moments. You're just flying into a system or something. And it can break out into action. It can break into heroic music or grim music when things go bad. And it's all part of one um sort of I want to say enclosed system of music that plays all of the space flight in the game. And there's a similar system for first person and a similar system for EVA events. Those are things that uh you know could apply to the entire game. That's just a starting

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    point cuz then it evolved. You know, initially we thought, well, we need sort of action and not action. But as time went on, we went, well, this is going to be more interesting if there are different um levels of intensity for all of the action. You know, you could be surrounded by 20 bad guys. there might only be two. Um, so the game is able to respond to those types of scenarios. It's also able to know when the player has the upper hand, so it can play more heroic music, when the player's in trouble, so it can be more grim. And it's all um, you know, it's all dynamic. It's all synced very tightly to what's happening with the player. The challenges of writing that kind of music, well, first off, you need to know you're doing it from the get- go. you know, there there are um you know, sort

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    of technical reasons why you have to kind of write the music modularly. Sections need to be self-contained if you're going to do this, you know. So, each of those little modules can be worked on as an individual cell almost of music because it could come at any time during the the during the player's, you know, uh experience. So if you're halfway through a great big melody and you have to make a left turn, that's an abrasive thing to do musically. So we have to kind of build the music in the in the dynamic system uh in a different way than we would in the cinematic system. So you know, in the the dynamic music has to be able to leap just like that from one thing to the next because you never know when the

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    player is going to turn the corner. But what we're able to do right now with the engine and even in the state that it currently is, which we'll only prove, is, you know, we're rapidly approaching the same decisions that I'd make when I'm scoring a film, but the game engine is making those decisions based on what's actually happening with the player. It's it's spectacular. So, as time's gone on, we've we've hit a a couple problems uh that have been a real pleasure to figure out um that uh that are more on the the creative side of the uh uh the process. One of the first big ones was the the transitions between segments because this is all it's a modular system. Um you could be in a a looping section of music that's covering uh how uh we call it grim. So it the

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    situation's gone bad, everything's blowing up. So we're in this this grim, heavy action sequence, but then we need to go into a heroic clip of music, but we need to get there with the transition that uh that isn't at all jarring. The the first thing to do was just to I mean, you have obviously the same tempo, the same key, but uh as the music transitions from one to another, we just get this this blur and you get elements of one, elements of the other, and it just it wasn't jelling. And um it took us a long time to figure out how to resolve it in but in the end we figured out our our main focus was musicality over immediacy. So what we've done is we we've locked these exit and entrance points of the music to uh key moments. If there's a crescendo as you get to the top of the crescendo that's a moment

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    where it can it can exit or enter a different segment. So you get these these points that you hit and then it's allowed to move to another piece of music. So we've we've completely negated the need for a crossfade. So it's pure music. One section of music will drive up into a crescendo and that lands at the the exit of the crescendo of another piece. So it's a beautiful evolving um full sort of seamless musical journey and we never have these ugly cross fades or there's there's nothing obvious about it which which was a real a real success. Another problem was that we need to deal with almost two succinct systems. We've got the dynamic music on one hand for that covers your gameplay in this beautiful cinematic way, but then we have these actual cinematic cues that are sort of pre-written, uh, bits

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    of music that, uh, Jeff's composed for very specific moments in the plot. Um, and when we land on these, uh, we need to make sure that that we get to them beautifully and we exit elegantly. Uh that's something that Sam Hall, the coder over here, has worked very hard to uh to get us a system that that you know Jeff can work with that uh that allows for that. So we now have this amazing system that we could be in this dynamic music for you're in space in combat and then we transition musically into this pre-written cinematic queue, but when you exit, uh our game engine has been listening to to what you've been doing in the game. So maybe during that musical queue you've landed on a planet and everything's calm. It knows that so that when you exit the the pre-written queue, you come back into the correct

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    music for your new situation, which is it's a phenomenal phenomenal bit of uh work from Sam. And it's it it just works elegantly. It's it's it's lovely. One of the things that I've always been open to as a composer is, you know, the next idea, right? And even when I feel like I've um written something that I'm happy with, I don't stop writing, you know. And if something else comes up and I want to explore it, sometimes that pays dividends, you know. I I see that all the time in music. I see it all the time with filmmakers I work with and I certainly see it in Star Citizen as well. when we first started uh talking about building the dynamic music, um you I'd explain the elements to him, but I didn't really know how deep he wanted to get into the the intricacies of the

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    system, but he loves it. And he gets he gets deeply involved in it. And as time has gone on, we've really kind of met in the middle for the both the creative and the technical. He he comes to me every day with with new ideas of how we can fix problems with musical transitions. And um you know whereas a year ago we'd send over uh lots of technical information and uh uh reference material and things it's become very fluid now and uh it's it's a real pleasure to to work with him in in this kind of way and uh yeah I think he's now got such a phenomenal grasp of of the the technicalities of the system that it's empowering him and you know it's just it's making it better for everyone. It's it's fantastic. If I have an idea, I can put it out into the world. And there are

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    so many brilliant people here that want to live up to every ambition, you know, and it starts with Chris, of course. But if I say, I think we can make this music system even more dynamic than anything that's come before. Well, the next thing I know, someone at Star Citizen has come up with a way to make that work within the game engine. And that's just a a tremendous asset, you know, and it's a blessing for me because, you know, I feel like I'm part of something that's really pushing the limits of what a video game can be, what it can do. Look, it's obviously it's a blessing that I get to do this for a living. And you know, I think from day one when I sent 60 resumes and got one phone call back, I realized, you know, when you get that phone call, when somebody says they want you to do something, write music, be a part of a film, be a part of a video

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    game, you know, it's a blessing and and you can turn it into a great opportunity and and you know, it's it's exciting to be a part of all of it. Heat up here. Jeff has just got so much experience

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    weaving narrative and music together. He's really taking Squadron 42 to the next level. Yeah, it's really impressive how Ross and the rest of the audio team have the tech bridging between those various emotions so seamlessly. You probably wouldn't even know it was happening if you hadn't been told. No, you wouldn't. Right. But one minute you're flying around to this beautiful score and the next your pulse is racing as the music amps up for a dog fight. It's pretty cool. Yeah. The only problem is uh I have the picture speech song stuck in my head now. And now I do too. Thank you. Sorry about that. Speaking of thanks, a big thanks to all our subscribers. Yes, definitely. Without all of you, we would not be able to share in-depth behind thescenes shows we bring to you weekly. So, thank you so much for your support and thank you to all of our backers for helping make the dream of Star Citizen possible. We wouldn't be able to do this without you. No, we

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    wouldn't. And that is our show for the week. But if you'd like even more Star Citizen, make sure to tune in tomorrow at noon Pacific for the latest happy hour stream to watch some live gameplay and discussion. Tomorrow's stream will be more ship focused with special guests Elwin Bachelor and Ben Lesnik stopping by to answer questions. It should be a fun one. Definitely. And until then, we will see you around the verse. Thank you for watching. So, if you want

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    to keep up with the latest and greatest in Star Citizen and Squadron 42's development, please follow us on our social media channels. See you soon.