Star Citizen: Calling All Devs - Stanton System

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:09

   hey everybody welcome to another episode of calling all debs our q a series where we take questions from you the star citizen community and pose them directly to our developers on today's show we got kind of a big one a little change in format we are doing one call one big call with two star citizen luminaries on the show this week we have star citizen live game director todd pappy and star citizen art director mr ian leland to talk about well closing out the stanton system so todd ian welcome to the show thank you hi hi so the question from the from the community was simply put what are the plans of finalizing the stanton system so let's just start there um okay we're we're a massively multiplayer game where we're building a persistent universe can stanton be finished and if so what

2. 00:00:57

   are what's our view for that i think it will be kind of a cascade of of things so um the first thing that we're focusing on is is basically finishing out the celestial bodies you know and really all we have left is crusader um and then major landing zone associated with crusader horizon and then from that side we're we're in a good place and then as other systems come online whether that be medical gameplay or hospitals or let's say salvage or other aspects like we will be going through and sweeping through each the system and making sure that we add game play you know two to there so from ian sam's standpoint

3. 00:01:46

   it might be done you know from the celestial body standpoint as well as his major landing zones but from my standpoint like we'll be working on this until you know we're done with our systems right yeah we work on multiple levels yeah okay um ian is is is make is the addition of crusader and and and and orizon is is that it when when you get those in are is the environment team done with stanton um i'd say yes and no so yes in the sense that um we're working towards a an objective to kind of close up what we've previously discussed and as todd said this could be

4. 00:02:32

   to do with celestial bodies or it could be to do with landon zones but um in in that side of things it's fairly quantifiable so um but on another side we're we're also developing tech as we go right so on what i mean by that is as new tech comes online it's very important to not showcase that in a a a new system coming down the pipe i think it's it's very important that we showcase that in stanton so um an example would be as planet tech is uh developed you know um you know last quarter you saw us uh update the hype maps uh and you know we've got quite a lot of content coming in the next quarter you know so those kind of give a little

5. 00:03:21

   example as to how we're looking to um still focus on developing our original system stanton but also we're looking to expand out into other systems so uh in answer to a question jared it's it's yes and no that's fair so all right if if if we're if it's if we're not going to get like a a big rubber stamp that says done you know and move on kind of thing let's talk instead about some of the things that we're working on for stan system some of the things that are uh that that will that we're going to be touching on that we're going to be pursuing over the next three months six months nine months however long uh no no times here uh what are we working on for stan right now um quite a lot quite a lot um

6. 00:04:11

   and it's it's quite varied as well so um just kind of give a little backstory so you guys are just seeing uh how we've updated someone like grimhex you know so this is a kind of a classic example of how we've taken one of our fairly old locations in our game and as we've developed the game we've kind of realized what that location needs so obviously we've gone back through and we've updated with the hangers so it supports um you know it supports the player ability to land and and take off from there in all side ships i think that was huge that's something that we've wanted to do for quite some time also while what was in there was doing other things like there's the mission given location

7. 00:04:58

   and although we we've done that work the obviously the the mission giver wasn't ready for that release and the the the kind of the racing the gameplay elements there as well wasn't ready but essentially what we're doing is we're almost making the movie set you know we're we're building the sets ready for the for the actors to come and and that's kind of a nice analogy a nice way to kind of look at things so even though we're laying the foundations you know it it kind of gives the opportunity for other teams to kind of put their content in a little bit later on so that's one example also you know as we've closed out new babbage we wanted to obviously validate that that last release we did but there's a few things that we couldn't quite get in there um for that

8. 00:05:45

   release an example would be something like the factory line you know the flagship store in your babbage and even something as small as like the the the kiosk in the spaceport you know will constantly look to go deeper or add further layers to the player experience and it could be either something as small of the player noticing oh hey like oh that's changed and for me like even as a player i really like it when developers do that because the space feels alive gives you that reason to kind of go back to it and all right okay what's new and we don't always advertise every single change we do because you know as developers you know we want to we want to make the experience as good as possible right now uh obviously uh the those are some

9. 00:06:34

   smaller you know granular things uh we have a limited amount of time here so let's let's just touch on some of the larger uh larger aspects that we're gonna come that we're going to work on uh for the stan system going forward uh we'll get into the nitty gritty on isc or sel or other programs um doc talk to us about things like the the the the the additions for space stations and the and the gas clouds and stuff like what what what's coming for stanton to that would consider like the roadmap for stan if you will okay so just to focus on the um modular side of things so we've been looking to go deeper into our space stations for some time you know you've seen them go from these quite small locations to these much larger much grander

10. 00:07:21

    uh locations and that was step one and now step two and step three is to go deeper and literally go deeper in terms of the internal components to it so right now we're working on spaces like the the cargo deck and the refinery deck so these are ways in which we can add further variety to these much larger locations and we can have a little bit of fun as well in terms of you know one space station on one part of the system you know will be very different to another station than another part so that's one example also um you know you guys have been seeing the the kind of the the gas cloud tech developed for for some time now and one of the things that was important for me is to find a an initial platform to showcase that

11. 00:08:08

    in in star citizen um so one of the things we're doing now is we're we've done the preliminary space gaping you know we've uh defined all of our vdbs we're doing the lighting so we're really getting a good idea of the palette that we can do in our lagrange points and now it's about other disciplines coming online and you know them doing the uh bodies of work to support that okay uh what else we got so from a design side um and as well as in our side uh we're focusing on monster closets uh which is it which is uh just our goofy way of saying you know hey this is where our ai will spawn and kind of out of view and uh then also despawn out of you um but it'll it allows us to fill up the

12. 00:08:58

    cities and or uh space stations or even you know let's say an incident happens around a certain area it allows us to actually despawn ai in a realistic realistic manner um from there we've got basically prepping for hospital gameplay and and the healing aspects so ian and i have already had early discussions with the team as far as what we need to do there as well as rich tire and other directors um on kind of how we want to roll that system out as well as the environment environments associated with that system at the same time and then we also are working on um the what we consider kind of space

13. 00:09:48

    edition exterior access points and this will allow us to have different um missions you know whether that be a repair mission or whether that be uh you know like a dead drop or uh infiltration or those types of things so you can actually access different parts of the space station um from eva and then be able to enter into the space station and do things there so that's that's really kind of just early investigation stuff uh does the work on hospitals affect like is this something for like every landing zone or is this just going to yeah okay yeah so when when we talk about hospitals again like this this would be introducing a new system or a new feature into the game so we

14. 00:10:36

    have to sweep through space stations we have to sweep through landing zones and you know each each one of its landing zones has unique ones whether that be maria pure of hearts or you know the hospital in the lord but uh levski or you know do we need to we'll need to talk about are we going to add one to grim hex like there's all sorts of other things that we need to be able to discuss and then prep those and then because each one of them has its own unique art style then you know ian's team has to get ready for those as well uh ian you talked about you know continuous improvements to the planets in the planet tech recently most recently the the new height maps uh folks can now see from space and it's really cool uh anything more coming to planets in in the stand system

15. 00:11:24

    yeah so obviously were hard at work on pyro but outside of that some new tech features are coming on are coming online um the first example would be now we've got the ability to have displacement on a per asset basis so as part of that process we're gonna do a sweep through um the stanton system and look at our geology packs and try and showcase that new feature where where possible and if you think about oh you know just just go back through um many planets and moons and update you know the geology features it's it's fairly sweeping right um but it's something you know we've been after a while and it's a good example of how we can go deeper

16. 00:12:10

    um other things that you might not see um specifically in the next release but it's fundamental to how we work is we've got these new painting tools so i'm sure we'll do a showcasing feature on this a little bit further down is the way in which we physically paint um onto these planets now um previously was you know you do a pass on the colors and you pass on objects whereas now you can define all of that data into a single brush so this is going to be um a huge shift in terms of how quickly we can sketch in planets or sketchy moons so like i said it we might not necessarily be going back through and repainting each planet and moon and stanton

17. 00:12:57

    just now um but we're utilizing those tools for how we're doing pyro right now okay so uh obviously we're not we're not covering everything that this is a marathon not a sprint there there are there are even more things coming to the stand system that uh folks will learn about as time goes on and development progresses uh but let's talk now about orizon and crusader uh now uh for most people that's the that's the final big ticket hospitals are cool uh oswalds are very cool the the the the gas closer and the range points all those things those are all great and awesome and we'll do a lot to make stanton bigger and better and more vibrant but for a lot of folks it's it comes down to crusader and and and auras and and then you know stan's done so uh what's happening what

18. 00:13:49

    what's hap what's happening with crusader and orison okay so uh with regards to crusader um this has been a a question mark um for us for some time but in the same way that we approached something like arkop the the idea is we'd look to validate the release of that location by utilizing the tech we have so rather than going away and hey we need all of these tech features and okay that pushes it out like let's see how we can get creative with the tech we have and we're literally in this type of prototyping stage right now results are already fairly promising obviously it doesn't include you know wonderful volumetric clouds and things like that but

19. 00:14:36

    you know as with everything in how we develop we can always get better further down the line but as part of this journey to to bring you guys as the community along with us hopefully you guys see lexing locations develop over time rather than just putting it behind the wall and saying hey we'll release it when it's ready so with regards to crusader that's where we're at right now you know we've got some interest in prototypes with the tech we have we might need to do some tweaks and shifts in terms of some of the shader code but the idea is you know it we we do the best we can with the tech we have right now so it doesn't block the location right it may seem may be obvious to some but just to put a point on it though uh all this planet tech that we've

20. 00:15:23

    developed the the new brushes and everything that you just talked about those are great for naturally occurring planets like hurston and microtech and all the moons and stuff like this but crusader is like arc corp it's kind of a bespoke uh individual creation because it's our first gas giant it's a gas joint right so there's a few fundamentals um that are very different to how we approach making uh more traditional well planets and moons um however like i said you know you can break some rules and you can adjust the way you work to try and get the look that you want and then from there we can always add more complexity like you know was all really inspired by the the satellite photos of jupiter you know phenomenally beautiful images and it's

21. 00:16:12

    about how do we work towards that look and that's probably a good way to describe it so we can expect crusader to iterate very similarly to how we saw like our corp iterate the first version won't be the last version think about it in terms of how we've iterated on planets like if you look back at our first planets we did to planets now i see the same sort of development curve okay now from crusader the gas giant you've also got orisin our last major landing zone from stanton and unlike any other landing zone no walls yep so um you know we've been [Music] very eager to work on arizona for quite some time

22. 00:16:58

    um it's always had a little special place in my heart right but it's it comes with its own unique challenges so as we've been working our way through stanton you know we've had to adapt and overcome to whichever visual challenge that that location demanded and i like to think that with when we release new babbage we kind of improved in many different areas and what i want to do is keep that momentum and apply it towards and then and take it further so obviously orizon is a very um open landing zone it's all about that vista so then there's kind of nowhere to hide and what we want to do is we want to really think about

23. 00:17:47

    the restrictions we add to the player to the point where those restrictions are very minimal um so literally um we have a massive open vista landing zone where we want the play to explore so um lots of challenges lots of creative challenges for us to solve also as we've said previously when we originally thought about arson our idea of what a london zone needs is is a little bit different so uh as you saw in someone like new babbage we introduced new elements like you know um food stores uh more complexity with bars things like this and with arsene

24. 00:18:36

    it's the same but there's going to be more you know there's going to be shipping locations there's going to be personal storage locations so what that landing zone needs is more intensive than uh previous so with all of these things kind of considered plus the fact that the work that we're already doing in stanton this is what's kind of given us our our kind of like our preliminary release window and you know we wanted uh more than anything for it to be this year you know we tried really hard but ultimately it comes to the point where we looked at it i mean like there would be too much of a sacrifice to quality the sacrifice would be on a player and for me and todd that's not really the route we want to go down to there's

25. 00:19:25

    always a a player first approach that we should do so then when we do release it you know it's not a disappointment that sounds great to me todd you got anything you want to add i think ian's covered most of it you know it like it's it's just uh taking what we've learned you know and really just expanding on it and trying to uh go through and and fix a lot of the issues like you know we've been going through our court we've been going through levski and lauraville looking at it from a player standpoint you know like a new player standpoint and saying okay you know how how are we visually leading the player around

26. 00:20:12

    this and and these are all you know things that are going through in in my you know in the team's mind you know of of how do we fix these things and and so when we're looking at horizon you know we're trying to make sure that we're taking all of these things that we've learned and doing those adjustments now you know while it's well it's easier you know to get it versus you know going back and having to sweep through it again and do those changes there all right well todd ian uh thank you very much for your time here today i think we've got a better understanding of of some of what's coming for stanton some of what lies ahead uh obviously we'll be discussing uh the things we already discussed today in detail as the months go on and then of course the things that uh uh maybe we we we kept to ourselves

27. 00:21:01

    we'll be revealing as as time goes on and events uh occur and stuff like this so uh again todd ian thank you so much for taking your time here uh remember uh folks watching uh you can submit your questions for consideration on each episode of calling all devs in the thread up on spectrum so for todd and ian i'm jared and until next time everybody