Inside Star Citizen: A New Studio Appears | Spring 2021

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:04

   [Music] what was the first thing you guys thought of each other the first time you met each other what's the first thing that come to mind like in the flesh we have a very bad attitude in person on camera were more reasonable look at that charisma i look cute i was just blinded by all of that i thought louis is taller than i expected [Laughter] i'm the cto here at turbulent and so creating this studio is a is a really great opportunity and i think that we're lucky to have louis pierlick and guillaume with us on this journey to build a super amazing locations team here in

2. 00:00:52

   montreal so i met all these guys separately which was interesting but the the pitch for the job interview was really about you know kick-starting a new studio from scratch in an existing family and so to be able to get there we needed a group of very motivated you know pillars to get this started and you even bought a spears that's repairs and i did i did i did i did that's how i got you guys on board okay so i thought we would start by just going around the table and just introduce ourselves and what you guys do at the other new this new studio in montreal all right uh well i'll start if you guys are okay with it i'm louis rousseau uh lead designer at sobila i am responsible for all the location and design uh

3. 00:01:41

   aspect of why this location is there what is the player doing while he's there and that kind of consideration that's my jam i'm a art director here in montreal basically i'm art directing and leading an amazing team of artists i can't i cannot express how much i'm happy and i am humble and i have gratitude to to lead this amazing team full of talent i without them we are nothing and i just want to make sure that everybody knows about it all right and i'll uh i'll book in that uh that topic so uh basically i'm guillen

4. 00:02:29

   vozel i'm the producer here so taking care of schedule take care of dependencies and making sure we have a good planning to actually deliver really good quality and defining the student division of the studio uh lots of recruiting and talking to a lot of people and assembling like a kick-ass team so let's uh go over a bit of our of our history so how did you did you guys uh where do you come from how do you get you guys get started and got to to this point uh here i started in the industry in in 2004 i was coming out of university and mostly in a similar cinematography kind of study i didn't know you had a background in cinema that's interesting i do too i did my university degree in cinema and then

5. 00:03:19

   after a few years uh working the sets i've transitioned to a level design um formation which got me into ubisoft or just crossing street just crossing street together following each other from a studio to another so i worked for ubisoft uh like eight years mostly on the tom clancy franchise so i work on many many rainbow sixes traveled a bit for ubisoft l2 and some projects like red steel in paris and stuff and i also returned to ubisoft briefly before um i i finally caught up to you that's an achievement we all caught up to benoit sure i mean yeah you guys heard it

6. 00:04:08

   before but you know i joined the project right after the first kickstarter and i've been supporting all the platform efforts uh since the beginning and fast forward uh into the future to the subject of today where we start a uh locations team to expand uh you know the world of star citizen and so basically the the the stories transitioning to the game space and really help make the project a reality uh and then that's where you guys come in all right um so basically i started as a tester in video games i remember my first gig was a multiplayer testing weekend on rainbow six raven shield and i had to bring my my big crt uh my big crt screen and my desktop tower on the metro i moved then

7. 00:04:56

   to eea montreal for my big first big aaa job as an assistant producer and that's really when i i took the the produ the production track and then uh switch to warner where obviously i met pierre lick and then i started working on the dlcs for batman arkham knight with rock city and uh i figured it was an interesting time to to to completely change and uh immigrate to to london uh so i switched to i i went to live in london and worked at rock city and uh finally i was uh missing montreal i was missing friends and family so i decided to come back uh and i uh decided to go to ubisoft and uh during that time periodic and i we had really reconnected and we've started looking uh for for put other opportunities together and we found

8. 00:05:43

   we found super nice so it feels we're at a unique opportunity at the unique point in time and it feels absolutely amazing to be to be in this position so guys we came here with a very specific mission uh so maybe we should talk a bit about that why don't you in your own words explain what what it is we're trying to achieve here oh i'm getting spotlighted i i'm surprised it wasn't no no hesitation i'm just gonna um basically our goal eventually is to be to become to go at at a level where our team can produce entire star systems we don't want to create only like nice vista we want to create content that bring purpose

9. 00:06:32

   to the brand and to the ip and to the project so everything every hour we make every decision we make is going toward that goal of course it won't happen like in three months but this is always the end goal and by that we mean not only locations or not only design like to have an integrated team that can work alongside the other teams at cig and collaborate but eventually be able to say okay let's do this star system and really develop it as much as possible including gameplay including putting a lot of things right so in order for the for the team to reach or graduate to being able to make full star systems obviously this doesn't happen overnight uh you know the team needs some some some real projects that they can deliver

10. 00:07:21

    to to to players that they can play right we know of a couple things that are in stenton that would add gameplay value right so we know that we're adding rooftop gameplay hospital locations which is brand new as well and leveraging procedural tools to make a lot of variations to all of those we are i want to say blessed to to be to to to receive a shot at this like the timing was just good for us to look at this location and say what if i was able to land the ship there like i already can but what if i could go inside what what would i find what kind of missions would i do a new babbage what kind of mission would i do on laureville and essentially give a reason for the players to stick around on a planet for a while and not just be cutieing like a ping pong ball all the time but

11. 00:08:09

    just say like yeah i love new babbage i can i can spend a lot of time here and and then experience the the planet more thoroughly we're producing right now the hospitals for every major landing zone and down the road we'll build them for this space station too we are already hands on producing those those nice locations that you will get the chance to see soon enough in loreville in grimex on our corp on new bad bridge and horizon and we're going to expand those hospitals across the verse as we still continue to grow and learn all together in this crazy coveted time we've been lucky to have guillaume beijing and valentina reaching out and and wanting to to look at this opportunity

12. 00:08:56

    uh the goal for them is to build up a solution that's really uh oriented around layouts our first proof of concept is space station so how can we help the workflow for the space station for artists and design to build them more quickly the second phase will be looking into developing rules in uzini so that the uzni can actually generate layouts in for those else to be then edited by a person and at least on the space station and maybe then in some caverns or or locations like that that we can actually give more gameplay to the player without sacrificing any terms of quality the thing is like even on the design side like the the way star citizen is developed is truly unique there's really no no competition that i can think of here in montreal that

13. 00:09:43

    that offers an opportunity like that to really craft and and focus on well i guess you said it best yeah like kick ass mandates and and just like deliver that and then move on to the next and expand and keep growing like that uh you know what one thing that we you know we've obviously this segment is about this new group in this new team but this team would be nothing without you know the cig family just totally embracing this effort well i hope these guys uh the viewers and everyone like knows that we're fans as well we're not just like you're on a business like to to to make a game like we are working on star citizen as as a privilege and it's like we play the game we we share the same sentiment that many many other players are are sharing

14. 00:10:34

    we've been looking at uh the reception that you guys had on the derelict and on the news that we've given so far and the reception is is really nice and it's it's it's heartwarming to see that like we hear you we we read what you have to say we listen to the videos and all of that and it's really just yeah a real pleasure to put like our shoulders to the wheel and and try to make this move forward so yeah thanks for having us i'm sure that we're going to be able to do great things and just watch us go you know my biggest wish is that you know we get to contribute as much as we can to this project you know by helping other teams by shipping locations by you know inheriting mandates and contributing to the larger hole which is you know ultimately we all have the same

15. 00:11:21

    objective which is to make you know the biggest baddest space mmo ever made the new game development studio that's been formed under the turbulent umbrella is an exciting new addition to the cloud imperium games family and their mandate of bringing new game play to existing locations creating a bevy of hospitals for medical gameplay and advancing our modular systems will be exciting preludes to their ultimate objective the creation of entire star systems you can expect we'll be checking in with them on all of our programs moving forward but up next it's sprint report time so let's get to it starting things off this week is the vfx team who's been working to address an issue with the readability of ship thrusters at distance which has been virtually non-existent in

16. 00:12:09

    the past where you can have swarms of ships without the the life and energy in them that we're looking for this issue actually becomes compounded with the recent addition of gas clouds where ships and debris can become obscured completely at greater ranges now to that end the team has begun working on applying the same long distance emissive particles currently used for missiles to the ship thrusters and while it's still early days and there's a lot of finessing left to do the initial work already makes quite a change to the scene as it is as the team continues polishing that they've also identified the missing ship contrails as an issue they'd like to prioritize they were lost in the effects package that was originally implemented for gas clouds and the vfx team is eager to bring them back with gas cloud specific effects for

17. 00:12:58

    added visual benefit and all this same work will also benefit flight and atmosphere during things like sandstorms and other inclement weather moving on to the environment teams more harvestables are being concepted in development for the upcoming pyro system including these devil pods of pyro4 referred to as the animantry this is a dried and expansive stalk that grows pods that can be harvested by citizens for the manufacture of heat resistant textiles of the eight options seen here we're thinking five and six are the ones that will likely move forward there's also jarrah's veil a wind anemone of pyro3 of freely brightly colored plants designed to grow on the edge of cliffs instead of feeding on soil their flower-like growths can be collected and used for medical study

18. 00:13:47

    current thinking is that options 1 and 2 will be moving forward here speaking of the pyro system it wouldn't be a sprint report without a look at the continuing progress of our colonialism outposts being worked on for pyro and other frontier systems now this week the props team has begun white boxing out some of the various accoutrements that may one day fill the interior spaces things like beds rugs that will eventually get some nice physicalized deformation so they really tie the rooms together all manner of lamps drapes that can hang in front of windows and diffuse the runtime lighting in new and exciting ways and some righteous pottery to unchain the melodies of our hearts that's a joke for the 90s people who

19. 00:14:35

    will understand that reference moving on to vehicles in the most recent monthly report available each month on the robertsspaceindustries.com website check it out we mentioned new gold standard work on the tried and true aegis sabre and you can see here that process beginning with the cutting in of panels for the various ship components now we'll be following along with the further interior and exterior developments throughout the quarter for the hercules star lifter the eu vehicle content team recently added a slew of inventory storage compartments to the area above the main cargo hold now these will be important access points for the upcoming local inventory system we recently discussed with rich tyra on calling all devs check that out if you haven't already they've also begun work on the cluster bomb mechanisms for the a2 variant

20. 00:15:24

    and all i'm going to say at this point is don't ever find yourself underneath an a2 it's not going to go well for you and finally before we let you go this week the same content team has been pushing forward on the redeemer further developing the exterior look and feel of this unique offering from aegis now focus during this sprint was on the thrusters and the glows to ensure they were nice and prominent with a stronger visual profile than what we've had before there's been some struggle getting the turrets to feel just right with the overall shape and silhouette in recent so we expect more tinkering there in the coming weeks also to get more tinkering is the belly of the ship which had not gone through final art at the time these images were captured we're aiming for a for a less boxy

21. 00:16:11

    underside than you can see here so what we learned this week well we learned that our partners at turbulent in addition to star citizen's web platform and services work have now branched out into game development with the creation of a new studio focused on persistent universe locations that their road to head towards creating new star systems begins with helping to flesh out our beloved stanton and that ships like the sabre the hercules and the legendary redeemer are now closer than ever before to realizing their full promise and impact on the verse now keep an eye out for the release of alpha 13 to our live servers today if it hasn't happened already by the time you watch this for inside star citizen i'm jared huckabee we'll see you all next week you