TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

Full Transcript

• The show is about to begin! your transcribers today are myself CanadianSyrup with Stormy Winters assisting
• We’ve got some footage of what appears to be the sound triggers from yesterday’s episode of Around the Verse.
• And we’re live! I see Jared Huckaby. Joining us first is Matteo Cerquone, Junior Sound Designer from Foundry 42 U.K.

[Matteo, what do you do?]

Sound Design in general, think of it as there’s no sound in the game and sound designers make all the sounds that exist from ships to ambience, to characters talking, if you hear anything other than silence, that’s his job. He’s been working on the project for around a year and a half now.

[What have you worked on in Star Citizen?]

When he first joined he did the sounds for the Avenger, also focused on the Xi’An Scout and did some ambience work.

If you have a question that you’d like to ask, submit it live through robertsspaceindustries.com in the general chat on the site.

[Have you worked on Wwise before?]

Yes, his graduation was all based on Wwise, it was fortunate he was able to join when he did and help transition the team from the original sound tech to Wwise. Wwise allows you to manipulate sounds in real time and give more detail otherwise not possible.

[How do you adjust the sounds during the soundstorm that make it so it doesn’t overwhelm?]

It’s about making sure sounds heard are different based on where you are in the sandstorm, a combination of triggers and placement balances that.

[How did the sandstorm form?]

A combination of sounds layers of to get it to where they were happy with it, and then triggers and adjusting the levels to best suit those triggers needs, bringing some up, and some down.

Wwise allows you to try different variations in real time and get very creative.

[How do you do the different sounds a ship does when it starts]

He doesn’t really have an answer, but they don’t know how a specific ship needs to sound until they start to populate the ship, each ship has their own library and they start experimenting.

[You’re reworking some of the Xi’An Scout sounds? What does that entail?]

One of the things the ship didn’t have was real time parameters such as when the ship pitches and rolls, no response from the thrusters based off how much strain it’s having put on it. This will give players more feedback.

[How do all these dynamic sound effects mesh with the music?]

It doesn’t really require much work to be honest. It’s about mix states at that point, your job is to make sure that the ambience and everything is good and Wwise will take care of the rest.

[How do you create audio for things humanity has never heard before?]

It’s mostly playing with the different instruments you have. One of the tools he uses allows him to create electric sounds which produce a lot of non human sounds. He apparently recorded dogfood being poured and vegetables and getting creative with manipulating it in real time.

[Regarding planetary sounds, how difficult will it be to make procedural sounds pertain to biomes?]

It will sound different! They can have blend triggers which change their noise based off parameters such as day, night, and the weather. They have the tech, still ironing it out.

• Day and night will have different ambience as well.
• That’s the end of the first segment with Matteo Cerquone, Junior Sound Designer in Foundry 42 U.K.
• We’re back with Vehicle Art Director, Nathan Dearsley! A pro as some call on Around the Verse, he’s been on the show three times prior.
• He was busy working on Citizencon and comments how interesting it was leading up to it, crazy busy, but exciting.

[Vehicle art directors have hardly anything to do at this time right?]

[Laughs] There’s a lot to do, some which he can’t talk because they involve Squadron 42 and some PU stuff which he can’t talk about either.

• If you have questions, post them at Robertsspaceindustries.com in the live chat on the site.
• Nathan Dearsley realised during making the Javelin for the Homestead demo that no one had really seen it prior to concept and he apologized on camera for ATV, but they edited that out. It takes a lot of work, and there’s still work to do, but it’s come along very well and hopefully the fans were excited to see the Javelin.

[What can you tell about how story affects your decisions?]

It’s a double edged sword, as a Vehicle Artist you want to follow a trait, a style to make a ship a certain way, but a ship without a history has no connection that can be made with it. If you can create a story by adding little things that make a player wonder what happened to this ship or who this person is that took control of that ship. It’s a break for artists to work on that kind of personalisation, especially Squadron 42.

• One thing they want to achieve is if you don’t clean your ship, it’s going to get dirty. They have prototype tech that can allow for it, it won’t be anything soon, but they can’t wait to have players be able to have different looking ships based on how they treat it.

[Is the Redeemer on the pipeline?]

The Redeemer came from TNGS and it was at a time when the project was in its early days, and it was nice to have someone make a ship for them, but later down the line they realized they didn’t have everything sorted out yet, so now it’s about bringing it up to the standards that current ships are built around.

• The ship that’s in the hangar now is just a model, it needs the component system, damage system, and a rework in general to get it flyable. The ships in the game are complex, but it’ll be worth it when the Redeemer comes to life.

[Will Starfarer captains get a chair in the captain’s quarters?]

Yes, it’s amusing because the artist who made that was Matt and it was an ongoing joke as they were making it because a few people were like, where does the captain sit? It wasn’t put in during concept, but it will get put in. Jared says if INN needs to bold one piece of important news from today’s RtV this is the one, according to him.

[Will we see a Javelin in its “normal” state anytime soon?]

That depends on the boss. There’s two internal areas that still need to be done, one is the cargo. The ship has been designed pretty well so it’s been a cool ship to make.

[How much did working on the Idris help you when making the Javelin?]

They helped alot, you reuse a lot of styles that are in place for Aegis and you can essentially block out the entire ship with existing assets. With how current guides are, for example a MISC ship with a substantial interior may take 40% less time because of assets in the game, it’s the 60% that makes it unique.

[Have you started the process of what the interior of a capital ship by RSI is like?]

Yes, the Bengal which has been in production. There’s the hangars, the bridge is four stories high with an additional two stories above that. There’s the corridors, ready room, habitation, toilets, showers. They’ve done a lot of stuff already and Dan did the raw concept for what bulkheads should look like. RSI walls for example will slope away from you at 30 degrees or away from you. The Bengal is a bit simpler in art because it needed to be which dictated the art style to an extent.

• The first go around is always the longest, you may mistakes, but in that time it allows you to be extra creative and refine your ideas and learn from your mistakes to produce better quality assets and textures and ultimately saving time down the road.
• That’s all the time they have with Nathan Dearsley for now, he enjoyed Reverse the Verse.
• Things going on this week and next. Free Fly this week that runs until the 31st giving everyone a F7-C Hornet. There’s also a CitizenCon DE this weekend with tickets still available. Next week is also the subscriber Townhall.