In this week’s Around the Verse episode Star Citizen developers revealed more details about the Squadron 42’s ongoing development with main focus landing on the Animations and how they affect your gameplay.
The latest episode of Around the Verse talked about the single player experience of Star Citizen – the solo story campaign Squadron 42. Before we focus on the main topic – Animations and Gameplay, let me update you on what has recently been done by the dev team on the game.
The GFX team has been working on a variety of visual improvements to the glass shader making improvements and bringing it to a level that this tool will be suitable to as many assets as possible. Improvements have been made to the glass effect both on surfaces and ship’s control panels, allowing for better view without distracting glare and reflections – the unlit mode has been added to help make these things possible. The VFX team has been working on the screen interference system that will be featured heavily into the narrative of Squadron 42. The spaces, environment, lighting and atmosphere increase of detail will help bring your exploration to a higher level.
A new prototype has been tested recently – the possibility for players to manually inspect their equipped weapon. When you activate this “mode”, the weapon is displayed in the middle of the screen and can be rotated in all directions so you can get a nice view from all sides, including any attachments and slots. The focus so far has been on pistols, stocked and shouldered weapons. Eventually more will be included, but work has to be done specifically for each type of gun, because of the vastly different requirements they all have when it comes to size, usability, upgrades and pure visuals.
Onto the cinematics – the main topic of this week’s ATV episode!
Cinematics utilize the games’ large star actors line up and allow the devs to create dramatic effect – that’s where the Gameplay Story Animation team’s role lies.
The story in Squadron 42 is expected to be vast and very deep. CIG have utilized two separate teams that are both working on the story. The first is focusing on cinematics and the second on gameplay story. The cinematics are the key moments for the narrative – these are the moments where the biggest chunks of story will be revealed to the player and it is all is done in a movie-like experience with very high quality, according to CIG. The story that is revealed through gameplay, though, is of no less importance. Each of the NPCs you will encounter must have their unique personality, traits and behavior.
One of the biggest goals that sits before the two teams is to present the characters you encounter and interact with less focus on the AI part. In other words CIG is trying to make them more life-like and create in you, the player, that feeling that you are not just meeting up with a robot that will give you your next assignment or accept your report of a mission well done. All of the NPCs should make you believe that they are real people with their own thinking, dreams, personal lives. This adds a much greater depth to the experience of Squadron 42.
Depending on what choices you make in the solo campaign, different NPCs will have different reactions and interactions with you. The characters will actually be responding to you based on what you have done and what they have heard about you or seen you do.
The motion capture isn’t always perfect and that’s not new. Some times the actors are performing their scenes and actions separately and the final scene has to be modeled and polished digitally. A great example of how complicated it is to make an NPC seem unique in a group or similar NPCs placed next to each other are the moments when you have to interact with multiple characters around or infront of you.
The gameplay story and cinematics teams are working towards creating a realistic experience – as if real people are sitting in front of you and as soon as they are done dealing with you, their lives will continue. Maybe some will go on a coffee break, others might go home to their families. It sure is interesting to follow this idea and see how successfully it has been implemented into the game when it’s completed (some day :P).
Check out the full episode embedded below.
