{"data":{"id":17735,"title":"Environment Art AMA Recap","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/17735-Environment-Art-AMA-Recap","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/17735","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/17735","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"None","images":[{"id":24594,"name":"Maximilian-Keilich.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/odvr8xs5z2ai0r\/source\/Maximilian-Keilich.jpg","alt":"","size":609725,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2020-08-20T22:43:06+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/24594","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/24594\/similar"},{"id":24595,"name":"Florian-Sollaneck.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/7esqvtnk6pappr\/source\/Florian-Sollaneck.png","alt":"","size":1327468,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2020-08-20T22:43:40+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/24595","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/24595\/similar"},{"id":24596,"name":"Pascal-Muller.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/bu7mwjxd9gizsr\/source\/Pascal-Muller.png","alt":"","size":224565,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2020-08-20T22:43:34+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/24596","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/24596\/similar"},{"id":24597,"name":"Vanessa-Bolke.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/7togdlwzouk0wr\/source\/Vanessa-Bolke.jpg","alt":"","size":440309,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2020-08-20T22:42:58+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/24597","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/24597\/similar"},{"id":24598,"name":"Oezlem-Sagbili.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/rujhyu5yf9zlqr\/source\/Oezlem-Sagbili.jpg","alt":"","size":1065375,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2020-08-20T22:47:41+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/24598","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/24598\/similar"}],"images_count":6,"translations":{"en_EN":"Environment Art AMA Recap\n\nEach month we host an open submission live Q&A on Spectrum hosted by developers from various specialties across CIG. These questions and answers were collected from the Spectrum AMA on August 19th, 2020.\n\n\nThis time, we welcomed seven guests from the Environment Art team working on planets & organic locations in Star Citizen:\n\nMaximilian Keilich | Senior Environment Artist\nHello! I have been in the industry for 5 years and joined CIG in 2017. You may not know me, but I am one of the people who tend to put too many rocks on the moons and planets, we will figure out the perfect amount of rocks, no worries! I have also worked on the mineable rocks and enjoy watching you guys blow them up.\n\nFlorian Sollaneck | Environment Artist\nI\u2019ve been in the industry for 7 years and since I\u2019ve started at CIG 4 years ago I\u2019ve been working on planetary content as part of the DE Environment Team. Together with the rest of my team I\u2019ve helped in the creation of your planet tools, the Stanton planets, moons and assets for them. Last year I\u2019ve explored (hehe) our cave tech which was an especially challenging but enjoyable project.\n\nPascal Muller | Senior Environment Artist\nI\u2019m a senior environment artist in the organics team. I started at CIG almost 5 years ago. Have been working on the planet tech and the organics team since day one. Very proud of the team. Also I don\u2019t see why one should not like a good noodle soup.\n\nVanessa B\u00f6lke | Environment Artist\nHi!! I\u2019ve been working at CIG for 3 years now as an Environment Artist. I am working with the rest of the organics team on planets and helping to develop the planet tech. I am creating assets together with the team to populate the large planet and moon surfaces but I also did vegetation assets for indoor environments such as New Babbage.\n\nSebastian Schroeder | Senior Environment Artist\nHi, I\u2019ve been in the games industry for over 10 years and 3 years at CIG. I don\u2019t do much in terms of art anymore and focus mostly on improving our planet tech and associated pipelines. I might need a more fitting job title.\n\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili | Senior Environment Artist\nHi! I\u2019ve been working at CIG for almost 4 years now and my main responsibility is to create anything vegetation related and distributing those on our planets. I really enjoyed creating different biomes for Hurston and Microtech. I also worked on harvestables and sometimes have to do some very weird (but funny) things that you guys can collect like the ranta dung for example.\n\nPatrick Gladys | Senior Environment Artist\nMy career began at Crytek, where I contributed to projects such as Crysis 3, Ryse: Son of Rome, and others. In 2015 I joined DICE in Stockholm, Sweden to work on the visually acclaimed Star Wars: Battlefront. After completing Battlefront 2, I moved back to Germany for the ambitious Star Citizen at Cloud Imperium Games \u2013 building procedural content like planets, caves, and materials.\n\nThis AMA is complete but keep an eye out for upcoming threads for your chance to ask us anything!\n\n\nPyro has a lava planet, are we going to see lava flow everywhere or will it be static? And\/or maybe volcanoes (that are active)\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nUnfortunately our tech currently does not support flowing lava (or even water) so the art direction of the planet was changed to have static, cooled down lava instead. It is definitely something we want to tackle properly in the future though \u2013 either as an update to Pyro III or a different planet in a different system.\n\n\nWill we ever see forests like in the carrack trailer in the PU?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili:\n\nThere are definitely ideas and concepts for having forests or jungles for upcoming systems.\n\nThe Stanton system we worked on until now didn\u2019t require lush biomes and the tech wasn\u2019t ready to scatter millions of plants to create a dense forest. We\u2019re still improving our tech to allow us to have more assets on a planet. But the environment team is already looking forward to try out something new and create some beautiful forests in the future.\n\n\nFor years we have seen the development of planetary\/biome creation toolsets. The assumption being that once you have enough biomes and assets added to this that you\u2019ll be able to move onto making multiple star systems. What are the current targets and goals for these tools and the expanding gameplay area in the short, medium and long term?\nPatrick Gladys:\n\nAs you know our asset libraries contain everything from geology, vegetation, surface materials etc. Let\u2019s say we get to a point where these libraries are filled with a great number of different archetypes of rock formations, cliffs, trees, flowers and more. The bigger and more diverse of a selection of assets that we already have, the less likely it is that we need to invest time into creating new content for new planets.\n\nExample A: For a generic dusty rocky moon we have most assets we need \u2013 so we can start immediately putting together the moon and more similar variations if we want to.\n\nExample B: Let\u2019s say we are asked to create a tropical island planet \u2013 in that case we need to build all\nthe necessary content (palm trees, tropical shrubbery etc.) that is required, since those are not yet part of our asset libraries at this point.\n\nThe long term objective is to build up strong asset packs that can be reused for the majority of planets so that we can focus on adding more systems quicker. Due to our tools, we\u2019d still have the capabilities to make planets feel drastically different despite some assets being reused\n\nSignificant tech & tools work was done every year so far and the most recent update lets us create a moon\/planet even faster (again) while being more flexible than before, letting us update planets way easier which lets us do tweaks more often and achieve better quality. We are quite happy with the improvements and the team is looking forward to what can be done on the current basis of it in the future.\n\n\nMoving forward beyond gas giants, what is your team currently working on regarding new planet biomes coming in the future?\nPascal Muller:\n\nWhen we moved over to working on the Pyro system, we created and are still creating new assets on all levels of content to build completely unique and fresh biomes.\n\nFrom an art direction point of view we want to make sure that there is a clear differentiation between the Stanton and Pyro system.\n\nIf you are on a planet in the Pyro system you will know it\u2019s the Pyro system.\n\n\nWhat can you tell us on the progress of the Pyro System?\nPatrick Gladys:\n\nHey man!\n\nThe team has already been working on Pyro for some time and it\u2019s progressing quite well. We have also not seen any decrease in the teams weekly output considering the WFH situation!\n\nNew geology packs, surface materials are constantly being added to our libraries that allow us to construct exciting and fresh biomes with very different looks.\n\nImproving existing assets from a quality point of view is also being worked on to ensure consistency between the new and old libraries.\n\nBesides creating all the content necessary for Pyro, there is work being done on the planet-tech and tools, which has always been a dependency \u2013 any changes to tech mean some kind of rework or adjustment on our end as well.\n\nThis is a very good thing, because with these new changes any updates\/tweaks in the future can be done much quicker in the future.\n\n\nHow will planets be updated with new biomes? Meaning will only newer planets get the updated biomes or will existing planets be reworked when more biomes join the game?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nWith one of the recent updates to the Planet Tech we are now able to add and change everything on a planet in a very non-destructive and much more procedural way than we could when we originally re-created the existing planets\/moons end of last year. The improvement allows us to go back to any planet and every biome on them and update\/improve and even add new ones if the necessity arises as well as giving us more natural transitions between them.\n\n\nWhat is the status of any work towards a Road generation tool? This was first talked about a few citcons back but I haven\u2019t heard much since.\nPascal Muller:\n\nIn the past we did create height maps with some basic forms of roads. An example would be the mining pits on Hurston. This is not an ideal solution and we will definitely be working to create more sophisticated roads in the future.\n\n\nCurrently there are a LOT of rocks on planets\/moons. This makes driving around with wheeled vehicles hard. Will we see a reduction of the amount of surface rocks in the future?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWe are tweaking the amount of rocks on all existing and upcoming moons and planets to make traversal in vehicles more comfortable.\n\n\nCan we expect huge and unique planetary terrain formations like big craters (like on old 2.x Yela) or hollows visible from orbit?\nPatrick Gladys:\n\nHuge craters, yes! Sometimes when we tackle new planets, we experiment a bit trying to figure out how to get visual features like these in using our updated tools.\n\n\nWhat are the next steps for Planet Tech V4?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nWe\u2019ve had a lot of improvements to the tech being implemented lately and it\u2019s getting closer to what it was originally envisioned to be when we set out on the planetary tech and planet rework. With those and a few more improvements that are still being worked on right now that will bring the Planet Tech to a state where we can create and iterate on existing and new planets\/moons very quickly and have everything come together for a more coherent, final frame. So right now the focus is mostly on improving quality\/speed and once that is in a really solid place we\u2019ll look into new, currently unanswered challenges.\n\n\nWill trees ever be breakable when a superheavy spaceship rams them?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili\n\nWe definitely want to have breakable vegetation in the future, but right now there has not been any work or R&D on that.\n\nWe\u2019re currently doing R&D for touch bending so that botanicals will bend when the player walks through them\/a vehicle drives through. Breakable vegetation would be the next step then!\n\n\nThere are a lot of old geology assets in the game that are quite subpar in quality compared to the new ones (the rocks in daymar, The spiky ones in delamar\u2026etc), Will they ever get replaced with better ones?\nSebastian Schroeder\n\nYes, and very soon as well \u2013 we are currently in the process of replacing a lot of the old geology assets with new, better ones using the new organics shader and will continue to do so until all are on the same quality level.\n\n\nAre you working on different kind of caves? icy? Alien ones? Can you give us some information about those?\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nNot at the moment. The focus for us right now is on Pyro planets. We had many ideas for caves that had to be put on the backlog in order to ship tier 1. We will revisit those once it is time to expand existing planets with more POIs but just to give you an example we have prototypes for caves you can enter with different sized vehicles.\n\n\nWhy are the icy caves from the citizencon demo not in the game? Thats a bit misleading that we only got the regular copy pasted ones with Microtech considering you said once we get SSOCS we will have hundreds of different caves across a planet.\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nThe cave shown at CitizenCon is very similar to the ones currently placed down on Microtech and its moons. You\u2019re right \u2013 now with SSOCS we are not bound by the number of caves in the verse anymore. The reason we didn\u2019t invest more time either just generating new rocky caves or actually working on completely new archetypes like ice caves is the question of importance and currently Pyro has a higher priority for now. Personally I would love to get back working on the next tier of caves improving their versatility, add more archetypes, gameplay opportunities etc. There was so much feedback from the community and it\u2019s all written down on my personal notebook waiting to get undusted once we shift gears and begin additional work on caves.\n\n\nWith the development of Crusader, is there development on tools that will make Gas Giants easier to produce in the future? (similar to Planet Tech)\nPascal Muller:\n\nCrusader is our starting point when it comes to gas giants. Once we are happy with the way it looks, there is no reason for us not to reuse that tech to help us create additional gas giants.\n\n\nWhats the next major hurdle for Planets? (geological formations, rivers, denser vegetation \/ forests)\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nOnce the current \u201cround\u201d of improvements to the planet tech is implemented and applied to our existing content we actually intend to have a look at exactly those three things you mention together with engineering and spend time to research on how to solve those big questions.\n\nWhile continuing to produce new planets obviously.\n\u2003\n\n\nThe snow ground textures in microtech are somewhat lackluster my opinion (compared to game like God of war or the last of us 2) the reason being is that a lot of the ground textures in microtech don\u2019t seem to have been created bespokly as a snow texture, Many (but not all of them) look to be recycled from other moons and planets, And just turned white in color. Also a lot of them seem to produce way too much pits and shadow area (this is actually a reoccurring problem with certain types of textures used across many of our moons and planets, I call them the shallow-wavy-pits textures, They always look weird from certain angles)\nAny plans to make a pass on them?\n\u2003\n\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nWhat you are seeing in the screenshot are our \u201cmedium scale normals\u201d that are intended to bridge the detail gap between close-up ground textures and the \u201clocal terrain textures\u201d aka elevation and the accompanying data. Those are distributed quite randomly at the moment and it\u2019s not always easy to get the exact visual we want.\n\nWe are currently working on getting the Planet Tech closer to it\u2019s originally envisioned state which will allow us much more control as to where and how those are placed to get a better transition and overall frame at all distances. So yes, those will be heavily reworked once that tech change comes in.\n\n\nAre you going to remove all or almost all the rocks (with the grass tech) and add roads on the the planets\/moons for a better drive on them?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nInstead of creating \u201cartificial\u201d roads for pristine areas of a moon or planet, we are tweaking the density and placement of rocks to have \u201cnatural\u201d roads appear by not spawning rocks everywhere.\n\n\nHow is your team currently tackling the issue of Crusader\u2019s clouds, what has been done, or what are you planning to do\/use?\nPascal Muller:\n\nWe have achieved good results so far. We are using the planet tech as a base. However it is a bit early to give exact details on the final frame.\n\n\nWill there be underwater Plants ,POIs etc ?\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nMost likely but it\u2019s not a priority for us right now since other departments would first need to work on things that allow players to access those environments.\n\n\nWhen can we see other variants of cave entrances? ie. The gladius size hole showed off on a ISC episode awhile back.\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nYes. What we showed in the ISC was no throwaway work and will get picked up in the future again. Personally I\u2019m not satisfied with the amount of variation our cave entrances have but that\u2019s something we had to learn from our first release. We\u2019ve got a solid plan on how to solve this in the future for tier 2 so stay tuned.\n\n\nFirst of all, thank you for your work and passion. My question is centered on marine environments in the planets: have you ever thought about creating environments that can be reached by immersing yourself in water?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nThank you! You can already find a tease of marine assets like coral and seaweed on some existing moons and planets which have an ocean, like Hurston. Our team in DE is more than excited to start working on underwater environments in the future, but until we have underwater gameplay it is not a priority right now.\n\n\nAny plans to add more and expand the library of organic assets of existing planets like hurston and microtech?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWe are always improving existing sets whenever we get a tech update or add new organic assets, like rocks or plants. When we feel we have something that could replace an existing asset on an older moon, we go in and swap it out.\n\n\n\nAre you working or have plans to work on something like a paradise island with crystal clear water, white sands and beaches and things like that? Do will see something like that in SC?\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nWe\u2019ve just recently worked on more believable beaches and coastlines but don\u2019t expect them to have white sand.\n\n\nHow much influence do you have on the harvestables design, lore and function? Anything interesting you\u2019d like to share or hint at what we might see floating in Crusader or melting around Pyro?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili:\n\nThe usual process of a harvestable is that the lore team comes up with harvestable ideas and sends this over to the concept art team where they will visualize the harvestable together with our Art Director. When the concept is done the environment art team will discuss the harvestable with the Art Director and we as artists can always come up with additional ideas for the design or function.\n\n\nDoes the team in Frankfurt help build assets for Squadron 42, Or is it exclusively for the PU?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nThe Frankfurt team primarily creates assets for the persistent universe. Due to very different technical and visual requirements as well as limitations, for our specific team, there\u2019s less cross-over.\n\nWhen it comes to tools we develop for the PU though other teams, including those working on S42, are obviously welcome to use these if it helps achieve their goals and their feedback is taken into account when developing them, with the biggest example being the Planet Tech.\n\n\n\nCan planets be hollow or without big chunks?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nUsing the current version of Planet Tech they can not be hollow or missing big chunks. There might be other approaches to building planets should we get to building a planet that actually needs it or changes to the tech to allow for that, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.\n\n\nWill space\/land minables in the future spawn stacked ontop of one another for a variety of mining vehicles? IE: Will you have Hand minables, on the surface of prospector minables, on the surface of Orion minables all clumped together so multiple equipment is needed to fully harvest an asteroid or node?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWe already have first person mineable rocks spawning on the bigger ship mineables. The idea behind it being that you need to get out of your prospector when you spot a smaller mineable and use the multi tool, then head back into the Prospector to mine the ship mineable itself. We do plan to expand that functionality more in the future.\n\n\nIt would be interesting to have planets with carnivorous vegetation, dangerous but at the same time profitable. it would be nice to be able to collect particular plants or animals \/ aliens to sell in private (black market) or regularized contexts. could something like this be created?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili:\n\nWe do have some plans for hazardous landscapes and dangerous plants in the future. To create carnivorous vegetation we would need to build animated botanicals, which would mean working together with our animation department. The engineers would also need to implement that the plant reacts to the player when he enters a certain distance.\n\n\nCan you talk about the future of mining, both on planets and in space? How close to what we have now in the shape and location of rocks is it to what is envisioned for the final state?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nTricky to say what the final state of mining is going to look like, since we are always listening to the feedback we get from you guys, improving the system accordingly. Personally I see the current implementation of mining as a good base that we plan to expand upon.\n\n\nDo you take possible future gameplay into account when crafting environments (for example, when we have swimming, we might want some nice cliffs to dive from or pretty coves or underwater caves, or maybe creating a type of huge thick tree that can shelter us from the cold or anything)?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWe will always go back to older planets and moons to make sure we support whatever gameplay updates come in. For example when we implemented mining, we made sure to create and distribute a mining rock variation on each planet and moon. We do not want people to feel like there is no reason anymore to visit Daymar or Yela, because other planets have \u201cmore\u201d gameplay.\n\n\nDisclaimer\nThe answers accurately reflect development\u2019s intentions at the time of writing, but the company and development team reserve the right to adapt, improve, or change feature and ship designs in response to feedback, playtesting, design revisions, or other considerations to improve balance or the quality of the game overall.","de_DE":"Umwelt Kunst AMA Rekapitulation\n\nJeden Monat veranstalten wir eine offene Live-Frage-Antwort-Runde zu Spectrum, die von Entwicklern aus verschiedenen Fachgebieten in ganz CIG veranstaltet wird. Diese Fragen und Antworten wurden auf der Spectrum AMA am 19. August 2020 gesammelt.\n\nDieses Mal begr\u00fc\u00dften wir sieben G\u00e4ste aus dem Umweltkunst-Team, die an Planeten & organischen Orten in Star Citizen arbeiten:\n\nMaximilian Keilich | Senior Umweltk\u00fcnstler\nHallo! Ich bin seit 5 Jahren in der Branche und seit 2017 bei der CIG. Du kennst mich vielleicht nicht, aber ich geh\u00f6re zu den Leuten, die dazu neigen, zu viele Steine auf die Monde und Planeten zu legen, wir werden die perfekte Menge an Steinen herausfinden, keine Sorge! Ich habe auch an den abbaubaren Steinen gearbeitet und genie\u00dfe es, euch zuzusehen, wie ihr sie in die Luft sprengt.\n\nFlorian Sollaneck | Umweltk\u00fcnstler\nIch bin seit 7 Jahren in der Industrie und seit ich vor 4 Jahren bei CIG angefangen habe, arbeite ich als Teil des DE Environment Teams an planetaren Inhalten. Zusammen mit dem Rest meines Teams habe ich bei der Erstellung eurer Planeten-Werkzeuge, der Stanton-Planeten, Monde und Anlagen f\u00fcr sie geholfen. Letztes Jahr habe ich unsere H\u00f6hlentechnologie erforscht (hehe), was ein besonders herausforderndes, aber unterhaltsames Projekt war.\n\nPascal Muller | Senior Umweltk\u00fcnstler\nIch bin ein leitender Umweltk\u00fcnstler im Bio-Team. Ich habe vor fast 5 Jahren bei CIG angefangen. Ich arbeite seit dem ersten Tag auf dem Planeten Tech und im Organik-Team. Ich bin sehr stolz auf das Team. Ich sehe auch nicht ein, warum man eine gute Nudelsuppe nicht m\u00f6gen sollte.\n\nVanessa B\u00f6lke | Umweltk\u00fcnstlerin\nHallo!! Ich arbeite jetzt seit 3 Jahren bei CIG als Environment Artist. Ich arbeite mit dem Rest des Bio-Teams auf den Planeten und helfe bei der Entwicklung der Planetentechnologie. Ich schaffe zusammen mit dem Team Anlagen, um die gro\u00dfen Planeten- und Mondoberfl\u00e4chen zu bev\u00f6lkern, aber ich habe auch Vegetationsanlagen f\u00fcr Innenumgebungen wie New Babbage gemacht.\n\nSebastian Schroeder | Senior Umweltk\u00fcnstler\nHi, ich bin seit \u00fcber 10 Jahren in der Spieleindustrie und seit 3 Jahren bei CIG. Ich mache nicht mehr viel in Sachen Kunst und konzentriere mich haupts\u00e4chlich darauf, die Technologie unseres Planeten und die dazugeh\u00f6rigen Pipelines zu verbessern. Vielleicht brauche ich eine passendere Berufsbezeichnung.\n\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili | Senior Umweltk\u00fcnstler\nHi! Ich arbeite jetzt seit fast 4 Jahren bei CIG und meine Hauptaufgabe ist es, alles, was mit Vegetation zu tun hat, zu erschaffen und diese auf unseren Planeten zu verteilen. Ich habe es wirklich genossen, verschiedene Biome f\u00fcr Hurston und Microtech zu erstellen. Ich habe auch an Harvestables gearbeitet und muss manchmal ein paar sehr seltsame (aber lustige) Dinge tun, die ihr sammeln k\u00f6nnt, wie zum Beispiel den Ranta-Dung.\n\nPatrick Gladys | Senior Umweltk\u00fcnstler\nMeine Karriere begann bei Crytek, wo ich zu Projekten wie Crysis 3, Ryse: Son of Rome und anderen beigetragen habe. Im Jahr 2015 kam ich zu DICE in Stockholm, Schweden, um an dem visuell gefeierten Star Wars: Battlefront zu arbeiten. Nachdem ich Battlefront 2 abgeschlossen hatte, zog ich zur\u00fcck nach Deutschland, um f\u00fcr den ehrgeizigen Sternenb\u00fcrger bei Cloud Imperium Games zu arbeiten - und dort prozedurale Inhalte wie Planeten, H\u00f6hlen und Materialien zu erstellen.\n\nDieser AMA ist komplett, aber haltet Ausschau nach kommenden Threads, damit ihr uns alles fragen k\u00f6nnt!\n\n\nPyro hat einen Lavaplaneten, werden wir \u00fcberall Lavastr\u00f6me sehen oder wird er statisch sein? Und\/oder vielleicht Vulkane (die aktiv sind)\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nUngl\u00fccklicherweise unterst\u00fctzt unsere Tech derzeit keine flie\u00dfende Lava (oder sogar Wasser), also wurde die Kunstrichtung des Planeten dahingehend ge\u00e4ndert, dass stattdessen statische, abgek\u00fchlte Lava verwendet wird. Es ist aber definitiv etwas, das wir in Zukunft richtig angehen wollen - entweder als Update zu Pyro III oder als ein anderer Planet in einem anderen System.\n\n\nWerden wir jemals W\u00e4lder wie in dem Carrack-Anh\u00e4nger in der PU sehen?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili:\n\nEs gibt definitiv Ideen und Konzepte, W\u00e4lder oder Dschungel f\u00fcr kommende Systeme zu haben.\n\nDas Stanton-System, an dem wir bis jetzt gearbeitet haben, brauchte keine \u00fcppigen Biome und die Technologie war noch nicht bereit, Millionen von Pflanzen zu verstreuen, um einen dichten Wald zu schaffen. Wir sind immer noch dabei, unsere Tech zu verbessern, um uns zu erlauben, mehr Verm\u00f6genswerte auf einem Planeten zu haben. Aber das Umweltteam freut sich schon jetzt darauf, etwas Neues auszuprobieren und in Zukunft einige wundersch\u00f6ne W\u00e4lder zu erschaffen.\n\n\nSeit Jahren haben wir die Entwicklung von planetaren\/biomischen Sch\u00f6pfungswerkzeugs\u00e4tzen gesehen. Die Annahme ist, dass, sobald man gen\u00fcgend Biome und Verm\u00f6genswerte hat, man in der Lage sein wird, auf die Erschaffung von Mehrsternsystemen \u00fcberzugehen. Was sind die aktuellen Ziele und Vorgaben f\u00fcr diese Tools und den expandierenden Gameplay-Bereich auf kurze, mittlere und lange Sicht?\nPatrick Gladys:\n\nWie ihr wisst, enthalten unsere Asset-Bibliotheken alles von Geologie, Vegetation, Oberfl\u00e4chenmaterialien etc. Sagen wir, wir kommen an einen Punkt, an dem diese Bibliotheken mit einer gro\u00dfen Anzahl verschiedener Archetypen von Felsformationen, Klippen, B\u00e4umen, Blumen und mehr gef\u00fcllt sind. Je gr\u00f6\u00dfer und vielf\u00e4ltiger die Auswahl an Inhalten ist, die wir bereits haben, desto weniger wahrscheinlich ist es, dass wir Zeit in die Erstellung neuer Inhalte f\u00fcr neue Planeten investieren m\u00fcssen.\n\nBeispiel A: F\u00fcr einen gew\u00f6hnlichen, staubigen, felsigen Mond haben wir die meisten Assets, die wir brauchen - also k\u00f6nnen wir sofort anfangen, den Mond und weitere \u00e4hnliche Variationen zusammenzustellen, wenn wir wollen.\n\nBeispiel B: Nehmen wir an, wir werden gebeten, einen tropischen Inselplaneten zu erschaffen - in diesem Fall m\u00fcssen wir alles bauen\ndie notwendigen Inhalte (Palmen, tropische Str\u00e4ucher etc.), die ben\u00f6tigt werden, da diese zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch nicht zu unseren Anlagenbibliotheken geh\u00f6ren.\n\nDas langfristige Ziel ist es, starke Asset-Pakete aufzubauen, die f\u00fcr die Mehrheit der Planeten wiederverwendet werden k\u00f6nnen, so dass wir uns darauf konzentrieren k\u00f6nnen, schneller weitere Systeme hinzuzuf\u00fcgen. Dank unserer Werkzeuge haben wir immer noch die M\u00f6glichkeit, Planeten drastisch zu ver\u00e4ndern, auch wenn einige Ressourcen wiederverwendet werden.\n\nBis jetzt wurde jedes Jahr erhebliche Arbeit an Technik & Tools geleistet und das neueste Update l\u00e4sst uns einen Mond\/Planeten noch schneller (wieder) erstellen, w\u00e4hrend wir flexibler als zuvor sind und die Planeten viel einfacher aktualisieren k\u00f6nnen, wodurch wir \u00f6fter Tweaks durchf\u00fchren und eine bessere Qualit\u00e4t erreichen k\u00f6nnen. Wir sind ziemlich zufrieden mit den Verbesserungen und das Team freut sich darauf, was auf der aktuellen Basis in Zukunft gemacht werden kann.\n\n\nWenn ihr euch \u00fcber die Gasriesen hinausbewegt, woran arbeitet euer Team derzeit in Bezug auf neue Planetenbiome, die in der Zukunft kommen werden?\nPascal Muller:\n\nAls wir dazu \u00fcbergingen, am Pyro-System zu arbeiten, schufen und schaffen wir immer noch neue Assets auf allen Inhaltsebenen, um v\u00f6llig einzigartige und frische Biome aufzubauen.\n\nAus der Sicht der Kunstrichtung wollen wir sicherstellen, dass es eine klare Unterscheidung zwischen dem Stanton- und dem Pyro-System gibt.\n\nWenn du auf einem Planeten im Pyro-System bist, wirst du wissen, dass es das Pyro-System ist.\n\n\nWas kannst du uns \u00fcber den Fortschritt des Pyro-Systems sagen?\nPatrick Gladys:\n\nHey Mann!\n\nDas Team arbeitet schon seit einiger Zeit an Pyro und es geht recht gut voran. In Anbetracht der WFH-Situation haben wir auch keinen R\u00fcckgang im w\u00f6chentlichen Output des Teams gesehen!\n\nNeue Geologie-Packs, Oberfl\u00e4chenmaterialien werden st\u00e4ndig zu unseren Bibliotheken hinzugef\u00fcgt, die es uns erlauben, aufregende und frische Biome mit sehr unterschiedlichem Aussehen zu konstruieren.\n\nEs wird auch daran gearbeitet, die vorhandenen Best\u00e4nde unter Qualit\u00e4tsgesichtspunkten zu verbessern, um die Koh\u00e4renz zwischen den neuen und alten Bibliotheken zu gew\u00e4hrleisten.\n\nNeben der Erstellung aller Inhalte, die f\u00fcr Pyro notwendig sind, wird auch an der Planeten-Technologie und den Werkzeugen gearbeitet, was schon immer eine Abh\u00e4ngigkeit war - jede \u00c4nderung der Technologie bedeutet auch eine Art von \u00dcberarbeitung oder Anpassung auf unserer Seite.\n\nDas ist eine sehr gute Sache, denn mit diesen neuen \u00c4nderungen k\u00f6nnen alle Updates\/\u00c4nderungen in der Zukunft viel schneller durchgef\u00fchrt werden.\n\n\nWie werden die Planeten mit neuen Biomen aktualisiert? Bedeutet das, dass nur neuere Planeten die aktualisierten Biome erhalten oder werden bestehende Planeten \u00fcberarbeitet, wenn weitere Biome ins Spiel kommen?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nMit einem der letzten Updates der Planet Tech sind wir nun in der Lage, alles auf einem Planeten auf eine sehr zerst\u00f6rungsfreie und viel prozeduralere Art und Weise hinzuzuf\u00fcgen und zu \u00e4ndern, als wir es Ende letzten Jahres konnten, als wir urspr\u00fcnglich die existierenden Planeten\/Monde neu erschaffen haben. Die Verbesserung erlaubt es uns, zu jedem Planeten und jedem Biom auf ihnen zur\u00fcckzugehen und sie zu aktualisieren\/verbessern und sogar neue hinzuzuf\u00fcgen, wenn die Notwendigkeit dazu besteht, sowie uns nat\u00fcrlichere \u00dcberg\u00e4nge zwischen ihnen zu geben.\n\n\nWie steht es mit der Arbeit an einem Werkzeug zur Stra\u00dfengenerierung? Es wurde zuerst \u00fcber ein paar Zitronen vor ein paar Jahren gesprochen, aber seitdem habe ich nicht mehr viel geh\u00f6rt.\nPascal Muller:\n\nIn der Vergangenheit haben wir H\u00f6henkarten mit einigen Grundformen von Stra\u00dfen erstellt. Ein Beispiel w\u00e4ren die Bergwerksgruben auf Hurston. Das ist keine ideale L\u00f6sung und wir werden definitiv daran arbeiten, in Zukunft anspruchsvollere Stra\u00dfen zu erstellen.\n\n\nMomentan gibt es eine VIELE Menge Felsen auf Planeten\/Monden. Das macht das Herumfahren mit Radfahrzeugen schwierig. Werden wir in Zukunft eine Reduzierung der Menge an Oberfl\u00e4chengestein sehen?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWir optimieren die Menge der Steine auf allen existierenden und kommenden Monden und Planeten, um das Reisen in Fahrzeugen komfortabler zu machen.\n\n\nK\u00f6nnen wir riesige und einzigartige planetarische Gel\u00e4ndeformationen wie gro\u00dfe Krater (wie auf dem alten 2.x Yela) oder vom Orbit aus sichtbare H\u00f6hlen erwarten?\nPatrick Gladys:\n\nRiesige Krater, ja! Manchmal, wenn wir neue Planeten in Angriff nehmen, experimentieren wir ein bisschen, um herauszufinden, wie wir mit unseren aktualisierten Tools solche visuellen Features bekommen k\u00f6nnen.\n\n\nWas sind die n\u00e4chsten Schritte f\u00fcr Planet Tech V4?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nWir hatten in letzter Zeit eine Menge Verbesserungen an der Tech, die implementiert wurde, und sie kommt n\u00e4her an das heran, was sie urspr\u00fcnglich geplant war, als wir uns auf den Weg zur \u00dcberarbeitung der planetaren Tech und des Planeten machten. Mit diesen und ein paar weiteren Verbesserungen, an denen im Moment noch gearbeitet wird, wird das die Planetentechnologie in einen Zustand bringen, in dem wir sehr schnell auf existierenden und neuen Planeten\/Monden erschaffen und iterieren k\u00f6nnen und alles f\u00fcr einen koh\u00e4renteren, endg\u00fcltigen Rahmen zusammengef\u00fcgt haben. Also im Moment liegt der Fokus haupts\u00e4chlich auf der Verbesserung von Qualit\u00e4t\/Geschwindigkeit und sobald das an einem wirklich soliden Ort ist, werden wir uns neue, derzeit unbeantwortete Herausforderungen ansehen.\n\n\nWerden B\u00e4ume jemals zerbrechlich sein, wenn ein superschweres Raumschiff sie rammt?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili\n\nWir wollen definitiv eine zerbrechliche Vegetation in der Zukunft haben, aber im Moment gibt es noch keine Arbeit oder Forschung und Entwicklung daran.\n\nWir sind gerade dabei, Forschung und Entwicklung im Bereich Touch-Bending zu betreiben, so dass sich die Botanicals biegen, wenn der Spieler durch sie hindurchgeht\/ein Fahrzeug durchf\u00e4hrt. Zerbrechliche Vegetation w\u00e4re dann der n\u00e4chste Schritt!\n\n\nEs gibt eine Menge alter geologischer Vorz\u00fcge im Spiel, die im Vergleich zu den neuen (die Felsen in Daymar, die stacheligen in Delamar...etc.) von ziemlich unterdurchschnittlicher Qualit\u00e4t sind. Werden sie jemals durch bessere ersetzt werden?\nSebastian Schr\u00f6der\n\nJa, und auch sehr bald - wir sind gerade dabei, eine Menge der alten Geologie-Assets durch neue, bessere zu ersetzen, indem wir den neuen Organik-Shader verwenden und werden dies so lange tun, bis alle auf dem gleichen Qualit\u00e4tsniveau sind.\n\n\nArbeitet ihr an verschiedenen Arten von H\u00f6hlen? eisig? Au\u00dferirdische? Kannst du uns ein paar Informationen \u00fcber diese geben?\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nIm Moment nicht. Der Fokus liegt f\u00fcr uns im Moment auf den Pyro-Planeten. Wir hatten viele Ideen f\u00fcr H\u00f6hlen, die in den R\u00fcckstand genommen werden mussten, um Tier 1 zu verschiffen. Wir werden diese wieder aufgreifen, sobald es an der Zeit ist, bestehende Planeten mit mehr POIs zu erweitern, aber nur um euch ein Beispiel zu geben, haben wir Prototypen f\u00fcr H\u00f6hlen, die ihr mit unterschiedlich gro\u00dfen Fahrzeugen betreten k\u00f6nnt.\n\n\nWarum sind die eisigen H\u00f6hlen aus der citizencon-Demo nicht im Spiel? Das ist ein bisschen irref\u00fchrend, da wir nur die normalen kopierten mit Microtech bekommen haben, wenn man bedenkt, dass du gesagt hast, sobald wir SSOCS haben, werden wir hunderte von verschiedenen H\u00f6hlen auf einem Planeten haben.\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nDie H\u00f6hle, die auf der CitizenCon gezeigt wird, ist den H\u00f6hlen, die derzeit auf Microtech und seinen Monden platziert sind, sehr \u00e4hnlich. Du hast recht - jetzt mit SSOCS sind wir nicht mehr an die Anzahl der H\u00f6hlen in dem Vers gebunden. Der Grund, warum wir nicht mehr Zeit investiert haben, entweder nur neue Felsh\u00f6hlen zu generieren oder tats\u00e4chlich an komplett neuen Archetypen wie Eish\u00f6hlen zu arbeiten, ist die Frage der Wichtigkeit und momentan hat Pyro eine h\u00f6here Priorit\u00e4t. Ich pers\u00f6nlich w\u00fcrde gerne wieder an der n\u00e4chsten Stufe von H\u00f6hlen arbeiten, um ihre Vielseitigkeit zu verbessern, mehr Archetypen hinzuzuf\u00fcgen, mehr Spielm\u00f6glichkeiten zu schaffen usw. Es gab so viel Feedback aus der Community und es ist alles auf meinem pers\u00f6nlichen Notizbuch notiert, das darauf wartet, entstaubt zu werden, sobald wir den Gang wechseln und mit der zus\u00e4tzlichen Arbeit an den H\u00f6hlen beginnen.\n\n\nGibt es mit der Entwicklung von Crusader eine Entwicklung von Werkzeugen, die es in Zukunft einfacher machen, Gasriesen zu produzieren? (\u00e4hnlich wie Planet Tech)\nPascal M\u00fcller:\n\nCrusader ist unser Ausgangspunkt, wenn es um Gasriesen geht. Sobald wir mit dem Aussehen zufrieden sind, gibt es f\u00fcr uns keinen Grund, diese Technologie nicht wiederzuverwenden, um uns dabei zu helfen, weitere Gasriesen zu erschaffen.\n\n\nWas ist die n\u00e4chste gro\u00dfe H\u00fcrde f\u00fcr Planets? (geologische Formationen, Fl\u00fcsse, dichtere Vegetation \/ W\u00e4lder)\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nSobald die aktuelle \"Runde\" der Verbesserungen an der Planetentechnologie implementiert und auf unseren bestehenden Inhalt angewendet ist, beabsichtigen wir tats\u00e4chlich, uns genau diese drei Dinge, die ihr erw\u00e4hnt habt, zusammen mit der Technik anzuschauen und Zeit damit zu verbringen, zu recherchieren, wie man diese gro\u00dfen Fragen l\u00f6sen kann.\n\nW\u00e4hrend wir offensichtlich weiterhin neue Planeten produzieren.\n\n\n\nDie Schnee-Bodentexturen in Microtech sind meiner Meinung nach etwas glanzlos (verglichen mit Spielen wie God of War oder The Last of us 2), der Grund daf\u00fcr ist, dass viele der Bodentexturen in Microtech anscheinend nicht bespokly als Schnee-Textur erstellt wurden, Viele (aber nicht alle) sehen aus, als w\u00e4ren sie von anderen Monden und Planeten recycelt worden, und sind einfach wei\u00df geworden. Auch scheinen viele von ihnen viel zu viele Gruben und Schattenbereiche zu produzieren (dies ist eigentlich ein immer wiederkehrendes Problem mit bestimmten Arten von Texturen, die auf vielen unserer Monde und Planeten verwendet werden, ich nenne sie die flach-welligen Grubentexturen, Sie sehen aus bestimmten Blickwinkeln immer seltsam aus)\nIrgendwelche Pl\u00e4ne, sich an sie ranzumachen?\n\n\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nWas ihr auf dem Screenshot seht, sind unsere \"Mittelgro\u00dfen Normalen\", die die Detaill\u00fccke zwischen den Nahaufnahmen der Bodentexturen und den \"Lokalen Gel\u00e4ndetexturen\" alias H\u00f6he und den dazugeh\u00f6rigen Daten schlie\u00dfen sollen. Diese sind im Moment ziemlich zuf\u00e4llig verteilt und es ist nicht immer einfach, genau das Bild zu bekommen, das wir wollen.\n\nWir arbeiten derzeit daran, die Planet Tech n\u00e4her an ihren urspr\u00fcnglich geplanten Zustand zu bringen, was uns viel mehr Kontrolle dar\u00fcber erlaubt, wo und wie diese platziert werden, um einen besseren \u00dcbergang und Gesamtrahmen auf allen Entfernungen zu erhalten. Also ja, diese werden stark \u00fcberarbeitet werden, sobald die Tech-\u00c4nderung eintritt.\n\n\nWirst du alle oder fast alle Steine entfernen (mit der Gras-Tech) und Stra\u00dfen auf den Planeten\/Monden hinzuf\u00fcgen, um sie besser befahren zu k\u00f6nnen?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nAnstatt \"k\u00fcnstliche\" Stra\u00dfen f\u00fcr unber\u00fchrte Gebiete eines Mondes oder Planeten zu schaffen, optimieren wir die Dichte und die Platzierung der Felsen, um \"nat\u00fcrliche\" Stra\u00dfen erscheinen zu lassen, indem wir nicht \u00fcberall Felsen laichen lassen.\n\n\nWie geht euer Team derzeit mit dem Thema Crusader's Clouds um, was wurde getan, oder was habt ihr vor zu tun\/zu verwenden?\nPascal Muller:\n\nBis jetzt haben wir gute Ergebnisse erzielt. Wir benutzen die Planetentechnologie als Basis. Es ist jedoch noch etwas fr\u00fch, um genaue Details \u00fcber den endg\u00fcltigen Rahmen zu geben.\n\n\nWird es Unterwasserpflanzen, POIs etc. geben?\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nH\u00f6chstwahrscheinlich, aber das ist im Moment keine Priorit\u00e4t f\u00fcr uns, da andere Abteilungen erst an Dingen arbeiten m\u00fcssten, die den Spielern den Zugang zu diesen Umgebungen erm\u00f6glichen.\n\n\nWann k\u00f6nnen wir andere Varianten von H\u00f6hleneing\u00e4nge sehen? d.h. das gladiusgro\u00dfe Loch zeigte sich in einer ISC-Episode vor einer Weile.\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nJa. Was wir auf dem ISC gezeigt haben, war keine Wegwerfarbeit und wird in Zukunft wieder aufgegriffen werden. Pers\u00f6nlich bin ich nicht zufrieden mit der Variationsbreite unserer H\u00f6hleneing\u00e4nge, aber das ist etwas, was wir aus unserer ersten Ver\u00f6ffentlichung lernen mussten. Wir haben einen soliden Plan, wie wir das in Zukunft f\u00fcr Tier 2 l\u00f6sen k\u00f6nnen, also bleibt dran.\n\n\nZuerst einmal vielen Dank f\u00fcr eure Arbeit und Leidenschaft. Meine Frage dreht sich um die Meeresumgebungen der Planeten: Hast du jemals dar\u00fcber nachgedacht, Umgebungen zu schaffen, die man durch Eintauchen ins Wasser erreichen kann?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nIch danke euch! Du kannst bereits einen Reiz von marinen Ressourcen wie Korallen und Algen auf einigen existierenden Monden und Planeten finden, die einen Ozean haben, wie Hurston. Unser Team in DE ist mehr als aufgeregt, in Zukunft mit der Arbeit an Unterwasserumgebungen zu beginnen, aber solange wir noch kein Unterwasser-Gameplay haben, ist das im Moment keine Priorit\u00e4t.\n\n\nIrgendwelche Pl\u00e4ne, noch mehr hinzuzuf\u00fcgen und die Bibliothek organischer Verm\u00f6genswerte von existierenden Planeten wie Hurston und Microtech zu erweitern?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWir verbessern bestehende Sets immer dann, wenn wir ein Tech-Update bekommen oder neue organische Assets, wie Steine oder Pflanzen, hinzuf\u00fcgen. Wenn wir das Gef\u00fchl haben, dass wir etwas haben, das ein bestehendes Asset auf einem \u00e4lteren Mond ersetzen k\u00f6nnte, gehen wir rein und tauschen es aus.\n\n\nArbeitest du oder hast du Pl\u00e4ne, auf so etwas wie einer paradiesischen Insel mit kristallklarem Wasser, wei\u00dfem Sand und Str\u00e4nden und solchen Dingen zu arbeiten? Wirst du so etwas in SC sehen?\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nWir haben erst k\u00fcrzlich an glaubw\u00fcrdigeren Str\u00e4nden und K\u00fcstenlinien gearbeitet, aber erwarte nicht, dass sie wei\u00dfen Sand haben.\n\n\nWie viel Einfluss habt ihr auf das Design, die \u00dcberlieferung und die Funktion der Erntemaschinen? Irgendwas Interessantes, das ihr mit uns teilen m\u00f6chtet oder einen Hinweis darauf, was wir in Crusader oder in der Pyro schweben sehen k\u00f6nnten?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili:\n\nDer \u00fcbliche Prozess eines Harvestables besteht darin, dass das Lore Team mit Ideen f\u00fcr das Harvestable aufwartet und diese an das Concept Art Team schickt, wo sie das Harvestable zusammen mit unserem Art Director visualisieren werden. Wenn das Konzept fertig ist, bespricht das Environment-Art-Team das Harvestable mit dem Art Director und wir als K\u00fcnstler k\u00f6nnen uns immer noch zus\u00e4tzliche Ideen f\u00fcr das Design oder die Funktion einfallen lassen.\n\n\nHilft das Team in Frankfurt beim Aufbau der Ausr\u00fcstung f\u00fcr Squadron 42, oder ist es ausschlie\u00dflich f\u00fcr die PU?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nDas Frankfurter Team schafft in erster Linie Werte f\u00fcr das persistente Universum. Aufgrund der sehr unterschiedlichen technischen und visuellen Anforderungen sowie Einschr\u00e4nkungen gibt es f\u00fcr unser spezifisches Team weniger Cross-Over.\n\nWenn es um Werkzeuge geht, die wir f\u00fcr die PU entwickeln, sind andere Teams, einschlie\u00dflich derer, die an S42 arbeiten, nat\u00fcrlich willkommen, diese zu benutzen, wenn es ihnen hilft, ihre Ziele zu erreichen und ihr Feedback bei der Entwicklung ber\u00fccksichtigt wird, wobei das gr\u00f6\u00dfte Beispiel die Planet Tech ist.\n\n\nK\u00f6nnen Planeten hohl oder ohne gro\u00dfe Brocken sein?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nMit der aktuellen Version von Planet Tech k\u00f6nnen sie nicht hohl sein oder gro\u00dfe Brocken fehlen. Es k\u00f6nnte andere Ans\u00e4tze f\u00fcr den Bau von Planeten geben, sollten wir einen Planeten bauen, der es tats\u00e4chlich braucht, oder \u00c4nderungen an der Tech vornehmen, um dies zu erm\u00f6glichen, aber wir werden diese Br\u00fccke \u00fcberqueren, wenn wir dazu kommen.\n\n\nWerden in Zukunft Raum\/Land-Minabeln aufeinander gestapelt f\u00fcr eine Vielzahl von Minenfahrzeugen laichen? IE: Wird es Hand-Minabeln geben, auf der Oberfl\u00e4che von Sch\u00fcrfer-Minabeln, auf der Oberfl\u00e4che von Orion-Minabeln, die alle so verklumpt sind, dass mehrere Ausr\u00fcstungen ben\u00f6tigt werden, um einen Asteroiden oder Knoten vollst\u00e4ndig zu ernten?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWir haben bereits Gesteine, die in der ersten Person abbaubar sind und auf den gr\u00f6\u00dferen Schiffen abbaubar sind. Die Idee dahinter ist, dass du aus deinem Goldsucher herauskommen musst, wenn du ein kleineres abbaubares Gestein entdeckst und das Multi-Tool benutzt, und dann zur\u00fcck in den Goldsucher gehst, um das abbaubare Schiff selbst abzubauen. Wir planen, diese Funktionalit\u00e4t in Zukunft noch weiter auszubauen.\n\n\nEs w\u00e4re interessant, Planeten mit fleischfressender Vegetation zu haben, gef\u00e4hrlich, aber gleichzeitig profitabel. Es w\u00e4re sch\u00f6n, bestimmte Pflanzen oder Tiere \/ Aliens sammeln zu k\u00f6nnen, um sie in privaten (Schwarzmarkt) oder regulierten Kontexten zu verkaufen. k\u00f6nnte so etwas geschaffen werden?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili:\n\nWir haben einige Pl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr gef\u00e4hrliche Landschaften und gef\u00e4hrliche Pflanzen in der Zukunft. Um eine fleischfressende Vegetation zu schaffen, m\u00fcssten wir animierte Botaniken bauen, was eine Zusammenarbeit mit unserer Animationsabteilung bedeuten w\u00fcrde. Die Ingenieure m\u00fcssten auch daf\u00fcr sorgen, dass die Pflanze auf den Spieler reagiert, wenn er eine bestimmte Entfernung betritt.\n\n\nKannst du \u00fcber die Zukunft des Bergbaus sprechen, sowohl auf den Planeten als auch im Weltraum? Wie nah an dem, was wir jetzt in Form und Lage der Felsen haben, ist es an dem, was f\u00fcr den endg\u00fcltigen Zustand vorgesehen ist?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nEs ist schwierig zu sagen, wie der endg\u00fcltige Stand des Bergbaus aussehen wird, da wir immer auf das Feedback h\u00f6ren, das wir von euch bekommen, und das System entsprechend verbessern. Ich pers\u00f6nlich sehe die derzeitige Implementierung des Bergbaus als eine gute Basis, die wir ausbauen wollen.\n\n\nBer\u00fccksichtigst du bei der Gestaltung von Umgebungen (wenn wir zum Beispiel schwimmen gehen, wollen wir vielleicht ein paar sch\u00f6ne Klippen zum Tauchen oder h\u00fcbsche Buchten oder Unterwasserh\u00f6hlen, oder vielleicht eine Art riesigen dicken Baum schaffen, der uns vor der K\u00e4lte oder so sch\u00fctzen kann)?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWir werden immer zu \u00e4lteren Planeten und Monden zur\u00fcckkehren, um sicherzustellen, dass wir alle Gameplay-Updates unterst\u00fctzen. Als wir zum Beispiel den Bergbau implementiert haben, haben wir daf\u00fcr gesorgt, dass wir auf jedem Planeten und Mond eine Bergbau-Gesteinsvariante erstellen und verteilen. Wir wollen nicht, dass die Leute das Gef\u00fchl haben, es g\u00e4be keinen Grund mehr, Daymar oder Yela zu besuchen, weil andere Planeten \"mehr\" Gameplay haben.\n\n\nHaftungsausschluss\n\n\nDie Antworten geben die Absichten der Entwicklung zum Zeitpunkt des Schreibens genau wieder, aber die Firma und das Entwicklerteam behalten sich das Recht vor, Feature- und Schiffsdesigns aufgrund von Feedback, Spieltests, Design\u00fcberarbeitungen oder anderen \u00dcberlegungen anzupassen, zu verbessern oder zu \u00e4ndern, um die Balance oder die Qualit\u00e4t des Spiels insgesamt zu verbessern.","zh_CN":"Environment Art AMA Recap\n\nEach month we host an open submission live Q&A on Spectrum hosted by developers from various specialties across CIG. These questions and answers were collected from the Spectrum AMA on August 19th, 2020.\n\n\nThis time, we welcomed seven guests from the Environment Art team working on planets & organic locations in Star Citizen:\n\nMaximilian Keilich | Senior Environment Artist\nHello! I have been in the industry for 5 years and joined CIG in 2017. You may not know me, but I am one of the people who tend to put too many rocks on the moons and planets, we will figure out the perfect amount of rocks, no worries! I have also worked on the mineable rocks and enjoy watching you guys blow them up.\n\nFlorian Sollaneck | Environment Artist\nI\u2019ve been in the industry for 7 years and since I\u2019ve started at CIG 4 years ago I\u2019ve been working on planetary content as part of the DE Environment Team. Together with the rest of my team I\u2019ve helped in the creation of your planet tools, the Stanton planets, moons and assets for them. Last year I\u2019ve explored (hehe) our cave tech which was an especially challenging but enjoyable project.\n\nPascal Muller | Senior Environment Artist\nI\u2019m a senior environment artist in the organics team. I started at CIG almost 5 years ago. Have been working on the planet tech and the organics team since day one. Very proud of the team. Also I don\u2019t see why one should not like a good noodle soup.\n\nVanessa B\u00f6lke | Environment Artist\nHi!! I\u2019ve been working at CIG for 3 years now as an Environment Artist. I am working with the rest of the organics team on planets and helping to develop the planet tech. I am creating assets together with the team to populate the large planet and moon surfaces but I also did vegetation assets for indoor environments such as New Babbage.\n\nSebastian Schroeder | Senior Environment Artist\nHi, I\u2019ve been in the games industry for over 10 years and 3 years at CIG. I don\u2019t do much in terms of art anymore and focus mostly on improving our planet tech and associated pipelines. I might need a more fitting job title.\n\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili | Senior Environment Artist\nHi! I\u2019ve been working at CIG for almost 4 years now and my main responsibility is to create anything vegetation related and distributing those on our planets. I really enjoyed creating different biomes for Hurston and Microtech. I also worked on harvestables and sometimes have to do some very weird (but funny) things that you guys can collect like the ranta dung for example.\n\nPatrick Gladys | Senior Environment Artist\nMy career began at Crytek, where I contributed to projects such as Crysis 3, Ryse: Son of Rome, and others. In 2015 I joined DICE in Stockholm, Sweden to work on the visually acclaimed Star Wars: Battlefront. After completing Battlefront 2, I moved back to Germany for the ambitious Star Citizen at Cloud Imperium Games \u2013 building procedural content like planets, caves, and materials.\n\nThis AMA is complete but keep an eye out for upcoming threads for your chance to ask us anything!\n\n\nPyro has a lava planet, are we going to see lava flow everywhere or will it be static? And\/or maybe volcanoes (that are active)\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nUnfortunately our tech currently does not support flowing lava (or even water) so the art direction of the planet was changed to have static, cooled down lava instead. It is definitely something we want to tackle properly in the future though \u2013 either as an update to Pyro III or a different planet in a different system.\n\n\nWill we ever see forests like in the carrack trailer in the PU?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili:\n\nThere are definitely ideas and concepts for having forests or jungles for upcoming systems.\n\nThe Stanton system we worked on until now didn\u2019t require lush biomes and the tech wasn\u2019t ready to scatter millions of plants to create a dense forest. We\u2019re still improving our tech to allow us to have more assets on a planet. But the environment team is already looking forward to try out something new and create some beautiful forests in the future.\n\n\nFor years we have seen the development of planetary\/biome creation toolsets. The assumption being that once you have enough biomes and assets added to this that you\u2019ll be able to move onto making multiple star systems. What are the current targets and goals for these tools and the expanding gameplay area in the short, medium and long term?\nPatrick Gladys:\n\nAs you know our asset libraries contain everything from geology, vegetation, surface materials etc. Let\u2019s say we get to a point where these libraries are filled with a great number of different archetypes of rock formations, cliffs, trees, flowers and more. The bigger and more diverse of a selection of assets that we already have, the less likely it is that we need to invest time into creating new content for new planets.\n\nExample A: For a generic dusty rocky moon we have most assets we need \u2013 so we can start immediately putting together the moon and more similar variations if we want to.\n\nExample B: Let\u2019s say we are asked to create a tropical island planet \u2013 in that case we need to build all\nthe necessary content (palm trees, tropical shrubbery etc.) that is required, since those are not yet part of our asset libraries at this point.\n\nThe long term objective is to build up strong asset packs that can be reused for the majority of planets so that we can focus on adding more systems quicker. Due to our tools, we\u2019d still have the capabilities to make planets feel drastically different despite some assets being reused\n\nSignificant tech & tools work was done every year so far and the most recent update lets us create a moon\/planet even faster (again) while being more flexible than before, letting us update planets way easier which lets us do tweaks more often and achieve better quality. We are quite happy with the improvements and the team is looking forward to what can be done on the current basis of it in the future.\n\n\nMoving forward beyond gas giants, what is your team currently working on regarding new planet biomes coming in the future?\nPascal Muller:\n\nWhen we moved over to working on the Pyro system, we created and are still creating new assets on all levels of content to build completely unique and fresh biomes.\n\nFrom an art direction point of view we want to make sure that there is a clear differentiation between the Stanton and Pyro system.\n\nIf you are on a planet in the Pyro system you will know it\u2019s the Pyro system.\n\n\nWhat can you tell us on the progress of the Pyro System?\nPatrick Gladys:\n\nHey man!\n\nThe team has already been working on Pyro for some time and it\u2019s progressing quite well. We have also not seen any decrease in the teams weekly output considering the WFH situation!\n\nNew geology packs, surface materials are constantly being added to our libraries that allow us to construct exciting and fresh biomes with very different looks.\n\nImproving existing assets from a quality point of view is also being worked on to ensure consistency between the new and old libraries.\n\nBesides creating all the content necessary for Pyro, there is work being done on the planet-tech and tools, which has always been a dependency \u2013 any changes to tech mean some kind of rework or adjustment on our end as well.\n\nThis is a very good thing, because with these new changes any updates\/tweaks in the future can be done much quicker in the future.\n\n\nHow will planets be updated with new biomes? Meaning will only newer planets get the updated biomes or will existing planets be reworked when more biomes join the game?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nWith one of the recent updates to the Planet Tech we are now able to add and change everything on a planet in a very non-destructive and much more procedural way than we could when we originally re-created the existing planets\/moons end of last year. The improvement allows us to go back to any planet and every biome on them and update\/improve and even add new ones if the necessity arises as well as giving us more natural transitions between them.\n\n\nWhat is the status of any work towards a Road generation tool? This was first talked about a few citcons back but I haven\u2019t heard much since.\nPascal Muller:\n\nIn the past we did create height maps with some basic forms of roads. An example would be the mining pits on Hurston. This is not an ideal solution and we will definitely be working to create more sophisticated roads in the future.\n\n\nCurrently there are a LOT of rocks on planets\/moons. This makes driving around with wheeled vehicles hard. Will we see a reduction of the amount of surface rocks in the future?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWe are tweaking the amount of rocks on all existing and upcoming moons and planets to make traversal in vehicles more comfortable.\n\n\nCan we expect huge and unique planetary terrain formations like big craters (like on old 2.x Yela) or hollows visible from orbit?\nPatrick Gladys:\n\nHuge craters, yes! Sometimes when we tackle new planets, we experiment a bit trying to figure out how to get visual features like these in using our updated tools.\n\n\nWhat are the next steps for Planet Tech V4?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nWe\u2019ve had a lot of improvements to the tech being implemented lately and it\u2019s getting closer to what it was originally envisioned to be when we set out on the planetary tech and planet rework. With those and a few more improvements that are still being worked on right now that will bring the Planet Tech to a state where we can create and iterate on existing and new planets\/moons very quickly and have everything come together for a more coherent, final frame. So right now the focus is mostly on improving quality\/speed and once that is in a really solid place we\u2019ll look into new, currently unanswered challenges.\n\n\nWill trees ever be breakable when a superheavy spaceship rams them?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili\n\nWe definitely want to have breakable vegetation in the future, but right now there has not been any work or R&D on that.\n\nWe\u2019re currently doing R&D for touch bending so that botanicals will bend when the player walks through them\/a vehicle drives through. Breakable vegetation would be the next step then!\n\n\nThere are a lot of old geology assets in the game that are quite subpar in quality compared to the new ones (the rocks in daymar, The spiky ones in delamar\u2026etc), Will they ever get replaced with better ones?\nSebastian Schroeder\n\nYes, and very soon as well \u2013 we are currently in the process of replacing a lot of the old geology assets with new, better ones using the new organics shader and will continue to do so until all are on the same quality level.\n\n\nAre you working on different kind of caves? icy? Alien ones? Can you give us some information about those?\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nNot at the moment. The focus for us right now is on Pyro planets. We had many ideas for caves that had to be put on the backlog in order to ship tier 1. We will revisit those once it is time to expand existing planets with more POIs but just to give you an example we have prototypes for caves you can enter with different sized vehicles.\n\n\nWhy are the icy caves from the citizencon demo not in the game? Thats a bit misleading that we only got the regular copy pasted ones with Microtech considering you said once we get SSOCS we will have hundreds of different caves across a planet.\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nThe cave shown at CitizenCon is very similar to the ones currently placed down on Microtech and its moons. You\u2019re right \u2013 now with SSOCS we are not bound by the number of caves in the verse anymore. The reason we didn\u2019t invest more time either just generating new rocky caves or actually working on completely new archetypes like ice caves is the question of importance and currently Pyro has a higher priority for now. Personally I would love to get back working on the next tier of caves improving their versatility, add more archetypes, gameplay opportunities etc. There was so much feedback from the community and it\u2019s all written down on my personal notebook waiting to get undusted once we shift gears and begin additional work on caves.\n\n\nWith the development of Crusader, is there development on tools that will make Gas Giants easier to produce in the future? (similar to Planet Tech)\nPascal Muller:\n\nCrusader is our starting point when it comes to gas giants. Once we are happy with the way it looks, there is no reason for us not to reuse that tech to help us create additional gas giants.\n\n\nWhats the next major hurdle for Planets? (geological formations, rivers, denser vegetation \/ forests)\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nOnce the current \u201cround\u201d of improvements to the planet tech is implemented and applied to our existing content we actually intend to have a look at exactly those three things you mention together with engineering and spend time to research on how to solve those big questions.\n\nWhile continuing to produce new planets obviously.\n\u2003\n\n\nThe snow ground textures in microtech are somewhat lackluster my opinion (compared to game like God of war or the last of us 2) the reason being is that a lot of the ground textures in microtech don\u2019t seem to have been created bespokly as a snow texture, Many (but not all of them) look to be recycled from other moons and planets, And just turned white in color. Also a lot of them seem to produce way too much pits and shadow area (this is actually a reoccurring problem with certain types of textures used across many of our moons and planets, I call them the shallow-wavy-pits textures, They always look weird from certain angles)\nAny plans to make a pass on them?\n\u2003\n\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nWhat you are seeing in the screenshot are our \u201cmedium scale normals\u201d that are intended to bridge the detail gap between close-up ground textures and the \u201clocal terrain textures\u201d aka elevation and the accompanying data. Those are distributed quite randomly at the moment and it\u2019s not always easy to get the exact visual we want.\n\nWe are currently working on getting the Planet Tech closer to it\u2019s originally envisioned state which will allow us much more control as to where and how those are placed to get a better transition and overall frame at all distances. So yes, those will be heavily reworked once that tech change comes in.\n\n\nAre you going to remove all or almost all the rocks (with the grass tech) and add roads on the the planets\/moons for a better drive on them?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nInstead of creating \u201cartificial\u201d roads for pristine areas of a moon or planet, we are tweaking the density and placement of rocks to have \u201cnatural\u201d roads appear by not spawning rocks everywhere.\n\n\nHow is your team currently tackling the issue of Crusader\u2019s clouds, what has been done, or what are you planning to do\/use?\nPascal Muller:\n\nWe have achieved good results so far. We are using the planet tech as a base. However it is a bit early to give exact details on the final frame.\n\n\nWill there be underwater Plants ,POIs etc ?\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nMost likely but it\u2019s not a priority for us right now since other departments would first need to work on things that allow players to access those environments.\n\n\nWhen can we see other variants of cave entrances? ie. The gladius size hole showed off on a ISC episode awhile back.\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nYes. What we showed in the ISC was no throwaway work and will get picked up in the future again. Personally I\u2019m not satisfied with the amount of variation our cave entrances have but that\u2019s something we had to learn from our first release. We\u2019ve got a solid plan on how to solve this in the future for tier 2 so stay tuned.\n\n\nFirst of all, thank you for your work and passion. My question is centered on marine environments in the planets: have you ever thought about creating environments that can be reached by immersing yourself in water?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nThank you! You can already find a tease of marine assets like coral and seaweed on some existing moons and planets which have an ocean, like Hurston. Our team in DE is more than excited to start working on underwater environments in the future, but until we have underwater gameplay it is not a priority right now.\n\n\nAny plans to add more and expand the library of organic assets of existing planets like hurston and microtech?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWe are always improving existing sets whenever we get a tech update or add new organic assets, like rocks or plants. When we feel we have something that could replace an existing asset on an older moon, we go in and swap it out.\n\n\n\nAre you working or have plans to work on something like a paradise island with crystal clear water, white sands and beaches and things like that? Do will see something like that in SC?\nFlorian Sollaneck:\n\nWe\u2019ve just recently worked on more believable beaches and coastlines but don\u2019t expect them to have white sand.\n\n\nHow much influence do you have on the harvestables design, lore and function? Anything interesting you\u2019d like to share or hint at what we might see floating in Crusader or melting around Pyro?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili:\n\nThe usual process of a harvestable is that the lore team comes up with harvestable ideas and sends this over to the concept art team where they will visualize the harvestable together with our Art Director. When the concept is done the environment art team will discuss the harvestable with the Art Director and we as artists can always come up with additional ideas for the design or function.\n\n\nDoes the team in Frankfurt help build assets for Squadron 42, Or is it exclusively for the PU?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nThe Frankfurt team primarily creates assets for the persistent universe. Due to very different technical and visual requirements as well as limitations, for our specific team, there\u2019s less cross-over.\n\nWhen it comes to tools we develop for the PU though other teams, including those working on S42, are obviously welcome to use these if it helps achieve their goals and their feedback is taken into account when developing them, with the biggest example being the Planet Tech.\n\n\n\nCan planets be hollow or without big chunks?\nSebastian Schroeder:\n\nUsing the current version of Planet Tech they can not be hollow or missing big chunks. There might be other approaches to building planets should we get to building a planet that actually needs it or changes to the tech to allow for that, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.\n\n\nWill space\/land minables in the future spawn stacked ontop of one another for a variety of mining vehicles? IE: Will you have Hand minables, on the surface of prospector minables, on the surface of Orion minables all clumped together so multiple equipment is needed to fully harvest an asteroid or node?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWe already have first person mineable rocks spawning on the bigger ship mineables. The idea behind it being that you need to get out of your prospector when you spot a smaller mineable and use the multi tool, then head back into the Prospector to mine the ship mineable itself. We do plan to expand that functionality more in the future.\n\n\nIt would be interesting to have planets with carnivorous vegetation, dangerous but at the same time profitable. it would be nice to be able to collect particular plants or animals \/ aliens to sell in private (black market) or regularized contexts. could something like this be created?\n\u00d6zlem Sagbili:\n\nWe do have some plans for hazardous landscapes and dangerous plants in the future. To create carnivorous vegetation we would need to build animated botanicals, which would mean working together with our animation department. The engineers would also need to implement that the plant reacts to the player when he enters a certain distance.\n\n\nCan you talk about the future of mining, both on planets and in space? How close to what we have now in the shape and location of rocks is it to what is envisioned for the final state?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nTricky to say what the final state of mining is going to look like, since we are always listening to the feedback we get from you guys, improving the system accordingly. Personally I see the current implementation of mining as a good base that we plan to expand upon.\n\n\nDo you take possible future gameplay into account when crafting environments (for example, when we have swimming, we might want some nice cliffs to dive from or pretty coves or underwater caves, or maybe creating a type of huge thick tree that can shelter us from the cold or anything)?\nMaximilian Keilich:\n\nWe will always go back to older planets and moons to make sure we support whatever gameplay updates come in. For example when we implemented mining, we made sure to create and distribute a mining rock variation on each planet and moon. We do not want people to feel like there is no reason anymore to visit Daymar or Yela, because other planets have \u201cmore\u201d gameplay.\n\n\nDisclaimer\nThe answers accurately reflect development\u2019s intentions at the time of writing, but the company and development team reserve the right to adapt, improve, or change feature and ship designs in response to feedback, playtesting, design revisions, or other considerations to improve balance or the quality of the game overall."},"links_count":0,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2020-08-21T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"5 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-08 15:07:45","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":17734,"next_id":17737}}