Sean Tracy:
Well there's a lot of LITTLE STUFF but there's some BIG TICKET ITEMS and some of the BIG TICKET ITEMS all centre around SQUADRON 42 so we've got AI and CINEMATICS... and a lot of people would think that they're not necessarily related, but within STAR CITIZEN they absolutely are, because we NEED to be able to SIGNAL these AI to transition into the very CINEMATIC MODES that we've got... we've got SO MUCH performance capture that we want to ahhh... allow this player to experience... we've got these HUGE NAME ACTORS, we want you to be WITHIN THAT STORY but at the same time we don't wanna just cut out to a... DECOUPLED CUT SCENE where a camera's flying around... we want you to be LIVING in this world...
Brian Chambers:
That's the one thing, I mean the... I was answering some questions earlier and they were like 'oh, are you gonna do a TRANSITION and then it's a... just a BIG CUT SCENE with no interaction and the answer is IT'S ALL OVER THE PLACE, there's so many things that we're creatively doing seamlessly... sometimes the player's on rails... sometimes you cut away but only for CERTAIN REASONS if it helps with the STORY and all that... and all that with AI in it, that's just... MESS
Sean Tracy:
That's right and we... you know... we... we got them REACTING to you, we need them having CONVERSATIONS with you, we need them giving you MISSIONS, we need... ah... all level of... all levels of different INTERPLAY between it... and then... we've got so much CONTENT that we HAVE TO GET IN so we have to figure out the BEST WAY to get it in because... uhm... SURE we can do these... the... the kind of OLD STYLE WAY were actually plugging in very bespoke scripted sequences... but AGAIN when we've got HOURS AND HOURS OF CINEMATICS, when we've got... hours and hours of GAMEPLAY that has to play between the two... we have to be very intelligent over how we actually implement this... this WORK
Brian Chambers:
And in part of that process, at least that I've been involved in, I mean, we're creating a system that from the foundation is going to... allow for all these different TYPES of events, behaviours, the different WAYS we want them triggered... all the VARIABLES we want them to do and not do... and that I think is what a lot of that focus has been on, is 'OK, what is that SOLID FOUNDATION' and get the rest of those, just FEW QUESTIONS that are UNANSWERED, get those SORTED.
Sean Tracy:
Right and when we have so many questions like that... it's a lot easier for everybody to get TOGETHER, uhm... because... like... LIKE YOU SAID we... we... we COLLABORATE really well across the STUDIOS... BUT!... Ah... There is something to be said for ALL OF THE PEOPLE being in ONE PLACE because you get this one little question HERE, this one little question HERE, before long you're DEATH BY A THOUSAND PAPERCUTS because... ah... if you've gotta wait a few hours for that answer you can't just really quickly COME UP WITH A NICE DESIGN PLAN so... there's things we're ADJUSTING like the ANIMATION PIPELINE to make it so we can accomplish all these AI AND CINEMATICS