EVE Frontier - The Visual Target of Frontier w/ CCP Jötunn and CCP Maximum Cats

EVE Frontier: Visuelle Ziele, Grafikfortschritt und technische Grundlagen

CCP
- 18.04.25 - 01:48:43 - 6.741 - EVE Frontier

• Zusammenfassung
• Original

EVE Frontier enthüllt seine visuellen Ziele und den grafischen Fortschritt. Die Entwicklung konzentriert sich auf technische Grundlagen, Shader-Technologien und die Erstellung detaillierter Assets. Ein pseudo-realistischer Look, inspiriert von brauner Sci-Fi, soll eine immersive Weltraum-Erfahrung schaffen. Die Carbon Engine ermöglicht die Handhabung riesiger Objekte und komplexer physikalischer Berechnungen.

EVE Frontier

00:00:00

00:05:06 Hello everybody, and welcome to another Eve Frontier livestream. I am CCP Jotun, and I was joined a moment ago by CCP Cat, who does not seem to understand that I've tried to lure her up here with treats. It's okay, it's fine. I'm not going crazy here on a holiday by myself, alone in my home. I'm in fact here with all of you on this livestream here. It's a beautiful Tuesday, a lovely day in Reykjavik. Ah, there she is, of course. Easily coerced with food.

00:05:35 But yes, this is actually a pre-recorded stream, not right now, this is live. But we are going to be seeing a pre-recorded stream we did yesterday with CCP Maximum Cats talking about the visual target of EVE Frontier. And I'm so excited to be able to show this with you. This is kind of a big one. This has been kind of a long time coming for us. I need to put that camera box back up because it does not quite mesh with the background.

00:06:03 We'll figure that out later. But this is a huge stream. There's a ton of really cool stuff. I've never seen myself before in this stream. And it's going to be a lot of fun. So I'll be back at the end to talk about a couple more administrative things before we get out of here. But for the next hour and 40 minutes or so, I will go ahead and pass it over to myself from the past and CCP Maximum Cats. Take it away me from 24 hours ago.

00:06:33 All right. Welcome back, everybody. This is another E-Frontier livestream that we are doing, but it's not live. This is a recorded livestream. This is a recorded stream that we've done as you're watching this about 24 hours ago, because hopefully all of us are in bed right now. It is a holiday in Iceland, probably a holiday in wherever you're at as well, I hope, I pray. But joining us today, how exciting is this? We have not had...

00:07:01 This is our beloved Game Director, Savant, if you will. Not Game Director, Game Design Director. No, not Game Design, Creative Director. Got it in three. Third time's the charm. Our Creative Director, CCP Maximum Cats. Maximum Cats, hello and welcome back to the stream. How are you?

00:07:21 Hello, hello. Very good. Good to be here. I'm glad to hear that. We have not had you on in a minute. The stress of not having your presence here, it just kills me. It's the worst. This is a stream week. So you and I have talked about this for the last couple of weeks because this is one that we knew we were going to do at some point, right? Because this is one of the things that gets brought up a lot, especially, you know, in terms of like...

00:07:47 When you're talking about space games in general, right? Space games have to hit a certain aesthetic, right? People are looking for a certain vibe visually. And EVE has done a great job at this. While people will complain that the standard interface of EVE is very much not showcasing the quality of the work at hand because of how pulled back most of the scenes are and how little you actually see of the ships and people spend all this money and stuff on scams.

00:08:17 Aber du kannst nicht sehen die Skins. Du kannst nicht die Arbeit der Team gemacht haben, um eine Aesthetik zu tun. Und es ist unglaublich. Ich glaube, ich glaube, ich glaube, ich glaube, ich glaube, ich glaube, ich glaube, ich glaube, ich glaube, ich glaube, dass sie das Gefühl haben, dass sie das Gefühl haben. Und Frontier ist nicht anders.

00:08:39 Frontier is no different. I mean, you are in charge of, you know, the creative teams. Obviously, you guys have a whole plan, a whole strategy, I imagine, for how a vision, a vision for how you imagine the Frontier is going to look. So I guess before we get started, because this is, and we, like, I guess I love it with this to say, the intention of us doing the stream now is that we want to showcase

00:09:04 um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um,

00:09:20 We do want to showcase direction, because we're already seeing a lot of direction. We're seeing a lot of, you know, you look at the inside of the NPC stations in-game currently, and you see these soaring monoliths, these ancient structures. They don't have all the, there's not the same sense of activity, of civilization almost. It's very distinct from EVE, and very distinct from a lot of other games that take place in space. I feel like, and I don't want to...

00:09:48 Aber es ist das Gefühl, dass viele Spiele, viele Spiele in diesem Genre haben diese Spiele empires, diese Sorgen-Civilisationen. Das macht mich mehr in die Meinung, Metroid Prime.

00:10:04 The vibes you get from what is effectively an abandoned world that used to have high civilization and never doesn't anymore. What kind of inspirations do you guys look for when you're talking about the visual aesthetic of a game like Frontier?

00:10:21 Hmm, we often do, and as you alluded, we often do find ourselves looking at things that are lying outside of confines of what is the norm of science fiction. Sometimes we, lately we're describing the general general vibe of the experience as kind of Conan the Barbarian in space. So, you know, it's more...

00:10:46 Es ist mehr mythisch, es ist mehr, wie wir auch sagen, als die Welt der älteren Zukunft, wo mehr Zeit langsamer hat, seit der Menschheit verlassen, als in der Realität, wie viel mehr Zeit langsamer, als in der Realität, zwischen der Älteren und der heutigen Zeit. So, es gibt viele mehr Dinge, die wir vergessen haben, als wir noch nie wissen. Und gleichzeitig versuchen wir zu schauen...

00:11:10 We look past the surface veneer of the sci-fi genre as an interpretation of reality into the actual reality. And if we look at space out there, even as much as we understand it now, and our understanding of it is evolving in real time lately. We're starting to realize that a lot of things in the physics just don't really adapt now that we have these much longer range capabilities for astronomy.

00:11:39 So we look at that world and we see something that is like, it's kind of, it's insane in an existential way. It's like the scales of everything and just the nature of things are, you can't even call them, you know, unfriendly to human life or inhospitable. They're just, they're on completely different scale. Like they don't know, they can't know what life even is. Right. So we are trying to capture a lot of that. So, you know, the things that are, the things that are underlined.

00:12:08 den Sci-Fi als Genre und den Trigger als Genre zu Beginn, aber ohne so viel zu schauen, diese regurgitationen, surface-level Interpretation zu sehen, wie wir normalerweise sehen.

00:12:23 There's this line in one of the Warhammer books where it talks about the Temple of Correction, right, which is where the Rebute Gilman, one of the Primarchs, is resting in his stasis pod. And they say that the Temple of Correction, to build it, they use enough marble that you could use to build a mountain and enough plasticele to, you know, build an entire fleet of warships. And the scale, just to, you know, all of this to house, you know, one guy sitting in a chair. And so in my mind, the scale of these things often, I feel like, because we are...

00:12:52 We are creatures of our own understanding, right? We are limited by our own experiences. We don't have the reference, right? To make these comparisons for ourselves. So, you know, saying how big is the thing? What does it look like? How ancient is it? All of these are just kind of things that we can say.

00:13:16 But putting it in practice is a whole different matter. And that is the challenge that you guys have in front of you. Taking these ideas of ancient and huge and abandon on all these ideas and turning them into something tangible. Which is pretty cool. You have a presentation.

00:13:37 I'm so excited to see it. As usual. But your presentations are very good. I've never complained about any of your presentations. Some of these presentations, a little sus. I've seen the ones that Overload brings in, a little suspect. But we're going to go ahead and go over to this screen. And so you're going to show us some stuff. I'm going to say this one more time, everybody. Grain of salt. But also, I think there's probably some stuff in here that is...

00:14:05 Das ist gut. Das ist gut. Das ist nicht alles, was du sehen, oder nächsten Mal, oder wann. Aber es ist kommen. So, Mr. Katz, Mr. Maximum Katz, bitte, take es weg. Was hast du?

00:14:27 So, I'm planning to talk a little bit about the overall progress on our visuals, not even so much on the art style of it or the creative intent behind it. We had a stream on this and maybe there will be time for a stream that is more focused on art direction and concept art and what we're trying to do. This one is a little bit more about how we're trying to do it.

00:14:55 Es ist die Grafik, es ist wie all diese Art-Stuff ist gekommen. Weil wir haben wirklich cool Progräß da lately, das ich denke, wäre wirklich cool zu zeigen. Weil ein paar davon, wie du also alluded to, ist nicht so weit auf dem horizon. Es zeigt Dinge, die kommen, kommen schon wieder in einem besseren Form.

00:15:24 Some of these are in months, some of these are maybe in years, who knows. But the stuff that we're showing here right now is stuff that we're definitely sure about coming to life at some point. Not ideas land. So yeah, mostly focused on the graphics side of this stuff, but we'll touch on the broader context a little bit too.

00:15:49 So, yeah, to touch on just the general intent still first, you know, why do we need these particular capabilities? What do we use them for? What are we flashing out? If you might remember, we're building a, this is going to be a mouthful, a moddable, massively multiplayer online space survival for a role-playing game. Yes, pretty close, pretty close. Not too bad.

00:16:17 Ja, ja. In more simple terms, it's really good. In more simple terms, it's not so much more simple, but it's a runtime programmable, decentralized, single shard MMO. So we're really taking all of this modularity and modability and programmability and go into a new dimension.

00:16:45 Und es ist noch ein Teil der Universität, aber es ist eine ganz eigene Branche, mit ihrer eigenen Art und ihrer eigenen Weltbildung, ihrer eigenen Lore. Alles ist bespoke. Und wir haben unsere Technologie mit E-Online. Wir haben eine Carbon-Engine und Tools, die mit dem es kommt.

00:17:10 But we are updating a lot of the capabilities in order to realize this particular vision, because we realize that even if we have to rebuild just even line from scratch and you right now, we probably wouldn't be able to without updating some of the capabilities or even kind of rediscovering some of the capabilities. Sure.

00:17:33 We started with pretty much that. We started with not maybe trying to recreate EVE Online, but we started with a kind of a deep mod of EVE Online. We took EVE, a certain snapshot of EVE, we forked it, and we started to add some experimental features.

00:17:57 Because A, we're still in scope of discovery. We're trying to understand that this project is even worth doing. Maybe there is a world where we can just take ETH and add blockchain to it, add new T-Crate, which is another thing that we were experimented with. Just use it as a test bet for some things and call it day. And then we quickly realized that these were just baby steps. There is much more potential in creating its own thing out of it.

00:18:26 But that still allowed us to be very pragmatic about the development process, where we can stand on the shoulders of giants and not do things which we know we can do in the future, but we can also use off-the-shelf solutions from what Eve has done. So starting small, being very scrappy about using our existing technology, because...

00:18:49 Was there a moment in this early process where you realized, was it a gradual realization that what you were building was not just a mod of Eve or just like a fork of Eve that you would then, you know, do some testing on and then call it good? Or was it just like a flash in the pan? There was like a moment where you were like, oh, this is something completely different than what we were expecting. And was that a...

00:19:19 Es war relativ schnell, aber dann gab es auch ein bestimmtes Spieltest, wo ein vieles Feedback von einem sehr, sehr close-knit group von Testern hatte, war, dass, etwas Surprisingly, sie waren eher überstehend, um es zu weit entfernen von EVE auf allen Fronten, in Bezug auf die Lore, die Art Assets und alles. Und so, wir sahen das und sahen.

00:19:46 Ich meine, es ist mehr interessant für uns, auch, zu entwickeln neue Dinge. Vielleicht gibt es etwas. Und so diese Intents coalesce zusammen.

00:19:56 Ja, das ist das, was wir jetzt versuchen.

00:20:26 Es ist völlig anders jetzt. Wir haben eine andere andere Plan. Es hat sich cool zu sehen, dass das develop. Aber anyway, continue, bitte. Ich denke, ein Seed von der Evolution war da von der Beginn, weil der eine Liner, die wir noch benutzen, ist, dass die Arma ist und von hier ist DayZ.

00:20:46 We used it from the very beginning to explain what is the delta between the original version of this mod. And then if we track the history of DayZ versus Arma, DayZ also eventually became its own thing, essentially spawned its own genre. So I guess we're just following in similar footsteps.

00:21:10 Und das heißt, dass wir immer wieder auf dem EventLine haben, dass wir immer wieder auf dem EventLine sehen können, dass wir immer wieder auf dem EventLine sehen können, weil wir es aus dem EventLine haben, weil wir es aus diesem Block von Marble haben, auf dem EventLine auf dem EventLine sehen können. Aber dann sehen wir schon wieder, dass es weniger und weniger Dinge gibt und mehr, mehr, mehr, mehr, mehr, mehr, mehr.

00:21:40 The style we're trying to land it is this.

00:21:47 Wir haben ein bisschen darüber gesprochen, ist dieses mythische, ähnliche Zukunft. Techno-barbarian Hellscape, das war von einem anderen Spieler. Es ist diese monolithische, primal, almost biblische Realität, mit dem Sinne von diesen großen, unknowzigen Fortschritten in der Infinityen, die außerhalb unserer Kapazität für Perception haben, weil wir nicht erlaubt haben.

00:22:12 oder etwas wie das. Wir sind nicht able for space. Und wir versuchen, das Heal. Again, Conan the Barbarian in post-apocalyptic megastructure ruins. Everything is unsolvable. Everything is vast. Humanity has long since been defeated already, and you're lost in all of this. Visually, we are following a pseudo-realistic look.

00:22:38 Es basiert in Science in terms of the universe that we are representing, but the representation is done through fictionally augmented lens. So if you imagine that there are some kind of augmented reality technologies in the future, driven by some ancient AIs, and they're trying to feed the images of space into this.

00:23:02 Das ist ein ganz einfaches Biologisches Inherited von der Planetary Existence. Und dann werden diese Vizuals in etwas einfacher für die Menschheit zu verstehen. So, wie zum Beispiel, rendering some radiation, oder, you know, some of these conditions, als literal light, oder fog, oder so, wie das. Weil wir nicht viel von Fog in Space sehen, mit einem Naked-Eyes, aber Naked-Eyes sind auch nicht sehr...

00:23:30 Das ist nicht der beste Tool, um die aktuellen Sprecher zu sehen. Ja, ja, ja. Es ist ein Teil der Fiction.

00:23:39 Ja, aber ich glaube, das macht Sinn. Es ist wahrscheinlich eine Überlegung der Universität, nicht nur für die Spieler-Charakter, aber auch für die Spieler-Charakter. Ich glaube, das macht Sinn. Es ist sagen, es gibt Dinge, ich meine, und jeder Game macht das, richtig? Du bist nicht sehen, wie wenn du durch ein Game-Universal bist, du bist nicht sehen pop-ups. Und dein Spieler-Charakter ist nicht sehen pop-ups auf dem, oder, sensiblich. Das sind speziell für die Person behind die Schrein.

00:24:08 Right.

00:24:11 Ja, und so we, pretty early on, we defined a range of visual target images, you know, these particular concepts that we're trying to replicate. These are, you know, these are some of them here to the right, not all of them. But yeah, and then the mission from that point on, once we look at that, then we are happy with the look how, you know, what are we lacking to replicate this thing in the engine? Are we lacking anything?

00:24:40 In order to do that, we did quite a lot of Unreal Engine prototyping, even outside of our own engine. A lot of this look is coming also from specific capabilities of Blender. There is a very specific kind of this airy, you know, volumetric look that Blender is very capable of out of the box. So at some point we were even calling like our internal name for the style was BlenderCore.

00:25:07 Und dann war es die Zeit zu experimentieren und prototypen diese Dinge. Und Sie können in dem, wie ...

00:25:25 Wie es bereits, in diesem Moment, ist es so nischisch, weil wir versuchen, es zu verabschieden mit den beiden Universen zu unterstützen. Und in einer super-simplifischen Form, die von diesen Ideen ist, dass die Event-Line ein bisschen mehr aspirationaler Raum, wo es möglich ist, wo es möglich ist, wo es möglich ist.

00:25:51 Things are probably not possible anymore. Everything has collapsed. So one is more about the future, another one in a way is more about the past, even though it's our future past. Sure. But even if we simplify that a lot and we step back into this kind of emotional psychology of colors, we can, if we squint really hard and we look at just the overall range of science fiction out there.

00:26:18 People will hate me for this a little bit, but there are kind of two types of sci-fi there. The blue sci-fi and orange sci-fi. And the blue sci-fi is things like Expanse, maybe Ghost in the Shell. You know, sometimes more near-future stuff, sometimes more space opera stuff. And then there is brown sci-fi. It's more things like Star Wars and Tatooine or Dune. It's, you know, when everything is kind of dusty, gritty and mythical.

00:26:45 Eve is the former for the most part, although it's a broad IP. There is a really large range of things. And we're trying to tackle a little bit more of the latter. So now we have Eve blue that we have already and this Eve red that we're building. So yeah, that's the goalpost where we're headed.

00:27:10 One of our missions to facilitate this vision was to upgrade our graphics capabilities. So not the way we do art or assets or concepts, but how we render things, how they're presented in the end. And I guess this project in particular being our kind of experimental dimension, experimental test bed.

00:27:32 oder für die Firma, ist eine Möglichkeit, die wir dann mit ETH verändern können, die wir dann mit ETH sharenieren, weil es die gleiche, gleiche Technologie ist. Aber es ist viel einfacher für uns hier, hier, weil es ein kleines Team ist, wir haben gut Momentum, es ist Agile, wir haben nicht viel Content, so wenn wir eine große Veränderung haben, wir haben nicht mehr. Aber ein paar Dinge,

00:28:00 Wenn diese Dinge funktioniert, dann gibt es gute Chancen, dass sie es getrennt werden, einige einfach nur automatisch, weil es so eine Core-Fundamentale Technologie getrennt werden, um die Mothership zu U-Online. Für dieses Projekt ist es natürlich, weil wir so far in der Mitte der Entwicklung. Es dauert viel Zeit, um die 4LM-RPG zu bauen.

00:28:28 There isn't any expectations for us of being final right now, being out of the door, which again allows to experiment with things which we're shipping in a somewhat working progress state because of individual features. So altogether, it's a perfect storm to do a graphics overhaul for both spaceships.

00:28:57 We'll be talking some of the nerdy stuff in some of these with some of some of these things. So to call me out if the terminology gets too far too far into the weeks. I'll try to explain.

00:29:10 I cannot imagine for the life of me that anybody who is watching this stream right now, a stream where two dudes sit here and talk about the way internet spaceships look, are going to have any issue with you using a little bit of jargon to explain how this operates. But I guess, I mean, this is exciting though, right? I mean, I don't want to kind of bury the lead on this thing, but...

00:29:35 It is not, I think, probably an unpopular thing to say that Carbon has not always been the easiest engine to work with from a graphics point of view. I mean, it was built a long time ago, and the intention for what it was doing, while it has been able to produce incredible things, it's not Unreal, right? It is trying to do a different kind of thing than what something like Unreal or something like...

00:30:00 Ein Name escapes me. But one of these other engines that are more graphics-focused are capable of doing. So then being able to make this step forward, make this graphics leap forward is a huge deal. I mean, it's not just about the aesthetics of the thing, it's about what can we accomplish with the tools we have going into the future. It's future-proofing, something that

00:30:27 Wir haben schon seit 20 Jahren gearbeitet, das ist total nuts. So, take it away, please.

00:30:35 We did explore Unreal, actually, and we did explore just what our options on the table are to build this particular project. And we knew at that point already what kind of project this should be. Sure. And Unreal was always tempting because of really good graphical capabilities. But for something like what we're trying to do...

00:31:00 Das ist wirklich großartig, durch MMO, nicht ein paar Runden verbunden. Und dann in total haben wir viele Spieler da. Aber das Single Shard Monster, wenn man starten, und also Single Shard Monster, müssen wir mit massive Differences in der Höhe. Wir haben kleine Dinge, wir haben sehr großartige Dinge, sehr kleine Dinge, sehr klein Dinge, die sehr close sind, sehr großartige Dinge.

00:31:27 Es ist ein bisschen trivial, aber wenn man sich anschauen, die actualen Kapazitäten der Engines hat, gibt es einen Engines, der kann diese Dinge erfolgreich machen. Wir haben es als Unternehmen gewonnen, weil wir eine andere Spiele haben. Ja. So, despite all die interessante, interesting shortcomings, um mit Carbon zu arbeiten, es wäre einfach nicht möglich, um das Projekt zu erkennen.

00:31:55 Ja, das ist eine sehr, sehr fruchtvolle Inheritanz zu besuchen, von unseren Progenitors. Ja, das stimmt. Ja. Es ist perfekt für etwas wie das, besonders wenn es um die Größe der Dinge geht. Denn das ist nicht nur grafisch.

00:32:16 Das ist ein Teil, aber es ist ein Teil, aber es ist ein Teil, aber es ist ein Teil. Es ist eine sehr non-triviale Herausforderung. Oder handeln die Physik auf diese scale mit diesen vielen Dingen. Ja, es ist ein Teil. Ja, ich denke, das ist vielleicht etwas, dass es ein bisschen unter-Appreciated ist, über EVE in general und Carbon, mehr specifically. Da sind keine Objekte in anderen Games größer als Sun und EVE.

00:32:44 You can do it. You can orbit a sun in EVE right now. You could go around it currently. I've done it with DevTools. But you can do it. The capability is there for you to go around the sun and end up in the same place where you left. That is a staggering amount of space to, you know.

00:33:07 orient yourself around and for the game to then have to sort out how it's going to show you what all that is. So being able to do that is not a small feat.

00:33:17 Es ist ja, es ist eine Unreasonable Technologie auf viele Accounts. Man hat einen Jahrzehnten gesagt, dass sie das nicht tun sollen, dass sie das nicht tun sollen, sondern dass sie das nicht tun sollen. Wir können nur befreundet werden. Aber es kommt mit diesem Projekt und der Technologie. Es kommt mit ein paar Interessen und Herausforderungen, die ich schon erwähnt habe.

00:33:46 Es ist nur 20 Jahre der Entwicklung. Es ist sehr, sehr varied. Du hast wirklich Cutting-Edge Sachen, aber dann hast du wirklich Archaic Sachen, damit niemand wirklich weiß, wie es funktioniert. Es gibt viele Lösungen in der da.

00:34:08 Das ist wirklich, wirklich gerätigtert für ein bestimmtes Case. Das war da, an einem Moment in der Zeit. Aber dann ist es einfach nicht möglich, dass das Solution für etwas anderes ist, weil alles super bespoke, komplett hard-coded ist. Some of die Lösungen, weil da diese Unik-Challenges, wie mit Scale, sind sehr idiosyncratic. Sie funktionieren sehr gut, aber dann bringen Sie jemanden in, der hat Erfahrung mit Arbeit.

00:34:37 mehr traditional technology, und sie sind einfach flabbergasted. Sie wissen, was zu tun, was zu tun. Es dauert Zeit, um die Leute zu wissen, warum es das so ist. All in all, es all adds up to this development environment, which in some aspects, manchmal macht es schwierig, zu experimenten mit shadern, mit Materials.

00:35:01 because you need to know very well what you want to end up with in the end, and then you can execute on it. But if you want to branch here, branch there, experiment with things a little bit, that can be super time consuming, which is why we have some solutions for that by leaning on other packages. So there are also missing capabilities both for

00:35:29 für unsere eigenen Projekte, aber auch für die Dinge, die in EVE existen, aber in der Vergangenheit in der Vergangenheit. Aber dann die Technologie literally wurde verloren, weil wir so viel Zeit haben. Ja, so vieles von der ersten Projekte war eher wie Archeologie. Wir waren nur versucht, diese wilde mix aus cutting-edge Sci-Fi-tech und diese Kräfte-Postapocalyptic-Solutions, die für einen Grunde genommen sind und nicht besonders verwendet.

00:35:57 Also, this might sound somewhat dystopian. It's really not. There is a lot of fun in that, and it's also like the outcomes that you are getting that way are very unique in a good way. Those of you who worked with any proprietary engines in the past are understanding the challenges pretty well. It's kind of the norm. If you're working outside of Unity or Unreal, it's always a little bit like that.

00:36:23 In different degrees, but like that. I made a Warhammer reference a second ago, and I think I may have been a little bit premature with that reference. Do you feel sometimes like you are kind of in charge of a bunch of tech priests who are going out there and digging through ancient code to try and uncover secrets? Kinda. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It gets quite literal. Sometimes you need to seek out, you get pointed to a particular tribe elder that you weren't even aware of. No one even understands.

00:36:53 Have you ever had a man

00:36:57 Oder in der faren corner of der Office. Manchmal kann man sie sich anwenden, indem man sie in den K-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A

00:37:26 We live in a much more modern world than 20 years ago. This time around, there is just so much more expertise amassed just across the global talent pool and interesting solutions which allow us to work around some of these challenges, such as, again, Unreal Engine. We learned a lot on it for

00:37:51 Just prototyping and experimenting on things really quickly, especially when it comes to things like lighting, shaders, materials, because it has really, really, really strong out of the box capabilities for this kind of stuff, for just going fast, which are also very, very artist friendly. You don't need to be an engineer in order to go pretty, pretty deep, especially with things that have to do with graphics. So we...

00:38:20 We leaned a lot on Unreal Engine, even early on, and still do, where the process that we often end up with is we prototype something in there, and then we look at the results, and then we try to reverse engineer it for Carbon implementation, and then whatever we end up there, we keep taking forward already outside of Unreal Engine confines, because Unreal Engine is also not...

00:38:47 Es ist flexibel auf einigen Level, aber dann, wenn wir diese Bespoke-Solutions schaffen können, können wir einfach alles tun. Wir können sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr gut sein. Es ist nicht nur eine Kopie von uns, was wir sehen in Unreal. Es ist nur eine Fondation. Und dann wird es auf dem Topf. Aber ja, es ist kind of indispensable.

00:39:11 So that's one of them. Another one is Blender. This is our main 3D suit, our main tech art suit. We do final 3D assets in it. We do concept art in it. We do procedural generation of things in it. I still sometimes talk to people who I think don't realize just how Blender has taken over the industry.

00:39:37 Ich habe mit einem Freund gesprochen, ein paar Tage vorhin. Er ist jetzt in 3D, und er sagt, ja, ich mache alles in Blender jetzt, aber ich möchte, dass ich meine Hände auf das Maya-License so dass ich es richtig machen kann. Dude, nein, das ist jetzt 2025. Blender ist das, was es ist.

00:40:00 It's best in class capabilities on average, with minor exceptions here and there for things like animation. It's open source, it's super extendable, so we're able to create this very delegatable processes in there, where we create this very bespoke, very specific setup, and then we can ship it over to whoever, to a contractor who then just downloads this completely free piece of software, opens our package, and then they're free to go.

00:40:29 Es ist komplett unmöglich mit diesen alten Archaic Packagen. So, ja, das ist einfach nur ein General-Advice. Wenn du in 3D hast, einfach nur ein Blender gemacht hast, einfach nur ein Blender. Ja, einfach nur ein Blender. Und das hat uns diese wirklich gute Möglichkeiten zu entwickeln, kleine Tools.

00:40:55 So our 3D guys and TechArt guys, whenever we have these core capabilities missing in our actual in-house technology, historically, we were able to just develop something quite quickly, just there in Blender, and then lean on that, potentially forever. We might not even replace some of these things with our internal tools, because open source, like this thing will...

00:41:22 hopefully leave just forever yeah unlike some of these paid packages which just you know some eventually someone like someone buys them then drives them into the ground and it disappears from the landscape and these things just survive same as you know things like linux

00:41:40 So, yeah, so this is where we started. And so here we can talk a little bit about the particular shiny toys that we were working on. Okay. The specific capabilities that we had to discover, rediscover, implement, that then we used to realize the vision. First things first, I can't take credit for any of it.

00:42:08 Ich bin nicht der Graphics Engineer, ich bin nicht der Techniker Artist, und das ist meistens der Domain. Ich habe fast keine Ahnung, was ich zu sagen. Nicht ganz, weil ich die erste halte meiner Karriere war, was in 3D. Ich weiß, was passiert am Ende dieser Prozess. Aber einige der sehr back-end parts dieser Prozess ist einfach so ein kind of Blackmagic.

00:42:34 Es ist sehr beeindruckend, wie Magic. A lot of this is also a very work in progress. We mentioned this already. A lot of these things are, maybe the teacher is done, but then it's not very calibrated towards the final look. Sometimes it might be a little bit too shiny or something like that. So expect it to look even better when it's in your hands, which should be soon with some of these.

00:43:03 So, first things first, we worked quite a bit on lighting, where it's not a super realistic setup in terms of the visual spectrum, what you would see with their naked eyes when you're out there in space. It's more this diegetic fiction that is going on there, where some of the things such as radiation are represented as light in its book.

00:43:27 We're also exaggerating some of the reflected lighting a little bit to make things just a little bit more airy, dusty, more tangible. We rediscovered ray-traced shadows to shake things a little bit better. And overall, what we're trying to achieve there is...

00:43:50 Wir sehen, dass wir hier ein Beispiel oder eher meaningfules Variante und Lighting-Conditionen über verschiedene Star-Systeme, aber auch über eine gewisse Star-Systeme. So, wie Sie sehen, wir haben diese Konzert-Gradienten, wo die weiter weg von der Star, von der Sun in der Star-Systeme, die Lighting-Conditionen sind verändern. Und Sie können hier sehen, dass die Experiments hier in der...

00:44:19 In dem Video, in dem Background, we are tweaking the lighting conditions. It doesn't affect the background in this case, but you can see how it goes pretty. Yeah. If you're really close to the star, it needs to be kind of intense. And then vice versa, if you go further away from the star, the background nebula should dominate the image a little bit more because the exposure is dynamically...

00:44:49 compensating for the amount of light.

00:44:53 Ja, das macht das viel. Und es gibt auch eine sehr interessante Art von Spaces, denn in real life, Spaces ist nicht ein sehr variedes Umgebnis. Es ist meistens empty. Es ist einfach nicht so, dass es nicht so gut ist. So wir sind auf Dinge wie das, in order to create this sense of, quote-unquote, different biomes, in der, in der, in der, in der, in der, in der, in der, in der Star-Systeme.

00:45:25 Yeah, this is also where, this is very, very fresh. I'm pretty sure you just saw this a few days ago. This is where we cracked the code on having array traced shadows work with alpha planes, where sometimes in order to create detail, we don't use actual geometry. It's just a plane with transparent pieces. So this is what we use to create these.

00:45:52 Ja, ja, ja, das ist sehr gut. Ja, ja, ja, ja. Ja, ja, ja. Ja, ja, ja, ja.

00:46:20 Dann, um, yeah, another thing that we iterated quite a bit in conjunction with lighting is just all sorts of post-processing effects. It's stuff that is usually, it's usually screen effects. Once you render the entire image, you do these things on top of everything else. So it's things like, you know, the color correction, when we need to tint the colors a little bit, or in this particular example in the video.

00:46:49 It's dynamic exposure, so it's a capability for the image to adjust automatically depending on the amount of brightness in the scene. So when you look at the star, for example, it adjusts a little bit. If you look at the nebula, it also adjusts a little bit, which creates this nice cinematic feel to the image, but then it also creates this nice automatic variety too.

00:47:18 Vielen Dank.

00:47:21 Also, now we have a little bit more control over how we employ all of these post-processing effects, because now we finally have something that Unreal has, for example, and that is post-processing volumes. We can designate an area in space, and then when you enter this area, you blend into some kind of a post-processing setup. You can see how here it desaturates.

00:47:50 oder ich glaube, das ist ein bisschen das Juicy-Signal-Loss-Effekt. Ja, das ist das Ding. Und wir können zwischen dem, haben Spheres und Spheres, die auszüglichen diese Effekte von den resten der Spheres. Sie können in verschiedenen Formen sein. Und das, ja, das ermöglicht uns zu entwickeln eine Welt mit localizeden Biome, localizeden Conditions, als opposed zu...

00:48:16 Just switch between two settings when you, for example, enter a site or enter a new start system. Because that can be just abrupt and jarring. This allows us to be much more fluid. Now, are these volumes, are these dynamic or are these, they have to be like scene in placements, right? Are these things that you can...

00:48:37 um, generate on a whim? Because I'm imagining, like, the noise that just keeps popping up in the screen. I can imagine that being a, like, a powerful example of, like, a weapon being used, right? If you get, you know, jammed in Frontier, instead of just your weapons stop functioning the way you want to, your screen goes into a haze for a period of time. Is that something that we can generate?

00:49:04 Ich denke so. Ja, ich meine, es ist einfach, wir können keine Objekte, das ist einfach nur ein Objekt. So in theory, nichts ist stopping uns. Sick. Ich kann bereits sehen, wie...

00:49:19 Because these things are completely graphical and they're happening purely on the client side. I think there will be people who will just hack through it and will not even know that it's happening. So it can be the main detriment to the receiving side of the tool. But if it's a flavor element or something that is also happening somewhere deeper mechanical on the side, then for sure.

00:49:49 Wir haben auch ein Update über dieses Effekt, das viele von euch sehr kennenlernen wird, wenn ihr das Erre von Playstation 3-Games erinnert. Es hat viel dieses Effekt. Es war einfach so, wie es in Soap war oder so. Als Industrie, wir haben Blum gefunden, und es hat uns nur ein bisschen...

00:50:16 Softer than all these really hard-cut polygonal shapes. But then, of course, as with any new tool, we overdid it just a bit. So at some point it became kind of a unfortunate cliché to use it. But when it's used in really small amounts, it's a very nice way to soften things a little bit, to sit them inside of the scene.

00:50:45 Und das kann auch sein, dass es nicht einfach nur ein Lightblob ist. Sie sehen hier, wir haben all sorts of interesting shapes. Das ist ein sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr.

00:51:09 Und wenn man einfach nur einen von ihnen hat, dann sieht man die vor- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach- und nach-

00:51:28 Now, this is a, yeah, this is a recent favorite. So it's a, we have a new Screen Space Ambient Occlusion algorithm. So it's a custom one. It's a homebrew algorithm of one of our graphics engineers. And what Screen Space Ambient Occlusion does is that we can bake, you know,

00:51:55 This map onto the sheet or to the asset that really helps with lighting. So here this asset is not really lit by any light sources. All of the shadows are coming from this screen space ambient occlusion. This is the traditional technique. This is what we used to have before. And you can see how it does a lot for the definition of shape. But it's...

00:52:20 Es ist irgendwie blurig, es ist nicht super gut. Ja. Und jetzt haben wir das. Es ist einfach super, super krisp. Ja. Das ist Cutting Edge Technologie. Du kannst hier sehen schon ein bisschen, wir werden das ein bisschen später sehen, aber es macht das viel für die finalen Fidelity der Schicks.

00:52:46 Weil es die neue Texture-Resolution und die neue Schadern nicht wirklich shine und wirklich popt. Ja, es fühlt sich clean. Ja, es ist viel cleaner und viel sharper und viel größer. Ja.

00:53:05 This is what it looks like, the effect that it gives when it's composited with the rest of the lupus textures and stuff like that. And its probability was subtle until you start looking closely, but then when you look at things, when these deeper cavities or just the deeper parts of the model, you can see how it's adding.

00:53:31 Es ist ein viel, hier in die Engines, für zum Beispiel, oder hier in die Engines. Das macht es einfach viel mehr, viel mehr Realistik. Das sieht ein bisschen wie ein 3D-Modell im Editor. Das sitzt in der Welt bereits.

00:53:51 Ja, das sind ja schon viele Klaus-Ups, die bereits starten zu zeigen, die ein bisschen mehr Fidelity auf den Schiff sind, wie viel interessanter, ein kleines Detail man sieht, das ist eine andere Angelegenheit, die wir versuchen, um unsere Game zu verbessern, weil wir die Spaceships haben. Das macht Sinn.

00:54:17 Ja, die nächste Frage ist, Fog. Wir wirklich, wenn man denkt, über dieses Look, das wir für, diese episch, monumentale, large-scale, large-scale Dinge haben, wir, natürlich, aus dem sehr begonnen haben, haben wir auf Fog sehr viel in unseren Konzept-Arts-Explorations gemacht, und dann, nur zu erkennen, dass der Fog ist, dass die Fog nicht, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist,

00:54:47 So that was a little bit of a problem. But yeah, not anymore. We now have this really nice distance fog that you can see in action here, which we overuse in a good way whenever we have to present a large structure, a stargate or an asteroid or something like that, to sell that sense of scale, because this is one of the ultimate scale cues.

00:55:14 Das ist wahrscheinlich nicht das, was man sehen würde mit der Naked Eye sehen würde. Es wäre wahrscheinlich nur eine complete darkness. Das ist das, was man sehen würde, bevor man sterben würde, weil es keine Air gibt. Aber das ist ein sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr.

00:55:34 And this fog, this distance fog that you can see going over the entire screen is just one layer of this similar haze and fog stuff that we utilize. And another layer is similar kind of idea, but it's volumetric fog, volumetric clouds. So this is not a screen effect. These are literal 3D blobs of fog, matter, that you can get inside of, you can fly past them.

00:56:04 which we also spam quite a bit as our signature effect, because it's doing a lot for a sense of density of scene or depth. It creates this parallax effect of going past things, which otherwise is...

00:56:25 Es kann ein bisschen schwierig sein in Spacescenen. Weil wir sagen, du bist in dieser kleinen Spaceship, und du gehst zu einer großen Spacesstation in der Distanz. Es gibt nur viele Fram-of-Referenz-Objekte, die dir sogar sagen, dass du bist, dass du bist. Wir sind ein bisschen mit Sachen, wie diese kleinen Spacespartikel passen, um die Spacespartikel zu schaffen. Aber das lässt uns zu...

00:56:54 Ja, und das ist etwas, dass die Leute nicht wirklich verstehen, besonders wenn sie... Das kleine Screen-Space-Protokale ist für sicher. Aber auch, ohne diese Fogging oder mit einem anderen Frame-Of-Referenz, die einzige Frame-Of-Referenz hat für Speed ist, wie schnell die Geschwindigkeit oder größer sind. Und wenn diese Dinge sind, dann kann es schwierig sein.

00:57:22 Ja, ja. Ja, ja. Neat. Ich liebe dieses Schott. Der erste, ich mag noch besser. Die Idee, die große Dinge aus dem Fog kommen, ist so gut. Es macht etwas zu den Arten. Ja, es funktioniert. Ja, es funktioniert. Ja, es ist großartig. Ja, es ist großartig. Es ist großartig. Und wir haben...

00:57:51 We had to go through some adventures to get these things to work together with each other. Because as any of you who worked with, I'm not sure, this is not playing for some reason. Any of you who worked with 3D before know that transparent things just really, really don't like, A, they don't like to work. B, then they don't like to work in conjunction with each other whenever they're overlapping.

00:58:19 So if this thing will... It may have just not loaded. We can... I'll throw this video... If you see me this video, I'll throw it in the Discord. After the fact. Yeah, we can do that. Hell yeah. But yeah, there we demonstrate how these things interact with each other in a cool way. Next one. What we sometimes call God Race or just Volumetric Lighting. It's another thing that we...

00:58:48 das wir agressiviert haben, in unser Early Concept Art, weil es diese Bibliothek-Sense gibt, diese Bibliothek-Effekte. Wir wussten schon, dass wir das etwas arbitrarily nutzen müssen, in order zu erreichen, unser Intended Look. Das ist wo einige von den Efforts gehen.

00:59:15 Um, giving us more control over this effect into just, and into making it work with all of the other components. For example, this thing does work with those polymetric clouds too. You know, the rays are shining through. Well, I was going to say, because the god rays almost imply a haze, right? Like you're not seeing god rays if there's not something for them to be reflecting off of. Uh, yeah, this is.

00:59:41 Ja, und da kann sie beanimiert werden, sie können alle verschiedene Sortsen von Noise überlegt auf dem, so dass wir all sorts of different environmental effects haben können. Ja, das ist sehr, sehr powerful. Ich hoffe, zu sehen viele von diesen, um, bis die Leute anfangen. Never. Not once.

01:00:04 Und dann, ja, es ermöglicht uns diese sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr, sehr.

01:00:30 So, next one. We are constantly working on upgrading our instancing capabilities, which is this capacity to render repeating elements efficiently. So if you have one object and then you can make 100 copies of it, you spend as much performance as you would spend on just one copy, which is, needless to say, it's very useful for things like...

01:00:56 Es gibt auch sehr komplexe Spacings, speziell wenn wir mit all diesen Modular Strukturen haben, mit den Strukturen, mit den Asteroidenen, wo wir eine Menge anstehenden Dinge haben. Und es gibt auch eine sehr agressivität mit Sachen wie den Surface Green Boot.

01:01:14 in order to create things that can hold up really really up close when you get to them which is of course one of the unique challenges of a project like this you can be this tiny tiny spaceship and then you have this huge stargate and you can get really really up close to it yeah we will also we will lean onto this quite a bit once we will get into proper capital ship territory not just large ships this is how we will be handling the

01:01:44 The Green Bull there. Interesting. That is for the future. I think somewhere CCP Bruder just set up in his chair. He didn't know why. Sorry, never mind. Go ahead.

01:02:00 So, yeah, and this is getting finalized right now. We are already experimenting with actual assets in the game, and that is new shaders, completely bespoke shaders to support new fidelity level for pretty much all of the asset categories in the project, because we have our own unique needs, which we found we're not satisfied.

01:02:25 bei den Legacy Shaders, die wir hatten, denn sie waren für unterschiedliche Worte. Wir sind die erste und die Worte-Case, denn das ist der größte Komplexität, was die Hard Surface, die Schiff, Structures und Turrets. Primär die Schiff, denn das ist das, was wir hatten zu starten. Und Sie können hier schon sehen, dass es hier viel mehr...

01:02:51 So, Ships is where we started. Then the next one is, we are finalizing this one too, is the shader for natural objects. So, things like asteroids, but not only asteroids.

01:03:18 Some of the cosmetic deployables that we are giving to the players are also done with a similar fader. Similar goals are pursued here. We are trying to create something that can hold up really, really, really up close so that you can get really close to this large asteroid and it doesn't look like, you know, like a PlayStation 2 game. This needs some calibration because as you can see, it's kind of shiny, but the overall intended look should be...

01:03:47 We saw it a few screenshots ago when we were talking about Unreal Engine. This is us trying to replicate that same material in Carbon.

01:04:00 So, and finally, Characters, which is another unique kind of worms, because they always start to deal with very specific use cases, such as skin and hair. We don't have a lot of hair and skin on chips, not yet at least. So, yeah, maybe eventually. So this is tackled separately.

01:04:27 Es ist ja, die Charakter Fischern selbst sind nicht super auf der horizon, weil wir müssen unsere Battles machen und es gibt vieles zu tun in der Core Gameplay zu machen, aber wir sind sehr aktiv, die Foundational Capabilität, wie Sie sehen hier. Das Hairshot ist... Ja, das Hairshot ist kompetitive mit einem anderen... Ich meine, das... Das ist ein Shot aus...

01:04:54 I don't know, any number of A titles and I would leave you. The fact that it's being rendered in Carbon is kind of nuts, honestly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:05:08 Next one, skyboxes. So, I mean, somewhat of a game-deaf-specific term, but if you think about how the sky is rendered around you in any given game or in most of them, it's usually just a polygonal box with a texture on top of it, panoramic texture. So we are updating that technology on our end also a little bit.

01:05:35 We take these really high-resolution HDR nebula textures, and we try to add, or we are actively adding a layer on top of them, which is dynamic reactive to the position in the world, in the region, but more importantly in the region, like which star system, I argue. So that we can do things such as, let's see, we should see some editing here.

01:06:04 So such as, you can see this, right, where we can use it to create some, because this is just testing with some random colors, but when we'll see it in more action a little bit later on, we are able to use these things to, for example, designate the galactic core, and then everything else is darkened, and the closer you get to the galactic core, the shape of the nebula is changing utilizing these kinds of masks.

01:06:33 So that allows us to make this a little bit of softer, almost procedural generated aspects to the world, which then we combine with positional landmark elements, which some of the players I think are noticing in the sky. Altogether, it allows us to create a sense of just traveling through the universe as opposed to just looking at the same background.

01:07:01 In diesem System, in diesem System, in diesem System, in diesem System muss man ein bisschen mehr alive in der Welt sein. Ich denke, das ist die größte Sache. Das ist auch, glaube ich, von gestern oder von dem Tag vorher. Das ist eine Sache, die komplett fresh ist. Und das ist... Ich liebe dieses Shot so viel.

01:07:24 Es sieht gut, ja. Hier kann man sehen, dass wir noch weit entfernt von der Zentren der Galaxie sind. Der Galaktische Horizont ist nur gesehen, in einem limiteden Hemisphäre. Und dann, die weiter in wir gehen, wie hier, plötzlich sind wir viel deeper in die Galaxie. Es beginnt zu sein, um uns zu sehen. Und dann, ich denke, hier in der Sommer wird...

01:07:52 Ja, das ist gut, Mann. Und dann gehen wir zurück in die Outskirts. Und diese Dinge, auch für mich, das macht mich denken. Ich denke, ich würde lieber in die Outskirts sein, weil ich einfach... Ich liebe die Vista. Es ist so dark, aber dann hast du das.

01:08:21 Das ist so gut. Das ist wirklich sehr gut. Das ist das, was wir haben drei slides. Ja, no shit. So hier ist, ich glaube, die nächste Frage, bevor wir zum nächsten, die nächste, die nächste, die nächste, die nächste Frage ist, ich meine, die Frage, das wird von diesem, und ich bin sicher, dass jemand in den Kommentaren ist, ich bin, in den Kommentaren, in die Zukunft zu sagen. Ich bin, in der Zukunft, in der Zukunft, in der Zukunft. Sind da going to be black holes in der Skybox?

01:08:53 We got three of them. There are, um, so without any, any spoilers, uh, if we, if we look at this one. Oh boy. Occasionally you see this mysterious, let's find them. There are mysterious objects. Yes. In the, in the sky. I think we might maybe. Yeah. What is that? Oh my. These guys. Yeah. What is that?

01:09:20 So, this is our prototype for these positional landmark elements. It's things that exist there in space between systems and systems and that are large enough to be seen or somehow signposted in the skybox. So, if you will ever see black holes or maybe rifts or anything like that, it would be...

01:09:41 Something like this. Maybe not exactly this, but this kind of technology. This is just prototyping. Of course. But yes, there will be things that you can see in the nebula that are positional, that are representative of something that is located somewhere on the global standard. Neat. Watch that space. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, go ahead.

01:10:09 So this was the shiny stuff, the tools. The next segment that we have, we can go over really quickly, over the things, over the actual content, over what we're bringing into the build using these capabilities.

01:10:33 So this is a little bit more into the actual assets and more importantly for this slide into the strategy for how we are bringing those assets into the project. And what we're trying to do in general is we are optimizing for value in the build. So instead of waiting for a long time until the final asset is complete.

01:10:58 Wir versuchen etwas sehr schnell zu bekommen und dann in den Spiel zu spüren, spielen mit den Spielern, geben es zu den Spielern, wenn es eine Verwendung ist für den Spielern ist. Und ja, wir machen viele Körnern, während wir im Hintergrund investieren können, um das Asset in der finalen Qualität zu erfinden. Das hat die Vorteile von wie wir tun, wie Konzeptart.

01:11:25 So this guy up top, this is our concept model. So we don't do a lot of this traditional old-school 2D concept art. We concept a lot of these things directly in 3D. So that allows us to put something like this into the game pretty much immediately. And then in the background, it's being worked up into something that is properly modeled, viewed, textured, and then eventually it turns up as something like this.

01:11:54 Ja, es ist, um, how this process manifests for the players will be pretty familiar to them, because a lot of the most of the assets that we have in the game right now are somewhere in this, at this stage, minus the textures. And so this is why, uh, you know, everything looks the way it looks right now. This is our, um, yeah, this is our way to initially go kind of broad, but shallow so that we can create a good volume of content.

01:12:22 Without over-investing into going deep and narrow. And then right about now we are ready to go deep and narrow on some of these assets and start polishing them up into the final 3D assets. You mean to tell me that that SamusKid model is not supposed to be made out of like Jenga blocks? I don't know if you... Not this one, obviously. No. Yeah, okay, okay. Fair enough.

01:12:45 Und ja, die Hauptsache...

01:12:58 The main category of assets there is kind of obvious. It's spaceships, because we are game about spaceships primarily. And our unique niche there is obviously ships in particular. They're not starfighters. The smallest thing that we're dealing with is like a space boat, not a space plane. So that's, yeah, this is what we're trying to land. These pieces of really heavy machinery.

01:13:27 die großartig sind, realistisch und wichtig sind. Wir versuchen sehr, sehr genauer zu sein. Was ist die Größe der Tür? Ist die Größe der Tür der gleiche Größe auf diesem Schiff oder dieser Schiff? Alles ist sehr genauer. Das hat auch die Ökonomie für die Ökonomie, wenn wir die Kosten des Schiffen kalkulieren.

01:13:50 This has very tangible connection to the volume of the ship. So we are trying to calculate how much stuff would actually go into building this thing so that it's all connected on the layer of digital physics. Do you do the math too when you're talking about, you said, you know, how much stuff goes into building a ship. Like looking at that last year, so that was a VAL or whatever the name we're using for it, the VAL. Yes. It has, obviously it is a...

01:14:16 Es hat eine bestimmte Art von Cargo space. Do we look at that Cargo space and say, okay, we think this is about this much space, and so that's what the real space of the vessel is actually going to be able to hold?

01:14:28 In principle, yes. It's not a given that the current numbers are representative of this, whatever you're playing with in the game. But otherwise, yes. Because this is a territory where we're somewhat sinful historically sometimes. If you sit down and look at some of the even-line ships, especially put them side by side, you can start seeing some...

01:14:53 Just strange space magic happening there when it comes to the size of cargo holds or the relative sizes of ships. And so now that we are building this from the ground up, we're trying to establish the foundations for this in a way where, you know, that homework is done beforehand and then we will not break these things anymore. And yeah, as usual, as mentioned many times, trying or not trying, doing.

01:15:22 Das ist wirklich gut in unserem Spiel, wenn es um Fidelity geht, um all diese Handrails und all the little crisp details. Das ist auch eine unserer Weise, um die Archeologie-History der Welt zu zeigen, weil all diese Schiff sind...

01:15:47 Produkts of different cultures and you can see the ideologies and the technologies of these cultures represented and how how the ships are designed so these are all of these are these tangible vestiges of civilizations that established presence at frontier at some point inevitably perished so here you can see that these three guys are obviously from different cultural backgrounds all of these are mining ships they have you know very

01:16:15 Very different sensibilities. And yeah, as mentioned, we concept them in 3D first. All of these are concepts. These are not the things that are going into the game. And all of them are designed to be true to scale. But I want to interject here real quick. So all three of these ships are not really anything that players have seen before at all, ever.

01:16:39 Ja, das ist richtig. Das ist ein PIKI. Ja, das ist richtig. Das ist ein Small Mining Frigate. Es sieht anders aus, wenn es die Textur hat.

01:17:04 In other words, what we've got in the game right now is not just what it is. There are more assets there that just have not quite come to fruition. Way more. Yeah, okay. Yeah, way more. And this is one of the benefits of this process where we go broad but shallow. For example, this is just one of the, what you can see here, one of the lineups of ships that we have.

01:17:27 So we have just a backlog of things that we can put into the game, take out from the game, experiment with until we have a good sense of priorities on what we need to polish up first. We have that sense of priorities for some lineups now, but yes, there is a lot of stuff accumulated there that we can play around with. Nice.

01:17:50 So, and then on the, um, going back to the graphics side of things, how we are utilizing the shader that we talked about in the beginning or a few slides ago, uh, to, to implement this into the game is our process is very heavily relying on this very high res reusable Atlas textures. Um, it's a.

01:18:15 Es ist ähnlich, wie viele von 3D in der Audioqualität haben. Es ist ähnlich, die sehr oldschool Tiled-Approaches, die wir hatten, vielleicht 15 oder 10 Jahre früher. Aber wir haben es mit neuen Fidelity, mit neuen Schadern, mit neuen Technologien. Es erreicht ein paar Dinge. Weil es eine Tiled-Texture ist, es ermöglicht uns ...

01:18:40 Unlike bespoke texture, it allows us to have very, very high texture fidelity. We can get to things really up close in whatever scale. But it's also, in our case, it has almost a concept art dimension to it. Because each of these texture atlases is representing a specific manufacturing origin, like a culture or affection.

01:19:05 oder eine Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art Art

01:19:30 It blockss the style of a manufacturer in a very organic way, in a similar way that is happening in real life. If you're Toyota, you have these certain parts that you're reusing or certain tools, and then that makes everything have this bespoke house style. And yeah, it creates a very optimized process too, where the only unique maps that we make for the...

01:19:58 Or the assets are just technical maps that we automate creation of those and we don't have to do anything bespoke once we're done with each of these assets? Same.

01:20:11 Ja, und es ist aktiv, wenn ein Einzelatlas ist, dann hat es diese Feedback-Loop, um die Konzept-Prozess zu verändern, weil dann die Konzept-Artist getrennt diese Atlas, und dann kann sie dann starten, um die Schieps mit einem Teil des Schieps auf dem Atlas zu verändern. Und dann geht es A, viel schneller als vorher.

01:20:39 Again, everything stays in style. So the stuff that you see here on the right, this is a part of the concept process. This is what the concept mesh looks like in Blender. And then it translates into the actual 3D asset quite predictably that way. And the actual 3D assets that eventually look like something like this. And here you can see how this Atlas aspect is manifesting.

01:21:07 Both of these are textured with the same Texture Atlas. And it doesn't mean that the two shapes are going to look exactly the same, but they do look like they're manufactured by the same entity or designed by the same entity, which is the idea. And once you have one of these done, then go into this one, then to the next one, the next one, it gets faster and faster with each one because you already have that foundational piece done there. Sure.

01:21:35 Und es ermöglicht uns zu gehen, mit der Fidelity und mit der Resolution zu sehen, wie man sieht, wie man diese individualen Plating-Pieße. Ja, ja, ja. Und all sorts of diese kleinen Slots und RIVITs und diese kinder Dinge. Das ist auch noch nicht komplett final. Das ist sehr kurz zu final, aber das ist...

01:22:03 Was man in der Spiel sehen, wird das W-2-Hell ja. Sehr beeindruckend.

01:22:11 Ja, ja, ja.

01:22:35 Und mit einem etwas mehr komplexen Animations, weil sie in den Hull gehen, sie re-rollen und so weiter. Aber es ist sehr selbexponendlich. Und vieles in der gleichen Modik ist da. Wir haben auch einen Bespoke Atlas. Und dann können wir die Atlas für alle Turrets von der gleichen Manufactur. Sick.

01:22:59 Ja, ich denke, das ist nicht so, ich meine, ich meine, ich meine, ich meine, auch sehr romantisch über das, aber ein paar von den Modeln, ich denke, in den Spiel gerade jetzt, sind die Reuse Assets oder Assets, die wir einfach haben, und so wir haben diese. Und so sehen wir diese, ich meine, diese ist, diese...

01:23:20 Ja.

01:23:48 And once again, as with the ships, also trying to be really careful with staying true to scale. These things are large and it's represented in the concept art and in the design, which is a little bit of a step away from some of what we would see in more traditional RTS games or something like this, which are more optimized for a specific screen space size, because everything is always at the same zoom level. Our strategy is a little bit more

01:24:17 in some sense even more simplistic but that is coming from you know from various places and that is just being true to scale sure because there isn't a given scale to the project you can go really really small and really really large and the most sensible thing to do at that point is just do what real life does

01:24:38 Turrets are obviously just the main, the most obvious module that goes onto your ship. There are more modules than that. And this is another area where we're trying to elevate a little bit the capabilities that we inherited from you and how to have just more module representation on your ship hull.

01:25:01 Pure Ship Modularity, where if you install a Cargo Extender, you can see it attached somewhere in your ship and doing something similar with other modules that can go into your ship. It will be not super mega utilized for now on the smaller ships, but we can expect this to be, to us to expand this capability a little bit more on capital ships where we can.

01:25:29 So you foresee a future where if somebody shows up and their ship is just absolutely covered in armor plates, that is indicative of the fact they actually are covered in armor plates. It's not just a visual thing, you're seeing...

01:25:47 Oh, they have put plates on their ship. And so then you have to recognize, oh, that's what this is. Or you see, you know, a certain kind of, you know, antenna sticking up in the back. You're like, oh, that's a, that's some kind of, you know, information-finding device. Keep an eye on that guy. He can see things that we can't see sort of a situation. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I mean, with Kyberts, one Kyberts is...

01:26:11 We'll see when we'll actually be able to do this in the engine. Another caveat being that because we are keeping things realistic, some of these things are mostly going to be noticeable for the owner of the ship when they fit in their ship and you see things changing. If you install a little sensor module on your ship, realistically, that's probably what's the external footprint of that. Maybe a little antenna, a little radome.

01:26:39 Obvious exceptions being things that take up a lot of volume, right? So like cargo containers.

01:27:07 ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja

01:27:31 Units, die die Spieler assemblee ihre Basis aus, und die Backbone aus dem Modulability und Programmability in der Spiel. Aber auch Dinge, die nicht so smart sind, wie fortifikationen, die Sie nicht programmieren können, die Sie noch nicht nutzen können. Und da ist es eine andere Situation, wie wir mit Chips und Turrets machen. Es ist also eine Hard Surface Asset, die Sie können wirklich close geteilt werden. Similar Schaden und Texturen Techniken.

01:28:01 And of course, massive decorative items, where this is another scale challenge. The scale of this, if you see these little ships for scale there, should be something like, if you imagine what does a self-respecting Neolithic tribe does once they're a little bit out of a complete low-life situation, they start to build huge monoliths.

01:28:30 impress other tribes and maybe impress their duties and we're trying to facilitate something like this but multiplied by space scale so these guys are very very large and need to hold up very very up close so a lot of the same techniques are utilized here but this time around closer to what we're doing with asteroids because it's a little bit more natural natural object case

01:28:58 There is also obviously all of the feral stuff as a category, but we can't talk about ferals. Just watch out for anything feral or for any feral information. Feral code is neurocompatible. Just always watch your back. Be careful out there. Keep an eye out. Nothing else on these guys. You know the only thing on the frontier that scares the CCP Goodfellow is ferals. It's true. Yeah, and rightfully so. Rightfully so, yeah.

01:29:27 Okay. We will not discuss ferals.

01:29:31 No, never. And then, yeah, of course, the nebula that are populating the skyboxes. This is where all of this stuff that we just mentioned, where it exists. It's the main backdrop. This giant, say, typically simulated region of space. Where the nebulas, we derive from a range of astrophotography vision modes. I think X-ray, infrared, and so on. Some less...

01:30:00 Some less fictional, some more speculative, but they're all grounded in science in their own way. High-resolution HDR. And these are going back to the Blender point in the very beginning. All of these are made out of pre-rendered Blender particles. So if you ever find yourself inspired to learn to do something like these guys to the left here, Blender is not a bad place to start. Nice.

01:30:28 Vielleicht ist es ein guter Platz zu sein. Und das ist das, was sie aktuell aussehen. Das ist auch von ein paar Tage vorhin.

01:30:40 A few little things here and there. We have new sun flares. It's this little sprite that goes on top of a star when you see it from far away, the local star of the system, the local sun, because this is one of these key graphical elements that are somewhat subtle, but then they have

01:31:06 They have a lot of contribution to creating this sense of something that's a little bit less sci-fi with these horizontal lens flares and stuff like that, but it's a little bit more mythical with these kinds of shapes.

01:31:21 Um, there is a bunch of stuff that is happening in terms of content on the character side of things, obviously, where our initial releases will be focusing on the standardized clone bodies, such as the ones that you're inhabiting right now. But we also have actual character creative work that is underway, where in both cases, where we're really trying to up the fidelity and ultimately end up with an...

01:31:47 der Ultimate Post-Human Charakter-Creator, wo man sehr tief in diese Idee von Transhumanismus oder Pantropien, die Idee ist, dass es vielleicht nicht die Terraformen Welt ist, sondern die Formen von Humans adaptieren. Denn Frontier ist ein grundsätzlich inhospitabeles Platz für Leben in allen Formen. Wir geben die Spieler diese Tools, um sich zu entwickeln, um sich in Formen zu entwickeln.

01:32:15 So, again, not super close on the horizon in terms of the engine itself, or the build rather, but as you can see, there is some stuff cooking there.

01:32:36 As you can see in the top video, we are leaning on Unreal to prototype things. And then they find their way into Carbon, which you can see here at the bottom. So it's there, they're already there. So when we say that it's not super close on the horizon, it doesn't mean...

01:33:03 10 Jahre oder so. Du wirst sie sehen, dass sie in der Lage sind.

01:33:12 Then, of course, megastructures. This is where all of these things like instancing or shader techniques are utilized to construct one of the backbones of Frontier. It's all of this vast sprawl of derelict infrastructure and another layer of archaeology where we have a lot of these. It's not clear if any of them were ever populated.

01:33:41 Es gibt einige Marken von Extinct-Cultures, wo wir alle zusammen versuchen, das Gefühl, dass wir das Gefühl haben, in dieser Space-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria-Maria

01:34:05 Das ist das, was wir hier sehen. Das ist bloß über Stargate. Und bei diesem Punkt werden sie zu kleineren Levels, als nur Space Assets. Das ist eine Unique Herausforderung, die wir lösen, indem wir eine extreme Modularität haben, wo wir diese Lego-Kits haben, wie Sie auf der Seite sehen.

01:34:32 Everything is instanced and reused out of these Lego kits to construct larger composite objects, such as what you see to the right. And also similar to what we're doing to shapes these very modular reusable tileable texture atlases so that the resolution holds up in any situation within the capacities of technologies known to mankind.

01:35:01 in 2025. Sick.

01:35:07 Similar stuff we are utilizing to construct all sorts of smaller space rocks and bigger space rocks, asteroids, and whatever other natural objects you might expect in space. Probably not that many, aside from various forms of space rocks. But here you can see both of these are experiments in Unreal, as you also saw in the very beginning.

01:35:34 wie es bereits in Karbon macht.

01:35:39 Und ja, das ist, dass wir ein Licht an, wie diese Dinge gehen durch die Prozess. Das ist unser internaler Slide. Wir sehen uns, ob ich mich für das, was wir hier sehen. Aber diese sind unsere Plans für Art Assets, für Schicks und Turrets für die Zukunft. Nicht die vollständige Bildung, aber

01:36:08 Was you can see here, or at least what I can see here, is that we are aiming to start delivering final quality ships sometime around June. We should have four, six done, and the seventh one done on the way. So this is where we are getting out of that situation of broad and shallow and start narrowing down on specific assets to get them to this final super juicy A, A quality.

01:36:37 Not everything at the same time, but one by one you will see more and more stuff coming to the game. Because most of the things that we see right now are representative of the intended designs, or many of the things, so there's things that are not used from Eve, but are all in various stages of prototype stage. And of course some stuff is just to use.

01:37:02 Ja, und da gibt es ein paar Dinge, die auf dem horizon sind, die wir noch nicht genutzt haben, aber die werden ihren Weg in den Planeten in der Zukunft machen. Es gibt Dinge wie Planeten. Wir haben noch nicht viel mit Planeten gemacht. Wir haben die Schader ein bisschen. Jetzt sind sie leichter in der Umgebung. Sie fühlen sich ein bisschen wie sie sind, wie sie kleine Stamps sind.

01:37:29 auf dem Wallpaper. Aber jetzt sind sie mehr so, wie wir hier sehen, auf der Seite oder auf der Seite. Sie arbeiten mit Fog, mit den Rest der Liking-Conditionen. Es fühlt sich so, dass sie da in der Szene sind, mit dem Rest des Spiels. Wir arbeiten an, wir arbeiten an, wir arbeiten an, ein Konzept für diese, wenn wir bereit sind. Aber das ist für jetzt...

01:37:54 Things like spaceships are taking priority because I think it's just more important to have more and better spaceships in the game about spaceships. But only in some time. Indeed.

01:38:06 The effects is another interesting challenge that we have in the foreseeable future. This is where, if you remember the beginning of our chat, this is where our existing capabilities are at their most, for lack of a better word, arcane. Because everything is kind of hard-coded. Whenever the effects artist needs to create something, they need to work in tandem with an engineer to create these bespoke capabilities right there on the spot, which is just daunting at scale.

01:38:35 So, while we're able to do some things, such as this new warp effect, for example, in the future, we will need to be looking, putting some effort into improving the core capabilities. So, for some time, chances are that the progress on this end, explosions and other things, will be relatively slow. Not completely non-existent, but slow.

01:39:00 But fortunately, this is also one of the areas where we can lean on the massive inheritance of even online quite successfully. There are so many explosions that are done there already that we are not in dire need for some time. Sure.

01:39:17 Skins are also somewhere on the horizon. Once we're at a better place with the core assets of Schicks themselves, we will move on to things such as first color material swaps and things like paint jobs. But also we are leaning heavier than in the past onto just model variations where if you have some kind of cosmetic variation of an asset.

01:39:41 Es ist die Hull selbst, die es auch beeinflusst. Nicht auf eine super, super dramatische Ebene, aber wenn man sich anschaut, wenn man diese zwei Leute anschaut, kann man sehen, wie diese Engineering Variation hat verschiedene Dinge auf dem Hull. Während dieser Hull ist nur ein Material Swap von der Default Kurvet.

01:40:06 And other little immersion tweaks are also happening. This is very technically kind of small, but then it's adding so much for this sense of being lost in this dark forgotten universe. There was a system, I don't remember which playtest it was last in. I think it was maybe Phase 4 last year. No, Phase 3 last year, where there was a system you could jump into and the system was just black.

01:40:35 There was no sun in the system. You started at one end. It was not a very big system either. You started at one end at a gate. And in front of you was an asteroid field that was just dark. And on the other end was another gate. And so you could see some of the light from the other gate.

01:40:52 Aber zu kommen, ihr habt ein solches Licht in der Fronten. Das war so, was gerade in der Fronten war. Und das war die coolste Sache, in einem Spaces Game zu sehen. Weil du wirklich fühlst wie du in den woods mit der Lantern bist, einfach zu machen. Survival. Ja, ja, ja. Ja, ich denke, das ist...

01:41:14 Cool. We're not letting this one go until it happens. There are some challenges there if we are making these lights, actual dynamic lights, but adding just these cosmetic spotlights, this should be very trivial. Nice. It's a trivial thing on a long list of other things, so we'll see. And finally, we...

01:41:40 All of this work on lighting and shaders is building towards... It's a holistic composite update on the way we render things, which is building towards... One of the things that it's building towards is empowering us to do more advanced things with decals. Because if you think about the way we discussed, the way we approach shapes in particular, where everything is relying on the style texture, that means that...

01:42:09 Es kann schwierig sein, dass etwas sehr besprochen und sehr besprochen ist, in einem bestimmten Bereich der Asset, wenn es nicht in diesem Atlus bereits existiert ist. Wir können das mit dem Modell, mit Geometrie, aber es wird viel besser sein, wenn wir das mit Decals supplementieren können, das mit Modell, mit Parallax Mapping werden können.

01:42:33 which makes it look not like a flat sticker on top of the asset but is an actual three-dimensional thing so in this example that you see here this is the extrusion here and then this thing this is all technically just a 2d texture but because of parallax mapping it looks like it's a it's modeled in there so this will be yeah this is the rpi in the sky and we'll get there i think sooner rather than later

01:43:02 So, yeah, we're getting to the end. This is how we will build towards this new era of virtual worlds. Nice. With our ultimate moddable sandbox MMO together, awake and eternally. Hell yeah. I mean, just looking at all this, obviously, I feel like for people who are...

01:43:23 Ich glaube, es hat sich gut zu sehen, zu sehen, diese Dinge zu haben, zu sehen, diese Dinge zu haben, zu sehen, diese Dinge zu haben, denn ich meine, diese Fotos, ich meine, diese Fotos, ich erinnere mich an, oder so lange, wie es May, vielleicht, und zu sehen sie jetzt, so kommen in den Furchtion und eigentlich, you know, zu sehen, wo ich, ich kann jetzt ein Klienter, jetzt, und die Most Current Build, die VisualTarget, die VisualTarget Build, und so zu sehen, diese Dinge.

01:43:50 In practice that I can get into and I can get my hands on. That's got to feel pretty good. And I imagine it has to feel great for you guys too. I mean, your team has been just absolutely working their asses off too. For sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are some shots which we were discussing a long time ago and saying that there is no way. There is no way we can do this. And now we can do that. Hell yeah.

01:44:14 Das fühlt sich gut. Ja, es wird gut gut, wenn man sich die Hände auf das. So, wir sind, wir sehen uns in June, um, um, um, und in die nicht so distant future, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um

01:44:41 and look back on where we come from because it has already been a pretty significant change just from where we started a couple months ago. So I am looking forward to it. So CCP Maximum Katz, thank you so much for joining us. It has been a pleasure as always. Thank you. To have you. I will toss it back over to CCP Jotun to wrap us up here. Until then, I've been CCP Jotun joined by Maximum Katz. Take it away, CCP Jotun.

01:45:09 Thank you, CCP Jotun. Once again, this is me, of course, CCP Jotun, back with, of course, CCP Cat. Thank you all so much for joining us and watching this stream. I thought this thing was nuts, and I'm glad we were able to share it with you guys. There's so much cool stuff in there, and truly so much other cool stuff. Yes, look at this cat. Very good. Anyway.

01:45:32 A lot of cool stuff in there. A lot of cool stuff is still coming. So next week, obviously this weekend, a lot of our team is on holiday. So you probably won't hear too much from me for the next couple days. Which is, I'm sure for a lot of you, a relief. But we are going to be back in action next week. Next Friday, we'll have another stream. We're going to be bringing on CCP Hex, CCP Layout Lord, and CCP... I can't remember their name.

01:45:58 Three of our UI and UX designers to talk about the UI and UX of Frontier. And they have a lot of cool stuff to talk about, a lot of cool stuff to show. And you've never spoken to them before, which is super cool. Okay, please, I'm so sorry. There you go.

01:46:16 But anyway, until then, friends, remember we are still going through our remnant access period until Monday. Remnant access is a free access period. You can go to eFrontier.com.

01:46:29 if you want to participate in the game for the next couple days we will be wrapping that up again on monday we are also doing a sale right now on founder access packs if you like what you see and you want to be more involved in the development process want to be able to get access to some cool dev content be able to

01:46:51 Literally ping anybody on the team at like 2 in the morning. Please don't do that, but people do it anyway. You can do that. You can sign up for those Founder Access packs. Those are all $10 off right now. And we'll be, I believe, through the end of Remnant Access. So it'll be a good time to do it. If you're interested in doing it, go check it out. Other than that, we are still, of course, running our...

01:47:12 The social media contest on our Discord, if you are a remnant writer or one of our founders, you can participate in that contest. We'll be giving away some of the cool tribal packs with some cool cosmetics in them. You saw a couple of those already in the stream. We'll be giving 10 of those away, and one lucky person who is my favorite is going to get all three. Should be a cool thing to win, if that's your thing.

01:47:36 Until next time, my friends, thank you so much, of course, as always, for joining us. I hope you are all having a good time. I hope you've enjoyed what you've seen. We will be back, like I said, next week. But until then, we'll see you out on the frontier. I've been CeCe Bioten. Have a lovely afternoon. Goodbye.