During the demo, Chris Roberts noted that all the content shown on stage had been created just between Gamescom and CitizenCon – months apart – aside from the tools used to make the planet. We then asked if the demo properly showed biomes, curious if the planet had been hand-crafted for the demo or if the Planet Ed tools were deployed in time to build-out the planet.
It was a really exciting demo, we were super happy to show planets V2.”
It's almost like an investor meeting – I mean, we're goin' in, we're showing them what all their support has really allowed us to do. We're always excited to show it off for the community. "I'm excited! I was super nervous for the demo. Procedural generation for Planets V2 also applies a new spin to each object placed, like palm trees, so that minute rotations and small tweaks break up the chance of noticing repeat assets and tiles.Īsked about how the demo went, Tracy said: Those biomes included acrid swamps, desert, oceans, and forests, with individual rule sets applied to each biome and mixed between the edges. The in-engine and in-game demonstrations at CitizenCon 2016 showed a Homestead demo, an Earth-like planet with various biomes edge-blended together. The tech demo showed a walk-through of CIG's team using large brushes to paint the surface with biomes, hand-placing bodies of water and buildings, and blending everything together.
The toolkit takes the approach of getting artists “90% of the way there,” allowing them to fine-tune the final 10% for faster production pipelines and a hands-on polish. This includes Planet Ed, already somewhat detailed here and here, which is the team's creation kit for planet customization and design. Tracy's role for the CitizenCon presentation primarily had him demonstrating the production tools utilized by CIG for planet development. The Technical Director took a few moments after CitizenCon to share details about the lower level technology driving the night's demonstration, like real-time physics, poly per pixel budgets, occlusion mapping, and more. Immediately following our already-published interview with Star Citizen's Chris Roberts, we encountered Technical Director Sean Tracy, recently responsible for educating us on the game's 64-bit engine.