Inside Star Citizen: How We Work - Level Design 

"if everything is large, then nothing is large" YES! When we can immerse ourselves into a location for hours and then move out and truly feel how massive the game is, I'm very happy!

Who in this team is validating caves design ? I would like to talk with them :D

i wish you can make real roads connecting cities or the satellite part of the city and we can play delivery missions like eurotruck simulator and once road becomes a thing you can start working on the real estate stuff

Star Citizen's dev blogs inspired me to be a game developer. Now I'm in year 8 of my professional career as an gameplay programmer but Star Citizen has not been released yet 😅

@11:00 is that a drake Mule carrying a box. Don't you do this to me CIG. Make it happen!

someday, when the tech allows for it, I hope to have a fully explorable Arc Corp that you can get hopelessly lost in.

Please, no markers for enemy NPCs... unless you scan. I hope the scan has a very limited radius. Keep up the awesome work, you are killing it... no pun intended

10:55 I really hope the MULE work in the 3.24 (or 4.0 at the latest)

whitebox to final art transition is so cool!

Did I hear someone making a break at 0:18? Solids or stripes?

9:33 To be honest, I don't really understand why there are no options to move around within stations other than using the elevator. Wasn't there even a plan to generate gears procedurally? similar to the food court

honestly the level design of the new distribution centers is fantastic. There's so much potential with them and they're fantastic in how non-linear they are. I really hope that the space stations and the landing zones get a similar treatment eventually because currently they're /painfully/ generic and bland.

"Do you always succeed? No" honesty is amazing. Love it

"...load up your Drake Mule, drive it over to your ship, load that ship, then fly out with your goods." This is like the Final Boss of Star Citizen.

Less enclosed elevators and more physically attached spaces is the way to go! Levski, Grim Hex and the mall/bar at Orison do elevators well. If I was king of CIG for a day enclosed elevators would only be used to get to hangars and nothing else.

"Lessons learned in Stanton for Pyro". I hope that means Stanton stations will be updated to match the 'flow' of Pyro stations in future...

Please also bring back the Sprint reports

I love that they have a billiard board in the office I could hear it when jarred was speaking

As long as my toon can finally eat pizza and/or nachos

Can't wait for personal hangers, it's kinda the "level design at home" us players get to have...😄

Once Pyro gets released I really hope CIG just focuses on PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE. I feel as though there is plenty on meat on the bones at this point and I would truly love to start enjoying some of the gameplay but the biggest reason I'm not playing is it is just such a brutal experience due to bugs/glitches/and just general performance. If this gets focused on I'll try to get my friends back in and maybe we could have a real good time.

You have been creating the same space stations and bunker for years. Great job

I would like there to be not only projects of abandoned places or garbage dumps, but also interior designs of our days with a wide range of options, rather than places where garbage accumulates and decomposes. So that you can do the interior decoration of your apartment in the city or office in the suburbs. for example, the office decoration that is presented in this video. very boring unchanging types of metal and plastic. In the game, they can be used in the construction of foundations, where it gives strength and durability. but in the city of the future, we would like to see the interiors of our time with realistic lighting and detail, this is normal for the city. Of course, metal and space style look best in the databases of organizations, but even there you can bring variety and beauty, and not just a garbage untidy style. Game good👍

Some of those shots.... we miss you Levski!

Awesome show meeting the team explaining all these parts of the game sometimes are overlooked. Or at least I didn’t know. 👍

Please please add some landmarks that make spaceports more visible at night! NBIS is terrible to find in the dark.

After watching this video I still wonder - why was Lorvile area redesigned? What was the goal? What existing and future game features did that redesign brought? Of course, it was a colossal job and a lot of human resources were spent - but for what?

Stanton seems to be the middle ground, and Pyro is the development of the Pirate home system with Grim Hex being a sub-hub, so now do we get to see a fully inhabited tourist system for all the cargo (and tourists) to move to?

Oh I know all about not being able to see enemies because of a blocked area 😂. Always awesome to see the team and the work yall do o7

That was super interesting and insightful. It gives me a much greater appreciation of the magic that everyone at CIG is working.

Seeing the player place a crate on top of a grated section at an outpost in order to create a bridge definitely gave me Tears of the Kingdom feels. CIG, can we get a feature that will let us weld items together? Let users create their own structures? That would be dope.

Loving this video series!

Life section, that actually made me laugh and these days that's not easy. Nice content and enjoyed the explanations.

Lol i love these insight videos they are essentially a free entry level class into game development on the process in making video games!

Thanks for sharing the process of game development with us. 🙃

Maelstrom, environnement Map and mb Ray tracing

I wonder if they will ever make an "abandoned" city. Would give them good practice for future cities and city undergrounds. Also a great place to find gameplay.

I find that there are some scary speeches in this video. In an immersive world, you don't have to design everything like a video game. You can have areas that are there just to add life. For example, Port Olisar could have been kept without replacing it with Station Seraphin. It wouldn't have broken the game. The more the game progresses, the more I get a feeling of nostalgia. Perhaps proof that your level design is going in a direction that is too 'video game'.

Looking forward to ideas to munch on. Design in most facets seems to have come around nicely.

Question: Are the Stanton space stations working in terms of level design according to them when taking into account what Star Citizen is supposed to be?

really like the reclaimer mission with the wonky gravity & jumptown , can't wait for JT to be dynamically triggered, kudos level design team :)

2:08 "If you die in an elevator that is actually a problem" - got it, next time I want to respawn I'll do it in the elevator. Just for testing purpose.

Nice work!

I don't have much interest in null sec systems like Pyro, but it does give me hopes for a future high sec one.

"WHO WANTS SOME NOODLES?"

I wish we have larger space station interiors, Most of the space station interior still feel too small and compact compare to their exteriors.

great video and some great examples thanks.

Great video guys!

Why would anyone use a mule when it only carries 1 1scu box? Tractor beam can carry one of anything.

Need a series on the counter-intuitively named, living breathing Universe. It's nice to see all the "build it and PCs will come" stuff but it would be nice to see plans on "NPCs come and see what they build".

I’m glad you are cutting down on elevator space magic. Keep doing that for all systems please.

great eps, thanks!

The smaller space stations in stanton feel, to me, like they should all have the same layout. Like walmart or target. Those companies go to great effort to provide consistency on the interior layout of their stores, so it's not frustrating to find and buy what you need. Often I'm stopping at the stations to pick up something as quickly as possible and I don't want to spend ten minutes finding something just because the layout has been randomized. Also loose the elevators! thanks! 🙂

Love the work you guys do but can we please straighten the New Babbage writing in the hangars lol

George Rankin gives me strong David Tennant as 10th doctor vibes

Awesome development and content!

"How We Work - Marketing team" here fixed it for you

The random PIcos etc found out and about in the verse should be different colours to the standard blue. So they actually have a different value, are exciting to find and start to create some player economy for supply vs demand. These are basics that should have been in the design docs 12 years ago. It's so frustrating to watch a sandbox game be designed at a glacial pace like a single-player game when all you needed to do was copy the best of EVE Online and make it all first person.

"who wants some noodles" I am getting flashbacks here

I wished that landing zone habs had different designs and not just from Covalex. Same for the shops and hospitals in space stations. It would really make those locations more unique and not just cookie cutter, cut and paste jobs.

So nice job well done guys

I really think we should have a White van ingame , to move boxes around 😉

It really puts me at ease that we have the Germans engineering the level design. You know its gonna be OSD levels of detail & thought

Great video, love to see how the teams describe their work and what their goals are. Just had a question about the environments being "static", will we see things change within stations and outposts, things like componants or boxes piling up, building panels being open for repairs with NPC working at them or maybe it could offer a repair mission for a player? will we see roomba drones sweeping up rubbish? just stuff that communicates a degree of change over time.

Jared looking sharp!

Best part of this video: Cave Maps

FIX THE COMM ARRAY TIGERCLAW INSERT BUTTON GODDAMNIT! I love the level design though, it's really great. One of the positives for SC 100%.

Speaking of Level Design... why isn't Providence Platform Orison's Spaceport? It was literally a dock/gantry for UEE Javelins.

30 days in could really use that f8c lightning. Only ship other than the arrow I like bring it back 😁

13:08 DIAMOND CITY?!?!?

Until traversing these locations is filled with things to do(missions), find(rare loot, riches, NPCs), fix(missions), learn(lore and professions), trigger(random events like killing a rare spawn to trigger a server-wide retaliation), etc. Locations will be another set piece where you go there once and then fly around doing bounties.

Very Cool!

It sounded like some of the devs were playing pool in the beginning of the video

What's the point of SCL if ISC is now mini-SCL?

We need the ups shorts

Hope this shows those interior levels for cities ;)

Man, I love this game.

I'm liking the philosophy they spoke of with Pyro and balancing the gameplay to visual content but I am really not sure how much I'll actually get to enjoy and play it. So far Pyro tests have been a gankfest. Not sure I can see that changing. I mean that's fun in it's own right but if I'll I'm doing is going to a larger PVP arena that'll get old fast. Prefer some deeper gameplay really. Shame if that's the case because it looks stunning.

Thanks!

love you guys

Heavenly well done guys

@Jared Congratulations on the successful work losing weight. Inspiring me. I need to get serious about it also. Well done.

some beautiful sneak peaks in this video but seriously how do we fix NPC's who just stand on chairs?

Yesss

So good.

This video perfectly shows my main issue with the Star Citizen levels: Everything is just soooo dark. Why are the main hallways of public areas as badly lit as a cave or a maintenance shaft? I really hope this will change once the new lighting system comes online.

Honestly, this series alone is well worth the price of my pledges. Great work guys!

Who's in charge of adding all the bugs?! They are very, very good at their job! lol

Cowboy Hats! When? 🙏🏼♥️

What happened with the questions about the members of the team? I really enjoyed hearing about the team members as well what they get up to in game development.

I have to admit that the level design these guys do is absolutely beautiful. When I saw Distribution Centers and the size and magnitude I was floored at the artwork. The downside, the game is unstable and in many cases relatively unplayable in performance, bugs, lag, latency, animation queue delays and lastly nothing works. Can't use a pool table or arcade machine, no PVP barfights on stations, so many elements but no actual use.

Espace pods + Command modules = When?

LANDING PADS we need a single landing pad on top of EVERY hab unit. that can't be occupied for more than 5 minutes.

Level designers: Consider adding dynamic lighting to POI locations and giving players the option to turn off/on lightsources at locations. Dynamic lighting and RNG scenarios for missions will dramatically increase replay value. Darkness as a gameplay element and interactive obstacle is largely underutilized in many games due to convenience.

Cant wait for 4.0!!!

Nice Idris-P in show

So they are like the conductors and the other teams are the musicians

Holy Friack, does Jared look tired! :O

I love the teams work and dedication, and i can really appreciate the effort. Just when i here all those sentences i have a bad feeling of "some people love to dig their own grave" 😂😂😂 Not out of evil intend. But when i here the each and individual statements of what they are responsible for and what zhey all di great, i can see 10 times more examples like the elevators that people would bring up to each statement and even which people would say that 😂 You know you'll be blamed for everything, right? Overspawning in a single building in rappel, missions not working, bunkervators not apearing, bad and blant level design (no 10k objects with bazillion triangles per square meter)... maybe you should think about stuff for a "how they will use it against us" perspective. 😉 I love the looks in Pyro, stations and outposts. But this focus on bringing players together and cramping them into a small area when everywhere a fight can break lose at any time? I don't know..... what could possibly go wrong?😂😂😂 i can't wait. Oh one minor correction, its not "when everywhere a fight CAN break lose".... exchange the can for a WILL. Its not uncertain at this point, only the time of day is. 😉 Fellow germans (oder deutsche Landsleute) keep up the good work, i count on you. 😆🇩🇪

Mr Huccaby, you comedy god