god dude imagines a graffiti-covered tram that goes down into the lower levels where you can also di missions for twitch or work as an arc corp-backed mercenary.
What I would like to see for ArcCorp or Lorville, is to have Merc-Missions that send you down into the "lower levels" (of city and society). Or the other way around, have more shady characters do their business down there. I essentially would like to see a possibility to play your whole game only in that area or on Area18. It's actually what fascinates me the most about SC. Sure, you can venture from planet to planet, but having the option to actually never go to space would be just as fun. And it would maybe open the game for many more players.
Hopefully, currently I am pretty sure that most of the planets surface is faked. I honestly don’t understand why/how there are planets like this in the game. I think Arc Corp is ugly, and makes no sense. Why do they have a planet spanning city, they haven’t been on the planet for that long.
Agreed, I wish we could see more of that city and I hope that maybe one day you will even be able to fly on some of those highways that you see so many ships flying over and using those airways to get to different parts of the city and to get to different mission areas as needed. I think that would just be amazing.
That's a completely unrealistic expectation, though. It's a space sim, focused on playing the game in ships, in space, with a combination of bespoke and procedural landing zones and space stations to give FPS missions, mission givers, areas for pickup/dropoff of materials, areas to shop, etc. It has always meant to be more of a rest-stop than anything else. Expecting them to flesh out the landing zones so much that you can play the game and never have to go to space goes *directly* against the vision of the game.
The entry way with the U shaped corridor is a trope in games, same with S shaped corridor. It's done for the sake of culling. So the interior doesn't have render and keep the exterior in the memory and vice versa.
@@CaptainUnikore He acknowledged it, yes. Could be better done tho. If I were them, I'd put the holographic greeter before the U in a bigger hall and then the directions/etc desk after it.
@@MrMutterbug Not without a loading screen most likely. If the frosting is see through in any way, you still have to render the inside to pass the frosting shader on top of it. If it's a full frost that doesn't render the inside, it can still have issues, cause culling has to be a fast algorithm and you need some leeway for culling errors. So you usually use more than 2 curves to create a major culling zone. You could make opening the door load in the next zone, but even then you see in certain games either a bit of lag opening the door or some pop in. When there are doors, people still make sure the entry way can do some culling to the rest of the zone, so you can have the entry hall preloaded at least to avoid artifacts. That's too much into detail anyway, most modern engines don't need manual culling zones, but you do them to avoid artifacts from the automatic culling and increase performance of your game. If a game has to render every interior of every building you see, it gets slow and choppy pretty fast even on modern hardware, why a lot of indie games have crappy performance, people don't know these basic things.
Back in the old days of Half-Life we called that kind of design element a Vis-blocker. It helps to keep the frames high. Modern games like Cyberpunk 2077 for example also use bloom to cull elements of the map. So if you are in the middle of a dark room you can't view outside, because the light in the windows is way too bright but the room can be way more detailed now.
Have you ever thought about doing a review of the architecture in Halo? Specifically New Mombassa in Halo ODST. I think that would be a very interesting video!
I really do think they could make a full city wide, explorable planet- IF they had server meshing working, were able to mesh different sections- and, had an incredible system to actually fill out the world.
Think like biomes on other planets- you can paint on different districts, set what type they are, and then set the number of X type of structures- such as power plants, atmospheric systems, living areas, or other aspects. The system fills insures that number is met, and automatically fills the areas between them in following set algorithms. You can even populate the interiors of buildings in a similar manner.
Fill it with what? Empty spaces and repeating designs where you do the same thing? Because that is what it would be. There are whole planets you can walk around but you don't for the same reasons.
@@Muckylittleme the finality of planet tech will eventually be having enough variation on the planets to be worth exploring. For cities, it would be harder, but it could be done in a few years' time
One of the huge accomplishments I think we've come to take for granted after so long is that being inside of a building is not a separate instanced location. You can see and potentially interact (wave or something) with people standing in the interior of a Pisces landed on an 890 jump flying by. Such things really help to bring the city to life so you're not reliant entirely on scripted or even dynamically generated background content.
I love ArcCorp, it's still my favourite major hub. It's especially amazing at night time, with all the neon lights piercing the darkness. Definitely Bladerunner vibes.
I really hope they create a system that allows some sort of limited procedural generation of areas on the surface of the city. It would be absolutely amazing to be able to race Rangers on the city streets/slums, or descend from a rooftop to the surface to enter another building for a mission.
Just lookin' out for ya Morph. The "blue" lights in the security checkpoints at the spaceports are (I think) UV lights that are intended to kill contagions and bacteria as you walk through it. I would not be surprised if in the future we players will likely be made to wait there for 15-30 seconds or something, to drive the lore/immersion.
It may have taken you a bit longer to do, but incredible video as always. Obviously your cinematography leads the way, but I love how you bring your insights as an architect to talk about what you're seeing. Interestingly for Area 18, the Riker Memorial Spaceport is supposedly in memorandum of a Star Citizen fan backer who sadly passed away and never saw the game to completion. I think that's a lovely touch.
Another awesome video Morph! I agree with you about the fact that there might not be enough places to visit at Arcorp but we only have one star system playable for now. Once we have more systems It might be just enough for the player base to have just one airport. The verticality needs work though I totally agree with that. Oh! And a deck at that penthouse place.
I think ArCorp us one of my favorite places. I know it's not a huge explorable landing zone but for me it's jaw dropping - the airport feeling, the future highway, the crazy lighting, giant commercials... it's all cool. Watching players come in to land is amazing while sitting in the lobby; just as though I was waiting for a flight. This one time, I looked out from the tram while on the highway and watched a Connie fly up to space. Jaw dropping...
I've watched 3 other of your "Architect Reviews" videos now plus this one, making 4, and I keep finding myself hoping that the RSI/S.C. developers watch your videos. You make some very good points, such as the awkward feel of entering the main ArcCorp building in Area 18, the lack of even a secondary escape hatch or door in the Mercury Star Runner, and the importance of views to the outside from ships, done so well in the Caterpillar & Carrack, but less so in others. I, too, would love to see them fill out ArcCorp a bit more. Great videos!
Flying bus is really breathtaking. And this balconies 10:55 ohh... Imagine standing there and watching how ur friends fly by. I hope there are more places like this (and more catwalks) I'm easily could spend 100 hours in "campaign" around here. If there was such
I think you nailed it. Definitely a good critique. I like that your constructive feedback and comes with advice on how to solve a problem. Very educational. :)
ArcCorp is still my favorite place in the game. I do hope they add more to it though. Its so cool, the visuals are amazing, especially at night but I want more areas where you forget its day or night and when you find yourself out of the "caves" of the undercity and finally see the sky you are reminded of what time it really is. There is potential for this if they dive back into ArcCorp and really go for it. I understand that they have the entire rest of the game to create but ArcCorp is really special and I hope it gets more attention. Great review as always. Idk how you get such good framerate but your cinematography is always super on point.
i love your videos dude! - 6:20 exactly what i always think!! open landing spots would be so much more fun! we are always locked inside in this game rn the headtracking pov with natural movements/lookarounds really makes for the best shots!
What an enjoyable and calming ride. I really enjoyed watching it, listening to it. Gives the feeling this is more than just the next level of gaming. This feels like...being in another world.
Awesome video, as always 🙂👍 One thing you might have missed is to explain why the spaceport at Area 18 is called "Riker Memorial Spaceport". It is named after a SC-backer who sadly died some time ago.
Star citizen is so poorly optimized. I'm running it on a fast M.2 SSD, an RTX 3080 and an i9 9900k with 32gb of RAM. Area 18 still runs at no more than 25-30FPS.
@@TheNorthHawk Early Alpha games rarely are, yet I don’t think the performance right now is really that bad based on the incredible draw distances, visuals, map sizes, and level of details. Is your performance always that bad though? Because I find that a bit peculiar as I very rarely get frame rates that low even in area 18 and I’m playing with an old 1080, a ryzen 5 3600 and 32gb 3200mhz ram. Perhaps internet connection plays a part in performance?
@@JoffThaBoff This is what perplexes me. I don't know why my performance is so poor, where the bottleneck is. I mean, my net isn't at all bad either. 150 megabits down, 15 up. It's enough of an upload speed for me to stream quite comfortably at 1080p, so I'm not sure why it performs so poorly.
I imagine one day nofly-zones will be places where you CAN fly, but arent allowed, resulting in fines in places like ArcCorp or being shot out of the sky (Lorville)
Really enjoying your videos Morph. I am new to SC and your videos have been an amazing guide. I would love to see some guidance in finding the different places of interest throughout the verse. A map to help find important locations. I enjoy making videos and can't wait to explore the possibilities. Love your work Morph. Thank you.
I love the design however i found the scale of the landingzones way to small. I know that at the moment they are not really looking into scaleing things up to much but for a city this big to have only such a small walkable area and in addition only at one single stop ... it feels like they could do so much more
Whole city is probably procedurally generated (from manually pre-prepared blocks) and 'assembled' and rendered live as you fly over. Geometry likely does not exist aside from walking places and it would be needed for precise collision detection and walking physics to work.
@@reav3rtm Yes and no. The planet is generated by artists painting with procedural tools that CIG have developed. There is far more direction and coherence this way because you have a human on the end thinking about what works and what looks right, but you get the benefit that procedural randomness can add.
@@ConradLarsonGaming Procedurally does not have to equate just using 'Perlin noise'. Are you sure that artists painted whole map *and* geometry is stored? Maybe they just 'painted' instructions, hints, heuristics for procedural generator that recreates city on the fly? (in deterministic way) It would be gigabytes if not terabytes of geometry alone to store. Could be streamed so does not need to be loaded all at once but storing that would be a challenge alone.
@@reav3rtm We've come a long way from when you had to store the whole geometry in that way. The artist's paint the landscape yes. Their work combined with the procedural tools they use produces heightmaps that the game uses to render the planet / moon's surface as you fly around.
@@ConradLarsonGaming Aren't you proving my point? :) (wrt this city, not landscapes in ex terrain). Unless you are saying this city is just rendered as sophisticated hightmap. But this also means detail is procedurally generated from some basic metadata that is the only thing stored.
Great video! ArcCorp is probably the least explored planet in Stanton because of the limited exportability. What I think would be amazing, would be procedural overpassing highways, that crisscross the planet, keep us a respectable altitude (to avoid low-res assets), but weave through buildings occasionally. Perfect place to really floor it on a hoverbike, with breathtaking scenery.
I love the idea of Arc Corp, but there are a few things that bother me about it. If anyone hasn't seen the 2017 CitizenCon keynote where they first show Arc Corp I suggest it. I think the one thing that sold me on it the most was the ships flying around the buildings and air highways that made the city feel more alive, which is lacking quite a bit now that's it's actually in game. Also in the keynote video they land on a space station and look down at the planet, the lights of the city looked amazing. With the Arc Corp that's in the game, from space the lights on the planet look like Christmas lights scattered here and there, I wish we had that crazy Coruscant light feel like they showed in the keynote. Not really anything architecture related but it's just missing some details to make it feel complete and lived in, feels sad and empty to me right now and that's why I don't usually visit it.
Really enjoy these "architectural review" episodes. It provides insights into design, purpose, and function which most of us enjoy but don't fully appreciate. Keep it going.
The entryway solution like what you see in the big ArcCorp building has been around for a while to help cull areas and maintain a visual budget. I remember them in areas of World of Warcraft (like the entrance to Stormwind). I think one of the better solutions they've come up with is using stairs and lowered ceilings to limit angles of view like in the CBD in Lorville. Another thing that helps is if there is something on or in front of the wall to make it look more purposeful. For ArcCorp, that could be a big generator that is suspended from the ceiling or maybe a series of pictures on the wall depicting the origin and history of the company. Then the purpose is "We want you to know who we are before you enter the premiere building on a city planet."
I havee been enjoying all your videos tremendously. (Binge watching a bit, as I am still very new to the game). As somebody who knows nothing about architecture and design I find it really interesting to hear all the things that you note about a space. When I visit these places I have the emotional responses and I can tell that they are atmospheric and well done, I find them believable and interesting to look at and pleasant to return to. You explain the reasons well. Thank you for making these!
I absolutely LOVE Area 18 - I love how massive it feels, how much it takes cues from Blade Runner and Kowloon Walled City, and how every interior fights to establish its own territory and ambience, but the outside is a free-for-all. But mostly I love how it just BOMBARDS you. Everywhere things blink, things move, and the relentless noise!
As someone who studied and worked in the aviation industry, I really feel like A18 and Lorville both have much room for improvement with their spaceports. For one, I would really like to see arrival/departure lanes. This allows for a more horizontal landing (for those ships more aerodynamic, as VTOL pads can still be a thing), and would allow, as you mention, for the devs to really play with the space to make these introductions and exits from the area special. I'm not asking for full blown SIDs and STARs, but having visual navigation to/from surface like they kind of did with the updated R&R stations, would make for some special and more interactive spaces that can show off the scale of both the playable space and the spaceport itself so much better
Wow! This is mind blowing beautiful. Such incredible detail! When VR is added, this will be almost good enough to live in! SC needs to move away from flat-screen, towards modern immersion. VR is here!
Wow! This is another classic Star Citizen presentation. The time to put this one together was wholeheartedly worth the effort. Obviously, there was a lot of thought put into this masterpiece called ArcCorp. Yes! The food joints and back alleys are interesting spots to hangout but the lore of going down to the surface to explore the shops and meet people would be awesome. Taking an elevator to the top floor of ArcCorp to gain entrance to a Consierge Club could be a reward. This video has provided me with a plethora of experiences to dream about either in my sleep, or exploration in a starship MSR, or riding on a Dragonfly, or on foot. Please, I hope Star Citizen doesn't read my post. I know them. They could easily go on another tangent. hahaha! Stay the course and finish the online game. Preach the Peace ✌
P.S. With all the things that you like, I really hope CIG notices your videos. It is so easy for people to only hear the negative, and I think it is valuable to also get the positive criticism, doubly so when it is such great compliments from somebody who clearly knows his stuff.
One thing that I found very important to game design and that has to do with architecture as well is where points of interest are placed and how paths are leading to them. Games have to minimize the space used for every POI to exist but still feel big, which means that designers need to create more way out of a limited space, possibly even multiple ways towards the same POI, and I find that the designers excelled at this in Area18. Look at how you progress through tunnels, along walkways and railings, as well as across archways to get from the Plaza to Astro Armada. There are 2 major and 2 minor passage ways diverging and reconnecting at multiple points along the way, broken up by buildings (some of which are useable) and lined with shops. If a straight line would connect the Plaza and the Astro Armada, you would sprint through it in just a few seconds, but with those diverging paths and buildings strategically placed to be obstacles it feels like a walk through half a city center. And the multiple passage ways mean that you will be able to approach the POIs from different angles and while seeing different parts of the city, from seedy alleyways and dive bars to places of commerce, and you still will never get lost on your way. Personally, I feel like this is a huge accomplishment.
The ArcCorp hangars should be in the side of a huge skyscraper, with pads on the surface at the base of it for smaller ships (though pads may be going away when we get persistent and personalized hangars). Having them on a huge building (or multiple buildings) would allow you to either have a great view of the city out the door of your hangar, or allow you to fly low near the surface for a lower level hangar.
Arcorp is a cool planet and the lighting is well done. Lorville has longer train rides to see the city at ground level. Eventually they will get more places to roam in. For now they are doing just enough of each place to get the tech working I think.
Actually it's super easy, barely an inconvenience! Yeah, we just have these pockets of details that we can put however much or little detail into. Like every ship, station or even city, we simply open up like a handful of locations of detail. And for the rest, it's just huuuge open empty space with pretty much nothing going on! wowowowow
I’m not complaining, I don’t want a under detailed star citizen. I respect chris roberts and his “it’s done when it’s done, I’m not willing to compromise for a release date”. And tbh it’s the best way to develop a game of this fidelity.
CIG hear me out... Personal apartments on ArcCorp, with rentable personal garages/hangars. There's enough space for it, unlike places like Lorville, which would become quite large if 100 people had their own garage there. And the garages would make it easy to load smaller vehicles into bigger ships quiclky, AND you could personalize it by adding your own paint theme, furniture and so on.
I wish that CIG makes connnections between each landing zone, like tunnels and trenches branching out, connect and intersect and that you can travel on the ground level or better say in the underground with elevators leading up to landing zones, possibly apartments and personal hangers that players can own.
Sorry I can't give an advice on what to improve, because your videos are perfect as they are. Keep up the good work. Look forward to more wonderful videos from you😊
I do hope they come back and do some upgrades to the city. How about adding some buildings like that big one on Hurston? How about adding more flying cars around? It still feels empty of air traffic. How about adding landing pads around the industry area? There is no reason to fly over to them which is a waste. How about adding volumetric clouds (aka dynamic weather system with rain, etc.) ? How about adding some green biodome parks? How about adding some lakes or ocean areas and even rivers to break up the environment? How about adding floating freeways which you could drive your vehicle from Area 18 to Area 19 for example? Just image if players could have car races on Arc Corp would be sooo cool. I know I am asking too much but I just think they could do so much more!!!!!
Fantastic video! My only comment would be that with the prefab metal plating construction it would be more likely that they are welded together along with expansion joints at specific points dictated by the prefab instead of bolted or screwed together. Welding the construction together combined with a self repairing meta-metal-material would vastly reduce the need for maintenance and would increase the overall safety of the buildings and walkways.
Outstanding Morphologis, simply outstanding. I remember when I was new to the game and heard about Area 18, and the feeling I got as descended through the clouds in my RSI Aurora. I remember the towers being the first thing to greet me, and I had to search hard for the spaceport as I expected an erect structure but rather it was very flat. I would want to experience that feeling over and over again as a I traveled in the city, but once you're on the ground there are no opportunities to take in the scale. Rooftop landings are nice, but Microtech does a much better job of allowing you to appreciate New Babbage over and over again. Be it on the tram, in the commons, or even in your apartment. Area 18 has none of these things--other than the tram which is the best feature of the planet. I completely agree.
Hi Morph, I think that we need to start thinking of the planets purely as "visual filler" - the same way a cloudy skybox would be in older games - without them necessarily being places full of places of interest or planetary-scaled gameplay areas, save for specific locations designated from the game designers themselves (PvE/PvP areas). I am not a CIG apologist by far, but generally having the expectation that you can create gameplay over 8 million square kilometers would be an impossible feat. Perhaps CIG should be more clear and keep expectations lower on the subject. Love your series by the way, CIG should hire you as a consultant.
The biggest city in gaming buuuuut with the least amount of stuff to do. It's mind boggling that CIG put such massive effort into creating something that you can't play in. You can walk around and interact with vendors. That's... pretty cool but... it's like getting the cone but no ice cream, yah feel me?
@@Exsulator2 Well this just leaves ArcCorp at the spot where its not done and like Morphologis mentioned, they will probably gonna come back to it later.
Nice vid as always I was the 1,000th like awesome. I really hope they get a chance in one of the lul months to open up some more of the interiors of the game . Medical gameplay will be really nice to see come online in Q2/3
I'm glad somebody finally came up with a name for the kinetic sculpture in the middle of ArcCorp Plaza. From now on I shall call it "ArcCorp Cog Thing".
Nice choice of glasses, I wish they'd add them in for non-subscribers though. With the earpieces, I always figured they were 'smart' and could link to a MobiGlas for full audio and visual display. As such they'd be superior to the contacts you get free with a MobiGlas as others would find it much harder to listen in on a conversation.
Dang it, I walked straight up to that shady NPC and left, I had no idea she gave missions. That would have been an experience to discover and embark on with no prior knowledge.
Honestly CIG might want to hire authors, along with architects, economists... Getting professional opinions on worldbuilding would be amazing Like on Morph's reviews on the Aegis Hammerhead, he mentioned the problem about how opening the cargo bay doors decompresses the entire ship. Stuff like that needs to be caught by something. An economist would recognize a single player buying medical supplies shouldn't create a shortage for the other players given the production capacity of a planet like ArcCorp being a 20 second quantum jump away. Authors would make sure buildings, ships, equipment, weapons, cargo would be consistent with the story and world This video series demonstrates how an architect opinion can be valuable (and entertaining) only problem is money...
like you stated I really want to be able to visit more levels, and more places on the planet - a city planet should have dank street levels like in 5th element or high rooftop settings that you dont need a ship to get to. It is also missing climate right now, it needs rain and clouds to set the contrast between nature and manmade since there is no greenery. Great video as always, great production and thank god no B-roll =)
It will be nice if one day some of the rooftop pads could gain access to the city. Level's will be arcorps challenge, I guess. Also, the arcorp centerpiece should be called Spacely's Sprocket. ;)
Unfortunately, the hangars are more than likely about hiding the spawn/despawn of ships, and cutting down on the amount of assets rendered on the client. It would be great to have landing pads, or massive open hangars, but I doubt that's going to happen. I would like the spaceport to include some more viewing platforms, and better places to see the ships coming and going.
One of my biggest issues with the city is the definition of the holograms on the buildings - they often look like they fall off on a gradient rather than having a strict ending, they're hazy, and can look odd. But, CIG will certainly be revisiting ArcCorp, they've said they want to add the oceans to the planet, and that there are other improvements to be made. But who knows where that is on their priority list - probably pretty low. I doubt they'll revisit any of the landing zones until Crusader and the Aaron Halo are out the door.
I have to say that I fully agree with you that Area 18 should have more open landing pads and I also think that is true for all of the landing zones. I wish that there would be generally more variety in landing facilities. It might nice to have something like a shared hangars or halls where multiple ships can land at the same time. Or just having more open pads. I think that would also make the spaceports and space stations feel more alive when you are actually landing parallel to other players or npcs. Just think about the busy outposts where Caterpillars and Freelancer line up to land and buy or sell some stuff without going into solitary confinement first. This way a single hut in the middle of nowhere feels more alive and real than a planet full with factories and apartments.
Can you please do an architect reviews on Klescher? I personally think its one of the most atmospheric and well designed locations in Star Citizen. Would love to see your review on it.
15:20 "designing from a bird's-eye view" this is an excellent comment that helps to explain why so many video games have barren and unrealistic spaces for characters to walk through
A Complex and taskful Postal and Parcel Mail system. Towers with cross bridge path walks connecting neighborhoods or residents with ground level traffic and motorists. Perfecting the imagery and practicality for the realization of a concept belief. Eisman Starr Lex Luthor
Apart from lower level exploration, rainy weather, etc. I already would like to see someone fly over the outskirts of Arccorp. I have not seen one video of someone doing so. It's a big nothing, I know but I still enjoy the design of the flat industry surface.
Every time I look in at Star Citizen, I find myself wishing it were on the Star Wars IP--something of this scale and ambition is the perfect concept for amazing SW content.
I would love to see the Area 18 spaceport to be open and rid some of the underground landing bays, make it more like a today's airports with ships coming and going on the surface.
Something about Arc Corp just enchants me. I wish they'd give it some more love - a lot more. I know CIG have SOOO much on their plate. But imagine roads, long straight highways to the next Area, with rest stops every few hundred miles. Awesome! They just isn't really any reason to explore the planet at the moment. I hope that changes. I love Arc Corp!
Your comments on trains and transport were spot on, and I agree, I was genuinely hoping there’d be more public transport and trains within Cyberpunk. Even more flying ships would’ve been nice. Random side note: any chance you’d do some videos on Halo’s Forerunner architecture and how it’s changed over time?
Another wonderful and entertaining video with very valid hints how to improve. Thanks. I especially agree on 3 of your main points: Landing outside of the main area with its high buildings was a disappointing design choice (beside from missing the scale - I miss a place where I can watch landing and starting ships in all landing zones so far), the impressive verticality of the structures should be much more used with adding according high rich and low poor areas to visit and adding a meaning to the buildings, like giving players the possibility to rent the penthouses on top of the skyscrapers with your own landing pad, would transform the endless city into something with meaning... Even as I hope that CIG moves on instead of redoing things again and again, some further adjustments would be still nice to get...
