As per usual, anything said during the show is subject to change by CIG and may not always be accurate at the time of posting. Also any mistakes you see that I may have missed, please let me know so I can correct them. Enjoy the show!

The show is now live! Today's Happy Hour is a Gamedev feature with Senior Producer, Eric Kieron Davis and Tech Director, Sean Tracy.

Today they'll be creating a live schedule, based off the input fans give during the show.

To start they'll schedule a feature that Sean wants and that is the "Space Whale". So now they'll go about scheduling the Space Whale and what resources are needed from where and how long it will take.

The very technical program they'll be starting with is Drumroll Excel! Also the first vote was, "Do you want a Space Whale? The options are Yes, Very Yes, and as long as it kills Jared.

The next vote is whether or not it should be Space Whale or Whales and Whales won by a vast majority.

So now they're figuring out which disciplines will be affected by this project and from there they will bid on how much time is needed to for a given discipline to finish their task.

Sean stresses the importance of a technical design review after a design concept has been drafted as anything is possible if given enough time, but it's important to figure out how long it will ACTUALLY take and what's the most efficient way of achieving that design.

After a technical review has been finished, it then will go to art for their take on visuals and finally concept will be fleshing it out completely. After concept they'll then create a high poly model and then an in-game model.

Once the in-game they'll work on LOD's, then Texturing/Materials. Variants are next in the pipeline and they're having a ball talking about whether or not variants will be colour or geo. Also they had a vote on whether or not there will be an interior of the whale and everyone said yes so you'll be able to go inside the space whale.

Once they've nailed down the above, it'll go to review to see whether or not they're happy with the art and design and if any changes need to made before it moves on.

Tech Art starts with R&D of the implementation of the Space Whale. Rigging, skinning, Simulation are the next three in line. Also a vote finished on whether variants will be geometry based or skin based and skin based won out.

[Will the Space Whale have damage states?] They'll get to that in VFX. They're also having a vote on whether or not it should and Yes is winning by a large margin.

Back to the pipeline, The final stages of tech art is tech setup, and then review.

The next discipline involved is tech design which first involves AI behaviours and subsumption. Item 2.0 components are next with implementation following that. Now because the chat decided on the interior there are some interesting questions tech design has to answer such as where are the cover points, how AI will move inside it because if you're going inside it, you're going to want to fight inside it. Finally it ends off with a review.

Another vote was put up which asked, "Space Whale VS Sand Worm. Who ya got? The winner was "No matter who wins, we win too.

Now they're determining how big the Space Whale will actually be. The options are 10m, 25m, 50m, 100m. Right off the bat 100 meters is winning by a landslide of course.

They're talking about how the Sand Worms iteration had an accident to where they gave cinematic a placeholder worm which was one meter long and it the cinematic team scaled that up to 1000x and when they gave it back, L.A. didn't know and scaled it 1000x again so it ended up to where the worm was larger than the planet and looked like it was eating it because they multiplied 1000 by 1000.

The next discipline is animation and starts off with locomotion then hit reactions. Facial animations are next. They're now asking whether or not Andy Serkis should be the mocap for the Space Whale and you can guess what fans picked.

Death animation/ragdoll is next. Attacks are next and they're determining whether or not the Space Whale is aggressive, friendly, friendly until you make them angry. The third option is winning by a majority. They also added retreat to the animation list with review to end it off.

Audio discipline starts with data, implementation, and then review.

VFX discipline is next with defining the surface type is first with creating effects coming next. Implementation follows after with a review to end off the discipline.

Engineering discipline begins with AI pathfinding being a large part of it. AI behaviours follows that with optimisation coming after. The next question being asked is whether or not the Space Whale has gravity inside it.

Physics grid is next on the list, and the vote for whether or not gravity would be inside was in favour of no. They were very relieved to hear that gravity was a no because it would add a lot of time to the creation of the Space Whale. Bug fixing and testing comes after with a review.

Now they're working on how long each discipline will take to finish their tasks assigned to them.

High level design will take approximately 3 days with review taking half a day.

Art is next. Concept: 10 days. High Poly Model: 20 days. In-game model: 10 days. LOD's: Half a day. Texturing/Materials: 10 days. Variants: 5 days Reviews: 2 days.

Tech Art time bids are next. R&D: 10 days. Rigging: 7 days. Skinning: 3 days. Simulation: 2 days. Tech Setup: 10 days. Review: 2 days.

Tech Design is next. AI Behaviors: 7.5 days. Item 2.0 components: 5 days. Implementation: 3 days. Cover Points: 3 days. Star System Markup: 3 days. Review: 2 days.

Animation. Locomotion: 2.5 days. Hit reactions: 8 days. Facial: 2 days. Death: 2 days. Attack: 2 days. Retreat: 2 days. Review: 2 days.

Audio. Design: 3 days. Data: 5 days. Implementation: 3 days. Review: 2 days.

VFX. Define surface type: 1 day. Create FX: 7 days. Implementation: 5 days. Review: 2 days.

Engineering. AI Pathfinding: 20 days. AI Behaviours: 20 days. Massive Character Rendering/optimisation: 10 days. Bugfixing/testing: 10 days.

Now they're dealing out the resources on who is specifically working on what in each discipline and whether it's one or two or more developers on a given task.

They finally finishing assigning resources and on the left is the dates and on the right is a chart that represents the time it will take. They're now working on Predecessors which means which disciplines have to be finished their work before the other disciplines can work on their part.

As they're assigning order, the chart on the right changes dynamically to give you an idea of when disciplines can begin.

Jared is giving a silent stare occasionally because they're currently overtime and Eric and Sean are going back and forth on when certain disciplines can start and it's hilarious. It goes to show how much planning is involved with something like a Space Whale.

Alright they've got their tasks, bids, resources and predecessors assigned! The final date for having them all done if it started today would be August 16th, 2017

Now the question is if you want Space Whale in 3.0, you have to figure out what to cut. Now this is if there's NO one else working on anything else in regards to the resources being used. So it shows you how much effort is involved into scheduling just one thing.

They're talking about how even after this schedule is made, there's still a couple steps to to get the actual date of when the project is expected to finish. So there's a lot planning to make something as simple as a Space Whale to be ingame.

So now they're talking about if they wanted Space Whale for 3.0, what should they bump? So now they're talking about should they bump the BMM or the Carrack back? (Also no those two are not going to make 3.0, but their resources are being used currently)

A poll has started if they should push the BMM or Carrack back and the BMM was voted to be pushed back (no it's not actually getting moved back)

They found the supersized worm image! Here it is in a second.