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Stellaris Dev Diary #110 - Creation and Beyond

Hello all interstellar readers!

It is time for me to write another entry and this one will be a special one for me to write. For those that doesn't know me, my name is Björn Iversen and I work as Audio Director at Paradox Development Studios.

Hope that you all have been enjoying Stellaris since our update and Apocalypse expansion, it was sure super fun working on audio assets for blowing up planets! But working on Apocalypse was also the beginning of the end for my part. The plan was that when I was done with my work for Apocalypse it was time for me to move to another project here at Paradox.

When I first started at Paradox, I was really excited about creating cool sounding audio assets for our historical games and what kind of challenges I would be facing! Fun note, I have been trying out PDS games since Europa Universalis 1. So imagine how surprised I was when I first walked into the office, did not ever imagine that I would start working on a new PDS IP, that also was a Sci-Fi game! It is like every Sound Designer’s dream to work on a game like this! Who doesn’t like working on lasers and explosions! But in reality I started working more with kazoo’s and clarinet to create all those sweet UI sound effects.

My first workstation at Paradox back in 2015 when I was high tech.

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Btw I still have those white headphones, but I have changed my keyboard to something more modern and my surroundings has changed to something much more comfortable.

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Here is a screenshot of the madness that was my first audio session for Stellaris and it was not easy going through it all today due to lack of structure.

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My folder structure did not make any sense today or even back then.

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There was some problems opening all these old sessions.

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Going back and looking at the VO sessions to see how I did edit everything:

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You will see some attached audio files to this Dev Diary which are some really old and early drafts of audio assets that I recorded for Stellaris. There is a good mix of clarinet and other weird things, and to be honest I don't remember everything that I did back then.

It was a bit weird for me in the beginning thinking about the whole idea of me not working any more on Stellaris, it was THE project I started on from day one as a Audio Director. But over the years I have been involved with so much with Stellaris, been able to make additions that you as the community has appreciated and also some additions that you have might not been as pleased with. It has been a long and bumpy road for me, but I have learned so much along the way!

I’m really pleased with my work on Stellaris and what I did achieve. What I’m probably most happy about is well VIR turned out to be. It was quite refreshing including VO into a PDS title since we haven’t really have any VO before in our titles. Also how we have expanded with VO in Stellaris with all the new additions in Synthetic Dawn and Humanoid Species Pack!

But after working for a couple of years on Stellaris I need to start focusing on other titles, so I’ll give a short introduction to Franco, forum name @Audiomancer, that will be focusing more on Stellaris in my place.

Hello beautiful community! My name is Franco Freda, and I'm a Senior Sound Designer here at Paradox Interactive. I met Björn last year and I was honoured to have gotten the opportunity to join him and the Audio Team. I was lucky to get to work with Stellaris as soon as I joined in January, right on time for the wrapping up of Apocalypse and was immediately blown away by the quality of its soundscape. Let's just say that if Space could actually have sound, I would want it to sound like that XD!


I'm looking forward to sharing this journey with all of you, and hope to be able to share some of the new awesome stuff we're working on very soon!
 

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On the whole I think the war mechanics are in a pretty good place right now. I like to see some changes to the effects of war exhaustion, and making the AI submit to demands other than conquest is still unreasonably difficult, but the system is leaps and bounds better than before.

It’s not perfect, but war is far more interesting than it used to be. And, Wiz also stated they would still tweak war mechanics going forward, but that it wouldn’t be the focus for the next few expansions. I’m ok with that because the rest of the game remains quite shallow, but has good foundations.

The doom and gloom and bitching and moaning about the new war mechanics are ridiculous.
 
I'm curious. Does a lot of work go into creating sounds for the game? I admit to not knowing pretty much anything about this aspect of video games, despite its apparent importance. This game seems to do a good job on it, however; I normally mute strategy games I play (I tend to be doing about six different things at once), but I always leave the normal sounds running for Stellaris (minus the music). So obviously, someone's doing something right. Keep up the good work and/or good luck with your new job.
 
Hi, Paradox!
I'm very confused. It's not what your personal life stories are not interesting; I'm sure they are. But, what does any of it, has to do with game development of Stellaris ? Can't you make a thread, about personal things, if you want to share ? Why it has to be in Dev diaries ? Every Thursday I look forward to reading something new and cool about Stellaris. This is 2nd dev diary, what has nothing to do with the game it self. Why ? Seriously ? I mean, please don't get me wrong, I'm sure all those other stuff are interesting in their own right. But at the end of the day, I'm here for the game, not personal life stories. I can always read a book or talk with people about things like that. Please stop. Give us dev diaries about the game it self. If there is nothing being worked at, in the moment, just dont release anything, until you have something.
Anyway, cheers !
 
Hi, Paradox!
I'm very confused. It's not what your personal life stories are not interesting; I'm sure they are. But, what does any of it, has to do with game development of Stellaris ? Can't you make a thread, about personal things, if you want to share ? Why it has to be in Dev diaries ? Every Thursday I look forward to reading something new and cool about Stellaris. This is 2nd dev diary, what has nothing to do with the game it self. Why ? Seriously ? I mean, please don't get me wrong, I'm sure all those other stuff are interesting in their own right. But at the end of the day, I'm here for the game, not personal life stories. I can always read a book or talk with people about things like that. Please stop. Give us dev diaries about the game it self. If there is nothing being worked at, in the moment, just dont release anything, until you have something.
Anyway, cheers !


Moral is important for more than soldiers.

It's great that the various employees feel comfortable enough with their community to share stories and joke around. They are people after all, hard working people who don't have to share anything.

And if the idea of paradox employees having fun with their job seems unimportant there's this selfish maxim: happy people work better.

As players we benefit from every single hour they spend on their wonderful games and if they think of their job and community fondly they will choose to spend more time with a spring in their step.

So if the question is "why bother?" The answer is "because it's fun" and paradox is in the business of creating fun for others.
 
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