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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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Wiz gave us image teasers, and every time he does so, the dev diary will contain those and talk more about it.

Do not worry people, this is just a late april fools joke and Wiz is currently writing the real one.
It will further coment on master muilders rework, multiple stars system and perhaps even more.

Sorry to ruin the joke but it's blatantly obvious with this many low quality pictures of computers, a ton of crap audio downloads and things almost nobody could understand. It was done on purpose.
 
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Meanwhile Point Defense is still broken, MP desyncs like hell, Balance is completely screwed and centered around Corvette Monofleets, Awakened Empires are out of whack, the Khan's assets break when they become Diadochis/New Khanates, the AI derps out with border expansion, Scaling Difficulty is broken, and of all the times we needed more Post-Release support diaries, we get . . . filler.

Is this really something that needed to take the Dev Diary slot and couldn't of been announced independently?

Maybe it's just too early to start talking about the new features? Or perhaps there is another dev diary incoming? Anyhow, I as a person do like to find out more about the people behind one of my favourite games.
 
This is lovely, and I wish Metal King well on his new project. I have enjoyed his work.

That said, we really could use some word about what's going on with post-release support. There are still quite a few major bugs and issues that badly need to be addressed. Are we going to get another beta branch? A 2.0.3 patch? I'm still not starting a new game based on the current issues - I'd like to know when I might be able to play again with some confidence.
 
Thanks Zebedee! :)
You have quite the shoes to fill ;) But I'm actually really looking forward to your input.
I wish you good luck, and a great time on this fantastic game!

Also, I sense some negativity in this thread, looking at all the random downvotes.
 
But what's going on with Stellaris?

I think it more a question of what's going on with Victoria III (or Chronicles of Darkness, if I had my way, come on give us the first ever supernatural horror grand strategy, for who wouldn't want to take part in vampire global politic, you know you want to Paradox), since at this point lot of veteran have been moved to unnamed/secret project. =p
 
To hopefully calm people's fears: yes, we are going to go a little quiet for a bit as we start work on future plans. That doesn't mean we are stopping anything, quite the reverse...we just have less to declare publicly until it's time to announce. We're not done supporting 2.0.x, we're going to get a patch with missing loc and fixes out when we can.

Dev diaries are a nice bonus thing we do to reach out to you, our fans, and give insight in to various parts of the game development process. They are never guaranteed to contain spoilers or reveals, nor can they possibly answer every individual player's craving for perfect information. My advice if you're uninterested in the content is to simply use your time on something you do like. We'll be back with info about future plans when those are ready to be announced.
 
I think it more a question of what's going on with Victoria III (or Chronicles of Darkness, if I had my way, come on give us the first ever supernatural horror grand strategy, for who wouldn't want to take part in vampire clans global politic, you know you want to Paradox), since at this point lot of veteran have been moved to unnamed/secret project. =p
This could be a pack of supernatural DLC for all the current games :p
 
You have quite the shoes to fill ;) But I'm actually really looking forward to your input.
I wish you good luck, and a great time on this fantastic game!

Also, I sense some negativity in this thread, looking at all the random downvotes.

Negative in this thread is that while some people might be interesting into knowing more about people working on project, other half of people expected to hear plans about the near future, like will there be patch 2.0.3, any news about 2.1 or anything else directly related to the project itself. I can relate myself to latter ones - when i hear 'dev diary', i expect devs talking about the future of project and incoming changes, not the story from a person who was moved onto the other project. This story could be placed in other thread imo, while providing us with the actual Dev Diary #110 - even a small clue what wiz is currently working on should be enough to satisfy me atleast
 
Negative in this thread is that while some people might be interesting into knowing more about people working on project, other half of people expected to hear plans about the near future, like will there be patch 2.0.3, any news about 2.1 or anything else directly related to the project itself. I can relate myself to latter ones - when i hear 'dev diary', i expect devs talking about the future of project and incoming changes, not the story from a person who was moved onto the other project. This story could be placed in other thread imo, while providing us with the actual Dev Diary #110 - even a small clue what wiz is currently working on should be enough to satisfy me atleast

We are still in post-release support mode, and will be so until we announce otherwise.
 
Negative in this thread is that while some people might be interesting into knowing more about people working on project, other half of people expected to hear plans about the near future, like will there be patch 2.0.3, any news about 2.1 or anything else directly related to the project itself. I can relate myself to latter ones - when i hear 'dev diary', i expect devs talking about the future of project and incoming changes, not the story from a person who was moved onto the other project. This story could be placed in other thread imo, while providing us with the actual Dev Diary #110 - even a small clue what wiz is currently working on should be enough to satisfy me atleast
I admit, I prefer more info about the game myself, but I don't mind having some so-called 'filler' dev diaries every once in a while. If Paradox feels like they aren't ready to announce something yet, I prefer not to get diaries about something that might not make it into the game eventually. I'm sure there will be an expansive diary about all the changes to solar systems and other things soon.
 
@Metal King Thank you so much for the amazing sounds! it has really helped bring the game to life and im sad to see you go to another project (though now that game is going to get awesome FX). good luck :D

also welcome @Audiomancer :D. good luck with your future work on this game :D
Thank you @Kepler68!

Who disagrees with my post :( You dont like the sound in Stellaris? :( :( :(
Oh and heya new guy :)

Heya to you too @KopiG! :)

You have quite the shoes to fill ;) But I'm actually really looking forward to your input.
I wish you good luck, and a great time on this fantastic game!

Also, I sense some negativity in this thread, looking at all the random downvotes.

Hey @CompactDisc , I've been spending a lot of time studying the game soundscape with Björn the last couple of months, and I'm genuinely excited about continuing his good work! There's a lot I wish I could share right now, but you'll just have to wait :) I'll be looking forward to your input then!
 
I love this game music. And the sound design is p-p-p-perfect.

Good luck with the new endevours Björn (btw, who do I have to kill to get a name like that?) and we're expecting much from you Audiomancer :D
 
The music of Waldetoft's crime, they do/did/done the sound effects and VO.