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Hello everyone,
We’re one week closer to CitizenCon 2948! As mentioned last week, we recently updated the CitizenCon website with loads of details about the event, including a breakdown of what to expect throughout the day. Find all the details here, and pick up tickets to attend in person here.
We also recently revealed Crusader Industries latest ship, the Mercury Star Runner, which is only available until next week. Catering to governments and the private sector alike, Crusader Industries’ star runner chassis raises the bar on speed and efficiency while remaining a stalwart of reliability. Find out more here.
On the community front, the MISC Prospector Commercial Contest has now ended. We’re currently in the process of reviewing submissions, and will announce the winners in the coming days. If you haven’t seen some of the incredible commercials submitted, check them out here.
Lastly, we’re still running one of our most exciting contests to date. Head over to Spectrum to find out how you can win the opportunity to direct a Motion Capture shoot LIVE at CitizenCon in our recently announced Emote Contest.
And with that, let’s see what else is going on this week:
Every week on Calling All Devs, designers, engineers, and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on Spectrum and voted for by YOU. This week we we talk about non-lethal weapons, navigation coordinates, ship customization, and more. Watch the full episode here.
On Tuesday, our Lore Team will publish another in-fiction portfolio meant to breathe life into the ‘verse. If you’re the type of person who truly wants to know the universe you’re exploring, these are for you.
Fast forward to Wednesday for a landslide of information in our Mercury Star Runner Q&A, answering your top questions about Crusader’s new data runner
Thursday will welcome another episode of Around the Verse where we’ll take a look at the latest Star Citizen news.
Finally, make sure to tune in on Friday for another episode of Reverse the Verse, broadcast live on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. Stay tuned for further information about who our special guests will be and keep an eye on Spectrum for the Questions Thread!
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We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Every week, we select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and highlight it in this section. The highlighted content creator will be awarded with an MVP badge on Spectrum and be immortalized in our MVP section of the Hub.
Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
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Arty Cross and friends took on a true exploration challenge by traveling to every outpost on Daymar in one session, which took 13 hours. That’s some serious dedication!
Welcome to August’s monthly report. It’s been an exciting few weeks throughout the CIG studios with Gamescom coming and going, CitizenCon 2948 planning in full swing, and Alpha 3.3 content is getting closer to completion.
Everyone’s been working hard to make our upcoming release the biggest and most exciting one yet. A big part of this is taming the beast that is Object Container Streaming. This is one of our biggest tech hurdles to date, and the team is heads down and focused on burning down remaining tasks and issues.
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LOS ANGELES
CHARACTER ART
This month, the Character Art Team improved upon Hair and Head tech, which will increase the visual quality of the current characters while revising the core tools used in the character wearables tech setup. The team has started testing vertex cloth simulation to allow more realistic clothing movement on all characters. They also continued the reworks of the Odyssey Flightsuit, Virgil TruDef Pro Armor, and Hurston Collection. This content comes with material variants to give Hurston a lively and realistic setting. Additionally, the team carried on with S42 costumes.
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VoiP/FoiP
With several teams working together, the team made good progress on the VoiP/FoiP feature. Turbulent, Faceware, and Audio were able to transmit voice and face via WebRTC. In addition, voice can now be sent and received from any WebRTC enabled device, such as a PC web browser, phone, and tablet. A major risk in the project has been eliminated as getting audio and face synchronized was a major hurdle.
The team is now moving onto server work to add player entities to the entire framework so that they can know who is talking and map them to players in-game. With integration wrapping up, they are at the stage when the US-1 Gameplay Team can transition to front-end UI work.
NARRATIVE
August saw the Narrative Team deliver On The Run, a new short story that introduced criminal data runners Alex Dougan and Mas Houlan who could later be tracked fleeing across the Starmap as part of the Crusader Mercury reveal. They also published to all backers a Galactic Guide focused on the Gurzil system and the final chapter in the serialized story The Knowledge of Good and Evil. Loremakers paid a visit to the Banu system of Bacchus, while subscribers were treated to another issue of Jump Point and an exclusive portfolio that explored how Rest & Relax became the most popular rest stop in the UEE.
Behind the curtain, the team tackled a wide variety of tasks for 3.3 and beyond. They wrote mission text, dialogue for a wide variety of characters, named new weapons, and advised on signs to be found around Lorville. The team also participated in reviews for the PU and Squadron 42, and continued their work on the Galactapedia.
VEHICLE FEATURES
As it relates to their areas of code ownership, the Vehicle Features Team spent a lot of time on Object Container Streaming (OCS). When OCS is complete, it will allow ships and other items to stream out at greater distances, which provides improved performance and reduction in network bandwidth.
Additionally, significant progress was made on the ongoing turret improvements and Ping & Scanning for Alpha 3.3. For turrets, the team is close to completing work on gyro stabilization and improvements to mouse and joystick controls. For Ping and Scanning, they’ve moved the scanning infrastructure over to the server, have been working to extend its range, and have been expanding information received from scanning vehicles.
VEHICLE PIPELINE
A lot of progress has been made towards the completion of several vehicles going out in Alpha 3.3. The new Tumbril Cyclone variants and the Consolidated Outlands Mustang are art-complete and in their final phase with Systems Design. The team is also in the final phase with the RSI Constellation Phoenix. Tech Art is working on the damage pass for these vehicles too. Meanwhile, post Alpha 3.3 vehicles move forward in production – the Art Team is in the greybox phase for the Anvil Hawk, while System Design is currently wrapping up the whitebox phase.
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GAMEPLAY FEATURES
Like many other teams, OCS was the top priority for Gameplay Features. Also, of high importance was the second iteration of the Group System, which is due in Alpha 3.3. In particular, they’ve been implementing mobiGlas and Visor Chat System features and UI, along with replacing the legacy Group System and interface with new backend systems. Completing this iteration will enable the team to start the integration of VoIP and FoIP.
They’ve also been supporting the Gameplay Feature Team in Austin with their work on improvements for Quantum Travel, and the Gameplay Team in the EU to implement REC Rental in Arena Commander and Star Marine.
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AUSTIN
SHIP ART
Ship Art got deeper into the greybox phase of the Origin 300 series refactor by detailing out the landing gear, headlights, and other features. They made another pass on the cockpit and pilot chair and are closer to getting that area to a satisfactory level. Next up is a test of the interior collision with a character in-game, as well as testing the enter/exit animations.
They’re also wrapping up some last modeling, lighting, and material tweaks on the interior of the Constellation Phoenix. When finished, they’ll move onto the LODs for the interior and exterior.
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ANIMATION
Animation continued to push through a few more Mission Givers (like Darneely in the image below) and are almost finished with a further three. These characters will be found at places like GrimHEX, Levski, and Lorville, so look forward to traveling around to meet with them in the future.
The team is working closely with Design on the Bartender to help flesh out the flow – soon players will be able to walk up and order tasty drinks from a believable barkeep. Players will also see NPCs sitting at the bar or ordering drinks to help the environment feel full of life.
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DESIGN
This month was a busy one for ATX Design, with plenty of work done for various portions of Alpha 3.3. First up, they supported getting rentals working in Arena Commander and Star Marine to ensure players don’t need to go too far to rent a favorite gun for your ship or character.
They worked with the LA Engineering team to make great progress on implementing some new improvements to Quantum Travel. These include displaying the status of party members during QT (including when a player drops out) and laying the groundwork for Quantum Travel Route Planning.
Headway was made on the Economy features for this quarter, with efforts to allow the economic status of resources to affect pricing reaching a significant milestone. Recipes for all items were completed so that, as the price of resources or parts fluctuates, players will be able to see a noticeable difference in the pricing of items. However, the change won’t be instantaneous and will develop over time.
They’ve also been working on creating new shops for Lorville and look forward to bringing players new items from the latest locations.
BACKEND SERVICES
Several Services have been written under the new architecture while support for the legacy architecture continues. This month focused on improvements to the Persistent Database, Badge Service, Leaderboards, Encryption, Security and more.
Services that have received some attention or are being entirely created from scratch to provide logical and efficient micro-services are:
*Badge Service: This is a simple caching service that pulls account badges from the web platform when a player logs in. The Diffusion Badge Service provides an API allowing other services, game server, and client to query individual or sets of badges.
Leaderboard Service: The Leaderboard Service caches player leaderboard stats.
PDB/SQL API: The new SQL API Diffusion Service provides a very simple interface allowing for Services to add, set, remove, or update data sets. It is specifically designed for persisting Ooz data structures in an SQL Database. A No-SQL solution is in the works as well.
Transaction Service: A general transaction Service is being created to manage rental and store purchases, as well as currency/service transactions for missions and service beacon contracts.
Loadout Service: The Loadout Service is a cache which provides an API to other Services allowing them to create, modify, and request specific loadouts for players or ships.
Backend Services have also been helping the Web Platform with their work on the Group Service and integration of Spectrum into the PU.
PLAYER RELATIONS
The Player Relations team helped wrap up Alpha 3.2.2, essentially completing the second quarterly release for 2018. They’ve now turned to 3.3 and CitizenCon preparation (and what always turns out to be a very busy last third of the year!).
They added a couple of new faces and will continue growing across the various studios. As the backer base and games grow, so do the needs of running the service.
The Evocati are also growing. Invites were sent out to some of our most diligent players and those most active on the Issue Council. This will help the team immensely with some large-scale testing in the coming months.
“We’d like to point all players to our growing Knowledge Base, which now has over 100 articles and has seen almost 120,000 visitors since its launch. We’ll continue to grow it by adding new ‘How-To’ articles, patch notes, and live service notifications. As always, we’d like to remind and encourage everyone to continue to use the Issue Council to help us triage and rate bugs and functionality. We use that data to prioritize for future updates, plus your IC participation will make you eligible for earlier PTU waves.”
QA
On the Publishing side of things, QA has been preparing for Alpha 3.3 by updating the current test plans and documentation.
Game side, work continues on the internal dev stream, where the testing focus has been on Object Container Streaming. Testing priorities were coordinated with counterparts in LA, UK, and DE, and the new TestRail software was updated to help make testing more efficient moving forward.
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WILMSLOW & DERBY
GRAPHICS
This month, the Graphics Team have been working on two main areas. The first is on improvements to the tech for space landscapes, which includes more realistic particle movement and lighting, GPU spline-based lightning effects, multi-threaded asteroid creation, and improvements to the volumetric gas cloud tech. Also, work was done on volumetric point light shadows for gas clouds, which are crucial to convincingly lighting our more complex space scenes. These shadows are computed in a single render pass and stored efficiently in 2D deep shadow maps, which can then be used to quickly evaluate the shadowing at any distance from the light. Keep an eye out, as many of these changes will be demonstrated soon.
The second major area of work this month was on shader improvements. The layer shader system can now support the cloth shading model and sub-surface-scattering. While these features were previously available using specialist and expensive shaders, the new changes can be used on a wide variety of assets with no noticeable performance penalty.
“We should start seeing wider use of cloth materials and materials that exhibit scattering such as plastics and ice.”
UI
The UI Team has been busy iterating on the RTT item preview system, which allows for a generalized method to display 3D items anywhere in the UI as part of a scrolling list component (such as kiosks, MobiGlas, MFDs, etc.). The team has also been busy conceiving the necessary changes to the flow and layout needed to support renting ships and items through the Electronic Access customization menus.
They have also been working on the UI design for the spectrum app functionality housed inside mobiGlas. They’ve also been working in conjunction with the design team to previsualize what approaching a restricted area in a city might look like to the player and continued supporting the environment team in crafting propaganda posters & signage for Lorville.
The team has also made additional headway on the core tech & tools, with a recent successful prototype of the bindings system on the mining HUD display to enable a much more streamlined interface for exposing game data to the UI frontend.
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ANIMATION
Throughout August, Animation worked on improving player stances and locomotion assets and used motion captured data to replace placeholders in the AI combat set.
They also updated ship character animations to new sequenced animations for more flexibility when moving forward with new ship & cockpit designs.
Going forward, they’re looking to finalize assets for looting and pickup now that the technical details are mostly resolved.
GAMEPLAY STORY
The Gameplay Story Team continued implementing high-priority scenes for Q3. This involved editing all the separate animations in a scene so they can play together in the correct order without any pops. They had to set up idle animations every time the game waits for the player to make a choice.
Lastly, they need to ensure that the ‘look at’ is animated correctly so the character looks directly at the player at the right times.
“It has been good to get stuck into detailed animation work and to cooperate closely with design on the setup and testing of these scenes.”
FACIAL ANIMATION
Throughout the past month, the Facial Animation Team has been hard at work developing the facial animations for Mission Givers, such as Darneely and NPCs like the race announcers, derelicts, shopkeepers, and admins.
Looking forward to next month, the team will continue to deliver facial animation results for the Mission Givers such as Pacheco and other NPCs, such as security, as well as more incoming NPCs for the new landing zones.
ENGINEERING/PROGRAMMING
The Network Team extended Bind Culling so that, instead of only culling out dynamically spawned entities such as ships and players, it can now also cull entire parts of the solar system. QA has been putting these changes through their paces and the programmers have been keeping on top of the bugs coming back. The Network Team has also worked on converting networked entity spawning from blocking synchronous spawns to asynchronous non-blocking ones. Combined with their Bind Culling work, these asynchronous spawns should allow Object Container Streaming to work smoothly in multiplayer.
PU-based feature teams worked on restricted areas, which will be used to stop players flying into planetside civilian locations. This is being complemented by an update to the landing UI. They also extended the mining feature to work with asteroids.
The Social AI Team have been working on the new usable tool in the editor, designed to make creating and debugging usables as intuitive as possible. They’re also creating functionality to mark up the paths used by the AI to allow subsumption events to be triggered. This is part of the work needed for our Walk and Talk feature.
Squadron 42 feature teams have been looking into triggering dynamic Track View cutscenes from conversations, including participant synchronization. This feeds well into the Walk and Talk feature work that the AI Actor Team is working through.
From their work on overclocking/overpowering, the Vehicle Feature Team has been improving vehicle power distribution and heat setup. Cooler overclocking now works and per-item power throttling is being developed.
Also, a big milestone was reached as the last of the old-style game objects were finally removed from the codebase. These have been replaced by component-based entities which are more efficient in terms of performance and sharing code. This also permitted the removal of a lot of now-redundant code from the codebase.
SHIPS
The Ship Art Team has been busy with final optimizations and polish on the Aegis Hammerhead to get it ready for its Alpha 3.3 release. The Banu Defender continues with the majority of its interior now at final grey box stage, while the Origin 890 Jump is starting to take shape in the lower decks with most of the ship receiving a grey box pass.
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AUDIO
The Audio Code team has been working hard to integrate the new backend for FoiP/VoiP data transmission and to optimize the data compression used by this feature. Trackview support has seen some improvements in the way audio is handled to offer more options for cinematic sound.
The dialog guys hunkered down to record new content for the Alpha 3.3 release and Lorville.
Progress is being made on new weapons sounds and, as always, the procession of new ships is being given plenty of audio love.
ENVIRONMENT ART
The team has now completed the art for a host of smaller locations for Lorville, including the new habitation modules, lobbies, and the interiors for Lorville’s bar, admin office, and shops. The first iteration of a security checkpoint and a transit platform (complete with train car) have also been finished. As well as this, they’re almost complete on the Teasa Spaceport interior with its new shop archetype, the Ship Rental store.
Work continues on the Underground Facility and Crashed Relay, with both moving into the final art stage.
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VFX
This month was very much a continuation of the team’s work from last month, including polishing the VFX for Hurston’s diverse range biomes, Lorville’s modular areas, and the new weapons and ships due to be seen in the 3.3 release.
As well as that, the team threw themselves firmly into Gas Clouds (not literally!), forming a mini ‘strike team’ with Art, Design, and others to really flesh out the requirements of this ambitious task. Working so closely with the other disciplines helped the team to maintain momentum, with several improvements coming to fruition as the month progressed.
They also began to clean up some of the older ballistic weapon effects, making use of new GPU particle improvements and adding more visual consistency on a per-manufacturer basis.
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FRANKFURT
LEVEL DESIGN
Work on Lorville continues with the team looking to modify the arrival area with a few additional shops and features to make it feel more like an active spaceport. The end goal is to have an area that quickly brings the player into the city, but also offers a few select amenities for those who need it.
There will also be a few minor changes to Levski to reflect the content added to Lorville. Although the rework is minor, it will add a few new things and bring Levski closer to its intended purpose and full potential.
Both the Transit System and procedural tech is progressing, and the team is close to adding a new and more stable version of elevators along with moving trains/trams. Level Design also gained a new team member this month, so time was spent onboarding and getting them acquainted with our tools and best practices.
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SYSTEM DESIGN
Frankfurt System Design focused mainly on AI improvements. They worked on populating Lorville with an assortment of civilians, engineers, guards, workers, etc. In general, they’ll exhibit similar behaviors as the NPCs that already exist in PU, but with more depth and flavor to help them better match the lore of the area. A lot of design work went into having the AI interact with one another and respond appropriately to events and stimuli generated by other NPCs or the player. For guard NPCs, they worked on designing a patrol system from the ground up. This should allow them to quickly map interest points and connect them with probability paths to define a patrol route that can change dynamically based on rules the designers control, or on game-driven events. At the same time, they are improving the existing simple patrol behaviors and prototyping more features in order to have an initial implementation for future releases before the actual system comes online.
FPS Combat AI had numerous improvements which will hopefully be in players hands in the near future.
For mining, they worked on getting some well-needed improvements to how the instability, resistance, and optimal window size are calculated. They decoupled the window size from instability, so now players can have unstable rocks with a large window and also stable rocks with a very tiny window. This allows the team to better control the difficulty of a rock without having to clamp its values artificially. Work was also completed on the asteroid side of mining and the team’s close to having things working as initially intended. A lot of work has gone into how rocks are spawned in space using the existing procedural asteroids.
ENGINE TOOLS
The Engine Tools Team worked on general usability improvements and game editor stability. The OCS and Prefab workflows received enhancements and fixes along with Trackview (the tool used by the Cinematics Team) getting general Data Core properties support. This was needed to get rid of a big chunk of the old Lua scripting dependencies used by game entities and to get one step closer to the implementation of OCS.
ENVIRONMENT ART
Polishing and bug fixing are still ongoing for Hurston and its four moons, and preproduction has started on the two moons orbiting Stanton 3 (ArcCorp). Beyond the roadmap, they’ve also started looking at Stanton 4 (MicroTech), which will be a significant challenge for the Art and Tech teams as they’ll be looking at frozen oceans, snowy mountains, frozen vegetation, and other elements that require technology and shaders to be modified and developed. The City or Lorville is entering its final stages as the team completes the outer boundaries of the city and the entry point from the planet’s surface.
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ENGINE
The Engine Team completed the first part of the physics command queue refactor. The goal is to allow the move of physics away from dedicated threads and towards our system-wide batch model so that it can scale and perform better with the number of available CPU cores.
They also continued progress on new solutions for cloth/soft body simulations, with several optimizations and improvements, and continued work on moving the skinning computation to GPU compute shaders.
They made load time improvements that addressed some inefficient code, which should reduce load times by up to 20 seconds (depending on PC specs). Lots of work was done on generating height map cascades of planet terrain which will be used for various effects in the future. In tandem, work started on large-scale planetary soft terrain shadows. These will replace the current implementation via traditional shadow maps, improve image quality, and the visibility range of terrain shadows.
TECH ART
The Tech Art Team worked on tools and the pipeline for authoring true next-gen cloth simulation setups for all dynamic attachments such as skirts, trench coats, jackets, and other loose-hanging clothing and equipment. The new softbody solver, which our Engineering department developed, is functioning as it should and will enable us to create all kinds of interesting secondary animation effects such as jiggling, sliding, and collisions. The authoring of such complex and advanced setups is just as important as the solver itself – it needs to be intuitive and provide maximum flexibility to the tech artists, hide the underlying complexity as much as possible, but allow access to it if needed.
While the authoring pipeline is based on Maya, changes to the setups are streamed live to the game engine through our LiveLink plugin and can therefore be previewed in WYSIWYG fashion, which is extremely important. The general workflow mimics the way Maya’s own cloth simulation setups (nCloth) are authored, thereby allowing Tech Artists and Character FX TDs familiar with the software to become productive and creative as efficiently as possible. The goal of these efforts is to make all the in-game clothing move naturally, look less rigid, and to enhance the PCAP primary character animation with a layer of physically-based secondary animation wherever possible.
For Tech Animation, they made further progress on the FPS weapons rework, including updating the rigs and bringing everything into a structure that’s easier to work with. They started working on a batch exporter for weapon animations that will make it much easier to iterate on existing weapons whenever a rig is updated, or new features are added to it. They also updated the AnimEvent lists for both the PU and S42 and removed a long list of old animations that were either no longer needed or moved to an updated location.
AI
A significative part of this month’s activity was spent working on a performance pass concerning two crucial components that heavily impact the behavior of our NPCs – Subsumption activity updates and NPC visual perception:
Subsumption: When hundreds of NPCs are active simultaneously, their activities need to update and respond to events or change in subactivity, depending on the internal or external state of the game. Updates of the Subsumption components are therefore always running each frame, thus creating a sensible performance issue as the number of active NPCs increases. Most of the time, the update is not truly needed as the NPC is just waiting for an event of some sort to determine the ‘next’ state of a behavior (e.g. walking on a path and waiting for a ‘destination reached’ event). We can therefore take advantage of that and suspend the updates whenever the running tasks allow it. Internal tests in a heavily crowded scenario confirm that when allowing suspension, the impact of the Subsumption updates is dramatically reduced.
Visual Perception: One of the most useful senses belonging to NPCs is their visual perception. Visibility checks are continuously performed by every NPC to assess the clearance of their line of sight between them and all other NPCs or players in their field of view. Visibility checks are raycasts ultimately performed by the physics system. Up to now, we relied on a legacy module of the AI system provided by the Lumberyard system, called VisionMap. In VisionMap, all checks were handled in a centralized place and updated each frame in the main thread (as a synchronous update). The new system handles the visibility checks directly in the individual NPC vision components and makes good use of the entity component update scheduler (ECUS) by using multi-threaded updates in a time-sliced fashion.
The team was also busy finishing work for OCS related to AI systems (Navigation & Cover). The navigation and cover data will not be part of a central manager anymore, instead there will be entity components (inside object containers) that will contain that data. This will help the OCS since the AI data is kept internally for each object container.
WEAPONS TEAM
The Weapons Art Team started production on a handful of new Hurston Dynamics ship weapons and a new knife designed for the ‘bad guys’ in-game.
Here’s an image of the ‘Sawtooth’, which is manufactured by Kastak Arms:
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BUILD ENGINEERING
This month, DevOps focused on tooling out a test area for the Audio Team’s build processes, so the Audio Team has more autonomy in augmenting and testing their own build tools. The Perforce submission pipeline has been refined to remove redundant MD5 hashing of verified content; previous verification checkpoints relied on a custom MD5 hashing implementation, and these nodes of verification have been updated to check with digests that have been cached by the Perforce server, cutting down submission times for heavy changelists from hours to seconds.
CINEMATICS
The Cinematic Team’s main priority has been to go through the kick-off and implementation pass phases of a large number of scenes across several S42 levels that are currently being worked on by the Level Design Team. The implementation pass is the first production pass on a scene where the animation is broken up into the different states that are needed for that particular scene to work.
The process goes from a pre-vis of the animation (pretty much the raw PCAP playing out) to a scene functioning as a conversation with starts, idles, pauses, branching options, and resolves. Iterations by the Level Design Team often change the layout of, for example, an asteroid base or other level environments, so the team needed to come up with an easy way to keep our scenes transportable.
They can now use each scene’s sequence object (the object the scene is defined in) as a root and when they move that sequence object around, the whole scene with its nodes animated within it moves with that root. This way, they can quickly accommodate a room being moved 50m down the corridor and can keep scenes up to date easily. It also helps level design to know they can adjust their level layout without having to request a big rework of a scene just to fit with a particular change.
Work was also completed on the tool side of things to keep the cinematic workflow compatible with the growing tech. An example of this would be the component-based entities that are replacing the old entities. A Tools Engineer wrote a new API so animators can still animate an entity’s properties via the cinematic timeline tool, Trackview. This is necessary if a cinematic designer wants to change a light’s properties, for example, or wants to dial down sun intensity for a specific shot.
QA
OCS related testing continued into August with changes to test from the AI team. More specifically, a Navigation System refactor to support it. The main change for this refactor is the way navigation mesh data is saved and exported. They focused on testing navigation mesh generation in the Editor, saving levels with Navigation Area objects, and exporting the Object Container levels with Navigation Area objects. They also needed to ensure that all levels that had existing Navigation Areas could still be re-exported and that the AI was still able to move around in the level and pass through doorways, etc. The cover system and usables were also monitored to ensure they were still functional with the newly exported areas.
The team worked together with ATX QA to test the new 1.003 version of the Subsumption Editor, which contained a lot of necessary fixes needed by the design team for better stabilization. Work continued with the Cinematics Team, with dedicated support for any Track View or Editor issues preventing the team from progressing on their sequences. In some cases, QA created simple test levels to better convey the issues they were encountering.
They also started the process for Automated Feature Tests for the current Feature Teams, with the first meeting to go over the specific setup and requirements at the end of the month with the Ship AI Feature Team. These tests will run for each build and will focus on testing systems that would be deemed risky and prevent usage of that particular build. The goal is to keep on top of features and ensure if they do break a build that the issue is brought to the relevant developer’s attention as quickly as possible. They also continued to provide support for any general Editor specific issues as well as the monthly (sometimes weekly) CIGPhysics smoke test, where new changes are checked in by the Physics team as part of the refactor of CIGPhysics.
VFX
The VFX Team continued to work on the environmental effects for the new moons as well as working on how the effects function with the new biomes being introduced.
They also continued working on destruction sequences for Squadron 42. This involves bringing the new workflows previously developed in the first quarter of the year into production shots.
LIGHTING
Progress is on track to finalize all the new Alpha 3.3 locations. The schedule is closely tied to when environments are finished by the art teams, so the focus this month has been on Lorville habitations, including prototyping a few lighting setups for each of the hab room layouts. They’ve also been finishing work on the security checkpoint common elements, tweaking the atmosphere and colorgrading for the Hurston moons. They also started work on an upcoming underground bunker location.
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SPECTRUM
The features of Spectrum 3.8.1-rel.8.1, including Friends and Notifications, received a positive reception from users. For this month, internal milestones were hit on the new Spectrum editor, ‘Quill’. This editor is currently undergoing testing to be released next month and will solve several bugs related to Android by replacing the old editor.
RSI PLATFORM
CitizenCon Microsite: The CitizenCon Microsite had an exciting update this month to include the presentation schedule. Other updates have been made as well, including the FAQ and ticket pages.
If you currently hold a standard or premium ticket, the option to purchase a Junior Co-pilot ticket is now available for all guests between the ages of 13-17 years. CitizenCon tickets contain a QR code that will be compatible with the ticket-scanning app at the event.
If you’re interested in attending the event, you can still grab a ticket before they run out here.
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Crusader Mercury Star Runner: Turbulent supported the release of the Crusader Mercury Star Runner. This release included an interactive mini-game chasing two wanted fugitives, Alexandria Dougan and Mas Houlan, across the ARK Starmap. During the game, that lasted several days, players followed clues posted by the UEE TipLine on Spectrum to locate the ever-changing coordinates of the rogue Star Runner. Players would then take note of these coordinates at certain times and enter them into the form on the site. If the coordinates entered were correct, the player could choose to alert either the UEE Advocacy or the fugitives. For playing the game, a mystery skin was added to the player’s hangar. Based on the collective choices made, more players chose the Advocacy, and so the skin awarded was of the UEE Advocacy.
Free-Fly: We released the Alpha 3.2 Free-Fly which gave everyone a chance to jump in and explore the Star Citizen universe. This Free-Fly granted access to the Prospector, Cutlass Black, Avenger Titan, and Dragonfly Black.
Issue Council: The Issue Council is our public bug reporting system used by the community to report issues. The upcoming version, Issue Council version 1.1.0, is scheduled to be deployed to the PTU during the first week of September. To meet this goal, the past month has been full of updates such as improved profile, more details in report creation, and newly mobile-friendly features. Plus, all known issues were fixed.
SERVICES
Group: On the Group System side, work this month focused on the development and integration of a major piece of the game backend: The Event Bus. Through this Bus, multiple services can communicate through domain events and affect their own relevant domains (like groups, chat or voice). With this new piece in place, we were able to integrate a fresh new lobby/chat API to replace the current in-game chat services (which were limited per instance). This will allow groups and parties to have chat lobbies that span the universe.
VOIP/FOIP: One the VOIP/FOIP side, the team completed the integration of the Voice Client libraries based on our initial transport prototype within the game engine, allowing testers to have a multi-way conversation from the game client. This initial set of tests from within the game context were very helpful in confirming the approach since the technology involved with the VOIP transport layer automatically gave support for echo cancellation, bandwidth throttling, QoS, and support for transporting the encoded facial data.
Work is now focused entirely on expanding the scalability of this infrastructure and adding capabilities to the game backend to create audio channels for groups, attach the sound elements to the proper in-game entities based on who is generating the data stream, as well as ensuring the voice infrastructure properly shards the audio channels across a fleet of voice servers.
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COMMUNITY
CitizenCon 2948 is right around the corner! It was only last week the latest wave of tickets hit our store, so make sure you secure yours to celebrate Star Citizen live in Austin, Texas on the 10th of October. Find out more on our CitizenCon website and, while you’re there, check out the event schedule and enjoy the retrospective video with memories from past events.
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The month of August was also full of remarkable events, with Gamescom in Cologne, Germany being the highlight. There wasn’t a Star Citizen booth on the show floor this time around, but the team traversed the halls representing the game and chatting with the community. Some very special pins were distributed amongst the crowd and every evening saw a Bar Citizen. An exclusive Town Hall Q&A was recorded in front of a live audience, giving attendees the opportunity to ask questions about the newly revealed Crusader Industries Mercury Star Runner. You can catch up on YouTube if you didn’t attend the Town Hall, or find yourself in the video if you did. Do you have more questions about the latest data runner from Crusader Industries? Keep an eye out on the Comm-Links, as the answers to the Spectrum Q&A will be posted very soon!
Speaking of events, the team held an RSI Apollo contest, asking for quotes that players think might be heard on board an RSI Apollo. It was tough to pick a winner, as we received so many excellent entries, but eventually, this won the competition:
♬ The hip bone’s connected to the, thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the, knee bone, the knee bone’s fused to this medium ablative/ballistic armor plate, please, pass the bone saw. ♬
As said before, the Community Team has been planning a wide variety of activities for this year, so there’ll be more exciting opportunities to leave your mark in the Star Citizen universe. In fact, another already started alongside the 3.2 Free-Fly event – the commercial contest is giving all producers, editors, and camera operators the chance to create a commercial video for the MISC Prospector and rewards the top three entries with sweet prizes. You have until 11:59 PM PDT on September 9th, 2018, so read up on the contest rules and start creating now!
Das Entwicklerstudio Cloud Imperium Games erklärt etwas genauer, wie das persistente Universum von Star Citizen entsteht. Zu diesem Zweck steht ab sofort eine neue Episode der Video-Serie "Reverse the Verse" für euch bereit, in der einige der…
CitizenCon 2948 is right around the corner! Only last week, the 3rd Wave of tickets hit our store, so make sure to secure yours to celebrate Star Citizen live, in Austin, Texas on October 10th. Find out more on our CitizenCon website, and while you’re there, enjoy the event schedule and retrospective video with memories from past events.
We also recently revealed Crusader Industries latest ship, the Mercury Star Runner. Built with the same engineering and design principals that have made Crusader the go-to manufacturer for galactic transport on any scale, the star runner chassis sets new standards for data and cargo conveyance. Find out more here.
The MISC Prospector Commercial Contest is still ongoing! We’ve seen a number of incredible entries come through so far, and eagerly await more. Find out all of the details here.
Lastly, we’re currently running one of our most exciting contests to date. Head over to Spectrum to find out how you can win the opportunity to direct a Motion Capture shoot LIVE at CitizenCon in our recently announced Emote Contest.
And with that, let’s see what else is going on this week:
Every week on Calling All Devs, designers, engineers, and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on Spectrum and voted for by YOU. This week we talk about Tessa Banister, ship alarms, and more. Watch the full episode here.
Then on Wednesday, join Lead Writer Will Weissbaum as he explores the Taranis system in an all new episode of Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Thursday will welcome another episode of Around the Verse where we’ll take a look at the latest Star Citizen news with a project update.
Also on Thursday, grab a cup of tea, cozy up, and get ready for the Monthly Studio Report where we’ll take a detailed look at what the teams around the globe have been up to in the month of August.
Finally, make sure to tune in on Friday for another episode of Reverse the Verse, broadcast live on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. Stay tuned for further information about who our special guests will be and keep an eye on Spectrum for the Questions Thread!
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We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Every week, we select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and highlight it in this section. The highlighted content creator will be awarded with an MVP badge on Spectrum and be immortalized in our MVP section of the Hub.
Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
Writer’s Note: The Knowledge of Good and Evil: Part Four was published originally in Jump Point 2.12. Catch up on the story by reading Part One, Part Two, Part Three.
“Forgive me.” I feel cold though I know it’s not the library’s air. My finger just about to press the button on Dirk’s small, black, featureless cube. My muttered prayer ringing in my own ears. Someone else responds as I feel a hand close around my wrist.
“Forgive you for what?”
I wheel around and come to face the speaker as I pull hard to wrench my wrist free, falling to the ground. Mom Super is standing over me like a dark tower.
“For what are you asking forgiveness, young one? What is that device?” Her words are soft but with an edge of steel.
No. Anyone but her. Let me be delayed or shamed or caught, but not by her. Not Mom Super. I can’t . . .
I break down at the realization that I will either have to lie to Mom Super just so I can betray her more, or admit I’ve already lied and am about to try and destroy the Holy Vault for Dirk.
“Young one, what’s wrong?” Mom Super starts to come to my aid.
“No!” I shout. I can barely speak through my sobs. “No, don’t help me. You can’t. Because of what Dirk . . .”
“Dirk? The man you used to work for in the Bazaar? Is that who’s been attacking you? What did he do?”
I don’t know what else to do. “He didn’t . . . he hasn’t yet. But . . . if I don’t wipe out the Vault he’s going to kill the children.” I’m panting for breath.
I point at the dormant cube. “If I don’t use that thing to fry the Vault, Dirk’s going to kill them all.”
She looks at me with a rage I’ve never seen, but eventually breaks the stare that has me paralyzed. She steps to the desk and picks up the cube and studies it. I’ve never felt this dirty or guilty in my life. The nights I slept in trash were cleaner than this.
“You will explain this, young one. Now.”
“I . . . I.” Gulping down a breath, I closed my eyes and clenched my fist. I already lied to her. I can’t do it again.
“I had an old debt to Dirk. He found me. Said I was finally going to pay him back. Knew I was with the Sisters. Threatened to hurt the school children if I didn’t do what he said. I brought it,” I point to the cube, “back with me.”
I look for some sign of sympathy but I don’t see any. Shoulder to me, she is only looking at the thing in her hands.
“I didn’t do it! I studied it, the cube, and I found out what it did. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t let it attack the Vault. So I took it back and told him I wouldn’t do it. And then he stunned me and the others, and now he’s kidnapped the children, and now if I don’t do it he’s going to kill them!”
I haven’t felt like it, but by the end I am almost yelling, my helplessness finally coming out as tired anger.
The silence is hot and heavy. My ears thunder with each heartbeat.
“You lied to us about what was happening to you and it has put the children we befriended in mortal danger. If you had told us earlier we could have had the authorities looking into the matter all the sooner. Now, their efforts may already be too late. And this?” She thrust the cube towards me, “Did you know what this would do then, if you turned it on? Did you lie to me about what you knew?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have attacked us all. There is nothing I can do for you.” Mom Super pulls out her mobiGlas and enters some commands.
I stay where I fell, unable to motivate myself to move. Soon four Sisters arrive and pick me up. Mom Super turns her back without another look at me. The Sisters escort me out of the library, but I notice they are not leading me back to the rooms.
We get to the door that leads out into the world and another Sister, the Returned, meets us with a large bag. Her hood is up on her habit. I suddenly realize all of them have their hoods up. The way the Sister do around outsiders.
“Oh god, no!” I say it out loud when I only mean to think it.
She thrusts the bag into my arms.
I don’t have the energy for more tears.
“You must go, now.”
The massive door opens to the first hints of light across the sky. The other Sisters back away from me. I turn to go, not wanting to. Each step feeling like a new punishment.
As I step across the doorway, a sudden memory flashes across my mind of the abused and beaten child being held by Dirk. Then my mind conjures worse of what might happen to them now. Does Mom Super think that the Blues care about a bunch of street rats going missing? They’ll call every shelter in the city but they won’t step one foot onto the dirty streets of Bazaar to actually find them.
My back stiffens and I turn around to say something.
The Sisters have left and only the closing door remains where my former life among them had been.
No good watching a door close when I have to find the kids. I don’t even know how long I have. Dirk might not be patient enough to wait a week to do something to them. If he hasn’t already, just to make his life easier. I pull my mobiGlas from my bag and ignore the pang of guilt remembering where it came from and why. I’m no good to the kids if I’m not strong enough to take care of myself.
Just standing there, the weight from the bag is starting to drag on me and I remember I haven’t slept in . . . I don’t know how long.
But it’s time to hunt Dirk and get my kids back.
I have to get back on the street. I’ve been using a lot of old information, and what I know about Dirk doesn’t match what’s been happening. Attacking the Sisters makes no sense for a Bazaar Boss. And since when does a Boss kidnap kids and make death threats?
His old shop is a noodle stand now. I’d checked into that when I’d first started teaching school with the Sisters. Barely anyone remembered that it had been a tech shop at all.
I feel two steps behind. I’ve been playing this to Dirk’s tune the whole way and it’s only gotten me into worse trouble. I was and still am a street rat and I can use that. The streets are hard and you don’t get ahead without making some enemies. If I can nose out Dirk’s reputation, I might get a better idea where he’s operating from. That’s my top priority. Find the kids.
A plan starts coming together in my head. Dirk is like me. He came from the street. No matter how far he’s gone up in the world, he probably has loose ends around Bazaar, and if I can find them they might just lead me to where he’s holding the kids.
“I’m coming. Hold on.”
I’m on the rail at first light, headed towards Bazaar Street. I get off two stops early and as I walk I see some street children, but most bolt when they notice me looking at them. They seem used to being chased off, since they are close to places the Blues and shop owners actually care about. I spend a few hours avoiding main drags and looking down alleys for the right kid to approach.
I finally pick out an older kid, maybe thirteen or so, loitering at the entrance of an alley like she has a purpose to be there. She has a tool pouch too, bingo. I walk up to her. I’m far enough away from Bazaar still that I hope she won’t recognize me if she ever came to school. Street kids all try to look the same and they tend to do a good enough job. The kid sees me coming and sets her feet, ready to talk or run.
“Eh rat. Need lock some info. Got a name, need a place.”
“Ha. Creds talk Lady. Null comm free. Creds up front.”
The kid points to the ledge on the wall next to her. Her slang is different than I’m used to, almost Bazaar, but I catch the meaning well enough. I’ve got to pay her up front and place it out in the clear for others to see if I want information. Making sure I’m not a Blue and making me a target if I flash too much money. Smart move. I don’t have much money, just one ten credit. I take it out and put it on the ledge. The kid eyes me and then snatches the chit.
“Wha’ handle got tha’ need indexed, Up?”
“Boss Dirk.” The kid does a good song and dance. Even stroking her chin as she ‘thinks.’
“Yeah . . . Oldie name tha’. Wrong eve’. Dirk ain’ null Boss. Dirk’s a Big. Been ’round long time. Tech stuff most . . .”
Dirk as a Big Boss? That means lots of credits and a crew of people working for him. There were only two Bigs in all of Bazaar when I was a rat. Did Dirk off one and take his place, or stake his own territory? Too complicated, I just need the basics right now.
“I need a place, got business with him. Hard kind.”
“Res’ ’s fuzz, Up. Hard ta scanner.”
The kid points to the ledge again. I already overpaid and she knows it.
“Listen, you give me where and you’ll get fifty more cred when I’m done with Dirk. Deal?”
This time she actually does think about it for awhile. Even if she has a boss that takes a cut, this would make her week. Maybe her month.
“Yeah . . . Some got say he got place at tha towers. Some got say a place down in Black Street. Lock is tha’ him got both. Tower stuff is legit front for wha’ he got at Black. Chop an’ Break shop makin’ parts out a black salvage. Gang stuff maybe.”
I know the place by name and the fear that was put in me as a street rat. No one goes to Black Street. I pull up the map on my mobiGlass. “Where in Black Street?”
“Dun know Lady, got some fuzz ’bout . . .”
Dodging again to try and get more cred. I’ve already promised what I don’t have. I can’t shake this with another empty bribe. I need to offer her something else. Her tool belt is welder style, but without a torch in the holster. She has some tech tools, but most are heavier, like for vehicle or ship work. She’s old enough she might be able to get work at the welding depot at the commercial spaceport. Working there gets you certifications. Certs means fees and a steady job. They take walk-ins and train them up, but don’t advertise it. That had been my backup plan for a few years now. Maybe it’ll be enough.
“Lock tha’ you got ship tools. Wha’ some rat doin’ with them? Got think tha’ ships is can get you out from here? How you going to get work on ships? I know some welders that work ships. Got ta be good at welding. You torch some?”
The sudden shift in conversation puts the kid on her heels. She looks away, trying to come up with one answer to all of my question.
“I torch some! Had ta trade ta meds when ’m got sick las’ freez.” The anger in her voice is a thin disguise for pain. Having to trade a prize possession for medicine. That depression didn’t kill her afterwards says a lot.
“Trade you straight info for info. Spaceport always needs welders. They’ll train you and get you basic certs. You use their gear and get paid daily. No lie. I plan on doing it but got business with Dirk first. You got your info now. So, you for info for me or not?”
That’s my last chip in a game I’m losing. I probably won’t get a second shot with someone else without more credits to start things off. The kid looks at me hard for awhile. Trying to weigh the worth of what I told her, whether it’s a lie.
“Rats an’ works know ’bout Big Dirk. Put out ’cast ta whole local ta work for him. Dirk double scans ’em for Gov or Blues an’ take ’em ta eight hundred wes’ sixteen thousand south.”
She taps my map to set the point.
“Got info out a rat tha’ run. Place got hangars ’round an’ one tower some. Only place like i’ ’round. Lot some folk head tha’ way. Null come back. Some ships come an’ get chopped. Some come an’ go. Rat tha’ ran say ’em work dead hard an’ then got sold ta slavers.”
The information almost sounds first hand. Maybe this kid could help me.
“You the rat that got out? Might need a guide around the place.”
No answer for that and the kid looks like she wants to bolt now.
“’m null go there. Craz that. Go at i’ from tha wes’ an you’ll get pas’ tha cams easy. Tha’s all ’m got tell. Ain’ eve’ glint zap on ya. You craz Up goin’ there. Ain’ none Up got business there.”
The kid give me one last look and walks away down the alley to places I shouldn’t follow. It’s a bad idea to push someone that just did you a favor on the street. My old street habits are starting to come back more as I check my surroundings and catch at least one person’s eyes lingering on me longer than they should have. I take in the rest of the passing crowd and don’t see anything that looks like a setup. I’m feeling paranoid. If Dirk really is a Big he could have people anywhere.
I get chills thinking that, and the kid’s comment about not having a weapon repeats in my head. I put up my hood and check that the map saved the location of Dirk’s chop shop. I make sure to avoid the area near the lingering eyes as I leave and don’t look back. I’ve got a lead, even if it’s a trap. I’m still the only hope my kids have.
I only hope I’m not too late.
The place I’m watching has to be Dirk’s. It fits the description and it’s in the most dangerous area of Bazaar, where even rats never go. Blues don’t come here, not like they care about Bazaar or rats. I saw three bodies on the ground on the way here. No way to check if they’re alive or dead without the chance of getting stabbed for interrupting someone’s high. My perch in the abandoned organics storehouse across from the compound is cold and the smell makes the sandwich I stole taste terrible. I only manage to force down a few bites, and my stomach is rebelling against even those.
From here I’ve been able to pick up some transmissions from the four-story office tower and the hangar’s fire suppression and alarm systems. My directional antenna found a dead spot in the office building, though. Second floor, northwest corner. Everywhere else has at least some sort of signal coming out. I even got the model number and command access of the robot vacuum next to it, but that area is dead. Like someone’s trying to hide something there. It’s my best shot.
While I’m planning out my approach I see armed people going between the hangars and the office. They’ve got about twice as many much-worse-off-looking adults surrounded. I see one of the group being herded turn and make a run for the fence. He doesn’t make it ten steps before a shot catches him in the back.
He falls to the ground, spun by the force of the shot hitting him. I’m thankful I can’t hear the sounds he makes thrashing on the ground. At least he’s still alive, I think blackly. The guards pick the runner up by the arms and drag him back to the hangar. It doesn’t look like they’re taking him to a medic. Dirk’s thugs mean business.
After watching all that I decide to make some modifications to my recently acquired stunner to give it more kick. I had lifted the cheap stun pistol from a rich Up kid I saw taking vid of Bazaar folks like it’s some sort of zoo. It might fry the first time I use it, but I’ll have to take that risk.
It’s only taken me a few hours to get here, set up, and find all this out. I put in a call to Mom Super but she didn’t answer. I don’t blame her. The Sisters have locked me out of the systems at the convent, but I had a direct tunnel to my education program that I never turned off. Like a private connection. It only lets me get to that room’s equipment, but it’s a way for me to get a message into the convent where someone might see it.
I’ve turned up the volume on the speakers and recorded a message. That message includes the video of what I saw earlier and explains what I’m doing so that someone will know even if I don’t get out. Now I’m just waiting here in this stink, second-guessing myself.
The sun has started to go down finally and my nerves are buzzing again. I’ve got thirty minutes before the next guard patrol will check this side of the grounds. If the kid I got this information from decided to sell me out, I’ll know soon enough. I double check my connection to my jury-rigged life-line and start towards the fence. At the fence I check it for a charge or alarms and don’t find any. My snips make quick work of the wire and I slip through.
A quick optic and radio scan shows cameras in the area, but none I can’t dodge. Thank god for small miracles. There’s still about fifteen meters of open pavement between the hangar I’m using for cover and the door to the service stairwell I picked out. I peek around the corner of the hanger and see that the main door is closed. I take a deep breath and start towards the office building.
About halfway there I hear the sound of ship engines and look up. Landing lights trace the ground a little ways away. I dash to the door and watch the ships appear and then travel out of sight from where I am. The hangar I had come from opens and a truck full of armed people drives out and off in the same direction. My heart is pounding and I know I didn’t run hard. I’ve got to pull it together. I turn my attention to the door.
A standard lock that’s not networked. No risk of external hack like that. Too bad for them, I’m right here. I pop the front panel off and start working. I almost have the bypass ready when I notice the inconspicuous block with two wires in it. Explosives.
I break out into a sweat as I realize how close I am to setting it off with what I’m about to do. How could I have been so stupid? This is craz. A bomb in a door? I was about to actually blow this and the kids would still be in danger. How can I do this if I can’t even get through the first door?
My hands are frozen as I look at what’s in front of me. It takes everything I have not to turn and run. My mind starts to latch on to things about the door to replace my runaway emotions. This is a prefab, like the ones on rail cars. Doors like this are cheap but not cheaply made. They cut corners on features, not substance. Like only having one power source.
That’s it. If I can cut the power to the lock, it will come free just like on a rail car. Hopefully no power will also mean no boom. It takes me just a second to find the thick connector that is the power plug and grab a hold. I take a deep breath and hold it, then I pull hard. I hear a hollow pop and the status lights inside the door panel all fade out. No boom and I’m still here. I let out the breath I’m holding long and slow. I have to keep moving.
After a few more seconds of frantic work in the dark I’ve got it rigged to stay open for when I come back. I hear the sounds of the truck coming just before I slip into the dim stairwell. About half the lights are missing and the unpainted walls show water spots and neglect. Not a camera in sight.
The second floor door is high tech but still not networked. The indicator shows locked. The access panel is on the other side. I rack my brain for something to get past it. After a few painful minutes of nothing I lean against it in despair. It moves. The latch must not have been caught.
I can’t believe it. I open it just enough to roll a camera sphere out as I pull up the feed on my mobiGlas.
The picture shows a bright white hallway with an elevator at one end and only a few other doors. I see one camera but it is pointed at the elevator. Two big men with pistols on their hips come out from the farthest room and get in the elevator. I freeze even though they can’t see me. The indicator shows it going down. I say a silent prayer hoping they are going out to meet the new arrivals. I find the door that looks like it should lead to where I’m going. I wait a few seconds more, and then walk into the hall and head for my target.
It has an old manual handle and is unlocked. My heart skips a beat at the thought of a trap. I take the stun pistol from its holster and open the door.
I look around but find myself alone in a big room. I close the door quickly and quietly, finding myself surrounded by computer panels and monitor lights. My mobiGlas beeps. I’ve lost connection to the outside. My eyes take a moment to adjust to dim lighting once more, as I put the stunner away.
I head to the station that looks most important. It’s a system monitoring terminal that has stats on dozens of sub-systems, all of them seemingly run from this room. I sit down and dig in. The setup is incredible. Star charts, financial information, shipping schedules, even payroll information for dozens of companies. All of them must be fake and controlled from here. This is how Dirk is laundering his salvage. The kid had said one side of Dirk’s operation is legit. Not for long. There is another set of information here that’s being kept separate. Ship manifests with destinations in Banu space. Pictures of people chained together and prices per shipment labeled only as ‘cargo.’ I skim through them quickly but I don’t see any of my children in the pictures. I copy as much as I can to my mobiGlas’s storage. This is all good, but it’s not why I’m here.
After some digging I find access to the cameras and pull up all the local feeds.
I get one of each floor’s elevator door, the main entrance, the front gate, a small room with a single chair in the middle, and a few showing parts of the fence. The last feed I check is an entirely black picture. It seems out of place in such a spartan set of things to record. I check it again. It’s a live feed. Then I see something. Black moving in the black. Something small. Someone.
My heart jumps. That has to be them. The label on the feed is Hangar 4 Storage. I’d seen that each hangar has a number painted on the side and know that 4 is on the north side of the building. It’s away from all the action outside right now, but the only way in from the outside is a huge cargo door. I pull up the controls for the door and try to open the cargo door remotely. As I do, I see a red warning flag pop up and the system locks. I must have triggered something!
I need to get out of this room.
They may already know I’m here, and if they don’t they will soon. I jog out the door and make a mental note as my mobiGlas beeps its reconnection to the network.
I head around the side of the building to the north and get within sight of the number 4 hangar. Lights are flashing on each of the buildings and a siren goes off. I hear shouts behind me and the sound of ship engines revving to launch prep. I head straight to the hangar door’s access panel. This one is standard, like the one to the stairwell, but this time no explosives. I get it to open after just a few tries and I scramble underneath and into the safety lighting.
A door just inside has ‘Storage’ on it stenciled in white. I run to it. It’s another manual door but it’s been chained shut.
My wire cutters can’t get through something this thick. I didn’t bring a torch. A chain? That’s stopping me? I got past explosives and around guards and into computers and now I can’t get past a chain? I kick the lock in frustration.
Flakes of rust float from the chain to the floor.
The rundown hangar has rusting bits and pieces all around. On the ground I see a pipe about two meters long. Jackpot!
I grab the pipe and examine the chain. It’s got some links that have been repaired before. I remember the materials book I studied. The chain is more likely to break than the pipe because of the welded links. I struggle a bit to wedge it between the door and chain. Once it’s securely set, I put my whole weight into pulling. The pole starts to bend but I keep the pressure on.
I hear a pop. Then a clang and the pipe goes slack, almost tumbling me to the floor. At the same time the chain and lock fall to the floor loudly. I recover, grabbing the door handle and pulling.
Light from the hangar lights flows into the small room as seven sets of eyes all stare back at me. The smell of human waste hits me like a wall. One child is lying on the floor. All the others are standing, backs against the wall. I can see the bruises. The ripped clothes. The gauntness. The fear. But they are still alive. Thank god, they are still alive.
One speaks in a whisper, “Sister?”
I almost say yes, but Mom Super’s betrayed face flashes in my mind.
“I’m here to get you out.” I hold out my hand to encourage them. “We have to go before the guards come.”
That seems to get through to them. One, then two more start to come out of the filthy prison they’d been kept in.
Another one is standing at the back of the room next to the child who hasn’t moved from the floor.
“’em can’ null walk none.” The standing one says, looking at his companion on the floor. I rush in and scoop up the child in one hand, trying not to gag on the smell.
“Out, everyone, and then through the door, then left keep going till the fence.”
Seeing me take their weakest as a burden sets the rest of them in motion, but as I come out of the filthy closet I see a pair of trucks loaded with vicious looking people heading straight for us.
All the children have stopped with me just inside the door. They’re looking at me. I can feel the one I’m holding barely breathing.
I will not let them take you.
I slam my fist into the door release and the door comes rattling down.
I pull the stunner from its holster, aim at the door’s control panel and pull the trigger. Nothing. I pull it again. Nothing.
“Got a hold tha trig down ta shot.” One of the children said it so softly I almost didn’t hear it. It was the one in my arm.
I do as she tells me and hold down the trigger. Seconds tick by and I hear the trucks stopping. The door is starting to move again. Suddenly my stunner fires and fries the controls. Someone on the other side doesn’t like that and points a weapon through the three centimeter opening and starts to fire.
The children duck behind what larger scrap pieces are around. Someone shouts and the shooting stops. The alarm sirens are still wailing but I can hear more commotion on the other side of the door.
“Rat! ’m know you there!” It’s Dirk. “Give up, rat! You null comin’ out a there ’less ’m let you out!”
The children start moving to better cover. If there is one thing a street kid knows, it’s how to find a place to hide. I look down at the one in my arms, passed out and filthy. Helpless.
“I’m not going to let them take you.” I say softly. Then I turn my face to the door and let out all the rage and anger I can call on. “You’re not my boss anymore, Dirk. You’re nothing to me now. You’re bigger than us, and you’ve got guns, so you think you can do whatever you want. And maybe you can, but I’m not gonna make it easy. I’m gonna fight for these kids. I’m stronger and smarter than you think, Dirk. All us rats are.”
A shot rings out and I duck back behind the beam I’ve crouched next to. The bullet punched a hole in the door. Someone sticks a hook through the hole and I hear an engine rev outside. The whole door starts to creak and strain.
Another shot, hole and hook. A second truck revs up and I see the panels of the door flexing under the pull. I have to find a way out of here. I remember specs of old hangars sometimes having ventilation at the ceiling. My eyes shoot up, looking for some sign of that and I find it almost immediately.
“You all have to climb. Get into the vents. It’s a way out. Come on.”
These children have been through hell and still they amaze me as they start to climb, helping each other. I nearly cry as they break every rule of the street by doing that. The first of them gets to the opening. One after the other they disappear into the closest thing to safety I can get them to. It’s little comfort but a better chance than they had locked up.
The last one through turns around to me, “Get heading, Sister. Got get out.”
I’m still holding the child in my arms and I realize I can’t climb and take her with me.
“Go, I can’t make it, I’m too big. I have to stay and take care of them.”
I get an intense look from more than one set of eyes.
“Go!”
The walls start to shake, the eyes disappear from the vent and dust falls from every angle as one side of the massive front door comes crashing down. It’s still obstructing the way but once the other side pulls free . . .
I move as far back among the scrap metal and tools as possible. I can barely see through the dust. There is yelling and flashlights shining into the newly opened gap. The trucks rev their engines again and then suddenly — they stop.
Gun and laser fire pop off and I can hear a new siren. No, sirens. They’re growing louder and closer. The trucks rev up again but this time I can hear them heading away.
The new sirens get louder still and then I see flashing blue lights streak past. Then again. And again. The Blues? How?
As the dust clears some vehicles pull to a stop outside the wrecked hangar door and several large men in plain clothes get out, guns drawn.
I shrink down, still keeping an eye on them, hoping they’ll leave if they don’t find anything.
Another vehicle stops and, like a ghost in a dream, I see Mom Super get out with a uniformed Blue next to her.
My lungs burn as I take in a dust-filled breath trying to shout to her, but I only cough. I get up and all eyes move to me and the child I’m carrying. I stumble out from behind my hiding place. I have to get to Mom Super.
That thought drives me forward. I stumble and fall. One of the Blues catches me, taking the child gently from my hands and laying me down against a wall.
“Are you hurt?” the Blue asks, “are there others?”
“The vents,” I cough, “in the vents.”
The Blue shines a light to the vent opening where six children are looking back at her. I motion them down with my arm and after a long pause they start to climb out. More Blues are coming in and helping the children. Blues helping street rats. This time the tears do come.
Mom Super is here now, next to me.
“Are you all right? Are you injured?”
The concern in her eyes and voice shame me. I don’t deserve her caring about me.
I take off my mobiGlas and hold it out to her. I clear my throat with a cough.
“I got as much information about Dirk’s operation as I could. Financials, dummy corps, contacts. It’s more than enough to shut him down if you give it to the Blues. This can keep the rest of the children safe.” I’m so exhausted my arm shakes with the effort of holding up the weight of the mobiGlas.
Mom Super takes it and moves past my hand towards me. Her arms surround me in an embrace. I don’t even know what to do. I let my hands fall to my side, feeling unworthy to hold the only Mother I’ve known.
“Well done, young one.”
A week later, the Blues have all the information I collected and I have my mobiGlas back. The children have been put in protective custody. Dirk’s operations have been shut down, though he is nowhere to be found. The news is talking about fixing poverty in the city. Street School has started again, with kids coming from all over. This week over a hundred come. They call us the Big Sisters now, like the Sisters took Dirk’s title. All of this and I’m getting ready to leave.
Mom Super has said that I can stay at the convent but I know I can’t. I put the children we were trying to help in danger and I almost attacked the core of the Sisters’ religion. I’m going to go to space and see all the things I’ve read about. I’ve always been just a guest here. I’ve never been one of them. I’m packing the last of my things when she comes to see me.
“Hello, young one,” she says. My back’s to the door.
“I’m not so young anymore,” I answer. “I’ve grown a bit since you gave me that name.”
Mom Super has a grin in her voice. “Gave you a name, did I? You refused to tell me what to call you. So I choose a description by which to call you. Hardly a name I think.”
There’s an unspoken ending to that sentence. I can feel it.
I turn around to see Mom Super standing in the doorway wearing her best habit. I guess it makes sense she would wear it on the day that I leave.
“We have something for you.”
“We?” I ask.
“Come, young one. It is time I do what you claim I have done already.”
There’s no way to refuse Mom Super when she has a plan.
She motions with her hand and I follow her out of the living area, past the meal hall and into the library.
Where rows of Sisters stand waiting in front of the book cases.
Three stories full. Rows about twenty feet long of sisters in their ceremonial best. One sister stands in the middle of the assembly on the main floor with a camera. Mom Super walks to stand next to her. I’m frozen just inside the door trying not to panic.
Turning in place Mom Super looks at me and then up to the gathered Sisters. She speaks loudly, “One has come among us whom we now know. One has been our guest who has had no name. One among us is leaving, following the call of her heart. These are all the same person. She had meant to do us harm but only in the cause of saving others, which she then did of her own accord. It would be right to record her name and good deeds in the histories of our Hall, but it would not be right to do so without using her name. What say you?”
A figure from the left of me steps forward, “We propose that she be given a name.”
Another figure steps forward, this time from my right. “We have come to consensus in this.”
“Step forward,” Mom Super says as she motions me toward her. I walk in a daze and stop when she signals.
Mom Super lays a hand on my shoulder. Her gaze drills into my eyes as she speaks. “This one has been found worthy and good among us. An inspiration to the study of knowledge and an example of courage. A changed person, remade by the force of her own will. What will you name her?”
First off, thanks to everyone who joined us in Cologne, Germany during Gamescom week. The team had a great time getting to meet many of you in person, and participate in our first ever Gamescom Town Hall Q&A, which is available to watch on YouTube here.
Alongside Gamescom festivities, we also revealed Crusader Industries latest ship, the Mercury Star Runner. Built with the same engineering and design principals that have made Crusader the go-to manufacturer for galactic transport on any scale, the star runner chassis sets new standards for data and cargo conveyance. Join the Manhunt with an interactive mini-game in the ARK Starmap, and find out more about this ship here.
In addition, you can now get into the ‘Verse for free for a limited time, and explore in several ships and vehicles: dogfight in the Avenger, bust rocks with the MISC Prospector, haul freight (or steal it) with the Cutlass Black, and live dangerously in the Dragonfly. If you have any questions on where to get started, we’ve also made an FAQ to make it easy.
Lastly, what better way to compliment the Gamescom Free-Fly than with a Commercial Contest, this time for the MISC Prospector! Find out all of the details here.
And with that, let’s see what else is going on this week:
Every week on Calling All Devs, designers, engineers, and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on Spectrum and voted for by YOU. This week we talk about multi-crew Arena Commander, waypoints, personal hangars, and more. Watch the full episode when it releases here.
Numerous serialized fiction stories have appeared in Jump Point but have never been made available to all backers. As laid out in our Lore Release Schedule, the fourth Tuesday of each month will be dedicated to bringing you these stories one exciting chapter at a time.
Thursday will welcome another episode of Around the Verse where we’ll take a look at the latest Star Citizen news with a project update.
Finally, make sure to tune in on Friday for another episode of Reverse the Verse, broadcast live on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. Stay tuned for further information about who our special guests will be and keep an eye on Spectrum for the Questions Thread!
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We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Every week, we select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and highlight it in this section. The highlighted content creator will be awarded with an MVP badge on Spectrum and be immortalized in our MVP section of the Hub.
Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
Building Star Citizen: Carrack Interior Walkthrough by West_Sage
The Community Team is at Gamescom this week, representing Star Citizen in Cologne, Germany. We don’t have a booth this time around, but if some of you are making the trip to Cologne, you can join us at one of four Bar Citizen events in the evenings or at the meetup on Friday that’ll include a special town hall Q&A for those in attendance. Find all the details about where we’ll be here.
But apart from one of the biggest gaming expos, we’ve still got more exciting events this week.
Our latest concept ship, the RSI Apollo, is still available until August 22nd, so make sure to check out our guardian angel before it’s gone. Celebrating the reveal of our latest medical ship, we held a contest where we wanted to see quotes that you might hear on board an RSI Apollo. The contest is now over and you can find out who’s the new owner of a shiny RSI Apollo Triage or click here, to see all of the contest entries on Twitter. Didn’t win anything this time around? No worries, the next contest is right around the corner!
And with that, let’s see what else is going on this week:
Every week on Calling All Devs, designers, engineers, and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on Spectrum and voted for by YOU. This week we talk about atmospheric planes and aquatic vehicles, “weapon rest” character positions, and the Aaron Halo asteroid field. Watch the full episode here.
On Tuesday, the Lore Team will publish another detailed piece of fiction, breathing life into the Star Citizen universe. Check out previously published lore posts here.
Thursday will welcome another episode of Around the Verse where we’ll take a look at the latest Star Citizen news with a project update. We’ve also seen Jared running around in a suit jacket today… but we aren’t sure if that’s an indicator of anything.
This Friday, we’ll be doing things a bit differently, as we’ll be hosting a special Townhall Q&A at the Brauhaus ohne Namen in Cologne for those attending the event. This means questions can be asked by those who attend, we’ll record the whole show, and upload it on our official YouTube channel at a later time for those who couldn’t make it.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 24TH, 2018
Reverse the Verse Town Hall Q&A (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)
Roadmap Update
RSI Newsletter
Bar Citizen – Brauhaus Ohne Namen – Special Townhall Q&A
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25TH, 2018
Bar Citizen – Hyatt Legends Bar
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We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Every week, we select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and highlight it in this section. The highlighted content creator will be awarded with an MVP badge on Spectrum and be immortalized in our MVP section of the Hub.
Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
Overview of the Xi’an language for diplomats by TradTeam
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The TradTeam, a unified group of translators of the French-speaking community, released the “Overview of the Xi’an language for diplomats”, a 100-page paper, translated into French. Bien joué!! This document will surely be an inspiration for all French speakers to add Xi’an to their skills.
Das US-Gericht in Kalifornien hat die Ende 2017 eingereichte Klage von Entwicklerstudio Crytek gegen das Team von Cloud Imperium Games in fast allen Punkten zugelassen. Die Star Citizen-Macher wollten die Klage zunächst abweisen - das Gericht lehnte…
Recently, we introduced our latest concept ship, the RSI Apollo, the Guardian Angel for rapid response and medivac operations. To celebrate the reveal, we’d like to give another Apollo away before the promotion ends! Find all the details on how you can win here, and as a reminder, the Apollo is still available here.
With that, let’s see what’s going on this week:
Every week on Calling All Devs, designers, engineers and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on Spectrum and voted for by YOU. This week we talk about crime stats, physics grids, and more! Watch the full episode here.
Tuesday, or now better known as “Lore Day”, will bring us a Galactic Guide on the Gurzil system, as seen previously in Jump Point Magazine.
Thursday will welcome another episode of Around the Verse where we’ll look at the latest Star Citizen news with a project update.
Lastly, make sure to tune in on Friday for Reverse the Verse: Gamedev, broadcast live on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. This week, we’ll sit down with Lead Vehicle Artist Elwin Bachiller Jr. as we jump into the game engine LIVE to explore the Mustang variants rework, currently in progress and scheduled to be released in the upcoming Alpha 3.3 patch
Inhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.
We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Every week, we select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and highlight it in this section. The highlighted content creator will be awarded with an MVP badge on Spectrum and be immortalized in our MVP section of the Hub.
Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
Aegis Hammerhead 3D Print and Custom Paint
by Ungineer
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Ungineer has done it again, this time recreating the Aegis Hammerhead. In total, it took Ungineer a little over 3 months in his spare time. Congratulations on the finished piece, and for being this week’s MVP!
Recently, we introduced our latest concept ship, the RSI Apollo, the Guardian Angel for rapid response and medivac operations. Since then, we’ve been gathering questions about the Apollo on Spectrum and are excited to bring you the answers you’ve been looking for. Make sure to keep an eye out on August 8th!
Also, if you were mining under a rock last Friday, make sure to catch up on the Letter From The Chairman and Reverse the Verse with Chris Roberts for the latest on Alpha 3.3, our video content, and UEC.
Lastly, read up on what our global studios accomplished over the last few weeks in our Monthly Studio Report.
With that, let’s see what’s going on this week:
Every week on Calling All Devs, designers, engineers and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on Spectrum and voted for by YOU. This week we talk about cruise speed decouple bugs, atmospheric flight on Hurston, and pursuing ships through Quantum Travel.
Tuesday will be bringing you an all-new episode of Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy, this time exploring the Banu System.
Fast forward to Wednesday for a landslide of information in our RSI Apollo Q&A, fresh and hot off the press.
Thursday will welcome another episode of Around the Verse where we’ll look at the latest Star Citizen news with a project update.
Lastly, make sure to tune in on Friday for another episode of Reverse the Verse, broadcast live on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. Stay tuned for further information about who our special guests will be and keep an eye on Spectrum for the Questions Thread!
Inhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.
We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Every week, we select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and highlight it in this section. The highlighted content creator will be awarded with an MVP badge on Spectrum and be immortalized in our MVP section of the Hub.
Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
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Last weekend, the Daymar Rally had a practice run and combined it with a security trial. The result is a video with impressive camera work and all teams safely reaching their destination. We can’t wait for the actual race!
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Hello Citizens
I hope you are all enjoying Star Citizen Alpha 3.2.1. We’re having a great time checking out the community streams, videos, and screenshots that you’re creating. Events like the Spanish Community getting together for a 50-person Quantum Jump to Daymar and a huge coordinated mixed-arms battle give us all an exciting glimpse at the possibilities of the universe that we’re building.
CitizenCon and Star Citizen Alpha 3.3
We were very happy with the format of last year’s CitizenCon and felt it was the most successful CitizenCon yet – the community could spend a solid amount of time with the developers and had the opportunity to learn about the game in a way impossible from a single presentation. This year we are doubling down on this approach to make it even more like a convention, and we have some pretty cool things in store for you that we’ll be sharing in the coming month.
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As part of our planning for CitizenCon, we need to make sure that it works with our new quarterly release schedule so that we don’t overload our development teams. In terms of focus and split deadlines, it doesn’t make much sense to deliver Star Citizen Alpha 3.3 at the end of September and then a few days later have CitizenCon, as it creates two big deadlines back to back and leaves us with less opportunity to surprise the community at the event.
Because of this, we’ve made the decision to align the Alpha 3.3 release (and subsequent 3rd quarter releases in the future) with CitizenCon, which this year will be on Oct 10th in Austin, Texas.
Going forward the release will be: Q1 end of March, Q2 the end of June, Q3 in October with CitizenCon, and the Q4 in mid-to-late December. We feel this makes the most sense for both the development teams and you, the community. We’re looking forward to Star Citizen Alpha 3.3 becoming part of the CitizenCon celebration.
Video Content
While on Reverse the Verse last month to discuss the release of 3.2, I mentioned that we were looking to revamp our video content to be more targeted to what we see as the three distinct groups that we would like to engage:
1. Hardcore backers that consume everything, from the shows, to Jump Point, to enthusiastic forum discussions.
2. Casual backers. They believe in and support Star Citizen but only check in occasionally and don’t have time to follow every little bit of information.
3. Potential or new backers who don’t know much about Star Citizen but would like to learn more.
You may have noticed the start of this format change with Around the Verse. We’ve been working to create a shorter, faster-moving show that feels more like a TV news show – one that strikes a good balance between quick updates and visuals; less talk, more show.
It’s still a work in progress and we’re in the process of beefing up our Video Production team with some new hires, as up to now we have relied on only a few people who have been putting in far too many hours than we felt healthy in order to satisfy in the insatiable demand for new Star Citizen content.
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Part of this initiative has caused us to sit down and look at the long-term plan for how we deliver interesting content each week without distracting or breaking the flow of the development teams.
It’s a difficult tightrope to walk. If we hold too much back, we’re accused of not being ‘open’ enough. Show everything, and people shrug their shoulders when we demo new content at a live event or are underwhelmed by a new release because they’ve already seen it on ATV. Because of this, we have decided to hold a few things back to have some features and content to surprise you at CitizenCon and on future releases. Don’t worry, there’s still plenty to show and discuss but we want a healthy balance between ongoing engagement and updates and genuine excitement and discovery.
However, ATV is only one piece of the puzzle as we plan to improve the quality of our behind-the-scenes featurettes. To do this, we’ve decided to not share deep dives on features that are in the middle of development, as we feel we can’t do them justice while they’re still being refined. Plus, it’s a pretty big strain on the development team when we make additional demands for interview time and b-roll creation while they are knee deep trying to deliver the feature.
Our new plan is to do fewer featurettes, but make them longer and of a higher quality, with better b-roll and graphics than past videos. We will only deep-dive into a feature or addition once it has been completed, to make sure we can tell the full story; from concept to in game. These featurettes are aimed at the first group I mentioned earlier: hardcore backers that want to know all the details and will make the time to do so.
The final part of the new Community video plan is to create video content aimed at the new or potential backers that want an easy digestible ‘in’ to the universe of Star Citizen, as well as giving existing backers a show to share with their friends to give them a taste of what Star Citizen is about. Casual backers should have content that they’ll enjoy when they want to catch up with the development of the game and universe.
We think this plan walks the appropriate line between too much and too little and addresses the three major audience groups that we’re trying to cater to.
UEC
Recently a few people have voiced their concerns about the removal of the player UEC wallet cap that came with the release of Star Citizen Alpha 3.2. This was done to help smooth over the transition to an in-game economy and to give people that had purchased game items through the now-defunct Voyager Direct web store the ability to ‘melt’ them back for UEC, so they can repurchase new items in-game. As we are going to be rebalancing the pricing and economy as we expand the game, and as we currently reset everyone’s accounts when we release a new patch, we felt it would be unfair to force people to keep items they may have bought at a radically different price. This would have happened if we’d kept the overall hard cap on UEC as many players had amassed a lot more than 150,000 UEC worth of items. We still limit the maximum purchasing to 25,000 UEC a day, but we felt that removing the cap was the right call, especially as with every persistent database reset we need to refund players the UEC they have purchased with money and used to buy in-game items. It’s one thing to lose an item due to gameplay, but it’s a complete other thing to have your game account forcibly reset with each new patch, losing all the items you paid actual money for.
Putting aside the puzzle of why some people don’t have a problem with stockpiling ships or items but a player having more than 150,000 UEC is game breaking, I think it may be useful to revisit Star Citizen’s economic model.
Developing and operating a game of Star Citizen’s ambition is expensive. From day one of the campaign we’ve been quite clear on the economic model for Star Citizen, which is to not require a subscription like many MMOs, but instead rely on sales of initial game packages and in-game money to fund development and online running costs. To ensure money isn’t a deciding factor in progression, the core principle that the game follows is that everything you can obtain with real money, outside of your initial game package, can also be earned in game via normal and fun gameplay. There will also be plenty of things that can only be earned by playing.
There are two types of resource players have that they can contribute to Star Citizen to make it better: time and money. A player that has lots of time but only backed for the basic game helps out by playing the game, giving feedback, and assisting new players. On the flip side, if a player has a family and a demanding job and only has four hours to game a week but wants to spend some money to shortcut the time investment they would need to purchase a new ship, what’s wrong with that? They are helping fund the ongoing development and running costs of the game, which benefits everyone. The exact same ship can be earned through pure gameplay without having to spend any money and the backer that has plenty of time is likely to be better at dogfighting and FPS gameplay after playing more hours to earn the ship. I don’t want to penalize either type of backer; I want them both to have fun. People should not feel disadvantaged because they don’t have time, nor should they feel disadvantaged if they don’t have money. I want our tent to be large and encompass all types of players with varied skill sets, time, and money.
This was the economic approach I proposed out when I first pitched Star Citizen because it is the model as a player I prefer. I don’t like to have to pay a subscription just to play and I hate when things are deliberately locked behind a paywall, but as someone that doesn’t have twenty hours a week to dedicate to building up my character or possessions, I appreciate the option to get a head start if I’m willing to pay a little extra.
Some people are worried that they will be disadvantaged when the game starts for ‘real’ compared to players that have stockpiled ships or UEC. This has been a debate on the forums since the project started, but this is not a concern for me as I know what the game will be and I know how we’re designing it.
There will always be some players that have more than others, regardless of whether they’ve spent more or played more, because people start at different times and play at different paces. This is the nature of persistent MMOs. Star Citizen isn’t some race to the top; it’s not like Highlander where “There can only be one!” It is an open-ended Persistent Universe Sandbox that doesn’t have an end game or a specific win-state. We are building it to cater to players of all skill levels, that prefer PvE or PvP, that like to play solo or in a group or a large organization, that want to pursue various professions, some peaceful and some combat orientated. This is the core philosophy of Star Citizen; there isn’t one path, nor is there one way to have fun.
This may be a foreign concept to gamers as the majority of games are about winning and losing, but Star Citizen isn’t a normal game. It’s a First Person Universe that allows you to live a virtual life in a compelling futuristic setting. You win by having fun, and fun is different things to different people.
Welcome to the Cloud Imperium Games Monthly Studio Report for July. This month, the team patched Star Citizen Alpha 3.2, pushed forward on Squadron 42, and continued developing systems, ships, and features for future releases.
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LOS ANGELES
VEHICLE FEATURES
This month, the U.S. Vehicle Feature Team focused their efforts on fixing turret bugs and making improvements to the Alpha 3.2.1 patch. After it went live, they reviewed turret feedback and began working on additional improvements for the upcoming 3.3 release.
They also continued their work on Ping & Scanning, including moving the scanning infrastructure over to the servers, generating signals via blackbox entities, and implementing the various information that will be provided by transponders.
VEHICLE PIPELINE
The Art, Design, and Tech Art Teams worked together to push the Consolidated Outland Mustang and Tumbril Cyclone variants through the greybox stages. Design and Tech Art worked on the final stage of the RSI Constellation Phoenix, and the Mustang’s landing gear compression was also completed. Tech Art also completed their greybox pass of the Anvil F8 Lightning and supported the mining animations used on the MISC Prospector. The teams collaborated with Animation on R&D and test cases for sequenced animations in vehicles, which will allow greater flexibility for future enter, exit, and cockpit animations.
In early August, the Art Team will move onto the first stages of the Anvil Hawk.
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GAMEPLAY FEATURES
To support the 3.2.1 patch, the Gameplay Feature Team spent the first week of the month fixing Group System bugs on both the code and UI fronts. After the patch, the team continued to work on the next iteration of the Group System for Alpha 3.3.
Finally, they focused on removing some of the legacy systems, updating the three-pane mobiGlas chat widget, and setting up the chat to come from a new backend service.
NARRATIVE
The Narrative Team began July with an episode of Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy about the Cano system. They wrote a Discovered piece about an archaeologist using a Vulture to salvage and explore a debris field, and delivered the July 2948 Shubin employee newsletter filled with tidbits about the company’s past and hope for the future. A history of the Imperial Cartography Center and the third episode of The Knowledge of Good and Evil also became available for all to read.
Subscribers received an exclusive Galactic Guide on the long-lost Oretain system, while July’s Jump Point covered the Drake Vulture, improved combat AI, and the mysterious Vasli fragment. And to top it all off, Jared honored the team by inviting them to appear on a very special RTV to play a spot of Alpha 3.2.1 and answer narrative questions.
The team tackled details about the moons of Hurston and ArcCorp, worked on mission giver design briefs, and fleshed out the Bartender and Patron line sets. They worked with the Character Team on Hurston Security loadouts and the System Design Team on Security behaviours and NPC placement. There were several syncs with the Live Design team focusing on expanded mission content for Alpha 3.3. Team leads participated in multiple reviews for Squadron 42 (S42) and the Persistent Universe (PU). They wrote some fun new marketing material, including the lore behind the successful Astromedics vid series that was tied to the RSI Apollo. Finally, work continued behind the scenes on the Galactapedia that will be shared further down the road.
CHARACTERS
The Character Art Team diligently worked on new Hair and Head tech, which will improve the appearance of current characters and revise some core tools used in the character wearables tech setup process. The team worked on the Hurston clothing collection, Virgil TrueDef Pro Armor, and reworked the Odyssey Flightsuit. Alongside the new content, material variants will be made to help fill out the NPCs found on Hurston. Plus, progress was made on a variety of Squadron 42 costumes.
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AUSTIN
DESIGN
Throughout July, the Design Team further experimented with how to make a bar feel like a living breathing environment, instead of static NPCs serving and consuming drinks. The intent was to give the bartender and others enough character, life, and flexibility so that they can deal with multiple patrons at once, including the player, while looking as lively and realistic as possible. They also began building out the AI logic in Subsumption, started rounds of feedback with Tony Zurovec, and worked with the Narrative Team to get lines written for the Bartender and Bar Patron characters. The aim is to get these lines, along with the placeholder animations provided by the ATX Animation Team, added into the game for internal review soon.
In an effort to allow the economic status of resources effect pricing, the team is constructing recipes for items so that, as the price of resources fluctuates, the players will be able to see a noticeable difference in the pricing of items. The change won’t be instant but will develop over time and can be influenced by the player base.
Work is also happening on getting the ship rental shop working in the PU to coincide with the ability to rent ships. Work on additional layouts for Truck Stops will lend a bit more variety to the shops that players will encounter when traveling to far-away locations.
On top of all this, the team took a moment to review how their data is structured and are finding ways to make things more efficient and organized for ease of use in the future.
ANIMATION
The Animation Team continues to research and develop animations for the PU’s female character. Very different animations are needed when the character sits in a ship versus moving around in the ‘verse, but progress is being made and the fidelity of female animations are getting closer to those of the male characters.
Placeholder block-out animations were sent to the ATX Design Team for the Bartender character to help them see the results of some of the AI R&D they were working on.
Alongside this, they continued to move several characters through the various stages of the pipeline, such as mission givers like Constantine Hurston, Clovus Darneely, and a new character of interest, Tecia Pacheco.
On the Ship side, animations were completed for the new Tumbril Cyclone variants. Specifically, the turret operator animations were reworked and polished.
SHIP ART
The Ship Team is deep in the concept phase of the 300i re-work and are currently fleshing out the new shape along with integrating many of the ‘wish list’ features that have been accumulating over the last few years, including new cargo options. They recently showed off the first round of concepts on ATV, with the community generally feeding back positively. However, a few concerns were voiced about the new design, which the team will be taking into consideration for the next and final round of concept presentation.
The final pass of the Constellation Phoenix’s modeling and lighting is currently underway. When finished, the team will move onto the final flight prep setup and polishing tasks. Then, they’ll create the LODs to complete the art pass for the Phoenix.
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BACKEND SERVICES
This month, the Backend Services team finished up support for 3.2.1 by fixing some critical bugs that were discovered after 3.2.0 went live. Specifically, they rectified issues with currency and fixed a bug that prevented the player from purchasing items from shops and inventories.
They also continued efforts to create Services using the new Ooz/Diffusion framework. This is part of the refactoring of the Persistence Cache to make it more scalable. Another accomplishment this month was finishing up the new Entitlement Processor service, which is far more robust and efficient than the legacy solution. The legacy Friends Service was also written into this new framework.
The other Services created so far are:
Character service: provides an API for character specific runtime and persistent data.
Wallet service: responsible for managing player currencies.
Item Loadout Service: manages player or ship default and custom loadouts.
Insurance service: manages all insurance claims.
DEVOPS
Dev Ops have been supporting the additional publishes related to 3.2 this month while also making great progress on the various feature stream enhancements to the build system.
“One of the most satisfying aspects of our publishing effort is to see the new gameplay features showing up on the various live streams and we’ve been enjoying many of those.” – Dev Ops
They’ve also worked very closely with the feature teams to add more gameplay analytics to help track game performance and resource consumption on a regional level, as well as on the individual game servers themselves. This additional data will help them tune server density to deliver the best possible compute and memory performance.
Feature stream work progressed this month as well. This project breaks source control branches down to the individual feature level to help the developers work more independently without potential conflict. This effort was well received by the devs and will be expanded. However, it was not without challenges, as these streams create an additional load on the build system and storage subsystems. The team worked through most of these issues and are now closing in on the final details that will allow them to scale the build system much wider than its current capability.
PLAYER RELATIONS
The Player Relations team helped wrap up 3.2.1 this month. This is the second such quarterly release, and the team is really hitting their stride with the new publishing cycle. They also wrapped up the Live Release Production Summit in Austin, Texas which dealt with subjects such as improving the publishing process and how the team can grow the Evocati volunteer group for future releases.
“We’d like to point all players to our growing Knowledge Base, which has over 100 articles and has seen almost 100,000 visitors since its inception. We will continue to grow this by adding new ‘How To’ articles, patch notes, and live service notifications here as well as on Spectrum.
As always, we’d like to remind and encourage everyone to continue to use the Issue Council to help us triage and rate bugs and functionality. We’ll use that data to prioritize for future updates, plus your IC participation will make you eligible to get into earlier PTU waves.” – Player Relations Team
QA
Last month 3.2 and 3.2.1 went live. For the QA team, this included publishing checklists for build testing and testing patches in the PTU, along with testing all the fixes as they were implemented.
On the Game side, they moved back to their internal dev stream and started testing the initial implementation of Object Container Streaming. They also shifted focus slightly to make sure all test plans and QA processes are updated and ready as more Object Container Streaming testing comes online.
On the Leadership side, it’s been business as usual with focus on coordinating testing priorities with their QA counterparts in LA, UK, and DE.
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WILMSLOW & DERBY
GRAPHICS
The Graphics Team completed the work required to make the renderer ready for Object Container Streaming. In addition, the team made the new surface shaders more efficient and easier to use, maintain, and improve. You’ll see the benefits from these updated shaders as the artists transition to them in Alpha 3.3 and 3.4.
They also improved the room culling system to allow for more complex level setups of rooms within rooms, which had previously resulted in rendering the entirety of the smaller room. This new feature allows the Art Team to build more elaborate interiors in both Squadron 42 and the PU with improved performance. The next focus will be on features to enhance the quality of lighting in and around gas clouds and large interior spaces where large lights would normally result in very low shadow resolution.
UI
The UI Team further developed the RTT item preview system that allows for a generalized method of displaying one or more 3D items anywhere in the UI as part of a scrolling list component. This works on things like kiosks, mobiGlas, MFDs, etc.
The team implemented the necessary changes to support renting ships and items through the Electronic Access customization menus and worked on the UI design for the Spectrum app in the mobiGlas.
They also collaborated with the Design Team to pre-visualize what approaching a no-fly zone might look like to the player. Work continued with the Environment and Narrative Team on crafting propaganda posters and signage for Lorville.
Additional headway was made on core tech & tools, with a successful prototype completed of the bindings system for the mining HUD display. This enables a more streamlined interface for exposing game data to the UI front-end.
ANIMATION
The team created animations for the reload and firing states of the upcoming Karna plasma assault rifle. To finalize assets for the SpecOps combat AI, they held a motion capture shoot to update the placeholder assets for hit reactions and the various threat level reactions to sights and sounds. They also improved enemy SpecOps AI combat poses with better blending between motion states.
Other tasks included supporting the ‘carryable system’ with a wide range of assets and a general clean-up of the animation database. They revamped the player’s ‘no weapon’ and ‘stocked’ locomotion forward assets.
Finally, a high-level review assessed the implementation of animations for Squadron 42 scenes featuring Master-at-Arms Duncan Chakma in the armory.
GAMEPLAY STORY
The Story Team began the month with pre-viz for all remaining scenes, which went well and took two weeks instead of the scheduled three. They then began to fully implement 16 scenes that the Design Team prioritized for Q3. The implementation pass is a slower process than pre-viz, but the team is delighted to work closely with Design and see the scenes come to life in-game.
ENGINEERING/PROGRAMMING
The Actor Feature Team has been developing an animation motion warping system, which gives each animation a variable distance it can travel without the need for a unique asset for each situation. The vaulting and mantling mechanic is being developed alongside this and comes into play when the prop being vaulted over has a variable depth and height. The new technology takes these dimensions and modifies the vault animation so that it seamlessly adjusts for the additional movement. This creates a better result than having multiple animations to cover all eventualities. It also frees up the artists from adhering to strict sizes and metrics when creating environments.
The way Subsumption sets up missions for Squadron 42 means the team often has to play through part of it just to get to a certain point in the level. There is functionality inside the editor to manually run parts of the Subsumption setup, which fast-forwards the flow, but it was fiddly and not exposed when running the standalone game. So, the team created a system to record a sequence of Subsumption steps into a single macro that can be played back in either the editor or game client. This allows the team to skip through a mission to an intended place, which will speed up development and testing.
The Tools Team has been creating a way to link Shotgun (assets for artists and animators) with Jira (production and scheduling). This new tool monitors Shotgun for changes and then reflects them in Jira. This allows content creators to continue using Shotgun while producers and supporting teams can see all the information they require from Shotgun within Jira.
The Network Team finished the entity bind culling functionality to allow more optimal networking based on how far away entities are from the player. They also did prep work for Object Container Streaming alongside other teams working on that technology.
SHIPS
The Ship Art Team worked on the MISC Freelancer base model by adding a few extra comforts to the interior, such as a toilet, shower, and food dispenser. The variants (MIS, MAX, and DUR) went into the updated art pipeline to get them looking as good as the base version.
The Origin 890 Jump also went into production this month. It already cleared the whitebox review and advanced to the greybox production phase. Some areas even went beyond to establish the look and style of the ship’s interior. Finally, the Banu Defender finished its initial R&D phase and is partially through the white box phase.
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AUDIO
The Audio Team supported Object Container Streaming and progressed with FOIP and VOIP features. They made great strides with the IFCS 2.0 system and physicalized object audio. Alpha 3.3 is the next major goal, so they generated audio mockups and prototypes to ensure they’re on track with the look and feel of the new features. Ship audio also kept the team very busy, as they supported a wave of new ships in the pipeline.
ENVIRONMENT ART
The team completed their work on the PU hangars, with only final lighting tweaks left to complete the two archetypes needed for the first release. They focused on developing new habitation modules and security/customs common elements. The habitation modules are coming out of the white box phase with their footprints, layout, modularity, and basic art determined. Now begins the process of making them pretty! The security archetype involves a lot of systems and designs that must be tested and iterated on before art can finalize it. As with the habs, these issues have been largely solved and the team began the next level art pass. The early white box design of a new location type was signed off, the Underground Facility. These will be something the team hasn’t tried before and are very excited to develop!
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VFX
With 3.2 safely in player’s hands, the team jumped into 3.3 content tasks, including a first pass at the Aegis Hammerhead’s effects and a new plasma assault rifle along with the many biomes, landing zones, and modular areas of Hurston.
Work continued on Squadron 42 tasks. Without revealing any spoilers, the team tackled included a visual polish of a screen interference and kicked off several experimental R&D sprints.
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FRANKFURT
VFX
The VFX Team worked on several moons for the PU, including various new biome types. This required them to expand the planet editor tools to allow for more unique and varied particle systems to be spawned procedurally using the object scattering systems. They also continued their work on the cinematic simulation assets, such as rigid and soft bodies for the Squadron 42 cinematics.
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AI
The AI Team determined the tasks remaining for Object Container Streaming and worked on them accordingly, adjusting AI logic if necessary to handle the current streaming requirements. Work was also completed for flight AI, creating new behaviors and changing existing ones, with a focus on making ship combat engaging and fun. Tasks were completed to improve performance, which is routinely done to ensure things are optimized as much as possible. Work has also been done on the flight pathfinder, taking it a few steps closer to having AI traverse the entire ‘verse on their own. FPS AI work focused on NPC tasks for the 3.3 release, including new behaviors, features, and optimizations.
BUILD ENGINEERING/DEVOPS
The DE Dev Ops Team continued to work with the Austin teams on both extending and finalizing the toolsets that govern synchronicity between central game-dev and feature streams. The API for controlling the central auto-integration system has been rolled out to accommodate the client-side feature-stream merging tool currently in development. This gives feature-stream owners control over how current their stream should be in relation to main central development in game dev, based on their preference and workflow style. The current feature streams are battle-testing these tools as they prepare to scale up the number of feature streams needed for the project.
WEAPONS
The Weapon Art Team primarily focused on Vanduul weaponry and finished the first pass of both modeling and texturing on the Plasma Lances, as well as a handful of scavenged knife variants.
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TOOLS
The Engine Tools Team focused on stabilizing the game editor after the Alpha 3.2 release. Usability improvements were added to increase the overall workflow quality for the designers when setting up the game entities. The new layer and universe outliner plugins received improvements based on the designer’s feedback, along with a general stabilization and performance improvement pass. The Look Development Mode, which is meant to improve in-game material setups, received an additional light mode to show assets under split light conditions, called Eclipse Mode. This helps artists improve their material setups for all possible in-game scenarios and makes it easier for them to compare the material under bright and dark conditions, for example, how an asset will look on a bright planet versus in outer space.
ENVIRONMENT ART
The Environment Art Team made substantial progress on Hurston’s four moons, with each becoming a visually unique location for players to explore. While working on the moons, the team also spent time improving the wind simulation on vegetation objects, which will breathe more life into the locations as wind moves through the grass, bushes, and trees. Hurston will be quite a visual change compared to the other locations currently in the game. The Lorville team moved onto the outer districts, shifting focus on the view of the city while flying above and around it. Lorville has received many improvements since it was first shown at CitizenCon.
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The Lighting Team worked side-by-side with the Environment Art Team on Lorville. Lots of progress was made on the environment art, which gives the Lighting Team plenty of locations to bring additional life, mood, and atmosphere into. The core landing zone received an initial lighting pass, with work still to come on the shops, spaceport, habitation, and security.
With the procedural layout generation tools receiving improvements, the team took the opportunity to further polish the upcoming Rest Stops. They improved the look and positioning of 2D and holographic advertisements, as well as fixed various issues with light leaking and other consistency issues between connected rooms.
Finally, crashed and derelict ships found in space and on planet surfaces were fixed due to previous setup issues which resulted in broken or missing lighting in most locations. The improved setups will provide a better foundation for the Lighting Team to create more interesting moods in these locations.
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SYSTEM DESIGN
The System Design Team laid the foundation for combat ship AI improvements, specifically giving AI ships the awareness of an enemy tailing them. They will build on this with further maneuvers, like enabling the AI to abruptly decelerate to cause the tailing ship to overshoot or wildly change its break-away angle to shake pursuers. Progress was also made on advanced civilian/security guard interactions and patrol behaviors, which will be implemented in future landing zones. These behaviors will work in sync with one another and will allow NPCs to react accordingly to different types of stimuli from the world around them. The behaviors are scalable to allow for more stimuli to be added if and when needed. It will also determine how NPCs react to their surroundings, such as Security Guards reacting differently to certain crimes in one location than they would in another.
The new transit system received attention as well. The team focused on the debugging capabilities of the system, laying an important piece of groundwork for complex elevator and train networks. On the FPS side, they began populating Security Outpost Kareah with combat NPCs. They also worked with the Mission and Level Design Teams to create additional facilities fit for combat encounters.
LEVEL DESIGN
This month the Level Design Team focused on the PU. They completed work on Lorville and explored how the Restricted Areas tech will be implemented into the full world. They also looked into the general areas around Lorville to ensure they have the correct content and points of interest.
Development advances with the procedural tool allowed them to return to the Rest Stops. They used the tool to generate a series of stations and verify their layouts, as well as to look into transferring old functionality of CryAstro into Tier 0 of the refuel/repair/rearm system. They also investigated early Tier 0 versions of Habitation, Refineries, sub-surface content, and more.
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CINEMATICS
The Cinematic Team updated the animation production pipeline to better communicate with the Design Team and make the overall structure more efficient. They also worked on chapters for Squadron 42, which consisted of numerous tasks depending on the current state of the cinematic, from animation and camera blocking, to animation polish, lighting setups, and TrackView work.
The team also completed some technical tasks: They implemented ‘Player Entity’ into Trackview and can now trigger ‘Mannequin Fragments’ which will allow the team to accurately use the Player and the new ‘look control’ while building their scenes. They’re also working on a technical solution for Subsumption to takeover player control in cutscenes when needed.
ENGINE
The Engine Team generally works across multiple areas and is called in to address potential code issues at any time – this month was no exception. They progressed on moving skinning computations to GPU compute shaders (dual quaternion skinning, blend shape, as well as tangent reconstruction submitted), and continued work on improving hair shading. They made significant progress on new solutions for cloth and volumetrics simulation, which they hope to show off soon. They added support for OC Streaming (entity aggregates) and exposed GPU load and memory stats directly from the Windows Graphics system. They also made advancements in the physics system refactor (queue refactoring, batch jobs, etc.) and revamped the exception handling code to improve the consistency of reported crashes.
TECH ART/ANIMATION
The Tech Art Team worked on the ‘Maya to Sandbox Editor’ live link for synchronizing animations between the two applications, giving real-time, in-engine rendered graphical feedback to the animators. They consolidated the head to head attachment asset pipeline for the next gen character customizer – a crucial requirement to achieve 100% consistent topology on the head meshes once they are converted from the Maya-internal format to the engine’s format. Once consolidated, they stress tested it to find any bugs in the resource compiler tool (RC) and addressed them accordingly. One large bug remains, but once it’s resolved they can switch to the newly revised system.
Tech Animation focused on restructuring the weapons pipeline, modifying elements to make it easier to work on files and find them in the future. They added an additional meta system to the weapon rigs to enable animators to batch export weapon animations and moved nearly all files into a new folder structure to separate multiple weapons of the same type by the same manufacturer. They also addressed a variety of bugs across multiple departments.
QA
Besides assisting the in-house development team with Editor and client reported issues, the QA Team focused on performance and system refactor testing. Client and server performance took a significant hit with the introduction of Mining, so they worked with the UK QA Team to gather performance RAD captures during a Mining specific playtest. Captures were obtained from a build containing changes that would improve performance centered around Mining. Captures were also done on an existing build that did not have anything extra included. Engineering then compared the captures done on each build, identified where there were improvements between the two, and noted what other areas would benefit from further optimizations.
They also worked on a QA test request for the AI Cover System to be refactored to support the incoming Object Container Streaming changes. The main goal was to ensure that not only existing cover systems within an Object Container level still worked, but that the newly set up Cover Systems did as well. They re-exported levels and then tested in-client to ensure that cover was generated and the AI used it the same way they did in previously. There should be no visible difference between the two, and they needed to confirm that no new issues were introduced. The same principle applied to an IKSystem refactor QATR that they did for Animation Engineering. Multiple lines of code were removed to improve overall performance, and testing was done to ensure that this did not break any other new and/or existing systems or features. QA also started regular performance testing on the PU test map, which contains the new Rest Stops, Hurston, and Lorville in order to get a head start on identifying issues that these new locations may introduce.
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SPECTRUM
SPECTRUM
On July 4th, the team deployed Spectrum 3.8! This build is now available to everyone and contains the latest features: Friends, Notifications, Quick Access Sidebar, and Message of the Day. You can sort friends by status or alphabetically and see information about their activity. You can also group friends by common orgs. Including pending friend requests, you can now have a maximum of 800 friends.
“Your in-game friends will be linked to your Spectrum friends in the future. Currently, your Spectrum friends list and the list of your friends in-game exist independently. When the game integrates the Spectrum friends system, your in-game contacts will not be copied to over. You should use this transition period to add your in-game contacts to your Spectrum friends list.” – Spectrum Team
Additionally, they refined the Settings page and slightly altered the display of embedded media in messages. Also, the member profile popup can now be accessed from the blocked users list by clicking on a member’s avatar.
After this major release, they deployed 3.8.1-rel.7 with minor bug fixes. You can refer to the Spectrum Knowledge Base for further details on using the new features
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CitizenCon Microsite: Turbulent launched the CitizenCon microsite this month. The new microsite serves as the information hub for everything CitizenCon. From here you can purchase tickets when available, read more about the wonderful city of Austin, and plan your trip to CitizenCon. Eventually the microsite will contain information about the event, including the presentation schedule and the live stream itself. Stay tuned to keep up on the latest details for CitizenCon.
RSI Apollo: Turbulent supported the release of the RSI Apollo, which included a mini-game designed by CIG’s Oliver Hughes and Sam Child. The game was a homage to King Kong, a game Chris Roberts developed as a teenager. Players that achieve a high score of 100,000 points receive a special Guardian Angel Badge and are entered into a contest to win an RSI Apollo package.
Free-Fly: The team updated the page design and interaction for upcoming free-fly events. Stay tuned for the next chance to participate in a Star Citizen Free-Fly!
SERVICES
Group: Turbulent continues to iterate on Group services and are currently working on a feature that generates a claims token. This token can be used by other services to validate group membership, permissions, and the ability of a user to join. They additionally worked on a series of tests to increase stability in the code base as services continue to grow.
VOIP/FOIP: The Backend Team collaborated with the UK Audio Team to build voice services in-game. They overcame a huge hurdle by successfully piecing together a prototype with one user in-game having a conversation with another on a web platform interface.
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Scan, Fracture, Extract. The community was hard on the rocks and dug deep during the past month. While Prospectors were busy mining, the team didn’t stop after introducing this gameplay feature with the 3.2 update. The recently released 3.2.1 patch brought reduced mission spawn timers, ship cannon changes, turret improvements, and more. Have you had a chance to check them out yet? Jump into the game and share your feedback with the developers on Spectrum.
The RSI Apollo was revealed as the latest concept ship, filling the gap between the Cutlass Red and the Endeavor for all medics-to-be. Learn more about the space doctor career path by checking out The Shipyard post covering medical gameplay as it works today and how it’s envisioned for the future.
The team celebrated the introduction of the Origin Jumpworks 600i with a video contest that asked content creators to devise a commercial for the luxurious ship. As shown countless times, the Star Citizen community has a wealth of talent and passion that delivers amazing videos, and they didn’t disappoint this time either. The quality of the submissions was mind-blowing, and the team wants to thank all the participants for the work and time put into creating the videos.
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The Community Team has been planning a wide variety of activities for this year and next that are, of course, coupled with sweet prizes. So even if this contest wasn’t for you, there’ll be more exciting opportunities to leave your mark in the Star Citizen universe. Outside of these events, the team is glad to see more players sharing fantastic content and are proud to regularly highlight them. FPS battles, trouble at CryAstro, mining challenges, and races were all featured this month. The team can’t wait to see what August will bring.
Cloud Imperium Games will not have a booth or presentation at Gamescom this year, but some team members will be visiting the show in Cologne, Germany, from August 22nd to 25th. There will be a variety of activities and opportunities to meet up during the week, so keep an eye out for future announcements. While they’re excited to meet you in Cologne, don’t forget that CitizenCon 2948 is almost here, too! After launching the all-new CitizenCon website, where you can find all the event info, the team continued to plan for what promises to be an unforgettable event.
First off, congratulations to our winners of the RSI Apollo Astromedics Contest. The RSI Apollo is still available in the pledge store through August 22nd, so check out the Ship Shape and RTV to learn more about this Guardian Angel. We’ve also collected the top-voted questions from our Q&A gathering thread, presented them to our designers and will be posting the answers in a Comm-link soon.
From footraces, to massive FPS battles, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching the variety of events taking place in-game, organized by communities around the globe. We’ve been highlighting a few of the best in Around the Verse lately, so make sure to share your next event on social media using #StarCitizen so we catch it. We can’t wait to see what you all come up with next.
With that, let’s see what’s going on this week:
Every week on Calling All Devs, designers, engineers and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on Spectrum and voted for by YOU. This week we cover the Origin 600i, missiles, quantum filtering, and more. Watch the full episode here.
On Tuesday, the Lore Team will publish another detailed piece of fiction, breathing life into the Star Citizen universe. Check out previously published lore posts here.
Thursday will welcome another episode of Around the Verse where we’ll take a look at the latest Star Citizen news with a project update.
If you watch Around the Verse and are still looking for more Star Citizen news, buckle in: we’ll also be releasing the Monthly Studio Report for July this Thursday.
Lastly, make sure to tune in on Friday for another episode of Reverse the Verse, broadcast live at 12PM Pacific on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. Stay tuned for further information about who our special guests will be and keep an eye on Spectrum for the Questions Thread!
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We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Every week, we select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and highlight it in this section. The highlighted content creator will be awarded with an MVP badge on Spectrum and be immortalized in our MVP section of the Hub.
Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
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MrKoddy has created an epic Bar Citizen logo. Not sure what a Bar Citizen is? Bar Citizens are events created around the globe BY the community. Check out this fan-created site to see if one is coming to your area: barcitizen.sc.
