Die Crowdfunding-Finanzierung des Weltraum-MMORPGs Star Citizen schreitet ungebremst voran. Nun wurde die Marke von 146 Millionen US-Dollar erreicht, woran der letzte Raumschiff-Sale sicher nicht ganz unbeteiligt war. Außerdem kündigten die Entwickler…
Quelle: http://www.pcgames.de/Star-Citizen-P…mescom-1225465/
Greetings Citizens
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Over the weekend, Several developers from the LA office, including Tyler Witkin, Jared Huckaby, Ben & Alexis Lesnick, Steve Bender, and myself went to a Bar Citizen hosted by some of the LA citizens. It was great to be able to meet some local citizens, and it was my first Bar Citizen since relocating to Los Angeles. I tricked Zyloh into eating a box of M&M’s mixed with Skittles. His reaction was great, but he gave me a terrible, scolding look the rest of the evening.
Let’s see what is going on this week:
Today’s Citizens of the Stars episode has Tyler Witkin introducing Jorunn, a man dedicated to the Bar Citizen movement around the globe. Then, Ben Lesnick puts Dennis Daniel, IT Manager for CIG LA in the hotseat for this week’s Quantum Questions. Learn what kind of machines we play Star Citizen here in the office, and learn the science (or magic?) used in communicating across five studios.
On Wednesday, our bi-weekly show “Bugsmashers!” is back! Bug hunter extraordinaire Mark Abent investigates why some players in Star Marine are able to travel extreme distances in the system after picking up a weapon. I think this is a bug I don’t want Mark to fix!
Thursday’s episode of Around the Verse visits our Manchester Studio, where we pull back the curtains and take a deeper look at Star Citizens development. This is my favorite studio update because of all the new artwork, and in-game footage Erin and the team always show us! Also, make sure to tune in for some exciting news about the Referral Program revamp! New rewards and a competition you won’t want to miss.
Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2 introduced support for 4K extra-wide resolutions and TrackIR, and on this week’s Happy Hour Showcase, we’re excited to bring both of these to the broadcast. Join Community Manager Jared Huckaby and special guests, Senior Producer Eric Keiron Davis, LA QA Manager Vincent Sinatra, and community broadcaster DeejayKnight as they play Star Citizen live with the fans and answer your questions following Around the Verse the day before. The floor is open to questions this Friday at 12pm Pacific on twitch.tv/starcitizen.
See you in the ‘Verse!
Tyler Nolin
AKA Admiral Sloth
Community ManagerThe Weekly Community Content Schedule
MONDAY, APRIL 10th, 2017
Citizens of the Stars (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)TUESDAY, APRIL 11th, 2017
Weekly Lore Post (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch)WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12th, 2017
Bugsmashers! (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)THURSDAY, APRIL 13th, 2017
Around the Verse (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)
Vault UpdateFRIDAY, APRIL 14th, 2017
Happy Hour Gameplay – Noon PST (https://twitch.tv/starcitizen)
RSI Newsletter
Monthly ReportCommunity Spotlight: April 10th, 2017 – Bar Citizen
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.It’s no secret that the Star Citizen community is the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be! For years, the community has taken it upon themselves to organize regular Bar Citizen events, providing an opportunity for Citizens around the world to meet up, make friends, and talk shop. In our opinion, this level of camaraderie is unparalleled, and we could not be more excited about it.
Below you will find a few of the recent Bar Citizens that took place, and remember, you can visit the community created website barcitizen.sc to find out if there is an event in your area!
Los Angeles, California
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Organized by Wolf Larsen, Star Citizens and CIG staff met up for drinks, fish and chips, and good times!
Atlanta, Georgia
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Organized by Chanticrow! Is that a webcam I see set up at the table? We would love to see that footage! Looks like a great event!
Houston, Texas
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Organized by Modern Man and Anchor, this Bar Citizen event looked like a fantastic time with some familiar faces!
Ixelles, Belgium
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Organized by TradTeam, this event just leaves you jealous that you were not there. Great event y’all!
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citi…In-Star-Citizen
Greetings Citizens
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Hey Citizens!
What an exciting weekend it has been! Have you gotten a chance to fly the Drake Buccaneer yet? Well, last Friday we released Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2 to the LIVE server and have spent much of the weekend reading all of the great feedback on all that 2.6.2 has to offer.
Let’s see what is going on this week:
Today’s Citizens of the Stars episode has Ben Lesnick introducing Erris, one of the founders of the popular fansite, Relay. Then, Jared Huckaby puts Vehicle Art Director Nathan Dearsley in the hotseat for this week’s Quantum Questions. What’s this about a ‘Defender concept ship’ in Quantum Questions? Watch to find out.
On Wednesday, our bi-weekly show The Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy is back! CIG Archivist Cherie Heiberg travels to the Yulin System in the Banu Protectorate. Discover how tensions between two Banu guilds affect the most popular Sataball arena in this week’s show.
Thursday’s episode of Around the ‘Verse visits our Austin Studio with an update from Jake Ross, and Turbulent’s Benoit Beausejour. Going forward, Turbulent will be joining the Austin, Texas studio updates, so look forward to more Spectrum news in the future.
To end the week, we are hosting Happy Hour Interview, where we kidnap a CIG developer and subject them to questions from backers on our official Twitch channel. Last month’s guests were Sean Tracy and Steve Bender. Joining us this week is a surprise (because we don’t know, yet).
Cliffhangars – Ahhhhhhh!
Tyler Nolin
AKA Admiral Sloth
Community ManagerThe Weekly Community Content Schedule
MONDAY, APRIL 3rd, 2017
Citizens of the Stars (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)TUESDAY, APRIL 4th, 2017
Weekly Lore Post (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch)WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5th, 2017
Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy! (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)THURSDAY, APRIL 6th, 2017
Around the Verse (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)
Vault UpdateFRIDAY, APRIL 7th, 2017
Happy Hour Interview: Guest and Time TBD (https://twitch.tv/starcitizen)
RSI NewsletterCommunity Spotlight: April 3rd, 2017 – Translation Citizen
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Star Citizen is a truly global phenomenon. There is something really special about those who take the time localize information for others. Here’s a small sampling of the amazing work dedicated citizens around the world are doing to bring Star Citizen to every corner of the globe.
Ciudadano Estelar
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Ciudadano Estelar is a fan site dedicated to the Spanish-speaking community. Both Frost and Vendaval work to translate Around the ‘Verse episodes, lore posts, and everything in between.
http://www.ciudadanoestelar.com
Star-Citizen.pro
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Star-Citizen.pro is one of the more popular websites for our Russian community. They have an in-depth FAQs page that helps players with everything from playing in Arena Commander, how to navigate around their account page, and of course, translating the official videos on our YouTube channel.
Star Citizen Traduction
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Star Citizen Traduction helps with our French-speaking community the same way the previous sites do. They are a group of dedicated backers who continually update the Star Citizen website and videos on a daily basis.
http://starcitizen-traduction.fr/
AngryBOT
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.AngryBOT is a YouTube content creator who has created a guide on using the Community Hub, translating the important parts of the Issue Council in order to make it more accessible for the German Community.
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citi…In-Star-Citizen
Drake Sale
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.At Drake Interplanetary, we care about our customers. Our commitment to providing safe, dependable, and economical transport is why Drake Interplanetary ships have flown across the universe for more than one hundred years. Now, we’ve created an extra special offer for anyone seeking safety and reliability at a reasonable price.
In honor of the diamond anniversary release of the Buccaneer, you can now receive the Buccaneer and four of our other splendid models at a special discount. Have recent Vanduul attacks made you and your loved ones vulnerable? Then get the Buccaneer and Cutlass at a special two-pack price. Join us and become a part of the growing militia movement protecting frontier systems. Together, we can save the stars. This one-time sale ends April 10, so act fast.
Buccaneer
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Because self-defense shouldn’t be a luxury item, we created the Buccaneer with the everyman in mind. This single occupant fighter is less expensive than our competitors, but just as effective. Multiple weapon mounts and two missile pylons guarantee you’ll hold your own if you’re ever caught in a scrap.
The sleek shape and light mass means nimble flying, so you can quickly maneuver out of harm’s way. The fighter also makes a nice companion for other ships in the Drake lineup, such as the Caterpillar. Defend your cargo and your loved ones with the Drake Buccaneer today.
Development Status: The Drake Buccaneer became flight ready with Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2.
Cutlass
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Drake Interplanetary is committed to the safety of all citizens and civilians, which is why we designed the Cutlass. This low-cost, low-maintenance ship comes with a larger-than-average cargo hold and dedicated tractor mount for facilitating search and rescue operations.
In fact, the Cutlass Red model is the go-to first responder for mobile medstations like the MISC Endeavor. The standard cargo hold comes equipped with a medical facility and Autodoc. Another popular model, the Cutlass Black, has been praised by local militia for decades. All products from Drake Enterprises are developed with your protection and security in mind.
Development Status: The Drake Cutlass Black became flight ready with Arena Commander 1.0. The Black is close to completing a major update, with the variants scheduled to follow.
Dragonfly
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Ever dreamed of open canopy racing like a pro? The economical Dragonfly turns that dream into a reality. Feel the wind in your hair or speed through the stars thanks to the modular chassis on this personal recreation vehicle. While in ground mode, skim across the rockiest of terrain with in-line mounted gravlevs. Fully extended outriders allow for exceptional mobility and responsiveness in zero-g mode. Go anywhere in the Dragonfly. The only limit to adventure is your imagination.
Drake Interplanetary promotes good sportsmanship and equality, which is why we’re a proud sponsor of the Amateur Open Canopy Racing League. Join the fun by getting a Drake Dragonfly today!
Development Status: Development of the Drake Dragonfly has been completed, it will premiere alongside procedural planets in an upcoming update.
Herald
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Called “The Empire’s Most Secure Data Courier Service” by trusted industry leaders, the Herald is a high speed courier ship, capable of moving data quickly and securely across the universe. We don’t believe you should ever compromise between speed and safety when it comes to your personal messages. That’s why the Drake Herald comes equipped with powerful main thrusters and dual missile racks.
Your trust is important to us. So when you trust us with your private data, only the best protection will suffice. Everything within the Data Storage Pod receives a proprietary encryption algorithm. In the slim chance your data falls into unsavory hands, the algorithm will render it unusable. Own the best messenger in the universe. Own the Herald.
Development Status: The Drake Herald became flight ready with Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.
Caterpillar
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.It’s said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Owners of the Caterpillar know that the beauty in this cargo ship is its seemingly limitless ability to mix and match cargo modules. In addition, the small price point makes cargo hauling a more affordable profession than ever. The Caterpillar is less expensive than other cargo ships, making it a popular choice for independent haulers. Thanks to the Caterpillar, more people than ever have become financially independent.
At Drake Interplanetary, we’re dedicated to making everyone’s life a little easier. That’s why the Caterpillar’s front cargo can house open canopy vehicles like the Drake Dragonfly, so you can access various landing sites with ease. The front cargo lift also folds into the cargo bay for smoother loading and unloading of your wares. Built with your safety in mind, the Command Module can detach from the body of the ship in the event of emergency. Fans of the Caterpillar refer to the Command Module as the “ship within the ship.” We hope that you call the Caterpillar your “home away from home” on those long cargo hauls.
Development Status: The Drake Caterpillar became flight ready with Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.
Drake Combo Packs
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.It’s the diamond anniversary release of the Drake Buccaneer! To thank our customers for sixty years of continued support, Drake Interplanetary is now offering a diamond anniversary discount on all our Drake gems: the Buccaneer, Cutlass, Caterpillar, Herald, and Dragonfly. Purchase the five ship combo pack and receive 15% off the total price.
Prefer to invest in self-defense? Then take advantage of our special two-pack price of $195 for both the Buccaneer and Cutlass Black. Fend off raiders and Vanduul with the best protection in the UEE. Both of these special offers expires on April 10, so get these Drake deals while you still can!
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…The-2947-Lineup
Greetings Citizens,
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Welcome to Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2! This patch is primarily dedicated to bug fixes with continued focus on Star Marine and Arena Commander. We also have the implementation of Mega Map for Multiplayer Arena Commander and Star Marine, new implementations to our ongoing network code updates, and the new Drake Buccaneer!
Your launcher should show “2.6.2-521494-c” as the client version. It is strongly recommended that players delete their USER folder for the LIVE client after patching, particularly if you start encountering any odd character graphical issues or crash on loading. The USER folder can be found (in default installations) at C:\Program Files\Cloud Imperium Games\StarCitizen\Public.
You can read the complete Patch Notes here.
Read on for a quick look at some of the highlights included in Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2. This week’s Around the Verse is Part 2 in our Ship Pipeline feature. We show you the development of a ship from greybox to flight ready.
Technical Advancements
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Play the Way You Want to Play
Customization and giving players many options to play Star Citizen has always been a top priority for us. Not only are we introducing additional customization options, but bringing back an old feature as well. With the release of Alpha 2.6.2, we have added support for non-traditional screen resolutions like very wide screens using 21:9 aspect ratio, and we have also re-enabled support for TrackIR.
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Multiplayer Mega Map
Mega Map is now enabled for multiplayer Arena Commander and Star Marine maps. This will allow for a much quicker loading time when switching between maps or going from one game mode to another.
Serialized Variables
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Serialized Variables replaces some of the original aspects of CryEngine for handling data and relaying information between clients. It’s a considerably more lightweight means for handling update messaging on the network, and reduces the risk of data being lost in caching or other processes – effectively reducing lag.
Balance Changes
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Arena Commander
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.We are bringing a lot of smaller quality of life fixes to Arena Commander. For example, we have gotten rid of the pesky helmet radar staying active when you spawn in a vehicle. Also, ship holograms are working again in the AC loadout screen, as well as the back button if you were invited to a private match.
In Race Mode, checkpoint numbering now starts at one instead of zero, the announcer no longer states you are going in the wrong direction after the fourth checkpoint in each lap, and we fixed an exploit that awarded large sums of REC without much participation.
Star Marine
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.We have made a number of changes to make playing in Star Marine feel better. Some new features include a “+25 Headshot” bonus reward, and Last Stand now requires six players to start instead of eight. It also includes adjusting the spawn points in OP Station Demien, on-foot radar now orients to the player and not the ground, and cooking grenade audio is more recognizable. Players also should no longer be placed into games with less than half of the game time left.
We’ve included numerous environment and audio fixes to Star Marine as well. The start of match countdown audio should no longer play twice, several collision issues in both maps have been resolved, as well as players falling off the map when jumping down certain staircases.
The New Buccaneer Has Arrived
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.This Is Not Your Average Fighter
Drake’s new interceptor and fighter is here!
Built to hit above its weight-class, the Buccaneer brings a notably more potent gun-loadout to lighter ships like the Avenger and the Gladius. Although a heavy-hitter, the Buccaneer is less durable compared to a F7C Hornet, and has a much weaker missile loadout than the AEGIS Sabre. This rough-and-tumble frontier fighter can be maintained in the worst of conditions in order to keep real, working space crews alive.
With an impressive amount of firepower, the Buccaneer comes equipped with two Size 1 9-Series Longswords on the wingtips, two Size 3 gimbals on the underwings with CF-117 Badgers, two Size 1 pylons for a customizable missile loadout, and finally a Size 4 hard point between the two engines as an unmanned turret with two Tarantula-870 Ballistic Cannons.
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…pha-262-Is-LIVE
Star Citizen-Entwickler Cloud Imperium Games hat offenbar Druck auf das Magazin The Escapist ausgeübt und die Löschung zweier umstrittener Artikel zum Online-Weltraumspiel erreicht. Die Reportagen aus dem Jahre 2015 hatten Chef-Entwickler Chris Roberts…
Quelle: http://www.pcgames.de/Star-Citizen-P…oberts-1224590/
In this week’s episode, hosts Eric Kieron Davis and Steve Bender check in with Germany for their studio update and share part two of the Drake Buccaneer Ship Pipeline.
And for info on becoming a subscriber, go to: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/subscriptions
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…round-The-Verse
Greetings Citizens
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Greetings Citizens!
Over the weekend, we invited wave three and four to the PTU to help us test Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2. We’ve been receiving a lot of great feedback and Issue Council reports as we move closer to the imminent release to Live.
So, what’s going on this week?
Today’s Citizens of the Stars episode features community video-maker Athagen as our Citizen Spotlight guest, and QA Tester Andrew Hernando is in the hotseat for another installment of Quantum Questions.
Subscriber’s Town Hall is back this Tuesday! This time, Turbulent sits down to talk about Spectrum, the launcher, and more. We don’t get enough opportunities to highlight the amazing contributions Turbulent provides, and are excited about the chance for them to answer your questions.
On Wednesday, Senior Gameplay Engineer Mark Abent tackles a game crash in Spectator mode for our bi-weekly show, Bugmashers! If you’re into the nitty gritty of game development, this show will be right up your alley.
Thursday’s episode of Around the ‘Verse visits our Frankfurt Studio with Brian Chambers. This show continues to be one of the hottest sources for the latest news about Star Citizen’s development, and this week is no different.
Wrapping up the week is Happy Hour Museum. Our very own Ben Lesnick is dusting off the cobwebs on Wing Commander: Privateer! These streams are a great opportunity to learn more about the history of the games that make up Star Citizen’s DNA.
With that, we’ll see you in the ‘Verse.
Tyler Witkin
AKA Zyloh
Community ManagerThe Weekly Community Content Schedule
MONDAY, MARCH 27TH, 2017
Citizens of the Stars (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)TUESDAY, MARCH 28th, 2017
Weekly Lore Post (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch)
Subscriber’s Town Hall (https://www.twitch.tv/starcitizen)WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29th, 2017
Bugsmashers! (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)THURSDAY, MARCH 30th, 2017
Around the Verse (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)
Vault UpdateFRIDAY, MARCH 31st, 2017
Happy Hour Museum (https://twitch.tv/starcitizen)
RSI NewsletterCommunity Spotlight: March 27th, 2017 – Desktop Citizen
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.The amount of contributions we see submitted to the Community Hub and Forums on a daily basis continues to amaze us. Last week, we showed off some of the amazing things you are building; this week the theme is “Desktop Citizen,” highlighting cool wallpapers that you have created using concept art and in-game screenshots! Below you will find a few that the developers have as their desktop backgrounds in the office. Don’t forget to check the Community Hub for more and upvote your favorites. You just might see them here in the near future.
Doom_Bringer
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Doom_Bringer has managed to capture an epic shot filled with vibrant colors. I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but this image immediately found a new home on my desktop.
IggyPi
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.IggyPi shares a screenshot highlighting the beautiful vista found outside of Astro Armada. You can’t help but stop, and stare out into the distance.
Archangel_666
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Archeangel_666 has taken a screenshot that surely makes all 350R pilots proud!
Oni-Ni-Kanabo
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Oni-Ni-Kanabo captured dozens of images that truly called to the inner-pirate in me. Make sure to check out the full album here.
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citi…In-Star-Citizen
In der Video-Reihe "Happy Hour Gamedev" hat das Entwicklerteam von Cloud Imperium Games ein kleines Minispiel für Star Citizen entwickelt. Der technische Designer Calix Reneau baut innerhalb einer Stunde einen ersten Basketball-Prototypen, der im Hangar…
Quelle: http://www.pcgames.de/Star-Citizen-P…Hangar-1224185/
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comhttpsInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Greetings Citizens,
We are kicking off the Year Five of the Star Citizen development subscriber program! Becoming a subscriber gives you access to exclusive perks. Each month you can look forward to a new behind-the-scenes issue of our digital magazine Jump Point and a piece of digital flair to decorate your hangar with, as well as the ability to test fly different loaner ships like the Starfarer, Gladius and Sabre. Subscribers also receive merchandise discounts, coupons (after every 12 months of accumulated subscription time) and access to exclusive digital sales, as well as the chance to submit questions for our shows!
Additionally, if you become a subscriber before April 17th, you’ll receive a special piece of bonus flair; a Big Bennys vending machine to decorate your hangar with! This flair will be distributed to all active subscribers on April 18, 2017.
Due to popular demand, we’ll also be offering a physical edition of Jump Point Volume 3 in the coming months. Subscribers will be the first to have a chance to purchase this at exclusive discounted price. If you’re a subscriber, keep an eye on the Den for additional updates on this in the near future.
You can find more details about becoming a subscriber here!.
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citi…er-Perks-Update
Sandi Gardiner and Forrest Stephan share how MegaMap improves playability in Star Citizen, while Eric Davis stops by with the Los Angeles studio update.
And for info on becoming a subscriber, go to: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/subscriptions
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…round-The-Verse
Greetings Citizens
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.The hardest part of this each week is figuring out how to start these. How was your weekend? Mine was good. Thanks for asking. Let’s get to what’s coming this week, shall we?
Today’s Citizens of the Stars features Head Honcho of our Austin Studio John Erskine in the Quantum Questions hotseat, and a highlight on Mr. Hasgaha and his continuing work leading the pack in Star Citizen screenshots.
Wednesday brings us a Banu-themed Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Is this the time we finally find out where the Banu homeworld is?! The answer is no. Sorry, I don’t know where I was going there. I’m not the hype guy.
Thursday of course is Around the Verse day, where you’ll always find the latest in Star Citizen development news. This week’s show cycles back around to another LA Studio Update, and I hear there’s more things in there than you can shake a cutlass at. Did I do that right? I hope I wasn’t too subtle.
Then to close out the week, Happy Hour cycles back to our next Gamedev-themed episode. This week, instead of creating a creature live on broadcast, Technical Designer Calix Reneau will try his hand at creating a first-pass game mechanic from scratch for inclusion in the game. What will that mechanic be? There’s a hint in last week’s ATV…
Coming up next week, keep an eye out for our next Subscriber’s Town Hall on Tuesday with members of the team at Turbulent where they’ll discuss everything from Spectrum to the launcher and more.
With that, we’ll see you in the ‘Verse.
Jared Huckaby
Community ManagerThe Weekly Community Content Schedule
MONDAY, MARCH 20TH, 2017
Citizens of the Stars (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)TUESDAY, MARCH 21ST, 2017
Weekly Lore Post (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch)WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22ND, 2017
Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)THURSDAY, MARCH 23RD, 2017
Around the Verse (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)
Vault UpdateFRIDAY, MARCH 24TH, 2017
Happy Hour Gamedev with Calix Reneau (https://twitch.tv/starcitizen)
RSI NewsletterCommunity Spotlight: March 20th, 2017 – Talk Citizen
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.This week’s theme is “Talk Citizen.” Whether viewed on Twitch, hosted on YouTube, streamed via Internet Radio, downloaded on iTunes, etc. there are many, many Star Citizen podcasts out there for you to enjoy. Below are just a few of the ones that permeate the Star Citizen community. Don’t forget to check the Community Hub for more and upvote your favorites. You just might see them here in the near future.
Fortnightly Frontier
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Fortnightly Frontier claims to be, “the best Star Citizen podcast in the verse,” but you’ll have to check them out and decide for yourself. Every two weeks Darjanator and Myre_TEST bring you news and discussions about the development of Star Citizen.
You can catch them on http://www.twitch.tv/myre_test for their live recordings every second Sunday at 19:00 GMT or audio only on https://soundcloud.com/fortnightly-frontier and in podcast form on Google Play https://play.google.com/music/listen?u…stf5anqzxm7rx3a as well as on YouTube.
Red Shirt Rabble
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Made by the OldBloodAndGuts group, the Red Shirt Rabble Podcast has a growing fanbase of viewers that complements a YouTube channel full of other videos like ship reviews, the science of Star Citizen, and more.
You can find out more about them here.
Knaarks’ Geschwafel
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.I’ll let Knaarks tell you about this one:
In Knaarks’ Geschwafel ist der Name Programm, denn ich versuche, so gut es mir eben möglich ist, Star Citizen zu erklären und auch ein paar News auszugraben und als Podcast zu veröffentlichen. Klingt komisch, ist aber so.
You can learn more about his podcast here.
Tales of Citizens
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Tales of Citizens is a discussion podcast where they dissect important issues and try their best to shed light on controversial questions, while providing what insight they can through thought provoking discussion.
They record Monthly on Sundays @ 7pm EST on https://www.rsiserver.com/www.twitch.tv/bridger15 and https://www.rsiserver.com/www.Youtube.co…trategyNetwork/. Show notes can be found at https://www.rsiserver.com/www.talesofshow.com
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citi…In-Star-Citizen
Das Entwicklerstudio Cloud Imperium Games wird für das kommende Weltraum-MMO Star Citizen nicht mehr auf die Grafikschnittstelle DirectX 12 setzen, sondern Vulkan nutzen. An den Grafikfeatures soll das nichts ändern, dafür können auch diejenigen die…
Quelle: http://www.pcgames.de/Star-Citizen-P…perium-1223648/
Monthly Studio Report: February 2017
Greetings Citizens!
Welcome to the monthly report where we collect updates from our studios around the world into a single comprehensive place to summarize the various progresses (and setbacks) they’ve experienced.
This past month has been a flurry of activity. Aside from making headway on S42 and the PU 3.0 undertaking, we launched 2.6.1 to the entire community and have been working on 2.6.2.
Anyway, enough with the intro, let’s get to some updates.
CIG Los Angeles
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Tech Content
Led by Sean Tracy, the Tech team worked with engineering to tackle the new damage system, which creates random and organic damage effects via procedurally generated materials and exposes the ship’s internal skeleton when metal melts away. They also worked on adding physics-driven destructible behavior to Item System 2.0 by converting the existing functionality into the new Item 2.0 health and damage system. Networking, Persistence, and VFX functionality are also being improved to extend destructibility to broader classes of entities, including props.
The tech content team also worked with animation to implement facial idles for ship pilots. Additionally, they developed a tool that marks up zones used by the renderer to hide and show different areas on a character mesh when layered pieces of clothing and armor are equipped. For example, if your character is wearing a shirt, and then you put a jacket on, the zone culling tells the renderer to ignore any part of the shirt that is out of sight. One of Tech Content’s contributions to this powerful feature was to create a tool that automatically zones and splits any number of assets, regardless of topology. This allows us to quickly implement the zone culling feature onto our massive database of character art.
Recently, tech design also worked on two prototypes. The first was based off Chris’ initial vision for the interaction system, the interface by which players will be able to control and manipulate various objects, such as ships, control panels, weapons, and more. Once they roughed out the system, they worked with programming and UI to ensure that the prototype’s functionality was not only clear on what we’re trying to achieve, but actually possible.
The second prototype focused on how the player controls the properties of items (like shields, weapons, and thrusters) so they can manage signals generated by entities like space ships. This work allows players to manage their ship emissions and engage in a stealthy gameplay. The prototype also explored how to change the properties of these items, so the team can determine how to make upgrades more desirable. It also fixed our previously limited system, which couldn’t be easily balanced, and provided a much more direct way to implement gameplay with simple numerical values.
Tech content is also deep into the setup of the Cutlass Black, Buccaneer, the re-work of the RSI Aurora and another ship we can’t quite discuss yet.
Finally, they’re taking a pass at updating our ship stats page on the website, so all the information about our ships will contain the most current specs. As part of this change, they plan on having regular updates about each of our ships moving forward.
Engineering
The engineering team worked on Instance Properties, which allow designers to modify any part of an entity component in Editor or Game. With this feature, designers do not have to create tons of similar entity templates, simply expose some parameters to modify within the editor itself. This will save asset storage space and reduce the number of entity components, while also allowing for more variations.
With the ultimate aim of creating seamless transitions through our entire universe, the engineering team is making progress on Object Container streaming by changing core engine code to radically increase the amount of content we can put in the game without sacrificing performance. They’re currently replacing the old prefab system in both the hangars and shops with an Object Container to prepare for this expected streaming.
On the radar front, we’ve added an extra timer value to the object data bank, which will be used to specify how much time an entry can remain as an echo contact. They also implemented the Metadata Component interface, which is a component that can be attached to any entity to make them radar detectable. In addition, a feature that allowed object databank linking and unlinking was added, so that entities will inherit databank entries from their parent which lets a player inherit information from the ship they are currently in.
Engineering worked on new scanner gameplay, specifically a mechanic that allows you to reveal hidden information about radar objects. Lastly, the team worked on Lighting States, so various altered states will reflect certain situations, like low power or emergency lockdown. This can currently be done using layer-switching but it requires duplicate lights for each state and has no options for transition animations. They developed a new entity called a Light Group that will take control of all the lights that are assigned to it. With its own internal state machine, the Light Group can modify its lights depending on the current state, for example, switching from a normal light state to an emergency light state and back.
Art
Over on the character side, the art team moved further down the pipeline on many new outfits. For Squadron 42, they created costumes for the deck crew, which presented an interesting challenge as they work a variety of jobs, some of which are in the vacuum of space. The deck crew outfit is coming along nicely in the high poly modelling phase. They also continued working on the Explorer space suit which was featured in our newsletter. They completed final texturing and sent it to rigging, which allows us to get it tested in-game. Finally, they worked on the heavy armor class for both Marine and Outlaw. The Heavy Outlaw will move into the high poly modelling phase once approved, while the Heavy Marine was handed off to rigging before it’s finally implemented.
Narrative
This month the Narrative team fleshed out the game’s alien races with Britton, our xenolinguist, to help develop their various languages. Great strides have been made, as members of the Narrative team can now be heard cursing in Xi’an around the office. The team also worked with artists and designers on various needs for 3.0 and Squadron 42. These include the lore behind various weapon and damage types, the look of planet specific NPC characters and the extensive text needs for Squadron 42.
Meanwhile, they continued to crank out weekly dispatches, a number of exclusives pieces for Jump Point, a wide-range of marketing materials, and much more. On the subject of marketing materials, the Narrative team also welcomed a new member this month, copywriter Desirée Proctor, who has been a great help in tackling things like ship brochures, manufacturer lore and component descriptions
Finally, archivist Cherie Heiberg worked with several departments to find the right database solution to catalogue and sort through the massive amount of animations that will be used in game.
CIG Austin
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Player Relations
Over at the Austin Studio, Player Relations travelled to the Foundry 42 and Turbulent offices to work on ways to better collect and distribute feedback that can be used during Evocati and PTU Waves during testing. At the same time, Player Relations helped test and launch both 2.6.1 and Spectrum.
Live Ops
The Server Engineering team has been supporting both live and the upcoming 2.6.2 patch. They also continued to enhance multi-region support for matchmaking. Fixes and tweaks have been made to the Party system and Contacts and Friends, which includes improvements to invitations and online/offline state notifications. The Austin Studio has directed much of their energy towards the new Diffusion architecture for the back end services. Diffusion allows the studio to easily create stateless micro services by combining C++ and Ooz scripting languages, which allows the creation of scalable and high-performing stateless services that will allow a larger number of concurrent players with improved stability and less downtime. All of the current back end services have been updated to run on the Diffusion core, which permits refactor/rewrite services for Diffusion without impacting current service operations. Finally, the new Diffusion API Gateway has been finished, which allows Spectrum and other external services to seamlessly integrate with the Diffusion network.
February marked the smooth launch of multi-region support for the LiveOps/DevOps team. The heavy lifting was directed toward the network and server side of our services which resulted in a relatively trouble free rollout for us. A good portion of our early development and testing was on the network to ensure the most reliable connections between the US, Germany, and Australia regions. The entire team was happy to see that the additional work paid off with performance and stability as expected. This allowed the team to move directly into writing enhancements to our monitoring and reporting tools.
Lighting
The Lighting team is working on initial lighting passes and polish passes for some of the locations in Squadron 42. The team is also doing some general optimizations and polish work on Retaliator and Constellation, among others. These changes will fix the infamous strobe lighting in the Retaliator cockpit, as well as improve performance inside these specific ships.
Ship Art
This month, the Drake Cutlass Black entered the greybox phase, so the Ship Art team added primary and secondary detail with geometry and material work. The team was able to kit bash pieces from the Caterpillar, add more details and complete a first lighting pass for the interiors.
Animation
The Austin Ship Animation team wrapped up the greybox phase of the mining ship, the MISC Prospector, with the UK Team. The Drake Buccaneer is getting finalized animations while the team also works on the Cutlass Black.
The PU Animation Team continued to create animations for NPCs to interact with the environment. One of these animations includes replacing the rough retargeted animations on the female with properly shot animations of female performance. They made progress debugging issues with animation, skeletons, and the animation pipeline in general, by working with Code and Design to create a better system to implement the hundreds of animations that have been developed.
One of Animation’s goals has been to create an entire eating experience for NPC characters at the Idris mess hall tables. The sequence begins with a character grabbing a tray and navigating to a table’s seat. Then, the character will sit, eat, drink, and perform any other actions. Finally, the character will stand with the tray in hand and navigate to the tray disposal. This exercise will actually incorporate almost all the departments and will answer a lot of questions about pushing the boundaries of natural NPC behavior.
Design
This month, the Design team worked on getting the first pass implementation of trade into the game with the goal of having a functioning, fluctuating economy that mirrors the real world in as many ways as possible. A few things are required to make this happen: the initial list of commodities must be developed, as well as the locations in which to buy and sell them, and a variable economy needs to be implemented. This economy will include goods flowing from their mined or gathered states, then onto the refineries, passing through manufacturers, and ultimately turning into buyable or tradable items. The price of these items will be an important element of gameplay, because player’s actions can impact the flow of resources, which will in turn affect supply and demand. Since this is still in the early stages, Design outlined a basic structure to represent major commodity groups: Ore, Gas, Food, Medical Supplies, and Vice (like drugs or other illegal items). That way, players can get an idea of which resource types will be traded or fought over. Once the system has been tested with the small subset, Design can expand the commodities into more specific things like Gold, Hydrogen, Rations, Bandages, and more. Next, places are needed so players can purchase and offload this cargo- once you buy it, refine it, and manufacture it.
Design has also been outlining the types of stores that will start to make their way into the PU. In the discussions about the new Truck Stop, it became apparent that all stations have the need for a certain level of resources to sustain their existence and thought that it was a little weird to sell resources directly to the shops themselves, so a new shop type was created. The Admin Office will focus on buying and selling station imports and exports for the local stores on the stage. This shop would also control Local Storage Rentals and include a job board to complete and plan deliveries. This shop type will be in the majority of the locations that don’t have a full-fleshed out Trade and Development Division (TDD), which is focused more on commodity trading.
Ultimately, the prices of commodities will vary based on the supply and demand of the dynamic economy, but, for testing purposes, commodity prices will be set by hand and stay within range of their base prices.
QA
For the month of February, QA Austin primarily focused on testing and supporting the release 2.6.1, and preparing for 2.6.2. This has included compiling comprehensive patch notes for both 2.6.1 and 2.6.2, daily checklists, and working with our UK QA counterparts to increase familiarity with the release process. Multiplayer Megamap and serialized variables have both been major focuses of attention. At the same time, Austin QA hired four new testers while also wrapping up their annual reviews for the existing team members leading to several corresponding promotions (congrats!). We have also been ramping up our attention on the Game-Dev stream as new tech comes online, to ensure stability for both Squadron 42 and 3.0 development.
IT & Operations
The IT team has been involved in multiple projects expanding of our internal build system infrastructure. Content continues to flow in through the ‘source – build – replication’ pipeline at an increasing pace so our infrastructure must occasionally grow along with it. The current upgrades are focusing on network and compute resources in the build system itself so we can isolate stability testing environments from production. In addition to reducing build times to some extent by reducing contention, we will also be able to double capacity for internal code testing further ensuring our engineers don’t have to wait in line. Soon after, the IT team will be shifting back to centralized storage growth but this time with a renewed focus on performance.
Foundry 42 UK
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The UK office has expanded somewhat since the last monthly report. There have been 22 new hires this year which brings the number up to 201 employees in the Wilmslow office and 9 developers at the new Derby Studio which mainly focuses on facial animation. To house everybody, we’ve been doing some remodelling in the office and even taken over another floor.
Programming
We have completed a sprint of the Player Interaction System, which improves how the player interacts with items or picks up objects. This system also incorporates the new highlighting and inner thought systems. This will allow players to have a more intuitive and accessible UI experience and clearly identify what they can interact with.
The team have continued work on the new mission system. The old flowgraph missions, which were not scalable to the needs of our dynamic universe, are going away to be replaced with a tool that can create diverse and systemic missions much more rapidly. Our Design team have already started using this tool to set up missions in the PU. The Frankfurt update will delve a little deeper into this, but the design team have started using the new System Editor tool, known as “Sol-Ed,” to put together our system maps which will really increase the productivity of our design teams.
The teams also completed two locomotion sprints. The first was to blend the walking-to-run and run-to-walk animation to better capture a more realistic sense of speed and inertia for the player. The second sprint was to vastly improve AI path following, so NPC characters are able to traverse close spaces and blend between animations in a much smoother manner.
Our Graphics team has been working to optimizing the lighting in the game. One major part of this work is to upgrade the quality and accuracy of rectangular lights. In most games, rectangular lights are not used very often due to their very high cost, but our artists have been requesting support due to the prevalence of these types of lights in our game, so we’ve spent a lot of time optimizing our shaders to make them viable. In addition, the team has improved the diffuse lighting and reflections to mirror real world behavior, which have had a tremendous effect on our character lighting.
On the Networking side, the team is finishing off the serialized variable, which will reduce network bandwidth for the PU. They also finished the new message queue to stabilize sending and receiving of packets and are continuing to hammer out bugs with the new Multiplayer Mega Map, so players can switch between game modes without long load times.
Animation
The Animation team has been pretty weapon-centric over the past month. They worked on reload, firing, hand poses and select-and-deselect animations for the current line of FPS weaponry in the game. They also worked on updating the no-weapon locomotion, the stocked sprint, prone combat animation and revised the female rig based on feedback.
As outlined in earlier discussions, managing your character’s stamina and oxygen has always been a part of SC’s ultimate FPS system, so the team started pre-visualization sprints to start locking down exactly how those animations would look and how that would affect gameplay.
The Derby studio continued to focus on S42 characters, but also found time to support the team for 3.0 characters including some of the mission givers as well as bartenders, shopkeepers and general population lines.
Art
The Concept team has taken a second pass on weapons to improve reload visuals and add detail where needed while working on some new ship weapons.
The Ship team has been putting the final touches on the exterior of this Javelin Destroyer, as well finishing work on the interior decks. This ship is an important one on several levels, not only be involved in the first instalment of Squadron 42, it will be available in the PU as our new capital ship mechanics like item port 2.0, come online.
Work is ongoing with the MISC’s hopeful entrant to Murray Cup, the Razor, while large strides have been made on the Hull series of cargo ships. They have been specifically tackling some of the major functionality questions about the ship: how the cargo arms will work, how they will load and unload cargo, or land. It’s been quite a challenge given the huge difference in carrying capacity from the smallest class “A” to the massive Class “E.”
The Environment team has continued with Squadron 42 work, but has also started early work on several locations that will turn up in the PU, like the Truck Stop. By utilizing the modular building sets, they’ve been able to mock up exteriors and interiors rather quickly to show the variety of locations we will be able to place in the PU. It’s been a great process, allowing the team to keep the art style consistent, while accommodating the functionality required by design.
The planetary surface outposts finished their initial art sprint to complete the base building set, so the team can create small outposts in multiple configurations and distributed across different landscapes. Now we have our building blocks, we can start adding flavor and details. Also, with the surface outposts, the team is developing how our shaders are going to react when we place these architectural elements in various biomes which will help give us believable systemic integration into their environments without having to invest lots of art time to create bespoke assets.
Lastly, as you know, space is very large, so while a lot of attention has been placed on detail the locations, moons and planets, the question was raised about how to make areas of space feel distinct and interesting. The Environment team has been syncing up with various departments to explore investing time in creating the visual targets for our space look and feel, whether travelling through anything from a nebula or dense asteroid field to a space storm or anomaly.
VFX
The Visual Effects Team has been focused on a lot of planning to help support our new planetary environments; including atmospheric flight effects and modular/ procedurally generated surface bases. Work has been done on thruster and damage effects for the Constellation Aquila and updates to the high tech damage effects library. The team has also iterated on last month’s explosion template and provided further polish to ballistic SMG weapons.
UI
This month, the UI team has progressed on our new Kiosk shopping interface, proven out by our prototype which allows us to make sure it works in all our locations and shop types. They’ve also continued to improve all our in-game HUD UI whether walking around, or on a ship.
Audio
Aside from supporting all the various sprints and requests from the other departments, the Audio team fixed up performance issues and tool improvements, created audio for new ships including the Dragonfly, Connie Aquila, and Prospector, worked on the music for both S42 and the PU, submitted fixes to weapon audio and finally implemented foley work so the right noises can be heard from differing material types.
Foundry 42 DE
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Cinematics
Coordinating with multiple disciplines across all our world-wide studios, the Cinematics team has been pushing forward on the rich storytelling of Squadron 42 in order to achieve the final look and feel that they are after. Thanks to the efforts of the Character team our A-List cast of characters is looking better than ever, which not only helps with immersion but also to express a fuller and richer range of emotions. One of the big focuses this month has been working with the UI and Art teams on refining the inner thought system and how Players will interact with it.
Weapons
The FPS focused part of the team have been working on the final polish passes for newest additions to the Behring and Klaus and Warner lines, as well as a new double-barrel ballistic Ravager shotgun from Kastak Arms. The ship weapon team have been focusing their time on finalizing the pipeline for the new modular and upgradeable system which, when completed, will allow greater flexibility for players, as well as allowing artists to create the weapons themselves more efficiently. An example of this is the work that is being done on updating the Knightsbridge Arms line.
Tech Art
This month, Tech Art worked on a tool for both cinematic and gameplay animators to quickly render out previews of their work in Maya by offloading the rendering to a different PC. This allows them to continue working during the render process, greatly expediting the workflow. The renders are an essential part of the review process since they assist the global team being able to see everyone’s progress across all the studios. In addition, the Tech Art team also worked on other numerous small tasks such as skinning, cloth, and automate file testing in Maya, and supporting the weapons team to name a few.
Engineering
The Engineering team focused much of their efforts on pushing the planet tech we have been developing even further. One notable step forward has been with planetary clouds. The team revised LOD computations for cloud textures in order to reduce aliasing and shimmering artifacts in the distance. Cloud animations have progressed as well making them even more realistic, and for creating a wider range of worlds, the artists now have the option to tint the clouds with various colors.
They also completed a first iteration of the Solar System Editor. This was an important tool for us to develop since the size of our solar systems and the amount of objects within them made other previous workflow methods exceeding difficult to use. This new editor allows our designers and artists to set up solar systems by dragging in planets as object containers, configuring their orbits around the sun, setting up moons orbiting around planets, and more.
The team completed numerous other improvements such as replacing the video player backend to allow for much higher quality videos at a much reduced file size. They also worked on compression and enabled client side feature testing on a large variety of game and engine features to automatically track if and when new submissions cause any unexpected errors.
AI
The AI team has recently completed two separate sprints related to the implementation of the subsumption mission system’s functionalities. These sprints used research and rescue missions in Crusader to test the expanded functionality and provide the groundwork for additional missions to be added with the subsumption system. One of the low level features added is the super GUID which provides a way to connect a variable in subsumption to an object in the world. For example, in Crusader, we had one main object container that defines the Stanton System. This container has a clear structure and contains asteroid fields, Port Olisar, etc. In the mission logic, we can have multiple super GUID variables that allow us to access specific elements within a given structure which will benefit the implementation of some of the richer mission designs.
This month the AI team also introduced a new tool, the subsumption visualizer. This tool allows designers to debug mission and behavior logic in realtime and make adjustments and modifications to the flow and NPCs on the fly which significantly cuts down iteration time. This tool is fully integrated into the engine and will be the central place for the debug functionalities of subsumption as a whole.
Usables have also been a large focus, and now system designers can have both the player and the AI interacting with the same usable, and intelligently be able to use objects inside of that usable. For example, sitting down at a table, picking up a cup, drinking from it, using a knife and fork, picking a grenade from a locker, etc. They in addition worked on getting all of the SQ42 character subsumption behaviors standardized across the board and using the same fixed template for conversations and 24 hour life cycle behaviors.
VFX
Over the past month, the VFX team has continued work on the procedural systems for placing particles on the surface of planets. They’ve also been working with the system designers on a brand new oxygen breathing system and the visuals attached to it. As players perform various actions in game, the oxygen system visuals will help inform the player of their exertion level. The system is still incredibly early in its development and may change, but has been showing good progress.
Level Design
The Level Design team is continuing its push on modular locations including surface outposts for hydroponics, mining, and storage. Of course, as with the other locations, both the interior and the exteriors of these outposts are modular, allowing designers to quickly create a wide variety of locations for players to explore while still maintaining the high level of visuals Star Citizen strives for.
Environmental Art
The Environment team has continued the development of the procedural tech and have been working directly with the programmers to improve the tools. The team has made a lot of progress on the procedural moons around Crusader, making sure that Yela, Cellin and Daymar each have their own distinct look and feel. A lot of effort has gone into making each one unique, but at the same time visually tying them to the overall look of Crusader. The work for the different ecosystems on these moons is now complete and the team is currently working on redefining the geological elements that will be found on each separate moons.
Turbulent
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The Turbulent team has been working away on Spectrum, checking the Issue Council for reported issues and identifying short term additions to the platform. Two of the releases that have been launched came directly from user feedback with the goal of releasing updates every two weeks. The team has added better readability on a thread list and tweaked sort algorithms based on user requests. They also incorporated timestamps to the threadlist and worked on allowing users to add inline media. They also aim to bring thumbnails to the threadlist and secondary thread types, since only classic threads exist. An upvote system for comments within the forum thread is in development.
The Turbulent team also stopped in Los Angeles and the UK to discuss in-game integration between platform and game. This integration will make Spectrum unique to other platforms as it will be the only one entrenched in Star Citizen. Another longer-term goal is different command channels. For example, a Squadron type channel that allows Admirals and Captains to broadcast to sub-channels when needed.
A Spectrum mobile app is Turbulent’s major focus. At the moment, Spectrum is mobile-ready via your phone’s web browser. There are still a few bugs, however, so the team is working to bring native support to the mobile platform, beginning with Androids and iOS. The goal is to get the mobile platform to a point where it’s easier for users to get notifications.
One of their long term goals is voice support, which is currently in research and development. They’re working through a lot of different technical options to get simple voice chat in. Once it’s implemented, users can take advantage of this feature while playing Star Citizen. As with everything in Spectrum, Turbulent would like to launch features fast and then improve upon them with the help of users.
Community
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The Community team added two important new members this month, Graphic Designer Javid Kazmi and Community Manager Tyler Nolin. Tyler will be operating from the Los Angeles office and you can expect to see him everywhere you Star Citizen. Please make him (and all our new employees) feel welcome on Spectrum!
On the subject of Spectrum, Turbulent has done some amazing work on getting this new communication hub up and running, and the dev team has been having a great time interacting with the community in the new forums and chat channels. If you see the gold name of a team member, don’t hesitate to reach out as we’re eager to hear your thoughts, discuss the game, and get to know all of you better. As for the legacy systems, by the time you read this, the old live chat will have been retired and preparations will be underway to transition the forums fully to Spectrum.
Also this month, CIG’s very own Jared Huckaby and Tyler Witkin travelled to snowy Boston to share Star Citizen with the masses gathering for PAX East, the East Coast’s largest gaming convention… and by all accounts, it sounds like it was a success. Check out these snaps from the massive Bar Citizen event.
In addition, the Community team kicked off the Anvil Hurricane promotion, which introduced the UEE’s toughest new fighter to our ranks. The Hurricane is a heavily armed ‘glass hammer’ of a ship which is intended to expand existing gameplay with a unique variation. For the promotion, a ‘warbirds’ style brochure was introduced along with a new kind of Ship Shape. Both were followed by two rounds of community Q&A that you can read here and here.
There have also been some exciting changes to the community weekly video lineup. An all-new style of 10 for the Chairman premiered with Chris being joined by Tony Zurovec to talk about cargo and mining professions in 3.0. Here’s a clip!
The new community show, Citizen’s of the Stars has been off to a great start, but it needs YOU! The show wouldn’t exist without incredible Citizens doing amazing things, so be sure to share your cool projects on the Community Hub whenever you can. We also need your questions for ‘Quantum Questions,’ which you can provide in the Subscriber’s Den. For more information about becoming a Subscriber click here .
Star Citizen’s Friday livestream, Happy Hour has become more diverse than ever, with a new set of ‘theme’ episodes that will make things more unique each week. Different programs will feature interviews, retro gaming and even live art prototyping! There’s something for everyone, so why not stop by and hang out.
Getting into the ‘nuts and bolts’ of how the Community team operates, representatives from around the company gathered for a week-long Community and Marketing sync up to discuss the exciting events, promotions and releases we have coming this year including some events that are happening this week at SXSW! John Erskine, Tyler Witkin, Eric Green and Merissa Meissner will be appearing on a panel talking about Community interaction, Evocati testing and more. The panel is set for this Saturday, 12:30-1:30 on the Geek Stage at the Austin Convention Center, Room 6AB so swing by if you can.
Thank you, everyone, for your support. Star Citizen can only be as good as the community that supports it… which means that we’re in good hands! We’ll see you in the ‘verse.
Conclusion
See You Next Month…
That will do it for February’s Monthly Report. Be sure to tune into Around the Verse next week to get a new update from the LA studio about their work on female characters, light group entities and the Aurora rework, followed by a trip to Frankfurt the week after where we’ll get updates from Animation, Lighting and AI.
Thanks again for your support and we’ll see you in the ’verse.
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…y-Studio-Report
Lead Technical Designer Kirk Tome joins Sandi Gardiner on this week’s episode to share a detailed look on level design. Studio Director & Global Head of Production Erin Roberts reports on the UK’s progress in this week’s studio update.
And for info on becoming a subscriber, go to: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/subscriptions
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…round-The-Verse
Greetings Citizens
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.What a great weekend.
Community Manager Tyler Witkin and I went up to PAX East this weekend to meet up with backers, broadcasters (and even geek out over some other cool games) and had a blast. It’s always a highlight of my job to meet you guys in person, discuss the things you’re passionate about, and see you mix with other backers you otherwise might never have met. I think the next big event between now and then is the ever looming Gamescom, but that’s still so far away and maybe I can sneak myself into a few Bar Citizen events between now and then…
This week, we have some fun treats in store, including another special edition of 10 for the Chairman with special guest, Tony Zurovec. Chris and Tony address 10 questions submitted from and voted on by our development subscribers. The topic for this special edition is Professions in Alpha 3.0, with an emphasis on Cargo and Mining mechanics. You won’t wanna miss it.
Before that happens, Cherie Heiberg takes the hot seat in this week’s Quantum Questions, including dropping a major hint about our next concept ship coming down the pipeline, and Thursday’s ATV brings us the monthly studio update from the UK studio, which is always certain to impress.
Finally, on Friday, Tyler and I return for another Happy Hour broadcast. We’ve spent the last month experimenting with a rotating format for the show, most recently this last Friday with a return to the live interview format with Sean Tracy, Steve Bender and Jake Ross. We’ll continue this rotation in the future with additional installments of Gamedev, Museum, Interview, and more.
With that, we’ll see you in the ‘verse!
Jared Huckaby
Community ManagerThe Weekly Community Content Schedule
MONDAY, MARCH 13TH, 2017
Citizens of the Stars (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)TUESDAY, MARCH 14TH, 2017
10 for the Chairman: Special Edition (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)
Weekly Lore Post (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch)WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15TH, 2017
Bugsmashers! (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)THURSDAY, MARCH 16TH, 2017
Around the Verse (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)
Vault UpdateFRIDAY, MARCH 17TH, 2017
Happy Hour (https://twitch.tv/starcitizen)
RSI NewsletterCommunity Spotlight: March 13th, 2017 – Storytellers
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.This week’s theme returns to “Storytellers,” those fan-fiction creations that see to further flesh out the potential Star Citizen universe. From prose to webcomics to video-series, storytelling is at the very heart of the Star Citizen experience, and what we have for you this week is just a small sampling from the way-back machine of fan fictions created in Star Citizen’s past.
So take a look, and don’t forget to check the Community Hub for all the latest contributions and upvote your favorites. You just might see them here in the near future.
Submono
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Submono starts us off with Here Be Dragons which tells the story of a wayward pilot and his visual anomaly. In-between two jump points a pilot and his Freelancer are suddenly surrounded by glowing beings that appear to be sardine shaped. The pilot then turns off the Freelancer’s systems and seemingly floats with these new creatures. A story created from the desire for Star Citizen to be a wondrous place, Here Be Dragons is a fantastic short story.
You can check out the original thread here.
The Blackjack Gang
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Next up we have this entry from Sutuul called The Blackjack Gang. Sutuil tells the story of a brother and sister that have joined a gang with cards of the deck carved on their helmets. While the story is short, it’s a fun adventure set in Star Citizen’s universe.
You can find the original story here.
Tem Barone
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Tem Barone created a number of Choose Your Own Adventure stories back when where at the end of each entry, readers were given three different options of how the story will continue. It was a fun chance for the Star Citizen community back then to direct the outcome of his series.
You can check one of those stories out here.
The Adventures of Rooster and Zan
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.The Adventures of Rooster and Zan told the story of two lifelong friends traveling the ‘verse in a Cutlass. Initially started as a few guys trying to make a profit, the story eventually spanned multiple chapters.
You can find the original stories here.
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citi…In-Star-Citizen
Derzeit findet zur Spielemesse PAX East wieder ein Free-Flight-Wochenende in Star Citizen statt. Wer daran teilnehmen will, der kann sich mit einem Code sogar kostenlos den Sabre-Jäger holen. Zudem spricht das Entwicklerteam unter anderem über die…
Quelle: http://www.pcgames.de/Star-Citizen-P…enende-1223005/
Chris Roberts and Sandi Gardiner learn how art and tech intersect to create the various weapons in Star Marine. The Austin studio details their progress in this week’s Studio Update. And for info on becoming a subscriber, go to: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/subscriptions
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…round-The-Verse
Greetings Citizens
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.We say it every week, but it continues to stand true: It’s been an eventful and exciting week!
Last week, Cloud Imperium Games staff attended GDC 2017 where we represented Star Citizen at the Amazon Lumberyard booth. It was a fantastic experience where we met backers, students, industry professionals, and hundreds of first time pilots. I’d like to take a moment to thank all of the volunteers who worked tirelessly to help operate the booth. We could not have done it without you!
So, what’s going on this week?
Monday brings another episode of Citizens of the Stars, a show that revolves around the incredible Star Citizen community. Will Development Director Brian Chambers become the new Quantum Champion? You’ll have to watch to find out!
Every Tuesday, another lore post is released, expanding the lore and narrative that makes up the Star Citizen universe and this week is no exception! If you’re interested in immersing yourself in our vast universe, these posts are for you. You can also browse previously released posts here.
If the lore post is not enough, you won’t want to miss this Wednesday’s detailed episode of Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where Senior Writer Will Weissbaum explores the Kiel system. And if you find yourself still craving more, make sure to head over to the Ark Starmap to explore all corners of the Star Citizen universe.
Thursday brings a new episode of Around the Verse, fresh and hot off the press. These episodes grant us a great opportunity to peek behind closed doors, deep-dive the complexity that is game development, and get to know the people working tirelessly on the project behind the scenes.
On Friday, Community Manager Jared Huckaby and myself will be heading to Boston for PAX East. Look out for us on the show floor all weekend long… we’ll have some goodies to hand out while supplies last! We are also looking forward to spending Saturday evening with all of you attending the community organized Bar Citizen event. You can find all the details about that event here.
With the Community Team away at PAX East, we are exploring some alternatives for our weekly livestream. We’ll have an update on that later in the week. As the saying goes, the show must go on!
And with that, we’ll see you in the ‘Verse!
Tyler “Zyloh” Witkin
Community ManagerThe Weekly Community Content Schedule
MONDAY, MARCH 6TH, 2017
Citizens of the Stars (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)TUESDAY, MARCH 7TH, 2017
Weekly Lore Post (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch)WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8TH, 2017
Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)THURSDAY, MARCH 9TH, 2017
Around the Verse (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)
Vault UpdateFRIDAY, MARCH 10TH, 2017
Stream TBD
RSI NewsletterCommunity Spotlight: March 6th, 2017 – Screenshot Citizen
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.This week’s theme is “Screenshot Citizen.” No matter where you go.. the forums.. the Community Hub.. Social Media.. you have most likely seen a massive influx of beautiful screenshots in the Star Citizen Universe. Star Citizen Alpha 2.6 brought an abundance of new camera controls, empowering creative citizens to capture stunning moments in the ‘Verse, and we couldn’t be more excited! Below you will find a few that stood out to us as being especially epic. Don’t forget to check the Community Hub for more and upvote your favorites. You just might see them here in the near future.
Albator
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Albator has captured an image that can be described in one word: Focus. With an Aurora in their sights, this pilot is ready to go!
Awesome picture Albator!
NarayanN7
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Narayan has managed to position himself perfectly to capture the eclipse of Yela. We can’t imagine the effort capturing this beautiful moment took. Fantastic job!
Dr_Krueger
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.This image by Dr_Krueger captures the scale of the Constellation Andromeda perfectly. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I had to load up 2.6.1 and take my Connie out for a flight after coming across this beauty.
Skyray
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Do I really need to say anything about this screenshot?
This. Is. Epic.
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citi…In-Star-Citizen
Anvil Hurricane Q&A - Part II
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Greetings Citizens,
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Meet the A4A Hurricane, a fighting spacecraft that packs a deadly punch into a slight fuselage. The spacecraft compensates for its lack of creature comforts with its powerful armament, boasting six guns capable of blasting their way through nearly anything. Hurricane pilots have yet to find an enemy shield they can’t knock down.
These questions were submitted by backers to the Anvil Hurricane Q&A thread on Spectrum, and were selected based on the amount of upvotes received over the last week.
You can find Part I of the Q&A here.
Special thanks to Calix Reneau, Kirk Tome, and Steven Kam for their efforts providing answers to these questions.
Questions & Answers
So faster than nimble but only a single Size 2 engine means it is damn slow. All other ships in that size have two Size 2 engines. And because of that it’s so low nimble that every capital ship can turn faster right?
The Hornet series, a cornerstone of the dogfighter universe in Star Citzen, also has a single Size 2 engine, while being 50% heavier, which should pay dividends on the Hurricane’s speed. With regards to capital ships, it’s important to keep in mind that in the new item system, capital ships use Size 4 engines.
We recognize there are many issues with the current display implementation of ship stats on the website. At present, one of these issues is the hardpoint and component sizing that reflects many ships designed at different times in our development, specifically during different iterations of the component sizing system. Not all of these figures are consistent with the most current ItemPort 2.0. This means that direct comparisons of ship component sizes across their design histories won’t look quite right until we revamp the way ship stats are displayed on our website. To that end, after a long period of saying we’re going to do it, we are indeed currently working on a ship specs page update which should help clear things up. It’s not as easy as plugging new numbers in, unfortunately, as it requires an new way to display the new information in a means that will make sense to players and allow for the proper comparison of data between ships. We’re as anxious to have this out to you as you are to have it. We recently mentioned the work being done in this regard last week on Around the Verse.
Many components of the ship, including the power plant, cooler, shield, engine, and thrusters are quite small. Could this result in a opportunity for stealth or at least the possibility of the Hurricane being difficult to find by scanning compared to other ships of similar size?
An interesting idea, but the Hurricane doesn’t get any of the natural advantages of a ship like the Sabre, and does you no more favors than most ships in this regard. That’s not to say you can’t be sneaky in a Hurricane, but without specific stealth equipment at your disposal, your relative shadiness will depend entirely on your own skill in managing your signature output than the size of your components.
How many Hurricanes will fit in the hangar bays of a capital ship?
The Hurricane is roughly the same size as the Hornet and Gladiator, and so will fit about as well as either of those two ships in various hangar bays of ships like the Idris, Polaris, etc.
Will the Hurricane have eight or ten maneuvering thrusters? Will the Hurricane have one or two primary engines?
The Hurricane’s single medium engine pipes thrust out to 2 mains, 8 mavs, and 2 retro thrusters. Losing a given thruster is a little like like losing a wheel, as opposed to losing the drivetrain, and your thruster performance is based on your power allocation.
What does “Glass Cannon” or “Glass Hammer” mean with regards to the Hurricane?
High damage output, at the cost of low durability. Plenty has been said already of the armament, so to elaborate further on the glass side of the equation we can compare the intended durability of the Hurricane to those of the Mustang and 300 series. It relies on afterburner for the agility to perform combat maneuvers, disengagement, or to throw off incoming fire, but even with the larger fuel tanks it can’t keep that up for long. The Hurricane is most effective in concert with other ships – if you can isolate an individual Hurricane from its allies, its chances of survival grow slim. The Hurricane stacks all of its advantages into one singular focus, and while it becomes incredibly potent as a result, it also gives rise to some exploitable weaknesses, which, as a Hurricane operator, it’s also your task to be aware of and avoid.
The Hornet line allows you the modularity to swap the turret out completely with things like a cargo box, large fixed mount, exploration equipment, surveillance equipment, tracker equipment, and more. Will the Hurricane have this modularity?
One of the great advantages of the Hornet series is that it was designed for a certain level of versatility: solid, well rounded performance that lays the foundation for a variety of gameplay styles. In many respects it’s also one of the most versatile fighters, as evidenced by its variants. When Anvil resurrected the Hurricane from Casse Aerospace’s design, it was meant for none of that, instead opting for extreme damage output at the cost of just about everything else. Currently, there are no plans for modularity beyond what is standard for hardpoints.
Can I exchange the manned turret in the Hurricane with a single fixed weapon like with the Hornet?
Unfortunately not, because the ball turret found on Hornet spacecraft are not considered “manned turrets,” as they do not include the requisite ship architecture including access areas and animation, and are perhaps best thought of as a particularly fancy remote gimbal mount. That it can be accessed directly and operated independently by the weapons system officer in the Super Hornet is a feature of that specific craft, but it is not a “manned turret” in the same sense as the Hurricane, and thus works properly with the size trade system. There are currently no plans to broadly support swapping a manned turret with a fixed mount.
Will it be possible to have the manned turret controlled by an AI NPC and if so, how would it be penalized since manned turrets already lose one size compared to unmanned ones?
At this time, we intend no additional penalty for hiring NPCs to man your turrets, just the UEC cost of their friendship. Since there aren’t options for trading manned turrets for unmanned turrets at the moment, this will probably handle the matter for the immediate future. The turret sizing rules, as with many things, undergo review and vetting over time to see if they comport with our solo-play/multi-crew game balance aims, so if it’s clear to us that a course adjustment will get us closer to that goal, we reserve the freedom to run with it.
Will we be able to lock the manned turret into forward fire and have it usable by the pilot when no gunner is in the seat?
Yes, with the right equipment. This question is a variation of one from the first Q&A, and has been asked in more than a few different ways, so we’re including it here again in an attempt to address them all.
One of our intents in Star Citizen is to support solo play and multi-crew play, with NPCs and human players alike, and to make it as viable and reasonably balanced as we can. It’s important to note here that “balance” in game design doesn’t always mean, “identical in each and every way.” In this instance it has a meaning closer to “what’s fair.” For us, multi-crew with humans is the greatest player investment, and so that endeavor should have the most efficient gameplay yield, with solo play being the lighter of player investments. That is not to say that solo play isn’t just as important; it’s just that we think the additional work to coordinate with others should have it’s reward.
Of course, poor cooperation can often be much worse than no cooperation at all! So a player sidestepping the need to interact with others will have access to less potential, but may nevertheless be able to make better use of that reduced potential. NPC crew, meanwhile, may split the difference by removing the responsibility and pitfalls of poor teamwork without granting the unified agency of direct control, while also presenting an opportunity for an increased resource cost.
The end result of all this is that we intend for each gameplay style to be fully supported, including slaving the turret to the pilot, swapping out that turret for compatible mounts, and locking forward fire. Our aim here is that multi-crew is never made pointless by overly-effective solo play through slave units and automation, and solo-play is not made impotent in the shadow of multi-crew systems and advantages. If things work out how we intend them to be, there will always be a trade-off between versatility, convenience, and performance in an effort to keep things a fair between playstyles as we can.
What are the specific plans to improve manned turret usability? Currently, they are of no use at all and certainly not superior to pilot slaved turrets, as was said in Q&A Part I?
Manned turret gameplay is not currently where we want it, and what was spoke to in Part I is of our intention in making them better than pilot slaved turrets. At present, as we are still prior to strike team implementation in our plans for turret refinement, the specifics for improvement are still in a nascent stage. That said, we intend for ships like the Hurricane and others to be a test bed for exploring and executing such improvements.
Early ideas at this stage include:
- Fixing the aiming stabilization
- Linking ship targeting computers to share aim and target information
- Using turret tracking to improve missile lock speed and strength; directional augmentation to radar and scanning gameplay
- A possible cooperative gun crew feature that scales ESP effectiveness based on how well each gunner is tracking the target
- A sort of tandem range-finding mechanic allowing players to contribute to their crews success
- Improving multi-crew combat coordination with shared pilot and gunner HUD and UI improvements
- Improved cooling for turret weapons
- Staggered fire to double the rate of fire with the same power and heat cost
- Screens within the turret allowing limited interactions with support roles
- Notifications for the gunner about repairs or boarders that need to be dealt with.
- And more…
It’s important to stress again that any number of these might be altered or cut entirely before implementation is completed. That’s one of the realities of game development, but we wanted to share some of our early thoughts on the topic. The probability of which specific solutions will make it to release is uncertain, and therefore should not be taken as the final word on anything. As often happens, some of these features may turn out to be very inter-related on an implementation level, so working on individual features in isolation does not guarantee good results. The takeaway here is that we are going to explore a variety of possible solutions to bring manned turret gameplay up to the enjoyable experience we want it to be.
Concept sale
About the Sale
The Hurricane concept sale will run through Monday, March 6, 2017. Standard and warbond versions are available, as are two packs that include a small discount on other ship types in Anvil’s expanding line-up. The loaner ship for the Hurricane will be the Anvil F7C-M Super Hornet. And if you want to know more? Around the Verse will feature the Hurricane in an upcoming ‘Ship Shape’ segment.
The Hurricane is being offered for the first time as a limited concept sale. This means that the ship design meets our specifications, but it is not yet ready to display in your Hangar, fight in Arena Commander, or fly in the Alpha. The sale includes Lifetime Insurance on the ship hull and a pair of decorative items for your Hangar. A future patch will add a Hurricane poster and then, once the in-game model is finished, you will also be given an in-game Hurricane mini ship model! Once this deal expires, the ship price will increase and not include Lifetime Insurance or these extras.
Disclaimer
Remember: we are offering this pledge ship to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this is what allows us to include deeper, non-combat oriented features in the Star Citizen world. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game.
Additionally, please note that all decorative ‘flare’ items will also be available to acquire in the finished game world. Also, while the Hurricane will be entering the ship pipeline now, it will ultimately be released after other concept ships have been completed. The goal is to make additional ships available that give players a different experience rather than a particular advantage when the persistent universe launches.
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…l-Hurricane-Q-A
