In der 350. Folge des PC Games Podcast sprechen Felix Schütz, Stefan Weiß, Peter Bathge und David Martin über Pros & Contras von No Mans Sky, das Metroid 2-Remake AM2R und Star Cititzen. Außerdem werden wie immer eure Hörerfragen beantwortet.
Quelle: http://www.pcgames.de/PC-Games-Podca…itizen-1204393/
Around the Verse: Episode 3.3 - Austin
This week, join our Austin Studio where we find out what’s new in Star Citizen, enjoy a fire side game design chat with Tony Z, then take a look at a new ship ready to enter our universe!
01:22 – Studio Update
08:32 – MVP with Tyler Witkin
09:18 – Behind the Scenes: NPC
19:13 – Ship Shape: Hornet F7AMVP: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/citi…ight-Vector-Art
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…round-The-Verse
Nebulöser Luftschlosstraum oder bald spielbare Realität? Unser exklusiver Studiobesuch bei Wing Commander-Schöpfer Chris Roberts zeigt, welche Fortschritte das Megaprojekt macht. Im zuletzt gegründeten Studio Foundry 42 in Frankfurt am Main durften wir…
Quelle: http://www.pcgames.de/Star-Citizen-P…dry-42-1203537/
Monthly Studio Report: July 2016
Greetings Citizens.
We’re officially in the second half of 2016 now, and the already impressive progress on Star Citizen and Squadron 42 continues to speed up and cover more ground every month as more and more game systems, design systems, build systems and staff come online. For Star Citizen, a lot of this month focused on development for Alpha 2.5, 2.6 and even 2.7. For Gamescom and CitizenCon, work continues on demos that showcase systems coming online in those patches and beyond. For a better look at what that all entails, let’s dive right in.
CIG Los Angeles
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Engineering
The engineering team have been helping stabilize SC Alpha 2.5.0 to ensure improved game play across several systems while continuing to chew away at the new ItemSystem. Almost all elements of our ships fall under this system, from seats to ladders to doors, etc. which makes it a major undertaking. We had David Bone Gill in from the UK because one of the many aspects of this new system is the interface and how that ties the whole experience together. His visit was incredibly bountiful and yielded many efficient solutions to how we’re going to make it all work nicely and we hope Bone comes back really soon.
Our own Senior Physics Engineer John Pritchett is hard at work on our Atmospheric Flight. This is quite an undertaking because everything that makes a ship fly from outer space to the surface of any planet has to be calculated precisely to give you the realistic feel of descending onto a new world while taking into consideration your ships specific flight mechanics.
Tech Design
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Tech Design has been working closely alongside John Pritchett, Chris Roberts, Todd Papy and others to make sure Atmospheric Flight is everything we expect it to be when the system is fully fleshed out in code. Thinking through this entire process is time consuming and incredibly exciting because of what it will unlock in our overall universe and game experience.
Calix Reneau worked alongside our global team ironing out the Salvage design further to be ready for code and implementation as well as several other design briefs. Meanwhile, Tech Designer Matt Sherman has been knocking out the tech setup and design of several ships currently in progress. The most obvious being the MISC Reliant Kore – Mini Hauler. He’s had several other ships he’s setting up alongside our art team that are very exciting with more information to come shortly.
Art
Character Artist Omar Aweidah has been working diligently on marine suits, getting them into a playable state alongside our tech content team and CG Supervisor Forrest Stephan. Associate Character Artist Cheyne Hessler has been actively working on all types of clothes for 2.5.0 including variants of all kinds. Senior Character Artist James Ku polished all types of different assets including the Male and Female base models.
The Drake Caterpillar is close to being finished on the art side. Lead 3D Artist Elwin Bachiller and his team are making major strides on that ship and are pushing to finish it to get ready for their next round of challenging ships.
Narrative
The Squadron 42 shoot is over and the Narrative team has finally been reunited in LA. As Chris mentioned on ATV a week or so ago, we ended up hitting around 1255 pages of scripts including wild lines, battle chatter etc., so yeah… that was a lot, but it was wonderful to be back on set with the awesome production team over there and the always amazing Imaginarium. It’ll be even better when we can actually talk about what we did over there.
In the final days of the shoot, however, we started to dip our toes in the vast ocean that will be the PU and recorded some sample lines for some generic and specific characters. Now that the PU is becoming more and more alive and more features are coming online, we’re going to start delving a little deeper into the narrative side, which is equally daunting and exciting.
Otherwise, the team’s been hard at work tackling the usual suspects (News Updates, Jump Point stories, Starmap) and we’ve had more time to spend on our Ask A Dev thread, so swing by if you’ve got questions that you think one of us could answer.
Quality Assurance
Los Angeles QA spent much of the month focusing on the new skeleton and recent animation changes, as well as preliminary testing for Item 2.0. We also got to check out early builds for the Dragonfly and for the atmospheric flight model which was very exciting in its own right as we take another step closer to the living universe everybody has been dreaming of. LAQA also helped in capturing in-game footage for a number of Community segments. Despite all of this, the team was still on hand to support development for the upcoming 2.5 release as well, with particular focus on the functionality and implementation of the new Grim HEX pirate station.
CIG Austin
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Development
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Our Design team, headed up by Lead Technical Designer Rob Reininger, have been focused on establishing various aspects of upcoming landing zones and points of interest. Most recently he and Jr. Technical Designer Robert Gaither have been supporting the LA Engineering team in setting up the new Item 2.0 elevators to work within Grim HEX Station. Before that, we established the inventories and whitebox setup for the new shops you’ll be able to find in the upcoming 2.5.0 release. Rob has also been further establishing the design for the Purchase Kiosk, an alternative way to shop for larger items that can’t easily fit into the physical shelves.
Designer Pete Mackay has been drafting up the GDD for Resource Spawning which will determine several methods of distributing resources throughout our play spaces. Separate approaches will be established for the procedural planet entities, one for asteroid fields, one for dust and gas nebula, and a final method for dealing with persistent/static entities or areas. Pete has been exploring aspects such as resource matter states, rarity, base value, and mass as well as locking down the general workflow for designers to setup the resource distribution.
Art/Animation
On the art side, Lighting Artist Emre Switzer has been iterating on feedback for final lighting passed on both Levski and Grim HEX. If you’ve seen any episodes of Around the Verse recently you’ve likely seen some of his work. Both environments are looking absolutely fantastic. Lead Ship Artist Chris Smith wrapped up his Final Art Pass on the Hornet F7A and has since moved on to revamping the Constellation variants to match the quality of the Andromeda. He’s currently focused on the Aquila and aims to have that wrapped up in the next few weeks. Ship Artist Josh Coons is still trucking along on the Drake Herald, working on the cockpit and ensuring it matches the metrics set forth by the Ship Animation Team.
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Speaking of Animation, our animators are hard at work on content for future releases. Ship Animator Daniel Craig worked to ensure that the Argo MPUV animation requirements complied with the ship geometry since the ship’s interior requires the character to crouch in certain situations. Lead Ship Animator Jay Brushwood has been knocking out animation requirements for the Drake Dragonfly, it’s a brand new type of vehicle, so it has been interesting to tackle the challenge it provides. Lastly, we wrapped up the reauthorized combat speed enter/exit animations for the Anvil Hornet and Super Hornet based off the data we got back from our mo-cap shoot at Imaginarium Studios. We’re turning our attention to reauthoring the M50 and Gladius next.
Our Persistent Universe Animation Team has been working diligently on polishing NPC animations for use in our peaceful NPC AI Subsumption system. Lead Animator Bryan Brewer has also been working with Design to solidify enter/exit metrics, creating helper files, and reviewing the female skeleton.
On the engineering front, our Backend Services Team headed up by Lead Server Engineer Jason Ely has been focusing on new services for future releases. While Server Engineers Tom Sawyer and Ian Guthrie at Wyrmbyte spent the better part of half the month fixing up bugs related to the Persistence Cache and players being able to log in on multiple machines with the same account, Jason turned his attention to drafting up documentation for the Service Beacon, a new feature designed by Tony Zurovec. This new feature allows players to request immediate assistance in a number of different areas or, alternatively, to offer their goods and services to other players and NPCs.QA
Austin QA has shifted the focus of the team back to our main development stream and are currently testing 2.5.0.
Multi-Factor authentication launched this month, with all the required testing and attention from the ATX QA team. This included testing all the app versions, new security features on the website and the updated launcher. Special kudos to Bryce, Scott, Brandon and Jeff for their devoted attention to supporting the deployment of Multi-Factor Authentication into the wild.
ATX and UK worked closely on weekly cross-studio play tests for performance and stability testing, but we also had a number of general destructive tests as nothing brings a group together like smashing space ships into each other. We also welcomed two new QA hires to our team this month – Elijah Montenegro and Tyler Tumlinson.
Game Support
Eric “Proxus” Green joined Chris Danks and Will Leverett to round out the current team. We went immediately to work on wrapping up 2.4.1, then began prep for 2.5.0 and beyond. Much of this involved training, documentation, processes… things that aren’t always sexy, but fundamental to running an online game.
Once done, we went straight to work with the Evocati on testing 2.5.0. We spent a lot of time shaping up how we process bug reports and feedback, revamping much of what existed. We’re very pleased at the quality of information that has come back to us in 2.5.0 testing, and we’ll be excited in getting the build out to a larger audience in the very near future.
We’re actually looking at adding more Game Support Staff here in Austin, specifically an E-Commerce Specialist to help us investigate consumer behavior and traffic on the website, as well as to research and investigate outliers on the service. Feel free to give the position a look here and apply if you are qualified and interested.IT/Operations
July marked another period of great progress on the Patch Size Reduction project. We’re now to the point of connecting programs together from the various teams and testing data delivery from point to point. This milestone is essential in getting us to the point of actually working with real data rather than just test data. Our own Mike “Sniper” Picket was seen in Austin segment of Around The Verse #100 modestly explaining his part of the project and what we’ve been working on.
The rest of the IT team has been working with Moritz out of our Frankfurt office supporting his preparations for the Gamescom event in Cologne, Germany. All demo equipment has to be assembled and tested with the latest game code on network gear exactly like what we expect to see on the ground at the show.
Many other side projects going on in the IT group this summer as well including a prototype build out of our new “Go Box”. Paul “Dr.” Vaden in the Austin studio is re-engineering the “office in a box” kit for size and efficiency. The goal of this project is to be able to plug in a ready-to-go infrastructure wherever we need it providing secure connectivity back home when on the road, say in Cologne. And our fearless leader Mike “Lagman” Jones has been counting bits again. He and Hassan in our UK studio have been working hard on designing a solution to increase performance and capacity of central storage systems in the UK and Frankfurt at a fraction of the cost.
LiveOps/DevOps
The team has been hard at work keeping track of a multitude of builds from multiple source streams with increased build replication and faster response times to build requests while simultaneously keeping up with internal tools development work. The Build system ran over 100 unique full testable builds moving well over a petabyte of data across the network resulting in around 75 internal server deployments.
Our Release Engineer, Miles continues to work with IT to find new ways of improving performance on incremental builds and asset compilations. Each 15-20 minute reduction may not seem like much, but when added together makes a huge difference in our major deployments. By breaking jobs down to smaller parts and cutting the time to rebuild, we can get more last minute fixes in to QA resulting in better builds out to the PTU publishes.
Foundry 42 UK
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Engineering
One of the main tasks of the company has been Subsumption and all of the systems which are tied into it, as it’s a core aspect of how we will create content and game play, specifically missions. This new mission system is designed to do away with the heavily-scripted Flow Graph and make it much more straightforward to implement the game play. For example, you can say that a particular area is going to be patrolled by a given group of ships and pilots and the Subsumption will do the rest: spawning them in when players arrive in the area and despawning them once everybody has left. Ultimately it will also allow the dynamic creation of missions in the PU, something we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. This mission system is something that sits very closely to Subsumption and they both work very closely with each other.
Another area Subsumption will be driving is the AI and we’re helping move all the old behavior tree code over to use it. It’s never easy moving a system over and it does tend to mean you take a step backwards in functionality before you can start to move forwards but we’re now starting to get back to the position where we were and we can really see the progress it’s making.
Art
Lots of things to report, but you guys know that already. The biggest thing for me, even though it is starting off small, is that we are re-evaluating how we go about imagining the ship weapons. Historically we have been reactive in creating weapons (responding to requests from Design), so I’ve put a small hold on production until we, the concept team, can devise a more modular formulaic route so that we can quickly and easily create families of weapons. It’s basic stuff really, but you need time and headspace to be able to think things through for a longer term vision and we are now at that point thankfully. We wanted to put a system in place so the ship weapon artists can improve production and get more weapons out to the fans.
What else? Klaus and Werner ATT4 and Sniper are being given some extra love, working up the family and making them consistent and usable for Squadron 42, early work has taken place on Kastak Arms on the shotgun and again laying the groundwork for consistent styling.
Ships, well I’ve been working with Justin and we’ve taken care of some Caterpillar things, like color schemes and branding, also updating the F8 concept (it’s been 2 years since the first iteration) and managed to get a magazine cover knocked out too.
VFX
This month the VFX team have done a flight-ready VFX pass on the ARGO – thrusters, damage etc. Work also continued on the Grim HEX environment effects, taking full advantage of the new tiled lighting model. Work also continued on weapon impact effects improvements.
Aside from this, Mike visited Caleb in sunny Frankfurt – along with some of the UK environment and props team, to discuss VFX support for procedural planets. As you can imagine, there was LOTS to talk about – clouds, weather, water, atmospheric entry/exit to name but a few things we will need to support. Working out a long term plan for something as complex as a procedural planet is crucial; there is no sense in just throwing a load of effects in before we have worked out the systems with which to generate them.
Finally, our new VFX artist Michal jumped straight into ship effects, tidying up some of the existing thrusters (necessary with the move to optics flares and bloom in 2.5.0) and created some lovely new boost effects.
Environment Art
As ever, the team is focused on taking sections of their Squadron 42 levels and using them as visual targets for modelling, shading, lighting, dressing etc. We are also polishing what we are going to be showing at Gamescom this year, we’re excited for everyone to see what we’ve been working on. A small hit team of artists have just returned from spending two weeks in the Frankfurt studio where they focused on using the procedural tech and working with the engineers to push the feature along. Internally we’re all super excited for this, and it’s going to be big for creating environments for SC.
Animation
The animation team has been hard at work tackling a variety of issues, ranging from weapon reloading animations for all positions, fixing broken animations caused in the batch process, and iterating on the new character skinning and base pose. All their hard work has created a 1:1 match between Maya and the Engine.
Vehicle Art
This month, we knocked out the captain’s quarters and started mirroring areas to the other side of the ship (such as stairways, corridors, hallways) on the Idris. This next month we are aiming to have all the interior rooms on the Idris complete to final art with collision to allow for a full play through. We have been doing a lot of clean up on the Javelin: finishing off junction rooms and started moving over standardized areas we first created on the Idris (such as the captain’s quarters) and making it work for the Javelin, one of the benefits from building up our AEGIS building set.
The Bengal team have made great process too, we are wrapping up the final art of the exterior hull, completed the Gatling gun, AA turrets, exterior bridge. On the interior we are wrapping up some final touches on the main Hangar to ensure our shaders work well with our latest lighting pass and light linking tech. Interior bridge is also close to coming to completion, something we are very excited to show more of. The team has also started on both the ready room and bunk rooms.
Design
The Squadron 42 design pit have been hammering away at the levels and things are really coming together. Sometimes you think you know a level, you get used to seeing the same Grey-box and then we’ll get an art update and it’s a game changer. You can really soak up the scale and details, and gives you that extra push in morale. It’s one of the real joys of this job when a designer with a beaming smile calls you over with a “hey, check this out…”
Implementation of all the recorded performance capture dialogue is well under way now which is replacing any temporary designer dialogue and text-to-speech which must be a huge relief for the script writers Dave and Will. It makes you appreciate the actor’s craft in hearing Mark Hamill and co. deliver their lines in the game, it makes such a difference.
The Character team have really been delivering the goods recently, making some good inroads into the required costumes list so we’re getting to a point now in which we can start populating the levels with final characters in their correct costumes.
Props
The team has been fairly divided this month, all focusing on different areas of the game. Two of our guys have been working closely with the environment team to push the procedural planet tech, start devising workflows and nailing down the pipeline.
We have also refined the hanging clothing workflow which is a combined effort from the character team (who create the base items) and the props team (who transform them into hanging versions and eventually folded clothing). It may seem like a small fish, but it helps add realism and immersion to the shopping experience.
We continue to work on the ship items. We now have just over 100 ship items complete, so plenty of customization options will be available when the feature launches. Next, we’ll be looking into the ship interiors and how the sub items integrate into them.
The newer members of the props team have all settled in great and with the new plethora of concepts coming everything is moving forward well.Graphics
The graphics team has been split between new features for our expanded universe and low-level improvements to our shading model.
For the expanded universe, we’ve finally made the sun into an actual object that you can fly around. Previously in CryEngine, the Sun was always 10km away in an artist specified direction no matter where you were in the universe, but now it’s a hot glowing sphere that casts light and shadows in all directions as you would expect, and has a physically accurate reflection which grows as you get closer. We’ve also began work on our asteroid tech to place asteroid fields and planetary rings consisting of millions of asteroids with minimal artist setup.
On the shading side we’ve improved our specular reflection model based on recent research in the field, and this should give us brighter and more accurate reflections from lights as well as being cheaper (which was actually one of our main motivations for the change). We’ve also improved the physical accuracy of how rough or glossy materials look when you zoom in/out from them.
Our final improvement this month is that we’ve completed our changes to the exposure control system. We can now let the art team finely tune how bright or dark they want the scene to appear, allowing them to use a much higher dynamic range of lighting. We’ve also implemented a realistic adaption algorithm that individually adjust according to your pupil dilation and photo pigment adaption.
Audio
Sam Hall fixed up some audio functionality in the editor, provided a host of new hooks for the dynamic music system and has been working on bug fix support for the 2.5 release.
Graham Phillipson has also been bug-fixing specifically: working on what we’re calling ‘interiority’ (so that we can change sounds depending on the player’s perspective/relationship to inside/outside sound sources more efficiently), RTPC normalization for consistent reverb levels across environments, further VOIP code tidy-up, adding pitch control to AudioAreaAmbiences and adjusting to his role in leading up the audio programming team.
Darren Lambourne has been hammering away at the Dragonfly and generally polishing up and improving ship audio, with the Idris taking up a fair chunk of time too. While Stefan Rutherford has been continuing work on the GrimHex map, providing support for new systems (elevators, doors etc.) and continuing revising and improving upon the FPS module audio.
Ross Tregenza has been coordinating with composers Pedro Camacho and Geoff Zanelli to get music into the game for both the Persistent Universe and Squadron 42. There’s a been a huge amount of work on the music logic system with some great new code aspects added by Sam Hall. He’s been iterating and tweaking the system and assembling the content in Wwise and finessing it all into one big seamless system.
Simon Price has been continuing his work on the dialogue pipeline, as well as providing support for bug-fixing too. Meanwhile, Bob Rissolo and Phil Smallwood were both out on patrol duties at the Squadron 42 shoot in Ealing and are dealing with the subsequent editorial work currently.
Matteo Cerquone has been working on some Squadron 42 maps, adding states and similar game-syncs; worked on UI “purchase Items” sounds; tested new ship engineRTPCs and assisted with some new parameters for improved ship audio feedback. Matteo’s also been working with Luke Hatton to prototype the new UI ship sound design language to have consistency over the different manufacturers, and divide the UI information into different pools of sounds.
Ewan Brown has made improvements to the spaceship flight audio feedback system. This translates more of the ship’s physics into usable audio parameters. Now speed and acceleration, in both linear and angular axes, are being fed into the audio engine. He’s also been working on new audio controls for atmospheric wind and turbulence and systems to improve dialogue lip sync for upcoming cinematic scenes.
Meanwhile, Jason Cobb has been setting up mix states for GrimHex, building pipeline support and refined the ATL generation script. That’s in addition to general bug testing and smashing.QA
The Foundry 42 QA team worked very hard with the Dev team again and of course, the community, to get 2.4.0 out to you guys and it was really rewarding. The response we got was amazing, but we didn’t stop there. After pushing it out, we gathered up all your feedback and bug reports and went straight in to get 2.4.1 out for you. After 2.4.1, some of the team cycled right into 2.5.0, while the rest started working on some lovely things to show at Gamescom.
This month was also good for seeing our team grow, with three new starters each starting a week apart, Ian Goodey, Stephen Austin & Idreece Hadi, they have fit well into the team and already have started focusing on specific aspects of testing, with Ian looking at Squadron 42 and FPS, Stephen working heavily on the Gamescom stuff and Idreece taking a technical testing approach.
Foundry 42 DE
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Engine
The Frankfurt core team working on planets is fairly small, Marco Corbetta & Carsten Wenzel working on the main tech and Pascal Mueller on environment art, but recently a couple of new people have been added. Anis Hireche is working on the ocean and effects, as well as Sascha Hoba working on PlanED, the planetary/ecosystem editor embedded into Sandbox. In addition to the above team, Mikhail Korotyev has been helping a lot with all round physics and math support.
Our next steps on the planets are going to be focused towards improving visuals even more, making the planets more and more interactive with landing areas and ecosystems. This includes numerous things such as massive rendering of objects, which is efficiently supported by the Zone system, worked on mainly by Chris Bolte, and prototyping the different planet types that make up the core Star Citizen universe. With the shift towards ecosystems we are putting more and more planets in the control of the artists which so we can create an interesting and engaging universe with deep history.
On the Zone system side, there has been a large refactoring and optimization pass on the tag system, plus several engine optimizations and fixes for 2.5 release, with more progress and features planned for the coming months. Additionally, Chris Raine has been working on a new local physics grid and planetary grid system.
We also continued working on vision stabilization for the first person view (1P). This is necessary to counter the head-bob that results from sharing the same rig between 1P and third person (3P) modes (meaning, essentially, that instead of being a floating camera, your character’s body and its movements are treated the same way as all the other characters you see.)
To achieve this we’ve developed several techniques that effectively simulate how human eyes stabilize an image. The first deals with the eyes directly and eliminates all orientation changes from the body on the camera, which is most effective when the body is idle. The processes mirrors how human eyes stabilize an image on the retina. The second, head stabilization, which we patterned after how birds deal with this same problem, keeps your head at a fixed position by counter-translating body motions to maintain the perception of stability. The adjustments are only a couple of centimeters at a time, which are barely visible on 3P models. The end result of a great tool for designers and animators that allow them to tweak the amount of head-bob to a level most people perceive as realistic. This is an ongoing development process and there will be more tweaks and improvements in the coming month.
The core engine team also focused on the Tag System. The Tag System allows us to mark up certain objects with Tags to give them a Semantic, for example Tagging an entity as a “stool” allows the code to determine if it is a stool (and potentially can be used to sit on it). We changed the architecture to store the data in Dataforge instead of a custom xml based database. In addition, we generalized the whole system so that we can store the Tags in the Zone System. This allows us to perform efficient spatial queries on all entities in the universe searching for specific tags.
Design
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.On the system design side, we’ve started work on the AI Crew Skills & Stats system which governs how good an AI is at doing a specific job and how players can improve their AI Crew at fulfilling specific tasks. In general, no two AI should be the same. Some will be better at shooting, tactics, or special weapon use while others might be better as an engineer or a tactical officer on your ship. The idea is to get players to carefully choose their crew, train them in order to improve specific qualities and take care of them, making sure they don’t die or get injured during operations.
All our social systems are seeing major reworks as we are pushing hard towards getting friends/contact lists, groups and organizations implemented properly in game. This should allow easier management of all social functions without having to quit the game while at the same time being fully integrated with the Spectrum ecosystem for players that want the social interaction but cannot afford to open the game on a phone or on a work computer.
A lot of work is going into most of our access systems, from Doors, Airlocks, Elevators and making sure these systems are integrated with all other systems in a station or ship like security, docking, customs etc. New tech has also come online allowing us to break down bigger systems into their component parts and link them together with signal links which get synced over the network. For example, a door can be just that but if we add a security terminal to it that will control access to the door and only allow people with the exact security clearance to pass through it.
The Level Design team is continuing its work on locations for the PU, we’ve just finished up Grim HEX which will give the less law-abiding players a location to use as well as providing a setting where shadier deals can take place. We will continue to expand upon Grim HEX, adding in more content and new sections to fully flesh out the location. Levski is progressing nicely as well, roads and access points have been added to the exterior, so visitors can reach the location both from the surface as well as from space.
We are also doing R&D regarding modularity and location components, this involves developing a system, as well as tools, that we can use to build everything from satellites to planetary outposts whilst maintaining the quality, realism and visual standards that we have set for Star Citizen. The system will provide us with the speed and flexibility we need to build the many locations required to bring our universe to life.
Weapons
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Last month we focused on finishing up the Behring P8-SC SMG as shown recently on ATV and giving the older weapons some texture polish as well. We have also brought them in line with our updated manufacturer style guides so some of the color schemes have slightly changes. Here’s a screenshot of the updated Devastator 12.
On top of that we have started to look into blocking out new and modular Missile Rack systems. These are supposed to bring our Missiles to sensible sizes, aid with balance and provide players with a lot more options in terms of what can be equipped on their ships.
Quality Assurance
DEQA has been very busy with testing updates involving both Physics and Rendering. These changes will enable our Engineers to implement future features much more seamlessly, as well as decrease performance issues in the client. Multiple test requests also came down the pipeline from our Cinematics team, post mo-cap shoot in London.
Together with Hannes Appell and Michael Nagasaka we were able to identify, repro, and JIRA TrackView issues that were encountered in the Editor during the shoot. The fixes for these issues will further improve our cinematic tools, which will be a huge benefit for the Cinematics team in future shoots.
AI
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.During July the AI team has primarily been focusing on Subsumption and the mission system.
First of all, we are now at version 0.962i for the Subsumption Editor, it is now much more stable and the usability has improved a lot.
We also introduced the possibility of defining the type of outputs a Task has, for example a SuppressFailure node only has a “Success” output while, for example. FindObject or SendEventTo have both a Success and Fail outputs. This allows us to properly inform the designers to what they should expect and handle from each task they can use in their behaviors.
The new mission system has also received a lot of attention in July, we created all the basic elements that will allow us to create and maintain a huge amount of missions for Squadron 42 and Star Citizen in general. Since the new mission system is embedded into the Subsumption tool, it allows designer to create their mission’s logic inside callbacks sent by the game when specific events occur. Imagine you need to escort a specific character to a safe location. If the character dies it calls a specific callback in the mission system and the designers can specify some specific logic that should be executed at that moment. We’ll show you more about this in the coming months.
We also worked on the Usables, improving the way NPCs can interact with multi IPs usable objects: you can think about a couch with three slots, when a character is tired and want to sit, he doesn’t care which slot to use but any free place is good to sit down. We also started the work on the perception of large objects, so that our NPC will be able to look at spaceships from distance and also look at big objects that might be occluded by other large elements (skyscrapers, mountains, and so on)
For the spaceships we worked on some fixes to allow the AI to land on specific landing pads correctly and we moved the crew definitions for specific spaceships into Dataforge so that tech designers can easily use our internal tool to customize the different ships.
And of course, in addition to the development of new features we also continued on improving the stability of the overall AI system and fixed as many bugs as we could.BHVR
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Engineering
This month we focused mostly on bug fixing. Some of the fixed issues included: purchasing errors (weapons with attachments weren’t given to the player, server/client crashing after transactions, etc.), drop down options not being displayed correctly in the Option Screen, and various AR bugs.
We also worked on cleaning up our low level UI data binding framework and added multiple features to give more control to the design team.
The Tag System is also coming back on our priority list now that more core features (such as AI) want to make use of tagging. Tags are an efficient way to add metadata to entities in the world enabling all sorts of features for design and engineering alike.
Design
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.We spent most of this month finishing, polishing and debugging of the abandoned imperial asteroid base we mentioned last month. There were assets missing, visibility area and export issues, gravity problems, some weird collisions, etc. Those are all common issues coming with a new release, and we’re on top of it.
We also continued integrating flair items into the game for future releases and worked on upcoming shop whiteboxes.
Art
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.More polish, bug fixing and optimizing was done with the help of our design team on Grim HEX and abandoned imperial asteroid base. Continuing the theme of storytelling, we wanted to make sure the visuals from the high level of a planet down to the details of a room reflects the passage of time from its dwellers. Given the size of the Star Citizen Universe, expect a significant contrast in visual style between the two locations.
Turbulent
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Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Last month, we launched Two-Step Authentication. Although it is optional, we strongly recommend that you enable it on your RSI account.
Two-Step Authentication adds an extra layer of security to the login process. In addition to your username and password, you would need to enter a special code in order to access your account. You can choose to receive this code by email, or via the mobile app (available for iOS and Android).
This was one of the most requested features from the community, so we’re really excited about this launch. For more detailed instructions and download links, please check out our page :
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…tion-Has-Landed
Communication Platform
For those of you who follow this column regularly, you’ll know that we have been working on a new communication platform that includes a new Forum and Chat module. We continue to work on the design and development of this platform, but at the same time, we are looking toward the “Phase 2” feature set which will offer additional communication channels. It’s still too early to present a defined list of features, but we are targeting CitizenCon to demo the “Phase 1” version. It’s only two months away, so you won’t have to wait much longer.
Game Launcher
We continue to develop the new game launcher, and we are working closely with CIG’s dev team on this project. We are targeting CitizenCon to have something that we can demo. Although the user interface will look the same, the “guts” of the launcher will be completely revamped and will allow the launcher to support multiple games and environments in the future.
Community
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Day-to-Day
As many of you may already know, our fearless leader Ben Lesnick spent much of the month in hospital fighting a severe infection, but we’re happy to report he’s back to Bendancing in the office now. He and Alexis are incredibly grateful for the love and support you guys shared during their difficult time on the forums and through social media.
Much of the day-to-day this month outside of that was spent coordinating and realizing the changes to our broadcast output, which we’ll go into greater detail in the next section, suffice to say that we couldn’t be prouder of the people here who pulled all the extra hours to make rotating the shows through the studios possible. Shout-outs to Thomas Hennessy, Justin Chambers, Tyler Witkin, Eric Davis, Sandi Gardiner, Jake Ross, Brian Chambers, Tom Solaru and a host of others for their continuing efforts to make that possible.
In addition to that, the road to Gamescom is always one of the most intense periods of the year. Our five days of gameplay streaming LIVE from that showfloor next month and the prep for our Fourth-Annual Gamescom Party and Presentation have dominated much of our day-to-day. I cannot understate how excited I am to meet so many of you in person, to play with so many of you over five-days of livestream, and celebrate Star Citizen together over the Gamescom week.
Broadcasts
Our most visible change this month was the newly updated format for Around the Verse. The team took a look at how to improve the show and then developed a plan to both update the format and to share more content from our studios around the world. We’ve been thrilled with the reaction, and can’t wait for you to see what’s coming up in future shows. Finally, a special thank you is owed to our Subscribers, who provided extensive feedback to assist with the update through the Subscriber’s Den forum.
The Loremakers Guide to the Galaxy has joined Bugsmashers in the Wednesday broadcast window. We’re incredibly happy to give the community a chance to hear about the lore, science, and design of the star systems that make up the universe of Star Citizen and Squadron 42 directly from the folks creating it.
You Guys
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.BritizenCon 2016! As another month of development passes, so does another month of stories, content videos, and community accomplishments.
On the streaming side of things, we were very excited to see the new podcast “Diverse the Verse” starring Sofiegrl, MzHartz, Lady Nighthawk, PixelMeSane, and Witchkittie. Keep these coming, we love hearing what our backers have to say.
We also announced that Star Citizen streamers Deejay Knight, Captain_Richard, BadNewsBaron, and Twerk17 will be traveling with us to stream live from the showfloor at Gamescom 2016.
On the Community Hub front, the amount of activity continues to amaze us. July saw new content coming from SCLoreCast, created by Lord Bayne, which breathes life into Star Citizen lore by adding music, sound effects, and epic voice-acting. Hasgaha lived up to all expectations with his continuous flow of beautiful Star Citizen screenshots, this time creating PSA Big Bennys addiction posters.
Speaking of Big Bennys, the long awaited Ballad of Big Bennys was released thanks to the help from all of you who submitted game-play clips, and of course the always-amazing years1hundred for editing it all together.
Lastly, how could we not give a shout-out for the first and potentially annual 2016 BritizenCon. This event is a fan-organised convention in the UK for Star Citizen fans to come together, hang out with developers, and talk shop.
I could keep listing the awesome content coming from all of you for days, but instead check it out for yourself on our “Community Hub”
Thank you all for making July one to remember. We can’t wait to see what you all come up with in the month of August…
The Wrap-Up
Looking Ahead
What. A. Month. It’s full steam ahead towards Gamescom 2016 and then CitizenCon 2016 in the weeks after that, and everyone here is brimming with excitement to share even MORE of what we’ve been working on at those two events. It’s an amazing time to be a Star Citizen, and witness the unparalleled look behind-the-scenes at the making of the Best Damn Space Sim Ever, every week, every month, and beyond.
We’ll see you at Gamescom 2016; we’ll be the ones on the Idris bridge.
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…y-Studio-Report
Star Citizen macht weiterhin Fortschritte. Das zeigt jedenfalls die aktuelle Folge der regelmäßig ausgestrahlten Video-Show "Around the Verse". Zahlreiche Ingame-Bilder und Gameplay-Szenen stellen unter anderem Verbesserungen am Landesystem, beim…
Quelle: http://www.pcgames.de/Star-Citizen-P…ce-Sim-1203792/
Around the Verse: Episode 3.2 - Manchester
This week, join our Manchester studio as we check in with the Studio Update, take a look at the flight-ready Argo, and go Behind the Scenes with… well, you should just watch to find out…
02:17 – Intro
03:16 – Studio Update
13:13 – Ship Shape: Argo
17:35 – MVP with Tyler Witkin
19:26 – Behind the Scenes: ???MVP: http://sclorecast.sclorecast.org/
GAMEPLAY: https://youtu.be/UfxIJSqbdmc
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…round-The-Verse
Additional sizes of Big Bennys T-Shirts Now Available!
Greetings Citizens,
GRAB… EAT… WEAR?!
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Big Bennys started from humble beginnings as a vending machine floating around Crusader, but you guys took him to places we never dreamed possible. To celebrate your efforts, and because the first batch of shirts flew off the shelves so fast, we’ve added additional stock and additional sizes of the long-awaited Big Benny’s t-shirt, available for pre-order now! Show your allegiance to Star Citizen’s most popular noodle vending machine with this dark grey tee featuring the Big Benny’s Logo! Fabric is 100% pre-shrunk cotton. Follow the care instructions on the shirt tag to keep your t-shirt looking its best!
*Subscribers may pre-order starting today, July 29th and your orders come with a Big Bennys patch. Additional stock will open to all backers on Monday at 12 noon PST.
Price includes worldwide shipping. This is a pre-order; estimated ship date is October 2016.
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…s-Now-Available
Around the Verse: Episode 3.1 - Los Angeles
ATV SEASON 3: NEW SHOW! NEW TIME! 1500 PST / 2200 UTC!
This week, join our Los Angeles studio as we check in with the Studio Update, take a look at the flight-ready Reliant, and explore new clothing options coming to GrimHex Station.
00:57 – Intro
02:49 – Studio Report
09:42 – Ship Shape: Reliant
13:42 – MVP with Tyler Witkin
14:11 – Behind the Scenes: GrimHex ClothingMVP: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/citi…Notes-A4-Prints
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…round-The-Verse
Die neue Ausgabe ist da!Mit der Vollversion Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. Titelthema: Star Citizen - Wir haben Chris Roberts neugegründetes Frankfurter Studio Foundry 42 besucht und viele exklusive Eindrücke mitgenommen. Außerdem in dieser Ausgabe…
Quelle: http://www.pcgames.de/PC-Games-Brand…-shock-1202481/
Richtig gelesen, ihr könnt euch im Universum von Star Citizen verewigen - eure Freunde werden neidisch sein! Einer der vielen Monde in der Spielwelt wird den Vor- oder Zunamen des Gewinners dieses Preisausschreibens tragen. Was ihr dafür tun müsst,…
Quelle: http://www.pcgames.de/Star-Citizen-P…-Spiel-1202162/
Crisis Fatigue
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Start Transmission
Howdy, haulers! Thanks for settling in for another installment of Clean Shot. My name’s Craig Burton and today’s show is almost over capacity — a Hull-D sized load of information coming your way! Ready to do this, Kari Ann?
That’s what I like to see, a big thumbs up! Our illustrious associate producer Kari Ann is calling the shots today while Skinny’s off getting some much needed R&R. Honestly, Skinny didn’t even want to take a vacation. New components make him weak in the knees, so I told him someone needed to run a new top-of-the-line power plant from Lightning Power Ltd. through the wringer and give me a review. Don’t let Skinny know, but after years of working with him, I think I finally discovered a way to get him to take some vacation — convince him it’s work.
Enough about Skinny. Let’s get this show going with a special TroubleZone.
We’ll start in Indra. This Xi’An system sees more than its fair share of Human haulers looking to trade with the Xi’An and Banu there. Well, over the past few months, an organized operation has been targeting Humans traveling through the system. Since the offenses occurred in Xi’An space, it’s hard to confirm the specific details, but from what I’ve heard, it sounds like a pretty straightforward grab job.
Pilots are lured to a location by a distress beacon and then swarmed by ships telling them to dump their cargo or come under attack. Those who listen and give up their goods without much of a fuss are free to go, their ships a bit lighter but their lives still intact.
There are no exact numbers on how often this has happened, but a UEE envoy to Indra has begun negotiating with the Xi’An council there to bring Human ships under the protection of authorized, independent Xi’An forces operating in the system. But take that for what it is — a solution left in the hands of some bureaucrat. Until this gets sorted, I’d be extra careful when heading into Indra. Personally, I wouldn’t go alone if I could help it, and as much as it goes against my good Samaritan streak, I definitely wouldn’t leave the normal shipping lanes for any distress beacons.
Moving on to Charon. It’s been over two years since civil war broke out on Charon III, and there’s still no end in sight. Numerous attempts by the UEE to bring the states of Dellin and Acheron to the negotiating table have failed. And now with the Vanduul War drawing most of the government’s focus, attention has been diverted away from the conflict.
Here to update us on the situation is Xavier Yu of Empire’s Overlooked, a Terra-based nonprofit. He has an interesting new plan to help the people of Charon III, and is in need of some altruistic haulers to execute it. Thanks for joining me today, Xavier.
Xavier Yu: Thank you, Craig, and thanks for drawing attention to a situation that has gotten far too little attention of late.
Happy to help in whatever way I can. Before we dig into the nitty gritty, give us a quick update on what’s happening on Charon III.
Xavier Yu: Quite simply, the situation grows more dire each day. On the ground, the civil war has not only crippled the planet’s economy, but also made it extremely dangerous to deliver aid. To make matters worse, it’s become increasingly difficult for us and other organizations to raise the money and supplies needed to help. That’s part of the reason we started searching for a new way to make a difference.
A few years back, when this ugly mess began, I remember the show receiving a ton of comms from folks asking how they could help. We referred a good many people to your organization. Any idea what changed?
Xavier Yu: To be honest, the UEE entering into a war of its own has been the biggest issue we’ve faced. Vanduul attacks have brought out the best in people all across this Empire, but they also diverted a lot of public and private resources away from this civil war.
Also, in a broader sense, crisis fatigue definitely has been a factor. When a tragedy of this scale first makes news there’s an initial burst of people motivated to help. But the longer a problem persists, the harder it becomes to maintain interest in it. At a certain point, it stops being headline news. People forget about it or wonder if their help is making a difference. Meanwhile, new causes, also worthy, take center stage.
What do you tell donors wondering why they should help a world tearing itself apart rather than one affected by, let’s say, an unexpected natural disaster or the war with the Vanduul?
Xavier Yu: I tell them that we must separate the politics from the public. The politics between Dellin and Acheron are destroying Charon III, but it’s the general public that is suffering. Since the UEE government has no legal jurisdiction to direct the planet’s politics, we must focus on empowering the people of Charon III so they can do it themselves. That begins by helping its people achieve some degree of economic stability.
Currently, the main industry on Charon III is war. This is particularly true in Dellin, where for many, working for the military or a company producing instruments of war is the only way to earn a living wage. Our new initiative looks to break that cycle by purchasing goods directly from the people of Charon III. If people can earn a living making furniture, clothing, jewelry or whatever else, then they won’t be forced to work for the war machine.
Over these past few months, we’ve put the infrastructure in place to execute this plan. Now we need dedicated haulers willing to brave the dangerous circumstances to pick up these products from Charon III.
Let’s get specific here, so all the haulers listening fully understand what they’re in for.
Xavier Yu: Simply, there’s no guarantee you won’t come under attack when entering or leaving the planet’s atmosphere.
That’s just horrible. Aren’t ships broadcasting a humanitarian signal protected under UEE law?
Xavier Yu: Technically, yes, but the UEE Navy no longer has the presence in system to ensure this protection. After war was declared against the Vanduul, a majority of the UEE fleet keeping an eye on the conflict was reassigned to the Vanduul front.
Once they left, both governments accused each other of using humanitarian shipments to import various munitions. Now, anything that enters the planet’s atmosphere is considered fair game by both sides. Luckily, we at Empire Overlooked have trusted sources on the ground that can direct our ships to landing zones considered safe at that moment.
Sounds like this isn’t exactly a job for everyone.
Xavier Yu: Definitely not. It takes a person with a certain set of skills and the right kind of ship to be able to handle this assignment.
Let’s just hold it right there. Kari Ann’s giving me the signal that it’s time for us to take a break. On the other side, Xavier Yu will dig into the specifics on what kind of pilots he’s looking for. Then I’ll pass along my thoughts on whether the performance of J-Span’s Cryo-Star cooler is worth the price.
All that and more when Clean Shot returns.
TRANSCRIPT BREAK
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spec…-Crisis-Fatigue
Big Bennys T-Shirts Now Available!
Greetings Citizens,
GRAB… EAT… WEAR?!
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Big Bennys started from humble beginnings as a vending machine floating around Crusader, but you guys took him to places we never dreamed possible. To celebrate your efforts, the long-awaited Big Benny’s t-shirt is now available for pre-order! Show your allegiance to Star Citizen’s most popular noodle vending machine with this dark grey tee featuring the Big Benny’s Logo! Fabric is 100% pre-shrunk cotton. Follow the care instructions on the shirt tag to keep your t-shirt looking its best!
Subscribers: If you purchase the Subscriber version of the shirt, your order will also include an exclusive Big Benny’s patch!
Price includes worldwide shipping. This is a pre-order; estimated ship date is October 2016.
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…s-Now-Available
Monthly Studio Report: June 2016
Greetings Citizens!
Welcome to the June 2016 monthly report! June was a most excellent month for Star Citizen, with the release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.4.0 and the 2.4.1 followup patch. 2.4 added a number of forward-facing elements to the game, including shopping and our first large flyable ship (the Starfarer)… but it was even more important ‘under the hood’ as it introduced persistence to Star Citizen! Persistence is essential to making a constantly-evolving multiplayer world, and there’s a lot for us to build on in future patches.
We also launched the Drake Dragonfly this month, our so-called ‘space motorcycle’ and the community responded with excitement! These cool, little ships are going to be so much fun to play, we’re eager to see them running around Port Olisar (and then across the surface of our planets!)
We hope you’re enjoying your time in Crusader, and we appreciate the incredible effort the community has put into helping test these game builds. With a game as complex as Star Citizen, intended to be played by pilots around the world, there’s so much in the way of architecture and systems that needs thorough testing in the real world… so the thousands upon thousands of players who’ve submitted bug reports are truly appreciated. Here’s the monthly report:
CIG Los Angeles
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Summer is finally come and the heat is on; not just in Los Angeles but in the ‘Verse as well. We are already half way through 2016 and just like the changing of the seasons, there has been quite a bit of change in Star Citizen. So let us take a gander at what the Los Angeles office has been up to for the month of June.
Engineering
For the Los Angeles Engineering team, the ItemSystem has been the number one priority across the team. However, over the course of any software development, bugs arise and decisions need to be made whether and when to divert resources to address them. Working on Star Citizen is no different. The Engineering team did get a boost in headcount with the addition of Steven Humphreys, an engineer from the UK office who has transferred to Los Angeles.
Lead Paul Reindell has always led by example. Not only is he involved with programming the game, he finds time to conduct interviews, training and mentoring the Engineering team’s newest members, and still is able to fix and close out multiple game bugs. That leadership is reflected in how industrious the Engineering team is.
Ariel Xu over the past few months has been steadily working on developing the PortEditor tool which drastically assists with how designers edit content by allowing dynamic adding/editing of the contents of the Port. Previously, it was necessary to edit the asset offline and reload it manually into the editor for every change. It’s easy to take something like that for granted by expecting that it should exist, but remember – tools don’t build themselves! Engineers Chad McKinney and Patrick Mathieu have completed major steps in improving the Use/Interaction system of Star Citizen.
Chad Zamzow’s focus includes implementing revised, component-specific IR/EM signatures, cooling systems, and shield emitter changes. While Mark Abent has been implementing features for the power plants, ship seat interactions, and also spent a large amount of time fixing bugs for the 2.4.0 release.
Tech Design
The Tech Design team is where many of the cool features you see in-game are fleshed out and implemented after the Engineering team has created the code and Art the assets. Being a part of the Tech Design team is more than just coming up with brand new ideas to implement in the game. The technical aspect is being able to understand the tools and capabilities of the game engine and being able to design features while remaining within the boundaries of what the tools are capable of. This is what makes our Tech Design team incredibly valuable to the development of Star Citizen. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what the Los Angeles Tech Design team has been up to in the month of June.
Starting with Tech Design Lead Kirk Tome, the number of tasks and bugs he has closed out is on the right side of hilarious. A total of 28 bugs and tasks have been resolved this month by Kirk alone of all shapes, sizes and durations. Many of the features completed this month are fundamental design tasks such as updating new information regarding the Cooling/Heat functionality of ships, balancing such as increasing the fuel tank size for the Xi’An Khartu-al, and fixing clipping or collision issues with the Mustang Delta and Drake Cutlass. This is on top of running the Los Angeles Tech Design team!
Calix Reneau’s focus has largely been on the Caterpillar and its various features that will expand Star Citizen’s repertoire of things you will be able to do in-game. The ship’s functional Tractor Beam installation, a new game mechanic, is one such feature of the Caterpillar and Calix has completed the design aspect of not just the Tractor Beam itself but also how the control terminals function. These are major milestones for in-game functionality and for the Caterpillar.
Matt Sherman’s tasks and bugs have largely surrounded the MISC Reliant. The final tech design for the Reliant has been completed along with multiple bugfixes which brings it one more step towards being available for players to enjoy.
Our newest Tech Designer, Stephen Hosmer, has already jumped in feet first and has closed out 33 bugs and tasks so let’s give a round of applause for the LA Tech Design team’s new guy. The majority of tasks completed by Stephen are adding new functionalities to Dataforge such as adding in tooltips that appear when performing a mouse-over of column headings and being able to mass edit cells. Ship-wise, Stephen has fixed issues on a bit of everything ranging from the Gladiator, Vanguard, Cutlass, Constellation Andromeda, and the Sabre just to name a few.
Art
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.With 2.4.0 out the door, the Art team has been continuing its focus on even more new clothing, polishing up some of the new animations you’ve seen in our recent video content and character fidelity, and hammering out the ships they have been working on for the past couple months.
Starting with Forrest Stephan, 2.5.0 clothing support for the Character Team has been one of his top priorities along with helping the Character Team with support for Squadron 42. The LA Concept Art team has also been hard at work creating beautiful examples for the art team to render into 3D. Gurmukh Bhasin has been working on Space Station stylization/looks while Justin Wentz has been fine tuning and revising Caterpillar concept pieces. Fashionistas Jeremiah Lee and Cheyne Hessler have been hard at work on the clothing as well. Jeremiah has been drawing up designs for the Odin Munitions Corp uniform while Cheyne is working on shirt color variants and tons of other clothing assets.
Omar Aweidah has completed creating pristine materials for the Light Armor phase 1 and has moved on to the Medium Marine Armor. James Ku has been mentoring our artists and upping their game while working on creating asset geometry for the female model and in-game heads.
On the ship-side, there has been a lot of work on the Drake Caterpillar continuing through the month of June into July. Elwin Bachiller and Daniel Kamentsky have completed the interior, working on the Engineering Engine Room and Cargo Module respectively.
Animation
For Ship Animation, we are receiving back the motion capture animation for Imaginarium for the improved and quicker ship entry and exit animation that many of you have been hoping for, and the Austin Studio is hard at work adapting them ship-by-ship. On the PU side, our team is working on life animations for the PU and for Squadron 42, working with Design to get workzones, mess halls, nightclub and bars, medical and all manner of world life animations into the game.
On the FPS side, the team is working on finalizing the feel of the gameplay for the base stocked weapon (rifles, shotguns, etc.) and pistol animations and also working on animations for a railgun. We are also working on the cover system, assuring that the distances for Players leaving cover is consistent and readable and also increasing the degree of visual feedback for when the Player is in the cover state. We are also working on updating and improving the jump mechanics and animations as well as committed a hip direction switch that happens when you are with no weapon- your hips will flip naturally to the direction you are going with no weapon, but stay in the right facing when using a stocked weapon.
Global Technical Content
As usual, the Global Tech Content team has been busy at work on a large range of features. Starting with their fearless leader, Sean Tracy, the armor and loadouts have been converted to use the new item system and Sean has now moved on to working on the Helmet 2.0 setup all while planning and scheduling tasks for the Tech Content team. He’s quite the busy guy!
The Radical Rigging Roughnecks, John Riggs and Gaige Hallman, each have had their hands full with various tasks. John has been working on the Male Navy Medical Doctor asset rigging and has started reviewing PU clothing, while Gaige has been creating the female clothing volumes and is doing R&D on standardizing neck sizes.
Mark McCall has completed work on creating character archetypes for Squadron 42 along with male Shubin miner uniform animation while Matt Intrieri has been hammering out too many bugs to list but has emphasized his work has touched on lighting, LODs, VFX, and is now working on fixing damage issues on the Drake Cutlass.
Associate Tech Artist Patrick Salerno has also been face down doing bug fixes that the QA team finds and has been primarily focused on missing asset issues and fixing bugs that occur when developers use the editing tools we have.
Finally, one of our newest to join the Tech Content team, Erik Link has completed a tech implementation pass for inspecting weapons as well as implementing assets in the game through Mannequin.
Quality Assurance
The Los Angeles QA team spent the majority of June, along with the Austin QA team, working on 2.4 and then prepping things for 2.5. LA QA Lead Vincent Sinatra led the Quality Assurance team in taking a preliminary look at procedural planets and are very excited with the progress we are seeing. On the bug front, our primary focus was on hammering away at the shield system for ships though we also took a pass at testing the Mustang, along with a review of the Reliant by taking preliminary flight tests in order to move it towards getting it flight-ready.
With Vince at the helm, our QA testers have had quite a bit on their plate. Colby Schneider has done quite a bit of exploratory testing in examining persistence in the PU as well as taking early swings at the procedural generation for planetary exploration. Colby has also performed some very preliminary testing of the Dragonfly and the Reliant but both craft are still in not quite ready for public deployment.
Eric Pietro’s focus has been on the 2.4.1 patch being pushed out to the PTU by the time this report goes live, with primary emphasis on looking at network stability and in-game performance. Eric has been in constant communication with the deployment teams to monitor and test implemented changes in the PU. Apart from that, Eric has also been tasked at looking into EVA physics, keyboard/controller functionality, and in-game animations. QA testers actually do quite a lot on a day to day basis!
Conclusion
Like every month preceding it, June has been productive. New ship developments, new in-game assets, new art pieces, a new format for Around the Verse, and new faces. We are definitely not idle in the studio and we hope these updates give you a glimpse of what goes on in the LA office, so thank you for joining us this month and allowing us to share what we’ve been up to.
So, here’s to a sweltering July…
CIG Austin
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June was a busy month in the Austin studio with multiple teams burning the midnight oil, working hard, and making lots of progress. We tested the many progressive iterations of 2.4.0 and published this to the Live server! This represents a big milestone for the Austin team since this is the first public version with Persistence and sets the stage for many additional persistent features yet to come. Our team is growing on many fronts with new QA, DevOps and Game Support team members starting this month. Many new faces and fresh perspectives who have all hit the ground running in their respective disciplines!
Austin Development
The month of June certainly was a busy one! The dev team here in Austin has had their hands in several areas of the project like always, and worked diligently to support the release of SC Alpha 2.4.0 where needed.
The Backend Services Team reached a MAJOR milestone this month with the release of Persistence in 2.4.0. Jason Ely, Tom Sawyer, and Ian Guthrie have all but tied a neat little bow on this major feature that is crucial to any MMO. With persistence comes a broadened way of approaching the game development of Star Citizen, and it’s a welcome challenge for our team. Since the release of Persistence Jason, Tom, and Ian have been cleaning up and knocking out the edge cases that were causing issues on the Live environment. There were some crashes that cropped up with the persistence cache that have since been resolved and subsequently released with the 2.4.1 patch.
The Design Team in Austin is looking farther out to future releases now that 2.4.0 has gone Live. Another major feature of 2.4.0 that was run out of Austin was Shopping. Lead Designer Rob Reininger and his team have since turned their attention to further fleshing out the Shopping design, adding elements for Purchasing via Kiosk, Selling, Commodities, and Remote Storage to their to-do list. We’ve touched on all of these features this month, however our primary focus right now is iterating on feedback for Purchasing via Kiosk that we’ve received from CR. We want to get this functionality online soon so that we can add some new shops and inventory to the game, including Dumper’s Depot and its inventory of ship components and weapons. Design intern Robert Gaither has been playing around with a program called Axure that helps us visualize how the user experience will work with the Purchase Kiosk. We’re hoping to have our next iteration in front of CR for approval and signoff soon.
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Our Ship Artists have been plugging away at their tasks for the Hornet F7A and the Herald. Both of those ships are in “Final Art” phases and the guys are going above and beyond to hit their deadlines.
Emre Switzer, Lighting Artist in Austin, has been working with the UK to wrap up an initial lighting pass on a new space station called GRIMHex. This environment is looking absolutely amazing and its thanks in no small part to Emre’s superb lighting skills.
Our Animation Team has shifted gears slightly this month. We’ve been getting data back from Imaginarium that Jay Brushwood helped run last month, and our Ship Animation Team has started reviewing this data and getting it into game. We’re getting data back for brand new ship enter/exit animations, and we’ll be using this data to reauthorize our ship animations to account for varying enter/exit speeds. We’re tracking well on the Hornet and Super Hornet right now, so look for speedier enter/exit animations on those ships soon!
Our PU Animation Team has altered course by request of Design to try and get some specific animation sets in game to be used with Subsumption, our peaceful NPC AI system. We’re going back and polishing animations for sitting on couches, leaning against walls, interacting with terminals, inspecting weapons, standing idles, and much more. With the aid of Erik Link, our new Tech Animator in our LA studio, we’re able to get these animations into game post-haste so that Design can start hooking these animations up for NPC’s to utilize! In addition to this, Lead Animator Bryan Brewer has been busy nailing down interaction metrics for several of our animation sets, including Sitting on Couches, Getting into Bed, Gripping Tools/Handles, Sitting/Standing Console Interactions, and the Bar Scene. These metrics will make it much easier to standardize how NPC’s interact with what we call “Usables”, which are items/props that characters can interact with in the scene.
QA
Austin QA was extremely busy through June with a big focus on 2.4.0 and 2.4.1, with us providing support for 11 PTU pushes and 2 Live pushes over the course of the month. This included everything from build testing, patch notes, databases checks build to build, as well as post-deployment support.
Persistence testing was a major focus item for our team throughout the month as we worked closely with our engineering team to overcome the remaining hurdles for 2.4.0, acting as a point of contact both for network engineers as well as our platform team to ensure everything was functioning normally. Major kudos go out to both Jeff Daily for his tireless work testing, documenting and supporting the platform team and Bryce Benton for taking on investigating emergent database and back-end issues.
We conducted a number of stress-tests with our PTU play testers, and started a new round of regular global performance captures with the entire QA department. Across the latter half of June, QA switched gears toward getting our development stream stabilized for 2.5.0 and providing ongoing support toward our 2.4.1 patch.
Several members of the Austin team were pulled into testing several new web and launcher security features for our site alongside Turbulent. We used this time to provide information on the functionality of the new security features, and provide recommendations to the Game and Customer support teams for supporting them. Special thanks to Scott McCrea and Brandon Crocker in particular for their tireless work testing and breaking the new security tools!
Otherwise we’ve been making major efforts to get ahead before our next big push, with the team as a whole concentrating to clear out a significant portion of our JIRA ticket backlog.
Marissa Meissner and Andrew Hesse have been focusing on laying down foundational work for QA over the next several months, including updated test plans, further training new hires and ensuring that new tools and procedures are documented for the global QA team. To round out our month, we also welcomed a new QA hire to our team this month, Michael Blackard and promoted Andrew Rexroth to QA Specialist!
Game Support
June was an amazing month for the Game Support Team!
We were all hands on deck early in the month for 2.4.0, whether it was testing on PTU, publishing to Live, or triaging the one-off issues afterwards. Game Support worked closely with QA, DevOps, and Production to run daily builds and tests with Evocati and 1st Wave PTU testers until we rolled out to Live, then we worked to track down issues related to Persistence into 2.4.1.
On many levels, 2.4.0 has been our biggest launch ever considering the amount of infrastructure changes on top of game content updates. With the advent of Persistence, we had to account for all of the scenarios in which a player would buy, use, equip, transfer, or destroy items, all the while making sure the platform, the game server, and the client are in sync with each other. As we progressed through the month, we continued to isolate and fix specific one-off situations that needed particular investigation, and we appreciate everyone’s patience as we troubleshot our Persistence related bugs.
As we’ve stated before, we’d not be able to do this as quickly without the immense help of our volunteers. Thank you Avocados and PTU testers… the BDSSE is one step closer because of your gracious help and tireless efforts.
On that note, as a reminder for those wanting to participate in Evocati or PTU: It’s possible to be added by being an active and helpful member of the Issue Council. We’ll be adding to both Evocati and PTU ranks later this summer, so jump on in!
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/issue-council
Internally, we’ve refined and updated some of our publish processes to streamline the way we get a build out. While these are largely invisible to you, the result for you should be less downtime, fewer mistakes, and increased communication.
We’ve also been finalizing some of the work related to Multi-Factor Authentication, both in terms of the user experience and the processes we’ll use to support it. Security of your account is of paramount importance to us here at CIG, and we very much look forward to rolling MFA out to the public later in July.
Lastly, we’re excited to grow by one here in Austin, Texas as one of the original Star Citizen backers, Eric “Proxus” Green, has joined us here in Game Support. We’re thrilled he’s onboard, and you’ll be hearing more from him next month!
IT/Operations
June brought us some exciting new developments in our patch reduction size project. When we started this massive overhaul we knew the project was going to be big incorporating several teams working together. We also knew that we’d uncover numerous hidden land mines along with hopefully a few little gems. This month we continued work on some of our internal delivery tools. As planned we will be rolling out the new patching mechanisms to QA and the developers to work out the kinks prior to working the new system in to our new public launcher. We did run in to some challenges this month on some of our core technology but we were able to quickly work past these problems and in the process we’ve designed an even better internal delivery approach. We still need testing to prove the new findings but it’s beginning to look like we may now be able to reduce our own storage footprint for all these builds which is something quite significant considering we’re currently producing 36-40 TB of build assets per month.
This month our LA studio got some core networking upgrades. As the LA QA team expanded, we saw exponential growth in network traffic per day due to the amount of builds they’re transferring across the network to each of their multiple testing systems. At the same time we upgraded the build storage as well which provided a major increase in build delivery performance to the entire LA studio. It’s pretty gratifying to see the teams receiving their builds faster than expected and we can’t wait to start rolling out some of this patch reduction technology so we can start seeing internal teams patching builds rather than copying multiple full builds per day.
LiveOps/DevOps
We deployed 12 publishes to PTU and two Publishes to Live this month. The addition of persistence has added more complexity to our publish process but the team is keeping up with the game dev schedule while writing optimizations to our publish orchestration system. This behind the scenes work is hard to see in the game but the near zero down time publishes and the high rate of PTU and QA publishes we can achieve makes it highly gratifying work that the entire team has been able to engage in.
Ahmed has been busy gathering and analyzing data gathered from the servers and managed to make an appearance on Reverse the Verse – June Subscriber Edition (embedded below.) In this interview he answered a number of questions about the servers and publishing. He even drew up a chart explaining how our game servers and the multiple services work from a high level starting from the build system all the way out to the final game publish.
Work has continued on build system optimization this month with our goals shifting slightly from build performance to build stability. We saw major improvements in stability as a result and still managed to pull out some minor gains in performance. As previously reported, this is an area where we will continue to focus as build iteration is a top priority for a development effort our size.
Foundry 42 UK
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Hello Citizens! Another good month in Manchester. We’re quite pleased to have Alpha 2.4 in Citizens’ hands, and we’re eager for you to see some of the other content we’ve been working on. Here’s June!
Concept Art
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.The concept team is growing, we have secured two new artists to join the team, one will be taking on the mushrooming list of props and the second chap will be tackling environments plus anything else we can throw at him
As most of you will know the Drake Dragonfly went out the door for its concept sale, all I want to do now is put the whole team on making the other manufacturers versions but that’s just my own wish and I hand on heart have no idea what the plans are for more (no really I don’t!).
Gav Rothery has just wrapped up a new ship that I think looks pretty awesome and we’re now focusing back on solving some Klaus and Werner FPS weapon designs and fleshing out the family (in addition to some work on the new corvette!)
A new small vehicle has also been worked up and passed straight to the production team – hmm I wonder when that’ll come out??..Ship items and props are ripping along and the whole universe feels like it’s starting to be more cohesive which can only be a good thing.
Also taking some time to work with Justin in LA and solve some areas of the Caterpillar that needed another round of attention and love – don’t worry owners, it’s mainly some shape language work to the command module and Turret – looks good, but then I’m biased!
Next month we’ll be addressing ship weapons and how to make more from less – watch this space.
Environment Team
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.The environment team has been working on many different tasks this month. As always the main production focus is on a sq42 level, and now we’ve started to move into the Final Art phase for most of the Shubin interior levels too. We are hardening up the Levski landing zone environment and bedding it into the procedural tech – feels really cool flying from space and onto a planet! Our lighting team has been blocking in some visual target areas for GrimHEX, this environment is shaping up and have a really good flavour to it. There is a demo coming up and we’re well on the way making sure we’re going to show you something special.
Props
As mentioned last month we have been on the final push for this batch of ship items. Shields, Coolers, Power Plants and Quantum drives are on their final art pass and we are just finishing up the last few Avionics modules, this should be complete within the next sprint (possible two…) and that closes off the first round of ship components.
We’ve had 3 new artists start in June so it’s been a busy few weeks but it is really going to help with supporting all the different areas of the game that require props and ship items.
Work has also progressed with the useable items which allow our players and AI to be able to fully interact with the props and environments, it’s a collaboration between the animation, design and props teams and will add that layer of natural interaction that will help to fully immerse the player in the game world.
With the amazing new procedural tech coming online we are looking at what we need to do to really push the visuals and work out what technical limitations we will need to accommodate when we ramp up resources for the feature.
Looking forward we are moving some of the team onto the smaller vehicle components to support the release of the Drake Dragonfly and pushing forward with the other ship item types while the rest of the team continue ploughing through our Squadron 42 prop list and as always do our best to squash any bugs with our live releases.
All in all, it has been a busy but productive month… and next month will be more of the same!
Spaceships
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.With another exciting month having gone by, the ship team in the UK has been plenty busy. We have made substantial progress on the Bengal with the main hangar, hangar lift wrapping up shortly along with the interior and exterior bridge of the ship. Idris interior does not have many more rooms left to do, with the team now focusing on some final polish before moving on to lighting and exterior damage.
Every improvement we make on the Idris will directly benefit the Javelin, one of the many benefits of using the manufacturer set to keep pushing the quality bar. Speaking of the Javelin, a lot of time has been spent finding the right look and feel for the hangar which is needed in both Squadron 42 and when it goes live in the PU. So capital ship progress is coming along great!
What about the other ships you ask? Well, we are happy to report that the Argo is wrapping up this week where we are left to hand it over to remaining disciplines and ensure it has everything it needs in order to go out to all of you! Several improvements have been made to the pod since it was last shown so keep a look out! We have also started production on both the Dragonfly and another vehicle, something we are all very excited for as it presents new challenges for us to tackle. The Dragonfly will be finishing its whitebox phase this week. Lastly, we are doing a lot of work to make sure the Vanduul ships look great, the UK team are focusing on the Driller (a carrier) at the moment. Every lesson learned here will allow us to share procedures and techniques across the entire Vanduul fleet!
Graphics
This month the graphics team have primarily been focussing on fixing bugs for the next release, and continuing with several major refactors to the underlying renderer code to pave the way for future features (e.g. improved transparency sorting & phasing out of DirectX 9 style code to help move to newer graphics APIs).
The gas cloud tech is also undergoing a major change to make use of a ‘bricked’ voxel format which allows increased detail in just the areas we need it. This is crucial for achieving details on very large gas clouds that would otherwise require a prohibitive amount of memory. The brick format should also allow us to make a number of optimisations where we can perform fewer calculations on large open areas.
The work on the improved HDR effects is continuing with upgrades to the exposure control system, but we’re excited that the new physically based bloom and lens flares have been enabled in the main development branch meaning this will be part of the next release to the backers. The new optical effects are faster than the previous effects, look much better, and crucially allow art to globally change the appearance of these affects with just a few button presses rather than having to tweak hundreds of individual flares. This is because the new flares are created in screen-space rather than being hand placed, and as a result we get flares off reflections too (e.g. when the sun reflects of the very shiny Starfarer).
Animation
This month we’ve been focusing in on the core FPS elements of the game. A new jump mechanic is being worked out, as well as testing stocked cover and blind fire and making tweaks where necessary to keep first and third person working well together. New pistol and stocked reload animations have been worked on to give a bit more weight and feel to reloading the weapons. We’ve been involved in testing the new camera and eye stabilisation and working our way through as many assets as possible to give a nice solid core feeling to the fps portion of the game. Selecting and deselecting weapons has been given another pass, working with tech animation we’re very hopeful to get a more polished 1P and 3P system online very soon. We’re excited with the progress even if there is still a lot more to come.
Engineering
Always seems to be a busy month getting a new release out, this time 2.4.0. As mentioned previously this was a large release for us because it’s the first time we’ve effected persistence in this production environment, and it changed the way a lot of systems worked, which in the long run is a very good thing but it was a major piece of engineering with a great deal of complexity.
Moving on from that we’ve been aware for a long time that some pretty hefty enhancements to CryNetwork would be required for a project of this scale, and getting 2.4.0 out really just re-emphasised this. CryNetwork was really starting to creak under the demands we’re making of it. We’re now chomping at the bit to start making a sustained effort on developing the new technology we’ve been designing on paper and proving it in the codebase. One such technology is the Global Serialized Variables which are designed to make the gameplay programmers’ lives easier and help optimise the network bandwidth. Previously when we were using “aspects” it is up to the gameplay programmer to decide what information needed to be sent over the network and then also to deal with both writing that information out on one end and reading it back in again at the other. This was always prone to mistakes in transmission because of the nature of network latency, which is unfortunately never really under your control. If you don’t receive, read, and parse the data in exactly the same manner you wrote it out you end up with a disconnection, which can prove more fiddly than you’d imagine. It was also very inefficient as if even one bit of data got changed the whole aspect block would have to get sent. The serialized variables takes all that away, the programmer just marks which variables they want to replicate to the server/clients and then the underlying system can just detect which have changed since the last time they were sent, and which haven’t, and takes care of the rest in a nice and efficient manner.
We’ve also been having problems with the underlying message queue which, although it would send packets through reliably, they wouldn’t necessarily come through in the correct order, and so you end up with a lot of code having to untangle that. Issues caused by this are very hard to track down and fix, especially within the real-time requirements of a multiplayer game, as by their nature they are completely random and the fixes tend to be horrible and nasty. We’re completely rewriting this message queue and it is going to be designed to better enforce the ordering and transmission of packets. This means we can make certain assumptions which will help clean up the codebase, for example if you get a message telling a player to respawn you know that the message killing them in the first place has already arrived and been processed. If there are any logicians out there in the audience, you’d love this stuff.
Otherwise gameplay progress has been ticking over nicely on all the usual aspects of the game.
Audio
Hello all! June was another busy month for CIG Audio. Here’s a breakdown of what people have been up to.
Sam Hall was mainly working on getting the dynamic bank loading to work as it should. As it stands, work is 99% complete, but we still need to deal with bank loading synchronisation before we can go live with it – this is to ensure sounds play on cue first time, every time.
Sam has also been optimising the Editor’s audio plugin start-up time to help with productivity. It now saves up to ten seconds every time the Editor starts up. Though this may seem inconsequential in the context of a single instance, all these periods waiting add up! (Think about how much time you’d lose in your own life if you had to wait at least ten seconds every time you opened your email or a Word document) Sam’s also currently working on improving the audio playback with the animation tool, Mannequin.
Graham Phillipson has been refactoring and refining the code to better support reverbs and weapon tails, to make transition between areas smoother and more “realistic”. Added more options to audio mark-up for how audio triggers begin. At the start of the month he got the prototype together for in-game VOIP which has wide-ranging implications for the persistent universe.
Darren Lambourne has been undertaking general maintenance of ship audio (improving sync on anims, bug fixing). Establish the audio structure (geometry and Wwise side) for the playable Idris, and working on designing the ‘tone’ and first pass implementation of the Idris ambiences.
Luke Hatton has been working on new explosion sounds so that smaller ship sizes (Hornet, Xian Scout, M50) aren’t quite as overbearing as the larger ones. He’s also been working on more pass-bys for the likes of the Origin M50; he’s currently looking at the pass-bys for the Starfarer, which require a different style because of the sheer size of the ship.
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Stefan Rutherford has been continuing work on the GrimHex map, putting down the foundations there for ambience. We’ve changed our process quite a lot where ambience is concerned; this is a lot more spatialized these days rather than made up of ‘2D’ beds/backgrounds so that the audio is far more compatible with head-tracking based audio rendering (i.e. VR) and also offers more momentary variation and interest. Otherwise he’s been revising and improving upon the FPS weapons.
Ross Tregenza has been primarily designing a system that will play cool cinematic music in a self-managing and context sensitive way throughout the Persistent Universe. He’s been working with Pedro Macedo Camacho to get the new music in place and fine tune the system – it’s already sounding awesome. The dynamic music system is also starting to make its way into Squadron 42, where it’ll be used in tandem with bespoke set piece music for the most dramatic moments of the game. He’s been working with Geoff Zanelli on that content – again, already sounding fantastic, even in its early days.
Ross has also been working on ambient sound for a variety of locations across Squadron 42, and keeping the audio guys informed of any S42 based developments, as well as assisting the dialogue guys when possible to help progress the battle-chatter systems.
Simon Price has been improving scalability of the dialogue pipeline, migrating Ship Computer dialogue over to the communication system ahead of a refactor/standardisation. Also generally porting dialogue to use the CommunicationSystem to give designers more control.
Bob Rissolo – lot of prep and preproduction work for S42 shoots, combined with editing dialogue for cinematics, making progress on the pipeline tools and tech with Simon.
Phil Smallwood has been riding shotgun with Bob recently so as to assist him on S42 shoot dialogue capture duties, and undertaking some dialogue edit work too.
Matteo Cerquone started taking ownership of various sub-systems such as physics, character Foley, as well as assisting Ross with S42 sound design.
Ewan Brown has been implementing support for multi-positional sounds within the game editor, which is a neat optimisation that reduces the number of voices for a given sound, even if it’s assigned to play from multiple positions. He’s also been working on low level audio synchronisation and various Mannequin tool improvements.
Last (but not least), Jason Cobb has been hard at work at a whole list of tasks! He’s been developing audio build validation scripts, fixing voice leaks, documenting test cases for Flowgraph audio trigger fixes and more… real nitty gritty stuff that will make Star Citizen all the more immersive from an audio persiectve! He’s about 90% complete an area-based mix state mark-up for multicrew ships, and he has been investigating the same for single-seat ships.
VFX
As has been the case company-wide this past month, the VFX team has dedicated a significant amount of time focusing on asset clean-up. Specifically in our case, we have been making sure none of our particle libraries are referencing missing textures, materials, custom lens flares or objects. These are the sort of tasks no one looks forward to, but there is something quite satisfying about whittling your way down a long error log list! Caleb in Frankfurt has been working hard on this, so no doubt he will elaborate on this process.
As well as this, we have been performing other general maintenance tasks such as converting various assets – smoke, fire and explosions in particular – over to the new heat map/gradient tech we now have in place. This is an ongoing process, as there are loads of legacy assets we want to convert in order to take advantage of the new tech.
Speaking of which, the new heat maps and gradients tie in beautifully with the optical bloom and flares that you will hopefully see in the next live release, as well as the tiled particle lighting we mentioned briefly in last month’s report. It’s been a long process getting all this tech to come together, but we feel confident that in the long run you will see a big step up in the quality of our effects!
In terms of new content, more work has been done on weapon impact effect variants, a polish pass on a new laser cannon, and an environment VFX pass for a new PU location. Finally, we have done an effects pass for flight-ready Reliant.
As always, busy busy busy!
Design
It’s been a busy June in the design department here in the UK. The Live team have grown to 4 full time designers and will be 5 in mid-July. I don’t want to spoil anything so I will just say that they are all working flat out working on expanding the content for the 2.7 Live release for the Stanton System. There is a lot of cool stuff going into that release on the systems side that we are excited to get out into the community, such as the new landing and take-off work that is being implemented by Craig. As of me writing this it is all using placeholder (programmer art), but are hopeful that Zane and crew will be able to take a pass at it before it is released into Live.
The systems design team have been working on MobiGlas and particularly the StarMap app, which is looking great as a portable version of our favourite web app.
As you will probably see from other reports we are refactoring the AI system for both combat and interstitials into one system called “Subsumption” that will systemically deal with a huge variety of different AI states. While this has affected some of the progress on a few S42 levels, it is looking hugely encouraging for the levels as a whole, cutting down massively on a lot of complex and sometimes fragile bespoke scripting from design.
The Tech team are working on the various ships and vehicles and we are hopeful to get the DragonFly, which is feeling very fun and different to what you will be used to, into the live stream soon. We are also almost there with the Argo light utility ship!
That’s it for now, except to say a big thanks as always for your fantastic support.
QA
UK QA have been very busy over the past month. Our primary focus was getting Alpha 2.4.0 out of the door. This required us to work in sync with our ATX counterparts, as well as the select backers in the Evocati group. As you’re no doubt aware, Alpha 2.4.0 is probably our biggest update since 2.0.0, with the introduction of shopping and persistence to Crusader, as well the Starfarer and Starfarer Gemini, our biggest flyable ships to date!
Alpha 2.4.0 is now in your hands, and has recently been patched up to Alpha 2.4.1 in order to extinguish a nasty infinite loading screen bug and an issue with ship persistence. We have continued to monitor the Live build, gathering feedback from you guys, as well as looking into issues that only seem to arise when the game is out in the wild.
Beyond that, testing on Squadron 42 continues as development ramps up, with our dedicated Squadron 42 testers performing daily smoke tests to help the devs narrow down on persistent issues. Adam Parker, our resident ship expert, has been putting the Reliant and the Argo through their initial paces. Mark Tobin, FPS extraordinaire, has been leading initial group tests on the FPS systems. Mark White, one of our seniors, has been testing additional systems you’ll be hearing about shortly!
Foundry 42 DE
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The Frankfurt team is running at full capacity, we have 49 desks in the office and just signed our 49th employee. We’re very selective on who we bring in, and have had a large amount of interest on joining from people worldwide. We’re also an extremely diverse group, made up of 13 different nationalities I believe. Luckily we planned ahead and as I previously mentioned we’re expanding our office space. The extension will hold an additional 25 people and will be ready for us on August 1st.
We’re getting closer to showing off more of our progress, and look forward to getting stuff in your hands. See below for a portion of some of the stuff we covered this month, it’s impossible to put it all, but gives you a sense of some of the larger items.
Weapons
Last month the weapon art team has been hard at work polishing up the existing Behring ship weapons as well as making a new Size 5 variant. On the FPS side we finished the ballistic Smart Ammo and the 1st pass texturing on the Behring P8SC submachine-gun. We’re also in the process of updating the Behring Pro-Line grenades and finished the 1st pass model so it can be rigged, animated and tested.
Quality Assurance
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.DE QA is happy to welcome Glenn Kneale as the newest member of our team! Glenn joins us from our CIG-UK office in Wilmslow, and he will be our new QA Technical Lead in our Frankfurt office. Glenn started the month by setting new grounds in personal development for the EU QA Technical team. New procedures for reporting have been set in place to ensure all information and progress is shared seamlessly across the UK and DE offices. DE QA also continued to spend the majority of the month of June testing the procedural planet together with support from Mark White in the UK. We also worked together with Marius Airinei to identify and debug a crash on the Crusader public servers. The crash was related to missiles being fired at other ships, and the reproduction rate is painfully low. We managed to repro the crash on the 2nd day of testing, and we were able to provide Marius with the information he needed to work toward a solid solution. Chris Speak has also been helping Ivo Herzeg by creating physics test maps, which Ivo is using to test both physics enabled character ragdolling and physicalized objects such as bottles, chairs, and other in-game props (see image above). The next few months will be focused on ramping up our testing for Gamescom 2016 together with UKQA and ATXQA, and we cannot wait to share what we will be testing – it is truly something to look forward to!
Cutscenes
The cutscene team spent the beginning of the month prepping material for a new Mocap shoot. A few key members headed to the UK the last week of June, and will return to Germany in a few weeks when the shoot is over. This is the last fully scheduled shoot for Squadron 42, with the possibility to return for a pickup shoot if needed. The Animators on the team also spent some time this month supporting the in-game animation team, as well as doing some animations to test out NPC head looks.
Engine
This month Ivo continued to work on smoothing out bits of the animation code, working on head-bobbing, Eye-Stabilization, and Head-stabilization. He’s made great progress and we’ll have something to show off in the very near future. We’ve also made some good leaps on the Procedural Planets and toolset for artist behind it. The tech team is excited to show off what they’ve done, and we’re getting close.
Rotating VisAreas: We worked on support for Rotating VisAreas. A VisArea can be thought of as a room with windows, which allows us to cull away all objects not visible through the windows (classic portal culling). So far VisAreas were 2.5D Shapes (polygons with a height). This was fine for our use cases so far: Regular flat levels like Area18 and Ships, where the VisAreas are part of the local reference frame and hence are still 2.5D, even if the hosting reference frame is rotated/moved. But now we have planets, and planets are round, which brings a new challenge. To allow us to use VisAreas on planets, we had to implement support for rotation. This was implemented by keeping the 2.5D representation but adjusting all the checks to be in VisAreas space, hence transform each point into the space of the visarea before it is checked. Doing it this way allowed us to keep all current VisAreas setups, and just extend the functionality.
Tree-ification of the ZoneSystem: The ZoneSystem was started as a spatial data structure which replaced the octree we used for fast culling for rendering. Such cull operations are mostly “large”, meaning they tend to cover a large area. Now the ZoneSystem (as planed from the beginning) is being used for more and more systems. Most of those systems tend to do “small” queries, like finding all objects in a 2m x 2m x 2m box with Tags [x,y,z]. The ZoneSystem is now responsible to find all objects in the whole universe inside this box extremely fast. When we experimented with this, it turned out that some parts of the ZoneSystem still utilized a linear search, and those didn’t scale well in our large universe with such small queries (large ones had enough other cost to not notice those issues). Hence we extended all internal data structures to utilize AABB trees, allowing us to more quickly exclude objects improving the runtime from O(N) to roughly O(Log2(N))). As this was a very complex change, since such tree structures must also be maintained in an efficient manner when some objects move, it took some time. But we are now in the final steps of local testing and so far it looks very promising and to give us the performance benefits we were aiming for.
Tech Art
Did a good amount of support to the Engine team on various things such as head stabilization. Also continued to support the weapons team, rigging new weapons as they get completed. Did some weapon select and deselect RND on animation driven IK, with the goal of getting them to look smooth in various frames of the animation while still being as responsive as they need to be. Also continued to address any and all bugs or issues from the global team.
AI
Let’s start this monthly talking about Subsumption and the mission system.
Subsumption has received a lot of attention this month, we first of all worked a lot with Tony Zurovec to introduce several features in the tool, then connect them up into the system code.
We introduced the concept of tasks with parallel children: when creating a subactivity, we can connect several tasks one to the other to create a chain of operations the NPC will then execute. We can now create archetypes for tasks that can actually serve as fathers of multiple children tasks: they manage the lifetime of the subtasks, how those tasks are executed in parallel with the father, and what to do when the father is interrupted.
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.In the picture we can see a node that executes in parallel specific subtasks, and it succeeds as soon as the one child succeeds and it fails as soon as one child fails.
Any node can be setup to have parallel children, but the actual task is totally responsible to define how the execution takes care of the children itself.
We also developed the concept of Checkpoints and Goto tasks.
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.A checkpoint is a way to store specific points in the behavior from which it’s safe to restore the execution at a later time. Any time a Checkpoint task is hit, then the system automatically stores that entry into the internal This.Subactivity.Checkpoint that can be then used by the Goto task. This allows us to create jobs that can be interrupted and resumed, we can perform operations in the middle of longer behaviors and resume the old tasks as soon as possible.
We introduce the functionality to handle specific events in the subactivities directly so that we can decide whether we wait to finish some operations before reacting to some events. We also started to work on the core code for the Subsumption Mission system: missions will sit on top of the normal NPC activities. Game and level designers can create their mission influencing the population of the level, the schedule of the NPCs, setup objectives and a lot of additional things. We hope to show you some screenshots about the mission system soon!
We’re close to complete the work on the local navigation mesh to allow characters to move inside moving ships, planets, etc. Regarding the spawning system, we moved the definition of the spaceships’ crew into Dataforge so that designers can easily setup this content without manually editing an xml or any configuration file. We also started the work to properly unify the code paths that spawns characters and ships.
Regarding the communication system we’re working close with the audio engineers to support properly external audio files that can be played through WWise, we also developed some new debug draw functionalities to help designers keep track of the dialogues used, the amount of times they are triggered, and so on.
This month we also worked on the ships behavior to properly support strict limitations on the flying behaviors: boundaries have always been considered as a soft limitation allowing ships to leave the assigned area to enter it back immediately after the restriction was not respected. We introduced improvements to the ships behavior to properly react to the target leaving the restricted area they might be assigned to, we introduced a new “boundary patrol” behavior that will trigger once the target cannot be reached due to “external” orders to the running behavior.
As usual we also continued on improving the stability of the overall AI system and to fix as many bugs as we could!
Design
On the System Design side we’ve focused on figuring out how our Vanduul behaviors work, what makes them special and unique compared to fighting against a human opponent. These guys need to offer the players a complete change of combat style where they will have to adapt to a faster paced, more explosive and melee heavy combat compared to their human enemy counterparts.
We are reworking the way docking in stations will work and all the services that will be available to you and your ship once docked. We’ve seen big problems with players not having enough landing pads so we are designing an automated system that will handle how pads get allocated, how you dock, undock and how your ship is stored once you get out of it. Our main goal is to get players and ships off the docking hangars as quick as possible to free them up for the next player that might want to use it.
We are starting to design the overarching security and criminality systems that will help us detect wrongdoers and report them to the NPC authorities who will take action. The idea is to, while still being lenient towards a player who merely errs occasionally (i.e. honest mistakes), have the world react in a ruthless way to people who abuse other players or do things that they’re not supposed to. The main goal is to make this part of the world so the NPCs take matters into their own hands based on the local law of the region of space rather than us developers having to police abusers. (Let’s face it – the devs and game support are always going to be very outnumbered. While we of course care about our players, we can’t personally be everywhere at once, so the system must have some ability to take care of itself)
The FPS suit is also getting a rework and is heading towards a more modular approach where players will be able to switch components and adjust it to what they need, be it combat or otherwise. At the same time we are looking into developing a new breed of modular deployable gadget that the players can customize as they see fit.
Work on out of combat human behaviors continues and we hope we can show you guys something as soon as the stuff comes online.
Level Design has finished the design of the lawless base we mentioned in last month’s report, and have been supporting and overseeing the art and design teams who are taking that whitebox design to completion, both at Bhvr and in the UK studio, to communicate the vision and ensure that the core design is preserved throughout the hardening phase. To make sure we could hit the 2.5 release with the lawless base we split it into tiers, which we can focus on one at a time. Expect to see that location evolve in steps over the next few major releases, with new areas opening up and interesting opportunities unlocking as we progress.
We iterated on the design of Levski (initially based in Nyx) to prepare it to be placed down on the Stanton planet. This involved adding extra hangars for parking, new road access and parking for visitors coming on-foot or driving on the planet surface to the mining base, and adding bedrooms for players to be able to sleep and respawn there. It is now in the artists’ capable hands to bring those additions up to the quality of the rest of Levski, so we can finally enable players to land on a procedural planet and have a first landmark to visit there. These days we’re digging more into modularity for building locations quickly and efficiently, focusing on service stations in particular.
We have also seen two new LD recruits join our ranks, Ben and Tobias, and focused on on-boarding them: getting them up to speed with the engine, designing practice levels to wrap their heads around the intricacies of Star Citizen and space environments, and generally welcoming them in the family.
BHVR
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.No Time Off For Good Behaviour!
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.
Behaviour Interactive has been busy working on some thrilling content you’ll see in Star Citizen Alpha 2.5. Here’s the rundown:
Engineering
In June we integrated the last feature missing from the optimized Hologram framework: Render to Target. This should significantly affect ships using on screen Holograms (like the Constellation, Retaliator, Aurora) and enable much better framerate. Not only that but other ships which previously displays empty screens (Vanguard, Sabre, Avenger, …) will now correctly display Holograms.
A lot of polish and bug fixing went into shopping as well. The mobiGlas shopping application will give better feedback on the status of your purchase request. You’ll notice that armor racks will display a full mannequin when trying them on instead of a floating head. All of this and more solid server and client fixes for improved stability.
Design
This month was very exciting working on the new outlaw space station. We finished working on the shops, Francois Boucher and Jesse Kalb respectably taking care of the clothing store and the personal weapon store. The artists did a fantastic job working with the tight layouts and they look great. We also worked on future shop locations for this space station and their whiteboxes are well underway.
Overall, we spent a lot of time in the Outlaw space station, fixing collisions issues, setuping gravity, kill triggers, airlocks, spawn room and logic, landing pads and a bunch of other things. I expect us to continue working on that location for a while, adding more and more and keeping it top notch.
Art
This month we continued working on a map from the previous month, an abandoned imperial asteroid base now occupied by “new” denizens.
Aside from finishing the remaining undefined structures and visuals, we’ve spent a major portion of this month polishing the environment. We took the designer’s vision and added a slice of life to the map.
The key focus of the polish was story telling. We wanted the environment to give clues on what happened in different sections within the map. The visuals for habitation pods, for example, reflected purposeful rearrangement of furniture and objects after the pods were constructed, as if dweller groups in different pods were trying to differentiate themselves from others, some sort of gang mentality perhaps.
Shops, on the other hand, contained objects that showed how the shop keep conducted business, how he went about his daily life outside of the business, and ultimately, how he left his mark in the forgotten stories of the abandoned base as time passed.
Per the same level of detail in other maps we helped create, expect landing pads, hangars, the exteriors/interiors to be full of its own life and style. We also added a bit more polish on a mining world we previously helped create. Stay tuned.
Turbulent
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Atomic Batteries to Power, Turbulent to Speed!
Greetings from sunny Montreal! Here’s what we’ve been up to in the last month:
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Last month, we completed the QA phase with the help of the CIG team. We are getting ready to launch MFA for the website and game launcher. In the first phase, you will be able to setup MFA with an email address or by installing our mobile app. If you’re new to MFA, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. There will be a post and tutorial explaining everything, plus a new FAQ page that you can consult at any time. This extra security is optional, but it’s easy to setup and will further protect your information and purchases.
Communication Platform
Internally, we are releasing a functional version of our new communication platform, which includes chat and the new forum. This will go through internal QA only. In the meantime, we are continuing to work on adding features to the platform, such as bookmarking and search. We are eager to share this new platform with the fans, but we have a ways to go yet. Well worth the wait, we can assure you!
Game Launcher
For those of you who’ve been following this column regularly, you know that we have been working with CIG on the new version of the game launcher/patcher. There’s a heavy-duty feature list, and we’ve been listening to CIG’s requests and suggestions. Development continues at a healthy pace, and we’re targeting to release a first version by end of summer.
If you’re new to this column, the new game launcher will support multiple environments (e.g. PTU, live) and multiple games (e.g. Star Citizen, Squadron 42), and will allow for background patching. The interface will be the same as the current version, but future iterations will include more features.
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Ship Happens
June was an exciting month for ship sales. Towards the end of the month we were introduced to the Dragonfly, a speedy little ultralight ship with attitude, to be used as a solo rider or as a swarm of Dragonflies. Two versions were put for sale: a sleek, stealthy looking black version and an in-your-face yellow version for those who want to be seen. Not only were these two variants for sale, but we also saw the return of the Caterpillar, both by itself and in a special package with both Dragonflies and LTI for all three ships; a very exciting combo!
Community
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Best Damn Space Sim Community Ever
The community that never sleeps. Serving a community in as many different time zones, continents and countries is an exciting challenge every month, and in June, we began to restructure our output to better serve the wider audience.
Day-to-Day
June was a month of focused efforts. Work continues on developing the Gamescom presentations for August, including our first real convention showfloor booth, modeled to invoke a sense of the bridge of an Idris. You may attempt to read into that what you like, but we promise it was just a matter of saying:
“Let’s do a fancy booth this year.”
“It’d be cool if it looked like the bridge of an Idris!”
Sometimes, it really is just that simple. =)
In addition to having a cool booth, we’ll be livestreaming gameplay from our latest builds on the showfloor itself over the course of the five days. While it’s still too early to say what that will involve, we’re looking at it as a chance to hang out with our fans both in attendance and abroad, give away some ships and swag, and simply celebrate how far Star Citizen has come in the last year. We anticipate broadcast times will match those of Gamescom operating times.
Broadcasts
June was dedicated to our run-up to our Around the Verse 100 Celebration, with a concentrated effort towards building out the video infrastructure necessary to expand and encompass our studios around the world, in addition to improving the overall presentation of our releases. Many of these changes won’t be visible to the public until July, August, and beyond, but the work that lead to those changes was a strong focus in the month of June, and you can see the beginnings of that work in Around the Verse 100 released on June 30th.
We look forward to sharing the new broadcast plan in the coming weeks once additional details are further cemented.
You Guys
As another month of development passes, so does another month of stories, content videos, and community accomplishments!
Last month, we highlighted the PTU testers, and we have to highlight them again! You all have been an extraordinary help in June, assisting us with getting SC Alpha 2.4.0 and 2.4.1 out the door! Your tireless effort has been greatly appreciated, and we plan to continue utilizing the PTU environment and our Evocati test group in future patches. Thank you!
On the streaming side of things, we were very happy to see the long-awaited return of Geekdomo’s always entertaining stream, Starcast. In addition, we want to give a huge congratulations to Farasalt for taking his streaming endeavor Full-time!
The Austin, TX Bar Citizen events continue to raise the bar every thanks to the amazing efforts put in by Scrapped, Pyrothoric, and Gany. The evening was Jam-packed with good drinks, good people, and of course, a lot of Star Citizen discussion/theorycrafting. If you have not been to a Bar Citizen before, we highly recommend seeing if there is one in your area! Great job guys!
On the Community Hub front, we continue to see incredible content flowing in! Terallian continues to develop his Star Citizen cinematic videos that we all love to see. This guy started learning the Cryengine only 2 months ago, and every video he puts out just gets better and better! Simoniac pulled out all the stops by releasing his USUK Hauling Interactive Starmap that left us all in awe! If you have not seen this thing, you need to stop what you are doing and jump on the Community Hub ASAP! Fantastic work Simoniac!
This community is packed with talented artists of all forms, and we are looking forward to seeing what you all do in the month of July!
The Wrap-Up
Looking Ahead
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.What comes after Alpha 2.4? Alpha 2.5, of course! 2.5 is going to add a major point of interest to the Crusader area: the GrimHex pirate base. As we continue to develop our reputation and faction system, we need a place for pirates to call home rather than having everyone on Port Olisar together. So we’ve built a very cool station with some exciting features you’re going to enjoy. 2.5 will also feature the flyable Reliant and a number of other updates we’ll be discussing in the coming weeks.
It’s also full speed ahead for Gamescom! Cloud Imperium will have a booth on the showfloor to show off Star Citizen, and there will be several chances to catch up with the team outside the convention. Expect to see more details before the next Monthly Report is due!
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…y-Studio-Report
Around the Verse: Episode 100.2
CENTENNIAL: PART II.
ATV turns 100! We tour the Foundry 42 UK offices, get an update on 2.5 and the GrimHex pirate station in News From Around the Verse, and check in on updates to the Bengal Carrier in Ship Shape.
00:48 – Intro
03:00 – F42 Manchester Office Tour
15:11 – NFATV
26:08 – Ship Shape: Bengal Carrier
30:39 – MVP with Tyler WitkinGAMEPLAY INTRO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5zewWzfn8M
MVP: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/citi…rawing-On-Paper
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…round-The-Verse
The Tevarin Plan
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.To: leeth
From: scire_facias
Sub: biz prop
2946.6.24.03.42.31SETleeth-
we need to talk. you dont know me but ive learned alot about you.
was workin in chronos when info about your company found its way to me. nifty little racket youre running. taking a % of resources and supplies your concern ships to the synthworld and diverting them to branaugh instead. funny thing, your companys past 8 quarterly reports dont mention it at all.
guessing some shareholders wouldnt be happy youre sending supplies to a planet of tevs instead of the synthworld. sure there are plenty of competitors willing to pay for such info.
good thing ima reasonable individual and offering you right of 1st refusal. this info will be sold. if not back to you then someone else.
u have 1 SED to respond …
-scire_facias
________________________________
To: scire_facias
From: leeth
Sub: Re: biz prop
2946.6.24.19.21.09SETI don’t know how you got this account, but understand that I do not respond to blackmail. I will be forwarding your information to local authorities. I’m sure they’ll be in touch.
-L
________________________________
To: leeth
From: scire_facias
Sub: Re: biz prop
2946.6.24.23.11.57SEThahahahahaha …. maybe the attached will change your mind. if you have any issues interpreting the data then show it to your team. theyll tell you how imperially blasted you are.
btw whats attached isnt even the most interesting breadcrumb you dropped. also leeched a series of comms between you and some associates on branaugh 2. i really liked the message dated 2946.6.13 where you pledged your “undying support” for their future plan.
listen i understand why youre all hot and heavy over this plan. youre a tev with a shipping empire and strong ties to the system. makes you primed to profit big time. sure you could weather the blowback if your connections to this expanding tevarin colony leaks … but what about senator kossi?
you pumped a lot of creds into his campaign to help him win. it wont matter if senator kossi knows about whats happening in branaugh or not. some unscrupulous soul could look at this info and make claims about who is really behind the senator. itd kill his career before it began.
still sure u want me to sell this info to someone else?
-scire_facias
< attachment: leethbranaughbiz.ssp >
________________________________
To: scire_facias
From: leeth
Sub: Re: biz prop
2946.6.25.13.48.22SETHow much to make this go away? I’ll need ironclad assurances.
-L
________________________________
To: leeth
From: scire_facias
Sub: Re: biz prop
2946.6.25.21.47.36SETas for assurances if i told you i torched everything would you really believe me? in my experience the best way to build trust is through a mutually beneficial business relationship. so heres my offer …
silence is expensive but im not into creds. info is my currency of choice. so youre going to keep giving me updates on what youre shipping into branaugh and how your fellow tevs are progressing on their plan.
do that and ill stay silent. hell – ill even explain how to fix your flawed security so no one else can screw you.
deal?
-scire_facias
________________________________
To: scire_facias
From: leeth
Sub: Re: biz prop
2946.6.26.15.52.08SETNormally, I avoid doing business with people I don’t know, but you’ve left me no other option. I agree to your terms, and will offer you this as a show of good faith.
Senator Kossi has no idea what’s going on in Branaugh. I’m certain you’ve scoured my comms in search of a smoking gun, but it’s not there. He is a true statesman and wholeheartedly dedicated to making the UEE a better place for all Citizens and civilians.
Come after me all you want, but if Senator Kossi gets dragged into this, there will be severe consequences. What he represents is bigger than both of us. After 300 years, the Tevarin people are just starting to become part of the fabric of this empire. All that progress will be washed away if he gets tied to this.
So I’ll be abundantly clear, if you take Kossi down, I will spare no expense to exact my revenge on you. I’ve worked hard to become a Citizen and stake out my place in this empire, but trust me, I didn’t grow my business into a massive multi-system operation without learning a few tricks. If you ruin him, you’ll only guarantee your own demise.
Now that we’re business partners, I’m trusting you’ll do what’s in the best interest of all parties involved.
-L
________________________________
To: leeth
From: scire_facias
Sub: Re: biz prop
2946.6.27.01.04.33SETill expect weekly updates on branaugh. keep feeding me info and we wont have a problem.
-scire_facias
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spec…he-Tevarin-Plan
Galactic Guide: Banshee System
Galactic Guide: Banshee System
BANSHEE SYSTEM
Human history is a story of exploration and expansion, written by brave individuals willing to set sail across an uncharted sea or enter an unknown jump point, each driven by the curiosity of what exists just over the horizon. Not asking if they should go there, but only if they could. The Banshee System exemplifies Humanity’s ability to overcome nature’s obstacles. At its center sits a pulsar, spewing enough radiation to make the system’s green zone planetary surfaces inhospitable. Many commonplace activities, like EVAing outside of a ship to perform repairs, can be deadly. Yet Humanity has found a way to call the system home. Maybe not because it should, but because it could.
Banshee’s pulsar is a rapidly rotating blue-white neutron star. Though there are many pulsars in the universe, Banshee’s is the only one discovered so far with jump points connected to it. This fact has led some scientists to hypothesize that the jump points’ proximity to a pulsar could eventually lead to their collapse and cut off the system from the wider universe. This fear permeates popular culture, despite the fact that the 2943 discovery of the Banshee-Tamsa jump has made the system one of the most connected in the UEE; only Terra and Hadrian are currently linked to more systems.
Still, danger and the Banshee System have been synonymous since its discovery in 2317. At the time, the Fora System was crawling with contractors brought in to terraform Hyperion. Spearheaded by Adaliz Dayan, a number of adventurous individuals decided to spend their free time exploring the system. The group dubbed themselves the Immram Association and exploration became a popular way for workers to enjoy their free time between shifts. One day, Dayan’s scans picked up a mysterious pocket of radiation in the middle of space. She sent a comm to her fellow IA members to investigate the anomaly. By the time others arrived, Dayan was gone.
IA members assumed Dayan had found a new jump point, but were unable to locate it themselves; when she didn’t re-emerge, they soon grew concerned and contacted the government. Eventually, a military pathfinder unit was dispatched to her coordinates to begin a search. When they finally discovered the jump point, what would come to be known as the Banshee System and its radiation spewing pulsar waited on the other side.
Sadly, Adaliz Dayan and her ship were never found. It is assumed she perished due to a pulsar flare and that her ship still drifts through space. Conscious of her sacrifice, Dayan was credited with discovering the system, and the Immram Association allowed to name it. They settled on the nickname Dayan earned during her college Sataball days and the system formally became Banshee — a doubly fitting title as the association with the ancient creature of myth served well to warn people of the system’s inherent dangers.
Wary of the hazards the Banshee System and its pulsar posed to the public, the government didn’t herald its discovery. They even passed a bill making it illegal for unauthorized ships to enter the system. Tensions came to a head in the early 26th century as Earth’s overcrowding reached cataclysmic levels. A legal argument erupted over whether the government had the right to ban people from a system. Many worried a future government could abuse this power to hide valuable land and/or minerals.
This led to the landmark Minto vs UPE court case that nullified the government’s permanent ban. The decision opened the Banshee System to all, and is also the reason the UEE cannot legally keep people from venturing into Vanduul space.
Curious members of the public, and numerous private interests, entered the system and quickly saw they weren’t missing much. Though massive deposits of raw materials existed on Lorona (Banshee III) no one could figure out how to safely extract them. Until, as has been the case numerous times in Human history, war catapulted technology to a new frontier.
During the First Tevarin War, Persei-based UPARQ developed massive magnetic coils designed to weaponize solar electromagnetic radiation. Though the project failed, UPARQ realized the coils could be an ideal method to collect power in the Banshee System. It wasn’t long before autonomous drilling rigs, powered by panels of these connected coils, bored into Lorona’s surface and allowed Humanity a place to hide from the pulsar’s effects. Today Lorona’s landing zones are lined with these iconic coils that power the vast settlements and mining operations beneath the planet’s surface.
TRAVEL WARNING
Refuel and run a complete system diagnosis on your ship prior to entering the Banshee System. Due to the extremely harsh conditions and pulsar fluctuations, rescue and repair operations can be exceedingly risky.
BANSHEE I
This small dwarf planet contains small pockets of mineral resources. However, its proximity to the pulsar makes extracting them a deadly proposition.
BANSHEE II
A terrestrial planet with an iron core. Documents released during the Historical Truth Act of 2941 revealed that a secret Messer era operation removed a number of specific swaths of the planet’s heavily irradiated surface. The intention of the operation, or what was done with the extracted sections, was not found within the documentation and remains unknown to this day.
BANSHEE III (Lorona)
Were it not for the vast resources of Lorona, many say the UEE would never have claimed the Banshee System. Today, it’s an essential and irreplaceable part of the universal supply chain. Extensive mining operations extract everything from precious metals to short carbon for the diamond laminate in cockpit glass.
The planet’s riches and inhospitable surface have driven Humanity to create a vast system of underground settlements connected by tunnels, a network that continues to expand to this day. When mining operations begin drilling and excavating new areas, the previous dig sites frequently become home to settlements of workers and their families. Some of these encampments want to trade with outsiders, while others prefer to be left alone. To avoid any confusion, we recommend not venturing into the tunnel system without a local guide.
Once deep enough underground to not have to wear radiation suits, or “Below the Line” in local slang, visitors spend most of their time in Kesseli, the capital and one of the largest subterranean cities in the universe. Though still a mining settlement at its core, the amount a valuable resources moving through the city have brought a measure of wealth to the inhabitants.
Under a ubiquitous layer of dust, numerous Empire-wide franchises have a presence here to supply locals, traders and visitors alike. One can even find high-end restaurants servicing well-paid mining executives. Lorona’s local culinary treasure is undoubtedly the Beutrempe, a sweet or savory puff pastry that uses a yeast strain native to the world to give a uniquely tangy taste. These delicious delicacies are on the menus of most restaurants, but can more easily be found baked in stalls set up near the most trafficked tunnels.
BANSHEE IV
In the 27th century, the Cenote Concern undertook an ambitious business plan to turn this distantly orbiting ice giant into an industrial source of heavy water. The plan famously failed and subsequently drove the company out of business.
HEARD IN THE WIND
“Haulers take heed or the death for which this Banshee keens will be your own.”
– Old Folk Saying“Take the worst, most awful place in the ’verse, and you can be damn sure there’s not only someone who wants to live there, but who will think you’re crazy for wanting to live anywhere else. These are my people.”
– Senator Junger Ries, Lorona, address to constituent dinner, 2943
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…-Banshee-System
Sponsored by Klaus & Werner
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.< BEGIN TRANSMISSION >
I’m Garret Coliga and welcome to another episode of TRACKER with all the latest news, tech and tips from around the bounty hunting ’verse. So settle in, we’ve got a good one for you.
Today’s show is brought to you by Klaus & Werner, makers of reliable energy weapons like the Model II Arclight. Trust me, I’ve used one of those bad boys for years and it’s never done me wrong. So, if you’re in the market for a new energy weapon for your ship or personal loadout, do what I do and start your search with Klaus & Werner.
Let’s dig into some official Bounty Hunter Guild news by checking the HotSheet. Remember these bounties are considered current as of the recording of this show, but might not stay that way. As always, check with your local Bounty Hunter Guild branch or the nearest law enforcement agency to confirm which bounties are active in your area.
Here’s one I haven’t seen before. Tre Wiebo is wanted for what’s being described as eco-terrorism in Gurzil. Apparently, this guy has been targeting miners in the system as a form of protest. He’s also been leaving copies of his manifesto after each attack. In it he goes into great detail saying how we must protect Gurzil so it can “naturally form.” Seems Mr. Wiebo has become very attached to this swirling mass of protoplanets to the point of violence.
Now, although to date, Wiebo has not killed anyone, his MO is to disable mining vessels with EMP strikes before delivering damage that’s devastating to the ship, but not life-threatening to its crew. Basically, this guy’s goal is to keep mining ships from leaving the system with the resources they’ve collected. Even though Wiebo isn’t dangerous in the traditional sense, he’s a gifted pilot who is extremely skilled at non-lethal combat. My recommendation would be to approach him on the ground if at all possible.
Next, we’ve got several credible reports of “Hot” Rod Rettenmund being spotted in two systems. The notorious ship jacker seemingly vanished over two years ago after escaping Tanys’ Advocacy Office and swiping one of their Stalkers. Ever since, his trail has been colder than the streets of Jele City.
That all changed four days ago when “Hot” Rod was spotted by multiple face-recs in the Fora System. Those reports were followed by a more recent update of him in Nemo where his trail seemed to indicate that he was desperately searching for a top-of-the-line scanner. No word on what spooked him out of the hole he was hiding in, but if I were a betting man, he appears to be making a run into Banu space through Corel. Of course, he’s surprised us before, so nothing can be certain with this guy.
Hearing about the reappearance of “Hot” Rod Rettenmund got me thinking about an old friend of mine, Louise Boyd. She’s carved out quite an interesting niche for herself by working cold cases. She agreed to come on the show to talk to us about this often forgotten aspect of bounty hunting. Great to have you here, Louise!
Louise Boyd: Hey there, Garret. Thrilled to join you. Quite a show you’ve got here.
Thanks. So you’ve built your reputation around finding criminals who have seemingly vanished. Many bounty hunters avoid cold cases due to their difficulty and low clearance rate, so why’d you decide to start working them?
Louise Boyd: Necessity more than anything else. There was a time about thirty years ago when I was running out of options to earn an honest living, so I walked into my local Bounty Hunter Guild branch and asked about opportunities.
At that time, I didn’t have any experience hunting criminals, but I’d grown up hearing stories from my grandfather, who was a respected bounty hunter himself. All those years, while he was entertaining me with his stories, turns out he was really teaching me bounty hunting tradecraft. Though in hindsight, it was a bit like thinking I could be a pilot because I had seen a photo of an M50 once.
You still recall anything you learned from his tales?
Louise Boyd: Absolutely! The first point that comes to mind is also the one thing I tell any young and hungry bounty hunter that asks me for advice — the best catch is a peaceful one.
My grandfather’s favorite stories were never about big gun battles or epic dogfights. Once he located his bounty, he loved to use deception. It allowed him to get in close and create confusion right before making the arrest. One he loved to tell involved him dressing up as a food delivery guy and knocking on this guy’s door with a fake order.
I think nowadays hunters call that “Baggin’ a Benny.” Did your grandfather inspire you to work cold cases?
Louise Boyd: Not that I recall.
So what drew you to them?
Louise Boyd: To start? To be honest, it was the lack of competition. Same reason I always ate the licorice flavored Gelbees growing up. I went after the high paying jobs at first like everyone else, but surprise, surprise, bounty hunters with years more experience or connections would beat me to the punch. I just hadn’t built up the skills or knowledge I needed to compete on that level, yet there were these piles of cold cases just sitting there that no one else wanted to touch.
I knew most people avoided cold cases because of the reasons you mentioned above, but I figured it would give me the chance to work a case at my own pace, and if I made an error or two, the stakes were much lower. So I picked one involving this woman who ran a ship insurance fraud ring for years, then vanished only days before the Advocacy was set to indict her. Turns out, I got lucky and ended up figuring out where she went.
Don’t be so modest, Louise, you’re one of the best bloodhounds I know. Which makes me wonder, why have you stuck with cold cases all these years?
Louise Boyd: Well, there are a few reasons. Generally, they’re safer than chasing normal bounties. Sometimes, it’s because the bounty has been hiding so successfully that they never see you coming. Other times, they’ve lived in fear of being captured for so long that they’re almost relieved you found them. I’m sure that sounds funny to some of your listeners, but everyone carries guilt in their own way. Many of my easiest collars come on people who did horrific things decades ago, and have had to live with that guilt while going unpunished.
Also, there’s no better feeling than contacting a family to tell them you’ve closed a cold case that affected them. The feeling is, well, almost indescribable. Being able to provide closure to people who never thought there was a chance for it.
That’s some really inspiring stuff, right there. So we need to take a quick commercial break. When we return, Louise is going to share with us her top five tips to help you crack that cold case. Plus, we’ll walk you through adjusting the scope on a Klaus & Werner Arrowhead sniper rifle to make sure you’re taking the perfect shot. That and more when TRACKER returns.
< TRANSMISSION BREAK >
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spec…CKER-Cold-Cases
10 for the Chairman Episode 85
The Chairman Returns! This week, Chris Roberts answers 10 questions from our development subscribers.
03:40 – Drake Ejection Seats
07:10 – Gamescom
09:27 – Pirating Notifications
11:08 – Focused Updates
17:44 – E3
19:18 – NYX
21:11 – AI Opponents
23:23 – CryEngine SC Development
25:24 – Hangar and Universe Module
26:54 – Vanduul Harvesters
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…or-The-Chairman
“The most important thing is to have a connection to your ride. Your ship needs to be your friend, your family. Why would you ever trust your life to something you didn’t love?”
- Kyle Valentino, founder of the Lonely Hearts Dragonfly ClubThe Drake Dragonfly
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Where can you go with the Drake Dragonfly? You’re on Terra. Take a look at the horizon and pick out any point. A looming mountain, a faraway alien ocean teaming with life, a distant megapolis. You’ll be there in no time. Now you’re on Port Olisar. Crane your neck up and pick anything in the heavens. A blazing star, a desolate moon, a looming asteroid. The Dragonfly, Drake’s first ultralight ship, will take you there… and beyond!
Drake Interplanetary is fond of claiming that they build starships for the way you live; with the Dragonfly, they’ve gone an extra step and built a new way of life around the ship itself. Highly compact for easy storage anywhere and capable of traversing both space and ground, the 2947 Dragonfly changes the way we think about ships.
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Durable and inexpensive, the Dragonfly can be operated by a lone rider, a team of two or serve as part of an intergalactic ‘motorcycle gang.’ Like other Drake ships, it is designed to operate alongside other ship platforms: imagine loading up a Caterpillar with a trio of Dragonflies, flying close support and retrieval for a Cutlass Red ambulance or strafing a massive cargo ship. It’s all possible with the 2947 Drake lineup.
The new Dragonfly is available now for preorder in an exclusive yellow early adopters’ variant. A selection of other packs are also available below, including a “Ride Together” two-pack that includes both the limited edition yellow Dragonfly and the standard production black model. Whether you’re looking forward to feeling the wind in your hair as you rocket across planetary surfaces or whether you want to experience nothing but your suit and your thrusters separating you from the void, the Dragonfly is ready.
Discover the 2947 Drake Dragonfly
Not just a ship, a way of life! This brochure, straight from Drake Interplanetary, introduces this ultralight snub and the unique culture surrounding it.
Read the brochureor
DownloadFeel that? It’s pure acceleration. The Dragonfly isn’t a ship, it’s an seamless extension of your whole body. There’s nothing between you and the void... and like all great pilots, you can hear the void calling. The Drake Dragonfly is fully rated to operate in planetary orbit, deep space and beyond.
What good is traveling the stars if you’re stuck taking a bus at your destination? The Drake Dragonfly doesn’t just tear up the spacelanes, it effortlessly adapts to planetary ground travel, both on and off-road! Whether you’re blazing trails on a newly discovered world or just want to run circles around the 9-to-5 crowd on their commute, there’s no other choice.
Take a good look at the Dragonfly, because under normal circumstances all you’re going to see is its dust. The Dragonfly is built around a simple philosophy: there’s nothing more important than acceleration and manoeuvrability. The fully open pilot’s seat and the rear-facing passenger slot allow the Dragonfly to behave more like a surgical instrument than a ship. Go ahead, leave them all behind.
Who says you can’t take it with you? You already know the Dragonfly goes where you go... and it’s also designed to live how you live. With the smallest available footprint and a compact design, the Dragonfly can easily stow away in an over-crowded garage, the tightest hangar or the smallest capital ship. Because part of owning a reliable machine should be having it there when you need it.
Don’t just be the first to own a new Dragonfly, show the world. The Drake Dragonfly is being produced in a launch-exclusive yellowjacket-and-chrome paint scheme to inaugurate a new kind of travel. This scheme is available only through authorized pre-orders. See your Drake Interplanetary dealer today, before it’s too late.
Want to get where you’re going without so much flash? The standard production model of the Dragonfly includes the Singularity paint scheme, featuring a deep black look with matte highlights. It’s elite sophistication and genuine class for a ship that doesn’t need to beg for either. Other color options are available, see your local Drake Interplanetary dealer for details.
You already know how reliable the Drake Caterpillar platform is. We’re pleased to announce that the Dragonfly has been designed specifically to work alongside the Caterpillar’s existing infrastructure. Up to three Dragonflies can be stored in each of this very hungry ship’s modular cargo units and deployed while in flight. There’s no better way to get a squadron of Dragonflies from place to place than aboard a Drake Caterpillar!
The 'Cat is designed for versatility above all else. The distinctive doors on the front and side bays allow easy transfer of goods and equipment while spaceborne, quickly expanding the ship's original search and rescue role. The cargo areas been adapted to fit a host of needs including Merchant Marine resupply ship, small-scale mobile salvage platform and traditional merchant transport.
In the Game
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.The Drake Dragonfly is intended to offer an even lighter type of utility snub ship than the Merlin or Archimedes. Though it is smaller, the Dragonfly is unquestionably meaner… and its ability to be used as both planetary and space transportation sets it apart like nothing else! (Note that the exposed cockpit means that the Dragonfly cannot re-enter; it must be carried to and from a planet by a larger ship. Like other snubs, it does not feature a quantum drive.)
When we first imagined the Dragonfly, we pictured a motorcycle gang of space pirates pouring out of a Caterpillar to take on a convoy. The Dragonfly is so inexpensive and so ubiquitous that it’s the perfect choice for a budget-conscious pirate gang… or any group that values the bottom line above strict safety limits. Beware the shipmaster who offers you a slot aboard a Dragonfly, he might just be sending you on a suicide mission!
From there, we realized that the Dragonfly would be less a ship and more an essential tool, an intergalactic pocket-knife that’s small enough, fast enough and maneuverable enough to get itself into tight spots where other ships wouldn’t dare tread. With the ability to traverse planet surfaces, the Dragonfly isn’t just the tool of a pirate… it’s useful for explorers hoping to get the lay of the land or anyone else wanting to move from place to place quickly.
How much fun is the Dragonfly? You’ll find out sooner than you expect! Star Citizen’s designers have already begun setting up this new ship in the engine… because we’re as excited to jet around with so much freedom, too! Keep following the Comm-Link for updates on the Dragonfly’s status. We hope you enjoy this ‘different’ concept and we can’t wait for everyone to go riding on the spacelanes!
Caterpillar Update
Caterpillar Update
Drake’s smallest ship isn’t the only one in the works right now… we’re also building out their largest! Cloud Imperium’s engineers, designers and artists are working to bring the Caterpillar into the engine as we speak. Since the Dragonfly is intended to complement the Caterpillar, we’ve decided to offer you a sneak peek at some of that work. Keep following the Comm-Link for more on the Caterpillar, including a behind-the-scenes look at the work going into it in an upcoming Around the Verse!
Like all Drake ships, the Caterpillar has versatility in its DNA. With multiple cargo bays available to be repurposed for a multitude of functions, the Caterpillar’s modular design allows it to be perfect for everything from armored cargo hauls to effective search and rescues. And, when paired with the new 2947 Dragonfly, the Caterpillar can add one more role to its already impressive roster: a mini carrier. That’s right, the Cat can launch Dragonflies directly from the cargo hold as protection fighters or as agile scouts!
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.ATV Excerpt – Behind the Scenes of the Dragonfly
Concept sale
About the Sale
The Dragonfly 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 or to fight in Star Citizen. The sale includes Lifetime Insurance on the ship hull and a pair of decorative items for your Hangar. A future patch will add a Dragonfly poster and then once the in-game model is finished you will also be given an in-game Dragonfly mini ship model! In the future, the ship price will increase and the offer will not include Life Time Insurance or these extras. Dragonfly model will be the yellow version.
If you’d like to add one to your fleet, they’re available in the pledge store until June 27, 2016. You can also view a detail of the Dragonfly in the Holo Viewer in the Tech Overview of the ship page, and be sure to enjoy the Drake Dragonfly brochure, an in-universe artifact straight from Drake Interplanetary headquarters!
As with every Concept Sale, we will also be doing a Q&A post. For the Drake Dragonfly, we’ll be taking questions here in this thread and posting the answers next week. Look for the Comm-Link Schedule next week to find out when that post will go up!
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. In the case of the limited-edition yellow scheme Dragonfly, a limited number proportionate to those sold will be made available in the ‘Verse upon ship launch for players who do not want to purchase during this sale. Going forward, Drake will produce the black variant for in-game sales.
Additionally, please note that the Dragonfly will be entering the ship pipeline now, it has been fast tracked for engine integration, with designers already working to enable it in-game. All decorative ‘flare’ items will also be available to acquire in the finished game world. The goal is to make additional ships available that give players a different experience rather than a particular advantage when the persistent universe launches.
Wallpaper Gallery
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Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…Drake-Dragonfly
Star Citizen Alpha 2.4 Available!
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.Star Citizen Alpha 2.4 is now live! This major update to Star Citizen’s persistent universe is now available in your launcher. Alpha 2.4 introduces the first iteration of in-game persistence and shopping, as well as major changes to the controls, updates to the ship roster (including making the massive Starfarer flyable in-game), bug fixes, balance updates and more! In short, this is our biggest and most important update since Star Citizen Alpha 2.0.
You can read all about the new systems below, and find a complete list of changes in the 2.4 Patch Notes here.
Ship Updates
Starfarers Take Flight!
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Star Citizen Alpha 2.4.0 welcomes the Stafarers to the skies! Not only has the base Starfarer become flight-ready, but the Gemini variant is being introduced as well and will be hangar and flight-ready too! These massive tankers have multiple decks and crew support for seven people, making it our largest flyable ship in-game so far.
If you missed out on your chance to pick up either the Base Starfarer or the Gemini variant, both are now on sale! These ships will be available on the pledge store through 6/20.
You can read more about the Starfarer in our original post here!
Hangar Ready Reliant!
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.In addition to the Starfarer duo, Alpha 2.4.0 introduces the MISC Reliant to the hangar!
With a larger cargo hold than the Aurora ES or the Mustang Alpha, the Reliant is a natural choice for anyone engaging in short-haul shipping. And that cargo space also means there’s plenty of internal room to expand, allowing the placement of medical systems, weapons racks and more. Ultimately, though, the Reliant is no transport: it’s a sleek and maneuverable utility ship more than capable of holding its own in combat!
You can read more about the Reliant in our original post here!
Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The goal is to make additional ships available that give players a different experience rather than a particular advantage when the persistent universe launches. Ship types sold during limited sales will be available to earn in the finished game.
Amon & Reese Pyroburst
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.This patch also brings another potential deadly weapon to your arsenal! Going forward, we want to put more emphasis on creating mechanically interesting ship weapons, rather than extra multiples of classics like the laser/ballistic cannons.
We are excited to introduce you to the Amon & Reese Pyroburst. The Pyroburst is a size 3 plasma scattergun, firing 8 proximity detonating plasma rounds per shot. This bad boy is great for a defensive loadout on a turret or a boom and zoom loadout on a fighter.
You can pick up the Pyroburst on the Voyager Direct Store here!
Persistence
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.That’s right, you read that correctly. Our Persistent Universe is finally persistent! The backend functionality has been completed and there are several things that you do in the game that will carry over between sessions. Many of these are detailed below, but include things like purchased items in shops, Alpha UEC balance, and hostility level.
Adding persistence is a huge milestone and a crucial addition to the game that will affect nearly every aspect of Star Citizen, and this is only the beginning! A ton of back-end work was completed in order to make this possible and we are looking forward to the updates to come as we continue to expand and flesh out this core foundation of the game!
Alpha UEC
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.With this release we are implementing a brand new currency, called “Alpha UEC”. This currency exists purely as a test currency and is designed to test out economy balance, item pricing, mission rewards, and more. We’ll monitor the activity of the initial wave of Alpha UEC and improve and iterate on the features mentioned. At any point this currency, and anything purchased with it, can be wiped so that a clean slate can be instituted and we can begin a new cycle of testing. (Anything purchased with real UEC on the Voyager Direct site will still be available and will persist as it previously did.)
As well as rewards, you will now also be charged for services at Cry-Astro. This is an initial implementation so some services are “all or nothing” in that, for instance, you cannot repair specific items on your ship – you have to repair the whole thing.
Shopping
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.It’s time for a Shopping Spree! With 2.4.0. we finally release the first iteration of purchasable items in shops. We have a few different shops open for business with more to follow soon after. They offer a variety of merchandise that can be purchased with our brand new currency Alpha UEC. For this iteration, you can also use this interface to equip an item you’ve already purchased. Proper storage and inventory solutions will come at a later date.
Casaba Outlet
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Casaba Outlet can be found at Area18 as well as Port Olisar and sells a variety of shirts, jackets, pants, hats and shoes. Each individual piece of clothing can be interacted with and purchased. Looking at an item in AR Mode displays the price, manufacturer, product description, and two Use Verbs: “Try On” and “Purchase”. “Try On” allows you to view how the item would look before making a purchase. Selecting “Purchase” will take the player to the purchase summary screen. The price of the item is listed, as well as a product description, the amount of credits the player has available, a button to confirm the purchase is present and a large “X” at the top right to cancel the purchase and close the window. Selecting “Purchase” will deduct the price from the player’s AUEC balance and equip the item on the player. Once the item has been purchased, you can come back to the shop to re-equip the item at any time with the “Equip” option.
Cubby Blast
Cubby Blast can be found on Area18 and sells weapons, ammo, medpacks, armor, and flight suits. The interface for interacting with items in Cubby Blast is very similar to Trying and Purchasing clothing at Casaba Outlet. For weapons, you can “Inspect” instead of “Try On.” The main difference here being when inspecting weapons, it will stay in 1P camera so you can get a feel for the item in your hands. In addition to weapons, there is also a variety of Armor Sets and several new RSI Flight Suits. (Treated in the same manner as clothing when it comes to the Use Verbs.)
Live Fire Weapons
Live Fire Weapons is the resident personal weapon vendor on Port Olisar in the space above Crusader. It too sells weapons, ammo, and medpacks. The interface for interacting with items in Live Fire Weapons is the same as Cubby Blast.
Garrity Defense
Garrity Defense is where you can go to purchase body armor and some of our brand new RSI flight suits. It is located on Port Olisar as well. The interface for interacting with items in Garrity Defense is the same as Casaba Outlet. Helmets and armor are packaged together into a single purchase.
Clothing Lockers
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Leaving the station without a proper space suit equipped will result in death. You now have two outfits you can switch between – a set of clothing you can wear indoors and your flightsuit. You will wake at Olisar wearing your indoor clothing. If you plan to head out into space you will have to change into your flightsuit or risk explosive decompression in the airlock. You can change your outfit in two locations – in your bedroom with a new wardrobe, or at the valet units beside every airlock.
You will find a wardrobe in your bedroom which will switch your clothes between civilian and spacesuit.
Missions and Rewards
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.Crusader Security has noticed that its currently unmanned security post is regularly subject to trespass, theft and systems tampering. They are now contracting out the facility’s security to those they have noticed doing lawful work.
You should be rewarded for missions by the amount shown in the mobiGlas beneath the objectives for the mission.
Some mission reward bonuses such as the PI mission awarding a bonus the next time you go to Olisar if you complete the mission in the “good” way. And the security guard mission rewards bonuses for every trespasser you kill at Kareah.You can now earn UEC by scavenging whisky and cigars. You will find these around Yela and also dotted around some of the ICC probe asteroid missions. There is a cheeky noodle based decay box in there too.
LiveWorks AR
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.With 2.4.0. we have released a new app in the mobiGlas that enables Port Modification Mode. This mode causes “Item Ports” to appear in the Hangars that you can use to customize your hangars in ways not able to previously. There are 2 different types of Item Ports currently: Ports that hold ships and Ports that hold flair objects. Clicking on an Item Port will bring up a list of available items via the player mobiGlas app. This list contains the following: the name of the currently placed item (none if the port is empty), a list of items the player possesses that can be placed at this port, the “Remove” button to take the currently placed item off the Item Port and place it back in the inventory, and the “Cancel” button to exit the item list without making any changes. The player can access the item list by selecting an Item Port, or by selecting the Modification App button from the front page of mobiGlas, however this method only allows you to place items if you selected an Item Port first.
Ships and Customization
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.As mentioned above, ships can be placed on an item port just like flair, as long as the port is a ship spawner. These Item Ports can be found on the landing pads in each Hangar; interacting with one of these will bring up a list of ships the player owns (as well as other vehicles, such as the Greycat). In addition, once a ship has been placed in the Hangar it will have Item Ports on it for the weapon hardpoints, shields, thrusters, etc. These components can be swapped out and customized (as long as the player has components that fit in their place). It works in exactly the same way as placing flair; once you interact with an Item Port a list of items that can fit in that port will be displayed. This will allow players to change weapon loadouts, swap out missiles or ammo, and change shields among other things.
Hangar Selection
With this release we have transitioned the hangar configuration functionality from the website to the Main Menu. In the main menu (accessed by pressing escape on your keyboard, and clicking “Options”) you can select which hangar you’d like to load. For this release we’ve restricted the hangars to one stock bay each. In the future you’ll be able to use the Port Modification app to expand your hangar and add new bays.
Control Changes
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.As Star Citizen has expanded, moving on from its early days as a Flight only space sim to bring in On Foot and EVA modes, the game’s control scheme has become more and more esoteric and disjointed – the intention then, with a redesign of the game’s default control mappings, was to re-evaluate the placement of the most important actions while also unifying them across all modes as much as possible.
Giving important actions more intuitive placement on each device was an obvious requirement – and this was what we tackled first – bringing MobiGlas for example, with its ever increasing usability, right to the fore. From then, we needed to delve into the unification. So how then do you start to bring things together across all 3 modes (Flight, On Foot and EVA)? For this we identified two very important factors to inform the design.
Firstly, we looked for commonalities between the three different modes of gameplay – this resulted in us viewing EVA as a possible cipher. EVA is the in-game bridge between On Foot and Flight – so we looked to see if it could also bridge the controls as well. From here the unification work was guided using the question of “When the player runs and jumps off a platform – should the jump button continue to push the player up?”. We said “yes” and developed on from there.
Secondly, we felt that the old mappings weren’t the best at utilising 6DOF, so we wanted to see if there was a way to improve in this area at the same time. Improving the ease in which a player could move between the 6DOF actions as well as making it possible for the player to layer these movements together (without too much trouble) were the key points we identified to improve 6DOF gameplay.
Before moving on to show what has been unified, let’s first dig down a little into what it actually means to unify the controls. As we worked through the unification process, we realised there were two different types of unification to consider: Global and Contextual. Breaking these two ideas down should hopefully explain our approach in more detail.
Global unification covers both the consistent placement of actions that exist in all modes – for example, previously, changing the camera view on gamepad was different for Flight and On Foot modes – and also the grouping of actions sensibly for the device across all modes – here the example is making all the keys used in movement always be the same in all modes.
Contextual unification carries this idea further getting sensible matching keys for similar actions that exist in the different modes. The best example here (that also demonstrates how much Global and Contextual overlap) is sprint from (On Foot) matching up with boost (Flight); two different actions that make perfect sense to go together and create a unified “go faster” movement key.
Expanding this idea further still, we have the grouping of keys in the same mode contextually. The example here being Free Look on [ Z ] and Look Behind on left [ ALT ] + [ Z ]. These actions were considered related because they activate different ways of viewing the game.
And also – carrying unification on to the very extremes – we wanted to explore the potential for keeping these contextual actions grouped between devices – so that when we paired actions together on the keyboard mapping we would consider, could they also be paired on the gamepad?Clearly then, this was always going to be a complicated process – but one that if we could get right would help remove some of the control boundaries SC had created over the past year. Moving on then, lets outline the unification achieved.
Global Unification
These actions are consistent across all modes (per device):
• Movement
• Pause & MobiGlas
• Contacts, Chat and 2D UI Cursor
• Interact / Use
• Cycle Camera View
• Freelook / Orbit Cam
• ModifiersContextual Unification
The tables below show which actions have been paired up between each device.
Keyboard:
On Foot / EVA Flight Move Forwards / Backwards Throttle Up / Down Strafe Left Right Strafe Left / Right Aim Up / Down Pitch Up / Down Aim Left / Right Yaw Left / Right Lean Left / Right Roll Left / Right Jump, Strafe Up Strafe Up Crouch, Strafe Down Strafe Down Primary Attack Weapon Group 1 Weapon Stance / Walk IFCS mode shift Reload Reticle Focus Sprint Boost / Afterburner Use Item Launch Countermeasure Cycle Item Cycle Countermeasure Melee Missile Lock / Fire Force respawn Self-destruct Change Fire Mode Decoupled Mode Toggle EVA Brake Spacebrake Gamepad:
On Foot / EVA Flight Move Forwards / Backwards Throttle Up / Down Aim Up / Down Pitch Up / Down Aim Left / Right Yaw Left / Right Weapon Stance / Walk IFCS mode shift Select Firearms Targeting Sprint Boost / Afterburner Change Fire Mode Automatic Landing Primary Attack Weapon Group 1 Use Item Launch Countermeasure Force respawn Self-destruct As you can see by the tables, it was a lot easier to do the contextual unification with the keyboard than the Gamepad (due to its obvious limitations for a game as complex as SC). In fact, the Gamepad’s problems were essentially this fundamental clash between the unification we wanted and the potential detriment to player usability. And, as our revisionary design process went on, there were plenty of times where it felt like we were punishing QA with our unified schemes…
In the end then, compromises were made on the Gamepad. As mentioned earlier, on the keyboard we made sure that Freelook and Look Behind were on the same key – Look Behind being the modified version of the same key – as we felt like it made contextual sense to do so. However, it was determined that the Decouple Toggle was a more important action than the Look Behind – so we made the Decouple Toggle the modified version of Freelook instead (activated with the combined press of [ LB ] + [ R3 ]). The thumbstick clicks being better placement for important actions due to the player not needing to relax the sticks during a dogfight.
Another example of this on the gamepad was the choice to make Roll the primary action on the [ LS ] X-axis instead of Strafe Left / Right – which would have matched with on foot and EVA. The decision ultimately was that Roll was more useful in Flight – relegating Strafe Left / Right to the modified version of the [ LS ] X-axis.
As for the keyboard, while it clearly had more real-estate to play with, there were still limitations to find ways around. For us, the importance of not having to move the keyboard hand away from the movement keys was pivotal. And it was this that the keyboard placement was built around; what do we need to fit around WASD to make SC easier to play?
We believe the new Keyboard and Mouse layout makes it easier for the player to potentially strafe up/down, strafe left/right, roll left/right, yaw left/right, pitch up/down, fire weapons, fire countermeasures, boost and more simultaneously… without shifting the keyboard hand position. A big factor in this improvement was to bring in [ SPACEBAR ] and left [ CTRL ] as the strafe up and down keys – so that the thumb and pinkie fingers could be used as part of the movement controls.
Obviously, allowing the pinkie and thumb to come into play in this manner was done to match things up with the on foot and EVA modes, but there was more to it than that in the end. Selecting these keys, freed up some more keys near to WASD for other actions – allowing us to rethink which pivotal controls should be within easy reach.
Clearing other actions off of the [ F ] key has allowed us to pin this key down as a contextual “interact” action. This means that in all situations the player can think of the [ F ] key as the only way of initiating or activating – clearing up another problem we had with our old USE key being used to strafe down. Also, in the long term, we’re going to need to lean on this key even heavier as we expand upon the player interactions via the Inner Thought system.
We then chose to utilise the [ R ] key for the reticule focus action – meaning the closet targeting action was the one that allowed the player to lock onto the thing they were looking at. Hopefully simplifying things on that front too.
These changes did pose one fairly complicated issue; what to do with spacebrake? Since we had opted to move it off of the space key for the strafe up action. I think it’s interesting to walk through the problems this created, and the controversial way in which we looked to fix it that we ended up dropping.
The functions of spacebrake are first to slow the ship throttle to 0 and then second to return to the starting throttle when released. Trouble was, double tapping [ S ] would set the throttle to 0 as well, so the only thing spacebrake was adding that was unique was the return to previous speed functionality. After considering this, we wondered if it was not better to place the action behind a modifier to free up space for other actions. However, when we tried putting it behind the modifier on [ X ], the feedback was overwhelmingly negative – due to how often the key is used by SC players. Here’s the feedback from our QA:
“This is such an awkward and counter-intuitive key combination to press, for something that a player would expect to be able to do instantly and in the heat of combat maneuvers. It discourages the use of space brake. And it is much more difficult to press in intense situations such as maneuvering and combat.”
Community feedback also confirmed this strong dislike! So we were left with no option but to look at installing the action back as a non-modified key press. The problem now of course, was that we didn’t have a place for it. Thus, another round of key juggling was needed. This actually resulted in the moving of the freelook key to [ Z ] and the landing mode back it its original place on [ N ].
I think it’s also worth addressing our decision to put the Gamepad throttle on the on the [ LS ] too. While some might point to this as an example of the unification going too far, we think that would be overlooking the benefits of the unification and of having an analog control of the throttle. Using the relative analog control on the [ LS ] means we have more granularity over the control of the throttle. As it was, the gamepad used a digital throttle the same as the keyboard – which we felt was not really making the best use of the anaolg controls at our disposal. Some have likened this new setup to be like a “mini HOTAS” which we are pleased with.
Leaving [ CAPSLOCK ] empty was, at first, something we didn’t think would be possible – giving up a key so close to the movement actions. We wanted [ CAPSLOCK ] to be free since SC is a game, that as it grows, will rely more and more on in-game communication. We really wanted to avoid the frustration of the “accidental shout” if it was possible.
Those that peaked ahead to the mappings might have spotted the Tab key being empty – this was done with a view to new control features coming soon. We definitely didn’t want to get stuck without a place for something we’ve deemed to be so important to S42…
Hopefully then this report has helped to explain just how much work has gone into this controls revision process as well as highlighting the improvements we’ve made to make the controls in SC unified for 2.4.0.
However, if you’re really reluctant to change then we’ve still got you covered with our new legacy mapping profiles. So as part of this redesign we made sure to include the old control schemes as loadable profiles – we’ve created layout_gamepad_Legacy and layout_keyboard_legacy mappings that can be loaded in in the Advanced Controls Customisation menu or by using the command pp_rebindkeys in the console. Just press [ ` ] and then type in pp_rebindkeys layout_keyboard_legacy or pp_rebindkeys layout_gamepad_legacy to revert back.
NEW CONTROL LAYOUT
Throughout the course of Star Citizen's development, we have made lots of changes to our control scheme. In this, 2.4 provides another major revision to our controls. To help, we've put together this handy PDF file that Citizens can use to help with the adjustment.
Download the 2.4 Control SchemePTU Testing
Externer Inhalt robertsspaceindustries.comInhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.We want to thank all of the incredible PTU testers for their patience and dedication in helping us get 2.4 out the door! We are very proud to have such a supportive community and could not have done it without them!
Since 2.4.0 was pushed to PTU, 492 Evocati accounts (our NDA test group) logged in 26,502 times over eight builds, providing 1,401 bug reports of various severity levels.
In total during 2.4.0 testing, where PTU 1st Wave and all Subscribers were added, 8,582 accounts logged in 185,009 times over the twenty builds of 2.4.0 on PTU, adding 3,086 bug reports… and 65 accounts logged into all 20 builds!!
This has become an instrumental component to testing a build before it goes to Live. We’ll be adding to our Evocati and PTU ranks later this summer, and the best way to get involved is by helping contribute to existing bug reports on the Issue Council, or adding new reports if one doesn’t exist!”
See you in the ‘verse!
Quelle: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//153…ha-24-Available
