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How has the mission creation process become more efficient by adopting a modular process? In this episode of Inside Star Citizen, the Mission Feature Team will walk us through how it works while also uncovering how mission modularity is beneficial to both the creators and players alike.
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Eigentlich sollte Alpha 3.18 einen neuen Meilenstein für Star Citizen darstellen. Das bisher größte Update für die Weltraum-Simulation sorgt aber für mehr Frust als Begeisterung.
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This article originally appeared in Jump Point 6.04.
Origin 300 Series
POINTS OF ORIGIN
Origin Jumpworks unveiled their X3 prototype at the 2889 Terra Air and Space Show, sending a shock to aerospace watchers and industry insiders alike: a company previously known for fusion engines and industrial transport ships was looking to take on the competitive single-seat market with a bold new aesthetic that looked like nothing else in the galaxy. While only a one-off technology and ‘look’ demonstrator, the reception of the X3 made it clear that the company was capable of competitive single-seat starcraft design and that there was an audience for their new design philosophy: there’s room for style in the vacuum. Emboldened by the public’s reaction to their new charge to combine aesthetic and utility, Origin began the conversion to single-seat manufacturer. There followed nearly a decade of work to develop a marketable ship and expand design facilities and factories for mass production of the final spacecraft.
The X3 programme had been headed by Otto and Andreas Lang, brothers and aerospace wunderkinds who were known for melding form and function. The Langs were not yet 35 when they were recruited from Seal Corporation to oversee advanced plasma manifold development at Origin. It was a position the brothers held only briefly: together the pair threw out the current design and outlined their own more efficient version in the first six months. Thanks to profits generated from that change, within a year they were appointed to head up the highly experimental X3 programme. The ultimate vision, they insisted, was clear from the start: manufacture a single-seat luxury spacecraft that incorporated clean, modern design. “Many creatures create tools,” Andreas would preach, “but Humanity is defined by a more sacred ability to appreciate beauty and to use that appreciation to create art.” It was their calling, then, to design spacecraft that would maintain our innate Humanity as we reached to ever-further stars and expanded beyond the ability to maintain a singular society. In the wake of the X3’s success, each brother built out his own team: Otto, the younger of the two, to shepherd the 200 series observation craft and Andreas to design what the company saw as its crown jewel: the 300 series personal spacecraft.
Andreas stacked his design team with fanatics, idealists after his own heart who believed in making sure the 300’s styling would carry some higher ideal. The resultant team was an eclectic mix: standard ship design specialists focused on areas like power plants, thrusters and life support, while outsiders from other industries were brought in to work on aesthetics, comfort and the general feel of the ship.
Despite all of this, a major factor in the 300’s success came not from the design think tank on the Rhine, but instead from the depths of the United Empire of Earth’s legal system. In 2898, the high court passed down a verdict in Pressman v. United Empire of Earth that allowed civilian craft to use the same speed safety standards that racing ships had been using for years. Pressman argued that with the current advances in avionics, the older safety regulations set by the Department of Transportation and Navigation were an unfair burden for modern pilots. The court agreed and the timing could not have been better for Origin: the 300 would be the first new spacecraft to take advantage of these new speed safety limits. As a result, in 2899, the 300 was one of the fastest ships available in its class. Although RSI, Drake and others quickly followed suit and produced ships that were ‘uncapped,’ Origin won popular acclaim by getting there first.
TAKING FLIGHT
The first hand-machined Origin 300 prototype (pre-production models lacked the closing alphabetic variant designators such as “-i” or “-p”) took flight at Frankfurt Cosmodrome on August 3, 2897. From a technical standpoint, the first flight was an enormous success: the prototype completed nine Earth orbits without a hitch. Additional early tests rapidly checked off the standard first flight objectives, including the Earth-Luna slingshot and the initial quantum to Io. Inside six months, 300-1 was ready to perform the first jump tests in real space. The only problem: a complete materials manifest of the current metals, alloys and components indicated that the end retail cost of the ship would be over fifteen times that of an Aurora. The company’s board, previously content to let Lang work without restrictions, stepped in. For the next fourteen months, the factions of the company fought a viscious internal battle over the 300’s production model, with a chain of executives resigning in defiance of Lang’s obstinance. Spacecraft designers and outside consultants were tasked with determining how to turn a perfect, expensive prototype into a working production model without sacrificing the soul of the machine. The result of these reworkings was a spacecraft with a sticker price roughly four times that of the contemporaneous Aurora. On December 18, 2899, the 300 series premiered at a special reveal ceremony at Baikonur to incredible acclaim. The combination of its stunning lines and incredible performance won over audiences immediately. The Origin 300 quickly became the ‘look’ of popular spaceflight — a symbol of success and a goal for everyone setting out into the galaxy. While RSI may have offered Humanity an easier path to the stars, Origin offered a collective chance to make that leap in style.
VARIANTS
The 300 series launched in 2899 with a single model: the 300i. Andreas was insistent that Origin would begin producing variants in the third model year by designing entirely new models to fulfill different specialized tasks. Origin, remembering the expense of the first prototype and the ensuing battle to lower production costs, balked at the idea. For all of the project’s rhetoric, later amplified by the series’ initial marketing, the company wanted to borrow an important aspect from RSI’s Aurora: a modular space frame designed to easily adapt variants. Like the Aurora, the 300 series would adapt the initial version into a host of different factory models built atop the standard design. By all accounts, the decision to develop variants instead of bespoke models soured Lang on the project altogether. Instead of helming the 2903 model year as previously intended, he built a smaller, separate team to construct the Origin 350r speed model. Not intended for wide sale, the 350r project allowed Lang and his most fervent acolytes a chance to build the high performance ships he desired for the racing circuit.
Over a dozen 300 series variants have been offered since the line’s inception, with the majority being minor, one-off yearly models themed for particular events, such as the Origin 320c “Imperator’s Edition.” However, two design variants have proven so effective that they have become part of the standard production run, receiving the same incremental model year improvements as the base ship. The Origin 315p was launched in 2930 as a ‘pocket explorer,’ an unusual attempt to marry the 300i’s lines with improved power output and a newly-developed scanning package. Despite the odd duck nature of the design, the 315p proved a reliable performer, with much of the success coming because smaller prospecting outfits were happy to have a dedicated spacecraft that could perform just as well, but provide the comfort and style that was often overlooked by other manufacturers.
The second long-standing variant is the 325a dogfighter, generally believed to be the result of a naval contract. No information has ever been declassified on why the UEEN might have utilized a fighting-focused 300i design, but an in-depth analysis of the ship’s properties suggest it was actually first designed as much as a decade before its 2940 reveal. In any case, the 325a adapts the 300i concept into a dedicated combat ship with upgrades to the weapons payload and the addition of a specialized targeting system.
Origin has expanded their production capabilities every year since the 300 launched, using the success of the design to finance more spacecraft that follow the same aesthetic philosophy. From the starter-level Origin 100 series to the beautiful-while-functional 600 ships to the luxurious 890 Jump flagship, Origin continues to adhere to Andreas Lang’s basic belief that the look and handling of spacecraft should speak to our deeper nature.
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Happy Monday, everyone!
Star Citizen Alpha 3.18: Lasting Legacies has launched to the live servers. This significant release represents a crucial milestone for the project, as it introduces the implementation of Persistent Entity Streaming (PES), a vital core scalable technology crucial for Server Meshing and the entire Star Citizen experience. We want to express our immense gratitude to our community who provided invaluable feedback during the PTU testing phase, which helped us get this one out the door.
We knew that a live release was necessary to continue testing at a scale only possible in the live environment. Since releasing, hundreds of thousands of you have turned up to check out the latest update. However, we understand that many of you are currently encountering issues preventing you from logging in, and for those who are able to get in, you may be experiencing a less than ideal gameplay experience.
First, we would like to apologize for the turbulence and frustration that many of you have experienced since release. While we anticipated that there might be some initial hiccups with the launch, and tried to set expectations accordingly, it is still unacceptable to us that so many of you have been unable to enjoy 3.18 properly. Please note that we we're all hands on deck working to get remaining issues resolved, and getting things running smoothly as quickly as possible. While we've already seen improvements in many areas, there's still more work to do, and the right people are on it.
In the meantime, we'd like to take a moment to highlight some vital resources at your disposal:
This page is your one-stop-shop for the latest updates on the current state of the game. We'll continue to update this page regularly, so check back often - especially if you're experiencing an issue related to connectivity or stability.
This Knowledge Base page is dedicated to highlighting the top known issues that many of you are experiencing. Most importantly it also houses any known workarounds or updates related to said issues.
It's likely that the issues you are experiencing are already reported on the Issue Council. Make sure to head over and contribute or submit a bug of your own.
Once again, we want to thank you all for your patience and support. Rest assured that we're aware of the current issues and working diligently to get them addressed so that we can all dive in and enjoy the new and exciting content in Alpha 3.18, such as the long-awaited introduction of Salvage, the Cargo Refactor, new race tracks, locations, and more.
Now, let's see what's going on this week:
This Tuesday, the Narrative team will post a Whitley's Guide on the 300 Series, originally debuted in Jump Point for subscribers.
Thursday on Inside Star Citizen, we dive deep into the modular mission system, the modular system that allows missions to be made modularly. They explain it better in the episode.
This Friday, join us for Star Citizen Live on Twitch! Guests and times to be announced later this week. You'll also receive our weekly RSI Newsletter delivered to your inbox.
We're constantly amazed at the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it's fan art, a cinematic, YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Every week, we select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and highlight it here. The highlighted content creator will be awarded an MVP badge on Spectrum and be immortalized in our MVP section of the Hub.
Don't forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for the chance to see it here!
Race The Verse - Episode 1
A group of players decided to take a crack at a version of "The Amazing Race" in the Stanton System, and the results are....well, amazing!
Watch the full video by Roshiu on the Community Hub!
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Now that the Scorpius Antares from Roberts Space Industries has been added to the 'verse, we posed a few questions to the Vehicle team about the new dedicated short-range interdiction fighter. Here are the answers, straight from the designers themselves.
Are there any advantages over the base Scorpius, such as armor, shields, and maneuverability? Will the Antares have improved speed to chase down targets over the base Scorpius?
The Antares' armor and shields are the same as the base Scorpius. However, the lack of a turret makes it lighter, so the Antares has a marginally higher top speed. For balance, its handling performance has been slightly reduced too.
Will the Antares' cockpit setup differ from the base Scorpius'? For example, will it have four MFDs instead of just two?
The cockpit setups are virtually identical, with only minor changes to the co-pilot seat to account for the extra functionality. The Scorpius was intentionally built with two MFDs, as we plan to bring back additional helmet-based MFDs in the future.
Despite losing the turret and therefore a substantial amount of its original firepower, as well as reduced angles of cover fire, the Antares still packs a punch in terms of weaponry. Would the Antares technically classify as a heavy fighter?
The Antares is still classified as a Heavy Fighter due to its remaining firepower, which, while lower in raw DPS, provides punch in alternate ways with the EMP and quantum jammer. However, it does somewhat straddle the line between a Heavy Fighter and an Interdictor.
How does the extra interdiction and EMP modules affect the Antares' signature when being scanned?
As it has more energy-hungry components and an additional powerplant to run them, the Antares' signature is higher than the regular Scorpius, meaning it can be detected more easily.
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How does the Antares' quantum enforcement device (QED) component differ from that of the RSI Mantis?
The Antares does not have a full QED, just a quantum jammer, which prevents nearby ships from using their quantum drive. The Mantis has both a quantum jammer and a quantum snare, which pulls other ships out of quantum travel. However, the Mantis does not have an EMP, like the Antares.
What advantages and disadvantages does the Antares have over, for example, the Cutlass Blue and the Vanguard Sentinel?
The key advantage is the combination of both a quantum jammer and an EMP device, whereas the Cutlass Blue and Sentinel only have one of the two. However, the Sentinel and Cutlass Blue benefit from having an accessible interior space, providing greater flexibility in role.
Will the EMP be as powerful as the Vanguard Sentinel's?
It is very similar in power to the Sentinel's, trading a slightly slower charge time for a slightly increased range. These values will likely be adjusted over time to ensure both remain competitive but different.
As the Antares is not as maneuverable or nimble as the Avenger Warlock, is the EMP's area of effect large enough to make up for this?
Yes. The Antares' EMP radius is higher than the Warlock's to account for its reduced mobility relative to the smaller ship.
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What size EMP generator will the Antares have? How many ships can the EMP take out?
The EMP generator is a bespoke item and doesn't fit within the usual component parameters. How many ships it can disable entirely depends on how close they are and their component sizes, as it's a radial effect that targets components directly.
What is the spooling time of the EMP on the Antares?
Giving concrete times for spool rates is something we wish to avoid at this point, as further balance and iteration post-launch is inevitable. Instead, it's better to think of it in a hierarchy compared to the other ships with EMP devices, such as the Sabre Raven, Avenger Warlock, and Vanguard Sentinel. Currently, the Raven is the fastest spooling, and the Antares and Sentinel are the slowest.
If someone is playing solo, can the pilot control the quantum jammer and the EMP?
No. A co-pilot is required to activate the quantum jammer and EMP.
Does the co-pilot have control of the missiles as well as the EMP?
No, the co-pilot just has access to the EMP and quantum jammer. The pilot controls the wing weapons and missiles.
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Is the e-warfare component (the EMP) of the Antares fully modular? For example, can it be replaced with the Scorpius' turret? Is the Antares a full variant of the original Scorpius?
The two ships have distinct geometry changes to the hulls, making them full variants. The components are not modular, so there is no possibility of equipping the others' items.
With the introduction of Master Modes, will the quantum jammer affect a ship's ability to quantum boost?
Yes. The quantum jammer is currently planned to interfere with the ability to quantum boost.
The possibility of extending the Scorpius' wing configuration to include the flat pattern was previously mentioned; is there any update to this?
It's still planned but low down on the priority list. We'll also be looking into other vehicles with third states (including the Dragonfly's compact state and Eclipse's tucked wings) when we do this.
What is the reasoning behind making the Antares a two-seater vs a one-seater?
Gameplay-wise, having all that on a single player would be quite overwhelming compared to splitting the load between two, especially in the heat of combat. For example, a single player having to deal with guns, missiles, the EMP, and quantum jammer when engaging a group of enemies alongside friendly ships would be too much.
Disclaimer
The answers accurately reflect development's intentions at the time of writing, but the company and development team reserve the right to adapt, improve, or change feature and ship designs in response to feedback, playtesting, design revisions, or other considerations to improve balance or the quality of the game overall.
Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and…
From RSI’s celebrated Applied Innovations division comes the latest in battlefield dominance - the Scorpius Antares.
Redesigned to house a devastating EMP device and quantum jammer, the Antares shuts down enemy combatants, leaving them open to attack or boarding.
Fully endorsed by the UEE Navy, and receiving the same glowing recommendations from the Wreckless 999th Test Squadron and Civilian Defense Force as its forebear, the Antares is the keystone of a next-generation battle fleet.
Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and…
Drake Interplanetary is proud to release the Vulture - a light industrial salvage vessel that lets you do you.
Rip and strip without the cumbersome hardware and multi-crew rigmarole of a larger ship, cut out the middleman, and answer to no one.
With the Vulture, one crew’s wreck becomes another pilot's riches.
SOLO SALVAGE
Be your own boss and take total control of navigation, defense, and the Vulture’s unique all-in-one Ripper utility rig.
Who needs a crew or a cumbersome ship when you can do it yourself in half the time?
SCRAPE WRECKS FAST AND EASY
The Vulture’s Ripper salvage rig keeps the entire operation simple. Dual integrated scraper beams, featuring Drake’s patented Tomium system, allow the operator to scrape hulls with maximum speed and efficiency.
EFFORTLESS INTAKE
The Ripper salvage rig is outfitted with a Lariot tractor beam designed specifically for the Vulture.
This industrial-grade system’s innovative beam configuration makes it more powerful than larger off-the-shelf setups, instantly pulling raw scrap into the ship. Ready for onboard processing.
ONBOARD PROCESSING
A fully integrated onboard scrap processor breaks down salvaged substances as quickly as the Lariot tractor system pulls them in, instantly processing raw scrap into sailable material.
Please note that due to issues with disrupted supply routes through the Ferron system, Vulture chassis are currently being issued minus their full processing capabilities. The necessary parts will be supplied to Vulture owners as soon as they become available.
CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN
In the Vulture, you’re truly the model of self-sufficiency. No more paying couriers, crew members, choppers, or haulers. With the onboard scrap processor and a generous 12 SCU of cargo space, you can put the weight on your shoulders and the profit in your pocket. You’re a wrecking crew of one.
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Alpha 3.18 throws open the door to the next stage of Star Citizen’s groundbreaking universe. Alongside adding immersive careers, stunning locations, and thrilling gameplay, the latest patch holds the key to true in-game persistence – one of the biggest hurdles in the pursuit of a living universe that evolves alongside its inhabitants.
Play now to discover everything Alpha 3.18 brings to the 'verse. And remember, this is just the beginning; there’s much, much more on the horizon.
Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and…
Today on Star Citizen Live, we'll discuss how the long-standing partnership between Turbulent and Cloud Imperium Games began followed by an interview with members of the Squadron 42 art team to explore how they entered the gaming industry.
Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and…
What will the role of an Engineer look like in the 'verse? Join us on another Journey to 4.0 to get a first look inside this new upcoming gameplay system.
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This is a cross-post of the report that was recently sent out via the monthly Squadron 42 newsletter. We’re publishing this a second time as a Comm-Link to make it easier for the community to reference back to.
TO: SQUADRON 42 RECRUITS
SUBJ: DEVELOPMENT UPDATE 03:01:2023
REF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX
FAO Squadron 42 Recruits.
Welcome to February’s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including enemy creatures, saving and loading, and naval behaviors.
Thank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.
Sincerely,
CIG COMMUNICATIONS
AI (Content)
Following on from their recent work of enabling characters to drink in usables, the AI Content team began setting characters up to use the mobiGlas at a variety of seats and tables.
“This is actually simpler than drinking and allowed us to get some great results in a short space of time.” AI Content
They also completed a large amount of animation polish, including a medic inspecting a patient, exiting beds from different directions and heights, and sitting on the floor feeling sick.
On the Design side, the team enabled utility characters to load boxes onto a trolley, move the trolley, and then unload the boxes to add additional life to large areas. They also began populating chapter 15 with AI characters in a variety of locations. For this, they utilized new technology to simplify the process and give them more control, the first pass of which is looking promising.
Alongside this, the bridge crew behavior in Shubin Station was refined and a first-pass setup for an interactive weapon rack was completed.
AI (Features)
Last month, the AI Features team finished work on a non-Humanoid creature AI. This involved increasing the range of animations that the creature can use, including a slow walk that allows the creature to stalk its prey, and look-poses that allow the creature to turn its head to face the target.
Improvements were also made to the code that distributes the creatures around a target when they attack in groups. This uses the formation system currently used by spaceship AI; when moving towards the target, it checks for and creates a formation around the target, with offsets designed to space the attacks equally. This implementation is currently with the designers for feedback before final adjustments are made.
AI Features continued with the medic behaviors, which allows the enemy AI to revive friends. ‘Downed’ AI are those that have taken near-fatal damage and can only be revived using a med-pen. ‘Unconscious’ AI are those that have been knocked out (e.g. by stealth takedown) and can be revived by any friendly. Recent work saw the team tidying up the different interactions and, in particular, focusing on what the AI does when encountering a downed or unconscious AI during combat. For example, if the AI is a medic, they will respond and revive their friend, regardless of condition. However, if they’re not a medic, they will call for one and any nearby will come to their aid.
Development of the buddy AI mentioned last month continued too. This now includes matching the player’s stance (e.g. crouch) and moving between cover when enemies are near.
On the animation side, the team prepared for and shot additional performance capture to replace various blockout animations.
Finally for AI Features, the team spent time re-reviewing their existing features to check that everything worked as expected as a whole. This led to them testing and fixing issues that could only be seen when all the functionality was working together.
AI (Tech)
AI Tech began February by completing the NPC Transit feature, which manages elevators and trains. Now, NPCs will understand if a transit carriage is present at their location and whether they can move directly inside, if they need to wait, or if they should press a button to call it. They will also understand when they’ve arrived at their destination and will move outside. While in the carriage, NPCs will look for a usable and idle there until they reach their destination. Upon completion, the feature was passed to Design, following which AI Tech addressed feedback and fixed bugs.
The team then allocated time to improving NPC trolley usage, ensuring that NPCs can use elevators and move trolleys with them if the behavior requests it. To achieve this, they had to write new and update existing behaviors and fix bugs related to path-following while pushing a trolley.
The team also finished the base skeleton for ‘boids’ (bird-oid objects), which will enable groups of small creatures like birds, fish, and rats. This required them to implement new components, including a system that allows designers to write rules and constraints related to spawning and movement, which were exposed to DataForge for easy access.
On the navigation-system side, AI Teach continued to work on cost area shapes that will influence the topology of navigation mesh triangles. This will enable the pathfinder to avoid or prefer to use specific areas. As mentioned in last month’s report, this will initially be used to avoid fire hazards and define sidewalks for social AI actors.
The team also progressed with navigation agent-type override parameters, which are used when creating areas with specific navigation constraints. For example, they enable an NPC to transition from standing in a regular space to crouching in a vent.
AI Tech also exposed new parameters to specify entity properties during the navigation-generation phase. Now, the designers will be able to mark entities as:
Included: The default value - the entity is processed during voxelization and the nav-mesh is generated using that object.
Excluded: One entity will be ignored during generation - for the navigation system, it will be equivalent to not having found that object.
Ignoring Walkability: The entity will cause the nav-mesh to consider it an obstacle - NPCs will not be able to walk on top of that object.
For AI tools, the team progressed their work on Apollo (the Subsumption tool) and added new functionality requested by the designers, including:
Mastergraph editing to allow users to select the default state of each parent state.
The ability to create new multigraph nodes by dragging functions from the outlier.
Support for comments inside XMLs (this was an engine-wide improvement).
Support to read object-container information related to platform creation directly from P4K files.
They also fixed several issues relating to the resizing of the node graph view.
Work continued on the usable coordinator tool, with the team adding support for multiple input types that can better specify when choosing the next usable or usable group. For example, specifying the number of usables required to determine that a group is ‘complete.’ They also fixed an issue preventing the usable group coordinator from working correctly with object containers and implemented the ability to add multiple instances of the same usable with different properties.
AI (Vehicle Features)
Vehicle Feature’s embedded AI team continued working on the new AI combat behaviors.
“We’ve had a lot of back and forth with the Design teams and directors to nail down behavior tactics that we’re happy with, and we are now working to implement and test this new combat AI.” AI Vehicle Features
Additionally, the new control surface feature for the vehicle flight system is being integrated with AI. Adjustments are being made to the AI movement systems to enable them to fly correctly and reliably with control surfaces rather than thrusters.
Animation
Throughout February, the SQ42 Animation team worked on various features, including their first creature enemy, Vanduul searching actions and threatens, ammo looting, and AI healing. They also worked on pro-style takedowns based on the recent unskilled versions; some design changes were made and responses to failed attacks were blocked out.
Background AI was developed for sick characters, medical wards, and emergency exits from object use. The team also worked on the Kastak Arms sniper rifle and began reviewing the first pass of the Titan animation rig. Zero-g grenade use for the player was also developed alongside further zero-g traversal and movement.
Various mo-cap data was captured, including a crowd watching a fight, numerous walk styles, use of hygiene cubicles, movement and stacking boxes, security weapon racks, and improved threat reactions for civilians.
The Facial Animation team worked on lines for enemies in Aciedo and captured facial forms and locomotion performances for injured and sick characters.
Art (Characters)
February saw the Character Art team continue work on the Screaming Galsons faction, including a set of cybernetic arms that the team are excited to implement.
They’re currently progressing with the high-poly stages for the navy pilot flightsuit and other navy assets. Work began on the OMC faction and the model for the enemy creature mentioned above.
Engine
In February, the Physics team made several improvements to box pruning. For example, changes were made to avoid bipartite box pruning inefficiencies, to decide when to run box pruning before obb pruning, and to significantly improve box pruning performance in general. Additional optimizations include using the spaceship's localspace obb for IFCS collision warning sweep checks to reduce the size of the checked volume. Furthermore, support for various unary and binary distance-field operations was added to the physics system as well as support for tapered capsules (aka bispheres) on articulated entities. Lastly, huge pages are now used for physical entity factories.
On the renderer, Gen12 received motion vector support for render-to-texture pipelines. Also, redundant copying of render target data for partial refractions was eliminated. Moreover, the team spent time improving ultra-wide-screen support. As one of the results, rendering of the in-game console was vastly improved, resulting in clearer text display. Improving the visor for ultra-wide screens is still being worked on. Lastly, the CPU side code for scatter queries was optimized.
For the core engine, further substantial improvements and performance optimizations were implemented for the remote shader compiler server. Work on streaming system improvements started, and the final touches on p4k v2 support for internal development tools are being wrapped up. The team also started looking into more advanced tool support for memory tracking of both the server and client.
Features (Gameplay)
Last month, Gameplay Features continued working on save and load, getting the Subsumption missions restoring correctly and back to their correct state. They set save points up in one of the missions and passed it to QA to see what wasn’t loading back in correctly so they could debug and fix it.
“We’re now getting the save time down and saving in the background so there isn’t a long stall each time.” Gameplay Features Team
They also implemented a tutorial feature for the designers. At opportune moments, they’ll be able to slow down and pause the game while bringing up instructions for a particular piece of gameplay functionality before continuing when the player achieves what’s required. They also set up consoles and datapads to run mobiGlas apps. This allows them to access the same functionality from different places or even create console-specific apps.
The new Starmap was enabled as the radar in the Gladius, which can transition between radar and full-screen modes and power on and off. The initial implementation of the new display markers was completed too.
Further polish was done on the seamless transition between the player camera and cinematic camera based on the Cinematics team’s feedback. For example, they improved the appearance when the player is moving over standing still.
Finally, the team further developed a feature that controls vehicles remotely. They can now constrain vehicles to a given area and ultimately lock them in a given place.
Features (Vehicles)
The Vehicle team spent part of the month enabling the newly redesigned quantum travel feature across various chapters in the campaign.
“It’s taken a lot of bug fixing, testing, and iteration to get to this stage, but so far it’s been going well and the new quantum travel is set to be enabled game-wide very shortly. As well as just bug fixing and testing, we’ve had lots of design feedback from the directors and we’ve been making iterations to the UI, controls, VFX, and general feel of the feature.” Vehicle Features Team
The other major area of focus was vehicle UI. The team recently received new features from UI Tech that enables them to render 3D UI on the player visor as an AR layer. This led to them building up reticles and aiming and targeting UI in this new tech as they work toward a vehicle heads-up display that integrates with the new multi-function display (MFD) system.
On a related topic, the underlying MFD tech is complete and the feature is almost usable in-game. The team now have the goal of enabling it game-wide for use in playtests by all devs in the company.
Ship radar received further work due to requests made by other teams to support their design work. Most of these came from the Level Design teams and involve mission logic manipulating the radar system to generate gameplay encounters.
Lastly, the ship-recall feature mentioned in last month’s report was fed back on, with Vehicle Features further iterating on it to improve and polish the gameplay. This involved collaboration with the AI, Flight Systems, and other Feature teams. When complete, the player will be able to use the SQ42 mobiGlas to call their ship and request it fly back to them.
Gameplay Story
Gameplay Story concentrated on mo-cap planning and polish passes last month to further improve their scenes. For example, they updated chapters 1 and 13 by completing thorough passes on the characters and reusing animations to make the scenes function correctly. They also created various new scenes by reusing old animations and using new mo-cap to add to others.
A significant scene in chapter 12 received a full pass, with a key character guiding and interacting with the player across a new environment.
The team also worked on a scene used if the player is injured and visits the medical bay to be healed. The scene was initially created using wildlines but didn't flow as well as hoped, so new animations were produced to make the character interact better with the player. Additional content was also added to allow the player to abandon and rejoin the scene.
Graphics & VFX Programming
Last month, the Graphics team continued to close out the final tasks for Gen12 before they transition to assisting in the completion of the Vulkan graphics API.
The damage-map system was converted to Gen12, and support for profile groups was added to achieve parity with profiling tools in the legacy renderer. Additionally, the render pipeline was made configurable to allow secondary viewports to balance the desired quality and cost. Finally, legacy lens flares were converted to Gen12 alongside initial support for HDR.
Support for TSAA is currently being added to secondary viewports, which will significantly improve visual quality, especially for hair. The team also submitted the first iteration of a new render-layer feature to allow easy customization of objects in the world for use with game features such as scanning and the mini-map.
For features, the Graphics team further developed several shaders, including converting LayerBlend v1 assets to the more recent v2 and adding usability improvements to the new shader. Various improvements were also made to the UI shaders, including stability fixes for anti-aliased borders, the option to render circles on each vertex, and lighting support to allow planets in the Starmap to appear both lit and holographic in a single pass.
For tools, texture processing was made significantly faster through parallelizing filtering and compression, which will be a significant improvement for the artists and build system. Work started on a new mesh format too, with the goal of vastly improving loading times and render performance.
The VFX Programming team's time was split between fire, quantum travel, and tool work. For fire, work began on decal shading to achieve glow, burn, and soot on objects within the scene. Quantum travel now has support for 'quantum casting' and ‘red shift’ along with various other code improvements. For tools, usability improvements continued and support was added for referencing particle effects from other particle effects.
The Planet Tech team worked on better shaping support for asteroid fields, improvements to the harvestable system, and adding support for instancing to terrain chunks.
Also, the Planet and Graphics teams worked together on a new water system. This is still at an early stage but aims to allow for GPU wave/ripple simulations at multiple scales as well as network-synced impacts for larger events (e.g. spaceships crashing). Shading improvements are also being made to achieve better reflections, refraction, and foam.
Level Design (Flight)
The Space/Dogfight team continued working to get all of the ship combat sections of the game flowing seamlessly into the social and FPS sections. They also continued working with the various Feature teams to get critical system updates integrated into the game flow. Last month, they further improved quantum travel and pinned targets. Save and load was also worked on alongside Gameplay Features.
Level Design (Social)
Last month, Level Design’s Social team made a concerted push on content across various chapters, including a major focus on background behaviors and schedules for the Idris. This content brings ‘interstitials’ (the connective tissue that bridges all scene content) to life. This was rolled out to one focus chapter to enable the team to see and evaluate in situ all of the Idris-specific behaviors, including the deck crew, bridge crew, utility, marines, engineers, gunners, medical, leisure, sleeping, sustenance, and hygiene. A large party scene aboard the ship progressed well too.
Narrative
A bulk of Narrative’s month was spent preparing for an upcoming mo-cap shoot. This included meeting with various stakeholders to review the content and ensure that the script reflects the latest changes, outline any potential lines they’d like to capture, and go through the casting process.
The team is also planning to use this shoot to start capturing scripts for some of the background characters (codenamed Redshirts) who will be used to populate larger spaces. These characters will utilize dynamic conversation tech along with an array of wildlines to act in a variety of careers. Narrative are aiming to capture a few of these line sets in every shoot to slowly build up numbers as opposed to scheduling them all into a single shoot. They’ll also capture additional combat sets for some of the campaign’s enemies.
Narrative continued meeting with the Design teams to walk through the latest level iterations. This is to assess if any additional content is required to support gameplay, provide guidance, or embellish the tone and flavor of the moment.
Otherwise, the team kicked off outlining the various collectibles that will be scattered throughout the game. Now that the types of collectibles have been decided, Narrative can start outlining each one so the Props team can start creating assets.
Tech Animation
Last month, the Tech Animation team were on set at Pinewood Studios in London, working alongside an outsource studio to finalize face scanning to populate the remainder of the gene pool for the head generation systems (DNA). This is relevant for both the PU and Squadron 42.
“We scanned a broad range of models, young and old, from all facets of Humanity available to us, which will go a long way to truly showing diversity in our game. The scanning went exceptionally well, our chosen outsource studio has a fantastic resource in their facial scanning rig, which delivered exceptional results. Coupled with lots of hard work and a good sense of humor, we made the most of our two weeks.” Tech Animation Team
UI
Last month, the UI Art and Design team worked on reusable signage created in Building Blocks to make things easier for the environment artists. This means they can select options from a menu and the sign is automatically generated rather than them having to create a unique texture each time.
They also continued concept work on two UI styles, ensuring they’re unique and the art direction is well received. They also produced concepts for additional MFD screen layouts and tweaked aiming and targeting alongside the Vehicle team.
UI continued to iterate on one of the in-world holographic UIs.
“As it’s the first of its kind in the game, after reviewing the prototype, we found lots of things to improve, so it had another concepting and in-game implementation pass to get it to the level we need.” UI Team
The team made an initial visual pass on the new hacking UI to make it feel more three-dimensional and holographic. UI also supported the SQ42 Feature team in setting up a universal 3D marker in the Starmap, and continued to create UI assets for the Cinematics team.
UI Tech created a color picker for use in the character customizer. They also continued to help polish the Starmap, adding space dust to make it easier to perceive movement, improving the controls, and creating cubic holo volumes. They added workflow fixes too, such as improved comments in Building Blocks, and making it easier to inspect drawn UIs.
VFX
Last month, VFX spent time cleaning up data asserts coming from various assets (including particle libraries). This was made easier by the VFX programmers who added more detailed information to the errors, including file paths for missing assets.
The team also completed their overhaul of the particle library structure, meaning older VFX can be swapped out for new and improved versions.
Finally, the team provided close support to Art, Design, and Cinematics on a variety of locations.
Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and…
Every two weeks, we accompany the Roadmap update with a brief explanatory note to give you insight into the decision-making that led to any changes. This is part of an effort to make our communications more transparent, more specific, and more insightful for all of you who help to make Star Citizen and Squadron 42 possible.
With that said, let’s go ahead and dive into this week’s Roadmap Roundup!
-CIG Community Team
Notable Changes for March 8, 2023
Release View
The following card has been added to the Alpha 3.19 column on Release View:
RSI Lynx
Building, implementing, and balancing RSI's planetary rover, the Lynx, as a game-ready vehicle.
Progress Tracker
With this publish, we're adding additional Q1 2023 and Q3 2023 schedules for downstream and upstream teams, respectively.
The following deliverable has been added to the Progress Tracker:
Additional Derelict Settlements
Settlements with both gameplay and social elements, spread throughout the Stanton wilderness using the Rastar tool.
That's all for this week! Join the discussion on Spectrum, and check out the Roadmap Companion Guide for more information on the Star Citizen Public Roadmap.
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Welcome to March, Subs. Alpha 3.18 is currently open for testing in the PTU, so if you want to experience and feedback on the upcoming patch before it hits the live servers, now’s the perfect time.
To help you get the most from your testing time, March’s Ship of the Month is the supremely versatile MISC Freelancer MAX. Outfitted with extra cargo capacity, it’s ideal for making a living shifting goods or vehicles across the ‘verse without sacrificing everyday usability.
And if you can’t bear to say goodbye at the end of the month, the Freelancer MAX is available until April 4 with enhanced insurance as part of our Subscriber Special Promotion.
If you prefer a more combative approach to life in the ‘verse, this month’s Flair is just the ticket. This exclusive collection of Klaus & Werner underbarrel lighting ensures you hit your mark in even the darkest corners of the ‘verse. (Flair will be available in the Alpha 3.18 Live patch.)
Tracer Laser Pointer (Orange)
This special edition generates an orange beam that's easy to see and identify.
Current Centurion-level Subscribers get the Tracer Laser Pointer (Orange) as part of their subscription.
Tracer Laser Pointer (Green)
This special edition generates a green beam that's easy to see and identify.
Current Imperator-level Subscribers get the Tracer Laser Pointer (Orange) and Tracer Laser Pointer (Green) as part of their subscription.
Brightspot Flashlight (Purple)
This special edition projects a purple circle that makes the beam less conspicuous from a distance.
The Brightspot Flashlight (Purple) is available to all Subscribers to pledge for from the Subscriber-Exclusive Store.
If you would like to receive this flair as part of a subscription, you can subscribe before March 11th, 2023 2000 UTC.
If you subscribe after March 11th, 2023, you can pick up these and previous months’ flair (going back to 2014) in the Subscriber-Exclusive Store. You can fill in any gaps in your collection and pick up extras to gift to non-Subscribers.
Lost Items
During play, you may find you lose your Subscriber and Pledge Store items upon death. To get them back, head to your Account Settings and initiate a character reset, which will restore any platform-attributed items you've lost in-game.
This is only a temporary solution to get your items back quickly. We're exploring various alternative recovery options that we plan to implement further down the line.
Earnable In-Game
Our goal is to make most items earnable in-game. For this reason, many Subscriber Flair items have been added to the in-game loot table as rare drops from Alpha 3.17. Most pre-2023 items that can be carried by players are available now, with new and future flair being added after a three-month exclusivity window.
NOTE: Some exclusive digital event items, such as those from CitizenCon Goodies Packs, will not be discoverable via the in-game loot system.
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Happy Monday, everyone!
Happy Monday, everyone!
Firstly, we'd like to extend a massive thank you to everyone who participated in last weekend's Alpha 3.18 PTU playtests! Your participation was monumental in helping us shore up several known problem areas, including server stability and performance. This led to a few vital hotfixes being deployed and the team getting the jump on further fixes coming down the line.
Your engagement last weekend enabled us to start tightening up the nuts and bolts on this build. Because of our success over the weekend, we are aiming to go live with Alpha 3.18 this week. We do want to set expectations that there may be some outstanding issues that can cause a server to deteriorate over time. However, the team will continue to focus on these and get additional hotfixes released as soon as possible.
For those of you looking to hang out with other enthusiasts in the flesh, check out BarCitizen.sc for a list of upcoming events. Maybe you'll hit up the Bar Citizen in Raleigh, North Carolina, this Friday or join our friends down under in Sydney, Australia, on Saturday; either way, we hope you enjoy a cold one. And remember to tell us in advance so we have the chance to join you!
Now, let's see what's going on this week:
This Tuesday, we'll publish the Subscriber Monthly Newsletter and Subscriber Comm-Link.
Wednesday brings about the Roadmap Update and the complementary Roadmap Roundup. We'll also repost last week's Squadron 42 Monthly Report newsletter as a comm-link.
On Thursday, ISC skips a week for another Journey to 4.0 special. This time it's a Design Brief episode focusing on the earliest approved blueprint for a brand-new upcoming gameplay system. Last time we learned about Investigations. What will it be this week? You'll have to tune in to find out.
This Friday, our good friend Benoit Beausejour, CTO and founder of our partners at Turbulent, is live in the studio to discuss the continuing growth of our game development studio in Montreal, which is currently responsible for many aspects of Alpha 3.18 and beyond. Join us for Star Citizen Live on Twitch at 16:00 UTC / 8 am Pacific for all the details! You'll also receive our weekly RSI Newsletter delivered to your inbox.
We're constantly amazed at the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it's fan art, a cinematic, YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Every week, we select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and highlight it here. The highlighted content creator will be awarded an MVP badge on Spectrum and be immortalized in our MVP section of the Hub.
Don't forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for the chance to see it here!
Safe Haven
In this atmospheric homage to the film-noir style, Detective Harvey Monroe of Stanton Security treads a bloody trail of deception and despair when a Huston executive is found dead alongside a mysterious stranger.
Watch the entire suspenseful video by Natronix on the Community Hub!
Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and…
This week on Star Citizen Live, we'll look inside the daily life and responsibilities of the VFX team, followed by a discussion with Executive Producer John Schimmel as he shares his journey from the entertainment industry to CIG.
Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and…
You've seen the concept art. You've seen the planning stages. Now it's time to go even deeper than before as we take you on a special whitebox tour showcasing the current development progress on new Underground Facilities.
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February was a busy month for all CIG studios, with final bug fixing for the upcoming patch alongside extensive feature and tech work for releases later this year. Read on for everything completed and in progress, including the Lorville rework, a new water system, updates to Arena Commander, and more.
AI (Tech)
AI Tech began February by completing the NPC Transit feature, which manages elevators and trains. Now, NPCs will understand if a transit carriage is present at their location and whether they can move directly inside, if they need to wait, or if they should press a button to call it. They will also understand when they’ve arrived at their destination and will move outside. While in the carriage, NPCs will look for a usable and idle there until they reach their destination. Upon completion, the feature was passed to Design, following which AI Tech addressed feedback and fixed bugs.
The team then allocated time to improving NPC trolley usage, ensuring that NPCs can use elevators and move trolleys with them if the behavior requests it. To achieve this, they had to write new and update existing behaviors and fix bugs related to path-following while pushing a trolley.
The team also finished the base skeleton for ‘boids’ (bird-oid objects), which will enable groups of small creatures like birds, fish, and rats. This required them to implement new components, including a system that allows designers to write rules and constraints related to spawning and movement, which were exposed to DataForge for easy access.
On the navigation-system side, AI Teach continued to work on cost area shapes that will influence the topology of navigation mesh triangles. This will enable the pathfinder to avoid or prefer to use specific areas. As mentioned in last month’s report, this will initially be used to avoid fire hazards and define sidewalks for social AI actors.
The team also progressed with navigation agent-type override parameters, which are used when creating areas with specific navigation constraints. For example, they enable an NPC to transition from standing in a regular space to crouching in a vent.
AI Tech also exposed new parameters to specify entity properties during the navigation-generation phase. Now, the designers will be able to mark entities as:
Included: The default value - the entity is processed during voxelization and the nav-mesh is generated using that object.
Excluded: One entity will be ignored during generation - for the navigation system, it will be equivalent to not having found that object.
Ignoring Walkability: The entity will cause the nav-mesh to consider it an obstacle - NPCs will not be able to walk on top of that object.
AI (Tools)
For AI tools, the team progressed their work on Apollo (the Subsumption tool) and added new functionality requested by the designers, including:
Mastergraph editing to allow users to select the default state of each parent state.
The ability to create new multigraph nodes by dragging functions from the outlier.
Support for comments inside XMLs (this was an engine-wide improvement).
Support to read object-container information related to platform creation directly from P4K files.
They also fixed several issues relating to the resizing of the node graph view.
Work continued on the usable coordinator tool, with the team adding support for multiple input types that can better specify when choosing the next usable or usable group. For example, specifying the number of usables required to determine that a group is ‘complete.’ They also fixed an issue preventing the usable group coordinator from working correctly with object containers and implemented the ability to add multiple instances of the same usable with different properties.
Finally for AI Tech, the team fixed and investigated issues with Alpha 3.18, including a problem with NPCs standing on chairs. This was caused by the incorrect animation setup of benches and chairs, likely due to a mannequin tag refactor that was not correctly propagated through the usable setup.
Art (Ships)
Last month, UK Vehicle Art approached the end of their work on the Argo SRV. The final art phase is in progress, including LOD and damage passes, and is expected to conclude with the final gate review and go/no-go in March.
Work also continued on an unannounced ship, which passed its LOD0 review gate and is well into the final-art phase.
A new variantmoved into the LOD0 phase after passing its greybox review in January. Detailing work on the exterior and interior is ongoing.
The Crusader Spiritcontinued its greybox pass, with a review gate taking place at the end of the month.
“While there are still a few visual design tweaks to be made, the Spirit is looking in great shape for the review.” Vehicle Art Team
The team looked at the MISC Hull C to fix any visual issues that occurred during the ongoing technical setup, while the MISC Freelanceris undergoing some interior tweaks to accommodate physicalized components.
Greybox on an upcoming vehicle progressed. Testing was done simultaneously on the modeling process to see if the team can reduce the LOD impact on production once they arrive at the final-content phase.
The Aopoa San'tok.yāiis currently in the greybox stage and is undergoing significant testing to see how far the team can take secondary motion.
“The goal for us is to make the ship feel as though it is reacting heavily to its inertia. Doing this requires that we apply blendspace animations similar to what we do with characters.” Vehicle Art Team
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Community
Throughout February, the Community team supported Coramor (Star Citizen’s take on Valentine’s Day) with a screenshot contest. In tandem, an update was released to the Community Hub that allows them to spotlight content created for specific events, take over the front page of the website, and collate community submissions for events into an archive.
“Last year’s Bar Citizen World Tour proved to be a huge success, with thousands of players meeting up in person for beverages, camaraderie, and giveaways. We have started planning many more events this year while also putting out the call for suggested locations on Spectrum.” Community Team
In support of the new Salvage mechanic, the team created a starter guide to coincide with Alpha 3.18 releasing to all waves on the PTU.
Alongside standard sentiment reporting and general communications and publishes, planning began for CitizenCon 2953 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Engine
In February, the Physics team made several improvements to box pruning. For example, changes were made to avoid bipartite box pruning inefficiencies, to decide when to run box pruning before obb pruning, and to significantly improve box pruning performance in general. Additional optimizations include using the spaceship's localspace obb for IFCS collision warning sweep checks to reduce the size of the checked volume. Furthermore, support for various unary and binary distance-field operations was added to the physics system as well as support for tapered capsules (aka bispheres) on articulated entities. Lastly, huge pages are now used for physical entity factories.
On the renderer, Gen12 received motion vector support for render-to-texture pipelines. Also, redundant copying of render target data for partial refractions was eliminated. Moreover, the team spent time improving ultra-wide-screen support. As one of the results, rendering of the in-game console was vastly improved, resulting in clearer text display. Improving the visor for ultra-wide screens is still being worked on. Lastly, the CPU side code for scatter queries was optimized.
For the core engine, further substantial improvements and performance optimizations were implemented for the remote shader compiler server. Work on streaming system improvements started, and the final touches on p4k v2 support for internal development tools are being wrapped up. The team also started looking into more advanced tool support for memory tracking of both the server and client.
The remainder of the time was spent supporting Alpha 3.18.
Features (Arena Commander)
February saw the Arena Commander team continuing to develop the Laying the Foundations deliverables for an upcoming patch. This included further work on the spawning and racing system refactors and the delivery of the refactored Rounds Module along with long-awaited bug fixes and quality-of-life changes.
The Design team focused on the conversion of a new Stanton location into Arena Commander, which will feature all standard game modes bar Classic Race.
“This location, which we'll talk about more as we get closer to release, has the team tackling some unique challenges with taking PU locations that'll help ease the process for future endeavors.” Features Team
The team also began work on an all-new atmospheric dogfighting arena, which will be the first fully atmospheric map in Arena Commander.
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Features (Characters & Weapons)
In February, the Features team continued to support the upcoming patch release with critical bug fixes, mainly for crashes and player-position desyncs.
The team also began looking at lockers and how to best create outfits as a pre-defined collection of items that can be equipped or worn in a single action. They’re currently looking at a combination of the item port and inventory systems to store and display large to small items. For example, a coat may appear on a hanger just like in the shops, whereas a small accessory item or weapon attachment could go into an inventory drawer.
Another inventory aspect in progress is allowing players to perform a reload directly from a backpack or pocket. For example, if ammunition isn't directly available from their suit, players can perform a slower reload where it’s retrieved from their inventory. However, this only works if spare ammunition has been stored prior to engaging in combat.
Features (Gameplay)
The Gameplay Features team continued their work on the tractor beam, enabling ship owners to protect their ship items by locking them using ‘lock exterior’ functionality. They also added an interaction to the Greycat Multi-Tool that will detach unlocked items from ships to allow more control over item detaching.
The team then expanded on the holo outline that Weapons Features provided to get clear feedback on the attaching rules for ship items. The QATR process for this began alongside QATRs for the Mining update.
The team continued their work on the Resource Network, which is now known as Engineering gameplay. Gameplay Features will provide a more in-depth look into this feature in an upcoming episode of Inside Star Citizen.
In the US, the PU team worked on the physicalized cargo refactor. This significant conversion has several goals:
Convert the existing cargo render proxy to actual physical entities for each cargo container. This enables them to be manually added and removed from the cargo grid using the tractor beam.
Convert all commodities, minerals, and harvestables to a new resource type. This requires refactors of the mining and refinery systems to ensure they worked with the new resources.
Recreate the Commodity Kiosk using Building Blocks to give greater flexibility with future changes.
Ensure that all missions that use any form of cargo, usually in the form of carryable two-handed entities, still work with the new cargo resource system.
Work with the Ships team to mark up all cargo grids to use the new system.
The PU team worked closely with EUPU Gameplay to ensure the conversion worked not only with the Mining and Refinery systems, but also to ensure that the new Salvage system worked with the new resource system as well.
“Once we had confirmed that cargo was properly working with the cargo grids, Chris Roberts pointed out the fact that, since ships were always destroyed upon death, the majority of cargo was destroyed, thus reducing the amount that players could interact with the new system. So, we worked with the Arena Commander Feature team to implement Soft Death on ships. This ensures that the majority of the time a ship is ‘destroyed,’ it enters a disabled state, which preserves all of the cargo within the ship so that it can be retrieved by interested parties.” USPU Team
Features (Mission)
February saw Mission Features make a few improvements to the Klescher Rehabilitation Facility, including changing the stashes to lootable containers (boxes for now). This allows them to put whatever items they want inside, such as rarer contraband alongside the typical sustenance and oxy-pens. A full stash should now contain an amount of contraband that can be returned, giving players another non-violent means to reduce their sentence. Players can now also steal minerals from other NPC inmates and, should they do it deep enough in the mines, get away without being caught.
Given these new options for generating merits, plus the new escape mission and Platinum Bay at the nearby outpost, the team decided to increase the cap on prison sentences to further punish those committing numerous felonies, though lighter sentences will remain the same.
“Mass murder now has serious consequences, leaving escape a much more tempting prospect.” Mission Feature Team
Several unannounced missions continued to be prototyped. One of which sees players escorting ships as they quantum travel and land at various locations, potentially allowing players aboard to carry out tasks.
Finally, after inheriting ownership of the Reputation System, the team began designing out the system as a whole alongside prioritizing which work comes first.
Features (Vehicles)
Last month, the Vehicle Feature team mostly focused on the transit system, which was heavily refactored for the release of Persistent Entity Streaming.
“As we’ve been pushing through the various PTU waves to release Alpha 3.18, more and more issues have arisen. Most transit bugs do not present locally on machines, so we’ve developed a system where we can remotely log the transit system and observe what happened after a bug occurs. This has been extremely helpful in finding various bugs in the PTU.” Vehicle Features
For releases further ahead, new features were added to the flight system and some older systems were refactored in support of one of the Ship team’s unannounced vehicles.
Finally, the MISC Hull C received a significant amount of low-level tech updates as the team worked through its issues.
Graphics, VFX Programming & Planet Tech
Last month, the Graphics team continued to close out the final tasks for Gen12 before they transition to assisting in the completion of the Vulkan graphics API.
The damage-map system was converted to Gen12, and support for profile groups was added to achieve parity with profiling tools in the legacy renderer. Additionally, the render pipeline was made configurable to allow secondary viewports to balance the desired quality and cost. Finally, legacy lens flares were converted to Gen12 alongside initial support for HDR.
Support for TSAA is currently being added to secondary viewports, which will significantly improve visual quality, especially for hair. The team also submitted the first iteration of a new render-layer feature to allow easy customization of objects in the world for use with game features such as scanning and the mini-map.
For features, the Graphics team further developed several shaders, including converting LayerBlend v1 assets to the more recent v2 and adding usability improvements to the new shader. Various improvements were also made to the UI shaders, including stability fixes for anti-aliased borders, the option to render circles on each vertex, and lighting support to allow planets in the Starmap to appear both lit and holographic in a single pass.
For tools, texture processing was made significantly faster through parallelizing filtering and compression, which will be a significant improvement for the artists and build system. Work started on a new mesh format too, with the goal of vastly improving loading times and render performance.
The VFX Programming team's time was split between fire, quantum travel, and tool work. For fire, work began on decal shading to achieve glow, burn, and soot on objects within the scene. Quantum travel now has support for 'quantum casting' and ‘red shift’ along with various other code improvements. For tools, usability improvements continued and support was added for referencing particle effects from other particle effects.
The Planet Tech team worked on better shaping support for asteroid fields, improvements to the harvestable system, and adding support for instancing to terrain chunks.
Also, the Planet and Graphics teams worked together on a new water system. This is still at an early stage but aims to allow for GPU wave/ripple simulations at multiple scales as well as network-synced impacts for larger events (e.g. spaceships crashing). Shading improvements are also being made to achieve better reflections, refraction, and foam.
In-Game Branding (Montreal)
The In-Game Branding team's work on Lorville’s skyline is coming to an end.
They also began their tasks for Pyro’s Ruin Station, with the first step being creating the visual identities of the gangs and their environments.
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Interactables
The Interactables team continued work on Pyro, creating more assets for Ruin Station.
“There’s more work to be done on this mandate and we have some really interesting interactable props that we can’t wait to share!” Interactables Team
The team have also been working closely with Mission Features on new assets that players will be interacting with around the 'verse and progressed with Flair that will reach players at some point this year.
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Live Tools (Montreal)
In February, the Live Tools team successfully implemented the first version of the Entity Graph Tool into the Network Operation Center, which is a major milestone in supporting Persistent Entity Streaming.
The developers are still working on improvements for other internal tools alongside priority bug fixing to support the release of Alpha 3.18.
Next, the team will start on the design and development of new Network Operation Center modules for Server Meshing.
Locations (EU)
In February, the Locations team completed the exteriors of Seraphim Station and the three Stanton jump points. Work is approaching ‘final art’ on the asteroid clusters for the Resource Rush mission, and the team is working on the last few modules to close out ‘Content Pack 3’, which will enable them to construct and distribute Pyro’s small-to-medium outposts.
Tasks progressed on Ruin Station and the underground facilities, the latter of which are currently in the whitebox stage. For organics, they prepared and hardened some of their cave initiatives and began looking into additional biome work.
The Design team worked on new missions for Pyro’s outposts. They also began investigation toward achieving gold-standard outposts, which produced several feature requests to facilitate new and interesting gameplay loops in Pyro relating to the resource network and Reputation System.
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Narrative
February began with the Narrative team addressing a handful of issues discovered by the thorough PTU testing of the Alpha 3.18. With tasks for the upcoming release winding down, attention turned to the next patch and beyond. Several items, clothing pieces, and vehicles were branded and named. Work continued on the upcoming Salvage, Mining, and Investigation missions, while improvements were considered for Bounty Hunting v2 and the Contract Manager.
The team also continued to refine and hone their work toward the gameplay in the Pyro system.
“Seeing how the system’s lawless nature has the potential to enhance existing gameplay loops has been very exciting for us.” Narrative Team
They also coordinated with the Environment and Design teams on building interiors. Additionally, progress was made on ‘narrative lootables.’ These are things like journals, articles, and messages that players might one day be able to discover as they explore the universe. Finally, the team’s narrative designers continued to work on expanding and improving player interactions with certain NPCs.
February also saw the release of a Portfolio expanding the history of Clark Defense Systems and a host of new Galactapedia entries. The Narrative team also appeared on an episode of Star Citizen Live.
Online services (Montreal)
In February, Online Services completed the development of shard isolation and the shard broker, with PTU testing beginning for both. These new features are used for isolating push workers and shard health/lifecycle respectively, with the goal being to maintain shard integrity.
The team also added inventory query caching to the entity-graph service. This stores the results of inventory queries in a cache to take the load off the database for repeated lookups of the same query, allowing for faster response times and less load on the database. This increases the overall read and write performance of the entity-graph service.
The team performed a refactor for insurance, ASOP terminals, the VMA backend, and game code, with the goal of improving performance and fixing some long-standing bugs.
Time was also spent working to stabilize the Alpha 3.18 release with multiple bug fixes.
Tech Animation
Last month, the Tech Animation team was on set at Pinewood Studios in London, working alongside an outsource studio to finalize face scanning to populate the remainder of the gene pool for the head generation systems (DNA). This is relevant for both the PU and Squadron 42.
“We scanned a broad range of models, young and old, from all facets of Humanity available to us, which will go a long way to truly showing diversity in our game. The scanning went exceptionally well, our chosen outsource studio has a fantastic resource in their facial scanning rig, which delivered exceptional results. Coupled with lots of hard work and a good sense of humor, we made the most of our two weeks.” Tech Animation Team
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UI
In February, UI Art and Design worked on several future features, including an interactive 3D UI prototype, a universal marker for the Starmap, and concept work for some of the updated vehicle UI styles.
The UI Tech team progressed in various areas, including creating a color picker UI for use in interactive screens. They continued to help polish the new Starmap, adding space dust to make it easier to perceive movement, improving the controls, and creating cubic holo volumes.
They also compelted some workflow fixes too, such as improving comments in Building Blocks files and making it easier to inspect drawn UI. They’ve also made some final fixes for Alpha 3.18.
VFX
Last month, the VFX team continued with their CPU-to-GPU particle library conversion. This has been good practice for some recent new starters in the team, helping them to get a better understanding of the many attributes accessible from the VFX editor.
They also continued to refine the new quantum-travel effects, and work began on several new vehicles, including one with unusual thrusters.
Finally, the team carried out improvements to Lorville’s skyline effects, adding more smoke and general ambiance to help sell the industrial theme.
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THE ARK, TAYAC SYSTEM
Welcome to this month’s Galactapedia update roundup. This month, we visit the Taranis system and the company that broke it, meet four exotic animals, learn about two popular Banu gods, and examine quantanium, among other subjects. Join the Spectrum thread for any discussion or feedback.
Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and…
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Kein Squadron 42, keine Alpha 4.0 und kein zweites Sonnensystem: 2023 klingt nach einem Sabbatjahr für Star Citizen. Doch es gibt wichtige Fortschritte.
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Happy Monday, everyone!
In case you missed it, Alpha 3.18 is currently available to all backers on the PTU servers, so you can already experience Persistent Entity Streaming, Salvage, and much more. If you plan on visiting the PTU servers for the first time, you can find out more in our Knowledge Base.
We wanted to thank all of you PTU testers out there for helping us kick the tires and bang the pipes, especially over the last weekend; your participation and engagement have proved invaluable in helping us identify critical issues, such as the memory leak that was causing some pesky crashes. The vast amount of data you generated throughout this PTU cycle has enabled the team to identify and implement much-needed fixes. We want to ensure we catch any stability-related bugs before switching to the Live environment, and we're very close. Your help is super appreciated and plays a vital role in us getting Alpha 3.18 to the live servers, especially this week as we navigate the home stretch. The more traffic we can get on the PTU this week, the better odds we have of getting this one out the door, so we hope to see you in the 'verse alongside us!
For those interested in what's coming beyond Alpha 3.18, you can get a sneak peek by checking out last week's ISC that showcases the upcoming improvements and additions to mining coming in Alpha 3.19.
We also want to remind you that many Bar Citizen events are occurring every week, such as the one in Angers, France, this Saturday. On BarCitizen.sc, you can find real-life events in your area and register your own events for others to discover and attend. Remember to let us know about your meetups on Spectrum; we just might make a pitstop and crash the party!
Now, let's see what's going on this week:
This Tuesday, the Narrative team brings us their monthly Galactapedia update.
Wednesday sees the release of February's Monthly Reports, with the PU's coming as a comm-link and Squadron 42's via newsletter.
Thursday's episode of Inside Star Citizen features an interior whitebox tour of the new Underground Facilities first showcased at CitizenCon 2952.
This Friday, Star Citizen Live features Mike Snowdon and members of the VFX team discussing their work. Don't miss it at 16:00 UTC / 8:00 am Pacific. You'll also receive our weekly RSI Newsletter in your inbox.
Have a stellar week both in and out of the 'verse!
We're constantly amazed at the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it's fan art, a cinematic, YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Every week, we select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and highlight it here. The highlighted content creator will be awarded an MVP badge on Spectrum and be immortalized in our MVP section of the Hub.
Don't forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for the chance to see it here!
Homecoming
NarayanN7 is back and has been playing and filming for two weeks, and this video came out of it. Looks like an exciting time!
Check out the full video on the Community Hub, and welcome back, pilot!
Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and…
