Star Citizen
Quote from Thalanoth on 13. June 2020, 9:11Nogen release date i sigte på en ?. Altså en færdig version, ikke nogen alpha/beta ting
Jeg følger ikke med, men den der creature feature video, vækkede lige interessen lidt igen
Nej desværre, der er ikke nogen final release, de smider det ud til os i små bidder når de er færdige med noget. Det sker heldigvis jævnligt. Så der er ikke andet end at hygge sig med at enten følge med på sidelinien, eller tage the plunge i deres alpha persistent univers, med alle de små og store dejlige bugs og prøve de ting af der allerede er der.
Der er heldigvis allerede en masse man kan prøve af.
Cargo running (legale og illegal goods)
Mining (i space, på planeter, i first person mode)
Racing (både med køretøj og rumskibe)
Bounty hunting
Prison gameplay (hvilket faktisk er ret imponerende andereledes aspekt i et mmo, synes ihvertfald at første iteration ser rigtig fedt ud)
Missionrunning med et helt vælg af forskellige mission givers
Så er der små antydninger af exploration med en masse små sites med derelicts og wrecks og andre sjove ting de har gemt rundt omkring. De forskellige bioms de har lavet på planeterne og månerne ser også rigtig flotte ud og er et besøg værd og der er også huler som faktisk er ret godt lavet.
Så ja det er ærgeligt at der ikke er nogen release date, men der er en masse ting at se/prøve.
Har lige haft min første multicrew mining mission med min bror og det var fedt.
Learning curve er ret hård i spillet der en masse man skal kunne huske og gøre rigtigt da det ellers hurtigt kan gå galt og man crasher eller noget andet skørt der lige får en til at starte forfra. Men det er så det jeg bruger tiden på op til release, øver mig i de forskellige ting så jeg ikke behøver starte som total newb når det så går igang. for det kunne godt blive en overvældende affaire.
Umiddelbart vil jeg som gammel eve spiller sige at det her bliver mere udfordrende, men det er jo en god ting, for det gør jo der er rigtig meget gameplay man kan leve sig ind i.
Har nyt rejsen af udviklingen indtil nu, selvom det har taget lidt længere end jeg troede, men jeg vidste heller ikke så meget om spil udvikling. Når man har fulgt med fra start, og har fulgt med i det meste af det de har lagt ud, så forstår man godt hvorfor det tager så lang tid for dette spil.
De laver noget som ikke er gjordt før i dette omfang, men resultatet vil blive ufatteligt godt tror jeg.
Ups, svaret blev lidt langt for et enkelt nej desværre, men blev lige inspireret til en længere forklaring 😉
Hilsen Momster
The Weekly Community Content Schedule
MONDAY, JUNE 15th, 2020
This Week in Star Citizen
TUESDAY, JUNE 16th, 2020
Lore Post- Galactic Guide: Ail’ka System
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17th, 2020
Flight & Combat Changes Comm-Link
Special Message from the Banu
THURSDAY, JUNE 18th, 2020
Inside Star Citizen (youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd)
FRIDAY, JUNE 19th, 2020
Star Citizen Live (twitch.tv/starcitizen)
Roadmap Update (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/1-Star-Citizen)
Roadmap Roundup
Subscriber Vault Update
Weekly Newsletter
Weekly Wisdom: Out-of-this-World Language Skills
Did you know that the languages spoken by our neighbors in the ‘verse actually exist? They are fully fleshed out languages, created for use in the world of Star Citizen & Squadron 42… and you can learn them!
Dive into the language of the Banu with Smoother Sailing in the Protectorate: A Rust Society Guide To Interacting with The Banu, or the language of the Xi’an with An Overview of the Xi’an Language for Diplomats: A Word from the Office of Xenolinguistic Protocol, and learn how to write your own text in those languages with font guides in our fankit.
Så lige lidt bonus youtube videoer jeg faldt over til dem der har lyst:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_QEAqammdw&feature=youtu.be <----- short movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBSewXEg1mU&feature=youtu.be <---- interview med en 42.000+$ backer (godt nok har jeg mange skibe, men ikke i den grad 😉
Hilsen Momster
Flight & Fight - Upcoming Improvements
In Star Citizen Alpha 3.10, we’re introducing numerous changes as part of our plan to improve the overall flight and combat experience.
As mentioned on Inside Star Citizen in February, we’ve assembled a vehicle experience team to overhaul flight and fight mechanics and introduce many quality-of-life improvements to make the experience more immersive and exciting.
Today we’re letting you know what to expect in our upcoming patch, which is currently in the hands of our Evocati test group (ETF) and will soon be available to a wider audience on our Public Test Server (PTU).
Making Flying More Dynamic
Thruster Efficiency Curves, Aerodynamics, and Jerk
What will change in Alpha 3.10?
We’ve made critical updates to flight performance for all ships, with thruster efficiency curves drastically changing the way thrusters work. In atmosphere, thrusters now lose efficiency and become much weaker. This is dependent on the ship and the thruster type to some degree, but ships in general will have much weaker thrusters in atmosphere and will behave differently.
Ships now also have individually simulated aerodynamic surfaces that contribute various small forces to the motion of the ship. Each force is dynamic and bespoke, allowing us to simulate wings of various kinds as well as flat plates and lifting body forces. Ships with wings are now able to stall, make level turns, lose speed in tight turns, and benefit from various aerodynamic features.
The aerodynamic interaction with wind is now more detailed, and you can expect the wind to push and pull ships in more complex ways. Breakable parts now affect aerodynamics, so a ship with a broken wing will no longer fly straight.
We’ve also increased the complexity of the thruster system for ships. Taking damage, powering down, or losing a thruster will now put the ship out of balance. You will experience unwanted rotations and instabilities in the ship’s control until you repair the damage.
Jerk is a core change to how ships move, both in space and within atmosphere, and is a measure of how quickly a ship’s acceleration changes. Previously, it was an infinite quantity. Now it’s finite, which means thrusters do not respond immediately to changes in acceleration. You can expect “weightier” feeling ships but with similar levels of maneuverability.
How will this impact the game experience?
By drastically reducing thruster efficiency in atmosphere, you’ll see a dramatic difference between flying and fighting around planetary bodies with atmosphere compared to battles in space. Since the aerodynamic forces are stronger in Alpha 3.10, flight is much less defined by a ship’s thrusters and more by its aerodynamics. This will really push the difference between space and atmospheric flight and add more depth and variety to Star Citizen.
Expect EVERY ship to behave differently and with a lot more character. For example, each ship has its own aerodynamic stability, so the Gladius will feel more stable when compared to the Hawk, which can turn faster but is much harder to control. Most ships are stable when flying forward, though strafing in atmosphere will cause various instabilities.
The new aerodynamic system also supports animating wings and parts, which we’ve not been able to do before. Ships like the Reliant, Hawk, and others that have moving wings will have a completely different aerodynamic feel after their parts have been animated.
One aim of this is to enable more engaging dogfighting. As we reduce the combat efficiency of a ship at high velocity, we encourage combat engagements at a lower speed, providing you with more time to launch a flight-maneuver or counter an opponent.
What’s coming next?
Our goal is to improve the vehicle experience further as we continue to work on the flight characteristics in atmosphere and space. Supporting animated aerodynamic surfaces also paves the way for working control surfaces, which will come in a future patch. Alpha 3.10 brings the very first changes, setting the stage for upcoming releases and further enhancements to the overall flight experience.
We are also going to further refine the difference between maneuvering thrusters and main engines. The concept is that maneuvering thrusters are built for quick pulses of high thrust for directional changes, while the main and VTOL engines are built for sustained thrust. This means that if you use maneuvering thrusters for sustained thrust, such as hovering for a prolonged time in gravity, they will have a lower thrust output and could overheat or misfire if used too long. This will further differentiate between ships in terms of space and atmosphere. Aerodynamic ships like the Gladius will be better suited to flying in atmosphere as the lift generated by their wings negate the need for maneuvering thruster to keep them aloft. But, if a pilot wanted to treat a Gladius like a helicopter gunship, they could only do this for a limited time before straining the thrusters, whereas a Valkyrie with four large VTOL engines would have no problem.
Once we’re happy with how atmospheric flight, thruster efficiency and jerk works, we will also look at the g-forces applied to the pilot to increase the sense of thrill and speed. Then, you can try to fly at your ship’s limit while taking fire or outmaneuvering attacks without falling unconscious.
For now, you should familiarize yourself with the new mechanics and test them excessively. We will then take a close look at your feedback and take your suggestions into account for further iterations of the new ship behaviors.
Tactics Without Strategy = Defeat
Turret, Gunnery Improvements, Targeting Methodology, and High-Speed Combat
What will change in Alpha 3.10?
Fixed weapons and turrets, both manned and remote-controlled, now have a fixed assist system. This fixed assist will still reward precise aim and area targeting but will also use weapon convergence to nudge bullets toward the target and aid players hitting with fixed weapons. We have also revised how the Predicted Impact Point (PIP) will be calculated. The PIP will now be updated purely on velocity, which gives us a much more stable firing solution and decreases the effects of network jitters and excessive juke behavior.
Additionally, we want you to be able to react to fast-changing combat situations and adjust turret behavior accordingly. Thus, we’re implementing new options like virtual joystick deflection (VJoy) style controls, turret-ESP, changeable turret velocity limiters, and the ability to automatically re-center the turret with new default key-bindings for easier control.
We know that it’s not always easy to keep orientation as a turret gunner when you’re moving with the turret while the ship’s pilot is making wild maneuvers. Therefore, we implemented the first iteration of turret UI created with building blocks. This work-in-progress UI already shows specific status labels so that there’s no uncertainty what the turret is doing, including VJoy mode, turret rotation, gimbal borders, and aim quality.
For Alpha 3.10, we also worked on the targeting computer and reworked how you deal with an enemy under fire. By looking at a target (using freelook or any form of head tracking), the targeting system will provide you with basic information about your opponent’s ship. Only by manually locking this ship will the targeting computer start spending resources on tracking the enemy vehicle and enable aim assist and missile lock. But be warned, your opponent will receive a notification that they are target-locked, and their ship computer will offer them the option to lock you as a target in return.
In addition to locking, you can pin up to three extra targets, which enables you to switch the target-lock among those pinned ships quickly. Those pins are shared within the ship, so it can be used to coordinate between turrets! In the future, the number of targets your ship can track will be dependent on the targeting computer. Combat-centric ships will have the ability to target multiple targets, but a basic starter may only be able to track one until you upgrade its targeting computer to a more powerful unit.
Finally, we looked at high-speed combat as we felt that too often dogfighting devolved into battling fast-moving pixels that zoomed past you. Combat was losing the visceral dogfighting feel that Star Citizen promised. The idea with the changes is to incentivize players with increased accuracy and higher availability of power for things like weapons and shields if traveling at or below Space Combat Maneuver (SCM) speed. Above this threshold the ship must divert more power to the thrusters, and it’s harder for the targeting computer to quickly resolve a firing solution, and thus harder for you to hit. This correlates to real life as it’s much harder to land accurate hits while moving fast. In this first iteration, some of the options that players will have at maximum velocity have been restricted. When flying above SCM speeds, weapon slew rate will decrease, and the time it takes to lock on missiles will increase.
What do we want to achieve with these changes?
We want turrets to be a meaningful choice for players. Not climbing into the pilot seat but manning a turret instead should reward players by adding serious punch to the fight. Enemy pilots should get nervous if you point a turret at them because they are accurate and deadly. With this, we offer you more substantial options during ship combat and see it as an essential step towards a full multi-crew combat experience.
The new targeting change eases the actual target selection process and makes it work better in large space battles. It’s also the first step towards pinning and sending targeting data to your friends.
Looking into the future
Space combat is a topic too complex to be approached with a single patch release. So, while Alpha 3.10 is a solid step towards achieving our vision, it does not stand for the final state of how we imagine space combat in Star Citizen to look.
Plans include the addition of weapon and thruster capacitors, so you need to choose carefully when to engage in a fight and use your guns or try to break away using boost. The thruster capacitor concept directly ties into the idea of high impulse versus sustained thrust discussed above. We want pilots to commit to their decisions and actions taken in a combat situation to have meaningful consequences for the outcome of the fight.
We will be adding some additional nuance on the penalties for engaging in combat above SCM speeds, such as increased energy consumption and shields that recharge slower.
We’re also reviewing the radar and scanning systems, allowing smaller ships to hide inside bigger ship’s signatures by changing how signatures are generated and detected.
Besides being a key factor in being picked up on a scan or seen on radar, your ships signature will affect how other weapons can track you. If you have full power to your thrusters and shields, you’ll run hot and be much easier to detect and track. The stronger your signature the easier it will be for a missile to lock and track you or auto gimbals to get on target.
Ultimately, we do not want space combat to feel like an FPS in space or a DPS race, but rather want to reward pilots that employ tactical maneuvers and carefully play out individual strengths and weaknesses of their and their opponent’s ship. Running stealthily allows you to not be detected easily, and even when picked up on radar it takes longer for your enemy to determine a firing solution as your signature is low. But if they hit, you’ll be in trouble as you can’t pump the same kind of power to your shields as you could if you were tanking it. There should not be one all-powerful ship or play style; the idea is to have strategies and counter strategies for different ships and play styles.
Thus, in the future you’ll see a lot of changes in the weapons systems, ship balance, and combat UI. This does not just cover the primary combat systems, but also ways to more effectively communicate with your co-pilots, gunners, and wingmen, and therefore enhance your tactical options in multicrew and fleet gameplay.Alpha 3.10 is just the first step towards our vision and we will bring many more improvements and changes to the current flight and combat experience over the coming patch releases. From utilizing the physics system to calculate weapon damage based on properties and speed instead of a simple hit point approach, to exciting multicrew gameplay that includes things like putting out fires or re-routing power nodes to keep your ship running: The upcoming changes will make space battles in Star Citizen a unique and thrilling experience.
Our next update, Alpha 3.10 is targeted to release in July. You can see what is planned for the future of Star Citizen on our weekly updated Roadmap. Thursday next week will feature a flight-focused episode of Inside Star Citizen, where the vehicle experience team will provide further info on the Flight & Fight improvements coming with the next patch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8hoEbs4krE
We take a chilling look at the evolving design of Vanduul fighters, before rolling up our sleeves and digging into another sprint report full of ships and shooting and locations.
To watch previous episodes of Inside Star Citizen, visit INSIDE STAR CITIZEN.
Happy Monday, everyone!
Last week, we talked about the upcoming changes in Alpha 3.10 that will improve the overall flight and combat experience. If you haven’t checked it out yet, make sure you hit the Flight & Fight Comm-Link to learn about how Star Citizen is evolving and how you’ll benefit from the changes.
If you plan on exploring the new flight update with your Aopoa Khartu-al, we have good news for you: The ship will receive an update in Alpha 3.10 to improve its handling and defensive and offensive capabilities.
Talking of aliens, we would like to thank everyone for the great submissions to our Alien Week contests. We’ll announce the winners on Wednesday, but if you’re already looking for a delicious recipe for the next alien welcome party, or want to be prepared for an unexpected encounter of the third kind, check out both the Intragalactic Cook-Off and First Contact Contest.
Now, let’s see what’s going on this week:
Following the release of the first part of Lost Squad: Before the Fall last month, this Tuesday will see the Narrative Team continue the action-packed story with part two.
This Wednesday, we’ll announce the winners of the Intragalactic Cook-Off & First Contact Contest.
On Thursday, we’ll welcome the latest episode of Inside Star Citizen. Our weekly look behind the scenes of Star Citizen development takes a deeper dive into the upcoming Flight and Fight improvements coming to the ‘verse with our upcoming patch.
On Friday, you’ll see a Roadmap update and Roundup, an update to the Subscriber Vault, the RSI Newsletter delivered to your inbox, and the latest issue of Jump Point. We’ll also welcome a new episode of Calling All Devs to our YouTube Channel with more info about PVP gameplay.
Christian Schmitt
Associate Community Manager
Screenshot by ln_nova
The Weekly Community Content Schedule
MONDAY, JUNE 22nd, 2020
This Week in Star Citizen
TUESDAY, JUNE 23rd, 2020
Lore Post – Lost Squad: Before the Fall (Part 2)
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24th, 2020
Winner Announcement Intragalactic Cook-Off
Winner Announcement First Contact Contest
THURSDAY, JUNE 25th, 2020
Inside Star Citizen (youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd)
FRIDAY, JUNE 26th, 2020
Calling All Devs (youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd)
Roadmap Update (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/1-Star-Citizen)
Roadmap Roundup
Subscriber Vault Update
Weekly Newsletter
Jump Point
Weekly Wisdom: CRIMESTATS AND YOU – legal edition
So, you’ve committed a crime and have acquired a crimestate. Let’s assume that it was a warrant and you are, of course, a law-abiding citizen of the UEE. So, you’re not gonna make an enterprising bounty hunter show you the guest seat on a Cutlass Blue and instead pay your fine.
At every spaceport or rest stop you’ll find an Advocacy console. Here you can simply log in as a user and pay your fine and wash your shirt clean. Too by-the-book? We talked about an alternative here.
Community MVP: June 22nd, 2020
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 a chance at seeing it here!
The Prowler by Seerthe6th
Seerthe6th submitted this amazing Esperia Prowler commercial, highlighting the ship's capabilities. After watching this, you'll find yourself keeping at least one eye to the skies for this bird of prey.
Watch the video on the Community Hub
Quote from Momster on 17. June 2020, 22:24
Opklaring på beskeden på Banu: (Det bliver godt nok sjovt at se hvor meget vi kommer til at misforstå dem i spillet senere)
¡indæ ta tambowæ epacho nyenga osouli findæ michæ!
.aa ndue zumi a tso, indue fo ssaa epacho fuYumano tsuBanu nzafwe ro. .takæ First Contact Day (efanga fekafo ræ dasi) zugi fuYumano, ke yandu indæ a pachæ tsulæ zo ndi tselæ. .aa fanga, tado da ¡etæ ndi tselæ tsuBanu tæ! sa uYumano. .uYumano kteyufu nyenjeko zuYumano duYumano tana aa zogo, tsao indæ mbunowæ ulæ luiyæ nyetseli zugi satsotæ zo cho pachú opacho zwa indæ pangawæ chulæ. .njekindue ndi mvo nyosouli ke cho a kunde mbuno michæ kida zo gao chindæ.
.indæ ta tado dænga sangindæ nyenga ssaa epacho fuYumano tsuBanu tanyæ kida zo gao.
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.kidada tie nyuYumano ndzofotie, enganyo ulæ pachuwæ ozwozwo fesse etie la wo ulæ wiliyæ. .inæ kte kteyæ opafu fayu pili sætsa ga osouli se yu nyenjeko. uYumano kte olæ si ojali kidadæ nyo la soma, zo ktawe. ta talæ lo ke yu yufu zuYumano da ¡ Happy First Contact Day. This gift shows how us Banu appreciate Humans!
•
.kidada uYumano yuféa da ¿o opacho fino traditional?, enganyo ktunyu kida. .njekeyufu yandu ¿u ubumi fuBanu uta sese yazi mbe lo?. .yato ye yato. .ulæ ye subawæ da ebanji dede. .indæ yu yufulæ zutseli da osouli mbe ozwoto zwa pacho, fondæ ¡very traditional! tæ.
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.indíndue, uYumano daki ndida ndzofopacho ye Banu. .chæ, ulæ da ndzopacho Tsiano Yumano dau. enjeko kafa fesse epacho Banu. .yufu ye yufuzæ nyulæ. .inæ da da olæ nyo ¡celebrate friendship!.
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.indæ da myama da uBanu pacho zutseli tsuYumano ndi sasa duYumano.
.da myama da zo chæ.
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.utuYumano yumlo opacho yobeo ya. .ulæ ssunjiyæ yu opacho nyubumi ni, zo soa, ni uYumano uta fekissumbi fulæ. kidada inæ kafowæ utu uta pacho ye do, enganyo da da zwopacho sila nyo friends, family fulæ dau.
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A Plan of Trade Strategy to Enrich our Souli!
As the beats count up, the moment of the Great Human Banu Friendship Buying Time is drawing closer. Humans call it “First Contact Day” and use it to signify that we are active trading partners. During this time Humans like to express how much they are friends to all the Banu people. While many Humans wish to do this the Human way through words and talking, it is best if we encourage them to show appreciation for our friendship in the proper way, purchasing the items of friendship that we are going to sell them. This is a very important time for the Souli and we must make the most of this opportunity so that our profits are as big as possible.
Let us recount the things we have learned to make Great Human Banu Friendship Buying Time as successful as possible.
- If you give a Human a gift, they will often buy something from you as free things make them uncomfortable. Use the inexpensive, small clothing pins that the Souli acquired for this purpose. Humans will wear them on their clothing even if they do not need it as a closure. Hand it to them and say in Human, “Happy First Contact Day. This gift shows how us Banu appreciate Humans.”
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You may be confused when Humans ask if your wares are “traditional.” This is their way of asking if it is made by Banu who are not alive. Do not be offended. They are not implying laziness on its construction. Warmly tell them that everything we sell is made by Souli which makes them “very traditional.”
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Humans will sometimes try to point out that certain items are not Banu. They will say an item is Xi’an or Human. This makes no sense since we are the ones selling them. Do not correct them. Just say that they are to “celebrate friendship.”
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Humans will want you to confirm that it is good that Banu are trading partners with Humans. Confirm this often.
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Some Humans are less likely to buy things for themselves, preferring to buy things for others, especially other Humans they are genetically similar to. If you find one who is reticent to buy, mention that items would be good for their “friends” or “family.”
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Watch your six and hang on to your butts, ‘cause you won’t be able to shake our extremely deep dive into the massive improvements and changes coming to flight and ship combat in Alpha 3.10.
To watch previous episodes of Inside Star Citizen, visit INSIDE STAR CITIZEN.
We learn more about the future of PvP gameplay in the Star Citizen Persistent Universe with this episode of Calling All Devs.
To watch previous episodes of Calling All Devs, visit CALLING ALL DEVS.
Star Citizen Monthly Report: June 2020 <--- [link til original med billeder]
This time next month, Alpha 3.10 will be well explored and civilians everywhere will be familiar with the latest iteration of the flight model. Naturally, the devs spent part of June tweaking relevant features and polishing assets to ready them for the masses. However, much more has been done, with tasks for Alpha 3.11 and beyond well underway. Check out all the details of what went on last month and what’s coming in the future…
AI (Combat)
We start June’s report with Character Combat, who tackled several aspects of realistic firing, including improving the code side of triggering and reloading. They made all requests event-based and added proper success notifications and different action results between the actor state machine and AI components. This gives the AI consistent knowledge of the results of requested actions, allowing them to create behaviors that can handle different scenarios correctly. For example, if an NPC is pushing towards an enemy, the team may want them to automatically reload their weapon. However, if no ammunition is available, the behavior will be notified and a new reaction activated. This can happen to NPCs less skilled in evaluating their ability to manage ammunition, while those better skilled can choose not to use that tactic unless enough ammunition is available.
They also began leveraging the usable system functionalities of the bartender in combat scenarios. In the social environment, they created the concept of usables that can produce and accept items:
“An ammo box is nothing else than an item provider. The item itself could produce magazines or it might have magazines attached, similar to how a beer fridge can contain beer bottles, but a mixing station can create the drinks from specific source items. This allows NPCs to search for places in the world that can provide them with magazines of a specific type, relocate to those objects, and refill their loadout. This gives opportunity for the player and forces NPCs to evaluate the environment to decide if and when it’s appropriate to use those refill spots.” Character Combat Team
Time was also spent completing tasks for server mesh implementation.
AI (Ships)
Ship AI kicked off a single-player version of the Player Group Manager, which is used to manage player parties and group quantum travel. The system relies on a backend service that only exists in a multiplayer context, so to support quantum-travel-linking in SQ42 between the player and NPC characters, a standalone version was created. A set of supporting nodes to allow the Mission Team to create and reference a managed group in Subsumption was also required.
We mention this here as, when complete, players in the PU will be able to use quantum-travel-linking within a group containing both real players and NPCs.
The team also implemented new queries to the Tactical Target System to improve the target selection in the ‘pilot combat’ activity. They also iterated on the sphere strafe movement block by adding speed controls and the ability to lock orbiting ships to a single axis within an acceptable range.
AI (Social)
Last month, Social AI focused on the first pass of two new scenarios: bridge crew behaviors and capital ship hangar crews.
The bridge crew behavior allows NPCs to handle the required work of a capital ship. Designers can specify in the NPC schedules which type of role they have (similar to how a player will assign a hired NPC), which will help the ‘generic’ behavior select the right seats and routines they have to perform. The captain will also roam the bridge and supervise other members of the crew.
The hangar crew behavior represents a set of behaviors for all NPCs that work in a hangar, including overseer, fueler, ordnance, mechanic, grunt, and air-traffic controller. In this instance, the ship is an example of a compound usable – a usable that can contain the functionality of other single usables.
The first iteration of the vendor behavior is also nearing completion. June saw the addition of patrons that can order a drink, bring it to a table, and then return it to the counter.
AI (General)
Global focus was on improvements to the various systems used by all AI Team members. Improvements were made to the debug draw of the Subsumption logic, allowing Subsumption functions, use channels, and conversations to display the updated value of their local variables. The range-event dispatcher-debug now easily displays the monitored characters’ distance, orientation, and more. The team also worked on the movement system to provide additional functions to validate the execution of a plan. For example, to correctly consider the movement along a path driven by a cutscene or an animation so that once finished, the character continues their movement smoothly. The ‘LookComponent’ was refactored to correctly handle requests with different priorities too.
Animation
Throughout June, the team blocked out animations for various features and improved their ability to efficiently capture, select, and turn-around motion capture. They also worked on knockbacks, staggers, and hit reactions from grenades and other thrown objects.
The team worked with Combat AI on weapon reloads, reloading from locations, and Vanduul locomotion mentioned above. For Social AI, they worked on lockers, smoking, crates, the bartender and bar patrons, and solved an issue with the seated console metric.
Animations for three new weapons were completed, including the two new Lightning Bolt Co. guns. Several mission givers were also worked on. Regarding mo-cap, they worked through the backlog of NPC captures and rebuilt the Take Selection tool, which allows the effective review and selection of completed mo-cap.
Art (Environment)
Last month, the Planet Art Team moved into full production of Pyro Three and Four. They’re currently producing the required assets, with a lot of new content reaching completion. They’re currently undertaking R&D on touch-bending for vegetation, which will ensure bushes and small vegetation are pushed away more realistically when the player walks through them. Work on Crusader continues too, with further development on the shaders underway.
Art (Ships)
In the UK, the team continued work on the Crusader Starlifter. “One of the last areas to go in was the impressive front cargo door/ramp that gives it full roll-on, roll-off capability for your ground vehicles.” – Vehicle Team
Other areas completed last month were the rec room and kitchen/dining area. The exterior is in the final art phase and currently receiving a material pass and UV mapping. Two unannounced ships and the Origin 100 series made great progress too.
In the US, the team worked on the turret seat, turret interior, rec room, scanning room, cockpit, foyer, and habs for the Star Runner. It’s now in the final art phase, with feedback being implemented to give it more of a ‘smuggler’s ship’ personality. The Aopoa Khartu-al was also reviewed, which led to its weapons and shields being buffed. This update will be live in Alpha 3.10.
Art (Weapons)
June saw development of the new Lightning Bolt Co. weapons completed. These guns have comparatively complex animation and technical setups, so required more attention than usual. Work continued on the Behring BR-2, while a new weapon entered development that the team is excited to unveil at the end of Q3.
On the UI side, all Gemini weapons now have functioning ammo counters, with work moving onto the Lightning Bolt Co. brand.
Audio
The Audio Team closed out all Alpha 3.10 tasks, including the Grim HEX updates and new weapons. Ambiances for a lot of older areas were rebalanced, such as Levski and Lorville. An audio-only rework of the Arclight pistol was completed too.
Backend Services
Last month, the Backend Team added the ability for the diffusion router to record analytic data, which will help live operations monitor the health of all services. Some low-level networking code was updated, fixing a few potential connection issues. They started on the new login flow that supports proper queuing and reporting to connecting players. Work was completed on high-performance dedicated pathways for some of the services to greatly improve network performance. The loadout and persistent variable services were also updated to support a distributed model for better performance and increased up-time reliability.
Characters
June saw the Character Team working on adding new mobiGlas variants to in-game shops. Because the mobiGlas is one of the oldest game assets, it’s built on older tech. “Setup for this item is tricky and being able to swap out a mobiGlas without unequipping one permanently was a huge technical challenge that shops had to deal with, even as we started bringing new colors online. This is now in QA and so far, minus a few string bugs, appears promising.” – The Character Team
They also began work on seasonal assets and kicked off tasks on an all-new model for the Pyro system. “We have begun modeling work on what we are calling the ‘Pyro Crab’. We don’t know what the future holds yet for this asset, but we’re excited to work on it.”
Community
The Community Team started the month with the Theaters of War Spectrum AMA, where Sean Tracy, Jonny Jacevicius, Tom Solaru, and Milan Pejcic answered player questions on the upcoming game mode. Following the concept release of the Origin G12 Rover, the team worked with the vehicle’s designers to answer the top-voted community questions in the Origin G12 Q&A.
To celebrate First Contact Day on June 12, 2438, the team kicked off Alien Week 2950. This week-long event featured two extraterrestrial-themed contests, the Intragalactic Cook-Off and First Contact contest. They also challenged the community’s xenolinguists to translate a letter from the Banu themselves in honor of the prestigious day.
Engineering
Last month, Engineering worked on the ISPC compiler for WAF: “Think HLSL for CPUs to write CPU target agnostic vectorized SSE functions that can be invoked from C/C++. This allows us to have bespoke, run-time invoked code paths for different CPU architectures to get the best possible performance for computation of heavy code.” – The Engineering Team
They also began experimenting with a new code-build system to improve quality-of-life for developers. This will feature implemented Python script to fold similar threads when inspecting GDB crash dumps and add a VC 2019 compiler transition to QA test requests.
Optimizations were made to the physics grid, physics instances, and local OBB algorithms. For planet entities, work was done to prevent cell generation under terrain, while the generation of POD entities on terrain patches was improved by moving complex constructors out of tight loops. They removed various methods from the physical entity interface to avoid virtual-function overhead, made box-pruning optimizations, and promoted moment-related variables to double precision so that the solver is more numerically stable in terms of large masses.
Body-dragging was further polished, and work continued on physical damage, this time focusing on deformations. Engineering continued tuning the integrity reduction formula based on the surface types of colliding parts, while ship-to-ship collision detection was tweaked to benefit stability and performance. Ragdoll experiments were also conducted and a quick prototype for cross-section data structure was completed.
Regarding the entity component update-scheduler, the Engineering Team worked on flattening or even removing recursive processing, made improvements to component processing inside an aggregate, and started implementing support for multiple component policies per-update-pass.
Numerous tasks were also completed for the Gen12 Renderer. For planetary atmospheres, they completed the guided filter to de-noise and up-sample lower resolution raymarching results for inscatter and transmittance. Work also began on re-projecting raymarching results to further reduce cost per-frame.
They also implemented a JSON-based profiler data-logger driven by internally collected telemetry, and revamped the HTML generator that utilizes JSON data to build email reports. The goal is to automate performance regression so they can see how it has evolved, both internally and in the PU.
Features (Gameplay)
June saw the Gameplay Feature Team continuing work on the player trading app, which is now in the art phase. “We are happy to announce that players will likely see the base functionality in our public test environments very soon, with the hopes that the art pass will be complete for live release soon.” – The Gameplay Feature Team
They also put significant time into the upcoming Alpha 3.10 patch and the ability to purchase ship paint from in-game shops.
Features (Vehicles)
The Vehicle Feature Team spent June finishing various features for Alpha 3.10, including the tweaks, improvements, and retuning needed to prepare ships for the new aerodynamic flight model and thruster efficiency curves. They also squashed bugs with thruster balance and other aspects of IFCS. Work also continued on the new targeting system and its associated UI.
Looking ahead, the development of features coming further down the line continued, including docking and improvements to missiles. Further development of the flight model will continue too.
Graphics
Last month, the Graphics Team continued working on CPU performance improvements, the first being to avoid expensive synchronization events between the CPU and GPU that could occur under certain scenarios and hardware setups. After discovering that the UI code used to rescale and tesselate vector art was highly CPU intensive, they added code to quantize UI screen resolution. This avoids code-path cases where the visual difference would otherwise be unnoticeable or extremely subtle (e.g. if two identical UI screens differ in size by just a few pixels). Another major optimization was to avoid DirectX and graphics-driver CPU overhead by minimizing shader and texture swapping. They also cached buffers that were being needlessly set many times per frame, reducing the overall number of function calls to DirectX by over 30%.
As with Engineering, work on the Gen12 renderer continued, this time with the new deferred graphics pipeline that features faster and easier-to-extend code.
“With some of the fundamentals now falling into place, we hope to ramp up the efforts to convert existing features over to the Gen12 renderer with an aim to enable an early version in the next few months.” – The Graphics Team
The edge-highlight/silhouette feature was upgraded to provide cleaner visuals with customizable line width, which was requested by the Vehicle Team to improve the appearance of various UI features.
Finally for Graphics, they changed how the culling system works for ships to allow them to be visible from much greater distances to aid gameplay. To help mitigate performance impact from the increased viewing distance, they implemented an automated testing system to measure the performance of every ship from every viewing distance to identify any requiring an optimization pass.
Level Design
June saw the Level Design Team working on new, as-yet-unannounced content and fixed as many bugs as possible for Alpha 3.10. They also closed out tasks on key locations such as Levski and New Babbage and made further progress with Orison.
Lighting
The Lighting Team wrapped up their key deliverables for Alpha 3.10, including additions to Grim HEX. This involved finalizing the new utilitarian hangars along with polishing and optimizing the asteroid’s exterior. New Babbage’s Hi-Tech hangars also had their lighting pass completed.
After feedback, the final lighting style was implemented across all hangar sizes and door configurations, giving them a unique feel. This was also the team’s first opportunity to implement various states of door lighting depending on whether they’re idle, opening, or closing.
The Factory Line store in New Babbage received its final lighting pass too. Alongside these new locations, bugs were fixed in older locations (such as surface outposts) and the rework of Lorville’s day and night states was completed. Players will now experience a different mood at L19 when the sun goes down.
Narrative
Narrative worked with Community on the Banu message for Alien Week, while some of the team explored their culinary abilities by designing three alien recipes (here, here, and here). Narrative also joined Audio and AI to discuss the prospect of players fighting the Vanduul.
On the development side, they worked on building additional mission content and worked alongside various other teams to propose an overhaul to the existing mission giver experience. They also created documents outlining the general feel of some upcoming locations alongside potential flora, fauna, and NPCs.
Props
Throughout June, the team continued work on props for the Factory Line, adding additional dressing to the area and making progress with the Muse Simpod. “This turned into a longer-than-expected task. There’s a lot of crossover with Animation, so we’re building the asset with that in mind from the start.” – The Props Team
The team continued to support the bartender feature and time was invested into the skinned asset pipeline; they now have an in-team solution rather than handing props to Tech Animation. “This unlocks us to make more use of these fun reactive assets without worrying about increasing other teams’ workloads, so it’s a big deal for us!”
Finally, white boxing kicked off for the cargo deck props, starting with background assets and storage solutions.
QA
Last month, QA completed several test requests, including one relating to the ongoing Tactical Point System refactor. This involved making sure that enemy NPCs still function properly, will reposition behind cover, and position themselves so they can fire. They also tested that the Social AI was still able to find, move to, and use usables, and that the Ship AI was able to find points to patrol.
QA tested the AI’s use of cover locations when fighting against the player, ensuring they use movement transitions (such as sliding) when going into cover, peeking, shooting, blindfiring, and when partially in cover. They also tested AI reactions to cover being compromised. For example, they needed to verify that the shotgun AI was a lot more aggressive compared to the others.
For Actor Tech, the undertook a test request for case-sensitive CRC32s involving load testing for all areas of the PU, SQ42, ships, vehicles, and editor levels. Once the load tests were completed, they moved to testing the actual features themselves to ensure that functionality was not compromised. A full test of the PU, SQ42, and some basic editor functionality was requested by the Engine Team following their work on the material editor. This was undertaken to ensure no new crashes were introduced and that the correct textures continued to load without issues.
Testing of StarWords v1.2 (the tool that handles most game text) is underway, with various improvements made based on feedback during testing.
Tech Animation
Technical Animation spent time with several of the feature teams to iterate on key deliverables for the PU, including the bartender. This involved creating rigging for glasses and liquids, which continues alongside refinement and system iteration to ensure quality and robustness.
The previously reported initiatives to overhaul the skin file setup and physics proxy refactor began to show results. The team is in the final stages of UI and process refinement and aims to deliver the pipeline by the end of the quarter.
Turbulent
The Web Platform Team worked on streamlining the Enlist Now forms, process, and user experience. These changes were deployed on June 10 and include numerous improvements.
“Based on the original Kickstarter campaign, the account creation process grew organically into something fairly complicated. It was a process involving multiple pages, email verification, and so forth. It is now possible to create an account on the website directly in the sidebar without having to leave the current page. All of the legacy and existing accounts have been migrated to the new system to make the transition as seamless as possible for existing users. The account creation form used to have a number of fields that required a lot of explanation for new users. We reduced the number of fields to a minimum and, as a result, enabled login with ‘email and password’ instead of just ‘login ID and password’. This change was done in a way that is completely seamless for existing users.” – The Turbulent Web Platform Team
User Interface (UI)
The UI Team supported the vehicle targeting and turret improvements recently seen in Inside Star Citizen, while the Code Team fixed bugs for Alpha 3.10 and gave 3D support to the building blocks UI tool. On the UI design side, work continued on a new mobiGlas app and the future of the Starmap and radar were iterated on. Screens were also created for the Factory Line store and concept art was created for new versions of scanning and vehicle UI.
VFX
One of the VFX Team’s bigger tasks for Alpha 3.10 was the new signed-distance-field-driven atmospheric entry effects. To compensate for the fact that entry effects are physical-based and most ships never reach high enough speeds to generate them, they made slight changes to the code.
“This is progressing well and we are looking forward to seeing beauty shots and videos from the community as they fly towards planets and moons!” – The VFX Team
Work also continued on the fire propagation feature. The team are still in the prototyping phase but can already see the potential and technical challenges of this feature. They also continued supporting the Environment Team with their ongoing gas cloud work. VFX tasks were completed for an upcoming vehicle too.