{"data":{"id":14758,"title":"Monthly Studio Report: May 2015","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/14758-Monthly-Studio-Report-May-2015","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/14758","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/14758","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly 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Citizens,\nIt\u2019s hard to believe June is already upon us! Work on Star Citizen continues at a frenzied pace at our studios and outsource partners around the world. This month, we\u2019re excited to introduce our latest studio, Foundry 42 Germany, to the report. You\u2019ll be seeing a lot from Germany in the coming months: they\u2019re charged with tackling many of the programming challenges facing Star Citizen on the road to the persistent universe. Work continues in those areas, and on our many modules and milestones, from Star Marine (now being readied for its PTU debut) to Squadron 42 (cinematics currently being directed by Chris Roberts in London!) Your top-level view of exactly what we\u2019ve done this month can be found below.\n\nWelcome back for another edition of the Monthly Report! This month has been an eventful one with lots of development news to cover. As always, we\u2019re super excited to share with you what we\u2019ve been up to over this past month! So settle in and get comfortable because here goes the development update!\n\nDesign\nOne of the biggest developments from May was the reveal and concept sale for the MISC Reliant. This sale was a big accomplishment for us, and really felt like we had every department firing on all cylinders to get the sale ready. Everyone involved in the sale really pushed to make sure that it wasn\u2019t just ready on-time, but it was ready early. It\u2019s been a great example of our various departments pooling together to help bring another of these incredible ships to life. We\u2019re also pretty confident that the community liked it as well, with over 19,000 sold during the concept sale. Thank you all so much for both supporting this great new ship from MISC, as well as the on going development of Star Citizen.\n\nWe\u2019ve taken a balance pass over the current roster of missiles, specifically by increasing the vulnerability of all CS-lock missiles (Tempest, Stalker, StrikeForce) to noise emitted by chaff, thus allowing those fired upon a better chance at escaping the wrath of these powerful munitions. Additionally, missile lock on times have been increased across the board (from 2 to 5 secs.), so pilots, brush up on those maneuvering skills! Keeping eyes on target just got that much more important. Fire-and-forget missiles also become more practical with this change. Happy hunting!\n\nOn of the ships coming down the pipeline is the Crusader Industries Genesis Starliner. The Starliner is a big ship, being a bit larger than a 747. This ship is unique in that it is one of the first Passenger ships tackled by the Star Citizen team. With it being the first ship of its kind, it has made us question our designs within regards to passengers in space. For instance, some of the questions still being answered is passenger capacity, safety of those passengers, and max flight times. The exterior concept is in a solid place, but the interior concepts are still being worked on. We are really excited to show you all what we have come up with. Soon, the Starliner will sail the stars with you at its helm, or as a passenger on your way to that vacation spot you wanted to check out.\n\nInitially talked about in the March update, we\u2019re continuing to make strides towards our new Physically Based Damage system. This new system is going to help on a number of fronts for current Arena Commander gameplay, as well as helping to setup to great foundations for Squadron 42 and the PU to be built out of. Some of the biggest highlights include a complete revamp on the damage and handling for every weapon with a definite focus on making sure Ballistic and Energy weapons each have their own unique characteristics and gameplay implications. But when you\u2019re changing damage, that\u2019s only part of the puzzle, so also expect a comparable update for every major ship-component to help support this new system: Ship and Shield health, Powerplant output, Cooling rates, the works.\n\nAnother big event in May for the Santa Monica office was having John Pritchett and Pete Mackay in the office as we started to really dial in some of the flight and thruster handling for the game. While they\u2019ve talked about some of their work during recent Around the Verse appearances, there\u2019s a lot of behind the scenes work their visit helped us to streamline. Now, we have even better tools and data setup to make building out new ships and components smoother and more consistent than before. This work already helped with the lead up to the Reliant sale and let us rapidly build out the mass and thruster requirements for the ship faster than ever.\n\nArt\nFor the HUD & UI, we\u2019ve done some work to improve CPU \/ rendering performance by optimizing the amount of draw calls that the scaleform aspect of the HUD was contributing as well as a refactor of the holo-objects which should go towards improving rendering performance of holographic items and entities. Overall, the amount of CPU resources that the HUD \/ UI takes up should now be considerably less, and we will continue to optimize it for the best performance possible.\n\nThis month Josh Coons and Mark McCall have created and implemented new helmet interiors that will be used for all FPS characters. This new direction for the helmets is a big step in realizing Chris Roberts overall vision for Star Citizen characters. The new helmet interior design will give the HUD team more flexibility and add to the realism of our universe.\n\nWhat makes our helmets unique is that they have an effect on the player\u2019s field of vision, improving the versimiltude in our FPS gaming experience. Equipment in our game should feel real and substantive \u2013 not just a set of stats and numbers to be min-maxed in gameplay, with characteristics that give different players choices based on their own subjective preferences and adding to the diversity of player choices.\n\nFor Technical Art, our focus this month has been on Ship Destruction, Salvage and Optimization. We\u2019ve been tasked to find balance between the most optimized damage approach while at the same time making sure our Gameplay Design remains intact.\n\nIn the past, for ship damage we would build out five versions of every part of a ship. These were the 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% damaged versions. Blowing ships to bits looked very cool, but this solution was extremely labor intensive, used a lot of system resources and wasn\u2019t scalable to allow CryEngine to render the epic armada of ships battling that Chris has envisioned.\n\nWe needed a new damage solution. So, Ali Brown, Okka Kyaw, Geoff Birch, and Mark Abent all helped to create our new Damage Shader and Squib tech that allowed for the destruction of our newest ships without the high resource cost. But even as we accomplished this great feat of optimization, our Designers were planning new gameplay mechanics such as Debris Salvage and Ship Repair, each of which adds costs to the overall processing demands of our ship model.\n\nThe real enemy of performance in Star Citizen with so many high-fidelity assets being rendered is \u201cDraw Calls\u201d. For those unfamiliar, Draw Calls are the amount of render passes on each piece of geometry to create the final image. If your spaceship hull has Diffuse, Specular and Normal textures, then that would equate to 3 draw calls. And if your ship is divided into a 50 pieces, that would be 50 \u00d7 3 = 150 draw calls. And add some high-quality self-shadowing, and you can double 150 to a huge 300 Draw Calls! Our ships being rendered with PBR (Physically Based Rendering), with the Damage Shader, Paint Variations and Decals requiring more like 15-30 draw calls per piece. So, to optimize Draw Calls, we needed to reduce the number of separate pieces. But, this means, to be truly optimized we would need to have fewer animated pieces and fewer debris break off of the ship! Quite a conundrum because we want those things!\n\nIn speaking with Ali about these optimization issues, he suggested a new debris approach that we\u2019ve have now been investigating. Instead of cutting the ship into separate, damageable areas and breaking debris off of the ship, he suggested we could hide parts of the ship using the Damage Shader and spawn Debris that would then fly away from the ship. This new approach still looks like debris is blown off of the ship, but allows us to reduce the number of ship hull meshes which also reduces draw calls significantly. And furthermore, this solution allows us to create debris that will contain Salvageable Components! So, that gun you just shot off that Cutlass in the PU? It\u2019s yours now. You\u2019re welcome.\n\nThere have been many other breakthroughs like this one. And this month has brought us closer than ever to realizing the space opera of our dreams. Now, our job is to implement the full optimization plan across all ships in the game, the goal being that we release Squadron 42 with amazingly fun gameplay and a silky-smooth frame-rate.\n\nEngineering\nRadar 2.0 work has been completed. Anything can be registered to be shown on the radar so long as there is a matching IRadarObject struct. What this means in laymen\u2019s terms is that as long as an item\/object has the proper information in it, that object will be picked up and displayed on the radar based off its physical properties. Yes, we can even give EMP grenades an EM signature and have it show up on the radar if your radar is configured to detect EM.\n\nWe\u2019ve also made it so that radars are capable of filtering for any kind of signature type and detected objects now have an instance of them created. The creation of this instance allows for us to do things like stutter position updates and\/or show decay\/falloff without affecting the actual detected object. This lets Design and Art do cool and interesting things to the instance version that is displayed without breaking the underlying logic that drives the radar\/signature. As part of this we\u2019ve also improved the performance of occlusion checks.\n\nLast but not least we\u2019ve added support for \u201cdecibels\u201d as a new signature type. While on foot in Star Citizen your radar can display audio from the surrounding environment such as footsteps and weapons fire. These events are now properly hooked up into the signature system so that your footsteps and weapons fire creates \u201cdecibels\u201d which are scanned for and displayed by the player radar. You\u2019ll see this debuting with the FPS.\n\nOur LA Engineering team has also been helping out on handling player\/character clothing, customization, and attachments using the item port system that we\u2019ve developed. The item port system allows the attaching of items to bones defined on 3D objects. This is how we attach all our ship parts and ship items. This system is being expanded upon for characters to support dynamic skeleton extension using skinned attachments.\n\nWhat this means in real terms is that we have the pieces of the body that are able to equip items. I.E. Feet, hands, left hand, right hand, torso, etc. marked with corresponding bones which define where attached items are attached. From there, if you were to equip a chest piece that allows a tactical shoulder light, oxygen tank, and chest holster each of those additional attachment points require additional bones. The system allows any of the extra bones that come in a skin (skinned object, not actual skin) attachment to extend the base skeleton by dynamically updating that skeleton with the additional bones.\n\nThat wraps up the update for the Santa Monica studio! Thank you as always for taking the time to read our story and for your support in making this game! We couldn\u2019t do this without each and every one of you and your support is highly valued by each of us here at Cloud Imperium. Thanks again and we\u2019ll see you for next month\u2019s update!\n\nApril showers have turned into May floods in Texas! We\u2019ve been hit with severe weather and major flooding as you may have seen in the news. Thankfully our studio has been mostly spared from this destruction and we\u2019ve been moving ahead as usual. We\u2019ve been testing new builds of Star Marine and hard at work on the Persistent Universe and many technical activities. Here are some detailed reports from the head of each team.\n\nPersistent Universe Team\nArt\nThe PU Art team has had its hands in a lot of areas of the project this month, as usual. One of our main focuses has been moving the Nyx>Delamar>Levski landing zone into Final Art stage. We\u2019re passed Greybox stage now and the environment is looking amazing. Art Director Mark Skelton, Lead Artist Patrick Thomas, and Global Environment Lead Ian Leyland have been working closely with BHVR to make this environment truly something to behold. VFX artist Lee Amarakoon and Lighting artist Marc Toscano have been busy adding that extra touch of fog, smoke, and lighting to breathe life into this environment. We can\u2019t wait to see you guys participating in shady back-alley dealings, selling things on the black market, and traversing the winding asteroid tunnels that this environment has to offer.\n\nAnother major focus has been optimizing the Stanton>ArcCorp>Area18 landing zone for better performance in preparation for the Social Module release. The extremely high level of detail and fidelity that makes our environments so amazing are pretty taxing on performance, but with new tech in place from our Graphics team we are able to greatly improve our performance through various means.\n\nConcept artist Ken Fairclough finished up a concept of a security turret prop that will eventually be found on landing zones like ArcCorp. These security turrets will be there to punish players who draw their weapons in areas that don\u2019t allow them. They will also act as a deterrent for trolls and griefers who think it\u2019s a great idea to open fire on random civilians.\n\nOur Character Team has been wrapping up support on the FPS characters. The Marines and Outlaws are at a point where we have bid them adieu and now our attention has shifted to creating the characters that will be seen playing SATABall in Astro Arena. We\u2019ve got some pretty slick new concepts we\u2019ve been working from and should be wrapping up in the next couple of weeks. Our character team has also been doing some R&D on Hair and Swappable Clothing for the upcoming Social Module release.\n\nThe Austin Animation Team has been supporting various areas of the project as well. We\u2019ve had our hands full retargeting old PU, FPS, and Arena Commander animations to our new skeleton. We\u2019ve also been providing support for improving the G-Force animations and testing out the Grabby Hands system. Senior Animator David Peng has been focusing 100% of his attention on updating cockpit and gunner templates to match the character\u2019s new proportions. We now have 7 cockpit types and 20 button combinations for our artists to choose from when creating cockpits.\n\nDesign\nMuch of Design\u2019s time this month was spent on fleshing out some of our other occupations that players can eventually choose to adopt in the PU. Tony Zurovec spent much of his time working out the ins and outs of the Pioneer (formerly exploration) occupation and how it relates to the functionality of an upcoming ship. Rob Reininger completed a first pass of how the Mercenary\/Escort occupation would work, while Nate Blaisdell and Evan Manning tackled the Bounty Hunter and Smuggler occupations, respectively. These designs are now sitting with Tony Z for review and once approved will be moved over to the queue with Andrew Nguyen for gameplay implementation.\n\nTony Z also finished his first draft of the new Universe Simulator (formerly the Economic Simulator) and forwarded it to the team over at Wyrmbyte. The new design incorporates much more than just the economy system that will be in the PU, now including things like the ability to create elementals and composites, the ability to create a planet within a solar system and assign it data, and the ability to create occupations for NPC\u2019s and specify execution logic for each occupation.\n\nMark Skelton and Tony Z, along with Lead Writer David Haddock, met with BHVR to go over designs and layouts for upcoming planetside locations. Specifically this month our attention has been on Magnus>Borea>Odyssa and Helios>Tangaroa>Mariana. Both of these locations will offer several new exciting opportunities and diversity to our already impressive stable of landing zones. We\u2019ll share some exciting look development with you guys as it comes online. Next month we will turn our attention to the other landing zones within the Stanton System: Crusader, Hurston, and MicroTech.\n\nEngineering\nThe month of May was a very busy month for the Engineering Team here in Austin and for the Wyrmbyte Team. A lot of big ticket items were completed and ready for initial testing.\nOne big item that everyone has been waiting for is our new Generic Instance Manager, which promises to bring notable improvements to systems such as matchmaking and party. This was architected by Jason Ely, and he brought it home with strong support from Tom Sawyer. We will run initial testing on this new system, which is intended to be a part of the upcoming FPS release.\n\nMeanwhile\u2026over at Wyrmbyte\u2026Scott Brown, Nathan Gray and Ryan Seabury have been working on our Universe Simulator and are about to deliver a proof-of-concept iteration with base functionality in. The next step is to continue to expand on this until we can create a working demo to share internally for further discussion on how to further build upon it. At the same time, Ian Guthrie is working on the first iteration of our Solar System Server, and will be wrapping up an initial iteration of that soon. The Wyrmbyte Team has also delivered a rewrite of our Player Info Server and our Presence Server in May and are continuing to work on their iPredictor ships and missiles movement system.\n\nOur other engineers have been busy, too\u2026Tom Davies has finished v1.0 of our Useable Editor for our NPC AI needs, and Jeff Uriarte is making solid progress on the Character Archetype Editor, which is another tool for our design team. Andrew Nguyen has been in R&D Land prepping for the initial prototyping of another occupation (tentatively called the \u201cDiscover\u201d occupation), and he has just wrapped up an initial prototype for the Mining occupation.\n\nBrian Mazza has been deep in crucial work needed by the team at large, such as implementing Google Brakepad for better crash reports, porting our Universe backend, and fixing server bugs that were blocking team progress and preventing build stability. Across the hall from Brian, James Wright has been working closely with QA on profiling and analyzing performance on our various builds, including a recent PTU build and our pending FPS build. This data is helping us determine problem areas that need attention in order to improve overall performance. And James has recruited the aid of Clive Johnson (who is close to wrapping up his work on implementing our Unique Global Entity ID system) and George Kidd from the UK Team to help investigate some of the critical performance issues uncovered in his profiling results.\n\nOn the tools side of things, Benjamin Bechtel has rolled out a new improved version of his Asset Validation Tool with an all new user interface. This tool is used daily by our artists. Benjamin is also awaiting a visit in June from UK tools engineer Ashly Canning to work together on our Dataforge Tool. Sean Tracy and Jeffery Zhu have rolled out the first phase of their stream restructuring, which will greatly help streamline our stream flows in getting our development streams all the way out to our live product. Lastly, these two gentlemen have spent a great deal of time and effort supporting Cort Soest on our much needed and super long task of cleaning up our Perforce data. The first two phases of this task have wrapped up in May.\n\nThe team is anticipating June and looking forward to offering their support on the upcoming FPS release, as well as continued work towards our upcoming Social Module.\n\nLive Operations\nQA\nFor the QA team, May began with testing and releasing 1.1.2 and subsequently 1.1.3.\nWith help from our Senior Engine Programmer James Wright, we conducted a specialized PTU test that utilized a separate server CPU thread to calculate physics. The results showed significant performance improvements during matches.\n\nChanges have been made to how we utilize different streams and branches with Perforce, our versioning control software. This will help with a much more structured and smooth release and feature integration process. This has also resulted in an increased workload for QA to ensure these additional streams or branches of the game and editor are properly tested. However the team is doing a great job rising to the occasion to ensure this additional testing requirement is met.\n\nOur FPS specialists have been very busy ensuring Star Marine is properly tested each day. The team was fortunate enough to be able to provide feedback directly to design director Todd Papy. Todd was very responsive to each point raised. After discussing these points, Todd tasked up and prioritized any agreed upon changes. As QA, it is very fulfilling to be able to be a part of the direction of development in such a way.\n\nMeanwhile, Todd Raffray has been making sure the Social Module is properly tested. Todd has been doing a great job ensuring all features are documented into a comprehensive checklist and continually tested as they come online.\n\nCongratulations to Miles Lee for transitioning into an official Associate Engineer role with our DevOps team! Miles has done a great job helping to create a framework for test automation. We can now capture performance data and automate the majority of our stability checks for each build as soon as they are available.\n\nThe team filmed their first episode of a special QA segment with Community where they showcase some of their favorite bugs.\n\nThe team was also fortunate enough to attend the University of Texas Denius-Sams Gaming Academy\u2019s launch party of their first official release called \u201cThe Calm Before\u201d. We had a lot of fun playing the game! Their team is very talented. Feel free to check out their free download!\n\nIt has been a busy month for us in QA. Next month we will be intently focus testing Alpha 1.2 in preparation for its imminent release.\n\nGame Support\nThis month was quite busy for Game Support as we continued to build upon some of the work done in March and April.\n\nThe month of May also saw the publish of two Arena Commander updates (1.1.2 and 1.1.3). Update 1.1.2 greatly helped players with the dreaded Match Not Found, Kicked Back to Lobby, and Infinite Load Screen issues, and 1.1.3 assisted with the persistent \u201crubber banding\u201d issues that saw players jump around the map. This is only the start of our optimizations, and we know you\u2019ll be excited to see how we continue to use your information to help improve the game experience.\n\nOn that note, we also ran an incredibly successful playtest on PTU using 1.1.2. Players crammed into the PTU service to help us stress test and gather important server analytics, and along the way we had an absolutely EPIC 8v8 round of matches, which has set off a round of discussions and assignments internally on what we can do to start increasing the player cap.\n\nIn terms of continuing to build and scale our support operations for you, one of the bigger items this month was the creation of an internal workflow and knowledge base that greatly expands our ability to help you. By internally publishing a full matrix of possible problems, troubleshooting methods, and resolutions, we\u2019ve been able to train more people in the company to help with technical issues. This means that we can help a greater number of people in a shorter amount of time, and provides a fantastic foundation for growing our team as we head into Star Marine, Social Module, Squadron 42, and ultimately the Persistent Universe.\n\nWe\u2019ve also begun to work with Turbulent who is driving two big initiatives for Game Support: The Community Bug Council (a MUCH improved way for players to submit and see what bugs are active in the system) and a new revamped version of the Live Service Notification page, which will include a much-desired Server Status page.\n\nYou\u2019ll see more about both of these in the coming weeks, but both of these are alignment with our larger goals of getting you more accurate information as quickly as possible about the state of the service.\n\nIT\/Operations\nMay has been a month of speed for IT. The IT group works hard to keep up with the expanding infrastructure needs of the development teams and performance of central storage systems at each studio continues to be one of our priorities. Last month we focused on internal build replication to studios from the build system in Austin. This month we\u2019ve shifted our focus to the performance of the underlying hardware in the Austin build system itself. The goal of this project is to significantly reduce the time it takes to generate builds. Reducing build times speeds up development and internal testing but the entire build pipeline is large and complex so we have been approaching this from several angles.\n\nFirst on the list has been the performance of the storage the build systems run on. The build system compiles code and assets for the game of course and most of this work really pushes the disks hard. I\/O wait times can go through the roof on normal systems and since our build system is compiling many builds in parallel we saw a great deal of time being lost just waiting for disks to catch up. To solve this problem we built a custom server with all flash storage using special controllers to push our IOPS well beyond our current needs. This one improvement to our build system has shown impressive results with a 66% reduction in build times.\n\nNext we plan to move more secondary systems over to fast storage which should result in additional reductions. Finally, we\u2019ll incorporate parallel processing methods to bring more cpu cores in to the build process. This step plus some potential resource caching should bring our build times down from hours to minutes.\n\nWe\u2019ve also been working closely with DevOps to improve our build automation systems which will add stability and usability to our current system. We\u2019re hoping to roll out the rest of these changes over the next few weeks. For now, we\u2019re very pleased with the early results and I think everyone is anxious to see how fast we can make these builds go now.\n\nDev Ops\nWe released two patches this month, Patch 1.1.2 and 1.1.3, and neither were on a Friday! Our team will continue to work with the company to attempt to corral these deployments to Tuesdays as industry standard, and then hopefully, move into a continuous deployment pipeline over the course of a few years which should eliminate the need for downtime (a lot of this will depend on our final database design).\n\nWe have been assisting in the deployment playtests of the FPS and using those opportunities to test our new launcher and patcher. So far the tests have been positive, but we have several more polish passes to go through before we move it to PTU for everyone to use. The Launcher development will be broken into three phases. The first, a PTU phase has already been mentioned. This takes the existing UI and combines it with our new patcher. The second phase will incorporate a complete re-write of the launcher into C++. Combined with the new patcher and the old UI, it will have stability improvements but will look and function much like the current launcher, and the upcoming PTU launcher. The third phase will be a complete new UI on top of the C++ core and patcher. These phases will take several months to roll out, and more information about each will be coming up soon.\n\nFinally, a ton of work has been going on how data in the company is created, stored, and consumed. We are looking at how we use branches in Perforce, how data is copied to the build server, what data is excluded, how development leads look at that data. Initiatives on better Perforce tools, an Exclusion tool, and a new build server have been additionally occupying the teams time. The build server is an especially large project, that we are aiming to have the core phase done by July 14th. To that end, one of the engineers in the Frankfurt studio has flown out to Austin to work with us over the next three weeks so we can collaborate on implementation ideas.\n\nWork on finalizing our database model and containerizing the servers has had to be put on hold while we finish our tools that handle all the data used by the studios. We will be returning to these topics when our tools currently in development are finished, and when our server team moves onto working on the Persistence Service that will be the main interface layer to the database. Hopefully, this work will be included in the June report!\n\nHello everyone! Here at Foundry 42, we\u2019re working on everything from Arena Commander (multicrew) to Squadron 42. Chris Roberts has spent the past month in another part of England, shooting performance capture for Squadron 42\u2026 and we\u2019re working closely to make sure that the data generated there turns into cinematics that will blow you away! Here\u2019s the department by department breakdown of what went on in Manchester this month:\n\nAnimation\nHere in the UK we\u2019re still working to support the needs of our designers. Whilst the Directors down at Imaginarium continue to capture the data we need we\u2019re busy providing block out animations for the design and code departments to start prototyping and implementing mechanics.\n\nWe\u2019re also working with the various studios globally to streamline the tools we all need to be able to work efficiently and effectively to achieve the goals set out for Squadron42 and beyond.\n- UK Lead Animator, Uisdean Ross.\n\nEngineering\nIn previous reports we\u2019ve briefly mentioned some of the general game mechanics we\u2019re working on here in the UK. This month we\u2019ve decided to do a little bit more of a break down on a few of them, what they are, and how they\u2019re coming along.\n\nConversation System: As usual there\u2019s been plenty of work to do on the conversation system this month, the highlights being the fix up of NPC to NPC conversations and the multiplayer aspect of the conversation system getting a first pass in preparation for the social module. The subtitles font has also been improved and work on revamping the player choice UI for branching conversations is underway. For Squadron 42 we now have text-to-speech in place which is highly useful for prototyping conversations as more dialogue gets added to these levels. Work on the animation side of the system is also in progress, with help from the Austin studio, to get the system ready to receive all the lovely motion capture data available to us.\n\nPAW (Personal Arc Welder). This weapon\/gadget is something special, because due to its behaviour, could be used for multiple things. We have been focused in both technical and design point of views. Speaking about the technical part, the cutting tech has been improved to use our damage system so now everything is more realistic, in fact now you can see how surfaces are being cut are affected by energy from the PAW. In addition, a complete review about the aim system has been made, allowing us to, for example, activate or deactivate the laser sight, changing its behaviour, etc\u2026 Finally, speaking about design and redesign, we have changed different effects like the beam and the dot in the aim system (laser sight) and we have added new ones like the impact effect and other particles.\n\nLooting System. In this case we have been focused in some technical changes. The previous Looting System was based on items, so for us, an entity was a group of items that we could take. But we wanted something more powerful, to not only take items, but place them too, so we decided to use the item port system (the item port system is a very powerful, flexible way of defining how items can be attached to each other). As a result, now we loot an entity, not necessarily a body, and search what kind of ports does it have and we can take items from those ports and place items on them. In summary, we turned a specific system into something more general and powerful.\n\nHydraulic doors. The hydraulic doors are an extension of a normal automatic door. These now have the option of being \u201ccomputer controlled\u201d so we can have features where we can lock the door going in either direction. We\u2019ve now added a new security method for players with the correct security privileges being able to lock and unlock doors and refining the lockdown and manual override mechanics. The override mechanic on certain of the doors allows the player to use their PAW to cut out a section and reveal a manual hydraulic pump to open the door by hand. These doors have also been rolled out into the hangers, unifying them to use the same system everywhere.\n\nMedpack: A medpack item has been added for use in the FPS game modes, it\u2019s purpose to help restore the player\u2019s health. When used the player will perform a combat heal, grasping the syringe like item in their hand and injecting it into a port in their armour. Healing in this manner will distribute the recovery equally across all limbs.\n\nCollectibles: Collectibles come in two forms, either items that can be picked up in much the same way as the looting mechanic, or items scanned for information, both of which get added to your inventory. Examples of which can be pieces of tech that can be scavenged for a monetary value, or dog tags that can unlock character profiles. These items can be found scattered around various areas in Squadron 42.\n\nGraphics\nThis month the graphics team have been primarily working on several different areas in parallel. We\u2019re close to completing an automated system for the artists that intelligently finds meshes it can merge together in the environment to improve performance. Because large parts of our level are built from modular kits (so that we can produce the quantity needed for the PU) we end up with more meshes than CryEngine, DirectX and the graphics driver can handle. Merging meshes reduces the overall number of objects in the level but doing so naively would cause a single level to take several gigabytes of RAM, and so our algorithm evaluates all potential merges operations we could take, and only executes the one that would save us the most performance for the lowest memory cost. The algorithm continues to merge the best candidates until it reaches a fixed memory budget or performance threshold specified by the artist. The end result is a massive saving in the number of objects and therefore performance, all for a minimal memory cost and no extra effort from the artist.\n\nThe VFX team have been hampered by various limitations and bugs in the particle lighting system in recent months, and so some of our team have been busy improving the particle lighting system and this should result in the VFX artists being able to create effects that sit much better in the environment. The rest of our team have been handling the many bugs we get prior to each release, and this time it\u2019s FPS related bugs relating to performance, streaming and depth of field improvements. We\u2019ve also been fitting in some fixes to the \u2018large world\u2019 rendering which will allow the CryEngine to work with practically unlimited map sizes.\n\nDesign\nThis month UK design have been continuing their work on several chapters of Squadron 42 getting them closer to greybox. The main priority for the team right now is the mocap shoot currently taking place in London. Each designer has been able to witness the amazing performances of our cast play out in their own levels which, even at a whitebox stage, look incredible and bring the world we\u2019re building to life that much more!\n\nThe internal Vertical Slice is also undergoing massive progress, helping us answer key questions about our core gameplay mechanics and develop our features for experiential, dogfighting and FPS scenarios.\n\nOn top of all this, the UK design team are also assisting in all the other areas of Star Citizen, as you have no doubt seen, with Arena Commander, weapons, ships and the upcoming FPS module keeping us all busy!\n\nArt\nWell, what can I say, for those who dared to looked at the leaked content you can certainly see we are putting your hard earned dollars to good use to make the best content we can! If you were good and are saving yourself, well good on you! We\u2019ll certainly deliver you something worthwhile for your prolonged abstinence.\n\nEvery month is busy here, there\u2019s not a minute that\u2019s not packed with decision making or poly or pixel pushing, ship concept work is starting to reduce, its mainly the odd image here and there to clarify any areas we have missed earlier on, Vanduul fleet all concepted out with just the weapons\/turrets to be worked out. We\u2019ve had some good work done by Jan Urschel and AtomHawk on environments too which is really helping shape the Sq42 storyline.\n\nEnvironments\nOur main focus for this last month has been pushing ahead with our Vertical Slice level, and supporting the shoot happening in London. For the VS we have been striving to achieve a level of detail which is fitting for Star Citizen, particular focus has been placed on player traversal through the scene, rewarding exploration, great vistas and composition, and of course top quality artwork. For the shoot we\u2019ve been making sure that scenes in which performances are being captured in are working correctly on set, and making these ever important last minute tweaks and changes. Excitement is high both on set and in the studio, we can\u2019t wait to show it to you guys.\n\nVFX\nWe\u2019ve had a full month of code support from the graphics engineers, who have cleared out an impressive backlog of bugs and feature requests. We\u2019ve also gained another VFX Artist, so the team is growing! This has enabled us to push forwards in several areas, including:\n\nSquadron 42 environmental VFX variants, namely:\n\nSparks\n\nSteam\n\nFire\/damage\n\nSpace storms (be careful, it\u2019s dangerous out there!)\n\nR&D for large turret VFX \u2013 muzzle flash, tracers, impacts etc.\n\nR&D for Squadron 42 cinematics, testing typical workflows and pipelines.\n\nVarious ship effects.\n\nOn a slightly less exciting note (but important nonetheless) we\u2019ve also been working hard behind the scenes to solidify our workflows and pipelines, and fleshing out the VFX roadmap, to allow us to keep well on top of the multitude off effects requirements across all areas of the Star Citizen universe!\n\nShips\nOh the ships, the ships \u2013 always keeping our top artists on their toes \u2013 the Idris, yes, its coming along nicely, maybe even a few surprises (i know you love them\/hate them), there has been a lot of work to tie the ships design language into a coherent form so that further down the line it\u2019s clear what manufacturer does what, has what style of panel lines, what kind of lights, the list is large but at least it will be clear for internal and external artists on what they need to achieve.\n\nStarfarer interior blocked out, ARGO needs a shader pass, Mining Drone continues, yes, the Jav hasn\u2019t been started, we are at maximum capacity until we find more staff \u2013 c\u2019mon join us and make the BDSSE :)\n\nUI\nThe team has expanded a 100% \u2013 we have gone from one to two artists! Work has continued on FPS UI and now exploring the style and look for Shubin, Aegis and Vanduul \u2013 watch this space.\n\nCharacters\nThe character team has been on site in London alongside the Imaginarium shoot with the camera rig and we have had an absolute blast! Every scan session has been fun and exciting and we have managed to capture some truly world leading data on some truly world class talent. They say you should never meet your heroes, but I completely disagree and every one of them have been friendly, professional and enthusiastic.\n\nThe data has already begun to be processed and some of you may have already seen some of the action from our scan session with Sandi, which is a good example of the energy and drive we have on this project.\n\nI only wish I could tell you who has sat in our rig!\n\nAudio\nHey everyone! On the CIG Audio side we\u2019ve mostly been continuing with our push towards releasing with Wwise. Still a lot of core stuff to do but we\u2019re making progress.\n\nI think it\u2019s fair to say we\u2019re finding a lot of clean-up work has been required as far as engineering is concerned. We\u2019d (perhaps optimistically) figured that most systems would simply need Wwise events created, that triggered in much the same way as their equivalents in FMOD, and away we go, all done! However that\u2019s rarely been the case and the more you dig, the more you find that needs doing.\n\nSo it\u2019s been as much a matter of taking stock, cleaning up, removing loose ends in terms of sound data, code and logic, as it has been making sure Wwise events and sounds simply exist. There are certain things that worked under FMOD that kind of worked, but more in spite of things rather than by design. This isn\u2019t down to the fault of anyone particularly, just that often audio has been reacting to project changes late in the day as the game has developed.\n\nSo as much as possible we\u2019ve been taking the opportunity to ensure this move over to Wwise is a shift from short-term, reactive thinking and design, and moving more towards how we aspire to approach things \u2013 getting ahead of the game (literally) as much as we can: coming up with templates in Wwise for instance, keeping everything clean and hack free. We\u2019ve brought our code team together again as well as our Austin-based tech sound design so we can bump heads most effectively in the run up to FPS. Having to engineer that new system as well as bring on the dog-fighting module back up to speed and support various aspects of the persistent universe \u2013 those things would be hard enough to do without the new audio engine to worry about. But we mustn\u2019t grumble too much!\n\nSadly one of our senior sound designers, Tom, left us this month. He\u2019s missed, as he had a wealth of experience in CryEngine particularly, but he was presented with an opportunity to move closer to loved ones and it\u2019s hard to argue with that. So he leaves on good terms \u2013 we wish him all the best in his future efforts, he won\u2019t be easily replaced.\n\nIn other news, we have our newly built sound design rooms, mostly ready to be occupied. We still need to apply our acoustic treatment properly to the walls, and we\u2019re waiting on some furniture and monitors (monitors is what audio people call speakers, just to confuse everyone) to arrive, but it\u2019s nice to see these rooms coming together. We\u2019ve tried to give each of them their own colour scheme which will either cause creative sparks, or mild insanity. Depends on the room really. Maybe we\u2019ll witness a little of both! They\u2019ll need some tweaking and tuning to try to ensure sonic neutrality. They\u2019re admittedly a little small, which makes it hard to ensure they\u2019re free of standing waves etc. that can misrepresent certain bands of the audio spectrum. We\u2019ll get as close as we practically can, but will just take a bit of time to get to where they need to be.\n\nWe\u2019ve been trying to fit in time to experiment with processes pertaining to alien vocals, which we\u2019ve started looking at while the linguists keep pinning down the alien language aspect. It\u2019s always a tricky area but it\u2019s proving very interesting to see what you can do before you get into the aural equivalent of the uncanny valley.\n\nAs well as the above we\u2019ve been on-hand to support the ongoing shoot for \u2018Squadron 42\u2019, which obviously I\u2019m going to say nothing about, so don\u2019t ask me. ;)\n\nThanks for taking the time to catch up on all things CIG Audio. Please do post a question or two on the Ask A Developer forum and we\u2019ll do our best to answer. Bye for now!\n\nThe Frankfurt team is steadily growing in size and active across numerous disciplines, base tech, AI, design, cinematics, Audio, Animation, FX, etc. As seen in our office video last month our temp space was filling up, we rented out an another room to accommodate additional hires. We\u2019ve also been preparing to move into our new office, the official move will be in early July, and we\u2019ll most likely put out a new video once we get settled in. We\u2019ve only been part of the global team for a few months now, but the momentum and progress across the game from all studios and offices is great to see, and we\u2019re glad to be part of it.\n\nEngineering\nFor the month of May, Frankfurt Engineering has been busy on multiple fronts. We made a lot of progress on Large World (moving the codebase to 64 bit coordinates, thus allowing galaxy size (literally) levels to be created and explored in Star Citizen) . The main task being worked on Large World this month was making the rendering Camera Relative: in fact the move to 64 bit required all rendering code to be changed to be relative to the camera and not simply in absolute world coordinates any more.\n\nThere has also been lots of progress on the Zone System, which is our new spatial partitioning system, replacing the old CryEngine octree spatial partitioning scheme. The Zone system is especially fit for a game like Star Citizen which features large, dynamic maps, huge amount of entities and large moving ships. Speaking of multicrew ships, we have also been working on ship-local physics grids (so players can walk around in moving ships), runtime prefabs, and investigating entity optimizations and streaming. We are initially testing those new systems with the Retaliator.\n\nWe also started implementing optimized asset storage formats for vertex data to reduce overall data size, improve lead-time and memory, as well as CPU\/GPU performance. These optimizations will be rolled out shortly.\n\nWe\u2019ve started some initial R&D discussion on the topic of procedural generation, which will get some dedicated time later down the line, after the big ticket items mentioned earlier are all in place. There has been a lot of clean-up of outdated CryEngine functionalities that we don\u2019t need any more for Star Citizen, like the old level heap, obsolete render nodes, and many other smaller items. Additionally we have been working on integrating the relevant parts of the new 3.7 SDK into our codebase. All those major tasks are now close to hit the Star Citizen code mainline. Additionally, we have been providing general engine support, features and engine bug fixes.\n\nWe\u2019ve also updated our memory profiling tools, removing related old cruft from the entire engine code.\n\nAI\nIn the last month we\u2019ve put a solid basis for all the future development related to the Artificial Intelligence in Star Citizen.\n\nWe started unifying CryEngine Communication System with the CIG Contextual Reaction System. What are those two systems?\n\nThe Communication System is used to allow AI characters to speak: the behaviour (or other system) can request to play a specific communication line (for example \u201cGreetThePlayerInFronOfYou\u201d) and the system is going to take care of and choose an appropriate variation for that concept (for example \u201cGreetings my friend!\u201d) and it\u2019s going to check if the defined pacing is actually allowing the audio to play. The system is also responsible to correctly handle a case in which a communication line playing on a high priority channel needs to cancel the current message if it\u2019s playing on a lower priority channel.\n\nThe classic example is the NPC being punched or shot while he is speaking. His scream of pain should definitely interrupt anything he was previously saying!\nThe Contextual Reaction System is used to trigger a communication line based on specific events triggered by the game. A ship that is heavily damaged may broadcast a \u201cShipsDamaged\u201d signal that is picked up by the CRS and it will choose a proper variation of that audio that must be played. CRS is already fully integrated into Dataforge so the writers are able to create new content without the need of code support. During this month we have started the merging of the new systems to take the benefit of both!\n\nWe also started working on the CryEngine Cover Surface System to connect it to the Kythera behavior system and to allow the support of large world. The Cover Surface System is able to sample a physical object and automatically create data to store cover positions.\n\nMoreover we have laid down the basis to extend the CryEngine MNM Navigation system to support large world and local navigation meshes. We have started prototyping the functionality to have a navigation mesh attached to a moving spaceship, so that we will be able in the next months to have the ship\u2019s crew members navigating in the internal spacecraft environment.\n\nWe also focused in coordinating the work of Moon Collider related to few improvements of the Kythera Behavior Tree system. The BTS is now connected to DataForge to allow system\/game designers to create\/prototype fast new behaviors without the need of writing C++ code. Also new behavior nodes have been introduced to support basic functionalities as state machines, timestamps and signals. All those functionalities will empower us to implement more complex and interesting behaviors.\n\nIn general we are planning lots of new features and we will prepare some cool videos\/pictures to show more details about our progress next month!\n\nDesign\nOn the design side, we\u2019ve been working closely with the UK team and taking ownership of a level for Squadron 42. We\u2019re active in every aspect of Star Citizen\u2019s development, from working on the FPS module release to developing high level AI behavior tree feedback that will span all of our game areas. Other challenges include building and setting up turret gameplay, providing the UK with high level Squadron 42 feedback and working on unifying FPS suit customization to make it work more like we currently do with the ships.\n\nCinematics\nA few members of the team have been on set in London for the full month with Chris Roberts shooting scenes for Squadron 42. The cast is amazing and we can\u2019t wait to announce who we have and show off their performances. We\u2019re ramping up the cinematics team and starting to get more traction on the internal pipeline and workflow.\n\nAudio\nOur Audio Engineer has spent the full month in the UK working with their Audio Team to get the Audio up and running on Wwise for the next release.\n\nContinued work on converting old FMOD based code features to use the new Audio System. Spent some time helping develop the asset conversion scripts to automate the more straightforward parts of the process, so that the sound designers can focus on tuning the sounds and the way they are triggered in game, instead of having to worry about porting the current implementations. Rolled out the set of new audio asset pipeline tools to be used by the sound designers and the build servers to simplify and speed up the day-to-day audio asset production.\n\nFX\nFor the past month we\u2019ve been focused mainly on researching various types of fire to include in the game. These range from small fires and debris, to towering flames and huge explosions. Smoke is also an important part and getting them to blend together in a realistic way has been one of the focuses for the current R&D cycle.\n\nWe\u2019ve also done some work on lightning for some of the squadron 42 missions, which will mainly be used as a long distance background effects.\n\nGood morning citizens! \u2026or Good evening pirates? \u2026what time is it in space anyways!? Post the correct answer in the comments to win a thumbs up.\n\nBecause it takes more than a month to create anything of importance in a game as huge and detailed as Star Citizen you might find that this month\u2019s report is similar to last month\u2019s report but described with different words :) Nevertheless, that does NOT mean that the month was devoid of progress, far from it! Here\u2019s the monthly report for the BHVR team:\n\nFirst off, a lot of our efforts went towards polishing, debugging, as well as supporting other studios on various game modules. As we are approaching the FPS module release and the social module delivery (prepare your excitement bags!) the time is not so much spent on adding new features, but rather on polishing and consolidating what is already in there.\n\nHere are the most notable modules, systems, systemic modules and modular systems that have been debugged, polished and\/or supported this month:\n\nThe in-game chat\n\nThe emote system: \/dance \/dothebender\n\nThe FPS Module\n\nThe Lobby: Multi-Seat\n\nThe Lobby: FPS Loadout\n\nLet\u2019s talk about the social module a bit. We\u2019ve added more functionality to the chat system in order to make it easier and more fun to use. We\u2019ve implemented the first version of filtered conversation tabs which allows you to have multiple conversations either private or public in an understandable and ordered manner. We\u2019ve iterated on the interface and its experience taking it to a lock-down state for this first iteration.\n\nWe also spent some time fixing interactive items such as flairs, the holotable and doors on the client & server sides. This is obviously pertinent for every in-game location, not just the hangars.\n\nEngineers have been debugging the replication and instantiation of the hangars while level designers have been fixing all sorts of problems inside them. I don\u2019t know what you are doing in those hangars guys, but they seem to break all the time! Please stop smashing your buggies all over the place. ;)\n\nThe creation of the base spawning module is complete which, believe it or not, handles spawning of multiple players simultaneously in hangars & planetside locations. With it we can spawn you (well not you, but your character) at the proper position, depending on where you\u2019re coming from (Hangar -> Planetside, Space -> Planetside, etc). Didn\u2019t think loading and spawning could be that interesting but we\u2019re excited to see the videos you\u2019ll post about your first time spawning planetside.\n\nOkay now let\u2019s get to the fun bit: planets! This month in the Art department we\u2019ve completed all the set pieces for an industrial mining planet. The plan is to use this set across the galaxy, primarily but not exclusively for Delamar in the NYX system. Our main goal is to make the set pieces as versatile as possible to enable any art team on this project to create different locations. This took quite a large amount of time to complete, but we are very happy with the end result.\n\nWe\u2019ve also started work on legacy objects to make them comply with the new visual and technical standards. As we make more locations we update our techniques and since these \u201cold\u201d pieces will be of use in the future, we need to make sure they are compliant.\n\nOur level Designers are exploring and refining other locations like the blocks on Terra Prime, Marianna and Odyssa as well as creating new interior locations and polishing\/supporting older locations. A bit like the legacy pieces in art, some interactive objects also changed and needed to be update to be on par.\n\nThe mobiGlas has seen lots of polish and progress. We\u2019ve implemented animations to make it extra slick. Some refinements and updates have been made on the shopping flow as well. We can now display your UEC balance and you\u2019ll also be able to buy stuff and things for real!\n\nIn the same vein, we did a first pass implementation on the UI, code and visuals of the microTech Kiosk. \u201cWhat the Hull is that?\u201d you may ask. Well, some shops and other locations around the verse have microTech kiosks which are used to show holographic representations of extra large products that don\u2019t fit the location. Kiosks are also used to get access to an inventory catalog with the help of the mobiGlas. The mobiGlas is also a microTech product, so now you see the connection. Our first kiosk will be used in Astro-Armada, where it can be interacted with to browse and buy ships.\n\nThe kiosks are part of the first phase of the ship shopping experience. We\u2019re planning on more immersive and interesting ways to shop ships for the future that were impossible to deliver right away.\n\nAnother interesting object we are working on is the personal locker. Don\u2019t be fooled, this has nothing to do with flairs. The personal locker can be found in your hangar and is where you will store your FPS gadgets and weapons. Later on down the road, this locker will be used to not only display weapons but to prepare loadouts in order to quickly change your character\u2019s equipment for the right job.\n\nAs always, we\u2019ve completed this month\u2019s Flair object along with other secret merchandise work, which we won\u2019t spoil the surprise, because spoiling surprises is not fun at all.\n\nThank you for your attention! Now go destroy some ships will ya!\n\nGreetings Star Citizens! I\u2019m sure most of you saw the massive post concerning Star Marine, and the reason why it\u2019s taking a little longer than expected. Thank you for bearing with us! Most of May was spent executing on the items listed in that post. See below for the details from each team.\n\nEngineering\nIn addition to squashing lots of bugs, the engineering team has been focused on supporting the animators with the new jukes, starts and stops system. There are unique animations for each direction shift to another, and also for each state and speed the player is traveling at. This can add up very quickly! Work has also continued to zero-g movement and SATA Ball features. After playtesting SATA Ball, we realized that there would need to be some specific cases to help with managing the ball in such a large space.\n\nDesign\nThe designers have been hard at work getting SATA Ball up and running. This mostly involves working on playabilty and visual cues to the player for what\u2019s happening. Making sure the players can easily find the ball, making sure the players can easily grab and throw the ball with accuracy, and making sure they can navigate to it effectively. They have also been doing lots of testing with the base set of weapons and tweaking how breathing plays into accuracy.\n\nAnimation\nThe animation team is currently focused on getting all of the jukes, starts and stop mocap data cleaned up and ready for implementation in game. As mentioned above, it is A LOT of mocap data, so they have their plates pretty full.\n\nArt\nThe art team has been focused on two primary goals over the last month. One is reworking the assets for the gold horizon station to be compliant with how things are setup for the persistent universe. This will allow teams across all studios to use this set in their various levels. Sharing is caring!\n\nThe second goal for the art team has been polishing the existing weapons and creating a unified rail system for attachments. This will make creating attachments much easier moving forward, since everything will be universal.\n\nVFX\nSome new VFX were created for SATA Ball, effects for the goals so players don\u2019t get confused and also some effects on the player for when they are shot and disabled. A polish pass was also done on all existing effects with feedback from Chris.\nThanks for reading Citizens! Illfonic Out!\n\nHere\u2019s what we\u2019ve been up to here in Montreal for the month of May :\n\nStarmap\nOutstanding progress was made this month in the actual art for the web star map module. We now have full artistic designs for the top-level Galactic Level view where all star systems are laid out, showing their Jump Point connections. The main challenge here was to find a way to represent the jump points that was stylistically beautiful but also functional to represent the wormhole sizes and directions where applicable. Great progress was done in a 2D HeatGrid type display to show (at any level) the political influence, crime and economic levels of areas of the galaxy. Though this is still experimental ; the visuals proposed by our artists inspired expanding this feature.\n\nOne major UI component included in this art pass is the control disc ; which is a very interesting design because we think it could also be used as an in-game component. This disc is how you will be able to interact with the different items you see on-screen while browsing the galaxy. Our mock-up set from the artists also includes the \u201cSpace Object Overview\u201d screen which is basically what happens when you request more information of an object, be it a planet, asteroid belt, nebula or wormhole. This general purpose view will serve as the primary display for information on anything from within the starmap as well as the jump to the Galactapedia entries for each of them.\n\nDesign of the Starmap is now at a state where it can be intertwined with actual plans for the Starmap in the game, which is why we\u2019ve also designed our interface to be unified with the game controls and experience.\n\nCommunity Hub\nWe completed the interfaces mock-ups for this new section this month, merging its design with the new website look, and attaching it to actual data-driven views. We\u2019ve spent a lot of time making sure that we could feature as much content from the fans as possible : images and galleries, but also videos from varied providers, streaming channels, podcasts\u2026 The Hub is still in intense development, we\u2019ll be able to show more soon.\n\nIssue council\nThe Issue Council, our new \u201ccrowdsourced\u201d bug report system, went through a month of heads-down coding. The core of the system has been completed including data models and system level API. Meanwhile, the design crew has been working through the motions on the actual UI. We gave a demo to the QA team in Austin and everyone is excited to start using it. In June we\u2019ll be testing it by actually entering bugs about itself in it!\n\nLauncher\nThis month we completed a prototype rework of the Star Citizen launcher in conjunction with the DevOps crew in Austin. The new launcher is just internal for now, only for CIG testing, and is based on BitTorrent technology. This allows the patching process to be more efficient in size and speed, and is a first step towards a web-driven launcher which will in turn lead to having more configuration tools directly in the launcher (hangar configuration, future inventory, REC activation\u2026).\n\nChat\nThe Chat system has seen some improvements this month also. We\u2019ve revamped its look to bring it closer to the rest of the site, and we\u2019ve introduced \u201csticky\u201d room subjects for better legibility.\n\nAnd more!\nThis month also came with its own content slew updates on the site. We actually saw 2 concept sales with both the Starfarer Gemini and the new MISC Reliant mini-hauler, and we also brought you the Montreal-produced minigame Hyper Vanguard Force IV by Dave Richard and Christine Marsh. Apex Predators unite!\n\nOn a more silent note, we\u2019ve also implemented the new Amazon \u201cLogin And Pay\u201d payment system for north-american users.\n\nHaving done lots of planning and design work over the last few months, May was light on these for a change, so we got the chance to really get stuck into some cool engineering work. There were several big designer tool features that we worked on, and we\u2019re looking forward to seeing them get put to use.\n\nEngineering\nLast month we spoke about the fancy spline joining improvements that we were working on. This is a feature that enables designers to specify a spline that they want a ship to fly along (in order to do some fancy maneuvers or fly really close to obstacles that the AI would otherwise keep a distance from), and the AI will figure out an optimal path to get on to the spline as quickly as possible. To do this the AI needs to figure out a path from its current position and direction to the start of the spline and to end up facing down the direction of the spline path once it gets there. This can then get more complicated because designers can specify the speed that they want the ship to be moving when it starts the spline, so this can affect the path that the ship takes, since it might need to curve the path a bit to add some extra run up if it needs to get up to speed or slow down by a lot. And, of course, we want all this to look fairly natural as well.\n\nWe finished the feature off this month and got it to the designers to make use of. Now that ships can reliably join splines from anywhere, it makes designer setup easier, but more importantly for you, it will let us use them far more in systemic behaviours. So far we\u2019ve had to be quite restrictive about when ships choose to join a spline, but this gives them far more freedom so \u2013 when we\u2019ve adjusted the behaviors \u2013 you\u2019ll see them used much more in future versions of Arena Commander.\n\nThe biggest feature we worked on this month was a complete change to the way we author AI behavior trees. Up to now, we\u2019ve been authoring them directly in code. Using Kythera\u2019s runtime C++ recompilation, this was actually quite efficient and allowed for fast iteration while running the game, but was not accessible to designers without a programming background. So we did a lot of work to allow behavior trees to be authored inside DataForge.\n\nYou will have heard a lot of mention of DataForge in the past, as the custom data management tool used by designers for all kinds of different data in Star Citizen. It has been engineered from the start to allow different views for different types of data, so where applicable, you might edit data in a spreadsheet style format, while for other things, a graphical node editing view is more appropriate, and so on.\n\nWe now have a behavior tree data category in DataForge that allows designers to create and edit behavior trees using a friendly GUI interface, and then apply these behaviors directly to an AI character without having to write any code. Plus they can modify the behavior trees at runtime and see the results immediately, which is fantastic for fast iteration.\n\nWhat made this a particularly interesting feature for us, though, is that we expect new behavior tree nodes to be created regularly in the future, and we wanted to support adding them into DataForge as easily as possible, so we did some work to create a simple console command in the editor that will automatically generate new definitions for DataForge, plus new C++ binding code that connects DataForge behavior tree structures with the underlying Kythera behavior tree code. So when a coder creates a new node, it\u2019s just a quick console command and the node is now fully integrated into DataForge!\n\nSo it\u2019s still possible to create AI behaviors in C++ just like before, but now we have this alternative GUI creation method, which then gets translated into equivalent C++ code when the behavior runs. We\u2019re excited to see the designers start to work with the new tool and create great behaviors. We expect to have to make small improvements in the near future to make the interface even easier for designers, but we think it\u2019s off to a great start. And we definitely have to give a huge shout-out to Ash Canning at Foundry 42, the mastermind behind DataForge who did lots of tweaks for us on really short notice to help DataForge support editing behavior trees better.\n\nFinally, we did some work inside our Kythera Inspector debugging tool to enable designers to debug their behavior trees a lot more easily, by getting a live visual representation of what the tree is currently doing at any time. Last month we added the ability to record and playback behavior trees states, but that\u2019s more useful for tracking down bugs. For developing behavior trees a live view of what they\u2019re doing is really handy. We\u2019re putting the final touches on this feature and will be getting it out to designers soon, so we\u2019ll wait for next month\u2019s report to go into more detail about it.\n\nLadies and gentleman, boys and girls, citizens of all ages, Thomas, cinematographer and editor extraordinaire, here to bring you the monthly report for May. Reporting as always from what can only be described as heaven on earth, aka the simply sublime paradisiac known as Santa Monica, California.\n\nAnd just like our splendid locale, May was a positively stupendous month for us. We debuted a new segment on our flagship show, Around the Verse, dubbed Ship Shape. Hosted by the effervescently and always alluring Lisa Ohanian, it affords us the opportunity to share with our fans and backers a compendious glimpse into the Ship Pipeline.\n\nSpeaking of Around the Verse, Ben Lesnick did a fantastic job hosting solo while co-host Sandi Gardiner was called upon to exhibit her thespianic skills at the Squadron 42 motion capture shoot in London, and we were treated to an array of talented developers all proving to be distinguished facsimiles, in our illustrious Chairman\u2019s absence, on our weekly 10 for series.\n\nMay also saw everybody\u2019s favorite Bugsmasher, Mr. Mark Bartholomew Abent III making the leap from Around the Verse sub segment to bi-weekly standalone show. His pilot episode was met with rave reviews, and it is with grand exuberance that I am pleased to announce that the network has indeed placed an order for a full season of shows.\n\nOn a completely unrelated note, May also begat us the much anticipated and long awaited grand opening of Fuddruckers Santa Monica, and the CommuniTeam wasted no time in visiting it for lunch, and I will just say this, we were not disappointed.\n\nAnd that, my fellow citizens, was the month of May. Thank you to all of our fans, without you, none of this would be possible, and it is truly an honor and a privilege to be able to do what we do.\n\nUntil next time, I will always and forever be,\n\nYour humble servant,\n\nThomas","de_DE":"us reports haben wir kurz einige der allgemeinen Spielmechaniken erw\u00e4hnt, an denen wir hier in Gro\u00dfbritannien arbeiten. Diesen Monat haben wir beschlossen, ein wenig mehr \u00fcber einige von ihnen zu erfahren, was sie sind und wie sie vorgehen.\n\nKonversationssystem: Wie \u00fcblich gab es in diesem Monat viel Arbeit am Konversationssystem zu erledigen, wobei die Highlights die Korrektur von NPC-zu-NPC-Gespr\u00e4chen und der Multiplayer-Aspekt des Konversationssystems waren, der einen ersten Durchgang zur Vorbereitung auf das Sozialmodul erhielt. Auch die Schriftart der Untertitel wurde verbessert, und es wird an einer \u00dcberarbeitung der Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che der Player-Auswahl f\u00fcr verzweigte Gespr\u00e4che gearbeitet. F\u00fcr die Staffel 42 haben wir jetzt Text-to-Speech im Einsatz, was sehr n\u00fctzlich f\u00fcr das Prototyping von Gespr\u00e4chen ist, da mehr Dialog zu diesen Ebenen hinzugef\u00fcgt wird. Die Arbeiten an der Animationsseite des Systems sind ebenfalls im Gange, mit Hilfe des Austin-Studios, um das System bereit zu machen, alle sch\u00f6nen Bewegungsdaten zu empfangen, die uns zur Verf\u00fcgung stehen.\n\nPAW (Personal Arc Welder). Diese Waffe\/Ger\u00e4t ist etwas Besonderes, denn aufgrund ihres Verhaltens kann sie f\u00fcr mehrere Dinge verwendet werden. Wir haben uns sowohl in technischer als auch in gestalterischer Hinsicht konzentriert. Was den technischen Teil betrifft, so wurde die Schneidtechnologie verbessert, um unser Schadenssystem zu nutzen, so dass jetzt alles realistischer ist, und zwar jetzt kann man sehen, wie Oberfl\u00e4chen durch die Energie der PAW beeinflusst werden. Dar\u00fcber hinaus wurde eine vollst\u00e4ndige \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung des Zielsystems durchgef\u00fchrt, die es uns erm\u00f6glicht, z.B. das Laservisier zu aktivieren oder zu deaktivieren, sein Verhalten zu \u00e4ndern, etc.... Schlie\u00dflich, wenn wir \u00fcber Design und Neugestaltung sprechen, haben wir verschiedene Effekte wie den Strahl und den Punkt im Zielsystem (Laservisier) ge\u00e4ndert und wir haben neue hinzugef\u00fcgt, wie den Aufpralleffekt und andere Partikel.\n\nPl\u00fcnderungssystem. In diesem Fall haben wir uns auf einige technische \u00c4nderungen konzentriert. Das vorherige Pl\u00fcnderungssystem basierte auf Gegenst\u00e4nden, so dass f\u00fcr uns eine Entit\u00e4t eine Gruppe von Gegenst\u00e4nden war, die wir nehmen konnten. Aber wir wollten etwas St\u00e4rkeres, um Gegenst\u00e4nde nicht nur zu nehmen, sondern auch zu platzieren, also haben wir uns f\u00fcr das Item-Port-System entschieden (das Item-Port-System ist eine sehr leistungsf\u00e4hige, flexible Methode, um zu definieren, wie Gegenst\u00e4nde aneinander befestigt werden k\u00f6nnen). Infolgedessen pl\u00fcndern wir jetzt eine Entit\u00e4t, nicht unbedingt einen K\u00f6rper, und suchen, welche Art von Ports sie hat, und wir k\u00f6nnen Elemente aus diesen Ports nehmen und Elemente darauf platzieren. Zusammenfassend l\u00e4sst sich sagen, dass wir ein bestimmtes System in etwas Allgemeineres und M\u00e4chtigeres verwandelt haben.\n\nHydraulische T\u00fcren. Die hydraulischen T\u00fcren sind eine Erweiterung einer normalen automatischen T\u00fcr. Diese haben jetzt die M\u00f6glichkeit, \"computergesteuert\" zu sein, so dass wir Funktionen haben, bei denen wir die T\u00fcr in beide Richtungen verriegeln k\u00f6nnen. Wir haben nun eine neue Sicherheitsmethode f\u00fcr Spieler mit den richtigen Sicherheitsprivilegien hinzugef\u00fcgt, die in der Lage sind, T\u00fcren zu verriegeln und zu entriegeln und die Mechanik der Verriegelung und manuellen \u00dcbersteuerung zu verfeinern. Die \u00dcberbr\u00fcckungsmechanik an einigen T\u00fcren erm\u00f6glicht es dem Spieler, mit seiner PAW einen Abschnitt auszuschneiden und eine manuelle Hydraulikpumpe zum \u00d6ffnen der T\u00fcr von Hand zu entdecken. Diese T\u00fcren wurden auch in die Kleiderb\u00fcgel gerollt, um sie so zu vereinen, dass sie \u00fcberall das gleiche System verwenden.\n\nMedpack: Ein Medpack-Element wurde f\u00fcr die Verwendung in den FPS-Spielmodi hinzugef\u00fcgt, um die Gesundheit des Spielers wiederherzustellen. Bei Verwendung f\u00fchrt der Spieler eine Kampfheilung durch, indem er die Spritze wie einen Gegenstand in der Hand greift und sie in einen Port in seiner R\u00fcstung spritzt. Eine solche Heilung verteilt die Erholung gleichm\u00e4\u00dfig auf alle Gliedma\u00dfen.\n\nSammlerst\u00fccke: Sammlerst\u00fccke gibt es in zwei Formen, entweder Gegenst\u00e4nde, die auf die gleiche Weise wie der Pl\u00fcnderer aufgenommen werden k\u00f6nnen, oder Gegenst\u00e4nde, die nach Informationen gescannt werden, die beide zu deinem Inventar hinzugef\u00fcgt werden. Beispiele daf\u00fcr k\u00f6nnen Technikelemente sein, die nach einem Geldwert durchsucht werden k\u00f6nnen, oder Dog Tags, die Charakterprofile freischalten k\u00f6nnen. Diese Gegenst\u00e4nde befinden sich verstreut in verschiedenen Bereichen der Staffel 42.\n\nGrafiken\nIn diesem Monat hat das Grafikteam vor allem an mehreren verschiedenen Bereichen parallel gearbeitet. Wir sind kurz davor, ein automatisiertes System f\u00fcr die K\u00fcnstler zu entwickeln, das intelligent Netze findet, die in der Umgebung zusammengef\u00fcgt werden k\u00f6nnen, um die Leistung zu verbessern. Da gro\u00dfe Teile unseres Levels aus modularen Kits bestehen (damit wir die f\u00fcr das PU ben\u00f6tigte Menge produzieren k\u00f6nnen), haben wir am Ende mehr Meshes, als CryEngine, DirectX und der Grafiktreiber verarbeiten k\u00f6nnen. Das Zusammenf\u00fchren von Netzen reduziert die Gesamtzahl der Objekte in der Ebene, w\u00fcrde aber dazu f\u00fchren, dass eine einzige Ebene mehrere Gigabyte RAM ben\u00f6tigt, und so wertet unser Algorithmus alle m\u00f6glichen Zusammenf\u00fchrungsoperationen aus, die wir durchf\u00fchren k\u00f6nnten, und f\u00fchrt nur diejenige aus, die uns die meiste Leistung bei geringsten Speicherkosten ersparen w\u00fcrde. Der Algorithmus f\u00fchrt die besten Kandidaten weiter zusammen, bis er ein vom K\u00fcnstler festgelegtes Speicherbudget oder eine vom K\u00fcnstler festgelegte Leistungsgrenze erreicht. Das Endergebnis ist eine massive Einsparung der Anzahl der Objekte und damit der Leistung, bei minimalen Speicherkosten und ohne zus\u00e4tzlichen Aufwand f\u00fcr den K\u00fcnstler.\n\nDas VFX-Team wurde in den letzten Monaten durch verschiedene Einschr\u00e4nkungen und Fehler in der Partikelbeleuchtung behindert, und so waren einige unserer Mitarbeiter damit besch\u00e4ftigt, die Partikelbeleuchtung zu verbessern, was dazu f\u00fchren sollte, dass die VFX-K\u00fcnstler in der Lage sein sollten, Effekte zu erzeugen, die viel besser in der Umgebung sitzen. Der Rest unseres Teams hat die vielen Fehler, die wir vor jeder Ver\u00f6ffentlichung erhalten haben, bearbeitet, und diesmal sind es FPS-bezogene Fehler in Bezug auf Leistung, Streaming und Feldverbesserungen. Wir haben auch einige Korrekturen f\u00fcr das Rendering der \"gro\u00dfen Welt\" vorgenommen, die es der CryEngine erm\u00f6glichen, mit praktisch unbegrenzten Kartengr\u00f6\u00dfen zu arbeiten.\n\nDesign\nIn diesem Monat hat das britische Design seine Arbeit an mehreren Kapiteln der Staffel 42 fortgesetzt, um sie der Greybox n\u00e4her zu bringen. Die Hauptpriorit\u00e4t des Teams liegt derzeit auf dem Mocap-Shooting, das derzeit in London stattfindet. Jeder Designer konnte die erstaunlichen Leistungen unserer Darsteller in ihren eigenen Levels erleben, die selbst auf einer Whitebox-B\u00fchne unglaublich aussehen und die Welt, die wir bauen, noch viel mehr zum Leben erwecken!\n\nDer interne Vertikalschnitt macht ebenfalls gro\u00dfe Fortschritte und hilft uns, wichtige Fragen zu unseren Kern-Gameplay-Mechanismen zu beantworten und unsere Funktionen f\u00fcr Erfahrungs-, Nahkampf- und FPS-Szenarien zu entwickeln.\n\nDar\u00fcber hinaus unterst\u00fctzt das britische Designteam auch alle anderen Bereiche von Star Citizen, wie Sie sicherlich gesehen haben, mit Arena Commander, Waffen, Schiffen und dem kommenden FPS-Modul, das uns alle besch\u00e4ftigt!\n\nKunst\nNun, was soll ich sagen, f\u00fcr diejenigen, die es gewagt haben, sich die durchgesickerten Inhalte anzusehen, k\u00f6nnen Sie sicherlich sehen, dass wir Ihre hart verdienten Dollar sinnvoll einsetzen, um den besten Inhalt zu machen, den wir k\u00f6nnen! Wenn du gut warst und dich selbst rettest, dann sei es gut zu dir! Wir werden dir sicherlich etwas liefern, das sich f\u00fcr deine anhaltende Abstinenz lohnt.\n\nJeder Monat ist hier sehr arbeitsreich, es gibt keine Minute, die nicht voller Entscheidungen oder Poly oder Pixel-Push ist, die Schiffskonzeptarbeit beginnt sich zu reduzieren, es ist vor allem das seltsame Bild hier und da, um alle Bereiche zu kl\u00e4ren, die wir fr\u00fcher verpasst haben, die Vanduul-Flotte hat alles mit nur den Waffen\/T\u00fcrmen konzipiert, die ausgearbeitet werden m\u00fcssen. Wir haben von Jan Urschel und AtomHawk gute Arbeit auch in Umgebungen geleistet, was die Sq42-Handlung wirklich mitgestaltet.\n\nUmgebungen\nUnser Hauptaugenmerk f\u00fcr diesen letzten Monat lag auf der Weiterentwicklung unseres Vertikalschnittlevels und der Unterst\u00fctzung des Shooting-Events in London. F\u00fcr die VS haben wir uns bem\u00fcht, einen Detaillierungsgrad zu erreichen, der f\u00fcr Star Citizen geeignet ist. Besonderer Wert wurde auf die Spielerdurchquerung durch die Szene gelegt, lohnende Erkundungen, gro\u00dfartige Ausblicke und Kompositionen und nat\u00fcrlich hochwertige Kunstwerke. F\u00fcr das Shooting haben wir sichergestellt, dass Szenen, in denen Auftritte festgehalten werden, am Set korrekt funktionieren und diese immer wichtigen \u00c4nderungen in letzter Minute vornehmen. Die Spannung ist sowohl am Set als auch im Studio gro\u00df, wir k\u00f6nnen es kaum erwarten, es euch zu zeigen.\n\nVFX\nWir hatten einen ganzen Monat lang Code-Support von den Grafikern, die einen beeindruckenden R\u00fcckstand an Bugs und Feature-Anfragen beseitigt haben. Wir haben auch einen weiteren VFX Artist gewonnen, so dass das Team w\u00e4chst! Dies hat es uns erm\u00f6glicht, in mehreren Bereichen voranzukommen, unter anderem:\n\nSquadron 42 Umwelt-VFX-Varianten, n\u00e4mlich: Funken Dampf Feuer\/Schaden Weltraumst\u00fcrme (Vorsicht, es ist gef\u00e4hrlich da drau\u00dfen!) F&E f\u00fcr gro\u00dfe Turm VFX - M\u00fcndungsfeuer, Leuchtspuren, St\u00f6\u00dfe usw. F&E f\u00fcr die Staffel 42 Kinematiken, die typische Arbeitsabl\u00e4ufe und Pipelines testen. Verschiedene Schiffseffekte. Auf einer etwas weniger spannenden (aber dennoch wichtigen) Seite haben wir auch hinter den Kulissen hart daran gearbeitet, unsere Workflows und Pipelines zu verfestigen und die VFX-Roadmap zu konkretisieren, damit wir die Vielzahl der Off-Effekte in allen Bereichen des Star Citizen-Universums gut im Griff behalten k\u00f6nnen!\n\nSchiffe\nOh die Schiffe, die Schiffe - immer unsere Top-K\u00fcnstler auf Trab halten - die Idris, ja, es kommt gut an, vielleicht sogar ein paar \u00dcberraschungen (ich wei\u00df, dass du sie liebst), es gab eine Menge Arbeit, um die Designsprache der Schiffe in eine koh\u00e4rente Form zu bringen, so dass weiter unten in der Linie klar ist, welcher Hersteller was macht, welchen Stil die Panel-Linien haben, welche Art von Leuchten, die Liste ist gro\u00df, aber zumindest wird es f\u00fcr interne und externe K\u00fcnstler klar sein, was sie erreichen m\u00fcssen.\n\nStarfarer-Innenraum blockiert, ARGO braucht einen Shaderpass, Mining Drone f\u00e4hrt fort, ja, die Jav wurde noch nicht gestartet, wir sind an der maximalen Kapazit\u00e4t, bis wir mehr Personal finden - kommt mit und macht den BDSSE :)\n\nUI\nDas Team hat sich um 100% erweitert - wir sind von einem auf zwei K\u00fcnstler \u00fcbergegangen! Die Arbeit an der Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che des FPS wurde fortgesetzt und nun wird der Stil erkundet und nach Shubin, Aegis und Vanduul gesucht - schauen Sie sich diesen Raum an.\n\nCharaktere\nDas Charakter-Team war neben dem Imaginarium-Shooting mit dem Kamerarigg vor Ort in London und wir hatten einen absoluten Spa\u00df! Jede Scan-Sitzung hat Spa\u00df gemacht und war spannend, und wir haben es geschafft, einige wirklich weltweit f\u00fchrende Daten \u00fcber einige wirklich erstklassige Talente zu erfassen. Sie sagen, dass man seine Helden nie treffen sollte, aber ich stimme v\u00f6llig nicht zu und jeder von ihnen war freundlich, professionell und enthusiastisch.\n\nDie Daten wurden bereits verarbeitet, und einige von Ihnen haben vielleicht bereits einige der Aktionen aus unserer Scan-Sitzung mit Sandi gesehen, was ein gutes Beispiel f\u00fcr die Energie und den Antrieb ist, den wir bei diesem Projekt haben.\n\nIch w\u00fcnschte nur, ich k\u00f6nnte dir sagen, wer in unserer Anlage gesessen hat!\n\nAudio\nHey zusammen! Auf der CIG-Audio-Seite haben wir haupts\u00e4chlich mit unserem Bestreben, mit Wwise zu ver\u00f6ffentlichen, weitergemacht. Es gibt noch viel zu tun, aber wir machen Fortschritte.\n\nIch denke, es ist fair zu sagen, dass wir feststellen, dass in Bezug auf das Engineering viele Aufr\u00e4umarbeiten erforderlich waren. Wir dachten (vielleicht optimistisch), dass die meisten Systeme einfach nur Wwise Events erzeugen m\u00fcssten, die auf die gleiche Weise ausgel\u00f6st wurden wie ihre \u00c4quivalente in FMOD, und los geht's, alles erledigt! Das ist jedoch selten der Fall gewesen, und je mehr du grabst, desto mehr findest du heraus, was getan werden muss.\n\nEs ging also ebenso sehr darum, eine Bestandsaufnahme zu machen, aufzur\u00e4umen, offene Fragen in Bezug auf Sounddaten, Code und Logik zu kl\u00e4ren, wie sicherzustellen, dass Wwise Events und Sounds einfach existieren. Es gibt bestimmte Dinge, die unter FMOD funktionierten, die in dieser Art und Weise funktionierten, aber mehr trotz aller Dinge als durch Design. Dies ist nicht auf die Schuld von jemandem zur\u00fcckzuf\u00fchren, nur dass Audio oft auf Projekt\u00e4nderungen sp\u00e4t am Tag der Entwicklung des Spiels reagiert hat.\n\nSo weit wie m\u00f6glich haben wir die Gelegenheit genutzt, um sicherzustellen, dass dieser Wechsel zu Wwise eine Verlagerung von kurzfristigem, reaktivem Denken und Gestalten ist, und dass wir uns mehr darauf zubewegen, wie wir die Dinge angehen wollen - dem Spiel (buchst\u00e4blich) so weit wie m\u00f6glich voraus zu sein: zum Beispiel Vorlagen in Wwise zu entwickeln, alles sauber und frei von Hacks zu halten. Wir haben unser Code-Team wieder zusammengebracht, ebenso wie unser in Austin entwickeltes Tech-Sound-Design, damit wir im Vorfeld von FPS am effektivsten K\u00f6pfe schlagen k\u00f6nnen. Das neue System zu entwickeln sowie das Dog-Fighting-Modul wieder auf den neuesten Stand zu bringen und verschiedene Aspekte des persistenten Universums zu unterst\u00fctzen - diese Dinge w\u00e4ren schwer genug, um ohne die neue Audio-Engine auskommen zu k\u00f6nnen. Aber wir d\u00fcrfen nicht zu viel meckern!\n\nLeider hat uns einer unserer Senior-Sounddesigner, Tom, diesen Monat verlassen. Er hat ihn vermisst, da er \u00fcber einen reichen Erfahrungsschatz in CryEngine verf\u00fcgte, aber ihm wurde die M\u00f6glichkeit geboten, seinen Lieben n\u00e4her zu kommen, und es ist schwer, damit zu argumentieren. Also geht er gut miteinander aus - wir w\u00fcnschen ihm alles Gute f\u00fcr seine zuk\u00fcnftigen Bem\u00fchungen, er wird nicht leicht zu ersetzen sein.\n\nIn weiteren Nachrichten haben wir unsere neu errichteten Sound-Design-R\u00e4ume, die gr\u00f6\u00dftenteils bezugsfertig sind. Wir m\u00fcssen unsere akustische Behandlung noch richtig auf die W\u00e4nde anwenden, und wir warten auf einige M\u00f6bel und Monitore (Monitore sind das, was die Audioleute Lautsprecher nennen, nur um alle zu verwirren), um anzukommen, aber es ist sch\u00f6n, diese R\u00e4ume zusammenkommen zu sehen. Wir haben versucht, jedem von ihnen eine eigene Farbgebung zu geben, die entweder kreative Funken oder leichten Wahnsinn verursacht. Kommt auf den Raum an. Vielleicht werden wir von beidem ein wenig Zeuge! Sie m\u00fcssen etwas optimiert und abgestimmt werden, um die Klangneutralit\u00e4t zu gew\u00e4hrleisten. Sie sind zugegebenerma\u00dfen ein wenig klein, was es schwierig macht, sicherzustellen, dass sie frei von stehenden Wellen usw. sind, die bestimmte B\u00e4nder des Audiospektrums falsch darstellen k\u00f6nnen. Wir kommen so nah ran, wie wir es praktisch k\u00f6nnen, aber wir brauchen nur ein wenig Zeit, um dorthin zu gelangen, wo sie sein m\u00fcssen.\n\nWir haben versucht, uns rechtzeitig anzupassen, um mit Prozessen im Zusammenhang mit fremden Vocals zu experimentieren, mit denen wir begonnen haben, w\u00e4hrend die Linguisten den Aspekt der fremden Sprache immer wieder festhalten. Es ist immer eine knifflige Gegend, aber es erweist sich als sehr interessant zu sehen, was man tun kann, bevor man in das akustische \u00c4quivalent des unheimlichen Tals kommt.\n\nAu\u00dferdem waren wir vor Ort, um den laufenden Dreh f\u00fcr'Squadron 42' zu unterst\u00fctzen, \u00fcber den ich nat\u00fcrlich nichts sagen werde, also fragen Sie mich nicht;)\n\nDanke, dass du dir die Zeit genommen hast, dich \u00fcber alle Dinge bei CIG Audio zu informieren. Bitte stellen Sie ein oder zwei Fragen im Ask A Developer Forum und wir werden unser Bestes tun, um diese zu beantworten. Auf Wiedersehen f\u00fcr jetzt!\n\nDas Frankfurter Team w\u00e4chst stetig und ist in zahlreichen Disziplinen wie Basistechnologie, KI, Design, Cinematics, Audio, Animation, FX, etc. t\u00e4tig. Wie in unserem B\u00fcrovideo letzten Monat zu sehen war, f\u00fcllte sich unser Zeitarbeitsraum, wir haben einen weiteren Raum gemietet, um zus\u00e4tzliche Mitarbeiter aufzunehmen. Wir haben uns auch darauf vorbereitet, in unser neues B\u00fcro einzuziehen, der offizielle Umzug wird Anfang Juli sein, und wir werden h\u00f6chstwahrscheinlich ein neues Video ver\u00f6ffentlichen, sobald wir uns eingelebt haben. Wir sind erst seit ein paar Monaten Teil des globalen Teams, aber die Dynamik und der Fortschritt im gesamten Spiel aus allen Studios und B\u00fcros ist gro\u00dfartig zu sehen, und wir sind froh, dabei zu sein.\n\nIngenieurwesen\nF\u00fcr den Monat Mai war Frankfurt Engineering an mehreren Fronten besch\u00e4ftigt. Wir haben gro\u00dfe Fortschritte auf dem Gebiet der Gro\u00dfen Welt gemacht (Verschiebung der Codebasis auf 64-Bit-Koordinaten, so dass Galaxiengr\u00f6\u00dfen (buchst\u00e4blich) in Star Citizen erstellt und erforscht werden k\u00f6nnen). Die Hauptaufgabe, die diesen Monat an Large World gearbeitet wurde, war es, die Rendering-Kamera relativ zu machen: Tats\u00e4chlich musste durch die Umstellung auf 64 Bit der gesamte Rendering-Code so ge\u00e4ndert werden, dass er relativ zur Kamera ist und nicht mehr einfach in der absoluten Welt koordiniert.\n\nEs gab auch viele Fortschritte beim Zonensystem, unserem neuen Raumgliederungssystem, das das alte oktare Raumgliederungsschema der CryEngine ersetzt. Das Zonensystem ist besonders geeignet f\u00fcr ein Spiel wie Star Citizen, das gro\u00dfe, dynamische Karten, eine gro\u00dfe Anzahl von Einheiten und gro\u00dfe bewegliche Schiffe bietet. Apropos Mehrbesatzung: Wir haben auch an schiffslokalen Physikgittern gearbeitet (damit die Spieler in fahrenden Schiffen herumlaufen k\u00f6nnen), an Laufzeitvorabteilungen und an der Untersuchung von Entit\u00e4tsoptimierungen und Streaming. Wir testen diese neuen Systeme zun\u00e4chst mit dem Retaliator.\n\nWir begannen auch mit der Implementierung optimierter Asset-Speicherformate f\u00fcr Vertex-Daten, um die Gesamtdatengr\u00f6\u00dfe zu reduzieren, die Durchlaufzeit und den Speicher sowie die CPU\/GPU-Leistung zu verbessern. Diese Optimierungen werden in K\u00fcrze umgesetzt.\n\nWir haben eine erste F&E-Diskussion zum Thema Prozesserzeugung begonnen, die sp\u00e4ter eine gewisse Zeit in Anspruch nehmen wird, nachdem die oben genannten Big-Ticket-Positionen alle vorhanden sind. Es gab viele Bereinigungen von veralteten CryEngine-Funktionalit\u00e4ten, die wir f\u00fcr Star Citizen nicht mehr ben\u00f6tigen, wie den alten Level Heap, veraltete Renderknoten und viele andere kleinere Elemente. Zus\u00e4tzlich haben wir daran gearbeitet, die relevanten Teile des neuen 3.7 SDK in unsere Codebasis zu integrieren. Alle diese Hauptaufgaben stehen nun kurz vor dem Erreichen der Hauptlinie des Star Citizen Codes. Dar\u00fcber hinaus haben wir allgemeine Unterst\u00fctzung, Funktionen und Bugfixes f\u00fcr den Motor bereitgestellt.\n\nWir haben auch unsere Speicherprofilierungstools aktualisiert und damit verbundene alte Kratzer aus dem gesamten Motorcode entfernt.\n\nKI\nIm letzten Monat haben wir eine solide Basis f\u00fcr alle zuk\u00fcnftigen Entwicklungen im Zusammenhang mit der K\u00fcnstlichen Intelligenz in Star Citizen gelegt.\n\nWir begannen mit der Vereinheitlichung des CryEngine Kommunikationssystems mit dem CIG Contextual Reaction System. Was sind das f\u00fcr Systeme?\n\nDas Kommunikationssystem wird verwendet, um KI-Charaktere sprechen zu lassen: Das Verhalten (oder ein anderes System) kann verlangen, eine bestimmte Kommunikationsleitung zu spielen (z.B. \"GreetThePlayerInFronOfYou\") und das System wird sich um eine geeignete Variante f\u00fcr dieses Konzept k\u00fcmmern und eine geeignete Variante w\u00e4hlen (z.B. \"Gr\u00fc\u00dfe mein Freund!\") und \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen, ob das definierte Tempo tats\u00e4chlich das Abspielen des Audios erm\u00f6glicht. Das System ist auch f\u00fcr den korrekten Umgang mit einem Fall verantwortlich, in dem eine Kommunikationsleitung, die auf einem Kanal mit hoher Priorit\u00e4t abspielt, die aktuelle Nachricht l\u00f6schen muss, wenn sie auf einem Kanal mit niedrigerer Priorit\u00e4t abspielt.\n\nDas klassische Beispiel ist der NSC, der w\u00e4hrend des Sprechens geschlagen oder geschossen wird. Sein Schmerzensschrei sollte definitiv alles unterbrechen, was er vorher gesagt hat!\nDas Contextual Reaction System wird verwendet, um eine Kommunikationsleitung auszul\u00f6sen, die auf bestimmten, vom Spiel ausgel\u00f6sten Ereignissen basiert. Ein Schiff, das stark besch\u00e4digt ist, kann ein \"ShipsDamaged\"-Signal ausstrahlen, das vom CRS empfangen wird, und es w\u00e4hlt eine geeignete Variante des Audios, das abgespielt werden muss. CRS ist bereits vollst\u00e4ndig in Dataforge integriert, so dass die Autoren in der Lage sind, neue Inhalte ohne Codeunterst\u00fctzung zu erstellen. In diesem Monat haben wir mit der Zusammenf\u00fchrung der neuen Systeme begonnen, um von beiden zu profitieren!\n\nWir begannen auch mit der Arbeit am CryEngine Cover Surface System, um es mit dem Kythera-Verhaltenssystem zu verbinden und die Unterst\u00fctzung der gro\u00dfen Welt zu erm\u00f6glichen. Das Cover Surface System ist in der Lage, ein physisches Objekt zu erfassen und automatisch Daten zu erzeugen, um Deckungspositionen zu speichern.\n\nDar\u00fcber hinaus haben wir die Grundlage f\u00fcr die Erweiterung des CryEngine MNM-Navigationssystems zur Unterst\u00fctzung gro\u00dfer weltweiter und lokaler Navigationsnetze geschaffen. Wir haben mit dem Prototyping der Funktionalit\u00e4t begonnen, ein Navigationsnetz an einem sich bewegenden Raumschiff anzubringen, so dass wir in den n\u00e4chsten Monaten die Besatzungsmitglieder des Schiffes in der internen Raumfahrzeugumgebung navigieren lassen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nWir konzentrierten uns auch auf die Koordination der Arbeit von Moon Collider im Zusammenhang mit einigen Verbesserungen des Kythera Behavior Tree Systems. Das BTS ist nun mit DataForge verbunden, damit System-\/Game-Designer schnelle neue Verhaltensweisen erstellen\/prototypen k\u00f6nnen, ohne C++-Code schreiben zu m\u00fcssen. Au\u00dferdem wurden neue Verhaltensknoten eingef\u00fchrt, die grundlegende Funktionalit\u00e4ten wie Zustandsmaschinen, Zeitstempel und Signale unterst\u00fctzen. All diese Funktionalit\u00e4ten werden uns in die Lage versetzen, komplexere und interessantere Verhaltensweisen zu implementieren.\n\nIm Allgemeinen planen wir viele neue Features und werden einige coole Videos\/Bilder vorbereiten, um mehr Details \u00fcber unseren Fortschritt im n\u00e4chsten Monat zu zeigen!\n\nDesign\nAuf der Designseite haben wir eng mit dem britischen Team zusammengearbeitet und die Verantwortung f\u00fcr ein Level der Staffel 42 \u00fcbernommen. Wir sind in jedem Aspekt der Entwicklung von Star Citizen aktiv, von der Arbeit an der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung des FPS-Moduls bis hin zur Entwicklung eines hochrangigen Verhaltensbaum-Feedbacks, das alle unsere Spielgebiete umfasst. Weitere Herausforderungen sind der Aufbau und die Einrichtung des Turm-Gameplays, die Bereitstellung von hochkar\u00e4tigem Squadron 42-Feedback f\u00fcr Gro\u00dfbritannien und die Arbeit an der Vereinheitlichung der Anpassung von FPS-Anz\u00fcgen, damit es besser funktioniert, als wir es derzeit mit den Schiffen tun.\n\nKinematiken\nEin paar Mitglieder des Teams waren den ganzen Monat \u00fcber in London am Set, Chris Roberts drehte Szenen f\u00fcr Squadron 42. Die Besetzung ist fantastisch und wir k\u00f6nnen es kaum erwarten, bekannt zu geben, wen wir haben und ihre Auftritte zu pr\u00e4sentieren. Wir verst\u00e4rken das Cinematics-Team und beginnen, die interne Pipeline und den Workflow zu verbessern.\n\nAudio\nUnser Audio-Ingenieur hat den ganzen Monat in Gro\u00dfbritannien verbracht, um mit seinem Audio-Team zusammenzuarbeiten, um das Audio f\u00fcr die n\u00e4chste Ver\u00f6ffentlichung auf Wwise zum Laufen zu bringen.\n\nWeitere Arbeiten zur Konvertierung alter FMOD-basierter Code-Features f\u00fcr die Verwendung des neuen Audiosystems. Ich habe einige Zeit bei der Entwicklung der Asset-Konvertierungsskripte mitgewirkt, um die einfacheren Teile des Prozesses zu automatisieren, so dass sich die Sound-Designer auf die Abstimmung der Sounds und die Art und Weise, wie sie im Spiel ausgel\u00f6st werden, konzentrieren k\u00f6nnen, anstatt sich um die Portierung der aktuellen Implementierungen k\u00fcmmern zu m\u00fcssen. Es wurden neue Tools f\u00fcr die Audio-Asset-Pipeline vorgestellt, die von den Sound-Designern und den Build-Servern verwendet werden, um die t\u00e4gliche Produktion von Audio-Assets zu vereinfachen und zu beschleunigen.\n\nFX\nIm letzten Monat haben wir uns haupts\u00e4chlich auf die Erforschung verschiedener Arten von Feuer konzentriert, die in das Spiel einbezogen werden sollen. Diese reichen von kleinen Br\u00e4nden und Tr\u00fcmmern bis hin zu gewaltigen Flammen und riesigen Explosionen. Rauch ist auch ein wichtiger Teil und sie dazu zu bringen, sich auf realistische Weise zu vermischen, war einer der Schwerpunkte des aktuellen F&E-Zyklus.\n\nWir haben auch einige Arbeiten am Blitz f\u00fcr einige der Staffel 42-Missionen durchgef\u00fchrt, die haupts\u00e4chlich als Langstrecken-Hintergrundeffekte verwendet werden.\n\nGuten Morgen, B\u00fcrger! ...oder Guten Abend Piraten? ...wie sp\u00e4t ist es \u00fcberhaupt im Raum?? Poste die richtige Antwort in die Kommentare, um einen Daumen nach oben zu gewinnen.\n\nDa es mehr als einen Monat dauert, etwas Wichtiges in einem so gro\u00dfen und detaillierten Spiel wie Star Citizen zu schaffen, k\u00f6nnte man feststellen, dass der Bericht dieses Monats dem Bericht des letzten Monats \u00e4hnlich ist, aber mit anderen Worten beschrieben wird :) Das bedeutet jedoch NICHT, dass der Monat ohne Fortschritt war, ganz im Gegenteil! Hier ist der Monatsbericht f\u00fcr das BHVR-Team:\n\nZun\u00e4chst einmal haben wir uns intensiv mit dem Polieren, Debuggen und der Unterst\u00fctzung anderer Studios auf verschiedenen Spielmodulen besch\u00e4ftigt. Als wir uns dem FPS-Modul-Release und der Lieferung des Sozialmoduls n\u00e4hern (bereiten Sie Ihre Aufregungstaschen vor!), wird die Zeit nicht so sehr mit dem Hinzuf\u00fcgen neuer Funktionen verbracht, sondern vielmehr mit dem Polieren und Konsolidieren des bereits Vorhandenen.\n\nHier sind die bemerkenswertesten Module, Systeme, systemischen Module und modularen Systeme, die in diesem Monat debugged, poliert und\/oder unterst\u00fctzt wurden:\n\nDer Chat im Spiel Das Emote-System: \/dance \/dothebender Das FPS-Modul Die Lobby: Mehrsitzer in der Lobby: FPS Loadout Lassen Sie uns etwas \u00fcber das Sozialmodul sprechen. Wir haben das Chatsystem um weitere Funktionen erweitert, um die Bedienung einfacher und angenehmer zu gestalten. Wir haben die erste Version der gefilterten Konversationsregisterkarten implementiert, die es Ihnen erm\u00f6glicht, mehrere private oder \u00f6ffentliche Gespr\u00e4che in verst\u00e4ndlicher und geordneter Weise zu f\u00fchren. Wir haben an der Schnittstelle und ihrer Erfahrung gearbeitet und sie f\u00fcr diese erste Iteration in einen Sperrzustand versetzt.\n\nWir haben auch einige Zeit damit verbracht, interaktive Elemente wie Flairs, den Holotable und T\u00fcren auf der Client- und Serverseite zu reparieren. Dies ist offensichtlich f\u00fcr jeden Ort im Spiel relevant, nicht nur f\u00fcr die Hangars.\n\nIngenieure haben die Replikation und Instanziierung der Hangars debuggt, w\u00e4hrend Leveldesigner alle m\u00f6glichen Probleme in ihnen gel\u00f6st haben. Ich wei\u00df nicht, was du in diesen Hangar-Jungs machst, aber sie scheinen die ganze Zeit zu brechen! Bitte h\u00f6r auf, deine Buggys \u00fcberall zu zertr\u00fcmmern. ;)\n\nDie Erstellung des Basis-Spawning-Moduls ist abgeschlossen, das, ob Sie es glauben oder nicht, das Spawnen mehrerer Spieler gleichzeitig in Hangars und an Planetenstandorten \u00fcbernimmt. Damit k\u00f6nnen wir dich (also nicht dich, sondern deinen Charakter) an die richtige Position bringen, je nachdem, woher du kommst (Hangar -> Planetenseite, Raum -> Planetenseite, etc). Ich h\u00e4tte nicht gedacht, dass das Laden und Spawnen so interessant sein k\u00f6nnte, aber wir sind gespannt auf die Videos, die Sie \u00fcber Ihren ersten Spawn-Planetenrand ver\u00f6ffentlichen werden.\n\nOkay, kommen wir nun zum lustigen Teil: Planeten! Diesen Monat haben wir in der Kunstabteilung alle Arbeiten f\u00fcr einen industriellen Bergbauplaneten abgeschlossen. Der Plan ist, dieses Set in der gesamten Galaxie zu verwenden, haupts\u00e4chlich, aber nicht ausschlie\u00dflich f\u00fcr Delamar im NYX-System. Unser Hauptziel ist es, die Setst\u00fccke so vielseitig wie m\u00f6glich zu gestalten, damit jedes Kunstteam in diesem Projekt verschiedene Orte schaffen kann. Dies hat ziemlich viel Zeit in Anspruch genommen, aber wir sind mit dem Endergebnis sehr zufrieden.\n\nWir haben auch mit der Arbeit an Legacy-Objekten begonnen, um sie an die neuen visuellen und technischen Standards anzupassen. Da wir mehr Standorte haben, aktualisieren wir unsere Techniken und da diese \"alten\" St\u00fccke in Zukunft von Nutzen sein werden, m\u00fcssen wir sicherstellen, dass sie konform sind.\n\nUnsere Leveldesigner erforschen und verfeinern andere Standorte wie die Bl\u00f6cke auf Terra Prime, Marianna und Odyssa, schaffen neue Innenr\u00e4ume und polieren und unterst\u00fctzen \u00e4ltere Standorte. \u00c4hnlich wie die alten Kunstwerke \u00e4nderten sich auch einige interaktive Objekte und mussten aktualisiert werden, um auf dem neuesten Stand zu sein.\n\nDas mobiGlas hat viel Glanz und Fortschritt erfahren. Wir haben Animationen implementiert, um es noch eleganter zu machen. Einige Verfeinerungen und Aktualisierungen wurden auch am Warenfluss vorgenommen. Wir k\u00f6nnen jetzt Ihr UEC-Guthaben anzeigen und Sie k\u00f6nnen auch Dinge und Dinge wirklich kaufen!\n\nIn gleicher Weise haben wir eine erste Implementierung der Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che, des Codes und der Visualisierung des microTech Kiosk durchgef\u00fchrt. \"Was zum Teufel ist das?\", magst du fragen. Nun, einige Gesch\u00e4fte und andere Orte rund um den Vers haben microTech-Kioske, die verwendet werden, um holographische Darstellungen von extra gro\u00dfen Produkten zu zeigen, die nicht zum Ort passen. Kioske werden auch genutzt, um mit Hilfe des mobiGlases Zugang zu einem Bestandskatalog zu erhalten. Das mobiGlas ist auch ein MicroTech-Produkt, so dass Sie jetzt die Verbindung sehen. Unser erster Kiosk wird in der Astro-Armada eingesetzt, wo er mit ihm interagiert werden kann, um Schiffe zu durchsuchen und zu kaufen.\n\nDie Kioske sind Teil der ersten Phase des Schiffseinkaufserlebnisses. Wir planen immersivere und interessantere Wege, um Schiffe f\u00fcr die Zukunft zu kaufen, die auf Anhieb nicht lieferbar waren.\n\nEin weiteres interessantes Objekt, an dem wir arbeiten, ist der Personalschrank. Lass dich nicht t\u00e4uschen, das hat nichts mit Flairs zu tun. Der pers\u00f6nliche Spind befindet sich in Ihrem Hangar und ist der Aufbewahrungsort f\u00fcr Ihre FPS-Ger\u00e4te und Waffen. Sp\u00e4ter auf der Stra\u00dfe wird dieser Schrank nicht nur dazu verwendet, Waffen zu zeigen, sondern auch, um Ladungen vorzubereiten, um die Ausr\u00fcstung deines Charakters schnell auf den richtigen Job umzustellen.\n\nWie immer haben wir das Flair-Objekt dieses Monats zusammen mit anderen geheimen Merchandise-Arbeiten fertiggestellt, was die \u00dcberraschung nicht verderben wird, denn \u00dcberraschungen zu verderben macht \u00fcberhaupt keinen Spa\u00df.\n\nVielen Dank f\u00fcr Ihre Aufmerksamkeit! Jetzt geh und zerst\u00f6re einige Schiffe, dann wirst du es tun!\n\nGr\u00fc\u00dfe Stern-B\u00fcrger! Ich bin sicher, dass die meisten von euch den massiven Beitrag \u00fcber Star Marine gesehen haben, und den Grund, warum es ein wenig l\u00e4nger dauert als erwartet. Vielen Dank, dass du mit uns mitgemacht hast! Der gr\u00f6\u00dfte Teil des Monats Mai wurde f\u00fcr die Ausf\u00fchrung der in diesem Beitrag aufgef\u00fchrten Punkte aufgewendet. Nachfolgend finden Sie die Details zu den einzelnen Teams.\n\nIngenieurwesen\nNeben dem Zerquetschen vieler Fehler hat sich das Engineering-Team darauf konzentriert, die Animatoren bei der Entwicklung des neuen Jukes, Starts und Stopps-Systems zu unterst\u00fctzen. Es gibt einzigartige Animationen f\u00fcr jede Richtungs\u00e4nderung in eine andere, sowie f\u00fcr jeden Zustand und jede Geschwindigkeit, mit der der Spieler unterwegs ist. Das kann sich sehr schnell summieren! Auch die Arbeit an Zero-g-Bewegungen und SATA-Kugelfunktionen wurde fortgesetzt. Nachdem wir den SATA-Ball getestet hatten, stellten wir fest, dass es einige spezifische F\u00e4lle geben musste, die uns helfen w\u00fcrden, den Ball auf einem so gro\u00dfen Raum zu managen.\n\nDesign\nDie Designer haben hart daran gearbeitet, SATA Ball zum Laufen zu bringen. Dies beinhaltet vor allem die Arbeit an der Spielbarkeit und den visuellen Hinweisen auf den Spieler f\u00fcr das Geschehen. Sicherstellen, dass die Spieler den Ball leicht finden k\u00f6nnen, dass die Spieler den Ball leicht greifen und mit Genauigkeit werfen k\u00f6nnen und dass sie ihn effektiv ansteuern k\u00f6nnen. Sie haben auch viele Tests mit dem Basissatz von Waffen durchgef\u00fchrt und optimiert, wie das Atmen in Genauigkeit spielt.\n\nAnimation\nDas Animationsteam konzentriert sich derzeit darauf, alle Jukes, Starts und Stopps von Mocap-Daten bereinigt und f\u00fcr die Implementierung im Spiel bereit zu machen. Wie bereits erw\u00e4hnt, ist es eine Menge Mocap-Daten, so dass sie ihre Teller ziemlich voll haben.\n\nKunst\nDas Kunstteam hat sich im letzten Monat auf zwei Hauptziele konzentriert. Einer davon ist die \u00dcberarbeitung der Anlagen f\u00fcr die Gold Horizon Station, um den Anforderungen an die Einrichtung des persistenten Universums gerecht zu werden. Dies wird es Teams in allen Studios erm\u00f6glichen, dieses Set in ihren verschiedenen Levels zu verwenden. Teilen ist wichtig!\n\nDas zweite Ziel des Kunstteams war es, die vorhandenen Waffen zu polieren und ein einheitliches Schienensystem f\u00fcr Befestigungen zu schaffen. Dies wird die Erstellung von Anh\u00e4ngen erheblich erleichtern, da alles universell ist.\n\nVFX\nEinige neue VFX wurden f\u00fcr SATA Ball entwickelt, Effekte f\u00fcr die Tore, damit die Spieler nicht verwirrt werden und auch einige Effekte f\u00fcr den Spieler, wenn sie erschossen und deaktiviert werden. Ein Polish Pass wurde auch f\u00fcr alle vorhandenen Effekte mit Feedback von Chris durchgef\u00fchrt.\nDanke, dass du Citizens gelesen hast! Illfonie aus!\n\nHier ist, was wir hier in Montreal im Monat Mai gemacht haben:\n\nStarmap\nHerausragende Fortschritte wurden in diesem Monat in der eigentlichen Kunst f\u00fcr das Webstar-Kartenmodul erzielt. Wir haben jetzt vollst\u00e4ndige k\u00fcnstlerische Entw\u00fcrfe f\u00fcr die Top-Level-Ansicht der Galaktischen Ebene, in der alle Sternensysteme angeordnet sind und ihre Jump Point Verbindungen zeigen. Die gr\u00f6\u00dfte Herausforderung bestand darin, einen Weg zu finden, die Sprungbretter stilistisch sch\u00f6n, aber auch funktional so darzustellen, dass sie die Gr\u00f6\u00dfen und Richtungen der Wurml\u00f6cher darstellen. Gro\u00dfe Fortschritte wurden bei einer 2D HeatGrid-Darstellung erzielt, um (auf jeder Ebene) den politischen Einfluss, die Kriminalit\u00e4t und die wirtschaftliche Ebene der Gebiete der Galaxie darzustellen. Obwohl dies immer noch experimentell ist, inspirierten die von unseren K\u00fcnstlern vorgeschlagenen Visuals zur Erweiterung dieses Features.\n\nEine der wichtigsten UI-Komponenten, die in diesem Kunstpass enthalten sind, ist die Control Disc; das ist ein sehr interessantes Design, da wir denken, dass es auch als In-Game-Komponente verwendet werden kann. Auf dieser Disc k\u00f6nnen Sie mit den verschiedenen Elementen, die Sie auf dem Bildschirm sehen, interagieren, w\u00e4hrend Sie durch die Galaxie surfen. Unser Mock-up-Set der K\u00fcnstler beinhaltet auch den Bildschirm \"Space Object Overview\", der im Grunde genommen das ist, was passiert, wenn man mehr Informationen \u00fcber ein Objekt anfordert, sei es ein Planet, ein Asteroideng\u00fcrtel, ein Nebel oder ein Wurmloch. Diese allgemeine Ansicht dient als prim\u00e4re Anzeige f\u00fcr Informationen \u00fcber alles aus der Starmap sowie f\u00fcr den Sprung zu den Galactapedia-Eintr\u00e4gen f\u00fcr jeden von ihnen.\n\nDas Design der Starmap ist nun in einem Zustand, in dem sie mit den tats\u00e4chlichen Pl\u00e4nen f\u00fcr die Starmap im Spiel verkn\u00fcpft werden kann, weshalb wir auch unsere Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che so gestaltet haben, dass sie mit den Spielkontrollen und -erfahrungen vereinheitlicht wird.\n\nCommunity Hub\nWir haben in diesem Monat die Schnittstellen-Mock-ups f\u00fcr diesen neuen Abschnitt fertiggestellt, sein Design mit dem neuen Website-Look verschmolzen und es an tats\u00e4chliche datengesteuerte Ansichten angeh\u00e4ngt. Wir haben viel Zeit damit verbracht, so viele Inhalte wie m\u00f6glich von den Fans zu pr\u00e4sentieren: Bilder und Galerien, aber auch Videos von verschiedenen Anbietern, Streaming-Kan\u00e4le, Podcasts.... Der Hub befindet sich noch in intensiver Entwicklung, wir werden bald mehr zeigen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nAusgaberat\nDer Issue Council, unser neues \"crowdsourced\" Bug-Reporting-System, durchlief einen Monat lang eine Headdown-Codierung. Der Kern des Systems wurde fertiggestellt, einschlie\u00dflich Datenmodelle und API auf Systemebene. In der Zwischenzeit hat das Designteam die Bewegungen auf der eigentlichen Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che durchgearbeitet. Wir haben dem QS-Team in Austin eine Demo gegeben und alle sind begeistert, dass sie es nutzen k\u00f6nnen. Im Juni werden wir es testen, indem wir tats\u00e4chlich Fehler \u00fcber sich selbst in es eingeben!\n\nLauncher\nDiesen Monat haben wir in Zusammenarbeit mit der DevOps-Crew in Austin eine Prototyp-\u00dcberarbeitung der Star Citizen-Rakete abgeschlossen. Der neue Launcher ist vorerst nur intern, nur f\u00fcr CIG-Tests, und basiert auf der BitTorrent-Technologie. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es, den Patchprozess in Gr\u00f6\u00dfe und Geschwindigkeit effizienter zu gestalten und ist ein erster Schritt zu einem webbasierten Launcher, der wiederum dazu f\u00fchrt, dass mehr Konfigurationswerkzeuge direkt im Launcher zur Verf\u00fcgung stehen (Hangarkonfiguration, zuk\u00fcnftige Inventur, REC-Aktivierung....).\n\nChat\nDas Chat-System hat auch in diesem Monat einige Verbesserungen erfahren. Wir haben sein Aussehen \u00fcberarbeitet, um es dem Rest der Website n\u00e4her zu bringen, und wir haben \"klebrige\" Raumthemen zur besseren Lesbarkeit eingef\u00fchrt.\n\nUnd noch mehr!\nIn diesem Monat kam auch mit einem eigenen Content Slew Updates auf der Website. Wir sahen tats\u00e4chlich 2 Konzeptverk\u00e4ufe mit dem Starfarer Gemini und dem neuen MISC Reliant Minischlepper, und wir brachten Ihnen auch das in Montreal produzierte Minispiel Hyper Vanguard Force IV von Dave Richard und Christine Marsh. Apex Predators vereinigen sich!\n\nUm es stiller auszudr\u00fccken: Wir haben auch das neue Amazon \"Login And Pay\"-Zahlungssystem f\u00fcr nordamerikanische Nutzer implementiert.\n\nNachdem May in den letzten Monaten viel Planungs- und Konstruktionsarbeit geleistet hatte, war May zur Abwechslung mal kurz auf diese aufmerksam geworden, so dass wir die Chance hatten, uns wirklich in eine coole Ingenieursarbeit einzulassen. Es gab mehrere gro\u00dfe Designer-Tool-Funktionen, an denen wir gearbeitet haben, und wir freuen uns darauf, sie nutzen zu k\u00f6nnen.\n\nIngenieurwesen\nLetzten Monat sprachen wir \u00fcber die ausgefallenen Verbesserungen beim Verbinden von Keilwellen, an denen wir gearbeitet haben. Dies ist ein Feature, das es Designern erm\u00f6glicht, eine Spline zu spezifizieren, die ein Schiff mitfliegen soll (um einige ausgefallene Man\u00f6ver durchzuf\u00fchren oder wirklich nahe an Hindernissen zu fliegen, von denen die KI sonst Abstand halten w\u00fcrde), und die KI wird einen optimalen Weg finden, um so schnell wie m\u00f6glich auf die Spline zu gelangen. Dazu muss die KI einen Weg von ihrer aktuellen Position und Richtung zum Anfang der Spline herausfinden und am Ende nach unten in die Richtung des Spline-Pfades schauen, sobald sie dort ankommt. Dies kann dann komplizierter werden, da die Konstrukteure die Geschwindigkeit angeben k\u00f6nnen, mit der sich das Schiff bewegen soll, wenn es die Spline startet, so dass dies den Weg, den das Schiff nimmt, beeinflussen kann, da es m\u00f6glicherweise den Weg ein wenig kr\u00fcmmen muss, um zus\u00e4tzliche Anstiege hinzuzuf\u00fcgen, wenn es auf den neuesten Stand der Technik kommen muss oder um viel langsamer zu werden. Und nat\u00fcrlich wollen wir auch, dass das alles ziemlich nat\u00fcrlich aussieht.\n\nWir haben das Feature diesen Monat fertig gestellt und es den Designern zur Verf\u00fcgung gestellt. Jetzt, da Schiffe Splines von \u00fcberall zuverl\u00e4ssig verbinden k\u00f6nnen, erleichtert es die Einrichtung des Designers, aber was f\u00fcr Sie noch wichtiger ist, es wird uns erm\u00f6glichen, sie viel mehr in systemischem Verhalten einzusetzen. Bisher mussten wir bei der Auswahl der Schiffe f\u00fcr eine Spline sehr restriktiv sein, aber das gibt ihnen viel mehr Freiheit. Wenn wir das Verhalten angepasst haben, werden sie in zuk\u00fcnftigen Versionen von Arena Commander viel mehr verwendet werden.\n\nDas gr\u00f6\u00dfte Feature, an dem wir diesen Monat gearbeitet haben, war eine komplette \u00c4nderung in der Art und Weise, wie wir KI-Verhaltensb\u00e4ume erstellen. Bisher haben wir sie direkt im Code erstellt. Mit Kytheras Laufzeit-C++-Rekompilierung war dies eigentlich recht effizient und erm\u00f6glichte eine schnelle Iteration w\u00e4hrend der Ausf\u00fchrung des Spiels, war aber f\u00fcr Designer ohne Programmierkenntnisse nicht zug\u00e4nglich. Deshalb haben wir viel Arbeit geleistet, damit Verhaltensb\u00e4ume in DataForge erstellt werden k\u00f6nnen.\n\nSie werden in der Vergangenheit viel von DataForge geh\u00f6rt haben, als das benutzerdefinierte Datenmanagement-Tool, das von Designern f\u00fcr alle Arten von unterschiedlichen Daten in Star Citizen verwendet wird. Es wurde von Anfang an so konzipiert, dass verschiedene Ansichten f\u00fcr verschiedene Datentypen m\u00f6glich sind, so dass Sie gegebenenfalls Daten in einem Tabellenkalkulationsformat bearbeiten k\u00f6nnen, w\u00e4hrend f\u00fcr andere Dinge eine grafische Knotenbearbeitungsansicht besser geeignet ist, und so weiter.\n\nWir haben jetzt eine Datenkategorie f\u00fcr Verhaltensbaumdaten in DataForge, die es Designern erm\u00f6glicht, Verhaltensb\u00e4ume \u00fcber eine benutzerfreundliche GUI-Schnittstelle zu erstellen und zu bearbeiten und diese Verhaltensweisen dann direkt auf ein KI-Zeichen anzuwenden, ohne dass sie Code schreiben m\u00fcssen. Au\u00dferdem k\u00f6nnen sie die Verhaltensb\u00e4ume zur Laufzeit modifizieren und die Ergebnisse sofort sehen, was f\u00fcr eine schnelle Wiederholung fantastisch ist.\n\nWas uns jedoch besonders interessant machte, ist, dass wir erwarten, dass in Zukunft regelm\u00e4\u00dfig neue Verhaltensbaumknoten erstellt werden, und wir wollten das Hinzuf\u00fcgen dieser Knoten in DataForge so einfach wie m\u00f6glich unterst\u00fctzen. Deshalb haben wir an der Erstellung eines einfachen Konsolenbefehls im Editor gearbeitet, der automatisch neue Definitionen f\u00fcr DataForge generiert, sowie an einem neuen C++-Bindungscode, der DataForge-Verhaltensbaumstrukturen mit dem zugrunde liegenden Kythera-Verhaltensbaumcode verbindet. Wenn ein Codierer also einen neuen Knoten erstellt, ist es nur ein kurzer Konsolenbefehl und der Knoten ist nun vollst\u00e4ndig in DataForge integriert!\n\nEs ist also immer noch m\u00f6glich, KI-Verhalten in C++ zu erstellen, wie bisher, aber jetzt haben wir diese alternative GUI-Erstellungsmethode, die dann in entsprechenden C++-Code \u00fcbersetzt wird, wenn das Verhalten ausgef\u00fchrt wird. Wir freuen uns, dass die Designer beginnen, mit dem neuen Tool zu arbeiten und gro\u00dfartige Verhaltensweisen zu entwickeln. Wir erwarten, dass wir in naher Zukunft kleine Verbesserungen vornehmen m\u00fcssen, um die Oberfl\u00e4che f\u00fcr Designer noch einfacher zu machen, aber wir denken, dass es ein guter Anfang ist. Und wir m\u00fcssen Ash Canning bei Foundry 42, dem Mastermind hinter DataForge, einen riesigen Schrei aussprechen, der uns wirklich kurzfristig viele Optimierungen vorgenommen hat, um DataForge zu helfen, Verhaltensweisen besser zu bearbeiten.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich haben wir etwas in unserem Debugging-Tool Kythera Inspector gearbeitet, damit Designer ihre Verhaltensb\u00e4ume viel einfacher debuggen k\u00f6nnen, indem sie jederzeit eine visuelle Live-Darstellung dessen erhalten, was der Baum gerade tut. Letzten Monat haben wir die M\u00f6glichkeit hinzugef\u00fcgt, Verhaltensb\u00e4ume aufzuzeichnen und wiederzugeben, aber das ist n\u00fctzlicher, um Fehler aufzusp\u00fcren. F\u00fcr die Entwicklung von Verhaltensb\u00e4umen ist eine Live-Ansicht dessen, was sie tun, sehr praktisch. Wir geben diesem Feature den letzten Schliff und werden es bald an die Designer weitergeben, also werden wir auf den Bericht des n\u00e4chsten Monats warten, um mehr dar\u00fcber zu erfahren.\n\nMeine Damen und Herren, Jungen und M\u00e4dchen, B\u00fcrger jeden Alters, Thomas, Kameramann und au\u00dfergew\u00f6hnlicher Redakteur, hier, um Ihnen den Monatsbericht f\u00fcr Mai zu pr\u00e4sentieren. Wie immer berichtend aus dem, was man nur als Himmel auf Erden bezeichnen kann, alias dem einfach erhabenen Paradies, bekannt als Santa Monica, Kalifornien.\n\nUnd genau wie unser pr\u00e4chtiges Lokal war der Mai f\u00fcr uns ein geradezu wunderbarer Monat. Wir deb\u00fctierten ein neues Segment in unserer Flaggschiffshow Around the Vers, genannt Ship Shape. Veranstaltet von der \u00fcberschw\u00e4nglichen und immer verf\u00fchrerischen Lisa Ohanian, bietet es uns die M\u00f6glichkeit, mit unseren Fans und Unterst\u00fctzern einen umfassenden Blick in die Schiffspipeline zu werfen.\n\nApropos Around the Vers, Ben Lesnick hat einen fantastischen Job als Solo-Moderatorin gemacht, w\u00e4hrend Co-Moderatorin Sandi Gardiner aufgerufen wurde, ihre thespianischen F\u00e4higkeiten beim Squadron 42 Motion Capture Shooting in London zu zeigen, und wir wurden mit einer Reihe talentierter Entwickler konfrontiert, die sich alle als hervorragende Faksimiles erwiesen haben, in Abwesenheit unseres ber\u00fchmten Vorsitzenden auf unserer w\u00f6chentlichen 10 f\u00fcr Serien.\n\nIm Mai sahen wir auch den beliebtesten Bugsmasher aller Zeiten, Herrn Mark Bartholomew Abent III, der den Sprung vom Untersegment Around the Verse zur alle zwei Wochen stattfindenden eigenst\u00e4ndigen Show machte. Seine Pilotfolge wurde mit begeisterten Kritiken aufgenommen, und es ist mit gro\u00dfer Begeisterung, dass ich mit Freude bekannt geben kann, dass das Netzwerk tats\u00e4chlich einen Auftrag f\u00fcr eine ganze Saison von Shows erteilt hat.\n\nGanz ohne Zusammenhang zeugte uns der Mai auch die lang erwartete und lang erwartete Er\u00f6ffnung von Fuddruckers Santa Monica, und das CommuniTeam vergeudete keine Zeit damit, es zum Mittagessen zu besuchen, und ich m\u00f6chte nur sagen, dass wir nicht entt\u00e4uscht waren.\n\nUnd das, meine lieben Mitb\u00fcrger, war der Monat Mai. Vielen Dank an alle unsere Fans, ohne dich w\u00e4re all dies nicht m\u00f6glich, und es ist wirklich eine Ehre und ein Privileg, das tun zu k\u00f6nnen, was wir tun.\n\nBis zum n\u00e4chsten Mal werde ich es immer und ewig sein,\n\nEuer dem\u00fctiger Diener,\n\nThomas Gr\u00fc\u00dfe B\u00fcrger,\nEs ist schwer zu glauben, dass June schon da ist! In unseren Studios und Outsourcing-Partnern auf der ganzen Welt wird hektisch an Star Citizen gearbeitet. Diesen Monat freuen wir uns, Ihnen unser neuestes Studio, Foundry 42 Germany, vorstellen zu k\u00f6nnen. Sie werden in den kommenden Monaten viel aus Deutschland sehen: Sie sind damit beauftragt, viele der Programmherausforderungen, mit denen Star Citizen auf dem Weg in das persistente Universum konfrontiert ist, anzugehen. In diesen Bereichen und an unseren vielen Modulen und Meilensteinen wird weiter gearbeitet, von Star Marine (das gerade f\u00fcr sein PTU-Deb\u00fct vorbereitet wird) bis hin zu Squadron 42 (Kinofilme werden derzeit von Chris Roberts in London geleitet!) Ihre Top-Level-Ansicht dessen, was wir diesen Monat genau getan haben, finden Sie unten.\n\nWillkommen zur\u00fcck zu einer weiteren Ausgabe des Monatsberichts! Dieser Monat war ein ereignisreicher Monat mit vielen Entwicklungsnachrichten. Wie immer sind wir super aufgeregt, mit dir zu teilen, was wir im letzten Monat gemacht haben! Also einrichten und es sich bequem machen, denn hier kommt das Entwicklungs-Update!\n\nDesign\nEine der gr\u00f6\u00dften Entwicklungen vom Mai war die Enth\u00fcllung und der Konzeptverkauf f\u00fcr den MISC Reliant. Dieser Verkauf war eine gro\u00dfe Leistung f\u00fcr uns und f\u00fchlte sich wirklich so an, als h\u00e4tten wir jede Abteilung auf alle Zylinder geschossen, um den Verkauf vorzubereiten. Alle, die am Verkauf beteiligt waren, dr\u00e4ngten sich wirklich darauf, sicherzustellen, dass es nicht nur p\u00fcnktlich, sondern auch fr\u00fch fertig war. Es war ein gro\u00dfartiges Beispiel daf\u00fcr, wie sich unsere verschiedenen Abteilungen zusammenschlossen, um ein weiteres dieser unglaublichen Schiffe zum Leben zu erwecken. Wir sind auch ziemlich zuversichtlich, dass es der Community auch gefallen hat, mit \u00fcber 19.000 verkauften Exemplaren w\u00e4hrend des Konzeptverkaufs. Vielen Dank an Sie alle, dass Sie sowohl dieses gro\u00dfartige neue Schiff von MISC als auch die Weiterentwicklung von Star Citizen unterst\u00fctzen.\n\nWir haben einen Balancepass \u00fcber die aktuelle Liste der Raketen genommen, insbesondere durch die Erh\u00f6hung der Anf\u00e4lligkeit aller CS-Lock-Raketen (Tempest, Stalker, StrikeForce) f\u00fcr Spreurauschen, wodurch diejenigen, die auf eine bessere Chance geschossen haben, dem Zorn dieser m\u00e4chtigen Munition zu entkommen. Zus\u00e4tzlich wurden die Raketenverriegelungszeiten auf der ganzen Linie erh\u00f6ht (von 2 auf 5 Sekunden), so dass die Piloten ihre Man\u00f6vrierf\u00e4higkeiten auffrischen k\u00f6nnen! Das Ziel im Auge zu behalten, ist umso wichtiger geworden. Mit dieser \u00c4nderung werden auch Feuerl\u00f6schraketen praktischer. Frohe Jagd!\n\nEines der Schiffe, die die Pipeline hinunterfahren, ist der Crusader Industries Genesis Starliner. Die Starliner ist ein gro\u00dfes Schiff, das etwas gr\u00f6\u00dfer als eine 747 ist. Dieses Schiff ist insofern einzigartig, als es eines der ersten Passagierschiffe ist, das vom Star Citizen-Team in Angriff genommen wird. Als erstes Schiff seiner Art hat es uns dazu gebracht, unsere Entw\u00fcrfe in Bezug auf die Passagiere im Weltraum in Frage zu stellen. So werden beispielsweise noch einige der Fragen zur Fahrgastkapazit\u00e4t, zur Sicherheit dieser Fahrg\u00e4ste und zu den maximalen Flugzeiten beantwortet. Das \u00e4u\u00dfere Konzept ist an einem soliden Ort, aber die inneren Konzepte sind noch in Arbeit. Wir freuen uns sehr, Ihnen alles zu zeigen, was wir uns ausgedacht haben. Bald wird der Starliner mit Ihnen am Steuer oder als Passagier auf dem Weg zu dem Urlaubsort, den Sie ausprobieren wollten, die Sterne erkunden.\n\nUrspr\u00fcnglich im M\u00e4rz-Update erw\u00e4hnt, machen wir weiterhin Fortschritte in Richtung unseres neuen Physically Based Damage Systems. Dieses neue System wird an mehreren Fronten f\u00fcr das aktuelle Arena Commander Gameplay helfen und dazu beitragen, die Grundlagen f\u00fcr die Staffel 42 und die PU, aus der sie gebaut werden soll, zu schaffen. Einige der gr\u00f6\u00dften Highlights sind eine komplette \u00dcberarbeitung des Schadens und der Handhabung f\u00fcr jede Waffe mit einem klaren Fokus darauf, sicherzustellen, dass Ballistik- und Energiewaffen ihre eigenen einzigartigen Eigenschaften und Auswirkungen auf das Spiel haben. Aber wenn Sie den Schaden \u00e4ndern, ist das nur ein Teil des R\u00e4tsels, also erwarten Sie auch ein vergleichbares Update f\u00fcr jede gr\u00f6\u00dfere Schiffskomponente, um dieses neue System zu unterst\u00fctzen: Schiffs- und Schild-Zustand, Kraftwerksleistung, K\u00fchlraten, alles in Ordnung.\n\nEin weiteres gro\u00dfes Ereignis im Mai f\u00fcr das B\u00fcro in Santa Monica war, John Pritchett und Pete Mackay im B\u00fcro zu haben, als wir begannen, einen Teil des Flug- und Thruster-Handling f\u00fcr das Spiel wirklich einzuw\u00e4hlen. W\u00e4hrend sie \u00fcber einige ihrer Arbeiten w\u00e4hrend der letzten Around the Vers-Auftritte gesprochen haben, gibt es viele Arbeiten hinter den Kulissen, deren Besuch uns geholfen hat, sie zu rationalisieren. Jetzt haben wir noch bessere Tools und Dateneinstellungen, um den Bau neuer Schiffe und Komponenten reibungsloser und einheitlicher als bisher zu gestalten. Diese Arbeit half bereits bei der Vorbereitung des Reliant Verkaufs und lie\u00df uns schnell die Massen- und Thrusteranforderungen f\u00fcr das Schiff schneller als je zuvor aufbauen.\n\nKunst\nF\u00fcr das HUD & UI haben wir einige Arbeit geleistet, um die CPU \/ Rendering-Performance zu verbessern, indem wir die Anzahl der Draw Calls, die der skalierte Aspekt des HUD beisteuerte, sowie einen Refaktor der Holo-Objekte optimiert haben, die zur Verbesserung der Rendering-Performance von holographischen Elementen und Entit\u00e4ten beitragen sollten. Insgesamt sollte die Menge der CPU-Ressourcen, die das HUD \/ UI in Anspruch nimmt, jetzt deutlich geringer sein, und wir werden sie weiter optimieren, um die bestm\u00f6gliche Leistung zu erzielen.\n\nDiesen Monat haben Josh Coons und Mark McCall eine neue Helminnenausstattung entworfen und umgesetzt, die f\u00fcr alle FPS-Charaktere verwendet wird. Diese neue Richtung f\u00fcr die Helme ist ein gro\u00dfer Schritt in der Realisierung von Chris Roberts Gesamtvision f\u00fcr Star Citizen Charaktere. Das neue Helminnere gibt dem HUD-Team mehr Flexibilit\u00e4t und tr\u00e4gt zum Realismus unseres Universums bei.\n\nWas unsere Helme einzigartig macht, ist, dass sie das Sichtfeld des Spielers beeinflussen und die Vielseitigkeit unseres FPS-Spielerlebnisses verbessern. Die Ausr\u00fcstung in unserem Spiel sollte sich real und substantiell anf\u00fchlen - nicht nur eine Reihe von Statistiken und Zahlen, die im Gameplay min-maxed werden sollen, mit Eigenschaften, die den verschiedenen Spielern die Wahl lassen, basierend auf ihren eigenen subjektiven Pr\u00e4ferenzen, und die die Vielfalt der Spielerwahlen erweitern.\n\nBei der technischen Kunst lag unser Schwerpunkt in diesem Monat auf Schiffsuntergang, Bergung und Optimierung. Wir haben den Auftrag, das Gleichgewicht zwischen dem am besten optimierten Schadensansatz zu finden und gleichzeitig sicherzustellen, dass unser Gameplay-Design intakt bleibt.\n\nIn der Vergangenheit haben wir f\u00fcr Schiffssch\u00e4den f\u00fcnf Versionen von jedem Teil eines Schiffes gebaut. Dies waren die 0%, 25%, 50%, 50%, 75% und 100% besch\u00e4digten Versionen. Das Sprengen von Schiffen sah sehr cool aus, aber diese L\u00f6sung war extrem arbeitsintensiv, verbrauchte viele Systemressourcen und war nicht skalierbar, damit CryEngine die epische Armada von Schiffen, die gegen Chris k\u00e4mpfen, darstellen konnte.\n\nWir brauchten eine neue Schadensl\u00f6sung. Ali Brown, Okka Kyaw, Geoff Birch und Mark Abent halfen alle bei der Entwicklung unserer neuen Damage Shader und Squib Technologie, die die Zerst\u00f6rung unserer neuesten Schiffe ohne die hohen Ressourcenkosten erm\u00f6glichte. Aber selbst als wir diese gro\u00dfartige Leistung der Optimierung vollbrachten, planten unsere Designer neue Spielmechaniken wie Debris Salvage und Ship Repair, von denen jede die Kosten f\u00fcr die gesamte Verarbeitung unseres Schiffsmodells erh\u00f6ht.\n\nDer wahre Leistungsfeind von Star Citizen mit so vielen High-Fidelity-Assets ist \"Draw Calls\". F\u00fcr diejenigen, die es noch nicht kennen, sind Draw Calls die Anzahl der Renderpasses auf jedem Geometrieteil, um das endg\u00fcltige Bild zu erstellen. Wenn Ihr Raumschiffrumpf diffuse, spiegelnde und normale Texturen hat, dann w\u00fcrde das 3 Draw Calls bedeuten. Und wenn Ihr Schiff in 50 St\u00fcck aufgeteilt ist, w\u00e4re das 50 \u00d7 3 = 150 Draw Calls. Und f\u00fcgen Sie einige hochwertige Selbstbeschattungen hinzu, und Sie k\u00f6nnen 150 auf riesige 300 Draw Calls verdoppeln! Unsere Schiffe werden mit PBR (Physically Based Rendering) gerendert, wobei der Damage Shader, Paint Variations und Decals mehr als 15-30 Draw Calls pro St\u00fcck erfordern. Um die Draw Calls zu optimieren, mussten wir also die Anzahl der einzelnen Figuren reduzieren. Aber das bedeutet, dass wir, um wirklich optimiert zu werden, weniger animierte Teile und weniger Absplitterungen des Schiffes ben\u00f6tigen w\u00fcrden! Ein ziemliches R\u00e4tsel, denn wir wollen diese Dinge!\n\nAls er mit Ali \u00fcber diese Optimierungsprobleme sprach, schlug er einen neuen Tr\u00fcmmeransatz vor, den wir jetzt untersucht haben. Anstatt das Schiff in einzelne, empfindliche Bereiche zu zerlegen und Tr\u00fcmmer vom Schiff zu l\u00f6sen, schlug er vor, Teile des Schiffes mit dem Damage Shader und Spawn Debris zu verstecken, die dann vom Schiff wegfliegen w\u00fcrden. Dieser neue Ansatz sieht immer noch so aus, als ob Tr\u00fcmmer vom Schiff geblasen werden, erm\u00f6glicht es uns aber, die Anzahl der Schiffsrumpfnetze zu reduzieren, was auch die Draw Calls deutlich reduziert. Und au\u00dferdem erm\u00f6glicht uns diese L\u00f6sung, Schutt zu erzeugen, der bergef\u00e4hige Komponenten enth\u00e4lt! Also, die Waffe, die du gerade von dem Entermesser in der PU abgeschossen hast? Es geh\u00f6rt jetzt dir. Gern geschehen.\n\nEs gab viele andere Durchbr\u00fcche wie diesen. Und dieser Monat hat uns der Verwirklichung der Weltraumoper unserer Tr\u00e4ume n\u00e4her denn je gebracht. Nun ist es unsere Aufgabe, den kompletten Optimierungsplan \u00fcber alle Schiffe im Spiel hinweg umzusetzen, mit dem Ziel, dass wir Squadron 42 mit erstaunlich lustigem Gameplay und einer seidig-glatten Bildrate ver\u00f6ffentlichen.\n\nIngenieurwesen\nDie Arbeiten an Radar 2.0 sind abgeschlossen. Alles kann registriert werden, um auf dem Radar angezeigt zu werden, solange es eine passende IRadarObjekt-Struktur gibt. F\u00fcr den Laien bedeutet das, dass, solange ein Objekt die richtigen Informationen enth\u00e4lt, dieses Objekt aufgenommen und auf dem Radar basierend auf seinen physikalischen Eigenschaften angezeigt wird. Ja, wir k\u00f6nnen EMP-Granaten sogar eine EM-Signatur geben und sie auf dem Radar erscheinen lassen, wenn Ihr Radar konfiguriert ist, um EM zu erkennen.\n\nWir haben es auch so gemacht, dass Radare in der Lage sind, nach jeder Art von Signaturtyp zu filtern und erkannte Objekte nun eine Instanz von ihnen erstellt haben. Die Erstellung dieser Instanz erm\u00f6glicht es uns, Dinge wie Stotterpositionsaktualisierungen durchzuf\u00fchren und\/oder Decay\/Afalloff anzuzeigen, ohne das tats\u00e4chlich erkannte Objekt zu beeinflussen. Auf diese Weise k\u00f6nnen Design und Kunst coole und interessante Dinge f\u00fcr die angezeigte Instanzversion tun, ohne die zugrunde liegende Logik, die das Radar\/Signatur antreibt, zu durchbrechen. In diesem Zusammenhang haben wir auch die Performance von Okklusionspr\u00fcfungen verbessert.\n\nLast but not least haben wir die Unterst\u00fctzung von \"Dezibel\" als neuen Signaturtyp hinzugef\u00fcgt. Zu Fu\u00df in Star Citizen kann Ihr Radar Audio aus der Umgebung wie Schritte und Waffenfeuer anzeigen. Diese Ereignisse sind nun ordnungsgem\u00e4\u00df in das Signatursystem eingebunden, so dass Ihre Schritte und Waffen Feuer \"Dezibel\" erzeugen, die vom Spielerradar gescannt und angezeigt werden. Du wirst sehen, wie dieses Deb\u00fct mit dem FPS stattfindet.\n\nUnser LA Engineering Team hat auch bei der Handhabung von Spieler-\/Charakterkleidung, Individualisierung und Anh\u00e4ngen mit dem von uns entwickelten Item-Port-System geholfen. Das Item-Port-System erm\u00f6glicht das Anbringen von Items an Knochen, die auf 3D-Objekten definiert sind. Auf diese Weise befestigen wir alle unsere Schiffsteile und Schiffsartikel. Dieses System wird f\u00fcr Charaktere erweitert, die eine dynamische Skelett-Erweiterung durch skinned attachments unterst\u00fctzen.\n\nDas bedeutet konkret, dass wir die K\u00f6rperteile haben, die in der Lage sind, Gegenst\u00e4nde auszur\u00fcsten. D.h. F\u00fc\u00dfe, H\u00e4nde, linke Hand, rechte Hand, Torso, etc. sind mit entsprechenden Knochen gekennzeichnet, die definieren, wo angebrachte Gegenst\u00e4nde angebracht sind. Von dort aus, wenn Sie ein Brustst\u00fcck ausstatten w\u00fcrden, das eine taktische Schulterleuchte, Sauerstofftank und Brustholster erlaubt, ben\u00f6tigt jeder dieser zus\u00e4tzlichen Befestigungspunkte zus\u00e4tzliche Knochen. Das System erlaubt es jedem der zus\u00e4tzlichen Knochen, die in einer Haut (enth\u00e4utetes Objekt, nicht tats\u00e4chliche Haut) angebracht sind, das Basisskelett zu erweitern, indem es dieses Skelett dynamisch mit den zus\u00e4tzlichen Knochen aktualisiert.\n\nDamit ist das Update f\u00fcr das Santa Monica Studio abgeschlossen! Vielen Dank wie immer, dass du dir die Zeit genommen hast, unsere Geschichte zu lesen und f\u00fcr deine Unterst\u00fctzung bei der Entwicklung dieses Spiels! Wir k\u00f6nnten das nicht ohne jeden einzelnen von euch machen und eure Unterst\u00fctzung wird von jedem von uns hier bei Cloud Imperium sehr gesch\u00e4tzt. Nochmals vielen Dank und wir sehen uns f\u00fcr das Update im n\u00e4chsten Monat!\n\nAprilschauer haben sich in Texas in Mai-Hochwasser verwandelt! Wir wurden von schwerem Wetter und gro\u00dfen \u00dcberschwemmungen heimgesucht, wie Sie vielleicht in den Nachrichten gesehen haben. Gl\u00fccklicherweise ist unser Studio von dieser Zerst\u00f6rung weitgehend verschont geblieben und wir sind wie gewohnt vorangekommen. Wir haben neue Builds von Star Marine getestet und hart an der Arbeit am Persistent Universe und vielen technischen Aktivit\u00e4ten gearbeitet. Hier sind einige detaillierte Berichte von den Leitern der einzelnen Teams.\n\nHartn\u00e4ckiges Universumsteam\nKunst\nDas PU Art Team hat in diesem Monat wie gewohnt in vielen Bereichen des Projekts mitgewirkt. Einer unserer Schwerpunkte war die Verlegung der Landezone Nyx>Delamar>Levski in die Final Art Phase. Wir sind jetzt an der Greybox-Phase vorbeigekommen und die Umgebung sieht fantastisch aus. Art Director Mark Skelton, Lead Artist Patrick Thomas und Global Environment Lead Ian Leyland haben eng mit BHVR zusammengearbeitet, um diese Umgebung wirklich zu einem Erlebnis zu machen. Der VFX-K\u00fcnstler Lee Amarakoon und der Lichtk\u00fcnstler Marc Toscano waren damit besch\u00e4ftigt, dieser Umgebung einen zus\u00e4tzlichen Hauch von Nebel, Rauch und Licht hinzuzuf\u00fcgen, um ihr Leben einzuhauchen. Wir k\u00f6nnen es kaum erwarten, euch an zwielichtigen Hintert\u00fcrchen teilhaben zu sehen, Dinge auf dem Schwarzmarkt zu verkaufen und die gewundenen Asteroiden-Tunnel zu durchqueren, die diese Umgebung zu bieten hat.\n\nEin weiterer Schwerpunkt lag auf der Optimierung der Landezone Stanton>ArcCorp>Area18 f\u00fcr eine bessere Leistung in Vorbereitung auf das Social Module Release. Der extrem hohe Detaillierungsgrad und die Genauigkeit, die unsere Umgebungen so erstaunlich machen, sind ziemlich anstrengend f\u00fcr die Leistung, aber mit dem Einsatz neuer Technologien aus unserem Grafikteam sind wir in der Lage, unsere Leistung mit verschiedenen Mitteln erheblich zu verbessern.\n\nDer Konzeptk\u00fcnstler Ken Fairclough hat ein Konzept f\u00fcr eine Sicherheitsturmst\u00fctze entwickelt, die schlie\u00dflich auf Landepl\u00e4tzen wie ArcCorp zu finden sein wird. Diese Sicherheitst\u00fcrme werden dazu dienen, Spieler zu bestrafen, die ihre Waffen in Gebieten ziehen, die ihnen das nicht erlauben. Sie werden auch als Abschreckungsmittel f\u00fcr Trolle und Trauernde dienen, die denken, dass es eine gute Idee ist, das Feuer auf zuf\u00e4llige Zivilisten zu er\u00f6ffnen.\n\nUnser Charakter-Team hat den Support f\u00fcr die FPS-Charaktere abgeschlossen. Die Marines und Outlaws befinden sich an einem Punkt, an dem wir ihnen Adieu gesagt haben, und jetzt hat sich unsere Aufmerksamkeit auf die Entwicklung der Charaktere verlagert, die beim Spielen von SATABall in der Astro Arena zu sehen sein werden. Wir haben einige ziemlich clevere neue Konzepte, von denen wir gearbeitet haben und die in den n\u00e4chsten Wochen abgeschlossen werden sollten. Unser Charakter-Team hat auch einige Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeiten zu Haar und austauschbarer Kleidung f\u00fcr das kommende Social Module Release durchgef\u00fchrt.\n\nDas Austin Animation Team hat auch verschiedene Bereiche des Projekts unterst\u00fctzt. Wir hatten alle H\u00e4nde voll zu tun, um alte PU-, FPS- und Arena Commander-Animationen auf unser neues Skelett zu \u00fcbertragen. Wir haben auch Unterst\u00fctzung bei der Verbesserung der G-Force-Animationen und beim Testen des Grabby Hands-Systems geleistet. Senior-Animator David Peng hat sich zu 100% darauf konzentriert, Cockpit- und Kanonenvorlagen an die neuen Proportionen des Charakters anzupassen. Wir haben jetzt 7 Cockpittypen und 20 Tastenkombinationen, aus denen unsere K\u00fcnstler bei der Erstellung von Cockpits w\u00e4hlen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDesign\nEin Gro\u00dfteil der Zeit, die Design in diesem Monat damit verbracht hat, einige unserer anderen Berufe zu vertiefen, die die Spieler schlie\u00dflich in der PU \u00fcbernehmen k\u00f6nnen. Tony Zurovec verbrachte einen Gro\u00dfteil seiner Zeit damit, die Besonderheiten der Pioniert\u00e4tigkeit (ehemals Exploration) zu ergr\u00fcnden und wie sie sich auf die Funktionalit\u00e4t eines zuk\u00fcnftigen Schiffes bezieht. Rob Reininger absolvierte einen ersten Durchgang dar\u00fcber, wie die S\u00f6ldner-\/Sportlerbesetzung funktionieren w\u00fcrde, w\u00e4hrend Nate Blaisdell und Evan Manning die Berufe Kopfgeldj\u00e4ger bzw. Schmuggler anpackten. Diese Entw\u00fcrfe liegen nun bei Tony Z zur \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung vor und werden nach der Genehmigung zusammen mit Andrew Nguyen in die Warteschlange gestellt, um das Gameplay zu implementieren.\n\nTony Z beendete auch seinen ersten Entwurf des neuen Universumssimulators (fr\u00fcher der Wirtschaftssimulator) und leitete ihn an das Team dr\u00fcben in Wyrmbyte weiter. Das neue Design beinhaltet viel mehr als nur das \u00f6konomische System, das in der PU enthalten sein wird, jetzt auch Dinge wie die F\u00e4higkeit, Elemente und Verbundwerkstoffe zu erzeugen, die F\u00e4higkeit, einen Planeten innerhalb eines Sonnensystems zu erschaffen und ihm Daten zuzuweisen, und die F\u00e4higkeit, Berufe f\u00fcr NSCs zu schaffen und die Ausf\u00fchrungslogik f\u00fcr jeden Beruf festzulegen.\n\nMark Skelton und Tony Z trafen sich zusammen mit Lead Writer David Haddock mit BHVR, um Entw\u00fcrfe und Layouts f\u00fcr die kommenden Standorte am Planetenrand zu besprechen. Konkret war unser Augenmerk in diesem Monat auf Magnus>Borea>Odyssa und Helios>Tangaroa>Mariana gerichtet. Beide Standorte werden unserem ohnehin schon beeindruckenden Stall von Landepl\u00e4tzen mehrere neue, spannende M\u00f6glichkeiten und Vielfalt bieten. Wir werden einige spannende Looks mit euch teilen, wenn es online geht. N\u00e4chsten Monat werden wir uns auf die anderen Landezonen innerhalb des Stantonssystems konzentrieren: Crusader, Hurston und MicroTech.\n\nIngenieurwesen\nDer Monat Mai war ein sehr arbeitsreicher Monat f\u00fcr das Engineering Team hier in Austin und f\u00fcr das Wyrmbyte Team. Viele gro\u00dfe Ticketartikel waren fertig und bereit f\u00fcr den ersten Test.\nEin gro\u00dfer Punkt, auf den alle gewartet haben, ist unser neuer Generic Instance Manager, der deutliche Verbesserungen in Systemen wie Matchmaking und Party verspricht. Dies wurde von Jason Ely entworfen, und er brachte es mit starker Unterst\u00fctzung von Tom Sawyer nach Hause. Wir werden erste Tests auf diesem neuen System durchf\u00fchren, das Teil des kommenden FPS-Release sein soll.\n\nInzwischen...dr\u00fcben bei Wyrmbyte...Scott Brown, Nathan Gray und Ryan Seabury haben an unserem Universums-Simulator gearbeitet und sind dabei, eine Proof-of-Concept-Iteration mit Basisfunktionalit\u00e4t zu liefern. Der n\u00e4chste Schritt ist, dies weiter auszubauen, bis wir eine Arbeitsdemo erstellen k\u00f6nnen, die wir intern f\u00fcr weitere Diskussionen dar\u00fcber austauschen k\u00f6nnen, wie wir darauf aufbauen k\u00f6nnen. Gleichzeitig arbeitet Ian Guthrie an der ersten Iteration unseres Sonnensystem-Servers und wird in K\u00fcrze eine erste Iteration davon abschlie\u00dfen. Das Wyrmbyte-Team hat auch eine Neufassung unseres Player Info Servers und unseres Presence Servers im Mai geliefert und arbeitet weiterhin an seinem iPredictor Schiffs- und Raketenbewegungssystem.\n\nUnsere anderen Ingenieure waren auch sehr besch\u00e4ftigt... Tom Davies hat v1.0 unseres Useable Editor f\u00fcr unsere NPC KI-Anforderungen fertiggestellt, und Jeff Uriarte macht solide Fortschritte mit dem Character Archetype Editor, einem weiteren Werkzeug f\u00fcr unser Designteam. Andrew Nguyen war in der Forschung und Entwicklung t\u00e4tig und bereitete sich auf das erste Prototyping eines anderen Berufes vor (vorl\u00e4ufig \"Discover\" genannt), und er hat gerade einen ersten Prototyp f\u00fcr den Bergbau-Beruf abgeschlossen.\n\nBrian Mazza war tief in der entscheidenden Arbeit, die vom gesamten Team ben\u00f6tigt wurde, wie z.B. die Implementierung von Google Brakepad f\u00fcr bessere Crash-Berichte, die Portierung unseres Universe Backends und die Behebung von Serverfehlern, die den Teamfortschritt blockierten und die Stabilit\u00e4t des Build verhinderten. Gegen\u00fcber von Brian hat James Wright eng mit QA zusammengearbeitet, um die Leistung unserer verschiedenen Builds zu profilieren und zu analysieren, einschlie\u00dflich eines aktuellen PTU-Builds und unseres anstehenden FPS-Builds. Diese Daten helfen uns, Problembereiche zu identifizieren, die Aufmerksamkeit erfordern, um die Gesamtleistung zu verbessern. Und James hat Clive Johnson (der kurz davor steht, seine Arbeit an der Implementierung unseres Unique Global Entity ID-Systems abzuschlie\u00dfen) und George Kidd vom britischen Team rekrutiert, um einige der kritischen Performance-Probleme zu untersuchen, die in seinen Profilergebnissen aufgedeckt wurden.\n\nAuf der Tool-Seite hat Benjamin Bechtel eine neue, verbesserte Version seines Asset Validation Tools mit einer v\u00f6llig neuen Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che eingef\u00fchrt. Dieses Tool wird t\u00e4glich von unseren K\u00fcnstlern verwendet. Benjamin erwartet im Juni auch einen Besuch des britischen Werkzeugingenieurs Ashly Canning, um gemeinsam an unserem Dataforge Tool zu arbeiten. Sean Tracy und Jeffery Zhu haben die erste Phase ihrer Stream-Restrukturierung eingeleitet, die wesentlich dazu beitragen wird, unsere Stream-Str\u00f6me zu rationalisieren, indem sie unsere Entwicklungsstr\u00f6me bis hin zu unserem Live-Produkt f\u00fchren. Schlie\u00dflich haben diese beiden Herren viel Zeit und M\u00fche darauf verwendet, Cort Soest bei unserer dringend ben\u00f6tigten und \u00fcberlangen Aufgabe der Bereinigung unserer Perforce-Daten zu unterst\u00fctzen. Die ersten beiden Phasen dieser Aufgabe sind im Mai abgeschlossen.\n\nDas Team erwartet den Juni und freut sich darauf, seine Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr die bevorstehende FPS-Ver\u00f6ffentlichung sowie die weitere Arbeit an unserem kommenden Sozialmodul anzubieten.\n\nLive-Betrieb\nQA\nF\u00fcr das QS-Team begann May mit dem Testen und Freigeben von 1.1.2 und anschlie\u00dfend 1.1.3.\nMit Hilfe unseres Senior Engine Programmierers James Wright f\u00fchrten wir einen speziellen PTU-Test durch, der einen separaten Server-CPU-Thread zur Berechnung der Physik verwendete. Die Ergebnisse zeigten signifikante Leistungssteigerungen w\u00e4hrend der Spiele.\n\nEs wurden \u00c4nderungen an der Art und Weise vorgenommen, wie wir verschiedene Streams und Zweige mit Perforce, unserer Versionierungskontrollsoftware, verwenden. Dies wird zu einem wesentlich strukturierteren und reibungsloseren Prozess der Release- und Feature-Integration beitragen. Dies hat auch zu einer erh\u00f6hten Arbeitsbelastung f\u00fcr die Qualit\u00e4tssicherung gef\u00fchrt, um sicherzustellen, dass diese zus\u00e4tzlichen Streams oder Zweige des Spiels und des Editors ordnungsgem\u00e4\u00df getestet werden. Das Team leistet jedoch hervorragende Arbeit, um sicherzustellen, dass diese zus\u00e4tzliche Testanforderung erf\u00fcllt wird.\n\nUnsere FPS-Spezialisten waren sehr damit besch\u00e4ftigt, sicherzustellen, dass Star Marine jeden Tag ordnungsgem\u00e4\u00df getestet wird. Das Team hatte das Gl\u00fcck, direkt an den Designchef Todd Papy Feedback geben zu k\u00f6nnen. Todd reagierte sehr schnell auf jeden angesprochenen Punkt. Nachdem er diese Punkte besprochen hatte, beauftragte Todd alle vereinbarten \u00c4nderungen und legte Priorit\u00e4ten fest. Als QA ist es sehr erf\u00fcllend, so ein Teil der Entwicklungsrichtung sein zu k\u00f6nnen.\n\nIn der Zwischenzeit hat Todd Raffray daf\u00fcr gesorgt, dass das Sozialmodul ordnungsgem\u00e4\u00df getestet wird. Todd hat einen gro\u00dfartigen Job gemacht, um sicherzustellen, dass alle Funktionen in einer umfassenden Checkliste dokumentiert und kontinuierlich getestet werden, w\u00e4hrend sie online gehen.\n\nHerzlichen Gl\u00fcckwunsch an Miles Lee, dass er mit unserem DevOps-Team in die Rolle eines offiziellen Associate Engineers gewechselt ist! Miles hat hervorragende Arbeit geleistet und dazu beigetragen, ein Framework f\u00fcr die Testautomatisierung zu schaffen. Wir k\u00f6nnen nun Leistungsdaten erfassen und die meisten unserer Stabilit\u00e4tspr\u00fcfungen f\u00fcr jeden Build automatisieren, sobald sie verf\u00fcgbar sind.\n\nDas Team drehte ihre erste Episode eines speziellen QA-Segments mit Community, wo sie einige ihrer Lieblingsfehler pr\u00e4sentierten.\n\nDas Team hatte auch das Gl\u00fcck, an der Launch-Party der University of Texas Denius-Sams Gaming Academy mit ihrem ersten offiziellen Release namens \"The Calm Before\" teilzunehmen. Wir hatten viel Spa\u00df beim Spielen! Ihr Team ist sehr talentiert. Z\u00f6gern Sie nicht, sich den kostenlosen Download anzusehen!\n\nEs war ein arbeitsreicher Monat f\u00fcr uns in der QA. N\u00e4chsten Monat werden wir uns intensiv mit dem Testen von Alpha 1.2 besch\u00e4ftigen, um uns auf die bevorstehende Ver\u00f6ffentlichung vorzubereiten.\n\nSpielunterst\u00fctzung\nDieser Monat war f\u00fcr den Game Support sehr arbeitsreich, da wir auf einigen der Arbeiten von M\u00e4rz und April aufgebaut haben.\n\nIm Monat Mai wurden auch zwei Updates f\u00fcr den Arena Commander ver\u00f6ffentlicht (1.1.2 und 1.1.3). Update 1.1.2 half den Spielern bei den gef\u00fcrchteten Problemen mit dem Match Not Found, Kicked Back to Lobby und Infinite Load Screen, und 1.1.3 unterst\u00fctzte sie bei den anhaltenden Problemen mit dem \"Gummibanding\", bei denen die Spieler um die Karte sprangen. Dies ist erst der Anfang unserer Optimierungen, und wir wissen, dass Sie gespannt sein werden, wie wir Ihre Informationen weiterhin nutzen, um das Spielerlebnis zu verbessern.\n\nIn diesem Zusammenhang haben wir auch einen unglaublich erfolgreichen Playtest auf PTU mit 1.1.2 durchgef\u00fchrt. Die Spieler haben sich in den PTU-Dienst gestopft, um uns zu helfen, Stresstests durchzuf\u00fchren und wichtige Serveranalysen zu sammeln, und auf dem Weg dorthin hatten wir eine absolut EPIC 8v8-Runde von Spielen, die eine Runde von Diskussionen und internen Aufgaben dar\u00fcber ausgel\u00f6st hat, was wir tun k\u00f6nnen, um die Spielerkappe zu erh\u00f6hen.\n\nIm Hinblick auf den weiteren Aufbau und die Skalierung unserer Support-Betriebe f\u00fcr Sie war einer der gr\u00f6\u00dferen Punkte in diesem Monat die Schaffung einer internen Workflow- und Wissensdatenbank, die unsere M\u00f6glichkeiten, Ihnen zu helfen, erheblich erweitert. Durch die interne Ver\u00f6ffentlichung einer vollst\u00e4ndigen Matrix m\u00f6glicher Probleme, Fehlerbehebungsmethoden und L\u00f6sungen konnten wir mehr Mitarbeiter im Unternehmen schulen, die bei technischen Problemen helfen. Das bedeutet, dass wir einer gr\u00f6\u00dferen Anzahl von Menschen in k\u00fcrzerer Zeit helfen k\u00f6nnen und bietet eine fantastische Grundlage f\u00fcr die Erweiterung unseres Teams auf dem Weg in die Sternenmarine, das Sozialmodul, die Staffel 42 und schlie\u00dflich das Persistente Universum.\n\nWir haben auch begonnen, mit Turbulent zusammenzuarbeiten, der zwei gro\u00dfe Initiativen f\u00fcr den Game Support vorantreibt: Der Community Bug Council (eine VIEL verbesserte M\u00f6glichkeit f\u00fcr Spieler, Beitr\u00e4ge einzureichen und zu sehen, welche Fehler im System aktiv sind) und eine neue, \u00fcberarbeitete Version der Live Service Notification Seite, die eine begehrte Server Status Seite enthalten wird.\n\nSie werden in den kommenden Wochen mehr \u00fcber diese beiden Punkte erfahren, aber beide sind auf unsere gr\u00f6\u00dferen Ziele ausgerichtet, Ihnen so schnell wie m\u00f6glich genauere Informationen \u00fcber den Zustand des Dienstes zu liefern.\n\nIT\/Betrieb\nDer Mai war ein Monat der Geschwindigkeit f\u00fcr die IT. Die IT-Gruppe arbeitet hart daran, mit den wachsenden Infrastrukturanforderungen der Entwicklungsteams Schritt zu halten, und die Leistung der zentralen Speichersysteme in jedem Studio ist weiterhin eine unserer Priorit\u00e4ten. Letzten Monat konzentrierten wir uns auf die interne Build-Replikation an Studios aus dem Build-System in Austin. Diesen Monat haben wir unseren Fokus auf die Leistung der zugrunde liegenden Hardware im Austin Build System selbst gelegt. Ziel dieses Projekts ist es, die Zeit f\u00fcr die Erstellung von Builds deutlich zu verk\u00fcrzen. Die Verk\u00fcrzung der Buildzeiten beschleunigt die Entwicklung und das interne Testen, aber die gesamte Build-Pipeline ist gro\u00df und komplex, so dass wir uns diesem Problem aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln n\u00e4hern.\n\nDer erste auf der Liste war die Leistung des Speichers, auf dem die Build-Systeme laufen. Das Build-System kompiliert nat\u00fcrlich Code und Assets f\u00fcr das Spiel und die meisten dieser Arbeiten schieben die Festplatten wirklich hart. I\/O-Wartezeiten k\u00f6nnen auf normalen Systemen durch die Decke gehen, und da unser Build-System viele Builds parallel kompiliert, haben wir viel Zeit verloren, indem wir nur darauf gewartet haben, dass die Festplatten aufholen. Um dieses Problem zu l\u00f6sen, haben wir einen benutzerdefinierten Server mit allen Flash-Speichern und speziellen Controllern gebaut, um unsere IOPS weit \u00fcber unsere aktuellen Bed\u00fcrfnisse hinaus zu entwickeln. Diese eine Verbesserung unseres Build-Systems hat beeindruckende Ergebnisse mit einer Reduzierung der Buildzeiten um 66% gezeigt.\n\nAls n\u00e4chstes planen wir, weitere Sekund\u00e4rsysteme auf Schnellspeicher umzustellen, was zu zus\u00e4tzlichen Reduzierungen f\u00fchren sollte. Schlie\u00dflich werden wir parallele Verarbeitungsmethoden integrieren, um mehr CPU-Kerne in den Build-Prozess einzubringen. Dieser Schritt und einige potenzielle Ressourcen-Cachings sollten unsere Buildzeiten von Stunden auf Minuten reduzieren.\n\nWir haben auch eng mit DevOps zusammengearbeitet, um unsere Geb\u00e4udeautomationssysteme zu verbessern, die unserem aktuellen System Stabilit\u00e4t und Benutzerfreundlichkeit verleihen werden. Wir hoffen, dass wir den Rest dieser \u00c4nderungen in den n\u00e4chsten Wochen umsetzen k\u00f6nnen. Im Moment sind wir sehr zufrieden mit den ersten Ergebnissen und ich denke, jeder ist gespannt, wie schnell wir diese Builds jetzt umsetzen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDev Ops\nWir haben diesen Monat zwei Patches ver\u00f6ffentlicht, Patch 1.1.2.2 und 1.1.3, und beide wurden an einem Freitag ver\u00f6ffentlicht! Unser Team wird weiterhin mit dem Unternehmen zusammenarbeiten, um zu versuchen, diese Bereitstellungen auf Dienstag als Industriestandard einzugrenzen, und dann hoffentlich im Laufe einiger Jahre in eine kontinuierliche Bereitstellungspipeline \u00fcbergehen, die die Notwendigkeit von Ausfallzeiten eliminieren sollte (viel davon h\u00e4ngt von unserem endg\u00fcltigen Datenbankdesign ab).\n\nWir haben bei den Deployment Playtests des FPS geholfen und diese M\u00f6glichkeiten genutzt, um unseren neuen Launcher und Patcher zu testen. Bisher waren die Tests positiv, aber wir m\u00fcssen noch einige weitere Polierdurchg\u00e4nge durchlaufen, bevor wir sie in die PTU verschieben, damit jeder sie benutzen kann. Die Entwicklung des Launcher wird in drei Phasen unterteilt. Der erste, eine PTU-Phase, wurde bereits erw\u00e4hnt. Dieser nimmt die bestehende Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che und kombiniert sie mit unserem neuen Patcher. In der zweiten Phase wird eine komplette \u00dcberarbeitung des Launcher in C++ erfolgen. In Kombination mit dem neuen Patcher und der alten Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che wird es Stabilit\u00e4tsverbesserungen aufweisen, aber \u00e4hnlich wie der aktuelle Launcher und der kommende PTU-Launcher aussehen und funktionieren. Die dritte Phase wird eine komplett neue Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che auf Basis des C++-Kerns und Patches sein. Die Einf\u00fchrung dieser Phasen wird mehrere Monate dauern, und weitere Informationen zu jeder Phase werden in K\u00fcrze ver\u00f6ffentlicht.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich ist eine Menge Arbeit damit verbunden, wie Daten im Unternehmen erstellt, gespeichert und konsumiert werden. Wir untersuchen, wie wir Zweige in Perforce verwenden, wie Daten auf den Build-Server kopiert werden, welche Daten ausgeschlossen sind, wie Entwicklungsleiter diese Daten betrachten. Initiativen f\u00fcr bessere Perforce-Tools, ein Ausschlusstool und einen neuen Build-Server haben die Teamzeit zus\u00e4tzlich in Anspruch genommen. Der Build-Server ist ein besonders gro\u00dfes Projekt, das wir bis zum 14. Juli abgeschlossen haben wollen. Zu diesem Zweck ist einer der Ingenieure des Frankfurter Studios nach Austin geflogen, um in den n\u00e4chsten drei Wochen mit uns zusammenzuarbeiten, damit wir an Implementierungsideen arbeiten k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDie Arbeit an der Fertigstellung unseres Datenbankmodells und der Containerisierung der Server musste auf Eis gelegt werden, w\u00e4hrend wir unsere Tools fertig stellen, die alle von den Studios verwendeten Daten verarbeiten. Wir werden auf diese Themen zur\u00fcckkommen, wenn unsere derzeit in der Entwicklung befindlichen Tools fertig sind und wenn unser Server-Team mit der Arbeit am Persistenzdienst beginnt, der die wichtigste Schnittstellenschicht zur Datenbank sein wird. Hoffentlich wird diese Arbeit in den Bericht vom Juni aufgenommen!\n\nHallo zusammen! Hier in der Gie\u00dferei 42 arbeiten wir an allem, vom Arena Commander (Multicrew) bis zur Staffel 42. Chris Roberts hat den letzten Monat in einem anderen Teil Englands verbracht, um die Leistung der Staffel 42 zu erfassen.... und wir arbeiten eng zusammen, um sicherzustellen, dass die dort generierten Daten in Kinofilme verwandelt werden, die Sie umhauen werden! Hier ist die Aufteilung der Abteilung nach Abteilungen, was diesen Monat in Manchester geschah:\n\nAnimation\nHier in Gro\u00dfbritannien arbeiten wir immer noch daran, die Bed\u00fcrfnisse unserer Designer zu erf\u00fcllen. W\u00e4hrend die Direktoren von Imaginarium weiterhin die Daten erfassen, die wir ben\u00f6tigen, sind wir damit besch\u00e4ftigt, Block-Out-Animationen f\u00fcr die Design- und Code-Abteilungen bereitzustellen, um mit dem Prototyping und der Implementierung der Mechanik zu beginnen.\n\nWir arbeiten auch mit den verschiedenen Studios weltweit zusammen, um die Tools zu rationalisieren, die wir alle ben\u00f6tigen, um effizient und effektiv arbeiten zu k\u00f6nnen, um die f\u00fcr Squadron42 und dar\u00fcber hinaus gesetzten Ziele zu erreichen.\n- UK Lead Animator, Uisdean Ross.\n\nIngenieurwesen\nIm Vorfeld","zh_CN":"Greetings Citizens,\nIt\u2019s hard to believe June is already upon us! Work on Star Citizen continues at a frenzied pace at our studios and outsource partners around the world. This month, we\u2019re excited to introduce our latest studio, Foundry 42 Germany, to the report. You\u2019ll be seeing a lot from Germany in the coming months: they\u2019re charged with tackling many of the programming challenges facing Star Citizen on the road to the persistent universe. Work continues in those areas, and on our many modules and milestones, from Star Marine (now being readied for its PTU debut) to Squadron 42 (cinematics currently being directed by Chris Roberts in London!) Your top-level view of exactly what we\u2019ve done this month can be found below.\n\nWelcome back for another edition of the Monthly Report! This month has been an eventful one with lots of development news to cover. As always, we\u2019re super excited to share with you what we\u2019ve been up to over this past month! So settle in and get comfortable because here goes the development update!\n\nDesign\nOne of the biggest developments from May was the reveal and concept sale for the MISC Reliant. This sale was a big accomplishment for us, and really felt like we had every department firing on all cylinders to get the sale ready. Everyone involved in the sale really pushed to make sure that it wasn\u2019t just ready on-time, but it was ready early. It\u2019s been a great example of our various departments pooling together to help bring another of these incredible ships to life. We\u2019re also pretty confident that the community liked it as well, with over 19,000 sold during the concept sale. Thank you all so much for both supporting this great new ship from MISC, as well as the on going development of Star Citizen.\n\nWe\u2019ve taken a balance pass over the current roster of missiles, specifically by increasing the vulnerability of all CS-lock missiles (Tempest, Stalker, StrikeForce) to noise emitted by chaff, thus allowing those fired upon a better chance at escaping the wrath of these powerful munitions. Additionally, missile lock on times have been increased across the board (from 2 to 5 secs.), so pilots, brush up on those maneuvering skills! Keeping eyes on target just got that much more important. Fire-and-forget missiles also become more practical with this change. Happy hunting!\n\nOn of the ships coming down the pipeline is the Crusader Industries Genesis Starliner. The Starliner is a big ship, being a bit larger than a 747. This ship is unique in that it is one of the first Passenger ships tackled by the Star Citizen team. With it being the first ship of its kind, it has made us question our designs within regards to passengers in space. For instance, some of the questions still being answered is passenger capacity, safety of those passengers, and max flight times. The exterior concept is in a solid place, but the interior concepts are still being worked on. We are really excited to show you all what we have come up with. Soon, the Starliner will sail the stars with you at its helm, or as a passenger on your way to that vacation spot you wanted to check out.\n\nInitially talked about in the March update, we\u2019re continuing to make strides towards our new Physically Based Damage system. This new system is going to help on a number of fronts for current Arena Commander gameplay, as well as helping to setup to great foundations for Squadron 42 and the PU to be built out of. Some of the biggest highlights include a complete revamp on the damage and handling for every weapon with a definite focus on making sure Ballistic and Energy weapons each have their own unique characteristics and gameplay implications. But when you\u2019re changing damage, that\u2019s only part of the puzzle, so also expect a comparable update for every major ship-component to help support this new system: Ship and Shield health, Powerplant output, Cooling rates, the works.\n\nAnother big event in May for the Santa Monica office was having John Pritchett and Pete Mackay in the office as we started to really dial in some of the flight and thruster handling for the game. While they\u2019ve talked about some of their work during recent Around the Verse appearances, there\u2019s a lot of behind the scenes work their visit helped us to streamline. Now, we have even better tools and data setup to make building out new ships and components smoother and more consistent than before. This work already helped with the lead up to the Reliant sale and let us rapidly build out the mass and thruster requirements for the ship faster than ever.\n\nArt\nFor the HUD & UI, we\u2019ve done some work to improve CPU \/ rendering performance by optimizing the amount of draw calls that the scaleform aspect of the HUD was contributing as well as a refactor of the holo-objects which should go towards improving rendering performance of holographic items and entities. Overall, the amount of CPU resources that the HUD \/ UI takes up should now be considerably less, and we will continue to optimize it for the best performance possible.\n\nThis month Josh Coons and Mark McCall have created and implemented new helmet interiors that will be used for all FPS characters. This new direction for the helmets is a big step in realizing Chris Roberts overall vision for Star Citizen characters. The new helmet interior design will give the HUD team more flexibility and add to the realism of our universe.\n\nWhat makes our helmets unique is that they have an effect on the player\u2019s field of vision, improving the versimiltude in our FPS gaming experience. Equipment in our game should feel real and substantive \u2013 not just a set of stats and numbers to be min-maxed in gameplay, with characteristics that give different players choices based on their own subjective preferences and adding to the diversity of player choices.\n\nFor Technical Art, our focus this month has been on Ship Destruction, Salvage and Optimization. We\u2019ve been tasked to find balance between the most optimized damage approach while at the same time making sure our Gameplay Design remains intact.\n\nIn the past, for ship damage we would build out five versions of every part of a ship. These were the 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% damaged versions. Blowing ships to bits looked very cool, but this solution was extremely labor intensive, used a lot of system resources and wasn\u2019t scalable to allow CryEngine to render the epic armada of ships battling that Chris has envisioned.\n\nWe needed a new damage solution. So, Ali Brown, Okka Kyaw, Geoff Birch, and Mark Abent all helped to create our new Damage Shader and Squib tech that allowed for the destruction of our newest ships without the high resource cost. But even as we accomplished this great feat of optimization, our Designers were planning new gameplay mechanics such as Debris Salvage and Ship Repair, each of which adds costs to the overall processing demands of our ship model.\n\nThe real enemy of performance in Star Citizen with so many high-fidelity assets being rendered is \u201cDraw Calls\u201d. For those unfamiliar, Draw Calls are the amount of render passes on each piece of geometry to create the final image. If your spaceship hull has Diffuse, Specular and Normal textures, then that would equate to 3 draw calls. And if your ship is divided into a 50 pieces, that would be 50 \u00d7 3 = 150 draw calls. And add some high-quality self-shadowing, and you can double 150 to a huge 300 Draw Calls! Our ships being rendered with PBR (Physically Based Rendering), with the Damage Shader, Paint Variations and Decals requiring more like 15-30 draw calls per piece. So, to optimize Draw Calls, we needed to reduce the number of separate pieces. But, this means, to be truly optimized we would need to have fewer animated pieces and fewer debris break off of the ship! Quite a conundrum because we want those things!\n\nIn speaking with Ali about these optimization issues, he suggested a new debris approach that we\u2019ve have now been investigating. Instead of cutting the ship into separate, damageable areas and breaking debris off of the ship, he suggested we could hide parts of the ship using the Damage Shader and spawn Debris that would then fly away from the ship. This new approach still looks like debris is blown off of the ship, but allows us to reduce the number of ship hull meshes which also reduces draw calls significantly. And furthermore, this solution allows us to create debris that will contain Salvageable Components! So, that gun you just shot off that Cutlass in the PU? It\u2019s yours now. You\u2019re welcome.\n\nThere have been many other breakthroughs like this one. And this month has brought us closer than ever to realizing the space opera of our dreams. Now, our job is to implement the full optimization plan across all ships in the game, the goal being that we release Squadron 42 with amazingly fun gameplay and a silky-smooth frame-rate.\n\nEngineering\nRadar 2.0 work has been completed. Anything can be registered to be shown on the radar so long as there is a matching IRadarObject struct. What this means in laymen\u2019s terms is that as long as an item\/object has the proper information in it, that object will be picked up and displayed on the radar based off its physical properties. Yes, we can even give EMP grenades an EM signature and have it show up on the radar if your radar is configured to detect EM.\n\nWe\u2019ve also made it so that radars are capable of filtering for any kind of signature type and detected objects now have an instance of them created. The creation of this instance allows for us to do things like stutter position updates and\/or show decay\/falloff without affecting the actual detected object. This lets Design and Art do cool and interesting things to the instance version that is displayed without breaking the underlying logic that drives the radar\/signature. As part of this we\u2019ve also improved the performance of occlusion checks.\n\nLast but not least we\u2019ve added support for \u201cdecibels\u201d as a new signature type. While on foot in Star Citizen your radar can display audio from the surrounding environment such as footsteps and weapons fire. These events are now properly hooked up into the signature system so that your footsteps and weapons fire creates \u201cdecibels\u201d which are scanned for and displayed by the player radar. You\u2019ll see this debuting with the FPS.\n\nOur LA Engineering team has also been helping out on handling player\/character clothing, customization, and attachments using the item port system that we\u2019ve developed. The item port system allows the attaching of items to bones defined on 3D objects. This is how we attach all our ship parts and ship items. This system is being expanded upon for characters to support dynamic skeleton extension using skinned attachments.\n\nWhat this means in real terms is that we have the pieces of the body that are able to equip items. I.E. Feet, hands, left hand, right hand, torso, etc. marked with corresponding bones which define where attached items are attached. From there, if you were to equip a chest piece that allows a tactical shoulder light, oxygen tank, and chest holster each of those additional attachment points require additional bones. The system allows any of the extra bones that come in a skin (skinned object, not actual skin) attachment to extend the base skeleton by dynamically updating that skeleton with the additional bones.\n\nThat wraps up the update for the Santa Monica studio! Thank you as always for taking the time to read our story and for your support in making this game! We couldn\u2019t do this without each and every one of you and your support is highly valued by each of us here at Cloud Imperium. Thanks again and we\u2019ll see you for next month\u2019s update!\n\nApril showers have turned into May floods in Texas! We\u2019ve been hit with severe weather and major flooding as you may have seen in the news. Thankfully our studio has been mostly spared from this destruction and we\u2019ve been moving ahead as usual. We\u2019ve been testing new builds of Star Marine and hard at work on the Persistent Universe and many technical activities. Here are some detailed reports from the head of each team.\n\nPersistent Universe Team\nArt\nThe PU Art team has had its hands in a lot of areas of the project this month, as usual. One of our main focuses has been moving the Nyx>Delamar>Levski landing zone into Final Art stage. We\u2019re passed Greybox stage now and the environment is looking amazing. Art Director Mark Skelton, Lead Artist Patrick Thomas, and Global Environment Lead Ian Leyland have been working closely with BHVR to make this environment truly something to behold. VFX artist Lee Amarakoon and Lighting artist Marc Toscano have been busy adding that extra touch of fog, smoke, and lighting to breathe life into this environment. We can\u2019t wait to see you guys participating in shady back-alley dealings, selling things on the black market, and traversing the winding asteroid tunnels that this environment has to offer.\n\nAnother major focus has been optimizing the Stanton>ArcCorp>Area18 landing zone for better performance in preparation for the Social Module release. The extremely high level of detail and fidelity that makes our environments so amazing are pretty taxing on performance, but with new tech in place from our Graphics team we are able to greatly improve our performance through various means.\n\nConcept artist Ken Fairclough finished up a concept of a security turret prop that will eventually be found on landing zones like ArcCorp. These security turrets will be there to punish players who draw their weapons in areas that don\u2019t allow them. They will also act as a deterrent for trolls and griefers who think it\u2019s a great idea to open fire on random civilians.\n\nOur Character Team has been wrapping up support on the FPS characters. The Marines and Outlaws are at a point where we have bid them adieu and now our attention has shifted to creating the characters that will be seen playing SATABall in Astro Arena. We\u2019ve got some pretty slick new concepts we\u2019ve been working from and should be wrapping up in the next couple of weeks. Our character team has also been doing some R&D on Hair and Swappable Clothing for the upcoming Social Module release.\n\nThe Austin Animation Team has been supporting various areas of the project as well. We\u2019ve had our hands full retargeting old PU, FPS, and Arena Commander animations to our new skeleton. We\u2019ve also been providing support for improving the G-Force animations and testing out the Grabby Hands system. Senior Animator David Peng has been focusing 100% of his attention on updating cockpit and gunner templates to match the character\u2019s new proportions. We now have 7 cockpit types and 20 button combinations for our artists to choose from when creating cockpits.\n\nDesign\nMuch of Design\u2019s time this month was spent on fleshing out some of our other occupations that players can eventually choose to adopt in the PU. Tony Zurovec spent much of his time working out the ins and outs of the Pioneer (formerly exploration) occupation and how it relates to the functionality of an upcoming ship. Rob Reininger completed a first pass of how the Mercenary\/Escort occupation would work, while Nate Blaisdell and Evan Manning tackled the Bounty Hunter and Smuggler occupations, respectively. These designs are now sitting with Tony Z for review and once approved will be moved over to the queue with Andrew Nguyen for gameplay implementation.\n\nTony Z also finished his first draft of the new Universe Simulator (formerly the Economic Simulator) and forwarded it to the team over at Wyrmbyte. The new design incorporates much more than just the economy system that will be in the PU, now including things like the ability to create elementals and composites, the ability to create a planet within a solar system and assign it data, and the ability to create occupations for NPC\u2019s and specify execution logic for each occupation.\n\nMark Skelton and Tony Z, along with Lead Writer David Haddock, met with BHVR to go over designs and layouts for upcoming planetside locations. Specifically this month our attention has been on Magnus>Borea>Odyssa and Helios>Tangaroa>Mariana. Both of these locations will offer several new exciting opportunities and diversity to our already impressive stable of landing zones. We\u2019ll share some exciting look development with you guys as it comes online. Next month we will turn our attention to the other landing zones within the Stanton System: Crusader, Hurston, and MicroTech.\n\nEngineering\nThe month of May was a very busy month for the Engineering Team here in Austin and for the Wyrmbyte Team. A lot of big ticket items were completed and ready for initial testing.\nOne big item that everyone has been waiting for is our new Generic Instance Manager, which promises to bring notable improvements to systems such as matchmaking and party. This was architected by Jason Ely, and he brought it home with strong support from Tom Sawyer. We will run initial testing on this new system, which is intended to be a part of the upcoming FPS release.\n\nMeanwhile\u2026over at Wyrmbyte\u2026Scott Brown, Nathan Gray and Ryan Seabury have been working on our Universe Simulator and are about to deliver a proof-of-concept iteration with base functionality in. The next step is to continue to expand on this until we can create a working demo to share internally for further discussion on how to further build upon it. At the same time, Ian Guthrie is working on the first iteration of our Solar System Server, and will be wrapping up an initial iteration of that soon. The Wyrmbyte Team has also delivered a rewrite of our Player Info Server and our Presence Server in May and are continuing to work on their iPredictor ships and missiles movement system.\n\nOur other engineers have been busy, too\u2026Tom Davies has finished v1.0 of our Useable Editor for our NPC AI needs, and Jeff Uriarte is making solid progress on the Character Archetype Editor, which is another tool for our design team. Andrew Nguyen has been in R&D Land prepping for the initial prototyping of another occupation (tentatively called the \u201cDiscover\u201d occupation), and he has just wrapped up an initial prototype for the Mining occupation.\n\nBrian Mazza has been deep in crucial work needed by the team at large, such as implementing Google Brakepad for better crash reports, porting our Universe backend, and fixing server bugs that were blocking team progress and preventing build stability. Across the hall from Brian, James Wright has been working closely with QA on profiling and analyzing performance on our various builds, including a recent PTU build and our pending FPS build. This data is helping us determine problem areas that need attention in order to improve overall performance. And James has recruited the aid of Clive Johnson (who is close to wrapping up his work on implementing our Unique Global Entity ID system) and George Kidd from the UK Team to help investigate some of the critical performance issues uncovered in his profiling results.\n\nOn the tools side of things, Benjamin Bechtel has rolled out a new improved version of his Asset Validation Tool with an all new user interface. This tool is used daily by our artists. Benjamin is also awaiting a visit in June from UK tools engineer Ashly Canning to work together on our Dataforge Tool. Sean Tracy and Jeffery Zhu have rolled out the first phase of their stream restructuring, which will greatly help streamline our stream flows in getting our development streams all the way out to our live product. Lastly, these two gentlemen have spent a great deal of time and effort supporting Cort Soest on our much needed and super long task of cleaning up our Perforce data. The first two phases of this task have wrapped up in May.\n\nThe team is anticipating June and looking forward to offering their support on the upcoming FPS release, as well as continued work towards our upcoming Social Module.\n\nLive Operations\nQA\nFor the QA team, May began with testing and releasing 1.1.2 and subsequently 1.1.3.\nWith help from our Senior Engine Programmer James Wright, we conducted a specialized PTU test that utilized a separate server CPU thread to calculate physics. The results showed significant performance improvements during matches.\n\nChanges have been made to how we utilize different streams and branches with Perforce, our versioning control software. This will help with a much more structured and smooth release and feature integration process. This has also resulted in an increased workload for QA to ensure these additional streams or branches of the game and editor are properly tested. However the team is doing a great job rising to the occasion to ensure this additional testing requirement is met.\n\nOur FPS specialists have been very busy ensuring Star Marine is properly tested each day. The team was fortunate enough to be able to provide feedback directly to design director Todd Papy. Todd was very responsive to each point raised. After discussing these points, Todd tasked up and prioritized any agreed upon changes. As QA, it is very fulfilling to be able to be a part of the direction of development in such a way.\n\nMeanwhile, Todd Raffray has been making sure the Social Module is properly tested. Todd has been doing a great job ensuring all features are documented into a comprehensive checklist and continually tested as they come online.\n\nCongratulations to Miles Lee for transitioning into an official Associate Engineer role with our DevOps team! Miles has done a great job helping to create a framework for test automation. We can now capture performance data and automate the majority of our stability checks for each build as soon as they are available.\n\nThe team filmed their first episode of a special QA segment with Community where they showcase some of their favorite bugs.\n\nThe team was also fortunate enough to attend the University of Texas Denius-Sams Gaming Academy\u2019s launch party of their first official release called \u201cThe Calm Before\u201d. We had a lot of fun playing the game! Their team is very talented. Feel free to check out their free download!\n\nIt has been a busy month for us in QA. Next month we will be intently focus testing Alpha 1.2 in preparation for its imminent release.\n\nGame Support\nThis month was quite busy for Game Support as we continued to build upon some of the work done in March and April.\n\nThe month of May also saw the publish of two Arena Commander updates (1.1.2 and 1.1.3). Update 1.1.2 greatly helped players with the dreaded Match Not Found, Kicked Back to Lobby, and Infinite Load Screen issues, and 1.1.3 assisted with the persistent \u201crubber banding\u201d issues that saw players jump around the map. This is only the start of our optimizations, and we know you\u2019ll be excited to see how we continue to use your information to help improve the game experience.\n\nOn that note, we also ran an incredibly successful playtest on PTU using 1.1.2. Players crammed into the PTU service to help us stress test and gather important server analytics, and along the way we had an absolutely EPIC 8v8 round of matches, which has set off a round of discussions and assignments internally on what we can do to start increasing the player cap.\n\nIn terms of continuing to build and scale our support operations for you, one of the bigger items this month was the creation of an internal workflow and knowledge base that greatly expands our ability to help you. By internally publishing a full matrix of possible problems, troubleshooting methods, and resolutions, we\u2019ve been able to train more people in the company to help with technical issues. This means that we can help a greater number of people in a shorter amount of time, and provides a fantastic foundation for growing our team as we head into Star Marine, Social Module, Squadron 42, and ultimately the Persistent Universe.\n\nWe\u2019ve also begun to work with Turbulent who is driving two big initiatives for Game Support: The Community Bug Council (a MUCH improved way for players to submit and see what bugs are active in the system) and a new revamped version of the Live Service Notification page, which will include a much-desired Server Status page.\n\nYou\u2019ll see more about both of these in the coming weeks, but both of these are alignment with our larger goals of getting you more accurate information as quickly as possible about the state of the service.\n\nIT\/Operations\nMay has been a month of speed for IT. The IT group works hard to keep up with the expanding infrastructure needs of the development teams and performance of central storage systems at each studio continues to be one of our priorities. Last month we focused on internal build replication to studios from the build system in Austin. This month we\u2019ve shifted our focus to the performance of the underlying hardware in the Austin build system itself. The goal of this project is to significantly reduce the time it takes to generate builds. Reducing build times speeds up development and internal testing but the entire build pipeline is large and complex so we have been approaching this from several angles.\n\nFirst on the list has been the performance of the storage the build systems run on. The build system compiles code and assets for the game of course and most of this work really pushes the disks hard. I\/O wait times can go through the roof on normal systems and since our build system is compiling many builds in parallel we saw a great deal of time being lost just waiting for disks to catch up. To solve this problem we built a custom server with all flash storage using special controllers to push our IOPS well beyond our current needs. This one improvement to our build system has shown impressive results with a 66% reduction in build times.\n\nNext we plan to move more secondary systems over to fast storage which should result in additional reductions. Finally, we\u2019ll incorporate parallel processing methods to bring more cpu cores in to the build process. This step plus some potential resource caching should bring our build times down from hours to minutes.\n\nWe\u2019ve also been working closely with DevOps to improve our build automation systems which will add stability and usability to our current system. We\u2019re hoping to roll out the rest of these changes over the next few weeks. For now, we\u2019re very pleased with the early results and I think everyone is anxious to see how fast we can make these builds go now.\n\nDev Ops\nWe released two patches this month, Patch 1.1.2 and 1.1.3, and neither were on a Friday! Our team will continue to work with the company to attempt to corral these deployments to Tuesdays as industry standard, and then hopefully, move into a continuous deployment pipeline over the course of a few years which should eliminate the need for downtime (a lot of this will depend on our final database design).\n\nWe have been assisting in the deployment playtests of the FPS and using those opportunities to test our new launcher and patcher. So far the tests have been positive, but we have several more polish passes to go through before we move it to PTU for everyone to use. The Launcher development will be broken into three phases. The first, a PTU phase has already been mentioned. This takes the existing UI and combines it with our new patcher. The second phase will incorporate a complete re-write of the launcher into C++. Combined with the new patcher and the old UI, it will have stability improvements but will look and function much like the current launcher, and the upcoming PTU launcher. The third phase will be a complete new UI on top of the C++ core and patcher. These phases will take several months to roll out, and more information about each will be coming up soon.\n\nFinally, a ton of work has been going on how data in the company is created, stored, and consumed. We are looking at how we use branches in Perforce, how data is copied to the build server, what data is excluded, how development leads look at that data. Initiatives on better Perforce tools, an Exclusion tool, and a new build server have been additionally occupying the teams time. The build server is an especially large project, that we are aiming to have the core phase done by July 14th. To that end, one of the engineers in the Frankfurt studio has flown out to Austin to work with us over the next three weeks so we can collaborate on implementation ideas.\n\nWork on finalizing our database model and containerizing the servers has had to be put on hold while we finish our tools that handle all the data used by the studios. We will be returning to these topics when our tools currently in development are finished, and when our server team moves onto working on the Persistence Service that will be the main interface layer to the database. Hopefully, this work will be included in the June report!\n\nHello everyone! Here at Foundry 42, we\u2019re working on everything from Arena Commander (multicrew) to Squadron 42. Chris Roberts has spent the past month in another part of England, shooting performance capture for Squadron 42\u2026 and we\u2019re working closely to make sure that the data generated there turns into cinematics that will blow you away! Here\u2019s the department by department breakdown of what went on in Manchester this month:\n\nAnimation\nHere in the UK we\u2019re still working to support the needs of our designers. Whilst the Directors down at Imaginarium continue to capture the data we need we\u2019re busy providing block out animations for the design and code departments to start prototyping and implementing mechanics.\n\nWe\u2019re also working with the various studios globally to streamline the tools we all need to be able to work efficiently and effectively to achieve the goals set out for Squadron42 and beyond.\n- UK Lead Animator, Uisdean Ross.\n\nEngineering\nIn previous reports we\u2019ve briefly mentioned some of the general game mechanics we\u2019re working on here in the UK. This month we\u2019ve decided to do a little bit more of a break down on a few of them, what they are, and how they\u2019re coming along.\n\nConversation System: As usual there\u2019s been plenty of work to do on the conversation system this month, the highlights being the fix up of NPC to NPC conversations and the multiplayer aspect of the conversation system getting a first pass in preparation for the social module. The subtitles font has also been improved and work on revamping the player choice UI for branching conversations is underway. For Squadron 42 we now have text-to-speech in place which is highly useful for prototyping conversations as more dialogue gets added to these levels. Work on the animation side of the system is also in progress, with help from the Austin studio, to get the system ready to receive all the lovely motion capture data available to us.\n\nPAW (Personal Arc Welder). This weapon\/gadget is something special, because due to its behaviour, could be used for multiple things. We have been focused in both technical and design point of views. Speaking about the technical part, the cutting tech has been improved to use our damage system so now everything is more realistic, in fact now you can see how surfaces are being cut are affected by energy from the PAW. In addition, a complete review about the aim system has been made, allowing us to, for example, activate or deactivate the laser sight, changing its behaviour, etc\u2026 Finally, speaking about design and redesign, we have changed different effects like the beam and the dot in the aim system (laser sight) and we have added new ones like the impact effect and other particles.\n\nLooting System. In this case we have been focused in some technical changes. The previous Looting System was based on items, so for us, an entity was a group of items that we could take. But we wanted something more powerful, to not only take items, but place them too, so we decided to use the item port system (the item port system is a very powerful, flexible way of defining how items can be attached to each other). As a result, now we loot an entity, not necessarily a body, and search what kind of ports does it have and we can take items from those ports and place items on them. In summary, we turned a specific system into something more general and powerful.\n\nHydraulic doors. The hydraulic doors are an extension of a normal automatic door. These now have the option of being \u201ccomputer controlled\u201d so we can have features where we can lock the door going in either direction. We\u2019ve now added a new security method for players with the correct security privileges being able to lock and unlock doors and refining the lockdown and manual override mechanics. The override mechanic on certain of the doors allows the player to use their PAW to cut out a section and reveal a manual hydraulic pump to open the door by hand. These doors have also been rolled out into the hangers, unifying them to use the same system everywhere.\n\nMedpack: A medpack item has been added for use in the FPS game modes, it\u2019s purpose to help restore the player\u2019s health. When used the player will perform a combat heal, grasping the syringe like item in their hand and injecting it into a port in their armour. Healing in this manner will distribute the recovery equally across all limbs.\n\nCollectibles: Collectibles come in two forms, either items that can be picked up in much the same way as the looting mechanic, or items scanned for information, both of which get added to your inventory. Examples of which can be pieces of tech that can be scavenged for a monetary value, or dog tags that can unlock character profiles. These items can be found scattered around various areas in Squadron 42.\n\nGraphics\nThis month the graphics team have been primarily working on several different areas in parallel. We\u2019re close to completing an automated system for the artists that intelligently finds meshes it can merge together in the environment to improve performance. Because large parts of our level are built from modular kits (so that we can produce the quantity needed for the PU) we end up with more meshes than CryEngine, DirectX and the graphics driver can handle. Merging meshes reduces the overall number of objects in the level but doing so naively would cause a single level to take several gigabytes of RAM, and so our algorithm evaluates all potential merges operations we could take, and only executes the one that would save us the most performance for the lowest memory cost. The algorithm continues to merge the best candidates until it reaches a fixed memory budget or performance threshold specified by the artist. The end result is a massive saving in the number of objects and therefore performance, all for a minimal memory cost and no extra effort from the artist.\n\nThe VFX team have been hampered by various limitations and bugs in the particle lighting system in recent months, and so some of our team have been busy improving the particle lighting system and this should result in the VFX artists being able to create effects that sit much better in the environment. The rest of our team have been handling the many bugs we get prior to each release, and this time it\u2019s FPS related bugs relating to performance, streaming and depth of field improvements. We\u2019ve also been fitting in some fixes to the \u2018large world\u2019 rendering which will allow the CryEngine to work with practically unlimited map sizes.\n\nDesign\nThis month UK design have been continuing their work on several chapters of Squadron 42 getting them closer to greybox. The main priority for the team right now is the mocap shoot currently taking place in London. Each designer has been able to witness the amazing performances of our cast play out in their own levels which, even at a whitebox stage, look incredible and bring the world we\u2019re building to life that much more!\n\nThe internal Vertical Slice is also undergoing massive progress, helping us answer key questions about our core gameplay mechanics and develop our features for experiential, dogfighting and FPS scenarios.\n\nOn top of all this, the UK design team are also assisting in all the other areas of Star Citizen, as you have no doubt seen, with Arena Commander, weapons, ships and the upcoming FPS module keeping us all busy!\n\nArt\nWell, what can I say, for those who dared to looked at the leaked content you can certainly see we are putting your hard earned dollars to good use to make the best content we can! If you were good and are saving yourself, well good on you! We\u2019ll certainly deliver you something worthwhile for your prolonged abstinence.\n\nEvery month is busy here, there\u2019s not a minute that\u2019s not packed with decision making or poly or pixel pushing, ship concept work is starting to reduce, its mainly the odd image here and there to clarify any areas we have missed earlier on, Vanduul fleet all concepted out with just the weapons\/turrets to be worked out. We\u2019ve had some good work done by Jan Urschel and AtomHawk on environments too which is really helping shape the Sq42 storyline.\n\nEnvironments\nOur main focus for this last month has been pushing ahead with our Vertical Slice level, and supporting the shoot happening in London. For the VS we have been striving to achieve a level of detail which is fitting for Star Citizen, particular focus has been placed on player traversal through the scene, rewarding exploration, great vistas and composition, and of course top quality artwork. For the shoot we\u2019ve been making sure that scenes in which performances are being captured in are working correctly on set, and making these ever important last minute tweaks and changes. Excitement is high both on set and in the studio, we can\u2019t wait to show it to you guys.\n\nVFX\nWe\u2019ve had a full month of code support from the graphics engineers, who have cleared out an impressive backlog of bugs and feature requests. We\u2019ve also gained another VFX Artist, so the team is growing! This has enabled us to push forwards in several areas, including:\n\nSquadron 42 environmental VFX variants, namely:\n\nSparks\n\nSteam\n\nFire\/damage\n\nSpace storms (be careful, it\u2019s dangerous out there!)\n\nR&D for large turret VFX \u2013 muzzle flash, tracers, impacts etc.\n\nR&D for Squadron 42 cinematics, testing typical workflows and pipelines.\n\nVarious ship effects.\n\nOn a slightly less exciting note (but important nonetheless) we\u2019ve also been working hard behind the scenes to solidify our workflows and pipelines, and fleshing out the VFX roadmap, to allow us to keep well on top of the multitude off effects requirements across all areas of the Star Citizen universe!\n\nShips\nOh the ships, the ships \u2013 always keeping our top artists on their toes \u2013 the Idris, yes, its coming along nicely, maybe even a few surprises (i know you love them\/hate them), there has been a lot of work to tie the ships design language into a coherent form so that further down the line it\u2019s clear what manufacturer does what, has what style of panel lines, what kind of lights, the list is large but at least it will be clear for internal and external artists on what they need to achieve.\n\nStarfarer interior blocked out, ARGO needs a shader pass, Mining Drone continues, yes, the Jav hasn\u2019t been started, we are at maximum capacity until we find more staff \u2013 c\u2019mon join us and make the BDSSE :)\n\nUI\nThe team has expanded a 100% \u2013 we have gone from one to two artists! Work has continued on FPS UI and now exploring the style and look for Shubin, Aegis and Vanduul \u2013 watch this space.\n\nCharacters\nThe character team has been on site in London alongside the Imaginarium shoot with the camera rig and we have had an absolute blast! Every scan session has been fun and exciting and we have managed to capture some truly world leading data on some truly world class talent. They say you should never meet your heroes, but I completely disagree and every one of them have been friendly, professional and enthusiastic.\n\nThe data has already begun to be processed and some of you may have already seen some of the action from our scan session with Sandi, which is a good example of the energy and drive we have on this project.\n\nI only wish I could tell you who has sat in our rig!\n\nAudio\nHey everyone! On the CIG Audio side we\u2019ve mostly been continuing with our push towards releasing with Wwise. Still a lot of core stuff to do but we\u2019re making progress.\n\nI think it\u2019s fair to say we\u2019re finding a lot of clean-up work has been required as far as engineering is concerned. We\u2019d (perhaps optimistically) figured that most systems would simply need Wwise events created, that triggered in much the same way as their equivalents in FMOD, and away we go, all done! However that\u2019s rarely been the case and the more you dig, the more you find that needs doing.\n\nSo it\u2019s been as much a matter of taking stock, cleaning up, removing loose ends in terms of sound data, code and logic, as it has been making sure Wwise events and sounds simply exist. There are certain things that worked under FMOD that kind of worked, but more in spite of things rather than by design. This isn\u2019t down to the fault of anyone particularly, just that often audio has been reacting to project changes late in the day as the game has developed.\n\nSo as much as possible we\u2019ve been taking the opportunity to ensure this move over to Wwise is a shift from short-term, reactive thinking and design, and moving more towards how we aspire to approach things \u2013 getting ahead of the game (literally) as much as we can: coming up with templates in Wwise for instance, keeping everything clean and hack free. We\u2019ve brought our code team together again as well as our Austin-based tech sound design so we can bump heads most effectively in the run up to FPS. Having to engineer that new system as well as bring on the dog-fighting module back up to speed and support various aspects of the persistent universe \u2013 those things would be hard enough to do without the new audio engine to worry about. But we mustn\u2019t grumble too much!\n\nSadly one of our senior sound designers, Tom, left us this month. He\u2019s missed, as he had a wealth of experience in CryEngine particularly, but he was presented with an opportunity to move closer to loved ones and it\u2019s hard to argue with that. So he leaves on good terms \u2013 we wish him all the best in his future efforts, he won\u2019t be easily replaced.\n\nIn other news, we have our newly built sound design rooms, mostly ready to be occupied. We still need to apply our acoustic treatment properly to the walls, and we\u2019re waiting on some furniture and monitors (monitors is what audio people call speakers, just to confuse everyone) to arrive, but it\u2019s nice to see these rooms coming together. We\u2019ve tried to give each of them their own colour scheme which will either cause creative sparks, or mild insanity. Depends on the room really. Maybe we\u2019ll witness a little of both! They\u2019ll need some tweaking and tuning to try to ensure sonic neutrality. They\u2019re admittedly a little small, which makes it hard to ensure they\u2019re free of standing waves etc. that can misrepresent certain bands of the audio spectrum. We\u2019ll get as close as we practically can, but will just take a bit of time to get to where they need to be.\n\nWe\u2019ve been trying to fit in time to experiment with processes pertaining to alien vocals, which we\u2019ve started looking at while the linguists keep pinning down the alien language aspect. It\u2019s always a tricky area but it\u2019s proving very interesting to see what you can do before you get into the aural equivalent of the uncanny valley.\n\nAs well as the above we\u2019ve been on-hand to support the ongoing shoot for \u2018Squadron 42\u2019, which obviously I\u2019m going to say nothing about, so don\u2019t ask me. ;)\n\nThanks for taking the time to catch up on all things CIG Audio. Please do post a question or two on the Ask A Developer forum and we\u2019ll do our best to answer. Bye for now!\n\nThe Frankfurt team is steadily growing in size and active across numerous disciplines, base tech, AI, design, cinematics, Audio, Animation, FX, etc. As seen in our office video last month our temp space was filling up, we rented out an another room to accommodate additional hires. We\u2019ve also been preparing to move into our new office, the official move will be in early July, and we\u2019ll most likely put out a new video once we get settled in. We\u2019ve only been part of the global team for a few months now, but the momentum and progress across the game from all studios and offices is great to see, and we\u2019re glad to be part of it.\n\nEngineering\nFor the month of May, Frankfurt Engineering has been busy on multiple fronts. We made a lot of progress on Large World (moving the codebase to 64 bit coordinates, thus allowing galaxy size (literally) levels to be created and explored in Star Citizen) . The main task being worked on Large World this month was making the rendering Camera Relative: in fact the move to 64 bit required all rendering code to be changed to be relative to the camera and not simply in absolute world coordinates any more.\n\nThere has also been lots of progress on the Zone System, which is our new spatial partitioning system, replacing the old CryEngine octree spatial partitioning scheme. The Zone system is especially fit for a game like Star Citizen which features large, dynamic maps, huge amount of entities and large moving ships. Speaking of multicrew ships, we have also been working on ship-local physics grids (so players can walk around in moving ships), runtime prefabs, and investigating entity optimizations and streaming. We are initially testing those new systems with the Retaliator.\n\nWe also started implementing optimized asset storage formats for vertex data to reduce overall data size, improve lead-time and memory, as well as CPU\/GPU performance. These optimizations will be rolled out shortly.\n\nWe\u2019ve started some initial R&D discussion on the topic of procedural generation, which will get some dedicated time later down the line, after the big ticket items mentioned earlier are all in place. There has been a lot of clean-up of outdated CryEngine functionalities that we don\u2019t need any more for Star Citizen, like the old level heap, obsolete render nodes, and many other smaller items. Additionally we have been working on integrating the relevant parts of the new 3.7 SDK into our codebase. All those major tasks are now close to hit the Star Citizen code mainline. Additionally, we have been providing general engine support, features and engine bug fixes.\n\nWe\u2019ve also updated our memory profiling tools, removing related old cruft from the entire engine code.\n\nAI\nIn the last month we\u2019ve put a solid basis for all the future development related to the Artificial Intelligence in Star Citizen.\n\nWe started unifying CryEngine Communication System with the CIG Contextual Reaction System. What are those two systems?\n\nThe Communication System is used to allow AI characters to speak: the behaviour (or other system) can request to play a specific communication line (for example \u201cGreetThePlayerInFronOfYou\u201d) and the system is going to take care of and choose an appropriate variation for that concept (for example \u201cGreetings my friend!\u201d) and it\u2019s going to check if the defined pacing is actually allowing the audio to play. The system is also responsible to correctly handle a case in which a communication line playing on a high priority channel needs to cancel the current message if it\u2019s playing on a lower priority channel.\n\nThe classic example is the NPC being punched or shot while he is speaking. His scream of pain should definitely interrupt anything he was previously saying!\nThe Contextual Reaction System is used to trigger a communication line based on specific events triggered by the game. A ship that is heavily damaged may broadcast a \u201cShipsDamaged\u201d signal that is picked up by the CRS and it will choose a proper variation of that audio that must be played. CRS is already fully integrated into Dataforge so the writers are able to create new content without the need of code support. During this month we have started the merging of the new systems to take the benefit of both!\n\nWe also started working on the CryEngine Cover Surface System to connect it to the Kythera behavior system and to allow the support of large world. The Cover Surface System is able to sample a physical object and automatically create data to store cover positions.\n\nMoreover we have laid down the basis to extend the CryEngine MNM Navigation system to support large world and local navigation meshes. We have started prototyping the functionality to have a navigation mesh attached to a moving spaceship, so that we will be able in the next months to have the ship\u2019s crew members navigating in the internal spacecraft environment.\n\nWe also focused in coordinating the work of Moon Collider related to few improvements of the Kythera Behavior Tree system. The BTS is now connected to DataForge to allow system\/game designers to create\/prototype fast new behaviors without the need of writing C++ code. Also new behavior nodes have been introduced to support basic functionalities as state machines, timestamps and signals. All those functionalities will empower us to implement more complex and interesting behaviors.\n\nIn general we are planning lots of new features and we will prepare some cool videos\/pictures to show more details about our progress next month!\n\nDesign\nOn the design side, we\u2019ve been working closely with the UK team and taking ownership of a level for Squadron 42. We\u2019re active in every aspect of Star Citizen\u2019s development, from working on the FPS module release to developing high level AI behavior tree feedback that will span all of our game areas. Other challenges include building and setting up turret gameplay, providing the UK with high level Squadron 42 feedback and working on unifying FPS suit customization to make it work more like we currently do with the ships.\n\nCinematics\nA few members of the team have been on set in London for the full month with Chris Roberts shooting scenes for Squadron 42. The cast is amazing and we can\u2019t wait to announce who we have and show off their performances. We\u2019re ramping up the cinematics team and starting to get more traction on the internal pipeline and workflow.\n\nAudio\nOur Audio Engineer has spent the full month in the UK working with their Audio Team to get the Audio up and running on Wwise for the next release.\n\nContinued work on converting old FMOD based code features to use the new Audio System. Spent some time helping develop the asset conversion scripts to automate the more straightforward parts of the process, so that the sound designers can focus on tuning the sounds and the way they are triggered in game, instead of having to worry about porting the current implementations. Rolled out the set of new audio asset pipeline tools to be used by the sound designers and the build servers to simplify and speed up the day-to-day audio asset production.\n\nFX\nFor the past month we\u2019ve been focused mainly on researching various types of fire to include in the game. These range from small fires and debris, to towering flames and huge explosions. Smoke is also an important part and getting them to blend together in a realistic way has been one of the focuses for the current R&D cycle.\n\nWe\u2019ve also done some work on lightning for some of the squadron 42 missions, which will mainly be used as a long distance background effects.\n\nGood morning citizens! \u2026or Good evening pirates? \u2026what time is it in space anyways!? Post the correct answer in the comments to win a thumbs up.\n\nBecause it takes more than a month to create anything of importance in a game as huge and detailed as Star Citizen you might find that this month\u2019s report is similar to last month\u2019s report but described with different words :) Nevertheless, that does NOT mean that the month was devoid of progress, far from it! Here\u2019s the monthly report for the BHVR team:\n\nFirst off, a lot of our efforts went towards polishing, debugging, as well as supporting other studios on various game modules. As we are approaching the FPS module release and the social module delivery (prepare your excitement bags!) the time is not so much spent on adding new features, but rather on polishing and consolidating what is already in there.\n\nHere are the most notable modules, systems, systemic modules and modular systems that have been debugged, polished and\/or supported this month:\n\nThe in-game chat\n\nThe emote system: \/dance \/dothebender\n\nThe FPS Module\n\nThe Lobby: Multi-Seat\n\nThe Lobby: FPS Loadout\n\nLet\u2019s talk about the social module a bit. We\u2019ve added more functionality to the chat system in order to make it easier and more fun to use. We\u2019ve implemented the first version of filtered conversation tabs which allows you to have multiple conversations either private or public in an understandable and ordered manner. We\u2019ve iterated on the interface and its experience taking it to a lock-down state for this first iteration.\n\nWe also spent some time fixing interactive items such as flairs, the holotable and doors on the client & server sides. This is obviously pertinent for every in-game location, not just the hangars.\n\nEngineers have been debugging the replication and instantiation of the hangars while level designers have been fixing all sorts of problems inside them. I don\u2019t know what you are doing in those hangars guys, but they seem to break all the time! Please stop smashing your buggies all over the place. ;)\n\nThe creation of the base spawning module is complete which, believe it or not, handles spawning of multiple players simultaneously in hangars & planetside locations. With it we can spawn you (well not you, but your character) at the proper position, depending on where you\u2019re coming from (Hangar -> Planetside, Space -> Planetside, etc). Didn\u2019t think loading and spawning could be that interesting but we\u2019re excited to see the videos you\u2019ll post about your first time spawning planetside.\n\nOkay now let\u2019s get to the fun bit: planets! This month in the Art department we\u2019ve completed all the set pieces for an industrial mining planet. The plan is to use this set across the galaxy, primarily but not exclusively for Delamar in the NYX system. Our main goal is to make the set pieces as versatile as possible to enable any art team on this project to create different locations. This took quite a large amount of time to complete, but we are very happy with the end result.\n\nWe\u2019ve also started work on legacy objects to make them comply with the new visual and technical standards. As we make more locations we update our techniques and since these \u201cold\u201d pieces will be of use in the future, we need to make sure they are compliant.\n\nOur level Designers are exploring and refining other locations like the blocks on Terra Prime, Marianna and Odyssa as well as creating new interior locations and polishing\/supporting older locations. A bit like the legacy pieces in art, some interactive objects also changed and needed to be update to be on par.\n\nThe mobiGlas has seen lots of polish and progress. We\u2019ve implemented animations to make it extra slick. Some refinements and updates have been made on the shopping flow as well. We can now display your UEC balance and you\u2019ll also be able to buy stuff and things for real!\n\nIn the same vein, we did a first pass implementation on the UI, code and visuals of the microTech Kiosk. \u201cWhat the Hull is that?\u201d you may ask. Well, some shops and other locations around the verse have microTech kiosks which are used to show holographic representations of extra large products that don\u2019t fit the location. Kiosks are also used to get access to an inventory catalog with the help of the mobiGlas. The mobiGlas is also a microTech product, so now you see the connection. Our first kiosk will be used in Astro-Armada, where it can be interacted with to browse and buy ships.\n\nThe kiosks are part of the first phase of the ship shopping experience. We\u2019re planning on more immersive and interesting ways to shop ships for the future that were impossible to deliver right away.\n\nAnother interesting object we are working on is the personal locker. Don\u2019t be fooled, this has nothing to do with flairs. The personal locker can be found in your hangar and is where you will store your FPS gadgets and weapons. Later on down the road, this locker will be used to not only display weapons but to prepare loadouts in order to quickly change your character\u2019s equipment for the right job.\n\nAs always, we\u2019ve completed this month\u2019s Flair object along with other secret merchandise work, which we won\u2019t spoil the surprise, because spoiling surprises is not fun at all.\n\nThank you for your attention! Now go destroy some ships will ya!\n\nGreetings Star Citizens! I\u2019m sure most of you saw the massive post concerning Star Marine, and the reason why it\u2019s taking a little longer than expected. Thank you for bearing with us! Most of May was spent executing on the items listed in that post. See below for the details from each team.\n\nEngineering\nIn addition to squashing lots of bugs, the engineering team has been focused on supporting the animators with the new jukes, starts and stops system. There are unique animations for each direction shift to another, and also for each state and speed the player is traveling at. This can add up very quickly! Work has also continued to zero-g movement and SATA Ball features. After playtesting SATA Ball, we realized that there would need to be some specific cases to help with managing the ball in such a large space.\n\nDesign\nThe designers have been hard at work getting SATA Ball up and running. This mostly involves working on playabilty and visual cues to the player for what\u2019s happening. Making sure the players can easily find the ball, making sure the players can easily grab and throw the ball with accuracy, and making sure they can navigate to it effectively. They have also been doing lots of testing with the base set of weapons and tweaking how breathing plays into accuracy.\n\nAnimation\nThe animation team is currently focused on getting all of the jukes, starts and stop mocap data cleaned up and ready for implementation in game. As mentioned above, it is A LOT of mocap data, so they have their plates pretty full.\n\nArt\nThe art team has been focused on two primary goals over the last month. One is reworking the assets for the gold horizon station to be compliant with how things are setup for the persistent universe. This will allow teams across all studios to use this set in their various levels. Sharing is caring!\n\nThe second goal for the art team has been polishing the existing weapons and creating a unified rail system for attachments. This will make creating attachments much easier moving forward, since everything will be universal.\n\nVFX\nSome new VFX were created for SATA Ball, effects for the goals so players don\u2019t get confused and also some effects on the player for when they are shot and disabled. A polish pass was also done on all existing effects with feedback from Chris.\nThanks for reading Citizens! Illfonic Out!\n\nHere\u2019s what we\u2019ve been up to here in Montreal for the month of May :\n\nStarmap\nOutstanding progress was made this month in the actual art for the web star map module. We now have full artistic designs for the top-level Galactic Level view where all star systems are laid out, showing their Jump Point connections. The main challenge here was to find a way to represent the jump points that was stylistically beautiful but also functional to represent the wormhole sizes and directions where applicable. Great progress was done in a 2D HeatGrid type display to show (at any level) the political influence, crime and economic levels of areas of the galaxy. Though this is still experimental ; the visuals proposed by our artists inspired expanding this feature.\n\nOne major UI component included in this art pass is the control disc ; which is a very interesting design because we think it could also be used as an in-game component. This disc is how you will be able to interact with the different items you see on-screen while browsing the galaxy. Our mock-up set from the artists also includes the \u201cSpace Object Overview\u201d screen which is basically what happens when you request more information of an object, be it a planet, asteroid belt, nebula or wormhole. This general purpose view will serve as the primary display for information on anything from within the starmap as well as the jump to the Galactapedia entries for each of them.\n\nDesign of the Starmap is now at a state where it can be intertwined with actual plans for the Starmap in the game, which is why we\u2019ve also designed our interface to be unified with the game controls and experience.\n\nCommunity Hub\nWe completed the interfaces mock-ups for this new section this month, merging its design with the new website look, and attaching it to actual data-driven views. We\u2019ve spent a lot of time making sure that we could feature as much content from the fans as possible : images and galleries, but also videos from varied providers, streaming channels, podcasts\u2026 The Hub is still in intense development, we\u2019ll be able to show more soon.\n\nIssue council\nThe Issue Council, our new \u201ccrowdsourced\u201d bug report system, went through a month of heads-down coding. The core of the system has been completed including data models and system level API. Meanwhile, the design crew has been working through the motions on the actual UI. We gave a demo to the QA team in Austin and everyone is excited to start using it. In June we\u2019ll be testing it by actually entering bugs about itself in it!\n\nLauncher\nThis month we completed a prototype rework of the Star Citizen launcher in conjunction with the DevOps crew in Austin. The new launcher is just internal for now, only for CIG testing, and is based on BitTorrent technology. This allows the patching process to be more efficient in size and speed, and is a first step towards a web-driven launcher which will in turn lead to having more configuration tools directly in the launcher (hangar configuration, future inventory, REC activation\u2026).\n\nChat\nThe Chat system has seen some improvements this month also. We\u2019ve revamped its look to bring it closer to the rest of the site, and we\u2019ve introduced \u201csticky\u201d room subjects for better legibility.\n\nAnd more!\nThis month also came with its own content slew updates on the site. We actually saw 2 concept sales with both the Starfarer Gemini and the new MISC Reliant mini-hauler, and we also brought you the Montreal-produced minigame Hyper Vanguard Force IV by Dave Richard and Christine Marsh. Apex Predators unite!\n\nOn a more silent note, we\u2019ve also implemented the new Amazon \u201cLogin And Pay\u201d payment system for north-american users.\n\nHaving done lots of planning and design work over the last few months, May was light on these for a change, so we got the chance to really get stuck into some cool engineering work. There were several big designer tool features that we worked on, and we\u2019re looking forward to seeing them get put to use.\n\nEngineering\nLast month we spoke about the fancy spline joining improvements that we were working on. This is a feature that enables designers to specify a spline that they want a ship to fly along (in order to do some fancy maneuvers or fly really close to obstacles that the AI would otherwise keep a distance from), and the AI will figure out an optimal path to get on to the spline as quickly as possible. To do this the AI needs to figure out a path from its current position and direction to the start of the spline and to end up facing down the direction of the spline path once it gets there. This can then get more complicated because designers can specify the speed that they want the ship to be moving when it starts the spline, so this can affect the path that the ship takes, since it might need to curve the path a bit to add some extra run up if it needs to get up to speed or slow down by a lot. And, of course, we want all this to look fairly natural as well.\n\nWe finished the feature off this month and got it to the designers to make use of. Now that ships can reliably join splines from anywhere, it makes designer setup easier, but more importantly for you, it will let us use them far more in systemic behaviours. So far we\u2019ve had to be quite restrictive about when ships choose to join a spline, but this gives them far more freedom so \u2013 when we\u2019ve adjusted the behaviors \u2013 you\u2019ll see them used much more in future versions of Arena Commander.\n\nThe biggest feature we worked on this month was a complete change to the way we author AI behavior trees. Up to now, we\u2019ve been authoring them directly in code. Using Kythera\u2019s runtime C++ recompilation, this was actually quite efficient and allowed for fast iteration while running the game, but was not accessible to designers without a programming background. So we did a lot of work to allow behavior trees to be authored inside DataForge.\n\nYou will have heard a lot of mention of DataForge in the past, as the custom data management tool used by designers for all kinds of different data in Star Citizen. It has been engineered from the start to allow different views for different types of data, so where applicable, you might edit data in a spreadsheet style format, while for other things, a graphical node editing view is more appropriate, and so on.\n\nWe now have a behavior tree data category in DataForge that allows designers to create and edit behavior trees using a friendly GUI interface, and then apply these behaviors directly to an AI character without having to write any code. Plus they can modify the behavior trees at runtime and see the results immediately, which is fantastic for fast iteration.\n\nWhat made this a particularly interesting feature for us, though, is that we expect new behavior tree nodes to be created regularly in the future, and we wanted to support adding them into DataForge as easily as possible, so we did some work to create a simple console command in the editor that will automatically generate new definitions for DataForge, plus new C++ binding code that connects DataForge behavior tree structures with the underlying Kythera behavior tree code. So when a coder creates a new node, it\u2019s just a quick console command and the node is now fully integrated into DataForge!\n\nSo it\u2019s still possible to create AI behaviors in C++ just like before, but now we have this alternative GUI creation method, which then gets translated into equivalent C++ code when the behavior runs. We\u2019re excited to see the designers start to work with the new tool and create great behaviors. We expect to have to make small improvements in the near future to make the interface even easier for designers, but we think it\u2019s off to a great start. And we definitely have to give a huge shout-out to Ash Canning at Foundry 42, the mastermind behind DataForge who did lots of tweaks for us on really short notice to help DataForge support editing behavior trees better.\n\nFinally, we did some work inside our Kythera Inspector debugging tool to enable designers to debug their behavior trees a lot more easily, by getting a live visual representation of what the tree is currently doing at any time. Last month we added the ability to record and playback behavior trees states, but that\u2019s more useful for tracking down bugs. For developing behavior trees a live view of what they\u2019re doing is really handy. We\u2019re putting the final touches on this feature and will be getting it out to designers soon, so we\u2019ll wait for next month\u2019s report to go into more detail about it.\n\nLadies and gentleman, boys and girls, citizens of all ages, Thomas, cinematographer and editor extraordinaire, here to bring you the monthly report for May. Reporting as always from what can only be described as heaven on earth, aka the simply sublime paradisiac known as Santa Monica, California.\n\nAnd just like our splendid locale, May was a positively stupendous month for us. We debuted a new segment on our flagship show, Around the Verse, dubbed Ship Shape. Hosted by the effervescently and always alluring Lisa Ohanian, it affords us the opportunity to share with our fans and backers a compendious glimpse into the Ship Pipeline.\n\nSpeaking of Around the Verse, Ben Lesnick did a fantastic job hosting solo while co-host Sandi Gardiner was called upon to exhibit her thespianic skills at the Squadron 42 motion capture shoot in London, and we were treated to an array of talented developers all proving to be distinguished facsimiles, in our illustrious Chairman\u2019s absence, on our weekly 10 for series.\n\nMay also saw everybody\u2019s favorite Bugsmasher, Mr. Mark Bartholomew Abent III making the leap from Around the Verse sub segment to bi-weekly standalone show. His pilot episode was met with rave reviews, and it is with grand exuberance that I am pleased to announce that the network has indeed placed an order for a full season of shows.\n\nOn a completely unrelated note, May also begat us the much anticipated and long awaited grand opening of Fuddruckers Santa Monica, and the CommuniTeam wasted no time in visiting it for lunch, and I will just say this, we were not disappointed.\n\nAnd that, my fellow citizens, was the month of May. Thank you to all of our fans, without you, none of this would be possible, and it is truly an honor and a privilege to be able to do what we do.\n\nUntil next time, I will always and forever be,\n\nYour humble servant,\n\nThomas"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":214,"created_at":"2015-06-05T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"10 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-08 03:10:56","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":14757,"next_id":14759}}