{"data":{"id":15187,"title":"Monthly Studio Report: January 2016","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/15187-Monthly-Studio-Report-January-2016","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/15187","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/15187","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly 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Citizens,\n2016 is here, and we\u2019re ready to rock! We kicked off the month with a series of summits in the UK and Los Angeles to prepare for the new year. There\u2019s still one more to go, an AI summit in Frankfurt happening next week, but we\u2019re ready to take on 2016! Now that our i\u2019s are dotted and our t\u2019s crossed, we\u2019re ready to continue getting some great content out to the community. Specifically: going forward, you can expect to see regular updates to the Star Citizen Alpha. We are shooting for one significant patch each month. Expect to see this cycle repeated: numerous PTU test patches followed by a live release and then a lull as content for the next patch is prepared and integrated. As I write this, the team is working on content for Alpha 2.2. Expect to hear more about this release very soon! Meanwhile, here are the specifics of what each Star Citizen studio was working on in January\u2026\n\nGreetings Citizens!\nNow that we have taken our first step into 2016, we have already started the year off with a big splash. January marked the release of Star Citizen 2.1.0, a continued evolution of the ground-breaking 2.0.0 release from last year. Additional world missions were added to the universe; however, the biggest stand-out feature was the additional two flyable ships: the Aegis Vanguard Warden and the long awaited MISC Freelancer. If you watched any of our streams last year, you would have witnessed the unveiling of the AEGIS Sabre. With the 2.1.0 release, for those who purchased the Sabre during its debut last year will find this sleek and beautiful space superiority fighter sitting in their hangar!\n\nAlong with the regular gamut of balances, fixes, and updates, below is our monthly report for CIG LA.\n\nEngineering\nJanuary has been a busy month for the CIG LA Engineering team. The biggest milestone for all of the LA teams was the successful release of Star Citizen 2.1.0. Lead Engineer Paul Reindell has made solid progress on the item refactor collectively called Item System 2.0. Other regions are contributing to this new system and many preliminary features have been already released in order to provide a solid foundation for the Item System 2.0 and set the stage for its continued evolution. As mentioned in last month\u2019s report, this feature provides greater control over itemization on the back end of the game. For January, Paul has implemented a physics controlling component that handles the physicalization of objects. This lives as a layer between the items and its physical proxy, interfacing how the physics mode of an object is changed (enabled, static, rigid, ragdoll, etc.).\n\nEngineer Mark Abent has been industriously creating parameters for ammunition. With many of our systems moving away from strict XML and moving towards our own internal data management system, there\u2019s a need to convert projectiles to this new management system. While outwardly, this will have no visible impact on the game itself, it changes how the parameters are loaded and allows us to move away from the XML project path.\n\nAssociate Engineer Chad Zamzow has been working on changes on how shields function. By making higher levels of shield health better at preventing damage, well-managed shields should provide a positive benefit over poorly\/improperly managed shields \u2013 with the end goal of making lasers increasingly effective at depleting shields the more damage a shield takes and providing interesting decisions for players balancing regeneration speed, sheer strength, and signature in their shield generator options.\n\nThe new Interaction system has been worked on by our Engine Programmer Allen Chen, changing how interactions function. The current \u201cUse\u201d function in-game prevents us from adding more than one action to a single interactable object. Allen has completely decoupled the interaction logic to allow multiple actors to interact with a single object simultaneously.\n\nTech Design\n\u201cShips galore!\u201d should be the slogan for the CIG LA Tech Design team this month. With so many ships in the pipeline, it is difficult to decide where to start from.\n\nOne of the most anticipated ships so far, the 890 Jump, has just had its technical design documentation completed by Matt Sherman. Creating technical design documentation for the ship provides the artists with a template of specifications. Requisite information such as dimensions, hard points, internal volume, and various functionalities will ensure the artists are incorporating all of the necessary design elements.\n\nFurther development on the Xi\u2019an Scout has reached the \u2018grey box\u2019 tech design phase. While the technical design documentation is akin to a \u201cletter of intent\u201d in that it is providing an idea of how the ship will function, the grey box stage is where the nitty gritty details of the ship begin to take shape. Lead Tech Designer Kirk Tome has given the Scout its overview such as its variants, characteristics \u2013 a comparison of various aspects of performance based on other ships of similar mass and design \u2013 and an idea of how the ergonomics of the cockpit will be laid out.\n\nWhile Kirk continues with his design work on the Scout, he has also taken on the hefty task of refactoring the mass of every ship in-game. Definitely not a job for the faint at heart, Kirk has researched how to properly calculate the mass of our ships, and is now looking to apply these findings. With functional realism an end-goal of Star Citizen, we want to make sure all ships are using calculations ideal for the kind of materials our universe will contain. Whether they are far-future composite materials yet to be discovered or are composed of tried and true iron and steel, every one of these items will affect how ships move through the void.\n\nBalance master Calix Reneau has also taken on a juggling task worthy of a traveling circus show. With our shield system being further iterated upon, Calix has created a metrics system to quantify shield performance. By allowing the Tech Design team to analyze these performance numbers, we can further fine tune how shields function not just as a whole, but also how they respond against various weapon types whether they are kinetic projectiles, energy-based attacks, or other exotic weapon types.\n\nArt\nWith the team beginning to fill out the shader libraries for MISC, it is no wonder the Reliant is shaping up to be one of our most stunning ships yet while also being one of our most collaborative multi studio efforts. Its unorthodox vertical shape has given our ship team a fresh canvas to exercise creative ideas for a creative design.\n\nThe MISC Reliant has been an all-hands-on-deck effort by the CIG LA Art team. Elwin Bachiller and Daniel Kamentsky have completed the exterior POMs and decals as well as generated almost all the geometry require to destroy it.\n\nConcept artist Gurmukh Bhasin has been creating large renders to wallpaper our new building as we are still getting settled in to the new location. Each conference room will be given a different theme based on a ship manufacturer, and Gurmukh has been designing renders for how each room should look when the installations are completed. If you ever come by to take a tour of the place, make sure you check out our giant mural featuring the Vanguard. Given how much time we spend here, the investment in morale is well worth the effort!\n\nOmar \u201cArmani\u201d Aweidah and Jeremiah \u201cVersace\u201d Lee, our in-game fashionistas, are creating uniform and clothing design for characters in-game. Creating an era-appropriate aesthetic for clothing while keeping certain elements familiar allows our players to identify and relate with the universe we have created. Not only do we want our ships to be the most epic spacecraft ever, we want to make sure our pilots, pirates, explorers, and ilk are geared appropriately for their chosen lot in the life of a Star Citizen. Jeremiah completed the medium armor concept, while Omar completed the high-poly geometry for the male navy BDU (Battle Dress Uniform).\n\nTech Content\nSean Tracy has migrated to the Los Angeles office, transplanting himself from Austin, Texas and has been making his mark with his Tech Content team.\n\nThose who piloted or stood in proximity to a Constellation during the 2.1.0 PTU may have noticed drops in in-game performance. Matt Intrieri and Mark McCall have been fastidiously delving into the root cause of this performance issue. With 2.1.1, pilots of (and anyone standing in proximity to) a Constellation should notice a marked increase in game performance.\n\nFurther content refinements performed by Mr. McCall include adding LODs to normalize the mesh count for the Constellation as well as converting thrusters for all ships to .CDF format and add LODs to the thrusters.\n\nRiggers Gaige Hallman and John Riggs (yes, we have a rigger named Riggs\u2026how awesome is that?) have been working on putting processes in place. John has finalized the skinning vertices on characters while Gaige has been spending a little time each day performing some early Spring cleaning, organizing our character outsource submission management in Shotgun.\n\nFinally, Patrick Salerno has also been proactively beautifying the Gladius by adding LODs to the Gladius to normalize the mesh count.\n\nProduction\nSenior Producer Eric Kieron Davis is truly a man of many talents. One week he is in Austin, TX assisting the production team with Persistent Universe processes then another week he is spearheading the beautification of the new Los Angeles CIG office, all while keeping his eyes on the target of 2.1.0 and 2.1.1.\n\nMark Hong has fully settled in, another transplant from our Austin, TX office, has taken control of the Art and Technical Content teams as their producer while Randy Vazquez has filled in the much-needed role of Engineering and Tech Design producer. Randy\u2019s familiarity with the design processes gives him a unique perspective on how best to manage the tasks of the Tech Design team, especially since Randy has both production and design experience under his belt. Production Assistant Darian Vorlick now fills a support role for the CIG LA team by providing data analytics, logistical reporting, as well as relieving any extraneous loads that may fall on the shoulders of the other producers.\n\nNarrative\nOur Head of Linear Content John Schimmel, Senior Writer Will Weisbaum and Lead Writer David Haddock were visiting the UK office for a few weeks to sync back up with the designers as well as discuss the production of Squadron 42. They were able to address all of the narrative items of the story and adjust based on new insights as the in-game tech advances. On the Persistent Universe front, as more landing zones are in the process of being built, they have been delving deeper into the look and feel of the locations, characters and even how in-game fictitious products are advertised and branded.\n\nIn addition to writing Jump Point articles and News Updates, Associate Writer Adam Wieser tackled a pretty massive S42 task: conforming the scripts to accurately reflect the dialogue recorded during last year\u2019s performance shoot. A laborious process for sure, but now that it\u2019s complete, the designers will no longer need to hunt down footage to see how scenes played out.\n\nArchivist Cherie Heiberg continued to work with our science consultants who have been generating data based on the various planets and systems in the Star Citizen universe while waging her colossal battle against the monstrous hydra known as disorganization and confusion. Our internal wiki is their battlefield. It\u2019s like Thunderdome. Two will enter. One will leave.\n\nConclusion\nWith the first 30 days of 2016 behind us, we still have another 335 left to go. That leaves us plenty of time for new ships, new features, new missions, and new art to make its way into the universe. February is looking to be just as exciting and we can\u2019t wait until we can bring you a month in review next time. We are making video game history, and all of you are at the center of it!\n\nHowdy Citizens,\nThe New Year is behind us and teams are in full swing planning, developing, testing, and launching new content for the game. We have had several team members in the LA studio this month for substantial in-person collaboration and planning efforts, and we\u2019ve received a ton of new content for testing and publishing. After substantial testing we launched the 2.1.0 version to the Live server, and have made subsequent updates to tweak and tune the experience. We\u2019re looking ahead to the 2.2.0 update which is soon to come! Here are some detailed updates from each group in Austin.\n\nPersistent Universe Team\nThe keyword for this month has been ROADMAP. Lots of scheduling and planning has been going on this month for 2016, and we\u2019ve made good progress in laying down a roadmap for features and content. Mark Skelton and Tony Zurovec have been in LA the last couple of weeks meeting with Chris Roberts, Erin Roberts, and others to ensure that all of our goals are lined up and clear to everyone.\n\nThat being said, roadmaps and schedules weren\u2019t the only thing we worked on this month. We\u2019ve identified the hero landing zones, smaller landing zones, and space content we want to bring online this year, but the ones that are currently in progress are tracking along nicely. The Levski landing zone in Nyx is in Final Art Stage, and we are now putting the finishing touches on the Shops we\u2019ll have there, including Cordry\u2019s (armor), Conscientious Objects (personal weapons), Caf\u00e9 Musain (bar), and the Medical Unit. Initial VFX and Lighting passes are under way for those environments and they are looking absolutely beautimous in their own grimy, decrepit kinda way.\n\nLooking forward, we\u2019ve been putting some hard design focus on creating blueprint documentation for the next hero landing zone on the horizon, the Stanton>Hurston>Lorville landing zone (that\u2019s the Lorville landing zone on planet Hurston in the Stanton system, for those of you who\u2019ve been enjoying the Starmap). Rob Reininger has been working with BHVR to layout the blueprints for the various shops for Hurston, as well as the layout for the city of Lorville itself. We\u2019re excited about the design opportunities that have presented themselves for this environment and are taking full advantage. We\u2019ve also been doing some pre-visualization for Hurston. Mark Skelton has been going back and forth with BHVR over the art direction of this environment, and Corentin Chevanne, Art Director at BHVR, and his crew have been doing an excellent job nailing that aesthetic. We\u2019re excited to jump on to this landing zone after we wrap up work on Levski.\n\nIn Ship Land, Chris Smith and Josh Coons have been chugging away on the Xi\u2019an Scout (or Khartu-Al). Emre has been working with them to finish up his initial lighting pass on it and it is looking pretty slick. We\u2019re aiming to finish up this ship in the very near future, at which point we will move on to our next focus, revamping the original 3 ships in Arena Commander (the Aurora, 300i, and Hornet) to match our current quality standards.\n\nOn the Ship Animation side, in conjunction with Art we\u2019ve been working on enter and exit cockpit animations for the Scout in preparation for its hangar-ready release. These animations are completely unique, since this type of ship is the first of its kind that we\u2019ve done. In addition we are implementing a new cockpit type control scheme for this ship: The Dual Orb. On the PU side, we\u2019ve wrapped up work on the Medical Unit animations and have been making some nice progress on the Nightclub scene animations. We\u2019ve got NPC\u2019s leaning against walls, sitting at booths, drinking at bars, using vending machines, and even using the toilet!\n\nAs mentioned previously, Tony Zurovec has been in LA for the past couple of weeks meeting with the other Directors to discuss high-level Design goals for 2016. There are several exciting features that are being discussed that we will aim to bring online this year. I won\u2019t mention them here just yet but look forward to updates on these features soon. Another part of the planning that Tony has been going over with Chris is the Backend Networking\/Server roadmap for the year. Jason Ely and Jeff Zhu are fully focused on Persistence right now, and will be for a while longer, but there are several core backend systems that need to be developed this year in order to make significant leaps forward in the PU. For example, Tom Sawyer just finished wrapping up work on improvements to the Party System, and will now be writing a TDD for the work to be done on his next focus, the \u201cTrue Friends System.\u201d More on that next month!\n\nLive Operations\nQA\nAfter a well-deserved break, QA began January with focusing testing efforts on the deployment of 2.1.0 to the live environment. After five deployments to the PTU, we were very happy to finally deploy 2.1.0 to live.\n\nThis month we have gained 2 new recruits. Please welcome Jeff Daily and Katarzyna Mierostawska. Jeff comes to us from NCSoft where he worked on many titles as QA Lead. Katarzyna worked with many titles as well including Trion World\u2019s Archeage where she obtained Cryengine testing experience.\n\nTraining new additions to the team is a significant undertaking but Tyler Witkin and Melissa Estrada are up to the task and doing a great job.\n\nAfter deploying 2.1.0 to the live environment QA began testing the game-dev development branch which will eventually become 2.2.0. Todd Raffray headed up a comprehensive test of Party System updates and improvements.\n\nMeanwhile, Vincent Sinatra and Andrew Hesse have completed additional investigations for designer Calix Reneau involving ship speeds, time to kill, and flight mechanics. Vincent and Andrew have also been supporting daily developer playtests in the LA studio which have resulted in very valuable feedback.\n\nThis month we had two visitors from our QA team from the Foundry 42 studio in Manchester Glenn Kneale and Andrew Mawdsley. Glenn and Andrew sat down with Jeffrey Pease and learned how to effectively monitor and report issues with our back end services.\n\nJust prior to the month\u2019s conclusion, we tested and deployed a small hotfix (2.1.2) to the PTU and then to the live environment. We are now squarely focused on testing new additions and updates in the game-dev branch which will become 2.2.0. The entire QA team is doing some really great work and we are all looking forward to getting 2.2.0 out to everyone as soon as possible.\n\nGame Support\nJanuary saw the rollout of 2.1.0 (and subsequently, 2.1.1 and 2.1.2) to our players. Chris Danks and Will Leverett in Game Support worked alongside Production, QA, and Live Ops to feverishly put out daily builds to get tested, assessed, fixed, and finally pushed to Live. We\u2019re excited to see the reception it\u2019s received, and we\u2019ll continue to make additional fixes on the road to 2.2.0 next month.\n\nGame Support also has been focused on the general work of catching up from the holidays. Most of this work is complete, and we\u2019re happy to provide faster turnarounds for players who send in technical-related tickets.\n\nOn a related note, we\u2019ve also been pushing hard to get caught up on our hacked accounts. We feel this is a good time to remind players that we do not condone buying and selling of pledges using the gifting system, in fact we actively discourage it. This is one area where we cannot promise and you should not expect that we can or must address a given ticket. The gifting mechanism is not intended for this use, and not only can CIG not monitor a third party transaction, you are exposing yourself to a risk where you may not be able to recover your funds if the other party has malicious intent.\n\nLastly, we\u2019ve been working with company leadership to discuss our plans for growth in 2016. We\u2019re excited about growing our team both in Manchester, UK and in Austin, Texas, and we\u2019ll be looking for some top talent to help us run the BDSSE in the next few months. Stay tuned!\n\nIT\/Operations\nJanuary has been fun for us all here on the IT team. First and most importantly, nothing broke down! We all feel quite a sense of relief over the stability of our networks now with all the work that has been done at each studio to accommodate the large bursts of data for the builds and publishes. Normally, a network of this size and complexity requires constant tuning and maintaining, particularly with all the requirements and overhead involved with secure communications between studios. This year over our holiday however, the IT team didn\u2019t even receive a single alert which is how it should be of course, but this is the first year for us that we\u2019ve experienced such a smooth holiday vacation.\n\nThis month went by very quickly but toward the end, we got to meet up with some really great groups of backers. It was fun to spend time chatting with them about some of the details about how the build system works and the cool systems we made which allow us to replicate petabytes of data between the studios. To those of you who were here, thanks for coming and we\u2019re looking forward to your next visit.\n\nLive Ops\nKicking off the first month of 2016 has been very productive in the LiveOps team. We published version 2.1 to the live service 3 times in January with 9 publishes to the PTU. We\u2019ve also reconfigured our desks to make room for more growth on the team and just because it feels good to clean everything at the beginning of the year.\n\nMajor progress has been made on tools that support the build process. This month has seen the most impressive updates in the form of interface and usability. These important changes will allow us to push more control out to the dev teams so they don\u2019t have to request every single change from us directly. Additionally, we\u2019ve nearly completed our work on the public crash handler which should be incorporated in to the game in February if all goes well. We expect this will produce a wealth of information for the dev team with regards to any client crashes \u2013 this information will help them hunt down and fix those client crash bugs once and for all. Finally, we\u2019re also finishing our work on a new type of build which we hope will have an impact on client load times. If we do well in testing, we\u2019re hoping to get these new builds in to the pipeline in February as well.\n\nGreetings Citizens,\n\nLet\u2019s get right to it! Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve been doing at Foundry 42 in the new year:\n\nArt\nConcepts\nA relatively slow month of production due to Christmas holidays eating into a good portion of the month, however true to form and CIG style we hit the ground running with 2 weeks of planning meetings for the hurdles we face this year.\n\nOne aspect of the planning was trying to give the concept team a smoother ride; in the past we\u2019ve had to adopt a fairly reactive flow, whereas this year I\u2019d like to know 3-6 months in advance \u2013 we have the work that\u2019s for sure!\n\nThis month the team has covered finishing off the Javelin exterior, Idris\/Javelin turrets, Shubin corridor and main bridge, low tech props, asteroid outpost garage interior and Apocalypse Arms rail gun (first pass).\n\nCharacter Team\nThe pressure is on! Forrest has been visiting and giving the guys a good understanding of the new pipeline and has done a stellar job on working with associate producer Andy to get a comprehensive schedule together. In terms of art work, \u201cRandall Graves\u201d is now close to in-game final and the Bridge Officers uniform high poly is looking top notch too.\n\nEnvironments\nMost of January has been picking up the whiteboxing phase for the environments in Sq42, we\u2019re making all the big changes to the layout, composition, vistas and flow in this period as everything is very malleable. It\u2019s really promising seeing how all our big set piece events will play out, and how the player will traverse through the various locations in the game. Our PU team has also started whiteboxing out a new location for Crusader which will feature a familiar character. This is going to be a cool one and we\u2019re going to take it into full production next month. Work is also progressing on our testbed for asteroid bases, the look development for the terrain is now complete and now we\u2019re applying this to the rest of the landscape.\n\nShip Art\nThere\u2019s plenty of spaceship action going on at Foundry 42! We\u2019re getting in to the final art stages of production with the Sabre and StarFarer. The StarFarer is rather large with lots of interior work so she\u2019s going to take a little longer but we hope to have the Sabre flying around Crusader very soon.\n\nIt\u2019s exciting times in the land of Capital Ships. We\u2019ve got resources back on to the Idris to get her ship shape with the Javelin and Bengal getting their whitebox work well underway. We can\u2019t wait to get these babies flying!\n\nVFX\nWe certainly hit the ground running after the Christmas break! Adam has been focusing on some \u201cthruster standardisation\u201d tasks. There are a number of inconsistencies that we want to smooth out across all thrusters in the game; one example would be some thruster effects having no idle effect , where others do (when the ship is \u201con\u201d but not thrusting) \u2013 we are going to make sure all idle thrusters have a glow to show the thing is powered up. Another part of this task is the creation of boost effects, so there is clear visual feedback to show the difference between boost and standard thrust. This wasn\u2019t previously possible, so Adam has been working closely with John Pritchett to give us improved functionality to really enhance our thruster effects.\n\nAway from thrusters, Mike has been working on a cleaned-up, simplified VFX style guide. This is a concise document that clearly lays out the expected visual style for our VFX artists to adhere to, ensuring visual consistency across the whole range of effects we make (and let\u2019s face it, we make a LOT of effects here!) \u2013 it also gives us a very clear visual language for different manufacturers and races. Mike has also been working on cleaning up the effects \u201ctemplates\u201d and building up our libraries so designers and artists have a greater range of effects to choose from when fleshing out their levels, weapons etc.\n\nCollectively, the VFX team have begun looking in earnest at the effects requirements for Squadron 42 \u2013 no spoilers here but suffice to say we have some spectacular scenarios throughout the campaign. I can tell you there will be explosions. Lots of explosions. Did I mention there are going to be explosions?\n\nProp Art\nThe Props team has been continuing to focus on the ship components, we are just putting the finishing touches on the third. We have however had a slight change of heart with how we approach the materials. After consulting the Character and Weapon teams we are now looking to use the same layer material they use, this allows us to achieve a much higher quality surface on the components and it has the added benefit of being much cheaper rendering wise. We will need to revisit our original components but the work is fairly quick and the benefits are well worth it.\n\nWe also hope to make use of this layer material in other areas of prop production which will ultimately mean we can throw more on screen than before, a bit of investigation work is in order next month.\n\nWith the prop audit coming to a close we have started to do a polish pass on some of the older and commonly used assets, with the aim of improving the quality and performance in one hit.\n\nWork had begun on supporting the Squadron levels and we are working closely with the environment team building some of the key props they require.\n\nFinally work has commenced on the next set of flair assets for our subscribers hangars, we are planning something a bit different in the next couple of months so we are trying to get a head start now.\n\nDesign\nWow! January went past at 100 miles-an-hour and the UK design team have been busy in all areas of the game. Systems design is still refactoring the UI for the HUD to give new players a less steep learning curve into the game. It\u2019s not just the HUD that needs an easy option as we are also looking at all of the usability aspects of the game in relation to new players, such as USE prompts, inner-thought, controls unification, better on-foot navigation aids and augmented reality.\n\nAs part of this process we are giving mobiGlas some much needed design love, doing a full sanity pass through all of the apps we will need, the priorities being the ones required for the military version for Squadron 42 and the shopping experience.\n\nWith the StarFarer coming out soon, we are looking to get the fuel collection gameplay tiered up so Players will have some interesting things to do with this beast of a ship in the coming Live releases.\n\nThe Tech designers are still bashing away on all of the new ships and having some extra bodies in that department is starting to pay off in terms of getting the ships flight ready sooner.\n\nFrom this month we are going to have a dedicated Ship Balance Designer who can act upon feedback in terms of where ships fit in the overall game. This is going to be a very important role going forward and will require a lot of trial and error before the ships feel how they are supposed to, but it\u2019s great that someone is now going to be responsible for this on a daily basis.\n\nI can\u2019t say too much about S42 as you know, but we had Chris Roberts and the writing team over here for the first two weeks of January and we are very happy with how the campaign is paced for design now.\n\nEngineering\nSome good progress has been made on some of the core systems this month which will all go and help make the game easier to maintain as well as fix some of those annoying little bugs that crop up from time to time.\n\nThe hardest part of the job sometimes is just knowing what to call something. For example, in the current version of a game when vehicles get created, either when you or somebody else requests a ship, or when AI spawn in, it\u2019s actually quite an inefficient process on the networking side. The client first comes up with a list of what the required loadout is and sends it to the server, the server then creates the ship with all the individual items (which can be over 100 depending on the ship), the server then serializes all these items to all the clients (a fancy way of saying it makes sure they both are synchronised with the same information) one at a time. This has led to a lot of pain in past to get all of this working, as the CryEngine wasn\u2019t designed to dynamically create vehicles like this, and it ended up with a lot of hard to track down bugs. A number of these were caused because the ship on the client could be built in a different order than on the server depending on what order the packets came through. We\u2019re now doing away with all of that and coming up with a solution where we just have one packet of information which describes the whole vehicle and how it is set up. This packet is sent to the clients in one go and used by both the server and the client to build the ship. Now we have the advantage that there\u2019s a lot less network traffic required, and because the server and all clients build the vehicle in exactly the same way it is completely deterministic which means it\u2019s a lot more robust and easier to track down any problems. We were going to call this new packet a Spawn Bundle, but that that got confused with the AISpawnBundle we already have, we then started calling it Dependent Entity Spawn Helper, which doesn\u2019t exactly trip off the tongue, so now we\u2019re using the Loadout Helper, which we\u2019re not really happy with either. So it\u2019ll probably change again. (If you don\u2019t think this is a big deal, consider that the name of a module or subroutine may be employed across multiple files across millions of lines of code across different code development branches being used by different teams that need merging before a release. And yet, a reliable and ordered naming convention is extremely important for internal consistency because if the names don\u2019t make intuitive or engineering sense, it\u2019s harder and slower for newcomers to get up to snuff on a system that\u2019s become too idiosyncratic.)\n\nThe Object Container work (which similarly had gone through numerous renames) is making some good progress. We\u2019ve now got proof of principle where we can export a level as an object container and get it to load into the game correctly. Now we begin the fun part of trying to split the level up into multiple containers and getting them to stream in and out of memory, which is where we start to break everything. We\u2019ll also be working on converting the prefabs over and getting the containers working with the Zone System. Once all of that is in it will allow us to greatly expand the scope of a level.\n\nOtherwise it\u2019s pretty much carrying on as usual. The audio guys are currently trying to track down a really nasty audio corruption bug which you might have heard. It\u2019s proving really tricky as it\u2019s very hard to reproduce, our QA only hear it after playing the game for around 4 hours in a session with a full server so we might only get it once or twice a day. It ends up that the turnaround time between creating a new build with some additional debugging, or potential fixes, and seeing what happens becomes very drawn out. We have started to narrow down what is going on though and we\u2019re confident we can get it fixed shortly.\n\nGraphics\nLast month a lot of our focus was on improving performance and we\u2019ve managed to make significant improvements on existing scenes\/ships but also on our newer and more complex assets that are still in production. Some of our recent big wins have come from fixing various issues on the Constellations and Retaliators room setup to ensure they\u2019re properly occluded from outside the ship, and to heavily optimise the UI of both ships (we now render less than \u00bc of the number of meshes for the holo-UI for the exact same visual result).\n\nThis month the leads have been planning the long term schedule for the year, and the graphics team have had to determine the graphics requirements of all the other teams (art, vfx, design, gameplay) and ensure we\u2019ve planned out all the required features. While doing this the rest of the graphics team have been focussing on newer features, starting with our revival of the gas cloud tech that will be vital for both Squadron 42 and the PU. The gas cloud tech will continue to be one of our main priorities for the next couple of months, and at the moment we\u2019re focussing on researching efficient volumetric lighting techniques and trying to get the look and feel right before getting into the optimisations and polish stages further down the line. Other new features we\u2019re starting on are improvements to some of the shaders such as glass and skin, a new version of our LOD merging tool to optimise space stations and FPS environments, improved fire\/glow on particle effects, and a completely new physically based glare & lens-flare system.\n\nAnimation\nHere in the UK we have been working on core FPS player mechanics. We\u2019ve been setting up some of the aim pose requirements for technical implementation of cover low and cover high systems. We\u2019ve also been reworking the no weapon locomotion turns to add in some weight to the animation in 3rd person while keeping the camera steady in first person. An interesting challenge in itself when gameplay requires turning on the spot!\n\nFurther adjustments to core gameplay requirements have been lowering the crouch locomotion set to better fit the height metric set by design. This will allow idle and locomotion to keep below cover height, instead of your head popping up when you start to move. We\u2019ve also started to look in to implementation of the vault and mantling mechanics, reviewing the motion capture data and working with design and code on the best way to break it up to allow for a smooth gameplay experience.\n\nOther than that we\u2019ve been planning for the year ahead, and providing some body data for cinematics over in Frankfurt to unblock them.\n\nAudio\nHere in CIG Audio, we\u2019ve spent a lot of time tracking down an issue that\u2019s affected the sound experience in the live release; wholesale and rather nasty distortion, that typically happens only after a reasonably lengthy play session.\n\nIt\u2019s been difficult to discern the cause up until this week, but we think we have a solution and we\u2019re rolling that out as soon as we can. We\u2019ve had help from the community in tracking this one down, and have to thank all involved who went above and beyond the call of duty in sending us their data files and reporting the issue in such detail \u2013 it\u2019s awesome to work hand in hand with you all. We\u2019ve also had some great assistance from Audiokinetic\u2019s support department who\u2019ve pitched in wherever they can. It\u2019s been a trying time for Graham, Sam and Mikhail in doing the necessary detective work and our QA team have also been of great assistance here. We\u2019ll write up a more detailed report of it for those interested later once we have a fuller picture.\n\nAs you can imagine, this has curtailed some of our progress on the system side and has highlighted just how much we need audio programming engineers; as well as this issue bringing this to the fore, we\u2019ve put together our entire audio engineering roadmap to feed into the wider code schedule and it includes much of what is discussed on the Ask A Dev forum and far more besides \u2013 there are a lot of foundations still to put down to cater for a universe as huge as ours, lots of variables to cater for and you can never quite know what they might be until the game hits the live servers.\n\nSo on the topic, we have a role available here at Foundry 42 for a Senior Audio Programmer, and one can apply via the CIG website!\n\nOtherwise, work has continued where possible on Squadron 42, with Ross putting down as much as he can there, setting some markers for how that workflow should be, and continuing on the music logic system with Sam. Ship work is continually ongoing via Darren and Luke. Stefan\u2019s been refining the impacts of ship-based weapons \u2013 he\u2019s looking at making them more dangerous when you\u2019re in EVA or generally unshielded by a ship. Matteo\u2019s continued with Foley work for characters, Phil has been putting together one of the most awesome rigs ever for p-cap dialogue capture purposes, Bob\u2019s been hard at it speccing up our dialogue system\/database. Jason\u2019s been assisting with that and looking to proximity based VOIP tech. I\u2019ve been arranging as much as I can for a forthcoming orchestral performance session, and also working with everyone on a bit of everything.\n\nHopefully with this nasty bug out the way we can get back to more gainful work in building up the systems and content. Thanks for listening!\n\nQA\nUK QA have been split between the testing of Star Citizen Future and Present this month \u2013 with us covering the current release streams of 2.1.0 (via 2.1.1 and 2.1.2) as well as the more developmental stream where the new upcoming features work is being done. At the time of writing this, 2.1.2 is about to go LIVE \u2013 so we\u2019re all feeling happy in the knowledge that it\u2019s been a good months\u2019 work well done!\n\nIn terms of our biggest, most difficult to catch bug this month; we\u2019ve been devoting a lot of time to the reproduction of the audio corruption and subsequent crash that\u2019s been happening in 2.1.0 and 2.1.1. This has been some quite involved work for the UK test team \u2013 which has required frequent communication with the audio programmers as well as needing us to be sat in the PTU and LIVE servers, trying to force the issue to occur \u2013 with the help of many a backer. So thanks again!\n\nThis is also Andy Nicholson\u2019s last month working as the QA Manager in the UK \u2013 Phil Webster will be taking his place in the coming week. Andy\u2019s SC journey will continue, albeit in a new form with the Design team \u2013 but as QA Manager he leaves a legacy of creating a really great QA team.\n\nAnd now it\u2019s time to sign off. SPACESHIPLAUNCHSFXNOISES!\n\nGreetings Citizens,\nHello from Frankfurt! Our main focus for January has been to re-iterate on the goals set throughout December and ensure we are still on track with them. For that we had a few meetings to discuss priorities so everyone was on the same page what to work on next. We slowly ramped-up on the focus so everyone could get back into their zone and work without interruption as much as possible. FPS, PU design, Cinematics, AI and core engine development progress so far within the first few weeks of 2016 has been quite impressive and you can find more details in the respective reports from our team.\n\nProduction\nThe production team started the month with a lot of planning sessions. Having ended the year with our massive 2.0.0 update, introducing some key features of our game, we want to ensure that 2016 will be aequally as exciting for everyone. We met with the Directors and the team to talk about what high level goals we want to achieve, and when they\u2019ll be completed, throughout 2016. We then prioritized and matched the tasks against our available resources. Talks with the team are still going on to break the goals down into achievable steps. Going through this process is taking a lot of time and since we also have to continue working on the updates\/bug fixes for the live game it\u2019s something that needs to be scheduled carefully to allow the team to prepare properly while keeping interruption on their current work as low as possible. On the AI side we are almost completed and will have a first draft roadmap ready within the next few days. This will cover all requirements for S42 but also PU and we have a lot of really interesting features and systems ready to be worked on. Follow-up discussions will happen with other departments of the team where dependencies need to be clarified. FPS, PU design and core engine development are on a good way, but all need prioritization and breaking the work down further before we can pull together a final plan.\n\nCode\nHi everyone, a new year starts with new technological challenges. We released 2.0 in December and 2.1 in January, each accompanied by a PTU phase before they went live. Star Citizen nowadays has a size of ~30GB, which means that with the current patch model, the backers have to download a load of data (Especially on the PTU where we want as many people as possible to make the game stable prior to going live). The size is the same internally for us, as even a 1GBit LAN connection cannot transfer 30 GB instantly. Hence we in Frankfurt collaborated with our Austin engineers on how to tackle this problem. We came up with a good solution in which we all believe in and have started to implement. The idea is to design a system which knows your local data, knows what data should be in the build, and then selectively downloads and updates your local data set to match the one of the build. For example, if between two PTU release, zero textures are changed, then no texture will be downloaded, reducing the required download by several GB. We hope to start testing this system soon internally and then extend it to our public releases as well. Unfortunately, as this is part an integration process which often tend to have many small issues which add up to a lot of time, I can only give you Soon\u2122 as an estimate.\n\nEVA was also a major focus! For extra vehicular activities (EVA) the player model is basically a ragdoll which is 100% controlled by physical impulses. This type of \u201cragdoll\u201d can be driven by animation and is able to perform all actions needed for a player character. All physics-based control models can be unpredictable in certain situations: for example, whenever legs collide with an obstacle the character is doing somersaults and sliding along walls always makes the view spin around. This behavior is physically correct and pretty much identical to what happens when parts of a ship collide with an obstacles in space. But if this happens in first person view, then it\u2019s not exactly what a player expects. In the last weeks we investigated (with the help of UK and LA) different control methods for the EVA suit that preserves the physicality of the ragdoll simulation and while still giving the player more precise controls for navigation and EVA combat. This includes:\n\nImproved \u201cview-based control mode\u201d without drifting. This control mode is very similar to John Pritchett\u2019s thruster controls for ships.\n\nImproved Yaw-Pitch controls that reduced the \u201ccamera roll\u201d.\n\nBetter capabilities to slide along walls by reducing the friction on the suit and using counter forces to stabilize spinning automatically.\n\nWeapon aiming in vertical and horizontal poses for driven ragdolls\n\nNew IK-system for driven ragdolls. Whenever the legs collide with the environment, the character can pull them up immediately.\n\nExperimental auto-navigation methods that makes it easier to move around in tighter spaces without getting stuck in level geometry.\n\nFinally, we continued working on the procedural planet environment and trying different combinations to improve the planets overall appearances. We\u2019re making great progress and look forward to showing things off in the future.\n\nAI\nSince AI didn\u2019t provide a large update for December due to the holiday, we\u2019ll focus on the general progress we made since last month.\n\nOn the character side we completed the first pass on the implementation of the functionalities required to allow enemies to use covers during their combat behaviors. Animators have provided us animations for staying in cover, shooting from cover, peeking from cover, and firing blindly at their target. The behaviors can now correctly request functionalities such as peeking or shooting from cover. The system will take care of analysing the current position in relation of the target position selecting the proper posture to use.\n\nWe also started to refactor the character perception. We\u2019re basically creating a perception system that can be modularized directly in the game code. Components will register the different entities into the system that will allow them to perceive through different senses. Vision has been the first to be tackled, we started using the CryEngine VisionMap and we created a game component that registers an entity as an Observer or Observable. This allow us to specify what we\u2019re interested in seeing, and how other characters can perceive us so the vision map can take care of making physical checks and caching information for queries. We will share more details about this in the upcoming weeks!\n\nOn the behavior side we have exposed a lot of functionalities through new behavior nodes and extended the current behavior we\u2019re using. We also started using the TokenSystem we previously talked about to create the foundation for the first coordination. With the TokenSystem we\u2019re experimenting with coordinating agents during the investigation of dangerous sounds, having one person going to investigate while the other covers him and wait for his information, etc.\n\nRegarding the spaceships AI, we have moved all the spawning logic from LUA to C++. This will allow us to maintain the system better and it already helped us by properly supporting the asynchronous entity spawning.\n\nIn addition to all of that we have been working on a lot of stability improvements and we have worked on the creation of a development plan for 2016 and beyond!\n\nBuild Engineering\nOur Senior Build Engineer has been busy in general working on the build system, trybuild and automation. This month a good amount of time was spent on general build issues that generally come up throughout development. He also worked on a few changes that will allow us to switch over to updated software once it\u2019s released.\n\nQA\nThis month Chris Speak has been progressing on Automated testing setups for CryEngine, primarily focused on AI and the way it handles obstacles within a level as well as the Usables such as vaulting over walls and climbing ladders using a relatively simple Flowgraph module. He setup a test-map that contains several feature tests that can be triggered via the console within both the Editor as well as in Client mode that tells an AI character to move towards a specific target location, and upon entering that location the FeatureTest node in Flowgraph marks the test as complete. The AI has to determine how to navigate to that target area using the obstacles in front of it, so in the case of the screenshot below it needs to climb two 4 meter ladders to reach the target.\n\nHe\u2019s also been recording timed demos for the purposes of automating end-user-experience testing to give us daily feedback relating to everything from ship boarding and flight, to FPS combat etc. This should give us a good foundation for future changes, and make changes to the game-code a bit less risky and painful.\n\nCinematics\nCinematics is currently at work on several scenes that happen during S42\u2019s story\u2019s beginning. We\u2019ve done a first pass on our Navy hospital scenes and are currently doing previs on a few others that we can\u2019t discuss just yet. Our Sr. Environment artists are busy building up terrain, as well as environment and key props for a dramatic planetside scene. The scene is fairly prominent and we need to make room for an Idris to land. We also started with a major facelift, as well as under-the-hood work, on the Trackview editor, one of the main tools use by the cinematic designers. Sascha Hoba is currently busy bringing the toolset up to speed for what we need it to do, both in usability and feature set. The additional functionality will make certain areas more efficient for the team, and allow us to assemble scenes quicker.\n\nDesign\nFor Level Design work continues on the prototypes for the Modular Environments and the Power Management Systems, we are pretty close to having the latter ready for an internal play test to verify the concept. It should turn out to be a pretty interesting, a dynamic and fun way for the players to interact with the environments in everything from Space Stations to planetary outposts, just make sure you don\u2019t turn off the lights while someone is still in the SpaceLoo\u2122, bad things might happen.\n\nAs with development life in general we sometimes encounter bugs and blockers that might temporarily halt our work in one area, but there is always work to be done fill those small gaps, so in the last month we have also been doing some work on a small multiplayer map, defining game rules for multiplayer (line of sights, density of obstacles, height variations, scale) as well as scheduling and planning for 2016.\n\nThis last month System Design has been focused on getting a thorough breakdown of all the systems that we need for Star Citizen, past, present and future. This would allow us to verify and better see what systems are used the most and in which specific situations so we can better prioritise them.\n\nBesides that we\u2019ve been working on various cargo prototypes to decide what is the perfect balance between doing things as realistically as possible while making sure cargo movement and management is still fun and exciting to do. Other systems that we are pushing for right now are looting and resource spawn management as these will allow us to improve the PU experience greatly. We\u2019ve also had a new addition to our team, Gr\u00e9goire, a great designer from France, he\u2019s been trying to catch up with the massive amount of documentation so that next month he is 100% up to date, while at the same time trying to get familiar with all the internal tools we use on a daily basis.\n\nOn top of all this we are continuing to interview great applicants and talent to fill the ranks of the expanding Frankfurt Design team.\n\nWeapons\nWe have been working with the concept art team on a new FPS weapon, it\u2019s going well and looks good, but It is still in a very early concept stage.\n\nAlso the updated metrics for ship mounted and personal weapons have been completed after being evaluated by various departments and are ready to be used.\n\nAudio\nThis month Mikhail spent most of the time on bug fixes and refactoring AudioSystem so that it uses the ZoneSystem for all relevant positional information. It turned out to be a fair bit of work, because, like most currently existing audio systems, CrySoundSystem was designed under an implicit assumption that audio sources are mostly static, and the ones that aren\u2019t inform the audio system explicitly when their positions change. This works well for the majority of 3D-engine-based games in existence. Naturally, like with many other things, Star Citizen is a different case. Since a lot of action in the game happens inside the spaceships, there is no reason to expect the audio sources in any particular frame to be static, in fact, more often than not they are all moving, and, sometimes, for example when landing on a capital ship, there might be several clusters of audio sources all moving at different speeds relative to the listener. This not only applies to the permanent audio sources like thrusters, ship weapons, doors etc., but also the transient ones, like footsteps, object collisions, electrical sparks. As you can imagine, when the standard approach is used, the number of position updates required quickly adds up and starts to affect the overall performance. On the other hand, the Zone System provides the engine modules with a centralized and efficient way to keep track of the positional information for the objects they need, so querying it once per frame for the positions of all audible sources based on the current listener\u2019s position is definitely a much more scalable solution.\n\nArt\nThis month Robert Stephens has been concentrating on the escape pod used in the Javelin Destroyer. Even though it\u2019s only a small \/ minor craft in comparison to some of the larger ships, we\u2019re spending the time we need to give it the level of detail fans and backers have come to expect. A good amount of time was spent on how the pod doors will open \/ close, we want to have both a complex and accurately stylize locking mechanism that the player can easily use and recognize. Some of the challenges with something like this is making it look as though it would work if it existed in real life, and also balancing that with the requirements of other departments such as animation so that the character can actually get in and out of the pod easily.\n\nPascal Muller has been working on art for the procedural planet tech. This involves a lot of iterating and figuring out what works on a technical level as well as getting it to look as good as possible. The main difficulty is to make it read visually no matter how far or how close you are to the planet. To make this work there are multiple levels of detail which blend in and out depending on your distance to the surface in a very particular way. Can\u2019t say much more about it at this point except that we can\u2019t wait to share it with everyone.\n\nTech Art\nAs part of our character pipeline, this month we divided or character data files into three separate units, _SRC, _PUB, and _BND files. The SRC file stores the render mesh and skeleton data, PUB stores the puppet rig, and _BND file helps us to map our FBX animation data to our puppet file. Currently we\u2019re smoothing out the pipeline and developing tools to communicate with different files and systems with metadata nodes. We also provided some Tech support for EVA animation as well as some rigging for a weapon prototype.\n\nVFX\nFor the past few weeks VFX in Frankfurt has been prototyping the visual looks and styles of some of the Xi\u2019an tech. This tech differs visually from the other races and In order to get this visual look it required us to integrate some new tools into our texture creation workflow.\n\n2016 is off to a great start! We began this month with great excitement for what\u2019s coming next. Here\u2019s what BHVR worked on in January:\n\nDesign\nJanuary was very successful for the Behaviour Design team. Francois Boucher and Jesse Kalb went full steam ahead on the blueprints and the whiteboxes of Hurston shops. Working with our friends at ATX, we quickly iterated on Hurston locations and are about ready to hand most of the whiteboxes to the Art team.\n\nWe also updated our shopping prototype and put it in situation in both Casaba Outlet and in Nyx\/Levski bazaar market, proving the concept even more, highlighting our future needs but also its current flaws.\n\nLead Designer Guillaume Bourque is working with a bunch of team members, both in Montreal and in other studios, setting the next collection of flair items on the right track. All I can say is it\u2019s going to be real nice. We are also looking forward the next location we are going to work on, possibly a space station.\n\nLastly, we are helping setting up the Bar Citizen Montreal event which is going to take place early February here in Montreal.\n\nArt\nThis month, well rested from our holydays, we began R&D for a brand new planet. The work consisted mostly on creating a distinct feel and ambience to make sure that all our planets don\u2019t look alike. Furthermore, working on a new planet is a great opportunity to apply the latest techniques that we\u2019ve learned from the previous planets. Hopefully with this in mind, we can improve even more the visual quality of our new assets.\n\nOn the building sets, we moved to the polishing phase of the industrial\/mining set. Also, we continued work on the different shops that we will be able to explore in Levski.\n\nThere was also a lot of work done on industrial props and on the next month flair objects.\n\nEngineering\nThis new year, there was a lot of work done on different game features. Simon Jambu worked on the Party System, to help you pick up the right instance to play with all your friends.\n\nJohn Corbett, has been continuously at work on the datastore system, to allow temporary modifications on ships. This will be handled through a holotable on Port Olisar\n\nMartin Poirier is working with other studios on in ships\u2019 display screen optimization: reducing the memory and CPU footprints of ship UI (especially multicrew ships) as well as making the system ship component driven.\n\nAdamo Maiorano and Fabien Poupineau are going full speed ahead on shopping experience. Going through different prototypes to make sure you have the best experience.\n\nGreetings from Montreal! Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve been up to in the last month:\n\nOrganization Invitations\nLast month, we launched the new Organization invitation template. We refreshed the look-and-feel so that it gives more prominence to the Organization\u2019s own branding, and also added color schemes to match the type of Organization. You can find this feature under My Account > Organizations, in the left menu.\n\nSubscription campaign\nWe wrapped up the QA phase for the upcoming Subscription campaign and will be launching in the beginning of February. Subscribers are a key part of the Star Citizen community, as they support the production of \u201c10 for the Chairman,\u201d \u201cAround the \u2018Verse,\u201d \u201cBugsmashers,\u201d \u201cMeet the Devs,\u201d and more. In addition to re-designing the Subscription section of the website, we produced some logos and animations that can be used in videos. We\u2019ve also added new exclusive rewards (for Centurions and Imperators) in an easy-to-read matrix. If you haven\u2019t already done so, now\u2019s the best time to become a Subscriber!\n\nShip Happens\nThis was an exciting month for ship production, as three ships were brought into the game. With the release of 2.1, the Sabre became hangar-ready, giving players their first in-game look at this agile fighter. As for flight-ready ships released in 2.1, we had the Freelancer base as well as the Vanguard Warden. During the release of 2.1, a sale was launched alongside it featuring the Sabre, Warden and an Aegis Fighter Pack featuring both the Sabre and its big brother, the Vanguard Warden. The following week also saw the sale of the alien ship, Xi\u2019An Khartu Al, to coincide with Gillian Anderson\u2019s interview on Squadron 42. To close out the month, there was a Free-fly to coincide with the weekend of PAX South.\n\nMulti-Factor Authentication (MFA)\nWe have begun development on the core mechanism for multi-factor authentication, which will greatly reduce the number of hacked accounts. In addition, we\u2019re updating our design layouts to match the current look-and-feel of the website. Once MFA is in place, you will need a second authentication factor besides your username and password in order to access the game. You will decide how you receive this second factor (by email, SMS or a third-party app such as Google Authenticator). We are still in the early stages, so keep checking back for more updates!\n\nARK Starmap\nWe began discussions with the Star Citizen dev team to decide on the best way to integrate the Starmap into the game. A lot of factors have to be considered, such as visual integrity, performance, code maintenance, star system updates (synching), and what technologies should be used for the in-game version. Each month, we will provide more details on the process. In the meantime, you can check out our web version at: https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/starmap\n\nBehind the Scenes\nWhat happens when the game crashes? Well, we have been working with the Star Citizen dev team to build something we call the Panic Service. The Panic Service is responsible for receiving game client crash data and cataloging them in a centralized database where they can be accessed by the devs. Game crash data is sent to us via the \u201cReceiver\u201d, which is then processed by the \u201cWorker\u201d and stored in a database. From now on, Star Citizen devs will be able to access all crash data from this database, making it easier to extract the pertinent information. This will save time in troubleshooting.\n\nBar Citizen\nFor those of you who live in or near Montreal, we hope to meet you at Bar Citizen Montreal! All the details can be found on their Facebook page.\n\nThe start of 2016 has been a fantastic one. Right out of the gate, the response from you guys to Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 and 2.1 has been tremendous, and it always makes our jobs just a little more enjoyable when we see all of you enjoying your Star Citizen experience.\n\nVideos\nThe 10 For series that airs every Monday made another evolution when we started incorporating hosts from different disciplines. With the addition of 10 for the Developers, we can answer questions provided by our development subscribers with more than one perspective. This has been providing us with what we feel are answers that are both more informative, and hopefully more interesting as well.\n\nAround the Verse continues expanding to include coverage of other studios like Austin and Manchester, while addressing the production challenges inherent in trying to coordinate, produce, and direct segments through Skype and email. We\u2019re hopeful to have a chance to visit our European studios in person this year and delve even deeper into the amazing work being done on the other side of the world.\n\nTo facilitate the production of these segments, we constructed three free-standing sets to improve overall production value. While only one of them is currently decorated, we have plans to bring the other two online in the coming weeks to months. This in conjunction with upgrades to the audio and lighting equipment, we\u2019re slowly working to make our weekly productions all that we want them to be.\n\nJanuary also saw the release of two videos detailing Gillian Anderson\u2019s work on the upcoming Squadron 42. Gillian is an exciting addition to the cast and we look forward to sharing more behind the scenes looks with other members of the cast in the future.\n\nForums\nWe recently added the Shipyard sub-section of the forums: an area dedicated specifically to the discussion of your favorite ships in Star Citizen. This change, like any change, often takes time to get used to, but the developers have taken to the dedicated nature of the feedback they\u2019re looking for, and information is flowing from Citizens to Designers more easily than ever, so we definitely feel this is a huge win for everyone involved.\n\nLive Events\nWhile we didn\u2019t have an official presence at any conventions this month, we were able to send a single infiltrator to PAX South to meet with fans and shake his head at the litany of \u201cwhen\u201d questions that assaulted him. Our intrepid Community Manager even managed to unexpectedly find himself on a panel with the Community Manager for Elite: Dangerous, much to the delight of fans in attendance.\n\nPerks\nWe launched our new Subscriptions landing page this month that you can find here. It\u2019s a brief look at all the things becoming a development subscriber gets you. This month\u2019s Subscriber flair was the AV8 Battle Armor Replica from the Puglisi Collection, and looking at the numbers appears to be a big hit with you guys. We\u2019re constantly looking for ways to improve our Subscriber flair, so if you have a fantastic idea, please share it with us in the Subscriber forums.\n\nCoda\nWe\u2019ll keep it short and sweet this month, as by the time you\u2019ve gotten to this section your eyeballs may be ready to burst. As always, we want to thank the other studios and departments for taking the time to gather all this info for us, as we appreciate it just as much as I\u2019m certain you all do.\n\nSee you in the \u2018Verse!","de_DE":"ist manchmal nur zu wissen, wie man etwas nennt. Zum Beispiel, in der aktuellen Version eines Spiels, wenn Fahrzeuge erstellt werden, entweder wenn Sie oder jemand anderes ein Schiff anfordert oder wenn die KI einl\u00e4uft, ist es eigentlich ein ziemlich ineffizienter Prozess auf der Netzwerkseite. Der Client erstellt zun\u00e4chst eine Liste, was die gew\u00fcnschte Auslastung ist und sendet sie an den Server, der Server erstellt dann das Schiff mit allen einzelnen Elementen (die je nach Schiff \u00fcber 100 sein k\u00f6nnen), der Server serialisiert dann alle diese Elemente an alle Clients (eine ausgefallene Art zu sagen, er stellt sicher, dass beide mit den gleichen Informationen synchronisiert sind). Dies hat in der Vergangenheit zu gro\u00dfen Schmerzen gef\u00fchrt, um all dies zum Laufen zu bringen, da die CryEngine nicht f\u00fcr die dynamische Erstellung solcher Fahrzeuge konzipiert wurde und es am Ende zu vielen schwer zu findenden Fehlern kam. Eine Reihe davon wurde verursacht, weil das Schiff auf dem Client in einer anderen Reihenfolge gebaut werden konnte als auf dem Server, je nachdem, durch welche Reihenfolge die Pakete kamen. Wir machen jetzt Schluss mit all dem und entwickeln eine L\u00f6sung, bei der wir nur ein Informationspaket haben, das das gesamte Fahrzeug und seine Zusammensetzung beschreibt. Dieses Paket wird in einem Durchgang an die Clients gesendet und sowohl vom Server als auch vom Client zum Bau des Schiffes verwendet. Jetzt haben wir den Vorteil, dass viel weniger Netzwerkverkehr erforderlich ist, und weil der Server und alle Clients das Fahrzeug genau so bauen, wie es ist, ist es v\u00f6llig deterministisch, was bedeutet, dass es viel robuster und einfacher ist, alle Probleme zu verfolgen. Wir wollten dieses neue Paket ein Spawn-Bundle nennen, aber das, was mit dem AISpawnBundle verwechselt wurde, das wir bereits haben, haben wir dann angefangen, es Dependent Entity Spawn Helper zu nennen, was nicht gerade von der Zunge stolpert, also verwenden wir jetzt den Loadout Helper, mit dem wir auch nicht wirklich zufrieden sind. Also wird es sich wahrscheinlich wieder \u00e4ndern. (Wenn Sie nicht der Meinung sind, dass dies eine gro\u00dfe Sache ist, denken Sie daran, dass der Name eines Moduls oder einer Unterroutine in mehreren Dateien \u00fcber Millionen von Codezeilen \u00fcber verschiedene Codeentwicklungszweige hinweg verwendet werden kann, die von verschiedenen Teams verwendet werden, die vor einer Ver\u00f6ffentlichung zusammengef\u00fchrt werden m\u00fcssen. Und doch ist eine zuverl\u00e4ssige und geordnete Namenskonvention f\u00fcr die interne Konsistenz \u00e4u\u00dferst wichtig, denn wenn die Namen keinen intuitiven oder technischen Sinn ergeben, ist es f\u00fcr Neueinsteiger immer schwieriger und langsamer, sich auf einem System zurechtzufinden, das zu eigenwillig geworden ist.\n\nDie Arbeit am Objektcontainer (die ebenfalls zahlreiche Umbenennungen durchlaufen hat) macht gute Fortschritte. Wir haben jetzt den Beweis des Prinzips, wo wir einen Level als Objektcontainer exportieren und ihn dazu bringen k\u00f6nnen, ihn korrekt in das Spiel zu laden. Jetzt beginnen wir den lustigen Teil des Versuchs, den Level in mehrere Container aufzuteilen und sie dazu zu bringen, in und aus dem Speicher zu streamen, wo wir anfangen, alles zu zerst\u00f6ren. Wir werden auch daran arbeiten, die Fertigh\u00e4user umzubauen und die Container mit dem Zonensystem zu betreiben. Sobald all das drin ist, wird es uns erm\u00f6glichen, den Umfang einer Ebene stark zu erweitern.\n\nAnsonsten geht es ziemlich genau so weiter wie bisher. Die Audioleute versuchen derzeit, einen wirklich b\u00f6sen Audio-Korruptionsfehler aufzusp\u00fcren, den Sie vielleicht geh\u00f6rt haben. Es erweist sich als wirklich knifflig, da es sehr schwer zu reproduzieren ist, unsere QA h\u00f6rt es erst, nachdem wir das Spiel etwa 4 Stunden lang in einer Sitzung mit einem vollen Server gespielt haben, so dass wir es vielleicht nur ein- bis zweimal am Tag bekommen. Es endet damit, dass die Bearbeitungszeit zwischen der Erstellung eines neuen Builds mit zus\u00e4tzlichem Debugging oder potenziellen Korrekturen und dem Anblick des Geschehens sehr langwierig wird. Wir haben damit begonnen, das Geschehen einzugrenzen, und wir sind zuversichtlich, dass wir es in K\u00fcrze beheben k\u00f6nnen.\n\nGrafiken\nIm vergangenen Monat lag ein gro\u00dfer Schwerpunkt auf der Leistungssteigerung, und wir haben es geschafft, signifikante Verbesserungen bei bestehenden Szenen\/Schiffen, aber auch bei unseren neueren und komplexeren Anlagen, die sich noch in Produktion befinden, zu erzielen. Einige unserer j\u00fcngsten gro\u00dfen Gewinne sind darauf zur\u00fcckzuf\u00fchren, dass wir verschiedene Probleme bei der Einrichtung des Raumes der Konstellationen und Vergelter behoben haben, um sicherzustellen, dass sie von au\u00dferhalb des Schiffes richtig verschlossen sind, und um die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che beider Schiffe stark zu optimieren (wir rendern nun weniger als \u00bc der Anzahl der Maschen f\u00fcr die Holo-UI f\u00fcr genau das gleiche visuelle Ergebnis).\n\nIn diesem Monat haben die Leads den langfristigen Zeitplan f\u00fcr das Jahr geplant, und das Grafikteam musste den Grafikbedarf aller anderen Teams (Art, Vfx, Design, Gameplay) ermitteln und sicherstellen, dass wir alle erforderlichen Funktionen geplant haben. Dabei hat sich der Rest des Grafikteams auf neuere Funktionen konzentriert, angefangen mit der Wiederbelebung der Gaswolken-Technologie, die sowohl f\u00fcr die Staffel 42 als auch f\u00fcr die PU von entscheidender Bedeutung sein wird. Die Gaswolkentechnik wird auch in den n\u00e4chsten Monaten eine unserer Hauptpriorit\u00e4ten sein, und im Moment konzentrieren wir uns auf die Erforschung effizienter volumetrischer Beleuchtungstechniken und versuchen, das Aussehen und Gef\u00fchl zu verbessern, bevor wir in die Optimierungen und Polierstufen auf der weiteren Strecke kommen. Weitere neue Funktionen, mit denen wir beginnen, sind Verbesserungen an einigen der Shader wie Glas und Haut, eine neue Version unseres LOD-Mischwerkzeugs zur Optimierung von Raumstationen und FPS-Umgebungen, verbesserte Feuer-\/Gl\u00fcheffekte bei Partikeln und ein v\u00f6llig neues physikalisch basiertes Blend- und Linsenblendsystem.\n\nAnimation\nHier in Gro\u00dfbritannien haben wir an der Kernmechanik von FPS-Spielern gearbeitet. Wir haben einige der Zielvorgaben f\u00fcr die technische Umsetzung von Cover Low- und Cover High-Systemen festgelegt. Wir haben auch die Bewegungsabl\u00e4ufe ohne Waffen \u00fcberarbeitet, um der Animation in der dritten Person etwas Gewicht zu verleihen und gleichzeitig die Kamera in der ersten Person ruhig zu halten. Eine interessante Herausforderung an sich, wenn das Gameplay eine Wendung auf der Stelle erfordert!\n\nWeitere Anpassungen an die Kernanforderungen des Gameplays wurden vorgenommen, um das Fortbewegungs-Set der Hocke zu senken und so die vom Design vorgegebene H\u00f6henmetrik besser anzupassen. Dies wird es erm\u00f6glichen, dass Leerlauf und Fortbewegung unter der Deckungsh\u00f6he bleiben, anstatt dass der Kopf auftaucht, wenn Sie anfangen, sich zu bewegen. Wir haben auch begonnen, uns mit der Implementierung der Tresorraum- und Verwahrungsmechanik zu befassen, die Bewegungsdaten zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen und mit Design und Code an der besten Methode zu arbeiten, um sie aufzubrechen und ein reibungsloses Spielerlebnis zu erm\u00f6glichen.\n\nAnsonsten haben wir f\u00fcr das kommende Jahr geplant und einige K\u00f6rperdaten f\u00fcr die Kinofilme in Frankfurt bereitgestellt, um sie freizugeben.\n\nAudio\nHier bei CIG Audio haben wir viel Zeit damit verbracht, ein Problem aufzusp\u00fcren, das das Klangerlebnis im Live-Release beeinflusst; Gro\u00dfhandel und eher b\u00f6se Verzerrungen, die typischerweise erst nach einer ziemlich langen Spielsitzung auftreten.\n\nEs war bis diese Woche schwierig, die Ursache zu erkennen, aber wir denken, dass wir eine L\u00f6sung haben und wir werden sie so schnell wie m\u00f6glich einf\u00fchren. Wir haben Hilfe von der Community erhalten, um diesen Fall aufzusp\u00fcren, und wir m\u00fcssen allen Beteiligten danken, die \u00fcber die Pflicht hinausgegangen sind, uns ihre Datendateien zu schicken und das Problem so detailliert zu melden - es ist fantastisch, Hand in Hand mit euch allen zu arbeiten. Wir haben auch gro\u00dfe Unterst\u00fctzung von der Supportabteilung von Audiokinetic erhalten, die sich, wo immer sie k\u00f6nnen, eingesetzt hat. Es war eine schwierige Zeit f\u00fcr Graham, Sam und Mikhail, die notwendige Detektivarbeit zu leisten, und unser QA-Team war auch hier eine gro\u00dfe Hilfe. Wir werden sp\u00e4ter einen detaillierteren Bericht dar\u00fcber verfassen, sobald wir ein vollst\u00e4ndigeres Bild haben.\n\nWie Sie sich vorstellen k\u00f6nnen, hat dies einige unserer Fortschritte auf der Systemseite eingeschr\u00e4nkt und verdeutlicht, wie sehr wir Audioprogrammierer brauchen; ebenso wie diese Problematik, die dies in den Vordergrund stellt, haben wir unsere gesamte Roadmap f\u00fcr die Audiotechnik zusammengestellt, um in den breiteren Codeplan einzuspeisen, und sie enth\u00e4lt viel von dem, was im Ask A Dev-Forum diskutiert wird, und vieles mehr - es gibt noch eine Menge Grundlagen, die f\u00fcr ein so riesiges Universum wie unseres zu schaffen sind, viele Variablen, auf die man achten muss und man kann nie genau wissen, was sie sein k\u00f6nnten, bis das Spiel auf die Live-Server trifft.\n\nSo haben wir hier in der Gie\u00dferei 42 eine Stelle f\u00fcr einen Senior Audio Programmer frei, und man kann sich \u00fcber die CIG-Website bewerben!\n\nAnsonsten wurde die Arbeit an Staffel 42 nach M\u00f6glichkeit fortgesetzt, wobei Ross dort so viel wie m\u00f6glich hinlegte, einige Markierungen setzte, wie dieser Workflow aussehen sollte, und mit Sam am Musiklogiksystem weitermachte. Die Schiffsarbeiten laufen kontinuierlich \u00fcber Darren und Luke. Stefan hat die Auswirkungen von schiffsbasierten Waffen verfeinert - er erw\u00e4gt, sie gef\u00e4hrlicher zu machen, wenn man in EVA ist oder generell von einem Schiff nicht abgeschirmt wird. Matteo setzte seine Arbeit mit Foley f\u00fcr Charaktere fort, Phil hat eines der gro\u00dfartigsten Rigs aller Zeiten f\u00fcr die Aufnahme von p-cap-Dialogen zusammengestellt, Bob war hart darin, unser Dialogsystem\/Datenbank zu spezifizieren. Jason hat dabei geholfen und sucht nach einem n\u00e4herungsbasierten VOIP-Technologie. Ich habe so viel wie m\u00f6glich f\u00fcr eine bevorstehende Orchesterauff\u00fchrung arrangiert und auch mit allen an einem St\u00fcck von allem gearbeitet.\n\nHoffentlich k\u00f6nnen wir mit diesem b\u00f6sen Bug den Weg zur\u00fcck zu mehr gewinnbringender Arbeit beim Aufbau der Systeme und Inhalte finden. Danke f\u00fcrs Zuh\u00f6ren!\n\nQA\nDie UK QA wurde in diesem Monat zwischen den Tests von Star Citizen Future und Present aufgeteilt - wobei wir die aktuellen Release-Streams von 2.1.0 (\u00fcber 2.1.1 und 2.1.2) sowie den eher entwicklungsorientierten Stream abdecken, in dem die Arbeiten an den neuen Features durchgef\u00fchrt werden. Zum Zeitpunkt des Schreibens dieses Artikels steht 2.1.2 kurz davor, LIVE zu gehen - also sind wir alle gl\u00fccklich in dem Wissen, dass es eine gute monatelange Arbeit war, die gut gemacht wurde!\n\nIm Hinblick auf unseren gr\u00f6\u00dften, am schwierigsten zu fangenden Bug in diesem Monat haben wir viel Zeit der Reproduktion der Audio-Korruption und dem anschlie\u00dfenden Crash gewidmet, der in 2.1.0 und 2.1.1.1 stattgefunden hat. Dies war eine ziemlich aufwendige Arbeit f\u00fcr das britische Testteam, das sowohl eine h\u00e4ufige Kommunikation mit den Audioprogrammierern als auch die Anwesenheit auf den PTU- und LIVE-Servern erforderte, um das Problem zu l\u00f6sen - mit Hilfe vieler Geldgeber. Nochmals vielen Dank!\n\nDies ist auch Andy Nicholsons letzter Monat als QA-Manager in Gro\u00dfbritannien - Phil Webster wird in der kommenden Woche seinen Platz einnehmen. Andys SC-Reise wird fortgesetzt, wenn auch in neuer Form mit dem Design-Team - aber als QA-Manager hinterl\u00e4sst er ein Verm\u00e4chtnis, ein wirklich gro\u00dfartiges QA-Team aufzubauen.\n\nUnd jetzt ist es an der Zeit, sich abzumelden. SPACESHIPLAUNCHSFXNOISES!\n\nGr\u00fc\u00dfe B\u00fcrger,\nHallo aus Frankfurt! Unser Hauptaugenmerk f\u00fcr Januar lag darauf, die im Dezember gesetzten Ziele zu bekr\u00e4ftigen und sicherzustellen, dass wir mit ihnen weiterhin auf Kurs sind. Dazu hatten wir ein paar Treffen, um die Priorit\u00e4ten zu besprechen, so dass alle auf der gleichen Seite waren, woran als n\u00e4chstes gearbeitet werden sollte. Wir haben uns langsam auf den Fokus konzentriert, so dass jeder wieder in seine Zone zur\u00fcckkehren und ohne Unterbrechung so viel wie m\u00f6glich arbeiten konnte. Die bisherigen Fortschritte bei der Entwicklung von FPS, PU-Design, Cinematics, KI und Kernmotoren in den ersten Wochen des Jahres 2016 waren sehr beeindruckend und weitere Details finden Sie in den jeweiligen Berichten unseres Teams.\n\nProduktion\nDas Produktionsteam begann den Monat mit vielen Planungssitzungen. Nachdem wir das Jahr mit unserem massiven 2.0.0.0-Update abgeschlossen haben und einige wichtige Funktionen unseres Spiels eingef\u00fchrt haben, wollen wir sicherstellen, dass 2016 f\u00fcr alle gleicherma\u00dfen spannend wird. Wir trafen uns mit den Direktoren und dem Team, um dar\u00fcber zu sprechen, welche hochgesteckten Ziele wir im Jahr 2016 erreichen wollen und wann sie erreicht sein werden. Anschlie\u00dfend haben wir die Aufgaben priorisiert und mit unseren verf\u00fcgbaren Ressourcen abgeglichen. Die Gespr\u00e4che mit dem Team laufen noch, um die Ziele in erreichbare Schritte zu zerlegen. Dieser Prozess nimmt viel Zeit in Anspruch und da wir auch weiterhin an den Updates\/Bugfixes f\u00fcr das Live-Spiel arbeiten m\u00fcssen, ist es etwas, das sorgf\u00e4ltig geplant werden muss, damit sich das Team gut vorbereiten kann und die Unterbrechung der laufenden Arbeit so gering wie m\u00f6glich gehalten wird. Auf der KI-Seite sind wir fast fertig und werden in den n\u00e4chsten Tagen einen ersten Entwurf einer Roadmap fertig haben. Damit werden alle Anforderungen f\u00fcr S42, aber auch f\u00fcr PU abgedeckt und wir haben viele wirklich interessante Features und Systeme, an denen wir arbeiten k\u00f6nnen. Nachgespr\u00e4che werden mit anderen Abteilungen des Teams gef\u00fchrt, in denen Abh\u00e4ngigkeiten gekl\u00e4rt werden m\u00fcssen. FPS, PU-Design und Kerntriebwerksentwicklung sind auf einem guten Weg, aber alle m\u00fcssen priorisiert und die Arbeit weiter heruntergebrochen werden, bevor wir einen endg\u00fcltigen Plan erstellen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nCode\nHallo zusammen, ein neues Jahr beginnt mit neuen technologischen Herausforderungen. Wir haben 2.0 im Dezember und 2.1 im Januar ver\u00f6ffentlicht, jeweils begleitet von einer PTU-Phase, bevor sie in Betrieb gingen. Star Citizen hat heutzutage eine Gr\u00f6\u00dfe von ~30GB, was bedeutet, dass die Geldgeber mit dem aktuellen Patch-Modell eine Menge Daten herunterladen m\u00fcssen (insbesondere auf der PTU, wo wir wollen, dass so viele Leute wie m\u00f6glich das Spiel stabil machen, bevor wir es live spielen). Die Gr\u00f6\u00dfe ist intern f\u00fcr uns gleich, da selbst eine 1GBit LAN-Verbindung nicht sofort 30 GB \u00fcbertragen kann. Deshalb haben wir in Frankfurt gemeinsam mit unseren Austin-Ingenieuren daran gearbeitet, dieses Problem zu l\u00f6sen. Wir haben eine gute L\u00f6sung gefunden, an die wir alle glauben und mit der Umsetzung begonnen haben. Die Idee ist, ein System zu entwerfen, das Ihre lokalen Daten kennt, wei\u00df, welche Daten im Build enthalten sein sollten, und dann selektiv Ihren lokalen Datensatz herunterl\u00e4dt und aktualisiert, um ihn an den des Build anzupassen. Wenn zum Beispiel zwischen zwei PTU-Versionen Null-Texturen ge\u00e4ndert werden, dann wird keine Textur heruntergeladen, was den erforderlichen Download um mehrere GB reduziert. Wir hoffen, dass wir dieses System bald intern testen und dann auch auf unsere \u00f6ffentlichen Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen ausweiten k\u00f6nnen. Da es sich hierbei um einen Integrationsprozess handelt, der oft viele kleine Probleme hat, die viel Zeit in Anspruch nehmen, kann ich Ihnen leider nur Soon\u2122 als Sch\u00e4tzung geben.\n\nAuch der EVA war ein wichtiger Schwerpunkt! F\u00fcr zus\u00e4tzliche Fahrzeugaktivit\u00e4ten (EVA) ist das Spielermodell im Grunde genommen eine Ragdoll, die zu 100% durch k\u00f6rperliche Impulse gesteuert wird. Diese Art von \"Ragdoll\" kann durch Animation gesteuert werden und ist in der Lage, alle Aktionen durchzuf\u00fchren, die f\u00fcr einen Spielercharakter erforderlich sind. Alle physikalisch basierten Kontrollmodelle k\u00f6nnen in bestimmten Situationen unvorhersehbar sein: Zum Beispiel, wenn Beine auf ein Hindernis sto\u00dfen, macht der Charakter Salti und das Gleiten entlang der W\u00e4nde l\u00e4sst den Blick immer umherwirbeln. Dieses Verhalten ist physikalisch korrekt und so ziemlich identisch mit dem, was passiert, wenn Teile eines Schiffes auf ein Hindernis im Weltraum prallen. Aber wenn dies in der First-Person-Ansicht geschieht, dann ist es nicht genau das, was ein Spieler erwartet. In den letzten Wochen haben wir (mit Hilfe von Gro\u00dfbritannien und LA) verschiedene Kontrollmethoden f\u00fcr den EVA-Anzug untersucht, die die Physik der Ragdoll-Simulation erhalten und dem Spieler dennoch genauere Kontrollen f\u00fcr Navigation und EVA-Kampf erm\u00f6glichen. Dazu geh\u00f6ren:\n\nVerbesserter \"view-based control mode\" ohne Driften. Dieser Steuermodus ist sehr \u00e4hnlich wie John Pritchetts Thruster-Steuerung f\u00fcr Schiffe. Verbesserte Gierneigungssteuerung, die die \"Kamerarolle\" reduziert. Bessere Gleitf\u00e4higkeit entlang der W\u00e4nde durch Reduzierung der Reibung am Anzug und Nutzung von Gegenkr\u00e4ften zur automatischen Stabilisierung des Spinnvorgangs. Waffe, die in vertikaler und horizontaler Pose f\u00fcr angetriebene Ragdolls zielt Neues IK-System f\u00fcr angetriebene Ragdolls. Wann immer die Beine mit der Umgebung kollidieren, kann der Charakter sie sofort nach oben ziehen. Experimentelle Autonavigationsmethoden, die es einfacher machen, sich auf engstem Raum zu bewegen, ohne in der Ebenengeometrie stecken zu bleiben. Schlie\u00dflich haben wir weiter an der prozeduralen Planetenumgebung gearbeitet und verschiedene Kombinationen ausprobiert, um das Gesamtbild des Planeten zu verbessern. Wir machen gro\u00dfe Fortschritte und freuen uns darauf, in Zukunft die Dinge zu pr\u00e4sentieren.\n\nKI\nDa die KI aufgrund des Feiertags kein gro\u00dfes Update f\u00fcr Dezember zur Verf\u00fcgung gestellt hat, werden wir uns auf die allgemeinen Fortschritte konzentrieren, die wir seit letztem Monat gemacht haben.\n\nAuf der Charakterseite haben wir den ersten Durchgang \u00fcber die Implementierung der Funktionalit\u00e4ten abgeschlossen, die erforderlich sind, damit Feinde w\u00e4hrend ihres Kampfverhaltens Decken verwenden k\u00f6nnen. Animatoren haben uns Animationen zur Verf\u00fcgung gestellt, um in Deckung zu bleiben, aus Deckung zu schie\u00dfen, aus Deckung zu schauen und blind auf ihr Ziel zu schie\u00dfen. Die Verhaltensweisen k\u00f6nnen nun korrekt Funktionalit\u00e4ten wie z.B. Peeking oder Shooting aus dem Cover anfordern. Das System k\u00fcmmert sich um die Analyse der aktuellen Position in Bezug auf die Zielposition und w\u00e4hlt die richtige Haltung aus.\n\nWir begannen auch, die Charakterwahrnehmung zu reformieren. Im Grunde genommen schaffen wir ein Wahrnehmungssystem, das direkt im Spielcode modularisiert werden kann. Die Komponenten registrieren die verschiedenen Einheiten im System, so dass sie mit unterschiedlichen Sinnen wahrnehmen k\u00f6nnen. Vision war die erste, die in Angriff genommen wurde, wir haben mit der CryEngine VisionMap begonnen und eine Spielekomponente entwickelt, die eine Entit\u00e4t als Beobachter oder Beobachter registriert. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es uns, zu spezifizieren, was wir sehen m\u00f6chten und wie andere Charaktere uns wahrnehmen k\u00f6nnen, damit die Vision Map sich um die Durchf\u00fchrung von physischen \u00dcberpr\u00fcfungen und das Zwischenspeichern von Informationen f\u00fcr Abfragen k\u00fcmmern kann. Wir werden in den n\u00e4chsten Wochen weitere Details dazu mitteilen!\n\nAuf der Verhaltensseite haben wir viele Funktionalit\u00e4ten durch neue Verhaltensknoten freigelegt und das aktuelle Verhalten, das wir verwenden, erweitert. Wir haben auch damit begonnen, das TokenSystem zu nutzen, \u00fcber das wir bereits gesprochen haben, um die Grundlage f\u00fcr die erste Koordination zu schaffen. Mit dem TokenSystem experimentieren wir mit koordinierenden Agenten bei der Untersuchung gef\u00e4hrlicher Ger\u00e4usche, wobei eine Person untersuchen wird, w\u00e4hrend die andere sie abdeckt und auf seine Informationen wartet, etc.\n\nWas die Raumschiffe KI betrifft, so haben wir die gesamte Spawning-Logik von LUA nach C++ verschoben. Dies wird es uns erm\u00f6glichen, das System besser zu warten, und es hat uns bereits geholfen, indem es das asynchrone Entity Spawning richtig unterst\u00fctzt hat.\n\nDar\u00fcber hinaus haben wir an vielen Stabilit\u00e4tsverbesserungen gearbeitet und an der Erstellung eines Entwicklungsplans f\u00fcr 2016 und dar\u00fcber hinaus gearbeitet!\n\nGeb\u00e4udetechnik\nUnser Senior Build Engineer war im Allgemeinen mit der Arbeit am Build-System, Trybuild und der Automatisierung besch\u00e4ftigt. In diesem Monat wurde viel Zeit mit allgemeinen Build-Problemen verbracht, die sich im Allgemeinen w\u00e4hrend der Entwicklung ergeben. Er arbeitete auch an ein paar \u00c4nderungen, die es uns erm\u00f6glichen werden, nach der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung auf aktualisierte Software umzusteigen.\n\nQA\nDiesen Monat hat Chris Speak Fortschritte bei automatisierten Testaufbauten f\u00fcr CryEngine gemacht, die sich haupts\u00e4chlich auf die KI und die Art und Weise konzentrieren, wie sie mit Hindernissen innerhalb einer Ebene umgeht, sowie auf die Gebrauchsgegenst\u00e4nde wie Sprung \u00fcber W\u00e4nde und Klettern von Leitern mit einem relativ einfachen Flowgraph-Modul. Er richtete eine Test-Map ein, die mehrere Funktionstests enth\u00e4lt, die \u00fcber die Konsole sowohl im Editor als auch im Client-Modus ausgel\u00f6st werden k\u00f6nnen, der einem KI-Charakter sagt, dass er sich zu einem bestimmten Zielort bewegen soll, und nach der Eingabe dieses Ortes markiert der FeatureTest Knoten im Flussdiagramm den Test als abgeschlossen. Die KI muss bestimmen, wie sie zu diesem Zielgebiet mit Hilfe der Hindernisse vor ihr navigieren soll, so dass sie im Falle des folgenden Screenshot zwei 4 Meter lange Leitern besteigen muss, um das Ziel zu erreichen.\n\nEr hat auch zeitgesteuerte Demos aufgezeichnet, um Endbenutzer-Erfahrungs-Tests zu automatisieren, um uns t\u00e4glich Feedback zu geben, das sich auf alles bezieht, von Schiffseinstieg und Flug, bis hin zum FPS-Kampf usw. Dies sollte uns eine gute Grundlage f\u00fcr zuk\u00fcnftige \u00c4nderungen geben und \u00c4nderungen am Spiel-Code etwas weniger riskant und schmerzhaft machen.\n\nKinematiken\nCinematics arbeitet derzeit an mehreren Szenen, die zu Beginn der Geschichte von S42 entstehen. Wir haben einen ersten Pass \u00fcber unsere Navy Hospital Szenen gemacht und machen derzeit Previs \u00fcber ein paar andere, die wir noch nicht diskutieren k\u00f6nnen. Unsere Umweltk\u00fcnstlerinnen und -k\u00fcnstler sind damit besch\u00e4ftigt, Gel\u00e4nde, Umwelt und Schl\u00fcsselrequisiten f\u00fcr eine dramatische Planetenszene aufzubauen. Die Szene ist ziemlich prominent, und wir m\u00fcssen Platz f\u00fcr eine Idris schaffen, die landen kann. Wir begannen auch mit einem gro\u00dfen Facelifting sowie der Arbeit unter der Motorhaube am Trackview-Editor, einem der wichtigsten Werkzeuge, die von den Filmdesignern verwendet werden. Sascha Hoba ist derzeit damit besch\u00e4ftigt, das Tool-Set auf den neuesten Stand zu bringen, damit wir die Anforderungen an die Benutzerfreundlichkeit und den Funktionsumfang erf\u00fcllen k\u00f6nnen. Die zus\u00e4tzliche Funktionalit\u00e4t wird bestimmte Bereiche f\u00fcr das Team effizienter machen und es uns erm\u00f6glichen, Szenen schneller zusammenzustellen.\n\nDesign\nF\u00fcr Level Design werden die Prototypen f\u00fcr die Modularen Umgebungen und die Power Management Systeme weiter entwickelt, wir sind kurz davor, diese f\u00fcr einen internen Spieltest zur \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung des Konzepts bereit zu halten. Es sollte sich als eine ziemlich interessante, dynamische und unterhaltsame M\u00f6glichkeit f\u00fcr die Spieler herausstellen, mit der Umgebung in allem, von den Raumstationen bis hin zu den planetarischen Au\u00dfenposten, zu interagieren, nur stellen Sie sicher, dass Sie das Licht nicht ausschalten, w\u00e4hrend jemand noch auf SpaceLoo\u2122 ist, es k\u00f6nnen schlimme Dinge passieren.\n\nWie beim Entwicklungsleben im Allgemeinen sto\u00dfen wir manchmal auf Bugs und Blocker, die unsere Arbeit in einem Bereich vor\u00fcbergehend einstellen k\u00f6nnten, aber es gibt immer Arbeit, die diese kleinen L\u00fccken schlie\u00dft, so dass wir im letzten Monat auch an einer kleinen Multiplayerkarte gearbeitet haben, die Spielregeln f\u00fcr Multiplayer (Sichtlinie, Hindernisdichte, H\u00f6henvariationen, Ma\u00dfstab) sowie die Planung und Planung f\u00fcr 2016 definiert hat.\n\nIm letzten Monat konzentrierte sich das Systemdesign auf eine gr\u00fcndliche Analyse aller Systeme, die wir f\u00fcr Star Citizen ben\u00f6tigen, Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. Dies w\u00fcrde es uns erm\u00f6glichen, zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen und besser zu sehen, welche Systeme am h\u00e4ufigsten und in welchen spezifischen Situationen eingesetzt werden, damit wir sie besser priorisieren k\u00f6nnen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem haben wir an verschiedenen Frachtprototypen gearbeitet, um zu entscheiden, was die perfekte Balance ist, die Dinge so realistisch wie m\u00f6glich zu gestalten und gleichzeitig sicherzustellen, dass die Bewegung und das Management der Ladung immer noch Spa\u00df macht und spannend ist. Andere Systeme, auf die wir gerade dr\u00e4ngen, sind Pl\u00fcnderung und Ressourcen-Spawn-Management, da diese es uns erm\u00f6glichen werden, das PU-Erlebnis erheblich zu verbessern. Wir haben auch eine Neuzugang in unserem Team, Gr\u00e9goire, ein gro\u00dfartiger Designer aus Frankreich, der versucht hat, die enorme Menge an Dokumentation nachzuholen, so dass er im n\u00e4chsten Monat zu 100% auf dem neuesten Stand ist, w\u00e4hrend er gleichzeitig versucht, sich mit allen internen Tools vertraut zu machen, die wir t\u00e4glich verwenden.\n\nDar\u00fcber hinaus f\u00fchren wir weiterhin Gespr\u00e4che mit gro\u00dfartigen Bewerbern und Talenten, um die Reihen des wachsenden Frankfurter Designteams zu besetzen.\n\nWaffen\nWir haben mit dem Concept Art Team an einer neuen FPS Waffe gearbeitet, sie l\u00e4uft gut und sieht gut aus, aber sie befindet sich noch in einem sehr fr\u00fchen Konzeptstadium.\n\nAuch die aktualisierten Metriken f\u00fcr Schiffswaffen und pers\u00f6nliche Waffen wurden nach Auswertung durch verschiedene Abteilungen vervollst\u00e4ndigt und sind einsatzbereit.\n\nAudio\nDiesen Monat verbrachte Mikhail die meiste Zeit mit Bugfixes und dem Refactoring des AudioSystems, so dass es das ZoneSystem f\u00fcr alle relevanten Positionsinformationen nutzt. Es stellte sich heraus, dass es sich um einiges an Arbeit handelte, denn wie die meisten derzeit existierenden Audiosysteme wurde CrySoundSystem unter der impliziten Annahme konzipiert, dass Audioquellen gr\u00f6\u00dftenteils statisch sind und solche, die das Audiosystem nicht explizit informieren, wenn sich ihre Positionen \u00e4ndern. Dies funktioniert gut f\u00fcr die meisten existierenden 3D-Engine basierten Spiele. Nat\u00fcrlich, wie bei vielen anderen Dingen, ist Star Citizen ein anderer Fall. Da viele Aktionen im Spiel innerhalb der Raumschiffe stattfinden, gibt es keinen Grund zu erwarten, dass die Audioquellen in einem bestimmten Rahmen statisch sind, in der Tat, meistens bewegen sie sich alle, und manchmal, zum Beispiel bei der Landung auf einem Gro\u00dfschiff, kann es mehrere Cluster von Audioquellen geben, die sich alle mit unterschiedlichen Geschwindigkeiten im Verh\u00e4ltnis zum Zuh\u00f6rer bewegen. Dies gilt nicht nur f\u00fcr die permanenten Audioquellen wie Triebwerke, Schiffswaffen, T\u00fcren usw., sondern auch f\u00fcr die transienten, wie Fu\u00dftritte, Objektkollisionen, elektrische Funken. Wie Sie sich vorstellen k\u00f6nnen, summiert sich bei Verwendung des Standardansatzes die Anzahl der erforderlichen Positionsupdates schnell und beeinflusst die Gesamtleistung. Andererseits bietet das Zonensystem den Motormodulen eine zentralisierte und effiziente M\u00f6glichkeit, die Positionsinformationen f\u00fcr die ben\u00f6tigten Objekte im Auge zu behalten, so dass es definitiv eine viel skalierbarere L\u00f6sung ist, sie einmal pro Frame nach den Positionen aller h\u00f6rbaren Quellen basierend auf der Position des aktuellen H\u00f6rers abzufragen.\n\nKunst\nDiesen Monat konzentriert sich Robert Stephens auf die Fluchtkapsel, die im Javelin Destroyer verwendet wird. Auch wenn es sich im Vergleich zu einigen der gr\u00f6\u00dferen Schiffe nur um ein kleines \/ kleines Schiff handelt, verbringen wir die Zeit, die wir brauchen, um ihm den Detailreichtum zu geben, den Fans und Geldgeber erwartet haben. Es wurde viel Zeit damit verbracht, wie sich die Gondelt\u00fcren \u00f6ffnen \/ schlie\u00dfen lassen, wir wollen sowohl einen komplexen als auch stilsicheren Verriegelungsmechanismus haben, den der Spieler leicht bedienen und erkennen kann. Einige der Herausforderungen bei so etwas machen es so aussehen, als ob es funktionieren w\u00fcrde, wenn es im wirklichen Leben existierte, und auch den Ausgleich mit den Anforderungen anderer Abteilungen wie Animation, so dass der Charakter tats\u00e4chlich leicht in und aus der Kapsel kommen kann.\n\nPascal Muller hat an der Kunst f\u00fcr den prozeduralen Planeten Tech gearbeitet. Dazu geh\u00f6rt es, viel zu wiederholen und herauszufinden, was auf technischer Ebene funktioniert, und es so gut wie m\u00f6glich aussehen zu lassen. Die Hauptschwierigkeit besteht darin, es visuell lesen zu lassen, egal wie weit oder wie nah du am Planeten bist. Damit dies funktioniert, gibt es mehrere Detaillierungsstufen, die sich je nach Abstand zur Oberfl\u00e4che auf ganz besondere Weise ein- und ausblenden. Ich kann an dieser Stelle nicht viel mehr dar\u00fcber sagen, au\u00dfer dass wir es kaum erwarten k\u00f6nnen, es mit allen zu teilen.\n\nTechnische Kunst\nAls Teil unserer Charakter-Pipeline haben wir diesen Monat die Charakter-Datendateien in drei separate Einheiten aufgeteilt, _SRC-, _PUB- und _BND-Dateien. Die SRC-Datei speichert die Rendering-Netz und Skelettdaten, PUB speichert das Puppet-Rigg und _BND-Datei hilft uns, unsere FBX-Animationsdaten auf unsere Puppendatei abzubilden. Derzeit gl\u00e4tten wir die Pipeline und entwickeln Tools zur Kommunikation mit verschiedenen Dateien und Systemen mit Metadatenknoten. Wir haben auch einige technische Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr EVA-Animationen sowie einige Riggingarbeiten f\u00fcr einen Waffenprototypen geleistet.\n\nVFX\nIn den letzten Wochen hat VFX in Frankfurt die visuellen Looks und Styles einiger der Xi'an-Technologien prototypisiert. Diese Technologie unterscheidet sich optisch von den anderen Rassen und um diesen visuellen Look zu erhalten, mussten wir einige neue Tools in unseren Texturierungs-Workflow integrieren.\n\n2016 hat einen guten Start! Wir haben diesen Monat mit gro\u00dfer Begeisterung f\u00fcr das, was als n\u00e4chstes kommt, begonnen. Hier ist, woran BHVR im Januar gearbeitet hat:\n\nDesign\nDer Januar war f\u00fcr das Behaviour Design Team sehr erfolgreich. Francois Boucher und Jesse Kalb gingen mit Volldampf auf die Blaupausen und die Whiteboxen der Hurston-L\u00e4den los. In Zusammenarbeit mit unseren Freunden bei ATX sind wir schnell an Hurston-Standorten iteriert und stehen dem Art-Team die meisten Whiteboxen zur Verf\u00fcgung.\n\nWir haben auch unseren Einkaufsprototypen aktualisiert und sowohl im Casaba Outlet als auch im Nyx\/Levski Basarmarkt in eine Situation gebracht, die das Konzept noch mehr beweist und unsere zuk\u00fcnftigen Bed\u00fcrfnisse, aber auch die aktuellen M\u00e4ngel hervorhebt.\n\nLead Designer Guillaume Bourque arbeitet mit einer Reihe von Teammitgliedern zusammen, sowohl in Montreal als auch in anderen Studios, um die n\u00e4chste Kollektion von Flairartikeln auf den richtigen Weg zu bringen. Alles, was ich sagen kann, ist, dass es sehr sch\u00f6n werden wird. Wir freuen uns auch auf den n\u00e4chsten Standort, an dem wir arbeiten werden, m\u00f6glicherweise eine Raumstation.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich helfen wir bei der Einrichtung der Veranstaltung Bar Citizen Montreal, die Anfang Februar hier in Montreal stattfinden wird.\n\nKunst\nDiesen Monat, gut ausgeruht von unseren Feiertagen, begannen wir mit der Forschung und Entwicklung f\u00fcr einen brandneuen Planeten. Die Arbeit bestand haupts\u00e4chlich darin, ein ausgepr\u00e4gtes Gef\u00fchl und Ambiente zu schaffen, um sicherzustellen, dass alle unsere Planeten nicht gleich aussehen. Dar\u00fcber hinaus ist die Arbeit auf einem neuen Planeten eine gro\u00dfartige Gelegenheit, die neuesten Techniken anzuwenden, die wir von den vorherigen Planeten gelernt haben. In diesem Sinne k\u00f6nnen wir hoffentlich die visuelle Qualit\u00e4t unserer neuen Assets noch weiter verbessern.\n\nBei den Baus\u00e4tzen sind wir in die Polierphase des Industrie-\/Bergbau-Sets \u00fcbergegangen. Au\u00dferdem haben wir die Arbeit an den verschiedenen Gesch\u00e4ften fortgesetzt, die wir in Levski erkunden k\u00f6nnen.\n\nEs wurde auch viel an Industriest\u00fctzen und an den Flairobjekten des n\u00e4chsten Monats gearbeitet.\n\nIngenieurwesen\nIn diesem neuen Jahr gab es eine Menge Arbeit an verschiedenen Spielfunktionen. Simon Jambu arbeitete am Partysystem, um dir zu helfen, die richtige Instanz zu finden, um mit all deinen Freunden zu spielen.\n\nJohn Corbett, war st\u00e4ndig mit der Arbeit am Datenspeichersystem besch\u00e4ftigt, um tempor\u00e4re \u00c4nderungen an Schiffen zu erm\u00f6glichen. Dies wird durch einen Holotable auf Port Olisar abgewickelt.\n\nMartin Poirier arbeitet mit anderen Studios zusammen, um die Bildschirmoptimierung von Schiffen zu verbessern: Reduzierung des Speicher- und CPU-Footprints der Schiffsoberfl\u00e4che (insbesondere von Multicrew-Schiffen) sowie die Steuerung der Systemkomponenten.\n\nAdamo Maiorano und Fabien Poupineau gehen beim Einkaufen mit voller Kraft voran. Durchlaufen verschiedener Prototypen, um sicherzustellen, dass Sie das beste Erlebnis haben.\n\nGr\u00fc\u00dfe aus Montreal! Hier ist, was wir im letzten Monat gemacht haben:\n\nUnternehmenseinladungen\nLetzten Monat haben wir die neue Einladungsvorlage f\u00fcr die Organisation eingef\u00fchrt. Wir haben das Look-and-Feel aktualisiert, so dass es dem eigenen Branding der Organisation mehr Bedeutung verleiht, und auch Farbschemata hinzugef\u00fcgt, die der Art der Organisation entsprechen. Sie finden diese Funktion unter Mein Konto > Organisationen im linken Men\u00fc.\n\nAbonnementkampagne\nWir haben die QS-Phase f\u00fcr die kommende Abonnementkampagne abgeschlossen und werden Anfang Februar starten. Abonnenten sind ein wichtiger Teil der Star Citizen-Community, da sie die Produktion von \"10 f\u00fcr den Vorsitzenden\", \"Rund um den Vers\", \"Bugsmashers\", \"Meet the Devs\" und mehr unterst\u00fctzen. Neben der Neugestaltung des Bereichs Abonnement der Website haben wir einige Logos und Animationen erstellt, die in Videos verwendet werden k\u00f6nnen. Wir haben auch neue exklusive Belohnungen (f\u00fcr Centurionen und Imperatoren) in einer leicht verst\u00e4ndlichen Matrix hinzugef\u00fcgt. Wenn Sie dies noch nicht getan haben, ist jetzt die beste Zeit, um Abonnent zu werden!\n\nSchiff passiert\nDies war ein aufregender Monat f\u00fcr die Schiffsproduktion, da drei Schiffe ins Spiel gebracht wurden. Mit der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von 2.1 wurde der S\u00e4bel Hangar-f\u00e4hig und gab den Spielern ihren ersten Blick auf diesen agilen K\u00e4mpfer im Spiel. Was die in 2.1 freigegebenen flugbereiten Schiffe betrifft, so hatten wir die Freelancer-Basis und den Vanguard Warden. W\u00e4hrend der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von 2.1 wurde gleichzeitig ein Verkauf mit dem S\u00e4bel, dem Aufseher und einem Aegis Fighter Pack mit dem S\u00e4bel und seinem gro\u00dfen Bruder, dem Vanguard Warden, gestartet. In der folgenden Woche wurde auch das au\u00dferirdische Schiff Xi'An Khartu Al verkauft, zeitgleich mit dem Interview von Gillian Anderson auf Staffel 42. Um den Monat abzuschlie\u00dfen, gab es eine Freifahrt, die mit dem Wochenende der PAX South zusammenfiel.\n\nMulti-Faktor-Authentifizierung (MFA)\nWir haben mit der Entwicklung des Kernmechanismus f\u00fcr die Multi-Faktor-Authentifizierung begonnen, der die Anzahl der gehackten Konten stark reduzieren wird. Dar\u00fcber hinaus aktualisieren wir unsere Design-Layouts, um sie an das aktuelle Look-and-Feel der Website anzupassen. Sobald die MFA eingerichtet ist, ben\u00f6tigen Sie neben Ihrem Benutzernamen und Passwort einen zweiten Authentifizierungsfaktor, um auf das Spiel zugreifen zu k\u00f6nnen. Sie entscheiden, wie Sie diesen zweiten Faktor erhalten (per E-Mail, SMS oder einer Drittanbieter-App wie Google Authenticator). Wir befinden uns noch in der Anfangsphase, also schauen Sie immer wieder vorbei, um weitere Updates zu erhalten!\n\nARK Sternenkarte\nWir begannen Diskussionen mit dem Star Citizen Entwicklungsteam, um zu entscheiden, wie die Starmap am besten in das Spiel integriert werden kann. Viele Faktoren m\u00fcssen ber\u00fccksichtigt werden, wie z.B. visuelle Integrit\u00e4t, Leistung, Codepflege, Star-System-Updates (Synching) und welche Technologien f\u00fcr die In-Game-Version verwendet werden sollten. Jeden Monat werden wir mehr Details \u00fcber den Prozess bekannt geben. In der Zwischenzeit k\u00f6nnen Sie sich unsere Web-Version ansehen unter: https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/starmap\n\nHinter den Kulissen\nWas passiert, wenn das Spiel abst\u00fcrzt? Nun, wir haben mit dem Star Citizen Entwicklungsteam zusammengearbeitet, um etwas zu bauen, das wir den Panikdienst nennen. Der Panikdienst ist daf\u00fcr verantwortlich, die Crash-Daten des Spielclients zu empfangen und in einer zentralen Datenbank zu katalogisieren, auf die die Entwickler zugreifen k\u00f6nnen. Die Spielabbruchdaten werden \u00fcber den \"Receiver\" an uns gesendet, der dann vom \"Worker\" verarbeitet und in einer Datenbank gespeichert wird. Von nun an k\u00f6nnen Star Citizen-Entwickler auf alle Crash-Daten aus dieser Datenbank zugreifen, was die Extraktion der relevanten Informationen erleichtert. Dies spart Zeit bei der Fehlersuche.\n\nBar B\u00fcrger\nF\u00fcr diejenigen unter Ihnen, die in oder in der N\u00e4he von Montreal wohnen, hoffen wir, Sie im Bar Citizen Montreal zu treffen! Alle Details findest du auf der Facebook-Seite.\n\nDer Beginn des Jahres 2016 war ein fantastischer. Direkt vor der Haust\u00fcr war die Resonanz von euch Jungs auf Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 und 2.1 enorm, und es macht unsere Arbeit immer ein wenig angenehmer, wenn wir sehen, wie ihr alle eure Star Citizen Erfahrung genie\u00dft.\n\nVideos\nDie 10 For-Serie, die jeden Montag ausgestrahlt wird, machte eine weitere Entwicklung, als wir begannen, Gastgeber aus verschiedenen Disziplinen aufzunehmen. Mit der Hinzuf\u00fcgung von 10 f\u00fcr die Entwickler k\u00f6nnen wir Fragen unserer Entwicklungsteilnehmer mit mehr als einer Perspektive beantworten. Das hat uns mit Antworten versorgt, die sowohl informativer als auch hoffentlich interessanter sind.\n\nAround the Verse expandiert weiter und umfasst die Berichterstattung \u00fcber andere Studios wie Austin und Manchester, w\u00e4hrend es sich gleichzeitig um die Herausforderungen bei der Produktion handelt, die mit dem Versuch verbunden sind, Segmente \u00fcber Skype und E-Mail zu koordinieren, zu produzieren und zu steuern. Wir hoffen, in diesem Jahr die M\u00f6glichkeit zu haben, unsere europ\u00e4ischen Studios pers\u00f6nlich zu besuchen und noch tiefer in die erstaunliche Arbeit am anderen Ende der Welt einzutauchen.\n\nUm die Produktion dieser Segmente zu erleichtern, haben wir drei freistehende Sets konstruiert, um den Gesamtproduktionswert zu verbessern. W\u00e4hrend nur einer von ihnen derzeit dekoriert ist, haben wir Pl\u00e4ne, die beiden anderen in den kommenden Wochen bis Monaten online zu bringen. In Verbindung mit der Modernisierung der Audio- und Beleuchtungstechnik arbeiten wir langsam daran, unsere w\u00f6chentlichen Produktionen so zu gestalten, wie wir es w\u00fcnschen.\n\nIm Januar wurden auch zwei Videos ver\u00f6ffentlicht, die Gillian Anderson's Arbeit an der kommenden Squadron 42 zeigen. Gillian ist eine aufregende Erg\u00e4nzung der Besetzung und wir freuen uns darauf, in Zukunft mehr hinter den Kulissen mit anderen Mitgliedern der Besetzung zu teilen.\n\nForen\nWir haben k\u00fcrzlich den Unterabschnitt Werft in den Foren hinzugef\u00fcgt: einen Bereich, der speziell der Diskussion \u00fcber Ihre Lieblingsschiffe in Star Citizen gewidmet ist. Diese \u00c4nderung, wie jede \u00c4nderung, braucht oft Zeit, um sich daran zu gew\u00f6hnen, aber die Entwickler haben sich der engagierten Natur des Feedbacks, nach dem sie suchen, angenommen, und Informationen flie\u00dfen leichter als je zuvor von B\u00fcrgern zu Designern, so dass wir definitiv der Meinung sind, dass dies ein gro\u00dfer Gewinn f\u00fcr alle Beteiligten ist.\n\nLive-Events\nObwohl wir diesen Monat keine offizielle Pr\u00e4senz auf irgendwelchen Conventions hatten, konnten wir einen einzigen Eindringling nach PAX South schicken, um uns mit den Fans zu treffen und den Kopf zu sch\u00fctteln bei der Litanei der \"Wann\"-Fragen, die ihn angriffen. Unser unerschrockener Community-Manager konnte sich sogar unerwartet in einem Panel mit dem Community-Manager f\u00fcr Elite wiederfinden: Gef\u00e4hrlich, sehr zur Freude der anwesenden Fans.\n\nVerg\u00fcnstigungen\nWir haben diesen Monat unsere neue Landing Page f\u00fcr Abonnements gestartet, die Sie hier finden. Es ist ein kurzer Blick auf all die Dinge, die dich dazu bringen, ein Entwicklungsteilnehmer zu werden. Das Flair des Abonnenten in diesem Monat war das AV8 Battle Armor Replica aus der Puglisi Collection, und das Betrachten der Zahlen scheint ein gro\u00dfer Hit bei euch zu sein. Wir sind st\u00e4ndig auf der Suche nach M\u00f6glichkeiten, unser Abonnenten-Flair zu verbessern. Wenn Sie also eine fantastische Idee haben, teilen Sie sie uns bitte in den Abonnentenforen mit.\n\nCoda\nWir werden es diesen Monat kurz und b\u00fcndig halten, denn als du zu diesem Abschnitt gekommen bist, k\u00f6nnten deine Aug\u00e4pfel bereit sein zu platzen. Wie immer m\u00f6chten wir uns bei den anderen Studios und Abteilungen bedanken, dass sie sich die Zeit genommen haben, all diese Informationen f\u00fcr uns zu sammeln, denn wir sch\u00e4tzen sie genauso sehr wie ich bin mir sicher, dass ihr es alle tut.\n\nWir sehen uns im Vers! Gr\u00fc\u00dfe B\u00fcrger,\n2016 ist da, und wir sind bereit zu rocken! Wir haben den Monat mit einer Reihe von Gipfeln in Gro\u00dfbritannien und Los Angeles begonnen, um uns auf das neue Jahr vorzubereiten. Es gibt noch einen weiteren Schritt, einen KI-Gipfel in Frankfurt n\u00e4chste Woche, aber wir sind bereit, 2016 anzunehmen! Jetzt, da unsere i's gepunktet und unsere t's gekreuzt sind, sind wir bereit, weiterhin einige gro\u00dfartige Inhalte f\u00fcr die Community bereitzustellen. Konkret: F\u00fcr die Zukunft k\u00f6nnen Sie erwarten, dass der Star Citizen Alpha regelm\u00e4\u00dfig aktualisiert wird. Wir streben nach einem signifikanten Patch pro Monat. Erwarten Sie, dass sich dieser Zyklus wiederholt: Zahlreiche PTU-Testpatches, gefolgt von einem Live-Release und dann einer Flaute als Inhalt f\u00fcr den n\u00e4chsten Patch, werden vorbereitet und integriert. W\u00e4hrend ich dies schreibe, arbeitet das Team an den Inhalten f\u00fcr Alpha 2.2. Erwarten Sie, dass Sie sehr bald mehr \u00fcber diese Version erfahren! In der Zwischenzeit sind hier die Besonderheiten dessen, woran jedes Star Citizen Studio im Januar gearbeitet hat.....\n\nGr\u00fc\u00dfe B\u00fcrger!\nNachdem wir nun unseren ersten Schritt ins Jahr 2016 gemacht haben, sind wir bereits mit einem gro\u00dfen Sprung in das neue Jahr gestartet. Im Januar wurde Star Citizen 2.1.0 ver\u00f6ffentlicht, eine Weiterentwicklung der bahnbrechenden Version 2.0.0.0 vom letzten Jahr. Dem Universum wurden zus\u00e4tzliche Weltmissionen hinzugef\u00fcgt; das gr\u00f6\u00dfte Alleinstellungsmerkmal waren jedoch die beiden zus\u00e4tzlichen flugf\u00e4higen Schiffe: die Aegis Vanguard Warden und der lang erwartete MISC Freelancer. Wenn Sie letztes Jahr einen unserer Streams gesehen h\u00e4tten, h\u00e4tten Sie die Enth\u00fcllung des AEGIS-S\u00e4bels miterlebt. Mit der Version 2.1.0 f\u00fcr diejenigen, die den Sabre w\u00e4hrend seines Deb\u00fcts im letzten Jahr gekauft haben, wird dieser elegante und sch\u00f6ne Weltraum\u00fcberlegenheits-K\u00e4mpfer in ihrem Hangar sitzen!\n\nNeben der regelm\u00e4\u00dfigen Auswahl an Bilanzen, Korrekturen und Updates finden Sie im Folgenden unseren Monatsbericht f\u00fcr CIG LA.\n\nIngenieurwesen\nDer Januar war ein arbeitsreicher Monat f\u00fcr das CIG LA Engineering Team. Der gr\u00f6\u00dfte Meilenstein f\u00fcr alle LA-Teams war die erfolgreiche Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Star Citizen 2.1.0. Lead Engineer Paul Reindell hat solide Fortschritte bei der Entwicklung des Item Refactors gemacht, der zusammenfassend als Item System 2.0 bezeichnet wird. Andere Regionen tragen zu diesem neuen System bei, und viele vorl\u00e4ufige Funktionen wurden bereits freigegeben, um eine solide Grundlage f\u00fcr das Elementsystem 2.0 zu schaffen und die Voraussetzungen f\u00fcr seine weitere Entwicklung zu schaffen. Wie im Bericht des letzten Monats erw\u00e4hnt, bietet diese Funktion eine gr\u00f6\u00dfere Kontrolle \u00fcber die Detaillierung im Backend des Spiels. F\u00fcr Januar hat Paulus eine physikalische Steuerungskomponente implementiert, die die Physikalisierung von Objekten \u00fcbernimmt. Dies lebt als Schicht zwischen den Elementen und ihrem physischen Proxy und verbindet die Art und Weise, wie der Physikmodus eines Objekts ge\u00e4ndert wird (aktiviert, statisch, starr, ragdoll, etc.).\n\nDer Ingenieur Mark Abent hat flei\u00dfig Parameter f\u00fcr die Munition entwickelt. Da sich viele unserer Systeme von strengem XML zu einem eigenen internen Datenmanagementsystem entwickeln, ist es notwendig, Projektile auf dieses neue Managementsystem umzustellen. W\u00e4hrend dies nach au\u00dfen hin keine sichtbaren Auswirkungen auf das Spiel selbst hat, \u00e4ndert es die Art und Weise, wie die Parameter geladen werden und erm\u00f6glicht es uns, vom XML-Projektpfad wegzugehen.\n\nDer stellvertretende Ingenieur Chad Zamzow hat an \u00c4nderungen der Funktionsweise von Schilden gearbeitet. Indem man den Gesundheitszustand der Schilde verbessert und Sch\u00e4den verhindert, sollten gut verwaltete Schilde einen positiven Nutzen gegen\u00fcber schlecht oder unsachgem\u00e4\u00df verwalteten Schilden bieten - mit dem Ziel, Laser immer effektiver bei der Beseitigung von Schilden zu machen, je mehr Schaden ein Schild erleidet und interessante Entscheidungen f\u00fcr Spieler zu treffen, die Regenerationsgeschwindigkeit, schiere St\u00e4rke und Signatur in ihren Schildgeneratoroptionen ausbalancieren.\n\nDas neue Interaction-System wurde von unserem Engine Programmer Allen Chen entwickelt und ver\u00e4ndert die Funktionsweise von Interaktionen. Die aktuelle \"Use\"-Funktion im Spiel verhindert, dass wir mehr als eine Aktion zu einem einzelnen interagierbaren Objekt hinzuf\u00fcgen. Allen hat die Interaktionslogik vollst\u00e4ndig entkoppelt, so dass mehrere Akteure gleichzeitig mit einem einzigen Objekt interagieren k\u00f6nnen.\n\nTechnisches Design\n\"Ships galore!\" sollte der Slogan f\u00fcr das CIG LA Tech Design Team in diesem Monat sein. Bei so vielen Schiffen in der Pipeline ist es schwierig zu entscheiden, von wo aus man anfangen soll.\n\nEines der bisher am meisten erwarteten Schiffe, die 890 Jump, wurde gerade von Matt Sherman mit seiner technischen Planungsdokumentation fertig gestellt. Die Erstellung der technischen Entwurfsdokumentation f\u00fcr das Schiff stellt den K\u00fcnstlern eine Vorlage f\u00fcr Spezifikationen zur Verf\u00fcgung. Erforderliche Informationen wie Abmessungen, Hartpunkte, Innenvolumen und verschiedene Funktionalit\u00e4ten sorgen daf\u00fcr, dass die K\u00fcnstler alle notwendigen Gestaltungselemente integrieren.\n\nDie Weiterentwicklung des Xi'an Scout hat die technische Designphase der grauen Box erreicht. W\u00e4hrend die technische Entwurfsdokumentation einem \"Letter of Intent\" \u00e4hnelt, indem sie eine Vorstellung davon vermittelt, wie das Schiff funktionieren wird, beginnen in der grauen Kastenphase die feink\u00f6rnigen Details des Schiffes Gestalt anzunehmen. Lead Tech Designer Kirk Tome hat dem Scout einen \u00dcberblick gegeben, wie z.B. seine Varianten, Eigenschaften - ein Vergleich verschiedener Leistungsaspekte basierend auf anderen Schiffen \u00e4hnlicher Masse und Bauweise - und eine Vorstellung davon, wie die Ergonomie des Cockpits gestaltet sein wird.\n\nW\u00e4hrend Kirk seine Designarbeit am Scout fortsetzt, hat er auch die schwere Aufgabe \u00fcbernommen, die Masse jedes Schiffes im Spiel zu refaktorisieren. Kirk ist definitiv kein Job f\u00fcr schwache Nerven, er hat erforscht, wie man die Masse unserer Schiffe richtig berechnet, und versucht nun, diese Erkenntnisse anzuwenden. Mit funktionalem Realismus, einem Endziel von Star Citizen, wollen wir sicherstellen, dass alle Schiffe Berechnungen verwenden, die ideal f\u00fcr die Art von Materialien sind, die unser Universum enthalten wird. Ob es sich nun um weit in die Zukunft reichende Verbundwerkstoffe handelt, die noch zu entdecken sind, oder um Materialien aus dem bew\u00e4hrten Eisen und Stahl, jedes dieser Elemente wird die Art und Weise beeinflussen, wie sich Schiffe durch die Leere bewegen.\n\nBalance-Meister Calix Reneau hat auch eine Jonglieraufgabe \u00fcbernommen, die einer reisenden Zirkusshow w\u00fcrdig ist. Mit der weiteren Iteration unseres Schildsystems hat Calix ein Metriesystem zur Quantifizierung der Schildleistung entwickelt. Indem wir dem Tech Design-Team erlauben, diese Leistungszahlen zu analysieren, k\u00f6nnen wir weiter verfeinern, wie Schilde nicht nur als Ganzes funktionieren, sondern auch, wie sie gegen verschiedene Waffentypen reagieren, unabh\u00e4ngig davon, ob es sich um kinetische Projektile, energiebasierte Angriffe oder andere exotische Waffentypen handelt.\n\nKunst\nDa das Team anf\u00e4ngt, die Shader-Bibliotheken f\u00fcr MISC auszuf\u00fcllen, ist es kein Wunder, dass sich die Reliant zu einem unserer atemberaubendsten Schiffe entwickelt und gleichzeitig zu einer unserer kollaborativsten Multi-Studio-Aufgaben wird. Seine unkonventionelle vertikale Form hat unserem Schiffsteam eine frische Leinwand gegeben, um kreative Ideen f\u00fcr ein kreatives Design zu entwickeln.\n\nDer MISC Reliant war eine reine Handarbeit des CIG LA Art Teams. Elwin Bachiller und Daniel Kamentsky haben die \u00e4u\u00dferen POMs und Decals fertiggestellt und fast alle Geometrien generiert, um sie zu zerst\u00f6ren.\n\nDer Konzeptk\u00fcnstler Gurmukh Bhasin hat gro\u00dfe Putzarbeiten zur Tapezierung unseres neuen Geb\u00e4udes erstellt, w\u00e4hrend wir uns noch immer an den neuen Standort gew\u00f6hnt haben. Jeder Konferenzraum erh\u00e4lt ein anderes Thema, das auf einem Schiffshersteller basiert, und Gurmukh hat Renderings entworfen, wie jeder Raum nach Fertigstellung der Installationen aussehen soll. Wenn Sie jemals vorbeikommen, um einen Rundgang durch den Ort zu machen, sollten Sie sich unser riesiges Wandbild mit der Vanguard ansehen. Angesichts der Zeit, die wir hier verbringen, ist die Investition in die Moral die M\u00fche wert!\n\nOmar \"Armani\" Aweidah und Jeremiah \"Versace\" Lee, unsere Modefans im Spiel, kreieren Uniform- und Kleidungsdesign f\u00fcr Charaktere im Spiel. Die Schaffung einer zeitgem\u00e4\u00dfen \u00c4sthetik f\u00fcr Kleidung unter Beibehaltung bestimmter Elemente erm\u00f6glicht es unseren Spielern, sich mit dem von uns geschaffenen Universum zu identifizieren und sich mit ihm zu identifizieren. Wir wollen nicht nur, dass unsere Schiffe die epischsten Raumschiffe aller Zeiten sind, sondern auch, dass unsere Lotsen, Piraten, Entdecker und Entdecker im Leben eines Sternenb\u00fcrgers angemessen auf das von ihnen gew\u00e4hlte Los ausgerichtet sind. Jeremiah vervollst\u00e4ndigte das Konzept der mittleren R\u00fcstung, w\u00e4hrend Omar die hochpolare Geometrie f\u00fcr die m\u00e4nnliche Marine BDU (Battle Dress Uniform) vervollst\u00e4ndigte.\n\nTechnischer Inhalt\nSean Tracy ist in das B\u00fcro in Los Angeles gewechselt, hat sich aus Austin, Texas, verpflanzt und sich mit seinem Tech Content Team einen Namen gemacht.\n\nDiejenigen, die w\u00e4hrend der 2.1.0 PTU eine Konstellation gesteuert haben oder in der N\u00e4he einer Konstellation standen, haben m\u00f6glicherweise einen R\u00fcckgang der Leistung im Spiel bemerkt. Matt Intrieri und Mark McCall haben sich intensiv mit der Ursache dieses Leistungsproblems besch\u00e4ftigt. Mit 2.1.1.1 sollten Piloten einer Konstellation (und alle, die in der N\u00e4he stehen) eine deutliche Steigerung der Spielleistung feststellen.\n\nWeitere inhaltliche Verbesserungen, die von Herrn McCall durchgef\u00fchrt werden, sind das Hinzuf\u00fcgen von LODs zur Normalisierung der Maschenzahl f\u00fcr die Konstellation sowie das Konvertieren von Triebwerken f\u00fcr alle Schiffe in das CDF-Format und das Hinzuf\u00fcgen von LODs zu den Triebwerken.\n\nRiggers Gaige Hallman und John Riggs (ja, wir haben einen Rigger namens Riggs.... wie fantastisch ist das?) haben daran gearbeitet, Prozesse in Gang zu setzen. John hat die H\u00e4utungspunkte der Charaktere finalisiert, w\u00e4hrend Gaige jeden Tag ein wenig Zeit damit verbracht hat, einen fr\u00fchen Fr\u00fchjahrsputz durchzuf\u00fchren und unser Charakter-Outsource Submission Management in Shotgun zu organisieren.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich hat Patrick Salerno auch proaktiv die Gladius versch\u00f6nert, indem er dem Gladius LODs hinzugef\u00fcgt hat, um die Maschenzahl zu normalisieren.\n\nProduktion\nSenior Producer Eric Kieron Davis ist wirklich ein Mann mit vielen Talenten. Eine Woche ist er in Austin, TX unterst\u00fctzt das Produktionsteam bei den Prozessen von Persistent Universe, eine weitere Woche leitet er die Versch\u00f6nerung des neuen Los Angeles CIG-B\u00fcros, w\u00e4hrend er gleichzeitig das Ziel von 2.1.0 und 2.1.1.1 im Auge beh\u00e4lt.\n\nMark Hong hat sich vollst\u00e4ndig eingelebt, eine weitere Transplantation aus unserem B\u00fcro in Austin, TX, hat die Kontrolle \u00fcber die Art und Technical Content Teams als deren Produzenten \u00fcbernommen, w\u00e4hrend Randy Vazquez die dringend ben\u00f6tigte Rolle des Engineering und Tech Design Produzenten \u00fcbernommen hat. Randys Vertrautheit mit den Designprozessen gibt ihm eine einzigartige Perspektive, wie er die Aufgaben des Tech Design Teams am besten managen kann, zumal Randy sowohl Produktions- als auch Designerfahrung hat. Produktionsassistent Darian Vorlick \u00fcbernimmt nun eine unterst\u00fctzende Rolle f\u00fcr das CIG LA-Team, indem er Datenanalysen, logistisches Reporting sowie die Entlastung von Fremdlasten, die auf die Schultern der anderen Produzenten fallen k\u00f6nnen, bereitstellt.\n\nNarrativ\nUnser Head of Linear Content John Schimmel, Senior Writer Will Weisbaum und Lead Writer David Haddock besuchten f\u00fcr einige Wochen das britische B\u00fcro, um sich mit den Designern abzustimmen und die Produktion von Squadron 42 zu besprechen. Sie waren in der Lage, alle narrativen Elemente der Geschichte anzusprechen und sich auf der Grundlage neuer Erkenntnisse mit dem Fortschritt der In-Game-Technologie anzupassen. An der Front des Persistent Universe, da sich immer mehr Landezonen im Aufbau befinden, haben sie sich tiefer mit dem Aussehen und dem Gef\u00fchl der Orte, Charaktere und sogar mit der Art und Weise, wie fiktive Produkte im Spiel beworben und gebrandmarkt werden, besch\u00e4ftigt.\n\nZus\u00e4tzlich zum Schreiben von Jump Point Artikeln und News Updates hat der Associate Writer Adam Wieser eine ziemlich umfangreiche S42-Aufgabe gel\u00f6st: die Anpassung der Skripte an den Dialog, der w\u00e4hrend des letztj\u00e4hrigen Performance-Shootings aufgenommen wurde. Ein m\u00fchsamer Prozess, aber jetzt, da er abgeschlossen ist, m\u00fcssen die Designer nicht mehr nach Filmmaterial suchen, um zu sehen, wie sich die Szenen abspielen.\n\nDie Archivarin Cherie Heiberg arbeitete weiterhin mit unseren wissenschaftlichen Beratern zusammen, die Daten \u00fcber die verschiedenen Planeten und Systeme im Star Citizen-Universum generiert haben, w\u00e4hrend sie ihren kolossalen Kampf gegen die monstr\u00f6se Hydra, bekannt als Desorganisation und Verwirrung, f\u00fchrte. Unser internes Wiki ist ihr Schlachtfeld. Es ist wie die Donnerkuppel. Zwei kommen rein. Einer wird gehen.\n\nFazit\nNach den ersten 30 Tagen des Jahres 2016 haben wir noch 335 weitere Tage vor uns. Das l\u00e4sst uns viel Zeit f\u00fcr neue Schiffe, neue Features, neue Missionen und neue Kunst, die ihren Weg ins Universum finden. Der Februar wird genauso spannend und wir k\u00f6nnen es kaum erwarten, bis wir Ihnen beim n\u00e4chsten Mal einen Monat Revue passieren lassen k\u00f6nnen. Wir schreiben Videospielgeschichte, und Sie alle stehen im Mittelpunkt!\n\nHowdy Citizens,\nDas neue Jahr ist vorbei und die Teams sind in vollem Gange, planen, entwickeln, testen und starten neue Inhalte f\u00fcr das Spiel. Wir hatten diesen Monat mehrere Teammitglieder im LA-Studio f\u00fcr die intensive pers\u00f6nliche Zusammenarbeit und Planung, und wir haben eine Menge neuer Inhalte f\u00fcr Tests und Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen erhalten. Nach umfangreichen Tests haben wir die Version 2.1.0 auf dem Live-Server gestartet und anschlie\u00dfend Updates vorgenommen, um das Erlebnis zu optimieren. Wir freuen uns auf das 2.2.0-Update, das bald kommen wird! Hier sind einige detaillierte Updates von jeder Gruppe in Austin.\n\nHartn\u00e4ckiges Universumsteam\nDas Stichwort f\u00fcr diesen Monat war ROADMAP. In diesem Monat laufen f\u00fcr 2016 viele Planungen und Planungen, und wir haben gute Fortschritte bei der Festlegung einer Roadmap f\u00fcr Features und Inhalte gemacht. Mark Skelton und Tony Zurovec waren in den letzten Wochen in LA und trafen sich mit Chris Roberts, Erin Roberts und anderen, um sicherzustellen, dass alle unsere Ziele in Einklang gebracht und f\u00fcr alle klar sind.\n\nAllerdings waren Roadmaps und Zeitpl\u00e4ne nicht das Einzige, woran wir diesen Monat gearbeitet haben. Wir haben die Helden-Landezonen, kleinere Landezonen und Weltrauminhalte identifiziert, die wir in diesem Jahr online bringen wollen, aber diejenigen, die derzeit im Einsatz sind, verfolgen dies gut. Die Levski-Landezone in Nyx befindet sich in der Endphase der Kunst, und wir vervollst\u00e4ndigen nun die Gesch\u00e4fte, die wir dort haben werden, darunter Cordry's (R\u00fcstung), Conscientious Objects (pers\u00f6nliche Waffen), Caf\u00e9 Musain (Bar) und die Medical Unit. Erste VFX- und Lichtp\u00e4sse sind f\u00fcr diese Umgebungen im Gange und sehen auf ihre eigene schmutzige, altersschwache Art und Weise absolut sch\u00f6n aus.\n\nMit Blick auf die Zukunft haben wir einen harten Designfokus auf die Erstellung von Blueprint-Dokumentationen f\u00fcr die n\u00e4chste Heldenlandungszone am Horizont gelegt, die Stanton>Hurston>Lorville Landungszone (das ist die Lorville Landungszone auf dem Planeten Hurston im Stanton-System, f\u00fcr diejenigen unter Ihnen, die die Starmap genossen haben). Rob Reininger hat mit BHVR zusammengearbeitet, um die Entw\u00fcrfe f\u00fcr die verschiedenen Gesch\u00e4fte f\u00fcr Hurston sowie das Layout f\u00fcr die Stadt Lorville selbst zu gestalten. Wir sind begeistert von den Gestaltungsm\u00f6glichkeiten, die sich f\u00fcr diese Umgebung ergeben haben und die wir voll aussch\u00f6pfen. Wir haben auch eine Vorvisualisierung f\u00fcr Hurston gemacht. Mark Skelton ist mit BHVR \u00fcber die Art Direction dieser Umgebung hin und her gegangen, und Corentin Chevanne, Art Director bei BHVR, und seine Crew haben diese \u00c4sthetik hervorragend umgesetzt. Wir freuen uns darauf, in diese Landezone zu springen, nachdem wir die Arbeit an Levski abgeschlossen haben.\n\nIm Schiffsland haben Chris Smith und Josh Coons mit dem Xi'an Scout (oder Khartu-Al) weggefahren. Emre hat mit ihnen zusammengearbeitet, um seinen ersten Lichtpass fertigzustellen, und es sieht ziemlich glatt aus. Wir streben an, dieses Schiff in naher Zukunft fertigzustellen, woraufhin wir zu unserem n\u00e4chsten Schwerpunkt \u00fcbergehen und die urspr\u00fcnglichen 3 Schiffe in Arena Commander (die Aurora, 300i und Hornet) auf unsere aktuellen Qualit\u00e4tsstandards umr\u00fcsten werden.\n\nAuf der Seite der Schiffsanimation haben wir in Zusammenarbeit mit Art an Ein- und Ausstiegscockpit-Animationen f\u00fcr den Scout gearbeitet, um ihn auf sein Hangar-Release vorzubereiten. Diese Animationen sind absolut einzigartig, da dieser Schiffstyp das erste seiner Art ist, das wir gemacht haben. Dar\u00fcber hinaus implementieren wir f\u00fcr dieses Schiff ein neues Cockpittyp-Steuerungsschema: Der Dual Orb. Auf der PU-Seite haben wir die Arbeit an den Animationen der Medizinischen Einheit abgeschlossen und haben einige gute Fortschritte bei den Animationen der Nachtclub-Szene gemacht. Wir haben NSCs, die sich gegen W\u00e4nde lehnen, an Kabinen sitzen, an Bars trinken, Automaten benutzen und sogar die Toilette benutzen!\n\nWie bereits erw\u00e4hnt, war Tony Zurovec in den letzten Wochen in LA, um mit den anderen Direktoren \u00fcber hochrangige Designziele f\u00fcr 2016 zu sprechen. Es gibt mehrere spannende Features, die diskutiert werden und die wir in diesem Jahr online stellen wollen. Ich werde sie hier noch nicht erw\u00e4hnen, aber ich freue mich auf Updates zu diesen Features in K\u00fcrze. Ein weiterer Teil der Planung, die Tony mit Chris durchgezogen hat, ist die Backend Networking\/Server Roadmap f\u00fcr das Jahr. Jason Ely und Jeff Zhu konzentrieren sich derzeit ganz auf Persistenz und werden es noch eine Weile sein, aber es gibt mehrere zentrale Backend-Systeme, die in diesem Jahr entwickelt werden m\u00fcssen, um in der PU signifikante Fortschritte zu erzielen. Zum Beispiel hat Tom Sawyer gerade die Arbeiten zur Verbesserung des Parteiensystems abgeschlossen und wird nun eine TDD f\u00fcr die Arbeit an seinem n\u00e4chsten Schwerpunkt, dem \"True Friends System\", schreiben. Mehr dazu im n\u00e4chsten Monat!\n\nLive-Betrieb\nQA\nNach einer wohlverdienten Pause begann die Qualit\u00e4tssicherung im Januar mit der Fokussierung der Testaufgaben auf die Bereitstellung von 2.1.0 in der Live-Umgebung. Nach f\u00fcnf Eins\u00e4tzen in der PTU waren wir sehr froh, dass wir 2.1.0 endlich live einsetzen konnten.\n\nDiesen Monat haben wir 2 neue Rekruten gewonnen. Wir begr\u00fc\u00dfen Jeff Daily und Katarzyna Mierostawska. Jeff kommt von NCSoft zu uns, wo er an vielen Titeln als QA Lead gearbeitet hat. Katarzyna arbeitete auch mit vielen Titeln, darunter Trion World's Archeage, wo sie Erfahrungen mit Cryengine Tests sammelte.\n\nDie Schulung von Neuzug\u00e4ngen im Team ist eine gro\u00dfe Herausforderung, aber Tyler Witkin und Melissa Estrada sind der Aufgabe gewachsen und leisten hervorragende Arbeit.\n\nNach der Bereitstellung von 2.1.0 in der Live-Umgebung begann QA mit dem Testen des Entwicklungszweiges f\u00fcr Game-Devices, der schlie\u00dflich zu 2.2.0 wird. Todd Raffray leitete einen umfassenden Test von Party System Updates und Verbesserungen.\n\nVincent Sinatra und Andrew Hesse haben unterdessen weitere Untersuchungen f\u00fcr den Designer Calix Reneau abgeschlossen, die sich auf Schiffsgeschwindigkeiten, T\u00f6tungszeiten und Flugmechanik beziehen. Vincent und Andrew haben auch t\u00e4gliche Entwickler-Spieltests im LA-Studio unterst\u00fctzt, die zu sehr wertvollem Feedback gef\u00fchrt haben.\n\nDiesen Monat hatten wir zwei Besucher aus unserem QS-Team vom Foundry 42 Studio in Manchester Glenn Kneale und Andrew Mawdsley. Glenn und Andrew setzten sich mit Jeffrey Pease zusammen und lernten, wie man Probleme mit unseren Backend-Services effektiv \u00fcberwacht und berichtet.\n\nKurz vor dem Ende des Monats haben wir einen kleinen Hotfix (2.1.2) auf die PTU und dann auf die Live-Umgebung getestet und bereitgestellt. Wir konzentrieren uns nun voll und ganz auf das Testen von Neuerungen und Updates in der Game-Device Branche, die zu 2.2.0 werden. Das gesamte QS-Team leistet wirklich gro\u00dfartige Arbeit und wir alle freuen uns darauf, 2.2.0 so schnell wie m\u00f6glich an alle weiterzugeben.\n\nSpielunterst\u00fctzung\nIm Januar wurde 2.1.0 (und anschlie\u00dfend 2.1.1.1 und 2.1.2) f\u00fcr unsere Spieler eingef\u00fchrt. Chris Danks und Will Leverett vom Game Support arbeiteten zusammen mit Production, QA und Live Ops daran, fieberhaft t\u00e4gliche Builds herauszubringen, um getestet, bewertet, repariert und schlie\u00dflich an Live weitergeleitet zu werden. Wir freuen uns sehr \u00fcber den Empfang, und wir werden weiterhin zus\u00e4tzliche Korrekturen auf dem Weg zu 2.2.0 im n\u00e4chsten Monat vornehmen.\n\nDer Game Support hat sich auch auf die allgemeine Aufholarbeit aus den Ferien konzentriert. Der gr\u00f6\u00dfte Teil dieser Arbeit ist abgeschlossen, und wir freuen uns, Spielern, die technisch relevante Tickets einsenden, schnellere Turnarounds anbieten zu k\u00f6nnen.\n\nIn diesem Zusammenhang haben wir auch hart daran gearbeitet, uns \u00fcber unsere gehackten Konten zu informieren. Wir halten dies f\u00fcr einen guten Zeitpunkt, um die Spieler daran zu erinnern, dass wir den Kauf und Verkauf von Pfandrechten \u00fcber das Geschenksystem nicht dulden, sondern aktiv davon abraten. Dies ist ein Bereich, in dem wir nichts versprechen k\u00f6nnen und Sie sollten nicht erwarten, dass wir ein bestimmtes Ticket ansprechen k\u00f6nnen oder m\u00fcssen. Der Geschenkmechanismus ist nicht f\u00fcr diesen Zweck bestimmt und kann nicht nur eine Transaktion eines Dritten nicht \u00fcberwachen, Sie setzen sich auch einem Risiko aus, bei dem Sie m\u00f6glicherweise nicht in der Lage sind, Ihre Gelder zur\u00fcckzuerhalten, wenn die andere Partei b\u00f6swillige Absichten hat.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich haben wir mit der Unternehmensleitung zusammengearbeitet, um unsere Wachstumspl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr 2016 zu besprechen. Wir freuen uns sehr \u00fcber die Erweiterung unseres Teams sowohl in Manchester, Gro\u00dfbritannien, als auch in Austin, Texas, und wir werden nach einigen Top-Talenten suchen, die uns in den n\u00e4chsten Monaten beim Betrieb des BDSSE unterst\u00fctzen. Bleiben Sie dran!\n\nIT\/Betrieb\nDer Januar hat uns allen hier im IT-Team Spa\u00df gemacht. Erstens und vor allem, nichts ist zusammengebrochen! Wir alle sp\u00fcren eine gewisse Erleichterung \u00fcber die Stabilit\u00e4t unserer Netzwerke jetzt mit all der Arbeit, die in jedem Studio geleistet wurde, um die gro\u00dfen Datenmengen f\u00fcr die Builds und Publishings zu bew\u00e4ltigen. Normalerweise erfordert ein Netzwerk dieser Gr\u00f6\u00dfe und Komplexit\u00e4t eine st\u00e4ndige Abstimmung und Wartung, insbesondere bei allen Anforderungen und Aufw\u00e4nden f\u00fcr eine sichere Kommunikation zwischen den Studios. In diesem Jahr w\u00e4hrend unseres Urlaubs hat das IT-Team jedoch nicht einmal einen einzigen Alarm erhalten, so wie es nat\u00fcrlich sein sollte, aber dies ist das erste Jahr f\u00fcr uns, in dem wir einen so reibungslosen Urlaub erlebt haben.\n\nDieser Monat ging sehr schnell vorbei, aber gegen Ende trafen wir uns mit einigen wirklich gro\u00dfartigen Gruppen von Geldgebern. Es hat Spa\u00df gemacht, Zeit damit zu verbringen, mit ihnen \u00fcber einige der Details \u00fcber die Funktionsweise des Build-Systems und die coolen Systeme zu plaudern, die wir entwickelt haben, um Petabyte an Daten zwischen den Studios zu replizieren. An alle, die hier waren, vielen Dank f\u00fcr Ihr Kommen und wir freuen uns auf Ihren n\u00e4chsten Besuch.\n\nLive-Ops\nDer Start in den ersten Monat 2016 war f\u00fcr das LiveOps-Team sehr produktiv. Wir haben die Version 2.1 des Live-Dienstes im Januar dreimal ver\u00f6ffentlicht, davon 9 f\u00fcr die PTU. Wir haben auch unsere Schreibtische neu gestaltet, um Platz f\u00fcr mehr Wachstum im Team zu schaffen und nur weil es sich gut anf\u00fchlt, alles zu Beginn des Jahres zu reinigen.\n\nGro\u00dfe Fortschritte wurden bei den Tools zur Unterst\u00fctzung des Build-Prozesses erzielt. In diesem Monat gab es die beeindruckendsten Updates in Form von Interface und Usability. Diese wichtigen \u00c4nderungen werden es uns erm\u00f6glichen, mehr Kontrolle \u00fcber die Entwicklungsteams auszu\u00fcben, so dass sie nicht jede einzelne \u00c4nderung direkt von uns anfordern m\u00fcssen. Au\u00dferdem haben wir unsere Arbeit am Public Crash Handler fast abgeschlossen, der im Februar in das Spiel integriert werden soll, wenn alles gut geht. Wir erwarten, dass dies eine F\u00fclle von Informationen f\u00fcr das Entwickler-Team in Bezug auf Client-Crashes liefern wird - diese Informationen werden ihnen helfen, diese Client-Crash-Bugs ein f\u00fcr alle Mal zu finden und zu beheben. Schlie\u00dflich beenden wir auch unsere Arbeit an einer neuen Art von Build, von der wir hoffen, dass sie sich auf die Ladezeiten der Kunden auswirken wird. Wenn wir beim Testen gut abschneiden, hoffen wir, dass diese neuen Builds auch im Februar in die Pipeline kommen.\n\nGr\u00fc\u00dfe B\u00fcrger,\n\nKommen wir gleich zur Sache! Hier ist, was wir im neuen Jahr in der Gie\u00dferei 42 gemacht haben:\n\nKunst\nKonzepte\nEin relativ langsamer Produktionsmonat, da die Weihnachtsfeiertage einen Gro\u00dfteil des Monats ausmachen, wie form- und CIG-gerecht wir auch sein m\u00f6gen, wir haben mit 2 Wochen Planungsmeetings f\u00fcr die H\u00fcrden, denen wir dieses Jahr gegen\u00fcberstehen, den Boden bereitet.\n\nEin Aspekt der Planung war der Versuch, dem Konzeptteam eine ruhigere Fahrt zu erm\u00f6glichen; in der Vergangenheit mussten wir einen ziemlich reaktiven Ablauf einhalten, w\u00e4hrend ich in diesem Jahr 3-6 Monate im Voraus wissen m\u00f6chte - wir haben die Arbeit, die sicher ist!\n\nDiesen Monat hat das Team die Fertigstellung des Speerwurfes au\u00dfen, der Idris\/Javelin-T\u00fcrme, des Shubin-Korridors und der Hauptbr\u00fccke, der Low-Tech-Requisiten, der Asteroiden-Au\u00dfenposten-Garage innen und der Apocalypse Arms Rail Gun (First Pass) abgedeckt.\n\nCharakter-Team\nDer Druck ist hoch! Forrest hat die Jungs besucht und ihnen ein gutes Verst\u00e4ndnis f\u00fcr die neue Pipeline vermittelt und eine hervorragende Arbeit bei der Zusammenarbeit mit dem assoziierten Produzenten Andy geleistet, um einen umfassenden Zeitplan zu erstellen. Was die Kunstwerke betrifft, so steht \"Randall Graves\" nun kurz vor dem Finale im Spiel und auch das einheitliche High Poly der Bridge Officers sieht erstklassig aus.\n\nUmgebungen\nDen gr\u00f6\u00dften Teil des Januars hat die Whiteboxing-Phase f\u00fcr die Umgebungen in Sq42 in Anspruch genommen, wir nehmen alle gro\u00dfen \u00c4nderungen am Layout, der Komposition, den Aussichten und dem Flow in dieser Zeit vor, da alles sehr formbar ist. Es ist wirklich vielversprechend zu sehen, wie sich all unsere gro\u00dfen Set-St\u00fccke entwickeln und wie der Spieler durch die verschiedenen Orte im Spiel wandern wird. Unser PU-Team hat auch mit der Whiteboxing eines neuen Standorts f\u00fcr Crusader begonnen, der einen vertrauten Charakter haben wird. Das wird cool und wir werden es n\u00e4chsten Monat in die volle Produktion nehmen. Auch an unserem Testbett f\u00fcr Asteroidenbasen wird gearbeitet, die Look-Entwicklung f\u00fcr das Gel\u00e4nde ist nun abgeschlossen und wird nun auf den Rest der Landschaft angewendet.\n\nSchiffskunst\nIn der Gie\u00dferei 42 gibt es jede Menge Raumschiff-Action! Mit dem Sabre und StarFarer kommen wir in die letzten Kunststufen der Produktion. Der StarFarer ist ziemlich gro\u00df mit viel Innenausbau, also wird es etwas l\u00e4nger dauern, aber wir hoffen, dass der S\u00e4bel bald um den Kreuzritter herumfliegen wird.\n\nEs sind aufregende Zeiten im Land der Gro\u00dfsegler. Wir haben Ressourcen zur\u00fcck zur Idris, um ihre Schiffsform mit der Speerspitze und den Bengalen zu verbessern, damit ihre Whitebox gut funktioniert. Wir k\u00f6nnen es kaum erwarten, diese Babys fliegen zu lassen!\n\nVFX\nWir haben nach der Weihnachtspause mit Sicherheit den ersten Schritt getan! Adam hat sich auf einige Aufgaben der \"Thruster-Standardisierung\" konzentriert. Es gibt eine Reihe von Inkonsistenzen, die wir \u00fcber alle Triebwerke im Spiel hinweg gl\u00e4tten wollen; ein Beispiel w\u00e4ren einige Triebwerkeffekte ohne Leerlaufeffekt, wo andere (wenn das Schiff \"eingeschaltet\", aber nicht gesto\u00dfen ist) - wir werden sicherstellen, dass alle Leerlauftriebwerke ein Gl\u00fchen haben, um zu zeigen, dass das Ding eingeschaltet ist. Ein weiterer Teil dieser Aufgabe ist die Erzeugung von Boost-Effekten, so dass es ein klares visuelles Feedback gibt, um den Unterschied zwischen Boost und Standard-Push zu zeigen. Dies war bisher nicht m\u00f6glich, also hat Adam eng mit John Pritchett zusammengearbeitet, um uns eine verbesserte Funktionalit\u00e4t zu bieten, um unsere Thruster-Effekte wirklich zu verbessern.\n\nAbseits der Triebwerke hat Mike an einem aufger\u00e4umten, vereinfachten VFX-Styleguide gearbeitet. Dies ist ein pr\u00e4gnantes Dokument, das den erwarteten visuellen Stil, den unsere VFX-K\u00fcnstler einhalten m\u00fcssen, klar darlegt und die visuelle Konsistenz \u00fcber die gesamte Bandbreite der Effekte gew\u00e4hrleistet, die wir machen (und seien wir ehrlich, wir machen hier eine Menge Effekte!) - es gibt uns auch eine sehr klare visuelle Sprache f\u00fcr verschiedene Hersteller und Rassen. Mike hat auch daran gearbeitet, die Effekte \"Vorlagen\" zu bereinigen und unsere Bibliotheken aufzubauen, so dass Designer und K\u00fcnstler eine gr\u00f6\u00dfere Auswahl an Effekten haben, aus denen sie w\u00e4hlen k\u00f6nnen, wenn sie ihre Ebenen, Waffen usw. ausarbeiten.\n\nZusammenfassend hat das VFX-Team damit begonnen, die Anforderungen an die Effekte f\u00fcr die Staffel 42 ernsthaft zu pr\u00fcfen - keine Spoiler hier, aber es gen\u00fcgt zu sagen, dass wir w\u00e4hrend der gesamten Kampagne einige spektakul\u00e4re Szenarien haben. Ich kann dir sagen, dass es Explosionen geben wird. Viele Explosionen. Habe ich schon erw\u00e4hnt, dass es Explosionen geben wird?\n\nRequisitenkunst\nDas Requisitenteam hat sich weiterhin auf die Schiffskomponenten konzentriert, wir sind gerade dabei, den letzten Schliff f\u00fcr den dritten zu geben. Wir haben jedoch einen leichten Sinneswandel bei der Art und Weise, wie wir mit den Materialien umgehen, festgestellt. Nach R\u00fccksprache mit den Charakter- und Waffenteams suchen wir nun nach dem gleichen Schichtmaterial, das sie verwenden, was es uns erm\u00f6glicht, eine viel hochwertigere Oberfl\u00e4che auf den Komponenten zu erreichen, und es hat den zus\u00e4tzlichen Vorteil, dass es viel billiger ist, wenn es um die Darstellung geht. Wir m\u00fcssen unsere urspr\u00fcnglichen Komponenten noch einmal \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen, aber die Arbeit ist ziemlich schnell und die Vorteile lohnen sich.\n\nWir hoffen auch, dieses Schichtmaterial in anderen Bereichen der Requisitenproduktion einsetzen zu k\u00f6nnen, was letztendlich bedeutet, dass wir mehr als bisher auf den Bildschirm werfen k\u00f6nnen, ein wenig Recherchearbeit ist im n\u00e4chsten Monat angesagt.\n\nNachdem das Requisiten-Audit abgeschlossen ist, haben wir begonnen, einige der \u00e4lteren und h\u00e4ufig genutzten Anlagen zu verfeinern, um die Qualit\u00e4t und Leistung auf einen Schlag zu verbessern.\n\nDie Arbeiten zur Unterst\u00fctzung der Staffelstufen haben begonnen, und wir arbeiten eng mit dem Umweltteam zusammen, um einige der wichtigsten Requisiten zu entwickeln, die sie ben\u00f6tigen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich haben die Arbeiten an den n\u00e4chsten Flair-Assets f\u00fcr unsere Abonnenten-Hangars begonnen, wir planen in den n\u00e4chsten Monaten etwas anderes, also versuchen wir jetzt, einen Vorsprung zu bekommen.\n\nDesign\nWow! Der Januar ging mit 100 Meilen pro Stunde vorbei und das britische Designteam war in allen Bereichen des Spiels besch\u00e4ftigt. Das Systemdesign \u00fcberarbeitet immer noch die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che des HUD, um neuen Spielern eine weniger steile Lernkurve in das Spiel zu erm\u00f6glichen. Es ist nicht nur das HUD, das eine einfache Option ben\u00f6tigt, da wir auch alle Aspekte der Benutzerfreundlichkeit des Spiels in Bezug auf neue Spieler betrachten, wie z.B. USE-Prompts, inneres Denken, Vereinheitlichung der Kontrollen, bessere Navigationshilfen vor Ort und erweiterte Realit\u00e4t.\n\nAls Teil dieses Prozesses geben wir mobiGlas die dringend ben\u00f6tigte Designliebe und machen einen Full-Sanity-Pass durch alle Apps, die wir ben\u00f6tigen, wobei die Priorit\u00e4ten diejenigen sind, die f\u00fcr die milit\u00e4rische Version f\u00fcr Squadron 42 und das Einkaufserlebnis erforderlich sind.\n\nMit dem StarFarer, der bald auf den Markt kommt, wollen wir das Spiel um die Treibstoffsammlung auf eine Stufe bringen, damit die Spieler in den kommenden Live-Versionen einige interessante Dinge mit diesem Schiff zu tun haben.\n\nDie Tech-Designer sind immer noch dabei, alle neuen Schiffe zu besiegen, und einige zus\u00e4tzliche K\u00f6rper in dieser Abteilung zu haben, beginnt sich auszuzahlen, um den Schiffsflug fr\u00fcher fertig zu stellen.\n\nAb diesem Monat werden wir einen eigenen Ship Balance Designer haben, der auf Feedback reagieren kann, wo die Schiffe in das Gesamtspiel passen. Dies wird in Zukunft eine sehr wichtige Rolle spielen und erfordert viel Versuch und Irrtum, bevor die Schiffe f\u00fchlen, wie sie sollen, aber es ist toll, dass jetzt jemand t\u00e4glich daf\u00fcr verantwortlich sein wird.\n\nIch kann nicht viel \u00fcber S42 sagen, wie Sie wissen, aber wir hatten Chris Roberts und das Autorenteam in den ersten zwei Januarwochen hier und wir sind sehr zufrieden damit, wie die Kampagne jetzt f\u00fcr das Design l\u00e4uft.\n\nIngenieurwesen\nIn diesem Monat wurden einige gute Fortschritte bei einigen der Kernsysteme gemacht, die alle dazu beitragen werden, das Spiel einfacher zu warten und einige dieser l\u00e4stigen kleinen Fehler zu beheben, die von Zeit zu Zeit auftreten.\n\nDer schwierigste Teil des Jobs ist.","zh_CN":"Greetings Citizens,\n2016 is here, and we\u2019re ready to rock! We kicked off the month with a series of summits in the UK and Los Angeles to prepare for the new year. There\u2019s still one more to go, an AI summit in Frankfurt happening next week, but we\u2019re ready to take on 2016! Now that our i\u2019s are dotted and our t\u2019s crossed, we\u2019re ready to continue getting some great content out to the community. Specifically: going forward, you can expect to see regular updates to the Star Citizen Alpha. We are shooting for one significant patch each month. Expect to see this cycle repeated: numerous PTU test patches followed by a live release and then a lull as content for the next patch is prepared and integrated. As I write this, the team is working on content for Alpha 2.2. Expect to hear more about this release very soon! Meanwhile, here are the specifics of what each Star Citizen studio was working on in January\u2026\n\nGreetings Citizens!\nNow that we have taken our first step into 2016, we have already started the year off with a big splash. January marked the release of Star Citizen 2.1.0, a continued evolution of the ground-breaking 2.0.0 release from last year. Additional world missions were added to the universe; however, the biggest stand-out feature was the additional two flyable ships: the Aegis Vanguard Warden and the long awaited MISC Freelancer. If you watched any of our streams last year, you would have witnessed the unveiling of the AEGIS Sabre. With the 2.1.0 release, for those who purchased the Sabre during its debut last year will find this sleek and beautiful space superiority fighter sitting in their hangar!\n\nAlong with the regular gamut of balances, fixes, and updates, below is our monthly report for CIG LA.\n\nEngineering\nJanuary has been a busy month for the CIG LA Engineering team. The biggest milestone for all of the LA teams was the successful release of Star Citizen 2.1.0. Lead Engineer Paul Reindell has made solid progress on the item refactor collectively called Item System 2.0. Other regions are contributing to this new system and many preliminary features have been already released in order to provide a solid foundation for the Item System 2.0 and set the stage for its continued evolution. As mentioned in last month\u2019s report, this feature provides greater control over itemization on the back end of the game. For January, Paul has implemented a physics controlling component that handles the physicalization of objects. This lives as a layer between the items and its physical proxy, interfacing how the physics mode of an object is changed (enabled, static, rigid, ragdoll, etc.).\n\nEngineer Mark Abent has been industriously creating parameters for ammunition. With many of our systems moving away from strict XML and moving towards our own internal data management system, there\u2019s a need to convert projectiles to this new management system. While outwardly, this will have no visible impact on the game itself, it changes how the parameters are loaded and allows us to move away from the XML project path.\n\nAssociate Engineer Chad Zamzow has been working on changes on how shields function. By making higher levels of shield health better at preventing damage, well-managed shields should provide a positive benefit over poorly\/improperly managed shields \u2013 with the end goal of making lasers increasingly effective at depleting shields the more damage a shield takes and providing interesting decisions for players balancing regeneration speed, sheer strength, and signature in their shield generator options.\n\nThe new Interaction system has been worked on by our Engine Programmer Allen Chen, changing how interactions function. The current \u201cUse\u201d function in-game prevents us from adding more than one action to a single interactable object. Allen has completely decoupled the interaction logic to allow multiple actors to interact with a single object simultaneously.\n\nTech Design\n\u201cShips galore!\u201d should be the slogan for the CIG LA Tech Design team this month. With so many ships in the pipeline, it is difficult to decide where to start from.\n\nOne of the most anticipated ships so far, the 890 Jump, has just had its technical design documentation completed by Matt Sherman. Creating technical design documentation for the ship provides the artists with a template of specifications. Requisite information such as dimensions, hard points, internal volume, and various functionalities will ensure the artists are incorporating all of the necessary design elements.\n\nFurther development on the Xi\u2019an Scout has reached the \u2018grey box\u2019 tech design phase. While the technical design documentation is akin to a \u201cletter of intent\u201d in that it is providing an idea of how the ship will function, the grey box stage is where the nitty gritty details of the ship begin to take shape. Lead Tech Designer Kirk Tome has given the Scout its overview such as its variants, characteristics \u2013 a comparison of various aspects of performance based on other ships of similar mass and design \u2013 and an idea of how the ergonomics of the cockpit will be laid out.\n\nWhile Kirk continues with his design work on the Scout, he has also taken on the hefty task of refactoring the mass of every ship in-game. Definitely not a job for the faint at heart, Kirk has researched how to properly calculate the mass of our ships, and is now looking to apply these findings. With functional realism an end-goal of Star Citizen, we want to make sure all ships are using calculations ideal for the kind of materials our universe will contain. Whether they are far-future composite materials yet to be discovered or are composed of tried and true iron and steel, every one of these items will affect how ships move through the void.\n\nBalance master Calix Reneau has also taken on a juggling task worthy of a traveling circus show. With our shield system being further iterated upon, Calix has created a metrics system to quantify shield performance. By allowing the Tech Design team to analyze these performance numbers, we can further fine tune how shields function not just as a whole, but also how they respond against various weapon types whether they are kinetic projectiles, energy-based attacks, or other exotic weapon types.\n\nArt\nWith the team beginning to fill out the shader libraries for MISC, it is no wonder the Reliant is shaping up to be one of our most stunning ships yet while also being one of our most collaborative multi studio efforts. Its unorthodox vertical shape has given our ship team a fresh canvas to exercise creative ideas for a creative design.\n\nThe MISC Reliant has been an all-hands-on-deck effort by the CIG LA Art team. Elwin Bachiller and Daniel Kamentsky have completed the exterior POMs and decals as well as generated almost all the geometry require to destroy it.\n\nConcept artist Gurmukh Bhasin has been creating large renders to wallpaper our new building as we are still getting settled in to the new location. Each conference room will be given a different theme based on a ship manufacturer, and Gurmukh has been designing renders for how each room should look when the installations are completed. If you ever come by to take a tour of the place, make sure you check out our giant mural featuring the Vanguard. Given how much time we spend here, the investment in morale is well worth the effort!\n\nOmar \u201cArmani\u201d Aweidah and Jeremiah \u201cVersace\u201d Lee, our in-game fashionistas, are creating uniform and clothing design for characters in-game. Creating an era-appropriate aesthetic for clothing while keeping certain elements familiar allows our players to identify and relate with the universe we have created. Not only do we want our ships to be the most epic spacecraft ever, we want to make sure our pilots, pirates, explorers, and ilk are geared appropriately for their chosen lot in the life of a Star Citizen. Jeremiah completed the medium armor concept, while Omar completed the high-poly geometry for the male navy BDU (Battle Dress Uniform).\n\nTech Content\nSean Tracy has migrated to the Los Angeles office, transplanting himself from Austin, Texas and has been making his mark with his Tech Content team.\n\nThose who piloted or stood in proximity to a Constellation during the 2.1.0 PTU may have noticed drops in in-game performance. Matt Intrieri and Mark McCall have been fastidiously delving into the root cause of this performance issue. With 2.1.1, pilots of (and anyone standing in proximity to) a Constellation should notice a marked increase in game performance.\n\nFurther content refinements performed by Mr. McCall include adding LODs to normalize the mesh count for the Constellation as well as converting thrusters for all ships to .CDF format and add LODs to the thrusters.\n\nRiggers Gaige Hallman and John Riggs (yes, we have a rigger named Riggs\u2026how awesome is that?) have been working on putting processes in place. John has finalized the skinning vertices on characters while Gaige has been spending a little time each day performing some early Spring cleaning, organizing our character outsource submission management in Shotgun.\n\nFinally, Patrick Salerno has also been proactively beautifying the Gladius by adding LODs to the Gladius to normalize the mesh count.\n\nProduction\nSenior Producer Eric Kieron Davis is truly a man of many talents. One week he is in Austin, TX assisting the production team with Persistent Universe processes then another week he is spearheading the beautification of the new Los Angeles CIG office, all while keeping his eyes on the target of 2.1.0 and 2.1.1.\n\nMark Hong has fully settled in, another transplant from our Austin, TX office, has taken control of the Art and Technical Content teams as their producer while Randy Vazquez has filled in the much-needed role of Engineering and Tech Design producer. Randy\u2019s familiarity with the design processes gives him a unique perspective on how best to manage the tasks of the Tech Design team, especially since Randy has both production and design experience under his belt. Production Assistant Darian Vorlick now fills a support role for the CIG LA team by providing data analytics, logistical reporting, as well as relieving any extraneous loads that may fall on the shoulders of the other producers.\n\nNarrative\nOur Head of Linear Content John Schimmel, Senior Writer Will Weisbaum and Lead Writer David Haddock were visiting the UK office for a few weeks to sync back up with the designers as well as discuss the production of Squadron 42. They were able to address all of the narrative items of the story and adjust based on new insights as the in-game tech advances. On the Persistent Universe front, as more landing zones are in the process of being built, they have been delving deeper into the look and feel of the locations, characters and even how in-game fictitious products are advertised and branded.\n\nIn addition to writing Jump Point articles and News Updates, Associate Writer Adam Wieser tackled a pretty massive S42 task: conforming the scripts to accurately reflect the dialogue recorded during last year\u2019s performance shoot. A laborious process for sure, but now that it\u2019s complete, the designers will no longer need to hunt down footage to see how scenes played out.\n\nArchivist Cherie Heiberg continued to work with our science consultants who have been generating data based on the various planets and systems in the Star Citizen universe while waging her colossal battle against the monstrous hydra known as disorganization and confusion. Our internal wiki is their battlefield. It\u2019s like Thunderdome. Two will enter. One will leave.\n\nConclusion\nWith the first 30 days of 2016 behind us, we still have another 335 left to go. That leaves us plenty of time for new ships, new features, new missions, and new art to make its way into the universe. February is looking to be just as exciting and we can\u2019t wait until we can bring you a month in review next time. We are making video game history, and all of you are at the center of it!\n\nHowdy Citizens,\nThe New Year is behind us and teams are in full swing planning, developing, testing, and launching new content for the game. We have had several team members in the LA studio this month for substantial in-person collaboration and planning efforts, and we\u2019ve received a ton of new content for testing and publishing. After substantial testing we launched the 2.1.0 version to the Live server, and have made subsequent updates to tweak and tune the experience. We\u2019re looking ahead to the 2.2.0 update which is soon to come! Here are some detailed updates from each group in Austin.\n\nPersistent Universe Team\nThe keyword for this month has been ROADMAP. Lots of scheduling and planning has been going on this month for 2016, and we\u2019ve made good progress in laying down a roadmap for features and content. Mark Skelton and Tony Zurovec have been in LA the last couple of weeks meeting with Chris Roberts, Erin Roberts, and others to ensure that all of our goals are lined up and clear to everyone.\n\nThat being said, roadmaps and schedules weren\u2019t the only thing we worked on this month. We\u2019ve identified the hero landing zones, smaller landing zones, and space content we want to bring online this year, but the ones that are currently in progress are tracking along nicely. The Levski landing zone in Nyx is in Final Art Stage, and we are now putting the finishing touches on the Shops we\u2019ll have there, including Cordry\u2019s (armor), Conscientious Objects (personal weapons), Caf\u00e9 Musain (bar), and the Medical Unit. Initial VFX and Lighting passes are under way for those environments and they are looking absolutely beautimous in their own grimy, decrepit kinda way.\n\nLooking forward, we\u2019ve been putting some hard design focus on creating blueprint documentation for the next hero landing zone on the horizon, the Stanton>Hurston>Lorville landing zone (that\u2019s the Lorville landing zone on planet Hurston in the Stanton system, for those of you who\u2019ve been enjoying the Starmap). Rob Reininger has been working with BHVR to layout the blueprints for the various shops for Hurston, as well as the layout for the city of Lorville itself. We\u2019re excited about the design opportunities that have presented themselves for this environment and are taking full advantage. We\u2019ve also been doing some pre-visualization for Hurston. Mark Skelton has been going back and forth with BHVR over the art direction of this environment, and Corentin Chevanne, Art Director at BHVR, and his crew have been doing an excellent job nailing that aesthetic. We\u2019re excited to jump on to this landing zone after we wrap up work on Levski.\n\nIn Ship Land, Chris Smith and Josh Coons have been chugging away on the Xi\u2019an Scout (or Khartu-Al). Emre has been working with them to finish up his initial lighting pass on it and it is looking pretty slick. We\u2019re aiming to finish up this ship in the very near future, at which point we will move on to our next focus, revamping the original 3 ships in Arena Commander (the Aurora, 300i, and Hornet) to match our current quality standards.\n\nOn the Ship Animation side, in conjunction with Art we\u2019ve been working on enter and exit cockpit animations for the Scout in preparation for its hangar-ready release. These animations are completely unique, since this type of ship is the first of its kind that we\u2019ve done. In addition we are implementing a new cockpit type control scheme for this ship: The Dual Orb. On the PU side, we\u2019ve wrapped up work on the Medical Unit animations and have been making some nice progress on the Nightclub scene animations. We\u2019ve got NPC\u2019s leaning against walls, sitting at booths, drinking at bars, using vending machines, and even using the toilet!\n\nAs mentioned previously, Tony Zurovec has been in LA for the past couple of weeks meeting with the other Directors to discuss high-level Design goals for 2016. There are several exciting features that are being discussed that we will aim to bring online this year. I won\u2019t mention them here just yet but look forward to updates on these features soon. Another part of the planning that Tony has been going over with Chris is the Backend Networking\/Server roadmap for the year. Jason Ely and Jeff Zhu are fully focused on Persistence right now, and will be for a while longer, but there are several core backend systems that need to be developed this year in order to make significant leaps forward in the PU. For example, Tom Sawyer just finished wrapping up work on improvements to the Party System, and will now be writing a TDD for the work to be done on his next focus, the \u201cTrue Friends System.\u201d More on that next month!\n\nLive Operations\nQA\nAfter a well-deserved break, QA began January with focusing testing efforts on the deployment of 2.1.0 to the live environment. After five deployments to the PTU, we were very happy to finally deploy 2.1.0 to live.\n\nThis month we have gained 2 new recruits. Please welcome Jeff Daily and Katarzyna Mierostawska. Jeff comes to us from NCSoft where he worked on many titles as QA Lead. Katarzyna worked with many titles as well including Trion World\u2019s Archeage where she obtained Cryengine testing experience.\n\nTraining new additions to the team is a significant undertaking but Tyler Witkin and Melissa Estrada are up to the task and doing a great job.\n\nAfter deploying 2.1.0 to the live environment QA began testing the game-dev development branch which will eventually become 2.2.0. Todd Raffray headed up a comprehensive test of Party System updates and improvements.\n\nMeanwhile, Vincent Sinatra and Andrew Hesse have completed additional investigations for designer Calix Reneau involving ship speeds, time to kill, and flight mechanics. Vincent and Andrew have also been supporting daily developer playtests in the LA studio which have resulted in very valuable feedback.\n\nThis month we had two visitors from our QA team from the Foundry 42 studio in Manchester Glenn Kneale and Andrew Mawdsley. Glenn and Andrew sat down with Jeffrey Pease and learned how to effectively monitor and report issues with our back end services.\n\nJust prior to the month\u2019s conclusion, we tested and deployed a small hotfix (2.1.2) to the PTU and then to the live environment. We are now squarely focused on testing new additions and updates in the game-dev branch which will become 2.2.0. The entire QA team is doing some really great work and we are all looking forward to getting 2.2.0 out to everyone as soon as possible.\n\nGame Support\nJanuary saw the rollout of 2.1.0 (and subsequently, 2.1.1 and 2.1.2) to our players. Chris Danks and Will Leverett in Game Support worked alongside Production, QA, and Live Ops to feverishly put out daily builds to get tested, assessed, fixed, and finally pushed to Live. We\u2019re excited to see the reception it\u2019s received, and we\u2019ll continue to make additional fixes on the road to 2.2.0 next month.\n\nGame Support also has been focused on the general work of catching up from the holidays. Most of this work is complete, and we\u2019re happy to provide faster turnarounds for players who send in technical-related tickets.\n\nOn a related note, we\u2019ve also been pushing hard to get caught up on our hacked accounts. We feel this is a good time to remind players that we do not condone buying and selling of pledges using the gifting system, in fact we actively discourage it. This is one area where we cannot promise and you should not expect that we can or must address a given ticket. The gifting mechanism is not intended for this use, and not only can CIG not monitor a third party transaction, you are exposing yourself to a risk where you may not be able to recover your funds if the other party has malicious intent.\n\nLastly, we\u2019ve been working with company leadership to discuss our plans for growth in 2016. We\u2019re excited about growing our team both in Manchester, UK and in Austin, Texas, and we\u2019ll be looking for some top talent to help us run the BDSSE in the next few months. Stay tuned!\n\nIT\/Operations\nJanuary has been fun for us all here on the IT team. First and most importantly, nothing broke down! We all feel quite a sense of relief over the stability of our networks now with all the work that has been done at each studio to accommodate the large bursts of data for the builds and publishes. Normally, a network of this size and complexity requires constant tuning and maintaining, particularly with all the requirements and overhead involved with secure communications between studios. This year over our holiday however, the IT team didn\u2019t even receive a single alert which is how it should be of course, but this is the first year for us that we\u2019ve experienced such a smooth holiday vacation.\n\nThis month went by very quickly but toward the end, we got to meet up with some really great groups of backers. It was fun to spend time chatting with them about some of the details about how the build system works and the cool systems we made which allow us to replicate petabytes of data between the studios. To those of you who were here, thanks for coming and we\u2019re looking forward to your next visit.\n\nLive Ops\nKicking off the first month of 2016 has been very productive in the LiveOps team. We published version 2.1 to the live service 3 times in January with 9 publishes to the PTU. We\u2019ve also reconfigured our desks to make room for more growth on the team and just because it feels good to clean everything at the beginning of the year.\n\nMajor progress has been made on tools that support the build process. This month has seen the most impressive updates in the form of interface and usability. These important changes will allow us to push more control out to the dev teams so they don\u2019t have to request every single change from us directly. Additionally, we\u2019ve nearly completed our work on the public crash handler which should be incorporated in to the game in February if all goes well. We expect this will produce a wealth of information for the dev team with regards to any client crashes \u2013 this information will help them hunt down and fix those client crash bugs once and for all. Finally, we\u2019re also finishing our work on a new type of build which we hope will have an impact on client load times. If we do well in testing, we\u2019re hoping to get these new builds in to the pipeline in February as well.\n\nGreetings Citizens,\n\nLet\u2019s get right to it! Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve been doing at Foundry 42 in the new year:\n\nArt\nConcepts\nA relatively slow month of production due to Christmas holidays eating into a good portion of the month, however true to form and CIG style we hit the ground running with 2 weeks of planning meetings for the hurdles we face this year.\n\nOne aspect of the planning was trying to give the concept team a smoother ride; in the past we\u2019ve had to adopt a fairly reactive flow, whereas this year I\u2019d like to know 3-6 months in advance \u2013 we have the work that\u2019s for sure!\n\nThis month the team has covered finishing off the Javelin exterior, Idris\/Javelin turrets, Shubin corridor and main bridge, low tech props, asteroid outpost garage interior and Apocalypse Arms rail gun (first pass).\n\nCharacter Team\nThe pressure is on! Forrest has been visiting and giving the guys a good understanding of the new pipeline and has done a stellar job on working with associate producer Andy to get a comprehensive schedule together. In terms of art work, \u201cRandall Graves\u201d is now close to in-game final and the Bridge Officers uniform high poly is looking top notch too.\n\nEnvironments\nMost of January has been picking up the whiteboxing phase for the environments in Sq42, we\u2019re making all the big changes to the layout, composition, vistas and flow in this period as everything is very malleable. It\u2019s really promising seeing how all our big set piece events will play out, and how the player will traverse through the various locations in the game. Our PU team has also started whiteboxing out a new location for Crusader which will feature a familiar character. This is going to be a cool one and we\u2019re going to take it into full production next month. Work is also progressing on our testbed for asteroid bases, the look development for the terrain is now complete and now we\u2019re applying this to the rest of the landscape.\n\nShip Art\nThere\u2019s plenty of spaceship action going on at Foundry 42! We\u2019re getting in to the final art stages of production with the Sabre and StarFarer. The StarFarer is rather large with lots of interior work so she\u2019s going to take a little longer but we hope to have the Sabre flying around Crusader very soon.\n\nIt\u2019s exciting times in the land of Capital Ships. We\u2019ve got resources back on to the Idris to get her ship shape with the Javelin and Bengal getting their whitebox work well underway. We can\u2019t wait to get these babies flying!\n\nVFX\nWe certainly hit the ground running after the Christmas break! Adam has been focusing on some \u201cthruster standardisation\u201d tasks. There are a number of inconsistencies that we want to smooth out across all thrusters in the game; one example would be some thruster effects having no idle effect , where others do (when the ship is \u201con\u201d but not thrusting) \u2013 we are going to make sure all idle thrusters have a glow to show the thing is powered up. Another part of this task is the creation of boost effects, so there is clear visual feedback to show the difference between boost and standard thrust. This wasn\u2019t previously possible, so Adam has been working closely with John Pritchett to give us improved functionality to really enhance our thruster effects.\n\nAway from thrusters, Mike has been working on a cleaned-up, simplified VFX style guide. This is a concise document that clearly lays out the expected visual style for our VFX artists to adhere to, ensuring visual consistency across the whole range of effects we make (and let\u2019s face it, we make a LOT of effects here!) \u2013 it also gives us a very clear visual language for different manufacturers and races. Mike has also been working on cleaning up the effects \u201ctemplates\u201d and building up our libraries so designers and artists have a greater range of effects to choose from when fleshing out their levels, weapons etc.\n\nCollectively, the VFX team have begun looking in earnest at the effects requirements for Squadron 42 \u2013 no spoilers here but suffice to say we have some spectacular scenarios throughout the campaign. I can tell you there will be explosions. Lots of explosions. Did I mention there are going to be explosions?\n\nProp Art\nThe Props team has been continuing to focus on the ship components, we are just putting the finishing touches on the third. We have however had a slight change of heart with how we approach the materials. After consulting the Character and Weapon teams we are now looking to use the same layer material they use, this allows us to achieve a much higher quality surface on the components and it has the added benefit of being much cheaper rendering wise. We will need to revisit our original components but the work is fairly quick and the benefits are well worth it.\n\nWe also hope to make use of this layer material in other areas of prop production which will ultimately mean we can throw more on screen than before, a bit of investigation work is in order next month.\n\nWith the prop audit coming to a close we have started to do a polish pass on some of the older and commonly used assets, with the aim of improving the quality and performance in one hit.\n\nWork had begun on supporting the Squadron levels and we are working closely with the environment team building some of the key props they require.\n\nFinally work has commenced on the next set of flair assets for our subscribers hangars, we are planning something a bit different in the next couple of months so we are trying to get a head start now.\n\nDesign\nWow! January went past at 100 miles-an-hour and the UK design team have been busy in all areas of the game. Systems design is still refactoring the UI for the HUD to give new players a less steep learning curve into the game. It\u2019s not just the HUD that needs an easy option as we are also looking at all of the usability aspects of the game in relation to new players, such as USE prompts, inner-thought, controls unification, better on-foot navigation aids and augmented reality.\n\nAs part of this process we are giving mobiGlas some much needed design love, doing a full sanity pass through all of the apps we will need, the priorities being the ones required for the military version for Squadron 42 and the shopping experience.\n\nWith the StarFarer coming out soon, we are looking to get the fuel collection gameplay tiered up so Players will have some interesting things to do with this beast of a ship in the coming Live releases.\n\nThe Tech designers are still bashing away on all of the new ships and having some extra bodies in that department is starting to pay off in terms of getting the ships flight ready sooner.\n\nFrom this month we are going to have a dedicated Ship Balance Designer who can act upon feedback in terms of where ships fit in the overall game. This is going to be a very important role going forward and will require a lot of trial and error before the ships feel how they are supposed to, but it\u2019s great that someone is now going to be responsible for this on a daily basis.\n\nI can\u2019t say too much about S42 as you know, but we had Chris Roberts and the writing team over here for the first two weeks of January and we are very happy with how the campaign is paced for design now.\n\nEngineering\nSome good progress has been made on some of the core systems this month which will all go and help make the game easier to maintain as well as fix some of those annoying little bugs that crop up from time to time.\n\nThe hardest part of the job sometimes is just knowing what to call something. For example, in the current version of a game when vehicles get created, either when you or somebody else requests a ship, or when AI spawn in, it\u2019s actually quite an inefficient process on the networking side. The client first comes up with a list of what the required loadout is and sends it to the server, the server then creates the ship with all the individual items (which can be over 100 depending on the ship), the server then serializes all these items to all the clients (a fancy way of saying it makes sure they both are synchronised with the same information) one at a time. This has led to a lot of pain in past to get all of this working, as the CryEngine wasn\u2019t designed to dynamically create vehicles like this, and it ended up with a lot of hard to track down bugs. A number of these were caused because the ship on the client could be built in a different order than on the server depending on what order the packets came through. We\u2019re now doing away with all of that and coming up with a solution where we just have one packet of information which describes the whole vehicle and how it is set up. This packet is sent to the clients in one go and used by both the server and the client to build the ship. Now we have the advantage that there\u2019s a lot less network traffic required, and because the server and all clients build the vehicle in exactly the same way it is completely deterministic which means it\u2019s a lot more robust and easier to track down any problems. We were going to call this new packet a Spawn Bundle, but that that got confused with the AISpawnBundle we already have, we then started calling it Dependent Entity Spawn Helper, which doesn\u2019t exactly trip off the tongue, so now we\u2019re using the Loadout Helper, which we\u2019re not really happy with either. So it\u2019ll probably change again. (If you don\u2019t think this is a big deal, consider that the name of a module or subroutine may be employed across multiple files across millions of lines of code across different code development branches being used by different teams that need merging before a release. And yet, a reliable and ordered naming convention is extremely important for internal consistency because if the names don\u2019t make intuitive or engineering sense, it\u2019s harder and slower for newcomers to get up to snuff on a system that\u2019s become too idiosyncratic.)\n\nThe Object Container work (which similarly had gone through numerous renames) is making some good progress. We\u2019ve now got proof of principle where we can export a level as an object container and get it to load into the game correctly. Now we begin the fun part of trying to split the level up into multiple containers and getting them to stream in and out of memory, which is where we start to break everything. We\u2019ll also be working on converting the prefabs over and getting the containers working with the Zone System. Once all of that is in it will allow us to greatly expand the scope of a level.\n\nOtherwise it\u2019s pretty much carrying on as usual. The audio guys are currently trying to track down a really nasty audio corruption bug which you might have heard. It\u2019s proving really tricky as it\u2019s very hard to reproduce, our QA only hear it after playing the game for around 4 hours in a session with a full server so we might only get it once or twice a day. It ends up that the turnaround time between creating a new build with some additional debugging, or potential fixes, and seeing what happens becomes very drawn out. We have started to narrow down what is going on though and we\u2019re confident we can get it fixed shortly.\n\nGraphics\nLast month a lot of our focus was on improving performance and we\u2019ve managed to make significant improvements on existing scenes\/ships but also on our newer and more complex assets that are still in production. Some of our recent big wins have come from fixing various issues on the Constellations and Retaliators room setup to ensure they\u2019re properly occluded from outside the ship, and to heavily optimise the UI of both ships (we now render less than \u00bc of the number of meshes for the holo-UI for the exact same visual result).\n\nThis month the leads have been planning the long term schedule for the year, and the graphics team have had to determine the graphics requirements of all the other teams (art, vfx, design, gameplay) and ensure we\u2019ve planned out all the required features. While doing this the rest of the graphics team have been focussing on newer features, starting with our revival of the gas cloud tech that will be vital for both Squadron 42 and the PU. The gas cloud tech will continue to be one of our main priorities for the next couple of months, and at the moment we\u2019re focussing on researching efficient volumetric lighting techniques and trying to get the look and feel right before getting into the optimisations and polish stages further down the line. Other new features we\u2019re starting on are improvements to some of the shaders such as glass and skin, a new version of our LOD merging tool to optimise space stations and FPS environments, improved fire\/glow on particle effects, and a completely new physically based glare & lens-flare system.\n\nAnimation\nHere in the UK we have been working on core FPS player mechanics. We\u2019ve been setting up some of the aim pose requirements for technical implementation of cover low and cover high systems. We\u2019ve also been reworking the no weapon locomotion turns to add in some weight to the animation in 3rd person while keeping the camera steady in first person. An interesting challenge in itself when gameplay requires turning on the spot!\n\nFurther adjustments to core gameplay requirements have been lowering the crouch locomotion set to better fit the height metric set by design. This will allow idle and locomotion to keep below cover height, instead of your head popping up when you start to move. We\u2019ve also started to look in to implementation of the vault and mantling mechanics, reviewing the motion capture data and working with design and code on the best way to break it up to allow for a smooth gameplay experience.\n\nOther than that we\u2019ve been planning for the year ahead, and providing some body data for cinematics over in Frankfurt to unblock them.\n\nAudio\nHere in CIG Audio, we\u2019ve spent a lot of time tracking down an issue that\u2019s affected the sound experience in the live release; wholesale and rather nasty distortion, that typically happens only after a reasonably lengthy play session.\n\nIt\u2019s been difficult to discern the cause up until this week, but we think we have a solution and we\u2019re rolling that out as soon as we can. We\u2019ve had help from the community in tracking this one down, and have to thank all involved who went above and beyond the call of duty in sending us their data files and reporting the issue in such detail \u2013 it\u2019s awesome to work hand in hand with you all. We\u2019ve also had some great assistance from Audiokinetic\u2019s support department who\u2019ve pitched in wherever they can. It\u2019s been a trying time for Graham, Sam and Mikhail in doing the necessary detective work and our QA team have also been of great assistance here. We\u2019ll write up a more detailed report of it for those interested later once we have a fuller picture.\n\nAs you can imagine, this has curtailed some of our progress on the system side and has highlighted just how much we need audio programming engineers; as well as this issue bringing this to the fore, we\u2019ve put together our entire audio engineering roadmap to feed into the wider code schedule and it includes much of what is discussed on the Ask A Dev forum and far more besides \u2013 there are a lot of foundations still to put down to cater for a universe as huge as ours, lots of variables to cater for and you can never quite know what they might be until the game hits the live servers.\n\nSo on the topic, we have a role available here at Foundry 42 for a Senior Audio Programmer, and one can apply via the CIG website!\n\nOtherwise, work has continued where possible on Squadron 42, with Ross putting down as much as he can there, setting some markers for how that workflow should be, and continuing on the music logic system with Sam. Ship work is continually ongoing via Darren and Luke. Stefan\u2019s been refining the impacts of ship-based weapons \u2013 he\u2019s looking at making them more dangerous when you\u2019re in EVA or generally unshielded by a ship. Matteo\u2019s continued with Foley work for characters, Phil has been putting together one of the most awesome rigs ever for p-cap dialogue capture purposes, Bob\u2019s been hard at it speccing up our dialogue system\/database. Jason\u2019s been assisting with that and looking to proximity based VOIP tech. I\u2019ve been arranging as much as I can for a forthcoming orchestral performance session, and also working with everyone on a bit of everything.\n\nHopefully with this nasty bug out the way we can get back to more gainful work in building up the systems and content. Thanks for listening!\n\nQA\nUK QA have been split between the testing of Star Citizen Future and Present this month \u2013 with us covering the current release streams of 2.1.0 (via 2.1.1 and 2.1.2) as well as the more developmental stream where the new upcoming features work is being done. At the time of writing this, 2.1.2 is about to go LIVE \u2013 so we\u2019re all feeling happy in the knowledge that it\u2019s been a good months\u2019 work well done!\n\nIn terms of our biggest, most difficult to catch bug this month; we\u2019ve been devoting a lot of time to the reproduction of the audio corruption and subsequent crash that\u2019s been happening in 2.1.0 and 2.1.1. This has been some quite involved work for the UK test team \u2013 which has required frequent communication with the audio programmers as well as needing us to be sat in the PTU and LIVE servers, trying to force the issue to occur \u2013 with the help of many a backer. So thanks again!\n\nThis is also Andy Nicholson\u2019s last month working as the QA Manager in the UK \u2013 Phil Webster will be taking his place in the coming week. Andy\u2019s SC journey will continue, albeit in a new form with the Design team \u2013 but as QA Manager he leaves a legacy of creating a really great QA team.\n\nAnd now it\u2019s time to sign off. SPACESHIPLAUNCHSFXNOISES!\n\nGreetings Citizens,\nHello from Frankfurt! Our main focus for January has been to re-iterate on the goals set throughout December and ensure we are still on track with them. For that we had a few meetings to discuss priorities so everyone was on the same page what to work on next. We slowly ramped-up on the focus so everyone could get back into their zone and work without interruption as much as possible. FPS, PU design, Cinematics, AI and core engine development progress so far within the first few weeks of 2016 has been quite impressive and you can find more details in the respective reports from our team.\n\nProduction\nThe production team started the month with a lot of planning sessions. Having ended the year with our massive 2.0.0 update, introducing some key features of our game, we want to ensure that 2016 will be aequally as exciting for everyone. We met with the Directors and the team to talk about what high level goals we want to achieve, and when they\u2019ll be completed, throughout 2016. We then prioritized and matched the tasks against our available resources. Talks with the team are still going on to break the goals down into achievable steps. Going through this process is taking a lot of time and since we also have to continue working on the updates\/bug fixes for the live game it\u2019s something that needs to be scheduled carefully to allow the team to prepare properly while keeping interruption on their current work as low as possible. On the AI side we are almost completed and will have a first draft roadmap ready within the next few days. This will cover all requirements for S42 but also PU and we have a lot of really interesting features and systems ready to be worked on. Follow-up discussions will happen with other departments of the team where dependencies need to be clarified. FPS, PU design and core engine development are on a good way, but all need prioritization and breaking the work down further before we can pull together a final plan.\n\nCode\nHi everyone, a new year starts with new technological challenges. We released 2.0 in December and 2.1 in January, each accompanied by a PTU phase before they went live. Star Citizen nowadays has a size of ~30GB, which means that with the current patch model, the backers have to download a load of data (Especially on the PTU where we want as many people as possible to make the game stable prior to going live). The size is the same internally for us, as even a 1GBit LAN connection cannot transfer 30 GB instantly. Hence we in Frankfurt collaborated with our Austin engineers on how to tackle this problem. We came up with a good solution in which we all believe in and have started to implement. The idea is to design a system which knows your local data, knows what data should be in the build, and then selectively downloads and updates your local data set to match the one of the build. For example, if between two PTU release, zero textures are changed, then no texture will be downloaded, reducing the required download by several GB. We hope to start testing this system soon internally and then extend it to our public releases as well. Unfortunately, as this is part an integration process which often tend to have many small issues which add up to a lot of time, I can only give you Soon\u2122 as an estimate.\n\nEVA was also a major focus! For extra vehicular activities (EVA) the player model is basically a ragdoll which is 100% controlled by physical impulses. This type of \u201cragdoll\u201d can be driven by animation and is able to perform all actions needed for a player character. All physics-based control models can be unpredictable in certain situations: for example, whenever legs collide with an obstacle the character is doing somersaults and sliding along walls always makes the view spin around. This behavior is physically correct and pretty much identical to what happens when parts of a ship collide with an obstacles in space. But if this happens in first person view, then it\u2019s not exactly what a player expects. In the last weeks we investigated (with the help of UK and LA) different control methods for the EVA suit that preserves the physicality of the ragdoll simulation and while still giving the player more precise controls for navigation and EVA combat. This includes:\n\nImproved \u201cview-based control mode\u201d without drifting. This control mode is very similar to John Pritchett\u2019s thruster controls for ships.\n\nImproved Yaw-Pitch controls that reduced the \u201ccamera roll\u201d.\n\nBetter capabilities to slide along walls by reducing the friction on the suit and using counter forces to stabilize spinning automatically.\n\nWeapon aiming in vertical and horizontal poses for driven ragdolls\n\nNew IK-system for driven ragdolls. Whenever the legs collide with the environment, the character can pull them up immediately.\n\nExperimental auto-navigation methods that makes it easier to move around in tighter spaces without getting stuck in level geometry.\n\nFinally, we continued working on the procedural planet environment and trying different combinations to improve the planets overall appearances. We\u2019re making great progress and look forward to showing things off in the future.\n\nAI\nSince AI didn\u2019t provide a large update for December due to the holiday, we\u2019ll focus on the general progress we made since last month.\n\nOn the character side we completed the first pass on the implementation of the functionalities required to allow enemies to use covers during their combat behaviors. Animators have provided us animations for staying in cover, shooting from cover, peeking from cover, and firing blindly at their target. The behaviors can now correctly request functionalities such as peeking or shooting from cover. The system will take care of analysing the current position in relation of the target position selecting the proper posture to use.\n\nWe also started to refactor the character perception. We\u2019re basically creating a perception system that can be modularized directly in the game code. Components will register the different entities into the system that will allow them to perceive through different senses. Vision has been the first to be tackled, we started using the CryEngine VisionMap and we created a game component that registers an entity as an Observer or Observable. This allow us to specify what we\u2019re interested in seeing, and how other characters can perceive us so the vision map can take care of making physical checks and caching information for queries. We will share more details about this in the upcoming weeks!\n\nOn the behavior side we have exposed a lot of functionalities through new behavior nodes and extended the current behavior we\u2019re using. We also started using the TokenSystem we previously talked about to create the foundation for the first coordination. With the TokenSystem we\u2019re experimenting with coordinating agents during the investigation of dangerous sounds, having one person going to investigate while the other covers him and wait for his information, etc.\n\nRegarding the spaceships AI, we have moved all the spawning logic from LUA to C++. This will allow us to maintain the system better and it already helped us by properly supporting the asynchronous entity spawning.\n\nIn addition to all of that we have been working on a lot of stability improvements and we have worked on the creation of a development plan for 2016 and beyond!\n\nBuild Engineering\nOur Senior Build Engineer has been busy in general working on the build system, trybuild and automation. This month a good amount of time was spent on general build issues that generally come up throughout development. He also worked on a few changes that will allow us to switch over to updated software once it\u2019s released.\n\nQA\nThis month Chris Speak has been progressing on Automated testing setups for CryEngine, primarily focused on AI and the way it handles obstacles within a level as well as the Usables such as vaulting over walls and climbing ladders using a relatively simple Flowgraph module. He setup a test-map that contains several feature tests that can be triggered via the console within both the Editor as well as in Client mode that tells an AI character to move towards a specific target location, and upon entering that location the FeatureTest node in Flowgraph marks the test as complete. The AI has to determine how to navigate to that target area using the obstacles in front of it, so in the case of the screenshot below it needs to climb two 4 meter ladders to reach the target.\n\nHe\u2019s also been recording timed demos for the purposes of automating end-user-experience testing to give us daily feedback relating to everything from ship boarding and flight, to FPS combat etc. This should give us a good foundation for future changes, and make changes to the game-code a bit less risky and painful.\n\nCinematics\nCinematics is currently at work on several scenes that happen during S42\u2019s story\u2019s beginning. We\u2019ve done a first pass on our Navy hospital scenes and are currently doing previs on a few others that we can\u2019t discuss just yet. Our Sr. Environment artists are busy building up terrain, as well as environment and key props for a dramatic planetside scene. The scene is fairly prominent and we need to make room for an Idris to land. We also started with a major facelift, as well as under-the-hood work, on the Trackview editor, one of the main tools use by the cinematic designers. Sascha Hoba is currently busy bringing the toolset up to speed for what we need it to do, both in usability and feature set. The additional functionality will make certain areas more efficient for the team, and allow us to assemble scenes quicker.\n\nDesign\nFor Level Design work continues on the prototypes for the Modular Environments and the Power Management Systems, we are pretty close to having the latter ready for an internal play test to verify the concept. It should turn out to be a pretty interesting, a dynamic and fun way for the players to interact with the environments in everything from Space Stations to planetary outposts, just make sure you don\u2019t turn off the lights while someone is still in the SpaceLoo\u2122, bad things might happen.\n\nAs with development life in general we sometimes encounter bugs and blockers that might temporarily halt our work in one area, but there is always work to be done fill those small gaps, so in the last month we have also been doing some work on a small multiplayer map, defining game rules for multiplayer (line of sights, density of obstacles, height variations, scale) as well as scheduling and planning for 2016.\n\nThis last month System Design has been focused on getting a thorough breakdown of all the systems that we need for Star Citizen, past, present and future. This would allow us to verify and better see what systems are used the most and in which specific situations so we can better prioritise them.\n\nBesides that we\u2019ve been working on various cargo prototypes to decide what is the perfect balance between doing things as realistically as possible while making sure cargo movement and management is still fun and exciting to do. Other systems that we are pushing for right now are looting and resource spawn management as these will allow us to improve the PU experience greatly. We\u2019ve also had a new addition to our team, Gr\u00e9goire, a great designer from France, he\u2019s been trying to catch up with the massive amount of documentation so that next month he is 100% up to date, while at the same time trying to get familiar with all the internal tools we use on a daily basis.\n\nOn top of all this we are continuing to interview great applicants and talent to fill the ranks of the expanding Frankfurt Design team.\n\nWeapons\nWe have been working with the concept art team on a new FPS weapon, it\u2019s going well and looks good, but It is still in a very early concept stage.\n\nAlso the updated metrics for ship mounted and personal weapons have been completed after being evaluated by various departments and are ready to be used.\n\nAudio\nThis month Mikhail spent most of the time on bug fixes and refactoring AudioSystem so that it uses the ZoneSystem for all relevant positional information. It turned out to be a fair bit of work, because, like most currently existing audio systems, CrySoundSystem was designed under an implicit assumption that audio sources are mostly static, and the ones that aren\u2019t inform the audio system explicitly when their positions change. This works well for the majority of 3D-engine-based games in existence. Naturally, like with many other things, Star Citizen is a different case. Since a lot of action in the game happens inside the spaceships, there is no reason to expect the audio sources in any particular frame to be static, in fact, more often than not they are all moving, and, sometimes, for example when landing on a capital ship, there might be several clusters of audio sources all moving at different speeds relative to the listener. This not only applies to the permanent audio sources like thrusters, ship weapons, doors etc., but also the transient ones, like footsteps, object collisions, electrical sparks. As you can imagine, when the standard approach is used, the number of position updates required quickly adds up and starts to affect the overall performance. On the other hand, the Zone System provides the engine modules with a centralized and efficient way to keep track of the positional information for the objects they need, so querying it once per frame for the positions of all audible sources based on the current listener\u2019s position is definitely a much more scalable solution.\n\nArt\nThis month Robert Stephens has been concentrating on the escape pod used in the Javelin Destroyer. Even though it\u2019s only a small \/ minor craft in comparison to some of the larger ships, we\u2019re spending the time we need to give it the level of detail fans and backers have come to expect. A good amount of time was spent on how the pod doors will open \/ close, we want to have both a complex and accurately stylize locking mechanism that the player can easily use and recognize. Some of the challenges with something like this is making it look as though it would work if it existed in real life, and also balancing that with the requirements of other departments such as animation so that the character can actually get in and out of the pod easily.\n\nPascal Muller has been working on art for the procedural planet tech. This involves a lot of iterating and figuring out what works on a technical level as well as getting it to look as good as possible. The main difficulty is to make it read visually no matter how far or how close you are to the planet. To make this work there are multiple levels of detail which blend in and out depending on your distance to the surface in a very particular way. Can\u2019t say much more about it at this point except that we can\u2019t wait to share it with everyone.\n\nTech Art\nAs part of our character pipeline, this month we divided or character data files into three separate units, _SRC, _PUB, and _BND files. The SRC file stores the render mesh and skeleton data, PUB stores the puppet rig, and _BND file helps us to map our FBX animation data to our puppet file. Currently we\u2019re smoothing out the pipeline and developing tools to communicate with different files and systems with metadata nodes. We also provided some Tech support for EVA animation as well as some rigging for a weapon prototype.\n\nVFX\nFor the past few weeks VFX in Frankfurt has been prototyping the visual looks and styles of some of the Xi\u2019an tech. This tech differs visually from the other races and In order to get this visual look it required us to integrate some new tools into our texture creation workflow.\n\n2016 is off to a great start! We began this month with great excitement for what\u2019s coming next. Here\u2019s what BHVR worked on in January:\n\nDesign\nJanuary was very successful for the Behaviour Design team. Francois Boucher and Jesse Kalb went full steam ahead on the blueprints and the whiteboxes of Hurston shops. Working with our friends at ATX, we quickly iterated on Hurston locations and are about ready to hand most of the whiteboxes to the Art team.\n\nWe also updated our shopping prototype and put it in situation in both Casaba Outlet and in Nyx\/Levski bazaar market, proving the concept even more, highlighting our future needs but also its current flaws.\n\nLead Designer Guillaume Bourque is working with a bunch of team members, both in Montreal and in other studios, setting the next collection of flair items on the right track. All I can say is it\u2019s going to be real nice. We are also looking forward the next location we are going to work on, possibly a space station.\n\nLastly, we are helping setting up the Bar Citizen Montreal event which is going to take place early February here in Montreal.\n\nArt\nThis month, well rested from our holydays, we began R&D for a brand new planet. The work consisted mostly on creating a distinct feel and ambience to make sure that all our planets don\u2019t look alike. Furthermore, working on a new planet is a great opportunity to apply the latest techniques that we\u2019ve learned from the previous planets. Hopefully with this in mind, we can improve even more the visual quality of our new assets.\n\nOn the building sets, we moved to the polishing phase of the industrial\/mining set. Also, we continued work on the different shops that we will be able to explore in Levski.\n\nThere was also a lot of work done on industrial props and on the next month flair objects.\n\nEngineering\nThis new year, there was a lot of work done on different game features. Simon Jambu worked on the Party System, to help you pick up the right instance to play with all your friends.\n\nJohn Corbett, has been continuously at work on the datastore system, to allow temporary modifications on ships. This will be handled through a holotable on Port Olisar\n\nMartin Poirier is working with other studios on in ships\u2019 display screen optimization: reducing the memory and CPU footprints of ship UI (especially multicrew ships) as well as making the system ship component driven.\n\nAdamo Maiorano and Fabien Poupineau are going full speed ahead on shopping experience. Going through different prototypes to make sure you have the best experience.\n\nGreetings from Montreal! Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve been up to in the last month:\n\nOrganization Invitations\nLast month, we launched the new Organization invitation template. We refreshed the look-and-feel so that it gives more prominence to the Organization\u2019s own branding, and also added color schemes to match the type of Organization. You can find this feature under My Account > Organizations, in the left menu.\n\nSubscription campaign\nWe wrapped up the QA phase for the upcoming Subscription campaign and will be launching in the beginning of February. Subscribers are a key part of the Star Citizen community, as they support the production of \u201c10 for the Chairman,\u201d \u201cAround the \u2018Verse,\u201d \u201cBugsmashers,\u201d \u201cMeet the Devs,\u201d and more. In addition to re-designing the Subscription section of the website, we produced some logos and animations that can be used in videos. We\u2019ve also added new exclusive rewards (for Centurions and Imperators) in an easy-to-read matrix. If you haven\u2019t already done so, now\u2019s the best time to become a Subscriber!\n\nShip Happens\nThis was an exciting month for ship production, as three ships were brought into the game. With the release of 2.1, the Sabre became hangar-ready, giving players their first in-game look at this agile fighter. As for flight-ready ships released in 2.1, we had the Freelancer base as well as the Vanguard Warden. During the release of 2.1, a sale was launched alongside it featuring the Sabre, Warden and an Aegis Fighter Pack featuring both the Sabre and its big brother, the Vanguard Warden. The following week also saw the sale of the alien ship, Xi\u2019An Khartu Al, to coincide with Gillian Anderson\u2019s interview on Squadron 42. To close out the month, there was a Free-fly to coincide with the weekend of PAX South.\n\nMulti-Factor Authentication (MFA)\nWe have begun development on the core mechanism for multi-factor authentication, which will greatly reduce the number of hacked accounts. In addition, we\u2019re updating our design layouts to match the current look-and-feel of the website. Once MFA is in place, you will need a second authentication factor besides your username and password in order to access the game. You will decide how you receive this second factor (by email, SMS or a third-party app such as Google Authenticator). We are still in the early stages, so keep checking back for more updates!\n\nARK Starmap\nWe began discussions with the Star Citizen dev team to decide on the best way to integrate the Starmap into the game. A lot of factors have to be considered, such as visual integrity, performance, code maintenance, star system updates (synching), and what technologies should be used for the in-game version. Each month, we will provide more details on the process. In the meantime, you can check out our web version at: https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/starmap\n\nBehind the Scenes\nWhat happens when the game crashes? Well, we have been working with the Star Citizen dev team to build something we call the Panic Service. The Panic Service is responsible for receiving game client crash data and cataloging them in a centralized database where they can be accessed by the devs. Game crash data is sent to us via the \u201cReceiver\u201d, which is then processed by the \u201cWorker\u201d and stored in a database. From now on, Star Citizen devs will be able to access all crash data from this database, making it easier to extract the pertinent information. This will save time in troubleshooting.\n\nBar Citizen\nFor those of you who live in or near Montreal, we hope to meet you at Bar Citizen Montreal! All the details can be found on their Facebook page.\n\nThe start of 2016 has been a fantastic one. Right out of the gate, the response from you guys to Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 and 2.1 has been tremendous, and it always makes our jobs just a little more enjoyable when we see all of you enjoying your Star Citizen experience.\n\nVideos\nThe 10 For series that airs every Monday made another evolution when we started incorporating hosts from different disciplines. With the addition of 10 for the Developers, we can answer questions provided by our development subscribers with more than one perspective. This has been providing us with what we feel are answers that are both more informative, and hopefully more interesting as well.\n\nAround the Verse continues expanding to include coverage of other studios like Austin and Manchester, while addressing the production challenges inherent in trying to coordinate, produce, and direct segments through Skype and email. We\u2019re hopeful to have a chance to visit our European studios in person this year and delve even deeper into the amazing work being done on the other side of the world.\n\nTo facilitate the production of these segments, we constructed three free-standing sets to improve overall production value. While only one of them is currently decorated, we have plans to bring the other two online in the coming weeks to months. This in conjunction with upgrades to the audio and lighting equipment, we\u2019re slowly working to make our weekly productions all that we want them to be.\n\nJanuary also saw the release of two videos detailing Gillian Anderson\u2019s work on the upcoming Squadron 42. Gillian is an exciting addition to the cast and we look forward to sharing more behind the scenes looks with other members of the cast in the future.\n\nForums\nWe recently added the Shipyard sub-section of the forums: an area dedicated specifically to the discussion of your favorite ships in Star Citizen. This change, like any change, often takes time to get used to, but the developers have taken to the dedicated nature of the feedback they\u2019re looking for, and information is flowing from Citizens to Designers more easily than ever, so we definitely feel this is a huge win for everyone involved.\n\nLive Events\nWhile we didn\u2019t have an official presence at any conventions this month, we were able to send a single infiltrator to PAX South to meet with fans and shake his head at the litany of \u201cwhen\u201d questions that assaulted him. Our intrepid Community Manager even managed to unexpectedly find himself on a panel with the Community Manager for Elite: Dangerous, much to the delight of fans in attendance.\n\nPerks\nWe launched our new Subscriptions landing page this month that you can find here. It\u2019s a brief look at all the things becoming a development subscriber gets you. This month\u2019s Subscriber flair was the AV8 Battle Armor Replica from the Puglisi Collection, and looking at the numbers appears to be a big hit with you guys. We\u2019re constantly looking for ways to improve our Subscriber flair, so if you have a fantastic idea, please share it with us in the Subscriber forums.\n\nCoda\nWe\u2019ll keep it short and sweet this month, as by the time you\u2019ve gotten to this section your eyeballs may be ready to burst. As always, we want to thank the other studios and departments for taking the time to gather all this info for us, as we appreciate it just as much as I\u2019m certain you all do.\n\nSee you in the \u2018Verse!"},"links_count":2,"comment_count":95,"created_at":"2016-02-06T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"10 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-08 08:45:13","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":15185,"next_id":15188}}