{"data":{"id":15285,"title":"Monthly Studio Report: March 2016","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/15285-Monthly-Studio-Report-March-2016","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/15285","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/15285","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly 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Citizens,\nYour monthly report is here. But first, a small patch! We\u2019ve just issued Star Citizen Alpha 2.3.1 to the live servers, which includes a variety of bug fixes and balance changes. You can access it via the launcher and you can read the complete patch notes here().\n\nIf you\u2019ve played Star Citizen Alpha 2.3, you already know that March was a month for REALLY BIG SHIPS! We launched the hangar-ready Starfarer this month, along with the long-awaited Xi\u2019An scout\u2026 and there\u2019s plenty more to follow! Today we will be checking in with all of our studios and outsource partners to see what the team was working on in March\u2026 but first, we\u2019d like to share some of the fruits of that labor: some of the work we\u2019ve been doing on seamless EVA transitions that you\u2019ll be seeing in an upcoming patch. Check it out and then read on to find out the work that went into making this a reality!\n\nHello everyone!\nCan you believe that a quarter of 2016 has already come and gone? But what a quarter it has been, has it not? Just look at what we have accomplished over the past month; the Xi\u2019an Aopoa Khartu-al, the Starfarer, and let us not overlook the biggest of them all \u2013 Intergalactic Food Delivery. With 2.3 also being released, we introduced a plethora of features and fixes, all of which can be found in our patch notes.\n\nThis is a global effort for every branch of Star Citizen but each branch contributes to the whole picture. So let us take a look at what CIG Los Angeles has knocked out of the park this month.\n\nEngineering\nThe CIG-LA Engineering team was bolstered with reinforcements! We had two new Gameplay Engineers join our ranks; Patrick Mathieu and Chad McKinney. We are very much looking forward to their contributions to Star Citizen!\n\nWork continues on the new interaction system being spearheaded by Allen Chen and Mark Abent which is in the early stages of implementation by being incorporated into the ship seat interactivity. Our newest team member, Chad McKinney, has jumped in head-first by helping Allen on the doors and ramp interactions. While this system is something we have mentioned in the past, it is making steady progress and we can hopefully begin implementing components in a near-future release.\n\nChad Zamzow has been testing the new Shield Emitter system which is currently in the implementation stage of development. This new feature will add greater dimension to how shields function; especially when it comes to larger capital-class ships which will have multiple shield emitters. This will give ship engineers greater control over how much energy gets routed to a particular shield\u2019s facing in order to maximize protection given a certain situation. Although great progress has been made to move this feature closer to release, there is still quite a bit of work left to do in the future.\n\nBut saving the best for last, our Engineering Lead Paul Reindell has been fast at work in bringing persistence into Star Citizen. For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, persistence refers to certain game parameters remaining active even if the player logs off. This includes allowing players to acquire items through the in-game shopping system. Whether you are purchasing snazzy new threads to make your space pirate look more\u2026pirate-y, or you have your eye on a deadly new pistol, the end-goal is to make sure the choices you make in-game will persist and not reset each game session. It may sound like the kind of thing you can just take for granted in gaming, but when your items and inventory are as intricate as they are in Star Citizen, it\u2019s actually no simple matter!\n\nTech Design\nWith the last couple patches, aside from tackling bugs it is clear the Tech Design team has been hard at work to bring you the best ships we have ever produced. Lead Tech Designer Kirk Tome worked hard on one of the most anticipated ships, the Xi\u2019An Aopoa Khartu-al, now flight-ready and available for you to go forth in alien style. To continue this momentum, Matthew Sherman has been working on getting the MISC Reliant hangar-ready and Calix Reneau has been working diligently on the whitebox of the Drake Caterpillar.\n\nOn the component side, you may have seen the new component class added to the Holotable. Power Plants are the latest component we are allowing ship owners to swap out, and as you might expect, power the various systems of your ship. Two new power plants, the AEGIS Regulus and Amon & Reese OverDrive, have been added and can be used to swap out the standard \u201cgeneric\u201d power plant your ship comes with.\n\nAs more components are introduced to the game, we cannot wait to see what customization options you will opt for as you pursue your chosen career path in Star Citizen.\n\nArt\nShips seem to be the hot ticket item this month, and it continues on with the LA Art team. Concept Artist Gurmukh Bhasin is busy concepting the Drake Caterpillar Cargo module while our newest Concept Artist Justin Wentz completed the concept art for the Caterpillar\u2019s crew habitation quarters. The next step is to model the habitation based on Justin\u2019s concept which is currently tasked to Art Lead Elwin Bachiller and Associate Artist Daniel Kamentsky.\n\nOn the PU side, our newest character artist is creating the pristine materials for the Navy jumpsuit, Jeremiah Lee is doing a 2nd concept pass on the light armor, and Art Supervisor Forrest Stephan is creating the pristine materials for the flight suit helmet as well as clothing for the Persistent Universe (PU).\n\nTechnical Content\nThe Global Tech Content team is truly a jack of all trades team that has its fingers in everything from Star Citizen to ship development to characters to the PU.\n\nTech Content Director Sean Tracy has been working on developing the tech for character customization. Just another step on the road to creating an immersive persistent in-game universe. Along with this tech, the artists have been using this to prototype how character customization will function. Associate Rigger Gaige Hallman has also been hard at work on the PU side of the game, creating clothing template layers. What this does is allows each article of clothing to occupy a certain amount of volume. This will ensure that various articles of clothing can co-exist without clipping into each other as long as they are properly fitted to those geo volumes.\n\nTo give an idea of the diverse challenges the Tech Content team faces, Senior Tech Artist Mark McCall has created a test level called GearValidator. This level\u2019s sole purpose is to test and ensure the landing gear of our ships will function correctly. After running through a series of tests, a report is provided that lets us know whether or not a particular ship\u2019s landing gear is performing as it should be.\n\nPart of what made the Xi\u2019an Aopoa Khartu-al able to be released in 2.3 was Matt Intrieri\u2019s work on getting so many Xi\u2019an Aopoa Khartu-al -related bugs fixed in a relatively short amount of time, but we also are aware there is more fixing and tweaking that still needs to be completed before we are absolutely sanguine with the ship. Associate Tech Artist Patrick Salerno continues to review and add LODs to normalize the mesh count on legacy ships; he\u2019s currently progressing through the 300-series.\n\nQA\nCIG-LA QA\u2019s primary focus was the push for 2.2 LIVE release and subsequent 2.3 PTU and LIVE Releases. In addition to standard sanity and smoke checks, the team also focused on:\n\nXi\u2019an Khartu-al flight performance.\n\nStarfarer hangar readiness, and preliminary flight performance.\n\nEarly testing of persistence features.\n\nInvestigating server stability and performance issues.\n\nGathering ship feedback, with this month\u2019s subject being the Drake Cutlass.\n\nIn addition, Eric Pietro began training for his new role as Animation\u2019s Tools Specialist, with his goal being to ensure that the animations tools are functioning properly, and suitable for all animator needs.\n\nNarrative\nLead Writer Dave Haddock is home from Manchester! Dave spent the month in the UK looking over the whitebox levels with the Designers, allowing him to determine what additional dialogue might need to be included. Since then, Senior Writer Will Weissbaum and Dave have been hard at work putting everything needed together so that we can make sure Squadron 42 really brings you into the world of Star Citizen. Before flying back, Dave also got to sit in on Chris\u2019 final editorial selects session, closing out the last lingering odds-and-ends from the previous performance shoot.\n\nAside from juggling News Updates, Galactic Guides and Portfolios, Associate Writer Adam Wieser has started naming the massive amounts of components\/items\/clothing that are being developed, writing the subsequent item descriptions as well as compiling a glossary for some of the more unique terms in an effort to standardize the language within the company. To give an example, if someone says a ship is an \u2018interdiction ship,\u2019 we\u2019re all in agreement what qualities or aspects that term.\n\nAside from continuing her wizardry with organizing the internal wiki, Cherie: Destroyer of Worlds\u2122 has been processing all the incoming scientific data for the various planets and stars and has kicked off the final batch of scientific data to our fantastic science consultants. She has also started compiling an initial list of potential entries for the Galactapedia as well as a chronology of events that have already \u2018happened\u2019 in the universe.\n\nWe had our alien language specialist, Britton Watkins, down to visit the office. After designing the Vanduul language for our shoot with Andy Serkis, Chris wanted to discuss next steps for Vanduul as well as the other languages. Hopefully, more news about that to come, but should be very exciting.\n\nUntil next month\u2026\n\nProduction\nThe Los Angeles Production team has been overseeing the hiring of new staff for the development teams. We have increased the number of artists and engineers, but we are still looking for designers, writers, and more engineers. While ramping up the number of developers in Los Angeles does help provide an increase in available resources, we want to make sure we are being smart about our strategies.\n\nIn order to ensure that Production is in sync with the other regional offices, we recently had Global Head of Production, Erin Roberts and Producer Ricky Jutley visiting from the UK office to discuss strategies for the PU with Todd Papy, Tony Zurovec, and Chris Roberts. While generally email or video conferencing are the usual methods for communicating trans-Atlantic, sometimes it is hard to beat face to face communication.\n\nSenior Producer Eric Davis has been not only overseeing the development milestones for 2.3 and 2.4, he has also largely overseen the ongoing construction as we move closer to completing the new office in Los Angeles. Associate Producer Randy Vazquez has been managing the tasks for Tech Design and Engineering while Associate Producer Mark Hong is responsible for managing the tasks for Tech Content and Art as well. While that list is simplified each one of those items contains a mountainous amount of individual tasks, milestones, schedules, reports, and other related responsibilities.\n\nIn Conclusion\nAs you can see, we have not been idle this month (nor have we ever been idle). We are very excited the Xi\u2019an Aopoa Khartu-al is being enjoyed. We know how long you have been waiting for it and we are proud of each new ship we release. Although mainly focused on by our compatriots in the UK, the Starfarer\u2019s hangar debut was also another milestone we were excited to complete. As mentioned earlier, we cannot wait until you see what we are doing with the Caterpillar, Herald, Reliant, and more. While we are proud of our accomplishments this month, it also reminds us we still have many more milestones to reach for. See you next month!\n\nHowdy Citizens,\nMarch was a very exciting month as always. We made lots of publishes to the PTU and deployed Star Citizen Alpha 2.3.0 to the live server! We\u2019ve had a number of visitors, and a number of travelers, and a great deal of cross-studio collaboration at all levels. We also had a blast at the Bar Citizen event at the start of the month, and we look forward to hosting more events like this in the future! Here are detailed updates from each studio lead:\n\nDevelopment\nThe major focus during the month of March here in Austin has been Shopping! By this I do not mean that we all went to the mall together to pick up the hottest fashion trends, but rather we focused on driving the features to completion that are required to get the shop environments functional for players. Lead Designer Rob Reininger has been driving various subfeatures like the Single-Item Transaction UI and flow and the shop environment item setup. Pete Mackay has been driving the pricing of all the various items that we will be selling in the shops. This has required much coordination between our Design and Community teams in LA and our Design Director Todd Papy and Pete has handled it just swimmingly. We\u2019re now implementing the established prices into DataForge where they will exist statically until we bring our formulaic solution online. The items will be able to be purchased with a new currency we\u2019ve established, internally called Alpha Currency. This currency exists for the sole purpose of testing out these prices and balancing the game, and will exist separately from UEC or REC. At any point we\u2019ll be able to wipe Alpha Currency and start fresh if something goes awry, and this will help us nail down final pricing numbers before we go Live.\n\nAlong with the Shopping frontend comes the work being done to support the Shopping backend. The Server Team here in Austin has been setting up the ability to add\/subtract Alpha Currency in game and handing it off to the UI and Design teams in the UK to use for the shopping interface and providing alpha currency rewards via completing missions. This work is part of Persistence as a whole, which made significant progress this month. We finally integrated Persistence into our main development stream, which means we can\u2019t go back to the way things were before and Persistence is here to stay. With that comes a lot of issues and bugs that need fixing, and now our Server Team is working hard to fix those up so we can get our main development stream running smoothly again.\n\nOne additional feature that we\u2019ve developed this month is the Port Modification View. Jeff Zhu did the programming work to rebuild the hangar code from the ground up, and we are now able to access various \u201cItem Ports\u201d around the hangar to customize the layout of our ships and hangar flair. No longer will the ships be organized in the hangars via the website, but instead you\u2019ll be able to walk up to a bay in the hangar and choose which ships go where in game. This is an exciting new feature and we\u2019ve been having a blast playing around with it. We\u2019ve now passed this off to the UI team to dress it up in a mobiGlas app. Look forward to seeing that feature very soon!\n\nOur Animation team has been supporting in various areas of the project, per usual. Jay Brushwood has been doing a lot of R&D on cockpit comparisons for the male and female characters. We want to make sure we are smart about how we approach this task so that we don\u2019t grow our animation footprint exponentially. The Ship Animation Team has also been providing assets to Programming to help R&D various features such as different enter\/exit speeds for the cockpits and allowing for two separate entry points for ships. Our PU Animation Team has been helping with defining metrics for various interactions in the game. From dining at a booth, to standing\/sitting at a computer console, to serving champagne on a tray, each new animation requires some thought into how we implement assets to fit with existing metrics. If metrics aren\u2019t established, we have to help create them so the Props Team know what dimensions their assets need to fit. Our Lead Animator, Bryan Brewer, has also been supporting Foundry 42 in implementing locomotion sets for various characters for Squadron 42. He\u2019s making rapid progress and it\u2019s nice to see some more of these characters come to life.\n\nLastly, our Ship Team here in Austin wrapped up work on the Xi\u2019an Khartu-Al this month and we released that to be flight ready with 2.3.0. It\u2019s a gorgeous, unique ship so major props go out to Chris Smith and Josh Coons for that accomplishment. Those guys have now moved on to the Hornet upgrade and the Drake Herald, respectively. Chris will be bringing the Hornet up to our current standards and optimizing the ship for performance considerations. Josh has been working on the whitebox model for the Drake Herald and will continue that into April.\n\nLive Operations:\nQA\nStar Citizen QA in Austin has been very busy this past month. With assistance from our other QA teams in LA and UK, the Austin QA successfully completed 18 deployments to our Public Test Universe as well as 5 deployments to the official live environment. The team was very happy to share the new features in Star Citizen Alpha 2.3.\n\nThis month we have a few new faces on the Austin QA team. A big welcome to Jesse Mark, Don Allen and Scott McCrea. We are happy to have them aboard. This month has also seen some movement in our ranks. As Senior QA, Tyler Witkin has shown the ability to foster positive interactions with our community. It is only natural that he transition into our Community department. Tyler is now our newest Community Manager! Andrew Hesse has been doing a great job as QA Lead for Austin and we are proud to announce his promotion to QA Manager. Andrew will manage the Austin QA studio as well as assist with QA future planning. Marissa Meissner has been doing an excellent job since she was brought on as our Information Specialist. Marissa has proven her ability to lead and ensure day to day tasks are completed. Marissa has worked on many tasks including fully documenting our processes and workflows, managing the Issue Council, being a liaison to Community and In Game Support and managing our patch notes process to name a few. Marissa will be our newest QA Lead in the Austin Studio where she will ensure our day to day tasks and requests are completed with utmost diligence. Congratulations to Andrew, Marissa and Tyler!\n\nMost of the month of March was occupied by testing the new features that were implemented into 2.3 and 2.3.1 including the hangar ready Starfarer and flyable Khartu-Al or Xi\u2019an Scout. QA also spent time testing the newly added FPS weapons and ship power plant components as well as verifying the many bug fixes included in the update.\n\nOur dedicated Squadron 42 tester Andrew Rexroth has been working closely with his counter-parts Liam Guest and Lee Jones in our UK office testing Squadron 42. Squadron 42 testing is ramping up with Andrew testing 5 separate levels each with many story driven objectives. We are also in the process of moving more testers over to Squadron 42 testing. Katarzyna Mierostawska is currently being trained to assist in this effort and more testers will make the change to Squadron 42 in the very near future.\n\nTodd Raffray has taken on testing the very beginnings of Persistence. Todd is working very closely with engineers Jeff Zhu, Ahmed Shaker, Jason Ely and Tom Sawyer to ensure each aspect of Persistence is understood and properly tested as it is implemented. Todd is also making sure this process is clearly communicated to our other teams so we are all on the same page in terms of testing this very significant feature.\n\nWe are incredibly excited for the upcoming release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.4. With our combined efforts across 4 studios, QA will continue to provide the quality testing the upcoming releases will require. Thank you to everyone that have provided feedback and contributing on the Issue Council. Your help goes a long way to ensuring we create the best damn space sim ever. See you next month!\n\nGame Support\nMarch was a great month for Will Leverett and Chris Danks in Game Support, if for no other reason than they got to work onsite together! Will spent two weeks in Manchester with Chris, as well as the Customer Service, Quality Assurance, and Production teams. There was a lot of time and effort put forth into making sure we\u2019re aligned in how we help players, training on new tools, and planning game server admin tools for what we\u2019ll need to help build, test, and support the Persistent Universe.\n\nWe saw 2.3.0 testing through PTU all the way to Live, and we\u2019ve coordinated with Ahmed Shaker and Jeffrey Pease in DevOps to test additional versions in order to isolate and identify the causes of AI overspawn. We\u2019re thankful for those playtesters who have been able to dedicate time towards tracking this down, and we\u2019re resolving new issues with each patch because of it.\n\nWe\u2019ve begun a process to collect website bugs in addition to client\/server\/launcher bugs on the Issue Council this month. We were admittedly not sure what results we would get, but the results have been extremely favorable and we have started to get those bugs into the dev cycle.\n\nGame Support has also continued to refine how we utilize the Public Test Universe (PTU). We\u2019ve gotten a heck of a lot of value out of PTU, and it\u2019s now essential to the development of Star Citizen. In addition, we\u2019ll be updating our PTU list of players for 2.4.0, so make sure you\u2019re staying active in PTU and on the Issue Council as that\u2019s how we invite our players!\n\nIT\/Operations\nIn March we\u2019ve seen major progress on the patch reduction size project. This project touches multiple teams including IT, DevOps, and engineering teams in Frankfurt as well as Montreal. We\u2019ve finished the low level changes to how data can be read by the engine and we\u2019ve built out the initial data stores for the project. We have also started the first steps toward modifying the build pipeline so that builds can output to the new data format.\n\nVery early patch testing has proven that our new patching methodology is working with test data so now it\u2019s on to building out the rest of the pipeline and rebuilding the core functionality of the launcher patcher. Because this is such a large re-write, we\u2019re taking this opportunity to build out an entirely new launcher patcher which will be loaded with new and improved functionality and controls when completed.\n\nWhile we are super excited to advance this project to the players as quickly as possible, we still have much to do and we must do it right. This change will impact the way builds are consumed internally to the dev teams and QA as well so we have more work to refactor internal delivery systems as well. So far though, we\u2019re seeing every indication that all teams are in sync and the project is on track.\n\nLiveOps\/DevOps\nThis month the team has been working as hard as ever on deployments, build system, and performance profiling. We\u2019ve delivered 18 publishes to PTU (up 10 from last month) and we\u2019ve completed 5 Live publishes. Major work was completed on a new test build system which has turned up some stunning results.\n\nThe primary goal of our test build system is to provide a functional test bed, even if modest on resources, where major changes or refactoring can occur without impacting the existing build pipeline. This is a tall order considering our production build system is massive consisting of 120 cores (240HT) with 1.5 TB of RAM combined across the stack. Our test build system is much smaller with 36 cores (72HT) and 128 GB RAM. The major difference is that the test build system is running local storage consisting of Intel\u2019s NVMe drives to perform the compilation steps rather than sharing storage with all other systems on the SAN. We expected major improvements in storage performance but what we got was nothing less than amazing.\n\nIn some, not all cases, the test build system is performing jobs with 80% reduction in time. It all comes down to storage and I\/O rates as we\u2019ve seen in every test we\u2019ve done. Highly I\/O dependent operations such as PAK file compilation are demonstrating 4x speed increase. It\u2019s still not feasible to use the test build system as a production build system replacement but when not in use in active testing these impressive results show us that we could use it for special builds and one offs which do come up several times per month.\n\nSpecial props go out to Ahmed and the rest of the publishing team for keeping up with the larger number of deployments to both our PTU and Live environments while running all the performance profiling multiple times per day. This is important work and we wouldn\u2019t be able to do it without the support of those backers helping us test on the PTU environment. We\u2019ve been gathering a wealth of information which has become invaluable to the engineering team as a whole. Chris Roberts himself has taken a keen interest in the server profiling work so thanks again for everyone who has been helping with this effort.\n\nHello Citizens,\nWe always start these notes saying that it was a busy month\u2026 because it\u2019s true! Let\u2019s jump into what happened this past March\u2026\n\nEngineering\nOn the FPS side, Gordon has finished up most of his work on the cover system, the last piece was procedural cover which allows you to slide and shoot around edges, and has moved onto the vaulting and mantling mechanic. First stages of this are going well, working with the animators so we can do procedural alignment of the animations. We\u2019ve also changed the markup so it\u2019s now a normal entity in the zone system. This then gives us all the advantages of the zone system so vaulting in a moving spaceship will work seamlessly. Jamie has been doing some work on the grenades as well as general bug fixing. Romulo has been carrying on with improvements to the weapons including interrupting the reload and general balance.\n\nCraig\u2019s improvements to the landing are progressing nicely and has completed the 2nd stage of the implementation which is a much simplified way of using the automatic landing. He\u2019s now moving on to the 3rd stage which involves landing inside another ship. The easy first bit of doing the landing once inside is now complete, the slightly harder task of getting the automatic landing to work whilst the ship you\u2019re trying to land is moving is the next job. Dave has started implementing the radar and scanning mechanic, he actually did a lot of work previously getting it working whilst in a ship scanning other ships, but he\u2019s now extended it to also work in FPS mode. A lot of the work actually ends up being on the UI side, so he\u2019s been working closely with Simon and Zane to get the UI working nicely. Rob is working again on the conversation system and integrating it with our Subsumption system, which is what is going to end up driving it going forwards. A conversation can be seen as just another task, so for the obligatory bar tender example, task 1 he can have a conversation about what drink a customer want, task 2 mix the drink, task 3 serve the drink, task 4 have a conversation about how the customer\u2019s day has been, and so on.\n\nSteve\u2019s been continuing work on the Object Containers and we\u2019re nearly at the point where we can use them to set the ships up, we\u2019re using the Retaliator as a bit of a test bed. Unfortunately we have hit a slight snag on the networking synchronisation side which means we need his Spawn Bundle system to make it work correctly, so now he\u2019s moved over and is concentrating on finishing that up.\n\nGraphics\nThis month, we\u2019ve looked into our facial animation tech, fixing several cases where the wrong detail level would have been selected, and made improvements to the data compilation step, vastly reducing the number of vertices that need to be stored and processed. We\u2019ve also been working on a performance profiling system that unifies all the important data into one screen, with built in filters to let us see what we have too much of, where it is, and which team is responsible for fixing it.\n\nWe\u2019ve built a system for linking lights to emissive surfaces, so that the luminance of the surface is automatically calculated from the intensity of the lights that are linked to it \u2013 this means that turning a light off can implicitly make the light bulb stop glowing, and gives the new optical effects (mentioned in last month\u2019s report) physically plausible light units to work from.\n\nWe\u2019ve done a pass over the particle effect shaders, adding an HDR temperature gradient option to let us have hot fire and dark smoke within a single particle, fixing conservation-of-energy when viewing particles from different angles, and correcting animated particles to warp smoothly from frame to frame.\n\nWork has continued on rendering gas clouds, and we\u2019ve started responding to bugs and feedback from the art and design teams. We\u2019ve also revisited the tiled lighting system, to push past the last few performance hurdles that are stopping us from switching over and deprecating the older system.\n\nShips\nShip team have been as busy as ever this month. The Starfarer that has been months in the making finally went into players hangars. The team is also happy to have successfully delivered the unique X\u2019ian Khartu-Al, allowing players to fly this.\n\nWe have also made incredible progress on the Idris and Javelin. This month we managed to get the Idris bridge, Gravity Room, Armory, Cargo Room and Escape Pods done. On the Javelin we got through the Bridge and the entire Engineering Deck.\n\nSpecifically to S42 we are very impressive with how the Bengal is shaping up. Wrapping up our final texture sheets on the exterior and creating the building sets needed for the interior. Bringing the Bengal up to the quality our community has come to expect from Star Citizen is very important to us.\n\nFinally, we are making progress on the Drake Herald and Caterpillar as well as the new Hornet F7A for Squadron 42. All of these are now in full production and we look forward to being able to share more on the progress of these soon!\n\nEnvironments\nThis month has seen another big push on SQ42, including one level which is now being moved into Final Art Phase. The whole facility is locked in terms of content and layout which will include terrain based traversal [blending with procedural content], maintenance bays, habitation sections, technical areas etc. It will be a full living, breathing environment by the time we are finished with it which is perfect for a sandbox based experience. Other locations of the campaign are progressing nicely, the guys are Greyboxing out the areas and translating the elements from the concept art into 3D.\n\nWeapons & Levels\nA lot of planning the previous month has really been helping get a good flow of work from the concept team, we are tackling both Sq42 content and in the gaps tackling areas for the PU too. Gary has spent a lot of time on the Xi\u2019an Transport ship interior, Jort on Space station interiors and exterior configurations, Dan on components and Javelin hangar, Stu on ship weapons, Sarah on ship components and props, Gavin R on a new small ship, Miles on the second pass of Behring FPS weaponry we need for sq42, integrating a more visually interesting rail system and designing the \u2018family\u2019 (sniper, CQB, shotgun etc). We also took a trip down to Lionhead Studios who are sadly closing to see if any of their staff would be interested in the project \u2013 fingers crossed for a few more team members!\n\nCharacter Team\nSome of the eagle eyed will have noticed new character outfits in Nathan\u2019s Starfarer video, the quality is really quite excellent! Mike has been working on Bridge crew outfits and Jon on the Vanduul, with having Chris in the studio it makes for much faster iteration, pushing and pulling and really getting this race to where Chris wants it.\n\nQA\nAs always it\u2019s been a very busy month here in QA at Foundry 42. As soon as we pushed 2.2 to Live we were hard at work on 2.3, making sure the epic Starfarer looked as good as it should and the Xi\u2019an Aopoa Khartu-al was as fast and nippy a scout\/exploration vehicle as it should be. Time was devoted to missile balancing, bringing those staple implements of dogfighting back into the fray as useful parts of the players arsenal and testing new changes to the EVA system, which I have to say is looking so good now! Our dedicated Squadron 42 testers Liam and Lee have been playing through new chapters as they have been integrated into the builds and put the Devastator-12 shotgun and the Arrowhead Sniper rifle through their paces.\n\nJust around the corner is 2.3.1 which we are beavering away at, checking that infinite loading screens are vanquished whilst trying our hardest to shoo (excess) pirates away from Yela, hopefully making it as smooth an experience for you guys as possible and it should be ready soon\u2122!\n\nWith every new PTU push Adam Parker gathered much appreciated feedback from the backers on PTU, which helps us immensely. I\u2019d like to thank all of our backers for the help they provide QA with their feedback and Issue Council reports, especially the guys and gals who put in massive amounts of time and effort on PTU helping us find larger scale issues that are otherwise too cumbersome for internal team to reproduce. Your input is really invaluable, a huge thanks to you all!\nWe have also had three new additions come into the QA fold, so please welcome Wayne Owen, Michaela Oliver and Ray Warner to the team! All three have industry experience from Sony Computer Entertainment (Wayne & Ray) and Traveller\u2019s Tales (Mici) adding further strength to our already formidable QA force! They have settled in and are quickly becoming part of the family here.\n\nRight now we are testing the last areas of 2.3.1 whilst gearing up for 2.4 which has some very exciting additions that we can\u2019t wait to try and break so you guys don\u2019t have to!\n\nSee you in the \u2018verse!\n\nVFX\nThe VFX team have been focusing on Live release priorities this month, including hangar-ready Starfarer (man that thing\u2019s a beast!) which requires lots of subtle interior effects. A lot of this is preparation \u2013 putting in the groundwork \u2013 for later flight-ready tasks. We\u2019ve also been supporting Caleb in Frankfurt who was tasked with the majority of effects tasks for flight-ready Scout \u2013 no doubt you will read all about that in the Frankfurt report!\n\nAway from live release, our new VFX artist Staffan has been getting to grips with weapon effects \u2013 we\u2019re working on a couple of new ones and have been tidying up some existing effects too.\n\nWe\u2019ve also been working closely with the graphics engineers to finalise several particle lighting improvements. We are really happy with how our particles \u201cbehave\u201d now in all lighting conditions (a crucial factor when working on such a complex universe with so many lighting variables). Related to this, we have been testing how our particles hold up with the new bloom and flares settings applied. Hint: they look really lovely; things like sparks, and other \u201chot\u201d particles look so much more natural now. We\u2019re really looking forwards to showing off these improvements in later live releases.\n\nDesign\nMarch was another busy month in the UK design department.\n\nIn terms of ships, we have a Starfarer flying around in the game now and what a beast it is! Hopefully we will be seeing a working refuelling system coming online very soon, but there is still work to do there in a number of areas. The Argo is getting very close to finished and the Javelin Destroyer has landed on the tech design table. We have seen some funny Idris landing videos doing the rounds this month as that ships gets closer to release. You would have to be a brave pilot to try to land a Hornet in there without Automatic Landing enabled, especially if it was moving. That said, we made good progress with the Automatic Landing system this month, and it feels great to land vertically on a station now, but we are still tuning the horizontal landing system, and waiting for the new UI to be implemented.\n\nThe first pass on the controls refactor is going in for 2.4.0, so you we see a much better unification between the various game modes, FPS, EVA and space combat. We are looking forward to getting any feedback on this.\n\nFrom system design, we got the mobiGlas refactored design signed off and into production. Also, the Holotable updated design is going into the engineering and UI teams hands for final implementation.\n\nS42 is still getting the bulk of our design resources and the levels now locked down from design\/art layout standpoint. The mechanics are filtering in and the NPC AI is getting more robust so we are starting to get a better feel for the play spaces.\n\nThanks again for the fantastic support as always.\n\nProps\nProps, short and sweet this month:\n\nThis month has seen a bit of a shift in priorities with ship components getting a few more resources and now we understand the feature better we want to make sure that when it goes live we have plenty of components to play with and customise your ships. There is going to be plenty of choices that should allow you to make your ship really feel yours and fly just how you want it.\n\nShopping has been the other big focus at the start of the month, we spent a bit of time bug fixing and doing some optimisations after getting some feedback and stats from our tech artist as well as putting the finishing touches on some of the props to make them work with the new tech that is being finalised.\n\nSquadron 42 work is continuing, we made an effort to go through and do a really quick pass on getting placeholders in for any props we were missing so that the environment artists and designers can dress their scenes and we can make sure we aren\u2019t missing anything off our plans.\n\nNext month, a lot more ship components and with our new team members settling in fast a few more props!\n\nAudio\nCIG Audio has been busy as ever this month.\n\nCIG Audio has been busy as ever this month.\n\nHopefully by now most of you will have enjoyed the Starfarer promo, including some beautifully produced music by Pedro Macedo Camacho for that. For the ship\u2019s sound design itself, Darren Lambourne has been busy working on the thrusters and interior soundscapes, still work in progress but hopefully befitting such an impressive ship. Luke Hatton has been giving many ships a review to ensure all is working as it should be and that the audio is ship-shape!\n\nMatteo Cerquone has been supporting the procedural Foley system and content for that, and is also responsible for a large part of the Xi\u2019An Scout\u2019s sound design \u2013 quite different to the usual ship schemes I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll agree.\n\nRoss Tregenza has been keeping on top of all things musical as usual, both for the Persistent Universe (while I\u2019m writing this report, I\u2019m listening live to another orchestral session that\u2019s being undertaken to ensure Star Citizen\u2019s music is performed live as much as possible; Ross is attending to that in person as I\u2019ve not been able to this time round); and we\u2019re also getting rolling with music for Squadron 42 too. We\u2019re hoping to get a new level of interactive score into the live release soon, following in the tradition of Chris Roberts\u2019 work in Wing Commander. We\u2019ll be taking a huge mass of material to a studio to mix with a film score mix engineer in the next month which should elevate this material even further.\n\nWe had an exterior gun recording session in March, which took place in Copehill Down in the south of England in conjunction with Steve Whetman (aka AudioBeast). We\u2019ve worked with him a number of times now on gun recording sessions and are now getting some lovely outdoor gunshot material through from this latest session \u2013 will take some time to edit and process, there\u2019s a lot of channels we captured from multiple perspectives. Stefan Rutherford headed that session up from our side, ably assisted by Matteo Cerquone and Philip Smallwood. We\u2019ll compile some photos and material for your reference and enjoyment, of course.\n\nPhil Smallwood has been training up with Bob Rissolo to assist him with all things dialogue related, puts us in a good place to deal with the Squadron 42 workload, as well as the vocal requirements for the persistent universe.\n\nJason Cobb\u2019s been busy working on ship explosion debris cloud sweeteners and providing a lot of support for the build process where audio is concerned, and assisting in Wwise tech support wherever possible. Stefan, myself and Jason have been looking at ways to re-structure the Wwise project to benefit procedural and linear-style mixing.\n\nAll the audio programming team have been working on various bugs and optimisations, as well as looking to progress the Ship Computer dialogue system (Sam Hall); the in-game VOIP-style system and procedural\/automated Foley\/footsteps (Graham Phillipson); and we\u2019ve had Simon Price digging ever deeper into dialogue pipeline tools and systems.\n\nOur general aim is to keep improving all things audio, from tools, workflows, pipelines on our side, to the content and overall sound that you hear and appreciate on the player side. Do keep asking questions and providing feedback on the Ask A Dev forum, that\u2019s always hugely valuable to us.\n\nThanks for listening!\n\nAnimation\nWe\u2019ve been working on the core locomotion \u2013 start stops and steps to improve player movement and responsiveness. Additionally, pistol aimpose exploration to strike a balance between first person and third person is working nicely together and the initial implementation of railgun animations has gone in so that we have a functioning weapon. The next stage will be to bring them up to final. There has also been support for ai animation \u2013 guys checking vents and reacting to sounds and the like. Finally, testing and feedback of new tool suite that is coming online is continuing!\n\nGreetings Citizens,\nThe Frankfurt office is continuing to grow in size and pick up momentum on all fronts. We grew by 4 people this month and have another few additional contracts started. It\u2019s exciting to see the internal progress, from pushing tech boundaries on the Procedural Planets, to the realism on the cinematics and facial tech, etc. We\u2019ve received a few personal letters and gifts from fellow citizens recently, things to help fatten us up. The team honestly appreciates all the support, it\u2019s a constant reminder of how cool the project is and how fortunate we are to be working on it. Here\u2019s a portion of what we\u2019ve been working on over the past month.\n\nWeapons\nThe weapon art team finished modelling a new ship weapon and is currently finalizing materials, textures and decals for it. Two more new ship weapons and a bunch of new FPS weapon concepts are also in production and should be ready to be shown off soon.\n\nEngine Code\nFollowing up on last month\u2019s mesh data compression for normals and tangent frames we started work on compressed vertex index support for meshes.\n\nWe did additional work on atmosphere rendering as well as research into large scale soft terrain shadows for planets.\n\nWe worked on a lot of trackview support and feature requests for S42 and did further improvements on the WAF workflow.\n\nEVA \u2013 After we got the base functionality of physicalized EVA working, we started to make the transitions between gravity and zero-gravity areas as smooth as possible. One aspect that made this a bit tricky is the extensive use of ragdolls as player characters in EVA. In Star Citizen ragdolls are usually not dead, they are just another way to animate a character. When running on ground a player model is a so-called \u201cLivingCharacter\u201d animated mainly by mocap-data. In EVA it\u2019s a \u201cDrivenRagdoll\u201d with a simulated articulated body. And for all other modes where the player is either unconscious, paralyzed or heavily influenced by physics we blend to a \u201cFloppyRagdoll\u201d. The difference between floppy and driven ragdolls is mainly how we use the artificial muscles to control the joints.\n\nThe player can do all kinds of actions all the time (running, jumping walking, floating, aiming, shooting, reloading, etc.) and whenever we transition from animation to physics and back to animation we have to ensure that we preserve the velocity and inertia of every single joint. This works pretty well when leaving the gravity area. It also works when entering the gravity area and the feet point towards the ground plane. But if the player approaches the ground plane in the wrong angle you can expect a lot of spectacular crash landings. In such uncontrolled cases we simply switch to floppy ragdoll, let the player crash to the ground and as soon as the simulation comes to rest he will automatically stand up again. If such a crash landing happens in first person view, then the player will experience everything through the eyes of a simulated ragdoll \u2026 and that might look pretty disturbing and painful :) Because all simulated, mocapped or keyframed animations are shared in first- and third-person view, we were able to use the same system in both view modes. This is the first time we worked with a player model where a large part of its motions are coming from physics and we feel that we are just scratching the surface of what\u2019s possible with this kind of physical simulations. This is an ongoing task and we hope to show more improvements in the next months.\n\nOptimizations \u2013 We did a good amount of work on optimization this month, to make our universe as large and as interesting as we want we need a good amount of objects in it, therefore we optimized various parts of the 3DEngine to increase our supported object count. We now support hierarchical culling for most of our culling operations in the ZoneSystem. This approach allows us to utilize the spatial structure which we use to speed up our visible culling even more: When we know that the bounding box of a group of objects is fully enclosed inside a camera frustum, we no longer need to check all individual objects against the camera. The same idea can be applied to other checks like box\/box overlaps or sphere\/distance tests. We then looked into the streaming code. Before it was running in parallel but synced with the MainThread, this means our frame-time is affected by the number of objects around the player (as we need to update those). When we now increase the number of objects, the frame-time obviously gets worse. To help with this issue, we have now decoupled the streaming state update from the actual streaming request. This allows us to update the streaming state (the expensive part of streaming) fully in parallel to the MainThread without affecting the frame-rate. We then looked at our JobManger, which is responsible to distribute all this work over the CPU cores. It turned out that we could massively improve our thread communication and improve our load-balancing. This means we utilize more CPU cores in parallel while reducing the latency of those operations. The next focus is on the rendering side, and we\u2019ll have more details on those next month.\n\nAs usual in this stage of development we also worked on various code clean-ups and bug fixes.\n\nEnvironment Art\nThis month the Environment Art team focused solely on supporting the new procedural planet tech, doing some R and D on detailing the surface of the planet by procedurally scattering geometry such as boulders, rocks, and pebbles.\n\nQA\nApril has been a busy month full of Automation testing setups for Chris Speak. Chris has been designing automated tests for AI spawning, death, and ragdolling after being killed by ship weapon fire. These tests also test ship pathing using Kythera Navsplines. When AI are spawned in, the automated test will run to check if the AI spawn in correctly. A ship will also fire shots at the spawned AI to verify weapon damage is being taken and that the AI dies correctly with proper ragdoll physics. The test map is still a work in progress, but will be an asset to the testing process once complete. Melissa Estrada made her final preparations for her transfer to the CIG-DE studio at the end of this month, and will be joining Chris Speak on the QA team as a QA Engine Specialist starting April 1st. She is looking forward to continuing her work on the EditorMonkey, which runs a python scripted automated test of the Editor Sanity checks as well as becoming a 2nd QA point-of-contact for in-house Developers to reach out to when needing specific in-house tests done for new features, and bug fixes.\n\nTech Art\nTech Art worked on expanding our animation pipeline and focused on the Asset Manager, where we will be populating all our assets. Also supported other departments, finalizing a new rig for the weapons team, bug fixes, etc. And of course we\u2019ve been supporting other teams and fixing bugs is out daily routine.\n\nCinematics\nCine Environment art built some more close-up geometry for an Admiral to admire on our Skydock scene where a spoileriffic super capital ship is currently being built. For a scene that hearkens back to the days where you had to install a speech pack for your Wing Commander II, Robert our part time cinematic environment artist has created additional set pieces and props that we can\u2019t discuss just yet. We also started up work on Shubin station performance capture scenes that involve Old Man & Graves (who looks awesome!) Those scenes will take a while and will involve lots of blending between pcap and AI locomotion as they traverse big parts of the station on foot. We finalized 1st pass on a part of Chapter 3 scenes and are still working on more of Chapter 03.\n\nWe also have 2 new starters in our team which brings us up to almost full staffing. We now have a Cinematic Producer and another Senior Cinematic Animator!\n\nDesign\nOur Level Designers are hard at work building major landing areas that will be used in the Persistent Universe in the future. Port Olisar is getting a lot of work done and a brand new Shopping District will get added to the existing facilities. This should allow players easy access to NPCs, shops, utilities and will make the place feel a lot more alive than it is right now. We are also adding a pirate\/lawless base where players that have been a bit \u201cnaughty\u201d can respawn after dying or where they can just dock without getting shot out of the sky by the law enforcement. This area will have its disadvantages when compared to a law abiding station of course, so players who do wrong will have to support the consequences. (Remember that the area around Crusader is UEE space. In an unclaimed or unrepresented system, the opposite might be true!) Another area that is receiving a lot of attention is the Hurston landing zone. This will consist of a large planetary settlement cantered around the Hurston family building and its gigantic strip mining operations. This area right now has gone through its layout phase and is moving towards the first art pass.\n\nSystem Design has been busy this month with setting up the ground work for a lot of AI features. A lot of code work has come online in AI and we managed to do a lot of behaviour prototyping, focusing mostly on their perception and reactions to seeing and hearing events, aiming precision and out of combat activities. At the same time we pushed designs forward on systems that are adjacent to our AI, especially our interactors which define how our AI interact with objects in the world for everything ranging from sitting on a chair or repairing a computer to opening a door or even turning on an alarm. Since all our interactors will also be usable by the player we are looking into how these will be used and how the player will handle interactions with objects that have multiple ways that they can be used. To cater for this we have decided to use the same Inner Thought system that we also use for dialogue selection as it seems to be a really nice fit. Another system we\u2019ve pushed forward is the Loot Generation which will handle how loot spawns across the world (that\u2019s not to say ships will be spewing out gold like a typical MMO, but there will be salvage and other benefits for scoring kills.) We are trying to build a system that encourages exploration rather than staying in one place and farming resources. We want you to have to search through the vastness of space for the areas that have not yet been discovered as those will most likely provide the most rewarding looting opportunities.\n\nWhile pushing these new systems, we also spent some time refactoring some old systems that were not quite up to par with our vision of Star Citizen. We\u2019re currently talking about the Quantum Travel which will get a major overhaul to make it a challenging part of gameplay where people who are good at it and know what they are doing will be able to enter QT faster (perhaps before being interdicted; see below) and travel for longer distances in one quantum navigation. At the same time we are introducing the concept of Interdiction to allow players to interrupt others from just leaving in the middle of a battle whenever they feel like it. There will be multiple ways of stopping a ship from entering QT ranging from simply damaging them, all the way to specialized weapons and deployable devices focused on stopping ships dead in their tracks. Another system receiving a bit of love is the Power Distribution. While we have worked on this in the past, the system is being reworked a bit now as we are starting to implement it into our first capital ship, the Idris. This system will handle all of the power and every consumer on board from your big laser cannons to the tiniest light bulb and dictate how power is routed throughout the ship, where it comes from, where it goes to and what happens when there\u2019s not enough of it to go around.\n\nAI\nThis month we actually progressed on multiple areas, let\u2019s start with the character movement. We developed a functionality to allow level designers to pre-place paths on the level that can be followed by the NPCs. As an example, this is going to be useful for creating patrol paths behaviors!\n\nWe enabled the new perception system in the build! After the first use we exposed some properties to correctly customize the events received by the different NPC when hearing different audio stimuli and we also exposed some more properties to designers so that they will be able to correctly customize perception properties directly in the different NPCs archetypes. We introduced some new components to control the weapons in use by the different NPCs. This central component will take care of installing different controller to use different type of weapons. If you think about the case in which a character wants to throw a grenade we will need to predict in a different way the shooting direction compared to the case in which the character is equipping a normal rifle. We also use this component to control the character accuracy so that we can create more or less skilled NPCs.\n\nOn the behavior side we introduced three main assignments, Defend Area, Combat Move and Hold Position. Those are basic \u201chigh level\u201d commands the level designers can use to create some interesting gameplay situations in their level!\n\nA lot of progress has been made on the Subsumption side. Subsumption currently support the following functionalities\n\nAn entity can have an activity associated to it\n\nEach activity can be composed by several subactivities\n\nThe selection of subactivity is now correctly following their priorities and relative probabilities\n\nWe introduce the basic support for events\n\nWe created our internal expression parser to correctly evaluate any mathematical or Boolean expression inside the pre-requisites of an activity or a task\n\nWe developed some basic debug draw functionalities\n\nWe introduced the following new tasks Sort Objects\n\nPop Objects\n\nCommunicate\n\nCompute\n\nCompare\n\nConverse\n\n\n\nWe developed a functionality to reserve an entity to use it or interact with it and allow other NPCs to know that object is reserved\n\nOn the ships side we have worked a lot on improving stability and the flying behavior of the ships, we also started the refactor of the ships behavior to allow the support of multiple crew members inside a ship.\n\nHello Citizens!\nHere\u2019s the latest from what the BHVR team has been doing in Montreal.\n\nDesign\nThis month, the Behaviour design team continued working on shopping and setup Casaba Outlet using the new dynamic spawning system for items. Now, we have items the player can actually wear, as we were working with placeholders before. It required a lot of setting up shelves, spawners and data setup. Now we\u2019ve got a long term solution that we are going to use for more upcoming shop locations. That was a great effort between Bhvr, Austin, LA and UK.\n\n2.3.0 release brought its usual share of hangars and Area18 bugs but nothing we haven\u2019t seen before. We also helped design and setup the extra-large hangar in Revel and York, making sure that new expansion worked with the existing system and the Starfarer spawned correctly when a player owned one. Again, great collaboration between us, Turbulent and the directors.\n\nFinally, we were handed the next hero landing zone whitebox: Hurston in the Stanton system. We are at a stage now, that we clean up the level and connect all the shops to the main paths. We replaced the CryEngine designer meshes for placeholder assets, which respect metrics and setup the level with proper layers and naming conventions. Overall, polishing the level design and getting the map ready for the art team.\n\nOh yeah, we are also helping and adding new content to Crusader and Port Olisar. It\u2019s great to be able to chip in on every front! Good times!\n\nEngineering\nThis month, it was all about shopping and figuring out the best way to give you a perfect shopping experience. This feature has many elements that required a cool collaboration between us and the other studios. Which, so far, has been a lot of fun.\n\nWe created a new AR-based shopping interface for clothes and personal weapons. Also a Catalog-based shopping system for vehicle components.\n\nWith the different types of clothes that you can buy, we had to create a tryout camera to enable the players to preview them on their character.\n\nThere was also work on a new shop inventory and layout randomizer.\n\nWe updated the CryAstro services UI and flow recode. Finally the most important task is hooking everything to the persistence.\n\nArt\nThis month we took the time to polish the Market area in Levski, to give it a really nice ambience that we hope you guys will love once is released.\n\nOf course we had to spend time with optimisations and debugging, to ensure a good map performance. With this in mind, there was a lot of work on the tech art side to profile all potential optimisations that can be applied to Levski.\n\nWe`ve also polished the shops facades, to make them look unique and to attract the player\u2019s attention as you explore the map.\n\nOn the flair side, we began working on the next space plant.\n\nFinally, we spent some time debugging the new Rebel & York bay area for the Starfarer.\n\nGreetings from sunny-but-windy? Wait, actually snowy\u2026 nope sunny! Montreal! Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve been up to in the last month:\n\nShip Stats\nWe are in the final stages of the design phase for the new ship reference matrix, so we will be able to start development soon. Grouping all the ships by chassis, and switching the layout so that you can see everything on one single page\u2026 you\u2019ll be able to select the chassis you want to compare, and view each ship\u2019s production status. This will greatly reduce the left-to-right scrolling, and enable you to easily view all the variants for each chassis. Please also note that, while we are working to improve the ship stats page, different ships are in different stages of development, and some of them have been updated to draw from the new component system and others will not reach that stage until they are further down the pipeline. That means that some of the information may still be temporary or early concept values, and they will definitely need revisions once designers start integrating actual ItemPorts and hardpoints into each respective ship\u2019s in-game assets and collecting information on out what works and what doesn\u2019t. Those values can\u2019t solidify in the ship stats page until that happens, and even then we\u2019ll need to iterate the ships based on feedback from the Live build and Arena Commander testing data. \u201cSubject to change\u201d doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re changing our minds carelessly or frivolously \u2013 it means that during development, they\u2019re going to get multiple balance passes on the road to final launch, which is what it\u2019s really all about.\n\nMulti-Factor Authentication (MFA)\nOur development of multi-factor authentication is ongoing, and we are now in the static integration phase. The first iteration of this feature will include two options for all members: sending the authentication code by email, or by a specifically-designed and -skinned Google Authenticator. In a future release, we will be able to send the code by SMS directly to your phone.\n\nCommunication Platform\nWe have been working on a rough prototype for a new communication platform, which will merge forums and chat systems into a single-page module. Our prototype has already started testing and we\u2019re actively refining its interfaces to make it as easy and intuitive to use as possible. Among other things, we are coming up with novel ways of filtering and organizing conversations and topics. Expect to hear more about it for the next few months!\n\nShip Happens\nThis month was very exciting for ships. A new concept ship unveiled, the Esperia Vanduul Blade was announced with a concept sale. This light Vanduul fighter joins the ranks of the Scythe and the Glaive, as Vanduul weapons being used by humans against their creators. March also saw a free-fly week, which included all flyable ships to anyone who created an account, giving new and veteran players a like a chance to try out some new ships. To celebrate this huge free fly, we had a ship sale, putting all flyable limited ships on sale.\n\nTo close out the month, when 2.3 went live, the Xi\u2019An Scout and the Starfarer went for sale, for which we developed a dedicated promo page with a few new modules like a browsable magazine-like layout. We\u2019ve since already reused it on the much anticipated Big Benny\u2019s food delivery menu. With 2.3 the Scout is now flight ready and the impressive Starfarer is now in the hangar for the first time!\n\nSales\nMarch was also very busy for merchandise. First the new customizable Squadron 42 dog tags were put on sale. Next Starmap posters were offered up, giving people a chance to own a very cool poster of the Star Citizen Universe that\u2019s been in the works ever since the Kickstarter campaign! Finally in preparation for this year\u2019s CitizenCon, tickets went on sale for our most anticipated event of the year, this time in Los Angeles.\n\nHello Citizens!\nI\u2019ll start with a little introduction.\n\nTyler Witkin here, or better known as Zyloh from the forums, and I am your newest Community Manager reporting in from under the bus in the Austin, TX studio! Yes! Two Community Managers! I am very excited to work closely with my new partner in crime Lando and the rest of the team to continue delivering you all awesome content and information. I am now back in Texas after a very productive and adventurous week of training in the LA studio. Throughout the week I worked closely with the team to better understand my new responsibilities, iron out the new role, and study the tools of the trade. There are some really great things planned in the coming months and I am very excited to dive in!\n\nCan you believe we are already a quarter through 2016?! Let\u2019s take a look at what went down in March!\n\nVideos\nWe continued to put out our regularly scheduled segments and content (made possible by all the awesome subscribers out there!) and finished strong with a very informative 10 For the Chairman with Global Head of Production and Foundry 42 Studio Director, Erin Roberts.\n\nMarch brought us the flyable Xi\u2019an Scout and hangar ready Starfarer. We released a comm-link detailing our now largest hangar-ready ship yet, the Starfarer. The page delves into the massive hauler and includes a visually stunning video created by Nathan Dearsley accompanied by new music from the talented Pedro Camacho! Definitely worth checking out!\n\nMarch also saw the release of a behind-the-curtains look at Squadron 42 with the talented Andy Serkis! We are extremely excited and fortunate to have him on board the cast for Squadron 42!\n\nWebsite\nThe MVP section of the Community Hub is now fully up to date with AtV\u2019s MVP winners. Make sure to check out some of the awesome content your fellow citizens are putting out there!\n\nLive Events\nWhile we did not attend any conventions\/events in March, we announced details and sold tickets for Citizen Con 2016! Citizen Con marks the original October 2012 announcement of the Star Citizen crowdfunding campaign, and the event has previously been held in Austin, Los Angeles and Manchester. This year, Citizen Con returns to Los Angeles at the Avalon Hollywood on October 9th for an action-packed day that will celebrate the latest and greatest work our developers are putting out.\n\nPerks\nSpace plants! March Subscriber Flair brought us the Tuserac Plena, aka the Terran Emperor Blossom, and in case you we\u2019re worried about your Emperor Blossom being lonely, the Xi\u2019An Space Plant stretch goal was awarded to all who backed before $49 million.\n\nAdditionally the servers were jam packed with new players and veterans alike for our Free Fly promotion that ran March 11th-22nd. It was great getting to see the level of camaraderie (and havoc) that took place whilst some of our experienced players welcomed the new crowd.\n\nCoda\nThat\u2019s all for March! 2016 is going to be a big year for Star Citizen and as always, we are dedicated and excited to continue communicating, sharing, and exploring this universe with all of you!\n\nSee you in the \u2018Verse!","de_DE":"itizen ist uns sehr wichtig.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich machen wir Fortschritte bei Drake Herald und Caterpillar sowie der neuen Hornet F7A f\u00fcr Squadron 42. Alle diese sind nun in voller Produktion und wir freuen uns darauf, in K\u00fcrze mehr \u00fcber den Fortschritt dieser Arbeiten berichten zu k\u00f6nnen!\n\nUmgebungen\nDieser Monat hat einen weiteren gro\u00dfen Schub f\u00fcr SQ42 gegeben, darunter ein Level, das nun in die Final Art Phase \u00fcberf\u00fchrt wird. Die gesamte Anlage ist inhaltlich und gestalterisch abgesichert, dazu geh\u00f6ren gel\u00e4ndeg\u00e4ngige Traversen (Mischung mit prozessualen Inhalten), Wartungsbuchten, Wohnabschnitte, technische Bereiche etc. Es wird eine vollst\u00e4ndige lebendige, atmende Umgebung sein, wenn wir mit ihr fertig sind, was perfekt f\u00fcr ein Sandbox-basiertes Erlebnis ist. Andere Orte der Kampagne kommen gut voran, die Jungs sind Greyboxing aus den Bereichen und \u00fcbersetzen die Elemente aus der Konzeptkunst in 3D.\n\nWaffen & Levels\nViele Planungen des Vormonats haben wirklich geholfen, einen guten Arbeitsfluss vom Konzeptteam zu bekommen, wir befassen uns sowohl mit den Inhalten von Sq42 als auch mit den L\u00fccken, die sich auch auf die Bereiche f\u00fcr die PU beziehen. Gary hat viel Zeit mit dem Xi'an Transportschiffinnenraum, Jort auf Raumstations-Innenr\u00e4umen und Au\u00dfenkonfigurationen, Dan auf Komponenten und Javelin-Hangar, Stu auf Schiffswaffen, Sarah auf Schiffskomponenten und Requisiten, Gavin R auf einem neuen kleinen Schiff, Miles auf dem zweiten Pass der Behring FPS-Waffen, die wir f\u00fcr sq42 ben\u00f6tigen, verbracht, ein optisch interessanteres Schienensystem integriert und die \"Familie\" entworfen (Scharfsch\u00fctze, CQB, Schrotflinte etc.). Wir machten auch einen Ausflug zu den Lionhead Studios, die leider schlie\u00dfen, um zu sehen, ob sich ihre Mitarbeiter f\u00fcr das Projekt interessieren w\u00fcrden - Daumen dr\u00fccken f\u00fcr ein paar weitere Teammitglieder!\n\nCharakter-Team\nEinige der Adleraugen werden in Nathans Starfarer-Video neue Charakter-Outfits bemerkt haben, die Qualit\u00e4t ist wirklich ganz hervorragend! Mike hat an Bridge Crew Outfits und Jon an der Vanduul gearbeitet, mit Chris im Studio sorgt es f\u00fcr eine viel schnellere Iteration, dr\u00fcckt und zieht und bringt dieses Rennen wirklich dorthin, wo Chris es will.\n\nQA\nWie immer war es ein sehr arbeitsreicher Monat hier in der QS bei Foundry 42. Sobald wir 2.2 zu Live geschickt haben, haben wir hart an 2.3 gearbeitet, um sicherzustellen, dass der epische Starfarer so gut aussah wie er sollte und der Xi'an Aopoa Khartu-al so schnell und flink ein Scout\/Erkundungsfahrzeug war, wie es sein sollte. Die Zeit wurde dem Raketenabgleich gewidmet, indem man die Grundger\u00e4te des Luftkampfes als n\u00fctzliche Teile des Arsenals der Spieler zur\u00fcck in den Kampf brachte und neue \u00c4nderungen am EVA-System erprobte, die, wie ich sagen muss, jetzt so gut aussehen! Unsere engagierten Squadron 42 Tester Liam und Lee haben neue Kapitel durchgespielt, da sie in die Builds integriert wurden und die Devastator-12 Schrotflinte und das Arrowhead Sniper Gewehr auf Herz und Nieren gepr\u00fcft haben.\n\nGleich um die Ecke befindet sich 2.3.1, das wir wegbeben, um zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen, ob unendliche Ladebildschirme besiegt sind, w\u00e4hrend wir unser Bestes tun, um (\u00fcbersch\u00fcssige) Piraten von Yela wegzusto\u00dfen, was es hoffentlich zu einem so reibungslosen Erlebnis f\u00fcr euch Jungs wie m\u00f6glich macht und es sollte soon\u2122 bereit sein!\n\nMit jedem neuen PTU-Push sammelte Adam Parker sehr gesch\u00e4tztes Feedback von den Backern auf PTU, was uns enorm hilft. Ich m\u00f6chte allen unseren Geldgebern f\u00fcr die Hilfe danken, die sie der Qualit\u00e4tssicherung mit ihrem Feedback und den Berichten des Issue Council zur Verf\u00fcgung stellen, insbesondere den Jungs und M\u00e4dels, die viel Zeit und M\u00fche in die PTU gesteckt haben, um uns zu helfen, gr\u00f6\u00dfere Probleme zu finden, die ansonsten zu schwerf\u00e4llig f\u00fcr das interne Team sind, um sie zu reproduzieren. Dein Input ist wirklich von unsch\u00e4tzbarem Wert, ein gro\u00dfes Dankesch\u00f6n an euch alle!\nWir haben auch drei neue Mitglieder in den QA-Bereich aufgenommen, also begr\u00fc\u00dfen Sie bitte Wayne Owen, Michaela Oliver und Ray Warner im Team! Alle drei verf\u00fcgen \u00fcber Branchenerfahrung von Sony Computer Entertainment (Wayne & Ray) und Traveller's Tales (Mici), die unsere ohnehin schon beachtliche QA-Kraft weiter st\u00e4rken! Sie haben sich eingelebt und werden hier schnell Teil der Familie.\n\nIm Moment testen wir die letzten Bereiche von 2.3.1, w\u00e4hrend wir uns auf 2.4 vorbereiten, das einige sehr aufregende Erg\u00e4nzungen enth\u00e4lt, die wir nicht erwarten k\u00f6nnen, um zu versuchen, sie zu brechen, damit ihr es nicht m\u00fcsst!\n\nWir sehen uns im Vers!\n\nVFX\nDas VFX-Team hat sich diesen Monat auf die Priorit\u00e4ten der Live-Ver\u00f6ffentlichung konzentriert, einschlie\u00dflich des Hangar-tauglichen Starfarer (Mann, das Ding ist ein Tier!), der viele subtile Inneneffekte erfordert. Vieles davon ist die Vorbereitung - das Einrichten der Grundlagen - f\u00fcr sp\u00e4tere flugfertige Aufgaben. Wir haben auch Caleb in Frankfurt unterst\u00fctzt, der mit den meisten Effektaufgaben f\u00fcr den flugbereiten Scout beauftragt wurde - zweifellos werden Sie das im Frankfurter Bericht lesen!\n\nAbseits der Live-Ver\u00f6ffentlichung hat sich unser neuer VFX-K\u00fcnstler Staffan mit Waffeneffekten besch\u00e4ftigt - wir arbeiten an ein paar neuen und haben auch einige bestehende Effekte aufger\u00e4umt.\n\nWir haben auch eng mit den Grafikern zusammengearbeitet, um mehrere Verbesserungen der Partikelbeleuchtung zu realisieren. Wir sind sehr zufrieden damit, wie sich unsere Partikel jetzt bei allen Lichtverh\u00e4ltnissen \"verhalten\" (ein entscheidender Faktor bei der Arbeit an einem so komplexen Universum mit so vielen Lichtvariablen). In diesem Zusammenhang haben wir getestet, wie unsere Partikel mit den neuen Einstellungen f\u00fcr Bl\u00fcten und Fackeln mithalten. Hinweis: Sie sehen wirklich sch\u00f6n aus; Dinge wie Funken und andere \"hei\u00dfe\" Partikel sehen jetzt so viel nat\u00fcrlicher aus. Wir freuen uns sehr darauf, diese Verbesserungen in sp\u00e4teren Live-Versionen zu pr\u00e4sentieren.\n\nDesign\nDer M\u00e4rz war ein weiterer arbeitsreicher Monat in der britischen Designabteilung.\n\nWas die Schiffe betrifft, so haben wir jetzt einen Starfarer, der im Spiel herumfliegt und was f\u00fcr ein Tier es ist! Hoffentlich wird in K\u00fcrze ein funktionierendes Betankungssystem in Betrieb gehen, aber es gibt dort in einer Reihe von Bereichen noch viel zu tun. Der Argo steht kurz vor der Fertigstellung und der Javelin Destroyer ist auf dem Tech Design Tisch gelandet. Wir haben einige lustige Idris Landevideos gesehen, die diesen Monat die Runden drehen, da die Schiffe der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung n\u00e4her kommen. Du m\u00fcsstest ein mutiger Pilot sein, um zu versuchen, eine Hornisse dort zu landen, ohne dass Automatic Landing aktiviert ist, besonders wenn sie sich bewegt. Allerdings haben wir in diesem Monat gute Fortschritte mit dem Automatic Landing System gemacht, und es f\u00fchlt sich gut an, jetzt vertikal auf einer Station zu landen, aber wir sind immer noch dabei, das horizontale Landungssystem zu optimieren und auf die Implementierung der neuen Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che zu warten.\n\nDie erste Weitergabe des Controls Refactors erfolgt f\u00fcr 2.4.0, so dass wir eine viel bessere Vereinheitlichung zwischen den verschiedenen Spielmodi, FPS, EVA und Weltraumkampf sehen. Wir freuen uns auf jedes Feedback dazu.\n\nVom Systemdesign haben wir das mobiGlas Refactored Design verabschiedet und in die Produktion gebracht. Au\u00dferdem geht das aktualisierte Holotable-Design in die H\u00e4nde des Engineering- und UI-Teams f\u00fcr die endg\u00fcltige Implementierung.\n\nS42 erh\u00e4lt immer noch den Gro\u00dfteil unserer Designressourcen und die Ebenen, die jetzt vom Standpunkt des Designs\/Kunst-Layouts aus festgelegt sind. Die Mechanik filtert ein und die NPC-KI wird robuster, so dass wir anfangen, ein besseres Gef\u00fchl f\u00fcr die Spielr\u00e4ume zu bekommen.\n\nNochmals vielen Dank f\u00fcr die fantastische Unterst\u00fctzung wie immer.\n\nRequisiten\nRequisiten, kurz und b\u00fcndig diesen Monat:\n\nIn diesem Monat hat sich die Priorit\u00e4tensetzung etwas verschoben, da die Schiffskomponenten ein paar mehr Ressourcen erhalten haben, und jetzt verstehen wir die Funktion besser, wir wollen sicherstellen, dass wir, wenn sie live geht, viele Komponenten haben, mit denen wir Ihre Schiffe spielen und anpassen k\u00f6nnen. Es wird viele M\u00f6glichkeiten geben, die es dir erm\u00f6glichen sollten, dein Schiff wirklich zu f\u00fchlen und zu fliegen, wie du es willst.\n\nShopping war Anfang des Monats der andere gro\u00dfe Schwerpunkt, wir haben ein wenig Zeit damit verbracht, Fehler zu beheben und einige Optimierungen vorzunehmen, nachdem wir einige R\u00fcckmeldungen und Statistiken von unserem Tech-K\u00fcnstler erhalten haben, sowie den letzten Schliff an einigen der Requisiten vorzunehmen, damit sie mit der neuen Technologie arbeiten k\u00f6nnen, die gerade fertig gestellt wird.\n\nDie Arbeit der Staffel 42 geht weiter, wir haben uns bem\u00fcht, Platzhalter f\u00fcr fehlende Requisiten zu bekommen, damit die Umweltk\u00fcnstler und Designer ihre Szenen gestalten k\u00f6nnen und wir sicherstellen k\u00f6nnen, dass wir nichts von unseren Pl\u00e4nen verpassen.\n\nN\u00e4chsten Monat viel mehr Schiffskomponenten und mit unseren neuen Teammitgliedern, die sich schnell ein paar weitere Requisiten einrichten!\n\nAudio\nCIG Audio war in diesem Monat wie immer sehr aktiv.\n\nCIG Audio war in diesem Monat wie immer sehr aktiv.\n\nHoffentlich haben die meisten von euch inzwischen die Starfarer-Promotion genossen, einschlie\u00dflich einiger wundersch\u00f6n produzierter Musik von Pedro Macedo Camacho daf\u00fcr. F\u00fcr das Sounddesign des Schiffes selbst hat Darren Lambourne an den Triebwerken und inneren Klanglandschaften gearbeitet, die noch in Arbeit sind, aber hoffentlich zu einem so beeindruckenden Schiff passen. Luke Hatton hat vielen Schiffen eine \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung gegeben, um sicherzustellen, dass alles so funktioniert, wie es sein sollte und dass der Ton in Schiffsform ist!\n\nMatteo Cerquone hat das prozedurale Foley-System und den Inhalt daf\u00fcr unterst\u00fctzt und ist auch f\u00fcr einen gro\u00dfen Teil des Sounddesigns des Xi'An Scout verantwortlich - ganz anders als die \u00fcblichen Schiffsprogramme, dem Sie sicherlich zustimmen werden.\n\nRoss Tregenza hat sich wie immer auf dem Laufenden gehalten, sowohl f\u00fcr das Persistent Universe (w\u00e4hrend ich diesen Bericht schreibe, h\u00f6re ich live eine weitere Orchestersitzung, die durchgef\u00fchrt wird, um sicherzustellen, dass die Musik von Star Citizen so oft wie m\u00f6glich live aufgef\u00fchrt wird; Ross k\u00fcmmert sich pers\u00f6nlich darum, da ich diesmal nicht in der Lage war); und wir beginnen auch mit der Musik f\u00fcr Staffel 42. Wir hoffen, bald eine neue Stufe der interaktiven Partitur in die Live-Ver\u00f6ffentlichung zu bekommen, die in der Tradition von Chris Roberts' Arbeit im Wing Commander steht. Wir werden im n\u00e4chsten Monat eine riesige Menge an Material in ein Studio bringen, um es mit einem Filmmusik-Mix-Ingenieur zu mischen, was dieses Material noch weiter steigern sollte.\n\nWir hatten im M\u00e4rz eine Exterior Gun Recording Session, die in Copehill Down im S\u00fcden Englands in Zusammenarbeit mit Steve Whetman (alias AudioBeast) stattfand. Wir haben schon einige Male mit ihm an Aufnahmen gearbeitet und bringen nun sch\u00f6nes Outdoor-Gunshot-Material aus dieser letzten Session durch - es wird einige Zeit dauern, es zu bearbeiten und zu verarbeiten, es gibt viele Kan\u00e4le, die wir aus verschiedenen Perspektiven aufgenommen haben. Stefan Rutherford leitete diese Sitzung von unserer Seite aus, unterst\u00fctzt von Matteo Cerquone und Philip Smallwood. Wir werden einige Fotos und Materialien f\u00fcr Sie zusammenstellen, nat\u00fcrlich zu Ihrer Information und zum Vergn\u00fcgen.\n\nPhil Smallwood hat sich mit Bob Rissolo zusammengetan, um ihm bei allen Fragen rund um den Dialog zu helfen, was uns an einen guten Ort bringt, um die Arbeitsbelastung der Staffel 42 sowie die gesanglichen Anforderungen an das persistente Universum zu bew\u00e4ltigen.\n\nJason Cobb war damit besch\u00e4ftigt, an S\u00fcssstoffen f\u00fcr Schiffsexplosionen zu arbeiten und hat den Build-Prozess in Bezug auf Audio sehr unterst\u00fctzt und, wo immer m\u00f6glich, beim Wwise Tech Support geholfen. Stefan, ich und Jason haben nach M\u00f6glichkeiten gesucht, das Wwise Projekt neu zu strukturieren, um prozedurale und lineare Mischungen zu nutzen.\n\nDas gesamte Audioprogrammierteam hat an verschiedenen Fehlern und Optimierungen gearbeitet und versucht, das Dialogsystem Ship Computer (Sam Hall), das VOIP-\u00e4hnliche System im Spiel und die prozeduralen\/automatisierten Foley\/Footsteps (Graham Phillipson) voranzubringen. Simon Price hat sich immer tiefer mit Dialogpipeline-Tools und -Systemen besch\u00e4ftigt.\n\nUnser allgemeines Ziel ist es, alle Dinge im Bereich Audio weiter zu verbessern, von Tools, Workflows, Pipelines auf unserer Seite bis hin zu den Inhalten und dem Gesamtklang, die Sie auf der Playerseite h\u00f6ren und sch\u00e4tzen. Stellen Sie weiterhin Fragen und geben Sie Feedback im Ask A Dev Forum, das f\u00fcr uns immer sehr wertvoll ist.\n\nDanke f\u00fcrs Zuh\u00f6ren!\n\nAnimation\nWir haben an der Kernbewegung gearbeitet - Startstopps und Schritte zur Verbesserung der Spielerbewegung und Reaktionsf\u00e4higkeit. Zus\u00e4tzlich arbeitet die Pistolen-Zielerforschung, um ein Gleichgewicht zwischen der ersten Person und der dritten Person herzustellen, gut zusammen und die erste Implementierung von Railgun-Animationen ist erfolgt, so dass wir eine funktionierende Waffe haben. Der n\u00e4chste Schritt wird darin bestehen, sie in die Endphase zu bringen. Es gab auch Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr ai-Animationen - Typen, die L\u00fcftungs\u00f6ffnungen \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen und auf Ger\u00e4usche und dergleichen reagieren. Schlie\u00dflich werden die Tests und das Feedback \u00fcber die neue Tool-Suite, die online kommt, fortgesetzt!\n\nGr\u00fc\u00dfe B\u00fcrger,\nDas Frankfurter B\u00fcro w\u00e4chst weiter und gewinnt in jeder Hinsicht an Dynamik. Wir sind diesen Monat um 4 Personen gewachsen und haben weitere zus\u00e4tzliche Vertr\u00e4ge gestartet. Es ist spannend, den internen Fortschritt zu sehen, von der Verschiebung der technischen Grenzen auf den Verfahrensplaneten bis hin zum Realismus in der Film- und Gesichtstechnik, etc. Wir haben in letzter Zeit ein paar pers\u00f6nliche Briefe und Geschenke von Mitb\u00fcrgern erhalten, Dinge, die uns helfen, uns zu m\u00e4sten. Das Team sch\u00e4tzt ehrlich die Unterst\u00fctzung, es erinnert uns st\u00e4ndig daran, wie cool das Projekt ist und wie gl\u00fccklich wir sind, daran zu arbeiten. Hier ist ein Teil dessen, woran wir in den letzten Monaten gearbeitet haben.\n\nWaffen\nDas Waffenkunstteam hat die Modellierung einer neuen Schiffswaffe abgeschlossen und fertigt derzeit Materialien, Texturen und Abziehbilder daf\u00fcr. Zwei weitere neue Schiffswaffen und eine Reihe neuer FPS-Waffenkonzepte sind ebenfalls in Produktion und sollten bereit sein, bald vorgestellt zu werden.\n\nMotorcode\nIm Anschluss an die Mesh-Datenkompression des letzten Monats f\u00fcr Normale und Tangentenrahmen haben wir mit der Arbeit an der Unterst\u00fctzung von komprimierten Knotenindexen f\u00fcr Meshes begonnen.\n\nWir haben zus\u00e4tzliche Arbeiten zur Atmosph\u00e4renwiedergabe sowie zur Erforschung gro\u00dffl\u00e4chiger weicher Gel\u00e4ndeschatten f\u00fcr Planeten durchgef\u00fchrt.\n\nWir haben an vielen Trackview-Unterst\u00fctzungen und Feature Requests f\u00fcr S42 gearbeitet und den WAF-Workflow weiter verbessert.\n\nEVA - Nachdem wir die Grundfunktionalit\u00e4t der physikalisierten EVA-Arbeit erhalten hatten, begannen wir, die \u00dcberg\u00e4nge zwischen Schwerkraft- und Schwerelosigkeitsbereichen so reibungslos wie m\u00f6glich zu gestalten. Ein Aspekt, der dies etwas schwierig machte, ist der umfangreiche Einsatz von Ragdolls als Spielercharaktere in EVA. In Star Citizen sind Ragdolls normalerweise nicht tot, sie sind nur eine weitere M\u00f6glichkeit, einen Charakter zu animieren. Beim Laufen am Boden ist ein Spielermodell ein sogenannter \"LivingCharacter\", der haupts\u00e4chlich aus Mocap-Daten animiert wird. In EVA ist es eine \"DrivenRagdoll\" mit einem simulierten Gelenkk\u00f6rper. Und f\u00fcr alle anderen Modi, in denen der Spieler entweder bewusstlos, gel\u00e4hmt oder stark physikalisch beeinflusst ist, verschmelzen wir zu einer \"FloppyRagdoll\". Der Unterschied zwischen schlaffen und getriebenen Ragdolls besteht haupts\u00e4chlich darin, wie wir die k\u00fcnstlichen Muskeln zur Kontrolle der Gelenke einsetzen.\n\nDer Spieler kann jederzeit alle Arten von Aktionen ausf\u00fchren (Laufen, Springen, Gehen, Schwimmen, Zielen, Schie\u00dfen, Nachladen, etc.) und wenn wir von der Animation zur Physik und zur\u00fcck zur Animation \u00fcbergehen, m\u00fcssen wir sicherstellen, dass wir die Geschwindigkeit und Tr\u00e4gheit jedes einzelnen Gelenks erhalten. Das funktioniert ziemlich gut, wenn man den Gravitationsbereich verl\u00e4sst. Es funktioniert auch beim Betreten des Schwerkraftbereichs und die F\u00fc\u00dfe zeigen auf die Grundplatte. Wenn sich der Spieler aber im falschen Winkel der Grundplatte n\u00e4hert, kann man mit vielen spektakul\u00e4ren Crash-Landungen rechnen. In solchen unkontrollierten F\u00e4llen wechseln wir einfach auf Floppy Ragdoll, lassen den Spieler auf den Boden fallen und sobald die Simulation zur Ruhe kommt, steht er automatisch wieder auf. Wenn eine solche Bruchlandung in der First-Person-Ansicht stattfindet, dann erlebt der Spieler alles mit den Augen einer simulierten Ragdoll.... und das k\u00f6nnte ziemlich verst\u00f6rend und schmerzhaft aussehen :) Da alle simulierten, mocapped oder keyframed Animationen in der First- und Third-Person-Sicht gemeinsam genutzt werden, konnten wir das gleiche System in beiden Ansichtsmodi verwenden. Dies ist das erste Mal, dass wir mit einem Spielermodell gearbeitet haben, bei dem ein gro\u00dfer Teil seiner Bewegungen aus der Physik stammt, und wir haben das Gef\u00fchl, dass wir nur die Oberfl\u00e4che dessen kratzen, was mit dieser Art von physikalischen Simulationen m\u00f6glich ist. Dies ist eine laufende Aufgabe und wir hoffen, in den n\u00e4chsten Monaten weitere Verbesserungen zu zeigen.\n\nOptimierungen - Wir haben diesen Monat viel Arbeit an der Optimierung geleistet, um unser Universum so gro\u00df und interessant zu machen, wie wir wollen, dass wir eine gute Anzahl von Objekten darin ben\u00f6tigen, deshalb haben wir verschiedene Teile der 3DEngine optimiert, um unsere unterst\u00fctzte Objektanzahl zu erh\u00f6hen. Wir unterst\u00fctzen nun die hierarchische Keulung f\u00fcr die meisten unserer Keulvorg\u00e4nge im ZoneSystem. Dieser Ansatz erm\u00f6glicht es uns, die r\u00e4umliche Struktur, die wir nutzen, zu nutzen, um unsere sichtbare Keulung noch weiter zu beschleunigen: Wenn wir wissen, dass das Begrenzungsrahmen einer Gruppe von Objekten vollst\u00e4ndig in einem Camera frustum eingeschlossen ist, m\u00fcssen wir nicht mehr alle einzelnen Objekte gegen die Kamera pr\u00fcfen. Die gleiche Idee kann auch auf andere Pr\u00fcfungen wie Box\/Box-\u00dcberlappungen oder Kugel-\/Distanztests angewendet werden. Wir haben uns dann den Streaming-Code angesehen. Bevor es parallel lief, aber mit dem MainThread synchronisiert wurde, bedeutet dies, dass unsere Frame-Zeit von der Anzahl der Objekte um den Player herum beeinflusst wird (da wir diese aktualisieren m\u00fcssen). Wenn wir nun die Anzahl der Objekte erh\u00f6hen, wird die Frame-Zeit offensichtlich schlechter. Um bei diesem Problem zu helfen, haben wir nun das Streaming-Status-Update von der eigentlichen Streaming-Anfrage entkoppelt. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es uns, den Streaming-Status (den teuren Teil des Streamings) vollst\u00e4ndig parallel zum MainThread zu aktualisieren, ohne die Bildrate zu beeinflussen. Dann haben wir uns unseren JobManager angesehen, der f\u00fcr die Verteilung all dieser Arbeiten auf die CPU-Kerne verantwortlich ist. Es stellte sich heraus, dass wir unsere Thread-Kommunikation massiv verbessern und unseren Load-Balancing verbessern konnten. Das bedeutet, dass wir mehr CPU-Kerne parallel nutzen und gleichzeitig die Latenzzeit dieser Operationen reduzieren. Der n\u00e4chste Schwerpunkt liegt auf der Rendering-Seite, und wir werden mehr Details zu diesen im n\u00e4chsten Monat erfahren.\n\nWie in dieser Phase der Entwicklung \u00fcblich, haben wir auch an verschiedenen Code-Bereinigungen und Bugfixes gearbeitet.\n\nUmwelt Kunst\nDiesen Monat konzentrierte sich das Environment Art Team ausschlie\u00dflich auf die Unterst\u00fctzung der neuen prozeduralen Planetentechnologie und f\u00fchrte einige Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeiten durch, um die Oberfl\u00e4che des Planeten durch prozedural verteilte Geometrie wie Felsbrocken, Felsen und Kieselsteine zu detaillieren.\n\nQA\nDer April war ein arbeitsreicher Monat voller Automatisierungs-Testaufbauten f\u00fcr Chris Speak. Chris hat automatisierte Tests f\u00fcr KI Spawning, Tod und Ragdolling entwickelt, nachdem er durch Schiffswaffenfeuer get\u00f6tet wurde. Diese Tests testen auch die Schiffspassage mit Kythera Navsplines. Wenn die KI gelauncht wird, wird der automatisierte Test ausgef\u00fchrt, um zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen, ob die KI korrekt gelauncht wird. Ein Schiff feuert auch Sch\u00fcsse auf die gelaunte KI ab, um zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen, ob Waffensch\u00e4den erlitten werden und ob die KI mit der richtigen Ragdollphysik korrekt stirbt. Die Testkarte ist noch in Arbeit, wird aber nach Abschluss des Testprozesses von Nutzen sein. Melissa Estrada hat ihre letzten Vorbereitungen f\u00fcr ihren Wechsel ins CIG-DE-Studio Ende dieses Monats getroffen und wird ab dem 1. April als QA Engine Specialist zu Chris Speak im QA-Team geh\u00f6ren. Sie freut sich darauf, ihre Arbeit am EditorMonkey fortzusetzen, der einen pythongesteuerten automatisierten Test der Editor Sanity Checks durchf\u00fchrt und gleichzeitig ein zweiter QA-Kontaktpunkt f\u00fcr interne Entwickler wird, an den sie sich wenden k\u00f6nnen, wenn sie spezifische interne Tests f\u00fcr neue Funktionen und Fehlerbehebungen ben\u00f6tigen.\n\nTechnische Kunst\nTech Art arbeitete am Ausbau unserer Animationspipeline und konzentrierte sich auf den Asset Manager, wo wir alle unsere Assets besetzen werden. Er unterst\u00fctzte auch andere Abteilungen, finalisierte ein neues Rig f\u00fcr das Waffenteam, Bugfixes, etc. Und nat\u00fcrlich haben wir andere Teams unterst\u00fctzt und die Fehlerbehebung ist aus dem Alltag verschwunden.\n\nKinematiken\nCine Environment Kunst baute eine etwas genauere Geometrie, die ein Admiral in unserer Skydock-Szene bewundern kann, wo gerade ein spoileriffisches Superhauptstadtschiff gebaut wird. F\u00fcr eine Szene, die auf die Zeit zur\u00fcckblickt, als Sie ein Sprachpaket f\u00fcr Ihren Wing Commander II installieren mussten, hat Robert, unser Teilzeitk\u00fcnstler f\u00fcr filmische Umgebungen, zus\u00e4tzliche B\u00fchnenbilder und Requisiten geschaffen, \u00fcber die wir noch nicht sprechen k\u00f6nnen. Wir haben auch mit der Arbeit an Shubin Station Performance Capture Szenen begonnen, die Old Man & Graves (der fantastisch aussieht!) involvieren. Diese Szenen werden eine Weile dauern und viele Mischungen zwischen Pcap und KI-Lokation beinhalten, w\u00e4hrend sie gro\u00dfe Teile der Station zu Fu\u00df durchqueren. Wir haben den 1. Durchgang f\u00fcr einen Teil der Kapitel-3-Szenen abgeschlossen und arbeiten noch an weiteren Kapiteln von Kapitel 03.\n\nWir haben auch 2 neue Starter in unserem Team, was uns auf eine fast vollst\u00e4ndige Besetzung bringt. Wir haben jetzt einen Cinematic Producer und einen weiteren Senior Cinematic Animator!\n\nDesign\nUnsere Leveldesigner arbeiten hart daran, gro\u00dfe Landepl\u00e4tze zu bauen, die in Zukunft im Persistent Universe eingesetzt werden. Port Olisar erledigt eine Menge Arbeit und ein brandneues Einkaufszentrum wird zu den bestehenden Einrichtungen hinzugef\u00fcgt. Dies sollte den Spielern einen einfachen Zugang zu NSCs, Gesch\u00e4ften, Versorgungseinrichtungen erm\u00f6glichen und wird dazu f\u00fchren, dass sich der Ort viel lebendiger anf\u00fchlt, als er es derzeit ist. Wir f\u00fcgen auch eine Piraten-\/Gesetzlos-Basis hinzu, in der Spieler, die ein wenig \"ungezogen\" waren, nach dem Tod wiederbelebt werden k\u00f6nnen oder in der sie einfach andocken k\u00f6nnen, ohne von der Polizei vom Himmel geschossen zu werden. Dieser Bereich wird nat\u00fcrlich seine Nachteile gegen\u00fcber einer gesetzestreuen Station haben, so dass Spieler, die etwas falsch machen, die Folgen tragen m\u00fcssen. (Denken Sie daran, dass das Gebiet um Crusader der UEE-Raum ist. In einem nicht beanspruchten oder nicht vertretenen System k\u00f6nnte das Gegenteil der Fall sein!) Ein weiterer Bereich, der viel Aufmerksamkeit erf\u00e4hrt, ist die Hurston Landezone. Diese wird aus einer gro\u00dfen planetarischen Siedlung bestehen, die sich um das Geb\u00e4ude der Familie Hurston und seine gigantischen Tagebaubetriebe gruppiert. Dieser Bereich hat gerade seine Layoutphase durchlaufen und bewegt sich auf den ersten Kunstpass zu.\n\nSystem Design war diesen Monat damit besch\u00e4ftigt, die Grundlagen f\u00fcr viele KI-Funktionen zu schaffen. Eine Menge Code-Arbeit ist in der KI online gegangen und wir haben es geschafft, eine Menge Verhaltensprototyping durchzuf\u00fchren, wobei wir uns haupts\u00e4chlich auf ihre Wahrnehmung und Reaktionen auf das Sehen und H\u00f6ren von Ereignissen konzentrierten, auf Pr\u00e4zision und Aktivit\u00e4ten au\u00dferhalb des Kampfes. Gleichzeitig haben wir die Entw\u00fcrfe f\u00fcr Systeme, die an unsere KI angrenzen, vorangetrieben, insbesondere f\u00fcr unsere Interaktoren, die definieren, wie unsere KI mit Objekten in der Welt interagiert, vom Sitzen auf einem Stuhl oder der Reparatur eines Computers bis hin zum \u00d6ffnen einer T\u00fcr oder sogar dem Einschalten eines Alarms. Da alle unsere Interaktoren auch f\u00fcr den Spieler nutzbar sein werden, untersuchen wir, wie diese verwendet werden und wie der Spieler mit Interaktionen mit Objekten umgeht, die mehrere M\u00f6glichkeiten haben, sie zu verwenden. Um dies zu gew\u00e4hrleisten, haben wir uns entschieden, das gleiche Inner Thought-System zu verwenden, das wir auch f\u00fcr die Dialogauswahl verwenden, da es eine wirklich sch\u00f6ne Erg\u00e4nzung zu sein scheint. Ein weiteres System, das wir vorangetrieben haben, ist die Loot Generation, die damit umgehen wird, wie Beute auf der ganzen Welt entsteht (das hei\u00dft nicht, dass Schiffe Gold wie ein typisches MMO ausspucken werden, aber es wird Bergung und andere Vorteile f\u00fcr das Erzielen von Kills geben). Wir versuchen, ein System aufzubauen, das die Erforschung f\u00f6rdert, anstatt an einem Ort zu bleiben und die landwirtschaftlichen Ressourcen zu nutzen. Wir m\u00f6chten, dass Sie die Weiten des Weltraums nach den Gebieten durchsuchen m\u00fcssen, die noch nicht entdeckt wurden, da diese h\u00f6chstwahrscheinlich die lohnendsten Pl\u00fcnderungsm\u00f6glichkeiten bieten.\n\nW\u00e4hrend wir diese neuen Systeme vorantreiben, haben wir auch einige Zeit damit verbracht, einige alte Systeme zu \u00fcberarbeiten, die nicht ganz unserer Vision von Star Citizen entsprachen. Wir sprechen derzeit \u00fcber das Quantum Travel, das grundlegend \u00fcberarbeitet wird, um es zu einem herausfordernden Teil des Gameplays zu machen, bei dem Menschen, die gut darin sind und wissen, was sie tun, in der Lage sein werden, schneller in QT einzusteigen (vielleicht bevor sie verboten werden; siehe unten) und l\u00e4ngere Strecken in einer Quantennavigation zur\u00fcckzulegen. Gleichzeitig f\u00fchren wir das Konzept des Verbotes ein, um es Spielern zu erm\u00f6glichen, andere zu unterbrechen, damit sie mitten in einem Kampf aufbrechen k\u00f6nnen, wann immer sie Lust dazu haben. Es wird mehrere M\u00f6glichkeiten geben, ein Schiff daran zu hindern, in QT einzudringen, von der einfachen Besch\u00e4digung bis hin zu speziellen Waffen und einsetzbaren Vorrichtungen, die darauf ausgerichtet sind, Schiffe zu stoppen, die auf ihrem Weg tot sind. Ein weiteres System, das ein wenig Liebe erh\u00e4lt, ist die Stromverteilung. W\u00e4hrend wir in der Vergangenheit daran gearbeitet haben, wird das System jetzt ein wenig \u00fcberarbeitet, da wir damit beginnen, es in unser erstes Gro\u00dfschiff, die Idris, zu implementieren. Dieses System \u00fcbernimmt die gesamte Energie und jeden Verbraucher an Bord, von Ihren gro\u00dfen Laserkanonen bis hin zur kleinsten Gl\u00fchbirne, und bestimmt, wie die Energie durch das ganze Schiff geleitet wird, woher sie kommt, wohin sie geht und was passiert, wenn nicht genug davon vorhanden ist.\n\nKI\nDiesen Monat sind wir tats\u00e4chlich in mehreren Bereichen vorangekommen, lassen Sie uns mit der Charakterbewegung beginnen. Wir haben eine Funktionalit\u00e4t entwickelt, die es Leveldesignern erm\u00f6glicht, Pfade auf der Ebene vorab zu platzieren, der die NSCs folgen k\u00f6nnen. Als Beispiel wird dies n\u00fctzlich sein, um das Verhalten von Patrouillenpfaden zu erstellen!\n\nWir haben das neue Wahrnehmungssystem im Aufbau aktiviert! Nach der ersten Verwendung haben wir einige Eigenschaften freigelegt, um die Ereignisse, die von den verschiedenen NSCs empfangen werden, korrekt anzupassen, wenn sie verschiedene Audio-Stimuli h\u00f6ren, und wir haben auch einige weitere Eigenschaften an Designer weitergegeben, so dass sie in der Lage sein werden, die Wahrnehmungseigenschaften direkt in den verschiedenen NSCs-Archetypen korrekt anzupassen. Wir haben einige neue Komponenten eingef\u00fchrt, um die von den verschiedenen NSCs verwendeten Waffen zu kontrollieren. Diese zentrale Komponente k\u00fcmmert sich um die Installation verschiedener Controller f\u00fcr den Einsatz verschiedener Waffentypen. Wenn du \u00fcber den Fall nachdenkst, in dem ein Charakter eine Granate werfen will, m\u00fcssen wir die Schussrichtung anders vorhersagen als in dem Fall, in dem der Charakter ein normales Gewehr ausstattet. Wir verwenden diese Komponente auch, um die Charaktergenauigkeit zu kontrollieren, so dass wir mehr oder weniger qualifizierte NSCs erstellen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nAuf der Verhaltensseite haben wir drei Hauptaufgaben eingef\u00fchrt, Verteidigungsbereich, Kampfbewegung und Position halten. Das sind grundlegende \"High-Level\"-Befehle, mit denen die Leveldesigner einige interessante Spielsituationen in ihrem Level erstellen k\u00f6nnen!\n\nAuf der Seite der Subsumtion wurden viele Fortschritte erzielt. Subsumption unterst\u00fctzt derzeit die folgenden Funktionalit\u00e4ten\n\nEine Entit\u00e4t kann eine Aktivit\u00e4t zugeordnet haben Jede Aktivit\u00e4t kann aus mehreren Teilaktivit\u00e4ten bestehen Die Auswahl der Subaktivit\u00e4t folgt nun korrekt ihren Priorit\u00e4ten und relativen Wahrscheinlichkeiten Wir stellen die grundlegende Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Ereignisse vor Wir haben unseren internen Ausdrucksparser erstellt, um jeden mathematischen oder booleschen Ausdruck innerhalb der vordefiniertenAnforderungen an eine Aktivit\u00e4t oder eine Aufgabe Wir haben einige grundlegende Debug-Zeichnungsfunktionalit\u00e4ten entwickelt Wir haben die folgenden neuen Aufgaben eingef\u00fchrt Sort Objects Pop Objects Communicate Compute Compare Compare Converse Wir haben eine Funktionalit\u00e4t entwickelt, um eine Entit\u00e4t zu reservieren, um sie zu verwenden oder mit ihr zu interagieren und anderen NSCs zu erm\u00f6glichen, zu wissen, dass das Objekt reserviert ist Auf der Schiffsseite haben wir viel an der Verbesserung der Stabilit\u00e4t und des Flugverhaltens der Schiffe gearbeitet, wir haben auch den Refactor des Schiffsverhaltens gestartet, um die Unterst\u00fctzung mehrerer Besatzungsmitglieder innerhalb eines Schiffes zu erm\u00f6glichen.\n\nHallo B\u00fcrger!\nHier ist das Neueste von dem, was das BHVR-Team in Montreal gemacht hat.\n\nDesign\nIn diesem Monat arbeitete das Behaviour Designteam weiter an den Einkaufsm\u00f6glichkeiten und richtete Casaba Outlet mit dem neuen dynamischen Spawning-System f\u00fcr Gegenst\u00e4nde ein. Jetzt haben wir Gegenst\u00e4nde, die der Spieler tats\u00e4chlich tragen kann, da wir zuvor mit Platzhaltern gearbeitet haben. Es erforderte viel Aufwand bei der Einrichtung von Regalen, Spawnern und Datenaufbereitung. Jetzt haben wir eine langfristige L\u00f6sung, die wir f\u00fcr weitere kommende Shop-Standorte einsetzen werden. Das war eine gro\u00dfartige Leistung zwischen Bhvr, Austin, LA und Gro\u00dfbritannien.\n\n2.3.0 Release brachte seinen \u00fcblichen Anteil an Hangars und Area18 Bugs mit, aber nichts, was wir noch nie zuvor gesehen haben. Wir haben auch geholfen, den extra gro\u00dfen Hangar in Revel und York zu entwerfen und einzurichten, um sicherzustellen, dass die neue Erweiterung mit dem bestehenden System funktioniert und der Starfarer korrekt gelaicht wurde, wenn ein Spieler einen besa\u00df. Nochmals, gro\u00dfartige Zusammenarbeit zwischen uns, Turbulent und den Direktoren.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich wurde uns die n\u00e4chste Helden-Landezone als Whitebox \u00fcbergeben: Hurston im Stanton-System. Wir sind jetzt in einem Stadium, in dem wir das Level aufr\u00e4umen und alle Gesch\u00e4fte mit den Hauptwegen verbinden. Wir haben die Designer-Netze der CryEngine f\u00fcr Platzhalter-Assets ersetzt, die die Metriken respektieren und die Ebene mit geeigneten Ebenen und Namenskonventionen einrichten. Insgesamt wurde das Leveldesign verfeinert und die Karte f\u00fcr das Kunstteam vorbereitet.\n\nOh ja, wir helfen auch und f\u00fcgen neue Inhalte zu Crusader und Port Olisar hinzu. Es ist toll, an jeder Front mitmachen zu k\u00f6nnen! Gute Zeiten!\n\nIngenieurwesen\nIn diesem Monat ging es um das Einkaufen und das Herausfinden des besten Weges, um Ihnen ein perfektes Einkaufserlebnis zu bieten. Dieses Feature hat viele Elemente, die eine gute Zusammenarbeit zwischen uns und den anderen Studios erforderten. Was bisher sehr viel Spa\u00df gemacht hat.\n\nWir haben ein neues AR-basiertes Shopping-Interface f\u00fcr Kleidung und pers\u00f6nliche Waffen entwickelt. Auch ein katalogbasiertes Einkaufssystem f\u00fcr Fahrzeugkomponenten.\n\nMit den verschiedenen Arten von Kleidung, die man kaufen kann, mussten wir eine Schnupperkamera entwickeln, damit die Spieler eine Vorschau auf ihren Charakter erhalten.\n\nEs wurde auch an einem neuen Shop-Inventar und einem Layout-Randomizer gearbeitet.\n\nWir haben die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che der CryAstro-Dienste aktualisiert und den Flow recodiert. Schlie\u00dflich ist die wichtigste Aufgabe, alles an die Ausdauer zu h\u00e4ngen.\n\nKunst\nDiesen Monat haben wir uns die Zeit genommen, den Marktplatz in Levski zu polieren, um ihm ein wirklich sch\u00f6nes Ambiente zu geben, von dem wir hoffen, dass Ihr es nach der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung lieben werdet.\n\nNat\u00fcrlich mussten wir Zeit mit Optimierungen und Debugging verbringen, um eine gute Map-Performance zu gew\u00e4hrleisten. In diesem Sinne gab es viel Arbeit auf der Seite der technischen Kunst, um alle m\u00f6glichen Optimierungen zu profilieren, die auf Levski anwendbar sind.\n\nWir haben auch die Fassaden der Gesch\u00e4fte poliert, um sie einzigartig aussehen zu lassen und die Aufmerksamkeit der Spieler auf sich zu ziehen, w\u00e4hrend Sie die Karte erkunden.\n\nAuf der Flair-Seite begannen wir mit der Arbeit an der n\u00e4chsten Raumfahrtfabrik.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich verbrachten wir einige Zeit damit, das neue Rebel & York Bay Area f\u00fcr den Starfarer zu debuggen.\n\nGr\u00fc\u00dfe von der Sonne - aber windig? Warte, eigentlich verschneit.... nicht sonnig! Montreal! Hier ist, was wir im letzten Monat gemacht haben:\n\nSchiffsstatistiken\nWir befinden uns in der Endphase der Entwurfsphase f\u00fcr die neue Schiffsreferenzmatrix, so dass wir bald mit der Entwicklung beginnen k\u00f6nnen. Gruppieren Sie alle Schiffe nach Chassis und wechseln Sie das Layout, so dass Sie alles auf einer einzigen Seite sehen k\u00f6nnen.... Sie k\u00f6nnen das Chassis ausw\u00e4hlen, das Sie vergleichen m\u00f6chten, und den Produktionsstatus jedes Schiffes anzeigen. Dadurch wird das Scrollen von links nach rechts stark reduziert und Sie k\u00f6nnen alle Varianten f\u00fcr jedes Chassis leicht einsehen. Bitte beachten Sie auch, dass sich verschiedene Schiffe in verschiedenen Entwicklungsstadien befinden, w\u00e4hrend wir an der Verbesserung der Schiffsstatistikseite arbeiten, und einige von ihnen wurden aktualisiert, um aus dem neuen Komponentensystem zu sch\u00f6pfen, und andere werden diese Phase erst erreichen, wenn sie weiter unten in der Pipeline sind. Das bedeutet, dass einige der Informationen noch tempor\u00e4re oder fr\u00fche Konzeptwerte sein k\u00f6nnen, und sie werden definitiv \u00fcberarbeitet werden m\u00fcssen, sobald die Designer beginnen, tats\u00e4chliche ItemPorts und Hardpoints in die Spielanlagen der jeweiligen Schiffe zu integrieren und Informationen dar\u00fcber zu sammeln, was funktioniert und was nicht. Diese Werte k\u00f6nnen sich auf der Seite mit den Schiffsstatistiken erst dann verfestigen, wenn dies der Fall ist, und selbst dann m\u00fcssen wir die Schiffe auf der Grundlage von Feedback aus dem Live-Build und den Testdaten des Arena Commander iterieren. \"Vorbehaltlich \u00c4nderungen\" bedeutet nicht, dass wir unsere Meinung leichtfertig oder leichtsinnig \u00e4ndern - es bedeutet, dass sie w\u00e4hrend der Entwicklung mehrere Balance-P\u00e4sse auf dem Weg zum endg\u00fcltigen Start erhalten werden, worum es wirklich geht.\n\nMulti-Faktor-Authentifizierung (MFA)\nUnsere Entwicklung der Multi-Faktor-Authentifizierung schreitet voran, und wir befinden uns nun in der statischen Integrationsphase. Die erste Wiederholung dieser Funktion beinhaltet zwei Optionen f\u00fcr alle Mitglieder: das Senden des Authentifizierungscodes per E-Mail oder durch einen speziell entwickelten und geh\u00e4uteten Google Authenticator. In einer zuk\u00fcnftigen Version werden wir in der Lage sein, den Code per SMS direkt an Ihr Handy zu senden.\n\nKommunikationsplattform\nWir haben an einem groben Prototyp f\u00fcr eine neue Kommunikationsplattform gearbeitet, die Foren und Chatsysteme zu einem einseitigen Modul verschmelzen wird. Unser Prototyp hat bereits mit dem Testen begonnen und wir arbeiten aktiv an der Weiterentwicklung seiner Schnittstellen, um sie so einfach und intuitiv wie m\u00f6glich zu gestalten. Unter anderem entwickeln wir neue M\u00f6glichkeiten, um Gespr\u00e4che und Themen zu filtern und zu organisieren. Erwarten Sie, dass Sie in den n\u00e4chsten Monaten mehr dar\u00fcber erfahren!\n\nSchiff passiert\nDieser Monat war f\u00fcr die Schiffe sehr aufregend. Ein neues Konzeptschiff wurde vorgestellt, die Esperia Vanduul Blade wurde mit einem Konzeptverkauf angek\u00fcndigt. Dieser leichte Vanduul-K\u00e4mpfer reiht sich in die Reihen der Sense und des Gletschers ein, da Vanduul-Waffen von Menschen gegen ihre Sch\u00f6pfer eingesetzt werden. Im M\u00e4rz fand auch eine Freiflugwoche statt, die alle fliegbaren Schiffe f\u00fcr jeden, der einen Account erstellt hat, umfasste, so dass neue und erfahrene Spieler die M\u00f6glichkeit hatten, einige neue Schiffe auszuprobieren. Um diese riesige Freifliege zu feiern, hatten wir einen Schiffsverkauf, bei dem alle fliegbaren limitierten Schiffe verkauft wurden.\n\nZum Abschluss des Monats, als 2.3 live ging, gingen der Xi'An Scout und der Starfarer in den Verkauf, f\u00fcr den wir eine eigene Promo-Seite mit einigen neuen Modulen wie einem browserbasierten magazin\u00e4hnlichen Layout entwickelt haben. Wir haben es inzwischen bereits auf der mit Spannung erwarteten Speisekarte von Big Benny wiederverwendet. Mit 2.3 ist der Scout nun flugbereit und der beeindruckende Starfarer ist nun zum ersten Mal im Hangar!\n\nUmsatz\nDer M\u00e4rz war auch f\u00fcr die Ware sehr arbeitsreich. Zuerst wurden die neuen anpassbaren Squadron 42 Dog Tags in den Handel gebracht. Als n\u00e4chstes wurden Starmap-Poster angeboten, die den Menschen die M\u00f6glichkeit geben, ein sehr cooles Poster des Star Citizen Universe zu besitzen, das seit der Kickstarter-Kampagne in Arbeit ist! Schlie\u00dflich wurden im Vorfeld der diesj\u00e4hrigen CitizenCon Tickets f\u00fcr unser am meisten erwartetes Event des Jahres, diesmal in Los Angeles, verkauft.\n\nHallo B\u00fcrger!\nIch beginne mit einer kleinen Vorstellung.\n\nTyler Witkin hier, oder besser bekannt als Zyloh aus dem Forum, und ich bin dein neuester Community Manager, der sich unter dem Bus im Austin, TX Studio meldet! Ja! Zwei Community-Manager! Ich freue mich sehr, eng mit meinem neuen Partner im Bereich Kriminalit\u00e4t Lando und dem Rest des Teams zusammenzuarbeiten, um Ihnen weiterhin alle fantastischen Inhalte und Informationen zu liefern. Ich bin jetzt nach einer sehr produktiven und abenteuerlichen Trainingswoche im LA-Studio wieder in Texas. W\u00e4hrend der ganzen Woche arbeitete ich eng mit dem Team zusammen, um meine neuen Verantwortlichkeiten besser zu verstehen, die neue Rolle zu kl\u00e4ren und die Werkzeuge des Handels zu studieren. In den n\u00e4chsten Monaten sind einige wirklich tolle Dinge geplant und ich bin sehr gespannt darauf, einzutauchen!\n\nKannst du glauben, dass wir bereits ein Quartal bis 2016 sind?! Werfen wir einen Blick darauf, was im M\u00e4rz passiert ist!\n\nVideos\nWir setzten unsere regelm\u00e4\u00dfig geplanten Segmente und Inhalte fort (erm\u00f6glicht durch all die gro\u00dfartigen Abonnenten da drau\u00dfen!) und schlossen stark mit einem sehr informativen 10 For the Chairman mit Global Head of Production and Foundry 42 Studio Director, Erin Roberts.\n\nIm M\u00e4rz brachte uns der fliegende Xi'an Scout und der Hangar-taugliche Starfarer. Wir haben einen Kommunikationslink freigegeben, der unser bisher gr\u00f6\u00dftes Hangar-taugliches Schiff, die Starfarer, beschreibt. Die Seite geht auf den massiven Schlepper ein und enth\u00e4lt ein visuell atemberaubendes Video von Nathan Dearsley, begleitet von neuer Musik des talentierten Pedro Camacho! Auf jeden Fall einen Besuch wert!\n\nIm M\u00e4rz wurde auch ein Blick hinter die Kulissen von Squadron 42 mit dem talentierten Andy Serkis ver\u00f6ffentlicht! Wir sind extrem aufgeregt und gl\u00fccklich, ihn an Bord der Besetzung f\u00fcr Staffel 42 zu haben!\n\nWebsite\nDer MVP-Bereich des Community Hubs ist nun vollst\u00e4ndig auf dem Laufenden \u00fcber die MVP-Gewinner von AtV. Schauen Sie sich einige der fantastischen Inhalte an, die Ihre Mitb\u00fcrger anbieten!\n\nLive-Events\nObwohl wir im M\u00e4rz an keiner Convention\/Events teilgenommen haben, haben wir Details bekannt gegeben und Tickets f\u00fcr die Citizen Con 2016 verkauft! Citizen Con markiert die urspr\u00fcngliche Ank\u00fcndigung der Star Citizen Crowdfunding-Kampagne vom Oktober 2012, und die Veranstaltung fand zuvor in Austin, Los Angeles und Manchester statt. In diesem Jahr kehrt Citizen Con am 9. Oktober im Avalon Hollywood nach Los Angeles zur\u00fcck, um an einem actionreichen Tag die neueste und gr\u00f6\u00dfte Arbeit zu feiern, die unsere Entwickler leisten.\n\nVerg\u00fcnstigungen\nWeltraumpflanzen! March Subscriber Flair brachte uns die Tuserac Plena, auch bekannt als die Terranische Kaiserbl\u00fcte, und falls Sie sich Sorgen machen, dass Ihre Kaiserbl\u00fcte einsam ist, wurde das Stretch-Ziel Xi'An Space Plant an alle vergeben, die vor 49 Millionen Dollar unterst\u00fctzt wurden.\n\nAu\u00dferdem waren die Server voller neuer Spieler und Veteranen f\u00fcr unsere Free-Fly-Promotion vom 11. bis 22. M\u00e4rz. Es war gro\u00dfartig, das Niveau der Kameradschaft (und des Chaos) zu sehen, das stattfand, w\u00e4hrend einige unserer erfahrenen Spieler die neue Menge begr\u00fc\u00dften.\n\nCoda\nDas ist alles f\u00fcr M\u00e4rz! 2016 wird ein gro\u00dfes Jahr f\u00fcr Star Citizen werden und wie immer sind wir engagiert und aufgeregt, dieses Universum weiterhin mit euch allen zu kommunizieren, zu teilen und zu erforschen!\n\nWir sehen uns im Vers! Gr\u00fc\u00dfe B\u00fcrger,\nDein Monatsbericht ist hier. Aber zuerst ein kleiner Fleck! Wir haben gerade Star Citizen Alpha 2.3.1 auf den Live-Servern ver\u00f6ffentlicht, das eine Vielzahl von Bugfixes und Balance\u00e4nderungen enth\u00e4lt. Sie k\u00f6nnen \u00fcber den Launcher darauf zugreifen und die kompletten Patch-Notes hier() lesen.\n\nWenn Sie Star Citizen Alpha 2.3 gespielt haben, wissen Sie bereits, dass M\u00e4rz ein Monat f\u00fcr WIRKLICH GROSSE Sendungen war! Wir haben diesen Monat den Hangar-tauglichen Starfarer zusammen mit dem lang erwarteten Xi'An Scout auf den Markt gebracht.... und es werden noch viele weitere folgen! Heute werden wir mit allen unseren Studios und Outsourcing-Partnern checken, um zu sehen, woran das Team im M\u00e4rz gearbeitet hat... aber zuerst m\u00f6chten wir einige der Fr\u00fcchte dieser Arbeit teilen: einige der Arbeiten, die wir an nahtlosen EVA-\u00dcberg\u00e4ngen geleistet haben, die Sie in einem kommenden Patch sehen werden. Schauen Sie sich das an und lesen Sie dann weiter, um die Arbeit herauszufinden, die dazu beigetragen hat, dies zu verwirklichen!\n\nHallo zusammen!\nK\u00f6nnen Sie sich vorstellen, dass ein Quartal 2016 bereits gekommen und gegangen ist? Aber was f\u00fcr ein Viertel war es, nicht wahr? Schauen wir uns nur an, was wir im letzten Monat erreicht haben: den Xi'an Aopoa Khartu-al, den Starfarer, und lassen wir nicht den gr\u00f6\u00dften von ihnen alle \u00fcbersehen - die intergalaktische Nahrungsversorgung. Da auch 2.3 ver\u00f6ffentlicht wird, haben wir eine F\u00fclle von Funktionen und Korrekturen eingef\u00fchrt, die alle in unseren Patch-Notizen zu finden sind.\n\nDies ist eine globale Anstrengung f\u00fcr jeden Zweig von Star Citizen, aber jeder Zweig tr\u00e4gt zum Gesamtbild bei. Lassen Sie uns also einen Blick darauf werfen, was die CIG Los Angeles diesen Monat aus dem Park geschlagen hat.\n\nIngenieurwesen\nDas CIG-LA Engineering Team wurde mit Verst\u00e4rkungen verst\u00e4rkt! Wir hatten zwei neue Gameplay Engineers in unseren Reihen: Patrick Mathieu und Chad McKinney. Wir freuen uns sehr auf ihre Beitr\u00e4ge zu Star Citizen!\n\nDie Arbeiten an dem neuen Interaktionssystem, das von Allen Chen und Mark Abent geleitet wird und sich in der Anfangsphase der Implementierung befindet, werden fortgesetzt, indem es in die Interaktivit\u00e4t des Schiffssitzes integriert wird. Unser neuestes Teammitglied, Chad McKinney, ist kopf\u00fcber in die Sache eingestiegen, indem er Allen an den T\u00fcren und Rampeninteraktionen half. Obwohl dieses System etwas ist, das wir in der Vergangenheit erw\u00e4hnt haben, macht es stetige Fortschritte, und wir k\u00f6nnen hoffentlich damit beginnen, Komponenten in einem baldigen Release zu implementieren.\n\nChad Zamzow hat das neue Shield Emitter System getestet, das sich derzeit in der Implementierungsphase der Entwicklung befindet. Diese neue Funktion wird der Funktionsweise von Schilden eine gr\u00f6\u00dfere Dimension verleihen, insbesondere wenn es sich um gr\u00f6\u00dfere Schiffe der Hauptstadtklasse handelt, die \u00fcber mehrere Schildemitter verf\u00fcgen. Dies gibt Schiffsingenieuren mehr Kontrolle dar\u00fcber, wie viel Energie auf die Vorderseite eines bestimmten Schildes geleitet wird, um den Schutz in einer bestimmten Situation zu maximieren. Obwohl gro\u00dfe Fortschritte gemacht wurden, um dieses Feature der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung n\u00e4her zu bringen, bleibt in Zukunft noch einiges zu tun.\n\nAber das Beste zum Schluss: Unser technischer Leiter Paul Reindell hat schnell daran gearbeitet, Ausdauer in Star Citizen zu bringen. F\u00fcr diejenigen, die mit dem Begriff nicht vertraut sind, bezieht sich Persistenz auf bestimmte Spielparameter, die auch bei einer Abmeldung des Spielers aktiv bleiben. Dazu geh\u00f6rt auch, dass Spieler Gegenst\u00e4nde \u00fcber das In-Game-Einkaufssystem erwerben k\u00f6nnen. Egal, ob du pfiffige neue Threads kaufst, um deinen Weltraumpiraten mehr aussehen zu lassen....piratenhaft, oder ob du dein Auge auf eine t\u00f6dliche neue Pistole hast, das Endziel ist es, sicherzustellen, dass die Entscheidungen, die du im Spiel triffst, bestehen bleiben und nicht jede Spielsitzung zur\u00fccksetzen. Es mag sich nach der Art von Dingen anh\u00f6ren, die man beim Spielen einfach als selbstverst\u00e4ndlich ansehen kann, aber wenn Ihre Gegenst\u00e4nde und Ihr Inventar so komplex sind wie in Star Citizen, ist es eigentlich keine einfache Sache!\n\nTechnisches Design\nBei den letzten Patches ist es klar, dass das Tech Design Team hart daran gearbeitet hat, Ihnen die besten Schiffe zu liefern, die wir je produziert haben. Der leitende Tech Designer Kirk Tome arbeitete hart an einem der am meisten erwarteten Schiffe, der Xi'An Aopoa Khartu-al, die jetzt flugbereit ist und Ihnen zur Verf\u00fcgung steht, um im au\u00dferirdischen Stil auszugehen. Um diese Dynamik fortzusetzen, hat Matthew Sherman an der Vorbereitung des MISC Reliant Hangars gearbeitet und Calix Reneau hat flei\u00dfig an der Whitebox der Drake Caterpillar gearbeitet.\n\nAuf der Komponentenseite haben Sie vielleicht die neue Komponentenklasse gesehen, die dem Holotable hinzugef\u00fcgt wurde. Kraftwerke sind die neueste Komponente, die wir den Reedern erm\u00f6glichen, die verschiedenen Systeme Ihres Schiffes auszutauschen und, wie Sie vielleicht erwarten, zu betreiben. Zwei neue Kraftwerke, die AEGIS Regulus und Amon & Reese OverDrive, wurden hinzugef\u00fcgt und k\u00f6nnen verwendet werden, um das standardm\u00e4\u00dfige \"generische\" Kraftwerk Ihres Schiffes auszutauschen.\n\nDa weitere Komponenten in das Spiel eingef\u00fchrt werden, k\u00f6nnen wir es kaum erwarten, welche Anpassungsm\u00f6glichkeiten Sie w\u00e4hlen werden, wenn Sie Ihren gew\u00e4hlten Karriereweg in Star Citizen einschlagen.\n\nKunst\nSchiffe scheinen in diesem Monat das hei\u00dfe Thema zu sein, und es geht weiter mit dem LA Art Team. Der Konzeptk\u00fcnstler Gurmukh Bhasin ist mit der Konzeption des Drake Caterpillar Cargo Moduls besch\u00e4ftigt, w\u00e4hrend unser neuester Konzeptk\u00fcnstler Justin Wentz die Konzeptkunst f\u00fcr die Crewww-Wohnr\u00e4ume der Caterpillar fertiggestellt hat. Der n\u00e4chste Schritt ist die Modellierung des Wohnens nach dem Konzept von Justin, das derzeit an Art Lead Elwin Bachiller und Associate Artist Daniel Kamentsky vergeben wird.\n\nAuf der PU-Seite kreiert unser neuester Charakter-K\u00fcnstler die makellosen Materialien f\u00fcr den Marine-Jumpsuit, Jeremiah Lee macht einen zweiten Konzeptpass f\u00fcr die leichte R\u00fcstung, und Art Supervisor Forrest Stephan kreiert die makellosen Materialien f\u00fcr den Fluganzughelm sowie Kleidung f\u00fcr das Persistent Universe (PU).\n\nTechnischer Inhalt\nDas Global Tech Content Team ist wirklich ein Allesk\u00f6nner-Team, das seine Finger in allem hat, vom Star Citizen \u00fcber die Schiffsentwicklung bis hin zu den Charakteren der PU.\n\nTech Content Director Sean Tracy hat an der Entwicklung der Technologie zur Charakteranpassung gearbeitet. Nur ein weiterer Schritt auf dem Weg zur Schaffung eines immersiven, persistenten In-Game-Universums. Zusammen mit dieser Technologie haben die K\u00fcnstler damit einen Prototyp erstellt, wie die Charakteranpassung funktionieren wird. Associate Rigger Gaige Hallman hat auch hart an der PU-Seite des Spiels gearbeitet und Kleidungsvorlagen erstellt. Dadurch kann jedes Kleidungsst\u00fcck ein bestimmtes Volumen einnehmen. Dadurch wird sichergestellt, dass verschiedene Kleidungsst\u00fccke nebeneinander existieren k\u00f6nnen, ohne ineinander zu klippen, solange sie ordnungsgem\u00e4\u00df an diese Geovolumina angepasst sind.\n\nUm einen Eindruck von den vielf\u00e4ltigen Herausforderungen zu vermitteln, vor denen das Tech Content Team steht, hat Senior Tech Artist Mark McCall eine Teststufe namens GearValidator entwickelt. Der einzige Zweck dieser Stufe ist es, das Fahrwerk unserer Schiffe zu testen und sicherzustellen, dass es einwandfrei funktioniert. Nach Durchf\u00fchrung einer Reihe von Tests wird ein Bericht erstellt, der uns dar\u00fcber informiert, ob das Fahrwerk eines bestimmten Schiffes die erforderliche Leistung erbringt oder nicht.\n\nEin Teil dessen, was die Xi'an Aopoa Khartu-al in 2.3 ver\u00f6ffentlichen konnte, war Matt Intrieris Arbeit, so viele Xi'an Aopoa Khartu-al -bezogene Fehler in relativ kurzer Zeit zu beheben, aber wir sind uns auch bewusst, dass es mehr Korrekturen und Optimierungen gibt, die noch abgeschlossen werden m\u00fcssen, bevor wir absolut blutr\u00fcnstig mit dem Schiff umgehen k\u00f6nnen. Associate Tech Artist Patrick Salerno \u00fcberpr\u00fcft und f\u00fcgt weiterhin LODs hinzu, um die Maschenzahl auf \u00e4lteren Schiffen zu normalisieren; er arbeitet sich derzeit durch die 300er-Serie.\n\nQA\nDer Schwerpunkt der CIG-LA QA lag auf der Entwicklung von 2.2 LIVE Release und den nachfolgenden 2.3 PTU und LIVE Releases. Zus\u00e4tzlich zu den \u00fcblichen Sanit\u00e4ts- und Rauchkontrollen konzentrierte sich das Team auch auf Folgendes:\n\nXi'an Khartu-al Flugleistung. Starfarer Hangar Bereitschaft und vorl\u00e4ufige Flugleistungen. Fr\u00fchzeitiges Testen von Persistenzfunktionen. Untersuchung von Problemen mit der Serverstabilit\u00e4t und -leistung. Sammeln von Schiffsfeedback, wobei das Thema dieses Monats der Drake Cutlass ist. Dar\u00fcber hinaus begann Eric Pietro mit der Ausbildung f\u00fcr seine neue Rolle als Animation's Tools Specialist, mit dem Ziel, sicherzustellen, dass die Animationswerkzeuge ordnungsgem\u00e4\u00df funktionieren und f\u00fcr alle Bed\u00fcrfnisse der Animatoren geeignet sind.\n\nNarrativ\nLead Writer Dave Haddock ist aus Manchester zur\u00fcck! Dave verbrachte den Monat in Gro\u00dfbritannien und schaute mit den Designern \u00fcber die Whitebox-Ebenen, so dass er feststellen konnte, welche zus\u00e4tzlichen Dialoge aufgenommen werden mussten. Seitdem haben Senior Writer Will Weissbaum und Dave hart daran gearbeitet, alles Notwendige zusammenzustellen, damit wir sicherstellen k\u00f6nnen, dass Squadron 42 Sie wirklich in die Welt von Star Citizen bringt. Bevor er zur\u00fcckflog, konnte Dave auch an der letzten Editorial-Selections-Session von Chris teilnehmen und die letzten verweilenden Quoten und Enden des vorherigen Performance-Shootings abschlie\u00dfen.\n\nNeben dem Jonglieren von News Updates, Galaktischen Leitf\u00e4den und Portfolios hat Associate Writer Adam Wieser damit begonnen, die riesigen Mengen an Komponenten, Artikeln und Bekleidung zu benennen, die gerade entwickelt werden, die nachfolgenden Artikelbeschreibungen zu schreiben und ein Glossar f\u00fcr einige der einzigartigeren Begriffe zu erstellen, um die Sprache im Unternehmen zu standardisieren. Um ein Beispiel zu nennen: Wenn jemand sagt, dass ein Schiff ein \"Verbotenes Schiff\" ist, sind wir uns alle einig, welche Eigenschaften oder Aspekte dieser Begriff hat.\n\nNeben der Fortsetzung ihrer Zauberei mit der Organisation des internen Wikis, Cherie: Destroyer von Worlds\u2122 hat alle eingehenden wissenschaftlichen Daten f\u00fcr die verschiedenen Planeten und Sterne verarbeitet und die letzte Reihe von wissenschaftlichen Daten an unsere fantastischen Wissenschaftsberater weitergeleitet. Sie hat auch damit begonnen, eine erste Liste m\u00f6glicher Eintr\u00e4ge f\u00fcr die Galactapedia sowie eine Chronologie der Ereignisse zu erstellen, die bereits im Universum \"passiert\" sind.\n\nWir hatten unsere au\u00dferirdische Sprachspezialistin, Britton Watkins, zu Besuch im B\u00fcro. Nachdem er die Vanduul-Sprache f\u00fcr unser Shooting mit Andy Serkis entworfen hatte, wollte Chris die n\u00e4chsten Schritte f\u00fcr Vanduul und die anderen Sprachen besprechen. Hoffentlich werden noch mehr Neuigkeiten dar\u00fcber folgen, aber es wird sehr aufregend werden.\n\nBis zum n\u00e4chsten Monat.....\n\nProduktion\nDas Los Angeles Production Team hat die Einstellung neuer Mitarbeiter f\u00fcr die Entwicklungsteams \u00fcberwacht. Wir haben die Zahl der K\u00fcnstler und Ingenieure erh\u00f6ht, aber wir suchen immer noch Designer, Schriftsteller und mehr Ingenieure. W\u00e4hrend die Erh\u00f6hung der Anzahl der Entwickler in Los Angeles dazu beitr\u00e4gt, die verf\u00fcgbaren Ressourcen zu erh\u00f6hen, wollen wir sicherstellen, dass wir \u00fcber unsere Strategien informiert sind.\n\nUm sicherzustellen, dass die Produktion mit den anderen Regionalb\u00fcros synchron ist, besuchten k\u00fcrzlich Erin Roberts und Ricky Jutley, Global Head of Production, aus dem britischen B\u00fcro, um Strategien f\u00fcr die PU mit Todd Papy, Tony Zurovec und Chris Roberts zu diskutieren. W\u00e4hrend E-Mail- oder Videokonferenzen im Allgemeinen die \u00fcblichen Methoden f\u00fcr die transatlantische Kommunikation sind, ist es manchmal schwierig, die pers\u00f6nliche Kommunikation zu \u00fcbertreffen.\n\nSenior Producer Eric Davis hat nicht nur die Entwicklungsmeilensteine f\u00fcr 2.3 und 2.4 \u00fcberwacht, er hat auch den laufenden Bau weitgehend \u00fcberwacht, w\u00e4hrend wir uns der Fertigstellung des neuen B\u00fcros in Los Angeles n\u00e4hern. Associate Producer Randy Vazquez hat die Aufgaben f\u00fcr Tech Design und Engineering geleitet, w\u00e4hrend Associate Producer Mark Hong auch f\u00fcr die Aufgaben f\u00fcr Tech Content und Art verantwortlich ist. W\u00e4hrend diese Liste vereinfacht ist, enth\u00e4lt jedes dieser Elemente eine geballte Anzahl von einzelnen Aufgaben, Meilensteinen, Zeitpl\u00e4nen, Berichten und anderen damit verbundenen Verantwortlichkeiten.\n\nAbschlie\u00dfend\nWie du sehen kannst, waren wir diesen Monat nicht unt\u00e4tig (noch waren wir jemals unt\u00e4tig). Wir freuen uns sehr, dass der Xi'an Aopoa Khartu-al genossen wird. Wir wissen, wie lange du darauf gewartet hast und wir sind stolz auf jedes neue Schiff, das wir ver\u00f6ffentlichen. Obwohl der Schwerpunkt auf unseren Landsleuten in Gro\u00dfbritannien lag, war das Deb\u00fct des Starfarer's Hangars auch ein weiterer Meilenstein, den wir mit Freude abschlie\u00dfen konnten. Wie bereits erw\u00e4hnt, k\u00f6nnen wir nicht warten, bis Sie sehen, was wir mit der Raupe, dem Verk\u00fcnder, dem Relianten und mehr machen. Wir sind zwar stolz auf unsere Leistungen in diesem Monat, aber es erinnert uns auch daran, dass wir noch viele weitere Meilensteine zu erreichen haben. Bis n\u00e4chsten Monat!\n\nHowdy Citizens,\nDer M\u00e4rz war wie immer ein sehr aufregender Monat. Wir haben viele Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen f\u00fcr die PTU gemacht und Star Citizen Alpha 2.3.0 auf dem Live-Server eingesetzt! Wir hatten eine Reihe von Besuchern und Reisenden sowie eine gro\u00dfe Anzahl von Studio-\u00fcbergreifenden Kooperationen auf allen Ebenen. Wir hatten auch einen Riesenspa\u00df beim Bar Citizen Event Anfang des Monats, und wir freuen uns darauf, in Zukunft weitere Veranstaltungen wie diese zu veranstalten! Hier finden Sie detaillierte Informationen zu den einzelnen Studio-Leads:\n\nEntwicklung\nDer Schwerpunkt im Monat M\u00e4rz hier in Austin lag auf Shopping! Damit meine ich nicht, dass wir alle zusammen ins Einkaufszentrum gegangen sind, um die hei\u00dfesten Modetrends aufzugreifen, sondern vielmehr haben wir uns darauf konzentriert, die Funktionen zur Vollendung zu bringen, die erforderlich sind, um die Shop-Umgebungen f\u00fcr die Spieler funktionsf\u00e4hig zu machen. Lead Designer Rob Reininger hat verschiedene Subfeatures wie die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che der Einzelposten-Transaktion und den Flow sowie die Einrichtung der Artikel in der Shop-Umgebung vorangetrieben. Pete Mackay hat die Preisgestaltung f\u00fcr all die verschiedenen Artikel, die wir in den Gesch\u00e4ften verkaufen werden, vorangetrieben. Dies erforderte viel Koordination zwischen unseren Design- und Community-Teams in LA und unserem Design Director Todd Papy und Pete hat es einfach perfekt gemacht. Wir implementieren nun die festgelegten Preise in DataForge, wo sie statisch existieren werden, bis wir unsere Formell\u00f6sung online bringen. Die Gegenst\u00e4nde k\u00f6nnen mit einer neuen W\u00e4hrung gekauft werden, die wir eingef\u00fchrt haben, intern Alpha Currency genannt. Diese W\u00e4hrung existiert ausschlie\u00dflich zu dem Zweck, diese Preise zu testen und das Spiel auszugleichen, und wird getrennt von UEC oder REC existieren. Zu jedem Zeitpunkt k\u00f6nnen wir Alpha Currency abwischen und neu anfangen, wenn etwas schief geht, und das wird uns helfen, die endg\u00fcltigen Preiszahlen festzulegen, bevor wir live gehen.\n\nZusammen mit dem Shopping-Frontend kommt die Arbeit, die zur Unterst\u00fctzung des Shopping-Backends geleistet wird. Das Server-Team hier in Austin hat die M\u00f6glichkeit eingerichtet, Alpha-W\u00e4hrung im Spiel hinzuzuf\u00fcgen\/abzuziehen und sie an die UI- und Design-Teams in Gro\u00dfbritannien weiterzugeben, um sie f\u00fcr die Einkaufsschnittstelle zu nutzen und Alpha-W\u00e4hrungsbelohnungen durch das Abschlie\u00dfen von Missionen bereitzustellen. Diese Arbeit ist Teil der Persistenz als Ganzes, die in diesem Monat erhebliche Fortschritte gemacht hat. Wir haben schlie\u00dflich Persistenz in unseren Hauptentwicklungsstrom integriert, was bedeutet, dass wir nicht mehr so weitermachen k\u00f6nnen, wie fr\u00fcher, und Persistenz ist hier, um zu bleiben. Damit kommen viele Probleme und Fehler, die behoben werden m\u00fcssen, und jetzt arbeitet unser Server-Team hart daran, diese zu beheben, damit wir unseren Hauptentwicklungsstrom wieder reibungslos laufen lassen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nEin weiteres Feature, das wir diesen Monat entwickelt haben, ist die Port Modification View. Jeff Zhu hat die Programmierarbeiten f\u00fcr den Umbau des Hangarcodes von Grund auf \u00fcbernommen, und wir k\u00f6nnen nun auf verschiedene \"Item Ports\" rund um den Hangar zugreifen, um das Layout unserer Schiffe und das Hangarflair anzupassen. Die Schiffe werden nicht mehr \u00fcber die Website in den Hangars organisiert, sondern Sie k\u00f6nnen stattdessen bis zu einer Bucht im Hangar gehen und w\u00e4hlen, welche Schiffe wohin im Spiel gehen. Dies ist ein aufregendes neues Feature und wir haben einen Riesenspa\u00df dabei gehabt, damit herumzuspielen. Wir haben das nun an das UI-Team weitergeleitet, um es in eine mobiGlas-App zu kleiden. Ich freue mich darauf, dieses Feature sehr bald zu sehen!\n\nUnser Animationsteam hat uns in verschiedenen Bereichen des Projekts wie gewohnt unterst\u00fctzt. Jay Brushwood hat viel an der Entwicklung von Cockpitvergleichen f\u00fcr die m\u00e4nnlichen und weiblichen Charaktere gearbeitet. Wir wollen sicherstellen, dass wir klug sind, wie wir diese Aufgabe angehen, damit wir unseren Animationsfu\u00dfabdruck nicht exponentiell vergr\u00f6\u00dfern. Das Ship Animation Team hat auch Verm\u00f6genswerte f\u00fcr die Programmierung bereitgestellt, um die Forschung und Entwicklung verschiedener Funktionen zu unterst\u00fctzen, wie z.B. unterschiedliche Ein- und Ausstiegsgeschwindigkeiten f\u00fcr die Cockpits und die M\u00f6glichkeit von zwei separaten Einstiegspunkten f\u00fcr Schiffe. Unser PU-Animationsteam hat bei der Definition von Metriken f\u00fcr verschiedene Interaktionen im Spiel geholfen. Vom Essen an einem Stand \u00fcber das Stehen\/Sitzen an einer Computerkonsole bis hin zum Servieren von Champagner auf einem Tablett - jede neue Animation erfordert einige \u00dcberlegungen dar\u00fcber, wie wir Assets implementieren, die mit bestehenden Metriken \u00fcbereinstimmen. Wenn Metriken nicht festgelegt sind, m\u00fcssen wir helfen, sie zu erstellen, damit das Requisitenteam wei\u00df, welche Dimensionen ihre Assets ben\u00f6tigen, um sie anzupassen. Unser Lead-Animator, Bryan Brewer, hat Foundry 42 auch bei der Implementierung von Lokomotionssets f\u00fcr verschiedene Charaktere f\u00fcr Squadron 42 unterst\u00fctzt. Er macht schnelle Fortschritte und es ist sch\u00f6n zu sehen, dass noch mehr dieser Charaktere zum Leben erwachen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich hat unser Schiffsteam hier in Austin die Arbeit an der Xi'an Khartu-Al diesen Monat abgeschlossen und wir haben sie mit 2.3.0 flugfertig freigegeben. Es ist ein wundersch\u00f6nes, einzigartiges Schiff, so dass die wichtigsten Requisiten an Chris Smith und Josh Coons f\u00fcr diese Leistung gehen. Diese Jungs sind nun mit dem Hornet-Upgrade bzw. dem Drake Herald fortgefahren. Chris wird die Hornet an unsere aktuellen Standards anpassen und das Schiff aus Performancegr\u00fcnden optimieren. Josh hat an dem Whitebox-Modell f\u00fcr den Drake Herald gearbeitet und wird es bis April fortsetzen.\n\nLive-Betrieb:\nQA\nStar Citizen QA in Austin war im vergangenen Monat sehr besch\u00e4ftigt. Mit Unterst\u00fctzung unserer anderen QA-Teams in LA und Gro\u00dfbritannien hat die Austin QA 18 Implementierungen in unserem Public Test Universe sowie 5 Implementierungen in der offiziellen Live-Umgebung erfolgreich abgeschlossen. Das Team war sehr erfreut, die neuen Funktionen in Star Citizen Alpha 2.3 zu pr\u00e4sentieren.\n\nDiesen Monat haben wir ein paar neue Gesichter im Austin QA-Team. Ein herzliches Willkommen an Jesse Mark, Don Allen und Scott McCrea. Wir freuen uns, sie an Bord zu haben. Auch in diesem Monat hat sich in unseren Reihen etwas bewegt. Als Senior QA hat Tyler Witkin die F\u00e4higkeit gezeigt, positive Interaktionen mit unserer Gemeinschaft zu f\u00f6rdern. Es ist nur nat\u00fcrlich, dass er in unsere Community-Abteilung wechselt. Tyler ist jetzt unser neuer Community-Manager! Andrew Hesse hat als QA Lead f\u00fcr Austin einen gro\u00dfartigen Job gemacht und wir sind stolz darauf, seine Bef\u00f6rderung zum QA Manager bekannt zu geben. Andrew wird das Austin QA Studio leiten und bei der QA Zukunftsplanung unterst\u00fctzen. Marissa Meissner hat hervorragende Arbeit geleistet, seit sie als unsere Informationsspezialistin eingestellt wurde. Marissa hat ihre F\u00e4higkeit bewiesen, allt\u00e4gliche Aufgaben zu leiten und sicherzustellen. Marissa hat an vielen Aufgaben gearbeitet, darunter die vollst\u00e4ndige Dokumentation unserer Prozesse und Arbeitsabl\u00e4ufe, die Leitung des Issue Council, die Verbindung zur Community und zum In Game Support sowie die Verwaltung unseres Patch-Notizen-Prozesses, um nur einige zu nennen. Marissa wird unsere neueste QA-Leiterin im Austin Studio sein, wo sie sicherstellen wird, dass unsere t\u00e4glichen Aufgaben und W\u00fcnsche mit gr\u00f6\u00dfter Sorgfalt erledigt werden. Herzlichen Gl\u00fcckwunsch an Andrew, Marissa und Tyler!\n\nDen gr\u00f6\u00dften Teil des Monats M\u00e4rz besch\u00e4ftigte das Testen der neuen Features, die in 2.3 und 2.3.1 implementiert wurden, darunter der Hangar-f\u00e4hige Starfarer und der fliegende Khartu-Al oder Xi'an Scout. QA verbrachte auch Zeit damit, die neu hinzugef\u00fcgten FPS-Waffen und Schiffskraftwerkskomponenten zu testen und die vielen Bugfixes des Updates zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen.\n\nUnser engagierter Squadron 42-Tester Andrew Rexroth arbeitet eng mit seinen Kollegen Liam Guest und Lee Jones in unserem britischen B\u00fcro zusammen, um Squadron 42 zu testen. Die Pr\u00fcfung der Staffel 42 l\u00e4uft auf Hochtouren, Andrew testet 5 verschiedene Levels mit jeweils vielen geschichtstr\u00e4chtigen Zielen. Wir sind auch dabei, weitere Tester zum Testen von Staffel 42 zu bewegen. Katarzyna Mierostawska wird derzeit geschult, um diese Bem\u00fchungen zu unterst\u00fctzen, und weitere Tester werden in naher Zukunft den Wechsel zur Staffel 42 vornehmen.\n\nTodd Raffray hat es \u00fcbernommen, die Anf\u00e4nge der Persistenz zu testen. Todd arbeitet sehr eng mit den Ingenieuren Jeff Zhu, Ahmed Shaker, Jason Ely und Tom Sawyer zusammen, um sicherzustellen, dass jeder Aspekt der Persistenz bei der Implementierung verstanden und angemessen getestet wird. Todd stellt auch sicher, dass dieser Prozess klar an unsere anderen Teams kommuniziert wird, so dass wir alle auf der gleichen Seite stehen, wenn es darum geht, dieses sehr wichtige Feature zu testen.\n\nWir sind unglaublich begeistert von der bevorstehenden Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Star Citizen Alpha 2.4. Mit unseren gemeinsamen Bem\u00fchungen in 4 Studios wird QA weiterhin die Qualit\u00e4tstests anbieten, die f\u00fcr die kommenden Versionen erforderlich sind. Vielen Dank an alle, die Feedback und Beitr\u00e4ge zum Issue Council gegeben haben. Deine Hilfe tr\u00e4gt wesentlich dazu bei, dass wir die beste verdammte Weltraumsimulation aller Zeiten erstellen. Bis n\u00e4chsten Monat!\n\nSpielunterst\u00fctzung\nDer M\u00e4rz war ein gro\u00dfartiger Monat f\u00fcr Will Leverett und Chris Danks im Game Support, wenn auch aus keinem anderen Grund, als dass sie vor Ort zusammen arbeiten konnten! Will verbrachte zwei Wochen in Manchester mit Chris, sowie den Teams f\u00fcr Kundenservice, Qualit\u00e4tssicherung und Produktion. Es wurde viel Zeit und M\u00fche darauf verwendet, sicherzustellen, dass wir uns darauf konzentrieren, wie wir Spielern helfen, neue Tools zu trainieren und die Administrationswerkzeuge f\u00fcr Gameserver zu planen, um das persistente Universum aufzubauen, zu testen und zu unterst\u00fctzen.\n\nWir haben 2.3.0-Tests \u00fcber PTU bis hin zu Live gesehen, und wir haben uns mit Ahmed Shaker und Jeffrey Pease in DevOps abgestimmt, um zus\u00e4tzliche Versionen zu testen, um die Ursachen f\u00fcr die KI-\u00dcberschneidung zu isolieren und zu identifizieren. Wir sind dankbar f\u00fcr die Playtester, die Zeit investieren konnten, um dies aufzusp\u00fcren, und wir l\u00f6sen deshalb mit jedem Patch neue Probleme.\n\nWir haben diesen Monat einen Prozess begonnen, um Website-Bugs zus\u00e4tzlich zu Client\/Server\/Launcher-Bugs im Issue Council zu sammeln. Wir waren uns zwar nicht sicher, welche Ergebnisse wir erhalten w\u00fcrden, aber die Ergebnisse waren \u00e4u\u00dferst positiv und wir haben damit begonnen, diese Fehler in den Entwicklungszyklus zu integrieren.\n\nDer Game Support hat auch die Art und Weise, wie wir das Public Test Universe (PTU) nutzen, weiter verbessert. Wir haben viel Wert aus der PTU herausgeholt, und sie ist jetzt f\u00fcr die Entwicklung von Star Citizen unerl\u00e4sslich. Dar\u00fcber hinaus werden wir unsere PTU-Liste der Spieler f\u00fcr 2.4.0 aktualisieren, also stellen Sie sicher, dass Sie in der PTU und im Issue Council aktiv bleiben, denn so laden wir unsere Spieler ein!\n\nIT\/Betrieb\nIm M\u00e4rz haben wir gro\u00dfe Fortschritte beim Projekt zur Reduzierung der Gr\u00f6\u00dfe von Pflastern erzielt. Dieses Projekt betrifft mehrere Teams, darunter IT-, DevOps- und Engineering-Teams in Frankfurt und Montreal. Wir haben die \u00c4nderungen auf niedriger Ebene an der Art und Weise, wie Daten von der Engine gelesen werden k\u00f6nnen, abgeschlossen und die ersten Datenspeicher f\u00fcr das Projekt aufgebaut. Wir haben auch die ersten Schritte unternommen, um die Build-Pipeline so zu modifizieren, dass Builds in das neue Datenformat ausgegeben werden k\u00f6nnen.\n\nSehr fr\u00fches Patch-Testing hat bewiesen, dass unsere neue Patch-Methodik mit Testdaten arbeitet, so dass es nun darum geht, den Rest der Pipeline aufzubauen und die Kernfunktionalit\u00e4t des Launcher-Patchers neu aufzubauen. Da es sich hierbei um eine so gro\u00dfe Neuschreibung handelt, nutzen wir die Gelegenheit, einen v\u00f6llig neuen Launcher-Patcher zu entwickeln, der nach Fertigstellung mit neuen und verbesserten Funktionen und Kontrollen ausgestattet wird.\n\nWir freuen uns zwar sehr, dieses Projekt so schnell wie m\u00f6glich bei den Spielern voranzutreiben, aber wir haben noch viel zu tun und m\u00fcssen es richtig machen. Diese \u00c4nderung wird sich auf die Art und Weise auswirken, wie Builds intern an die Entwicklungsteams und die Qualit\u00e4tssicherung weitergegeben werden, so dass wir auch mehr Arbeit haben, um interne Liefersysteme zu \u00fcberarbeiten. Bisher sehen wir jedoch alle Anzeichen daf\u00fcr, dass alle Teams synchron sind und das Projekt auf Kurs ist.\n\nLiveOps\/DevOps\/DevOps\nIn diesem Monat hat das Team so hart wie nie zuvor an der Bereitstellung, dem Aufbau von Systemen und der Erstellung von Leistungsprofilen gearbeitet. Wir haben 18 Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen an PTU geliefert (plus 10 gegen\u00fcber dem letzten Monat) und 5 Live-Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen abgeschlossen. Die Hauptarbeiten an einem neuen Testbau-System, das einige erstaunliche Ergebnisse erbracht hat, wurden abgeschlossen.\n\nDas Hauptziel unseres Testbuild-Systems ist es, einen funktionsf\u00e4higen Pr\u00fcfstand zur Verf\u00fcgung zu stellen, auch wenn er nur mit geringen Ressourcen auskommt, wo gr\u00f6\u00dfere \u00c4nderungen oder Refactoring auftreten k\u00f6nnen, ohne die bestehende Baupipeline zu beeintr\u00e4chtigen. Dies ist ein gro\u00dfer Auftrag, wenn man bedenkt, dass unser Produktionsbau-System massiv ist und aus 120 Kernen (240HT) mit 1,5 TB RAM \u00fcber den gesamten Stapel verteilt besteht. Unser Testbuild-System ist mit 36 Kernen (72HT) und 128 GB RAM viel kleiner. Der Hauptunterschied besteht darin, dass das Test-Build-System lokalen Speicher aus Intels NVMe-Laufwerken betreibt, um die Kompilierungsschritte durchzuf\u00fchren, anstatt Speicher mit allen anderen Systemen im SAN zu teilen. Wir erwarteten erhebliche Verbesserungen bei der Speicherleistung, aber was wir bekamen, war nicht weniger als erstaunlich.\n\nIn einigen, nicht allen F\u00e4llen f\u00fchrt das Testbuild-System Auftr\u00e4ge mit einer Zeitersparnis von 80% aus. Es kommt auf die Speicher- und I\/O-Raten an, wie wir sie in jedem Test gesehen haben. Stark I\/O-abh\u00e4ngige Operationen wie die PAK-Dateierstellung zeigen eine 4-fache Geschwindigkeitssteigerung. Es ist immer noch nicht m\u00f6glich, das Test Build System als Ersatz f\u00fcr ein Serien Build System zu verwenden, aber wenn es nicht im aktiven Test eingesetzt wird, zeigen uns diese beeindruckenden Ergebnisse, dass wir es f\u00fcr spezielle Builds und One Offs verwenden k\u00f6nnen, die mehrmals im Monat auftauchen.\n\nSpezielle Requisiten gehen an Ahmed und den Rest des Publishing-Teams, um mit der gr\u00f6\u00dferen Anzahl von Implementierungen in unseren PTU- und Live-Umgebungen Schritt zu halten und gleichzeitig das gesamte Performance-Profiling mehrmals t\u00e4glich auszuf\u00fchren. Dies ist eine wichtige Arbeit, und wir w\u00e4ren nicht in der Lage, dies ohne die Unterst\u00fctzung der Geldgeber zu tun, die uns helfen, Tests in der PTU-Umgebung durchzuf\u00fchren. Wir haben eine F\u00fclle von Informationen gesammelt, die f\u00fcr das gesamte Engineering-Team von unsch\u00e4tzbarem Wert sind. Chris Roberts selbst hat sich sehr f\u00fcr die Arbeit mit dem Server-Profiling interessiert, also vielen Dank nochmals an alle, die bei dieser Arbeit geholfen haben.\n\nHallo B\u00fcrger,\nWir beginnen immer mit diesen Notizen und sagen, dass es ein arbeitsreicher Monat war.... weil es wahr ist! Lassen Sie uns auf das eingehen, was im vergangenen M\u00e4rz passiert ist.....\n\nIngenieurwesen\nAuf der FPS-Seite hat Gordon die meisten seiner Arbeiten am Abdeckungssystem abgeschlossen, das letzte St\u00fcck war eine prozedurale Abdeckung, mit der man um die Kanten gleiten und schie\u00dfen kann, und ist auf die Gew\u00f6lbe- und Verwahrungsmechanik \u00fcbergegangen. Die ersten Phasen davon laufen gut, in Zusammenarbeit mit den Animatoren, so dass wir die prozedurale Ausrichtung der Animationen vornehmen k\u00f6nnen. Wir haben auch das Markup ge\u00e4ndert, so dass es nun eine normale Einheit im Zonensystem ist. Dies gibt uns dann alle Vorteile des Zonensystems, so dass das Voltigieren in einem sich bewegenden Raumschiff nahtlos funktioniert. Jamie hat einige Arbeiten an den Granaten sowie allgemeine Fehlerbehebungen durchgef\u00fchrt. Romulo hat die Verbesserungen an den Waffen fortgesetzt, einschlie\u00dflich der Unterbrechung der Nachladung und des allgemeinen Gleichgewichts.\n\nCraigs Verbesserungen an der Landung kommen gut voran und haben die zweite Phase der Implementierung abgeschlossen, was eine viel einfachere Art der Nutzung der automatischen Landung ist. Er geht nun zur dritten Stufe \u00fcber, bei der er in einem anderen Schiff landet. Das einfache erste St\u00fcck, die Landung einmal drinnen zu machen, ist nun abgeschlossen, die etwas schwierigere Aufgabe, die automatische Landung zum Laufen zu bringen, w\u00e4hrend sich das Schiff, das Sie zu landen versuchen, bewegt, ist die n\u00e4chste Aufgabe. Dave hat mit der Implementierung des Radar- und Scan-Mechanikers begonnen, er hat tats\u00e4chlich eine Menge Arbeit geleistet, bevor er ihn zum Laufen gebracht hat, w\u00e4hrend er in einem Schiff andere Schiffe scannte, aber er hat ihn nun erweitert, um auch im FPS-Modus zu arbeiten. Ein Gro\u00dfteil der Arbeit endet eigentlich auf der UI-Seite, also hat er eng mit Simon und Zane zusammengearbeitet, um die UI gut funktionieren zu lassen. Rob arbeitet wieder an dem Konversationssystem und integriert es in unser Subsumptionssystem, was dazu f\u00fchren wird, dass es vorw\u00e4rts geht. Ein Gespr\u00e4ch kann als eine weitere Aufgabe angesehen werden, so dass er f\u00fcr das obligatorische Ausschreibungsbeispiel, Aufgabe 1, ein Gespr\u00e4ch dar\u00fcber f\u00fchren kann, welches Getr\u00e4nk ein Kunde m\u00f6chte, Aufgabe 2 das Getr\u00e4nk mischen, Aufgabe 3 das Getr\u00e4nk servieren, Aufgabe 4 ein Gespr\u00e4ch dar\u00fcber f\u00fchren kann, wie der Tag des Kunden war, und so weiter.\n\nSteve hat die Arbeit an den Objektcontainern fortgesetzt und wir sind fast an dem Punkt angelangt, an dem wir sie zum Aufbau der Schiffe verwenden k\u00f6nnen, wir benutzen den Retaliator als ein kleines Testumfeld. Leider haben wir auf der Seite der Netzwerksynchronisation einen kleinen Haken, was bedeutet, dass wir sein Spawn-Bundle-System brauchen, damit es richtig funktioniert, also ist er jetzt umgezogen und konzentriert sich darauf, das zu beenden.\n\nGrafiken\nDiesen Monat haben wir uns mit unserer Gesichtsanimationstechnologie besch\u00e4ftigt, indem wir mehrere F\u00e4lle behoben haben, in denen die falsche Detailebene ausgew\u00e4hlt worden w\u00e4re, und den Schritt der Datenkompilierung verbessert, wodurch die Anzahl der Knoten, die gespeichert und verarbeitet werden m\u00fcssen, erheblich reduziert wurde. Wir haben auch an einem Performance-Profiling-System gearbeitet, das alle wichtigen Daten auf einem Bildschirm vereint, mit eingebauten Filtern, damit wir sehen k\u00f6nnen, wovon wir zu viel haben, wo es ist und welches Team f\u00fcr die Reparatur verantwortlich ist.\n\nWir haben ein System zur Verkn\u00fcpfung von Leuchten mit emittierenden Oberfl\u00e4chen entwickelt, so dass die Leuchtdichte der Oberfl\u00e4che automatisch aus der Intensit\u00e4t der damit verbundenen Leuchten berechnet wird - das bedeutet, dass das Ausschalten einer Leuchte implizit dazu f\u00fchren kann, dass die Gl\u00fchbirne aufh\u00f6rt zu leuchten, und die neuen optischen Effekte (die im Bericht des letzten Monats erw\u00e4hnt wurden) physikalisch plausible Lichteinheiten ergeben, von denen aus gearbeitet werden kann.\n\nWir haben einen Pass \u00fcber die Partikel-Effekt-Shader gemacht, indem wir eine HDR-Temperaturgradienten-Option hinzugef\u00fcgt haben, um uns hei\u00dfes Feuer und dunklen Rauch innerhalb eines einzelnen Partikels zu erm\u00f6glichen, die Energieerhaltung beim Betrachten von Partikeln aus verschiedenen Winkeln zu fixieren und animierte Partikel zu korrigieren, um sich sanft von Bild zu Bild zu verziehen.\n\nDie Arbeit am Rendering von Gaswolken wurde fortgesetzt, und wir haben begonnen, auf Fehler und Feedback von den Kunst- und Designteams zu reagieren. Wir haben auch das geflieste Beleuchtungssystem \u00fcberarbeitet, um die letzten Leistungsh\u00fcrden zu \u00fcberwinden, die uns daran hindern, umzusteigen und das \u00e4ltere System zu missachten.\n\nSchiffe\nDas Schiffsteam war in diesem Monat so besch\u00e4ftigt wie eh und je. Der Starfarer, der seit Monaten in der Entwicklung ist, ging schlie\u00dflich in die Spielerhallen. Das Team ist auch froh, dass es den einzigartigen X'ian Khartu-Al erfolgreich geliefert hat, so dass die Spieler diesen fliegen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nAuch bei Idris und Speer haben wir unglaubliche Fortschritte gemacht. Diesen Monat haben wir es geschafft, die Idris-Br\u00fccke, den Gravitationsraum, das Arsenal, den Frachtraum und die Fluchtkapseln fertig zu stellen. Auf dem Speer kamen wir durch die Br\u00fccke und das gesamte Engineering Deck.\n\nInsbesondere bei S42 sind wir sehr beeindruckt, wie sich die Bengalen entwickeln. Wir wickeln unsere endg\u00fcltigen Texturplatten an der Au\u00dfenseite ein und erstellen die f\u00fcr den Innenbereich ben\u00f6tigten Baus\u00e4tze. Die Bengalen auf die Qualit\u00e4t zu bringen, die unsere Gemeinschaft von Star erwartet.","zh_CN":"Greetings Citizens,\nYour monthly report is here. But first, a small patch! We\u2019ve just issued Star Citizen Alpha 2.3.1 to the live servers, which includes a variety of bug fixes and balance changes. You can access it via the launcher and you can read the complete patch notes here().\n\nIf you\u2019ve played Star Citizen Alpha 2.3, you already know that March was a month for REALLY BIG SHIPS! We launched the hangar-ready Starfarer this month, along with the long-awaited Xi\u2019An scout\u2026 and there\u2019s plenty more to follow! Today we will be checking in with all of our studios and outsource partners to see what the team was working on in March\u2026 but first, we\u2019d like to share some of the fruits of that labor: some of the work we\u2019ve been doing on seamless EVA transitions that you\u2019ll be seeing in an upcoming patch. Check it out and then read on to find out the work that went into making this a reality!\n\nHello everyone!\nCan you believe that a quarter of 2016 has already come and gone? But what a quarter it has been, has it not? Just look at what we have accomplished over the past month; the Xi\u2019an Aopoa Khartu-al, the Starfarer, and let us not overlook the biggest of them all \u2013 Intergalactic Food Delivery. With 2.3 also being released, we introduced a plethora of features and fixes, all of which can be found in our patch notes.\n\nThis is a global effort for every branch of Star Citizen but each branch contributes to the whole picture. So let us take a look at what CIG Los Angeles has knocked out of the park this month.\n\nEngineering\nThe CIG-LA Engineering team was bolstered with reinforcements! We had two new Gameplay Engineers join our ranks; Patrick Mathieu and Chad McKinney. We are very much looking forward to their contributions to Star Citizen!\n\nWork continues on the new interaction system being spearheaded by Allen Chen and Mark Abent which is in the early stages of implementation by being incorporated into the ship seat interactivity. Our newest team member, Chad McKinney, has jumped in head-first by helping Allen on the doors and ramp interactions. While this system is something we have mentioned in the past, it is making steady progress and we can hopefully begin implementing components in a near-future release.\n\nChad Zamzow has been testing the new Shield Emitter system which is currently in the implementation stage of development. This new feature will add greater dimension to how shields function; especially when it comes to larger capital-class ships which will have multiple shield emitters. This will give ship engineers greater control over how much energy gets routed to a particular shield\u2019s facing in order to maximize protection given a certain situation. Although great progress has been made to move this feature closer to release, there is still quite a bit of work left to do in the future.\n\nBut saving the best for last, our Engineering Lead Paul Reindell has been fast at work in bringing persistence into Star Citizen. For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, persistence refers to certain game parameters remaining active even if the player logs off. This includes allowing players to acquire items through the in-game shopping system. Whether you are purchasing snazzy new threads to make your space pirate look more\u2026pirate-y, or you have your eye on a deadly new pistol, the end-goal is to make sure the choices you make in-game will persist and not reset each game session. It may sound like the kind of thing you can just take for granted in gaming, but when your items and inventory are as intricate as they are in Star Citizen, it\u2019s actually no simple matter!\n\nTech Design\nWith the last couple patches, aside from tackling bugs it is clear the Tech Design team has been hard at work to bring you the best ships we have ever produced. Lead Tech Designer Kirk Tome worked hard on one of the most anticipated ships, the Xi\u2019An Aopoa Khartu-al, now flight-ready and available for you to go forth in alien style. To continue this momentum, Matthew Sherman has been working on getting the MISC Reliant hangar-ready and Calix Reneau has been working diligently on the whitebox of the Drake Caterpillar.\n\nOn the component side, you may have seen the new component class added to the Holotable. Power Plants are the latest component we are allowing ship owners to swap out, and as you might expect, power the various systems of your ship. Two new power plants, the AEGIS Regulus and Amon & Reese OverDrive, have been added and can be used to swap out the standard \u201cgeneric\u201d power plant your ship comes with.\n\nAs more components are introduced to the game, we cannot wait to see what customization options you will opt for as you pursue your chosen career path in Star Citizen.\n\nArt\nShips seem to be the hot ticket item this month, and it continues on with the LA Art team. Concept Artist Gurmukh Bhasin is busy concepting the Drake Caterpillar Cargo module while our newest Concept Artist Justin Wentz completed the concept art for the Caterpillar\u2019s crew habitation quarters. The next step is to model the habitation based on Justin\u2019s concept which is currently tasked to Art Lead Elwin Bachiller and Associate Artist Daniel Kamentsky.\n\nOn the PU side, our newest character artist is creating the pristine materials for the Navy jumpsuit, Jeremiah Lee is doing a 2nd concept pass on the light armor, and Art Supervisor Forrest Stephan is creating the pristine materials for the flight suit helmet as well as clothing for the Persistent Universe (PU).\n\nTechnical Content\nThe Global Tech Content team is truly a jack of all trades team that has its fingers in everything from Star Citizen to ship development to characters to the PU.\n\nTech Content Director Sean Tracy has been working on developing the tech for character customization. Just another step on the road to creating an immersive persistent in-game universe. Along with this tech, the artists have been using this to prototype how character customization will function. Associate Rigger Gaige Hallman has also been hard at work on the PU side of the game, creating clothing template layers. What this does is allows each article of clothing to occupy a certain amount of volume. This will ensure that various articles of clothing can co-exist without clipping into each other as long as they are properly fitted to those geo volumes.\n\nTo give an idea of the diverse challenges the Tech Content team faces, Senior Tech Artist Mark McCall has created a test level called GearValidator. This level\u2019s sole purpose is to test and ensure the landing gear of our ships will function correctly. After running through a series of tests, a report is provided that lets us know whether or not a particular ship\u2019s landing gear is performing as it should be.\n\nPart of what made the Xi\u2019an Aopoa Khartu-al able to be released in 2.3 was Matt Intrieri\u2019s work on getting so many Xi\u2019an Aopoa Khartu-al -related bugs fixed in a relatively short amount of time, but we also are aware there is more fixing and tweaking that still needs to be completed before we are absolutely sanguine with the ship. Associate Tech Artist Patrick Salerno continues to review and add LODs to normalize the mesh count on legacy ships; he\u2019s currently progressing through the 300-series.\n\nQA\nCIG-LA QA\u2019s primary focus was the push for 2.2 LIVE release and subsequent 2.3 PTU and LIVE Releases. In addition to standard sanity and smoke checks, the team also focused on:\n\nXi\u2019an Khartu-al flight performance.\n\nStarfarer hangar readiness, and preliminary flight performance.\n\nEarly testing of persistence features.\n\nInvestigating server stability and performance issues.\n\nGathering ship feedback, with this month\u2019s subject being the Drake Cutlass.\n\nIn addition, Eric Pietro began training for his new role as Animation\u2019s Tools Specialist, with his goal being to ensure that the animations tools are functioning properly, and suitable for all animator needs.\n\nNarrative\nLead Writer Dave Haddock is home from Manchester! Dave spent the month in the UK looking over the whitebox levels with the Designers, allowing him to determine what additional dialogue might need to be included. Since then, Senior Writer Will Weissbaum and Dave have been hard at work putting everything needed together so that we can make sure Squadron 42 really brings you into the world of Star Citizen. Before flying back, Dave also got to sit in on Chris\u2019 final editorial selects session, closing out the last lingering odds-and-ends from the previous performance shoot.\n\nAside from juggling News Updates, Galactic Guides and Portfolios, Associate Writer Adam Wieser has started naming the massive amounts of components\/items\/clothing that are being developed, writing the subsequent item descriptions as well as compiling a glossary for some of the more unique terms in an effort to standardize the language within the company. To give an example, if someone says a ship is an \u2018interdiction ship,\u2019 we\u2019re all in agreement what qualities or aspects that term.\n\nAside from continuing her wizardry with organizing the internal wiki, Cherie: Destroyer of Worlds\u2122 has been processing all the incoming scientific data for the various planets and stars and has kicked off the final batch of scientific data to our fantastic science consultants. She has also started compiling an initial list of potential entries for the Galactapedia as well as a chronology of events that have already \u2018happened\u2019 in the universe.\n\nWe had our alien language specialist, Britton Watkins, down to visit the office. After designing the Vanduul language for our shoot with Andy Serkis, Chris wanted to discuss next steps for Vanduul as well as the other languages. Hopefully, more news about that to come, but should be very exciting.\n\nUntil next month\u2026\n\nProduction\nThe Los Angeles Production team has been overseeing the hiring of new staff for the development teams. We have increased the number of artists and engineers, but we are still looking for designers, writers, and more engineers. While ramping up the number of developers in Los Angeles does help provide an increase in available resources, we want to make sure we are being smart about our strategies.\n\nIn order to ensure that Production is in sync with the other regional offices, we recently had Global Head of Production, Erin Roberts and Producer Ricky Jutley visiting from the UK office to discuss strategies for the PU with Todd Papy, Tony Zurovec, and Chris Roberts. While generally email or video conferencing are the usual methods for communicating trans-Atlantic, sometimes it is hard to beat face to face communication.\n\nSenior Producer Eric Davis has been not only overseeing the development milestones for 2.3 and 2.4, he has also largely overseen the ongoing construction as we move closer to completing the new office in Los Angeles. Associate Producer Randy Vazquez has been managing the tasks for Tech Design and Engineering while Associate Producer Mark Hong is responsible for managing the tasks for Tech Content and Art as well. While that list is simplified each one of those items contains a mountainous amount of individual tasks, milestones, schedules, reports, and other related responsibilities.\n\nIn Conclusion\nAs you can see, we have not been idle this month (nor have we ever been idle). We are very excited the Xi\u2019an Aopoa Khartu-al is being enjoyed. We know how long you have been waiting for it and we are proud of each new ship we release. Although mainly focused on by our compatriots in the UK, the Starfarer\u2019s hangar debut was also another milestone we were excited to complete. As mentioned earlier, we cannot wait until you see what we are doing with the Caterpillar, Herald, Reliant, and more. While we are proud of our accomplishments this month, it also reminds us we still have many more milestones to reach for. See you next month!\n\nHowdy Citizens,\nMarch was a very exciting month as always. We made lots of publishes to the PTU and deployed Star Citizen Alpha 2.3.0 to the live server! We\u2019ve had a number of visitors, and a number of travelers, and a great deal of cross-studio collaboration at all levels. We also had a blast at the Bar Citizen event at the start of the month, and we look forward to hosting more events like this in the future! Here are detailed updates from each studio lead:\n\nDevelopment\nThe major focus during the month of March here in Austin has been Shopping! By this I do not mean that we all went to the mall together to pick up the hottest fashion trends, but rather we focused on driving the features to completion that are required to get the shop environments functional for players. Lead Designer Rob Reininger has been driving various subfeatures like the Single-Item Transaction UI and flow and the shop environment item setup. Pete Mackay has been driving the pricing of all the various items that we will be selling in the shops. This has required much coordination between our Design and Community teams in LA and our Design Director Todd Papy and Pete has handled it just swimmingly. We\u2019re now implementing the established prices into DataForge where they will exist statically until we bring our formulaic solution online. The items will be able to be purchased with a new currency we\u2019ve established, internally called Alpha Currency. This currency exists for the sole purpose of testing out these prices and balancing the game, and will exist separately from UEC or REC. At any point we\u2019ll be able to wipe Alpha Currency and start fresh if something goes awry, and this will help us nail down final pricing numbers before we go Live.\n\nAlong with the Shopping frontend comes the work being done to support the Shopping backend. The Server Team here in Austin has been setting up the ability to add\/subtract Alpha Currency in game and handing it off to the UI and Design teams in the UK to use for the shopping interface and providing alpha currency rewards via completing missions. This work is part of Persistence as a whole, which made significant progress this month. We finally integrated Persistence into our main development stream, which means we can\u2019t go back to the way things were before and Persistence is here to stay. With that comes a lot of issues and bugs that need fixing, and now our Server Team is working hard to fix those up so we can get our main development stream running smoothly again.\n\nOne additional feature that we\u2019ve developed this month is the Port Modification View. Jeff Zhu did the programming work to rebuild the hangar code from the ground up, and we are now able to access various \u201cItem Ports\u201d around the hangar to customize the layout of our ships and hangar flair. No longer will the ships be organized in the hangars via the website, but instead you\u2019ll be able to walk up to a bay in the hangar and choose which ships go where in game. This is an exciting new feature and we\u2019ve been having a blast playing around with it. We\u2019ve now passed this off to the UI team to dress it up in a mobiGlas app. Look forward to seeing that feature very soon!\n\nOur Animation team has been supporting in various areas of the project, per usual. Jay Brushwood has been doing a lot of R&D on cockpit comparisons for the male and female characters. We want to make sure we are smart about how we approach this task so that we don\u2019t grow our animation footprint exponentially. The Ship Animation Team has also been providing assets to Programming to help R&D various features such as different enter\/exit speeds for the cockpits and allowing for two separate entry points for ships. Our PU Animation Team has been helping with defining metrics for various interactions in the game. From dining at a booth, to standing\/sitting at a computer console, to serving champagne on a tray, each new animation requires some thought into how we implement assets to fit with existing metrics. If metrics aren\u2019t established, we have to help create them so the Props Team know what dimensions their assets need to fit. Our Lead Animator, Bryan Brewer, has also been supporting Foundry 42 in implementing locomotion sets for various characters for Squadron 42. He\u2019s making rapid progress and it\u2019s nice to see some more of these characters come to life.\n\nLastly, our Ship Team here in Austin wrapped up work on the Xi\u2019an Khartu-Al this month and we released that to be flight ready with 2.3.0. It\u2019s a gorgeous, unique ship so major props go out to Chris Smith and Josh Coons for that accomplishment. Those guys have now moved on to the Hornet upgrade and the Drake Herald, respectively. Chris will be bringing the Hornet up to our current standards and optimizing the ship for performance considerations. Josh has been working on the whitebox model for the Drake Herald and will continue that into April.\n\nLive Operations:\nQA\nStar Citizen QA in Austin has been very busy this past month. With assistance from our other QA teams in LA and UK, the Austin QA successfully completed 18 deployments to our Public Test Universe as well as 5 deployments to the official live environment. The team was very happy to share the new features in Star Citizen Alpha 2.3.\n\nThis month we have a few new faces on the Austin QA team. A big welcome to Jesse Mark, Don Allen and Scott McCrea. We are happy to have them aboard. This month has also seen some movement in our ranks. As Senior QA, Tyler Witkin has shown the ability to foster positive interactions with our community. It is only natural that he transition into our Community department. Tyler is now our newest Community Manager! Andrew Hesse has been doing a great job as QA Lead for Austin and we are proud to announce his promotion to QA Manager. Andrew will manage the Austin QA studio as well as assist with QA future planning. Marissa Meissner has been doing an excellent job since she was brought on as our Information Specialist. Marissa has proven her ability to lead and ensure day to day tasks are completed. Marissa has worked on many tasks including fully documenting our processes and workflows, managing the Issue Council, being a liaison to Community and In Game Support and managing our patch notes process to name a few. Marissa will be our newest QA Lead in the Austin Studio where she will ensure our day to day tasks and requests are completed with utmost diligence. Congratulations to Andrew, Marissa and Tyler!\n\nMost of the month of March was occupied by testing the new features that were implemented into 2.3 and 2.3.1 including the hangar ready Starfarer and flyable Khartu-Al or Xi\u2019an Scout. QA also spent time testing the newly added FPS weapons and ship power plant components as well as verifying the many bug fixes included in the update.\n\nOur dedicated Squadron 42 tester Andrew Rexroth has been working closely with his counter-parts Liam Guest and Lee Jones in our UK office testing Squadron 42. Squadron 42 testing is ramping up with Andrew testing 5 separate levels each with many story driven objectives. We are also in the process of moving more testers over to Squadron 42 testing. Katarzyna Mierostawska is currently being trained to assist in this effort and more testers will make the change to Squadron 42 in the very near future.\n\nTodd Raffray has taken on testing the very beginnings of Persistence. Todd is working very closely with engineers Jeff Zhu, Ahmed Shaker, Jason Ely and Tom Sawyer to ensure each aspect of Persistence is understood and properly tested as it is implemented. Todd is also making sure this process is clearly communicated to our other teams so we are all on the same page in terms of testing this very significant feature.\n\nWe are incredibly excited for the upcoming release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.4. With our combined efforts across 4 studios, QA will continue to provide the quality testing the upcoming releases will require. Thank you to everyone that have provided feedback and contributing on the Issue Council. Your help goes a long way to ensuring we create the best damn space sim ever. See you next month!\n\nGame Support\nMarch was a great month for Will Leverett and Chris Danks in Game Support, if for no other reason than they got to work onsite together! Will spent two weeks in Manchester with Chris, as well as the Customer Service, Quality Assurance, and Production teams. There was a lot of time and effort put forth into making sure we\u2019re aligned in how we help players, training on new tools, and planning game server admin tools for what we\u2019ll need to help build, test, and support the Persistent Universe.\n\nWe saw 2.3.0 testing through PTU all the way to Live, and we\u2019ve coordinated with Ahmed Shaker and Jeffrey Pease in DevOps to test additional versions in order to isolate and identify the causes of AI overspawn. We\u2019re thankful for those playtesters who have been able to dedicate time towards tracking this down, and we\u2019re resolving new issues with each patch because of it.\n\nWe\u2019ve begun a process to collect website bugs in addition to client\/server\/launcher bugs on the Issue Council this month. We were admittedly not sure what results we would get, but the results have been extremely favorable and we have started to get those bugs into the dev cycle.\n\nGame Support has also continued to refine how we utilize the Public Test Universe (PTU). We\u2019ve gotten a heck of a lot of value out of PTU, and it\u2019s now essential to the development of Star Citizen. In addition, we\u2019ll be updating our PTU list of players for 2.4.0, so make sure you\u2019re staying active in PTU and on the Issue Council as that\u2019s how we invite our players!\n\nIT\/Operations\nIn March we\u2019ve seen major progress on the patch reduction size project. This project touches multiple teams including IT, DevOps, and engineering teams in Frankfurt as well as Montreal. We\u2019ve finished the low level changes to how data can be read by the engine and we\u2019ve built out the initial data stores for the project. We have also started the first steps toward modifying the build pipeline so that builds can output to the new data format.\n\nVery early patch testing has proven that our new patching methodology is working with test data so now it\u2019s on to building out the rest of the pipeline and rebuilding the core functionality of the launcher patcher. Because this is such a large re-write, we\u2019re taking this opportunity to build out an entirely new launcher patcher which will be loaded with new and improved functionality and controls when completed.\n\nWhile we are super excited to advance this project to the players as quickly as possible, we still have much to do and we must do it right. This change will impact the way builds are consumed internally to the dev teams and QA as well so we have more work to refactor internal delivery systems as well. So far though, we\u2019re seeing every indication that all teams are in sync and the project is on track.\n\nLiveOps\/DevOps\nThis month the team has been working as hard as ever on deployments, build system, and performance profiling. We\u2019ve delivered 18 publishes to PTU (up 10 from last month) and we\u2019ve completed 5 Live publishes. Major work was completed on a new test build system which has turned up some stunning results.\n\nThe primary goal of our test build system is to provide a functional test bed, even if modest on resources, where major changes or refactoring can occur without impacting the existing build pipeline. This is a tall order considering our production build system is massive consisting of 120 cores (240HT) with 1.5 TB of RAM combined across the stack. Our test build system is much smaller with 36 cores (72HT) and 128 GB RAM. The major difference is that the test build system is running local storage consisting of Intel\u2019s NVMe drives to perform the compilation steps rather than sharing storage with all other systems on the SAN. We expected major improvements in storage performance but what we got was nothing less than amazing.\n\nIn some, not all cases, the test build system is performing jobs with 80% reduction in time. It all comes down to storage and I\/O rates as we\u2019ve seen in every test we\u2019ve done. Highly I\/O dependent operations such as PAK file compilation are demonstrating 4x speed increase. It\u2019s still not feasible to use the test build system as a production build system replacement but when not in use in active testing these impressive results show us that we could use it for special builds and one offs which do come up several times per month.\n\nSpecial props go out to Ahmed and the rest of the publishing team for keeping up with the larger number of deployments to both our PTU and Live environments while running all the performance profiling multiple times per day. This is important work and we wouldn\u2019t be able to do it without the support of those backers helping us test on the PTU environment. We\u2019ve been gathering a wealth of information which has become invaluable to the engineering team as a whole. Chris Roberts himself has taken a keen interest in the server profiling work so thanks again for everyone who has been helping with this effort.\n\nHello Citizens,\nWe always start these notes saying that it was a busy month\u2026 because it\u2019s true! Let\u2019s jump into what happened this past March\u2026\n\nEngineering\nOn the FPS side, Gordon has finished up most of his work on the cover system, the last piece was procedural cover which allows you to slide and shoot around edges, and has moved onto the vaulting and mantling mechanic. First stages of this are going well, working with the animators so we can do procedural alignment of the animations. We\u2019ve also changed the markup so it\u2019s now a normal entity in the zone system. This then gives us all the advantages of the zone system so vaulting in a moving spaceship will work seamlessly. Jamie has been doing some work on the grenades as well as general bug fixing. Romulo has been carrying on with improvements to the weapons including interrupting the reload and general balance.\n\nCraig\u2019s improvements to the landing are progressing nicely and has completed the 2nd stage of the implementation which is a much simplified way of using the automatic landing. He\u2019s now moving on to the 3rd stage which involves landing inside another ship. The easy first bit of doing the landing once inside is now complete, the slightly harder task of getting the automatic landing to work whilst the ship you\u2019re trying to land is moving is the next job. Dave has started implementing the radar and scanning mechanic, he actually did a lot of work previously getting it working whilst in a ship scanning other ships, but he\u2019s now extended it to also work in FPS mode. A lot of the work actually ends up being on the UI side, so he\u2019s been working closely with Simon and Zane to get the UI working nicely. Rob is working again on the conversation system and integrating it with our Subsumption system, which is what is going to end up driving it going forwards. A conversation can be seen as just another task, so for the obligatory bar tender example, task 1 he can have a conversation about what drink a customer want, task 2 mix the drink, task 3 serve the drink, task 4 have a conversation about how the customer\u2019s day has been, and so on.\n\nSteve\u2019s been continuing work on the Object Containers and we\u2019re nearly at the point where we can use them to set the ships up, we\u2019re using the Retaliator as a bit of a test bed. Unfortunately we have hit a slight snag on the networking synchronisation side which means we need his Spawn Bundle system to make it work correctly, so now he\u2019s moved over and is concentrating on finishing that up.\n\nGraphics\nThis month, we\u2019ve looked into our facial animation tech, fixing several cases where the wrong detail level would have been selected, and made improvements to the data compilation step, vastly reducing the number of vertices that need to be stored and processed. We\u2019ve also been working on a performance profiling system that unifies all the important data into one screen, with built in filters to let us see what we have too much of, where it is, and which team is responsible for fixing it.\n\nWe\u2019ve built a system for linking lights to emissive surfaces, so that the luminance of the surface is automatically calculated from the intensity of the lights that are linked to it \u2013 this means that turning a light off can implicitly make the light bulb stop glowing, and gives the new optical effects (mentioned in last month\u2019s report) physically plausible light units to work from.\n\nWe\u2019ve done a pass over the particle effect shaders, adding an HDR temperature gradient option to let us have hot fire and dark smoke within a single particle, fixing conservation-of-energy when viewing particles from different angles, and correcting animated particles to warp smoothly from frame to frame.\n\nWork has continued on rendering gas clouds, and we\u2019ve started responding to bugs and feedback from the art and design teams. We\u2019ve also revisited the tiled lighting system, to push past the last few performance hurdles that are stopping us from switching over and deprecating the older system.\n\nShips\nShip team have been as busy as ever this month. The Starfarer that has been months in the making finally went into players hangars. The team is also happy to have successfully delivered the unique X\u2019ian Khartu-Al, allowing players to fly this.\n\nWe have also made incredible progress on the Idris and Javelin. This month we managed to get the Idris bridge, Gravity Room, Armory, Cargo Room and Escape Pods done. On the Javelin we got through the Bridge and the entire Engineering Deck.\n\nSpecifically to S42 we are very impressive with how the Bengal is shaping up. Wrapping up our final texture sheets on the exterior and creating the building sets needed for the interior. Bringing the Bengal up to the quality our community has come to expect from Star Citizen is very important to us.\n\nFinally, we are making progress on the Drake Herald and Caterpillar as well as the new Hornet F7A for Squadron 42. All of these are now in full production and we look forward to being able to share more on the progress of these soon!\n\nEnvironments\nThis month has seen another big push on SQ42, including one level which is now being moved into Final Art Phase. The whole facility is locked in terms of content and layout which will include terrain based traversal [blending with procedural content], maintenance bays, habitation sections, technical areas etc. It will be a full living, breathing environment by the time we are finished with it which is perfect for a sandbox based experience. Other locations of the campaign are progressing nicely, the guys are Greyboxing out the areas and translating the elements from the concept art into 3D.\n\nWeapons & Levels\nA lot of planning the previous month has really been helping get a good flow of work from the concept team, we are tackling both Sq42 content and in the gaps tackling areas for the PU too. Gary has spent a lot of time on the Xi\u2019an Transport ship interior, Jort on Space station interiors and exterior configurations, Dan on components and Javelin hangar, Stu on ship weapons, Sarah on ship components and props, Gavin R on a new small ship, Miles on the second pass of Behring FPS weaponry we need for sq42, integrating a more visually interesting rail system and designing the \u2018family\u2019 (sniper, CQB, shotgun etc). We also took a trip down to Lionhead Studios who are sadly closing to see if any of their staff would be interested in the project \u2013 fingers crossed for a few more team members!\n\nCharacter Team\nSome of the eagle eyed will have noticed new character outfits in Nathan\u2019s Starfarer video, the quality is really quite excellent! Mike has been working on Bridge crew outfits and Jon on the Vanduul, with having Chris in the studio it makes for much faster iteration, pushing and pulling and really getting this race to where Chris wants it.\n\nQA\nAs always it\u2019s been a very busy month here in QA at Foundry 42. As soon as we pushed 2.2 to Live we were hard at work on 2.3, making sure the epic Starfarer looked as good as it should and the Xi\u2019an Aopoa Khartu-al was as fast and nippy a scout\/exploration vehicle as it should be. Time was devoted to missile balancing, bringing those staple implements of dogfighting back into the fray as useful parts of the players arsenal and testing new changes to the EVA system, which I have to say is looking so good now! Our dedicated Squadron 42 testers Liam and Lee have been playing through new chapters as they have been integrated into the builds and put the Devastator-12 shotgun and the Arrowhead Sniper rifle through their paces.\n\nJust around the corner is 2.3.1 which we are beavering away at, checking that infinite loading screens are vanquished whilst trying our hardest to shoo (excess) pirates away from Yela, hopefully making it as smooth an experience for you guys as possible and it should be ready soon\u2122!\n\nWith every new PTU push Adam Parker gathered much appreciated feedback from the backers on PTU, which helps us immensely. I\u2019d like to thank all of our backers for the help they provide QA with their feedback and Issue Council reports, especially the guys and gals who put in massive amounts of time and effort on PTU helping us find larger scale issues that are otherwise too cumbersome for internal team to reproduce. Your input is really invaluable, a huge thanks to you all!\nWe have also had three new additions come into the QA fold, so please welcome Wayne Owen, Michaela Oliver and Ray Warner to the team! All three have industry experience from Sony Computer Entertainment (Wayne & Ray) and Traveller\u2019s Tales (Mici) adding further strength to our already formidable QA force! They have settled in and are quickly becoming part of the family here.\n\nRight now we are testing the last areas of 2.3.1 whilst gearing up for 2.4 which has some very exciting additions that we can\u2019t wait to try and break so you guys don\u2019t have to!\n\nSee you in the \u2018verse!\n\nVFX\nThe VFX team have been focusing on Live release priorities this month, including hangar-ready Starfarer (man that thing\u2019s a beast!) which requires lots of subtle interior effects. A lot of this is preparation \u2013 putting in the groundwork \u2013 for later flight-ready tasks. We\u2019ve also been supporting Caleb in Frankfurt who was tasked with the majority of effects tasks for flight-ready Scout \u2013 no doubt you will read all about that in the Frankfurt report!\n\nAway from live release, our new VFX artist Staffan has been getting to grips with weapon effects \u2013 we\u2019re working on a couple of new ones and have been tidying up some existing effects too.\n\nWe\u2019ve also been working closely with the graphics engineers to finalise several particle lighting improvements. We are really happy with how our particles \u201cbehave\u201d now in all lighting conditions (a crucial factor when working on such a complex universe with so many lighting variables). Related to this, we have been testing how our particles hold up with the new bloom and flares settings applied. Hint: they look really lovely; things like sparks, and other \u201chot\u201d particles look so much more natural now. We\u2019re really looking forwards to showing off these improvements in later live releases.\n\nDesign\nMarch was another busy month in the UK design department.\n\nIn terms of ships, we have a Starfarer flying around in the game now and what a beast it is! Hopefully we will be seeing a working refuelling system coming online very soon, but there is still work to do there in a number of areas. The Argo is getting very close to finished and the Javelin Destroyer has landed on the tech design table. We have seen some funny Idris landing videos doing the rounds this month as that ships gets closer to release. You would have to be a brave pilot to try to land a Hornet in there without Automatic Landing enabled, especially if it was moving. That said, we made good progress with the Automatic Landing system this month, and it feels great to land vertically on a station now, but we are still tuning the horizontal landing system, and waiting for the new UI to be implemented.\n\nThe first pass on the controls refactor is going in for 2.4.0, so you we see a much better unification between the various game modes, FPS, EVA and space combat. We are looking forward to getting any feedback on this.\n\nFrom system design, we got the mobiGlas refactored design signed off and into production. Also, the Holotable updated design is going into the engineering and UI teams hands for final implementation.\n\nS42 is still getting the bulk of our design resources and the levels now locked down from design\/art layout standpoint. The mechanics are filtering in and the NPC AI is getting more robust so we are starting to get a better feel for the play spaces.\n\nThanks again for the fantastic support as always.\n\nProps\nProps, short and sweet this month:\n\nThis month has seen a bit of a shift in priorities with ship components getting a few more resources and now we understand the feature better we want to make sure that when it goes live we have plenty of components to play with and customise your ships. There is going to be plenty of choices that should allow you to make your ship really feel yours and fly just how you want it.\n\nShopping has been the other big focus at the start of the month, we spent a bit of time bug fixing and doing some optimisations after getting some feedback and stats from our tech artist as well as putting the finishing touches on some of the props to make them work with the new tech that is being finalised.\n\nSquadron 42 work is continuing, we made an effort to go through and do a really quick pass on getting placeholders in for any props we were missing so that the environment artists and designers can dress their scenes and we can make sure we aren\u2019t missing anything off our plans.\n\nNext month, a lot more ship components and with our new team members settling in fast a few more props!\n\nAudio\nCIG Audio has been busy as ever this month.\n\nCIG Audio has been busy as ever this month.\n\nHopefully by now most of you will have enjoyed the Starfarer promo, including some beautifully produced music by Pedro Macedo Camacho for that. For the ship\u2019s sound design itself, Darren Lambourne has been busy working on the thrusters and interior soundscapes, still work in progress but hopefully befitting such an impressive ship. Luke Hatton has been giving many ships a review to ensure all is working as it should be and that the audio is ship-shape!\n\nMatteo Cerquone has been supporting the procedural Foley system and content for that, and is also responsible for a large part of the Xi\u2019An Scout\u2019s sound design \u2013 quite different to the usual ship schemes I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll agree.\n\nRoss Tregenza has been keeping on top of all things musical as usual, both for the Persistent Universe (while I\u2019m writing this report, I\u2019m listening live to another orchestral session that\u2019s being undertaken to ensure Star Citizen\u2019s music is performed live as much as possible; Ross is attending to that in person as I\u2019ve not been able to this time round); and we\u2019re also getting rolling with music for Squadron 42 too. We\u2019re hoping to get a new level of interactive score into the live release soon, following in the tradition of Chris Roberts\u2019 work in Wing Commander. We\u2019ll be taking a huge mass of material to a studio to mix with a film score mix engineer in the next month which should elevate this material even further.\n\nWe had an exterior gun recording session in March, which took place in Copehill Down in the south of England in conjunction with Steve Whetman (aka AudioBeast). We\u2019ve worked with him a number of times now on gun recording sessions and are now getting some lovely outdoor gunshot material through from this latest session \u2013 will take some time to edit and process, there\u2019s a lot of channels we captured from multiple perspectives. Stefan Rutherford headed that session up from our side, ably assisted by Matteo Cerquone and Philip Smallwood. We\u2019ll compile some photos and material for your reference and enjoyment, of course.\n\nPhil Smallwood has been training up with Bob Rissolo to assist him with all things dialogue related, puts us in a good place to deal with the Squadron 42 workload, as well as the vocal requirements for the persistent universe.\n\nJason Cobb\u2019s been busy working on ship explosion debris cloud sweeteners and providing a lot of support for the build process where audio is concerned, and assisting in Wwise tech support wherever possible. Stefan, myself and Jason have been looking at ways to re-structure the Wwise project to benefit procedural and linear-style mixing.\n\nAll the audio programming team have been working on various bugs and optimisations, as well as looking to progress the Ship Computer dialogue system (Sam Hall); the in-game VOIP-style system and procedural\/automated Foley\/footsteps (Graham Phillipson); and we\u2019ve had Simon Price digging ever deeper into dialogue pipeline tools and systems.\n\nOur general aim is to keep improving all things audio, from tools, workflows, pipelines on our side, to the content and overall sound that you hear and appreciate on the player side. Do keep asking questions and providing feedback on the Ask A Dev forum, that\u2019s always hugely valuable to us.\n\nThanks for listening!\n\nAnimation\nWe\u2019ve been working on the core locomotion \u2013 start stops and steps to improve player movement and responsiveness. Additionally, pistol aimpose exploration to strike a balance between first person and third person is working nicely together and the initial implementation of railgun animations has gone in so that we have a functioning weapon. The next stage will be to bring them up to final. There has also been support for ai animation \u2013 guys checking vents and reacting to sounds and the like. Finally, testing and feedback of new tool suite that is coming online is continuing!\n\nGreetings Citizens,\nThe Frankfurt office is continuing to grow in size and pick up momentum on all fronts. We grew by 4 people this month and have another few additional contracts started. It\u2019s exciting to see the internal progress, from pushing tech boundaries on the Procedural Planets, to the realism on the cinematics and facial tech, etc. We\u2019ve received a few personal letters and gifts from fellow citizens recently, things to help fatten us up. The team honestly appreciates all the support, it\u2019s a constant reminder of how cool the project is and how fortunate we are to be working on it. Here\u2019s a portion of what we\u2019ve been working on over the past month.\n\nWeapons\nThe weapon art team finished modelling a new ship weapon and is currently finalizing materials, textures and decals for it. Two more new ship weapons and a bunch of new FPS weapon concepts are also in production and should be ready to be shown off soon.\n\nEngine Code\nFollowing up on last month\u2019s mesh data compression for normals and tangent frames we started work on compressed vertex index support for meshes.\n\nWe did additional work on atmosphere rendering as well as research into large scale soft terrain shadows for planets.\n\nWe worked on a lot of trackview support and feature requests for S42 and did further improvements on the WAF workflow.\n\nEVA \u2013 After we got the base functionality of physicalized EVA working, we started to make the transitions between gravity and zero-gravity areas as smooth as possible. One aspect that made this a bit tricky is the extensive use of ragdolls as player characters in EVA. In Star Citizen ragdolls are usually not dead, they are just another way to animate a character. When running on ground a player model is a so-called \u201cLivingCharacter\u201d animated mainly by mocap-data. In EVA it\u2019s a \u201cDrivenRagdoll\u201d with a simulated articulated body. And for all other modes where the player is either unconscious, paralyzed or heavily influenced by physics we blend to a \u201cFloppyRagdoll\u201d. The difference between floppy and driven ragdolls is mainly how we use the artificial muscles to control the joints.\n\nThe player can do all kinds of actions all the time (running, jumping walking, floating, aiming, shooting, reloading, etc.) and whenever we transition from animation to physics and back to animation we have to ensure that we preserve the velocity and inertia of every single joint. This works pretty well when leaving the gravity area. It also works when entering the gravity area and the feet point towards the ground plane. But if the player approaches the ground plane in the wrong angle you can expect a lot of spectacular crash landings. In such uncontrolled cases we simply switch to floppy ragdoll, let the player crash to the ground and as soon as the simulation comes to rest he will automatically stand up again. If such a crash landing happens in first person view, then the player will experience everything through the eyes of a simulated ragdoll \u2026 and that might look pretty disturbing and painful :) Because all simulated, mocapped or keyframed animations are shared in first- and third-person view, we were able to use the same system in both view modes. This is the first time we worked with a player model where a large part of its motions are coming from physics and we feel that we are just scratching the surface of what\u2019s possible with this kind of physical simulations. This is an ongoing task and we hope to show more improvements in the next months.\n\nOptimizations \u2013 We did a good amount of work on optimization this month, to make our universe as large and as interesting as we want we need a good amount of objects in it, therefore we optimized various parts of the 3DEngine to increase our supported object count. We now support hierarchical culling for most of our culling operations in the ZoneSystem. This approach allows us to utilize the spatial structure which we use to speed up our visible culling even more: When we know that the bounding box of a group of objects is fully enclosed inside a camera frustum, we no longer need to check all individual objects against the camera. The same idea can be applied to other checks like box\/box overlaps or sphere\/distance tests. We then looked into the streaming code. Before it was running in parallel but synced with the MainThread, this means our frame-time is affected by the number of objects around the player (as we need to update those). When we now increase the number of objects, the frame-time obviously gets worse. To help with this issue, we have now decoupled the streaming state update from the actual streaming request. This allows us to update the streaming state (the expensive part of streaming) fully in parallel to the MainThread without affecting the frame-rate. We then looked at our JobManger, which is responsible to distribute all this work over the CPU cores. It turned out that we could massively improve our thread communication and improve our load-balancing. This means we utilize more CPU cores in parallel while reducing the latency of those operations. The next focus is on the rendering side, and we\u2019ll have more details on those next month.\n\nAs usual in this stage of development we also worked on various code clean-ups and bug fixes.\n\nEnvironment Art\nThis month the Environment Art team focused solely on supporting the new procedural planet tech, doing some R and D on detailing the surface of the planet by procedurally scattering geometry such as boulders, rocks, and pebbles.\n\nQA\nApril has been a busy month full of Automation testing setups for Chris Speak. Chris has been designing automated tests for AI spawning, death, and ragdolling after being killed by ship weapon fire. These tests also test ship pathing using Kythera Navsplines. When AI are spawned in, the automated test will run to check if the AI spawn in correctly. A ship will also fire shots at the spawned AI to verify weapon damage is being taken and that the AI dies correctly with proper ragdoll physics. The test map is still a work in progress, but will be an asset to the testing process once complete. Melissa Estrada made her final preparations for her transfer to the CIG-DE studio at the end of this month, and will be joining Chris Speak on the QA team as a QA Engine Specialist starting April 1st. She is looking forward to continuing her work on the EditorMonkey, which runs a python scripted automated test of the Editor Sanity checks as well as becoming a 2nd QA point-of-contact for in-house Developers to reach out to when needing specific in-house tests done for new features, and bug fixes.\n\nTech Art\nTech Art worked on expanding our animation pipeline and focused on the Asset Manager, where we will be populating all our assets. Also supported other departments, finalizing a new rig for the weapons team, bug fixes, etc. And of course we\u2019ve been supporting other teams and fixing bugs is out daily routine.\n\nCinematics\nCine Environment art built some more close-up geometry for an Admiral to admire on our Skydock scene where a spoileriffic super capital ship is currently being built. For a scene that hearkens back to the days where you had to install a speech pack for your Wing Commander II, Robert our part time cinematic environment artist has created additional set pieces and props that we can\u2019t discuss just yet. We also started up work on Shubin station performance capture scenes that involve Old Man & Graves (who looks awesome!) Those scenes will take a while and will involve lots of blending between pcap and AI locomotion as they traverse big parts of the station on foot. We finalized 1st pass on a part of Chapter 3 scenes and are still working on more of Chapter 03.\n\nWe also have 2 new starters in our team which brings us up to almost full staffing. We now have a Cinematic Producer and another Senior Cinematic Animator!\n\nDesign\nOur Level Designers are hard at work building major landing areas that will be used in the Persistent Universe in the future. Port Olisar is getting a lot of work done and a brand new Shopping District will get added to the existing facilities. This should allow players easy access to NPCs, shops, utilities and will make the place feel a lot more alive than it is right now. We are also adding a pirate\/lawless base where players that have been a bit \u201cnaughty\u201d can respawn after dying or where they can just dock without getting shot out of the sky by the law enforcement. This area will have its disadvantages when compared to a law abiding station of course, so players who do wrong will have to support the consequences. (Remember that the area around Crusader is UEE space. In an unclaimed or unrepresented system, the opposite might be true!) Another area that is receiving a lot of attention is the Hurston landing zone. This will consist of a large planetary settlement cantered around the Hurston family building and its gigantic strip mining operations. This area right now has gone through its layout phase and is moving towards the first art pass.\n\nSystem Design has been busy this month with setting up the ground work for a lot of AI features. A lot of code work has come online in AI and we managed to do a lot of behaviour prototyping, focusing mostly on their perception and reactions to seeing and hearing events, aiming precision and out of combat activities. At the same time we pushed designs forward on systems that are adjacent to our AI, especially our interactors which define how our AI interact with objects in the world for everything ranging from sitting on a chair or repairing a computer to opening a door or even turning on an alarm. Since all our interactors will also be usable by the player we are looking into how these will be used and how the player will handle interactions with objects that have multiple ways that they can be used. To cater for this we have decided to use the same Inner Thought system that we also use for dialogue selection as it seems to be a really nice fit. Another system we\u2019ve pushed forward is the Loot Generation which will handle how loot spawns across the world (that\u2019s not to say ships will be spewing out gold like a typical MMO, but there will be salvage and other benefits for scoring kills.) We are trying to build a system that encourages exploration rather than staying in one place and farming resources. We want you to have to search through the vastness of space for the areas that have not yet been discovered as those will most likely provide the most rewarding looting opportunities.\n\nWhile pushing these new systems, we also spent some time refactoring some old systems that were not quite up to par with our vision of Star Citizen. We\u2019re currently talking about the Quantum Travel which will get a major overhaul to make it a challenging part of gameplay where people who are good at it and know what they are doing will be able to enter QT faster (perhaps before being interdicted; see below) and travel for longer distances in one quantum navigation. At the same time we are introducing the concept of Interdiction to allow players to interrupt others from just leaving in the middle of a battle whenever they feel like it. There will be multiple ways of stopping a ship from entering QT ranging from simply damaging them, all the way to specialized weapons and deployable devices focused on stopping ships dead in their tracks. Another system receiving a bit of love is the Power Distribution. While we have worked on this in the past, the system is being reworked a bit now as we are starting to implement it into our first capital ship, the Idris. This system will handle all of the power and every consumer on board from your big laser cannons to the tiniest light bulb and dictate how power is routed throughout the ship, where it comes from, where it goes to and what happens when there\u2019s not enough of it to go around.\n\nAI\nThis month we actually progressed on multiple areas, let\u2019s start with the character movement. We developed a functionality to allow level designers to pre-place paths on the level that can be followed by the NPCs. As an example, this is going to be useful for creating patrol paths behaviors!\n\nWe enabled the new perception system in the build! After the first use we exposed some properties to correctly customize the events received by the different NPC when hearing different audio stimuli and we also exposed some more properties to designers so that they will be able to correctly customize perception properties directly in the different NPCs archetypes. We introduced some new components to control the weapons in use by the different NPCs. This central component will take care of installing different controller to use different type of weapons. If you think about the case in which a character wants to throw a grenade we will need to predict in a different way the shooting direction compared to the case in which the character is equipping a normal rifle. We also use this component to control the character accuracy so that we can create more or less skilled NPCs.\n\nOn the behavior side we introduced three main assignments, Defend Area, Combat Move and Hold Position. Those are basic \u201chigh level\u201d commands the level designers can use to create some interesting gameplay situations in their level!\n\nA lot of progress has been made on the Subsumption side. Subsumption currently support the following functionalities\n\nAn entity can have an activity associated to it\n\nEach activity can be composed by several subactivities\n\nThe selection of subactivity is now correctly following their priorities and relative probabilities\n\nWe introduce the basic support for events\n\nWe created our internal expression parser to correctly evaluate any mathematical or Boolean expression inside the pre-requisites of an activity or a task\n\nWe developed some basic debug draw functionalities\n\nWe introduced the following new tasks Sort Objects\n\nPop Objects\n\nCommunicate\n\nCompute\n\nCompare\n\nConverse\n\n\n\nWe developed a functionality to reserve an entity to use it or interact with it and allow other NPCs to know that object is reserved\n\nOn the ships side we have worked a lot on improving stability and the flying behavior of the ships, we also started the refactor of the ships behavior to allow the support of multiple crew members inside a ship.\n\nHello Citizens!\nHere\u2019s the latest from what the BHVR team has been doing in Montreal.\n\nDesign\nThis month, the Behaviour design team continued working on shopping and setup Casaba Outlet using the new dynamic spawning system for items. Now, we have items the player can actually wear, as we were working with placeholders before. It required a lot of setting up shelves, spawners and data setup. Now we\u2019ve got a long term solution that we are going to use for more upcoming shop locations. That was a great effort between Bhvr, Austin, LA and UK.\n\n2.3.0 release brought its usual share of hangars and Area18 bugs but nothing we haven\u2019t seen before. We also helped design and setup the extra-large hangar in Revel and York, making sure that new expansion worked with the existing system and the Starfarer spawned correctly when a player owned one. Again, great collaboration between us, Turbulent and the directors.\n\nFinally, we were handed the next hero landing zone whitebox: Hurston in the Stanton system. We are at a stage now, that we clean up the level and connect all the shops to the main paths. We replaced the CryEngine designer meshes for placeholder assets, which respect metrics and setup the level with proper layers and naming conventions. Overall, polishing the level design and getting the map ready for the art team.\n\nOh yeah, we are also helping and adding new content to Crusader and Port Olisar. It\u2019s great to be able to chip in on every front! Good times!\n\nEngineering\nThis month, it was all about shopping and figuring out the best way to give you a perfect shopping experience. This feature has many elements that required a cool collaboration between us and the other studios. Which, so far, has been a lot of fun.\n\nWe created a new AR-based shopping interface for clothes and personal weapons. Also a Catalog-based shopping system for vehicle components.\n\nWith the different types of clothes that you can buy, we had to create a tryout camera to enable the players to preview them on their character.\n\nThere was also work on a new shop inventory and layout randomizer.\n\nWe updated the CryAstro services UI and flow recode. Finally the most important task is hooking everything to the persistence.\n\nArt\nThis month we took the time to polish the Market area in Levski, to give it a really nice ambience that we hope you guys will love once is released.\n\nOf course we had to spend time with optimisations and debugging, to ensure a good map performance. With this in mind, there was a lot of work on the tech art side to profile all potential optimisations that can be applied to Levski.\n\nWe`ve also polished the shops facades, to make them look unique and to attract the player\u2019s attention as you explore the map.\n\nOn the flair side, we began working on the next space plant.\n\nFinally, we spent some time debugging the new Rebel & York bay area for the Starfarer.\n\nGreetings from sunny-but-windy? Wait, actually snowy\u2026 nope sunny! Montreal! Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve been up to in the last month:\n\nShip Stats\nWe are in the final stages of the design phase for the new ship reference matrix, so we will be able to start development soon. Grouping all the ships by chassis, and switching the layout so that you can see everything on one single page\u2026 you\u2019ll be able to select the chassis you want to compare, and view each ship\u2019s production status. This will greatly reduce the left-to-right scrolling, and enable you to easily view all the variants for each chassis. Please also note that, while we are working to improve the ship stats page, different ships are in different stages of development, and some of them have been updated to draw from the new component system and others will not reach that stage until they are further down the pipeline. That means that some of the information may still be temporary or early concept values, and they will definitely need revisions once designers start integrating actual ItemPorts and hardpoints into each respective ship\u2019s in-game assets and collecting information on out what works and what doesn\u2019t. Those values can\u2019t solidify in the ship stats page until that happens, and even then we\u2019ll need to iterate the ships based on feedback from the Live build and Arena Commander testing data. \u201cSubject to change\u201d doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re changing our minds carelessly or frivolously \u2013 it means that during development, they\u2019re going to get multiple balance passes on the road to final launch, which is what it\u2019s really all about.\n\nMulti-Factor Authentication (MFA)\nOur development of multi-factor authentication is ongoing, and we are now in the static integration phase. The first iteration of this feature will include two options for all members: sending the authentication code by email, or by a specifically-designed and -skinned Google Authenticator. In a future release, we will be able to send the code by SMS directly to your phone.\n\nCommunication Platform\nWe have been working on a rough prototype for a new communication platform, which will merge forums and chat systems into a single-page module. Our prototype has already started testing and we\u2019re actively refining its interfaces to make it as easy and intuitive to use as possible. Among other things, we are coming up with novel ways of filtering and organizing conversations and topics. Expect to hear more about it for the next few months!\n\nShip Happens\nThis month was very exciting for ships. A new concept ship unveiled, the Esperia Vanduul Blade was announced with a concept sale. This light Vanduul fighter joins the ranks of the Scythe and the Glaive, as Vanduul weapons being used by humans against their creators. March also saw a free-fly week, which included all flyable ships to anyone who created an account, giving new and veteran players a like a chance to try out some new ships. To celebrate this huge free fly, we had a ship sale, putting all flyable limited ships on sale.\n\nTo close out the month, when 2.3 went live, the Xi\u2019An Scout and the Starfarer went for sale, for which we developed a dedicated promo page with a few new modules like a browsable magazine-like layout. We\u2019ve since already reused it on the much anticipated Big Benny\u2019s food delivery menu. With 2.3 the Scout is now flight ready and the impressive Starfarer is now in the hangar for the first time!\n\nSales\nMarch was also very busy for merchandise. First the new customizable Squadron 42 dog tags were put on sale. Next Starmap posters were offered up, giving people a chance to own a very cool poster of the Star Citizen Universe that\u2019s been in the works ever since the Kickstarter campaign! Finally in preparation for this year\u2019s CitizenCon, tickets went on sale for our most anticipated event of the year, this time in Los Angeles.\n\nHello Citizens!\nI\u2019ll start with a little introduction.\n\nTyler Witkin here, or better known as Zyloh from the forums, and I am your newest Community Manager reporting in from under the bus in the Austin, TX studio! Yes! Two Community Managers! I am very excited to work closely with my new partner in crime Lando and the rest of the team to continue delivering you all awesome content and information. I am now back in Texas after a very productive and adventurous week of training in the LA studio. Throughout the week I worked closely with the team to better understand my new responsibilities, iron out the new role, and study the tools of the trade. There are some really great things planned in the coming months and I am very excited to dive in!\n\nCan you believe we are already a quarter through 2016?! Let\u2019s take a look at what went down in March!\n\nVideos\nWe continued to put out our regularly scheduled segments and content (made possible by all the awesome subscribers out there!) and finished strong with a very informative 10 For the Chairman with Global Head of Production and Foundry 42 Studio Director, Erin Roberts.\n\nMarch brought us the flyable Xi\u2019an Scout and hangar ready Starfarer. We released a comm-link detailing our now largest hangar-ready ship yet, the Starfarer. The page delves into the massive hauler and includes a visually stunning video created by Nathan Dearsley accompanied by new music from the talented Pedro Camacho! Definitely worth checking out!\n\nMarch also saw the release of a behind-the-curtains look at Squadron 42 with the talented Andy Serkis! We are extremely excited and fortunate to have him on board the cast for Squadron 42!\n\nWebsite\nThe MVP section of the Community Hub is now fully up to date with AtV\u2019s MVP winners. Make sure to check out some of the awesome content your fellow citizens are putting out there!\n\nLive Events\nWhile we did not attend any conventions\/events in March, we announced details and sold tickets for Citizen Con 2016! Citizen Con marks the original October 2012 announcement of the Star Citizen crowdfunding campaign, and the event has previously been held in Austin, Los Angeles and Manchester. This year, Citizen Con returns to Los Angeles at the Avalon Hollywood on October 9th for an action-packed day that will celebrate the latest and greatest work our developers are putting out.\n\nPerks\nSpace plants! March Subscriber Flair brought us the Tuserac Plena, aka the Terran Emperor Blossom, and in case you we\u2019re worried about your Emperor Blossom being lonely, the Xi\u2019An Space Plant stretch goal was awarded to all who backed before $49 million.\n\nAdditionally the servers were jam packed with new players and veterans alike for our Free Fly promotion that ran March 11th-22nd. It was great getting to see the level of camaraderie (and havoc) that took place whilst some of our experienced players welcomed the new crowd.\n\nCoda\nThat\u2019s all for March! 2016 is going to be a big year for Star Citizen and as always, we are dedicated and excited to continue communicating, sharing, and exploring this universe with all of you!\n\nSee you in the \u2018Verse!"},"links_count":3,"comment_count":83,"created_at":"2016-04-09T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"10 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-08 00:53:35","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":15283,"next_id":15286}}