{"data":{"id":15325,"title":"Monthly Studio Report: April 2016","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/15325-Monthly-Studio-Report-April-2016","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/15325","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/15325","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"None","images":[{"id":4852,"name":"Reliant_Hangar2.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/jvvikihwt65xir\/source\/Reliant_Hangar2.png","alt":"","size":990641,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2016-05-05T19:10:13+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/4852","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/4852\/similar"},{"id":4853,"name":"Caterpillar-Interior-Cargo-Concept.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/fpujaetofrcdtr\/source\/Caterpillar-Interior-Cargo-Concept.png","alt":"","size":2989955,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2016-05-05T04:50:43+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/4853","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/4853\/similar"},{"id":4854,"name":"Reliant_3.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/3fgpdi92b4l1xr\/source\/Reliant_3.jpg","alt":"MISC Reliant","size":510672,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2016-05-05T18:51:41+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/4854","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/4854\/similar"},{"id":4855,"name":"85X_illustration.JPG","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/71nr5exyo2my9r\/source\/85X_illustration.JPG","alt":"Origin 85x","size":1758018,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2014-10-09T20:13:43+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/4855","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/4855\/similar"},{"id":4857,"name":"Under_Construction_PO.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/mszx4alhkwo2vr\/source\/Under_Construction_PO.jpg","alt":"Port Olisar - 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Alpha 2.4 promises to be one of our biggest patches yet: not only adding new front-facing content like ships and functional stores, but long-awaited \u201cunder-the-hood\u201d changes that create the necessary foundation for all the content yet to come.\n\nThese monthly reports are one of my favorite things we do here at Cloud Imperium Games. Even with all the internet shows like the 10 For Series, Around the Verse and Reverse the Verse that share information on the development of our games every week, there\u2019s still so much more that the hundreds of people worldwide supporting Star Citizen work on. We may not always be able to share every detail, but I\u2019m confident in both the quantity and quality of that which we share each and every week; and in this case every month.\n\nWith that, let\u2019s dive in and see what each studio has been working on in the month of April.\n\nMade in the Shade\n\nWhat a month April was! Looking at where we were in March, it is clear this is an epic undertaking and we are making steady progress on this grand adventure called Star Citizen. With another month come and gone, it is that time again where we review what has been accomplished in the CIG Los Angeles office, specifically.\n\nWhile the Los Angeles office is largely focused on getting 2.4 on to the PTU, each team is focused on multiple facets of its development. So let us take a look at what each team has been up to for the month of April.\n\n\nEngineering\nEngineering Lead Paul Reindell has been absolutely busy this month with the Los Angeles Engineering team. Last month we mentioned we had hired 2 new Gameplay Engineers, Patrick Mathieu and Chad McKinney. He has been helping bring the new Engineers up to speed, making sure they are well-versed in myriad processes involved at CIG. Furthermore, he has been doing support for 2.4 and several new features that are rolling out, including the Shopping UI, the new ItemSystem 2.0, and one of the biggest aspects, persistence. We are moving closer to having actual persistence in-game and the Engineering team has been making herculean efforts in making that function a reality.\n\nChad Zamzow has been working on building out the shield management mechanics, working with Tech Design Lead Kirk Tome on allowing player-control over the shield system. With the Shield Generator work being done, for the month of April he spent part of the time working on a Controller Interface for that feature and HUD code for the Shield Emitter.\n\nMark Abent has been working on the Seat feature, fixing up broken code and cleaning up the Entering Seats function including fixing player interactions, player enter\/exit\/idle and attachments. By the end of the month, Mark had progressed on to tackling the Phys Controller.\n\nAriel Xu has continually been working on creating our internal tool, the Port Editor. As mentioned in the past, this tool will allow the Designer greater power over editing the game, which is critical for expediting design and balancing efforts especially with the increasing numbers of assets entering the pipeline. Building game design tools is an incredibly exciting but daunting task. The ultimate goal is to provide designers with the tools they need to create new systems and features with as easy an interface as possible.\n\nUnder Paul\u2019s guidance, our two newbie Engineers Chad McKinney & Patrick Mathieu have jumped headfirst into the game. Chad is already hard at work on the Doors system. He is currently working on a signal pipe set up to allow greater modularity within the Door system after he finished working on proxy triggers such as an automatic door opening, audio triggers, and animations. Patrick has been working on developing Controller Managers. These are systems that designate seat-priority, priorities for components, and adding events to components.\n\n\nTech Design\nLead Tech Designer Kirk Tome has been occupied with a lot of priorities over the month of April. One priority has been discussing and dissecting (alongside his partners across the globe) the new and upcoming ships to be released. He has also supported the Tech Design team\u2019s endeavors regarding the refactor of Coolers and Power Plants along with charting out Shields and Quantum Travel Drives.\n\nMatt Sherman has not only been working on getting the Reliant flight-ready, he is also writing up the design brief for the 85X and the white box setup for the much-lauded Herald. Matt has also been working hand-in-hand with Kirk to chart out the intricacies of Quantum Travel beyond the basic and introductory mechanisms currently available in the baby PU.\n\nOver the past few weeks, we have been showcasing several new mechanics\/gameplay features we have been fleshing out. Of these new features, the Salvage functionality is one that Calix Reneau has been looking into and he has made steady progress to prepare this system for its first rollout. Furthermore, Calix has also looked into how terminal stations will function. This refers to the workstations players will use to operate various features such as the Salvage mechanic, what functionalities will be available on the terminal\u2019s screen and so forth.\n\n\nNarrative\nSquadron 42, Squadron 42, Squadron 42\u2026\n\nWe have been jamming full-tilt on pouring over the scripts to figure out what pieces we need to write the additional scripts needed to fill in the gaps, reflect revised level flow and general ambiance.\n\nI would love to be able to go into more detail, but I am reenlisting my strict NO SPOILER policy. We will hopefully be able to go into a little more detail when we can come up for air.\n\nIn the meantime, we have been juggling needs for the Persistent Universe; everything from taking fiction passes at various locations and working out potential narrative possibilities to generating item descriptions (a task that will probably be pretty consistent for some time), helping with signage and other environmental storytelling and writing a lot of comm\/message text.\n\nGood times.\n\nAgain, we will be able to go into a bit more detail once these things go public.\nUntil next time.\n\n\nArt\nThe Engineering team is not the only team that has expanded over the month of April. The CIG Los Angeles art family increased with the addition of Byungjin \u201cJin\u201d Hyun. An incredibly talented artist, Jin has plunged in by working on the interior of the Drake Caterpillar. Grouping up with 3D Art Lead Elwin Bachiller and Daniel Kamentsky who are working on creating the interior habitation sections of the Caterpillar, it is a ship that is turning out to be utterly beautiful.\n\nWhile the three of them are hard at work in bringing the Caterpillar to life, these assets would not be possible without an amazing team of Concept Artists who produce the aesthetic direction on what to create. Concept Artists Gurmukh Bhasin and Justin Wentz created the concept pieces for the Caterpillar\u2019s exterior and command bridge, respectively.\n\nCG Supervisor Forrest Stephan, after returning from a sojourn to our UK office, has been applying his substantial talents towards creating the Pristine Materials for the Pilot Flight Suit, specifically for the game asset surfacing and supporting the clothing shopping for the PU.\n\nOmar Aweidah completed the high-poly modeling for the light armor while one of our newer artists, Cheyne Hessler, has created the game asset geometry for player jetpacks.\nFinally, our own haute couture fashionista, Jeremiah Lee, has bent his skills towards designing costuming\/clothing for the PU. After all, one must look good when jaunting through the 30th century.\n\n\nGlobal Technical Content\nAs we have explained in the past, the Tech Content team is unique. While amorphous in form, its functions and directives are very clear under the leadership of Sean Tracy. Sean has been composing the design docs for how the Character Customization tech will function while Senior Technical Artist Mark McCall has tackled the task of R&D. This is to become the system that will allow players to customize their in-game characters. It makes you wonder whose character\u2019s face will be immortalized in Star Citizen? Will yours go down in infamy as a vicious pirate who disrupts trade lanes in their never-ending quest for loot? Or will it be a benevolent face of a loved politician? Perhaps an epic beard will give you a dashing, roguish look that can charm the masses. These are the things we imagine as we think about where Star Citizen will take us all.\n\nAssociate Technical Artist Patrick Salerno\u2019s work on LOD\u2019s have given new polish on various Components such as the Landing Gear, Escape Pods, Main Thrusters, Seats, and Weapon Mounts just to name a few items from his comprehensive list. Senior Technical Artist Matt Intrieri has also addressed an audio issue where Gladiator pilot seat enter and exit animations were causing the associated audio effect to trigger elsewhere instead of being centered on the geometry. In addition to the audio issue, Matt also resolved multiple bugs ranging from enter\/exit animations to retrofitting Legacy Ships such as the Anvil Hornet.\n\nOn the rigging side of the Tech Content team, after completing the Undersuit Armor game asset rigging, Senior Rigger John Riggs is in progress of creating pipeline scripts for Maya. Associate Rigger Gaige Hallman resolved clothing volume clipping on characters along with several massive clothing fixes to prepare for the upcoming shopping experience.\n\n\nQuality Assurance\nLA-QA\u2019s focus has been on the upcoming 2.4 release, testing new features and ensuring stability and performance across all builds. In particular, the team concentrated on:\n\n2.4 Persistence Features\n\nNew Shopping Implementation\n\nPersistent Universe Clothing\n\nStarfarer Flight Performance\n\nThe team also got an added treat of taking a first look at large scale solar systems with the hopes of implementing the procedural planets functionality in the coming months.\n\n\nProduction\nSpeaking of amorphous, this is a descriptor often used to describe what it actually is that Producers do. Senior Producer Eric Kieron Davis not only manages the CIG LA Production team, he has also overseen most of the ongoing construction and beautification of our new office. Although we moved into the building back in November, we have begun flourishing the final touches in order to make this office feel like home. This includes overseeing the art pieces hung up on the meeting room walls, contracting individuals to create and mount images from Star Citizen on our commissary walls, and also our really awesome faux-airlock doors that lead from the lobby into the heart of the building. Office comfort makes a big difference during crunch times, and the immersive environment sustains energy and creativity more than many truly appreciate.\n\nAssociate Producers Mark Hong and Randy Vazquez have been tireless dervishes of energy in keeping the LA teams focused on getting 2.4 on to the PTU and then out to the official release. Randy is responsible for setting up regular internal, office-wide playtest sessions to keep everyone familiar and fluent with our game content while maintaining schedules of in-progress as well as future upcoming tasks for the Tech Design and Engineering teams, while Mark Hong supports the Tech Content and Art teams. These tasks are not just for 2.4 but also looking ahead at features coming down the pipeline. Production Assistant Darian Vorlick for the past month has been helping the Community team by temporarily taking over social network update responsibilities on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as supporting the Production staff where needed.\n\n\nConclusion\nLike any previous month at CIG, there is not a single moment where the office is not humming with activity. With our focus largely on finishing 2.4, April was definitely not shy of new content either. We also introduced the updated MISC Prospector and in celebration of its launch, we included a Concept Sale along with quality elements to accompany it such as details on Mining, a \u201cjob application\u201d for mining operations at Shubin Interstellar, and our regular weekly programs like \u201cAround the Verse,\u201d the \u201c10 for the Chairman\/Developers\u201d series, and \u201cBugsmashers.\u201d\n\nThe month of May is looking to be no less exciting and intense. Your support and enthusiasm along with Chris Roberts\u2019 vision, inspires us to no end. We hope you enjoy what we have accomplished this month and we look forward to sharing new content in the near and distant future. Thank you for being a Star Citizen on this journey.\n\nSee you next month.\n\nPersistent Testing\n\nThis month has been all about persistence and testing 2.4. All teams have been working hard to test and fix various items that are coming in to the live version of the game. 2.4 is shaping up to be a monumental update to the game which will bring online many systems which have been in development for some time, and set the stage for many more features to come online in upcoming publishes. Kudos to everyone in Austin for their hard work. Here are detailed reports from each team!\n\n\nDevelopment\nThe primary focus of the ATX Development Team this month has been working towards the first release of Shopping and Persistence. Rob Reininger and our Design Team here in Austin with support from BHVR have been busy setting up the shops to function on Port Olisar in addition to what already exists in Area18. We\u2019ve got Casaba Outlet and Cubby Blast open for business, and we\u2019ll aim to sell clothing, armor, and weapons in our first release. It has required a lot of work from several different folks to make sure that the clothing and weapon items are properly spawned in on the store shelves and racks, getting the mannequin props set up so that clothing and armor can be properly purchased and equipped from it, and setting up all the data so that it properly appears in the Purchase UI. Pete Mackay has been spending his time balancing the pricing in the game and creating a new formula that will help determine pricing for everything from clothing to ships.\n\nWe\u2019ve also spent some time nailing down the short and long-term design requirements for what we\u2019re calling \u201cTry On\/Inspect Mode\u201d. This mode will switch on when selecting the appropriate \u201cUse Verb\u201d within the Shop UI and it will allow you to view a potential purchase on your character before actually buying it. We\u2019ve got an initial implementation in place and are scheduling out the rest of the features for future releases.\n\nWe\u2019re turning our focus now to getting Dumper\u2019s Depot online so that you can shop for ship components and weapons in-game as well. Rob Reininger is drafting up a Game Design Document for \u201cPurchasing via Terminal\u201d, which will be utilized in shops that have an inventory too large to fit on all of the shelves. Ship components\/weapons and ships in general are a great example of where this feature would be used.\n\nIn other news, the work on the first deployment of the Persistence backend is now complete! Jason Ely, Tom Sawyer, and Jeff Zhu worked diligently this month to finally make our services persistent. We\u2019ve provided our programmers and designers the ability to hook into this now so that we can start fully persisting things like player health, ship damage, hostility level, item purchases, ammo count, and much more. We\u2019ve also implemented a new currency tentatively called Alpha UEC which will be used primarily to test shopping and other services. This new currency will help with balancing the pricing and overall economy and is subject to wipe at any time in order to implement new fixes. We\u2019re turning our attention now to scheduling out a roadmap for getting actual Persistent UEC in the game.\n\nAnother major feature we\u2019ve been working is Port Modification. We\u2019ve been working with the UI Team in the UK to implement a new app in the mobiGlas that will allow you guys to customize your hangars and eventually much more. We\u2019ve ported our hangars and flair objects over to using the new Item System 2.0 so that now you can access specific \u201cports\u201d around your hangar and place things wherever you like! Eventually this will allow for customization of ship loadouts as well. We\u2019ve gotten the ball rolling in fleshing out a design for using this app in other locations as well, like the Crusader map.\n\nOur Ship Team here in Austin continues their work from last month. Chris Smith is working on the new-and-improved Hornet F7A model for Squadron 42, currently in greybox phase. Josh Coons is trucking along on the Drake Herald, also in greybox phase. These ships are coming along nicely and it is exciting to see ships both old and new get the extreme attention to detail that these guys provide with all the experience and resources that we\u2019ve cultivated as we\u2019ve grown.\n\nThe Animation Team in Austin has been supporting in various areas of the project, per usual. Our Ship Animation Team has had their hands in ships of all shapes and sizes, including bug fixing for the Starfarer, reviews on the Hornet F7A, Herald, Caterpillar, and Dragonfly, and support for the Idris. They\u2019ve also created some new animations for entering\/exiting the Freelancer ladder and put in place the combat enter\/exits for the Aurora and Avenger. The PU Animation Team, meanwhile, has actually wrapped up their work on the Spaceship Showroom and Nightclub scene animations and are turning their attention to helping out on Squadron 42. They will be creating background animations for the performance capture scenes as well as implementing locomotion sets for various characters in the game.\nLastly, lighting artist Emre Switzer has nearly finished his final tweaks on the Levski landing zone. The market area is properly lit and appropriately dingy. Overall Levski is a fantastic environment and we can\u2019t wait to get it y\u2019all\u2019s hands!\n\n\nQuality Assurance\nApril has been almost entirely devoted to 2.4.0 testing. With Persistence coming online, a slew of new features have been added that need to be documented and tested. Our Persistent Universe Specialist, Todd Raffray, has been working closely with the design team to document all the new features that have been coming online for 2.4.0 and keeping the rest of the QA team updated on their expected behavior. Jeff Daily has been working on expanding our internal check-lists to accommodate all of the new features, as well as improving some of our older check-lists. Shopping alone adds many new test cases to our regular check-lists; here\u2019s just a handful of tests that need to be performed for shopping alone:\n\nDoes the shopping interface open and properly progress through each screen?\n\nIs all the information on the shopping interface displaying correctly?\n\nAre there typos?\n\nAre the correct clothing brand names and descriptions displayed?\n\nAre there localization identifiers being displayed?\n\nIs the transaction being processed by the server?\n\nIs the aUEC properly deducted from the player\u2019s account?\n\nIs the purchased item granted to the player\u2019s account?\n\nDoes mobiGlas update the player\u2019s aUEC after the purchase has been completed?\n\nDo the items appear correct on the character?\n\nDo they clip the character in any unexpected ways?\n\nAre there shader issues with the new clothing materials?\n\nAre they deforming properly during animations?\n\nDo the items appear correct on the shelves\/clothes racks?\n\nDo the items display their Augmented Reality interface when viewing them on the clothes rack and is the information displayed correct?\n\nWhen using the \u201cTry On\u201d option, do the items get removed from the clothes rack while the character is wearing them, and are they returned once the character exits the \u201cTry On\u201d interface?\n\nDo your new clothes appear when other players are viewing your character?\n\nDoes the character behave appropriately when activating the airlock while wearing civilian clothes?\n\nPersistence doesn\u2019t just add new functionality, such as in-game shopping, but also changes existing features like hangar customization. In 2.4.0, players will now be able to choose what flair items they display and where they display them. As a result, Robert Gaither has been working closely with our Persistent Universe Designer, Rob Reininger, on setting up item ports throughout all the hangars in order to allow you to decide how you want to customize them.\n\nWith any new major release comes new ships! 2.4.0 will see the Reliant reach Hangar-Ready status, and the Starfarer has now been made Flight-Ready so we\u2019ve been doing our passes on both ships to ensure they\u2019re performing as expected. As an added bonus, weapon projectiles will now properly transition across\/inside local physics grids! That\u2019s right, you can now shoot from outside to inside of a ship (or vice-versa) and hit players who just uhhh\u2026 happen to be in the way. So feel free to start practicing your boarding tactics and engage in some fps firefights in the Starfarer (and any other ship with a large enough interior) when 2.4.0 hits!\n\nAndrew Rexroth and Katarzyna Mierostawska have been continuing Squadron 42 testing along with their UK counterparts, and have been documenting all the test cases necessary for when the time comes for the rest of the QA Team to jump into the fray in full force.\n\nOur QA Information Specialist, Marissa Meissner, has recently been promoted to QA Lead, and has had her hands full training our latest new QA members: Jesse Mark (Jesse-CIG), Don Allen (Tunahead-CIG), Scott McCrea (Spectral-CIG), Bryce Benton (Underscore-CIG) and Brandon Crocker (Neverender-CIG). Please feel free to welcome them appropriately (weapons hot) if you run across them in game!\n\nAnd finally, it has been 0 days since a member of QA has died to the airlock.\n\n\nGame Support\nApril was a super month for Game Support! We wrapped up work on 2.3.1 at the first part of the month, then focused heavily on catching up on our ticket work.\n\nMost significantly, we collaborated with Toast to establish the process for our brand new Evocati Test Flight volunteer test program. This group, 1\/3rd of which is from our top Issue Council contributors and 2\/3rd from our most active PTU testers, will act as a \u201cpre-PTU\u201d group, playtesting builds to make sure they are stable before the build goes out to a wider audience.\n\nWe\u2019ll be very excited to unleash this group on 2.4.0 playtesting early in May!\nFor those wanting to participate in Evocati or PTU, it\u2019s still possible! The best way to do this is to be an active member of the Issue Council reporting and contributing on bugs. There\u2019s a lot of competition for a few spots, but we will look to update our ranks later this summer, so get on those bugs!\n\nWe\u2019ve also opened up another Game Support Agent position in Austin, Texas, as the needs of the Star Citizen service continue to grow and expand. Check it out at https:\/\/cloudimperiumgames.com\/jobs\/415-Game-Support-Agent!!\n\n\nIT\/Operations\nThe cure for slow is to make it fast. The IT department spends much of its time identifying performance bottlenecks and often finds new and creative ways to alleviate them. This month was no different. With every fix, there\u2019s usually something behind it.\n\nIn our never ending quest to continue to further reduce turnaround times on our builds we\u2019ve identified and tackled the latest choke point \u2013 memory. At this point we monitor everything down to the smallest details. Having recently improving network and storage performance we realized that we\u2019re spending a good deal of time on disk starving for memory. This was due to a recent code change that came from our engine team in order to improve build performance under certain conditions which actually resulted in higher RAM consumption than we were expecting because their performance gains are coming from caching more in to RAM. In order to account for this we\u2019ve increased RAM to those build machines by 4x and performance jumped accordingly. Of course this means we\u2019ll be increasing physical RAM across the entire build stack as a result and aggressively pursuing the next performance gain we can find.\n\nIT has also been busy in London setting up for a quick mocap shoot. This was a ground up project starting with empty rooms and setting up everything necessary in short order. In addition to the mocap equipment itself we deploy multiple support teams which all need to be connected via an internal network as well as linked back in to the home network in Manchester. Monitoring systems, local storage, firewalls, backup systems, wifi, laptops all must be built out to support any shoot, large or small. We have found that the key to success goes beyond planning and organization. For any remote project to be successful we must build the network out as an extension of our internal network so team members can get straight to work without having to worry about anything.\n\n\nLiveOps\/DevOps\nWith fewer publishes this month, we\u2019ve taken the time to perform some necessary house cleaning. Ahmed has rewritten significant portions of the deployment process. The goals of this work are twofold. The advances in persistence bring significant changes to the deployment process adding considerable complexity to the mix as compared to previous publishes. We have also taken this opportunity to improve efficiencies where possible as well as improving error handling conditions which all go to making the work Ahmed and his team are doing behind the scenes that much better. While there will always be room for improvement, most people would never know it based on the outstanding work being done in this area. With each advancement in the publishing tool set we reduce the amount of manual work involved in publishing Star Citizen.\n\nWe\u2019re all very happy to welcome two new engineers to our team this month. Both Andy and Nate are joining us as DevOps engineers and they have already hit the ground running. Andy is investigating new systems which he will use to enhance our big data reporting systems on the server side and Nate is already working on a series of prototypes that we will use to more fully automate our server side publishing systems for the QA, PTU, and Live environments. While these are fairly large projects these guys are already moving at our pace so we\u2019re anxious to see what else they come up with in their first month.\n\nThanks to our new test build system we\u2019re seeing much more stable build progress this month as expected. We\u2019ve also extended this to incorporate a test build step for risky code changes which helps to further stabilize the build pipeline as well as keeping builds moving more steadily to QA. By working closely with IT we did identify some more areas where we could improve overall build performance. We\u2019re getting to the point where a gain in speed doesn\u2019t feel as big as it used to but when every hour counts we will continue to find every possible performance gain we can.\n\nChuffed and Knackered\n\nThe team at Foundry 42 UK works tirelessly on both Star Citizen and Squadron 42, are are excited for everyone to see what they\u2019ve been cooking up.\n\n\nEnvironment Team\nSome changes are coming to Port Olisar. We gone through and fitted some shopping locations within the struts which helps gives the facility some more personality and is a great testbed for the shopping mechanic. We are starting with a small number of locations initially, but in the future we will be rolling out more locations as more buyable items come online. These updates will be coming in for the next release so we\u2019re looking forward to getting it out to you guys.\n\nNyx is in the final stages of polish and optimization, we\u2019re drilling down to hit our budgets in each area to make sure we deliver a smooth experience. Once the procedural tech is ready for prime time we will be integrating the location into the terrain ready for release.\n\nThe hard work is also continuing on the Sq42 campaign, the vertical slice level is continuing with its final art production phase and part of the weekly company playtests.\nThat\u2019s all for this month folks, happy shopping in 2.4 and enjoy the vitamin D sunbath\u2026\n\n\nF42 AD\nThere are months where it\u2019s hard to keep up, the rate of flow and change sometimes is amazing! I have to admit, the Prospector, we really did wrestle that ship and it took a lot of work on both Gavin\u2019s and my front to get it where Chris was happy \u2013 all being said, the results came out pretty good and it might not be too long before it gets made!\n\nConcept work is also continuing on the new corvette, a small personal vehicle and a new small ship. We\u2019ve also tackled some Behring ship weapons (Size 5,4,3) and a boatload of components, not forgetting the Klaus and Werner weapon family guide with a hope to updating and unifying the weapons. There\u2019s has also been a good amount of fettling of the Vertical slice level and prop designs \u2013 we all know the standard we want to achieve, there are just no shortcuts and it takes time.\n\nFor characters, a lot of work has been going on with the Vanduul, with Chris being in the studio on a more regular basis it making it a lot easier to fine tune the creature design. Also work started on medical staff costumes and also UEE staff.\n\n\nVFX\nThis month the VFX team have been busy working on the Starfarer. Specifically, implementing its flight-ready effects \u2013 including damage, interior states, thrusters and weapons. The interior effects in particular have been time-consuming because of the sheer quantity of room and corridors. As always, we have worked closely with the ship team to ensure our effects sync up beautifully with the lighting.\n\nWe have also created effects for two new ship weapons, added effects to the new Crusader areas, and revisited our \u201chigh tech\u201d effects category to bring it in line with the VFX style guide.\n\nAway from the \u201cfun\u201d stuff (i.e.: blowing up massive spaceships!) we have also spent time cleaning up our pipeline documentation. Primarily this is for the other disciplines\u2019 benefit so they can more clearly see how far along the VFX artists are on any given task \u2013 essential when a small team is involved in so many tasks at any one time.\n\n\nGraphics\nAs well as fixing some stability issues the graphics team have been working on a variety of new features for the artists this month, the first of which is improvements to the layered shader we use for characters, weapons and props. This shader allows us to define the appearance of an object as the combination of more \u2018layers\u2019 such as cloth, steel, plastic etc. The new changes allow us to define how each of these layers will wear\/erode over time, improve the overall performance of the shader, and allow it to be used on both small props and very large weapons.\n\nWe\u2019ve also been finalizing our work on the \u2018light linking system\u2019 which allows light sources and glowing light-fittings to be linked together so that the brightness of the light fittings accurately reflects the realistic intensity of the bulb. This is crucial in getting the full benefit of the new HDR flare & bloom tech which we\u2019re hoping to enable for the next release. The latest changes have refactored this to allow it work with the upcoming Object Container system.\n\nAfter seeing a great presentation from GDC 2016 on improving the performance of tiled-lighting, we\u2019ve been working on integrating this technique into our pipeline so that we can transition to tiled-lighting as opposed to the current deferred-lighting solution (should potentially be faster).\n\nWork has officially started on implementing a new method of handling the ordering of the large number of transparent objects that Star Citizen requires (e.g. cockpit glass, visor, UI and particles etc). This will also involve integration transparent objects better with the post effects such as motion blur, depth of field and anti-aliasing, however this process requires deep engine work so will take quite a while to complete, but should fix issues such the cockpit glass and ship UI rendering in the wrong order when viewed from outside the cockpit.\n\nFinally we have been finalizing a new profiling system that breaks down performance costs per art team to help us profile and optimize the huge amount of content in our game.\n\n\nEngineering\nThe big feature development we\u2019ve been helping out working on this month is the persistence, or basically the game remembering stuff between sessions. This is a very big deal as it\u2019s the groundwork that so much of the game will be built upon. The underlying system has been implemented over in the US studios, but we\u2019ve been then building on top of that so you can start seeing and enjoying the results of their hard work.\n\nOne of the big things that we now persist is the new AUEC (our alpha credits) so in Crusader we\u2019ve started looking at ways in which we can reward the player with these credits depending on what you accomplish. David\u2019s been working with the designers on implementing some of this gameplay. Now when you complete a mission you will get rewarded. Spotted somebody with a wanted level? Take them out and you\u2019ll get a bounty. Find something interesting on a disused space station? Could make you some money.\n\nOf course we\u2019re implementing ways of spending this newly gotten cash. So we\u2019ve updated the repair stations so that they\u2019re no longer free and you have to pay an amount to fix up your ship. Fuel and ammo also now come with a cost. And of course shopping is being implemented! We\u2019ve now got working shops in both Crusader and ArcCorp where you can go and buy clothes and weapons. On the clothing side Jamie has been working on a new try on mode where you can select a the piece of clothing you\u2019re interested in and your able to view it on your character before deciding to buy, or with weapons being able to pick them up and inspect them before putting down some credits.\n\nAnother big aspect of the persistence is how we now store your hangar and the loadout of your ships. Rather than selecting which ships are in your hangar, or which flair items you can see from the website, we can now do it all in-game. This actually brings together several new pieces of tech from the Interaction Point system to the \u2018inner thought\u2019 UI which the UI guys here have been working on. Both Simon and Bone have been getting this UI working so you can see these interaction points, go up to one of them, select how you want to interact with it, and depending on what select in this case it\u2019ll bring up a menu of what items can go on that spot. It\u2019s a very flexible system so if it\u2019ll allow you to place what ships you want in your hangar to changing the loadout of the ship itself.\n\nOtherwise as usual we\u2019ve been working in the background on all the ongoing mechanics required for S42. Nothing too much to update on but Craig is making good progress on the new landing system and getting landing working on a moving carrier ship, Rob has been improving the conversation system with it working with subsumption, Romulo has been doing some underlying conversion work on the weapons and implementing grenades, Gordon is progressing nicely with ledge grabs as well and vaulting and mantling.\n\n\nQuality Assurance\nIt\u2019s been a very busy month in QA here at Foundry 42. We worked tirelessly with the Dev team and you the community to get 2.3.1 out with the hopes of clearing up some of the nasty frame rate issues and the server stability crashes and while work on that is still ongoing, 2.3.1 brought about some much needed improvements.\n\nWith that out the door we began working on the big one, 2.4.0 is probably one of the biggest releases we have worked on since Crusader was created. But boy is it an exciting patch. Persistence. Everything persists now, and testing it has been a rollercoaster of emotions, QA\u2019s main hurdle has been stability. In its first iteration, persistence made the game very unstable, with versions completely failing to build and a lot of time spent on frustrating tests. But we got through the hard times and have been ploughing on, testing the changes to the Hostility system, the Missions system and the Cry Astro Stations. We\u2019re really eager to push this to you guys and gather up your feedback.\n\nBut persistence isn\u2019t the only exciting thing we have been working on. Stocked shops (In Both ArcCorp and Port Olisar) & Alpha UEC, A new flight ready ship, a new hangar ready ship and a completely overhauled Hangar system (The Port Modification App). A few fun bugs have showed up in this testing time, such as ships bouncing around the hangar, Eldritch horror style floating eyeballs and so much more.\n\nRight now we are working very hard to find and bug up all the major issues so this can get pushed to the PTU and you guys can get to see all the fantastic changes that have gone in.\n\nSee you in the \u2018verse!\n\n\nAudio\nApril for audio was, as ever, busy! The S42 work and the 2.4 release have been our main points of focus this month, but alongside that a big wedge of music production was undertaken. But we\u2019ll start with the individual updates.\n\nSam Hall has been hard at it with ship computer work, looking to reengineer and refactor this so we can have it behave more intelligently in-game. This has involved syncing up with those in systems design as well as moving it across to the subsumption system. As well as this he\u2019s been working on resolving 2.4 bugs, optimizing an audio plug-in for Dataforge, and adding triggers for airlock transitions (e.g. for when the player enters space without the prerequisite protective helmet).\n\nAs well as his work on the music production (see below), Ross Tregenza has been iterating on the music logic system and is still holding up the fort in being the overall point man for Squadron 42.\n\nLuke Hatton handily bullet-pointed his general tasks! So bullet-point away, Luke:\n\nTweaks to maneuvering audio for the Aurora and fixed missing audio on the primary thruster for the Aurora LN\n\nMix tweaks to the tutorial hangar, more ambiance details now audible\n\nFixed broken enter and exit sounds on the Gladiator\n\nNow using general health parameter in Wwise for ships, so we can alter any sound based on the amount of damage a ship has taken easily\n\nAdded distant explosion sound variants\n\nDarren Lambourne, apart from his mastering mission in Munich, has been polishing up the Starfarer and working on audio for the Argo MPUV cargo vehicle.\n\nMatteo Cerquone has also bullet-pointed things:\n\nAdded audio for Devastator Energy Shotgun dry fire\n\nAdded sounds for interactive elements such as alarm systems, elevators and doors for S42\n\nOld Foley clean up\n\nBug fixing\n\nBob Rissolo and Phil Smallwood have both been deep on the dialogue side, preparing for future dialogue\/p-cap sessions and implementing\/processing material for current usage by the design department. Phil\u2019s also been working on social module tasks, esp. re. shopping and general locations.\n\nSimon Price is still very much engaged in dialogue pipeline tools that will be required for S42 as well as the live release.\n\nGraham Phillipson \u2013 he\u2019s also been on 2.4 bugs etc. but otherwise:\n\nRefinements of automatic footstep generation code\n\nAdded listener-based RTPCs to area shapes\n\nLUA -> c++ code conversion\n\nTech debt removal, improving maintainability\n\nFixed bug with EVA audio not updating properly\n\nStefan Rutherford has been re-organizing some large aspects of the Wwise project structure to underpin the mix pipeline, which is a joint design\/engineering effort by Lee Banyard (me), Jason Cobb, Stefan Rutherford and Graham Philipson currently \u2013 this will feed into S42\u2019s linear-styling which require a more \u2018filmic\u2019 mix workflow, as well as the more systematic mix workflow that the persistent universe requires. Otherwise he\u2019s been working on new content for our auto-footstep system, restructuring and redesigning the guns. He also headed up another gun recording session that took place in early April at Copehill Down with the company \u2018Audiobeast\u2019 (aka Steve Whetman). Hopefully some photos will be along for the ride with this monthly report, if not I\u2019ll post some to the \u2018Ask A Dev\u2019 audio forum, hopefully we\u2019ll wrangle some video too.\n\nJason Cobb has, as ever, been providing technical back-up in various aspects of the audio build pipeline, and is setting up mix states\/snapshots across the game as part of the wider mix foundational work.\n\nAs mentioned previously, we pushed through a lot of music production work this month. We had another session at the start of the month in Bratislava with the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, to upgrade a lot of the themes and incidental pieces for Star Citizen. Partly this is material for the special edition soundtrack CD, but this material will also make its way into the game as well to improve upon what\u2019s already present.\n\nThen, with that material in the bag, Pedro Macedo Camacho, Ross Tregenza and I went down to Real World Studios, and met up with our mix engineer Peter Fuchs and assistant engineer Patrick Phillips. As well as being a talented and experienced recording engineer for our orchestral sessions, Peter has an extensive CV of mixing orchestral scores for film and games \u2013 you can check out his CV on IMDB if interested: http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0297273\/\n\nWe spent five solid days in the studio shaping and sculpting the rather lovely source material into more finalized tracks. If you\u2019re interested in the facility, you can find pictures of it at http:\/\/realworldstudios.com\/recording-studios\/the-big-room\/ \u2013 we were in what\u2019s aptly named \u2018The Big Room\u2019 (hint \u2013 it\u2019s big). While there\u2019s an expansive mixing console there, much of the work of mixing by Peter was done \u2018in the box\u2019 \u2013 that is, within Pro Tools itself rather than routing everything through the SSL console. When working with many pre-recorded tracks this is often a quicker process due to the amount of setting up it would take between one piece of music and the next to assign everything to the desk, and his workflow is better suited to working this way. But mixing desks look impressive, of course! ;)\n\nOnce we were done with the mixing process, that material was taken on a step further at CS Mastering \u2013 which is a mastering studio in Munich headed up by Christoph Stickel. (If curious, you can see some images at http:\/\/www.csmastering.de\/) Darren Lambourne was in attendance with Christoph and Peter Fuchs, and the process of putting together a finalized CD master was undertaken here. This involves working with the stereo tracks only, rather than Pro Tools sessions; but refining them yet further so they form a more cohesive \u2018whole\u2019, with a mixture of very high end analogue and digital audio processing equipment to hand.\n\nAll of this was a workflow that we\u2019d wanted to get locked down for some time and I have to thank everyone for making it possible, we went from performance to a final master in really good time and I hope everyone will enjoy the results, whether in-game or on the soundtrack CD itself. It\u2019s wonderful to hear Pedro\u2019s work polished to this level of sonic shine, I think we all learned a lot from the experience and it will help refine the process for music production across Star Citizen as well as Squadron 42.\n\nAnd I think that\u2019s all for this month from CIG Audio. As always, thanks for listening!\n\nAnimation\nContinued on with railgun animation sets\n\nFixing cover bugs\n\nTurn animations worked on for 180 degrees and 360 degrees\n\nTesting and feedback on tools\n\nFurther work to start \/ stop \/ step locomotion\n\nNew FPS weapon look dev and feedback with the art team\n\nRecruitment \u2013 new animator starting next month\n\n\nProps\nThe ship components continue to be a big focus this month for the props team, we are wrapping up the full set of small coolers and we have started work on power plants and quantum drives.\n\nWe have been supporting the new persistence feature by supplying the designers with a hand full of assets to support their new mission mechanics, this initial bunch was a quick pass to get something in to prove out the gameplay and will hopefully just be the start that we can add to in the future.\n\nAnother bit of exciting news is that we have now had our additional tech requests added in to the layer blend material and can now use it across the board for prop production. We were waiting on a few tweaks and adjustments to the way the shader worked and that has now been delivered. This is a big step forward for us as it allows us to almost half the number of draw calls on each prop so should really help to make our pops nice and cheap in terms of performance and we plan to use it in anger over the next few months.\n\nFinally we have been supporting the shopping and clothing feature with a new auto valet locker system so allow for quick and easy changing of clothes and a bit of work has been done looking on our workflow for creating hanging and folded variants of all the clothing you can purchase.\n\nNext month, more ship components and back to squadron 42 props.\n\n\nSpaceships\nInterior production of the Idris is coming to a close, this has enabled the team to start look dev and prototyping of the crashed \/ damaged asset and start to establish a real key beat within the story arc of Squadron 42. From this research the team should then be able to establish a grounded look and feel for damaged cap ships including the Javelin and Bengal.\n\nProduction on the Javelin exterior has moved forward, sharing procedures and techniques found during the development of the Idris, this has also fed into the Bengal production, all ships now sharing a very specific Squadron 42 Livery.\n\n\nDesign\nWe had a very busy April in the UK Design department.\n\nFirstly, we are back in Ealing shooting pickup scenes at Imaginarium, this has kept a lot of designers busy in terms of finalizing the play spaces and putting in stability fixes. It\u2019s always really rewarding for the guys who are working hard on the Squadron 42 levels to see the level of polish that the actor\u2019s performances give to the player experience.\n\nThe Live Release team have been very busy this month with the introduction of our first stage of persistence. Crusaders expanding economy now includes new missions and bonuses, as well as new scavengeables. Cry-Astro now charge for their services and players will now find that respawning has a cost attached. As well as the numerous additions to the play space, we have been starting the work on the solar system scale map which will be coming soon. All in all a very interesting and productive month for the Live Release team that you will soon get to experience and feedback to us on.\n\nThe Technical team have continued to setup the various ships that are currently slated for release, and the full component refactor that will make such a difference to functionality and versatility of these craft is nearing completion. It\u2019s nice to finally see an upgradability system that works beginning to roll out into the live builds soon.\n\nObviously the component system will have a huge impact on the new Balancing Team and that is getting a lot of focus right now so that when it hits we can be in the best possible shape to release something that works.\n\nOverall it\u2019s been another good month for Squadron 42 development and continued building for the persistent universe.\n\nGerman Precision\n\nApril was a solid productive month for us in Frankfurt in regards to both progress and planning. We had Chris out to the studio for a few days for face to face meetings with various departments. Since the last update we have 5 new people working in the office across multiple areas, with each discipline starting to round out a bit more. We\u2019ve all been busy, as we say every month, but every day the team is constantly pushing things forward. The tech update for this month will read shorter than normal, because a good amount of the engine team are working on the procedural tech, and we\u2019d prefer to keep some of the details internal for now and give you the full breakdown when the time comes for you guys to experience it for yourselves. This month we\u2019ve also had a few groups come through the office and hang out with the team, as I always say, the support from you guys is much appreciated and helps push us on a daily basis.\n\n\nWeapons\nThe weapon art team finished texturing two new ship weapons and are currently working on the various LOD\u2019s (level of details) and getting them integrated into the game. The Apocalypse Arms Scourge Railgun has been given some additional polish and is in its final stages of art production and is being animated in parallel. We\u2019ve also blocked out a prototype for one new FPS weapon and have a bunch more in the concept stage. We\u2019ll hopefully have some images to share of the new work next month.\n\n\nEngine\nThe core engine team focused on various areas of code to improve. First we continued our support to increase the number of render-able objects. To support massive counts of 50.000 and more (think asteroids or planet vegetation\/rocks) we implemented a very fast instancing rendering path. This allows us to make the whole scenery more populated and interesting by showing more objects than we previously could. While implementing this rendering path, we also took some time to clean up parts of the rendering pipeline, unifying a few areas where we could.\n\nAnother focused area was the JobManager, which we improved the month before to be more flexible; people can new work on different batches, specify which batches have priorities and so on. As most of this was written as lock-less code for performance reasons, we missed some bugs. And since this was low level multithreading code, we now had the fun of finding out why certain operations succeed over 1 million times to suddenly fail. Good news is that we are confident that we ironed out those issues (we managed to run 12 instances of the editor in parallel without any threading issues, which should trigger all kinds of unusual thread timings).\n\nThe third area we looked into was to further improve the streaming code. Streaming can be very computation intensive as the code must touch all objects around the player, not just the fully visible objects. Since our game uses a very large view distance, this resulted in a very large number of objects needing an update. We could massively reduce this number by implementing a broad phase object distance culling. In the ZoneSystem, we already group objects together by spatial properties, now we combine the maximum view distance of all objects in such groups. If the whole group is further away than this combined distance, we can immediately ignore the whole group.\n\nLastly we spent a little time on our vsync implementation, as we noticed that we couldn\u2019t get a stable 60 fps even if we had over 70 fps when vsync was disabled. It turned out that this was a thread synchronization issue which is now fixed. During this investigation, we also had to investigate the details about how windowed rendering works in Windows 7 and later. In short, it is complex :) For our vsync fixes, this unfortunately means that we can only ensure correct vsync in fullscreen mode. Because of this we added some experimental vsync modes.\n\nUse the Windows Composite Manager to vsync (r_Vsync 2). This mode has a certain performance cost.\n\nImplement our own vsyncing (r_Vsync 3). Works, but can result in some tearing as we can\u2019t control when windows draw the data on the screen.\n\nDisable the Composite Manager (r_Vsync 4). Works only on windows 7 (It is no longer possible to disable vsync on newer windows versions).\n\nOf course mode 0 (no vsync) and mode 1 (regular vsync) are still in the game and should be the ones used. But it could be worth to try out the other modes for the brave ones.\n\n\nBuild System\nShort and simple update from our Senior Build Engineer.\n\nTrybuild bug fixing and balancing for game-dev and 2.4.\n\nCopyBuild automation.\n\nTools for VFX artists.\n\nFeature testing for game-dev (WIP).\n\n\nCinematics\nThis month the cinematic team continued to push forward on all fronts, blocking out of scenes, working with engineers on workflow and tools, as well as improving the overall look of body and facial animations. A good amount of time was also spent on preparing for a PCap (Performance Capture) shoot starting in early May. A few members of the team went to the UK office for a few days to go over scripts and sort out blocking of new scenes with the writers and Level Designers.\n\n\nQuality Assurance\nArt testing was the major theme in April for CIG-DE QA. Chris Speak and Melissa Estrada have been busy enhancing the Artist testing pipeline to ensure Editor tools are in top working order with the addition of new checklists and an Art specific sanity checklist that caters to an Artist\u2019s specific needs. QA has seen the benefits of these discipline specific sanity tests and will be working toward creating additional checklists on a per discipline basis. QA will also be assisting with the revamp of our in-house tool used to grab builds, to make it easier for developers to obtain information on whether a build is usable for development or not. Chris has also been collaborating with Carsten Wenzel on time demo creation and Francesco Di Mizio with FeatureTests, so that we can start client-side automation tests for both current and future features and in-game systems. Melissa was buried deep in code with Ivo Herzeg to get to the bottom of a crash issue that prevented QA and development from entering the tutorial for testing and debugging. The crash occurred as the player loaded into the level, and it turned out that the cause was related to the character\u2019s limbs essentially exploding to astronomical values! She also spent time testing potential Vertical Sync fixes from Christopher Bolte that should bring significant improvements to overall game-play in future releases. It\u2019s been a very busy month for CIG-DE QA, but we are already starting to prep full force for May and whatever challenges it may bring.\n\n\nAI: Artificial Intelligence\nThis month the AI team has been mostly focusing on making progress on the development of Subsumption.\n\nFirst of all we have been making progresses on the implementation of the Interactors for AI. Currently each Interactor can be setup by the design team to contain the required information an NPC needs to interact with it: position of the alignment to start the interaction, the animation the NPC needs to play, and the action he needs to perform. The NPC will then search for objects in the world that serve specific purpose and he can interact with them and perform actions on them.\n\nSubsumption uses the following hierarchy for creating behaviors:\n\nActivities > Subactivities > Tasks\n\nThis month we also introduced a lot of new tasks (the basic building blocks designers will use to create behaviors ) and we made a pass on the basic functionalities for debugging on screen useful information regarding the system. We also made the basic pass on the Action Areas, those are the elements in the world that allow designers to mark areas with specific information: a multicrew space ship, for example, might have an engine room, a hangar, a control room, and so on. Action Areas allow the NPCs to reason about the environment to fulfill their tasks.\n\nWe also spent some time unifying the movement speeds between NPCs and Players, so we now have full control of 5 different pseudospeeds on the AI side: Walk Slow, Walk Fast, Run Slow, Run Fast, and Sprint.\n\nWe\u2019ve also been refactoring the spawning system to allow designers to have a more reliable and stable system to populate the world. The new AI Spawning Manager is going to be the system used by both scripted logic and the mission system to populate the universe. Currently the main goal of the new system is to simplify the spawning mechanics and make it more robust, for example we introduced a proper special validation to analyse the space that will be occupied by the ship we want to spawn.\n\nLast but not least we dedicated some time to bug fixing and stability improvements as we regularly do, it\u2019s worth mentioning we have fixed several crashes and we have removed the main cause of the 5 seconds stall that was happening on some i5 core machines.\n\n\nVFX\nOver the past few months the Frankfurt VFX team has been working on some new tech for our particles. What this allows us to do is record the optical flow of motion between the frames in our animated textures and then distort or morph one frame into the next instead of doing a simple cross fade between frames. Not only does this drastically smooth out the animation of the textures, but it also has the added benefit of allowing us to reduce the amount of frames in the animation, thereby increasing the resolution of each individual frame without increasing the overall texture resolution.\n\nWe have also been working on fleshing out the effects for the high-tech tech style. Image example can be seen in our DE header image.\n\n\nTech Art\nWe are helping animation programmers for R and D on itemport animation which will help us to easily pick and swap any prop, weapon, or its attachments. We\u2019ve been supporting and making progressing with numerous weapons from the weapons team. We\u2019ve also been moving forward our DCC pipeline with scene manager, which helps artists to easily assemble a complete animation scene in Maya.\n\n\nDesign\nThe Level Designers have been focusing on iterating through the layout of the Hurston landing zone as well as that of the lawless base mentioned last month. Hurston is seeing some revisions to its layout to improve its scale, as we are still figuring out best practices for combining the scale of ships and hangars, of grandiose vistas and buildings, with the scale of functional (and fairly realistic) playable spaces. Getting to the best of both worlds is an ongoing challenge that we\u2019re iterating our way through, which means that designing those first few locations of different types and sizes naturally takes a lot longer while we learn what level design rules best apply to PU locations. The lawless base is soon getting into \u2018concepting\u2019 phase, during which the assortment of un-textured volumes that it\u2019s made of so far will be painted over by concept artists, to give guidance to the art team on how to build and beautify it.\n\nWe are also doing the groundwork for the next batch of locations that have to be built when both of those are out of our hands: figuring out what makes those new locations special, and how to allow the levels, technology and game mechanics to join hands in an effort to move the game forward as fast and efficiently as possible. That involves aligning with different departments to dig into critical designs such as spawning, parking, shopping\/trading, etc. to see what features are coming up in the short term and how best to showcase them through the locations we build (instead of just adding extra places to visit.)\n\nFinally, we\u2019re still going through the recruitment process to fill up our ranks with more level designers, to help us work through those tasks and develop the foundation of our level design philosophy for the PU.\n\nOn the System Design side we\u2019ve continued to work on our AI as we are switching them from Modular Behavior Trees to fully use Subsumption for in combat and out of combat behaviors. Eventually we\u2019ll end up with all our AI being built in a single unified tool.\nWe are also continuing the Inner Thought implementation and its integration in other systems like the Useables, Interactors and Looting. This system will help us get a unified interface for interacting with objects that have more than one simple use case, making dialogue choices and even giving your wingmen commands in the heat of battle.\n\nWork also continues on the Power Distribution and Reputation systems as these have received an overhaul and will soon be entering production. Another system that was in need, and is receiving a major rework is the FPS Suit because of the changes to FPS defenses and this one will still be ongoing for the next month.\n\nMore on the production side of design we\u2019ve been busy setting the goals for the May-July period, breaking down systems and setting priorities for all of them in regards to each career. This has enabled us to have a better overview of what is actually critical in getting those careers up and running on the live servers as soon as possible.\n\nOn Our Best Behaviour\n\nAt BHVR, we create much of the art for Star Citizen and make sure the quality of every graphic element reaches a level of quality never seen before.\n\n\nEngineering\nThis month was a long sprint to get 2.4 features out of the door and into the hands of QA testers, PTU users and eventually yours, our dear players.\n\nA good proportion of this was related to shopping features: lots of work on AR and mobiGlas, but especially doing proper networked transactions and shop actions replication.\n\nLots of goodies that we\u2019re all excited to see you try.\n\nWe reworked Cry-Astro services, to make sure the new service request flow works well with multicrew ships. This was a big pay off, now any member of your crew can use their mobiGlas to request individual services while preventing different people paying for the same service (maybe in shadier service area, but NOT at Cry-Astro, the Empire\u2019s repair, restock and refuel one stop solution!). Also you will only pay for services as they are executed, so if you\u2019re being shot or have to leave in a hurry, you don\u2019t need be afraid of not getting your money\u2019s worth.\n\n\nDesign\nThis month, the Bhvr design team was very busy with shopping and next release features. We continued setting up shops, both on Area 18 and Port Olisar. It\u2019s funny how it is more work and complicated than it just looks on the outside. The guys did a great job making this work cleanly and efficiently.\n\nWe also did some work on the Revel and York Hangar to support the new abilities of the Port modification system. We also updated all the flair items and hangar decorations to support that new system. Looking forward to see what the players think.\n\nNext month should see the construction of a new environment and plenty of level design for the team. We are also eager to continue iterating on the shopping system and expanding the features around it.\n\n\nArt\nOn the Art side, we had a lot of fun making additions to Port Olisar, which you will be able to experience very soon. Mostly work related to shops, additional dressing and adding a larger landing pad.\n\nWe have also opened new areas to make them ready for later releases.\n\nMoreover, we supported the shopping mechanics with custom props, to better showcase the items sold in the stores.\n\nOn Levski, we continued our optimizations on all fronts, meshes, textures, materials and lighting, but we are close to finish the optimizations.\n\nFinally, we worked on new props and finish next month`s flair object.\n\nCloudy with a Chance of Platform\n\nGreetings from cloudy Montreal! Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve been up to in the last month.\n\n\nShip Stats\nDesign is complete for the new ship reference matrix, and we have already started development. This new matrix will allow users to more easily view all of Star Citizen\u2019s expanding catalog of ships and give the ability to compare multiple stats. We also have designs for a mobile version, which are being reviewed internally.\n\n\nMulti-Factor Authentication (MFA)\nOur development of multi-factor authentication continues, and we are adding a mobile authenticator app. As part of a three-pronged attack, we will also be updating the game launcher to include MFA.\n\n\nCommunication Platform\nWe have presented a rough prototype of our new communication platform to CIG, and reviews were positive. We are working on the chat module for the time being, and then we will start developing the forum module. We\u2019re still a few months away from a beta launch, but we\u2019re confident you will love it.\n\n\nShip Happens\nApril was a very exciting month for ships. It kicked off with a Star Citizen April Fools\u2019 joke, in the form of the Big Benny inspired Reliant and your reaction to this goofy delivery vehicle was overwhelming to say the least! Later in the month, there was a Free Fly for anyone who wanted to try out Star Citizen. This was also accompanied by a Tax Day Sale putting the Super Hornet, Gladiator and the Retaliator Bomber up for sale for a week. Finally, to cap off the month, there was a concept sale of the Prospector a specialized mining vessel. This sale featured a Shubin recruitment page, where citizens were encouraged to apply to the company. The best 5 submissions will be rewarded with an Orion!\n\n\nSales\nThere were also a couple of merchandise sales this month: they included a track jacket bundled with the Star Citizen deck of cards for a reduced price; there were also some new Anvil Aerospace mouse pads that were on sale earlier this month. And finally, to round out April, a new set of fabric patches representing some of the manufacturers on the Star Citizen universe were released for sale.\n\nHome Alone\n\nOh my gosh. We\u2019re at the end. Ben and Ali are out of town this week so I get to write whatever I want and nobody can stop me. Well, Chris still has to read this and approve it. He can definitely stop me\u2026\n\nAnyway, it\u2019s been a hell of a month. Lots of ups and downs and twists and turns, but no matter what happens each month, it always seems to go by too fast. That\u2019s what happens when you work with this community: you make the time fly. April 2015 was when I started \u201cofficially\u201d as your Community Manager, and the last year has been one for the books. I hope you\u2019ve enjoyed the changes and improvements to our community output over the last year. It\u2019s truly been a team effort, with any given endeavor being an absurd idea from Ben we make reality, or an equally absurd idea from me that Ben is wise enough to let me get away with, and either of those being impossible to pull off without the support of Alexis, Thomas, Justin, Toast, and especially Sandi.\n\nWith that, let\u2019s look at our output this month.\n\n\nApril Fools!\nWE GOT YOU!\n\nWE SO GOT YOU GOOD!\n\nIt\u2019s time for full disclosure: On March 29th we had nothing. Nada. Zilch. We were ready to call in the towel on April Fools this year. Just too busy, and we never want to do something that doesn\u2019t move the needle for us, y\u2019know? Then at about 3pm in the afternoon I had what I knew was a terrible idea that had come too late for us to do anything with, so I walked into Ben\u2019s office intending for him to talk me out of it.\n\n\u201cHey Ben, you know how everyone is always asking for those profession deep dives?\u201d\n\n\u201cTalk to Tony Zurovec.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no\u2026 I had a terrible idea that I want you to talk me out of. Let\u2019s do a fake profession post about food delivery. We can use the Big Bennys assets that Jeremiah and Elwin and Gaige have been putting together in their spare time for that other thing and use them here.\u201d\n\nThis\u2026 THIS is where he was supposed to give me that look I get sometimes. The look that says: \u201cEvery decision involved in the process of hiring you was a mistake.\u201d\n\nIt\u2019s the same look I get from Chris when I show him that Jar Jar Tongue Sucker from 1999 I have on my desk.\n\nBut he didn\u2019t give me that look. He said the words that often mean I won\u2019t be sleeping for the next three days, \u201cLet\u2019s do it!\u201d\n\nAnd with that, we rallied Jeremiah Lee, Gaige Hallman, and Elwin Bachillier to finish up the \u201cfun side projects\u201d they\u2019d been fooling around with in their spare time while Ben wrote up the copy and our friends at Turbulent coded new tech for the website that would allow us to simulate opening and reading a menu (that same tech we\u2019d re-purpose later this same month for the Starfarer sale.)\n\nAnd after late nights with Gaige animating our Delivery Dancer, speedy work by Elwin to skin the Reliant, and Jeremiah cranking out variant Bennys emotes, we had the ingredients needed to \u201cmove the needle.\u201d\n\nAnd that\u2019s how you make a terrible idea a reality in only 3 days.\n\n\nBroadcasts\nUsually I like to go through and discuss the videos we put out in sequential order, highlighting and discussing the various peaks of content. Not this time. We\u2019re skipping straight to dessert! Did you watch RtV last Friday?! Lando\u2019s dad, or more commonly known as Dad Lando made his starring debut, capturing our hearts with his passion and perspective on the Star Citizen universe. Seriously, this guy rocks. His ability to embarass Lando definitely boosts his likeability.\n\nAround the Verse and the 10 For series continued its regular schedule this month while Lando\u2019s \u201cWonderful World of Star Citizen\u201d introduced us to the always entertaining Captain Richard and his history on live streaming, and the creative talent of Mr. Combustible and his detailed workflow when 3D printing Star Citizen ships.\n\nReverse the Verse achieved a new apogee this month after Composer Pedro Camacho and Senior Sound Designer Ross Tregenza joined us for some exclusive new music reveals and an abundance of detailed information. We are extremely fortunate to have these talented gentlemen on our team.\n\n\nWebsite\nIf you checked out the Turbulent section of our Monthly Report, you can already see some of the work-in-progress at overhauling and improving our web experience. That \u201ccommunication platform\u201d they\u2019re developing is so exciting I can hardly contain myself, and will impact every aspect of your interaction with our website.\n\nIn addition to that, one of the many things being worked on is an update to the old Ship Status page. A dedicated landing page instead of a series of forum posts, this will eventually allow Citizens to quickly glance at the continuing development of our ships as they move through the pipeline, and play your own \u201cat-home\u201d version of, \u201cWhere\u2019s My Spaceship?\u201d\n\nThose two, combined with the new Ship Reference Matrix, and our continuing efforts to improve on all aspects of our presentation make this a fun time to be working with our partners at Turbulent. I\u2019m continually grateful for their dedication and support when we come up with crazy ideas at the last possible moments. They\u2019re always game to try something new, and push the boundaries of what a game website can be. Benoit, Benjamin, Scott, Ken\u2026 even Felix. =oP\n\n\nYou Guys\nThis is a new section added to celebrate all things related to our community and their accomplishments! It has been an awesome month for our Star Citizen streamers! Starting the month off, Farasalt and Captain_Richard stepped up their game for one of the funniest April Fools gags I\u2019v seen. It was seemingly just another Friday night on Captain_Richard\u2019s channel.. Everyone sat awaiting for the intro music to stop and the man himself to appear. When the curtains arose, Farasalt appeared, decked out in thick makeup and a Captain_Richard\u2019s shirt. What ensued was over an hour of hilarity as Farasalt NAILED a Captain_Richard impression. All the mannerisms were on point! Definitely check this out. Well done gentlemen.\n\nDeejay Knight is now officially a Twitch Partner! This was a well-deserved promotion that came to no one\u2019s surprise. Deejay continues to rouse his audiences with his upbeat performances and is an absolute pleasure to watch. Huge congratulations!\n\nCapturing our attention with his sweet dance moves and positive vibes, SGT_Gamble has become a household name in the Star Citizen community. Gamble has been rallying entire servers together to participate in exciting and emergent game-play that we just can\u2019t get enough of. Awesome stuff sir!\n\nLastly, April was one of the toughest months to date when it came to choosing MVP\u2019s. The amount of content flowing in from our community is absolutely astounding! Check out these well deserved winners!\n\nLooking Ahead\nThat was some month we had. Every month we move closer and closer to realizing the vision and scope of both Star Citizen and Squadron 42. In our four studios around the world and our partner studios in Canada and elsewhere, people work tirelessly to fulfill the promise of this unprecedented project. Whether they\u2019re artists, programmers, designers, engineers, writers, directors, producers, and more, they\u2019re all gamers who want to share this experience with everyone reading these each and every month.\n\nIn the months ahead, you\u2019ll see us continue to build on the foundation of persistence Alpha 2.4 provides. As the teams in each studio continue to expand, you\u2019ll see our pace of production continue to pick up as it already has since late 2015. The knowledge and experience we gain with each new ship built, each new character brought to life, each new landing zone realized, and each new game system coming online will inform the next one after that, meaning that not only will the quantity of our output increase, so will the quality continue to improve.\n\nWhether it\u2019s website you visit, the broadcasts that inform you, the game you play, or the platform that supports it, we\u2019re continuing to iterate on every aspect of Star Citizen and Squadron 42\u2019s continuing development, a truly unique experience for everyone involved because you\u2019re here for the ride with us.\n\nAnd we wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.\n\nWe\u2019ll see you in the \u2018Verse.","de_DE":"in \u00dcbereinstimmung mit dem VFX Style Guide.\n\nAbseits von den \"lustigen\" Sachen (z.B.: riesige Raumschiffe in die Luft jagen!) haben wir auch Zeit damit verbracht, unsere Pipeline-Dokumentation aufzur\u00e4umen. In erster Linie ist dies zum Nutzen der anderen Disziplinen, so dass sie besser sehen k\u00f6nnen, wie weit die VFX-K\u00fcnstler von einer bestimmten Aufgabe entfernt sind - unerl\u00e4sslich, wenn ein kleines Team gleichzeitig an so vielen Aufgaben beteiligt ist.\n\n\nGrafiken\nNeben der Behebung einiger Stabilit\u00e4tsprobleme hat das Grafikteam in diesem Monat an einer Vielzahl neuer Features f\u00fcr die K\u00fcnstler gearbeitet, von denen das erste die Verbesserung des Layers ist, den wir f\u00fcr Charaktere, Waffen und Requisiten verwenden. Dieser Shader erm\u00f6glicht es uns, das Aussehen eines Objekts als die Kombination von mehreren \"Schichten\" wie Stoff, Stahl, Kunststoff usw. zu definieren. Die neuen \u00c4nderungen erlauben es uns, zu definieren, wie jede dieser Schichten im Laufe der Zeit tragen\/erodieren wird, die Gesamtleistung des Shaders zu verbessern und ihn sowohl f\u00fcr kleine Requisiten als auch f\u00fcr sehr gro\u00dfe Waffen einzusetzen.\n\nWir haben auch unsere Arbeit am \"Light Linking System\" abgeschlossen, mit dem Lichtquellen und gl\u00fchende Leuchten miteinander verbunden werden k\u00f6nnen, so dass die Helligkeit der Leuchten die realistische Intensit\u00e4t der Gl\u00fchbirne genau wiedergibt. Dies ist entscheidend, um den vollen Nutzen aus der neuen HDR Flare & Bloom Technologie zu ziehen, die wir f\u00fcr das n\u00e4chste Release zu erm\u00f6glichen hoffen. Die letzten \u00c4nderungen haben dies \u00fcberarbeitet, so dass es mit dem kommenden Object Container System funktioniert.\n\nNachdem wir eine gro\u00dfartige Pr\u00e4sentation von der GDC 2016 \u00fcber die Verbesserung der Leistung der Kachelbeleuchtung gesehen haben, haben wir daran gearbeitet, diese Technik in unsere Pipeline zu integrieren, damit wir auf die Kachelbeleuchtung umsteigen k\u00f6nnen, im Gegensatz zur aktuellen L\u00f6sung f\u00fcr die verz\u00f6gerte Beleuchtung (sollte m\u00f6glicherweise schneller sein).\n\nOffiziell wurde mit der Implementierung einer neuen Methode zur Handhabung der Bestellung der gro\u00dfen Anzahl von transparenten Objekten begonnen, die Star Citizen ben\u00f6tigt (z.B. Cockpitglas, Visier, UI und Partikel etc.). Dies beinhaltet auch die Integration transparenter Objekte, die besser mit den Post-Effekten wie Bewegungsunsch\u00e4rfe, Tiefensch\u00e4rfe und Anti-Aliasing verbunden sind, jedoch erfordert dieser Prozess eine tiefe Motorarbeit, die eine ganze Weile dauern wird, aber Probleme wie das Rendern von Cockpitglas und Schiffsoberfl\u00e4che in der falschen Reihenfolge beheben sollte, wenn man sie von au\u00dferhalb des Cockpits betrachtet.\n\nEndlich haben wir ein neues Profiling-System entwickelt, das die Leistungskosten pro Art-Team aufschl\u00fcsselt, um uns zu helfen, die riesige Menge an Inhalten in unserem Spiel zu profilieren und zu optimieren.\n\n\nIngenieurwesen\nDie gro\u00dfe Feature-Entwicklung, an der wir diesen Monat mitgearbeitet haben, ist die Ausdauer, oder im Grunde genommen das Spiel, das sich zwischen den Sitzungen an Dinge erinnert. Das ist eine sehr gro\u00dfe Sache, da es die Grundlage ist, auf der so viel vom Spiel aufgebaut wird. Das zugrunde liegende System wurde in den US-Studios implementiert, aber wir haben dann darauf aufgebaut, damit Sie die Ergebnisse ihrer harten Arbeit sehen und genie\u00dfen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nEines der gro\u00dfen Dinge, auf die wir jetzt bestehen, ist das neue AUEC (unsere Alpha-Credits), also haben wir in Crusader begonnen, nach Wegen zu suchen, wie wir den Spieler mit diesen Credits belohnen k\u00f6nnen, je nachdem, was Sie erreichen. David hat mit den Designern an der Umsetzung eines Teils dieses Gameplays gearbeitet. Wenn Sie jetzt eine Mission erf\u00fcllen, werden Sie belohnt. Hast du jemanden mit einem gew\u00fcnschten Level gefunden? Nimm sie raus und du bekommst ein Kopfgeld. Haben Sie etwas Interessantes auf einer stillgelegten Raumstation gefunden? Ich k\u00f6nnte dir etwas Geld einbringen.\n\nNat\u00fcrlich implementieren wir M\u00f6glichkeiten, dieses neu erworbene Geld auszugeben. Deshalb haben wir die Reparaturstellen so aktualisiert, dass sie nicht mehr kostenlos sind und du einen Betrag bezahlen musst, um dein Schiff zu reparieren. Treibstoff und Munition sind jetzt auch mit Kosten verbunden. Und nat\u00fcrlich wird auch das Einkaufen umgesetzt! Wir haben jetzt sowohl bei Crusader als auch bei ArcCorp Werkst\u00e4tten, in denen Sie Kleidung und Waffen kaufen k\u00f6nnen. Auf der Bekleidungsseite hat Jamie an einem neuen Anprobe-Modus gearbeitet, in dem du das Kleidungsst\u00fcck, an dem du interessiert bist, ausw\u00e4hlen kannst und es auf deinem Charakter ansehen kannst, bevor du dich zum Kauf entscheidest, oder mit Waffen, die in der Lage sind, sie aufzuheben und zu inspizieren, bevor du einige Credits ablegst.\n\nEin weiterer wichtiger Aspekt der Persistenz ist, wie wir jetzt Ihren Hangar und die Verladung Ihrer Schiffe lagern. Anstatt auszuw\u00e4hlen, welche Schiffe sich in deinem Hangar befinden oder welche Flairgegenst\u00e4nde du auf der Website sehen kannst, k\u00f6nnen wir nun alles im Spiel machen. Dies bringt tats\u00e4chlich mehrere neue Technologien zusammen, vom Interaction Point System bis hin zur \"inner thought\" Oberfl\u00e4che, an der die UI Jungs hier gearbeitet haben. Sowohl Simon als auch Bone haben diese Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che zum Laufen gebracht, so dass Sie diese Interaktionspunkte sehen k\u00f6nnen, gehen Sie zu einem von ihnen, w\u00e4hlen Sie, wie Sie mit ihr interagieren m\u00f6chten, und je nachdem, was Sie in diesem Fall ausw\u00e4hlen, wird ein Men\u00fc angezeigt, in dem Sie sehen, welche Elemente an dieser Stelle verwendet werden k\u00f6nnen. Es ist ein sehr flexibles System, wenn es Ihnen also erlaubt, die gew\u00fcnschten Schiffe in Ihrem Hangar zu platzieren, um die Auslastung des Schiffes selbst zu \u00e4ndern.\n\nAnsonsten haben wir wie \u00fcblich im Hintergrund an allen laufenden Mechaniken gearbeitet, die f\u00fcr S42 ben\u00f6tigt werden. Nichts zu viel zu aktualisieren, aber Craig macht gute Fortschritte beim neuen Landungssystem und bei der Landung auf einem fahrenden Tr\u00e4gerschiff, Rob hat das Konversationssystem verbessert, indem er mit Unterordnung arbeitete, Romulo hat einige grundlegende Umbauarbeiten an den Waffen durchgef\u00fchrt und Granaten implementiert, Gordon kommt auch mit Felsvorspr\u00fcngen und Voltigieren und Mangeln gut voran.\n\n\nQualit\u00e4tssicherung\nEs war ein sehr arbeitsreicher Monat in der QA hier in der Gie\u00dferei 42. Wir haben unerm\u00fcdlich mit dem Dev-Team und Ihnen, der Community, zusammengearbeitet, um 2.3.1 herauszubekommen, in der Hoffnung, einige der b\u00f6sen Framerate Probleme zu l\u00f6sen und die Serverstabilit\u00e4t st\u00fcrzt ab, und w\u00e4hrend die Arbeit daran noch andauert, hat 2.3.1 einige dringend ben\u00f6tigte Verbesserungen gebracht.\n\nNachdem wir mit der Arbeit an der gro\u00dfen Version begonnen haben, ist 2.4.0 wahrscheinlich eine der gr\u00f6\u00dften Versionen, an denen wir seit der Gr\u00fcndung von Crusader gearbeitet haben. Aber Junge, es ist ein aufregender Patch. Ausdauer. Alles bleibt jetzt bestehen, und beim Testen war es eine Achterbahn der Emotionen, die Haupth\u00fcrde der QA war die Stabilit\u00e4t. In seiner ersten Iteration machte die Beharrlichkeit das Spiel sehr instabil, mit Versionen, die komplett nicht gebaut werden konnten und viel Zeit damit verbracht, Tests zu frustrieren. Aber wir haben die schwierigen Zeiten \u00fcberstanden und sind weitergepfl\u00fcgt und die \u00c4nderungen am Feindseligkeitssystem, am Missions-System und an den Cry Astro Stations getestet. Wir sind sehr daran interessiert, dies an euch weiterzugeben und euer Feedback zu sammeln.\n\nAber Ausdauer ist nicht das Einzige, woran wir gearbeitet haben. Best\u00fcckte Gesch\u00e4fte (sowohl in ArcCorp als auch in Port Olisar) & Alpha UEC, ein neues flugfertiges Schiff, ein neues Hangar-taugliches Schiff und ein komplett \u00fcberarbeitetes Hangarsystem (The Port Modification App). In dieser Testzeit sind ein paar lustige Bugs aufgetaucht, wie z.B. Schiffe, die um den Hangar herum h\u00fcpfen, Eldritch Horror Style schwimmende Aug\u00e4pfel und so viel mehr.\n\nIm Moment arbeiten wir sehr hart daran, alle wichtigen Probleme zu finden und zu beheben, so dass dies auf die PTU \u00fcbertragen werden kann und ihr Jungs all die fantastischen \u00c4nderungen sehen k\u00f6nnt, die vorgenommen wurden.\n\nWir sehen uns im Vers!\n\n\nAudio\nDer April f\u00fcr Audio war wie immer sehr arbeitsreich! Die S42-Arbeit und das 2.4-Release waren in diesem Monat unsere Schwerpunkte, aber daneben wurde ein gro\u00dfer Teil der Musikproduktion durchgef\u00fchrt. Aber wir beginnen mit den einzelnen Updates.\n\nSam Hall war mit der Arbeit am Schiffscomputer sehr besch\u00e4ftigt und wollte dies \u00fcberarbeiten, damit wir es im Spiel intelligenter verhalten k\u00f6nnen. Dies beinhaltete die Synchronisation mit denen im Systemdesign sowie die Verlagerung in das Subsumtionssystem. Au\u00dferdem hat er an der Behebung von 2.4 Bugs, der Optimierung eines Audio-Plugins f\u00fcr Dataforge und dem Hinzuf\u00fcgen von Triggern f\u00fcr Luftschleusen\u00fcberg\u00e4nge gearbeitet (z.B. wenn der Spieler ohne den erforderlichen Schutzhelm in den Raum tritt).\n\nNeben seiner Arbeit an der Musikproduktion (siehe unten) hat Ross Tregenza an der Musiklogik gearbeitet und h\u00e4lt immer noch die Stellung als Gesamtpunkthalter der Staffel 42.\n\nLuke Hatton hat seine allgemeinen Aufgaben mit einer handlichen Kugel markiert! So weit weg von der Kugel, Luke:\n\nOptimiert das Man\u00f6vrieren von Audio f\u00fcr die Aurora und korrigiert fehlendes Audio am Prim\u00e4rantrieb f\u00fcr den Aurora LN Mix optimiert den Tutorialhangar, weitere Ambiance-Details jetzt h\u00f6rbar Fixed broken enter and exit sounds on the Gladiator Now using general health parameter in Wwise for ships, so dass wir jeden Sound basierend auf der H\u00f6he des Schadens, den ein Schiff erlitten hat, \u00e4ndern k\u00f6nnen Hinzugef\u00fcgte entfernte Explosionsklangsvarianten Darren Lambourne hat, abgesehen von seiner Mastering-Mission in M\u00fcnchen, den Starfarer poliert und an Audio f\u00fcr das Argo MPUV-LKW gearbeitet.\n\nMatteo Cerquone hat auch schussfeste Dinge:\n\nAudio f\u00fcr Devastator Energy Shotgun trockenes Feuer hinzugef\u00fcgt Zus\u00e4tzliche Sounds f\u00fcr interaktive Elemente wie Alarmsysteme, Aufz\u00fcge und T\u00fcren f\u00fcr S42 Old Foley bereinigen Bugfixing Bob Rissolo und Phil Smallwood waren beide tief auf der Dialogseite, bereit f\u00fcr zuk\u00fcnftige Dialog-\/P-Cap-Sitzungen und Implementierung\/Verarbeitung von Material f\u00fcr die aktuelle Nutzung durch die Designabteilung. Phil hat sich auch mit Aufgaben des Sozialmoduls besch\u00e4ftigt, insbesondere mit Einkaufsm\u00f6glichkeiten und allgemeinen Standorten.\n\nSimon Price besch\u00e4ftigt sich nach wie vor intensiv mit Dialog-Pipeline-Tools, die sowohl f\u00fcr S42 als auch f\u00fcr das Live-Release ben\u00f6tigt werden.\n\nGraham Phillipson - er war auch auf 2.4 Bugs etc., aber sonst:\n\nVerfeinerungen des automatischen Trittschaltgenerierungscodes Hinzuf\u00fcgen von listenerbasierten RTPCs zu Area Shapes LUA -> c++ Code-Konvertierung Tech Schuldenentfernung, Verbesserung der Wartbarkeit Fehler behoben, bei dem EVA-Audio nicht richtig aktualisiert wurde Stefan Rutherford hat einige gro\u00dfe Aspekte der Wwise Projektstruktur neu organisiert, um die Mix-Pipeline zu untermauern, die derzeit von Lee Banyard (mir), Jason Cobb, Stefan Rutherford und Graham Philipson gemeinsam entwickelt wird - dies wird in den linearen Stil von S42 einflie\u00dfen, der einen filmischeren\" Mix-Workflow sowie den systematischeren Mix-Workflow erfordert, den das persistente Universum erfordert. Ansonsten hat er an neuen Inhalten f\u00fcr unser Auto-Fu\u00dfschrittsystem gearbeitet, die Waffen umstrukturiert und neu gestaltet. Er leitete auch eine weitere Gun Recording Session, die Anfang April im Copehill Down mit der Firma Audiobeast\" (alias Steve Whetman) stattfand. Hoffentlich werden einige Fotos f\u00fcr die Fahrt mit diesem Monatsbericht dabei sein, wenn nicht, werde ich einige im Audio-Forum'Ask A Dev' posten, hoffentlich werden wir uns auch mit einigen Videos besch\u00e4ftigen.\n\nJason Cobb hat, wie immer, technische Unterst\u00fctzung in verschiedenen Aspekten der Audio-Build-Pipeline geleistet und richtet Mix-Zust\u00e4nde\/Snapshots im gesamten Spiel als Teil der breiteren Mix-Grundlagenarbeit ein.\n\nWie bereits erw\u00e4hnt, haben wir diesen Monat viel Arbeit in der Musikproduktion geleistet. Anfang des Monats hatten wir eine weitere Sitzung in Bratislava mit dem Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, um viele Themen und Begleitst\u00fccke f\u00fcr Star Citizen zu verbessern. Teilweise ist dies Material f\u00fcr die Special Edition Soundtrack CD, aber dieses Material wird auch seinen Weg ins Spiel finden, um das bereits Vorhandene zu verbessern.\n\nDann, mit diesem Material in der Tasche, gingen Pedro Macedo Camacho, Ross Tregenza und ich runter in die Real World Studios und trafen uns mit unserem Mix Engineer Peter Fuchs und Assistant Engineer Patrick Phillips. Peter ist nicht nur ein talentierter und erfahrener Toningenieur f\u00fcr unsere Orchestersitzungen, sondern verf\u00fcgt auch \u00fcber einen umfangreichen Lebenslauf mit Mischungen von Orchesterpartituren f\u00fcr Film und Spiele - seinen Lebenslauf k\u00f6nnen Sie bei Interesse auf der IMDB einsehen: http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0297273\/\n\nWir verbrachten f\u00fcnf solide Tage im Studio, um das ziemlich sch\u00f6ne Quellmaterial zu formen und in fertige Tracks zu formen. Wenn Sie sich f\u00fcr die Anlage interessieren, finden Sie Bilder davon unter http:\/\/realworldstudios.com\/recording-studios\/the-big-room\/ - wir waren in dem, wie es treffend hei\u00dft, \"The Big Room\" (Hinweis - es ist gro\u00df). W\u00e4hrend es dort ein gro\u00dfz\u00fcgiges Mischpult gibt, wurde ein Gro\u00dfteil der Arbeit von Peter'in the box' erledigt - das hei\u00dft, innerhalb von Pro Tools selbst, anstatt alles \u00fcber die SSL-Konsole zu leiten. Wenn Sie mit vielen zuvor aufgenommenen Tracks arbeiten, ist dies oft ein schnellerer Prozess, da die Einrichtung zwischen einem Musikst\u00fcck und dem n\u00e4chsten dauert, um alles dem Schreibtisch zuzuweisen, und sein Workflow ist besser geeignet, auf diese Weise zu arbeiten. Aber Mischpulte sehen nat\u00fcrlich beeindruckend aus! ;)\n\nNachdem wir mit dem Mischprozess fertig waren, wurde dieses Material bei CS Mastering - einem Mastering-Studio in M\u00fcnchen unter der Leitung von Christoph Stickel - einen Schritt weiter gebracht. (Wenn Sie neugierig sind, k\u00f6nnen Sie einige Bilder unter http:\/\/www.csmastering.de\/ sehen) Darren Lambourne war in Anwesenheit von Christoph und Peter Fuchs, und der Prozess der Zusammenstellung eines fertigen CD-Masters wurde hier durchgef\u00fchrt. Dabei wird nur mit den Stereospuren gearbeitet und nicht mit Pro Tools-Sessions, sondern noch weiter verfeinert, um ein zusammenh\u00e4ngenderes \"Ganzes\" zu bilden, mit einer Mischung aus sehr hochwertigen analogen und digitalen Audioverarbeitungsger\u00e4ten zur Hand.\n\nAll dies war ein Workflow, den wir schon seit einiger Zeit fixieren wollten, und ich muss mich bei allen daf\u00fcr bedanken, dass sie es m\u00f6glich gemacht haben, wir sind von der Performance zu einem endg\u00fcltigen Master in wirklich kurzer Zeit \u00fcbergegangen und ich hoffe, dass alle das Ergebnis genie\u00dfen werden, ob im Spiel oder auf der Soundtrack-CD selbst. Es ist wunderbar zu h\u00f6ren, wie Pedros Arbeit auf dieses Niveau des Schallglanzes gebracht wurde, ich denke, wir alle haben viel aus der Erfahrung gelernt und es wird helfen, den Prozess der Musikproduktion sowohl bei Star Citizen als auch bei Staffel 42 zu verfeinern.\n\nUnd ich denke, das war's f\u00fcr diesen Monat von CIG Audio. Wie immer, danke f\u00fcrs Zuh\u00f6ren!\n\nAnimation\nFortsetzung mit Railgun-Animationssets Fixierung von Cover-Bugs Turn-Animationen f\u00fcr 180 Grad und 360 Grad Erprobung und Feedback zu Tools Weitere Arbeiten zum Starten \/ Stoppen \/ Schrittfahren Neuer FPS-Waffen-Look Dev und Feedback mit dem Art-Team Rekrutierung - neuer Animator ab n\u00e4chstem Monat\nRequisiten\nDie Schiffskomponenten stehen auch in diesem Monat im Mittelpunkt des Requisiteurs, wir verpacken den kompletten Satz kleiner K\u00fchler und wir haben mit der Arbeit an Kraftwerken und Quantenantrieben begonnen.\n\nWir haben die neue Persistenz-Funktion unterst\u00fctzt, indem wir den Designern eine Hand voller Ressourcen zur Verf\u00fcgung gestellt haben, um ihre neuen Missionsmechaniken zu unterst\u00fctzen. Dieser erste Haufen war ein schneller Durchgang, um etwas hineinzubekommen, um das Gameplay zu beweisen, und wird hoffentlich nur der Anfang sein, den wir in Zukunft hinzuf\u00fcgen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nEine weitere spannende Nachricht ist, dass wir nun unsere zus\u00e4tzlichen technischen Anforderungen in das Schichtmischmaterial aufgenommen haben und es nun fl\u00e4chendeckend f\u00fcr die Requisitenproduktion nutzen k\u00f6nnen. Wir warteten auf ein paar Optimierungen und Anpassungen an der Funktionsweise des Shaders, die nun umgesetzt wurden. Dies ist ein gro\u00dfer Schritt nach vorne f\u00fcr uns, da es uns erlaubt, fast die H\u00e4lfte der Anzahl der Draw Calls auf jeder Requisite zu machen, also sollte es wirklich helfen, unsere Pops sch\u00f6n und billig in Bezug auf die Performance zu machen, und wir planen, es im Zorn in den n\u00e4chsten Monaten zu nutzen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich haben wir die Einkaufs- und Bekleidungsfunktion mit einem neuen automatischen Schlie\u00dffachsystem unterst\u00fctzt, so dass ein schnelles und einfaches Wechseln der Kleidung m\u00f6glich ist, und es wurde einiges an Arbeit geleistet, indem auf unserem Workflow nach h\u00e4ngenden und gefalteten Varianten aller Kleidungsst\u00fccke gesucht wurde, die Sie kaufen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nN\u00e4chsten Monat, mehr Schiffskomponenten und zur\u00fcck zur Staffel 42 Requisiten.\n\n\nRaumschiffe\nDie Innenproduktion des Idris neigt sich dem Ende zu, was es dem Team erm\u00f6glicht hat, mit der Look-Entwicklung und dem Prototyping des abgest\u00fcrzten \/ besch\u00e4digten Assets zu beginnen und einen echten Key Beat im Story Arc der Staffel 42 zu etablieren. Ausgehend von dieser Forschung sollte das Team dann in der Lage sein, ein geerdetes Aussehen und Gef\u00fchl f\u00fcr besch\u00e4digte Cap-Schiffe einschlie\u00dflich der Javelin und Bengalen zu entwickeln.\n\nDie Produktion auf der Au\u00dfenseite des Speerwurfes hat sich weiterentwickelt und Verfahren und Techniken ausgetauscht, die w\u00e4hrend der Entwicklung des Idris gefunden wurden, was auch in die bengalische Produktion eingeflossen ist, wobei alle Schiffe nun eine sehr spezifische Staffel 42 Leber teilen.\n\n\nDesign\nWir hatten einen sehr arbeitsreichen April in der britischen Designabteilung.\n\nErstens, wir sind wieder in Ealing Shooting Pickup Szenen bei Imaginarium, das hat viele Designer besch\u00e4ftigt, was die Fertigstellung der Spielr\u00e4ume und die Stabilit\u00e4tsbehebung betrifft. Es ist immer sehr lohnend f\u00fcr die Jungs, die hart an den Squadron 42 Levels arbeiten, das Niveau des Polierens zu sehen, das die Leistungen des Schauspielers dem Spielerlebnis verleihen.\n\nDas Live Release Team war diesen Monat sehr besch\u00e4ftigt mit der Einf\u00fchrung unserer ersten Phase der Ausdauer. Kreuzritter, die die Wirtschaft expandieren lassen, umfassen jetzt neue Missionen und Boni sowie neue Fangwaffen. Cry-Astro berechnen jetzt f\u00fcr ihre Dienste und die Spieler werden nun feststellen, dass das Wiederbeleben mit Kosten verbunden ist. Neben den zahlreichen Erweiterungen des Spielraums haben wir mit den Arbeiten an der demn\u00e4chst erscheinenden Karte des Sonnensystems begonnen. Alles in allem ein sehr interessanter und produktiver Monat f\u00fcr das Live Release Team, den Sie bald erleben und an uns weitergeben werden.\n\nDas technische Team hat die verschiedenen Schiffe, die derzeit zur Freigabe anstehen, weiter aufgebaut, und der vollst\u00e4ndige Komponentenreflektor, der einen solchen Unterschied in der Funktionalit\u00e4t und Vielseitigkeit dieser Schiffe machen wird, steht kurz vor der Fertigstellung. Es ist sch\u00f6n, endlich ein Upgrade-System zu sehen, das bald mit dem Rollout in die Live-Builds beginnt.\n\nNat\u00fcrlich wird das Komponentensystem einen gro\u00dfen Einfluss auf das neue Balancing Team haben, und das wird jetzt immer wichtiger, so dass wir, wenn es auftaucht, in der bestm\u00f6glichen Form sein k\u00f6nnen, um etwas zu ver\u00f6ffentlichen, das funktioniert.\n\nInsgesamt war es ein weiterer guter Monat f\u00fcr die Entwicklung von Squadron 42 und den weiteren Aufbau des persistenten Universums.\n\nDeutsche Pr\u00e4zision\n\nDer April war f\u00fcr uns in Frankfurt ein solider Produktionsmonat, sowohl was den Fortschritt als auch was die Planung betrifft. Wir hatten Chris f\u00fcr ein paar Tage ins Studio gebracht, um pers\u00f6nliche Treffen mit verschiedenen Abteilungen zu vereinbaren. Seit dem letzten Update haben wir 5 neue Mitarbeiter im B\u00fcro, die in mehreren Bereichen arbeiten, wobei jede Disziplin anf\u00e4ngt, ein wenig mehr abzurunden. Wir alle waren besch\u00e4ftigt, wie wir jeden Monat sagen, aber jeden Tag treibt das Team die Dinge st\u00e4ndig voran. Das Tech-Update f\u00fcr diesen Monat wird k\u00fcrzer als normal ausfallen, da ein Gro\u00dfteil des Motorenteams an der Verfahrenstechnik arbeitet, und wir w\u00fcrden es vorziehen, einige der Details vorerst intern zu behalten und euch den vollst\u00e4ndigen \u00dcberblick zu geben, wenn die Zeit kommt, dass ihr es selbst erlebt. Diesen Monat haben wir auch ein paar Gruppen durch das B\u00fcro kommen lassen und mit dem Team rumh\u00e4ngen, wie ich immer sage, die Unterst\u00fctzung von euch Jungs ist sehr willkommen und hilft uns t\u00e4glich weiter.\n\n\nWaffen\nDas Waffenkunstteam hat die Texturierung von zwei neuen Schiffswaffen abgeschlossen und arbeitet derzeit an den verschiedenen LOD's (Level of Details) und deren Integration in das Spiel. Die Apokalypse Arms Scourge Railgun wurde mit etwas mehr Glanz versehen und befindet sich in der Endphase der Kunstproduktion und wird parallel animiert. Wir haben auch einen Prototyp f\u00fcr eine neue FPS-Waffe blockiert und haben noch einen Haufen mehr in der Konzeptphase. Wir werden hoffentlich einige Bilder haben, die wir n\u00e4chsten Monat von der neuen Arbeit teilen werden.\n\n\nMotor\nDas Kernteam der Engine konzentrierte sich auf verschiedene Bereiche des Codes, die verbessert werden sollten. Zuerst haben wir unsere Unterst\u00fctzung fortgesetzt, um die Anzahl der renderbaren Objekte zu erh\u00f6hen. Um massive Z\u00e4hlungen von 50.000 und mehr zu unterst\u00fctzen (denken Sie an Asteroiden oder Planetenvegetation\/Felsen), haben wir einen sehr schnellen Instanzen-Renderingpfad implementiert. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es uns, die gesamte Landschaft bev\u00f6lkerungsreicher und interessanter zu gestalten, indem wir mehr Objekte zeigen, als wir bisher konnten. W\u00e4hrend der Implementierung dieses Rendering-Pfades haben wir uns auch einige Zeit genommen, um Teile der Rendering-Pipeline zu bereinigen und einige Bereiche zu vereinheitlichen, wo wir konnten.\n\nEin weiterer Schwerpunkt war der JobManager, den wir im Vormonat verbessert haben, um flexibler zu sein; die Mitarbeiter k\u00f6nnen neu an verschiedenen Chargen arbeiten, festlegen, welche Chargen Priorit\u00e4ten haben und so weiter. Da das meiste davon aus Performance-Gr\u00fcnden als lock-less Code geschrieben wurde, haben wir einige Fehler \u00fcbersehen. Und da es sich um Low-Level-Multithreading-Code handelte, hatten wir nun den Spa\u00df herauszufinden, warum bestimmte Operationen \u00fcber 1 Million Mal erfolgreich waren, um pl\u00f6tzlich auszufallen. Gute Nachrichten sind, dass wir zuversichtlich sind, dass wir diese Probleme gel\u00f6st haben (wir haben es geschafft, 12 Instanzen des Editors parallel laufen zu lassen, ohne Threading-Probleme, die alle Arten von ungew\u00f6hnlichen Thread-Timings ausl\u00f6sen sollten).\n\nDer dritte Bereich, den wir untersucht haben, war die weitere Verbesserung des Streaming-Codes. Streaming kann sehr rechenintensiv sein, da der Code alle Objekte um den Player herum ber\u00fchren muss, nicht nur die vollst\u00e4ndig sichtbaren Objekte. Da unser Spiel einen sehr gro\u00dfen Betrachtungsabstand verwendet, f\u00fchrte dies zu einer sehr gro\u00dfen Anzahl von Objekten, die ein Update ben\u00f6tigen. Wir k\u00f6nnten diese Zahl massiv reduzieren, indem wir eine Breitphasen-Selektion des Objektabstandes implementieren. Im ZoneSystem gruppieren wir bereits Objekte nach r\u00e4umlichen Eigenschaften, jetzt kombinieren wir die maximale Sichtweite aller Objekte in solchen Gruppen. Wenn die gesamte Gruppe weiter entfernt ist als diese kombinierte Distanz, k\u00f6nnen wir die gesamte Gruppe sofort ignorieren.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich verbrachten wir ein wenig Zeit mit unserer vsync-Implementierung, da wir feststellten, dass wir keine stabilen 60 fps bekommen konnten, selbst wenn wir \u00fcber 70 fps hatten, wenn vsync deaktiviert war. Es stellte sich heraus, dass es sich um ein Problem bei der Thread-Synchronisation handelte, das nun behoben ist. W\u00e4hrend dieser Untersuchung mussten wir auch die Details dar\u00fcber untersuchen, wie Windows-Wiedergabe unter Windows 7 und h\u00f6her funktioniert. Kurz gesagt, es ist komplex :) F\u00fcr unsere vsync-Fixes bedeutet dies leider, dass wir nur im Vollbildmodus f\u00fcr die korrekte Synchronisierung von vsync sorgen k\u00f6nnen. Aus diesem Grund haben wir einige experimentelle Vsync-Modi hinzugef\u00fcgt.\n\nVerwenden Sie den Windows Composite Manager f\u00fcr vsync (r_Vsync 2). Dieser Modus hat einen gewissen Leistungsaufwand. Implementieren Sie unser eigenes Vsyncing (r_Vsync 3). Funktioniert, kann aber zu einigen Rissen f\u00fchren, da wir nicht kontrollieren k\u00f6nnen, wann Fenster die Daten auf dem Bildschirm zeichnen. Deaktivieren Sie den Composite Manager (r_Vsync 4). Funktioniert nur unter Windows 7 (Es ist nicht mehr m\u00f6glich, vsync bei neueren Windows-Versionen zu deaktivieren). Nat\u00fcrlich sind Modus 0 (kein Vsync) und Modus 1 (normaler Vsync) noch im Spiel und sollten die verwendeten sein. Aber es k\u00f6nnte sich lohnen, die anderen Modi f\u00fcr die Mutigen auszuprobieren.\n\n\nSystem erstellen\nKurzes und einfaches Update von unserem Senior Build Engineer.\n\nTrybuild Fehlerbehebung und Ausgleich f\u00fcr Game-Dev und 2.4. CopyBuild-Automatisierung. Tools f\u00fcr VFX-K\u00fcnstler. Funktionspr\u00fcfung f\u00fcr Game-Device (WIP).\nKinematiken\nIn diesem Monat hat das Filmteam die Arbeit an allen Fronten weiter vorangetrieben, Szenen ausgeblendet, mit Ingenieuren an Workflows und Tools gearbeitet und das Gesamtbild von K\u00f6rper- und Gesichtsanimationen verbessert. Auch die Vorbereitung auf ein PCap (Performance Capture) Shooting ab Anfang Mai hat viel Zeit in Anspruch genommen. Ein paar Mitglieder des Teams gingen f\u00fcr ein paar Tage ins britische B\u00fcro, um Skripte durchzugehen und das Blockieren neuer Szenen mit den Autoren und Level Designern zu kl\u00e4ren.\n\n\nQualit\u00e4tssicherung\nKunsttests waren im April das Hauptthema der CIG-DE QA. Chris Speak und Melissa Estrada waren damit besch\u00e4ftigt, die Artist Testpipeline zu erweitern, um sicherzustellen, dass die Editor-Tools in einwandfreiem Zustand sind, mit dem Hinzuf\u00fcgen neuer Checklisten und einer Art-spezifischen Checkliste, die den spezifischen Bed\u00fcrfnissen eines K\u00fcnstlers gerecht wird. QA hat die Vorteile dieser fachspezifischen Gesundheitstests erkannt und wird darauf hinarbeiten, zus\u00e4tzliche Checklisten f\u00fcr jede Disziplin zu erstellen. QA wird auch bei der \u00dcberarbeitung unseres hauseigenen Tools zur Erfassung von Builds helfen, um es Entwicklern zu erleichtern, Informationen dar\u00fcber zu erhalten, ob ein Build f\u00fcr die Entwicklung verwendbar ist oder nicht. Chris hat auch mit Carsten Wenzel bei der Erstellung von Zeitdemos und Francesco Di Mizio bei FeatureTests zusammengearbeitet, so dass wir client-seitige Automatisierungstests f\u00fcr aktuelle und zuk\u00fcnftige Features und In-Game-Systeme starten k\u00f6nnen. Melissa wurde tief im Code mit Ivo Herzeg vergraben, um einem Absturzproblem auf den Grund zu gehen, das QA und Entwicklung daran hinderte, in das Tutorial zum Testen und Debuggen einzutreten. Der Absturz ereignete sich, als der Spieler in das Level geladen wurde, und es stellte sich heraus, dass die Ursache darin bestand, dass die Gliedma\u00dfen des Charakters im Wesentlichen zu astronomischen Werten explodierten! Sie verbrachte auch Zeit damit, potenzielle Vertical Sync-Fixes von Christopher Bolte zu testen, die in zuk\u00fcnftigen Versionen erhebliche Verbesserungen im gesamten Gameplay bringen sollten. Es war ein sehr arbeitsreicher Monat f\u00fcr die CIG-DE QA, aber wir beginnen bereits damit, die volle Kraft f\u00fcr Mai und die damit verbundenen Herausforderungen vorzubereiten.\n\n\nKI: K\u00fcnstliche Intelligenz\nIn diesem Monat hat sich das KI-Team haupts\u00e4chlich darauf konzentriert, Fortschritte bei der Entwicklung von Subsumption zu erzielen.\n\nZun\u00e4chst einmal haben wir Fortschritte bei der Umsetzung der Interactors for AI erzielt. Derzeit kann jeder Interakteur vom Designteam so eingerichtet werden, dass er die erforderlichen Informationen enth\u00e4lt, die ein NSC f\u00fcr die Interaktion mit ihm ben\u00f6tigt: Position der Ausrichtung, um die Interaktion zu starten, die Animation, die der NSC abspielen muss, und die Aktion, die er ausf\u00fchren muss. Der NSC wird dann nach Objekten in der Welt suchen, die einem bestimmten Zweck dienen, und er kann mit ihnen interagieren und Aktionen an ihnen durchf\u00fchren.\n\nDie Subsumtion verwendet die folgende Hierarchie f\u00fcr die Erstellung von Verhaltensweisen:\n\nAktivit\u00e4ten > Unteraktivit\u00e4ten > Aufgaben In diesem Monat haben wir auch viele neue Aufgaben eingef\u00fchrt (die grundlegenden Bausteine, die Designer verwenden werden, um Verhaltensweisen zu erstellen) und wir haben die grundlegenden Funktionalit\u00e4ten f\u00fcr das Debuggen auf dem Bildschirm mit n\u00fctzlichen Informationen \u00fcber das System weitergegeben. Wir haben auch die grundlegenden Informationen \u00fcber die Aktionsfl\u00e4chen weitergegeben, das sind die Elemente in der Welt, die es Designern erm\u00f6glichen, Bereiche mit spezifischen Informationen zu markieren: Ein mehrk\u00f6pfiges Raumschiff zum Beispiel k\u00f6nnte einen Maschinenraum, einen Hangar, einen Kontrollraum und so weiter haben. Aktionsbereiche erm\u00f6glichen es den NSCs, \u00fcber die Umgebung nachzudenken, um ihre Aufgaben zu erf\u00fcllen.\n\nWir haben auch einige Zeit damit verbracht, die Bewegungsgeschwindigkeiten zwischen NSCs und Spielern zu vereinheitlichen, so dass wir nun die volle Kontrolle \u00fcber 5 verschiedene Pseudogeschwindigkeiten auf der KI-Seite haben: Langsam gehen, schnell gehen, langsam laufen, langsam laufen, schnell laufen und sprinten.\n\nWir haben auch das Spawning-System \u00fcberarbeitet, damit die Designer ein zuverl\u00e4ssigeres und stabileres System haben, um die Welt zu bev\u00f6lkern. Der neue KI Spawning Manager wird das System sein, das sowohl von der skriptgesteuerten Logik als auch vom Missionssystem verwendet wird, um das Universum zu bev\u00f6lkern. Derzeit ist das Hauptziel des neuen Systems, die Laichmechanik zu vereinfachen und robuster zu machen, z.B. haben wir eine spezielle Validierung eingef\u00fchrt, um den Raum zu analysieren, der von dem Schiff eingenommen wird, das wir laichen wollen.\n\nLast but not least haben wir, wie wir es regelm\u00e4\u00dfig tun, einige Zeit der Fehlerbehebung und Stabilit\u00e4tsverbesserung gewidmet, es ist erw\u00e4hnenswert, dass wir mehrere Abst\u00fcrze behoben haben und wir die Hauptursache f\u00fcr den 5-Sekunden-Stall, der auf einigen i5-Kernmaschinen stattfand, beseitigt haben.\n\n\nVFX\nIn den letzten Monaten hat das Frankfurter VFX-Team an einer neuen Technologie f\u00fcr unsere Partikel gearbeitet. Was uns dies erm\u00f6glicht, ist, den optischen Bewegungsfluss zwischen den Frames in unseren animierten Texturen aufzuzeichnen und dann ein Frame in das n\u00e4chste zu verzerren oder zu morphen, anstatt ein einfaches \u00dcberblenden zwischen den Frames durchzuf\u00fchren. Dies gl\u00e4ttet nicht nur die Animation der Texturen drastisch, sondern hat auch den zus\u00e4tzlichen Vorteil, dass wir die Anzahl der Einzelbilder in der Animation reduzieren k\u00f6nnen, wodurch die Aufl\u00f6sung jedes einzelnen Bildes erh\u00f6ht wird, ohne die allgemeine Texturaufl\u00f6sung zu erh\u00f6hen.\n\nWir haben auch daran gearbeitet, die Effekte f\u00fcr den High-Tech-Stil zu konkretisieren. Ein Bildbeispiel finden Sie in unserem DE-Header-Bild.\n\n\nTechnische Kunst\nWir helfen Animationsprogrammierern f\u00fcr Forschung und Entwicklung bei der itemport-Animation, die uns helfen wird, jede Requisite, Waffe oder deren Anh\u00e4nge einfach auszuw\u00e4hlen und zu tauschen. Wir unterst\u00fctzen und machen Fortschritte mit zahlreichen Waffen des Waffenteams. Wir haben auch unsere DCC-Pipeline mit Szenemanager weiterentwickelt, die K\u00fcnstlern hilft, eine komplette Animationsszene in Maya einfach zusammenzustellen.\n\n\nDesign\nDie Leveldesigner haben sich darauf konzentriert, durch das Layout der Hurston Landezone sowie der im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnten gesetzlosen Basis zu iterieren. Hurston sieht einige \u00dcberarbeitungen seines Layouts, um seine Gr\u00f6\u00dfe zu verbessern, da wir immer noch bew\u00e4hrte Praktiken f\u00fcr die Kombination der Gr\u00f6\u00dfe von Schiffen und Hangars, von grandiosen Ausblicken und Geb\u00e4uden mit der Gr\u00f6\u00dfe von funktionalen (und ziemlich realistischen) spielbaren R\u00e4umen herausfinden. Das Beste aus beiden Welten herauszuholen ist eine st\u00e4ndige Herausforderung, die wir uns immer wieder stellen, was bedeutet, dass das Entwerfen dieser ersten paar Standorte unterschiedlicher Art und Gr\u00f6\u00dfe nat\u00fcrlich viel l\u00e4nger dauert, w\u00e4hrend wir erfahren, welche Level-Designregeln am besten f\u00fcr PU-Standorte gelten. Die gesetzlose Basis ger\u00e4t bald in eine \"Konzeptphase\", in der das Sortiment der unstrukturierten B\u00e4nde, aus denen sie bisher besteht, von Konzeptk\u00fcnstlern \u00fcbermalt wird, um das Kunstteam bei der Erstellung und Versch\u00f6nerung zu unterst\u00fctzen.\n\nWir legen auch den Grundstein f\u00fcr die n\u00e4chste Reihe von Standorten, die gebaut werden m\u00fcssen, wenn beide nicht mehr in unseren H\u00e4nden sind: herauszufinden, was diese neuen Standorte besonders macht, und wie man es den Levels, der Technologie und den Spielmechaniken erm\u00f6glicht, sich an den H\u00e4nden zu halten, um das Spiel so schnell und effizient wie m\u00f6glich voranzubringen. Das beinhaltet die Abstimmung mit verschiedenen Abteilungen, um in kritische Designs wie Spawning, Parken, Shopping\/Trading, etc. zu graben, um zu sehen, welche Features kurzfristig auftauchen und wie man sie am besten durch die von uns gebauten Standorte pr\u00e4sentiert (anstatt nur zus\u00e4tzliche Orte zu besuchen.)\n\nSchlie\u00dflich befinden wir uns noch im Rekrutierungsprozess, um unsere Reihen mit mehr Leveldesignern zu f\u00fcllen, um uns bei der Bew\u00e4ltigung dieser Aufgaben zu unterst\u00fctzen und die Grundlage unserer Leveldesign-Philosophie f\u00fcr die PU zu entwickeln.\n\nAuf der Seite des Systemdesigns haben wir weiterhin an unserer KI gearbeitet, da wir sie von Modular Behavior Trees auf die volle Nutzung von Subsumption f\u00fcr im Kampf und au\u00dferhalb des Kampfverhaltens umstellen. Schlie\u00dflich werden wir am Ende alle unsere KI in einem einzigen, einheitlichen Tool aufbauen.\nWir setzen auch die Implementierung von Inner Thought und deren Integration in andere Systeme wie die Useables, Interactors und Looting fort. Dieses System wird uns helfen, eine einheitliche Oberfl\u00e4che f\u00fcr die Interaktion mit Objekten zu erhalten, die mehr als einen einfachen Anwendungsfall haben, Dialogentscheidungen zu treffen und sogar deinen Fl\u00fcgelmannsbefehlen in der Hitze des Gefechts zu geben.\n\nAuch an den Energieverteilungs- und Reputationssystemen wird weiter gearbeitet, da diese \u00fcberholt wurden und in K\u00fcrze in die Produktion gehen werden. Ein weiteres System, das in Not war und eine gro\u00dfe \u00dcberarbeitung erh\u00e4lt, ist der FPS Anzug wegen der \u00c4nderungen an der FPS-Verteidigung, und dieses wird noch f\u00fcr den n\u00e4chsten Monat laufen.\n\nMehr auf der Produktionsseite des Designs waren wir damit besch\u00e4ftigt, die Ziele f\u00fcr die Zeit von Mai bis Juli zu setzen, die Systeme zu zerlegen und f\u00fcr alle Priorit\u00e4ten in Bezug auf jede Karriere zu setzen. Dadurch haben wir einen besseren \u00dcberblick dar\u00fcber, was eigentlich entscheidend ist, um diese Karrieren so schnell wie m\u00f6glich auf den Live-Servern zum Laufen zu bringen.\n\nAuf unser bestes Verhalten\n\nBei BHVR kreieren wir viel Kunst f\u00fcr Star Citizen und stellen sicher, dass die Qualit\u00e4t jedes grafischen Elements ein bisher unerreichtes Qualit\u00e4tsniveau erreicht.\n\n\nIngenieurwesen\nDieser Monat war ein langer Sprint, um 2.4 Features aus der T\u00fcr und in die H\u00e4nde von QA-Testern, PTU-Anwendern und schlie\u00dflich Ihnen, unseren lieben Spielern, zu bekommen.\n\nEin Gro\u00dfteil davon entfiel auf Einkaufsfunktionen: viel Arbeit an AR und mobiGlas, aber vor allem auf die korrekte Replikation von vernetzten Transaktionen und Shopaktionen.\n\nViele Leckereien, die wir alle freuen, wenn du es versuchst.\n\nWir haben die Cry-Astro-Dienste \u00fcberarbeitet, um sicherzustellen, dass der neue Serviceanforderungsablauf bei Mehrbesatzungsschiffen gut funktioniert. Das war ein gro\u00dfer Gewinn, jetzt kann jedes Mitglied Ihrer Crew mit seinem mobiGlas individuelle Dienstleistungen anfordern und gleichzeitig verhindern, dass verschiedene Personen f\u00fcr denselben Service bezahlen (vielleicht im schattigeren Servicebereich, aber NICHT bei Cry-Astro, der Reparatur-, Auff\u00fcll- und Betankungsl\u00f6sung des Empires!). Au\u00dferdem bezahlen Sie nur f\u00fcr Dienstleistungen, wenn sie ausgef\u00fchrt werden, also wenn Sie erschossen werden oder in Eile gehen m\u00fcssen, brauchen Sie keine Angst zu haben, nicht auf den Wert Ihres Geldes zu kommen.\n\n\nDesign\nDiesen Monat war das Bhvr-Designteam sehr besch\u00e4ftigt mit dem Einkaufen und den Funktionen der n\u00e4chsten Version. Wir haben die Einrichtung von Gesch\u00e4ften fortgesetzt, sowohl in der Area 18 als auch in Port Olisar. Es ist lustig, wie es arbeitsintensiver und komplizierter ist, als es nur nach au\u00dfen hin aussieht. Die Jungs haben einen tollen Job gemacht, damit dies sauber und effizient funktioniert.\n\nWir haben auch am Revel und York Hangar gearbeitet, um die neuen F\u00e4higkeiten des Hafenmodifikationssystems zu unterst\u00fctzen. Wir haben auch alle Flairartikel und Hangardekorationen aktualisiert, um dieses neue System zu unterst\u00fctzen. Ich freue mich darauf, zu sehen, was die Spieler denken.\n\nN\u00e4chsten Monat sollte der Bau einer neuen Umgebung und viel Leveldesign f\u00fcr das Team stattfinden. Wir sind auch bestrebt, die Iteration des Einkaufssystems und die Erweiterung der Funktionen fortzusetzen.\n\n\nKunst\nAuf der Kunstseite hatten wir viel Spa\u00df daran, Port Olisar zu erweitern, was Sie sehr bald erleben werden. Haupts\u00e4chlich Arbeiten im Zusammenhang mit Gesch\u00e4ften, zus\u00e4tzlicher Kleidung und dem Hinzuf\u00fcgen eines gr\u00f6\u00dferen Landeplatzes.\n\nWir haben auch neue Bereiche er\u00f6ffnet, um sie f\u00fcr sp\u00e4tere Releases fit zu machen.\n\nDar\u00fcber hinaus unterst\u00fctzten wir die Einkaufsmechaniker mit individuellen Requisiten, um die in den Gesch\u00e4ften verkauften Artikel besser zu pr\u00e4sentieren.\n\nAuf Levski haben wir unsere Optimierungen an allen Fronten, Maschen, Texturen, Materialien und Beleuchtung fortgesetzt, aber wir stehen kurz vor dem Abschluss der Optimierungen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich haben wir an neuen Requisiten gearbeitet und beenden das Flairobjekt des n\u00e4chsten Monats.\n\nBew\u00f6lkt mit Aussicht auf eine Plattform\n\nGr\u00fc\u00dfe aus dem bew\u00f6lkten Montreal! Hier ist, was wir im letzten Monat gemacht haben.\n\n\nSchiffsstatistiken\nDas Design f\u00fcr die neue Schiffsreferenzmatrix ist abgeschlossen, und wir haben mit der Entwicklung bereits begonnen. Diese neue Matrix wird es den Nutzern erm\u00f6glichen, den gesamten expandierenden Schiffskatalog von Star Citizen leichter einzusehen und mehrere Statistiken zu vergleichen. Wir haben auch Designs f\u00fcr eine mobile Version, die intern \u00fcberpr\u00fcft werden.\n\n\nMulti-Faktor-Authentifizierung (MFA)\nUnsere Entwicklung der Multi-Faktor-Authentifizierung geht weiter, und wir f\u00fcgen eine mobile Authenticator-App hinzu. Im Rahmen eines dreigliedrigen Angriffs werden wir auch den Spielstarter um MFA erweitern.\n\n\nKommunikationsplattform\nWir haben der CIG einen groben Prototyp unserer neuen Kommunikationsplattform vorgestellt, und die Bewertungen waren positiv. Wir arbeiten derzeit an dem Chat-Modul, und dann werden wir mit der Entwicklung des Forenmoduls beginnen. Wir sind noch ein paar Monate von einem Beta-Start entfernt, aber wir sind zuversichtlich, dass Sie es lieben werden.\n\n\nSchiff passiert\nApril war ein sehr aufregender Monat f\u00fcr Schiffe. Es begann mit einem Witz der Star Citizen April Fools, in Form des Big Benny inspirierten Reliant und Ihre Reaktion auf dieses alberne Lieferfahrzeug war \u00fcberw\u00e4ltigend, um es vorsichtig auszudr\u00fccken! Sp\u00e4ter im Monat gab es eine Freifliege f\u00fcr alle, die Star Citizen ausprobieren wollten. Dies wurde auch von einem Tax Day Sale begleitet, bei dem die Super Hornet, der Gladiator und der Retaliator Bomber f\u00fcr eine Woche zum Verkauf angeboten wurden. Schlie\u00dflich, um den Monat abzuschlie\u00dfen, gab es ein Konzept f\u00fcr den Verkauf des Prospektors, eines spezialisierten Minenschiffes. Dieser Verkauf beinhaltete eine Shubin Rekrutierungsseite, auf der die B\u00fcrger ermutigt wurden, sich bei dem Unternehmen zu bewerben. Die besten 5 Einsendungen werden mit einem Orion belohnt!\n\n\nUmsatz\nEs gab auch ein paar Merchandising-Verk\u00e4ufe in diesem Monat: Sie enthielten eine Trackjacke, die mit dem Star Citizen Kartendeck zu einem reduzierten Preis geb\u00fcndelt war; es gab auch einige neue Anvil Aerospace Mauspads, die Anfang dieses Monats im Angebot waren. Und schlie\u00dflich, um den April abzurunden, wurde ein neuer Satz von Stoffaufn\u00e4hern, die einige der Hersteller des Star Citizen Universums repr\u00e4sentieren, zum Verkauf freigegeben.\n\nAllein zu Hause\n\nAch du meine G\u00fcte. Wir sind am Ende. Ben und Ali sind diese Woche nicht in der Stadt, also kann ich schreiben, was ich will, und niemand kann mich aufhalten. Nun, Chris muss das noch lesen und genehmigen. Er kann mich definitiv aufhalten.....\n\nWie auch immer, es war ein verdammt langer Monat. Viele H\u00f6hen und Tiefen und Drehungen und Wendungen, aber egal, was jeden Monat passiert, es scheint immer zu schnell vorbei zu gehen. Das passiert, wenn man mit dieser Community zusammenarbeitet: Man l\u00e4sst die Zeit vergehen. Im April 2015 habe ich als Ihr Community-Manager \"offiziell\" angefangen, und das letzte Jahr war eines f\u00fcr die B\u00fccher. Ich hoffe, dass dir die \u00c4nderungen und Verbesserungen unserer Community-Produktion im letzten Jahr gefallen haben. Es war wirklich eine Teamleistung, wobei jedes gegebene Unterfangen eine absurde Idee von Ben ist, den wir verwirklichen, oder eine ebenso absurde Idee von mir, mit der Ben klug genug ist, um mich davonkommen zu lassen, und einer der beiden, die ohne die Unterst\u00fctzung von Alexis, Thomas, Justin, Toast und vor allem Sandi unm\u00f6glich zu schaffen sind.\n\nLassen Sie uns damit einen Blick auf unsere Produktion in diesem Monat werfen.\n\n\nAprilscherze!\nWIR HABEN DICH!\n\nWIR HABEN DICH SO GUT ERWISCHT!\n\nEs ist Zeit f\u00fcr eine vollst\u00e4ndige Offenlegung: Am 29. M\u00e4rz hatten wir nichts. Nada. Nichts. Wir waren bereit, das Handtuch am Aprilscherz in diesem Jahr zu holen. Einfach zu besch\u00e4ftigt, und wir wollen nie etwas tun, das die Nadel nicht f\u00fcr uns bewegt, wei\u00dft du? Dann gegen 15 Uhr am Nachmittag hatte ich eine schreckliche Idee, von der ich wusste, dass sie zu sp\u00e4t f\u00fcr uns gekommen war, um etwas damit zu machen, also ging ich in Bens B\u00fcro und wollte, dass er mir das ausreden w\u00fcrde.\n\n\"Hey Ben, wei\u00dft du, wie jeder immer nach diesen professionellen Tieftauchg\u00e4ngen fragt?\"\n\n\"Sprich mit Tony Zurovec.\"\n\n\"Nein, nein, nein... Ich hatte eine schreckliche Idee, die du mir ausreden sollst. Lassen Sie uns einen gef\u00e4lschten Berufspost \u00fcber die Lieferung von Lebensmitteln machen. Wir k\u00f6nnen die Big Bennys-Assets, die Jeremiah und Elwin und Gaige in ihrer Freizeit f\u00fcr das andere Ding zusammengetragen haben, nutzen und sie hier einsetzen.\"\n\nHier... hier sollte er mir den Blick geben, den ich manchmal bekomme. Der Blick, der sagt: \"Jede Entscheidung, die mit dem Prozess der Einstellung von Ihnen verbunden ist, war ein Fehler.\"\n\nEs ist derselbe Look, den ich von Chris bekomme, wenn ich ihm zeige, dass ich den Jar Jar Tongue Sucker von 1999 auf meinem Schreibtisch habe.\n\nAber er sah mich nicht so an. Er sagte die Worte, die oft bedeuten, dass ich die n\u00e4chsten drei Tage nicht schlafen werde: \"Lass es uns tun!\"\n\nUnd damit haben wir Jeremiah Lee, Gaige Hallman und Elwin Bachillier versammelt, um die \"lustigen Nebenprojekte\" fertigzustellen, mit denen sie in ihrer Freizeit herumgealbert hatten, w\u00e4hrend Ben die Kopie schrieb und unsere Freunde von Turbulent eine neue Technologie f\u00fcr die Website kodierten, die es uns erm\u00f6glichen w\u00fcrde, das \u00d6ffnen und Lesen eines Men\u00fcs zu simulieren (dieselbe Technologie, die wir sp\u00e4ter im selben Monat f\u00fcr den Starfarer-Verkauf wieder verwenden w\u00fcrden).\n\nUnd nach den sp\u00e4ten N\u00e4chten mit Gaige, der unsere Delivery Dancer animierte, der schnellen Arbeit von Elwin, um den Relianten zu h\u00e4uten, und Jeremiah, der die Variante Bennys emotes herausbrachte, hatten wir die Zutaten, um die Nadel zu \"bewegen\".\n\nUnd so macht man eine schreckliche Idee in nur 3 Tagen Realit\u00e4t.\n\n\nSendungen\nNormalerweise gehe ich gerne durch und bespreche die Videos, die wir in sequentieller Reihenfolge ver\u00f6ffentlichen, wobei ich die verschiedenen Spitzen des Inhalts hervorhebe und diskutiere. Diesmal nicht. Wir springen direkt zum Dessert! Hast du letzten Freitag RtV gesehen?! Lando's Vater, oder besser bekannt als Dad Lando, gab sein Deb\u00fct als Star und eroberte unsere Herzen mit seiner Leidenschaft und Perspektive f\u00fcr das Star Citizen Universum. Ernsthaft, dieser Typ rockt. Seine F\u00e4higkeit, Lando zu blamieren, steigert definitiv seine Sympathie.\n\nRund um den Vers und die Serie 10 For setzte sich der regul\u00e4re Zeitplan in diesem Monat fort, w\u00e4hrend Landos \"Wonderful World of Star Citizen\" uns den immer unterhaltsamen Captain Richard und seine Geschichte des Livestreamings sowie das kreative Talent von Mr. Combustible und seinen detaillierten Workflow beim 3D-Druck von Star Citizen-Schiffen vorstellte.\n\nReverse the Verse erreichte diesen Monat einen neuen H\u00f6hepunkt, nachdem der Komponist Pedro Camacho und der Senior Sound Designer Ross Tregenza f\u00fcr einige exklusive Enth\u00fcllungen neuer Musik und eine F\u00fclle detaillierter Informationen zu uns kamen. Wir haben das gro\u00dfe Gl\u00fcck, diese talentierten Herren in unserem Team zu haben.\n\n\nWebsite\nWenn Sie den Abschnitt Turbulent unseres Monatsberichts gelesen haben, k\u00f6nnen Sie bereits einige der laufenden Arbeiten zur \u00dcberarbeitung und Verbesserung unserer Web-Erfahrung sehen. Die \"Kommunikationsplattform\", die sie entwickeln, ist so aufregend, dass ich mich kaum beherrschen kann und jeden Aspekt Ihrer Interaktion mit unserer Website beeinflussen wird.\n\nDar\u00fcber hinaus ist eines der vielen Dinge, an denen gearbeitet wird, ein Update der alten Ship Status Seite. Eine eigene Landing Page anstelle einer Reihe von Forenbeitr\u00e4gen, die es den B\u00fcrgern schlie\u00dflich erm\u00f6glichen wird, einen schnellen Blick auf die weitere Entwicklung unserer Schiffe zu werfen, w\u00e4hrend sie sich durch die Pipeline bewegen, und Ihre eigene \"zu Hause\" Version von \"Wo ist mein Raumschiff\" zu spielen.\n\nDiese beiden, kombiniert mit der neuen Ship Reference Matrix und unseren kontinuierlichen Bem\u00fchungen, alle Aspekte unserer Pr\u00e4sentation zu verbessern, machen es uns Spa\u00df, mit unseren Partnern bei Turbulent zusammenzuarbeiten. Ich bin immer wieder dankbar f\u00fcr ihr Engagement und ihre Unterst\u00fctzung, wenn wir in letzter Minute verr\u00fcckte Ideen entwickeln. Sie sind immer ein Spiel, um etwas Neues auszuprobieren und die Grenzen dessen, was eine Spiel-Website sein kann, zu \u00fcberschreiten. Benoit, Benjamin, Scott, Ken.... sogar Felix. =oP\n\n\nIhr Jungs\nDies ist ein neuer Abschnitt, der hinzugef\u00fcgt wurde, um alle Dinge zu feiern, die mit unserer Gemeinschaft und ihren Leistungen zusammenh\u00e4ngen! Es war ein fantastischer Monat f\u00fcr unsere Star Citizen Streamer! Anfang des Monats haben Farasalt und Captain_Richard ihr Spiel f\u00fcr einen der lustigsten Aprilscherze, die ich gesehen habe, intensiviert. Es war anscheinend nur ein weiterer Freitagabend auf Captain_Richards Kanal.... Alle sa\u00dfen da und warteten darauf, dass die Intro-Musik aufh\u00f6rte und der Mann selbst erschien. Als die Vorh\u00e4nge aufgingen, erschien Farasalt, geschm\u00fcckt mit dickem Make-up und einem Hemd von Captain_Richard. Was folgte, war \u00fcber eine Stunde Heiterkeit, als Farasalt einen Captain_Richard Eindruck hinterlie\u00df. Alle Manierismen waren auf den Punkt gebracht! Schauen Sie sich das auf jeden Fall an. Gut gemacht, meine Herren.\n\nDeejay Knight ist jetzt offiziell ein Twitch Partner! Dies war eine wohlverdiente Bef\u00f6rderung, die niemanden \u00fcberraschte. Deejay begeistert sein Publikum mit seinen fr\u00f6hlichen Auftritten und ist ein absolutes Vergn\u00fcgen zu sehen. Herzlichen Gl\u00fcckwunsch!\n\nSGT_Gamble fesselt unsere Aufmerksamkeit mit seinen s\u00fc\u00dfen Tanzbewegungen und positiven Vibes und ist zu einem Begriff in der Star Citizen Community geworden. Gamble hat ganze Server zusammengerufen, um an spannenden und aufstrebenden Spielen teilzunehmen, von denen wir einfach nicht genug bekommen k\u00f6nnen. Fantastisches Zeug, Sir!\n\nSchlie\u00dflich war April einer der bisher schwierigsten Monate, wenn es um die Wahl der MVPs ging. Die Menge an Inhalten, die aus unserer Community kommen, ist absolut erstaunlich! Schauen Sie sich diese wohlverdienten Gewinner an!\n\nVorausschauend\nDas war ein Monat, den wir hatten. Jeden Monat kommen wir der Verwirklichung der Vision und des Umfangs von Star Citizen und Squadron 42 immer n\u00e4her. In unseren vier Studios auf der ganzen Welt und unseren Partnerstudios in Kanada und anderswo arbeiten Menschen unerm\u00fcdlich daran, das Versprechen dieses beispiellosen Projekts zu erf\u00fcllen. Ob K\u00fcnstler, Programmierer, Designer, Ingenieure, Schriftsteller, Regisseure, Produzenten und mehr, sie sind alle Spieler, die diese Erfahrung mit allen teilen wollen, die diese jeden Monat lesen.\n\nIn den kommenden Monaten werden Sie sehen, dass wir weiterhin auf der Grundlage von Persistenz aufbauen, die Alpha 2.4 bietet. Wenn die Teams in jedem Studio weiter wachsen, werden Sie sehen, wie sich unser Produktionstempo weiter erh\u00f6ht, wie es bereits seit Ende 2015 der Fall ist. Das Wissen und die Erfahrung, die wir mit jedem neuen Schiffsbau gewinnen, jeder neue Charakter zum Leben erweckt, jede neue Landezone realisiert und jedes neue Spielsystem, das online kommt, wird das n\u00e4chste danach informieren, was bedeutet, dass nicht nur die Quantit\u00e4t unserer Produktion steigen wird, sondern auch die Qualit\u00e4t weiter steigen wird.\n\nOb es sich nun um die Website handelt, die Sie besuchen, die Sendungen, die Sie informieren, das Spiel, das Sie spielen, oder die Plattform, die es unterst\u00fctzt, wir wiederholen weiterhin jeden Aspekt der Weiterentwicklung von Star Citizen und Squadron 42, eine wirklich einzigartige Erfahrung f\u00fcr alle Beteiligten, denn Sie sind mit uns unterwegs.\n\nUnd wir wollten es nicht anders haben.\n\nWir sehen uns in der Strophe. Gr\u00fc\u00dfe B\u00fcrger!\n\nGestern haben wir die erste Iteration von Star Citizen Alpha 2.4 in das Persistent Test Universe verschoben, und ein Gro\u00dfteil des Monats April wurde im Dienste dieses Vorhabens ausgegeben. Alpha 2.4 verspricht, einer unserer bisher gr\u00f6\u00dften Patches zu werden: nicht nur das Hinzuf\u00fcgen neuer Inhalte wie Schiffe und funktionale Gesch\u00e4fte, sondern auch die lang erwarteten \"under-the-hood\"-\u00c4nderungen, die die notwendige Grundlage f\u00fcr alle noch kommenden Inhalte schaffen.\n\nDiese Monatsberichte sind eines meiner Lieblingsbesch\u00e4ftigungen hier bei Cloud Imperium Games. Trotz all der Internet-Shows wie die 10 For Series, Around the Vers und Reverse the Vers, die jede Woche Informationen \u00fcber die Entwicklung unserer Spiele austauschen, gibt es immer noch so viel mehr, dass die Hunderte von Menschen weltweit, die Star Citizen unterst\u00fctzen, daran arbeiten. Wir sind vielleicht nicht immer in der Lage, jedes Detail zu teilen, aber ich bin zuversichtlich, dass sowohl die Quantit\u00e4t als auch die Qualit\u00e4t dessen, was wir jede Woche teilen, und in diesem Fall jeden Monat.\n\nLassen Sie uns damit eintauchen und sehen, woran jedes Studio im Monat April gearbeitet hat.\n\nHergestellt im Schatten\n\nWas f\u00fcr ein Monat April war! Wenn man sich ansieht, wo wir im M\u00e4rz waren, ist klar, dass dies ein episches Unterfangen ist, und wir machen stetige Fortschritte bei diesem gro\u00dfen Abenteuer namens Star Citizen. Mit einem weiteren Monat kommen und gehen, ist es diese Zeit wieder, in der wir \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen, was im CIG Los Angeles B\u00fcro erreicht wurde, insbesondere.\n\nW\u00e4hrend sich das B\u00fcro in Los Angeles haupts\u00e4chlich darauf konzentriert, 2.4 an die PTU zu bringen, konzentriert sich jedes Team auf mehrere Aspekte seiner Entwicklung. Werfen wir also einen Blick darauf, was die einzelnen Teams im Monat April geleistet haben.\n\n\nIngenieurwesen\nEngineering Lead Paul Reindell war diesen Monat sehr besch\u00e4ftigt mit dem Los Angeles Engineering Team. Letzten Monat haben wir erw\u00e4hnt, dass wir 2 neue Gameplay Engineers eingestellt haben, Patrick Mathieu und Chad McKinney. Er hat die neuen Ingenieure auf den neuesten Stand gebracht und daf\u00fcr gesorgt, dass sie mit den unz\u00e4hligen Prozessen bei der CIG bestens vertraut sind. Dar\u00fcber hinaus hat er die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr 2.4 und mehrere neue Funktionen \u00fcbernommen, die gerade eingef\u00fchrt werden, darunter die Einkaufsoberfl\u00e4che, das neue ItemSystem 2.0 und einer der gr\u00f6\u00dften Aspekte, die Persistenz. Wir n\u00e4hern uns der tats\u00e4chlichen Persistenz im Spiel und das Engineering-Team hat sich bem\u00fcht, diese Funktion zu verwirklichen.\n\nChad Zamzow hat am Aufbau der Schildmanagementmechanik gearbeitet und mit Tech Design Lead Kirk Tome daran gearbeitet, den Spielern die Kontrolle \u00fcber das Schildsystem zu erm\u00f6glichen. W\u00e4hrend der Arbeit am Schildgenerator arbeitete er f\u00fcr den Monat April einen Teil der Zeit an einem Controller Interface f\u00fcr dieses Feature und HUD-Code f\u00fcr den Shield Emitter.\n\nMark Abent hat an der Sitzfunktion gearbeitet, um gebrochenen Code zu beheben und die Funktion Betreten von Sitzen zu bereinigen, einschlie\u00dflich der Festlegung von Spielerinteraktionen, Spieler-Einstieg, Spieler-Ausgang, Leerlauf und Anlagen. Bis zum Ende des Monats hatte Mark den Phys Controller in Angriff genommen.\n\nAriel Xu hat kontinuierlich an der Entwicklung unseres internen Tools, dem Port Editor, gearbeitet. Wie bereits in der Vergangenheit erw\u00e4hnt, wird dieses Tool dem Designer mehr Macht \u00fcber die Bearbeitung des Spiels geben, was entscheidend f\u00fcr die Beschleunigung des Designs und den Ausgleich der Bem\u00fchungen ist, insbesondere mit der steigenden Anzahl von Assets, die in die Pipeline gelangen. Der Bau von Spieledesigntools ist eine unglaublich spannende, aber auch schwierige Aufgabe. Das ultimative Ziel ist es, den Designern die Werkzeuge zur Verf\u00fcgung zu stellen, die sie ben\u00f6tigen, um neue Systeme und Funktionen mit einer so einfachen Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che wie m\u00f6glich zu erstellen.\n\nUnter Pauls Leitung sind unsere beiden Neueinsteiger Chad McKinney & Patrick Mathieu kopf\u00fcber in das Spiel gesprungen. Chad arbeitet bereits hart an der Entwicklung des T\u00fcrsystems. Derzeit arbeitet er an einer Signalleitung, die eine gr\u00f6\u00dfere Modularit\u00e4t innerhalb des T\u00fcrsystems erm\u00f6glicht, nachdem er die Arbeit an Proxy-Triggern wie einer automatischen T\u00fcr\u00f6ffnung, Audio-Triggern und Animationen beendet hat. Patrick hat an der Entwicklung von Controller Managern gearbeitet. Dies sind Systeme, die Sitzpriorit\u00e4t, Priorit\u00e4ten f\u00fcr Komponenten und das Hinzuf\u00fcgen von Ereignissen zu Komponenten festlegen.\n\n\nTechnisches Design\nDer Lead Tech Designer Kirk Tome hat sich im April mit vielen Priorit\u00e4ten besch\u00e4ftigt. Eine Priorit\u00e4t war die Diskussion und Sezierung (zusammen mit seinen Partnern auf der ganzen Welt) der neuen und kommenden Schiffe, die freigegeben werden sollen. Er hat auch die Bem\u00fchungen des Tech Design Teams bez\u00fcglich des Refactors von K\u00fchlern und Kraftwerken sowie die Erstellung von Schilden und Quantenfahrantrieben unterst\u00fctzt.\n\nMatt Sherman hat nicht nur daran gearbeitet, den Reliant flugbereit zu machen, er schreibt auch den Designbrief f\u00fcr den 85X und das White Box Setup f\u00fcr den viel gelobten Herald. Matt hat auch Hand in Hand mit Kirk gearbeitet, um die Feinheiten von Quantum Travel \u00fcber die grundlegenden und einf\u00fchrenden Mechanismen hinaus aufzuzeigen, die derzeit im Baby PU verf\u00fcgbar sind.\n\nIn den letzten Wochen haben wir mehrere neue Mechaniken\/Gameplay-Features vorgestellt, die wir ausgearbeitet haben. Von diesen neuen Funktionen ist die Salvage-Funktionalit\u00e4t eine, die Calix Reneau untersucht hat, und er hat stetige Fortschritte bei der Vorbereitung dieses Systems f\u00fcr den ersten Rollout gemacht. Dar\u00fcber hinaus hat Calix auch untersucht, wie Endstationen funktionieren werden. Dies bezieht sich auf die Arbeitspl\u00e4tze, mit denen die Spieler verschiedene Funktionen wie den Bergungsmechaniker bedienen, welche Funktionen auf dem Bildschirm des Terminals verf\u00fcgbar sind und so weiter.\n\n\nNarrativ\nGeschwader 42, Geschwader 42, Geschwader 42, Geschwader 42.....\n\nWir haben mit voller Wucht daran gearbeitet, die Skripte zu \u00fcberfluten, um herauszufinden, welche Teile wir ben\u00f6tigen, um die zus\u00e4tzlichen Skripte zu schreiben, die ben\u00f6tigt werden, um die L\u00fccken zu schlie\u00dfen, den \u00fcberarbeiteten Level-Flow und die allgemeine Atmosph\u00e4re widerzuspiegeln.\n\nIch w\u00fcrde gerne n\u00e4her darauf eingehen, aber ich bekr\u00e4ftige meine strenge NO SPOILER-Politik. Wir werden hoffentlich in der Lage sein, ein wenig mehr ins Detail zu gehen, wenn wir aus der Luft kommen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nIn der Zwischenzeit haben wir die Bed\u00fcrfnisse f\u00fcr das Persistente Universum jongliert; alles von der Aufnahme von Fiktionsp\u00e4ssen an verschiedenen Orten \u00fcber die Ausarbeitung potenzieller Erz\u00e4hlm\u00f6glichkeiten bis hin zur Generierung von Artikelbeschreibungen (eine Aufgabe, die wahrscheinlich f\u00fcr einige Zeit ziemlich einheitlich sein wird), der Hilfe bei der Beschilderung und anderen Umweltstorytelling und dem Schreiben von viel Kommt-\/Nachrichtentexten.\n\nGute Zeiten.\n\nAuch hier werden wir etwas ausf\u00fchrlicher darauf eingehen k\u00f6nnen, sobald diese Dinge \u00f6ffentlich bekannt werden.\nBis zum n\u00e4chsten Mal.\n\n\nKunst\nDas Engineering-Team ist nicht das einzige Team, das im Laufe des Monats April gewachsen ist. Die Kunstfamilie CIG Los Angeles wuchs mit der Aufnahme von Byungjin \"Jin\" Hyun. Als unglaublich talentierter K\u00fcnstler ist Jin in das Innere der Drake Caterpillar eingedrungen. Zusammen mit 3D Art Lead Elwin Bachiller und Daniel Kamentsky, die an der Erstellung der Innenwohnr\u00e4ume der Caterpillar arbeiten, ist es ein Schiff, das sich als \u00e4u\u00dferst sch\u00f6n erweist.\n\nW\u00e4hrend die drei hart daran arbeiten, den Caterpillar zum Leben zu erwecken, w\u00e4ren diese Vorteile ohne ein erstaunliches Team von Konzeptk\u00fcnstlern, die die \u00e4sthetische Richtung f\u00fcr das, was geschaffen werden soll, vorgeben, nicht m\u00f6glich gewesen. Die Konzeptk\u00fcnstler Gurmukh Bhasin und Justin Wentz entwarfen die Konzeptteile f\u00fcr die Au\u00dfen- bzw. Kommandobr\u00fccke der Caterpillar.\n\nCG Supervisor Forrest Stephan, nachdem er von einem Aufenthalt in unserem britischen B\u00fcro zur\u00fcckgekehrt ist, hat seine betr\u00e4chtlichen Talente in die Entwicklung der Pristine Materials for the Pilot Flight Suit eingebracht, speziell f\u00fcr die Oberfl\u00e4che des Spielobjekts und die Unterst\u00fctzung beim Einkauf von Kleidung f\u00fcr die PU.\n\nOmar Aweidah hat das High-Poly-Modell f\u00fcr die leichte R\u00fcstung fertiggestellt, w\u00e4hrend eine unserer neueren K\u00fcnstlerinnen, Cheyne Hessler, die Game Asset Geometrie f\u00fcr Spieler-Jetpacks erstellt hat.\nSchlie\u00dflich hat unser eigener Haute Couture Modefan, Jeremiah Lee, seine F\u00e4higkeiten in die Gestaltung von Kost\u00fcmen\/Kleidung f\u00fcr die PU eingebracht. Schlie\u00dflich muss man bei einem Ausflug durch das 30. Jahrhundert gut aussehen.\n\n\nGlobale technische Inhalte\nWie wir bereits in der Vergangenheit erl\u00e4utert haben, ist das Tech Content Team einzigartig. Obwohl amorph in der Form, sind seine Funktionen und Richtlinien unter der Leitung von Sean Tracy sehr klar. Sean hat die Designunterlagen verfasst, wie die Charakteranpassungstechnologie funktionieren wird, w\u00e4hrend Senior Technical Artist Mark McCall die Aufgabe der Forschung und Entwicklung angegangen ist. Dies soll das System werden, das es den Spielern erm\u00f6glicht, ihre Charaktere im Spiel anzupassen. Es stellt dich die Frage, wessen Gesicht in Star Citizen verewigt wird? Wird deines als b\u00f6sartiger Pirat, der die Handelswege auf seiner endlosen Suche nach Beute st\u00f6rt, in Verruf geraten? Oder wird es ein wohlwollendes Gesicht eines geliebten Politikers sein? Vielleicht gibt dir ein epischer Bart einen flotten, schurkischen Blick, der die Massen verzaubern kann. Das sind die Dinge, die wir uns vorstellen, wenn wir dar\u00fcber nachdenken, wohin Star Citizen uns alle f\u00fchren wird.\n\nAssociate Technical Artist Patrick Salerno's Arbeit an LOD's hat verschiedenen Komponenten wie Fahrwerk, Fluchtkapseln, Haupttriebwerke, Sitze und Waffenhalterungen neuen Glanz verliehen, um nur einige Punkte aus seiner umfassenden Liste zu nennen. Senior Technical Artist Matt Intrieri hat auch ein Audioproblem angesprochen, bei dem Gladiator-Pilotensitze mit Ein- und Ausstiegsanimationen den zugeh\u00f6rigen Audioeffekt anderswo ausl\u00f6sen lie\u00dfen, anstatt sich auf die Geometrie zu konzentrieren. Zus\u00e4tzlich zum Audioproblem behebt Matt auch mehrere Fehler, die von Enter\/Exit-Animationen bis hin zur Nachr\u00fcstung von Legacy-Schiffen wie der Anvil Hornet reichen.\n\nAuf der Rigging-Seite des Tech Content Teams, nach Abschluss der Undersuit Armor Game Asset Rigging, ist Senior Rigger John Riggs dabei, Pipeline-Skripte f\u00fcr Maya zu erstellen. Associate Rigger Gaige Hallman beschloss, das Kleidungsvolumen auf die Charaktere zu beschr\u00e4nken, zusammen mit mehreren massiven Bekleidungsfixes, um sich auf das bevorstehende Einkaufserlebnis vorzubereiten.\n\n\nQualit\u00e4tssicherung\nDer Schwerpunkt von LA-QA lag auf der bevorstehenden Version 2.4, dem Testen neuer Funktionen und der Sicherstellung von Stabilit\u00e4t und Leistung \u00fcber alle Builds hinweg. Insbesondere konzentrierte sich das Team auf:\n\n2.4 Persistenz Merkmale Neue Einkaufsimplementierung Persistent Universe Clothing Starfarer Flight Performance Das Team erhielt auch einen zus\u00e4tzlichen Leckerbissen, einen ersten Blick auf gro\u00dffl\u00e4chige Sonnensysteme zu werfen, mit der Hoffnung, die Funktionalit\u00e4t der prozeduralen Planeten in den kommenden Monaten zu implementieren.\n\n\nProduktion\nApropos amorph, dies ist ein Deskriptor, der oft verwendet wird, um zu beschreiben, was es eigentlich ist, was die Produzenten tun. Senior Producer Eric Kieron Davis leitet nicht nur das CIG LA Production Team, er hat auch den gr\u00f6\u00dften Teil des laufenden Baus und der Versch\u00f6nerung unseres neuen B\u00fcros \u00fcberwacht. Obwohl wir bereits im November in das Geb\u00e4ude eingezogen sind, haben wir begonnen, die letzten Handgriffe zu vollbringen, damit sich dieses B\u00fcro wie zu Hause f\u00fchlt. Dazu geh\u00f6ren die \u00dcberwachung der Kunstwerke, die an den W\u00e4nden der Besprechungsr\u00e4ume aufgeh\u00e4ngt sind, die Beauftragung von Einzelpersonen, Bilder von Star Citizen zu erstellen und auf unseren Kommiss\u00e4rw\u00e4nden zu montieren, sowie unsere wirklich gro\u00dfartigen Faux-Airlock-T\u00fcren, die von der Lobby in das Herz des Geb\u00e4udes f\u00fchren. Der B\u00fcrokomfort macht in Krisenzeiten einen gro\u00dfen Unterschied, und die immersive Umgebung unterst\u00fctzt Energie und Kreativit\u00e4t mehr, als viele wirklich sch\u00e4tzen.\n\nDie Associate Producers Mark Hong und Randy Vazquez waren unerm\u00fcdliche Derwische an Energie, damit sich die LA-Teams darauf konzentrierten, 2.4 auf die PTU und dann auf die offizielle Ver\u00f6ffentlichung zu bringen. Randy ist verantwortlich f\u00fcr die Einrichtung regelm\u00e4\u00dfiger interner, b\u00fcroweiter Spieletestsitzungen, um alle mit unseren Spielinhalten vertraut und flie\u00dfend zu halten, w\u00e4hrend er gleichzeitig die Zeitpl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr laufende und zuk\u00fcnftige Aufgaben f\u00fcr die Teams Tech Design und Engineering einh\u00e4lt, w\u00e4hrend Mark Hong die Teams Tech Content und Art unterst\u00fctzt. Diese Aufgaben sind nicht nur f\u00fcr 2.4, sondern auch f\u00fcr die kommenden Features in der Pipeline. Produktionsassistent Darian Vorlick hat dem Community-Team im vergangenen Monat geholfen, indem er vor\u00fcbergehend die Verantwortung f\u00fcr die Aktualisierung von Social Networks auf Facebook, Twitter und Instagram \u00fcbernommen hat und die Produktionsmitarbeiter bei Bedarf unterst\u00fctzt.\n\n\nFazit\nWie in jedem Vormonat bei der CIG gibt es keinen einzigen Moment, in dem das B\u00fcro nicht vor Aktivit\u00e4t strotzt. Da wir uns weitgehend auf die Fertigstellung von 2.4. konzentrieren, war auch der April definitiv nicht von neuen Inhalten verschont. Wir stellten auch den aktualisierten MISC Prospector vor und zur Feier seiner Einf\u00fchrung haben wir einen Konzeptverkauf mit begleitenden Qualit\u00e4tselementen wie Details zu Mining, eine \"Bewerbung\" f\u00fcr den Bergbau bei Shubin Interstellar und unsere regelm\u00e4\u00dfigen Wochenprogramme wie \"Around the Vers\", die Reihe \"10 for the Chairman\/Developers\" und \"Bugsmashers\" aufgenommen.\n\nDer Monat Mai sieht nicht minder aufregend und intensiv aus. Ihre Unterst\u00fctzung und Begeisterung sowie die Vision von Chris Roberts inspirieren uns zu nichts. Wir hoffen, dass Ihnen das, was wir in diesem Monat erreicht haben, gef\u00e4llt und wir freuen uns darauf, in naher und ferner Zukunft neue Inhalte zu pr\u00e4sentieren. Vielen Dank, dass Sie auf dieser Reise ein Sternenb\u00fcrger sind.\n\nBis n\u00e4chsten Monat.\n\nPersistente Tests\n\nIn diesem Monat ging es um Ausdauer und das Testen von 2.4. Alle Teams haben hart daran gearbeitet, verschiedene Gegenst\u00e4nde zu testen und zu reparieren, die in die Live-Version des Spiels kommen. 2.4 entwickelt sich zu einem monumentalen Update des Spiels, das viele Systeme, die sich seit einiger Zeit in der Entwicklung befinden, online bringen und die Voraussetzungen daf\u00fcr schaffen wird, dass viele weitere Features in den kommenden Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen online kommen. Wir bedanken uns bei allen in Austin f\u00fcr ihre harte Arbeit. Hier sind detaillierte Berichte von jedem Team!\n\n\nEntwicklung\nDer Schwerpunkt des ATX-Entwicklungsteams lag in diesem Monat auf der Entwicklung des ersten Releases von Shopping and Persistence. Rob Reininger und unser Designteam hier in Austin haben mit Unterst\u00fctzung von BHVR die Gesch\u00e4fte eingerichtet, die zus\u00e4tzlich zu dem, was bereits in Area18 existiert, auf Port Olisar funktionieren. Wir haben Casaba Outlet und Cubby Blast er\u00f6ffnet und wollen Kleidung, R\u00fcstungen und Waffen in unserer ersten Version verkaufen. Es hat eine Menge Arbeit von mehreren verschiedenen Leuten erfordert, um sicherzustellen, dass die Kleidung und die Waffenartikel richtig in den Regalen und Regalen der Gesch\u00e4fte eingebrannt werden, um die Requisiten der Schaufensterpuppen so einzurichten, dass Kleidung und R\u00fcstung richtig gekauft und von ihr ausgestattet werden k\u00f6nnen, und um alle Daten so einzurichten, dass sie richtig in der Kaufoberfl\u00e4che erscheinen. Pete Mackay hat seine Zeit damit verbracht, die Preise im Spiel auszugleichen und eine neue Formel zu entwickeln, die helfen wird, die Preise f\u00fcr alles von Kleidung bis hin zu Schiffen zu bestimmen.\n\nWir haben auch einige Zeit damit verbracht, die kurz- und langfristigen Designanforderungen f\u00fcr den so genannten \"Try On\/Inspect Mode\" festzulegen. Dieser Modus wird eingeschaltet, wenn Sie das entsprechende \"Use Verb\" innerhalb der Shop-Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che ausw\u00e4hlen, und er erm\u00f6glicht es Ihnen, einen m\u00f6glichen Kauf f\u00fcr Ihren Charakter zu sehen, bevor Sie ihn tats\u00e4chlich kaufen. Wir haben eine erste Implementierung und planen die restlichen Funktionen f\u00fcr zuk\u00fcnftige Versionen.\n\nWir konzentrieren uns jetzt darauf, Dumper's Depot online zu stellen, so dass du auch im Spiel nach Schiffskomponenten und Waffen suchen kannst. Rob Reininger entwirft ein Game Design Document f\u00fcr \"Purchasing via Terminal\", das in Gesch\u00e4ften eingesetzt wird, deren Bestand zu gro\u00df ist, um in alle Regale zu passen. Schiffskomponenten\/Waffen und Schiffe im Allgemeinen sind ein gutes Beispiel daf\u00fcr, wo diese Funktion eingesetzt wird.\n\nIn weiteren Nachrichten ist die Arbeit am ersten Einsatz des Persistence-Backends nun abgeschlossen! Jason Ely, Tom Sawyer und Jeff Zhu arbeiteten diesen Monat flei\u00dfig daran, unsere Dienste endlich dauerhaft zu machen. Wir haben unseren Programmierern und Designern die M\u00f6glichkeit gegeben, sich jetzt in dieses Thema einzubringen, so dass wir mit der vollst\u00e4ndigen Aufrechterhaltung von Dingen wie Spielergesundheit, Schiffsschaden, Feindseligkeitsstufe, Gegenstandsk\u00e4ufe, Munitionszahl und vieles mehr beginnen k\u00f6nnen. Wir haben auch eine neue W\u00e4hrung namens Alpha UEC eingef\u00fchrt, die haupts\u00e4chlich zum Testen von Einkaufsm\u00f6glichkeiten und anderen Dienstleistungen verwendet wird. Diese neue W\u00e4hrung wird zum Ausgleich von Preis und Gesamtwirtschaft beitragen und kann jederzeit gel\u00f6scht werden, um neue Korrekturen vorzunehmen. Wir richten unser Augenmerk nun auf die Planung einer Roadmap, um die tats\u00e4chliche persistente UEC ins Spiel zu bringen.\n\nEin weiteres wichtiges Feature, an dem wir gearbeitet haben, ist die Port\u00e4nderung. Wir haben mit dem UI-Team in Gro\u00dfbritannien zusammengearbeitet, um eine neue App im mobiGlas zu implementieren, die es euch Jungs erm\u00f6glicht, eure Hangars und schlie\u00dflich vieles mehr individuell anzupassen. Wir haben unsere Hangars und Flair-Objekte auf das neue Item System 2.0 umgestellt, so dass Sie nun auf bestimmte \"Ports\" rund um Ihren Hangar zugreifen und Dinge platzieren k\u00f6nnen, wo immer Sie wollen! Schlie\u00dflich wird dies auch eine Anpassung der Schiffsverladungen erm\u00f6glichen. Wir haben den Ball ins Rollen gebracht, indem wir ein Design f\u00fcr den Einsatz dieser App auch an anderen Orten, wie der Kreuzritter-Karte, ausgearbeitet haben.\n\nUnser Schiffsteam hier in Austin setzt seine Arbeit vom letzten Monat fort. Chris Smith arbeitet an dem neuen und verbesserten Hornet F7A-Modell f\u00fcr Squadron 42, das sich derzeit in der Graubox-Phase befindet. Josh Coons f\u00e4hrt mit dem Drake Herald mit, ebenfalls in der Greybox-Phase. Diese Schiffe kommen gut voran und es ist aufregend zu sehen, wie alte und neue Schiffe die extreme Aufmerksamkeit f\u00fcr Details erhalten, die diese Jungs mit all der Erfahrung und den Ressourcen, die wir w\u00e4hrend unseres Wachstums kultiviert haben, zur Verf\u00fcgung stellen.\n\nDas Animationsteam in Austin hat in verschiedenen Bereichen des Projekts wie gewohnt unterst\u00fctzt. Unser Schiffsanimationsteam hat Schiffe aller Gr\u00f6\u00dfen und Formen in die Finger bekommen, einschlie\u00dflich Bugfixing f\u00fcr den Starfarer, Reviews f\u00fcr die Hornet F7A, Herald, Caterpillar und Dragonfly sowie Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr die Idris. Sie haben auch einige neue Animationen f\u00fcr den Ein- und Ausstieg aus der Freelancer-Leiter erstellt und die Kampf-Ein- und -Ausg\u00e4nge f\u00fcr Aurora und Avenger eingerichtet. Das PU-Animationsteam hat seine Arbeit an den Animationen des Spaceship Showrooms und der Nachtclub-Szene abgeschlossen und richtet sein Augenmerk auf die Unterst\u00fctzung der Staffel 42. Sie werden Hintergrundanimationen f\u00fcr die Performance Capture Szenen erstellen und Bewegungsabl\u00e4ufe f\u00fcr verschiedene Charaktere im Spiel implementieren.\nSchlie\u00dflich hat der Lichtk\u00fcnstler Emre Switzer seine letzten Optimierungen auf der Levski Landezone fast abgeschlossen. Das Marktgebiet ist richtig beleuchtet und entsprechend schmutzig. Insgesamt ist Levski eine fantastische Umgebung und wir k\u00f6nnen es kaum erwarten, es in die H\u00e4nde zu bekommen!\n\n\nQualit\u00e4tssicherung\nDer April war fast ausschlie\u00dflich dem Testen von 2.4.0 gewidmet. Da Persistence online verf\u00fcgbar ist, wurde eine Reihe neuer Funktionen hinzugef\u00fcgt, die dokumentiert und getestet werden m\u00fcssen. Unser Spezialist f\u00fcr Persistent Universe, Todd Raffray, hat eng mit dem Designteam zusammengearbeitet, um alle neuen Funktionen zu dokumentieren, die f\u00fcr 2.4.0 online gegangen sind, und den Rest des QA-Teams \u00fcber ihr erwartetes Verhalten auf dem Laufenden zu halten. Jeff Daily hat an der Erweiterung unserer internen Checklisten gearbeitet, um alle neuen Funktionen zu integrieren, sowie an der Verbesserung einiger unserer \u00e4lteren Checklisten. Allein das Einkaufen erweitert unsere regelm\u00e4\u00dfigen Checklisten um viele neue Testf\u00e4lle; hier sind nur eine Handvoll Tests, die allein f\u00fcr das Einkaufen durchgef\u00fchrt werden m\u00fcssen:\n\n\u00d6ffnet sich die Einkaufsoberfl\u00e4che und durchl\u00e4uft jeder Bildschirm richtig? Werden alle Informationen auf der Einkaufsoberfl\u00e4che korrekt angezeigt? Gibt es Tippfehler? Werden die korrekten Markennamen und Beschreibungen der Kleidung angezeigt? Werden Lokalisierungsbezeichnungen angezeigt? Wird die Transaktion vom Server verarbeitet? Wird die aUEC ordnungsgem\u00e4\u00df vom Spielerkonto abgezogen? Wird der gekaufte Gegenstand dem Spielerkonto des Spielers gutgeschrieben? Aktualisiert mobiGlas die aUEC des Spielers nach Abschluss des Kaufs? Erscheinen die Elemente auf dem Charakter korrekt? Schneiden sie den Charakter auf unerwartete Weise? Gibt es Shader-Probleme mit den neuen Bekleidungsmaterialien? Verformen sie sich bei Animationen richtig? Erscheinen die Artikel in den Regalen\/W\u00e4schest\u00e4ndern korrekt? Zeigen die Elemente ihre Augmented Reality-Schnittstelle an, wenn sie auf dem Kleiderst\u00e4nder angezeigt werden, und sind die angezeigten Informationen korrekt? Wenn du die Option \"Anprobieren\" verwendest, werden die Gegenst\u00e4nde vom Kleiderst\u00e4nder entfernt, w\u00e4hrend der Charakter sie tr\u00e4gt, und werden sie zur\u00fcckgegeben, sobald der Charakter die Schnittstelle \"Anprobieren\" verl\u00e4sst? Erscheinen deine neuen Kleider, wenn andere Spieler deinen Charakter sehen? Verh\u00e4lt sich der Charakter beim Aktivieren der Luftschleuse in Zivilkleidung angemessen? Persistenz f\u00fcgt nicht nur neue Funktionen hinzu, wie z.B. das Einkaufen im Spiel, sondern \u00e4ndert auch bestehende Funktionen wie die Anpassung des Hangars. In 2.4.0.0 k\u00f6nnen die Spieler nun w\u00e4hlen, welche Flairgegenst\u00e4nde sie anzeigen und wo sie sie anzeigen. Aus diesem Grund hat Robert Gaither eng mit unserem Persistent Universe Designer, Rob Reininger, zusammengearbeitet, um Item-Ports in allen Hangars einzurichten, damit Sie entscheiden k\u00f6nnen, wie Sie sie anpassen m\u00f6chten.\n\nMit jeder neuen Hauptversion kommen neue Schiffe! 2.4.0 wird sehen, dass der Reliant den Hangar-Ready-Status erreicht, und der Starfarer wurde nun flugbereit gemacht, so dass wir unsere P\u00e4sse auf beiden Schiffen gemacht haben, um sicherzustellen, dass sie wie erwartet funktionieren. Als zus\u00e4tzlichen Bonus werden Waffengeschosse nun korrekt in\/innerhalb der lokalen Physik-Gitter \u00fcbergehen! Das ist richtig, du kannst jetzt von au\u00dfen nach innen eines Schiffes (oder umgekehrt) schie\u00dfen und Spieler treffen, die nur \u00e4hhhh.... zuf\u00e4llig im Weg sind. Also z\u00f6gere nicht, deine Boarding-Taktik zu \u00fcben und an einigen fps-Feuergefechten im Starfarer (und jedem anderen Schiff mit einem ausreichend gro\u00dfen Innenraum) teilzunehmen, wenn 2.4.0 trifft!\n\nAndrew Rexroth und Katarzyna Mierostawska haben die Tests der Staffel 42 zusammen mit ihren britischen Kollegen fortgesetzt und alle Testf\u00e4lle dokumentiert, die notwendig sind, damit der Rest des QA-Teams mit voller Kraft in den Kampf ziehen kann.\n\nUnsere QA-Informationsfachfrau Marissa Meissner wurde k\u00fcrzlich zur QA-Leiterin bef\u00f6rdert und hat ihre H\u00e4nde voll damit besch\u00e4ftigt, unsere neuesten neuen QA-Mitglieder zu schulen: Jesse Mark (Jesse-CIG), Don Allen (Tunahead-CIG), Scott McCrea (Spectral-CIG), Bryce Benton (Underscore-CIG) und Brandon Crocker (Neverender-CIG). Bitte z\u00f6gere nicht, sie angemessen (waffenm\u00e4\u00dfig) willkommen zu hei\u00dfen, wenn du sie im Spiel triffst!\n\nUnd schlie\u00dflich ist es 0 Tage her, seit ein Mitglied der QA an der Luftschleuse gestorben ist.\n\n\nSpielunterst\u00fctzung\nApril war ein super Monat f\u00fcr den Game Support! Wir haben die Arbeit an 2.3.1 in der ersten Monatsh\u00e4lfte abgeschlossen und uns dann stark darauf konzentriert, unsere Ticketarbeit nachzuholen.\n\nAm wichtigsten ist, dass wir mit Toast zusammengearbeitet haben, um den Prozess f\u00fcr unser brandneues freiwilliges Testprogramm Evocati Test Flight zu etablieren. Diese Gruppe, von denen 1\/3 von unseren wichtigsten Mitwirkenden des Issue Council und 2\/3 von unseren aktivsten PTU-Testern stammt, wird als \"Pre-PTU\"-Gruppe fungieren und Builds testen, um sicherzustellen, dass sie stabil sind, bevor der Build an ein breiteres Publikum ausgeliefert wird.\n\nWir werden sehr gespannt sein, diese Gruppe Anfang Mai auf dem 2.4.0 Playtest zu ver\u00f6ffentlichen!\nF\u00fcr diejenigen, die an Evocati oder PTU teilnehmen wollen, ist es trotzdem m\u00f6glich! Der beste Weg, dies zu tun, ist, ein aktives Mitglied des Issue Council zu sein, das \u00fcber Fehler berichtet und dazu beitr\u00e4gt. Es gibt eine Menge Konkurrenz f\u00fcr ein paar Pl\u00e4tze, aber wir werden versuchen, unsere R\u00e4nge sp\u00e4ter in diesem Sommer zu aktualisieren, also k\u00fcmmere dich um diese Fehler!\n\nWir haben auch eine weitere Position als Game Support Agent in Austin, Texas, er\u00f6ffnet, da die Bed\u00fcrfnisse des Star Citizen Service weiter wachsen und expandieren. Schaut es euch unter https:\/\/cloudimperiumgames.com\/jobs\/415-Game-Support-Agent an!!!!\n\n\nIT\/Betrieb\nDie L\u00f6sung f\u00fcr langsam ist, es schnell zu machen. Die IT-Abteilung verbringt einen Gro\u00dfteil ihrer Zeit damit, Leistungsengp\u00e4sse zu identifizieren und findet oft neue und kreative Wege, um sie zu beheben. Dieser Monat war nicht anders. Bei jeder Reparatur steckt normalerweise etwas dahinter.\n\nIn unserem unerm\u00fcdlichen Bestreben, die Durchlaufzeiten unserer Builds weiter zu reduzieren, haben wir den neuesten Engpass - den Speicher - identifiziert und angegangen. An dieser Stelle \u00fcberwachen wir alles bis ins kleinste Detail. Nachdem wir k\u00fcrzlich die Netzwerk- und Speicherleistung verbessert haben, stellten wir fest, dass wir viel Zeit damit verbringen, auf der Festplatte nach Speicher zu suchen. Dies war auf eine k\u00fcrzliche Code-\u00c4nderung zur\u00fcckzuf\u00fchren, die von unserem Engine-Team vorgenommen wurde, um die Build-Performance unter bestimmten Bedingungen zu verbessern, was tats\u00e4chlich zu einem h\u00f6heren RAM-Verbrauch f\u00fchrte, als wir erwartet hatten, da ihre Leistungssteigerungen aus dem Caching von mehr in den RAM kommen. Um dies zu ber\u00fccksichtigen, haben wir den Arbeitsspeicher gegen\u00fcber denjenigen, die Maschinen bauen, um das Vierfache erh\u00f6ht und die Leistung entsprechend gesteigert. Nat\u00fcrlich bedeutet dies, dass wir dadurch den physischen RAM \u00fcber den gesamten Build-Stack erh\u00f6hen und den n\u00e4chsten Leistungsgewinn, den wir finden k\u00f6nnen, aggressiv verfolgen werden.\n\nDie IT-Abteilung war auch in London damit besch\u00e4ftigt, sich f\u00fcr einen schnellen Mocap-Shoot vorzubereiten. Es handelte sich um ein Ground Up-Projekt, das mit leeren R\u00e4umen begann und alles Notwendige in kurzer Zeit aufbaute. Zus\u00e4tzlich zu den mocap-Ger\u00e4ten selbst setzen wir mehrere Support-Teams ein, die alle \u00fcber ein internes Netzwerk verbunden und wieder mit dem Heimnetzwerk in Manchester verbunden sein m\u00fcssen. \u00dcberwachungssysteme, lokale Speicher, Firewalls, Backup-Systeme, WLAN, Laptops m\u00fcssen alle so ausgelegt sein, dass sie jede Aufnahme, ob gro\u00df oder klein, unterst\u00fctzen. Wir haben festgestellt, dass der Schl\u00fcssel zum Erfolg \u00fcber die Planung und Organisation hinausgeht. Damit jedes Remote-Projekt erfolgreich ist, m\u00fcssen wir das Netzwerk als Erweiterung unseres internen Netzwerks aufbauen, damit die Teammitglieder direkt zur Arbeit gehen k\u00f6nnen, ohne sich um irgendetwas k\u00fcmmern zu m\u00fcssen.\n\n\nLiveOps\/DevOps\/DevOps\nMit weniger Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen in diesem Monat haben wir uns die Zeit genommen, einige notwendige Hausreinigungen durchzuf\u00fchren. Ahmed hat wesentliche Teile des Bereitstellungsprozesses neu geschrieben. Die Ziele dieser Arbeit sind zweigeteilt. Die Fortschritte in der Persistenz bringen erhebliche \u00c4nderungen im Bereitstellungsprozess mit sich, die den Mix im Vergleich zu fr\u00fcheren Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen erheblich komplexer machen. Wir haben diese Gelegenheit auch genutzt, um die Effizienz nach M\u00f6glichkeit zu verbessern und die Bedingungen f\u00fcr die Fehlerbehandlung zu verbessern, die alle dazu beitragen, dass die Arbeit, die Ahmed und sein Team hinter den Kulissen leisten, viel besser wird. Es wird zwar immer Raum f\u00fcr Verbesserungen geben, aber die meisten Menschen w\u00fcrden es aufgrund der hervorragenden Arbeit, die in diesem Bereich geleistet wird, nie erfahren. Mit jeder Weiterentwicklung des Publishing-Tool-Sets reduzieren wir den manuellen Aufwand f\u00fcr die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Star Citizen.\n\nWir alle freuen uns sehr, diesen Monat zwei neue Ingenieure in unserem Team begr\u00fc\u00dfen zu d\u00fcrfen. Sowohl Andy als auch Nate kommen als DevOps-Ingenieure zu uns und haben bereits den ersten Schritt getan. Andy erforscht neue Systeme, mit denen er unsere gro\u00dfen Datenberichtssysteme auf der Serverseite verbessern wird, und Nate arbeitet bereits an einer Reihe von Prototypen, mit denen wir unsere serverseitigen Publishing-Systeme f\u00fcr die QA-, PTU- und Live-Umgebung st\u00e4rker automatisieren werden. W\u00e4hrend es sich hierbei um ziemlich gro\u00dfe Projekte handelt, bewegen sich diese Jungs bereits in unserem Tempo, also sind wir gespannt, was sie sich noch in ihrem ersten Monat einfallen lassen.\n\nDank unseres neuen Testbuild-Systems sehen wir in diesem Monat einen deutlich stabileren Baufortschritt als erwartet. Wir haben dies auch um einen Test Build-Schritt f\u00fcr risikoreiche Code-\u00c4nderungen erweitert, der hilft, die Build-Pipeline weiter zu stabilisieren und die Builds stabiler in Richtung QA zu verschieben. Durch die enge Zusammenarbeit mit der IT haben wir einige weitere Bereiche identifiziert, in denen wir die Gesamtleistung des Builds verbessern k\u00f6nnen. Wir kommen an den Punkt, an dem sich ein Geschwindigkeitsgewinn nicht mehr so gro\u00df anf\u00fchlt wie fr\u00fcher, aber wenn jede Stunde z\u00e4hlt, werden wir weiterhin jeden m\u00f6glichen Leistungsgewinn finden, den wir erzielen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nGepeitscht und geknallt\n\nDas Team von Foundry 42 UK arbeitet unerm\u00fcdlich sowohl an Star Citizen als auch an Staffel 42, sind begeistert, dass jeder sehen kann, was er sich ausgedacht hat.\n\n\nUmweltteam\nEinige \u00c4nderungen kommen nach Port Olisar. Wir haben einige Einkaufsm\u00f6glichkeiten innerhalb der Streben durchquert und eingerichtet, was der Einrichtung mehr Pers\u00f6nlichkeit verleiht und ein hervorragendes Testfeld f\u00fcr den Einkaufsmechaniker ist. Wir beginnen zun\u00e4chst mit einer kleinen Anzahl von Standorten, aber in Zukunft werden wir mehr Standorte einf\u00fchren, da mehr kaufbare Artikel online kommen. Diese Updates werden f\u00fcr die n\u00e4chste Version erscheinen, also freuen wir uns darauf, sie euch zur Verf\u00fcgung zu stellen.\n\nNyx befindet sich in der Endphase der Feinabstimmung und Optimierung, wir arbeiten hart daran, unsere Budgets in jedem Bereich zu erreichen, um sicherzustellen, dass wir ein reibungsloses Erlebnis bieten. Sobald die Verfahrenstechnik f\u00fcr die Prime Time bereit ist, werden wir den Standort in das Gel\u00e4nde integrieren und zur Freigabe bereitstellen.\n\nDie harte Arbeit wird auch an der Sq42-Kampagne fortgesetzt, die vertikale Slice-Ebene setzt ihre letzte Phase der Kunstproduktion und Teil der w\u00f6chentlichen Firmen-Spieltests fort.\nDas ist alles f\u00fcr diesen Monat Leute, frohes Einkaufen in 2.4 und genie\u00dfen Sie das Vitamin D-Sonnenbad.....\n\n\nF42 AD\nEs gibt Monate, in denen es schwer ist, Schritt zu halten, die Durchfluss- und \u00c4nderungsrate ist manchmal erstaunlich! Ich muss zugeben, der Prospektor, wir haben wirklich mit dem Schiff gerungen, und es brauchte viel Arbeit sowohl an Gavin als auch an meiner Front, um es dorthin zu bringen, wo Chris gl\u00fccklich war - alles in allem kamen die Ergebnisse ziemlich gut an, und es k\u00f6nnte nicht mehr lange dauern, bis es fertig wird!\n\nDie Konzeptarbeit an der neuen Corvette, einem kleinen Privatfahrzeug und einem neuen kleinen Schiff wird ebenfalls fortgesetzt. Wir haben auch einige Behring-Schiffswaffen (Gr\u00f6\u00dfe 5,4,3) und eine Bootsladung mit Komponenten in Angriff genommen, nicht zu vergessen der Klaus und Werner Waffenfamilienf\u00fchrer mit der Hoffnung, die Waffen zu aktualisieren und zu vereinheitlichen. Es gab auch eine Menge Putzen der vertikalen Slice-Level- und Requisiten-Designs - wir alle kennen den Standard, den wir erreichen wollen, es gibt nur keine Abk\u00fcrzungen und es braucht Zeit.\n\nF\u00fcr die Charaktere wurde viel Arbeit mit dem Vanduul geleistet, da Chris regelm\u00e4\u00dfiger im Studio war, was es viel einfacher macht, das Design der Kreatur zu optimieren. Auch an Kost\u00fcmen f\u00fcr medizinisches Personal und UEE-Personal wurde gearbeitet.\n\n\nVFX\nDiesen Monat war das VFX-Team damit besch\u00e4ftigt, an dem Starfarer zu arbeiten. Insbesondere die Umsetzung seiner flugfertigen Effekte - einschlie\u00dflich Sch\u00e4den, Innenzust\u00e4nde, Triebwerke und Waffen. Vor allem die Inneneffekte waren aufgrund der schieren Menge an R\u00e4umen und G\u00e4ngen zeitaufw\u00e4ndig. Wie immer haben wir eng mit dem Schiffsteam zusammengearbeitet, um sicherzustellen, dass unsere Effekte perfekt mit der Beleuchtung harmonieren.\n\nWir haben auch Effekte f\u00fcr zwei neue Schiffswaffen geschaffen, die neuen Kreuzfahrergebiete um Effekte erweitert und unsere Effektkategorie \"High-Tech\" \u00fcberarbeitet.","zh_CN":"Greetings Citizens!\n\nYesterday, we pushed the first iteration of Star Citizen Alpha 2.4 to the Persistent Test Universe, and much of the month of April was spent in service of that endeavor. Alpha 2.4 promises to be one of our biggest patches yet: not only adding new front-facing content like ships and functional stores, but long-awaited \u201cunder-the-hood\u201d changes that create the necessary foundation for all the content yet to come.\n\nThese monthly reports are one of my favorite things we do here at Cloud Imperium Games. Even with all the internet shows like the 10 For Series, Around the Verse and Reverse the Verse that share information on the development of our games every week, there\u2019s still so much more that the hundreds of people worldwide supporting Star Citizen work on. We may not always be able to share every detail, but I\u2019m confident in both the quantity and quality of that which we share each and every week; and in this case every month.\n\nWith that, let\u2019s dive in and see what each studio has been working on in the month of April.\n\nMade in the Shade\n\nWhat a month April was! Looking at where we were in March, it is clear this is an epic undertaking and we are making steady progress on this grand adventure called Star Citizen. With another month come and gone, it is that time again where we review what has been accomplished in the CIG Los Angeles office, specifically.\n\nWhile the Los Angeles office is largely focused on getting 2.4 on to the PTU, each team is focused on multiple facets of its development. So let us take a look at what each team has been up to for the month of April.\n\n\nEngineering\nEngineering Lead Paul Reindell has been absolutely busy this month with the Los Angeles Engineering team. Last month we mentioned we had hired 2 new Gameplay Engineers, Patrick Mathieu and Chad McKinney. He has been helping bring the new Engineers up to speed, making sure they are well-versed in myriad processes involved at CIG. Furthermore, he has been doing support for 2.4 and several new features that are rolling out, including the Shopping UI, the new ItemSystem 2.0, and one of the biggest aspects, persistence. We are moving closer to having actual persistence in-game and the Engineering team has been making herculean efforts in making that function a reality.\n\nChad Zamzow has been working on building out the shield management mechanics, working with Tech Design Lead Kirk Tome on allowing player-control over the shield system. With the Shield Generator work being done, for the month of April he spent part of the time working on a Controller Interface for that feature and HUD code for the Shield Emitter.\n\nMark Abent has been working on the Seat feature, fixing up broken code and cleaning up the Entering Seats function including fixing player interactions, player enter\/exit\/idle and attachments. By the end of the month, Mark had progressed on to tackling the Phys Controller.\n\nAriel Xu has continually been working on creating our internal tool, the Port Editor. As mentioned in the past, this tool will allow the Designer greater power over editing the game, which is critical for expediting design and balancing efforts especially with the increasing numbers of assets entering the pipeline. Building game design tools is an incredibly exciting but daunting task. The ultimate goal is to provide designers with the tools they need to create new systems and features with as easy an interface as possible.\n\nUnder Paul\u2019s guidance, our two newbie Engineers Chad McKinney & Patrick Mathieu have jumped headfirst into the game. Chad is already hard at work on the Doors system. He is currently working on a signal pipe set up to allow greater modularity within the Door system after he finished working on proxy triggers such as an automatic door opening, audio triggers, and animations. Patrick has been working on developing Controller Managers. These are systems that designate seat-priority, priorities for components, and adding events to components.\n\n\nTech Design\nLead Tech Designer Kirk Tome has been occupied with a lot of priorities over the month of April. One priority has been discussing and dissecting (alongside his partners across the globe) the new and upcoming ships to be released. He has also supported the Tech Design team\u2019s endeavors regarding the refactor of Coolers and Power Plants along with charting out Shields and Quantum Travel Drives.\n\nMatt Sherman has not only been working on getting the Reliant flight-ready, he is also writing up the design brief for the 85X and the white box setup for the much-lauded Herald. Matt has also been working hand-in-hand with Kirk to chart out the intricacies of Quantum Travel beyond the basic and introductory mechanisms currently available in the baby PU.\n\nOver the past few weeks, we have been showcasing several new mechanics\/gameplay features we have been fleshing out. Of these new features, the Salvage functionality is one that Calix Reneau has been looking into and he has made steady progress to prepare this system for its first rollout. Furthermore, Calix has also looked into how terminal stations will function. This refers to the workstations players will use to operate various features such as the Salvage mechanic, what functionalities will be available on the terminal\u2019s screen and so forth.\n\n\nNarrative\nSquadron 42, Squadron 42, Squadron 42\u2026\n\nWe have been jamming full-tilt on pouring over the scripts to figure out what pieces we need to write the additional scripts needed to fill in the gaps, reflect revised level flow and general ambiance.\n\nI would love to be able to go into more detail, but I am reenlisting my strict NO SPOILER policy. We will hopefully be able to go into a little more detail when we can come up for air.\n\nIn the meantime, we have been juggling needs for the Persistent Universe; everything from taking fiction passes at various locations and working out potential narrative possibilities to generating item descriptions (a task that will probably be pretty consistent for some time), helping with signage and other environmental storytelling and writing a lot of comm\/message text.\n\nGood times.\n\nAgain, we will be able to go into a bit more detail once these things go public.\nUntil next time.\n\n\nArt\nThe Engineering team is not the only team that has expanded over the month of April. The CIG Los Angeles art family increased with the addition of Byungjin \u201cJin\u201d Hyun. An incredibly talented artist, Jin has plunged in by working on the interior of the Drake Caterpillar. Grouping up with 3D Art Lead Elwin Bachiller and Daniel Kamentsky who are working on creating the interior habitation sections of the Caterpillar, it is a ship that is turning out to be utterly beautiful.\n\nWhile the three of them are hard at work in bringing the Caterpillar to life, these assets would not be possible without an amazing team of Concept Artists who produce the aesthetic direction on what to create. Concept Artists Gurmukh Bhasin and Justin Wentz created the concept pieces for the Caterpillar\u2019s exterior and command bridge, respectively.\n\nCG Supervisor Forrest Stephan, after returning from a sojourn to our UK office, has been applying his substantial talents towards creating the Pristine Materials for the Pilot Flight Suit, specifically for the game asset surfacing and supporting the clothing shopping for the PU.\n\nOmar Aweidah completed the high-poly modeling for the light armor while one of our newer artists, Cheyne Hessler, has created the game asset geometry for player jetpacks.\nFinally, our own haute couture fashionista, Jeremiah Lee, has bent his skills towards designing costuming\/clothing for the PU. After all, one must look good when jaunting through the 30th century.\n\n\nGlobal Technical Content\nAs we have explained in the past, the Tech Content team is unique. While amorphous in form, its functions and directives are very clear under the leadership of Sean Tracy. Sean has been composing the design docs for how the Character Customization tech will function while Senior Technical Artist Mark McCall has tackled the task of R&D. This is to become the system that will allow players to customize their in-game characters. It makes you wonder whose character\u2019s face will be immortalized in Star Citizen? Will yours go down in infamy as a vicious pirate who disrupts trade lanes in their never-ending quest for loot? Or will it be a benevolent face of a loved politician? Perhaps an epic beard will give you a dashing, roguish look that can charm the masses. These are the things we imagine as we think about where Star Citizen will take us all.\n\nAssociate Technical Artist Patrick Salerno\u2019s work on LOD\u2019s have given new polish on various Components such as the Landing Gear, Escape Pods, Main Thrusters, Seats, and Weapon Mounts just to name a few items from his comprehensive list. Senior Technical Artist Matt Intrieri has also addressed an audio issue where Gladiator pilot seat enter and exit animations were causing the associated audio effect to trigger elsewhere instead of being centered on the geometry. In addition to the audio issue, Matt also resolved multiple bugs ranging from enter\/exit animations to retrofitting Legacy Ships such as the Anvil Hornet.\n\nOn the rigging side of the Tech Content team, after completing the Undersuit Armor game asset rigging, Senior Rigger John Riggs is in progress of creating pipeline scripts for Maya. Associate Rigger Gaige Hallman resolved clothing volume clipping on characters along with several massive clothing fixes to prepare for the upcoming shopping experience.\n\n\nQuality Assurance\nLA-QA\u2019s focus has been on the upcoming 2.4 release, testing new features and ensuring stability and performance across all builds. In particular, the team concentrated on:\n\n2.4 Persistence Features\n\nNew Shopping Implementation\n\nPersistent Universe Clothing\n\nStarfarer Flight Performance\n\nThe team also got an added treat of taking a first look at large scale solar systems with the hopes of implementing the procedural planets functionality in the coming months.\n\n\nProduction\nSpeaking of amorphous, this is a descriptor often used to describe what it actually is that Producers do. Senior Producer Eric Kieron Davis not only manages the CIG LA Production team, he has also overseen most of the ongoing construction and beautification of our new office. Although we moved into the building back in November, we have begun flourishing the final touches in order to make this office feel like home. This includes overseeing the art pieces hung up on the meeting room walls, contracting individuals to create and mount images from Star Citizen on our commissary walls, and also our really awesome faux-airlock doors that lead from the lobby into the heart of the building. Office comfort makes a big difference during crunch times, and the immersive environment sustains energy and creativity more than many truly appreciate.\n\nAssociate Producers Mark Hong and Randy Vazquez have been tireless dervishes of energy in keeping the LA teams focused on getting 2.4 on to the PTU and then out to the official release. Randy is responsible for setting up regular internal, office-wide playtest sessions to keep everyone familiar and fluent with our game content while maintaining schedules of in-progress as well as future upcoming tasks for the Tech Design and Engineering teams, while Mark Hong supports the Tech Content and Art teams. These tasks are not just for 2.4 but also looking ahead at features coming down the pipeline. Production Assistant Darian Vorlick for the past month has been helping the Community team by temporarily taking over social network update responsibilities on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as supporting the Production staff where needed.\n\n\nConclusion\nLike any previous month at CIG, there is not a single moment where the office is not humming with activity. With our focus largely on finishing 2.4, April was definitely not shy of new content either. We also introduced the updated MISC Prospector and in celebration of its launch, we included a Concept Sale along with quality elements to accompany it such as details on Mining, a \u201cjob application\u201d for mining operations at Shubin Interstellar, and our regular weekly programs like \u201cAround the Verse,\u201d the \u201c10 for the Chairman\/Developers\u201d series, and \u201cBugsmashers.\u201d\n\nThe month of May is looking to be no less exciting and intense. Your support and enthusiasm along with Chris Roberts\u2019 vision, inspires us to no end. We hope you enjoy what we have accomplished this month and we look forward to sharing new content in the near and distant future. Thank you for being a Star Citizen on this journey.\n\nSee you next month.\n\nPersistent Testing\n\nThis month has been all about persistence and testing 2.4. All teams have been working hard to test and fix various items that are coming in to the live version of the game. 2.4 is shaping up to be a monumental update to the game which will bring online many systems which have been in development for some time, and set the stage for many more features to come online in upcoming publishes. Kudos to everyone in Austin for their hard work. Here are detailed reports from each team!\n\n\nDevelopment\nThe primary focus of the ATX Development Team this month has been working towards the first release of Shopping and Persistence. Rob Reininger and our Design Team here in Austin with support from BHVR have been busy setting up the shops to function on Port Olisar in addition to what already exists in Area18. We\u2019ve got Casaba Outlet and Cubby Blast open for business, and we\u2019ll aim to sell clothing, armor, and weapons in our first release. It has required a lot of work from several different folks to make sure that the clothing and weapon items are properly spawned in on the store shelves and racks, getting the mannequin props set up so that clothing and armor can be properly purchased and equipped from it, and setting up all the data so that it properly appears in the Purchase UI. Pete Mackay has been spending his time balancing the pricing in the game and creating a new formula that will help determine pricing for everything from clothing to ships.\n\nWe\u2019ve also spent some time nailing down the short and long-term design requirements for what we\u2019re calling \u201cTry On\/Inspect Mode\u201d. This mode will switch on when selecting the appropriate \u201cUse Verb\u201d within the Shop UI and it will allow you to view a potential purchase on your character before actually buying it. We\u2019ve got an initial implementation in place and are scheduling out the rest of the features for future releases.\n\nWe\u2019re turning our focus now to getting Dumper\u2019s Depot online so that you can shop for ship components and weapons in-game as well. Rob Reininger is drafting up a Game Design Document for \u201cPurchasing via Terminal\u201d, which will be utilized in shops that have an inventory too large to fit on all of the shelves. Ship components\/weapons and ships in general are a great example of where this feature would be used.\n\nIn other news, the work on the first deployment of the Persistence backend is now complete! Jason Ely, Tom Sawyer, and Jeff Zhu worked diligently this month to finally make our services persistent. We\u2019ve provided our programmers and designers the ability to hook into this now so that we can start fully persisting things like player health, ship damage, hostility level, item purchases, ammo count, and much more. We\u2019ve also implemented a new currency tentatively called Alpha UEC which will be used primarily to test shopping and other services. This new currency will help with balancing the pricing and overall economy and is subject to wipe at any time in order to implement new fixes. We\u2019re turning our attention now to scheduling out a roadmap for getting actual Persistent UEC in the game.\n\nAnother major feature we\u2019ve been working is Port Modification. We\u2019ve been working with the UI Team in the UK to implement a new app in the mobiGlas that will allow you guys to customize your hangars and eventually much more. We\u2019ve ported our hangars and flair objects over to using the new Item System 2.0 so that now you can access specific \u201cports\u201d around your hangar and place things wherever you like! Eventually this will allow for customization of ship loadouts as well. We\u2019ve gotten the ball rolling in fleshing out a design for using this app in other locations as well, like the Crusader map.\n\nOur Ship Team here in Austin continues their work from last month. Chris Smith is working on the new-and-improved Hornet F7A model for Squadron 42, currently in greybox phase. Josh Coons is trucking along on the Drake Herald, also in greybox phase. These ships are coming along nicely and it is exciting to see ships both old and new get the extreme attention to detail that these guys provide with all the experience and resources that we\u2019ve cultivated as we\u2019ve grown.\n\nThe Animation Team in Austin has been supporting in various areas of the project, per usual. Our Ship Animation Team has had their hands in ships of all shapes and sizes, including bug fixing for the Starfarer, reviews on the Hornet F7A, Herald, Caterpillar, and Dragonfly, and support for the Idris. They\u2019ve also created some new animations for entering\/exiting the Freelancer ladder and put in place the combat enter\/exits for the Aurora and Avenger. The PU Animation Team, meanwhile, has actually wrapped up their work on the Spaceship Showroom and Nightclub scene animations and are turning their attention to helping out on Squadron 42. They will be creating background animations for the performance capture scenes as well as implementing locomotion sets for various characters in the game.\nLastly, lighting artist Emre Switzer has nearly finished his final tweaks on the Levski landing zone. The market area is properly lit and appropriately dingy. Overall Levski is a fantastic environment and we can\u2019t wait to get it y\u2019all\u2019s hands!\n\n\nQuality Assurance\nApril has been almost entirely devoted to 2.4.0 testing. With Persistence coming online, a slew of new features have been added that need to be documented and tested. Our Persistent Universe Specialist, Todd Raffray, has been working closely with the design team to document all the new features that have been coming online for 2.4.0 and keeping the rest of the QA team updated on their expected behavior. Jeff Daily has been working on expanding our internal check-lists to accommodate all of the new features, as well as improving some of our older check-lists. Shopping alone adds many new test cases to our regular check-lists; here\u2019s just a handful of tests that need to be performed for shopping alone:\n\nDoes the shopping interface open and properly progress through each screen?\n\nIs all the information on the shopping interface displaying correctly?\n\nAre there typos?\n\nAre the correct clothing brand names and descriptions displayed?\n\nAre there localization identifiers being displayed?\n\nIs the transaction being processed by the server?\n\nIs the aUEC properly deducted from the player\u2019s account?\n\nIs the purchased item granted to the player\u2019s account?\n\nDoes mobiGlas update the player\u2019s aUEC after the purchase has been completed?\n\nDo the items appear correct on the character?\n\nDo they clip the character in any unexpected ways?\n\nAre there shader issues with the new clothing materials?\n\nAre they deforming properly during animations?\n\nDo the items appear correct on the shelves\/clothes racks?\n\nDo the items display their Augmented Reality interface when viewing them on the clothes rack and is the information displayed correct?\n\nWhen using the \u201cTry On\u201d option, do the items get removed from the clothes rack while the character is wearing them, and are they returned once the character exits the \u201cTry On\u201d interface?\n\nDo your new clothes appear when other players are viewing your character?\n\nDoes the character behave appropriately when activating the airlock while wearing civilian clothes?\n\nPersistence doesn\u2019t just add new functionality, such as in-game shopping, but also changes existing features like hangar customization. In 2.4.0, players will now be able to choose what flair items they display and where they display them. As a result, Robert Gaither has been working closely with our Persistent Universe Designer, Rob Reininger, on setting up item ports throughout all the hangars in order to allow you to decide how you want to customize them.\n\nWith any new major release comes new ships! 2.4.0 will see the Reliant reach Hangar-Ready status, and the Starfarer has now been made Flight-Ready so we\u2019ve been doing our passes on both ships to ensure they\u2019re performing as expected. As an added bonus, weapon projectiles will now properly transition across\/inside local physics grids! That\u2019s right, you can now shoot from outside to inside of a ship (or vice-versa) and hit players who just uhhh\u2026 happen to be in the way. So feel free to start practicing your boarding tactics and engage in some fps firefights in the Starfarer (and any other ship with a large enough interior) when 2.4.0 hits!\n\nAndrew Rexroth and Katarzyna Mierostawska have been continuing Squadron 42 testing along with their UK counterparts, and have been documenting all the test cases necessary for when the time comes for the rest of the QA Team to jump into the fray in full force.\n\nOur QA Information Specialist, Marissa Meissner, has recently been promoted to QA Lead, and has had her hands full training our latest new QA members: Jesse Mark (Jesse-CIG), Don Allen (Tunahead-CIG), Scott McCrea (Spectral-CIG), Bryce Benton (Underscore-CIG) and Brandon Crocker (Neverender-CIG). Please feel free to welcome them appropriately (weapons hot) if you run across them in game!\n\nAnd finally, it has been 0 days since a member of QA has died to the airlock.\n\n\nGame Support\nApril was a super month for Game Support! We wrapped up work on 2.3.1 at the first part of the month, then focused heavily on catching up on our ticket work.\n\nMost significantly, we collaborated with Toast to establish the process for our brand new Evocati Test Flight volunteer test program. This group, 1\/3rd of which is from our top Issue Council contributors and 2\/3rd from our most active PTU testers, will act as a \u201cpre-PTU\u201d group, playtesting builds to make sure they are stable before the build goes out to a wider audience.\n\nWe\u2019ll be very excited to unleash this group on 2.4.0 playtesting early in May!\nFor those wanting to participate in Evocati or PTU, it\u2019s still possible! The best way to do this is to be an active member of the Issue Council reporting and contributing on bugs. There\u2019s a lot of competition for a few spots, but we will look to update our ranks later this summer, so get on those bugs!\n\nWe\u2019ve also opened up another Game Support Agent position in Austin, Texas, as the needs of the Star Citizen service continue to grow and expand. Check it out at https:\/\/cloudimperiumgames.com\/jobs\/415-Game-Support-Agent!!\n\n\nIT\/Operations\nThe cure for slow is to make it fast. The IT department spends much of its time identifying performance bottlenecks and often finds new and creative ways to alleviate them. This month was no different. With every fix, there\u2019s usually something behind it.\n\nIn our never ending quest to continue to further reduce turnaround times on our builds we\u2019ve identified and tackled the latest choke point \u2013 memory. At this point we monitor everything down to the smallest details. Having recently improving network and storage performance we realized that we\u2019re spending a good deal of time on disk starving for memory. This was due to a recent code change that came from our engine team in order to improve build performance under certain conditions which actually resulted in higher RAM consumption than we were expecting because their performance gains are coming from caching more in to RAM. In order to account for this we\u2019ve increased RAM to those build machines by 4x and performance jumped accordingly. Of course this means we\u2019ll be increasing physical RAM across the entire build stack as a result and aggressively pursuing the next performance gain we can find.\n\nIT has also been busy in London setting up for a quick mocap shoot. This was a ground up project starting with empty rooms and setting up everything necessary in short order. In addition to the mocap equipment itself we deploy multiple support teams which all need to be connected via an internal network as well as linked back in to the home network in Manchester. Monitoring systems, local storage, firewalls, backup systems, wifi, laptops all must be built out to support any shoot, large or small. We have found that the key to success goes beyond planning and organization. For any remote project to be successful we must build the network out as an extension of our internal network so team members can get straight to work without having to worry about anything.\n\n\nLiveOps\/DevOps\nWith fewer publishes this month, we\u2019ve taken the time to perform some necessary house cleaning. Ahmed has rewritten significant portions of the deployment process. The goals of this work are twofold. The advances in persistence bring significant changes to the deployment process adding considerable complexity to the mix as compared to previous publishes. We have also taken this opportunity to improve efficiencies where possible as well as improving error handling conditions which all go to making the work Ahmed and his team are doing behind the scenes that much better. While there will always be room for improvement, most people would never know it based on the outstanding work being done in this area. With each advancement in the publishing tool set we reduce the amount of manual work involved in publishing Star Citizen.\n\nWe\u2019re all very happy to welcome two new engineers to our team this month. Both Andy and Nate are joining us as DevOps engineers and they have already hit the ground running. Andy is investigating new systems which he will use to enhance our big data reporting systems on the server side and Nate is already working on a series of prototypes that we will use to more fully automate our server side publishing systems for the QA, PTU, and Live environments. While these are fairly large projects these guys are already moving at our pace so we\u2019re anxious to see what else they come up with in their first month.\n\nThanks to our new test build system we\u2019re seeing much more stable build progress this month as expected. We\u2019ve also extended this to incorporate a test build step for risky code changes which helps to further stabilize the build pipeline as well as keeping builds moving more steadily to QA. By working closely with IT we did identify some more areas where we could improve overall build performance. We\u2019re getting to the point where a gain in speed doesn\u2019t feel as big as it used to but when every hour counts we will continue to find every possible performance gain we can.\n\nChuffed and Knackered\n\nThe team at Foundry 42 UK works tirelessly on both Star Citizen and Squadron 42, are are excited for everyone to see what they\u2019ve been cooking up.\n\n\nEnvironment Team\nSome changes are coming to Port Olisar. We gone through and fitted some shopping locations within the struts which helps gives the facility some more personality and is a great testbed for the shopping mechanic. We are starting with a small number of locations initially, but in the future we will be rolling out more locations as more buyable items come online. These updates will be coming in for the next release so we\u2019re looking forward to getting it out to you guys.\n\nNyx is in the final stages of polish and optimization, we\u2019re drilling down to hit our budgets in each area to make sure we deliver a smooth experience. Once the procedural tech is ready for prime time we will be integrating the location into the terrain ready for release.\n\nThe hard work is also continuing on the Sq42 campaign, the vertical slice level is continuing with its final art production phase and part of the weekly company playtests.\nThat\u2019s all for this month folks, happy shopping in 2.4 and enjoy the vitamin D sunbath\u2026\n\n\nF42 AD\nThere are months where it\u2019s hard to keep up, the rate of flow and change sometimes is amazing! I have to admit, the Prospector, we really did wrestle that ship and it took a lot of work on both Gavin\u2019s and my front to get it where Chris was happy \u2013 all being said, the results came out pretty good and it might not be too long before it gets made!\n\nConcept work is also continuing on the new corvette, a small personal vehicle and a new small ship. We\u2019ve also tackled some Behring ship weapons (Size 5,4,3) and a boatload of components, not forgetting the Klaus and Werner weapon family guide with a hope to updating and unifying the weapons. There\u2019s has also been a good amount of fettling of the Vertical slice level and prop designs \u2013 we all know the standard we want to achieve, there are just no shortcuts and it takes time.\n\nFor characters, a lot of work has been going on with the Vanduul, with Chris being in the studio on a more regular basis it making it a lot easier to fine tune the creature design. Also work started on medical staff costumes and also UEE staff.\n\n\nVFX\nThis month the VFX team have been busy working on the Starfarer. Specifically, implementing its flight-ready effects \u2013 including damage, interior states, thrusters and weapons. The interior effects in particular have been time-consuming because of the sheer quantity of room and corridors. As always, we have worked closely with the ship team to ensure our effects sync up beautifully with the lighting.\n\nWe have also created effects for two new ship weapons, added effects to the new Crusader areas, and revisited our \u201chigh tech\u201d effects category to bring it in line with the VFX style guide.\n\nAway from the \u201cfun\u201d stuff (i.e.: blowing up massive spaceships!) we have also spent time cleaning up our pipeline documentation. Primarily this is for the other disciplines\u2019 benefit so they can more clearly see how far along the VFX artists are on any given task \u2013 essential when a small team is involved in so many tasks at any one time.\n\n\nGraphics\nAs well as fixing some stability issues the graphics team have been working on a variety of new features for the artists this month, the first of which is improvements to the layered shader we use for characters, weapons and props. This shader allows us to define the appearance of an object as the combination of more \u2018layers\u2019 such as cloth, steel, plastic etc. The new changes allow us to define how each of these layers will wear\/erode over time, improve the overall performance of the shader, and allow it to be used on both small props and very large weapons.\n\nWe\u2019ve also been finalizing our work on the \u2018light linking system\u2019 which allows light sources and glowing light-fittings to be linked together so that the brightness of the light fittings accurately reflects the realistic intensity of the bulb. This is crucial in getting the full benefit of the new HDR flare & bloom tech which we\u2019re hoping to enable for the next release. The latest changes have refactored this to allow it work with the upcoming Object Container system.\n\nAfter seeing a great presentation from GDC 2016 on improving the performance of tiled-lighting, we\u2019ve been working on integrating this technique into our pipeline so that we can transition to tiled-lighting as opposed to the current deferred-lighting solution (should potentially be faster).\n\nWork has officially started on implementing a new method of handling the ordering of the large number of transparent objects that Star Citizen requires (e.g. cockpit glass, visor, UI and particles etc). This will also involve integration transparent objects better with the post effects such as motion blur, depth of field and anti-aliasing, however this process requires deep engine work so will take quite a while to complete, but should fix issues such the cockpit glass and ship UI rendering in the wrong order when viewed from outside the cockpit.\n\nFinally we have been finalizing a new profiling system that breaks down performance costs per art team to help us profile and optimize the huge amount of content in our game.\n\n\nEngineering\nThe big feature development we\u2019ve been helping out working on this month is the persistence, or basically the game remembering stuff between sessions. This is a very big deal as it\u2019s the groundwork that so much of the game will be built upon. The underlying system has been implemented over in the US studios, but we\u2019ve been then building on top of that so you can start seeing and enjoying the results of their hard work.\n\nOne of the big things that we now persist is the new AUEC (our alpha credits) so in Crusader we\u2019ve started looking at ways in which we can reward the player with these credits depending on what you accomplish. David\u2019s been working with the designers on implementing some of this gameplay. Now when you complete a mission you will get rewarded. Spotted somebody with a wanted level? Take them out and you\u2019ll get a bounty. Find something interesting on a disused space station? Could make you some money.\n\nOf course we\u2019re implementing ways of spending this newly gotten cash. So we\u2019ve updated the repair stations so that they\u2019re no longer free and you have to pay an amount to fix up your ship. Fuel and ammo also now come with a cost. And of course shopping is being implemented! We\u2019ve now got working shops in both Crusader and ArcCorp where you can go and buy clothes and weapons. On the clothing side Jamie has been working on a new try on mode where you can select a the piece of clothing you\u2019re interested in and your able to view it on your character before deciding to buy, or with weapons being able to pick them up and inspect them before putting down some credits.\n\nAnother big aspect of the persistence is how we now store your hangar and the loadout of your ships. Rather than selecting which ships are in your hangar, or which flair items you can see from the website, we can now do it all in-game. This actually brings together several new pieces of tech from the Interaction Point system to the \u2018inner thought\u2019 UI which the UI guys here have been working on. Both Simon and Bone have been getting this UI working so you can see these interaction points, go up to one of them, select how you want to interact with it, and depending on what select in this case it\u2019ll bring up a menu of what items can go on that spot. It\u2019s a very flexible system so if it\u2019ll allow you to place what ships you want in your hangar to changing the loadout of the ship itself.\n\nOtherwise as usual we\u2019ve been working in the background on all the ongoing mechanics required for S42. Nothing too much to update on but Craig is making good progress on the new landing system and getting landing working on a moving carrier ship, Rob has been improving the conversation system with it working with subsumption, Romulo has been doing some underlying conversion work on the weapons and implementing grenades, Gordon is progressing nicely with ledge grabs as well and vaulting and mantling.\n\n\nQuality Assurance\nIt\u2019s been a very busy month in QA here at Foundry 42. We worked tirelessly with the Dev team and you the community to get 2.3.1 out with the hopes of clearing up some of the nasty frame rate issues and the server stability crashes and while work on that is still ongoing, 2.3.1 brought about some much needed improvements.\n\nWith that out the door we began working on the big one, 2.4.0 is probably one of the biggest releases we have worked on since Crusader was created. But boy is it an exciting patch. Persistence. Everything persists now, and testing it has been a rollercoaster of emotions, QA\u2019s main hurdle has been stability. In its first iteration, persistence made the game very unstable, with versions completely failing to build and a lot of time spent on frustrating tests. But we got through the hard times and have been ploughing on, testing the changes to the Hostility system, the Missions system and the Cry Astro Stations. We\u2019re really eager to push this to you guys and gather up your feedback.\n\nBut persistence isn\u2019t the only exciting thing we have been working on. Stocked shops (In Both ArcCorp and Port Olisar) & Alpha UEC, A new flight ready ship, a new hangar ready ship and a completely overhauled Hangar system (The Port Modification App). A few fun bugs have showed up in this testing time, such as ships bouncing around the hangar, Eldritch horror style floating eyeballs and so much more.\n\nRight now we are working very hard to find and bug up all the major issues so this can get pushed to the PTU and you guys can get to see all the fantastic changes that have gone in.\n\nSee you in the \u2018verse!\n\n\nAudio\nApril for audio was, as ever, busy! The S42 work and the 2.4 release have been our main points of focus this month, but alongside that a big wedge of music production was undertaken. But we\u2019ll start with the individual updates.\n\nSam Hall has been hard at it with ship computer work, looking to reengineer and refactor this so we can have it behave more intelligently in-game. This has involved syncing up with those in systems design as well as moving it across to the subsumption system. As well as this he\u2019s been working on resolving 2.4 bugs, optimizing an audio plug-in for Dataforge, and adding triggers for airlock transitions (e.g. for when the player enters space without the prerequisite protective helmet).\n\nAs well as his work on the music production (see below), Ross Tregenza has been iterating on the music logic system and is still holding up the fort in being the overall point man for Squadron 42.\n\nLuke Hatton handily bullet-pointed his general tasks! So bullet-point away, Luke:\n\nTweaks to maneuvering audio for the Aurora and fixed missing audio on the primary thruster for the Aurora LN\n\nMix tweaks to the tutorial hangar, more ambiance details now audible\n\nFixed broken enter and exit sounds on the Gladiator\n\nNow using general health parameter in Wwise for ships, so we can alter any sound based on the amount of damage a ship has taken easily\n\nAdded distant explosion sound variants\n\nDarren Lambourne, apart from his mastering mission in Munich, has been polishing up the Starfarer and working on audio for the Argo MPUV cargo vehicle.\n\nMatteo Cerquone has also bullet-pointed things:\n\nAdded audio for Devastator Energy Shotgun dry fire\n\nAdded sounds for interactive elements such as alarm systems, elevators and doors for S42\n\nOld Foley clean up\n\nBug fixing\n\nBob Rissolo and Phil Smallwood have both been deep on the dialogue side, preparing for future dialogue\/p-cap sessions and implementing\/processing material for current usage by the design department. Phil\u2019s also been working on social module tasks, esp. re. shopping and general locations.\n\nSimon Price is still very much engaged in dialogue pipeline tools that will be required for S42 as well as the live release.\n\nGraham Phillipson \u2013 he\u2019s also been on 2.4 bugs etc. but otherwise:\n\nRefinements of automatic footstep generation code\n\nAdded listener-based RTPCs to area shapes\n\nLUA -> c++ code conversion\n\nTech debt removal, improving maintainability\n\nFixed bug with EVA audio not updating properly\n\nStefan Rutherford has been re-organizing some large aspects of the Wwise project structure to underpin the mix pipeline, which is a joint design\/engineering effort by Lee Banyard (me), Jason Cobb, Stefan Rutherford and Graham Philipson currently \u2013 this will feed into S42\u2019s linear-styling which require a more \u2018filmic\u2019 mix workflow, as well as the more systematic mix workflow that the persistent universe requires. Otherwise he\u2019s been working on new content for our auto-footstep system, restructuring and redesigning the guns. He also headed up another gun recording session that took place in early April at Copehill Down with the company \u2018Audiobeast\u2019 (aka Steve Whetman). Hopefully some photos will be along for the ride with this monthly report, if not I\u2019ll post some to the \u2018Ask A Dev\u2019 audio forum, hopefully we\u2019ll wrangle some video too.\n\nJason Cobb has, as ever, been providing technical back-up in various aspects of the audio build pipeline, and is setting up mix states\/snapshots across the game as part of the wider mix foundational work.\n\nAs mentioned previously, we pushed through a lot of music production work this month. We had another session at the start of the month in Bratislava with the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, to upgrade a lot of the themes and incidental pieces for Star Citizen. Partly this is material for the special edition soundtrack CD, but this material will also make its way into the game as well to improve upon what\u2019s already present.\n\nThen, with that material in the bag, Pedro Macedo Camacho, Ross Tregenza and I went down to Real World Studios, and met up with our mix engineer Peter Fuchs and assistant engineer Patrick Phillips. As well as being a talented and experienced recording engineer for our orchestral sessions, Peter has an extensive CV of mixing orchestral scores for film and games \u2013 you can check out his CV on IMDB if interested: http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0297273\/\n\nWe spent five solid days in the studio shaping and sculpting the rather lovely source material into more finalized tracks. If you\u2019re interested in the facility, you can find pictures of it at http:\/\/realworldstudios.com\/recording-studios\/the-big-room\/ \u2013 we were in what\u2019s aptly named \u2018The Big Room\u2019 (hint \u2013 it\u2019s big). While there\u2019s an expansive mixing console there, much of the work of mixing by Peter was done \u2018in the box\u2019 \u2013 that is, within Pro Tools itself rather than routing everything through the SSL console. When working with many pre-recorded tracks this is often a quicker process due to the amount of setting up it would take between one piece of music and the next to assign everything to the desk, and his workflow is better suited to working this way. But mixing desks look impressive, of course! ;)\n\nOnce we were done with the mixing process, that material was taken on a step further at CS Mastering \u2013 which is a mastering studio in Munich headed up by Christoph Stickel. (If curious, you can see some images at http:\/\/www.csmastering.de\/) Darren Lambourne was in attendance with Christoph and Peter Fuchs, and the process of putting together a finalized CD master was undertaken here. This involves working with the stereo tracks only, rather than Pro Tools sessions; but refining them yet further so they form a more cohesive \u2018whole\u2019, with a mixture of very high end analogue and digital audio processing equipment to hand.\n\nAll of this was a workflow that we\u2019d wanted to get locked down for some time and I have to thank everyone for making it possible, we went from performance to a final master in really good time and I hope everyone will enjoy the results, whether in-game or on the soundtrack CD itself. It\u2019s wonderful to hear Pedro\u2019s work polished to this level of sonic shine, I think we all learned a lot from the experience and it will help refine the process for music production across Star Citizen as well as Squadron 42.\n\nAnd I think that\u2019s all for this month from CIG Audio. As always, thanks for listening!\n\nAnimation\nContinued on with railgun animation sets\n\nFixing cover bugs\n\nTurn animations worked on for 180 degrees and 360 degrees\n\nTesting and feedback on tools\n\nFurther work to start \/ stop \/ step locomotion\n\nNew FPS weapon look dev and feedback with the art team\n\nRecruitment \u2013 new animator starting next month\n\n\nProps\nThe ship components continue to be a big focus this month for the props team, we are wrapping up the full set of small coolers and we have started work on power plants and quantum drives.\n\nWe have been supporting the new persistence feature by supplying the designers with a hand full of assets to support their new mission mechanics, this initial bunch was a quick pass to get something in to prove out the gameplay and will hopefully just be the start that we can add to in the future.\n\nAnother bit of exciting news is that we have now had our additional tech requests added in to the layer blend material and can now use it across the board for prop production. We were waiting on a few tweaks and adjustments to the way the shader worked and that has now been delivered. This is a big step forward for us as it allows us to almost half the number of draw calls on each prop so should really help to make our pops nice and cheap in terms of performance and we plan to use it in anger over the next few months.\n\nFinally we have been supporting the shopping and clothing feature with a new auto valet locker system so allow for quick and easy changing of clothes and a bit of work has been done looking on our workflow for creating hanging and folded variants of all the clothing you can purchase.\n\nNext month, more ship components and back to squadron 42 props.\n\n\nSpaceships\nInterior production of the Idris is coming to a close, this has enabled the team to start look dev and prototyping of the crashed \/ damaged asset and start to establish a real key beat within the story arc of Squadron 42. From this research the team should then be able to establish a grounded look and feel for damaged cap ships including the Javelin and Bengal.\n\nProduction on the Javelin exterior has moved forward, sharing procedures and techniques found during the development of the Idris, this has also fed into the Bengal production, all ships now sharing a very specific Squadron 42 Livery.\n\n\nDesign\nWe had a very busy April in the UK Design department.\n\nFirstly, we are back in Ealing shooting pickup scenes at Imaginarium, this has kept a lot of designers busy in terms of finalizing the play spaces and putting in stability fixes. It\u2019s always really rewarding for the guys who are working hard on the Squadron 42 levels to see the level of polish that the actor\u2019s performances give to the player experience.\n\nThe Live Release team have been very busy this month with the introduction of our first stage of persistence. Crusaders expanding economy now includes new missions and bonuses, as well as new scavengeables. Cry-Astro now charge for their services and players will now find that respawning has a cost attached. As well as the numerous additions to the play space, we have been starting the work on the solar system scale map which will be coming soon. All in all a very interesting and productive month for the Live Release team that you will soon get to experience and feedback to us on.\n\nThe Technical team have continued to setup the various ships that are currently slated for release, and the full component refactor that will make such a difference to functionality and versatility of these craft is nearing completion. It\u2019s nice to finally see an upgradability system that works beginning to roll out into the live builds soon.\n\nObviously the component system will have a huge impact on the new Balancing Team and that is getting a lot of focus right now so that when it hits we can be in the best possible shape to release something that works.\n\nOverall it\u2019s been another good month for Squadron 42 development and continued building for the persistent universe.\n\nGerman Precision\n\nApril was a solid productive month for us in Frankfurt in regards to both progress and planning. We had Chris out to the studio for a few days for face to face meetings with various departments. Since the last update we have 5 new people working in the office across multiple areas, with each discipline starting to round out a bit more. We\u2019ve all been busy, as we say every month, but every day the team is constantly pushing things forward. The tech update for this month will read shorter than normal, because a good amount of the engine team are working on the procedural tech, and we\u2019d prefer to keep some of the details internal for now and give you the full breakdown when the time comes for you guys to experience it for yourselves. This month we\u2019ve also had a few groups come through the office and hang out with the team, as I always say, the support from you guys is much appreciated and helps push us on a daily basis.\n\n\nWeapons\nThe weapon art team finished texturing two new ship weapons and are currently working on the various LOD\u2019s (level of details) and getting them integrated into the game. The Apocalypse Arms Scourge Railgun has been given some additional polish and is in its final stages of art production and is being animated in parallel. We\u2019ve also blocked out a prototype for one new FPS weapon and have a bunch more in the concept stage. We\u2019ll hopefully have some images to share of the new work next month.\n\n\nEngine\nThe core engine team focused on various areas of code to improve. First we continued our support to increase the number of render-able objects. To support massive counts of 50.000 and more (think asteroids or planet vegetation\/rocks) we implemented a very fast instancing rendering path. This allows us to make the whole scenery more populated and interesting by showing more objects than we previously could. While implementing this rendering path, we also took some time to clean up parts of the rendering pipeline, unifying a few areas where we could.\n\nAnother focused area was the JobManager, which we improved the month before to be more flexible; people can new work on different batches, specify which batches have priorities and so on. As most of this was written as lock-less code for performance reasons, we missed some bugs. And since this was low level multithreading code, we now had the fun of finding out why certain operations succeed over 1 million times to suddenly fail. Good news is that we are confident that we ironed out those issues (we managed to run 12 instances of the editor in parallel without any threading issues, which should trigger all kinds of unusual thread timings).\n\nThe third area we looked into was to further improve the streaming code. Streaming can be very computation intensive as the code must touch all objects around the player, not just the fully visible objects. Since our game uses a very large view distance, this resulted in a very large number of objects needing an update. We could massively reduce this number by implementing a broad phase object distance culling. In the ZoneSystem, we already group objects together by spatial properties, now we combine the maximum view distance of all objects in such groups. If the whole group is further away than this combined distance, we can immediately ignore the whole group.\n\nLastly we spent a little time on our vsync implementation, as we noticed that we couldn\u2019t get a stable 60 fps even if we had over 70 fps when vsync was disabled. It turned out that this was a thread synchronization issue which is now fixed. During this investigation, we also had to investigate the details about how windowed rendering works in Windows 7 and later. In short, it is complex :) For our vsync fixes, this unfortunately means that we can only ensure correct vsync in fullscreen mode. Because of this we added some experimental vsync modes.\n\nUse the Windows Composite Manager to vsync (r_Vsync 2). This mode has a certain performance cost.\n\nImplement our own vsyncing (r_Vsync 3). Works, but can result in some tearing as we can\u2019t control when windows draw the data on the screen.\n\nDisable the Composite Manager (r_Vsync 4). Works only on windows 7 (It is no longer possible to disable vsync on newer windows versions).\n\nOf course mode 0 (no vsync) and mode 1 (regular vsync) are still in the game and should be the ones used. But it could be worth to try out the other modes for the brave ones.\n\n\nBuild System\nShort and simple update from our Senior Build Engineer.\n\nTrybuild bug fixing and balancing for game-dev and 2.4.\n\nCopyBuild automation.\n\nTools for VFX artists.\n\nFeature testing for game-dev (WIP).\n\n\nCinematics\nThis month the cinematic team continued to push forward on all fronts, blocking out of scenes, working with engineers on workflow and tools, as well as improving the overall look of body and facial animations. A good amount of time was also spent on preparing for a PCap (Performance Capture) shoot starting in early May. A few members of the team went to the UK office for a few days to go over scripts and sort out blocking of new scenes with the writers and Level Designers.\n\n\nQuality Assurance\nArt testing was the major theme in April for CIG-DE QA. Chris Speak and Melissa Estrada have been busy enhancing the Artist testing pipeline to ensure Editor tools are in top working order with the addition of new checklists and an Art specific sanity checklist that caters to an Artist\u2019s specific needs. QA has seen the benefits of these discipline specific sanity tests and will be working toward creating additional checklists on a per discipline basis. QA will also be assisting with the revamp of our in-house tool used to grab builds, to make it easier for developers to obtain information on whether a build is usable for development or not. Chris has also been collaborating with Carsten Wenzel on time demo creation and Francesco Di Mizio with FeatureTests, so that we can start client-side automation tests for both current and future features and in-game systems. Melissa was buried deep in code with Ivo Herzeg to get to the bottom of a crash issue that prevented QA and development from entering the tutorial for testing and debugging. The crash occurred as the player loaded into the level, and it turned out that the cause was related to the character\u2019s limbs essentially exploding to astronomical values! She also spent time testing potential Vertical Sync fixes from Christopher Bolte that should bring significant improvements to overall game-play in future releases. It\u2019s been a very busy month for CIG-DE QA, but we are already starting to prep full force for May and whatever challenges it may bring.\n\n\nAI: Artificial Intelligence\nThis month the AI team has been mostly focusing on making progress on the development of Subsumption.\n\nFirst of all we have been making progresses on the implementation of the Interactors for AI. Currently each Interactor can be setup by the design team to contain the required information an NPC needs to interact with it: position of the alignment to start the interaction, the animation the NPC needs to play, and the action he needs to perform. The NPC will then search for objects in the world that serve specific purpose and he can interact with them and perform actions on them.\n\nSubsumption uses the following hierarchy for creating behaviors:\n\nActivities > Subactivities > Tasks\n\nThis month we also introduced a lot of new tasks (the basic building blocks designers will use to create behaviors ) and we made a pass on the basic functionalities for debugging on screen useful information regarding the system. We also made the basic pass on the Action Areas, those are the elements in the world that allow designers to mark areas with specific information: a multicrew space ship, for example, might have an engine room, a hangar, a control room, and so on. Action Areas allow the NPCs to reason about the environment to fulfill their tasks.\n\nWe also spent some time unifying the movement speeds between NPCs and Players, so we now have full control of 5 different pseudospeeds on the AI side: Walk Slow, Walk Fast, Run Slow, Run Fast, and Sprint.\n\nWe\u2019ve also been refactoring the spawning system to allow designers to have a more reliable and stable system to populate the world. The new AI Spawning Manager is going to be the system used by both scripted logic and the mission system to populate the universe. Currently the main goal of the new system is to simplify the spawning mechanics and make it more robust, for example we introduced a proper special validation to analyse the space that will be occupied by the ship we want to spawn.\n\nLast but not least we dedicated some time to bug fixing and stability improvements as we regularly do, it\u2019s worth mentioning we have fixed several crashes and we have removed the main cause of the 5 seconds stall that was happening on some i5 core machines.\n\n\nVFX\nOver the past few months the Frankfurt VFX team has been working on some new tech for our particles. What this allows us to do is record the optical flow of motion between the frames in our animated textures and then distort or morph one frame into the next instead of doing a simple cross fade between frames. Not only does this drastically smooth out the animation of the textures, but it also has the added benefit of allowing us to reduce the amount of frames in the animation, thereby increasing the resolution of each individual frame without increasing the overall texture resolution.\n\nWe have also been working on fleshing out the effects for the high-tech tech style. Image example can be seen in our DE header image.\n\n\nTech Art\nWe are helping animation programmers for R and D on itemport animation which will help us to easily pick and swap any prop, weapon, or its attachments. We\u2019ve been supporting and making progressing with numerous weapons from the weapons team. We\u2019ve also been moving forward our DCC pipeline with scene manager, which helps artists to easily assemble a complete animation scene in Maya.\n\n\nDesign\nThe Level Designers have been focusing on iterating through the layout of the Hurston landing zone as well as that of the lawless base mentioned last month. Hurston is seeing some revisions to its layout to improve its scale, as we are still figuring out best practices for combining the scale of ships and hangars, of grandiose vistas and buildings, with the scale of functional (and fairly realistic) playable spaces. Getting to the best of both worlds is an ongoing challenge that we\u2019re iterating our way through, which means that designing those first few locations of different types and sizes naturally takes a lot longer while we learn what level design rules best apply to PU locations. The lawless base is soon getting into \u2018concepting\u2019 phase, during which the assortment of un-textured volumes that it\u2019s made of so far will be painted over by concept artists, to give guidance to the art team on how to build and beautify it.\n\nWe are also doing the groundwork for the next batch of locations that have to be built when both of those are out of our hands: figuring out what makes those new locations special, and how to allow the levels, technology and game mechanics to join hands in an effort to move the game forward as fast and efficiently as possible. That involves aligning with different departments to dig into critical designs such as spawning, parking, shopping\/trading, etc. to see what features are coming up in the short term and how best to showcase them through the locations we build (instead of just adding extra places to visit.)\n\nFinally, we\u2019re still going through the recruitment process to fill up our ranks with more level designers, to help us work through those tasks and develop the foundation of our level design philosophy for the PU.\n\nOn the System Design side we\u2019ve continued to work on our AI as we are switching them from Modular Behavior Trees to fully use Subsumption for in combat and out of combat behaviors. Eventually we\u2019ll end up with all our AI being built in a single unified tool.\nWe are also continuing the Inner Thought implementation and its integration in other systems like the Useables, Interactors and Looting. This system will help us get a unified interface for interacting with objects that have more than one simple use case, making dialogue choices and even giving your wingmen commands in the heat of battle.\n\nWork also continues on the Power Distribution and Reputation systems as these have received an overhaul and will soon be entering production. Another system that was in need, and is receiving a major rework is the FPS Suit because of the changes to FPS defenses and this one will still be ongoing for the next month.\n\nMore on the production side of design we\u2019ve been busy setting the goals for the May-July period, breaking down systems and setting priorities for all of them in regards to each career. This has enabled us to have a better overview of what is actually critical in getting those careers up and running on the live servers as soon as possible.\n\nOn Our Best Behaviour\n\nAt BHVR, we create much of the art for Star Citizen and make sure the quality of every graphic element reaches a level of quality never seen before.\n\n\nEngineering\nThis month was a long sprint to get 2.4 features out of the door and into the hands of QA testers, PTU users and eventually yours, our dear players.\n\nA good proportion of this was related to shopping features: lots of work on AR and mobiGlas, but especially doing proper networked transactions and shop actions replication.\n\nLots of goodies that we\u2019re all excited to see you try.\n\nWe reworked Cry-Astro services, to make sure the new service request flow works well with multicrew ships. This was a big pay off, now any member of your crew can use their mobiGlas to request individual services while preventing different people paying for the same service (maybe in shadier service area, but NOT at Cry-Astro, the Empire\u2019s repair, restock and refuel one stop solution!). Also you will only pay for services as they are executed, so if you\u2019re being shot or have to leave in a hurry, you don\u2019t need be afraid of not getting your money\u2019s worth.\n\n\nDesign\nThis month, the Bhvr design team was very busy with shopping and next release features. We continued setting up shops, both on Area 18 and Port Olisar. It\u2019s funny how it is more work and complicated than it just looks on the outside. The guys did a great job making this work cleanly and efficiently.\n\nWe also did some work on the Revel and York Hangar to support the new abilities of the Port modification system. We also updated all the flair items and hangar decorations to support that new system. Looking forward to see what the players think.\n\nNext month should see the construction of a new environment and plenty of level design for the team. We are also eager to continue iterating on the shopping system and expanding the features around it.\n\n\nArt\nOn the Art side, we had a lot of fun making additions to Port Olisar, which you will be able to experience very soon. Mostly work related to shops, additional dressing and adding a larger landing pad.\n\nWe have also opened new areas to make them ready for later releases.\n\nMoreover, we supported the shopping mechanics with custom props, to better showcase the items sold in the stores.\n\nOn Levski, we continued our optimizations on all fronts, meshes, textures, materials and lighting, but we are close to finish the optimizations.\n\nFinally, we worked on new props and finish next month`s flair object.\n\nCloudy with a Chance of Platform\n\nGreetings from cloudy Montreal! Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve been up to in the last month.\n\n\nShip Stats\nDesign is complete for the new ship reference matrix, and we have already started development. This new matrix will allow users to more easily view all of Star Citizen\u2019s expanding catalog of ships and give the ability to compare multiple stats. We also have designs for a mobile version, which are being reviewed internally.\n\n\nMulti-Factor Authentication (MFA)\nOur development of multi-factor authentication continues, and we are adding a mobile authenticator app. As part of a three-pronged attack, we will also be updating the game launcher to include MFA.\n\n\nCommunication Platform\nWe have presented a rough prototype of our new communication platform to CIG, and reviews were positive. We are working on the chat module for the time being, and then we will start developing the forum module. We\u2019re still a few months away from a beta launch, but we\u2019re confident you will love it.\n\n\nShip Happens\nApril was a very exciting month for ships. It kicked off with a Star Citizen April Fools\u2019 joke, in the form of the Big Benny inspired Reliant and your reaction to this goofy delivery vehicle was overwhelming to say the least! Later in the month, there was a Free Fly for anyone who wanted to try out Star Citizen. This was also accompanied by a Tax Day Sale putting the Super Hornet, Gladiator and the Retaliator Bomber up for sale for a week. Finally, to cap off the month, there was a concept sale of the Prospector a specialized mining vessel. This sale featured a Shubin recruitment page, where citizens were encouraged to apply to the company. The best 5 submissions will be rewarded with an Orion!\n\n\nSales\nThere were also a couple of merchandise sales this month: they included a track jacket bundled with the Star Citizen deck of cards for a reduced price; there were also some new Anvil Aerospace mouse pads that were on sale earlier this month. And finally, to round out April, a new set of fabric patches representing some of the manufacturers on the Star Citizen universe were released for sale.\n\nHome Alone\n\nOh my gosh. We\u2019re at the end. Ben and Ali are out of town this week so I get to write whatever I want and nobody can stop me. Well, Chris still has to read this and approve it. He can definitely stop me\u2026\n\nAnyway, it\u2019s been a hell of a month. Lots of ups and downs and twists and turns, but no matter what happens each month, it always seems to go by too fast. That\u2019s what happens when you work with this community: you make the time fly. April 2015 was when I started \u201cofficially\u201d as your Community Manager, and the last year has been one for the books. I hope you\u2019ve enjoyed the changes and improvements to our community output over the last year. It\u2019s truly been a team effort, with any given endeavor being an absurd idea from Ben we make reality, or an equally absurd idea from me that Ben is wise enough to let me get away with, and either of those being impossible to pull off without the support of Alexis, Thomas, Justin, Toast, and especially Sandi.\n\nWith that, let\u2019s look at our output this month.\n\n\nApril Fools!\nWE GOT YOU!\n\nWE SO GOT YOU GOOD!\n\nIt\u2019s time for full disclosure: On March 29th we had nothing. Nada. Zilch. We were ready to call in the towel on April Fools this year. Just too busy, and we never want to do something that doesn\u2019t move the needle for us, y\u2019know? Then at about 3pm in the afternoon I had what I knew was a terrible idea that had come too late for us to do anything with, so I walked into Ben\u2019s office intending for him to talk me out of it.\n\n\u201cHey Ben, you know how everyone is always asking for those profession deep dives?\u201d\n\n\u201cTalk to Tony Zurovec.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no\u2026 I had a terrible idea that I want you to talk me out of. Let\u2019s do a fake profession post about food delivery. We can use the Big Bennys assets that Jeremiah and Elwin and Gaige have been putting together in their spare time for that other thing and use them here.\u201d\n\nThis\u2026 THIS is where he was supposed to give me that look I get sometimes. The look that says: \u201cEvery decision involved in the process of hiring you was a mistake.\u201d\n\nIt\u2019s the same look I get from Chris when I show him that Jar Jar Tongue Sucker from 1999 I have on my desk.\n\nBut he didn\u2019t give me that look. He said the words that often mean I won\u2019t be sleeping for the next three days, \u201cLet\u2019s do it!\u201d\n\nAnd with that, we rallied Jeremiah Lee, Gaige Hallman, and Elwin Bachillier to finish up the \u201cfun side projects\u201d they\u2019d been fooling around with in their spare time while Ben wrote up the copy and our friends at Turbulent coded new tech for the website that would allow us to simulate opening and reading a menu (that same tech we\u2019d re-purpose later this same month for the Starfarer sale.)\n\nAnd after late nights with Gaige animating our Delivery Dancer, speedy work by Elwin to skin the Reliant, and Jeremiah cranking out variant Bennys emotes, we had the ingredients needed to \u201cmove the needle.\u201d\n\nAnd that\u2019s how you make a terrible idea a reality in only 3 days.\n\n\nBroadcasts\nUsually I like to go through and discuss the videos we put out in sequential order, highlighting and discussing the various peaks of content. Not this time. We\u2019re skipping straight to dessert! Did you watch RtV last Friday?! Lando\u2019s dad, or more commonly known as Dad Lando made his starring debut, capturing our hearts with his passion and perspective on the Star Citizen universe. Seriously, this guy rocks. His ability to embarass Lando definitely boosts his likeability.\n\nAround the Verse and the 10 For series continued its regular schedule this month while Lando\u2019s \u201cWonderful World of Star Citizen\u201d introduced us to the always entertaining Captain Richard and his history on live streaming, and the creative talent of Mr. Combustible and his detailed workflow when 3D printing Star Citizen ships.\n\nReverse the Verse achieved a new apogee this month after Composer Pedro Camacho and Senior Sound Designer Ross Tregenza joined us for some exclusive new music reveals and an abundance of detailed information. We are extremely fortunate to have these talented gentlemen on our team.\n\n\nWebsite\nIf you checked out the Turbulent section of our Monthly Report, you can already see some of the work-in-progress at overhauling and improving our web experience. That \u201ccommunication platform\u201d they\u2019re developing is so exciting I can hardly contain myself, and will impact every aspect of your interaction with our website.\n\nIn addition to that, one of the many things being worked on is an update to the old Ship Status page. A dedicated landing page instead of a series of forum posts, this will eventually allow Citizens to quickly glance at the continuing development of our ships as they move through the pipeline, and play your own \u201cat-home\u201d version of, \u201cWhere\u2019s My Spaceship?\u201d\n\nThose two, combined with the new Ship Reference Matrix, and our continuing efforts to improve on all aspects of our presentation make this a fun time to be working with our partners at Turbulent. I\u2019m continually grateful for their dedication and support when we come up with crazy ideas at the last possible moments. They\u2019re always game to try something new, and push the boundaries of what a game website can be. Benoit, Benjamin, Scott, Ken\u2026 even Felix. =oP\n\n\nYou Guys\nThis is a new section added to celebrate all things related to our community and their accomplishments! It has been an awesome month for our Star Citizen streamers! Starting the month off, Farasalt and Captain_Richard stepped up their game for one of the funniest April Fools gags I\u2019v seen. It was seemingly just another Friday night on Captain_Richard\u2019s channel.. Everyone sat awaiting for the intro music to stop and the man himself to appear. When the curtains arose, Farasalt appeared, decked out in thick makeup and a Captain_Richard\u2019s shirt. What ensued was over an hour of hilarity as Farasalt NAILED a Captain_Richard impression. All the mannerisms were on point! Definitely check this out. Well done gentlemen.\n\nDeejay Knight is now officially a Twitch Partner! This was a well-deserved promotion that came to no one\u2019s surprise. Deejay continues to rouse his audiences with his upbeat performances and is an absolute pleasure to watch. Huge congratulations!\n\nCapturing our attention with his sweet dance moves and positive vibes, SGT_Gamble has become a household name in the Star Citizen community. Gamble has been rallying entire servers together to participate in exciting and emergent game-play that we just can\u2019t get enough of. Awesome stuff sir!\n\nLastly, April was one of the toughest months to date when it came to choosing MVP\u2019s. The amount of content flowing in from our community is absolutely astounding! Check out these well deserved winners!\n\nLooking Ahead\nThat was some month we had. Every month we move closer and closer to realizing the vision and scope of both Star Citizen and Squadron 42. In our four studios around the world and our partner studios in Canada and elsewhere, people work tirelessly to fulfill the promise of this unprecedented project. Whether they\u2019re artists, programmers, designers, engineers, writers, directors, producers, and more, they\u2019re all gamers who want to share this experience with everyone reading these each and every month.\n\nIn the months ahead, you\u2019ll see us continue to build on the foundation of persistence Alpha 2.4 provides. As the teams in each studio continue to expand, you\u2019ll see our pace of production continue to pick up as it already has since late 2015. The knowledge and experience we gain with each new ship built, each new character brought to life, each new landing zone realized, and each new game system coming online will inform the next one after that, meaning that not only will the quantity of our output increase, so will the quality continue to improve.\n\nWhether it\u2019s website you visit, the broadcasts that inform you, the game you play, or the platform that supports it, we\u2019re continuing to iterate on every aspect of Star Citizen and Squadron 42\u2019s continuing development, a truly unique experience for everyone involved because you\u2019re here for the ride with us.\n\nAnd we wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.\n\nWe\u2019ll see you in the \u2018Verse."},"links_count":4,"comment_count":97,"created_at":"2016-05-06T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"10 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-18 21:51:12","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":15322,"next_id":15326}}