{"data":{"id":16363,"title":"Monthly Studio Report: December 2017","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/16363-Monthly-Studio-Report-December-2017","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/16363","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/16363","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly Reports","images":[{"id":6641,"name":"OMC_LightArmor_InGame-2.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/5iqtykxtlvmuhr\/source\/OMC_LightArmor_InGame-2.jpg","alt":"","size":2014947,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T20:59:30+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6641","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6641\/similar"},{"id":6642,"name":"TMBLBuggy.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/928qfqdpfius0r\/source\/TMBLBuggy.jpg","alt":"","size":129330,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T20:53:05+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6642","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6642\/similar"},{"id":6643,"name":"OMC_LightArmor_InGame.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/t56ephm9yvzgpr\/source\/OMC_LightArmor_InGame.jpg","alt":"","size":1237991,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T20:54:56+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6643","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6643\/similar"},{"id":6645,"name":"F8_damage_color_breakup.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/ch39uiw84siddr\/source\/F8_damage_color_breakup.jpg","alt":"","size":1323325,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T21:02:38+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6645","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6645\/similar"},{"id":6646,"name":"A.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/72szcwrzg6x0gr\/source\/A.jpg","alt":"","size":904173,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T21:12:54+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6646","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6646\/similar"},{"id":6648,"name":"B.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/54ap5gp44lkdhr\/source\/B.jpg","alt":"","size":511833,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T21:12:54+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6648","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6648\/similar"},{"id":6649,"name":"Bridge_03.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/3fjpytvuqb0uar\/source\/Bridge_03.jpg","alt":"","size":1160818,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T19:07:02+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6649","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6649\/similar"},{"id":6651,"name":"ClothShading.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/6vq5e89gczcesr\/source\/ClothShading.jpg","alt":"","size":663970,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T18:38:30+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6651","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6651\/similar"},{"id":6653,"name":"Hammerhead001.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/r0188f5gh10srr\/source\/Hammerhead001.jpg","alt":"","size":819164,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T17:49:18+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6653","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6653\/similar"},{"id":6654,"name":"Hammerhead005.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/83brv97hpfynir\/source\/Hammerhead005.jpg","alt":"","size":739627,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T17:49:18+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6654","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6654\/similar"},{"id":6655,"name":"Avenger_cargo_01.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/on6gc0k2vm47dr\/source\/Avenger_cargo_01.jpg","alt":"","size":2556230,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T17:51:08+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6655","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6655\/similar"},{"id":6656,"name":"Avenger_cargo_02.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/izuktwo5c5pwer\/source\/Avenger_cargo_02.jpg","alt":"","size":3445143,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T17:51:11+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6656","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6656\/similar"},{"id":6657,"name":"Bridge_02.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/dwqps7118xbvmr\/source\/Bridge_02.jpg","alt":"","size":692198,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T17:54:51+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6657","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6657\/similar"},{"id":6658,"name":"Corridor_01.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/kayu2szomeshpr\/source\/Corridor_01.jpg","alt":"","size":1136656,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T17:54:52+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6658","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6658\/similar"},{"id":6659,"name":"Eclipse_02.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/is82a386wmm0dr\/source\/Eclipse_02.png","alt":"","size":657427,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2018-01-11T17:58:47+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6659","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6659\/similar"},{"id":6660,"name":"Blade_01.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/23b5wnc45j1hsr\/source\/Blade_01.jpg","alt":"","size":1162546,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T18:03:00+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6660","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6660\/similar"},{"id":6661,"name":"Gladius_shield_on2.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/59otgek25ekyqr\/source\/Gladius_shield_on2.jpg","alt":"","size":1212337,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T18:10:15+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6661","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6661\/similar"},{"id":6662,"name":"PortOlisar_Artboard-1.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/7588b2sefkfser\/source\/PortOlisar_Artboard-1.png","alt":"","size":625079,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2018-01-11T18:54:12+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6662","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6662\/similar"},{"id":6663,"name":"PortOlisar_Artboard-2.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/3e0ttlhdnxwybr\/source\/PortOlisar_Artboard-2.png","alt":"","size":470772,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2018-01-11T18:54:14+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6663","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6663\/similar"},{"id":6664,"name":"Hangar_concepts.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/ah4ob5owhbo0wr\/source\/Hangar_concepts.jpg","alt":"","size":3041997,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T18:56:52+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6664","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6664\/similar"},{"id":6665,"name":"DE_Monthly_Report_Weapons_kahix.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/00n4uqiym1tnnr\/source\/DE_Monthly_Report_Weapons_kahix.jpg","alt":"","size":791021,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T20:11:05+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6665","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6665\/similar"},{"id":6666,"name":"DE_Monthly_Report_VFX_Coil_RnD_Shubin-2.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/56uchn3p34z7ir\/source\/DE_Monthly_Report_VFX_Coil_RnD_Shubin-2.jpg","alt":"","size":565802,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T20:09:38+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6666","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6666\/similar"},{"id":6667,"name":"DE_Monthly_Report_Weapons_AMRS_S4-6.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/vlx55z76g1yjkr\/source\/DE_Monthly_Report_Weapons_AMRS_S4-6.png","alt":"","size":1490869,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2018-01-11T20:11:12+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6667","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6667\/similar"},{"id":6668,"name":"DE_Monthly_Report_Weapons_f55.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/6uwzszuerx3ffr\/source\/DE_Monthly_Report_Weapons_f55.jpg","alt":"","size":2299717,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T20:11:08+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6668","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6668\/similar"},{"id":6669,"name":"DE_Monthly_Report_Env_Art_01_.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/z9mpzk7jqgnskr\/source\/DE_Monthly_Report_Env_Art_01_.jpg","alt":"","size":127555,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T20:06:24+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6669","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6669\/similar"},{"id":6670,"name":"DE_Monthly_Report_Env_Art_02.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/sdqytk1rnk096r\/source\/DE_Monthly_Report_Env_Art_02.jpg","alt":"","size":148316,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T20:06:24+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6670","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6670\/similar"},{"id":6671,"name":"Screen-Shot-2018-01-11-At-33752-PM.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/qwojnp81bmfdar\/source\/Screen-Shot-2018-01-11-At-33752-PM.png","alt":"","size":1590883,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2018-01-11T20:42:28+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6671","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6671\/similar"},{"id":6672,"name":"56_2.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/cr0noriegl63hr\/source\/56_2.jpg","alt":"","size":686697,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T21:31:00+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6672","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6672\/similar"},{"id":6673,"name":"VS_Holiday-Special.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/v58c4m024jrd9r\/source\/VS_Holiday-Special.jpg","alt":"","size":333178,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T21:22:38+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6673","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6673\/similar"},{"id":6674,"name":"TMBL_HeavyTank_ShotD_TL04.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/fk1b24y84y0zwr\/source\/TMBL_HeavyTank_ShotD_TL04.jpg","alt":"","size":1846352,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2018-01-11T21:22:56+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6674","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6674\/similar"},{"id":6675,"name":"Squadron-42-Star-Citizen-Screenshot-20180107-192059.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/y18kn10490c3zr\/source\/Squadron-42-Star-Citizen-Screenshot-20180107-192059.png","alt":"","size":3525822,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2018-01-11T21:22:55+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6675","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/6675\/similar"},{"id":30963,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/vjhp2njbokvxb\/source.png","alt":"","size":4895804,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-05-02T18:53:45+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30963","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30963\/similar"},{"id":31194,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/dyu8i559admn1\/source.png","alt":"","size":3831731,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-06-06T16:13:24+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31194","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31194\/similar"},{"id":31403,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/p34sp3q2kl01b\/source.png","alt":"","size":3014864,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-07-04T13:35:01+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31403","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31403\/similar"},{"id":31536,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/6u5x9e23ftrw7\/source.png","alt":"","size":3531870,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-08-01T14:29:26+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31536","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31536\/similar"},{"id":31783,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/gaazjx0n1kop2\/source.png","alt":"","size":3223870,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-09-12T14:59:52+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31783","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31783\/similar"},{"id":32961,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/8m2c1vusdb0hj\/source.png","alt":"","size":4757052,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-10-03T12:11:38+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/32961","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/32961\/similar"},{"id":32962,"name":"source.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/4x3lw5w4vk3o4\/source.jpg","alt":"","size":584749,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2023-10-31T19:13:02+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/32962","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/32962\/similar"},{"id":38000,"name":"source.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/x5aus9nndxu4s\/source.jpg","alt":"","size":1186506,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2025-02-05T13:01:54+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38000","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38000\/similar"},{"id":38060,"name":"source.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/fe6j2ifv3ash4\/source.jpg","alt":"","size":1773870,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2025-03-04T15:04:48+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38060","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38060\/similar"},{"id":38084,"name":"source.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/pgmk7f9gt3j9y\/source.jpg","alt":"","size":2091105,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2025-04-01T17:29:16+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38084","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38084\/similar"},{"id":40391,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/svep7j1purh1f\/source.png","alt":"","size":5543040,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2025-07-01T15:37:40+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/40391","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/40391\/similar"}],"images_count":74,"translations":{"en_EN":"Greetings Citizens!\n\n\nWelcome to the Monthly Studio Report, where we collect updates from our various studios around the world to show you what they\u2019ve been working on this past month. In the rush up to the holidays, the entire company was focused on accomplishing two major tasks: pushing Star Citizen 3.0 to the Live Servers and polishing up work on the Vertical Slice, which featured an hour of gameplay from Squadron 42. Afterwards, everybody broke for some much needed rest before coming back to hit the New Year running. With that said, let\u2019s get to it. CLOUD IMPERIUM: LOS ANGELES\n\nENGINEERING\nAlpha 3.0 was a monumental engineering milestone for Star Citizen, particularly for the LA vehicle team. During December, the first tier of Item 2.0 for ships was finalized with several bug fixes and important features closed out for 3.0. The team tackled a major hurdle with the integration of UI with this very complicated system. Finally, some of the underlying systems that play a huge role in Squadron 42 and the Persistent Universe (Scanning and Quantum Travel) saw some iteration and prototyping that they were really proud to bring to fruition.\n\nAs the 3.0 release came together, the core system team focused polishing and stabilizing some key parts of Star Citizen. Cargo and shopping saw significant bug fixes, bringing these features in alignment with long term goals. Infrastructural game code such as the room system, interaction system, and even damage saw significant bug fixes right up to the release.\n\nTECH DESIGN\nLA Tech Design spent the majority of December getting the new Item 2.0 ships working as smoothly as possible for Star Citizen Alpha 3.0. They knocked out a multitude of bugs, including but not limited to enter\/exit alignment issues on the Scythe, an issue where damage was not passing to all parts of a ship, seat access issues with the Caterpillar, atmosphere bugs in the Herald, and IK issues in the Mustang seats. The team also spent time balancing the shield stats to account for better power retention and heat generation, hooked up cursors to all player interactions in the ships, and finished setting up bed conversions from Object Container to ItemPort.\n\nBeyond Alpha 3.0, they continued to work on ships like the Anvil Terrapin, the revised Consolidated Outland Mustang, and Tumbril Cyclone to get them set up and flyable (or drivable, as the case may be). They also completed design briefs for the [REDACTED] ship that they are really looking forward to.\n\nLastly, the team supported the UI Team in completing the Scanning Visor, MFD, and hooked up all assets to be released in the future.\n\nART\nThe Ship Art Team wrapped up 2017 with a bang. The new RSI Aurora was completed and officially released. Major progress was made on several other vehicles such as the Anvil Hurricane, the reworked Consolidated Outland Mustang, and the Tumbril Cyclone. The team had their fair share of bug fixing and support tasks for various features released with Alpha 3.0 in addition to upcoming releases.\n\n\n\n\nThe Character Team put the finishing touches on the Squadron 42 cast for the Vertical Slice. One key development was the work done with the graphics team to implement a new hair shader to make the characters shine. Finally, the team added wear and tear to some of our character loadouts, giving them an authentic feel in-game.\n\nNARRATIVE\nIn December, the Narrative Team worked closely with Design to chase down any lingering bugs and issues that arose to ensure that mission content, item descriptions, and even posters were ready for Alpha 3.0. They also helped provide additional environmental storytelling and prop write-ups to help sell the world of Squadron 42 in the Vertical Slice. In addition, they delivered weekly lore updates, wrote three pieces for Jump Point, continued the development of the Xi\u2019an language, and supported the marketing department on numerous tasks including the Tumbril Nova brochure.\n\nTECH CONTENT\nThe Global Technical Content Team delivered some great accomplishments in December to wrap up 2017 on a high note. The Tech Animation team was busy with tools support, character rigging, and various MoCap tasks throughout the month. For tools and related work, they improved Mannequin Python Tools, the CIG Tools Installer, a Jump\/Spike Detection Tool, and the Skeleton Table as well as added several new health checks to the pipelines. The team also supported the S42 Vertical slice by rigging several characters and fix a ton of skinning bugs as well. The MoCap team tracked, solved, and processed a large group of characters in support of Squadron 42. A MoCap shoot was also held to capture some additional footage needed for key characters.\n\nOn the Tech Art side, the team sub-divided between Environments, Ships and Weapons. For Environments, a lot of support and R&D was put into our glass shader and a vertex curvature script. Additionally, they planned for Procedural Layouts work coming in 2018. A lot of bugs were investigated as well\u2026 for lights\/shadows, hair rendering and texture streaming. For Ships, the team supported the release of the several new vehicles in the Alpha 3.0 release. This included work on damage and VisAreas, as well as bug fixing and investigating a lot of log spam issues. The team also worked on landing gear compression for the ships in the Around the Verse holiday special.\n\nFinally, on the Weapons front, the team was in R&D mode for Animated Attachments\/Magazines. They made progress on the P8AR magazine, Gemini F55, and a skin transfer script\/tool. They also fixed several weapon bugs. Lastly, the Global Technical Content team supported other areas, such as the reorganization of the tool branches.\nCLOUD IMPERIUM: AUSTIN\n\nDESIGN\nGetting 3.0 ready to go live was the big focus this month for the ATX Design Team. Using feedback from those testing the PTU builds, they were able to tackle a variety of bugs relating to shopping and cargo trading across the stations and moons surrounding Crusader. The economy and item pricing continued to be balanced based on collected analytics. Of course, there is still a lot more dialing in to be done once the systems function together on the live servers.\n\nFurther work on Mission Givers Ruto and Miles also was an important task for the team. Representing a complex mix of numerous systems like animation and subsumption, it has been encouraging to see the progress made on getting these first two characters into the game. We have already learned a lot so far that will help streamline and improve the process in the future.\n\nART\nWith the release of 3.0.0 to Live, the community finally got to see the updated Constellation Aquila, Drake Cutlass and Aopoa Nox. The ship team spent the month providing support to push the Persistent Universe to the Live servers. The Constellation Phoenix was whitebox complete and progressed onto greybox. Meanwhile, the Anvil F8 Lightning entered the whitebox phase at the beginning of the month and progressed nicely in between bugfixing tasks.\n\nBACKEND SERVICES\nTo start the month, the DevOps team delivered multiple PTU publishes each week. They monitored performance and feedback from the Evocati and PTU players and pushed out builds that contained fixes and feature deployments as fast as possible. They also worked with IT to ensure everything was ready for the Live release. This included dealing with a number of system failures just prior to 3.0 going Live.\n\nAfter the intensive 3.0 publishing process, the team carefully tracked the bandwidth being used and adjusted the servers accordingly. They also worked with design to apply a number of hot fixes to address unexpected issues that negatively impact performance and gameplay. They accomplished this without affecting players by carefully watching servers and restarting them with the better code when the server population reached zero.\n\nIn addition to everything surrounding the Live release, the team continued to support devs with diagnostics, performance captures, and more.\n\nANIMATION\nThe Animation Team this month spent time looking at the Player experience in Alpha 3.0 to make sure that all the animations associated with the various interactions that people would encounter while running missions and exploring around Crusader were looking good as possible. This included some bug fixes, some adjustments on various transition elements, as well as just general polish. The team also began work on the Tumbril Cyclone animations that were recorded in a motion capture shoot last month. On the ship side of things, there was additional technical set up that was needed to be looked at on several ships as the team investigated a few linger issues that had been noted by players testing the PTU.\n\nOutside of Alpha 3.0, a lot of time was spent on the Squadron 42 vertical slice as the date of the Holiday Special approached. As the directors and leads reviewed the content daily, the team performed polish passes on the numerous interaction animations on the Idris to make sure the crew looked as good as possible as they moved around the ship performing various tasks through the usables system\n\nATX QA\nAs Star Citizen Alpha transitioned between the PTU and Live, needless to say ATX QA had a busy month, tirelessly testing the bugfixes and change submissions to the 3.0.0 build. One of the biggest challenges, especially with a release that incorporates as many new updates and features as this one, is making sure that fixes to the game don\u2019t destabilize a build in other places. To help minimize this risk, the devs adopted the QA test request system more vigorously, and every single feature-related check-in towards the end had to be tested thoroughly. Although this increased the team\u2019s workload in order to maintain the daily pushes to PTU, this process helped ensure that the army of testers would have a stable enough build to keep providing key feedback.\n\nPLAYER RELATIONS\nWith the holiday season right around the corner, there was a lot to be \u201ctonkful\u201d for this month. Right on the heels of Star Citizen\u2019s Anniversary, the Player Relations team assisted backers with the newly announced Aegis Hammerhead and Anvil Hawk. Plus, the Holiday Special brought with it the Tumbril Nova tank and three exclusive Holiday Game Packages perfect for sharing Star Citizen with friends and loved ones. The team also continued to coordinate with the massive ongoing testing effort as alpha 3.0 PTU continued to roll out to more and more backers, and most excitingly, the build went Live! Thanks again to all the Players for their ongoing contributions to the Issue Council. Your help is vital to the project.\nFOUNDRY 42: UK\n\nGRAPHICS\nOver the last month, the graphics team focused on both 3.0 and the Squadron 42 vertical slice. Most of that time involved bug fixes. Highlights included major fixes to texture streaming bugs (they\u2019ve since found another bug in Lumberyard and the fix will vastly reduce VRAM usage on the next release), a fix for facial animation glitching, and various fixes for hair and temporal anti-aliasing. They also continued to develop the Render-To-Texture system, including adding expose control to video comms calls and using the system for the new ship targeting displays.\n\nThe Squadron 42 vertical slice also benefited from some of their new features, such as a new cloth shading model, improved light-beams, the debut of volumetric gas-cloud tech, and a new particle-based shield effect that uses signed-distance-fields to allow the particles to flow smoothly along the hull of the ship. Their r-focus for the new year will shift to improving performance and various planned shader improvements to enable more dynamic materials.\n\nSHIPS\nHammerhead\nThe team was really excited to reveal the Hammerhead in November and since then they\u2019ve been hard at work finishing the exterior sections not seen in the video. They did a detail pass across the hull and engines, and gave the underside more attention. The landing gears were also added, so the exterior is now ready to start on the damage set up. For the interior, they blocked out the floor plan using existing Aegis kits from the Idris and Javelin. They also worked out what bespoke and new pieces are needed to finish the interior and have a couple of guys at work on these now.\n\nRevised Avenger\nThe Avenger has been undergoing a complete re-make to address issues with the original and make it conform to the current ship metrics and requirements. The updated Avenger revealed in the Around the Verse holiday special was a combined effort between the ship team and the newly formed Squadron 42 team. The cargo and bounty hunter variants are art complete, and work on the EMP variant is scheduled for January. Work to finalize the remaining exterior parts, such as landing gear, damage and LODs, will start soon.\n\n600i\nThe 600i is entering the final art phase. On the exterior, the thrusters and landing gear are near completion, and work is due to start on the turret. The interior is going through a polish pass, while work on the bridge, corridors and exploration module are due to be wrapped up soon. Since the last update, the team listened to backer feedback and removed the struts from the bridge windows.\n\nGladius\nThe Gladius was a big part of the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice, so they spent time tweaking it for the demo. This included implementing the new glass and screen shader, cockpit lighting and headlight tweaks, screen sizes\/positioning and adding the new starmap. Cockpits are the most complex parts of the ships, bringing together input from across the company, and they went through many iterations before satisfying the requirements of all departments.\n\nEclipse\nWork continued on the Eclipse, as the cockpit and exterior were grey boxed. The mesh is currently going through a detail pass before starting on textures and shaders.\n\nBlade\nThe Vanduul Blade exterior is almost complete, and has been brought into line with other Vanduul ships. The team\u2019s current focus is on the interior and working out the enter and exit mechanism for pilots.\n\nVFX\nThe UK VFX team spent December bug-fixing and optimizing for 3.0, following on from the sanity pass discussed last month. R&D work continued on signed-distance-field shield effects, including power-on, power-off and impact effects for the Gladius, Cutlass and Buccaneer. They also honed in on the finer effect details seen in the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice demo. There are too many to name individually, but highlights include the Coil itself, the lightning storm inside the giant asteroids and the Slaver base cryo-pods.\n\nThe team also made solid progress on VFX for the Scanning feature. Amongst other things, it will emit a virtual particle grid (only seen via the UI) that allows players to better visualize 3D space when they\u2019re in, well, space.\n\nUI\nThe UI team spent December splitting their time between wrapping up features for 3.0 and working on bugfixes for the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice. On the PU side, the team had daily standups for each feature with Directors to get feedback straight away. These daily syncs not only helped progress for the Starmap, PMA, VMA and MFD\/Visor holodisplays, but ensured that communication was kept close between the various departments involved in pulling these features together ahead of 3.0 going Live.\n\nIn the run up to the Holiday Special, the UI focused on various bug fixes, including ensuring that the Visor UI would turn on at the correct time, removing quantum linking text from the Gladius HUD, and providing performance fixes alongside others to polish the experience. In addition, fluff screens for Chemline Solutions were designed and implemented ahead of the stream.\n\nENVIRONMENTS\nIn December, the environment team delivered final optimizations and bug fixes deemed as \u2018must fix\u2019 for the release of 3.0. As those tasks were completed, the team began to work on the next environments. A big focus of 2018 will be on getting spaces that are shared across locations functional, so the team worked on whiteboxing the kits for both hangars and habitation modules. The idea is to create kits for all these \u2018common\u2019 elements in a specific art style so they can be used across different locations. The whitebox stage allows design, art, and code to lock down the features of an element before committing to final art.\n\nElsewhere, the DE team has been looking at improvements to the planet texturing systems. The main goal is to improve the diversity and breakup of terrain types across a planet\u2019s surface. The new tech increases the number of supported distribution channels by 5x, meaning there\u2019s some improved visuals across terrains in the not too distant future.\n\nAUDIO\nSQ42\nThe audio team had all hands on deck in the lead up to the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice. They ensured the demo was fully supported with all the Dialog, Music and SFX content required. This work included additional sound design for cinematics, location ambience polish pass, ship SFX balancing, dialog attenuation\/mix pass, and new music content\/logic implementation via Subsumption.\n\nPU\nThe audio team simultaneously supported the Alpha 3.0 release with content creation, implementation and polish of dialog, SFX, and music assets. These included implementing new music logic and content for PU armistice zones (Olisar, Levski and Grim HEX), improving definition and intelligibility of weapon sounds, and adjusting thruster sounds for the Dragonfly and Nox in light of ongoing flight model tweaks.\nGoing forward, the audio team looks to iterate on the current Foley system and actor status system (breathing component). They also plan to begin work on a fully fleshed out sound simulation system.\n\nENVIRONMENT ART\nThe Concept and Tech teams introduced a new core structure and narrative behind how Lorville on Hurston function and come together. They developed an exciting and visually interesting city archetype for integrating procedural and landing zone elements. The team did an extensive amount of concept work to solve most of the major design issues.\n\nThe base archetype for a utilitarian habitation was established for the first procedural and fully interactive room. Concept is busy investigating and solving both material and theming diversity for generating these units across the Stanton system.\n\nSHIPS AND WEAPONS\nThis month, the team wrapped up the super large Tumbril Nova tank plus three other new ships of varying sizes and roles. They also provided support where needed and helped with marketing and new website revamp. For ship weapons, the team completed the Trident Laserbeam S4-S6 and the Hurston Electron Beam Alterations S1-S3.\n\nDERBY ANIMATION\nThe Derby Facial team was super busy right up until the 21st Dec with Facial animation tasks ranging from polishing the Prisoner Arrival scene to adding more in-game dialogue for random NPC characters.\n\nThe team also held their first Studio Christmas Party. It was a fairly small key event, but a good chance for staff and partners to enjoy some good food and a couple of drinks.\n\nThe team\u2019s pleased to announce that Senior Facial Animator Tony Wills is moving positions and is now Lead Gameplay Story Animator. Tony will oversee 800+ in-game mini \u201ccut scenes.\u201d\n\nENGINEERING\nThe UK programming team did a lot of bug fixing and polish work to get Alpha 3.0 out of the door as well as the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice in preparation.\n\nOn the cinematics side, they implemented the dynamic lighting mentioned last month. This allows the devs to fade up a specific lighting rig for a cutscene to highlight the quality of the characters. They also experimented with a new dynamic depth of field (DoF) mechanic for non-combat scenarios to give the game a more cinematic feel. Rather than having an infinite DoF, which is usually the case, the game focuses on what the player is currently looking at and applies a subtle blur for everything that is nearer\/further away.\n\nThe networking team worked on serialized variable culling, which will eventually become entity bind culling. This stops the server from distributing the state of variables on an entity after a certain distance. Considering the massive size of the PU and the content required to fill it, sending updates to everybody became a bottleneck. This helps the network bandwidth and performance side, as the server\/client doesn\u2019t have to deal with nearly as much data. The downside is that when the code is not expecting this behaviour, these edge cases introduced new bugs that needed to be found and worked through.\n\nOtherwise, they tackled other performance issues and optimizations, polished as many features as as possible before the end of the year, and a enjoyed a nice break over the holidays!\nFOUNDRY 42: DE\n\nENGINE\nThe DE Engine team spent a majority of the past month focused on improving performance and addressing issues for the current Live release. In the process, they worked with most other disciplines to help profile items and make recommendations and\/or fix issues when needed. Some cases are straightforward and addressed promptly, but for others the fix may be deemed it to risky to address immediately. Those items are still worked on, but will take a bit longer to verify and be included in future patches\/releases.\n\nIn addition to performance improvements, they worked with the Environment Art team to further enhance the visuals of the planet terrain. They made improvements to a new memory tracking tool for both server and clients. Implemented scripts to automatically analyze gathered statistics to quickly find leaks and dubious allocations. Fixed several issues related to how data is collected in our crash database Sentry. They started implementation of horizon based SSDO, and the initial results look really good. They reworked the cloth shader to use a more physically based shading model for cloth, as well as fixed shading discontinuities within it. They also reworked the motion blur implementation in game, and continued work on the Subsumption visualizer.\n\nLEVEL DESIGN\nThe Level Design department finished locations found in the 3.0 release ahead of schedule, so they focused on both bug fixing and polish during the latter part of December. After 3.0 was in PTU for a while, the decision was made to increase the server size. That meant they had to add more spawning areas to enable people to spawn in smoothly without conflict with one another. Finally, the DE Level Design team is looking to expand. As more features come online, they\u2019ll need additional designers to keep on top of the increased content and the R&D for upcoming system solutions and releases.\n\nTECH ART\nThe DE Tech Art team split their time between both 3.0.0 and Squadron 42 tasks. They\u2019re currently extending the FPS weapons pipeline with a new tool called CIGSiknXfe which will enable weapon artists to transfer skin weights to different meshes from one source skinned object. They started work on real-time cloth and flesh sim R&D and development of a live-link between Maya and the game engine, so animators can tweak animations, in particular facial animations, while enjoying the advanced shading quality of the in-engine real-time renders vs. Maya\u2019s own low quality viewport renders. This tech will be particularly useful for integrating and tweaking the p-cap (facial) animations in Squadron 42\u2019s cinematic cutscenes. This artistically controlled lighting will have a huge impact on the look and feel of an animation\/performance, meaning that iterating real time and in-game will make things much more efficient for the team.\n\nVFX\nLast month, the VFX team focused on the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice. They contributed to the Coil volumetric cloud, adding exterior effects to the slaver base on Gainey, and specific effects for the cinematic sequences. They dressed the exterior of the Slaver Base in the low technological style with suitable effects for the dusty planet surface. The cinematic effects were bespoke for the cutaways in the vertical slice. The work on the Coil gas cloud tech went through a good amount of R&D. The team focused on developing methods to create an interior volume while keeping in-line with the base concepts and art direction. It went through numerous iterations, and they paid close attention to how the interior created interesting compositions and visuals while flying.\n\nWEAPONS\nThe FPS weapons art team completed the first art pass on the Gemini F55 LMG and the Torral Aggregate Kahix Missile Launcher. Meanwhile, the ship weapons art team finished the first pass art for the A&R Laser Cannons (Size 1-6) and the Gallenson Tactical Ballistic Gatlings (Size 1-3). The team has also been working on scripts and tools to help further speed up their art pipeline. One such script is a Ship Weapon Tool made to assist in the creation of modular weapons. This new tool creates a larger number of weapons in a short amount of time by allowing artists to preview different component setups in real-time and automates the export process directly to the game engine. All animation exports and engine related meta-files are handled by the script, leaving the artist to focus on making the art.\n\nBUILD ENGINEERING\nThe Build Engineers added QA-TR (QA-TestRequest ) options to trybuild, which has already proven beneficial for the team. They also developed a feature to offload QA-TR trybuilds to dedicated agents in an effort to reduce compile times. So far, trybuild has been a simple code validation tool through which coders must check if their changelist compiles correctly against the most recent code updates. This ensures the next build will function correctly if they submit their changelist. This newest feature allows coders to have their changelist compiled against a specific CL. Within the tryBuild UI, the user can select an archive option and will receive an email with a link to a zip archive containing their binaries. At this point, a programmer can send a request to QA (namely QA-TR) asking to thoroughly test their binaries, making sure that their fix and\/or new feature works as expected. If QA approves the changes, then the programmer can submit their changelist. This provides an added layer of security, helping to reassure that the current active build is functioning as expected. Since the archive option also involves changing two waf compile options, compilation times inevitably got longer. To work around this issue, IT set up dedicated trybuild machines whose sole role is to accept trybuild requests only when the archive options is ticked. This brought the trybuild system back to normal compilation times.\n\nQA\nThe DE QA team spent December dealing with various in-house test requests for 3.0 and focused Squadron 42 testing. For 3.0, Hangar and shield test requests were completed for our Level Design and AI team, while additional testing for character movements was done for Animation. They also obtained in-game footage of the current state of various systems to be reviewed at a director level. Mission Giver testing was done for Ruto and Eckhart, as well as specific footage recorded for each of these NPCs with criteria provided by the Design team.\n\nDE QA eventually shifted focus to testing Squadron 42, specifically testing Combat AI, Flight AI wildlines, and AI turrets. They worked closely with the development teams designated for each of these sections as part of individual sprints to ensure that they had the needed QA support. For Combat AI, regular stand-up and review meetings were held leading up to the Squadron 42 Around the Verse holiday special. This involved reviewing the state of Combat AI daily and creating JIRA reports for any new issues called out during the review, as well as regular testing of the Combat AI. To test AI wildlines, they regularly played the vertical slice up to the dogfight that happens after quantum traveling to Gainey moon, then they had to ensure that all intended wildlines would trigger based on certain events performed by the Player.\n\nAI\nDecember was a very intense and productive month for the AI team. Regarding Subsumption, they introduced several new functionalities: the new Subsumption Event Dispatcher, the Mastergraph, and the Dynamic Trackview implementation. The Subsumption Event Dispatcher is a way to fully support the Subsumption events without relying on any other external system. It\u2019s composed by a central system that allows user code to create and send an event. The events are created in a pool to allow the AI system to efficiently handle and reuse the allocated memory, and each signal lifetime is automatically managed by specific structures called Handlers that also allow fast access to the signal itself.\n\nUser code can specify a direct event to an entity, or send an event to all the entities in a range from a specific location. Send events in a range is now zone safe and all the code efficiently uses the zone system for special queries and entity filtering. The Mastergraph is a way for building a relationship between multiple Subsumption activities. The team wants a general way for handling assignments (requests from designers), combat and regular activities. The Mastergraph allow them to specify transitions between our scheduled activities and other logic that should be executed when specific events are received. They also provided support for dynamic trackview scenes. A dynamic trackview scene is a cinematic scene where the participants can be replaced at runtime with actual AI NPCs. This allows the cinematic designers to work on their scene in a controlled environment. It also allows level designers to populate their level with NPCs that might have different activities, specific clothing, customizations, etc., based on how the Player affects the game. All the changes in the character might influence the real NPC characters and be part of the cinematic scenes. Also, dynamic trackview scenes can be potentially interrupted, so the AI system needs to know how to take over when and if that happens.\n\nShips AI also got some attention last month. The Squadron 42 Vertical Slice showed the first version of the updated spaceship behavior. The current Movement System is in control for both on-foot and flying movement requests, and Subsumption is in charge of controlling the pilots\/seat operators behaviors. The new spaceships are fully controlled by the NPC seating on the operator seats, each operator has specific behaviors to use the items they control. The first version of turrets has been implemented using Subsumption, and initial accuracy parameters introduced for the NPCs using seats items. The missions system progressed for the Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 release, introducing both environmental missions and interdiction. All the logic required for Office Admin NPCs was implemented to allow designers to create delivery and pickup missions. Additional work was done as well, which they\u2019ll provide more details in the near future.\n\nCINEMATICS\nThe Cinematic team spent the month hard at work prepping the relevant sequences and tech needed for the Squadron 42 Around the Verse holiday special . Here\u2019s a small portion of what they\u2019ve been recently working on. They scaled PCap performances for the character Vat Tagaca, played by Craig Fairbrass, to emphasize his real-life, intimidating body stature. They changed the base lighting of the Idris aft hangar deck, featured when the Argo arrives, to be darker and more moody than the standard light setup. There was much back and forth with AI and Cinematic Tools Engineers to get the AI functional and the tools to properly place them.\n\nWork was done to the Trackview Navspline tech that allows them to precisely puppeteer AI ships, like going from the interior zones to outside Shubin space seamlessly. They worked with engineering on several features that enrich the game cinematically. They prototyped and then enabled an always-on autofocus FSTOP based Depth Of Field (mostly for non-combat situations) that adds a filmic realism to walking around and exploring interiors. The team successfully created a couple of gold standard scenes, which take into account all departments necessary and represent the flow and interaction that will be applied to future applicable scenes. Tech that uses lightgroups as cinematic light layers for scenes was also completed. With default or custom individual timing of lights coming online, any scene can be tagged and a corresponding lightlayer triggered to fade in. This can be a light rig per scene or per location, as both are viable. The cine lighting rig will be used to push certain cinematics further than what the environmental base lighting provides. The cinematics team generally doesn\u2019t go into too much detail, so they don\u2019t spoil the story, but they\u2019ll go into more detail on the Vertical Slice in a future update.\n\nENVIRONMENT ART\nLast month, the DE Environment Art team spent time preparing for 2018 and the challenges ahead. It is always good to look back at the progress made during the year and realign the goals for the new year. A lot of preparation and R&D went into updating the planet tech and tools. As the game moves from moons to full planets with more visually diverse ecosystems, the team wanted to have more control and variety of colors and materials. Work is being done on updating the planet tech as well as the shaders used on the scattered assets. This allows them to have the visual palette they want in the upcoming locations. It also provides a nice visual update and boost in quality for our existing moons.\n\nSYSTEM DESIGN\nThe System Design team spent December finalizing work on both 3.0 and the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice. A lot of the work went into the first major mission givers, Eckhart & Ruto, and ensuring there are no edge cases where they can get stuck or players can abuse them. Both presented different challenges, as each has their own conversation flow, way of being found and triggered. They also completed the first implementation of the Admin Officer for all our major locations. Once again, many edge cases had to be considered and a lot of work went into making sure the players can\u2019t block him for too long or give him items that he can\u2019t properly handle. There are still some issues, but the team is sorting out the solutions.\n\nAnother big focus was FPS combat AI. It\u2019s not finished but showing a lot of promise. The combat AI are beginning to act in a more believable manner, as they continue to add behaviors, adjust the timing of combat, and strive to get AI fights to feel challenging and fun to play. Things they also completed include: override pump upgrades to doors, hatches received locks that could be cut through, the beds in the Idris got upgraded with shutters, and more complex usables were added to make the game feel more alive.\nTURBULENT\n\nDecember was a release month as the Turbulent team was instrumental in getting 3.0 in your hands!\n\nLAUNCHER\nFinally released, the new RSI Launcher replaces the CIG Patcher that was previously used to distribute the game assets to your desktop for Star Citizen 2.6 and lower.\n\nThis release marks a major milestone for the team as the entire system that powers the launcher will allow us a direct integration path with the game where we will be now be able to open communication between your game sessions and the Spectrum client through integration points. This also opens the door for integrated anti-cheat sandboxing systems.\n\nGetting the launcher in your hands as part of 3.0 has been our team\u2019s main focus for while as multiple rounds of testing on multiple platforms have taken place to ensure the new delta patcher, UI, installer and application shell perform well in all supported machine types and versions.\n\n3.0 release also marks the deployment of the launcher backend which provides a new and secure way to distribute game update notifications and asset authorization to backers.\n\nROADMAP\nA separate team was split from the main group to work on a new and updated Roadmap display engine for the producers at CIG to use to update the community on the schedule and plans for the game. This new engine will allow the producers to create releases, place them in time and have feature cards on each to describe a feature of the game planned for a specific period.\n\nWe hope this new format will make the schedule updates more fun to read and will also help the teams produce more updates, as the backend systems provide more tools to update the schedule per feature card.\n\nSHIP SALES\nOur design team added life to the Tumbril Nova concept in December, fleshing out the first ground vehicle tank in the Star Citizen universe, inspired by 1980\u2019s action figures.\n\nThis week is your last chance to pick up a Tumbril Nova in the concept phase!\n\nWELCOME TO STAR CITIZEN\nThroughout December, the web team has been hard at work on the next iteration of the Star Citizen site. You can view a full report of our work on Welcome to SC in the January episode of ATV! We are hoping to launch a first pass of this new iteration in the first month of the year. Community\n\n\nWhile December is traditionally an action-packed month for Star Citizen, the team took it to the next level in 2017. On December 22nd, the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice was revealed during the Around the Verse holiday special and shared more than one hour of raw gameplay, including a special version with Director\u2019s commentary from Chris Roberts himself. If you\u2019re interested in more information about Squadron 42, you can enlist now to receive regular updates and exclusives on the updated Squadron 42 page here.\n\nThe holiday special also introduced the legendary battle tank \u2014 the Tumbril Nova. This battlefield dominator is available through January 15, and you can find all of the details here.\n\nIf the Holiday Special was not enough, the team published Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 to Live servers just before the holidays. This required a herculean effort by teams around the globe and we\u2019re not finished just yet! Releasing Alpha 3.0 has opened the gates for what promises to be an exciting new year of updates to the Star Citizen universe. If you\u2019re curious to see what\u2019s next, you\u2019ll be able to check in with our updated roadmap for 2018 that will come online with the revised RSI website.\n\nWe said it last month, but we\u2019ll say it again \u2014 thank you to each and every one of the dedicated testers who helped make the release of Alpha 3.0 possible. We truly appreciate you and your efforts!\n\nThanks to the release of Alpha 3.0, we have also seen a massive influx in community-created content submitted to the website. We highly encourage you to browse the Community Hub and check out all of the new videos, screenshots, guides, music, 3D prints, and more. Keep \u2018em coming!\n\nLastly, we\u2019ve taken the time to go through and organize your feedback on a variety of topics. We\u2019re in the process of planning and executing some fun changes that you\u2019ll see rolled out during the new year.\n\nAnd with that, we\u2019ll see you in the \u2018Verse! WE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026","de_DE":"Gr\u00fc\u00dfe B\u00fcrger!\n\nWillkommen zum monatlichen Studio-Report, wo wir Updates von unseren verschiedenen Studios auf der ganzen Welt sammeln, um Ihnen zu zeigen, woran sie im letzten Monat gearbeitet haben. In der Eile bis zu den Feiertagen konzentrierte sich das gesamte Unternehmen auf zwei Hauptaufgaben: die \u00dcbertragung von Star Citizen 3.0 auf die Live-Server und die Bearbeitung des Vertical Slice, der eine Stunde Spielzeit von Staffel 42 bot. Danach brachen alle f\u00fcr die dringend ben\u00f6tigte Ruhepause, bevor sie zur\u00fcckkamen, um das neue Jahr in Folge zu beginnen. Wenn das so ist, kommen wir zur Sache. WOLKENIMPERIUM: LOS ANGELES\nMASCHINENBAU\nAlpha 3.0 war ein monumentaler technischer Meilenstein f\u00fcr Star Citizen, insbesondere f\u00fcr das LA-Fahrzeugteam. Im Dezember wurde die erste Stufe von Punkt 2.0 f\u00fcr Schiffe mit mehreren Bugfixes abgeschlossen und wichtige Funktionen f\u00fcr 3.0 abgeschlossen. Mit der Integration der Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che mit diesem sehr komplexen System hat das Team eine gro\u00dfe H\u00fcrde genommen. Schlie\u00dflich sahen einige der zugrunde liegenden Systeme, die eine gro\u00dfe Rolle in Staffel 42 und dem Persistent Universe (Scanning und Quantum Travel) spielen, einige Iterationen und Prototypen, auf die sie wirklich stolz waren.\nAls die Version 3.0 zusammenkam, konzentrierte sich das Hauptsystemteam auf das Polieren und Stabilisieren einiger Schl\u00fcsselkomponenten von Star Citizen. Fracht und Einkaufen sahen erhebliche Fehlerbehebungen, die diese Funktionen mit den langfristigen Zielen in Einklang brachten. Infrastruktureller Spielcode wie das Raumsystem, das Interaktionssystem und sogar Sch\u00e4den sahen signifikante Bugfixes bis zum Release.\nTECH DESIGN\nLA Tech Design verbrachte die meiste Zeit im Dezember damit, die neuen Item 2.0-Schiffe f\u00fcr Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 so reibungslos wie m\u00f6glich zu entwickeln. Sie schlugen eine Vielzahl von Bugs nieder, einschlie\u00dflich, aber nicht beschr\u00e4nkt auf Ein-\/Ausgangsausrichtungsprobleme an der Sense, ein Problem, bei dem Sch\u00e4den nicht auf alle Teile eines Schiffes \u00fcbergingen, Probleme beim Zugang zum Sitz mit der Caterpillar, atmosph\u00e4rische Bugs im Herald und IK-Probleme bei den Mustang-Sitzen. Das Team verbrachte auch Zeit damit, die Schildstatistiken abzugleichen, um eine bessere Stromspeicherung und W\u00e4rmeerzeugung zu gew\u00e4hrleisten, schloss Cursor an alle Spielerinteraktionen auf den Schiffen an und beendete die Einrichtung von Bettenumbauten vom Objektcontainer zum ItemPort.\n\u00dcber Alpha 3.0 hinaus arbeiteten sie weiterhin auf Schiffen wie der Amboss-Schildkr\u00f6te, dem \u00fcberarbeiteten Consolidated Outland Mustang und dem Tumbril Cyclone, um sie einzurichten und fliegen zu k\u00f6nnen (bzw. fahrbar). Sie fertigten auch Designvorschl\u00e4ge f\u00fcr das Schiff[REDACTED], auf das sie sich wirklich freuen.\nSchlie\u00dflich unterst\u00fctzte das Team das UI-Team bei der Fertigstellung des Scan-Visors, des MFD, und schloss alle Verm\u00f6genswerte an, die in Zukunft freigegeben werden sollen.\nKUNST\nDas Ship Art Team schloss 2017 mit einem Knall ab. Der neue RSI Aurora wurde fertiggestellt und offiziell freigegeben. Gro\u00dfe Fortschritte wurden bei mehreren anderen Fahrzeugen erzielt, wie dem Anvil Hurricane, dem \u00fcberarbeiteten Consolidated Outland Mustang und dem Tumbril Cyclone. Das Team hatte seinen gerechten Anteil an Fehlerbehebungs- und Supportaufgaben f\u00fcr verschiedene Funktionen, die mit Alpha 3.0 und den kommenden Versionen ver\u00f6ffentlicht wurden.\nDas Charakter-Team vervollst\u00e4ndigte die Besetzung der Staffel 42 f\u00fcr den Vertikalschnitt. Eine wichtige Entwicklung war die Zusammenarbeit mit dem Grafikteam bei der Implementierung eines neuen Haarschneiders, der die Charaktere zum Gl\u00e4nzen bringt. Schlie\u00dflich hat das Team einige unserer Charakterauslastungen mit Verschlei\u00df verbunden, was ihnen ein authentisches Gef\u00fchl im Spiel verleiht.\nNARRATIV\nIm Dezember arbeitete das Narrative Team eng mit Design zusammen, um alle verbliebenen Fehler und Probleme zu beheben, die auftraten, um sicherzustellen, dass Missionsinhalte, Artikelbeschreibungen und sogar Poster f\u00fcr Alpha 3.0 bereit waren. Sie trugen auch dazu bei, zus\u00e4tzliche \u00f6kologische Geschichten zu erz\u00e4hlen und Requisiten zu schreiben, um die Welt von Staffel 42 im Vertikalschnitt zu verkaufen. Dar\u00fcber hinaus lieferten sie w\u00f6chentliche \u00dcberlieferungen, schrieben drei St\u00fccke f\u00fcr Jump Point, setzten die Entwicklung der Xi'an-Sprache fort und unterst\u00fctzten die Marketingabteilung bei zahlreichen Aufgaben, darunter die Tumbril Nova Brosch\u00fcre.\nTECH INHALT\nDas Global Technical Content Team hat im Dezember einige gro\u00dfe Erfolge erzielt, um das Jahr 2017 mit einem positiven Ergebnis abzuschlie\u00dfen. Das Tech Animation Team war den ganzen Monat \u00fcber mit Tools-Support, Charakter-Rigging und verschiedenen MoCap-Aufgaben besch\u00e4ftigt. F\u00fcr Werkzeuge und verwandte Arbeiten wurden die Mannequin Python Tools, der CIG Tools Installer, ein Jump\/Spike Detection Tool und die Skeleton Table verbessert sowie mehrere neue Zustandspr\u00fcfungen an den Pipelines hinzugef\u00fcgt. Das Team unterst\u00fctzte auch die S42 Vertical Slice, indem es mehrere Charaktere manipulierte und auch eine Tonne Skinning Bugs bearbeitete. Das MoCap-Team verfolgte, l\u00f6ste und bearbeitete eine gro\u00dfe Gruppe von Charakteren zur Unterst\u00fctzung der Staffel 42. Ein MoCap-Shooting wurde auch durchgef\u00fchrt, um zus\u00e4tzliches Filmmaterial aufzunehmen, das f\u00fcr Schl\u00fcsselpersonen ben\u00f6tigt wird.\nAuf der Seite der Tech Art unterteilte sich das Team in Environments, Ships und Weapons. F\u00fcr Umgebungen wurde viel Unterst\u00fctzung und Forschung und Entwicklung in unseren Glas-Shader und ein Vertex-Kr\u00fcmmungsskript investiert. Zus\u00e4tzlich planten sie, dass die Arbeiten an den Verfahrensanordnungen 2018 beginnen sollten. Viele Fehler wurden auch untersucht.... f\u00fcr Lichter\/Schatten, Haarwiedergabe und Texturstreaming. F\u00fcr Schiffe unterst\u00fctzte das Team die Freigabe der verschiedenen neuen Fahrzeuge im Alpha 3.0 Release. Dazu geh\u00f6rten Arbeiten zu Schaden und VisAreas sowie die Behebung und Untersuchung vieler Probleme mit Log-Spam. Das Team arbeitete auch an der Fahrwerkskompression f\u00fcr die Schiffe im Around the Verse Urlaubsspezial.\nSchlie\u00dflich, was die Waffen betrifft, befand sich das Team im R&D-Modus f\u00fcr animierte Anh\u00e4nge\/Magazine. Sie machten Fortschritte beim P8AR-Magazin, Gemini F55 und einem Skin Transfer Skript\/Tool. Sie haben auch mehrere Waffenfehler behoben. Schlie\u00dflich unterst\u00fctzte das Team von Global Technical Content andere Bereiche, wie z.B. die Reorganisation der Werkzeugzweige.\nWOLKENIMPERIUM: AUSTIN\nDESIGN\nDie Bereitstellung von 3.0 ready to go live war der gro\u00dfe Fokus des ATX Design Teams in diesem Monat. Unter Verwendung des Feedbacks derjenigen, die die PTU-Builds testen, konnten sie eine Vielzahl von Fehlern in Bezug auf Einkaufen und Frachthandel auf den Stationen und Monden um Crusader herum beheben. Die Wirtschaft und die Artikelpreise waren auf der Grundlage der gesammelten Analysen weiterhin ausgeglichen. Nat\u00fcrlich gibt es noch viel mehr Einwahlen, wenn die Systeme auf den Live-Servern zusammenwirken.\nDie weitere Arbeit an den Missionsgebern Ruto und Miles war ebenfalls eine wichtige Aufgabe f\u00fcr das Team. Da es sich um einen komplexen Mix aus zahlreichen Systemen wie Animation und Subsumtion handelt, war es ermutigend zu sehen, welche Fortschritte gemacht wurden, um die ersten beiden Charaktere ins Spiel zu bringen. Wir haben bisher bereits viel gelernt, das dazu beitragen wird, den Prozess in Zukunft zu rationalisieren und zu verbessern.\nKUNST\nMit dem Release von 3.0.0 zu Live erhielt die Community endlich die aktualisierte Constellation Aquila, Drake Cutlass und Aopoa Nox zu sehen. Das Schiffsteam verbrachte den Monat damit, Unterst\u00fctzung zu leisten, um das Persistent Universe auf die Live-Server zu bringen. Das Sternbild Ph\u00f6nix war vollst\u00e4ndig in der Whitebox und wurde in die Greybox verschoben. Inzwischen ist der Anvil F8 Lightning Anfang des Monats in die Whitebox-Phase eingetreten und hat sich zwischen den Bugfixing-Aufgaben gut entwickelt.\nBACKEND-SERVICES\nZu Beginn des Monats lieferte das DevOps-Team jede Woche mehrere PTU-Publikationen. Sie \u00fcberwachten die Leistung und das Feedback der Evocati- und PTU-Player und brachten Builds heraus, die so schnell wie m\u00f6glich Korrekturen und Funktionsbereitstellungen enthielten. Sie arbeiteten auch mit der IT zusammen, um sicherzustellen, dass alles f\u00fcr das Live-Release bereit war. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Behandlung einer Reihe von Systemfehlern kurz vor dem Going Live von 3.0.\nNach dem intensiven 3.0-Ver\u00f6ffentlichungsprozess verfolgte das Team sorgf\u00e4ltig die verwendete Bandbreite und passte die Server entsprechend an. Sie arbeiteten auch mit dem Design zusammen, um eine Reihe von Hotfixes anzuwenden, um unerwartete Probleme zu beheben, die sich negativ auf Leistung und Spielablauf auswirken. Sie schafften dies, ohne die Spieler zu beeintr\u00e4chtigen, indem sie die Server sorgf\u00e4ltig \u00fcberwachten und sie mit dem besseren Code neu starteten, wenn die Serverpopulation Null erreichte.\nZus\u00e4tzlich zu allem, was mit dem Live-Release zu tun hat, unterst\u00fctzte das Team die Entwickler weiterhin mit Diagnose, Performance-Captures und vielem mehr.\nANIMATION\nDas Animationsteam verbrachte diesen Monat damit, sich die Spielerfahrung in Alpha 3.0 anzusehen, um sicherzustellen, dass alle Animationen, die mit den verschiedenen Interaktionen verbunden sind, denen Menschen w\u00e4hrend der Durchf\u00fchrung von Missionen und der Erkundung von Kreuzrittern begegnen w\u00fcrden, so gut wie m\u00f6glich aussehen. Dazu geh\u00f6rten einige Bugfixes, einige Anpassungen an verschiedenen \u00dcbergangselementen sowie eine allgemeine \u00dcberarbeitung. Das Team begann auch mit der Arbeit an den Tumbril Cyclone Animationen, die letzten Monat in einem Motion Capture Shooting aufgenommen wurden. Auf der Schiffsseite gab es zus\u00e4tzliche technische Einrichtungen, die auf mehreren Schiffen untersucht werden mussten, da das Team einige Probleme untersuchte, die von Spielern, die die PTU testen, festgestellt worden waren.\nAu\u00dferhalb von Alpha 3.0 wurde viel Zeit mit der vertikalen Scheibe der Staffel 42 verbracht, als sich das Datum des Holiday Specials n\u00e4herte. W\u00e4hrend die Direktoren und Leads den Inhalt t\u00e4glich \u00fcberpr\u00fcften, gab das Team die zahlreichen Interaktionsanimationen auf der Idris weiter, um sicherzustellen, dass die Crew so gut wie m\u00f6glich aussah, w\u00e4hrend sie sich auf dem Schiff bewegte und verschiedene Aufgaben durch das benutzerfreundliche System ausf\u00fchrte.\nATX QA\nAls Star Citizen Alpha zwischen PTU und Live wechselte, hatte ATX QA nat\u00fcrlich einen arbeitsreichen Monat und testete unerm\u00fcdlich die Bugfixes und \u00c4nderungsvorschl\u00e4ge f\u00fcr den 3.0.0.0 Build. Eine der gr\u00f6\u00dften Herausforderungen, besonders bei einer Version, die so viele neue Updates und Funktionen wie diese enth\u00e4lt, ist es, sicherzustellen, dass Fixes im Spiel einen Build an anderer Stelle nicht destabilisieren. Um dieses Risiko zu minimieren, haben die Entwickler das QA-Testanforderungssystem st\u00e4rker \u00fcbernommen, und jeder einzelne featurebezogene Check-in am Ende musste gr\u00fcndlich getestet werden. Obwohl dies die Arbeitsbelastung des Teams erh\u00f6hte, um die t\u00e4glichen Pushs zur PTU aufrechtzuerhalten, trug dieser Prozess dazu bei, dass die Armee der Tester einen stabilen Aufbau hatte, der es erlaubte, weiterhin wichtige R\u00fcckmeldungen zu geben.\nSPIELERBEZIEHUNGEN\nDa die Weihnachtszeit vor der T\u00fcr stand, gab es f\u00fcr diesen Monat viel, was \"tonkful\" sein sollte. Unmittelbar nach dem Star Citizen's Anniversary unterst\u00fctzte das Player Relations-Team die Geldgeber mit den neu angek\u00fcndigten Aegis Hammerhead und Anvil Hawk. Au\u00dferdem brachte das Holiday Special den Tumbril Nova Tank und drei exklusive Holiday Game Packages mit, die perfekt sind, um Star Citizen mit Freunden und Lieben zu teilen. Das Team koordinierte sich auch weiterhin mit den massiven laufenden Testaufwendungen, da die Alpha 3.0 PTU weiterhin bei immer mehr Geldgebern eingef\u00fchrt wurde, und am spannendsten war, dass der Build in Betrieb ging! Nochmals vielen Dank an alle Spieler f\u00fcr ihre kontinuierlichen Beitr\u00e4ge zum Issue Council. Ihre Hilfe ist f\u00fcr das Projekt von entscheidender Bedeutung.\nGIE\u00dfEREI 42: GRO\u00dfBRITANNIEN\nGRAFIK\nIm Laufe des letzten Monats konzentrierte sich das Grafikteam sowohl auf 3.0 als auch auf die vertikale Scheibe der Squadron 42. Meistens ging es um Bugfixes. Zu den Highlights geh\u00f6rten wichtige Korrekturen f\u00fcr Textur-Streaming-Bugs (sie haben inzwischen einen weiteren Bug in Lumberyard gefunden und der Fix wird die VRAM-Nutzung in der n\u00e4chsten Version erheblich reduzieren), eine Korrektur f\u00fcr Gesichtsanimationsprobleme und verschiedene Korrekturen f\u00fcr Haare und zeitliches Anti-Aliasing. Sie entwickelten auch das Render-To-Texture-System weiter, einschlie\u00dflich der Hinzuf\u00fcgung der Expose-Kontrolle zu Videokommanrufen und der Verwendung des Systems f\u00fcr die neuen Schiffszielanzeigen.\nDie vertikale Scheibe der Squadron 42 profitierte auch von einigen ihrer neuen Funktionen, wie z.B. einem neuen Tuchschattierungsmodell, verbesserten Lichtstrahlen, der Einf\u00fchrung der volumetrischen Gaswolkentechnik und einem neuen partikelbasierten Schildeffekt, der mit Hilfe von signierten Abstandsfeldern einen reibungslosen Fluss der Partikel entlang des Schiffsrumpfes erm\u00f6glicht. Ihr r-Fokus f\u00fcr das neue Jahr wird sich auf die Leistungssteigerung und verschiedene geplante Shader-Verbesserungen verlagern, um dynamischere Materialien zu erm\u00f6glichen.\nSCHIFFE\nHammerkopf\nDas Team war sehr aufgeregt, die Hammerhead im November zu enth\u00fcllen, und seitdem haben sie hart daran gearbeitet, die Au\u00dfenbereiche fertigzustellen, die im Video nicht zu sehen waren. Sie machten eine Detailf\u00fchrung \u00fcber den Rumpf und die Motoren und gaben der Unterseite mehr Aufmerksamkeit. Die Fahrwerke wurden ebenfalls hinzugef\u00fcgt, so dass das \u00c4u\u00dfere nun bereit ist, mit dem Aufbau des Schadens zu beginnen. F\u00fcr den Innenbereich blockierten sie den Grundriss mit bestehenden Aegis-Kits aus Idris und Speer. Sie haben auch herausgefunden, welche ma\u00dfgeschneiderten und neuen St\u00fccke ben\u00f6tigt werden, um das Interieur fertigzustellen und ein paar Jungs bei der Arbeit an diesen jetzt.\n\u00dcberarbeiteter R\u00e4cher\nDer Avenger wurde einer kompletten \u00dcberarbeitung unterzogen, um Probleme mit dem Original zu beheben und es mit den aktuellen Schiffsmetriken und Anforderungen in Einklang zu bringen. Das aktualisierte Avenger, das im Around the Verse Urlaubsspezial enth\u00fcllt wurde, war eine gemeinsame Anstrengung zwischen dem Schiffsteam und dem neu gebildeten Squadron 42 Team. Die Cargo- und Bounty-J\u00e4ger-Varianten sind art complete, und die Arbeiten an der EMP-Variante sind f\u00fcr Januar geplant. Die Arbeiten zur Fertigstellung der restlichen \u00e4u\u00dferen Teile, wie Fahrwerk, Sch\u00e4den und LODs, werden in K\u00fcrze beginnen.\n600i\nDer 600i geht in die letzte Kunstphase. An der Au\u00dfenseite sind die Triebwerke und das Fahrwerk fast fertig, und die Arbeiten am Turm sollen beginnen. Der Innenraum durchl\u00e4uft einen Poliergang, w\u00e4hrend die Arbeiten an der Br\u00fccke, den G\u00e4ngen und dem Erkundungsmodul in K\u00fcrze abgeschlossen werden sollen. Seit dem letzten Update h\u00f6rte sich das Team das Feedback der Unterst\u00fctzer an und entfernte die Streben aus den Br\u00fcckenfenstern.\nGladius\nDie Gladius war ein gro\u00dfer Teil der Squadron 42 Vertical Slice, also verbrachten sie Zeit damit, sie f\u00fcr die Demo zu optimieren. Dazu geh\u00f6rten die Implementierung des neuen Glas- und Bildschirmschatters, die Cockpitbeleuchtung und die Anpassung der Scheinwerfer, die Bildschirmgr\u00f6\u00dfen\/Positionierung und das Hinzuf\u00fcgen der neuen Sternkarte. Cockpits sind die komplexesten Teile der Schiffe, die Input aus dem gesamten Unternehmen zusammenbringen, und sie durchlaufen viele Iterationen, bevor sie die Anforderungen aller Abteilungen erf\u00fcllen.\nFinsternis\nDie Arbeiten an der Eclipse wurden fortgesetzt, da das Cockpit und das \u00c4u\u00dfere grau umrandet waren. Das Mesh durchl\u00e4uft derzeit einen Detailpass, bevor es mit Texturen und Shadern beginnt.\nKlinge\nDas \u00c4u\u00dfere der Vanduul Blade ist fast vollst\u00e4ndig und wurde mit anderen Vanduul-Schiffen in Einklang gebracht. Der aktuelle Fokus des Teams liegt auf dem Interieur und der Entwicklung des Ein- und Ausstiegsmechanismus f\u00fcr Piloten.\nVFX\nDas britische VFX-Team verbrachte den Dezember damit, Fehler zu beheben und f\u00fcr 3.0 zu optimieren, nachdem der im letzten Monat diskutierte Gesundheitspass abgeschlossen war. Die Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeiten an signierten Distanzfeldschildeffekten, einschlie\u00dflich Einschalt-, Ausschalt- und Schlagwirkung f\u00fcr Gladius, Entermesser und Freibeuter, wurden fortgesetzt. Sie verfeinerten auch die feineren Effektdetails, die in der Squadron 42 Vertical Slice Demo zu sehen waren. Es gibt zu viele, um sie einzeln zu nennen, aber Highlights sind die Spule selbst, der Blitzsturm in den riesigen Asteroiden und die Kryo-Pods der Slaver-Basis.\nAuch beim VFX f\u00fcr die Scan-Funktion hat das Team gute Fortschritte gemacht. Unter anderem wird es ein virtuelles Partikelgitter aussenden (nur \u00fcber die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che zu sehen), das es den Spielern erm\u00f6glicht, den 3D-Raum besser zu visualisieren, wenn sie sich im Raum befinden.\nUI\nDas UI-Team verbrachte den Dezember damit, seine Zeit zwischen dem Verpacken von Features f\u00fcr 3.0 und der Arbeit an Bugfixes f\u00fcr die Squadron 42 Vertical Slice aufzuteilen. Auf der PU-Seite hatte das Team t\u00e4gliche Eins\u00e4tze f\u00fcr jedes Feature mit den Directors, um sofort Feedback zu erhalten. Diese t\u00e4glichen Synchronisierungen trugen nicht nur dazu bei, die Holodisplays Starmap, PMA, VMA und MFD\/Visor voranzubringen, sondern sorgten auch daf\u00fcr, dass die Kommunikation zwischen den verschiedenen Abteilungen, die an der Zusammenf\u00fchrung dieser Funktionen beteiligt waren, vor dem Going Live von 3.0 eng gehalten wurde.\nIm Vorfeld des Holiday Specials konzentrierte sich die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che auf verschiedene Bugfixes, darunter die Sicherstellung, dass die Visor-Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che zum richtigen Zeitpunkt eingeschaltet wird, die Entfernung von Quantenverkn\u00fcpfungstext aus dem Gladius HUD und die Bereitstellung von Performance-Korrekturen neben anderen, um das Erlebnis zu verbessern. Dar\u00fcber hinaus wurden Flusensiebe f\u00fcr Chemline entworfen und vor dem Strom implementiert.\nUMGEBUNGEN\nIm Dezember lieferte das Umweltteam endg\u00fcltige Optimierungen und Bugfixes, die als \"must fix\" f\u00fcr das Release von 3.0 angesehen werden. Als diese Aufgaben erledigt waren, begann das Team mit der Arbeit an den n\u00e4chsten Umgebungen. Ein gro\u00dfer Schwerpunkt des Jahres 2018 wird darin bestehen, R\u00e4ume, die \u00fcber die Standorte verteilt sind, funktionsf\u00e4hig zu machen, so dass das Team an der Whiteboxing der Baus\u00e4tze f\u00fcr Hangars und Wohnmodule arbeitete. Die Idee ist es, Kits f\u00fcr all diese \"gemeinsamen\" Elemente in einem bestimmten Kunststil zu erstellen, damit sie an verschiedenen Orten verwendet werden k\u00f6nnen. Die Whitebox-Plattform erm\u00f6glicht es Design, Kunst und Code, die Funktionen eines Elements zu sperren, bevor es sich der endg\u00fcltigen Kunst widmet.\nAn anderer Stelle hat sich das DE-Team mit der Verbesserung der Planetentextursysteme besch\u00e4ftigt. Das Hauptziel ist es, die Vielfalt und Aufl\u00f6sung der Gel\u00e4ndetypen auf der Oberfl\u00e4che eines Planeten zu verbessern. Die neue Technologie erh\u00f6ht die Anzahl der unterst\u00fctzten Vertriebskan\u00e4le um das F\u00fcnffache, was bedeutet, dass es in nicht allzu ferner Zukunft einige verbesserte visuelle Effekte auf dem gesamten Gel\u00e4nde gibt.\nAUDIO\nSQ42\nDas Audioteam hatte alle H\u00e4nde an Deck in der F\u00fchrung bis zum Squadron 42 Vertical Slice. Sie stellten sicher, dass die Demo vollst\u00e4ndig mit allen erforderlichen Dialog-, Musik- und SFX-Inhalten unterst\u00fctzt wurde. Diese Arbeiten umfassten zus\u00e4tzliches Sounddesign f\u00fcr Kinematiken, Location Ambience Polish Pass, Ship SFX Balancing, Dialog D\u00e4mpfung \/ Mix Pass und New Music Content \/ Logic Implementation via Subsumption.\nPU\nDas Audioteam unterst\u00fctzte gleichzeitig die Alpha 3.0-Version bei der Erstellung, Implementierung und Verfeinerung von Inhalten f\u00fcr Dialog-, SFX- und Musikdateien. Dazu geh\u00f6rten die Implementierung neuer Musiklogik und -inhalte f\u00fcr PU-Waffenruhezonen (Olisar, Levski und Grim HEX), die Verbesserung der Definition und Verst\u00e4ndlichkeit von Waffenger\u00e4uschen sowie die Anpassung der Thruster-Sounds f\u00fcr Dragonfly und Nox im Hinblick auf die laufenden Optimierungen des Flugmodells.\nIn Zukunft wird das Auditteam \u00fcber das aktuelle Foley-System und das Schauspielerstatussystem (Atmungskomponente) iterieren. Au\u00dferdem ist geplant, mit den Arbeiten an einem vollst\u00e4ndig ausgearbeiteten Klangsimulationssystem zu beginnen.\nUMWELTKUNST\nDie Concept- und Tech-Teams stellten eine neue Kernstruktur und Erz\u00e4hlung vor, wie Lorville on Hurston funktioniert und zusammenkommt. Sie entwickelten einen spannenden und optisch interessanten Stadtarchetyp zur Integration von Verfahrens- und Landezonenelementen. Das Team f\u00fchrte eine umfangreiche Konzeptarbeit durch, um die meisten der wichtigsten Designprobleme zu l\u00f6sen.\nF\u00fcr den ersten prozeduralen und voll interaktiven Raum wurde der Basisarchetyp f\u00fcr ein nutzbringendes Wohnen festgelegt. Concept ist damit besch\u00e4ftigt, sowohl die materielle als auch die thematische Vielfalt zu untersuchen und zu l\u00f6sen, um diese Einheiten im gesamten Stanton-System zu generieren.\nSCHIFFE UND WAFFEN\nDiesen Monat wickelte das Team den supergro\u00dfen Tumbril Nova Panzer sowie drei weitere neue Schiffe unterschiedlicher Gr\u00f6\u00dfe und Rolle ein. Sie leisteten auch Unterst\u00fctzung, wenn n\u00f6tig, und halfen bei der Vermarktung und der Neugestaltung der Website. F\u00fcr Schiffswaffen fertigte das Team den Trident Laserbeam S4-S6 und die Hurston Electron Beam Moderations S1-S3.\nDERBY-ANIMATION\nDas Derby Facial Team war bis zum 21. Dezember super besch\u00e4ftigt mit Gesichtsanimationsaufgaben, die vom Polieren der Gefangenenankunftsszene bis hin zum Hinzuf\u00fcgen weiterer Dialoge f\u00fcr zuf\u00e4llige NSC-Charaktere im Spiel reichen.\nDas Team veranstaltete auch seine erste Studio-Weihnachtsfeier. Es war eine ziemlich kleine Schl\u00fcsselveranstaltung, aber eine gute Gelegenheit f\u00fcr Mitarbeiter und Partner, gutes Essen und ein paar Getr\u00e4nke zu genie\u00dfen.\nDas Team freut sich, bekannt geben zu k\u00f6nnen, dass der Senior Facial Animator Tony Wills Positionen wechselt und nun Lead Gameplay Story Animator ist. Tony wird mehr als 800 Mini-Cut-Szenen im Spiel betreuen.\nMASCHINENBAU\nDas britische Programmierteam hat viel Arbeit geleistet, um Alpha 3.0 aus der T\u00fcr zu bekommen, sowie das Squadron 42 Vertical Slice in Vorbereitung.\nIm Bereich der Filmkunst haben sie die im vergangenen Monat erw\u00e4hnte dynamische Beleuchtung umgesetzt. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es den Entwicklern, ein bestimmtes Lichtrigg f\u00fcr eine Cutscene zu verblassen, um die Qualit\u00e4t der Charaktere hervorzuheben. Sie experimentierten auch mit einer neuen Dynamic Depth of Field (DoF)-Mechanik f\u00fcr Nicht-Kampf-Szenarien, um dem Spiel ein filmischeres Gef\u00fchl zu verleihen. Anstatt eine unendliche DoF zu haben, was normalerweise der Fall ist, konzentriert sich das Spiel auf das, was der Spieler gerade ansieht, und wendet eine subtile Unsch\u00e4rfe auf alles an, was n\u00e4her\/weiter entfernt ist.\nDas Netzwerkteam arbeitete an der serialisierten Variablenauslese, die schlie\u00dflich zu einer Einheit f\u00fcr die Bindungsauslese wird. Dies verhindert, dass der Server den Zustand von Variablen auf eine Entit\u00e4t nach einer bestimmten Entfernung verteilt. In Anbetracht der enormen Gr\u00f6\u00dfe der PU und des Inhalts, der ben\u00f6tigt wird, um sie zu f\u00fcllen, wurde das Versenden von Updates an alle zu einem Engpass. Dies hilft der Netzwerkbandbreite und der Leistungsseite, da der Server\/Client nicht mit fast so vielen Daten umgehen muss. Der Nachteil ist, dass, wenn der Code dieses Verhalten nicht erwartet, diese Edge-F\u00e4lle neue Fehler aufwiesen, die gefunden und bearbeitet werden mussten.\nAnsonsten haben sie sich mit anderen Leistungsproblemen und Optimierungen besch\u00e4ftigt, so viele Funktionen wie m\u00f6glich vor Ende des Jahres ausgefeilt und eine sch\u00f6ne Pause \u00fcber die Feiertage genossen!\nGIE\u00dfEREI 42: DE\nMOTOR\nDas DE-Engine-Team hat sich im vergangenen Monat mehrheitlich auf die Verbesserung der Leistung und die L\u00f6sung von Problemen f\u00fcr die aktuelle Live-Version konzentriert. Dabei arbeiteten sie mit den meisten anderen Disziplinen zusammen, um die Profilerstellung zu unterst\u00fctzen und bei Bedarf Empfehlungen abzugeben und\/oder Probleme zu beheben. Einige F\u00e4lle sind unkompliziert und werden umgehend bearbeitet, aber f\u00fcr andere kann die Behebung als zu riskant erachtet werden. Diese Elemente werden noch bearbeitet, werden aber etwas l\u00e4nger dauern, um sie zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen und in zuk\u00fcnftige Patches\/Releases aufzunehmen.\nNeben der Leistungssteigerung arbeiteten sie mit dem Environment Art Team zusammen, um die Visualisierung des Planetengel\u00e4ndes weiter zu verbessern. Sie haben Verbesserungen an einem neuen Speicher-Tracking-Tool f\u00fcr Server und Clients vorgenommen. Implementierte Skripte zur automatischen Analyse der gesammelten Statistiken, um Lecks und zweifelhafte Zuordnungen schnell zu finden. Mehrere Probleme im Zusammenhang mit der Datenerfassung in unserer Crash-Datenbank Sentry wurden behoben. Sie begannen mit der Implementierung von horizontbasiertem SSDO, und die ersten Ergebnisse sehen wirklich gut aus. Sie \u00fcberarbeiteten den Stoffschattierer, um ein physikalischeres Schattierungsmodell f\u00fcr Stoff zu verwenden, sowie feste Schattierungsdiskontinuit\u00e4ten in ihm. Sie \u00fcberarbeiteten auch die Implementierung der Bewegungsunsch\u00e4rfe im Spiel und setzten die Arbeit am Subsumption Visualizer fort.\nLEVEL DESIGN\nDie Abteilung Leveldesign beendete die im Release 3.0 gefundenen Standorte vorzeitig, so dass sie sich in der zweiten Dezemberh\u00e4lfte sowohl auf die Fehlerbehebung als auch auf die Feinbearbeitung konzentrierte. Nachdem 3.0 eine Weile in PTU war, wurde die Entscheidung getroffen, die Servergr\u00f6\u00dfe zu erh\u00f6hen. Das bedeutete, dass sie mehr Laichgebiete hinzuf\u00fcgen mussten, damit die Menschen reibungslos und ohne Konflikte miteinander laichen konnten. Schlie\u00dflich plant das DE Level Design Team eine Erweiterung. Wenn weitere Funktionen online kommen, ben\u00f6tigen sie zus\u00e4tzliche Designer, um \u00fcber den gestiegenen Content und die Forschung und Entwicklung f\u00fcr kommende Systeml\u00f6sungen und Releases informiert zu sein.\nTECH ART\nDas DE Tech Art Team teilte seine Zeit zwischen 3.0.0.0 und Squadron 42 Aufgaben auf. Sie erweitern derzeit die FPS-Waffenpipeline mit einem neuen Tool namens CIGSiknXfe, das es Waffenk\u00fcnstlern erm\u00f6glichen wird, Hautgewichte auf verschiedene Maschen aus einem Quellobjekt zu \u00fcbertragen. Sie begannen mit der Arbeit an der Echtzeit-Tuch- und Fleischsimulation und der Entwicklung einer Live-Verbindung zwischen Maya und der Game-Engine, so dass Animatoren Animationen, insbesondere Gesichtsanimationen, optimieren und gleichzeitig die fortschrittliche Shadingqualit\u00e4t der Echtzeit-Renderings im Vergleich zu Mayas eigenen, minderwertigen Viewport-Renderings genie\u00dfen k\u00f6nnen. Diese Technologie wird besonders n\u00fctzlich sein, um die p-cap (Gesichts-)Animationen in den filmischen Schnittszenen von Squadron 42 zu integrieren und zu optimieren. Diese k\u00fcnstlerisch gesteuerte Beleuchtung wird einen gro\u00dfen Einfluss auf das Erscheinungsbild einer Animation\/Performance haben, was bedeutet, dass die Iteration in Echtzeit und im Spiel die Effizienz des Teams deutlich erh\u00f6ht.\nVFX\nLetzten Monat konzentrierte sich das VFX-Team auf die Squadron 42 Vertical Slice. Sie trugen zur volumetrischen Wolke des Coil bei, indem sie der Slave-Basis auf Gainey \u00e4u\u00dfere Effekte und spezifische Effekte f\u00fcr die Filmsequenzen hinzuf\u00fcgten. Sie kleideten die Au\u00dfenseite der Slaver Base im niederen technologischen Stil mit geeigneten Effekten f\u00fcr die staubige Planetenoberfl\u00e4che. Die filmischen Effekte wurden f\u00fcr die Ausschnitte in der vertikalen Scheibe ma\u00dfgeschneidert. Die Arbeiten an der Coil-Gaswolkentechnik wurden mit gro\u00dfem Aufwand durchgef\u00fchrt. Das Team konzentrierte sich auf die Entwicklung von Methoden zur Schaffung eines Innenraumes unter Ber\u00fccksichtigung der Grundkonzepte und der Art Direction. Es durchlief zahlreiche Iterationen, und sie achteten genau darauf, wie das Interieur w\u00e4hrend des Fluges interessante Kompositionen und Visuals kreierte.\nWEAPONS\nDas Waffenkunstteam des FPS fertigte den ersten Kunstpass f\u00fcr den Gemini F55 LMG und den Torral Aggregate Kahix Raketenwerfer. Unterdessen fertigte das Schiffswaffen-Kunstteam die erste Pass Art f\u00fcr die A&R Laserkanonen (Gr\u00f6\u00dfe 1-6) und die Gallenson Tactical Ballistic Gatlings (Gr\u00f6\u00dfe 1-3). Das Team hat auch an Skripten und Tools gearbeitet, um die Kunstpipeline weiter zu beschleunigen. Ein solches Skript ist ein Schiffswaffenwerkzeug, das zur Unterst\u00fctzung bei der Entwicklung modularer Waffen entwickelt wurde. Dieses neue Tool erstellt in kurzer Zeit eine gr\u00f6\u00dfere Anzahl von Waffen, indem es K\u00fcnstlern erm\u00f6glicht, verschiedene Komponenten-Setups in Echtzeit zu sehen und den Exportvorgang direkt in die Spiele-Engine zu automatisieren. Alle Animationsexporte und motorbezogenen Metadateien werden vom Skript verarbeitet, so dass sich der K\u00fcnstler auf die Erstellung der Kunst konzentrieren kann.\nGEB\u00c4UDETECHNIK\nDie Build Engineers haben QA-TR (QA-TestRequest) Optionen zum Trybuild hinzugef\u00fcgt, was sich bereits als vorteilhaft f\u00fcr das Team erwiesen hat. Sie entwickelten auch eine Funktion, um QA-TR-Trybuilds an dedizierte Agenten zu verteilen, um die Kompilierungszeit zu verk\u00fcrzen. Bisher war Trybuild ein einfaches Code-Validierungstool, mit dem Programmierer \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen m\u00fcssen, ob ihre \u00c4nderungsliste anhand der neuesten Code-Updates korrekt kompiliert wird. Dadurch wird sichergestellt, dass der n\u00e4chste Build korrekt funktioniert, wenn sie ihre \u00c4nderungsliste einreichen. Diese neueste Funktion erm\u00f6glicht es Programmierern, ihre \u00c4nderungsliste gegen eine bestimmte CL kompilieren zu lassen. Innerhalb der tryBuild-Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che kann der Benutzer eine Archivierungsoption ausw\u00e4hlen und erh\u00e4lt eine E-Mail mit einem Link zu einem Zip-Archiv, das seine Bin\u00e4rdateien enth\u00e4lt. An dieser Stelle kann ein Programmierer eine Anfrage an QA (n\u00e4mlich QA-TR) senden, in der er darum bittet, seine Bin\u00e4rdateien gr\u00fcndlich zu testen und sich vergewissert, dass ihr Fix und\/oder ihr neues Feature wie erwartet funktioniert. Wenn die QA die \u00c4nderungen genehmigt, kann der Programmierer seine \u00c4nderungsliste einreichen. Dies bietet eine zus\u00e4tzliche Sicherheitsebene und tr\u00e4gt dazu bei, sicherzustellen, dass der aktuelle aktive Build wie erwartet funktioniert. Da bei der Archiv-Option auch zwei Waf-Compile-Optionen ge\u00e4ndert werden m\u00fcssen, werden die Kompilierungszeiten zwangsl\u00e4ufig l\u00e4nger. Um dieses Problem zu umgehen, richtete die IT-Abteilung spezielle Trybuild-Maschinen ein, deren einzige Aufgabe es ist, Trybuild-Anfragen nur dann anzunehmen, wenn die Archivierungsoptionen aktiviert sind. Dies brachte das Trybuild-System wieder auf normale Kompilierungszeiten zur\u00fcck.\nQA\nDas DE QA-Team besch\u00e4ftigte sich im Dezember mit verschiedenen internen Testanfragen f\u00fcr 3.0 und konzentrierte sich auf das Testen von Squadron 42. F\u00fcr 3.0 wurden Hangar- und Schildtestanforderungen f\u00fcr unser Level Design und KI-Team abgeschlossen, w\u00e4hrend zus\u00e4tzliche Tests f\u00fcr Charakterbewegungen f\u00fcr Animation durchgef\u00fchrt wurden. Sie erhielten auch In-Game-Material \u00fcber den aktuellen Stand verschiedener Systeme, das auf Direktorenebene \u00fcberpr\u00fcft werden sollte. Die Mission Geber Tests wurden f\u00fcr Ruto und Eckhart durchgef\u00fchrt, ebenso wie spezifisches Material, das f\u00fcr jeden dieser NSCs nach Kriterien des Design-Teams aufgenommen wurde.\nDE QA konzentrierte sich schlie\u00dflich auf das Testen von Geschwader 42, insbesondere auf das Testen von Kampfflugzeugen, Flugk\u00e4fig-Wildlinien und KI-T\u00fcrmen. Sie arbeiteten eng mit den Entwicklungsteams zusammen, die f\u00fcr jeden dieser Abschnitte als Teil der einzelnen Sprints benannt wurden, um sicherzustellen, dass sie die erforderliche QS-Unterst\u00fctzung erhielten. F\u00fcr die Combat KI wurden regelm\u00e4\u00dfige Steh- und Review-Meetings im Vorfeld der Staffel 42 Around the Verse durchgef\u00fchrt. Dies beinhaltete die t\u00e4gliche \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung des Stands der Combat KI und die Erstellung von JIRA-Berichten f\u00fcr alle neuen Themen, die w\u00e4hrend der \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung angesprochen wurden, sowie regelm\u00e4\u00dfige Tests der Combat KI. Um die KI-Wildlinien zu testen, spielten sie regelm\u00e4\u00dfig die vertikale Scheibe bis zum Luftkampf, der nach der Quantenreise zum Gainey-Mond stattfindet, dann mussten sie sicherstellen, dass alle beabsichtigten Wildlinien aufgrund bestimmter vom Spieler ausgef\u00fchrter Ereignisse ausgel\u00f6st werden.\nKI\nDer Dezember war ein sehr intensiver und produktiver Monat f\u00fcr das KI-Team. Was die Subsumption betrifft, so wurden mehrere neue Funktionalit\u00e4ten eingef\u00fchrt: der neue Subsumption Event Dispatcher, der Mastergraph und die Dynamic Trackview Implementierung. Der Subsumption Event Dispatcher ist eine M\u00f6glichkeit, die Subsumption Events vollst\u00e4ndig zu unterst\u00fctzen, ohne auf ein anderes externes System angewiesen zu sein. Es besteht aus einem zentralen System, das es dem Benutzercode erm\u00f6glicht, ein Ereignis zu erstellen und zu senden. Die Ereignisse werden in einem Pool erstellt, damit das KI-System den zugewiesenen Speicher effizient handhaben und wiederverwenden kann, und jede Signallebensdauer wird automatisch von spezifischen Strukturen verwaltet, die Handler genannt werden, die auch einen schnellen Zugriff auf das Signal selbst erm\u00f6glichen.\nDer Benutzercode kann ein direktes Ereignis an eine Entit\u00e4t angeben oder ein Ereignis an alle Entit\u00e4ten in einem Bereich von einem bestimmten Ort aus senden. Sendeereignisse in einem Bereich sind jetzt zonensicher und der gesamte Code nutzt das Zonensystem effizient f\u00fcr spezielle Abfragen und Entit\u00e4tsfilterung. Der Mastergraph ist eine M\u00f6glichkeit, eine Beziehung zwischen mehreren Subsumption-Aktivit\u00e4ten aufzubauen. Das Team w\u00fcnscht sich einen allgemeinen Weg f\u00fcr die Bearbeitung von Aufgaben (Anfragen von Designern), Kampf und regul\u00e4re Aktivit\u00e4ten. Der Mastergraph erm\u00f6glicht es ihnen, \u00dcberg\u00e4nge zwischen unseren geplanten Aktivit\u00e4ten und anderer Logik festzulegen, die ausgef\u00fchrt werden sollen, wenn bestimmte Ereignisse empfangen werden. Sie unterst\u00fctzten auch dynamische Trackview-Szenen. Eine dynamische Trackview-Szene ist eine Filmszene, in der die Teilnehmer zur Laufzeit durch aktuelle KI-NPCs ersetzt werden k\u00f6nnen. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es den Filmdesignern, in einer kontrollierten Umgebung an ihrer Szene zu arbeiten. Es erlaubt auch Leveldesignern, ihr Level mit NSCs zu besetzen, die unterschiedliche Aktivit\u00e4ten, spezifische Kleidung, Anpassungen usw. haben k\u00f6nnen, je nachdem, wie der Spieler das Spiel beeinflusst. Alle \u00c4nderungen im Charakter k\u00f6nnen die echten NSC-Charaktere beeinflussen und Teil der Filmszenen sein. Au\u00dferdem k\u00f6nnen dynamische Trackview-Szenen m\u00f6glicherweise unterbrochen werden, so dass das KI-System wissen muss, wie man  \u00fcbernehmen, wann und ob das passiert.\nShips KI hat auch letzten Monat etwas Aufmerksamkeit erregt. Die Squadron 42 Vertical Slice zeigte die erste Version des aktualisierten Raumschiffverhaltens. Das aktuelle Bewegungssystem steuert sowohl die Anforderungen an die Fu\u00df- als auch an die Flugbewegung, und Subsumption ist f\u00fcr die Steuerung des Verhaltens des Piloten\/Sitzf\u00fchrers verantwortlich. Die neuen Raumschiffe werden vollst\u00e4ndig von den NSC-Sitzen auf den Fahrersitzen gesteuert, jeder Fahrer hat ein bestimmtes Verhalten, um die von ihm kontrollierten Gegenst\u00e4nde zu verwenden. Die erste Version der T\u00fcrme wurde mit Hilfe von Subsumption implementiert, und die ersten Genauigkeitsparameter f\u00fcr die NSCs wurden mit Hilfe von Sitzelementen eingef\u00fchrt. Das Missions-System wurde f\u00fcr das Release Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 weiterentwickelt und f\u00fchrte sowohl Umweltmissionen als auch Verbote ein. Alle f\u00fcr Office Admin NPCs erforderlichen Funktionen wurden implementiert, damit Designer Liefer- und Abholmissionen erstellen k\u00f6nnen. Es wurden auch zus\u00e4tzliche Arbeiten durchgef\u00fchrt, die in naher Zukunft n\u00e4her erl\u00e4utert werden.\nKINEMATIK\nDas Cinematic-Team hat den Monat hart daran gearbeitet, die relevanten Sequenzen und Technologien f\u00fcr die Staffel 42 Around the Verse holiday special vorzubereiten. Hier ist ein kleiner Teil von dem, woran sie k\u00fcrzlich gearbeitet haben. Sie skalierten PCap-Auftritte f\u00fcr den Charakter Vat Tagaca, gespielt von Craig Fairbrass, um seine reale, einsch\u00fcchternde K\u00f6rpergr\u00f6\u00dfe zu unterstreichen. Sie \u00e4nderten die Grundbeleuchtung des hinteren Hangardecks von Idris, das bei der Ankunft des Argo zum Einsatz kam, so, dass es dunkler und launischer war als das Standard-Lichtsetup. Es gab viel hin und her mit KI- und Cinematic Tools Engineers, um die KI-Funktionalit\u00e4t und die Werkzeuge, um sie richtig zu platzieren.\nEs wurde an der Trackview Navspline-Technologie gearbeitet, die es ihnen erm\u00f6glicht, KI-Schiffe pr\u00e4zise zu marschieren, wie z.B. von den Innenzonen in den \u00e4u\u00dferen Shubin-Raum nahtlos zu gelangen. Sie arbeiteten mit dem Engineering an mehreren Features, die das Spiel filmisch bereichern. Sie prototypisierten und erm\u00f6glichten dann einen immer aktiven Autofokus, der auf der FSTOP-basierten Sch\u00e4rfentiefe basiert (meist f\u00fcr Nicht-Kampfsituationen), der dem Gehen und Erkunden von Innenr\u00e4umen einen filmischen Realismus verleiht. Das Team hat erfolgreich eine Reihe von Goldstandard-Szenen erstellt, die alle notwendigen Abteilungen ber\u00fccksichtigen und den Fluss und die Interaktion darstellen, die auf zuk\u00fcnftige anwendbare Szenen angewendet werden. Auch die Technik, die Lichtgruppen als filmische Lichtschichten f\u00fcr Szenen verwendet, wurde abgeschlossen. Mit standardm\u00e4\u00dfigem oder benutzerdefiniertem individuellem Timing der online kommenden Lichter kann jede Szene markiert und eine entsprechende Lightlayer zum Einblenden ausgel\u00f6st werden. Dies kann ein Lichtrigg pro Szene oder pro Standort sein, da beide realisierbar sind. Das Cine Beleuchtungsger\u00e4t wird verwendet, um bestimmte Kinofilme weiter zu entwickeln, als es die umweltfreundliche Basisbeleuchtung bietet. Das Cinematics-Team geht in der Regel nicht allzu sehr ins Detail, so dass sie die Geschichte nicht verderben, aber sie werden in einem zuk\u00fcnftigen Update genauer auf den Vertikalschnitt eingehen.\nUMWELTKUNST\nIm vergangenen Monat hat sich das DE Environment Art Team intensiv auf das Jahr 2018 und die anstehenden Herausforderungen vorbereitet. Es ist immer gut, auf die im Laufe des Jahres erzielten Fortschritte zur\u00fcckzublicken und die Ziele f\u00fcr das neue Jahr neu auszurichten. Viele Vorbereitungen und F&E-Arbeiten wurden in die Aktualisierung der Planetentechnologie und -werkzeuge gesteckt. W\u00e4hrend sich das Spiel von Monden zu vollen Planeten mit optisch vielf\u00e4ltigeren \u00d6kosystemen entwickelt, wollte das Team mehr Kontrolle und Vielfalt an Farben und Materialien haben. Es wird an der Aktualisierung der Planetentechnologie sowie der Shader f\u00fcr die verstreuten Assets gearbeitet. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es ihnen, die gew\u00fcnschte visuelle Palette an den kommenden Orten zu haben. Es bietet auch ein sch\u00f6nes visuelles Update und eine Steigerung der Qualit\u00e4t f\u00fcr unsere bestehenden Monde.\nSYSTEM-DESIGN\nDas System Design Team verbrachte den Dezember damit, die Arbeiten an sowohl 3.0 als auch an der Squadron 42 Vertical Slice abzuschlie\u00dfen. Ein Gro\u00dfteil der Arbeit floss in die ersten gro\u00dfen Missionsgeber, Eckhart & Ruto, und stellte sicher, dass es keine Randf\u00e4lle gibt, in denen sie stecken bleiben oder Spieler sie missbrauchen k\u00f6nnen. Beide stellten unterschiedliche Herausforderungen dar, da jeder seinen eigenen Gespr\u00e4chsfluss hat, seine eigene Art gefunden und ausgel\u00f6st zu werden. Sie haben auch die erste Implementierung des Admin Officer f\u00fcr alle unsere wichtigsten Standorte abgeschlossen. Wieder einmal mussten viele Edge-Cases ber\u00fccksichtigt werden und es wurde viel Arbeit geleistet, um sicherzustellen, dass die Spieler ihn nicht zu lange blockieren oder ihm Gegenst\u00e4nde geben k\u00f6nnen, die er nicht richtig handhaben kann. Es gibt noch einige Probleme, aber das Team k\u00fcmmert sich um die L\u00f6sungen.\nEin weiterer gro\u00dfer Schwerpunkt war die FPS-Kampf-KI. Es ist noch nicht fertig, aber es zeigt viel Versprechen. Die Kampf-KI f\u00e4ngt an, glaubw\u00fcrdiger zu handeln, da sie weiterhin Verhaltensweisen hinzuf\u00fcgen, den Zeitpunkt des Kampfes anpassen und danach streben, dass sich KI-K\u00e4mpfe herausfordernd und unterhaltsam anf\u00fchlen. Zu den Dingen, die sie auch fertiggestellt haben, geh\u00f6ren: \u00dcbersteuerung von Pumpen-Upgrades f\u00fcr T\u00fcren, Luken, die mit Schl\u00f6ssern versehen wurden, die durchgeschnitten werden konnten, die Betten im Idris wurden mit Rolll\u00e4den aufger\u00fcstet, und komplexere Gebrauchsgegenst\u00e4nde wurden hinzugef\u00fcgt, um das Spiel lebendiger zu machen.\nTURBULENT\n\nDezember war ein Ver\u00f6ffentlichungsmonat, da das Turbulent Team ma\u00dfgeblich dazu beigetragen hat, 3.0 in Ihre H\u00e4nde zu bekommen!\nLAUNCHER\nDer schlie\u00dflich ver\u00f6ffentlichte neue RSI-Launcher ersetzt den CIG-Patcher, der zuvor zur Verteilung der Spiele-Assets auf Ihrem Desktop f\u00fcr Star Citizen 2.6 und niedriger verwendet wurde.\nDiese Version stellt einen wichtigen Meilenstein f\u00fcr das Team dar, da das gesamte System, das den Launcher antreibt, uns einen direkten Integrationspfad mit dem Spiel erm\u00f6glicht, wo wir nun in der Lage sein werden, die Kommunikation zwischen Ihren Spielsitzungen und dem Spectrum-Client \u00fcber Integrationspunkte zu \u00f6ffnen. Dies \u00f6ffnet auch die T\u00fcr f\u00fcr integrierte Anti-Cheat-Sandboxsysteme.\nDer Launcher als Teil von 3.0 in Ihre H\u00e4nde zu bekommen, war schon seit langem das Hauptaugenmerk unseres Teams, w\u00e4hrend mehrere Testrunden auf mehreren Plattformen stattgefunden haben, um sicherzustellen, dass der neue Delta-Patcher, die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che, der Installer und die Anwendungs-Shell in allen unterst\u00fctzten Maschinentypen und Versionen gut funktionieren.\n3.0 Release markiert auch den Einsatz des Launcher Backends, das eine neue und sichere M\u00f6glichkeit bietet, Benachrichtigungen \u00fcber Spielupdates und Asset-Autorisierung an Geldgeber zu verteilen.\nROADMAP\nEin separates Team wurde von der Hauptgruppe getrennt, um an einer neuen und aktualisierten Roadmap-Display-Engine zu arbeiten, mit der die Produzenten der CIG die Community \u00fcber den Zeitplan und die Pl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr das Spiel informieren k\u00f6nnen. Diese neue Engine wird es den Produzenten erm\u00f6glichen, Releases zu erstellen, sie rechtzeitig zu platzieren und mit Featurekarten zu versehen, um ein Feature des f\u00fcr einen bestimmten Zeitraum geplanten Spiels zu beschreiben.\nWir hoffen, dass dieses neue Format die Aktualisierungen des Zeitplans interessanter macht und auch den Teams hilft, mehr Aktualisierungen zu produzieren, da die Backend-Systeme mehr Tools zur Verf\u00fcgung stellen, um den Zeitplan pro Funktionskarte zu aktualisieren.\nSCHIFFVERKAUF\nUnser Designteam hat das Tumbril Nova-Konzept im Dezember mit Leben erf\u00fcllt und den ersten Bodenfahrzeugtank im Star Citizen-Universum ausgearbeitet, der von den Actionfiguren der 1980er Jahre inspiriert wurde.\nDiese Woche ist Ihre letzte Chance, eine Tumbril Nova in der Konzeptphase abzuholen!\nWILLKOMMEN BEI STAR CITIZEN\nDen ganzen Dezember \u00fcber hat das Web-Team hart an der n\u00e4chsten Iteration der Star Citizen-Website gearbeitet. Sie k\u00f6nnen einen vollst\u00e4ndigen Bericht \u00fcber unsere Arbeit an Welcome to SC in der Januar-Episode von ATV sehen! Wir hoffen, dass wir im ersten Monat des Jahres einen ersten Durchgang dieser neuen Iteration starten k\u00f6nnen. Community\n\nW\u00e4hrend der Dezember traditionell ein actiongeladener Monat f\u00fcr Star Citizen ist, hat das Team ihn 2017 auf die n\u00e4chste Stufe gehoben. Am 22. Dezember wurde das Squadron 42 Vertical Slice w\u00e4hrend des Around the Verse Feiertagsspecials enth\u00fcllt und teilte mehr als eine Stunde rohes Gameplay, einschlie\u00dflich einer speziellen Version mit dem Kommentar des Direktors von Chris Roberts selbst. Wenn Sie an weiteren Informationen \u00fcber Squadron 42 interessiert sind, k\u00f6nnen Sie sich jetzt anmelden, um regelm\u00e4\u00dfig Updates und Exklusivangebote auf der aktualisierten Squadron 42-Seite zu erhalten.\nIm Rahmen des Urlaubsspezials wurde auch der legend\u00e4re Kampfpanzer - der Tumbril Nova - vorgestellt. Dieser Schlachtfeldbeherrscher ist bis zum 15. Januar verf\u00fcgbar, und Sie k\u00f6nnen alle Details hier finden.\nAls ob das Holiday Special nicht genug w\u00e4re, ver\u00f6ffentlichte das Team kurz vor den Feiertagen Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 to Live Server. Dies erforderte eine Herkulesarbeit von Teams auf der ganzen Welt und wir sind noch nicht fertig! Die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Alpha 3.0 hat die Tore f\u00fcr ein aufregendes neues Jahr der Aktualisierung des Star Citizen-Universums ge\u00f6ffnet. Wenn Sie neugierig sind, was als n\u00e4chstes kommt, k\u00f6nnen Sie sich mit unserer aktualisierten Roadmap f\u00fcr 2018 vertraut machen, die mit der \u00fcberarbeiteten RSI-Website online gehen wird.\nWir haben es letzten Monat gesagt, aber wir werden es noch einmal sagen - vielen Dank an jeden einzelnen der engagierten Tester, die dazu beigetragen haben, die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Alpha 3.0 zu erm\u00f6glichen. Wir sch\u00e4tzen Sie und Ihre Bem\u00fchungen sehr!\nDank der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Alpha 3.0 haben wir auch einen massiven Anstieg der von der Community erstellten Inhalte auf der Website erlebt. Wir empfehlen dir sehr, den Community Hub zu besuchen und alle neuen Videos, Screenshots, Anleitungen, Musik, 3D-Drucke und vieles mehr zu sehen. Lasst sie weiter kommen!\nSchlie\u00dflich haben wir uns die Zeit genommen, Ihr Feedback zu einer Vielzahl von Themen durchzugehen und zu organisieren. Wir sind dabei, einige lustige \u00c4nderungen zu planen und durchzuf\u00fchren, die im Laufe des neuen Jahres eingef\u00fchrt werden.\nUnd damit sehen wir dich in der Strophe! WIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT.....","zh_CN":"Greetings Citizens!\n\n\nWelcome to the Monthly Studio Report, where we collect updates from our various studios around the world to show you what they\u2019ve been working on this past month. In the rush up to the holidays, the entire company was focused on accomplishing two major tasks: pushing Star Citizen 3.0 to the Live Servers and polishing up work on the Vertical Slice, which featured an hour of gameplay from Squadron 42. Afterwards, everybody broke for some much needed rest before coming back to hit the New Year running. With that said, let\u2019s get to it. CLOUD IMPERIUM: LOS ANGELES\n\nENGINEERING\nAlpha 3.0 was a monumental engineering milestone for Star Citizen, particularly for the LA vehicle team. During December, the first tier of Item 2.0 for ships was finalized with several bug fixes and important features closed out for 3.0. The team tackled a major hurdle with the integration of UI with this very complicated system. Finally, some of the underlying systems that play a huge role in Squadron 42 and the Persistent Universe (Scanning and Quantum Travel) saw some iteration and prototyping that they were really proud to bring to fruition.\n\nAs the 3.0 release came together, the core system team focused polishing and stabilizing some key parts of Star Citizen. Cargo and shopping saw significant bug fixes, bringing these features in alignment with long term goals. Infrastructural game code such as the room system, interaction system, and even damage saw significant bug fixes right up to the release.\n\nTECH DESIGN\nLA Tech Design spent the majority of December getting the new Item 2.0 ships working as smoothly as possible for Star Citizen Alpha 3.0. They knocked out a multitude of bugs, including but not limited to enter\/exit alignment issues on the Scythe, an issue where damage was not passing to all parts of a ship, seat access issues with the Caterpillar, atmosphere bugs in the Herald, and IK issues in the Mustang seats. The team also spent time balancing the shield stats to account for better power retention and heat generation, hooked up cursors to all player interactions in the ships, and finished setting up bed conversions from Object Container to ItemPort.\n\nBeyond Alpha 3.0, they continued to work on ships like the Anvil Terrapin, the revised Consolidated Outland Mustang, and Tumbril Cyclone to get them set up and flyable (or drivable, as the case may be). They also completed design briefs for the [REDACTED] ship that they are really looking forward to.\n\nLastly, the team supported the UI Team in completing the Scanning Visor, MFD, and hooked up all assets to be released in the future.\n\nART\nThe Ship Art Team wrapped up 2017 with a bang. The new RSI Aurora was completed and officially released. Major progress was made on several other vehicles such as the Anvil Hurricane, the reworked Consolidated Outland Mustang, and the Tumbril Cyclone. The team had their fair share of bug fixing and support tasks for various features released with Alpha 3.0 in addition to upcoming releases.\n\n\n\n\nThe Character Team put the finishing touches on the Squadron 42 cast for the Vertical Slice. One key development was the work done with the graphics team to implement a new hair shader to make the characters shine. Finally, the team added wear and tear to some of our character loadouts, giving them an authentic feel in-game.\n\nNARRATIVE\nIn December, the Narrative Team worked closely with Design to chase down any lingering bugs and issues that arose to ensure that mission content, item descriptions, and even posters were ready for Alpha 3.0. They also helped provide additional environmental storytelling and prop write-ups to help sell the world of Squadron 42 in the Vertical Slice. In addition, they delivered weekly lore updates, wrote three pieces for Jump Point, continued the development of the Xi\u2019an language, and supported the marketing department on numerous tasks including the Tumbril Nova brochure.\n\nTECH CONTENT\nThe Global Technical Content Team delivered some great accomplishments in December to wrap up 2017 on a high note. The Tech Animation team was busy with tools support, character rigging, and various MoCap tasks throughout the month. For tools and related work, they improved Mannequin Python Tools, the CIG Tools Installer, a Jump\/Spike Detection Tool, and the Skeleton Table as well as added several new health checks to the pipelines. The team also supported the S42 Vertical slice by rigging several characters and fix a ton of skinning bugs as well. The MoCap team tracked, solved, and processed a large group of characters in support of Squadron 42. A MoCap shoot was also held to capture some additional footage needed for key characters.\n\nOn the Tech Art side, the team sub-divided between Environments, Ships and Weapons. For Environments, a lot of support and R&D was put into our glass shader and a vertex curvature script. Additionally, they planned for Procedural Layouts work coming in 2018. A lot of bugs were investigated as well\u2026 for lights\/shadows, hair rendering and texture streaming. For Ships, the team supported the release of the several new vehicles in the Alpha 3.0 release. This included work on damage and VisAreas, as well as bug fixing and investigating a lot of log spam issues. The team also worked on landing gear compression for the ships in the Around the Verse holiday special.\n\nFinally, on the Weapons front, the team was in R&D mode for Animated Attachments\/Magazines. They made progress on the P8AR magazine, Gemini F55, and a skin transfer script\/tool. They also fixed several weapon bugs. Lastly, the Global Technical Content team supported other areas, such as the reorganization of the tool branches.\nCLOUD IMPERIUM: AUSTIN\n\nDESIGN\nGetting 3.0 ready to go live was the big focus this month for the ATX Design Team. Using feedback from those testing the PTU builds, they were able to tackle a variety of bugs relating to shopping and cargo trading across the stations and moons surrounding Crusader. The economy and item pricing continued to be balanced based on collected analytics. Of course, there is still a lot more dialing in to be done once the systems function together on the live servers.\n\nFurther work on Mission Givers Ruto and Miles also was an important task for the team. Representing a complex mix of numerous systems like animation and subsumption, it has been encouraging to see the progress made on getting these first two characters into the game. We have already learned a lot so far that will help streamline and improve the process in the future.\n\nART\nWith the release of 3.0.0 to Live, the community finally got to see the updated Constellation Aquila, Drake Cutlass and Aopoa Nox. The ship team spent the month providing support to push the Persistent Universe to the Live servers. The Constellation Phoenix was whitebox complete and progressed onto greybox. Meanwhile, the Anvil F8 Lightning entered the whitebox phase at the beginning of the month and progressed nicely in between bugfixing tasks.\n\nBACKEND SERVICES\nTo start the month, the DevOps team delivered multiple PTU publishes each week. They monitored performance and feedback from the Evocati and PTU players and pushed out builds that contained fixes and feature deployments as fast as possible. They also worked with IT to ensure everything was ready for the Live release. This included dealing with a number of system failures just prior to 3.0 going Live.\n\nAfter the intensive 3.0 publishing process, the team carefully tracked the bandwidth being used and adjusted the servers accordingly. They also worked with design to apply a number of hot fixes to address unexpected issues that negatively impact performance and gameplay. They accomplished this without affecting players by carefully watching servers and restarting them with the better code when the server population reached zero.\n\nIn addition to everything surrounding the Live release, the team continued to support devs with diagnostics, performance captures, and more.\n\nANIMATION\nThe Animation Team this month spent time looking at the Player experience in Alpha 3.0 to make sure that all the animations associated with the various interactions that people would encounter while running missions and exploring around Crusader were looking good as possible. This included some bug fixes, some adjustments on various transition elements, as well as just general polish. The team also began work on the Tumbril Cyclone animations that were recorded in a motion capture shoot last month. On the ship side of things, there was additional technical set up that was needed to be looked at on several ships as the team investigated a few linger issues that had been noted by players testing the PTU.\n\nOutside of Alpha 3.0, a lot of time was spent on the Squadron 42 vertical slice as the date of the Holiday Special approached. As the directors and leads reviewed the content daily, the team performed polish passes on the numerous interaction animations on the Idris to make sure the crew looked as good as possible as they moved around the ship performing various tasks through the usables system\n\nATX QA\nAs Star Citizen Alpha transitioned between the PTU and Live, needless to say ATX QA had a busy month, tirelessly testing the bugfixes and change submissions to the 3.0.0 build. One of the biggest challenges, especially with a release that incorporates as many new updates and features as this one, is making sure that fixes to the game don\u2019t destabilize a build in other places. To help minimize this risk, the devs adopted the QA test request system more vigorously, and every single feature-related check-in towards the end had to be tested thoroughly. Although this increased the team\u2019s workload in order to maintain the daily pushes to PTU, this process helped ensure that the army of testers would have a stable enough build to keep providing key feedback.\n\nPLAYER RELATIONS\nWith the holiday season right around the corner, there was a lot to be \u201ctonkful\u201d for this month. Right on the heels of Star Citizen\u2019s Anniversary, the Player Relations team assisted backers with the newly announced Aegis Hammerhead and Anvil Hawk. Plus, the Holiday Special brought with it the Tumbril Nova tank and three exclusive Holiday Game Packages perfect for sharing Star Citizen with friends and loved ones. The team also continued to coordinate with the massive ongoing testing effort as alpha 3.0 PTU continued to roll out to more and more backers, and most excitingly, the build went Live! Thanks again to all the Players for their ongoing contributions to the Issue Council. Your help is vital to the project.\nFOUNDRY 42: UK\n\nGRAPHICS\nOver the last month, the graphics team focused on both 3.0 and the Squadron 42 vertical slice. Most of that time involved bug fixes. Highlights included major fixes to texture streaming bugs (they\u2019ve since found another bug in Lumberyard and the fix will vastly reduce VRAM usage on the next release), a fix for facial animation glitching, and various fixes for hair and temporal anti-aliasing. They also continued to develop the Render-To-Texture system, including adding expose control to video comms calls and using the system for the new ship targeting displays.\n\nThe Squadron 42 vertical slice also benefited from some of their new features, such as a new cloth shading model, improved light-beams, the debut of volumetric gas-cloud tech, and a new particle-based shield effect that uses signed-distance-fields to allow the particles to flow smoothly along the hull of the ship. Their r-focus for the new year will shift to improving performance and various planned shader improvements to enable more dynamic materials.\n\nSHIPS\nHammerhead\nThe team was really excited to reveal the Hammerhead in November and since then they\u2019ve been hard at work finishing the exterior sections not seen in the video. They did a detail pass across the hull and engines, and gave the underside more attention. The landing gears were also added, so the exterior is now ready to start on the damage set up. For the interior, they blocked out the floor plan using existing Aegis kits from the Idris and Javelin. They also worked out what bespoke and new pieces are needed to finish the interior and have a couple of guys at work on these now.\n\nRevised Avenger\nThe Avenger has been undergoing a complete re-make to address issues with the original and make it conform to the current ship metrics and requirements. The updated Avenger revealed in the Around the Verse holiday special was a combined effort between the ship team and the newly formed Squadron 42 team. The cargo and bounty hunter variants are art complete, and work on the EMP variant is scheduled for January. Work to finalize the remaining exterior parts, such as landing gear, damage and LODs, will start soon.\n\n600i\nThe 600i is entering the final art phase. On the exterior, the thrusters and landing gear are near completion, and work is due to start on the turret. The interior is going through a polish pass, while work on the bridge, corridors and exploration module are due to be wrapped up soon. Since the last update, the team listened to backer feedback and removed the struts from the bridge windows.\n\nGladius\nThe Gladius was a big part of the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice, so they spent time tweaking it for the demo. This included implementing the new glass and screen shader, cockpit lighting and headlight tweaks, screen sizes\/positioning and adding the new starmap. Cockpits are the most complex parts of the ships, bringing together input from across the company, and they went through many iterations before satisfying the requirements of all departments.\n\nEclipse\nWork continued on the Eclipse, as the cockpit and exterior were grey boxed. The mesh is currently going through a detail pass before starting on textures and shaders.\n\nBlade\nThe Vanduul Blade exterior is almost complete, and has been brought into line with other Vanduul ships. The team\u2019s current focus is on the interior and working out the enter and exit mechanism for pilots.\n\nVFX\nThe UK VFX team spent December bug-fixing and optimizing for 3.0, following on from the sanity pass discussed last month. R&D work continued on signed-distance-field shield effects, including power-on, power-off and impact effects for the Gladius, Cutlass and Buccaneer. They also honed in on the finer effect details seen in the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice demo. There are too many to name individually, but highlights include the Coil itself, the lightning storm inside the giant asteroids and the Slaver base cryo-pods.\n\nThe team also made solid progress on VFX for the Scanning feature. Amongst other things, it will emit a virtual particle grid (only seen via the UI) that allows players to better visualize 3D space when they\u2019re in, well, space.\n\nUI\nThe UI team spent December splitting their time between wrapping up features for 3.0 and working on bugfixes for the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice. On the PU side, the team had daily standups for each feature with Directors to get feedback straight away. These daily syncs not only helped progress for the Starmap, PMA, VMA and MFD\/Visor holodisplays, but ensured that communication was kept close between the various departments involved in pulling these features together ahead of 3.0 going Live.\n\nIn the run up to the Holiday Special, the UI focused on various bug fixes, including ensuring that the Visor UI would turn on at the correct time, removing quantum linking text from the Gladius HUD, and providing performance fixes alongside others to polish the experience. In addition, fluff screens for Chemline Solutions were designed and implemented ahead of the stream.\n\nENVIRONMENTS\nIn December, the environment team delivered final optimizations and bug fixes deemed as \u2018must fix\u2019 for the release of 3.0. As those tasks were completed, the team began to work on the next environments. A big focus of 2018 will be on getting spaces that are shared across locations functional, so the team worked on whiteboxing the kits for both hangars and habitation modules. The idea is to create kits for all these \u2018common\u2019 elements in a specific art style so they can be used across different locations. The whitebox stage allows design, art, and code to lock down the features of an element before committing to final art.\n\nElsewhere, the DE team has been looking at improvements to the planet texturing systems. The main goal is to improve the diversity and breakup of terrain types across a planet\u2019s surface. The new tech increases the number of supported distribution channels by 5x, meaning there\u2019s some improved visuals across terrains in the not too distant future.\n\nAUDIO\nSQ42\nThe audio team had all hands on deck in the lead up to the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice. They ensured the demo was fully supported with all the Dialog, Music and SFX content required. This work included additional sound design for cinematics, location ambience polish pass, ship SFX balancing, dialog attenuation\/mix pass, and new music content\/logic implementation via Subsumption.\n\nPU\nThe audio team simultaneously supported the Alpha 3.0 release with content creation, implementation and polish of dialog, SFX, and music assets. These included implementing new music logic and content for PU armistice zones (Olisar, Levski and Grim HEX), improving definition and intelligibility of weapon sounds, and adjusting thruster sounds for the Dragonfly and Nox in light of ongoing flight model tweaks.\nGoing forward, the audio team looks to iterate on the current Foley system and actor status system (breathing component). They also plan to begin work on a fully fleshed out sound simulation system.\n\nENVIRONMENT ART\nThe Concept and Tech teams introduced a new core structure and narrative behind how Lorville on Hurston function and come together. They developed an exciting and visually interesting city archetype for integrating procedural and landing zone elements. The team did an extensive amount of concept work to solve most of the major design issues.\n\nThe base archetype for a utilitarian habitation was established for the first procedural and fully interactive room. Concept is busy investigating and solving both material and theming diversity for generating these units across the Stanton system.\n\nSHIPS AND WEAPONS\nThis month, the team wrapped up the super large Tumbril Nova tank plus three other new ships of varying sizes and roles. They also provided support where needed and helped with marketing and new website revamp. For ship weapons, the team completed the Trident Laserbeam S4-S6 and the Hurston Electron Beam Alterations S1-S3.\n\nDERBY ANIMATION\nThe Derby Facial team was super busy right up until the 21st Dec with Facial animation tasks ranging from polishing the Prisoner Arrival scene to adding more in-game dialogue for random NPC characters.\n\nThe team also held their first Studio Christmas Party. It was a fairly small key event, but a good chance for staff and partners to enjoy some good food and a couple of drinks.\n\nThe team\u2019s pleased to announce that Senior Facial Animator Tony Wills is moving positions and is now Lead Gameplay Story Animator. Tony will oversee 800+ in-game mini \u201ccut scenes.\u201d\n\nENGINEERING\nThe UK programming team did a lot of bug fixing and polish work to get Alpha 3.0 out of the door as well as the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice in preparation.\n\nOn the cinematics side, they implemented the dynamic lighting mentioned last month. This allows the devs to fade up a specific lighting rig for a cutscene to highlight the quality of the characters. They also experimented with a new dynamic depth of field (DoF) mechanic for non-combat scenarios to give the game a more cinematic feel. Rather than having an infinite DoF, which is usually the case, the game focuses on what the player is currently looking at and applies a subtle blur for everything that is nearer\/further away.\n\nThe networking team worked on serialized variable culling, which will eventually become entity bind culling. This stops the server from distributing the state of variables on an entity after a certain distance. Considering the massive size of the PU and the content required to fill it, sending updates to everybody became a bottleneck. This helps the network bandwidth and performance side, as the server\/client doesn\u2019t have to deal with nearly as much data. The downside is that when the code is not expecting this behaviour, these edge cases introduced new bugs that needed to be found and worked through.\n\nOtherwise, they tackled other performance issues and optimizations, polished as many features as as possible before the end of the year, and a enjoyed a nice break over the holidays!\nFOUNDRY 42: DE\n\nENGINE\nThe DE Engine team spent a majority of the past month focused on improving performance and addressing issues for the current Live release. In the process, they worked with most other disciplines to help profile items and make recommendations and\/or fix issues when needed. Some cases are straightforward and addressed promptly, but for others the fix may be deemed it to risky to address immediately. Those items are still worked on, but will take a bit longer to verify and be included in future patches\/releases.\n\nIn addition to performance improvements, they worked with the Environment Art team to further enhance the visuals of the planet terrain. They made improvements to a new memory tracking tool for both server and clients. Implemented scripts to automatically analyze gathered statistics to quickly find leaks and dubious allocations. Fixed several issues related to how data is collected in our crash database Sentry. They started implementation of horizon based SSDO, and the initial results look really good. They reworked the cloth shader to use a more physically based shading model for cloth, as well as fixed shading discontinuities within it. They also reworked the motion blur implementation in game, and continued work on the Subsumption visualizer.\n\nLEVEL DESIGN\nThe Level Design department finished locations found in the 3.0 release ahead of schedule, so they focused on both bug fixing and polish during the latter part of December. After 3.0 was in PTU for a while, the decision was made to increase the server size. That meant they had to add more spawning areas to enable people to spawn in smoothly without conflict with one another. Finally, the DE Level Design team is looking to expand. As more features come online, they\u2019ll need additional designers to keep on top of the increased content and the R&D for upcoming system solutions and releases.\n\nTECH ART\nThe DE Tech Art team split their time between both 3.0.0 and Squadron 42 tasks. They\u2019re currently extending the FPS weapons pipeline with a new tool called CIGSiknXfe which will enable weapon artists to transfer skin weights to different meshes from one source skinned object. They started work on real-time cloth and flesh sim R&D and development of a live-link between Maya and the game engine, so animators can tweak animations, in particular facial animations, while enjoying the advanced shading quality of the in-engine real-time renders vs. Maya\u2019s own low quality viewport renders. This tech will be particularly useful for integrating and tweaking the p-cap (facial) animations in Squadron 42\u2019s cinematic cutscenes. This artistically controlled lighting will have a huge impact on the look and feel of an animation\/performance, meaning that iterating real time and in-game will make things much more efficient for the team.\n\nVFX\nLast month, the VFX team focused on the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice. They contributed to the Coil volumetric cloud, adding exterior effects to the slaver base on Gainey, and specific effects for the cinematic sequences. They dressed the exterior of the Slaver Base in the low technological style with suitable effects for the dusty planet surface. The cinematic effects were bespoke for the cutaways in the vertical slice. The work on the Coil gas cloud tech went through a good amount of R&D. The team focused on developing methods to create an interior volume while keeping in-line with the base concepts and art direction. It went through numerous iterations, and they paid close attention to how the interior created interesting compositions and visuals while flying.\n\nWEAPONS\nThe FPS weapons art team completed the first art pass on the Gemini F55 LMG and the Torral Aggregate Kahix Missile Launcher. Meanwhile, the ship weapons art team finished the first pass art for the A&R Laser Cannons (Size 1-6) and the Gallenson Tactical Ballistic Gatlings (Size 1-3). The team has also been working on scripts and tools to help further speed up their art pipeline. One such script is a Ship Weapon Tool made to assist in the creation of modular weapons. This new tool creates a larger number of weapons in a short amount of time by allowing artists to preview different component setups in real-time and automates the export process directly to the game engine. All animation exports and engine related meta-files are handled by the script, leaving the artist to focus on making the art.\n\nBUILD ENGINEERING\nThe Build Engineers added QA-TR (QA-TestRequest ) options to trybuild, which has already proven beneficial for the team. They also developed a feature to offload QA-TR trybuilds to dedicated agents in an effort to reduce compile times. So far, trybuild has been a simple code validation tool through which coders must check if their changelist compiles correctly against the most recent code updates. This ensures the next build will function correctly if they submit their changelist. This newest feature allows coders to have their changelist compiled against a specific CL. Within the tryBuild UI, the user can select an archive option and will receive an email with a link to a zip archive containing their binaries. At this point, a programmer can send a request to QA (namely QA-TR) asking to thoroughly test their binaries, making sure that their fix and\/or new feature works as expected. If QA approves the changes, then the programmer can submit their changelist. This provides an added layer of security, helping to reassure that the current active build is functioning as expected. Since the archive option also involves changing two waf compile options, compilation times inevitably got longer. To work around this issue, IT set up dedicated trybuild machines whose sole role is to accept trybuild requests only when the archive options is ticked. This brought the trybuild system back to normal compilation times.\n\nQA\nThe DE QA team spent December dealing with various in-house test requests for 3.0 and focused Squadron 42 testing. For 3.0, Hangar and shield test requests were completed for our Level Design and AI team, while additional testing for character movements was done for Animation. They also obtained in-game footage of the current state of various systems to be reviewed at a director level. Mission Giver testing was done for Ruto and Eckhart, as well as specific footage recorded for each of these NPCs with criteria provided by the Design team.\n\nDE QA eventually shifted focus to testing Squadron 42, specifically testing Combat AI, Flight AI wildlines, and AI turrets. They worked closely with the development teams designated for each of these sections as part of individual sprints to ensure that they had the needed QA support. For Combat AI, regular stand-up and review meetings were held leading up to the Squadron 42 Around the Verse holiday special. This involved reviewing the state of Combat AI daily and creating JIRA reports for any new issues called out during the review, as well as regular testing of the Combat AI. To test AI wildlines, they regularly played the vertical slice up to the dogfight that happens after quantum traveling to Gainey moon, then they had to ensure that all intended wildlines would trigger based on certain events performed by the Player.\n\nAI\nDecember was a very intense and productive month for the AI team. Regarding Subsumption, they introduced several new functionalities: the new Subsumption Event Dispatcher, the Mastergraph, and the Dynamic Trackview implementation. The Subsumption Event Dispatcher is a way to fully support the Subsumption events without relying on any other external system. It\u2019s composed by a central system that allows user code to create and send an event. The events are created in a pool to allow the AI system to efficiently handle and reuse the allocated memory, and each signal lifetime is automatically managed by specific structures called Handlers that also allow fast access to the signal itself.\n\nUser code can specify a direct event to an entity, or send an event to all the entities in a range from a specific location. Send events in a range is now zone safe and all the code efficiently uses the zone system for special queries and entity filtering. The Mastergraph is a way for building a relationship between multiple Subsumption activities. The team wants a general way for handling assignments (requests from designers), combat and regular activities. The Mastergraph allow them to specify transitions between our scheduled activities and other logic that should be executed when specific events are received. They also provided support for dynamic trackview scenes. A dynamic trackview scene is a cinematic scene where the participants can be replaced at runtime with actual AI NPCs. This allows the cinematic designers to work on their scene in a controlled environment. It also allows level designers to populate their level with NPCs that might have different activities, specific clothing, customizations, etc., based on how the Player affects the game. All the changes in the character might influence the real NPC characters and be part of the cinematic scenes. Also, dynamic trackview scenes can be potentially interrupted, so the AI system needs to know how to take over when and if that happens.\n\nShips AI also got some attention last month. The Squadron 42 Vertical Slice showed the first version of the updated spaceship behavior. The current Movement System is in control for both on-foot and flying movement requests, and Subsumption is in charge of controlling the pilots\/seat operators behaviors. The new spaceships are fully controlled by the NPC seating on the operator seats, each operator has specific behaviors to use the items they control. The first version of turrets has been implemented using Subsumption, and initial accuracy parameters introduced for the NPCs using seats items. The missions system progressed for the Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 release, introducing both environmental missions and interdiction. All the logic required for Office Admin NPCs was implemented to allow designers to create delivery and pickup missions. Additional work was done as well, which they\u2019ll provide more details in the near future.\n\nCINEMATICS\nThe Cinematic team spent the month hard at work prepping the relevant sequences and tech needed for the Squadron 42 Around the Verse holiday special . Here\u2019s a small portion of what they\u2019ve been recently working on. They scaled PCap performances for the character Vat Tagaca, played by Craig Fairbrass, to emphasize his real-life, intimidating body stature. They changed the base lighting of the Idris aft hangar deck, featured when the Argo arrives, to be darker and more moody than the standard light setup. There was much back and forth with AI and Cinematic Tools Engineers to get the AI functional and the tools to properly place them.\n\nWork was done to the Trackview Navspline tech that allows them to precisely puppeteer AI ships, like going from the interior zones to outside Shubin space seamlessly. They worked with engineering on several features that enrich the game cinematically. They prototyped and then enabled an always-on autofocus FSTOP based Depth Of Field (mostly for non-combat situations) that adds a filmic realism to walking around and exploring interiors. The team successfully created a couple of gold standard scenes, which take into account all departments necessary and represent the flow and interaction that will be applied to future applicable scenes. Tech that uses lightgroups as cinematic light layers for scenes was also completed. With default or custom individual timing of lights coming online, any scene can be tagged and a corresponding lightlayer triggered to fade in. This can be a light rig per scene or per location, as both are viable. The cine lighting rig will be used to push certain cinematics further than what the environmental base lighting provides. The cinematics team generally doesn\u2019t go into too much detail, so they don\u2019t spoil the story, but they\u2019ll go into more detail on the Vertical Slice in a future update.\n\nENVIRONMENT ART\nLast month, the DE Environment Art team spent time preparing for 2018 and the challenges ahead. It is always good to look back at the progress made during the year and realign the goals for the new year. A lot of preparation and R&D went into updating the planet tech and tools. As the game moves from moons to full planets with more visually diverse ecosystems, the team wanted to have more control and variety of colors and materials. Work is being done on updating the planet tech as well as the shaders used on the scattered assets. This allows them to have the visual palette they want in the upcoming locations. It also provides a nice visual update and boost in quality for our existing moons.\n\nSYSTEM DESIGN\nThe System Design team spent December finalizing work on both 3.0 and the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice. A lot of the work went into the first major mission givers, Eckhart & Ruto, and ensuring there are no edge cases where they can get stuck or players can abuse them. Both presented different challenges, as each has their own conversation flow, way of being found and triggered. They also completed the first implementation of the Admin Officer for all our major locations. Once again, many edge cases had to be considered and a lot of work went into making sure the players can\u2019t block him for too long or give him items that he can\u2019t properly handle. There are still some issues, but the team is sorting out the solutions.\n\nAnother big focus was FPS combat AI. It\u2019s not finished but showing a lot of promise. The combat AI are beginning to act in a more believable manner, as they continue to add behaviors, adjust the timing of combat, and strive to get AI fights to feel challenging and fun to play. Things they also completed include: override pump upgrades to doors, hatches received locks that could be cut through, the beds in the Idris got upgraded with shutters, and more complex usables were added to make the game feel more alive.\nTURBULENT\n\nDecember was a release month as the Turbulent team was instrumental in getting 3.0 in your hands!\n\nLAUNCHER\nFinally released, the new RSI Launcher replaces the CIG Patcher that was previously used to distribute the game assets to your desktop for Star Citizen 2.6 and lower.\n\nThis release marks a major milestone for the team as the entire system that powers the launcher will allow us a direct integration path with the game where we will be now be able to open communication between your game sessions and the Spectrum client through integration points. This also opens the door for integrated anti-cheat sandboxing systems.\n\nGetting the launcher in your hands as part of 3.0 has been our team\u2019s main focus for while as multiple rounds of testing on multiple platforms have taken place to ensure the new delta patcher, UI, installer and application shell perform well in all supported machine types and versions.\n\n3.0 release also marks the deployment of the launcher backend which provides a new and secure way to distribute game update notifications and asset authorization to backers.\n\nROADMAP\nA separate team was split from the main group to work on a new and updated Roadmap display engine for the producers at CIG to use to update the community on the schedule and plans for the game. This new engine will allow the producers to create releases, place them in time and have feature cards on each to describe a feature of the game planned for a specific period.\n\nWe hope this new format will make the schedule updates more fun to read and will also help the teams produce more updates, as the backend systems provide more tools to update the schedule per feature card.\n\nSHIP SALES\nOur design team added life to the Tumbril Nova concept in December, fleshing out the first ground vehicle tank in the Star Citizen universe, inspired by 1980\u2019s action figures.\n\nThis week is your last chance to pick up a Tumbril Nova in the concept phase!\n\nWELCOME TO STAR CITIZEN\nThroughout December, the web team has been hard at work on the next iteration of the Star Citizen site. You can view a full report of our work on Welcome to SC in the January episode of ATV! We are hoping to launch a first pass of this new iteration in the first month of the year. Community\n\n\nWhile December is traditionally an action-packed month for Star Citizen, the team took it to the next level in 2017. On December 22nd, the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice was revealed during the Around the Verse holiday special and shared more than one hour of raw gameplay, including a special version with Director\u2019s commentary from Chris Roberts himself. If you\u2019re interested in more information about Squadron 42, you can enlist now to receive regular updates and exclusives on the updated Squadron 42 page here.\n\nThe holiday special also introduced the legendary battle tank \u2014 the Tumbril Nova. This battlefield dominator is available through January 15, and you can find all of the details here.\n\nIf the Holiday Special was not enough, the team published Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 to Live servers just before the holidays. This required a herculean effort by teams around the globe and we\u2019re not finished just yet! Releasing Alpha 3.0 has opened the gates for what promises to be an exciting new year of updates to the Star Citizen universe. If you\u2019re curious to see what\u2019s next, you\u2019ll be able to check in with our updated roadmap for 2018 that will come online with the revised RSI website.\n\nWe said it last month, but we\u2019ll say it again \u2014 thank you to each and every one of the dedicated testers who helped make the release of Alpha 3.0 possible. We truly appreciate you and your efforts!\n\nThanks to the release of Alpha 3.0, we have also seen a massive influx in community-created content submitted to the website. We highly encourage you to browse the Community Hub and check out all of the new videos, screenshots, guides, music, 3D prints, and more. Keep \u2018em coming!\n\nLastly, we\u2019ve taken the time to go through and organize your feedback on a variety of topics. We\u2019re in the process of planning and executing some fun changes that you\u2019ll see rolled out during the new year.\n\nAnd with that, we\u2019ll see you in the \u2018Verse! WE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":4,"comment_count":86,"created_at":"2018-01-11T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"8 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 23:34:16","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":16362,"next_id":16364}}