{"data":{"id":17503,"title":"Star Citizen Monthly Report: February 2020","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/17503-Star-Citizen-Monthly-Report-February-2020","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/17503","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/17503","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly 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second month of 2020 kicked off with focus on the upcoming Alpha 3.9 patch. From the interiors of New Babbage to a rework of the Inner Thought system, it\u2019s going to make a big impact when it launches in the coming months and will pave the way for even more exciting ships, locations, and features in the future. Read on to find out what our global studios did, and are doing, to make it a reality.\nAI\nCharacter Combat kick off February\u2019s report, who spent the month progressing combat behaviors, specifically iterating on assault and hold-position tactics. They improved the Reservation Manager System usually employed to reserve object use in the universe. This was achieved by adding the ability for NPCs to reserve volumes of space to correctly position themselves and retain the knowledge of where the AI wants them to go. They also began adjusting the AI system to accommodate server meshing. The main requirement for this is to split the responsibility of the different systems by server so that the Networking Team can correctly test and identify problems as soon as possible. They\u2019re also tweaking the navigation system to better support the object-container streaming level design workflow. This involves constructing a pipeline where navigation data is embedded in each container to improve control over which portions of data are loaded at a time.\nShip AI completed the first iteration of the full 3D navigation system for NPC ships. The system is currently with QA for testing before it\u2019s integrated into Alpha 3.9. This is an important step for the Ship AI Team as it offers new opportunities to implement more diverse missions not limited to open-space environments. Thanks to dynamic collision avoidance, they were able to remove the current speed limits on all AI ships. Instead of a capped standard combat mode (SCM) speed, NPCs can now set their own according to the desired relative goal velocity.\n\nSocial AI continued polishing vendor behavior, readying it for use in the bar setups and shops. Last month\u2019s focus was preparing and delivering drinks and cocktails \u2013 a multi-disciplinary effort that will define the pipeline for all future social environment work in the PU. When finished, the team will be able to generate content and create templates for multiple layouts much quicker. Currently, the vendor can pick up and deliver anything that already exists in the world, such as a bottle of beer, and prepare many things that don\u2019t, such as a cocktail. They\u2019re also working on other social behaviors, such as fitness and janitor activities. Both leverage the in-development \u2018path scripting\u2019 functionality. The purpose of this is to use the environment to define possible AI options, such as cleaning and patrolling, and can be used to simplify story scene scripting. It works by allowing a designer to lay down paths in the environment, create branches for each vertex, and define which subsumption logic can be executed and which conditions should be met.\nAnimation\nLast month, Animation worked on the social AI behaviors that give life to the hangar and bar environments. They also focused on locomotion and body dragging, created new animation sets for several upcoming ships, and worked on reloads and malfunctions for the AI Team. Weapons-wise, three new guns (two rifles and a pistol) made their way through the pipeline.\nArt (Environment)\nThe Art Team\u2019s February was dominated by microTech\u2019s moons, Calliope, Clio, and Euterpe, which are now ready for release. New assets were also created in preparation for the upcoming organics shader. The team updated the pipelines and streamlined the creation process on asset packs and any files left over from the conversion to V4 were cleaned up. This puts them in a good place to continue with new content for the Pyro System.\n\n\nArt (Ships)\nIn the US, the Ships Team redesigned the Origin M50 cockpit to align with the updated brand style and to conform with UI requirements. The geometry will be updated shortly. The Drake Cutlass Blue\u2019s prisoner pods evolved to a cylindrical form after discussions with Design and Animation regarding how prisoners would be placed into them and how many could fit into the ship. Time was also spent preparing the Esperia Prowler for release.\nIn Europe, focus was on closing out the Anvil Carrack, including fixing landing pad errors and bugs that caused the ship to be too heavy to take off. The whitebox assets for the Crusader Hercules and an upcoming (but as-yet-unannounced) ship were also reviewed. The team is currently gearing up to create various faction skins for the Mission Team. While doing so, any ships not using the current hard surface shader will be updated. They also set up the tint system and enabled cockpit canopies to support VFX rain effects and ongoing shader work.\nArt (Weapons)\nWork continued on the Lightning Bolt Co. weapons mentioned last month, with both having the bulk of the modeling completed for the LOD0 stage. An accompanying scope was also kicked off for the Atzkav sniper rifle. The Gemini C54 sub-machine gun was handed over to Design and Animation for its first fitting pass. Regarding ship weapons, the Klaus & Werner Sledge mass driver made it through the art pipeline, while size variants of the Esperia ballistic and laser cannons were finalized.\nAudio\nThe Audio Team supported feature requests for the upcoming Alpha 3.8.2 and 3.9.0 releases. The Carrack received a full audio pass and new sounds were created for the actor status update. Locations-wise, full planetary setups were completed for Clio, Calliope, and Euterpe, and a pass was made on New Babbage\u2019s interiors. They also asked the community for comments on Alpha 3.8.1 and broke down the feedback into actionable points that will be scheduled for implementation in future quarters.\nBackend Services\nLast month, Backend Services focused on scaling the loadout service and fixed several small issues with long-term persistence, insurance claims, account resets, and ship loadouts. The iCache is in the final stages, with advanced query methods being added and tested \u2013 internal stress and reliability testing are ongoing.\nCharacters\nFebruary saw the Character Team texturing outfits and implementing props and variants for New Babbage. Several new characters were concepted, a suit for the new prison gameplay was developed, and bugs were worked out of the upcoming Caldera environment suit.\nCommunity\nThe team dubbed last month \u2018February with Friends\u2019, with festivities including the annual greetings card and in-game screenshot contest. The team hosted a gallery with more than 200 Valentine\u2019s entries that can be viewed now.\nFebruary\u2019s infographic looked into how friends, grouping, and communications currently work in-game, while the inaugural Spectrum AMA (Ask Me Anything) tackled the upcoming prison gameplay.\nCommunity also supported the announcement of CitizenCon 2950.\n\u201cThe event is coming to Los Angeles, California, and we can\u2019t wait for you all to see what we have in store. Cosplayers should take this opportunity to start brainstorming, as the contest has already been confirmed for a return engagement. Beyond that, keep it tuned to the official CitizenCon website for more details as they become available.\u201d \u2013 The Community Team\n\nDesign\nLast month, Austin\u2019s Design Team focused on Alpha 3.9, including assigning all mission-giver usables new object templates. This is important as it enables them to take advantage of the new Subsumption hooks. They also prepared shops for the impending introduction of food and drinks for the new hunger\/thirst status, and progress was made on the \u2018material economy\u2019 required for the Quantum Editor toolset.\nEngineering\nIn Frankfurt, Engineering worked on physics threading and performance. This involved investigating the full parallelization of integration parts in physics time step-code, multithreading the polygonize function for interior volumes, continuing concurrent\/immediate queuing for physics, implementing local command queues, and adding the option to create queues on demand. They began finalizing and integrating the new signed distance field (SDF) system to accelerate collision checks on complex geometry and increase the precision of results. Unified fields can now be animated as any other part (they\u2019re still special in some regards but can be seen as a regular part from the outside) and distance fields on objects can be taken into account when sampling distances.\nOptimization-wise, they disabled physics on skin attachments and made OC and SDF-size improvements and allocation optimizations for interior volumes. They enabled foliage to support 64-bit precision status updates and zones, made render proxy for ropes work with the zone system, continued work on death reaction animations, and provided support for actor\/ragdoll body dragging.\nWork was done to the zone system, while a culling update thread to parallelize spatial culling structure updates was introduced. The team optimized streaming by skipping many unnecessary atomic operations on smart pointer copies and reduced the parallelization of occlusion culling. They also made improvements to the concurrent access check (support checking RW-lock semantics) and WAF improvements.\nIn support of the Gen12 renderer and Vulkan, they generalized texture views, refactored the texture creation process and remaining D3D texture view code, added MSAA support, removed old direct VB\/IB memory access code, added ViewInfo for access to common view\/camera related parameters, and looked into moving shader parsing into the resource container. The first improvement pass for hair AO was made, which is now coupled with color, and dye shift softness was introduced. Ocean shader improvements were made too by porting ocean rendering to deferred and further working on cube map reflections.\nThe raymarcher was simplified by removing the explicit evaluations of segments to significantly compact generated code and reduce register use. Non-linear stepping for raymarching was also implemented to improve quality at a reduced number of samples. Planet terrain was iterated on to support the rendering of large ground-based objects on the height and shadow maps. A persona live mo-cap plugin for the editor was created too. Finally, animation code was amended to ensure ragdolls work with ground alignment and the CHR chunk loader was simplified to initialize physics (which is still ongoing).\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe majority of Gameplay Feature\u2019s month was spent wrapping-up engineering support for prison missions.\n\u201cIt\u2019s been a long and involved process getting this feature together, but we feel everyone will be extremely pleased and excited by the results!\u201d \u2013 The Gameplay Features Team\nThey also worked on design and engineering for the ongoing friends service refactor. The aim is to make it considerably easier for players to connect in the universe by unifying each iteration of the friend database. Though a multi-quarter task, the first version will be available soon.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nThe US-based Vehicle Team continued to develop sub-targeting, which will allow players to cycle between specific targets on a single vehicle. It will also enable players to store and spawn vehicles within the cargo bays of their other vehicles. Work also began on the life support systems, while the repair system is being upgraded for compatibility with server meshing and other upcoming features.\nThe UK team continued with IFCS, changing thruster efficiency curves, making aerodynamics changes, and improving tools for in-editor implementation. They also kicked-off the new HUD UI using the building blocks system and continued with their tasks for server meshing.\nGraphics\nLast month, the Graphics Team started developing tools to allow Environment Art to use the new tint palette system in deep hierarchies of object containers with minimal setup. This works by setting up a hierarchy of tint-palettes for the various sections of an environment (exterior, interior, lobby, habs, engineering, etc.) followed by a fallback hierarchy in case the preferred pallet isn\u2019t available. For example, Port Olisar\u2019s habitation area would search in the \u2018Olisar\u2019 hierarchy for a \u2018habs\u2019 palette. However, if it doesn\u2019t find it, it will search the \u2018Generic Space Station\u2019 palette, followed by \u2018Generic Location\u2019, and so on.\nLevel Design\nThe Level Design Team spent February finalizing and polishing New Babbage. They\u2019re currently tweaking the usables and AI, ensuring everything runs smoothly. They also spent time updating location navigation meshes, which involved individualizing them per-area and splitting them into smaller sections to ensure stable AI behavior as smaller containers stream in and out. The next iteration of the restricted areas system was started and will bring no-fly zones closer to final delivery. There\u2019s still work to be done as more code comes online, but the second iteration will provide an improvement over the current one.\nLighting\nFebruary began with a new member joining the Lighting Team to help them expand support across the PU, enable more bugs to be fixed, and generally improve overall quality. For prisons, the team worked on the individual cells, the wider Klescher facility, and how the exterior is embedding into the planet. The attached cave network will feature more man-made lighting than other subterranean locations; the goal being to establish a dark, oppressive, and uncomfortable atmosphere.\nThe prisons also include the first test-case use of dynamic cubemaps, which will periodically re-bake probes based on player distance and the angle of the sun. The exterior of the facility is a perfect use case, as the boreholes should appear differently throughout the day. Once the potential bugs and performance issues are ironed out, the feature will be rolled out to new and existing locations across the PU.\nSeveral shop locations within New Babbage received their main passes, including TDD, OmegaPro, Centermass, Planetary Services, and Aparelli. Lighting tasks are currently being progressing for the main commons, plaza, and promenade dome. The biggest challenge is relaying different visual identities based on the time of day. For the first time, the team will be able to utilize new technology built into the LightGroup feature that changes states based on the angle of the sun. This allows the team to automatically turn lights on\/off when the sun goes down\/comes up, and make changes to the color and intensity of lights around the landing zone.\n\n\nNarrative\nNarrative spent time in February supporting Alpha 3.9. This included inputting new mission contracts, creating names and descriptions for dozens of new items, and writing detailed fiction to bring New Babbage and the Klescher facility to life. In support of this, a new internally developed string management system was delivered to make entering and managing all in-game text much easier. Time was given to fleshing out content for future locations and missions, Galactapedia saw further revisions and additions, and the Imperator election heated up with an announcement of the top ten candidates. They also assisted various teams with lore-based initiatives that will be announced later in the year.\nPlayer Relations\nAlongside supporting various promotions and events, Player Relations worked on getting the Carrack and Alpha 3.8.2 stable and ready for release.\nProps\nFebruary saw the Props Team completing the landing zone and prison work mentioned last month, mainly focusing on street furniture, shop interiors, and bar furniture. They also worked on several new food items, which propelled the pipeline forward as they now have a process for supporting skinned props. This was a wider initiative, involving the Props, Animation, and Actor Status teams.\n\u201cIt\u2019s still early days, but we hope to make more use of these new tools going forward and expect to see more dynamic props in the future!\u201d \u2013 The Props Team\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nQA\nFebruary saw the embedded feature testers focusing on different weapon type behaviors, while the combat testers continued with shotgun and pistol behavior. Support for both the Ship and Combat AI teams resumed as the 3D navigation system is now continually worked on. In Frankfurt, a new tester joined the team. They\u2019re currently in training but will soon specialize in combat AI. This will involve taking responsibility for testing new behaviors and missions featuring AI. Testing New Babbage was a high priority, with QA helping Level Design with the newly implemented usables and transit system. Work in the tools section branched to include the new localization tool, StarWords, which will be included in everyday testing going forward.\nTech Art\nLast month, Tech Animation implemented a new rig-logic editing plugin command for Maya. For performance and efficiency, the backend was implemented in C++. The Qt-based frontend\/UI layer is currently implemented using python. While the Vanduul face rigs already use this new runtime rig logic, all 120+ human face-rigs will soon be ported over to the new system.\nTurbulent\nFebruary saw Turbulent complete Hex\u2019s backend transformation as well as rework the pipeline. They\u2019re currently adding features to the Network Operations Center and enabling tools to visualize and manage existing services. A minor update to the launcher was also made to support enhancements to testing environments. The team also improved logging granularity in ledger and inventory services event tracking to provide resourceful statistics to engineering. Game Services continued working on the friend list unification. The second of three milestones was completed last week.\nTurbulent\u2019s Web Team supported the flyable release of the Carrack, including the addition of the limited-edition \u2018Expedition\u2019 livery. They also worked with Community on the Valentine\u2019s Day contests and the CitizenCon save-the-date announcement.\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nMost of UI\u2019s art focus last month was on creating environmental displays, including the screen graphics for prisons and signs, screens, and menus for New Babbage. Feature-wise, they further improved the look of the radial Inner Thought menus and polished the Actor Status display for the visor. Both are scheduled for Alpha 3.9.\nVFX\nThe VFX Team completed a significant amount of content for the prison, New Babbage interiors, and microTech\u2019s moons. They finalized their work on the Carrack and several new health effects that communicate to players when they\u2019re too hot, cold, and hungry. They also provided effects for volatile cargo, mining consumables, and made minor adjustments to the Scourge railgun. Feature-wise, work on SDF-driven atmospheric entry-effects continues with promising results, while look-dev on the fire component began.\nThe Code Team fixed issues with pre-aged planet effects, added extra debug options, and improved computation for the scattering query grid by moving it to the GPU. VFX Tech Art supported the Character Team with an experimental new LOD pipeline using the tools in Houdini. The team also kicked off training sessions in Houdini to improve the procedural generation of assets across all art departments.\nThe Frankfurt-based team fleshed out VFX for the Esperia Prowler, including a new visual style favoring stealth and defense. The effects are toned down compared to other ships to make it harder to detect and track as it flies around.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026","de_DE":"Der zweite Monat des Jahres 2020 startete mit dem Schwerpunkt auf dem bevorstehenden Alpha 3.9-Patch. Von den Innenr\u00e4umen von New Babbage bis hin zu einer \u00dcberarbeitung des Inner Thought-Systems wird es eine gro\u00dfe Wirkung haben, wenn es in den kommenden Monaten auf den Markt kommt und den Weg f\u00fcr noch aufregendere Schiffe, Orte und Funktionen in der Zukunft ebnen wird. Lesen Sie weiter, um herauszufinden, was unsere globalen Studios getan haben und tun, um es Wirklichkeit werden zu lassen.\nKI\nCharacter Combat ist der Auftakt zum Februar-Bericht, der den Monat damit verbrachte, das Kampfverhalten voranzutreiben, wobei insbesondere die Angriffs- und Haltungstaktiken wiederholt wurden. Sie verbesserten das Reservations-Manager-System, das normalerweise f\u00fcr die Reservierung von Objekten im Universum eingesetzt wird. Dies wurde dadurch erreicht, dass die NPCs nun in der Lage sind, Raumvolumina zu reservieren, um sich korrekt zu positionieren und das Wissen dar\u00fcber zu behalten, wohin die KI sie f\u00fchren soll. Sie begannen auch damit, das KI-System so anzupassen, dass es die Vermaschung von Servern erm\u00f6glicht. Die wichtigste Voraussetzung daf\u00fcr ist die Aufteilung der Verantwortung der verschiedenen Systeme nach Servern, damit das Networking-Team Probleme so schnell wie m\u00f6glich korrekt testen und identifizieren kann. Sie passen auch das Navigationssystem an, um den Design-Workflow auf der Streamingebene von Objektcontainern besser zu unterst\u00fctzen. Dazu geh\u00f6rt der Aufbau einer Pipeline, bei der Navigationsdaten in jeden Container eingebettet werden, um die Kontrolle dar\u00fcber zu verbessern, welche Datenteile jeweils geladen werden.\nDie Schiffs-KI hat die erste Iteration des vollst\u00e4ndigen 3D-Navigationssystems f\u00fcr NPC-Schiffe abgeschlossen. Das System wird derzeit von der Qualit\u00e4tssicherung getestet, bevor es in Alpha 3.9 integriert wird. Dies ist ein wichtiger Schritt f\u00fcr das Schiffs-KI-Team, da es neue M\u00f6glichkeiten bietet, vielf\u00e4ltigere Missionen zu implementieren, die nicht auf Freifeldumgebungen beschr\u00e4nkt sind. Dank der dynamischen Kollisionsvermeidung konnten sie die derzeitigen Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungen auf allen KI-Schiffen aufheben. Statt einer begrenzten Standardkampfmodus-Geschwindigkeit (SCM) k\u00f6nnen die NPCs nun ihre eigene Geschwindigkeit entsprechend der gew\u00fcnschten relativen Zielgeschwindigkeit einstellen.\n\nDie soziale KI hat das Verhalten der Anbieter weiter poliert und f\u00fcr den Einsatz in den Barbetrieben und Gesch\u00e4ften vorbereitet. Im letzten Monat lag der Schwerpunkt auf der Vorbereitung und Lieferung von Getr\u00e4nken und Cocktails - eine multidisziplin\u00e4re Anstrengung, die die Pipeline f\u00fcr alle zuk\u00fcnftigen Arbeiten im sozialen Umfeld der PU definieren wird. Nach Abschluss der Arbeit wird das Team in der Lage sein, Inhalte zu generieren und Vorlagen f\u00fcr verschiedene Layouts viel schneller zu erstellen. Zurzeit kann der Anbieter alles abholen und liefern, was es bereits auf der Welt gibt, z.B. eine Flasche Bier, und viele Dinge vorbereiten, die es nicht gibt, z.B. einen Cocktail. Sie arbeiten auch an anderen sozialen Verhaltensweisen, wie z.B. Fitness und Hausmeistert\u00e4tigkeiten. Beide nutzen die in der Entwicklung befindliche \"Pfad-Scripting\"-Funktionalit\u00e4t. Damit soll die Umgebung dazu genutzt werden, m\u00f6gliche KI-Optionen zu definieren, wie z.B. Reinigung und Patrouillenfahrten, und kann dazu verwendet werden, die Erstellung von Szenen-Skripten zu vereinfachen. Es funktioniert, indem es einem Designer erlaubt, Pfade in der Umgebung festzulegen, Verzweigungen f\u00fcr jeden Vertex zu erstellen und zu definieren, welche Subsumtionslogik ausgef\u00fchrt werden kann und welche Bedingungen erf\u00fcllt sein sollten.\nAnimation\nIm vergangenen Monat arbeitete Animation an den sozialen KI-Verhaltensweisen, die die Hangar- und Bar-Umgebungen beleben. Sie konzentrierten sich auch auf die Fortbewegung und das Ziehen des K\u00f6rpers, erstellten neue Animationssets f\u00fcr mehrere kommende Schiffe und arbeiteten an Nachladungen und Fehlfunktionen f\u00fcr das KI-Team. Was die Waffen anbelangt, so haben drei neue Gewehre (zwei Gewehre und eine Pistole) ihren Weg durch die Pipeline gefunden.\nKunst (Umwelt)\nDer Februar des Kunstteams wurde von den Monden Calliope, Clio und Euterpe von microTech dominiert, die nun zur Ver\u00f6ffentlichung bereit sind. Au\u00dferdem wurden neue Anlagen zur Vorbereitung auf den bevorstehenden Organik-Shader geschaffen. Das Team aktualisierte die Pipelines und straffte den Erstellungsprozess von Asset-Paketen, und alle von der Konvertierung in V4 \u00fcbrig gebliebenen Dateien wurden bereinigt. Damit sind sie in einer guten Position, um mit neuen Inhalten f\u00fcr das Pyro-System fortzufahren.\n\n\nKunst (Schiffe)\nIn den USA hat das Schiffsteam das Origin M50-Cockpit neu gestaltet, um es an den aktualisierten Markenstil anzupassen und die Anforderungen der Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che zu erf\u00fcllen. Die Geometrie wird in K\u00fcrze aktualisiert werden. Die Gefangenenkapseln der Drake Cutlass Blue entwickelten sich zu einer zylindrischen Form, nachdem mit Design und Animation besprochen wurde, wie die Gefangenen darin untergebracht werden sollten und wie viele in das Schiff passen w\u00fcrden. Es wurde auch Zeit darauf verwendet, den Esperia Prowler f\u00fcr die Freilassung vorzubereiten.\nIn Europa konzentrierte man sich auf die Schlie\u00dfung der Ambosskarabiner, einschlie\u00dflich der Behebung von Fehlern bei den Landepl\u00e4tzen und Fehlern, die dazu f\u00fchrten, dass das Schiff zu schwer zum Abheben war. Auch die Whitebox-Assets f\u00fcr die Crusader Hercules und ein kommendes (aber noch nicht angek\u00fcndigtes) Schiff wurden \u00fcberpr\u00fcft. Das Team bereitet sich derzeit darauf vor, verschiedene Faction Skins f\u00fcr das Missionsteam zu erstellen. Dabei werden alle Schiffe, die nicht den aktuellen Hard Surface Shader verwenden, aktualisiert. Sie richteten auch das Tint-System ein und aktivierten die Cockpit-Canopies, um VFX-Regen-Effekte und die laufende Shader-Arbeit zu unterst\u00fctzen.\nKunst (Waffen)\nDie Arbeit an den im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnten Waffen der Lightning Bolt Co. wurde fortgesetzt, wobei bei beiden der Gro\u00dfteil der Modellierung f\u00fcr die LOD0-Phase abgeschlossen wurde. Ein begleitendes Zielfernrohr wurde auch f\u00fcr das Atzkav-Scharfsch\u00fctzengewehr in Angriff genommen. Die Maschinenpistole Gemini C54 wurde f\u00fcr ihren ersten Anpassungsdurchgang an Design und Animation \u00fcbergeben. Was die Schiffswaffen betrifft, so schaffte es der Klaus & Werner Sledge-Massentreiber durch die Kunst-Pipeline, w\u00e4hrend die Gr\u00f6\u00dfenvarianten der Esperia-Ballistik- und Laserkanonen fertiggestellt wurden.\nAudio\nDas Audio-Team unterst\u00fctzte Feature-Anfragen f\u00fcr die kommenden Alpha 3.8.2 und 3.9.0 Releases. Das Carrack erhielt einen vollst\u00e4ndigen Audio-Pass und es wurden neue Sounds f\u00fcr das Schauspieler-Status-Update erstellt. Was die Standorte betrifft, so wurden die vollst\u00e4ndigen Planetenaufstellungen f\u00fcr Clio, Calliope und Euterpe fertiggestellt, und es wurde ein Pass f\u00fcr die Innenr\u00e4ume von New Babbage erstellt. Sie baten die Gemeinschaft auch um Kommentare zu Alpha 3.8.1 und unterteilten das Feedback in umsetzbare Punkte, die in den kommenden Quartalen umgesetzt werden sollen.\nBackend-Dienste\nIm vergangenen Monat konzentrierte sich Backend Services auf die Skalierung des Ausladedienstes und behebt mehrere kleine Probleme mit langfristiger Persistenz, Versicherungsanspr\u00fcchen, Kontenr\u00fcckstellungen und Schiffsausladungen. Der iCache befindet sich in der Endphase, wobei erweiterte Abfragemethoden hinzugef\u00fcgt und getestet werden - interne Stress- und Zuverl\u00e4ssigkeitstests sind im Gange.\nZeichen\nIm Februar texturierte das Character Team die Outfits und implementierte Requisiten und Varianten f\u00fcr New Babbage. Es wurden mehrere neue Charaktere konzipiert, ein Anzug f\u00fcr das neue Gef\u00e4ngnis-Gameplay wurde entwickelt, und aus dem kommenden Caldera-Umgebungs-Anzug wurden Bugs herausgearbeitet.\nGemeinschaft\nDas Team nannte den vergangenen Monat \"Februar mit Freunden\", mit Feierlichkeiten wie der j\u00e4hrlichen Gru\u00dfkarte und dem Screenshot-Wettbewerb im Spiel. Das Team veranstaltete eine Galerie mit mehr als 200 Valentins-Beitr\u00e4gen, die jetzt eingesehen werden k\u00f6nnen.\nIn der Infografik vom Februar wurde untersucht, wie Freunde, Gruppenbildung und Kommunikation derzeit im Spiel funktionieren, w\u00e4hrend das erste Spectrum AMA (Ask Me Anything) das bevorstehende Gef\u00e4ngnis-Gameplay in Angriff nahm.\nDie Gemeinschaft unterst\u00fctzte auch die Ank\u00fcndigung der CitizenCon 2950.\n\"Die Veranstaltung kommt nach Los Angeles, Kalifornien, und wir k\u00f6nnen es kaum erwarten, dass Sie alle sehen, was wir auf dem Programm haben. Die Cosplayer sollten diese Gelegenheit nutzen, um mit einem Brainstorming zu beginnen, da der Wettbewerb bereits f\u00fcr eine Wiederaufnahme best\u00e4tigt wurde. Dar\u00fcber hinaus sollten Sie die offizielle Website der CitizenCon besuchen, um weitere Einzelheiten zu erfahren, sobald sie verf\u00fcgbar sind. - Das Gemeinschaftsteam\n\nGestaltung\nIm letzten Monat konzentrierte sich das Design-Team von Austin auf Alpha 3.9, einschlie\u00dflich der Zuweisung neuer Objektvorlagen f\u00fcr alle Missionsgeber. Dies ist wichtig, da es ihnen erm\u00f6glicht, die neuen Subsumptions-Hooks zu nutzen. Sie bereiteten auch Gesch\u00e4fte f\u00fcr die bevorstehende Einf\u00fchrung von Lebensmitteln und Getr\u00e4nken f\u00fcr den neuen Hunger\/Durst-Status vor, und es wurden Fortschritte bei der \"Materialwirtschaft\" erzielt, die f\u00fcr das Quantum-Editor-Toolset erforderlich ist.\nTechnik\nIn Frankfurt arbeitete das Ingenieurwesen an den Themen Einf\u00e4delung und Leistung in der Physik. Dies beinhaltete die Untersuchung der vollst\u00e4ndigen Parallelisierung von Integrationsteilen im physikalischen Zeitschrittcode, Multithreading der Polygonisierungsfunktion f\u00fcr Innenvolumen, die Fortsetzung des concurrent\/immediate Queuing f\u00fcr die Physik, die Implementierung lokaler Befehlswarteschlangen und die M\u00f6glichkeit, Warteschlangen bei Bedarf zu erstellen. Sie begannen mit der Fertigstellung und Integration des neuen SDF-Systems (Signed Distance Field), um die Kollisionspr\u00fcfung komplexer Geometrien zu beschleunigen und die Pr\u00e4zision der Ergebnisse zu erh\u00f6hen. Vereinheitlichte Felder k\u00f6nnen nun wie jeder andere Teil animiert werden (sie sind in mancher Hinsicht immer noch speziell, k\u00f6nnen aber von au\u00dfen als regul\u00e4rer Teil betrachtet werden) und Abstandsfelder auf Objekten k\u00f6nnen bei der Abtastung von Abst\u00e4nden ber\u00fccksichtigt werden.\nIn Bezug auf die Optimierung haben sie die Physik auf Hautanh\u00e4ngen deaktiviert und Verbesserungen der OC- und SDF-Gr\u00f6\u00dfe sowie Zuordnungsoptimierungen f\u00fcr Innenvolumen vorgenommen. Sie erm\u00f6glichten die Unterst\u00fctzung von Statusaktualisierungen und Zonen mit 64-Bit-Pr\u00e4zision im Blattwerk, lie\u00dfen Proxy-Rendering f\u00fcr Seile mit dem Zonensystem arbeiten, setzten die Arbeit an Animationen der Todesreaktion fort und unterst\u00fctzten das Ziehen von Schauspielern\/Ragdoll-K\u00f6rpern.\nEs wurde an dem Zonensystem gearbeitet, w\u00e4hrend ein Aktualisierungs-Thread zur Parallelisierung der r\u00e4umlichen Aktualisierungen der Keulungsstruktur eingef\u00fchrt wurde. Das Team optimierte das Streaming, indem es viele unn\u00f6tige atomare Operationen auf Smart-Pointer-Kopien \u00fcbersprang und die Parallelisierung des Occlusion Culling reduzierte. Sie nahmen auch Verbesserungen bei der Pr\u00fcfung des gleichzeitigen Zugriffs (Unterst\u00fctzung der Pr\u00fcfung der RW-Lock-Semantik) und Verbesserungen der WAF vor.\nZur Unterst\u00fctzung des Gen12-Renderers und von Vulkan wurden Texturansichten verallgemeinert, der Texturerzeugungsprozess und der verbleibende D3D-Texturansichtscode \u00fcberarbeitet, MSAA-Unterst\u00fctzung hinzugef\u00fcgt, der alte direkte VB\/IB-Speicherzugriffscode entfernt, ViewInfo f\u00fcr den Zugriff auf g\u00e4ngige ansichts- und kamerabezogene Parameter hinzugef\u00fcgt und das Verschieben des Shader-Parsing in den Ressourcencontainer untersucht. Der erste Verbesserungsdurchgang f\u00fcr Haar-AO wurde durchgef\u00fchrt, der nun mit Farbe gekoppelt ist, und es wurde eine Weichheit der Farbstoffverschiebung eingef\u00fchrt. Verbesserungen bei den Ozean-Shadern wurden ebenfalls vorgenommen, indem das Ozean-Rendering auf verz\u00f6gerte und weitere Arbeiten an W\u00fcrfelkartenreflexionen \u00fcbertragen wurden.\nDer Raymarcher wurde vereinfacht, indem die expliziten Auswertungen von Segmenten entfernt wurden, um den generierten Code deutlich zu verdichten und den Registerverbrauch zu reduzieren. Au\u00dferdem wurde ein nichtlinearer Schritt f\u00fcr das Raymarchen implementiert, um die Qualit\u00e4t bei einer reduzierten Anzahl von Proben zu verbessern. Das Planetengel\u00e4nde wurde iterativ bearbeitet, um die Darstellung gro\u00dfer bodengebundener Objekte auf den H\u00f6hen- und Schattenkarten zu unterst\u00fctzen. Es wurde auch ein Live-Mo-Cap-Plugin f\u00fcr den Editor erstellt. Schlie\u00dflich wurde der Animationscode ge\u00e4ndert, um sicherzustellen, dass die Ragdolls mit der Bodenausrichtung arbeiten, und der CHR-Chunk-Lader wurde vereinfacht, um die Physik zu initialisieren (was noch nicht abgeschlossen ist).\nFunktionen (Spielablauf)\nDer gr\u00f6\u00dfte Teil des Spielmonats wurde damit verbracht, die technische Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Gef\u00e4ngnismissionen abzuschlie\u00dfen.\n\"Es war ein langer und aufw\u00e4ndiger Prozess, dieses Feature zusammenzustellen, aber wir glauben, dass alle sehr zufrieden und begeistert von den Ergebnissen sein werden! - Das Team f\u00fcr Spielfunktionen\nSie arbeiteten auch an Design und Technik f\u00fcr den laufenden Friends Service Refactor. Das Ziel ist es, den Spielern die Verbindung im Universum erheblich zu erleichtern, indem jede Iteration der Freundesdatenbank vereinheitlicht wird. Obwohl es sich um eine Aufgabe mit mehreren Quartalen handelt, wird die erste Version bald verf\u00fcgbar sein.\nFunktionen (Fahrzeuge)\nDas in den USA ans\u00e4ssige Vehicle Team hat die Entwicklung von Sub-Targeting fortgesetzt, das es den Spielern erm\u00f6glicht, mit einem einzigen Fahrzeug zwischen bestimmten Zielen zu fahren. Es wird den Spielern auch erm\u00f6glichen, Fahrzeuge in den Lader\u00e4umen ihrer anderen Fahrzeuge zu lagern und zu laichen. Die Arbeit an den lebenserhaltenden Systemen wurde ebenfalls begonnen, w\u00e4hrend das Reparatursystem f\u00fcr die Kompatibilit\u00e4t mit der Serververnetzung und anderen bevorstehenden Funktionen aufger\u00fcstet wird.\nDas britische Team setzte die Arbeit am IFCS fort, indem es die Effizienzkurven der Triebwerke \u00e4nderte, \u00c4nderungen an der Aerodynamik vornahm und die Werkzeuge f\u00fcr die Implementierung im Editor verbesserte. Au\u00dferdem starteten sie die neue HUD-Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che unter Verwendung des Baukastensystems und setzten ihre Aufgaben f\u00fcr die Serververnetzung fort.\nGrafiken\nIm letzten Monat begann das Grafikteam mit der Entwicklung von Werkzeugen, die es der Environment Art erm\u00f6glichen, das neue Farbpalettensystem in tiefen Hierarchien von Objektcontainern mit minimaler Einrichtung zu verwenden. Dies funktioniert, indem eine Hierarchie von Farbpaletten f\u00fcr die verschiedenen Bereiche einer Umgebung (Au\u00dfenbereich, Innenbereich, Lobby, habs, Technik, usw.) erstellt wird, gefolgt von einer Fallback-Hierarchie f\u00fcr den Fall, dass die bevorzugte Palette nicht verf\u00fcgbar ist. Zum Beispiel w\u00fcrde der Wohnbereich von Port Olisar in der 'Olisar'-Hierarchie nach einer 'habs'-Palette suchen. Wird sie jedoch nicht gefunden, wird die Palette 'Generic Space Station' durchsucht, gefolgt von 'Generic Location' und so weiter.\nEbene Entwurf\nDas Level Design Team verbrachte den Februar damit, New Babbage fertigzustellen und zu polieren. Sie sind gerade dabei, die Nutzbarkeit und die KI zu optimieren, um sicherzustellen, dass alles reibungslos l\u00e4uft. Sie haben auch Zeit damit verbracht, die Navigationsnetze f\u00fcr die Standorte zu aktualisieren, wobei sie diese pro Bereich individualisiert und in kleinere Abschnitte aufgeteilt haben, um ein stabiles KI-Verhalten zu gew\u00e4hrleisten, wenn kleinere Container ein- und ausgehen. Die n\u00e4chste Iteration des Sperrzonen-Systems wurde gestartet und wird die Flugverbotszonen n\u00e4her an die endg\u00fcltige Auslieferung bringen. Es gibt noch viel zu tun, wenn mehr Code online kommt, aber die zweite Iteration wird eine Verbesserung gegen\u00fcber der aktuellen bieten.\nBeleuchtung\nDer Februar begann damit, dass ein neues Mitglied dem Beleuchtungsteam beitrat, um ihnen zu helfen, den Support in der gesamten PU auszuweiten, mehr Fehler zu beheben und die Gesamtqualit\u00e4t zu verbessern. F\u00fcr die Gef\u00e4ngnisse arbeitete das Team an den einzelnen Zellen, der gr\u00f6\u00dferen Klescher-Einrichtung und an der Einbettung des Au\u00dfenbereichs in den Planeten. Das angeschlossene H\u00f6hlennetz wird mehr k\u00fcnstliche Beleuchtung aufweisen als andere unterirdische Orte; Ziel ist es, eine dunkle, bedr\u00fcckende und unangenehme Atmosph\u00e4re zu schaffen.\nDie Gef\u00e4ngnisse beinhalten auch den ersten Testfall, bei dem dynamische Kubikkarten verwendet werden, bei denen die Sonden in regelm\u00e4\u00dfigen Abst\u00e4nden auf der Grundlage der Entfernung der Spieler und des Sonnenwinkels neu gebacken werden. Das \u00c4u\u00dfere der Einrichtung ist ein perfekter Anwendungsfall, da die Bohrl\u00f6cher im Laufe des Tages unterschiedlich aussehen sollten. Sobald die potenziellen Fehler und Leistungsprobleme behoben sind, wird die Funktion an neuen und bestehenden Standorten in der gesamten PU eingef\u00fchrt.\nMehrere Standorte innerhalb von New Babbage erhielten ihre Hauptp\u00e4sse, darunter TDD, OmegaPro, Centermass, Planetary Services und Aparelli. Die Beleuchtungsarbeiten f\u00fcr die wichtigsten Gemeinschaftseinrichtungen, den Platz und die Kuppel der Promenade werden derzeit vorangetrieben. Die gr\u00f6\u00dfte Herausforderung ist die Vermittlung verschiedener visueller Identit\u00e4ten je nach Tageszeit. Zum ersten Mal wird das Team in der Lage sein, eine neue Technologie zu nutzen, die in die LightGroup-Funktion integriert ist und die Zust\u00e4nde in Abh\u00e4ngigkeit vom Sonnenstand \u00e4ndert. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es dem Team, die Lichter automatisch ein- und auszuschalten, wenn die Sonne unter- bzw. aufsteigt, und die Farbe und Intensit\u00e4t der Lichter um die Landezone herum zu ver\u00e4ndern.\n\n\nErz\u00e4hlung\nNarrative verbrachte im Februar Zeit mit der Unterst\u00fctzung von Alpha 3.9. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Eingabe neuer Missionsvertr\u00e4ge, die Erstellung von Namen und Beschreibungen f\u00fcr Dutzende von neuen Gegenst\u00e4nden und das Schreiben detaillierter Fiktion, um New Babbage und die Klescher-Anlage zum Leben zu erwecken. Zur Unterst\u00fctzung wurde ein neues, intern entwickeltes System zur Verwaltung von Zeichenketten geliefert, das die Eingabe und Verwaltung aller Texte im Spiel wesentlich erleichtert. Es wurde Zeit f\u00fcr die Ausarbeitung von Inhalten f\u00fcr k\u00fcnftige Standorte und Missionen einger\u00e4umt, Galactapedia wurde weiter \u00fcberarbeitet und erg\u00e4nzt, und die Imperator-Wahl wurde mit der Bekanntgabe der zehn besten Kandidaten angeheizt. Au\u00dferdem unterst\u00fctzten sie verschiedene Teams bei den Initiativen, die im Laufe des Jahres bekannt gegeben werden sollen.\nBeziehungen zu den Spielern\nNeben der Unterst\u00fctzung verschiedener Werbeaktionen und Veranstaltungen arbeitete Player Relations daran, Carrack und Alpha 3.8.2 stabil und ver\u00f6ffentlichungsreif zu machen.\nRequisiten\nIm Februar schloss das Requisitenteam die im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnte Landezone und die Gef\u00e4ngnisarbeiten ab, wobei es sich haupts\u00e4chlich auf die Stadtm\u00f6blierung, die Inneneinrichtung der Gesch\u00e4fte und die Einrichtung der Bars konzentrierte. Sie arbeiteten auch an mehreren neuen Nahrungsmitteln, die die Pipeline vorantreiben, da sie nun \u00fcber ein Verfahren zur Unterst\u00fctzung von geh\u00e4uteten Requisiten verf\u00fcgen. Dies war eine umfassendere Initiative, an der die Teams f\u00fcr Requisiten, Animation und Schauspielerstatus beteiligt waren.\n\"Es ist noch ein Anfang, aber wir hoffen, dass wir diese neuen Instrumente in Zukunft mehr nutzen werden und erwarten, dass wir in Zukunft mehr dynamische Requisiten sehen werden! - Das Requisiten-Team\n\n\n\nQA\nIm Februar konzentrierten sich die Tester der eingebetteten Funktionen auf unterschiedliche Verhaltensweisen der Waffentypen, w\u00e4hrend die Kampftester mit dem Verhalten von Schrotflinten und Pistolen weitermachten. Die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr das Schiffs- und das Kampf-KI-Team wurde wieder aufgenommen, da nun kontinuierlich an dem 3D-Navigationssystem gearbeitet wird. In Frankfurt kam ein neuer Tester zum Team hinzu. Sie befinden sich derzeit in der Ausbildung, werden sich aber bald auf die Kampf-KI spezialisieren. Dazu wird die Verantwortung f\u00fcr das Testen neuer Verhaltensweisen und Missionen mit KI \u00fcbernommen. Das Testen von New Babbage hatte eine hohe Priorit\u00e4t, wobei die QA beim Leveldesign mit dem neu implementierten Nutz- und Transitsystem behilflich ist. Die Arbeit im Bereich der Werkzeuge verzweigte sich, um das neue Lokalisierungswerkzeug StarWords mit einzubeziehen, das in Zukunft in die allt\u00e4glichen Tests einbezogen werden soll.\nTechnische Kunst\nLetzten Monat implementierte Tech Animation einen neuen Rig-Logic-Editing-Plugin-Befehl f\u00fcr Maya. Aus Gr\u00fcnden der Leistung und Effizienz wurde das Backend in C++ implementiert. Die Qt-basierte Frontend\/UI-Schicht wird derzeit mit Python implementiert. W\u00e4hrend die Vanduul-Face-Rigs bereits diese neue Runtime-Rig-Logik verwenden, werden bald alle \u00fcber 120 Human Face-Rigs auf das neue System portiert werden.\nUnruhig\nIm Februar wurde in Turbulenzen die Backend-Transformation von Hex abgeschlossen und die Pipeline \u00fcberarbeitet. Zurzeit wird das Network Operations Center um neue Funktionen erweitert und es werden Tools zur Visualisierung und Verwaltung bestehender Dienste bereitgestellt. Au\u00dferdem wurde eine kleinere Aktualisierung der Tr\u00e4gerrakete vorgenommen, um Verbesserungen der Testumgebungen zu unterst\u00fctzen. Das Team verbesserte auch die Protokollierungsgranularit\u00e4t in der Ereignisverfolgung von Ledger- und Bestandsdiensten, um der Technik einfallsreiche Statistiken zur Verf\u00fcgung zu stellen. Game Services arbeitete weiter an der Vereinheitlichung der Freundesliste. Der zweite von drei Meilensteinen wurde letzte Woche abgeschlossen.\nDas Web-Team von Turbulent unterst\u00fctzte die fliegbare Ver\u00f6ffentlichung des Carrack, einschlie\u00dflich der Hinzuf\u00fcgung der limitierten Auflage der \"Expedition\"-Lackierung. Sie arbeiteten auch mit der Gemeinschaft bei den Wettbewerben zum Valentinstag und der Ank\u00fcndigung der CitizenCon zur Rettung des Datums zusammen.\n\nBenutzerschnittstelle (UI)\nDer gr\u00f6\u00dfte Teil des Kunstfokus von UI im letzten Monat lag auf der Erstellung von Umweltdarstellungen, einschlie\u00dflich der Bildschirmgrafiken f\u00fcr Gef\u00e4ngnisse und Schilder, Bildschirme und Men\u00fcs f\u00fcr New Babbage. Was die Funktionen betrifft, so haben sie das Aussehen der radialen Inner Thought-Men\u00fcs weiter verbessert und die Anzeige des Schauspieler-Status f\u00fcr das Visier aufpoliert. Beide sind f\u00fcr Alpha 3.9 geplant.\nVFX\nDas VFX-Team hat eine betr\u00e4chtliche Menge an Inhalten f\u00fcr das Gef\u00e4ngnis, die Innenr\u00e4ume von New Babbage und die Monde von microTech fertiggestellt. Sie schlossen ihre Arbeit am Carrack und einige neue Gesundheitseffekte ab, die den Spielern mitteilen, wenn ihnen zu hei\u00df, zu kalt und zu hungrig ist. Sie stellten auch Effekte f\u00fcr fl\u00fcchtige Ladung und Bergbau-Verbrauchsmaterialien bereit und nahmen kleinere Anpassungen an der Scourge-Bahnkanone vor. Die Arbeit an SDF-gesteuerten atmosph\u00e4rischen Einstiegseffekten wird mit viel versprechenden Ergebnissen fortgesetzt, w\u00e4hrend mit der Entwicklung der Feuer-Komponente begonnen wurde.\nDas Code-Team behebt Probleme mit vorgealterten Planeteneffekten, f\u00fcgt zus\u00e4tzliche Debug-Optionen hinzu und verbessert die Berechnung des Streuabfragerasters, indem es auf die GPU verlagert wird. VFX Tech Art unterst\u00fctzte das Character-Team mit einer experimentellen neuen LOD-Pipeline unter Verwendung der Werkzeuge in Houdini. Das Team startete auch Schulungssitzungen in Houdini, um die prozedurale Erstellung von Assets in allen Kunstabteilungen zu verbessern.\nDas in Frankfurt ans\u00e4ssige Team entwickelte VFX f\u00fcr den Esperia Prowler, einschlie\u00dflich eines neuen visuellen Stils, der die Tarnung und Verteidigung beg\u00fcnstigt. Die Effekte sind im Vergleich zu anderen Schiffen abgeschw\u00e4cht, um die Erkennung und Verfolgung des umherfliegenden Schiffes zu erschweren.\nWIR SEHEN SIE N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...","zh_CN":"The second month of 2020 kicked off with focus on the upcoming Alpha 3.9 patch. From the interiors of New Babbage to a rework of the Inner Thought system, it\u2019s going to make a big impact when it launches in the coming months and will pave the way for even more exciting ships, locations, and features in the future. Read on to find out what our global studios did, and are doing, to make it a reality.\nAI\nCharacter Combat kick off February\u2019s report, who spent the month progressing combat behaviors, specifically iterating on assault and hold-position tactics. They improved the Reservation Manager System usually employed to reserve object use in the universe. This was achieved by adding the ability for NPCs to reserve volumes of space to correctly position themselves and retain the knowledge of where the AI wants them to go. They also began adjusting the AI system to accommodate server meshing. The main requirement for this is to split the responsibility of the different systems by server so that the Networking Team can correctly test and identify problems as soon as possible. They\u2019re also tweaking the navigation system to better support the object-container streaming level design workflow. This involves constructing a pipeline where navigation data is embedded in each container to improve control over which portions of data are loaded at a time.\nShip AI completed the first iteration of the full 3D navigation system for NPC ships. The system is currently with QA for testing before it\u2019s integrated into Alpha 3.9. This is an important step for the Ship AI Team as it offers new opportunities to implement more diverse missions not limited to open-space environments. Thanks to dynamic collision avoidance, they were able to remove the current speed limits on all AI ships. Instead of a capped standard combat mode (SCM) speed, NPCs can now set their own according to the desired relative goal velocity.\n\nSocial AI continued polishing vendor behavior, readying it for use in the bar setups and shops. Last month\u2019s focus was preparing and delivering drinks and cocktails \u2013 a multi-disciplinary effort that will define the pipeline for all future social environment work in the PU. When finished, the team will be able to generate content and create templates for multiple layouts much quicker. Currently, the vendor can pick up and deliver anything that already exists in the world, such as a bottle of beer, and prepare many things that don\u2019t, such as a cocktail. They\u2019re also working on other social behaviors, such as fitness and janitor activities. Both leverage the in-development \u2018path scripting\u2019 functionality. The purpose of this is to use the environment to define possible AI options, such as cleaning and patrolling, and can be used to simplify story scene scripting. It works by allowing a designer to lay down paths in the environment, create branches for each vertex, and define which subsumption logic can be executed and which conditions should be met.\nAnimation\nLast month, Animation worked on the social AI behaviors that give life to the hangar and bar environments. They also focused on locomotion and body dragging, created new animation sets for several upcoming ships, and worked on reloads and malfunctions for the AI Team. Weapons-wise, three new guns (two rifles and a pistol) made their way through the pipeline.\nArt (Environment)\nThe Art Team\u2019s February was dominated by microTech\u2019s moons, Calliope, Clio, and Euterpe, which are now ready for release. New assets were also created in preparation for the upcoming organics shader. The team updated the pipelines and streamlined the creation process on asset packs and any files left over from the conversion to V4 were cleaned up. This puts them in a good place to continue with new content for the Pyro System.\n\n\nArt (Ships)\nIn the US, the Ships Team redesigned the Origin M50 cockpit to align with the updated brand style and to conform with UI requirements. The geometry will be updated shortly. The Drake Cutlass Blue\u2019s prisoner pods evolved to a cylindrical form after discussions with Design and Animation regarding how prisoners would be placed into them and how many could fit into the ship. Time was also spent preparing the Esperia Prowler for release.\nIn Europe, focus was on closing out the Anvil Carrack, including fixing landing pad errors and bugs that caused the ship to be too heavy to take off. The whitebox assets for the Crusader Hercules and an upcoming (but as-yet-unannounced) ship were also reviewed. The team is currently gearing up to create various faction skins for the Mission Team. While doing so, any ships not using the current hard surface shader will be updated. They also set up the tint system and enabled cockpit canopies to support VFX rain effects and ongoing shader work.\nArt (Weapons)\nWork continued on the Lightning Bolt Co. weapons mentioned last month, with both having the bulk of the modeling completed for the LOD0 stage. An accompanying scope was also kicked off for the Atzkav sniper rifle. The Gemini C54 sub-machine gun was handed over to Design and Animation for its first fitting pass. Regarding ship weapons, the Klaus & Werner Sledge mass driver made it through the art pipeline, while size variants of the Esperia ballistic and laser cannons were finalized.\nAudio\nThe Audio Team supported feature requests for the upcoming Alpha 3.8.2 and 3.9.0 releases. The Carrack received a full audio pass and new sounds were created for the actor status update. Locations-wise, full planetary setups were completed for Clio, Calliope, and Euterpe, and a pass was made on New Babbage\u2019s interiors. They also asked the community for comments on Alpha 3.8.1 and broke down the feedback into actionable points that will be scheduled for implementation in future quarters.\nBackend Services\nLast month, Backend Services focused on scaling the loadout service and fixed several small issues with long-term persistence, insurance claims, account resets, and ship loadouts. The iCache is in the final stages, with advanced query methods being added and tested \u2013 internal stress and reliability testing are ongoing.\nCharacters\nFebruary saw the Character Team texturing outfits and implementing props and variants for New Babbage. Several new characters were concepted, a suit for the new prison gameplay was developed, and bugs were worked out of the upcoming Caldera environment suit.\nCommunity\nThe team dubbed last month \u2018February with Friends\u2019, with festivities including the annual greetings card and in-game screenshot contest. The team hosted a gallery with more than 200 Valentine\u2019s entries that can be viewed now.\nFebruary\u2019s infographic looked into how friends, grouping, and communications currently work in-game, while the inaugural Spectrum AMA (Ask Me Anything) tackled the upcoming prison gameplay.\nCommunity also supported the announcement of CitizenCon 2950.\n\u201cThe event is coming to Los Angeles, California, and we can\u2019t wait for you all to see what we have in store. Cosplayers should take this opportunity to start brainstorming, as the contest has already been confirmed for a return engagement. Beyond that, keep it tuned to the official CitizenCon website for more details as they become available.\u201d \u2013 The Community Team\n\nDesign\nLast month, Austin\u2019s Design Team focused on Alpha 3.9, including assigning all mission-giver usables new object templates. This is important as it enables them to take advantage of the new Subsumption hooks. They also prepared shops for the impending introduction of food and drinks for the new hunger\/thirst status, and progress was made on the \u2018material economy\u2019 required for the Quantum Editor toolset.\nEngineering\nIn Frankfurt, Engineering worked on physics threading and performance. This involved investigating the full parallelization of integration parts in physics time step-code, multithreading the polygonize function for interior volumes, continuing concurrent\/immediate queuing for physics, implementing local command queues, and adding the option to create queues on demand. They began finalizing and integrating the new signed distance field (SDF) system to accelerate collision checks on complex geometry and increase the precision of results. Unified fields can now be animated as any other part (they\u2019re still special in some regards but can be seen as a regular part from the outside) and distance fields on objects can be taken into account when sampling distances.\nOptimization-wise, they disabled physics on skin attachments and made OC and SDF-size improvements and allocation optimizations for interior volumes. They enabled foliage to support 64-bit precision status updates and zones, made render proxy for ropes work with the zone system, continued work on death reaction animations, and provided support for actor\/ragdoll body dragging.\nWork was done to the zone system, while a culling update thread to parallelize spatial culling structure updates was introduced. The team optimized streaming by skipping many unnecessary atomic operations on smart pointer copies and reduced the parallelization of occlusion culling. They also made improvements to the concurrent access check (support checking RW-lock semantics) and WAF improvements.\nIn support of the Gen12 renderer and Vulkan, they generalized texture views, refactored the texture creation process and remaining D3D texture view code, added MSAA support, removed old direct VB\/IB memory access code, added ViewInfo for access to common view\/camera related parameters, and looked into moving shader parsing into the resource container. The first improvement pass for hair AO was made, which is now coupled with color, and dye shift softness was introduced. Ocean shader improvements were made too by porting ocean rendering to deferred and further working on cube map reflections.\nThe raymarcher was simplified by removing the explicit evaluations of segments to significantly compact generated code and reduce register use. Non-linear stepping for raymarching was also implemented to improve quality at a reduced number of samples. Planet terrain was iterated on to support the rendering of large ground-based objects on the height and shadow maps. A persona live mo-cap plugin for the editor was created too. Finally, animation code was amended to ensure ragdolls work with ground alignment and the CHR chunk loader was simplified to initialize physics (which is still ongoing).\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe majority of Gameplay Feature\u2019s month was spent wrapping-up engineering support for prison missions.\n\u201cIt\u2019s been a long and involved process getting this feature together, but we feel everyone will be extremely pleased and excited by the results!\u201d \u2013 The Gameplay Features Team\nThey also worked on design and engineering for the ongoing friends service refactor. The aim is to make it considerably easier for players to connect in the universe by unifying each iteration of the friend database. Though a multi-quarter task, the first version will be available soon.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nThe US-based Vehicle Team continued to develop sub-targeting, which will allow players to cycle between specific targets on a single vehicle. It will also enable players to store and spawn vehicles within the cargo bays of their other vehicles. Work also began on the life support systems, while the repair system is being upgraded for compatibility with server meshing and other upcoming features.\nThe UK team continued with IFCS, changing thruster efficiency curves, making aerodynamics changes, and improving tools for in-editor implementation. They also kicked-off the new HUD UI using the building blocks system and continued with their tasks for server meshing.\nGraphics\nLast month, the Graphics Team started developing tools to allow Environment Art to use the new tint palette system in deep hierarchies of object containers with minimal setup. This works by setting up a hierarchy of tint-palettes for the various sections of an environment (exterior, interior, lobby, habs, engineering, etc.) followed by a fallback hierarchy in case the preferred pallet isn\u2019t available. For example, Port Olisar\u2019s habitation area would search in the \u2018Olisar\u2019 hierarchy for a \u2018habs\u2019 palette. However, if it doesn\u2019t find it, it will search the \u2018Generic Space Station\u2019 palette, followed by \u2018Generic Location\u2019, and so on.\nLevel Design\nThe Level Design Team spent February finalizing and polishing New Babbage. They\u2019re currently tweaking the usables and AI, ensuring everything runs smoothly. They also spent time updating location navigation meshes, which involved individualizing them per-area and splitting them into smaller sections to ensure stable AI behavior as smaller containers stream in and out. The next iteration of the restricted areas system was started and will bring no-fly zones closer to final delivery. There\u2019s still work to be done as more code comes online, but the second iteration will provide an improvement over the current one.\nLighting\nFebruary began with a new member joining the Lighting Team to help them expand support across the PU, enable more bugs to be fixed, and generally improve overall quality. For prisons, the team worked on the individual cells, the wider Klescher facility, and how the exterior is embedding into the planet. The attached cave network will feature more man-made lighting than other subterranean locations; the goal being to establish a dark, oppressive, and uncomfortable atmosphere.\nThe prisons also include the first test-case use of dynamic cubemaps, which will periodically re-bake probes based on player distance and the angle of the sun. The exterior of the facility is a perfect use case, as the boreholes should appear differently throughout the day. Once the potential bugs and performance issues are ironed out, the feature will be rolled out to new and existing locations across the PU.\nSeveral shop locations within New Babbage received their main passes, including TDD, OmegaPro, Centermass, Planetary Services, and Aparelli. Lighting tasks are currently being progressing for the main commons, plaza, and promenade dome. The biggest challenge is relaying different visual identities based on the time of day. For the first time, the team will be able to utilize new technology built into the LightGroup feature that changes states based on the angle of the sun. This allows the team to automatically turn lights on\/off when the sun goes down\/comes up, and make changes to the color and intensity of lights around the landing zone.\n\n\nNarrative\nNarrative spent time in February supporting Alpha 3.9. This included inputting new mission contracts, creating names and descriptions for dozens of new items, and writing detailed fiction to bring New Babbage and the Klescher facility to life. In support of this, a new internally developed string management system was delivered to make entering and managing all in-game text much easier. Time was given to fleshing out content for future locations and missions, Galactapedia saw further revisions and additions, and the Imperator election heated up with an announcement of the top ten candidates. They also assisted various teams with lore-based initiatives that will be announced later in the year.\nPlayer Relations\nAlongside supporting various promotions and events, Player Relations worked on getting the Carrack and Alpha 3.8.2 stable and ready for release.\nProps\nFebruary saw the Props Team completing the landing zone and prison work mentioned last month, mainly focusing on street furniture, shop interiors, and bar furniture. They also worked on several new food items, which propelled the pipeline forward as they now have a process for supporting skinned props. This was a wider initiative, involving the Props, Animation, and Actor Status teams.\n\u201cIt\u2019s still early days, but we hope to make more use of these new tools going forward and expect to see more dynamic props in the future!\u201d \u2013 The Props Team\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nQA\nFebruary saw the embedded feature testers focusing on different weapon type behaviors, while the combat testers continued with shotgun and pistol behavior. Support for both the Ship and Combat AI teams resumed as the 3D navigation system is now continually worked on. In Frankfurt, a new tester joined the team. They\u2019re currently in training but will soon specialize in combat AI. This will involve taking responsibility for testing new behaviors and missions featuring AI. Testing New Babbage was a high priority, with QA helping Level Design with the newly implemented usables and transit system. Work in the tools section branched to include the new localization tool, StarWords, which will be included in everyday testing going forward.\nTech Art\nLast month, Tech Animation implemented a new rig-logic editing plugin command for Maya. For performance and efficiency, the backend was implemented in C++. The Qt-based frontend\/UI layer is currently implemented using python. While the Vanduul face rigs already use this new runtime rig logic, all 120+ human face-rigs will soon be ported over to the new system.\nTurbulent\nFebruary saw Turbulent complete Hex\u2019s backend transformation as well as rework the pipeline. They\u2019re currently adding features to the Network Operations Center and enabling tools to visualize and manage existing services. A minor update to the launcher was also made to support enhancements to testing environments. The team also improved logging granularity in ledger and inventory services event tracking to provide resourceful statistics to engineering. Game Services continued working on the friend list unification. The second of three milestones was completed last week.\nTurbulent\u2019s Web Team supported the flyable release of the Carrack, including the addition of the limited-edition \u2018Expedition\u2019 livery. They also worked with Community on the Valentine\u2019s Day contests and the CitizenCon save-the-date announcement.\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nMost of UI\u2019s art focus last month was on creating environmental displays, including the screen graphics for prisons and signs, screens, and menus for New Babbage. Feature-wise, they further improved the look of the radial Inner Thought menus and polished the Actor Status display for the visor. Both are scheduled for Alpha 3.9.\nVFX\nThe VFX Team completed a significant amount of content for the prison, New Babbage interiors, and microTech\u2019s moons. They finalized their work on the Carrack and several new health effects that communicate to players when they\u2019re too hot, cold, and hungry. They also provided effects for volatile cargo, mining consumables, and made minor adjustments to the Scourge railgun. Feature-wise, work on SDF-driven atmospheric entry-effects continues with promising results, while look-dev on the fire component began.\nThe Code Team fixed issues with pre-aged planet effects, added extra debug options, and improved computation for the scattering query grid by moving it to the GPU. VFX Tech Art supported the Character Team with an experimental new LOD pipeline using the tools in Houdini. The team also kicked off training sessions in Houdini to improve the procedural generation of assets across all art departments.\nThe Frankfurt-based team fleshed out VFX for the Esperia Prowler, including a new visual style favoring stealth and defense. The effects are toned down compared to other ships to make it harder to detect and track as it flies around.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":4,"comment_count":40,"created_at":"2020-03-06T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"6 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 21:23:17","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":17502,"next_id":17504}}