{"data":{"id":17543,"title":"Star Citizen Monthly Report: March 2020","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/17543-Star-Citizen-Monthly-Report-March-2020","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/17543","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/17543","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly 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its release right around the corner, Alpha 3.9\u2019s features and new additions were worked on extensively throughout March. Read on for all the details on exactly what was done throughout the month (well, what we can share for now of course). Stay safe out there.\nAI\nWe start with Combat AI, who focused on refactoring the Cover System. This involved utilizing voxelization data (the same process used for navigation mesh creation) to better evaluate the environment and construct cover surfaces and locations. The aim is to simplify the environment and build consistent cover data from the pre-assembled prefabs. This will enable the designers to mark objects as elements to be considered in the cover generation phase so the code can handle it efficiently, potentially turning multiple objects into one cover object. They also worked on a new combat tactic for holding positions, which included a polishing pass based on discussions with the designers and feedback from the directors. They also began investigating the work required to introduce the reloading mechanic to NPCs.\nShip AI dedicated part of the month to addressing bugs and corner cases following the integration of the 3D collision avoidance system into game-dev and the Alpha 3.9 stream. Better collision avoidance enables additional combat maneuvers to be developed to add flare to the dogfighting AI. In particular, they focused on defensive maneuvers (retreat\/flee) that tell AI ships to prioritize shaking off attackers to reduce their chances of being hit. Additional work was done for formation flying too. Preliminary design work began on capital ship behaviors and standard dogfight activity was streamlined to accommodate new maneuvers and cope with the growing number of combat requirements.\nSocial AI worked on new features that can be used for both systemic patrol and environmental scripting. Environmental scripting is used to create story scene markups that can be used dynamically by Subsumption behaviors to keep actor performances as intact as possible. Various fitness behaviors were developed for New Babbage. There are currently nine different warmups and six exercises, including jogging, mountain-climber twist, push up, sit up, plank, leg raise, and burpee. Alongside fitness, the team spent time polishing the bartender, who will debut in Lorville. He can currently provide bottled Smoltz, draft beer, and whiskey and cola. The release stream was also stabilized and bugs were fixed for Alpha 3.9.\nAnimation\nAlongside body dragging, the Actor Team began looking at the visual fidelity of the \u2018effort\u2019 set to get a heavier weight and feel to it. This is currently scheduled to be delivered in Alpha 4.0 and will further improve the set coming out soon.\n\u201cWe also worked on some shockingly good animations for some new FPS weapons coming soon\u2026\u201d \u2013 The Animation Team.\nOn the combat AI side, they created assets and graphs for reloading and weapon malfunction animations.\nThe Social Team focused on creating animations for work zones, which include datapad and multi-tool use. The Facial Team supported eating and drinking and various upcoming PU characters. Mo-cap wise, they burned down the backlog of capture data and improved their toolsets to better streamline future shoots.\nArt (Environment)\nLast month, the team worked on the first two planets in the Pyro system alongside various other environments. New landscapes, terrain, geology shapes, and vegetation are being explored and worked on with a huge amount of excitement.\n\u201cPyro is an unfriendly and hostile system and the opportunity to create something more otherworldly and dangerous-looking is a nice challenge and change of pace for us.\u201d \u2013 The Environment Art Team\nArt (Ships)\nThe US-based team spent time in March polishing the Esperia Prowler. They also further developed the M50\u2019s cockpit and exterior to better align them with the contemporary Origin style. The Cutlass Blue\u2019s prisoner pods were also iterated on to appear more \u201cprisoner containment\u201d like.\nAn as-yet-unseen ship completed the whitebox stage and will head into greybox soon. Several older ships were updated to work with the latest shaders, preparing them for the tint pallet system.\nArt (Weapons)\nMarch saw the Weapons Team iterate on the Lightning Bolt Co.\u2019s sniper rifle and pistol after a round of feedback from design and animation. Tweaks were made to the iron sights, rig issues were debugged, and the player\u2019s holding position was adjusted. Various bug-fixing and polishing tasks were also completed in preparation for its Alpha 3.9 release.\n\nAudio\nThe Audio Team progressed with their various tasks for Alpha 3.9. New Babbage received music written by Pedro Camacho and the Audio Team that changes based on the day\/night cycle. They also completed their work on the Player Status system, progressed with the Esperia Prowler, ambiances for prisons, and fixed a handful of bugs. They looked at the overall game mix too, which is done prior to every major release. The Dialogue Team implemented walla and dialogue lines for New Babbage and the prison, while Audio Code focused on stability and fixing audio-related crashes and bugs.\nBackend Services\nMarch saw Backend Services fixing bugs, tweaking existing features, and optimizing services. They\u2019re currently testing and tweaking various parts of the iCache and are preparing to migrate several legacy services to the new model.\nCharacters\nThe Character Team\u2019s March focus was on an upcoming event and the Alpha 3.9 release. Most of the modeling and artwork was finalized, while the tech artists completed fixes for rigging (including sim and volume adjustments) and new instore items. A model was also finished that marks the beginning of some interesting work for a future PU release.\nCommunity\nThe Community Team celebrated St. Patrick\u2019s Day, or Stella Fortuna as it\u2019s known in-universe, with a limerick contest. They received over 650 entries and rewarded the winners with exclusive emerald versions of the RSI Constellation Phoenix, RSI Ursa Rover, and Kruger Archimedes. Here\u2019s the winning limerick, courtesy of Canuck_2099.\nI rented a mining Prospector, Its scanner, a resource detector.\n\nSo I fractured a rock,\n\nAnd it caused quite a shock.\n\nLucky me it had shields to protect her!\nThe Community Team hosted another Ask Me Anything, this time tackling the most asked questions on the upcoming Player Status feature. The system will launch with Alpha 3.9 and brings things like hunger, thirst, and body temperature to Star Citizen.\n\u201cMembers of our Frankfurt-based team attended a Bar Citizen in Li\u00e8ge and had an absolute blast meeting the community in Belgium. A big thank you to the organizers for putting on such a great event!\u201d \u2013 The Community Team\n\nEngineering\nMarch saw Engineering working on physics threading and performance. They enabled up to 30 physics threads (defaulting to \u00be of logical cores available); added the option to limit the number of threads per task; improved the memory performance and footprint of command queues; defined local queues that can be processed in parallel; moved relevant game code to local physics command queues; created local queues based on the entities\u2019 adam so they can process the joint\/part updates in parallel; moved many reposition\/recompute calls to queues; and made various other queue related optimizations.\nThey also added driven ragdoll support for body dragging, gravity adjustments to actor entity ground tracking, per-joint driven ragdoll stiffness, and impulse to the root of a tracking-driven ragdoll.\nRegarding unused vertex optimization, all unused vertices in physics meshes are now pruned. Alongside saving 8GB of disk space, it provides better data cache locality on the CPU. Work also continued on part containers\/compute bounding box optimization (formerly known as physics geometry instancing). Skinned foliage was missing leaves, which was fixed before being given to the object-container-splitting physics voxel grids.\nThe Vulcan (G12) render mesh API was refactored for more streamlined and efficient creation and data upload. Unused legacy code was removed, and a shader handle was added to the remaining legacy pipeline. For unified raymarching, the initial elements of the adaptive resolution were submitted, work continued on the upsampling of adaptive resolution results, and samples were placed via low discrepancy generators. They also determined the screen bound of planetary atmospheres to further guide sample placement and began R&D into ensuring adaptive resolution raymarching works well with ray jittering and TSAA.\nThey also investigated performance issues with oceans caused by CPU readback and fixed HDR display and D3D debug runtime errors.\nFor general work, Engineering improved the ECUS update code by fixing a flaw in the update logic that caused unnecessary iterations of aggregate groups. They further improved the logic to reduce scans of entire connection lists and optimized threading.\nA significant improvement was made to the large render batch management\u2019s performance. Previously, Engineering had iterated on the list of potential batches, but it grew to over 1000 entries, making clean up computationally expensive (1.5ms). To solve this, they now maintain a list of rendered batches. Subsections of component update functions were added to their batch jobs to improve profiling, as were profiling subsections to batch jobs. For the Zone System, a new interface for updating local bounds was added.\nThe animation side of Engineering made a prototype of a new skin loader and added support for physical skin proxies. They also moved all relevant World Builder code into its own engine module for faster programming iteration time.\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nGameplay Features worked through the final stages of the Friends List refactor. There\u2019s still testing to do, but the initial phase of this long-sought feature is on schedule for launch in Alpha 3.9. Among other things, the new feature includes a new party window and the ability to right-click on contacts and \u2018Join Session\u2019 with any online contact. A presence indicator will also show the part of the game they\u2019re playing and whether they\u2019re available to party-up with, and a \u2018Join Leader\u2019 button will allow players to connect with another pilot on any server.\n\u201cWe understand how much of a pain point partying-up was in previous versions of the game and we wanted to resolve this for you ASAP. We felt it was important to rebuild the entire experience from the ground up, because it really needed to be! I\u2019m certain it will still have a few rough edges, but we feel like it\u2019s a MASSIVE improvement over what was there before and that you guys would appreciate having this in your hands sooner rather than later. Please look for threads related to it on Spectrum, as we will 100% be looking for feedback from you guys on where you would like to see it go from here.\u201d \u2013 The Gameplay Features Team\nThe team also added food items into several key shops around the \u2018verse to support the Actor Feature Team\u2019s hunger\/thirst gameplay. A Quick Buy feature was also added for these smaller, handheld items, so purchasing them doesn\u2019t require using the mobiGlas. Several critical bugs for Alpha 3.9 were fixed, and they supported the Mission Feature Team on implementing prisons into the final patch build.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nIn the US, Vehicle Features supported the release of the Esperia Prowler by resolving an issue with the VTOL animations that prevented the wings from animating correctly during take-off\/landing. In the latter half of the month, focus shifted to support Alpha 3.9. Improvments to sub-targeting continue.\nIn the EU, the team worked to convert and update ship HUDs to use the new building blocks tech. They also further developed IFCS:\n\u201cA lot of things have been happening regarding the flight model, with thruster efficiency curves being finalized, tested, and improved. This work has also necessitated a new aerodynamic model, which we\u2019re ironing out now and getting ready to convert a lot of ships to use.\u201d \u2013 The Vehicle Features Team\nGraphics\nThe Graphics Team spent the month continuing their crucial work on the Vulkan renderer, converting the existing volumetric fog system and debug tools to the new system. They also began planning and prototyping how to handle interdependencies of resources between shader passes, as the system will need to allocate resources and efficiently schedule work while ensuring it doesn\u2019t read resources before write operations are completed. The team also investigated how to improve the legibility of holographic\/transparent UI screens in extremely bright or dark environments. This involved using the average and maximum brightness, or a localized region of the screen, to determine a suitable UI brightness. Several color blending approaches were also investigated.\nLighting\nLast month, the Lighting Team spent most of their PU-based work on Alpha 3.9. For New Babbage, this meant optimizing the cost of shadow casting by balancing the highest possible quality and framerate. The new day\/night light states received constant refinement to ensure the transitions were believable and to prevent situations with too much darkness.\nLighting for the Klescher prison facility involved a totally different approach, as this location is built using a mixture of bespoke object containers (such as the main hub) and modularly built elements (like the mines and caves). The team made several iterations on the hub, exteriors, and habitation pods and are currently focused on the underground sections. The challenge there is placing lights that feel natural, diverse, and lead the player.\n\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative Team continued their focus on getting Alpha 3.9 ready for release, writing dozens of descriptions for food, drinks, clothing, and more. Additional mission polish was done following feedback from ongoing playtests, while a new law was crafted to cut down on pad ramming.\nThey also began looking into the lore of several upcoming star systems, providing details on flora, fauna, points of interest, and gameplay scenarios players might encounter. Additionally, there was a coordinated effort with Systemic Services and Tools to expand the list of materials and resources in Star Citizen\u2019s economy. The Galactapedia saw new additions and updates on the 4th, 11th, and 25th of the month.\nThe 2950 Imperator election continues, with the team writing a Stella Fortuna-themed piece focusing on candidate Antwan Lillard. They also appeared on Star Citizen Live to answer a few questions about the Second Tevarin War, and subscribers got a new edition of Jump Point magazine.\nPlayer Relations\nAs usual, the Player Relations Team focused on supporting the growing number of backers and ongoing projects, including the rollout of the Character Reset tool that backers can use as a \u201cnuclear option\u201d to fix their account. They also ask that players check out the Knowledge Base \u2013 a comprehensive index of updates, solutions, and workarounds to any issues in accessing and playing within the PU.\nProps\nThe Props Team\u2019s March focus was on food and drink items, adding additional variants and completing technical setups. Most items required several different meshes for their various states, included shop variants to enable them to be bought and consumed. They also created new shop displays for New Babbage and work began in earnest on mining consumables. Naturally, time was also spent fixing bugs and polishing Alpha 3.9 assets where needed.\n\nQA\nIn March, QA began testing New Babbage. This was primarily focused on level setup and involved working closely with the embedded environment art tester. Object container splitting and physics grid changes made their way into the Alpha 3.9 build and subsequently affected ATC functions across all landing zones.\nFor Combat AI, they focused on the newly implemented missions and expanded combat testing to assess how the NPCs react to multiple players and how they use cover when flanked.\nRegarding Ship AI, tests continued on dogfighting, security, and civilian ships, with an emphasis on the 3D navigation system in asteroid belts and clusters. The Tech Art request for CPU and GPU captures of different head types was completed, which will enable them to debug character skinning issues while animating. Alpha 3.9 was also tested, as were the ongoing Evocati builds.\nTech Animation\n\u201cThis quarter saw the welcome addition of two new staff members to the Technical Animation Team. Their skills and motivation have brought a welcome boost to our small team and give us greater scope to support the company as a whole.\u201d The Tech Animation Team\nAlongside training new team members, March saw Tech Animation refactoring the in-house facial rigging and animation suite. This is with a view to supporting next-generation content with a flexible and modular approach to the codebase and rigging platform. This will ultimately be used to further refine the existing facial rigs and create all new ones to populate our universe.\nThe team also helped implement the animations that led to the creation of a new toolset to help visualize and apply flowgraph-style animation sets to the non-flowgraph sandbox animation tool suite. This helps the team create and preserve animation state machines, which is required for the complex AI behaviors players are awaiting in the universe.\nContinued work with the Social AI Team identified the need for Tech Animation to further refine their rigging toolsets to support the vast number of upcoming new props. They\u2019re now robust enough and enable a streamlined approach to authoring new animation rigs. They also spring-cleaned their codebase, identifying new pipeline foundations and tools to refactor.\nTech Art also developed a tool to enable Character Art to add skeleton extensions from a preset before editing and exporting them to speed up the authoring process. They worked with the Weapons Team on bugs and requests, including rig updates, Mannequin setups, IK target updates, and export errors.\nThey partnered with Social-AI on a variety of tasks, including setups for new usables, fixing integration issues, feeding back on upcoming Mannequin setups, fixing proc clip issues, and investigating wildline setups for the bartender. They also created a rig for the Aegis Gladius to enable proper animated interactions between characters and the ship.\nTech Art\nLast month, Tech Animation added additional functionality to the runtime rig plugin command for Maya, which will give improved sanity checks, more detailed error reports, and a streamlined command-line interface. They investigated ways to improve the performance of the DNA system that underpins head customization. During head morphing, the DNA system blends various components to make a unique facial rig. One of these data chunks is known internally as skin weight, which is used by the dual-quaternion skinning deformer. These weights are traditionally defined per character. However, the team realized that they don\u2019t vary that much and by unifying them, they could save the blending computations at runtime for improved performance. They assessed what visual impact the weight unification would have, with the aim being not to lose any quality whatsoever. The findings were positive, so this will go ahead and become particularly beneficial once the highest quality heads (T0) are added to the DNA system.\nTurbulent\nGame services developers at Turbulent completed the Friend List unification between Spectrum and the game client. Sensitive improvements were made to the Network Operation Center, which now has basic visibility on groups, lobbies, and voice channels for those working on the game. A new iteration of the internal custom logging system was also released.\nTurbulent worked on several as-yet-unannounced projects and supported the St. Patrick\u2019s Day promotion that featured the Kruger Archimedes Emerald.\nVFX\nThe VFX Team continued delivering effects for the upcoming new content, including the Esperia Prowler, New Babbage, and prison. They also worked on destruction effects for volatile cargo. Code-wise, visor frost was updated to correctly use the \u2018frost amount\u2019 set from the codec. A new set of debug display options was completed for the VFX artists and bug fixes and optimizations were made too. Feature-wise, the SDF-based atmospheric entry effects completed and are ready to be rolled out to all vehicles in a future release. Pre-production R&D also continued for the fire component.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026","de_DE":"Da die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Alpha 3.9 unmittelbar bevorsteht, wurde im M\u00e4rz intensiv an den Funktionen und Neuerungen von Alpha 3.9 gearbeitet. Lesen Sie weiter f\u00fcr alle Details dar\u00fcber, was genau im Laufe des Monats getan wurde (na ja, was wir nat\u00fcrlich erst einmal mitteilen k\u00f6nnen). Bleiben Sie sicher da drau\u00dfen.\nKI\nWir beginnen mit Combat AI, die sich auf die \u00dcberarbeitung des Deckungssystems konzentrierte. Dabei wurden Voxelizationsdaten (derselbe Prozess, der f\u00fcr die Erstellung von Navigationsnetzen verwendet wurde) verwendet, um die Umgebung besser zu bewerten und Deckungsfl\u00e4chen und Standorte zu konstruieren. Ziel ist es, die Umgebung zu vereinfachen und konsistente Deckungsdaten aus den vorkonfektionierten Fertigh\u00e4usern aufzubauen. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es den Designern, Objekte als Elemente zu markieren, die in der Phase der Cover-Generierung ber\u00fccksichtigt werden sollen, so dass der Code diese effizient handhaben kann und m\u00f6glicherweise mehrere Objekte in ein Cover-Objekt verwandelt. Sie arbeiteten auch an einer neuen Kampftaktik zum Halten von Positionen, die einen Polierdurchgang auf der Grundlage von Diskussionen mit den Designern und R\u00fcckmeldungen der Direktoren beinhaltete. Sie begannen auch mit der Untersuchung der Arbeiten, die zur Einf\u00fchrung der Nachlade-Mechanik bei den NPCs erforderlich sind.\nDie Schiffs-KI widmete einen Teil des Monats der Behebung von Fehlern und Eckf\u00e4llen nach der Integration des 3D-Kollisionsvermeidungssystems in die Spieleentwicklung und den Alpha 3.9-Stream. Eine bessere Kollisionsvermeidung erm\u00f6glicht es, zus\u00e4tzliche Kampfman\u00f6ver zu entwickeln, um die KI im Nahkampf zu verbessern. Insbesondere konzentrierten sie sich auf Abwehrman\u00f6ver (R\u00fcckzug\/Flucht), die KI-Schiffe anweisen, das Absch\u00fctteln von Angreifern zu priorisieren, um ihre Trefferchancen zu verringern. Auch f\u00fcr den Formationsflug wurde zus\u00e4tzliche Arbeit geleistet. Es wurde mit der Vorentwurfsarbeit f\u00fcr das Verhalten von Gro\u00dfkampfschiffen begonnen, und die Standard-Dogfight-Aktivit\u00e4ten wurden rationalisiert, um neue Man\u00f6ver zu erm\u00f6glichen und die wachsende Zahl von Kampfanforderungen zu bew\u00e4ltigen.\nDie soziale KI arbeitete an neuen Funktionen, die sowohl f\u00fcr systemische Patrouillen als auch f\u00fcr Umweltskripte verwendet werden k\u00f6nnen. Das Umweltdrehbuch wird zur Erstellung von Szenenauszeichnungen verwendet, die von Subsumptionsverhalten dynamisch genutzt werden k\u00f6nnen, um die Leistungen der Schauspieler so intakt wie m\u00f6glich zu halten. F\u00fcr New Babbage wurden verschiedene Fitnessverhaltensweisen entwickelt. Derzeit gibt es neun verschiedene Aufw\u00e4rm\u00fcbungen und sechs \u00dcbungen, darunter Jogging, Bergsteigerdrehung, Push-up, Aufsetzen, Planken, Beinheben und Aufsto\u00dfen. Neben der Fitness verbrachte das Team auch Zeit damit, den Barkeeper zu polieren, der in Lorville deb\u00fctieren wird. Er kann derzeit Smoltz in Flaschen, Bier vom Fass sowie Whisky und Cola anbieten. Der Freigabestrom wurde ebenfalls stabilisiert und Fehler f\u00fcr Alpha 3.9 behoben.\nAnimation\nNeben dem Ziehen des K\u00f6rpers begann das Schauspielerteam, die visuelle Treue der \"Anstrengung\" zu betrachten, die gesetzt wurde, um ein gr\u00f6\u00dferes Gewicht und Gef\u00fchl zu erhalten. Dies ist derzeit f\u00fcr Alpha 4.0 geplant und wird das bald erscheinende Set weiter verbessern.\n\"Wir haben auch an einigen schockierend guten Animationen f\u00fcr einige neue FPS-Waffen gearbeitet, die bald erscheinen werden...\" - Das Animationsteam.\nAuf der Seite der Kampf-KI haben sie Hilfsmittel und Grafiken f\u00fcr Nachlade- und Waffenfunktionsanimationen erstellt.\nDas Sozialteam konzentrierte sich auf die Erstellung von Animationen f\u00fcr Arbeitszonen, die Datenpad- und Multi-Tool-Einsatz umfassen. Das Facial Team unterst\u00fctzte Essen und Trinken und verschiedene aufkommende PU-Charaktere. Was die M\u00fctzen betrifft, so haben sie den R\u00fcckstand bei der Datenerfassung abgebrannt und ihre Toolsets verbessert, um zuk\u00fcnftige Aufnahmen besser zu gestalten.\nKunst (Umwelt)\nIm vergangenen Monat arbeitete das Team neben verschiedenen anderen Umgebungen an den ersten beiden Planeten des Pyro-Systems. Neue Landschaften, Gel\u00e4nde, geologische Formen und Vegetation werden mit gro\u00dfer Spannung erforscht und bearbeitet.\n\"Pyro ist ein unfreundliches und feindseliges System, und die M\u00f6glichkeit, etwas mehr jenseitige und gef\u00e4hrlich aussehende zu schaffen, ist eine sch\u00f6ne Herausforderung und eine Abwechslung f\u00fcr uns. - Das Team f\u00fcr Umweltkunst\nKunst (Schiffe)\nDas in den USA ans\u00e4ssige Team verbrachte im M\u00e4rz Zeit damit, den Esperia Prowler zu polieren. Sie entwickelten auch das Cockpit und das \u00c4u\u00dfere der M50 weiter, um sie besser an den zeitgen\u00f6ssischen Origin-Stil anzupassen. Auch die Gefangenenkapseln der Cutlass Blue wurden \u00fcberarbeitet, um den Eindruck einer \"Gefangeneneind\u00e4mmung\" zu erwecken.\nEin bisher noch nicht gesehenes Schiff hat die Whitebox-Phase abgeschlossen und wird bald in die Greybox gehen. Mehrere \u00e4ltere Schiffe wurden auf den neuesten Stand gebracht, um mit den neuesten Shadern zu arbeiten und sie f\u00fcr das Farbpalettensystem vorzubereiten.\nKunst (Waffen)\nIm M\u00e4rz wiederholte das Waffenteam nach einer Runde von Feedback aus dem Design und der Animation die Scharfsch\u00fctzengewehr und -pistole der Lightning Bolt Co. Die Eisenvisierung wurde optimiert, Probleme mit dem Rigg wurden behoben und die Halteposition des Spielers angepasst. Au\u00dferdem wurden verschiedene Fehlerbehebungs- und Polierarbeiten in Vorbereitung auf die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Alpha 3.9 durchgef\u00fchrt.\n\nAudio\nDas Audio-Team machte bei seinen verschiedenen Aufgaben f\u00fcr Alpha 3.9 Fortschritte. New Babbage erhielt von Pedro Camacho und dem Audio-Team geschriebene Musik, die sich je nach Tag\/Nacht-Zyklus \u00e4ndert. Sie schlossen auch ihre Arbeit am Spielerstatus-System ab, machten Fortschritte mit dem Esperia Prowler, den Ambiences f\u00fcr Gef\u00e4ngnisse und beendeten eine Handvoll Fehler. Sie haben sich auch den gesamten Spiel-Mix angeschaut, der vor jeder gr\u00f6\u00dferen Ver\u00f6ffentlichung durchgef\u00fchrt wird. Das Dialogteam implementierte Walla und Dialogzeilen f\u00fcr New Babbage und das Gef\u00e4ngnis, w\u00e4hrend sich der Audiocode auf die Stabilit\u00e4t und die Behebung von Abst\u00fcrzen und Fehlern im Zusammenhang mit dem Ton konzentrierte.\nBackend-Dienste\nIm M\u00e4rz wurden bei den Backend-Diensten Fehler behoben, bestehende Funktionen optimiert und die Dienste optimiert. Sie testen und optimieren derzeit verschiedene Teile des iCache und bereiten die Migration verschiedener Legacy-Dienste auf das neue Modell vor.\nZeichen\nDer Schwerpunkt des Charakterteams lag im M\u00e4rz auf einer bevorstehenden Veranstaltung und der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Alpha 3.9. Der Gro\u00dfteil der Modellierung und der Kunstwerke wurde fertiggestellt, w\u00e4hrend die Technikk\u00fcnstler Korrekturen f\u00fcr das Rigging (einschlie\u00dflich Sim- und Lautst\u00e4rkeanpassungen) und neue Instore-Gegenst\u00e4nde fertigstellten. Au\u00dferdem wurde ein Modell fertiggestellt, das den Beginn einiger interessanter Arbeiten f\u00fcr eine zuk\u00fcnftige PU-Version markiert.\nGemeinschaft\nDas Community Team feierte den St. Patrick's Day, oder Stella Fortuna, wie es im Universum genannt wird, mit einem Limerick-Wettbewerb. Sie erhielten \u00fcber 650 Einsendungen und belohnten die Gewinner mit exklusiven Smaragdversionen der RSI Constellation Phoenix, RSI Ursa Rover und Kruger Archimedes. Hier ist der Sieger-Limerick, mit freundlicher Genehmigung von Canuck_2099.\nIch habe einen Prospector f\u00fcr den Bergbau gemietet, seinen Scanner, einen Rohstoffdetektor.\n\nAlso habe ich einen Stein zerbrochen,\n\nUnd es hat einen ziemlichen Schock ausgel\u00f6st.\n\nZum Gl\u00fcck hatte es Schilde, um sie zu sch\u00fctzen!\n\n\nDas Community-Team veranstaltete ein weiteres Ask Me Anything, diesmal mit den am h\u00e4ufigsten gestellten Fragen zum bevorstehenden Spielerstatus-Feature. Das System wird mit Alpha 3.9 gestartet und bringt Dinge wie Hunger, Durst und K\u00f6rpertemperatur zu Star Citizen.\n\"Mitglieder unseres Frankfurter Teams besuchten eine Bar Citizen in L\u00fcttich und hatten einen absoluten Wahnsinnsspa\u00df beim Treffen mit der Gemeinde in Belgien. Ein gro\u00dfes Dankesch\u00f6n an die Organisatoren f\u00fcr die Durchf\u00fchrung einer so gro\u00dfartigen Veranstaltung!\" - Das Gemeinschaftsteam\nTechnik\nIm M\u00e4rz arbeiteten die Ingenieure an physikalischen Einf\u00e4delungen und Leistungen. Sie aktivierten bis zu 30 Physik-Threads (standardm\u00e4\u00dfig sind unter \u00be logische Kerne verf\u00fcgbar); f\u00fcgten die Option hinzu, die Anzahl der Threads pro Aufgabe zu begrenzen; verbesserten die Speicherleistung und den Platzbedarf der Befehlswarteschlangen; definierten lokale Warteschlangen, die parallel verarbeitet werden k\u00f6nnen; verschoben relevanten Spielcode in lokale Physik-Befehlswarteschlangen; erstellten lokale Warteschlangen auf der Grundlage des Adam der Entit\u00e4ten, so dass sie die Aktualisierungen der Verbindungen\/Teilst\u00fccke parallel verarbeiten k\u00f6nnen; verschoben viele Neupositionierungs-\/Rechenaufrufe in Warteschlangen und nahmen verschiedene andere warteschlangenbezogene Optimierungen vor.\nSie f\u00fcgten auch die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr getriebene Ragdolls f\u00fcr das Body-Dragging, Schwerkraftanpassungen f\u00fcr die Bodenverfolgung der Akteurseinheiten, die Steifigkeit der gelenkgetriebenen Ragdolls und den Impuls f\u00fcr die Wurzel einer verfolgungsgesteuerten Ragdoll hinzu.\nHinsichtlich der ungenutzten Eckpunktoptimierung werden jetzt alle ungenutzten Eckpunkte in den physikalischen Netzen beschnitten. Neben der Einsparung von 8 GB Plattenplatz bietet es eine bessere Daten-Cache-Lokalit\u00e4t auf der CPU. Die Arbeit an der Optimierung von Teilecontainern\/Bounding Boxen (fr\u00fcher bekannt als physikalische Geometrie-Instanzen) wurde ebenfalls fortgesetzt. Den geh\u00e4uteten Bl\u00e4ttern fehlten Bl\u00e4tter, was behoben wurde, bevor sie an die objektcontaineraufteilenden Physik-Voxel-Gitter \u00fcbergeben wurden.\nDie Vulcan (G12)-Rendering-Mesh-API wurde f\u00fcr eine rationalisierte und effizientere Erstellung und den Daten-Upload \u00fcberarbeitet. Ungenutzter Legacy-Code wurde entfernt und ein Shader-Handle wurde der verbleibenden Legacy-Pipeline hinzugef\u00fcgt. Zur Vereinheitlichung des Raymarching wurden die ersten Elemente der adaptiven Aufl\u00f6sung vorgelegt, die Arbeit an der Abtastung der Ergebnisse der adaptiven Aufl\u00f6sung wurde fortgesetzt, und die Abtastwerte wurden \u00fcber Generatoren mit geringer Diskrepanz platziert. Sie bestimmten auch die Bildschirmgrenze der Planetenatmosph\u00e4ren, um die Platzierung der Proben weiter zu steuern, und begannen mit der Forschung und Entwicklung, um sicherzustellen, dass das Raymarching mit adaptiver Aufl\u00f6sung gut mit Strahlenzittern und TSAA funktioniert.\nSie untersuchten auch Leistungsprobleme mit Ozeanen, die durch das CPU-Readback verursacht wurden, und beendeten HDR-Anzeige- und D3D-Debug-Laufzeitfehler.\nF\u00fcr allgemeine Arbeiten verbesserte die Technik den ECUS-Aktualisierungscode, indem ein Fehler in der Aktualisierungslogik behoben wurde, der unn\u00f6tige Iterationen von Aggregatgruppen verursachte. Die Logik wurde weiter verbessert, um das Scannen ganzer Verbindungslisten zu reduzieren und das Threading zu optimieren.\nDie Leistung der Verwaltung gro\u00dfer Render-Batches wurde erheblich verbessert. Zuvor hatte die Technik auf der Liste der m\u00f6glichen Stapel iteriert, aber die Liste wuchs auf \u00fcber 1000 Eintr\u00e4ge an, was die Bereinigung rechenintensiv machte (1,5 ms). Um dieses Problem zu l\u00f6sen, f\u00fchren sie jetzt eine Liste der gerenderten Batches. Unterabschnitte von Komponentenaktualisierungsfunktionen wurden ihren Batch-Jobs hinzugef\u00fcgt, um die Profilerstellung zu verbessern, ebenso wie die Profilerstellung von Unterabschnitten zu Batch-Jobs. F\u00fcr das Zonensystem wurde eine neue Schnittstelle f\u00fcr die Aktualisierung lokaler Grenzen hinzugef\u00fcgt.\nDie Animationsseite der Technik erstellte einen Prototyp eines neuen Skin-Loaders und f\u00fcgte Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr physische Skin-Proxys hinzu. Au\u00dferdem wurde der gesamte relevante Code von World Builder in ein eigenes Engine Modul verschoben, um die Iterationszeit bei der Programmierung zu verk\u00fcrzen.\nFunktionen (Spielablauf)\nDie Spielfunktionen haben die letzten Phasen der \u00dcberarbeitung der Freundesliste durchlaufen. Es sind noch Tests durchzuf\u00fchren, aber die erste Phase dieses lang ersehnten Features ist planm\u00e4\u00dfig f\u00fcr den Start in Alpha 3.9 vorgesehen. Die neue Funktion umfasst unter anderem ein neues Party-Fenster und die M\u00f6glichkeit, mit der rechten Maustaste auf Kontakte zu klicken und mit jedem beliebigen Online-Kontakt \"Sitzung beitreten\" zu k\u00f6nnen. Eine Pr\u00e4senzanzeige zeigt au\u00dferdem an, welchen Teil des Spiels sie gerade spielen und ob sie zum Feiern zur Verf\u00fcgung stehen, und ein \"Join Leader\"-Knopf erm\u00f6glicht es den Spielern, sich mit einem anderen Piloten auf einem beliebigen Server zu verbinden.\n\"Wir wissen, wie schmerzhaft es in fr\u00fcheren Versionen des Spiels war, zu feiern, und wir wollten dies so schnell wie m\u00f6glich f\u00fcr Sie l\u00f6sen. Wir hielten es f\u00fcr wichtig, die gesamte Erfahrung von Grund auf neu aufzubauen, denn das war wirklich notwendig! Ich bin mir sicher, dass es noch ein paar Ecken und Kanten haben wird, aber wir sind der Meinung, dass es eine MASSIVE Verbesserung im Vergleich zu dem ist, was vorher da war, und dass ihr es zu sch\u00e4tzen wisst, wenn ihr das lieber fr\u00fcher als sp\u00e4ter in die Hand nehmt. Bitte suchen Sie nach Themen, die damit in Zusammenhang stehen, auf Spectrum, da wir zu 100% auf R\u00fcckmeldungen von Ihnen warten, wie es weitergehen soll\". - Das Team f\u00fcr Spielfunktionen\nDas Team f\u00fcgte auch Lebensmittel in mehreren wichtigen Gesch\u00e4ften rund um den \"Vers\" hinzu, um das Hunger\/Durst-Gameplay des Schauspieler-Featureteams zu unterst\u00fctzen. F\u00fcr diese kleineren, handgehaltenen Gegenst\u00e4nde wurde auch eine Schnellkauf-Funktion hinzugef\u00fcgt, so dass der Kauf dieser Gegenst\u00e4nde nicht mit dem mobiGlas erfolgen muss. Mehrere kritische Fehler f\u00fcr Alpha 3.9 wurden behoben, und sie unterst\u00fctzten das Mission Feature Team bei der Implementierung von Gef\u00e4ngnissen in den endg\u00fcltigen Patch-Build.\nFunktionen (Fahrzeuge)\nIn den USA unterst\u00fctzte Vehicle Features die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung des Esperia Prowlers durch die L\u00f6sung eines Problems mit den VTOL-Animationen, das die korrekte Animation der Fl\u00fcgel bei Start und Landung verhinderte. In der zweiten H\u00e4lfte des Monats verlagerte sich der Schwerpunkt auf die Unterst\u00fctzung von Alpha 3.9. Die Verbesserungen an der Unterzielerfassung werden fortgesetzt.\nIn der EU arbeitete das Team daran, Schiffs-HUDs umzubauen und zu aktualisieren, um die neuen technischen Bausteine zu verwenden. Sie entwickelten auch das IFCS weiter:\n\"Es hat sich eine Menge in Bezug auf das Flugmodell getan, wobei die Kurven der Triebwerkseffizienz fertig gestellt, getestet und verbessert wurden. Diese Arbeit hat auch ein neues aerodynamisches Modell erforderlich gemacht, das wir jetzt ausb\u00fcgeln und f\u00fcr die Umr\u00fcstung vieler Schiffe auf den Betrieb vorbereiten. - Das Team f\u00fcr Fahrzeugeigenschaften\nGrafiken\nDas Grafikteam verbrachte den Monat damit, seine entscheidende Arbeit am Vulkan-Renderer fortzusetzen und das bestehende volumetrische Nebelsystem und die Debug-Tools in das neue System zu konvertieren. Au\u00dferdem begannen sie mit der Planung und Prototyperstellung, wie die Abh\u00e4ngigkeiten der Ressourcen zwischen den Shader-Durchg\u00e4ngen gehandhabt werden k\u00f6nnen, da das System Ressourcen zuweisen und die Arbeit effizient planen muss, w\u00e4hrend es gleichzeitig sicherstellen muss, dass es keine Ressourcen liest, bevor die Schreibvorg\u00e4nge abgeschlossen sind. Das Team untersuchte auch, wie die Lesbarkeit holographischer\/transparenter UI-Bildschirme in extrem hellen oder dunklen Umgebungen verbessert werden kann. Dazu wurde die durchschnittliche und maximale Helligkeit oder ein lokalisierter Bereich des Bildschirms verwendet, um eine geeignete UI-Helligkeit zu bestimmen. Es wurden auch mehrere Ans\u00e4tze zur Farbmischung untersucht.\nBeleuchtung\nIm vergangenen Monat hat das Beleuchtungsteam den gr\u00f6\u00dften Teil seiner PU-basierten Arbeit auf Alpha 3.9 verwendet. F\u00fcr New Babbage bedeutete dies, die Kosten f\u00fcr den Schattenwurf zu optimieren, indem man die h\u00f6chstm\u00f6gliche Qualit\u00e4t und Framerate ausbalancierte. Die neuen Tag-\/Nachtlichtzust\u00e4nde wurden st\u00e4ndig verfeinert, um sicherzustellen, dass die \u00dcberg\u00e4nge glaubw\u00fcrdig sind und um Situationen mit zu viel Dunkelheit zu verhindern.\nDie Beleuchtung der Klescher-Gefangenenanlage erforderte einen v\u00f6llig anderen Ansatz, da dieser Ort aus einer Mischung aus ma\u00dfgeschneiderten Objektcontainern (wie dem Hauptknotenpunkt) und modular aufgebauten Elementen (wie den Minen und H\u00f6hlen) gebaut wird. Das Team f\u00fchrte mehrere Iterationen am Hauptknotenpunkt, an den Au\u00dfenbereichen und den Wohnkammern durch und konzentriert sich derzeit auf die unterirdischen Bereiche. Die Herausforderung besteht darin, dort Lichter zu platzieren, die sich nat\u00fcrlich und abwechslungsreich anf\u00fchlen und den Spieler f\u00fchren.\n\n\nErz\u00e4hlung\nDas Erz\u00e4hlteam konzentrierte sich weiterhin darauf, Alpha 3.9 f\u00fcr die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung vorzubereiten und schrieb Dutzende von Beschreibungen f\u00fcr Essen, Getr\u00e4nke, Kleidung und mehr. Nach dem Feedback aus den laufenden Spieltests wurden weitere Verbesserungen vorgenommen, w\u00e4hrend ein neues Gesetz ausgearbeitet wurde, um das Rammen von Bl\u00f6cken zu reduzieren.\nSie begannen auch, sich mit den \u00dcberlieferungen \u00fcber mehrere aufstrebende Sternensysteme zu befassen und lieferten Einzelheiten \u00fcber Flora, Fauna, Sehensw\u00fcrdigkeiten und Spielszenarien, auf die die Spieler sto\u00dfen k\u00f6nnten. Zus\u00e4tzlich gab es eine koordinierte Anstrengung mit Systemic Services and Tools, um die Liste der Materialien und Ressourcen in der Wirtschaft des Sternenb\u00fcrgers zu erweitern. Am 4., 11. und 25. des Monats wurden in der Galactapedia neue Erg\u00e4nzungen und Aktualisierungen vorgenommen.\nDie 2950er Imperator-Wahl geht weiter, wobei das Team einen Beitrag zum Thema Stella Fortuna schreibt, der sich auf den Kandidaten Antwan Lillard konzentriert. Sie erschienen auch in Star Citizen Live, um einige Fragen zum Zweiten Tevarin-Krieg zu beantworten, und die Abonnenten erhielten eine neue Ausgabe der Zeitschrift Jump Point.\nBeziehungen zu den Spielern\nWie \u00fcblich konzentrierte sich das Team f\u00fcr Spielerbeziehungen auf die Unterst\u00fctzung der wachsenden Zahl von Unterst\u00fctzern und der laufenden Projekte, einschlie\u00dflich der Einf\u00fchrung des Tools zur Charakterr\u00fcckstellung, das die Unterst\u00fctzer als \"nukleare Option\" nutzen k\u00f6nnen, um ihr Konto zu reparieren. Au\u00dferdem bitten sie die Spieler, sich die Wissensdatenbank anzuschauen - ein umfassender Index mit Aktualisierungen, L\u00f6sungen und Umgehungsl\u00f6sungen f\u00fcr alle Probleme beim Zugriff auf die PU und beim Spielen innerhalb der PU.\nRequisiten\nDer Schwerpunkt des Requisitenteams lag im M\u00e4rz auf Lebensmitteln und Getr\u00e4nken, wobei zus\u00e4tzliche Varianten hinzugef\u00fcgt und technische Einrichtungen vervollst\u00e4ndigt wurden. Die meisten Artikel erforderten mehrere verschiedene Maschen f\u00fcr ihre verschiedenen Zust\u00e4nde, einschlie\u00dflich Shop-Varianten, damit sie gekauft und konsumiert werden konnten. Sie schufen auch neue Ladenauslagen f\u00fcr New Babbage und begannen ernsthaft mit der Arbeit an den Verbrauchsmaterialien f\u00fcr den Bergbau. Nat\u00fcrlich wurde auch Zeit darauf verwendet, Fehler zu beheben und Alpha 3.9-Anlagen zu polieren, wo dies erforderlich war.\n\nQA\nIm M\u00e4rz begann die QA mit der Erprobung von New Babbage. Dies konzentrierte sich in erster Linie auf die Einrichtung von Ebenen und beinhaltete eine enge Zusammenarbeit mit dem Kunst-Tester f\u00fcr eingebettete Umgebungen. Die Aufteilung von Objektcontainern und \u00c4nderungen des physikalischen Gitters fanden ihren Weg in das Alpha 3.9-Build und wirkten sich anschlie\u00dfend auf die ATC-Funktionen in allen Landezonen aus.\nBei der Kampf-KI konzentrierten sie sich auf die neu implementierten Missionen und erweiterte Kampftests, um zu beurteilen, wie die NSCs auf mehrere Spieler reagieren und wie sie Deckung nutzen, wenn sie flankiert werden.\nBei der Schiffs-KI wurden die Tests auf Luftkampf-, Sicherheits- und Zivilschiffen fortgesetzt, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf dem 3D-Navigationssystem in Asteroideng\u00fcrteln und -clustern lag. Die Tech-Art-Anforderung f\u00fcr CPU- und GPU-Erfassungen verschiedener Kopftypen wurde abgeschlossen, was es ihnen erm\u00f6glichen wird, Probleme bei der Charakterh\u00e4utung w\u00e4hrend der Animation zu debuggen. Auch Alpha 3.9 wurde getestet, ebenso wie die laufenden Evocati-Builds.\nTechnische Animation\n\"In diesem Quartal wurde das Team f\u00fcr technische Animation um zwei neue Mitarbeiter erweitert. Ihre F\u00e4higkeiten und ihre Motivation haben unserem kleinen Team einen willkommenen Aufschwung gebracht und uns mehr Spielraum f\u00fcr die Unterst\u00fctzung des Unternehmens als Ganzes gegeben. Das Team f\u00fcr technische Animation\nNeben der Schulung neuer Teammitglieder wurde im M\u00e4rz von Tech Animation die hausinterne Gesichtsausr\u00fcstung und Animationssuite \u00fcberarbeitet. Ziel ist es, Inhalte der n\u00e4chsten Generation mit einem flexiblen und modularen Ansatz f\u00fcr die Codebasis und die Rigging-Plattform zu unterst\u00fctzen. Dies wird letztendlich dazu verwendet werden, die bestehenden Gesichts-Rigs weiter zu verfeinern und alle neuen zu schaffen, um unser Universum zu bev\u00f6lkern.\nDas Team half auch bei der Implementierung der Animationen, die zur Erstellung eines neuen Werkzeugsatzes f\u00fchrten, der die Visualisierung und Anwendung von Animationss\u00e4tzen im Flowgraph-Stil auf die Nicht-Flowgraph-Sandbox-Animationswerkzeugsuite unterst\u00fctzt. Dies hilft dem Team bei der Erstellung und Erhaltung von Animationszustandsmaschinen, die f\u00fcr die komplexen KI-Verhaltensweisen erforderlich sind, die die Spieler im Universum erwarten.\nDie weitere Arbeit mit dem sozialen KI-Team hat den Bedarf an Tech-Animation identifiziert, um ihre Rigging-Toolsets weiter zu verfeinern, um die gro\u00dfe Anzahl der bevorstehenden neuen Requisiten zu unterst\u00fctzen. Sie sind jetzt robust genug und erm\u00f6glichen einen rationellen Ansatz f\u00fcr die Erstellung neuer Animations-Rigs. Sie haben auch ihre Codebasis gr\u00fcndlich gereinigt und neue Pipeline-Fundamente und Werkzeuge f\u00fcr die Refactorierung identifiziert.\nTech Art hat auch ein Werkzeug entwickelt, mit dem Character Art vor der Bearbeitung und dem Export Skeletterweiterungen aus einer Voreinstellung hinzuf\u00fcgen kann, um den Authoring-Prozess zu beschleunigen. Sie arbeiteten mit dem Weapons Team an Fehlern und Anfragen, einschlie\u00dflich Rig-Updates, Mannequin-Setups, IK-Zielaktualisierungen und Exportfehler.\nSie arbeiteten mit Social-AI an einer Vielzahl von Aufgaben zusammen, darunter die Einrichtung neuer Benutzeroberfl\u00e4chen, die Behebung von Integrationsproblemen, die R\u00fcckmeldung zu bevorstehenden Mannequin-Einrichtungen, die Behebung von Problemen mit Proc-Clips und die Untersuchung von Wildline-Einrichtungen f\u00fcr den Barkeeper. Au\u00dferdem wurde ein Rigg f\u00fcr die Aegis Gladius erstellt, um die richtige animierte Interaktion zwischen den Charakteren und dem Schiff zu erm\u00f6glichen.\nTechnische Kunst\nIm letzten Monat hat Tech Animation zus\u00e4tzliche Funktionen zum Laufzeit-Rig-Plugin-Befehl f\u00fcr Maya hinzugef\u00fcgt, die verbesserte Zustandspr\u00fcfungen, detailliertere Fehlerberichte und eine optimierte Befehlszeilenschnittstelle bieten. Sie untersuchten M\u00f6glichkeiten zur Verbesserung der Leistung des DNA-Systems, das die Anpassung des Kopfes unterst\u00fctzt. W\u00e4hrend des Kopf-Morphings mischt das DNA-System verschiedene Komponenten zu einem einzigartigen Gesichts-Rig. Einer dieser Datenbl\u00f6cke ist intern als Hautgewicht bekannt, das vom Dual-Quaternion-H\u00e4utungsdeformierer verwendet wird. Diese Gewichte werden traditionell pro Zeichen definiert. Das Team erkannte jedoch, dass sie nicht so stark variieren, und durch ihre Vereinheitlichung konnten sie die Mischungsberechnungen zur Laufzeit einsparen und so die Leistung verbessern. Sie sch\u00e4tzten ab, welchen visuellen Einfluss die Gewichtsvereinheitlichung haben w\u00fcrde, mit dem Ziel, keinerlei Qualit\u00e4tsverlust zu erleiden. Die Ergebnisse waren positiv, so dass dies fortgef\u00fchrt wird und besonders vorteilhaft sein wird, wenn die hochwertigsten K\u00f6pfe (T0) in das DNA-System aufgenommen werden.\nUnruhig\nDie Entwickler der Spieleservices bei Turbulent haben die Vereinheitlichung der Freundesliste zwischen Spectrum und dem Spiel-Client abgeschlossen. Es wurden empfindliche Verbesserungen am Network Operation Center vorgenommen, das nun \u00fcber eine grundlegende Sichtbarkeit auf Gruppen, Lobbys und Sprachkan\u00e4le f\u00fcr diejenigen verf\u00fcgt, die an dem Spiel arbeiten. Eine neue Version des internen benutzerdefinierten Protokollierungssystems wurde ebenfalls ver\u00f6ffentlicht.\nTurbulent arbeitete an mehreren noch nicht angek\u00fcndigten Projekten und unterst\u00fctzte die St. Patrick's Day-Promotion, bei der der Kr\u00fcger Archimedes Emerald im Mittelpunkt stand.\nVFX\nDas VFX-Team lieferte weiterhin Effekte f\u00fcr die bevorstehenden neuen Inhalte, einschlie\u00dflich des Esperia Prowlers, New Babbage und des Gef\u00e4ngnisses. Sie arbeiteten auch an Zerst\u00f6rungseffekten f\u00fcr fl\u00fcchtige Fracht. Was den Code betrifft, so wurde der Visierfrost aktualisiert, um die vom Codec eingestellte \"Frostmenge\" korrekt zu verwenden. Ein neuer Satz von Debug-Anzeigeoptionen wurde f\u00fcr die VFX-K\u00fcnstler fertiggestellt, und es wurden auch Fehler behoben und Optimierungen vorgenommen. Die SDF-basierten atmosph\u00e4rischen Eingangseffekte wurden vervollst\u00e4ndigt und k\u00f6nnen in einer zuk\u00fcnftigen Version f\u00fcr alle Fahrzeuge eingesetzt werden. Auch die Vorproduktionsforschung und -entwicklung f\u00fcr die Feuerkomponente wurde fortgesetzt.\nWIR SEHEN SIE N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...","zh_CN":"With its release right around the corner, Alpha 3.9\u2019s features and new additions were worked on extensively throughout March. Read on for all the details on exactly what was done throughout the month (well, what we can share for now of course). Stay safe out there.\nAI\nWe start with Combat AI, who focused on refactoring the Cover System. This involved utilizing voxelization data (the same process used for navigation mesh creation) to better evaluate the environment and construct cover surfaces and locations. The aim is to simplify the environment and build consistent cover data from the pre-assembled prefabs. This will enable the designers to mark objects as elements to be considered in the cover generation phase so the code can handle it efficiently, potentially turning multiple objects into one cover object. They also worked on a new combat tactic for holding positions, which included a polishing pass based on discussions with the designers and feedback from the directors. They also began investigating the work required to introduce the reloading mechanic to NPCs.\nShip AI dedicated part of the month to addressing bugs and corner cases following the integration of the 3D collision avoidance system into game-dev and the Alpha 3.9 stream. Better collision avoidance enables additional combat maneuvers to be developed to add flare to the dogfighting AI. In particular, they focused on defensive maneuvers (retreat\/flee) that tell AI ships to prioritize shaking off attackers to reduce their chances of being hit. Additional work was done for formation flying too. Preliminary design work began on capital ship behaviors and standard dogfight activity was streamlined to accommodate new maneuvers and cope with the growing number of combat requirements.\nSocial AI worked on new features that can be used for both systemic patrol and environmental scripting. Environmental scripting is used to create story scene markups that can be used dynamically by Subsumption behaviors to keep actor performances as intact as possible. Various fitness behaviors were developed for New Babbage. There are currently nine different warmups and six exercises, including jogging, mountain-climber twist, push up, sit up, plank, leg raise, and burpee. Alongside fitness, the team spent time polishing the bartender, who will debut in Lorville. He can currently provide bottled Smoltz, draft beer, and whiskey and cola. The release stream was also stabilized and bugs were fixed for Alpha 3.9.\nAnimation\nAlongside body dragging, the Actor Team began looking at the visual fidelity of the \u2018effort\u2019 set to get a heavier weight and feel to it. This is currently scheduled to be delivered in Alpha 4.0 and will further improve the set coming out soon.\n\u201cWe also worked on some shockingly good animations for some new FPS weapons coming soon\u2026\u201d \u2013 The Animation Team.\nOn the combat AI side, they created assets and graphs for reloading and weapon malfunction animations.\nThe Social Team focused on creating animations for work zones, which include datapad and multi-tool use. The Facial Team supported eating and drinking and various upcoming PU characters. Mo-cap wise, they burned down the backlog of capture data and improved their toolsets to better streamline future shoots.\nArt (Environment)\nLast month, the team worked on the first two planets in the Pyro system alongside various other environments. New landscapes, terrain, geology shapes, and vegetation are being explored and worked on with a huge amount of excitement.\n\u201cPyro is an unfriendly and hostile system and the opportunity to create something more otherworldly and dangerous-looking is a nice challenge and change of pace for us.\u201d \u2013 The Environment Art Team\nArt (Ships)\nThe US-based team spent time in March polishing the Esperia Prowler. They also further developed the M50\u2019s cockpit and exterior to better align them with the contemporary Origin style. The Cutlass Blue\u2019s prisoner pods were also iterated on to appear more \u201cprisoner containment\u201d like.\nAn as-yet-unseen ship completed the whitebox stage and will head into greybox soon. Several older ships were updated to work with the latest shaders, preparing them for the tint pallet system.\nArt (Weapons)\nMarch saw the Weapons Team iterate on the Lightning Bolt Co.\u2019s sniper rifle and pistol after a round of feedback from design and animation. Tweaks were made to the iron sights, rig issues were debugged, and the player\u2019s holding position was adjusted. Various bug-fixing and polishing tasks were also completed in preparation for its Alpha 3.9 release.\n\nAudio\nThe Audio Team progressed with their various tasks for Alpha 3.9. New Babbage received music written by Pedro Camacho and the Audio Team that changes based on the day\/night cycle. They also completed their work on the Player Status system, progressed with the Esperia Prowler, ambiances for prisons, and fixed a handful of bugs. They looked at the overall game mix too, which is done prior to every major release. The Dialogue Team implemented walla and dialogue lines for New Babbage and the prison, while Audio Code focused on stability and fixing audio-related crashes and bugs.\nBackend Services\nMarch saw Backend Services fixing bugs, tweaking existing features, and optimizing services. They\u2019re currently testing and tweaking various parts of the iCache and are preparing to migrate several legacy services to the new model.\nCharacters\nThe Character Team\u2019s March focus was on an upcoming event and the Alpha 3.9 release. Most of the modeling and artwork was finalized, while the tech artists completed fixes for rigging (including sim and volume adjustments) and new instore items. A model was also finished that marks the beginning of some interesting work for a future PU release.\nCommunity\nThe Community Team celebrated St. Patrick\u2019s Day, or Stella Fortuna as it\u2019s known in-universe, with a limerick contest. They received over 650 entries and rewarded the winners with exclusive emerald versions of the RSI Constellation Phoenix, RSI Ursa Rover, and Kruger Archimedes. Here\u2019s the winning limerick, courtesy of Canuck_2099.\nI rented a mining Prospector, Its scanner, a resource detector.\n\nSo I fractured a rock,\n\nAnd it caused quite a shock.\n\nLucky me it had shields to protect her!\nThe Community Team hosted another Ask Me Anything, this time tackling the most asked questions on the upcoming Player Status feature. The system will launch with Alpha 3.9 and brings things like hunger, thirst, and body temperature to Star Citizen.\n\u201cMembers of our Frankfurt-based team attended a Bar Citizen in Li\u00e8ge and had an absolute blast meeting the community in Belgium. A big thank you to the organizers for putting on such a great event!\u201d \u2013 The Community Team\n\nEngineering\nMarch saw Engineering working on physics threading and performance. They enabled up to 30 physics threads (defaulting to \u00be of logical cores available); added the option to limit the number of threads per task; improved the memory performance and footprint of command queues; defined local queues that can be processed in parallel; moved relevant game code to local physics command queues; created local queues based on the entities\u2019 adam so they can process the joint\/part updates in parallel; moved many reposition\/recompute calls to queues; and made various other queue related optimizations.\nThey also added driven ragdoll support for body dragging, gravity adjustments to actor entity ground tracking, per-joint driven ragdoll stiffness, and impulse to the root of a tracking-driven ragdoll.\nRegarding unused vertex optimization, all unused vertices in physics meshes are now pruned. Alongside saving 8GB of disk space, it provides better data cache locality on the CPU. Work also continued on part containers\/compute bounding box optimization (formerly known as physics geometry instancing). Skinned foliage was missing leaves, which was fixed before being given to the object-container-splitting physics voxel grids.\nThe Vulcan (G12) render mesh API was refactored for more streamlined and efficient creation and data upload. Unused legacy code was removed, and a shader handle was added to the remaining legacy pipeline. For unified raymarching, the initial elements of the adaptive resolution were submitted, work continued on the upsampling of adaptive resolution results, and samples were placed via low discrepancy generators. They also determined the screen bound of planetary atmospheres to further guide sample placement and began R&D into ensuring adaptive resolution raymarching works well with ray jittering and TSAA.\nThey also investigated performance issues with oceans caused by CPU readback and fixed HDR display and D3D debug runtime errors.\nFor general work, Engineering improved the ECUS update code by fixing a flaw in the update logic that caused unnecessary iterations of aggregate groups. They further improved the logic to reduce scans of entire connection lists and optimized threading.\nA significant improvement was made to the large render batch management\u2019s performance. Previously, Engineering had iterated on the list of potential batches, but it grew to over 1000 entries, making clean up computationally expensive (1.5ms). To solve this, they now maintain a list of rendered batches. Subsections of component update functions were added to their batch jobs to improve profiling, as were profiling subsections to batch jobs. For the Zone System, a new interface for updating local bounds was added.\nThe animation side of Engineering made a prototype of a new skin loader and added support for physical skin proxies. They also moved all relevant World Builder code into its own engine module for faster programming iteration time.\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nGameplay Features worked through the final stages of the Friends List refactor. There\u2019s still testing to do, but the initial phase of this long-sought feature is on schedule for launch in Alpha 3.9. Among other things, the new feature includes a new party window and the ability to right-click on contacts and \u2018Join Session\u2019 with any online contact. A presence indicator will also show the part of the game they\u2019re playing and whether they\u2019re available to party-up with, and a \u2018Join Leader\u2019 button will allow players to connect with another pilot on any server.\n\u201cWe understand how much of a pain point partying-up was in previous versions of the game and we wanted to resolve this for you ASAP. We felt it was important to rebuild the entire experience from the ground up, because it really needed to be! I\u2019m certain it will still have a few rough edges, but we feel like it\u2019s a MASSIVE improvement over what was there before and that you guys would appreciate having this in your hands sooner rather than later. Please look for threads related to it on Spectrum, as we will 100% be looking for feedback from you guys on where you would like to see it go from here.\u201d \u2013 The Gameplay Features Team\nThe team also added food items into several key shops around the \u2018verse to support the Actor Feature Team\u2019s hunger\/thirst gameplay. A Quick Buy feature was also added for these smaller, handheld items, so purchasing them doesn\u2019t require using the mobiGlas. Several critical bugs for Alpha 3.9 were fixed, and they supported the Mission Feature Team on implementing prisons into the final patch build.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nIn the US, Vehicle Features supported the release of the Esperia Prowler by resolving an issue with the VTOL animations that prevented the wings from animating correctly during take-off\/landing. In the latter half of the month, focus shifted to support Alpha 3.9. Improvments to sub-targeting continue.\nIn the EU, the team worked to convert and update ship HUDs to use the new building blocks tech. They also further developed IFCS:\n\u201cA lot of things have been happening regarding the flight model, with thruster efficiency curves being finalized, tested, and improved. This work has also necessitated a new aerodynamic model, which we\u2019re ironing out now and getting ready to convert a lot of ships to use.\u201d \u2013 The Vehicle Features Team\nGraphics\nThe Graphics Team spent the month continuing their crucial work on the Vulkan renderer, converting the existing volumetric fog system and debug tools to the new system. They also began planning and prototyping how to handle interdependencies of resources between shader passes, as the system will need to allocate resources and efficiently schedule work while ensuring it doesn\u2019t read resources before write operations are completed. The team also investigated how to improve the legibility of holographic\/transparent UI screens in extremely bright or dark environments. This involved using the average and maximum brightness, or a localized region of the screen, to determine a suitable UI brightness. Several color blending approaches were also investigated.\nLighting\nLast month, the Lighting Team spent most of their PU-based work on Alpha 3.9. For New Babbage, this meant optimizing the cost of shadow casting by balancing the highest possible quality and framerate. The new day\/night light states received constant refinement to ensure the transitions were believable and to prevent situations with too much darkness.\nLighting for the Klescher prison facility involved a totally different approach, as this location is built using a mixture of bespoke object containers (such as the main hub) and modularly built elements (like the mines and caves). The team made several iterations on the hub, exteriors, and habitation pods and are currently focused on the underground sections. The challenge there is placing lights that feel natural, diverse, and lead the player.\n\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative Team continued their focus on getting Alpha 3.9 ready for release, writing dozens of descriptions for food, drinks, clothing, and more. Additional mission polish was done following feedback from ongoing playtests, while a new law was crafted to cut down on pad ramming.\nThey also began looking into the lore of several upcoming star systems, providing details on flora, fauna, points of interest, and gameplay scenarios players might encounter. Additionally, there was a coordinated effort with Systemic Services and Tools to expand the list of materials and resources in Star Citizen\u2019s economy. The Galactapedia saw new additions and updates on the 4th, 11th, and 25th of the month.\nThe 2950 Imperator election continues, with the team writing a Stella Fortuna-themed piece focusing on candidate Antwan Lillard. They also appeared on Star Citizen Live to answer a few questions about the Second Tevarin War, and subscribers got a new edition of Jump Point magazine.\nPlayer Relations\nAs usual, the Player Relations Team focused on supporting the growing number of backers and ongoing projects, including the rollout of the Character Reset tool that backers can use as a \u201cnuclear option\u201d to fix their account. They also ask that players check out the Knowledge Base \u2013 a comprehensive index of updates, solutions, and workarounds to any issues in accessing and playing within the PU.\nProps\nThe Props Team\u2019s March focus was on food and drink items, adding additional variants and completing technical setups. Most items required several different meshes for their various states, included shop variants to enable them to be bought and consumed. They also created new shop displays for New Babbage and work began in earnest on mining consumables. Naturally, time was also spent fixing bugs and polishing Alpha 3.9 assets where needed.\n\nQA\nIn March, QA began testing New Babbage. This was primarily focused on level setup and involved working closely with the embedded environment art tester. Object container splitting and physics grid changes made their way into the Alpha 3.9 build and subsequently affected ATC functions across all landing zones.\nFor Combat AI, they focused on the newly implemented missions and expanded combat testing to assess how the NPCs react to multiple players and how they use cover when flanked.\nRegarding Ship AI, tests continued on dogfighting, security, and civilian ships, with an emphasis on the 3D navigation system in asteroid belts and clusters. The Tech Art request for CPU and GPU captures of different head types was completed, which will enable them to debug character skinning issues while animating. Alpha 3.9 was also tested, as were the ongoing Evocati builds.\nTech Animation\n\u201cThis quarter saw the welcome addition of two new staff members to the Technical Animation Team. Their skills and motivation have brought a welcome boost to our small team and give us greater scope to support the company as a whole.\u201d The Tech Animation Team\nAlongside training new team members, March saw Tech Animation refactoring the in-house facial rigging and animation suite. This is with a view to supporting next-generation content with a flexible and modular approach to the codebase and rigging platform. This will ultimately be used to further refine the existing facial rigs and create all new ones to populate our universe.\nThe team also helped implement the animations that led to the creation of a new toolset to help visualize and apply flowgraph-style animation sets to the non-flowgraph sandbox animation tool suite. This helps the team create and preserve animation state machines, which is required for the complex AI behaviors players are awaiting in the universe.\nContinued work with the Social AI Team identified the need for Tech Animation to further refine their rigging toolsets to support the vast number of upcoming new props. They\u2019re now robust enough and enable a streamlined approach to authoring new animation rigs. They also spring-cleaned their codebase, identifying new pipeline foundations and tools to refactor.\nTech Art also developed a tool to enable Character Art to add skeleton extensions from a preset before editing and exporting them to speed up the authoring process. They worked with the Weapons Team on bugs and requests, including rig updates, Mannequin setups, IK target updates, and export errors.\nThey partnered with Social-AI on a variety of tasks, including setups for new usables, fixing integration issues, feeding back on upcoming Mannequin setups, fixing proc clip issues, and investigating wildline setups for the bartender. They also created a rig for the Aegis Gladius to enable proper animated interactions between characters and the ship.\nTech Art\nLast month, Tech Animation added additional functionality to the runtime rig plugin command for Maya, which will give improved sanity checks, more detailed error reports, and a streamlined command-line interface. They investigated ways to improve the performance of the DNA system that underpins head customization. During head morphing, the DNA system blends various components to make a unique facial rig. One of these data chunks is known internally as skin weight, which is used by the dual-quaternion skinning deformer. These weights are traditionally defined per character. However, the team realized that they don\u2019t vary that much and by unifying them, they could save the blending computations at runtime for improved performance. They assessed what visual impact the weight unification would have, with the aim being not to lose any quality whatsoever. The findings were positive, so this will go ahead and become particularly beneficial once the highest quality heads (T0) are added to the DNA system.\nTurbulent\nGame services developers at Turbulent completed the Friend List unification between Spectrum and the game client. Sensitive improvements were made to the Network Operation Center, which now has basic visibility on groups, lobbies, and voice channels for those working on the game. A new iteration of the internal custom logging system was also released.\nTurbulent worked on several as-yet-unannounced projects and supported the St. Patrick\u2019s Day promotion that featured the Kruger Archimedes Emerald.\nVFX\nThe VFX Team continued delivering effects for the upcoming new content, including the Esperia Prowler, New Babbage, and prison. They also worked on destruction effects for volatile cargo. Code-wise, visor frost was updated to correctly use the \u2018frost amount\u2019 set from the codec. A new set of debug display options was completed for the VFX artists and bug fixes and optimizations were made too. Feature-wise, the SDF-based atmospheric entry effects completed and are ready to be rolled out to all vehicles in a future release. Pre-production R&D also continued for the fire component.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":10,"comment_count":43,"created_at":"2020-04-02T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"6 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 21:17:06","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":17542,"next_id":17544}}