{"data":{"id":17712,"title":"Star Citizen Monthly Report: July 2020","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/17712-Star-Citizen-Monthly-Report-July-2020","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/17712","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/17712","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly 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hope you\u2019re all enjoying the new additions that Alpha 3.10 brings to the \u2018verse. This month\u2019s report touches on a few of the final flourishes made to the latest patch, but most work done throughout July was for content not-yet implemented. Read on for the details on what you can expect to see in quarter three and beyond!\nAI (Combat)\nThe team continued to refine dodge-action triggering, which is currently used during combat when the player is aiming or shooting toward an NPC. Triggering this action requires careful evaluation of different conditions, such as the space within the navigation mesh needed to play the animation or the time spent aiming.\nAll character types will benefit from ongoing improvements to the AI weapon component. This work exposed all fire modes to the various behaviors, with the team enabling the AI to switch between fire modes the same way the player does.\nThe team are currently adding ammo box refill functionality for NPCs so that, in combat, any with low or no ammunition can retreat to an ammo box to refill. They\u2019re also implementing specific urgent enter\/exit\/rummage animations and are improving the looting mechanism that allows players and NPCs to pick ammunition and store it on their loadouts.\nA few bugs were fixed throughout the month too, including one involving raycasts being wrongly validated by the physics engine. Improvements were also made to the animations when NPCs move into and out of cover, and an unwanted behavior was removed that caused NPCs to blind-fire from cover when the player wasn\u2019t there.\nAI (Ships)\nShip AI made several improvements to the Tactical Query System, including optimizing the way it handles queries and structures data. They also improved and extended how different keywords are used. For example, in the target selection queries, they added the \u2018HasTag\u2019 property to select entities specifically tagged with a role.\nThey also extended the way weights are defined so they can configure both the actual weight of a property and the value it must have for weight calculation. A \u2018ShipStateMonitorComponent\u2019 was implemented to allow multiple ship states to be easily monitored and cached. This will allow multiple systems to use the data to drive logic.\nAI (Social)\nThe bartender has been mentioned in a lot in reports throughout the year as it has been used to test and develop general functionalities that will be used by all vendors in the PU.\nThe first pass of a feature that connects the different bars to the shop services was also implemented. This will enable the vendor to validate the price of items in relation to the player\u2019s available cash and complete a transaction once goods are delivered.\nAway from scenarios, progress was made on the patrol path functionality that allows instant path calculation for short distances. This significantly reduces delays when triggering specific cutscenes or animations for a much smoother experience. Support was also finished for the speed overrides on setups on the edges of paths.\nBug-wise, the team fixed several problems that were causing NPCs to stand on top of usables. The majority of these were a direct consequence of object container streaming preventing characters from reattaching to usables. For example, one was due to the usable code wrongly overriding the deferred attachment request by multiple characters, while another was a wrong navigation mesh validation when streaming back in where no validation was required.\nAI (General)\nFor global AI, the team improved the functionality of the LookComponent. First, they converted the internal look request queue to a more sophisticated priority-based queue. Each request is now associated with specific semantics that pile on top of each other based on a predefined priority. They currently have the following semantic order, from the lowest to highest priority: Look ahead: When moving on a path, an NPC might try to look ahead based on the path it\u2019s following.\n\nProcedural object discovery: When moving around, interesting things might be noticed by the NPC that can then be looked at.\n\nBehavior-driven requests: The behavior can sometimes explicitly request the NPC look at something.\n\nTrackview: During cutscenes, the designers can override targets based on the scene itself.\n\nSynchronization: In a PU environment, the networked target is used by the NPCs on the clients.\n\n\n\n\nThe team also made several optimizations to collision avoidance and subsumption. The component code was adjusted to better support the updated parallelization and server meshing too. Animation\nLast month, the Animation Team worked on force reactions, such as knockbacks, knockdowns, twitches, and flinches. They completed pre-visual work on zero-g push\/pull, further developed grenade and object throwing, and undertook tests for high-gravity moves. Work continued on some new weapons too.\nThe bartender and bar patrons received attention (specifically bug fixing), as did the useables for flight hangars, cryotanks, and seated consoles. Work on the \u2018chowline\u2019 usable began too, which manages NPCs queueing for food.\nThey also continued to work through the mo-cap backlog, comms calls, and the review and selection pipelines. Time was also dedicated to developing COVID-19 safety plans for when mo-cap shoots can begin again.\nArt (Environment)\n\u201cLast month was exciting for the Organics Team. We\u2019ve been waiting for a long time for some of the last remaining features of the organics shader and the planet editor to be finished and, this month, a big update came in: the planet editor now features brushes!\u201d \u2013 The Environment Art Team\nA brush is essentially a collection of ingredients that can be painted onto the planet. In the past, Environment Art painted color, objects, and ground textures separately. With this update, the team can now assign all of these to one brush and paint them at the same time onto a surface. And helpfully, everything can be changed on the fly.\nThe organic shader also received huge improvements in terms of terrain asset integration; the team can now tell each object to pick up either the color of the bedrock or the terrain. This can be done for the whole asset or selectively for each material layered onto an object.\nProduction wrapped up on Pyro III and Pyro IV, and the whitebox assets for Pyro VI were further developed. Pyro V is currently on hold due to it requiring gas giant tech, which is in R&D alongside Crusader. The same goes for the touch-bending of vegetation assets.\n\nArt (Ships)\nIn the US, the Art Team moved the Crusader Mercury to the final art stage, which involves iterating on feedback, adding textures, and adding LODs. Alongside this, greybox work will continue to hookup animations, implement interactions, set up internal and external doors, and set up RTT\/comms calls. Additionally, Design will optimize flight, cameras, and visuals.\nWhile awaiting the Mercury, the tech artists worked on several Maya rigs for pilot and operator seats. This work will create a template used by players, AI, and cinematics.\nThe Origin 100i series is nearing completion, with technical exterior work and the holographic cockpit button currently in progress. Work also continued on one soon-to-be-unveiled ship. Another that won\u2019t be seen for a while is currently in the greybox stage.\nArt (Weapons)\nLast month, work concluded on the Behring GP-33 grenade launcher, which required tweaks to its ammunition and rig. Weapon Art also finalized the Behring BR2 shotgun and began roughing out the Gemini A03 sniper rifle.\nFor ship weapons, the Behring S7 laser repeater was completed and work began on some new turrets. A pass was made on the Behring S12 torpedo to include a destroyed variant.\nThe team\u2019s graphic designer spent time finalizing the reticle of the LBCO sniper rifle and completed his tasks on the LBCO ammo counters.\nAudio\nThe Audio Team spent the month supporting gameplay features, items, and locations coming in Alpha 3.11. This included the improved throw mechanics, Behring GP-33 grenade launcher, and cargo deck, which received new music, walla (crowd sounds), and SFX. They also began adding music to locations without dedicated soundtracks, such as caves, and completed the audio reworks of the K&W Demeco LMG and Arclight pistol.\nThe team looked into new methods of adding dialogue to missions to give more variation:\n\u201cThis is very early, so don\u2019t expect to see any updates in near releases, but we have heard the feedback and are aware of the repetitiveness ourselves!\u201d \u2013 The Audio Team\nThe also looked into implementing the new version of the Wwise software to give the designers more tools to use when developing.\nBackend Services\nBackend Services worked diligently throughout July to make improvements to existing technology that will increase the number of concurrent players and provide a higher quality experience in-game and when logging in. They also finished major refactors to the variable service and item caching system that will have the same benefits. These new services will be coming in future releases.\nCharacters\nLast month\u2019s character development focused mainly on supporting upcoming events and future releases. The team worked on several helmets and armors that will be revealed in the coming months.\nCreature development continued and is now requiring the input of other departments. Creatures require AI and other support, so the team is working to secure the engineering manpower needed for a dedicated Creature Team.\nOther work was in pursuit of several upcoming locations and landing zones, including the cargo decks and Orison; any time a character shows up in a render, in-game advert, or behind a counter, the team has to support it.\nCommunity\nThe Community Team started the month with the release of the Invictus Launch Week & Alpha 3.9.x. Postmortem Comm-Link, sharing high-level thoughts on what went well, what didn\u2019t, and what was learned for next time.\nIn the spirit of the Foundation Festival, the updated guide system is currently being put to the test and the team concluded their search for the best crew in the \u2018verse. They also published an infographic breaking down popular choices of character customization.\nIn last month\u2019s Intragalactic Cook-off, the community was asked to cook or bake something inspired by their favorite Star Citizen alien race. With the contest concluded, the Community Team published the complete collection of alien-themed recipes in the Alien Week Cookbook.\n\nEngineering\nEngineering spent part of July updating the compiler toolchain and supported the Intel SPMD Program Compiler (ISPC) WAF build chain. The ISPC will be used to write target-agnostic SSE-optimized code for heavy duty CPU computing, meaning it will fully utilize CPU capabilities on each machine the code runs. Several code paths for physics, the 3D engine, and zone system are being ported already.\nRegarding physics, they made server memory optimizations that included tracking physical entity lifetimes and rectifying spawning issues. They also moved physical entity ID handling to amortize at a constant cost and reduced the async spawning load of thousands of brushes. They limited the number of async-created physical entities that can spawn in a frame, moved internal data to an allocated-on-demand structure, and removed legacy tracing of secondary pending rays.\nCollision detection was improved by five percent in worst-case \u201ccarrack vs. Grim HEX\u201d scenarios, and planet terrain patches were rotated to prevent them from overlapping if the patch is far from either the equator or poles. More context and markers for telemetry were added to help fast-track performance issues. Work was done on SDF sets for the Vehicle Feature Team and AFT support was given to dragging bodies onto ships and stairs. Improvements were made to the physics editor plugin, which now supports large-world coordinates.\nSystem-wise, Engineering submitted several entity update policy improvements, started work on the rendering bounds update policies, began replacing the existing frame profiler with a new one based on ImGUI, and started optimizing SIMD code and memory layout for zone partitions.\nEngineering also continued their ongoing work on the Gen12 renderer, including implementing the GPU resource set alongside code to prevent PSO redundancy.\nThey began improving runtime support for both the Gen12 and legacy pipelines (to ensure usability during transition), moved Gen12 work to batch jobs, continued work on global state removal in-renderer, and developed a more declarative approach for setting up screen passes with less duplicated and boilerplate code. Alongside this, D3D shaders now cache in the pipeline object, used material-IDs-to-objects are accessible at higher levels to allow for pipeline pre-compilation, and device manager access was removed from the legacy device.\nThe team supported G12 materials, improved the lifetime management of all render resources (ownership semantics), and continued schedule passes and bound resources for the render graph.\nFor planet atmosphere unified raymarching, they improved ray jittering when using temporal raymarching, improved noisy joint bilateral up-sampling, and increased the sharpness of up-sampled results for both guided and noisy JBL filtering. Improvements were also made to sample tagging of atmo silhouette pixels for better reproduction in the final up-sampled result.\nWork on the planet toll, named PlanEd, was completed, including an overhaul to the deluxe painter. Planet serialization was also modified to use YASLI instead of DataCore.\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe Gameplay Feature Team had a busy month in July. After updating the visuals on the player trading app, they completed the app\u2019s base functionality and got it through testing to ensure it hit Alpha 3.10.\n\u201cWe believe that players will be thrilled to now finally have the option to trade various currencies with their friends!\u201d \u2013 The Gameplay Features Team\nThey also assisted the Social AI Team with setting bartenders up in various locations around the \u2018verse.\nWith Alpha 3.10\u2019s tasks completed, work for the next release began, notably converting the frontend screens from Flash to the new Building Blocks system. Although they plan to dramatically redefine the game\u2019s entry experience at a later stage, the current goal is to get the frontend in a suitable place for these updates and improve the existing process.\nFinally, they created design documents and high-level plans for a number of exciting, large-scale initiatives that will be hitting the PU in the near future and beyond.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nThe Vehicle Team finalized their work on Alpha 3.10 and acted on feedback relating to the weapon reticle and targeting UI. They also supported the Vehicle Experience Team with the new targeting system as well.\nRestricted areas received significant focus following feedback from the Evocati and PTU, which resulted in several quality-of-life improvements while they evaluate further ways to improve the experience.\nAlpha 3.10\u2019s new aerodynamic system was iterated on too. Following feedback surrounding wind and how it interacted with the new system, values were modified and handling tweaked to make flying more intuitive. They also balanced the forces and torque on each ship to improve roll speeds and amend stall speeds for certain ships. Turbulence was also worked on, but this won\u2019t be implemented until a future patch.\nLastly, looking to the future, the team worked on docking, reaching a point where they can dock a Merlin and a Constellation. Various elements impact this feature, such as physics attachments, multiplayer, and the UI that supports players when docking.\nLevel Design\nLevel Design continued to expand on several new locations. Orison\u2019s design is making great progress, with the team finalizing large parts of the layout. A pass was also completed for the location\u2019s important core systems and markup. A handful of rest stops received new layouts and plans for additional content were made with the Mission Team.\nLighting\nThe Lighting Team completed their polish pass on Lorville and turned their attention to Area18, which will receive similar treatment, including separate day and night lighting.\nA key focus last month was improving the NPC lighting across all bar locations, especially on the bartender NPCs themselves.\n\u201cA lot of work has gone into the bartender, so it seems only fair that they are shown in their best light!\u201d -The Lighting Team\nLooking to the future, the Lighting Team kicked off R&D into improving the look of characters inside ship cockpits and through comms calls. Traditionally, ship lighting has been handled by separate teams, which has led to inconsistencies as lighting workflows have changed over time. In the coming months, the team aims to both raise the quality of cockpit lighting and add consistency to characters. They will also optimize various elements to reduce the lighting cost when multiple ships are on screen at once.\n\n\nNarrative\nLast month, Narrative supported future mission text and worked through new and updated player wearables. They also generated scripts and supervised a remote voice-over recording session.\nOtherwise, the team worked with Art and Design to further develop Orison and Pyro, creating documents outlining the general tone, potential storylines, and environmental storytelling to help sell the intended experience. They also began constructing a narrative timeline for the PU, where they can map out projected storylines on everything from a local level to events covering multiple systems. The Writer\u2019s Guide began getting a long overdue update too.\nProps\nProps spent the month supporting the upcoming cargo stations with an array of shopfront and dressing assets, including shop kiosks, stands, shelving, and counter sets. Additionally, a rework of the MMHC counter set to comply with the new bartender metrics was completed. Work also finished on the microTech Simpod, which is on display at the FactoryLine shop. New props for Grim HEX were kicked off and support was given to the cooperative locomotion system too.\nQA\nLast month, Quality Assurance completed multiple test requests (QATRs) and continued to participate in weekly playtests. A key QATR involved a test of multiple aspects of the PU to ensure all the recent changes hadn\u2019t negatively affected anything.\nAs the Combat AI Team recently added Derelict AI and new UGFs were placed on microTech\u2019s moons, QA expanded their regular testing to include these new locations.\nThe Ship AI Team implemented an update to QT Linking, which QA were assigned to test. The changes focus on how players link and travel and set the groundwork for future updates to the system. The also continued their regular checks and supported the Ship AI Team.\nLocations-wise, QA received a request to test changes to the restricted areas around Lorville and Area18. Support for the Tools Team continued, with QA continuing to work on DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore, and the sandbox editor.\nTurbulent (Services)\nLast month, Turbulent delivered several tools that will be useful to game masters and player support teams. First, visibility for orgs in Hex\u2019s Network Operation Center was finalized. Then, the lobby service was reworked to enable its fuller implementation in Hex.\nCigTrace, a new logger for services activity was implemented. This enables the delivery of the CigTrace visualizer, currently a prototype to view player movement as a heat map. More tools will be added in the future to better analyze and visualize player activity during live events. The Game Services Team also achieved the first milestone of the wider identity service project.\nTurbulent (Web Platform)\nTurbulent\u2019s Web Platform Team made changes to Spectrum, including the location and organization of player settings, which is the first step to preparing the UI to incorporate new features. Next up, players will see changes to the navigation bar. Ongoing efforts will eventually deliver multi-user private lobbies and private messages will no longer be restricted to two people.\nUser Interface (UI)\nFirstly, UI created new fonts and updated existing ones to unify text going forwards. Secondly, they continued converting legacy systems to Building Blocks, this month focusing on the lens and comms calls. They also progressed with elevator panels, preparing them for release in the near future.\nUI\u2019s embedded artists continued to work with their teams on various features, including Alpha 3.10\u2019s targeting updates and several upcoming features for Alpha 3.11 and beyond.\nVehicle Tech\nThe Vehicle Team finalized their work on Alpha 3.10 and acted on feedback relating to the weapon reticle and targeting UI. They also supported the Vehicle Experience Team with the new targeting system as well.\nThey also looked into vehicle entrance and exit times, investigating how to speed up the process without speeding up the animations. Improvements were made to a few ships and a plan was built for tech to flesh out more improvements in the future. The team plan to expand the tech to not only speed up enters and exits, but to enable the designers to flesh out more interesting and complex sequences.\nTime was spent linking gameplay systems, like shields, with SDF collisions. These improvements not only optimize collision impacts with shields but allow the gameplay to match the visual SDF. Additionally, the team ensured the collisions work with part detachment, part repair, and attached sub-items, such as turrets.\nFinally, Vehicles worked with the Actor Feature Team on improving the radar and scanning experience for vehicles and on foot, including experimenting with how capital ships could interfere or hide among smaller ships.\nThey also added a method to utilize SDFs to generate an accurate cross-section surface area of an object. This allows them to plan how ambient signatures from nearby objects, like stations or asteroids, can interfere with the cross-section.\nVFX\nAside from some final bug fixing and optimization for Alpha 3.10, the UK-based VFX Team completed pre-production tasks for Alpha 3.11 and 3.12. Included were the refinery deck (including large containers with molten liquid being poured into them), the Origin 100i series, and the Behring GP-33 grenade launcher.\nFire propagation also made progress this month, with the code prototype allowing propagation between entities and voxels across multiple surface types.\n\u201cAlthough still firmly in the prototyping phase, we managed to roll a flaming barrel across an interior surface and watch it set fire to the interior!\u201d \u2013 The VFX Team\nThe team in Frankfurt worked to convert old CPU particle effects to the latest GPU particle system. This will bring both visual and performance improvements to some of the older CPU effects.\nBoth locales worked on SDF shields which, when complete, will correctly conform to the ship even when parts have been blown off.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026","de_DE":"Wir hoffen, dass ihr alle die neuen Erg\u00e4nzungen genie\u00dft, die Alpha 3.10 dem 'Vers' bringt. Der diesmonatige Bericht ber\u00fchrt ein paar der letzten Feinheiten des letzten Patches, aber die meiste Arbeit, die w\u00e4hrend des ganzen Juli gemacht wurde, war f\u00fcr Inhalte, die noch nicht implementiert wurden. Lest weiter f\u00fcr die Details dar\u00fcber, was ihr im dritten Quartal und dar\u00fcber hinaus erwarten k\u00f6nnt!\nKI (Kampf)\nDas Team hat die Ausweich-Aktionsausl\u00f6sung weiter verfeinert, die derzeit w\u00e4hrend des Kampfes verwendet wird, wenn der Spieler auf einen NSC zielt oder schie\u00dft. Das Ausl\u00f6sen dieser Aktion erfordert eine sorgf\u00e4ltige Auswertung verschiedener Bedingungen, wie z.B. den Raum innerhalb des Navigationsnetzes, der zum Abspielen der Animation ben\u00f6tigt wird, oder die Zeit, die mit dem Zielen verbracht wird.\nAlle Charaktertypen werden von den laufenden Verbesserungen der KI-Waffenkomponente profitieren. Bei dieser Arbeit wurden alle Feuermodi den verschiedenen Verhaltensweisen ausgesetzt, wobei das Team die KI in die Lage versetzt, zwischen den Feuermodi auf die gleiche Weise wie der Spieler zu wechseln.\nDas Team f\u00fcgt derzeit die Funktion zum Nachf\u00fcllen von Munitionskisten f\u00fcr NSCs hinzu, so dass sich im Kampf jeder mit wenig oder keiner Munition zum Nachf\u00fcllen in eine Munitionskiste zur\u00fcckziehen kann. Au\u00dferdem implementieren sie spezielle Animationen f\u00fcr dringende Ein-\/Ausgangs-\/W\u00fchlanimationen und verbessern den Pl\u00fcnderungsmechanismus, der es Spielern und NSCs erlaubt, Munition zu sammeln und auf ihren Ladungen zu lagern.\nIm Laufe des Monats wurden auch ein paar Fehler behoben, darunter einer, bei dem Raycasts f\u00e4lschlicherweise von der Physik-Engine validiert wurden. Au\u00dferdem wurden Verbesserungen an den Animationen vorgenommen, wenn sich NSCs in und aus der Deckung bewegen, und ein unerw\u00fcnschtes Verhalten wurde entfernt, das dazu f\u00fchrte, dass NSCs aus der Deckung heraus blind schossen, wenn der Spieler nicht da war.\nKI (Schiffe)\nSchiffskI hat mehrere Verbesserungen am Taktischen Abfragesystem vorgenommen, einschlie\u00dflich der Optimierung der Art und Weise, wie es Abfragen behandelt und Daten strukturiert. Sie haben auch die Art und Weise, wie verschiedene Schl\u00fcsselw\u00f6rter verwendet werden, verbessert und erweitert. Zum Beispiel haben sie in den Zielauswahl-Abfragen die 'HasTag'-Eigenschaft hinzugef\u00fcgt, um Entit\u00e4ten auszuw\u00e4hlen, die speziell mit einer Rolle getaggt sind.\nSie haben auch die Art und Weise erweitert, wie Gewichte definiert werden, so dass sie sowohl das tats\u00e4chliche Gewicht einer Eigenschaft als auch den Wert, den sie f\u00fcr die Gewichtsberechnung haben muss, konfigurieren k\u00f6nnen. Eine 'ShipStateMonitorComponent' wurde implementiert, damit mehrere Schiffszust\u00e4nde einfach \u00fcberwacht und gecached werden k\u00f6nnen. Dies wird es mehreren Systemen erm\u00f6glichen, die Daten zur Steuerung der Logik zu nutzen.\nKI (sozial)\nDer Barkeeper wurde im Laufe des Jahres in vielen Berichten erw\u00e4hnt, da er dazu benutzt wurde, allgemeine Funktionalit\u00e4ten zu testen und zu entwickeln, die von allen Anbietern in der PU genutzt werden.\nDer erste Durchgang eines Features, das die verschiedenen Bars mit den Services des Shops verbindet, wurde ebenfalls implementiert. Dies wird es dem Verk\u00e4ufer erm\u00f6glichen, den Preis der Gegenst\u00e4nde im Verh\u00e4ltnis zum verf\u00fcgbaren Bargeld des Spielers zu validieren und eine Transaktion abzuschlie\u00dfen, sobald die Waren geliefert wurden.\nAbseits von Szenarien wurden Fortschritte bei der Patrouillenpfadfunktionalit\u00e4t gemacht, die eine sofortige Pfadberechnung f\u00fcr kurze Entfernungen erm\u00f6glicht. Dies reduziert die Verz\u00f6gerungen beim Ausl\u00f6sen bestimmter Zwischensequenzen oder Animationen erheblich und sorgt so f\u00fcr ein wesentlich reibungsloseres Erlebnis. Au\u00dferdem wurde die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr die Geschwindigkeits\u00fcberschreitungen bei Aufstellungen am Rande von Pfaden beendet.\nBug-m\u00e4\u00dfig hat das Team mehrere Probleme behoben, die dazu f\u00fchrten, dass NSCs \u00fcber den Nutzbaren standen. Die meisten davon waren eine direkte Folge des Streamings von Objektcontainern, die verhinderten, dass sich die Charaktere wieder an benutzbare Objekte anh\u00e4ngen konnten. Zum Beispiel lag es zum Beispiel daran, dass der benutzbare Code f\u00e4lschlicherweise die Anfrage nach einem aufgeschobenen Attachment durch mehrere Charaktere \u00fcberschrieb, w\u00e4hrend ein anderes Problem eine falsche Validierung des Navigationsnetzes war, wenn man wieder hineinstreamte, wo keine Validierung erforderlich war.\nKI (Allgemein)\nF\u00fcr die globale KI hat das Team die Funktionalit\u00e4t der LookComponent verbessert. Zuerst haben sie die interne Look-Request-Warteschlange in eine ausgefeiltere, auf Priorit\u00e4ten basierende Warteschlange umgewandelt. Jede Anfrage ist nun mit einer spezifischen Semantik verbunden, die sich basierend auf einer vordefinierten Priorit\u00e4t \u00fcbereinander stapelt. Derzeit haben sie die folgende semantische Reihenfolge, von der niedrigsten bis zur h\u00f6chsten Priorit\u00e4t:\nBlick nach vorne: Wenn sich ein NPC auf einem Pfad bewegt, k\u00f6nnte er versuchen, nach vorne zu schauen, basierend auf dem Pfad, dem er folgt. Prozedurale Objekt-Entdeckung: Wenn er sich bewegt, kann es sein, dass dem NSC interessante Dinge auffallen, die er sich dann ansehen kann. Verhaltensbedingte Anfragen: Das Verhalten kann manchmal explizit verlangen, dass der NSC sich etwas anschaut. Streckenansicht: W\u00e4hrend Zwischensequenzen k\u00f6nnen die Designer Ziele basierend auf der Szene selbst au\u00dfer Kraft setzen. Synchronisierung: In einer PU-Umgebung wird das vernetzte Ziel von den NSCs auf den Clients verwendet.\nDas Team hat auch einige Optimierungen zur Kollisionsvermeidung und Subsumtion vorgenommen. Auch der Komponentencode wurde angepasst, um die aktualisierte Parallelisierung und Serververmaschung besser zu unterst\u00fctzen.\nAnimation\nLetzten Monat arbeitete das Animationsteam an Kraftreaktionen wie R\u00fcckschl\u00e4gen, Niederschl\u00e4gen, Zuckungen und Zuckungen. Sie schlossen die vorvisuelle Arbeit an Zero-G Push\/Pull ab, entwickelten das Granaten- und Objektwerfen weiter und unternahmen Tests f\u00fcr High-Gravity-Moves. Die Arbeit an einigen neuen Waffen wurde ebenfalls fortgesetzt.\nDer Barkeeper und die Barbesucher erhielten Aufmerksamkeit (insbesondere Fehlerbehebung), ebenso wie die Gebrauchsgegenst\u00e4nde f\u00fcr Flughangars, Kryotanks und Sitzkonsolen. Die Arbeit an der nutzbaren 'Chowline' begann ebenfalls, die die NSCs beim Anstehen f\u00fcr Essen verwaltet.\nSie arbeiteten auch weiter an den mo-cap R\u00fcckst\u00e4nden, den Kommunikationsaufrufen und den \u00dcberpr\u00fcfungs- und Auswahlpipelines. Es wurde auch Zeit darauf verwendet, Sicherheitspl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr COVID-19 zu entwickeln, wann die Mo-Cap-Shootings wieder beginnen k\u00f6nnen.\nKunst (Umwelt)\n\"Der letzte Monat war aufregend f\u00fcr das Organics Team. Wir haben lange darauf gewartet, dass einige der letzten verbliebenen Features des Organik-Shaders und des Planeten-Editors fertiggestellt werden, und diesen Monat kam ein gro\u00dfes Update: der Planeten-Editor bietet jetzt Pinsel! - Das Umwelt-Kunst-Team\nEin Pinsel ist im Wesentlichen eine Sammlung von Zutaten, die auf den Planeten gemalt werden k\u00f6nnen. In der Vergangenheit hat Environment Art Farbe, Objekte und Bodentexturen getrennt voneinander gemalt. Mit diesem Update kann das Team nun alle diese Zutaten einem Pinsel zuordnen und sie gleichzeitig auf eine Oberfl\u00e4che malen. Und hilfreicherweise kann alles im Handumdrehen ge\u00e4ndert werden.\nDer organische Shader wurde auch in Bezug auf die Integration von Terrain-Assets enorm verbessert; das Team kann nun jedem Objekt sagen, dass es entweder die Farbe des Grundgesteins oder des Terrains aufnehmen soll. Dies kann f\u00fcr die gesamte Anlage oder selektiv f\u00fcr jedes Material, das auf ein Objekt geschichtet wird, erfolgen.\nDie Produktion auf Pyro III und Pyro IV wurde abgeschlossen und die Whitebox-Assets f\u00fcr Pyro VI wurden weiterentwickelt. Pyro V ist derzeit auf Eis gelegt, da es Gasriesentechnologie ben\u00f6tigt, die sich neben Crusader in der Forschung und Entwicklung befindet. Das Gleiche gilt f\u00fcr das Touch-Bending von Vegetationskomponenten.\n\nKunst (Schiffe)\nIn den USA hat das Art Team den Crusader Mercury in die letzte Kunststufe gebracht, in der es darum geht, das Feedback zu iterieren, Texturen hinzuzuf\u00fcgen und LODs hinzuzuf\u00fcgen. Parallel dazu wird die Arbeit an der Greybox fortgesetzt, um Animationen anzuschlie\u00dfen, Interaktionen zu implementieren, interne und externe T\u00fcren einzurichten und RTT\/comms-Calls einzurichten. Zus\u00e4tzlich wird das Design Flug, Kameras und Visuals optimieren.\nW\u00e4hrend sie auf den Merkur warteten, arbeiteten die Tech-K\u00fcnstler an mehreren Maya-Rigs f\u00fcr Piloten- und Operator-Sitze. Diese Arbeit wird eine Vorlage erstellen, die von Spielern, KI und Cinematics verwendet wird.\nDie Origin 100i Serie n\u00e4hert sich der Vollendung, die technischen Au\u00dfenarbeiten und die holografische Cockpittaste sind derzeit in Arbeit. Die Arbeiten an einem Schiff, das bald enth\u00fcllt werden soll, wurden ebenfalls fortgesetzt. Ein weiteres, das f\u00fcr eine Weile nicht zu sehen sein wird, befindet sich derzeit in der Greybox-Phase.\nKunst (Waffen)\nLetzten Monat wurden die Arbeiten am Granatwerfer Behring GP-33 abgeschlossen, bei denen an der Munition und der Ausr\u00fcstung gefeilt werden musste. Weapon Art hat au\u00dferdem die Behring BR2 Schrotflinte fertiggestellt und mit der Vorfertigung des Gemini A03 Scharfsch\u00fctzengewehrs begonnen.\nF\u00fcr die Schiffswaffen wurde der Behring S7-Laserrepetierer fertiggestellt und mit der Arbeit an einigen neuen Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrmen begonnen. Der Behring S12-Torpedo wurde \u00fcberholt, um eine zerst\u00f6rte Variante einzubauen.\nDer Grafikdesigner des Teams verbrachte Zeit damit, das Absehen des LBCO-Scharfsch\u00fctzengewehrs fertigzustellen und seine Aufgaben an den LBCO-Munitionsz\u00e4hlern zu erledigen.\nAudio\nDas Audio-Team verbrachte den Monat damit, Gameplay-Features, Gegenst\u00e4nde und Orte zu unterst\u00fctzen, die in Alpha 3.11 kommen. Dazu geh\u00f6rten die verbesserte Wurfmechanik, der Granatwerfer Behring GP-33 und das Frachtdeck, das neue Musik, Walla (Crowd-Sounds) und SFX erhielt. Au\u00dferdem begannen sie damit, Orte ohne eigenen Soundtrack, wie z.B. H\u00f6hlen, mit Musik zu versehen, und schlossen die Audio-\u00dcberarbeitungen des K&W Demeco LMG und der Arclight-Pistole ab.\nDas Team suchte nach neuen Methoden, um den Missionen Dialoge hinzuzuf\u00fcgen, um mehr Abwechslung zu bieten:\n\"Das ist sehr fr\u00fch, also erwarte keine Updates in den n\u00e4chsten Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen, aber wir haben das Feedback geh\u00f6rt und sind uns der Wiederholungsh\u00e4ufigkeit selbst bewusst! - Das Audio-Team\nSie haben sich auch mit der Implementierung der neuen Version der Wwise Software besch\u00e4ftigt, um den Designern mehr Werkzeuge f\u00fcr die Entwicklung zur Verf\u00fcgung zu stellen.\nBackend-Dienste\nDie Backend Services haben den ganzen Juli \u00fcber flei\u00dfig daran gearbeitet, Verbesserungen an der bestehenden Technologie vorzunehmen, um die Anzahl der gleichzeitigen Spieler zu erh\u00f6hen und eine qualitativ hochwertigere Erfahrung im Spiel und beim Einloggen zu erm\u00f6glichen. Au\u00dferdem haben sie das variable Service- und Item-Caching-System \u00fcberarbeitet, das dieselben Vorteile haben wird. Diese neuen Dienste werden in zuk\u00fcnftigen Versionen zur Verf\u00fcgung stehen.\nCharaktere\nDie Charakterentwicklung des letzten Monats konzentrierte sich haupts\u00e4chlich auf die Unterst\u00fctzung anstehender Events und zuk\u00fcnftiger Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen. Das Team hat an mehreren Helmen und R\u00fcstungen gearbeitet, die in den kommenden Monaten enth\u00fcllt werden.\nDie Entwicklung der Kreaturen ging weiter und erfordert nun den Input anderer Abteilungen. Da die Kreaturen KI und andere Unterst\u00fctzung ben\u00f6tigen, arbeitet das Team daran, die f\u00fcr ein engagiertes Kreaturenteam ben\u00f6tigten Ingenieurskr\u00e4fte zu sichern.\nWeitere Arbeit war die Suche nach mehreren neuen Orten und Landezonen, einschlie\u00dflich der Frachtdecks und Orison; jedes Mal, wenn ein Charakter in einem Render, einer Werbung im Spiel oder hinter einem Counter auftaucht, muss das Team ihn unterst\u00fctzen.\nGemeinschaft\nDas Community Team begann den Monat mit der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung der Invictus Launch Week & Alpha 3.9.x. Postmortem Comm-Link, in dem es auf hoher Ebene Gedanken dar\u00fcber austauschte, was gut gelaufen ist, was nicht, und was f\u00fcr das n\u00e4chste Mal gelernt wurde.\nIm Geiste des Foundation Festivals wird das aktualisierte Leitsystem derzeit auf den Pr\u00fcfstand gestellt und das Team schloss seine Suche nach der besten Crew in der 'Strophe' ab. Au\u00dferdem haben sie eine Infografik ver\u00f6ffentlicht, in der sie die beliebtesten M\u00f6glichkeiten der Charakteranpassung aufschl\u00fcsseln.\nIn der letzten Ausgabe des Intragalaktischen Kochwettbewerbs wurde die Community gebeten, etwas zu kochen oder zu backen, das von ihrer Lieblings-Alienrasse, den Sternenb\u00fcrgern, inspiriert wurde. Nach Abschluss des Wettbewerbs ver\u00f6ffentlichte das Community-Team die komplette Sammlung von Rezepten mit Alien-Themen im Alien Week Cookbook.\n\nTechnik\nDie Ingenieure verbrachten einen Teil des Juli damit, die Compiler-Toolchain zu aktualisieren und unterst\u00fctzten die Intel SPMD Program Compiler (ISPC) WAF-Buildkette. Der ISPC wird verwendet, um zielgerichteten, SSE-optimierten Code f\u00fcr Hochleistungs-CPU-Computing zu schreiben, was bedeutet, dass er die CPU-F\u00e4higkeiten auf jeder Maschine, auf der der Code l\u00e4uft, voll ausnutzt. Mehrere Codepfade f\u00fcr die Physik, die 3D-Engine und das Zonensystem werden bereits portiert.\nWas die Physik betrifft, so wurden Server-Speicher-Optimierungen vorgenommen, die das Verfolgen der Lebensdauer von physikalischen Entit\u00e4ten und das Beheben von Spawning-Problemen beinhalten. Au\u00dferdem haben sie die Handhabung der IDs der physischen Entit\u00e4ten so ver\u00e4ndert, dass sie sich zu konstanten Kosten amortisiert und die asynchrone Spawning-Last von tausenden von Brushes reduziert. Sie beschr\u00e4nkten die Anzahl der async-erstellten physischen Entit\u00e4ten, die in einem Frame spawnen k\u00f6nnen, verschoben interne Daten in eine Allocation-on-Demand-Struktur und entfernten die Nachverfolgung von sekund\u00e4ren ausstehenden Strahlen.\nDie Kollisionserkennung wurde in den Worst-Case-Szenarien \"Carrack vs. Grim HEX\" um f\u00fcnf Prozent verbessert, und die Planeten-Terrain-Patches wurden gedreht, um zu verhindern, dass sie sich \u00fcberlappen, wenn der Patch entweder weit vom \u00c4quator oder von den Polen entfernt ist. Es wurden mehr Kontext und Markierungen f\u00fcr die Telemetrie hinzugef\u00fcgt, um Performance-Probleme im Schnelldurchlauf zu beheben. Es wurde an SDF-Sets f\u00fcr das Vehicle Feature Team gearbeitet und die AFT unterst\u00fctzte das Schleppen von K\u00f6rpern auf Schiffe und Treppen. Es wurden Verbesserungen am Physik-Editor-Plugin vorgenommen, das nun auch Koordinaten f\u00fcr gro\u00dfe Welten unterst\u00fctzt.\nSystemtechnisch hat die Technik mehrere Verbesserungen der Entity-Update-Richtlinien eingereicht, die Arbeit an den Rendering-Bounds-Update-Richtlinien begonnen, den existierenden Frame Profiler durch einen neuen ersetzt, der auf ImGUI basiert, und begonnen, den SIMD-Code und das Speicherlayout f\u00fcr Zonenpartitionen zu optimieren.\nDie Ingenieure setzten auch ihre laufende Arbeit am Gen12-Renderer fort, einschlie\u00dflich der Implementierung des GPU-Ressourcensatzes neben dem Code, um PSO-Redundanz zu verhindern.\nSie fingen an, die Laufzeitunterst\u00fctzung sowohl f\u00fcr die Gen12- als auch f\u00fcr die Legacy-Pipelines zu verbessern (um die Nutzbarkeit w\u00e4hrend des \u00dcbergangs zu gew\u00e4hrleisten), verlagerten die Gen12-Arbeiten auf Batch-Jobs, setzten die Arbeit an der globalen Zustandsentfernung im Renderer fort und entwickelten einen deklarativeren Ansatz f\u00fcr die Einrichtung von Bildschirmdurchl\u00e4ufen mit weniger dupliziertem und Boilerplate-Code. Au\u00dferdem werden D3D-Shader nun im Pipeline-Objekt zwischengespeichert, verwendete Material-IDs zu Objekten sind auf h\u00f6heren Ebenen zug\u00e4nglich, um die Vorkompilierung der Pipeline zu erm\u00f6glichen, und der Zugriff auf den Ger\u00e4temanager wurde aus dem Legacy-Ger\u00e4t entfernt.\nDas Team unterst\u00fctzte G12-Materialien, verbesserte die Lebenszeitverwaltung aller Render-Ressourcen (Besitz-Semantik) und setzte Zeitplan\u00fcbergaben und gebundene Ressourcen f\u00fcr den Rendergraph fort.\nF\u00fcr das vereinheitlichte Raymarching der Planetenatmosph\u00e4re verbesserten sie das Rayjittering beim zeitlichen Raymarching, verbesserten das verrauschte gemeinsame bilaterale Up-Sampling und erh\u00f6hten die Sch\u00e4rfe der Up-Sample-Ergebnisse sowohl f\u00fcr das gef\u00fchrte als auch f\u00fcr das verrauschte JBL-Filtering. Au\u00dferdem wurde das Sample-Tagging von Atmo-Silhouetten-Pixeln verbessert, um eine bessere Reproduktion im endg\u00fcltigen Up-Sampling-Ergebnis zu erzielen.\nDie Arbeit an der Planeten-Maut, genannt PlanEd, wurde abgeschlossen, einschlie\u00dflich einer \u00dcberholung des Deluxe-Malers. Die Planeten-Serialisierung wurde ebenfalls modifiziert, um YASLI anstelle von DataCore zu verwenden.\nEigenschaften (Gameplay)\nDas Gameplay-Feature-Team hatte im Juli einen arbeitsreichen Monat. Nachdem sie die Grafik der Spieler-Handels-App aktualisiert hatten, vervollst\u00e4ndigten sie die Basisfunktionalit\u00e4t der App und testeten sie, um sicherzustellen, dass sie Alpha 3.10 erreicht.\n\"Wir glauben, dass die Spieler begeistert sein werden, jetzt endlich die M\u00f6glichkeit zu haben, verschiedene W\u00e4hrungen mit ihren Freunden zu tauschen! - Das Gameplay-Features-Team\nSie halfen dem Social KI Team auch dabei, Barkeeper an verschiedenen Orten rund um den 'Vers' aufzustellen.\nNachdem die Aufgaben von Alpha 3.10 erledigt waren, begannen die Arbeiten f\u00fcr die n\u00e4chste Version, insbesondere die Umstellung der Frontend-Screens von Flash auf das neue Building Blocks System. Obwohl sie planen, das Einstiegserlebnis des Spiels zu einem sp\u00e4teren Zeitpunkt dramatisch neu zu definieren, ist das aktuelle Ziel, das Frontend an einen geeigneten Ort f\u00fcr diese Aktualisierungen zu bringen und den bestehenden Prozess zu verbessern.\nSchlie\u00dflich haben sie Design-Dokumente und hochrangige Pl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr eine Reihe aufregender, gro\u00df angelegter Initiativen erstellt, die die PU in naher Zukunft und dar\u00fcber hinaus treffen werden.\nFeatures (Fahrzeuge)\nDas Fahrzeugteam schloss seine Arbeit an Alpha 3.10 ab und reagierte auf das Feedback bez\u00fcglich des Waffenabsehen und der Ziel-UI. Au\u00dferdem unterst\u00fctzten sie das Vehicle Experience Team mit dem neuen Zielsystem.\nDie Sperrgebiete wurden nach dem Feedback der Evocati und PTU stark fokussiert, was zu mehreren Verbesserungen der Lebensqualit\u00e4t f\u00fchrte, w\u00e4hrend sie weitere M\u00f6glichkeiten zur Verbesserung der Erfahrung evaluierten.\nDas neue aerodynamische System von Alpha 3.10 wurde ebenfalls \u00fcberarbeitet. Nach dem Feedback zum Wind und seiner Wechselwirkung mit dem neuen System wurden die Werte modifiziert und das Handling optimiert, um das Fliegen intuitiver zu gestalten. Au\u00dferdem wurden die Kr\u00e4fte und das Drehmoment auf jedem Schiff ausgeglichen, um die Rollgeschwindigkeiten zu verbessern und die Stallgeschwindigkeit f\u00fcr bestimmte Schiffe anzupassen. Auch an Turbulenzen wurde gearbeitet, aber das wird erst in einem zuk\u00fcnftigen Patch implementiert.\nMit Blick auf die Zukunft arbeitete das Team schlie\u00dflich am Andocken, um einen Punkt zu erreichen, an dem sie einen Merlin und eine Constellation andocken k\u00f6nnen. Verschiedene Elemente wirken sich auf dieses Feature aus, wie z.B. physikalische Anh\u00e4nge, Multiplayer und die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che, die die Spieler beim Andocken unterst\u00fctzt.\nLevel Entwurf\nDas Leveldesign expandierte weiter an mehreren neuen Orten. Orison's Design macht gro\u00dfe Fortschritte, wobei das Team gro\u00dfe Teile des Layouts fertig gestellt hat. Es wurde auch ein Pass f\u00fcr die wichtigen Kernsysteme und das Markup der Location fertiggestellt. Eine Handvoll Rastst\u00e4tten erhielten neue Layouts und Pl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr zus\u00e4tzliche Inhalte wurden mit dem Missionsteam erstellt.\nBeleuchtung\nDas Beleuchtungsteam schloss seinen Politurpass auf Lorville ab und wandte seine Aufmerksamkeit auf Area18, die eine \u00e4hnliche Behandlung erhalten wird, einschlie\u00dflich getrennter Tag- und Nachtbeleuchtung.\nEin Hauptaugenmerk lag letzten Monat auf der Verbesserung der NSC-Beleuchtung in allen Barlokalen, insbesondere bei den Barkeeper-NSCs selbst.\n\"Eine Menge Arbeit ist in den Barkeeper geflossen, also scheint es nur fair, dass sie in ihrem besten Licht gezeigt werden! -Das Beleuchtungsteam\nMit Blick auf die Zukunft hat das Beleuchtungsteam mit der Forschung und Entwicklung begonnen, um das Aussehen der Charaktere in den Cockpits der Schiffe und durch Kommunikationsaufrufe zu verbessern. Traditionell wurde die Schiffsbeleuchtung von getrennten Teams gehandhabt, was zu Inkonsistenzen gef\u00fchrt hat, da sich die Beleuchtungsabl\u00e4ufe im Laufe der Zeit ge\u00e4ndert haben. In den kommenden Monaten will das Team sowohl die Qualit\u00e4t der Cockpitbeleuchtung verbessern als auch die Konsistenz der Charaktere verbessern. Au\u00dferdem werden sie verschiedene Elemente optimieren, um die Beleuchtungskosten zu reduzieren, wenn mehrere Schiffe gleichzeitig auf dem Bildschirm sind.\n\n\nErz\u00e4hlung\nLetzten Monat unterst\u00fctzte Narrative zuk\u00fcnftige Missionstexte und arbeitete neue und aktualisierte Spieler-Wearables durch. Au\u00dferdem erstellten sie Skripte und \u00fcberwachten eine ferngesteuerte Voice-Over-Aufnahmesession.\nAnsonsten arbeitete das Team mit Art and Design zusammen, um Orison und Pyro weiterzuentwickeln und erstellte Dokumente, die den allgemeinen Ton, m\u00f6gliche Handlungsstr\u00e4nge und das Erz\u00e4hlen von Umweltgeschichten skizzierten, um die beabsichtigte Erfahrung zu verkaufen. Au\u00dferdem begannen sie damit, eine narrative Zeitleiste f\u00fcr die PU zu erstellen, auf der sie die projizierten Handlungsstr\u00e4nge f\u00fcr alles von einer lokalen Ebene bis hin zu Ereignissen, die mehrere Systeme umfassen, darstellen k\u00f6nnen. Auch der Writer's Guide erhielt ein l\u00e4ngst \u00fcberf\u00e4lliges Update.\nRequisiten\nDie Requisiten verbrachten den Monat damit, die kommenden Frachtstationen mit einer Reihe von Ladenfront- und Kleidungsst\u00fccken zu unterst\u00fctzen, darunter Kioske, St\u00e4nde, Regale und Thekensets. Zus\u00e4tzlich wurde eine \u00dcberarbeitung des MMHC-Tresensets abgeschlossen, um den neuen Barkeeper-Metriken zu entsprechen. Die Arbeiten am microTech Simpod, der im FactoryLine-Shop ausgestellt ist, wurden ebenfalls abgeschlossen. Neue Requisiten f\u00fcr Grim HEX wurden in Angriff genommen und auch das kooperative Fortbewegungssystem wurde unterst\u00fctzt.\nQA\nLetzten Monat hat die Qualit\u00e4tssicherung mehrere Testanfragen (QATRs) abgeschlossen und weiterhin an w\u00f6chentlichen Spieltests teilgenommen. Ein wichtiger QATR beinhaltete einen Test mehrerer Aspekte der PU, um sicherzustellen, dass die letzten \u00c4nderungen keine negativen Auswirkungen hatten.\nDa das Combat KI Team k\u00fcrzlich Derelict KI hinzugef\u00fcgt hat und neue UGFs auf den Monden von microTech platziert wurden, hat die QA ihre regelm\u00e4\u00dfigen Tests auf diese neuen Orte ausgeweitet.\nDas Schiffs-KI-Team implementierte ein Update des QT-Linking, mit dessen Test die QA beauftragt wurde. Die \u00c4nderungen konzentrieren sich darauf, wie Spieler verlinken und reisen und legen den Grundstein f\u00fcr zuk\u00fcnftige Updates des Systems. Au\u00dferdem setzten sie ihre regelm\u00e4\u00dfigen \u00dcberpr\u00fcfungen fort und unterst\u00fctzten das Schiffs-KI-Team.\nWas die Standorte betrifft, so erhielt die QA eine Anfrage, \u00c4nderungen an den Sperrgebieten um Lorville und Area18 zu testen. Die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr das Tools-Team wurde fortgesetzt, wobei QA weiterhin an DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore und dem Sandbox-Editor arbeitete.\nTurbulent (Dienstleistungen)\nLetzten Monat hat Turbulent mehrere Tools geliefert, die den Spielleitern und Spielerunterst\u00fctzungsteams n\u00fctzlich sein werden. Zun\u00e4chst wurde die Sichtbarkeit f\u00fcr Orgs im Network Operation Center von Hex abgeschlossen. Dann wurde der Lobby-Service \u00fcberarbeitet, um eine vollst\u00e4ndigere Implementierung in Hex zu erm\u00f6glichen.\nCigTrace, ein neuer Logger f\u00fcr Service-Aktivit\u00e4ten wurde implementiert. Dies erm\u00f6glicht die Auslieferung des CigTrace-Visualisierers, derzeit ein Prototyp, mit dem Spielerbewegungen als Heatmap angezeigt werden k\u00f6nnen. In Zukunft werden weitere Tools hinzugef\u00fcgt, um die Spieleraktivit\u00e4t w\u00e4hrend Live-Events besser analysieren und visualisieren zu k\u00f6nnen. Das Game Services Team hat au\u00dferdem den ersten Meilenstein des umfassenderen Identit\u00e4tsservice-Projekts erreicht.\nTurbulent (Web-Plattform)\nDas Webplattform-Team von Turbulent's Webplattform-Team hat \u00c4nderungen an Spectrum vorgenommen, einschlie\u00dflich des Ortes und der Organisation der Spielereinstellungen, was der erste Schritt zur Vorbereitung der UI ist, um neue Funktionen einzubauen. Als N\u00e4chstes werden die Spieler \u00c4nderungen an der Navigationsleiste sehen. Laufende Bem\u00fchungen werden schlie\u00dflich dazu f\u00fchren, dass private Lobbys f\u00fcr mehrere Spieler eingerichtet werden und private Nachrichten nicht l\u00e4nger auf zwei Personen beschr\u00e4nkt sein werden.\nBenutzeroberfl\u00e4che (UI)\nZuerst hat das UI neue Schriftarten erstellt und bestehende aktualisiert, um den Text vorw\u00e4rts zu vereinheitlichen. Zweitens haben sie damit fortgefahren, alte Systeme in Building Blocks umzuwandeln, wobei sie sich diesen Monat auf die Linse und Comms Calls konzentriert haben. Au\u00dferdem machten sie Fortschritte mit den Fahrstuhl-Panels und bereiteten sie f\u00fcr die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung in naher Zukunft vor.\nDie Embedded Artists von UI arbeiteten weiterhin mit ihren Teams an verschiedenen Features, einschlie\u00dflich Alpha 3.10's Targeting Updates und einigen kommenden Features f\u00fcr Alpha 3.11 und dar\u00fcber hinaus.\nFahrzeug-Technologie\nDas Fahrzeugteam schloss seine Arbeit an Alpha 3.10 ab und reagierte auf das Feedback bez\u00fcglich des Waffenabsehen und der Ziel-UI. Au\u00dferdem unterst\u00fctzten sie das Vehicle Experience Team mit dem neuen Zielsystem.\nSie haben sich auch mit den Ein- und Ausstiegszeiten der Fahrzeuge besch\u00e4ftigt und untersucht, wie man den Prozess beschleunigen kann, ohne die Animationen zu beschleunigen. Es wurden Verbesserungen an einigen wenigen Schiffen vorgenommen und ein Plan f\u00fcr die Technik erstellt, um in Zukunft noch mehr Verbesserungen vornehmen zu k\u00f6nnen. Das Team plant, die Technologie zu erweitern, um nicht nur das Ein- und Aussteigen zu beschleunigen, sondern es den Designern auch zu erm\u00f6glichen, interessantere und komplexere Sequenzen zu entwickeln.\nEs wurde Zeit damit verbracht, Gameplay-Systeme, wie Schilde, mit SDF-Kollisionen zu verbinden. Diese Verbesserungen optimieren nicht nur die Kollisionsauswirkungen mit den Schilden, sondern erlauben es dem Gameplay, sich an die visuelle SDF anzupassen. Zus\u00e4tzlich stellte das Team sicher, dass die Kollisionen mit Teilabl\u00f6sung, Teilreparatur und angeh\u00e4ngten Unterelementen, wie z.B. Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrmen, funktionieren.\nSchlie\u00dflich arbeiteten die Fahrzeuge mit dem Actor Feature Team zusammen, um das Radar- und Scan-Erlebnis f\u00fcr Fahrzeuge und zu Fu\u00df zu verbessern, einschlie\u00dflich des Experimentierens, wie Gro\u00dfkampfschiffe interferieren oder sich zwischen kleineren Schiffen verstecken k\u00f6nnen.\nSie f\u00fcgten auch eine Methode hinzu, SDFs zu nutzen, um eine genaue Querschnittsfl\u00e4che eines Objekts zu erzeugen. Dies erlaubt es ihnen zu planen, wie Umgebungssignaturen von nahen Objekten, wie Stationen oder Asteroiden, den Querschnitt st\u00f6ren k\u00f6nnen.\nVFX\nAbgesehen von einigen letzten Fehlerbehebungen und Optimierungen f\u00fcr Alpha 3.10, hat das UK-basierte VFX-Team die Vorproduktionsaufgaben f\u00fcr Alpha 3.11 und 3.12 abgeschlossen. Dazu geh\u00f6rten das Raffineriedeck (einschlie\u00dflich gro\u00dfer Beh\u00e4lter, in die geschmolzene Fl\u00fcssigkeit gegossen wurde), die Origin 100i-Serie und der Behring GP-33-Granatwerfer.\nAuch die Feuerausbreitung machte diesen Monat Fortschritte, da der Code-Prototyp die Ausbreitung zwischen Entit\u00e4ten und Voxeln \u00fcber mehrere Oberfl\u00e4chentypen erlaubt.\n\"Obwohl wir uns noch fest in der Prototyp-Phase befinden, haben wir es geschafft, ein flammendes Fass \u00fcber eine innere Oberfl\u00e4che zu rollen und zuzusehen, wie es das Innere in Brand setzt! - Das VFX-Team\nDas Team in Frankfurt arbeitete daran, alte CPU-Partikeleffekte auf das neueste GPU-Partikelsystem zu konvertieren. Dies wird sowohl visuelle als auch Leistungsverbesserungen f\u00fcr einige der \u00e4lteren CPU-Effekte bringen.\nBeide Schaupl\u00e4tze arbeiteten an SDF-Schilden, die sich, wenn sie fertig sind, korrekt an das Schiff anpassen werden, auch wenn Teile weggesprengt wurden.\nWIR SEHEN EUCH N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...","zh_CN":"We hope you\u2019re all enjoying the new additions that Alpha 3.10 brings to the \u2018verse. This month\u2019s report touches on a few of the final flourishes made to the latest patch, but most work done throughout July was for content not-yet implemented. Read on for the details on what you can expect to see in quarter three and beyond!\nAI (Combat)\nThe team continued to refine dodge-action triggering, which is currently used during combat when the player is aiming or shooting toward an NPC. Triggering this action requires careful evaluation of different conditions, such as the space within the navigation mesh needed to play the animation or the time spent aiming.\nAll character types will benefit from ongoing improvements to the AI weapon component. This work exposed all fire modes to the various behaviors, with the team enabling the AI to switch between fire modes the same way the player does.\nThe team are currently adding ammo box refill functionality for NPCs so that, in combat, any with low or no ammunition can retreat to an ammo box to refill. They\u2019re also implementing specific urgent enter\/exit\/rummage animations and are improving the looting mechanism that allows players and NPCs to pick ammunition and store it on their loadouts.\nA few bugs were fixed throughout the month too, including one involving raycasts being wrongly validated by the physics engine. Improvements were also made to the animations when NPCs move into and out of cover, and an unwanted behavior was removed that caused NPCs to blind-fire from cover when the player wasn\u2019t there.\nAI (Ships)\nShip AI made several improvements to the Tactical Query System, including optimizing the way it handles queries and structures data. They also improved and extended how different keywords are used. For example, in the target selection queries, they added the \u2018HasTag\u2019 property to select entities specifically tagged with a role.\nThey also extended the way weights are defined so they can configure both the actual weight of a property and the value it must have for weight calculation. A \u2018ShipStateMonitorComponent\u2019 was implemented to allow multiple ship states to be easily monitored and cached. This will allow multiple systems to use the data to drive logic.\nAI (Social)\nThe bartender has been mentioned in a lot in reports throughout the year as it has been used to test and develop general functionalities that will be used by all vendors in the PU.\nThe first pass of a feature that connects the different bars to the shop services was also implemented. This will enable the vendor to validate the price of items in relation to the player\u2019s available cash and complete a transaction once goods are delivered.\nAway from scenarios, progress was made on the patrol path functionality that allows instant path calculation for short distances. This significantly reduces delays when triggering specific cutscenes or animations for a much smoother experience. Support was also finished for the speed overrides on setups on the edges of paths.\nBug-wise, the team fixed several problems that were causing NPCs to stand on top of usables. The majority of these were a direct consequence of object container streaming preventing characters from reattaching to usables. For example, one was due to the usable code wrongly overriding the deferred attachment request by multiple characters, while another was a wrong navigation mesh validation when streaming back in where no validation was required.\nAI (General)\nFor global AI, the team improved the functionality of the LookComponent. First, they converted the internal look request queue to a more sophisticated priority-based queue. Each request is now associated with specific semantics that pile on top of each other based on a predefined priority. They currently have the following semantic order, from the lowest to highest priority: Look ahead: When moving on a path, an NPC might try to look ahead based on the path it\u2019s following.\n\nProcedural object discovery: When moving around, interesting things might be noticed by the NPC that can then be looked at.\n\nBehavior-driven requests: The behavior can sometimes explicitly request the NPC look at something.\n\nTrackview: During cutscenes, the designers can override targets based on the scene itself.\n\nSynchronization: In a PU environment, the networked target is used by the NPCs on the clients.\n\n\n\n\nThe team also made several optimizations to collision avoidance and subsumption. The component code was adjusted to better support the updated parallelization and server meshing too. Animation\nLast month, the Animation Team worked on force reactions, such as knockbacks, knockdowns, twitches, and flinches. They completed pre-visual work on zero-g push\/pull, further developed grenade and object throwing, and undertook tests for high-gravity moves. Work continued on some new weapons too.\nThe bartender and bar patrons received attention (specifically bug fixing), as did the useables for flight hangars, cryotanks, and seated consoles. Work on the \u2018chowline\u2019 usable began too, which manages NPCs queueing for food.\nThey also continued to work through the mo-cap backlog, comms calls, and the review and selection pipelines. Time was also dedicated to developing COVID-19 safety plans for when mo-cap shoots can begin again.\nArt (Environment)\n\u201cLast month was exciting for the Organics Team. We\u2019ve been waiting for a long time for some of the last remaining features of the organics shader and the planet editor to be finished and, this month, a big update came in: the planet editor now features brushes!\u201d \u2013 The Environment Art Team\nA brush is essentially a collection of ingredients that can be painted onto the planet. In the past, Environment Art painted color, objects, and ground textures separately. With this update, the team can now assign all of these to one brush and paint them at the same time onto a surface. And helpfully, everything can be changed on the fly.\nThe organic shader also received huge improvements in terms of terrain asset integration; the team can now tell each object to pick up either the color of the bedrock or the terrain. This can be done for the whole asset or selectively for each material layered onto an object.\nProduction wrapped up on Pyro III and Pyro IV, and the whitebox assets for Pyro VI were further developed. Pyro V is currently on hold due to it requiring gas giant tech, which is in R&D alongside Crusader. The same goes for the touch-bending of vegetation assets.\n\nArt (Ships)\nIn the US, the Art Team moved the Crusader Mercury to the final art stage, which involves iterating on feedback, adding textures, and adding LODs. Alongside this, greybox work will continue to hookup animations, implement interactions, set up internal and external doors, and set up RTT\/comms calls. Additionally, Design will optimize flight, cameras, and visuals.\nWhile awaiting the Mercury, the tech artists worked on several Maya rigs for pilot and operator seats. This work will create a template used by players, AI, and cinematics.\nThe Origin 100i series is nearing completion, with technical exterior work and the holographic cockpit button currently in progress. Work also continued on one soon-to-be-unveiled ship. Another that won\u2019t be seen for a while is currently in the greybox stage.\nArt (Weapons)\nLast month, work concluded on the Behring GP-33 grenade launcher, which required tweaks to its ammunition and rig. Weapon Art also finalized the Behring BR2 shotgun and began roughing out the Gemini A03 sniper rifle.\nFor ship weapons, the Behring S7 laser repeater was completed and work began on some new turrets. A pass was made on the Behring S12 torpedo to include a destroyed variant.\nThe team\u2019s graphic designer spent time finalizing the reticle of the LBCO sniper rifle and completed his tasks on the LBCO ammo counters.\nAudio\nThe Audio Team spent the month supporting gameplay features, items, and locations coming in Alpha 3.11. This included the improved throw mechanics, Behring GP-33 grenade launcher, and cargo deck, which received new music, walla (crowd sounds), and SFX. They also began adding music to locations without dedicated soundtracks, such as caves, and completed the audio reworks of the K&W Demeco LMG and Arclight pistol.\nThe team looked into new methods of adding dialogue to missions to give more variation:\n\u201cThis is very early, so don\u2019t expect to see any updates in near releases, but we have heard the feedback and are aware of the repetitiveness ourselves!\u201d \u2013 The Audio Team\nThe also looked into implementing the new version of the Wwise software to give the designers more tools to use when developing.\nBackend Services\nBackend Services worked diligently throughout July to make improvements to existing technology that will increase the number of concurrent players and provide a higher quality experience in-game and when logging in. They also finished major refactors to the variable service and item caching system that will have the same benefits. These new services will be coming in future releases.\nCharacters\nLast month\u2019s character development focused mainly on supporting upcoming events and future releases. The team worked on several helmets and armors that will be revealed in the coming months.\nCreature development continued and is now requiring the input of other departments. Creatures require AI and other support, so the team is working to secure the engineering manpower needed for a dedicated Creature Team.\nOther work was in pursuit of several upcoming locations and landing zones, including the cargo decks and Orison; any time a character shows up in a render, in-game advert, or behind a counter, the team has to support it.\nCommunity\nThe Community Team started the month with the release of the Invictus Launch Week & Alpha 3.9.x. Postmortem Comm-Link, sharing high-level thoughts on what went well, what didn\u2019t, and what was learned for next time.\nIn the spirit of the Foundation Festival, the updated guide system is currently being put to the test and the team concluded their search for the best crew in the \u2018verse. They also published an infographic breaking down popular choices of character customization.\nIn last month\u2019s Intragalactic Cook-off, the community was asked to cook or bake something inspired by their favorite Star Citizen alien race. With the contest concluded, the Community Team published the complete collection of alien-themed recipes in the Alien Week Cookbook.\n\nEngineering\nEngineering spent part of July updating the compiler toolchain and supported the Intel SPMD Program Compiler (ISPC) WAF build chain. The ISPC will be used to write target-agnostic SSE-optimized code for heavy duty CPU computing, meaning it will fully utilize CPU capabilities on each machine the code runs. Several code paths for physics, the 3D engine, and zone system are being ported already.\nRegarding physics, they made server memory optimizations that included tracking physical entity lifetimes and rectifying spawning issues. They also moved physical entity ID handling to amortize at a constant cost and reduced the async spawning load of thousands of brushes. They limited the number of async-created physical entities that can spawn in a frame, moved internal data to an allocated-on-demand structure, and removed legacy tracing of secondary pending rays.\nCollision detection was improved by five percent in worst-case \u201ccarrack vs. Grim HEX\u201d scenarios, and planet terrain patches were rotated to prevent them from overlapping if the patch is far from either the equator or poles. More context and markers for telemetry were added to help fast-track performance issues. Work was done on SDF sets for the Vehicle Feature Team and AFT support was given to dragging bodies onto ships and stairs. Improvements were made to the physics editor plugin, which now supports large-world coordinates.\nSystem-wise, Engineering submitted several entity update policy improvements, started work on the rendering bounds update policies, began replacing the existing frame profiler with a new one based on ImGUI, and started optimizing SIMD code and memory layout for zone partitions.\nEngineering also continued their ongoing work on the Gen12 renderer, including implementing the GPU resource set alongside code to prevent PSO redundancy.\nThey began improving runtime support for both the Gen12 and legacy pipelines (to ensure usability during transition), moved Gen12 work to batch jobs, continued work on global state removal in-renderer, and developed a more declarative approach for setting up screen passes with less duplicated and boilerplate code. Alongside this, D3D shaders now cache in the pipeline object, used material-IDs-to-objects are accessible at higher levels to allow for pipeline pre-compilation, and device manager access was removed from the legacy device.\nThe team supported G12 materials, improved the lifetime management of all render resources (ownership semantics), and continued schedule passes and bound resources for the render graph.\nFor planet atmosphere unified raymarching, they improved ray jittering when using temporal raymarching, improved noisy joint bilateral up-sampling, and increased the sharpness of up-sampled results for both guided and noisy JBL filtering. Improvements were also made to sample tagging of atmo silhouette pixels for better reproduction in the final up-sampled result.\nWork on the planet toll, named PlanEd, was completed, including an overhaul to the deluxe painter. Planet serialization was also modified to use YASLI instead of DataCore.\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe Gameplay Feature Team had a busy month in July. After updating the visuals on the player trading app, they completed the app\u2019s base functionality and got it through testing to ensure it hit Alpha 3.10.\n\u201cWe believe that players will be thrilled to now finally have the option to trade various currencies with their friends!\u201d \u2013 The Gameplay Features Team\nThey also assisted the Social AI Team with setting bartenders up in various locations around the \u2018verse.\nWith Alpha 3.10\u2019s tasks completed, work for the next release began, notably converting the frontend screens from Flash to the new Building Blocks system. Although they plan to dramatically redefine the game\u2019s entry experience at a later stage, the current goal is to get the frontend in a suitable place for these updates and improve the existing process.\nFinally, they created design documents and high-level plans for a number of exciting, large-scale initiatives that will be hitting the PU in the near future and beyond.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nThe Vehicle Team finalized their work on Alpha 3.10 and acted on feedback relating to the weapon reticle and targeting UI. They also supported the Vehicle Experience Team with the new targeting system as well.\nRestricted areas received significant focus following feedback from the Evocati and PTU, which resulted in several quality-of-life improvements while they evaluate further ways to improve the experience.\nAlpha 3.10\u2019s new aerodynamic system was iterated on too. Following feedback surrounding wind and how it interacted with the new system, values were modified and handling tweaked to make flying more intuitive. They also balanced the forces and torque on each ship to improve roll speeds and amend stall speeds for certain ships. Turbulence was also worked on, but this won\u2019t be implemented until a future patch.\nLastly, looking to the future, the team worked on docking, reaching a point where they can dock a Merlin and a Constellation. Various elements impact this feature, such as physics attachments, multiplayer, and the UI that supports players when docking.\nLevel Design\nLevel Design continued to expand on several new locations. Orison\u2019s design is making great progress, with the team finalizing large parts of the layout. A pass was also completed for the location\u2019s important core systems and markup. A handful of rest stops received new layouts and plans for additional content were made with the Mission Team.\nLighting\nThe Lighting Team completed their polish pass on Lorville and turned their attention to Area18, which will receive similar treatment, including separate day and night lighting.\nA key focus last month was improving the NPC lighting across all bar locations, especially on the bartender NPCs themselves.\n\u201cA lot of work has gone into the bartender, so it seems only fair that they are shown in their best light!\u201d -The Lighting Team\nLooking to the future, the Lighting Team kicked off R&D into improving the look of characters inside ship cockpits and through comms calls. Traditionally, ship lighting has been handled by separate teams, which has led to inconsistencies as lighting workflows have changed over time. In the coming months, the team aims to both raise the quality of cockpit lighting and add consistency to characters. They will also optimize various elements to reduce the lighting cost when multiple ships are on screen at once.\n\n\nNarrative\nLast month, Narrative supported future mission text and worked through new and updated player wearables. They also generated scripts and supervised a remote voice-over recording session.\nOtherwise, the team worked with Art and Design to further develop Orison and Pyro, creating documents outlining the general tone, potential storylines, and environmental storytelling to help sell the intended experience. They also began constructing a narrative timeline for the PU, where they can map out projected storylines on everything from a local level to events covering multiple systems. The Writer\u2019s Guide began getting a long overdue update too.\nProps\nProps spent the month supporting the upcoming cargo stations with an array of shopfront and dressing assets, including shop kiosks, stands, shelving, and counter sets. Additionally, a rework of the MMHC counter set to comply with the new bartender metrics was completed. Work also finished on the microTech Simpod, which is on display at the FactoryLine shop. New props for Grim HEX were kicked off and support was given to the cooperative locomotion system too.\nQA\nLast month, Quality Assurance completed multiple test requests (QATRs) and continued to participate in weekly playtests. A key QATR involved a test of multiple aspects of the PU to ensure all the recent changes hadn\u2019t negatively affected anything.\nAs the Combat AI Team recently added Derelict AI and new UGFs were placed on microTech\u2019s moons, QA expanded their regular testing to include these new locations.\nThe Ship AI Team implemented an update to QT Linking, which QA were assigned to test. The changes focus on how players link and travel and set the groundwork for future updates to the system. The also continued their regular checks and supported the Ship AI Team.\nLocations-wise, QA received a request to test changes to the restricted areas around Lorville and Area18. Support for the Tools Team continued, with QA continuing to work on DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore, and the sandbox editor.\nTurbulent (Services)\nLast month, Turbulent delivered several tools that will be useful to game masters and player support teams. First, visibility for orgs in Hex\u2019s Network Operation Center was finalized. Then, the lobby service was reworked to enable its fuller implementation in Hex.\nCigTrace, a new logger for services activity was implemented. This enables the delivery of the CigTrace visualizer, currently a prototype to view player movement as a heat map. More tools will be added in the future to better analyze and visualize player activity during live events. The Game Services Team also achieved the first milestone of the wider identity service project.\nTurbulent (Web Platform)\nTurbulent\u2019s Web Platform Team made changes to Spectrum, including the location and organization of player settings, which is the first step to preparing the UI to incorporate new features. Next up, players will see changes to the navigation bar. Ongoing efforts will eventually deliver multi-user private lobbies and private messages will no longer be restricted to two people.\nUser Interface (UI)\nFirstly, UI created new fonts and updated existing ones to unify text going forwards. Secondly, they continued converting legacy systems to Building Blocks, this month focusing on the lens and comms calls. They also progressed with elevator panels, preparing them for release in the near future.\nUI\u2019s embedded artists continued to work with their teams on various features, including Alpha 3.10\u2019s targeting updates and several upcoming features for Alpha 3.11 and beyond.\nVehicle Tech\nThe Vehicle Team finalized their work on Alpha 3.10 and acted on feedback relating to the weapon reticle and targeting UI. They also supported the Vehicle Experience Team with the new targeting system as well.\nThey also looked into vehicle entrance and exit times, investigating how to speed up the process without speeding up the animations. Improvements were made to a few ships and a plan was built for tech to flesh out more improvements in the future. The team plan to expand the tech to not only speed up enters and exits, but to enable the designers to flesh out more interesting and complex sequences.\nTime was spent linking gameplay systems, like shields, with SDF collisions. These improvements not only optimize collision impacts with shields but allow the gameplay to match the visual SDF. Additionally, the team ensured the collisions work with part detachment, part repair, and attached sub-items, such as turrets.\nFinally, Vehicles worked with the Actor Feature Team on improving the radar and scanning experience for vehicles and on foot, including experimenting with how capital ships could interfere or hide among smaller ships.\nThey also added a method to utilize SDFs to generate an accurate cross-section surface area of an object. This allows them to plan how ambient signatures from nearby objects, like stations or asteroids, can interfere with the cross-section.\nVFX\nAside from some final bug fixing and optimization for Alpha 3.10, the UK-based VFX Team completed pre-production tasks for Alpha 3.11 and 3.12. Included were the refinery deck (including large containers with molten liquid being poured into them), the Origin 100i series, and the Behring GP-33 grenade launcher.\nFire propagation also made progress this month, with the code prototype allowing propagation between entities and voxels across multiple surface types.\n\u201cAlthough still firmly in the prototyping phase, we managed to roll a flaming barrel across an interior surface and watch it set fire to the interior!\u201d \u2013 The VFX Team\nThe team in Frankfurt worked to convert old CPU particle effects to the latest GPU particle system. This will bring both visual and performance improvements to some of the older CPU effects.\nBoth locales worked on SDF shields which, when complete, will correctly conform to the ship even when parts have been blown off.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":6,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2020-08-05T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"5 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 20:56:37","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":17711,"next_id":17714}}