{"data":{"id":17742,"title":"Star Citizen Monthly Report: August 2020","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/17742-Star-Citizen-Monthly-Report-August-2020","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/17742","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/17742","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly 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month\u2019s report gives us a glimpse into the work done for the Star Citizen Persistent Universe throughout August. Although most teams are still very much working from home, significant progress was made in several areas, including upcoming weapons, the backend, and UI tech. Read on for all last month\u2019s work and a peek into the features coming in Alpha 3.11 and beyond.\nAI (Combat)\nFor human combat, work on realistic firing continued, including the implementation of physical ammo boxes and ammo refill behaviors. They also added functionality to swap weapons so NPCs no longer need to execute the unequip\/equip flow to transition from one to another. This also empowers the animators to create smooth transitions when swapping weapons.\nThe team is currently creating comprehensive documentation to inform realistic combat, such as how character skills and traits influence combat behaviors and how emergent synergy between characters can create a more realistic and flowing combat experience.\nAI (Ships)\nThe Ship AI Team developed a new version of the accuracy system that relates the skill of an AI character (as set by the designers) to its proficiency when using weapons. Previously, when aiming, an AI gunner would alternate between two states, \u2018hit\u2019 and \u2018miss\u2019, which led to a poor hit rate regardless of AI ability or target location. Now, the skill determines how rapidly the gunner\u2019s aim moves to a location where a hit is more likely. Aiming error is a dynamic variable that changes depending on how fast the target moves relative to the shooter. For example, if a player is almost stationary, the AI will shoot more consistently, forcing players to perform defensive maneuvers. This system applies to all AI, including all varieties of turrets and FPS combat. Furthermore, ship and turret AI can now use charged weapons correctly providing their fire actions permit it, such as the Idris\u2019 rail gun.\nAI (Social)\nFor social AI, they created documentation and examples to allow designers to replicate the bartender functionalities in multiple vendors. This allows them to quickly populate the world with an initial version of interactive characters capable of selling different types of goods.\nMultiple fixes for the released bartender scenarios and general PU were also made. They still have several \u2018standing on a chair\u2019 bugs to rectify, but iteration has revealed several edge cases on how various systems interact, including networking, streaming, the actor state machine, usables, and navigation.\nAI (General)\nFor general AI work, the team added pause and resume functionality to the movement system. Now, patrol paths can request to wait in a specific location while executing logic. They can also restart the movement at any given time if conditions are met.\nThe look component code was also rectified to correctly use the target location (not just direction) to enable correct eye convergence, and bugs were identified and fixed in the real digital acting functionality. For Subsumption, the team implemented a generic way to create a \u2018C++ enum\u2019 (essentially variables with specific values).\nAnimation\nAnimation spent the month working on object and grenade throwing, knockdowns and knockbacks, and several new weapons. They also further developed AI interaction with seats in capital ships, the bartender, ship inspections, and progressed with their work on NPC ammo retrieval. They also continued creating female player faces and emotes.\nArt (Environment)\nEnvironment Art spent the month utilizing the tech delivered last month to get Pyro VI to the \u2018whitebox complete\u2019 stage. They\u2019re currently placing ground textures, objects, and scattering logic using the paintbrush system. Once the brushes\/biomes are finalized, a final painting pass is done to ensure meaningful distribution and a good global read.\nPyro V\u2019s moons also entered into production. \u201cThis is great timing for the team, as it lets all the artists grab one moon and go crazy with the new tools. They have a clear idea of how to use the new tech, but this is also a good opportunity to see how the artists go about making a new planet from scratch and use slightly different workflows.\u201d \u2013 The Environment Art Team\nOne of the hopes for this tech is that, along with better visuals, new planets will be created much more quickly than previously possible.\nStanton\u2019s planets and moons are currently being updated with the latest tech too, though this is predominately for technical reasons. Progress was also made on Crusader, with R&D underway into flow maps to bring the gas giant to life.\nArt (Ships)\nIn the US, the Ship Team continued working through the final art stage of the Crusader Mercury, with some areas heading into the flight-ready phase, including damage geometry. This involves creating a second UV set to paint the damage onto as the ship takes damage. Additional detail is being applied to the interior rooms and a functional dashboard with articulating buttons is in development. This will include independent power control for various systems, weapon controls, and more. Each system is planned to have built-in feedback to allow players to see the state of each system at a glance and identify if damage is preventing a system from working.\nThe UK-based team continued their work on the Crusader Hercules, with focus on the habitation areas, taking them to the final art stage. The lift and the cargo hold also made progress, and the corridor connecting to the bridge was completed, including suit lockers, escape pods, and several component bays. The Origin 100i series is now art-complete and has been handed off to downstream teams, while the recently unveiled Esperia Talon is in the final art stage and receiving a detail pass.\nArt (Weapons)\nWork continued on the Behring BR2 shotgun, which received its final game-ready setup and LOD pass. The Behring GP-33 grenade launcher received an additional pass to adjust some of the rig and ammunition setup too. The Behring mk4 frag grenade was updated to support the new throw feature and gained a visual indicator to show the \u2018cooking\u2019 time before it\u2019s thrown. Greybox work continued on automatic defense turrets and the team looked into missile and missile-rack metrics, ensuring the props work with all missile variants.\nAudio\nEarly in the month, the team tackled the audio for the Behring BR2 shotgun, which led to the significant challenge of finding the right balance between sci-fi and traditional ballistic sounds. They also began composing the music, ambiances, and walla for the upcoming cargo and refinery decks, including the affiliated shops.\n\u201cWalla is essentially the sound of crowds \u2013 that sort of \u2018rabble rabble\u2019 that you might be familiar with. In the cargo deck, there are a bunch of NPCs and walla helps give the area a lot of life and the feeling of business.\u201d \u2013 The Audio Team\nFor music, they\u2019re currently improving the granularity and structure of the system to improve the transition between music based on what\u2019s happening from a gameplay context.\nAugust saw a refactor to the footsteps system to improve the audio on different surfaces, making it more responsive to player movement. They worked on the Origin 100 series, looking at sound effects for moving parts and setting up ambiances and thrusters. The coming month will see them move onto the deathmask and internal damage. Support was also given to the ongoing work on throwing, which involved updated grenade sound effects.\nThe team is currently in the process of adding additional audio feedback when player ships take damage. For example, when a ship loses a wing, thruster, or weapons, players will hear it happening.\nIn technical sound design, they evaluated the mix levels across the game and supported the Actor Team with the \u2018force reactions\u2019 feature to enable correct audio when players fall and hit different surface types.\nAs mentioned last month, a new version of Wwise was implemented to give the sound designers more tools and freedom. It could also improve sound stability and prevent a few ongoing audio-related memory issues, meaning that players shouldn\u2019t lose sound in-game. Several bugs in the FOIP & VOIP systems were fixed too.\nBackend Services\nLast month, changes and fixes were made to the wallet service as it was running \u2018hot\u2019 under load, with the entitlement processor updated to support the upcoming super cache. Most of the code for the super cache is finalized, though some reliability and optimization work remains before it can be tested and tuned. The meshed loadout service also went through load testing and is expected to be completed on schedule.\nA lot of low-level networking code work was finalized, including network system startup and shutdown, and primary work on the meshed variable service began. This includes the use of direct connections rather than global routing through the diffusion router, which is currently in the test and tuning phase.\nCharacters\nAugust saw the Character Team focusing on several helmets, subscriber items, and a brand-new armor set. A number of fun items were worked on, including a series of seasonal assets. New uniforms were also designed and progress was made on NPC clothing, including outfits for Orison.\nThe concept artists worked on material variants for upcoming assets, while the Tech Team prepared and rigged assets due for release in Alpha 3.11. Bugs were fixed and support was given for several upcoming events too.\nCommunity\nThe Community Team kicked off the month with the \u201cWhere in the \u2018Verse is Pico?\u201d contest, which asked the community to share screenshots of their adventures with microTech\u2019s diminutive mascot. They also gave a detailed look into how development progress will be shared in the future via the Star Citizen & Squadron 42 Roadmap Update.\nThis month\u2019s Spectrum AMA featured members of the Environment Art Team answering community questions on Pyro, planet tech, and many other topics within their remit.\nIn the spirit of the Foundation Festival, the top guides in each area of expertise received their prizes, the winners of the \u201cBest Crew in the \u2018Verse\u201d contest were chosen, and August\u2019s Infographic detailed the timeline of Humanity\u2019s ascension to the stars.\nFinally for the Community Team, the top-voted questions about the recently unveiled Esperia Talon were answered in their latest ship Q&A.\n\nEngineering (Physics)\nIn August, the Engineering Team added support for SDF-based local physics grids and SDF sets, interior grid markup for SDFs in the resource compiler, and g-force calculation for all actor entities. They also added a separate g-force collision calculation to the actor entity, new visualization modes to help development, and \u2018inspect\u2019 and \u2018modify\u2019 properties of static and rigid entities. The option to export bit-voxel geometry via the mesh setup and save it inside CGF was added too.\nOptimization-wise, they worked on multi-threaded RC bit-voxel baking, which saves a few hundred bytes on every CPhysicalEntity instance and improves cache locality by reordering members. They also saved four bytes per physical-placeholder instance, disabled debug validation in the final release, moved large geometry into a dedicated bucket during grid population, improved bit-voxel tree-box calculation by using blocks instead of individual voxels, and optimized tree traversals in grid checks\nEngineering (Systems)\nThe Systems Team added an API to the crash handler that allows the dumping of cigprofile data. This will help them analyze what the system was doing shortly before running into a deadlock and watch dog time out and log memory usage at the time of the crash.\nDeep analysis was done to resolve the disparity between tracked and system-reported memory use. Several improvements were made on both Windows and Linux to correctly track data moving forward, including low level allocator reserved pages and third-party allocations. They continued looking into the SIMD and memory layout code for zone partitions, implemented faster execution for scoped FPE enable and disable by eliminating linear search through all registered threads, and fixed several issues with ISPC integration. They also reduced the memory use of P4K system and changed the MemoryAddressRange to use CIG API instead of native OS API for memory tracking.\nEngineering (Rendering)\nWork on the Gen12 renderer continued, with the team adding support for instancing and a \u2018keep alive\u2019 list so that GPUDevice objects are kept active until the end of a frame. Several refactors and optimizations were made too.\nCleanup in the shader system and renderer for thread safety continued, as did G12 brush rendering. They also started to look into DX11.1 API support (Windows 8.1 and up) for binding CBs using offsets for intermediate performance improvements until Vulkan ships. They also added support for custom texture views when using pass resources.\nVolumetric fog to PassResource was ported to prevent the shader parser from stripping global symbols. Some severe Alpha 3.10 GPU memory leaks were fixed too.\nFor planet atmosphere unified raymarching, the team established a general atmosphere context to avoid accessing resources globally. This make it easier and safer to reuse shared code. All related shader code was refactored too. For temporal reprojection, they implemented options for: neighborhood clipping, refining color bbox using neighborhood variance, compression (based on scene luminance), and color space conversion of color data for tighter bbox to reduce errors introduce by clipping and clamping. The depth dilation code was futher developed too.\nR&D into volumetric clouds continued and detailed plans for experiments and next steps were drafted. The initial set up for the volumetric cloud render environment was completed, code was restructured to allow it to be shared between planet atmosphere and volumetric cloud shaders, and the initial pass and injection of cloud raymarch results into the unified atmosphere raymarcher was implemented. The team made performance improvements to the terrain displacement mapping and optimized the shader parser to improve turnaround times when editing shader code.\nFinally, Engineering implemented fast bicubic b-spline and Catmull Rom spline interpolation variants for two-to-four channel texture data, further bi-cubic spline evaluation optimizations, made a planet terrain shadow pass, and fixed time precision issue in cloud animation.\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe beginning of the month saw Gameplay Features focusing on fixing critical bugs and polishing features for the Alpha 3.10.1 patch release. Once complete, they finished converting the front-end screens of the Persistent Universe from Flash to Building Blocks. They\u2019re now focusing on the first art pass, with plans to have secondary and tertiary passes in the future.\nThe team also looked into the cargo hauling profession. Work is being done to see it in a much broader sense, with aspirations to expanding the system to make it more interactive and exhilarating.\n\u201cCargo haulers will ultimately need to monitor their cargo, checking to make sure it\u2019s stable and in good condition while they travel. Beginner haulers will need to check things like temperature while hauling food, whereas experienced haulers may need to check the stability of volatile shipments. We feel the new design will be a great update for the profession and look forward to seeing the reactions from citizens when it comes online!\u201d \u2013 The Gameplay Features Team\nAlongside this work, the team is working on a new reputation system. Citizens will soon have a reputation score that changes as they complete missions or tasks around the universe. The system will allow players to earn perks through reputation gains and will tie into player perks. It will also add support for NPC organizations and their rankings. The team also created a new service to track reputation so that it won\u2019t roll back when they push a new build and wipe the databases.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nThe Vehicle Feature Team spent considerable time throughout August working on much-needed usability features for vehicles, including showing which hangar a player\u2019s ship is in after it\u2019s spawned from an ASOP terminal. For a future release, they\u2019re working on a feature to highlight a ship\u2019s available entrances too, such as ladders, doors, and elevators.\nWork on docking continues. Various aspects of the UI were iterated on to adequately detail docking progress and to give suitable guidance to a docking port regardless of its type or orientation. Different IFCS control modes are also being investigated to let players control the ship relative to a port to make docking easier.\nThe team also worked on the headless client automated testing system that enables restricted area landing splines to be tested automatically as part of the flow.\nGraphics\nThe Graphics Team predominantly focused on the Gen12 renderer last month, with time dedicated spcifically to the conversion process so that the old renderer code can be deprecated as quickly as possible. Various systems are currently being converted, including gas cloud rendering, shadow masking, and run-time environment probes. Improvements were also made to the rendering API to allow simpler and more robust client code that\u2019s less prone to human error. Work on the Vulkan backend made good progress too. The shaders were cleaned up to remove all unnecessary reliance on CPU uploaded data; modern GPU performance means it\u2019s more important to save the CPU work in the renderer and driver than a few tiny instructions on the GPU.\nWork on the organic shader continued too, bringing tighter integration with the planets to enable the artists to use assets in a variety of biomes and have them automatically integrate into their surroundings.\nLevel Design\nThe Level Design Team continued to work on the new Rest Stop interiors, ensuring space for future expansions within each layout. Orison is progressing well and recently transitioned from whitebox to greybox.\nLighting\nLast month, the Lighting Team added the final touches to the upcoming cargo deck module. This involved lighting the interior floor space, accompanying shop location, and new exterior add-on modules, ensuring they visually integrate with the rest of the station.\nThe Lighting Team also began preliminary work on Orison. In these early stages, the team\u2019s role is to ensure that the space can accommodate the technical requirements for ideal cubemap placement and prevent any performance issues further down the line. Since lighting is one of the most render-intensive elements of the frame, it\u2019s important that locations are set up from the beginning to avoid any potential issues.\nR&D work is still ongoing to improve NPC and character lighting in comms calls. New tech is being developed to spawn a dynamic lighting rig onto a character, which takes into account the surrounding environment lighting and re-projects it directly onto the character\u2019s face. Often due to performance or practical reasons, there can\u2019t always be a light source casting perfectly onto a character in all angles and situations. This new tech has the potential to allow for more cinematic lighting on NPC interactions, irrelevant of the environment.\n\n\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative Team delivered a wave of new lore to the RSI website. On the Imperator election front, a new interview with candidate Mira Ngo aired on financial news show Kaizen and dozens of new Galactapedia articles were added, including one on the famed Phiyi Tower). on Charon III. The team also hosted a talk for new employees to give them a solid foundational understanding of the story so far.\nThey also continued to support the ongoing development of Orison, with additional layers of detail being added as work progresses. For Alpha 3.11, new mission contract text, journal entries, and item names and descriptions were handed off to design, along with writeups on a few expanded laws.\nWith the bartender having received so many recent improvements, the team looked at possible improvements that will hopefully make their way to other shopkeepers and vendors in upcoming releases.\nEffort was also spent further fleshing out the narrative timeline mentioned in last month\u2019s report, including plans for expanded mission content for future releases. Finally, the latest round of bugs that made their way to the team via the Issue Council after the release of 3.10 were addressed.\nPlayer Relations\nPlayer Relations spent most of the month supporting and investigating legacy Alpha 3.9 and 3.10 issues, including isolating, identifying, and working with other teams to resolve a variety of persistence bugs. This resulted in 93,000 ships being returned to player accounts. Support for this work will continue throughout the year.\nProps\nWork continued on the cargo deck props, with consoles and material work completed for various heavy machinery. A pass was completed on the larger cargo containers, adding more branding and creating a less-demanding background dressing set for the Environment Team. A new set of screens was created to support the conversion to Building Block elevator screens, which will replace the old manual buttons.\nA set of new volatile cargo assets was kicked off too. Each of the three types requires unique visuals to reinforce their gameplay along with cargo cage assets to help bed them into their surroundings. Props also supported the new push\/pull feature work being developed by the Actor Feature Team, which involved the conversion and technical setup of some existing trolley props.\n\n\n\nQA\nQA focused on numerous QATRs, including a proto head change request that affected how AI were procedurally generated and required the team to check all NPCs in the game. An animation loader QATR meant they had to load into every area and multiple editor levels to ensure objects with moving parts worked as they did before. A SOCS update QATR required the team to load into all the areas to ensure nothing was broken and there were no performance drops.\nThey also continued to create test maps for the Locations Team to learn about the setups and further test the systems used. The Tools Team were also supported with the testing of DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore, and the sandbox editor.\nTurbulent\nTurbulent\u2019s Game Services Team delivered a new iteration of the CigTrace visualizer that enables game masters to easily visualize and compare player movement for given periods. A full rework of how in-game notifications are managed is currently in progress. The notification service has reached its first milestone, which enables other teams to start integrating new notification processes.\nSignificant effort was invested in building a new backend architecture to facilitate high player concurrency on game servers. The team has been setting up the first steps to enable the onboarding of more developers onto the project. Turbulent\u2019s Web Platform Team also supported the recent initiatives for the Greycat ROC and Esperia Talon pages.\n\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nMost \u2018visual\u2019 teams have embedded UI artists, all of who have been working on a variety of upcoming features. For the Actor Feature Team, the artists polished the Personal Inner Though system and external inventory, both of which will be used in the PU and SQ42. New concepts for holo-tech were devised for the Vehicle Feature Team, while adverts and branding for the cargo deck were created for the Environment Team.\nFeature-wise, the UI Team created new designs for the reworked starmap.\u201cWhile it shouldn\u2019t be expected any time soon, we know that it\u2019s a piece of core functionality that you all use regularly, so we want to improve the experience of doing so.\u201d \u2013 The UI Team\nThey also began looking at the various fonts used throughout the game with the goal of unifying and updating them.\nThe UI Tech Team worked on \u2018canvas-slicing\u2019 tech, which will give other teams more freedom to add 2D UI to 3D spaces (via Building Blocks). They also began looking into refactoring the color system. The aim is to aid developers by making it easier to adjust colors across various parts of the UI using a stylesheet rather than adjusting RGB values in each element. It will also allow vector gradients to be used in UI.\nVFX\nLast month, the VFX Team progressed with the refinery location effects, including improvements to the molten metal pouring from large containers in the background, which were in pre-production last month. They also made capital ship improvements, specifically the way gradual damage reads across the hull.\nWork continued on the fire hazard propagation prototype, this time focusing on networking to make sure it adequately syncs between the client and server. Further concepts were created for shields, including the visual read of impacts to show players the health of the shield, and improvements were made to quantum travel VFX.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026","de_DE":"Der Bericht dieses Monats gibt uns einen Einblick in die Arbeit, die im August f\u00fcr das Star Citizen Persistent Universe geleistet wurde. Obwohl die meisten Teams immer noch sehr viel von zu Hause aus arbeiten, wurden in verschiedenen Bereichen erhebliche Fortschritte gemacht, darunter kommende Waffen, das Backend und die UI-Technologie. Lest weiter f\u00fcr die gesamte Arbeit des letzten Monats und einen Blick in die Features, die in Alpha 3.11 und dar\u00fcber hinaus kommen werden.\nKI (Kampf)\nF\u00fcr den Kampf der Menschen wurde die Arbeit am realistischen Schie\u00dfen fortgesetzt, einschlie\u00dflich der Einf\u00fchrung von physischen Munitionskisten und dem Verhalten beim Nachf\u00fcllen von Munition. Au\u00dferdem wurde die Funktionalit\u00e4t hinzugef\u00fcgt, Waffen zu tauschen, so dass die NSCs nicht l\u00e4nger den Unquip\/Equip-Flow ausf\u00fchren m\u00fcssen, um von einem zum anderen zu wechseln. Dies bef\u00e4higt die Animatoren auch dazu, sanfte \u00dcberg\u00e4nge zu schaffen, wenn sie die Waffen tauschen.\nDas Team erstellt derzeit eine umfassende Dokumentation, um \u00fcber realistische K\u00e4mpfe zu informieren, z.B. dar\u00fcber, wie Charakterfertigkeiten und -eigenschaften das Kampfverhalten beeinflussen und wie durch die entstehende Synergie zwischen den Charakteren ein realistischeres und flie\u00dfenderes Kampferlebnis geschaffen werden kann.\nKI (Schiffe)\nDas Schiffs-KI-Team hat eine neue Version des Genauigkeitssystems entwickelt, das die Fertigkeit eines KI-Charakters (wie von den Designern festgelegt) mit seinem K\u00f6nnen im Umgang mit Waffen in Beziehung setzt. Fr\u00fcher wechselte ein KI-Sch\u00fctze beim Zielen zwischen zwei Zust\u00e4nden, 'Treffer' und 'Fehlschuss', was zu einer schlechten Trefferquote unabh\u00e4ngig von der KI-F\u00e4higkeit oder dem Zielort f\u00fchrte. Jetzt bestimmt die Fertigkeit, wie schnell sich das Ziel des Sch\u00fctzen an einen Ort bewegt, an dem ein Treffer wahrscheinlicher ist. Der Zielfehler ist eine dynamische Variable, die sich \u00e4ndert, je nachdem wie schnell sich das Ziel relativ zum Sch\u00fctzen bewegt. Wenn ein Spieler zum Beispiel fast station\u00e4r ist, schie\u00dft die KI gleichm\u00e4\u00dfiger und zwingt die Spieler zu Abwehrman\u00f6vern. Dieses System gilt f\u00fcr alle KI, einschlie\u00dflich aller Arten von Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrmen und FPS-K\u00e4mpfen. Au\u00dferdem k\u00f6nnen Schiffs- und Turm-KI nun geladene Waffen korrekt einsetzen, sofern ihre Schussaktionen dies zulassen, wie zum Beispiel das Railgun von Idris.\nKI (sozial)\nF\u00fcr die soziale KI haben sie Dokumentationen und Beispiele erstellt, um den Designern zu erm\u00f6glichen, die Barkeeper-Funktionalit\u00e4ten in verschiedenen Anbietern nachzubilden. Auf diese Weise k\u00f6nnen sie die Welt schnell mit einer ersten Version interaktiver Charaktere bev\u00f6lkern, die in der Lage sind, verschiedene Arten von Waren zu verkaufen.\nMehrere Korrekturen f\u00fcr die ver\u00f6ffentlichten Barkeeper-Szenarien und allgemeine PU wurden ebenfalls vorgenommen. Es gibt immer noch einige 'auf einem Stuhl stehend'-Fehler zu beheben, aber die Iteration hat einige Grenzf\u00e4lle aufgedeckt, wie verschiedene Systeme interagieren, einschlie\u00dflich Netzwerk, Streaming, die Akteurszustandsmaschine, Nutzbarkeit und Navigation.\nKI (Allgemein)\nF\u00fcr die allgemeine KI-Arbeit hat das Team die Pause- und Wiederaufnahme-Funktionalit\u00e4t zum Bewegungssystem hinzugef\u00fcgt. Jetzt k\u00f6nnen Patrouillenpfade anfordern, an einem bestimmten Ort zu warten, w\u00e4hrend sie die Logik ausf\u00fchren. Sie k\u00f6nnen die Bewegung auch jederzeit neu starten, wenn die Bedingungen erf\u00fcllt sind.\nDer Code der Look-Komponente wurde ebenfalls korrigiert, um den Zielort korrekt zu verwenden (nicht nur die Richtung), um eine korrekte Augenkonvergenz zu erm\u00f6glichen, und es wurden Fehler in der echten digitalen Schauspielfunktionalit\u00e4t identifiziert und behoben. F\u00fcr Subsumption implementierte das Team eine generische Methode, um eine 'C++-Enumeration' zu erstellen (im Wesentlichen Variablen mit bestimmten Werten).\nAnimation\nDie Animation hat den Monat damit verbracht, an Objekt- und Granatewerfen, Niederschl\u00e4gen und R\u00fcckschl\u00e4gen und einigen neuen Waffen zu arbeiten. Au\u00dferdem haben sie die KI-Interaktion mit Sitzen in Gro\u00dfkampfschiffen, dem Barkeeper, Schiffsinspektionen weiterentwickelt und ihre Arbeit an der NSC-Munitionsbeschaffung vorangetrieben. Au\u00dferdem haben sie weiterhin weibliche Spielergesichter und Emotes erstellt.\nKunst (Umgebung)\nEnvironment Art hat den ganzen Monat damit verbracht, die im letzten Monat gelieferte Tech zu benutzen, um Pyro VI in die 'Whitebox complete'-Phase zu bringen. Momentan werden Bodentexturen, Objekte und Streuungslogik mit dem Pinselsystem platziert. Sobald die Pinsel\/Biome fertiggestellt sind, wird ein letzter Maldurchgang durchgef\u00fchrt, um eine sinnvolle Verteilung und eine gute globale Lesbarkeit zu gew\u00e4hrleisten.\nDie Monde von Pyro V sind ebenfalls in Produktion gegangen. \"Das ist ein gro\u00dfartiges Timing f\u00fcr das Team, denn so k\u00f6nnen sich alle K\u00fcnstler einen Mond schnappen und mit den neuen Werkzeugen verr\u00fcckt spielen. Sie haben eine klare Vorstellung davon, wie die neue Technologie zu verwenden ist, aber das ist auch eine gute Gelegenheit zu sehen, wie die K\u00fcnstler einen neuen Planeten von Grund auf neu erschaffen und leicht ver\u00e4nderte Arbeitsabl\u00e4ufe verwenden. - Das Umweltkunst-Team\nEine der Hoffnungen f\u00fcr diese Technologie ist, dass zusammen mit einer besseren Grafik, neue Planeten viel schneller als bisher m\u00f6glich erstellt werden k\u00f6nnen.\nStantons Planeten und Monde werden derzeit ebenfalls mit der neuesten Tech aktualisiert, obwohl dies haupts\u00e4chlich aus technischen Gr\u00fcnden geschieht. Fortschritte gab es auch bei Crusader, wo die Forschung und Entwicklung von Flow Maps im Gange ist, um den Gasriesen zum Leben zu erwecken.\nKunst (Schiffe)\nIn den USA arbeitete das Schiffsteam weiter an der letzten Kunststufe des Kreuzfahrermerkurses, wobei einige Bereiche in die Flugbereitschaftsphase \u00fcbergingen, darunter auch die Schadensgeometrie. Dazu geh\u00f6rt die Erstellung eines zweiten UV-Sets, auf das der Schaden gemalt wird, wenn das Schiff Schaden nimmt. Weitere Details werden an den Innenr\u00e4umen angebracht und ein funktionelles Armaturenbrett mit Gelenkkn\u00f6pfen ist in Entwicklung. Dies wird eine unabh\u00e4ngige Energiekontrolle f\u00fcr verschiedene Systeme, Waffenkontrollen und mehr beinhalten. Jedes System soll \u00fcber eine eingebaute R\u00fcckmeldung verf\u00fcgen, damit die Spieler den Zustand jedes Systems auf einen Blick erkennen und erkennen k\u00f6nnen, ob ein System aufgrund von Sch\u00e4den nicht funktioniert.\nDas in Gro\u00dfbritannien ans\u00e4ssige Team setzte seine Arbeit an den Crusader Hercules fort, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf den Wohnbereichen lag, um sie bis zur letzten Kunststufe zu bringen. Der Aufzug und der Frachtraum machten ebenfalls Fortschritte, und der Korridor, der mit der Br\u00fccke verbunden ist, wurde fertiggestellt, einschlie\u00dflich der Schlie\u00dff\u00e4cher f\u00fcr die Anz\u00fcge, der Rettungskapseln und einiger Komponentenbuchten. Die Origin 100i-Serie ist nun kunstfertig und wurde an die Downstream-Teams \u00fcbergeben, w\u00e4hrend sich der k\u00fcrzlich enth\u00fcllte Esperia Talon in der letzten Kunststufe befindet und einen Detailpass erh\u00e4lt.\nKunst (Waffen)\nDie Arbeit an der Behring BR2 Schrotflinte ging weiter, die ihr endg\u00fcltiges spielbereites Setup und den LOD-Pass erhielt. Der Behring GP-33 Granatwerfer erhielt einen zus\u00e4tzlichen Pass, um auch einen Teil des Riggs und des Munitionssetups anzupassen. Die Behring mk4 Frag-Granate wurde aktualisiert, um das neue Wurf-Feature zu unterst\u00fctzen und erhielt eine visuelle Anzeige, die die 'Kochzeit' vor dem Wurf anzeigt. Die Greybox-Arbeiten an den automatischen Verteidigungst\u00fcrmen wurden fortgesetzt und das Team untersuchte die Raketen- und Raketengestellmetriken, um sicherzustellen, dass die Requisiten mit allen Raketenvarianten funktionieren.\nAudio\nAnfang des Monats hat sich das Team mit dem Audio f\u00fcr die Behring BR2-Flinte besch\u00e4ftigt, was zu der gro\u00dfen Herausforderung f\u00fchrte, die richtige Balance zwischen Sci-Fi und traditionellen ballistischen Kl\u00e4ngen zu finden. Au\u00dferdem begannen sie mit der Komposition der Musik, der Stimmungen und der Walla f\u00fcr die kommenden Fracht- und Raffineriedecks, einschlie\u00dflich der angeschlossenen L\u00e4den.\n\"Walla ist im Wesentlichen der Klang von Menschenmengen - diese Art von 'Gesindel', die du vielleicht kennst. Im Frachtdeck gibt es einen Haufen NPCs und Walla hilft, der Gegend eine Menge Leben und das Gef\u00fchl von Business zu geben\". - Das Audio-Team\nWas die Musik betrifft, so verbessern sie derzeit die Granularit\u00e4t und Struktur des Systems, um den \u00dcbergang zwischen der Musik, basierend auf dem, was in einem Gameplay-Kontext passiert, zu verbessern.\nIm August wurde das Fu\u00dfspielsystem \u00fcberarbeitet, um den Ton auf verschiedenen Oberfl\u00e4chen zu verbessern, damit es besser auf die Bewegungen des Spielers reagiert. Sie arbeiteten an der Origin 100 Serie, suchten nach Soundeffekten f\u00fcr bewegliche Teile und stellten Stimmungen und Triebwerke ein. Im kommenden Monat werden sie sich auf die Totenmaske und den inneren Schaden konzentrieren. Unterst\u00fctzung gab es auch bei den laufenden Arbeiten am Werfen, bei denen es um aktualisierte Granatensoundeffekte ging.\nDas Team ist derzeit dabei, zus\u00e4tzliches Audio-Feedback hinzuzuf\u00fcgen, wenn Spielerschiffe Schaden nehmen. Zum Beispiel, wenn ein Schiff einen Fl\u00fcgel, ein Triebwerk oder Waffen verliert, werden die Spieler dies h\u00f6ren.\nBeim technischen Sounddesign haben sie die Mischstufen im ganzen Spiel ausgewertet und das Schauspieler-Team mit dem Feature 'Kraftreaktionen' unterst\u00fctzt, um den korrekten Ton zu erm\u00f6glichen, wenn Spieler fallen und auf verschiedene Oberfl\u00e4chentypen treffen.\nWie bereits letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnt, wurde eine neue Version von Wwise implementiert, um den Sounddesignern mehr Werkzeuge und Freiheiten zu geben. Es k\u00f6nnte auch die Soundstabilit\u00e4t verbessern und ein paar laufende audio-bezogene Speicherprobleme verhindern, was bedeutet, dass Spieler im Spiel keinen Sound verlieren sollten. Mehrere Fehler in den FOIP & VOIP Systemen wurden ebenfalls behoben.\nBackend-Dienste\nLetzten Monat wurden \u00c4nderungen und Korrekturen am Brieftaschenservice vorgenommen, da er unter Last 'hei\u00df' lief, wobei der Berechtigungsprozessor aktualisiert wurde, um den kommenden Super-Cache zu unterst\u00fctzen. Der gr\u00f6\u00dfte Teil des Codes f\u00fcr den Super-Cache ist fertig gestellt, obwohl es noch einige Arbeiten an der Zuverl\u00e4ssigkeit und Optimierung gibt, bevor er getestet und abgestimmt werden kann. Der Meshed-Loadout-Service wurde ebenfalls einem Lasttest unterzogen und wird voraussichtlich planm\u00e4\u00dfig abgeschlossen werden.\nViele Arbeiten am Low-Level-Netzwerkcode wurden abgeschlossen, einschlie\u00dflich des Hoch- und Herunterfahrens des Netzwerksystems, und die prim\u00e4ren Arbeiten am Meshed-Variable-Service begannen. Dazu geh\u00f6rt die Verwendung von direkten Verbindungen anstelle des globalen Routings durch den Diffusion-Router, der sich derzeit in der Test- und Abstimmungsphase befindet.\nCharaktere\nIm August konzentrierte sich das Charakter-Team auf mehrere Helme, Abonnenten-Gegenst\u00e4nde und ein brandneues R\u00fcstungsset. Es wurde an einer Reihe lustiger Gegenst\u00e4nde gearbeitet, darunter eine Reihe von saisonalen Gegenst\u00e4nden. Es wurden auch neue Uniformen entworfen und Fortschritte bei der NSC-Kleidung gemacht, einschlie\u00dflich der Outfits f\u00fcr Orison.\nDie Konzeptk\u00fcnstler arbeiteten an Materialvarianten f\u00fcr kommende Gegenst\u00e4nde, w\u00e4hrend das Tech Team die Gegenst\u00e4nde, die in Alpha 3.11 ver\u00f6ffentlicht werden sollen, vorbereitete und zusammenstellte. Au\u00dferdem wurden Bugs behoben und Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr verschiedene kommende Events gegeben.\nGemeinschaft\nDas Community Team startete den Monat mit dem \"Wo im 'Verse ist Pico?\"-Wettbewerb, bei dem die Community aufgefordert wurde, Screenshots ihrer Abenteuer mit dem winzigen Maskottchen von microTech zu teilen. Au\u00dferdem gaben sie einen detaillierten Einblick, wie der Entwicklungsfortschritt in Zukunft \u00fcber das Star Citizen & Squadron 42 Roadmap Update geteilt wird.\nIn der diesmonatigen Spectrum AMA haben Mitglieder des Environment Art Teams Fragen der Community zu Pyro, Planet Tech und vielen anderen Themen aus ihrem Aufgabenbereich beantwortet.\nIm Geiste des Foundation Festivals erhielten die Top-Guides in jedem Fachgebiet ihre Preise, die Gewinner des Wettbewerbs \"Beste Crew im 'Verse'\" wurden ausgew\u00e4hlt und im August wurde im Infographic die Zeitleiste des Aufstiegs der Menschheit zu den Sternen detailliert beschrieben.\nUnd schlie\u00dflich wurden dem Community Team die am h\u00e4ufigsten gestellten Fragen \u00fcber das k\u00fcrzlich enth\u00fcllte Esperia Talon in ihrem neuesten Schiff Q&A beantwortet.\n\nIngenieurwesen (Physik)\nIm August f\u00fcgte das Ingenieurteam Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr SDF-basierte lokale Physik-Grids und SDF-Sets, innere Gitterauszeichnung f\u00fcr SDFs im Ressourcen-Compiler und g-force-Berechnung f\u00fcr alle Akteur-Entit\u00e4ten hinzu. Sie f\u00fcgten auch eine separate G-Kraft-Kollisionsberechnung f\u00fcr die actor Entity hinzu, neue Visualisierungsmodi, um die Entwicklung zu unterst\u00fctzen, und 'inspizieren' und 'modifizieren' Eigenschaften von statischen und starren Entities. Die Option, Bit-Voxel-Geometrie \u00fcber das Mesh-Setup zu exportieren und im CGF zu speichern, wurde ebenfalls hinzugef\u00fcgt.\nOptimierungstechnisch arbeiteten sie am Multi-Threaded-RC-Bit-Voxel-Backing, das ein paar hundert Bytes auf jeder CPhysicalEntity-Instanz spart und die Cache-Lokalit\u00e4t durch die Neuordnung der Mitglieder verbessert. Au\u00dferdem haben sie vier Bytes pro physischer Platzhalter-Instanz eingespart, die Debug-Validierung in der finalen Version deaktiviert, gro\u00dfe Geometrien w\u00e4hrend der Grid-Population in einen dedizierten Eimer verschoben, die Bit-Voxel-Baum-Box-Berechnung durch die Verwendung von Bl\u00f6cken statt einzelner Voxel verbessert und die Baumdurchquerung bei Grid-Checks optimiert.\nIngenieurwesen (Systeme)\nDas Systems Team hat dem Crashhandler eine API hinzugef\u00fcgt, die das Dumpen von Zigprofildaten erlaubt. Dies wird ihnen helfen, zu analysieren, was das System kurz vor einem Deadlock gemacht hat, und das Timeout des Hundes zu beobachten und den Speicherverbrauch zum Zeitpunkt des Absturzes zu protokollieren.\nEine tiefgehende Analyse wurde durchgef\u00fchrt, um die Diskrepanz zwischen dem verfolgten und dem vom System gemeldeten Speicherverbrauch aufzul\u00f6sen. Sowohl unter Windows als auch unter Linux wurden mehrere Verbesserungen vorgenommen, um die Daten korrekt zu verfolgen, einschlie\u00dflich der von Low-Level-Allokatoren reservierten Seiten und der Zuweisung von Drittanbietern. Sie setzten die Untersuchung des SIMD- und Speicher-Layout-Codes f\u00fcr Zonenpartitionen fort, implementierten eine schnellere Ausf\u00fchrung f\u00fcr scoped FPE aktivieren und deaktivieren, indem die lineare Suche durch alle registrierten Threads eliminiert wurde, und beendeten mehrere Probleme mit der ISPC-Integration. Sie reduzierten auch den Speicherverbrauch des P4K-Systems und \u00e4nderten den MemoryAddressRange, um die CIG-API anstelle der nativen OS-API f\u00fcr die Speicherverfolgung zu verwenden.\nTechnik (Rendering)\nDie Arbeit am Gen12-Renderer wurde fortgesetzt, wobei das Team Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Instanzierung und eine 'Keep Alive'-Liste hinzuf\u00fcgte, so dass GPUDevice-Objekte bis zum Ende eines Frames aktiv bleiben. Es wurden auch verschiedene Refactors und Optimierungen vorgenommen.\nAufr\u00e4umarbeiten im Shader-System und Renderer f\u00fcr die Threadsicherheit wurden fortgesetzt, ebenso das G12-Pinsel-Rendering. Sie begannen auch, sich mit der DX11.1-API-Unterst\u00fctzung (Windows 8.1 und h\u00f6her) f\u00fcr das Binden von CBs unter Verwendung von Offsets f\u00fcr zwischenzeitliche Leistungsverbesserungen zu besch\u00e4ftigen, bis Vulkan ausl\u00e4uft. Sie f\u00fcgten auch Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr benutzerdefinierte Texturansichten bei der Verwendung von Pass-Ressourcen hinzu.\nVolumetrischer Nebel wurde auf PassResource portiert, um den Shader-Parser daran zu hindern, globale Symbole zu entfernen. Einige schwere Alpha 3.10 GPU-Speicherlecks wurden ebenfalls behoben.\nF\u00fcr das vereinheitlichte Raymarching der Planetenatmosph\u00e4re hat das Team einen allgemeinen Atmosph\u00e4renkontext erstellt, um den globalen Zugriff auf Ressourcen zu vermeiden. Dies macht es einfacher und sicherer, geteilten Code wiederzuverwenden. Der gesamte zugeh\u00f6rige Shader-Code wurde ebenfalls \u00fcberarbeitet. F\u00fcr die zeitliche Reprojektion implementierten sie Optionen f\u00fcr: Nachbarschaftsclipping, Verfeinerung der bbox-Farbdaten durch Nachbarschaftsvarianz, Kompression (basierend auf der Szenenluminanz) und Farbraumkonvertierung der Farbdaten f\u00fcr eine engere bbox, um Fehler zu reduzieren, die durch Clipping und Clamping entstehen. Der Code zur Tiefenausdehnung wurde ebenfalls weiterentwickelt.\nDie Forschung und Entwicklung im Bereich der volumetrischen Wolken wurde fortgesetzt und detaillierte Pl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr Experimente und n\u00e4chste Schritte wurden entworfen. Die anf\u00e4ngliche Einrichtung der volumetrischen Wolken-Rendering-Umgebung wurde abgeschlossen, der Code wurde umstrukturiert, damit er zwischen der Planetenatmosph\u00e4re und den volumetrischen Wolken-Shadern geteilt werden kann, und der anf\u00e4ngliche Durchlauf und die Injektion der Ergebnisse des Wolken-Raymarch in den einheitlichen Atmosph\u00e4ren-Raymarch wurde implementiert. Das Team nahm Leistungsverbesserungen an der Gel\u00e4ndeverschiebungskartierung vor und optimierte den Shader-Parser, um die Umlaufzeiten beim Editieren des Shader-Codes zu verbessern.\nSchlie\u00dflich implementierte die Technik schnelle bikubische B-Spline- und Catmull-Rom-Spline-Interpolationsvarianten f\u00fcr Zwei-zu-Vier-Kanal-Texturdaten, weitere Optimierungen der bikubischen Spline-Bewertung, machte einen Planeten-Terrain-Schattenpass und behebt ein Zeitgenauigkeitsproblem in der Wolkenanimation.\nEigenschaften (Gameplay)\nZu Beginn des Monats konzentrierten sich die Gameplay-Features darauf, kritische Fehler zu beheben und die Features f\u00fcr die Alpha 3.10.1 Patch-Ver\u00f6ffentlichung zu polieren. Sobald der Patch fertig ist, haben sie die Front-End-Bildschirme des Persistent Universe von Flash in Building Blocks umgewandelt. Jetzt konzentrieren sie sich auf den ersten Kunstpass, wobei geplant ist, in Zukunft sekund\u00e4re und terti\u00e4re P\u00e4sse zu haben.\nDas Team hat sich auch mit dem Beruf des Frachtf\u00fchrers besch\u00e4ftigt. Es wird daran gearbeitet, ihn in einem viel weiteren Sinne zu sehen, mit dem Bestreben, das System zu erweitern, um es interaktiver und aufregender zu machen.\n\"Die Frachtschlepper werden letztendlich ihre Fracht \u00fcberwachen m\u00fcssen, um sicherzustellen, dass sie stabil und in gutem Zustand ist, w\u00e4hrend sie reisen. Anf\u00e4nger werden Dinge wie die Temperatur beim Transport von Lebensmitteln \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen m\u00fcssen, w\u00e4hrend erfahrene Spediteure die Stabilit\u00e4t von fl\u00fcchtigen Sendungen \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen m\u00fcssen. Wir glauben, dass das neue Design ein gro\u00dfartiges Update f\u00fcr den Berufsstand sein wird und freuen uns auf die Reaktionen der B\u00fcrger, wenn es online geht! - Das Gameplay-Features-Team\nNeben dieser Arbeit arbeitet das Team an einem neuen Reputationssystem. Die B\u00fcrger werden bald einen Rufwert haben, der sich \u00e4ndert, wenn sie Missionen oder Aufgaben im ganzen Universum erf\u00fcllen. Das System wird es den Spielern erm\u00f6glichen, Verg\u00fcnstigungen durch Rufgewinne zu verdienen und wird mit den Verg\u00fcnstigungen der Spieler verbunden sein. Au\u00dferdem wird es Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr NSC-Organisationen und deren Rankings bieten. Das Team hat au\u00dferdem einen neuen Dienst zur Rufverfolgung eingerichtet, damit der Ruf nicht zur\u00fcckgesetzt wird, wenn sie einen neuen Build schieben und die Datenbanken l\u00f6schen.\nFeatures (Fahrzeuge)\nDas Vehicle Feature Team hat den ganzen August \u00fcber viel Zeit damit verbracht, an dringend ben\u00f6tigten Usability-Features f\u00fcr Fahrzeuge zu arbeiten, einschlie\u00dflich der Anzeige, in welchem Hangar sich das Schiff eines Spielers befindet, nachdem es von einem ASOP-Terminal gelawned wurde. F\u00fcr eine zuk\u00fcnftige Version arbeiten sie an einem Feature, das auch die verf\u00fcgbaren Eing\u00e4nge eines Schiffes hervorhebt, wie z.B. Leitern, T\u00fcren und Aufz\u00fcge.\nDie Arbeit am Andocken geht weiter. Verschiedene Aspekte der UI wurden wiederholt, um den Fortschritt des Andockens angemessen detailliert zu beschreiben und einem Andockhafen unabh\u00e4ngig von seinem Typ oder seiner Ausrichtung eine geeignete Anleitung zu geben. Es werden auch verschiedene IFCS-Kontrollmodi untersucht, um Spielern die Kontrolle \u00fcber das Schiff relativ zu einem Hafen zu erm\u00f6glichen, um das Andocken zu erleichtern.\nDas Team arbeitete auch am automatischen Testsystem des Headless-Clients, das es erm\u00f6glicht, die Lande-Splines f\u00fcr Sperrgebiete als Teil des Ablaufs automatisch zu testen.\nGrafiken\nDas Grafikteam konzentrierte sich letzten Monat haupts\u00e4chlich auf den Gen12-Renderer, wobei die Zeit speziell dem Konvertierungsprozess gewidmet wurde, damit der alte Renderer-Code so schnell wie m\u00f6glich veraltet ist. Zurzeit werden verschiedene Systeme konvertiert, darunter Gaswolken-Rendering, Schattenmaskierung und Runtime Environment Probes. Verbesserungen wurden auch an der Rendering-API vorgenommen, um einfacheren und robusteren Clientcode zu erm\u00f6glichen, der weniger anf\u00e4llig f\u00fcr menschliche Fehler ist. Die Arbeit am Vulkan-Backend machte ebenfalls gute Fortschritte. Die Shader wurden ges\u00e4ubert, um alle unn\u00f6tige Abh\u00e4ngigkeit von der CPU hochgeladenen Daten zu entfernen; moderne GPU-Leistung bedeutet, dass es wichtiger ist, die CPU-Arbeit im Renderer und Treiber zu sparen, als ein paar winzige Anweisungen auf der GPU.\nDie Arbeit an den organischen Shadern wurde ebenfalls fortgesetzt, um eine engere Integration mit den Planeten zu erreichen, damit die K\u00fcnstler in der Lage sind, Assets in einer Vielzahl von Biomen zu nutzen und sie automatisch in ihre Umgebung zu integrieren.\nLevel Entwurf\nDas Leveldesign-Team arbeitete weiter an den neuen Innenr\u00e4umen der Rastst\u00e4tten, um Platz f\u00fcr zuk\u00fcnftige Erweiterungen innerhalb jedes Layouts zu schaffen. Orison macht gute Fortschritte und ist k\u00fcrzlich von Whitebox zu Greybox \u00fcbergegangen.\nBeleuchtung\nLetzten Monat hat das Beleuchtungsteam dem kommenden Frachtdeckmodul den letzten Schliff gegeben. Dies beinhaltete die Beleuchtung der inneren Bodenfl\u00e4che, begleitende Ladenlokale und neue \u00e4u\u00dfere Zusatzmodule, um sicherzustellen, dass sie sich optisch mit dem Rest der Station integrieren.\nDas Beleuchtungsteam begann auch mit den Vorarbeiten an Orison. In dieser fr\u00fchen Phase besteht die Aufgabe des Teams darin, sicherzustellen, dass der Raum die technischen Anforderungen f\u00fcr eine ideale Platzierung der Cubemaps erf\u00fcllt und Leistungsprobleme im weiteren Verlauf vermieden werden. Da die Beleuchtung eines der renderintensivsten Elemente des Frames ist, ist es wichtig, dass die Locations von Anfang an eingerichtet werden, um m\u00f6gliche Probleme zu vermeiden.\nDie F&E-Arbeiten zur Verbesserung der NPC- und Charakter-Beleuchtung in den Kommunikationsaufrufen sind noch nicht abgeschlossen. Es werden neue Techniken entwickelt, um einen Charakter mit einem dynamischen Beleuchtungs-Rig zu versehen, das die Beleuchtung der Umgebung ber\u00fccksichtigt und sie direkt auf das Gesicht des Charakters projiziert. Oft kann es aus Performance- oder praktischen Gr\u00fcnden nicht immer eine Lichtquelle geben, die einen Charakter in allen Winkeln und Situationen perfekt ausleuchtet. Diese neue Technologie hat das Potenzial, eine filmischere Beleuchtung der NSC-Interaktionen zu erm\u00f6glichen, unabh\u00e4ngig von der Umgebung.\n\n\n\nErz\u00e4hlung\nDas Narrative Team hat eine Welle von neuen \u00dcberlieferungen auf die RSI-Website gebracht. An der Imperator-Wahlfront wurde ein neues Interview mit der Kandidatin Mira Ngo in der Finanznachrichtensendung Kaizen ausgestrahlt und Dutzende neuer Galactapedia-Artikel wurden hinzugef\u00fcgt, darunter einer \u00fcber den ber\u00fchmten Phiyi-Turm). auf Charon III. Das Team veranstaltete auch einen Vortrag f\u00fcr neue Mitarbeiter, um ihnen ein solides Grundverst\u00e4ndnis der bisherigen Geschichte zu vermitteln.\nAu\u00dferdem unterst\u00fctzten sie weiterhin die fortlaufende Entwicklung von Orison, wobei mit fortschreitender Arbeit weitere Detailebenen hinzugef\u00fcgt wurden. F\u00fcr Alpha 3.11 wurden neue Missionsvertragstexte, Tagebucheintr\u00e4ge und Gegenstandsnamen und -beschreibungen an das Design \u00fcbergeben, zusammen mit Aufzeichnungen \u00fcber ein paar erweiterte Gesetze.\nDa der Barkeeper in letzter Zeit so viele Verbesserungen erhalten hat, hat sich das Team Gedanken \u00fcber m\u00f6gliche Verbesserungen gemacht, die hoffentlich in den kommenden Versionen ihren Weg zu anderen Ladenbesitzern und Verk\u00e4ufern finden werden.\nEs wurden auch weitere Anstrengungen unternommen, um die im Bericht des letzten Monats erw\u00e4hnte Zeitachse f\u00fcr die Erz\u00e4hlung weiter zu konkretisieren, einschlie\u00dflich der Pl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr erweiterte Missionsinhalte f\u00fcr zuk\u00fcnftige Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen. Schlie\u00dflich wurde auch die letzte Runde von Bugs angesprochen, die nach der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von 3.10 \u00fcber den Issue Council ihren Weg ins Team gefunden haben.\nSpieler-Beziehungen\nDie Spielerbeziehungen verbrachten die meiste Zeit des Monats mit der Unterst\u00fctzung und Untersuchung von Problemen des Alpha 3.9- und 3.10-Verm\u00e4chtnisses, einschlie\u00dflich der Isolierung, Identifizierung und Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Teams, um eine Vielzahl von Persistenzfehlern zu beheben. Dies f\u00fchrte dazu, dass 93.000 Schiffe auf Spieler-Accounts zur\u00fcckgegeben wurden. Die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr diese Arbeit wird das ganze Jahr \u00fcber fortgesetzt.\nRequisiten\nDie Arbeiten an den Requisiten f\u00fcr das Frachtdeck wurden fortgesetzt und die Konsolen und Materialarbeiten f\u00fcr verschiedene schwere Maschinen abgeschlossen. Ein Pass f\u00fcr die gr\u00f6\u00dferen Frachtcontainer wurde fertiggestellt, wodurch mehr Branding hinzugef\u00fcgt und ein weniger anspruchsvolles Hintergrund-Dressing-Set f\u00fcr das Umweltteam geschaffen wurde. Ein neues Set von Bildschirmen wurde erstellt, um die Umwandlung in Building Block Fahrstuhl-Bildschirme zu unterst\u00fctzen, die die alten manuellen Kn\u00f6pfe ersetzen werden.\nAu\u00dferdem wurde ein Set mit neuen fl\u00fcchtigen Frachtg\u00fctern eingef\u00fchrt. Jeder der drei Typen ben\u00f6tigt einzigartige Grafiken, um das Gameplay zu verst\u00e4rken, sowie Frachtk\u00e4fig-Assets, die helfen, sie in ihre Umgebung einzuf\u00fcgen. Die Requisiten unterst\u00fctzten auch die Arbeit an den neuen Push\/Pull-Features, die vom Actor Feature Team entwickelt wurden und die den Umbau und die technische Einrichtung einiger existierender Trolley-Requisiten beinhalteten.\n\n\n\nQA\nQA konzentrierte sich auf zahlreiche QATRs, einschlie\u00dflich einer protokollarischen \u00c4nderungsanfrage f\u00fcr den Kopf, die sich auf die Art und Weise auswirkte, wie KI prozedural generiert wurden und das Team dazu verpflichtete, alle NPCs im Spiel zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen. Ein Animations-Loader-QATR bedeutete, dass sie in jeden Bereich und mehrere Editorebenen laden mussten, um sicherzustellen, dass Objekte mit beweglichen Teilen wie zuvor funktionieren. Ein SOCS-Update-QATR bedeutete, dass das Team in alle Bereiche laden musste, um sicherzustellen, dass nichts kaputt war und es keine Leistungseinbr\u00fcche gab.\nAu\u00dferdem erstellten sie weiterhin Testkarten f\u00fcr das Locations Team, um mehr \u00fcber die Setups zu erfahren und die verwendeten Systeme weiter zu testen. Das Tools-Team wurde auch bei den Tests von DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore und dem Sandbox-Editor unterst\u00fctzt.\nTurbulentes\nTurbulent's Game Services Team hat eine neue Iteration des CigTrace-Visualizers geliefert, der es den Spielleitern erm\u00f6glicht, die Bewegungen der Spieler f\u00fcr bestimmte Zeitr\u00e4ume einfach zu visualisieren und zu vergleichen. Eine vollst\u00e4ndige \u00dcberarbeitung der Art und Weise, wie die Benachrichtigungen im Spiel verwaltet werden, ist derzeit in Arbeit. Der Benachrichtigungsdienst hat seinen ersten Meilenstein erreicht, der es anderen Teams erm\u00f6glicht, neue Benachrichtigungsprozesse zu integrieren.\nBetr\u00e4chtliche Anstrengungen wurden in den Aufbau einer neuen Backend-Architektur investiert, um eine hohe Gleichzeitigkeit der Spieler auf den Spielservern zu erm\u00f6glichen. Das Team hat die ersten Schritte eingeleitet, um weitere Entwickler in das Projekt einsteigen zu lassen. Das Webplattform-Team von Turbulent's unterst\u00fctzte auch die j\u00fcngsten Initiativen f\u00fcr die Seiten Greycat ROC und Esperia Talon.\n\n\nBenutzeroberfl\u00e4che (UI)\nDie meisten 'visuellen' Teams haben eingebettete UI-K\u00fcnstler, die alle an einer Vielzahl von kommenden Features gearbeitet haben. F\u00fcr das Actor Feature Team haben die K\u00fcnstler das Personal Inner Though System und das externe Inventar aufpoliert, die beide im PU und SQ42 zum Einsatz kommen werden. F\u00fcr das Fahrzeug-Feature-Team wurden neue Konzepte f\u00fcr Holo-Technologie entwickelt, w\u00e4hrend f\u00fcr das Umwelt-Team Werbung und Branding f\u00fcr das Frachtdeck erstellt wurden.\nWas die Features betrifft, so hat das UI-Team neue Designs f\u00fcr die \u00fcberarbeitete Starmap erstellt: \"Auch wenn es in n\u00e4chster Zeit nicht zu erwarten ist, wissen wir, dass es sich um ein St\u00fcck Kernfunktionalit\u00e4t handelt, die ihr alle regelm\u00e4\u00dfig benutzt, deshalb wollen wir das Erlebnis, dies zu tun, verbessern. - Das UI-Team\nSie begannen sich auch die verschiedenen Schriftarten anzusehen, die im Spiel verwendet werden, mit dem Ziel, sie zu vereinheitlichen und zu aktualisieren.\nDas UI-Tech-Team arbeitete an der 'Canvas-Slicing'-Technik, die anderen Teams mehr Freiheit geben wird, 2D-UI zu 3D-R\u00e4umen hinzuzuf\u00fcgen (\u00fcber Building Blocks). Sie begannen auch, sich mit dem Refactoring des Farbsystems zu befassen. Das Ziel ist es, den Entwicklern zu helfen, indem man es einfacher macht, die Farben \u00fcber verschiedene Teile der UI mit Hilfe eines Stylesheets anzupassen, anstatt die RGB-Werte in jedem Element anzupassen. Es wird auch erlauben, Vektorgradienten in der UI zu verwenden.\nVFX\nLetzten Monat machte das VFX-Team Fortschritte bei den Raffinerie-Lokalisierungseffekten, einschlie\u00dflich Verbesserungen an dem geschmolzenen Metall, das aus gro\u00dfen Beh\u00e4ltern im Hintergrund flie\u00dft, die letzten Monat in der Vorproduktion waren. Au\u00dferdem haben sie Verbesserungen an den Gro\u00dfschiffen vorgenommen, insbesondere an der Art und Weise, wie sich der allm\u00e4hliche Schaden am Rumpf ablesen l\u00e4sst.\nDie Arbeit an dem Prototyp zur Ausbreitung der Brandgefahr wurde fortgesetzt, diesmal konzentrierte man sich auf die Vernetzung, um sicherzustellen, dass der Client und der Server angemessen synchronisiert werden. Es wurden weitere Konzepte f\u00fcr Schilde entwickelt, einschlie\u00dflich der visuellen Anzeige von Einschl\u00e4gen, um den Spielern die Gesundheit des Schildes zu zeigen, und es wurden Verbesserungen am Quantenreise-VFX vorgenommen.\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...","zh_CN":"This month\u2019s report gives us a glimpse into the work done for the Star Citizen Persistent Universe throughout August. Although most teams are still very much working from home, significant progress was made in several areas, including upcoming weapons, the backend, and UI tech. Read on for all last month\u2019s work and a peek into the features coming in Alpha 3.11 and beyond.\nAI (Combat)\nFor human combat, work on realistic firing continued, including the implementation of physical ammo boxes and ammo refill behaviors. They also added functionality to swap weapons so NPCs no longer need to execute the unequip\/equip flow to transition from one to another. This also empowers the animators to create smooth transitions when swapping weapons.\nThe team is currently creating comprehensive documentation to inform realistic combat, such as how character skills and traits influence combat behaviors and how emergent synergy between characters can create a more realistic and flowing combat experience.\nAI (Ships)\nThe Ship AI Team developed a new version of the accuracy system that relates the skill of an AI character (as set by the designers) to its proficiency when using weapons. Previously, when aiming, an AI gunner would alternate between two states, \u2018hit\u2019 and \u2018miss\u2019, which led to a poor hit rate regardless of AI ability or target location. Now, the skill determines how rapidly the gunner\u2019s aim moves to a location where a hit is more likely. Aiming error is a dynamic variable that changes depending on how fast the target moves relative to the shooter. For example, if a player is almost stationary, the AI will shoot more consistently, forcing players to perform defensive maneuvers. This system applies to all AI, including all varieties of turrets and FPS combat. Furthermore, ship and turret AI can now use charged weapons correctly providing their fire actions permit it, such as the Idris\u2019 rail gun.\nAI (Social)\nFor social AI, they created documentation and examples to allow designers to replicate the bartender functionalities in multiple vendors. This allows them to quickly populate the world with an initial version of interactive characters capable of selling different types of goods.\nMultiple fixes for the released bartender scenarios and general PU were also made. They still have several \u2018standing on a chair\u2019 bugs to rectify, but iteration has revealed several edge cases on how various systems interact, including networking, streaming, the actor state machine, usables, and navigation.\nAI (General)\nFor general AI work, the team added pause and resume functionality to the movement system. Now, patrol paths can request to wait in a specific location while executing logic. They can also restart the movement at any given time if conditions are met.\nThe look component code was also rectified to correctly use the target location (not just direction) to enable correct eye convergence, and bugs were identified and fixed in the real digital acting functionality. For Subsumption, the team implemented a generic way to create a \u2018C++ enum\u2019 (essentially variables with specific values).\nAnimation\nAnimation spent the month working on object and grenade throwing, knockdowns and knockbacks, and several new weapons. They also further developed AI interaction with seats in capital ships, the bartender, ship inspections, and progressed with their work on NPC ammo retrieval. They also continued creating female player faces and emotes.\nArt (Environment)\nEnvironment Art spent the month utilizing the tech delivered last month to get Pyro VI to the \u2018whitebox complete\u2019 stage. They\u2019re currently placing ground textures, objects, and scattering logic using the paintbrush system. Once the brushes\/biomes are finalized, a final painting pass is done to ensure meaningful distribution and a good global read.\nPyro V\u2019s moons also entered into production. \u201cThis is great timing for the team, as it lets all the artists grab one moon and go crazy with the new tools. They have a clear idea of how to use the new tech, but this is also a good opportunity to see how the artists go about making a new planet from scratch and use slightly different workflows.\u201d \u2013 The Environment Art Team\nOne of the hopes for this tech is that, along with better visuals, new planets will be created much more quickly than previously possible.\nStanton\u2019s planets and moons are currently being updated with the latest tech too, though this is predominately for technical reasons. Progress was also made on Crusader, with R&D underway into flow maps to bring the gas giant to life.\nArt (Ships)\nIn the US, the Ship Team continued working through the final art stage of the Crusader Mercury, with some areas heading into the flight-ready phase, including damage geometry. This involves creating a second UV set to paint the damage onto as the ship takes damage. Additional detail is being applied to the interior rooms and a functional dashboard with articulating buttons is in development. This will include independent power control for various systems, weapon controls, and more. Each system is planned to have built-in feedback to allow players to see the state of each system at a glance and identify if damage is preventing a system from working.\nThe UK-based team continued their work on the Crusader Hercules, with focus on the habitation areas, taking them to the final art stage. The lift and the cargo hold also made progress, and the corridor connecting to the bridge was completed, including suit lockers, escape pods, and several component bays. The Origin 100i series is now art-complete and has been handed off to downstream teams, while the recently unveiled Esperia Talon is in the final art stage and receiving a detail pass.\nArt (Weapons)\nWork continued on the Behring BR2 shotgun, which received its final game-ready setup and LOD pass. The Behring GP-33 grenade launcher received an additional pass to adjust some of the rig and ammunition setup too. The Behring mk4 frag grenade was updated to support the new throw feature and gained a visual indicator to show the \u2018cooking\u2019 time before it\u2019s thrown. Greybox work continued on automatic defense turrets and the team looked into missile and missile-rack metrics, ensuring the props work with all missile variants.\nAudio\nEarly in the month, the team tackled the audio for the Behring BR2 shotgun, which led to the significant challenge of finding the right balance between sci-fi and traditional ballistic sounds. They also began composing the music, ambiances, and walla for the upcoming cargo and refinery decks, including the affiliated shops.\n\u201cWalla is essentially the sound of crowds \u2013 that sort of \u2018rabble rabble\u2019 that you might be familiar with. In the cargo deck, there are a bunch of NPCs and walla helps give the area a lot of life and the feeling of business.\u201d \u2013 The Audio Team\nFor music, they\u2019re currently improving the granularity and structure of the system to improve the transition between music based on what\u2019s happening from a gameplay context.\nAugust saw a refactor to the footsteps system to improve the audio on different surfaces, making it more responsive to player movement. They worked on the Origin 100 series, looking at sound effects for moving parts and setting up ambiances and thrusters. The coming month will see them move onto the deathmask and internal damage. Support was also given to the ongoing work on throwing, which involved updated grenade sound effects.\nThe team is currently in the process of adding additional audio feedback when player ships take damage. For example, when a ship loses a wing, thruster, or weapons, players will hear it happening.\nIn technical sound design, they evaluated the mix levels across the game and supported the Actor Team with the \u2018force reactions\u2019 feature to enable correct audio when players fall and hit different surface types.\nAs mentioned last month, a new version of Wwise was implemented to give the sound designers more tools and freedom. It could also improve sound stability and prevent a few ongoing audio-related memory issues, meaning that players shouldn\u2019t lose sound in-game. Several bugs in the FOIP & VOIP systems were fixed too.\nBackend Services\nLast month, changes and fixes were made to the wallet service as it was running \u2018hot\u2019 under load, with the entitlement processor updated to support the upcoming super cache. Most of the code for the super cache is finalized, though some reliability and optimization work remains before it can be tested and tuned. The meshed loadout service also went through load testing and is expected to be completed on schedule.\nA lot of low-level networking code work was finalized, including network system startup and shutdown, and primary work on the meshed variable service began. This includes the use of direct connections rather than global routing through the diffusion router, which is currently in the test and tuning phase.\nCharacters\nAugust saw the Character Team focusing on several helmets, subscriber items, and a brand-new armor set. A number of fun items were worked on, including a series of seasonal assets. New uniforms were also designed and progress was made on NPC clothing, including outfits for Orison.\nThe concept artists worked on material variants for upcoming assets, while the Tech Team prepared and rigged assets due for release in Alpha 3.11. Bugs were fixed and support was given for several upcoming events too.\nCommunity\nThe Community Team kicked off the month with the \u201cWhere in the \u2018Verse is Pico?\u201d contest, which asked the community to share screenshots of their adventures with microTech\u2019s diminutive mascot. They also gave a detailed look into how development progress will be shared in the future via the Star Citizen & Squadron 42 Roadmap Update.\nThis month\u2019s Spectrum AMA featured members of the Environment Art Team answering community questions on Pyro, planet tech, and many other topics within their remit.\nIn the spirit of the Foundation Festival, the top guides in each area of expertise received their prizes, the winners of the \u201cBest Crew in the \u2018Verse\u201d contest were chosen, and August\u2019s Infographic detailed the timeline of Humanity\u2019s ascension to the stars.\nFinally for the Community Team, the top-voted questions about the recently unveiled Esperia Talon were answered in their latest ship Q&A.\n\nEngineering (Physics)\nIn August, the Engineering Team added support for SDF-based local physics grids and SDF sets, interior grid markup for SDFs in the resource compiler, and g-force calculation for all actor entities. They also added a separate g-force collision calculation to the actor entity, new visualization modes to help development, and \u2018inspect\u2019 and \u2018modify\u2019 properties of static and rigid entities. The option to export bit-voxel geometry via the mesh setup and save it inside CGF was added too.\nOptimization-wise, they worked on multi-threaded RC bit-voxel baking, which saves a few hundred bytes on every CPhysicalEntity instance and improves cache locality by reordering members. They also saved four bytes per physical-placeholder instance, disabled debug validation in the final release, moved large geometry into a dedicated bucket during grid population, improved bit-voxel tree-box calculation by using blocks instead of individual voxels, and optimized tree traversals in grid checks\nEngineering (Systems)\nThe Systems Team added an API to the crash handler that allows the dumping of cigprofile data. This will help them analyze what the system was doing shortly before running into a deadlock and watch dog time out and log memory usage at the time of the crash.\nDeep analysis was done to resolve the disparity between tracked and system-reported memory use. Several improvements were made on both Windows and Linux to correctly track data moving forward, including low level allocator reserved pages and third-party allocations. They continued looking into the SIMD and memory layout code for zone partitions, implemented faster execution for scoped FPE enable and disable by eliminating linear search through all registered threads, and fixed several issues with ISPC integration. They also reduced the memory use of P4K system and changed the MemoryAddressRange to use CIG API instead of native OS API for memory tracking.\nEngineering (Rendering)\nWork on the Gen12 renderer continued, with the team adding support for instancing and a \u2018keep alive\u2019 list so that GPUDevice objects are kept active until the end of a frame. Several refactors and optimizations were made too.\nCleanup in the shader system and renderer for thread safety continued, as did G12 brush rendering. They also started to look into DX11.1 API support (Windows 8.1 and up) for binding CBs using offsets for intermediate performance improvements until Vulkan ships. They also added support for custom texture views when using pass resources.\nVolumetric fog to PassResource was ported to prevent the shader parser from stripping global symbols. Some severe Alpha 3.10 GPU memory leaks were fixed too.\nFor planet atmosphere unified raymarching, the team established a general atmosphere context to avoid accessing resources globally. This make it easier and safer to reuse shared code. All related shader code was refactored too. For temporal reprojection, they implemented options for: neighborhood clipping, refining color bbox using neighborhood variance, compression (based on scene luminance), and color space conversion of color data for tighter bbox to reduce errors introduce by clipping and clamping. The depth dilation code was futher developed too.\nR&D into volumetric clouds continued and detailed plans for experiments and next steps were drafted. The initial set up for the volumetric cloud render environment was completed, code was restructured to allow it to be shared between planet atmosphere and volumetric cloud shaders, and the initial pass and injection of cloud raymarch results into the unified atmosphere raymarcher was implemented. The team made performance improvements to the terrain displacement mapping and optimized the shader parser to improve turnaround times when editing shader code.\nFinally, Engineering implemented fast bicubic b-spline and Catmull Rom spline interpolation variants for two-to-four channel texture data, further bi-cubic spline evaluation optimizations, made a planet terrain shadow pass, and fixed time precision issue in cloud animation.\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe beginning of the month saw Gameplay Features focusing on fixing critical bugs and polishing features for the Alpha 3.10.1 patch release. Once complete, they finished converting the front-end screens of the Persistent Universe from Flash to Building Blocks. They\u2019re now focusing on the first art pass, with plans to have secondary and tertiary passes in the future.\nThe team also looked into the cargo hauling profession. Work is being done to see it in a much broader sense, with aspirations to expanding the system to make it more interactive and exhilarating.\n\u201cCargo haulers will ultimately need to monitor their cargo, checking to make sure it\u2019s stable and in good condition while they travel. Beginner haulers will need to check things like temperature while hauling food, whereas experienced haulers may need to check the stability of volatile shipments. We feel the new design will be a great update for the profession and look forward to seeing the reactions from citizens when it comes online!\u201d \u2013 The Gameplay Features Team\nAlongside this work, the team is working on a new reputation system. Citizens will soon have a reputation score that changes as they complete missions or tasks around the universe. The system will allow players to earn perks through reputation gains and will tie into player perks. It will also add support for NPC organizations and their rankings. The team also created a new service to track reputation so that it won\u2019t roll back when they push a new build and wipe the databases.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nThe Vehicle Feature Team spent considerable time throughout August working on much-needed usability features for vehicles, including showing which hangar a player\u2019s ship is in after it\u2019s spawned from an ASOP terminal. For a future release, they\u2019re working on a feature to highlight a ship\u2019s available entrances too, such as ladders, doors, and elevators.\nWork on docking continues. Various aspects of the UI were iterated on to adequately detail docking progress and to give suitable guidance to a docking port regardless of its type or orientation. Different IFCS control modes are also being investigated to let players control the ship relative to a port to make docking easier.\nThe team also worked on the headless client automated testing system that enables restricted area landing splines to be tested automatically as part of the flow.\nGraphics\nThe Graphics Team predominantly focused on the Gen12 renderer last month, with time dedicated spcifically to the conversion process so that the old renderer code can be deprecated as quickly as possible. Various systems are currently being converted, including gas cloud rendering, shadow masking, and run-time environment probes. Improvements were also made to the rendering API to allow simpler and more robust client code that\u2019s less prone to human error. Work on the Vulkan backend made good progress too. The shaders were cleaned up to remove all unnecessary reliance on CPU uploaded data; modern GPU performance means it\u2019s more important to save the CPU work in the renderer and driver than a few tiny instructions on the GPU.\nWork on the organic shader continued too, bringing tighter integration with the planets to enable the artists to use assets in a variety of biomes and have them automatically integrate into their surroundings.\nLevel Design\nThe Level Design Team continued to work on the new Rest Stop interiors, ensuring space for future expansions within each layout. Orison is progressing well and recently transitioned from whitebox to greybox.\nLighting\nLast month, the Lighting Team added the final touches to the upcoming cargo deck module. This involved lighting the interior floor space, accompanying shop location, and new exterior add-on modules, ensuring they visually integrate with the rest of the station.\nThe Lighting Team also began preliminary work on Orison. In these early stages, the team\u2019s role is to ensure that the space can accommodate the technical requirements for ideal cubemap placement and prevent any performance issues further down the line. Since lighting is one of the most render-intensive elements of the frame, it\u2019s important that locations are set up from the beginning to avoid any potential issues.\nR&D work is still ongoing to improve NPC and character lighting in comms calls. New tech is being developed to spawn a dynamic lighting rig onto a character, which takes into account the surrounding environment lighting and re-projects it directly onto the character\u2019s face. Often due to performance or practical reasons, there can\u2019t always be a light source casting perfectly onto a character in all angles and situations. This new tech has the potential to allow for more cinematic lighting on NPC interactions, irrelevant of the environment.\n\n\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative Team delivered a wave of new lore to the RSI website. On the Imperator election front, a new interview with candidate Mira Ngo aired on financial news show Kaizen and dozens of new Galactapedia articles were added, including one on the famed Phiyi Tower). on Charon III. The team also hosted a talk for new employees to give them a solid foundational understanding of the story so far.\nThey also continued to support the ongoing development of Orison, with additional layers of detail being added as work progresses. For Alpha 3.11, new mission contract text, journal entries, and item names and descriptions were handed off to design, along with writeups on a few expanded laws.\nWith the bartender having received so many recent improvements, the team looked at possible improvements that will hopefully make their way to other shopkeepers and vendors in upcoming releases.\nEffort was also spent further fleshing out the narrative timeline mentioned in last month\u2019s report, including plans for expanded mission content for future releases. Finally, the latest round of bugs that made their way to the team via the Issue Council after the release of 3.10 were addressed.\nPlayer Relations\nPlayer Relations spent most of the month supporting and investigating legacy Alpha 3.9 and 3.10 issues, including isolating, identifying, and working with other teams to resolve a variety of persistence bugs. This resulted in 93,000 ships being returned to player accounts. Support for this work will continue throughout the year.\nProps\nWork continued on the cargo deck props, with consoles and material work completed for various heavy machinery. A pass was completed on the larger cargo containers, adding more branding and creating a less-demanding background dressing set for the Environment Team. A new set of screens was created to support the conversion to Building Block elevator screens, which will replace the old manual buttons.\nA set of new volatile cargo assets was kicked off too. Each of the three types requires unique visuals to reinforce their gameplay along with cargo cage assets to help bed them into their surroundings. Props also supported the new push\/pull feature work being developed by the Actor Feature Team, which involved the conversion and technical setup of some existing trolley props.\n\n\n\nQA\nQA focused on numerous QATRs, including a proto head change request that affected how AI were procedurally generated and required the team to check all NPCs in the game. An animation loader QATR meant they had to load into every area and multiple editor levels to ensure objects with moving parts worked as they did before. A SOCS update QATR required the team to load into all the areas to ensure nothing was broken and there were no performance drops.\nThey also continued to create test maps for the Locations Team to learn about the setups and further test the systems used. The Tools Team were also supported with the testing of DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore, and the sandbox editor.\nTurbulent\nTurbulent\u2019s Game Services Team delivered a new iteration of the CigTrace visualizer that enables game masters to easily visualize and compare player movement for given periods. A full rework of how in-game notifications are managed is currently in progress. The notification service has reached its first milestone, which enables other teams to start integrating new notification processes.\nSignificant effort was invested in building a new backend architecture to facilitate high player concurrency on game servers. The team has been setting up the first steps to enable the onboarding of more developers onto the project. Turbulent\u2019s Web Platform Team also supported the recent initiatives for the Greycat ROC and Esperia Talon pages.\n\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nMost \u2018visual\u2019 teams have embedded UI artists, all of who have been working on a variety of upcoming features. For the Actor Feature Team, the artists polished the Personal Inner Though system and external inventory, both of which will be used in the PU and SQ42. New concepts for holo-tech were devised for the Vehicle Feature Team, while adverts and branding for the cargo deck were created for the Environment Team.\nFeature-wise, the UI Team created new designs for the reworked starmap.\u201cWhile it shouldn\u2019t be expected any time soon, we know that it\u2019s a piece of core functionality that you all use regularly, so we want to improve the experience of doing so.\u201d \u2013 The UI Team\nThey also began looking at the various fonts used throughout the game with the goal of unifying and updating them.\nThe UI Tech Team worked on \u2018canvas-slicing\u2019 tech, which will give other teams more freedom to add 2D UI to 3D spaces (via Building Blocks). They also began looking into refactoring the color system. The aim is to aid developers by making it easier to adjust colors across various parts of the UI using a stylesheet rather than adjusting RGB values in each element. It will also allow vector gradients to be used in UI.\nVFX\nLast month, the VFX Team progressed with the refinery location effects, including improvements to the molten metal pouring from large containers in the background, which were in pre-production last month. They also made capital ship improvements, specifically the way gradual damage reads across the hull.\nWork continued on the fire hazard propagation prototype, this time focusing on networking to make sure it adequately syncs between the client and server. Further concepts were created for shields, including the visual read of impacts to show players the health of the shield, and improvements were made to quantum travel VFX.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":10,"comment_count":1,"created_at":"2020-09-02T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"5 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 20:53:35","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":17741,"next_id":17745}}