{"data":{"id":17813,"title":"Star Citizen Monthly Report: September 2020","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/17813-Star-Citizen-Monthly-Report-September-2020","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/17813","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/17813","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly 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release of Alpha 3.11 is fast approaching, and with it comes a whole host of new features to Star Citizen. Many of these new additions received their final tweaks and polishes throughout September, which you can get a sneak peek of in this month\u2019s report. It wasn\u2019t all Alpha 3.11 either, with great progress made on some significant updates scheduled for this winter\u2019s patch and beyond. Expect interesting info on refinery decks, upcoming events, new ships, and of course, the Pyro system.\nAI (Character Combat)\nCharacter Combat kick off the report with their ongoing work on accurate ammunition handling. As NPCs won\u2019t have infinite ammo, they will need to account for resources and decide when to attempt to procure more. When complete, should NPCs not have an appropriate melee weapon, they may decide that surrender is the best option. The team prepared several animation options and embedding \u2018surrender\u2019 in various behaviors. They also added improved transitions when exiting and staying in cover under certain conditions. A handful of visual perception parameters and the debug draw were tweaked to allow the designers to better iterate on the values that the AI use to perceive and understand enemies from different distances (and whether the character is in the primary or secondary field-of-view).\nAI (General)\nLast month, the AI Team fixed more issues with characters standing on top of usables, a lot of which were related to the object-container failing to restore characters to the right state. The team would like to share insight into this issue and some of the stability improvements currently in development.\n\u201cThe visual bug was always caused by NPCs being attached to usables that would stream out and then stream back in when a player approached the area. In one case, the internal event sent to the player state-machine to request the re-attachment would be lost and never processed. In the second case, the character would stream in after the usable and several other characters. Those characters would then execute their regular behaviors and could \u2018steal\u2019 the usable from the non-streamed character, causing the usable to fail to attach once they were eventually streamed back in. We want to share this with our community to give you an insight into the necessity of catching these specific situations and making the systems that AI rely on as strong as possible.\u201d \u2013 The AI Team\nThe long-term plan is to make extensive use of services to populate the environment and simulate areas when players are not around. This means a lot of these issues will become irrelevant due to the systems being used in slightly different ways.\nThe team was also busy with Alpha 3.11 bug fixes and performance optimization.\nAI (Ships)\nSeptember saw the Ship AI Team focus their attention on weapons, missile management, and a further pass on capital ship combat behavior. The latter involved making AI gunners aware of the damage composition of their available weapon groups. For example, if a gunner has a choice between energy- or physical-damage weapons, they will first attempt to lower their opponent\u2019s shields using the energy weapon. Then, when the health status falls below a certain threshold (dictated by the gunner\u2019s \u2018fire discipline\u2019 skill) they will switch to physical damage to deliver the killing blow.\n\nThey added more data to allow AI gunners to respect a cooldown before arming and launching missiles. They also ensured that, when several AI ships spawn at the same time, they don\u2019t have the same cooldown time to prevent the target being subject to a barrage of missiles. A supplementary check was added to ensure that a ship recently hit by a missile won\u2019t be targeted again for a set period of time (again, depending on the fire discipline of the shooter).\nAnother new feature being worked on is the ability for NPCs to intercept missiles. As a first step, torpedoes and missiles were added to AI perception so that they are seen as potential targets. They then changed missile hostility so all missiles that target AI ships are considered hostile; this ensures turret gunners only shoot down missiles that are a threat to friendlies. Manned turret priorities were also changed, so small and medium turrets prioritize shooting down incoming torpedoes while heavy turrets ignore them as they\u2019re generally too large and slow to be effective. Weapon size is also a factor, with small turrets prioritizing smaller targets and heavy turrets more dangerous ones.\n\nThe team also worked on the \u2018InSeatWeaponRange Tactical Target Query,\u2019 which checks if a turret gunner or ship could potentially fire at a target, and added an optimal engage-range task that calculates the range ships should attempt to stay at when engaging a particular target. The first pass of the subsumption behaviour for capital ships was implemented too, which varies based on whether a ship has a front gun and the type of target.\nAnimation\nThe Animation Team spent the majority of the month on SQ42-related tasks, but worked on a number of comms calls for various pilots specifically for the PU.\nArt (Environment)\nLast month, the Modular Environment Team finalized their work on the new cargo decks coming in Alpha 3.11. They also began looking into the art requirements for ship-to-station docking, supported work for several upcoming events, and make progress on the refinery decks. They also experimented with gas clouds at Lagrange points and supported Design in implementing the new Rest Stop interiors.\nThe Landing Zone Team continued their ongoing development of Orison. The main critical path elements are now established, including shops, transit systems, and habs, with most moving from the whitebox to the greybox phase.\nSeptember saw the Organics Team continue production of the Pyro system, with focus on Pyro VI and the moons of Pyro V. Alongside this, they continued updating the Stanton system with the new planet brushes, which can be seen firsthand in Alpha 3.11. This is a prerequisite for the latest improvements to the organic shader and its biome accumulation feature, which is intended for release in Alpha 3.12.\nThe Environment Art Team continued production on all Pyro-related content. The moons in particular received most of the attention, being brought out of the whitebox stage and readied for feedback and polish. Pyro VI progressed well too, with the global look and various biomes of the planet defined.\nThe team are always reviewing the various aspects of their pipeline to see if quality can be increased or content optimized. This time, they decided to take a closer look at the ground textures that define the close-up surface of the planets and moons, replacing all existing materials with photogrammetry-based data. Similarly, a lot of geology assets were replaced with items that make use of the latest additions to the organics shader, such as more sophisticated blending and the displacement of texture detail. This brings both the ground and geology assets visually more in line with each other and improves overall quality.\nDue to recent updates to the planet painting tools, the team made all of Stanton\u2019s planets and moons fully compatible with the changes. However, this was less of a visual pass and more of a technical update.\nArt (Ships)\nIn the US, the Art and System Design teams made great progress on the Crusader Mercury, which is rapidly approaching the final art phase. It\u2019s expected to reach the release-prep stage in October.\n\nVehicle Tech Art completed their damage pass on the upcoming Origin 100 Series ships, which included solving an issue that prevented cosmetic items detaching with debris. The team also supported Engineering on the SDF shield, 3D VisAreas, and docking features.\nIn the UK, the Art Team continued to work on the Crusader Hercules. Last month saw the lift and hangar doors complete their final art pass and the habs make it to the art-complete stage.\nThe Esperia Talon is also close to art-complete; the final art pass was made (minus the landing gear) before it moved onto the damage setup and LODs.\nThe Aegis Gladius also received a little attention, with the team adding component access across the exterior.\nArt (Weapons)\nThe Weapons Art Team spent a portion of the month training new prop artists in Maya and the workflow for creating new weapons and attachments. Work also began a new set that includes scopes, barrel, and under-barrel attachments. The Behring FS-9 LMG began its first art pass, while the Gemini A03 sniper rifle entered the final art phase too.\nAudio\nThe Audio Team started the month cleaning up the music system by refactoring and organizing old files and optimizing code.\nAfter that, they revisited some old space-derelict ambiances and supported the Green Zone removal (including the ability to destroy the turrets protecting the space stations!).\nThey began work on the physics props refactor and improved some of the older props used by the \u2018object push\/pull\u2019 feature currently in development. Audio updates were also made for the UI-related features coming in Alpha 3.11, including the external inventory and front-end rework.\nCode-wise, the team completed work to enable the playing of audio on GPU particles and further developed the tools used by the sound designers.\nBackend Services\nLast month, the Backend Server Team focused on deploying, testing, and tuning the meshed Loadout Service and Meshed Variable Service. They moved the flow of all variable and loadout data away from trafficking through the diffusion routers to a more optimal and direct path. This isolates the traffic between specific services, meaning it cannot disrupt the flow of other information that moves through diffusion. They also fixed a number of outstanding issues from Alpha 3.10, including memory leaks, network connectivity issues, and performance bugs.\nCharacters\nIn September, work continued on an armor set due for completion in Q4 2020 that the team refer to as \u201cespecially challenging to implement\u201d due to changing geometry in the variants. Other tasks involved NPC clothing assets, mission-giver heads, and concepts for a utilitarian mining-focused armor.\n\u201cWe are particularly excited to finally be adding more gameplay armors to the PU, as Design will now be delivering \u2018armor design documents\u2019 to us at regular intervals. Among others, we have started concepting a series of bounty hunting and tracking-focused armors. You can expect to see these in 2021.\u201d -The Character Team\nFinally, they supported various upcoming releases and events, including IAE 2950 and the release of the Crusader Mercury.\nCommunity\nCommunity\u2019s September was dominated by Ship Showdown. Phase 1, which started at the end of August, tasked players with championing their favorite spacecraft or vehicle by submitting self-created ship art to the Community Hub or Twitter. We received hundreds of incredible submissions, with the ten most outstanding receiving a MISC Prospector.\nThe community\u2019s top 16 then faced each other in Phase 2 head-to-head tournament, which was ultimately won by the Anvil Carrack. The final four ships will receive in-game liveries and in-game shirts that will be revealed at the IAE later this year. A two-week Free Fly accompanied the second phase, during which all top 16 ships were available to everyone for free.\nThe Team also celebrated Talk Like a Pirate Day with the Fly Like a Pirate Screenshot Contest, which asked the community to show off their most piratical activities throughout the \u2018verse. Due to the inevitable cancellation of CitizenCon this year, the team kicked off the Cosplay Contest, with great prizes for the best submissions.\nCommunity worked with several development teams to put together the Alpha 3.10 Postmortem, where senior devs shared their high-level thoughts on what went well, what didn\u2019t, and what they learned for next time.\nThey also shared several posts regarding upcoming updates to the \u2018verse, many of which can be found in Alpha 3.11: Law System Updates, Rest Stop Armistice Restrictions Updates, and Missiles and Countermeasures Improvements.\nEngineering\nLast month\u2019s physics optimizations included improving the intersection routines for SDF baking and adding further culling to AABB tree traversal. The team added g-force calculation to all rigid entities and the ability to add the mass of rigids inside the grid host mass. They gave initial support to adaptive signed-distance-fields (SDF), added exterior shadow geometry (which enables boundary entities within the hosted zone in interior OCs), and now properly support all primitive physics types for interior grids. They also added external impulses to \u2018pe_status_dynamics\u2019 and created a grid without explicit geometry. Support was provided for multiple external accelerations too.\nFor the ongoing G12 renderer work, the team supported the optional execution of stages, added debug names to all constant buffers (and made it mandatory), and undertook custom material CB and layer-blend support. Legacy pipeline resets were removed from the begin\/end render pass to the locations of the legacy-Gen12 switch, which currently saves up to 2000 API calls.\nEngineering merged the deferred and deferred-display-mapped pipelines, implemented the TSAA stage, and promoted the following stages to \u2018stable:\u2019 Tonemapping, DepthOfField, MotionBlur, Optics, Colorgrading, OpticsExposure. They removed save\/load resource-binding code on the begin\/end render pass, saving around 500 API calls per-frame. Parameterized common depth functions were also added so that they don\u2019t access global constants, as was depth down-sampling.\nWork on the atmosphere, clouds, and unified raymarcher continued in earnest, which led to cloud data that now properly interacts with the atmospheric segment it injects into (via corrected luminance integration and transmittance evaluation). The team added support for the injection of (existing) spherical clouds into the unified atmospheric raymarcher, now using uniformly distributed sample locations when integrating over hemispheres. This significantly improves LUT integration results, removes several artifacts, and converges much quicker.\nA new atmospheric multi-scatter LUT was added that supports infinite scattering orders, while the current multi-scatter LUT was rebalanced due to excessive brightness. The team also refined soft-edge computation for spherical clouds to reduce aliasing and improved the visible sun-disc evaluation when computing sunlight. This evaluation is fully integrated into the wider atmospheric lighting system and impacts direct and indirect lighting. An imbalance of computed brightness between regular and injection passes was completed; now clouds appear with consistent brightness in both regular atmosphere and via unified raymarching. The team provided support for separate Rayleigh and Mie inscatter LUTs in the current atmospheric code path too, which fixes several false color artifacts. The new LUT parameterization better supports high atmospheres and, among other things, fixes the very prominent halo around the silhouette of a planet\u2019s dark side.\nThe team sped up and unified the optical depth pre-computations in the absorption layers of atmospheres. Among other things, this allows them to add an ozone layer to Earth-like planets, which will emphasize blue skies and enable correct shading during twilight. It also enables the physically plausible fine-tuning of atmospheres. They now also use solar irradiance throughout the evaluation of atmospheric lighting to give a much-improved evaluation of sun radiance for points outside of planetary atmospheres. This enables twilight casting, atmospheric scattering, and allows the sun\u2019s angular radius to project objects onto a planet\u2019s penumbra region.\nGeneral system work involved several fixes to ISPC integration (a special compiler that generates highly optimized SSE code for heavy duty jobs running on CPUs). The team implemented support for static stationary zone groups and concave geometries as vis areas and fixed the method they find vis areas and portals by name.\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nSeptember was a busy month for the US Gameplay Features Team, who focused on fixing bugs, completing feature work, and preparing for future initiatives.\nThe beginning of the month saw them complete the final pass on the updated PU front-end screens. While the ultimate goal is to completely redefine the entry experience, these changes will refine the whole process and provide a smoother transition from the starting screens to gameplay. Some of the changes were showcased in a recent Inside Star Citizen.\nThe team began redesigning the mission manager app, with the current focus on converting the app from Flash to Building Blocks. Once complete, the team will focus on updating functionality and making changes to the overall design.\nAlongside redesigns, the team continued to make progress on the new reputation system. Additional design work and functionality was added, with focus on individual player reputations.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nA major focus for Vehicle Features last month was docking, including fixing various issues with the Kruger snubs and RSI Constellation. While they still have to deal with several issues, such as spawning the ships together correctly, great progress was made. For example, testers can now properly get in and out of the snub while it\u2019s docked in the Constellation.\nThe first functioning version of station docking was also completed. Currently, testers request to dock, get assigned a docking port, and connect with it.\nThe team supported the ongoing mining UI refresh. Aspects of the ship flight HUD and mining UI all now work together seamlessly, and the UI utilizes the new building blocks technology.\nGraphics\nThe Graphics Team split their time last month between work on the new Gen12 renderer, general features, and bug fixing. Gen12 tasks included converting the game\u2019s post-effects manager, which handles all \u2018miscellaneous\u2019 effects such as blurred vision and blackouts. The Gen12 core infrastructure was further developed to be compatible with the configurable graphics pipelines and the constant shader buffers were further polished.\nThe remainder of the Graphics Team\u2019s time was spent on the render-to-texture system, with the hookup to the texture-streaming system now complete. This means they can now run-time-generate as many textures as they like and automatically load-balance the memory with the rest of the textures in-game. The organic shader work was also completed. Currently, the team are working on iridescent effects for some upcoming ships and armor.\nLevel Design\nThe Modular Level Design Team worked through tasks for the cargo and refinery decks. They also focused on general space station interiors to ensure a more focused experience, with further iterations planned for the future.\nThe Landing Zone Level Design Team continued to work on Orison; all the core elements are now in place bar a couple of shop layouts they\u2019re still iterating on.\nBoth teams completed the first version of new panels that, among other things, will be used to update the existing elevator buttons.\nLighting\nLast month, the Lighting Team predominately supported the upcoming Alpha 3.11 patch release, which involved polishing and finalized their work on the cargo deck locations. They also began investigating alternate lighting states for existing Rest Stops. To start with, they completed a look-dev pass on a potential low-power state, with plans to flesh it out across the entire set of Rest Stop modular rooms in the future. They\u2019re also planning to create a look for emergency lighting. These lighting states will eventually be integrated into gameplay systems, such as power, and provide the potential for more Rest Stop variations in general.\nThey also began supporting Orison, setting up a basic lighting pass for the whitebox layout. It\u2019s important, even at these early stages, for the Lighting Team to identify potentially problematic spots where lighting performance will be poor. This enables fixes and layout changes to be made with minimal knock-on work for other departments.\n\n\nAnother pass was done on Lorville, this time adding simple animations to the security tower spotlights during the night-time lighting setup. This, alongside other short animations in the new cargo decks, provides a test case for adding more animated elements to locations to help bring them to life.\nNarrative\nThroughout September, the Narrative Team worked on environment documents for upcoming locations. This involves outlining the tone, history, and flavor of the area and detailing the potential stores and NPCs that might be encountered in anticipation of kickoff meetings with Art and Design. The team also worked closely with Design in the UK and Austin to look at the features currently in development and plan out potential mission content to help highlight them. From there, they started to breakdown characters and potential lines. As Narrative began scripting, the Design Team created placeholder assets to test the lines in-game to allow them to refine any lines or dialogue events before they record with an actor.\nAs with each month, another new batch of items needed to be named and described. Whether working with the Character Team on weapons, props, armor, and clothing or the Vehicle Team on ship components, everything that can be viewed in a store or the equipment manager needs a dedicated description.\nThe team also worked with QA to task-up the latest batch of Narrative bugs reported to the Issue Council.\nOn the Dispatch front, the upcoming Imperator election progressed. The team\u2019s latest post featured the final debate between the last five candidates.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve seen their posters around the landing zones and heard their campaign ads, but make sure you read up on their latest positions before the polls go live this month. And don\u2019t forget to cast your vote!\u201d -The Narrative Team\nPlayer Relations\nThe Player Relations Team spent the month working to expand service to seven days a week and growing the team in both Austin and Wilmslow, filling several positions that will reduce the ticket response time, regardless of day. They also worked alongside the Evocati to prepare for the release of Alpha 3.11.\nProps\nThe Props Team spent part of September wrapping up support on the new cargo station assets. This includes the counter sets, shipping containers, and assets for the shop.\nThey were also kept busy supporting the new locomotion push\/pull trolley system. When implemented, players will be able to manipulate trolleys and other \u2018pushable\u2019 objects. Templates were put in place, which means they can now update existing assets incrementally to work with this new feature.\nQA\nLast month, Quality Assurance continued to focus on test requests and participated in weekly playtests. The majority of features worked on were behind the scenes, so a significant number of existing assets had to be tested to ensure nothing had changed.\nThey also tested turret and ship AI accuracy, which involved looking into the existing placements and AI behaviors via Arena Commander. QA also continued to support the Engine Team, with September\u2019s focus on getting to the bottom of several hard-to-reproduce crashes and memory leaks.\nLocations-wise, the team continued to work through various transit-system issues. The Tools Team continued to support the ongoing work on core tools, including DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore, and the sandbox editor.\nTech (Animation)\nAlongside training new additions to team, Tech Animation supported Social AI in creating and technically implementing various assets throughout the PU. There was a concentrated drive to finish up the in-house facial rig and tool suite to enable the continued creation of new heads. This precedes the wider push to overhaul the entire head creation pipeline, with the view to future proofing it for the next few years.\nThe ongoing initiative to create new tools to help implement animations with a graphical user interface continued.\n\u201cThe UI is looking great and we\u2019re currently writing the technical implementation that will drive the link into our current animation toolset.\u201d \u2013 The Tech Animation Team\nTech (Art)\nTech Art\u2019s September priorities included supporting the aforementioned Kruger\/Constellation docking, 3D VisAreas, testing the multi-grid SDF with Engineering, and wrapping up tasks on the Origin 100 Series.\nAn as-yet-unannounced ship was developed further, and a bug causing shader damage to not initialize on large ships until players are extremely close by is currently being looked at.\nTech (Vehicles)\nVehicle Tech spent the month improving the behavior and visuals of vehicle destruction, focusing on making the destruction of extremely large ships a satisfyingly explosive experience. They also prepared for upcoming improvements to radar, ping, and scanning, with the aim being to enrich the experience of discovering and gathering detailed information of entities while traveling on foot and in ships. Finally, vehicle-system-related bugs were addressed for Alpha 3.11.\nTurbulent\nThroughout September, the team focused on the Alpha 3.11 delivery by bug-fixing existing features and running several critical migrations. They also added features to Hex, including the ability to visualize ledger data (long-term persistence) and perform credit\/debit actions. Several UI and UX improvements were also made to make the tool more user friendly.\nAmong other initiatives, the Web Platform Team supported the launch of Ship Showdown 2950.\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nLast month, UI\u2019s embedded artists worked through various features, such as the external inventory and missile UI. They also continued work on the refinery kiosk UI, pushing hard on stability and bug fixing.\nTech-wise, they made improvements to the Building Blocks system and supported the impending Alpha 3.11 release with bug fixing and other small elements of tech debt.\nVFX\nThe VFX Team made further progress with fire hazards, further developing the code prototype and making networking and performance considerations.\nThe Art Team, working alongside the Code Team, created a \u2018visual target\u2019. A visual target doesn\u2019t use code hooks, but is instead an opportunity for the artists to focus on getting their effects to look as good as possible. Then, when they\u2019re happy with the quality, the Code and Art teams can work out how to integrate the visuals into the system.\nAlso this month, VFX for a new ballistic shotgun, grenade launcher, and Origin 100i.\nFinally, bugs were fixed and polishing was done for the imminent Alpha 3.11 release.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026","de_DE":"Die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Alpha 3.11 steht kurz bevor, und mit ihr kommt eine ganze Reihe neuer Features f\u00fcr Star Citizen. Viele dieser Neuerungen wurden im Laufe des Septembers \u00fcberarbeitet und auf den letzten Schliff gebracht, wovon ihr im Bericht dieses Monats einen kleinen Einblick bekommen k\u00f6nnt. Es war auch nicht alles Alpha 3.11, mit gro\u00dfen Fortschritten bei einigen wichtigen Updates, die f\u00fcr den Patch dieses Winters und dar\u00fcber hinaus geplant sind. Es erwarten euch interessante Infos zu den Raffineriedecks, kommenden Events, neuen Schiffen und nat\u00fcrlich dem Pyro-System.\nKI (Charakter-Kampf)\nCharacter Combat geben den Startschuss f\u00fcr den Bericht mit ihrer laufenden Arbeit an der pr\u00e4zisen Handhabung von Munition. Da die NSCs nicht unendlich viel Munition haben werden, m\u00fcssen sie Rechenschaft \u00fcber die Ressourcen ablegen und entscheiden, wann sie versuchen, mehr zu beschaffen. Sollten NSCs nach Abschluss des Kampfes keine geeignete Nahkampfwaffe haben, k\u00f6nnen sie entscheiden, dass die Kapitulation die beste Option ist. Das Team hat verschiedene Animationsoptionen und die Einbettung von 'Aufgeben' in verschiedene Verhaltensweisen vorbereitet. Au\u00dferdem haben sie verbesserte \u00dcberg\u00e4nge beim Verlassen und beim Verbleiben in Deckung unter bestimmten Bedingungen hinzugef\u00fcgt. Eine Handvoll visueller Wahrnehmungsparameter und das Debug-Draw wurden optimiert, um es den Designern zu erm\u00f6glichen, die Werte, die die KI verwendet, um Feinde aus verschiedenen Entfernungen wahrzunehmen und zu verstehen (und ob sich der Charakter im prim\u00e4ren oder sekund\u00e4ren Sichtfeld befindet), besser zu iterieren.\nKI (Allgemein)\nLetzten Monat hat das KI-Team weitere Probleme mit Charakteren behoben, die auf benutzbaren Objekten standen. Viele davon hatten damit zu tun, dass der Objekt-Container die Charaktere nicht wieder in den richtigen Zustand versetzt hat. Das Team m\u00f6chte euch gerne einen Einblick in dieses Problem und einige der Stabilit\u00e4tsverbesserungen geben, die sich derzeit in der Entwicklung befinden.\n\"Der visuelle Fehler wurde immer dadurch verursacht, dass NSCs an Nutzbarkeiten angeh\u00e4ngt waren, die aus- und wieder einstr\u00f6mten, wenn sich ein Spieler dem Gebiet n\u00e4herte. In einem Fall ging das interne Ereignis, das an die State-Machine des Spielers gesendet wurde, um die Neuanbindung anzufordern, verloren und wurde nie verarbeitet. Im zweiten Fall w\u00fcrde der Charakter nach dem benutzbaren und mehreren anderen Charakteren hereinstr\u00f6men. Diese Charaktere f\u00fchrten dann ihr normales Verhalten aus und konnten dem nicht gestreamten Charakter die Brauchbaren 'stehlen', was dazu f\u00fchrte, dass die Brauchbaren sich nicht mehr anh\u00e4ngen konnten, wenn sie schlie\u00dflich wieder herein gestreamt wurden. Wir m\u00f6chten dies mit unserer Community teilen, um euch einen Einblick in die Notwendigkeit zu geben, diese speziellen Situationen einzufangen und die Systeme, auf die die KI angewiesen ist, so stark wie m\u00f6glich zu machen\". - Das KI-Team\nDer langfristige Plan ist es, die Dienste umfassend zu nutzen, um die Umgebung zu bev\u00f6lkern und Gebiete zu simulieren, wenn Spieler nicht in der N\u00e4he sind. Das bedeutet, dass viele dieser Themen aufgrund der leicht unterschiedlichen Nutzung der Systeme irrelevant werden.\nDas Team war au\u00dferdem mit Alpha 3.11 Bugfixes und Leistungsoptimierung besch\u00e4ftigt.\nKI (Schiffe)\nIm September konzentrierte sich das Schiffs-KI-Team auf Waffen, Raketenmanagement und einen weiteren Pass auf das Kampfverhalten von Gro\u00dfkampfschiffen. Letzteres beinhaltete die Sensibilisierung der KI-Sch\u00fctzen f\u00fcr die Schadenszusammensetzung ihrer verf\u00fcgbaren Waffengruppen. Hat ein Bordsch\u00fctze zum Beispiel die Wahl zwischen Energie- oder K\u00f6rperschadens-Waffen, wird er zun\u00e4chst versuchen, die Schilde seines Gegners mit der Energiewaffe zu senken. Wenn der Gesundheitszustand unter einen bestimmten Schwellenwert f\u00e4llt (der von der Fertigkeit \"Feuerdisziplin\" des Sch\u00fctzen bestimmt wird), wechselt er zu physischem Schaden, um den t\u00f6dlichen Schlag auszuf\u00fchren.\n\nSie haben mehr Daten hinzugef\u00fcgt, damit die KI-Sch\u00fctzen eine Abklingzeit respektieren k\u00f6nnen, bevor sie Raketen scharf machen und starten. Sie haben auch daf\u00fcr gesorgt, dass, wenn mehrere KI-Schiffe gleichzeitig spawnen, sie nicht die gleiche Abklingzeit haben, um zu verhindern, dass das Ziel einem Raketenbeschuss ausgesetzt wird. Eine zus\u00e4tzliche \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung wurde hinzugef\u00fcgt, um sicherzustellen, dass ein Schiff, das k\u00fcrzlich von einer Rakete getroffen wurde, f\u00fcr eine bestimmte Zeitspanne nicht erneut angegriffen wird (wiederum abh\u00e4ngig von der Feuerdisziplin des Sch\u00fctzen).\nEin weiteres neues Feature, an dem gearbeitet wird, ist die M\u00f6glichkeit f\u00fcr NPCs, Raketen abzufangen. Als erster Schritt wurden Torpedos und Raketen zur KI-Wahrnehmung hinzugef\u00fcgt, so dass sie als potenzielle Ziele gesehen werden. Dann wurde die Raketenfeindlichkeit ge\u00e4ndert, so dass alle Raketen, die auf KI-Schiffe zielen, als feindlich angesehen werden; dies stellt sicher, dass Turmsch\u00fctze nur Raketen abschie\u00dfen, die eine Bedrohung f\u00fcr befreundete Schiffe darstellen. Die Priorit\u00e4ten der bemannten Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrme wurden ebenfalls ge\u00e4ndert, so dass kleine und mittlere Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrme den Abschuss ankommender Torpedos priorisieren, w\u00e4hrend schwere Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrme sie ignorieren, da sie im Allgemeinen zu gro\u00df und langsam sind, um effektiv zu sein. Die Gr\u00f6\u00dfe der Waffen ist ebenfalls ein Faktor, wobei kleine Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrme kleineren Zielen und schwere Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrme gef\u00e4hrlicheren Zielen den Vorrang geben.\n\nDas Team hat auch an der 'InSeatWeaponRange Tactical Target Query' gearbeitet, die pr\u00fcft, ob ein Turmsch\u00fctze oder ein Schiff potenziell auf ein Ziel feuern k\u00f6nnte, und hat eine optimale Kampfentfernungsaufgabe hinzugef\u00fcgt, die die Entfernung berechnet, die Schiffe versuchen sollten, bei einem bestimmten Ziel zu bleiben. Der erste Durchgang des Subsumtionsverhaltens f\u00fcr Gro\u00dfkampfschiffe wurde ebenfalls implementiert, welches davon abh\u00e4ngt, ob ein Schiff eine Frontkanone hat und welche Art von Ziel es hat.\nAnimation\nDas Animation Team verbrachte die meiste Zeit des Monats mit SQ42-bezogenen Aufgaben, arbeitete aber an einer Reihe von Comms Calls f\u00fcr verschiedene Piloten speziell f\u00fcr die PU.\nKunst (Umwelt)\nLetzten Monat hat das Modular Environment Team seine Arbeit an den neuen Frachtdecks, die in Alpha 3.11 kommen, abgeschlossen. Sie begannen auch damit, die k\u00fcnstlerischen Anforderungen f\u00fcr das Andocken von Schiff zu Station zu untersuchen, unterst\u00fctzten die Arbeiten f\u00fcr mehrere kommende Veranstaltungen und machten Fortschritte auf den Raffineriedecks. Sie experimentierten auch mit Gaswolken an Lagrange-Punkten und unterst\u00fctzten das Design bei der Implementierung der neuen Rastst\u00e4tten-Innenr\u00e4ume.\nDas Landing Zone Team setzte die laufende Entwicklung von Orison fort. Die wichtigsten Elemente des kritischen Pfades sind nun etabliert, einschlie\u00dflich L\u00e4den, Transitsysteme und Habs, wobei die meisten von der Whitebox- zur Greybox-Phase \u00fcbergehen.\nIm September setzte das Organik-Team die Produktion des Pyro-Systems fort, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf Pyro VI und den Monden von Pyro V lag. Parallel dazu setzten sie die Aktualisierung des Stanton-Systems mit den neuen Planetenb\u00fcrsten fort, die man aus erster Hand in Alpha 3.11 sehen kann. Dies ist eine Voraussetzung f\u00fcr die neuesten Verbesserungen des organischen Shaders und seiner Biome-Akkumulationsfunktion, die f\u00fcr die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung in Alpha 3.12 vorgesehen ist.\nDas Environment Art Team hat die Produktion aller Pyro-bezogenen Inhalte fortgesetzt. Vor allem die Monde erhielten die meiste Aufmerksamkeit, da sie aus der Whitebox-B\u00fchne geholt und f\u00fcr Feedback und Feinschliff vorbereitet wurden. Auch Pyro VI machte gute Fortschritte, da der globale Look und verschiedene Biome des Planeten definiert wurden.\nDas Team \u00fcberpr\u00fcft st\u00e4ndig die verschiedenen Aspekte ihrer Pipeline, um zu sehen, ob die Qualit\u00e4t erh\u00f6ht oder der Inhalt optimiert werden kann. Diesmal haben sie beschlossen, sich die Bodentexturen, die die Oberfl\u00e4che der Planeten und Monde im Nahbereich definieren, genauer anzuschauen und alle vorhandenen Materialien durch auf Photogrammetrie basierende Daten zu ersetzen. In \u00e4hnlicher Weise wurden viele geologische Assets durch Gegenst\u00e4nde ersetzt, die die neuesten Erg\u00e4nzungen des organischen Shaders nutzen, wie z.B. eine ausgefeiltere Mischung und die Verschiebung von Texturdetails. Dies bringt sowohl den Boden als auch die geologischen Objekte visuell besser in Einklang und verbessert die Gesamtqualit\u00e4t.\nAufgrund der j\u00fcngsten Aktualisierungen der Planetenmalwerkzeuge hat das Team alle Planeten und Monde von Stanton vollst\u00e4ndig kompatibel mit den \u00c4nderungen gemacht. Dabei handelte es sich jedoch weniger um einen visuellen Pass als vielmehr um ein technisches Update.\nKunst (Schiffe)\nIn den USA haben die Kunst- und Systemdesign-Teams gro\u00dfe Fortschritte beim Kreuzritter Merkur gemacht, der sich rasch der letzten Kunstphase n\u00e4hert. Es wird erwartet, dass er im Oktober die Vorbereitungsphase f\u00fcr die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung erreichen wird.\n\nVehicle Tech Art hat ihren Schadenspass auf den kommenden Schiffen der Origin 100er Serie abgeschlossen, bei dem unter anderem ein Problem gel\u00f6st wurde, das verhinderte, dass sich kosmetische Gegenst\u00e4nde mit Tr\u00fcmmern abl\u00f6sen konnten. Das Team unterst\u00fctzte au\u00dferdem die Technik am SDF-Schild, 3D-Visabereiche und Andockfunktionen.\nIn Gro\u00dfbritannien arbeitete das Art Team weiter an der Crusader Hercules. Letzten Monat haben der Fahrstuhl und die Hangart\u00fcren ihren letzten Kunstpass bestanden und die habs haben es bis zur Kunstvollendung geschafft.\nAuch der Esperia-Talon steht kurz vor der Vollendung; der letzte Kunstpass wurde (ohne das Fahrwerk) durchgef\u00fchrt, bevor er auf die Schadensaufstellung und die LODs \u00fcbertragen wurde.\nAuch der Aegis Gladius wurde ein wenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt, indem das Team den Zugang zu den Komponenten \u00fcber die Au\u00dfenseite hinzugef\u00fcgt hat.\nKunst (Waffen)\nDas Weapons Art Team verbrachte einen Teil des Monats damit, neue Requisitenk\u00fcnstler in Maya und den Arbeitsablauf f\u00fcr die Erstellung neuer Waffen und Anh\u00e4nge zu trainieren. Die Arbeit begann auch mit einem neuen Set, das Zielfernrohre, Lauf und Anh\u00e4nge unter dem Lauf enth\u00e4lt. Das Behring FS-9 LMG begann seinen ersten Kunstpass, w\u00e4hrend das Gemini A03 Scharfsch\u00fctzengewehr ebenfalls in die letzte Kunstphase eintrat.\nAudio\nDas Audio Team begann den Monat damit, das Musiksystem aufzur\u00e4umen, indem es alte Dateien \u00fcberarbeitete und organisierte und den Code optimierte.\nDanach \u00fcberpr\u00fcften sie einige alte weltraumverlassene Atmosph\u00e4ren und unterst\u00fctzten die Entfernung der Gr\u00fcnen Zone (einschlie\u00dflich der M\u00f6glichkeit, die T\u00fcrme, die die Raumstationen sch\u00fctzen, zu zerst\u00f6ren!)\nSie begannen mit der Arbeit am Refactor der physikalischen Requisiten und verbesserten einige der \u00e4lteren Requisiten, die von der 'Objekt Push\/Pull'-Funktion verwendet werden, die sich derzeit in der Entwicklung befindet. Es wurden auch Audio-Updates f\u00fcr die UI-bezogenen Features gemacht, die in Alpha 3.11 kommen werden, einschlie\u00dflich des externen Inventars und der \u00dcberarbeitung des Frontends.\nCodetechnisch hat das Team die Arbeit abgeschlossen, um das Abspielen von Audio auf GPU-Partikeln zu erm\u00f6glichen und die von den Sounddesignern verwendeten Tools weiter entwickelt.\nBackend-Dienste\nLetzten Monat konzentrierte sich das Backend-Server-Team darauf, den vermaschten Loadout-Service und den vermaschten Variablen-Service einzusetzen, zu testen und zu tunen. Sie haben den Fluss aller variablen und Loadout-Daten weg vom Trafficking durch die Diffusions-Router auf einen optimaleren und direkteren Weg gebracht. Dadurch wird der Verkehr zwischen bestimmten Diensten isoliert, was bedeutet, dass er den Fluss anderer Informationen, die sich durch die Diffusion bewegen, nicht unterbrechen kann. Au\u00dferdem haben sie eine Reihe offener Probleme von Alpha 3.10 behoben, darunter Speicherlecks, Netzwerkverbindungsprobleme und Performance-Bugs.\nCharaktere\nIm September wurde die Arbeit an einem R\u00fcstungsset fortgesetzt, das im 4. Quartal 2020 fertiggestellt werden soll und das das Team aufgrund der sich \u00e4ndernden Geometrie in den Varianten als \"besonders herausfordernd in der Umsetzung\" bezeichnet. Weitere Aufgaben betrafen NSC-Kleidungsgegenst\u00e4nde, Missionsgeberk\u00f6pfe und Konzepte f\u00fcr eine utilitaristische, auf Bergbau ausgerichtete R\u00fcstung.\n\"Wir freuen uns besonders, dass wir endlich mehr Gameplay-R\u00fcstungen zum PU hinzuf\u00fcgen k\u00f6nnen, da Design uns nun in regelm\u00e4\u00dfigen Abst\u00e4nden 'R\u00fcstungsdesign-Dokumente' zukommen lassen wird. Unter anderem haben wir damit begonnen, eine Reihe von Kopfgeldjagd- und Aufsp\u00fcr-R\u00fcstungen zu konzipieren. Ihr k\u00f6nnt erwarten, diese im Jahr 2021 zu sehen\". -Das Charakter-Team\nSchlie\u00dflich unterst\u00fctzten sie verschiedene bevorstehende Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen und Veranstaltungen, darunter IAE 2950 und die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung des Crusader Mercury.\nGemeinschaft\nDer September der Community stand ganz im Zeichen von Ship Showdown. In Phase 1, die Ende August begann, hatten die Spieler die Aufgabe, ihr Lieblingsraumschiff oder -fahrzeug zu verfechten, indem sie selbst erstellte Schiffskunst an den Community-Hub oder Twitter schicken. Wir erhielten hunderte von unglaublichen Einsendungen, wobei die zehn herausragendsten einen MISC-Prospector erhielten.\nDie Top 16 der Community standen sich dann in einem Kopf-an-Kopf-Turnier der Phase 2 gegen\u00fcber, das letztendlich von der Anvil Carrack gewonnen wurde. Die letzten vier Schiffe erhalten In-Game-Livreen und In-Game-Shirts, die sp\u00e4ter in diesem Jahr auf der IAE enth\u00fcllt werden. Eine zweiw\u00f6chige Freifliege begleitete die zweite Phase, in der alle Top 16 Schiffe f\u00fcr alle kostenlos zur Verf\u00fcgung standen.\nDas Team feierte au\u00dferdem den \"Talk Like a Pirate Day\" mit dem Screenshot-Wettbewerb \"Fly Like a Pirate\", bei dem die Community w\u00e4hrend der gesamten 'Strophe' ihre piratenhaftesten Aktivit\u00e4ten vorf\u00fchren sollte. Aufgrund der unvermeidlichen Absage der CitizenCon in diesem Jahr, startete das Team den Cosplay-Wettbewerb, mit tollen Preisen f\u00fcr die besten Einsendungen.\nDie Community arbeitete mit mehreren Entwicklerteams zusammen, um den Alpha 3.10 Postmortem zusammenzustellen, bei dem Senior Devs ihre hochrangigen Gedanken dar\u00fcber austauschten, was gut gelaufen ist, was nicht, und was sie f\u00fcr das n\u00e4chste Mal gelernt haben.\nAu\u00dferdem teilten sie mehrere Beitr\u00e4ge \u00fcber bevorstehende Updates des 'Verses, von denen viele in Alpha 3.11 zu finden sind: Updates des Rechtssystems, Updates der Waffenstillstandsbeschr\u00e4nkungen f\u00fcr den Ruhezustand und Verbesserungen der Raketen und Gegenma\u00dfnahmen.\nTechnik\nDie Physik-Optimierungen des letzten Monats beinhalteten die Verbesserung der Schnittpunkt-Routinen f\u00fcr das SDF-Backen und das Hinzuf\u00fcgen von weiterem Culling zur AABB-Baumdurchquerung. Das Team f\u00fcgte eine G-Kraft-Berechnung f\u00fcr alle starren Entit\u00e4ten hinzu und die M\u00f6glichkeit, die Masse der Rigids innerhalb der Grid-Host-Masse hinzuzuf\u00fcgen. Sie gaben anf\u00e4nglich Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr adaptive signed-distance-fields (SDF), f\u00fcgten \u00e4u\u00dfere Schattengeometrie hinzu (was Boundary Entities innerhalb der gehosteten Zone in inneren OCs erm\u00f6glicht), und unterst\u00fctzen nun alle primitiven Physiktypen f\u00fcr innere Grids korrekt. Sie haben auch externe Impulse zu 'pe_status_dynamics' hinzugef\u00fcgt und ein Grid ohne explizite Geometrie erstellt. Es wurde auch Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr mehrere externe Beschleunigungen bereitgestellt.\nF\u00fcr die laufende Arbeit am G12-Renderer unterst\u00fctzte das Team die optionale Ausf\u00fchrung von Stages, f\u00fcgte Debug-Namen zu allen konstanten Puffern hinzu (und machte es zur Pflicht), und \u00fcbernahm die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr benutzerdefiniertes Material CB und Layer-Blend. Legacy-Pipeline-R\u00fccksetzungen wurden aus dem Begin\/End-Renderer-Pass an die Stellen des Legacy-Gen12-Switch entfernt, der derzeit bis zu 2000 API-Aufrufe speichert.\nDas Engineering hat die verz\u00f6gerten und verz\u00f6gerten Display-mapped Pipelines zusammengef\u00fchrt, die TSAA-Stufe implementiert und die folgenden Stufen zu 'stable' bef\u00f6rdert: Tonemapping, DepthOfField, MotionBlur, Optics, Colorgrading, OpticsExposure. Sie entfernten den ressourcenbindenden Code zum Speichern\/Laden beim Rendern am Anfang\/Ende, wodurch etwa 500 API-Aufrufe pro Frame eingespart wurden. Au\u00dferdem wurden parametrisierte allgemeine Tiefenfunktionen hinzugef\u00fcgt, so dass sie nicht auf globale Konstanten zugreifen, ebenso wie Tiefen-Down-Sampling.\nDie Arbeit an der Atmosph\u00e4re, den Wolken und dem vereinheitlichten Raymarcher wurde ernsthaft fortgesetzt, was zu Wolkendaten f\u00fchrte, die nun korrekt mit dem Atmosph\u00e4rensegment interagieren, in das sie injiziert werden (durch korrigierte Luminanzintegration und Transmissionsauswertung). Das Team f\u00fcgte Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr die Injektion von (existierenden) sph\u00e4rischen Wolken in den vereinheitlichten atmosph\u00e4rischen Raymarcher hinzu, die nun gleichm\u00e4\u00dfig verteilte Probenorte bei der Integration \u00fcber Hemisph\u00e4ren verwenden. Dies verbessert die Ergebnisse der LUT-Integration erheblich, entfernt mehrere Artefakte und konvergiert viel schneller.\nEine neue atmosph\u00e4rische Multi-Scatter LUT wurde hinzugef\u00fcgt, die unendliche Streuordnungen unterst\u00fctzt, w\u00e4hrend die aktuelle Multi-Scatter LUT aufgrund \u00fcberm\u00e4\u00dfiger Helligkeit neu ausbalanciert wurde. Das Team verfeinerte auch die Soft-Edge-Berechnung f\u00fcr sph\u00e4rische Wolken, um Aliasing zu reduzieren und verbesserte die Auswertung der sichtbaren Sonnenscheibe bei der Berechnung des Sonnenlichts. Diese Auswertung ist vollst\u00e4ndig in das breitere atmosph\u00e4rische Beleuchtungssystem integriert und beeinflusst die direkte und indirekte Beleuchtung. Ein Ungleichgewicht der berechneten Helligkeit zwischen regul\u00e4ren und Injektionsdurchg\u00e4ngen wurde vervollst\u00e4ndigt; jetzt erscheinen die Wolken mit konstanter Helligkeit sowohl in der regul\u00e4ren Atmosph\u00e4re als auch durch vereinheitlichtes Raymarching. Das Team hat auch Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr separate Rayleigh- und Mie-Inscatter-LUTs im aktuellen atmosph\u00e4rischen Codepfad bereitgestellt, was mehrere Falschfarben-Artefakte behebt. Die neue LUT-Parametrisierung unterst\u00fctzt hohe Atmosph\u00e4ren besser und behebt unter anderem den sehr markanten Halo um die Silhouette der dunklen Seite eines Planeten.\nDas Team beschleunigte und vereinheitlichte die Vorberechnungen der optischen Tiefe in den Absorptionsschichten der Atmosph\u00e4ren. Dies erlaubt ihnen unter anderem, den erd\u00e4hnlichen Planeten eine Ozonschicht hinzuzuf\u00fcgen, die den blauen Himmel hervorhebt und eine korrekte Schattierung w\u00e4hrend der D\u00e4mmerung erm\u00f6glicht. Es erm\u00f6glicht auch die physikalisch plausible Feinabstimmung der Atmosph\u00e4ren. Sie benutzen jetzt auch die Sonneneinstrahlung w\u00e4hrend der gesamten Auswertung der atmosph\u00e4rischen Beleuchtung, um eine viel bessere Bewertung der Sonnenstrahlung f\u00fcr Punkte au\u00dferhalb der planetarischen Atmosph\u00e4ren zu erhalten. Dies erm\u00f6glicht den D\u00e4mmerungswurf, die atmosph\u00e4rische Streuung und erlaubt den Winkelradius der Sonne, um Objekte auf die Halbschattenregion eines Planeten zu projizieren.\nAllgemeine Systemarbeit beinhaltete mehrere Korrekturen an der ISPC-Integration (ein spezieller Compiler, der hochoptimierten SSE-Code f\u00fcr hochbelastete Jobs auf CPUs generiert). Das Team implementierte die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr statische station\u00e4re Zonengruppen und konkave Geometrien als Vis-Bereiche und korrigierte die Methode, mit der sie Vis-Bereiche und Portale anhand des Namens finden.\nEigenschaften (Gameplay)\nDer September war ein arbeitsreicher Monat f\u00fcr das US Gameplay Features Team, das sich darauf konzentrierte, Bugs zu beheben, die Arbeit an den Features abzuschlie\u00dfen und sich auf zuk\u00fcnftige Initiativen vorzubereiten.\nAnfang des Monats haben sie den letzten Durchgang an den aktualisierten PU-Front-End-Bildschirmen abgeschlossen. W\u00e4hrend das ultimative Ziel darin besteht, das Einstiegserlebnis komplett neu zu definieren, werden diese \u00c4nderungen den gesamten Prozess verfeinern und f\u00fcr einen reibungsloseren \u00dcbergang von den Startbildschirmen zum Gameplay sorgen. Einige der \u00c4nderungen wurden k\u00fcrzlich in einem Inside Star Citizen vorgestellt.\nDas Team begann mit der Neugestaltung der Missionsmanager-App, wobei der Schwerpunkt derzeit auf der Konvertierung der App von Flash in Building Blocks liegt. Nach der Fertigstellung wird sich das Team darauf konzentrieren, die Funktionalit\u00e4t zu aktualisieren und \u00c4nderungen am Gesamtdesign vorzunehmen.\nNeben der Neugestaltung hat das Team auch Fortschritte beim neuen Rufsystem gemacht. Es wurden zus\u00e4tzliche Designarbeiten und Funktionen hinzugef\u00fcgt, wobei der Fokus auf den Ruf einzelner Spieler liegt.\nFeatures (Fahrzeuge)\nEin Hauptaugenmerk bei den Fahrzeugfeatures lag letzten Monat auf dem Andocken, einschlie\u00dflich der Behebung verschiedener Probleme mit den Kr\u00fcger-Snubs und der RSI Constellation. Auch wenn sie noch mit verschiedenen Problemen zu k\u00e4mpfen haben, wie z.B. die Schiffe korrekt zusammen zu spawnen, wurden gro\u00dfe Fortschritte gemacht. Zum Beispiel k\u00f6nnen die Tester nun richtig in den Snub ein- und aussteigen, w\u00e4hrend dieser in der Constellation angedockt ist.\nDie erste funktionierende Version der Stationsankopplung wurde ebenfalls fertiggestellt. Momentan fordern die Tester das Andocken an, bekommen einen Docking-Port zugewiesen und verbinden sich mit diesem.\nDas Team unterst\u00fctzte den laufenden Refresh der Bergbau-UI. Aspekte des Schiffsflug-HUDs und der Bergbau-UI arbeiten nun alle nahtlos zusammen, und die UI nutzt die neue Bausteintechnologie.\nGrafiken\nDas Grafikteam hat letzten Monat seine Zeit zwischen der Arbeit am neuen Gen12-Renderer, allgemeinen Features und Fehlerbehebung aufgeteilt. Zu den Gen12-Aufgaben geh\u00f6rte die Konvertierung des Post-Effekt-Managers des Spiels, der alle 'Verschiedenen' Effekte wie verschwommene Sicht und Blackouts handhabt. Die Gen12-Kerninfrastruktur wurde weiterentwickelt, um mit den konfigurierbaren Grafik-Pipelines kompatibel zu sein, und die konstanten Shader-Puffer wurden weiter aufpoliert.\nDie restliche Zeit des Grafikteams wurde mit dem Render-to-Texture-System verbracht, wobei die Verbindung zum Textur-Streaming-System nun abgeschlossen ist. Das bedeutet, dass sie nun zur Laufzeit so viele Texturen generieren k\u00f6nnen, wie sie wollen, und den Speicher automatisch mit dem Rest der Texturen im Spiel ausbalancieren k\u00f6nnen. Die Arbeit an den organischen Shadern wurde ebenfalls abgeschlossen. Derzeit arbeitet das Team an irisierenden Effekten f\u00fcr einige kommende Schiffe und R\u00fcstungen.\nLevel Entwurf\nDas Modulare Leveldesign-Team arbeitete Aufgaben f\u00fcr die Fracht- und Raffineriedecks ab. Sie konzentrierten sich auch auf die allgemeinen Innenr\u00e4ume der Raumstation, um eine konzentriertere Erfahrung zu gew\u00e4hrleisten, wobei f\u00fcr die Zukunft weitere Iterationen geplant sind.\nDas Leveldesign-Team f\u00fcr die Landezone arbeitete weiter an Orison; alle Kernelemente sind nun an Ort und Stelle, abgesehen von ein paar Ladenlayouts, an denen sie immer noch iterieren.\nBeide Teams haben die erste Version der neuen Panels fertiggestellt, die unter anderem dazu dienen werden, die bestehenden Fahrstuhlkn\u00f6pfe zu aktualisieren.\nBeleuchtung\nLetzten Monat unterst\u00fctzte das Beleuchtungsteam haupts\u00e4chlich die bevorstehende Alpha 3.11 Patch-Ver\u00f6ffentlichung, die das Polieren und Abschlie\u00dfen der Arbeiten an den Standorten des Frachtdecks beinhaltete. Au\u00dferdem begannen sie damit, alternative Beleuchtungszust\u00e4nde f\u00fcr bestehende Rastpl\u00e4tze zu untersuchen. Zu Beginn schlossen sie einen Look-Dev-Pass f\u00fcr einen potentiellen Low-Power-Zustand ab, mit Pl\u00e4nen, ihn in Zukunft auf die gesamte Reihe der modularen Rastst\u00e4tten auszudehnen. Au\u00dferdem planen sie, einen Look f\u00fcr die Notbeleuchtung zu erstellen. Diese Beleuchtungszust\u00e4nde werden irgendwann in Spielsysteme integriert werden, wie z.B. Strom, und bieten das Potenzial f\u00fcr weitere Rastst\u00e4ttenvariationen im Allgemeinen.\nSie begannen auch, Orison zu unterst\u00fctzen, indem sie einen grundlegenden Beleuchtungspass f\u00fcr das Whitebox-Layout einrichteten. Es ist wichtig, dass das Beleuchtungsteam schon in diesem fr\u00fchen Stadium potentiell problematische Stellen identifiziert, an denen die Lichtleistung schlecht sein wird. Auf diese Weise k\u00f6nnen Korrekturen und Layout-\u00c4nderungen mit minimaler Nacharbeit f\u00fcr andere Abteilungen vorgenommen werden.\n\n\nEin weiterer Durchgang wurde auf Lorville gemacht, dieses Mal wurden einfache Animationen zu den Scheinwerfern der Sicherheitst\u00fcrme w\u00e4hrend der n\u00e4chtlichen Beleuchtungseinrichtung hinzugef\u00fcgt. Dies, zusammen mit anderen kurzen Animationen in den neuen Frachtdecks, stellt einen Testfall f\u00fcr das Hinzuf\u00fcgen von mehr animierten Elementen an Schaupl\u00e4tzen dar, um sie zum Leben zu erwecken.\nErz\u00e4hlung\nDen ganzen September \u00fcber arbeitete das Erz\u00e4hlteam an Umweltdokumenten f\u00fcr die kommenden Schaupl\u00e4tze. Dazu geh\u00f6rt es, den Ton, die Geschichte und den Geschmack der Gegend zu skizzieren und die potenziellen L\u00e4den und NSCs zu beschreiben, denen man in Erwartung der Kickoff-Meetings mit Art and Design begegnen k\u00f6nnte. Das Team hat au\u00dferdem eng mit Design in Gro\u00dfbritannien und Austin zusammengearbeitet, um sich die derzeit in Entwicklung befindlichen Features anzusehen und potenzielle Missionsinhalte zu planen, um sie hervorzuheben. Von da an begannen sie damit, Charaktere und m\u00f6gliche Linien aufzuschl\u00fcsseln. Als Narrative mit dem Schreiben von Drehb\u00fcchern begann, erstellte das Design-Team Platzhalter, um die Zeilen im Spiel zu testen, damit sie alle Zeilen oder Dialogereignisse verfeinern konnten, bevor sie mit einem Schauspieler aufgenommen wurden.\nWie jeden Monat musste eine neue Gruppe von Gegenst\u00e4nden benannt und beschrieben werden. Egal, ob sie mit dem Charakter-Team an Waffen, Requisiten, R\u00fcstungen und Kleidung arbeiten oder mit dem Fahrzeug-Team an Schiffskomponenten, alles, was in einem Laden oder beim Ausr\u00fcstungsmanager zu sehen ist, braucht eine eigene Beschreibung.\nDas Team hat auch mit der QA zusammengearbeitet, um die letzten Fehler in der Erz\u00e4hlung, die dem Issue Council gemeldet wurden, zu beheben.\nAn der Dispatch-Front ging es mit der bevorstehenden Imperator-Wahl voran. Der letzte Beitrag des Teams enthielt die letzte Debatte zwischen den letzten f\u00fcnf Kandidaten.\n\"Ihr habt ihre Plakate in den Landezonen gesehen und ihre Wahlwerbung geh\u00f6rt, aber lest euch unbedingt \u00fcber ihre neuesten Positionen, bevor die Umfragen diesen Monat live gehen. Und vergiss nicht, deine Stimme abzugeben!\" -Das Erz\u00e4hlteam\nSpieler-Beziehungen\nDas Spieler-Beziehungs-Team hat den Monat damit verbracht, den Service auf sieben Tage in der Woche auszuweiten und das Team in Austin und Wilmslow zu vergr\u00f6\u00dfern, wobei mehrere Positionen besetzt wurden, die die Reaktionszeit auf Tickets reduzieren, unabh\u00e4ngig vom Tag. Sie arbeiteten auch an der Seite der Evocati, um die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Alpha 3.11 vorzubereiten.\nRequisiten\nDas Requisiten-Team verbrachte einen Teil des Septembers damit, die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr die neuen Anlagen der Frachtstation einzupacken. Dazu geh\u00f6ren die Thekensets, die Versandbeh\u00e4lter und Gegenst\u00e4nde f\u00fcr den Laden.\nAu\u00dferdem waren sie damit besch\u00e4ftigt, das neue Push\/Pull-Wagensystem f\u00fcr die Fortbewegung zu unterst\u00fctzen. Wenn es implementiert ist, werden die Spieler in der Lage sein, Wagen und andere 'schiebbare' Gegenst\u00e4nde zu manipulieren. Es wurden Vorlagen erstellt, was bedeutet, dass sie nun vorhandene Gegenst\u00e4nde schrittweise aktualisieren k\u00f6nnen, um mit dieser neuen Funktion zu arbeiten.\nQA\nLetzten Monat konzentrierte sich die Qualit\u00e4tssicherung weiterhin auf Testanfragen und nahm an w\u00f6chentlichen Spieltests teil. Die meisten der Features, an denen gearbeitet wurde, befanden sich hinter den Kulissen, so dass eine betr\u00e4chtliche Anzahl bestehender Assets getestet werden musste, um sicherzustellen, dass sich nichts ge\u00e4ndert hatte.\nSie testeten auch die Genauigkeit der KI von Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrmen und Schiffen, wobei die bestehenden Platzierungen und das KI-Verhalten \u00fcber den Arena-Commander untersucht wurden. QA unterst\u00fctzte auch weiterhin das Engine Team, wobei der Schwerpunkt im September darauf lag, mehreren schwer zu reproduzierenden Abst\u00fcrzen und Speicherlecks auf den Grund zu gehen.\nWas die Standorte betrifft, so arbeitete das Team weiterhin an verschiedenen Transitsystemproblemen. Das Tools-Team unterst\u00fctzte weiterhin die laufende Arbeit an den Kerntools, einschlie\u00dflich DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore und dem Sandbox-Editor.\nTechnik (Animation)\nNeben der Schulung neuer Teammitglieder unterst\u00fctzte Tech Animation Social AI bei der Erstellung und technischen Umsetzung verschiedener Assets in der gesamten PU. Es gab ein konzentriertes Bestreben, die hauseigene Gesichtsausr\u00fcstung und die Tool-Suite fertigzustellen, um die kontinuierliche Kreation neuer K\u00f6pfe zu erm\u00f6glichen. Dies geht dem umfassenderen Vorsto\u00df voraus, die gesamte Pipeline f\u00fcr die Kreation von K\u00f6pfen zu \u00fcberholen, um sie f\u00fcr die n\u00e4chsten Jahre zukunftssicher zu machen.\nDie laufende Initiative zur Schaffung neuer Werkzeuge, um Animationen mit einer grafischen Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che zu implementieren, wurde fortgesetzt.\n\"Die UI sieht gro\u00dfartig aus und wir schreiben gerade an der technischen Umsetzung, die den Link in unser aktuelles Animations-Toolset bringen wird. - Das Tech-Animations-Team\nTechnik (Kunst)\nZu den Priorit\u00e4ten von Tech Art im September geh\u00f6rten die Unterst\u00fctzung des bereits erw\u00e4hnten Kr\u00fcger\/Constellation Docking, 3D VisAreas, das Testen der Multi-Grid SDF mit Engineering und das Abschlie\u00dfen der Aufgaben f\u00fcr die Origin 100 Serie.\nEin bisher unangek\u00fcndigtes Schiff wurde weiterentwickelt und ein Bug, der dazu f\u00fchrt, dass Shaderschaden auf gro\u00dfen Schiffen erst dann initialisiert wird, wenn Spieler extrem nahe sind, wird derzeit untersucht.\nTech (Fahrzeuge)\nDie Fahrzeugtechnik verbrachte den Monat damit, das Verhalten und die Optik der Fahrzeugzerst\u00f6rung zu verbessern und konzentrierte sich darauf, die Zerst\u00f6rung von extrem gro\u00dfen Schiffen zu einer befriedigend explosiven Erfahrung zu machen. Au\u00dferdem bereiteten sie sich auf kommende Verbesserungen an Radar, Ping und Scanning vor, mit dem Ziel, die Erfahrung des Entdeckens und Sammeln detaillierter Informationen von Wesen zu Fu\u00df und in Schiffen zu bereichern. Schlie\u00dflich wurden fahrzeugsystembezogene Bugs f\u00fcr Alpha 3.11 angesprochen.\nTurbulentes\nW\u00e4hrend des ganzen Septembers konzentrierte sich das Team auf die Auslieferung von Alpha 3.11, indem es Fehler in den bestehenden Funktionen beseitigte und mehrere kritische Migrationen durchf\u00fchrte. Sie f\u00fcgten au\u00dferdem Funktionen zu Verhexung hinzu, darunter die M\u00f6glichkeit, die Daten des Hauptbuchs zu visualisieren (langfristige Persistenz) und Kredit-\/Lastschrift-Aktionen durchzuf\u00fchren. Au\u00dferdem wurden mehrere UI- und UX-Verbesserungen vorgenommen, um das Tool benutzerfreundlicher zu machen.\nNeben anderen Initiativen unterst\u00fctzte das Web-Plattform-Team den Start von Ship Showdown 2950.\n\nBenutzeroberfl\u00e4che (UI)\nLetzten Monat haben die eingebetteten UI-K\u00fcnstler verschiedene Features durchgearbeitet, wie zum Beispiel das externe Inventar und die Raketen-UI. Sie setzten auch die Arbeit an der Raffinerie-Kiosk-UI fort und arbeiteten hart an der Stabilit\u00e4t und Fehlerbehebung.\nIn technischer Hinsicht verbesserten sie das Building Blocks System und unterst\u00fctzten das bevorstehende Alpha 3.11 Release mit Bugfixes und anderen kleinen Tech-Schulden.\nVFX\nDas VFX-Team machte weitere Fortschritte bei den Feuergefahren, entwickelte den Code-Prototypen weiter und stellte \u00dcberlegungen zur Vernetzung und Leistung an.\nDas Art Team, das mit dem Code Team zusammenarbeitete, erstellte ein 'visuelles Ziel'. Ein visuelles Ziel verwendet keine Code-Hooks, sondern ist stattdessen eine Gelegenheit f\u00fcr die K\u00fcnstler, sich darauf zu konzentrieren, ihre Effekte so gut wie m\u00f6glich aussehen zu lassen. Wenn sie dann mit der Qualit\u00e4t zufrieden sind, k\u00f6nnen das Code- und das Art-Team ausarbeiten, wie sie die Visuals in das System integrieren k\u00f6nnen.\nDiesen Monat gibt es au\u00dferdem VFX f\u00fcr eine neue ballistische Schrotflinte, einen Granatwerfer und Origin 100i.\nEndlich wurden Bugs behoben und an den Feinheiten f\u00fcr die bevorstehende Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Alpha 3.11 gefeilt.\nWIR SEHEN EUCH N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...","zh_CN":"The release of Alpha 3.11 is fast approaching, and with it comes a whole host of new features to Star Citizen. Many of these new additions received their final tweaks and polishes throughout September, which you can get a sneak peek of in this month\u2019s report. It wasn\u2019t all Alpha 3.11 either, with great progress made on some significant updates scheduled for this winter\u2019s patch and beyond. Expect interesting info on refinery decks, upcoming events, new ships, and of course, the Pyro system.\nAI (Character Combat)\nCharacter Combat kick off the report with their ongoing work on accurate ammunition handling. As NPCs won\u2019t have infinite ammo, they will need to account for resources and decide when to attempt to procure more. When complete, should NPCs not have an appropriate melee weapon, they may decide that surrender is the best option. The team prepared several animation options and embedding \u2018surrender\u2019 in various behaviors. They also added improved transitions when exiting and staying in cover under certain conditions. A handful of visual perception parameters and the debug draw were tweaked to allow the designers to better iterate on the values that the AI use to perceive and understand enemies from different distances (and whether the character is in the primary or secondary field-of-view).\nAI (General)\nLast month, the AI Team fixed more issues with characters standing on top of usables, a lot of which were related to the object-container failing to restore characters to the right state. The team would like to share insight into this issue and some of the stability improvements currently in development.\n\u201cThe visual bug was always caused by NPCs being attached to usables that would stream out and then stream back in when a player approached the area. In one case, the internal event sent to the player state-machine to request the re-attachment would be lost and never processed. In the second case, the character would stream in after the usable and several other characters. Those characters would then execute their regular behaviors and could \u2018steal\u2019 the usable from the non-streamed character, causing the usable to fail to attach once they were eventually streamed back in. We want to share this with our community to give you an insight into the necessity of catching these specific situations and making the systems that AI rely on as strong as possible.\u201d \u2013 The AI Team\nThe long-term plan is to make extensive use of services to populate the environment and simulate areas when players are not around. This means a lot of these issues will become irrelevant due to the systems being used in slightly different ways.\nThe team was also busy with Alpha 3.11 bug fixes and performance optimization.\nAI (Ships)\nSeptember saw the Ship AI Team focus their attention on weapons, missile management, and a further pass on capital ship combat behavior. The latter involved making AI gunners aware of the damage composition of their available weapon groups. For example, if a gunner has a choice between energy- or physical-damage weapons, they will first attempt to lower their opponent\u2019s shields using the energy weapon. Then, when the health status falls below a certain threshold (dictated by the gunner\u2019s \u2018fire discipline\u2019 skill) they will switch to physical damage to deliver the killing blow.\n\nThey added more data to allow AI gunners to respect a cooldown before arming and launching missiles. They also ensured that, when several AI ships spawn at the same time, they don\u2019t have the same cooldown time to prevent the target being subject to a barrage of missiles. A supplementary check was added to ensure that a ship recently hit by a missile won\u2019t be targeted again for a set period of time (again, depending on the fire discipline of the shooter).\nAnother new feature being worked on is the ability for NPCs to intercept missiles. As a first step, torpedoes and missiles were added to AI perception so that they are seen as potential targets. They then changed missile hostility so all missiles that target AI ships are considered hostile; this ensures turret gunners only shoot down missiles that are a threat to friendlies. Manned turret priorities were also changed, so small and medium turrets prioritize shooting down incoming torpedoes while heavy turrets ignore them as they\u2019re generally too large and slow to be effective. Weapon size is also a factor, with small turrets prioritizing smaller targets and heavy turrets more dangerous ones.\n\nThe team also worked on the \u2018InSeatWeaponRange Tactical Target Query,\u2019 which checks if a turret gunner or ship could potentially fire at a target, and added an optimal engage-range task that calculates the range ships should attempt to stay at when engaging a particular target. The first pass of the subsumption behaviour for capital ships was implemented too, which varies based on whether a ship has a front gun and the type of target.\nAnimation\nThe Animation Team spent the majority of the month on SQ42-related tasks, but worked on a number of comms calls for various pilots specifically for the PU.\nArt (Environment)\nLast month, the Modular Environment Team finalized their work on the new cargo decks coming in Alpha 3.11. They also began looking into the art requirements for ship-to-station docking, supported work for several upcoming events, and make progress on the refinery decks. They also experimented with gas clouds at Lagrange points and supported Design in implementing the new Rest Stop interiors.\nThe Landing Zone Team continued their ongoing development of Orison. The main critical path elements are now established, including shops, transit systems, and habs, with most moving from the whitebox to the greybox phase.\nSeptember saw the Organics Team continue production of the Pyro system, with focus on Pyro VI and the moons of Pyro V. Alongside this, they continued updating the Stanton system with the new planet brushes, which can be seen firsthand in Alpha 3.11. This is a prerequisite for the latest improvements to the organic shader and its biome accumulation feature, which is intended for release in Alpha 3.12.\nThe Environment Art Team continued production on all Pyro-related content. The moons in particular received most of the attention, being brought out of the whitebox stage and readied for feedback and polish. Pyro VI progressed well too, with the global look and various biomes of the planet defined.\nThe team are always reviewing the various aspects of their pipeline to see if quality can be increased or content optimized. This time, they decided to take a closer look at the ground textures that define the close-up surface of the planets and moons, replacing all existing materials with photogrammetry-based data. Similarly, a lot of geology assets were replaced with items that make use of the latest additions to the organics shader, such as more sophisticated blending and the displacement of texture detail. This brings both the ground and geology assets visually more in line with each other and improves overall quality.\nDue to recent updates to the planet painting tools, the team made all of Stanton\u2019s planets and moons fully compatible with the changes. However, this was less of a visual pass and more of a technical update.\nArt (Ships)\nIn the US, the Art and System Design teams made great progress on the Crusader Mercury, which is rapidly approaching the final art phase. It\u2019s expected to reach the release-prep stage in October.\n\nVehicle Tech Art completed their damage pass on the upcoming Origin 100 Series ships, which included solving an issue that prevented cosmetic items detaching with debris. The team also supported Engineering on the SDF shield, 3D VisAreas, and docking features.\nIn the UK, the Art Team continued to work on the Crusader Hercules. Last month saw the lift and hangar doors complete their final art pass and the habs make it to the art-complete stage.\nThe Esperia Talon is also close to art-complete; the final art pass was made (minus the landing gear) before it moved onto the damage setup and LODs.\nThe Aegis Gladius also received a little attention, with the team adding component access across the exterior.\nArt (Weapons)\nThe Weapons Art Team spent a portion of the month training new prop artists in Maya and the workflow for creating new weapons and attachments. Work also began a new set that includes scopes, barrel, and under-barrel attachments. The Behring FS-9 LMG began its first art pass, while the Gemini A03 sniper rifle entered the final art phase too.\nAudio\nThe Audio Team started the month cleaning up the music system by refactoring and organizing old files and optimizing code.\nAfter that, they revisited some old space-derelict ambiances and supported the Green Zone removal (including the ability to destroy the turrets protecting the space stations!).\nThey began work on the physics props refactor and improved some of the older props used by the \u2018object push\/pull\u2019 feature currently in development. Audio updates were also made for the UI-related features coming in Alpha 3.11, including the external inventory and front-end rework.\nCode-wise, the team completed work to enable the playing of audio on GPU particles and further developed the tools used by the sound designers.\nBackend Services\nLast month, the Backend Server Team focused on deploying, testing, and tuning the meshed Loadout Service and Meshed Variable Service. They moved the flow of all variable and loadout data away from trafficking through the diffusion routers to a more optimal and direct path. This isolates the traffic between specific services, meaning it cannot disrupt the flow of other information that moves through diffusion. They also fixed a number of outstanding issues from Alpha 3.10, including memory leaks, network connectivity issues, and performance bugs.\nCharacters\nIn September, work continued on an armor set due for completion in Q4 2020 that the team refer to as \u201cespecially challenging to implement\u201d due to changing geometry in the variants. Other tasks involved NPC clothing assets, mission-giver heads, and concepts for a utilitarian mining-focused armor.\n\u201cWe are particularly excited to finally be adding more gameplay armors to the PU, as Design will now be delivering \u2018armor design documents\u2019 to us at regular intervals. Among others, we have started concepting a series of bounty hunting and tracking-focused armors. You can expect to see these in 2021.\u201d -The Character Team\nFinally, they supported various upcoming releases and events, including IAE 2950 and the release of the Crusader Mercury.\nCommunity\nCommunity\u2019s September was dominated by Ship Showdown. Phase 1, which started at the end of August, tasked players with championing their favorite spacecraft or vehicle by submitting self-created ship art to the Community Hub or Twitter. We received hundreds of incredible submissions, with the ten most outstanding receiving a MISC Prospector.\nThe community\u2019s top 16 then faced each other in Phase 2 head-to-head tournament, which was ultimately won by the Anvil Carrack. The final four ships will receive in-game liveries and in-game shirts that will be revealed at the IAE later this year. A two-week Free Fly accompanied the second phase, during which all top 16 ships were available to everyone for free.\nThe Team also celebrated Talk Like a Pirate Day with the Fly Like a Pirate Screenshot Contest, which asked the community to show off their most piratical activities throughout the \u2018verse. Due to the inevitable cancellation of CitizenCon this year, the team kicked off the Cosplay Contest, with great prizes for the best submissions.\nCommunity worked with several development teams to put together the Alpha 3.10 Postmortem, where senior devs shared their high-level thoughts on what went well, what didn\u2019t, and what they learned for next time.\nThey also shared several posts regarding upcoming updates to the \u2018verse, many of which can be found in Alpha 3.11: Law System Updates, Rest Stop Armistice Restrictions Updates, and Missiles and Countermeasures Improvements.\nEngineering\nLast month\u2019s physics optimizations included improving the intersection routines for SDF baking and adding further culling to AABB tree traversal. The team added g-force calculation to all rigid entities and the ability to add the mass of rigids inside the grid host mass. They gave initial support to adaptive signed-distance-fields (SDF), added exterior shadow geometry (which enables boundary entities within the hosted zone in interior OCs), and now properly support all primitive physics types for interior grids. They also added external impulses to \u2018pe_status_dynamics\u2019 and created a grid without explicit geometry. Support was provided for multiple external accelerations too.\nFor the ongoing G12 renderer work, the team supported the optional execution of stages, added debug names to all constant buffers (and made it mandatory), and undertook custom material CB and layer-blend support. Legacy pipeline resets were removed from the begin\/end render pass to the locations of the legacy-Gen12 switch, which currently saves up to 2000 API calls.\nEngineering merged the deferred and deferred-display-mapped pipelines, implemented the TSAA stage, and promoted the following stages to \u2018stable:\u2019 Tonemapping, DepthOfField, MotionBlur, Optics, Colorgrading, OpticsExposure. They removed save\/load resource-binding code on the begin\/end render pass, saving around 500 API calls per-frame. Parameterized common depth functions were also added so that they don\u2019t access global constants, as was depth down-sampling.\nWork on the atmosphere, clouds, and unified raymarcher continued in earnest, which led to cloud data that now properly interacts with the atmospheric segment it injects into (via corrected luminance integration and transmittance evaluation). The team added support for the injection of (existing) spherical clouds into the unified atmospheric raymarcher, now using uniformly distributed sample locations when integrating over hemispheres. This significantly improves LUT integration results, removes several artifacts, and converges much quicker.\nA new atmospheric multi-scatter LUT was added that supports infinite scattering orders, while the current multi-scatter LUT was rebalanced due to excessive brightness. The team also refined soft-edge computation for spherical clouds to reduce aliasing and improved the visible sun-disc evaluation when computing sunlight. This evaluation is fully integrated into the wider atmospheric lighting system and impacts direct and indirect lighting. An imbalance of computed brightness between regular and injection passes was completed; now clouds appear with consistent brightness in both regular atmosphere and via unified raymarching. The team provided support for separate Rayleigh and Mie inscatter LUTs in the current atmospheric code path too, which fixes several false color artifacts. The new LUT parameterization better supports high atmospheres and, among other things, fixes the very prominent halo around the silhouette of a planet\u2019s dark side.\nThe team sped up and unified the optical depth pre-computations in the absorption layers of atmospheres. Among other things, this allows them to add an ozone layer to Earth-like planets, which will emphasize blue skies and enable correct shading during twilight. It also enables the physically plausible fine-tuning of atmospheres. They now also use solar irradiance throughout the evaluation of atmospheric lighting to give a much-improved evaluation of sun radiance for points outside of planetary atmospheres. This enables twilight casting, atmospheric scattering, and allows the sun\u2019s angular radius to project objects onto a planet\u2019s penumbra region.\nGeneral system work involved several fixes to ISPC integration (a special compiler that generates highly optimized SSE code for heavy duty jobs running on CPUs). The team implemented support for static stationary zone groups and concave geometries as vis areas and fixed the method they find vis areas and portals by name.\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nSeptember was a busy month for the US Gameplay Features Team, who focused on fixing bugs, completing feature work, and preparing for future initiatives.\nThe beginning of the month saw them complete the final pass on the updated PU front-end screens. While the ultimate goal is to completely redefine the entry experience, these changes will refine the whole process and provide a smoother transition from the starting screens to gameplay. Some of the changes were showcased in a recent Inside Star Citizen.\nThe team began redesigning the mission manager app, with the current focus on converting the app from Flash to Building Blocks. Once complete, the team will focus on updating functionality and making changes to the overall design.\nAlongside redesigns, the team continued to make progress on the new reputation system. Additional design work and functionality was added, with focus on individual player reputations.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nA major focus for Vehicle Features last month was docking, including fixing various issues with the Kruger snubs and RSI Constellation. While they still have to deal with several issues, such as spawning the ships together correctly, great progress was made. For example, testers can now properly get in and out of the snub while it\u2019s docked in the Constellation.\nThe first functioning version of station docking was also completed. Currently, testers request to dock, get assigned a docking port, and connect with it.\nThe team supported the ongoing mining UI refresh. Aspects of the ship flight HUD and mining UI all now work together seamlessly, and the UI utilizes the new building blocks technology.\nGraphics\nThe Graphics Team split their time last month between work on the new Gen12 renderer, general features, and bug fixing. Gen12 tasks included converting the game\u2019s post-effects manager, which handles all \u2018miscellaneous\u2019 effects such as blurred vision and blackouts. The Gen12 core infrastructure was further developed to be compatible with the configurable graphics pipelines and the constant shader buffers were further polished.\nThe remainder of the Graphics Team\u2019s time was spent on the render-to-texture system, with the hookup to the texture-streaming system now complete. This means they can now run-time-generate as many textures as they like and automatically load-balance the memory with the rest of the textures in-game. The organic shader work was also completed. Currently, the team are working on iridescent effects for some upcoming ships and armor.\nLevel Design\nThe Modular Level Design Team worked through tasks for the cargo and refinery decks. They also focused on general space station interiors to ensure a more focused experience, with further iterations planned for the future.\nThe Landing Zone Level Design Team continued to work on Orison; all the core elements are now in place bar a couple of shop layouts they\u2019re still iterating on.\nBoth teams completed the first version of new panels that, among other things, will be used to update the existing elevator buttons.\nLighting\nLast month, the Lighting Team predominately supported the upcoming Alpha 3.11 patch release, which involved polishing and finalized their work on the cargo deck locations. They also began investigating alternate lighting states for existing Rest Stops. To start with, they completed a look-dev pass on a potential low-power state, with plans to flesh it out across the entire set of Rest Stop modular rooms in the future. They\u2019re also planning to create a look for emergency lighting. These lighting states will eventually be integrated into gameplay systems, such as power, and provide the potential for more Rest Stop variations in general.\nThey also began supporting Orison, setting up a basic lighting pass for the whitebox layout. It\u2019s important, even at these early stages, for the Lighting Team to identify potentially problematic spots where lighting performance will be poor. This enables fixes and layout changes to be made with minimal knock-on work for other departments.\n\n\nAnother pass was done on Lorville, this time adding simple animations to the security tower spotlights during the night-time lighting setup. This, alongside other short animations in the new cargo decks, provides a test case for adding more animated elements to locations to help bring them to life.\nNarrative\nThroughout September, the Narrative Team worked on environment documents for upcoming locations. This involves outlining the tone, history, and flavor of the area and detailing the potential stores and NPCs that might be encountered in anticipation of kickoff meetings with Art and Design. The team also worked closely with Design in the UK and Austin to look at the features currently in development and plan out potential mission content to help highlight them. From there, they started to breakdown characters and potential lines. As Narrative began scripting, the Design Team created placeholder assets to test the lines in-game to allow them to refine any lines or dialogue events before they record with an actor.\nAs with each month, another new batch of items needed to be named and described. Whether working with the Character Team on weapons, props, armor, and clothing or the Vehicle Team on ship components, everything that can be viewed in a store or the equipment manager needs a dedicated description.\nThe team also worked with QA to task-up the latest batch of Narrative bugs reported to the Issue Council.\nOn the Dispatch front, the upcoming Imperator election progressed. The team\u2019s latest post featured the final debate between the last five candidates.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve seen their posters around the landing zones and heard their campaign ads, but make sure you read up on their latest positions before the polls go live this month. And don\u2019t forget to cast your vote!\u201d -The Narrative Team\nPlayer Relations\nThe Player Relations Team spent the month working to expand service to seven days a week and growing the team in both Austin and Wilmslow, filling several positions that will reduce the ticket response time, regardless of day. They also worked alongside the Evocati to prepare for the release of Alpha 3.11.\nProps\nThe Props Team spent part of September wrapping up support on the new cargo station assets. This includes the counter sets, shipping containers, and assets for the shop.\nThey were also kept busy supporting the new locomotion push\/pull trolley system. When implemented, players will be able to manipulate trolleys and other \u2018pushable\u2019 objects. Templates were put in place, which means they can now update existing assets incrementally to work with this new feature.\nQA\nLast month, Quality Assurance continued to focus on test requests and participated in weekly playtests. The majority of features worked on were behind the scenes, so a significant number of existing assets had to be tested to ensure nothing had changed.\nThey also tested turret and ship AI accuracy, which involved looking into the existing placements and AI behaviors via Arena Commander. QA also continued to support the Engine Team, with September\u2019s focus on getting to the bottom of several hard-to-reproduce crashes and memory leaks.\nLocations-wise, the team continued to work through various transit-system issues. The Tools Team continued to support the ongoing work on core tools, including DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore, and the sandbox editor.\nTech (Animation)\nAlongside training new additions to team, Tech Animation supported Social AI in creating and technically implementing various assets throughout the PU. There was a concentrated drive to finish up the in-house facial rig and tool suite to enable the continued creation of new heads. This precedes the wider push to overhaul the entire head creation pipeline, with the view to future proofing it for the next few years.\nThe ongoing initiative to create new tools to help implement animations with a graphical user interface continued.\n\u201cThe UI is looking great and we\u2019re currently writing the technical implementation that will drive the link into our current animation toolset.\u201d \u2013 The Tech Animation Team\nTech (Art)\nTech Art\u2019s September priorities included supporting the aforementioned Kruger\/Constellation docking, 3D VisAreas, testing the multi-grid SDF with Engineering, and wrapping up tasks on the Origin 100 Series.\nAn as-yet-unannounced ship was developed further, and a bug causing shader damage to not initialize on large ships until players are extremely close by is currently being looked at.\nTech (Vehicles)\nVehicle Tech spent the month improving the behavior and visuals of vehicle destruction, focusing on making the destruction of extremely large ships a satisfyingly explosive experience. They also prepared for upcoming improvements to radar, ping, and scanning, with the aim being to enrich the experience of discovering and gathering detailed information of entities while traveling on foot and in ships. Finally, vehicle-system-related bugs were addressed for Alpha 3.11.\nTurbulent\nThroughout September, the team focused on the Alpha 3.11 delivery by bug-fixing existing features and running several critical migrations. They also added features to Hex, including the ability to visualize ledger data (long-term persistence) and perform credit\/debit actions. Several UI and UX improvements were also made to make the tool more user friendly.\nAmong other initiatives, the Web Platform Team supported the launch of Ship Showdown 2950.\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nLast month, UI\u2019s embedded artists worked through various features, such as the external inventory and missile UI. They also continued work on the refinery kiosk UI, pushing hard on stability and bug fixing.\nTech-wise, they made improvements to the Building Blocks system and supported the impending Alpha 3.11 release with bug fixing and other small elements of tech debt.\nVFX\nThe VFX Team made further progress with fire hazards, further developing the code prototype and making networking and performance considerations.\nThe Art Team, working alongside the Code Team, created a \u2018visual target\u2019. A visual target doesn\u2019t use code hooks, but is instead an opportunity for the artists to focus on getting their effects to look as good as possible. Then, when they\u2019re happy with the quality, the Code and Art teams can work out how to integrate the visuals into the system.\nAlso this month, VFX for a new ballistic shotgun, grenade launcher, and Origin 100i.\nFinally, bugs were fixed and polishing was done for the imminent Alpha 3.11 release.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":13,"comment_count":54,"created_at":"2020-10-07T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"5 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-14 03:01:47","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":17812,"next_id":17814}}