{"data":{"id":17975,"title":"Star Citizen Monthly Report: January 2021","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/17975-Star-Citizen-Monthly-Report-January-2021","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/17975","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/17975","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly 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Star Citizen devs kicked off the year working on everything from the upcoming Alpha 3.13 patch to features due in several months\u2019 time. Read on for the latest details on the physical inventory, Crusader\u2019s latest ships, Orison, and much more.\n\nAI (General)\nJanuary\u2019s general AI work included improving debug draw for the special action component that allows for a better understanding of which actions are available at any given time. Time was also dedicated to the support of Alpha 3.12 and 3.12.1.\nMost notably, the new year saw a reorganization of the AI teams into a more efficient structure to encourage knowledge sharing and a more holistic approach to prioritizing tasks and goals.\nThe department is now split by content, features, and tech: AI Content create behaviors, usables, and other related content\n\nAI Features implement project features. For example, new combat behaviors and ship maneuvers\n\nAI Tech handles all core functionalities that require a more structural design\n\n\nAI (Content)\nThe Content Team spent January working on early versions of the engineer, hygiene, hawker, and tourist behaviors.\nThe first pass on the engineer handles maintenance operations for wall panels inside ships and hangars, including inspecting internal fuses and replacing them if damaged. The initial implementation of the hygiene behavior gives NPCs the ability to use toilets, sinks, and showers, while the Hawker is a generic activity that handles various street vendors and speakers. For example, NPCs manning hotdog or taco stands. The first pass on the tourist behavior deals with characters going to and traveling around areas to look at points of interest.\nThe team are also looking to introduce new behaviors into the \u2018leisure\u2019 and \u2018eat and drink\u2019 activities, such as vending and arcade machine use.\nAI (Features)\nAI Features started the year by introducing the first traits affecting AI pilot tactic selection, which allows them to craft more realistic and personal encounters. For example, some pilots will choose safer approaches during combat while others will show-off and use specialist maneuvers.\nSupport for different operator modes began too, which will enable NPCs to correctly use the same new functionalities exposed to players. This includes setting QT mode when they want to quantum jump and returning to the default mode before piloting or fighting.\nOn the enemy-combat side, dodge actions now utilize blend space. This allows NPCs to align correctly when dodging for a more fluid and immersive combat experience. More controls were introduced to define attack-action limits and to allow the interruption of combo attacks. AI Features also added the \u2019WeaponConfidence\u2019 stat that\u2019s used to control the firing pace for characters based on their weapon proficiency.\nAI (Tech)\nAI Tech implemented new functionality to validate Subsumption code events. This allows them to verify bad setups, missing files, and ensure that variables carried by events are configured correctly. They also began supporting feature tests for Subsumption behavior and logic. To achieve this, they exposed a way to request that NPCs execute a custom logic assignment. This gives them a flexible way to request the execution of specific logic to NPCs that stacks on top of the systemic behaviors at the appropriate time.\nAI Tech also optimized the Subsumption \u2018DebugTaskTree\u2019 and Subsumption update. The DebugTaskTree optimization reduces runtime allocation, bringing the performance of the internal build closer to the release build. The Subsumption update reduces locks in the memory allocator. Local tests have shown that this saves around 5ms when updating 500 active NPCs at a given time.\nArt (Characters)\nThroughout January, the Character Team wrapped up their Alpha 3.13 tasks, planned for an upcoming event, and kicking off initiatives for Alpha 3.14. The concept artists delivered medical outfits, concepted backpacks for the physical inventory, and continued work on three new armor sets. Several clothing assets for the refinery decks and Orison were developed by the character and tech artists, while new armors were completed for an incremental Alpha 3.13 patch.\nArt (Environment)\nThe Environment Art Team started 2021 with full production of a new outpost POI archetype for the Modular Team. A lot of work went into the concept and pre-production stages, with work now beginning on the whitebox. The next stage is creating a small modular architecture kit that can be easily expanded to add diversity as the need arises.\nThe Landing Zone Team continued their work on Orison. All platforms are going into the final art phase, with some notably beautiful spaces coming together in the last few weeks. The arcade, spaceport exterior, Voyager Bar interior, and Green Circle habs are all in the final stages of development, while the visual targets for the habitation platform buildings and underside structures are currently in progress.\n\nStanton\u2019s polish pass continued, the harvestable library was expanded, and work on cave entrances that can accommodate vehicles began. The Planet Content Team started developing a pipeline for generating new and updated asteroids too.\nArt (Ships)\nSince returning from the winter holidays, the majority of the US-based Ship Team worked on a community-favorite vehicle scheduled for release later in the year. This involves several artists, designers, tech artists, and engineers working together to reach the intended launch date. Last month, the whitebox review was completed and internal feedback and embedded testing began.\nThe team also put the final touches on [Redacted], moving it into the final stage. The RSI Constellation Taurus also continued to move down the pipeline and is currently scheduled for completion in Q2 2021. Another variant was also developed for an upcoming holiday and the overall tint process was improved to support new vehicle tints throughout the year too.\nAway from specific vehicles, support was given to ship-to-ship docking, lift gravity, SDF shields, animation vis-areas, and damage.\nIn the UK, the Crusader C2 Hercules was handed to the downstream teams and progress was made on the A2 and M2 variants. Specifically, the A2 received a control room for the turrets while the M2 gained a jump-seat room for the crew of the ground vehicles.\nArt (Weapons)\nThe Weapon Art Team continued to work on the Volt Parallax electron rifle, taking the art to \u2018greybox complete.\u2019 The majority of the mesh was modeled and the team are currently rigging and animating the weapon before heading further into the final art phase.\n\nThe UltiFlex Novia crossbow progressed through final art and was handed over to Tech Art to finalize the rig due to the unique challenges of the weapon.\n\n\nEarly in the month, an investigation was made into the mag stripping feature to assess what will be needed once feature work starts. The team took this opportunity to make a pass on the grip-nodes setup too.\nFinally for FPS weapons, the team added a new healing Multi-Tool attachment. They also updated the battery and resource canister to be detachable to futureproof the weapon for additional functionality. Work also began on a new standalone Greycat Industrial cutter tool that was initially required for Squadron 42 but will make its way into the PU soon.\n\nOn the ship weapons side, work continued on the FireStorm Kinetics Colossus MOAB, which moved to final art. At the end of the month, development began on an all-new weapon too.\nCommunity\nThe Community Team kicked off 2021 announcing the winners of the\u202fEsperia Talon Screenshot,\u202fCozy Glow, and\u202fDesign a Luminalia Sweater contests.\nJanuary also saw more than 150 teams from around the world fight to take home a title in the Daymar Rally 2951.\nCongratulations to everyone involved! Seeing the community come together and create an event with this amount of coordination and effort is truly sensational.\u201d -The Community Team\nFor the temporary \u202fremoval of Delamar\u202fin Alpha 3.12.1, the team hosted the\u202fDelamar Is Going Home contest\u202fto give the asteroid a proper sendoff. Delamar and Levski will return in their lore-correct location when the Nyx system enters the PU.\n\nThe first\u202fRoadmap update\u202fof 2021 brought several improvements to the Progress & Release Tracker along with the addition of new teams and columns for Alpha 3.14, 3.15, and 3.16. As always, the Roadmap update was accompanied by a Roadmap Roundup, giving insight into the decision-making process that led to the changes.\nEngine\nJanuary saw the Physics Team complete the first of three parts of geometry instancing. Geometry instancing within physics allows the sharing of common part-related data among entities and improves how data is stored. This better utilizes the CPU cache and HW pre-fetching during collision detection and opens up costly operations to be performed more efficiently via SIMD. Ultimately, the benefits will be better performance, significantly less memory usage, and vastly reduced CPU cost during asynchronous spawning and terrain physicalization. Work on the next stage will commence later this quarter.\nIn other work, soft bodies were further optimized and heavy-duty functions were moved to ISPC (SIMD, AVX) with a net speedup of 2.5x on Intel and 2x on AMD powered-machines. Additionally, simulation topology now organizes constraints by particle indices, meaning they are stored roughly in the order they process particles in the buffer, leading to better cache localization. This yielded another 1.5x speedup on heavy and dense assets. Soft bodies now perform a single box pruning run for all external collision candidates to give 50% speedup for external collision detection.\nThe existing EVA push\/pull control was replaced with a simplified yet more robust scheme. General-purpose AABB overlap and box-pruning functions were cleaned up, while SSE (float) and AVX (double) variants were implemented, yielding improvements across the board. The ongoing switch from VA-driven character ragdoll to regular-driven ragdoll continued. Several network synchronization issues for wheeled vehicles were investigated, which resulted in initial fixes and a plan for an improved net-sync that takes the environment as well as physical movement into account. This is slated for implementation in Q2.\nAdditional research went into the large-scale object buoyancy calculation that resulted in a prototype solution. Regarding rag dolls and AFT support, the flickering of wheels and casters on trolleys was fixed, and solutions to handling detached character collisions and the Munchhausen effect were found. Research into stabilizing moving platforms (elevator floors, cargo lifts) in a more reliable way was also completed.\nOn the renderer, work on the shader cache backend refactor that began in December was completed, with the resulting implementation much leaner and compact. While focus is now back on Gen12, further improvements will be made in the future.\nRegarding volumetric cloud rendering, several improvements and optimization were implemented. Cloud shadow maps and related render buffers were switched to a more efficient storage scheme that gives significant memory and bandwidth savings along with slightly improved precision. Shadow map generation now supports incremental updates to amortize per-frame cost and increase shadow quality. Cloud shaping started and is progressing well too.\nThe Engine Team kicked off the year with additional vis-area-related improvements. For example, support for multi-segment vis-areas and correct 3D clipping of legacy particles. Further improvements were made to the engine profiler. Among other things, it now collects information about context switches via Windows ETW API to better analyze per-core utilization with respect to unnecessary or unexpected thread switching. Additionally, improvements to the scheduling of entity-component updates continued, and several follow-up changes to the memory manager refactor carried out in December were submitted.\nFeatures (Characters & Weapons)\nAs the game grows, so does the number of character animations, so January saw an initiative to improve asset format and compilation. This will give the Features Team faster builds, less memory use, and better load times across their large database of animation assets. They\u2019re currently developing improvements to run-time performance, starting with planning to ensure they have strong solutions that scale to the size and ambition of the project.\nWork also continued on several features, including hacking. Recent discussions revolved around how to scale difficulty, with considerations for the size of the play area, number of AI opponents, and randomly generated content. \u201cThis mini-game is shaping up to have a number of interesting strategical options and is looking very promising!\u201d -The Features Team\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe US Gameplay Feature Team hit the ground running fixing bugs for Alpha 3.12 and carrying on with upcoming features.\nWork continued on the reputation mobiGlas app mentioned in the last report. This time, the designers polished up the design direction while considering the complexity of the reputation system and its possible future expansions. Meanwhile, the engineers began implementing the feature itself, giving the team a deeper look into the app\u2019s functionality.\nThe team also resumed work on the \u2018asset manager\u2019 mobiGlas app, which will give players an overview of their items and allow them to filter by various categories. Designs are currently being finalized in preparation for a quick turnaround, with the goal of launching in Alpha 3.14.\nFeatures (Mission & Live Content)\nAfter the winter break, the team returned to address a handful of bugs and polish tasks before moving to their quarter-one goals.\nWork was mostly completed on a new variant of the delivery mission that takes advantage of quantum-sensitive cargo. Development then moved to the bug fixing and polish stage while some of the team kicked off the timed delivery mission mentioned last month.\nInvestigation also began on ways to implement some of the features other teams worked on during the last few quarters, including body dragging, trolley push and pull, and hacking. The tech side of the spawn closet feature moved into its final stages too, so the team began prototyping areas it can be implemented into the game.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nThe Vehicle Feature Team began the year with docking, pushing to get it complete for Alpha 3.13. This includes both ship-to-station docking and the first stage of ship-to-ship docking, which focuses on the RSI Constellation and its parasite ship, the Kruger Merlin. The team fully integrated docking with air traffic control before retroactively changing the Merlin\/ Constellation docking to use a similar code path for consistency. When implemented, players won\u2019t need to call air-traffic control when docking with a ship like the Constellation, but the owner of the ship will need to accept it.\nAnother area of focus was missiles, with the team helping to refactor them to use IFCS 2 for reliability and tunability. When complete, IFCS will fully control target tracking and guidance code to ensure missiles behave more predictably and don\u2019t oscillate around targets as they do currently.\nLastly, time was dedicated to vehicle naming. Various disciplines, including Backend Services and Art, worked together to get the names on the sides of select vehicles. While there\u2019s more work to do between interconnected systems and rendering, the feature is progressing well.\nGraphics\nThe Graphics Team started the year finalizing several outstanding bugs and features that didn\u2019t quite make last quarter\u2019s deadlines. Once complete, focus moved to the Gen12 renderer, which received various improvements to features like depth-of-field.\nA major rewrite of the tessellation shaders was done to streamline the code and fix a number of bugs. The shadow pass conversion was also completed, with the team now looking to see if they can enable this codepath by default.\nLighting\nThe Lighting Team worked more on Orison, improving the spaceport interior and working through a new set of room overlays for non-commercial and refinery space stations. A new team member was welcomed and onboarded, and internal documents were expanding to enable other artists to implement some steps of the lighting pipeline..\n\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative Team began 2021 finalizing the plan for the year\u2019s upcoming lore posts. Joining the usual mix of articles will be new additions that the team are excited to share.\nWork also continued on Orison, including scripts for some of the city\u2019s announcements and text for ads that will populate the floating platforms. They also continued to assist with content for future dynamic events and new missions. For current missions, they reviewed feedback from the Alpha 3.12 release, fixing a few bugs and improving some of the mission descriptions to make the objectives clearer.\nProgress on the reputation system continued, with a focus on how best to display lore information. A wealth of new items and clothing were named and described too.\n\u201cBe sure to check out the year\u2019s first post as New United takes a look at how the recently elected Imperator is performing. Plus, a slate of new Galactapedia entries are waiting for you to explore!\u201d -The Narrative Team\nPlayer Relations\nAlongside supporting players with Alpha 3.12, Player Relations began building their infrastructure to support more players and bigger events.\nProps\nProps began 2021 with new tasks alongside closing out a few from last year. Support for cooperative locomotion trolley push\/pull concluded, with templates fully established, an array of existing assets updated, and art polish completed. They also finished an art-debt pass on some of the oldest props in the library. For new work, they moved ahead with prop requests for Orison and started an art pass on mining modules that should conclude at the end of the quarter.\nQA\nQA\u2019s primary focus for January was testing with the Evocati and working through upcoming features for Alpha 3.13 and beyond.\nOn the management side, the team continued to hone their testing processes in preparation for the quarterly releases and large-scale events. They also began working more closely with the development teams, embedding testers to get a head start on the development cycle. This will help in the long run, as the embedded testers will provide detailed information on how features work, which will be used for wider-scale testing.\nWith the reshuffle of the AI teams, QA also rearranged themselves to better support development. Focus on performance testing AI was added to the weekly checks to ensure the team are ahead of the curve and catch any potential issues. Weekly checklists and focus testing continued, as did dev requests.\nSupport for the Engine Team ramped up too, with one of the testers moving to work alongside them. Their focus last month was to reproduce many of the hard-to-replicate crashes and provide the developers with the information they need to fix them.\nThe Tools Team continued to receive QA support, with continued testing of DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore, and the sandbox editor.\nSystemic Services & Tools\nThe Systemic Systems and Tools Team continued work on the Quantum Simulation service integration along with new technology they plan to share with the community soon.\n2021 will also see the team increase in size to accommodate the growing need for services and support for Quantum across many aspects of the game.\nOn the services front, the team focused on improving the stability and performance of the backend. This involved fixing several logic issues and crashes that were noticed on the live server. The \u2018Super pCache\u2019 is now with QA, with the team tuning performance and addressing any issues discovered during testing.\nThey also created new tools for the upcoming reputation system and continued to support the Star Citizen economy with Data Tools to help alleviate the significant amount of data while they prepare for Quantum to take the reins.\nTech Animation\nTech Animation kicked off 2021 creating animation rigs for creatures that will be found across various locations. More mission-givers were iterated on alongside refinement to the facial rig authoring tool suite, which will create a refined workflow to give quicker turnaround for high-quality facial expressions. A new weapon also passed through the rigging pipeline.\nTurbulent\nLast month, the majority of the Turbulent game services team focused on maintenance, the goal of which being to pick up tasks on less urgent items from the previous year. This included updating and creating documents for processes and services, fixes, follow-up features, investigations in our services. They also improved new relic integration and supported a fix for chat messages.\nThey also began working on tech designs for services they will be working on this year, including the configuration service used to distribute configurations to services, the identity service that manages player lifecycle and persistence, and \u2018shard and instance\u2019 management (formerly known as matchmaking).\nThe Live Tools team moved forward on Hex, fixing bugs for 1.0 along with mapping out the UX and tech design for 2.0. Investigations began into role-based access in Hex, with the team putting together a TDD to outline its functionality and use. The error reporting pipeline received improvements and effort was dedicated to improving service load testing as well.\nUser Interface (UI)\nLast month, UI began programming the underlying system that will allow them to work on new Starmap, radar, interior map, and mini-map interfaces. While it\u2019ll be several months before they can be seen in-game, the team already have a robust designs tying them together.\nOn the UI design side, plans were created for an updated Options screen and the vehicle teams were supported with updates to various cockpit UI.\nThe UI artists also developed animated concepts for the hacking UI and progressed with screen branding and adverts for Orison.\nVehicle Tech\nThe Vehicle Tech Team fixed bugs for Alpha 3.12 and made steady progress on the upcoming vehicles of Alpha 3.13. They also made improvements to the scanning and ping system to ensure detecting faraway or hidden entities and extracting details about them is fun and intuitive. These improvements will also make their way to players scanning on foot.\nVFX\nLast month, the VFX Team kicked off pre-production tasks for vehicle radar scanning and ping. The UI Team provided concept videos, so the VFX team are currently investigating how to achieve the required visuals in-engine.\nWork also began on the moons of Pyro, which involved gathering information on details such as climate values (how windy, how hot, etc.). The teams also investigated VFX requirements for thruster wind volumes as they\u2019re planning to move to a more physical-based setup for vehicle landing dust effects, making use of the wind volumes that were added to thrusters last year.\nThe VFX Code Team resumed their work on the new particle lighting model, with the goal of allowing the VFX artists to convert their effects to the new model in the near future. Gen 12 work continued too, with a focus on transparency rendering. Steady progress was made on fire hazards too.\nVFX\u2019s Tech Art Team continued to provide gas cloud support to the art and design teams alongside R&D into destruction pipelines.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026","de_DE":"Die Entwickler von Star Citizen haben das Jahr damit begonnen, an allem zu arbeiten, vom kommenden Alpha 3.13 Patch bis hin zu Features, die in einigen Monaten erscheinen werden. Lies weiter f\u00fcr die neuesten Details \u00fcber das physische Inventar, Crusaders neueste Schiffe, Orison und vieles mehr.\n\nKI (Allgemein)\nDie allgemeine KI-Arbeit im Januar beinhaltete die Verbesserung der Debug-Zeichnung f\u00fcr die spezielle Aktionskomponente, die ein besseres Verst\u00e4ndnis daf\u00fcr erm\u00f6glicht, welche Aktionen zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt verf\u00fcgbar sind. Auch dem Support von Alpha 3.12 und 3.12.1 wurde Zeit gewidmet.\nDas neue Jahr sah vor allem eine Reorganisation der KI-Teams in eine effizientere Struktur, um den Wissensaustausch zu f\u00f6rdern und einen ganzheitlicheren Ansatz f\u00fcr die Priorisierung von Aufgaben und Zielen.\nDie Abteilung ist nun nach Content, Features und Tech aufgeteilt:\nAI Content erstellt Behaviors, Usables und andere verwandte Inhalte AI Features implementieren Projektfeatures. Zum Beispiel neue Kampfverhalten und Schiffsman\u00f6ver AI Tech k\u00fcmmert sich um alle Kernfunktionalit\u00e4ten, die ein eher strukturelles Design erfordern\nKI (Inhalt)\nDas Content Team hat den Januar damit verbracht, an fr\u00fchen Versionen der Verhaltensweisen des Ingenieurs, der Hygiene, des H\u00e4ndlers und des Touristen zu arbeiten.\nDer erste Durchgang des Ingenieurs k\u00fcmmert sich um die Wartung der Wandpaneele in Schiffen und Hangars, einschlie\u00dflich der Inspektion der internen Sicherungen und deren Austausch, wenn sie besch\u00e4digt sind. Die erste Implementierung des Hygiene-Verhaltens gibt NSCs die M\u00f6glichkeit, Toiletten, Waschbecken und Duschen zu benutzen, w\u00e4hrend der Hawker eine generische Aktivit\u00e4t ist, die verschiedene Stra\u00dfenverk\u00e4ufer und Lautsprecher bedient. Zum Beispiel NPCs, die Hotdog- oder Taco-St\u00e4nde besetzen. Der erste Durchgang des Touristenverhaltens befasst sich mit Charakteren, die sich in Gebiete begeben und dort herumreisen, um sich Sehensw\u00fcrdigkeiten anzuschauen.\nDas Team m\u00f6chte auch neue Verhaltensweisen in den Bereichen \"Freizeit\" und \"Essen und Trinken\" einf\u00fchren, wie z.B. die Nutzung von Verkaufsautomaten und Arcade-Automaten.\nKI (Features)\nDie KI-Features haben das Jahr mit der Einf\u00fchrung der ersten Eigenschaften begonnen, die die Taktikauswahl der KI-Piloten beeinflussen, was es ihnen erm\u00f6glicht, realistischere und pers\u00f6nlichere Begegnungen zu gestalten. Zum Beispiel werden einige Piloten w\u00e4hrend des Kampfes eine sicherere Herangehensweise w\u00e4hlen, w\u00e4hrend andere angeben und spezielle Man\u00f6ver verwenden werden.\nAuch die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr verschiedene Operator-Modi hat begonnen, was es den NPCs erm\u00f6glichen wird, die gleichen neuen Funktionalit\u00e4ten, die den Spielern zur Verf\u00fcgung stehen, korrekt zu nutzen. Dazu geh\u00f6rt das Einstellen des QT-Modus, wenn sie einen Quantensprung machen wollen, und die R\u00fcckkehr in den Standardmodus vor dem Piloten oder Kampf.\nAuf der Seite der Gegnerk\u00e4mpfe nutzen Ausweichaktionen nun den Blend Space. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es den NSCs, sich beim Ausweichen korrekt auszurichten, was zu einem fl\u00fcssigeren und immersiveren Kampferlebnis f\u00fchrt. Es wurden weitere Steuerelemente eingef\u00fchrt, um Angriffsaktionsgrenzen zu definieren und die Unterbrechung von Kombo-Angriffen zu erm\u00f6glichen. Die KI-Features f\u00fcgten auch den 'WeaponConfidence'-Status hinzu, der verwendet wird, um das Feuertempo f\u00fcr Charaktere basierend auf ihrer Waffenfertigkeit zu steuern.\nKI (Tech)\nAI Tech implementierte eine neue Funktionalit\u00e4t zur \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung von Subsumption Code Events. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es ihnen, fehlerhafte Setups und fehlende Dateien zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen und sicherzustellen, dass die von den Ereignissen \u00fcbertragenen Variablen korrekt konfiguriert sind. Sie haben auch begonnen, Funktionstests f\u00fcr Subsumption Verhalten und Logik zu unterst\u00fctzen. Um dies zu erreichen, haben sie eine M\u00f6glichkeit geschaffen, NPCs aufzufordern, eine benutzerdefinierte Logikzuweisung auszuf\u00fchren. Dies gibt ihnen eine flexible M\u00f6glichkeit, die Ausf\u00fchrung spezifischer Logik an NSCs anzufordern, die sich zum richtigen Zeitpunkt auf das systemische Verhalten stapelt.\nAI Tech hat auch die Subsumption 'DebugTaskTree' und Subsumption Update optimiert. Die DebugTaskTree-Optimierung reduziert die Laufzeitzuweisung und bringt die Leistung des internen Builds n\u00e4her an den Release-Build. Das Subsumption Update reduziert die Sperren im Memory Allocator. Lokale Tests haben gezeigt, dass dies etwa 5ms einspart, wenn 500 aktive NPCs zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt aktualisiert werden.\nKunst (Charaktere)\nIm Laufe des Januars hat das Charakterteam seine Aufgaben f\u00fcr Alpha 3.13 abgeschlossen, ein bevorstehendes Event geplant und die Initiativen f\u00fcr Alpha 3.14 gestartet. Die Konzeptk\u00fcnstler lieferten medizinische Outfits, entwarfen Rucks\u00e4cke f\u00fcr das physische Inventar und arbeiteten weiter an drei neuen R\u00fcstungssets. Mehrere Bekleidungs-Assets f\u00fcr die Raffinerie-Decks und Orison wurden von den Charakter- und Tech-Artists entwickelt, w\u00e4hrend neue R\u00fcstungen f\u00fcr einen inkrementellen Alpha 3.13-Patch fertiggestellt wurden.\nKunst (Umgebung)\nDas Environment Art Team startete 2021 mit der vollst\u00e4ndigen Produktion eines neuen Au\u00dfenposten POI Archetyps f\u00fcr das Modular Team. Es wurde viel Arbeit in die Konzept- und Vorproduktionsphase gesteckt und nun beginnt die Arbeit an der Whitebox. Der n\u00e4chste Schritt ist die Erstellung eines kleinen, modularen Baukastens, der leicht erweitert werden kann, um die Vielfalt zu erh\u00f6hen, wenn es n\u00f6tig ist.\nDas Landing Zone Team hat seine Arbeit an Orison fortgesetzt. Alle Plattformen gehen in die finale Kunstphase, wobei in den letzten Wochen einige besonders sch\u00f6ne R\u00e4ume entstanden sind. Die Arkade, das \u00c4u\u00dfere des Raumhafens, das Innere der Voyager Bar und die Habs des Gr\u00fcnen Kreises befinden sich alle in der Endphase der Entwicklung, w\u00e4hrend die visuellen Ziele f\u00fcr die Geb\u00e4ude der Wohnplattform und die Unterseitenstrukturen derzeit in Arbeit sind.\n\nStantons polnischer Pass wurde fortgesetzt, die erntef\u00e4hige Bibliothek wurde erweitert und die Arbeit an H\u00f6hleneing\u00e4ngen, die Fahrzeuge beherbergen k\u00f6nnen, begann. Das Planet Content Team begann auch mit der Entwicklung einer Pipeline f\u00fcr die Generierung neuer und aktualisierter Asteroiden.\nKunst (Schiffe)\nSeit der R\u00fcckkehr aus den Winterferien hat der Gro\u00dfteil des in den USA ans\u00e4ssigen Schiffsteams an einem von der Community favorisierten Fahrzeug gearbeitet, das sp\u00e4ter im Jahr ver\u00f6ffentlicht werden soll. Dabei arbeiten mehrere K\u00fcnstler, Designer, Techniker und Ingenieure zusammen, um das geplante Ver\u00f6ffentlichungsdatum zu erreichen. Letzten Monat wurde das Whitebox-Review abgeschlossen und internes Feedback und eingebettete Tests begannen.\nDas Team hat auch dem [Redacted] den letzten Schliff gegeben und es in die finale Phase gebracht. Der RSI Constellation Taurus hat sich ebenfalls weiter in der Pipeline nach unten bewegt und ist derzeit f\u00fcr die Fertigstellung in Q2 2021 geplant. Eine weitere Variante wurde f\u00fcr einen bevorstehenden Feiertag entwickelt und der gesamte T\u00f6nungsprozess wurde verbessert, um auch neue Fahrzeugt\u00f6nungen w\u00e4hrend des Jahres zu unterst\u00fctzen.\nAbseits von spezifischen Fahrzeugen wurde Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr das Andocken von Schiffen, die Schwerkraft, SDF-Schilde, Animations-Vis-Areas und Sch\u00e4den gegeben.\nIn Gro\u00dfbritannien wurde der Crusader C2 Hercules an die Downstream-Teams \u00fcbergeben und es wurden Fortschritte bei den Varianten A2 und M2 gemacht. Konkret erhielt die A2 einen Kontrollraum f\u00fcr die Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrme, w\u00e4hrend die M2 einen Jump-Seat-Raum f\u00fcr die Besatzung der Bodenfahrzeuge erhielt.\nArt (Weapons)\nDas Weapon Art Team arbeitete weiter an dem Volt Parallax Elektronengewehr und brachte die Art zur 'greybox complete'. Der Gro\u00dfteil des Meshes wurde modelliert und das Team riggt und animiert die Waffe derzeit, bevor es in die finale Art-Phase geht.\n\nDie UltiFlex Novia Armbrust hat die Final Art Phase durchlaufen und wurde aufgrund der einzigartigen Herausforderungen der Waffe an Tech Art \u00fcbergeben, um das Rig zu finalisieren.\n\n\nAnfang des Monats wurde eine Untersuchung des Mag Stripping-Features durchgef\u00fchrt, um festzustellen, was ben\u00f6tigt wird, sobald die Feature-Arbeiten beginnen. Das Team nutzte die Gelegenheit, um auch das Grip-Nodes-Setup zu \u00fcberarbeiten.\nSchlie\u00dflich f\u00fcgte das Team f\u00fcr FPS-Waffen ein neues heilendes Multi-Tool-Attachment hinzu. Au\u00dferdem wurden die Batterie und der Ressourcenkanister abnehmbar gemacht, um die Waffe zukunftssicher f\u00fcr zus\u00e4tzliche Funktionen zu machen. Au\u00dferdem wurde mit der Arbeit an einem neuen, eigenst\u00e4ndigen Greycat Industrial Cutter Tool begonnen, das urspr\u00fcnglich f\u00fcr Squadron 42 ben\u00f6tigt wurde, aber bald seinen Weg in die PU finden wird.\n\nAuf der Schiffswaffenseite wurde die Arbeit an der FireStorm Kinetics Colossus MOAB fortgesetzt, die in den finalen Entwurf \u00fcberging. Am Ende des Monats begann auch die Entwicklung einer v\u00f6llig neuen Waffe.\nCommunity\nDas Community Team begann das Jahr 2021 mit der Bekanntgabe der Gewinner der Wettbewerbe Esperia Talon Screenshot, Cozy Glow und Design a Luminalia Sweater.\nIm Januar k\u00e4mpften au\u00dferdem mehr als 150 Teams aus der ganzen Welt um den Titel bei der Daymar Rally 2951.\nHerzlichen Gl\u00fcckwunsch an alle Beteiligten! Zu sehen, wie die Community zusammenkommt und ein Event mit so viel Koordination und Aufwand auf die Beine stellt, ist wirklich sensationell.\" -Das Community Team\nF\u00fcr die vor\u00fcbergehende Entfernung von Delamar in Alpha 3.12.1 veranstaltete das Team den Delamar Is Going Home Wettbewerb, um dem Asteroiden einen geb\u00fchrenden Abschied zu geben. Delamar und Levski werden an ihrem lore-korrekten Ort zur\u00fcckkehren, wenn das Nyx-System in die PU aufgenommen wird.\n\nDas erste Roadmap-Update des Jahres 2021 brachte einige Verbesserungen im Progress & Release Tracker sowie das Hinzuf\u00fcgen von neuen Teams und Spalten f\u00fcr Alpha 3.14, 3.15 und 3.16. Wie immer wurde das Roadmap-Update von einem Roadmap-Roundup begleitet, das einen Einblick in den Entscheidungsprozess gibt, der zu den \u00c4nderungen f\u00fchrte.\nEngine\nIm Januar hat das Physics Team den ersten von drei Teilen des Geometry Instancing abgeschlossen. Geometry Instancing innerhalb der Physik erm\u00f6glicht die gemeinsame Nutzung von partbezogenen Daten zwischen den Entities und verbessert die Art und Weise, wie die Daten gespeichert werden. Dies nutzt den CPU-Cache und das HW-Pre-Fetching w\u00e4hrend der Kollisionserkennung besser aus und er\u00f6ffnet kostspielige Operationen, die \u00fcber SIMD effizienter ausgef\u00fchrt werden k\u00f6nnen. Letztendlich werden die Vorteile eine bessere Performance, deutlich weniger Speicherverbrauch und erheblich reduzierte CPU-Kosten w\u00e4hrend des asynchronen Spawnings und der Terrain Physicalization sein. Die Arbeit an der n\u00e4chsten Stufe wird sp\u00e4ter in diesem Quartal beginnen.\nIn anderen Arbeiten wurden Soft Bodies weiter optimiert und schwere Funktionen auf ISPC (SIMD, AVX) verlagert, mit einem Netto-Speedup von 2,5x auf Intel und 2x auf AMD powered-machines. Zus\u00e4tzlich organisiert die Simulationstopologie nun die Constraints nach Partikelindizes, d.h. sie werden ungef\u00e4hr in der Reihenfolge gespeichert, in der sie die Partikel im Puffer verarbeiten, was zu einer besseren Cache-Lokalisierung f\u00fchrt. Dies f\u00fchrte zu einem weiteren 1,5-fachen Speedup bei schweren und dichten Assets. Soft Bodies f\u00fchren nun einen einzigen Box Pruning-Lauf f\u00fcr alle externen Kollisionskandidaten durch, was zu einer 50%igen Beschleunigung der externen Kollisionserkennung f\u00fchrt.\nDie bestehende EVA Push\/Pull Steuerung wurde durch ein vereinfachtes, aber robusteres Schema ersetzt. Die allgemeinen AABB-\u00dcberlappungs- und Box-Pruning-Funktionen wurden aufger\u00e4umt, w\u00e4hrend SSE- (float) und AVX- (double) Varianten implementiert wurden, was zu Verbesserungen auf breiter Front f\u00fchrte. Die laufende Umstellung von VA-gesteuerten Charakter-Ragdolls auf regul\u00e4r gesteuerte Ragdolls wurde fortgesetzt. Mehrere Probleme mit der Netzwerksynchronisation von Fahrzeugen auf R\u00e4dern wurden untersucht, was zu ersten Fixes und einem Plan f\u00fcr eine verbesserte Netzwerksynchronisation f\u00fchrte, die sowohl die Umgebung als auch die physische Bewegung in Betracht zieht. Dies soll in Q2 implementiert werden.\nZus\u00e4tzliche Forschung ging in die Berechnung des Auftriebs von gro\u00dfen Objekten, was zu einer prototypischen L\u00f6sung f\u00fchrte. In Bezug auf Stoffpuppen und AFT-Unterst\u00fctzung wurde das Flackern von R\u00e4dern und Rollen an Trolleys behoben und L\u00f6sungen f\u00fcr die Handhabung von Kollisionen mit losgel\u00f6sten Charakteren und dem M\u00fcnchhausen-Effekt gefunden. Die Forschung an der Stabilisierung von sich bewegenden Plattformen (Fahrstuhlb\u00f6den, Lastenaufz\u00fcge) auf eine zuverl\u00e4ssigere Art und Weise wurde ebenfalls abgeschlossen.\nBeim Renderer wurde die Arbeit am Shader-Cache-Backend Refactor, die im Dezember begonnen wurde, abgeschlossen, wobei die resultierende Implementierung viel schlanker und kompakter ist. W\u00e4hrend der Fokus nun wieder auf Gen12 liegt, werden in der Zukunft weitere Verbesserungen vorgenommen werden.\nIn Bezug auf das volumetrische Cloud Rendering wurden mehrere Verbesserungen und Optimierungen implementiert. Die Cloud Shadow Maps und die dazugeh\u00f6rigen Renderbuffer wurden auf ein effizienteres Speicherschema umgestellt, das signifikante Einsparungen an Speicher und Bandbreite sowie eine leicht verbesserte Pr\u00e4zision bietet. Die Erzeugung von Schattenkarten unterst\u00fctzt nun inkrementelle Updates, um die Kosten pro Frame zu amortisieren und die Qualit\u00e4t der Schatten zu erh\u00f6hen. Cloud Shaping hat begonnen und macht ebenfalls gute Fortschritte.\nDas Engine Team hat das Jahr mit weiteren vis-area-bezogenen Verbesserungen begonnen. Zum Beispiel Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Multisegment-Vis-Areas und korrektes 3D-Clipping von Legacy-Partikeln. Weitere Verbesserungen wurden am Engine-Profiler vorgenommen. Unter anderem sammelt er nun Informationen \u00fcber Kontextwechsel \u00fcber die Windows ETW API, um die Auslastung pro Kern im Hinblick auf unn\u00f6tige oder unerwartete Threadwechsel besser zu analysieren. Au\u00dferdem wurden Verbesserungen am Scheduling von Entity-Komponenten-Updates fortgesetzt und einige Folge\u00e4nderungen des im Dezember durchgef\u00fchrten Refactors des Speichermanagers eingereicht.\nFeatures (Charaktere & Waffen)\nMit dem Wachstum des Spiels w\u00e4chst auch die Anzahl der Charakteranimationen, weshalb im Januar eine Initiative zur Verbesserung des Asset-Formats und der Kompilierung durchgef\u00fchrt wurde. Dies wird dem Features Team schnellere Builds, weniger Speicherverbrauch und bessere Ladezeiten f\u00fcr die gro\u00dfe Datenbank an Animations-Assets erm\u00f6glichen. Sie entwickeln derzeit Verbesserungen f\u00fcr die Laufzeit-Performance und beginnen mit der Planung, um sicherzustellen, dass sie starke L\u00f6sungen haben, die mit der Gr\u00f6\u00dfe und den Ambitionen des Projekts skalieren.\nDie Arbeit an verschiedenen Features, einschlie\u00dflich Hacking, wurde ebenfalls fortgesetzt. Die letzten Diskussionen drehten sich um die Skalierung des Schwierigkeitsgrades, mit \u00dcberlegungen zur Gr\u00f6\u00dfe des Spielfeldes, der Anzahl der KI-Gegner und der zuf\u00e4llig generierten Inhalte. \"Dieses Minispiel entwickelt sich zu einer Reihe interessanter strategischer Optionen und sieht sehr vielversprechend aus!\" -The Features Team\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nDas US Gameplay Feature Team hat sich m\u00e4chtig ins Zeug gelegt, um Bugs f\u00fcr die Alpha 3.12 zu beheben und an den kommenden Features weiterzuarbeiten.\nDie Arbeit an der im letzten Bericht erw\u00e4hnten Ruf-MobiGlas-App wurde fortgesetzt. Dieses Mal feilten die Designer an der Designrichtung und ber\u00fccksichtigten dabei die Komplexit\u00e4t des Reputationssystems und seine m\u00f6glichen zuk\u00fcnftigen Erweiterungen. In der Zwischenzeit begannen die Ingenieure mit der Implementierung des Features selbst, was dem Team einen tieferen Einblick in die Funktionalit\u00e4t der App erm\u00f6glichte.\nDas Team nahm auch die Arbeit an der 'Asset Manager' mobiGlas App wieder auf, die den Spielern einen \u00dcberblick \u00fcber ihre Gegenst\u00e4nde geben wird und ihnen erlaubt, nach verschiedenen Kategorien zu filtern. Die Entw\u00fcrfe werden derzeit finalisiert, um eine schnelle Umsetzung zu erm\u00f6glichen, mit dem Ziel, in der Alpha 3.14 zu starten.\nFeatures (Missionen & Live-Inhalte)\nNach der Winterpause kehrte das Team zur\u00fcck, um eine Handvoll Bugs zu beseitigen und an den Features zu feilen, bevor es sich den Zielen des ersten Quartals zuwandte.\nDie Arbeit wurde gr\u00f6\u00dftenteils an einer neuen Variante der Liefermission abgeschlossen, die den Vorteil von quantensensitiver Fracht nutzt. Die Entwicklung ging dann in die Phase der Fehlerbehebung und des Feinschliffs \u00fcber, w\u00e4hrend ein Teil des Teams die im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnte zeitlich begrenzte Liefermission in Angriff nahm.\nAu\u00dferdem begann die Untersuchung von M\u00f6glichkeiten, einige der Features zu implementieren, an denen andere Teams in den letzten Quartalen gearbeitet haben, darunter Body Dragging, Trolley Push and Pull und Hacking. Die technische Seite des Spawn-Closet-Features ging ebenfalls in die Endphase und das Team begann mit dem Prototyping von Bereichen, in denen es ins Spiel implementiert werden kann.\nFeatures (Fahrzeuge)\nDas Fahrzeug-Feature-Team begann das Jahr mit dem Andocken und dr\u00e4ngte darauf, es f\u00fcr Alpha 3.13 fertigzustellen. Dies beinhaltet sowohl das Andocken von Schiff zu Station als auch die erste Stufe des Andockens von Schiff zu Schiff, die sich auf die RSI Constellation und ihr Parasitenschiff, die Kruger Merlin, konzentriert. Das Team hat das Andocken mit der Flugsicherung vollst\u00e4ndig integriert, bevor es r\u00fcckwirkend das Andocken zwischen Merlin und Constellation \u00e4ndert, um einen \u00e4hnlichen Codepfad f\u00fcr die Konsistenz zu verwenden. Wenn dies implementiert ist, m\u00fcssen die Spieler die Flugsicherung nicht anrufen, wenn sie an ein Schiff wie die Constellation andocken, aber der Besitzer des Schiffes muss dies akzeptieren.\nEin weiterer Schwerpunkt waren Raketen, bei denen das Team geholfen hat, sie so zu \u00fcberarbeiten, dass sie IFCS 2 f\u00fcr Zuverl\u00e4ssigkeit und Abstimmbarkeit nutzen. Wenn es fertig ist, wird IFCS den Zielverfolgungs- und Lenkungscode vollst\u00e4ndig kontrollieren, um sicherzustellen, dass die Raketen sich vorhersehbarer verhalten und nicht um die Ziele herum schwanken, wie sie es derzeit tun.\nZu guter Letzt wurde Zeit f\u00fcr die Namensgebung der Fahrzeuge aufgewendet. Verschiedene Disziplinen, darunter Backend Services und Art, arbeiteten zusammen, um die Namen auf die Seiten ausgew\u00e4hlter Fahrzeuge zu bringen. Obwohl es noch mehr Arbeit zwischen den miteinander verbundenen Systemen und dem Rendering gibt, macht das Feature gute Fortschritte.\nGrafiken\nDas Grafikteam begann das Jahr mit der Fertigstellung einiger ausstehender Bugs und Features, die es nicht ganz bis zum letzten Quartal geschafft haben. Nach der Fertigstellung wurde der Fokus auf den Gen12 Renderer gelegt, der verschiedene Verbesserungen an Features wie der Tiefensch\u00e4rfe erhielt.\nDie Tessellationsshader wurden grundlegend \u00fcberarbeitet, um den Code zu optimieren und eine Reihe von Fehlern zu beheben. Die Schattenpass-Konvertierung wurde ebenfalls abgeschlossen und das Team pr\u00fcft nun, ob es diesen Codepfad standardm\u00e4\u00dfig aktivieren kann.\nBeleuchtung\nDas Beleuchtungsteam arbeitete weiter an Orison, verbesserte das Interieur des Raumhafens und arbeitete an einem neuen Set von Raum-Overlays f\u00fcr nicht-kommerzielle und Raffinerie-Raumstationen. Ein neues Teammitglied wurde willkommen gehei\u00dfen und an Bord geholt, und interne Dokumente wurden erweitert, um anderen K\u00fcnstlern die M\u00f6glichkeit zu geben, einige Schritte der Beleuchtungspipeline zu implementieren.\n\n\nNarrative\nDas Narrative Team begann 2021 damit, den Plan f\u00fcr die kommenden Lore-Posts des Jahres zu finalisieren. Neben der \u00fcblichen Mischung an Artikeln wird es neue Erg\u00e4nzungen geben, auf die sich das Team freut.\nAu\u00dferdem wurde die Arbeit an Orison fortgesetzt, einschlie\u00dflich der Skripte f\u00fcr einige der Ank\u00fcndigungen der Stadt und der Texte f\u00fcr die Anzeigen, die die schwebenden Plattformen bev\u00f6lkern werden. Das Team arbeitete auch weiter an den Inhalten f\u00fcr zuk\u00fcnftige dynamische Events und neue Missionen. F\u00fcr die aktuellen Missionen wurde das Feedback aus der Alpha 3.12 ausgewertet, ein paar Fehler behoben und einige Missionsbeschreibungen verbessert, um die Ziele klarer zu machen.\nDie Fortschritte beim Rufsystem wurden fortgesetzt, wobei der Fokus darauf lag, wie die Informationen zur Geschichte am besten dargestellt werden k\u00f6nnen. Eine F\u00fclle von neuen Gegenst\u00e4nden und Kleidungsst\u00fccken wurde ebenfalls benannt und beschrieben.\n\"Schaut euch unbedingt den ersten Post des Jahres an, in dem New United einen Blick darauf wirft, wie sich der k\u00fcrzlich gew\u00e4hlte Imperator schl\u00e4gt. Au\u00dferdem warten eine Reihe neuer Galactapedia-Eintr\u00e4ge darauf, von dir erkundet zu werden!\" -Das Narrative Team\nSpieler Beziehungen\nNeben der Unterst\u00fctzung der Spieler mit der Alpha 3.12 haben die Player Relations begonnen, ihre Infrastruktur auszubauen, um mehr Spieler und gr\u00f6\u00dfere Events zu unterst\u00fctzen.\nProps\nProps begann 2021 mit neuen Aufgaben und schloss gleichzeitig einige vom letzten Jahr ab. Die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr die kooperative Fortbewegung Trolley Push\/Pull wurde abgeschlossen, die Templates vollst\u00e4ndig etabliert, eine Reihe bestehender Assets aktualisiert und der Art-Polish abgeschlossen. Sie beendeten auch die \u00dcberarbeitung einiger der \u00e4ltesten Requisiten in der Bibliothek. F\u00fcr neue Arbeiten wurden Requisitenanfragen f\u00fcr Orison bearbeitet und ein Art Pass f\u00fcr Bergbaumodule begonnen, der am Ende des Quartals abgeschlossen sein sollte.\nQA\nDer Hauptfokus der QA lag im Januar auf dem Testen mit den Evocati und der Arbeit an den kommenden Features f\u00fcr Alpha 3.13 und dar\u00fcber hinaus.\nAuf der Seite des Managements feilte das Team weiter an seinen Testprozessen, um sich auf die viertelj\u00e4hrlichen Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen und Gro\u00dfereignisse vorzubereiten. Sie begannen auch, enger mit den Entwicklungsteams zusammenzuarbeiten und Tester einzubinden, um einen Vorsprung im Entwicklungszyklus zu bekommen. Dies wird langfristig helfen, da die eingebetteten Tester detaillierte Informationen \u00fcber die Funktionsweise von Features liefern, die dann f\u00fcr breitere Tests genutzt werden k\u00f6nnen.\nMit der Umbildung der KI-Teams hat sich auch die QA neu aufgestellt, um die Entwicklung besser zu unterst\u00fctzen. Der Fokus auf Leistungstests der KI wurde zu den w\u00f6chentlichen Checks hinzugef\u00fcgt, um sicherzustellen, dass das Team der Entwicklung voraus ist und alle potenziellen Probleme erkennt. Die w\u00f6chentlichen Checklisten und Fokustests wurden fortgesetzt, ebenso wie die Entwicklungsanfragen.\nDie Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr das Engine Team wurde ebenfalls erh\u00f6ht, da einer der Tester nun an der Seite des Teams arbeitet. Ihr Fokus lag im letzten Monat darauf, viele der schwer zu reproduzierenden Abst\u00fcrze zu reproduzieren und die Entwickler mit den n\u00f6tigen Informationen zu versorgen, um diese zu beheben.\nDas Tools Team erhielt weiterhin QA-Unterst\u00fctzung, mit fortgesetzten Tests von DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore und dem Sandbox-Editor.\nSystemische Dienste & Tools\nDas Systemic Systems and Tools Team setzte die Arbeit an der Integration des Quantum Simulation Service fort, zusammen mit neuen Technologien, die sie bald mit der Community teilen wollen.\nIm Jahr 2021 wird sich das Team vergr\u00f6\u00dfern, um den wachsenden Bedarf an Diensten und Support f\u00fcr Quantum in vielen Bereichen des Spiels zu decken.\nAn der Servicefront konzentrierte sich das Team darauf, die Stabilit\u00e4t und Leistung des Backends zu verbessern. Dies beinhaltete die Behebung mehrerer Logikprobleme und Abst\u00fcrze, die auf dem Live-Server bemerkt wurden. Der 'Super pCache' befindet sich nun bei der QA, wo das Team die Leistung optimiert und alle Probleme behebt, die w\u00e4hrend der Tests entdeckt wurden.\nAu\u00dferdem wurden neue Tools f\u00fcr das kommende Reputationssystem erstellt und die Star Citizen Wirtschaft mit Data Tools weiter unterst\u00fctzt, um die gro\u00dfe Datenmenge zu verringern, w\u00e4hrend sie sich auf die \u00dcbernahme durch Quantum vorbereiten.\nTech Animation\nDie Tech Animation begann 2021 mit der Erstellung von Animations-Rigs f\u00fcr Kreaturen, die an verschiedenen Orten zu finden sein werden. Neben der Verfeinerung der Gesichts-Rig-Authoring-Tool-Suite, die einen verfeinerten Arbeitsablauf f\u00fcr eine schnellere Bearbeitung von hochwertigen Gesichtsausdr\u00fccken erm\u00f6glicht, wurden weitere Missions-Geber iteriert. Eine neue Waffe durchlief ebenfalls die Rigging-Pipeline.\nTurbulent\nIm letzten Monat konzentrierte sich der Gro\u00dfteil des Turbulent Game Services Teams auf Wartungsarbeiten, mit dem Ziel, weniger dringende Aufgaben aus dem letzten Jahr wieder aufzunehmen. Dazu geh\u00f6rte das Aktualisieren und Erstellen von Dokumenten f\u00fcr Prozesse und Dienste, Fixes, Folgefeatures, Untersuchungen in unseren Diensten. Sie verbesserten auch die neue Reliktintegration und unterst\u00fctzten einen Fix f\u00fcr Chatnachrichten.\nAu\u00dferdem begannen sie mit der Arbeit an technischen Entw\u00fcrfen f\u00fcr Dienste, an denen sie in diesem Jahr arbeiten werden, darunter der Konfigurationsdienst, der zur Verteilung von Konfigurationen an Dienste verwendet wird, der Identit\u00e4tsdienst, der den Lebenszyklus und die Persistenz von Spielern verwaltet, und die Verwaltung von 'Shard und Instanz' (fr\u00fcher als Matchmaking bekannt).\nDas Live-Tools-Team hat Hex weiterentwickelt, Fehler f\u00fcr 1.0 behoben und das UX- und Tech-Design f\u00fcr 2.0 entworfen. Untersuchungen zum rollenbasierten Zugriff in Hex begannen, wobei das Team ein TDD erstellte, um die Funktionalit\u00e4t und Nutzung zu skizzieren. Die Fehlerberichterstattungs-Pipeline wurde verbessert und es wurde auch an der Verbesserung der Lasttests f\u00fcr den Service gearbeitet.\nBenutzeroberfl\u00e4che (UI)\nLetzten Monat begann das UI-Team mit der Programmierung des zugrundeliegenden Systems, das es ihnen erm\u00f6glichen wird, an neuen Starmap-, Radar-, Innenraum- und Mini-Map-Interfaces zu arbeiten. Auch wenn es noch einige Monate dauern wird, bis sie im Spiel zu sehen sein werden, hat das Team bereits ein robustes Design, das sie miteinander verbindet.\nAuf der Seite des UI-Designs wurden Pl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr einen aktualisierten Options-Bildschirm erstellt und die Fahrzeug-Teams wurden mit Updates f\u00fcr verschiedene Cockpit-UIs unterst\u00fctzt.\nDie UI-K\u00fcnstler entwickelten au\u00dferdem animierte Konzepte f\u00fcr die Hacking-UI und arbeiteten an Screen-Branding und Anzeigen f\u00fcr Orison.\nFahrzeug Tech\nDas Vehicle Tech Team behob Bugs f\u00fcr Alpha 3.12 und machte stetige Fortschritte an den kommenden Fahrzeugen der Alpha 3.13. Sie haben auch Verbesserungen am Scan- und Ping-System vorgenommen, um sicherzustellen, dass das Aufsp\u00fcren von weit entfernten oder versteckten Entit\u00e4ten und das Extrahieren von Details \u00fcber sie Spa\u00df macht und intuitiv ist. Diese Verbesserungen werden auch ihren Weg zu den Spielern finden, die zu Fu\u00df scannen.\nVFX\nLetzten Monat hat das VFX-Team mit den Vorproduktionsarbeiten f\u00fcr den Fahrzeugradarscan und das Ping-System begonnen. Das UI-Team hat Konzeptvideos zur Verf\u00fcgung gestellt, so dass das VFX-Team derzeit untersucht, wie man die ben\u00f6tigten Visuals in-engine erreichen kann.\nAu\u00dferdem begannen die Arbeiten an den Monden von Pyro, was das Sammeln von Informationen \u00fcber Details wie Klimawerte (wie windig, wie hei\u00df, etc.) beinhaltete. Die Teams untersuchten auch die VFX-Anforderungen f\u00fcr die Windvolumina der Triebwerke, da sie planen, zu einem physikalischeren Setup f\u00fcr die Staubeffekte bei der Fahrzeuglandung \u00fcberzugehen und dabei die Windvolumina zu nutzen, die den Triebwerken letztes Jahr hinzugef\u00fcgt wurden.\nDas VFX Code Team hat die Arbeit am neuen Partikel-Lichtmodell fortgesetzt, mit dem Ziel, dass die VFX Artists ihre Effekte in naher Zukunft auf das neue Modell umstellen k\u00f6nnen. Auch die Arbeit an Gen 12 wurde fortgesetzt, wobei der Fokus auf dem Transparenz-Rendering lag. Stetige Fortschritte wurden auch bei den Feuergefahren gemacht.\nDas Tech Art Team von VFX unterst\u00fctzte die Art- und Design-Teams weiterhin bei der Gaswolke und arbeitete an den Zerst\u00f6rungspipelines.\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...","zh_CN":"The Star Citizen devs kicked off the year working on everything from the upcoming Alpha 3.13 patch to features due in several months\u2019 time. Read on for the latest details on the physical inventory, Crusader\u2019s latest ships, Orison, and much more.\n\nAI (General)\nJanuary\u2019s general AI work included improving debug draw for the special action component that allows for a better understanding of which actions are available at any given time. Time was also dedicated to the support of Alpha 3.12 and 3.12.1.\nMost notably, the new year saw a reorganization of the AI teams into a more efficient structure to encourage knowledge sharing and a more holistic approach to prioritizing tasks and goals.\nThe department is now split by content, features, and tech: AI Content create behaviors, usables, and other related content\n\nAI Features implement project features. For example, new combat behaviors and ship maneuvers\n\nAI Tech handles all core functionalities that require a more structural design\n\n\nAI (Content)\nThe Content Team spent January working on early versions of the engineer, hygiene, hawker, and tourist behaviors.\nThe first pass on the engineer handles maintenance operations for wall panels inside ships and hangars, including inspecting internal fuses and replacing them if damaged. The initial implementation of the hygiene behavior gives NPCs the ability to use toilets, sinks, and showers, while the Hawker is a generic activity that handles various street vendors and speakers. For example, NPCs manning hotdog or taco stands. The first pass on the tourist behavior deals with characters going to and traveling around areas to look at points of interest.\nThe team are also looking to introduce new behaviors into the \u2018leisure\u2019 and \u2018eat and drink\u2019 activities, such as vending and arcade machine use.\nAI (Features)\nAI Features started the year by introducing the first traits affecting AI pilot tactic selection, which allows them to craft more realistic and personal encounters. For example, some pilots will choose safer approaches during combat while others will show-off and use specialist maneuvers.\nSupport for different operator modes began too, which will enable NPCs to correctly use the same new functionalities exposed to players. This includes setting QT mode when they want to quantum jump and returning to the default mode before piloting or fighting.\nOn the enemy-combat side, dodge actions now utilize blend space. This allows NPCs to align correctly when dodging for a more fluid and immersive combat experience. More controls were introduced to define attack-action limits and to allow the interruption of combo attacks. AI Features also added the \u2019WeaponConfidence\u2019 stat that\u2019s used to control the firing pace for characters based on their weapon proficiency.\nAI (Tech)\nAI Tech implemented new functionality to validate Subsumption code events. This allows them to verify bad setups, missing files, and ensure that variables carried by events are configured correctly. They also began supporting feature tests for Subsumption behavior and logic. To achieve this, they exposed a way to request that NPCs execute a custom logic assignment. This gives them a flexible way to request the execution of specific logic to NPCs that stacks on top of the systemic behaviors at the appropriate time.\nAI Tech also optimized the Subsumption \u2018DebugTaskTree\u2019 and Subsumption update. The DebugTaskTree optimization reduces runtime allocation, bringing the performance of the internal build closer to the release build. The Subsumption update reduces locks in the memory allocator. Local tests have shown that this saves around 5ms when updating 500 active NPCs at a given time.\nArt (Characters)\nThroughout January, the Character Team wrapped up their Alpha 3.13 tasks, planned for an upcoming event, and kicking off initiatives for Alpha 3.14. The concept artists delivered medical outfits, concepted backpacks for the physical inventory, and continued work on three new armor sets. Several clothing assets for the refinery decks and Orison were developed by the character and tech artists, while new armors were completed for an incremental Alpha 3.13 patch.\nArt (Environment)\nThe Environment Art Team started 2021 with full production of a new outpost POI archetype for the Modular Team. A lot of work went into the concept and pre-production stages, with work now beginning on the whitebox. The next stage is creating a small modular architecture kit that can be easily expanded to add diversity as the need arises.\nThe Landing Zone Team continued their work on Orison. All platforms are going into the final art phase, with some notably beautiful spaces coming together in the last few weeks. The arcade, spaceport exterior, Voyager Bar interior, and Green Circle habs are all in the final stages of development, while the visual targets for the habitation platform buildings and underside structures are currently in progress.\n\nStanton\u2019s polish pass continued, the harvestable library was expanded, and work on cave entrances that can accommodate vehicles began. The Planet Content Team started developing a pipeline for generating new and updated asteroids too.\nArt (Ships)\nSince returning from the winter holidays, the majority of the US-based Ship Team worked on a community-favorite vehicle scheduled for release later in the year. This involves several artists, designers, tech artists, and engineers working together to reach the intended launch date. Last month, the whitebox review was completed and internal feedback and embedded testing began.\nThe team also put the final touches on [Redacted], moving it into the final stage. The RSI Constellation Taurus also continued to move down the pipeline and is currently scheduled for completion in Q2 2021. Another variant was also developed for an upcoming holiday and the overall tint process was improved to support new vehicle tints throughout the year too.\nAway from specific vehicles, support was given to ship-to-ship docking, lift gravity, SDF shields, animation vis-areas, and damage.\nIn the UK, the Crusader C2 Hercules was handed to the downstream teams and progress was made on the A2 and M2 variants. Specifically, the A2 received a control room for the turrets while the M2 gained a jump-seat room for the crew of the ground vehicles.\nArt (Weapons)\nThe Weapon Art Team continued to work on the Volt Parallax electron rifle, taking the art to \u2018greybox complete.\u2019 The majority of the mesh was modeled and the team are currently rigging and animating the weapon before heading further into the final art phase.\n\nThe UltiFlex Novia crossbow progressed through final art and was handed over to Tech Art to finalize the rig due to the unique challenges of the weapon.\n\n\nEarly in the month, an investigation was made into the mag stripping feature to assess what will be needed once feature work starts. The team took this opportunity to make a pass on the grip-nodes setup too.\nFinally for FPS weapons, the team added a new healing Multi-Tool attachment. They also updated the battery and resource canister to be detachable to futureproof the weapon for additional functionality. Work also began on a new standalone Greycat Industrial cutter tool that was initially required for Squadron 42 but will make its way into the PU soon.\n\nOn the ship weapons side, work continued on the FireStorm Kinetics Colossus MOAB, which moved to final art. At the end of the month, development began on an all-new weapon too.\nCommunity\nThe Community Team kicked off 2021 announcing the winners of the\u202fEsperia Talon Screenshot,\u202fCozy Glow, and\u202fDesign a Luminalia Sweater contests.\nJanuary also saw more than 150 teams from around the world fight to take home a title in the Daymar Rally 2951.\nCongratulations to everyone involved! Seeing the community come together and create an event with this amount of coordination and effort is truly sensational.\u201d -The Community Team\nFor the temporary \u202fremoval of Delamar\u202fin Alpha 3.12.1, the team hosted the\u202fDelamar Is Going Home contest\u202fto give the asteroid a proper sendoff. Delamar and Levski will return in their lore-correct location when the Nyx system enters the PU.\n\nThe first\u202fRoadmap update\u202fof 2021 brought several improvements to the Progress & Release Tracker along with the addition of new teams and columns for Alpha 3.14, 3.15, and 3.16. As always, the Roadmap update was accompanied by a Roadmap Roundup, giving insight into the decision-making process that led to the changes.\nEngine\nJanuary saw the Physics Team complete the first of three parts of geometry instancing. Geometry instancing within physics allows the sharing of common part-related data among entities and improves how data is stored. This better utilizes the CPU cache and HW pre-fetching during collision detection and opens up costly operations to be performed more efficiently via SIMD. Ultimately, the benefits will be better performance, significantly less memory usage, and vastly reduced CPU cost during asynchronous spawning and terrain physicalization. Work on the next stage will commence later this quarter.\nIn other work, soft bodies were further optimized and heavy-duty functions were moved to ISPC (SIMD, AVX) with a net speedup of 2.5x on Intel and 2x on AMD powered-machines. Additionally, simulation topology now organizes constraints by particle indices, meaning they are stored roughly in the order they process particles in the buffer, leading to better cache localization. This yielded another 1.5x speedup on heavy and dense assets. Soft bodies now perform a single box pruning run for all external collision candidates to give 50% speedup for external collision detection.\nThe existing EVA push\/pull control was replaced with a simplified yet more robust scheme. General-purpose AABB overlap and box-pruning functions were cleaned up, while SSE (float) and AVX (double) variants were implemented, yielding improvements across the board. The ongoing switch from VA-driven character ragdoll to regular-driven ragdoll continued. Several network synchronization issues for wheeled vehicles were investigated, which resulted in initial fixes and a plan for an improved net-sync that takes the environment as well as physical movement into account. This is slated for implementation in Q2.\nAdditional research went into the large-scale object buoyancy calculation that resulted in a prototype solution. Regarding rag dolls and AFT support, the flickering of wheels and casters on trolleys was fixed, and solutions to handling detached character collisions and the Munchhausen effect were found. Research into stabilizing moving platforms (elevator floors, cargo lifts) in a more reliable way was also completed.\nOn the renderer, work on the shader cache backend refactor that began in December was completed, with the resulting implementation much leaner and compact. While focus is now back on Gen12, further improvements will be made in the future.\nRegarding volumetric cloud rendering, several improvements and optimization were implemented. Cloud shadow maps and related render buffers were switched to a more efficient storage scheme that gives significant memory and bandwidth savings along with slightly improved precision. Shadow map generation now supports incremental updates to amortize per-frame cost and increase shadow quality. Cloud shaping started and is progressing well too.\nThe Engine Team kicked off the year with additional vis-area-related improvements. For example, support for multi-segment vis-areas and correct 3D clipping of legacy particles. Further improvements were made to the engine profiler. Among other things, it now collects information about context switches via Windows ETW API to better analyze per-core utilization with respect to unnecessary or unexpected thread switching. Additionally, improvements to the scheduling of entity-component updates continued, and several follow-up changes to the memory manager refactor carried out in December were submitted.\nFeatures (Characters & Weapons)\nAs the game grows, so does the number of character animations, so January saw an initiative to improve asset format and compilation. This will give the Features Team faster builds, less memory use, and better load times across their large database of animation assets. They\u2019re currently developing improvements to run-time performance, starting with planning to ensure they have strong solutions that scale to the size and ambition of the project.\nWork also continued on several features, including hacking. Recent discussions revolved around how to scale difficulty, with considerations for the size of the play area, number of AI opponents, and randomly generated content. \u201cThis mini-game is shaping up to have a number of interesting strategical options and is looking very promising!\u201d -The Features Team\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe US Gameplay Feature Team hit the ground running fixing bugs for Alpha 3.12 and carrying on with upcoming features.\nWork continued on the reputation mobiGlas app mentioned in the last report. This time, the designers polished up the design direction while considering the complexity of the reputation system and its possible future expansions. Meanwhile, the engineers began implementing the feature itself, giving the team a deeper look into the app\u2019s functionality.\nThe team also resumed work on the \u2018asset manager\u2019 mobiGlas app, which will give players an overview of their items and allow them to filter by various categories. Designs are currently being finalized in preparation for a quick turnaround, with the goal of launching in Alpha 3.14.\nFeatures (Mission & Live Content)\nAfter the winter break, the team returned to address a handful of bugs and polish tasks before moving to their quarter-one goals.\nWork was mostly completed on a new variant of the delivery mission that takes advantage of quantum-sensitive cargo. Development then moved to the bug fixing and polish stage while some of the team kicked off the timed delivery mission mentioned last month.\nInvestigation also began on ways to implement some of the features other teams worked on during the last few quarters, including body dragging, trolley push and pull, and hacking. The tech side of the spawn closet feature moved into its final stages too, so the team began prototyping areas it can be implemented into the game.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nThe Vehicle Feature Team began the year with docking, pushing to get it complete for Alpha 3.13. This includes both ship-to-station docking and the first stage of ship-to-ship docking, which focuses on the RSI Constellation and its parasite ship, the Kruger Merlin. The team fully integrated docking with air traffic control before retroactively changing the Merlin\/ Constellation docking to use a similar code path for consistency. When implemented, players won\u2019t need to call air-traffic control when docking with a ship like the Constellation, but the owner of the ship will need to accept it.\nAnother area of focus was missiles, with the team helping to refactor them to use IFCS 2 for reliability and tunability. When complete, IFCS will fully control target tracking and guidance code to ensure missiles behave more predictably and don\u2019t oscillate around targets as they do currently.\nLastly, time was dedicated to vehicle naming. Various disciplines, including Backend Services and Art, worked together to get the names on the sides of select vehicles. While there\u2019s more work to do between interconnected systems and rendering, the feature is progressing well.\nGraphics\nThe Graphics Team started the year finalizing several outstanding bugs and features that didn\u2019t quite make last quarter\u2019s deadlines. Once complete, focus moved to the Gen12 renderer, which received various improvements to features like depth-of-field.\nA major rewrite of the tessellation shaders was done to streamline the code and fix a number of bugs. The shadow pass conversion was also completed, with the team now looking to see if they can enable this codepath by default.\nLighting\nThe Lighting Team worked more on Orison, improving the spaceport interior and working through a new set of room overlays for non-commercial and refinery space stations. A new team member was welcomed and onboarded, and internal documents were expanding to enable other artists to implement some steps of the lighting pipeline..\n\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative Team began 2021 finalizing the plan for the year\u2019s upcoming lore posts. Joining the usual mix of articles will be new additions that the team are excited to share.\nWork also continued on Orison, including scripts for some of the city\u2019s announcements and text for ads that will populate the floating platforms. They also continued to assist with content for future dynamic events and new missions. For current missions, they reviewed feedback from the Alpha 3.12 release, fixing a few bugs and improving some of the mission descriptions to make the objectives clearer.\nProgress on the reputation system continued, with a focus on how best to display lore information. A wealth of new items and clothing were named and described too.\n\u201cBe sure to check out the year\u2019s first post as New United takes a look at how the recently elected Imperator is performing. Plus, a slate of new Galactapedia entries are waiting for you to explore!\u201d -The Narrative Team\nPlayer Relations\nAlongside supporting players with Alpha 3.12, Player Relations began building their infrastructure to support more players and bigger events.\nProps\nProps began 2021 with new tasks alongside closing out a few from last year. Support for cooperative locomotion trolley push\/pull concluded, with templates fully established, an array of existing assets updated, and art polish completed. They also finished an art-debt pass on some of the oldest props in the library. For new work, they moved ahead with prop requests for Orison and started an art pass on mining modules that should conclude at the end of the quarter.\nQA\nQA\u2019s primary focus for January was testing with the Evocati and working through upcoming features for Alpha 3.13 and beyond.\nOn the management side, the team continued to hone their testing processes in preparation for the quarterly releases and large-scale events. They also began working more closely with the development teams, embedding testers to get a head start on the development cycle. This will help in the long run, as the embedded testers will provide detailed information on how features work, which will be used for wider-scale testing.\nWith the reshuffle of the AI teams, QA also rearranged themselves to better support development. Focus on performance testing AI was added to the weekly checks to ensure the team are ahead of the curve and catch any potential issues. Weekly checklists and focus testing continued, as did dev requests.\nSupport for the Engine Team ramped up too, with one of the testers moving to work alongside them. Their focus last month was to reproduce many of the hard-to-replicate crashes and provide the developers with the information they need to fix them.\nThe Tools Team continued to receive QA support, with continued testing of DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore, and the sandbox editor.\nSystemic Services & Tools\nThe Systemic Systems and Tools Team continued work on the Quantum Simulation service integration along with new technology they plan to share with the community soon.\n2021 will also see the team increase in size to accommodate the growing need for services and support for Quantum across many aspects of the game.\nOn the services front, the team focused on improving the stability and performance of the backend. This involved fixing several logic issues and crashes that were noticed on the live server. The \u2018Super pCache\u2019 is now with QA, with the team tuning performance and addressing any issues discovered during testing.\nThey also created new tools for the upcoming reputation system and continued to support the Star Citizen economy with Data Tools to help alleviate the significant amount of data while they prepare for Quantum to take the reins.\nTech Animation\nTech Animation kicked off 2021 creating animation rigs for creatures that will be found across various locations. More mission-givers were iterated on alongside refinement to the facial rig authoring tool suite, which will create a refined workflow to give quicker turnaround for high-quality facial expressions. A new weapon also passed through the rigging pipeline.\nTurbulent\nLast month, the majority of the Turbulent game services team focused on maintenance, the goal of which being to pick up tasks on less urgent items from the previous year. This included updating and creating documents for processes and services, fixes, follow-up features, investigations in our services. They also improved new relic integration and supported a fix for chat messages.\nThey also began working on tech designs for services they will be working on this year, including the configuration service used to distribute configurations to services, the identity service that manages player lifecycle and persistence, and \u2018shard and instance\u2019 management (formerly known as matchmaking).\nThe Live Tools team moved forward on Hex, fixing bugs for 1.0 along with mapping out the UX and tech design for 2.0. Investigations began into role-based access in Hex, with the team putting together a TDD to outline its functionality and use. The error reporting pipeline received improvements and effort was dedicated to improving service load testing as well.\nUser Interface (UI)\nLast month, UI began programming the underlying system that will allow them to work on new Starmap, radar, interior map, and mini-map interfaces. While it\u2019ll be several months before they can be seen in-game, the team already have a robust designs tying them together.\nOn the UI design side, plans were created for an updated Options screen and the vehicle teams were supported with updates to various cockpit UI.\nThe UI artists also developed animated concepts for the hacking UI and progressed with screen branding and adverts for Orison.\nVehicle Tech\nThe Vehicle Tech Team fixed bugs for Alpha 3.12 and made steady progress on the upcoming vehicles of Alpha 3.13. They also made improvements to the scanning and ping system to ensure detecting faraway or hidden entities and extracting details about them is fun and intuitive. These improvements will also make their way to players scanning on foot.\nVFX\nLast month, the VFX Team kicked off pre-production tasks for vehicle radar scanning and ping. The UI Team provided concept videos, so the VFX team are currently investigating how to achieve the required visuals in-engine.\nWork also began on the moons of Pyro, which involved gathering information on details such as climate values (how windy, how hot, etc.). The teams also investigated VFX requirements for thruster wind volumes as they\u2019re planning to move to a more physical-based setup for vehicle landing dust effects, making use of the wind volumes that were added to thrusters last year.\nThe VFX Code Team resumed their work on the new particle lighting model, with the goal of allowing the VFX artists to convert their effects to the new model in the near future. Gen 12 work continued too, with a focus on transparency rendering. Steady progress was made on fire hazards too.\nVFX\u2019s Tech Art Team continued to provide gas cloud support to the art and design teams alongside R&D into destruction pipelines.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":10,"comment_count":30,"created_at":"2021-02-03T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"5 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 20:25:57","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":17974,"next_id":17976}}