{"data":{"id":18296,"title":"Star Citizen Monthly Report: August 2021","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/18296-Star-Citizen-Monthly-Report-August-2021","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/18296","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/18296","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly 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to August\u2019s PU Report! With all Alpha 3.14 tasks closed out, most teams focused their sights on content for Alpha 3.15 and beyond. Read on for the details of everything worked on throughout the month, including jump points, dynamic events, AI behaviors, and several top-secret vehicles.\n\nAI (Content)\nThroughout August, AI Content supported Level Design by creating a new \u2018worker\u2019 behavior. This enables the designers to apply traits to the various AI archetypes, refining which usables they use, such as sitting, leaning, inspecting, and cooking.\nThe team modified various usables to utilize the first reaction system, which allows NPCs to break out of usables during animations. For example, if an NPC is typing at a console and hears a gunshot or sees an enemy, they will stop typing and react appropriately. This was completed for the standing and sitting console, leans, seats, stairs, railings, search spots, attack spots, and more. They\u2019re currently working with the Engine and Animation teams to improve the visuals.\nPre-vis began on two new products for a future delivery: the dealer behavior and Pyro location usables.\nThe dealer is a mobile vendor that players can buy from and sell to. This NPC stores one-handed items on their person, though if a player wants a two-handed item, they\u2019re guided to the dealer\u2019s \u201cshop\u201d nearby. The TrackView pre-vis went through its second iteration, with the team currently building consensus with all the different design teams.\nAI Content identifying several usables to help sell Pyro\u2019s theme of sickness, greed, and poverty. The second pre-vis pass was completed, which will be presented to the directors before the new usables begin production.\nThe team also continued to develop the hospital respawn experience for Alpha 3.15 and the subsequent vendor rollout to various locations around Stanton.\nAI (Features)\nAI Features continued to work on combat scenarios. Throughout August, they improved visual perception by adjusting the field-of-view form and exposing more information for the designers to tweak. The aim of this is to create a stealth combat mechanism from the player\u2019s perspective, which requires adjustable perception timings and field of view.\nNew functionality was also added to the tactical point system. This enables it to compute path distances when selecting viable relocation points or cover locations during combat, rather than just direct distance. NPCs were also set up to use missile turrets.\nAI (Tech)\nAI Tech improved the pathfinder system to work with planetary navigation mesh tiles, enabling them to place NPCs on planets and move them from one location to another. They also started the work for generating planet navigation mesh automatically based on a player\u2019s proximity.\nOne feature delivered this month allows the player to lead a formation of AI ships. This was initially requested for Squadron 42 but should be available in the PU in the future.\nImprovements were also made to the collision avoidance system, including physics optimizations for obstacle queries and a small restructure of related data.\nSignificant effort was also directed at improving AI design paths and how NPCs follow them. As the design paths can be quite complex with multiple branches, they were updated to allow NPCs to follow them from any starting place.\nWork also continued on the Subsumption editor, this time completing the multi-graph view.\nAnimation\nThe Animation team spent part of August focusing on vendors for illegal goods, food, drink, and other items, which involved creating animation pre-vis videos showing how the assets should be used in Pyro. These videos will also enable the team to better communicate with Design how to combine assets for different useable into other useables to extend asset use and give more variety. This work will be used to improve the existing bartenders too.\nThe team progressed with the overall medical behavior, including patron pre-vis videos, hospital healing functionality, and related useables. They\u2019re also working on drunk locomotion for status changes (in both weapon and no weapon stances), with the first drop containing functional assets.\nThe cowering and surrender behaviors mentioned in previous reports progressed throughout the month, while additional seated idling animations were added to make characters feel more alive.\nA motion capture (mo-cap) shoot was arranged to cover blockouts for the hygiene cubicle, hacking, navigation, arcade machines, unwell seating, additional vendor animations, and locomotion R&D. The Marketing team were supported on an upcoming video too.\nOn the facial side, progress was made on vendor lines and chowline animations.\nArt (Characters)\nLast month, Character Art completed a large batch of new assets for Alpha 3.15, including a heat-resistant heavy armor that will replace the Caldera Pembroke suit.\nThe team also finalized several new backpacks, including three based on the Clark Defense Systems brand and one on Doomsday. They also reworked existing backpacks previously attached to armor cores to make them individual, modular items. From Alpha 3.15 onwards, each new armor will come with a backpack in the same style.\nArt (Ships)\nIn the UK, the yet-to-be-announced ship originally mentioned earlier in the year was completed, with the team\u2019s final task of creating additional paints currently underway.\nThe Redeemer is approaching final-art complete, with the team finalizing the interactive buttons in the cockpit, remote turret bays, component room, and making the final polish of the lower deck.\nWork also commenced on the MISC Hull A, which is close to being whitebox complete. Its larger sibling, the Hull C, is currently being brought up to \u2018gold standard.\u2019 August\u2019s focus was on the exterior, with the team switching out materials to the newer shader and making sure it\u2019s ready for the current paint system.\nTwo unannounced vehicles continued to progress through the pipeline. One recently completed its greybox review and is approaching final art, while the other is awaiting its greybox review though is close to having a finalized exterior.\nRefueling work was also done on the MISC Starfarer. The refueling arm mentioned last month is now complete, with focus turning to the tractor beam assembly at the rear that forms part of the refining feature.\nThe Crusader A2 Hercules passed its final art review too.\nIn the US, the Crusader Ares moved through the final art phase, with the cockpit, enter\/exit system, component housings, landing gear, and thrusters receiving polish.\nThe cockpit, habitation area, ladder passage, and cargo hold are all nearing greybox complete for the Drake Vulture.\nAn all-new vehicle is almost greybox-complete, while art for the variant mentioned last month was finished.\nAudio\nThe SFX and Dialogue teams revisited Orison in August, this time adding ambiances and spot effects to three areas. New voiceovers and music were implemented to fill out the audio experience too.\nAmbiances and spot effects were completed for the Grim HEX hospital and incidental voiceovers were recorded to inform players how painful treatments can be.\nMechanism and explosion effects were also added to the \u2018Mother Of All Bombs\u2019.\nTech Sound Design helped implement the hacking system for the SFX team, adding sounds alongside the usual team support.\nFinally, prep for CitizenCon 2951 continued. Audio Code collated assets ready to show off their new tech, while SFX supported the Locations teams with level ambiance sounds that will be demoed during the event.\nCommunity\nThe Community team supported the Star Citizen Alpha 3.14 launch with three engaging contests:\n\nPlayers that wanted to invite a friend to the \u2018verse and claim a unique referral bonus could participate in the \u2018Wish You Were Here\u2019 Greeting Card Contest by creating a greeting card of Orison.\n\nThe Finding Finley Screenshot Contest starred Crusader\u2019s stormwals, Francis and Finley, while the Constellation Coloring Contest encouraged community creativity focused on RSI\u2019s famous tourer.\n\nNewcomers to the Star Citizen were supported with an updated New Players Comm-Link, and players were briefed about the updated XenoThreat dynamic event.\nThe team also kicked off Ship Showdown 2951, the annual head-to-head battle to determine the community\u2019s favorite in-game vehicle.\nEngine\nIn August, the Physics team progressed with physical quantum travel. In their development stream, they now have a proper quantum grid (per solar system) and a quantum-obstacle component that registers an analytical representation of an obstacle. Some to-be-sorted issues aside, they can now make the equivalent of a blind quantum jump and drop out before hitting a moon along the travel path.\nThey also continued to improve performance. Among other things, the destruction of static physical entities now runs time-sliced, while querying and processing parts of a physical entity during collision detection was improved. The physics system code cleanup continued too. For example, the physical world\u2019s time-step function now makes individual phases of the time step clearer.\nThe transition to the Gen12 renderer progressed throughout August. Shader activation was made thread-safe and no longer requires explicit synchronization via locks, volumetric fog volumes now run natively in Gen12, and the team refactored the use of several reflected shader parameters throughout render code and shaders. Tint support was added as well as scattering query support for forward-shaded objects, and several pieces of legacy code across the renderer code base were cleaned up.\nRegarding atmosphere and volumetric clouds, time was spent reworking the reprojection and filter chain to ultimately allow raymarching at lower resolutions for improved GPU performance. Improvements were made to the placement of samples for raymarching. This involved reprojecting results from previous frames, filtering and denoising cloud depth, and up-sampling inscatter and transmittance results to full resolution for various problematic view scenarios. These scenarios include orbital views, scenes with high depth complexity, and any scene with strong camera movement. This is all still work in progress, though the team hopes to roll it out shortly.\nWork was submitted to improve cloud shading by better blending between forward and backward scattering inside them, which is important for rendering the silver lining. Moreover, improvements were made to the look of cloud edges to give them a more volumetric feel. The stepping code for local cloud shadow details was reworked to allow more details for the same performance cost.\nOn the core-engine side, time was spent optimizing the low-level system. For example, various improvements were made to CigFunction, which serves as a vehicle to capture and pass C++ lambdas (in this particular case code and data for deferred asynchronous execution as a job). The next focus was optimizing the entity unloading stalls plaguing the PU. As a result, several entity-unload bottlenecks were rectified. Furthermore, the management of component events was optimized and code to create and destroy them improved.\nWork was also done to deliver multiple optimizations in the spatial culling system, which will be used for server meshing. Lastly, the entity component update scheduler was changed to allow more than one update per component pass to enable the more flexible use of components.\nFeatures (Characters & Weapons)\nIn August, the Features team focused on bug fixing and polishing for the new player inventory and actor status features.\n\u201cSome of the more amusing bugs included looting a dead player and finding their ship, and all its vehicle weapons, in their inventory, and lowering a gurney to put an injured player on it but at the end of the animation it starts bouncing around killing everyone.\u201d -The Features Team\nOn the technical side, the team began work to separate the complex animations required for humanoid and creature skeletons from the more mechanical skeletons. The latter, of which there are normally significantly more of in a scene, will benefit from a much more streamlined animation update flow. This also allows the animation system\u2019s update rules to be better tailored to each skeleton type. As well as improving update time, this should see a reduction in memory usage in heavily populated areas.\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe US Gameplay Feature team progressed with the NikNax work mentioned in last month\u2019s report. The app is now \u2018feature complete\u2019 and in the polishing phase of production, while the look and feel are currently being finalized.\nThey also continued to develop dynamic events.\n\u201cWe began working on Jumptown 2.0, the next dynamic event, where outposts become hyper-lucrative, tempting players to fight to control the area and gather as much profit as possible. More information on that coming very soon.\u201d -The Gameplay Feature Team\nThey also continued to work on TDDs for the cargo refactor, the character archetype editor, and the new shopping and selling initiative, all of which should be at the review stage soon.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nLast month, the Vehicle Feature team ramped up the development of jump points, creating the gameplay and development tools required to deliver the feature and make it easier to work with for other teams.\nIn addition, the team progressed with a number of internal debug tools to monitor IFCS and more easily inspect things like missiles, which will improve future workflow. They also supported the PU Feature team with refueling, continued to work on HUD improvements, and supported Vehicle Experience with bombing-related UIs for Alpha 3.15.\nVehicle Experience focused on finishing the development of the bombing feature, which entered the review stages. They also worked to balance upcoming ships for Alpha 3.15 and beyond and wrapped up final issues with the current patch release.\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nLast month, the Graphics team progressed with the render-to-texture system, which is receiving a mini-overhaul to cope with some new UI systems that make extensive use of 3D icons and compositing, such as the personal inventory.\nThey enabled dynamically rendered textures to be cached to allow them to generate a large number of high-quality, super-sampled images with minimal cost. They also dynamically reduced texture resolution in out-of-focus areas (e.g. when using the mobiGlas) to reallocate more resources to the rest of the game.\nFor Gen12, the shadow and real-time-probe systems were converted and will soon be activated by default in the main branch. Streaming of real-time probes was also completed and enabled, which solves memory issues in scenes with numerous probes, such as Orison.\nAlpha 3.15 will mark the first release that utilizes extensive auto testing for VFX tech, so the Programming team spent time resolving bugs to achieve a solid baseline. This also improved the overall quality of particle effects.\nAlongside this, they began adding support for refraction into the GPU particle system, matching the functionality of the CPU particle system and surpassing its visual quality. This marks the end of a long-standing goal to implement counterparts of all legacy mesh and sprite functionality in the new CPU particle system.\nThe VFX Programming team also continued with the fire hazard system. It now utilizes the new compressed physics render-mesh, which obtains accurate surface data without relying on lower-resolution and lower-accuracy physics proxy meshes. The way fire spreads through doorways was improved too.\nLighting\nThe Lighting team primarily focused on upcoming content for Alpha 3.15 and future deliverables for Pyro.\n\nPasses were completed on locations within Orison, including the Crusader Showroom, Cousin Crow\u2019s Custom Craft, and Providence Surplus. Lighting work was completed for the space clinics and hospital in Grim HEX, and progress continued on the medical areas in Area18 and Lorville. The team also tackled some smaller backlog items, such as further Orison optimization and general bug fixing.\n\nLighting also assisted Planet Content, making a pass on the atmospheric and color-grading settings for Pyro\u2019s planets and moons, helping to make each feel unique and interesting.\nNarrative\nThe Narrative team focused on Alpha 3.15 throughout August, working with Design on contract text for new missions and expanding the organizations and gameplay scopes represented in the Delphi mobiGlas app. Medical gameplay and the new hospital and clinic locations were also worked on, with the team making passes on all related UI and branding. New dialogue was recorded to help populate the clinics and new Orison locations.\nBeyond Alpha 3.15, the team worked on content for IAE 2951 and upcoming dynamic events. Additionally, they recorded mission audio for the various security forces in Stanton that will add further depth to future content.\nPreliminary work began on a new mission type, with the team working closely with Design to begin prototyping dialogue to support the gameplay. The development of narrative content continued for Pyro, further defining what players can expect to encounter in the new system.\nNew lore was also released, including a Congress Now debating the appointment of a Xi\u2019an ambassador, along with The Shakedown, a serialized fiction story set on ArcCorp. A new selection of Galactapedia articles was added too.\nPlayer Relations\n\u2018Player Relations Live QA\u2019 launched this month. This new team will concentrate on the live experience, including reproducing and triaging player-reported bugs on the Issue Council. They also began early Alpha 3.15 work, focusing on the player experience before it hits Evocati.\nThe Player Relations team also expanded in the UK and DE to support the ever-growing player base, patch releases, and upcoming events.\nQA\nQA\u2019s primary publishing focus was on Alpha 3.14, testing XenoThreat and Ninetails Lockdown. Mid-month, they were publishing every day to the PTU, testing stability, verifying fixes, and gathering details of issues not reproducible internally.\nDevelopment-wise, the team undertook familiarity testing with some of the new features and systems planned for Alpha 3.15.\nScheduling was also completed in preparation for upcoming testing, and plans were drawn up ahead of feature testing.\nSystemic Services & Tools\nIn August, Systemic Services & Tools continued their work on Quantum (the economy and AI simulation), making improvements to the tools that allow the designers to adjust these various systems.\nThe team also worked on edge cases for the backend services, adding stability to the service HUB and variable filter services.\nAugust saw work wrap up on the player and AI info service to allow the Quantum simulation (or any other backend service) to pull more data at a faster rate as needed. The service engineers also aided their gameplay counterparts with improvements to the physical inventory.\nWork began in earnest on the NPC tracker, which will allow the tracking of NPCs between servers. The system will be used by any gameplay loop that wants or needs to track NPCs as they shift from instantiated to virtual AI and move around the \u2018verse.\nFinally, a new generic escrow service wrapped up, allowing for a more streamlined money transaction loop that SST is hoping integrates with the various gameplay loops.\nTurbulent (Services)\nTurbulent\u2019s Live Tools team completed the base framework for the new windowing layout in Hex along with some of the core functionality. They also supported the PU Locations with the Might Bridge tool. Working alongside members of the QA and Publishing teams, improvements were made to the crash handling pipeline, refining deduplication for Sentry crashes.\nThe Game Services team achieved key milestones in the server meshing project, delivering the first version of the new matchmaking system. The service communicating with the new database now has all the required main features too, and several optimizations were made.\nTurbulent (Web Platform)\nBoth of Turbulent\u2019s web teams worked on technical projects to add new capabilities to the engineering platform.\nEcommerce is working on a new database indexing solution to give the team new capabilities to efficiently search for and create new content. This is primarily for the Pledge Store but it will also help to create new pages that don\u2019t hinder the site\u2019s performance.\nThe Architecture team is working on a system to improve the way information passes between their various services. This will improve existing systems and enable the team to hit the ground running on new micro-services that interact with other elements on the platform.\nVehicle Tech\nThe Vehicle Tech team put the finishing touches on the radar, scanning, and ping refactor for vehicles. They also prepared to incorporate the improvements to first-person gameplay. Some improvements were identified in the existing systems and functionality, which have been included in upcoming plans accordingly. Bugs were also fixed for Alpha 3.14.\nVFX\nLast month, the VFX team revisited the new vehicle SDF-based shields. A simplified setup was provided, with better scalability options allowing fewer effects to be used across the wide range of ship scales.\nThey also began working on ship-wake effects with the Vehicle Feature team, which will allow surface dust, snow, etc. to be displaced when ships are rapidly flying along the surface. This is a continuation of the work recently completed for thruster wind volumes.\nVFX passes were also done for the Crusader A2 Hercules, one of the unannounced ships mentioned earlier in the report, and for the Crusader Ares\u2019 S7 weapons.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026","de_DE":"Willkommen zum PU-Bericht f\u00fcr August! Nachdem alle Aufgaben der Alpha 3.14 abgeschlossen waren, haben sich die meisten Teams auf die Inhalte der Alpha 3.15 und dar\u00fcber hinaus konzentriert. Lies weiter f\u00fcr die Details zu allem, woran im Laufe des Monats gearbeitet wurde, darunter Sprungpunkte, dynamische Ereignisse, KI-Verhalten und mehrere streng geheime Fahrzeuge.\n\nKI (Inhalt)\nDen ganzen August hindurch unterst\u00fctzte AI Content das Leveldesign, indem es ein neues 'Arbeiter'-Verhalten erstellte. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es den Designern, Eigenschaften auf die verschiedenen KI-Archetypen anzuwenden und zu verfeinern, welche Usables sie verwenden, wie zum Beispiel Sitzen, Anlehnen, Inspizieren und Kochen.\nDas Team modifizierte verschiedene Usables, um das erste Reaktionssystem zu nutzen, das es NSCs erlaubt, w\u00e4hrend Animationen aus Usables auszubrechen. Wenn ein NSC zum Beispiel an einer Konsole tippt und einen Schuss h\u00f6rt oder einen Feind sieht, wird er aufh\u00f6ren zu tippen und entsprechend reagieren. Dies wurde f\u00fcr die stehende und sitzende Konsole, Anlehnungen, Sitze, Treppen, Gel\u00e4nder, Suchspots, Angriffsspots und mehr fertiggestellt. Momentan arbeiten sie mit den Engine- und Animationsteams zusammen, um die Visuals zu verbessern.\nDie Vorarbeiten f\u00fcr zwei neue Produkte f\u00fcr eine zuk\u00fcnftige Auslieferung haben begonnen: das H\u00e4ndlerverhalten und die Pyro Location Usables.\nDer H\u00e4ndler ist ein mobiler Verk\u00e4ufer, von dem die Spieler kaufen und an den sie verkaufen k\u00f6nnen. Dieser NPC bewahrt einh\u00e4ndige Gegenst\u00e4nde an seiner Person auf, wenn ein Spieler jedoch einen zweih\u00e4ndigen Gegenstand ben\u00f6tigt, wird er zum nahegelegenen \"Laden\" des H\u00e4ndlers gef\u00fchrt. Die TrackView-Vorschau durchlief ihre zweite Iteration, wobei das Team derzeit einen Konsens mit allen verschiedenen Design-Teams herstellt.\nDer KI-Inhalt identifiziert mehrere Usables, die helfen, Pyros Thema von Krankheit, Gier und Armut zu verkaufen. Der zweite Pre-Vis-Pass wurde fertiggestellt, der den Regisseuren pr\u00e4sentiert werden wird, bevor die neuen Usables in Produktion gehen.\nDas Team entwickelte au\u00dferdem das Krankenhaus-Respawn-Erlebnis f\u00fcr Alpha 3.15 und den anschlie\u00dfenden Vendor-Rollout an verschiedenen Orten in Stanton weiter.\nKI (Features)\nDie KI-Features arbeiteten weiter an den Kampfszenarien. Den ganzen August \u00fcber wurde die visuelle Wahrnehmung verbessert, indem die Form des Sichtfeldes angepasst wurde und mehr Informationen f\u00fcr die Designer zur Verf\u00fcgung gestellt wurden. Ziel ist es, eine Stealth-Kampfmechanik aus der Spielerperspektive zu schaffen, die anpassbare Wahrnehmungszeiten und Sichtfelder erfordert.\nNeue Funktionalit\u00e4t wurde auch dem taktischen Punktesystem hinzugef\u00fcgt. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es, bei der Auswahl von brauchbaren Verlagerungspunkten oder Deckungsorten w\u00e4hrend des Kampfes Wegstrecken zu berechnen, anstatt nur die direkte Entfernung. NPCs wurden au\u00dferdem so eingestellt, dass sie Raketent\u00fcrme benutzen k\u00f6nnen.\nKI (Tech)\nAI Tech verbesserte das Pathfinder-System, um mit planetaren Navigations-Mesh-Tiles zu arbeiten, was es erm\u00f6glicht, NSCs auf Planeten zu platzieren und sie von einem Ort zum anderen zu bewegen. Sie begannen auch mit der Arbeit f\u00fcr die automatische Generierung von Planetennavigationsmeshs basierend auf der N\u00e4he eines Spielers.\nEin Feature, das diesen Monat ausgeliefert wurde, erlaubt es dem Spieler, eine Formation von KI-Schiffen zu f\u00fchren. Dies wurde urspr\u00fcnglich f\u00fcr Squadron 42 angefordert, sollte aber in Zukunft auch im PU verf\u00fcgbar sein.\nEs wurden auch Verbesserungen am Kollisionsvermeidungssystem vorgenommen, darunter Physikoptimierungen f\u00fcr Hindernisabfragen und eine kleine Umstrukturierung der zugeh\u00f6rigen Daten.\nErhebliche Anstrengungen wurden auch unternommen, um die KI-Designpfade und die Art und Weise, wie NPCs ihnen folgen, zu verbessern. Da die Designpfade mit mehreren Verzweigungen recht komplex sein k\u00f6nnen, wurden sie aktualisiert, damit die NSCs ihnen von jedem Startpunkt aus folgen k\u00f6nnen.\nDie Arbeit am Subsumption-Editor wurde ebenfalls fortgesetzt, dieses Mal mit der Fertigstellung der Multi-Graph-Ansicht.\nAnimation\nDas Animationsteam verbrachte einen Teil des Augusts damit, sich auf Verk\u00e4ufer f\u00fcr illegale Waren, Essen, Trinken und andere Gegenst\u00e4nde zu konzentrieren, was die Erstellung von Animationsvorschaufilmen beinhaltete, die zeigen, wie die Assets in Pyro verwendet werden sollen. Diese Videos werden es dem Team auch erm\u00f6glichen, besser mit dem Design zu kommunizieren, wie man Assets f\u00fcr verschiedene Useables mit anderen Useables kombinieren kann, um die Nutzung der Assets zu erweitern und mehr Abwechslung zu bieten. Diese Arbeit wird auch genutzt werden, um die bestehenden Barkeeper zu verbessern.\nDas Team machte Fortschritte mit dem gesamten medizinischen Verhalten, einschlie\u00dflich der Patron Pre-Vis Videos, der Krankenhaus-Heilungsfunktion und verwandten Useables. Sie arbeiten auch an der Fortbewegung von Betrunkenen f\u00fcr Status\u00e4nderungen (sowohl mit als auch ohne Waffen), wobei der erste Drop funktionale Assets enth\u00e4lt.\nDie in fr\u00fcheren Berichten erw\u00e4hnten Verhaltensweisen des Kauerns und der Kapitulation wurden im Laufe des Monats weiterentwickelt, w\u00e4hrend zus\u00e4tzliche Animationen f\u00fcr das Sitzen im Leerlauf hinzugef\u00fcgt wurden, damit sich die Charaktere lebendiger f\u00fchlen.\nEin Motion Capture (Mo-Cap) Shooting wurde arrangiert, um Blockouts f\u00fcr die Hygienekabine, Hacking, Navigation, Arcade-Maschinen, unruhiges Sitzen, zus\u00e4tzliche Verk\u00e4ufer-Animationen und Lokomotion R&D abzudecken. Das Marketing-Team wurde auch bei einem kommenden Video unterst\u00fctzt.\nAuf der Gesichtsseite wurden Fortschritte bei den Vendor Lines und Chowline Animationen gemacht.\nKunst (Charaktere)\nLetzten Monat hat Character Art einen gro\u00dfen Stapel neuer Assets f\u00fcr Alpha 3.15 fertiggestellt, darunter eine hitzebest\u00e4ndige schwere R\u00fcstung, die den Caldera Pembroke Anzug ersetzen wird.\nDas Team hat auch mehrere neue Rucks\u00e4cke fertiggestellt, darunter drei, die auf der Marke Clark Defense Systems basieren, und einen f\u00fcr Doomsday. Sie \u00fcberarbeiteten auch bestehende Rucks\u00e4cke, die zuvor an R\u00fcstungskernen befestigt waren, um sie zu individuellen, modularen Gegenst\u00e4nden zu machen. Ab Alpha 3.15 wird jede neue R\u00fcstung mit einem Rucksack im gleichen Stil ausgeliefert.\nKunst (Schiffe)\nIn Gro\u00dfbritannien wurde das noch nicht angek\u00fcndigte Schiff, von dem Anfang des Jahres die Rede war, fertiggestellt, und das Team ist derzeit dabei, weitere Farben zu erstellen.\nDie Redeemer n\u00e4hert sich der Final-Art-Fertigstellung, wobei das Team die interaktiven Kn\u00f6pfe im Cockpit, die ferngesteuerten Gesch\u00fctzturmsch\u00e4chte und den Komponentenraum fertigstellt und den letzten Schliff am Unterdeck vornimmt.\nDie Arbeiten an der MISC Hull A haben ebenfalls begonnen und sind kurz vor der Fertigstellung. Sein gr\u00f6\u00dferes Geschwisterschiff, der Rumpf C, wird derzeit auf den \"Goldstandard\" gebracht. Im August lag der Fokus auf dem Exterieur, wobei das Team die Materialien auf den neueren Shader umstellte und sicherstellte, dass es f\u00fcr das aktuelle Lacksystem bereit ist.\nZwei unangek\u00fcndigte Fahrzeuge haben sich weiter durch die Pipeline bewegt. Das eine hat vor kurzem sein Greybox-Review abgeschlossen und n\u00e4hert sich dem finalen Design, w\u00e4hrend das andere auf sein Greybox-Review wartet, aber kurz davor steht, ein finales Exterieur zu haben.\nAuch an der MISC Starfarer wurde an der Betankung gearbeitet. Der im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnte Betankungsarm ist nun fertiggestellt, wobei sich der Fokus auf die Traktorstrahlbaugruppe am Heck richtet, die Teil der Betankungsfunktion ist.\nAuch der Crusader A2 Hercules hat sein finales Art-Review bestanden.\nIn den USA durchlief der Crusader Ares die finale Art-Phase, wobei das Cockpit, das Ein- und Ausstiegssystem, die Komponentengeh\u00e4use, das Fahrwerk und die Triebwerke den letzten Schliff erhielten.\nDas Cockpit, der Wohnbereich, der Leiterdurchgang und der Frachtraum des Drake Vulture stehen kurz vor der Fertigstellung der Greybox.\nEin komplett neues Fahrzeug ist fast greybox-fertig, w\u00e4hrend die Kunst f\u00fcr die im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnte Variante fertiggestellt wurde.\nAudio\nDie SFX- und Dialog-Teams haben sich im August erneut mit Orison besch\u00e4ftigt, diesmal mit dem Hinzuf\u00fcgen von Umgebungen und Spoteffekten in drei Gebieten. Neue Sprachausgabe und Musik wurden ebenfalls implementiert, um das Audioerlebnis zu vervollst\u00e4ndigen.\nAmbient- und Spoteffekte wurden f\u00fcr das Grim HEX-Krankenhaus fertiggestellt und beil\u00e4ufige Voice-Overs wurden aufgenommen, um die Spieler dar\u00fcber zu informieren, wie schmerzhaft Behandlungen sein k\u00f6nnen.\nMechanismus- und Explosionseffekte wurden auch f\u00fcr die 'Mother Of All Bombs' hinzugef\u00fcgt.\nTech Sound Design half bei der Implementierung des Hacking-Systems f\u00fcr das SFX-Team und f\u00fcgte neben dem \u00fcblichen Team-Support auch Sounds hinzu.\nSchlie\u00dflich gingen die Vorbereitungen f\u00fcr die CitizenCon 2951 weiter. Audio Code sammelte Assets, um ihre neue Technologie zu pr\u00e4sentieren, w\u00e4hrend SFX die Locations-Teams mit Level-Ambientesounds unterst\u00fctzte, die w\u00e4hrend des Events vorgef\u00fchrt werden.\nCommunity\nDas Community Team unterst\u00fctzte den Start der Star Citizen Alpha 3.14 mit drei spannenden Wettbewerben:\n\nSpieler, die einen Freund in das 'Verse einladen und einen einzigartigen Empfehlungsbonus beanspruchen wollten, konnten am 'Wish You Were Here' Greeting Card Contest teilnehmen, indem sie eine Gru\u00dfkarte von Orison erstellten.\n\nDer \"Finding Finley Screenshot Contest\" stellte Crusaders Sturmwale Francis und Finley in den Mittelpunkt, w\u00e4hrend der \"Constellation Coloring Contest\" die Kreativit\u00e4t der Community anregte und sich auf RSIs ber\u00fchmtes Reiseflugzeug konzentrierte.\n\nNeuank\u00f6mmlinge in Star Citizen wurden mit einem aktualisierten New Players Comm-Link unterst\u00fctzt und die Spieler wurden \u00fcber das aktualisierte XenoThreat Dynamic Event informiert.\nDas Team startete auch den Ship Showdown 2951, das j\u00e4hrliche Kopf-an-Kopf-Rennen, um das Lieblingsfahrzeug der Community im Spiel zu bestimmen.\nEngine\nIm August hat das Physik-Team Fortschritte bei der physikalischen Quantenreise gemacht. In ihrem Entwicklungsstrom haben sie nun ein richtiges Quantengitter (pro Sonnensystem) und eine Quanten-Hindernis-Komponente, die eine analytische Darstellung eines Hindernisses registriert. Abgesehen von einigen noch zu l\u00f6senden Problemen, k\u00f6nnen sie nun das \u00c4quivalent eines blinden Quantensprungs machen und aussteigen, bevor sie einen Mond auf dem Reisepfad treffen.\nSie haben auch die Leistung weiter verbessert. Unter anderem l\u00e4uft die Zerst\u00f6rung von statischen physikalischen Entit\u00e4ten nun zeitgesteuert ab, w\u00e4hrend die Abfrage und Verarbeitung von Teilen einer physikalischen Entit\u00e4t w\u00e4hrend der Kollisionserkennung verbessert wurde. Auch die Aufr\u00e4umarbeiten am Code des Physiksystems wurden fortgesetzt. Zum Beispiel macht die Zeitschrittfunktion der physikalischen Welt nun einzelne Phasen des Zeitschritts deutlicher.\nDie Umstellung auf den Gen12 Renderer wurde im August vorangetrieben. Die Shader-Aktivierung wurde thread-sicher gemacht und erfordert nun keine explizite Synchronisation \u00fcber Locks mehr, volumetrische Nebelvolumina laufen nun nativ in Gen12 und das Team hat die Verwendung mehrerer reflektierter Shader-Parameter im gesamten Rendercode und den Shadern \u00fcberarbeitet. Tint-Support wurde hinzugef\u00fcgt, ebenso wie Scattering-Query-Support f\u00fcr vorw\u00e4rts schattierte Objekte, und mehrere Teile des Legacy-Codes in der Renderer-Codebasis wurden bereinigt.\nIn Bezug auf die Atmosph\u00e4re und volumetrische Wolken wurde Zeit damit verbracht, die Reprojektion und die Filterkette zu \u00fcberarbeiten, um letztendlich Raymarching bei niedrigeren Aufl\u00f6sungen f\u00fcr eine verbesserte GPU-Leistung zu erm\u00f6glichen. Verbesserungen wurden an der Platzierung von Samples f\u00fcr das Raymarchen vorgenommen. Dies beinhaltete die Reprojektion von Ergebnissen aus vorherigen Frames, die Filterung und Entrauschung der Wolkentiefe und das Upsampling von Inscatter- und Transmittance-Ergebnissen auf volle Aufl\u00f6sung f\u00fcr verschiedene problematische Ansichtsszenarien. Zu diesen Szenarien geh\u00f6ren Orbitalansichten, Szenen mit hoher Tiefenkomplexit\u00e4t und jede Szene mit starken Kamerabewegungen. Dies ist alles noch in Arbeit, aber das Team hofft, es bald ausrollen zu k\u00f6nnen.\nEs wurde daran gearbeitet, die Schattierung von Wolken zu verbessern, indem man besser zwischen Vorw\u00e4rts- und R\u00fcckw\u00e4rtsstreuung in ihnen \u00fcberblendet, was wichtig f\u00fcr das Rendern des Silberstreifens ist. Au\u00dferdem wurden Verbesserungen am Aussehen der Wolkenkanten vorgenommen, um ihnen ein volumetrischeres Gef\u00fchl zu geben. Der Stepping-Code f\u00fcr lokale Wolkenschattendetails wurde \u00fcberarbeitet, um mehr Details f\u00fcr die gleichen Performancekosten zu erm\u00f6glichen.\nAuf der Seite der Core-Engine wurde Zeit damit verbracht, das Low-Level-System zu optimieren. Zum Beispiel wurden verschiedene Verbesserungen an CigFunction vorgenommen, das als Vehikel dient, um C++ Lambdas (in diesem speziellen Fall Code und Daten f\u00fcr die verz\u00f6gerte asynchrone Ausf\u00fchrung als Job) zu erfassen und weiterzugeben. Der n\u00e4chste Schwerpunkt war die Optimierung der Entity Unloading Stalls, die die PU plagten. Als Ergebnis wurden mehrere Entity-Entlade-Engp\u00e4sse behoben. Des Weiteren wurde die Verwaltung von Komponentenereignissen optimiert und der Code zum Erzeugen und Zerst\u00f6ren dieser verbessert.\nEs wurde auch daran gearbeitet, mehrere Optimierungen im Spatial Culling System vorzunehmen, welches f\u00fcr das Server Meshing verwendet wird. Zu guter Letzt wurde der Update-Scheduler f\u00fcr Entity-Komponenten ge\u00e4ndert, um mehr als ein Update pro Komponentendurchlauf zu erlauben, um eine flexiblere Nutzung von Komponenten zu erm\u00f6glichen.\nFeatures (Charaktere & Waffen)\nIm August konzentrierte sich das Features-Team auf die Fehlerbehebung und den Feinschliff f\u00fcr das neue Spielerinventar und die Schauspieler-Status-Features.\n\"Einige der am\u00fcsantesten Bugs waren das Pl\u00fcndern eines toten Spielers und das Auffinden seines Schiffes und all seiner Fahrzeugwaffen in seinem Inventar und das Absenken einer Trage, um einen verletzten Spieler darauf zu legen, aber am Ende der Animation f\u00e4ngt sie an, herumzuspringen und alle zu t\u00f6ten.\" -The Features Team\nAuf der technischen Seite begann das Team mit der Arbeit, die komplexen Animationen, die f\u00fcr humanoide und Kreaturenskelette ben\u00f6tigt werden, von den eher mechanischen Skeletten zu trennen. Letztere, von denen es normalerweise deutlich mehr in einer Szene gibt, werden von einem viel schlankeren Animations-Update-Fluss profitieren. Dies erlaubt es auch, die Aktualisierungsregeln des Animationssystems besser auf jeden Skelett-Typ zuzuschneiden. Dies verbessert nicht nur die Aktualisierungszeit, sondern sollte auch zu einer Reduzierung des Speicherverbrauchs in stark bev\u00f6lkerten Gebieten f\u00fchren.\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nDas US Gameplay Feature Team hat die im letzten Bericht erw\u00e4hnte Arbeit an NikNax vorangetrieben. Die App ist nun 'feature complete' und befindet sich in der Polishing-Phase der Produktion, w\u00e4hrend das Look and Feel derzeit finalisiert wird.\nAuch an der Entwicklung von dynamischen Events wurde weiter gearbeitet.\n\"Wir haben mit der Arbeit an Jumptown 2.0 begonnen, dem n\u00e4chsten dynamischen Event, bei dem Au\u00dfenposten hyperlukrativ werden und die Spieler dazu verleiten, um die Kontrolle des Gebiets zu k\u00e4mpfen und so viel Profit wie m\u00f6glich zu machen. Mehr Informationen dazu kommen sehr bald.\" -The Gameplay Feature Team\nAu\u00dferdem wurde weiter an den TDDs f\u00fcr den Fracht-Refactor, den Charakter-Archetypen-Editor und die neue Einkaufs- und Verkaufsinitiative gearbeitet, die alle bald im Review-Stadium sein sollten.\nFeatures (Fahrzeuge)\nIm letzten Monat hat das Fahrzeug-Feature-Team die Entwicklung von Sprungpunkten vorangetrieben und die notwendigen Gameplay- und Entwicklungstools erstellt, um das Feature bereitzustellen und anderen Teams die Arbeit damit zu erleichtern.\nAu\u00dferdem machte das Team Fortschritte mit einer Reihe von internen Debug-Tools, um IFCS zu \u00fcberwachen und Dinge wie Raketen einfacher zu inspizieren, was den zuk\u00fcnftigen Arbeitsablauf verbessern wird. Au\u00dferdem unterst\u00fctzten sie das PU-Feature-Team bei der Betankung, arbeiteten weiter an HUD-Verbesserungen und unterst\u00fctzten Vehicle Experience mit bombenbezogenen UIs f\u00fcr Alpha 3.15.\nVehicle Experience konzentrierte sich auf den Abschluss der Entwicklung des Bombing-Features, das in die Review-Phase ging. Au\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie an der Balance der kommenden Schiffe f\u00fcr Alpha 3.15 und dar\u00fcber hinaus und beendeten letzte Probleme mit dem aktuellen Patch-Release.\nGrafik & VFX Programmierung\nIm letzten Monat hat das Grafikteam das Render-to-Texture-System weiterentwickelt, das eine kleine \u00dcberarbeitung erh\u00e4lt, um mit einigen neuen UI-Systemen zurechtzukommen, die ausgiebig Gebrauch von 3D-Symbolen und Compositing machen, wie zum Beispiel das pers\u00f6nliche Inventar.\nSie erm\u00f6glichten es, dass dynamisch gerenderte Texturen zwischengespeichert werden k\u00f6nnen, um eine gro\u00dfe Anzahl von qualitativ hochwertigen, super-abgetasteten Bildern mit minimalen Kosten zu erzeugen. Sie reduzierten auch dynamisch die Texturaufl\u00f6sung in unscharfen Bereichen (z.B. bei der Verwendung des mobiGlas), um mehr Ressourcen f\u00fcr den Rest des Spiels zu reallokieren.\nF\u00fcr Gen12 wurden die Schatten- und Echtzeit-Sondensysteme umgestellt und werden bald standardm\u00e4\u00dfig im Hauptzweig aktiviert sein. Das Streaming von Echtzeitsonden wurde ebenfalls fertiggestellt und aktiviert, was Speicherprobleme in Szenen mit zahlreichen Sonden, wie z.B. Orison, l\u00f6st.\nAlpha 3.15 wird das erste Release sein, das umfangreiche Autotests f\u00fcr die VFX-Technik nutzt, daher hat das Programmierteam Zeit damit verbracht, Bugs zu beheben, um eine solide Basislinie zu erreichen. Dadurch wurde auch die allgemeine Qualit\u00e4t der Partikeleffekte verbessert.\nParallel dazu wurde die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Refraktion in das GPU-Partikelsystem integriert, um die Funktionalit\u00e4t des CPU-Partikelsystems zu erreichen und dessen visuelle Qualit\u00e4t zu \u00fcbertreffen. Dies markiert das Ende eines langj\u00e4hrigen Ziels, die Gegenst\u00fccke aller Legacy-Mesh- und Sprite-Funktionen in das neue CPU-Partikel-System zu implementieren.\nDas VFX Programming Team hat auch mit dem Fire Hazard System weitergemacht. Es nutzt nun das neue komprimierte Physik-Rendermesh, das akkurate Oberfl\u00e4chendaten erh\u00e4lt, ohne sich auf geringer aufgel\u00f6ste und ungenauere Physik-Proxy-Meshes zu verlassen. Die Art und Weise, wie sich das Feuer durch T\u00fcr\u00f6ffnungen ausbreitet, wurde ebenfalls verbessert.\nBeleuchtung\nDas Beleuchtungsteam hat sich haupts\u00e4chlich auf die kommenden Inhalte f\u00fcr Alpha 3.15 und zuk\u00fcnftige Lieferungen f\u00fcr Pyro konzentriert.\n\nEs wurden Durchg\u00e4nge an Orten in Orison abgeschlossen, darunter der Crusader Showroom, Cousin Crow's Custom Craft und Providence Surplus. Die Beleuchtungsarbeiten f\u00fcr die Weltraumkliniken und das Krankenhaus in Grim HEX wurden abgeschlossen, und die Arbeiten an den medizinischen Bereichen in Area18 und Lorville gingen weiter. Das Team nahm auch einige kleinere Aufgaben in Angriff, wie die weitere Optimierung von Orison und allgemeine Fehlerbehebung.\n\nDie Beleuchtungsabteilung unterst\u00fctzte auch den Planeteninhalt, indem sie die atmosph\u00e4rischen und farblichen Einstellungen f\u00fcr die Planeten und Monde von Pyro \u00fcberarbeitete, was dazu beitrug, dass sich jeder Planet einzigartig und interessant anf\u00fchlt.\nNarrative\nDas Narrative Team konzentrierte sich den ganzen August \u00fcber auf die Alpha 3.15 und arbeitete zusammen mit dem Design an Vertragstexten f\u00fcr neue Missionen und der Erweiterung der Organisationen und Spielbereiche, die in der Delphi mobiGlas App dargestellt werden. Das medizinische Gameplay und die neuen Krankenhaus- und Klinikstandorte wurden ebenfalls bearbeitet, wobei das Team alle damit zusammenh\u00e4ngenden UI- und Branding-Elemente \u00fcberarbeitet hat. Neue Dialoge wurden aufgenommen, um die Kliniken und neuen Orison-Standorte zu bev\u00f6lkern.\n\u00dcber die Alpha 3.15 hinaus arbeitete das Team an Inhalten f\u00fcr IAE 2951 und kommende dynamische Events. Zus\u00e4tzlich wurden Missions-Audios f\u00fcr die verschiedenen Sicherheitskr\u00e4fte in Stanton aufgenommen, die den zuk\u00fcnftigen Inhalten mehr Tiefe verleihen werden.\nDie Vorarbeiten f\u00fcr einen neuen Missionstyp begannen, wobei das Team eng mit dem Design zusammenarbeitete, um mit dem Prototyping von Dialogen zur Unterst\u00fctzung des Gameplays zu beginnen. Die Entwicklung von narrativen Inhalten f\u00fcr Pyro wurde fortgesetzt, um weiter zu definieren, was die Spieler in dem neuen System erwarten k\u00f6nnen.\nAu\u00dferdem wurde neue Lore ver\u00f6ffentlicht, darunter ein Kongress, der jetzt \u00fcber die Ernennung eines Xi'an-Botschafters debattiert, sowie The Shakedown, eine fortlaufende fiktive Geschichte, die auf ArcCorp spielt. Eine neue Auswahl an Galactapedia-Artikeln wurde ebenfalls hinzugef\u00fcgt.\nSpieler Beziehungen\nDie 'Player Relations Live QA' wurde diesen Monat gestartet. Dieses neue Team wird sich auf das Live-Erlebnis konzentrieren, einschlie\u00dflich der Reproduktion und Bearbeitung von Fehlern, die von Spielern im Issue Council gemeldet werden. Au\u00dferdem hat das Team mit der fr\u00fchen Alpha 3.15 begonnen und konzentriert sich auf das Spielerlebnis, bevor es auf Evocati erscheint.\nDas Player Relations Team wurde auch in UK und DE erweitert, um die stetig wachsende Spielerbasis, Patch-Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen und kommende Events zu unterst\u00fctzen.\nQA\nDas Hauptaugenmerk der QA lag auf der Alpha 3.14 und dem Testen von XenoThreat und Ninetails Lockdown. Mitte des Monats ver\u00f6ffentlichten sie jeden Tag auf der PTU, testeten die Stabilit\u00e4t, verifizierten Fehlerbehebungen und sammelten Details zu Problemen, die intern nicht reproduzierbar waren.\nIn der Entwicklung testete das Team einige der neuen Features und Systeme, die f\u00fcr die Alpha 3.15 geplant sind, um sich mit ihnen vertraut zu machen.\nAuch die Zeitplanung wurde in Vorbereitung auf die anstehenden Tests abgeschlossen und Pl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr die Feature-Tests wurden erstellt.\nSystemische Dienste & Tools\nIm August setzten die Systemic Services & Tools ihre Arbeit an Quantum (der Wirtschafts- und KI-Simulation) fort und nahmen Verbesserungen an den Tools vor, die es den Designern erlauben, diese verschiedenen Systeme anzupassen.\nDas Team arbeitete auch an Edge Cases f\u00fcr die Backend-Services und f\u00fcgte dem Service HUB und den variablen Filter-Services Stabilit\u00e4t hinzu.\nIm August wurden die Arbeiten am Spieler- und KI-Informationsdienst abgeschlossen, damit die Quantum-Simulation (oder jeder andere Backend-Dienst) bei Bedarf mehr Daten mit einer schnelleren Rate abrufen kann. Die Service-Ingenieure unterst\u00fctzten ihre Kollegen aus dem Gameplay auch mit Verbesserungen am physischen Inventar.\nDie Arbeit am NPC-Tracker, der die Verfolgung von NPCs zwischen den Servern erm\u00f6glichen wird, hat ernsthaft begonnen. Das System wird von jeder Spielschleife genutzt werden, die NSCs verfolgen will oder muss, w\u00e4hrend sie von der instanziierten zur virtuellen KI wechseln und sich durch das Verse bewegen.\nZu guter Letzt wurde ein neuer generischer Treuhandservice fertiggestellt, der eine vereinfachte Geldtransaktionsschleife erm\u00f6glicht, von der SST hofft, dass sie sich in die verschiedenen Gameplay-Loops integrieren l\u00e4sst.\nTurbulent (Dienstleistungen)\nDas Live-Tools-Team von Turbulent hat das Grundger\u00fcst f\u00fcr das neue Fenster-Layout in Hex zusammen mit einigen der Kernfunktionen fertiggestellt. Au\u00dferdem unterst\u00fctzten sie die PU Locations mit dem Might Bridge Tool. In Zusammenarbeit mit Mitgliedern des QA- und Publishing-Teams wurden Verbesserungen an der Pipeline f\u00fcr die Absturzbehandlung vorgenommen und die Deduplizierung f\u00fcr Sentry-Abst\u00fcrze verfeinert.\nDas Game Services-Team erreichte wichtige Meilensteine im Server-Meshing-Projekt und lieferte die erste Version des neuen Matchmaking-Systems. Der Dienst, der mit der neuen Datenbank kommuniziert, verf\u00fcgt nun ebenfalls \u00fcber alle erforderlichen Hauptfunktionen, und es wurden mehrere Optimierungen vorgenommen.\nTurbulent (Web-Plattform)\nDie beiden Web-Teams von Turbulent arbeiteten an technischen Projekten, um die technische Plattform um neue Funktionen zu erweitern.\nEcommerce arbeitet an einer neuen Datenbank-Indexierungsl\u00f6sung, um dem Team neue M\u00f6glichkeiten zu geben, effizient nach neuen Inhalten zu suchen und diese zu erstellen. Dies ist in erster Linie f\u00fcr den Pledge Store gedacht, wird aber auch dabei helfen, neue Seiten zu erstellen, die die Leistung der Seite nicht beeintr\u00e4chtigen.\nDas Architekturteam arbeitet an einem System, um den Informationsaustausch zwischen den verschiedenen Diensten zu verbessern. Dies wird die bestehenden Systeme verbessern und es dem Team erm\u00f6glichen, mit neuen Microservices zu beginnen, die mit anderen Elementen der Plattform interagieren.\nFahrzeugtechnik\nDas Vehicle Tech Team hat den letzten Schliff am Radar-, Scan- und Ping-Refactor f\u00fcr Fahrzeuge vorgenommen. Au\u00dferdem bereiteten sie sich darauf vor, die Verbesserungen f\u00fcr das First-Person-Gameplay einzubauen. Es wurden einige Verbesserungen in den bestehenden Systemen und Funktionen identifiziert, die entsprechend in die kommenden Pl\u00e4ne aufgenommen wurden. Auch Bugs wurden f\u00fcr die Alpha 3.14 behoben.\nVFX\nLetzten Monat hat das VFX-Team die neuen SDF-basierten Fahrzeugschilde \u00fcberarbeitet. Es wurde ein vereinfachtes Setup erstellt, mit besseren Skalierungsoptionen, die es erlauben, weniger Effekte \u00fcber die gro\u00dfe Bandbreite von Schiffsma\u00dfst\u00e4ben zu verwenden.\nSie begannen auch mit dem Vehicle Feature Team an den Ship-Wake-Effekten zu arbeiten, die es erm\u00f6glichen werden, Oberfl\u00e4chenstaub, Schnee, etc. zu verschieben, wenn Schiffe schnell \u00fcber die Oberfl\u00e4che fliegen. Dies ist eine Fortsetzung der Arbeit, die k\u00fcrzlich f\u00fcr die Thruster-Wind-Volumen abgeschlossen wurde.\nVFX-Passes wurden auch f\u00fcr die Crusader A2 Hercules, eines der unangek\u00fcndigten Schiffe, die fr\u00fcher im Bericht erw\u00e4hnt wurden, und f\u00fcr die S7-Waffen der Crusader Ares gemacht.\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...","zh_CN":"Welcome to August\u2019s PU Report! With all Alpha 3.14 tasks closed out, most teams focused their sights on content for Alpha 3.15 and beyond. Read on for the details of everything worked on throughout the month, including jump points, dynamic events, AI behaviors, and several top-secret vehicles.\n\nAI (Content)\nThroughout August, AI Content supported Level Design by creating a new \u2018worker\u2019 behavior. This enables the designers to apply traits to the various AI archetypes, refining which usables they use, such as sitting, leaning, inspecting, and cooking.\nThe team modified various usables to utilize the first reaction system, which allows NPCs to break out of usables during animations. For example, if an NPC is typing at a console and hears a gunshot or sees an enemy, they will stop typing and react appropriately. This was completed for the standing and sitting console, leans, seats, stairs, railings, search spots, attack spots, and more. They\u2019re currently working with the Engine and Animation teams to improve the visuals.\nPre-vis began on two new products for a future delivery: the dealer behavior and Pyro location usables.\nThe dealer is a mobile vendor that players can buy from and sell to. This NPC stores one-handed items on their person, though if a player wants a two-handed item, they\u2019re guided to the dealer\u2019s \u201cshop\u201d nearby. The TrackView pre-vis went through its second iteration, with the team currently building consensus with all the different design teams.\nAI Content identifying several usables to help sell Pyro\u2019s theme of sickness, greed, and poverty. The second pre-vis pass was completed, which will be presented to the directors before the new usables begin production.\nThe team also continued to develop the hospital respawn experience for Alpha 3.15 and the subsequent vendor rollout to various locations around Stanton.\nAI (Features)\nAI Features continued to work on combat scenarios. Throughout August, they improved visual perception by adjusting the field-of-view form and exposing more information for the designers to tweak. The aim of this is to create a stealth combat mechanism from the player\u2019s perspective, which requires adjustable perception timings and field of view.\nNew functionality was also added to the tactical point system. This enables it to compute path distances when selecting viable relocation points or cover locations during combat, rather than just direct distance. NPCs were also set up to use missile turrets.\nAI (Tech)\nAI Tech improved the pathfinder system to work with planetary navigation mesh tiles, enabling them to place NPCs on planets and move them from one location to another. They also started the work for generating planet navigation mesh automatically based on a player\u2019s proximity.\nOne feature delivered this month allows the player to lead a formation of AI ships. This was initially requested for Squadron 42 but should be available in the PU in the future.\nImprovements were also made to the collision avoidance system, including physics optimizations for obstacle queries and a small restructure of related data.\nSignificant effort was also directed at improving AI design paths and how NPCs follow them. As the design paths can be quite complex with multiple branches, they were updated to allow NPCs to follow them from any starting place.\nWork also continued on the Subsumption editor, this time completing the multi-graph view.\nAnimation\nThe Animation team spent part of August focusing on vendors for illegal goods, food, drink, and other items, which involved creating animation pre-vis videos showing how the assets should be used in Pyro. These videos will also enable the team to better communicate with Design how to combine assets for different useable into other useables to extend asset use and give more variety. This work will be used to improve the existing bartenders too.\nThe team progressed with the overall medical behavior, including patron pre-vis videos, hospital healing functionality, and related useables. They\u2019re also working on drunk locomotion for status changes (in both weapon and no weapon stances), with the first drop containing functional assets.\nThe cowering and surrender behaviors mentioned in previous reports progressed throughout the month, while additional seated idling animations were added to make characters feel more alive.\nA motion capture (mo-cap) shoot was arranged to cover blockouts for the hygiene cubicle, hacking, navigation, arcade machines, unwell seating, additional vendor animations, and locomotion R&D. The Marketing team were supported on an upcoming video too.\nOn the facial side, progress was made on vendor lines and chowline animations.\nArt (Characters)\nLast month, Character Art completed a large batch of new assets for Alpha 3.15, including a heat-resistant heavy armor that will replace the Caldera Pembroke suit.\nThe team also finalized several new backpacks, including three based on the Clark Defense Systems brand and one on Doomsday. They also reworked existing backpacks previously attached to armor cores to make them individual, modular items. From Alpha 3.15 onwards, each new armor will come with a backpack in the same style.\nArt (Ships)\nIn the UK, the yet-to-be-announced ship originally mentioned earlier in the year was completed, with the team\u2019s final task of creating additional paints currently underway.\nThe Redeemer is approaching final-art complete, with the team finalizing the interactive buttons in the cockpit, remote turret bays, component room, and making the final polish of the lower deck.\nWork also commenced on the MISC Hull A, which is close to being whitebox complete. Its larger sibling, the Hull C, is currently being brought up to \u2018gold standard.\u2019 August\u2019s focus was on the exterior, with the team switching out materials to the newer shader and making sure it\u2019s ready for the current paint system.\nTwo unannounced vehicles continued to progress through the pipeline. One recently completed its greybox review and is approaching final art, while the other is awaiting its greybox review though is close to having a finalized exterior.\nRefueling work was also done on the MISC Starfarer. The refueling arm mentioned last month is now complete, with focus turning to the tractor beam assembly at the rear that forms part of the refining feature.\nThe Crusader A2 Hercules passed its final art review too.\nIn the US, the Crusader Ares moved through the final art phase, with the cockpit, enter\/exit system, component housings, landing gear, and thrusters receiving polish.\nThe cockpit, habitation area, ladder passage, and cargo hold are all nearing greybox complete for the Drake Vulture.\nAn all-new vehicle is almost greybox-complete, while art for the variant mentioned last month was finished.\nAudio\nThe SFX and Dialogue teams revisited Orison in August, this time adding ambiances and spot effects to three areas. New voiceovers and music were implemented to fill out the audio experience too.\nAmbiances and spot effects were completed for the Grim HEX hospital and incidental voiceovers were recorded to inform players how painful treatments can be.\nMechanism and explosion effects were also added to the \u2018Mother Of All Bombs\u2019.\nTech Sound Design helped implement the hacking system for the SFX team, adding sounds alongside the usual team support.\nFinally, prep for CitizenCon 2951 continued. Audio Code collated assets ready to show off their new tech, while SFX supported the Locations teams with level ambiance sounds that will be demoed during the event.\nCommunity\nThe Community team supported the Star Citizen Alpha 3.14 launch with three engaging contests:\n\nPlayers that wanted to invite a friend to the \u2018verse and claim a unique referral bonus could participate in the \u2018Wish You Were Here\u2019 Greeting Card Contest by creating a greeting card of Orison.\n\nThe Finding Finley Screenshot Contest starred Crusader\u2019s stormwals, Francis and Finley, while the Constellation Coloring Contest encouraged community creativity focused on RSI\u2019s famous tourer.\n\nNewcomers to the Star Citizen were supported with an updated New Players Comm-Link, and players were briefed about the updated XenoThreat dynamic event.\nThe team also kicked off Ship Showdown 2951, the annual head-to-head battle to determine the community\u2019s favorite in-game vehicle.\nEngine\nIn August, the Physics team progressed with physical quantum travel. In their development stream, they now have a proper quantum grid (per solar system) and a quantum-obstacle component that registers an analytical representation of an obstacle. Some to-be-sorted issues aside, they can now make the equivalent of a blind quantum jump and drop out before hitting a moon along the travel path.\nThey also continued to improve performance. Among other things, the destruction of static physical entities now runs time-sliced, while querying and processing parts of a physical entity during collision detection was improved. The physics system code cleanup continued too. For example, the physical world\u2019s time-step function now makes individual phases of the time step clearer.\nThe transition to the Gen12 renderer progressed throughout August. Shader activation was made thread-safe and no longer requires explicit synchronization via locks, volumetric fog volumes now run natively in Gen12, and the team refactored the use of several reflected shader parameters throughout render code and shaders. Tint support was added as well as scattering query support for forward-shaded objects, and several pieces of legacy code across the renderer code base were cleaned up.\nRegarding atmosphere and volumetric clouds, time was spent reworking the reprojection and filter chain to ultimately allow raymarching at lower resolutions for improved GPU performance. Improvements were made to the placement of samples for raymarching. This involved reprojecting results from previous frames, filtering and denoising cloud depth, and up-sampling inscatter and transmittance results to full resolution for various problematic view scenarios. These scenarios include orbital views, scenes with high depth complexity, and any scene with strong camera movement. This is all still work in progress, though the team hopes to roll it out shortly.\nWork was submitted to improve cloud shading by better blending between forward and backward scattering inside them, which is important for rendering the silver lining. Moreover, improvements were made to the look of cloud edges to give them a more volumetric feel. The stepping code for local cloud shadow details was reworked to allow more details for the same performance cost.\nOn the core-engine side, time was spent optimizing the low-level system. For example, various improvements were made to CigFunction, which serves as a vehicle to capture and pass C++ lambdas (in this particular case code and data for deferred asynchronous execution as a job). The next focus was optimizing the entity unloading stalls plaguing the PU. As a result, several entity-unload bottlenecks were rectified. Furthermore, the management of component events was optimized and code to create and destroy them improved.\nWork was also done to deliver multiple optimizations in the spatial culling system, which will be used for server meshing. Lastly, the entity component update scheduler was changed to allow more than one update per component pass to enable the more flexible use of components.\nFeatures (Characters & Weapons)\nIn August, the Features team focused on bug fixing and polishing for the new player inventory and actor status features.\n\u201cSome of the more amusing bugs included looting a dead player and finding their ship, and all its vehicle weapons, in their inventory, and lowering a gurney to put an injured player on it but at the end of the animation it starts bouncing around killing everyone.\u201d -The Features Team\nOn the technical side, the team began work to separate the complex animations required for humanoid and creature skeletons from the more mechanical skeletons. The latter, of which there are normally significantly more of in a scene, will benefit from a much more streamlined animation update flow. This also allows the animation system\u2019s update rules to be better tailored to each skeleton type. As well as improving update time, this should see a reduction in memory usage in heavily populated areas.\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe US Gameplay Feature team progressed with the NikNax work mentioned in last month\u2019s report. The app is now \u2018feature complete\u2019 and in the polishing phase of production, while the look and feel are currently being finalized.\nThey also continued to develop dynamic events.\n\u201cWe began working on Jumptown 2.0, the next dynamic event, where outposts become hyper-lucrative, tempting players to fight to control the area and gather as much profit as possible. More information on that coming very soon.\u201d -The Gameplay Feature Team\nThey also continued to work on TDDs for the cargo refactor, the character archetype editor, and the new shopping and selling initiative, all of which should be at the review stage soon.\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nLast month, the Vehicle Feature team ramped up the development of jump points, creating the gameplay and development tools required to deliver the feature and make it easier to work with for other teams.\nIn addition, the team progressed with a number of internal debug tools to monitor IFCS and more easily inspect things like missiles, which will improve future workflow. They also supported the PU Feature team with refueling, continued to work on HUD improvements, and supported Vehicle Experience with bombing-related UIs for Alpha 3.15.\nVehicle Experience focused on finishing the development of the bombing feature, which entered the review stages. They also worked to balance upcoming ships for Alpha 3.15 and beyond and wrapped up final issues with the current patch release.\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nLast month, the Graphics team progressed with the render-to-texture system, which is receiving a mini-overhaul to cope with some new UI systems that make extensive use of 3D icons and compositing, such as the personal inventory.\nThey enabled dynamically rendered textures to be cached to allow them to generate a large number of high-quality, super-sampled images with minimal cost. They also dynamically reduced texture resolution in out-of-focus areas (e.g. when using the mobiGlas) to reallocate more resources to the rest of the game.\nFor Gen12, the shadow and real-time-probe systems were converted and will soon be activated by default in the main branch. Streaming of real-time probes was also completed and enabled, which solves memory issues in scenes with numerous probes, such as Orison.\nAlpha 3.15 will mark the first release that utilizes extensive auto testing for VFX tech, so the Programming team spent time resolving bugs to achieve a solid baseline. This also improved the overall quality of particle effects.\nAlongside this, they began adding support for refraction into the GPU particle system, matching the functionality of the CPU particle system and surpassing its visual quality. This marks the end of a long-standing goal to implement counterparts of all legacy mesh and sprite functionality in the new CPU particle system.\nThe VFX Programming team also continued with the fire hazard system. It now utilizes the new compressed physics render-mesh, which obtains accurate surface data without relying on lower-resolution and lower-accuracy physics proxy meshes. The way fire spreads through doorways was improved too.\nLighting\nThe Lighting team primarily focused on upcoming content for Alpha 3.15 and future deliverables for Pyro.\n\nPasses were completed on locations within Orison, including the Crusader Showroom, Cousin Crow\u2019s Custom Craft, and Providence Surplus. Lighting work was completed for the space clinics and hospital in Grim HEX, and progress continued on the medical areas in Area18 and Lorville. The team also tackled some smaller backlog items, such as further Orison optimization and general bug fixing.\n\nLighting also assisted Planet Content, making a pass on the atmospheric and color-grading settings for Pyro\u2019s planets and moons, helping to make each feel unique and interesting.\nNarrative\nThe Narrative team focused on Alpha 3.15 throughout August, working with Design on contract text for new missions and expanding the organizations and gameplay scopes represented in the Delphi mobiGlas app. Medical gameplay and the new hospital and clinic locations were also worked on, with the team making passes on all related UI and branding. New dialogue was recorded to help populate the clinics and new Orison locations.\nBeyond Alpha 3.15, the team worked on content for IAE 2951 and upcoming dynamic events. Additionally, they recorded mission audio for the various security forces in Stanton that will add further depth to future content.\nPreliminary work began on a new mission type, with the team working closely with Design to begin prototyping dialogue to support the gameplay. The development of narrative content continued for Pyro, further defining what players can expect to encounter in the new system.\nNew lore was also released, including a Congress Now debating the appointment of a Xi\u2019an ambassador, along with The Shakedown, a serialized fiction story set on ArcCorp. A new selection of Galactapedia articles was added too.\nPlayer Relations\n\u2018Player Relations Live QA\u2019 launched this month. This new team will concentrate on the live experience, including reproducing and triaging player-reported bugs on the Issue Council. They also began early Alpha 3.15 work, focusing on the player experience before it hits Evocati.\nThe Player Relations team also expanded in the UK and DE to support the ever-growing player base, patch releases, and upcoming events.\nQA\nQA\u2019s primary publishing focus was on Alpha 3.14, testing XenoThreat and Ninetails Lockdown. Mid-month, they were publishing every day to the PTU, testing stability, verifying fixes, and gathering details of issues not reproducible internally.\nDevelopment-wise, the team undertook familiarity testing with some of the new features and systems planned for Alpha 3.15.\nScheduling was also completed in preparation for upcoming testing, and plans were drawn up ahead of feature testing.\nSystemic Services & Tools\nIn August, Systemic Services & Tools continued their work on Quantum (the economy and AI simulation), making improvements to the tools that allow the designers to adjust these various systems.\nThe team also worked on edge cases for the backend services, adding stability to the service HUB and variable filter services.\nAugust saw work wrap up on the player and AI info service to allow the Quantum simulation (or any other backend service) to pull more data at a faster rate as needed. The service engineers also aided their gameplay counterparts with improvements to the physical inventory.\nWork began in earnest on the NPC tracker, which will allow the tracking of NPCs between servers. The system will be used by any gameplay loop that wants or needs to track NPCs as they shift from instantiated to virtual AI and move around the \u2018verse.\nFinally, a new generic escrow service wrapped up, allowing for a more streamlined money transaction loop that SST is hoping integrates with the various gameplay loops.\nTurbulent (Services)\nTurbulent\u2019s Live Tools team completed the base framework for the new windowing layout in Hex along with some of the core functionality. They also supported the PU Locations with the Might Bridge tool. Working alongside members of the QA and Publishing teams, improvements were made to the crash handling pipeline, refining deduplication for Sentry crashes.\nThe Game Services team achieved key milestones in the server meshing project, delivering the first version of the new matchmaking system. The service communicating with the new database now has all the required main features too, and several optimizations were made.\nTurbulent (Web Platform)\nBoth of Turbulent\u2019s web teams worked on technical projects to add new capabilities to the engineering platform.\nEcommerce is working on a new database indexing solution to give the team new capabilities to efficiently search for and create new content. This is primarily for the Pledge Store but it will also help to create new pages that don\u2019t hinder the site\u2019s performance.\nThe Architecture team is working on a system to improve the way information passes between their various services. This will improve existing systems and enable the team to hit the ground running on new micro-services that interact with other elements on the platform.\nVehicle Tech\nThe Vehicle Tech team put the finishing touches on the radar, scanning, and ping refactor for vehicles. They also prepared to incorporate the improvements to first-person gameplay. Some improvements were identified in the existing systems and functionality, which have been included in upcoming plans accordingly. Bugs were also fixed for Alpha 3.14.\nVFX\nLast month, the VFX team revisited the new vehicle SDF-based shields. A simplified setup was provided, with better scalability options allowing fewer effects to be used across the wide range of ship scales.\nThey also began working on ship-wake effects with the Vehicle Feature team, which will allow surface dust, snow, etc. to be displaced when ships are rapidly flying along the surface. This is a continuation of the work recently completed for thruster wind volumes.\nVFX passes were also done for the Crusader A2 Hercules, one of the unannounced ships mentioned earlier in the report, and for the Crusader Ares\u2019 S7 weapons.\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":9,"comment_count":27,"created_at":"2021-09-01T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"4 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 19:48:29","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":18295,"next_id":18297}}