{"data":{"id":19734,"title":"Star Citizen Monthly Report: November & December 2023","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/SCW\/19734-API","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/19734","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/19734","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"None","images":[{"id":26651,"name":"STARCITIZEN_WHITE.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/y1f0boj8fak5rr\/source\/STARCITIZEN_WHITE.png","alt":"","size":73278,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2021-02-03T06:54:29+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/26651","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/26651\/similar"},{"id":32863,"name":"your-lordship.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/ad19cb5f2edfb531fbde5bb5821f5b011bc2646c\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjReskj8nFVSCtdx2EqLvsXMnNmCZNrcZ3jDkA\/your-lordship.png","alt":"g-illustration","size":4997317,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-11-20T20:00:51+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/32863","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/32863\/similar"},{"id":33066,"name":"4c15a79d-b983-47f4-8a70-a536bf8be76d-1.webp","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/d7a48ffee8555541078dc14e2bff323ccbc7cedf\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjReskPLq45QyyU95vkTToZkE9KPyjwkQb2dc2\/4c15a79d-b983-47f4-8a70-a536bf8be76d-1.webp","alt":"g-illustration","size":510968,"mime_type":"image\/webp","last_modified":"2023-12-04T22:30:35+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/33066","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/33066\/similar"},{"id":33994,"name":"4.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/22b8c442fb6c090a0a40d6314fc840eabf4c1033\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjResetmw1A3Hx5AewdhuuP4umAV7nbTmhqkZU\/4.png","alt":"g-illustration","size":5423030,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2024-01-10T22:15:53+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/33994","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/33994\/similar"},{"id":33997,"name":"2.webp","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/06f878b42d9b3b904d29b056e21de78acf3a574a\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjResjpSWqRg3WYWbrL2DAJqrnEVJwVp5pi3Ga\/2.webp","alt":"g-illustration","size":472946,"mime_type":"image\/webp","last_modified":"2024-01-10T22:15:56+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/33997","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/33997\/similar"},{"id":33998,"name":"novdec-2-luminalia.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/8ba07297e5d3cf5dd7f3321958dcc1919d7f70da\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjReseBoA5eSUWxt64p1ujW2RepktVKAjPrZiN\/novdec-2-luminalia.png","alt":"g-illustration","size":3664849,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2024-01-10T22:15:56+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/33998","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/33998\/similar"},{"id":34000,"name":"novdec-1-daymardunes.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/0a5d4bc48e3b7a141b16fc0ff7616bda6a62fa54\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjResevAA4GCZHwCSVz6xD6XM2Ni7ifuM7Pd9x\/novdec-1-daymardunes.png","alt":"g-illustration","size":4831905,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2024-01-10T22:16:06+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/34000","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/34000\/similar"},{"id":34002,"name":"banner-nov-dec-2023.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/20874443d42575c990c6c069557604a32b2851c3\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjReseNBissXqcpgdiso9v1HDu68sZot8nsVSE\/banner-nov-dec-2023.png","alt":"g-banner-advanced","size":5260127,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2024-01-10T22:16:08+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/34002","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/34002\/similar"}],"images_count":16,"translations":{"en_EN":"PU Monthly Report\nNovember\/December 2023\nHappy New Year! We\u2019re kicking off 2024 with a look back at the last couple of months of 2023. Read on for a full rundown of everything done for the Persistent Universe throughout November and December, including new creatures, vehicles, planet tech, and more.\n\nAI (Content)\nAI Content spent the end of the year bug fixing to improve social AI. Once in a more robust state, they\u2019ll start implementing various SQ42 features and behaviors.\n\nIn the meantime, they revived the civilian behavior. This involved fixing basic AI usables such as chairs, seats, and rails across various locations and identifying outdated usable setups and communicating with the Props team to bring them up to date.\n\nVoice packs and basic behaviors were updated for the hawker, vendor, admin, and bartender AI across different stations and landing zones. Now, NPCs will have the proper voice packs assigned to them with their behaviors triggering lines correctly. NPCs will also use their usables correctly with better animations rather than just standing still (however, some shops might not have full functionality due to lacking proper usables).\n\nThe team also identified and fixed a selection of security AI bugs in Lorville\u2019s transit area. This involved implementing some of SQ42\u2019s security behaviors, including sentry and guards, and giving NPCs appropriate voice packs.\n\nFinally, AI Content worked with Level Design to implement SQ42\u2019s engineer and security behaviors across different areas with limited functionality.\n\nAI (Features)\nAs part of the Alpha 3.22 release, AI Features spent time investigating issues preventing the improved combat behavior from working as intended during missions, including slow-reacting AI.\n\n\u201cLike the infamous \u2018standing on chairs\u2019 issue, AI being slow to react doesn\u2019t have a single cause but highlights a range of issues that appear to manifest as the same problem. Each cause needs to be individually investigated and a solution proposed, and often this requires hours of testing and debugging to find the precise conditions under which the specific issue occurs. Often issues are intermittent or only manifest in specific missions at specific locations.\u201d AI Features Team\n\nThe team are aiming to reduce the amount of time it takes to debug these issues via three approaches:\n\nThe first is to improve knowledge of the AI debugging tools, particularly among the QA team, so that when an issue is first encountered, all the right information is available. This can often highlight issues with specific mission or location setups that don\u2019t require further debugging. For example, missing or badly placed navigation mesh, missing animations, or poor server frame rates.\n\nThe second is to speed up the process of getting to the right location; if an issue only occurs in a specific spot during a certain mission, the team need to be able to quickly reproduce it rather than waiting for the mission and location combination to line up as part of the normal flow. When investigating issues, one of the biggest time sinks is flying to the location (even using the no-clip god mode), so they\u2019re looking at providing teleport functionality to active mission locations.\n\nFinally, when they\u2019ve identified a cause that might occur again, they\u2019ll improve the debugging tools to highlight it so that they can more easily identify subsequent occurrences.\n\nFor the Alpha 3.22 release, AI Features worked on several causes of slow-reacting AI, including:\n\nFixing an issue where increases in the AI perception meter were not being recognized in the general reaction function, causing NPCs to \u2018hang\u2019 in a reaction idle animation.\n\nFixing an issue where AI weren\u2019t exiting the investigate behavior correctly due to not checking the current target.\n\nDebugging an issue where the hostility and perception systems weren\u2019t correctly encapsulating the specific requirements for hostility in a particular mission and location. However, this requires a better specification of the intended design and will come with planned improvements to the hostility system. The team are also investigating if they can add a hotfix to work around this issue in the next release.\n\nThese aren\u2019t the only slow-reacting AI issues, so the team will continue to investigate and fix issues in subsequent releases while ensuring they maintain the improved combat functionality.\n\nAI Features also worked on AI issues identified with the replication layer. The replication layer is a core component of server meshing, allowing the AI to migrate between servers or restore their state after a server crash. The team identified that when the AI was serialized back from the replication layer, its observable state (alive, dead, unconscious, etc.) was not correctly restored, which led to issues. For example, the AI thinking another agent was dead and not trying to attack them. As part of this fix, the team are making the switch between these states more consistent and less ad-hoc by tying it more closely with the status component that controls when the switch occurs.\n\nAI (Tech)\nAt the end of the year, AI Tech progressed with features and support for release builds. For boids, they\u2019re close to finalizing the first iteration that will allow the designers to place fish, rodents, and birds in the environment. Recent updates include rules to avoid dangerous areas or actors, transition rules that will detect weapons fired\/bullets hit, and the ability to switch from idle\/wandering to a fleeing rule set. The team also further iterated on killing boids agents and how they transition from an animation-driven state to ragdoll. For birds, they extended the number of wandering states. For example, besides flying, birds can also walk after a landing transition. Synchronization between the server and client is currently being worked on.\n\nEffort was also put into optimizing and improving various features, including the pathfinder algorithm, collision-avoidance system, navigation system, and Subsumption loading logic.\n\nFor Apollo tools, AI Tech continued to support the designers with additional functionality, including the ability to create PNG files from behaviors, improved readability for Subsumption flowgraph nodes, and improved undo\/redo actions.\n\nSeveral existing features were polished and finalized, including NPCs utilizing trolleys, which received improved collision avoidance. This was achieved by updating the PID controller logic and how it\u2019s used for path following when NPCs are pushing trolleys.\n\nFor AI using ladders, new functionality was added. For example, NPCs can now check if the ladder is available and will only use it if free or another NPC is climbing it in the same direction. In case the ladder is being used the opposite way, NPCs will find a free spot at the top or bottom and wait.\n\nOn the ship AI side, the team improved and extended spline functionality. This involved allowing ships to move along a spline while staying orientated toward the target and moving to the beginning of a spline that\u2019s already moving (e.g. a spline attached to a different ship).\n\nToward the end of the year, AI Tech started to look for a better solution to generating navigation mesh on planets, as the current implementation could be faster and has problems generating navigation mesh close to planetary poles (which is affecting some outpost locations and their associated NPCs). This is currently in progress and an update will be provided in a future report.\n\nAnimation\nAnimation spent time bringing creatures to the \u2018verse, starting with a four-legged predator, a bird, and fish. They also continued to work on facial animation for increased line count and fidelity.\n\nArt (Characters)\nIn November and December, Character Art completed the legendary Duster outfit and the racing flightsuit helmet. They continued working on the racing flightsuit itself and prepared an outfit for Subscriber flair. Alongside this, R&D was done for creatures.\n\nThe Character Concept Art team started an exploration phase on features for the character customizer and for other creatures.\n\nArt (Ships)\nToward the end of the year, the RSI Polaris passed its whitebox review gate and progressed into the greybox phase where all of the surface modeling and animations will be completed. Emphasis was on modularity for the interior to improve reuse and scalability.\n\nWork started on the gold-standard pass for the Aegis Sabre Raven, which includes a component pass and dashboard polish.\n\nThree new variants were worked on: one entered production, another continued through greybox, and the last progressed into LOD0.\n\nNovember also saw work wrap up on the Gatac Syulen and structural salvage support for the Aegis Reclaimer.\n\nCommunity\nNovember and December were busy months for the Community team, who supported Pyro on the Preview Channel for the first time. The team was incredibly grateful for all of the positive feedback, and had a blast gathering sentiment around Star Citizen's second system.\n\nAlongside general housekeeping related to winding down CitizenCon 2953, the team uploaded all panels from the event to YouTube, along with chapters and timestamps, and published community pictures of the life-size Drake Dragonfly taken on Saturday and Sunday at the event.\n\nCommunity supported the return of the\u202fIntergalactic Aerospace Expo\u202f(IAE) and associated Free Fly, publishing the IAE 2953 FAQ and Guide to Professions and Design Convention Badge contests.\n\nThey also continued to connect with citizens across the globe at a variety of Bar Citizen events, alongside planning for the 2024 Bar Citizen World Tour.\n\n\u201cWe had a blast at the recent Bar Citizen events we were lucky enough to attend! Thanks to everyone who joined us in Dublin, Ireland, and Milan, Italy, as well as the Virtual Bar Citizen put on by the great folks at Sol Citizens! That's a wrap for the Bar Citizen World Tour for 2023, but as a reminder, we're looking to hear from you on where we should visit in 2024, and already have our first Bar Citizen attendance locked in with Barcelona, Spain, coming up on February 3!\u201d\n\nThe team worked with the Player Experience group to highlight a selection of Test Universe Champions who contributed significantly to the recent round of patch testing. This initiative will continue in future patches, with new categories each cycle.\n\nDecember saw the Community team embrace the tradition of\u202fLuminalia, including a referral promotion and a Luminalia Greeting Card contest with extra rewards.\n\nThey also teamed up with Intel and CLXGaming to give away Star Citizen game packages (along with the exclusive Sabre Raven ship) to five lucky winners, and a custom Sabre Raven PC, during the Dreamhack gaming festival in Atlanta.\n\nThe team then supported the release of Alpha 3.22: Wrecks to Riches. Alongside the Player Experience team, they tracked and directed player feedback on the latest features and discussed solutions to bugs and quality-of-life issues with the development teams. They also updated the Salvage & Repair Guide to help players better understand the new gameplay introduced with Structural Salvage.\n\nLast but not least, the team has started working on CitizenCon 2954! More on that later...\n\nEconomy\nNovember and December saw the Economy team finish price-balancing armors and vehicles. They then began looking into the prices of FPS weapons as part of balancing the wider economy to bring all systems together. A contextual inventory inheritance was designed to tag items in shops that will allow them to more easily rebalance prices too.\n\nThe team worked on the economic implications of freight elevators and started balancing the time and cost of using them.\n\nThey also investigated UEC income and began taking actions to prevent exploits and rebalance mission rewards, and investigated exploits relating to ship claim time and prices.\n\nFeatures (Arena Commander)\nThroughout November and December, the Features team focused on closing out essential refactors and polish tasks before they transition to supporting the Persistent Universe in a more permanent capacity. They also supported upcoming special events and the Alpha 3.22 release.\n\nEngineering completed work on the \u2018Kill Collector\u2019 Experimental Modes for Alpha 3.22, including a system that allows devs to replace the collection item depending on both the game mode and active events. Further work was done on the special events and award systems, including prerequisite requirements allowing the team to implement exclusive awards. This work also included the addition of unique loading screens, backgrounds, and a banner that displays on the frontend when an event or experimental mode is active, the latter including a countdown until the next rotation. Experimentation also began with an in-game FPS loadout customizer utilizing the new spawn screen.\n\nFor engineering, the team successfully completed the initial tests of enabling streaming in Arena Commander. This will enable them to deliver improved performance to the module and use any Persistent Universe location without limitations. Previously, some locations, such as ones near cities, were unable to be used without significant additional work - with streaming, the turnaround on porting any location to Arena Commander will be minimal.\n\nDesign supported work for Kill Collector, Duo Showdown, and other game modes and special events for Alpha 3.22 and beyond. Alongside a number of quality-of-life updates and polish to the frontend, spawn screen, and multi-crew systems, they also began planning for the year ahead.\n\nLevel Design completed work on three new racetracks (with one more in progress) for a new game mode. A brand-new track around the Pyro jump point was also created specifically to test the new Master Modes: Classic Race game mode for Alpha 3.22. The team created a prototype game mode that saw a successful playtest and will be further worked upon in 2024 too.\n\nFinally, the team completed a new grav-lev racing game mode, which was debuted at Dreamhack Atlanta.\n\nFeatures (Mission)\nIn November, the Features team began implementing a deadline system within a few missions across the \u2018verse, which will ensure missions can\u2019t be kept indefinitely if the accepted players are not engaging with them. This is for a few reasons. For example, players can lock out other missions and, narratively, it doesn\u2019t make sense that a contractor would wait five hours for players to kill someone when they know their exact position. However, this is not a universally implemented system; each mission\u2019s deadline will be individually considered.\n\nThe steal\/recover mission continued to be polished and variants are currently being made.\n\nThe New Player Experience was also polished, with the team adding new parts to introduce some of the more important in-game systems. The team then turned to cleaning up and polishing the existing infiltrate and defend missions. And with Data Heist\u2019s release, the team kicked off a counter mission using one of the modular missions.\n\nJumptown saw changes to how players engage in combat, while the journey started to make each location feel unique.\n\nIn December, Missions Features began prototyping a time-trial foot race to utilize more of the Ledge Grab v2 feature.\n\nFinally, converting missions to use the freight elevator began. For example, Blockade Runner, XenoThreat, and other missions are being assessed to determine what needs to be updated to ensure they align with the new feature ahead of its release.\n\nGraphics, VFX Programming, & Planet Tech\nAt the end of 2023, the Graphics teams largely progressed with their longer-term tasks. For example, work continued on improving the visual quality of gas clouds through the addition of a directional occlusion effect. The gas-cloud-system output is also being unified with the planetary-cloud system so that the new cloud upscaling solution can be used by both.\n\nThe Global Illumination team added support for transparency via a dense view-frustum voxel grid of low-resolution probes along with a sparser zone-space grid of higher-resolution probes. Work is also ongoing to improve the representation of materials in the raytracing system.\n\nVulkan is reaching the final stages of development, with the team wrapping up the last of their rendering tech. Ongoing work is targeting reducing stutter by working on shader\/PSO compilation caching and general performance polishing before the initial release.\n\nThe Planet Tech team continued wrapping up the water feature, focusing on robustness, memory usage, and performance. Alongside this, the Graphics team improved the water-edge effects against both the environment and visor\/camera lens.\n\nVFX Programming worked toward finishing off fire-hazard visuals, investigated networking support for the fire-hazard system, and added support for water VFX. On the tools side, support is being added for unique IDs associated with each particle effect to allow robust referencing and the reorganization of effects.\n\nNarrative\nThe end of the year brought with it a flurry of activity for the Narrative team as they worked to close out strong and set themselves up for an even better 2954. November was host to IAE, which featured immersive career dioramas on the show floor and new vids from security professional Garman Humble and social-media influencer Mahli. For the release of Alpha 3.22, the team worked on supporting a wide range of new features such as structural salvage, derelict settlements, cargo containers, Arena Commander additions, and a variety of Luminalia items (including the holiday favorite biscuit, Ringalings). The team also worked on the development of the San\u2019tok.y\u0101i, with a focus on the Xi\u2019an language and lore.\n\nLooking ahead, the team planned upcoming work for the PU, including new missions that will be more narratively focused, and discussed how best to utilize guilds and factions as players progress and earn reputation. Time was also dedicated to improving the generalized NPC voicepack to streamline it and make it more functional with an eye toward making the universe more immersive while still manageable for the scope of Star Citizen.\n\nAs always, a selection of lore posts was featured on the RSI website \u2013 a look back at Banu first contact with Jerry: A History Half-Remembered, a November Galactapedia Update, a Loremakers: Community Questions, and to end the year, a December Galactapedia Update.\n\nR&D\nIn November and December, the R&D team spent a significant amount of time on the temporal render mode for atmosphere and clouds. As a result, the first WIP version of advanced history rejection, as well as refined disocclusion detection and preparation of dilated motion vectors, was submitted. More research went into the upsample and history blend process to achieve highly detailed results that match the reference full-resolution render output as much as possible.\n\nFor ground fog, experimental support for fog density maps was added and is currently in review with Tech Art. The signal encoding and reconstruction code for volumetric cloud shadows received a fix to minimize ringing artifacts occasionally visible in areas where (unattenuated) sunlight first hits clouds. The atmosphere light pass received refined irradiance estimates based on community feedback, which had reported that the bottom of ships approaching a planet in higher orbit were almost entirely black as opposed to receiving reflected ground light.\n\nAside from the work on visuals, various improvements were also implemented to the postmortem crash analysis tool, which processes reports submitted via internal testing as well as the PU and PTU. The tool now supports the deduping of callstacks for all threads in a process and sorts them so that important threads are listed at the top. The tool now also supports dumps written by \u2018fast-linked\u2019 binaries. Additional support is planned to capture and extract auxiliary callstacks for memory corruptions (specifically, double deletes and writes after free events). Those will then be used for issue deduplication in Sentry to allow the coalescence of memory crashes much more effectively.\n\nTech Art\/Animation\nThe Technical Animation team spent the end of the year on deliverables for the content teams across both projects.\n\nThese include an outfit manager that will pull together a full set of assets for any character outfit in-game, which will help the Animation teams author specific content.\n\nPreviously missing from the pipeline, physics proxy tools creation was added for an intuitive and streamlined way to create physicalized skeletons in Maya. An animation-events editor was also added to keep audio linked to animations across projects. New ADB diff tools also help the devs track and diagnose problems with complex XML format files that need historical context to be useful.\n\nA replacement for a very old toolset that validates content being exported from Maya was created.\n\n\u201cWe're now in a position to add to the tests and potentially change some low-level paradigms to enable exploration of new pipeline possibilities.\u201d Technical Animation team\n\nAdditionally, Technical Animation authored and fixed more head assets, refined existing pipelines, continued developing engine animation systems, and ideated on additional ways to help them approach gold master.\n\nSpecifically for PU, the team spent time authoring new creatures.\n\nVFX\nDuring November and December, the VFX team worked on structural-salvage effects for the Drake Vulture and Aegis Reclaimer.\n\nThey also provided effects support for new locations and existing location reworks, including several new derelicts and Rappel, a \u201crather hellish environment with the ground literally burning!\u201d\n\nVehicle-effects support was provided too, including for the Aopoa San'tok.y\u0101i and the Origin X1 series.","de_DE":"PU-Monatsbericht\nNovember\/Dezember 2023\nFrohes neues Jahr! Wir beginnen das Jahr 2024 mit einem R\u00fcckblick auf die letzten Monate des Jahres 2023. Hier findest du eine vollst\u00e4ndige \u00dcbersicht \u00fcber alles, was im November und Dezember im Persistent Universe passiert ist, darunter neue Kreaturen, Fahrzeuge, Planetentechnologie und vieles mehr.\n\nKI (Inhalt)\nAI Content hat das Jahresende damit verbracht, Fehler zu beheben und die soziale KI zu verbessern. Sobald sie stabiler ist, werden sie verschiedene SQ42-Funktionen und Verhaltensweisen einf\u00fchren.\n\nIn der Zwischenzeit haben sie das zivile Verhalten wiederbelebt. Dazu wurden grundlegende KI-Benutzungsgegenst\u00e4nde wie St\u00fchle, Sitze und Schienen an verschiedenen Orten repariert und veraltete Benutzungsgegenst\u00e4nde identifiziert, die mit dem Requisitenteam auf den neuesten Stand gebracht wurden.\n\nSprachpakete und grundlegende Verhaltensweisen wurden f\u00fcr die KI von H\u00e4ndlern, Verk\u00e4ufern, Verwaltern und Barkeepern in verschiedenen Stationen und Landezonen aktualisiert. Jetzt werden den NSCs die richtigen Sprachpakete zugewiesen und ihre Verhaltensweisen l\u00f6sen die richtigen Zeilen aus. Au\u00dferdem verwenden die NSCs jetzt ihre Gebrauchsgegenst\u00e4nde korrekt und mit besseren Animationen, anstatt einfach nur stillzustehen (einige L\u00e4den haben jedoch m\u00f6glicherweise nicht die volle Funktionalit\u00e4t, weil ihnen die richtigen Gebrauchsgegenst\u00e4nde fehlen).\n\nDas Team hat au\u00dferdem eine Reihe von Sicherheits-KI-Fehlern in Lorvilles Transitbereich identifiziert und behoben. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Implementierung einiger Sicherheitsverhaltensweisen von SQ42, wie z. B. Wache und W\u00e4chter, und die Ausstattung der NSCs mit entsprechenden Sprachpaketen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich arbeitete der KI-Content mit dem Leveldesign zusammen, um das Ingenieur- und Sicherheitsverhalten von SQ42 in verschiedenen Bereichen mit begrenzter Funktionalit\u00e4t zu implementieren.\n\nKI (Features)\nAls Teil der Alpha 3.22 hat der Bereich KI-Features einige Zeit damit verbracht, Probleme zu untersuchen, die verhindern, dass das verbesserte Kampfverhalten in den Missionen wie vorgesehen funktioniert, z. B. die langsam reagierende KI.\n\n\"Wie das ber\u00fcchtigte Problem mit den St\u00fchlen hat auch die langsam reagierende KI nicht nur eine einzige Ursache, sondern weist auf eine Reihe von Problemen hin, die sich als dasselbe Problem zu manifestieren scheinen. Jede Ursache muss einzeln untersucht und eine L\u00f6sung vorgeschlagen werden, was oft stundenlange Tests und Fehlersuche erfordert, um die genauen Bedingungen herauszufinden, unter denen das spezifische Problem auftritt. Oft treten die Probleme nur sporadisch oder nur bei bestimmten Missionen an bestimmten Orten auf.\" Team KI-Funktionen\n\nDas Team hat sich zum Ziel gesetzt, den Zeitaufwand f\u00fcr die Fehlersuche durch drei Ans\u00e4tze zu verringern:\n\nDer erste besteht darin, die Kenntnisse \u00fcber die KI-Fehlerbehebungswerkzeuge zu verbessern, vor allem im QA-Team, damit beim ersten Auftreten eines Fehlers alle richtigen Informationen zur Verf\u00fcgung stehen. Dadurch k\u00f6nnen oft Probleme mit bestimmten Missions- oder Standortkonfigurationen aufgedeckt werden, die keine weitere Fehlersuche erfordern. Zum Beispiel ein fehlendes oder schlecht platziertes Navigationsnetz, fehlende Animationen oder schlechte Server-Frameraten.\n\nWenn ein Problem nur an einer bestimmten Stelle w\u00e4hrend einer bestimmten Mission auftritt, muss das Team in der Lage sein, es schnell zu reproduzieren, anstatt darauf zu warten, dass die Kombination aus Mission und Ort im normalen Spielablauf auftaucht. Bei der Untersuchung von Problemen ist einer der gr\u00f6\u00dften Zeitfresser der Flug zum Ort (selbst im No-Clip-God-Modus), daher wird eine Teleportfunktion zu aktiven Missionsorten gepr\u00fcft.\n\nWenn sie eine Ursache gefunden haben, die wieder auftreten k\u00f6nnte, werden sie die Debugging-Tools verbessern, um sie hervorzuheben, damit sie sp\u00e4tere Vorf\u00e4lle leichter identifizieren k\u00f6nnen.\n\nF\u00fcr die Version Alpha 3.22 haben die KI-Funktionen an mehreren Ursachen f\u00fcr langsam reagierende KI gearbeitet, darunter:\n\nEs wurde ein Problem behoben, bei dem der Anstieg der KI-Wahrnehmungsanzeige in der allgemeinen Reaktionsfunktion nicht erkannt wurde, was dazu f\u00fchrte, dass NSCs in einer Reaktionsleerlaufanimation \"h\u00e4ngen\" blieben.\n\nEs wurde ein Problem behoben, bei dem die KI das Erkundungsverhalten nicht korrekt beendete, weil sie das aktuelle Ziel nicht \u00fcberpr\u00fcfte.\n\nBehebung eines Problems, bei dem die Feindseligkeits- und Wahrnehmungssysteme die spezifischen Anforderungen an die Feindseligkeit in einer bestimmten Mission und an einem bestimmten Ort nicht korrekt kapselten. Dies erfordert jedoch eine bessere Spezifikation des beabsichtigten Designs und wird mit den geplanten Verbesserungen des Feindseligkeitssystems einhergehen. Das Team pr\u00fcft au\u00dferdem, ob es in der n\u00e4chsten Version einen Hotfix einbauen kann, um dieses Problem zu beheben.\n\nDies sind nicht die einzigen Probleme mit der langsam reagierenden KI. Das Team wird auch weiterhin Probleme untersuchen und in den n\u00e4chsten Versionen beheben und gleichzeitig sicherstellen, dass die verbesserte Kampffunktionalit\u00e4t erhalten bleibt.\n\nDie KI-Funktionen haben auch an KI-Problemen gearbeitet, die im Zusammenhang mit der Replikationsschicht festgestellt wurden. Die Replikationsschicht ist eine Kernkomponente des Server-Meshings und erm\u00f6glicht es der KI, zwischen Servern zu wechseln oder ihren Zustand nach einem Serverabsturz wiederherzustellen. Das Team stellte fest, dass der beobachtbare Zustand der KI (lebendig, tot, bewusstlos usw.) nicht korrekt wiederhergestellt wurde, wenn die KI von der Replikationsschicht zur\u00fcckserialisiert wurde, was zu Problemen f\u00fchrte. Zum Beispiel dachte die KI, ein anderer Agent sei tot und versuchte nicht, ihn anzugreifen. Als Teil dieser Korrektur macht das Team den Wechsel zwischen diesen Zust\u00e4nden konsistenter und weniger ad-hoc, indem es ihn enger mit der Statuskomponente verkn\u00fcpft, die steuert, wann der Wechsel stattfindet.\n\nKI (Tech)\nZum Ende des Jahres hat die KI-Technik Fortschritte bei den Funktionen und der Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Release-Builds gemacht. F\u00fcr Boids steht die erste Iteration kurz vor der Fertigstellung, die es den Designern erm\u00f6glicht, Fische, Nager und V\u00f6gel in der Umgebung zu platzieren. Zu den j\u00fcngsten Aktualisierungen geh\u00f6ren Regeln zur Vermeidung von gef\u00e4hrlichen Gebieten oder Akteuren, \u00dcbergangsregeln, die abgefeuerte Waffen und getroffene Kugeln erkennen, und die M\u00f6glichkeit, von Leerlauf\/Wandern zu einem Regelsatz f\u00fcr die Flucht zu wechseln. Das Team hat auch die Regeln f\u00fcr das T\u00f6ten von Boids-Agenten und den \u00dcbergang von einem animierten Zustand zu einer Stoffpuppe \u00fcberarbeitet. Bei V\u00f6geln wurde die Anzahl der Wanderzust\u00e4nde erweitert. Zum Beispiel k\u00f6nnen V\u00f6gel nicht nur fliegen, sondern nach einem Lande\u00fcbergang auch laufen. An der Synchronisierung zwischen dem Server und dem Client wird derzeit noch gearbeitet.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde an der Optimierung und Verbesserung verschiedener Funktionen gearbeitet, darunter der Pathfinder-Algorithmus, das Kollisionsvermeidungssystem, das Navigationssystem und die Subsumption-Ladelogik.\n\nBei den Apollo-Tools hat AI Tech die Designer mit zus\u00e4tzlichen Funktionen unterst\u00fctzt, z. B. der M\u00f6glichkeit, PNG-Dateien aus Verhaltensweisen zu erstellen, der verbesserten Lesbarkeit von Subsumption-Flowgraph-Knoten und den verbesserten Undo\/Redo-Aktionen.\n\nMehrere bestehende Funktionen wurden aufpoliert und fertiggestellt, darunter NSCs, die Karren benutzen, die eine verbesserte Kollisionsvermeidung erhielten. Dazu wurde die Logik des PID-Reglers aktualisiert und die Art und Weise, wie er f\u00fcr die Pfadverfolgung verwendet wird, wenn NSCs Karren schieben.\n\nF\u00fcr die KI, die Leitern benutzt, wurden neue Funktionen hinzugef\u00fcgt. Zum Beispiel k\u00f6nnen NSCs jetzt pr\u00fcfen, ob die Leiter verf\u00fcgbar ist und sie nur benutzen, wenn sie frei ist oder ein anderer NSC sie in dieselbe Richtung klettert. Wenn die Leiter in die entgegengesetzte Richtung benutzt wird, suchen sich die NSCs einen freien Platz am oberen oder unteren Ende und warten.\n\nIm Bereich der SchiffskI hat das Team die Spline-Funktionalit\u00e4t verbessert und erweitert. Dazu geh\u00f6rte, dass sich Schiffe entlang eines Splines bewegen k\u00f6nnen, w\u00e4hrend sie auf das Ziel ausgerichtet bleiben und sich zum Anfang eines Splines bewegen, der sich bereits bewegt (z. B. ein Spline, der an ein anderes Schiff angeschlossen ist).\n\nGegen Ende des Jahres hat AI Tech begonnen, nach einer besseren L\u00f6sung f\u00fcr die Generierung von Navigationsmeshs auf Planeten zu suchen, da die aktuelle Implementierung schneller sein k\u00f6nnte und Probleme bei der Generierung von Navigationsmeshs in der N\u00e4he von Planetenpolen hat (was sich auf einige Au\u00dfenposten und die dazugeh\u00f6rigen NSCs auswirkt). Daran wird derzeit gearbeitet und ein Update wird in einem zuk\u00fcnftigen Bericht ver\u00f6ffentlicht.\n\nAnimation\nDie Animation hat sich damit besch\u00e4ftigt, Kreaturen in die Welt zu bringen, angefangen mit einem vierbeinigen Raubtier, einem Vogel und einem Fisch. Au\u00dferdem wurde weiter an der Gesichtsanimation gearbeitet, um die Anzahl der Linien und die Wiedergabetreue zu erh\u00f6hen.\n\nKunst (Charaktere)\nIm November und Dezember stellte Character Art das legend\u00e4re Duster-Outfit und den Helm des Rennfluganzugs fertig. Sie arbeiteten weiter am Rennfluganzug selbst und bereiteten ein Outfit f\u00fcr Subscriber Flair vor. Parallel dazu wurde an den Kreaturen gearbeitet.\n\nDas Character Concept Art Team begann mit der Erforschung von Funktionen f\u00fcr den Character Customizer und f\u00fcr andere Kreaturen.\n\nKunst (Schiffe)\nGegen Ende des Jahres durchlief die RSI Polaris das Whitebox-Review-Gate und ging in die Greybox-Phase \u00fcber, in der die gesamte Oberfl\u00e4chenmodellierung und die Animationen abgeschlossen werden. Der Schwerpunkt lag auf der Modularit\u00e4t des Innenraums, um die Wiederverwendung und Skalierbarkeit zu verbessern.\n\nDie Arbeit am Gold-Standard-Pass f\u00fcr den Aegis Sabre Raven begann, der einen Komponenten-Pass und den Feinschliff des Armaturenbretts umfasst.\n\nEs wurde an drei neuen Varianten gearbeitet: Eine ging in die Produktion, eine andere wurde in der Greybox weiterbearbeitet und die letzte wurde in LOD0 \u00fcberf\u00fchrt.\n\nIm November wurden au\u00dferdem die Arbeiten an der Gatac Syulen und der strukturellen Bergungsunterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr den Aegis Reclaimer abgeschlossen.\n\nCommunity\nNovember und Dezember waren arbeitsreiche Monate f\u00fcr das Community-Team, das Pyro zum ersten Mal im Vorschaukanal unterst\u00fctzte. Das Team war unglaublich dankbar f\u00fcr all das positive Feedback und hatte viel Spa\u00df dabei, die Stimmung rund um das zweite System von Star Citizen zu sammeln.\n\nNeben allgemeinen Aufgaben im Zusammenhang mit dem Abschluss der CitizenCon 2953 lud das Team alle Panels der Veranstaltung mit Kapiteln und Zeitstempeln auf YouTube hoch und ver\u00f6ffentlichte Community-Fotos der lebensgro\u00dfen Drake Dragonfly, die am Samstag und Sonntag auf der Veranstaltung aufgenommen wurden.\n\nDie Community unterst\u00fctzte die R\u00fcckkehr der Intergalactic Aerospace Expo (IAE) und die damit verbundene Free Fly, indem sie die IAE 2953 FAQ und den Leitfaden f\u00fcr Berufe und Design Convention Badge Wettbewerbe ver\u00f6ffentlichte.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde der Kontakt zu den B\u00fcrgerinnen und B\u00fcrgern auf der ganzen Welt bei einer Vielzahl von Bar Citizen-Veranstaltungen aufrechterhalten und die Bar Citizen World Tour 2024 geplant.\n\n\"Wir hatten einen Riesenspa\u00df bei den letzten Bar Citizen-Veranstaltungen, an denen wir teilnehmen durften! Vielen Dank an alle, die in Dublin, Irland, und Mailand, Italien, dabei waren, sowie an den virtuellen Bar Citizen, der von den gro\u00dfartigen Leuten von Sol Citizens organisiert wurde! Das war's mit der Bar Citizen World Tour f\u00fcr 2023, aber zur Erinnerung: Wir wollen von euch wissen, wo wir 2024 hingehen sollen, und haben bereits unseren ersten Bar Citizen-Besuch fest eingeplant: Barcelona, Spanien, am 3. Februar!\"\n\nDas Team hat mit der Gruppe f\u00fcr Spielerfahrung zusammengearbeitet, um eine Auswahl von Test Universe Champions hervorzuheben, die einen wichtigen Beitrag zur letzten Runde der Patch-Tests geleistet haben. Diese Initiative wird auch in zuk\u00fcnftigen Patches fortgesetzt, mit neuen Kategorien in jedem Zyklus.\n\nIm Dezember hat das Community-Team die Tradition von Luminalia aufgegriffen und eine Empfehlungsaktion sowie einen Luminalia-Gru\u00dfkartenwettbewerb mit zus\u00e4tzlichen Belohnungen veranstaltet.\n\nIn Zusammenarbeit mit Intel und CLXGaming wurden au\u00dferdem Star Citizen-Spielepakete (zusammen mit dem exklusiven Sabre Raven-Schiff) an f\u00fcnf gl\u00fcckliche Gewinner\/innen sowie ein ma\u00dfgefertigter Sabre Raven-PC w\u00e4hrend des Dreamhack Gaming Festivals in Atlanta verlost.\n\nAnschlie\u00dfend unterst\u00fctzte das Team die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Alpha 3.22: Wrecks to Riches. Zusammen mit dem Team f\u00fcr Spielerfahrung verfolgten sie das Feedback der Spieler zu den neuesten Funktionen und diskutierten mit den Entwicklungsteams L\u00f6sungen f\u00fcr Bugs und Qualit\u00e4tsprobleme. Au\u00dferdem aktualisierten sie den Bergungs- und Reparaturleitfaden, um den Spielern zu helfen, das mit der strukturellen Bergung eingef\u00fchrte neue Gameplay besser zu verstehen.\n\nUnd nicht zuletzt hat das Team mit der Arbeit an der CitizenCon 2954 begonnen! Mehr dazu sp\u00e4ter...\n\nWirtschaft\nIm November und Dezember hat das Wirtschaftsteam die Preisanpassung f\u00fcr R\u00fcstungen und Fahrzeuge abgeschlossen. Anschlie\u00dfend wurden die Preise f\u00fcr FPS-Waffen untersucht, um die Wirtschaft insgesamt auszubalancieren und alle Systeme zusammenzuf\u00fchren. Eine kontextabh\u00e4ngige Inventarvererbung wurde entwickelt, um die Gegenst\u00e4nde in den L\u00e4den zu kennzeichnen, damit die Preise leichter angepasst werden k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDas Team arbeitete an den wirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen von Lastenaufz\u00fcgen und begann, die Zeit und die Kosten f\u00fcr ihre Nutzung auszugleichen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem untersuchten sie die UEC-Einnahmen und begannen, Ma\u00dfnahmen zu ergreifen, um Exploits zu verhindern und Missionsbelohnungen neu auszubalancieren.\n\nFeatures (Arena Commander)\nIm November und Dezember konzentrierte sich das Features-Team auf den Abschluss wichtiger Refactors und Polishing-Aufgaben, bevor es in den dauerhaften Support des persistenten Universums \u00fcbergeht. Au\u00dferdem unterst\u00fctzten sie anstehende Sonderveranstaltungen und die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung der Alpha 3.22.\n\nDie Technikabteilung schloss die Arbeit an den experimentellen Modi \"Kill Collector\" f\u00fcr Alpha 3.22 ab, einschlie\u00dflich eines Systems, das es den Entwicklern erm\u00f6glicht, den Sammelgegenstand je nach Spielmodus und aktiven Ereignissen zu ersetzen. Es wurde weiter an den besonderen Ereignissen und Belohnungssystemen gearbeitet, einschlie\u00dflich der Voraussetzungen, die es dem Team erm\u00f6glichen, exklusive Belohnungen einzuf\u00fchren. Dazu geh\u00f6rten auch einzigartige Ladebildschirme, Hintergr\u00fcnde und ein Banner, das im Frontend angezeigt wird, wenn ein Ereignis oder ein experimenteller Modus aktiv ist, wobei letzterer einen Countdown bis zur n\u00e4chsten Rotation enth\u00e4lt. Au\u00dferdem wurde mit einem FPS-Loadout-Anpassungsprogramm im Spiel experimentiert, das den neuen Spawn-Bildschirm nutzt.\n\nIm Bereich Technik hat das Team die ersten Tests zur Aktivierung des Streamings im Arena Commander erfolgreich abgeschlossen. Dadurch k\u00f6nnen sie die Leistung des Moduls verbessern und jeden Ort im Persistenten Universum ohne Einschr\u00e4nkungen nutzen. Bisher konnten einige Orte, z. B. in der N\u00e4he von St\u00e4dten, nur mit erheblichem Mehraufwand genutzt werden - mit dem Streaming wird der Zeitaufwand f\u00fcr die Portierung eines Ortes in den Arena Commander minimal sein.\n\nDas Design unterst\u00fctzte die Arbeit f\u00fcr Kill Collector, Duo Showdown und andere Spielmodi und spezielle Events f\u00fcr Alpha 3.22 und dar\u00fcber hinaus. Neben einer Reihe von Qualit\u00e4tsverbesserungen und der Optimierung des Frontends, des Spawn-Bildschirms und der Multi-Crew-Systeme wurde auch mit der Planung f\u00fcr das kommende Jahr begonnen.\n\nDas Level Design hat die Arbeit an drei neuen Rennstrecken (eine weitere ist in Arbeit) f\u00fcr einen neuen Spielmodus abgeschlossen. Au\u00dferdem wurde eine brandneue Strecke rund um den Pyro-Sprungpunkt erstellt, um die neuen Master Modes zu testen: Classic Race Spielmodus f\u00fcr Alpha 3.22 zu testen. Das Team hat einen Prototyp des Spielmodus erstellt, der erfolgreich getestet wurde und an dem auch 2024 weiter gearbeitet werden wird.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich hat das Team einen neuen Grav-Lev-Rennspielmodus fertiggestellt, der auf der Dreamhack Atlanta vorgestellt wurde.\n\nFeatures (Mission)\nIm November hat das Features-Team damit begonnen, ein Fristensystem f\u00fcr einige Missionen im gesamten Verse einzuf\u00fchren, das daf\u00fcr sorgt, dass Missionen nicht ewig aufrechterhalten werden k\u00f6nnen, wenn die akzeptierten Spieler\/innen sich nicht mit ihnen besch\u00e4ftigen. Daf\u00fcr gibt es mehrere Gr\u00fcnde. Zum Beispiel k\u00f6nnen Spieler\/innen andere Missionen aussperren, und aus narrativer Sicht macht es keinen Sinn, dass ein Auftraggeber f\u00fcnf Stunden darauf wartet, dass Spieler\/innen jemanden t\u00f6ten, wenn sie dessen genaue Position kennen. Dieses System ist jedoch nicht universell einsetzbar; die Frist jeder Mission wird individuell ber\u00fccksichtigt.\n\nDie Mission \"Stehlen\/Wiederfinden\" wurde weiter ausgefeilt und es werden derzeit Varianten erstellt.\n\nDas Team f\u00fcgte neue Teile hinzu, um einige der wichtigsten Systeme im Spiel einzuf\u00fchren. Das Team hat sich dann daran gemacht, die bestehenden Infiltrations- und Verteidigungsmissionen aufzur\u00e4umen und zu polieren. Und mit der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung von Data Heist startete das Team eine Gegenmission, die eine der modularen Missionen nutzt.\n\nIn Jumptown wurde die Art und Weise, wie die Spieler\/innen in den Kampf ziehen, ver\u00e4ndert, w\u00e4hrend die Reise begann, damit sich jeder Ort einzigartig anf\u00fchlt.\n\nIm Dezember begann Missions Features mit der Entwicklung eines Prototyps f\u00fcr ein Zeitrennen zu Fu\u00df, bei dem das Feature \"Ledge Grab v2\" noch st\u00e4rker zum Einsatz kommt.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich wurde damit begonnen, die Missionen f\u00fcr die Nutzung des Lastenaufzugs umzubauen. So werden zum Beispiel Blockade Runner, XenoThreat und andere Missionen \u00fcberpr\u00fcft, um festzustellen, was aktualisiert werden muss, um sicherzustellen, dass sie mit dem neuen Feature vor dessen Ver\u00f6ffentlichung \u00fcbereinstimmen.\n\nGrafik, VFX-Programmierung und Planetentechnologie\nEnde 2023 kamen die Grafikteams mit ihren l\u00e4ngerfristigen Aufgaben weitgehend voran. So wurde zum Beispiel die Arbeit an der Verbesserung der visuellen Qualit\u00e4t von Gaswolken durch die Hinzuf\u00fcgung eines direktionalen Okklusionseffekts fortgesetzt. Au\u00dferdem wird die Ausgabe des Gaswolkensystems mit der des Planetensystems vereinheitlicht, damit die neue L\u00f6sung zum Hochskalieren der Wolken von beiden genutzt werden kann.\n\nDas Global Illumination Team hat die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Transparenz durch ein dichtes Voxel-Gitter mit niedriger Aufl\u00f6sung und ein sp\u00e4rlicheres Zonen-Raum-Gitter mit h\u00f6herer Aufl\u00f6sung hinzugef\u00fcgt. Es wird auch daran gearbeitet, die Darstellung von Materialien im Raytracing-System zu verbessern.\n\nVulkan befindet sich in der Endphase der Entwicklung, und das Team hat die letzten Rendering-Technologien fertiggestellt. Die laufenden Arbeiten zielen darauf ab, Stotterer zu reduzieren, indem sie an der Zwischenspeicherung der Shader\/PSO-Kompilierung und der allgemeinen Leistungsoptimierung vor der ersten Ver\u00f6ffentlichung arbeiten.\n\nDas Planet Tech-Team hat die Arbeiten an der Wasserfunktion fortgesetzt und sich dabei auf Robustheit, Speicherverbrauch und Leistung konzentriert. Au\u00dferdem hat das Grafikteam die Wasserkanteneffekte sowohl f\u00fcr die Umgebung als auch f\u00fcr den Visor\/die Kameralinse verbessert.\n\nDas VFX-Programmierungsteam arbeitete an der Fertigstellung der Feuergefahrenvisualisierung, untersuchte die Netzwerkunterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr das Feuergefahrensystem und f\u00fcgte Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Wasser-VFX hinzu. Auf der Seite der Werkzeuge wird die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr eindeutige IDs f\u00fcr jeden Partikeleffekt hinzugef\u00fcgt, um eine robuste Referenzierung und die Neuorganisation von Effekten zu erm\u00f6glichen.\n\nNarrative\nDas Ende des Jahres brachte f\u00fcr das Narrative-Team eine F\u00fclle von Aktivit\u00e4ten mit sich, um das Jahr gut abzuschlie\u00dfen und sich f\u00fcr ein noch besseres Jahr 2954 vorzubereiten. Im November fand die IAE statt, auf der es immersive Karrieredioramen und neue Videos von Sicherheitsexperte Garman Humble und Social-Media-Influencer Mahli zu sehen gab. F\u00fcr die Ver\u00f6ffentlichung der Alpha 3.22 arbeitete das Team an der Unterst\u00fctzung einer Vielzahl neuer Funktionen wie strukturelle Bergung, verlassene Siedlungen, Frachtcontainer, Erweiterungen f\u00fcr den Arenakommandanten und eine Vielzahl von Luminalia-Gegenst\u00e4nden (einschlie\u00dflich des Lieblingskekses der Feiertage, Ringalings). Das Team arbeitete auch an der Entwicklung der San'tok.y\u0101i, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf der Sprache und den \u00dcberlieferungen von Xi'an lag.\n\nMit Blick auf die Zukunft plante das Team die anstehenden Arbeiten f\u00fcr das PU, darunter neue Missionen, die st\u00e4rker auf die Geschichte ausgerichtet sein werden, und besprach, wie Gilden und Fraktionen am besten genutzt werden k\u00f6nnen, wenn die Spieler\/innen vorankommen und Ansehen erlangen. Au\u00dferdem wurde an der Verbesserung des allgemeinen NPC-Stimmenpakets gearbeitet, um es zu straffen und funktionaler zu machen, damit das Universum noch eindringlicher und gleichzeitig f\u00fcr den Umfang von Star Citizen \u00fcberschaubar wird.\n\nWie immer wurde auf der RSI-Website eine Auswahl von Beitr\u00e4gen zur Geschichte ver\u00f6ffentlicht - ein Blick zur\u00fcck auf Banus ersten Kontakt mit Jerry: A History Half-Remembered, ein November Galactapedia Update, ein Loremakers: Community Questions und zum Abschluss des Jahres ein Galactapedia-Update im Dezember.\n\nF&E\nIm November und Dezember verbrachte das F&E-Team viel Zeit mit dem temporalen Rendermodus f\u00fcr Atmosph\u00e4re und Wolken. Als Ergebnis wurde die erste WIP-Version der fortgeschrittenen Geschichtsverweigerung sowie eine verfeinerte Disocclusion-Erkennung und die Vorbereitung von dilatierten Bewegungsvektoren eingereicht. Weitere Forschung wurde in den Upsample- und History-Blend-Prozess gesteckt, um hochdetaillierte Ergebnisse zu erzielen, die dem Referenz-Renderoutput in voller Aufl\u00f6sung so weit wie m\u00f6glich entsprechen.\n\nF\u00fcr Bodennebel wurde eine experimentelle Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Nebeldichtekarten hinzugef\u00fcgt, die derzeit von Tech Art gepr\u00fcft wird. Die Signalcodierung und der Rekonstruktionscode f\u00fcr volumetrische Wolkenschatten wurden verbessert, um Ringing-Artefakte zu minimieren, die gelegentlich in Bereichen sichtbar sind, in denen (unged\u00e4mpftes) Sonnenlicht zuerst auf Wolken trifft. Der Atmosph\u00e4renlichtpass wurde aufgrund von R\u00fcckmeldungen aus der Community verfeinert. Diese hatten berichtet, dass die Unterseite von Schiffen, die sich einem Planeten in einer h\u00f6heren Umlaufbahn n\u00e4hern, fast vollst\u00e4ndig schwarz ist, w\u00e4hrend das Bodenlicht reflektiert wird.\n\nNeben der Arbeit an der Grafik wurden auch verschiedene Verbesserungen am Postmortem-Crash-Analyse-Tool vorgenommen, das Berichte verarbeitet, die \u00fcber interne Tests sowie \u00fcber die PU und PTU eingereicht wurden. Das Tool unterst\u00fctzt jetzt das Deduplizieren von Callstacks f\u00fcr alle Threads in einem Prozess und sortiert sie so, dass wichtige Threads ganz oben aufgef\u00fchrt werden. Das Tool unterst\u00fctzt jetzt auch Dumps, die von \"fast-linked\" Binaries geschrieben wurden. Es ist geplant, zus\u00e4tzliche Callstacks zu erfassen und zu extrahieren, um Speicherkorruptionen (insbesondere doppelte L\u00f6schvorg\u00e4nge und Schreibvorg\u00e4nge nach Free-Events) zu erkennen. Diese werden dann f\u00fcr die Problemdeduplizierung in Sentry verwendet, um die Zusammenf\u00fchrung von Speicherabst\u00fcrzen viel effektiver zu machen.\n\nTech Art\/Animation\nDas Team f\u00fcr technische Animation hat das Jahresende damit verbracht, Ergebnisse f\u00fcr die Content-Teams beider Projekte zu liefern.\n\nDazu geh\u00f6rt ein Outfit-Manager, der einen kompletten Satz an Assets f\u00fcr jedes Charakter-Outfit im Spiel zusammenstellt und den Animationsteams hilft, spezifische Inhalte zu erstellen.\n\nDie Erstellung von Physik-Proxy-Tools, die bisher in der Pipeline fehlten, wurde hinzugef\u00fcgt, um die Erstellung von physischen Skeletten in Maya intuitiv und effizient zu gestalten. Au\u00dferdem wurde ein Editor f\u00fcr Animationsereignisse hinzugef\u00fcgt, mit dem Audio projekt\u00fcbergreifend mit Animationen verkn\u00fcpft werden kann. Neue ADB-Diff-Tools helfen den Entwicklern au\u00dferdem dabei, Probleme mit komplexen XML-Formatdateien zu erkennen und zu diagnostizieren, die einen historischen Kontext ben\u00f6tigen, um n\u00fctzlich zu sein.\n\nEin Ersatz f\u00fcr ein sehr altes Toolset, das aus Maya exportierte Inhalte validiert, wurde erstellt.\n\n\"Wir sind jetzt in der Lage, die Tests zu erweitern und m\u00f6glicherweise einige Low-Level-Paradigmen zu \u00e4ndern, um neue M\u00f6glichkeiten in der Pipeline zu erforschen. Technisches Animationsteam\n\nDar\u00fcber hinaus hat Technical Animation weitere Head-Assets erstellt und korrigiert, bestehende Pipelines verfeinert, die Engine-Animationssysteme weiterentwickelt und Ideen f\u00fcr zus\u00e4tzliche M\u00f6glichkeiten entwickelt, die ihnen helfen, sich dem Goldmaster zu n\u00e4hern.\n\nSpeziell f\u00fcr PU verbrachte das Team Zeit mit der Erstellung neuer Kreaturen.\n\nVFX\nIm November und Dezember arbeitete das VFX-Team an strukturellen Zerst\u00f6rungseffekten f\u00fcr den Drake Vulture und den Aegis Reclaimer.\n\nAu\u00dferdem lieferten sie Effekte f\u00fcr neue Drehorte und die \u00dcberarbeitung bestehender Drehorte, darunter mehrere neue Wracks und Rappel, eine \"ziemlich h\u00f6llische Umgebung, in der der Boden buchst\u00e4blich brennt!\"\n\nAuch Fahrzeugeffekte wurden unterst\u00fctzt, unter anderem f\u00fcr den Aopoa San'tok.y\u0101i und die Origin X1-Serie.","zh_CN":"PU Monthly Report\nNovember\/December 2023\nHappy New Year! We\u2019re kicking off 2024 with a look back at the last couple of months of 2023. Read on for a full rundown of everything done for the Persistent Universe throughout November and December, including new creatures, vehicles, planet tech, and more.\n\nAI (Content)\nAI Content spent the end of the year bug fixing to improve social AI. Once in a more robust state, they\u2019ll start implementing various SQ42 features and behaviors.\n\nIn the meantime, they revived the civilian behavior. This involved fixing basic AI usables such as chairs, seats, and rails across various locations and identifying outdated usable setups and communicating with the Props team to bring them up to date.\n\nVoice packs and basic behaviors were updated for the hawker, vendor, admin, and bartender AI across different stations and landing zones. Now, NPCs will have the proper voice packs assigned to them with their behaviors triggering lines correctly. NPCs will also use their usables correctly with better animations rather than just standing still (however, some shops might not have full functionality due to lacking proper usables).\n\nThe team also identified and fixed a selection of security AI bugs in Lorville\u2019s transit area. This involved implementing some of SQ42\u2019s security behaviors, including sentry and guards, and giving NPCs appropriate voice packs.\n\nFinally, AI Content worked with Level Design to implement SQ42\u2019s engineer and security behaviors across different areas with limited functionality.\n\nAI (Features)\nAs part of the Alpha 3.22 release, AI Features spent time investigating issues preventing the improved combat behavior from working as intended during missions, including slow-reacting AI.\n\n\u201cLike the infamous \u2018standing on chairs\u2019 issue, AI being slow to react doesn\u2019t have a single cause but highlights a range of issues that appear to manifest as the same problem. Each cause needs to be individually investigated and a solution proposed, and often this requires hours of testing and debugging to find the precise conditions under which the specific issue occurs. Often issues are intermittent or only manifest in specific missions at specific locations.\u201d AI Features Team\n\nThe team are aiming to reduce the amount of time it takes to debug these issues via three approaches:\n\nThe first is to improve knowledge of the AI debugging tools, particularly among the QA team, so that when an issue is first encountered, all the right information is available. This can often highlight issues with specific mission or location setups that don\u2019t require further debugging. For example, missing or badly placed navigation mesh, missing animations, or poor server frame rates.\n\nThe second is to speed up the process of getting to the right location; if an issue only occurs in a specific spot during a certain mission, the team need to be able to quickly reproduce it rather than waiting for the mission and location combination to line up as part of the normal flow. When investigating issues, one of the biggest time sinks is flying to the location (even using the no-clip god mode), so they\u2019re looking at providing teleport functionality to active mission locations.\n\nFinally, when they\u2019ve identified a cause that might occur again, they\u2019ll improve the debugging tools to highlight it so that they can more easily identify subsequent occurrences.\n\nFor the Alpha 3.22 release, AI Features worked on several causes of slow-reacting AI, including:\n\nFixing an issue where increases in the AI perception meter were not being recognized in the general reaction function, causing NPCs to \u2018hang\u2019 in a reaction idle animation.\n\nFixing an issue where AI weren\u2019t exiting the investigate behavior correctly due to not checking the current target.\n\nDebugging an issue where the hostility and perception systems weren\u2019t correctly encapsulating the specific requirements for hostility in a particular mission and location. However, this requires a better specification of the intended design and will come with planned improvements to the hostility system. The team are also investigating if they can add a hotfix to work around this issue in the next release.\n\nThese aren\u2019t the only slow-reacting AI issues, so the team will continue to investigate and fix issues in subsequent releases while ensuring they maintain the improved combat functionality.\n\nAI Features also worked on AI issues identified with the replication layer. The replication layer is a core component of server meshing, allowing the AI to migrate between servers or restore their state after a server crash. The team identified that when the AI was serialized back from the replication layer, its observable state (alive, dead, unconscious, etc.) was not correctly restored, which led to issues. For example, the AI thinking another agent was dead and not trying to attack them. As part of this fix, the team are making the switch between these states more consistent and less ad-hoc by tying it more closely with the status component that controls when the switch occurs.\n\nAI (Tech)\nAt the end of the year, AI Tech progressed with features and support for release builds. For boids, they\u2019re close to finalizing the first iteration that will allow the designers to place fish, rodents, and birds in the environment. Recent updates include rules to avoid dangerous areas or actors, transition rules that will detect weapons fired\/bullets hit, and the ability to switch from idle\/wandering to a fleeing rule set. The team also further iterated on killing boids agents and how they transition from an animation-driven state to ragdoll. For birds, they extended the number of wandering states. For example, besides flying, birds can also walk after a landing transition. Synchronization between the server and client is currently being worked on.\n\nEffort was also put into optimizing and improving various features, including the pathfinder algorithm, collision-avoidance system, navigation system, and Subsumption loading logic.\n\nFor Apollo tools, AI Tech continued to support the designers with additional functionality, including the ability to create PNG files from behaviors, improved readability for Subsumption flowgraph nodes, and improved undo\/redo actions.\n\nSeveral existing features were polished and finalized, including NPCs utilizing trolleys, which received improved collision avoidance. This was achieved by updating the PID controller logic and how it\u2019s used for path following when NPCs are pushing trolleys.\n\nFor AI using ladders, new functionality was added. For example, NPCs can now check if the ladder is available and will only use it if free or another NPC is climbing it in the same direction. In case the ladder is being used the opposite way, NPCs will find a free spot at the top or bottom and wait.\n\nOn the ship AI side, the team improved and extended spline functionality. This involved allowing ships to move along a spline while staying orientated toward the target and moving to the beginning of a spline that\u2019s already moving (e.g. a spline attached to a different ship).\n\nToward the end of the year, AI Tech started to look for a better solution to generating navigation mesh on planets, as the current implementation could be faster and has problems generating navigation mesh close to planetary poles (which is affecting some outpost locations and their associated NPCs). This is currently in progress and an update will be provided in a future report.\n\nAnimation\nAnimation spent time bringing creatures to the \u2018verse, starting with a four-legged predator, a bird, and fish. They also continued to work on facial animation for increased line count and fidelity.\n\nArt (Characters)\nIn November and December, Character Art completed the legendary Duster outfit and the racing flightsuit helmet. They continued working on the racing flightsuit itself and prepared an outfit for Subscriber flair. Alongside this, R&D was done for creatures.\n\nThe Character Concept Art team started an exploration phase on features for the character customizer and for other creatures.\n\nArt (Ships)\nToward the end of the year, the RSI Polaris passed its whitebox review gate and progressed into the greybox phase where all of the surface modeling and animations will be completed. Emphasis was on modularity for the interior to improve reuse and scalability.\n\nWork started on the gold-standard pass for the Aegis Sabre Raven, which includes a component pass and dashboard polish.\n\nThree new variants were worked on: one entered production, another continued through greybox, and the last progressed into LOD0.\n\nNovember also saw work wrap up on the Gatac Syulen and structural salvage support for the Aegis Reclaimer.\n\nCommunity\nNovember and December were busy months for the Community team, who supported Pyro on the Preview Channel for the first time. The team was incredibly grateful for all of the positive feedback, and had a blast gathering sentiment around Star Citizen's second system.\n\nAlongside general housekeeping related to winding down CitizenCon 2953, the team uploaded all panels from the event to YouTube, along with chapters and timestamps, and published community pictures of the life-size Drake Dragonfly taken on Saturday and Sunday at the event.\n\nCommunity supported the return of the\u202fIntergalactic Aerospace Expo\u202f(IAE) and associated Free Fly, publishing the IAE 2953 FAQ and Guide to Professions and Design Convention Badge contests.\n\nThey also continued to connect with citizens across the globe at a variety of Bar Citizen events, alongside planning for the 2024 Bar Citizen World Tour.\n\n\u201cWe had a blast at the recent Bar Citizen events we were lucky enough to attend! Thanks to everyone who joined us in Dublin, Ireland, and Milan, Italy, as well as the Virtual Bar Citizen put on by the great folks at Sol Citizens! That's a wrap for the Bar Citizen World Tour for 2023, but as a reminder, we're looking to hear from you on where we should visit in 2024, and already have our first Bar Citizen attendance locked in with Barcelona, Spain, coming up on February 3!\u201d\n\nThe team worked with the Player Experience group to highlight a selection of Test Universe Champions who contributed significantly to the recent round of patch testing. This initiative will continue in future patches, with new categories each cycle.\n\nDecember saw the Community team embrace the tradition of\u202fLuminalia, including a referral promotion and a Luminalia Greeting Card contest with extra rewards.\n\nThey also teamed up with Intel and CLXGaming to give away Star Citizen game packages (along with the exclusive Sabre Raven ship) to five lucky winners, and a custom Sabre Raven PC, during the Dreamhack gaming festival in Atlanta.\n\nThe team then supported the release of Alpha 3.22: Wrecks to Riches. Alongside the Player Experience team, they tracked and directed player feedback on the latest features and discussed solutions to bugs and quality-of-life issues with the development teams. They also updated the Salvage & Repair Guide to help players better understand the new gameplay introduced with Structural Salvage.\n\nLast but not least, the team has started working on CitizenCon 2954! More on that later...\n\nEconomy\nNovember and December saw the Economy team finish price-balancing armors and vehicles. They then began looking into the prices of FPS weapons as part of balancing the wider economy to bring all systems together. A contextual inventory inheritance was designed to tag items in shops that will allow them to more easily rebalance prices too.\n\nThe team worked on the economic implications of freight elevators and started balancing the time and cost of using them.\n\nThey also investigated UEC income and began taking actions to prevent exploits and rebalance mission rewards, and investigated exploits relating to ship claim time and prices.\n\nFeatures (Arena Commander)\nThroughout November and December, the Features team focused on closing out essential refactors and polish tasks before they transition to supporting the Persistent Universe in a more permanent capacity. They also supported upcoming special events and the Alpha 3.22 release.\n\nEngineering completed work on the \u2018Kill Collector\u2019 Experimental Modes for Alpha 3.22, including a system that allows devs to replace the collection item depending on both the game mode and active events. Further work was done on the special events and award systems, including prerequisite requirements allowing the team to implement exclusive awards. This work also included the addition of unique loading screens, backgrounds, and a banner that displays on the frontend when an event or experimental mode is active, the latter including a countdown until the next rotation. Experimentation also began with an in-game FPS loadout customizer utilizing the new spawn screen.\n\nFor engineering, the team successfully completed the initial tests of enabling streaming in Arena Commander. This will enable them to deliver improved performance to the module and use any Persistent Universe location without limitations. Previously, some locations, such as ones near cities, were unable to be used without significant additional work - with streaming, the turnaround on porting any location to Arena Commander will be minimal.\n\nDesign supported work for Kill Collector, Duo Showdown, and other game modes and special events for Alpha 3.22 and beyond. Alongside a number of quality-of-life updates and polish to the frontend, spawn screen, and multi-crew systems, they also began planning for the year ahead.\n\nLevel Design completed work on three new racetracks (with one more in progress) for a new game mode. A brand-new track around the Pyro jump point was also created specifically to test the new Master Modes: Classic Race game mode for Alpha 3.22. The team created a prototype game mode that saw a successful playtest and will be further worked upon in 2024 too.\n\nFinally, the team completed a new grav-lev racing game mode, which was debuted at Dreamhack Atlanta.\n\nFeatures (Mission)\nIn November, the Features team began implementing a deadline system within a few missions across the \u2018verse, which will ensure missions can\u2019t be kept indefinitely if the accepted players are not engaging with them. This is for a few reasons. For example, players can lock out other missions and, narratively, it doesn\u2019t make sense that a contractor would wait five hours for players to kill someone when they know their exact position. However, this is not a universally implemented system; each mission\u2019s deadline will be individually considered.\n\nThe steal\/recover mission continued to be polished and variants are currently being made.\n\nThe New Player Experience was also polished, with the team adding new parts to introduce some of the more important in-game systems. The team then turned to cleaning up and polishing the existing infiltrate and defend missions. And with Data Heist\u2019s release, the team kicked off a counter mission using one of the modular missions.\n\nJumptown saw changes to how players engage in combat, while the journey started to make each location feel unique.\n\nIn December, Missions Features began prototyping a time-trial foot race to utilize more of the Ledge Grab v2 feature.\n\nFinally, converting missions to use the freight elevator began. For example, Blockade Runner, XenoThreat, and other missions are being assessed to determine what needs to be updated to ensure they align with the new feature ahead of its release.\n\nGraphics, VFX Programming, & Planet Tech\nAt the end of 2023, the Graphics teams largely progressed with their longer-term tasks. For example, work continued on improving the visual quality of gas clouds through the addition of a directional occlusion effect. The gas-cloud-system output is also being unified with the planetary-cloud system so that the new cloud upscaling solution can be used by both.\n\nThe Global Illumination team added support for transparency via a dense view-frustum voxel grid of low-resolution probes along with a sparser zone-space grid of higher-resolution probes. Work is also ongoing to improve the representation of materials in the raytracing system.\n\nVulkan is reaching the final stages of development, with the team wrapping up the last of their rendering tech. Ongoing work is targeting reducing stutter by working on shader\/PSO compilation caching and general performance polishing before the initial release.\n\nThe Planet Tech team continued wrapping up the water feature, focusing on robustness, memory usage, and performance. Alongside this, the Graphics team improved the water-edge effects against both the environment and visor\/camera lens.\n\nVFX Programming worked toward finishing off fire-hazard visuals, investigated networking support for the fire-hazard system, and added support for water VFX. On the tools side, support is being added for unique IDs associated with each particle effect to allow robust referencing and the reorganization of effects.\n\nNarrative\nThe end of the year brought with it a flurry of activity for the Narrative team as they worked to close out strong and set themselves up for an even better 2954. November was host to IAE, which featured immersive career dioramas on the show floor and new vids from security professional Garman Humble and social-media influencer Mahli. For the release of Alpha 3.22, the team worked on supporting a wide range of new features such as structural salvage, derelict settlements, cargo containers, Arena Commander additions, and a variety of Luminalia items (including the holiday favorite biscuit, Ringalings). The team also worked on the development of the San\u2019tok.y\u0101i, with a focus on the Xi\u2019an language and lore.\n\nLooking ahead, the team planned upcoming work for the PU, including new missions that will be more narratively focused, and discussed how best to utilize guilds and factions as players progress and earn reputation. Time was also dedicated to improving the generalized NPC voicepack to streamline it and make it more functional with an eye toward making the universe more immersive while still manageable for the scope of Star Citizen.\n\nAs always, a selection of lore posts was featured on the RSI website \u2013 a look back at Banu first contact with Jerry: A History Half-Remembered, a November Galactapedia Update, a Loremakers: Community Questions, and to end the year, a December Galactapedia Update.\n\nR&D\nIn November and December, the R&D team spent a significant amount of time on the temporal render mode for atmosphere and clouds. As a result, the first WIP version of advanced history rejection, as well as refined disocclusion detection and preparation of dilated motion vectors, was submitted. More research went into the upsample and history blend process to achieve highly detailed results that match the reference full-resolution render output as much as possible.\n\nFor ground fog, experimental support for fog density maps was added and is currently in review with Tech Art. The signal encoding and reconstruction code for volumetric cloud shadows received a fix to minimize ringing artifacts occasionally visible in areas where (unattenuated) sunlight first hits clouds. The atmosphere light pass received refined irradiance estimates based on community feedback, which had reported that the bottom of ships approaching a planet in higher orbit were almost entirely black as opposed to receiving reflected ground light.\n\nAside from the work on visuals, various improvements were also implemented to the postmortem crash analysis tool, which processes reports submitted via internal testing as well as the PU and PTU. The tool now supports the deduping of callstacks for all threads in a process and sorts them so that important threads are listed at the top. The tool now also supports dumps written by \u2018fast-linked\u2019 binaries. Additional support is planned to capture and extract auxiliary callstacks for memory corruptions (specifically, double deletes and writes after free events). Those will then be used for issue deduplication in Sentry to allow the coalescence of memory crashes much more effectively.\n\nTech Art\/Animation\nThe Technical Animation team spent the end of the year on deliverables for the content teams across both projects.\n\nThese include an outfit manager that will pull together a full set of assets for any character outfit in-game, which will help the Animation teams author specific content.\n\nPreviously missing from the pipeline, physics proxy tools creation was added for an intuitive and streamlined way to create physicalized skeletons in Maya. An animation-events editor was also added to keep audio linked to animations across projects. New ADB diff tools also help the devs track and diagnose problems with complex XML format files that need historical context to be useful.\n\nA replacement for a very old toolset that validates content being exported from Maya was created.\n\n\u201cWe're now in a position to add to the tests and potentially change some low-level paradigms to enable exploration of new pipeline possibilities.\u201d Technical Animation team\n\nAdditionally, Technical Animation authored and fixed more head assets, refined existing pipelines, continued developing engine animation systems, and ideated on additional ways to help them approach gold master.\n\nSpecifically for PU, the team spent time authoring new creatures.\n\nVFX\nDuring November and December, the VFX team worked on structural-salvage effects for the Drake Vulture and Aegis Reclaimer.\n\nThey also provided effects support for new locations and existing location reworks, including several new derelicts and Rappel, a \u201crather hellish environment with the ground literally burning!\u201d\n\nVehicle-effects support was provided too, including for the Aopoa San'tok.y\u0101i and the Origin X1 series."},"links_count":0,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2024-01-10T22:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"2 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-04-24 23:21:10","valid_relations":["images","links","translations"],"prev_id":19723,"next_id":19735}}