Monthly Report: August 2014
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Greetings Citizens,
Star Citizen keeps getting bigger! August saw a major reveal at Gamescom, plus trips to Dragon*Con and PAX to share Star Citizen with the masses! On the development side, we’ve made massive progress on everything from the First Person Shooter module to the soon-to-be-playable racing mode! You can learn what each of Star Citizen’s studios has been up to in this month’s report, available below.
Travis Day, Producer
Greetings Citizens,
August has been an exciting month for the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42! We showed off what we’ve been working on for backers at our event in Cologne, Germany for Gamecom and for everyone around the world via a livestream. (Available below!) We showed off the new ships and gameplay modes being included in version 0.9 of Arena Commander, teased FPS which will be demoed at PAX Australia, and showed off some early work towards multicrew combat using a Constellation.
As always these kinds of live events are very exciting for the team both as an opportunity to showcase their work to the community and also as an opportunity for those in attendance to meet with our backers face to face. Being around so many people as excited about Star Citizen and Squadron 42 as we are, is truly invigorating. We are truly lucky to have such an engaged fan base participating in the development process helping us to make this game. So, thank you all for your support!
The multicrew combat demo was put together by the group here in Santa Monica with some support from the guys in Austin. It required a lot of hard work on various systems that lay the groundwork for bringing support of multicrew ships to Arena Commander, Squadron 42, and ultimately the Persistent Universe. To that end, we wanted to share with you some of the underlying technology that was in the demo that, perhaps, isn’t readily apparent when watching it.
Localized physics grids. Sounds exciting, right? Well, it is! Generally in 3D games with physics you have what can simplistically be thought of as a large cube that encompasses the whole map, a grid. Inside that cube physics are being simulated for every object and player that have physics set to active relative to their position within that grid. This is what handles collision with objects, projectile physics, etc.
Problems arise when you want to have players freely (not scripted and not on rails) moving inside a freely moving vehicle/object. This is because that single physics grid only has awareness of each entity in the level as an individual and doesn’t (by default) understand their relationships to one another. This manifests itself where, in a Constellation for example, the ship is flying forward while pitching and yawing. Unfortunately the global physics grid thinks of you and the ship as two separate objects with no relationship and so it pitches and yaws the ship while moving it forward and treats the player as though nothing has happened. As the player you will see the ship yaw around you, pitch around you, and ultimately the collisions with it will fling you around like a pinball.
Here is where the localized physics grid comes into play! It allows us to have multiple smaller physics grids within the larger global physics grid. The global grid will track each smaller grid as an individual and that smaller grid tracks all objects within it relative to whatever it is attached to. Where this gets cool is when you attach a localized grid to a ship like the Constellation. Now, when the Constellation pitches and yaws while flying your player position stays relative to the ship so you will also pitch, yaw, and move along with it in perfect unison. This allows for ships to have fully functioning interiors with characters running around while the ship itself is blasting through space and maneuvering seamlessly. Completing this work was a large accomplishment and also a very foundational piece for SQ42 and Star Citizen in the long run.
One of the other more “under the hood” things that went into the demo was on the HUD. One of the critically important pieces of functionality for the HUD in the long run is being able to separate and subdivide its component pieces so that they can be displayed on different screens, have their positioning and size customized per HUD per player, and be rendered directly to a texture for seamless display on fixed screens. All of these features have been added to the system so that moving forward we will be better able to support customizing the HUD both on the development side and for players to customize their own visor HUD. We’ve also added the first step in fully supporting passing HUD elements and control over them between the different seats in a multicrew seats. The HUD is something we pride ourselves on as it is the thing you will see most of the game in its current state. More work needs to be done (there always is) but the foundation is there and now we need to keep refining and tweaking so we can make it even more awesome.
Gamescom is behind us and we look forward to the next opportunity to share more of the ‘Verse with our fans. Citizen Con and PAX Australia are on the horizon and we look forward to the new challenges this complex but rewarding project brings. As we said at the beginning being around our backers is invigorating to our entire team, it makes the long nights and stressful times worth it. Star Citizen is a special game, the passion and dedication of our community isn’t just appreciated it is required to make this game a reality.
Eric Peterson, Studio Director
Good day Citizens. As the sun continues to bake us to a crisp in hot as hades Austin Texas, our development teams have been toiling away to make sure that we bring a great experience to folks all over the verse. It has been an amazing month, from getting things ready for our show in Germany (always one of my personal favorites) to preparing for upcoming events like CiitzenCon, and Pax Australia. As most folks know our office is tasked with the persistent universe, and backend server support, as well as running the publishing arm of CIG.
Here is what the various departments in Austin:
Art
This month the art team in Austin was busy helping out on several different parts of Star Citizen. We had ship artists helping to get the M50 and Constellation variants all ship shape for GamesCom and prepping the 350r for upcoming release. Our artists on the PU team developed some new concepts and began creating props to be used in our missions for the Persistent Universe, as well as some R&D on jump gate effects and weather effects for our Planetside locations.
Cinematics
Released the Constellation Commercial at Gamescom. Working towards future ship commercials. Planning, budgeting and scouting for motion capture and performance capture for Squadron 42 cinematics. Working on debugging facial animation pipeline.
Animation
Began working with Sean Tracy to improve animation pipeline and execution. Held an animation workshop to focus on identifying issues with our locomotion set and how to improve it using the 4D blendspace technology in CryEngine. Creating a new skeleton and rig and retargeting animations to that new skeleton as well as solving and editing the animations from last month’s mocap shoot. Our character artists were hard at work fleshing out characters for the Constellation commercial and the FPS demo coming up at PAX Australia, and our animation team hosted some of the guys at [REDACTED] to bang out some new locomotion sets for our characters.
Design
This month, the Austin design team has been focused on integrating basic systems into the persistent universe prototype, transitioning from the surface of a planet to the hangar and then to space, and connecting systems with jump points. Technical designers have been putting the finishing touches on city interior (and space stations) building kits to enable faster construction of planetary environments. Meanwhile, the team has continued to add detail to other major game systems as they approach on the PU roadmap.
Platform/Publishing
This month the platform team launched the new store with amazingly detailed and updated ship stats and many more ships available in the holoviewer! In addition, we launched the M50 and Constellation promotions with full stat, storefront, and holoviewer support. We’ve done tons of work on Leaderboards and look forward to launching this to the public very soon. And also completed lots of concept work on the new Starmap which was voted as a fan favorite in a recent stretch goal poll.
Programming
This week, we Integrated CryEngine 3.6.3 into our codebase and deployed it to the team. That is always a challenge and tends to bring new bugs, but this has been one of the best transitions to date. We also migrated the team to Visual Studio 2012 with IT’s valued support. And, we continued working on the server side persistence and related work for the PU, and PU prototyping including star system layout. We also continued work on Large World and related tasks and designed and began work on Movement Improvements including dead reckoning with our partner Wyrmbyte. We finished projectile light pooling, we implemented basic TrackIR support as well as other VR fixes. We released new versions of the launcher with bug fixes and many improvements. We also released 12.5.2 and version 12.6, and continue to work on version 13.0 or .9 as it is also known.
That and much more is what Austin has been up to this month, and we will continue to chip away at the granite that is Star Citizen, slowly revealing the beautiful statue underneath. On a personal note, it was quite an honor to meet so many enthusiastic Citizens at Gamescom this year and I look forward to meeting many more at our upcoming events, I love coming back to the studios and sharing with them the stories of meeting folks and sharing a laugh or a common enthusiasm for this great Chris Roberts adventure. We are all very lucky to be at this place at this time – and we will strive to always make you proud.
Erin Roberts, Studio Director
Hi everyone, August was a massive month for us at Foundry 42. We put a lot of focus on release 13, and the Gamescom event and it was fantastic to see eveyones’ response to what we showed there. I had a chance to talk to a bunch of the community while in Cologne, and really enjoyed meeting everyone, getting feedback and answering questions. The F42 team is really ticking over now, and you guys will start seeing a bunch of new content and gameplay over the next few months, not to mention our work on Squadron 42 which although we can’t show yet, is really coming together nicely. As always thanks must go out to all our backers, Star Citizen would not be this special without the community, your feedback, support and energy. That is what makes Star Citizen special and really drives everyone here in development to create this amazing universe.
Design
Development on Squadron 42 has continued well this month, with us breaking down the campaign further and putting more planning into how the players “home” ship will be an engaging and believable hub for them to explore and interact with. The vertical slice work is continuing and asking many questions that we have been focusing on answering going forward. One of the challenges with creating the “story campaign” is to make sure that we keep the agile gameplay without introducing bespoke mechanics that would not be available in the PU. We have been spending time this month working out how some of these mechanics will work across the game as a whole (for example, scavenging items from dead bodies).
The ship pipeline is rolling on with work being carried out on the Starfarer now, other ships still progressing well. I bang on about it every monthly report, but I really can’t wait until we can get you guys running around some of these bigger ships in game, it really adds a whole new dimension to everything.
Arena Commander work is also continuing well, with more systems coming online and game modes being refined and polished. You’ll see all that soon enough as we get closer to the next patch.
Programming Director
Another month and the big GamesCom event! If you saw the show you’ll have seen all the work we’ve been putting into getting the demonstration together, including the two new game modes Murray Cup Racing and Vanduul Swarm coop. As a result it was one of our more trouble free presentations!
Since GamesCom we’ve been working hard polishing up these two new game modes to make them as awesome as possible for their introduction to the community in the Release 13 update. We’re really stoked about the amount of progress we’ve made this month for Arena Commander, not only the new game modes and also the much improved audio, HUD improvements, control improvements (including 6 DoF!), leaderboards, and the usual bug fixing and polish.
Longer term we’re making great progress on Squadron 42, with lots of support for the designers on our “vertical slice”. We’re also been busy making progress on improvements to setting up vehicles, which is going to be imperative once we start working on the larger vehicles. This includes continued work on our new DataForge tool alongside the start of a new vehicle state system which will allow the ship setup to be much more data driven.
Overall another busy month!
Art
The art team has increased again! We have added two artists to the environment team and also taken on a Lead Character artist and a Lead VFX artist.
Concept work has taken place on Shubin interiors, the Anvil F8 heavy fighter, the mining drone cabin, Panther class carrier Bridge and Javelin interiors.
The Environment team also worked hard and completed the New Horizons map including a cool trailer for GamesCON – great work team!
Work is continuing on the spaceships – Gladius, Retaliator and Gladiator have all gone to their texturing phases, the Idris, Javelin and Panther interiors are all marching forward too.
Amongst all that we have also hopped back to greyboxing the Shubin exterior for the vertical slice level.
Animation have also been hard at work prepping for the VS and supporting the states with Arena Commander fixes and additions.
Audio
It’s been the month of Gamescom and an exciting time for all involved! Team audio have been spending their time split between the constellation demo, trailer sound design, Murray cup, sounds for the new ships and continued work on the audio in general. Not too much then!
As we move passed Gamescom we’ve been trying to get the last few bits into the release 13 before it is let loose into the wild. This has including things like UI sounds that play when you hit an enemy (good feedback!) and some updated boost sounds.
The New Horizon Speedway has had some attention, for example as you fly through the tunnel in the centre of the map you’ll hear air whooshing passed you that modulates based on your speed.
Included in DFM 0.9 is ‘Trevor Basque’ the official announcer for the Murray Cup. When racing around New Horizon you might note that the sound of his voice is actually played back at 3D positions in the environment as if it was playing through speakers like at a real race! The PA system delay effect is actually the culmination of the dialogue lines being played back from several of these points with the delay time being calculated in-game based on distance, it isn’t just a pre-baked effect! After this we’d like to use this system to add a visual counterpart to the game object so you can see the speaker where the sounds are emanating from. The ‘Bitching Betty’ ship computer voices will be using a similar system inside of multi-crew ships.
A hot topic in the community is the fact that Star Citizen has sound in space! How is this possible? Well it is something that we are putting great thought into and put simply, Star Citizen doesn’t have sound in space…. It has simulated sound that is played back to you to help you better pilot your ship. There will be more details about this in future posts and this method will be better supported in-game in future. Hopefully this begins to address the questions people have been asking.
That’s all from the sound guys, it’s early days for the soundscape of Star Citizen with a heck of a lot to do before the final game comes out but it’s great seeing the community feedback we’ve had so far.
Mathieu Beaulieu, Producer
Things have been moving pretty quickly here in sunny Montreal.
Hangars!
Our team has been spending a good amount of time debugging and optimising the new hangars to get them ready for public release. We have also begun working on the basic layout for the next planet locations and shops for Arc Corp Area 18 and Terra Prime.
Next month’s flair object is done and we are now preparing for the next one.
Our engineers have been busy helping out with tools used for populating space environments with various objects, which we will eventually need for mission prototyping. They have also been creating tools for our designers and level designers to facilitate the creation of tags and tagging requests, which will eventually be used for many in-game systems including mobiGlas, shops, AI, etc.
Work is well underway for the pause menu refactor, and we are moving along with the control customization implementation, as well the mG Scheduler prototype for mission management. Several other mobiGlas apps have been designed as well, including mG Wear for avatar customization, mG Skyline for the star map, and the mG Notification Center.
Finally, audio has been keeping up with the changes to the levels, sounding the flair objects when required and battling memory budget issues.
[Redacted]
G’Day Citizens! Did you enjoy Gamescom? Are you happy with your Connies? We certainly hope so!
I’m sure you all must be aware by now… The secret is out. The beans have been spilled. The cat is out of the bag! That’s right, [REDACTED] will finally be showing off some FPS goodness at PAX Australia!
We’ve been hard at work getting things ready for the big event. As you may have noticed from the teaser that was shown at Gamescom, the station environment we’ve been working on has been coming together really well. More props are coming online daily and are being added to the environment. We now have detailed objects filling up the mess hall, security office and Gravity Control room… Along with all these props, visual effects are being added to give a strong sense of atmosphere. Air rushes through doors as they open, sparks trickle down from broken equipment and water splashes (you guys really seemed to enjoy that…) as players crash through puddles on the floor.
The engineers and animators here at [REDACTED] took a quick trip down to CiG Austin to hammer out some long standing animation issues. We now have a new skeleton and rig to work with that should greatly improve the animations in the game and fix many of the issues that we have been having (and some of those you may have been experiencing in the hangars).
On the engineering and design side, we have shifted from real life nerf-gun fights to in-game playtests. In my personal opinion they are much more fun, more productive and less dangerous! These tests have mostly been focused on improving stability and fixing network issues, but we are now transitioning to iterating on gameplay and balance.
I would like to personally thank [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] for all their hard work and crunching to put together an amazing Gamescom teaser trailer in a very short amount of time. I think everybody would agree that you guys did a real smash up job and deserve some special mention.
Lastly, I would like to give a shout out to an unexpected guest we had last month. Super Star Citizen Wulf Knight somehow discovered our true identity (are you a wizard?!), stopped by to meet the team, and then fed the entire office with pizza! From everybody here, thanks for the grub Wulf!
P.S. – Are you Citizens all hyped up for leaderboards like I am? I’ll see you on the rankings, my handle is [REDACTED]!
Turbulent
Benoit Beauséjour, Founder
The Platform team was all over the place this August, pushing the website to its full potential and shaping its future at the same time.
August Events and the Ship Catalog
Of course August was the month we officially released the new Ship Catalog and what we dubbed the “Store Revamp”. We reorganized the whole store to make it easier to navigate, while at the same time interlocking it with game data every step of the way. The new Ships catalog is the first brick toward a complete and thorough Galactapedia, giving you access to tremendous amounts of data directly from the game.
You may have noticed that this last month had been heavy with events. Gamescom, the Constellation lineup reveal, DragonCon, the shattered 50 Million barrier… These were all perfect occasions to make the whole site a better experience for everyone, one step at a time. We fine-tuned the way the Store can handle flash sales, stabilized the Chat for high traffic events… and overall smoothed out a lot of bumps in the site.
We took advantage of the new Ship Catalog to make its centralized data available across the board : the Constellation lineup saw the birth of Comm-links with Stats and Holo-Viewers that will never go out of date. The Community’s overwhelmingly positive response has been a huge influence on us to go even further an immerse you, the players, into the Star Citizen Universe as soon as you hit the Site.
Starmap, Leaderboards and future projects
In the aftermath of the new Store and Catalog release, we are now laying down the foundation of what the Website will be for the next few months. The Community has spoken, so the web-based Starmap is taking form. Still in early concept, we are making this into the second brick of Galactapedia. But it will be its own complete feature, and we can’t wait to share with you what we have in store for it.
We’ve also been working on creating the first Arena Commander Leaderboards module. Gathering the data from all available game modes, compiling data for users AND organizations, and displaying that huge amount of data in a way that will allow players to measure up against others, quantify their progress and even recruit promising players into their orgs is a beautiful challenge, and we are happy to step up to it. You won’t have to wait long until you actually see it, so stay tuned!
Pretty soon you’ll also be able to select the Hangar you want to see in the Hangar Module, and which ships you want to display, directly from the Web. That’s been another focus of ours lately, so that you can fully enjoy these beautiful 4 new hangars!
Of course concept work for Organizations Drop Two is still going on as well. It has been for a while now, and production on this will be kicking in shortly.
Full of challenges and great surprises, this has been a busy month, and above all, a promising one!
Matthew Jack, Founder
August was a big month for all of the Star Citizen teams, and Moon Collider was certainly no exception. With a big demo imminent, as well as a major new release to prepare for, there was plenty of work to get done
You all saw the Gamescom demo, of course, and with it the announcement of Vanduul Swarm Coop mode. We’ve been doing some work to make sure the AI behaves well in a multiplayer environment, but overall we were very pleased that the AI handled the transition quite smoothly, and there weren’t that many issues to deal with. This is a great gameplay mode, and we’re looking forward to hearing from the community how we can tweak and improve the AI to make it even better.
We’ve also done some work on Vanduul Swarm Singleplayer for version 0.9 of Arena Commander that we think will be a big improvement. We got a lot of feedback about ways to improve the behavior of team mates, and in particular people want them to do a better job of avoiding you. So we’ve improved their avoidance behavior and now they should give you a wider berth. We are keen to get community feedback on how effective this change is. There have also been some tweaks to all AI ships due to the speed increases in the new version, and we expect that we’ll be doing further tweaks as we get feedback from you all about what works and what doesn’t.
On the FPS combat front, we been continuing to do work on the perception abilities of the AI. There were also some issues with animation of the AI that were making them have trouble aiming at the player and being able to turn around properly when being flanked, but we got those solved and the AI are much more effective as a result. It was a good example of how AI and animation are often very closely connected.
We added a very cool feature to our AI debugging toolset this month, that has already proven to be extremely useful in tracking down bugs. One problem is that in multi player matches the AI will be running on the server and when you see something weird on a client, it can be hard to get good information about what the AI is doing on the server, so you can figure out if the problem is on the server or the client. We now have the ability to capture information about the AI from the server, and then stream it in real time inside a client with 3D visualized debugging, so we can see immediately if there are any discrepancies between what is happening on the server and on the client.
Finally, we’ve been doing more design work on the persistent universe, along with some prototyping work to enable designers to start placing objects in the world that AI can interact with. And as always, no month would be complete without doing various other bugfixes and optimizations, improvements to our processes and all of those little things that aren’t very exciting, but are essential to making all the cool stuff possible!
Star Citizen keeps getting bigger! August saw a major reveal at Gamescom, plus trips to Dragon*Con and PAX to share Star Citizen with the masses! On the development side, we’ve made massive progress on everything from the First Person Shooter module to the soon-to-be-playable racing mode! You can learn what each of Star Citizen’s studios has been up to in this month’s report, available below.
Travis Day, Producer
Greetings Citizens,
August has been an exciting month for the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42! We showed off what we’ve been working on for backers at our event in Cologne, Germany for Gamecom and for everyone around the world via a livestream. (Available below!) We showed off the new ships and gameplay modes being included in version 0.9 of Arena Commander, teased FPS which will be demoed at PAX Australia, and showed off some early work towards multicrew combat using a Constellation.
As always these kinds of live events are very exciting for the team both as an opportunity to showcase their work to the community and also as an opportunity for those in attendance to meet with our backers face to face. Being around so many people as excited about Star Citizen and Squadron 42 as we are, is truly invigorating. We are truly lucky to have such an engaged fan base participating in the development process helping us to make this game. So, thank you all for your support!
The multicrew combat demo was put together by the group here in Santa Monica with some support from the guys in Austin. It required a lot of hard work on various systems that lay the groundwork for bringing support of multicrew ships to Arena Commander, Squadron 42, and ultimately the Persistent Universe. To that end, we wanted to share with you some of the underlying technology that was in the demo that, perhaps, isn’t readily apparent when watching it.
Localized physics grids. Sounds exciting, right? Well, it is! Generally in 3D games with physics you have what can simplistically be thought of as a large cube that encompasses the whole map, a grid. Inside that cube physics are being simulated for every object and player that have physics set to active relative to their position within that grid. This is what handles collision with objects, projectile physics, etc.
Problems arise when you want to have players freely (not scripted and not on rails) moving inside a freely moving vehicle/object. This is because that single physics grid only has awareness of each entity in the level as an individual and doesn’t (by default) understand their relationships to one another. This manifests itself where, in a Constellation for example, the ship is flying forward while pitching and yawing. Unfortunately the global physics grid thinks of you and the ship as two separate objects with no relationship and so it pitches and yaws the ship while moving it forward and treats the player as though nothing has happened. As the player you will see the ship yaw around you, pitch around you, and ultimately the collisions with it will fling you around like a pinball.
Here is where the localized physics grid comes into play! It allows us to have multiple smaller physics grids within the larger global physics grid. The global grid will track each smaller grid as an individual and that smaller grid tracks all objects within it relative to whatever it is attached to. Where this gets cool is when you attach a localized grid to a ship like the Constellation. Now, when the Constellation pitches and yaws while flying your player position stays relative to the ship so you will also pitch, yaw, and move along with it in perfect unison. This allows for ships to have fully functioning interiors with characters running around while the ship itself is blasting through space and maneuvering seamlessly. Completing this work was a large accomplishment and also a very foundational piece for SQ42 and Star Citizen in the long run.
One of the other more “under the hood” things that went into the demo was on the HUD. One of the critically important pieces of functionality for the HUD in the long run is being able to separate and subdivide its component pieces so that they can be displayed on different screens, have their positioning and size customized per HUD per player, and be rendered directly to a texture for seamless display on fixed screens. All of these features have been added to the system so that moving forward we will be better able to support customizing the HUD both on the development side and for players to customize their own visor HUD. We’ve also added the first step in fully supporting passing HUD elements and control over them between the different seats in a multicrew seats. The HUD is something we pride ourselves on as it is the thing you will see most of the game in its current state. More work needs to be done (there always is) but the foundation is there and now we need to keep refining and tweaking so we can make it even more awesome.
Gamescom is behind us and we look forward to the next opportunity to share more of the ‘Verse with our fans. Citizen Con and PAX Australia are on the horizon and we look forward to the new challenges this complex but rewarding project brings. As we said at the beginning being around our backers is invigorating to our entire team, it makes the long nights and stressful times worth it. Star Citizen is a special game, the passion and dedication of our community isn’t just appreciated it is required to make this game a reality.
Eric Peterson, Studio Director
Good day Citizens. As the sun continues to bake us to a crisp in hot as hades Austin Texas, our development teams have been toiling away to make sure that we bring a great experience to folks all over the verse. It has been an amazing month, from getting things ready for our show in Germany (always one of my personal favorites) to preparing for upcoming events like CiitzenCon, and Pax Australia. As most folks know our office is tasked with the persistent universe, and backend server support, as well as running the publishing arm of CIG.
Here is what the various departments in Austin:
Art
This month the art team in Austin was busy helping out on several different parts of Star Citizen. We had ship artists helping to get the M50 and Constellation variants all ship shape for GamesCom and prepping the 350r for upcoming release. Our artists on the PU team developed some new concepts and began creating props to be used in our missions for the Persistent Universe, as well as some R&D on jump gate effects and weather effects for our Planetside locations.
Cinematics
Released the Constellation Commercial at Gamescom. Working towards future ship commercials. Planning, budgeting and scouting for motion capture and performance capture for Squadron 42 cinematics. Working on debugging facial animation pipeline.
Animation
Began working with Sean Tracy to improve animation pipeline and execution. Held an animation workshop to focus on identifying issues with our locomotion set and how to improve it using the 4D blendspace technology in CryEngine. Creating a new skeleton and rig and retargeting animations to that new skeleton as well as solving and editing the animations from last month’s mocap shoot. Our character artists were hard at work fleshing out characters for the Constellation commercial and the FPS demo coming up at PAX Australia, and our animation team hosted some of the guys at [REDACTED] to bang out some new locomotion sets for our characters.
Design
This month, the Austin design team has been focused on integrating basic systems into the persistent universe prototype, transitioning from the surface of a planet to the hangar and then to space, and connecting systems with jump points. Technical designers have been putting the finishing touches on city interior (and space stations) building kits to enable faster construction of planetary environments. Meanwhile, the team has continued to add detail to other major game systems as they approach on the PU roadmap.
Platform/Publishing
This month the platform team launched the new store with amazingly detailed and updated ship stats and many more ships available in the holoviewer! In addition, we launched the M50 and Constellation promotions with full stat, storefront, and holoviewer support. We’ve done tons of work on Leaderboards and look forward to launching this to the public very soon. And also completed lots of concept work on the new Starmap which was voted as a fan favorite in a recent stretch goal poll.
Programming
This week, we Integrated CryEngine 3.6.3 into our codebase and deployed it to the team. That is always a challenge and tends to bring new bugs, but this has been one of the best transitions to date. We also migrated the team to Visual Studio 2012 with IT’s valued support. And, we continued working on the server side persistence and related work for the PU, and PU prototyping including star system layout. We also continued work on Large World and related tasks and designed and began work on Movement Improvements including dead reckoning with our partner Wyrmbyte. We finished projectile light pooling, we implemented basic TrackIR support as well as other VR fixes. We released new versions of the launcher with bug fixes and many improvements. We also released 12.5.2 and version 12.6, and continue to work on version 13.0 or .9 as it is also known.
That and much more is what Austin has been up to this month, and we will continue to chip away at the granite that is Star Citizen, slowly revealing the beautiful statue underneath. On a personal note, it was quite an honor to meet so many enthusiastic Citizens at Gamescom this year and I look forward to meeting many more at our upcoming events, I love coming back to the studios and sharing with them the stories of meeting folks and sharing a laugh or a common enthusiasm for this great Chris Roberts adventure. We are all very lucky to be at this place at this time – and we will strive to always make you proud.
Erin Roberts, Studio Director
Hi everyone, August was a massive month for us at Foundry 42. We put a lot of focus on release 13, and the Gamescom event and it was fantastic to see eveyones’ response to what we showed there. I had a chance to talk to a bunch of the community while in Cologne, and really enjoyed meeting everyone, getting feedback and answering questions. The F42 team is really ticking over now, and you guys will start seeing a bunch of new content and gameplay over the next few months, not to mention our work on Squadron 42 which although we can’t show yet, is really coming together nicely. As always thanks must go out to all our backers, Star Citizen would not be this special without the community, your feedback, support and energy. That is what makes Star Citizen special and really drives everyone here in development to create this amazing universe.
Design
Development on Squadron 42 has continued well this month, with us breaking down the campaign further and putting more planning into how the players “home” ship will be an engaging and believable hub for them to explore and interact with. The vertical slice work is continuing and asking many questions that we have been focusing on answering going forward. One of the challenges with creating the “story campaign” is to make sure that we keep the agile gameplay without introducing bespoke mechanics that would not be available in the PU. We have been spending time this month working out how some of these mechanics will work across the game as a whole (for example, scavenging items from dead bodies).
The ship pipeline is rolling on with work being carried out on the Starfarer now, other ships still progressing well. I bang on about it every monthly report, but I really can’t wait until we can get you guys running around some of these bigger ships in game, it really adds a whole new dimension to everything.
Arena Commander work is also continuing well, with more systems coming online and game modes being refined and polished. You’ll see all that soon enough as we get closer to the next patch.
Programming Director
Another month and the big GamesCom event! If you saw the show you’ll have seen all the work we’ve been putting into getting the demonstration together, including the two new game modes Murray Cup Racing and Vanduul Swarm coop. As a result it was one of our more trouble free presentations!
Since GamesCom we’ve been working hard polishing up these two new game modes to make them as awesome as possible for their introduction to the community in the Release 13 update. We’re really stoked about the amount of progress we’ve made this month for Arena Commander, not only the new game modes and also the much improved audio, HUD improvements, control improvements (including 6 DoF!), leaderboards, and the usual bug fixing and polish.
Longer term we’re making great progress on Squadron 42, with lots of support for the designers on our “vertical slice”. We’re also been busy making progress on improvements to setting up vehicles, which is going to be imperative once we start working on the larger vehicles. This includes continued work on our new DataForge tool alongside the start of a new vehicle state system which will allow the ship setup to be much more data driven.
Overall another busy month!
Art
The art team has increased again! We have added two artists to the environment team and also taken on a Lead Character artist and a Lead VFX artist.
Concept work has taken place on Shubin interiors, the Anvil F8 heavy fighter, the mining drone cabin, Panther class carrier Bridge and Javelin interiors.
The Environment team also worked hard and completed the New Horizons map including a cool trailer for GamesCON – great work team!
Work is continuing on the spaceships – Gladius, Retaliator and Gladiator have all gone to their texturing phases, the Idris, Javelin and Panther interiors are all marching forward too.
Amongst all that we have also hopped back to greyboxing the Shubin exterior for the vertical slice level.
Animation have also been hard at work prepping for the VS and supporting the states with Arena Commander fixes and additions.
Audio
It’s been the month of Gamescom and an exciting time for all involved! Team audio have been spending their time split between the constellation demo, trailer sound design, Murray cup, sounds for the new ships and continued work on the audio in general. Not too much then!
As we move passed Gamescom we’ve been trying to get the last few bits into the release 13 before it is let loose into the wild. This has including things like UI sounds that play when you hit an enemy (good feedback!) and some updated boost sounds.
The New Horizon Speedway has had some attention, for example as you fly through the tunnel in the centre of the map you’ll hear air whooshing passed you that modulates based on your speed.
Included in DFM 0.9 is ‘Trevor Basque’ the official announcer for the Murray Cup. When racing around New Horizon you might note that the sound of his voice is actually played back at 3D positions in the environment as if it was playing through speakers like at a real race! The PA system delay effect is actually the culmination of the dialogue lines being played back from several of these points with the delay time being calculated in-game based on distance, it isn’t just a pre-baked effect! After this we’d like to use this system to add a visual counterpart to the game object so you can see the speaker where the sounds are emanating from. The ‘Bitching Betty’ ship computer voices will be using a similar system inside of multi-crew ships.
A hot topic in the community is the fact that Star Citizen has sound in space! How is this possible? Well it is something that we are putting great thought into and put simply, Star Citizen doesn’t have sound in space…. It has simulated sound that is played back to you to help you better pilot your ship. There will be more details about this in future posts and this method will be better supported in-game in future. Hopefully this begins to address the questions people have been asking.
That’s all from the sound guys, it’s early days for the soundscape of Star Citizen with a heck of a lot to do before the final game comes out but it’s great seeing the community feedback we’ve had so far.
Mathieu Beaulieu, Producer
Things have been moving pretty quickly here in sunny Montreal.
Hangars!
Our team has been spending a good amount of time debugging and optimising the new hangars to get them ready for public release. We have also begun working on the basic layout for the next planet locations and shops for Arc Corp Area 18 and Terra Prime.
Next month’s flair object is done and we are now preparing for the next one.
Our engineers have been busy helping out with tools used for populating space environments with various objects, which we will eventually need for mission prototyping. They have also been creating tools for our designers and level designers to facilitate the creation of tags and tagging requests, which will eventually be used for many in-game systems including mobiGlas, shops, AI, etc.
Work is well underway for the pause menu refactor, and we are moving along with the control customization implementation, as well the mG Scheduler prototype for mission management. Several other mobiGlas apps have been designed as well, including mG Wear for avatar customization, mG Skyline for the star map, and the mG Notification Center.
Finally, audio has been keeping up with the changes to the levels, sounding the flair objects when required and battling memory budget issues.
[Redacted]
G’Day Citizens! Did you enjoy Gamescom? Are you happy with your Connies? We certainly hope so!
I’m sure you all must be aware by now… The secret is out. The beans have been spilled. The cat is out of the bag! That’s right, [REDACTED] will finally be showing off some FPS goodness at PAX Australia!
We’ve been hard at work getting things ready for the big event. As you may have noticed from the teaser that was shown at Gamescom, the station environment we’ve been working on has been coming together really well. More props are coming online daily and are being added to the environment. We now have detailed objects filling up the mess hall, security office and Gravity Control room… Along with all these props, visual effects are being added to give a strong sense of atmosphere. Air rushes through doors as they open, sparks trickle down from broken equipment and water splashes (you guys really seemed to enjoy that…) as players crash through puddles on the floor.
The engineers and animators here at [REDACTED] took a quick trip down to CiG Austin to hammer out some long standing animation issues. We now have a new skeleton and rig to work with that should greatly improve the animations in the game and fix many of the issues that we have been having (and some of those you may have been experiencing in the hangars).
On the engineering and design side, we have shifted from real life nerf-gun fights to in-game playtests. In my personal opinion they are much more fun, more productive and less dangerous! These tests have mostly been focused on improving stability and fixing network issues, but we are now transitioning to iterating on gameplay and balance.
I would like to personally thank [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] for all their hard work and crunching to put together an amazing Gamescom teaser trailer in a very short amount of time. I think everybody would agree that you guys did a real smash up job and deserve some special mention.
Lastly, I would like to give a shout out to an unexpected guest we had last month. Super Star Citizen Wulf Knight somehow discovered our true identity (are you a wizard?!), stopped by to meet the team, and then fed the entire office with pizza! From everybody here, thanks for the grub Wulf!
P.S. – Are you Citizens all hyped up for leaderboards like I am? I’ll see you on the rankings, my handle is [REDACTED]!
Turbulent
Benoit Beauséjour, Founder
The Platform team was all over the place this August, pushing the website to its full potential and shaping its future at the same time.
August Events and the Ship Catalog
Of course August was the month we officially released the new Ship Catalog and what we dubbed the “Store Revamp”. We reorganized the whole store to make it easier to navigate, while at the same time interlocking it with game data every step of the way. The new Ships catalog is the first brick toward a complete and thorough Galactapedia, giving you access to tremendous amounts of data directly from the game.
You may have noticed that this last month had been heavy with events. Gamescom, the Constellation lineup reveal, DragonCon, the shattered 50 Million barrier… These were all perfect occasions to make the whole site a better experience for everyone, one step at a time. We fine-tuned the way the Store can handle flash sales, stabilized the Chat for high traffic events… and overall smoothed out a lot of bumps in the site.
We took advantage of the new Ship Catalog to make its centralized data available across the board : the Constellation lineup saw the birth of Comm-links with Stats and Holo-Viewers that will never go out of date. The Community’s overwhelmingly positive response has been a huge influence on us to go even further an immerse you, the players, into the Star Citizen Universe as soon as you hit the Site.
Starmap, Leaderboards and future projects
In the aftermath of the new Store and Catalog release, we are now laying down the foundation of what the Website will be for the next few months. The Community has spoken, so the web-based Starmap is taking form. Still in early concept, we are making this into the second brick of Galactapedia. But it will be its own complete feature, and we can’t wait to share with you what we have in store for it.
We’ve also been working on creating the first Arena Commander Leaderboards module. Gathering the data from all available game modes, compiling data for users AND organizations, and displaying that huge amount of data in a way that will allow players to measure up against others, quantify their progress and even recruit promising players into their orgs is a beautiful challenge, and we are happy to step up to it. You won’t have to wait long until you actually see it, so stay tuned!
Pretty soon you’ll also be able to select the Hangar you want to see in the Hangar Module, and which ships you want to display, directly from the Web. That’s been another focus of ours lately, so that you can fully enjoy these beautiful 4 new hangars!
Of course concept work for Organizations Drop Two is still going on as well. It has been for a while now, and production on this will be kicking in shortly.
Full of challenges and great surprises, this has been a busy month, and above all, a promising one!
Matthew Jack, Founder
August was a big month for all of the Star Citizen teams, and Moon Collider was certainly no exception. With a big demo imminent, as well as a major new release to prepare for, there was plenty of work to get done
You all saw the Gamescom demo, of course, and with it the announcement of Vanduul Swarm Coop mode. We’ve been doing some work to make sure the AI behaves well in a multiplayer environment, but overall we were very pleased that the AI handled the transition quite smoothly, and there weren’t that many issues to deal with. This is a great gameplay mode, and we’re looking forward to hearing from the community how we can tweak and improve the AI to make it even better.
We’ve also done some work on Vanduul Swarm Singleplayer for version 0.9 of Arena Commander that we think will be a big improvement. We got a lot of feedback about ways to improve the behavior of team mates, and in particular people want them to do a better job of avoiding you. So we’ve improved their avoidance behavior and now they should give you a wider berth. We are keen to get community feedback on how effective this change is. There have also been some tweaks to all AI ships due to the speed increases in the new version, and we expect that we’ll be doing further tweaks as we get feedback from you all about what works and what doesn’t.
On the FPS combat front, we been continuing to do work on the perception abilities of the AI. There were also some issues with animation of the AI that were making them have trouble aiming at the player and being able to turn around properly when being flanked, but we got those solved and the AI are much more effective as a result. It was a good example of how AI and animation are often very closely connected.
We added a very cool feature to our AI debugging toolset this month, that has already proven to be extremely useful in tracking down bugs. One problem is that in multi player matches the AI will be running on the server and when you see something weird on a client, it can be hard to get good information about what the AI is doing on the server, so you can figure out if the problem is on the server or the client. We now have the ability to capture information about the AI from the server, and then stream it in real time inside a client with 3D visualized debugging, so we can see immediately if there are any discrepancies between what is happening on the server and on the client.
Finally, we’ve been doing more design work on the persistent universe, along with some prototyping work to enable designers to start placing objects in the world that AI can interact with. And as always, no month would be complete without doing various other bugfixes and optimizations, improvements to our processes and all of those little things that aren’t very exciting, but are essential to making all the cool stuff possible!
Grüße Bürger,
Star Citizen wird immer größer! Im August gab es eine große Enthüllung auf der Gamescom, sowie Reisen nach Dragon*Con und PAX, um Star Citizen mit den Massen zu teilen! Auf der Entwicklungsseite haben wir enorme Fortschritte gemacht, vom First Person Shooter-Modul bis zum bald spielbaren Rennmodus! Was die einzelnen Studios von Star Citizen geleistet haben, erfahren Sie im Bericht dieses Monats, der unten verfügbar ist.
Travis Day, Produzentin
Grüße Bürger,
August war ein aufregender Monat für die Entwicklung von Star Citizen und Squadron 42! Auf unserer Veranstaltung in Köln, Deutschland, zeigten wir Gamecom und allen anderen auf der ganzen Welt in einem Livestream, woran wir für die Geldgeber gearbeitet haben. (Unten verfügbar!) Wir zeigten die neuen Schiffe und Spielmodi, die in der Version 0.9 von Arena Commander enthalten sind, neckte FPS, die auf der PAX Australia vorgeführt werden, und zeigte einige frühe Arbeiten zum Multicrew-Kampf mit einer Konstellation.
Wie immer sind diese Art von Live-Events für das Team sehr spannend, sowohl als Gelegenheit, ihre Arbeit der Community zu präsentieren, als auch als Gelegenheit für die Anwesenden, unsere Geldgeber persönlich zu treffen. Mit so vielen Menschen zusammen zu sein, die so begeistert sind von Star Citizen und Staffel 42 wie wir, ist wirklich belebend. Wir haben wirklich Glück, dass eine so engagierte Fangemeinde am Entwicklungsprozess teilnimmt und uns bei der Entwicklung dieses Spiels unterstützt. Also, vielen Dank an euch alle für eure Unterstützung!
Die Multicrew-Kampfdemo wurde von der Gruppe hier in Santa Monica mit etwas Unterstützung der Jungs in Austin zusammengestellt. Es erforderte viel harte Arbeit an verschiedenen Systemen, die die Grundlage für die Unterstützung von Multicrew-Schiffen für Arena Commander, Squadron 42 und schließlich das Persistent Universe bildeten. Zu diesem Zweck wollten wir Ihnen einige der zugrundeliegenden Technologien vorstellen, die in der Demo enthalten sind und die vielleicht beim Anschauen nicht ohne weiteres sichtbar sind.
Lokalisierte physikalische Netze. Klingt aufregend, oder? Nun, das ist es! Im Allgemeinen hat man in 3D-Spielen mit Physik das, was man sich vereinfacht als einen großen Würfel vorstellen kann, der die gesamte Karte, ein Gitter, umfasst. In diesem Würfel wird die Physik für jedes Objekt und jeden Spieler simuliert, bei dem die Physik relativ zu ihrer Position in diesem Gitter aktiv ist. Das ist es, was mit Kollisionen mit Objekten, Projektilphysik, etc. umgeht.
Probleme entstehen, wenn man Spieler frei (nicht geskriptet und nicht auf Schienen) in einem sich frei bewegenden Fahrzeug/Objekt bewegen lassen will. Dies liegt daran, dass dieses einzelne Physikgitter nur das Bewusstsein für jede Entität in der Ebene als Individuum hat und ihre Beziehungen zueinander nicht (standardmäßig) versteht. Dies manifestiert sich, wenn das Schiff z.B. in einer Konstellation beim Pitching und Gieren vorwärts fliegt. Leider betrachtet das globale Physikgitter dich und das Schiff als zwei getrennte Objekte ohne Beziehung und so neigt und giert es das Schiff, während es vorwärts bewegt wird, und behandelt den Spieler, als wäre nichts passiert. Als Spieler wirst du das Schiff sehen, das um dich herum giert, um dich herum wirft, und schließlich werden dich die Kollisionen mit ihm wie ein Flipper herumschleudern.
Hier kommt das lokalisierte Physikgitter ins Spiel! Es ermöglicht uns, mehrere kleinere Physikgitter innerhalb des größeren globalen Physikgitters zu haben. Das globale Gitter verfolgt jedes kleinere Gitter als Individuum und dieses kleinere Gitter verfolgt alle Objekte in ihm in Bezug auf das, woran es angeschlossen ist. Wo dies cool wird, ist, wenn man ein lokalisiertes Gitter an ein Schiff wie die Konstellation anbringt. Jetzt, wenn das Sternbild beim Fliegen die Stellungen und Gieren verändert, bleibt Ihre Spielerposition relativ zum Schiff, so dass Sie auch Stellungen, Gieren und Bewegungen in perfekter Übereinstimmung ausführen können. Dies ermöglicht es Schiffen, voll funktionsfähige Innenräume mit Charakteren zu haben, die herumlaufen, während das Schiff selbst durch den Raum sprengt und nahtlos manövriert. Die Fertigstellung dieser Arbeit war eine große Leistung und auch ein sehr grundlegendes Stück für SQ42 und Star Citizen auf lange Sicht.
Eine der anderen weiteren "unter der Haube" Dinge, die in die Demo gingen, war auf dem HUD. Eine der wichtigsten Funktionen für das HUD ist auf lange Sicht die Möglichkeit, seine Komponententeile zu trennen und zu unterteilen, so dass sie auf verschiedenen Bildschirmen angezeigt werden können, ihre Positionierung und Größe pro HUD und Player angepasst werden kann und direkt zu einer Textur für eine nahtlose Darstellung auf festen Bildschirmen gerendert wird. Alle diese Funktionen wurden dem System hinzugefügt, so dass wir in Zukunft besser in der Lage sein werden, die Anpassung des HUD sowohl auf der Entwicklungsseite als auch für Spieler, die ihr eigenes Visier-HUD anpassen möchten, zu unterstützen. Wir haben auch den ersten Schritt zur vollständigen Unterstützung von HUD-Elementen und deren Kontrolle zwischen den verschiedenen Sitzen in einem Mehrchraubensitz hinzugefügt. Das HUD ist etwas, worauf wir stolz sind, da es die Sache ist, die du den größten Teil des Spiels in seinem aktuellen Zustand sehen wirst. Es muss mehr Arbeit geleistet werden (es gibt sie immer), aber das Fundament ist da und jetzt müssen wir weiter verfeinern und optimieren, damit wir es noch großartiger machen können.
Die Gamescom ist hinter uns und wir freuen uns auf die nächste Gelegenheit, mehr vom Vers mit unseren Fans zu teilen. Citizen Con und PAX Australia sind am Horizont und wir freuen uns auf die neuen Herausforderungen, die dieses komplexe, aber lohnende Projekt mit sich bringt. Wie wir eingangs gesagt haben, ist es für unser gesamtes Team belebend, es macht die langen Nächte und die stressigen Zeiten wert. Star Citizen ist ein besonderes Spiel, die Leidenschaft und das Engagement unserer Community wird nicht nur geschätzt, sondern auch gefordert, um dieses Spiel zu verwirklichen.
Eric Peterson, Studio-Direktor
Guten Tag Bürger. Während die Sonne uns weiterhin zu einem knackigen in heißen Hades Austin Texas backt, haben sich unsere Entwicklungsteams angestrengt, um sicherzustellen, dass wir den Leuten in der ganzen Strophe eine großartige Erfahrung bieten. Es war ein erstaunlicher Monat, von der Vorbereitung unserer Show in Deutschland (immer einer meiner persönlichen Favoriten) bis zur Vorbereitung auf kommende Events wie CiitzenCon und Pax Australia. Wie die meisten Leute wissen, ist unser Büro mit der Aufgabe betraut, das persistente Universum und die Unterstützung von Backend-Servern zu betreuen und den Publishing-Bereich der CIG zu betreiben.
Hier ist, was die verschiedenen Abteilungen in Austin:
Kunst
Diesen Monat war das Kunstteam in Austin damit beschäftigt, bei mehreren verschiedenen Teilen von Star Citizen zu helfen. Wir hatten Schiffskünstler, die halfen, die M50- und Constellation-Varianten für GamesCom in Form zu bringen und die 350r für die bevorstehende Veröffentlichung vorzubereiten. Unsere Künstler im PU-Team entwickelten einige neue Konzepte und begannen mit der Entwicklung von Requisiten für unsere Missionen für das Persistente Universum sowie mit der Entwicklung von Sprungtoreffekten und Wettereffekten für unsere Standorte auf den Planeten.
Kinematiken
Veröffentlichung des Constellation Commercial bei der Gamescom. Arbeitet an zukünftigen Schiffswerbespots. Planung, Budgetierung und Scouting für Motion Capture und Performance Capture für Squadron 42 Kinofilme. Arbeiten an der Debugging-Pipeline für Gesichtsanimationen.
Animation
Beginn der Zusammenarbeit mit Sean Tracy zur Verbesserung der Animationspipeline und -ausführung. Durchführung eines Animationsworkshops, bei dem es darum ging, Probleme mit unserem Lokomotionsset zu identifizieren und zu verbessern, indem die 4D-Blendspace-Technologie in CryEngine eingesetzt wird. Erstellen eines neuen Skeletts und Rigs und Retargeting von Animationen zu diesem neuen Skelett sowie Lösen und Bearbeiten der Animationen aus dem Mocap-Shooting des letzten Monats. Unsere Charakterkünstler waren fleißig dabei, die Charaktere für den Constellation-Werbespot und die FPS-Demo bei PAX Australia zu entwickeln, und unser Animationsteam moderierte einige der Jungs bei[REDACTED], um einige neue Lokomotionssets für unsere Charaktere zu entwickeln.
Design
In diesem Monat konzentrierte sich das Austin-Designteam auf die Integration von Basissystemen in den Prototyp des persistenten Universums, den Übergang von der Oberfläche eines Planeten zum Hangar und dann zum Weltraum und die Verbindung von Systemen mit Sprungbrettern. Technische Designer haben die Bausätze für das Stadtinnere (und die Raumstationen) vervollständigt, um den Bau von Planetenumgebungen zu beschleunigen. In der Zwischenzeit hat das Team weitere Details zu anderen wichtigen Spielsystemen hinzugefügt, während sie sich der PU-Roadmap nähern.
Plattform/Veröffentlichung
Diesen Monat hat das Plattformteam den neuen Shop mit erstaunlich detaillierten und aktualisierten Schiffsstatistiken und vielen weiteren im Holoviewer verfügbaren Schiffen eröffnet! Darüber hinaus haben wir die Promotionen M50 und Constellation mit voller Statistik-, Storefront- und Holoviewer-Unterstützung eingeführt. Wir haben tonnenweise an Leaderboards gearbeitet und freuen uns darauf, diese sehr bald der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen. Und auch die Konzeptarbeit am neuen Starmap, der in einer aktuellen Stretch Goal-Umfrage als Fan-Favorit gewählt wurde, wurde vielfach abgeschlossen.
Programmierung
Diese Woche haben wir CryEngine 3.6.3 in unsere Codebasis integriert und im Team bereitgestellt. Das ist immer eine Herausforderung und bringt tendenziell neue Bugs mit sich, aber das war einer der besten Übergänge bis jetzt. Wir haben das Team auch auf Visual Studio 2012 mit dem wertvollen Support der IT-Abteilung umgestellt. Und wir haben weiter an der serverseitigen Persistenz und den damit verbundenen Arbeiten für das PU- und PU-Prototyping einschließlich Sternsystem-Layout gearbeitet. Wir setzten auch die Arbeit an Large World und verwandten Aufgaben fort und entwarfen und begannen die Arbeit an Movement Improvements einschließlich Dead Reckoning mit unserem Partner Wyrmbyte. Wir haben das Projectile Light Pooling abgeschlossen, wir haben grundlegende TrackIR-Unterstützung sowie andere VR-Fixes implementiert. Wir haben neue Versionen des Launcher mit Bugfixes und vielen Verbesserungen veröffentlicht. Wir haben auch 12.5.2 und 12.6 veröffentlicht und arbeiten weiter an der Version 13.0 oder .9, wie sie auch genannt wird.
Das und noch viel mehr ist es, was Austin diesen Monat vorhat, und wir werden weiterhin den Granit, der Star Citizen ist, abhacken und langsam die schöne Statue darunter enthüllen. Persönlich gesehen war es eine ziemliche Ehre, dieses Jahr so viele begeisterte Bürger auf der Gamescom zu treffen, und ich freue mich darauf, viele weitere auf unseren kommenden Veranstaltungen zu treffen, ich liebe es, in die Studios zurückzukehren und mit ihnen die Geschichten von der Begegnung mit Leuten zu teilen und ein Lachen oder eine gemeinsame Begeisterung für dieses großartige Chris Roberts Abenteuer zu teilen. Wir alle haben das große Glück, zu diesem Zeitpunkt an diesem Ort zu sein - und wir werden uns bemühen, dich immer stolz zu machen.
Erin Roberts, Studioleiterin
Hallo zusammen, August war ein gewaltiger Monat für uns bei Foundry 42. Wir haben viel Wert auf Release 13 und das Gamescom-Event gelegt und es war fantastisch, die Resonanz von eveyones auf das zu sehen, was wir dort gezeigt haben. Ich hatte die Möglichkeit, während meines Aufenthaltes in Köln mit einem Haufen der Community zu sprechen, und es hat mir wirklich Spaß gemacht, alle zu treffen, Feedback zu bekommen und Fragen zu beantworten. Das F42-Team tickt jetzt wirklich, und ihr werdet in den nächsten Monaten eine Menge neuer Inhalte und Gameplay sehen, ganz zu schweigen von unserer Arbeit an Squadron 42, die, obwohl wir noch nicht zeigen können, wirklich gut zusammenkommt. Wie immer muss man sich bei allen unseren Geldgebern bedanken, denn Star Citizen wäre ohne die Gemeinschaft, Ihr Feedback, Ihre Unterstützung und Energie nicht so besonders. Das ist es, was Star Citizen so besonders macht und wirklich jeden hier in der Entwicklung antreibt, um dieses erstaunliche Universum zu erschaffen.
Design
Die Entwicklung der Staffel 42 ging diesen Monat gut voran, wobei wir die Kampagne weiter aufschlüsseln und mehr Planung darauf verwenden, wie das "Heimat"-Schiff der Spieler eine ansprechende und glaubwürdige Drehscheibe für sie sein wird, mit der sie erkunden und interagieren können. Die vertikale Slice-Arbeit wird fortgesetzt und stellt viele Fragen, auf die wir uns bei der Beantwortung der zukünftigen Aufgaben konzentriert haben. Eine der Herausforderungen bei der Erstellung der "Story-Kampagne" besteht darin, sicherzustellen, dass wir das agile Gameplay beibehalten, ohne maßgeschneiderte Mechaniken einzuführen, die in der PU nicht verfügbar wären. Wir haben diesen Monat damit verbracht, herauszufinden, wie einige dieser Mechaniken im gesamten Spiel funktionieren werden (z.B. das Plündern von Gegenständen von Leichen).
Die Schiffspipeline läuft weiter, die Arbeiten an der Starfarer werden nun durchgeführt, andere Schiffe kommen noch gut voran. Ich habe jeden Monatsbericht darüber gelesen, aber ich kann es kaum erwarten, bis wir euch Jungs dazu bringen können, einige dieser größeren Schiffe im Spiel zu spielen, es verleiht allem eine ganz neue Dimension.
Die Arbeit des Arena Commander geht ebenfalls gut voran, da weitere Systeme online gehen und die Spielmodi verfeinert und verbessert werden. Du wirst das alles bald genug sehen, wenn wir dem nächsten Patch näher kommen.
Programmdirektor
Noch ein Monat und das große GamesCom-Event! Wenn Sie die Show gesehen haben, werden Sie all die Arbeit gesehen haben, die wir in die Zusammenstellung der Demonstration investiert haben, einschließlich der beiden neuen Spielmodi Murray Cup Racing und Vanduul Swarm Coop. Infolgedessen war es eine unserer problemloseren Präsentationen!
Seit GamesCom haben wir hart daran gearbeitet, diese beiden neuen Spielmodi zu verbessern, um sie so großartig wie möglich für ihre Einführung in die Community im Release 13 Update zu machen. Wir sind wirklich begeistert von den Fortschritten, die wir diesen Monat für Arena Commander gemacht haben, nicht nur von den neuen Spielmodi und auch von der stark verbesserten Audioqualität, HUD-Verbesserungen, Verbesserungen an der Steuerung (einschließlich 6 DoF!), Ranglisten und den üblichen Bugfixes und Polierungen.
Längerfristig machen wir große Fortschritte mit der Staffel 42, mit viel Unterstützung für die Designer bei unserer "vertikalen Scheibe". Wir sind auch damit beschäftigt, Fortschritte bei der Verbesserung der Einrichtung von Fahrzeugen zu erzielen, was nach Beginn der Arbeit an den größeren Fahrzeugen unerlässlich sein wird. Dazu gehört die weitere Arbeit an unserem neuen DataForge-Tool neben dem Start eines neuen Fahrzeugzustandsystems, das es ermöglicht, die Schiffseinrichtung wesentlich datenorientierter zu gestalten.
Insgesamt ein weiterer arbeitsreicher Monat!
Kunst
Das Kunstteam hat sich wieder vergrößert! Wir haben zwei Künstler in das Umweltteam aufgenommen und auch einen Lead Character Künstler und einen Lead VFX Künstler eingestellt.
Es wurden Konzeptarbeiten an den Innenräumen von Shubin, dem schweren Jäger Anvil F8, der Drohnenkabine im Bergbau, der Panther-Carrier Bridge und den Innenräumen von Javelin durchgeführt.
Das Umweltteam arbeitete auch hart und vervollständigte die New Horizons Map inklusive eines coolen Trailers für GamesCON - great work team!
Die Arbeiten an den Raumschiffen gehen weiter - Gladius, Vergelter und Gladiator sind alle in ihre Texturierungsphasen gegangen, auch die Innenräume von Idris, Javelin und Panther marschieren voran.
Unter anderem sind wir auch zurück zum Greyboxen des Shubin-Außenbereichs für die vertikale Scheibenebene gesprungen.
Die Animation war auch bei der Vorbereitung auf den VS und der Unterstützung der Staaten mit Arena Commander Korrekturen und Ergänzungen sehr arbeitsintensiv.
Audio
Es war der Monat der Gamescom und eine aufregende Zeit für alle Beteiligten! Team Audio hat seine Zeit aufgeteilt in Konstellationsdemo, Trailer-Sounddesign, Murray-Cup, Sounds für die neuen Schiffe und weitere Arbeiten am Audio im Allgemeinen. Dann nicht zu viel!
Als wir an der Gamescom vorbeiziehen, haben wir versucht, die letzten paar Bits in die Version 13 zu bekommen, bevor sie in die Wildnis entlassen wird. Dazu gehören Dinge wie UI-Sounds, die spielen, wenn man einen Gegner trifft (gutes Feedback!) und einige aktualisierte Boost-Sounds.
Der New Horizon Speedway hat einige Aufmerksamkeit erregt, zum Beispiel, wenn Sie durch den Tunnel in der Mitte der Karte fliegen, hören Sie, wie Luft an Ihnen vorbeizieht, die sich je nach Ihrer Geschwindigkeit moduliert.
In DFM 0.9 enthalten ist 'Trevor Basque', der offizielle Ansager für den Murray Cup. Wenn Sie um New Horizon herum rasen, werden Sie vielleicht feststellen, dass der Klang seiner Stimme tatsächlich an 3D-Positionen in der Umgebung wiedergegeben wird, als ob sie durch Lautsprecher wie bei einem echten Rennen gespielt würde! Der Verzögerungseffekt des PA-Systems ist eigentlich der Höhepunkt der Dialogzeilen, die von mehreren dieser Punkte aus abgespielt werden, wobei die Verzögerungszeit im Spiel aus der Entfernung berechnet wird, es handelt sich nicht nur um einen vorgefertigten Effekt! Danach möchten wir mit diesem System ein visuelles Gegenstück zum Spielobjekt hinzufügen, damit Sie den Lautsprecher sehen können, von dem die Sounds ausgehen. Die Schiffscomputerstimmen der Bitching Betty" werden ein ähnliches System innerhalb von Mehrbesatzungsschiffen verwenden.
Ein heißes Thema in der Community ist die Tatsache, dass Star Citizen Sound im Weltraum hat! Wie ist das möglich? Nun, es ist etwas, in das wir große Überlegungen einbringen und einfach ausgedrückt, Star Citizen hat keinen Klang im Raum....... Es hat einen simulierten Klang, der zu dir zurückgespielt wird, um dir zu helfen, dein Schiff besser zu steuern. In zukünftigen Beiträgen wird es mehr Details dazu geben und diese Methode wird in Zukunft im Spiel besser unterstützt. Hoffentlich beginnt dies, die Fragen zu beantworten, die die Menschen gestellt haben.
Das ist alles von den Sound-Leuten, es ist ein früher Tag für die Klanglandschaft von Star Citizen mit viel zu tun, bevor das letzte Spiel herauskommt, aber es ist toll, das Feedback der Community zu sehen, das wir bisher hatten.
Mathieu Beaulieu, Produzentin
Hier im sonnigen Montreal geht es ziemlich schnell.
Hangars!
Unser Team hat viel Zeit damit verbracht, die neuen Hangars zu debuggen und zu optimieren, um sie für die öffentliche Freigabe vorzubereiten. Wir haben auch damit begonnen, das Basislayout für die nächsten Planetenstandorte und Geschäfte für Arc Corp Area 18 und Terra Prime zu erstellen.
Das Flairobjekt des nächsten Monats ist fertig und wir bereiten uns jetzt auf das nächste vor.
Unsere Ingenieure waren damit beschäftigt, mit Werkzeugen zu helfen, die zur Besiedlung von Weltraumumgebungen mit verschiedenen Objekten verwendet werden, die wir schließlich für das Mission Prototyping benötigen werden. Sie haben auch Werkzeuge für unsere Designer und Leveldesigner entwickelt, um die Erstellung von Tags und Tagging-Anfragen zu erleichtern, die schließlich für viele In-Game-Systeme wie mobiGlas, Shops, KI, etc. verwendet werden.
Die Arbeiten für den Pausenmenü-Refaktor sind in vollem Gange, und wir gehen mit der Implementierung der Steuerungsanpassung sowie dem Prototyp des mG Scheduler für das Missionsmanagement voran. Mehrere weitere mobiGlas-Anwendungen wurden ebenfalls entwickelt, darunter mG Wear für die Anpassung von Avataren, mG Skyline für die Sternkarte und das mG Notification Center.
Schließlich hat die Audiotechnik mit den Änderungen der Pegel Schritt gehalten, bei Bedarf die Flair-Objekte geklungen und Speicher-Budgetprobleme bekämpft.
(Redigiert)
G'Day Bürger! Hat dir die Gamescom gefallen? Bist du mit deinen Connies zufrieden? Das hoffen wir sehr!
Ich bin sicher, dass ihr euch inzwischen alle bewusst sein müsst.... Das Geheimnis ist gelüftet. Die Bohnen wurden verschüttet. Die Katze ist aus dem Sack! Das ist richtig, [REDACTED] wird endlich etwas FPS-Gute bei PAX Australia zeigen!
Wir haben hart daran gearbeitet, die Dinge für das große Ereignis vorzubereiten. Wie Sie vielleicht an dem Teaser, der auf der Gamescom gezeigt wurde, bemerkt haben, kommt die Senderumgebung, an der wir gearbeitet haben, sehr gut zusammen. Weitere Requisiten kommen täglich online und werden der Umwelt hinzugefügt. Wir haben jetzt detaillierte Objekte, die die Kantine, das Sicherheitsbüro und den Schwerkraftkontrollraum füllen.... Zusammen mit all diesen Requisiten werden visuelle Effekte hinzugefügt, um ein starkes Gefühl von Atmosphäre zu vermitteln. Die Luft strömt beim Öffnen durch die Türen, Funken tröpfeln von kaputter Ausrüstung und Wasserspritzern (ihr scheint das wirklich zu genießen....), während die Spieler durch Pfützen auf dem Boden stürzen.
Die Ingenieure und Animatoren hier bei [REDACTED] machten einen kurzen Abstecher nach CiG Austin, um einige langjährige Animationsprobleme zu lösen. Wir haben jetzt ein neues Skelett und Rigg, mit dem wir arbeiten können, das die Animationen im Spiel erheblich verbessern und viele der Probleme beheben sollte, die wir hatten (und einige von denen, die du vielleicht in den Hangars erlebt hast).
Auf der technischen und Design-Seite haben wir uns von echten Nerf-Gun-Kämpfen zu In-Game-Playtests verlagert. Meiner persönlichen Meinung nach machen sie viel mehr Spaß, sind produktiver und weniger gefährlich! Diese Tests konzentrierten sich hauptsächlich auf die Verbesserung der Stabilität und die Behebung von Netzwerkproblemen, aber wir sind jetzt dabei, auf die Wiederholung von Gameplay und Balance umzustellen.
Ich möchte mich persönlich bei [REDACTED],[REDACTED],[REDACTED] und[REDACTED] für all ihre harte Arbeit und ihr Knirschen bedanken, um in kürzester Zeit einen tollen Gamescom Teaser-Trailer zusammenzustellen. Ich denke, jeder würde zustimmen, dass ihr Jungs einen echten Bombenjob gemacht habt und eine besondere Erwähnung verdient habt.
Abschließend möchte ich einem unerwarteten Gast, den wir letzten Monat hatten, einen Schrei aussprechen. Super Star Bürger Wulf Knight entdeckte irgendwie unsere wahre Identität (bist du ein Zauberer?!), kam vorbei, um das Team zu treffen, und fütterte dann das gesamte Büro mit Pizza! Von allen hier, danke für die Larve Wulf!
P.S. - Sind Sie Bürger, die alle für Ranglisten aufgepeppt sind, wie ich es bin? Ich sehe dich in der Rangliste, mein Griff ist[REDAKTIERT]!
Turbulent
Benoit Beauséjour, Gründer und Gründer
Im August dieses Jahres war das Platform-Team überall präsent, um die Website auf ihr volles Potenzial zu bringen und gleichzeitig ihre Zukunft zu gestalten.
August Veranstaltungen und der Schiffskatalog
Natürlich war August der Monat, in dem wir den neuen Schiffskatalog offiziell veröffentlicht haben und das, was wir den "Store Revamp" nannten. Wir haben den gesamten Store neu organisiert, um die Navigation zu erleichtern und ihn gleichzeitig mit den Spieldaten in jedem Schritt zu verzahnen. Der neue Ships-Katalog ist der erste Baustein zu einer vollständigen und gründlichen Galactapedia, die Ihnen Zugang zu riesigen Datenmengen direkt aus dem Spiel bietet.
Sie haben vielleicht bemerkt, dass dieser letzte Monat sehr reich an Ereignissen war. Gamescom, die Aufstellung von Constellation, DragonCon, die zerbrochene 50-Millionen-Schwelle.... Das waren alles perfekte Gelegenheiten, um die gesamte Website zu einem besseren Erlebnis für alle zu machen, einen Schritt nach dem anderen. Wir haben die Art und Weise, wie der Shop mit Flash-Verkäufen umgehen kann, verfeinert, den Chat für Veranstaltungen mit hohem Traffic stabilisiert.... und insgesamt viele Unebenheiten auf der Website beseitigt.
Wir haben den neuen Schiffskatalog genutzt, um seine zentralisierten Daten flächendeckend verfügbar zu machen: In der Constellation-Linie entstanden Comm-Links mit Stats und Holo-Viewern, die nie veraltet sein werden. Die überwältigend positive Resonanz der Community war ein großer Einfluss auf uns, um Sie, die Spieler, noch weiter in das Star Citizen Universe einzutauchen, sobald Sie die Website besuchen.
Starmap, Leaderboards und zukünftige Projekte
Nach dem neuen Store und Catalog Release legen wir nun den Grundstein für die Gestaltung der Website für die nächsten Monate. Die Gemeinschaft hat gesprochen, so dass die webbasierte Starmap Gestalt annimmt. Noch im frühen Konzept, machen wir daraus den zweiten Baustein von Galactapedia. Aber es wird sein eigenes komplettes Feature sein, und wir können es kaum erwarten, mit Ihnen zu teilen, was wir dafür auf Lager haben.
Wir haben auch an der Entwicklung des ersten Arena Commander Leaderboards Moduls gearbeitet. Die Daten aus allen verfügbaren Spielmodi zu sammeln, Daten für Benutzer UND Organisationen zusammenzustellen und diese riesige Datenmenge so darzustellen, dass die Spieler sich mit anderen messen, ihren Fortschritt quantifizieren und sogar vielversprechende Spieler in ihre Orgs aufnehmen können, ist eine schöne Herausforderung, der wir uns gerne stellen. Du wirst nicht lange warten müssen, bis du es tatsächlich siehst, also bleib dran!
Schon bald können Sie auch direkt aus dem Web den Hangar auswählen, den Sie im Hangarmodul sehen möchten und welche Schiffe Sie anzeigen möchten. Das war in letzter Zeit ein weiterer Schwerpunkt, so dass Sie diese schönen 4 neuen Hangars voll genießen können!
Natürlich wird auch weiterhin an der Konzeptarbeit für Organizations Drop Two gearbeitet. Es ist schon eine Weile her, und die Produktion dazu wird in Kürze beginnen.
Voller Herausforderungen und großer Überraschungen war dies ein arbeitsreicher Monat, und vor allem ein vielversprechender!
Matthew Jack, Gründer und Gründer
August war ein großer Monat für alle Star Citizen-Teams, und Moon Collider war sicherlich keine Ausnahme. Mit einer bevorstehenden großen Demo sowie einer wichtigen neuen Version, auf die man sich vorbereiten musste, gab es viel Arbeit zu erledigen.
Ihr alle habt natürlich die Gamescom-Demo und damit die Ankündigung des Vanduul Swarm Coop-Modus gesehen. Wir haben einige Arbeit geleistet, um sicherzustellen, dass sich die KI in einer Multiplayer-Umgebung gut verhält, aber insgesamt waren wir sehr erfreut, dass die KI den Übergang recht reibungslos abgewickelt hat, und es gab nicht allzu viele Probleme zu lösen. Dies ist ein großartiger Spielmodus, und wir freuen uns darauf, von der Community zu hören, wie wir die KI optimieren und verbessern können, um sie noch besser zu machen.
Wir haben auch einige Arbeiten am Vanduul Swarm Singleplayer für die Version 0.9 von Arena Commander durchgeführt, die wir für eine große Verbesserung halten. Wir haben viel Feedback darüber erhalten, wie man das Verhalten von Teamkollegen verbessern kann, und insbesondere die Leute wollen, dass sie eine bessere Arbeit leisten, um dich zu vermeiden. Also haben wir ihr Vermeidungsverhalten verbessert und jetzt sollten sie dir einen größeren Platz einräumen. Wir sind gespannt auf das Feedback der Community, wie effektiv diese Veränderung ist. Es gab auch einige Optimierungen an allen KI-Schiffen aufgrund der Geschwindigkeitssteigerungen in der neuen Version, und wir erwarten, dass wir weitere Optimierungen vornehmen werden, da wir von Ihnen Feedback darüber erhalten, was funktioniert und was nicht.
An der Kampffront des FÖD haben wir weiterhin an den Wahrnehmungsfähigkeiten der KI gearbeitet. Es gab auch einige Probleme mit der Animation der KI, die sie dazu brachten, Schwierigkeiten zu haben, auf den Spieler zu zielen und sich beim Flankenwechsel richtig umdrehen zu können, aber wir haben diese Probleme gelöst und die KI ist dadurch viel effektiver. Es war ein gutes Beispiel dafür, wie KI und Animation oft sehr eng miteinander verbunden sind.
Wir haben diesen Monat unserem KI-Debugging-Toolset ein sehr cooles Feature hinzugefügt, das sich bereits als äußerst nützlich beim Aufspüren von Bugs erwiesen hat. Ein Problem ist, dass in Multiplayer-Matches die KI auf dem Server laufen wird und wenn Sie etwas Seltsames auf einem Client sehen, kann es schwierig sein, gute Informationen darüber zu erhalten, was die KI auf dem Server macht, so dass Sie herausfinden können, ob das Problem auf dem Server oder dem Client liegt. Wir haben jetzt die Möglichkeit, Informationen über die KI vom Server zu erfassen und sie dann in Echtzeit innerhalb eines Clients mit 3D-visuellem Debugging zu streamen, so dass wir sofort sehen können, ob es Diskrepanzen zwischen dem, was auf dem Server und auf dem Client geschieht, gibt.
Schließlich haben wir mehr Designarbeit am persistenten Universum geleistet, zusammen mit einigen Prototypingarbeiten, die es Designern ermöglichen, Objekte in der Welt zu platzieren, mit denen die KI interagieren kann. Und wie immer wäre kein Monat komplett ohne diverse andere Bugfixes und Optimierungen, Verbesserungen unserer Prozesse und all die kleinen Dinge, die nicht sehr aufregend sind, aber unerlässlich, um all die coolen Dinge möglich zu machen!
Star Citizen wird immer größer! Im August gab es eine große Enthüllung auf der Gamescom, sowie Reisen nach Dragon*Con und PAX, um Star Citizen mit den Massen zu teilen! Auf der Entwicklungsseite haben wir enorme Fortschritte gemacht, vom First Person Shooter-Modul bis zum bald spielbaren Rennmodus! Was die einzelnen Studios von Star Citizen geleistet haben, erfahren Sie im Bericht dieses Monats, der unten verfügbar ist.
Travis Day, Produzentin
Grüße Bürger,
August war ein aufregender Monat für die Entwicklung von Star Citizen und Squadron 42! Auf unserer Veranstaltung in Köln, Deutschland, zeigten wir Gamecom und allen anderen auf der ganzen Welt in einem Livestream, woran wir für die Geldgeber gearbeitet haben. (Unten verfügbar!) Wir zeigten die neuen Schiffe und Spielmodi, die in der Version 0.9 von Arena Commander enthalten sind, neckte FPS, die auf der PAX Australia vorgeführt werden, und zeigte einige frühe Arbeiten zum Multicrew-Kampf mit einer Konstellation.
Wie immer sind diese Art von Live-Events für das Team sehr spannend, sowohl als Gelegenheit, ihre Arbeit der Community zu präsentieren, als auch als Gelegenheit für die Anwesenden, unsere Geldgeber persönlich zu treffen. Mit so vielen Menschen zusammen zu sein, die so begeistert sind von Star Citizen und Staffel 42 wie wir, ist wirklich belebend. Wir haben wirklich Glück, dass eine so engagierte Fangemeinde am Entwicklungsprozess teilnimmt und uns bei der Entwicklung dieses Spiels unterstützt. Also, vielen Dank an euch alle für eure Unterstützung!
Die Multicrew-Kampfdemo wurde von der Gruppe hier in Santa Monica mit etwas Unterstützung der Jungs in Austin zusammengestellt. Es erforderte viel harte Arbeit an verschiedenen Systemen, die die Grundlage für die Unterstützung von Multicrew-Schiffen für Arena Commander, Squadron 42 und schließlich das Persistent Universe bildeten. Zu diesem Zweck wollten wir Ihnen einige der zugrundeliegenden Technologien vorstellen, die in der Demo enthalten sind und die vielleicht beim Anschauen nicht ohne weiteres sichtbar sind.
Lokalisierte physikalische Netze. Klingt aufregend, oder? Nun, das ist es! Im Allgemeinen hat man in 3D-Spielen mit Physik das, was man sich vereinfacht als einen großen Würfel vorstellen kann, der die gesamte Karte, ein Gitter, umfasst. In diesem Würfel wird die Physik für jedes Objekt und jeden Spieler simuliert, bei dem die Physik relativ zu ihrer Position in diesem Gitter aktiv ist. Das ist es, was mit Kollisionen mit Objekten, Projektilphysik, etc. umgeht.
Probleme entstehen, wenn man Spieler frei (nicht geskriptet und nicht auf Schienen) in einem sich frei bewegenden Fahrzeug/Objekt bewegen lassen will. Dies liegt daran, dass dieses einzelne Physikgitter nur das Bewusstsein für jede Entität in der Ebene als Individuum hat und ihre Beziehungen zueinander nicht (standardmäßig) versteht. Dies manifestiert sich, wenn das Schiff z.B. in einer Konstellation beim Pitching und Gieren vorwärts fliegt. Leider betrachtet das globale Physikgitter dich und das Schiff als zwei getrennte Objekte ohne Beziehung und so neigt und giert es das Schiff, während es vorwärts bewegt wird, und behandelt den Spieler, als wäre nichts passiert. Als Spieler wirst du das Schiff sehen, das um dich herum giert, um dich herum wirft, und schließlich werden dich die Kollisionen mit ihm wie ein Flipper herumschleudern.
Hier kommt das lokalisierte Physikgitter ins Spiel! Es ermöglicht uns, mehrere kleinere Physikgitter innerhalb des größeren globalen Physikgitters zu haben. Das globale Gitter verfolgt jedes kleinere Gitter als Individuum und dieses kleinere Gitter verfolgt alle Objekte in ihm in Bezug auf das, woran es angeschlossen ist. Wo dies cool wird, ist, wenn man ein lokalisiertes Gitter an ein Schiff wie die Konstellation anbringt. Jetzt, wenn das Sternbild beim Fliegen die Stellungen und Gieren verändert, bleibt Ihre Spielerposition relativ zum Schiff, so dass Sie auch Stellungen, Gieren und Bewegungen in perfekter Übereinstimmung ausführen können. Dies ermöglicht es Schiffen, voll funktionsfähige Innenräume mit Charakteren zu haben, die herumlaufen, während das Schiff selbst durch den Raum sprengt und nahtlos manövriert. Die Fertigstellung dieser Arbeit war eine große Leistung und auch ein sehr grundlegendes Stück für SQ42 und Star Citizen auf lange Sicht.
Eine der anderen weiteren "unter der Haube" Dinge, die in die Demo gingen, war auf dem HUD. Eine der wichtigsten Funktionen für das HUD ist auf lange Sicht die Möglichkeit, seine Komponententeile zu trennen und zu unterteilen, so dass sie auf verschiedenen Bildschirmen angezeigt werden können, ihre Positionierung und Größe pro HUD und Player angepasst werden kann und direkt zu einer Textur für eine nahtlose Darstellung auf festen Bildschirmen gerendert wird. Alle diese Funktionen wurden dem System hinzugefügt, so dass wir in Zukunft besser in der Lage sein werden, die Anpassung des HUD sowohl auf der Entwicklungsseite als auch für Spieler, die ihr eigenes Visier-HUD anpassen möchten, zu unterstützen. Wir haben auch den ersten Schritt zur vollständigen Unterstützung von HUD-Elementen und deren Kontrolle zwischen den verschiedenen Sitzen in einem Mehrchraubensitz hinzugefügt. Das HUD ist etwas, worauf wir stolz sind, da es die Sache ist, die du den größten Teil des Spiels in seinem aktuellen Zustand sehen wirst. Es muss mehr Arbeit geleistet werden (es gibt sie immer), aber das Fundament ist da und jetzt müssen wir weiter verfeinern und optimieren, damit wir es noch großartiger machen können.
Die Gamescom ist hinter uns und wir freuen uns auf die nächste Gelegenheit, mehr vom Vers mit unseren Fans zu teilen. Citizen Con und PAX Australia sind am Horizont und wir freuen uns auf die neuen Herausforderungen, die dieses komplexe, aber lohnende Projekt mit sich bringt. Wie wir eingangs gesagt haben, ist es für unser gesamtes Team belebend, es macht die langen Nächte und die stressigen Zeiten wert. Star Citizen ist ein besonderes Spiel, die Leidenschaft und das Engagement unserer Community wird nicht nur geschätzt, sondern auch gefordert, um dieses Spiel zu verwirklichen.
Eric Peterson, Studio-Direktor
Guten Tag Bürger. Während die Sonne uns weiterhin zu einem knackigen in heißen Hades Austin Texas backt, haben sich unsere Entwicklungsteams angestrengt, um sicherzustellen, dass wir den Leuten in der ganzen Strophe eine großartige Erfahrung bieten. Es war ein erstaunlicher Monat, von der Vorbereitung unserer Show in Deutschland (immer einer meiner persönlichen Favoriten) bis zur Vorbereitung auf kommende Events wie CiitzenCon und Pax Australia. Wie die meisten Leute wissen, ist unser Büro mit der Aufgabe betraut, das persistente Universum und die Unterstützung von Backend-Servern zu betreuen und den Publishing-Bereich der CIG zu betreiben.
Hier ist, was die verschiedenen Abteilungen in Austin:
Kunst
Diesen Monat war das Kunstteam in Austin damit beschäftigt, bei mehreren verschiedenen Teilen von Star Citizen zu helfen. Wir hatten Schiffskünstler, die halfen, die M50- und Constellation-Varianten für GamesCom in Form zu bringen und die 350r für die bevorstehende Veröffentlichung vorzubereiten. Unsere Künstler im PU-Team entwickelten einige neue Konzepte und begannen mit der Entwicklung von Requisiten für unsere Missionen für das Persistente Universum sowie mit der Entwicklung von Sprungtoreffekten und Wettereffekten für unsere Standorte auf den Planeten.
Kinematiken
Veröffentlichung des Constellation Commercial bei der Gamescom. Arbeitet an zukünftigen Schiffswerbespots. Planung, Budgetierung und Scouting für Motion Capture und Performance Capture für Squadron 42 Kinofilme. Arbeiten an der Debugging-Pipeline für Gesichtsanimationen.
Animation
Beginn der Zusammenarbeit mit Sean Tracy zur Verbesserung der Animationspipeline und -ausführung. Durchführung eines Animationsworkshops, bei dem es darum ging, Probleme mit unserem Lokomotionsset zu identifizieren und zu verbessern, indem die 4D-Blendspace-Technologie in CryEngine eingesetzt wird. Erstellen eines neuen Skeletts und Rigs und Retargeting von Animationen zu diesem neuen Skelett sowie Lösen und Bearbeiten der Animationen aus dem Mocap-Shooting des letzten Monats. Unsere Charakterkünstler waren fleißig dabei, die Charaktere für den Constellation-Werbespot und die FPS-Demo bei PAX Australia zu entwickeln, und unser Animationsteam moderierte einige der Jungs bei[REDACTED], um einige neue Lokomotionssets für unsere Charaktere zu entwickeln.
Design
In diesem Monat konzentrierte sich das Austin-Designteam auf die Integration von Basissystemen in den Prototyp des persistenten Universums, den Übergang von der Oberfläche eines Planeten zum Hangar und dann zum Weltraum und die Verbindung von Systemen mit Sprungbrettern. Technische Designer haben die Bausätze für das Stadtinnere (und die Raumstationen) vervollständigt, um den Bau von Planetenumgebungen zu beschleunigen. In der Zwischenzeit hat das Team weitere Details zu anderen wichtigen Spielsystemen hinzugefügt, während sie sich der PU-Roadmap nähern.
Plattform/Veröffentlichung
Diesen Monat hat das Plattformteam den neuen Shop mit erstaunlich detaillierten und aktualisierten Schiffsstatistiken und vielen weiteren im Holoviewer verfügbaren Schiffen eröffnet! Darüber hinaus haben wir die Promotionen M50 und Constellation mit voller Statistik-, Storefront- und Holoviewer-Unterstützung eingeführt. Wir haben tonnenweise an Leaderboards gearbeitet und freuen uns darauf, diese sehr bald der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen. Und auch die Konzeptarbeit am neuen Starmap, der in einer aktuellen Stretch Goal-Umfrage als Fan-Favorit gewählt wurde, wurde vielfach abgeschlossen.
Programmierung
Diese Woche haben wir CryEngine 3.6.3 in unsere Codebasis integriert und im Team bereitgestellt. Das ist immer eine Herausforderung und bringt tendenziell neue Bugs mit sich, aber das war einer der besten Übergänge bis jetzt. Wir haben das Team auch auf Visual Studio 2012 mit dem wertvollen Support der IT-Abteilung umgestellt. Und wir haben weiter an der serverseitigen Persistenz und den damit verbundenen Arbeiten für das PU- und PU-Prototyping einschließlich Sternsystem-Layout gearbeitet. Wir setzten auch die Arbeit an Large World und verwandten Aufgaben fort und entwarfen und begannen die Arbeit an Movement Improvements einschließlich Dead Reckoning mit unserem Partner Wyrmbyte. Wir haben das Projectile Light Pooling abgeschlossen, wir haben grundlegende TrackIR-Unterstützung sowie andere VR-Fixes implementiert. Wir haben neue Versionen des Launcher mit Bugfixes und vielen Verbesserungen veröffentlicht. Wir haben auch 12.5.2 und 12.6 veröffentlicht und arbeiten weiter an der Version 13.0 oder .9, wie sie auch genannt wird.
Das und noch viel mehr ist es, was Austin diesen Monat vorhat, und wir werden weiterhin den Granit, der Star Citizen ist, abhacken und langsam die schöne Statue darunter enthüllen. Persönlich gesehen war es eine ziemliche Ehre, dieses Jahr so viele begeisterte Bürger auf der Gamescom zu treffen, und ich freue mich darauf, viele weitere auf unseren kommenden Veranstaltungen zu treffen, ich liebe es, in die Studios zurückzukehren und mit ihnen die Geschichten von der Begegnung mit Leuten zu teilen und ein Lachen oder eine gemeinsame Begeisterung für dieses großartige Chris Roberts Abenteuer zu teilen. Wir alle haben das große Glück, zu diesem Zeitpunkt an diesem Ort zu sein - und wir werden uns bemühen, dich immer stolz zu machen.
Erin Roberts, Studioleiterin
Hallo zusammen, August war ein gewaltiger Monat für uns bei Foundry 42. Wir haben viel Wert auf Release 13 und das Gamescom-Event gelegt und es war fantastisch, die Resonanz von eveyones auf das zu sehen, was wir dort gezeigt haben. Ich hatte die Möglichkeit, während meines Aufenthaltes in Köln mit einem Haufen der Community zu sprechen, und es hat mir wirklich Spaß gemacht, alle zu treffen, Feedback zu bekommen und Fragen zu beantworten. Das F42-Team tickt jetzt wirklich, und ihr werdet in den nächsten Monaten eine Menge neuer Inhalte und Gameplay sehen, ganz zu schweigen von unserer Arbeit an Squadron 42, die, obwohl wir noch nicht zeigen können, wirklich gut zusammenkommt. Wie immer muss man sich bei allen unseren Geldgebern bedanken, denn Star Citizen wäre ohne die Gemeinschaft, Ihr Feedback, Ihre Unterstützung und Energie nicht so besonders. Das ist es, was Star Citizen so besonders macht und wirklich jeden hier in der Entwicklung antreibt, um dieses erstaunliche Universum zu erschaffen.
Design
Die Entwicklung der Staffel 42 ging diesen Monat gut voran, wobei wir die Kampagne weiter aufschlüsseln und mehr Planung darauf verwenden, wie das "Heimat"-Schiff der Spieler eine ansprechende und glaubwürdige Drehscheibe für sie sein wird, mit der sie erkunden und interagieren können. Die vertikale Slice-Arbeit wird fortgesetzt und stellt viele Fragen, auf die wir uns bei der Beantwortung der zukünftigen Aufgaben konzentriert haben. Eine der Herausforderungen bei der Erstellung der "Story-Kampagne" besteht darin, sicherzustellen, dass wir das agile Gameplay beibehalten, ohne maßgeschneiderte Mechaniken einzuführen, die in der PU nicht verfügbar wären. Wir haben diesen Monat damit verbracht, herauszufinden, wie einige dieser Mechaniken im gesamten Spiel funktionieren werden (z.B. das Plündern von Gegenständen von Leichen).
Die Schiffspipeline läuft weiter, die Arbeiten an der Starfarer werden nun durchgeführt, andere Schiffe kommen noch gut voran. Ich habe jeden Monatsbericht darüber gelesen, aber ich kann es kaum erwarten, bis wir euch Jungs dazu bringen können, einige dieser größeren Schiffe im Spiel zu spielen, es verleiht allem eine ganz neue Dimension.
Die Arbeit des Arena Commander geht ebenfalls gut voran, da weitere Systeme online gehen und die Spielmodi verfeinert und verbessert werden. Du wirst das alles bald genug sehen, wenn wir dem nächsten Patch näher kommen.
Programmdirektor
Noch ein Monat und das große GamesCom-Event! Wenn Sie die Show gesehen haben, werden Sie all die Arbeit gesehen haben, die wir in die Zusammenstellung der Demonstration investiert haben, einschließlich der beiden neuen Spielmodi Murray Cup Racing und Vanduul Swarm Coop. Infolgedessen war es eine unserer problemloseren Präsentationen!
Seit GamesCom haben wir hart daran gearbeitet, diese beiden neuen Spielmodi zu verbessern, um sie so großartig wie möglich für ihre Einführung in die Community im Release 13 Update zu machen. Wir sind wirklich begeistert von den Fortschritten, die wir diesen Monat für Arena Commander gemacht haben, nicht nur von den neuen Spielmodi und auch von der stark verbesserten Audioqualität, HUD-Verbesserungen, Verbesserungen an der Steuerung (einschließlich 6 DoF!), Ranglisten und den üblichen Bugfixes und Polierungen.
Längerfristig machen wir große Fortschritte mit der Staffel 42, mit viel Unterstützung für die Designer bei unserer "vertikalen Scheibe". Wir sind auch damit beschäftigt, Fortschritte bei der Verbesserung der Einrichtung von Fahrzeugen zu erzielen, was nach Beginn der Arbeit an den größeren Fahrzeugen unerlässlich sein wird. Dazu gehört die weitere Arbeit an unserem neuen DataForge-Tool neben dem Start eines neuen Fahrzeugzustandsystems, das es ermöglicht, die Schiffseinrichtung wesentlich datenorientierter zu gestalten.
Insgesamt ein weiterer arbeitsreicher Monat!
Kunst
Das Kunstteam hat sich wieder vergrößert! Wir haben zwei Künstler in das Umweltteam aufgenommen und auch einen Lead Character Künstler und einen Lead VFX Künstler eingestellt.
Es wurden Konzeptarbeiten an den Innenräumen von Shubin, dem schweren Jäger Anvil F8, der Drohnenkabine im Bergbau, der Panther-Carrier Bridge und den Innenräumen von Javelin durchgeführt.
Das Umweltteam arbeitete auch hart und vervollständigte die New Horizons Map inklusive eines coolen Trailers für GamesCON - great work team!
Die Arbeiten an den Raumschiffen gehen weiter - Gladius, Vergelter und Gladiator sind alle in ihre Texturierungsphasen gegangen, auch die Innenräume von Idris, Javelin und Panther marschieren voran.
Unter anderem sind wir auch zurück zum Greyboxen des Shubin-Außenbereichs für die vertikale Scheibenebene gesprungen.
Die Animation war auch bei der Vorbereitung auf den VS und der Unterstützung der Staaten mit Arena Commander Korrekturen und Ergänzungen sehr arbeitsintensiv.
Audio
Es war der Monat der Gamescom und eine aufregende Zeit für alle Beteiligten! Team Audio hat seine Zeit aufgeteilt in Konstellationsdemo, Trailer-Sounddesign, Murray-Cup, Sounds für die neuen Schiffe und weitere Arbeiten am Audio im Allgemeinen. Dann nicht zu viel!
Als wir an der Gamescom vorbeiziehen, haben wir versucht, die letzten paar Bits in die Version 13 zu bekommen, bevor sie in die Wildnis entlassen wird. Dazu gehören Dinge wie UI-Sounds, die spielen, wenn man einen Gegner trifft (gutes Feedback!) und einige aktualisierte Boost-Sounds.
Der New Horizon Speedway hat einige Aufmerksamkeit erregt, zum Beispiel, wenn Sie durch den Tunnel in der Mitte der Karte fliegen, hören Sie, wie Luft an Ihnen vorbeizieht, die sich je nach Ihrer Geschwindigkeit moduliert.
In DFM 0.9 enthalten ist 'Trevor Basque', der offizielle Ansager für den Murray Cup. Wenn Sie um New Horizon herum rasen, werden Sie vielleicht feststellen, dass der Klang seiner Stimme tatsächlich an 3D-Positionen in der Umgebung wiedergegeben wird, als ob sie durch Lautsprecher wie bei einem echten Rennen gespielt würde! Der Verzögerungseffekt des PA-Systems ist eigentlich der Höhepunkt der Dialogzeilen, die von mehreren dieser Punkte aus abgespielt werden, wobei die Verzögerungszeit im Spiel aus der Entfernung berechnet wird, es handelt sich nicht nur um einen vorgefertigten Effekt! Danach möchten wir mit diesem System ein visuelles Gegenstück zum Spielobjekt hinzufügen, damit Sie den Lautsprecher sehen können, von dem die Sounds ausgehen. Die Schiffscomputerstimmen der Bitching Betty" werden ein ähnliches System innerhalb von Mehrbesatzungsschiffen verwenden.
Ein heißes Thema in der Community ist die Tatsache, dass Star Citizen Sound im Weltraum hat! Wie ist das möglich? Nun, es ist etwas, in das wir große Überlegungen einbringen und einfach ausgedrückt, Star Citizen hat keinen Klang im Raum....... Es hat einen simulierten Klang, der zu dir zurückgespielt wird, um dir zu helfen, dein Schiff besser zu steuern. In zukünftigen Beiträgen wird es mehr Details dazu geben und diese Methode wird in Zukunft im Spiel besser unterstützt. Hoffentlich beginnt dies, die Fragen zu beantworten, die die Menschen gestellt haben.
Das ist alles von den Sound-Leuten, es ist ein früher Tag für die Klanglandschaft von Star Citizen mit viel zu tun, bevor das letzte Spiel herauskommt, aber es ist toll, das Feedback der Community zu sehen, das wir bisher hatten.
Mathieu Beaulieu, Produzentin
Hier im sonnigen Montreal geht es ziemlich schnell.
Hangars!
Unser Team hat viel Zeit damit verbracht, die neuen Hangars zu debuggen und zu optimieren, um sie für die öffentliche Freigabe vorzubereiten. Wir haben auch damit begonnen, das Basislayout für die nächsten Planetenstandorte und Geschäfte für Arc Corp Area 18 und Terra Prime zu erstellen.
Das Flairobjekt des nächsten Monats ist fertig und wir bereiten uns jetzt auf das nächste vor.
Unsere Ingenieure waren damit beschäftigt, mit Werkzeugen zu helfen, die zur Besiedlung von Weltraumumgebungen mit verschiedenen Objekten verwendet werden, die wir schließlich für das Mission Prototyping benötigen werden. Sie haben auch Werkzeuge für unsere Designer und Leveldesigner entwickelt, um die Erstellung von Tags und Tagging-Anfragen zu erleichtern, die schließlich für viele In-Game-Systeme wie mobiGlas, Shops, KI, etc. verwendet werden.
Die Arbeiten für den Pausenmenü-Refaktor sind in vollem Gange, und wir gehen mit der Implementierung der Steuerungsanpassung sowie dem Prototyp des mG Scheduler für das Missionsmanagement voran. Mehrere weitere mobiGlas-Anwendungen wurden ebenfalls entwickelt, darunter mG Wear für die Anpassung von Avataren, mG Skyline für die Sternkarte und das mG Notification Center.
Schließlich hat die Audiotechnik mit den Änderungen der Pegel Schritt gehalten, bei Bedarf die Flair-Objekte geklungen und Speicher-Budgetprobleme bekämpft.
(Redigiert)
G'Day Bürger! Hat dir die Gamescom gefallen? Bist du mit deinen Connies zufrieden? Das hoffen wir sehr!
Ich bin sicher, dass ihr euch inzwischen alle bewusst sein müsst.... Das Geheimnis ist gelüftet. Die Bohnen wurden verschüttet. Die Katze ist aus dem Sack! Das ist richtig, [REDACTED] wird endlich etwas FPS-Gute bei PAX Australia zeigen!
Wir haben hart daran gearbeitet, die Dinge für das große Ereignis vorzubereiten. Wie Sie vielleicht an dem Teaser, der auf der Gamescom gezeigt wurde, bemerkt haben, kommt die Senderumgebung, an der wir gearbeitet haben, sehr gut zusammen. Weitere Requisiten kommen täglich online und werden der Umwelt hinzugefügt. Wir haben jetzt detaillierte Objekte, die die Kantine, das Sicherheitsbüro und den Schwerkraftkontrollraum füllen.... Zusammen mit all diesen Requisiten werden visuelle Effekte hinzugefügt, um ein starkes Gefühl von Atmosphäre zu vermitteln. Die Luft strömt beim Öffnen durch die Türen, Funken tröpfeln von kaputter Ausrüstung und Wasserspritzern (ihr scheint das wirklich zu genießen....), während die Spieler durch Pfützen auf dem Boden stürzen.
Die Ingenieure und Animatoren hier bei [REDACTED] machten einen kurzen Abstecher nach CiG Austin, um einige langjährige Animationsprobleme zu lösen. Wir haben jetzt ein neues Skelett und Rigg, mit dem wir arbeiten können, das die Animationen im Spiel erheblich verbessern und viele der Probleme beheben sollte, die wir hatten (und einige von denen, die du vielleicht in den Hangars erlebt hast).
Auf der technischen und Design-Seite haben wir uns von echten Nerf-Gun-Kämpfen zu In-Game-Playtests verlagert. Meiner persönlichen Meinung nach machen sie viel mehr Spaß, sind produktiver und weniger gefährlich! Diese Tests konzentrierten sich hauptsächlich auf die Verbesserung der Stabilität und die Behebung von Netzwerkproblemen, aber wir sind jetzt dabei, auf die Wiederholung von Gameplay und Balance umzustellen.
Ich möchte mich persönlich bei [REDACTED],[REDACTED],[REDACTED] und[REDACTED] für all ihre harte Arbeit und ihr Knirschen bedanken, um in kürzester Zeit einen tollen Gamescom Teaser-Trailer zusammenzustellen. Ich denke, jeder würde zustimmen, dass ihr Jungs einen echten Bombenjob gemacht habt und eine besondere Erwähnung verdient habt.
Abschließend möchte ich einem unerwarteten Gast, den wir letzten Monat hatten, einen Schrei aussprechen. Super Star Bürger Wulf Knight entdeckte irgendwie unsere wahre Identität (bist du ein Zauberer?!), kam vorbei, um das Team zu treffen, und fütterte dann das gesamte Büro mit Pizza! Von allen hier, danke für die Larve Wulf!
P.S. - Sind Sie Bürger, die alle für Ranglisten aufgepeppt sind, wie ich es bin? Ich sehe dich in der Rangliste, mein Griff ist[REDAKTIERT]!
Turbulent
Benoit Beauséjour, Gründer und Gründer
Im August dieses Jahres war das Platform-Team überall präsent, um die Website auf ihr volles Potenzial zu bringen und gleichzeitig ihre Zukunft zu gestalten.
August Veranstaltungen und der Schiffskatalog
Natürlich war August der Monat, in dem wir den neuen Schiffskatalog offiziell veröffentlicht haben und das, was wir den "Store Revamp" nannten. Wir haben den gesamten Store neu organisiert, um die Navigation zu erleichtern und ihn gleichzeitig mit den Spieldaten in jedem Schritt zu verzahnen. Der neue Ships-Katalog ist der erste Baustein zu einer vollständigen und gründlichen Galactapedia, die Ihnen Zugang zu riesigen Datenmengen direkt aus dem Spiel bietet.
Sie haben vielleicht bemerkt, dass dieser letzte Monat sehr reich an Ereignissen war. Gamescom, die Aufstellung von Constellation, DragonCon, die zerbrochene 50-Millionen-Schwelle.... Das waren alles perfekte Gelegenheiten, um die gesamte Website zu einem besseren Erlebnis für alle zu machen, einen Schritt nach dem anderen. Wir haben die Art und Weise, wie der Shop mit Flash-Verkäufen umgehen kann, verfeinert, den Chat für Veranstaltungen mit hohem Traffic stabilisiert.... und insgesamt viele Unebenheiten auf der Website beseitigt.
Wir haben den neuen Schiffskatalog genutzt, um seine zentralisierten Daten flächendeckend verfügbar zu machen: In der Constellation-Linie entstanden Comm-Links mit Stats und Holo-Viewern, die nie veraltet sein werden. Die überwältigend positive Resonanz der Community war ein großer Einfluss auf uns, um Sie, die Spieler, noch weiter in das Star Citizen Universe einzutauchen, sobald Sie die Website besuchen.
Starmap, Leaderboards und zukünftige Projekte
Nach dem neuen Store und Catalog Release legen wir nun den Grundstein für die Gestaltung der Website für die nächsten Monate. Die Gemeinschaft hat gesprochen, so dass die webbasierte Starmap Gestalt annimmt. Noch im frühen Konzept, machen wir daraus den zweiten Baustein von Galactapedia. Aber es wird sein eigenes komplettes Feature sein, und wir können es kaum erwarten, mit Ihnen zu teilen, was wir dafür auf Lager haben.
Wir haben auch an der Entwicklung des ersten Arena Commander Leaderboards Moduls gearbeitet. Die Daten aus allen verfügbaren Spielmodi zu sammeln, Daten für Benutzer UND Organisationen zusammenzustellen und diese riesige Datenmenge so darzustellen, dass die Spieler sich mit anderen messen, ihren Fortschritt quantifizieren und sogar vielversprechende Spieler in ihre Orgs aufnehmen können, ist eine schöne Herausforderung, der wir uns gerne stellen. Du wirst nicht lange warten müssen, bis du es tatsächlich siehst, also bleib dran!
Schon bald können Sie auch direkt aus dem Web den Hangar auswählen, den Sie im Hangarmodul sehen möchten und welche Schiffe Sie anzeigen möchten. Das war in letzter Zeit ein weiterer Schwerpunkt, so dass Sie diese schönen 4 neuen Hangars voll genießen können!
Natürlich wird auch weiterhin an der Konzeptarbeit für Organizations Drop Two gearbeitet. Es ist schon eine Weile her, und die Produktion dazu wird in Kürze beginnen.
Voller Herausforderungen und großer Überraschungen war dies ein arbeitsreicher Monat, und vor allem ein vielversprechender!
Matthew Jack, Gründer und Gründer
August war ein großer Monat für alle Star Citizen-Teams, und Moon Collider war sicherlich keine Ausnahme. Mit einer bevorstehenden großen Demo sowie einer wichtigen neuen Version, auf die man sich vorbereiten musste, gab es viel Arbeit zu erledigen.
Ihr alle habt natürlich die Gamescom-Demo und damit die Ankündigung des Vanduul Swarm Coop-Modus gesehen. Wir haben einige Arbeit geleistet, um sicherzustellen, dass sich die KI in einer Multiplayer-Umgebung gut verhält, aber insgesamt waren wir sehr erfreut, dass die KI den Übergang recht reibungslos abgewickelt hat, und es gab nicht allzu viele Probleme zu lösen. Dies ist ein großartiger Spielmodus, und wir freuen uns darauf, von der Community zu hören, wie wir die KI optimieren und verbessern können, um sie noch besser zu machen.
Wir haben auch einige Arbeiten am Vanduul Swarm Singleplayer für die Version 0.9 von Arena Commander durchgeführt, die wir für eine große Verbesserung halten. Wir haben viel Feedback darüber erhalten, wie man das Verhalten von Teamkollegen verbessern kann, und insbesondere die Leute wollen, dass sie eine bessere Arbeit leisten, um dich zu vermeiden. Also haben wir ihr Vermeidungsverhalten verbessert und jetzt sollten sie dir einen größeren Platz einräumen. Wir sind gespannt auf das Feedback der Community, wie effektiv diese Veränderung ist. Es gab auch einige Optimierungen an allen KI-Schiffen aufgrund der Geschwindigkeitssteigerungen in der neuen Version, und wir erwarten, dass wir weitere Optimierungen vornehmen werden, da wir von Ihnen Feedback darüber erhalten, was funktioniert und was nicht.
An der Kampffront des FÖD haben wir weiterhin an den Wahrnehmungsfähigkeiten der KI gearbeitet. Es gab auch einige Probleme mit der Animation der KI, die sie dazu brachten, Schwierigkeiten zu haben, auf den Spieler zu zielen und sich beim Flankenwechsel richtig umdrehen zu können, aber wir haben diese Probleme gelöst und die KI ist dadurch viel effektiver. Es war ein gutes Beispiel dafür, wie KI und Animation oft sehr eng miteinander verbunden sind.
Wir haben diesen Monat unserem KI-Debugging-Toolset ein sehr cooles Feature hinzugefügt, das sich bereits als äußerst nützlich beim Aufspüren von Bugs erwiesen hat. Ein Problem ist, dass in Multiplayer-Matches die KI auf dem Server laufen wird und wenn Sie etwas Seltsames auf einem Client sehen, kann es schwierig sein, gute Informationen darüber zu erhalten, was die KI auf dem Server macht, so dass Sie herausfinden können, ob das Problem auf dem Server oder dem Client liegt. Wir haben jetzt die Möglichkeit, Informationen über die KI vom Server zu erfassen und sie dann in Echtzeit innerhalb eines Clients mit 3D-visuellem Debugging zu streamen, so dass wir sofort sehen können, ob es Diskrepanzen zwischen dem, was auf dem Server und auf dem Client geschieht, gibt.
Schließlich haben wir mehr Designarbeit am persistenten Universum geleistet, zusammen mit einigen Prototypingarbeiten, die es Designern ermöglichen, Objekte in der Welt zu platzieren, mit denen die KI interagieren kann. Und wie immer wäre kein Monat komplett ohne diverse andere Bugfixes und Optimierungen, Verbesserungen unserer Prozesse und all die kleinen Dinge, die nicht sehr aufregend sind, aber unerlässlich, um all die coolen Dinge möglich zu machen!
Greetings Citizens,
Star Citizen keeps getting bigger! August saw a major reveal at Gamescom, plus trips to Dragon*Con and PAX to share Star Citizen with the masses! On the development side, we’ve made massive progress on everything from the First Person Shooter module to the soon-to-be-playable racing mode! You can learn what each of Star Citizen’s studios has been up to in this month’s report, available below.
Travis Day, Producer
Greetings Citizens,
August has been an exciting month for the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42! We showed off what we’ve been working on for backers at our event in Cologne, Germany for Gamecom and for everyone around the world via a livestream. (Available below!) We showed off the new ships and gameplay modes being included in version 0.9 of Arena Commander, teased FPS which will be demoed at PAX Australia, and showed off some early work towards multicrew combat using a Constellation.
As always these kinds of live events are very exciting for the team both as an opportunity to showcase their work to the community and also as an opportunity for those in attendance to meet with our backers face to face. Being around so many people as excited about Star Citizen and Squadron 42 as we are, is truly invigorating. We are truly lucky to have such an engaged fan base participating in the development process helping us to make this game. So, thank you all for your support!
The multicrew combat demo was put together by the group here in Santa Monica with some support from the guys in Austin. It required a lot of hard work on various systems that lay the groundwork for bringing support of multicrew ships to Arena Commander, Squadron 42, and ultimately the Persistent Universe. To that end, we wanted to share with you some of the underlying technology that was in the demo that, perhaps, isn’t readily apparent when watching it.
Localized physics grids. Sounds exciting, right? Well, it is! Generally in 3D games with physics you have what can simplistically be thought of as a large cube that encompasses the whole map, a grid. Inside that cube physics are being simulated for every object and player that have physics set to active relative to their position within that grid. This is what handles collision with objects, projectile physics, etc.
Problems arise when you want to have players freely (not scripted and not on rails) moving inside a freely moving vehicle/object. This is because that single physics grid only has awareness of each entity in the level as an individual and doesn’t (by default) understand their relationships to one another. This manifests itself where, in a Constellation for example, the ship is flying forward while pitching and yawing. Unfortunately the global physics grid thinks of you and the ship as two separate objects with no relationship and so it pitches and yaws the ship while moving it forward and treats the player as though nothing has happened. As the player you will see the ship yaw around you, pitch around you, and ultimately the collisions with it will fling you around like a pinball.
Here is where the localized physics grid comes into play! It allows us to have multiple smaller physics grids within the larger global physics grid. The global grid will track each smaller grid as an individual and that smaller grid tracks all objects within it relative to whatever it is attached to. Where this gets cool is when you attach a localized grid to a ship like the Constellation. Now, when the Constellation pitches and yaws while flying your player position stays relative to the ship so you will also pitch, yaw, and move along with it in perfect unison. This allows for ships to have fully functioning interiors with characters running around while the ship itself is blasting through space and maneuvering seamlessly. Completing this work was a large accomplishment and also a very foundational piece for SQ42 and Star Citizen in the long run.
One of the other more “under the hood” things that went into the demo was on the HUD. One of the critically important pieces of functionality for the HUD in the long run is being able to separate and subdivide its component pieces so that they can be displayed on different screens, have their positioning and size customized per HUD per player, and be rendered directly to a texture for seamless display on fixed screens. All of these features have been added to the system so that moving forward we will be better able to support customizing the HUD both on the development side and for players to customize their own visor HUD. We’ve also added the first step in fully supporting passing HUD elements and control over them between the different seats in a multicrew seats. The HUD is something we pride ourselves on as it is the thing you will see most of the game in its current state. More work needs to be done (there always is) but the foundation is there and now we need to keep refining and tweaking so we can make it even more awesome.
Gamescom is behind us and we look forward to the next opportunity to share more of the ‘Verse with our fans. Citizen Con and PAX Australia are on the horizon and we look forward to the new challenges this complex but rewarding project brings. As we said at the beginning being around our backers is invigorating to our entire team, it makes the long nights and stressful times worth it. Star Citizen is a special game, the passion and dedication of our community isn’t just appreciated it is required to make this game a reality.
Eric Peterson, Studio Director
Good day Citizens. As the sun continues to bake us to a crisp in hot as hades Austin Texas, our development teams have been toiling away to make sure that we bring a great experience to folks all over the verse. It has been an amazing month, from getting things ready for our show in Germany (always one of my personal favorites) to preparing for upcoming events like CiitzenCon, and Pax Australia. As most folks know our office is tasked with the persistent universe, and backend server support, as well as running the publishing arm of CIG.
Here is what the various departments in Austin:
Art
This month the art team in Austin was busy helping out on several different parts of Star Citizen. We had ship artists helping to get the M50 and Constellation variants all ship shape for GamesCom and prepping the 350r for upcoming release. Our artists on the PU team developed some new concepts and began creating props to be used in our missions for the Persistent Universe, as well as some R&D on jump gate effects and weather effects for our Planetside locations.
Cinematics
Released the Constellation Commercial at Gamescom. Working towards future ship commercials. Planning, budgeting and scouting for motion capture and performance capture for Squadron 42 cinematics. Working on debugging facial animation pipeline.
Animation
Began working with Sean Tracy to improve animation pipeline and execution. Held an animation workshop to focus on identifying issues with our locomotion set and how to improve it using the 4D blendspace technology in CryEngine. Creating a new skeleton and rig and retargeting animations to that new skeleton as well as solving and editing the animations from last month’s mocap shoot. Our character artists were hard at work fleshing out characters for the Constellation commercial and the FPS demo coming up at PAX Australia, and our animation team hosted some of the guys at [REDACTED] to bang out some new locomotion sets for our characters.
Design
This month, the Austin design team has been focused on integrating basic systems into the persistent universe prototype, transitioning from the surface of a planet to the hangar and then to space, and connecting systems with jump points. Technical designers have been putting the finishing touches on city interior (and space stations) building kits to enable faster construction of planetary environments. Meanwhile, the team has continued to add detail to other major game systems as they approach on the PU roadmap.
Platform/Publishing
This month the platform team launched the new store with amazingly detailed and updated ship stats and many more ships available in the holoviewer! In addition, we launched the M50 and Constellation promotions with full stat, storefront, and holoviewer support. We’ve done tons of work on Leaderboards and look forward to launching this to the public very soon. And also completed lots of concept work on the new Starmap which was voted as a fan favorite in a recent stretch goal poll.
Programming
This week, we Integrated CryEngine 3.6.3 into our codebase and deployed it to the team. That is always a challenge and tends to bring new bugs, but this has been one of the best transitions to date. We also migrated the team to Visual Studio 2012 with IT’s valued support. And, we continued working on the server side persistence and related work for the PU, and PU prototyping including star system layout. We also continued work on Large World and related tasks and designed and began work on Movement Improvements including dead reckoning with our partner Wyrmbyte. We finished projectile light pooling, we implemented basic TrackIR support as well as other VR fixes. We released new versions of the launcher with bug fixes and many improvements. We also released 12.5.2 and version 12.6, and continue to work on version 13.0 or .9 as it is also known.
That and much more is what Austin has been up to this month, and we will continue to chip away at the granite that is Star Citizen, slowly revealing the beautiful statue underneath. On a personal note, it was quite an honor to meet so many enthusiastic Citizens at Gamescom this year and I look forward to meeting many more at our upcoming events, I love coming back to the studios and sharing with them the stories of meeting folks and sharing a laugh or a common enthusiasm for this great Chris Roberts adventure. We are all very lucky to be at this place at this time – and we will strive to always make you proud.
Erin Roberts, Studio Director
Hi everyone, August was a massive month for us at Foundry 42. We put a lot of focus on release 13, and the Gamescom event and it was fantastic to see eveyones’ response to what we showed there. I had a chance to talk to a bunch of the community while in Cologne, and really enjoyed meeting everyone, getting feedback and answering questions. The F42 team is really ticking over now, and you guys will start seeing a bunch of new content and gameplay over the next few months, not to mention our work on Squadron 42 which although we can’t show yet, is really coming together nicely. As always thanks must go out to all our backers, Star Citizen would not be this special without the community, your feedback, support and energy. That is what makes Star Citizen special and really drives everyone here in development to create this amazing universe.
Design
Development on Squadron 42 has continued well this month, with us breaking down the campaign further and putting more planning into how the players “home” ship will be an engaging and believable hub for them to explore and interact with. The vertical slice work is continuing and asking many questions that we have been focusing on answering going forward. One of the challenges with creating the “story campaign” is to make sure that we keep the agile gameplay without introducing bespoke mechanics that would not be available in the PU. We have been spending time this month working out how some of these mechanics will work across the game as a whole (for example, scavenging items from dead bodies).
The ship pipeline is rolling on with work being carried out on the Starfarer now, other ships still progressing well. I bang on about it every monthly report, but I really can’t wait until we can get you guys running around some of these bigger ships in game, it really adds a whole new dimension to everything.
Arena Commander work is also continuing well, with more systems coming online and game modes being refined and polished. You’ll see all that soon enough as we get closer to the next patch.
Programming Director
Another month and the big GamesCom event! If you saw the show you’ll have seen all the work we’ve been putting into getting the demonstration together, including the two new game modes Murray Cup Racing and Vanduul Swarm coop. As a result it was one of our more trouble free presentations!
Since GamesCom we’ve been working hard polishing up these two new game modes to make them as awesome as possible for their introduction to the community in the Release 13 update. We’re really stoked about the amount of progress we’ve made this month for Arena Commander, not only the new game modes and also the much improved audio, HUD improvements, control improvements (including 6 DoF!), leaderboards, and the usual bug fixing and polish.
Longer term we’re making great progress on Squadron 42, with lots of support for the designers on our “vertical slice”. We’re also been busy making progress on improvements to setting up vehicles, which is going to be imperative once we start working on the larger vehicles. This includes continued work on our new DataForge tool alongside the start of a new vehicle state system which will allow the ship setup to be much more data driven.
Overall another busy month!
Art
The art team has increased again! We have added two artists to the environment team and also taken on a Lead Character artist and a Lead VFX artist.
Concept work has taken place on Shubin interiors, the Anvil F8 heavy fighter, the mining drone cabin, Panther class carrier Bridge and Javelin interiors.
The Environment team also worked hard and completed the New Horizons map including a cool trailer for GamesCON – great work team!
Work is continuing on the spaceships – Gladius, Retaliator and Gladiator have all gone to their texturing phases, the Idris, Javelin and Panther interiors are all marching forward too.
Amongst all that we have also hopped back to greyboxing the Shubin exterior for the vertical slice level.
Animation have also been hard at work prepping for the VS and supporting the states with Arena Commander fixes and additions.
Audio
It’s been the month of Gamescom and an exciting time for all involved! Team audio have been spending their time split between the constellation demo, trailer sound design, Murray cup, sounds for the new ships and continued work on the audio in general. Not too much then!
As we move passed Gamescom we’ve been trying to get the last few bits into the release 13 before it is let loose into the wild. This has including things like UI sounds that play when you hit an enemy (good feedback!) and some updated boost sounds.
The New Horizon Speedway has had some attention, for example as you fly through the tunnel in the centre of the map you’ll hear air whooshing passed you that modulates based on your speed.
Included in DFM 0.9 is ‘Trevor Basque’ the official announcer for the Murray Cup. When racing around New Horizon you might note that the sound of his voice is actually played back at 3D positions in the environment as if it was playing through speakers like at a real race! The PA system delay effect is actually the culmination of the dialogue lines being played back from several of these points with the delay time being calculated in-game based on distance, it isn’t just a pre-baked effect! After this we’d like to use this system to add a visual counterpart to the game object so you can see the speaker where the sounds are emanating from. The ‘Bitching Betty’ ship computer voices will be using a similar system inside of multi-crew ships.
A hot topic in the community is the fact that Star Citizen has sound in space! How is this possible? Well it is something that we are putting great thought into and put simply, Star Citizen doesn’t have sound in space…. It has simulated sound that is played back to you to help you better pilot your ship. There will be more details about this in future posts and this method will be better supported in-game in future. Hopefully this begins to address the questions people have been asking.
That’s all from the sound guys, it’s early days for the soundscape of Star Citizen with a heck of a lot to do before the final game comes out but it’s great seeing the community feedback we’ve had so far.
Mathieu Beaulieu, Producer
Things have been moving pretty quickly here in sunny Montreal.
Hangars!
Our team has been spending a good amount of time debugging and optimising the new hangars to get them ready for public release. We have also begun working on the basic layout for the next planet locations and shops for Arc Corp Area 18 and Terra Prime.
Next month’s flair object is done and we are now preparing for the next one.
Our engineers have been busy helping out with tools used for populating space environments with various objects, which we will eventually need for mission prototyping. They have also been creating tools for our designers and level designers to facilitate the creation of tags and tagging requests, which will eventually be used for many in-game systems including mobiGlas, shops, AI, etc.
Work is well underway for the pause menu refactor, and we are moving along with the control customization implementation, as well the mG Scheduler prototype for mission management. Several other mobiGlas apps have been designed as well, including mG Wear for avatar customization, mG Skyline for the star map, and the mG Notification Center.
Finally, audio has been keeping up with the changes to the levels, sounding the flair objects when required and battling memory budget issues.
[Redacted]
G’Day Citizens! Did you enjoy Gamescom? Are you happy with your Connies? We certainly hope so!
I’m sure you all must be aware by now… The secret is out. The beans have been spilled. The cat is out of the bag! That’s right, [REDACTED] will finally be showing off some FPS goodness at PAX Australia!
We’ve been hard at work getting things ready for the big event. As you may have noticed from the teaser that was shown at Gamescom, the station environment we’ve been working on has been coming together really well. More props are coming online daily and are being added to the environment. We now have detailed objects filling up the mess hall, security office and Gravity Control room… Along with all these props, visual effects are being added to give a strong sense of atmosphere. Air rushes through doors as they open, sparks trickle down from broken equipment and water splashes (you guys really seemed to enjoy that…) as players crash through puddles on the floor.
The engineers and animators here at [REDACTED] took a quick trip down to CiG Austin to hammer out some long standing animation issues. We now have a new skeleton and rig to work with that should greatly improve the animations in the game and fix many of the issues that we have been having (and some of those you may have been experiencing in the hangars).
On the engineering and design side, we have shifted from real life nerf-gun fights to in-game playtests. In my personal opinion they are much more fun, more productive and less dangerous! These tests have mostly been focused on improving stability and fixing network issues, but we are now transitioning to iterating on gameplay and balance.
I would like to personally thank [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] for all their hard work and crunching to put together an amazing Gamescom teaser trailer in a very short amount of time. I think everybody would agree that you guys did a real smash up job and deserve some special mention.
Lastly, I would like to give a shout out to an unexpected guest we had last month. Super Star Citizen Wulf Knight somehow discovered our true identity (are you a wizard?!), stopped by to meet the team, and then fed the entire office with pizza! From everybody here, thanks for the grub Wulf!
P.S. – Are you Citizens all hyped up for leaderboards like I am? I’ll see you on the rankings, my handle is [REDACTED]!
Turbulent
Benoit Beauséjour, Founder
The Platform team was all over the place this August, pushing the website to its full potential and shaping its future at the same time.
August Events and the Ship Catalog
Of course August was the month we officially released the new Ship Catalog and what we dubbed the “Store Revamp”. We reorganized the whole store to make it easier to navigate, while at the same time interlocking it with game data every step of the way. The new Ships catalog is the first brick toward a complete and thorough Galactapedia, giving you access to tremendous amounts of data directly from the game.
You may have noticed that this last month had been heavy with events. Gamescom, the Constellation lineup reveal, DragonCon, the shattered 50 Million barrier… These were all perfect occasions to make the whole site a better experience for everyone, one step at a time. We fine-tuned the way the Store can handle flash sales, stabilized the Chat for high traffic events… and overall smoothed out a lot of bumps in the site.
We took advantage of the new Ship Catalog to make its centralized data available across the board : the Constellation lineup saw the birth of Comm-links with Stats and Holo-Viewers that will never go out of date. The Community’s overwhelmingly positive response has been a huge influence on us to go even further an immerse you, the players, into the Star Citizen Universe as soon as you hit the Site.
Starmap, Leaderboards and future projects
In the aftermath of the new Store and Catalog release, we are now laying down the foundation of what the Website will be for the next few months. The Community has spoken, so the web-based Starmap is taking form. Still in early concept, we are making this into the second brick of Galactapedia. But it will be its own complete feature, and we can’t wait to share with you what we have in store for it.
We’ve also been working on creating the first Arena Commander Leaderboards module. Gathering the data from all available game modes, compiling data for users AND organizations, and displaying that huge amount of data in a way that will allow players to measure up against others, quantify their progress and even recruit promising players into their orgs is a beautiful challenge, and we are happy to step up to it. You won’t have to wait long until you actually see it, so stay tuned!
Pretty soon you’ll also be able to select the Hangar you want to see in the Hangar Module, and which ships you want to display, directly from the Web. That’s been another focus of ours lately, so that you can fully enjoy these beautiful 4 new hangars!
Of course concept work for Organizations Drop Two is still going on as well. It has been for a while now, and production on this will be kicking in shortly.
Full of challenges and great surprises, this has been a busy month, and above all, a promising one!
Matthew Jack, Founder
August was a big month for all of the Star Citizen teams, and Moon Collider was certainly no exception. With a big demo imminent, as well as a major new release to prepare for, there was plenty of work to get done
You all saw the Gamescom demo, of course, and with it the announcement of Vanduul Swarm Coop mode. We’ve been doing some work to make sure the AI behaves well in a multiplayer environment, but overall we were very pleased that the AI handled the transition quite smoothly, and there weren’t that many issues to deal with. This is a great gameplay mode, and we’re looking forward to hearing from the community how we can tweak and improve the AI to make it even better.
We’ve also done some work on Vanduul Swarm Singleplayer for version 0.9 of Arena Commander that we think will be a big improvement. We got a lot of feedback about ways to improve the behavior of team mates, and in particular people want them to do a better job of avoiding you. So we’ve improved their avoidance behavior and now they should give you a wider berth. We are keen to get community feedback on how effective this change is. There have also been some tweaks to all AI ships due to the speed increases in the new version, and we expect that we’ll be doing further tweaks as we get feedback from you all about what works and what doesn’t.
On the FPS combat front, we been continuing to do work on the perception abilities of the AI. There were also some issues with animation of the AI that were making them have trouble aiming at the player and being able to turn around properly when being flanked, but we got those solved and the AI are much more effective as a result. It was a good example of how AI and animation are often very closely connected.
We added a very cool feature to our AI debugging toolset this month, that has already proven to be extremely useful in tracking down bugs. One problem is that in multi player matches the AI will be running on the server and when you see something weird on a client, it can be hard to get good information about what the AI is doing on the server, so you can figure out if the problem is on the server or the client. We now have the ability to capture information about the AI from the server, and then stream it in real time inside a client with 3D visualized debugging, so we can see immediately if there are any discrepancies between what is happening on the server and on the client.
Finally, we’ve been doing more design work on the persistent universe, along with some prototyping work to enable designers to start placing objects in the world that AI can interact with. And as always, no month would be complete without doing various other bugfixes and optimizations, improvements to our processes and all of those little things that aren’t very exciting, but are essential to making all the cool stuff possible!
Star Citizen keeps getting bigger! August saw a major reveal at Gamescom, plus trips to Dragon*Con and PAX to share Star Citizen with the masses! On the development side, we’ve made massive progress on everything from the First Person Shooter module to the soon-to-be-playable racing mode! You can learn what each of Star Citizen’s studios has been up to in this month’s report, available below.
Travis Day, Producer
Greetings Citizens,
August has been an exciting month for the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42! We showed off what we’ve been working on for backers at our event in Cologne, Germany for Gamecom and for everyone around the world via a livestream. (Available below!) We showed off the new ships and gameplay modes being included in version 0.9 of Arena Commander, teased FPS which will be demoed at PAX Australia, and showed off some early work towards multicrew combat using a Constellation.
As always these kinds of live events are very exciting for the team both as an opportunity to showcase their work to the community and also as an opportunity for those in attendance to meet with our backers face to face. Being around so many people as excited about Star Citizen and Squadron 42 as we are, is truly invigorating. We are truly lucky to have such an engaged fan base participating in the development process helping us to make this game. So, thank you all for your support!
The multicrew combat demo was put together by the group here in Santa Monica with some support from the guys in Austin. It required a lot of hard work on various systems that lay the groundwork for bringing support of multicrew ships to Arena Commander, Squadron 42, and ultimately the Persistent Universe. To that end, we wanted to share with you some of the underlying technology that was in the demo that, perhaps, isn’t readily apparent when watching it.
Localized physics grids. Sounds exciting, right? Well, it is! Generally in 3D games with physics you have what can simplistically be thought of as a large cube that encompasses the whole map, a grid. Inside that cube physics are being simulated for every object and player that have physics set to active relative to their position within that grid. This is what handles collision with objects, projectile physics, etc.
Problems arise when you want to have players freely (not scripted and not on rails) moving inside a freely moving vehicle/object. This is because that single physics grid only has awareness of each entity in the level as an individual and doesn’t (by default) understand their relationships to one another. This manifests itself where, in a Constellation for example, the ship is flying forward while pitching and yawing. Unfortunately the global physics grid thinks of you and the ship as two separate objects with no relationship and so it pitches and yaws the ship while moving it forward and treats the player as though nothing has happened. As the player you will see the ship yaw around you, pitch around you, and ultimately the collisions with it will fling you around like a pinball.
Here is where the localized physics grid comes into play! It allows us to have multiple smaller physics grids within the larger global physics grid. The global grid will track each smaller grid as an individual and that smaller grid tracks all objects within it relative to whatever it is attached to. Where this gets cool is when you attach a localized grid to a ship like the Constellation. Now, when the Constellation pitches and yaws while flying your player position stays relative to the ship so you will also pitch, yaw, and move along with it in perfect unison. This allows for ships to have fully functioning interiors with characters running around while the ship itself is blasting through space and maneuvering seamlessly. Completing this work was a large accomplishment and also a very foundational piece for SQ42 and Star Citizen in the long run.
One of the other more “under the hood” things that went into the demo was on the HUD. One of the critically important pieces of functionality for the HUD in the long run is being able to separate and subdivide its component pieces so that they can be displayed on different screens, have their positioning and size customized per HUD per player, and be rendered directly to a texture for seamless display on fixed screens. All of these features have been added to the system so that moving forward we will be better able to support customizing the HUD both on the development side and for players to customize their own visor HUD. We’ve also added the first step in fully supporting passing HUD elements and control over them between the different seats in a multicrew seats. The HUD is something we pride ourselves on as it is the thing you will see most of the game in its current state. More work needs to be done (there always is) but the foundation is there and now we need to keep refining and tweaking so we can make it even more awesome.
Gamescom is behind us and we look forward to the next opportunity to share more of the ‘Verse with our fans. Citizen Con and PAX Australia are on the horizon and we look forward to the new challenges this complex but rewarding project brings. As we said at the beginning being around our backers is invigorating to our entire team, it makes the long nights and stressful times worth it. Star Citizen is a special game, the passion and dedication of our community isn’t just appreciated it is required to make this game a reality.
Eric Peterson, Studio Director
Good day Citizens. As the sun continues to bake us to a crisp in hot as hades Austin Texas, our development teams have been toiling away to make sure that we bring a great experience to folks all over the verse. It has been an amazing month, from getting things ready for our show in Germany (always one of my personal favorites) to preparing for upcoming events like CiitzenCon, and Pax Australia. As most folks know our office is tasked with the persistent universe, and backend server support, as well as running the publishing arm of CIG.
Here is what the various departments in Austin:
Art
This month the art team in Austin was busy helping out on several different parts of Star Citizen. We had ship artists helping to get the M50 and Constellation variants all ship shape for GamesCom and prepping the 350r for upcoming release. Our artists on the PU team developed some new concepts and began creating props to be used in our missions for the Persistent Universe, as well as some R&D on jump gate effects and weather effects for our Planetside locations.
Cinematics
Released the Constellation Commercial at Gamescom. Working towards future ship commercials. Planning, budgeting and scouting for motion capture and performance capture for Squadron 42 cinematics. Working on debugging facial animation pipeline.
Animation
Began working with Sean Tracy to improve animation pipeline and execution. Held an animation workshop to focus on identifying issues with our locomotion set and how to improve it using the 4D blendspace technology in CryEngine. Creating a new skeleton and rig and retargeting animations to that new skeleton as well as solving and editing the animations from last month’s mocap shoot. Our character artists were hard at work fleshing out characters for the Constellation commercial and the FPS demo coming up at PAX Australia, and our animation team hosted some of the guys at [REDACTED] to bang out some new locomotion sets for our characters.
Design
This month, the Austin design team has been focused on integrating basic systems into the persistent universe prototype, transitioning from the surface of a planet to the hangar and then to space, and connecting systems with jump points. Technical designers have been putting the finishing touches on city interior (and space stations) building kits to enable faster construction of planetary environments. Meanwhile, the team has continued to add detail to other major game systems as they approach on the PU roadmap.
Platform/Publishing
This month the platform team launched the new store with amazingly detailed and updated ship stats and many more ships available in the holoviewer! In addition, we launched the M50 and Constellation promotions with full stat, storefront, and holoviewer support. We’ve done tons of work on Leaderboards and look forward to launching this to the public very soon. And also completed lots of concept work on the new Starmap which was voted as a fan favorite in a recent stretch goal poll.
Programming
This week, we Integrated CryEngine 3.6.3 into our codebase and deployed it to the team. That is always a challenge and tends to bring new bugs, but this has been one of the best transitions to date. We also migrated the team to Visual Studio 2012 with IT’s valued support. And, we continued working on the server side persistence and related work for the PU, and PU prototyping including star system layout. We also continued work on Large World and related tasks and designed and began work on Movement Improvements including dead reckoning with our partner Wyrmbyte. We finished projectile light pooling, we implemented basic TrackIR support as well as other VR fixes. We released new versions of the launcher with bug fixes and many improvements. We also released 12.5.2 and version 12.6, and continue to work on version 13.0 or .9 as it is also known.
That and much more is what Austin has been up to this month, and we will continue to chip away at the granite that is Star Citizen, slowly revealing the beautiful statue underneath. On a personal note, it was quite an honor to meet so many enthusiastic Citizens at Gamescom this year and I look forward to meeting many more at our upcoming events, I love coming back to the studios and sharing with them the stories of meeting folks and sharing a laugh or a common enthusiasm for this great Chris Roberts adventure. We are all very lucky to be at this place at this time – and we will strive to always make you proud.
Erin Roberts, Studio Director
Hi everyone, August was a massive month for us at Foundry 42. We put a lot of focus on release 13, and the Gamescom event and it was fantastic to see eveyones’ response to what we showed there. I had a chance to talk to a bunch of the community while in Cologne, and really enjoyed meeting everyone, getting feedback and answering questions. The F42 team is really ticking over now, and you guys will start seeing a bunch of new content and gameplay over the next few months, not to mention our work on Squadron 42 which although we can’t show yet, is really coming together nicely. As always thanks must go out to all our backers, Star Citizen would not be this special without the community, your feedback, support and energy. That is what makes Star Citizen special and really drives everyone here in development to create this amazing universe.
Design
Development on Squadron 42 has continued well this month, with us breaking down the campaign further and putting more planning into how the players “home” ship will be an engaging and believable hub for them to explore and interact with. The vertical slice work is continuing and asking many questions that we have been focusing on answering going forward. One of the challenges with creating the “story campaign” is to make sure that we keep the agile gameplay without introducing bespoke mechanics that would not be available in the PU. We have been spending time this month working out how some of these mechanics will work across the game as a whole (for example, scavenging items from dead bodies).
The ship pipeline is rolling on with work being carried out on the Starfarer now, other ships still progressing well. I bang on about it every monthly report, but I really can’t wait until we can get you guys running around some of these bigger ships in game, it really adds a whole new dimension to everything.
Arena Commander work is also continuing well, with more systems coming online and game modes being refined and polished. You’ll see all that soon enough as we get closer to the next patch.
Programming Director
Another month and the big GamesCom event! If you saw the show you’ll have seen all the work we’ve been putting into getting the demonstration together, including the two new game modes Murray Cup Racing and Vanduul Swarm coop. As a result it was one of our more trouble free presentations!
Since GamesCom we’ve been working hard polishing up these two new game modes to make them as awesome as possible for their introduction to the community in the Release 13 update. We’re really stoked about the amount of progress we’ve made this month for Arena Commander, not only the new game modes and also the much improved audio, HUD improvements, control improvements (including 6 DoF!), leaderboards, and the usual bug fixing and polish.
Longer term we’re making great progress on Squadron 42, with lots of support for the designers on our “vertical slice”. We’re also been busy making progress on improvements to setting up vehicles, which is going to be imperative once we start working on the larger vehicles. This includes continued work on our new DataForge tool alongside the start of a new vehicle state system which will allow the ship setup to be much more data driven.
Overall another busy month!
Art
The art team has increased again! We have added two artists to the environment team and also taken on a Lead Character artist and a Lead VFX artist.
Concept work has taken place on Shubin interiors, the Anvil F8 heavy fighter, the mining drone cabin, Panther class carrier Bridge and Javelin interiors.
The Environment team also worked hard and completed the New Horizons map including a cool trailer for GamesCON – great work team!
Work is continuing on the spaceships – Gladius, Retaliator and Gladiator have all gone to their texturing phases, the Idris, Javelin and Panther interiors are all marching forward too.
Amongst all that we have also hopped back to greyboxing the Shubin exterior for the vertical slice level.
Animation have also been hard at work prepping for the VS and supporting the states with Arena Commander fixes and additions.
Audio
It’s been the month of Gamescom and an exciting time for all involved! Team audio have been spending their time split between the constellation demo, trailer sound design, Murray cup, sounds for the new ships and continued work on the audio in general. Not too much then!
As we move passed Gamescom we’ve been trying to get the last few bits into the release 13 before it is let loose into the wild. This has including things like UI sounds that play when you hit an enemy (good feedback!) and some updated boost sounds.
The New Horizon Speedway has had some attention, for example as you fly through the tunnel in the centre of the map you’ll hear air whooshing passed you that modulates based on your speed.
Included in DFM 0.9 is ‘Trevor Basque’ the official announcer for the Murray Cup. When racing around New Horizon you might note that the sound of his voice is actually played back at 3D positions in the environment as if it was playing through speakers like at a real race! The PA system delay effect is actually the culmination of the dialogue lines being played back from several of these points with the delay time being calculated in-game based on distance, it isn’t just a pre-baked effect! After this we’d like to use this system to add a visual counterpart to the game object so you can see the speaker where the sounds are emanating from. The ‘Bitching Betty’ ship computer voices will be using a similar system inside of multi-crew ships.
A hot topic in the community is the fact that Star Citizen has sound in space! How is this possible? Well it is something that we are putting great thought into and put simply, Star Citizen doesn’t have sound in space…. It has simulated sound that is played back to you to help you better pilot your ship. There will be more details about this in future posts and this method will be better supported in-game in future. Hopefully this begins to address the questions people have been asking.
That’s all from the sound guys, it’s early days for the soundscape of Star Citizen with a heck of a lot to do before the final game comes out but it’s great seeing the community feedback we’ve had so far.
Mathieu Beaulieu, Producer
Things have been moving pretty quickly here in sunny Montreal.
Hangars!
Our team has been spending a good amount of time debugging and optimising the new hangars to get them ready for public release. We have also begun working on the basic layout for the next planet locations and shops for Arc Corp Area 18 and Terra Prime.
Next month’s flair object is done and we are now preparing for the next one.
Our engineers have been busy helping out with tools used for populating space environments with various objects, which we will eventually need for mission prototyping. They have also been creating tools for our designers and level designers to facilitate the creation of tags and tagging requests, which will eventually be used for many in-game systems including mobiGlas, shops, AI, etc.
Work is well underway for the pause menu refactor, and we are moving along with the control customization implementation, as well the mG Scheduler prototype for mission management. Several other mobiGlas apps have been designed as well, including mG Wear for avatar customization, mG Skyline for the star map, and the mG Notification Center.
Finally, audio has been keeping up with the changes to the levels, sounding the flair objects when required and battling memory budget issues.
[Redacted]
G’Day Citizens! Did you enjoy Gamescom? Are you happy with your Connies? We certainly hope so!
I’m sure you all must be aware by now… The secret is out. The beans have been spilled. The cat is out of the bag! That’s right, [REDACTED] will finally be showing off some FPS goodness at PAX Australia!
We’ve been hard at work getting things ready for the big event. As you may have noticed from the teaser that was shown at Gamescom, the station environment we’ve been working on has been coming together really well. More props are coming online daily and are being added to the environment. We now have detailed objects filling up the mess hall, security office and Gravity Control room… Along with all these props, visual effects are being added to give a strong sense of atmosphere. Air rushes through doors as they open, sparks trickle down from broken equipment and water splashes (you guys really seemed to enjoy that…) as players crash through puddles on the floor.
The engineers and animators here at [REDACTED] took a quick trip down to CiG Austin to hammer out some long standing animation issues. We now have a new skeleton and rig to work with that should greatly improve the animations in the game and fix many of the issues that we have been having (and some of those you may have been experiencing in the hangars).
On the engineering and design side, we have shifted from real life nerf-gun fights to in-game playtests. In my personal opinion they are much more fun, more productive and less dangerous! These tests have mostly been focused on improving stability and fixing network issues, but we are now transitioning to iterating on gameplay and balance.
I would like to personally thank [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] for all their hard work and crunching to put together an amazing Gamescom teaser trailer in a very short amount of time. I think everybody would agree that you guys did a real smash up job and deserve some special mention.
Lastly, I would like to give a shout out to an unexpected guest we had last month. Super Star Citizen Wulf Knight somehow discovered our true identity (are you a wizard?!), stopped by to meet the team, and then fed the entire office with pizza! From everybody here, thanks for the grub Wulf!
P.S. – Are you Citizens all hyped up for leaderboards like I am? I’ll see you on the rankings, my handle is [REDACTED]!
Turbulent
Benoit Beauséjour, Founder
The Platform team was all over the place this August, pushing the website to its full potential and shaping its future at the same time.
August Events and the Ship Catalog
Of course August was the month we officially released the new Ship Catalog and what we dubbed the “Store Revamp”. We reorganized the whole store to make it easier to navigate, while at the same time interlocking it with game data every step of the way. The new Ships catalog is the first brick toward a complete and thorough Galactapedia, giving you access to tremendous amounts of data directly from the game.
You may have noticed that this last month had been heavy with events. Gamescom, the Constellation lineup reveal, DragonCon, the shattered 50 Million barrier… These were all perfect occasions to make the whole site a better experience for everyone, one step at a time. We fine-tuned the way the Store can handle flash sales, stabilized the Chat for high traffic events… and overall smoothed out a lot of bumps in the site.
We took advantage of the new Ship Catalog to make its centralized data available across the board : the Constellation lineup saw the birth of Comm-links with Stats and Holo-Viewers that will never go out of date. The Community’s overwhelmingly positive response has been a huge influence on us to go even further an immerse you, the players, into the Star Citizen Universe as soon as you hit the Site.
Starmap, Leaderboards and future projects
In the aftermath of the new Store and Catalog release, we are now laying down the foundation of what the Website will be for the next few months. The Community has spoken, so the web-based Starmap is taking form. Still in early concept, we are making this into the second brick of Galactapedia. But it will be its own complete feature, and we can’t wait to share with you what we have in store for it.
We’ve also been working on creating the first Arena Commander Leaderboards module. Gathering the data from all available game modes, compiling data for users AND organizations, and displaying that huge amount of data in a way that will allow players to measure up against others, quantify their progress and even recruit promising players into their orgs is a beautiful challenge, and we are happy to step up to it. You won’t have to wait long until you actually see it, so stay tuned!
Pretty soon you’ll also be able to select the Hangar you want to see in the Hangar Module, and which ships you want to display, directly from the Web. That’s been another focus of ours lately, so that you can fully enjoy these beautiful 4 new hangars!
Of course concept work for Organizations Drop Two is still going on as well. It has been for a while now, and production on this will be kicking in shortly.
Full of challenges and great surprises, this has been a busy month, and above all, a promising one!
Matthew Jack, Founder
August was a big month for all of the Star Citizen teams, and Moon Collider was certainly no exception. With a big demo imminent, as well as a major new release to prepare for, there was plenty of work to get done
You all saw the Gamescom demo, of course, and with it the announcement of Vanduul Swarm Coop mode. We’ve been doing some work to make sure the AI behaves well in a multiplayer environment, but overall we were very pleased that the AI handled the transition quite smoothly, and there weren’t that many issues to deal with. This is a great gameplay mode, and we’re looking forward to hearing from the community how we can tweak and improve the AI to make it even better.
We’ve also done some work on Vanduul Swarm Singleplayer for version 0.9 of Arena Commander that we think will be a big improvement. We got a lot of feedback about ways to improve the behavior of team mates, and in particular people want them to do a better job of avoiding you. So we’ve improved their avoidance behavior and now they should give you a wider berth. We are keen to get community feedback on how effective this change is. There have also been some tweaks to all AI ships due to the speed increases in the new version, and we expect that we’ll be doing further tweaks as we get feedback from you all about what works and what doesn’t.
On the FPS combat front, we been continuing to do work on the perception abilities of the AI. There were also some issues with animation of the AI that were making them have trouble aiming at the player and being able to turn around properly when being flanked, but we got those solved and the AI are much more effective as a result. It was a good example of how AI and animation are often very closely connected.
We added a very cool feature to our AI debugging toolset this month, that has already proven to be extremely useful in tracking down bugs. One problem is that in multi player matches the AI will be running on the server and when you see something weird on a client, it can be hard to get good information about what the AI is doing on the server, so you can figure out if the problem is on the server or the client. We now have the ability to capture information about the AI from the server, and then stream it in real time inside a client with 3D visualized debugging, so we can see immediately if there are any discrepancies between what is happening on the server and on the client.
Finally, we’ve been doing more design work on the persistent universe, along with some prototyping work to enable designers to start placing objects in the world that AI can interact with. And as always, no month would be complete without doing various other bugfixes and optimizations, improvements to our processes and all of those little things that aren’t very exciting, but are essential to making all the cool stuff possible!
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- Monthly Reports
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- 11 years ago (2014-09-03T00:00:00+00:00)