Monthly Report: March 2014 - [Comm-Links](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links) - Monthly Report: March 2014 Monthly Report: March 2014 ========================== Undefined Undefined Monthly Reports [Previous](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/13784) [Next](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/13792) Content ------- English April Fools! Of course we have the real monthly report for you… and the Star Citizen team isn’t going to a tropical island any time soon, we have a game to finish! Read on for monthly status updates from all of Star Citizen’s studio heads and outsource partners. Travis Day, Dogfight Producer Santa Monica, California… Home to year round sunshine, excellent restaurants along the walking promenade, and a 3-mile stretch of beautiful beach. We’ve seen none of these things for many weeks now as we’ve been locked in our office working hard on Dogfighting! In all seriousness though while it is tiring, it is also very invigorating, and this project drives everyone’s passion and the knowledge that the community is just as excited as we are pushes us to our best work. I have never been more awed by a team’s discipline and dedication. We work not because we’re forced to but instead because we love what we’re working on and want to really wow people with Chris’ reveal before PAX East. Alright, well at this point I am sure you’re thinking, “We get it, the teams is working hard… But what have you DONE?” Well fair enough, here we go! The HUD has moved forward by leaps and bounds. This has been one of our most collaborative pieces of work with other studios and it is really shaping up! Over the course of the past couple of months, we have been working hard to conceptualize and define the base functionality that will drive the HUD and peripheral user interfaces in many of the ships that you will be piloting in the Star Citizen universe. In any ship, you will be able to manage and interact with many different systems, such as weapons configuration management, power and energy management, shields management, radar configuration, navigation, comms, target tracking, preset configuration, and much more. All of these components need to be quickly accessible to you at any given point in time, especially during heated situations such as combat. Our goal in designing the cockpit UI was to present such complex components in a manner that is functionally intuitive, yet aesthetically consistent with the fiction in that you’re piloting a ship from the future. One of the biggest challenges in designing any sci-fi interface is striking the right balance between what looks / feels visually interesting and what is functionally efficient, both of which are equally important in driving the immersion as you’re piloting ships in Star Citizen. We feel that we have achieved a nice blending between the two in our design given some of the core concepts behind the UI. One of which for example, is the extensive use of actual 3D geometry within the UI to visually represent items and objects (such as targets, parts of your own ship, etc.), and the many various states they may have. We have also been doing extensive work developing a custom “holoshader” that gives these 3D objects a very “holographic” look, which will have them fit nicely into the overall design. We’ve been developing some really cool features for the UI in Star Citizen. We are looking forward to sharing with you in detail our vision behind the HUD and all of its various components soon, but there is still much work to be done before it’s considered in any final state. Multiplayer functionality has also been a large and bug filled undertaking this month. We’ve spent a great deal of time this month writing code to improve the systems we’d previously created and debugging issues with precision, latency, and bandwidth limitations. Now that we are testing with our newly crafted backend (CIGNet) we’re starting to work through the various systems to make sure that the experience remains playable with a variety of pings and available bandwidth. Our design team has also been hard at work continuing to hook up and balance many newly created items and continuing to add nuance to the ships. We’ve finished implementing and doing an early balance pass on ship items. Furthermore, we’ve completed hooking up the Scythe for perfectly balanced flight with all of its thrusters working in concert to bring its weapons to bear on enemies. During this process our Physics programmer was able to tweak and debug his hand crafted thruster analysis tool which greatly aids in placing and balancing thrusters for all future ships. We’ve also been upgrading the Hornet to PBR so it has a lot more realistic look and feel to it. During this process Chris Smith took it upon himself to make some interior upgrades to the cockpit with higher resolution pass adding a lot more intricate details to the interior of the cockpit. Intricate mechanical workings were done as well to make the canopy operate on a believable track system and modifying the seat for a believable ejection. Lastly with PBR came the integration of the weathering system that allows him to apply some very believable wear and tear looks to the models. He even took a pass of mocking up some different armor types for it. With all of these detailed changes plus the PBR conversion the Hornet is really looking quite stunning! We’ve also grown our team here a bit over the last month with an additional three new employees bringing our total headcount in this studio to 27. Joining us this month were Kami Talebi (Production Coordinator), Joanna Whitmarsh (Marketing Associate), and James Pugh (Assistant Community Manger) who’ve all hit the ground running quite well! It has been amazing to watch the team here grow from three people almost a year ago to our current size today and we all look forward to continuing to grow the best possible team in the future with which to build the BDSSE! Thanks for reading and if you have any questions about what you’ve seen in this report please do not hesitate to reach out to us on the ‘Ask a Developer’ threads in the forums. See you in the ‘verse! Eric Peterson, Studio Director CIG Texas has had an amazing month of March from getting the backend server up and running which allows all of us at CIG to join up and battle in daily Dogfighting sessions – which can get mighty heated these days. We are also busy working on patch 11.2 which will upgrade the patching system for the upcoming DFM reveal and subsequent release. Also, we are supporting the hard charging Santa Monica team with the DFM by having several folks embedded in the trenches lending a hand. Our Engineers got the full universe cluster configured and deployed to our cloud servers autonomously through our build system, and while our initial tests would only allow 2 or 3 players to connect, we are now up to dozens of us battling every single day. Also, we have many new improvements and enhancements for the Oculus Rift coming in the next Hangar Patch, such as FOV fixes, and dual-screen rendering, which will greatly enhance the VR experience. In addition, we’ve been working to support artists for enhancing visuals such as making PBR (or PBS) look as fantastic as possible and also greatly improved the shield effects, making them more configurable and now have a “from cockpit” view of the shields. We are also very busy integrating systems for the DFM, such as matchmaking, and leaderboards, which will be needed for our upcomming release. Animation has been very busy cleaning up the data from our first full performance capture session. Now, we are busy integrating the animation curves generated into our in game body and faces. And of course, making sure that all the animations work for the ships coming up in the dogfighting module. Audio has been busy getting the interactive music working correctly, as well as adding new sound effects for lasers, thrusters, cockpits, breakups and hits – in addition, recording all the dialogue for the “bitching betty” or warning system for the space ships we will be flying soon. Design has managed to fill 5 of the its open positions – it was a great month for finding some talented & dedicated designers that will go that extra mile to make Star Citizen the best experience possible. We are moving full steam ahead with BHVR on the economy simulation which will be responsible for generating many of the player missions in the game. It goes without saying that we are knee deep in dogfighting testing, and we are busy assisting with PBR implementation in the hangars, as well as making the tools that will allow us to populate the systems that all of us are looking forward to visiting. The art team has gotten the first female character modeled and approved by the man himself, we have also gotten the new facial rigs from 3Lateral and are busy attaching animations to them as we speak. We are working on ship parts and components that will be swappable on the various ships. We have completed the RSI helmet that you will be wearing as you fly in the DFM – or get ejected into space. We are also busy coordinating the performance capture sessions needed for both Star Citizen and Squadron 42. In addition we are busy sculpting the Xi’an race for look and feel. It is looking really sweet. Overall, the team is hard at work, making sure that we deliver a great experience, and support Chris as we make the Best Damned Space Sim Ever! Erin Roberts, Studio Director Hi again from sunny England. :) Well, the past month has flown by with a huge amount of work in a lot of directions… The team has been focusing on two main areas… Support for the dog fighting module, as well as pushing forward on a bunch of systems and content for Squadron 42. In terms of the dog fighting module the artists have been focusing on creating and polishing the maps that we will all be playing in. After getting the maps up and running, we have now been focusing on making space landmarks in the levels to make navigation intuitive, and will now be focusing in the last few weeks on lighting and effects to really make the maps sing. Design has been focusing on the different game modes for the dog fighting module, so on each map you will be able to play different types of games (Death match, team death match, horde mode etc.) Also, a lot of work has been going into the Vanduul AI, balancing the new flight model with the new vehicle (Fighter) setup and AI. This is quite a process as we have to balance the physics system with the vehicle weight and thruster ratios, and then make sure it all acts the way it should with the new Kythera AI from Mooncollider. The coders have been working on a bunch of the game rules, effects, HUD elements, counter measures, control options and general stability for the module. For Squadron 42, we have been pushing ahead with the block outs for all the UEE Capital Ships so we can get those into full production, the Idris and Retaliator are now in full production, along with a host of smaller craft, soon to be followed by the Panther and Javelin. This has entailed a bunch of concept / product design work from our internal concept artists Andrew Ley and Stuart Jennet who are making sure that every part of a ship, whether it be weapons, living quarters etc. all work as you would expect. We have to make sure each ship is a living and interactive space. (We want everything to have a function / use that looks like it should, and don’t want to have to re-work things later and waste time) We are also looking at starting the block outs for the Vanduul cap ship fleet next month as well as more work on the full block out of the Shubin Mining base. We have designed the ships systems for cap ships, which we will be sharing with the community in the coming weeks. Hopefully this will make manning capital ships with your friends a lot of fun, as different people need to work together to manage engineering, weapons control, shields, communications, navigation, radar and our favourite so far electronic warfare… Meetings have taken place over the motion capture process (both body and facial), which we will be taking the lead for at Foundry 42, as it is a huge part of pushing the fidelity and storytelling for the game. And finally David Haddock has been with us in the UK for the last two weeks, breaking down the story with Phil Meller, to continue with the script for S42 which is already moving towards the size of War and Peace. Phil will then be travelling over to LA to join David next month to finish their work off and get final sign off from Chris on the full story breakdown for S42. That’s about it for now! As always, thanks for all your support, without you guys we wouldn’t be able to have so much fun making this great game. Mathieu Beaulieu, Producer March was a very productive month at Behaviour Interactive. We are deep into the design and backend development of the economy within the persistent universe, bringing together complex systems to create the most realistic economic system ever found in a space sim. Concepts such as labor, salary, and employee happiness will be tracked and have an independent effect on the economic output of every location within the PU. Some worlds will favor the rich upper class, while others will favor the working class etc… We have also examined several vital issues such as inflation, monetary policy, central banks and player loans. We have started to use the Physical Based Rendering technology developed by Crytek and have begun to apply it to all the hangars. The results are great and will bring all the in-game textures to a high level of realism. Also, check out the latest development for the room system and the Asteroid Hangar on Episode 62 of Wingman’s Hangar! Last month we completed a first pass on the UI framework. Now, we are making good use of this framework for the integration of the Dog Fighting Module menus, as well as the Visor HUD. We are still ramping up and always looking for the best talent to join our team. Seven new employees joined us this month: 2 new artists, 2 intern artists, 1 UI designer, 1 game designer and 1 programmer. We are now 39 developers working hard to bring some amazing art and gameplay features to you in the ‘verse. Tara Decker, Producer The CGBot team has spent March (with the windows open;) working on various aspects of Star Citizen including ships, characters, and weapons. After an intense knowledge-transfer visit from Forrest Stephan and Chris Smith in late February, work began on putting the Aurora through the damage and PBR pipelines. We had great results and look forward to seeing some really beautiful destruction during Dogfighting. We are also working closely with Foundry 42 to get the Idris ready for single-player action. Several areas of the ship are being reworked as F42 goes through it with an eye towards making gameplay fun and interesting -we started the ship awhile back and are really happy to work with that incredible crew on making the Idris a great ship to own. On the character front, we were happy to work with the new character lead, David Jennison, on starting female characters. We get the pleasure of working on the completely bad-freaking-*rse Female Punk Pirate outfit. Getting that to work with the female base model & seeing her awesomeness come to life is well, awesome. Lastly, we jumped in to create some of the FPS weapons with [Redacted]. Weapons that are realistic of course, as Chris requires; so letting artists zone out on the details is always fun. It’s been an intense March working with the teams to get ships ready for Dogfighting fun while also feeding the overall SC needs. We’re proud to contribute to the effort. Btw, Canada, does a Gold in London count? ;) Sean Murphy, Outsource Manager Our stellar contract artists keep pumping out great work; Ryan Church is continuing to refine the Panther Escort Carrier and Emmanuel Shiu, Jan Urschel, and John Dickenson (among others!) continue on Vanduul, Banu, and Xi’an ships. Stephan Martiniere has created some fantastic environment paintings for the Tal system, Rob McKinnon has given us some awesome helmet, weapon, and armor designs, and Eddie del Rio has done some really interesting exploration of the Xi’an scout ship. Ed Lee has created a very cool crossbow for our Shroud of the Avatar crossover, and we’ve gotten some great Vanduul characters from Brett Briley and Justin Sweet. In addition, we’ve got a couple of new names working with us – Stefano Tsai in the UK has started building the M50 and Gavin Rothery, production designer on the movie “Moon”, has started work on the UEE Gladius. We’re excited to have them on board! [Redacted] What used to be merely an FPS team is growing! The team has been busily chasing our dogfighting goals, and steadily kicking along towards the debut of FPS as well. The animation team has applied loads of elbow grease and polish to player animation and movement in 0G, player movement in space after ejection is enabled by thrusters on the pilot suit to really sell the experience of floating weightless in the black. Our artists have leveraged their ample skills to produce tons of weapon FX, from lasers to grenades to the formidable electric shotgun. They’ve also turned their hands toward the environments, building up locations both on and off-planet, including that Outlaw space station we mentioned last month, perhaps you’ll be getting a peek at that soon? Our engineers have spent the month deep in the weeds of movement and eye-look positions, fixing physics errors and debugging elevators. While not too glamorous from the player side, these things all add up to make your alternate life that much more real. The networking guys have been slaving over hot matchmaking services, while working with our HUD artists to enable menuing systems and scoreboards. Dogfighting Servers have been deployed, and are even now being hammered by our testers to ensure the smoothest play experience possible for our backers when the dogfighting module goes live. This means that, In addition to letting you fly your ships and shoot your foes, we’ve added support for scoring and statistics keeping over all our multiplayer game modes! Can’t wait to see you in space! (Sizzling like stellar bacon at the hot end of our lasers!) Mark Day, Studio Director voidALPHA in Emeryville, CA is focused on Planetside locations! Specifically, The Blocks and Landing Zone on Terra:Prime. Despite being a lower-income section of Prime, The Blocks is starting to look really good and contrasts nicely with the upscale environment that is Landing Zone. Speaking of upscale, Centermass, located on Landing Zone is as fancy as weapon shops come! It is the focus of great effort on our part and we are branding this location as our “beautiful corner”. It is a section of Landing Zone that will set the visual high bar for our team here at voidALPHA. We are determined to make it melt your eyes! We are also in the early stages of conceptualization on another Planetside location that has lots of promise but we can’t quite share yet. Trust us, it’s going to look amazing! We’ve been doing a tiny bit of traveling as well, with representatives going to BHVR in Canada for lighting training and to San Francisco for GDC 2014 to assist with recruitment efforts. voidALPHA is building all this cool stuff with 5 people: a level designer, concept artist, production manager and 2 environment artists. Benoit Beauséjour, Founder Web team here! We’ve spent the whole dreadfully cold month of March neck-deep in new features, and we switched a few priorities here and there to make sure that everything comes out as cool as it can be, but in the right order. Much design work has been going on to flesh out the mechanics and interfaces for Orgs Drop Two. We want you to have fun roleplaying in your Orgs (yes, plural) and we know you can’t wait to do a bit of espionage of your own. As we move to implementation in the month of April and May expect to see more releases on the specifics of what we are preparing soon! We’re still revamping the way ship data is handled in the site and more specifically in the store. You’ll be able to browse all the ship data and statistics right from the store pages. Some exciting new visualization features are also in the works! Our team has been busy keeping up with the heavy Dogfighting Module development across all studios and focusing on producing new info, download and leaderboard views for the release of the DFM to the public. This includes how to get actual match and pilot data across to the site and in your accounts. In preparation for this launch the crew has performed several server upgrades, maintenance and migrations to make sure the infrastructure is ready for the live release. This means switching to newer, more powerful server instances and preparation for the huge live operations that will follow launch day! To help with spreading the good news, the Press section has been revamped to include more articles and more stuff for journalists across the globe. March also saw the release of the RSVP system with a first event for PAX East. Major progress was made in making a new transient room system for the XMPP chat system that should be ready to release soon. So many Orgs were created in such short time we had to change the way the channels were handled. The net result is you will be able to use your Community Monicker in XMPP once this is out and live. Team stands at solid 8 souls. Platform team out! Aprilscherze! Natürlich haben wir den echten Monatsbericht für Sie.... und das Star Citizen Team geht nicht so schnell auf eine tropische Insel, wir haben ein Spiel zu beenden! Lesen Sie weiter für monatliche Status-Updates von allen Studioleitern und Outsourcing-Partnern von Star Citizen. Travis Day, Dogfight Producer, Dogfight Producer Santa Monica, Kalifornien.... Heimat des ganzjährigen Sonnenscheins, ausgezeichnete Restaurants entlang der Promenade und ein 3 Meilen langer schöner Strand. Wir haben nichts davon seit vielen Wochen gesehen, da wir in unserem Büro eingesperrt waren und hart am Dogfighting gearbeitet haben! Im Ernst, aber obwohl es anstrengend ist, ist es auch sehr belebend, und dieses Projekt treibt die Leidenschaft aller voran und das Wissen, dass die Gemeinschaft genauso begeistert ist wie wir, treibt uns zu unserer besten Arbeit. Ich war noch nie so beeindruckt von der Disziplin und dem Engagement eines Teams. Wir arbeiten nicht, weil wir dazu gezwungen sind, sondern weil wir das, woran wir arbeiten, lieben und die Leute mit Chris' Enthüllung vor der PAX East wirklich begeistern wollen. In Ordnung, nun, ich bin mir sicher, dass Sie an dieser Stelle denken: "Wir haben es verstanden, die Teams arbeiten hart.... Aber was haben Sie getan?" Nun, fair genug, los geht's! Das HUD hat sich sprunghaft weiterentwickelt. Dies war eine unserer kollaborativsten Arbeiten mit anderen Studios und es entwickelt sich wirklich! Im Laufe der letzten Monate haben wir hart daran gearbeitet, die Basisfunktionalität zu konzipieren und zu definieren, die die HUD- und peripheren Benutzeroberflächen in vielen der Schiffe, die Sie im Star Citizen-Universum steuern werden, antreibt. Auf jedem Schiff können Sie viele verschiedene Systeme verwalten und mit ihnen interagieren, wie z.B. Waffenkonfigurationsmanagement, Energie- und Energiemanagement, Schildmanagement, Radarkonfiguration, Navigation, Kommunikation, Zielverfolgung, voreingestellte Konfiguration und vieles mehr. Alle diese Komponenten müssen zu jedem Zeitpunkt schnell für Sie zugänglich sein, insbesondere in heißen Situationen wie z.B. im Kampf. Unser Ziel bei der Gestaltung der Cockpit-Oberfläche war es, so komplexe Komponenten funktional intuitiv und ästhetisch im Einklang mit der Fiktion zu präsentieren, dass Sie ein Schiff aus der Zukunft steuern. Eine der größten Herausforderungen bei der Gestaltung eines Sci-Fi-Interfaces ist es, die richtige Balance zwischen dem, was optisch interessant aussieht / sich anfühlt, und dem, was funktional effizient ist, zu finden. Beide sind ebenso wichtig für das Eintauchen, wie Sie Schiffe in Star Citizen steuern. Wir sind der Meinung, dass wir eine schöne Mischung zwischen den beiden in unserem Design erreicht haben, da einige der Kernkonzepte hinter der Benutzeroberfläche stehen. Eines davon ist zum Beispiel die umfassende Verwendung der tatsächlichen 3D-Geometrie innerhalb der Benutzeroberfläche, um Elemente und Objekte (wie Ziele, Teile des eigenen Schiffes usw.) und die vielen verschiedenen Zustände, die sie haben können, visuell darzustellen. Wir haben auch umfangreiche Arbeit geleistet, indem wir einen benutzerdefinierten "Holoshader" entwickelt haben, der diesen 3D-Objekten einen sehr "holographischen" Look verleiht, der sie gut in das Gesamtdesign integriert. Wir haben einige wirklich coole Features für die Benutzeroberfläche in Star Citizen entwickelt. Wir freuen uns darauf, Ihnen bald unsere Vision hinter dem HUD und all seinen verschiedenen Komponenten im Detail mitzuteilen, aber es bleibt noch viel zu tun, bevor es in einem endgültigen Zustand betrachtet wird. Die Multiplayer-Funktionalität war auch in diesem Monat ein großes und fehlerhaftes Unterfangen. Wir haben diesen Monat viel Zeit damit verbracht, Code zu schreiben, um die Systeme zu verbessern, die wir zuvor erstellt hatten, und Probleme mit Präzision, Latenz und Bandbreitenbeschränkungen zu debuggen. Jetzt, da wir mit unserem neu gestalteten Backend (CIGNet) testen, beginnen wir, die verschiedenen Systeme durchzuarbeiten, um sicherzustellen, dass das Erlebnis mit einer Vielzahl von Pings und verfügbarer Bandbreite spielbar bleibt. Unser Designteam hat auch hart daran gearbeitet, viele neu geschaffene Gegenstände weiter zu verbinden und auszubalancieren und den Schiffen weiterhin Nuancen zu verleihen. Wir haben die Implementierung und Durchführung einer frühzeitigen Saldenübergabe von Schiffspositionen abgeschlossen. Außerdem haben wir den Anschluss der Scythe für einen perfekt ausbalancierten Flug abgeschlossen, wobei alle ihre Triebwerke gemeinsam arbeiten, um ihre Waffen gegen Feinde einzusetzen. Während dieses Prozesses war unser Physikprogrammierer in der Lage, sein handgefertigtes Analysetool für Triebwerke zu optimieren und zu debuggen, was bei der Platzierung und dem Auswuchten von Triebwerken für alle zukünftigen Schiffe sehr hilfreich ist. Wir haben auch die Hornet auf PBR aufgerüstet, so dass sie ein viel realistischeres Aussehen und Gefühl hat. Während dieses Prozesses nahm Chris Smith es auf sich, um einige Innenaufrüstungen zum Cockpit mit höherer Auflösung zu machen, die dem Inneren des Cockpits viel kompliziertere Details hinzufügen. Aufwändige mechanische Arbeiten wurden ebenfalls durchgeführt, um die Kappe auf einem zuverlässigen Schienensystem laufen zu lassen und den Sitz für einen zuverlässigen Auswurf zu modifizieren. Schließlich kam mit PBR die Integration des Bewitterungssystems, das es ihm ermöglicht, einige sehr glaubwürdige Verschleißerscheinungen auf die Modelle anzuwenden. Er nahm sogar einen Pass, um verschiedene Rüstungstypen dafür zu verspotten. Mit all diesen detaillierten Änderungen und dem PBR Umbau sieht die Hornet wirklich umwerfend aus! Wir haben auch unser Team hier im letzten Monat ein wenig vergrößert, mit weiteren drei neuen Mitarbeitern, so dass wir in diesem Studio insgesamt 27 Mitarbeiter beschäftigen. Kami Talebi (Produktionskoordinatorin), Joanna Whitmarsh (Marketing Associate) und James Pugh (Assistant Community Manger), die alle sehr gut gelaufen sind, haben sich uns in diesem Monat angeschlossen! Es war erstaunlich zu sehen, wie das Team hier von drei Personen vor fast einem Jahr auf unsere heutige Größe anstieg, und wir alle freuen uns darauf, auch in Zukunft das bestmögliche Team zu bilden, mit dem wir den BDSSE aufbauen können! Vielen Dank für die Lektüre und wenn Sie Fragen zu dem, was Sie in diesem Bericht gesehen haben, haben, zögern Sie bitte nicht, uns über die Themen'Ask a Developer' in den Foren zu kontaktieren. Wir sehen uns im Vers! Eric Peterson, Studio-Direktor CIG Texas hatte einen erstaunlichen Monat März, nachdem der Backend-Server in Betrieb genommen wurde, der es uns allen bei CIG ermöglicht, an den täglichen Dogfighting-Sitzungen teilzunehmen und zu kämpfen - was heutzutage sehr heiß werden kann. Wir sind auch damit beschäftigt, an Patch 11.2 zu arbeiten, der das Patchesystem für die kommende DFM Enthüllung und die anschließende Veröffentlichung aktualisieren wird. Außerdem unterstützen wir das hart umkämpfte Santa Monica-Team mit dem DFM, indem wir mehrere Leute in die Schützengräben eingebettet haben, die eine Hand reichen. Unsere Ingenieure haben den kompletten Universum-Cluster konfiguriert und auf unseren Cloud-Servern autonom über unser Build-System bereitgestellt, und während unsere ersten Tests nur 2 oder 3 Spielern die Verbindung ermöglichen würden, kämpfen wir jetzt bis zu Dutzenden von uns jeden Tag. Außerdem haben wir viele neue Verbesserungen und Erweiterungen für den Oculus Rift im nächsten Hangar Patch, wie z.B. FOV-Fixes und Dual-Screen-Rendering, die das VR-Erlebnis erheblich verbessern werden. Darüber hinaus haben wir daran gearbeitet, Künstler bei der Verbesserung von Visuals zu unterstützen, wie z.B. PBR (oder PBS) so fantastisch wie möglich aussehen zu lassen und auch die Schildeffekte stark zu verbessern, sie konfigurierbarer zu machen und nun eine "aus dem Cockpit" Ansicht der Schilde zu haben. Wir sind auch sehr damit beschäftigt, Systeme für das DFM zu integrieren, wie Matchmaking und Ranglisten, die für unser kommendes Release benötigt werden. Die Animation war sehr damit beschäftigt, die Daten aus unserer ersten vollständigen Leistungserfassung zu bereinigen. Jetzt sind wir damit beschäftigt, die erzeugten Animationskurven in unseren Körper und unsere Gesichter im Spiel zu integrieren. Und natürlich, um sicherzustellen, dass alle Animationen für die Schiffe funktionieren, die im Dogfighting-Modul auftauchen. Audio war damit beschäftigt, die interaktive Musik zum Laufen zu bringen, neue Soundeffekte für Laser, Thruster, Cockpits, Trennungen und Hits hinzuzufügen und den gesamten Dialog für das "bitching betty" oder das Warnsystem für die Raumschiffe, die wir bald fliegen werden, aufzunehmen. Design hat es geschafft, 5 seiner offenen Stellen zu besetzen - es war ein großartiger Monat, um einige talentierte und engagierte Designer zu finden, die diese zusätzliche Meile gehen werden, um Star Citizen das bestmögliche Erlebnis zu bieten. Wir treiben mit Hochdruck die Wirtschaftssimulation mit BHVR voran, die für die Generierung vieler der Spielermissionen im Spiel verantwortlich sein wird. Es versteht sich von selbst, dass wir uns knietief im Dogfighting-Test befinden, und wir sind damit beschäftigt, die PBR-Implementierung in den Hangars zu unterstützen und die Werkzeuge zu entwickeln, die es uns ermöglichen, die Systeme zu füllen, die wir alle gerne besuchen würden. Das Kunstteam hat die erste weibliche Figur modelliert und vom Mann selbst genehmigt bekommen, wir haben auch die neuen Gesichtsrigs von 3Lateral bekommen und sind damit beschäftigt, Animationen an ihnen anzubringen, während wir sprechen. Wir arbeiten an Schiffsteile und Komponenten, die auf den verschiedenen Schiffen austauschbar sein werden. Wir haben den RSI-Helm fertig gestellt, den du tragen wirst, wenn du im DFM fliegst - oder ins All geworfen wirst. Wir sind auch damit beschäftigt, die Leistungserfassung zu koordinieren, die sowohl für Star Citizen als auch für Staffel 42 erforderlich ist. Darüber hinaus sind wir damit beschäftigt, das Xi'an Rennen um Look and Feel zu gestalten. Es sieht wirklich süß aus. Insgesamt ist das Team hart bei der Arbeit, stellt sicher, dass wir eine großartige Erfahrung liefern und unterstützt Chris bei der Entwicklung der besten verdammten Space Sim aller Zeiten! Erin Roberts, Studioleiterin Hallo wieder aus dem sonnigen England. :) Nun, der letzte Monat ist mit viel Arbeit in viele Richtungen vergangen..... Das Team hat sich auf zwei Hauptbereiche konzentriert.... Unterstützung für das Hundekampfmodul, sowie die Weiterentwicklung einer Reihe von Systemen und Inhalten für die Staffel 42. Im Hinblick auf das Modul Hundekampf haben sich die Künstler darauf konzentriert, die Karten zu erstellen und zu polieren, in denen wir alle spielen werden. Nachdem wir die Karten in Betrieb genommen haben, haben wir uns nun darauf konzentriert, in den Ebenen Raummarkierungen vorzunehmen, um die Navigation intuitiv zu gestalten, und werden uns nun in den letzten Wochen auf Beleuchtung und Effekte konzentrieren, um die Karten wirklich zum Singen zu bringen. Das Design hat sich auf die verschiedenen Spielmodi für das Hundekampfmodul konzentriert, so dass Sie auf jeder Karte verschiedene Arten von Spielen spielen können (Todesspiel, Teamtodspiel, Hordenmodus usw.). Außerdem wurde viel Arbeit in die Vanduul KI gesteckt, indem das neue Flugmodell mit dem Setup des neuen Fahrzeugs (Fighter) und der KI abgeglichen wurde. Das ist ein ziemlicher Prozess, denn wir müssen das physikalische System mit dem Fahrzeuggewicht und den Schubverhältnissen in Einklang bringen und dann sicherstellen, dass es mit der neuen Kythera-KI von Mooncollider so funktioniert, wie es sollte. Die Programmierer haben an einer Reihe von Spielregeln, Effekten, HUD-Elementen, Gegenmaßnahmen, Kontrollmöglichkeiten und allgemeiner Stabilität für das Modul gearbeitet. Für die Staffel 42 haben wir die Block Outs für alle UEE Capital Ships vorangetrieben, damit wir diese in die volle Produktion bringen können, die Idris und der Retaliator sind jetzt in voller Produktion, zusammen mit einer Vielzahl kleinerer Schiffe, denen bald der Panther und der Javelin folgen werden. Dies hat zu einer Reihe von Konzept-/Produktdesignarbeiten unserer internen Konzeptkünstler Andrew Ley und Stuart Jennet geführt, die dafür sorgen, dass jeder Teil eines Schiffes, ob Waffen, Wohnräume usw., wie erwartet funktioniert. Wir müssen sicherstellen, dass jedes Schiff ein lebendiger und interaktiver Raum ist. (Wir wollen, dass alles eine Funktion hat, die so aussieht, wie es sollte, und wollen nicht, dass wir die Dinge später überarbeiten müssen und Zeit verschwenden). Wir sind auch dabei, die Block-Outs für die Vanduul Cap Ship Flotte nächsten Monat zu starten, sowie weitere Arbeiten am gesamten Block aus der Shubin Mining Basis. Wir haben die Schiffssysteme für Cap-Schiffe entworfen, die wir in den kommenden Wochen mit der Community teilen werden. Hoffentlich macht es Spaß, die Schiffe der Besatzungshauptstadt mit deinen Freunden zu besetzen, denn verschiedene Leute müssen zusammenarbeiten, um Engineering, Waffenkontrolle, Schilde, Kommunikation, Navigation, Radar und unsere bisher beliebteste elektronische Kriegsführung zu verwalten..... Besprechungen haben über den Bewegungserfassungsprozess (sowohl Körper als auch Gesicht) stattgefunden, für den wir bei Foundry 42 die Führung übernehmen werden, da er einen großen Teil dazu beiträgt, die Treue und das Geschichtenerzählen für das Spiel voranzutreiben. Und schließlich war David Haddock in den letzten zwei Wochen bei uns in Großbritannien und hat die Geschichte mit Phil Meller aufgeschlüsselt, um mit dem Skript für S42 fortzufahren, das sich bereits auf die Größe von Krieg und Frieden zubewegt. Phil wird dann nach LA reisen, um sich David im nächsten Monat anzuschließen, um ihre Arbeit zu beenden und von Chris die endgültige Freigabe für die vollständige Aufschlüsselung der Geschichte für S42 zu erhalten. Das war's fürs Erste! Wie immer, danke für eure Unterstützung, ohne euch wären wir nicht in der Lage, so viel Spaß an diesem tollen Spiel zu haben. Mathieu Beaulieu, Produzentin Der März war ein sehr produktiver Monat bei Behaviour Interactive. Wir sind tief in das Design und die Backend-Entwicklung der Wirtschaft innerhalb des persistenten Universums vertieft und bringen komplexe Systeme zusammen, um das realistischste Wirtschaftssystem zu schaffen, das je in einer Weltraumsimulation gefunden wurde. Konzepte wie Arbeit, Gehalt und Mitarbeiterzufriedenheit werden verfolgt und wirken sich unabhängig auf die Wirtschaftsleistung jedes Standortes innerhalb der PU aus. Einige Welten werden die reiche Oberschicht bevorzugen, während andere die Arbeiterklasse usw. bevorzugen... Wir haben auch einige wichtige Themen wie Inflation, Geldpolitik, Zentralbanken und Spielerkredite untersucht. Wir haben begonnen, die von Crytek entwickelte Physical Based Rendering-Technologie zu nutzen und sie auf alle Hangars anzuwenden. Die Ergebnisse sind großartig und werden alle Texturen im Spiel auf ein hohes Maß an Realismus bringen. Außerdem gibt es die neueste Entwicklung für das Raumsystem und den Asteroidenhangar in Episode 62 von Wingman's Hangar! Letzten Monat haben wir einen ersten Durchgang über das UI-Framework abgeschlossen. Nun nutzen wir diesen Rahmen für die Integration der Menüs des Dog Fighting Module sowie des Visor HUD. Wir sind immer noch im Aufbau und suchen immer nach den besten Talenten, um unser Team zu verstärken. Sieben neue Mitarbeiter sind in diesem Monat zu uns gekommen: 2 neue Künstler, 2 interne Künstler, 1 UI-Designer, 1 Game Designer und 1 Programmierer. Wir sind jetzt 39 Entwickler, die hart daran arbeiten, Ihnen in der Strophe einige erstaunliche Kunst- und Gameplay-Funktionen zu bieten. Tara Decker, Produzentin Das CGBot-Team hat im März (bei geöffneten Fenstern;) an verschiedenen Aspekten von Star Citizen gearbeitet, darunter Schiffe, Charaktere und Waffen. Nach einem intensiven Wissenstransferbesuch von Forrest Stephan und Chris Smith Ende Februar begannen die Arbeiten, die Aurora durch die Schäden und PBR-Pipelines zu bringen. Wir hatten großartige Ergebnisse und freuen uns auf eine wirklich schöne Zerstörung während des Dogfighting. Wir arbeiten auch eng mit der Gießerei 42 zusammen, um die Idris für die Einzelspieler-Action fit zu machen. Mehrere Bereiche des Schiffes werden überarbeitet, während die F42 durchläuft, um das Gameplay unterhaltsam und interessant zu gestalten - wir haben das Schiff vor einiger Zeit gestartet und sind wirklich glücklich, mit dieser unglaublichen Crew daran zu arbeiten, die Idris zu einem großartigen Schiff zu machen. Auf der Charakterseite waren wir glücklich, mit dem neuen Charakterleiter David Jennison an der Entwicklung von weiblichen Charakteren zu arbeiten. Wir haben das Vergnügen, an dem völlig bösen-*rse Female Punk Pirate Outfit zu arbeiten. Das mit dem weiblichen Basismodell zum Laufen zu bringen und zu sehen, wie ihre Großartigkeit zum Leben erwacht, ist gut, großartig. Schließlich sprangen wir ein, um einige der FPS-Waffen mit[Redacted] zu erstellen. Waffen, die natürlich realistisch sind, wie Chris es verlangt; so dass es immer Spaß macht, Künstler auf die Details eingehen zu lassen. Es war ein intensiver März, der mit den Teams zusammengearbeitet hat, um die Schiffe für den Dogfighting-Spaß vorzubereiten und gleichzeitig die allgemeinen SC-Anforderungen zu erfüllen. Wir sind stolz darauf, einen Beitrag dazu zu leisten. Btw, Kanada, zählt ein Gold in London? ;) Sean Murphy, Outsourcing Manager Unsere herausragenden Vertragskünstler leisten immer wieder großartige Arbeit; Ryan Church verfeinert weiterhin den Panther Escort Carrier und Emmanuel Shiu, Jan Urschel und John Dickenson (unter anderem!) fahren auf Vanduul, Banu und Xi'an Schiffen fort. Stephan Martiniere hat einige fantastische Umgebungsbilder für das Tal-System geschaffen, Rob McKinnon hat uns einige fantastische Helm-, Waffen- und Rüstungsdesigns gegeben, und Eddie del Rio hat einige wirklich interessante Erkundungen des Xi'an-Spähschiffs durchgeführt. Ed Lee hat für unser Shroud of the Avatar Crossover eine sehr coole Armbrust kreiert, und wir haben einige großartige Vanduul Charaktere von Brett Briley und Justin Sweet bekommen. Außerdem haben wir ein paar neue Namen, die mit uns zusammenarbeiten - Stefano Tsai in Großbritannien hat mit dem Bau des M50 begonnen und Gavin Rothery, Produktionsdesigner des Films "Moon", hat mit der Arbeit am UEE Gladius begonnen. Wir freuen uns, sie an Bord zu haben! (Redigiert) Was früher nur ein FPS-Team war, wächst! Das Team hat unsere Luftkampfziele eifrig verfolgt und ist auch beim Debüt von FPS immer weiter vorangekommen. Das Animationsteam hat viel Ellenbogenfett und Politur auf die Spieleranimation und -bewegung in 0G aufgetragen, die Spielerbewegung im Raum nach dem Auswurf wird durch Triebwerke am Pilotenanzug ermöglicht, um wirklich das Erlebnis des Schwebens ohne Gewicht im Schwarz zu verkaufen. Unsere Künstler haben ihre umfangreichen Fähigkeiten genutzt, um Tonnen von Waffen-Effekten zu produzieren, vom Laser über Granaten bis hin zur beeindruckenden elektrischen Schrotflinte. Sie haben auch ihre Hände in Richtung der Umgebung gerichtet und sowohl auf dem On- als auch auf dem Off-Planet-Standort aufgebaut, einschließlich der Raumstation Outlaw, die wir letzten Monat erwähnt haben, vielleicht bekommen Sie ja bald einen Blick darauf? Unsere Ingenieure haben den Monat tief in das Unkraut der Bewegung und der Positionen im Blickfeld verbracht, Physikfehler behoben und Aufzüge getestet. Obwohl von der Spielerseite nicht allzu glamourös, summieren sich diese Dinge, um dein alternatives Leben so realistisch wie möglich zu gestalten. Die Netzwerkkerle haben sich um heiße Matchmaking-Dienste gekümmert, während sie mit unseren HUD-Künstlern gearbeitet haben, um Menüsysteme und Anzeigetafeln zu ermöglichen. Dogfighting Server wurden eingesetzt und werden auch jetzt noch von unseren Testern gehämmert, um ein möglichst reibungsloses Spielerlebnis für unsere Geldgeber zu gewährleisten, wenn das Dogfighting-Modul live geht. Das bedeutet, dass wir nicht nur Ihre Schiffe fliegen und Ihre Feinde erschießen lassen, sondern auch die Unterstützung für Punktestand und Statistiken über alle unsere Mehrspieler-Spielmodi hinzugefügt haben! Ich kann es kaum erwarten, dich im Weltraum zu sehen! (Knisternd wie Sternenspeck am heißen Ende unserer Laser!) Mark Day, Studioleiterin voidALPHA in Emeryville, CA ist auf die Standorte auf den Planeten ausgerichtet! Insbesondere die Blöcke und Landezone auf Terra:Prime. Obwohl The Blocks ein einkommensschwacher Bereich von Prime ist, beginnt The Blocks, wirklich gut auszusehen und steht in gutem Kontrast zu dem gehobenen Umfeld, das Landing Zone ist. Apropos gehoben, Centermass, in der Landing Zone gelegen, ist so ausgefallen, wie Waffenläden kommen! Es ist der Schwerpunkt unserer Bemühungen und wir brandmarken diesen Standort als unsere "schöne Ecke". Es ist ein Teil der Landezone, der die visuelle Messlatte für unser Team hier bei voidALPHA setzen wird. Wir sind entschlossen, es Ihre Augen schmelzen zu lassen! Wir befinden uns auch in der Anfangsphase der Konzeptualisierung an einem anderen Standort auf dem Planeten, der viel versprechend ist, aber wir können ihn noch nicht ganz teilen. Vertrauen Sie uns, es wird fantastisch aussehen! Wir haben auch ein wenig gereist, mit Vertretern, die zu BHVR in Kanada für Lichttraining und nach San Francisco für GDC 2014 gehen, um bei der Rekrutierung zu helfen. voidALPHA baut all diese coolen Sachen mit 5 Leuten: einem Leveldesigner, Konzeptkünstler, Produktionsleiter und 2 Umweltkünstlern. Benoit Beauséjour, Gründer und Gründer Web-Team hier! Wir haben den ganzen schrecklich kalten Monat März im Halstief in neue Features investiert, und wir haben hier und da ein paar Prioritäten gesetzt, um sicherzustellen, dass alles so cool wie möglich, aber in der richtigen Reihenfolge herauskommt. Viel Designarbeit wurde unternommen, um die Mechanik und Schnittstellen für Orgs Drop Two zu konkretisieren. Wir möchten, dass du Spaß am Rollenspiel in deinen Orgs hast (ja, Plural) und wir wissen, dass du es kaum erwarten kannst, selbst ein wenig Spionage zu betreiben. Da wir mit der Implementierung im Monat April beginnen, erwarten wir weitere Veröffentlichungen zu den Besonderheiten dessen, was wir in Kürze vorbereiten! Wir überarbeiten immer noch die Art und Weise, wie Schiffsdaten auf der Website und insbesondere im Geschäft verarbeitet werden. Sie können alle Schiffsdaten und Statistiken direkt auf den Shop-Seiten durchsuchen. Einige aufregende neue Visualisierungsfunktionen sind ebenfalls in Arbeit! Unser Team war damit beschäftigt, mit der Entwicklung des Dogfighting Module in allen Studios Schritt zu halten und sich auf die Erstellung neuer Info-, Download- und Leaderboard-Ansichten für die Veröffentlichung des DFM in der Öffentlichkeit zu konzentrieren. Dazu gehört auch, wie Sie tatsächliche Spiel- und Pilotdaten auf die Website und in Ihren Konten übertragen können. In Vorbereitung auf diesen Start hat die Crew mehrere Server-Upgrades, Wartungsarbeiten und Migrationen durchgeführt, um sicherzustellen, dass die Infrastruktur für das Live-Release bereit ist. Das bedeutet, auf neuere, leistungsfähigere Serverinstanzen umzusteigen und sich auf den großen Live-Betrieb vorzubereiten, der dem Launch-Tag folgt! Um bei der Verbreitung der guten Nachrichten zu helfen, wurde der Pressebereich überarbeitet, um mehr Artikel und mehr Material für Journalisten auf der ganzen Welt zu veröffentlichen. Im März wurde auch das RSVP-System mit einer ersten Veranstaltung für PAX East freigegeben. Große Fortschritte wurden bei der Entwicklung eines neuen transienten Raumsystems für das XMPP-Chatsystem erzielt, das in Kürze freigegeben werden soll. So viele Orgs wurden in so kurzer Zeit erstellt, dass wir die Art und Weise, wie die Kanäle behandelt wurden, ändern mussten. Das Endergebnis ist, dass du deinen Community Monicker in XMPP nutzen kannst, sobald er veröffentlicht und live ist. Das Team steht bei soliden 8 Seelen. Plattform-Team raus! April Fools! Of course we have the real monthly report for you… and the Star Citizen team isn’t going to a tropical island any time soon, we have a game to finish! Read on for monthly status updates from all of Star Citizen’s studio heads and outsource partners. Travis Day, Dogfight Producer Santa Monica, California… Home to year round sunshine, excellent restaurants along the walking promenade, and a 3-mile stretch of beautiful beach. We’ve seen none of these things for many weeks now as we’ve been locked in our office working hard on Dogfighting! In all seriousness though while it is tiring, it is also very invigorating, and this project drives everyone’s passion and the knowledge that the community is just as excited as we are pushes us to our best work. I have never been more awed by a team’s discipline and dedication. We work not because we’re forced to but instead because we love what we’re working on and want to really wow people with Chris’ reveal before PAX East. Alright, well at this point I am sure you’re thinking, “We get it, the teams is working hard… But what have you DONE?” Well fair enough, here we go! The HUD has moved forward by leaps and bounds. This has been one of our most collaborative pieces of work with other studios and it is really shaping up! Over the course of the past couple of months, we have been working hard to conceptualize and define the base functionality that will drive the HUD and peripheral user interfaces in many of the ships that you will be piloting in the Star Citizen universe. In any ship, you will be able to manage and interact with many different systems, such as weapons configuration management, power and energy management, shields management, radar configuration, navigation, comms, target tracking, preset configuration, and much more. All of these components need to be quickly accessible to you at any given point in time, especially during heated situations such as combat. Our goal in designing the cockpit UI was to present such complex components in a manner that is functionally intuitive, yet aesthetically consistent with the fiction in that you’re piloting a ship from the future. One of the biggest challenges in designing any sci-fi interface is striking the right balance between what looks / feels visually interesting and what is functionally efficient, both of which are equally important in driving the immersion as you’re piloting ships in Star Citizen. We feel that we have achieved a nice blending between the two in our design given some of the core concepts behind the UI. One of which for example, is the extensive use of actual 3D geometry within the UI to visually represent items and objects (such as targets, parts of your own ship, etc.), and the many various states they may have. We have also been doing extensive work developing a custom “holoshader” that gives these 3D objects a very “holographic” look, which will have them fit nicely into the overall design. We’ve been developing some really cool features for the UI in Star Citizen. We are looking forward to sharing with you in detail our vision behind the HUD and all of its various components soon, but there is still much work to be done before it’s considered in any final state. Multiplayer functionality has also been a large and bug filled undertaking this month. We’ve spent a great deal of time this month writing code to improve the systems we’d previously created and debugging issues with precision, latency, and bandwidth limitations. Now that we are testing with our newly crafted backend (CIGNet) we’re starting to work through the various systems to make sure that the experience remains playable with a variety of pings and available bandwidth. Our design team has also been hard at work continuing to hook up and balance many newly created items and continuing to add nuance to the ships. We’ve finished implementing and doing an early balance pass on ship items. Furthermore, we’ve completed hooking up the Scythe for perfectly balanced flight with all of its thrusters working in concert to bring its weapons to bear on enemies. During this process our Physics programmer was able to tweak and debug his hand crafted thruster analysis tool which greatly aids in placing and balancing thrusters for all future ships. We’ve also been upgrading the Hornet to PBR so it has a lot more realistic look and feel to it. During this process Chris Smith took it upon himself to make some interior upgrades to the cockpit with higher resolution pass adding a lot more intricate details to the interior of the cockpit. Intricate mechanical workings were done as well to make the canopy operate on a believable track system and modifying the seat for a believable ejection. Lastly with PBR came the integration of the weathering system that allows him to apply some very believable wear and tear looks to the models. He even took a pass of mocking up some different armor types for it. With all of these detailed changes plus the PBR conversion the Hornet is really looking quite stunning! We’ve also grown our team here a bit over the last month with an additional three new employees bringing our total headcount in this studio to 27. Joining us this month were Kami Talebi (Production Coordinator), Joanna Whitmarsh (Marketing Associate), and James Pugh (Assistant Community Manger) who’ve all hit the ground running quite well! It has been amazing to watch the team here grow from three people almost a year ago to our current size today and we all look forward to continuing to grow the best possible team in the future with which to build the BDSSE! Thanks for reading and if you have any questions about what you’ve seen in this report please do not hesitate to reach out to us on the ‘Ask a Developer’ threads in the forums. See you in the ‘verse! Eric Peterson, Studio Director CIG Texas has had an amazing month of March from getting the backend server up and running which allows all of us at CIG to join up and battle in daily Dogfighting sessions – which can get mighty heated these days. We are also busy working on patch 11.2 which will upgrade the patching system for the upcoming DFM reveal and subsequent release. Also, we are supporting the hard charging Santa Monica team with the DFM by having several folks embedded in the trenches lending a hand. Our Engineers got the full universe cluster configured and deployed to our cloud servers autonomously through our build system, and while our initial tests would only allow 2 or 3 players to connect, we are now up to dozens of us battling every single day. Also, we have many new improvements and enhancements for the Oculus Rift coming in the next Hangar Patch, such as FOV fixes, and dual-screen rendering, which will greatly enhance the VR experience. In addition, we’ve been working to support artists for enhancing visuals such as making PBR (or PBS) look as fantastic as possible and also greatly improved the shield effects, making them more configurable and now have a “from cockpit” view of the shields. We are also very busy integrating systems for the DFM, such as matchmaking, and leaderboards, which will be needed for our upcomming release. Animation has been very busy cleaning up the data from our first full performance capture session. Now, we are busy integrating the animation curves generated into our in game body and faces. And of course, making sure that all the animations work for the ships coming up in the dogfighting module. Audio has been busy getting the interactive music working correctly, as well as adding new sound effects for lasers, thrusters, cockpits, breakups and hits – in addition, recording all the dialogue for the “bitching betty” or warning system for the space ships we will be flying soon. Design has managed to fill 5 of the its open positions – it was a great month for finding some talented & dedicated designers that will go that extra mile to make Star Citizen the best experience possible. We are moving full steam ahead with BHVR on the economy simulation which will be responsible for generating many of the player missions in the game. It goes without saying that we are knee deep in dogfighting testing, and we are busy assisting with PBR implementation in the hangars, as well as making the tools that will allow us to populate the systems that all of us are looking forward to visiting. The art team has gotten the first female character modeled and approved by the man himself, we have also gotten the new facial rigs from 3Lateral and are busy attaching animations to them as we speak. We are working on ship parts and components that will be swappable on the various ships. We have completed the RSI helmet that you will be wearing as you fly in the DFM – or get ejected into space. We are also busy coordinating the performance capture sessions needed for both Star Citizen and Squadron 42. In addition we are busy sculpting the Xi’an race for look and feel. It is looking really sweet. Overall, the team is hard at work, making sure that we deliver a great experience, and support Chris as we make the Best Damned Space Sim Ever! Erin Roberts, Studio Director Hi again from sunny England. :) Well, the past month has flown by with a huge amount of work in a lot of directions… The team has been focusing on two main areas… Support for the dog fighting module, as well as pushing forward on a bunch of systems and content for Squadron 42. In terms of the dog fighting module the artists have been focusing on creating and polishing the maps that we will all be playing in. After getting the maps up and running, we have now been focusing on making space landmarks in the levels to make navigation intuitive, and will now be focusing in the last few weeks on lighting and effects to really make the maps sing. Design has been focusing on the different game modes for the dog fighting module, so on each map you will be able to play different types of games (Death match, team death match, horde mode etc.) Also, a lot of work has been going into the Vanduul AI, balancing the new flight model with the new vehicle (Fighter) setup and AI. This is quite a process as we have to balance the physics system with the vehicle weight and thruster ratios, and then make sure it all acts the way it should with the new Kythera AI from Mooncollider. The coders have been working on a bunch of the game rules, effects, HUD elements, counter measures, control options and general stability for the module. For Squadron 42, we have been pushing ahead with the block outs for all the UEE Capital Ships so we can get those into full production, the Idris and Retaliator are now in full production, along with a host of smaller craft, soon to be followed by the Panther and Javelin. This has entailed a bunch of concept / product design work from our internal concept artists Andrew Ley and Stuart Jennet who are making sure that every part of a ship, whether it be weapons, living quarters etc. all work as you would expect. We have to make sure each ship is a living and interactive space. (We want everything to have a function / use that looks like it should, and don’t want to have to re-work things later and waste time) We are also looking at starting the block outs for the Vanduul cap ship fleet next month as well as more work on the full block out of the Shubin Mining base. We have designed the ships systems for cap ships, which we will be sharing with the community in the coming weeks. Hopefully this will make manning capital ships with your friends a lot of fun, as different people need to work together to manage engineering, weapons control, shields, communications, navigation, radar and our favourite so far electronic warfare… Meetings have taken place over the motion capture process (both body and facial), which we will be taking the lead for at Foundry 42, as it is a huge part of pushing the fidelity and storytelling for the game. And finally David Haddock has been with us in the UK for the last two weeks, breaking down the story with Phil Meller, to continue with the script for S42 which is already moving towards the size of War and Peace. Phil will then be travelling over to LA to join David next month to finish their work off and get final sign off from Chris on the full story breakdown for S42. That’s about it for now! As always, thanks for all your support, without you guys we wouldn’t be able to have so much fun making this great game. Mathieu Beaulieu, Producer March was a very productive month at Behaviour Interactive. We are deep into the design and backend development of the economy within the persistent universe, bringing together complex systems to create the most realistic economic system ever found in a space sim. Concepts such as labor, salary, and employee happiness will be tracked and have an independent effect on the economic output of every location within the PU. Some worlds will favor the rich upper class, while others will favor the working class etc… We have also examined several vital issues such as inflation, monetary policy, central banks and player loans. We have started to use the Physical Based Rendering technology developed by Crytek and have begun to apply it to all the hangars. The results are great and will bring all the in-game textures to a high level of realism. Also, check out the latest development for the room system and the Asteroid Hangar on Episode 62 of Wingman’s Hangar! Last month we completed a first pass on the UI framework. Now, we are making good use of this framework for the integration of the Dog Fighting Module menus, as well as the Visor HUD. We are still ramping up and always looking for the best talent to join our team. Seven new employees joined us this month: 2 new artists, 2 intern artists, 1 UI designer, 1 game designer and 1 programmer. We are now 39 developers working hard to bring some amazing art and gameplay features to you in the ‘verse. Tara Decker, Producer The CGBot team has spent March (with the windows open;) working on various aspects of Star Citizen including ships, characters, and weapons. After an intense knowledge-transfer visit from Forrest Stephan and Chris Smith in late February, work began on putting the Aurora through the damage and PBR pipelines. We had great results and look forward to seeing some really beautiful destruction during Dogfighting. We are also working closely with Foundry 42 to get the Idris ready for single-player action. Several areas of the ship are being reworked as F42 goes through it with an eye towards making gameplay fun and interesting -we started the ship awhile back and are really happy to work with that incredible crew on making the Idris a great ship to own. On the character front, we were happy to work with the new character lead, David Jennison, on starting female characters. We get the pleasure of working on the completely bad-freaking-*rse Female Punk Pirate outfit. Getting that to work with the female base model & seeing her awesomeness come to life is well, awesome. Lastly, we jumped in to create some of the FPS weapons with [Redacted]. Weapons that are realistic of course, as Chris requires; so letting artists zone out on the details is always fun. It’s been an intense March working with the teams to get ships ready for Dogfighting fun while also feeding the overall SC needs. We’re proud to contribute to the effort. Btw, Canada, does a Gold in London count? ;) Sean Murphy, Outsource Manager Our stellar contract artists keep pumping out great work; Ryan Church is continuing to refine the Panther Escort Carrier and Emmanuel Shiu, Jan Urschel, and John Dickenson (among others!) continue on Vanduul, Banu, and Xi’an ships. Stephan Martiniere has created some fantastic environment paintings for the Tal system, Rob McKinnon has given us some awesome helmet, weapon, and armor designs, and Eddie del Rio has done some really interesting exploration of the Xi’an scout ship. Ed Lee has created a very cool crossbow for our Shroud of the Avatar crossover, and we’ve gotten some great Vanduul characters from Brett Briley and Justin Sweet. In addition, we’ve got a couple of new names working with us – Stefano Tsai in the UK has started building the M50 and Gavin Rothery, production designer on the movie “Moon”, has started work on the UEE Gladius. We’re excited to have them on board! [Redacted] What used to be merely an FPS team is growing! The team has been busily chasing our dogfighting goals, and steadily kicking along towards the debut of FPS as well. The animation team has applied loads of elbow grease and polish to player animation and movement in 0G, player movement in space after ejection is enabled by thrusters on the pilot suit to really sell the experience of floating weightless in the black. Our artists have leveraged their ample skills to produce tons of weapon FX, from lasers to grenades to the formidable electric shotgun. They’ve also turned their hands toward the environments, building up locations both on and off-planet, including that Outlaw space station we mentioned last month, perhaps you’ll be getting a peek at that soon? Our engineers have spent the month deep in the weeds of movement and eye-look positions, fixing physics errors and debugging elevators. While not too glamorous from the player side, these things all add up to make your alternate life that much more real. The networking guys have been slaving over hot matchmaking services, while working with our HUD artists to enable menuing systems and scoreboards. Dogfighting Servers have been deployed, and are even now being hammered by our testers to ensure the smoothest play experience possible for our backers when the dogfighting module goes live. This means that, In addition to letting you fly your ships and shoot your foes, we’ve added support for scoring and statistics keeping over all our multiplayer game modes! Can’t wait to see you in space! (Sizzling like stellar bacon at the hot end of our lasers!) Mark Day, Studio Director voidALPHA in Emeryville, CA is focused on Planetside locations! Specifically, The Blocks and Landing Zone on Terra:Prime. Despite being a lower-income section of Prime, The Blocks is starting to look really good and contrasts nicely with the upscale environment that is Landing Zone. Speaking of upscale, Centermass, located on Landing Zone is as fancy as weapon shops come! It is the focus of great effort on our part and we are branding this location as our “beautiful corner”. It is a section of Landing Zone that will set the visual high bar for our team here at voidALPHA. We are determined to make it melt your eyes! We are also in the early stages of conceptualization on another Planetside location that has lots of promise but we can’t quite share yet. Trust us, it’s going to look amazing! We’ve been doing a tiny bit of traveling as well, with representatives going to BHVR in Canada for lighting training and to San Francisco for GDC 2014 to assist with recruitment efforts. voidALPHA is building all this cool stuff with 5 people: a level designer, concept artist, production manager and 2 environment artists. Benoit Beauséjour, Founder Web team here! We’ve spent the whole dreadfully cold month of March neck-deep in new features, and we switched a few priorities here and there to make sure that everything comes out as cool as it can be, but in the right order. Much design work has been going on to flesh out the mechanics and interfaces for Orgs Drop Two. We want you to have fun roleplaying in your Orgs (yes, plural) and we know you can’t wait to do a bit of espionage of your own. As we move to implementation in the month of April and May expect to see more releases on the specifics of what we are preparing soon! We’re still revamping the way ship data is handled in the site and more specifically in the store. You’ll be able to browse all the ship data and statistics right from the store pages. Some exciting new visualization features are also in the works! Our team has been busy keeping up with the heavy Dogfighting Module development across all studios and focusing on producing new info, download and leaderboard views for the release of the DFM to the public. This includes how to get actual match and pilot data across to the site and in your accounts. In preparation for this launch the crew has performed several server upgrades, maintenance and migrations to make sure the infrastructure is ready for the live release. This means switching to newer, more powerful server instances and preparation for the huge live operations that will follow launch day! To help with spreading the good news, the Press section has been revamped to include more articles and more stuff for journalists across the globe. March also saw the release of the RSVP system with a first event for PAX East. Major progress was made in making a new transient room system for the XMPP chat system that should be ready to release soon. So many Orgs were created in such short time we had to change the way the channels were handled. The net result is you will be able to use your Community Monicker in XMPP once this is out and live. Team stands at solid 8 souls. Platform team out! Links ----- No links available. Images ------ 25 image/jpeg [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/3r8132wfcyb47r/source/Idris_briefing_room02tex.jpg) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/3r8132wfcyb47r/source/Idris_briefing_room02tex.jpg) Idris_briefing_room02tex.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1529) Last Modified 12 years ago Size 5.50 MB [Source](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/3r8132wfcyb47r/source/Idris_briefing_room02tex.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1529) image/jpeg [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/utplim2kjkj88r/source/Idris_Cover.jpg) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/utplim2kjkj88r/source/Idris_Cover.jpg) Idris_Cover.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1530) Last Modified 12 years ago Size 1.29 MB [Source](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/utplim2kjkj88r/source/Idris_Cover.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1530) image/png [ 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[Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/38084) image/png [ ![](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/svep7j1purh1f/source.png) ](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/svep7j1purh1f/source.png) source.png [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/40391) Last Modified 10 months ago Size 5.29 MB [Source](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/svep7j1purh1f/source.png) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/40391) Metadata -------- CIG ID 13785 Channel Undefined Category Undefined Series Monthly Reports Comments 309 Published 12 years ago (2014-04-01T00:00:00+00:00) [RSI Article](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13785-Monthly-Report-March-2014) [API](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/api/comm-links/13785)