Arena Commander Weekly Report - May 5-9 - [Comm-Links](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links) - Arena Commander Weekly Report - May 5-9 Arena Commander Weekly Report - May 5-9 ======================================= Undefined Undefined None [Previous](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/13861) [Next](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/13864) Content ------- English I know you’re all impatient to get your hands on the DFM, and believe me we’re all very eager to have it in the state that we can start to roll out it to all of you but as in any ambitious undertaking there’s still some details that we’re busy wrapping up in terms of the backend end, build deployment, matchmaking and network stability over the internet – All the while trying to balance and tune the core gameplay of the DFM. We’ll have more exact dates to share by the end of next week, which we’ll update you with in next week’s report, but the goal is to start rolling out the DFM towards the end of this month – this will be staged as scaling to 250,000+ players is much more like launching a finished game as opposed to an early pre-alpha for gameplay feedback – our plan is to have Vanduul Swarm (single player against AI) available to everyone from the start, and then give people access to the multiplayer servers in increasing numbers as long as the system holds up. (To answer your next question, the rollout will be based on Citizen number; the earlier you backed, the earlier you will gain access to multiplayer dogfighting.) We don’t know the maximum number of concurrent players or some of the backend server issues (as we’ll literally be dynamically spinning up hundreds of servers on demand depending on demand) we’re planning to go slow and cautious at first, while we make sure everything works. So please be patient and bear with us. Remember that with Arena Commander we are launching something much more akin to a full game (its feature set is more in line to an action arena combat game like World of Tanks) and to do that for the sheer number of backers that Star Citizen has is a challenge in itself! — Chris Roberts Travis Day, Dogfight Producer Greetings Citizens! Thank you all for tuning in for another Friday Arena Commander update! As always the team here in Santa Monica has been hard at work wrapping up all the gameplay features and systems work for our first release of Arena Commander to everyone. We’re putting the last few major components to bed and should have something we’re confident in sharing soon™. Speaking of systems work, Paul Reindell our Lead Engineer has been putting the finishing touches on the power system for our spaceships which just wrapped up this week. Paul has put together a properly balanced power generation and drawing system with configurable priorities for different systems. Meaning that if you are drawing large amounts of power on your weapons (pew pew), depending on the settings/priorities that you have put in place, it will either maximize your firepower while drawing down the power being deployed to the shields and thrusters or reduce your fire rate and power to maintain the maximum efficiency for thrusters and shields. It sounds fairly standard but as with everything that we do the detail is what makes the system really shine. Not only can you apply broad stroke allocations like thrusters over weapons or vice versa but you can also assign priority with that. So if for example you experience a power shortage to your weapons you can have set priorities for power to the different individual weapons that you value most to keep them firing until the last drop of energy is consumed. This approach allows more casual players to make sweeping adjustments quite quickly while allowing for players to get as detailed as they want to on micromanaging every last aspect. As everyone knows though… With great power, comes great… Improvements to the shield system! So not only did Paul finish off the power allocation and flow system, he’s also adjusted the shield system. Part of this was necessitated to insure the shield maintained its full functionality with the finalized power system but it has also improved the granularity of control that players will have over their shields via the HUD both in the shield management tab as well as the knock on effects of decisions they make in power management. It also helps to lay the ground work for having ships with multiple shield generators drawing from multiple or single power plants and battery systems. Power and Shields are not the only systems that got closed off this week however. The IFCS has become much more configurable for the player so they can determine how “hands on” they want it to be. One of the major additions in this week alone was introducing the ability to configure how the ship’s IFCS handles turns. Generally in the Arena Commander (and later SC/SQ42) as you “turn” the IFCS is not only firing thrusters to orient your ship rotationally to its new desired orientation. The IFCS is also using the thrusters to arrest your velocity on your old vector align your angular velocity to your new goal orientation and keep those in sync to maintain symmetry between orientation and velocity. As you can imagine, if your main engine is at full throttle your maneuvering thrusters have to expend a lot of energy adjusting angular velocity and this can cause you to turn slower the higher your primary engine is thrusting. We decided to adjust this mode so that the IFCS would no longer limit the rate of your rotation but instead reduce your throttle so that you could maintain maximum rotation performance. This has created a much more responsive and fun experience with the IFCS fully enabled. We’ve felt like this is driving in a car with traction control enabled as the IFCS will always prevent your ship from rotating faster than your angular velocity can change, basically keeping the backend from sliding out, to further the car analogy. Well we’ve now introduced an intermediate step where you can fly with “traction control” turned off. This allows you to change the orientation of your ship without the IFCS dampening rotation to stay in lock step with your ships velocity vector. At higher rates of speed it means you can really get these two out of alignment if you’re not careful but it also makes for some really awesome slaloming through asteroid belts and, for lack of a better term, drifting through turns. What good would all this power and maneuverability be without some beautiful weapon effects to back it all up though? This week has seen a lot of final polish and finishing touches going into each of the weapon and damage effects. Both Casey and Forrest have been revisiting all the effects and meeting with Chris to review and revise the particulars of each effect to meet his standards. The results have been quite stunning as we’re using some very complicated layered visual effects like you would see in a major motion picture at runtime. The effects are starting to take on more of the look of a summer blockbuster than a video game. The lighting for each of the ships and effects have also gotten their final passes following the finishing of the PBR integration and conversion work that has been ongoing. We’re all really excited as we watch this game coming together and cannot wait to share it with as soon as humanly possible. There are still a great many breaking issues left to resolve but we are getting closer to having it each and every week. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading what we’ve been up to this week in Santa Monica. As always, if you have any questions please post them to our ‘Ask a Dev’ threads! Thank you for your continued support! Cloud Imperium Games Santa Monica Eric Peterson, Studio Director Citizens! Hello from sunny and getting hotter Austin. It has been a very busy week here as we get closer and closer to sharing Arena Commander with all of you. We have had many a heated exchange with offices from all around the globe as we test our servers and flight mechanics to get them just right. In addition to working on Arena Commander we got a couple of patches out yesterday, one was to upgrade the patcher itself to prepare it for bigger and better things, and the other was a Hangar patch to fix up the Oculus rift in our game, and add some cool hangar flare – like the towel for everyone that joined us before 42m, and as you know 42 is significant to our community. We also added in a calendar for subscribers – this is so they always know the correct date in 2944. :) So, without further ado here is what the Austin team was up to this week with the dogfighting module. Art & Animation In animation this week, we were skinning, rigging and animating thrusters, fixing the hangar versions and the landing gear for the 300i. We also are fixing the IK locators in the Hornet, fixing the offset in the freelancer cockpit. Fixed the canard turret, and are fixing materials for the power plant. The thruster placement on the 300i needed some work, and we exported all the 300i hangar ships and fixing the canard mannequin. In addition we dealt with the Freelancer (redacted but something really cool was here), worked out mannequin issues for the 300i and the Aurora, and are fixing cockpit animations for the button pushes and reactions. Art has been busy this week working on the player helmet and getting it up to Star Citizen standards, we are also working on the skin materials for the new scanned heads for the game, and we are finishing up tons of components for the various ships for V1 of Arena Commander. In addition the 300i. Programming Our Engineers have been heads down fixing issues for the DFM, the hangar and have finalized the first version of the Match-Making service which will allow you to choose and be placed in a DFM match! We have also been working with IT to finalize the deployment of our new Build System for quicker patches – Hooray for quicker patches! Along those lines, the team has also fixed the last issues for patch 11.2 which should now be out to the public. We have also finished up CryEngine 3.6 integration and are prepping it for the next patch for when we release Arena Commander to the Citizens. Design Design has been running down/documenting matchmaking changes, fixing stuff for the hangar patch (yeah I know not Arena commander), testing Arena Commander and giving feedback as we improve it’s playability. We also did a Missile update & submitted updated ships stats for review. We are also very busy testing the multiplayer matchmaking, and getting tons of audio into the game for your aural pleasure. As we get closer and closer to the day in which we will be blowing each other to bits in the verse the excitement continues to build in each studio. A day does not go by in which we don’t realize how lucky we are, and we can never thank you Citizens enough. Thanks for your continued support. EP Erin Roberts, Studio Director Hi everyone, The best news I can report is that Arena Commander is at a point where our team in the UK is focusing less on dogfighting and more on Squadron 42 and developing capital ships. You’ll read more about that in the next monthly report, but in terms of the dogfighting module this week we have only been focusing on minor changes, balancing, bug fixes and playtesting the build. So the update from the UK is getting shorter, which is a good thing! :) Running down the different areas: Design The design team has been working to balance the shield and weapon stats for the Scythe and the Hornet (especially important for the single player ‘Vanduul Swarm’ mode.) We have also been working on balancing game modes, including fixes for the aforementioned Swarm and the Capture the Core mode. Art & Animation We’ve been finishing the rigging and weighting for the Vanduul pilot, as well as creating and cleaning up finer detail cockpit animations for the player pilot. That’s things like pushing buttons, firing weapons and the like. We’ve also been cleaning up some of the effects for the Capture the Core mode. Programming In the graphics department, we have spent a lot of time updating the assets to work with the new 3.6 CryTek engine that we just moved over to as well as fixing some visual bugs associated with that. (It supports a lot of features we need, but also means we have to fix up any issues that come with the new build!) We’ve also been doing some tweaks and changes to the controls for different joysticks. THere has been some work on player ejection from the Hornet in order to make it look and work better. We are also working on the HUD so that it provides even more feedback to the player so they know when they’re getting hit, how far they are from a target and so on. On the debugging front, we’ve been working an issue with ships not registering hits properly and another where VFX don’t show up correctly. That’s all from us this week in the UK. Thanks, as always, for your support! Ich weiß, dass Sie alle ungeduldig sind, das DFM in die Finger zu bekommen, und glauben Sie mir, wir sind alle sehr gespannt darauf, es so zu haben, dass wir damit beginnen können, es an Sie alle weiterzugeben, aber wie bei jedem ehrgeizigen Projekt gibt es immer noch einige Details, die wir in Bezug auf Backend-End, Build-Deployment, Matchmaking und Netzwerkstabilität über das Internet zusammenfassen müssen - während wir versuchen, das Kern-Gameplay des DFM auszugleichen und zu optimieren. Wir werden bis Ende nächster Woche genauere Termine haben, die wir Ihnen im Bericht der nächsten Woche mitteilen werden, aber das Ziel ist es, mit der Einführung des DFM gegen Ende dieses Monats zu beginnen - dies wird als Skalierung auf 250 erfolgen,000+ Spieler ist viel mehr wie der Start eines fertigen Spiels als ein frühes Pre-Alpha für das Gameplay-Feedback - unser Plan ist es, Vanduul Swarm (Einzelspieler gegen KI) von Anfang an für alle verfügbar zu haben und den Leuten dann in zunehmender Anzahl Zugang zu den Multiplayer-Servern zu geben, solange das System hält. (Um Ihre nächste Frage zu beantworten, basiert der Rollout auf der Citizen-Nummer; je früher Sie die Unterstützung erhalten, desto früher erhalten Sie Zugang zu Multiplayer-Durchkämpfen.) Wir kennen nicht die maximale Anzahl gleichzeitiger Spieler oder einige der Backend-Server-Probleme (da wir buchstäblich Hunderte von Servern bei Bedarf dynamisch aufdrehen werden, je nach Bedarf), wir planen, zunächst langsam und vorsichtig zu sein, während wir sicherstellen, dass alles funktioniert. Also bitte geduldig sein und mit uns Nachsicht haben. Denke daran, dass wir mit Arena Commander etwas viel Ähnlicheres wie ein komplettes Spiel auf den Markt bringen (sein Funktionsumfang entspricht eher einem Action-Arenakampfspiel wie World of Tanks) und das für die schiere Anzahl der Unterstützer, die Star Citizen hat, ist eine Herausforderung für sich! - Chris Roberts Travis Day, Dogfight Producer, Dogfight Producer Grüße Bürger! Vielen Dank an alle, die sich für ein weiteres Freitag-Arenakommandanten-Update angemeldet haben! Wie immer war das Team hier in Santa Monica hart bei der Arbeit, um alle Gameplay-Funktionen und -Systeme für unsere erste Version von Arena Commander für alle zu entwickeln. Wir legen die letzten paar Hauptkomponenten ins Bett und sollten etwas haben, von dem wir überzeugt sind, dass wir soon™ teilen werden. Apropos Systemarbeit: Paul Reindell, unser leitender Ingenieur, hat das Antriebssystem für unsere Raumschiffe, das diese Woche abgeschlossen wurde, verfeinert. Paul hat ein ausgewogenes Energieerzeugungs- und -ziehungssystem mit konfigurierbaren Prioritäten für verschiedene Systeme zusammengestellt. Das bedeutet, dass, wenn Sie große Mengen an Energie auf Ihre Waffen (Kirchenbank) ziehen, abhängig von den Einstellungen/Prioritäten, die Sie an Ort und Stelle gesetzt haben, es entweder Ihre Feuerkraft maximiert, während es die Energie herunterzieht, die zu den Schilden und Triebwerken entfaltet wird, oder Ihre Feuerrate und Energie reduziert, um die maximale Effizienz für Triebwerke und Schilde aufrechtzuerhalten. Es klingt ziemlich normal, aber wie bei allem, was wir tun, ist das Detail das, was das System wirklich glänzen lässt. Sie können nicht nur breite Schlaganfallzuordnungen wie Triebwerke über Waffen oder umgekehrt anwenden, sondern auch Prioritäten setzen. Wenn du also zum Beispiel einen Energiemangel an deinen Waffen hast, kannst du Prioritäten für die Macht auf die verschiedenen einzelnen Waffen setzen, die du am meisten schätzt, um sie feuern zu lassen, bis der letzte Tropfen Energie verbraucht ist. Dieser Ansatz ermöglicht es eher Gelegenheitsspielern, in kürzester Zeit umfangreiche Anpassungen vorzunehmen, während die Spieler bei der Mikromanagementaufgabe bis ins kleinste Detail so detailliert werden können, wie sie es wünschen. Wie jeder weiß.... Mit großer Leistung, kommt großartig.... Verbesserungen am Schildsystem! So hat Paul nicht nur die Energieverteilung und das Strömungssystem fertig gestellt, sondern auch das Schildsystem angepasst. Ein Teil davon war notwendig, um sicherzustellen, dass der Schild seine volle Funktionalität mit dem fertigen Powersystem beibehält, aber es hat auch die Granularität der Kontrolle verbessert, die die Spieler über ihre Schilde über den HUD haben werden, sowohl in der Registerkarte Schildmanagement als auch in der Klopfen auf die Auswirkungen von Entscheidungen, die sie im Powermanagement treffen. Es hilft auch, die Grundlagen für Schiffe mit mehreren Schildgeneratoren zu schaffen, die aus mehreren oder einzelnen Kraftwerken und Batteriesystemen stammen. Power and Shields sind nicht die einzigen Systeme, die diese Woche jedoch geschlossen wurden. Das IFCS ist für den Spieler viel konfigurierbarer geworden, so dass er bestimmen kann, wie "hands on" er es haben möchte. Eine der wichtigsten Neuerungen allein in dieser Woche war die Einführung der Möglichkeit, die Drehungen des IFCS des Schiffes zu konfigurieren. Im Allgemeinen feuert das IFCS im Arena Commander (und später SC/SQ42) beim "Drehen" nicht nur Triebwerke, um Ihr Schiff drehend auf seine neue gewünschte Ausrichtung auszurichten. Das IFCS verwendet auch die Triebwerke, um Ihre Geschwindigkeit auf Ihrem alten Vektor zu arretieren, Ihre Winkelgeschwindigkeit auf Ihre neue Zielorientierung auszurichten und diese synchron zu halten, um die Symmetrie zwischen Ausrichtung und Geschwindigkeit aufrechtzuerhalten. Wie Sie sich vorstellen können, wenn Ihr Hauptmotor mit Vollgas betrieben wird, müssen Ihre Manövriertriebwerke viel Energie aufwenden, um die Winkelgeschwindigkeit einzustellen, was dazu führen kann, dass Sie sich umso langsamer drehen, je höher Ihr Hauptmotor ist. Wir haben uns entschieden, diesen Modus so einzustellen, dass das IFCS die Geschwindigkeit Ihrer Rotation nicht mehr begrenzt, sondern Ihr Gaspedal reduziert, so dass Sie die maximale Rotationsleistung beibehalten können. Dies hat zu einem viel reaktionsschnelleren und unterhaltsameren Erlebnis geführt, wenn das IFCS vollständig aktiviert ist. Wir haben das Gefühl, dass dies das Fahren in einem Auto mit aktivierter Traktionskontrolle ist, da das IFCS immer verhindert, dass sich Ihr Schiff schneller dreht, als sich Ihre Winkelgeschwindigkeit ändern kann, und im Grunde genommen verhindert, dass das Backend herausrutscht, um die Autoanalogie zu fördern. Nun, wir haben jetzt einen Zwischenschritt eingeführt, in dem Sie mit ausgeschalteter "Traktionskontrolle" fliegen können. Dies ermöglicht es Ihnen, die Ausrichtung Ihres Schiffes ohne die IFCS-Dämpfungsdrehung zu ändern, um mit dem Geschwindigkeitsvektor Ihres Schiffes im Schleusenschritt zu bleiben. Bei höheren Geschwindigkeiten bedeutet das, dass man diese beiden wirklich aus der Ausrichtung bringen kann, wenn man nicht vorsichtig ist, aber es sorgt auch für einige wirklich großartige Slalomfahrten durch Asteroidengürtel und, mangels eines besseren Begriffs, Driften durch Kurven. Was nützt all diese Kraft und Manövrierfähigkeit ohne einige schöne Waffeneffekte, um das Ganze zu unterstützen? In dieser Woche wurden viele letzte Feinschliffe und Feinschliffe für jeden der Waffen- und Schadenseffekte vorgenommen. Sowohl Casey als auch Forrest haben alle Effekte erneut besucht und sich mit Chris getroffen, um die Einzelheiten jedes Effekts zu überprüfen und zu überarbeiten, um seinen Standards zu entsprechen. Die Ergebnisse waren ziemlich beeindruckend, da wir einige sehr komplizierte mehrschichtige visuelle Effekte verwenden, wie man sie in einem großen Kinofilm zur Laufzeit sehen würde. Die Effekte beginnen, mehr das Aussehen eines Sommer-Blockbusters als ein Videospiel anzunehmen. Die Beleuchtung für jedes der Schiffe und Effekte hat auch nach Abschluss der laufenden PBR-Integrations- und Umbaumaßnahmen ihre endgültigen Durchgänge erhalten. Wir sind alle wirklich begeistert, wenn wir dieses Spiel zusammenkommen sehen und können es kaum erwarten, es so schnell wie möglich mit anderen zu teilen. Es gibt noch sehr viele Probleme zu lösen, aber wir kommen dem Ziel näher, es jede Woche zu haben. Ich hoffe, Sie haben die Lektüre dessen, was wir diese Woche in Santa Monica gemacht haben, genossen. Wie immer, wenn du Fragen hast, schicke sie bitte an unsere'Ask a Dev'-Threads! Vielen Dank für Ihre anhaltende Unterstützung! Cloud Imperium Spiele Santa Monica Eric Peterson, Studio-Direktor Bürger! Hallo von sunny und wird heißer Austin. Es war eine sehr arbeitsreiche Woche hier, in der wir immer näher daran kommen, den Arena Commander mit euch allen zu teilen. Wir hatten so manchen regen Austausch mit Büros auf der ganzen Welt, während wir unsere Server und Flugmechaniker testen, um sie genau richtig zu machen. Zusätzlich zur Arbeit an Arena Commander haben wir gestern ein paar Patches herausgebracht, einer war das Upgrade des Patches selbst, um ihn auf größere und bessere Dinge vorzubereiten, und der andere war ein Hangar-Patch, um den Oculus-Riss in unserem Spiel zu reparieren und einige coole Hangar-Flare hinzuzufügen - wie das Handtuch für jeden, der vor 42m zu uns kam, und wie du weißt, ist 42 wichtig für unsere Community. Wir haben auch einen Kalender für Abonnenten hinzugefügt - so wissen sie immer das richtige Datum in 2944. :) So, ohne weiteres hier ist, was das Austin-Team diese Woche mit dem Dogfighting-Modul gemacht hat. Kunst & Animation In der Animation diese Woche waren wir beim Häuten, Aufriggen und Animieren von Triebwerken, beim Reparieren der Hangarversionen und des Fahrwerks für den 300i. Wir reparieren auch die IK-Locatoren in der Hornisse, um den Offset im Freelancer-Cockpit zu fixieren. Fixierte den Canard-Turm und sind Befestigungsmaterial für das Kraftwerk. Die Thrusterplatzierung auf dem 300i erforderte einige Arbeit, und wir exportierten alle 300i Hangarschiffe und reparierten die Canard-Schaufensterpuppe. Außerdem haben wir uns mit dem Freelancer beschäftigt (redigiert, aber etwas wirklich Cooles war hier), Mannequin-Themen für den 300i und den Aurora ausgearbeitet und Cockpit-Animationen für die Tastendrücke und Reaktionen erstellt. Art war diese Woche damit beschäftigt, am Spielerhelm zu arbeiten und ihn auf Star Citizen-Niveau zu bringen, wir arbeiten auch an den Hautmaterialien für die neuen gescannten Köpfe für das Spiel und wir fertigen Tonnen von Komponenten für die verschiedenen Schiffe für V1 des Arena Commander. Darüber hinaus ist der 300i. Programmierung Unsere Ingenieure haben die Probleme mit dem DFM, dem Hangar und der ersten Version des Match-Making-Service, der es Ihnen ermöglicht, auszuwählen und in einem DFM-Match platziert zu werden, abgeschlossen! Wir haben auch mit der IT zusammengearbeitet, um die Bereitstellung unseres neuen Build-Systems für schnellere Patches abzuschließen - Hurra für schnellere Patches! In diesem Sinne hat das Team auch die letzten Probleme für Patch 11.2 behoben, der nun veröffentlicht werden soll. Wir haben auch die Integration von CryEngine 3.6 abgeschlossen und bereiten sie für den nächsten Patch vor, wenn wir Arena Commander an die Bürger freigeben. Design Das Design wurde heruntergefahren/dokumentiert, Änderungen vorgenommen, Sachen für den Hangar-Patch repariert (ja, ich kenne den Arena-Commander nicht), Arena Commander getestet und Feedback gegeben, da wir seine Spielbarkeit verbessern. Wir haben auch ein Raketen-Update durchgeführt und aktualisierte Schiffsstatistiken zur Überprüfung vorgelegt. Wir sind auch sehr damit beschäftigt, das Multiplayer-Matchmaking zu testen und Tonnen von Audio in das Spiel zu bringen, um Ihr Hörvergnügen zu steigern. Während wir uns dem Tag, an dem wir uns gegenseitig in Stücke reißen werden, immer näher kommen, wächst die Spannung in jedem Studio weiter. Ein Tag vergeht nicht, an dem wir nicht erkennen, wie viel Glück wir haben, und wir können euch Bürgern nie genug danken. Vielen Dank für Ihre weitere Unterstützung. EP Erin Roberts, Studioleiterin Hallo zusammen, Die beste Nachricht, die ich berichten kann, ist, dass sich Arena Commander an einem Punkt befindet, an dem sich unser Team in Großbritannien weniger auf Luftkämpfe als vielmehr auf die Staffel 42 und die Entwicklung von Großschiffen konzentriert. Mehr dazu erfahren Sie im nächsten Monatsbericht, aber im Hinblick auf das Dogfighting-Modul in dieser Woche haben wir uns nur auf kleinere Änderungen, Balancing, Bugfixes und Playtesting des Build konzentriert. So wird das Update aus Großbritannien immer kürzer, was eine gute Sache ist! :) Er läuft die verschiedenen Bereiche hinunter: Design Das Designteam hat daran gearbeitet, die Schild- und Waffenwerte für die Sense und die Hornisse auszugleichen (besonders wichtig für den Einzelspieler-Modus'Vanduul Swarm'.) Wir haben auch an der Ausbalancierung der Spielmodi gearbeitet, einschließlich Fixes für den oben genannten Schwarm und den Capture the Core Modus. Kunst & Animation Wir haben die Takelung und Gewichtung für den Vanduul-Piloten abgeschlossen und feinere Cockpit-Animationen für den Spielerpiloten erstellt und bereinigt. Das sind Dinge wie Knöpfe drücken, Waffen abfeuern und dergleichen. Wir haben auch einige der Effekte für den Capture the Core Modus bereinigt. Programmierung In der Grafikabteilung haben wir viel Zeit damit verbracht, die Assets zu aktualisieren, um mit der neuen 3.6 CryTek-Engine zu arbeiten, zu der wir gerade übergegangen sind, und einige damit verbundene visuelle Fehler zu beheben. (Es unterstützt viele Funktionen, die wir benötigen, bedeutet aber auch, dass wir alle Probleme, die mit dem neuen Build auftreten, beheben müssen!) Wir haben auch einige Optimierungen und Änderungen an den Bedienelementen für verschiedene Joysticks vorgenommen. Es gab einige Arbeiten zur Spielerauswurf aus der Hornisse, um sie besser aussehen zu lassen und zu funktionieren. Wir arbeiten auch an dem HUD, so dass es dem Spieler noch mehr Feedback gibt, damit er weiß, wann er getroffen wird, wie weit er von einem Ziel entfernt ist und so weiter. Auf der Debugging-Front haben wir ein Problem mit Schiffen bearbeitet, die Hits nicht richtig registrieren und ein weiteres, bei dem VFX nicht korrekt angezeigt wird. Das ist alles von uns diese Woche in Großbritannien. Vielen Dank, wie immer, für deine Unterstützung! I know you’re all impatient to get your hands on the DFM, and believe me we’re all very eager to have it in the state that we can start to roll out it to all of you but as in any ambitious undertaking there’s still some details that we’re busy wrapping up in terms of the backend end, build deployment, matchmaking and network stability over the internet – All the while trying to balance and tune the core gameplay of the DFM. We’ll have more exact dates to share by the end of next week, which we’ll update you with in next week’s report, but the goal is to start rolling out the DFM towards the end of this month – this will be staged as scaling to 250,000+ players is much more like launching a finished game as opposed to an early pre-alpha for gameplay feedback – our plan is to have Vanduul Swarm (single player against AI) available to everyone from the start, and then give people access to the multiplayer servers in increasing numbers as long as the system holds up. (To answer your next question, the rollout will be based on Citizen number; the earlier you backed, the earlier you will gain access to multiplayer dogfighting.) We don’t know the maximum number of concurrent players or some of the backend server issues (as we’ll literally be dynamically spinning up hundreds of servers on demand depending on demand) we’re planning to go slow and cautious at first, while we make sure everything works. So please be patient and bear with us. Remember that with Arena Commander we are launching something much more akin to a full game (its feature set is more in line to an action arena combat game like World of Tanks) and to do that for the sheer number of backers that Star Citizen has is a challenge in itself! — Chris Roberts Travis Day, Dogfight Producer Greetings Citizens! Thank you all for tuning in for another Friday Arena Commander update! As always the team here in Santa Monica has been hard at work wrapping up all the gameplay features and systems work for our first release of Arena Commander to everyone. We’re putting the last few major components to bed and should have something we’re confident in sharing soon™. Speaking of systems work, Paul Reindell our Lead Engineer has been putting the finishing touches on the power system for our spaceships which just wrapped up this week. Paul has put together a properly balanced power generation and drawing system with configurable priorities for different systems. Meaning that if you are drawing large amounts of power on your weapons (pew pew), depending on the settings/priorities that you have put in place, it will either maximize your firepower while drawing down the power being deployed to the shields and thrusters or reduce your fire rate and power to maintain the maximum efficiency for thrusters and shields. It sounds fairly standard but as with everything that we do the detail is what makes the system really shine. Not only can you apply broad stroke allocations like thrusters over weapons or vice versa but you can also assign priority with that. So if for example you experience a power shortage to your weapons you can have set priorities for power to the different individual weapons that you value most to keep them firing until the last drop of energy is consumed. This approach allows more casual players to make sweeping adjustments quite quickly while allowing for players to get as detailed as they want to on micromanaging every last aspect. As everyone knows though… With great power, comes great… Improvements to the shield system! So not only did Paul finish off the power allocation and flow system, he’s also adjusted the shield system. Part of this was necessitated to insure the shield maintained its full functionality with the finalized power system but it has also improved the granularity of control that players will have over their shields via the HUD both in the shield management tab as well as the knock on effects of decisions they make in power management. It also helps to lay the ground work for having ships with multiple shield generators drawing from multiple or single power plants and battery systems. Power and Shields are not the only systems that got closed off this week however. The IFCS has become much more configurable for the player so they can determine how “hands on” they want it to be. One of the major additions in this week alone was introducing the ability to configure how the ship’s IFCS handles turns. Generally in the Arena Commander (and later SC/SQ42) as you “turn” the IFCS is not only firing thrusters to orient your ship rotationally to its new desired orientation. The IFCS is also using the thrusters to arrest your velocity on your old vector align your angular velocity to your new goal orientation and keep those in sync to maintain symmetry between orientation and velocity. As you can imagine, if your main engine is at full throttle your maneuvering thrusters have to expend a lot of energy adjusting angular velocity and this can cause you to turn slower the higher your primary engine is thrusting. We decided to adjust this mode so that the IFCS would no longer limit the rate of your rotation but instead reduce your throttle so that you could maintain maximum rotation performance. This has created a much more responsive and fun experience with the IFCS fully enabled. We’ve felt like this is driving in a car with traction control enabled as the IFCS will always prevent your ship from rotating faster than your angular velocity can change, basically keeping the backend from sliding out, to further the car analogy. Well we’ve now introduced an intermediate step where you can fly with “traction control” turned off. This allows you to change the orientation of your ship without the IFCS dampening rotation to stay in lock step with your ships velocity vector. At higher rates of speed it means you can really get these two out of alignment if you’re not careful but it also makes for some really awesome slaloming through asteroid belts and, for lack of a better term, drifting through turns. What good would all this power and maneuverability be without some beautiful weapon effects to back it all up though? This week has seen a lot of final polish and finishing touches going into each of the weapon and damage effects. Both Casey and Forrest have been revisiting all the effects and meeting with Chris to review and revise the particulars of each effect to meet his standards. The results have been quite stunning as we’re using some very complicated layered visual effects like you would see in a major motion picture at runtime. The effects are starting to take on more of the look of a summer blockbuster than a video game. The lighting for each of the ships and effects have also gotten their final passes following the finishing of the PBR integration and conversion work that has been ongoing. We’re all really excited as we watch this game coming together and cannot wait to share it with as soon as humanly possible. There are still a great many breaking issues left to resolve but we are getting closer to having it each and every week. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading what we’ve been up to this week in Santa Monica. As always, if you have any questions please post them to our ‘Ask a Dev’ threads! Thank you for your continued support! Cloud Imperium Games Santa Monica Eric Peterson, Studio Director Citizens! Hello from sunny and getting hotter Austin. It has been a very busy week here as we get closer and closer to sharing Arena Commander with all of you. We have had many a heated exchange with offices from all around the globe as we test our servers and flight mechanics to get them just right. In addition to working on Arena Commander we got a couple of patches out yesterday, one was to upgrade the patcher itself to prepare it for bigger and better things, and the other was a Hangar patch to fix up the Oculus rift in our game, and add some cool hangar flare – like the towel for everyone that joined us before 42m, and as you know 42 is significant to our community. We also added in a calendar for subscribers – this is so they always know the correct date in 2944. :) So, without further ado here is what the Austin team was up to this week with the dogfighting module. Art & Animation In animation this week, we were skinning, rigging and animating thrusters, fixing the hangar versions and the landing gear for the 300i. We also are fixing the IK locators in the Hornet, fixing the offset in the freelancer cockpit. Fixed the canard turret, and are fixing materials for the power plant. The thruster placement on the 300i needed some work, and we exported all the 300i hangar ships and fixing the canard mannequin. In addition we dealt with the Freelancer (redacted but something really cool was here), worked out mannequin issues for the 300i and the Aurora, and are fixing cockpit animations for the button pushes and reactions. Art has been busy this week working on the player helmet and getting it up to Star Citizen standards, we are also working on the skin materials for the new scanned heads for the game, and we are finishing up tons of components for the various ships for V1 of Arena Commander. In addition the 300i. Programming Our Engineers have been heads down fixing issues for the DFM, the hangar and have finalized the first version of the Match-Making service which will allow you to choose and be placed in a DFM match! We have also been working with IT to finalize the deployment of our new Build System for quicker patches – Hooray for quicker patches! Along those lines, the team has also fixed the last issues for patch 11.2 which should now be out to the public. We have also finished up CryEngine 3.6 integration and are prepping it for the next patch for when we release Arena Commander to the Citizens. Design Design has been running down/documenting matchmaking changes, fixing stuff for the hangar patch (yeah I know not Arena commander), testing Arena Commander and giving feedback as we improve it’s playability. We also did a Missile update & submitted updated ships stats for review. We are also very busy testing the multiplayer matchmaking, and getting tons of audio into the game for your aural pleasure. As we get closer and closer to the day in which we will be blowing each other to bits in the verse the excitement continues to build in each studio. A day does not go by in which we don’t realize how lucky we are, and we can never thank you Citizens enough. Thanks for your continued support. EP Erin Roberts, Studio Director Hi everyone, The best news I can report is that Arena Commander is at a point where our team in the UK is focusing less on dogfighting and more on Squadron 42 and developing capital ships. You’ll read more about that in the next monthly report, but in terms of the dogfighting module this week we have only been focusing on minor changes, balancing, bug fixes and playtesting the build. So the update from the UK is getting shorter, which is a good thing! :) Running down the different areas: Design The design team has been working to balance the shield and weapon stats for the Scythe and the Hornet (especially important for the single player ‘Vanduul Swarm’ mode.) We have also been working on balancing game modes, including fixes for the aforementioned Swarm and the Capture the Core mode. Art & Animation We’ve been finishing the rigging and weighting for the Vanduul pilot, as well as creating and cleaning up finer detail cockpit animations for the player pilot. That’s things like pushing buttons, firing weapons and the like. We’ve also been cleaning up some of the effects for the Capture the Core mode. Programming In the graphics department, we have spent a lot of time updating the assets to work with the new 3.6 CryTek engine that we just moved over to as well as fixing some visual bugs associated with that. (It supports a lot of features we need, but also means we have to fix up any issues that come with the new build!) We’ve also been doing some tweaks and changes to the controls for different joysticks. THere has been some work on player ejection from the Hornet in order to make it look and work better. We are also working on the HUD so that it provides even more feedback to the player so they know when they’re getting hit, how far they are from a target and so on. On the debugging front, we’ve been working an issue with ships not registering hits properly and another where VFX don’t show up correctly. That’s all from us this week in the UK. Thanks, as always, for your support! Links ----- No links available. Images ------ 3 image/jpeg [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/bcpe477l1fxamr/source/SCDFM_1.jpg) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/bcpe477l1fxamr/source/SCDFM_1.jpg) SCDFM_1.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1585) Last Modified 12 years ago Size 371.42 KB [Source](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/bcpe477l1fxamr/source/SCDFM_1.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1585) image/jpeg [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/mjj5zqfuvel7kr/source/SCDFM_3.jpg) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/mjj5zqfuvel7kr/source/SCDFM_3.jpg) SCDFM_3.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1586) Last Modified 12 years ago Size 312.24 KB [Source](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/mjj5zqfuvel7kr/source/SCDFM_3.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1586) image/png [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/6bwahrin0awhmr/source/StarCitizen_Ship_Platform.png) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/6bwahrin0awhmr/source/StarCitizen_Ship_Platform.png) StarCitizen_Ship_Platform.png [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1614) Last Modified 11 years ago Size 14.23 MB [Source](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/6bwahrin0awhmr/source/StarCitizen_Ship_Platform.png) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1614) Metadata -------- CIG ID 13863 Channel Undefined Category Undefined Series None Comments 453 Published 11 years ago (2014-05-09T00:00:00+00:00) [RSI Article](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13863-Arena-Commander-Weekly-Report-May-5-9) [API](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/api/comm-links/13863)