Arena Commander Weekly Report - May 19-23 - [Comm-Links](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links) - Arena Commander Weekly Report - May 19-23 Arena Commander Weekly Report - May 19-23 ========================================= Undefined Undefined None [Previous](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/13890) [Next](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/13893) Content ------- English Greetings Citizens, V0.8 of Arena Commander is almost here! Hopefully this will be the final weekly report before it launches. You can find the individual studio reports below, but first I’d like to run through the milestones we listed last week. May 17th: The planned server update was successful, thanks to our hard working IT groups! May 18th: Perforce Streams setup was completed and an Arena Commander Release Stream was successfully created and work began to make sure the build system would be ready to build from the new streams setup. May 19th: The QA team began their troubleshooting session, which lasted several days as the final work was done to finish integration of the Arena Commander Release Stream with the build system. A ‘must fix’ list was generated and updated through the week as progress was made. May 22nd: Pencils down! Infrastructure change to Perforce Streams was completed successfully, Perforce was locked down and it was successfully updated with the latest from main. All developers successfully migrated to the Arena Commander Release Stream which was officially closed to new check-ins last night. Only updates that have gone through a specific approval process will be included with V.8 of the Arena Commander now. What that boils down to is that we’re still on schedule and things are looking good. There’s still a lot to do over the next seven days and there are still unknowns… but we have a great team that is dedicated to making Arena Commander a reality! Travis Day, Dogfight Producer Greetings Citizens! It is with mixed feelings that I write this weekly report… While I have great progress to report on the development of Arena Commander I fear that if all continues to go well, most of you will not read my Monthly report next week because you’ll be too busy playing Arena Commander. Perhaps I should approve a few of these risky commits to ensure a captive audience… I kid, I kid… In all seriousness there has been tremendous progress this week and so far we are on track with the timetable we outlined last week. That said, it’s worth reiterating that in software development, with so many moving parts, there is always the potential for unforeseen issues to arise! I like to call it Malcom’s Lazor, (Murphy’s Law and Occam’s Razor) anything that can go wrong will and it is usually the simplest thing. This week was a big accomplishment, as you’ve read above we entered code lock on our Release Stream and the team is busily fixing as many of the most game breaking bugs as we possibly can. So far we have been hitting the schedule we set for ourselves and the transitions to Perforce Streams, migration of the build process, and enforcement of lockdown has been going as planned. Here in LA the focus has been primarily on finalizing the ships, their component features, and the visual effects. We’ve gotten VFX to a point where we are quite happy for the first release of Arena Commander. There is still a lot more we would like to do with them in the future with additional graphics engineering support, but we think you’ll enjoy what we’ve cooked up so far. The HUD is to a point where we are happy with it for our pre-alpha release. There are some bugs, room for improvement on usability, and additional visuals but the core functionality is in and ready for the community to start giving us feedback on. The HUD is something that we really look forward to working closely with the community on as it is a very important part of player experience and readability. So please, help us to make a HUD that meets your needs while maintaining Chris’ vision by providing feedback. The ship damage system has been further revised and improved to support breaking the ships in a procedural way based on the location of impacts. The system for making sure the visual effects properly attach has also been revised to best showcase the pieces of the ship blowing off from your shots. We feel like we have reached a point with this system where we’re pretty happy with its current state. There are still some improvements in performance and potential for additional functionality but this represents a good first pass at the functionality we will need for this system in the long term. Flight controls are often a hotly debated topic amongst the studios. This week we’ve settled on button configurations and feel for the IFCS that most people are happy with. There are still some small tweaks to make and long debates to be had but we’re very close to achieving what we feel is the best feeling flight model. Of course this is another one, like the HUD, where player feedback is very important to us. We’ve made it a point to add as many flight modes as possible so that people can experiment with different styles and let us know what works and what doesn’t. Balance is ongoing (looking at you 300i mega thread) and will be ongoing after our initial release right on in to the Persistent Universe. We are currently working to make sure that every ship feels unique and has its own set of pros and cons in broad strokes and we will continue to hone in their unique place within the universe from there. Again, part of the reason that we wanted to go with these early pre-alpha module releases was so that we could involve the community as early as possible to get feedback! So please, give us feedback! This has been a great week as we turn from feature development to an exclusive focus on stability, performance, and polish. The team is very excited for everyone in the community to start playing Arena Commander as soon as possible! Hopefully this time next week you will be enjoying Arena Commander for yourself and sending us feedback rather than reading about it here! Until then, thanks for reading and please feel free to post any questions in our ‘Ask a Dev’ threads. Cheers, Cloud Imperium Games Santa Monica Eric Peterson, Studio Director Hello Citizens! We have been working extremely hard to get Arena Commander into your hands. Folks here are excited about getting to show off all the stuff we have been working on and getting it into your hands, so without further ado here is the report from the Austin office. QA CIG ATX QA has been feverishly testing each build as they become available. Once we determine the build is ready for play testing an email is sent to the global team with details and instructions. During each play test information and other diagnostics are gathered by our gameplay and server programming teams. Once the playtest has concluded, feedback is gathered from each discipline; Art, Animation, Design, and Programming. The results are then sent to production to be included in the daily studio update. Chris & the team will then respond to the feedback. Based on those responses additional tasks may be created and assigned out to development. QA will then continue to regress test resolved issues as well as log any new issues that may be uncovered. At the end of the day a new build is kicked off and the process starts over. It is a lot of hard work, but very rewarding to witness the creation of Arena Commander which will stand on its own as an incredibly fun game as well as be the foundation for space flight for the Persistent Universe and the Squadron 42 single player experience. Audio Audio has been finishing up our tasks on the initial Arena Commander release. We are only making the absolutely necessary changes now in order to keep the build stable, things like mix levels, and what comes out of daily testing are the things we are changing. Some last-minute tech like the first-person breathing manager, Ejection and EVA is getting its audio finished off, too. Design ATX design has continued to push forward on the persistent universe, while also keeping involved with the imminent dogfighting release. Our technical design staff is helping to put the finishing touches on all of the moving parts for dogfighting – from the ships themselves all the way down to the little bits, like the parts you see on the radar. Meanwhile, we’re hammering away at both single-player and multi-player matches, providing feedback, and becoming the most feared pilots in the ‘verse. Art The art team was hard at work this week making tweaks to the Aurora, 300i, and Scythe to get them in top notch shape to duke it out in Arena Commander. Engine glow, warning indicator lights, detail on the missile racks, and adjusting the seat in the Aurora so you can see out the cockpit better were just a few of the things being done to the ships. Optimized versions of all items were created for the HUD, explosions and other VFX were created for when a ship is destroyed, and the RSI helmet was polished up as well. Animation We are continuing to make progress with hooking up the 300i and the Aurora getting them looking as good as the Hornet. Animations have been created to match the new layout for the 300i. The seat in the aurora has been raised for a better view out of the cockpit & both Ships have a full G Force and reaction animations done. New thrusters have been created, skinned, animated, and exported. Outside of dogfighting we continue to work on all the locomotion animations. New animations will be in game. There are still a few visual bugs but we are working on resolving the code that is causing them. IT The IT Department has been hard at work this week making infrastructure improvements to support the dev teams efforts on Arena Commander. The Austin team made massive improvements in the build and source control systems which were necessary to support continued development and push builds out faster. UK and LA IT Managers performed various upgrades to individual developer machines in order to ensure they are able to do game builds and renders as fast as possible. We are preparing for the onslaught of Citizens downloading Arena Commander when it comes out, should be fun. Video Production We got a glimpse at Arena Commander with WH episode 70. This week we’re shooting deeper coverage with Rob Irving and some of the design team for next week’s Wingman’s Hangar. Also, our media heritage is now secure. Our call for a proper data integrity plan for the terabytes of video being created by CIG has resulted in a dual storage solution based in Santa Monica and Austin. Mike Jones was instrumental in identifying the hardware and procedural solutions to ensure all media producers have access to our growing archive of media and securing that media for the future. Engineering This week, Austin Engineering worked towards the first Dogfighting release by working on the universe services themselves and game servers, and fixing, building, and deploying full release playtest client and server builds for Arena Commander playtesting, and improving and profiling game client performance. In addition, we assisted with the integration and bug fixing of matchmaking and also fixed ship, rendering, tool, and engine bugs affecting the Hangar and the Sandbox Editor tool from CryEngine 3.6 integration and dogfighting changes. Additionally, we continued to improve the build and deployment system and switched the development team over to a more efficient and easier to use source (and asset) control paradigm called Perforce Streams and assisted individuals with the migration. Perforce Streams also allows team members to switch between the release stream and main stream quickly, which is important for our distributed development team and to keep the release stream stable. Production Our production team has performed admirably in supporting Arena commander, by chasing down individual tasks and dependencies, and making sure that things were handed off from studio to studio in an efficient manner. We are constantly moving things in and out of the first release cycle based upon time needed to completion and risk assessment, once you feel you are on top of things, another batch of Jira tasks comes sliding down the pipeline to be reviewed, assigned and chased, it is all in good fun though, in order for us to bring Arena Commander out to the Citizens. We also continued our efforts in planning out ships and will soon begin working with REDACTED on the weapons for the FPS (Go Jake!!). In addition, we have plans in place to monitor the performance of the game once it is launched to make sure we can properly focus and prioritize any bugs that the Citizens might uncover. So that is it from Austin – it has been a tough hill to climb but we can see the crest, and are looking forward to a little fresh meat in the verse ! BRING IT CITIZENS !!! Wingman – out ! Erin Roberts, Studio Director Design (Nick Elms) We have a great week balancing the AI for our survival mode “Vanduul Swarm” and providing detailed polish feedback for Engineering and Art. Office playtests were longer and noisier than before, which is a good sign we are getting towards making it fun. There is still work to do, but we have had a whole lot of smiles around the office when playing here. The multiplayer modes, “Capture-the-Core” and “Battle Royale” are coming along, but we still have some important back end issues to tidy up to help make these feel more satisfying. It feels like everyone in the world-wide team is pushing themselves so hard to get as much into this deliverable as humanly possible. As you can probably imagine, with so many “super enthusiastic” Devs constantly checking in new stuff around the clock, the production guys have had to pull out all the stops to keep everyone organized. I for one think they have done an amazing job. Anyway… I really hope you guys enjoy the “Vanduul Swarm” and I’m looking forward to pushing it further with your input. Engineering (Derek Senior) The list of tasks for Foundry 42’s engineering department to assist with on Arena Commander is getting smaller and smaller! We’ve been focusing on general fixes and polish, including a particular focus on the targeting HUD. We’ve done some additional work on the menus and the ‘landing platform’ that you take off from in the simulator, and are working an ejection update and improved controller feedback implementation. Art (Paul Jones) In addition to heavily working on look and feel for key areas of the Squadron 42 storyline, we’ve been doing some future DFM work going ahead with assets being greyboxed for testing in “Conquest” game type. VFX have been working heavily on DFM tasks, we’ve been working to give a more cinematic feel to them and also define a narrative (a Forrest term) so that it’s not just a flame attached to a wing piece as it flies past your cockpit, if you watch it, it’ll go through a whole sequence of events in its lifecycle, this is the kind of love we like to all areas of the game given time. Animation cracking on with ejection animations to make it more fun when you are shot out of your cockpit before it blows into its many parts, alongside that, Cinematic head integration testing to make the best looking cinematic heads seen in a space game. Grüße Bürger, V0.8 des Arena Commander ist fast da! Hoffentlich wird dies der letzte wöchentliche Bericht sein, bevor er veröffentlicht wird. Nachfolgend finden Sie die einzelnen Studio-Berichte, aber zuerst möchte ich die Meilensteine durchgehen, die wir letzte Woche aufgelistet haben. 17. Mai: Das geplante Server-Update war dank unserer hart arbeitenden IT-Gruppen erfolgreich! 18. Mai: Das Setup von Perforce Streams wurde abgeschlossen und ein Arena Commander Release Stream wurde erfolgreich erstellt, und es wurde mit den Arbeiten begonnen, um sicherzustellen, dass das Build-System bereit sein würde, aus dem neuen Stream-Setup zu bauen. 19. Mai: Das QA-Team begann mit der Fehlerbehebung, die mehrere Tage dauerte, während die letzten Arbeiten zur Fertigstellung der Integration des Arena Commander Release Streams in das Build-System abgeschlossen wurden. Eine "Muss-Fix"-Liste wurde erstellt und im Laufe der Woche aktualisiert, wenn Fortschritte gemacht wurden. 22. Mai: Bleistifte weg! Die Umstellung der Infrastruktur auf Perforce Streams wurde erfolgreich abgeschlossen, Perforce wurde gesperrt und erfolgreich mit den neuesten Informationen von main aktualisiert. Alle Entwickler migrierten erfolgreich auf den Arena Commander Release Stream, der gestern Abend offiziell für neue Check-Ins geschlossen wurde. Nur Updates, die einen bestimmten Genehmigungsprozess durchlaufen haben, werden jetzt in V.8 des Arena Commander aufgenommen. Was darauf hinausläuft, ist, dass wir immer noch im Zeitplan liegen und die Dinge gut laufen. In den nächsten sieben Tagen gibt es noch viel zu tun und es gibt noch Unbekanntes.... aber wir haben ein großartiges Team, das sich der Verwirklichung des Arena Commander verschrieben hat! Travis Day, Dogfight Producer, Dogfight Producer Grüße Bürger! Mit gemischten Gefühlen schreibe ich diesen Wochenbericht.... Während ich große Fortschritte bei der Entwicklung des Arena Commander mache, fürchte ich, dass, wenn alles weiterhin gut läuft, die meisten von euch meinen Monatsbericht nächste Woche nicht lesen werden, weil ihr zu sehr damit beschäftigt sein werdet, Arena Commander zu spielen. Vielleicht sollte ich ein paar dieser riskanten Verpflichtungen genehmigen, um ein unverlierbares Publikum zu gewährleisten..... Ich scherze, ich scherze.... In aller Ernsthaftigkeit hat es in dieser Woche gewaltige Fortschritte gegeben, und bisher sind wir mit dem Zeitplan, den wir letzte Woche festgelegt haben, auf Kurs. Allerdings ist es wichtig zu betonen, dass in der Softwareentwicklung mit so vielen beweglichen Teilen immer das Potenzial für unvorhergesehene Probleme besteht! Ich nenne es gerne Malcom's Lazor, (Murphy's Law und Occam's Razor) alles, was schief gehen kann, wird und es ist normalerweise die einfachste Sache. Diese Woche war eine große Leistung, wie Sie oben gelesen haben, haben wir die Code-Lock-Funktion in unseren Release Stream integriert und das Team repariert so viele der meisten Bugs, wie möglich. Bisher haben wir den von uns selbst gesetzten Zeitplan eingehalten und die Übergänge zu Perforce Streams, die Migration des Build-Prozesses und die Durchsetzung der Sperre verliefen wie geplant. Hier in LA lag der Schwerpunkt vor allem auf der Fertigstellung der Schiffe, ihrer Komponenten und der visuellen Effekte. Wir haben VFX so weit gebracht, dass wir uns sehr über die erste Version von Arena Commander freuen. Es gibt noch viel mehr, was wir mit ihnen in Zukunft mit zusätzlicher Unterstützung für die Grafiktechnik machen möchten, aber wir denken, dass Ihnen das, was wir uns bisher ausgedacht haben, gefallen wird. Das HUD ist zu einem Punkt, an dem wir mit ihm für unsere Pre-Alpha-Version zufrieden sind. Es gibt einige Fehler, Verbesserungsmöglichkeiten bei der Benutzerfreundlichkeit und zusätzliche visuelle Elemente, aber die Kernfunktionalität ist in und bereit für die Community, um uns Feedback zu geben. Das HUD ist etwas, worauf wir uns sehr freuen, eng mit der Community zusammenzuarbeiten, da es ein sehr wichtiger Teil der Spielerfahrung und Lesbarkeit ist. Bitte helfen Sie uns also, ein HUD zu entwickeln, das Ihren Bedürfnissen entspricht und gleichzeitig die Vision von Chris durch Feedback unterstützt. Das Schiffsschadensystem wurde weiter überarbeitet und verbessert, um das Abbrechen der Schiffe in einer verfahrenstechnischen Weise zu unterstützen, die sich nach dem Ort der Auswirkungen richtet. Das System zur Sicherstellung, dass die visuellen Effekte richtig angebracht sind, wurde ebenfalls überarbeitet, um die Teile des Schiffes, die von Ihren Aufnahmen weggeblasen werden, optimal zu präsentieren. Wir haben das Gefühl, dass wir mit diesem System an einem Punkt angelangt sind, an dem wir mit dem aktuellen Zustand ziemlich zufrieden sind. Es gibt noch einige Leistungssteigerungen und Potenziale für zusätzliche Funktionen, aber dies ist ein guter erster Schritt zu der Funktionalität, die wir langfristig für dieses System benötigen werden. Flugsteuerungen sind in den Studios oft ein heiß diskutiertes Thema. Diese Woche haben wir uns auf Tastenkonfigurationen und das Gefühl für das IFCS geeinigt, mit dem die meisten Leute zufrieden sind. Es gibt noch einige kleine Optimierungen und lange Debatten, aber wir sind sehr nahe dran, das zu erreichen, was wir für das beste Flugmodell halten. Natürlich ist dies ein anderes, wie das HUD, wo das Feedback der Spieler für uns sehr wichtig ist. Wir haben es uns zur Aufgabe gemacht, so viele Flugmodi wie möglich hinzuzufügen, damit die Leute mit verschiedenen Stilen experimentieren können und uns wissen lassen, was funktioniert und was nicht. Die Balance ist im Gange (wenn man sich Ihren 300i Megathread ansieht) und wird nach unserer ersten Veröffentlichung direkt im Persistent Universe fortgesetzt. Wir arbeiten derzeit daran, sicherzustellen, dass sich jedes Schiff einzigartig anfühlt und seine eigenen Vor- und Nachteile in großen Schritten hat, und wir werden von dort aus weiterhin an seinem einzigartigen Platz im Universum feilen. Auch hier war ein Teil des Grundes, warum wir uns für diese frühen Pre-Alpha-Modul-Releases entschieden haben, damit wir die Community so früh wie möglich einbeziehen können, um Feedback zu erhalten! Also bitte, gib uns Feedback! Dies war eine großartige Woche, in der wir uns von der Feature-Entwicklung zu einem ausschließlichen Fokus auf Stabilität, Performance und Polieren entwickelten. Das Team freut sich sehr, dass alle in der Community so schnell wie möglich mit dem Spielen von Arena Commander beginnen können! Hoffentlich wirst du nächste Woche um diese Zeit den Arena Commander selbst genießen und uns Feedback schicken, anstatt hier darüber zu lesen! Bis dahin danke für die Lektüre und bitte zögere nicht, alle Fragen in unseren'Ask a Dev'-Threads zu stellen. Prost, Cloud Imperium Spiele Santa Monica Eric Peterson, Studio-Direktor Hallo Bürger! Wir haben extrem hart gearbeitet, um Arena Commander in Ihre Hände zu bekommen. Die Leute hier sind begeistert davon, all die Sachen zu zeigen, an denen wir gearbeitet haben, und sie in deine Hände zu bekommen, also ohne weitere Umstände hier ist der Bericht aus dem Büro in Austin. QA CIG ATX QA hat jeden Build fieberhaft getestet, sobald er verfügbar ist. Sobald wir festgestellt haben, dass das Build für den Spieltest bereit ist, wird eine E-Mail mit Details und Anweisungen an das globale Team gesendet. Während jedes Spiels werden von unseren Spiel- und Serverprogrammierungsteams Informationen und andere Diagnosen gesammelt. Nach Abschluss des Spieltests wird Feedback aus den einzelnen Disziplinen Kunst, Animation, Design und Programmierung gesammelt. Die Ergebnisse werden dann an die Produktion geschickt, um sie in das tägliche Studio-Update aufzunehmen. Chris & das Team werden dann auf das Feedback reagieren. Basierend auf diesen Antworten können zusätzliche Aufgaben erstellt und der Entwicklung zugewiesen werden. Die Qualitätssicherung wird dann die Rückführung der gelösten Probleme fortsetzen und alle neuen Probleme, die aufgedeckt werden könnten, protokollieren. Am Ende des Tages wird ein Neubau gestartet und der Prozess beginnt von vorne. Es ist viel harte Arbeit, aber sehr lohnend, die Entwicklung des Arena Commander zu erleben, der als eigenständiges, unglaublich unterhaltsames Spiel auf sich gestellt sein wird und die Grundlage für die Raumfahrt des Persistent Universe und der Squadron 42 Einzelspieler-Erfahrung bildet. Audio Audio hat unsere Aufgaben mit der ersten Version von Arena Commander abgeschlossen. Wir nehmen jetzt nur die absolut notwendigen Änderungen vor, um den Build stabil zu halten, Dinge wie Mix-Level, und was aus dem täglichen Testen kommt, sind die Dinge, die wir ändern. Einige Last-Minute-Techniker wie der First-Person-Atemmanager, Ejection und EVA bekommen auch ihr Audio zum Abschluss. Design Das ATX-Design hat das hartnäckige Universum weiter vorangetrieben und bleibt gleichzeitig an der bevorstehenden Veröffentlichung des Dogfighting beteiligt. Unsere technischen Konstrukteure helfen, alle beweglichen Teile für den Luftkampf zu vervollständigen - von den Schiffen selbst bis hinunter zu den kleinen Teilen, wie sie auf dem Radar zu sehen sind. In der Zwischenzeit hämmern wir sowohl bei Einzel- als auch bei Mehrspielerspielen, geben Feedback und werden zu den gefürchtetsten Piloten im Vers. Kunst Das Kunstteam war diese Woche hart bei der Arbeit und hat an den Aurora, 300i und Scythe gearbeitet, um sie in Top-Form zu bringen, um sie in Arena Commander herauszufordern. Motorglühen, Warnblinkleuchten, Details zu den Raketengestellen und die Einstellung des Sitzes im Aurora, so dass Sie das Cockpit besser sehen können, waren nur einige der Dinge, die mit den Schiffen gemacht wurden. Optimierte Versionen aller Gegenstände wurden für das HUD erstellt, Explosionen und andere VFX wurden erstellt, wenn ein Schiff zerstört wird, und der RSI-Helm wurde ebenfalls poliert. Animation Wir machen weiterhin Fortschritte beim Anschluss des 300i und der Aurora, damit sie so gut aussehen wie die Hornet. Es wurden Animationen erstellt, die dem neuen Layout des 300i entsprechen. Der Sitz in der Aurora wurde für eine bessere Sicht aus dem Cockpit angehoben & beide Schiffe haben eine volle G Force und Reaktionsanimationen durchgeführt. Neue Triebwerke wurden entwickelt, enthäutet, animiert und exportiert. Außerhalb des Luftkampfes arbeiten wir weiterhin an allen Bewegungsanimationen. Neue Animationen werden im Spiel sein. Es gibt noch ein paar visuelle Fehler, aber wir arbeiten an der Lösung des Codes, der sie verursacht. IT Die IT-Abteilung hat diese Woche hart daran gearbeitet, die Infrastruktur zu verbessern, um die Bemühungen der Entwicklungsteams um Arena Commander zu unterstützen. Das Austin-Team machte massive Verbesserungen bei den Build- und Source-Control-Systemen, die notwendig waren, um die Weiterentwicklung zu unterstützen und Builds schneller voranzutreiben. Die IT-Manager in Großbritannien und LA führten verschiedene Upgrades an einzelnen Entwicklungsmaschinen durch, um sicherzustellen, dass sie Spiele-Builds und Renderings so schnell wie möglich durchführen können. Wir bereiten uns auf den Ansturm der Bürger vor, die Arena Commander herunterladen, wenn es herauskommt, sollte Spaß machen. Videoproduktion Wir haben einen Blick auf Arena Commander mit WH Episode 70 geworfen. Diese Woche drehen wir eine tiefere Berichterstattung mit Rob Irving und einem Teil des Designteams für den Hangar von Wingman's nächste Woche. Außerdem ist unser Medienerbe jetzt sicher. Unsere Forderung nach einem angemessenen Datenintegritätsplan für die von CIG erstellten Terabyte Video hat zu einer Dual-Storage-Lösung mit Sitz in Santa Monica und Austin geführt. Mike Jones war maßgeblich an der Identifizierung der Hardware- und Prozesslösungen beteiligt, um sicherzustellen, dass alle Medienproduzenten Zugang zu unserem wachsenden Medienarchiv haben und diese Medien für die Zukunft sichern. Ingenieurwesen Diese Woche arbeitete Austin Engineering auf die erste Dogfighting-Version hin, indem es an den Universumsservices selbst und den Spielservern arbeitete und den Spielclient und die Server-Builds für Arena Commander Playtests reparierte, baute und einsetzte. Darüber hinaus haben wir bei der Integration und Fehlerbehebung von Matchmaking sowie bei der Behebung von Schiffs-, Rendering-, Tool- und Engine-Fehlern im Hangar und im Sandbox-Editor-Tool von CryEngine 3.6 Integration und Dogfighting Änderungen geholfen. Darüber hinaus haben wir das Build und Deployment System weiter verbessert und das Entwicklungsteam auf ein effizienteres und einfacher zu bedienendes Quell- (und Asset-) Kontrollparadigma umgestellt, das Perforce Streams genannt wird und Einzelpersonen bei der Migration unterstützt. Perforce Streams ermöglicht es Teammitgliedern auch, schnell zwischen dem Release- und dem Hauptstrom zu wechseln, was für unser verteiltes Entwicklungsteam wichtig ist und den Release-Strom stabil hält. Produktion Unser Produktionsteam hat bei der Unterstützung des Arena-Kommandanten hervorragende Arbeit geleistet, indem es einzelne Aufgaben und Abhängigkeiten verfolgt und dafür gesorgt hat, dass die Dinge von Studio zu Studio auf effiziente Weise weitergegeben wurden. Wir bewegen ständig Dinge innerhalb und außerhalb des ersten Release-Zyklus, basierend auf der Zeit, die für die Fertigstellung und Risikobewertung benötigt wird, sobald Sie das Gefühl haben, dass Sie auf dem Laufenden sind, kommt eine weitere Reihe von Jira-Aufgaben, die über die Pipeline gleiten, um überprüft, zugewiesen und verfolgt zu werden, aber es macht alles Spaß, damit wir Arena Commander zu den Bürgern bringen können. Wir haben auch unsere Bemühungen bei der Planung von Schiffen fortgesetzt und werden bald mit REDACTED an den Waffen für die FPS (Go Jake!!!!) arbeiten. Darüber hinaus haben wir Pläne, die Leistung des Spiels nach dem Start zu überwachen, um sicherzustellen, dass wir alle Fehler, die die Bürger entdecken könnten, richtig fokussieren und priorisieren können. Das ist es also von Austin aus - es war ein schwieriger Hügel, aber wir können den Kamm sehen und freuen uns auf ein wenig frisches Fleisch in der Strophe! BRING ES BÜRGER!!!!!!!! Flügelmann - raus! Erin Roberts, Studioleiterin Design (Nick Elms) Wir haben eine tolle Woche, in der wir die KI für unseren Überlebensmodus "Vanduul Swarm" balancieren und detailliertes polnisches Feedback für Technik und Kunst geben. Büro-Spieltests waren länger und lauter als zuvor, was ein gutes Zeichen dafür ist, dass wir uns dafür einsetzen, dass es Spaß macht. Es gibt noch viel zu tun, aber wir haben eine ganze Menge Lächeln im Büro gehabt, als wir hier gespielt haben. Die Mehrspieler-Modi "Capture-the-Core" und "Battle Royale" kommen auf den Markt, aber wir haben noch einige wichtige Backend-Probleme zu klären, damit sich diese besser anfühlen. Es fühlt sich an, als würde sich jeder im weltweiten Team so sehr bemühen, so viel wie möglich in dieses Ergebnis zu investieren. Wie du dir wahrscheinlich vorstellen kannst, mussten die Produktionsmitarbeiter bei so vielen "super enthusiastischen" Devs, die ständig rund um die Uhr neue Sachen einchecken, alle Register ziehen, um alle zu organisieren. Ich für meinen Teil denke, dass sie eine erstaunliche Arbeit geleistet haben. Wie auch immer.... Ich hoffe wirklich, dass ihr den "Vanduul Swarm" genießt und ich freue mich darauf, ihn mit eurem Input weiter auszubauen. Ingenieurwesen (Derek Senior) Die Liste der Aufgaben, bei denen die technische Abteilung der Gießerei 42 bei Arena Commander assistiert, wird immer kleiner! Wir haben uns auf allgemeine Korrekturen und Polituren konzentriert, einschließlich eines besonderen Fokus auf das Targeting HUD. Wir haben einige zusätzliche Arbeiten an den Menüs und der Landeplattform, von der aus Sie im Simulator starten, durchgeführt und arbeiten an einem Auswurf-Update und einer verbesserten Implementierung des Steuergerätes. Kunst (Paul Jones) Neben der intensiven Arbeit am Look and Feel für wichtige Bereiche der Squadron 42-Handlung haben wir einige zukünftige DFM-Arbeiten durchgeführt, bei denen die Assets für Tests im Spieltyp "Conquest" in die Graubox gelegt wurden. VFX haben stark an DFM-Aufgaben gearbeitet, wir haben daran gearbeitet, ihnen ein filmischeres Gefühl zu geben und auch eine Erzählung (ein Forrest Begriff) zu definieren, so dass es nicht nur eine Flamme ist, die an einem Flügel befestigt ist, während er an Ihrem Cockpit vorbeifliegt, wenn Sie ihn sehen, wird er eine ganze Reihe von Ereignissen in seinem Lebenszyklus durchlaufen, das ist die Art von Liebe, die wir zu allen Bereichen des Spiels mögen, die uns Zeit gegeben haben. Animation, die mit Auswurfanimationen weitermacht, um es mehr Spaß zu machen, wenn Sie aus Ihrem Cockpit geschossen werden, bevor es in seine vielen Teile explodiert, daneben Cinematic Head Integrationstests, um die am besten aussehenden Cinematic Heads zu machen, die in einem Weltraumspiel gesehen werden. Greetings Citizens, V0.8 of Arena Commander is almost here! Hopefully this will be the final weekly report before it launches. You can find the individual studio reports below, but first I’d like to run through the milestones we listed last week. May 17th: The planned server update was successful, thanks to our hard working IT groups! May 18th: Perforce Streams setup was completed and an Arena Commander Release Stream was successfully created and work began to make sure the build system would be ready to build from the new streams setup. May 19th: The QA team began their troubleshooting session, which lasted several days as the final work was done to finish integration of the Arena Commander Release Stream with the build system. A ‘must fix’ list was generated and updated through the week as progress was made. May 22nd: Pencils down! Infrastructure change to Perforce Streams was completed successfully, Perforce was locked down and it was successfully updated with the latest from main. All developers successfully migrated to the Arena Commander Release Stream which was officially closed to new check-ins last night. Only updates that have gone through a specific approval process will be included with V.8 of the Arena Commander now. What that boils down to is that we’re still on schedule and things are looking good. There’s still a lot to do over the next seven days and there are still unknowns… but we have a great team that is dedicated to making Arena Commander a reality! Travis Day, Dogfight Producer Greetings Citizens! It is with mixed feelings that I write this weekly report… While I have great progress to report on the development of Arena Commander I fear that if all continues to go well, most of you will not read my Monthly report next week because you’ll be too busy playing Arena Commander. Perhaps I should approve a few of these risky commits to ensure a captive audience… I kid, I kid… In all seriousness there has been tremendous progress this week and so far we are on track with the timetable we outlined last week. That said, it’s worth reiterating that in software development, with so many moving parts, there is always the potential for unforeseen issues to arise! I like to call it Malcom’s Lazor, (Murphy’s Law and Occam’s Razor) anything that can go wrong will and it is usually the simplest thing. This week was a big accomplishment, as you’ve read above we entered code lock on our Release Stream and the team is busily fixing as many of the most game breaking bugs as we possibly can. So far we have been hitting the schedule we set for ourselves and the transitions to Perforce Streams, migration of the build process, and enforcement of lockdown has been going as planned. Here in LA the focus has been primarily on finalizing the ships, their component features, and the visual effects. We’ve gotten VFX to a point where we are quite happy for the first release of Arena Commander. There is still a lot more we would like to do with them in the future with additional graphics engineering support, but we think you’ll enjoy what we’ve cooked up so far. The HUD is to a point where we are happy with it for our pre-alpha release. There are some bugs, room for improvement on usability, and additional visuals but the core functionality is in and ready for the community to start giving us feedback on. The HUD is something that we really look forward to working closely with the community on as it is a very important part of player experience and readability. So please, help us to make a HUD that meets your needs while maintaining Chris’ vision by providing feedback. The ship damage system has been further revised and improved to support breaking the ships in a procedural way based on the location of impacts. The system for making sure the visual effects properly attach has also been revised to best showcase the pieces of the ship blowing off from your shots. We feel like we have reached a point with this system where we’re pretty happy with its current state. There are still some improvements in performance and potential for additional functionality but this represents a good first pass at the functionality we will need for this system in the long term. Flight controls are often a hotly debated topic amongst the studios. This week we’ve settled on button configurations and feel for the IFCS that most people are happy with. There are still some small tweaks to make and long debates to be had but we’re very close to achieving what we feel is the best feeling flight model. Of course this is another one, like the HUD, where player feedback is very important to us. We’ve made it a point to add as many flight modes as possible so that people can experiment with different styles and let us know what works and what doesn’t. Balance is ongoing (looking at you 300i mega thread) and will be ongoing after our initial release right on in to the Persistent Universe. We are currently working to make sure that every ship feels unique and has its own set of pros and cons in broad strokes and we will continue to hone in their unique place within the universe from there. Again, part of the reason that we wanted to go with these early pre-alpha module releases was so that we could involve the community as early as possible to get feedback! So please, give us feedback! This has been a great week as we turn from feature development to an exclusive focus on stability, performance, and polish. The team is very excited for everyone in the community to start playing Arena Commander as soon as possible! Hopefully this time next week you will be enjoying Arena Commander for yourself and sending us feedback rather than reading about it here! Until then, thanks for reading and please feel free to post any questions in our ‘Ask a Dev’ threads. Cheers, Cloud Imperium Games Santa Monica Eric Peterson, Studio Director Hello Citizens! We have been working extremely hard to get Arena Commander into your hands. Folks here are excited about getting to show off all the stuff we have been working on and getting it into your hands, so without further ado here is the report from the Austin office. QA CIG ATX QA has been feverishly testing each build as they become available. Once we determine the build is ready for play testing an email is sent to the global team with details and instructions. During each play test information and other diagnostics are gathered by our gameplay and server programming teams. Once the playtest has concluded, feedback is gathered from each discipline; Art, Animation, Design, and Programming. The results are then sent to production to be included in the daily studio update. Chris & the team will then respond to the feedback. Based on those responses additional tasks may be created and assigned out to development. QA will then continue to regress test resolved issues as well as log any new issues that may be uncovered. At the end of the day a new build is kicked off and the process starts over. It is a lot of hard work, but very rewarding to witness the creation of Arena Commander which will stand on its own as an incredibly fun game as well as be the foundation for space flight for the Persistent Universe and the Squadron 42 single player experience. Audio Audio has been finishing up our tasks on the initial Arena Commander release. We are only making the absolutely necessary changes now in order to keep the build stable, things like mix levels, and what comes out of daily testing are the things we are changing. Some last-minute tech like the first-person breathing manager, Ejection and EVA is getting its audio finished off, too. Design ATX design has continued to push forward on the persistent universe, while also keeping involved with the imminent dogfighting release. Our technical design staff is helping to put the finishing touches on all of the moving parts for dogfighting – from the ships themselves all the way down to the little bits, like the parts you see on the radar. Meanwhile, we’re hammering away at both single-player and multi-player matches, providing feedback, and becoming the most feared pilots in the ‘verse. Art The art team was hard at work this week making tweaks to the Aurora, 300i, and Scythe to get them in top notch shape to duke it out in Arena Commander. Engine glow, warning indicator lights, detail on the missile racks, and adjusting the seat in the Aurora so you can see out the cockpit better were just a few of the things being done to the ships. Optimized versions of all items were created for the HUD, explosions and other VFX were created for when a ship is destroyed, and the RSI helmet was polished up as well. Animation We are continuing to make progress with hooking up the 300i and the Aurora getting them looking as good as the Hornet. Animations have been created to match the new layout for the 300i. The seat in the aurora has been raised for a better view out of the cockpit & both Ships have a full G Force and reaction animations done. New thrusters have been created, skinned, animated, and exported. Outside of dogfighting we continue to work on all the locomotion animations. New animations will be in game. There are still a few visual bugs but we are working on resolving the code that is causing them. IT The IT Department has been hard at work this week making infrastructure improvements to support the dev teams efforts on Arena Commander. The Austin team made massive improvements in the build and source control systems which were necessary to support continued development and push builds out faster. UK and LA IT Managers performed various upgrades to individual developer machines in order to ensure they are able to do game builds and renders as fast as possible. We are preparing for the onslaught of Citizens downloading Arena Commander when it comes out, should be fun. Video Production We got a glimpse at Arena Commander with WH episode 70. This week we’re shooting deeper coverage with Rob Irving and some of the design team for next week’s Wingman’s Hangar. Also, our media heritage is now secure. Our call for a proper data integrity plan for the terabytes of video being created by CIG has resulted in a dual storage solution based in Santa Monica and Austin. Mike Jones was instrumental in identifying the hardware and procedural solutions to ensure all media producers have access to our growing archive of media and securing that media for the future. Engineering This week, Austin Engineering worked towards the first Dogfighting release by working on the universe services themselves and game servers, and fixing, building, and deploying full release playtest client and server builds for Arena Commander playtesting, and improving and profiling game client performance. In addition, we assisted with the integration and bug fixing of matchmaking and also fixed ship, rendering, tool, and engine bugs affecting the Hangar and the Sandbox Editor tool from CryEngine 3.6 integration and dogfighting changes. Additionally, we continued to improve the build and deployment system and switched the development team over to a more efficient and easier to use source (and asset) control paradigm called Perforce Streams and assisted individuals with the migration. Perforce Streams also allows team members to switch between the release stream and main stream quickly, which is important for our distributed development team and to keep the release stream stable. Production Our production team has performed admirably in supporting Arena commander, by chasing down individual tasks and dependencies, and making sure that things were handed off from studio to studio in an efficient manner. We are constantly moving things in and out of the first release cycle based upon time needed to completion and risk assessment, once you feel you are on top of things, another batch of Jira tasks comes sliding down the pipeline to be reviewed, assigned and chased, it is all in good fun though, in order for us to bring Arena Commander out to the Citizens. We also continued our efforts in planning out ships and will soon begin working with REDACTED on the weapons for the FPS (Go Jake!!). In addition, we have plans in place to monitor the performance of the game once it is launched to make sure we can properly focus and prioritize any bugs that the Citizens might uncover. So that is it from Austin – it has been a tough hill to climb but we can see the crest, and are looking forward to a little fresh meat in the verse ! BRING IT CITIZENS !!! Wingman – out ! Erin Roberts, Studio Director Design (Nick Elms) We have a great week balancing the AI for our survival mode “Vanduul Swarm” and providing detailed polish feedback for Engineering and Art. Office playtests were longer and noisier than before, which is a good sign we are getting towards making it fun. There is still work to do, but we have had a whole lot of smiles around the office when playing here. The multiplayer modes, “Capture-the-Core” and “Battle Royale” are coming along, but we still have some important back end issues to tidy up to help make these feel more satisfying. It feels like everyone in the world-wide team is pushing themselves so hard to get as much into this deliverable as humanly possible. As you can probably imagine, with so many “super enthusiastic” Devs constantly checking in new stuff around the clock, the production guys have had to pull out all the stops to keep everyone organized. I for one think they have done an amazing job. Anyway… I really hope you guys enjoy the “Vanduul Swarm” and I’m looking forward to pushing it further with your input. Engineering (Derek Senior) The list of tasks for Foundry 42’s engineering department to assist with on Arena Commander is getting smaller and smaller! We’ve been focusing on general fixes and polish, including a particular focus on the targeting HUD. We’ve done some additional work on the menus and the ‘landing platform’ that you take off from in the simulator, and are working an ejection update and improved controller feedback implementation. Art (Paul Jones) In addition to heavily working on look and feel for key areas of the Squadron 42 storyline, we’ve been doing some future DFM work going ahead with assets being greyboxed for testing in “Conquest” game type. VFX have been working heavily on DFM tasks, we’ve been working to give a more cinematic feel to them and also define a narrative (a Forrest term) so that it’s not just a flame attached to a wing piece as it flies past your cockpit, if you watch it, it’ll go through a whole sequence of events in its lifecycle, this is the kind of love we like to all areas of the game given time. Animation cracking on with ejection animations to make it more fun when you are shot out of your cockpit before it blows into its many parts, alongside that, Cinematic head integration testing to make the best looking cinematic heads seen in a space game. Links ----- Text URL last week [ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13883-Arena-Commander-Weekly-Report-May-12-16 ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13883-Arena-Commander-Weekly-Report-May-12-16) Images ------ 5 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/jpeg [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/dg381iusy43jwr/source/DFM_5232014.jpg) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/dg381iusy43jwr/source/DFM_5232014.jpg) DFM_5232014.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1745) Last Modified 11 years ago Size 4.92 MB [Source](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/dg381iusy43jwr/source/DFM_5232014.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1745) image/jpeg [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/wbxtsmptfegx8r/source/Glass_Shader.jpg) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/wbxtsmptfegx8r/source/Glass_Shader.jpg) Glass_Shader.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1746) Last Modified 11 years ago Size 2.83 MB [Source](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/wbxtsmptfegx8r/source/Glass_Shader.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1746) image/jpeg [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/cutk1m0e08mmar/source/Helmet.jpg) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/cutk1m0e08mmar/source/Helmet.jpg) Helmet.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1747) Last Modified 11 years ago Size 2.15 MB [Source](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/cutk1m0e08mmar/source/Helmet.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1747) Metadata -------- CIG ID 13891 Channel Undefined Category Undefined Series None Comments 185 Published 11 years ago (2014-05-23T00:00:00+00:00) [RSI Article](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13891-Arena-Commander-Weekly-Report-May-19-23) [API](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/api/comm-links/13891)