Monthly Studio Report: April 2016

Greetings Citizens!

Yesterday, we pushed the first iteration of Star Citizen Alpha 2.4 to the Persistent Test Universe, and much of the month of April was spent in service of that endeavor. Alpha 2.4 promises to be one of our biggest patches yet: not only adding new front-facing content like ships and functional stores, but long-awaited “under-the-hood” changes that create the necessary foundation for all the content yet to come.

These monthly reports are one of my favorite things we do here at Cloud Imperium Games. Even with all the internet shows like the 10 For Series, Around the Verse and Reverse the Verse that share information on the development of our games every week, there’s still so much more that the hundreds of people worldwide supporting Star Citizen work on. We may not always be able to share every detail, but I’m confident in both the quantity and quality of that which we share each and every week; and in this case every month.

With that, let’s dive in and see what each studio has been working on in the month of April.

Made in the Shade

What a month April was! Looking at where we were in March, it is clear this is an epic undertaking and we are making steady progress on this grand adventure called Star Citizen. With another month come and gone, it is that time again where we review what has been accomplished in the CIG Los Angeles office, specifically.

While the Los Angeles office is largely focused on getting 2.4 on to the PTU, each team is focused on multiple facets of its development. So let us take a look at what each team has been up to for the month of April.


Engineering
Engineering Lead Paul Reindell has been absolutely busy this month with the Los Angeles Engineering team. Last month we mentioned we had hired 2 new Gameplay Engineers, Patrick Mathieu and Chad McKinney. He has been helping bring the new Engineers up to speed, making sure they are well-versed in myriad processes involved at CIG. Furthermore, he has been doing support for 2.4 and several new features that are rolling out, including the Shopping UI, the new ItemSystem 2.0, and one of the biggest aspects, persistence. We are moving closer to having actual persistence in-game and the Engineering team has been making herculean efforts in making that function a reality.

Chad Zamzow has been working on building out the shield management mechanics, working with Tech Design Lead Kirk Tome on allowing player-control over the shield system. With the Shield Generator work being done, for the month of April he spent part of the time working on a Controller Interface for that feature and HUD code for the Shield Emitter.

Mark Abent has been working on the Seat feature, fixing up broken code and cleaning up the Entering Seats function including fixing player interactions, player enter/exit/idle and attachments. By the end of the month, Mark had progressed on to tackling the Phys Controller.

Ariel Xu has continually been working on creating our internal tool, the Port Editor. As mentioned in the past, this tool will allow the Designer greater power over editing the game, which is critical for expediting design and balancing efforts especially with the increasing numbers of assets entering the pipeline. Building game design tools is an incredibly exciting but daunting task. The ultimate goal is to provide designers with the tools they need to create new systems and features with as easy an interface as possible.

Under Paul’s guidance, our two newbie Engineers Chad McKinney & Patrick Mathieu have jumped headfirst into the game. Chad is already hard at work on the Doors system. He is currently working on a signal pipe set up to allow greater modularity within the Door system after he finished working on proxy triggers such as an automatic door opening, audio triggers, and animations. Patrick has been working on developing Controller Managers. These are systems that designate seat-priority, priorities for components, and adding events to components.


Tech Design
Lead Tech Designer Kirk Tome has been occupied with a lot of priorities over the month of April. One priority has been discussing and dissecting (alongside his partners across the globe) the new and upcoming ships to be released. He has also supported the Tech Design team’s endeavors regarding the refactor of Coolers and Power Plants along with charting out Shields and Quantum Travel Drives.

Matt Sherman has not only been working on getting the Reliant flight-ready, he is also writing up the design brief for the 85X and the white box setup for the much-lauded Herald. Matt has also been working hand-in-hand with Kirk to chart out the intricacies of Quantum Travel beyond the basic and introductory mechanisms currently available in the baby PU.

Over the past few weeks, we have been showcasing several new mechanics/gameplay features we have been fleshing out. Of these new features, the Salvage functionality is one that Calix Reneau has been looking into and he has made steady progress to prepare this system for its first rollout. Furthermore, Calix has also looked into how terminal stations will function. This refers to the workstations players will use to operate various features such as the Salvage mechanic, what functionalities will be available on the terminal’s screen and so forth.


Narrative
Squadron 42, Squadron 42, Squadron 42…

We have been jamming full-tilt on pouring over the scripts to figure out what pieces we need to write the additional scripts needed to fill in the gaps, reflect revised level flow and general ambiance.

I would love to be able to go into more detail, but I am reenlisting my strict NO SPOILER policy. We will hopefully be able to go into a little more detail when we can come up for air.

In the meantime, we have been juggling needs for the Persistent Universe; everything from taking fiction passes at various locations and working out potential narrative possibilities to generating item descriptions (a task that will probably be pretty consistent for some time), helping with signage and other environmental storytelling and writing a lot of comm/message text.

Good times.

Again, we will be able to go into a bit more detail once these things go public.
Until next time.


Art
The Engineering team is not the only team that has expanded over the month of April. The CIG Los Angeles art family increased with the addition of Byungjin “Jin” Hyun. An incredibly talented artist, Jin has plunged in by working on the interior of the Drake Caterpillar. Grouping up with 3D Art Lead Elwin Bachiller and Daniel Kamentsky who are working on creating the interior habitation sections of the Caterpillar, it is a ship that is turning out to be utterly beautiful.

While the three of them are hard at work in bringing the Caterpillar to life, these assets would not be possible without an amazing team of Concept Artists who produce the aesthetic direction on what to create. Concept Artists Gurmukh Bhasin and Justin Wentz created the concept pieces for the Caterpillar’s exterior and command bridge, respectively.

CG Supervisor Forrest Stephan, after returning from a sojourn to our UK office, has been applying his substantial talents towards creating the Pristine Materials for the Pilot Flight Suit, specifically for the game asset surfacing and supporting the clothing shopping for the PU.

Omar Aweidah completed the high-poly modeling for the light armor while one of our newer artists, Cheyne Hessler, has created the game asset geometry for player jetpacks.
Finally, our own haute couture fashionista, Jeremiah Lee, has bent his skills towards designing costuming/clothing for the PU. After all, one must look good when jaunting through the 30th century.


Global Technical Content
As we have explained in the past, the Tech Content team is unique. While amorphous in form, its functions and directives are very clear under the leadership of Sean Tracy. Sean has been composing the design docs for how the Character Customization tech will function while Senior Technical Artist Mark McCall has tackled the task of R&D. This is to become the system that will allow players to customize their in-game characters. It makes you wonder whose character’s face will be immortalized in Star Citizen? Will yours go down in infamy as a vicious pirate who disrupts trade lanes in their never-ending quest for loot? Or will it be a benevolent face of a loved politician? Perhaps an epic beard will give you a dashing, roguish look that can charm the masses. These are the things we imagine as we think about where Star Citizen will take us all.

Associate Technical Artist Patrick Salerno’s work on LOD’s have given new polish on various Components such as the Landing Gear, Escape Pods, Main Thrusters, Seats, and Weapon Mounts just to name a few items from his comprehensive list. Senior Technical Artist Matt Intrieri has also addressed an audio issue where Gladiator pilot seat enter and exit animations were causing the associated audio effect to trigger elsewhere instead of being centered on the geometry. In addition to the audio issue, Matt also resolved multiple bugs ranging from enter/exit animations to retrofitting Legacy Ships such as the Anvil Hornet.

On the rigging side of the Tech Content team, after completing the Undersuit Armor game asset rigging, Senior Rigger John Riggs is in progress of creating pipeline scripts for Maya. Associate Rigger Gaige Hallman resolved clothing volume clipping on characters along with several massive clothing fixes to prepare for the upcoming shopping experience.


Quality Assurance
LA-QA’s focus has been on the upcoming 2.4 release, testing new features and ensuring stability and performance across all builds. In particular, the team concentrated on:

2.4 Persistence Features

New Shopping Implementation

Persistent Universe Clothing

Starfarer Flight Performance

The team also got an added treat of taking a first look at large scale solar systems with the hopes of implementing the procedural planets functionality in the coming months.


Production
Speaking of amorphous, this is a descriptor often used to describe what it actually is that Producers do. Senior Producer Eric Kieron Davis not only manages the CIG LA Production team, he has also overseen most of the ongoing construction and beautification of our new office. Although we moved into the building back in November, we have begun flourishing the final touches in order to make this office feel like home. This includes overseeing the art pieces hung up on the meeting room walls, contracting individuals to create and mount images from Star Citizen on our commissary walls, and also our really awesome faux-airlock doors that lead from the lobby into the heart of the building. Office comfort makes a big difference during crunch times, and the immersive environment sustains energy and creativity more than many truly appreciate.

Associate Producers Mark Hong and Randy Vazquez have been tireless dervishes of energy in keeping the LA teams focused on getting 2.4 on to the PTU and then out to the official release. Randy is responsible for setting up regular internal, office-wide playtest sessions to keep everyone familiar and fluent with our game content while maintaining schedules of in-progress as well as future upcoming tasks for the Tech Design and Engineering teams, while Mark Hong supports the Tech Content and Art teams. These tasks are not just for 2.4 but also looking ahead at features coming down the pipeline. Production Assistant Darian Vorlick for the past month has been helping the Community team by temporarily taking over social network update responsibilities on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as supporting the Production staff where needed.


Conclusion
Like any previous month at CIG, there is not a single moment where the office is not humming with activity. With our focus largely on finishing 2.4, April was definitely not shy of new content either. We also introduced the updated MISC Prospector and in celebration of its launch, we included a Concept Sale along with quality elements to accompany it such as details on Mining, a “job application” for mining operations at Shubin Interstellar, and our regular weekly programs like “Around the Verse,” the “10 for the Chairman/Developers” series, and “Bugsmashers.”

The month of May is looking to be no less exciting and intense. Your support and enthusiasm along with Chris Roberts’ vision, inspires us to no end. We hope you enjoy what we have accomplished this month and we look forward to sharing new content in the near and distant future. Thank you for being a Star Citizen on this journey.

See you next month.

Persistent Testing

This month has been all about persistence and testing 2.4. All teams have been working hard to test and fix various items that are coming in to the live version of the game. 2.4 is shaping up to be a monumental update to the game which will bring online many systems which have been in development for some time, and set the stage for many more features to come online in upcoming publishes. Kudos to everyone in Austin for their hard work. Here are detailed reports from each team!


Development
The primary focus of the ATX Development Team this month has been working towards the first release of Shopping and Persistence. Rob Reininger and our Design Team here in Austin with support from BHVR have been busy setting up the shops to function on Port Olisar in addition to what already exists in Area18. We’ve got Casaba Outlet and Cubby Blast open for business, and we’ll aim to sell clothing, armor, and weapons in our first release. It has required a lot of work from several different folks to make sure that the clothing and weapon items are properly spawned in on the store shelves and racks, getting the mannequin props set up so that clothing and armor can be properly purchased and equipped from it, and setting up all the data so that it properly appears in the Purchase UI. Pete Mackay has been spending his time balancing the pricing in the game and creating a new formula that will help determine pricing for everything from clothing to ships.

We’ve also spent some time nailing down the short and long-term design requirements for what we’re calling “Try On/Inspect Mode”. This mode will switch on when selecting the appropriate “Use Verb” within the Shop UI and it will allow you to view a potential purchase on your character before actually buying it. We’ve got an initial implementation in place and are scheduling out the rest of the features for future releases.

We’re turning our focus now to getting Dumper’s Depot online so that you can shop for ship components and weapons in-game as well. Rob Reininger is drafting up a Game Design Document for “Purchasing via Terminal”, which will be utilized in shops that have an inventory too large to fit on all of the shelves. Ship components/weapons and ships in general are a great example of where this feature would be used.

In other news, the work on the first deployment of the Persistence backend is now complete! Jason Ely, Tom Sawyer, and Jeff Zhu worked diligently this month to finally make our services persistent. We’ve provided our programmers and designers the ability to hook into this now so that we can start fully persisting things like player health, ship damage, hostility level, item purchases, ammo count, and much more. We’ve also implemented a new currency tentatively called Alpha UEC which will be used primarily to test shopping and other services. This new currency will help with balancing the pricing and overall economy and is subject to wipe at any time in order to implement new fixes. We’re turning our attention now to scheduling out a roadmap for getting actual Persistent UEC in the game.

Another major feature we’ve been working is Port Modification. We’ve been working with the UI Team in the UK to implement a new app in the mobiGlas that will allow you guys to customize your hangars and eventually much more. We’ve ported our hangars and flair objects over to using the new Item System 2.0 so that now you can access specific “ports” around your hangar and place things wherever you like! Eventually this will allow for customization of ship loadouts as well. We’ve gotten the ball rolling in fleshing out a design for using this app in other locations as well, like the Crusader map.

Our Ship Team here in Austin continues their work from last month. Chris Smith is working on the new-and-improved Hornet F7A model for Squadron 42, currently in greybox phase. Josh Coons is trucking along on the Drake Herald, also in greybox phase. These ships are coming along nicely and it is exciting to see ships both old and new get the extreme attention to detail that these guys provide with all the experience and resources that we’ve cultivated as we’ve grown.

The Animation Team in Austin has been supporting in various areas of the project, per usual. Our Ship Animation Team has had their hands in ships of all shapes and sizes, including bug fixing for the Starfarer, reviews on the Hornet F7A, Herald, Caterpillar, and Dragonfly, and support for the Idris. They’ve also created some new animations for entering/exiting the Freelancer ladder and put in place the combat enter/exits for the Aurora and Avenger. The PU Animation Team, meanwhile, has actually wrapped up their work on the Spaceship Showroom and Nightclub scene animations and are turning their attention to helping out on Squadron 42. They will be creating background animations for the performance capture scenes as well as implementing locomotion sets for various characters in the game.
Lastly, lighting artist Emre Switzer has nearly finished his final tweaks on the Levski landing zone. The market area is properly lit and appropriately dingy. Overall Levski is a fantastic environment and we can’t wait to get it y’all’s hands!


Quality Assurance
April has been almost entirely devoted to 2.4.0 testing. With Persistence coming online, a slew of new features have been added that need to be documented and tested. Our Persistent Universe Specialist, Todd Raffray, has been working closely with the design team to document all the new features that have been coming online for 2.4.0 and keeping the rest of the QA team updated on their expected behavior. Jeff Daily has been working on expanding our internal check-lists to accommodate all of the new features, as well as improving some of our older check-lists. Shopping alone adds many new test cases to our regular check-lists; here’s just a handful of tests that need to be performed for shopping alone:

Does the shopping interface open and properly progress through each screen?

Is all the information on the shopping interface displaying correctly?

Are there typos?

Are the correct clothing brand names and descriptions displayed?

Are there localization identifiers being displayed?

Is the transaction being processed by the server?

Is the aUEC properly deducted from the player’s account?

Is the purchased item granted to the player’s account?

Does mobiGlas update the player’s aUEC after the purchase has been completed?

Do the items appear correct on the character?

Do they clip the character in any unexpected ways?

Are there shader issues with the new clothing materials?

Are they deforming properly during animations?

Do the items appear correct on the shelves/clothes racks?

Do the items display their Augmented Reality interface when viewing them on the clothes rack and is the information displayed correct?

When using the “Try On” option, do the items get removed from the clothes rack while the character is wearing them, and are they returned once the character exits the “Try On” interface?

Do your new clothes appear when other players are viewing your character?

Does the character behave appropriately when activating the airlock while wearing civilian clothes?

Persistence doesn’t just add new functionality, such as in-game shopping, but also changes existing features like hangar customization. In 2.4.0, players will now be able to choose what flair items they display and where they display them. As a result, Robert Gaither has been working closely with our Persistent Universe Designer, Rob Reininger, on setting up item ports throughout all the hangars in order to allow you to decide how you want to customize them.

With any new major release comes new ships! 2.4.0 will see the Reliant reach Hangar-Ready status, and the Starfarer has now been made Flight-Ready so we’ve been doing our passes on both ships to ensure they’re performing as expected. As an added bonus, weapon projectiles will now properly transition across/inside local physics grids! That’s right, you can now shoot from outside to inside of a ship (or vice-versa) and hit players who just uhhh… happen to be in the way. So feel free to start practicing your boarding tactics and engage in some fps firefights in the Starfarer (and any other ship with a large enough interior) when 2.4.0 hits!

Andrew Rexroth and Katarzyna Mierostawska have been continuing Squadron 42 testing along with their UK counterparts, and have been documenting all the test cases necessary for when the time comes for the rest of the QA Team to jump into the fray in full force.

Our QA Information Specialist, Marissa Meissner, has recently been promoted to QA Lead, and has had her hands full training our latest new QA members: Jesse Mark (Jesse-CIG), Don Allen (Tunahead-CIG), Scott McCrea (Spectral-CIG), Bryce Benton (Underscore-CIG) and Brandon Crocker (Neverender-CIG). Please feel free to welcome them appropriately (weapons hot) if you run across them in game!

And finally, it has been 0 days since a member of QA has died to the airlock.


Game Support
April was a super month for Game Support! We wrapped up work on 2.3.1 at the first part of the month, then focused heavily on catching up on our ticket work.

Most significantly, we collaborated with Toast to establish the process for our brand new Evocati Test Flight volunteer test program. This group, 1/3rd of which is from our top Issue Council contributors and 2/3rd from our most active PTU testers, will act as a “pre-PTU” group, playtesting builds to make sure they are stable before the build goes out to a wider audience.

We’ll be very excited to unleash this group on 2.4.0 playtesting early in May!
For those wanting to participate in Evocati or PTU, it’s still possible! The best way to do this is to be an active member of the Issue Council reporting and contributing on bugs. There’s a lot of competition for a few spots, but we will look to update our ranks later this summer, so get on those bugs!

We’ve also opened up another Game Support Agent position in Austin, Texas, as the needs of the Star Citizen service continue to grow and expand. Check it out at https://cloudimperiumgames.com/jobs/415-Game-Support-Agent!!


IT/Operations
The cure for slow is to make it fast. The IT department spends much of its time identifying performance bottlenecks and often finds new and creative ways to alleviate them. This month was no different. With every fix, there’s usually something behind it.

In our never ending quest to continue to further reduce turnaround times on our builds we’ve identified and tackled the latest choke point – memory. At this point we monitor everything down to the smallest details. Having recently improving network and storage performance we realized that we’re spending a good deal of time on disk starving for memory. This was due to a recent code change that came from our engine team in order to improve build performance under certain conditions which actually resulted in higher RAM consumption than we were expecting because their performance gains are coming from caching more in to RAM. In order to account for this we’ve increased RAM to those build machines by 4x and performance jumped accordingly. Of course this means we’ll be increasing physical RAM across the entire build stack as a result and aggressively pursuing the next performance gain we can find.

IT has also been busy in London setting up for a quick mocap shoot. This was a ground up project starting with empty rooms and setting up everything necessary in short order. In addition to the mocap equipment itself we deploy multiple support teams which all need to be connected via an internal network as well as linked back in to the home network in Manchester. Monitoring systems, local storage, firewalls, backup systems, wifi, laptops all must be built out to support any shoot, large or small. We have found that the key to success goes beyond planning and organization. For any remote project to be successful we must build the network out as an extension of our internal network so team members can get straight to work without having to worry about anything.


LiveOps/DevOps
With fewer publishes this month, we’ve taken the time to perform some necessary house cleaning. Ahmed has rewritten significant portions of the deployment process. The goals of this work are twofold. The advances in persistence bring significant changes to the deployment process adding considerable complexity to the mix as compared to previous publishes. We have also taken this opportunity to improve efficiencies where possible as well as improving error handling conditions which all go to making the work Ahmed and his team are doing behind the scenes that much better. While there will always be room for improvement, most people would never know it based on the outstanding work being done in this area. With each advancement in the publishing tool set we reduce the amount of manual work involved in publishing Star Citizen.

We’re all very happy to welcome two new engineers to our team this month. Both Andy and Nate are joining us as DevOps engineers and they have already hit the ground running. Andy is investigating new systems which he will use to enhance our big data reporting systems on the server side and Nate is already working on a series of prototypes that we will use to more fully automate our server side publishing systems for the QA, PTU, and Live environments. While these are fairly large projects these guys are already moving at our pace so we’re anxious to see what else they come up with in their first month.

Thanks to our new test build system we’re seeing much more stable build progress this month as expected. We’ve also extended this to incorporate a test build step for risky code changes which helps to further stabilize the build pipeline as well as keeping builds moving more steadily to QA. By working closely with IT we did identify some more areas where we could improve overall build performance. We’re getting to the point where a gain in speed doesn’t feel as big as it used to but when every hour counts we will continue to find every possible performance gain we can.

Chuffed and Knackered

The team at Foundry 42 UK works tirelessly on both Star Citizen and Squadron 42, are are excited for everyone to see what they’ve been cooking up.


Environment Team
Some changes are coming to Port Olisar. We gone through and fitted some shopping locations within the struts which helps gives the facility some more personality and is a great testbed for the shopping mechanic. We are starting with a small number of locations initially, but in the future we will be rolling out more locations as more buyable items come online. These updates will be coming in for the next release so we’re looking forward to getting it out to you guys.

Nyx is in the final stages of polish and optimization, we’re drilling down to hit our budgets in each area to make sure we deliver a smooth experience. Once the procedural tech is ready for prime time we will be integrating the location into the terrain ready for release.

The hard work is also continuing on the Sq42 campaign, the vertical slice level is continuing with its final art production phase and part of the weekly company playtests.
That’s all for this month folks, happy shopping in 2.4 and enjoy the vitamin D sunbath…


F42 AD
There are months where it’s hard to keep up, the rate of flow and change sometimes is amazing! I have to admit, the Prospector, we really did wrestle that ship and it took a lot of work on both Gavin’s and my front to get it where Chris was happy – all being said, the results came out pretty good and it might not be too long before it gets made!

Concept work is also continuing on the new corvette, a small personal vehicle and a new small ship. We’ve also tackled some Behring ship weapons (Size 5,4,3) and a boatload of components, not forgetting the Klaus and Werner weapon family guide with a hope to updating and unifying the weapons. There’s has also been a good amount of fettling of the Vertical slice level and prop designs – we all know the standard we want to achieve, there are just no shortcuts and it takes time.

For characters, a lot of work has been going on with the Vanduul, with Chris being in the studio on a more regular basis it making it a lot easier to fine tune the creature design. Also work started on medical staff costumes and also UEE staff.


VFX
This month the VFX team have been busy working on the Starfarer. Specifically, implementing its flight-ready effects – including damage, interior states, thrusters and weapons. The interior effects in particular have been time-consuming because of the sheer quantity of room and corridors. As always, we have worked closely with the ship team to ensure our effects sync up beautifully with the lighting.

We have also created effects for two new ship weapons, added effects to the new Crusader areas, and revisited our “high tech” effects category to bring it in line with the VFX style guide.

Away from the “fun” stuff (i.e.: blowing up massive spaceships!) we have also spent time cleaning up our pipeline documentation. Primarily this is for the other disciplines’ benefit so they can more clearly see how far along the VFX artists are on any given task – essential when a small team is involved in so many tasks at any one time.


Graphics
As well as fixing some stability issues the graphics team have been working on a variety of new features for the artists this month, the first of which is improvements to the layered shader we use for characters, weapons and props. This shader allows us to define the appearance of an object as the combination of more ‘layers’ such as cloth, steel, plastic etc. The new changes allow us to define how each of these layers will wear/erode over time, improve the overall performance of the shader, and allow it to be used on both small props and very large weapons.

We’ve also been finalizing our work on the ‘light linking system’ which allows light sources and glowing light-fittings to be linked together so that the brightness of the light fittings accurately reflects the realistic intensity of the bulb. This is crucial in getting the full benefit of the new HDR flare & bloom tech which we’re hoping to enable for the next release. The latest changes have refactored this to allow it work with the upcoming Object Container system.

After seeing a great presentation from GDC 2016 on improving the performance of tiled-lighting, we’ve been working on integrating this technique into our pipeline so that we can transition to tiled-lighting as opposed to the current deferred-lighting solution (should potentially be faster).

Work has officially started on implementing a new method of handling the ordering of the large number of transparent objects that Star Citizen requires (e.g. cockpit glass, visor, UI and particles etc). This will also involve integration transparent objects better with the post effects such as motion blur, depth of field and anti-aliasing, however this process requires deep engine work so will take quite a while to complete, but should fix issues such the cockpit glass and ship UI rendering in the wrong order when viewed from outside the cockpit.

Finally we have been finalizing a new profiling system that breaks down performance costs per art team to help us profile and optimize the huge amount of content in our game.


Engineering
The big feature development we’ve been helping out working on this month is the persistence, or basically the game remembering stuff between sessions. This is a very big deal as it’s the groundwork that so much of the game will be built upon. The underlying system has been implemented over in the US studios, but we’ve been then building on top of that so you can start seeing and enjoying the results of their hard work.

One of the big things that we now persist is the new AUEC (our alpha credits) so in Crusader we’ve started looking at ways in which we can reward the player with these credits depending on what you accomplish. David’s been working with the designers on implementing some of this gameplay. Now when you complete a mission you will get rewarded. Spotted somebody with a wanted level? Take them out and you’ll get a bounty. Find something interesting on a disused space station? Could make you some money.

Of course we’re implementing ways of spending this newly gotten cash. So we’ve updated the repair stations so that they’re no longer free and you have to pay an amount to fix up your ship. Fuel and ammo also now come with a cost. And of course shopping is being implemented! We’ve now got working shops in both Crusader and ArcCorp where you can go and buy clothes and weapons. On the clothing side Jamie has been working on a new try on mode where you can select a the piece of clothing you’re interested in and your able to view it on your character before deciding to buy, or with weapons being able to pick them up and inspect them before putting down some credits.

Another big aspect of the persistence is how we now store your hangar and the loadout of your ships. Rather than selecting which ships are in your hangar, or which flair items you can see from the website, we can now do it all in-game. This actually brings together several new pieces of tech from the Interaction Point system to the ‘inner thought’ UI which the UI guys here have been working on. Both Simon and Bone have been getting this UI working so you can see these interaction points, go up to one of them, select how you want to interact with it, and depending on what select in this case it’ll bring up a menu of what items can go on that spot. It’s a very flexible system so if it’ll allow you to place what ships you want in your hangar to changing the loadout of the ship itself.

Otherwise as usual we’ve been working in the background on all the ongoing mechanics required for S42. Nothing too much to update on but Craig is making good progress on the new landing system and getting landing working on a moving carrier ship, Rob has been improving the conversation system with it working with subsumption, Romulo has been doing some underlying conversion work on the weapons and implementing grenades, Gordon is progressing nicely with ledge grabs as well and vaulting and mantling.


Quality Assurance
It’s been a very busy month in QA here at Foundry 42. We worked tirelessly with the Dev team and you the community to get 2.3.1 out with the hopes of clearing up some of the nasty frame rate issues and the server stability crashes and while work on that is still ongoing, 2.3.1 brought about some much needed improvements.

With that out the door we began working on the big one, 2.4.0 is probably one of the biggest releases we have worked on since Crusader was created. But boy is it an exciting patch. Persistence. Everything persists now, and testing it has been a rollercoaster of emotions, QA’s main hurdle has been stability. In its first iteration, persistence made the game very unstable, with versions completely failing to build and a lot of time spent on frustrating tests. But we got through the hard times and have been ploughing on, testing the changes to the Hostility system, the Missions system and the Cry Astro Stations. We’re really eager to push this to you guys and gather up your feedback.

But persistence isn’t the only exciting thing we have been working on. Stocked shops (In Both ArcCorp and Port Olisar) & Alpha UEC, A new flight ready ship, a new hangar ready ship and a completely overhauled Hangar system (The Port Modification App). A few fun bugs have showed up in this testing time, such as ships bouncing around the hangar, Eldritch horror style floating eyeballs and so much more.

Right now we are working very hard to find and bug up all the major issues so this can get pushed to the PTU and you guys can get to see all the fantastic changes that have gone in.

See you in the ‘verse!


Audio
April for audio was, as ever, busy! The S42 work and the 2.4 release have been our main points of focus this month, but alongside that a big wedge of music production was undertaken. But we’ll start with the individual updates.

Sam Hall has been hard at it with ship computer work, looking to reengineer and refactor this so we can have it behave more intelligently in-game. This has involved syncing up with those in systems design as well as moving it across to the subsumption system. As well as this he’s been working on resolving 2.4 bugs, optimizing an audio plug-in for Dataforge, and adding triggers for airlock transitions (e.g. for when the player enters space without the prerequisite protective helmet).

As well as his work on the music production (see below), Ross Tregenza has been iterating on the music logic system and is still holding up the fort in being the overall point man for Squadron 42.

Luke Hatton handily bullet-pointed his general tasks! So bullet-point away, Luke:

Tweaks to maneuvering audio for the Aurora and fixed missing audio on the primary thruster for the Aurora LN

Mix tweaks to the tutorial hangar, more ambiance details now audible

Fixed broken enter and exit sounds on the Gladiator

Now using general health parameter in Wwise for ships, so we can alter any sound based on the amount of damage a ship has taken easily

Added distant explosion sound variants

Darren Lambourne, apart from his mastering mission in Munich, has been polishing up the Starfarer and working on audio for the Argo MPUV cargo vehicle.

Matteo Cerquone has also bullet-pointed things:

Added audio for Devastator Energy Shotgun dry fire

Added sounds for interactive elements such as alarm systems, elevators and doors for S42

Old Foley clean up

Bug fixing

Bob Rissolo and Phil Smallwood have both been deep on the dialogue side, preparing for future dialogue/p-cap sessions and implementing/processing material for current usage by the design department. Phil’s also been working on social module tasks, esp. re. shopping and general locations.

Simon Price is still very much engaged in dialogue pipeline tools that will be required for S42 as well as the live release.

Graham Phillipson – he’s also been on 2.4 bugs etc. but otherwise:

Refinements of automatic footstep generation code

Added listener-based RTPCs to area shapes

LUA -> c++ code conversion

Tech debt removal, improving maintainability

Fixed bug with EVA audio not updating properly

Stefan Rutherford has been re-organizing some large aspects of the Wwise project structure to underpin the mix pipeline, which is a joint design/engineering effort by Lee Banyard (me), Jason Cobb, Stefan Rutherford and Graham Philipson currently – this will feed into S42’s linear-styling which require a more ‘filmic’ mix workflow, as well as the more systematic mix workflow that the persistent universe requires. Otherwise he’s been working on new content for our auto-footstep system, restructuring and redesigning the guns. He also headed up another gun recording session that took place in early April at Copehill Down with the company ‘Audiobeast’ (aka Steve Whetman). Hopefully some photos will be along for the ride with this monthly report, if not I’ll post some to the ‘Ask A Dev’ audio forum, hopefully we’ll wrangle some video too.

Jason Cobb has, as ever, been providing technical back-up in various aspects of the audio build pipeline, and is setting up mix states/snapshots across the game as part of the wider mix foundational work.

As mentioned previously, we pushed through a lot of music production work this month. We had another session at the start of the month in Bratislava with the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, to upgrade a lot of the themes and incidental pieces for Star Citizen. Partly this is material for the special edition soundtrack CD, but this material will also make its way into the game as well to improve upon what’s already present.

Then, with that material in the bag, Pedro Macedo Camacho, Ross Tregenza and I went down to Real World Studios, and met up with our mix engineer Peter Fuchs and assistant engineer Patrick Phillips. As well as being a talented and experienced recording engineer for our orchestral sessions, Peter has an extensive CV of mixing orchestral scores for film and games – you can check out his CV on IMDB if interested: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0297273/

We spent five solid days in the studio shaping and sculpting the rather lovely source material into more finalized tracks. If you’re interested in the facility, you can find pictures of it at http://realworldstudios.com/recording-studios/the-big-room/ – we were in what’s aptly named ‘The Big Room’ (hint – it’s big). While there’s an expansive mixing console there, much of the work of mixing by Peter was done ‘in the box’ – that is, within Pro Tools itself rather than routing everything through the SSL console. When working with many pre-recorded tracks this is often a quicker process due to the amount of setting up it would take between one piece of music and the next to assign everything to the desk, and his workflow is better suited to working this way. But mixing desks look impressive, of course! ;)

Once we were done with the mixing process, that material was taken on a step further at CS Mastering – which is a mastering studio in Munich headed up by Christoph Stickel. (If curious, you can see some images at http://www.csmastering.de/) Darren Lambourne was in attendance with Christoph and Peter Fuchs, and the process of putting together a finalized CD master was undertaken here. This involves working with the stereo tracks only, rather than Pro Tools sessions; but refining them yet further so they form a more cohesive ‘whole’, with a mixture of very high end analogue and digital audio processing equipment to hand.

All of this was a workflow that we’d wanted to get locked down for some time and I have to thank everyone for making it possible, we went from performance to a final master in really good time and I hope everyone will enjoy the results, whether in-game or on the soundtrack CD itself. It’s wonderful to hear Pedro’s work polished to this level of sonic shine, I think we all learned a lot from the experience and it will help refine the process for music production across Star Citizen as well as Squadron 42.

And I think that’s all for this month from CIG Audio. As always, thanks for listening!

Animation
Continued on with railgun animation sets

Fixing cover bugs

Turn animations worked on for 180 degrees and 360 degrees

Testing and feedback on tools

Further work to start / stop / step locomotion

New FPS weapon look dev and feedback with the art team

Recruitment – new animator starting next month


Props
The ship components continue to be a big focus this month for the props team, we are wrapping up the full set of small coolers and we have started work on power plants and quantum drives.

We have been supporting the new persistence feature by supplying the designers with a hand full of assets to support their new mission mechanics, this initial bunch was a quick pass to get something in to prove out the gameplay and will hopefully just be the start that we can add to in the future.

Another bit of exciting news is that we have now had our additional tech requests added in to the layer blend material and can now use it across the board for prop production. We were waiting on a few tweaks and adjustments to the way the shader worked and that has now been delivered. This is a big step forward for us as it allows us to almost half the number of draw calls on each prop so should really help to make our pops nice and cheap in terms of performance and we plan to use it in anger over the next few months.

Finally we have been supporting the shopping and clothing feature with a new auto valet locker system so allow for quick and easy changing of clothes and a bit of work has been done looking on our workflow for creating hanging and folded variants of all the clothing you can purchase.

Next month, more ship components and back to squadron 42 props.


Spaceships
Interior production of the Idris is coming to a close, this has enabled the team to start look dev and prototyping of the crashed / damaged asset and start to establish a real key beat within the story arc of Squadron 42. From this research the team should then be able to establish a grounded look and feel for damaged cap ships including the Javelin and Bengal.

Production on the Javelin exterior has moved forward, sharing procedures and techniques found during the development of the Idris, this has also fed into the Bengal production, all ships now sharing a very specific Squadron 42 Livery.


Design
We had a very busy April in the UK Design department.

Firstly, we are back in Ealing shooting pickup scenes at Imaginarium, this has kept a lot of designers busy in terms of finalizing the play spaces and putting in stability fixes. It’s always really rewarding for the guys who are working hard on the Squadron 42 levels to see the level of polish that the actor’s performances give to the player experience.

The Live Release team have been very busy this month with the introduction of our first stage of persistence. Crusaders expanding economy now includes new missions and bonuses, as well as new scavengeables. Cry-Astro now charge for their services and players will now find that respawning has a cost attached. As well as the numerous additions to the play space, we have been starting the work on the solar system scale map which will be coming soon. All in all a very interesting and productive month for the Live Release team that you will soon get to experience and feedback to us on.

The Technical team have continued to setup the various ships that are currently slated for release, and the full component refactor that will make such a difference to functionality and versatility of these craft is nearing completion. It’s nice to finally see an upgradability system that works beginning to roll out into the live builds soon.

Obviously the component system will have a huge impact on the new Balancing Team and that is getting a lot of focus right now so that when it hits we can be in the best possible shape to release something that works.

Overall it’s been another good month for Squadron 42 development and continued building for the persistent universe.

German Precision

April was a solid productive month for us in Frankfurt in regards to both progress and planning. We had Chris out to the studio for a few days for face to face meetings with various departments. Since the last update we have 5 new people working in the office across multiple areas, with each discipline starting to round out a bit more. We’ve all been busy, as we say every month, but every day the team is constantly pushing things forward. The tech update for this month will read shorter than normal, because a good amount of the engine team are working on the procedural tech, and we’d prefer to keep some of the details internal for now and give you the full breakdown when the time comes for you guys to experience it for yourselves. This month we’ve also had a few groups come through the office and hang out with the team, as I always say, the support from you guys is much appreciated and helps push us on a daily basis.


Weapons
The weapon art team finished texturing two new ship weapons and are currently working on the various LOD’s (level of details) and getting them integrated into the game. The Apocalypse Arms Scourge Railgun has been given some additional polish and is in its final stages of art production and is being animated in parallel. We’ve also blocked out a prototype for one new FPS weapon and have a bunch more in the concept stage. We’ll hopefully have some images to share of the new work next month.


Engine
The core engine team focused on various areas of code to improve. First we continued our support to increase the number of render-able objects. To support massive counts of 50.000 and more (think asteroids or planet vegetation/rocks) we implemented a very fast instancing rendering path. This allows us to make the whole scenery more populated and interesting by showing more objects than we previously could. While implementing this rendering path, we also took some time to clean up parts of the rendering pipeline, unifying a few areas where we could.

Another focused area was the JobManager, which we improved the month before to be more flexible; people can new work on different batches, specify which batches have priorities and so on. As most of this was written as lock-less code for performance reasons, we missed some bugs. And since this was low level multithreading code, we now had the fun of finding out why certain operations succeed over 1 million times to suddenly fail. Good news is that we are confident that we ironed out those issues (we managed to run 12 instances of the editor in parallel without any threading issues, which should trigger all kinds of unusual thread timings).

The third area we looked into was to further improve the streaming code. Streaming can be very computation intensive as the code must touch all objects around the player, not just the fully visible objects. Since our game uses a very large view distance, this resulted in a very large number of objects needing an update. We could massively reduce this number by implementing a broad phase object distance culling. In the ZoneSystem, we already group objects together by spatial properties, now we combine the maximum view distance of all objects in such groups. If the whole group is further away than this combined distance, we can immediately ignore the whole group.

Lastly we spent a little time on our vsync implementation, as we noticed that we couldn’t get a stable 60 fps even if we had over 70 fps when vsync was disabled. It turned out that this was a thread synchronization issue which is now fixed. During this investigation, we also had to investigate the details about how windowed rendering works in Windows 7 and later. In short, it is complex :) For our vsync fixes, this unfortunately means that we can only ensure correct vsync in fullscreen mode. Because of this we added some experimental vsync modes.

Use the Windows Composite Manager to vsync (r_Vsync 2). This mode has a certain performance cost.

Implement our own vsyncing (r_Vsync 3). Works, but can result in some tearing as we can’t control when windows draw the data on the screen.

Disable the Composite Manager (r_Vsync 4). Works only on windows 7 (It is no longer possible to disable vsync on newer windows versions).

Of course mode 0 (no vsync) and mode 1 (regular vsync) are still in the game and should be the ones used. But it could be worth to try out the other modes for the brave ones.


Build System
Short and simple update from our Senior Build Engineer.

Trybuild bug fixing and balancing for game-dev and 2.4.

CopyBuild automation.

Tools for VFX artists.

Feature testing for game-dev (WIP).


Cinematics
This month the cinematic team continued to push forward on all fronts, blocking out of scenes, working with engineers on workflow and tools, as well as improving the overall look of body and facial animations. A good amount of time was also spent on preparing for a PCap (Performance Capture) shoot starting in early May. A few members of the team went to the UK office for a few days to go over scripts and sort out blocking of new scenes with the writers and Level Designers.


Quality Assurance
Art testing was the major theme in April for CIG-DE QA. Chris Speak and Melissa Estrada have been busy enhancing the Artist testing pipeline to ensure Editor tools are in top working order with the addition of new checklists and an Art specific sanity checklist that caters to an Artist’s specific needs. QA has seen the benefits of these discipline specific sanity tests and will be working toward creating additional checklists on a per discipline basis. QA will also be assisting with the revamp of our in-house tool used to grab builds, to make it easier for developers to obtain information on whether a build is usable for development or not. Chris has also been collaborating with Carsten Wenzel on time demo creation and Francesco Di Mizio with FeatureTests, so that we can start client-side automation tests for both current and future features and in-game systems. Melissa was buried deep in code with Ivo Herzeg to get to the bottom of a crash issue that prevented QA and development from entering the tutorial for testing and debugging. The crash occurred as the player loaded into the level, and it turned out that the cause was related to the character’s limbs essentially exploding to astronomical values! She also spent time testing potential Vertical Sync fixes from Christopher Bolte that should bring significant improvements to overall game-play in future releases. It’s been a very busy month for CIG-DE QA, but we are already starting to prep full force for May and whatever challenges it may bring.


AI: Artificial Intelligence
This month the AI team has been mostly focusing on making progress on the development of Subsumption.

First of all we have been making progresses on the implementation of the Interactors for AI. Currently each Interactor can be setup by the design team to contain the required information an NPC needs to interact with it: position of the alignment to start the interaction, the animation the NPC needs to play, and the action he needs to perform. The NPC will then search for objects in the world that serve specific purpose and he can interact with them and perform actions on them.

Subsumption uses the following hierarchy for creating behaviors:

Activities > Subactivities > Tasks

This month we also introduced a lot of new tasks (the basic building blocks designers will use to create behaviors ) and we made a pass on the basic functionalities for debugging on screen useful information regarding the system. We also made the basic pass on the Action Areas, those are the elements in the world that allow designers to mark areas with specific information: a multicrew space ship, for example, might have an engine room, a hangar, a control room, and so on. Action Areas allow the NPCs to reason about the environment to fulfill their tasks.

We also spent some time unifying the movement speeds between NPCs and Players, so we now have full control of 5 different pseudospeeds on the AI side: Walk Slow, Walk Fast, Run Slow, Run Fast, and Sprint.

We’ve also been refactoring the spawning system to allow designers to have a more reliable and stable system to populate the world. The new AI Spawning Manager is going to be the system used by both scripted logic and the mission system to populate the universe. Currently the main goal of the new system is to simplify the spawning mechanics and make it more robust, for example we introduced a proper special validation to analyse the space that will be occupied by the ship we want to spawn.

Last but not least we dedicated some time to bug fixing and stability improvements as we regularly do, it’s worth mentioning we have fixed several crashes and we have removed the main cause of the 5 seconds stall that was happening on some i5 core machines.


VFX
Over the past few months the Frankfurt VFX team has been working on some new tech for our particles. What this allows us to do is record the optical flow of motion between the frames in our animated textures and then distort or morph one frame into the next instead of doing a simple cross fade between frames. Not only does this drastically smooth out the animation of the textures, but it also has the added benefit of allowing us to reduce the amount of frames in the animation, thereby increasing the resolution of each individual frame without increasing the overall texture resolution.

We have also been working on fleshing out the effects for the high-tech tech style. Image example can be seen in our DE header image.


Tech Art
We are helping animation programmers for R and D on itemport animation which will help us to easily pick and swap any prop, weapon, or its attachments. We’ve been supporting and making progressing with numerous weapons from the weapons team. We’ve also been moving forward our DCC pipeline with scene manager, which helps artists to easily assemble a complete animation scene in Maya.


Design
The Level Designers have been focusing on iterating through the layout of the Hurston landing zone as well as that of the lawless base mentioned last month. Hurston is seeing some revisions to its layout to improve its scale, as we are still figuring out best practices for combining the scale of ships and hangars, of grandiose vistas and buildings, with the scale of functional (and fairly realistic) playable spaces. Getting to the best of both worlds is an ongoing challenge that we’re iterating our way through, which means that designing those first few locations of different types and sizes naturally takes a lot longer while we learn what level design rules best apply to PU locations. The lawless base is soon getting into ‘concepting’ phase, during which the assortment of un-textured volumes that it’s made of so far will be painted over by concept artists, to give guidance to the art team on how to build and beautify it.

We are also doing the groundwork for the next batch of locations that have to be built when both of those are out of our hands: figuring out what makes those new locations special, and how to allow the levels, technology and game mechanics to join hands in an effort to move the game forward as fast and efficiently as possible. That involves aligning with different departments to dig into critical designs such as spawning, parking, shopping/trading, etc. to see what features are coming up in the short term and how best to showcase them through the locations we build (instead of just adding extra places to visit.)

Finally, we’re still going through the recruitment process to fill up our ranks with more level designers, to help us work through those tasks and develop the foundation of our level design philosophy for the PU.

On the System Design side we’ve continued to work on our AI as we are switching them from Modular Behavior Trees to fully use Subsumption for in combat and out of combat behaviors. Eventually we’ll end up with all our AI being built in a single unified tool.
We are also continuing the Inner Thought implementation and its integration in other systems like the Useables, Interactors and Looting. This system will help us get a unified interface for interacting with objects that have more than one simple use case, making dialogue choices and even giving your wingmen commands in the heat of battle.

Work also continues on the Power Distribution and Reputation systems as these have received an overhaul and will soon be entering production. Another system that was in need, and is receiving a major rework is the FPS Suit because of the changes to FPS defenses and this one will still be ongoing for the next month.

More on the production side of design we’ve been busy setting the goals for the May-July period, breaking down systems and setting priorities for all of them in regards to each career. This has enabled us to have a better overview of what is actually critical in getting those careers up and running on the live servers as soon as possible.

On Our Best Behaviour

At BHVR, we create much of the art for Star Citizen and make sure the quality of every graphic element reaches a level of quality never seen before.


Engineering
This month was a long sprint to get 2.4 features out of the door and into the hands of QA testers, PTU users and eventually yours, our dear players.

A good proportion of this was related to shopping features: lots of work on AR and mobiGlas, but especially doing proper networked transactions and shop actions replication.

Lots of goodies that we’re all excited to see you try.

We reworked Cry-Astro services, to make sure the new service request flow works well with multicrew ships. This was a big pay off, now any member of your crew can use their mobiGlas to request individual services while preventing different people paying for the same service (maybe in shadier service area, but NOT at Cry-Astro, the Empire’s repair, restock and refuel one stop solution!). Also you will only pay for services as they are executed, so if you’re being shot or have to leave in a hurry, you don’t need be afraid of not getting your money’s worth.


Design
This month, the Bhvr design team was very busy with shopping and next release features. We continued setting up shops, both on Area 18 and Port Olisar. It’s funny how it is more work and complicated than it just looks on the outside. The guys did a great job making this work cleanly and efficiently.

We also did some work on the Revel and York Hangar to support the new abilities of the Port modification system. We also updated all the flair items and hangar decorations to support that new system. Looking forward to see what the players think.

Next month should see the construction of a new environment and plenty of level design for the team. We are also eager to continue iterating on the shopping system and expanding the features around it.


Art
On the Art side, we had a lot of fun making additions to Port Olisar, which you will be able to experience very soon. Mostly work related to shops, additional dressing and adding a larger landing pad.

We have also opened new areas to make them ready for later releases.

Moreover, we supported the shopping mechanics with custom props, to better showcase the items sold in the stores.

On Levski, we continued our optimizations on all fronts, meshes, textures, materials and lighting, but we are close to finish the optimizations.

Finally, we worked on new props and finish next month`s flair object.

Cloudy with a Chance of Platform

Greetings from cloudy Montreal! Here’s what we’ve been up to in the last month.


Ship Stats
Design is complete for the new ship reference matrix, and we have already started development. This new matrix will allow users to more easily view all of Star Citizen’s expanding catalog of ships and give the ability to compare multiple stats. We also have designs for a mobile version, which are being reviewed internally.


Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Our development of multi-factor authentication continues, and we are adding a mobile authenticator app. As part of a three-pronged attack, we will also be updating the game launcher to include MFA.


Communication Platform
We have presented a rough prototype of our new communication platform to CIG, and reviews were positive. We are working on the chat module for the time being, and then we will start developing the forum module. We’re still a few months away from a beta launch, but we’re confident you will love it.


Ship Happens
April was a very exciting month for ships. It kicked off with a Star Citizen April Fools’ joke, in the form of the Big Benny inspired Reliant and your reaction to this goofy delivery vehicle was overwhelming to say the least! Later in the month, there was a Free Fly for anyone who wanted to try out Star Citizen. This was also accompanied by a Tax Day Sale putting the Super Hornet, Gladiator and the Retaliator Bomber up for sale for a week. Finally, to cap off the month, there was a concept sale of the Prospector a specialized mining vessel. This sale featured a Shubin recruitment page, where citizens were encouraged to apply to the company. The best 5 submissions will be rewarded with an Orion!


Sales
There were also a couple of merchandise sales this month: they included a track jacket bundled with the Star Citizen deck of cards for a reduced price; there were also some new Anvil Aerospace mouse pads that were on sale earlier this month. And finally, to round out April, a new set of fabric patches representing some of the manufacturers on the Star Citizen universe were released for sale.

Home Alone

Oh my gosh. We’re at the end. Ben and Ali are out of town this week so I get to write whatever I want and nobody can stop me. Well, Chris still has to read this and approve it. He can definitely stop me…

Anyway, it’s been a hell of a month. Lots of ups and downs and twists and turns, but no matter what happens each month, it always seems to go by too fast. That’s what happens when you work with this community: you make the time fly. April 2015 was when I started “officially” as your Community Manager, and the last year has been one for the books. I hope you’ve enjoyed the changes and improvements to our community output over the last year. It’s truly been a team effort, with any given endeavor being an absurd idea from Ben we make reality, or an equally absurd idea from me that Ben is wise enough to let me get away with, and either of those being impossible to pull off without the support of Alexis, Thomas, Justin, Toast, and especially Sandi.

With that, let’s look at our output this month.


April Fools!
WE GOT YOU!

WE SO GOT YOU GOOD!

It’s time for full disclosure: On March 29th we had nothing. Nada. Zilch. We were ready to call in the towel on April Fools this year. Just too busy, and we never want to do something that doesn’t move the needle for us, y’know? Then at about 3pm in the afternoon I had what I knew was a terrible idea that had come too late for us to do anything with, so I walked into Ben’s office intending for him to talk me out of it.

“Hey Ben, you know how everyone is always asking for those profession deep dives?”

“Talk to Tony Zurovec.”

“No, no… I had a terrible idea that I want you to talk me out of. Let’s do a fake profession post about food delivery. We can use the Big Bennys assets that Jeremiah and Elwin and Gaige have been putting together in their spare time for that other thing and use them here.”

This… THIS is where he was supposed to give me that look I get sometimes. The look that says: “Every decision involved in the process of hiring you was a mistake.”

It’s the same look I get from Chris when I show him that Jar Jar Tongue Sucker from 1999 I have on my desk.

But he didn’t give me that look. He said the words that often mean I won’t be sleeping for the next three days, “Let’s do it!”

And with that, we rallied Jeremiah Lee, Gaige Hallman, and Elwin Bachillier to finish up the “fun side projects” they’d been fooling around with in their spare time while Ben wrote up the copy and our friends at Turbulent coded new tech for the website that would allow us to simulate opening and reading a menu (that same tech we’d re-purpose later this same month for the Starfarer sale.)

And after late nights with Gaige animating our Delivery Dancer, speedy work by Elwin to skin the Reliant, and Jeremiah cranking out variant Bennys emotes, we had the ingredients needed to “move the needle.”

And that’s how you make a terrible idea a reality in only 3 days.


Broadcasts
Usually I like to go through and discuss the videos we put out in sequential order, highlighting and discussing the various peaks of content. Not this time. We’re skipping straight to dessert! Did you watch RtV last Friday?! Lando’s dad, or more commonly known as Dad Lando made his starring debut, capturing our hearts with his passion and perspective on the Star Citizen universe. Seriously, this guy rocks. His ability to embarass Lando definitely boosts his likeability.

Around the Verse and the 10 For series continued its regular schedule this month while Lando’s “Wonderful World of Star Citizen” introduced us to the always entertaining Captain Richard and his history on live streaming, and the creative talent of Mr. Combustible and his detailed workflow when 3D printing Star Citizen ships.

Reverse the Verse achieved a new apogee this month after Composer Pedro Camacho and Senior Sound Designer Ross Tregenza joined us for some exclusive new music reveals and an abundance of detailed information. We are extremely fortunate to have these talented gentlemen on our team.


Website
If you checked out the Turbulent section of our Monthly Report, you can already see some of the work-in-progress at overhauling and improving our web experience. That “communication platform” they’re developing is so exciting I can hardly contain myself, and will impact every aspect of your interaction with our website.

In addition to that, one of the many things being worked on is an update to the old Ship Status page. A dedicated landing page instead of a series of forum posts, this will eventually allow Citizens to quickly glance at the continuing development of our ships as they move through the pipeline, and play your own “at-home” version of, “Where’s My Spaceship?”

Those two, combined with the new Ship Reference Matrix, and our continuing efforts to improve on all aspects of our presentation make this a fun time to be working with our partners at Turbulent. I’m continually grateful for their dedication and support when we come up with crazy ideas at the last possible moments. They’re always game to try something new, and push the boundaries of what a game website can be. Benoit, Benjamin, Scott, Ken… even Felix. =oP


You Guys
This is a new section added to celebrate all things related to our community and their accomplishments! It has been an awesome month for our Star Citizen streamers! Starting the month off, Farasalt and Captain_Richard stepped up their game for one of the funniest April Fools gags I’v seen. It was seemingly just another Friday night on Captain_Richard’s channel.. Everyone sat awaiting for the intro music to stop and the man himself to appear. When the curtains arose, Farasalt appeared, decked out in thick makeup and a Captain_Richard’s shirt. What ensued was over an hour of hilarity as Farasalt NAILED a Captain_Richard impression. All the mannerisms were on point! Definitely check this out. Well done gentlemen.

Deejay Knight is now officially a Twitch Partner! This was a well-deserved promotion that came to no one’s surprise. Deejay continues to rouse his audiences with his upbeat performances and is an absolute pleasure to watch. Huge congratulations!

Capturing our attention with his sweet dance moves and positive vibes, SGT_Gamble has become a household name in the Star Citizen community. Gamble has been rallying entire servers together to participate in exciting and emergent game-play that we just can’t get enough of. Awesome stuff sir!

Lastly, April was one of the toughest months to date when it came to choosing MVP’s. The amount of content flowing in from our community is absolutely astounding! Check out these well deserved winners!

Looking Ahead
That was some month we had. Every month we move closer and closer to realizing the vision and scope of both Star Citizen and Squadron 42. In our four studios around the world and our partner studios in Canada and elsewhere, people work tirelessly to fulfill the promise of this unprecedented project. Whether they’re artists, programmers, designers, engineers, writers, directors, producers, and more, they’re all gamers who want to share this experience with everyone reading these each and every month.

In the months ahead, you’ll see us continue to build on the foundation of persistence Alpha 2.4 provides. As the teams in each studio continue to expand, you’ll see our pace of production continue to pick up as it already has since late 2015. The knowledge and experience we gain with each new ship built, each new character brought to life, each new landing zone realized, and each new game system coming online will inform the next one after that, meaning that not only will the quantity of our output increase, so will the quality continue to improve.

Whether it’s website you visit, the broadcasts that inform you, the game you play, or the platform that supports it, we’re continuing to iterate on every aspect of Star Citizen and Squadron 42’s continuing development, a truly unique experience for everyone involved because you’re here for the ride with us.

And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

We’ll see you in the ‘Verse.

in Übereinstimmung mit dem VFX Style Guide.

Abseits von den "lustigen" Sachen (z.B.: riesige Raumschiffe in die Luft jagen!) haben wir auch Zeit damit verbracht, unsere Pipeline-Dokumentation aufzuräumen. In erster Linie ist dies zum Nutzen der anderen Disziplinen, so dass sie besser sehen können, wie weit die VFX-Künstler von einer bestimmten Aufgabe entfernt sind - unerlässlich, wenn ein kleines Team gleichzeitig an so vielen Aufgaben beteiligt ist.


Grafiken
Neben der Behebung einiger Stabilitätsprobleme hat das Grafikteam in diesem Monat an einer Vielzahl neuer Features für die Künstler gearbeitet, von denen das erste die Verbesserung des Layers ist, den wir für Charaktere, Waffen und Requisiten verwenden. Dieser Shader ermöglicht es uns, das Aussehen eines Objekts als die Kombination von mehreren "Schichten" wie Stoff, Stahl, Kunststoff usw. zu definieren. Die neuen Änderungen erlauben es uns, zu definieren, wie jede dieser Schichten im Laufe der Zeit tragen/erodieren wird, die Gesamtleistung des Shaders zu verbessern und ihn sowohl für kleine Requisiten als auch für sehr große Waffen einzusetzen.

Wir haben auch unsere Arbeit am "Light Linking System" abgeschlossen, mit dem Lichtquellen und glühende Leuchten miteinander verbunden werden können, so dass die Helligkeit der Leuchten die realistische Intensität der Glühbirne genau wiedergibt. Dies ist entscheidend, um den vollen Nutzen aus der neuen HDR Flare & Bloom Technologie zu ziehen, die wir für das nächste Release zu ermöglichen hoffen. Die letzten Änderungen haben dies überarbeitet, so dass es mit dem kommenden Object Container System funktioniert.

Nachdem wir eine großartige Präsentation von der GDC 2016 über die Verbesserung der Leistung der Kachelbeleuchtung gesehen haben, haben wir daran gearbeitet, diese Technik in unsere Pipeline zu integrieren, damit wir auf die Kachelbeleuchtung umsteigen können, im Gegensatz zur aktuellen Lösung für die verzögerte Beleuchtung (sollte möglicherweise schneller sein).

Offiziell wurde mit der Implementierung einer neuen Methode zur Handhabung der Bestellung der großen Anzahl von transparenten Objekten begonnen, die Star Citizen benötigt (z.B. Cockpitglas, Visier, UI und Partikel etc.). Dies beinhaltet auch die Integration transparenter Objekte, die besser mit den Post-Effekten wie Bewegungsunschärfe, Tiefenschärfe und Anti-Aliasing verbunden sind, jedoch erfordert dieser Prozess eine tiefe Motorarbeit, die eine ganze Weile dauern wird, aber Probleme wie das Rendern von Cockpitglas und Schiffsoberfläche in der falschen Reihenfolge beheben sollte, wenn man sie von außerhalb des Cockpits betrachtet.

Endlich haben wir ein neues Profiling-System entwickelt, das die Leistungskosten pro Art-Team aufschlüsselt, um uns zu helfen, die riesige Menge an Inhalten in unserem Spiel zu profilieren und zu optimieren.


Ingenieurwesen
Die große Feature-Entwicklung, an der wir diesen Monat mitgearbeitet haben, ist die Ausdauer, oder im Grunde genommen das Spiel, das sich zwischen den Sitzungen an Dinge erinnert. Das ist eine sehr große Sache, da es die Grundlage ist, auf der so viel vom Spiel aufgebaut wird. Das zugrunde liegende System wurde in den US-Studios implementiert, aber wir haben dann darauf aufgebaut, damit Sie die Ergebnisse ihrer harten Arbeit sehen und genießen können.

Eines der großen Dinge, auf die wir jetzt bestehen, ist das neue AUEC (unsere Alpha-Credits), also haben wir in Crusader begonnen, nach Wegen zu suchen, wie wir den Spieler mit diesen Credits belohnen können, je nachdem, was Sie erreichen. David hat mit den Designern an der Umsetzung eines Teils dieses Gameplays gearbeitet. Wenn Sie jetzt eine Mission erfüllen, werden Sie belohnt. Hast du jemanden mit einem gewünschten Level gefunden? Nimm sie raus und du bekommst ein Kopfgeld. Haben Sie etwas Interessantes auf einer stillgelegten Raumstation gefunden? Ich könnte dir etwas Geld einbringen.

Natürlich implementieren wir Möglichkeiten, dieses neu erworbene Geld auszugeben. Deshalb haben wir die Reparaturstellen so aktualisiert, dass sie nicht mehr kostenlos sind und du einen Betrag bezahlen musst, um dein Schiff zu reparieren. Treibstoff und Munition sind jetzt auch mit Kosten verbunden. Und natürlich wird auch das Einkaufen umgesetzt! Wir haben jetzt sowohl bei Crusader als auch bei ArcCorp Werkstätten, in denen Sie Kleidung und Waffen kaufen können. Auf der Bekleidungsseite hat Jamie an einem neuen Anprobe-Modus gearbeitet, in dem du das Kleidungsstück, an dem du interessiert bist, auswählen kannst und es auf deinem Charakter ansehen kannst, bevor du dich zum Kauf entscheidest, oder mit Waffen, die in der Lage sind, sie aufzuheben und zu inspizieren, bevor du einige Credits ablegst.

Ein weiterer wichtiger Aspekt der Persistenz ist, wie wir jetzt Ihren Hangar und die Verladung Ihrer Schiffe lagern. Anstatt auszuwählen, welche Schiffe sich in deinem Hangar befinden oder welche Flairgegenstände du auf der Website sehen kannst, können wir nun alles im Spiel machen. Dies bringt tatsächlich mehrere neue Technologien zusammen, vom Interaction Point System bis hin zur "inner thought" Oberfläche, an der die UI Jungs hier gearbeitet haben. Sowohl Simon als auch Bone haben diese Benutzeroberfläche zum Laufen gebracht, so dass Sie diese Interaktionspunkte sehen können, gehen Sie zu einem von ihnen, wählen Sie, wie Sie mit ihr interagieren möchten, und je nachdem, was Sie in diesem Fall auswählen, wird ein Menü angezeigt, in dem Sie sehen, welche Elemente an dieser Stelle verwendet werden können. Es ist ein sehr flexibles System, wenn es Ihnen also erlaubt, die gewünschten Schiffe in Ihrem Hangar zu platzieren, um die Auslastung des Schiffes selbst zu ändern.

Ansonsten haben wir wie üblich im Hintergrund an allen laufenden Mechaniken gearbeitet, die für S42 benötigt werden. Nichts zu viel zu aktualisieren, aber Craig macht gute Fortschritte beim neuen Landungssystem und bei der Landung auf einem fahrenden Trägerschiff, Rob hat das Konversationssystem verbessert, indem er mit Unterordnung arbeitete, Romulo hat einige grundlegende Umbauarbeiten an den Waffen durchgeführt und Granaten implementiert, Gordon kommt auch mit Felsvorsprüngen und Voltigieren und Mangeln gut voran.


Qualitätssicherung
Es war ein sehr arbeitsreicher Monat in der QA hier in der Gießerei 42. Wir haben unermüdlich mit dem Dev-Team und Ihnen, der Community, zusammengearbeitet, um 2.3.1 herauszubekommen, in der Hoffnung, einige der bösen Framerate Probleme zu lösen und die Serverstabilität stürzt ab, und während die Arbeit daran noch andauert, hat 2.3.1 einige dringend benötigte Verbesserungen gebracht.

Nachdem wir mit der Arbeit an der großen Version begonnen haben, ist 2.4.0 wahrscheinlich eine der größten Versionen, an denen wir seit der Gründung von Crusader gearbeitet haben. Aber Junge, es ist ein aufregender Patch. Ausdauer. Alles bleibt jetzt bestehen, und beim Testen war es eine Achterbahn der Emotionen, die Haupthürde der QA war die Stabilität. In seiner ersten Iteration machte die Beharrlichkeit das Spiel sehr instabil, mit Versionen, die komplett nicht gebaut werden konnten und viel Zeit damit verbracht, Tests zu frustrieren. Aber wir haben die schwierigen Zeiten überstanden und sind weitergepflügt und die Änderungen am Feindseligkeitssystem, am Missions-System und an den Cry Astro Stations getestet. Wir sind sehr daran interessiert, dies an euch weiterzugeben und euer Feedback zu sammeln.

Aber Ausdauer ist nicht das Einzige, woran wir gearbeitet haben. Bestückte Geschäfte (sowohl in ArcCorp als auch in Port Olisar) & Alpha UEC, ein neues flugfertiges Schiff, ein neues Hangar-taugliches Schiff und ein komplett überarbeitetes Hangarsystem (The Port Modification App). In dieser Testzeit sind ein paar lustige Bugs aufgetaucht, wie z.B. Schiffe, die um den Hangar herum hüpfen, Eldritch Horror Style schwimmende Augäpfel und so viel mehr.

Im Moment arbeiten wir sehr hart daran, alle wichtigen Probleme zu finden und zu beheben, so dass dies auf die PTU übertragen werden kann und ihr Jungs all die fantastischen Änderungen sehen könnt, die vorgenommen wurden.

Wir sehen uns im Vers!


Audio
Der April für Audio war wie immer sehr arbeitsreich! Die S42-Arbeit und das 2.4-Release waren in diesem Monat unsere Schwerpunkte, aber daneben wurde ein großer Teil der Musikproduktion durchgeführt. Aber wir beginnen mit den einzelnen Updates.

Sam Hall war mit der Arbeit am Schiffscomputer sehr beschäftigt und wollte dies überarbeiten, damit wir es im Spiel intelligenter verhalten können. Dies beinhaltete die Synchronisation mit denen im Systemdesign sowie die Verlagerung in das Subsumtionssystem. Außerdem hat er an der Behebung von 2.4 Bugs, der Optimierung eines Audio-Plugins für Dataforge und dem Hinzufügen von Triggern für Luftschleusenübergänge gearbeitet (z.B. wenn der Spieler ohne den erforderlichen Schutzhelm in den Raum tritt).

Neben seiner Arbeit an der Musikproduktion (siehe unten) hat Ross Tregenza an der Musiklogik gearbeitet und hält immer noch die Stellung als Gesamtpunkthalter der Staffel 42.

Luke Hatton hat seine allgemeinen Aufgaben mit einer handlichen Kugel markiert! So weit weg von der Kugel, Luke:

Optimiert das Manövrieren von Audio für die Aurora und korrigiert fehlendes Audio am Primärantrieb für den Aurora LN Mix optimiert den Tutorialhangar, weitere Ambiance-Details jetzt hörbar Fixed broken enter and exit sounds on the Gladiator Now using general health parameter in Wwise for ships, so dass wir jeden Sound basierend auf der Höhe des Schadens, den ein Schiff erlitten hat, ändern können Hinzugefügte entfernte Explosionsklangsvarianten Darren Lambourne hat, abgesehen von seiner Mastering-Mission in München, den Starfarer poliert und an Audio für das Argo MPUV-LKW gearbeitet.

Matteo Cerquone hat auch schussfeste Dinge:

Audio für Devastator Energy Shotgun trockenes Feuer hinzugefügt Zusätzliche Sounds für interaktive Elemente wie Alarmsysteme, Aufzüge und Türen für S42 Old Foley bereinigen Bugfixing Bob Rissolo und Phil Smallwood waren beide tief auf der Dialogseite, bereit für zukünftige Dialog-/P-Cap-Sitzungen und Implementierung/Verarbeitung von Material für die aktuelle Nutzung durch die Designabteilung. Phil hat sich auch mit Aufgaben des Sozialmoduls beschäftigt, insbesondere mit Einkaufsmöglichkeiten und allgemeinen Standorten.

Simon Price beschäftigt sich nach wie vor intensiv mit Dialog-Pipeline-Tools, die sowohl für S42 als auch für das Live-Release benötigt werden.

Graham Phillipson - er war auch auf 2.4 Bugs etc., aber sonst:

Verfeinerungen des automatischen Trittschaltgenerierungscodes Hinzufügen von listenerbasierten RTPCs zu Area Shapes LUA -> c++ Code-Konvertierung Tech Schuldenentfernung, Verbesserung der Wartbarkeit Fehler behoben, bei dem EVA-Audio nicht richtig aktualisiert wurde Stefan Rutherford hat einige große Aspekte der Wwise Projektstruktur neu organisiert, um die Mix-Pipeline zu untermauern, die derzeit von Lee Banyard (mir), Jason Cobb, Stefan Rutherford und Graham Philipson gemeinsam entwickelt wird - dies wird in den linearen Stil von S42 einfließen, der einen filmischeren" Mix-Workflow sowie den systematischeren Mix-Workflow erfordert, den das persistente Universum erfordert. Ansonsten hat er an neuen Inhalten für unser Auto-Fußschrittsystem gearbeitet, die Waffen umstrukturiert und neu gestaltet. Er leitete auch eine weitere Gun Recording Session, die Anfang April im Copehill Down mit der Firma Audiobeast" (alias Steve Whetman) stattfand. Hoffentlich werden einige Fotos für die Fahrt mit diesem Monatsbericht dabei sein, wenn nicht, werde ich einige im Audio-Forum'Ask A Dev' posten, hoffentlich werden wir uns auch mit einigen Videos beschäftigen.

Jason Cobb hat, wie immer, technische Unterstützung in verschiedenen Aspekten der Audio-Build-Pipeline geleistet und richtet Mix-Zustände/Snapshots im gesamten Spiel als Teil der breiteren Mix-Grundlagenarbeit ein.

Wie bereits erwähnt, haben wir diesen Monat viel Arbeit in der Musikproduktion geleistet. Anfang des Monats hatten wir eine weitere Sitzung in Bratislava mit dem Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, um viele Themen und Begleitstücke für Star Citizen zu verbessern. Teilweise ist dies Material für die Special Edition Soundtrack CD, aber dieses Material wird auch seinen Weg ins Spiel finden, um das bereits Vorhandene zu verbessern.

Dann, mit diesem Material in der Tasche, gingen Pedro Macedo Camacho, Ross Tregenza und ich runter in die Real World Studios und trafen uns mit unserem Mix Engineer Peter Fuchs und Assistant Engineer Patrick Phillips. Peter ist nicht nur ein talentierter und erfahrener Toningenieur für unsere Orchestersitzungen, sondern verfügt auch über einen umfangreichen Lebenslauf mit Mischungen von Orchesterpartituren für Film und Spiele - seinen Lebenslauf können Sie bei Interesse auf der IMDB einsehen: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0297273/

Wir verbrachten fünf solide Tage im Studio, um das ziemlich schöne Quellmaterial zu formen und in fertige Tracks zu formen. Wenn Sie sich für die Anlage interessieren, finden Sie Bilder davon unter http://realworldstudios.com/recording-studios/the-big-room/ - wir waren in dem, wie es treffend heißt, "The Big Room" (Hinweis - es ist groß). Während es dort ein großzügiges Mischpult gibt, wurde ein Großteil der Arbeit von Peter'in the box' erledigt - das heißt, innerhalb von Pro Tools selbst, anstatt alles über die SSL-Konsole zu leiten. Wenn Sie mit vielen zuvor aufgenommenen Tracks arbeiten, ist dies oft ein schnellerer Prozess, da die Einrichtung zwischen einem Musikstück und dem nächsten dauert, um alles dem Schreibtisch zuzuweisen, und sein Workflow ist besser geeignet, auf diese Weise zu arbeiten. Aber Mischpulte sehen natürlich beeindruckend aus! ;)

Nachdem wir mit dem Mischprozess fertig waren, wurde dieses Material bei CS Mastering - einem Mastering-Studio in München unter der Leitung von Christoph Stickel - einen Schritt weiter gebracht. (Wenn Sie neugierig sind, können Sie einige Bilder unter http://www.csmastering.de/ sehen) Darren Lambourne war in Anwesenheit von Christoph und Peter Fuchs, und der Prozess der Zusammenstellung eines fertigen CD-Masters wurde hier durchgeführt. Dabei wird nur mit den Stereospuren gearbeitet und nicht mit Pro Tools-Sessions, sondern noch weiter verfeinert, um ein zusammenhängenderes "Ganzes" zu bilden, mit einer Mischung aus sehr hochwertigen analogen und digitalen Audioverarbeitungsgeräten zur Hand.

All dies war ein Workflow, den wir schon seit einiger Zeit fixieren wollten, und ich muss mich bei allen dafür bedanken, dass sie es möglich gemacht haben, wir sind von der Performance zu einem endgültigen Master in wirklich kurzer Zeit übergegangen und ich hoffe, dass alle das Ergebnis genießen werden, ob im Spiel oder auf der Soundtrack-CD selbst. Es ist wunderbar zu hören, wie Pedros Arbeit auf dieses Niveau des Schallglanzes gebracht wurde, ich denke, wir alle haben viel aus der Erfahrung gelernt und es wird helfen, den Prozess der Musikproduktion sowohl bei Star Citizen als auch bei Staffel 42 zu verfeinern.

Und ich denke, das war's für diesen Monat von CIG Audio. Wie immer, danke fürs Zuhören!

Animation
Fortsetzung mit Railgun-Animationssets Fixierung von Cover-Bugs Turn-Animationen für 180 Grad und 360 Grad Erprobung und Feedback zu Tools Weitere Arbeiten zum Starten / Stoppen / Schrittfahren Neuer FPS-Waffen-Look Dev und Feedback mit dem Art-Team Rekrutierung - neuer Animator ab nächstem Monat
Requisiten
Die Schiffskomponenten stehen auch in diesem Monat im Mittelpunkt des Requisiteurs, wir verpacken den kompletten Satz kleiner Kühler und wir haben mit der Arbeit an Kraftwerken und Quantenantrieben begonnen.

Wir haben die neue Persistenz-Funktion unterstützt, indem wir den Designern eine Hand voller Ressourcen zur Verfügung gestellt haben, um ihre neuen Missionsmechaniken zu unterstützen. Dieser erste Haufen war ein schneller Durchgang, um etwas hineinzubekommen, um das Gameplay zu beweisen, und wird hoffentlich nur der Anfang sein, den wir in Zukunft hinzufügen können.

Eine weitere spannende Nachricht ist, dass wir nun unsere zusätzlichen technischen Anforderungen in das Schichtmischmaterial aufgenommen haben und es nun flächendeckend für die Requisitenproduktion nutzen können. Wir warteten auf ein paar Optimierungen und Anpassungen an der Funktionsweise des Shaders, die nun umgesetzt wurden. Dies ist ein großer Schritt nach vorne für uns, da es uns erlaubt, fast die Hälfte der Anzahl der Draw Calls auf jeder Requisite zu machen, also sollte es wirklich helfen, unsere Pops schön und billig in Bezug auf die Performance zu machen, und wir planen, es im Zorn in den nächsten Monaten zu nutzen.

Schließlich haben wir die Einkaufs- und Bekleidungsfunktion mit einem neuen automatischen Schließfachsystem unterstützt, so dass ein schnelles und einfaches Wechseln der Kleidung möglich ist, und es wurde einiges an Arbeit geleistet, indem auf unserem Workflow nach hängenden und gefalteten Varianten aller Kleidungsstücke gesucht wurde, die Sie kaufen können.

Nächsten Monat, mehr Schiffskomponenten und zurück zur Staffel 42 Requisiten.


Raumschiffe
Die Innenproduktion des Idris neigt sich dem Ende zu, was es dem Team ermöglicht hat, mit der Look-Entwicklung und dem Prototyping des abgestürzten / beschädigten Assets zu beginnen und einen echten Key Beat im Story Arc der Staffel 42 zu etablieren. Ausgehend von dieser Forschung sollte das Team dann in der Lage sein, ein geerdetes Aussehen und Gefühl für beschädigte Cap-Schiffe einschließlich der Javelin und Bengalen zu entwickeln.

Die Produktion auf der Außenseite des Speerwurfes hat sich weiterentwickelt und Verfahren und Techniken ausgetauscht, die während der Entwicklung des Idris gefunden wurden, was auch in die bengalische Produktion eingeflossen ist, wobei alle Schiffe nun eine sehr spezifische Staffel 42 Leber teilen.


Design
Wir hatten einen sehr arbeitsreichen April in der britischen Designabteilung.

Erstens, wir sind wieder in Ealing Shooting Pickup Szenen bei Imaginarium, das hat viele Designer beschäftigt, was die Fertigstellung der Spielräume und die Stabilitätsbehebung betrifft. Es ist immer sehr lohnend für die Jungs, die hart an den Squadron 42 Levels arbeiten, das Niveau des Polierens zu sehen, das die Leistungen des Schauspielers dem Spielerlebnis verleihen.

Das Live Release Team war diesen Monat sehr beschäftigt mit der Einführung unserer ersten Phase der Ausdauer. Kreuzritter, die die Wirtschaft expandieren lassen, umfassen jetzt neue Missionen und Boni sowie neue Fangwaffen. Cry-Astro berechnen jetzt für ihre Dienste und die Spieler werden nun feststellen, dass das Wiederbeleben mit Kosten verbunden ist. Neben den zahlreichen Erweiterungen des Spielraums haben wir mit den Arbeiten an der demnächst erscheinenden Karte des Sonnensystems begonnen. Alles in allem ein sehr interessanter und produktiver Monat für das Live Release Team, den Sie bald erleben und an uns weitergeben werden.

Das technische Team hat die verschiedenen Schiffe, die derzeit zur Freigabe anstehen, weiter aufgebaut, und der vollständige Komponentenreflektor, der einen solchen Unterschied in der Funktionalität und Vielseitigkeit dieser Schiffe machen wird, steht kurz vor der Fertigstellung. Es ist schön, endlich ein Upgrade-System zu sehen, das bald mit dem Rollout in die Live-Builds beginnt.

Natürlich wird das Komponentensystem einen großen Einfluss auf das neue Balancing Team haben, und das wird jetzt immer wichtiger, so dass wir, wenn es auftaucht, in der bestmöglichen Form sein können, um etwas zu veröffentlichen, das funktioniert.

Insgesamt war es ein weiterer guter Monat für die Entwicklung von Squadron 42 und den weiteren Aufbau des persistenten Universums.

Deutsche Präzision

Der April war für uns in Frankfurt ein solider Produktionsmonat, sowohl was den Fortschritt als auch was die Planung betrifft. Wir hatten Chris für ein paar Tage ins Studio gebracht, um persönliche Treffen mit verschiedenen Abteilungen zu vereinbaren. Seit dem letzten Update haben wir 5 neue Mitarbeiter im Büro, die in mehreren Bereichen arbeiten, wobei jede Disziplin anfängt, ein wenig mehr abzurunden. Wir alle waren beschäftigt, wie wir jeden Monat sagen, aber jeden Tag treibt das Team die Dinge ständig voran. Das Tech-Update für diesen Monat wird kürzer als normal ausfallen, da ein Großteil des Motorenteams an der Verfahrenstechnik arbeitet, und wir würden es vorziehen, einige der Details vorerst intern zu behalten und euch den vollständigen Überblick zu geben, wenn die Zeit kommt, dass ihr es selbst erlebt. Diesen Monat haben wir auch ein paar Gruppen durch das Büro kommen lassen und mit dem Team rumhängen, wie ich immer sage, die Unterstützung von euch Jungs ist sehr willkommen und hilft uns täglich weiter.


Waffen
Das Waffenkunstteam hat die Texturierung von zwei neuen Schiffswaffen abgeschlossen und arbeitet derzeit an den verschiedenen LOD's (Level of Details) und deren Integration in das Spiel. Die Apokalypse Arms Scourge Railgun wurde mit etwas mehr Glanz versehen und befindet sich in der Endphase der Kunstproduktion und wird parallel animiert. Wir haben auch einen Prototyp für eine neue FPS-Waffe blockiert und haben noch einen Haufen mehr in der Konzeptphase. Wir werden hoffentlich einige Bilder haben, die wir nächsten Monat von der neuen Arbeit teilen werden.


Motor
Das Kernteam der Engine konzentrierte sich auf verschiedene Bereiche des Codes, die verbessert werden sollten. Zuerst haben wir unsere Unterstützung fortgesetzt, um die Anzahl der renderbaren Objekte zu erhöhen. Um massive Zählungen von 50.000 und mehr zu unterstützen (denken Sie an Asteroiden oder Planetenvegetation/Felsen), haben wir einen sehr schnellen Instanzen-Renderingpfad implementiert. Dies ermöglicht es uns, die gesamte Landschaft bevölkerungsreicher und interessanter zu gestalten, indem wir mehr Objekte zeigen, als wir bisher konnten. Während der Implementierung dieses Rendering-Pfades haben wir uns auch einige Zeit genommen, um Teile der Rendering-Pipeline zu bereinigen und einige Bereiche zu vereinheitlichen, wo wir konnten.

Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt war der JobManager, den wir im Vormonat verbessert haben, um flexibler zu sein; die Mitarbeiter können neu an verschiedenen Chargen arbeiten, festlegen, welche Chargen Prioritäten haben und so weiter. Da das meiste davon aus Performance-Gründen als lock-less Code geschrieben wurde, haben wir einige Fehler übersehen. Und da es sich um Low-Level-Multithreading-Code handelte, hatten wir nun den Spaß herauszufinden, warum bestimmte Operationen über 1 Million Mal erfolgreich waren, um plötzlich auszufallen. Gute Nachrichten sind, dass wir zuversichtlich sind, dass wir diese Probleme gelöst haben (wir haben es geschafft, 12 Instanzen des Editors parallel laufen zu lassen, ohne Threading-Probleme, die alle Arten von ungewöhnlichen Thread-Timings auslösen sollten).

Der dritte Bereich, den wir untersucht haben, war die weitere Verbesserung des Streaming-Codes. Streaming kann sehr rechenintensiv sein, da der Code alle Objekte um den Player herum berühren muss, nicht nur die vollständig sichtbaren Objekte. Da unser Spiel einen sehr großen Betrachtungsabstand verwendet, führte dies zu einer sehr großen Anzahl von Objekten, die ein Update benötigen. Wir könnten diese Zahl massiv reduzieren, indem wir eine Breitphasen-Selektion des Objektabstandes implementieren. Im ZoneSystem gruppieren wir bereits Objekte nach räumlichen Eigenschaften, jetzt kombinieren wir die maximale Sichtweite aller Objekte in solchen Gruppen. Wenn die gesamte Gruppe weiter entfernt ist als diese kombinierte Distanz, können wir die gesamte Gruppe sofort ignorieren.

Schließlich verbrachten wir ein wenig Zeit mit unserer vsync-Implementierung, da wir feststellten, dass wir keine stabilen 60 fps bekommen konnten, selbst wenn wir über 70 fps hatten, wenn vsync deaktiviert war. Es stellte sich heraus, dass es sich um ein Problem bei der Thread-Synchronisation handelte, das nun behoben ist. Während dieser Untersuchung mussten wir auch die Details darüber untersuchen, wie Windows-Wiedergabe unter Windows 7 und höher funktioniert. Kurz gesagt, es ist komplex :) Für unsere vsync-Fixes bedeutet dies leider, dass wir nur im Vollbildmodus für die korrekte Synchronisierung von vsync sorgen können. Aus diesem Grund haben wir einige experimentelle Vsync-Modi hinzugefügt.

Verwenden Sie den Windows Composite Manager für vsync (r_Vsync 2). Dieser Modus hat einen gewissen Leistungsaufwand. Implementieren Sie unser eigenes Vsyncing (r_Vsync 3). Funktioniert, kann aber zu einigen Rissen führen, da wir nicht kontrollieren können, wann Fenster die Daten auf dem Bildschirm zeichnen. Deaktivieren Sie den Composite Manager (r_Vsync 4). Funktioniert nur unter Windows 7 (Es ist nicht mehr möglich, vsync bei neueren Windows-Versionen zu deaktivieren). Natürlich sind Modus 0 (kein Vsync) und Modus 1 (normaler Vsync) noch im Spiel und sollten die verwendeten sein. Aber es könnte sich lohnen, die anderen Modi für die Mutigen auszuprobieren.


System erstellen
Kurzes und einfaches Update von unserem Senior Build Engineer.

Trybuild Fehlerbehebung und Ausgleich für Game-Dev und 2.4. CopyBuild-Automatisierung. Tools für VFX-Künstler. Funktionsprüfung für Game-Device (WIP).
Kinematiken
In diesem Monat hat das Filmteam die Arbeit an allen Fronten weiter vorangetrieben, Szenen ausgeblendet, mit Ingenieuren an Workflows und Tools gearbeitet und das Gesamtbild von Körper- und Gesichtsanimationen verbessert. Auch die Vorbereitung auf ein PCap (Performance Capture) Shooting ab Anfang Mai hat viel Zeit in Anspruch genommen. Ein paar Mitglieder des Teams gingen für ein paar Tage ins britische Büro, um Skripte durchzugehen und das Blockieren neuer Szenen mit den Autoren und Level Designern zu klären.


Qualitätssicherung
Kunsttests waren im April das Hauptthema der CIG-DE QA. Chris Speak und Melissa Estrada waren damit beschäftigt, die Artist Testpipeline zu erweitern, um sicherzustellen, dass die Editor-Tools in einwandfreiem Zustand sind, mit dem Hinzufügen neuer Checklisten und einer Art-spezifischen Checkliste, die den spezifischen Bedürfnissen eines Künstlers gerecht wird. QA hat die Vorteile dieser fachspezifischen Gesundheitstests erkannt und wird darauf hinarbeiten, zusätzliche Checklisten für jede Disziplin zu erstellen. QA wird auch bei der Überarbeitung unseres hauseigenen Tools zur Erfassung von Builds helfen, um es Entwicklern zu erleichtern, Informationen darüber zu erhalten, ob ein Build für die Entwicklung verwendbar ist oder nicht. Chris hat auch mit Carsten Wenzel bei der Erstellung von Zeitdemos und Francesco Di Mizio bei FeatureTests zusammengearbeitet, so dass wir client-seitige Automatisierungstests für aktuelle und zukünftige Features und In-Game-Systeme starten können. Melissa wurde tief im Code mit Ivo Herzeg vergraben, um einem Absturzproblem auf den Grund zu gehen, das QA und Entwicklung daran hinderte, in das Tutorial zum Testen und Debuggen einzutreten. Der Absturz ereignete sich, als der Spieler in das Level geladen wurde, und es stellte sich heraus, dass die Ursache darin bestand, dass die Gliedmaßen des Charakters im Wesentlichen zu astronomischen Werten explodierten! Sie verbrachte auch Zeit damit, potenzielle Vertical Sync-Fixes von Christopher Bolte zu testen, die in zukünftigen Versionen erhebliche Verbesserungen im gesamten Gameplay bringen sollten. Es war ein sehr arbeitsreicher Monat für die CIG-DE QA, aber wir beginnen bereits damit, die volle Kraft für Mai und die damit verbundenen Herausforderungen vorzubereiten.


KI: Künstliche Intelligenz
In diesem Monat hat sich das KI-Team hauptsächlich darauf konzentriert, Fortschritte bei der Entwicklung von Subsumption zu erzielen.

Zunächst einmal haben wir Fortschritte bei der Umsetzung der Interactors for AI erzielt. Derzeit kann jeder Interakteur vom Designteam so eingerichtet werden, dass er die erforderlichen Informationen enthält, die ein NSC für die Interaktion mit ihm benötigt: Position der Ausrichtung, um die Interaktion zu starten, die Animation, die der NSC abspielen muss, und die Aktion, die er ausführen muss. Der NSC wird dann nach Objekten in der Welt suchen, die einem bestimmten Zweck dienen, und er kann mit ihnen interagieren und Aktionen an ihnen durchführen.

Die Subsumtion verwendet die folgende Hierarchie für die Erstellung von Verhaltensweisen:

Aktivitäten > Unteraktivitäten > Aufgaben In diesem Monat haben wir auch viele neue Aufgaben eingeführt (die grundlegenden Bausteine, die Designer verwenden werden, um Verhaltensweisen zu erstellen) und wir haben die grundlegenden Funktionalitäten für das Debuggen auf dem Bildschirm mit nützlichen Informationen über das System weitergegeben. Wir haben auch die grundlegenden Informationen über die Aktionsflächen weitergegeben, das sind die Elemente in der Welt, die es Designern ermöglichen, Bereiche mit spezifischen Informationen zu markieren: Ein mehrköpfiges Raumschiff zum Beispiel könnte einen Maschinenraum, einen Hangar, einen Kontrollraum und so weiter haben. Aktionsbereiche ermöglichen es den NSCs, über die Umgebung nachzudenken, um ihre Aufgaben zu erfüllen.

Wir haben auch einige Zeit damit verbracht, die Bewegungsgeschwindigkeiten zwischen NSCs und Spielern zu vereinheitlichen, so dass wir nun die volle Kontrolle über 5 verschiedene Pseudogeschwindigkeiten auf der KI-Seite haben: Langsam gehen, schnell gehen, langsam laufen, langsam laufen, schnell laufen und sprinten.

Wir haben auch das Spawning-System überarbeitet, damit die Designer ein zuverlässigeres und stabileres System haben, um die Welt zu bevölkern. Der neue KI Spawning Manager wird das System sein, das sowohl von der skriptgesteuerten Logik als auch vom Missionssystem verwendet wird, um das Universum zu bevölkern. Derzeit ist das Hauptziel des neuen Systems, die Laichmechanik zu vereinfachen und robuster zu machen, z.B. haben wir eine spezielle Validierung eingeführt, um den Raum zu analysieren, der von dem Schiff eingenommen wird, das wir laichen wollen.

Last but not least haben wir, wie wir es regelmäßig tun, einige Zeit der Fehlerbehebung und Stabilitätsverbesserung gewidmet, es ist erwähnenswert, dass wir mehrere Abstürze behoben haben und wir die Hauptursache für den 5-Sekunden-Stall, der auf einigen i5-Kernmaschinen stattfand, beseitigt haben.


VFX
In den letzten Monaten hat das Frankfurter VFX-Team an einer neuen Technologie für unsere Partikel gearbeitet. Was uns dies ermöglicht, ist, den optischen Bewegungsfluss zwischen den Frames in unseren animierten Texturen aufzuzeichnen und dann ein Frame in das nächste zu verzerren oder zu morphen, anstatt ein einfaches Überblenden zwischen den Frames durchzuführen. Dies glättet nicht nur die Animation der Texturen drastisch, sondern hat auch den zusätzlichen Vorteil, dass wir die Anzahl der Einzelbilder in der Animation reduzieren können, wodurch die Auflösung jedes einzelnen Bildes erhöht wird, ohne die allgemeine Texturauflösung zu erhöhen.

Wir haben auch daran gearbeitet, die Effekte für den High-Tech-Stil zu konkretisieren. Ein Bildbeispiel finden Sie in unserem DE-Header-Bild.


Technische Kunst
Wir helfen Animationsprogrammierern für Forschung und Entwicklung bei der itemport-Animation, die uns helfen wird, jede Requisite, Waffe oder deren Anhänge einfach auszuwählen und zu tauschen. Wir unterstützen und machen Fortschritte mit zahlreichen Waffen des Waffenteams. Wir haben auch unsere DCC-Pipeline mit Szenemanager weiterentwickelt, die Künstlern hilft, eine komplette Animationsszene in Maya einfach zusammenzustellen.


Design
Die Leveldesigner haben sich darauf konzentriert, durch das Layout der Hurston Landezone sowie der im letzten Monat erwähnten gesetzlosen Basis zu iterieren. Hurston sieht einige Überarbeitungen seines Layouts, um seine Größe zu verbessern, da wir immer noch bewährte Praktiken für die Kombination der Größe von Schiffen und Hangars, von grandiosen Ausblicken und Gebäuden mit der Größe von funktionalen (und ziemlich realistischen) spielbaren Räumen herausfinden. Das Beste aus beiden Welten herauszuholen ist eine ständige Herausforderung, die wir uns immer wieder stellen, was bedeutet, dass das Entwerfen dieser ersten paar Standorte unterschiedlicher Art und Größe natürlich viel länger dauert, während wir erfahren, welche Level-Designregeln am besten für PU-Standorte gelten. Die gesetzlose Basis gerät bald in eine "Konzeptphase", in der das Sortiment der unstrukturierten Bände, aus denen sie bisher besteht, von Konzeptkünstlern übermalt wird, um das Kunstteam bei der Erstellung und Verschönerung zu unterstützen.

Wir legen auch den Grundstein für die nächste Reihe von Standorten, die gebaut werden müssen, wenn beide nicht mehr in unseren Händen sind: herauszufinden, was diese neuen Standorte besonders macht, und wie man es den Levels, der Technologie und den Spielmechaniken ermöglicht, sich an den Händen zu halten, um das Spiel so schnell und effizient wie möglich voranzubringen. Das beinhaltet die Abstimmung mit verschiedenen Abteilungen, um in kritische Designs wie Spawning, Parken, Shopping/Trading, etc. zu graben, um zu sehen, welche Features kurzfristig auftauchen und wie man sie am besten durch die von uns gebauten Standorte präsentiert (anstatt nur zusätzliche Orte zu besuchen.)

Schließlich befinden wir uns noch im Rekrutierungsprozess, um unsere Reihen mit mehr Leveldesignern zu füllen, um uns bei der Bewältigung dieser Aufgaben zu unterstützen und die Grundlage unserer Leveldesign-Philosophie für die PU zu entwickeln.

Auf der Seite des Systemdesigns haben wir weiterhin an unserer KI gearbeitet, da wir sie von Modular Behavior Trees auf die volle Nutzung von Subsumption für im Kampf und außerhalb des Kampfverhaltens umstellen. Schließlich werden wir am Ende alle unsere KI in einem einzigen, einheitlichen Tool aufbauen.
Wir setzen auch die Implementierung von Inner Thought und deren Integration in andere Systeme wie die Useables, Interactors und Looting fort. Dieses System wird uns helfen, eine einheitliche Oberfläche für die Interaktion mit Objekten zu erhalten, die mehr als einen einfachen Anwendungsfall haben, Dialogentscheidungen zu treffen und sogar deinen Flügelmannsbefehlen in der Hitze des Gefechts zu geben.

Auch an den Energieverteilungs- und Reputationssystemen wird weiter gearbeitet, da diese überholt wurden und in Kürze in die Produktion gehen werden. Ein weiteres System, das in Not war und eine große Überarbeitung erhält, ist der FPS Anzug wegen der Änderungen an der FPS-Verteidigung, und dieses wird noch für den nächsten Monat laufen.

Mehr auf der Produktionsseite des Designs waren wir damit beschäftigt, die Ziele für die Zeit von Mai bis Juli zu setzen, die Systeme zu zerlegen und für alle Prioritäten in Bezug auf jede Karriere zu setzen. Dadurch haben wir einen besseren Überblick darüber, was eigentlich entscheidend ist, um diese Karrieren so schnell wie möglich auf den Live-Servern zum Laufen zu bringen.

Auf unser bestes Verhalten

Bei BHVR kreieren wir viel Kunst für Star Citizen und stellen sicher, dass die Qualität jedes grafischen Elements ein bisher unerreichtes Qualitätsniveau erreicht.


Ingenieurwesen
Dieser Monat war ein langer Sprint, um 2.4 Features aus der Tür und in die Hände von QA-Testern, PTU-Anwendern und schließlich Ihnen, unseren lieben Spielern, zu bekommen.

Ein Großteil davon entfiel auf Einkaufsfunktionen: viel Arbeit an AR und mobiGlas, aber vor allem auf die korrekte Replikation von vernetzten Transaktionen und Shopaktionen.

Viele Leckereien, die wir alle freuen, wenn du es versuchst.

Wir haben die Cry-Astro-Dienste überarbeitet, um sicherzustellen, dass der neue Serviceanforderungsablauf bei Mehrbesatzungsschiffen gut funktioniert. Das war ein großer Gewinn, jetzt kann jedes Mitglied Ihrer Crew mit seinem mobiGlas individuelle Dienstleistungen anfordern und gleichzeitig verhindern, dass verschiedene Personen für denselben Service bezahlen (vielleicht im schattigeren Servicebereich, aber NICHT bei Cry-Astro, der Reparatur-, Auffüll- und Betankungslösung des Empires!). Außerdem bezahlen Sie nur für Dienstleistungen, wenn sie ausgeführt werden, also wenn Sie erschossen werden oder in Eile gehen müssen, brauchen Sie keine Angst zu haben, nicht auf den Wert Ihres Geldes zu kommen.


Design
Diesen Monat war das Bhvr-Designteam sehr beschäftigt mit dem Einkaufen und den Funktionen der nächsten Version. Wir haben die Einrichtung von Geschäften fortgesetzt, sowohl in der Area 18 als auch in Port Olisar. Es ist lustig, wie es arbeitsintensiver und komplizierter ist, als es nur nach außen hin aussieht. Die Jungs haben einen tollen Job gemacht, damit dies sauber und effizient funktioniert.

Wir haben auch am Revel und York Hangar gearbeitet, um die neuen Fähigkeiten des Hafenmodifikationssystems zu unterstützen. Wir haben auch alle Flairartikel und Hangardekorationen aktualisiert, um dieses neue System zu unterstützen. Ich freue mich darauf, zu sehen, was die Spieler denken.

Nächsten Monat sollte der Bau einer neuen Umgebung und viel Leveldesign für das Team stattfinden. Wir sind auch bestrebt, die Iteration des Einkaufssystems und die Erweiterung der Funktionen fortzusetzen.


Kunst
Auf der Kunstseite hatten wir viel Spaß daran, Port Olisar zu erweitern, was Sie sehr bald erleben werden. Hauptsächlich Arbeiten im Zusammenhang mit Geschäften, zusätzlicher Kleidung und dem Hinzufügen eines größeren Landeplatzes.

Wir haben auch neue Bereiche eröffnet, um sie für spätere Releases fit zu machen.

Darüber hinaus unterstützten wir die Einkaufsmechaniker mit individuellen Requisiten, um die in den Geschäften verkauften Artikel besser zu präsentieren.

Auf Levski haben wir unsere Optimierungen an allen Fronten, Maschen, Texturen, Materialien und Beleuchtung fortgesetzt, aber wir stehen kurz vor dem Abschluss der Optimierungen.

Schließlich haben wir an neuen Requisiten gearbeitet und beenden das Flairobjekt des nächsten Monats.

Bewölkt mit Aussicht auf eine Plattform

Grüße aus dem bewölkten Montreal! Hier ist, was wir im letzten Monat gemacht haben.


Schiffsstatistiken
Das Design für die neue Schiffsreferenzmatrix ist abgeschlossen, und wir haben mit der Entwicklung bereits begonnen. Diese neue Matrix wird es den Nutzern ermöglichen, den gesamten expandierenden Schiffskatalog von Star Citizen leichter einzusehen und mehrere Statistiken zu vergleichen. Wir haben auch Designs für eine mobile Version, die intern überprüft werden.


Multi-Faktor-Authentifizierung (MFA)
Unsere Entwicklung der Multi-Faktor-Authentifizierung geht weiter, und wir fügen eine mobile Authenticator-App hinzu. Im Rahmen eines dreigliedrigen Angriffs werden wir auch den Spielstarter um MFA erweitern.


Kommunikationsplattform
Wir haben der CIG einen groben Prototyp unserer neuen Kommunikationsplattform vorgestellt, und die Bewertungen waren positiv. Wir arbeiten derzeit an dem Chat-Modul, und dann werden wir mit der Entwicklung des Forenmoduls beginnen. Wir sind noch ein paar Monate von einem Beta-Start entfernt, aber wir sind zuversichtlich, dass Sie es lieben werden.


Schiff passiert
April war ein sehr aufregender Monat für Schiffe. Es begann mit einem Witz der Star Citizen April Fools, in Form des Big Benny inspirierten Reliant und Ihre Reaktion auf dieses alberne Lieferfahrzeug war überwältigend, um es vorsichtig auszudrücken! Später im Monat gab es eine Freifliege für alle, die Star Citizen ausprobieren wollten. Dies wurde auch von einem Tax Day Sale begleitet, bei dem die Super Hornet, der Gladiator und der Retaliator Bomber für eine Woche zum Verkauf angeboten wurden. Schließlich, um den Monat abzuschließen, gab es ein Konzept für den Verkauf des Prospektors, eines spezialisierten Minenschiffes. Dieser Verkauf beinhaltete eine Shubin Rekrutierungsseite, auf der die Bürger ermutigt wurden, sich bei dem Unternehmen zu bewerben. Die besten 5 Einsendungen werden mit einem Orion belohnt!


Umsatz
Es gab auch ein paar Merchandising-Verkäufe in diesem Monat: Sie enthielten eine Trackjacke, die mit dem Star Citizen Kartendeck zu einem reduzierten Preis gebündelt war; es gab auch einige neue Anvil Aerospace Mauspads, die Anfang dieses Monats im Angebot waren. Und schließlich, um den April abzurunden, wurde ein neuer Satz von Stoffaufnähern, die einige der Hersteller des Star Citizen Universums repräsentieren, zum Verkauf freigegeben.

Allein zu Hause

Ach du meine Güte. Wir sind am Ende. Ben und Ali sind diese Woche nicht in der Stadt, also kann ich schreiben, was ich will, und niemand kann mich aufhalten. Nun, Chris muss das noch lesen und genehmigen. Er kann mich definitiv aufhalten.....

Wie auch immer, es war ein verdammt langer Monat. Viele Höhen und Tiefen und Drehungen und Wendungen, aber egal, was jeden Monat passiert, es scheint immer zu schnell vorbei zu gehen. Das passiert, wenn man mit dieser Community zusammenarbeitet: Man lässt die Zeit vergehen. Im April 2015 habe ich als Ihr Community-Manager "offiziell" angefangen, und das letzte Jahr war eines für die Bücher. Ich hoffe, dass dir die Änderungen und Verbesserungen unserer Community-Produktion im letzten Jahr gefallen haben. Es war wirklich eine Teamleistung, wobei jedes gegebene Unterfangen eine absurde Idee von Ben ist, den wir verwirklichen, oder eine ebenso absurde Idee von mir, mit der Ben klug genug ist, um mich davonkommen zu lassen, und einer der beiden, die ohne die Unterstützung von Alexis, Thomas, Justin, Toast und vor allem Sandi unmöglich zu schaffen sind.

Lassen Sie uns damit einen Blick auf unsere Produktion in diesem Monat werfen.


Aprilscherze!
WIR HABEN DICH!

WIR HABEN DICH SO GUT ERWISCHT!

Es ist Zeit für eine vollständige Offenlegung: Am 29. März hatten wir nichts. Nada. Nichts. Wir waren bereit, das Handtuch am Aprilscherz in diesem Jahr zu holen. Einfach zu beschäftigt, und wir wollen nie etwas tun, das die Nadel nicht für uns bewegt, weißt du? Dann gegen 15 Uhr am Nachmittag hatte ich eine schreckliche Idee, von der ich wusste, dass sie zu spät für uns gekommen war, um etwas damit zu machen, also ging ich in Bens Büro und wollte, dass er mir das ausreden würde.

"Hey Ben, weißt du, wie jeder immer nach diesen professionellen Tieftauchgängen fragt?"

"Sprich mit Tony Zurovec."

"Nein, nein, nein... Ich hatte eine schreckliche Idee, die du mir ausreden sollst. Lassen Sie uns einen gefälschten Berufspost über die Lieferung von Lebensmitteln machen. Wir können die Big Bennys-Assets, die Jeremiah und Elwin und Gaige in ihrer Freizeit für das andere Ding zusammengetragen haben, nutzen und sie hier einsetzen."

Hier... hier sollte er mir den Blick geben, den ich manchmal bekomme. Der Blick, der sagt: "Jede Entscheidung, die mit dem Prozess der Einstellung von Ihnen verbunden ist, war ein Fehler."

Es ist derselbe Look, den ich von Chris bekomme, wenn ich ihm zeige, dass ich den Jar Jar Tongue Sucker von 1999 auf meinem Schreibtisch habe.

Aber er sah mich nicht so an. Er sagte die Worte, die oft bedeuten, dass ich die nächsten drei Tage nicht schlafen werde: "Lass es uns tun!"

Und damit haben wir Jeremiah Lee, Gaige Hallman und Elwin Bachillier versammelt, um die "lustigen Nebenprojekte" fertigzustellen, mit denen sie in ihrer Freizeit herumgealbert hatten, während Ben die Kopie schrieb und unsere Freunde von Turbulent eine neue Technologie für die Website kodierten, die es uns ermöglichen würde, das Öffnen und Lesen eines Menüs zu simulieren (dieselbe Technologie, die wir später im selben Monat für den Starfarer-Verkauf wieder verwenden würden).

Und nach den späten Nächten mit Gaige, der unsere Delivery Dancer animierte, der schnellen Arbeit von Elwin, um den Relianten zu häuten, und Jeremiah, der die Variante Bennys emotes herausbrachte, hatten wir die Zutaten, um die Nadel zu "bewegen".

Und so macht man eine schreckliche Idee in nur 3 Tagen Realität.


Sendungen
Normalerweise gehe ich gerne durch und bespreche die Videos, die wir in sequentieller Reihenfolge veröffentlichen, wobei ich die verschiedenen Spitzen des Inhalts hervorhebe und diskutiere. Diesmal nicht. Wir springen direkt zum Dessert! Hast du letzten Freitag RtV gesehen?! Lando's Vater, oder besser bekannt als Dad Lando, gab sein Debüt als Star und eroberte unsere Herzen mit seiner Leidenschaft und Perspektive für das Star Citizen Universum. Ernsthaft, dieser Typ rockt. Seine Fähigkeit, Lando zu blamieren, steigert definitiv seine Sympathie.

Rund um den Vers und die Serie 10 For setzte sich der reguläre Zeitplan in diesem Monat fort, während Landos "Wonderful World of Star Citizen" uns den immer unterhaltsamen Captain Richard und seine Geschichte des Livestreamings sowie das kreative Talent von Mr. Combustible und seinen detaillierten Workflow beim 3D-Druck von Star Citizen-Schiffen vorstellte.

Reverse the Verse erreichte diesen Monat einen neuen Höhepunkt, nachdem der Komponist Pedro Camacho und der Senior Sound Designer Ross Tregenza für einige exklusive Enthüllungen neuer Musik und eine Fülle detaillierter Informationen zu uns kamen. Wir haben das große Glück, diese talentierten Herren in unserem Team zu haben.


Website
Wenn Sie den Abschnitt Turbulent unseres Monatsberichts gelesen haben, können Sie bereits einige der laufenden Arbeiten zur Überarbeitung und Verbesserung unserer Web-Erfahrung sehen. Die "Kommunikationsplattform", die sie entwickeln, ist so aufregend, dass ich mich kaum beherrschen kann und jeden Aspekt Ihrer Interaktion mit unserer Website beeinflussen wird.

Darüber hinaus ist eines der vielen Dinge, an denen gearbeitet wird, ein Update der alten Ship Status Seite. Eine eigene Landing Page anstelle einer Reihe von Forenbeiträgen, die es den Bürgern schließlich ermöglichen wird, einen schnellen Blick auf die weitere Entwicklung unserer Schiffe zu werfen, während sie sich durch die Pipeline bewegen, und Ihre eigene "zu Hause" Version von "Wo ist mein Raumschiff" zu spielen.

Diese beiden, kombiniert mit der neuen Ship Reference Matrix und unseren kontinuierlichen Bemühungen, alle Aspekte unserer Präsentation zu verbessern, machen es uns Spaß, mit unseren Partnern bei Turbulent zusammenzuarbeiten. Ich bin immer wieder dankbar für ihr Engagement und ihre Unterstützung, wenn wir in letzter Minute verrückte Ideen entwickeln. Sie sind immer ein Spiel, um etwas Neues auszuprobieren und die Grenzen dessen, was eine Spiel-Website sein kann, zu überschreiten. Benoit, Benjamin, Scott, Ken.... sogar Felix. =oP


Ihr Jungs
Dies ist ein neuer Abschnitt, der hinzugefügt wurde, um alle Dinge zu feiern, die mit unserer Gemeinschaft und ihren Leistungen zusammenhängen! Es war ein fantastischer Monat für unsere Star Citizen Streamer! Anfang des Monats haben Farasalt und Captain_Richard ihr Spiel für einen der lustigsten Aprilscherze, die ich gesehen habe, intensiviert. Es war anscheinend nur ein weiterer Freitagabend auf Captain_Richards Kanal.... Alle saßen da und warteten darauf, dass die Intro-Musik aufhörte und der Mann selbst erschien. Als die Vorhänge aufgingen, erschien Farasalt, geschmückt mit dickem Make-up und einem Hemd von Captain_Richard. Was folgte, war über eine Stunde Heiterkeit, als Farasalt einen Captain_Richard Eindruck hinterließ. Alle Manierismen waren auf den Punkt gebracht! Schauen Sie sich das auf jeden Fall an. Gut gemacht, meine Herren.

Deejay Knight ist jetzt offiziell ein Twitch Partner! Dies war eine wohlverdiente Beförderung, die niemanden überraschte. Deejay begeistert sein Publikum mit seinen fröhlichen Auftritten und ist ein absolutes Vergnügen zu sehen. Herzlichen Glückwunsch!

SGT_Gamble fesselt unsere Aufmerksamkeit mit seinen süßen Tanzbewegungen und positiven Vibes und ist zu einem Begriff in der Star Citizen Community geworden. Gamble hat ganze Server zusammengerufen, um an spannenden und aufstrebenden Spielen teilzunehmen, von denen wir einfach nicht genug bekommen können. Fantastisches Zeug, Sir!

Schließlich war April einer der bisher schwierigsten Monate, wenn es um die Wahl der MVPs ging. Die Menge an Inhalten, die aus unserer Community kommen, ist absolut erstaunlich! Schauen Sie sich diese wohlverdienten Gewinner an!

Vorausschauend
Das war ein Monat, den wir hatten. Jeden Monat kommen wir der Verwirklichung der Vision und des Umfangs von Star Citizen und Squadron 42 immer näher. In unseren vier Studios auf der ganzen Welt und unseren Partnerstudios in Kanada und anderswo arbeiten Menschen unermüdlich daran, das Versprechen dieses beispiellosen Projekts zu erfüllen. Ob Künstler, Programmierer, Designer, Ingenieure, Schriftsteller, Regisseure, Produzenten und mehr, sie sind alle Spieler, die diese Erfahrung mit allen teilen wollen, die diese jeden Monat lesen.

In den kommenden Monaten werden Sie sehen, dass wir weiterhin auf der Grundlage von Persistenz aufbauen, die Alpha 2.4 bietet. Wenn die Teams in jedem Studio weiter wachsen, werden Sie sehen, wie sich unser Produktionstempo weiter erhöht, wie es bereits seit Ende 2015 der Fall ist. Das Wissen und die Erfahrung, die wir mit jedem neuen Schiffsbau gewinnen, jeder neue Charakter zum Leben erweckt, jede neue Landezone realisiert und jedes neue Spielsystem, das online kommt, wird das nächste danach informieren, was bedeutet, dass nicht nur die Quantität unserer Produktion steigen wird, sondern auch die Qualität weiter steigen wird.

Ob es sich nun um die Website handelt, die Sie besuchen, die Sendungen, die Sie informieren, das Spiel, das Sie spielen, oder die Plattform, die es unterstützt, wir wiederholen weiterhin jeden Aspekt der Weiterentwicklung von Star Citizen und Squadron 42, eine wirklich einzigartige Erfahrung für alle Beteiligten, denn Sie sind mit uns unterwegs.

Und wir wollten es nicht anders haben.

Wir sehen uns in der Strophe. Grüße Bürger!

Gestern haben wir die erste Iteration von Star Citizen Alpha 2.4 in das Persistent Test Universe verschoben, und ein Großteil des Monats April wurde im Dienste dieses Vorhabens ausgegeben. Alpha 2.4 verspricht, einer unserer bisher größten Patches zu werden: nicht nur das Hinzufügen neuer Inhalte wie Schiffe und funktionale Geschäfte, sondern auch die lang erwarteten "under-the-hood"-Änderungen, die die notwendige Grundlage für alle noch kommenden Inhalte schaffen.

Diese Monatsberichte sind eines meiner Lieblingsbeschäftigungen hier bei Cloud Imperium Games. Trotz all der Internet-Shows wie die 10 For Series, Around the Vers und Reverse the Vers, die jede Woche Informationen über die Entwicklung unserer Spiele austauschen, gibt es immer noch so viel mehr, dass die Hunderte von Menschen weltweit, die Star Citizen unterstützen, daran arbeiten. Wir sind vielleicht nicht immer in der Lage, jedes Detail zu teilen, aber ich bin zuversichtlich, dass sowohl die Quantität als auch die Qualität dessen, was wir jede Woche teilen, und in diesem Fall jeden Monat.

Lassen Sie uns damit eintauchen und sehen, woran jedes Studio im Monat April gearbeitet hat.

Hergestellt im Schatten

Was für ein Monat April war! Wenn man sich ansieht, wo wir im März waren, ist klar, dass dies ein episches Unterfangen ist, und wir machen stetige Fortschritte bei diesem großen Abenteuer namens Star Citizen. Mit einem weiteren Monat kommen und gehen, ist es diese Zeit wieder, in der wir überprüfen, was im CIG Los Angeles Büro erreicht wurde, insbesondere.

Während sich das Büro in Los Angeles hauptsächlich darauf konzentriert, 2.4 an die PTU zu bringen, konzentriert sich jedes Team auf mehrere Aspekte seiner Entwicklung. Werfen wir also einen Blick darauf, was die einzelnen Teams im Monat April geleistet haben.


Ingenieurwesen
Engineering Lead Paul Reindell war diesen Monat sehr beschäftigt mit dem Los Angeles Engineering Team. Letzten Monat haben wir erwähnt, dass wir 2 neue Gameplay Engineers eingestellt haben, Patrick Mathieu und Chad McKinney. Er hat die neuen Ingenieure auf den neuesten Stand gebracht und dafür gesorgt, dass sie mit den unzähligen Prozessen bei der CIG bestens vertraut sind. Darüber hinaus hat er die Unterstützung für 2.4 und mehrere neue Funktionen übernommen, die gerade eingeführt werden, darunter die Einkaufsoberfläche, das neue ItemSystem 2.0 und einer der größten Aspekte, die Persistenz. Wir nähern uns der tatsächlichen Persistenz im Spiel und das Engineering-Team hat sich bemüht, diese Funktion zu verwirklichen.

Chad Zamzow hat am Aufbau der Schildmanagementmechanik gearbeitet und mit Tech Design Lead Kirk Tome daran gearbeitet, den Spielern die Kontrolle über das Schildsystem zu ermöglichen. Während der Arbeit am Schildgenerator arbeitete er für den Monat April einen Teil der Zeit an einem Controller Interface für dieses Feature und HUD-Code für den Shield Emitter.

Mark Abent hat an der Sitzfunktion gearbeitet, um gebrochenen Code zu beheben und die Funktion Betreten von Sitzen zu bereinigen, einschließlich der Festlegung von Spielerinteraktionen, Spieler-Einstieg, Spieler-Ausgang, Leerlauf und Anlagen. Bis zum Ende des Monats hatte Mark den Phys Controller in Angriff genommen.

Ariel Xu hat kontinuierlich an der Entwicklung unseres internen Tools, dem Port Editor, gearbeitet. Wie bereits in der Vergangenheit erwähnt, wird dieses Tool dem Designer mehr Macht über die Bearbeitung des Spiels geben, was entscheidend für die Beschleunigung des Designs und den Ausgleich der Bemühungen ist, insbesondere mit der steigenden Anzahl von Assets, die in die Pipeline gelangen. Der Bau von Spieledesigntools ist eine unglaublich spannende, aber auch schwierige Aufgabe. Das ultimative Ziel ist es, den Designern die Werkzeuge zur Verfügung zu stellen, die sie benötigen, um neue Systeme und Funktionen mit einer so einfachen Benutzeroberfläche wie möglich zu erstellen.

Unter Pauls Leitung sind unsere beiden Neueinsteiger Chad McKinney & Patrick Mathieu kopfüber in das Spiel gesprungen. Chad arbeitet bereits hart an der Entwicklung des Türsystems. Derzeit arbeitet er an einer Signalleitung, die eine größere Modularität innerhalb des Türsystems ermöglicht, nachdem er die Arbeit an Proxy-Triggern wie einer automatischen Türöffnung, Audio-Triggern und Animationen beendet hat. Patrick hat an der Entwicklung von Controller Managern gearbeitet. Dies sind Systeme, die Sitzpriorität, Prioritäten für Komponenten und das Hinzufügen von Ereignissen zu Komponenten festlegen.


Technisches Design
Der Lead Tech Designer Kirk Tome hat sich im April mit vielen Prioritäten beschäftigt. Eine Priorität war die Diskussion und Sezierung (zusammen mit seinen Partnern auf der ganzen Welt) der neuen und kommenden Schiffe, die freigegeben werden sollen. Er hat auch die Bemühungen des Tech Design Teams bezüglich des Refactors von Kühlern und Kraftwerken sowie die Erstellung von Schilden und Quantenfahrantrieben unterstützt.

Matt Sherman hat nicht nur daran gearbeitet, den Reliant flugbereit zu machen, er schreibt auch den Designbrief für den 85X und das White Box Setup für den viel gelobten Herald. Matt hat auch Hand in Hand mit Kirk gearbeitet, um die Feinheiten von Quantum Travel über die grundlegenden und einführenden Mechanismen hinaus aufzuzeigen, die derzeit im Baby PU verfügbar sind.

In den letzten Wochen haben wir mehrere neue Mechaniken/Gameplay-Features vorgestellt, die wir ausgearbeitet haben. Von diesen neuen Funktionen ist die Salvage-Funktionalität eine, die Calix Reneau untersucht hat, und er hat stetige Fortschritte bei der Vorbereitung dieses Systems für den ersten Rollout gemacht. Darüber hinaus hat Calix auch untersucht, wie Endstationen funktionieren werden. Dies bezieht sich auf die Arbeitsplätze, mit denen die Spieler verschiedene Funktionen wie den Bergungsmechaniker bedienen, welche Funktionen auf dem Bildschirm des Terminals verfügbar sind und so weiter.


Narrativ
Geschwader 42, Geschwader 42, Geschwader 42, Geschwader 42.....

Wir haben mit voller Wucht daran gearbeitet, die Skripte zu überfluten, um herauszufinden, welche Teile wir benötigen, um die zusätzlichen Skripte zu schreiben, die benötigt werden, um die Lücken zu schließen, den überarbeiteten Level-Flow und die allgemeine Atmosphäre widerzuspiegeln.

Ich würde gerne näher darauf eingehen, aber ich bekräftige meine strenge NO SPOILER-Politik. Wir werden hoffentlich in der Lage sein, ein wenig mehr ins Detail zu gehen, wenn wir aus der Luft kommen können.

In der Zwischenzeit haben wir die Bedürfnisse für das Persistente Universum jongliert; alles von der Aufnahme von Fiktionspässen an verschiedenen Orten über die Ausarbeitung potenzieller Erzählmöglichkeiten bis hin zur Generierung von Artikelbeschreibungen (eine Aufgabe, die wahrscheinlich für einige Zeit ziemlich einheitlich sein wird), der Hilfe bei der Beschilderung und anderen Umweltstorytelling und dem Schreiben von viel Kommt-/Nachrichtentexten.

Gute Zeiten.

Auch hier werden wir etwas ausführlicher darauf eingehen können, sobald diese Dinge öffentlich bekannt werden.
Bis zum nächsten Mal.


Kunst
Das Engineering-Team ist nicht das einzige Team, das im Laufe des Monats April gewachsen ist. Die Kunstfamilie CIG Los Angeles wuchs mit der Aufnahme von Byungjin "Jin" Hyun. Als unglaublich talentierter Künstler ist Jin in das Innere der Drake Caterpillar eingedrungen. Zusammen mit 3D Art Lead Elwin Bachiller und Daniel Kamentsky, die an der Erstellung der Innenwohnräume der Caterpillar arbeiten, ist es ein Schiff, das sich als äußerst schön erweist.

Während die drei hart daran arbeiten, den Caterpillar zum Leben zu erwecken, wären diese Vorteile ohne ein erstaunliches Team von Konzeptkünstlern, die die ästhetische Richtung für das, was geschaffen werden soll, vorgeben, nicht möglich gewesen. Die Konzeptkünstler Gurmukh Bhasin und Justin Wentz entwarfen die Konzeptteile für die Außen- bzw. Kommandobrücke der Caterpillar.

CG Supervisor Forrest Stephan, nachdem er von einem Aufenthalt in unserem britischen Büro zurückgekehrt ist, hat seine beträchtlichen Talente in die Entwicklung der Pristine Materials for the Pilot Flight Suit eingebracht, speziell für die Oberfläche des Spielobjekts und die Unterstützung beim Einkauf von Kleidung für die PU.

Omar Aweidah hat das High-Poly-Modell für die leichte Rüstung fertiggestellt, während eine unserer neueren Künstlerinnen, Cheyne Hessler, die Game Asset Geometrie für Spieler-Jetpacks erstellt hat.
Schließlich hat unser eigener Haute Couture Modefan, Jeremiah Lee, seine Fähigkeiten in die Gestaltung von Kostümen/Kleidung für die PU eingebracht. Schließlich muss man bei einem Ausflug durch das 30. Jahrhundert gut aussehen.


Globale technische Inhalte
Wie wir bereits in der Vergangenheit erläutert haben, ist das Tech Content Team einzigartig. Obwohl amorph in der Form, sind seine Funktionen und Richtlinien unter der Leitung von Sean Tracy sehr klar. Sean hat die Designunterlagen verfasst, wie die Charakteranpassungstechnologie funktionieren wird, während Senior Technical Artist Mark McCall die Aufgabe der Forschung und Entwicklung angegangen ist. Dies soll das System werden, das es den Spielern ermöglicht, ihre Charaktere im Spiel anzupassen. Es stellt dich die Frage, wessen Gesicht in Star Citizen verewigt wird? Wird deines als bösartiger Pirat, der die Handelswege auf seiner endlosen Suche nach Beute stört, in Verruf geraten? Oder wird es ein wohlwollendes Gesicht eines geliebten Politikers sein? Vielleicht gibt dir ein epischer Bart einen flotten, schurkischen Blick, der die Massen verzaubern kann. Das sind die Dinge, die wir uns vorstellen, wenn wir darüber nachdenken, wohin Star Citizen uns alle führen wird.

Associate Technical Artist Patrick Salerno's Arbeit an LOD's hat verschiedenen Komponenten wie Fahrwerk, Fluchtkapseln, Haupttriebwerke, Sitze und Waffenhalterungen neuen Glanz verliehen, um nur einige Punkte aus seiner umfassenden Liste zu nennen. Senior Technical Artist Matt Intrieri hat auch ein Audioproblem angesprochen, bei dem Gladiator-Pilotensitze mit Ein- und Ausstiegsanimationen den zugehörigen Audioeffekt anderswo auslösen ließen, anstatt sich auf die Geometrie zu konzentrieren. Zusätzlich zum Audioproblem behebt Matt auch mehrere Fehler, die von Enter/Exit-Animationen bis hin zur Nachrüstung von Legacy-Schiffen wie der Anvil Hornet reichen.

Auf der Rigging-Seite des Tech Content Teams, nach Abschluss der Undersuit Armor Game Asset Rigging, ist Senior Rigger John Riggs dabei, Pipeline-Skripte für Maya zu erstellen. Associate Rigger Gaige Hallman beschloss, das Kleidungsvolumen auf die Charaktere zu beschränken, zusammen mit mehreren massiven Bekleidungsfixes, um sich auf das bevorstehende Einkaufserlebnis vorzubereiten.


Qualitätssicherung
Der Schwerpunkt von LA-QA lag auf der bevorstehenden Version 2.4, dem Testen neuer Funktionen und der Sicherstellung von Stabilität und Leistung über alle Builds hinweg. Insbesondere konzentrierte sich das Team auf:

2.4 Persistenz Merkmale Neue Einkaufsimplementierung Persistent Universe Clothing Starfarer Flight Performance Das Team erhielt auch einen zusätzlichen Leckerbissen, einen ersten Blick auf großflächige Sonnensysteme zu werfen, mit der Hoffnung, die Funktionalität der prozeduralen Planeten in den kommenden Monaten zu implementieren.


Produktion
Apropos amorph, dies ist ein Deskriptor, der oft verwendet wird, um zu beschreiben, was es eigentlich ist, was die Produzenten tun. Senior Producer Eric Kieron Davis leitet nicht nur das CIG LA Production Team, er hat auch den größten Teil des laufenden Baus und der Verschönerung unseres neuen Büros überwacht. Obwohl wir bereits im November in das Gebäude eingezogen sind, haben wir begonnen, die letzten Handgriffe zu vollbringen, damit sich dieses Büro wie zu Hause fühlt. Dazu gehören die Überwachung der Kunstwerke, die an den Wänden der Besprechungsräume aufgehängt sind, die Beauftragung von Einzelpersonen, Bilder von Star Citizen zu erstellen und auf unseren Kommissärwänden zu montieren, sowie unsere wirklich großartigen Faux-Airlock-Türen, die von der Lobby in das Herz des Gebäudes führen. Der Bürokomfort macht in Krisenzeiten einen großen Unterschied, und die immersive Umgebung unterstützt Energie und Kreativität mehr, als viele wirklich schätzen.

Die Associate Producers Mark Hong und Randy Vazquez waren unermüdliche Derwische an Energie, damit sich die LA-Teams darauf konzentrierten, 2.4 auf die PTU und dann auf die offizielle Veröffentlichung zu bringen. Randy ist verantwortlich für die Einrichtung regelmäßiger interner, büroweiter Spieletestsitzungen, um alle mit unseren Spielinhalten vertraut und fließend zu halten, während er gleichzeitig die Zeitpläne für laufende und zukünftige Aufgaben für die Teams Tech Design und Engineering einhält, während Mark Hong die Teams Tech Content und Art unterstützt. Diese Aufgaben sind nicht nur für 2.4, sondern auch für die kommenden Features in der Pipeline. Produktionsassistent Darian Vorlick hat dem Community-Team im vergangenen Monat geholfen, indem er vorübergehend die Verantwortung für die Aktualisierung von Social Networks auf Facebook, Twitter und Instagram übernommen hat und die Produktionsmitarbeiter bei Bedarf unterstützt.


Fazit
Wie in jedem Vormonat bei der CIG gibt es keinen einzigen Moment, in dem das Büro nicht vor Aktivität strotzt. Da wir uns weitgehend auf die Fertigstellung von 2.4. konzentrieren, war auch der April definitiv nicht von neuen Inhalten verschont. Wir stellten auch den aktualisierten MISC Prospector vor und zur Feier seiner Einführung haben wir einen Konzeptverkauf mit begleitenden Qualitätselementen wie Details zu Mining, eine "Bewerbung" für den Bergbau bei Shubin Interstellar und unsere regelmäßigen Wochenprogramme wie "Around the Vers", die Reihe "10 for the Chairman/Developers" und "Bugsmashers" aufgenommen.

Der Monat Mai sieht nicht minder aufregend und intensiv aus. Ihre Unterstützung und Begeisterung sowie die Vision von Chris Roberts inspirieren uns zu nichts. Wir hoffen, dass Ihnen das, was wir in diesem Monat erreicht haben, gefällt und wir freuen uns darauf, in naher und ferner Zukunft neue Inhalte zu präsentieren. Vielen Dank, dass Sie auf dieser Reise ein Sternenbürger sind.

Bis nächsten Monat.

Persistente Tests

In diesem Monat ging es um Ausdauer und das Testen von 2.4. Alle Teams haben hart daran gearbeitet, verschiedene Gegenstände zu testen und zu reparieren, die in die Live-Version des Spiels kommen. 2.4 entwickelt sich zu einem monumentalen Update des Spiels, das viele Systeme, die sich seit einiger Zeit in der Entwicklung befinden, online bringen und die Voraussetzungen dafür schaffen wird, dass viele weitere Features in den kommenden Veröffentlichungen online kommen. Wir bedanken uns bei allen in Austin für ihre harte Arbeit. Hier sind detaillierte Berichte von jedem Team!


Entwicklung
Der Schwerpunkt des ATX-Entwicklungsteams lag in diesem Monat auf der Entwicklung des ersten Releases von Shopping and Persistence. Rob Reininger und unser Designteam hier in Austin haben mit Unterstützung von BHVR die Geschäfte eingerichtet, die zusätzlich zu dem, was bereits in Area18 existiert, auf Port Olisar funktionieren. Wir haben Casaba Outlet und Cubby Blast eröffnet und wollen Kleidung, Rüstungen und Waffen in unserer ersten Version verkaufen. Es hat eine Menge Arbeit von mehreren verschiedenen Leuten erfordert, um sicherzustellen, dass die Kleidung und die Waffenartikel richtig in den Regalen und Regalen der Geschäfte eingebrannt werden, um die Requisiten der Schaufensterpuppen so einzurichten, dass Kleidung und Rüstung richtig gekauft und von ihr ausgestattet werden können, und um alle Daten so einzurichten, dass sie richtig in der Kaufoberfläche erscheinen. Pete Mackay hat seine Zeit damit verbracht, die Preise im Spiel auszugleichen und eine neue Formel zu entwickeln, die helfen wird, die Preise für alles von Kleidung bis hin zu Schiffen zu bestimmen.

Wir haben auch einige Zeit damit verbracht, die kurz- und langfristigen Designanforderungen für den so genannten "Try On/Inspect Mode" festzulegen. Dieser Modus wird eingeschaltet, wenn Sie das entsprechende "Use Verb" innerhalb der Shop-Benutzeroberfläche auswählen, und er ermöglicht es Ihnen, einen möglichen Kauf für Ihren Charakter zu sehen, bevor Sie ihn tatsächlich kaufen. Wir haben eine erste Implementierung und planen die restlichen Funktionen für zukünftige Versionen.

Wir konzentrieren uns jetzt darauf, Dumper's Depot online zu stellen, so dass du auch im Spiel nach Schiffskomponenten und Waffen suchen kannst. Rob Reininger entwirft ein Game Design Document für "Purchasing via Terminal", das in Geschäften eingesetzt wird, deren Bestand zu groß ist, um in alle Regale zu passen. Schiffskomponenten/Waffen und Schiffe im Allgemeinen sind ein gutes Beispiel dafür, wo diese Funktion eingesetzt wird.

In weiteren Nachrichten ist die Arbeit am ersten Einsatz des Persistence-Backends nun abgeschlossen! Jason Ely, Tom Sawyer und Jeff Zhu arbeiteten diesen Monat fleißig daran, unsere Dienste endlich dauerhaft zu machen. Wir haben unseren Programmierern und Designern die Möglichkeit gegeben, sich jetzt in dieses Thema einzubringen, so dass wir mit der vollständigen Aufrechterhaltung von Dingen wie Spielergesundheit, Schiffsschaden, Feindseligkeitsstufe, Gegenstandskäufe, Munitionszahl und vieles mehr beginnen können. Wir haben auch eine neue Währung namens Alpha UEC eingeführt, die hauptsächlich zum Testen von Einkaufsmöglichkeiten und anderen Dienstleistungen verwendet wird. Diese neue Währung wird zum Ausgleich von Preis und Gesamtwirtschaft beitragen und kann jederzeit gelöscht werden, um neue Korrekturen vorzunehmen. Wir richten unser Augenmerk nun auf die Planung einer Roadmap, um die tatsächliche persistente UEC ins Spiel zu bringen.

Ein weiteres wichtiges Feature, an dem wir gearbeitet haben, ist die Portänderung. Wir haben mit dem UI-Team in Großbritannien zusammengearbeitet, um eine neue App im mobiGlas zu implementieren, die es euch Jungs ermöglicht, eure Hangars und schließlich vieles mehr individuell anzupassen. Wir haben unsere Hangars und Flair-Objekte auf das neue Item System 2.0 umgestellt, so dass Sie nun auf bestimmte "Ports" rund um Ihren Hangar zugreifen und Dinge platzieren können, wo immer Sie wollen! Schließlich wird dies auch eine Anpassung der Schiffsverladungen ermöglichen. Wir haben den Ball ins Rollen gebracht, indem wir ein Design für den Einsatz dieser App auch an anderen Orten, wie der Kreuzritter-Karte, ausgearbeitet haben.

Unser Schiffsteam hier in Austin setzt seine Arbeit vom letzten Monat fort. Chris Smith arbeitet an dem neuen und verbesserten Hornet F7A-Modell für Squadron 42, das sich derzeit in der Graubox-Phase befindet. Josh Coons fährt mit dem Drake Herald mit, ebenfalls in der Greybox-Phase. Diese Schiffe kommen gut voran und es ist aufregend zu sehen, wie alte und neue Schiffe die extreme Aufmerksamkeit für Details erhalten, die diese Jungs mit all der Erfahrung und den Ressourcen, die wir während unseres Wachstums kultiviert haben, zur Verfügung stellen.

Das Animationsteam in Austin hat in verschiedenen Bereichen des Projekts wie gewohnt unterstützt. Unser Schiffsanimationsteam hat Schiffe aller Größen und Formen in die Finger bekommen, einschließlich Bugfixing für den Starfarer, Reviews für die Hornet F7A, Herald, Caterpillar und Dragonfly sowie Unterstützung für die Idris. Sie haben auch einige neue Animationen für den Ein- und Ausstieg aus der Freelancer-Leiter erstellt und die Kampf-Ein- und -Ausgänge für Aurora und Avenger eingerichtet. Das PU-Animationsteam hat seine Arbeit an den Animationen des Spaceship Showrooms und der Nachtclub-Szene abgeschlossen und richtet sein Augenmerk auf die Unterstützung der Staffel 42. Sie werden Hintergrundanimationen für die Performance Capture Szenen erstellen und Bewegungsabläufe für verschiedene Charaktere im Spiel implementieren.
Schließlich hat der Lichtkünstler Emre Switzer seine letzten Optimierungen auf der Levski Landezone fast abgeschlossen. Das Marktgebiet ist richtig beleuchtet und entsprechend schmutzig. Insgesamt ist Levski eine fantastische Umgebung und wir können es kaum erwarten, es in die Hände zu bekommen!


Qualitätssicherung
Der April war fast ausschließlich dem Testen von 2.4.0 gewidmet. Da Persistence online verfügbar ist, wurde eine Reihe neuer Funktionen hinzugefügt, die dokumentiert und getestet werden müssen. Unser Spezialist für Persistent Universe, Todd Raffray, hat eng mit dem Designteam zusammengearbeitet, um alle neuen Funktionen zu dokumentieren, die für 2.4.0 online gegangen sind, und den Rest des QA-Teams über ihr erwartetes Verhalten auf dem Laufenden zu halten. Jeff Daily hat an der Erweiterung unserer internen Checklisten gearbeitet, um alle neuen Funktionen zu integrieren, sowie an der Verbesserung einiger unserer älteren Checklisten. Allein das Einkaufen erweitert unsere regelmäßigen Checklisten um viele neue Testfälle; hier sind nur eine Handvoll Tests, die allein für das Einkaufen durchgeführt werden müssen:

Öffnet sich die Einkaufsoberfläche und durchläuft jeder Bildschirm richtig? Werden alle Informationen auf der Einkaufsoberfläche korrekt angezeigt? Gibt es Tippfehler? Werden die korrekten Markennamen und Beschreibungen der Kleidung angezeigt? Werden Lokalisierungsbezeichnungen angezeigt? Wird die Transaktion vom Server verarbeitet? Wird die aUEC ordnungsgemäß vom Spielerkonto abgezogen? Wird der gekaufte Gegenstand dem Spielerkonto des Spielers gutgeschrieben? Aktualisiert mobiGlas die aUEC des Spielers nach Abschluss des Kaufs? Erscheinen die Elemente auf dem Charakter korrekt? Schneiden sie den Charakter auf unerwartete Weise? Gibt es Shader-Probleme mit den neuen Bekleidungsmaterialien? Verformen sie sich bei Animationen richtig? Erscheinen die Artikel in den Regalen/Wäscheständern korrekt? Zeigen die Elemente ihre Augmented Reality-Schnittstelle an, wenn sie auf dem Kleiderständer angezeigt werden, und sind die angezeigten Informationen korrekt? Wenn du die Option "Anprobieren" verwendest, werden die Gegenstände vom Kleiderständer entfernt, während der Charakter sie trägt, und werden sie zurückgegeben, sobald der Charakter die Schnittstelle "Anprobieren" verlässt? Erscheinen deine neuen Kleider, wenn andere Spieler deinen Charakter sehen? Verhält sich der Charakter beim Aktivieren der Luftschleuse in Zivilkleidung angemessen? Persistenz fügt nicht nur neue Funktionen hinzu, wie z.B. das Einkaufen im Spiel, sondern ändert auch bestehende Funktionen wie die Anpassung des Hangars. In 2.4.0.0 können die Spieler nun wählen, welche Flairgegenstände sie anzeigen und wo sie sie anzeigen. Aus diesem Grund hat Robert Gaither eng mit unserem Persistent Universe Designer, Rob Reininger, zusammengearbeitet, um Item-Ports in allen Hangars einzurichten, damit Sie entscheiden können, wie Sie sie anpassen möchten.

Mit jeder neuen Hauptversion kommen neue Schiffe! 2.4.0 wird sehen, dass der Reliant den Hangar-Ready-Status erreicht, und der Starfarer wurde nun flugbereit gemacht, so dass wir unsere Pässe auf beiden Schiffen gemacht haben, um sicherzustellen, dass sie wie erwartet funktionieren. Als zusätzlichen Bonus werden Waffengeschosse nun korrekt in/innerhalb der lokalen Physik-Gitter übergehen! Das ist richtig, du kannst jetzt von außen nach innen eines Schiffes (oder umgekehrt) schießen und Spieler treffen, die nur ähhhh.... zufällig im Weg sind. Also zögere nicht, deine Boarding-Taktik zu üben und an einigen fps-Feuergefechten im Starfarer (und jedem anderen Schiff mit einem ausreichend großen Innenraum) teilzunehmen, wenn 2.4.0 trifft!

Andrew Rexroth und Katarzyna Mierostawska haben die Tests der Staffel 42 zusammen mit ihren britischen Kollegen fortgesetzt und alle Testfälle dokumentiert, die notwendig sind, damit der Rest des QA-Teams mit voller Kraft in den Kampf ziehen kann.

Unsere QA-Informationsfachfrau Marissa Meissner wurde kürzlich zur QA-Leiterin befördert und hat ihre Hände voll damit beschäftigt, unsere neuesten neuen QA-Mitglieder zu schulen: Jesse Mark (Jesse-CIG), Don Allen (Tunahead-CIG), Scott McCrea (Spectral-CIG), Bryce Benton (Underscore-CIG) und Brandon Crocker (Neverender-CIG). Bitte zögere nicht, sie angemessen (waffenmäßig) willkommen zu heißen, wenn du sie im Spiel triffst!

Und schließlich ist es 0 Tage her, seit ein Mitglied der QA an der Luftschleuse gestorben ist.


Spielunterstützung
April war ein super Monat für den Game Support! Wir haben die Arbeit an 2.3.1 in der ersten Monatshälfte abgeschlossen und uns dann stark darauf konzentriert, unsere Ticketarbeit nachzuholen.

Am wichtigsten ist, dass wir mit Toast zusammengearbeitet haben, um den Prozess für unser brandneues freiwilliges Testprogramm Evocati Test Flight zu etablieren. Diese Gruppe, von denen 1/3 von unseren wichtigsten Mitwirkenden des Issue Council und 2/3 von unseren aktivsten PTU-Testern stammt, wird als "Pre-PTU"-Gruppe fungieren und Builds testen, um sicherzustellen, dass sie stabil sind, bevor der Build an ein breiteres Publikum ausgeliefert wird.

Wir werden sehr gespannt sein, diese Gruppe Anfang Mai auf dem 2.4.0 Playtest zu veröffentlichen!
Für diejenigen, die an Evocati oder PTU teilnehmen wollen, ist es trotzdem möglich! Der beste Weg, dies zu tun, ist, ein aktives Mitglied des Issue Council zu sein, das über Fehler berichtet und dazu beiträgt. Es gibt eine Menge Konkurrenz für ein paar Plätze, aber wir werden versuchen, unsere Ränge später in diesem Sommer zu aktualisieren, also kümmere dich um diese Fehler!

Wir haben auch eine weitere Position als Game Support Agent in Austin, Texas, eröffnet, da die Bedürfnisse des Star Citizen Service weiter wachsen und expandieren. Schaut es euch unter https://cloudimperiumgames.com/jobs/415-Game-Support-Agent an!!!!


IT/Betrieb
Die Lösung für langsam ist, es schnell zu machen. Die IT-Abteilung verbringt einen Großteil ihrer Zeit damit, Leistungsengpässe zu identifizieren und findet oft neue und kreative Wege, um sie zu beheben. Dieser Monat war nicht anders. Bei jeder Reparatur steckt normalerweise etwas dahinter.

In unserem unermüdlichen Bestreben, die Durchlaufzeiten unserer Builds weiter zu reduzieren, haben wir den neuesten Engpass - den Speicher - identifiziert und angegangen. An dieser Stelle überwachen wir alles bis ins kleinste Detail. Nachdem wir kürzlich die Netzwerk- und Speicherleistung verbessert haben, stellten wir fest, dass wir viel Zeit damit verbringen, auf der Festplatte nach Speicher zu suchen. Dies war auf eine kürzliche Code-Änderung zurückzuführen, die von unserem Engine-Team vorgenommen wurde, um die Build-Performance unter bestimmten Bedingungen zu verbessern, was tatsächlich zu einem höheren RAM-Verbrauch führte, als wir erwartet hatten, da ihre Leistungssteigerungen aus dem Caching von mehr in den RAM kommen. Um dies zu berücksichtigen, haben wir den Arbeitsspeicher gegenüber denjenigen, die Maschinen bauen, um das Vierfache erhöht und die Leistung entsprechend gesteigert. Natürlich bedeutet dies, dass wir dadurch den physischen RAM über den gesamten Build-Stack erhöhen und den nächsten Leistungsgewinn, den wir finden können, aggressiv verfolgen werden.

Die IT-Abteilung war auch in London damit beschäftigt, sich für einen schnellen Mocap-Shoot vorzubereiten. Es handelte sich um ein Ground Up-Projekt, das mit leeren Räumen begann und alles Notwendige in kurzer Zeit aufbaute. Zusätzlich zu den mocap-Geräten selbst setzen wir mehrere Support-Teams ein, die alle über ein internes Netzwerk verbunden und wieder mit dem Heimnetzwerk in Manchester verbunden sein müssen. Überwachungssysteme, lokale Speicher, Firewalls, Backup-Systeme, WLAN, Laptops müssen alle so ausgelegt sein, dass sie jede Aufnahme, ob groß oder klein, unterstützen. Wir haben festgestellt, dass der Schlüssel zum Erfolg über die Planung und Organisation hinausgeht. Damit jedes Remote-Projekt erfolgreich ist, müssen wir das Netzwerk als Erweiterung unseres internen Netzwerks aufbauen, damit die Teammitglieder direkt zur Arbeit gehen können, ohne sich um irgendetwas kümmern zu müssen.


LiveOps/DevOps/DevOps
Mit weniger Veröffentlichungen in diesem Monat haben wir uns die Zeit genommen, einige notwendige Hausreinigungen durchzuführen. Ahmed hat wesentliche Teile des Bereitstellungsprozesses neu geschrieben. Die Ziele dieser Arbeit sind zweigeteilt. Die Fortschritte in der Persistenz bringen erhebliche Änderungen im Bereitstellungsprozess mit sich, die den Mix im Vergleich zu früheren Veröffentlichungen erheblich komplexer machen. Wir haben diese Gelegenheit auch genutzt, um die Effizienz nach Möglichkeit zu verbessern und die Bedingungen für die Fehlerbehandlung zu verbessern, die alle dazu beitragen, dass die Arbeit, die Ahmed und sein Team hinter den Kulissen leisten, viel besser wird. Es wird zwar immer Raum für Verbesserungen geben, aber die meisten Menschen würden es aufgrund der hervorragenden Arbeit, die in diesem Bereich geleistet wird, nie erfahren. Mit jeder Weiterentwicklung des Publishing-Tool-Sets reduzieren wir den manuellen Aufwand für die Veröffentlichung von Star Citizen.

Wir alle freuen uns sehr, diesen Monat zwei neue Ingenieure in unserem Team begrüßen zu dürfen. Sowohl Andy als auch Nate kommen als DevOps-Ingenieure zu uns und haben bereits den ersten Schritt getan. Andy erforscht neue Systeme, mit denen er unsere großen Datenberichtssysteme auf der Serverseite verbessern wird, und Nate arbeitet bereits an einer Reihe von Prototypen, mit denen wir unsere serverseitigen Publishing-Systeme für die QA-, PTU- und Live-Umgebung stärker automatisieren werden. Während es sich hierbei um ziemlich große Projekte handelt, bewegen sich diese Jungs bereits in unserem Tempo, also sind wir gespannt, was sie sich noch in ihrem ersten Monat einfallen lassen.

Dank unseres neuen Testbuild-Systems sehen wir in diesem Monat einen deutlich stabileren Baufortschritt als erwartet. Wir haben dies auch um einen Test Build-Schritt für risikoreiche Code-Änderungen erweitert, der hilft, die Build-Pipeline weiter zu stabilisieren und die Builds stabiler in Richtung QA zu verschieben. Durch die enge Zusammenarbeit mit der IT haben wir einige weitere Bereiche identifiziert, in denen wir die Gesamtleistung des Builds verbessern können. Wir kommen an den Punkt, an dem sich ein Geschwindigkeitsgewinn nicht mehr so groß anfühlt wie früher, aber wenn jede Stunde zählt, werden wir weiterhin jeden möglichen Leistungsgewinn finden, den wir erzielen können.

Gepeitscht und geknallt

Das Team von Foundry 42 UK arbeitet unermüdlich sowohl an Star Citizen als auch an Staffel 42, sind begeistert, dass jeder sehen kann, was er sich ausgedacht hat.


Umweltteam
Einige Änderungen kommen nach Port Olisar. Wir haben einige Einkaufsmöglichkeiten innerhalb der Streben durchquert und eingerichtet, was der Einrichtung mehr Persönlichkeit verleiht und ein hervorragendes Testfeld für den Einkaufsmechaniker ist. Wir beginnen zunächst mit einer kleinen Anzahl von Standorten, aber in Zukunft werden wir mehr Standorte einführen, da mehr kaufbare Artikel online kommen. Diese Updates werden für die nächste Version erscheinen, also freuen wir uns darauf, sie euch zur Verfügung zu stellen.

Nyx befindet sich in der Endphase der Feinabstimmung und Optimierung, wir arbeiten hart daran, unsere Budgets in jedem Bereich zu erreichen, um sicherzustellen, dass wir ein reibungsloses Erlebnis bieten. Sobald die Verfahrenstechnik für die Prime Time bereit ist, werden wir den Standort in das Gelände integrieren und zur Freigabe bereitstellen.

Die harte Arbeit wird auch an der Sq42-Kampagne fortgesetzt, die vertikale Slice-Ebene setzt ihre letzte Phase der Kunstproduktion und Teil der wöchentlichen Firmen-Spieltests fort.
Das ist alles für diesen Monat Leute, frohes Einkaufen in 2.4 und genießen Sie das Vitamin D-Sonnenbad.....


F42 AD
Es gibt Monate, in denen es schwer ist, Schritt zu halten, die Durchfluss- und Änderungsrate ist manchmal erstaunlich! Ich muss zugeben, der Prospektor, wir haben wirklich mit dem Schiff gerungen, und es brauchte viel Arbeit sowohl an Gavin als auch an meiner Front, um es dorthin zu bringen, wo Chris glücklich war - alles in allem kamen die Ergebnisse ziemlich gut an, und es könnte nicht mehr lange dauern, bis es fertig wird!

Die Konzeptarbeit an der neuen Corvette, einem kleinen Privatfahrzeug und einem neuen kleinen Schiff wird ebenfalls fortgesetzt. Wir haben auch einige Behring-Schiffswaffen (Größe 5,4,3) und eine Bootsladung mit Komponenten in Angriff genommen, nicht zu vergessen der Klaus und Werner Waffenfamilienführer mit der Hoffnung, die Waffen zu aktualisieren und zu vereinheitlichen. Es gab auch eine Menge Putzen der vertikalen Slice-Level- und Requisiten-Designs - wir alle kennen den Standard, den wir erreichen wollen, es gibt nur keine Abkürzungen und es braucht Zeit.

Für die Charaktere wurde viel Arbeit mit dem Vanduul geleistet, da Chris regelmäßiger im Studio war, was es viel einfacher macht, das Design der Kreatur zu optimieren. Auch an Kostümen für medizinisches Personal und UEE-Personal wurde gearbeitet.


VFX
Diesen Monat war das VFX-Team damit beschäftigt, an dem Starfarer zu arbeiten. Insbesondere die Umsetzung seiner flugfertigen Effekte - einschließlich Schäden, Innenzustände, Triebwerke und Waffen. Vor allem die Inneneffekte waren aufgrund der schieren Menge an Räumen und Gängen zeitaufwändig. Wie immer haben wir eng mit dem Schiffsteam zusammengearbeitet, um sicherzustellen, dass unsere Effekte perfekt mit der Beleuchtung harmonieren.

Wir haben auch Effekte für zwei neue Schiffswaffen geschaffen, die neuen Kreuzfahrergebiete um Effekte erweitert und unsere Effektkategorie "High-Tech" überarbeitet.

Greetings Citizens!

Yesterday, we pushed the first iteration of Star Citizen Alpha 2.4 to the Persistent Test Universe, and much of the month of April was spent in service of that endeavor. Alpha 2.4 promises to be one of our biggest patches yet: not only adding new front-facing content like ships and functional stores, but long-awaited “under-the-hood” changes that create the necessary foundation for all the content yet to come.

These monthly reports are one of my favorite things we do here at Cloud Imperium Games. Even with all the internet shows like the 10 For Series, Around the Verse and Reverse the Verse that share information on the development of our games every week, there’s still so much more that the hundreds of people worldwide supporting Star Citizen work on. We may not always be able to share every detail, but I’m confident in both the quantity and quality of that which we share each and every week; and in this case every month.

With that, let’s dive in and see what each studio has been working on in the month of April.

Made in the Shade

What a month April was! Looking at where we were in March, it is clear this is an epic undertaking and we are making steady progress on this grand adventure called Star Citizen. With another month come and gone, it is that time again where we review what has been accomplished in the CIG Los Angeles office, specifically.

While the Los Angeles office is largely focused on getting 2.4 on to the PTU, each team is focused on multiple facets of its development. So let us take a look at what each team has been up to for the month of April.


Engineering
Engineering Lead Paul Reindell has been absolutely busy this month with the Los Angeles Engineering team. Last month we mentioned we had hired 2 new Gameplay Engineers, Patrick Mathieu and Chad McKinney. He has been helping bring the new Engineers up to speed, making sure they are well-versed in myriad processes involved at CIG. Furthermore, he has been doing support for 2.4 and several new features that are rolling out, including the Shopping UI, the new ItemSystem 2.0, and one of the biggest aspects, persistence. We are moving closer to having actual persistence in-game and the Engineering team has been making herculean efforts in making that function a reality.

Chad Zamzow has been working on building out the shield management mechanics, working with Tech Design Lead Kirk Tome on allowing player-control over the shield system. With the Shield Generator work being done, for the month of April he spent part of the time working on a Controller Interface for that feature and HUD code for the Shield Emitter.

Mark Abent has been working on the Seat feature, fixing up broken code and cleaning up the Entering Seats function including fixing player interactions, player enter/exit/idle and attachments. By the end of the month, Mark had progressed on to tackling the Phys Controller.

Ariel Xu has continually been working on creating our internal tool, the Port Editor. As mentioned in the past, this tool will allow the Designer greater power over editing the game, which is critical for expediting design and balancing efforts especially with the increasing numbers of assets entering the pipeline. Building game design tools is an incredibly exciting but daunting task. The ultimate goal is to provide designers with the tools they need to create new systems and features with as easy an interface as possible.

Under Paul’s guidance, our two newbie Engineers Chad McKinney & Patrick Mathieu have jumped headfirst into the game. Chad is already hard at work on the Doors system. He is currently working on a signal pipe set up to allow greater modularity within the Door system after he finished working on proxy triggers such as an automatic door opening, audio triggers, and animations. Patrick has been working on developing Controller Managers. These are systems that designate seat-priority, priorities for components, and adding events to components.


Tech Design
Lead Tech Designer Kirk Tome has been occupied with a lot of priorities over the month of April. One priority has been discussing and dissecting (alongside his partners across the globe) the new and upcoming ships to be released. He has also supported the Tech Design team’s endeavors regarding the refactor of Coolers and Power Plants along with charting out Shields and Quantum Travel Drives.

Matt Sherman has not only been working on getting the Reliant flight-ready, he is also writing up the design brief for the 85X and the white box setup for the much-lauded Herald. Matt has also been working hand-in-hand with Kirk to chart out the intricacies of Quantum Travel beyond the basic and introductory mechanisms currently available in the baby PU.

Over the past few weeks, we have been showcasing several new mechanics/gameplay features we have been fleshing out. Of these new features, the Salvage functionality is one that Calix Reneau has been looking into and he has made steady progress to prepare this system for its first rollout. Furthermore, Calix has also looked into how terminal stations will function. This refers to the workstations players will use to operate various features such as the Salvage mechanic, what functionalities will be available on the terminal’s screen and so forth.


Narrative
Squadron 42, Squadron 42, Squadron 42…

We have been jamming full-tilt on pouring over the scripts to figure out what pieces we need to write the additional scripts needed to fill in the gaps, reflect revised level flow and general ambiance.

I would love to be able to go into more detail, but I am reenlisting my strict NO SPOILER policy. We will hopefully be able to go into a little more detail when we can come up for air.

In the meantime, we have been juggling needs for the Persistent Universe; everything from taking fiction passes at various locations and working out potential narrative possibilities to generating item descriptions (a task that will probably be pretty consistent for some time), helping with signage and other environmental storytelling and writing a lot of comm/message text.

Good times.

Again, we will be able to go into a bit more detail once these things go public.
Until next time.


Art
The Engineering team is not the only team that has expanded over the month of April. The CIG Los Angeles art family increased with the addition of Byungjin “Jin” Hyun. An incredibly talented artist, Jin has plunged in by working on the interior of the Drake Caterpillar. Grouping up with 3D Art Lead Elwin Bachiller and Daniel Kamentsky who are working on creating the interior habitation sections of the Caterpillar, it is a ship that is turning out to be utterly beautiful.

While the three of them are hard at work in bringing the Caterpillar to life, these assets would not be possible without an amazing team of Concept Artists who produce the aesthetic direction on what to create. Concept Artists Gurmukh Bhasin and Justin Wentz created the concept pieces for the Caterpillar’s exterior and command bridge, respectively.

CG Supervisor Forrest Stephan, after returning from a sojourn to our UK office, has been applying his substantial talents towards creating the Pristine Materials for the Pilot Flight Suit, specifically for the game asset surfacing and supporting the clothing shopping for the PU.

Omar Aweidah completed the high-poly modeling for the light armor while one of our newer artists, Cheyne Hessler, has created the game asset geometry for player jetpacks.
Finally, our own haute couture fashionista, Jeremiah Lee, has bent his skills towards designing costuming/clothing for the PU. After all, one must look good when jaunting through the 30th century.


Global Technical Content
As we have explained in the past, the Tech Content team is unique. While amorphous in form, its functions and directives are very clear under the leadership of Sean Tracy. Sean has been composing the design docs for how the Character Customization tech will function while Senior Technical Artist Mark McCall has tackled the task of R&D. This is to become the system that will allow players to customize their in-game characters. It makes you wonder whose character’s face will be immortalized in Star Citizen? Will yours go down in infamy as a vicious pirate who disrupts trade lanes in their never-ending quest for loot? Or will it be a benevolent face of a loved politician? Perhaps an epic beard will give you a dashing, roguish look that can charm the masses. These are the things we imagine as we think about where Star Citizen will take us all.

Associate Technical Artist Patrick Salerno’s work on LOD’s have given new polish on various Components such as the Landing Gear, Escape Pods, Main Thrusters, Seats, and Weapon Mounts just to name a few items from his comprehensive list. Senior Technical Artist Matt Intrieri has also addressed an audio issue where Gladiator pilot seat enter and exit animations were causing the associated audio effect to trigger elsewhere instead of being centered on the geometry. In addition to the audio issue, Matt also resolved multiple bugs ranging from enter/exit animations to retrofitting Legacy Ships such as the Anvil Hornet.

On the rigging side of the Tech Content team, after completing the Undersuit Armor game asset rigging, Senior Rigger John Riggs is in progress of creating pipeline scripts for Maya. Associate Rigger Gaige Hallman resolved clothing volume clipping on characters along with several massive clothing fixes to prepare for the upcoming shopping experience.


Quality Assurance
LA-QA’s focus has been on the upcoming 2.4 release, testing new features and ensuring stability and performance across all builds. In particular, the team concentrated on:

2.4 Persistence Features

New Shopping Implementation

Persistent Universe Clothing

Starfarer Flight Performance

The team also got an added treat of taking a first look at large scale solar systems with the hopes of implementing the procedural planets functionality in the coming months.


Production
Speaking of amorphous, this is a descriptor often used to describe what it actually is that Producers do. Senior Producer Eric Kieron Davis not only manages the CIG LA Production team, he has also overseen most of the ongoing construction and beautification of our new office. Although we moved into the building back in November, we have begun flourishing the final touches in order to make this office feel like home. This includes overseeing the art pieces hung up on the meeting room walls, contracting individuals to create and mount images from Star Citizen on our commissary walls, and also our really awesome faux-airlock doors that lead from the lobby into the heart of the building. Office comfort makes a big difference during crunch times, and the immersive environment sustains energy and creativity more than many truly appreciate.

Associate Producers Mark Hong and Randy Vazquez have been tireless dervishes of energy in keeping the LA teams focused on getting 2.4 on to the PTU and then out to the official release. Randy is responsible for setting up regular internal, office-wide playtest sessions to keep everyone familiar and fluent with our game content while maintaining schedules of in-progress as well as future upcoming tasks for the Tech Design and Engineering teams, while Mark Hong supports the Tech Content and Art teams. These tasks are not just for 2.4 but also looking ahead at features coming down the pipeline. Production Assistant Darian Vorlick for the past month has been helping the Community team by temporarily taking over social network update responsibilities on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as supporting the Production staff where needed.


Conclusion
Like any previous month at CIG, there is not a single moment where the office is not humming with activity. With our focus largely on finishing 2.4, April was definitely not shy of new content either. We also introduced the updated MISC Prospector and in celebration of its launch, we included a Concept Sale along with quality elements to accompany it such as details on Mining, a “job application” for mining operations at Shubin Interstellar, and our regular weekly programs like “Around the Verse,” the “10 for the Chairman/Developers” series, and “Bugsmashers.”

The month of May is looking to be no less exciting and intense. Your support and enthusiasm along with Chris Roberts’ vision, inspires us to no end. We hope you enjoy what we have accomplished this month and we look forward to sharing new content in the near and distant future. Thank you for being a Star Citizen on this journey.

See you next month.

Persistent Testing

This month has been all about persistence and testing 2.4. All teams have been working hard to test and fix various items that are coming in to the live version of the game. 2.4 is shaping up to be a monumental update to the game which will bring online many systems which have been in development for some time, and set the stage for many more features to come online in upcoming publishes. Kudos to everyone in Austin for their hard work. Here are detailed reports from each team!


Development
The primary focus of the ATX Development Team this month has been working towards the first release of Shopping and Persistence. Rob Reininger and our Design Team here in Austin with support from BHVR have been busy setting up the shops to function on Port Olisar in addition to what already exists in Area18. We’ve got Casaba Outlet and Cubby Blast open for business, and we’ll aim to sell clothing, armor, and weapons in our first release. It has required a lot of work from several different folks to make sure that the clothing and weapon items are properly spawned in on the store shelves and racks, getting the mannequin props set up so that clothing and armor can be properly purchased and equipped from it, and setting up all the data so that it properly appears in the Purchase UI. Pete Mackay has been spending his time balancing the pricing in the game and creating a new formula that will help determine pricing for everything from clothing to ships.

We’ve also spent some time nailing down the short and long-term design requirements for what we’re calling “Try On/Inspect Mode”. This mode will switch on when selecting the appropriate “Use Verb” within the Shop UI and it will allow you to view a potential purchase on your character before actually buying it. We’ve got an initial implementation in place and are scheduling out the rest of the features for future releases.

We’re turning our focus now to getting Dumper’s Depot online so that you can shop for ship components and weapons in-game as well. Rob Reininger is drafting up a Game Design Document for “Purchasing via Terminal”, which will be utilized in shops that have an inventory too large to fit on all of the shelves. Ship components/weapons and ships in general are a great example of where this feature would be used.

In other news, the work on the first deployment of the Persistence backend is now complete! Jason Ely, Tom Sawyer, and Jeff Zhu worked diligently this month to finally make our services persistent. We’ve provided our programmers and designers the ability to hook into this now so that we can start fully persisting things like player health, ship damage, hostility level, item purchases, ammo count, and much more. We’ve also implemented a new currency tentatively called Alpha UEC which will be used primarily to test shopping and other services. This new currency will help with balancing the pricing and overall economy and is subject to wipe at any time in order to implement new fixes. We’re turning our attention now to scheduling out a roadmap for getting actual Persistent UEC in the game.

Another major feature we’ve been working is Port Modification. We’ve been working with the UI Team in the UK to implement a new app in the mobiGlas that will allow you guys to customize your hangars and eventually much more. We’ve ported our hangars and flair objects over to using the new Item System 2.0 so that now you can access specific “ports” around your hangar and place things wherever you like! Eventually this will allow for customization of ship loadouts as well. We’ve gotten the ball rolling in fleshing out a design for using this app in other locations as well, like the Crusader map.

Our Ship Team here in Austin continues their work from last month. Chris Smith is working on the new-and-improved Hornet F7A model for Squadron 42, currently in greybox phase. Josh Coons is trucking along on the Drake Herald, also in greybox phase. These ships are coming along nicely and it is exciting to see ships both old and new get the extreme attention to detail that these guys provide with all the experience and resources that we’ve cultivated as we’ve grown.

The Animation Team in Austin has been supporting in various areas of the project, per usual. Our Ship Animation Team has had their hands in ships of all shapes and sizes, including bug fixing for the Starfarer, reviews on the Hornet F7A, Herald, Caterpillar, and Dragonfly, and support for the Idris. They’ve also created some new animations for entering/exiting the Freelancer ladder and put in place the combat enter/exits for the Aurora and Avenger. The PU Animation Team, meanwhile, has actually wrapped up their work on the Spaceship Showroom and Nightclub scene animations and are turning their attention to helping out on Squadron 42. They will be creating background animations for the performance capture scenes as well as implementing locomotion sets for various characters in the game.
Lastly, lighting artist Emre Switzer has nearly finished his final tweaks on the Levski landing zone. The market area is properly lit and appropriately dingy. Overall Levski is a fantastic environment and we can’t wait to get it y’all’s hands!


Quality Assurance
April has been almost entirely devoted to 2.4.0 testing. With Persistence coming online, a slew of new features have been added that need to be documented and tested. Our Persistent Universe Specialist, Todd Raffray, has been working closely with the design team to document all the new features that have been coming online for 2.4.0 and keeping the rest of the QA team updated on their expected behavior. Jeff Daily has been working on expanding our internal check-lists to accommodate all of the new features, as well as improving some of our older check-lists. Shopping alone adds many new test cases to our regular check-lists; here’s just a handful of tests that need to be performed for shopping alone:

Does the shopping interface open and properly progress through each screen?

Is all the information on the shopping interface displaying correctly?

Are there typos?

Are the correct clothing brand names and descriptions displayed?

Are there localization identifiers being displayed?

Is the transaction being processed by the server?

Is the aUEC properly deducted from the player’s account?

Is the purchased item granted to the player’s account?

Does mobiGlas update the player’s aUEC after the purchase has been completed?

Do the items appear correct on the character?

Do they clip the character in any unexpected ways?

Are there shader issues with the new clothing materials?

Are they deforming properly during animations?

Do the items appear correct on the shelves/clothes racks?

Do the items display their Augmented Reality interface when viewing them on the clothes rack and is the information displayed correct?

When using the “Try On” option, do the items get removed from the clothes rack while the character is wearing them, and are they returned once the character exits the “Try On” interface?

Do your new clothes appear when other players are viewing your character?

Does the character behave appropriately when activating the airlock while wearing civilian clothes?

Persistence doesn’t just add new functionality, such as in-game shopping, but also changes existing features like hangar customization. In 2.4.0, players will now be able to choose what flair items they display and where they display them. As a result, Robert Gaither has been working closely with our Persistent Universe Designer, Rob Reininger, on setting up item ports throughout all the hangars in order to allow you to decide how you want to customize them.

With any new major release comes new ships! 2.4.0 will see the Reliant reach Hangar-Ready status, and the Starfarer has now been made Flight-Ready so we’ve been doing our passes on both ships to ensure they’re performing as expected. As an added bonus, weapon projectiles will now properly transition across/inside local physics grids! That’s right, you can now shoot from outside to inside of a ship (or vice-versa) and hit players who just uhhh… happen to be in the way. So feel free to start practicing your boarding tactics and engage in some fps firefights in the Starfarer (and any other ship with a large enough interior) when 2.4.0 hits!

Andrew Rexroth and Katarzyna Mierostawska have been continuing Squadron 42 testing along with their UK counterparts, and have been documenting all the test cases necessary for when the time comes for the rest of the QA Team to jump into the fray in full force.

Our QA Information Specialist, Marissa Meissner, has recently been promoted to QA Lead, and has had her hands full training our latest new QA members: Jesse Mark (Jesse-CIG), Don Allen (Tunahead-CIG), Scott McCrea (Spectral-CIG), Bryce Benton (Underscore-CIG) and Brandon Crocker (Neverender-CIG). Please feel free to welcome them appropriately (weapons hot) if you run across them in game!

And finally, it has been 0 days since a member of QA has died to the airlock.


Game Support
April was a super month for Game Support! We wrapped up work on 2.3.1 at the first part of the month, then focused heavily on catching up on our ticket work.

Most significantly, we collaborated with Toast to establish the process for our brand new Evocati Test Flight volunteer test program. This group, 1/3rd of which is from our top Issue Council contributors and 2/3rd from our most active PTU testers, will act as a “pre-PTU” group, playtesting builds to make sure they are stable before the build goes out to a wider audience.

We’ll be very excited to unleash this group on 2.4.0 playtesting early in May!
For those wanting to participate in Evocati or PTU, it’s still possible! The best way to do this is to be an active member of the Issue Council reporting and contributing on bugs. There’s a lot of competition for a few spots, but we will look to update our ranks later this summer, so get on those bugs!

We’ve also opened up another Game Support Agent position in Austin, Texas, as the needs of the Star Citizen service continue to grow and expand. Check it out at https://cloudimperiumgames.com/jobs/415-Game-Support-Agent!!


IT/Operations
The cure for slow is to make it fast. The IT department spends much of its time identifying performance bottlenecks and often finds new and creative ways to alleviate them. This month was no different. With every fix, there’s usually something behind it.

In our never ending quest to continue to further reduce turnaround times on our builds we’ve identified and tackled the latest choke point – memory. At this point we monitor everything down to the smallest details. Having recently improving network and storage performance we realized that we’re spending a good deal of time on disk starving for memory. This was due to a recent code change that came from our engine team in order to improve build performance under certain conditions which actually resulted in higher RAM consumption than we were expecting because their performance gains are coming from caching more in to RAM. In order to account for this we’ve increased RAM to those build machines by 4x and performance jumped accordingly. Of course this means we’ll be increasing physical RAM across the entire build stack as a result and aggressively pursuing the next performance gain we can find.

IT has also been busy in London setting up for a quick mocap shoot. This was a ground up project starting with empty rooms and setting up everything necessary in short order. In addition to the mocap equipment itself we deploy multiple support teams which all need to be connected via an internal network as well as linked back in to the home network in Manchester. Monitoring systems, local storage, firewalls, backup systems, wifi, laptops all must be built out to support any shoot, large or small. We have found that the key to success goes beyond planning and organization. For any remote project to be successful we must build the network out as an extension of our internal network so team members can get straight to work without having to worry about anything.


LiveOps/DevOps
With fewer publishes this month, we’ve taken the time to perform some necessary house cleaning. Ahmed has rewritten significant portions of the deployment process. The goals of this work are twofold. The advances in persistence bring significant changes to the deployment process adding considerable complexity to the mix as compared to previous publishes. We have also taken this opportunity to improve efficiencies where possible as well as improving error handling conditions which all go to making the work Ahmed and his team are doing behind the scenes that much better. While there will always be room for improvement, most people would never know it based on the outstanding work being done in this area. With each advancement in the publishing tool set we reduce the amount of manual work involved in publishing Star Citizen.

We’re all very happy to welcome two new engineers to our team this month. Both Andy and Nate are joining us as DevOps engineers and they have already hit the ground running. Andy is investigating new systems which he will use to enhance our big data reporting systems on the server side and Nate is already working on a series of prototypes that we will use to more fully automate our server side publishing systems for the QA, PTU, and Live environments. While these are fairly large projects these guys are already moving at our pace so we’re anxious to see what else they come up with in their first month.

Thanks to our new test build system we’re seeing much more stable build progress this month as expected. We’ve also extended this to incorporate a test build step for risky code changes which helps to further stabilize the build pipeline as well as keeping builds moving more steadily to QA. By working closely with IT we did identify some more areas where we could improve overall build performance. We’re getting to the point where a gain in speed doesn’t feel as big as it used to but when every hour counts we will continue to find every possible performance gain we can.

Chuffed and Knackered

The team at Foundry 42 UK works tirelessly on both Star Citizen and Squadron 42, are are excited for everyone to see what they’ve been cooking up.


Environment Team
Some changes are coming to Port Olisar. We gone through and fitted some shopping locations within the struts which helps gives the facility some more personality and is a great testbed for the shopping mechanic. We are starting with a small number of locations initially, but in the future we will be rolling out more locations as more buyable items come online. These updates will be coming in for the next release so we’re looking forward to getting it out to you guys.

Nyx is in the final stages of polish and optimization, we’re drilling down to hit our budgets in each area to make sure we deliver a smooth experience. Once the procedural tech is ready for prime time we will be integrating the location into the terrain ready for release.

The hard work is also continuing on the Sq42 campaign, the vertical slice level is continuing with its final art production phase and part of the weekly company playtests.
That’s all for this month folks, happy shopping in 2.4 and enjoy the vitamin D sunbath…


F42 AD
There are months where it’s hard to keep up, the rate of flow and change sometimes is amazing! I have to admit, the Prospector, we really did wrestle that ship and it took a lot of work on both Gavin’s and my front to get it where Chris was happy – all being said, the results came out pretty good and it might not be too long before it gets made!

Concept work is also continuing on the new corvette, a small personal vehicle and a new small ship. We’ve also tackled some Behring ship weapons (Size 5,4,3) and a boatload of components, not forgetting the Klaus and Werner weapon family guide with a hope to updating and unifying the weapons. There’s has also been a good amount of fettling of the Vertical slice level and prop designs – we all know the standard we want to achieve, there are just no shortcuts and it takes time.

For characters, a lot of work has been going on with the Vanduul, with Chris being in the studio on a more regular basis it making it a lot easier to fine tune the creature design. Also work started on medical staff costumes and also UEE staff.


VFX
This month the VFX team have been busy working on the Starfarer. Specifically, implementing its flight-ready effects – including damage, interior states, thrusters and weapons. The interior effects in particular have been time-consuming because of the sheer quantity of room and corridors. As always, we have worked closely with the ship team to ensure our effects sync up beautifully with the lighting.

We have also created effects for two new ship weapons, added effects to the new Crusader areas, and revisited our “high tech” effects category to bring it in line with the VFX style guide.

Away from the “fun” stuff (i.e.: blowing up massive spaceships!) we have also spent time cleaning up our pipeline documentation. Primarily this is for the other disciplines’ benefit so they can more clearly see how far along the VFX artists are on any given task – essential when a small team is involved in so many tasks at any one time.


Graphics
As well as fixing some stability issues the graphics team have been working on a variety of new features for the artists this month, the first of which is improvements to the layered shader we use for characters, weapons and props. This shader allows us to define the appearance of an object as the combination of more ‘layers’ such as cloth, steel, plastic etc. The new changes allow us to define how each of these layers will wear/erode over time, improve the overall performance of the shader, and allow it to be used on both small props and very large weapons.

We’ve also been finalizing our work on the ‘light linking system’ which allows light sources and glowing light-fittings to be linked together so that the brightness of the light fittings accurately reflects the realistic intensity of the bulb. This is crucial in getting the full benefit of the new HDR flare & bloom tech which we’re hoping to enable for the next release. The latest changes have refactored this to allow it work with the upcoming Object Container system.

After seeing a great presentation from GDC 2016 on improving the performance of tiled-lighting, we’ve been working on integrating this technique into our pipeline so that we can transition to tiled-lighting as opposed to the current deferred-lighting solution (should potentially be faster).

Work has officially started on implementing a new method of handling the ordering of the large number of transparent objects that Star Citizen requires (e.g. cockpit glass, visor, UI and particles etc). This will also involve integration transparent objects better with the post effects such as motion blur, depth of field and anti-aliasing, however this process requires deep engine work so will take quite a while to complete, but should fix issues such the cockpit glass and ship UI rendering in the wrong order when viewed from outside the cockpit.

Finally we have been finalizing a new profiling system that breaks down performance costs per art team to help us profile and optimize the huge amount of content in our game.


Engineering
The big feature development we’ve been helping out working on this month is the persistence, or basically the game remembering stuff between sessions. This is a very big deal as it’s the groundwork that so much of the game will be built upon. The underlying system has been implemented over in the US studios, but we’ve been then building on top of that so you can start seeing and enjoying the results of their hard work.

One of the big things that we now persist is the new AUEC (our alpha credits) so in Crusader we’ve started looking at ways in which we can reward the player with these credits depending on what you accomplish. David’s been working with the designers on implementing some of this gameplay. Now when you complete a mission you will get rewarded. Spotted somebody with a wanted level? Take them out and you’ll get a bounty. Find something interesting on a disused space station? Could make you some money.

Of course we’re implementing ways of spending this newly gotten cash. So we’ve updated the repair stations so that they’re no longer free and you have to pay an amount to fix up your ship. Fuel and ammo also now come with a cost. And of course shopping is being implemented! We’ve now got working shops in both Crusader and ArcCorp where you can go and buy clothes and weapons. On the clothing side Jamie has been working on a new try on mode where you can select a the piece of clothing you’re interested in and your able to view it on your character before deciding to buy, or with weapons being able to pick them up and inspect them before putting down some credits.

Another big aspect of the persistence is how we now store your hangar and the loadout of your ships. Rather than selecting which ships are in your hangar, or which flair items you can see from the website, we can now do it all in-game. This actually brings together several new pieces of tech from the Interaction Point system to the ‘inner thought’ UI which the UI guys here have been working on. Both Simon and Bone have been getting this UI working so you can see these interaction points, go up to one of them, select how you want to interact with it, and depending on what select in this case it’ll bring up a menu of what items can go on that spot. It’s a very flexible system so if it’ll allow you to place what ships you want in your hangar to changing the loadout of the ship itself.

Otherwise as usual we’ve been working in the background on all the ongoing mechanics required for S42. Nothing too much to update on but Craig is making good progress on the new landing system and getting landing working on a moving carrier ship, Rob has been improving the conversation system with it working with subsumption, Romulo has been doing some underlying conversion work on the weapons and implementing grenades, Gordon is progressing nicely with ledge grabs as well and vaulting and mantling.


Quality Assurance
It’s been a very busy month in QA here at Foundry 42. We worked tirelessly with the Dev team and you the community to get 2.3.1 out with the hopes of clearing up some of the nasty frame rate issues and the server stability crashes and while work on that is still ongoing, 2.3.1 brought about some much needed improvements.

With that out the door we began working on the big one, 2.4.0 is probably one of the biggest releases we have worked on since Crusader was created. But boy is it an exciting patch. Persistence. Everything persists now, and testing it has been a rollercoaster of emotions, QA’s main hurdle has been stability. In its first iteration, persistence made the game very unstable, with versions completely failing to build and a lot of time spent on frustrating tests. But we got through the hard times and have been ploughing on, testing the changes to the Hostility system, the Missions system and the Cry Astro Stations. We’re really eager to push this to you guys and gather up your feedback.

But persistence isn’t the only exciting thing we have been working on. Stocked shops (In Both ArcCorp and Port Olisar) & Alpha UEC, A new flight ready ship, a new hangar ready ship and a completely overhauled Hangar system (The Port Modification App). A few fun bugs have showed up in this testing time, such as ships bouncing around the hangar, Eldritch horror style floating eyeballs and so much more.

Right now we are working very hard to find and bug up all the major issues so this can get pushed to the PTU and you guys can get to see all the fantastic changes that have gone in.

See you in the ‘verse!


Audio
April for audio was, as ever, busy! The S42 work and the 2.4 release have been our main points of focus this month, but alongside that a big wedge of music production was undertaken. But we’ll start with the individual updates.

Sam Hall has been hard at it with ship computer work, looking to reengineer and refactor this so we can have it behave more intelligently in-game. This has involved syncing up with those in systems design as well as moving it across to the subsumption system. As well as this he’s been working on resolving 2.4 bugs, optimizing an audio plug-in for Dataforge, and adding triggers for airlock transitions (e.g. for when the player enters space without the prerequisite protective helmet).

As well as his work on the music production (see below), Ross Tregenza has been iterating on the music logic system and is still holding up the fort in being the overall point man for Squadron 42.

Luke Hatton handily bullet-pointed his general tasks! So bullet-point away, Luke:

Tweaks to maneuvering audio for the Aurora and fixed missing audio on the primary thruster for the Aurora LN

Mix tweaks to the tutorial hangar, more ambiance details now audible

Fixed broken enter and exit sounds on the Gladiator

Now using general health parameter in Wwise for ships, so we can alter any sound based on the amount of damage a ship has taken easily

Added distant explosion sound variants

Darren Lambourne, apart from his mastering mission in Munich, has been polishing up the Starfarer and working on audio for the Argo MPUV cargo vehicle.

Matteo Cerquone has also bullet-pointed things:

Added audio for Devastator Energy Shotgun dry fire

Added sounds for interactive elements such as alarm systems, elevators and doors for S42

Old Foley clean up

Bug fixing

Bob Rissolo and Phil Smallwood have both been deep on the dialogue side, preparing for future dialogue/p-cap sessions and implementing/processing material for current usage by the design department. Phil’s also been working on social module tasks, esp. re. shopping and general locations.

Simon Price is still very much engaged in dialogue pipeline tools that will be required for S42 as well as the live release.

Graham Phillipson – he’s also been on 2.4 bugs etc. but otherwise:

Refinements of automatic footstep generation code

Added listener-based RTPCs to area shapes

LUA -> c++ code conversion

Tech debt removal, improving maintainability

Fixed bug with EVA audio not updating properly

Stefan Rutherford has been re-organizing some large aspects of the Wwise project structure to underpin the mix pipeline, which is a joint design/engineering effort by Lee Banyard (me), Jason Cobb, Stefan Rutherford and Graham Philipson currently – this will feed into S42’s linear-styling which require a more ‘filmic’ mix workflow, as well as the more systematic mix workflow that the persistent universe requires. Otherwise he’s been working on new content for our auto-footstep system, restructuring and redesigning the guns. He also headed up another gun recording session that took place in early April at Copehill Down with the company ‘Audiobeast’ (aka Steve Whetman). Hopefully some photos will be along for the ride with this monthly report, if not I’ll post some to the ‘Ask A Dev’ audio forum, hopefully we’ll wrangle some video too.

Jason Cobb has, as ever, been providing technical back-up in various aspects of the audio build pipeline, and is setting up mix states/snapshots across the game as part of the wider mix foundational work.

As mentioned previously, we pushed through a lot of music production work this month. We had another session at the start of the month in Bratislava with the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, to upgrade a lot of the themes and incidental pieces for Star Citizen. Partly this is material for the special edition soundtrack CD, but this material will also make its way into the game as well to improve upon what’s already present.

Then, with that material in the bag, Pedro Macedo Camacho, Ross Tregenza and I went down to Real World Studios, and met up with our mix engineer Peter Fuchs and assistant engineer Patrick Phillips. As well as being a talented and experienced recording engineer for our orchestral sessions, Peter has an extensive CV of mixing orchestral scores for film and games – you can check out his CV on IMDB if interested: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0297273/

We spent five solid days in the studio shaping and sculpting the rather lovely source material into more finalized tracks. If you’re interested in the facility, you can find pictures of it at http://realworldstudios.com/recording-studios/the-big-room/ – we were in what’s aptly named ‘The Big Room’ (hint – it’s big). While there’s an expansive mixing console there, much of the work of mixing by Peter was done ‘in the box’ – that is, within Pro Tools itself rather than routing everything through the SSL console. When working with many pre-recorded tracks this is often a quicker process due to the amount of setting up it would take between one piece of music and the next to assign everything to the desk, and his workflow is better suited to working this way. But mixing desks look impressive, of course! ;)

Once we were done with the mixing process, that material was taken on a step further at CS Mastering – which is a mastering studio in Munich headed up by Christoph Stickel. (If curious, you can see some images at http://www.csmastering.de/) Darren Lambourne was in attendance with Christoph and Peter Fuchs, and the process of putting together a finalized CD master was undertaken here. This involves working with the stereo tracks only, rather than Pro Tools sessions; but refining them yet further so they form a more cohesive ‘whole’, with a mixture of very high end analogue and digital audio processing equipment to hand.

All of this was a workflow that we’d wanted to get locked down for some time and I have to thank everyone for making it possible, we went from performance to a final master in really good time and I hope everyone will enjoy the results, whether in-game or on the soundtrack CD itself. It’s wonderful to hear Pedro’s work polished to this level of sonic shine, I think we all learned a lot from the experience and it will help refine the process for music production across Star Citizen as well as Squadron 42.

And I think that’s all for this month from CIG Audio. As always, thanks for listening!

Animation
Continued on with railgun animation sets

Fixing cover bugs

Turn animations worked on for 180 degrees and 360 degrees

Testing and feedback on tools

Further work to start / stop / step locomotion

New FPS weapon look dev and feedback with the art team

Recruitment – new animator starting next month


Props
The ship components continue to be a big focus this month for the props team, we are wrapping up the full set of small coolers and we have started work on power plants and quantum drives.

We have been supporting the new persistence feature by supplying the designers with a hand full of assets to support their new mission mechanics, this initial bunch was a quick pass to get something in to prove out the gameplay and will hopefully just be the start that we can add to in the future.

Another bit of exciting news is that we have now had our additional tech requests added in to the layer blend material and can now use it across the board for prop production. We were waiting on a few tweaks and adjustments to the way the shader worked and that has now been delivered. This is a big step forward for us as it allows us to almost half the number of draw calls on each prop so should really help to make our pops nice and cheap in terms of performance and we plan to use it in anger over the next few months.

Finally we have been supporting the shopping and clothing feature with a new auto valet locker system so allow for quick and easy changing of clothes and a bit of work has been done looking on our workflow for creating hanging and folded variants of all the clothing you can purchase.

Next month, more ship components and back to squadron 42 props.


Spaceships
Interior production of the Idris is coming to a close, this has enabled the team to start look dev and prototyping of the crashed / damaged asset and start to establish a real key beat within the story arc of Squadron 42. From this research the team should then be able to establish a grounded look and feel for damaged cap ships including the Javelin and Bengal.

Production on the Javelin exterior has moved forward, sharing procedures and techniques found during the development of the Idris, this has also fed into the Bengal production, all ships now sharing a very specific Squadron 42 Livery.


Design
We had a very busy April in the UK Design department.

Firstly, we are back in Ealing shooting pickup scenes at Imaginarium, this has kept a lot of designers busy in terms of finalizing the play spaces and putting in stability fixes. It’s always really rewarding for the guys who are working hard on the Squadron 42 levels to see the level of polish that the actor’s performances give to the player experience.

The Live Release team have been very busy this month with the introduction of our first stage of persistence. Crusaders expanding economy now includes new missions and bonuses, as well as new scavengeables. Cry-Astro now charge for their services and players will now find that respawning has a cost attached. As well as the numerous additions to the play space, we have been starting the work on the solar system scale map which will be coming soon. All in all a very interesting and productive month for the Live Release team that you will soon get to experience and feedback to us on.

The Technical team have continued to setup the various ships that are currently slated for release, and the full component refactor that will make such a difference to functionality and versatility of these craft is nearing completion. It’s nice to finally see an upgradability system that works beginning to roll out into the live builds soon.

Obviously the component system will have a huge impact on the new Balancing Team and that is getting a lot of focus right now so that when it hits we can be in the best possible shape to release something that works.

Overall it’s been another good month for Squadron 42 development and continued building for the persistent universe.

German Precision

April was a solid productive month for us in Frankfurt in regards to both progress and planning. We had Chris out to the studio for a few days for face to face meetings with various departments. Since the last update we have 5 new people working in the office across multiple areas, with each discipline starting to round out a bit more. We’ve all been busy, as we say every month, but every day the team is constantly pushing things forward. The tech update for this month will read shorter than normal, because a good amount of the engine team are working on the procedural tech, and we’d prefer to keep some of the details internal for now and give you the full breakdown when the time comes for you guys to experience it for yourselves. This month we’ve also had a few groups come through the office and hang out with the team, as I always say, the support from you guys is much appreciated and helps push us on a daily basis.


Weapons
The weapon art team finished texturing two new ship weapons and are currently working on the various LOD’s (level of details) and getting them integrated into the game. The Apocalypse Arms Scourge Railgun has been given some additional polish and is in its final stages of art production and is being animated in parallel. We’ve also blocked out a prototype for one new FPS weapon and have a bunch more in the concept stage. We’ll hopefully have some images to share of the new work next month.


Engine
The core engine team focused on various areas of code to improve. First we continued our support to increase the number of render-able objects. To support massive counts of 50.000 and more (think asteroids or planet vegetation/rocks) we implemented a very fast instancing rendering path. This allows us to make the whole scenery more populated and interesting by showing more objects than we previously could. While implementing this rendering path, we also took some time to clean up parts of the rendering pipeline, unifying a few areas where we could.

Another focused area was the JobManager, which we improved the month before to be more flexible; people can new work on different batches, specify which batches have priorities and so on. As most of this was written as lock-less code for performance reasons, we missed some bugs. And since this was low level multithreading code, we now had the fun of finding out why certain operations succeed over 1 million times to suddenly fail. Good news is that we are confident that we ironed out those issues (we managed to run 12 instances of the editor in parallel without any threading issues, which should trigger all kinds of unusual thread timings).

The third area we looked into was to further improve the streaming code. Streaming can be very computation intensive as the code must touch all objects around the player, not just the fully visible objects. Since our game uses a very large view distance, this resulted in a very large number of objects needing an update. We could massively reduce this number by implementing a broad phase object distance culling. In the ZoneSystem, we already group objects together by spatial properties, now we combine the maximum view distance of all objects in such groups. If the whole group is further away than this combined distance, we can immediately ignore the whole group.

Lastly we spent a little time on our vsync implementation, as we noticed that we couldn’t get a stable 60 fps even if we had over 70 fps when vsync was disabled. It turned out that this was a thread synchronization issue which is now fixed. During this investigation, we also had to investigate the details about how windowed rendering works in Windows 7 and later. In short, it is complex :) For our vsync fixes, this unfortunately means that we can only ensure correct vsync in fullscreen mode. Because of this we added some experimental vsync modes.

Use the Windows Composite Manager to vsync (r_Vsync 2). This mode has a certain performance cost.

Implement our own vsyncing (r_Vsync 3). Works, but can result in some tearing as we can’t control when windows draw the data on the screen.

Disable the Composite Manager (r_Vsync 4). Works only on windows 7 (It is no longer possible to disable vsync on newer windows versions).

Of course mode 0 (no vsync) and mode 1 (regular vsync) are still in the game and should be the ones used. But it could be worth to try out the other modes for the brave ones.


Build System
Short and simple update from our Senior Build Engineer.

Trybuild bug fixing and balancing for game-dev and 2.4.

CopyBuild automation.

Tools for VFX artists.

Feature testing for game-dev (WIP).


Cinematics
This month the cinematic team continued to push forward on all fronts, blocking out of scenes, working with engineers on workflow and tools, as well as improving the overall look of body and facial animations. A good amount of time was also spent on preparing for a PCap (Performance Capture) shoot starting in early May. A few members of the team went to the UK office for a few days to go over scripts and sort out blocking of new scenes with the writers and Level Designers.


Quality Assurance
Art testing was the major theme in April for CIG-DE QA. Chris Speak and Melissa Estrada have been busy enhancing the Artist testing pipeline to ensure Editor tools are in top working order with the addition of new checklists and an Art specific sanity checklist that caters to an Artist’s specific needs. QA has seen the benefits of these discipline specific sanity tests and will be working toward creating additional checklists on a per discipline basis. QA will also be assisting with the revamp of our in-house tool used to grab builds, to make it easier for developers to obtain information on whether a build is usable for development or not. Chris has also been collaborating with Carsten Wenzel on time demo creation and Francesco Di Mizio with FeatureTests, so that we can start client-side automation tests for both current and future features and in-game systems. Melissa was buried deep in code with Ivo Herzeg to get to the bottom of a crash issue that prevented QA and development from entering the tutorial for testing and debugging. The crash occurred as the player loaded into the level, and it turned out that the cause was related to the character’s limbs essentially exploding to astronomical values! She also spent time testing potential Vertical Sync fixes from Christopher Bolte that should bring significant improvements to overall game-play in future releases. It’s been a very busy month for CIG-DE QA, but we are already starting to prep full force for May and whatever challenges it may bring.


AI: Artificial Intelligence
This month the AI team has been mostly focusing on making progress on the development of Subsumption.

First of all we have been making progresses on the implementation of the Interactors for AI. Currently each Interactor can be setup by the design team to contain the required information an NPC needs to interact with it: position of the alignment to start the interaction, the animation the NPC needs to play, and the action he needs to perform. The NPC will then search for objects in the world that serve specific purpose and he can interact with them and perform actions on them.

Subsumption uses the following hierarchy for creating behaviors:

Activities > Subactivities > Tasks

This month we also introduced a lot of new tasks (the basic building blocks designers will use to create behaviors ) and we made a pass on the basic functionalities for debugging on screen useful information regarding the system. We also made the basic pass on the Action Areas, those are the elements in the world that allow designers to mark areas with specific information: a multicrew space ship, for example, might have an engine room, a hangar, a control room, and so on. Action Areas allow the NPCs to reason about the environment to fulfill their tasks.

We also spent some time unifying the movement speeds between NPCs and Players, so we now have full control of 5 different pseudospeeds on the AI side: Walk Slow, Walk Fast, Run Slow, Run Fast, and Sprint.

We’ve also been refactoring the spawning system to allow designers to have a more reliable and stable system to populate the world. The new AI Spawning Manager is going to be the system used by both scripted logic and the mission system to populate the universe. Currently the main goal of the new system is to simplify the spawning mechanics and make it more robust, for example we introduced a proper special validation to analyse the space that will be occupied by the ship we want to spawn.

Last but not least we dedicated some time to bug fixing and stability improvements as we regularly do, it’s worth mentioning we have fixed several crashes and we have removed the main cause of the 5 seconds stall that was happening on some i5 core machines.


VFX
Over the past few months the Frankfurt VFX team has been working on some new tech for our particles. What this allows us to do is record the optical flow of motion between the frames in our animated textures and then distort or morph one frame into the next instead of doing a simple cross fade between frames. Not only does this drastically smooth out the animation of the textures, but it also has the added benefit of allowing us to reduce the amount of frames in the animation, thereby increasing the resolution of each individual frame without increasing the overall texture resolution.

We have also been working on fleshing out the effects for the high-tech tech style. Image example can be seen in our DE header image.


Tech Art
We are helping animation programmers for R and D on itemport animation which will help us to easily pick and swap any prop, weapon, or its attachments. We’ve been supporting and making progressing with numerous weapons from the weapons team. We’ve also been moving forward our DCC pipeline with scene manager, which helps artists to easily assemble a complete animation scene in Maya.


Design
The Level Designers have been focusing on iterating through the layout of the Hurston landing zone as well as that of the lawless base mentioned last month. Hurston is seeing some revisions to its layout to improve its scale, as we are still figuring out best practices for combining the scale of ships and hangars, of grandiose vistas and buildings, with the scale of functional (and fairly realistic) playable spaces. Getting to the best of both worlds is an ongoing challenge that we’re iterating our way through, which means that designing those first few locations of different types and sizes naturally takes a lot longer while we learn what level design rules best apply to PU locations. The lawless base is soon getting into ‘concepting’ phase, during which the assortment of un-textured volumes that it’s made of so far will be painted over by concept artists, to give guidance to the art team on how to build and beautify it.

We are also doing the groundwork for the next batch of locations that have to be built when both of those are out of our hands: figuring out what makes those new locations special, and how to allow the levels, technology and game mechanics to join hands in an effort to move the game forward as fast and efficiently as possible. That involves aligning with different departments to dig into critical designs such as spawning, parking, shopping/trading, etc. to see what features are coming up in the short term and how best to showcase them through the locations we build (instead of just adding extra places to visit.)

Finally, we’re still going through the recruitment process to fill up our ranks with more level designers, to help us work through those tasks and develop the foundation of our level design philosophy for the PU.

On the System Design side we’ve continued to work on our AI as we are switching them from Modular Behavior Trees to fully use Subsumption for in combat and out of combat behaviors. Eventually we’ll end up with all our AI being built in a single unified tool.
We are also continuing the Inner Thought implementation and its integration in other systems like the Useables, Interactors and Looting. This system will help us get a unified interface for interacting with objects that have more than one simple use case, making dialogue choices and even giving your wingmen commands in the heat of battle.

Work also continues on the Power Distribution and Reputation systems as these have received an overhaul and will soon be entering production. Another system that was in need, and is receiving a major rework is the FPS Suit because of the changes to FPS defenses and this one will still be ongoing for the next month.

More on the production side of design we’ve been busy setting the goals for the May-July period, breaking down systems and setting priorities for all of them in regards to each career. This has enabled us to have a better overview of what is actually critical in getting those careers up and running on the live servers as soon as possible.

On Our Best Behaviour

At BHVR, we create much of the art for Star Citizen and make sure the quality of every graphic element reaches a level of quality never seen before.


Engineering
This month was a long sprint to get 2.4 features out of the door and into the hands of QA testers, PTU users and eventually yours, our dear players.

A good proportion of this was related to shopping features: lots of work on AR and mobiGlas, but especially doing proper networked transactions and shop actions replication.

Lots of goodies that we’re all excited to see you try.

We reworked Cry-Astro services, to make sure the new service request flow works well with multicrew ships. This was a big pay off, now any member of your crew can use their mobiGlas to request individual services while preventing different people paying for the same service (maybe in shadier service area, but NOT at Cry-Astro, the Empire’s repair, restock and refuel one stop solution!). Also you will only pay for services as they are executed, so if you’re being shot or have to leave in a hurry, you don’t need be afraid of not getting your money’s worth.


Design
This month, the Bhvr design team was very busy with shopping and next release features. We continued setting up shops, both on Area 18 and Port Olisar. It’s funny how it is more work and complicated than it just looks on the outside. The guys did a great job making this work cleanly and efficiently.

We also did some work on the Revel and York Hangar to support the new abilities of the Port modification system. We also updated all the flair items and hangar decorations to support that new system. Looking forward to see what the players think.

Next month should see the construction of a new environment and plenty of level design for the team. We are also eager to continue iterating on the shopping system and expanding the features around it.


Art
On the Art side, we had a lot of fun making additions to Port Olisar, which you will be able to experience very soon. Mostly work related to shops, additional dressing and adding a larger landing pad.

We have also opened new areas to make them ready for later releases.

Moreover, we supported the shopping mechanics with custom props, to better showcase the items sold in the stores.

On Levski, we continued our optimizations on all fronts, meshes, textures, materials and lighting, but we are close to finish the optimizations.

Finally, we worked on new props and finish next month`s flair object.

Cloudy with a Chance of Platform

Greetings from cloudy Montreal! Here’s what we’ve been up to in the last month.


Ship Stats
Design is complete for the new ship reference matrix, and we have already started development. This new matrix will allow users to more easily view all of Star Citizen’s expanding catalog of ships and give the ability to compare multiple stats. We also have designs for a mobile version, which are being reviewed internally.


Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Our development of multi-factor authentication continues, and we are adding a mobile authenticator app. As part of a three-pronged attack, we will also be updating the game launcher to include MFA.


Communication Platform
We have presented a rough prototype of our new communication platform to CIG, and reviews were positive. We are working on the chat module for the time being, and then we will start developing the forum module. We’re still a few months away from a beta launch, but we’re confident you will love it.


Ship Happens
April was a very exciting month for ships. It kicked off with a Star Citizen April Fools’ joke, in the form of the Big Benny inspired Reliant and your reaction to this goofy delivery vehicle was overwhelming to say the least! Later in the month, there was a Free Fly for anyone who wanted to try out Star Citizen. This was also accompanied by a Tax Day Sale putting the Super Hornet, Gladiator and the Retaliator Bomber up for sale for a week. Finally, to cap off the month, there was a concept sale of the Prospector a specialized mining vessel. This sale featured a Shubin recruitment page, where citizens were encouraged to apply to the company. The best 5 submissions will be rewarded with an Orion!


Sales
There were also a couple of merchandise sales this month: they included a track jacket bundled with the Star Citizen deck of cards for a reduced price; there were also some new Anvil Aerospace mouse pads that were on sale earlier this month. And finally, to round out April, a new set of fabric patches representing some of the manufacturers on the Star Citizen universe were released for sale.

Home Alone

Oh my gosh. We’re at the end. Ben and Ali are out of town this week so I get to write whatever I want and nobody can stop me. Well, Chris still has to read this and approve it. He can definitely stop me…

Anyway, it’s been a hell of a month. Lots of ups and downs and twists and turns, but no matter what happens each month, it always seems to go by too fast. That’s what happens when you work with this community: you make the time fly. April 2015 was when I started “officially” as your Community Manager, and the last year has been one for the books. I hope you’ve enjoyed the changes and improvements to our community output over the last year. It’s truly been a team effort, with any given endeavor being an absurd idea from Ben we make reality, or an equally absurd idea from me that Ben is wise enough to let me get away with, and either of those being impossible to pull off without the support of Alexis, Thomas, Justin, Toast, and especially Sandi.

With that, let’s look at our output this month.


April Fools!
WE GOT YOU!

WE SO GOT YOU GOOD!

It’s time for full disclosure: On March 29th we had nothing. Nada. Zilch. We were ready to call in the towel on April Fools this year. Just too busy, and we never want to do something that doesn’t move the needle for us, y’know? Then at about 3pm in the afternoon I had what I knew was a terrible idea that had come too late for us to do anything with, so I walked into Ben’s office intending for him to talk me out of it.

“Hey Ben, you know how everyone is always asking for those profession deep dives?”

“Talk to Tony Zurovec.”

“No, no… I had a terrible idea that I want you to talk me out of. Let’s do a fake profession post about food delivery. We can use the Big Bennys assets that Jeremiah and Elwin and Gaige have been putting together in their spare time for that other thing and use them here.”

This… THIS is where he was supposed to give me that look I get sometimes. The look that says: “Every decision involved in the process of hiring you was a mistake.”

It’s the same look I get from Chris when I show him that Jar Jar Tongue Sucker from 1999 I have on my desk.

But he didn’t give me that look. He said the words that often mean I won’t be sleeping for the next three days, “Let’s do it!”

And with that, we rallied Jeremiah Lee, Gaige Hallman, and Elwin Bachillier to finish up the “fun side projects” they’d been fooling around with in their spare time while Ben wrote up the copy and our friends at Turbulent coded new tech for the website that would allow us to simulate opening and reading a menu (that same tech we’d re-purpose later this same month for the Starfarer sale.)

And after late nights with Gaige animating our Delivery Dancer, speedy work by Elwin to skin the Reliant, and Jeremiah cranking out variant Bennys emotes, we had the ingredients needed to “move the needle.”

And that’s how you make a terrible idea a reality in only 3 days.


Broadcasts
Usually I like to go through and discuss the videos we put out in sequential order, highlighting and discussing the various peaks of content. Not this time. We’re skipping straight to dessert! Did you watch RtV last Friday?! Lando’s dad, or more commonly known as Dad Lando made his starring debut, capturing our hearts with his passion and perspective on the Star Citizen universe. Seriously, this guy rocks. His ability to embarass Lando definitely boosts his likeability.

Around the Verse and the 10 For series continued its regular schedule this month while Lando’s “Wonderful World of Star Citizen” introduced us to the always entertaining Captain Richard and his history on live streaming, and the creative talent of Mr. Combustible and his detailed workflow when 3D printing Star Citizen ships.

Reverse the Verse achieved a new apogee this month after Composer Pedro Camacho and Senior Sound Designer Ross Tregenza joined us for some exclusive new music reveals and an abundance of detailed information. We are extremely fortunate to have these talented gentlemen on our team.


Website
If you checked out the Turbulent section of our Monthly Report, you can already see some of the work-in-progress at overhauling and improving our web experience. That “communication platform” they’re developing is so exciting I can hardly contain myself, and will impact every aspect of your interaction with our website.

In addition to that, one of the many things being worked on is an update to the old Ship Status page. A dedicated landing page instead of a series of forum posts, this will eventually allow Citizens to quickly glance at the continuing development of our ships as they move through the pipeline, and play your own “at-home” version of, “Where’s My Spaceship?”

Those two, combined with the new Ship Reference Matrix, and our continuing efforts to improve on all aspects of our presentation make this a fun time to be working with our partners at Turbulent. I’m continually grateful for their dedication and support when we come up with crazy ideas at the last possible moments. They’re always game to try something new, and push the boundaries of what a game website can be. Benoit, Benjamin, Scott, Ken… even Felix. =oP


You Guys
This is a new section added to celebrate all things related to our community and their accomplishments! It has been an awesome month for our Star Citizen streamers! Starting the month off, Farasalt and Captain_Richard stepped up their game for one of the funniest April Fools gags I’v seen. It was seemingly just another Friday night on Captain_Richard’s channel.. Everyone sat awaiting for the intro music to stop and the man himself to appear. When the curtains arose, Farasalt appeared, decked out in thick makeup and a Captain_Richard’s shirt. What ensued was over an hour of hilarity as Farasalt NAILED a Captain_Richard impression. All the mannerisms were on point! Definitely check this out. Well done gentlemen.

Deejay Knight is now officially a Twitch Partner! This was a well-deserved promotion that came to no one’s surprise. Deejay continues to rouse his audiences with his upbeat performances and is an absolute pleasure to watch. Huge congratulations!

Capturing our attention with his sweet dance moves and positive vibes, SGT_Gamble has become a household name in the Star Citizen community. Gamble has been rallying entire servers together to participate in exciting and emergent game-play that we just can’t get enough of. Awesome stuff sir!

Lastly, April was one of the toughest months to date when it came to choosing MVP’s. The amount of content flowing in from our community is absolutely astounding! Check out these well deserved winners!

Looking Ahead
That was some month we had. Every month we move closer and closer to realizing the vision and scope of both Star Citizen and Squadron 42. In our four studios around the world and our partner studios in Canada and elsewhere, people work tirelessly to fulfill the promise of this unprecedented project. Whether they’re artists, programmers, designers, engineers, writers, directors, producers, and more, they’re all gamers who want to share this experience with everyone reading these each and every month.

In the months ahead, you’ll see us continue to build on the foundation of persistence Alpha 2.4 provides. As the teams in each studio continue to expand, you’ll see our pace of production continue to pick up as it already has since late 2015. The knowledge and experience we gain with each new ship built, each new character brought to life, each new landing zone realized, and each new game system coming online will inform the next one after that, meaning that not only will the quantity of our output increase, so will the quality continue to improve.

Whether it’s website you visit, the broadcasts that inform you, the game you play, or the platform that supports it, we’re continuing to iterate on every aspect of Star Citizen and Squadron 42’s continuing development, a truly unique experience for everyone involved because you’re here for the ride with us.

And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

We’ll see you in the ‘Verse.