Star Citizen Monthly Report: September 2021 - [Comm-Links](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links) - Star Citizen Monthly Report: September 2021 Star Citizen Monthly Report: September 2021 =========================================== Undefined Undefined Monthly Reports [Previous](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/18347) [Next](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/18349) Content ------- English September was a busy month for all teams at Cloud Imperium. Alongside preparing for the excitement of this October’s all-digital CitizenCon, the final touches were added to many features coming in Alpha 3.15, and great progress was made on content coming later in the year. Read on for all the details, including the latest on the Personal Inventory, various news ships, Pyro, and jump points. AI Content In September, AI Content concluded their work on the new ‘worker’ behavior, which the designers will use to quickly add life to various environments. This will replace many legacy behaviors until environment-specific AI is added. They also added security ‘T0’ to outposts. Now, NPCs can find and use usables on their patrols, making their routes feel more believable and less robotic. NPCs can guard entrances by blocking entry or checking IDs too. The bartender (vendor) was expanded with new ‘cafe’ usables to allow players to order soft drinks at locations in Area18. Progress continued on the patron and goods dealer behaviors detailed last month, and doctors and nurses were to New Babbage and Orison’s hospitals. These are progressing well, with a QATR taking place early next month. AI Feature The AI Feature team continued to work on perception changes for stealth, including creating a mechanism to tweak the ranges of sound events like weapons firing, bullet impact, footsteps, and vaulting. They also updated the debug renderer to show the type of sound event, enabling designers to identify the sound events they’re working on. Progress was made on melee combat, improving the combo system to make it more data-driven so that designers can add new combos quickly and easily. Previously, combo attacks were set up in the Subsumption logic of the melee attack behavior, stringing together multiple single attack tasks. Now a single ‘combo attack’ task is used to improve responsiveness between the parts of the combo. AI Features also worked with the Actor team to come up with a solution for the AI hitting low or high targets with melee attacks, adjusting the spine bones’ rotation up and down to bend towards the target. The clean-up of motion capture animation assets for cowering, surrendering, perception reactions, and unarmed cover usage continued too. Finally, the team fixed some issues with ships defending a lead ship getting stuck in a loop trying to select a new target. AI Tech Last month, the AI Tech team focused on optimizing several AI systems to improve performance, including turret behavior. Focus was given to making 3D collision avoidance for AI Ships work in complex scenes with narrow spaces where bounding boxes for obstacles aren’t a viable solution. There was a variety of updates to pathing, pathfinding, path execution, and movement alongside continued progress on planetary navigation too. For the Subsumption Editor, they finished implementing the docking system, which will enable them to reorganize the UI. Bugs were also fixed for Alpha 3.15, and the team continued to write technical documentation related to AI systems and server meshing. Animation The Animation team spent September improving vendors, including adding new items and location-based assets and transitions to give a more life-like result. They also discussed how to best implement emotional state idles to characters to give them life when idling. Work on behavior blockouts and animations for the patron continued – some of the assets previously shot for patrons sitting at bars is being implemented to give a more robust feel to NPCs at bars and counters. “We dropped in a considerable amount of new idle animations for characters sitting, and are working towards the day when no character looks like a statue but rather a living, breathing person. Some of these animations have not been fully edited yet, but we wanted to get them in so we can feel out the results in the PTU and PU.” Animation Team On the player side, the team began reworking various select and deselect asset sets so that they work well in all instances, including with the new inventory system. Improvements were made to drunk locomotion that will, alongside a new asset drop, significantly improve the visuals. Art (Characters) Last month, Character Art prepared assets for Alpha 3.15, and beyond. The tech artists also finished skinning two new armors debuting in the coming patch that will help fill out various gameplay archetypes. For Subscribers, two new helmets scheduled for release at the end of the year were modeled and passed to tech art for skinning. These will be paired with color variants of existing armors, like the recent Star Kitty and Kabuki helmets. They also put the finishing touches on the prize assets based on the Ship Showdown’s final four. Character Art progressed with Alpha 3.16 content, including a texture update pass on all DNA archetype heads. This will massively improve the quality of the Character Customizer and NPC heads for both the PU and SQ42. For Pyro, the concept artists continued creating costume packs of the frontier-style clothing that will serve as the basis of clothing for the whole system. Multiple armors were also modeled for the XenoThreat gang using the CDS armor as a base. Art (Ships) In the US, the Ship team completed final art for the Crusader Ares, which involved implementing the new large-scale glow workflow into the thrusters for improved lighting. They also set up a bifurcated material system to support both the non-armored Ion and armored Inferno branches when applying tints, so each version of the ship will appear slightly differently. The Drake Vulture moved into the greybox stage – the interior is now completed, and the team are focusing on finishing the exterior, including the reclamation arms, nose grinder, body, cockpit, landing gear, and thrusters. They also added a collapsible exterior ladder to allow players to access the cockpit from the arm. One of the previously mentioned unannounced ships is currently in the final art phase, with a focus on polishing materials and nacelles. Attention is currently directed at dynamic animations to give players more feedback when the ship is in motion. Another ship discussed in the last month’s report is now art complete. The team is planning a bug-fixing pass and preparing to set up the final tint range. In the UK, an unannounced ship moved down the pipeline while several others reached the final-art stage. Tasks for the Crusader A2 Hercules were closed out, including minor polishing and bug fixing. The upcoming MISC cargo ships progressed well – the Hull C had numerous details finalized, while the Hull A is approaching its whitebox review. Audio The Audio team spent September closing out goals set in Q3 and supporting the build-up to various events. Orison had a final push, with the SFX and dialogue for Cousin Crow’s and the Crusader Showroom completed alongside an ambiance polish, VO tours, and mixing. Plans for Orison Spaceport’s music progressed, and the rest stop and Grim HEX hospital locations received their final SFX and dialogue passes. “The ‘gruesome treatment VO’ is a particular highlight for Grim HEX now it’s implemented in-game.” Audio Team Tech Sound Design and SFX worked together to add effects to the medical bed and bomb delivery UI. Finally, Audio worked on SFX and dialogue for IAE. Community Community’s month began supporting the returning XenoThreat event, including publishing an infographic detailing various facts and figures. After the event, the team invited the backers to an AMA on dynamic events. Once complete, they posted a comm-link to make it easier to recap. Outside the game, the team supported the annual Ship Showdown competition. During phase one, the community was challenged to support their favorite craft by submitting an original creation to the Community Hub or Twitter, with the team rewarding the 10 submissions they felt were particularly outstanding with an Origin 100i. During phase two and the finals, Community supported the accompanying Free Fly and detailed the knockout rounds that ultimately crowned the Argo MPUV-1C as the overall winner. Community closed out the month announcing this year’s Digital CitizenCon schedule and the Digital Goodies Pack that all backers will receive for free. Engine In August, the Physics team continued to optimize backend code, including for soft body implementation. Various parts of relevant collision detection routines were optimized algorithmically by improving their bounding volume representations and hierarchy. Soft body topology loading and building, baking code, and memory management were improved too. Additionally, terrain meshes are now flagged so that they can be exclusively raycast against along with allowing meshes to cluster with a single raycast. Moreover, kinematic parts are now used as valid moving ground colliders on actor entities. For the renderer, work continued on the global draw packet cache. A mechanism was added to rebuild the cache when necessary. Its logic was also refined to prevent the unnecessary recreation of draw packets with identical arguments, which is important for brushes. On a higher level, the Gen12 render interface is now used for stat OBJs and render proxies throughout the engine, which marks another step in the transition to the new render paradigm. The shader system saw several changes too – shader parser initialization was streamlined, and the user cache was moved to the ‘Window’s APPDATA folder’. This will be rolled out post Alpha 3.15 and should fix a long-standing issue for some users. There were also various changes to refactor and transition code to Gen12. Regarding atmosphere and volumetric clouds, there have been various improvements to cloud shadows. The stepping code for local cloud shadows has been refined to be easier to control by artists as well as optimized so that it’s not evaluated unless necessary. Aside from self-shadowing, clouds now also cast their shadows onto the entire scene which has become important for proper scene integration as the team start to use them on planets as well. Additionally, work to improve the rendering of cloud edges has been completed, and parameters exposed to artists, to give them a more volumetric look. Research went into various topics: 1) a quick prototype for better rendering of rain clouds was implemented, 2) integration of cloud shadows into the atmosphere has been implemented (among other things will allow for light shafts from clouds), and 3) because of these shadows in the atmosphere a prototype for improved rendering of multi scattering in clouds and atmosphere was implemented. It acknowledges the presence of clouds in the atmosphere when it comes to indirect lighting and will help shading clouds (brighter, more natural white tones in shadows) as well as the ambiance of overcast skies on ground (less hazy and blueish – in case of earth like planets). These research items are still WIP and will hopefully mature enough to be shipped in the coming months with other improvements to rendering quality and performance. On the core engine side, support for ‘APPDATA’ access was added to the P4K system. Aside from now storing the user shader cache folder there, the team plan to eventually move all temporary game-client files to this new location. The P4K file system was also improved to properly deal with Unicode paths. Work on the performance regression system picked up again with numerous supporting changes, as it’s becoming important to daily progress and development stability. The team also supported server meshing by decoupling code so that it can run as a standalone service. They started focusing more on optimization too, with certain game scenarios frequently analyzed, reported, and updated. This brought various improvements that will be rolled out post Alpha 3.15. For example, entity-component wakeup was improved by keeping components active for some time. Server Object Container Streaming code was heavily optimized, and memory allocation when using CigFunction (lambdas) was improved. There were various other amends too, such as moving runtime GPU buffer updates to background threads. Features (Characters & Weapons) The Feature team continued focusing on bug fixing and quality-of-life improvements for the new Player Inventory and Actor Status features. In particular, the inventory was running slower than experienced on internal playtests, so significant effort was put into making it more responsive wherever possible. Item filtering is at the top of the list of quality-of-life improvements. The Greycat Multi-Tool is now the first weapon/gadget with two types of reloading action – one for the healing attachment vial and one for its battery. This means the user has to manage two different resources to get the best from it. The first iteration of the new underlying logic for the actor-control state machine began testing this month. This logic is purpose-built based on the use of the old state machine and should scale significantly better with project size and complexity. It will also offer better debugging tools, reducing the time it takes to find and fix bugs. Features (Gameplay) Gameplay Features continued supporting local inventories and getting the NikNax app ready for Alpha 3.15, with bug fixing and UI polishing taking a majority of the team’s time. They also supported various mission teams in connecting content to the reputation system, set up shops and bartenders in Orison, and prepared for IAE. Looking further ahead, work began on allowing items to be sold at shops, the future cargo rework, and Jumptown v2. Features (Vehicles) September saw the Vehicle Feature team progress with jump points, significantly progressing with party jumping. In addition, the team further developed new animation techniques for the Hull C, and supported VFX with improvements to ground effects. The remaining time was spent on ship data debug improvements to further support development processes. Vehicle Experience tested the bombing mechanic in QA after a successful review and polish period last month. They’re now in the final bug-fixing and optimization stage leading up to release and are awaiting feedback from the Evocati and PTU phases. Improvements were also made to turrets for a future release, and experiments were done on missile tuning and balance across the game. The team are also exploring how to further build on operator modes. Vehicle Features also prepared for Alpha 3.15’s ship releases, supported Actor Features with the intoxication mode for piloting and driving, completed general bug fixing and improvements. Graphics & VFX Programming The Graphics team made further performance improvements to the render profile as well as optimizations to post effects (depth of field and motion blur), terrain rendering, and fog to maintain the same performance at higher resolutions. Alongside this, they improved the water shader. These changes allow shading to be based on available tiled-lighting data rather than the nearest environment probe to create more consistent lighting in scenes involving water volumes. They also changed water volume lighting to take into account volumetrics, such as clouds and fog, avoiding previous issues where water volumes would ignore local fog volumes when shading. They also progressed on the render-to-texture refactor by implementing region copy for static RTTOs to reuse the existing content instead of re-rendering it. This will ultimately increase performance and save on scene pass usage. They also re-wrote the RTT atlas packing algorithm to support the new region copy feature, making it more robust and easier to maintain. Finally, Graphics looked into validation errors and collated captured Vulkan analytical information for future extensions. Lighting The Lighting team polished and optimized Orison’s new shops; Cousin Crow’s, Providence Surplus, and the Crusader Showroom. “A lot of effort went into ensuring these new locations thematically fit within the style of Orison but that each has a unique style and flavor. To help support the addition of these locations, we made further lighting optimization work around their respective platforms.” Lighting Team They also continued to finalize the upcoming hospitals and clinics, implementing feedback from the art directors and fixing visual bugs. Support continued for colonialism outposts, with lighting passes almost complete on all current modules and components. Optimization and polish work is ongoing and new dynamic lighting was added to support airlock cycling. Narrative As the release of Alpha 3.15 draws closer, Narrative worked to ensure all final elements and last details are in place before it goes live. This included a pass of the hints added in support of the new gameplay features and journal entries to help explain some of the more complex systems. For NikNax, the team adjusted item names and stats, specifically changing all armor capacity amounts from Storage Points (SP) to microSCU (µSCU). The Delphi reputation app also received attention to ensure everything is as clear as possible now that organizations can have multiple scopes for players to earn ranks in. The team also spent time playtesting to identify and resolve as many bugs as possible. Beyond Alpha 3.15, time was spent discussing details about the in-development hacking gameplay, Pyro’s space stations, and non-water-based oceans. A recording session to capture mission and public address system dialogue was also completed, and work continued with AI, Design, and Audio on new NPC behaviors. “For the lore lovers out there, September brought a whole host of new narrative posts to the website. This quarter’s Loremakers: Community Questions went out with some tasty tidbits regarding military ranks. A book excerpt from Always Forward: A UEE Marine History, originally featured in Jump Point magazine, was released to non-subscribers. (For those of you who might not be aware, every month Subscribers receive a new issue of Jump Point magazine that features new lore, in-depth interviews, dives into design, and a delightful forward from editor Benjamin Lesnick. Definitely worth checking out!) We also released a deep dive into the new medical lore behind regeneration. Last but not least, a new batch of fascinating entries were added to the continually growing Galactapedia.” Narrative Team QA QA’s primary publishing focus was on preparation for the Alpha 3.15 cycle, specifically ensuring they have proper coverage for Evocati and wave one PTU. For development, the team predominantly worked through QA Test Requests (QATR) as they arrived. Many needed significant testing as they included interconnected features that fundamentally change how the game is played. A new publishing checklist was created to manage the inevitable requests for daily publishes, and the team’s training path was reworked to better align with wider development. For embedded testing, the AI-based team focused on movement fixes for NPCs, which has far-reaching implications. They also tested turrets, targeting, and general functionality in response to player threats. For the Engine team, support continued with minimum-spec PC stress testing along with continued PageHeap testing to catch memory leaks. Furthermore, automation training continued, with the aim to ultimately create automated test cases for different departments. QA also continued to support the Tools team with DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore, CopyBuild, and the sandbox editor. Systemic Services & Tools Throughout September, Systemic Services & Tools (SST) continued to work on the economy, tools, and Quantum (the AI simulation). Edge cases were also wrapped up for easier use and recording. SST wrapped up some foundational adjustments to diffusion and how it communicates with the DGS in the form of adjustments to the DirectConnect DGS Thread Bridge. The service engineers are now working with their Gameplay Engineering counterparts on a new gameplay system “for the mercantilely minded player.” Work continues in earnest on intelligent NPC spawning, with an impressive internal milestone hit by the team. Finally, in preparation for Alpha 3.15, new edge cases in the inventory system and backend services were addressed. Turbulent (Services) Last month, Turbulent’s Live Tools team deployed a new launcher. This contains updated logic for the verify feature, extending the time of the warning message on game launch and updating bindings with a new loading sequence. The Game Services team progressed with the discipline service, with most critical calls being delivered. The launcher and in-game work for this is done too, with the QA phase beginning soon. The team continued to refactor the entity graph and worked on the matchmaking service. The Web team worked on pages for CitizenCon and IAE and created a new backend tool to improve the appearance and functionality of all website content. UI Last month, the UI team focused on performance improvements, optimizing some of the more costly areas of the user interface. “We made more progress on the underlying code work of the Starmap, and started to get some placeholder UI into development builds so we can really start playing around with it, as you will eventually!” UI Team UI also worked on screens for the upcoming infiltrate and defend mission archetypes, and finished the screens for hospitals and the personal inventory. Vehicle Tech Vehicle Tech put the finishing touches on a Squadron 42-specific vehicle mechanic, with the aim of expanding it into the PU. Alongside this, bugs for Alpha 3.15 were fixed, and the groundwork for incorporating radar and scanning into FPS gameplay progressed. Some functional radar and scanning design changes are in the works too. Major improvements in how players control doors and other room-related interactions (such as lights, atmosphere, and communication systems) are in the prototyping stages. The aim is to fully immerse players by allowing them to control their environment while exploring on foot. “Expect more door control panel interactions to come soon!” Vehicle Tech VFX VFX finished off their work on the new vehicle wakes, which was done alongside the Vehicle Feature team, and effects were completed for an unannounced ship. Finally, further development work was done on Theaters of War. WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH… Der September war ein arbeitsreicher Monat für alle Teams bei Cloud Imperium. Neben den Vorbereitungen für die aufregende, komplett digitale CitizenCon im Oktober dieses Jahres wurden die letzten Handgriffe an vielen Funktionen der Alpha 3.15 vorgenommen und große Fortschritte bei den Inhalten gemacht, die später im Jahr erscheinen werden. Lies weiter, um alle Details zu erfahren, einschließlich der neuesten Informationen über das persönliche Inventar, verschiedene neue Schiffe, Pyro und Sprungpunkte. KI-Inhalte Im September beendete AI Content die Arbeit am neuen "Arbeiter"-Verhalten, mit dem die Designer den verschiedenen Umgebungen schnell Leben einhauchen werden. Dieses Verhalten wird viele alte Verhaltensweisen ersetzen, bis eine umgebungsspezifische KI hinzugefügt wird. Außerdem wurde die Sicherheit "T0" für Außenposten hinzugefügt. Jetzt können NSCs auf ihren Patrouillen nützliche Gegenstände finden und benutzen, wodurch sich ihre Routen glaubwürdiger und weniger roboterhaft anfühlen. NSCs können auch Eingänge bewachen, indem sie den Zutritt blockieren oder Ausweise kontrollieren. Der Barkeeper (Verkäufer) wurde um neue "Cafe"-Usables erweitert, die es den Spielern ermöglichen, Getränke an Orten in der Area18 zu bestellen. Die im letzten Monat beschriebenen Verhaltensweisen der Gönner und Warenhändler wurden weiter ausgebaut, und die Krankenhäuser in New Babbage und Orison wurden mit Ärzten und Krankenschwestern ausgestattet. Die Arbeiten kommen gut voran, und Anfang nächsten Monats findet ein QATR statt. KI-Funktion Das KI-Team hat weiter an den Wahrnehmungsänderungen für Stealth gearbeitet und einen Mechanismus entwickelt, mit dem die Reichweite von Geräuschereignissen wie Waffenschüssen, Geschosseinschlägen, Schritten und Sprüngen angepasst werden kann. Außerdem wurde der Debug-Renderer so aktualisiert, dass er die Art des Geräuschevents anzeigt, damit die Designer die Geräusche identifizieren können, an denen sie gerade arbeiten. Das Combosystem wurde verbessert, um es datengesteuerter zu machen, damit die Designer/innen schnell und einfach neue Combos hinzufügen können. Bisher wurden Combo-Angriffe in der Subsumptionslogik des Nahkampfverhaltens eingerichtet, indem mehrere Einzelangriffe aneinandergereiht wurden. Jetzt wird eine einzige Aufgabe "Kombo-Angriff" verwendet, um die Reaktionsfähigkeit zwischen den einzelnen Teilen der Kombo zu verbessern. Die KI-Features arbeiteten auch mit dem Actor-Team zusammen, um eine Lösung für die KI zu finden, die mit Nahkampfangriffen niedrige oder hohe Ziele trifft, indem sie die Drehung der Wirbelsäulenknochen nach oben und unten anpasst, um sich zum Ziel hin zu beugen. Die Bereinigung der Motion-Capture-Animationen für das Kauern, die Kapitulation, die Wahrnehmungsreaktionen und die Verwendung von unbewaffneter Deckung wurde ebenfalls fortgesetzt. Schließlich hat das Team einige Probleme mit Schiffen behoben, die ein führendes Schiff verteidigten und beim Versuch, ein neues Ziel auszuwählen, in einer Schleife stecken blieben. KI-Technik Im letzten Monat konzentrierte sich das KI-Tech-Team auf die Optimierung verschiedener KI-Systeme, um die Leistung zu verbessern, einschließlich des Verhaltens der Geschütztürme. Der Schwerpunkt lag darauf, dass die 3D-Kollisionsvermeidung für KI-Schiffe in komplexen Szenen mit engen Räumen funktioniert, in denen Bounding Boxes für Hindernisse keine praktikable Lösung sind. Es gab eine Reihe von Aktualisierungen für Pfadfindung, Pfadausführung und Bewegung sowie weitere Fortschritte bei der Planetennavigation. Für den Subsumption Editor wurde die Implementierung des Andocksystems abgeschlossen, wodurch die Benutzeroberfläche umgestaltet werden kann. Außerdem wurden Bugs für Alpha 3.15 behoben und das Team schrieb weiter an der technischen Dokumentation zu KI-Systemen und Server-Meshing. Animation Das Animationsteam verbrachte den September damit, die Verkäufer zu verbessern. Dazu gehörten das Hinzufügen von neuen Gegenständen und ortsabhängigen Objekten sowie Übergänge, um ein noch lebensechteres Ergebnis zu erzielen. Außerdem wurde besprochen, wie man den emotionalen Zustand der Charaktere am besten implementieren kann, um ihnen im Leerlauf Leben einzuhauchen. Die Arbeit an den Verhaltensblockaden und Animationen für die Gäste wurde fortgesetzt - einige der Assets, die zuvor für die Gäste an den Bars gedreht wurden, werden nun implementiert, um den NSCs an den Bars und Theken mehr Leben einzuhauchen. "Wir haben eine beträchtliche Menge an neuen Leerlauf-Animationen für sitzende Charaktere eingebaut und arbeiten auf den Tag hin, an dem kein Charakter mehr wie eine Statue aussieht, sondern wie eine lebende, atmende Person. Einige dieser Animationen sind noch nicht vollständig bearbeitet, aber wir wollten sie einbauen, damit wir das Ergebnis in der PTU und PU ausprobieren können." Animationsteam Auf der Spielerseite hat das Team damit begonnen, verschiedene Auswahl- und Abwahl-Assets zu überarbeiten, damit sie in allen Situationen gut funktionieren, auch mit dem neuen Inventarsystem. Es wurden Verbesserungen an der Fortbewegung der Betrunkenen vorgenommen, die zusammen mit einem neuen Asset-Drop die Optik deutlich verbessern werden. Kunst (Charaktere) Im letzten Monat hat Character Art die Assets für Alpha 3.15 und darüber hinaus vorbereitet. Die Techniker haben außerdem zwei neue Rüstungen fertiggestellt, die mit dem kommenden Patch eingeführt werden und verschiedene Gameplay-Archetypen abrunden werden. Für die Abonnenten wurden zwei neue Helme, die Ende des Jahres erscheinen sollen, modelliert und zum Skinning an die Tech Artists übergeben. Diese werden mit Farbvarianten bestehender Rüstungen gepaart, wie den neuen Helmen Star Kitty und Kabuki. Außerdem haben sie den letzten Schliff an den Preis-Assets für die vier Finalisten des Ship Showdowns vorgenommen. Die Charaktergestaltung wurde mit den Inhalten der Alpha 3.16 vorangetrieben, einschließlich eines Textur-Updates für alle Köpfe des DNA-Archetyps. Dies wird die Qualität der Charakteranpassung und der NSC-Köpfe sowohl für PU als auch für SQ42 erheblich verbessern. Für Pyro setzten die Konzeptkünstler die Erstellung von Kostümpaketen mit Kleidung im Frontier-Stil fort, die als Grundlage für die Kleidung des gesamten Systems dienen wird. Außerdem wurden mehrere Rüstungen für die XenoThreat-Gang modelliert, wobei die CDS-Rüstung als Grundlage diente. Kunst (Schiffe) In den USA hat das Schiffsteam die endgültigen Entwürfe für die Crusader Ares fertiggestellt. Dabei wurde der neue großflächige Glow-Workflow in die Triebwerke implementiert, um die Beleuchtung zu verbessern. Außerdem wurde ein zweigeteiltes Materialsystem eingerichtet, das sowohl die ungepanzerten Ionen- als auch die gepanzerten Inferno-Zweige bei der Anwendung von Tönungen unterstützt, so dass jede Version des Schiffes etwas anders aussehen wird. Der Drake Vulture befindet sich nun in der Greybox-Phase - das Innere ist nun fertig und das Team konzentriert sich auf die Fertigstellung des Äußeren, einschließlich der Rückgewinnungsarme, des Nasenschleifers, des Rumpfes, des Cockpits, des Fahrwerks und der Triebwerke. Außerdem haben sie eine klappbare Außenleiter hinzugefügt, über die die Spieler/innen vom Arm aus ins Cockpit gelangen können. Eines der bereits erwähnten unangekündigten Schiffe befindet sich derzeit in der finalen Entwurfsphase, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf dem Polieren von Materialien und Gondeln liegt. Das Augenmerk liegt derzeit auf dynamischen Animationen, um den Spieler/innen mehr Feedback zu geben, wenn das Schiff in Bewegung ist. Ein weiteres Schiff, das im letzten Monatsbericht besprochen wurde, ist nun fertiggestellt. Das Team plant einen Durchgang zur Fehlerbehebung und bereitet sich auf die Einrichtung der endgültigen Farbpalette vor. In Großbritannien wurde ein unangekündigtes Schiff in die Pipeline aufgenommen, während mehrere andere das Stadium der Fertigstellung erreichten. Die Aufgaben für die Crusader A2 Hercules wurden abgeschlossen, einschließlich kleinerer Polierarbeiten und Fehlerbehebungen. Die kommenden MISC-Frachtschiffe kamen gut voran - an der Hülle C wurden zahlreiche Details fertiggestellt, während sich die Hülle A der Whitebox-Überprüfung nähert. Audio Das Audio-Team verbrachte den September damit, die im dritten Quartal gesetzten Ziele abzuschließen und die Vorbereitungen für verschiedene Events zu unterstützen. In Orison wurden die SFX und Dialoge für das Cousin Crow's und den Crusader Showroom fertiggestellt und das Ambiente aufpoliert, die Stimmen abgemischt und gemischt. Die Pläne für die Musik im Raumhafen von Orison schritten voran, und die Raststätte und das Krankenhaus von Grim HEX erhielten ihre letzten SFX- und Dialogdurchläufe. "Die 'grausame Behandlung VO' ist ein besonderes Highlight für Grim HEX, da sie nun im Spiel implementiert ist. Audio-Team Tech Sound Design und SFX arbeiteten gemeinsam an den Effekten für das Krankenbett und die Bombenabwurfstelle. Schließlich arbeitete Audio an den SFX und Dialogen für IAE. Community Der Monat der Community begann mit der Unterstützung des zurückkehrenden XenoThreat-Events, einschließlich der Veröffentlichung einer Infografik, die verschiedene Fakten und Zahlen enthält. Nach dem Event lud das Team die Unterstützer zu einem AMA über dynamische Events ein. Nach der Veranstaltung wurde ein Comm-Link gepostet, um die Zusammenfassung zu erleichtern. Außerhalb des Spiels unterstützte das Team den jährlichen Ship Showdown Wettbewerb. In der ersten Phase war die Community aufgefordert, ihr Lieblingsschiff zu unterstützen, indem sie eine originelle Kreation im Community Hub oder auf Twitter einreichte. Das Team belohnte die 10 Einsendungen, die es für besonders herausragend hielt, mit einem Origin 100i. In der zweiten Phase und im Finale unterstützte die Community den begleitenden Free Fly und berichtete ausführlich über die K.O.-Runden, aus denen schließlich die Argo MPUV-1C als Gesamtsieger hervorging. Zum Abschluss des Monats gab Community den Zeitplan für die diesjährige Digital CitizenCon und das Digital Goodies Pack bekannt, das alle Unterstützer kostenlos erhalten werden. Motor Im August hat das Physik-Team den Backend-Code weiter optimiert, unter anderem für die Implementierung von Soft Bodies. Verschiedene Teile der relevanten Kollisionserkennungsroutinen wurden algorithmisch optimiert, indem ihre Bounding-Volumen-Darstellungen und die Hierarchie verbessert wurden. Auch das Laden und Erstellen der Softbody-Topologie, der Backcode und die Speicherverwaltung wurden verbessert. Außerdem werden Geländemeshes jetzt so gekennzeichnet, dass sie ausschließlich mit einem Raycast beschossen werden können und dass Meshes mit einem einzigen Raycast gebündelt werden können. Außerdem werden kinematische Teile jetzt als gültige bewegliche Bodenkollider für Actor-Entities verwendet. Beim Renderer wurde die Arbeit am globalen Draw Packet Cache fortgesetzt. Es wurde ein Mechanismus hinzugefügt, um den Cache bei Bedarf neu zu erstellen. Die Logik wurde außerdem verfeinert, um zu verhindern, dass Zeichnungspakete mit identischen Argumenten unnötig neu erstellt werden, was für Pinsel wichtig ist. Auf einer höheren Ebene wird die Gen12-Renderschnittstelle jetzt für stat OBJs und Render-Proxys in der gesamten Engine verwendet, was einen weiteren Schritt beim Übergang zum neuen Renderparadigma darstellt. Auch am Shader-System wurden einige Änderungen vorgenommen: Die Initialisierung des Shader-Parsers wurde vereinfacht und der Benutzer-Cache wurde in den APPDATA-Ordner des Fensters verschoben. Dies wird nach der Alpha 3.15 eingeführt und sollte ein langjähriges Problem für einige Nutzer/innen beheben. Außerdem gab es verschiedene Änderungen, um den Code zu überarbeiten und auf Gen12 umzustellen. Der Stepping-Code für lokale Wolkenschatten wurde verfeinert, damit er von den Künstlern leichter zu kontrollieren ist, und so optimiert, dass er nur bei Bedarf ausgewertet wird. Neben dem Eigenschatten werfen die Wolken nun auch ihren Schatten auf die gesamte Szene, was für die korrekte Szenenintegration wichtig ist, wenn das Team beginnt, sie auch auf Planeten zu verwenden. Außerdem wurde das Rendering der Wolkenränder verbessert und den Künstlern wurden Parameter zur Verfügung gestellt, um ihnen ein volumetrischeres Aussehen zu verleihen. Auf der Seite der Core-Engine wurde dem P4K-System die Unterstützung für den Zugriff auf APPDATA hinzugefügt. Das Team hat vor, nicht nur den Shader-Cache-Ordner dort zu speichern, sondern auch alle temporären Dateien des Spielclients dorthin zu verschieben. Das P4K-Dateisystem wurde außerdem verbessert, damit es mit Unicode-Pfaden richtig umgehen kann. Die Arbeit am System zur Leistungsreduzierung wurde mit zahlreichen unterstützenden Änderungen wieder aufgenommen, da es für den täglichen Fortschritt und die Stabilität der Entwicklung immer wichtiger wird. Das Team unterstützte auch das Server-Meshing, indem es den Code entkoppelte, damit er als eigenständiger Dienst laufen kann. Das Team konzentrierte sich auch mehr auf die Optimierung, indem es bestimmte Spielszenarien häufig analysierte, berichtete und aktualisierte. Dies brachte verschiedene Verbesserungen mit sich, die nach der Alpha 3.15 ausgerollt werden. Zum Beispiel wurde das Aufwecken von Entitätskomponenten verbessert, indem die Komponenten eine Zeit lang aktiv gehalten wurden. Der Server Object Container Streaming Code wurde stark optimiert und die Speicherzuweisung bei der Verwendung von CigFunction (Lambdas) wurde verbessert. Es gab auch verschiedene andere Änderungen, wie z. B. die Verlagerung von GPU-Pufferaktualisierungen zur Laufzeit in Hintergrund-Threads. Schließlich wurde der Code der Engine weiter bereinigt, um die Unterstützung von Legacy-Code für Konsolen der letzten Generation zu entfernen, und die Kernspeicherzuweisungen wurden angepasst, um den Entwicklern zu Debugging-Zwecken mehr Kontrolle über das Speicherlayout zu geben. Features (Charaktere & Waffen) Das Feature-Team konzentrierte sich weiterhin auf die Behebung von Fehlern und die Verbesserung der Lebensqualität für die neuen Funktionen Spielerinventar und Akteursstatus. Vor allem das Inventar lief langsamer als bei den internen Spieltests erwartet, daher wurden erhebliche Anstrengungen unternommen, um es so schnell wie möglich zu machen. Das Filtern von Gegenständen steht ganz oben auf der Liste der Qualitätsverbesserungen. Das Greycat Multi-Tool ist jetzt die erste Waffe/ das erste Gadget mit zwei Arten von Nachladevorgängen - einer für die Ampulle des Heilungsaufsatzes und einer für seine Batterie. Das bedeutet, dass der Nutzer zwei verschiedene Ressourcen verwalten muss, um das Beste aus ihm herauszuholen. Die erste Iteration der neuen Logik, die der Zustandsmaschine für die Akteurssteuerung zugrunde liegt, wurde diesen Monat getestet. Diese Logik wurde speziell auf der Grundlage des alten Zustandsautomaten entwickelt und sollte mit der Größe und Komplexität des Projekts deutlich besser skalieren. Außerdem bietet sie bessere Debugging-Tools, die die Zeit für das Finden und Beheben von Fehlern verkürzen. Features (Gameplay) Im Bereich Gameplay-Features wurde die Unterstützung lokaler Inventare fortgesetzt und die NikNax-App für die Alpha 3.15 vorbereitet, wobei die Fehlerbehebung und der Feinschliff der Benutzeroberfläche die meiste Zeit des Teams in Anspruch nahmen. Außerdem unterstützten sie verschiedene Missionsteams bei der Anbindung von Inhalten an das Rufsystem, richteten Läden und Barkeeper in Orison ein und bereiteten sich auf die IAE vor. Außerdem wurde mit der Arbeit an der Möglichkeit begonnen, Gegenstände in Läden zu verkaufen, die zukünftige Überarbeitung der Fracht und Jumptown v2. Features (Fahrzeuge) Im September hat das Team für Fahrzeug-Features Fortschritte bei den Sprungpunkten gemacht und das Party-Springen deutlich verbessert. Außerdem entwickelte das Team neue Animationstechniken für den Rumpf C weiter und unterstützte die VFX mit Verbesserungen an den Bodeneffekten. Die restliche Zeit wurde für die Verbesserung der Schiffsdaten verwendet, um die Entwicklungsprozesse weiter zu unterstützen. Vehicle Experience testete die Bombardierungsmechanik in der Qualitätssicherung, nachdem sie im letzten Monat erfolgreich überarbeitet worden war. Sie befinden sich jetzt in der letzten Fehlerbehebungs- und Optimierungsphase vor der Veröffentlichung und warten auf das Feedback aus den Evocati- und PTU-Phasen. Es wurden auch Verbesserungen an den Geschütztürmen für eine zukünftige Veröffentlichung vorgenommen und Experimente zur Raketenabstimmung und -balance im gesamten Spiel durchgeführt. Das Team prüft außerdem, wie die Operator-Modi weiter ausgebaut werden können. Vehicle Features bereitete außerdem die Schiffsreleases der Alpha 3.15 vor, unterstützte Actor Features mit dem Rauschmodus für Piloten und Fahrer und schloss allgemeine Fehlerbehebungen und Verbesserungen ab. Grafik & VFX-Programmierung Das Grafikteam nahm weitere Leistungsverbesserungen am Renderprofil sowie Optimierungen an Post-Effekten (Tiefenschärfe und Bewegungsunschärfe), Terrain-Rendering und Nebel vor, um die gleiche Leistung bei höheren Auflösungen zu erhalten. Darüber hinaus wurde der Wassershader verbessert. Diese Änderungen ermöglichen es, dass die Schattierung auf den verfügbaren Kachelbeleuchtungsdaten und nicht auf der nächstgelegenen Umgebungssonde basiert, um eine konsistentere Beleuchtung in Szenen mit Wasservolumen zu schaffen. Außerdem wurde die Beleuchtung von Wasservolumina so geändert, dass volumetrische Faktoren wie Wolken und Nebel berücksichtigt werden, wodurch frühere Probleme vermieden werden, bei denen Wasservolumina lokale Nebelvolumina beim Shading ignorierten. Außerdem haben sie das Render-to-Texture-Refactoring vorangetrieben, indem sie Region Copy für statische RTTOs implementiert haben, um den vorhandenen Inhalt wiederzuverwenden, anstatt ihn neu zu rendern. Das erhöht die Leistung und spart den Verbrauch von Scene-Passes. Außerdem wurde der Algorithmus zum Packen des RTT-Atlas neu geschrieben, um die neue Funktion zum Kopieren von Regionen zu unterstützen, wodurch er robuster und einfacher zu warten ist. Schließlich untersuchte Graphics die Validierungsfehler und sammelte die erfassten analytischen Vulkan-Informationen für zukünftige Erweiterungen. Beleuchtung Das Beleuchtungsteam polierte und optimierte die neuen Läden von Orison: Cousin Crow's, Providence Surplus und den Crusader Showroom. "Wir haben uns viel Mühe gegeben, um sicherzustellen, dass diese neuen Läden thematisch zum Stil von Orison passen, aber auch, dass jeder Laden einen eigenen Stil und eine eigene Note hat. Um die neuen Standorte zu unterstützen, haben wir die Beleuchtung für ihre jeweiligen Plattformen weiter optimiert." Beleuchtungsteam Außerdem wurde die Fertigstellung der Krankenhäuser und Kliniken fortgesetzt, wobei das Feedback der Art Directors umgesetzt und visuelle Fehler behoben wurden. Die Unterstützung für die Kolonialismus-Außenposten wurde fortgesetzt, wobei die Beleuchtungsübergänge für alle aktuellen Module und Komponenten fast abgeschlossen sind. Die Optimierungs- und Polierarbeiten werden fortgesetzt, und es wurde eine neue dynamische Beleuchtung hinzugefügt, um das Schleusensystem zu unterstützen. Narrative Während die Veröffentlichung der Alpha 3.15 näher rückt, wurde an der Narrative gearbeitet, um sicherzustellen, dass alle finalen Elemente und letzten Details vor der Veröffentlichung vorhanden sind. Dazu gehörten auch die Hinweise, die zur Unterstützung der neuen Gameplay-Funktionen hinzugefügt wurden, und die Tagebucheinträge, die helfen, einige der komplexeren Systeme zu erklären. Für NikNax passte das Team die Namen und Werte von Gegenständen an und änderte insbesondere alle Rüstungskapazitäten von Speicherpunkten (SP) in microSCU (µSCU). Die Delphi-Ruf-App wurde ebenfalls überarbeitet, um sicherzustellen, dass alles so klar wie möglich ist, da Organisationen nun mehrere Bereiche haben können, in denen Spieler/innen Ränge verdienen können. Das Team verbrachte auch viel Zeit mit Playtests, um so viele Bugs wie möglich zu identifizieren und zu beheben. Über die Alpha 3.15 hinaus wurde Zeit damit verbracht, Details über das in der Entwicklung befindliche Hacking-Gameplay, die Raumstationen von Pyro und die nicht wasserbasierten Ozeane zu besprechen. Außerdem wurde eine Aufnahmesitzung zur Aufnahme der Dialoge in den Missionen und im Lautsprechersystem durchgeführt und die Arbeit mit KI, Design und Audio an neuen NSC-Verhaltensweisen fortgesetzt. "Für die Geschichtenliebhaber unter euch gab es im September eine ganze Reihe neuer Beiträge auf der Website. Die Loremakers dieses Quartals: Community Questions" wurde mit einigen Leckerbissen über militärische Ränge veröffentlicht. Ein Buchauszug aus Always Forward: A UEE Marine History, der ursprünglich im Jump Point Magazin erschienen ist, wurde für Nicht-Abonnenten veröffentlicht. (Abonnenten erhalten jeden Monat eine neue Ausgabe des Jump Point Magazins mit neuen Geschichten, ausführlichen Interviews, Einblicken in das Design und einem schönen Vorwort von Redakteur Benjamin Lesnick. Es lohnt sich auf jeden Fall, es zu lesen). Außerdem haben wir einen tiefen Einblick in die neue medizinische Geschichte der Regeneration gegeben. Und nicht zuletzt wurden der ständig wachsenden Galactapedia neue faszinierende Einträge hinzugefügt." Narrative Team QA Der Hauptfokus des QA-Teams lag auf den Vorbereitungen für den Alpha 3.15-Zyklus, insbesondere auf der Sicherstellung einer angemessenen Abdeckung für Evocati und Welle 1 PTU. Für die Entwicklung arbeitete das Team vor allem QA Test Requests (QATR) ab, sobald sie eintrafen. Viele davon erforderten umfangreiche Tests, da sie miteinander verbundene Funktionen enthielten, die das Spiel grundlegend verändern. Es wurde eine neue Veröffentlichungs-Checkliste erstellt, um die unvermeidlichen Anfragen für tägliche Veröffentlichungen zu bewältigen, und der Ausbildungsweg des Teams wurde überarbeitet, um ihn besser mit der allgemeinen Entwicklung abzustimmen. Bei den eingebetteten Tests konzentrierte sich das KI-basierte Team auf die Verbesserung der Bewegungen von NSCs, was weitreichende Auswirkungen hat. Außerdem wurden Geschütztürme, das Zielen und die allgemeine Funktionalität als Reaktion auf Spielerbedrohungen getestet. Das Engine-Team setzte die Stresstests für PCs mit minimalen Anforderungen fort und führte die PageHeap-Tests fort, um Speicherlecks zu finden. Außerdem wurden die Automatisierungsschulungen fortgesetzt, mit dem Ziel, automatisierte Testfälle für verschiedene Abteilungen zu erstellen. Außerdem unterstützte die QA das Tools-Team weiterhin mit DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore, CopyBuild und dem Sandbox-Editor. Systemische Dienste & Tools Im September hat Systemic Services & Tools (SST) weiter an der Wirtschaft, den Tools und Quantum (der KI-Simulation) gearbeitet. Außerdem wurden Edge Cases für eine einfachere Nutzung und Aufzeichnung überarbeitet. SST schloss einige grundlegende Anpassungen an der Diffusion und der Kommunikation mit dem DGS in Form von Anpassungen an der DirectConnect DGS Thread Bridge ab. Die Service-Ingenieure arbeiten jetzt zusammen mit ihren Kollegen aus dem Gameplay Engineering an einem neuen Spielsystem "für den kaufmännisch orientierten Spieler". Die Arbeit am intelligenten NPC-Spawning geht weiter, und das Team hat einen beeindruckenden internen Meilenstein erreicht. In Vorbereitung auf die Alpha 3.15 wurden neue Probleme im Inventarsystem und den Backend-Diensten behoben. Turbulent (Dienstleistungen) Letzten Monat hat das Live-Tools-Team von Turbulent einen neuen Launcher bereitgestellt. Dieser enthält eine aktualisierte Logik für die Verifizierungsfunktion, verlängert die Zeit der Warnmeldung beim Spielstart und aktualisiert die Bindungen mit einer neuen Ladesequenz. Das Team der Game Services hat den Disziplinierungsdienst weiterentwickelt und die meisten kritischen Aufforderungen erfüllt. Die Arbeiten am Launcher und im Spiel sind ebenfalls abgeschlossen, und die QA-Phase beginnt bald. Das Team setzte die Überarbeitung des Entitätsgraphen fort und arbeitete an dem Matchmaking-Dienst. Das Webteam hat an den Seiten für CitizenCon und IAE gearbeitet und ein neues Backend-Tool entwickelt, um das Aussehen und die Funktionalität aller Website-Inhalte zu verbessern. UI Im letzten Monat konzentrierte sich das UI-Team auf Leistungsverbesserungen und optimierte einige der kostspieligeren Bereiche der Benutzeroberfläche. "Wir haben weitere Fortschritte bei der Arbeit am zugrunde liegenden Code der Starmap gemacht und damit begonnen, einige Platzhalter-UI in die Entwicklungs-Builds zu bringen, damit wir wirklich anfangen können, damit herumzuspielen, so wie du es schließlich auch tun wirst!" UI-Team Das UI-Team hat außerdem an den Bildschirmen für die kommenden Missionsarchetypen Infiltrieren und Verteidigen gearbeitet und die Bildschirme für Krankenhäuser und das persönliche Inventar fertiggestellt. Fahrzeugtechnik Die Fahrzeugtechnik hat einer Squadron 42-spezifischen Fahrzeugmechanik den letzten Schliff gegeben, mit dem Ziel, sie im PU zu erweitern. Außerdem wurden Bugs für Alpha 3.15 behoben und die Grundlagen für die Integration von Radar und Scanning in das FPS-Gameplay geschaffen. Einige funktionale Änderungen am Radar- und Scanning-Design sind ebenfalls in Arbeit. Wichtige Verbesserungen bei der Steuerung von Türen und anderen raumbezogenen Interaktionen (z. B. Licht, Atmosphäre und Kommunikationssysteme) befinden sich in der Prototyping-Phase. Das Ziel ist es, dass die Spieler/innen ihre Umgebung selbst steuern können, während sie zu Fuß unterwegs sind. "Erwarte, dass es bald mehr Interaktionen mit dem Türbedienfeld geben wird! Fahrzeugtechnik VFX VFX beendete die Arbeit an den neuen Fahrzeug-Wakes, die zusammen mit dem Vehicle Feature Team durchgeführt wurde, und die Effekte für ein noch nicht angekündigtes Schiff wurden fertiggestellt. Außerdem wurde die Entwicklungsarbeit an den Kriegsschauplätzen fortgesetzt. WIR SEHEN UNS NÄCHSTEN MONAT WIEDER... September was a busy month for all teams at Cloud Imperium. Alongside preparing for the excitement of this October’s all-digital CitizenCon, the final touches were added to many features coming in Alpha 3.15, and great progress was made on content coming later in the year. Read on for all the details, including the latest on the Personal Inventory, various news ships, Pyro, and jump points. AI Content In September, AI Content concluded their work on the new ‘worker’ behavior, which the designers will use to quickly add life to various environments. This will replace many legacy behaviors until environment-specific AI is added. They also added security ‘T0’ to outposts. Now, NPCs can find and use usables on their patrols, making their routes feel more believable and less robotic. NPCs can guard entrances by blocking entry or checking IDs too. The bartender (vendor) was expanded with new ‘cafe’ usables to allow players to order soft drinks at locations in Area18. Progress continued on the patron and goods dealer behaviors detailed last month, and doctors and nurses were to New Babbage and Orison’s hospitals. These are progressing well, with a QATR taking place early next month. AI Feature The AI Feature team continued to work on perception changes for stealth, including creating a mechanism to tweak the ranges of sound events like weapons firing, bullet impact, footsteps, and vaulting. They also updated the debug renderer to show the type of sound event, enabling designers to identify the sound events they’re working on. Progress was made on melee combat, improving the combo system to make it more data-driven so that designers can add new combos quickly and easily. Previously, combo attacks were set up in the Subsumption logic of the melee attack behavior, stringing together multiple single attack tasks. Now a single ‘combo attack’ task is used to improve responsiveness between the parts of the combo. AI Features also worked with the Actor team to come up with a solution for the AI hitting low or high targets with melee attacks, adjusting the spine bones’ rotation up and down to bend towards the target. The clean-up of motion capture animation assets for cowering, surrendering, perception reactions, and unarmed cover usage continued too. Finally, the team fixed some issues with ships defending a lead ship getting stuck in a loop trying to select a new target. AI Tech Last month, the AI Tech team focused on optimizing several AI systems to improve performance, including turret behavior. Focus was given to making 3D collision avoidance for AI Ships work in complex scenes with narrow spaces where bounding boxes for obstacles aren’t a viable solution. There was a variety of updates to pathing, pathfinding, path execution, and movement alongside continued progress on planetary navigation too. For the Subsumption Editor, they finished implementing the docking system, which will enable them to reorganize the UI. Bugs were also fixed for Alpha 3.15, and the team continued to write technical documentation related to AI systems and server meshing. Animation The Animation team spent September improving vendors, including adding new items and location-based assets and transitions to give a more life-like result. They also discussed how to best implement emotional state idles to characters to give them life when idling. Work on behavior blockouts and animations for the patron continued – some of the assets previously shot for patrons sitting at bars is being implemented to give a more robust feel to NPCs at bars and counters. “We dropped in a considerable amount of new idle animations for characters sitting, and are working towards the day when no character looks like a statue but rather a living, breathing person. Some of these animations have not been fully edited yet, but we wanted to get them in so we can feel out the results in the PTU and PU.” Animation Team On the player side, the team began reworking various select and deselect asset sets so that they work well in all instances, including with the new inventory system. Improvements were made to drunk locomotion that will, alongside a new asset drop, significantly improve the visuals. Art (Characters) Last month, Character Art prepared assets for Alpha 3.15, and beyond. The tech artists also finished skinning two new armors debuting in the coming patch that will help fill out various gameplay archetypes. For Subscribers, two new helmets scheduled for release at the end of the year were modeled and passed to tech art for skinning. These will be paired with color variants of existing armors, like the recent Star Kitty and Kabuki helmets. They also put the finishing touches on the prize assets based on the Ship Showdown’s final four. Character Art progressed with Alpha 3.16 content, including a texture update pass on all DNA archetype heads. This will massively improve the quality of the Character Customizer and NPC heads for both the PU and SQ42. For Pyro, the concept artists continued creating costume packs of the frontier-style clothing that will serve as the basis of clothing for the whole system. Multiple armors were also modeled for the XenoThreat gang using the CDS armor as a base. Art (Ships) In the US, the Ship team completed final art for the Crusader Ares, which involved implementing the new large-scale glow workflow into the thrusters for improved lighting. They also set up a bifurcated material system to support both the non-armored Ion and armored Inferno branches when applying tints, so each version of the ship will appear slightly differently. The Drake Vulture moved into the greybox stage – the interior is now completed, and the team are focusing on finishing the exterior, including the reclamation arms, nose grinder, body, cockpit, landing gear, and thrusters. They also added a collapsible exterior ladder to allow players to access the cockpit from the arm. One of the previously mentioned unannounced ships is currently in the final art phase, with a focus on polishing materials and nacelles. Attention is currently directed at dynamic animations to give players more feedback when the ship is in motion. Another ship discussed in the last month’s report is now art complete. The team is planning a bug-fixing pass and preparing to set up the final tint range. In the UK, an unannounced ship moved down the pipeline while several others reached the final-art stage. Tasks for the Crusader A2 Hercules were closed out, including minor polishing and bug fixing. The upcoming MISC cargo ships progressed well – the Hull C had numerous details finalized, while the Hull A is approaching its whitebox review. Audio The Audio team spent September closing out goals set in Q3 and supporting the build-up to various events. Orison had a final push, with the SFX and dialogue for Cousin Crow’s and the Crusader Showroom completed alongside an ambiance polish, VO tours, and mixing. Plans for Orison Spaceport’s music progressed, and the rest stop and Grim HEX hospital locations received their final SFX and dialogue passes. “The ‘gruesome treatment VO’ is a particular highlight for Grim HEX now it’s implemented in-game.” Audio Team Tech Sound Design and SFX worked together to add effects to the medical bed and bomb delivery UI. Finally, Audio worked on SFX and dialogue for IAE. Community Community’s month began supporting the returning XenoThreat event, including publishing an infographic detailing various facts and figures. After the event, the team invited the backers to an AMA on dynamic events. Once complete, they posted a comm-link to make it easier to recap. Outside the game, the team supported the annual Ship Showdown competition. During phase one, the community was challenged to support their favorite craft by submitting an original creation to the Community Hub or Twitter, with the team rewarding the 10 submissions they felt were particularly outstanding with an Origin 100i. During phase two and the finals, Community supported the accompanying Free Fly and detailed the knockout rounds that ultimately crowned the Argo MPUV-1C as the overall winner. Community closed out the month announcing this year’s Digital CitizenCon schedule and the Digital Goodies Pack that all backers will receive for free. Engine In August, the Physics team continued to optimize backend code, including for soft body implementation. Various parts of relevant collision detection routines were optimized algorithmically by improving their bounding volume representations and hierarchy. Soft body topology loading and building, baking code, and memory management were improved too. Additionally, terrain meshes are now flagged so that they can be exclusively raycast against along with allowing meshes to cluster with a single raycast. Moreover, kinematic parts are now used as valid moving ground colliders on actor entities. For the renderer, work continued on the global draw packet cache. A mechanism was added to rebuild the cache when necessary. Its logic was also refined to prevent the unnecessary recreation of draw packets with identical arguments, which is important for brushes. On a higher level, the Gen12 render interface is now used for stat OBJs and render proxies throughout the engine, which marks another step in the transition to the new render paradigm. The shader system saw several changes too – shader parser initialization was streamlined, and the user cache was moved to the ‘Window’s APPDATA folder’. This will be rolled out post Alpha 3.15 and should fix a long-standing issue for some users. There were also various changes to refactor and transition code to Gen12. Regarding atmosphere and volumetric clouds, there have been various improvements to cloud shadows. The stepping code for local cloud shadows has been refined to be easier to control by artists as well as optimized so that it’s not evaluated unless necessary. Aside from self-shadowing, clouds now also cast their shadows onto the entire scene which has become important for proper scene integration as the team start to use them on planets as well. Additionally, work to improve the rendering of cloud edges has been completed, and parameters exposed to artists, to give them a more volumetric look. Research went into various topics: 1) a quick prototype for better rendering of rain clouds was implemented, 2) integration of cloud shadows into the atmosphere has been implemented (among other things will allow for light shafts from clouds), and 3) because of these shadows in the atmosphere a prototype for improved rendering of multi scattering in clouds and atmosphere was implemented. It acknowledges the presence of clouds in the atmosphere when it comes to indirect lighting and will help shading clouds (brighter, more natural white tones in shadows) as well as the ambiance of overcast skies on ground (less hazy and blueish – in case of earth like planets). These research items are still WIP and will hopefully mature enough to be shipped in the coming months with other improvements to rendering quality and performance. On the core engine side, support for ‘APPDATA’ access was added to the P4K system. Aside from now storing the user shader cache folder there, the team plan to eventually move all temporary game-client files to this new location. The P4K file system was also improved to properly deal with Unicode paths. Work on the performance regression system picked up again with numerous supporting changes, as it’s becoming important to daily progress and development stability. The team also supported server meshing by decoupling code so that it can run as a standalone service. They started focusing more on optimization too, with certain game scenarios frequently analyzed, reported, and updated. This brought various improvements that will be rolled out post Alpha 3.15. For example, entity-component wakeup was improved by keeping components active for some time. Server Object Container Streaming code was heavily optimized, and memory allocation when using CigFunction (lambdas) was improved. There were various other amends too, such as moving runtime GPU buffer updates to background threads. Features (Characters & Weapons) The Feature team continued focusing on bug fixing and quality-of-life improvements for the new Player Inventory and Actor Status features. In particular, the inventory was running slower than experienced on internal playtests, so significant effort was put into making it more responsive wherever possible. Item filtering is at the top of the list of quality-of-life improvements. The Greycat Multi-Tool is now the first weapon/gadget with two types of reloading action – one for the healing attachment vial and one for its battery. This means the user has to manage two different resources to get the best from it. The first iteration of the new underlying logic for the actor-control state machine began testing this month. This logic is purpose-built based on the use of the old state machine and should scale significantly better with project size and complexity. It will also offer better debugging tools, reducing the time it takes to find and fix bugs. Features (Gameplay) Gameplay Features continued supporting local inventories and getting the NikNax app ready for Alpha 3.15, with bug fixing and UI polishing taking a majority of the team’s time. They also supported various mission teams in connecting content to the reputation system, set up shops and bartenders in Orison, and prepared for IAE. Looking further ahead, work began on allowing items to be sold at shops, the future cargo rework, and Jumptown v2. Features (Vehicles) September saw the Vehicle Feature team progress with jump points, significantly progressing with party jumping. In addition, the team further developed new animation techniques for the Hull C, and supported VFX with improvements to ground effects. The remaining time was spent on ship data debug improvements to further support development processes. Vehicle Experience tested the bombing mechanic in QA after a successful review and polish period last month. They’re now in the final bug-fixing and optimization stage leading up to release and are awaiting feedback from the Evocati and PTU phases. Improvements were also made to turrets for a future release, and experiments were done on missile tuning and balance across the game. The team are also exploring how to further build on operator modes. Vehicle Features also prepared for Alpha 3.15’s ship releases, supported Actor Features with the intoxication mode for piloting and driving, completed general bug fixing and improvements. Graphics & VFX Programming The Graphics team made further performance improvements to the render profile as well as optimizations to post effects (depth of field and motion blur), terrain rendering, and fog to maintain the same performance at higher resolutions. Alongside this, they improved the water shader. These changes allow shading to be based on available tiled-lighting data rather than the nearest environment probe to create more consistent lighting in scenes involving water volumes. They also changed water volume lighting to take into account volumetrics, such as clouds and fog, avoiding previous issues where water volumes would ignore local fog volumes when shading. They also progressed on the render-to-texture refactor by implementing region copy for static RTTOs to reuse the existing content instead of re-rendering it. This will ultimately increase performance and save on scene pass usage. They also re-wrote the RTT atlas packing algorithm to support the new region copy feature, making it more robust and easier to maintain. Finally, Graphics looked into validation errors and collated captured Vulkan analytical information for future extensions. Lighting The Lighting team polished and optimized Orison’s new shops; Cousin Crow’s, Providence Surplus, and the Crusader Showroom. “A lot of effort went into ensuring these new locations thematically fit within the style of Orison but that each has a unique style and flavor. To help support the addition of these locations, we made further lighting optimization work around their respective platforms.” Lighting Team They also continued to finalize the upcoming hospitals and clinics, implementing feedback from the art directors and fixing visual bugs. Support continued for colonialism outposts, with lighting passes almost complete on all current modules and components. Optimization and polish work is ongoing and new dynamic lighting was added to support airlock cycling. Narrative As the release of Alpha 3.15 draws closer, Narrative worked to ensure all final elements and last details are in place before it goes live. This included a pass of the hints added in support of the new gameplay features and journal entries to help explain some of the more complex systems. For NikNax, the team adjusted item names and stats, specifically changing all armor capacity amounts from Storage Points (SP) to microSCU (µSCU). The Delphi reputation app also received attention to ensure everything is as clear as possible now that organizations can have multiple scopes for players to earn ranks in. The team also spent time playtesting to identify and resolve as many bugs as possible. Beyond Alpha 3.15, time was spent discussing details about the in-development hacking gameplay, Pyro’s space stations, and non-water-based oceans. A recording session to capture mission and public address system dialogue was also completed, and work continued with AI, Design, and Audio on new NPC behaviors. “For the lore lovers out there, September brought a whole host of new narrative posts to the website. This quarter’s Loremakers: Community Questions went out with some tasty tidbits regarding military ranks. A book excerpt from Always Forward: A UEE Marine History, originally featured in Jump Point magazine, was released to non-subscribers. (For those of you who might not be aware, every month Subscribers receive a new issue of Jump Point magazine that features new lore, in-depth interviews, dives into design, and a delightful forward from editor Benjamin Lesnick. Definitely worth checking out!) We also released a deep dive into the new medical lore behind regeneration. Last but not least, a new batch of fascinating entries were added to the continually growing Galactapedia.” Narrative Team QA QA’s primary publishing focus was on preparation for the Alpha 3.15 cycle, specifically ensuring they have proper coverage for Evocati and wave one PTU. For development, the team predominantly worked through QA Test Requests (QATR) as they arrived. Many needed significant testing as they included interconnected features that fundamentally change how the game is played. A new publishing checklist was created to manage the inevitable requests for daily publishes, and the team’s training path was reworked to better align with wider development. For embedded testing, the AI-based team focused on movement fixes for NPCs, which has far-reaching implications. They also tested turrets, targeting, and general functionality in response to player threats. For the Engine team, support continued with minimum-spec PC stress testing along with continued PageHeap testing to catch memory leaks. Furthermore, automation training continued, with the aim to ultimately create automated test cases for different departments. QA also continued to support the Tools team with DataForge, StarWords, ExcelCore, CopyBuild, and the sandbox editor. Systemic Services & Tools Throughout September, Systemic Services & Tools (SST) continued to work on the economy, tools, and Quantum (the AI simulation). Edge cases were also wrapped up for easier use and recording. SST wrapped up some foundational adjustments to diffusion and how it communicates with the DGS in the form of adjustments to the DirectConnect DGS Thread Bridge. The service engineers are now working with their Gameplay Engineering counterparts on a new gameplay system “for the mercantilely minded player.” Work continues in earnest on intelligent NPC spawning, with an impressive internal milestone hit by the team. Finally, in preparation for Alpha 3.15, new edge cases in the inventory system and backend services were addressed. Turbulent (Services) Last month, Turbulent’s Live Tools team deployed a new launcher. This contains updated logic for the verify feature, extending the time of the warning message on game launch and updating bindings with a new loading sequence. The Game Services team progressed with the discipline service, with most critical calls being delivered. The launcher and in-game work for this is done too, with the QA phase beginning soon. The team continued to refactor the entity graph and worked on the matchmaking service. The Web team worked on pages for CitizenCon and IAE and created a new backend tool to improve the appearance and functionality of all website content. UI Last month, the UI team focused on performance improvements, optimizing some of the more costly areas of the user interface. “We made more progress on the underlying code work of the Starmap, and started to get some placeholder UI into development builds so we can really start playing around with it, as you will eventually!” UI Team UI also worked on screens for the upcoming infiltrate and defend mission archetypes, and finished the screens for hospitals and the personal inventory. Vehicle Tech Vehicle Tech put the finishing touches on a Squadron 42-specific vehicle mechanic, with the aim of expanding it into the PU. Alongside this, bugs for Alpha 3.15 were fixed, and the groundwork for incorporating radar and scanning into FPS gameplay progressed. Some functional radar and scanning design changes are in the works too. Major improvements in how players control doors and other room-related interactions (such as lights, atmosphere, and communication systems) are in the prototyping stages. The aim is to fully immerse players by allowing them to control their environment while exploring on foot. “Expect more door control panel interactions to come soon!” Vehicle Tech VFX VFX finished off their work on the new vehicle wakes, which was done alongside the Vehicle Feature team, and effects were completed for an unannounced ship. Finally, further development work was done on Theaters of War. WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH… Links ----- Text URL XenoThreat [ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18255-XenoThreat-Returns ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18255-XenoThreat-Returns) infographic [ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18330-The-Fight-Against-XenoThreat ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18330-The-Fight-Against-XenoThreat) comm-link [ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18309-Dynamic-Events-AMA-Recap ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18309-Dynamic-Events-AMA-Recap) particularly outstanding [ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/ship-showdown-2951-submissions-top-10-winners ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/ship-showdown-2951-submissions-top-10-winners) Free Fly [ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18320-Ship-Showdown-Top-Four-Free-Fly ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18320-Ship-Showdown-Top-Four-Free-Fly) Digital CitizenCon schedule [ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/citizencon/ ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/citizencon/) Digital Goodies Pack [ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/citizencon-digital-goodies-pack-2 ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/citizencon-digital-goodies-pack-2) Loremakers: Community Questions [ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/18297-Loremakers-Community-Questions ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/18297-Loremakers-Community-Questions) Always Forward: A UEE Marine History [ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/18316-Always-Forward-A-UEE-Marine-History ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/18316-Always-Forward-A-UEE-Marine-History) new medical lore behind regeneration [ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/18327-Loremakers-Guide-To-Regeneration ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/18327-Loremakers-Guide-To-Regeneration) Images ------ 14 image/jpeg [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/3vi6gidnvjjm9r/source/Cousin-Crows-Lighting-Pass.jpg) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/3vi6gidnvjjm9r/source/Cousin-Crows-Lighting-Pass.jpg) Cousin-Crows-Lighting-Pass.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/27893) Last Modified 4 years ago Size 4.96 MB [Source](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/3vi6gidnvjjm9r/source/Cousin-Crows-Lighting-Pass.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/27893) image/jpeg [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/tsfvsf4o59387r/source/Sneak.jpg) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/tsfvsf4o59387r/source/Sneak.jpg) Sneak.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/27894) Last Modified 4 years 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[Source](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/8m2c1vusdb0hj/source.png) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/32961) image/jpeg [ ![](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/4x3lw5w4vk3o4/source.jpg) ](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/4x3lw5w4vk3o4/source.jpg) source.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/32962) Last Modified 2 years ago Size 571.04 KB [Source](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/4x3lw5w4vk3o4/source.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/32962) image/jpeg [ ![](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/x5aus9nndxu4s/source.jpg) ](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/x5aus9nndxu4s/source.jpg) source.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/38000) Last Modified 1 year ago Size 1.13 MB [Source](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/x5aus9nndxu4s/source.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/38000) image/jpeg [ ![](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/fe6j2ifv3ash4/source.jpg) ](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/fe6j2ifv3ash4/source.jpg) source.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/38060) Last Modified 1 year ago Size 1.69 MB [Source](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/fe6j2ifv3ash4/source.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/38060) image/jpeg [ ![](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/pgmk7f9gt3j9y/source.jpg) ](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/pgmk7f9gt3j9y/source.jpg) source.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/38084) Last Modified 1 year ago Size 1.99 MB [Source](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/pgmk7f9gt3j9y/source.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/38084) image/png [ ![](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/svep7j1purh1f/source.png) ](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/svep7j1purh1f/source.png) source.png [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/40391) Last Modified 10 months ago Size 5.29 MB [Source](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/svep7j1purh1f/source.png) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/40391) Metadata -------- CIG ID 18348 Channel Undefined Category Undefined Series Monthly Reports Comments 29 Published 4 years ago (2021-10-07T00:00:00+00:00) [RSI Article](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18348-Star-Citizen-Monthly-Report-September-2021) [API](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/api/comm-links/18348)