Alpha 3.14 Postmortem - [Comm-Links](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links) - Alpha 3.14 Postmortem Alpha 3.14 Postmortem ===================== Undefined Undefined None [Previous](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/18348) [Next](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/18351) Content ------- English Alpha 3.14 Postmortem 10/08/2021 - 1:00 PM On August 6, 2021, we launched Alpha 3.14: Welcome To Orison, which introduced a number of new features and changes, including Power Management, Missile Operator Mode, and, of course, Crusader and its majestic city in the clouds, Orison. The following is a postmortem from the senior developers themselves, detailing what was delivered and their thoughts on how it went. Locations Ian Leyland, Star Citizen Art Director What went well? The release of Orison was a huge milestone for the team and the project. It was the most challenging and ambitious landing zone to date, but the team was able to draw upon the experience from previous landing zones to deliver the location. Orison is one of the most accessible locations for the player, needing only restricted areas around the main social spaces. Alpha 3.14 also showed the lobby spaces of Orison General and Brentworth in New Babbage. These hospital locations will open up with the medical gameplay loop coming in Alpha 3.15. Crusader was the first Gas Giant in Star Citizen and with it we saw the first version of a volumetric cloud system. What didn’t go so well? Regarding the overall player experience for Orison, there were unfortunately quite a few elements that didn’t make the initial release. For example, specific missions, localized tourism-based interactivity, and, of course, space whales. We would also have liked to release Orison with all the planned shop locations, but rather than hold the release of the location, we decided to release these additional shops in the coming patch. What we’ll do differently in the future As above, we can always improve on aligning on multi-discipline features so that they’re delivered in time for a location release window and give the best initial experience to the player. Improvements and optimizations to some of our new tech features will also benefit the experience and performance of our locations. Vehicle Pillar John Crewe, Vehicle Director In Star Citizen Alpha 3.14, the Vehicle Pillar delivered some fundamental changes to how spaceship combat plays out with some of the biggest changes to the vehicle system since we introduced IFCS 2.0 in Alpha 3.5! Power Management V2 What went well? Formally known as “Capacitors”, Power Management v2 evolved over its development to not just include the capacitor system but also the related interactions with other systems and the power triangle on the MFDs. Though outside the original scope of the feature, we managed to incorporate all these additional interactions within the initial delivery, helping increase the quality of the feature out of the box. The capacitor system itself provided an instant change to the dynamic between ships during combat, especially so when dealing with multicrew ships and turrets as they have become significantly stronger. This has helped to reduce the often-cited argument of “why bring a friend in my ship when two ships are stronger.” What didn’t go so well? While we managed to deliver it all, internally it came in very hot due to staff availability issues beyond our control. This required members from other teams and departments to help pitch in and ensure everything had at least an initial balance pass by the time it hit the PTU. A decision fairly late on in production moved the Power Triangle from the HUD to just the MFDs, which caused readability issues in terms of how players interact with the system. This is something we want to look at again in future iterations. A few ships had some tricky-to-solve capacitor issues resulting in undesirable shot counts throughout the PTU stage, which caused less than desirable player experience. What we’ll do differently in the future As often is the case when we roll out changes that impact the entire plethora of vehicles we have in the game, they take a considerable amount of time to implement. This time around, we were hampered more than planned for. So, when doing these changes in the future, we’ll involve other teams earlier on to help provide support quicker. Due to things taking longer than we had planned, we didn’t manage to get it to our internal QA and then Evocati in a complete state. This meant a lot of balance work was done during PTU that should have been done earlier. Missile Operator Mode What went well? Missile Operator Mode was a fundamental shift in both experience and mentality for using missiles and I think it was well-received due to the additional clarity and features you get compared to the previous setup. You are now able to competently cycle and arm multiple missiles as well as get better information about the lock state of your target. You also have the ability to dumb-fire missiles, which was previously unavailable. The downside of being in a separate mode preventing the use of both guns and missiles was predicted by some to cause some kickback, but the feedback was overwhelmingly positive as it was clear, once some tuning was done, that those two weapon types operate in very different engagement ranges. So, using both together is something that has a very minimal window of opportunity and restricting you to one or the other forces a choice of how you want to engage in combat. What didn’t go so well? We didn’t explain the feature well enough during Evocati and PTU, leading to confusion about what the new UI elements displayed and what they were actually doing. The feature itself beyond that was pretty robust. What we’ll do differently in the future The next logical step is to expand this mode to allow multiple target-locks and incorporate other ordnance types, which you’ll see in Alpha 3.15 with the introduction of the A2 Hercules and its bombs. Canvas Sliced Ship HUDs What went well? With the above features coming online, we identified before development began that the current HUD would not be suitable and a replacement was needed. Combined with needing to move away from Flash/Scaleform to our own Building Blocks system, we quickly iterated on multiple concepts that could be implemented in-game rapidly and be adjusted on the fly to help nail down a functional UI. The new system in its current public iteration is a generic, single layout only differing in color per manufacturer. However, in the future it will allow us to heavily stylize each manufacturer’s HUD, even down to variants per ship. What didn’t go so well? With new tech always comes some quirks. In this instance, we lost a lot of the readability that we’d spent so long achieving with the previous HUD system. It was only during the PTU phase that we managed to bring it back online thanks to the Graphics and UI Tech teams. What we’ll do differently in the future As mentioned above, whenever a feature touches all vehicles in the game, we need to provide visibility and guidance to teams who can help us implement it much sooner so they can hit the ground running rather than needing training on how to implement the feature into existing content. For example, the HUD required many aspects of the ship content to be setup in a specific way. RSI Constellation Taurus Completing the venerable Constellation series, Alpha 3.14 finally brought the Constellation Taurus to the game, complete with its extended hull section designed to haul more cargo than the other variants. Production on the vehicle was relatively straightforward, albeit it often delayed and stop/start due to other company priorities. And, we had planned to improve the cockpit visibility across all the variants as part of this release but decided to save this for its future “Gold Standard” pass. One area that changed from the concept was the lower turret, which was originally completely removed in favor of a shielded cargo area. We iterated on a few ideas during production but none felt right or they had big compromises to usability. Having it be externally accessible required a lot of mechanics to be added to a small space reducing the actual capacity it could hold, while having it internally accessible again caused issues with interaction and the movement of cargo through the ship. In the end, we decided to repurpose the redundant Merlin docking room into the shielded cargo room, making use of otherwise dead space and allowing us to keep the turret and instead equip it with tractor beams for easier cargo loading and acquisition. Overall, the ship was well received and the full line of Constellations being available is a great milestone, but all of them will benefit greatly from a Gold Standard pass to push them to the same quality as other vehicles in the game, especially internally. Alpha 3.14 Postmortem 10/08/2021 - 13:00 UHR Am 6. August 2021 haben wir die Alpha 3.14: Welcome To Orison veröffentlicht, die eine Reihe neuer Funktionen und Änderungen mit sich brachte, darunter das Energiemanagement, den Raketenbedienungsmodus und natürlich Crusader und seine majestätische Stadt in den Wolken, Orison. Im Folgenden findest du einen Bericht der leitenden Entwickler, in dem sie über die Neuerungen berichten und was sie darüber denken, wie es gelaufen ist. Standorte Ian Leyland, Star Citizen Art Director Wann ist es gut gelaufen? Die Veröffentlichung von Orison war ein großer Meilenstein für das Team und das Projekt. Es war die bisher anspruchsvollste und ehrgeizigste Landezone, aber das Team konnte auf die Erfahrungen aus früheren Landezonen zurückgreifen, um den Ort zu schaffen. Orison ist einer der am leichtesten zugänglichen Orte für die Spieler/innen, die nur begrenzte Bereiche um die wichtigsten Sozialräume herum benötigen. Alpha 3.14 zeigte auch die Lobbybereiche von Orison General und Brentworth in New Babbage. Diese Krankenhausstandorte werden sich mit der medizinischen Spielschleife in Alpha 3.15 öffnen. Crusader war der erste Gasriese in Star Citizen und mit ihm sahen wir die erste Version eines volumetrischen Wolkensystems. Was ist nicht so gut gelaufen? Was das Spielerlebnis in Orison angeht, gab es leider einige Elemente, die es nicht in die erste Version geschafft haben. Zum Beispiel bestimmte Missionen, tourismusbasierte Interaktivität und natürlich die Weltraumwale. Wir hätten Orison auch gerne mit allen geplanten Ladenlokalen veröffentlicht, aber anstatt die Veröffentlichung des Lokals hinauszuzögern, haben wir beschlossen, diese zusätzlichen Läden im kommenden Patch zu veröffentlichen. Was wir in Zukunft anders machen werden Wie bereits erwähnt, können wir uns immer noch verbessern, wenn es darum geht, multidisziplinäre Features so auszurichten, dass sie rechtzeitig zum Veröffentlichungsfenster des Ortes geliefert werden und dem Spieler die beste Anfangserfahrung bieten. Verbesserungen und Optimierungen an einigen unserer neuen technischen Funktionen werden sich ebenfalls positiv auf das Erlebnis und die Leistung unserer Orte auswirken. Säule Fahrzeug John Crewe, Fahrzeug-Direktor In Star Citizen Alpha 3.14 hat die Fahrzeugsäule einige grundlegende Änderungen an der Art und Weise, wie Raumschiffskämpfe ablaufen, vorgenommen. Dies sind einige der größten Änderungen am Fahrzeugsystem, seit wir IFCS 2.0 in Alpha 3.5 eingeführt haben! Energiemanagement V2 Was ist gut gelaufen? Das Energiemanagement v2, das ursprünglich unter dem Namen "Kondensatoren" bekannt war, hat sich im Laufe der Entwicklung weiterentwickelt und umfasst nicht nur das Kondensatorsystem, sondern auch die damit verbundenen Interaktionen mit anderen Systemen und das Energiedreieck auf den MFDs. Obwohl die Funktion ursprünglich nicht vorgesehen war, ist es uns gelungen, all diese zusätzlichen Interaktionen in die erste Lieferung einzubauen, was die Qualität der Funktion von Anfang an erhöht hat. Das Kondensatorsystem selbst hat die Dynamik zwischen den Schiffen im Kampf sofort verändert, vor allem bei Schiffen mit mehreren Besatzungsmitgliedern und Geschütztürmen, da diese nun deutlich stärker sind. Das hat dazu beigetragen, das oft zitierte Argument "Warum einen Freund in mein Schiff holen, wenn zwei Schiffe stärker sind?" zu entkräften. Was ist nicht so gut gelaufen? Wir haben es zwar geschafft, alles abzuliefern, aber intern lief es aufgrund von Problemen mit der Verfügbarkeit von Mitarbeitern, die wir nicht beeinflussen konnten, sehr heiß. Deshalb mussten Mitglieder aus anderen Teams und Abteilungen mithelfen und sicherstellen, dass alles zumindest ansatzweise fertiggestellt war, als es in die PTU kam. Eine Entscheidung, die relativ spät in der Produktion getroffen wurde, verlegte das Machtdreieck vom HUD auf die MFDs, was zu Problemen bei der Lesbarkeit der Interaktion der Spieler mit dem System führte. Das ist etwas, das wir uns in zukünftigen Iterationen noch einmal ansehen wollen. Bei einigen Schiffen gab es Probleme mit den Kondensatoren, die zu unerwünschten Schusszahlen in der PTU-Phase führten, was für die Spieler/innen nicht gerade ein tolles Erlebnis war. Was wir in Zukunft anders machen werden Wie so oft, wenn wir Änderungen einführen, die sich auf alle Fahrzeuge im Spiel auswirken, brauchen wir viel Zeit, um sie umzusetzen. Dieses Mal wurden wir mehr behindert als geplant. Deshalb werden wir in Zukunft bei solchen Änderungen andere Teams früher einbeziehen, damit wir schneller Unterstützung leisten können. Weil es länger gedauert hat als geplant, haben wir es nicht geschafft, die Änderungen vollständig an unsere interne QA und dann an Evocati zu übergeben. Das bedeutete, dass während der PTU viel Ausgleichsarbeit geleistet wurde, die früher hätte geleistet werden müssen. Raketenbediener-Modus Was ist gut gelaufen? Der Raketenbedienermodus war ein grundlegender Wechsel in der Erfahrung und Mentalität bei der Nutzung von Raketen und ich denke, dass er aufgrund der zusätzlichen Klarheit und der Funktionen, die man im Vergleich zum vorherigen Setup erhält, gut angenommen wurde. Du bist jetzt in der Lage, mehrere Raketen zu steuern und scharf zu machen, und bekommst bessere Informationen über den Status der Zielerfassung. Außerdem kannst du jetzt auch Raketen abfeuern, was vorher nicht möglich war. Der Nachteil, dass es einen separaten Modus gibt, der den Einsatz von Kanonen und Raketen verhindert, wurde von einigen als Nachteil vorausgesagt, aber das Feedback war überwältigend positiv, denn es war klar, dass diese beiden Waffentypen in sehr unterschiedlichen Bereichen eingesetzt werden können, nachdem einige Einstellungen vorgenommen wurden. Wenn du also beide zusammen einsetzt, gibt es nur ein sehr kleines Zeitfenster, und wenn du dich auf die eine oder die andere Waffe beschränkst, musst du dich entscheiden, wie du in den Kampf ziehen willst. Was ist nicht so gut gelaufen? Wir haben die Funktion während Evocati und PTU nicht gut genug erklärt, was zu Verwirrung darüber führte, was die neuen UI-Elemente anzeigten und was sie tatsächlich taten. Abgesehen davon war die Funktion selbst ziemlich robust. Was wir in Zukunft anders machen werden Der nächste logische Schritt ist, diesen Modus zu erweitern, um mehrere Zielverriegelungen zu ermöglichen und andere Munitionstypen zu integrieren, was du in Alpha 3.15 mit der Einführung der A2 Hercules und ihrer Bomben sehen wirst. Canvas Sliced Ship HUDs Was ist gut gelaufen? Als die oben genannten Funktionen online gingen, stellten wir schon vor Beginn der Entwicklung fest, dass das aktuelle HUD nicht geeignet war und ersetzt werden musste. In Kombination mit der Notwendigkeit, von Flash/Scaleform auf unser eigenes Building Blocks-System umzusteigen, haben wir schnell mehrere Konzepte entwickelt, die schnell im Spiel implementiert und während des Spiels angepasst werden konnten, um eine funktionale Benutzeroberfläche zu schaffen. Das neue System in seiner aktuellen Version ist ein allgemeines, einheitliches Layout, das sich nur durch die Farben der einzelnen Hersteller unterscheidet. In Zukunft wird es uns jedoch ermöglichen, das HUD jedes Herstellers stark zu stylen, sogar bis hin zu Varianten pro Schiff. Was ist nicht so gut gelaufen? Neue Technologien bringen immer einige Macken mit sich. In diesem Fall haben wir viel von der Lesbarkeit verloren, die wir mit dem vorherigen HUD-System so lange erreicht hatten. Erst in der PTU-Phase konnten wir es dank der Grafik- und UI-Tech-Teams wieder zum Laufen bringen. Was wir in Zukunft anders machen werden Wie bereits erwähnt, müssen wir immer dann, wenn ein Feature alle Fahrzeuge im Spiel betrifft, den Teams, die uns bei der Umsetzung helfen können, viel früher Einblick und Anleitung geben, damit sie sofort loslegen können und nicht erst geschult werden müssen, wie sie das Feature in bestehende Inhalte einbauen können. Für das HUD mussten zum Beispiel viele Aspekte des Schiffsinhalts auf eine bestimmte Weise eingerichtet werden. RSI Constellation Taurus Mit der Alpha 3.14 wurde die ehrwürdige Constellation-Serie vervollständigt und die Constellation Taurus ins Spiel gebracht, die mit ihrem verlängerten Rumpf mehr Ladung transportieren kann als die anderen Varianten. Die Produktion des Fahrzeugs verlief relativ unkompliziert, auch wenn sie sich aufgrund anderer Prioritäten des Unternehmens oft verzögerte und stockte. Außerdem hatten wir geplant, die Sicht im Cockpit aller Varianten im Rahmen dieser Version zu verbessern, beschlossen aber, dies für den zukünftigen "Gold Standard"-Pass aufzuheben. Ein Bereich, der gegenüber dem Konzept geändert wurde, war der untere Turm, der ursprünglich zugunsten eines abgeschirmten Laderaums komplett entfernt wurde. Wir haben während der Produktion einige Ideen durchgespielt, aber keine fühlte sich richtig an oder war mit großen Kompromissen für die Benutzerfreundlichkeit verbunden. Der Zugang von außen erforderte eine Menge Mechanik auf kleinem Raum, was die tatsächliche Kapazität reduzierte, während der Zugang von innen wiederum zu Problemen bei der Interaktion und der Bewegung der Ladung durch das Schiff führte. Schließlich entschieden wir uns, den überflüssigen Merlin-Andockraum in den abgeschirmten Frachtraum umzuwandeln, um den sonst ungenutzten Raum zu nutzen und den Geschützturm zu behalten und ihn stattdessen mit Traktorstrahlen auszustatten, um das Laden und Erfassen von Fracht zu erleichtern. Insgesamt wurde das Schiff gut angenommen und die Verfügbarkeit der gesamten Constellations-Reihe ist ein großer Meilenstein, aber alle werden von einem Gold-Standard-Pass stark profitieren, um sie auf die gleiche Qualität wie andere Fahrzeuge im Spiel zu bringen, vor allem intern. Alpha 3.14 Postmortem 10/08/2021 - 1:00 PM On August 6, 2021, we launched Alpha 3.14: Welcome To Orison, which introduced a number of new features and changes, including Power Management, Missile Operator Mode, and, of course, Crusader and its majestic city in the clouds, Orison. The following is a postmortem from the senior developers themselves, detailing what was delivered and their thoughts on how it went. Locations Ian Leyland, Star Citizen Art Director What went well? The release of Orison was a huge milestone for the team and the project. It was the most challenging and ambitious landing zone to date, but the team was able to draw upon the experience from previous landing zones to deliver the location. Orison is one of the most accessible locations for the player, needing only restricted areas around the main social spaces. Alpha 3.14 also showed the lobby spaces of Orison General and Brentworth in New Babbage. These hospital locations will open up with the medical gameplay loop coming in Alpha 3.15. Crusader was the first Gas Giant in Star Citizen and with it we saw the first version of a volumetric cloud system. What didn’t go so well? Regarding the overall player experience for Orison, there were unfortunately quite a few elements that didn’t make the initial release. For example, specific missions, localized tourism-based interactivity, and, of course, space whales. We would also have liked to release Orison with all the planned shop locations, but rather than hold the release of the location, we decided to release these additional shops in the coming patch. What we’ll do differently in the future As above, we can always improve on aligning on multi-discipline features so that they’re delivered in time for a location release window and give the best initial experience to the player. Improvements and optimizations to some of our new tech features will also benefit the experience and performance of our locations. Vehicle Pillar John Crewe, Vehicle Director In Star Citizen Alpha 3.14, the Vehicle Pillar delivered some fundamental changes to how spaceship combat plays out with some of the biggest changes to the vehicle system since we introduced IFCS 2.0 in Alpha 3.5! Power Management V2 What went well? Formally known as “Capacitors”, Power Management v2 evolved over its development to not just include the capacitor system but also the related interactions with other systems and the power triangle on the MFDs. Though outside the original scope of the feature, we managed to incorporate all these additional interactions within the initial delivery, helping increase the quality of the feature out of the box. The capacitor system itself provided an instant change to the dynamic between ships during combat, especially so when dealing with multicrew ships and turrets as they have become significantly stronger. This has helped to reduce the often-cited argument of “why bring a friend in my ship when two ships are stronger.” What didn’t go so well? While we managed to deliver it all, internally it came in very hot due to staff availability issues beyond our control. This required members from other teams and departments to help pitch in and ensure everything had at least an initial balance pass by the time it hit the PTU. A decision fairly late on in production moved the Power Triangle from the HUD to just the MFDs, which caused readability issues in terms of how players interact with the system. This is something we want to look at again in future iterations. A few ships had some tricky-to-solve capacitor issues resulting in undesirable shot counts throughout the PTU stage, which caused less than desirable player experience. What we’ll do differently in the future As often is the case when we roll out changes that impact the entire plethora of vehicles we have in the game, they take a considerable amount of time to implement. This time around, we were hampered more than planned for. So, when doing these changes in the future, we’ll involve other teams earlier on to help provide support quicker. Due to things taking longer than we had planned, we didn’t manage to get it to our internal QA and then Evocati in a complete state. This meant a lot of balance work was done during PTU that should have been done earlier. Missile Operator Mode What went well? Missile Operator Mode was a fundamental shift in both experience and mentality for using missiles and I think it was well-received due to the additional clarity and features you get compared to the previous setup. You are now able to competently cycle and arm multiple missiles as well as get better information about the lock state of your target. You also have the ability to dumb-fire missiles, which was previously unavailable. The downside of being in a separate mode preventing the use of both guns and missiles was predicted by some to cause some kickback, but the feedback was overwhelmingly positive as it was clear, once some tuning was done, that those two weapon types operate in very different engagement ranges. So, using both together is something that has a very minimal window of opportunity and restricting you to one or the other forces a choice of how you want to engage in combat. What didn’t go so well? We didn’t explain the feature well enough during Evocati and PTU, leading to confusion about what the new UI elements displayed and what they were actually doing. The feature itself beyond that was pretty robust. What we’ll do differently in the future The next logical step is to expand this mode to allow multiple target-locks and incorporate other ordnance types, which you’ll see in Alpha 3.15 with the introduction of the A2 Hercules and its bombs. Canvas Sliced Ship HUDs What went well? With the above features coming online, we identified before development began that the current HUD would not be suitable and a replacement was needed. Combined with needing to move away from Flash/Scaleform to our own Building Blocks system, we quickly iterated on multiple concepts that could be implemented in-game rapidly and be adjusted on the fly to help nail down a functional UI. The new system in its current public iteration is a generic, single layout only differing in color per manufacturer. However, in the future it will allow us to heavily stylize each manufacturer’s HUD, even down to variants per ship. What didn’t go so well? With new tech always comes some quirks. In this instance, we lost a lot of the readability that we’d spent so long achieving with the previous HUD system. It was only during the PTU phase that we managed to bring it back online thanks to the Graphics and UI Tech teams. What we’ll do differently in the future As mentioned above, whenever a feature touches all vehicles in the game, we need to provide visibility and guidance to teams who can help us implement it much sooner so they can hit the ground running rather than needing training on how to implement the feature into existing content. For example, the HUD required many aspects of the ship content to be setup in a specific way. RSI Constellation Taurus Completing the venerable Constellation series, Alpha 3.14 finally brought the Constellation Taurus to the game, complete with its extended hull section designed to haul more cargo than the other variants. Production on the vehicle was relatively straightforward, albeit it often delayed and stop/start due to other company priorities. And, we had planned to improve the cockpit visibility across all the variants as part of this release but decided to save this for its future “Gold Standard” pass. One area that changed from the concept was the lower turret, which was originally completely removed in favor of a shielded cargo area. We iterated on a few ideas during production but none felt right or they had big compromises to usability. Having it be externally accessible required a lot of mechanics to be added to a small space reducing the actual capacity it could hold, while having it internally accessible again caused issues with interaction and the movement of cargo through the ship. In the end, we decided to repurpose the redundant Merlin docking room into the shielded cargo room, making use of otherwise dead space and allowing us to keep the turret and instead equip it with tractor beams for easier cargo loading and acquisition. Overall, the ship was well received and the full line of Constellations being available is a great milestone, but all of them will benefit greatly from a Gold Standard pass to push them to the same quality as other vehicles in the game, especially internally. Links ----- No links available. Images ------ 0 No images available. Metadata -------- CIG ID 18349 Channel Undefined Category Undefined Series None Comments 0 Published 4 years ago (2021-10-08T16:00:00+00:00) [RSI Article](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/SCW/18349-API) [API](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/api/comm-links/18349)