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Greetings Citizens It’s been a busy week. Last week saw the release of ATV with our always stellar UK Studio Update and the addition of what was almost certainly our largest, most in-depth Ship Shape segment of all time: the Aegis Javelin. ATV has grown and evolved by leaps and bounds over the last year, and a large part of that is due to the continued support of our Subscribers, and the tremendous work of team members across the world dedicating their time and efforts to pulling back the curtain and showing you more of what we’ve been working on than ever before. So to you and to them, I just wanted to add one more, “Thank You” to the pile. You’re the best. Yeah, you. Okay, maybe not YOU, but definitely you. Also last week we published our March Monthly Studio Report and our biggest schedule update, ever, including a behind-the-scenes video detailing just some of the considerations made when putting together a production schedule at any level. Doing this was something Chris was extremely passionate about, and I don’t have to tell you how contagious that passion for making Star Citizen can be. It’s one of the many reasons we enjoy working on a project like this. If you haven’t checked out Chris’ Letter from the Chairman and the 3.0/2017 Production Schedule Report, I’d highly recommend you do so. I also got to visit a replica of the Hotel Room from the end of 2001: a Space Odyssey this weekend and I’m still excited about it so I’m including a line about it and picture here and nobody can stop me. I’m even gonna bold it. This week brings us continuing episodes of Citizens of the Stars and Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy, an ATV on Thursday from the LA Studio, and the return of Happy Hour Gamedev on Friday. What’s on this week’s Gamedev? Well, if things go how I think they’re gonna go, it won’t be like anything you’ll ever see from any other game studio, so check that out. Of course, thinking about it, that’s every episode of Happy Hour Gamedev so far, isn’t it? Subscribers can look for a thread about the next Subscriber’s Town Hall to go up in the Den sometime this week, and a thread for the next 10 for the Chairman Special Edition to go up in the weeks after that. And in case you missed it, the price for our next concept ship, the Banu Defender was announced over the weekend in the Ship Prices announcement thread. It’s $185 dollars, and the ship and the Banu race will be revealed to the world on Friday. With that, I’ll see you in the ‘Verse. Jared “Disco Lando” Huckaby Community Manager The Weekly Community Content Schedule MONDAY, APRIL 17th, 2017 Citizens of the Stars (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/) TUESDAY, APRIL 18th, 2017 Weekly Lore Post (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch) WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19th, 2017 Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/) THURSDAY, APRIL 20th, 2017 Around the Verse (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/) Vault Update FRIDAY, APRIL 21st, 2017 Happy Hour Gamedev – Noon PST (https://twitch.tv/starcitizen) RSI Newsletter Banu Defender Concept Sale Community Spotlight: April 17th, 2017 – Stream Citizen There are many ways to spread the word that Space Sims are back, be that in webforums or chatrooms, news articles or reviews, but perhaps one of my favorite ways to share our mutual love of Star Citizen is through streaming. There are many folks out there that showcase Star Citizen to others through their streams on a variety of platforms, including Twitch, YouTube, and Beam, and you can get a real sense for how the game is progressing by watching the reactions of players live. This week, we shine the spotlight on these industrious individuals who share their love of Star Citizen through streaming. Visit the Community Hub Talung A self-proclaimed “gamer from the days of the Sinclair Spectrum and somehow still remaining a complete noob at most games,” Talung can often be found streaming Star Citizen and was recently partnered with Twitch. You can find his stream channel at twitch.tv/talung. Grakees A fan and backer since May 2013, Grakees streams Star Citizen throughout the week. You can join in the fun at twitch.tv/grakees and experience the HUGS. He’s big on hugs. Watch out. Sgt. Gamble You may remember Sgt. Gamble from our CitizenCon 2016 Pre-Show gamestreams. His streams often have an infectious energy that his viewers enjoy. You can check out his channel at twitch.tv/sgt_gamble. RedLir RedLir streams nearly every day of the week, often highlighting his adventures in Star Citizen. As a member of TEST Squadron… well, what more do I really need to say, right? You can catch his streams at twitch.tv/redlir. Przeczytaj całość

Welcome to Citizens of the Stars, our new weekly program exclusively about you, the Star Citizen Community. Whether through bug reports on the issue council, feedback on the forums, or the creation of content inspired by the game, Star Citizen is only possible because of the community. Citizens of the Stars not only highlights these contributions, but also puts a dev in the hotseat for a round of Quantum Questions, which addresses some fun facts about the dev and game. This week’s Citizen Spotlight shines on the Moon Shiners and all the stellar Star Citizen content they create. Will Junior Technical Designer Robert Gaither take the Quantum Questions top spot? Remember, many of the questions used are taken from our Star Citizen Subscribers in this thread here. Don’t forget to add yours for inclusion in future episodes, vote for the ones you want to see answered, and remember to keep them short and concise if you want your best chance of having them answered in under two minutes. The links for this week’s content are below: CITIZEN SPOTLIGHT The Moon Shiners TOP 5: Hauling a Merlin in a Starfarer to Yela for a Sunday Ride A Star Citizen Movie Series Quantum Paradox Episode 1 “Tessa” a Star Citizen Music Video Orgtool MVP: Wing Commander Theme Rescore by Utho Riley Przeczytaj całość

Letter from the Chairman: The Road Ahead Greetings Citizens, After many months of estimating and planning I am excited to share with you the Star Citizen Schedule and Roadmap for the rest of this year. First, I would like to take a moment to thank the outstanding producers around the company who have worked with the Directors and Leads to bring this schedule to the point we feel comfortable sharing it publicly. Creating a proper production schedule is a Herculean task in and of itself and then knowing that it will be visible to over a million eager supporters around the world is a daunting prospect. The schedule you are now looking at is built from the estimates of hundreds of developers around the company, collected and integrated against our overall objectives for the game. To give you an idea of the work that goes into building and maintaining a schedule of the complexity needed for Star Citizen, I would like to share a video with you, it’s well worth your time to see just how much work and thought is needed to schedule manage something of the scope of Star Citizen. The next Release is a major milestone for us, as it will be the first time the community will get to experience the Planetary Tech in a Live build. Like the Star Citizen Alpha numbering change from 1.3 to 2.0 for the move to Large World, with its 64-bit precision and Local Grid physics tech, that allows us to deliver a game of our detail at a solar system scale, 3.0 represents a giant jump in gameplay potential from the code in the 2.x branch. For a start, it will contain about nine months of our main development branch beyond 2.6.x as well as almost two years of Planetary Tech development that the Frankfurt Engine team embarked on in the last half of 2015. The Planetary Tech opens up a whole new landscape (pun intended) for adventure. In the same way that Large World and Physics Grids created new possibilities in gameplay by allowing players to go from walking around a space station to boarding a ship, flying it hundreds of thousands of kilometers, exiting their pilot seat, walking to an airlock, opening it and EVAing over to a derelict station, all from the same point of view, the Planetary Tech takes it one massive leap further. When you see a Planet or Moon, you will be able to fly there, land and explore on foot, or from your ship or a ground vehicle you have brought with you. All seamlessly, all with the incredible first person detail that Star Citizen is known for. With this we are delivering something that goes way beyond the initial promises and conception of Star Citizen; we will be simulating a First person Universe with almost no limits. It’s a great illustration of how with the support of a Community as great as Star Citizen’s anything is possible. With the debut of 3.0 at the end of June we’re starting with the three Moons around Crusader; Cellin, Yela and Daymar. In addition, we’re hoping to also get the Planet-like Asteroid Delamar and its landing zone Levski in as a “Stretch” goal. Then as we move through the year the universe will expand to include all the main landing zones for Stanton. We had originally hoped to deliver most of the Stanton Landing Zones with the first release of Planetary Tech, but that proved optimistic once the talented team at Behaviour, who had built ArcCorp, Levski, Grim HEX and had begun work on the remaining landing zones of Stanton, moved off Star Citizen and onto another Behaviour project in December. We had been steadily shifting our reliance away from external resources and we felt it would be unfair to block them from the opportunity to work on their own game. Unfortunately, replacing an Environment team of over 20 is no small task, which has set back the progress we had originally planned to make on the landing zones of Stanton. As of today, we have just abut replaced the team with internal hires and we are continuing to hire additional environment artists as fast as we can find ones that meet our quality bar. The Environment Team is now some 37 artists strong, so long term we feel we are better situated to deliver the vast amount of locations that Star Citizen and Squadron 42 needs. Rather than make everyone wait for the landing zones to all be completed we decided the best course of action would be to get the Planetary Tech and the other improvements in everyone’s hands as soon as possible. Our goal for 3.0 is to again do what we found so valuable when building Arena Commander: involve the community as soon as possible. More than any other process, it is YOUR feedback that helps further Star Citizen’s development… which means that we need you on our moons with this next release. The worlds we’re creating are massive, and giant planets mean we need a lot of eyes (and mice, keyboards and flight sticks) making sure they’re up to par. How big do I mean? It takes about four and half hours to circumnavigate the Cellin in a Dragonfly at full afterburn or twelve and half days of walking! If every single person registered through RSI today stood on the same moon at the same distance, they wouldn’t even see each other. There’s a lot to explore and a LOT to test in this massive step forward for Star Citizen. While the Planetary Tech is maybe the biggest headline, it is just one of the many new pieces of tech that will debut with 3.0. With the increased detail of the Weekly Studio reports, you’ve been seeing glimpses of fundamental systems that we have been building that will dramatically increase the ability to interact and be immersed in the universe of Star Citizen. Systems like Item 2.0 with its new Player Interaction Mode that allows for a much wider variety of actions and gameplay, such as managing a wider array of your ship’s functions to using and manipulating items like you can in real-life. Or the Entity Owner Manager that will allow us to persist proper state on Players, Ships and Items no matter where they are, even if not in memory or owned by a Player. If your ship is shot up, it will still be shot up when you log back in or return to spot you left it on a Moon. Or the completely new dynamic Physics Grid System that handles the needs of planets and the wide-open reaches of space. You can stand on a Moon as it rotates on its axis, watching the sun rise and fall! Or Cargo and Kiosks that will open the possibility of Professions by allowing Players to earn money as a Trader, Hauler or Pirate. Of course Haulers need protection and Pirates need hunting, which creates opportunities for Mercenaries and Bounty Hunters via the new MobiGlas Mission App. Or the debut of Subsumption’s Mission system which provides a scalable and flexible system that is tightly integrated with our new AI systems, allowing us to generate challenging encounters and scenarios on the fly as well as creating a structure for multipart and narrative missions longer term. I could go on for a few more pages as there are so many new features and content that will be arriving in the next release but in the spirit of TL;DR go to here; to see a detailed list of the Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 Features. Star Citizen 3.0 Alpha is just the first step though. We’ve decided to share our longer roadmap through the rest of the year, so you can have visibility on what parts of the Stanton System come online and when, along with the associated gameplay. Our plan is to have two more releases in the LIVE branch of Star Citizen this year after 3.0 that fill out the Stanton System beyond what we outlined last year. It’s a pretty big deal to share the schedule of our longer term roadmap, but we felt that it would help with everyone’s visibility on when certain features and content can be expected and understanding when things take longer or priorities shift due to unforeseen problems. We would not be here without all of your support and in some ways the Community is an extension of the development team providing the funding and the feedback on the huge undertaking we are doing. No one has ever attempted to build a game as ambitious as Star Citizen and I doubt any Publisher would have the patience or stamina that it requires to build something that breaks molds the way Star Citizen does. 3.0 with its Planetary Tech is a testimony to the power of Crowdfunding and an enthusiastic, empowered Community. Myself and the team and eternally thankful to be able to build Star Citizen the right way, being able to take the time to engineer things for the long term, a way that will allow the universe to flourish for years to come. Together we are making history. See you in the ‘Verse! — Chris Roberts Przeczytaj całość

Monthly Studio Report: March 2017 Greetings Citizens! Welcome to the monthly report where we collect updates from our studios around the world into a single comprehensive place to summarize the various progresses (and setbacks) they’ve experienced. Last month we debuted our new style of Monthly Report, utilizing the weekly Studio Reports found in Around the Verse to create an overview of progress made in the last four weeks. In addition to our continuing progress with Squadron 42 and the PU 3.0 undertaking, we released both 2.6.2 and 2.6.3 to the entire community, and have now focused those attentions to the upcoming Star Citizen Alpha 3.0. With that, let’s review some of what each studio did this month. CIG Los Angeles CLOUD IMPERIUM: LOS ANGELES SHIP ART AND DESIGN The ship team spent a lot of the month working on the Drake Buccaneer. Art created a custom dual weapon mount and generated all the LODs, while the tech content team implemented UV2s and Damage. Tech design made their flight balance passes to get it ready for flight with sound and then passed it along to VFX. The ship team has also made a lot of progress on the newly revamped RSI Aurora. The whitebox phase in now complete, which includes a proxy layout of the space, establishing the animation positions, placing the screens, and making sure the characters could hold the controls. The final geometry of the cockpit has begun in an effort to improve the inside of the ship. Now that tech design has implemented all the art updates into the ship’s new archetype, the RSI Aurora is heading into greybox. TECH DESIGN The tech design group completed the design for the Multi Function Display (MFD) screens, which controls power, heat, coolers, shields, weapons, countermeasures and missiles, in preparation for Item 2.0 functionality. These designer prototypes are meant to help understand what’s needed and see how everything will interact with each other. UI As soon as these designs have been approved, the UI team will create an interface to take advantage of the functionality that engineering is implementing in the back end. Once this system is in place, a ship that is staffed by a knowledgeable crew will be able to operate their ship beyond the default system settings and min-max the various ship systems to suit not only a player’s style, but potentially save a player during a potentially devastating attack. QA This month QA aided LA Development by checking a variety of fixes for 2.6.2 issues. They also provided support to Austin QA with PTU & LIVE sanity checks, smoke tests, sweeps and deployments, and helped new hires get up to speed with the game. As for feature work, the team swept ship destruction VFX, Item System 2.0, implementation of recent loadout changes, and tested multiple iterations of new targeting and ESP code. For a quick reminder on Quality Assurance terms, a Sanity Check basically ensures that the game loads. This is now automated, but can take about an hour or two to investigate any errors that arise. A Smoke Test checks the basic functionality. This process takes 6-8 people about a day if there aren’t any major issues. A Full Sweep means checking everything possible, a process which requires a much larger team and can take over a week. Full Sweeps are the most arduous, rigorous, and intense, but also incredibly important. ENGINEERING The engineering team started a new shop entity that uses DataCore components to allow shops to be easily streamed in with object containers, with the aim to be finished in the next sprint. The plan is to make shops more dynamic and reactive to the economy by retrieving their inventory from the back end. The engineering team added a new attribute to vehicle XMLs that allows designers to specify the interior grid type of the vehicle (small, medium, or large). This optimization will reduce memory storage as all ships previously defaulted to medium size. As discussed previously, a new Light Group entity was developed, equipped with a state machine to serve as the ultimate light switch. Now that implementation of the core state-switching functionality is complete, the next step is to start using the Light Group in our vehicles and environments and replace all instances of the old layer-switching method of light management. This new light group entity reduces the number of lights used, which has dramatic impacts on performance. For example, hundreds of entities were reduced down to 90 or less with no visual impact on the Drake Caterpillar. A framework is being developed in IFCS (Intelligent Flight Control System) for the autopilot to handle situations like take-off and landing sequences. This also applies to AI control, so they’ll be providing the AI developers with a set of tools for controlling the ships, like a “move-to”, “change speed to”, etc. This will improve the stability and predictability of ship motion under optimal conditions. The Room System and Atmosphere Containers were updated with several new features, better debugging tools, and several bug fixes. The room system has only been implemented in a few locations, but these changes will allow the implementation of rooms and atmospheres throughout the various locations and ships in the game. At the moment, the entering and exiting of airlocks are scripted events. They don’t factor in atmosphere of any kind. This new system will be able to replace this setup with an actual room and atmosphere that allows for a dynamic experience. In addition to the room system changes, a new feature allows the designers and artists to set wear and dirt parameters for loadouts. This functionality comes in two levels: overall and individual values for specific items. Wear and Dirt values are used by the render node to set shader parameters that make items look old, dusty, scuffed up, and burnt out. This task also used Loadout Editor side work, where the team added UI support to edit wear and dirt. Recently, the team started on the Entity Owner Manager. This system will be responsible for managing ownership and lifetimes of all the entities in the game and is a core feature required to take gameplay from a multiplayer game to a persistent online experience. It will work in conjunction with the back end persistence systems to indicate dynamic changes to the world that need to be tracked and persisted across sessions. The Entity Owner Manager will also work with various game and engine systems, including Debris, Salvage, Criminality, Streaming, Missions, Cargo, Shops, and more to help create the persistent experience across clients and servers. The team has been working on scanning subcomponents, which required some slight refactoring of the object databank. After the changes, the databank can support the storage of “child” entries, which will be the subcomponents on ships/players/etc. In doing this, the thread safety of accessing data within the databank was also improved. This allows calculations to be moved onto other threads, which will help improve performance. This focuses on two big elements: the ping component and angle of focus. The ping component is the method in which a player or pilot will send out a wave to see if there are any objects of note within their scan range. This could be a ship, an asteroid, or even traces that mark whether a player entered or exited quantum travel. Since other players can detect these traces, we think that this could have some pretty heavy game implications. For example, if you were an outlaw, it would allow you to track potential prey. Angle of focus allows players to adjust the angle with which they’re scanning. A smaller angle will also provide more range, but only contacts within the angle can be detected. The underlying radar query logic is being refactored to use zone queries rather than a huge iteration of registered radar objects. This will make the scanning system much more efficient. TECH CONTENT Since the tech content team supports and implements every pipeline within Star Citizen and Squadron 42, one of their main focuses have been performance improvements. For instance, the team changed the mesh vertex and position formats, which massively improves streaming of these meshes as well as reducing build size.They’re also improving the Python integration within our editor, which allows for faster development of Python tools which are used by every department across the company. The tools can script any sandbox process they want. For example, it can place asteroids and generate modular outposts, which saves a tremendous amount of development time on otherwise tedious and time consuming tasks. The tech content team completed a character animation tool that tracks and reports the number of various wild lines each character will have in the universe. With over 1200 pages of script for S42, which include all story lines as well as wild lines, a tool was needed to continuously generate reports on how many were completed and what was left to solve. Once the various lines are all in, the system will be able to pull lines based on player action and situation, but also randomize the potential wildline responses so the NPCs aren’t repeating the same line every time. All helmets have been converted to a dot skin format. The conversion was important to allow a unified LOD ratio across the character skins. This means no more helmet-less people running around the ’verse. To ensure this is easier in the future, Tech Content also created a tool that rigs skins and exports automatically which will drastically reduce dev time from an entire day to just a few minutes. Heads were also successfully converted to use the human skin shader developed by the graphics team. Since there are 44 different areas of blended wrinkles and blended diffuse, the texture cost was quite high, at about 100 MB per head. With this change, roughly 90% of the original texture memory cost was saved without discernable visual impact. With the implementation of the female character progressing rapidly, thousands of animations have been transferred from male to female to complete her motion set and provide a data for animation to iterate on. To help the cinematics team focus on content needed for Squadron 42, a tool was written to allow for visibility of scenes before they even hit the engine. This allows for fast exporting of animations and preview renders which are then automatically uploaded to Shotgun. This makes it easier and faster to review the many hours of cinematics for Squadron 42. NARRATIVE The narrative team has been developing some additional 3.0 missions. They’ve also begun documenting posters and props to populate the world of Star Citizen. The team also created an equivalent Time Capsule approach for the Xi’an history from birth to present day as a means of expanding Xi’an history and society documentation. Breakdowns of ethno-groups in the Star Citizen universe has been in progress to take full advantage of the character customization technology 3Lateral showcased at GDC a few weeks ago. CHARACTER ART The character team is working on the ingame mesh of the Heavy Outlaw. Next, it will go onto rigging and implementation. The light, medium, and heavy female marine armor and the undersuit has been sent to rigging and implementation. Once the male base suits were done, an adjusted wrap technique was used to save development time. We’ve also made progress on the Female Explorer suit, which has now moved through the high poly phase, so she’ll be exploring the universe in no time. On the Squadron 42 front, both the EVA deck crew and the Marine BDU have gone through the high poly phase and are onto the in-game mesh and texturing phase. We’ve continued developing the Vanduul and the medium and heavy versions of the OMC outlaw faction. Lastly, the mechanized Titan Suit is in R&D along with other alien concept sculpts. CIG Austin CLOUD IMPERIUM: AUSTIN DESIGN The ATX Design team focused on getting 2.6.2 out the door, which has mainly consisted of adding new subscriber flair items and fixing some minor bugs. Additional shop-related elements have been updated as the shopping system continues to grow. The team is also in the process of revising the Stanton System Map. Also, Landing Zone AI and Usables are undergoing additional development. New subscriber flair will be rolled out in the coming months. One of the new items is called the ‘viVid Display,’ which can display game locations holographically. Players can use the ‘viVid Display’ to find out more about locations, including their intended visuals. Other flair items include a series of ship schematics, which will showcase the level of detail that goes into ship design. These light board displays can be hung from any poster style port in your hangar. The Shopping System will be revamped in our next release. As the Item 2.0 system advances, the Item Port structure has been changed as well so it can fall in line with the end goal. These fluctuations have re-addressed things like how Shop Mannequins and Item Bundles are set up. The team’s goal is to create a base mannequin object that the shopping system can apply loadouts to. The items on a given mannequin would be purchasable by themselves, or as a bundle for a discounted price. In the past, every outfit was only purchasable as an entire set of items. On top of that, a bespoke mannequin setup had to be generated for each unique outfit display. Fortunately, advancing tech will soon allow the Loadout Editor to quickly create various item combinations within a given shop. That loadout, comprised of items in the shop, will then be assigned to the shop’s inventory as a “Bundle.” The Shopping System will then spawn these bundles directly onto an empty shop mannequin with no additional effort by the designers. A process that took hours will soon take minutes, allowing different item combinations to be quickly generated for display on the mannequins. While this might seem like a minor change, this will actually unlock a multitude of options for the design team to create realistic shops. ANIMATION The PU Animation Team just finished a small Mocap shoot using the in-house OptiTrack system. This was a pickup shoot to help fill in all the gaps from the Performance Capture shoots done at Imaginarium studios and captured transition animations for both male and female characters. These animations included sitting down at tables with trays, going through the chow line, eating, drinking, rummaging, or sitting in cockpits and turrets. A Usable is an object that a player or NPC can interact with like a chair, wall, table, or any other set piece, but also include props such as cups, plates, bottles, crates, and anything else that can physically picked up by a person. Obviously, animation can only get these game assets so far. The biggest challenge right now is making all the usables function in game. It is up to code, tech and designers to make them work, which is why Austin Animation is working closely with our Frankfurt and UK studios. The team also amended metrics for door control panels, bathroom toilet facilities, and chow lines in the Idris mess hall. Tech is being put in place that will allow an NPC to navigate to a usable set piece and perform a variety of actions (like grabbing a usable prop off the set piece, setting other usable props onto it, walking away with the prop, going to and interacting with another usable set piece, setting usable props on top of usable props, then getting up and navigating to a third usable set piece to dispose of the usable prop with all the usable props on it). Once this one test case is fully functional, we will be able to use these universal animations with different usables throughout the game. SHIP ANIMATION The Ship Animation team has finished the major animation tasks for the Drake Cutlass Black. Characters can now enter and exit the pilot and copilot seats properly. For the copilot, the team used a new cockpit template called the “Stick.” This template positions the player in a pose like that of a helicopter pilot which was required to fit the new geometry of the Cutlass cockpit. DEV OPS DevOps added additional logging to better track issues and allows the team to dump the status of the users download session at the moment they experience the issue. The DevOps team then works directly with the Community Relations team to debug the issue or issues the user is experiencing. A great example of this is the latest version of the Patcher. As some of the Windows 10 users may have already noticed, the 2.4.9 version of the Patcher brought back music that had been missing. The exact cause of the issue was that the Windows 10 sound settings were set to 192kHz which caused the Patcher to crash if you had the music turned on. You can now enjoy all of Pedro Camacho’s music again! QA The QA Department has been heavily focused on 2.6.2 testing. With the addition of Multiplayer Megamap and Serialized Variables, multiple cross-studio playtests between the ATX and UK studios were performed in order to check for any unexpected behaviors, such as increased desynchronization and lag between clients, massive performance changes (good or bad), and crashes. Since the new Drake Buccaneer came online sooner than expected, we were able to perform frequent testing to ensure the ship was operating as expected for its inclusion in 2.6.2. In the development stream testing, Squadron 42 testing continues, as well as a range of tests with ground vehicles on planetary surfaces in a multiplayer environment. Various development tools are also being tested, such as the Procedural Planet Editor (PlanED), and the Subsumption Editor. PLAYER RELATIONS The Player Relations team was very busy in both the US and UK this month helping with 2.6.2 and 2.6.3. We spent a lot of time with Evocati and QA working on getting the final bugs worked out, then managing our public PTU playtests. In the coming weeks, we will be increasing and updating our PTU test numbers, so we’ve spent a lot of time working on how to roll that out, too. Lastly, we also had a great summit in LA with other department leads and stakeholders to work out our plans for the rest of year, and we got to spend a little time working with our Turbulent friends as well. Foundry 42 UK FOUNDRY 42: UK PROGRAMMING The player interaction sprint is proceeding at full speed. Rather than outlining a whole mesh, they have created a system where sub-objects can be highlighted allowing players to choose individual parts. This is especially useful in cockpits, where players can interact with individual buttons and switches to access things like ship functions and resource distribution. The team has also been ensuring the new interaction system works seamlessly with the multifunction displays (MFD). The new placement system has also come online, so players can choose where and with what orientation objects can be set down. If the placement position is out of range, players now automatically go into a throw state. Different actor states have been added to the Player Status System, so the player finds it harder, or even impossible, to do things like jump, vault and mantle depending on how fatigued they are. Mass has been added to the suit and weapons as another way to influence the player’s stamina. We’ve also added a breathing state component to bring together the player’s status with the procedural breathing animation and sound. The team is now starting work on new gameplay elements like suit punctures, oxygen recharging and depressurisation.The team invested time in the conversation system tech by creating a tool to help simplify complicated conversations when there are multiple actors in the same scene. UI The UI team began the front-end skeleton framework for Kiosk shopping. This includes properly setting up all UI components such as lists, grids, buttons, TextFields, and other various assets. Once this is done, the engineers will hook these components up to the game data and get it presented diegetically in the game world. The team is also supporting the player interaction system to unify the way the players will interact with in-game UI screens across the game. This means the same underlying system used to interact with a MFD in a ship seat will be applied to all in-game terminals, wall-mounted displays, and kiosks. This will make interaction with in-game displays feel much less clunky and constrictive. In anticipation of the Graphics Team’s work on the new render-to-texture (RTT) tech, the UI team has done a round of testing using current helmet interiors to see how well the UI looks rendered onto an interior glass surface.The new RTT tech will eventually allow the UI to render properly in the rendering pipeline, making it feel much more integrated with the game-world than it is currently. They have also checked how well the text will read at various sizes and how any post-processing effects, such as motion blur or chromatic aberration, might potentially negatively impact the legibility of the text and symbols. The UI team is also looking at potential impacts the new incoming dynamic field of view system might have on the UI. This new system will allow such things like the HUD and 3D helmet interior to remain roughly the same size on screen when setting a lower or higher field of view. AUDIO The Audio team has been involved in all gameplay features like the Buccaneer, surface outposts, Squadron level development, and the actor status system. Work has continued on the Audio Propagation system to make audio respect walls, doors and paths. In the current system, audio triggers play from their point of origin and either being occluded or un-occluded, but always play from their source position. The new propagation system will allow a sound playing inside a room to be heard by anyone listening from outside the room, either through the door, window, or any other opening. This extends to other rooms, so a sound playing 4 rooms away will navigate the doorways and the air in between in order to reach the listener. Also, the first and second pass of the mix management system have been completed. This is a virtual mixing console that can be applied to certain areas or rooms and allows the creation of mix snapshots that can apply volume, filter or effect settings on any parts of the audio mix with faders in DataForge that can be tweaked in real-time. Setting up and organising these areas, and mix snapshots, will allow for easy adjustment of the audio mix. Finally, a lot of progress has been made on the WordUp dialogue tool to manage the huge amount of spoken lines in the PU and S42. For fun, here’s a piece of original Star Citizen music called Atomos for you to enjoy. CONCEPT ART The Concept team has been finishing the Gemini ballistic shotgun and establishing the look of a new ship weapon manufacturer, Preacher Armaments. Preacher prides themselves on making high-quality, reliable and effective weapons that are favored by bounty hunters, police, and militia. In 2940, the conglomerate Eon Group bought out Preacher from founder Kino Walton and immediately ramped up manufacturing. Preacher Armaments is aggressively making its way into stores across the universe. Concept work for the Banu Defender is complete, as well as on two additional ships that will be revealed in the future. Work continues on the truckstop interiors, satellite interiors, New Babbage on microTech and dressing for the modular habitation modules. Here is a glimpse of a WIP Truckstop interior. Truckstops will serve as waypoints for haulers and other travelers making their way through the system giving them a chance to restock, refuel, and stretch their legs. ENVIRONMENT ART The environment team has been refining the surface outposts with technical, engineering, and habitation spaces coming together with their preliminary dressing passes. The exteriors are now mostly complete. The team is also looking into lighting variations for the procedural system to add more complex setups for the lighting states. The greybox for the truckstop space station is continuing and now that all the building set pieces have been established, the detail phase has begun. On the Satellite sprint, we’re close to being Whitebox complete on the communication archetype, which means the modules and classifications that were specified by design have been visually explored. SHIP ART AND DESIGN Our ship team has been continuing work on the Hull-C and Reclaimer, which includes the new light controller work that allows for easier set up of different lighting entities and switches them between property states (e.g., on, off, emergency) depending on various circumstances such as a player interaction or sufficient pull from a connected power pipe. The Javelin continues to be polished for both Squadron 42 and Star Citizen. The team is also completing the capital ships of the Vanduul Fleet. VFX As you’re aware, the VFX was completed on the Drake Buccaneer and the ship was released in 2.6.2. Meanwhile, the RSI Constellation Aquila is going through its flight-ready pass. The MISC Prospector finished a thrusters first pass and damage R&D blockout. The new GPU-driven thruster trails have completed its initial implementation phase. On the Weapon VFX side, the style guide has been improved by bringing in a new system that defines the visual style of a weapon based on manufacturer and energy type. The Apocalypse Arms Scourge railgun, Kastak Arms Devastator plasma shotgun rework, and Klaus & Werner Gallant energy rifle rework finished their first pass. The layered impact library has been rolled out. Previously, impacts were per weapon and per surface type, but the new setup allows us to layer up individual elements which gives more flexibility and less maintenance. ANIMATION The animation team has been exploring a lot of technical previs this past month. Part of that work includes improving the functionality of the shouldered weapon state to get the railgun ready and playable for 3.0. The team also polished the prone set so it will be ready for code to work their magic on fixing any edge cases and continued to work on Breathing & Stamina to create a solid look and feel for a player breathing across multiple states, such as normal, tired and hyperventilating. The weapons-free jumps are getting a pass to bring the animations more in line with the mocap rather than the technical first pass implementation. The Devastator shotgun, Gallant, Arrowhead, and Railgun weapon reloads have been improved. Meanwhile, the Derby Studio continued with Facial animation for SQ42 and Star Citizen cinematics. They attended a facial shoot down in London for 3.0 and members of the team visited the LA studio for some facial animation R&D meetings. Foundry 42 DE FOUNDRY 42: DE WEAPONS This past month, we completed all the rockets and rocket pods ranging from size 1 to 3 as well as the first art pass for the Knightbridge Arms Ballistic Cannons. The various sizes can now be used to test out the new modularity system and various upgraded levels and combinations. The FPS weapon artists finished a second art pass on the Klaus & Werner Arclight II, Gallant, and Arrowhead which now include new venting mechanisms that add more visual interest to the reloads. The first art pass on the Kastak Arms Ravager-212 and a second art pass on the Kastak Arms Devastator with an additional layer of detail was also completed. LIGHTING The lighting team began determining a way to integrate lighting on modular surface outposts, so it feels coherent across potentially countless outpost layout permutations. The challenge with this task is that every room could have a different arrangement of props and objects, which dictates where lights would logically be placed, as well as the theme or mood of that room. For example, crew sleeping quarters should have a different mood than a hydroponics lab. To do this, the lighting team tested for possible issues (such as light leaking through walls or certain lighting variations looking incorrect when placed next to others) by integrating simple lighting variations into the procedural system. The team also focused on creating a visual target for our main room types (habitation, hydroponics, mining, and storage) to see how far we can push the lighting to match our concepts and goals for the interior look of our surface outposts. When these are finished, we can then determine how to break the lighting down into modular components that can be fed back into the procedural system. TECH ART The tech art team worked on multiple skinning tasks, including clothing for both the PU and SQ42 (to widen the range of character customization) and a skinning pass on the final Vanduul mesh (so the animators can work on their animations).The team created a tool that allows the team to quickly update the exact grip placements for individual weapons. Artists can now use a reference mesh, create an offset, hit export, and immediately see their changes live in engine. This will allow them to iterate much quicker than before. In addition, they developed a tool for the animators to redirect their walking animations to turn animations. This fairly simple tool that will ultimately reduce the time the animators need to spend on certain specific animations. DESIGN The Level Design team worked on the modularity of Space Stations and Surface Outposts. As an initial proof of concept, the team has decided to move forward with five versions of the outposts. Ultimately with this system, we’ll be able to create a large number of outposts with different layouts and purposes, but first, the systems, props, and placement of planets need to work as intended. The Truck Stop is our first test of modularity in Space Stations. Soon, customizable hubs will be able to create variations using add-ons and procedural prop placement which can add flavor to various rooms. The modularity of Space Stations also extends to how the rooms connect to one another through the use of pre-made flowcharts. Design is collaborating with engineers to get it functioning in-game as intended. The system design team has been continuing their work on the usables system, as well as working with the cinematics team in helping to establish the final look and feel for the conversation system. ENGINE TEAM The engine team finished the physics grid refactoring, which is used to store each individual physical object in the world and to allow for fast neighbour queries. The old legacy CryPhysics grid system worked by projecting the entire world onto a fixed 2d array of cells of uniform dimension. For memory reasons, the old system was configured to huge cell sizes to allow for our massive worlds, which lead to severe performance problems when dealing with lots of small objects as well as lots of entities returned due to the fact the grid would ‘wrap-around’ every few thousand kilometres. To address these issues, the new grid system was designed to have a sparse and fixed hierarchy of nested 3D grid cells of various sizes where objects will get inserted into different levels of the fixed hierarchy depending on their size. That way, the engine can efficiently handle objects the size of a planet (several thousand kilometres in radius) all the way down to small pebbles just a few centimeters across. Initial performance tests in Stanton have proven the new grid to be vastly more efficient (10x less entities returned for small queries, and queries in general faster in the magnitude of 1.2x – 2x) while using slightly more memory than the legacy system. The team has also been developing the core foundation of our AI movement. While motion capture animation is perfect for cut-scenes and all types of linear animations where things are fixed and predictable, mocap-data can’t be used directly for animations that need to be truly interactive. To use mocap-data in interactive situations, longer motion-clips must be broken into shorter clips and generated into multiple variations of the same motion-style. As an example, a simple walk-cycle needs the ability to walk at different speeds, walk in circles, walk on slopes, and walk in different directions. A typical AI-character in Squadron might have about 1000 of these motion-clips. It’s impossible to create unique animations-clips for every given situation. That’s why we developed a blending technique called Parametric Blending. Parametric Blending enables all these clips to be controllable at runtime. It takes the concept of “simple” animation-blending and moves it to the next level. The goal is to make the outcome of a transition or an interpolation predictable for an undefined number of assets. Each motion-clip contains a combination of physical and stylistic properties (what we call the “natural” motion-parameters, because they are inherently part of the motion itself). To control a character in a game, these “natural” motion-parameters need to be passed to the animation-system, and let it generate the motion we need. Once there are enough animation-clips, they’re placed into a blend-space. The most important aspect of a blend-space is that each animation-clip represents a point in a coordinate-system and all points are connected by an index list. In a blend-space, blending is treated as a geometrical problem. The relationship between animation-clips is extremely important for the blending to work. The placement of the assets into the blend-space is fully automatic due to how the animators set up their locators before export. In a single blend-space, there can be more than 100 unique animation-clips and they can be controlled like a single animation. In a 2D blendspace, the travel-speed is on the X and the turn-speed is on the Y. This means we can generate all motions between a slow-walk and fast-walk while maintaining the correct turn-speeds. Blend-spaces are not only limited to simple motion-cycles, they’ll be used for most AI motions in our vast universe, enabling our AI-characters to move fluidly and realistically in the world. The engine team also did improvements to the objects blending with terrain. The underlying terrain and objects shapes are now taken into account to blend procedurally distributed objects more naturally with the planetary generated environment. QA The QA team has been testing the Loadout Editor. The Loadout Editor is heavily used by our devs across all four locations, so it made sense to increase the depth of testing on a daily basis. The first version of the Solar System Editor (also known by its shortened name: SolEd) is being tested as well. The Engineers went over SolEd’s functionality and gathered initial feedback from the team. QA documented the feedback and will work closely with the engineers on the best ways to address and test specific feedback in the near future. They also supported the Engine team with testing of a few things such as the updated Planet Physics grid and the Refactoring of Texture Streamer logic. AI The AI team this month completed some work on Mission related functionalities for both the PU and Squadron 42 designers. They also improved the setup for complex conversation scenarios, where multiple characters need to interact with one another. The first step to achieve that was to allow the subsumption logic to run on top of players. That allows logic on predefined story scenes to be executed and also ensures the AI system can fully communicate with players and interact with them. The subsumption tool also had some improvements on the conversation setup. The team also kicked off work on “Conversation Sub Activities.” The sub-activities describe the logic for multiple characters in one view, to make it easier for designers to synchronize interactions between the characters and the environment. Essentially, those conversations will still result in unique sub activities that run on the different characters so that each individual entity can still handle further events/situations on their own. The first pass on refactoring of the perception for the spaceships was also completed. There is currently a general perception component on characters that can handle several types of senses. A normal Human will have his own vision and hearing senses, but once sitting down inside a spaceship, they will also be able to interface with the spaceship radar and group the information about the different senses into its perception component. This will allow for progress towards more “character-controlled” behaviors on spaceships, since strict dependencies between the game code and specific behaviors running on the vehicles themselves will be removed. CINEMATICS The cinematics team is making steady progress across multiple chapters, from implementing new scenes to polishing existing ones. The team also assisted in defining the look of the conversation system and participated in the various sprints push this system along. The goal is to allow for a cinematic feel while still maintaining flexibility and immersion. VFX The VFX team in Frankfurt has continued working on planetary effects. The systems for implementation have been progressing nicely thanks to the close collaboration between the VFX artists and Engineers. They started implementing some of the new effects on the planets, including various atmosphere and weather effects, as well as more specific effects for various types of assets that will be distributed with the object scattering system. ENVIRONMENT ART The Frankfurt environment team has been primarily focused on finalizing the Crusader’s moons. The procedural assets distribution system has seen a lot of progress and is still improving. All the separate pieces that make-up our procedural planets and moons are truly starting to fall into place. The team is now moving on to get the Levski landing zone integrated onto Delamar and will be the first big landing zone on a procedural entity. This means a new procedural planet/asteroid and the exteriors architecture of Levski will be created. The challenge is to merge the procedural terrain and the landing zone in a way in which they feel like they belong together. Turbulent TURBULENT This month, Turbulent launched spectrum 0.3.2, which includes major performance updates to help render messages and threads in the client. Hopefully, this will allow users to switch faster between lobbies and channels, as well as take less CPU and render time than in the 0.3.1 version. 0.3.2 also brings two new features. First users can now re-order communities in the top left of the sidebar by dragging and dropping the community to the new location.Second, the other feature is the channel thread list, so now threads that contain media information and videos have thumbnail images allowing users to preview the content. There has also been mobile optimization and keyboard fixes that will hopefully be ready for 0.3.3. This should fix bugs Android users have been encountering when typing into the chat. The new patch also adds nested threads to the forums Users can now create a new thread and change a discussion type from a classic chronological timeline into a nested discussion. This gives us two benefits. First, we can now sort by up votes and get a nested reply tree behind it. Second, users can gain more control into choosing discussion types. The post creator will have the option of choosing if it’s a nested thread or not. Turbulent will also archive the old forums on Friday, April 14. We’ve expanded our category list to bring all those discussions from the old forum to Spectrum. This will not be an import, but a recreation inside the new system. This month, the team also worked on the new delta patcher. Turbulent is responsible for building the actual application that hosts the patching libraries, so we’ve worked hard over this month to get this new application setup. It requires a whole new application stack called Electron which lets the team patch the game data with this new launcher internally. Another major project started this month is a redesign of some of the elements of the RSI site. This is a massive overhaul of the website to address how it caters to new users. We can’t talk much about it now, but there will be updates as the design progresses. There has also been progress on updating the Ship Stats page. The ship stats are supposed to reflect the intent design of a ship and not necessarily the exact stats that are currently in game, but at the same time, there are things that are missing. The team is changing how the back end manages this by re-designing some of the tech view, specifications view, and holoviewer. Community Community Some of our devs attended Austin’s biggest media festival, South by Southwest, and participated in a special panel last month. Before that, Community Manager Jared Huckaby and Lead Community Manager Tyler Witkin attended PAX East where they got some hands on time with our incredible backers. CIG team members haven’t been back to meet our East Coast backers since 2014, so it was good to visit again. In addition to meeting many content creators at the PAX event itself, they were also able to attend a Boston Bar Citizen with fans from all over. The importance of these events cannot be understated, as they’re not only a great chance for you to meet the team, but it really energizes the team to directly interface with all of you. And speaking of Bar Citizens, the team was also honored to attend meet-ups in Brisbane, Australia; Austin, Texas; and Santa Monica, California. There are Bar Citizens happening every week. Learn more about them here. Subscribers this month saw the Space Station flair series begin in addition to receiving their very own Big Benny’s machine as part of the annual Subscription update. The March Jump Point was also released with a focus on the Anvil Hurricane. The issue also includes plenty of lore, part of an original Star Citizen serial, and more! On Citizens of the Stars, the team checked in with some of the best screenshot artists, original video makers, and news reporters in the community while also spotlighting plenty of other backer projects. Don’t forget, if you’re a subscriber you can contribute questions to Quantum Questions and vote for which ones are asked to the weekly development guests. Check out the thread in the Subscriber’s Den on Spectrum. During this month’s Happy Hours, the team showed how our designers prototype new systems by building a basketball game mockup live, and our very own Ben Lesnick took a dive into Chris Roberts’ Privateer to talk about how this classic game has influenced Star Citizen. Star Citizen joined the worldwide celebration of Space Week with many developers, including Sean Tracy and Erin Roberts, appearing on the Twitch front page to talk about the worlds being built in Star Citizen.The team at Turbulent also held a live Town Hall to answer questions about Spectrum and their other platform work. Spectrum continues to update with more functionality on the horizon. As of today, old forums are being closed and archived. Posts will still be available to read, but Spectrum will be the new home for any future discussions. Last week, the team held a special ‘Drake-over’ sale to celebrate the Buccaneer being flight-ready. With the Dragonfly and Cutlass finishing up, the current Drake lineup is almost done. Also on the ship front, a lot of work has been put into our next reveal, the Banu Defender. Stay tuned to learn more about both the Defender and the Banu race! Additionally, an update to the Referral Program is in progress. Expect to hear more about this soon, including details on a special contest. Conclusion WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH… Przeczytaj całość

Monthly Studio Report: March 2017 Greetings Citizens! Welcome to the monthly report where we collect updates from our studios around the world into a single comprehensive place to summarize the various progresses (and setbacks) they’ve experienced. Last month we debuted our new style of Monthly Report, utilizing the weekly Studio Reports found in Around the Verse to create an overview of progress made in the last four weeks. In addition to our continuing progress with Squadron 42 and the PU 3.0 undertaking, we released both 2.6.2 and 2.6.3 to the entire community, and have now focused those attentions to the upcoming Star Citizen Alpha 3.0. With that, let’s review some of what each studio did this month. CIG Los Angeles CLOUD IMPERIUM: LOS ANGELES SHIP ART AND DESIGN The ship team spent a lot of the month working on the Drake Buccaneer. Art created a custom dual weapon mount and generated all the LODs, while the tech content team implemented UV2s and Damage. Tech design made their flight balance passes to get it ready for flight with sound and then passed it along to VFX. The ship team has also made a lot of progress on the newly revamped RSI Aurora. The whitebox phase in now complete, which includes a proxy layout of the space, establishing the animation positions, placing the screens, and making sure the characters could hold the controls. The final geometry of the cockpit has begun in an effort to improve the inside of the ship. Now that tech design has implemented all the art updates into the ship’s new archetype, the RSI Aurora is heading into greybox. TECH DESIGN The tech design group completed the design for the Multi Function Display (MFD) screens, which controls power, heat, coolers, shields, weapons, countermeasures and missiles, in preparation for Item 2.0 functionality. These designer prototypes are meant to help understand what’s needed and see how everything will interact with each other. UI As soon as these designs have been approved, the UI team will create an interface to take advantage of the functionality that engineering is implementing in the back end. Once this system is in place, a ship that is staffed by a knowledgeable crew will be able to operate their ship beyond the default system settings and min-max the various ship systems to suit not only a player’s style, but potentially save a player during a potentially devastating attack. QA This month QA aided LA Development by checking a variety of fixes for 2.6.2 issues. They also provided support to Austin QA with PTU & LIVE sanity checks, smoke tests, sweeps and deployments, and helped new hires get up to speed with the game. As for feature work, the team swept ship destruction VFX, Item System 2.0, implementation of recent loadout changes, and tested multiple iterations of new targeting and ESP code. For a quick reminder on Quality Assurance terms, a Sanity Check basically ensures that the game loads. This is now automated, but can take about an hour or two to investigate any errors that arise. A Smoke Test checks the basic functionality. This process takes 6-8 people about a day if there aren’t any major issues. A Full Sweep means checking everything possible, a process which requires a much larger team and can take over a week. Full Sweeps are the most arduous, rigorous, and intense, but also incredibly important. ENGINEERING The engineering team started a new shop entity that uses DataCore components to allow shops to be easily streamed in with object containers, with the aim to be finished in the next sprint. The plan is to make shops more dynamic and reactive to the economy by retrieving their inventory from the back end. The engineering team added a new attribute to vehicle XMLs that allows designers to specify the interior grid type of the vehicle (small, medium, or large). This optimization will reduce memory storage as all ships previously defaulted to medium size. As discussed previously, a new Light Group entity was developed, equipped with a state machine to serve as the ultimate light switch. Now that implementation of the core state-switching functionality is complete, the next step is to start using the Light Group in our vehicles and environments and replace all instances of the old layer-switching method of light management. This new light group entity reduces the number of lights used, which has dramatic impacts on performance. For example, hundreds of entities were reduced down to 90 or less with no visual impact on the Drake Caterpillar. A framework is being developed in IFCS (Intelligent Flight Control System) for the autopilot to handle situations like take-off and landing sequences. This also applies to AI control, so they’ll be providing the AI developers with a set of tools for controlling the ships, like a “move-to”, “change speed to”, etc. This will improve the stability and predictability of ship motion under optimal conditions. The Room System and Atmosphere Containers were updated with several new features, better debugging tools, and several bug fixes. The room system has only been implemented in a few locations, but these changes will allow the implementation of rooms and atmospheres throughout the various locations and ships in the game. At the moment, the entering and exiting of airlocks are scripted events. They don’t factor in atmosphere of any kind. This new system will be able to replace this setup with an actual room and atmosphere that allows for a dynamic experience. In addition to the room system changes, a new feature allows the designers and artists to set wear and dirt parameters for loadouts. This functionality comes in two levels: overall and individual values for specific items. Wear and Dirt values are used by the render node to set shader parameters that make items look old, dusty, scuffed up, and burnt out. This task also used Loadout Editor side work, where the team added UI support to edit wear and dirt. Recently, the team started on the Entity Owner Manager. This system will be responsible for managing ownership and lifetimes of all the entities in the game and is a core feature required to take gameplay from a multiplayer game to a persistent online experience. It will work in conjunction with the back end persistence systems to indicate dynamic changes to the world that need to be tracked and persisted across sessions. The Entity Owner Manager will also work with various game and engine systems, including Debris, Salvage, Criminality, Streaming, Missions, Cargo, Shops, and more to help create the persistent experience across clients and servers. The team has been working on scanning subcomponents, which required some slight refactoring of the object databank. After the changes, the databank can support the storage of “child” entries, which will be the subcomponents on ships/players/etc. In doing this, the thread safety of accessing data within the databank was also improved. This allows calculations to be moved onto other threads, which will help improve performance. This focuses on two big elements: the ping component and angle of focus. The ping component is the method in which a player or pilot will send out a wave to see if there are any objects of note within their scan range. This could be a ship, an asteroid, or even traces that mark whether a player entered or exited quantum travel. Since other players can detect these traces, we think that this could have some pretty heavy game implications. For example, if you were an outlaw, it would allow you to track potential prey. Angle of focus allows players to adjust the angle with which they’re scanning. A smaller angle will also provide more range, but only contacts within the angle can be detected. The underlying radar query logic is being refactored to use zone queries rather than a huge iteration of registered radar objects. This will make the scanning system much more efficient. TECH CONTENT Since the tech content team supports and implements every pipeline within Star Citizen and Squadron 42, one of their main focuses have been performance improvements. For instance, the team changed the mesh vertex and position formats, which massively improves streaming of these meshes as well as reducing build size.They’re also improving the Python integration within our editor, which allows for faster development of Python tools which are used by every department across the company. The tools can script any sandbox process they want. For example, it can place asteroids and generate modular outposts, which saves a tremendous amount of development time on otherwise tedious and time consuming tasks. The tech content team completed a character animation tool that tracks and reports the number of various wild lines each character will have in the universe. With over 1200 pages of script for S42, which include all story lines as well as wild lines, a tool was needed to continuously generate reports on how many were completed and what was left to solve. Once the various lines are all in, the system will be able to pull lines based on player action and situation, but also randomize the potential wildline responses so the NPCs aren’t repeating the same line every time. All helmets have been converted to a dot skin format. The conversion was important to allow a unified LOD ratio across the character skins. This means no more helmet-less people running around the ’verse. To ensure this is easier in the future, Tech Content also created a tool that rigs skins and exports automatically which will drastically reduce dev time from an entire day to just a few minutes. Heads were also successfully converted to use the human skin shader developed by the graphics team. Since there are 44 different areas of blended wrinkles and blended diffuse, the texture cost was quite high, at about 100 MB per head. With this change, roughly 90% of the original texture memory cost was saved without discernable visual impact. With the implementation of the female character progressing rapidly, thousands of animations have been transferred from male to female to complete her motion set and provide a data for animation to iterate on. To help the cinematics team focus on content needed for Squadron 42, a tool was written to allow for visibility of scenes before they even hit the engine. This allows for fast exporting of animations and preview renders which are then automatically uploaded to Shotgun. This makes it easier and faster to review the many hours of cinematics for Squadron 42. NARRATIVE The narrative team has been developing some additional 3.0 missions. They’ve also begun documenting posters and props to populate the world of Star Citizen. The team also created an equivalent Time Capsule approach for the Xi’an history from birth to present day as a means of expanding Xi’an history and society documentation. Breakdowns of ethno-groups in the Star Citizen universe has been in progress to take full advantage of the character customization technology 3Lateral showcased at GDC a few weeks ago. CHARACTER ART The character team is working on the ingame mesh of the Heavy Outlaw. Next, it will go onto rigging and implementation. The light, medium, and heavy female marine armor and the undersuit has been sent to rigging and implementation. Once the male base suits were done, an adjusted wrap technique was used to save development time. We’ve also made progress on the Female Explorer suit, which has now moved through the high poly phase, so she’ll be exploring the universe in no time. On the Squadron 42 front, both the EVA deck crew and the Marine BDU have gone through the high poly phase and are onto the in-game mesh and texturing phase. We’ve continued developing the Vanduul and the medium and heavy versions of the OMC outlaw faction. Lastly, the mechanized Titan Suit is in R&D along with other alien concept sculpts. CIG Austin CLOUD IMPERIUM: AUSTIN DESIGN The ATX Design team focused on getting 2.6.2 out the door, which has mainly consisted of adding new subscriber flair items and fixing some minor bugs. Additional shop-related elements have been updated as the shopping system continues to grow. The team is also in the process of revising the Stanton System Map. Also, Landing Zone AI and Usables are undergoing additional development. New subscriber flair will be rolled out in the coming months. One of the new items is called the ‘viVid Display,’ which can display game locations holographically. Players can use the ‘viVid Display’ to find out more about locations, including their intended visuals. Other flair items include a series of ship schematics, which will showcase the level of detail that goes into ship design. These light board displays can be hung from any poster style port in your hangar. The Shopping System will be revamped in our next release. As the Item 2.0 system advances, the Item Port structure has been changed as well so it can fall in line with the end goal. These fluctuations have re-addressed things like how Shop Mannequins and Item Bundles are set up. The team’s goal is to create a base mannequin object that the shopping system can apply loadouts to. The items on a given mannequin would be purchasable by themselves, or as a bundle for a discounted price. In the past, every outfit was only purchasable as an entire set of items. On top of that, a bespoke mannequin setup had to be generated for each unique outfit display. Fortunately, advancing tech will soon allow the Loadout Editor to quickly create various item combinations within a given shop. That loadout, comprised of items in the shop, will then be assigned to the shop’s inventory as a “Bundle.” The Shopping System will then spawn these bundles directly onto an empty shop mannequin with no additional effort by the designers. A process that took hours will soon take minutes, allowing different item combinations to be quickly generated for display on the mannequins. While this might seem like a minor change, this will actually unlock a multitude of options for the design team to create realistic shops. ANIMATION The PU Animation Team just finished a small Mocap shoot using the in-house OptiTrack system. This was a pickup shoot to help fill in all the gaps from the Performance Capture shoots done at Imaginarium studios and captured transition animations for both male and female characters. These animations included sitting down at tables with trays, going through the chow line, eating, drinking, rummaging, or sitting in cockpits and turrets. A Usable is an object that a player or NPC can interact with like a chair, wall, table, or any other set piece, but also include props such as cups, plates, bottles, crates, and anything else that can physically picked up by a person. Obviously, animation can only get these game assets so far. The biggest challenge right now is making all the usables function in game. It is up to code, tech and designers to make them work, which is why Austin Animation is working closely with our Frankfurt and UK studios. The team also amended metrics for door control panels, bathroom toilet facilities, and chow lines in the Idris mess hall. Tech is being put in place that will allow an NPC to navigate to a usable set piece and perform a variety of actions (like grabbing a usable prop off the set piece, setting other usable props onto it, walking away with the prop, going to and interacting with another usable set piece, setting usable props on top of usable props, then getting up and navigating to a third usable set piece to dispose of the usable prop with all the usable props on it). Once this one test case is fully functional, we will be able to use these universal animations with different usables throughout the game. SHIP ANIMATION The Ship Animation team has finished the major animation tasks for the Drake Cutlass Black. Characters can now enter and exit the pilot and copilot seats properly. For the copilot, the team used a new cockpit template called the “Stick.” This template positions the player in a pose like that of a helicopter pilot which was required to fit the new geometry of the Cutlass cockpit. DEV OPS DevOps added additional logging to better track issues and allows the team to dump the status of the users download session at the moment they experience the issue. The DevOps team then works directly with the Community Relations team to debug the issue or issues the user is experiencing. A great example of this is the latest version of the Patcher. As some of the Windows 10 users may have already noticed, the 2.4.9 version of the Patcher brought back music that had been missing. The exact cause of the issue was that the Windows 10 sound settings were set to 192kHz which caused the Patcher to crash if you had the music turned on. You can now enjoy all of Pedro Camacho’s music again! QA The QA Department has been heavily focused on 2.6.2 testing. With the addition of Multiplayer Megamap and Serialized Variables, multiple cross-studio playtests between the ATX and UK studios were performed in order to check for any unexpected behaviors, such as increased desynchronization and lag between clients, massive performance changes (good or bad), and crashes. Since the new Drake Buccaneer came online sooner than expected, we were able to perform frequent testing to ensure the ship was operating as expected for its inclusion in 2.6.2. In the development stream testing, Squadron 42 testing continues, as well as a range of tests with ground vehicles on planetary surfaces in a multiplayer environment. Various development tools are also being tested, such as the Procedural Planet Editor (PlanED), and the Subsumption Editor. PLAYER RELATIONS The Player Relations team was very busy in both the US and UK this month helping with 2.6.2 and 2.6.3. We spent a lot of time with Evocati and QA working on getting the final bugs worked out, then managing our public PTU playtests. In the coming weeks, we will be increasing and updating our PTU test numbers, so we’ve spent a lot of time working on how to roll that out, too. Lastly, we also had a great summit in LA with other department leads and stakeholders to work out our plans for the rest of year, and we got to spend a little time working with our Turbulent friends as well. Foundry 42 UK FOUNDRY 42: UK PROGRAMMING The player interaction sprint is proceeding at full speed. Rather than outlining a whole mesh, they have created a system where sub-objects can be highlighted allowing players to choose individual parts. This is especially useful in cockpits, where players can interact with individual buttons and switches to access things like ship functions and resource distribution. The team has also been ensuring the new interaction system works seamlessly with the multifunction displays (MFD). The new placement system has also come online, so players can choose where and with what orientation objects can be set down. If the placement position is out of range, players now automatically go into a throw state. Different actor states have been added to the Player Status System, so the player finds it harder, or even impossible, to do things like jump, vault and mantle depending on how fatigued they are. Mass has been added to the suit and weapons as another way to influence the player’s stamina. We’ve also added a breathing state component to bring together the player’s status with the procedural breathing animation and sound. The team is now starting work on new gameplay elements like suit punctures, oxygen recharging and depressurisation.The team invested time in the conversation system tech by creating a tool to help simplify complicated conversations when there are multiple actors in the same scene. UI The UI team began the front-end skeleton framework for Kiosk shopping. This includes properly setting up all UI components such as lists, grids, buttons, TextFields, and other various assets. Once this is done, the engineers will hook these components up to the game data and get it presented diegetically in the game world. The team is also supporting the player interaction system to unify the way the players will interact with in-game UI screens across the game. This means the same underlying system used to interact with a MFD in a ship seat will be applied to all in-game terminals, wall-mounted displays, and kiosks. This will make interaction with in-game displays feel much less clunky and constrictive. In anticipation of the Graphics Team’s work on the new render-to-texture (RTT) tech, the UI team has done a round of testing using current helmet interiors to see how well the UI looks rendered onto an interior glass surface.The new RTT tech will eventually allow the UI to render properly in the rendering pipeline, making it feel much more integrated with the game-world than it is currently. They have also checked how well the text will read at various sizes and how any post-processing effects, such as motion blur or chromatic aberration, might potentially negatively impact the legibility of the text and symbols. The UI team is also looking at potential impacts the new incoming dynamic field of view system might have on the UI. This new system will allow such things like the HUD and 3D helmet interior to remain roughly the same size on screen when setting a lower or higher field of view. AUDIO The Audio team has been involved in all gameplay features like the Buccaneer, surface outposts, Squadron level development, and the actor status system. Work has continued on the Audio Propagation system to make audio respect walls, doors and paths. In the current system, audio triggers play from their point of origin and either being occluded or un-occluded, but always play from their source position. The new propagation system will allow a sound playing inside a room to be heard by anyone listening from outside the room, either through the door, window, or any other opening. This extends to other rooms, so a sound playing 4 rooms away will navigate the doorways and the air in between in order to reach the listener. Also, the first and second pass of the mix management system have been completed. This is a virtual mixing console that can be applied to certain areas or rooms and allows the creation of mix snapshots that can apply volume, filter or effect settings on any parts of the audio mix with faders in DataForge that can be tweaked in real-time. Setting up and organising these areas, and mix snapshots, will allow for easy adjustment of the audio mix. Finally, a lot of progress has been made on the WordUp dialogue tool to manage the huge amount of spoken lines in the PU and S42. For fun, here’s a piece of original Star Citizen music called Atomos for you to enjoy. CONCEPT ART The Concept team has been finishing the Gemini ballistic shotgun and establishing the look of a new ship weapon manufacturer, Preacher Armaments. Preacher prides themselves on making high-quality, reliable and effective weapons that are favored by bounty hunters, police, and militia. In 2940, the conglomerate Eon Group bought out Preacher from founder Kino Walton and immediately ramped up manufacturing. Preacher Armaments is aggressively making its way into stores across the universe. Concept work for the Banu Defender is complete, as well as on two additional ships that will be revealed in the future. Work continues on the truckstop interiors, satellite interiors, New Babbage on microTech and dressing for the modular habitation modules. Here is a glimpse of a WIP Truckstop interior. Truckstops will serve as waypoints for haulers and other travelers making their way through the system giving them a chance to restock, refuel, and stretch their legs. ENVIRONMENT ART The environment team has been refining the surface outposts with technical, engineering, and habitation spaces coming together with their preliminary dressing passes. The exteriors are now mostly complete. The team is also looking into lighting variations for the procedural system to add more complex setups for the lighting states. The greybox for the truckstop space station is continuing and now that all the building set pieces have been established, the detail phase has begun. On the Satellite sprint, we’re close to being Whitebox complete on the communication archetype, which means the modules and classifications that were specified by design have been visually explored. SHIP ART AND DESIGN Our ship team has been continuing work on the Hull-C and Reclaimer, which includes the new light controller work that allows for easier set up of different lighting entities and switches them between property states (e.g., on, off, emergency) depending on various circumstances such as a player interaction or sufficient pull from a connected power pipe. The Javelin continues to be polished for both Squadron 42 and Star Citizen. The team is also completing the capital ships of the Vanduul Fleet. VFX As you’re aware, the VFX was completed on the Drake Buccaneer and the ship was released in 2.6.2. Meanwhile, the RSI Constellation Aquila is going through its flight-ready pass. The MISC Prospector finished a thrusters first pass and damage R&D blockout. The new GPU-driven thruster trails have completed its initial implementation phase. On the Weapon VFX side, the style guide has been improved by bringing in a new system that defines the visual style of a weapon based on manufacturer and energy type. The Apocalypse Arms Scourge railgun, Kastak Arms Devastator plasma shotgun rework, and Klaus & Werner Gallant energy rifle rework finished their first pass. The layered impact library has been rolled out. Previously, impacts were per weapon and per surface type, but the new setup allows us to layer up individual elements which gives more flexibility and less maintenance. ANIMATION The animation team has been exploring a lot of technical previs this past month. Part of that work includes improving the functionality of the shouldered weapon state to get the railgun ready and playable for 3.0. The team also polished the prone set so it will be ready for code to work their magic on fixing any edge cases and continued to work on Breathing & Stamina to create a solid look and feel for a player breathing across multiple states, such as normal, tired and hyperventilating. The weapons-free jumps are getting a pass to bring the animations more in line with the mocap rather than the technical first pass implementation. The Devastator shotgun, Gallant, Arrowhead, and Railgun weapon reloads have been improved. Meanwhile, the Derby Studio continued with Facial animation for SQ42 and Star Citizen cinematics. They attended a facial shoot down in London for 3.0 and members of the team visited the LA studio for some facial animation R&D meetings. Foundry 42 DE FOUNDRY 42: DE WEAPONS This past month, we completed all the rockets and rocket pods ranging from size 1 to 3 as well as the first art pass for the Knightbridge Arms Ballistic Cannons. The various sizes can now be used to test out the new modularity system and various upgraded levels and combinations. The FPS weapon artists finished a second art pass on the Klaus & Werner Arclight II, Gallant, and Arrowhead which now include new venting mechanisms that add more visual interest to the reloads. The first art pass on the Kastak Arms Ravager-212 and a second art pass on the Kastak Arms Devastator with an additional layer of detail was also completed. LIGHTING The lighting team began determining a way to integrate lighting on modular surface outposts, so it feels coherent across potentially countless outpost layout permutations. The challenge with this task is that every room could have a different arrangement of props and objects, which dictates where lights would logically be placed, as well as the theme or mood of that room. For example, crew sleeping quarters should have a different mood than a hydroponics lab. To do this, the lighting team tested for possible issues (such as light leaking through walls or certain lighting variations looking incorrect when placed next to others) by integrating simple lighting variations into the procedural system. The team also focused on creating a visual target for our main room types (habitation, hydroponics, mining, and storage) to see how far we can push the lighting to match our concepts and goals for the interior look of our surface outposts. When these are finished, we can then determine how to break the lighting down into modular components that can be fed back into the procedural system. TECH ART The tech art team worked on multiple skinning tasks, including clothing for both the PU and SQ42 (to widen the range of character customization) and a skinning pass on the final Vanduul mesh (so the animators can work on their animations).The team created a tool that allows the team to quickly update the exact grip placements for individual weapons. Artists can now use a reference mesh, create an offset, hit export, and immediately see their changes live in engine. This will allow them to iterate much quicker than before. In addition, they developed a tool for the animators to redirect their walking animations to turn animations. This fairly simple tool that will ultimately reduce the time the animators need to spend on certain specific animations. DESIGN The Level Design team worked on the modularity of Space Stations and Surface Outposts. As an initial proof of concept, the team has decided to move forward with five versions of the outposts. Ultimately with this system, we’ll be able to create a large number of outposts with different layouts and purposes, but first, the systems, props, and placement of planets need to work as intended. The Truck Stop is our first test of modularity in Space Stations. Soon, customizable hubs will be able to create variations using add-ons and procedural prop placement which can add flavor to various rooms. The modularity of Space Stations also extends to how the rooms connect to one another through the use of pre-made flowcharts. Design is collaborating with engineers to get it functioning in-game as intended. The system design team has been continuing their work on the usables system, as well as working with the cinematics team in helping to establish the final look and feel for the conversation system. ENGINE TEAM The engine team finished the physics grid refactoring, which is used to store each individual physical object in the world and to allow for fast neighbour queries. The old legacy CryPhysics grid system worked by projecting the entire world onto a fixed 2d array of cells of uniform dimension. For memory reasons, the old system was configured to huge cell sizes to allow for our massive worlds, which lead to severe performance problems when dealing with lots of small objects as well as lots of entities returned due to the fact the grid would ‘wrap-around’ every few thousand kilometres. To address these issues, the new grid system was designed to have a sparse and fixed hierarchy of nested 3D grid cells of various sizes where objects will get inserted into different levels of the fixed hierarchy depending on their size. That way, the engine can efficiently handle objects the size of a planet (several thousand kilometres in radius) all the way down to small pebbles just a few centimeters across. Initial performance tests in Stanton have proven the new grid to be vastly more efficient (10x less entities returned for small queries, and queries in general faster in the magnitude of 1.2x – 2x) while using slightly more memory than the legacy system. The team has also been developing the core foundation of our AI movement. While motion capture animation is perfect for cut-scenes and all types of linear animations where things are fixed and predictable, mocap-data can’t be used directly for animations that need to be truly interactive. To use mocap-data in interactive situations, longer motion-clips must be broken into shorter clips and generated into multiple variations of the same motion-style. As an example, a simple walk-cycle needs the ability to walk at different speeds, walk in circles, walk on slopes, and walk in different directions. A typical AI-character in Squadron might have about 1000 of these motion-clips. It’s impossible to create unique animations-clips for every given situation. That’s why we developed a blending technique called Parametric Blending. Parametric Blending enables all these clips to be controllable at runtime. It takes the concept of “simple” animation-blending and moves it to the next level. The goal is to make the outcome of a transition or an interpolation predictable for an undefined number of assets. Each motion-clip contains a combination of physical and stylistic properties (what we call the “natural” motion-parameters, because they are inherently part of the motion itself). To control a character in a game, these “natural” motion-parameters need to be passed to the animation-system, and let it generate the motion we need. Once there are enough animation-clips, they’re placed into a blend-space. The most important aspect of a blend-space is that each animation-clip represents a point in a coordinate-system and all points are connected by an index list. In a blend-space, blending is treated as a geometrical problem. The relationship between animation-clips is extremely important for the blending to work. The placement of the assets into the blend-space is fully automatic due to how the animators set up their locators before export. In a single blend-space, there can be more than 100 unique animation-clips and they can be controlled like a single animation. In a 2D blendspace, the travel-speed is on the X and the turn-speed is on the Y. This means we can generate all motions between a slow-walk and fast-walk while maintaining the correct turn-speeds. Blend-spaces are not only limited to simple motion-cycles, they’ll be used for most AI motions in our vast universe, enabling our AI-characters to move fluidly and realistically in the world. The engine team also did improvements to the objects blending with terrain. The underlying terrain and objects shapes are now taken into account to blend procedurally distributed objects more naturally with the planetary generated environment. QA The QA team has been testing the Loadout Editor. The Loadout Editor is heavily used by our devs across all four locations, so it made sense to increase the depth of testing on a daily basis. The first version of the Solar System Editor (also known by its shortened name: SolEd) is being tested as well. The Engineers went over SolEd’s functionality and gathered initial feedback from the team. QA documented the feedback and will work closely with the engineers on the best ways to address and test specific feedback in the near future. They also supported the Engine team with testing of a few things such as the updated Planet Physics grid and the Refactoring of Texture Streamer logic. AI The AI team this month completed some work on Mission related functionalities for both the PU and Squadron 42 designers. They also improved the setup for complex conversation scenarios, where multiple characters need to interact with one another. The first step to achieve that was to allow the subsumption logic to run on top of players. That allows logic on predefined story scenes to be executed and also ensures the AI system can fully communicate with players and interact with them. The subsumption tool also had some improvements on the conversation setup. The team also kicked off work on “Conversation Sub Activities.” The sub-activities describe the logic for multiple characters in one view, to make it easier for designers to synchronize interactions between the characters and the environment. Essentially, those conversations will still result in unique sub activities that run on the different characters so that each individual entity can still handle further events/situations on their own. The first pass on refactoring of the perception for the spaceships was also completed. There is currently a general perception component on characters that can handle several types of senses. A normal Human will have his own vision and hearing senses, but once sitting down inside a spaceship, they will also be able to interface with the spaceship radar and group the information about the different senses into its perception component. This will allow for progress towards more “character-controlled” behaviors on spaceships, since strict dependencies between the game code and specific behaviors running on the vehicles themselves will be removed. CINEMATICS The cinematics team is making steady progress across multiple chapters, from implementing new scenes to polishing existing ones. The team also assisted in defining the look of the conversation system and participated in the various sprints push this system along. The goal is to allow for a cinematic feel while still maintaining flexibility and immersion. VFX The VFX team in Frankfurt has continued working on planetary effects. The systems for implementation have been progressing nicely thanks to the close collaboration between the VFX artists and Engineers. They started implementing some of the new effects on the planets, including various atmosphere and weather effects, as well as more specific effects for various types of assets that will be distributed with the object scattering system. ENVIRONMENT ART The Frankfurt environment team has been primarily focused on finalizing the Crusader’s moons. The procedural assets distribution system has seen a lot of progress and is still improving. All the separate pieces that make-up our procedural planets and moons are truly starting to fall into place. The team is now moving on to get the Levski landing zone integrated onto Delamar and will be the first big landing zone on a procedural entity. This means a new procedural planet/asteroid and the exteriors architecture of Levski will be created. The challenge is to merge the procedural terrain and the landing zone in a way in which they feel like they belong together. Turbulent TURBULENT This month, Turbulent launched spectrum 0.3.2, which includes major performance updates to help render messages and threads in the client. Hopefully, this will allow users to switch faster between lobbies and channels, as well as take less CPU and render time than in the 0.3.1 version. 0.3.2 also brings two new features. First users can now re-order communities in the top left of the sidebar by dragging and dropping the community to the new location.Second, the other feature is the channel thread list, so now threads that contain media information and videos have thumbnail images allowing users to preview the content. There has also been mobile optimization and keyboard fixes that will hopefully be ready for 0.3.3. This should fix bugs Android users have been encountering when typing into the chat. The new patch also adds nested threads to the forums Users can now create a new thread and change a discussion type from a classic chronological timeline into a nested discussion. This gives us two benefits. First, we can now sort by up votes and get a nested reply tree behind it. Second, users can gain more control into choosing discussion types. The post creator will have the option of choosing if it’s a nested thread or not. Turbulent will also archive the old forums on Friday, April 14. We’ve expanded our category list to bring all those discussions from the old forum to Spectrum. This will not be an import, but a recreation inside the new system. This month, the team also worked on the new delta patcher. Turbulent is responsible for building the actual application that hosts the patching libraries, so we’ve worked hard over this month to get this new application setup. It requires a whole new application stack called Electron which lets the team patch the game data with this new launcher internally. Another major project started this month is a redesign of some of the elements of the RSI site. This is a massive overhaul of the website to address how it caters to new users. We can’t talk much about it now, but there will be updates as the design progresses. There has also been progress on updating the Ship Stats page. The ship stats are supposed to reflect the intent design of a ship and not necessarily the exact stats that are currently in game, but at the same time, there are things that are missing. The team is changing how the back end manages this by re-designing some of the tech view, specifications view, and holoviewer. Community Community Some of our devs attended Austin’s biggest media festival, South by Southwest, and participated in a special panel last month. Before that, Community Manager Jared Huckaby and Lead Community Manager Tyler Witkin attended PAX East where they got some hands on time with our incredible backers. CIG team members haven’t been back to meet our East Coast backers since 2014, so it was good to visit again. In addition to meeting many content creators at the PAX event itself, they were also able to attend a Boston Bar Citizen with fans from all over. The importance of these events cannot be understated, as they’re not only a great chance for you to meet the team, but it really energizes the team to directly interface with all of you. And speaking of Bar Citizens, the team was also honored to attend meet-ups in Brisbane, Australia; Austin, Texas; and Santa Monica, California. There are Bar Citizens happening every week. Learn more about them here. Subscribers this month saw the Space Station flair series begin in addition to receiving their very own Big Benny’s machine as part of the annual Subscription update. The March Jump Point was also released with a focus on the Anvil Hurricane. The issue also includes plenty of lore, part of an original Star Citizen serial, and more! On Citizens of the Stars, the team checked in with some of the best screenshot artists, original video makers, and news reporters in the community while also spotlighting plenty of other backer projects. Don’t forget, if you’re a subscriber you can contribute questions to Quantum Questions and vote for which ones are asked to the weekly development guests. Check out the thread in the Subscriber’s Den on Spectrum. During this month’s Happy Hours, the team showed how our designers prototype new systems by building a basketball game mockup live, and our very own Ben Lesnick took a dive into Chris Roberts’ Privateer to talk about how this classic game has influenced Star Citizen. Star Citizen joined the worldwide celebration of Space Week with many developers, including Sean Tracy and Erin Roberts, appearing on the Twitch front page to talk about the worlds being built in Star Citizen.The team at Turbulent also held a live Town Hall to answer questions about Spectrum and their other platform work. Spectrum continues to update with more functionality on the horizon. As of today, old forums are being closed and archived. Posts will still be available to read, but Spectrum will be the new home for any future discussions. Last week, the team held a special ‘Drake-over’ sale to celebrate the Buccaneer being flight-ready. With the Dragonfly and Cutlass finishing up, the current Drake lineup is almost done. Also on the ship front, a lot of work has been put into our next reveal, the Banu Defender. Stay tuned to learn more about both the Defender and the Banu race! Additionally, an update to the Referral Program is in progress. Expect to hear more about this soon, including details on a special contest. Conclusion WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH… Przeczytaj całość

Monthly Studio Report: March 2017 Greetings Citizens! Welcome to the monthly report where we collect updates from our studios around the world into a single comprehensive place to summarize the various progresses (and setbacks) they’ve experienced. Last month we debuted our new style of Monthly Report, utilizing the weekly Studio Reports found in Around the Verse to create an overview of progress made in the last four weeks. In addition to our continuing progress with Squadron 42 and the PU 3.0 undertaking, we released both 2.6.2 and 2.6.3 to the entire community, and have now focused those attentions to the upcoming Star Citizen Alpha 3.0. With that, let’s review some of what each studio did this month. CIG Los Angeles CLOUD IMPERIUM: LOS ANGELES SHIP ART AND DESIGN The ship team spent a lot of the month working on the Drake Buccaneer. Art created a custom dual weapon mount and generated all the LODs, while the tech content team implemented UV2s and Damage. Tech design made their flight balance passes to get it ready for flight with sound and then passed it along to VFX. The ship team has also made a lot of progress on the newly revamped RSI Aurora. The whitebox phase in now complete, which includes a proxy layout of the space, establishing the animation positions, placing the screens, and making sure the characters could hold the controls. The final geometry of the cockpit has begun in an effort to improve the inside of the ship. Now that tech design has implemented all the art updates into the ship’s new archetype, the RSI Aurora is heading into greybox. TECH DESIGN The tech design group completed the design for the Multi Function Display (MFD) screens, which controls power, heat, coolers, shields, weapons, countermeasures and missiles, in preparation for Item 2.0 functionality. These designer prototypes are meant to help understand what’s needed and see how everything will interact with each other. UI As soon as these designs have been approved, the UI team will create an interface to take advantage of the functionality that engineering is implementing in the back end. Once this system is in place, a ship that is staffed by a knowledgeable crew will be able to operate their ship beyond the default system settings and min-max the various ship systems to suit not only a player’s style, but potentially save a player during a potentially devastating attack. QA This month QA aided LA Development by checking a variety of fixes for 2.6.2 issues. They also provided support to Austin QA with PTU & LIVE sanity checks, smoke tests, sweeps and deployments, and helped new hires get up to speed with the game. As for feature work, the team swept ship destruction VFX, Item System 2.0, implementation of recent loadout changes, and tested multiple iterations of new targeting and ESP code. For a quick reminder on Quality Assurance terms, a Sanity Check basically ensures that the game loads. This is now automated, but can take about an hour or two to investigate any errors that arise. A Smoke Test checks the basic functionality. This process takes 6-8 people about a day if there aren’t any major issues. A Full Sweep means checking everything possible, a process which requires a much larger team and can take over a week. Full Sweeps are the most arduous, rigorous, and intense, but also incredibly important. ENGINEERING The engineering team started a new shop entity that uses DataCore components to allow shops to be easily streamed in with object containers, with the aim to be finished in the next sprint. The plan is to make shops more dynamic and reactive to the economy by retrieving their inventory from the back end. The engineering team added a new attribute to vehicle XMLs that allows designers to specify the interior grid type of the vehicle (small, medium, or large). This optimization will reduce memory storage as all ships previously defaulted to medium size. As discussed previously, a new Light Group entity was developed, equipped with a state machine to serve as the ultimate light switch. Now that implementation of the core state-switching functionality is complete, the next step is to start using the Light Group in our vehicles and environments and replace all instances of the old layer-switching method of light management. This new light group entity reduces the number of lights used, which has dramatic impacts on performance. For example, hundreds of entities were reduced down to 90 or less with no visual impact on the Drake Caterpillar. A framework is being developed in IFCS (Intelligent Flight Control System) for the autopilot to handle situations like take-off and landing sequences. This also applies to AI control, so they’ll be providing the AI developers with a set of tools for controlling the ships, like a “move-to”, “change speed to”, etc. This will improve the stability and predictability of ship motion under optimal conditions. The Room System and Atmosphere Containers were updated with several new features, better debugging tools, and several bug fixes. The room system has only been implemented in a few locations, but these changes will allow the implementation of rooms and atmospheres throughout the various locations and ships in the game. At the moment, the entering and exiting of airlocks are scripted events. They don’t factor in atmosphere of any kind. This new system will be able to replace this setup with an actual room and atmosphere that allows for a dynamic experience. In addition to the room system changes, a new feature allows the designers and artists to set wear and dirt parameters for loadouts. This functionality comes in two levels: overall and individual values for specific items. Wear and Dirt values are used by the render node to set shader parameters that make items look old, dusty, scuffed up, and burnt out. This task also used Loadout Editor side work, where the team added UI support to edit wear and dirt. Recently, the team started on the Entity Owner Manager. This system will be responsible for managing ownership and lifetimes of all the entities in the game and is a core feature required to take gameplay from a multiplayer game to a persistent online experience. It will work in conjunction with the back end persistence systems to indicate dynamic changes to the world that need to be tracked and persisted across sessions. The Entity Owner Manager will also work with various game and engine systems, including Debris, Salvage, Criminality, Streaming, Missions, Cargo, Shops, and more to help create the persistent experience across clients and servers. The team has been working on scanning subcomponents, which required some slight refactoring of the object databank. After the changes, the databank can support the storage of “child” entries, which will be the subcomponents on ships/players/etc. In doing this, the thread safety of accessing data within the databank was also improved. This allows calculations to be moved onto other threads, which will help improve performance. This focuses on two big elements: the ping component and angle of focus. The ping component is the method in which a player or pilot will send out a wave to see if there are any objects of note within their scan range. This could be a ship, an asteroid, or even traces that mark whether a player entered or exited quantum travel. Since other players can detect these traces, we think that this could have some pretty heavy game implications. For example, if you were an outlaw, it would allow you to track potential prey. Angle of focus allows players to adjust the angle with which they’re scanning. A smaller angle will also provide more range, but only contacts within the angle can be detected. The underlying radar query logic is being refactored to use zone queries rather than a huge iteration of registered radar objects. This will make the scanning system much more efficient. TECH CONTENT Since the tech content team supports and implements every pipeline within Star Citizen and Squadron 42, one of their main focuses have been performance improvements. For instance, the team changed the mesh vertex and position formats, which massively improves streaming of these meshes as well as reducing build size.They’re also improving the Python integration within our editor, which allows for faster development of Python tools which are used by every department across the company. The tools can script any sandbox process they want. For example, it can place asteroids and generate modular outposts, which saves a tremendous amount of development time on otherwise tedious and time consuming tasks. The tech content team completed a character animation tool that tracks and reports the number of various wild lines each character will have in the universe. With over 1200 pages of script for S42, which include all story lines as well as wild lines, a tool was needed to continuously generate reports on how many were completed and what was left to solve. Once the various lines are all in, the system will be able to pull lines based on player action and situation, but also randomize the potential wildline responses so the NPCs aren’t repeating the same line every time. All helmets have been converted to a dot skin format. The conversion was important to allow a unified LOD ratio across the character skins. This means no more helmet-less people running around the ’verse. To ensure this is easier in the future, Tech Content also created a tool that rigs skins and exports automatically which will drastically reduce dev time from an entire day to just a few minutes. Heads were also successfully converted to use the human skin shader developed by the graphics team. Since there are 44 different areas of blended wrinkles and blended diffuse, the texture cost was quite high, at about 100 MB per head. With this change, roughly 90% of the original texture memory cost was saved without discernable visual impact. With the implementation of the female character progressing rapidly, thousands of animations have been transferred from male to female to complete her motion set and provide a data for animation to iterate on. To help the cinematics team focus on content needed for Squadron 42, a tool was written to allow for visibility of scenes before they even hit the engine. This allows for fast exporting of animations and preview renders which are then automatically uploaded to Shotgun. This makes it easier and faster to review the many hours of cinematics for Squadron 42. NARRATIVE The narrative team has been developing some additional 3.0 missions. They’ve also begun documenting posters and props to populate the world of Star Citizen. The team also created an equivalent Time Capsule approach for the Xi’an history from birth to present day as a means of expanding Xi’an history and society documentation. Breakdowns of ethno-groups in the Star Citizen universe has been in progress to take full advantage of the character customization technology 3Lateral showcased at GDC a few weeks ago. CHARACTER ART The character team is working on the ingame mesh of the Heavy Outlaw. Next, it will go onto rigging and implementation. The light, medium, and heavy female marine armor and the undersuit has been sent to rigging and implementation. Once the male base suits were done, an adjusted wrap technique was used to save development time. We’ve also made progress on the Female Explorer suit, which has now moved through the high poly phase, so she’ll be exploring the universe in no time. On the Squadron 42 front, both the EVA deck crew and the Marine BDU have gone through the high poly phase and are onto the in-game mesh and texturing phase. We’ve continued developing the Vanduul and the medium and heavy versions of the OMC outlaw faction. Lastly, the mechanized Titan Suit is in R&D along with other alien concept sculpts. CIG Austin CLOUD IMPERIUM: AUSTIN DESIGN The ATX Design team focused on getting 2.6.2 out the door, which has mainly consisted of adding new subscriber flair items and fixing some minor bugs. Additional shop-related elements have been updated as the shopping system continues to grow. The team is also in the process of revising the Stanton System Map. Also, Landing Zone AI and Usables are undergoing additional development. New subscriber flair will be rolled out in the coming months. One of the new items is called the ‘viVid Display,’ which can display game locations holographically. Players can use the ‘viVid Display’ to find out more about locations, including their intended visuals. Other flair items include a series of ship schematics, which will showcase the level of detail that goes into ship design. These light board displays can be hung from any poster style port in your hangar. The Shopping System will be revamped in our next release. As the Item 2.0 system advances, the Item Port structure has been changed as well so it can fall in line with the end goal. These fluctuations have re-addressed things like how Shop Mannequins and Item Bundles are set up. The team’s goal is to create a base mannequin object that the shopping system can apply loadouts to. The items on a given mannequin would be purchasable by themselves, or as a bundle for a discounted price. In the past, every outfit was only purchasable as an entire set of items. On top of that, a bespoke mannequin setup had to be generated for each unique outfit display. Fortunately, advancing tech will soon allow the Loadout Editor to quickly create various item combinations within a given shop. That loadout, comprised of items in the shop, will then be assigned to the shop’s inventory as a “Bundle.” The Shopping System will then spawn these bundles directly onto an empty shop mannequin with no additional effort by the designers. A process that took hours will soon take minutes, allowing different item combinations to be quickly generated for display on the mannequins. While this might seem like a minor change, this will actually unlock a multitude of options for the design team to create realistic shops. ANIMATION The PU Animation Team just finished a small Mocap shoot using the in-house OptiTrack system. This was a pickup shoot to help fill in all the gaps from the Performance Capture shoots done at Imaginarium studios and captured transition animations for both male and female characters. These animations included sitting down at tables with trays, going through the chow line, eating, drinking, rummaging, or sitting in cockpits and turrets. A Usable is an object that a player or NPC can interact with like a chair, wall, table, or any other set piece, but also include props such as cups, plates, bottles, crates, and anything else that can physically picked up by a person. Obviously, animation can only get these game assets so far. The biggest challenge right now is making all the usables function in game. It is up to code, tech and designers to make them work, which is why Austin Animation is working closely with our Frankfurt and UK studios. The team also amended metrics for door control panels, bathroom toilet facilities, and chow lines in the Idris mess hall. Tech is being put in place that will allow an NPC to navigate to a usable set piece and perform a variety of actions (like grabbing a usable prop off the set piece, setting other usable props onto it, walking away with the prop, going to and interacting with another usable set piece, setting usable props on top of usable props, then getting up and navigating to a third usable set piece to dispose of the usable prop with all the usable props on it). Once this one test case is fully functional, we will be able to use these universal animations with different usables throughout the game. SHIP ANIMATION The Ship Animation team has finished the major animation tasks for the Drake Cutlass Black. Characters can now enter and exit the pilot and copilot seats properly. For the copilot, the team used a new cockpit template called the “Stick.” This template positions the player in a pose like that of a helicopter pilot which was required to fit the new geometry of the Cutlass cockpit. DEV OPS DevOps added additional logging to better track issues and allows the team to dump the status of the users download session at the moment they experience the issue. The DevOps team then works directly with the Community Relations team to debug the issue or issues the user is experiencing. A great example of this is the latest version of the Patcher. As some of the Windows 10 users may have already noticed, the 2.4.9 version of the Patcher brought back music that had been missing. The exact cause of the issue was that the Windows 10 sound settings were set to 192kHz which caused the Patcher to crash if you had the music turned on. You can now enjoy all of Pedro Camacho’s music again! QA The QA Department has been heavily focused on 2.6.2 testing. With the addition of Multiplayer Megamap and Serialized Variables, multiple cross-studio playtests between the ATX and UK studios were performed in order to check for any unexpected behaviors, such as increased desynchronization and lag between clients, massive performance changes (good or bad), and crashes. Since the new Drake Buccaneer came online sooner than expected, we were able to perform frequent testing to ensure the ship was operating as expected for its inclusion in 2.6.2. In the development stream testing, Squadron 42 testing continues, as well as a range of tests with ground vehicles on planetary surfaces in a multiplayer environment. Various development tools are also being tested, such as the Procedural Planet Editor (PlanED), and the Subsumption Editor. PLAYER RELATIONS The Player Relations team was very busy in both the US and UK this month helping with 2.6.2 and 2.6.3. We spent a lot of time with Evocati and QA working on getting the final bugs worked out, then managing our public PTU playtests. In the coming weeks, we will be increasing and updating our PTU test numbers, so we’ve spent a lot of time working on how to roll that out, too. Lastly, we also had a great summit in LA with other department leads and stakeholders to work out our plans for the rest of year, and we got to spend a little time working with our Turbulent friends as well. Foundry 42 UK FOUNDRY 42: UK PROGRAMMING The player interaction sprint is proceeding at full speed. Rather than outlining a whole mesh, they have created a system where sub-objects can be highlighted allowing players to choose individual parts. This is especially useful in cockpits, where players can interact with individual buttons and switches to access things like ship functions and resource distribution. The team has also been ensuring the new interaction system works seamlessly with the multifunction displays (MFD). The new placement system has also come online, so players can choose where and with what orientation objects can be set down. If the placement position is out of range, players now automatically go into a throw state. Different actor states have been added to the Player Status System, so the player finds it harder, or even impossible, to do things like jump, vault and mantle depending on how fatigued they are. Mass has been added to the suit and weapons as another way to influence the player’s stamina. We’ve also added a breathing state component to bring together the player’s status with the procedural breathing animation and sound. The team is now starting work on new gameplay elements like suit punctures, oxygen recharging and depressurisation.The team invested time in the conversation system tech by creating a tool to help simplify complicated conversations when there are multiple actors in the same scene. UI The UI team began the front-end skeleton framework for Kiosk shopping. This includes properly setting up all UI components such as lists, grids, buttons, TextFields, and other various assets. Once this is done, the engineers will hook these components up to the game data and get it presented diegetically in the game world. The team is also supporting the player interaction system to unify the way the players will interact with in-game UI screens across the game. This means the same underlying system used to interact with a MFD in a ship seat will be applied to all in-game terminals, wall-mounted displays, and kiosks. This will make interaction with in-game displays feel much less clunky and constrictive. In anticipation of the Graphics Team’s work on the new render-to-texture (RTT) tech, the UI team has done a round of testing using current helmet interiors to see how well the UI looks rendered onto an interior glass surface.The new RTT tech will eventually allow the UI to render properly in the rendering pipeline, making it feel much more integrated with the game-world than it is currently. They have also checked how well the text will read at various sizes and how any post-processing effects, such as motion blur or chromatic aberration, might potentially negatively impact the legibility of the text and symbols. The UI team is also looking at potential impacts the new incoming dynamic field of view system might have on the UI. This new system will allow such things like the HUD and 3D helmet interior to remain roughly the same size on screen when setting a lower or higher field of view. AUDIO The Audio team has been involved in all gameplay features like the Buccaneer, surface outposts, Squadron level development, and the actor status system. Work has continued on the Audio Propagation system to make audio respect walls, doors and paths. In the current system, audio triggers play from their point of origin and either being occluded or un-occluded, but always play from their source position. The new propagation system will allow a sound playing inside a room to be heard by anyone listening from outside the room, either through the door, window, or any other opening. This extends to other rooms, so a sound playing 4 rooms away will navigate the doorways and the air in between in order to reach the listener. Also, the first and second pass of the mix management system have been completed. This is a virtual mixing console that can be applied to certain areas or rooms and allows the creation of mix snapshots that can apply volume, filter or effect settings on any parts of the audio mix with faders in DataForge that can be tweaked in real-time. Setting up and organising these areas, and mix snapshots, will allow for easy adjustment of the audio mix. Finally, a lot of progress has been made on the WordUp dialogue tool to manage the huge amount of spoken lines in the PU and S42. For fun, here’s a piece of original Star Citizen music called Atomos for you to enjoy. CONCEPT ART The Concept team has been finishing the Gemini ballistic shotgun and establishing the look of a new ship weapon manufacturer, Preacher Armaments. Preacher prides themselves on making high-quality, reliable and effective weapons that are favored by bounty hunters, police, and militia. In 2940, the conglomerate Eon Group bought out Preacher from founder Kino Walton and immediately ramped up manufacturing. Preacher Armaments is aggressively making its way into stores across the universe. Concept work for the Banu Defender is complete, as well as on two additional ships that will be revealed in the future. Work continues on the truckstop interiors, satellite interiors, New Babbage on microTech and dressing for the modular habitation modules. Here is a glimpse of a WIP Truckstop interior. Truckstops will serve as waypoints for haulers and other travelers making their way through the system giving them a chance to restock, refuel, and stretch their legs. ENVIRONMENT ART The environment team has been refining the surface outposts with technical, engineering, and habitation spaces coming together with their preliminary dressing passes. The exteriors are now mostly complete. The team is also looking into lighting variations for the procedural system to add more complex setups for the lighting states. The greybox for the truckstop space station is continuing and now that all the building set pieces have been established, the detail phase has begun. On the Satellite sprint, we’re close to being Whitebox complete on the communication archetype, which means the modules and classifications that were specified by design have been visually explored. SHIP ART AND DESIGN Our ship team has been continuing work on the Hull-C and Reclaimer, which includes the new light controller work that allows for easier set up of different lighting entities and switches them between property states (e.g., on, off, emergency) depending on various circumstances such as a player interaction or sufficient pull from a connected power pipe. The Javelin continues to be polished for both Squadron 42 and Star Citizen. The team is also completing the capital ships of the Vanduul Fleet. VFX As you’re aware, the VFX was completed on the Drake Buccaneer and the ship was released in 2.6.2. Meanwhile, the RSI Constellation Aquila is going through its flight-ready pass. The MISC Prospector finished a thrusters first pass and damage R&D blockout. The new GPU-driven thruster trails have completed its initial implementation phase. On the Weapon VFX side, the style guide has been improved by bringing in a new system that defines the visual style of a weapon based on manufacturer and energy type. The Apocalypse Arms Scourge railgun, Kastak Arms Devastator plasma shotgun rework, and Klaus & Werner Gallant energy rifle rework finished their first pass. The layered impact library has been rolled out. Previously, impacts were per weapon and per surface type, but the new setup allows us to layer up individual elements which gives more flexibility and less maintenance. ANIMATION The animation team has been exploring a lot of technical previs this past month. Part of that work includes improving the functionality of the shouldered weapon state to get the railgun ready and playable for 3.0. The team also polished the prone set so it will be ready for code to work their magic on fixing any edge cases and continued to work on Breathing & Stamina to create a solid look and feel for a player breathing across multiple states, such as normal, tired and hyperventilating. The weapons-free jumps are getting a pass to bring the animations more in line with the mocap rather than the technical first pass implementation. The Devastator shotgun, Gallant, Arrowhead, and Railgun weapon reloads have been improved. Meanwhile, the Derby Studio continued with Facial animation for SQ42 and Star Citizen cinematics. They attended a facial shoot down in London for 3.0 and members of the team visited the LA studio for some facial animation R&D meetings. Foundry 42 DE FOUNDRY 42: DE WEAPONS This past month, we completed all the rockets and rocket pods ranging from size 1 to 3 as well as the first art pass for the Knightbridge Arms Ballistic Cannons. The various sizes can now be used to test out the new modularity system and various upgraded levels and combinations. The FPS weapon artists finished a second art pass on the Klaus & Werner Arclight II, Gallant, and Arrowhead which now include new venting mechanisms that add more visual interest to the reloads. The first art pass on the Kastak Arms Ravager-212 and a second art pass on the Kastak Arms Devastator with an additional layer of detail was also completed. LIGHTING The lighting team began determining a way to integrate lighting on modular surface outposts, so it feels coherent across potentially countless outpost layout permutations. The challenge with this task is that every room could have a different arrangement of props and objects, which dictates where lights would logically be placed, as well as the theme or mood of that room. For example, crew sleeping quarters should have a different mood than a hydroponics lab. To do this, the lighting team tested for possible issues (such as light leaking through walls or certain lighting variations looking incorrect when placed next to others) by integrating simple lighting variations into the procedural system. The team also focused on creating a visual target for our main room types (habitation, hydroponics, mining, and storage) to see how far we can push the lighting to match our concepts and goals for the interior look of our surface outposts. When these are finished, we can then determine how to break the lighting down into modular components that can be fed back into the procedural system. TECH ART The tech art team worked on multiple skinning tasks, including clothing for both the PU and SQ42 (to widen the range of character customization) and a skinning pass on the final Vanduul mesh (so the animators can work on their animations).The team created a tool that allows the team to quickly update the exact grip placements for individual weapons. Artists can now use a reference mesh, create an offset, hit export, and immediately see their changes live in engine. This will allow them to iterate much quicker than before. In addition, they developed a tool for the animators to redirect their walking animations to turn animations. This fairly simple tool that will ultimately reduce the time the animators need to spend on certain specific animations. DESIGN The Level Design team worked on the modularity of Space Stations and Surface Outposts. As an initial proof of concept, the team has decided to move forward with five versions of the outposts. Ultimately with this system, we’ll be able to create a large number of outposts with different layouts and purposes, but first, the systems, props, and placement of planets need to work as intended. The Truck Stop is our first test of modularity in Space Stations. Soon, customizable hubs will be able to create variations using add-ons and procedural prop placement which can add flavor to various rooms. The modularity of Space Stations also extends to how the rooms connect to one another through the use of pre-made flowcharts. Design is collaborating with engineers to get it functioning in-game as intended. The system design team has been continuing their work on the usables system, as well as working with the cinematics team in helping to establish the final look and feel for the conversation system. ENGINE TEAM The engine team finished the physics grid refactoring, which is used to store each individual physical object in the world and to allow for fast neighbour queries. The old legacy CryPhysics grid system worked by projecting the entire world onto a fixed 2d array of cells of uniform dimension. For memory reasons, the old system was configured to huge cell sizes to allow for our massive worlds, which lead to severe performance problems when dealing with lots of small objects as well as lots of entities returned due to the fact the grid would ‘wrap-around’ every few thousand kilometres. To address these issues, the new grid system was designed to have a sparse and fixed hierarchy of nested 3D grid cells of various sizes where objects will get inserted into different levels of the fixed hierarchy depending on their size. That way, the engine can efficiently handle objects the size of a planet (several thousand kilometres in radius) all the way down to small pebbles just a few centimeters across. Initial performance tests in Stanton have proven the new grid to be vastly more efficient (10x less entities returned for small queries, and queries in general faster in the magnitude of 1.2x – 2x) while using slightly more memory than the legacy system. The team has also been developing the core foundation of our AI movement. While motion capture animation is perfect for cut-scenes and all types of linear animations where things are fixed and predictable, mocap-data can’t be used directly for animations that need to be truly interactive. To use mocap-data in interactive situations, longer motion-clips must be broken into shorter clips and generated into multiple variations of the same motion-style. As an example, a simple walk-cycle needs the ability to walk at different speeds, walk in circles, walk on slopes, and walk in different directions. A typical AI-character in Squadron might have about 1000 of these motion-clips. It’s impossible to create unique animations-clips for every given situation. That’s why we developed a blending technique called Parametric Blending. Parametric Blending enables all these clips to be controllable at runtime. It takes the concept of “simple” animation-blending and moves it to the next level. The goal is to make the outcome of a transition or an interpolation predictable for an undefined number of assets. Each motion-clip contains a combination of physical and stylistic properties (what we call the “natural” motion-parameters, because they are inherently part of the motion itself). To control a character in a game, these “natural” motion-parameters need to be passed to the animation-system, and let it generate the motion we need. Once there are enough animation-clips, they’re placed into a blend-space. The most important aspect of a blend-space is that each animation-clip represents a point in a coordinate-system and all points are connected by an index list. In a blend-space, blending is treated as a geometrical problem. The relationship between animation-clips is extremely important for the blending to work. The placement of the assets into the blend-space is fully automatic due to how the animators set up their locators before export. In a single blend-space, there can be more than 100 unique animation-clips and they can be controlled like a single animation. In a 2D blendspace, the travel-speed is on the X and the turn-speed is on the Y. This means we can generate all motions between a slow-walk and fast-walk while maintaining the correct turn-speeds. Blend-spaces are not only limited to simple motion-cycles, they’ll be used for most AI motions in our vast universe, enabling our AI-characters to move fluidly and realistically in the world. The engine team also did improvements to the objects blending with terrain. The underlying terrain and objects shapes are now taken into account to blend procedurally distributed objects more naturally with the planetary generated environment. QA The QA team has been testing the Loadout Editor. The Loadout Editor is heavily used by our devs across all four locations, so it made sense to increase the depth of testing on a daily basis. The first version of the Solar System Editor (also known by its shortened name: SolEd) is being tested as well. The Engineers went over SolEd’s functionality and gathered initial feedback from the team. QA documented the feedback and will work closely with the engineers on the best ways to address and test specific feedback in the near future. They also supported the Engine team with testing of a few things such as the updated Planet Physics grid and the Refactoring of Texture Streamer logic. AI The AI team this month completed some work on Mission related functionalities for both the PU and Squadron 42 designers. They also improved the setup for complex conversation scenarios, where multiple characters need to interact with one another. The first step to achieve that was to allow the subsumption logic to run on top of players. That allows logic on predefined story scenes to be executed and also ensures the AI system can fully communicate with players and interact with them. The subsumption tool also had some improvements on the conversation setup. The team also kicked off work on “Conversation Sub Activities.” The sub-activities describe the logic for multiple characters in one view, to make it easier for designers to synchronize interactions between the characters and the environment. Essentially, those conversations will still result in unique sub activities that run on the different characters so that each individual entity can still handle further events/situations on their own. The first pass on refactoring of the perception for the spaceships was also completed. There is currently a general perception component on characters that can handle several types of senses. A normal Human will have his own vision and hearing senses, but once sitting down inside a spaceship, they will also be able to interface with the spaceship radar and group the information about the different senses into its perception component. This will allow for progress towards more “character-controlled” behaviors on spaceships, since strict dependencies between the game code and specific behaviors running on the vehicles themselves will be removed. CINEMATICS The cinematics team is making steady progress across multiple chapters, from implementing new scenes to polishing existing ones. The team also assisted in defining the look of the conversation system and participated in the various sprints push this system along. The goal is to allow for a cinematic feel while still maintaining flexibility and immersion. VFX The VFX team in Frankfurt has continued working on planetary effects. The systems for implementation have been progressing nicely thanks to the close collaboration between the VFX artists and Engineers. They started implementing some of the new effects on the planets, including various atmosphere and weather effects, as well as more specific effects for various types of assets that will be distributed with the object scattering system. ENVIRONMENT ART The Frankfurt environment team has been primarily focused on finalizing the Crusader’s moons. The procedural assets distribution system has seen a lot of progress and is still improving. All the separate pieces that make-up our procedural planets and moons are truly starting to fall into place. The team is now moving on to get the Levski landing zone integrated onto Delamar and will be the first big landing zone on a procedural entity. This means a new procedural planet/asteroid and the exteriors architecture of Levski will be created. The challenge is to merge the procedural terrain and the landing zone in a way in which they feel like they belong together. Turbulent TURBULENT This month, Turbulent launched spectrum 0.3.2, which includes major performance updates to help render messages and threads in the client. Hopefully, this will allow users to switch faster between lobbies and channels, as well as take less CPU and render time than in the 0.3.1 version. 0.3.2 also brings two new features. First users can now re-order communities in the top left of the sidebar by dragging and dropping the community to the new location.Second, the other feature is the channel thread list, so now threads that contain media information and videos have thumbnail images allowing users to preview the content. There has also been mobile optimization and keyboard fixes that will hopefully be ready for 0.3.3. This should fix bugs Android users have been encountering when typing into the chat. The new patch also adds nested threads to the forums Users can now create a new thread and change a discussion type from a classic chronological timeline into a nested discussion. This gives us two benefits. First, we can now sort by up votes and get a nested reply tree behind it. Second, users can gain more control into choosing discussion types. The post creator will have the option of choosing if it’s a nested thread or not. Turbulent will also archive the old forums on Friday, April 14. We’ve expanded our category list to bring all those discussions from the old forum to Spectrum. This will not be an import, but a recreation inside the new system. This month, the team also worked on the new delta patcher. Turbulent is responsible for building the actual application that hosts the patching libraries, so we’ve worked hard over this month to get this new application setup. It requires a whole new application stack called Electron which lets the team patch the game data with this new launcher internally. Another major project started this month is a redesign of some of the elements of the RSI site. This is a massive overhaul of the website to address how it caters to new users. We can’t talk much about it now, but there will be updates as the design progresses. There has also been progress on updating the Ship Stats page. The ship stats are supposed to reflect the intent design of a ship and not necessarily the exact stats that are currently in game, but at the same time, there are things that are missing. The team is changing how the back end manages this by re-designing some of the tech view, specifications view, and holoviewer. Community Community Some of our devs attended Austin’s biggest media festival, South by Southwest, and participated in a special panel last month. Before that, Community Manager Jared Huckaby and Lead Community Manager Tyler Witkin attended PAX East where they got some hands on time with our incredible backers. CIG team members haven’t been back to meet our East Coast backers since 2014, so it was good to visit again. In addition to meeting many content creators at the PAX event itself, they were also able to attend a Boston Bar Citizen with fans from all over. The importance of these events cannot be understated, as they’re not only a great chance for you to meet the team, but it really energizes the team to directly interface with all of you. And speaking of Bar Citizens, the team was also honored to attend meet-ups in Brisbane, Australia; Austin, Texas; and Santa Monica, California. There are Bar Citizens happening every week. Learn more about them here. Subscribers this month saw the Space Station flair series begin in addition to receiving their very own Big Benny’s machine as part of the annual Subscription update. The March Jump Point was also released with a focus on the Anvil Hurricane. The issue also includes plenty of lore, part of an original Star Citizen serial, and more! On Citizens of the Stars, the team checked in with some of the best screenshot artists, original video makers, and news reporters in the community while also spotlighting plenty of other backer projects. Don’t forget, if you’re a subscriber you can contribute questions to Quantum Questions and vote for which ones are asked to the weekly development guests. Check out the thread in the Subscriber’s Den on Spectrum. During this month’s Happy Hours, the team showed how our designers prototype new systems by building a basketball game mockup live, and our very own Ben Lesnick took a dive into Chris Roberts’ Privateer to talk about how this classic game has influenced Star Citizen. Star Citizen joined the worldwide celebration of Space Week with many developers, including Sean Tracy and Erin Roberts, appearing on the Twitch front page to talk about the worlds being built in Star Citizen.The team at Turbulent also held a live Town Hall to answer questions about Spectrum and their other platform work. Spectrum continues to update with more functionality on the horizon. As of today, old forums are being closed and archived. Posts will still be available to read, but Spectrum will be the new home for any future discussions. Last week, the team held a special ‘Drake-over’ sale to celebrate the Buccaneer being flight-ready. With the Dragonfly and Cutlass finishing up, the current Drake lineup is almost done. Also on the ship front, a lot of work has been put into our next reveal, the Banu Defender. Stay tuned to learn more about both the Defender and the Banu race! Additionally, an update to the Referral Program is in progress. Expect to hear more about this soon, including details on a special contest. Conclusion WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH… Przeczytaj całość

Spring is Here! Whether you’re new to Star Citizen or a Persistent Universe pro, our Spring Sale has something for you. Start the season off right with our discounted Starter Packs and Basket Full Of Mini Ships. Want to see what all the buzz is about first? Then try the Super Hornet Free Fly before you buy. Even though spring is the time for new beginnings, this sale comes to an end on Tuesday, April 18. Get Started There’s an update on its way to Star Citizen, so it’s a great time to join the Persistent Universe. Take advantage of our discount starter pack and download Star Citizen for only $40 with your choice of either a Mustang or Aurora ship. The Aurora is the ideal beginner’s ship. This newly redesigned spacecraft favors durability over speed. Looking for something with a bit more edge? The Mustang pushes power ratios to the max with its ultralight material alloys. Some consider the design unsafe, but devoted Mustang owners say it’s worth the risk. New Reliant Kore Starter The long-awaited Reliant Kore starter package is finally here! This second-tier starter is perfect for those ready to spring into action. At a price of only $75, you can’t afford to wait. This starter ship comes with more than one seat, so invite a new friend for a trip through the ‘verse. The MISC Reliant is loaded with Xi’An technology, like Xi’An thruster tech. The Kore variant features additional speed and dogfighting capabilities to help keep you safe on hauling runs. MISC designed the Kore to support its Hull series, which is optimal for the occasional skirmish during trips. The vertical flying-wing shape makes this spacecraft especially unique. A Basket of Mini-Ships If you’re already playing Star Citizen, then get an eggcellent basket of five mini ships for a shell-shocking price of $160! This offer includes the Merlin, Archimedes, Argo, 85x, and Dragonfly. These little ships have a BIG job ahead of them: helping Citizens explore the massive procedural planets arriving in Star Citizen Alpha 3.0! Each short-range vehicle is also available individually for $50 or less. The Drake Dragonfly features a rare open canopy design that’s capable of being operated on land and in space. If you’re in need of a short-range fighter, then the P52 Merlin is the ship for you. The Merlin variant P72 Archimedes racer is for those that prefer an emphasis on luxury. If you’re considering a career as a merchant, the Argo MPUV is an excellent utility vehicle capable of hauling people or small batches of cargo. The 85x from Origin Jumpworks is a luxury ship, perfect for short range excursions. Get cracking on this deal before it’s gone. Spring Sale About the Sale The Spring Star Ship Sale sale will run through Tuesday, April 18. Reliant Kore packages will be available in the store without the included discount after this time. Disclaimer Remember: we are offering this pledge ship to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this is what allows us to include new features in the Star Citizen world. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game. The goal is to make additional ships available that give players a different experience rather than a particular advantage when the persistent universe launches. Additionally, please note that all decorative ‘flare’ items will also be available to acquire in the finished game world. Przeczytaj całość

Spring 2947 Free Fly Greetings Citizens This weekend from April 14th to April 18th we’re giving everyone the chance to FLY FREE one of our flagship… ships, the Anvil Super Hornet. If you already have a Star Citizen account, you can log in and the ship will be available to you in all game modes. If you don’t already have a Star Citizen account, you can register one for free, download the game, and log in with no purchase necessary through April 18th. We look forward to seeing you in the ‘Verse! Przeczytaj całość

Sandi Gardiner and Forrest Stephan share the UK studio update and a look at the Aegis Javelin. And for info on becoming a subscriber, go to: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/subscriptions Przeczytaj całość

Greetings Citizens Over the weekend, Several developers from the LA office, including Tyler Witkin, Jared Huckaby, Ben & Alexis Lesnick, Steve Bender, and myself went to a Bar Citizen hosted by some of the LA citizens. It was great to be able to meet some local citizens, and it was my first Bar Citizen since relocating to Los Angeles. I tricked Zyloh into eating a box of M&M’s mixed with Skittles. His reaction was great, but he gave me a terrible, scolding look the rest of the evening. Let’s see what is going on this week: Today’s Citizens of the Stars episode has Tyler Witkin introducing Jorunn, a man dedicated to the Bar Citizen movement around the globe. Then, Ben Lesnick puts Dennis Daniel, IT Manager for CIG LA in the hotseat for this week’s Quantum Questions. Learn what kind of machines we play Star Citizen here in the office, and learn the science (or magic?) used in communicating across five studios. On Wednesday, our bi-weekly show “Bugsmashers!” is back! Bug hunter extraordinaire Mark Abent investigates why some players in Star Marine are able to travel extreme distances in the system after picking up a weapon. I think this is a bug I don’t want Mark to fix! Thursday’s episode of Around the Verse visits our Manchester Studio, where we pull back the curtains and take a deeper look at Star Citizens development. This is my favorite studio update because of all the new artwork, and in-game footage Erin and the team always show us! Also, make sure to tune in for some exciting news about the Referral Program revamp! New rewards and a competition you won’t want to miss. Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2 introduced support for 4K extra-wide resolutions and TrackIR, and on this week’s Happy Hour Showcase, we’re excited to bring both of these to the broadcast. Join Community Manager Jared Huckaby and special guests, Senior Producer Eric Keiron Davis, LA QA Manager Vincent Sinatra, and community broadcaster DeejayKnight as they play Star Citizen live with the fans and answer your questions following Around the Verse the day before. The floor is open to questions this Friday at 12pm Pacific on twitch.tv/starcitizen. See you in the ‘Verse! Tyler Nolin AKA Admiral Sloth Community Manager The Weekly Community Content Schedule MONDAY, APRIL 10th, 2017 Citizens of the Stars (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/) TUESDAY, APRIL 11th, 2017 Weekly Lore Post (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch) WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12th, 2017 Bugsmashers! (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/) THURSDAY, APRIL 13th, 2017 Around the Verse (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/) Vault Update FRIDAY, APRIL 14th, 2017 Happy Hour Gameplay – Noon PST (https://twitch.tv/starcitizen) RSI Newsletter Monthly Report Community Spotlight: April 10th, 2017 – Bar Citizen It’s no secret that the Star Citizen community is the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be! For years, the community has taken it upon themselves to organize regular Bar Citizen events, providing an opportunity for Citizens around the world to meet up, make friends, and talk shop. In our opinion, this level of camaraderie is unparalleled, and we could not be more excited about it. Below you will find a few of the recent Bar Citizens that took place, and remember, you can visit the community created website barcitizen.sc to find out if there is an event in your area! Visit BarCitizen.sc Los Angeles, California Organized by Wolf Larsen, Star Citizens and CIG staff met up for drinks, fish and chips, and good times! Atlanta, Georgia Organized by Chanticrow! Is that a webcam I see set up at the table? We would love to see that footage! Looks like a great event! Houston, Texas Organized by Modern Man and Anchor, this Bar Citizen event looked like a fantastic time with some familiar faces! Ixelles, Belgium Organized by TradTeam, this event just leaves you jealous that you were not there. Great event y’all! Przeczytaj całość

Can Senior Gameplay Engineer Mark Abent smash a bug that kicks players out of Star Marine when their weapons are fully loaded? Watch to find out. Przeczytaj całość

Waitaha ADVOCACY ARCHIVE INTRA-AGENCY MESSAGES 2947-04-11_08:14 SET TO: SA JULIE NADIR CC: SC LEN TEXIERA FROM: ASC FREDDY AGUILAR SUBJECT: HIGH PRIORITY — DEVELOPING SITUATION A strange one just came in from our friends in Customs. They had a hauling ship try to jump the line. After finally disabling the ship and establishing comms, they discovered that the person flying the ship was covered in blood. Local law jumped protocol and moved in to secure the ship. They found the ship’s pilot, Jerome Flabian (PersonalFile #HS5-44246-773), bludgeoned to death on the cockpit floor. To make matters more interesting, the woman flying the ship, Naomi Thampi (PersonalFile #NB1-31452-081), hardly acknowledged the body or the armed police when approached, just repeatedly demanded to know how much longer it’d take her to clear Customs. Considering the time it will take this information to reach SAC Texiera on Earth, I’ll be overseeing the operation until otherwise notified. Nadir — Take control of the crime scene. Don’t let the locals give you any flak over jurisdiction. The ship’s flight manifest shows that it traveled from Genesis into Corel, so it’s ours. Let’s get to work. Freddy Aquilar Assistant Section Chief Office of the Advocacy New Junction, Lo, Corel 2947-04-11_10:29 SET TO: ASC FREDDY AGUILAR CC: SC LEN TEXIERA FROM: SA JULIE NADIR RE: HIGH PRIORITY — DEVELOPING SITUATION I’ve brought Naomi Thampi back to the station and put her in Interrogation Room 2. To say something is seriously off with her would be an understatement. All she’s done since I picked her up is complain about the line at Customs and how her cargo’s losing credits. No matter what I ask, even a simple question like her name, all I get in response is something about the current market value of manganese or something similar. Getting anything worthwhile out of her, let alone a confession, may be trickier than expected. That said, her hands and clothes are covered in physical evidence. Davis is with her now taking scans and samples. He’s also going to draw blood for a toxicology screening. My immediate reaction is that she’s on something, but I’ve never seen someone so disassociated from reality but aware. Once Davis is done, I’ll let her stew for a bit and just observe. Let’s see what some alone time does for her. Julie Nadir Special Agent Office of the Advocacy New Junction, Lo, Corel 2947-04-11_12:41 SET TO: ASC FREDDY AGUILAR CC: SC LEN TEXIERA FROM: SA JULIE NADIR RE: HIGH PRIORITY — DEVELOPING SITUATION My team finished a sweep through the ship and a preliminary records search. The pilot wasn’t the only victim. We found four more bodies in the bunkroom. Evidence is still being collected so an official incident report is still a ways out. Local law weren’t exactly careful when taking the ship, so there’s a lot of contamination at the scene. Plus, we were delayed by Customs officials insisting that we clear the massive ship from the queue since it was causing major delays. Anyways, here’s what I have so far. Regtags list the ship as Waitaha. It recently received a permit to mine the asteroid belt in Genesis. The government is stingy with those permits so it was a plum opportunity. Personnel files show the ship staffed a regular crew, but one of their usual engineers wasn’t available. Somehow Thampi landed the gig. We’re still looking into exactly how that happened. We pulled IDs on the ship’s remaining four crewmembers: Ben Lateef (PersonalFile #OH8-31148-310), Cian Parker (PersonalFile #LW5-47162-163), Julia Lai (PersonalFile #BW8-43201-947) and Aisha Mehldau (PersonalFile #XE2-71582-349). All died of asphyxiation in their berths. Looks like Thampi cut off oxygen to the bunkroom once she was in control of the ship. Finally, we searched Thampi’s locker and personal belongings. The only thing of note was a small lockbox that we had to hack open. Inside was a plastic vial filled with some kind of fermented substance shaped into small balls. It’s been sent out for analysis. Will keep you two updated on any further developments on my end. Julie Nadir Special Agent Office of the Advocacy New Junction, Lo, Corel 2947-04-11_14:36 SET TO: ASC FREDDY AGUILAR CC: SC LEN TEXIERA FROM: SA JULIE NADIR RE: HIGH PRIORITY — DEVELOPING SITUATION My initial interrogation of Thampi is complete. It took mere minutes to get her to confess. Honestly, “confess” may be the wrong word to describe what happened. She feels like her actions were completely justified. I wouldn’t say she bragged about it, but she freely admitted to what she did. In fact, she actually seemed annoyed that I was “fixated on it.” During Thampi’s period of isolation, she repeated, ad nauseam, a list of ores and their market price. When I finally entered the room she demanded to know their current values at the New Junction TDD. Since she ignored anything else I said, I finally decided to look them up for her. Upon hearing the answers she grew agitated, and then repeated the phrase, “I told them they’d drop.” When pressed on what she was talking about, Thampi admitted to arguing with the rest of Waitaha’s crew over their return to Corel. She was convinced commodity prices would fall and insisted they return as soon as possible before it happened. Thampi never articulated the position of the rest of the crew. She only said they didn’t share the same urgency as her in returning to Lo. So Thampi grabbed her wrench, “took care of the pilot,” and then commandeered the ship. She also admitted to cutting off oxygen to the bunk to “keep everyone else from waking up.” Following this matter-of-fact confession, Thampi asked when she could return to the ship and sell the ores. Her only concern was that their prices would continue to drop and that she was “missing her window.” When I left the interrogation room her tox screening was waiting for me. Looks like there’s a significant amount of a foreign substance in her system that’s been identified as “E’tâm.” Are either of you familiar with it? I’m not, but whatever that stuff did to her is just terrible … Julie Nadir Special Agent Office of the Advocacy New Junction, Lo, Corel 2947-04-11_15:18 SET TO: SA JULIE NADIR CC: SC LEN TEXIERA FROM: ASC FREDDY AGUILAR RE: HIGH PRIORITY — DEVELOPING SITUATION Same shit that’s in Thampi’s system is in the lockbox. Here’s what I’ve dug up so far on E’tâm. It’s a Xi’an drug, goes by the street names ‘Flow,’ ‘blinder’ or ‘ticktock’ by Humans. Side effects include hyper awareness, cognitive enhancement and hyper focus, so it’s become popular among students and workers. Recently, there’s been an increasing number of cases involving E’tâm in Corel. Most involve people so engrossed in a task that they neglect to eat, sleep or take care of other basic bodily functions, thus prompting a call to authorities from a friend or relative in an effort to get that person help. So far, no other cases quite like Thampi’s have popped up, but I’ll keep looking. Let’s hope this is an isolated incident. Freddy Aquilar Assistant Section Chief Office of the Advocacy New Junction, Lo, Corel Przeczytaj całość

Welcome to Citizens of the Stars, our new weekly program exclusively about you, the Star Citizen Community. Whether through bug reports on the issue council, feedback on the forums, or the creation of content inspired by the game, Star Citizen is only possible because of the community. Citizens of the Stars not only highlights these contributions, but also puts a dev in the hotseat for a round of Quantum Questions, which addresses some fun facts about the dev and game. Jorunn is in the Citizen Spotlight to talk everything Bar Citizen. Can IT Manager Dennis Daniel become the new Quantum Questions champion? Remember, many of the questions used are taken from our Star Citizen Subscribers in this thread here. Don’t forget to add yours for inclusion in future episodes, vote for the ones you want to see answered, and remember to keep them short and concise if you want your best chance of having them answered in under two minutes. The links for this week’s content are below: CITIZEN SPOTLIGHT Jorunn and BarCitizen.sc TOP 5: Newegg and their 9-Screen Laptop Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2 and TrackIR The Star Citizen/Elite Dangerous Subreddit in reddit.com/r/place The Next Great Ship Commercial MVP: Star Citizen Modena Play 2017 Przeczytaj całość

Star Citizen is back at GamesCom and Gloria Theater for 2947! The Fifth Annual Star Citizen Gamescom Party! For those of you who joined us in Cologne last year, you will be happy to hear that our plans for this year are very similar at this stage. Gamescom runs from 21st through 26th August. We will have a fun and interactive booth in the game halls, opportunities to meet the team in the evenings, and a live show at Gloria Theater on the Friday 25th. Join your host Chris Roberts as we showcase some of what we’ve been working on this year, and deliver some never-seen-before gameplay! Ticket Details The 750 tickets for Gloria Theater are €30 each and will go on sale with the following format: Saturday 22nd April 7PM CEST: 200 Tickets available to Concierge and Subscribers only Saturday 22nd April 11PM CEST: 175 Tickets available to Concierge and Subscribers only Sunday 23rd April 7PM CEST: 200 tickets available to all backers Sunday 23rd April 11pm CEST: The remaining 175 Tickets available to all backers. The show will start in the evening on the Friday, with timings to be confirmed closer to the date. Tickets will be available here: When & Where Friday, August 25th – Times to be confirmed closer to the event. Gloria Theater, Apostelnstrasse 11, 50667 Köln. Space is limited, so be sure you get your tickets fast! This will be an evening event, going through until late. - Frequently Asked Questions Parking There are many car parks close by and within walking distance from Gloria. Top 3 below: Parkhaus Wolfsstraße: Open: Mon-Sun 24 hours Address: Wolfsstraße 6, 50667 Köln Gertruden-Parkhaus: Open: Mon-Sun until 1am Address Breite Straße 169-177, 50667 Köln Parkhaus Bazaar de Cologne: Open: Mon-Sun until 1am Address: Große Brinkgasse 5, 50672 Köln Additional parking available on the street, with a parking ticket necessary until 11pm. What to Bring PLEASE remember to bring your printed ticket or a digital copy stored on your phone in addition to your photo ID. If you have a Citizen Card or any Star Citizen clothing, bring it (cosplay encouraged). There is a bar at the venue for drinks, and a small selection of snacks available from the café. Attendees are highly encouraged to eat meals prior to the show. Each year, fans have kindly offered gifts for the team. Unfortunately, since many of us are flying back to the United States the next day we are unable to accept anything at the event. We truly appreciate the thought, though! Is the Gloria Theatre wheelchair accessible? Wheelchairs should be pre-registered with us by entering a support ticket (link to Contact Us) to ensure suitable entry is available for the event. The hall is located on the ground floor of the theater. While wheelchair users will be given priority access, it is worth noting there are no disabled toilets on the premises; however, these can be found in public buildings in the neighbourhood. Central Library Josef-Haubrish-Hof 1 50676 Koln http://www.stadt-koeln.de/leben-in-koeln/stadtbibliothek/ Can I bring my own food and drink? No, this is not allowed for the venue – Please stop by one of the traditional German restaurants nearby before the event. Will there be seating available? No, this will be a standing event. Is there an age restriction for the venue? Yes, the event is 18+ Can people bring their own seating for the wait? You may bring a small foldable seat to use while outside the theater, however use of them inside the premises is prohibited, so you would need to use the coat check once inside. Please only bring what you’ll need with you to the event, as well as your Star Citizen merchandise! Is there a Coat Check? Attendees will be encouraged to store their belongings in the visitor’s cloakroom. Coats, jackets, bags, umbrellas etc., may be asked to be checked if they are large; with deference to everyone’s safety and ease of access. This storage costs €1.50 per ticket (Remember to keep this safe!) Does my ticket also grant me access to Gamescom? No, you will need to purchase a separate ticket to attend Gamescom at Koelnmesse. Our party at Gloria Theater does not require you to attend Gamescom. They are separate events. Please visit the GamesCom Website for their tickets. What do I do before the show? Rather than queuing up for hours beforehand, we encourage backers to meet up nearby. Keep an eye on Spectrum for posts on this topic closer to the event date. If there are unsold tickets from Saturday 22nd, will they be available to all backers when tickets are added on the 23rd? Yes. On Sunday 23rd the ability to purchase tickets will be unlocked to all backers, which will include any previously unsold tickets. Stay In The Loop! Look out for latest news, contests, and additional information about where Chris and the team will be during Gamescom. Whether you’re with us in Germany, or back at home, keep up to date with all things Star Citizen by following our various channels on social media: Twitter Facebook Instagram Przeczytaj całość

Star Citizen is back at GamesCom and Gloria Theater for 2947! The Fifth Annual Star Citizen Gamescom Party! For those of you who joined us in Cologne last year, you will be happy to hear that our plans for this year are very similar at this stage. Gamescom runs from 21st through 26th August. We will have a fun and interactive booth in the game halls, opportunities to meet the team in the evenings, and a live show at Gloria Theater on the Friday 26th. Join your host Chris Roberts as we showcase some of what we’ve been working on this year, and deliver some never-seen-before gameplay! Ticket Details The 750 tickets for Gloria Theater are €30 each and will go on sale with the following format: Saturday 22nd April 7PM CEST: 200 Tickets available to Concierge and Subscribers only Saturday 22nd April 11PM CEST: 175 Tickets available to Concierge and Subscribers only Sunday 23rd April 7PM CEST: 200 tickets available to all backers Sunday 23rd April 11pm CEST: The remaining 175 Tickets available to all backers. The show will start in the evening on the Friday, with timings to be confirmed closer to the date. Tickets will be available here: When & Where Gloria Theater, Apostelnstrasse 11, 50667 Köln. Space is limited, so be sure you get your tickets fast! This will be an evening event, going through until late. Times to be confirmed closer to the event. - Frequently Asked Questions Parking There are many car parks close by and within walking distance from Gloria. Top 3 below: Parkhaus Wolfsstraße: Open: Mon-Sun 24 hours Address: Wolfsstraße 6, 50667 Köln Gertruden-Parkhaus: Open: Mon-Sun until 1am Address Breite Straße 169-177, 50667 Köln Parkhaus Bazaar de Cologne: Open: Mon-Sun until 1am Address: Große Brinkgasse 5, 50672 Köln Additional parking available on the street, with a parking ticket necessary until 11pm. What to Bring PLEASE remember to bring your printed ticket or a digital copy stored on your phone in addition to your photo ID. If you have a Citizen Card or any Star Citizen clothing, bring it (cosplay encouraged). There is a bar at the venue for drinks, and a small selection of snacks available from the café. Attendees are highly encouraged to eat meals prior to the show. Each year, fans have kindly offered gifts for the team. Unfortunately, since many of us are flying back to the United States the next day we are unable to accept anything at the event. We truly appreciate the thought, though! Is the Gloria Theatre wheelchair accessible? Wheelchairs should be pre-registered with us by entering a support ticket (link to Contact Us) to ensure suitable entry is available for the event. The hall is located on the ground floor of the theater. While wheelchair users will be given priority access, it is worth noting there are no disabled toilets on the premises; however, these can be found in public buildings in the neighbourhood. Central Library Josef-Haubrish-Hof 1 50676 Koln http://www.stadt-koeln.de/leben-in-koeln/stadtbibliothek/ Can I bring my own food and drink? No, this is not allowed for the venue – Please stop by one of the traditional German restaurants nearby before the event. Will there be seating available? No, this will be a standing event. Is there an age restriction for the venue? Yes, the event is 18+ Can people bring their own seating for the wait? You may bring a small foldable seat to use while outside the theater, however use of them inside the premises is prohibited, so you would need to use the coat check once inside. Please only bring what you’ll need with you to the event, as well as your Star Citizen merchandise! Is there a Coat Check? Attendees will be encouraged to store their belongings in the visitor’s cloakroom. Coats, jackets, bags, umbrellas etc., may be asked to be checked if they are large; with deference to everyone’s safety and ease of access. This storage costs €1.50 per ticket (Remember to keep this safe!) Does my ticket also grant me access to Gamescom? No, you will need to purchase a separate ticket to attend Gamescom at Koelnmesse. Our party at Gloria Theater does not require you to attend Gamescom. They are separate events. Please visit the GamesCom Website for their tickets. What do I do before the show? Rather than queuing up for hours beforehand, we encourage backers to meet up nearby. Keep an eye on Spectrum for posts on this topic closer to the event date. If there are unsold tickets from Saturday 22nd, will they be available to all backers when tickets are added on the 23rd? Yes. On Sunday 23rd the ability to purchase tickets will be unlocked to all backers, which will include any previously unsold tickets. Stay In The Loop! Look out for latest news, contests, and additional information about where Chris and the team will be during Gamescom. Whether you’re with us in Germany, or back at home, keep up to date with all things Star Citizen by following our various channels on social media: Twitter Facebook Instagram Przeczytaj całość

Chris Roberts and Eric Kieron Davis share the recent Drake Interplanetary controversy. Learn about the upcoming planetary outposts and hear the latest from the Austin and Turbulent offices. And for info on becoming a subscriber, go to: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/subscriptions Przeczytaj całość

Archivist Cherie Heiberg travels to the Yulin System in the Banu Protectorate. Discover how tensions between two Banu guilds affect the most popular Sataball arena in this week’s episode. Remember that you can always explore the Star Citizen Universe yourself in our web-based Ark Star Map. Przeczytaj całość

Lars: Strap in, buckos, and hold on! I’m Lars Gonall. That’s Daisy Wences. And you’re in the Spectrum Spectator zone! Daisy: This is where the sweet laser effects would go if our show had any laser effects. Lars: You know what, we would consider it a personal favor if you could imagine your own sweet laser effects at this point. Daisy: Or better yet, pause our show, go find some sweet laser effects to watch, and then come back to us. That last step’s important. Don’t get so distracted by sweet lasers that you forget to watch the rest of the show. Lars: Maybe they could make their own laser effects, like if their ship has a repeater or something. Daisy: And for all you historians watching, that statement right there is what led to our show getting canceled. Lars: Speaking of, we have to address the elephant in the room before we can get to today’s review. It seems that Spectrum Spectator has got its very own scandal going. Daisy: I gotta say, while being deeply embroiled in controversy is crazy stressful, it also kind of feels like a weight has been lifted off me. It’s a weird mixed bag of emotions. Sort of like how when you get a new ship, you can’t really relax until you get your first scratch. Lars: You’re totally right. This is like a big dent in the rear hatch of our show. Sure, we might not be as pretty anymore, but maybe we won’t be as scared to fly around in riskier sectors. Which, now that I’ve said that, I’m not sure what that means? Does that mean we’re finally going to review Skinjobs? I really don’t want to have to review Skinjobs. Daisy: So, for those of you who don’t belong to the Spectrum Spectator forums, you might not be aware that there have been accusations that Lars and I have been taking money in exchange for giving shows good reviews. More specifically, that we recommended all of you watch Halcyon only because that show’s sponsor, Fizzz Soda, happens to also be one of our sponsors. Lars: First off, drink more Fizzz, it is delicious. Secondly, all our opinions are our own. We specifically avoid directly dealing with sponsors for this reason. Daisy: Part of the problem might be that we’ve never taken the time to explain publicly how we sell ad time. Not because we wanted to hide anything, mind you, but just because we figured no one wanted to see the sausage being made. Lars: How it works is that we contract with a third-party service called Shine Marketing. They analyze our episodes before they’re uploaded and use an algorithm to match which of their clients’ ads would be most suitable to run as our sponsor for each episode. Daisy: For example, later on when we talk about the most recent episode of The Avenger and how it was beyond insane, we might wind up with a commercial for an Aegis Avenger or something. Now, did we get money directly from Aegis to talk about the Avenger? No. Lars: So, despite what the conspiracy theorists will have you believe, we did not receive credits from Halcyon or Fizzz for our review. We received credits from Shine who received money from Fizzz. Daisy: Actually, hearing you say it, it does sound like a conspiracy. Lars: Can we address the fact that the real issue here is just how much people hate Halcyon? Daisy: Seriously! I really thought it was good. A murder in interspace? Great premise. Lars: I know, right? I stand by our review. The acting was a little stilted and all the adjudication scenes looked like they were shot in somebody’s aunt’s basement, but the legal drama side of it was tight. Raised some really interesting questions. Can any government claim interspace as their own? Do crimes committed in jump tunnels count as crimes? Daisy: I still get nervous every time before I enter a jump point now thanks to the show. I just keep thinking about how I’m technically leaving the UEE and that the normal laws don’t apply. Lars: I think it really was the fact that the show left everything as an open question that has people so annoyed with it. But I guess I don’t always need everything wrapped up into a neat little package to enjoy it. Who knows, maybe when they inevitably remake it in a few years, it’ll do better. Daisy: I heard that some Senator might introduce a new bill to cover some of the legal loopholes the show exposed. Lars: That would be awesome. Talk about a piece of fiction having an impact. Daisy: I don’t think we’re going to have time to cover The Avenger before we take a break. Do you have a quick one we can do? Lars: In the spirit of all the talk around the HuXa treaty stuff, I watched the new Xi’an co-financed comedy Strange and Stranger, about two brothers who are trying to track down the Freelancer they grew up in after their parents’ death. Daisy: And? Lars: My biggest takeaway is that, despite every trailer stating the opposite, there is no way this movie can be considered a comedy. The brothers are two of the most unlikeable people you could be forced to spend two hours with and I couldn’t care less if they reconciled with their past or not. That being said, the young Xi’an T.ōng really stole the film for me. Played by newcomer Nyalā Yimm, the few scenes we spent running around with her on Indra 1a were almost worth struggling through the rest. I want a whole story just focusing on her world. The way she portrayed the sadness over leaving her mother’s family-line in sharp contrast to the freedom she felt being on her own was fantastic. A really awesome look at some of the unique culture that has sprung up there recently and at what these Xi’an go through when they give up their house. Daisy: There was some controversy on the Xi’an side concerning her character, right? Lars: Oh yeah, giving up your family is a huge deal for Xi’an, so there were a lot of important people in their government arguing that this film glamorized it too much. I guess the compromise was the Xi’an who backed it get to keep the profits, but the film won’t be screened in Xi’an systems at all. Daisy: It’s so funny. As soon as I hear a vid is banned somewhere I always want to see it more. Lars: To be honest, I’d just wait until someone releases an edit of only the T.ōng scenes. Daisy: All right, we’re going to take a break for a quick word from our Shine-supplied sponsor. Lars: When Spectrum Spectator returns, we’re going to discuss the latest episode of The Avenger. Daisy: Alexi Dario finally comes to terms with the fact that his long-lost brother is not only alive but may have been the one who sabotaged his ship, while Lars and I come to terms with the fact that this show is somehow still being made. So, make sure to stick around. Przeczytaj całość

Greetings Citizens Hey Citizens! What an exciting weekend it has been! Have you gotten a chance to fly the Drake Buccaneer yet? Well, last Friday we released Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2 to the LIVE server and have spent much of the weekend reading all of the great feedback on all that 2.6.2 has to offer. Let’s see what is going on this week: Today’s Citizens of the Stars episode has Ben Lesnick introducing Erris, one of the founders of the popular fansite, Relay. Then, Jared Huckaby puts Vehicle Art Director Nathan Dearsley in the hotseat for this week’s Quantum Questions. What’s this about a ‘Defender concept ship’ in Quantum Questions? Watch to find out. On Wednesday, our bi-weekly show The Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy is back! CIG Archivist Cherie Heiberg travels to the Yulin System in the Banu Protectorate. Discover how tensions between two Banu guilds affect the most popular Sataball arena in this week’s show. Thursday’s episode of Around the ‘Verse visits our Austin Studio with an update from Jake Ross, and Turbulent’s Benoit Beausejour. Going forward, Turbulent will be joining the Austin, Texas studio updates, so look forward to more Spectrum news in the future. To end the week, we are hosting Happy Hour Interview, where we kidnap a CIG developer and subject them to questions from backers on our official Twitch channel. Last month’s guests were Sean Tracy and Steve Bender. Joining us this week is a surprise (because we don’t know, yet). Cliffhangars – Ahhhhhhh! Tyler Nolin AKA Admiral Sloth Community Manager The Weekly Community Content Schedule MONDAY, APRIL 3rd, 2017 Citizens of the Stars (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/) TUESDAY, APRIL 4th, 2017 Weekly Lore Post (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch) WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5th, 2017 Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy! (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/) THURSDAY, APRIL 6th, 2017 Around the Verse (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/) Vault Update FRIDAY, APRIL 7th, 2017 Happy Hour Interview: Guest and Time TBD (https://twitch.tv/starcitizen) RSI Newsletter Community Spotlight: April 3rd, 2017 – Translation Citizen Star Citizen is a truly global phenomenon. There is something really special about those who take the time localize information for others. Here’s a small sampling of the amazing work dedicated citizens around the world are doing to bring Star Citizen to every corner of the globe. Visit the Community Hub Ciudadano Estelar Ciudadano Estelar is a fan site dedicated to the Spanish-speaking community. Both Frost and Vendaval work to translate Around the ‘Verse episodes, lore posts, and everything in between. http://www.ciudadanoestelar.com Star-Citizen.pro Star-Citizen.pro is one of the more popular websites for our Russian community. They have an in-depth FAQs page that helps players with everything from playing in Arena Commander, how to navigate around their account page, and of course, translating the official videos on our YouTube channel. http://star-citizen.pro/ Star Citizen Traduction Star Citizen Traduction helps with our French-speaking community the same way the previous sites do. They are a group of dedicated backers who continually update the Star Citizen website and videos on a daily basis. http://starcitizen-traduction.fr/ AngryBOT AngryBOT is a YouTube content creator who has created a guide on using the Community Hub, translating the important parts of the Issue Council in order to make it more accessible for the German Community. German Translation of the Issue Council Przeczytaj całość

Welcome to Citizens of the Stars, our new weekly program exclusively about you, the Star Citizen Community. Whether through bug reports on the issue council, feedback on the forums, or the creation of content inspired by the game, Star Citizen is only possible because of the community. Citizens of the Stars not only highlights these contributions, but also puts a dev in the hotseat for a round of Quantum Questions, which addresses some fun facts about the dev and game. This week’s Citizen Spotlight is on Erris and his team at Star Citizen fansite, Relay.sc. Also, will Vehicle Art Director Nathan Dearsley take the top spot in Quantum Questions? Remember, many of the questions used are taken from our Star Citizen Subscribers in this thread here. Don’t forget to add yours for inclusion in future episodes, vote for the ones you want to see answered, and remember to keep them short and concise if you want your best chance of having them answered in under two minutes. The links for this week’s content are below: CITIZEN SPOTLIGHT Erris and Relay.sc TOP 5: FabledJunkyard and his brother’s Buccaneer & Hornet Art Star Pixelzen by Wykstrom CptDux and their Laser Engraved Star Citizen Computer The Star Citizen Route Planner by SCCenter MVP: Sonic_Temples for Star Citizen: Gundo Przeczytaj całość

Drake Sale At Drake Interplanetary, we care about our customers. Our commitment to providing safe, dependable, and economical transport is why Drake Interplanetary ships have flown across the universe for more than one hundred years. Now, we’ve created an extra special offer for anyone seeking safety and reliability at a reasonable price. In honor of the diamond anniversary release of the Buccaneer, you can now receive the Buccaneer and four of our other splendid models at a special discount. Have recent Vanduul attacks made you and your loved ones vulnerable? Then get the Buccaneer and Cutlass at a special two-pack price. Join us and become a part of the growing militia movement protecting frontier systems. Together, we can save the stars. This one-time sale ends April 10, so act fast. Buccaneer Because self-defense shouldn’t be a luxury item, we created the Buccaneer with the everyman in mind. This single occupant fighter is less expensive than our competitors, but just as effective. Multiple weapon mounts and two missile pylons guarantee you’ll hold your own if you’re ever caught in a scrap. The sleek shape and light mass means nimble flying, so you can quickly maneuver out of harm’s way. The fighter also makes a nice companion for other ships in the Drake lineup, such as the Caterpillar. Defend your cargo and your loved ones with the Drake Buccaneer today. Development Status: The Drake Buccaneer became flight ready with Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2. Cutlass Drake Interplanetary is committed to the safety of all citizens and civilians, which is why we designed the Cutlass. This low-cost, low-maintenance ship comes with a larger-than-average cargo hold and dedicated tractor mount for facilitating search and rescue operations. In fact, the Cutlass Red model is the go-to first responder for mobile medstations like the MISC Endeavor. The standard cargo hold comes equipped with a medical facility and Autodoc. Another popular model, the Cutlass Black, has been praised by local militia for decades. All products from Drake Enterprises are developed with your protection and security in mind. Development Status: The Drake Cutlass Black became flight ready with Arena Commander 1.0. The Black is close to completing a major update, with the variants scheduled to follow. Dragonfly Ever dreamed of open canopy racing like a pro? The economical Dragonfly turns that dream into a reality. Feel the wind in your hair or speed through the stars thanks to the modular chassis on this personal recreation vehicle. While in ground mode, skim across the rockiest of terrain with in-line mounted gravlevs. Fully extended outriders allow for exceptional mobility and responsiveness in zero-g mode. Go anywhere in the Dragonfly. The only limit to adventure is your imagination. Drake Interplanetary promotes good sportsmanship and equality, which is why we’re a proud sponsor of the Amateur Open Canopy Racing League. Join the fun by getting a Drake Dragonfly today! Development Status: Development of the Drake Dragonfly has been completed, it will premiere alongside procedural planets in an upcoming update. Herald Called “The Empire’s Most Secure Data Courier Service” by trusted industry leaders, the Herald is a high speed courier ship, capable of moving data quickly and securely across the universe. We don’t believe you should ever compromise between speed and safety when it comes to your personal messages. That’s why the Drake Herald comes equipped with powerful main thrusters and dual missile racks. Your trust is important to us. So when you trust us with your private data, only the best protection will suffice. Everything within the Data Storage Pod receives a proprietary encryption algorithm. In the slim chance your data falls into unsavory hands, the algorithm will render it unusable. Own the best messenger in the universe. Own the Herald. Development Status: The Drake Herald became flight ready with Star Citizen Alpha 2.6. Caterpillar It’s said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Owners of the Caterpillar know that the beauty in this cargo ship is its seemingly limitless ability to mix and match cargo modules. In addition, the small price point makes cargo hauling a more affordable profession than ever. The Caterpillar is less expensive than other cargo ships, making it a popular choice for independent haulers. Thanks to the Caterpillar, more people than ever have become financially independent. At Drake Interplanetary, we’re dedicated to making everyone’s life a little easier. That’s why the Caterpillar’s front cargo can house open canopy vehicles like the Drake Dragonfly, so you can access various landing sites with ease. The front cargo lift also folds into the cargo bay for smoother loading and unloading of your wares. Built with your safety in mind, the Command Module can detach from the body of the ship in the event of emergency. Fans of the Caterpillar refer to the Command Module as the “ship within the ship.” We hope that you call the Caterpillar your “home away from home” on those long cargo hauls. Development Status: The Drake Caterpillar became flight ready with Star Citizen Alpha 2.6. Drake Combo Packs It’s the diamond anniversary release of the Drake Buccaneer! To thank our customers for sixty years of continued support, Drake Interplanetary is now offering a diamond anniversary discount on all our Drake gems: the Buccaneer, Cutlass, Caterpillar, Herald, and Dragonfly. Purchase the five ship combo pack and receive 15% off the total price. Prefer to invest in self-defense? Then take advantage of our special two-pack price of $195 for both the Buccaneer and Cutlass Black. Fend off raiders and Vanduul with the best protection in the UEE. Both of these special offers expires on April 10, so get these Drake deals while you still can! Przeczytaj całość

Greetings Citizens, Welcome to Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2! This patch is primarily dedicated to bug fixes with continued focus on Star Marine and Arena Commander. We also have the implementation of Mega Map for Multiplayer Arena Commander and Star Marine, new implementations to our ongoing network code updates, and the new Drake Buccaneer! Your launcher should show “2.6.2-521494-c” as the client version. It is strongly recommended that players delete their USER folder for the LIVE client after patching, particularly if you start encountering any odd character graphical issues or crash on loading. The USER folder can be found (in default installations) at C:\Program Files\Cloud Imperium Games\StarCitizen\Public. You can read the complete Patch Notes here. Read on for a quick look at some of the highlights included in Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.2. This week’s Around the Verse is Part 2 in our Ship Pipeline feature. We show you the development of a ship from greybox to flight ready. Technical Advancements Play the Way You Want to Play Customization and giving players many options to play Star Citizen has always been a top priority for us. Not only are we introducing additional customization options, but bringing back an old feature as well. With the release of Alpha 2.6.2, we have added support for non-traditional screen resolutions like very wide screens using 21:9 aspect ratio, and we have also re-enabled support for TrackIR. Multiplayer Mega Map Mega Map is now enabled for multiplayer Arena Commander and Star Marine maps. This will allow for a much quicker loading time when switching between maps or going from one game mode to another. Serialized Variables Serialized Variables replaces some of the original aspects of CryEngine for handling data and relaying information between clients. It’s a considerably more lightweight means for handling update messaging on the network, and reduces the risk of data being lost in caching or other processes – effectively reducing lag. Balance Changes Arena Commander We are bringing a lot of smaller quality of life fixes to Arena Commander. For example, We have gotten rid of the pesky helmet radar staying active when you spawn in a vehicle. Also, ship holograms are working again in the AC loadout screen, as well as the back button if you were invited to a private match. In Race Mode, checkpoint numbering now starts at one instead of zero, the announcer no longer states you are going in the wrong direction after the fourth checkpoint in each lap, and we fixed an exploit that awarded large sums of REC without much participation. Star Marine We have made a number of changes to make playing in Star Marine feel better. Some new features include a “+25 Headshot” bonus reward, and Last Stand now requires six players to start instead of eight. It also includes adjusting the spawn points in OP Station Demien, on-foot radar now orients to the player and not the ground, and cooking grenade audio is more recognizable. Players also should no longer be placed into games with less than half of the game time left. We’ve included numerous environment and audio fixes to Star Marine as well. The start of match countdown audio should no longer play twice, several collision issues in both maps have been resolved, as well as players falling off the map when jumping down certain staircases. The New Buccaneer Has Arrived This Is Not Your Average Fighter Drake’s new interceptor and fighter is here! Built to hit above its weight-class, the Buccaneer brings a notably more potent gun-loadout to lighter ships like the Avenger and the Gladius. Although a heavy-hitter, the Buccaneer is less durable compared to a F7C Hornet, and as a much weaker missile loadout than the AEGIS Sabre. This rough-and-tumble frontier fighter can be maintained in the worst of conditions in order to keep real, working space crews alive. With an impressive amount of firepower, the Buccaneer comes equipped with two Size 1 9-Series Longswords on the wingtips, two Size 3 gimbals on the underwings with CF-117 Badgers, two Size 1 pylons for a customizable missile loadout, and finally a Size 4 hard point between the two engines as an unmanned turret with two Tarantula-870 Ballistic Cannons. Przeczytaj całość

Avenger Titan Renegade Subscriber Sale! Greetings Subscribers! The Avenger Titan Renegade is on sale this weekend only! The Renegade honors Danny Solomon, the Advocacy pilot who brought justice to Bremen. Bring your own sense of justice to the universe by purchasing the March Ship of the Month. Sale runs Friday through Monday, so get it while you can! Interested in learning about our Subscriber Program? More information can be found here! Visit the Renegade Przeczytaj całość

In this week’s episode, hosts Eric Kieron Davis and Steve Bender check in with Germany for their studio update and share part two of the Drake Buccaneer Ship Pipeline. And for info on becoming a subscriber, go to: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/subscriptions Przeczytaj całość

Senior Gameplay Engineer Mark Abent discovers a bug that causes a crash when players exit spectator mode. Can Mark smash this bug? Watch and find out. Przeczytaj całość