The October CIG Monthly Report is a summary of material that is the intellectual property of Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) and it’s subsidiaries.

LOS ANGELES

Engineering

Delved deeper into Object Containers and Object Container streaming

Progressed on vehicles within Item System 2.0 and all it contains

Tech Design

Assisted global team with the bug queue

Constellation Aquila and Drake Herald brought closer to flight readiness

Art

Clothing and general pipeline improvements and progress were included

The Character team grew while increasing character quality and deliveries

Narrative

Progress also made on 2.6 content, new component descriptions, the Galactapedia, and other unmentionables

Provided lore posts, Jump Point and captured content for 3.0 mocap shoot in London this past month

Quality Assurance

Vincent Sinatra played the Homestead demo at CitizenCon

DESIGN

Rob Reininger working with UI team on ‘Shopping Kiosk’ GDD to create mockups and how that system would interact, this will be passed to Engineering for implementation

Finalizing first iteration of ‘Price Fixer’ which will generate in-game values based on characteristics and component costs for all ships and inform their pricing in PU

He also aided UK design in balancing FPS weapons and items for Star Marine

Peter Mackay working on ‘Trade Slayer’ which is and end-to-end economic model of how an item gets created from mining commodities, refined, manufactured and placed on store shelf

These provide the basis to generate requests to other teams like clothing from Character artists so they can begin to populate these locations

Rob Reininger and Robert Gaither created blueprint level design docs for various shops and services in Crusader, microTech and Hurston

ART

Emre Switzer worked on lighting for Star Marine maps

Josh Coons finished the Herald which is in QA testing and he’s moved to Cutlass variants refactor, already progressed the ship into Greybox phase

ANIMATION

Added ‘combat speed’ animations to Retaliator, Merling, M50, Scythe and Freelancer, these save time when entering/exiting a ship

Ship Animation Team supported animations tasks for Ursa Rover, Drake Caterpillar and Drake Herald while providing insight for ships like MISC Prospector and Drake Buccaneer

These will be used in both SQ42 and PU and must work within parameters of Subsumption Usables(nodes that AI navigate to and interact with)

PU Animation Team tackled implementing a new set of background animations such as characters interacting with datapads, using PAW tool, getting in/out of bunks and eating at mess hall table

BACKEND SERVICES

These tools will give their Game Support Team more capabilities, such as reserving a game master slot on a server, providing slash commands to better identify specific player info and presence and allow for better instance controlled testing

Ian Guthrie at Wyrmbyte was busy creating admin tools for their servers

Tom Sawyer worked on optimizing the Lobby System, also as a part of their Frontend Refactor he wrote a new Leaderboard that allows it to display in-game instead of just the website

Jason will be working on grander changes within the backend infrastructure to better optimize services

Jason Ely spent most of the month rewriting their Hub Server, this provides more scalability as the community and player base grows

QA

Michael Blackard and Elijah Montenegro assisted Austin Animation Team with new ship enter/exit animations

Jesse Mark assisted in building a new set of web dashboards for LiveOps and NOC teams

With Katarzyna Mierostawska he also work with UK team to test and verify several new automation tests

Bryce Benton started rebuilding the QA documentation on server stability diagnostics and bugging

The team also tested and deployed multiple 2.5.0 builds for Evocati to test and provide initial feedback on ship-balance changes considered for 2.6.0

Scott McCrea, Brandon Crocker and Matt Gant focused on Star Marine

Andrew Rexroth and Tory Turner with support from Tyler T tested the Vertical Slice and provided SQ42 support

Don Allen and Todd Raffray spent September and October testing the Homestead Demo

Game Support

Cross-trained a ‘base’ team for the foundation that will be needed closer to launch

Plan to unify our teams for better and quicker service

Hired more folks and are working closely with Customer Service

Spent a lot of time on Evocati Test Flight and doubled their size to over 800 people from 40 countries speaking 18 different languages.

IT/Operations

Supported Dennis Daniels, Mike Jones and staff in the building of matching computers for final development polish, testing and presentation

Thanks so much to the volunteers who provided tremendous support with its setup and teardown

All studios supported the CitizenCon show with prep work weeks prior and a week afterwards

LiveOps/DevOps

Focused on live server infrastructure optimization and reducing patch sizes after CitizenCon

Governed each branches build timings to prevent replication conflicts for the global dev teams

Provided around the clock build and deployment support for CitizenCon

Art

Applying lessons from Driller to rest of Vanduul ships.

Driller is wrapping up.

Also working on capital ships. Final phase of closing out Idris, Javelin and Bengal.

Both of these ships are flight ready.

Ship team working on Drake Herald and Vanguard Hoplite for 2.6.

First true look at SQ42.

All SQ42 levels are in final art and are gearing up to reveal the vertical slice.

These are main thing players will visit.

Frankfurt studio designers supported artists on surface outposts, modular space stations and satellites.

Planets must work well with continued work on landing zones – microTech, Crusader and Hurston.

Worked with Frankfurt to ensure art and engineering can make planets better and allow easier integration of assets.

Environment Team worked on both Star Marine maps.

Usual work on ship items and props.

Wrapped up first round of Esperia Prowler.

Started work on new MISC ship.

Lots of artwork and designs produced for Polaris.

Graphics

Also brings higher res shadows and improved performance.

Will vastly increase number of simultaneous shadow casting lights.

Started rework and unification of shadow systems.

Focused on several new features.

Props

Destructible props being worked on.

Looks better and more efficient.

Converted older assets to new material system.

Lots of work in SQ42.

CitizenCon highlighted areas where pipelines could be improved.

Last month was hectic and rewarding.

Audio

Improved workflow and collision interpretation – different clothing, armour, weapon sounds when bumping/scraping.

Audio dynamic range changed to dropdown with three choices.

Music system reworked to support multiple concurrent music suites for seamless music.

Improvements to quantum drive, ship weapons and player death.

Refined various ships like Dragonfly and Caterpillar.

Grenade bounce work and bug fixes for SM.

Worked on ambience, scavenger voices, epic sandstorm and more.

QA

Sweeping balance changes for flight model, shields and ship weapons kept team busy.

New ships tested – Hoplite and Herald.

VFX

Continued R&D for automated VFX placement on planets.

Atmospheric VFX entry fully driven by code/data now.

For Homestead, supplied ship controls (driven by code/data), general ambient effects (sand, debris, weather), weapon improvements (incl. blood impacts), upgrades to Dragonfly explosions and Ursa Rover effects.

Improvements on both ships and FPS weapons (including shader fixes).

Worked on Herald and Hoplite.

Cleanup and optimization of Arena Commander.

Programming

Investigating new “mega map” that allows switching between Arena Commander game modes and maps without having to load in and out.

Can now change loadout without ever going to hangar.

Big changes to lobby UI.

Provides more control over DoF, FoV, operator shake, point of interest and zoom.

More dramatic and cinematic cameras.

Unified code between different modes – chase, orbit, passenger and spectator.

Animation

Work done on general AI combat animation sets – focused on enter/exit cover, blind fire and under fire.

Captured assets for stealth kills from various angles.

Working on grenade functionality and visuals.

Design

Some issues would usually persist late into development cycle.

Focus on this section is paying dividends in terms of issues being fixed.

Slice is selected as it contains almost all aspects of gameplay and avoids spoilers.

Arena Commander upgrades – incl. persistent missile inventory between deaths, pickups and pirate swarm rebalance and improvements.

New asteroid tech that improves ring around Yela.

Live Team added mission content for Crusader (incl. many secrets).

Split between 2.6 and SQ42.

UI

Finally supported environment team with ambient screen assets/animations – gives live/movement to environments.

Game-mode specific UI should function properly and be consistent with rest of game.

Worked with Character Team on creating new first person helmets and HUDs that have unique look/feel.

Should provide improved user experience (esp. for new players)

Provides much needed visual update to main menu and pause screens.

Affects game lobbies for Arena Commander, Star Marine and in-game leaderboards.

Since focused on UI for 2.6.

Team focused on HUD/UI needs for planetary demo showcased at CitizenCon.

Programming

Internal Planet tools were worked on in conjunction with the Environment Art Team

Physics and occlusion optimisation work with local grids

Cloud models and shading received some attention as well as ocean rendering

Work done on ecosystems, vegetation, object spawning and terrain blending

Focused on coding for CitizenCon and the global road map

AI

AI pilots can now directly use quantum travel and afterburners as well as be triggered by Designers

An emotion component was added that will affect NPC character’s behaviour

for the right speed

The pseudospeed calculation was reintroduced to NPC characters to Animators and Designers can select the right animation

Improvements were also made to the collision avoidance code and also allows AI to identify a player as an entity

Navmesh for characters was refactored to allow the AI to identify possible shortcuts

Subsumption combat behaviour given first pass

NPC personal logger used to help debug their state and behaviour decision process

Primary and secondary sub-activities for Subsumption were implemented

Design

Continued work on planet outposts and modular satellites

Much progress has been made designing the modular building system for space stations

Work was done on a space station locations for 3.0 release

The Landing System was refined for docking, landing and how it looks in game

The entire team travelled to the U.K. last month to help out with CitizenCon

Build

This system will be hooked up with the new patching system/launcher when that is complete

The resource compiler process, which takes the most time when in the build process was optimised.

Environmental Art

Working with Engineers in the U.K. to create additional assets and terrain

Five systems were created in total over a short space of time

Most of the team spent their time generation the ecosystems shown at CitizenCon

Cinematics

A small side project for the Star Marine release was also completed

Ongoing research with the goal of making Look IK and AI locomotion blend fluidly out of captured story scenes

In-cockpit and in-helmet comms were readied for Squadron

Work was finished for the camera path in the CitizenCon demo

Weapon Art

The Behring P8 weapon family iron sights were worked on

The FPS team were busy with grenades and grenade variants

Existing missile assets were optimised and polished with a small amount of variants added

The focus was mostly on missiles this past month

Quality Assurance

An internal playtest of Star Marine’s current state was completed and feedback gathered

Gravity boxes and areas ragdolls as well as checking zone transition changes to the interior physics grids

After testing Squadron and Homestead demo for CitizenCon regular test activity resumed

VFX

Many of the effects achieved in the demo were done while working closely with the Cinematics and Animation departments

Environmental effects like clouds, heat refraction and sand blowing in the wind were completed for the demo

Focus on effects for the CitizenCon demo and Squadron 42

Art

Going to show progress of Stanton landing locations.

Variety of different climates, architecture and story of different locales.

Lot of effort showing diversity of the universe.

Hurston

People are like indentured servants.

MicroTech

Reinforces architectural themes with interactive tech and view matching environment colour scheme.

Inside it is very clean, lots of technology and simple elegance.

Crusader

Gas giant with city in clouds.

Communication Platform

Future releases have more functionality, including game integrated overlay and voice chat.

Initial launch will be a web application.

Designed to integrate forums, chat and other features into streamlined platform.

Ship Happens

Followed by free-fly to everyone.

Backer-only free-fly for all ships happened.

Many ship packages made available.

Polaris went on sale at CitizenCon.

RSI Newsletter

Recaps subscriber updates, current promotions, top pilots, fan creations and sometimes new content.

More curated content and community information.

Newsletter saw an overhaul.

Had an unforgettable time meeting people at TwitchCon Bar Citizen.

Support from CitizenCon was great.

Meeting everyone gives the team a big boost.

Community in Germany hosted their own CitCon event.

Staff from Germany showed up and had a blast at the event.

Becoming difficult to keep up with streamers and podcasts.

Good to see veterans helping people out.