CLOUD IMPERIUM : LOS ANGELES



ENGINEERING

As part of the upcoming 3.0 release, we’re very excited to introduce cargo as a mechanic. To ensure your ship is technically equipped to handle this, we’ve created cargo grids to provide the visual element of transporting commodities like minerals, scrap, and food. The number of commodities you have will manifest as stacks of crates located within the ship’s cargo hold and will be limited in capacity by the dimensions of the grid your ship can use. This system will also allow you to park vehicles and other loose items into the cargo hold, but will limit the amount of grid space you have available for bought or scavenged commodities. Code wrapped up on this feature and design has implemented the new cargo grids into all the ships that can carry cargo.

Engineering also finished implementing the solar system content (or what we’ve been calling object containers) into a hierarchy to ensure that outposts on a moon or planet, as well as space stations in near orbit, are all in the correct planetary grid at all times.

The team also just provided the much-needed Object Container editing. When creating a gameplay level, we build the level with a combination of Assets and Object Containers. Originally, Object Containers had to be built in the dedicated Object Container level, which, unfortunately, made the contents of the Object Container only editable in the actual Object Container level.

In the previous system, when designers used to build levels with Object Containers, if they wanted to modify the contents of that ObjectContainer, they would need to exit the current level, open the Object Container level, do some tuning, save, export, and then move back to the level. This new tool will allow the designer to edit the contents of an Object Container, save and export all while inside the level. This new workflow will save Design a lot of time.

The engineers have created a new debug and setup process to help handle vehicle interior damage states. Interior damage states will be changed based on the cumulative health of a ship. The old method was written in flowgraph, but now the process has been integrated into a vehicle component, so that it can be used in various places. This new process should help us find the problem quickly, solve it fast, and get the team back to working on features.

The update process of the Intelligent Flight Control System (IFCS) for our ships has now been converted to a batch update. Because IFCS is very isolated from the physics engine, taking in values like velocity, mass, center-of-mass, etc., and outputting one linear and one angular impulse, there’s no reason IFCS needs to be updated in lockstep with the physics thread. This change will be more efficient, but also hopefully allow a larger number of players on the servers.

The team has now completed the new quantum drive 2.0. We’ve removed the old code that controlled things like VFX and sound FX playback, as well as obstruction detection and alignment code, and moved the targeting of a QT point to the Target Selector on the ship, so the drive only cares about the travel point itself. This made the drive code much simpler and should make it run smoother. Aside from bugfixing, the team also added some features that attach to the quantum drive, such as automatically closing all external doors when doing a jump to prevent accidents by jumping out of a ship traveling at high fractions of the speed of light.

This updated quantum drive is now ready for design and art to start tweaking and implementing on all the ships, as well as for UI to start creating a more realistic feel for how such an event should be handled in-game and incorporate other features like the star map.

SHIP TEAM

The RSI Aurora went through a final art check this week, so the only remaining work will be from any incoming bugs that pop up while going through design implementation, animation updating, sound, VFX, etc. The team also created fourteen different skins for designers to utilize as well. We’re excited to get this updated version of Star Citizen’s most prolific ship into your hands, and the team here is working hard to make make this a reality.

The Anvil Terrapin is finalizing its greybox phase, which included setting up the exterior hierarchy, polishing the proxies, baked and migrated animations. For the interior, the artists are polishing the geometry in the cockpit and habitation, and moving into the final art phase. The Terrapin was also sent over to Tech Design to begin their greybox pass on the ship.

Now that the ships are being converted to Item 2.0, the team has also completely reworked the ship stats page on the website to allow for up-to-the-minute stats. The design has now been finalized, the icons finished with refined meaning and everything is currently being updated on the web.

TECH ART

The team implemented the first iteration of the landing springs technology to allow for a more cushioned landing experience on uneven terrain. From here, they will move on to the next step of full visible landing compression on the landing gear, which is slated for after 3.0’s release.

Tech Art’s role tends to increase the closer you get to a major release as performance begins to take priority over features and asset developments, so they have been reviewing the release builds to identify code and content fixes that would dramatically improve performance. One in particular is called Statoscope. It plots graphs from data logged on a per-frame basis, and provides a way of recording values (e.g. fps, number of drawcalls, etc.) from Star Citizen and showing how they change over the course of a play-through. This really helps our development team find ways to improve performance by identifying massive frame time offenders.

Tech animation improved the format that animations are saved as and then reloaded into other scenes. Due to the amount of characters and lengths of the scenes, they could formerly take up to 50 minutes to load in Maya, but with this improvement, the worst load time has been drastically reduced by over 82%, meaning cinematics won’t be waiting long to make quick iterations.

On the skinning front, a female transfer mesh has been created and the male transfer mesh has been massively updated. These transfer meshes are used with our skinning tools to automate basic skinning of all new characters. Tech animators can now spend time perfecting the weighting of the mesh allowing for a higher quality and more accurate deformation in less time.

Our tech art team identified an issue where the eyelids on many of the heads had vertex normal issues. They ultimately determined that because the vertices of the eyelids were so close together, the normal would get flipped but only on a few verts. This has now been fixed and characters can now sleep with ease.

CHARACTER TEAM

The team has been knocking out countless costumes for Squadron 42 and Star Citizen. Currently in production, the male Navy medical corpsman has entered the high poly phase. Once that’s complete, he will then go on to in-game modeling. Another female character is finishing up her in-game asset then will be sent over to get textured and rigged along with our OMC Undersuits, which have also finished up in-game modeling.

The civilians and the miners of Levski are currently being textured before heading over to rigging and implementation into their final resting place in-game on Delamar.

The team updated some of the legacy UEE and Pirate armors to not only bring them up to the visual quality of our current assets but allow them to be swappable with all newer armor pieces. We’ve officially started high-poly on some of your favorites and then will be moving onto the in-game modeling and texturing pass.

Along with the new eye options, the team began work on a multitude of hairstyles. These are all in various states of production, but a select group will be ready for 3.0.0.

An assortment of new characters, like the Male Marine BDU and Male Deckcrew, have been rigged and implemented. They can now be found on the bridge of the Idris or completing their work on the exterior of a ship in the vacuum of space. Lastly, the Female Light Marine armor and Female Explorer Suit have finished up their implementation passes.

NARRATIVE

Our narrative team has had a jam-packed month as well. With Item 2.0 coming online, they have been knocking out a massive amount of component and item descriptions needed for 3.0, everything from coolers and quantum drives to armor sets and shirts. They have been getting trained up on handling the localizations of these names and descriptions into DataForge directly, giving them a bit more oversight in making sure that the latest text is appearing in the game. The team wrote approximately 2800 lines worth of generic NPCs to liven up the universe then recorded them in a VO booth down in London. To help keep track of these assets, the team started building a Persistent Universe character tracking sheet to create a single consolidated reference for lines, file names (for all the departments like audio, animation), overall status, and priority for the massive amounts of dialogue for Mission Givers, Generic NPCs and more.

Lastly, the team has been walking through the locations of both Squadron 42 and the PU and writing up documentation of props, posters, signs, branding, and set dressing for more immersive environmental storytelling.