Hello everyone, and welcome to the Week in 10 for July 11 – 15

This week on the Week in 10, we talk news!

Erris and I talk a little bit about the Argo, procedural planets, GrimHex, Reverse the Verse and Around the Verse, 2.7 Stanton system and subsumption. We hope you enjoy our summary.

Another quick note, our friends over at The Base, Star Citizen’s premiere radio station, now have The Week in 10 in their rotation, so thanks to them! If you’d like to listen to some great music, and some great Star Citizen themed shows, check out The Base!

Check out the long-form notes below!:

AtV Bits: 100th Episode Pt. 4: Frankfurt

Focus is on 2.5 featuring GrimHex and other additions.

Argo will be the next concept sale and will be flyable in 2.5 and for purchase when 2.5 goes live.

Studio Report

AI: Continuing to work on subsumption Pushing forwards on communications: bug fixes and core system

Weapons: Working on a set of unified Behring laser cannons: completed size 2 to size 6, working on size 1 Working on the Behring P8SC 10mm ballistic submachine gun: final polish and tweaks

Engine: Continued to move forward on procedural planets: bug fixing Worked on head stabilisation: you’ll “see and feel” it in 2.5 Optimization and continued work on the local physics grid



QA: Working on feature testing and automated testing, creating test maps

Design: Working on docking and landing Working on Vanduul behaviours

Level: Working on the “truck stop”, cargo depots and security station Working closely with Art to make things very modular



Behind the Scenes: Grimhex

GrimHex is a facility in Yela’s asteroid belt.

It has accommodations, shops, bedrooms, etc.

They struggled to connect the interior and exterior due to the sizes of landing pads compared to the player. It becomes a big area very quickly.

They’ve decided to also add hangars where you can request landing permission and land safely inside to rectify this.

Currently it is weapons restricted inside but eventually you’ll be able to carry weapons but they don’t want it to be a constant deathmatch.

It’ll come out in the next two-to-three patches with new areas and activities as tech and art come online for the location.

There is a central hub with elevators going to landing zones.

There will be a bar and kiosk with an area to enter and bet on races.

There is a tunnel going through the tunnel where races will start/end.

Lots of work has gone into GrimHex by multiple designers from all studios.

RtV

[With the Authenticator App available, is there any priority for subscribers to the SC app?] It’s being worked on by Turbulent. It’s not subscriber only, it’ll be available to everyone, work on it is proceeding. Disco has seen mockups. They’re actively building it, but no ETA yet.

[Argo quantum jump drive?] No. It’s a snub. If you go back to watching the CitizenCon presentation last year, there’s an Argo at the beginning of the Idris section. It’s a very small ship. More like a ship tender than anything else.

[Any other stations and buildings being worked on right now?] Yes. Very yes. A lot.

[GrimHex – free fire or safe zone?] Depends on feedback. They talked about it in AtV this week. That’s iterative. What happens in the first version might change. Eventually CIG dont’ want armistice zones, period. They’re a weird godray that prevents you from pulling a gun. There’s another system in-line that’s being built out that will punish you for doing bad things in certain areas, but not prevent you from doing it.

[How is in-game voice chat coming along?] It’s being worked on, but that’s as much as they can say. They got to see a sample in a recent show-and-tell, and it was the highlight. Chris is very excited about it. I believe it’ll come with the revamp of the org / social system?

[Have you been able to play through a mission in SQ42 yet?] Disco has been able to, but has chosen not to. Tyler has played through every mission because he comes from QA, and it was his job to to so.

[Was GrimHex always part of the plan?] It was something that came from a lot of feedback that designers agreed on. They wanted to have somewhere for outlaws to spawn.

[Is there still a plan to release Gold Horizon to PU?] It was built for the original iteration of Star Marine. It was never intended to go in the PU. It was a video-game level within the Star Marine video-game inside Star Citizen. Not sure if Gold Horizon will be even be included in that. Disco doesn’t know. It’s not a SQ42 asset, it’s not a PU asset. Was strictly for the video-game within the video-game (which is not gone)

[Planning content that’ll require specific ships / roles?] will there be group / raid content? Disco’s only heard yes, but that’s still very far down the line. They’re still building out game systems; cargo, mining, etc… Raid stuff comes down the line. From the info Disco has right now though, yes, that stuff’s planned.

[How is AI coming along? Has QA tested playing against AI NPC’s?] Yes, cause it’s very key to SQ42, which is heavily in testing. It’s going really well.

[Will the Carrack go on sale?] Eventually, yes. It’s not super-limited. There’s no current plan, but if you look at previous history, the anniversary sale in November is probably a safe bet.

[Will there be a lean left / right mechanic in FPS?] Yes. It’ll be in cover. This could change, but what they were working on before was, in-game when you walk close to a wall and your player holds his gun up, that would put you in ‘cover’, and then you can peek out, peek over railings, etc…

[Will Argo fit in Starfarer?] Don’t know, they’ll find out when things are fully built. Trying to guess how big the door is… probably, but not definitive.

[Can I upgrade my Kore to a news van in 2.5?] No, news van is a variant that’ll come at a later date.

[What happened to procedural generation at Frankfurt AtV?] AtV is not the good time to show that. There might be a cool event in Germany coming up in a month that would be the perfect time to show procedural gen off.

[How is 2.5 coming along? Will it go to Evocati first?] It’s doing really well. Generally when a build goes to Evocati it’s pretty messy. 2.5 is looking really good stability wise so… soon.

[As AC has lots of issues, missiles etc… will there be dev focus on AC?] Missiles is not just in AC, still an issue in Crusader as well. That’d be fixed in both when it gets fixed. Disco does say there’s some AC focus coming, probably in 2.6 or so, but that’s just a possibly.

[Idris comes with an Argo, any others?] No. Idris is the only ship right now that comes standard with an Argo. Disco could see possibly the Polaris and the Javelin, but that’s theory, nothing confirmed right now.

[When will patcher be updated so we don’t need to DL 25 gigs?] Check out Austin’s AtV last week, there’s detail on that in there about Delta patching. It’s heavily in development. When it’s finished they’ll test it internally and use it internally first and when it’s ready then they’ll roll it out.



[Will the Herald info gathering gameplay when it’s flight-ready or later?] Herald will be flight ready before info-running is ready. Only because gameplay systems are being prioritised by how fast the work is developing and how many people it would affect. If it only affects one or two ships, it’s not as important as mining / cargo / etc…

[What tech needed for Merlin to dock with Connie?] Landing 2.0 is called Landing Pad 2.0. The tech needed is being worked on though. Don’t expect Merlin to connie docking in Landing Pad 2.0. That’s more about auto-landing.

Today is Gurmukh’s last day, he’s sad to leave, but he’s been here for 2.5 years. ‘the fans have been amazing, it’s been a wonderful pleasure meeting everybody’

[Ships working on recently?] Gurmukh hasn’t been working on ships recently, more space station stuff. Lots of the stations are starting to feel the same cause they’re using the same kit, so what he was working on for a while was trying to develop a new system for unique, different-looking type of stations.

[How will this affect Carrack dev?] Gurmukh was concept art, it’s about to be built out, Gurmukh’s work is done.

Start of AtV season 3 next week. The experiment they began, rotating through the studios, they’re gonna do that. AtV will continue to rotate from the studios. Next week’ll be LA, then UK, then Austin, then Frankfurt. Great way to get larger reports with videos and images etc…

RtV is also changing. Next week RtV will rotate from studio to studio. It’ll still be live, it’ll be Tyler or Disco hosting with the respective studio. RtV will be from LA next week. Community member in the small screen, guest on the big screen.

Next week is the Subscriber Town-hall. Used to be monthly Subscriber RtV, they realised this week that the subscriber special thing are in the style of a Town Hall.

The show to replace 10 ftC is still contingent on when Chris comes back, he’s still shooting in the UK. That won’t be done till he comes back. They’re gonna do it when they have something they like and announce it then.

PG GAMER GERMANY ARTICLE

short english summary

(found on reddit thanks blablablablabla78 https://as.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4u7yve/star_citizen_in_pc_games_german/d5nkntb):

No misunderstanding, they actually played it. Chris and Erin were there as well. There’s also a new screenshot of mark hamils face, looks much better now than before.

Edit:

2.6 will launch Star Marine as separate module just like Arena Commander, this was also played by staff of PC Games and they are saying it’s much more polished on the FPS side and feels a lot better than current rudimentary FPS in the PTU.

2.7 will bring procedural planets and you will be able to travel the whole stanton system and all planets and moons can be directly approached down to the surface.

Edit:

They say the new lighting system as part of the procedural planets build looks much more natural

They say that approaching the planet looks and technically feels better than with Elite Dangerous.

You can land anywhere manually, automatic landing gets yout to fixed positions i.e. landing zones.

Microtech and Hurston come in follow-up patches after 2.7

They aim to have Stanton fully playable i.e. with all stations and landing zones (according to CR about 40 locations) by end of 2016

There will be more jobs and missions as well.

Trading will be in by then

Chris describing that missions might be accepted up in space stations but could lead you down to planet surfaces, not clear if this is going to be in with 2.7 but seemingly something SQ42 will benefit from.

Planets and moons are revolving around suns, with naturally simulated day and night cycles.

When flying over the ocean they were noticing that the horizon had a correctly simulated curve.

Trees and Animals seemingly are planned (edit: doesn’t seem to be in with 2.7, sorry) – they have them seemingly setup in pre-made templates they call eco-systems – these can be brushed over the planet surface, some magic blends the transitions to make it look naturally and consistent.

Planetary surface details are controlled by a dynamical LOD system.

Some pop-up was visible during the planetary approach but they described it as impressive.

They were also impressed with the cloud system, which wasn’t just a simple texture layer but seemingly is described what I assume is volumetric, i.e. they have deepth and height and impact visibility, leading to mountain crests piercing through clouds etc.

They are writing that there isn’t any artificially restricted view range

Parallax-Occlusion Maps with dynamic tesselation is used for the surface details.

GTX 980 was used with 100 fps on the planetary surface, so performance seems to be pretty good already, sorry that was just editor benchmaks in game it was 45fps :)

Some stuff about the subsumption-AI saying NPCs might have hobbies and a virtual mind, allowing them to remember the player or be influenced in his opinions by the player. To avoid performance issues, they seemingly control the update cycles based on player proximitiy i.e. update cycles go to 1hz instead of 60hz if no one is around.

They also wrote that they were positively surprised that all employees at Foundry 42 Frankfurt that they had a chance to talk with seemed to be truthfuly grateful to be able to work on the project due to the challenge it represents. They specifically point out, that the enthusiasm didn’t feel faked.

Thanks to @The_Don