These are the Highlights that I felt were the most interesting & important.
As always, it pays to read the entire Monthly report if you truely wish to know what is happening and planned for the future of Star Citizen.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15704-Monthly-Studio-Report
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Backend Team has been hard at work on a massive project to refactor our entire backend infrastructure to a new architecture we’re calling Diffusion. Diffusion will be a truly cloud-oriented service architecture that will help improve high scalability and availability for our services. It will be powered by a top level “coordination” layer written in a proprietary language developed by our Lead Server Engineer, Jason Ely.
The team has been working hard on multi-region support, the bulk of our efforts going toward the network and server side of our services. We are very happy to report that this work will pay dividends very soon in game and there will be more detailed information on this soon as well. We’ve also been working on our internal tools including the build system, all of which share the same goals of performance and stability improvements while keeping costs down.
Plus, we’ve been experimenting with new assets to blow stuff up.
On the SQ42 front, the Shubin base is having a major push visually at the moment, since it’s a massive part of the story, we’re making sure it’s the hero it deserves to be.
We are also allocating more resource to work on the growing universe. Soon we’ll have four concept artists working out moons, nebulas and space stations, no small task! Work has begun on the first three surface outposts. These modular asset sets can be configured in multiple ways to give variation to the smaller settlements that will be scattered across the planet surfaces.
The Tech team are still very busy moving ships functionality into the new Item 2.0 system in preparation for a whole host of new gameplay opportunities.
The Systems Designers have been working on adding a lot more detail to the framework of the multi-crew Seat Actions in preparation for meeting with Chris in early Feb.
We want our conversations to feel “filmic” while still allowing the player freedom. Invoking a “cinematic” feel first and foremost means changing the lens to values that are more akin to how a film camera would depict a character. The engines FOV traditionally is calculated with a vertical FOV value. The current in-game on-foot FOV is at 55 which is equivalent to an extreme wide angle lens of approximately ~13mm (using 35mm film equivalent ARRI master prime lenses as a comparison). That kind of lens is bordering on fisheye lens territory. If the player gets close to a character using this kind of FOV it distorts faces, so what we are doing is gradually changing the FOV over a certain time down to 30 which is equivalent to a ~25mm wide angle portrait lens. We are finding this is a nice compromise of the faces revealing all of the awesome scanned detail by appearing big on screen while still allowing for a sense of orientation in regards to the background (if player decides to move during a conversation).
we are continuing our work on the Truck Stop, Refinery and Cargo Station, the first design phase of these is complete and they have now been handed over to the Environment Art team.
The Oxygen, Breathing & Stamina systems have started being implemented and soon we will have players begin to carry their own oxygen supplies or risk turning blue in the face. The system should handle everything from how the oxygen tank delivers breathable air to the helmet, to how the player breathes said air and how his body converts that into actual usable stamina. At the same time, all actions are being converted to consume this stamina, so you will want to keep your character supplied with oxygen if you want them to be capable of performing various actions.
Landing and Take-off systems are also going into implementation mode as we are unifying Squadron 42 and PU mechanics.
Basically we’re implementing an air traffic control system that allows players to queue for landing permissions and makes sure that people don’t block landing sites for everyone else.
Cheers,
Cosmic
As always, it pays to read the entire Monthly report if you truely wish to know what is happening and planned for the future of Star Citizen.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15704-Monthly-Studio-Report
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Backend Team has been hard at work on a massive project to refactor our entire backend infrastructure to a new architecture we’re calling Diffusion. Diffusion will be a truly cloud-oriented service architecture that will help improve high scalability and availability for our services. It will be powered by a top level “coordination” layer written in a proprietary language developed by our Lead Server Engineer, Jason Ely.
The team has been working hard on multi-region support, the bulk of our efforts going toward the network and server side of our services. We are very happy to report that this work will pay dividends very soon in game and there will be more detailed information on this soon as well. We’ve also been working on our internal tools including the build system, all of which share the same goals of performance and stability improvements while keeping costs down.
Plus, we’ve been experimenting with new assets to blow stuff up.
On the SQ42 front, the Shubin base is having a major push visually at the moment, since it’s a massive part of the story, we’re making sure it’s the hero it deserves to be.
We are also allocating more resource to work on the growing universe. Soon we’ll have four concept artists working out moons, nebulas and space stations, no small task! Work has begun on the first three surface outposts. These modular asset sets can be configured in multiple ways to give variation to the smaller settlements that will be scattered across the planet surfaces.
The Tech team are still very busy moving ships functionality into the new Item 2.0 system in preparation for a whole host of new gameplay opportunities.
The Systems Designers have been working on adding a lot more detail to the framework of the multi-crew Seat Actions in preparation for meeting with Chris in early Feb.
We want our conversations to feel “filmic” while still allowing the player freedom. Invoking a “cinematic” feel first and foremost means changing the lens to values that are more akin to how a film camera would depict a character. The engines FOV traditionally is calculated with a vertical FOV value. The current in-game on-foot FOV is at 55 which is equivalent to an extreme wide angle lens of approximately ~13mm (using 35mm film equivalent ARRI master prime lenses as a comparison). That kind of lens is bordering on fisheye lens territory. If the player gets close to a character using this kind of FOV it distorts faces, so what we are doing is gradually changing the FOV over a certain time down to 30 which is equivalent to a ~25mm wide angle portrait lens. We are finding this is a nice compromise of the faces revealing all of the awesome scanned detail by appearing big on screen while still allowing for a sense of orientation in regards to the background (if player decides to move during a conversation).
we are continuing our work on the Truck Stop, Refinery and Cargo Station, the first design phase of these is complete and they have now been handed over to the Environment Art team.
The Oxygen, Breathing & Stamina systems have started being implemented and soon we will have players begin to carry their own oxygen supplies or risk turning blue in the face. The system should handle everything from how the oxygen tank delivers breathable air to the helmet, to how the player breathes said air and how his body converts that into actual usable stamina. At the same time, all actions are being converted to consume this stamina, so you will want to keep your character supplied with oxygen if you want them to be capable of performing various actions.
Landing and Take-off systems are also going into implementation mode as we are unifying Squadron 42 and PU mechanics.
Basically we’re implementing an air traffic control system that allows players to queue for landing permissions and makes sure that people don’t block landing sites for everyone else.
Cheers,
Cosmic
