July Monthly Report Highlights
(at least the bits I found most interesting)
Los Angeles -
- Calix Reneau worked alongside our global team ironing out the Salvage design further to be ready for code and implementation
- Tech Designer Matt Sherman has been knocking out the tech setup and design of several ships currently in progress. The most obvious being the MISC Reliant Kore – Mini Hauler. He’s had several other ships he’s setting up alongside our art team that are very exciting with more information to come shortly.
- The Drake Caterpillar is close to being finished on the art side. Lead 3D Artist Elwin Bachiller and his team are making major strides on that ship and are pushing to finish it to get ready for their next round of challenging ships.
Austin -
- drafting up documentation for the Service Beacon, a new feature designed by Tony Zurovec. This new feature allows players to request immediate assistance in a number of different areas or, alternatively, to offer their goods and services to other players and NPCs.
- Designer Pete Mackay has been drafting up the GDD for Resource Spawning which will determine several methods of distributing resources throughout our play spaces.
- Chris Smith wrapped up his Final Art Pass on the Hornet F7A and has since moved on to revamping the Constellation variants to match the quality of the Andromeda. He’s currently focused on the Aquila and aims to have that wrapped up in the next few weeks
Foundry 42 UK -
- we are re-evaluating how we go about imagining the ship weapons. - o the ship weapon artists can improve production and get more weapons out to the fans.
- VFX support for procedural planets. As you can imagine, there was LOTS to talk about – clouds, weather, water, atmospheric entry/exit to name but a few things we will need to support.
- we knocked out the captain’s quarters and started mirroring areas to the other side of the ship (such as stairways, corridors, hallways) on the Idris. This next month we are aiming to have all the interior rooms on the Idris complete to final art with collision to allow for a full play through
- We now have just over 100 ship items complete, so plenty of customization options will be available when the feature launches. Next, we’ll be looking into the ship interiors and how the sub items integrate into them.
- For the expanded universe, we’ve finally made the sun into an actual object that you can fly around. Previously in CryEngine, the Sun was always 10km away in an artist specified direction no matter where you were in the universe, but now it’s a hot glowing sphere that casts light and shadows in all directions as you would expect, and has a physically accurate reflection which grows as you get closer. We’ve also began work on our asteroid tech to place asteroid fields and planetary rings consisting of millions of asteroids with minimal artist setup.
- working on what we’re calling ‘interiority’ (so that we can change sounds depending on the player’s perspective/relationship to inside/outside sound sources more efficiently), RTPC normalization for consistent reverb levels across environments, further VOIP code tidy-up
Foundry 42 DE -
- Our next steps on the planets are going to be focused towards improving visuals even more, making the planets more and more interactive with landing areas and ecosystems.
- With the shift towards ecosystems we are putting more and more planets in the control of the artists which so we can create an interesting and engaging universe with deep history.
- , we’ve started work on the AI Crew Skills & Stats system which governs how good an AI is at doing a specific job and how players can improve their AI Crew at fulfilling specific tasks.
- The idea is to get players to carefully choose their crew, train them in order to improve specific qualities and take care of them, making sure they don’t die or get injured during operations.
- All our social systems are seeing major reworks as we are pushing hard towards getting friends/contact lists, groups and organizations implemented properly in game. This should allow easier management of all social functions without having to quit the game while at the same time being fully integrated with the Spectrum ecosystem for players that want the social interaction but cannot afford to open the game on a phone or on a work computer.
- Levski is progressing nicely as well, roads and access points have been added to the exterior, so visitors can reach the location both from the surface as well as from space.
- we have started to look into blocking out new and modular Missile Rack systems. These are supposed to bring our Missiles to sensible sizes, aid with balance and provide players with a lot more options in terms of what can be equipped on their ships.
BHVR -
- Some of the fixed issues included: purchasing errors (weapons with attachments weren’t given to the player, server/client crashing after transactions, etc.), drop down options not being displayed correctly in the Option Screen, and various AR bugs.
- we wanted to make sure the visuals from the high level of a planet down to the details of a room reflects the passage of time from its dwellers.
Turbulent -
- we have been working on a new communication platform that includes a new Forum and Chat module. We continue to work on the design and development of this platform, but at the same time, we are looking toward the “Phase 2” feature set which will offer additional communication channels. It’s still too early to present a defined list of features, but we are targeting CitizenCon to demo the “Phase 1” version.
- We continue to develop the new game launcher - We are targeting CitizenCon to have something that we can demo - Although the user interface will look the same, the “guts” of the launcher will be completely revamped and will allow the launcher to support multiple games and environments in the future.
Community -
- On the streaming side of things, we were very excited to see the new podcast “Diverse the Verse” starring Sofiegrl, MzHartz, Lady Nighthawk, PixelMeSane, and Witchkittie. Keep these coming, we love hearing what our backers have to say.
- We also announced that Star Citizen streamers Deejay Knight, Captain_Richard, BadNewsBaron, and Twerk17 will be traveling with us to stream live from the showfloor at Gamescom 2016.
- Lastly, how could we not give a shout-out for the first and potentially annual 2016 BritizenCon. This event is a fan-organised convention in the UK for Star Citizen fans to come together, hang out with developers, and talk shop.
We’ll see you at Gamescom 2016; we’ll be the ones on the Idris bridge.
Although this seems lengthy, it is a small portion of the Report.
I have tried to highlight some facts of interest.
You can read the Monthly Report for more in depth info.
I hope some of you found this useful.
Cheers.
(at least the bits I found most interesting)
Los Angeles -
- Calix Reneau worked alongside our global team ironing out the Salvage design further to be ready for code and implementation
- Tech Designer Matt Sherman has been knocking out the tech setup and design of several ships currently in progress. The most obvious being the MISC Reliant Kore – Mini Hauler. He’s had several other ships he’s setting up alongside our art team that are very exciting with more information to come shortly.
- The Drake Caterpillar is close to being finished on the art side. Lead 3D Artist Elwin Bachiller and his team are making major strides on that ship and are pushing to finish it to get ready for their next round of challenging ships.
Austin -
- drafting up documentation for the Service Beacon, a new feature designed by Tony Zurovec. This new feature allows players to request immediate assistance in a number of different areas or, alternatively, to offer their goods and services to other players and NPCs.
- Designer Pete Mackay has been drafting up the GDD for Resource Spawning which will determine several methods of distributing resources throughout our play spaces.
- Chris Smith wrapped up his Final Art Pass on the Hornet F7A and has since moved on to revamping the Constellation variants to match the quality of the Andromeda. He’s currently focused on the Aquila and aims to have that wrapped up in the next few weeks
Foundry 42 UK -
- we are re-evaluating how we go about imagining the ship weapons. - o the ship weapon artists can improve production and get more weapons out to the fans.
- VFX support for procedural planets. As you can imagine, there was LOTS to talk about – clouds, weather, water, atmospheric entry/exit to name but a few things we will need to support.
- we knocked out the captain’s quarters and started mirroring areas to the other side of the ship (such as stairways, corridors, hallways) on the Idris. This next month we are aiming to have all the interior rooms on the Idris complete to final art with collision to allow for a full play through
- We now have just over 100 ship items complete, so plenty of customization options will be available when the feature launches. Next, we’ll be looking into the ship interiors and how the sub items integrate into them.
- For the expanded universe, we’ve finally made the sun into an actual object that you can fly around. Previously in CryEngine, the Sun was always 10km away in an artist specified direction no matter where you were in the universe, but now it’s a hot glowing sphere that casts light and shadows in all directions as you would expect, and has a physically accurate reflection which grows as you get closer. We’ve also began work on our asteroid tech to place asteroid fields and planetary rings consisting of millions of asteroids with minimal artist setup.
- working on what we’re calling ‘interiority’ (so that we can change sounds depending on the player’s perspective/relationship to inside/outside sound sources more efficiently), RTPC normalization for consistent reverb levels across environments, further VOIP code tidy-up
Foundry 42 DE -
- Our next steps on the planets are going to be focused towards improving visuals even more, making the planets more and more interactive with landing areas and ecosystems.
- With the shift towards ecosystems we are putting more and more planets in the control of the artists which so we can create an interesting and engaging universe with deep history.
- , we’ve started work on the AI Crew Skills & Stats system which governs how good an AI is at doing a specific job and how players can improve their AI Crew at fulfilling specific tasks.
- The idea is to get players to carefully choose their crew, train them in order to improve specific qualities and take care of them, making sure they don’t die or get injured during operations.
- All our social systems are seeing major reworks as we are pushing hard towards getting friends/contact lists, groups and organizations implemented properly in game. This should allow easier management of all social functions without having to quit the game while at the same time being fully integrated with the Spectrum ecosystem for players that want the social interaction but cannot afford to open the game on a phone or on a work computer.
- Levski is progressing nicely as well, roads and access points have been added to the exterior, so visitors can reach the location both from the surface as well as from space.
- we have started to look into blocking out new and modular Missile Rack systems. These are supposed to bring our Missiles to sensible sizes, aid with balance and provide players with a lot more options in terms of what can be equipped on their ships.
BHVR -
- Some of the fixed issues included: purchasing errors (weapons with attachments weren’t given to the player, server/client crashing after transactions, etc.), drop down options not being displayed correctly in the Option Screen, and various AR bugs.
- we wanted to make sure the visuals from the high level of a planet down to the details of a room reflects the passage of time from its dwellers.
Turbulent -
- we have been working on a new communication platform that includes a new Forum and Chat module. We continue to work on the design and development of this platform, but at the same time, we are looking toward the “Phase 2” feature set which will offer additional communication channels. It’s still too early to present a defined list of features, but we are targeting CitizenCon to demo the “Phase 1” version.
- We continue to develop the new game launcher - We are targeting CitizenCon to have something that we can demo - Although the user interface will look the same, the “guts” of the launcher will be completely revamped and will allow the launcher to support multiple games and environments in the future.
Community -
- On the streaming side of things, we were very excited to see the new podcast “Diverse the Verse” starring Sofiegrl, MzHartz, Lady Nighthawk, PixelMeSane, and Witchkittie. Keep these coming, we love hearing what our backers have to say.
- We also announced that Star Citizen streamers Deejay Knight, Captain_Richard, BadNewsBaron, and Twerk17 will be traveling with us to stream live from the showfloor at Gamescom 2016.
- Lastly, how could we not give a shout-out for the first and potentially annual 2016 BritizenCon. This event is a fan-organised convention in the UK for Star Citizen fans to come together, hang out with developers, and talk shop.
We’ll see you at Gamescom 2016; we’ll be the ones on the Idris bridge.
Although this seems lengthy, it is a small portion of the Report.
I have tried to highlight some facts of interest.
You can read the Monthly Report for more in depth info.
I hope some of you found this useful.
Cheers.
