Month: November 2018

Calling All Devs

Every week, designers, engineers and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on SPECTRUM and voted on by YOU.

You can submit your questions for consideration in future episodes of Calling All Devs here.

And for info on becoming a subscriber, go to: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/subscriptions

Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/16834-Calling-All-Devs

This Week in Star Citizen

Hello everyone,

Last week, we celebrated All Hallows’ Eve across our studios and crowned the winners of our two Halloween themed community contests. Check out the winners of the Pumpkin Carving Contest, and the FOIP Contest, highlighting the most terrifying or terrified expressions.

We welcomed more filmmakers to the annals of Star Citizen cinematic history with our Mustang Commercial Contest. Check out the work of the bold community filmmakers who embraced the maverick spirit of Consolidated Outland to create commercials that Silas Koerner himself would be proud of.

If you haven’t yet, you can also read up on Anvil’s latest bruiser, the Valkyrie. The Q&A on the recently revealed troop/personnel transport ship answers the top-voted community questions.

And with that, let’s see what’s going on this week:

Today we’re re-releasing September’s Squadron 42 Monthly Report as a Comm-Link. It’s important to note that this is a cross-post of the report you already received recently in your email’s inbox, but we wanted to publish it as a Comm-Link as well for convvenience. This is a cross-posting process we plan to continue for future Squadron 42 reports. Check that out here.

On Calling All Devs every week, designers, engineers, and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on Spectrum and voted for by YOU. This week we talk about ship headlights, moving from planet to planet while offline, the docking functionality of the Merlin, and more!

On Tuesday, the Lore Team will publish another “Far From Home” piece, in which Old Jegger will be visiting an old homestead and reflecting on the reasons why he left. Check out previously published lore posts here.

Thursday will welcome another episode of Around the Verse where we’ll take a look at the latest Star Citizen news.

Tune in on Friday at at 9am PST for another episode of Reverse the Verse, broadcast live on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. This week, we’ll have Environment Art Director Ian Leyland on the show to answer questions following up the variety of CitizenCon presentations related to the “man-made” structures of Alpha 3.3.5, such as “Welcome to Lorville” and “The Mod Squad.” Post your questions on Spectrum and vote on the ones you want to see addressed most.

Ulf Kuerschner
Senior Community Manager

The Weekly Community Content Schedule

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5TH, 2018
            Calling All Devs   (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6TH, 2018
            Weekly Lore Post   (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch)

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7TH, 2018
            –   

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8TH, 2018
            Around the Verse    (https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd/)
            Vault Update   

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9TH, 2018
            Reverse the Verse   (https://www.twitch.tv/starcitizen)
            Roadmap Update   
            RSI Newsletter   

Community MVP: November 5th, 2018

We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Every week, we select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and highlight it here. The highlighted content creator will be awarded with an MVP badge on Spectrum and be immortalized in our MVP section of the Hub.

Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!

Operation Hammerhead by Gwim

The Black Star Initiative is putting the Aegis Hammerhead to the test. What does the turret say?!

Enjoy the video on the Community Hub.

Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citizens/16833-This-Week-In-Star-Citizen

Squadron 42 Monthly Report: September 2018

Squadron 42 Monthly Report: September 2018

This is a cross-post of the report that was recently sent out via the monthly Squadron 42 newsletter. We’re publishing this a second time as a Comm-Link to make it easier for the community to reference back to, and plan on following this process for future Squadron 42 Monthly Reports.

As the development of Squadron 42 thunders on, the brain trust at UEE Naval High Command has retooled their dispatches.

We aim to bring you the most significant and comprehensive project updates available. However, particularly sensitive details will remain under wraps to avoid unnecessary leaks to the civilian community.

Read on for a look into the work done on Squadron 42 during September and keep a weather eye open on this channel for future briefings.

CitizenCon 2948 saw the first look at the latest Squadron 42 trailer. If you missed it, or want to check it out again, you’ll find the full 4K version on the official Star Citizen YouTube channel.

Cinematics

The Cinematics Team split their time this month between creating content and advancing tech and tools. They had several meetings about where to fit PCAP to reworked props and where to change geometry to fit the specific shot performances; in particular, where to place the Idris and Bengal’s captain’s chairs.

They modified and completed several Trackview master sequences featuring newly-edited PCAP, including camera and lighting. The completed sequences essentially show a conversation or first-person cinematic and all of its branches in a linear fashion. The animators then use these to iterate on pose-matching, while the level designers use them as the blueprint for how the scene will play out once it’s scripted via AI logic.

On the tech side, they worked with tool engineers to improve the navspline for puppeteering ships. The spline now features better ghost vehicle rendering too, allowing its control points to be manipulated as editor objects. General work on the usability of the spline is continuing with numerous improvements. The team also revamped the ability to trigger weapon and turret fire on ships.

A collaboration with the tech teams featured example scenes that contain performances by real-life actors. As the actors were directing their performance to a specific point, the goal is now to guide the player towards that spot via UI. The first tests look promising.

Engineering

The Actor Team made a lot of small improvements to how first-person gameplay feels, such as speeding up weapon swapping, tweaking ADS aiming when moving, and adjusting weapon sway. They also revisited and fixed issues with the jump mechanic before undertaking a more detailed pass using the new time-warping tech to clean up the assets. Progress continues with the Usable Editor Tool, which enables the team to create and amend new usables directly in the editor and simplify the current process.

The new Walk and Talk prototype is making progress, with two characters now walking together while having a believable and dynamic conversation. The EU Gameplay Team has been supporting the cinematics group, fixing issues they’ve been having when creating cutscenes.

Facial animation

The team worked along-side Tech Animation to test the Vanduul facial rig. They also ran the first set of reviews for the new Facial Animation Quality Benchmark, with the goal of establishing a gold-standard for facial performance in a triple-A game.

Gameplay Story

September was a particularly exciting month as the Story Team implemented more scenes than ever before. The aim for Q3 began with around 10, but they managed to get 23 working in-game to a high standard. They also gave more thought to the lighting and positioning of scenes within levels, which has led to considerable improvements to their visual appearance.

Graphics

The Graphics Team worked on several new features as part of ongoing space-crafting improvements. This included adding shadows onto and from gas clouds (with a 75% memory saving), the addition of turbulence and interference when near dense regions of cloud, and a new GPU spline based lightning system. On top of this, they also improved reflections from water and added tessellation to the organic shader, which is mainly used for rocks and terrain.

Level Design

The team is operating at full capacity, with a heavy focus on scene implementation and usables. Making all the locations of the game feel realistic and believable (particularly the way the AI interact and move around on their various schedules) is always a top priority.

All chapters of the game have a single design owner and several support designers who can work on them simultaneously. The numerous feature teams all have S42 technical priorities on their backlogs and have a steady stream of technology and workflow improvements coming in on a weekly basis.

Props

The Props Team shifted priorities slightly this month to focus on getting their templates updated to work with the new usable systems, with the aim to make it easier to scale functionality out across the game.

Work has progressed on junk and scrap piles, with the whitebox assets getting a material pass. The original simpods have been brought up to scratch, staying true to the original concept but being reworked using the custom normal workflow. They were also converted to work with the most current shaders. Finally, the team has been going through the cinematic scenes and have started work on the props with performance capture associated with them.

Ship Art

The Ship Art Team paused for a couple weeks on Persistent Universe work to take care of some pilot-fitting issues on a prominent S42 campaign ship. They raised the pilot position up and refined the interior geo a bit more. Now that it’s done, they’re back in full swing on the 300i grey-box for the PU.

Tech Animation

The Motion Capture Team has been reconfiguring their whole rig to trigger capture on every platform over TCP/IP: reference, facial & body. This made it much easier to match and manage the resulting datasets and has improved workflow across the board.

They put it to the test on a recent shoot in Manchester and worked to implement much of the resulting animation. They have also been refining the pipelines in which they process the data sets from motion capture and bring them together as a whole in their animation DCC of choice, Maya.

Female animation received baseline processing, with retargeting of the core reference databases and basic animation done to make the refinement pass as easy as possible.

They also worked on multiple fixes for the usable system and supported the Combat AI Team with new weapon setups for left-handed combat.

Lastly, the team has been developing the facial rigging pipeline and skinning toolsets, with the Vanduul as the central focus of development.

UI

While UI predominantly provided support for new features in the PU, they also supported various environmental needs for Squadron 42, such as ambient displays in the background of scenes and locations.

VFX

This month, the team focused heavily on a variety of feature improvements, including significantly upgraded lightning effects. This doesn’t just refer to how it looks, but how it can be dynamically controlled and how it interacts with the player. This was all done in close collaboration with the Art and Design teams.

They also worked on various cinematics, as well as several in-game cutscenes. Some have been challenging to work on as they flesh out unique environments and situations that haven’t been seen before in a video game.

Weapons

The Weapon Art Team finished production on the Kastak Arms Sawtooth knife.

Covert Intel

Conclusion

WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH…

Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/16792-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-September-2018

The Hot Air Balloon Update


Up, up and away… Hot Air Balloons are in, along with anti-air missiles to take them down. There’s a new type of Cargo Ship, nerfs, and more. This patch wipes the servers. Enjoy! Source: https://rust.facepunch.com/blog/the-hot-air-balloon-update/