News: All your up to the date Official RSI news in one thread!!!

STAR CITIZEN STORE & SHIPS UPDATE
AUGUST 4TH 2014




Greetings Citizen,
The RSI website received a well-deserved update today with the addition of the new ship pages and browser. This update means a big change to the store, which is now easier to use and more friendly to new backers who aren’t as familiar with Star Citizen. It also lays down the proper framework to expand how we present ships at the RSI site. Instead of a single page of ship stats, each spacecraft now has its own detailed page with artwork and a holo viewer (where available.) You’ll be able to follow the development of our ships through these tools… or just admire the ones you own!

Every ship’s specifications page has been updated and is now ‘data driven,’ making it easier for the web team to update quickly. Ships with 3D models are now available in the holo viewer and we’ve added 350 new in-engine screenshots and 1,500 ship data points to the site! Finally, this update is also the first step towards the Galactapedia, which will tie in to the website’s ships specs and other aspects of the game.

 

LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN
AUGUST 4TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,
It looks like the Origin M50 is rocketing off the showroom floor and we’ve reached the $49 million crowd funding level! The $49 million reward is the last of our set of user-voted ‘flair goals.’ Congrats to all current backers of Star Citizen – you have earned a Xi’An Space Plant!

That’s all thanks to you, Star Citizen’s backers. We’ve had a lot of questions about why we still need to continue crowd funding. The answer is that that money is letting Star Citizen tackle longer term features and content sooner than we normally would. To sustain this level of development, we need to keep bringing in additional funds. Star Citizen is still much less than the other published backed AAA games that have similar levels of ambition (some would even say a little less ) like GTA V, Watch Dogs or Destiny.

We know that Star Citizen is an incredibly ambitious project, after all its basically several high fidelity AAA games all rolled into one; a MMO Space Sim, a First Person Shooter, a rich Single Player story and a fully-fledged Trading and Economy game. I’m pretty sure this level of ambition is why the majority of you backed. If I had pitched Star Citizen to a typical publisher, told them I wanted all these features and wanted to make it just for a PC I would have been laughed out of the room. (Of course, you all showed publishers that a AAA space sim for the PC is no laughing matter!)

Our plan is to scale the team based on the crowd funding, with the goal to be able to double down on development wherever it’s possible to do so. If we need more artists to produce additional ships, we’d like to be able to hire them. Or if we need more engineers to get a head start on some longer term technical issue before it blocks other parts of development, we want that option! It’s the new players hearing about Star Citizen and Arena Commander for the first time and jumping in as well as sales like the M50 that enable us to continue to chase our shared dream of the BDSSEto the highest fidelity. So thank you for your support.

Here’s the $49 million goal:

• Xi’An Space Plant – Similar to a bonsai tree, the Centennial Bloom is a very famous Xi’An plant indigenous to EealusIII that blossoms for one night every one hundred years. They sell the plants in sealed terrariums to traders. Ever since their introduction to the UEE, Humanity has been fascinated by these beautiful plants and the wait for them to bloom.

Please remember that the stretch goals are rewards for reaching levels and don’t indicate a specific million dollars spent. Star Citizen is a massive game, and every dollar goes to making it possible. Stretch goals are intended to reward and include the community that is making the game possible, not to indicate to the world that we are “feature creeping” too much into the game.

For the $51 million stretch goal, I’d like to try something a little different in the hopes that it might be another way to involve you, our backers, in Star Citizen’s development process. For the first time, we’re going to try giving you a say in Star Citizen’s production schedule!

As you may have seen, Star Citizen’s platform team launched our new online store today! We sat down to develop the new store with an eye towards making it more friendly to new backers; people who didn’t know the difference between a game package and an addon ship. In the process, we also revamped how we display ship information to everyone. That meant adding hundreds of images and other resources like the holo-viewers for existing backers!

Next, we will sit down with Turbulent to decide the next big push. We have plenty of things on the to-do list, including the Galactapedia, web scoreboards for Arena Commander, the interactive galaxy map and Organizations Drop 2. These are all things that are going to happen… what we’re going to ask you to do is to determine the priority. Which of these major projects should our web designers and artists focus their resources on next?

• Orgs Drop 2 – Divisions, jobs and the 3D Organizations browser.

• Orgs Drop 3 – Private forums for each Star Citizen Organization.

• Galactapedia – Your guide to the Star Citizen universe which ties directly into Star Citizen’s persistent universe.

• Web Scoreboards – Want to see your Arena Commander history on the website, or find out how you stack up against other Citizens?

• Known Universe Map – An interactive map of Star Citizen’s known universe which will expand along with the game.

The work the platform team does is the most community-facing; from rebuilding the pledge store to creating the XMPP chat, their work impacts you before anything else! That’s why this is the first time Star Citizen’s backers will get to directly influence our production schedule and resource allocation. We’d also like to hear your thoughts below: what do you think would improve the web side of the game? You never know: you may just have an idea worth including the next time around!

— Chris Roberts

 

MONTHLY REPORT: JULY 2014
AUGUST 4TH 2014

Greetings Citizens,
July was a big month for Star Citizen! The long battle with rubber-banding tested our resovle at times, but we finally achieved victory! We’re ecstatic with the results of all our work: Arena Commander’s multiplayer is playing like we originally intended.

We’re eager to move on to integrating other portions of the larger game… including those that have been in simultaneous development across our studios and outsource partners! August will see several big events, including Chris’ presentation at Gamescom and presentations at PAX East and Dragon*Con. Expect to see some cool parts of the Star Citizen universe in the coming weeks!


CLOUD IMPERIUM SANTA MONICA




Travis Day, Dogfight Producer
Greetings Citizens,

At this point, I think it’s safe to say that you already know a lot of what Cloud Imperium Games Santa Monica has been focusing on! Our engineers have been working the rubber banding problem since the release of 12.4, and we’re so happy that the fix is finally out. Eliminating rubber banding (and in the process so many other issues) involved taking several aspects of Arena Commander (including our very complex physics system) apart, examining all the pieces and then hoping they fit back together correctly. But the early word is they do, and 12.5 is the best multiplayer experience yet!

If you’re interested in some very specific details about this process, please check out the “patch update” posts released during each week of 12.5’s development. To make a long story short, though, every single member of the Santa Monica team went above and beyond to get this thing out, whether that meant playtesting in their spare time or working until the wee hours rewriting physics code.

Arena Commander isn’t the only thing expanding this month, though: the office itself is growing. We’re in the process of moving the Community team (and several others) into additional office space next door, which will give us room to grow the team here. One thing that’s allowing us to do is move the ship production pipeline to Santa Monica. Kami traveled to Austin last week to work on that transition, which will allow Chris more visibility on where a particular ship is at any time.

We’ve also been preparing for our Gamescom 2014 demo, which will happen in just over two weeks. Sandi and her team have done a great job of planning the event, where you’ll get a chance to meet some of the team behind Arena Commander. We’re eager to hang out with the backers who are making this all possible and swap some dogfighting war stories. Look for us in Cologne and feel free to say hi if you spot us around the show.

Looking forward, we’re hoping to expand the Arena Commander multiplayer base as soon as possible. Expect news on that shortly. In the meantime, please keep helping us test the game! Your Twitch streams, CS tickets, forum comments and other interactions with the team are what has let us get to this point, and I hope you can feel how your input has allowed us to improve the AC experience. Keep your fighters flying and your feedback coming in!


CLOUD IMPERIUM AUSTIN



Eric Peterson, Studio Director
The CIG Austin office has been hard at work on Star Citizen, from getting patch 12.5 out, to preparing for the upcoming Gamescom event. Here is an inside look at what our studio has been up to as we continue onwards toward delivering the BDSSE.

Mocap and Cinematics
Characters

We have been working on our pipeline for characters and rigging and have been investigating incorporating some interesting clothing technology from Redacted Studios in (somewhere on planet earth). We got our head scanning rig in and will soon be ready to expand our characters, we have also been investigating head customization methodologies for players. We’ve been supporting the Redacted Commercial, the Redacted II Commercial, and the bigger badder Redacted III Commercial.

Animations

Have spent the month doing a 4 week female animation set mocap session focusing on basic locomotion andFPS/weapon set moves. We have also been supporting the various commercials with motion capture, solving, and editing. In addition our very own Sandi Gardiner stopped in and put on the suit for some motion capture sessions, what a trooper!

Cinematics

We are refining the budget and schedule for the S42 mocap and performance capture shoots and beginning the pre-production process. Where will we capture? Look for an announcement sometime in the future about that.

Engineering
Release 12.4 support and profiling. Assisted with debugging and improvement of ship movement and matchmaking for release 12.5. Performed CryEngine 3.6.3 integration and submitting it for testing. Physics bug fixes. Basic live server metrics. Implemented and testing automated large universe cluster deployment. Implemented caching patch servers and pre-warming, being deployed with IT. Tool improvements and fixes, including Trackview fixes for commercial work and auto-import of Crytek SDK Perforce server. PU planning, star system layout tool, and PU prototyping. Future improved ship and character movement planning and discussion.. Oh, and released 12.5 – finally.

Design
The CIG Austin design team is hard at work on bringing the persistent universe to life. We’re starting small, getting all of the basic functionality in place and expanding as we go. We’ve put together a more detailed roadmap for the next twelve months of development, and we’re polishing off all of the design and tasking needs for that development. Of course, all of it centers around the economy and how it connects the universe.

Meanwhile, we’re hard at work supporting other areas of the universe: standardizing ship development, pushing ahead with balance for ships and parts, helping to get ships into the hangar, working out the technology and design of our clothing sets, and – as always – helping the test and balancing of the dogfighting module, as well as animation support for some ship setups. Been a busy month, but we love seeing where this is going, and we hope that you will enjoy it.

Ships
The CIG ATX ship team has been VERY busy preparing for Gamescom. Although I can’t disclose the actually ships you’ll see there, I can tell you they are awesome! Having said that we, on the ship team, are looking well past Gamescom. The month of August and September look to be very exciting with several ships in the pipeline. And we hope you enjoy the M50 – as Chris Smith just did an amazing job of getting that ready.

Art
Well, on ships we worked on the m50, mustang, constellation and it’s variants, xian scout, Vanduul ship exploration as well as various components to allow some customization in the near future.

On the characters side of the equation – Redacted commercial characters are being completed, other module characters are in the works and lots of work on the Xian Character as well as Character customizations.

On the persistent universe, or planetside of things, we worked on the Gold horizon space station for Redacted as well as Hangar revamps. In addition, the gold shirt auction has been a big success, thank you all for your continued support.

Freelance
This month CGBot has been focused on the stars – the Constellations, to be precise! They’re preparing the ship and the variants ready to go in hangars. Virtuos has been getting acquainted with our editor and preparing to start working on ships, while also continuing with props for the REDACTED demo, and Rmory is creating some awesome weapon concepts and game assets for the REDACTED as well.

On the contractor front, the focus has been mostly on getting concepts for the REDACTED demo – David Brochard and Rob McKinnon have been working on some cool armor art. In the meantime new contractor Hugues Giboire has been working up a 3D Xi’an character. Our other active contractors have been working on ships – Jim Martin has submitted some new concepts for the Caterpillar, Jan Urschel is working on the Xi’an Transport Derelict, Ryan Church continues to develop the Panther, and George Hull has delivered some awesome new revisions to the Collector concept!”

Production
In addition Citizens, we also had a PU summit in Montreal with our partners at BHVR and are very happy with what is going on up there, not to mention the weather in July is WAY better than in Austin. So, as you can see, we have been working hard on making our dream game, and will continue to march forward on making the BDSSE. The team here appreciates all the support, and patience, as we know that sometimes things go a little bit off kilter on delivery, but love being able to share all of the secrets of game development, even when some things take a bit more time. So thank you all for your continued passion, and love for this game, it keeps us all full of pride and satisfaction knowing that we are all in this together.


FOUNDRY 42



Erin Roberts, Studio Director
Hi again, really busy month down at the farm. So much has been achieved throughout this month at Foundry 42, from helping get 12.5 out, to some great work by the team on our next big feature release (13) and Gamescom. Not forgetting S42 which we have made really great progress on.

Loads of focus has been on GamesCom and getting as much polish into our main branch as possible to show the game at its best. (We have been running two sets of the code for the past 6-8 weeks, Release 12 branch which is what we released 12.5 from on Wednesday night, which is predominantly about getting dog fighting stable and balanced, and main where the new features are being implemented which we make new branches from when we get near to release.) This allows us to get on with new feature implementation for the game, while not destabilizing our release builds with new code and data. So basically what you have seen in 12.5 is only the work that has happened in that branch, there is much, much more that has been going on all this time that you will see soon when we hit Gamescom and release version 13.

I look forward to meeting a bunch of you while in Germany in a few weeks and showing some really cool stuff at Gamescom so I can really thank you all for your support and patience, while we endeavour to make this incredible Universe together.

Design
Blimey! Has it been a month already.

Leader Boards, Lobby systems, Key Bindings have all had design focus and are being worked on for release in 13 or soon after. Also we’ve got two new awesome game modes for DFM which we plan on showing at Gamescom and releasing with 13.

S42 has made a bunch of progress this month. We have broken down the campaign further with the writers and the tasks are all out there for the “Vertical Slice”. We have prototypes for landing and take-off being worked on right now. Also, lots of work is going into the FPS side of the game, with AI behaviour, combat, stealth, perception, pick-ups, objective systems, checkpoints and the conversations system, all being designed and implemented for the game. We have a number of missions early white boxed so we can play through from start to end to make sure the pacing is right.

The ship white-boxing on the Panther Class Escort carrier is continuing really well, and the Idris is getting closer to “Hangar” release. (caveat: it won’t fit in the hangar so there will be another cool way to get into it from the hangar).

Again, thanks for the fantastic support. It is a pleasure to be working on such an awesome project with you all.

Programming
This month we’ve been splitting our engineering time up into three parallel teams to make sure we deliver everything we want to show you guys in 12.5, Gamescom and give you all the best experience going forwards with S42.

We’ve been helping out on the 12.5 build. Apart from the rubber banding we’ve been trying to track down and fix a really nasty low repro bug which would cause the player’s head to shake constantly when they respawn after dying. Every time we thought we had a fix the player would start standing up in the cockpit instead. Every time we thought we’d fixed the standing up bug with head shake would return. And so on. We think we’ve now got a good handle and fix on both issues now for the latest patch.

We’re really excited by what we are going to show you at GamesCom. There’s been a lot of work on polishing up theHUD to make it more friendly, the radar to make it less cluttered, cameras, lots of audio improvements, new game modes and loads more.

And finally we’re supporting our designers here getting the Squadron 42 vertical slice up and running, including prototyping a new landing mechanic, and long term goals like creating a tool to make setting up the vehicles easier and less error prone, (which will allow us to get ships and vehicles into DFM much faster) a new vehicle state system, AI and, as always, lots of bug fixing!

Environment Art
The environment team has been hard at work this month on creating something special, we are producing a new location like nothing you’ve seen before in Star Citizen. We have taken the architecture, lighting and colour palette in a different direction, this will complement the existing environments – so we will have Dying Star (Red), Broken Moon (Blue), and the new map (Green). All these elements will also find their way into the PU, so it helps flesh out the Universe you will all be living in when the PU comes online.

We are really excited for you guys to see it, all will be revealed at GamesCon and Release 13.

Vehicle Art
The Ship and Vehicle Team here at Foundry 42 , has been hard at work this month continuing work on the Gladius, the Gladiator and the Retaliator, as well as our current cap ship productions like the Javelin and the Panther.

The Gladius is currently been setup for its shading, audio and animations, before it goes into the technical setup stage, where it can be made ready for the Hangar. We’re really close on this one.

The Gladiator is currently in its grey box stage, and the Retaliator is getting closer and closer to its final grey box stage.

The ongoing design work on the Javelin is working nicely alongside the art production for this ship, currently we are working on the Bridge and the Crew mess for this ship, so we can tie these rooms into the storyline for SQ42.

The massive Panther is coming along nicely as well, all the hallways are nearing completion, and we are currently focussing on the Crew Barracks and escape pods to be grey boxed.

Lots of work has also been going on with animation, where new pilot animations for the ship cockpits are going into our main branch for Gamescom, and a bunch of testing on Vanduul movement and also our character and facial systems.

Audio
This month has been all about getting the audio to follow clearer goals and design direction. We’ve further revised a selection of weapon sounds as a test bed for a new approach to weapon sounds. The weapons that we’ve done so far now include percussive/explosive elements and mechanical layers. The new approach to these sounds gives a more believable and satisfying result. We’re also excited to introduce the new ship fly-by sounds as of release 13. If a Vanduul ship tears past you, this moment will now have an exciting and carefully designed fly by sound. Plenty of other improvements have been happening across the board for the sound of Star Citizen so look forward to those over the coming months.

As well as the various improvements we’ve been making, team audio has been hard at work on gamescom related tasks which we are incredibly excited to show everyone!!


BHVR



Mathieu Beaulieu, Producer
The month of July brings beautiful warm weather to Montreal and lots of planning!

This month Behaviour hosted a Persistent Universe Summit where Chris Roberts, Tony Zurovec and other folks from CIG sat down with [Redacted] and the Montreal team to better and more efficiently plan the approach to world building for the PU.

Summer wouldn’t be complete without bugs! Programming has been working on a lot of Release 12.5 bug fixes related to the Visor, Arena Commander UI, as well as with the Asteroid Hangar.

The concept phase for the Origin 890 Jump is complete!

Subscriber flair for July is ready to go, and August and September flair objects are underway.

Level design, art, audio and programming teams have also been hard at work reworking the original three hangars. They are now in the debugging/polish phase and the hangars are looking more and more slick.

A galactic tune-up is also underway! The design team has been injecting Science into the current star systems. They have also been hard at work planning the first internal release of planetside.

The UI team continues to advance with various mobiGlas mock-ups, as well as a redesign of the current pause screen, flair object UI, and the occasional bug squishing. They have also been reading all your posts in the Star Citizen UI/UX thread (even though they can’t answer every post (yet)). Keep the great ideas coming!


CGBOT



Austin Goddard, Producer
July has come and gone but not without progress on all fronts from the CGBot team.

We are continuing to chip away at all the tasks needed to bring you the Constellation fleet. One of our main focuses when it comes to Constellation is getting one of the ships dogfight ready. The task hasn’t been simple but thanks to our friends at CIG ATX, we are well on our way to wrapping things up in the coming days.

Along with Constellation we are also working on Idris. Detailing out each room individually is a long process but we believe it will be well worth the effort when you get to explore every inch of this ship. Development will continue to take place on Idris through August.

As was mentioned in the last update we finished up two characters at the beginning of this month. We look forward to future character work and the name alone of our next character has CGBot excited. It is our hope that with these characters and ships you will enjoy navigating the galaxy.

 

MONTHLY REPORT: JULY 2014 (cont'd)
AUGUST 4TH 2014

TURBULENT



Benoit Beauséjour, Founder
No time to enjoy sunny Montreal summer for the platform team!



New ship pages & viewer
The new ship pages have been taking most of our cycles as we have established the data framework and views we need to present proper ship specifications to allow players to browse the ship catalog. This include a custom management console to handle managing specifications data for each ship variant and chassis as well as APIendpoints to drive the Holo Viewer and Tech Overview for all current ships.

There was a huge data management task as we coordinated the capture of over 300 NEW ship screenshots for all available ships from different view angles as well as the acquisition and export of the ship technical data. A few sample are included in this report.

This major refactoring has been in the works for some time but has really come together in the last few weeks as we integrated the new WebGL Holo Viewer into the data model. The new viewer allows you to browse hardpoints, propulsion and POI directly on the ship and see the contents of the ship loadout in 3d space. In addition, we built a full 3D POI Editor that allows us to add POI markers to specific areas of each ship and/or correct the data that we imported. It’s very convenient for showing POIs on concept ships that have not reached the CryEngine yet. Work is left to fully integrate this process into the ship pipeline ; but we are hopeful that this will be properly integrated soon!

We also wanted to be able to properly report the state of each ship online. Is this ship in the hangar? Can I fly it? Is this ship currently in concept? This new framework will allow us to modify the game module pages to include the state of each ship in relation with each module.

This set of tools and data models is our first piece of the Galactapedia as all of the ship data is entirely separated from the store and will also be used to drive pieces of that module when we are closer to bring it online. We expect to take on the same work for Planets and Systems in the near future.

To properly present the new ship pages, we have also refactored the entire store to properly reflect the vision of the manufacturer and of the ships. Hopefully this new mode to browse will feel more in-fiction and properly reflect the depth of the Star Citizen universe.

You should see the results of this work online very soon! We’re excited!

Organizations Drop Two
Concept work on the features for Organizations Drop Two have continued. We plan to introduce a tool specifically for players with the “Operations” role to allow them to manage Jobs & Divisions within their Organizations. This tool mainly brings the feature of structure to your group and will be a very good way to organize it into sub units. This feature coupled with the features of “Jobs”, which will act like a tag system, will make filtering and managing members easier. We have some very cool visualization ideas on this front and we hope to be able to show you some of them soon!

We also made some headway on conceptualizing some recruiting tools for Organizations to help leaders in finding members. We hope to include these in the drop.

All in all a great month!


MOON COLLIDER



Matthew Jack, Founder
July was an important month for Moon Collider, as we significantly increased the size of our team, which will allow us to better meet the AI needs for Star Citizen in the future and support the other teams as they work on more AI-heavy features. We’ve been really pleased with your response to the Vanduul Swarm gameplay so far, and our new team members will really help us to continue delivering the top notch AI that you are all expecting to see when you play Star Citizen.

We’ve been a team of three-and-a-half for a while and we’ve now made the jump to six, with a core of four full-time developers and two supporting part-time. So who are the new faces?

Adam and Diana have both left the warm shores of Perth, Australia, and decided to brave the Edinburgh climate in order to be part of the Kythera team. Both of them have worked previously at Crytek as a programmer and project manager, respectively. Adam will be working full time with us programming and lending his animation expertise to help make our Kythera AI system blend seamlessly with CryEngine’s animated characters, while Diana will provide support part time taking over administrative duties so the rest of the team can spend more time getting awesome new features into the game and out to all of you to play.

Jurie is a veteran developer, having worked previously at Rockstar Games. He has been the extra “half” in recent months, doing contract work for us on our debugging toolset. Any system is only as good as it’s tools; that’s especially true for AI and with Jurie’s help we’re really pushing what’s possible (more on that below!) He will continue to work part-time from France, improving Kythera’s debugging and visualization features so that it’s easier for us and all of the Star Citizen teams to understand what’s going on in the virtual heads of AI. This will help us continue to be confident that the AI is robust, and more importantly, fun to play with and against!

Enough with the roll call, though. What have we been doing this month?

We’ve been continuing our work to get the dogfighting AI running on the server, and that’s shaping up nicely. There is still more work to do to make it more robust, but we’re happy with what we’ve achieved so far.

On the FPS side we’ve been making more improvements to the AI, with a particular focus on their perception abilities, such as incorporating line-of-sight information to determine whether they can see the player and gathering basic information about all of the characters that are nearby. Their combat abilities are still very basic at the moment, but with the groundwork we’re adding we can start developing more sophisticated behaviours.

We made some significant improvements to our toolset this month, with the main feature being an ability to record detailed data about what AI is doing while running the game, and then replay it later with visual debugging information inside the game world. This is an extremely useful feature for designers to be able to go back and examine exactly what the AI did in different situations during a playthrough, so that they can find opportunities to refine their behavior to make them more fun to play against. It’s also very handy for tracking down bugs!

A big feature that we’re starting to devote serious time to is the persistent universe, and designing how the AI needs to work, particularly planetside. There are a lot of big challenges here and we’re all very ambitious with what we’re hoping to achieve, so we’ll be spending a reasonable amount of time on design work in this area so that we get it right.

Finally, the whole team took some time off from Star Citizen earlier in the month to attend the Game/AI Conference in Vienna. This was a great opportunity to talk with other AI developers and learn about the AI technology being developed for other games. We’re passionate about keeping Kythera at the cutting edge of game AI and this conference is one of the most important annual gatherings for game AI developers, so it was really great that we could all attend. It was also an opportunity for our newly expanded team to all be in the same place at the same time, which allowed us to take this excellent team photo at the Prater amusement park in Vienna. And yes, yes we think that clown is pretty scary too.

 

ARENA COMMANDER MULTIPLAYER AVAILABLE!
AUGUST 6TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,
We are very pleased to announce that Arena Commander’s multiplayer is now available for all of Star Citizen’s backers! We have been reviewing the user experience data from Patch 12.5 and have decided it’s time to open the floodgates! Everyone with Alpha Access or an Arena Commander Pass can now play the current multiplayer modes (with more to be added soon!) Multiplayer will also be available to anyone who picks up an Arena Commander pass going forward.

Thank you to every backer who has helped get us to this point. Your feedback has been absolutely essential in improving Arena Commander and the multiplayer experience. Thank you for your forum posts, your Twitch streams, your bug reports and your patience with the process. The knowledge we’ve gained from this tiered rollout goes well beyond just this release: it’s going to benefit how we launch every single future module and ultimately the Star Citizen Persistent Universe.

Remember: this is still a pre-alpha module! That means we still have plenty of work to do. The team is now working hard to add many planned features (like keybindings, scoreboards and additional ships) and also to improve what we’ve already created. In the coming weeks, expect to see a lot of work on game balance and Arena Commander’s game rules (where players spawn, how a kill is calculated, how the matchmaking server decides to connect users and the like.) Your continued thoughts on how the game plays will be invaluable in this process!

For those of you new to the Arena Commander multiplayer experience, the QA team has generated a quick list of beginner tips. We’ve noticed that some players are frustrated by their first matches, going up against pilots with different ships and more experience. We’re working on game rules changes that will alter this, but can also say that with a little patience you’ll be dogfighting with the best of them in no time! Winning at Arena Commander requires some skill… but these tips should help get you started right:

• Avoid flying slowly or sitting still. Especially after spawning into the middle of a chaotic fire fight.
• Use boost as much as possible (left shift). The higher speed makes you a more difficult target to follow and fire on effectively.
• Incorporate barrel rolls into your evasive maneuvers. Rolling and boosting can be very effective in helping to avoid enemy fire.
• Avoid fixating on a single target. Continue changing targets and flying evasively to maintain situational awareness and find the more vulnerable enemies.
• Avoid engaging another player head on. This is a sure way to get killed.
• If you must engage a target head on, switching to decoupled mode (capslock) and strafing can help to avoid a last second collision.
• Experiment with Comstab mode on and off (ctrl + capslock twice). Having it on will help minimize sliding while turning but having it off can help you become a harder target to hit.
• With g-force safety toggled off (ctr+capslock) you can perform more aggressive maneuvers but be careful because the additional g-forces can cause you to black out.
• If you have additional weapons at your disposal, experiment with alternate loadouts via the holo-table.
• Missile damage is absorbed by shields. For maximum damage, weaken your enemies’ shields by using standard weapons before firing missiles.
• Try getting almost on top of your target before releasing a missile, in order to reduce the amount of time that your opponent has to react.

UPDATE 8/06/2014: We are currently seeing server load issues associated with the multiplayer rollout. Our engineers are investigating the problem. Discovering issues like this is the benefit of making such an early build available to the public! We thank you for your patience and support.

 

CAPTURE THE CORE NOW PLAYABLE!
AUGUST 8TH 2014





Greetings Citizens,
As promised, Arena Commander is expanding! Now that multiplayer is available to all backers, we are beginning to roll out additional game modes. This process begins today with the launch of Capture the Core!

Patterned after classic ‘Capture the Flag’ games but with the additional challenge of operating in three dimensional space, Capture the Core is a team based game mode that rewards points to players for capturing ‘cores’ from the opposite side of the map. Players must capture the cores and then transport them to the other side of the map to add to their energy stockpile.

In order to capture a core, your team’s core must not be currently taken. You can steal the enemy’s Core by flying through it, either at their base or out in space if it has been dropped by a teammate. If a player carrying a Core is killed, the Core will remain at the location of his death for 30 seconds or until it is either returned by an ally or stolen by an enemy.

The game ends after one team has scored 5 captures, or 20 minutes have elapsed. Kills do not progress your team to victory directly, and spending your time trying to shoot down enemy pilots exclusively will be detrimental to your team! Points are awarded for picking up the enemy Core, Capturing a Core, returning your stolen Core or killing an enemy carrying your Core.

This mode is very objective based, and players will do best to focus on protecting their core, escorting their-core carriers, and taking down anyone who has stolen their core. When choosing a ship, it is not only toughness one should keep in mind, but a ship’s respective speed. Different ships can serve different roles.

Capture the core is available to all Arena Commander-eligible backers now. Please give it a try and let us know if you run into any issues; your feedback is essential to improving every aspect of Arena Commander.

Known Issues:

• Sometimes when the player is spawned / re-spawned, the markers / icons used to denote the team rings and cores will disappear from the HUD.

• If a player joins the game after a core has been removed from a ring and looks at the ring, the ring will still have the lightning effect displayed. If the core is returned to the ring, it will then begin to function normally.

• In rare cases the particle manager will not cull old particles, which will lead to your PC slowing down over time. To fix the issue you will need to quit back to the lobby and re-enter.

 

FREE POSTERS RELEASED!
AUGUST 8TH 2014

Greetings Citizens,



Since last year’s Gamescom, we have traditionally given backers a choice of Star Citizen posters at our events, as a small thanks for all the support they’ve given us. This year is no different, with two cool new designs to choose from being printed now!

We’ve decided to go one step further, though, and let every backer add one of the new posters to their Hangar. We’ve added 1,000 UEC to every ‘ready’ account, which will allow you to choose any poster from the Voyager Direct store for free.

The new designs are a 2944 Murray Cup racing poster, celebrating the Origin M50 and 350R, and a Constellation poster, celebrating the soon-to-be-revealed Constellation lineup! You are also free to spend your UEC on other decorations or weapons if you would prefer.

You can check out both of the new posters here, or browse the entire selection in the Voyager Direct store.

 

Constellation Model Sale Tomorrow!
AUGUST 13TH, 2014

Greetings Citizens,



The Constellation model is here! Starting tomorrow at 1 PM PDT (8 PM UDC) we will be selling 2,500 10” Constellation models to all backers. Models cost $125 shipped, and will include a specially constructed shipping package. Unlike t-shirts, which ship via China Post, the Constellation models will ship via DHL.

The Constellation is a marvel of engineering and imagination. What better way to show your love of adventure than with this 10” model of the RSI Constellation. The model includes dual movable turrets and thrusters, perfectly replicated after the most iconic human ship. The Takuetsu Starship Company has worked with the RSI engineers to develop the most accurate and sturdy model. Roberts Space Industries is notorious for their commitment to quality and they have given their seal of approval.



The Constellation is a multi-functional ship. From traders to bounty hunters the Constellation is the jack of all trades and the master of most. The model of the most popular ship in the Roberts Space Industry catalogue can be displayed on your mantle. The 10“Constellation model by Takuetsu Starship Models.

Each model include a certificate of authenticity. Constellation models will ship starting September 8th. Additional models may be made available in the future, depending on demand. (Factory logistics require that we produce all merchandise in advance, which means we can only offer a certain number of items at a time. This applies to everything from t-shirts to playing cards to ship models.)

 

FPS TEASER
AUGUST 15TH 2014



REDACTED is hard at work on the FPS module and they wanted to share a brief teaser of the work being done to bring gunplay to the ‘Verse. More will be revealed at PAX Australia but here is just a taste of the FPS module.

 

NEW HANGAR
AUGUST 15TH 2014



Hangars are getting upgraded! As stated during the Gamescom presentation big changes are coming to the way we handle hangars. Not only are they getting a makeover to feel more like home but functionality is being added. We want your hangar to feel like it truly belongs to you and to be a place you want to spend time. Look for these changes when V 0.9 goes live! Here is a sneak peek at how we are upgrading the hangar:

 

RACING TEASER
AUGUST 15TH 2014



Racing is coming to Star Citizen! The Murray Cup is the big leagues of racing in the ‘Verse and now is your chance to get your name written in the book of racing legends. Racing will be available in v 0.9 and then you can start building your reputation. You have a long way to go before your name can be said in the same breath as the first Murray Cup winner Ian Rikkord but even the greats have to start somewhere. Get ready to tune, test, and race!

 

CONSTELLATION COMMERCIAL
AUGUST 15TH 2014



THE 2945 CONSTELLATION

It is our honor to open the Hangar doors to RSI’s 2945 lineup of variants for the Constellation starting today! The four types are outlined below, each with their own brochure. All Constellation types are available live in your Hangar starting today. We are also premiering the long-anticipated Constellation commercial, which features the Constellation Aquila explorer in action as it discovers an alien world!

Discover them all below!

 

GLADIATOR IN POPULAR SCIENCE
AUGUST 19TH 2014

Greetings Citizens,

The September issue of Popular Science magazine features an article on Star Citizen! The article is intended to introduce outsiders to the project… but the team at Popular Science asked us if we could create some cool diagrams that would make sense appearing in the article. We chose the Anvil Gladiator, Star Citizen’s light bomber and created a series of graphics showing off the level of detail we’re putting into the ship design. Only one was used in the print edition, but you can see all three here today!

 

LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN
AUGUST 19TH 2014






The RSI Constellation Taurus


The RSI Constellation Aquila


The RSI Constellation Andromeda


The RSI Constellation Phoenix

Greetings Citizens,
This past weekend has been incredible for Star Citizen. The response from the community and press to our event at Gamescom in Cologne has been incredible. Having thousands of new backers sign up and hitting two stretch goals shows the community are as excited as we are by what we showed! I’m re-energized after getting to meet with so many of you at the backer event in Cologne. Hanging out with backers signing posters and chatting about Star Citizen’s future until 3 AM was an experience I wouldn’t miss!

The goal behind our Gamescom lineup was to show the world how Star Citizen is going to grow beyond dogfighting. From introducing Constellation variants with non-combat roles to demoing co-op crewed ship play to teasing our plans for integrating AAA-quality FPS combat right alongside our space combat… Star Citizen is going to be more than any space sim that has come before. You can check out the complete Gamescom event in the video link above.

The Constellation holds a special place in my heart. As many of you know, it’s the ship I’m most interested in flying myself because I believe it represents a kind of gameplay we haven’t seen before in space sims. Taking on the galaxy with a crew of compatriots is a fantasy we’ve all had, and it’s something I wasn’t ever able to replicate on Wing Commander. That’s the reason the team pushed so hard to finish the ‘multi-crew ships’ demo you saw on Friday… I want the community to be able to see some of the more varied gameplay I’ve had in my head all these months.

The Constellation was also the first ship we revealed to the Star Citizen community (the Hornet, Scythe and Bengal were already made when we announced the game.) It was designed by one of the top concept artists in the movie business, and it has long represented Star Citizen’s potential. Check out our original brochure from the early days of the campaign; we’ve come a long way! Upgrading its look and creating appropriate variants was a labor of love for the team.

At $50 million, we hit the “alien languages” stretch goal, which means we’re going to earmark funding to hire professional linguists to create unique languages for our three biggest alien races. Here’s the writeup:

• Alien Languages – Do you speak Banu? We will work with real-world linguists to create distinctive and realistic alien languages for Star Citizen’s three biggest alien races, the Vanduul, the Xi’An and the Banu. No universal translators, no garbled animal noises: Star Citizen’s aliens will be speaking their own authentic languages!

David Ladyman will be leading this effort, and you can expect to hear progress reports from him as it comes together.

I’d also like to pay a small tribute to our “$50 Million Man,” Wulf Knight. Wulf is no stranger to those following Star Citizen’s development. He’s been a constant friend to the development team and to the community, and I’m honored to reveal that his purchase of a Constellation ‘Super Pack’ was what pushed us to this incredible level. As a small reward for his service and his symbolic status I’d like to personally award him the Vanduul Scythe that his ship collection is missing!

But we didn’t just pass $50 million this weekend… we passed $51 million! The $51 million goal was chosen via backer poll, the first time you have been asked to help determine our production priorities. Citizens overwhelmingly let us know that they want the web team to focus on creating an interactive Star Citizen ‘known space’ map as their next major project… so that’s going to happen!

Look for more details in the coming days, but we intend to make this the start of our interactive Galactapedia and to tie it in to the Hangar switchover I spoke about at Gamescom; it just may be time for our long time backers to choose where in the galaxy they’re going to start the game!

Now, I’d like to reveal the next two stretch goals! The first, for $52 million, is a small reward for everyone who has helped get us to this point: a jetpack! Technically, a Manned Maneuvering Unit which will allow you to engage in zero-G combat as soon as we launch that portion of the module. We’ll add this to the accounts of everyone who has backed us to this point, making sure you’re armed and ready when the FPS module drops later this year.

• The BB-12 is a brand new Manned Maneuvering Unit from Azure Sky Aero. Whether you are engaging in precision mining operations or delicate salvage retrieval, the BB-12 is capable of EVA operation for six uninterrupted hours. This new model features twenty-four precision nozzle thrusters and two redesigned heavy-duty tanks of gaseous nitrogen propellant, capable of being hot-swapped while on the drift or refueled back on the ship. With the BB-12, Azure Sky has once again cemented their place as the premierEVA tech provider.

At $53 million, we would like to look ahead to Star Citizen’s launch. One thing we’re doing today is drilling down how a lot of our post-launch systems will work: deciding how we discourage bad behavior within the confines of the Star Citizen universe, while at the same time letting players have as much fun and freedom as possible. What we’d like to experiment with on launch is the “Independent Arbitrator’s Guild,” a staffed position for taking care of certain player disputes without leaving our world. The stretch goal will earmark money to maintain this as a position at Cloud Imperium! Here’s the in-universe background:

• INDEPENDENT ARBITRATOR’S GUILD – Have you been wronged by your superiors? Has the member of your organization entrusted with watching the funds, been watching them go into their own pocket? Think you don’t have any recourse? You’re wrong. Fully licensed and bonded to work within the UEE and beyond, the Independent Arbitrator’s Guild allows citizens (and civilians, we don’t discriminate!) to file complaints against (or within) private organizations. Petition cases with our IAG representatives to have your voice heard and restitutions made. Is your business less than legitimate? IAG is only here to judge the matters you want us to. Confidentiality is guaranteed.

I would like to end by talking about one more change: we’re planning to revamp the RSI front page to make the experience friendlier to new players. While at Gamescom, I had a chance to talk to plenty of people who had heard of Star Citizen but hadn’t backed. It wasn’t because they didn’t like what they’d seen of the project or that they weren’t interested in this kind of game… they simply did not understand how to get started.

We’ve been taking for granted the fact that our existing backers understand the project so well. Many of you have been with us for eighteen months and understand the nature of the lore we put out, or our process for involving the community in pre-alpha modules… but to gamers just discovering the project, it’s overwhelming!

As part of this initiative, the crowdfunding counter will no longer live on the front page. There are several reasons for this, but the biggest one is Star Citizen’ isn’t just about making millions of dollars. While continued funding is necessary to build Star Citizen at the current level of AAA fidelity and no compromises, the first experience for new people should be about the game and universe, not about how much money we’ve raised. Backers do a whole lot more than just buy new ships. You are our eyes and ears; you sell the project to other gamers better than any ad campaign ever could, your design ideas expand our scope and your bug reports help us make a smoother game. Every time you dogfight in Arena Commander, you’re helping make Star Citizen better!

In the coming weeks, we intend to replace the counter on the front page with new kinds of goals. Expect to see additional types of stretch goals for number of players active, number of Vanduul extinguished, number of bugs reported and more! The crowd funding information will live on in a dedicated subpage with increased fidelity for those of you that love numbers and following our record breaking progress.

We’ll be working on those details with production and platform over the next few weeks… but I think it will create a better base for the community that will make you better feel like you’re contributing to the project in ways beyond pledging money.

As always, thank you for your incredible support. As I was reminded time and time again at Gamescom, this community is beyond anything seen in gaming before. You are allowing this new kind of development not only to proceed, but to flourish.

— Chris Roberts

 

Store Update: Towels and Cards!
AUGUST 22ND 2014



Greetings Citizens,
We’ve updated the pledge store with a pair of new items! Be the driest Citizen on your block with a fluffy grey towel, produced in honor of the $42 million stretch goal… or try your luck at cards with an all-in-one pack that includes a deck of Star Citizen playing cards, a notepad, a pen and a window decal!

 

LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN
AUGUST 26TH 2014




Greetings Citizens,

The crowd funding tally may have moved, but we’re still celebrating our stretch goals! We reached another over the weekend with a seemingly-impossible $52 million in crowd funding. Thank you for your support in recent days; I know the Constellation sale was a big deal… but the Constellation only matters because backers understand the vision for Star Citizen!



Over the weekend, executive producer Alex Mayberry announced that we’re partnering with AMD to include a starter ship with particular graphics cards. Please check out the Mustang Omega racer variant, with and “AMD” racing skin (or “Accelerated Mass Design,” to better keep the immersion.) Expect to see more on the Mustang and variants in the near future.

But today, the team is hustling to finish Arena Commander v0.9 and we’re really feeding on all the energy that came out of Gamescom! This next release will include a number of new features including friend codes and the new Murray Cup racing mode (aka the New Horizons mode!) As I mentioned at Gamescom, it looks like the significant blocker will be the leaderboards (as well as several other smaller issues, such as making friend codes work correctly.) We’ll update you later in the week on the status!

In the meantime, everyone who pledged before $52 million gets a jetpack!

• The BB-12 is a brand new Manned Maneuvering Unit from Azure Sky Aero. Whether you are engaging in precision mining operations or delicate salvage retrieval, the BB-12 is capable of EVA operation for six uninterrupted hours. This new model features twenty-four precision nozzle thrusters and two redesigned heavy-duty tanks of gaseous nitrogen propellant, capable of being hot-swapped while on the drift or refueled back on the ship. With the BB-12, Azure Sky has once again cemented their place as the premierEVA tech provider.

I can’t wait for a Moonraker-style battle to reach and board a space station! Our physics engine should make it a lot of fun… but that’s further in the future. Next up is the $54 million stretch goal. For this one, I turned to our Persistent Universe Director, Tony Zurovec. I asked Tony what he’d love to see in Star Citizen that isn’t in the Game Design Documents just yet. And here’s the first of his suggestions:

• More Detailed AI Activities – we’ll add ten distinct types of AI character roles on planetside environments! At $53 million, this includes Bartender, Doctor, Entertainer, Nurse, Sanitation Worker, Security Guard, Shopper, Tourist, Vagrant and Vandal. Future AI roles will be added with future stretch goals! Each additional ‘class’ of character will be fully expressive and have a role to play in Star Citizen’s planetside interaction AND the game’s greater economy.

Like all stretch goals, that’s just an indication of the kind of feature we can add with ongoing funding. Expect to hear more from Tony as we really kick the Persistent Universe portion of the project into high gear! As always, thank you for your support. I’m very excited about sharing Arena Commander v0.9 and beyond with the community; it truly is seeing your feedback that keeps us going. We can’t do this without you!

— Chris Roberts

 

Arena Commander V.9 Status Update
AUGUST 29TH 2014



Greeting Citizens


We have been working around the clock to have Arena Commander V0.9 ready for our backers. As of tonight, there are several remaining bugs that we feel would not provide the best possible Arena Commander experience and which would ultimately be detrimental to our process of community testing/feedback. We had hoped to have these ironed out and ready to go today (and in time for PAX Prime and Dragon*Con!) but have made the tough decision not to release until it meets the standards you’ve come to expect.

With version 0.9 we’ve added the Murray Cup Racing map and game mode, the Vanduul Swarm Coop game mode, and the now-flyable M50 and 350R. The patch also includes our first implementation of private matches and the option to select multiple control schemes (more control customization will arrive in another patch shortly after this one.) These features in particular have required that we concurrently add a number of new features to our nascent backend infrastructure to support their introduction. By introducing features we have not rolled out before, we are seeing new bugs with our backend for the first time as well. These issues include problems like being unable to join a private match, frequent issues connecting to servers with the new game modes and map, and some new gameplay crashes.

These are all major issues we want (and expect) to resolve shortly. The most major “blocker” bug, as discussed in the Gamescom presentation, is the introduction of the new Leaderboard system to this build. The leaderboards are going to be for all modes in Arena Commander, including the recently added Vanduul Swarm Co-Op and Murray Cup Racing (racing without placement scores isn’t much fun!) From a technical standpoint, Leaderboards are a big deal. They’re the first time the game will be consistently passing significant amounts of data between the client (what you download and play) and the platform (the web side of things.)

Even if you aren’t looking forward to comparing scores with friends, getting the back end of Star Citizen to talk to the backend of the Star Citizen website is a huge deal. What we’re hooking up today is also going to allow features like the Galactapedia, Interactive Star Map and the Star Citizen mobile app to communicate with the game. Our goal with Star Citizen is to build a universe with a highly connected community at its core and Leaderboards, along with the stat tracking and backend infrastructure that allow for leaderboards, are a significant step in building that experience. Allowing backers to get the first taste of a larger persistence in the ‘Verse is something we feel is very important.

We know that it is disappointing that we’re not quite ready to share our progress with the community, but today’s build is just not yet to a state where it achieves our vision. We will be working around the globe through the holiday weekend to deliver on the promise of V0.9. And for those interested in the process, we will be providing continued updates in the coming week on the status of the release. The entire Star Citizen team will be working as hard as possible to make sure you’re racing ships and taking on the Vanduul together soon!

 

MONTHLY REPORT: AUGUST 2014
SEPTEMBER 2ND 2014

Greetings Citizens,
Star Citizen keeps getting bigger! August saw a major reveal at Gamescom, plus trips to Dragon*Con andPAX to share Star Citizen with the masses! On the development side, we’ve made massive progress on everything from the First Person Shooter module to the soon-to-be-playable racing mode! You can learn what each of Star Citizen’s studios has been up to in this month’s report, available below.


CLOUD IMPERIUM SANTA MONICA



Travis Day, Producer
Greetings Citizens,

August has been an exciting month for the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42! We showed off what we’ve been working on for backers at our event in Cologne, Germany for Gamecom and for everyone around the world via a livestream. (Available below!) We showed off the new ships and gameplay modes being included in version 0.9 of Arena Commander, teased FPS which will be demoed at PAX Australia, and showed off some early work towards multicrew combat using a Constellation.

As always these kinds of live events are very exciting for the team both as an opportunity to showcase their work to the community and also as an opportunity for those in attendance to meet with our backers face to face. Being around so many people as excited about Star Citizen and Squadron 42 as we are, is truly invigorating. We are truly lucky to have such an engaged fan base participating in the development process helping us to make this game. So, thank you all for your support!

The multicrew combat demo was put together by the group here in Santa Monica with some support from the guys in Austin. It required a lot of hard work on various systems that lay the groundwork for bringing support of multicrew ships to Arena Commander, Squadron 42, and ultimately the Persistent Universe. To that end, we wanted to share with you some of the underlying technology that was in the demo that, perhaps, isn’t readily apparent when watching it.

Localized physics grids. Sounds exciting, right? Well, it is! Generally in 3D games with physics you have what can simplistically be thought of as a large cube that encompasses the whole map, a grid. Inside that cube physics are being simulated for every object and player that have physics set to active relative to their position within that grid. This is what handles collision with objects, projectile physics, etc.

Problems arise when you want to have players freely (not scripted and not on rails) moving inside a freely moving vehicle/object. This is because that single physics grid only has awareness of each entity in the level as an individual and doesn’t (by default) understand their relationships to one another. This manifests itself where, in a Constellation for example, the ship is flying forward while pitching and yawing. Unfortunately the global physics grid thinks of you and the ship as two separate objects with no relationship and so it pitches and yaws the ship while moving it forward and treats the player as though nothing has happened. As the player you will see the ship yaw around you, pitch around you, and ultimately the collisions with it will fling you around like a pinball.

Here is where the localized physics grid comes into play! It allows us to have multiple smaller physics grids within the larger global physics grid. The global grid will track each smaller grid as an individual and that smaller grid tracks all objects within it relative to whatever it is attached to. Where this gets cool is when you attach a localized grid to a ship like the Constellation. Now, when the Constellation pitches and yaws while flying your player position stays relative to the ship so you will also pitch, yaw, and move along with it in perfect unison. This allows for ships to have fully functioning interiors with characters running around while the ship itself is blasting through space and maneuvering seamlessly. Completing this work was a large accomplishment and also a very foundational piece for SQ42 and Star Citizen in the long run.

One of the other more “under the hood” things that went into the demo was on the HUD. One of the critically important pieces of functionality for the HUD in the long run is being able to separate and subdivide its component pieces so that they can be displayed on different screens, have their positioning and size customized per HUD per player, and be rendered directly to a texture for seamless display on fixed screens. All of these features have been added to the system so that moving forward we will be better able to support customizing the HUD both on the development side and for players to customize their own visor HUD. We’ve also added the first step in fully supporting passing HUD elements and control over them between the different seats in a multicrew seats. The HUDis something we pride ourselves on as it is the thing you will see most of the game in its current state. More work needs to be done (there always is) but the foundation is there and now we need to keep refining and tweaking so we can make it even more awesome.

Gamescom is behind us and we look forward to the next opportunity to share more of the ‘Verse with our fans. Citizen Con and PAX Australia are on the horizon and we look forward to the new challenges this complex but rewarding project brings. As we said at the beginning being around our backers is invigorating to our entire team, it makes the long nights and stressful times worth it. Star Citizen is a special game, the passion and dedication of our community isn’t just appreciated it is required to make this game a reality.


CLOUD IMPERIUM AUSTIN



Eric Peterson, Studio Director
Good day Citizens. As the sun continues to bake us to a crisp in hot as hades Austin Texas, our development teams have been toiling away to make sure that we bring a great experience to folks all over the verse. It has been an amazing month, from getting things ready for our show in Germany (always one of my personal favorites) to preparing for upcoming events like CiitzenCon, and Pax Australia. As most folks know our office is tasked with the persistent universe, and backend server support, as well as running the publishing arm ofCIG.

Here is what the various departments in Austin:

Art
This month the art team in Austin was busy helping out on several different parts of Star Citizen. We had ship artists helping to get the M50 and Constellation variants all ship shape for GamesCom and prepping the 350r for upcoming release. Our artists on the PU team developed some new concepts and began creating props to be used in our missions for the Persistent Universe, as well as some R&D on jump gate effects and weather effects for our Planetside locations.

Cinematics
Released the Constellation Commercial at Gamescom. Working towards future ship commercials. Planning, budgeting and scouting for motion capture and performance capture for Squadron 42 cinematics. Working on debugging facial animation pipeline.

Animation
Began working with Sean Tracy to improve animation pipeline and execution. Held an animation workshop to focus on identifying issues with our locomotion set and how to improve it using the 4D blendspace technology in CryEngine. Creating a new skeleton and rig and retargeting animations to that new skeleton as well as solving and editing the animations from last month’s mocap shoot. Our character artists were hard at work fleshing out characters for the Constellation commercial and the FPS demo coming up at PAX Australia, and our animation team hosted some of the guys at [REDACTED] to bang out some new locomotion sets for our characters.

Design
This month, the Austin design team has been focused on integrating basic systems into the persistent universe prototype, transitioning from the surface of a planet to the hangar and then to space, and connecting systems with jump points. Technical designers have been putting the finishing touches on city interior (and space stations) building kits to enable faster construction of planetary environments. Meanwhile, the team has continued to add detail to other major game systems as they approach on the PU roadmap.

Platform/Publishing
This month the platform team launched the new store with amazingly detailed and updated ship stats and many more ships available in the holoviewer! In addition, we launched the M50 and Constellation promotions with full stat, storefront, and holoviewer support. We’ve done tons of work on Leaderboards and look forward to launching this to the public very soon. And also completed lots of concept work on the new Starmap which was voted as a fan favorite in a recent stretch goal poll.

Programming
This week, we Integrated CryEngine 3.6.3 into our codebase and deployed it to the team. That is always a challenge and tends to bring new bugs, but this has been one of the best transitions to date. We also migrated the team to Visual Studio 2012 with IT’s valued support. And, we continued working on the server side persistence and related work for the PU, and PU prototyping including star system layout. We also continued work on Large World and related tasks and designed and began work on Movement Improvements including dead reckoning with our partner Wyrmbyte. We finished projective light pooling, we implemented basic TrackIR support as well as other VR fixes. We released new versions of the launcher with bug fixes and many improvements. We also released 12.5.2 and version 12.6, and continue to work on version 13.0 or .9 as it is also known.

That and much more is what Austin has been up to this month, and we will continue to chip away at the granite that is Star Citizen, slowly revealing the beautiful statue underneath. On a personal note, it was quite an honor to meet so many enthusiastic Citizens at Gamescom this year and I look forward to meeting many more at our upcoming events, I love coming back to the studios and sharing with them the stories of meeting folks and sharing a laugh or a common enthusiasm for this great Chris Roberts adventure. We are all very lucky to be at this place at this time – and we will strive to always make you proud.


FOUNDRY 42



Erin Roberts, Studio Director
Hi everyone, August was a massive month for us at Foundry 42. We put a lot of focus on release 13, and the Gamescom event and it was fantastic to see eveyones’ response to what we showed there. I had a chance to talk to a bunch of the community while in Cologne, and really enjoyed meeting everyone, getting feedback and answering questions. The F42 team is really ticking over now, and you guys will start seeing a bunch of new content and gameplay over the next few months, not to mention our work on Squadron 42 which although we can’t show yet, is really coming together nicely. As always thanks must go out to all our backers, Star Citizen would not be this special without the community, your feedback, support and energy. That is what makes Star Citizen special and really drives everyone here in development to create this amazing universe.

Design
Development on Squadron 42 has continued well this month, with us breaking down the campaign further and putting more planning into how the players “home” ship will be an engaging and believable hub for them to explore and interact with. The vertical slice work is continuing and asking many questions that we have been focusing on answering going forward. One of the challenges with creating the “story campaign” is to make sure that we keep the agile gameplay without introducing bespoke mechanics that would not be available in the PU. We have been spending time this month working out how some of these mechanics will work across the game as a whole (for example, scavenging items from dead bodies).

The ship pipeline is rolling on with work being carried out on the Starfarer now, other ships still progressing well. I bang on about it every monthly report, but I really can’t wait until we can get you guys running around some of these bigger ships in game, it really adds a whole new dimension to everything.

Arena Commander work is also continuing well, with more systems coming online and game modes being refined and polished. You’ll see all that soon enough as we get closer to the next patch.

Programming Director
Another month and the big GamesCom event! If you saw the show you’ll have seen all the work we’ve been putting into getting the demonstration together, including the two new game modes Murray Cup Racing and Vanduul Swarm coop. As a result it was one of our more trouble free presentations!

Since GamesCom we’ve been working hard polishing up these two new game modes to make them as awesome as possible for their introduction to the community in the Release 13 update. We’re really stoked about the amount of progress we’ve made this month for Arena Commander, not only the new game modes and also the much improved audio, HUD improvements, control improvements (including 6 DoF!), leaderboards, and the usual bug fixing and polish.

Longer term we’re making great progress on Squadron 42, with lots of support for the designers on our “vertical slice”. We’re also been busy making progress on improvements to setting up vehicles, which is going to be imperative once we start working on the larger vehicles. This includes continued work on our new DataForge tool alongside the start of a new vehicle state system which will allow the ship setup to be much more data driven.

Overall another busy month!

Art
The art team has increased again! We have added two artists to the environment team and also taken on a Lead Character artist and a Lead VFX artist.

Concept work has taken place on Shubin interiors, the Anvil F8 heavy fighter, the mining drone cabin, Panther class carrier Bridge and Javelin interiors.

The Environment team also worked hard and completed the New Horizons map including a cool trailer for GamesCON – great work team!

Work is continuing on the spaceships – Gladius, Retaliator and Gladiator have all gone to their texturing phases, the Idris, Javelin and Panther interiors are all marching forward too.

Amongst all that we have also hopped back to greyboxing the Shubin exterior for the vertical slice level.

Animation have also been hard at work prepping for the VS and supporting the states with Arena Commander fixes and additions.

Audio
It’s been the month of Gamescom and an exciting time for all involved! Team audio have been spending there time split between the constellation demo, trailer sound design, Murray cup, sounds for the new ships and continued work on the audio in general. Not too much then!

As we move passed Gamescom we’ve been trying to get the last few bits into the release 13 before it is let loose into the wild. This has including things like UI sounds that play when you hit an enemy (good feedback!) and some updated boost sounds.

The New Horizon Speedway has had some attention, for example as you fly through the tunnel in the centre of the map you’ll hear air whooshing passed you that modulates based on your speed.

Included in DFM 0.9 is ‘Trevor Basque’ the official announcer for the Murray Cup. When racing around New Horizon you might note that the sound of his voice is actually played back at 3D positions in the environment as if it was playing through speakers like at a real race! The PA system delay effect is actually the culmination of the dialogue lines being played back from several of these points with the delay time being calculated in-game based on distance, it isn’t just a pre-baked effect! After this we’d like to use this system to add a visual counterpart to the game object so you can see the speaker where the sounds are emanating from. The ‘Bitching Betty’ ship computer voices will be using a similar system inside of multi-crew ships.

A hot topic in the community is the fact that Star Citizen has sound in space! How is this possible? Well it is something that we are putting great thought into and put simply, Star Citizen doesn’t have sound in space…. It has simulated sound that is played back to you to help you better pilot your ship. There will be more details about this in future posts and this method will be better supported in-game in future. Hopefully this begins to address the questions people have been asking.

That’s all from the sound guys, it’s early days for the soundscape of Star Citizen with a heck of a lot to do before the final game comes out but it’s great seeing the community feedback we’ve had so far.


BHVR



Mathieu Beaulieu, Producer

Things have been moving pretty quickly here in sunny Montreal.

Hangars!

Our team has been spending a good amount of time debugging and optimising the new hangars to get them ready for public release. We have also begun working on the basic layout for the next planet locations and shops for Arc Corp Area 18 and Terra Prime.

Next month’s flair object is done and we are now preparing for the next one.

Our engineers have been busy helping out with tools used for populating space environments with various objects, which we will eventually need for mission prototyping. They have also been creating tools for our designers and level designers to facilitate the creation of tags and tagging requests, which will eventually be used for many in-game systems including mobiGlas, shops, AI, etc.

Work is well underway for the pause menu refactor, and we are moving along with the control customization implementation, as well the mG Scheduler prototype for mission management. Several other mobiGlas apps have been designed as well, including mG Wear for avatar customization, mG Skyline for the star map, and the mG Notification Center.

Finally, audio has been keeping up with the changes to the levels, sounding the flair objects when required and battling memory budget issues.