Modding Tools, Over $200 Million & Ship Questions
Welcome to some more Star Citizen, today looking at Funding & Unofficial Mods / Tools, questions for a big ship Q&A and a variety of answers from devs over the week.
Funding
Star Citizen raised over $7 million in the last few days during the Anniversary FreeFlight.
Over $8 million in November & the Anniversary Sale isn’t even over yet.
I believe it ends at 8am UTC on the 5th of December.
It looks like SC will hit over $210 million in funding by the end of 2018.
3.4 is supposed to have a LIVE build by the end of the year, I believe they were aiming at the 20th of December if possible, if not a LIVE build then a PUBLIC PTU is the most likely thing.
With 3.4 now effectively being an extension of the 3.3, it should bring a lot of QoL improvements BUT I am much more looking forward to 3.5 in March 2019 now.
Hopefully 3.4 will go to Evocati this week!
Star Citizen Modding Tools
A group of modders fronted by Unknown44 on Reddit have released some tools & a video guide for them for Star Citizen enabling access to console commands in an offline version of the PU.
Among them is the P4KTool also known as Crucible allows users to access the data.p4k file that contains almost all of Star Citizens files.
He combines this with the Offline Launcher – Lumberjack to get into the console.
This then in turn allows you to spawn in assets. This can be used in 3.3.6 to spawn in the Idris-M asset that was at 2948 Aegis Expo for example.
I think there is a worry that these could be engineered to work in a live environment & basically be hacks or cheats.
But Unknown44 states
“I am concerned that people are going to try and cheat as so far CIG’s attempts to lock anything down were thwarted in a single afternoon so I am going to carefully drip updates on this project to keep you and CIG safe from scum who have no respect for modding.”
Personally I am loath to use anything unverified security wise & I haven’t gone over the .exes, though if Unknown44 releases the source code that will make things a bit easier to check.
Also I am pretty sure it’s against the EULA/TOS to use invasive tools like this.
I am curious on how CIG respond, modding is supposed to be supported by the game at some point BUT do CIG want this sort of exposed assets In Star Citizen’s current state?
It’s very possible they will lock the whole thing down, or if they don’t then they will be very careful what they include asset wise in the future for builds.
Because for the most part the being able to spawn in the Idris and F8, Hawk and those assets is only because they were included for the Anniversary Expo, most of them are just part built assets too.
Looking at the Reddit post it’s a mix of extremely angry people & others that are really happy to have something new to play with, that might foreshadow modding sooner than expected.
If you are going to use these tools then you do so at your own risk. I am content watching videos of others messing around with the Idris and F8 assets.
I do like the idea of modding getting into the game soon rather than later and the ability to mess around in an offline sandbox is very appealing.
After watching the video as well, Unknown44 looks to be using this as a way to potentially get hired by CIG, I’ve talked to him a few times on Discord and he seems like a nice smart guy, so goodluck with that.
Dev Answers
The GreyCat Buggy was bugged if you tried to melt it after buying it for $$ you’d get UEC back, this is being looked at now but no ETA on a fix.
The Banu Defenders Cockpit view will see noticeable improvements from the Concept design, mainly in regard to arms blocking it’s visibility.
There was a lot of Twitter chatter with Pedro Camacho & the Star Citizen Community, Pedro has done a huge amount of composing for Star Citizen’s PU, the music is amazing!
I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a Star Citizen Orchestra at some point… maybe at a CitizenCon?
They have removed the “Includes a hidden sensor-dampened area for your most precious cargo.” from the description of the Constellation Phoenix
Ship Q&A
There is a massive Ship Q&A Coming up on the 7th of December live at 5pm UTC on the Star Citizen Twitch. This is their last RtV of the year.
They’ll be hosting a general Q&A on all ships Star Citizen. They are asking for questions but want people’s expectation to be tempered based on if the ship in question is already on the roadmap or not.
Ships that ARE on the Public Roadmap are the ones farther along in the pipeline, and will have more information available about them. These include Hawk, Freelancer Variants, 300 Rework, Banu Defender, Reliant Variants, Constellation Taurus, Archimedes and 890 Jump.
Ships that ARE NOT on the Roadmap are more than a year out, and likely aren’t in active development, so will have less determinate information available about them. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask about them (ASK), just adjust your expectations of specific details accordingly. They’re gonna have more info about Group 1 ships than Group 2.
If you want to ask a question, make sure you get involved with that, links below!
Some of the most upvoted and likely to be asked questions include:
Vanguard Improvements & Updates
it was mentioned we will be able to customize / build our own ships before purchasing during the origin spotlight (paintjob, interior, accessories). Will this be available for all ships and will people who have already purchased ships get a 1 time token to customise them post purchase?
Lots of Question about the Polaris & Carrack, when can we expect to see it on the Roadmap & specifics about the ships. Like We were told the Carrack was now 10m longer than the original length, to clarify, is that the 123m Carrack?
Progression on ships that have been dark for a while the Endeavor, Crucible and Genesis.
With the recent Idris upgrade kit, can you please confirm if there is still intended to be an in-game upgrade path from an Idris P to a full Idris M? I think I can answer that one tho, you’ll never be able to make an Idris P an M but you can get very close, you’ll be able to put the same turrets and rail gun on that the M has BUT I think the M might have some hull changes that allow for extra armor.
WHEN CAPITAL SHIPS like the Idris and Javelin?
Ship to Ship Docking, ship to station, multi-grid physics tech, parasite docking & the Hull C
Drones & Ship Modularity
There are quite a lot there, lots of the same ones repeated too. Even if you are not asking a question, check them out and upvote ones you want to get asked!