Around The Verse Summary – All Systems ARGO
Welcome to some more Star Citizen with a Summary of CIGs Around the Verse all systems ARGO, looking at Character Performance, the ARGO SRV & Traffic at ArcCorp in Alpha 3.5.
The Hornet HeartSeeker will be flyable in Alpha 3.5.
AtV Summary
They have been improving character resource performance.
Draw calls are directly related to this, the more draw calls the more memory and more GPU/CPU used.
Characters use a layer blend shader and a layer shader.
The layer shader is a list of materials, textures and how mesh together.
The layer blend shader literally blends these together.
Characters benefit from this technique as it reduces draw calls by magnitudes.
They want this system optimized now so that all assets use this system correctly and don’t need more work later. They are making sure all their appropriate artists are fully drilled into doing this.
The memory and draw calls saved here will allow for other areas of the game to look better like ships and environments by making use of this resource credit.
ARGO SRV
We found out a bit more about the ARGO SRV which will go on full concept sale (today at time of recording 15th Feb)
It’s a single pilot, search and recovery vehicle hence SRV.
It focuses on tractor beam gameplay, recovering vehicles and moving things.
Other ships do have tractor beams BUT this SRV is dedicated to their use.
It’s very much a get involved with others ship, you can respond to Service Beacons to come tow or recover players AND there will be NPC Missions that make use of the SRVs services so there is always something to do.
You CAN use it to aid in other gameplay loops like mining and salvage too.
The ship can pull cargo with it’s tractor beams too.
The tractor beams (on the tow arms) have a lot of movement to be versatile in manipulating objects, there shouldn’t be much in the way of faffing around getting the right angle to grab an object.
It has a big powerplant to cater for it’s power hungry tractor beam setup.
The plan for it to be able to tow a Cutlass, potentially upto a Constellation sized ship (based on it’s cargo load)
Multiple SRVs can work together to move a ship faster or larger ships.
You may also be able to take multiple small vehicles and clump them together.
In the future they want to further expand ARGOs vehicle range.
ArcCorp Traffic 3.5
They’ve been working on traffic at ArcCorp.
They will have some moving traffic deep down on the city streets below.
They are testing the way it looks at the moment in very simple ways, it looks very sim-city atm. The idea here is to add to the immersion of being in a real living breathing city.
The accomplish this by having a texture that scrolls across the geometry and city tiles with roads, traffic is then added on top of that. Traffic isn’t something you’d see from space, but once in atmosphere you’ll start to spot the glow of moving vehicles below.
CIG are looking for feedback on the merchandise too, I’ll link that below.
And there is an RtV today 15th Feb, the Sounds of Space at 6pm UTC there is a thread for questions still open again linked below.