Star Citizen Homestead & Planet Updates
Star Citizen we have some updates on Alpha 3.11s new Inventory System AND Planetary Updates AS WELL AS work on Refineries & the Pyro Star System that is ongoing. We also get a sneak peek at explorations of Homesteads and new POI that are being developed in concept.
Wait theres more, as we have a dev response about Old CryAstro Rest Stops and the Ship Showdown moves into Round 2.
Inside Star Citizen: Taking Inventory | Summer 2020
Player Inventories are getting updated & evolved in 3.11.
They are still going to iterate on it further.
It will give you inventory space per armor part based on the individual pieces capacity with a new interface. This is accessed in the same way as previously via the Action Wheel (Hold F and Right Click) OR Press the Y Key which should be the Default Key.
You’ll be able to manage your inventory a lot better with options to split/stack and move (drag and drop) your items as well as carry, inspect and drop like before.
They are working on the holoshader and the look of the UI… its very basic at the moment.
This system also allows External Inventories to be accessed, so things like the cargo container on the ROC.
You can use this to put inventory in, take it out… I like the idea of being able to drop the materials from the ROC into your cargo hold of a ship before going back out to fill it up again!
Soon we will be able to loot bodies in a similar way.
There are various planetary updates with 3.11 including updated textures, better tessellation, improved object scattering and the painting tool used to apply all this has got better… We should be seeing planets and moons all move over the v4 planet tech and get these improvements too.
You can see Daymar here starting to get these improvements. They have been removing things like potato looking rocks apparently… what’s wrong with potatoes?
The new rocks use the updated organic shader and look… well better… less potato-y and flat.
We are getting much more detailed sand, gravel and ground cover.
We will see more details on Cargo Decks next week BUT the other Station Facilities they are working on are for 3.12 and they are refinery decks… They are currently in greybox and have been set dressing their current iterations.
The Smelter Drums are a big focus of the refinery decks and they’ve been improving their looks.
Pyro the new star system is getting more work! Which is good!
They showed current work on one of the moons orbiting Pyro 5
This is a very reminiscent of North American Desert, Rocky Plateau Biomes… I think they are called Badlands… however currently CI feel its a little too much like “Red Daymar” but that’s partly because this phase only uses existing asset libraries and not too many alterations on that. They are making it look more dried, crumbly and volcanic looking while also adding more assets.
Homestead Concepts were shown off a few weeks ago and they are exploring these now in 3d. They are looking for a colonial style of hardwearing built to last in many environments kind of a thing. Some of them looking like they have been used for generations and been juryrigged rather than upgraded over the years.
They are working out what they like from shapes and materials. They are thinking of having the building made of materials from the local planet/moon using a shader I expect to alter it’s look. These will be built with function in mind as well so they need power to have lighting, water needs to be stored, there might be life support… all in the same way as a ship.
There was a question on Spectrum The old rest stops were cool. Are they coming back anywhere? CIs Jake Dunlop Replied:
The old stations were procedural. To explain it in a really easy way is the old stations fit together like puzzle pieces, the new ones fit together more like lego pieces.
The newer stations have much more freedom to change their shape and add on new segments at any time (like what we are doing with the cargo exterior addons currently). Adding those on the old system would have been hard.
The new stations also allow for hangars to be attached, we still have landing pads but mainly hangars are better so we can despawn and spawn ships without anyone seeing (immersion! + it’s cheaper to render less ships).
Lastly there is hardly any room in the old stations, so procedurally generating an interior in such a small area is very limiting. Once we created the new much much larger station exteriors we could spawn whatever layouts we wanted + were able to make very tall rooms. We also made some rooms wider because of the extra space, but not too wide that it would take forever to walk through the stations.
If you would also like to know, the new stations don’t just use all new work, we did re-use some of the old stations’ meshes to help construct these so really it’s all an upgrade
The 2nd Round of the Ship Showdown head to heads is on… make sure you vote on your fav ship each day.
We have the Carrack vs the Caterpillar then…
Gladius Vs Eclipse
Cutlass Black vs Avenger Titan
And the Valkyrie vs the 890 Jump
The 4 winners will move to the semi finals.
The FreeFly associated with the event is on until the 23rd of September so make sure to jump into Star Citizen and test out some of the most popular ships in game!