Star Citizen New Roadmaps Incoming
Hello & Welcome to some more Star Citizen we have had an update on the New Roadmap plans for Squadron 42 and Star Citizen as well as a sprint report showing some of the work that CI are working on now with a Summary of ISC and the Upcoming Roadmap Update Post.
Most excitingly for me, the Nova Tank is in White Box and very much in active development.
We know that CI want it for ToW as a “priority” but it should be in the PU at the same time and I would expect it to be in our hands in the next couple of quarters.
The POI (or lagrange point) gas clouds are coming with 3.12. They give texture and intrigue to space stations and other existing POI. The lighting guys are working to have clouds appropriate react to sunlight and distance from the star.
They are also adding appropriate lighting to Refinery Decks. They want them to look great WITHOUT destroying your framerates. Smoke and fixtures will then be completed.
Docking Areas are being worked on, these look to be modular add-on areas for space stations with an Observation area, Docking Services etc… this will allow them to have sections added to stations specifically for docking collars to allow large ships to visit a space station and make use of their services without landing.
Fire work has moved to convection propagation, gravity, windspeed/direction are all important to the way fire now moves… as is the materials that it’s burning and the atmosphere of the area it is in BUT the fire will spread in a believable manner.
We saw more of the interior of the Crusader Hercules C2 Starlifer. Various areas of the ship are completing their greybox phase and more are moving into the final art phase.
The much awaited New Roadmaps for Star Citizen & Squadron 42 are becoming more of a reality. CI have been working on a Progress Tracker and Public Facing Roadmap that convey more information about the development of their games and their features. Showing what teams are working on any given feature, how many people and more detailed information on the task the duration of it’s sprint etc… Cloud Imperium have now shared an update with what’s going on with this:
The new Roadmap has been in active development and we’re still marching towards our end-of-year target. It may seem like a simple task, but an oft-overlooked aspect of building out this Roadmap is the management of such a massive dataset. Building out the front end for a Roadmap isn’t the hardest part – not even close. The new Roadmap relies on large swaths of data coming in from more than 50 teams, which requires a lot of effort to organize and make presentable for public consumption. In addition, since we’ll be sharing headcount, expertise, and more, this massive dataset will require ongoing and regular maintenance and QC. The key has been in establishing a pipeline/process so that the new roadmap is sustainable.
So, what can you expect this December? We plan on delivering a Roadmap that focuses on our core features from our “upstream” teams initially. An “upstream” team is a team that is responsible for a core deliverable (tech/content/feature), while “downstream” teams often won’t have a good idea of their work until the upstream team’s content has been decided and locked in. Downstream teams consist of support teams such as UI, Audio, and other similar teams. The nature of development is obviously that downstream teams have to be reactive to some degree to what upstream teams are working on, which can make it very difficult to accurately map out long-term work. Not only that, but the process works both ways, so often times the downstream evaluations that feed back into upstream planning can alter the upstream team’s timelines.
They showed an example of the progress tracker that was using real data and is the format we can expect from the initial offering. IT showed work is being planned for FPS Personal Radars and Scanning, ZeroG Push/Pull Mechanics, moving into 2021 there are Updates to the Actor Status System, Healing, Personal Inventory, Cover Leaning, Physical Inventory Storage, tho they haven’t confirmed the features for Q1 / Q2 2021 yet so bare that in mind.
It looks the the Roadmap may have upto a year of planning on it.
The new Roadmap is going to have two views that you can cycle through at your leisure: the Progress Tracker (seen in the video) and Release View. Release View is very similar to what you already see on the Public Roadmap that is currently available.
They said that the features populated on these will be ones that they have the highest degree of confidence will make it into that release.
For the immediate release in the quarter ahead, you will see it generously populated. While we intend for this view to show several quarters out, we want to be very clear that due to the nature of priority shifts (which you’ve seen time and time again), visibility beyond one quarter isn’t something you should consider locked.
They can’t make promises with the roadmaps, priorities change and sometimes a feature isn’t ready or viable. Delays to features will still happen as can pivots to entirely new tasks…
This will show very accurately the work that is currently being done and then the plans for future content with as much accuracy as they can have BUT they want people to know that this is likely to be less and less accurate the further you go out time wise… in 3 quarters a patch can be very different from what they plan today.
We will see what they’re working on, and what their current priorities are for the quarters after.
They will share some more information when they have it BUT expect these new roadmaps by the end of the year!
They also talked about the MSR and it being a fan favorite, it represents a lot of Sci-Fi Fantasy and covers a huge amount of gameplay.
When DataRunning comes online the Server Room is going to be BUSY! They talk about moving server racks around and looking thru data too.
All the cockpit buttons have their mapping already planned or ready for future gameplay.
They redesigned the cargo area so the Ursa Rover OR a Cyclone could fit!
I’ve got a full MSR Ship Buyer’s Guide & Tour for those of you that are interested, looking at the whole ship and it’s gameplay.