Star Citizen February 2021 Monthly Report
Welcome to some more Star Citizen with a Summary of the Monthly Report that was released in February 2021… this goes over what CI have been working on recently and what they are working on for the 1st Quarter of 2021 and beyond for Star Citizen’s Persistent Universe.
Environments are in full production with New Outpost POI archetypes and they are now in whitebox. They are moving onto making a small modular architecture kit that can be easily expanded to add diversity as the need arises.
Crusaders Landing Zone Orison now has the arcade, spaceport exterior, Voyager Bar interior, and Green Circle habs all in the final stages of development and habs/other structures are currently in progress. The location also saw lighting work improving the spaceport interior there.
They are building the scripts for announcer lines here now too.
They have been making props for both Orison but also mining modules…
The Stanton System polish pass continued, the harvestable library was expanded, and work on cave entrances that can accommodate vehicles began. The Planet Content Team started developing a pipeline for generating new and updated asteroids too.
VFX Work also began on the moons of Pyro, which involved gathering information on details such as climate values (how windy, how hot, etc.). They also investigated requirements for thruster wind volumes as they’re planning to move to a more physical-based setup for vehicle landing dust effects, making use of the wind volumes that were added to thrusters last year.
Steady progress was made on fire hazards too AND Gas Cloud Tech continued receiving support.
For those of you excited about animals the Tech Animation Team kicked off 2021 creating animation rigs for creatures that will be found across various locations. We know that animals are in active production and are coming to the game… SOON ™?
Gameplay
Gameplay Work also continued on several features, including hacking. Recent discussions revolved around how to scale difficulty, with considerations for the size of the play area, number of AI opponents, and randomly generated content. The Features Team Said “This mini-game is shaping up to have a number of interesting strategic options and is looking very promising!”
Work continued on the reputation mobiGlas app mentioned in the last report. This time, the designers polished up the design direction while considering the complexity of the reputation system and its possible future expansions. Meanwhile, the engineers began implementing the feature itself, giving the team a deeper look into the app’s functionality.
The team also resumed work on the ‘asset manager’ mobiGlas app, which will give players an overview of their items and allow them to filter by various categories. Designs are currently being finalized in preparation for a quick turnaround, with the goal of launching in Alpha 3.14.
Work was mostly completed on a new variant of the delivery mission that takes advantage of quantum-sensitive cargo and they also worked on a time sensitive version too.
Investigation also began on ways to implement some of the features other teams worked on during the last few quarters, including body dragging, trolley push and pull, and hacking. The tech side of the spawn closet feature moved into its final stages too, so the team began prototyping areas it can be implemented into the game.
They are well on their way with meeting their target for docking in 3.13.
This includes both ship-to-station docking and the first stage of ship-to-ship docking, which focuses on the RSI Constellation and its parasite ship, the Kruger Merlin. The owner of the Constellation will be able to accept docking requests.
Missile Updates to IFCS 2 are being worked on this will fully control target tracking and guidance code to ensure missiles behave more predictably and don’t oscillate around targets as they do currently.
They talked about vehicle/ship naming saying work was done
“to get the names on the sides of select vehicles.”
While there’s more work to do between interconnected systems and rendering, the feature is progressing well. To what end players will be able to customize names in 3.13… and the frontend for it remains to be seen!
Player Relations began building their infrastructure to support more players and bigger events.
The Systemic Systems and Tools Team continued work on the Quantum Simulation service integration along with new technology they plan to share with the community soon. So this is the Dynamic Universe and Quantum System that Tony Z talks about!
UI began programming the underlying system that will allow them to work on new Starmap, radar, interior map, and mini-map interfaces. While it’ll be several months before they can be seen in-game, the team already have a robust designs tying them together. Please please lead to a better mobiGlas and STARMAP app!
They also made improvements to the scanning and ping system to ensure detecting faraway or hidden entities and extracting details about them is fun and intuitive. These improvements will also make their way to players scanning on foot.
Character
They completed concept work on Medical Outfits, Backpacks for Physical Inventory and various New Armor Sets were both concepted and prepared for 3.13.x an incremental Patch (that I expect we will see in May for Fleet Week)
New Clothing for Refinery Decks (Industrial) and Orison were developed.
The Volt Parallax electron rifle is greybox complete.
The UltiFlex Novia crossbow progressed through final art.
They’ve been working on the ammo/mag stripping feature.
They have added a new healing Multi-Tool attachment. They also updated the battery and resource canister to be detachable to futureproof the weapon for additional functionality. Work also began on a new standalone Greycat Industrial cutter tool that was initially required for Squadron 42 but will make its way into the PU soon.
Ships & Vehicles
They have continued work on the Nova Tonk and are really pushing to make it’s target release date of 3.13… they are making progress in greybox.
The Crusader C2 Hercules was handed to the downstream teams and progress was made on the A2 and M2 variants. Specifically, the A2 received a control room for the turrets while the M2 gained a jump-seat room for the crew of the ground vehicles.
There is a REDACTED ship that’s moving to it’s final stages (potentially the 400i).
The Constellation Taurus’s work is progressing and looks set to release in Q2.
We know they have been working on another Skin Variant of a Ship for some form of Holiday… maybe it’s Valentines… maybe TriggerFish (April Fools), there is also Chinese New Year AND St Patricks day too. Actually… we have heard of them working on the latter 2 so… it makes sense its for them.
Work continued on the FireStorm Kinetics Colossus MOAB (Mother of all bombs).
And they began working on an ALL NEW WEAPON too.
The AI Teams reorganized The department is now split by content, features, and tech:
- AI Content create behaviors, usables, and other related content
- AI Features implement project features. For example, new combat behaviors and ship maneuvers
- AI Tech handles all core functionalities that require a more structural design
They have been testing various AI Subsumption Events which should lead to some big optimizations in regards to the latency, amount and memory usage of NPCs.
They have been working on archetype AI Behaviors for engineer, hygiene, hawker, and tourist.
For the Engineer they have worked on getting them interacting with wall panels in ships and stations so they can inspect and replace damaged fuses.
Hygiene behaviors allow NPCs to use toilets, sinks and showers.
Hawker is for street vendors that man the various stands at LZs.
Tourist behavior deals with characters going to and traveling around areas to look at points of interest.
They are now working on eating drinking, vending machine and arcade machine use for leisure behaviors.
Work was done on AI Pilot Tactics – some pilots will choose safer approaches during combat while others will show-off and use specialist maneuvers. AI will also be able to use QT and switch to combat mode when needed. They are better at dodging too and they added a WeaponConfidence Stat which is used to control AI firing pace.
Engine
We will get the Gen12 Renderer and Vulkan on day and they have been working on that as well as various other engine and backend updates.
Geometry Instancing completed the first of 3 parts of it’s work. This will allow for better memory usage and performance as well as less CPU resources being needed… in fact there was a lot of optimization and improvements to a lot of stuff, soft bodies, ragdolls, volumetric clouds, EVA, better usage of CPU instructions and much more.
Several network synchronization issues for wheeled vehicles were investigated, which resulted in initial fixes and a plan for an improved net-sync that takes the environment as well as physical movement into account. This is slated for implementation in Q2.
Research into stabilizing moving platforms (elevator floors, cargo lifts) in a more reliable way was also completed.
Water Buoyancy and Ragdolls saw more work.
The Super pCache is being tested by QA.
And that’s it for the monthly report this time BUT what do you think? We know that CI are working on 8-10 events this year, what do you think they will be? We know some of them…
XenoThreat… Nine Tails Lockdown, Fleet Week, IAE but what others? What are you looking forward to most in 2021 feature / ship or location wise? Whatever your thoughts I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.