Star Citizen TLDR – Core Tech & New Cargo?!
Star Citizen TLDR looking at all the News from this week including a deeper look at Roadmap Delays and Core Features discussed with the iCache, Persistence and Server Meshing.
There has been a couple of more delays on more minor features for the Roadmap with 3.11:
Elevator Panel Updates – We took a little extra time on early UI work which pushed the handover for these updates past their intended completion date. For this specific feature, Props & Art needed to complete their work before handing over to Design. With that work complete, the task has been passed off to level design and, with such a tight turnaround, our Level Design does not have enough bandwidth to get the work in before 3.11’s branch day. The majority of our level designers are focusing on other 3.11.0 tasks that have been deemed higher priority (ex. Space Station – Cargo Decks), and we made the decision to not pull them off of that work. Because of this, Elevator Panel Updates has been moved to the Alpha 3.12 column.
Missile Operator Mode – We’ve decided to move Missile Operator Mode to release simultaneously with additional improvements to missiles we have planned for early 2021 in order to make a bigger and more comprehensive impact on the missile gameplay at once. This card has been removed from the Roadmap, expected to be released alongside missile improvements in 2021.
The UI panels is pretty minor and Missile Operator Mode by themselves are pretty minor BUT I am interested in the Missile Updates they have planned 3.10 at the moment is very missile meta… spam… and missiles are CHEAP and easy.
I was hoping for a rework to this in 2020 BUT at least we know that Q1/Q2 2021 is where they want to have that rework and Missile Operator Mode all together.
In the Newsletter this week there is a Sneak Peek of Time Sensitive Canisters… I assume these are mission / cargo items that are similar to quantanium in the fact you have to get it to the destination quickly and safely otherwise BOOM or they might be worth nothing… Is this a feature for 3.11? I don’t know, I am speculating?! The picture also looks like the spaceman is placing (or removing) a canister in another box full of canisters… we know that Cargo 2.0 or whatever they are calling it should allow for this functionality so it will be interesting to see what they have in store for us in the coming months.
The Talon, Shirek and ROC are still on Warbond sale until the 31st of August so this is the Last Chance to get them at a discount… please remember that you will be able to get them in game as well.
The ROC is already drivable in game, the Talon & Shriek are planned to be flyable in game for 3.12 at the end of the year.
From the Jump Point Magazine we saw that RSI Subs September look like they are getting knives with new skins for their flair items.
Calling All Devs looked at Core Tech this week…
They have been building towards Server Meshing for year and iCache is part of that:
The iCache or Item Cache interacts with the game and backend databases that writes and queries data efficiently at real time. This is a massive improvement over the way that databases are currently handled. They have also been fixing a lot of other systems & code up at the same time as building the iCache, making sure they work with that in mind and helping clear tech debt. This is going to be much more scalable for their needs, faster and more efficient and have better fault tolerance.
They are in the process of integrating the new iCache Tech at the moment.
This has also been supporting work to Physicalized Inventory and New Cargo Changes.
When implemented you’ll notice more snappy access to shop inventory, the mobiGlas and the VMA/PMA apps… even spawning a ship or deal with cargo you’ll notice that snappiness… also the fault tolerance should mean you have a better less interrupted experience.
Global Persistence is supported by the iCache and necessary for Server Meshing as well. It’s persistent data that effects the world that isn’t player account data. They have a version of GP right now but it’s volatile, when the server goes down the data is lost. In the future the data will be tracked, saved and recoverable. That’s not to say that the game won’t clean it self up… there will be more dynamic events as well BUT the world will start to be shaped and impacted permanently by players AND NPC actions.
Server Meshing connects multiple servers together and seamless shares data between them allowing for 1000s of players to exist in the same “shard”.
They are currently working on time sync issues, dealing with lag, rubber banding, desync. They are near a position where they want to start testing (internally) 2 servers communicating with each other with an early version of server meshing.
This has been the culmination of years of work and 100s of tasks.
It’s a huge change to how Servers typically would work and changing server authority.
They’ve been building the rest of the game with this in mind to help alleviate technical debt.
There is still a long way to go tho before we have it in player hands!
Inside Star Citizen this week looked at Gas Clouds, Spacescaping that will make Space and POI more interesting and Force reaction that will have explosions, shotguns and sudden impacts knock your character down.
The Ship Showdown has started as well which has the community creating content on the ships the like and the most popular ships will be part of a 2 week freefly that looks to start on the 9th of September.
I’ve got an indepth video looking at The Ship Showdown and that Inside Star Citizen.