News!

AtV

Studio Update

• Eric Kieron Davis welcomes us back to LA and states they have grown to 74 to include a total of 12 Engineers

• New ships will have heat and power components that act as real heat sinks and affect infrared signature masking

• Shopping should provide more responsive purchasing with the reimplementation of a new replicated function system: Remote Methods

• Improvements for trying clothes on. Updating persistent data after purchases is next

• More light group entity work allows for individual direction lighting and rotation from source via a simple property

• Making light groups and interior devices rely on a vehicle’s power is next

• Through hard work the control manager can now dictate the control of an item or sub-items by any particular seat, console or AI and may be toggled by a player from direct to AI control and has been added to Dataforge

• Whitebox of the Anvil Terrapin is complete and greybox is ongoing

• RSI Aurora progress is steady and past general polish into fine details such as cockpit controls, screens and sleeping quarters

• The Q.A. Team doesn't want to leave work and loves testing the new planetary tech that's soon to be released in 3.0

• The Tech Content Team supports every aspect of the games with technical art constantly maintaining a unified library of assets for shared use

• Database of animations must be split logically in order for streaming to be seamless or else you might be the victim of an animation error

• Engineering, Tech Art and Developer Operations parsed asset errors this month via 200 megabyte text logs line-by-line

• A new editor tool implemented in item 2.0 characters will make loadouts easier and faster to create

• A new skinning tool reduces turnaround for skinning complex setups and improves the process overall

• Tech Art worked hard to make sure your character's items attach and detach in real time fluidly

• The heavy marine is the most complex character to date and is ready for the battlefield

• The heavy outlaw is not far behind as well as various uniforms, outfits and aliens due to the Character Team

• Concepts for the Xi'An and Banu are finishing up and Rudo and Miles Eckhart are ready to meet you as quest givers in the verse

Banu Lore

Lore

• Banu were part of the original time capsule and humanity’s first contact

• Xi'An influence came from China, Vanduul the Visigoths, Tevarin from feudal Japan and the Banu the Persian Empire

• Vernon Tar was the first human to have contact with the Banu who ended up being a fugitive running from one of the guilds

• Material items the Banu own signify their wealth and station in life

• The Banu travel with all their belongings on board their ships and put them on display to show visitors they are friendly

• As Banu do not tend to indulge in art, their design choices tend to reflect a more artistic quality when compared to other species

• Banu do not hold much interest in history such as who built what, when and where. They only care that it works and is effective at what it does

• The Banu lifestyle is about accruing stuff reflecting living a full life, places you’ve been, people you’ve met, etc and living in the present

Design

• The original design of the Banu had lots of ridges on the face and was a little scarier

• They wanted to try and bring more colour into them, explore skin tones, why would they have different skin tones and why those things exist

• Tried to keep the old design of lines on the face as it was an interesting design language and they wanted to run with it a little more

• They wanted to get across some features that players can connect with, with a little bit of a human element to the design

• The clothing will be very decadent, lots of patterns, colours that will show different places that they’ve been

• The species as a whole is very specialised: If they’re a soldier/merchant/etc, they’ve trained their whole lives to be that.

• The Banu can come across as a little awkward or aggressive, the way they try and make you feel more comfortable is to display their wealth and belongings for you to see

Banu Defender

• The name of the ship implies its role, defence. It isn’t designed to be aggressive, but to protect what the pilot considers important. Because the ship was Banu, they collaborated with writers David Haddock and Will Weissbaum in order to design the ship.

• They had 18 initial ideas that were in a variety of different configurations that they had to pin down in order to get approval from Chris to begin concept.

• The Banu fly their ships differently than that of a UEE pilot in that instead of a traditional pilot and then a gunner manning a turret separately, they work in tandem to where the gunner will control the main armament alongside the pilot which is why there is a dual cockpit system for the Defender.

• While they were making the ship, they started via human standards, but found that things didn’t mesh correctly and it wasn’t what they were going for, and so a lot of work went into how the ship ‘flowed’ together and made the ship feel more organic and smooth.

• The ship is designed around having a bigger shield than most fighters available, but trades that strength for having a very weak hull.

• The ship’s engine is a reengineered Xi’An engine that was put in place of a previous human engine due to its superior performance.

• The Banu don’t celebrate the same things culturally as we do such as art for example and a lot of their effort is put into things like ships as you can notice from their quality and aesthetic.

• The goal of the ship was to enable a pilot to be able to fly and gun, but if they needed a co-pilot for engineering or perhaps take over the guns to free up the pilot to do more things, then they can.