Nehkara and Shiver give a quick summary of the key points of the week's development in Star Citizen
Studio Update
Gameplay
Player Interaction system has moved along quickly and the Inner Thought System has seen further improvements
Air Traffic Controller initial implementation underway, working on the underlying structure
Finishing up the Character Status System: final implementation of procedural breathing and suit punctures
Working on ‘pick up and carry’ combining player interaction and Useables
Initial development of conversation tech into Subsumption; Design implementing all conversations to test
Audio
R&D and planning for systems to map and modify audio automatically
Work continues on Audio Propagation System, Breathing System audio and "Word Up" (a new dialogue tool)
Also Ship Weapons Toolkit, Gallant reload audio, weapon tell refactor, multi-positional code support
Music
Working on Dynamically Looping Cinematic Ambient Music System
Also dogfighting music logic clean up, Tension System prototyping and planetside procedural music
Added more music to the launcher
Graphics
Initial integration of real time lit volumetric fog from Lumberyard
Render to texture is progressing quickly; initial 2D version UI Team to update UIs (3D holographic projections soon)
Real time Environment Probe Tech nearing completion (allows fully dynamic bounce light and reflections on a planet)
VFX
Atmospheric flight effect: planetary entry VFX and engine trails are now being merged, optimised and fixed
Lightning entity effect improvements: attempting to create realistic lightning and electrical effects
Completed first pass on the MISC Prospector thrusters and damage
Initial work on APR Scourge railgun ‘charging’ and ‘charged’ effects
Concept Art
Origin 600i concept is now in its final stages
Weapons
Completed Preacher Distortion Scattergun and Apocalypse Arms Scattershot
Working on Klaus and Werner LMG.
Ship
Reclaimer has made a lot of progress: hull exterior (and claw) completed; interior habitation, tech and salvage completed
Work has also begun on the derelict ships: ships are being broken into structural elements, aged/deteriorated materials are being created and a wreckage component is being worked on
Razor hull is complete and damage pass in progress; LODs are being finalised, working to get it flight ready
Hull C exterior is largely complete: maneuvering thrusters are being incorporated and polish work done to match the interior and exterior
Environment
Exploring ways to create volumetric forms in space
Surface Outposts are finishing their interior visual benchmarks for engineering, habitation and hydroponics
Truck Stop space stations are in final art phase: working on shader library and bringing pieces up to final art quality
Animation
Working on the cover AI to improve all animations beyond ‘functional’
Breathing state improvements: migrating curve data from Maya to DataForge
Implemented multi-directional takedowns: killing enemies within close proximity
Improvements to weapon set ups and reloads: Devastator shotgun, Arrowhead sniper rifle, Galant laser rifle and P8SC ballistic SMG
Melee improvements for pistol and stock weapon archetypes
Derby
Busy with face and body animations for 3.0 mission givers
Delivered 500 facial animations files for implementing into S42
Tracked and solved almost 1000 body animations for the PU
New facial animations for shooting guns
Behinds the Scenes: Player Interaction System
The Player Interaction System touches everything in game opening up numerous opportunities to interact with contextual feedback
This is the third version since the Alpha 2.5 interaction system and incorporates Item 2.0 with raycast and collision geometry and new added features to make it more contextually aware of the player's interactions
The original Use System was limited to one action and wasn't very descriptive
A fundamental rewrite was needed to bring the interaction system to the wanted level of immersive detail
During the earliest cargo prototypes it became clear that a unifying core was needed to facilitate the vastly growing input systems
This completely new system uses a changeable cursor upon condition and highlighting of interacted object to provide more focus, clarity and feedback for the player's interaction
The philosophy is that the object along in tandem with the player's state dictates how interaction functions for a more natural approaches
The player's interaction is only limited by the animation and the physicality of the character
The system uses proximity query, checking interact-able objects around the character and cursor raycasts to browse the available interaction options
How to do these things while covering all the various player and environmental options and providing the expected level of polish took hard coordination between the LA and UK offices
A difficult aspect to getting this system together was they had to build various systems of the game in isolation so they would function regardless of the fact the rest of the game wasn’t there
Taking all these specific behaviour tailored to all these systems and create a generic interaction object that needs to sync with all these other generic aspects
They also need to have all these interactions that need to coexist with a wide variety of gameplay
A type of intelligence needed to be added to the game to create a more intuitive experience where interacting with objects is concerned
Anything designated as being interactable is using the Item 2.0 component System
The new system adds the ability to have interactions on particular bones/subregions of an entity
Generic components gives them building blocks to make things ultra bespoke but the downside to bespoke content is: It requires constant maintenance due to changing technology, changing environments you’ve places items in, etc
Making behaviours more separated/modular/generic allows for things to be built out more conceptually
They used subsystems such as zone system queries for figuring out which objects you can interact with are in proximity of the player and also such things like ray casting to determine which objects were best used
There is now through line of input you can interact with the whole game that is consistent
The new interaction system is more about fluidly browsing what you can clearly see, options are more clearly defined
The new system also requires you to move around less compared to the old one
They’ve been focused on consolidating their behaviours/tech to get to the point where when they build things they can just stitch them together conceptually
In conjunction with the interaction system they’re working on something they call rendered texture that in a UI sense means it allows the UI to render properly within the rendering pipeline
Rendered texture tech will also allow them to project onto curved surfaces
Continuously adding new things and thinking of new possibilities for the system including unifying systems to gain the benefits from the new interaction system
Of note Aegis Eclipse concept next week $275
All CCU options will soon cost an additional $5, this also applies to $0 CCUs