VFX:
The VFX team had a great summit. All the team members met here in Manchester to further define the way forward for SC effects, Besides that there have been massive improvements in the damage system, coupled with some tricky techniques developed by the ship guys. The damaged ships are really starting to look cool and be efficient. Arena Commander has also received additional VFX as well as polishing the ones already in place.
RSI MUSEUM: Ultima Underworld 1 & 2
BHVR
Design
Since we’ve already posted more than enough words on this site this month, such as our mobiGlas Deep Dive, here’s a condensed report for BHVR design team to balance it out.
The design team was implicated in the UI summit. Some answers were found and the attack plan was refined.
Lots of effort was put towards the social module. Shops were populated, maps were refined, elevators were fixed, bar glasses were cleaned.
Even more effort was put towards planetside. Designers were busy with working on paper design, whiteboxing, and general support for more and more locations.
The mobiGlas deep dive article was written and posted. Hope you liked it! If you haven’t seen it I assure you it’s worth your while.
And last but not least, some of us got the chance to participate in our first Star Citizen panel for IGDA Montreal! It was a great experience and we got to meet some of the fans, which is always an honor for us! You can find out more info here!
Art
This is what art was up to this month:
We did a quick optimization pass on Terra to make sure that our work stays clean during the whole creation process. We began working on the paper layout for the additional Terra sectors and polished some of the old shops while optimizing the performance for each.
ArcCorp was revisited to merge new shops, polish some of the visuals, and to make sure that the frame rate is stable.
Nyx’s paper layout and WhiteBox was finished.
Finally, we spent some time dressing a tutorial map.
Concept-wise, we’ve been refining certain key areas of Levsky, the former mining colony based in the Nyx system, such as the Grand Barter, which is the equivalent of the TDD for this location and visually represented as a flea market.
We also worked on a prefab system that QV Planet Services used to use when they were trying to mine the asteroid. It’s composed of platforms that hook up into the rocky tunnels with hydraulic columns to support the heavy ceilings, beams, clamps, etc…
UI
This month Behaviour hosted a UI summit with invitees travelling from Austin, LA, Denver, and UK . What an experience! It was great to finally get everyone in the same room to talk about UI across the entire game. Exciting stuff!
We also continued to work on chat UI, contact list, multiplayer hangar UI, various logo design tasks, decals, and the pause screen also got some love.
Additionally we worked on mock-ups for a new and improved holotable experience, and started work on branding the mobiGlas depending on which shop you are visiting.
Programming
This month we’ve put a lot of effort into solidifying the multiplayer experience. Specifically, we’ve added UI Elements to provide more guidance and feedback to the players regarding the whole “Invite a friend to my Hangar” process. We’ve also greatly improved the stability of the actual multiplayer hangar as well as looking into the multiplayer planetside experience. A good deal of time was also spent on the chat implementation which is starting to look pretty good, and soon will be ready for an eventual release. We’ve also gotten back to working, ever so slightly, on the mobiGlas in order to fine tune the shopping experience that we hope to demo fairly soon.
You should soon be able to get your hands on a few changes to the holotable including control customization. Your favorite interactive gadget should be a bit easier to use with the addition of automatic filtering and sorting. As far as control customization is concerned, you should have more control than ever on controlling continuous inputs with the addition of a new curve editing tool. This tool will allow you to easily remap how the input should affect specific control options.
Illfonic
How’s it going Citizens? Here at IllFonic we’ve been working feverishly to get the FPS module in a good state for showing at PAX East. This has been quite the challenge as a few new things came online recently which introduced quite a few new bugs that required a slew of items and animations to be reworked. Luckily, we had Mr. Bender from CIG Santa Monica on site to help out on the animation side of things. He has been instrumental in getting all of the new animations squared away with our local team. Beyond that, he came during the worst snow we’ve had in over a year, so… Who knows? He might even become a local!
Engineering
Squashing bugs, bugs, and more bugs. The engineers have also been polishing the zero-g push & pull system, which has been a challenge, but is coming along nicely. A large amount of work has been done on the HUD and UI, including elements to support the FPS game modes. Lastly, programmers have also been supporting the animation team, which has been quite a bit since most of the mechanics are driven by the animation system.
Art
Squashing bugs, bugs, and more bugs. The art team has also been putting the final touches in terms of lighting and performance tweaking on the levels that will be shown at PAX East and release with the module. Final models were done on our new weapons and gadgets, and material work for these models is now under way.
Animation
Boy oh boy have these guys been busy. Over the last month they have been hooking up all of the new animations with the new rig. This literally means that every animation needs to be re-targeted and exported so it’s quite a bit of work. Steve Bender has been here to help out and make sure that everything looks great in both 1st person and 3rd person perspectives. They have also been busy squashing bugs, bugs, and more bugs.
Design
Squashing bugs, bugs, and more bugs. The designers have also been focused on tweaking weapon balance, the aiming model, and play-testing the levels. In addition to the work being done for PAX, progress continues on the new game modes and maps that will be coming after the initial release of the FPS module.
VFX
On the VFX side, new visual effects were created for the grappling device while all other weapon FX were revisited and polished up. Everybody is happy with how they are looking now and we hope all of you Citizens will enjoy them too.
[REDACTED] out, see you at PAX East!
