- 11 ore fa
Un nuovo videodiario sullo sviluppo di Star Citizen si effetti particellari e altro.
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00:00Grazie a tutti.
00:30Siamo planning per 3.0
00:32Ma first, let's head to Austin for a studio update
00:37Hey guys, Jake Ross here, producer in Austin
00:39The wheels are in motion on several features here in Austin
00:42Let's dive right in and see what's been going on this month
00:44On the design side, we've been doing a new pass on the Price Fixer tool
00:48Which is the master Excel sheet where all of our pricing structure is laid out
00:51We've got a bunch of new assets that have come online
00:54And our designer working on it, Pete McKay
00:57Has all the new ships, new items, new armor suits and some other FPS goodies
01:01So Pete has been working to make sure they all fall within the pricing balance of the game
01:05As well as balancing them to the most recent design pass of the items
01:08What's really exciting about this now, as opposed to 6 months ago
01:11Is that we're getting far enough with the overall design of the items in the game
01:14To better understand the gameplay implication of the items
01:16Although this has required us to go back and make another pass through the items
01:20To bring older items in line, we're now able to more accurately predict where their base prices should sit
01:26On top of this, as we are getting new missions in the game
01:29We are doing an additional pass on mission rewards, insurance prices and respawn timers
01:34We are also setting up the shop inventories utilizing the new shop tech from LA Engineering Team
01:39In addition, we are getting NPCs into some of the main hub areas of our PU landing zones
01:45Junior designer Robert Gaither has been focusing on Grim Hex in order to prove out the behaviors
01:50But the plan is to extend these general behaviors to the other landing zones like Port Olisar and Levski
01:55The overall goal here is to start to create a general sense of ambience
01:59And start to bring the levels to life
02:01Finally, we have Miles Eckhart
02:03Getting Miles Eckhart, our mission giver, into the game
02:06Has required a lot of collaboration and work from several different teams
02:09The Usables team has created the tech that allows us to link extraneous objects
02:13Such as the bar stool, to other usables, the high bar table
02:16And still register items on the table properly, such as Eckhart's glass
02:20The mission system team has given us the ability to look for missions with the Eckhart Tag
02:24Figure out what is currently available for players
02:27And pass those via subsumption to the player's mission log for acceptance or rejection
02:32Between the AI and FPS programmers, they have created an animation technique we're calling feather blending
02:37That will allow us to blend between usable object animations
02:40Such as the generic sitting animation for a bar stool
02:43And the animations related to the mission giver conversations
02:46The subsumption tech and programming team
02:48Have been facilitating all of this through the subsumption tools
02:52And by the game code that goes with it
02:54Overall, we've made a lot of progress in the last few weeks
02:57And we are looking forward to polishing this up for the 3.0 release
03:01On the art side of things here in Austin
03:03Josh Koons, our ship artist, has been working with the tech art team
03:07To finish creating the LODs and the damage pass of the Cutlass Black
03:10He was also busy making tweaks to the cockpit area and the rotating nacelles
03:14Based on the tech art feedback and wishes
03:16He has now moved on to creating an awesome looking render and videos
03:20Which will be used on the website and various marketing events
03:24We can now say that the formerly top secret project that lead ship artist Chris Smith
03:29Has been working on is the Gian Nox bike
03:31Starting around March, he has been tirelessly modeling and texturing the spike from the beginning to the end
03:36In the last month, he has been working with many team members on creating the incredible artwork
03:41For the brochure and slick marketing release video for this new ship
03:45As well as an interview on how it all came together
03:47The server engineering team has been working closely with DevOps
03:50To integrate and test Diffusion in a QA environment
03:53So far, things are looking good
03:54The team has started working with gameplay engineering to show them how to best utilize the features that Diffusion can
03:59offer
04:00We will continue to work with them over the next few months
04:03To identify new and old gameplay features that will be best suited as Diffusion services
04:07In time, we will move much more of the feature logic in Diffusion services
04:11Allowing for higher scalability and optimal performance
04:15This month in the PU animation team
04:18We are starting on the NPC usables for counters
04:20This will include working with our shopkeepers and bartenders NPCs
04:24And collaborating with designing to bring these elements to life
04:27Once these are complete, a player would be able to walk into a shop to buy merchandise from NPCs that
04:32sell weapons, spacesuits, clothing, ship parts, and other such things
04:36This will incorporate our wildline system as well with face animation and audio captured at our mocap shoots
04:42To complete these features, we needed to capture a few transition elements that were missing
04:46So we shuffled some desks around and set up a quick mocap shoot in our office
04:51Along with the bartender, we are also getting the usable for the barstool up and running
04:55Once this is done, a player will be able to go and sit at a barstool and order a drink
04:59Finally, we finished the carry system animations
05:01As a player, you can now pick up a standard sized box and walk around with it
05:05So now we have all the needed tech to expand this mechanic to pick up a wide range of things
05:10and carry it wherever needed
05:11On the ship animation side in Austin, we are wrapping up setting up the standard for the cockpit experience
05:17As well as polishing and creating new improved animations for our next release
05:20In addition to various bug fixes within the cockpit, we are working with the design and programming teams
05:26To bring the same level of interactions you get in the cockpits to the manned turrets in the ships
05:31This includes g-force reactions, hit reactions, as well as a g-lock pass-out
05:35And wake-up sequence for when you're pulling too many g's
05:40The DevOps team is quietly adding more hardware and increasing network capacity
05:44To handle the necessary increase in build activity connected to the 3.0 release
05:48Everything is growing in size, which means increasing demands on the build system and its various subsystems
05:54Meanwhile, the LiveOps team has completed the build out of the latest server size expansion
05:58Supporting the latest rev of shopping and subsumption
06:01They're still tuning and making adjustments, but it's always exciting to see the new services coming online
06:07For June, Austin QA has been all hands on deck testing new features and preparing for 3.0
06:12Major testing items for our group include new overhauled Star Marine weapons, testing of the Crusader moons,
06:17Levski, new missions, the improved mobiglass interface and apps, particularly the star map
06:21And ships, lots of ships
06:23Many ships have come online for item 2.0, so each of them requires a complete sweep for issues
06:27As well as a review of old issues, such as animation and ship idling
06:30To see what may have carried over in the new implementation
06:33Stability and performance has been a major focus as well
06:35With Austin QA working closely with our UK counterparts to conduct regular playtests and captures
06:40Squadron 42 testing has been working closely with the rest of the team
06:43As new tech means new bugs that are often shared between both groups of testers
06:47We've continued providing additional support for the animation team here in Austin as well
06:51Handling mocap file cleanup, supporting setup and teardown for pickup shoots
06:55And other tasks that free up our animators to handle more important items
06:59Our normal engine and editor testing has kicked into high gear
07:02As the surge of new tools and tech from developers in all four studios
07:05Means we are constantly checking shelved check-ins and binaries for problems
07:09Making sure everything is ready to go
07:11Before it gets checked in and turned over to the rest of the company to use is very important
07:15This has included changes to resource management for objects and planets
07:19New build distribution tools, server changes to support subsumption
07:23As well as network code improvements and a refactor of the material manager
07:28The player relations team continues to prepare for upcoming 3.0 work
07:31And can't wait to give to the backers the new player experience that will go on the website
07:35And match the new content coming up in the game
07:38They'll also be adding to the Evocati ranks in the coming weeks
07:42And are excited to announce two new hires in addition to more headcount in Austin, Manchester and our Frankfurt studio
07:50Work continues at a breakneck pace and so does our excitement about the upcoming release
07:54Thanks for tuning in and for all your support
07:57See you guys in the verse
08:00Hey guys, this is Benoit with Turbunet and this is our update
08:03So we have moved 036a version of Spectrum up to the PTU for regression testing
08:09This first first release in this branch is only for testing all of the backend changes that we've made
08:16We're preparing the groundwork for desktop integration
08:18And so we've changed all of our actions which are the core of how this application is functioning
08:23So we've transferred to a new standard
08:25This will help us manage how we do desktop release of Spectrum
08:30Which will be able to have a window in the overlay and a window on your desktop at the same
08:35time
08:35But by sharing all the resources
08:37And so we're laying the groundwork for this
08:39So this first release on PTU is only for regression testing
08:42And we're going to be throwing in new features into 036
08:46The first one being the new form editor
08:48And so we're introducing drafts
08:51So when you create new posts in a thread
08:53We will save your draft
08:55So you can go on back to browsing
08:57And then come back and complete your draft for every thread
08:59We're going to allow you to do inline images
09:01And so we're changing all of the way the markup processing is working in the editor
09:06Adding more markdown support for more styling
09:09Like styling of links, inline images
09:11So you're not forced to use the frame that we have for all the images
09:15Or when you make galleries
09:17And so that's going to
09:17We're hoping that this is what you guys wanted
09:20So we've done a lot of work on the editor on that front
09:22Another major feature in 036a is custom roles
09:27That's the big feature
09:28And so we've been working hard at creating the new member lists
09:31That you can see directly from your Spectrum org management part
09:36Then you'll be able to change roles of your users
09:39You know, simply by visiting their profiles
09:41And so the custom roles system basically allow you to create new roles
09:45That have their custom set of permissions
09:47On top of the ones that are provided by the org system
09:49And so this should give you guys a lot of flexibility
09:53In how you assign people to groups
09:55How you let them see specific sub-forums or sub-chats within your orgs
10:00What goes with this is also an update to mini-profiles
10:02We're not happy with the way mini-profiles have been working up to now
10:05And so we've been changing that
10:07So we're going to a more compact setup
10:10That will have a set of actions on all of them
10:13One thing that we're trying to implement at the same time
10:16As we're bringing these new member profiles in
10:18Is we're going to be re-importing
10:20We're re-implementing post counts
10:22And so now you'll be able to see post counts
10:24For all the users on the system
10:26So you'll be able to see how many posts they've made
10:29How many replies they've created
10:31And we're also introducing the concept of karma
10:34So when people upvote content that you've created
10:36You gain karma
10:37And that is shown in your Spectrum mini-profile
10:41This new succinct profile also will have a hotlink to message people
10:44So you don't have to click on them and click on private message
10:47You can just message them directly
10:48So this is our 036 version
10:50We're going to be starting to merge our branches very soon
10:53More groundwork on the backend on voice
10:55So we're really hard at work right now
10:57Working the transmission part of our voice infrastructure
11:00How we're going to be able to have servers directing
11:04And routing people to different voice servers
11:06How that's going to work
11:08And what kind of data channel we're going to have
11:10Because we have additional data to carry in this project
11:13Not just voice
11:13And so we need to be able to carry these data channels as well
11:16And so we're looking at how we're going to be doing that
11:19So there's a lot of resources dedicated to that right now
11:21Totally unrelated to Spectrum
11:23We've been working for 3.0 for a new system to handle crashes
11:29We've developed years ago
11:31A system called Panic that tracks your client crashes
11:34And so we needed to basically reintegrate that to get more visibility on it
11:39And so we've integrated our Panic system with Sentry
11:43Which is a super nice UI that we're using on the Spectrum side already
11:47But that we're now going to be using on the game side
11:49That will allow us to track your client crashes
11:52You know, see the repro counts
11:54Assign those to developers
11:55Link them to GR issues
11:58View regression
11:59So we get regression notifications
12:00And all this stuff from the game crashes
12:03So we've developed a custom SDK integration with Sentry
12:07It's going to be super good for testing
12:09It's going to help developers in the testing phases for 3.0
12:12So we're super excited about that because that work is completed
12:15Otherwise our main teams are working on Welcome to SC
12:18The new Star Citizen website revamp
12:20And so that's progressing
12:22We're now in full coding mode
12:24Most of the design work is finished on all mobile and tablets and everything
12:28And so right now we're developing
12:29And so we don't have anything to show yet
12:31But you know, soon hopefully
12:34And so that's our Turbinin update for this month
12:37Thank you guys
12:40Cutlass Black's looking pretty good
12:42Josh has done a great job updating the ship
12:44Yeah, no he definitely has
12:45I mean the ship team in Austin is killing it
12:47Chris Smith recently finished the knots
12:49Which went on sale this past Friday
12:52And it's pretty much done
12:55We've been flying it around on moons
12:56And we're looking forward to getting it in your guys' hands in the very near future
13:00But I would say the incredible attention does not stop just at ships
13:04Our VFX team has been hard to work to get other cool effects like engine trails ready for the 3
13:09.0 release
13:10Let's catch up with our VFX team to see all the impressive effects they've been creating
13:23I'm Mike Snowden, I'm the visual effects director
13:25We get to play with lots of particles
13:27Of which there are many in Star Citizen
13:29From a kind of wisp of steam from a mug on a table
13:32To a capital ship exploding
13:35There'll be effects needed for both of those things
13:37And anything in between as well
13:38The challenge with VFX is maintaining the level of fidelity
13:42The kind of quality, the visual quality that Star Citizen requires
13:46Maintaining that across that kind of range of scale
13:48Seeing these kind of things up close
13:50Versus seeing them way way off in the distance
13:53And making sure they always look good
13:54There's lots of challenges
13:56Both artistically but also optimization wise as well
14:00Making sure that they run efficiently in the game
14:02I'm currently setting up the engine trails and entry and exit effects for the atmosphere
14:08Basically going through each ship
14:11Setting up the particle libraries for each ship
14:13And setting the correct colour values for each manufacturer
14:17Chris is a big fan of the engine trails
14:19For gameplay reasons primarily
14:21But you know it's something that is very much a part of the Star Citizen dream I guess
14:25He always kind of saw the engine trails being a part of that
14:29There's also going to be atmospheric entry effects for ships
14:32And anything actually
14:33Not just ships but objects that are passing through atmosphere
14:35Exit effects as well when ships are actually leaving the atmosphere
14:38Contrails when vehicles and ships are moving around at speed on the planets
14:43So those are the three kind of things that we think about
14:45When we're talking about atmospheric flight effects
14:47When we were looking at the challenges that things like engine trails were going to give us
14:51We essentially knew that we couldn't really do it with the current tech we've got
14:54We had various attempts at doing so
14:56We essentially identified what the problems were with the current tech
15:00All kinds of things really
15:01The old system was completely based on one thread
15:05So it's a very linear system
15:08It started very small and was built upon and built upon
15:10And it became kind of a monster
15:13It was jumping from one part to the other part to the other part
15:16And it was really, it was a mess
15:18The old system was computing each particle on the CPU, each frame
15:25And then it had to sort of download all this data to the graphic card every frame
15:32To make these engine trails a reality in Star Citizen
15:35We had to bring together a team of people
15:38It's not something that we could solve on our own as VFX artists
15:41So we had to involve graphics programmers to give us the features that our editor needs
15:47To kind of build these kind of engine trails
15:49Lots and lots of particles for example
15:51So one thing that we didn't have in the editor was GPU particles
15:54With the support of the tech team and the code team
15:57We're all working together to generate this GPU particle system
16:01Which is essentially the driving force of these trails and entry and exit effects
16:06Because at the moment we can only put a certain amount of CPU particles on screen
16:09Before it affects the CPU of course
16:11To speed up the system we have to reorganize the design based on how a modern PC works
16:18Data can take like a slow path and a fast path
16:21And part of this is also to reduce the amount of data that the CPU has to upload to the
16:26GPU each frame
16:27We can do it in a way where it only uploads when the particle is born the data gets uploaded
16:33In some cases we don't even have to
16:35The data just need to be uploaded once
16:38And then it can sort of manage itself on the GPU
16:41Without the CPU having to intervene very much
16:45We have these two concepts of deterministic and non-deterministic particles
16:52Well, not deterministic and non-deterministic states
16:56And the most of the states are deterministic
16:58Which means that you only need to upload them on birth
17:03Well, maybe some states can even, state buffers can even be shared among multiple emitters
17:10And emitters is the point or the area where new particles get spawned from
17:15So by doing this separation you only need to update the states that are non-deterministic
17:23For all the other states, well, you still need to know the state that's a particular point in time
17:29But it's much faster to compute
17:33You don't actually need to store the state
17:35You can just sort of derive these formulas
17:39Making those trails behave correctly through the gameplay
17:43And kind of react to what the ship's doing
17:44That's where we needed the game coder to give us the kind of the hooks to trigger these effects
17:50The code I write is made very generic
17:53So it's made so that all kinds of particles can be set up
17:58So currently we're using the engine trails as a test for this system
18:03But it's supposed to cater to every kind of particle you can imagine
18:09If it needs to be enabled, disabled or the strength adjusted during gameplay
18:13Then the system should be able to handle that
18:17I built up the system completely with DataForge live preview in mind
18:22So whenever you change anything in DataForge
18:25Everything will be reloaded, will be adjusted to whatever you've set in DataForge
18:30So the game will have a live preview as the feature says
18:34So it allows VFX artists to more easily iterate over their VFX setup
18:40Most of the time VFX artists will say
18:43Like this should change a little bit
18:45This should be thicker or thinner
18:47It should be different
18:48And then either I make it possible for them to do it themselves
18:52So add a property to DataForge
18:56So they can drag a slider, make it thinner or thicker
19:00But sometimes I'll have to go in code
19:03Get some other strength from like the Thrust source strength or the boost strength
19:09And add it in a formula so they can use it better
19:12When all the effects are complete
19:14We will be able to lay down the foundation of setting up new effects
19:17Today for example I finished the code for first iteration of collisions
19:22Non-deterministic particles can like
19:24Yeah, you can shoot them into a scene
19:26And it will bounce off the geometry in the scene
19:30We have another feature and that's fields
19:32It's a way to compute the field around the geometrical shape
19:37So we want to use this on the ships
19:41When you pass through particles
19:44They will sort of get transformed along the field
19:47The great thing about engine trails and atmosphere
19:50Is that even on the moons it's going to be an atmosphere
19:53So you're going to see in 3.0 there's going to be the three moons
19:57They're going to have certain levels of atmosphere
19:59They'll vary but you're going to get some really nice
20:02Kind of subtle atmospheric entry effects
20:04With engine trails knowing where someone is
20:07It's going to be so useful if you're flying around in a group
20:10If you're not necessarily fighting against each other
20:13If you're just flying around in a convoy or whatever
20:16It's going to be really nice to be able to see where people are going
20:18But also in combat as well you're going to get a nice sense of
20:21Kind of the visceral sense I guess with engine trails
20:23That's going to provide quite different experience to what we've currently got
20:26For the player they will notice this
20:28The performance is much better
20:31With this new system you can have
20:33I don't know, you can have ten or a hundred of these effects
20:36And it still runs
20:37Also we will have certain GPU features
20:40That wasn't just wasn't possible
20:43And it wasn't implemented in the whole system
20:46And in general our intention is that the visual quality will be much better
20:52It will be much cooler, much more dynamic effects
20:55It's really great to be able to focus on really cool new things
20:58That we can use again like across the game really
21:02The hooks that we've got from GameCode now
21:04Are going to help us drive all kinds of new features and effects
21:07The graphics side of things
21:09The new particle system itself
21:11Is going to enable us to kind of create more stuff as well
21:14So where we had maybe a hundred sparks before
21:16We're going to be able to have a thousand sparks
21:18As a VFX artist it's kind of exciting to be able to do that
21:21Especially on the scope of our game
21:35Wow, okay, so pretty cool
21:37You know, we built a whole new GPU particle system
21:40So we can have thousands, hundreds of thousands
21:43Even millions of particles in a way that the old CPU system couldn't handle
21:48And one of the main reasons for this was to be able to do things like engine trails
21:53Contrails and various other effects that require a high amount of particles
21:57And I really think it will make a big difference to space combat
22:01When you can sort of see the, well even in the atmospheric combat
22:05You can see where the ships are moving and what direction they're going
22:08And it's almost like you have a pretty cool vista
22:11We showed it in some of the B-roll where you could sort of see this battle happening in the
22:14distance
22:14And engine trails and explosions
22:16And I think it will add a lot to the texture of space combat in Star Citizen
22:20And also Squadron 42
22:22So that's some of the cool stuff that's made possible by you guys
22:26And that's it for today's episode
22:28Thanks to all of our backers
22:30It's your support that allows us to build the game we've always dreamed of
22:33Yes, and thanks to our subscribers for making shows like this possible
22:37July Subscribers Ship of the Month will be the consolation
22:40So be sure to crew up and take it out for a spin
22:43Last month's ship, the Caterpillar, will be on sale for subscribers this weekend only
22:48So grab yours before it's too late
22:51Yes, and don't forget to tune in tomorrow for a special happy hour
22:54Where the community team will be answering your burning questions
22:57Hopefully I'm not sure if that's about entry or re-entry or whatever about Star Citizen
23:02And until next week we'll see you
23:05Around the Verse
23:08And we'll be gonna get back to you
23:09And we'll see you next time
23:12Happy News
23:12To the New Year
23:12And we'll see you next time
23:13See you next time
23:13Happy News
23:13Bye
23:13Bye
23:13Grazie per la visione!
23:43Grazie a tutti!
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