News: All your up to the date Official RSI news in one thread!!!

Star Citizen Patch 11
5513.18306
FEBRUARY 18TH 2014

• NEW FEATURES
  • NEW FEATURE: Moving targets added to Firing Range
  • NEW FEATURE: Freelancer cockpit updated
  • NEW FEATURE: Firing Range sound improvements
  • NEW FEATURE: Blue activate buttons added to Cutlass
  • NEW FEATURE: Additional Cutlass functionality added
  • NEW FEATURE: Ammo items now display in Holotable

• KNOWN ISSUES
  • KNOWN ISSUE: You can get stuck in the Deluxe Hangar door
  • KNOWN ISSUE: Cutlass does not display in Holotable
  • KNOWN ISSUE: Behring M4A Laser can flicker while mounted on weapon mount
  • KNOWN ISSUE: Hands offset when grabbing controls in Avenger
  • KNOWN ISSUE: Character must jump to access Constellation elevator platform
  • KNOWN ISSUE: Incorrect gun geometry on starboard side of Freelancer

• BUG FIXES
  • BUG FIX: Various geometry collision improvements
  • BUG FIX: Fixed first person mouse look in some cockpits
  • BUG FIX: Ship third person mouse look movement now matches player third person mouse look movement
  • BUG FIX: Resolved issue where ship third person camera view would zoom all the way in or all the way out
  • BUG FIX: Resolved crash issue involving Cutlass
  • BUG FIX: Various ship animation improvements
  • BUG FIX: Item/ship graphic no longer remains after deactivating Holotable
  • BUG FIX: Bullet impact and particle graphic polish
  • BUG FIX: Buggy no longer moves on its own
  • BUG FIX: No longer able to exit buggy if there isn’t a clear spot for player
  • BUG FIX: Can no longer exit buggy while it’s moving
  • BUG FIX: Weapon mount targets health adjusted
  • BUG FIX: Ball Turret re-added to the Super Hornet
  • BUG FIX: Resolved various crash and crash on exit issues
  • BUG FIX: File structure cleanup
  • BUG FIX: Holotable bug fixes & graphic updates
  • BUG FIX: Prevent weapon mount collision from becoming offset when fired
  • BUG FIX: Player no longer moves forward when sidestepping
  • BUG FIX: Resolved collision issue with Hornet tracker Rotodome
  • BUG FIX: No longer able to clip through Foot locker

 

Hangar Patch 11 Available :
FEBRUARY 18TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,
We’ve issued an update to the Star Citizen Hangar module! Today’s patch is primarily about fixing bugs reported by Citizens, but it also improves the functionality of the Cutlass, the Freelancer’s cockpit, the weapons mounts and enhances the recently released firing range. Your holotable will now display ammo, the firing range targets will now move and activate buttons can now be found in the Cutlass. You can find the full list of changes in the patch notes.

You can access the current patch by logging in to your Hangar launcher.

 

SUBSCRIBER YEAR TWO PLANS
FEBRUARY 19TH 2014

Greetings Citizens,
Many of our backers have recently started the second year of their development subscriptions. We’ve been hard at work coming up with new rewards for the dedicated subscribers who have helped support Star Citizen so much in the past year. We’re excited to announce those plans today!

The biggest change for Year Two is that all Subscribers will start earning in-game display items for their hangars (and eventually elsewhere.) Every two months we’ll add a surprise item to your account; it could be anything from a unique fish for your tank to a futuristic toolbox for your hangar! These items won’t give any special gameplay advantage and they will be available to discover in Star Citizen once the persistent universe launches… but for now, the only way to display them is by becoming a development subscriber!


(Above: Part of the Year One subscriber installation being created for the Los Angeles office.)

SUBSCRIBER REWARDS YEAR TWO

Here are the updated reward tiers for 2014:


Artwork for future cloth patches

CENTURION (BASE)

• Access to Jump Point, the monthly digital magazine of Star Citizen. A lengthy monthly newsletter including updates from the team, exclusive in-universe fiction and behind-the-screens information about Star Citizen’s development. Subscribers can access the entire collection of Jump Point back issues at any time.

• A new surprise decorative item for your Hangar added to your account every two months!

• Access to “The Vault,” a collection of Star Citizen artwork that would otherwise never be seen, including ‘paths not taken’ discarded concept art for the true collector. The Vault also includes full resolution versions of all imagery used to create each issue of Jump Point.

• A catalog of Star Citizen subscriber merchandise, available at times throughout the year. (Including the prototype ship patches and Vanduul size comparison poster seen in this post!)

• The ability to provide questions for Chris Roberts’ weekly “10 for the Chairman” sessions.

• Access to a Subscriber-only forum and chat room!

CENTURION (AFTER 12 MONTHS)

• Your name in the game! We can’t tell you where you’ll find it, but if you subscribe for at least twelve months your name will be located somewhere in the Star Citizen world.

• Get VIP admission to all future RSI Fan events. You will receive priority reservation for CItizenCons and other conventions!

• Website Beta Access – join the elite team called upon to test new web content, like the Organization System and Galactapedia (forthcoming.)

• Website Beta Access – join the elite team called upon to test new web content, like the Organization System!

• Get a single-use 15%-Off coupon for the store. (Applicable on digital goods only.)

• “ TEST PILOT” access badge – a single-use token allowing you one day of access to test fly any of the five base spacecraft each month during a future dogfighting alpha test.

• Centurion: Year Two decals for your ship.

IMPERATOR (BASE)

All of the perks of Centurion Package PLUS:

• Get VIP admission to all future RSI Fan events. You will receive priority reservation for CItizenCons and other conventions!

• Two copies of each digital Hangar item. Share with your friends!

• “VANDUUL TEST PILOT” badge allowing access to fly the Vanduul Scythe during the upcoming Dogfighting Module test phase. Each month gives an additional 24 hours of access to the Scythe!

IMPERATOR (AFTER 12 MONTHS)

• Create a pirate! We’re populating Spider with NPCs and you will have the right to name one and create their backstory for the official Galactapedia! (CIG reserves the right to edit any content created as part of this perk.)

• “ADVANCED TEST PILOT” access badge – a single-use token allowing you one day of access to test fly any available spacecraft each month during a future dogfighting alpha test. Includes rare ships and variants! TheDFM will launch with a selection of single-seat fighters and add other ships with ongoing patches.

• Imperator: Year Two Decals for your ships.

You can learn more about subscribing here.


Year One Imperator names will be part of this installation in the Los Angeles office!

JUMP POINT: YEAR ONE

We’re also happy to report that Jump Point: Volume 1, the promised collection of all 2012-2013 Jump Point issues, is going to press as we speak. All 12-month Imperators (past or present) will be able to order a limited-edition hardcover copy for the cost of shipping alone ($20). Additional softcovers will be available for sale to 12-month Centurions (past or present) at a cost of $40 (which basically covers printing and shipping). The softcover version will also be available in limited numbers to all backers for $80. More details about the book will be made available shortly, when preorders go live.


WIP - Vanduul ship size comparison poster

 

Letter from the Chairman: $39 Million
FEBRUARY 21ST 2014



Greetings Citizens,
We have reached another crowd funding record! Even though the team is heads down working to finish the Dogfighting Module, our backers are continuing to spread the word and make Star Citizen a success. To everyone who has joined recently: welcome! To everyone who has helped us reach this point: thank you!


At $39 million you unlocked the penultimate user-chosen star system! Here’s the description:

• UDS-2943-01-22 System – Breaking news: UEEastrophysicists based at the famed Klavs observatory station have utilized advanced telescopy and other remote sensing technologies to identify a truly unusual star system on the fringes of known space. The object, once thought to be a single massive star, is actually a trinary star consisting of two white dwarfs and an active pulsar orbiting one another. Because of the complex gravitic factors at work, it is now believed that a jump point leading to the system likely exists in or near explored human space. Beyond the bizarre stellar makeup, the composition of the system is all but unknown. Could planets exist in this carefully balanced web? What else might have been drawn there? One thing is certain: the first Citizen to travel to UDS-2943-01-22 will have one hell of a view!

I would also like to share some artwork of the UEE’s new Javelin-class destroyer. You may have caught a glimpse of the Javelin on this week’s _Wingman’s Hangar_… and now I’d like to share a closer look! The ship was designed by David Hobbins. David has been working hard to create not just a cool exterior, but also an interior that evokes the crowded corridors of a real world destroyer. The plan is for it to be modular, with parts we can swap out for different roles (assault destroyer, LRR destroyer and so on!) The Javelin is still in the conceptual stages… but I think it’s cool enough to share with the community!


As I said last time, I’m very excited about our next stretch goal. Our previous stretch goals have been about expanding Star Citizen immediately; adding new ships, new systems and more. Each one has added something to the game while allowing us to widen our bandwidth: hire more employees, expand our development facilities, purchase new technology and so on. Now it’s time to look a little further in the future!


Star Citizen isn’t just about the game we launch with. We’re going into this building not only an immersive launch experience, but the platforms and the tools to let us keep expanding the game to meet the available technology. The game won’t be a static experience: we want to build Star Citizen in a way that the experience will be fresh in five years, ten years and into the foreseeable future.

Among the most common feature requests for Star Citizen are atmospheric combat and ground exploration. These are the single biggest things we would like to include in the game, but they’re also something we know we can’t have day one. Our universe is a big place, and creating the hundreds of existing landouts properly is enough of a challenge… building entire continents and atmospheres in the current system would take a lifetime.


That’s where procedural generation comes in. If we can develop a truly great procedural generation system, one that lets us create entire planets for you to populate, then we can expand the game to add these features (and more) in the future.

• Procedural Generation R&D Team – This stretch goal will allocate funding for Cloud Imperium to develop procedural generation technology for future iterations of Star Citizen. Advanced procedural generation will be necessary for creating entire planets worth of exploration and development content. A special strike team of procedural generation-oriented developers will be assembled to make this technology a reality.

I hope you will agree with me that this is an exciting goal, and that you will join me in this commitment to Star Citizen’s future! Thank you for continuing to make Star Citizen possible and for continuing to help it grow. Remember that next time, we will reveal the $42 million goal… which should be a fitting objective for such an auspicious number!

— Chris Roberts

 

Updates: PAX East, Wall of Honor and More!
FEBRUARY 27TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,
Big things are happening at Cloud Imperium! The team is busy getting ready for the Dogfighting Module premiere at PAX East; there’s a lot to be done, we’re excited to show you what we’ve been working on! Meanwhile, the team at Turbulent has launched a new build of the Roberts Space Industries website, incorporating a number of bug fixes and adding some new features.

PAX East
Mark your calenders for the evening of April 10th! The Star Citizen team is headed to PAX East! Chris Roberts and dogfighting team will be headed to Boston this April to show off the Dogfighting Module to Citizens in a special event. The event will run from 8 to midnight, with subscribers and concierge getting in an hour early.

The Star Citizen Dogfighting Module reveal event will be held at a venue outside the PAX East show so that Citizens who do not have PAX tickets can attend. The event takes place the day before the show, so Citizens will get the first chance to see. As with the Hangar launch at Gamescom, we have set up a venue that can hold roughly 1,500 people. The registration process will launch next week, and there will be no cost for Star Citizen backers to attend. Because of the limited number of tickets, only backers can attend; no plus ones.

We’re also holding a special contest for the event! Three members each from the six most active Star Citizen Organizations (two in each category, large, medium and small) will be invited to have a special interview session with Chris Roberts during PAX! Keep in mind that organization activity will take into account a number of factors beyond number of members, so stay active on the forums and the chat! Winners will be selected on March 14th, to allow time for members to make travel plans.

Last, but not least, Star Citizen will be appearing on the show floor! We’ve partnered with a hardware manufacturer to show the DFM in a shared booth; expect more details to be available soon. Chris Roberts will also be speaking on a PC Gamer panel on Friday, April 11th at 4:30 PM (location TBA.) Here’s the official description:




The (Incredible) Future of PC Gaming, hosted by PC Gamer
The immortal hobby of PC gaming continues to experience a renaissance of innovation, affordability, and accessibility. Free-to-play, an explosive indie scene, eSports, virtual reality, livestreaming, 4K displays, crowdfunding, Steam Early Access, and the growth of Linux position the PC as a truly vibrant platform.


But how will technologies like gameplay streaming, SteamOS, the Oculus Rift, and others shapes PC gaming? More importantly, what new experiences will the PC games of the near future provide? PC Gamer asks our panel of innovators and PC gaming stakeholders to paint a clear picture of the next five years. Stick around to participate in the audience Q&A.

Panelists:
Evan Lahti [Editor-in-Chief, PC Gamer], Palmer Luckey [Founder, Oculus VR], John Smedley [President, Sony Online Entertainment], Tom Petersen [Director of Technical Marketing, Nvidia], Chris Roberts [Founder, Cloud Imperium Games]




Wall of Honor
Last week, we showed our plans for the first year subscriber Wall of Honor which will be displayed in Cloud Imperium’s Los Angeles office. Citizens who are eligible to be included on the wall can now select the name they would like printed on the display by going to My Account > Settings > Profile and filling out the “Wall of Honor” field with their choice.

Names should be thirty alphanumeric characters or less, and they will be edited for profanity. Anyone who subscribed for one year of Imperator or Imperator Prime time during the first year of subscriptions is eligible for this perk. If you are part of that group and the Wall of Honor field is not appearing on your account, please contact CS immediately.

Imperators have SEVEN DAYS to enter their preferred names; the list will go to the printers on Friday, March 7th. If you do not opt to select a name, your current Community Moniker will be used.


Mustang Size Comparison

Mustang Poll
It was a close race, but those wanting to wait to see the Consolidated Outland Mustang in the CryEngine edged out those who want to buy it now! As a result, we will not be having a Mustang promo this week; but check back in the future when we will officially launch Star Citizen’s second starter ship! And stay tuned tomorrow, when we will reveal the initial specs for the Mustang and the AX Gunship project being built by the TNGS teams!

New Comment System
Per your feedback, the Comm-Link commenting system has been totally revamped! As you can see below, it is now a threaded system separate from the RSI forums. As part of this launch, all archived comments from the original RSI website, previously unavailable, have been added back to the system.

Forum Polls
Want to find out what your fellow Citizen’s favorite ship is? Where they’re going to start the game? What they eat for lunch? Star Citizen backers may now create their own polls in the RSI forums! You can include a poll in your post by checking the “attach poll” option at the bottom of the submission field.

 

Mustang & Gunship Stats Update
FEBRUARY 28TH 2014



Tonight’s The Next Great Starship revealed the current specifications for the gunship that the competing teams will be building. The gunship does not have a manufacturer yet; each team will be able to choose an existing company from which to style their candidate! These are the exact specifications given to each team… we can’t wait to see what they come up with!

REQUEST FOR BID: AX Type Gunship

The United Empire of Earth is seeking design bids for the next generation AX gunship project. Gunships will be deployed to front line UEE units engaged in piracy interdiction and the ongoing police action against the Vanduul. Designs should be suitable for both space combat and ground support mission roles. The hull design will not be considered military confidential and may be modified for resale on the civilian market. Manufactures may submit their own suggested name and classification. Please review the attached specifications for further requirements and details.

Structural-
Crew: 1 pilot, 2 gunners, 4-6 marines
Cargo – 15 tonnes
Thrusters- 4 xTR2 (jointed)
Cargo Capacity – 15 tonnes (to be used for cargo or troops)
Upgrade Space – 10 slots
Max Power Plant Size – 5 Max Shield – 5

Hardpoints-
1 Class 4 (pilot’s controlled turret – two class 1 mounts, size 3)
2 Class 3 (2 missile racks)
2 Class 5 (two manned turrets)

Notes from the Chairman-​

• • Thrusters are jointed – top front left, top front right, bottom front left, bottom front right, combines with the back thrusters to create a 8x thruster array, so back 4 engines double as top back left, top back right, bottom back left and bottom back right – obviously when they are firing at a level to balance against the front thrusters. It will also be important that the front and back set of thrusters balance each other in terms of distance from center of mass – or another way to think of it would be if the front thrusters which have a smaller thrust could be further away from the center of the mass than the rear engines so that the resulting torque created (for angular rotation) by thrusting on the front thrusters would balance with the main engines / rear thrusters for when they fire in unison to impart angular acceleration.

• • Gunship won’t be too maneuverable as the thruster array rotation speed won’t be super-fast, so it’s ability to maneuver quickly will be curtailed as the thrusters will take a few beats to deploy to the correct firing position.

We’re also excited to reveal the initial specifications for the Consolidated Outland Mustang, Star Citizen’s second starter ship. Once modeled in the CryEngine, backers will be able to choose between the Aurora or the Mustang as their base level pledge ship.

Model: Mustang Alpha
Manufacturer: Consolidated Outland
Role: Pursuit

Description: The new Mustang spacecraft line is preparing to go into mass production is priced to compete with Roberts Space Industries’ Aurora. Using newly-developed construction techniques and ultralight material alloys sometimes considered unsafe, the Mustang pushes power ratios to the limit. The result is a sleek, stylish spacecraft that weighs less than the Aurora and has more options for engines and thrusters… at the expense of some stability, weapons hardpoints and cargo capacity.

Structural
Cargo Capacity: 5 tonnes (optional)
Max Crew: 1 person
Upgrade Space: 3 slots
Max Power Plant Size: 3
Max Engine (Primary Thruster): 2xTR2
Maneuvering Thrusters: 6xTR1
Max Shield: 2

Hardpoints
Class-1: 2x Size 2 (wing mount)
Class-4: 1x Size 1 (nose turret)

​

Remember that all of Star Citizen’s ship specifications are subject to change for game balancing as the project continues! These specifications represent our current thinking for these ships.

 

MONTHLY REPORT: FEBRUARY 2014
MARCH 4TH 2014





Greetings Citizens,

At the start of this year there was some heated debate on the community forums about whether the team at Cloud Imperium was doing enough to keep the community informed. As with most of the debates on our forums there were some widely differing views; there wasn’t enough information on the game’s progress, there was too much, there was just enough. With a community as large as Star Citizen’s, you can’t please everyone all the time.

I’m proud of our track record of keeping the community informed. We have eight to ten posts a week on the RSI website, we are currently delivering 3 videos a week (Ten for the Chairman, Wingman’s Hangar and the Next Great Starship). We have a whole forum subsection where the community can ask and get answers directly from the ever expanding development team. I don’t believe there is any other game, even one that is out of development and “live” that involves and informs the community to the extent we do.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t improve!

As I hope people have noticed, we’ve shifted the focus of our video content to have more behind the scenes material, and to answer harder questions than perhaps we did last year. Even though we’re proud of the amount of updates we share that doesn’t mean that we don’t listen to what is said and if it resonates, respond. One of the valid criticisms about our information flow is that its sheer quantity can be overwhelming and there isn’t any kind of high level summary for the people that don’t have the time to watch every video, read every post and monitor the forums for any data point they have missed.

So in response to that I am introducing the very first CIG Star Citizen monthly report. The concept is simple – a high level monthly production progress report from the various teams from around the world working on Star Citizen.

You may find it interesting to know that as of this moment there are 212 people working on Star Citizen between the internal and external studios and contractors! More people are working on this project than most AAA console titles, and it’s definitely the largest team to work on a Space Sim. These are jobs you have created! It’s an amazing accomplishment and it’s all down to your passion for space sims, PCs and doing something different!

Not only are that but these are 212 developers that want what you want – to make the best game possible – they don’t have to worry about a publisher pushing them to release early to plug a hole in a quarterly revenue plan or to incorporate a feature just because it’s the favor of the month.

It is because of this, and the new backers that continually join the community every month – you may be interested to know that 71% if the $6M or so we raised since December came from new backers – that I feel confident that we are making something that will be special. It won’t always be perfect, or on time, but given the talent of the team and the enthusiasm, feedback and support of the community I know we will reach the promised land of a living breathing universe that we can all adventure in together for many years to come.

As I write this, the Star Citizen team is all around me hard at work on the Dogfighting Module. We plan to premiere dogfighting at a special Citizens-only event just prior to PAX East. If all goes as planned, the Dogfighting Module itself will launch shortly after PAX and you will finally get your hands on your flight sticks! The team is scurrying to take care of thousands upon thousands of necessary details: variable damage states, HUD detailing, weapons cameras, engine sounds and countless other things that go into creating an immersive space combat experience. At this point, we can now regularly dogfight here in the office.

The biggest danger, or “blocker” in game development parlance, continues to be the server backend. You may recall that we pushed the release because we did not want to use the standard CryEngine server and net-code. Instead, we decided it would be more efficient to use the system which will form the nucleus of Star Citizen’s persistent servers in the future. We have high hopes that the solution will be ready in time for launch… and that that solution will stand up to the hundreds of thousands of Citizens waiting to battle it out. The very success that Star Citizen has had in building such a large community so early in its development is also one of its most challenging – launching the DFM will be akin to launching a major online game. Except we aren’t even close to being finished. It’s a high wire act of the most difficult proportions!

— Chris Roberts

(Read the rest at the link. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13610-Monthly-Report-February-2014)

 

JUMP POINT: VOLUME ONE PRE-ORDERS OPEN!
MARCH 6TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,

Our first published book is available for pre-order today! For the past year, development subscribers have received monthly Jump Point magazines. We originally planned for Jump Point to be a quick, four-to-six page summary of what was going on in the Star Citizen universe… and the end result was a fifty-plus page full-color publication each month! We’ve collected the first year of magazines in one giant physical volume.

Jump Point includes everything from behind-the-screens stories about Star Citizen’s development to in-universe fiction available nowhere else! If you tuned in to Wingman’s Hangar yesterday, you’ve seen our sample copy. We’re excited about doing the print run. Pre-orders begin today, from which we will judge the initial print run for the books. We’ll keep you updated to let you know when the books go to print and when you can expect your copy! To introduce the book and the details for subscriber copies, here’s editor-in-chief David Ladyman:

A Year of Future History!

The printed Jump Point Volume 1 is now available for sale: all 650 pages of the first 13 issues of Jump Point, bound together in one book. Each printed page has two original Jump Point pages (8.5” x 7”), resulting in a jumbo, 8.5” x 14”, 330-page archive on the first year of Star Citizen.

As a special thank you, we have listed in the book the monikers of every subscriber during our first year of publication.

This paperback behemoth is available for pre-order for $80 (which includes shipping). Pre-orders will determine how many we print, so order yours now to be sure to get one.
Centurion subscribers with at least a year (12 months) of subscription will find a badge on their account permitting the purchase for $40 (basically, the cost to print and ship it).

Imperator subscribers with at least a year (12 months) of subscription will find a badge on their account permitting the purchase of the special hardback Imperator edition for $20 (which covers most of the cost of shipping).

We will continue this special offer for Imperators and Centurions as long as supplies last — every few months, we’ll award badges to subscribers who have achieved a 12-month subscription since the last time we checked.

David
​

You can put in your pre-order here!

We are also excited to announce that RSVPs for the PAX East event will go out tomorrow! The venue holds 1,500 people, and allotments of 500 each will be released throughout the day (at noon, 5 PM and 10 PM EST.) The noon allotment will be limited to Subscribers and Concierge. We look forward to seeing you there!

 

RSVP FOR THE PAX EAST EVENT
MARCH 7TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,

Cloud Imperium Games will be hosting a special event just prior to PAX East this year. The Cloud Imperium team will be on the show floor at PAX, but we want to give our backers the very first look at what we’re getting ready to release.

The event will take place on April 10th, 2014 from 8 PM to midnight, with Subscribers and Concierge being admitted an hour early (at 7 PM.) Attendance does NOT require a PAX badge; the event is Citizens only. The venue holds 1,500 people, so make sure and RSVP today!

You can register for your ticket here! Because of the limited space, we are unable to allow plus ones. Tickets will be released throughout the day, starting at noon EST for Subscribers and Concierge. All-backer allotments will be made available at 5 PM EST and 10 PM EST. Please note that the link will not be available until this time!

Please note that the RSVP system is automated and Customer Support can not manually add you to the list. Once the tickets are gone, they’re gone!

The event will take place at Royale Boston, at 275 Tremont Street.

 

LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN: $40 MILLION
MARCH 11TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,
We’ve done it again! The Star Citizen community has pushed us to another incredible crowd funding goal: $40 million, a number that would have been an impossible dream at the start of the game’s development. I’m constantly amazed by the continued support we receive and how this community manages to grow every day. Since the last milestone we’ve added over 10,000 new citizens! Some say that space sims are niche. I’m not so sure!

At $40 million, you unlocked the last of the backer-voted star systems. Since the results of the last poll were so close, we decided to include both of the top two options:

• Kabal System – The discovery of a new system is always an exciting time. Even the most jaded NavJumpers can’t help entertaining the possibilities for scientific understanding or new species or even a new home that could await them on the other side of a new jump point. The discovery of Kabal was certainly something new. By all outward appearances, the system seemed empty. It was only during when a UEESurveying team began to assess Kabal III, did they find something disturbing; old uninhabited Tevarin cities. How could an entire Tevarin system escape detection all these years? Did the Tevarin that were assimilated into the UEE know about it? How was it kept a secret? The questions multiplied when a detachment of Marines, sent to secure the planet ended up discovering a cache of old Tevarin war machines. Among the rows and rows of weapons, they made an even more disturbing discovery; some of the technology was made in the last ten years…

• Oretani System – Oretani was just one of many systems that were being discovered during the rapid Expansion era of the 25th century. The surveyors noticed nothing in the system’s six worlds of immediate importance. Only one planet seemed to be a viable candidate for terraforming. The terraforming Corp that won the bid sent a mid-level team (and their families) into the system to start processing when the only jump point into the system collapsed. Scientists scrambled to figure out a solution, but it was the first time an incident like this had occurred. As years stretched into decades, people studied the area around the former jump point, hoping for a sign that it had reopened, but after time they gave up. After all this time, Oretani is only ever debated among select number of historians. Most believe that without support, the initial terraformers probably died out, but no one really knows what to expect on the other side if that jump point ever reopens.

WIP Storyboard for mobiGlas Design

Per tradition, we are announcing the $42 million stretch goal today. 42 is a celebrated number for Star Citizen. Before the crowd funding campaign launched, I teased the game to my oldest fans with the RSIwebsite. To enter you had to guess the password. The hint was “Life, the Universe and Everything”. We expected most Sci-Fans to get the reference to Douglas Adams “Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy”. We planned to launch the teaser site 42 days out from the announcement however the realities of web development intervened but we did manage to work in a lasting reference to the project’s humble beginnings by using 42 in the name of the legendary fighter squadron you aspire to join in the single-player adventure, Squadron 42!


WIP Storyboard for mobiGlas Design

It’s only appropriate for the $42 million stretch goal that we do something that recognizes the role that the answer to “Life, The Universe and Everything” has played in this amazing journey.

Star Citizen’s equivalent of “The Hitch Hikers Guide” is the Observist section of Star Citizen’s Galactapedia.


WIP Storyboard for mobiGlas Design

The Galactapedia isn’t a simple wiki or a static how-to guide: it’s going to integrate directly into the game universe and respond in real time as players steer the course of Star Citizen’s world. We envision making the news with an impressive feat in the Galactapedia as a major goal for many players: if you’re the one who finally defeats the Dread Pirate Roberts, charts a new Jump Point or makes the Advocacy’s Most Wanted list, your actions will become memorialized for all time in the Galactapedia! What’s more, the Galactapedia will be available both inside Star Citizen and through the RSI website.
With all of this in mind, we have a few additions to the game and some rewards for our loyal backers at the $42 million level! Read on:

• Updated Observist Guide – Additional funding from the $42 million level will go to expanding the website area of the Galactapedia: expect to see holographic ships, items and navigation interface in 3D! Imagine admiring your ships or planning your loadouts right here at the RSI website.

ExoGlas Concept Art

• Explorer-class mobiGlas Rig – Every player who backs before we hit $42 million will start the game with their own, visually distinctive mobiGlas “ExoGlas” rig which can be used to access the Observist at any time. I’ve charged the mobiGlas team with a very difficult task: creating a realistic interface that will help keep your affairs in order in an expansive galaxy that we hope players will expand in unknown directions. It’s almost like building our own in fiction operating system for an imagined future, and it’s very different task than building spaceships. This backer-exclusive mobiGlas kit will come pre-loaded with additional galactic information that new players would ordinarily need to explore or barter to fill out; it’s our way of honoring the information you’ve collected about the Star Citizen universe through theRSI site and community over the past year!

• Gladius – The Squadron 42 team will develop an additional fighter for the game, the Aegis Dynamics Gladius-class light fighter. The Gladius will be the first fighter built entirely from concept to CryEngine in the UK! Here’s the official description:The Aegis Gladius is the UEE’s reigning light short-range patrol fighter. A single-seat ship with no room for expansion, the Gladius is fast, maneuverable and capable of punching far above its weight. The main advantage to the design is simplicity: cheap to produce, easy to repair and outfit and quick to train new pilots on. The Gladius is an aging design nearing the end of its life-cycle, although iterative updates have kept it the most nimble fighter in the active fleet.

• Towel – And of course, everyone who backs before we hit $42 million will also receive a towel for their hangar. Don’t explore the galaxy without it!

Remember that our stretch goals are examples, ways of showing you how we are improving the game with the additional funding and ways to thank you for your early support. The full impact of each additional dollar is actually felt across the board: the project currently employs over 200 people. As a result, every dollar allows us to support this large team and helps improve Star Citizen in both scope and scale.

Thank you for your support, for making this possible. I can’t wait to show you what we have in store for Star Citizen; stay tuned!

— Chris Roberts

P.S., A number of Citizens have asked why we stopped giving out stretch goal rewards to backers (like the repair bot and the space suit offered early in the campaign.) The truth is, we had so many new features we wanted to discuss that the practice slipped our mind. For the next set of stretch goals, we’re going to give you in-game rewards… and we’re letting you pick what you want. Please vote in the poll below to pick the $43 million unlock reward. The winner will be described in the next Chairman post and the option with the lowest votes will be eliminated from contention!

 

Idris Revamp
MARCH 28TH 2014

Greetings Citizens,

The Idris corvette is dead; long live the Idris frigate!

The team at Foundry 42 is currently building the first missions for Squadron 42, the single player game that will launch you into the Star Citizen universe. The game’s story calls for the player to start the game aboard a smaller UEE capital ship. We assigned them the Idris, the scrappy little corvette with a fierce bite already designed by Ryan Church.


Concept - Idris Briefing Room

Working from the Idris for this piece seemed like a natural fit… until the team whiteboxing the interior found that the original concept was not sized to fit with the Hornet model. Since the Idris would need to carry multiple Hornets (in both Squadron 42 and the persistent universe) they needed to expand the flight deck. Other additions, necessary as we learned exactly how a capital ship would function, necessitated more inside: a tender to support repair operations, medical facilities for the FPS segment and so on. The Idris needed to get bigger and better!


Concept - Idris Brig

In the end, the ship was a full hundred meters longer and a much more imposing threat than the patrol corvette we originally imagined. As such, we have made the decision to reclassify the ship. The Idris is now a frigate, and existing fiction will be updated to reflect this change wherever possible. We are not removing Idrises from anyone’s inventories; everyone who owned an Idris corvette yesterday owns an Idris frigate today. I’m hoping existing backers will be happy: you’re ending up with twice the ship you pledged for!


WIP - Idris Rescue Ship

If you’re absolutely dead set on seeing a corvette in Star Citizen, have no fear: our designers and artists are going to get to work on a new, smaller corvette that will be made available in the future!

Please enjoy some of the latest Idris artwork included in this post. This is the ship as it stands today. Development subscribers will also get an extensive WIP article in today’s Jump Point magazine, launching later tonight (click here for more information on how to subscribe.) Pay special attention to the search-and-rescue ship, now included with every Idris… it’s one of the reasons we needed to reclassify!

— Chris Roberts

 

Letter from the Chairman: $41 Million
MARCH 31ST 2014



Greetings Citizens,
We’ve hit another record-setting crowd funding level: $41 million!

I’m incredibly happy to hit this goal as it green-lights a very important research project aimed at improving Star Citizen’s long term future. With this funding, we’ll be looking into procedural generation to help build the universe out in a greater detail and scope in ways we didn’t think possible when we started developing the game! We will have some exciting announcements to make down the line involving some of the talent we’ve been talking to about helping us with procedural system and planet building.

• Procedural Generation R&D Team – This stretch goal will allocate funding for Cloud Imperium to develop procedural generation technology for future iterations of Star Citizen. Advanced procedural generation will be necessary for creating entire planets worth of exploration and development content. A special strike team of procedural generation-oriented developers will be assembled to make this technology a reality.

OCULUS & FACEBOOK







Like many of you, I was genuinely surprised to hear the news that Oculus had been acquired by Facebook. There has been a lot written this past week about the acquisition and some notable people have come out for and against. I know a lot of backers and gamers feel like they’ve been betrayed by Oculus “selling out.”

I’m not one of them.

Why?

From the start I was very aware that the Kickstarter for Oculus was just to prove there was a demand. In order to play in the consumer hardware business you need A LOT of money. And while we prove every day that crowd funding can generate more dollars to back a dream than anyone imagined was possible it is still not enough in the game Oculus hopes to play. Even with the $91M they raised from Venture Capital it was not enough.

To illustrate what I’m talking about let’s just take the Star Citizen community. When we ran a survey at the end of 2012 approximately 30% of the respondents said they planned to purchase the Rift to play Star Citizen. We currently have more than 400,000 accounts, and I would guess by the time the Rift consumer version launches it could be close to 600,000 to 800,000. So at our high end (assuming the percentages stay consistent as we grow, which I acknowledge is a big “if” as I suspect the Star Citizen early adopters are predisposed to invest money in the best possible gaming experience) that would be 240,00 Rift headsets at the high end. The price goal of the Rift was $300 retail. Let’s say the Rift costs $200 to manufacture and ship – not unreasonable if you compare it to the component cost of some smartphones, which have some of the same parts (display, accelerometers), don’t have some other parts (optics, headset, input / output) but have some others that the Rift doesn’t (memory, CPU). And of course Oculus is not going to have the same volumes Samsung or Apple have so it will probably have to pay more for similar components.

As you can’t really build hardware on demand you need to make sure you manufacture enough to meet initial demand. So just to meet the demand from Star Citizen early adopters, they would need to invest $48M in inventory. Let’s say their goal would be to sell one million headsets in the first year (not unreasonable if Star Citizen will help sell 200,000+). One million headsets would be $200M in manufacturing costs – and that isn’t even counting marketing costs. As another example Microsoft invested more than $1 billion dollars in Xbox One inventory for this past holiday (each Xbox One costs $471 and they sold more than 3M units in the holiday season).

Consumer hardware is a big boy’s game and this is the reason why Oculus agreed to be bought by Facebook. Otherwise, their fear would be that they prove there is a demand for VR but don’t have the resources to scale and capitalize on it while a much deeper pocketed company (like Samsung or Sony) sweeps in with the financial muscle and says “Hey, thanks for all the hard work, now let us reap the rewards!” As headline grabbing as the acquisition cost was in terms of wealth generation for such a young company without any significant sales, the real reason why Palmer, Brendan, et al. went with the deal was to be able to deliver VR at the scale that will make it mainstream.

At this point I don’t see Facebook being anything other than a very rich sugar daddy – the core Facebook strategy is about user acquisition through easy accessibility from multiple ubiquitous platforms. The Rift is neither ubiquitous nor easy to access right now! I can only guess that Mark Zuckerberg made this move as a bet on a potentially exciting future platform enthused by his tech geek’s excitement over what VR could bring. Both the key Oculus team members public comments and Facebook’s positioning stress that the deal was really about giving Oculus the resources to achieve the vision on a global scale, and not about another platform to see your friends data stream on.

I want to see Oculus and VR succeed.

From the moment I first saw the Rift, I knew it was something special. I can tell you firsthand that the team behind the headset has a true passion for making VR tomorrow’s standard. My hope is that the Facebook acquisition will mean more funding for a better finished product and not a loss of the incredible soul and vision that convinced me to back the project. I haven’t heard or seen anything to the contrary so until I do we are fully committed to supporting the Rift.

Now to answer the myriad forum threads that popped up worrying about the possibility of Cloud Imperium selling out to a much bigger company – don’t worry! We have no plans nor interest in “selling out!”

Thanks to the amazing support from the community we don’t need to go to anyone with deep pockets to make OURdream a reality. As we deliver a digital product we have no huge inventory costs, just the costs of development and running servers which at the moment are covered by the community’s contributions.

And last but not least I’m having way to much fun building the universe of my dreams for everyone to adventure in! I’ve been down the big company acquisition route twice before and there’s a reason I am making Star Citizen totally independently!




POLL RESULTS


Last time, we asked you to vote for the next stretch goal’s player reward… and the resounding winner was UEEMarine combat armor! You can read more about the armor, which will be unlocked at $43 million, now:

Omni Role Combat Armor (ORC) mk9Manufacturer: CDS (Clark Defense Systems)

The ‘standard’ Marine armor for almost twenty years, ORC armor is prohibitively more expensive than standardized infantry body armor used by Army Ground Forces, but the Marines boast far fewer numbers and tend to make compelling arguments to get what they ask for. Clark Defense Systems’ ORC armor is created of composite mesh of fibers reinforced with ablative plates, offering a modest protection against both energy and kinetic weapons. While it doesn’t offer the same protection of the Marines’ proprietary Nail-armor or their SpecOps variants, ORCmk9 armor is a baseline solution for any number of situations the average Marine will encounter on any given day. Besides, in the words of Lt. Col Armin Trask, “you wanna know the best armor? Not getting shot.”​

We’ve eliminated the least popular reward (bonus UEC) and started a second poll; be sure to vote for what you’d like as the $44 million goal below!

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE AS THE NEXT PLAYER REWARD STRETCH GOAL?


What would you like as the next player reward stretch goal?

1. A new ship's gun
2. An additional Hangar room
3. Updated scanner software
4. A new role-specific outfit
5. A dashboard decoration
6. Engine tuning kit
7. A ship skin
8. A space plant
9. Mystery object

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit:
Soon after I posted this, the original letter was taken down. It was brought back up with these changes:


OCULUS & FACEBOOK



Like many of you,
I was genuinely surprised to hear the news that Oculus had been acquired by Facebook. There has been a lot written this past week about the acquisition and some notable people have come out for and against. I know a lot of backers and gamers feel like they’ve been betrayed by Oculus “selling out”.

I’m not one of them.

Why?

From the moment I first saw the Rift, I knew it was something special. I can tell you firsthand that the team behind the headset has a true passion for making VR tomorrow’s standard.

In order for the Rift to succeed, it really needed a lot more funding than it has raised from its past two VC rounds. Hardware is expensive: it’s one thing to perfect the technology, but before you can sell a single Rift, you need to spend hundreds of millions on manufacturing and building a supply chain if you intend to make the Rift (and Virtual Reality) relevant for the mass market. Microsoft invested well over a billion dollars just to launch the Xbox One this fall! My hope is that Facebook’s funding will let Oculus compete with much bigger companies and deliver an attractively priced consumer headset at the scale needed for mass market adoption without the loss of the incredible passion that convinced me to back the project. I haven’t heard or seen anything to the contrary so until I do we are fully committed to supporting the Rift.

For an interesting insiders’ view on the benefits of the acquisition, I would recommend everyone read Oculus’ new Chief Scientist Michael Abrash’s blog post on the subject.

Now to answer the myriad forum threads that popped up worrying about the possibility of Cloud Imperium being acquired by another, bigger company – don’t worry! We have no plans nor interest in following this path! We don’t need to go to anyone with deep pockets to make OUR dream a reality. To mass-produce hardware like the Rift, you need an outlay of hundreds of millions of dollars. Luckily our ships are digital so we have hardly any cost of goods, just the cost of developing the universe of Star Citizen and running servers that Star Citizen’s universe will be simulated on. Thanks to the generosity of the Star Citizen community we have these two things covered

And last but not least I’m having way to much fun building the universe of my dreams for everyone to adventure in! I’ve been down the big company acquisition route twice before and there’s a reason I am making Star Citizen totally independently!

 

MONTHLY REPORT: MARCH, 2014
APRIL 1ST 2014

April Fools! Of course we have the real monthly report for you… and the Star Citizen team isn’t going to a tropical island any time soon, we have a game to finish! Read on for monthly status updates from all of Star Citizen’s studio heads and outsource partners. (You can find the previous April 1st version of this report here.)

CLOUD IMPERIUM SANTA MONICA




Travis Day, Dogfight Producer
Santa Monica, California… Home to year round sunshine, excellent restaurants along the walking promenade, and a 3-mile stretch of beautiful beach. We’ve seen none of these things for many weeks now as we’ve been locked in our office working hard on Dogfighting!

In all seriousness though while it is tiring, it is also very invigorating, and this project drives everyone’s passion and the knowledge that the community is just as excited as we are pushes us to our best work. I have never been more awed by a team’s discipline and dedication. We work not because we’re forced to but instead because we love what we’re working on and want to really wow people with Chris’ reveal before PAX East.

Alright, well at this point I am sure you’re thinking, “We get it, the teams is working hard… But what have you DONE?” Well fair enough, here we go! The HUD has moved forward by leaps and bounds. This has been one of our most collaborative pieces of work with other studios and it is really shaping up! Over the course of the past couple of months, we have been working hard to conceptualize and define the base functionality that will drive the HUD and peripheral user interfaces in many of the ships that you will be piloting in the Star Citizen universe.

In any ship, you will be able to manage and interact with many different systems, such as weapons configuration management, power and energy management, shields management, radar configuration, navigation, comms, target tracking, preset configuration, and much more. All of these components need to be quickly accessible to you at any given point in time, especially during heated situations such as combat.


Concept of the Hornet’s HUD and information panels created by Zane Bien and is used as the basis for the HUD’s creation

Our goal in designing the cockpit UI was to present such complex components in a manner that is functionally intuitive, yet aesthetically consistent with the fiction in that you’re piloting a ship from the future. One of the biggest challenges in designing any sci-fi interface is striking the right balance between what looks / feels visually interesting and what is functionally efficient, both of which are equally important in driving the immersion as you’re piloting ships in Star Citizen.

We feel that we have achieved a nice blending between the two in our design given some of the core concepts behind the UI. One of which for example, is the extensive use of actual 3D geometry within the UI to visually represent items and objects (such as targets, parts of your own ship, etc.), and the many various states they may have. We have also been doing extensive work developing a custom “holoshader” that gives these 3D objects a very “holographic” look, which will have them fit nicely into the overall design.

We’ve been developing some really cool features for the UI in Star Citizen. We are looking forward to sharing with you in detail our vision behind the HUD and all of its various components soon, but there is still much work to be done before it’s considered in any final state.

Multiplayer functionality has also been a large and bug filled undertaking this month. We’ve spent a great deal of time this month writing code to improve the systems we’d previously created and debugging issues with precision, latency, and bandwidth limitations. Now that we are testing with our newly crafted backend (CIGNet) we’re starting to work through the various systems to make sure that the experience remains playable with a variety of pings and available bandwidth.

Our design team has also been hard at work continuing to hook up and balance many newly created items and continuing to add nuance to the ships. We’ve finished implementing and doing an early balance pass on ship items. Furthermore, we’ve completed hooking up the Scythe for perfectly balanced flight with all of its thrusters working in concert to bring its weapons to bear on enemies. During this process our Physics programmer was able to tweak and debug his hand crafted thruster analysis tool which greatly aids in placing and balancing thrusters for all future ships.


Work in Progress model of the Hornet using PBR with heavy armor affixed to it by Chris Smith

We’ve also been upgrading the Hornet to PBR so it has a lot more realistic look and feel to it. During this process Chris Smith took it upon himself to make some interior upgrades to the cockpit with higher resolution pass adding a lot more intricate details to the interior of the cockpit. Intricate mechanical workings were done as well to make the canopy operate on a believable track system and modifying the seat for a believable ejection. Lastly with PBR came the integration of the weathering system that allows him to apply some very believable wear and tear looks to the models. He even took a pass of mocking up some different armor types for it. With all of these detailed changes plus thePBR conversion the Hornet is really looking quite stunning!

We’ve also grown our team here a bit over the last month with an additional three new employees bringing our total headcount in this studio to 27. Joining us this month were Kami Talebi (Production Coordinator), Joanna Whitmarsh (Marketing Associate), and James Pugh (Assistant Community Manger) who’ve all hit the ground running quite well! It has been amazing to watch the team here grow from three people almost a year ago to our current size today and we all look forward to continuing to grow the best possible team in the future with which to build the BDSSE!

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions about what you’ve seen in this report please do not hesitate to reach out to us on the ‘Ask a Developer’ threads in the forums.

See you in the ‘verse!

CLOUD IMPERIUM AUSTIN







Eric Peterson, Studio Director
CIG Texas has had an amazing month of March from getting the backend server up and running which allows all of us at CIG to join up and battle in daily Dogfighting sessions – which can get mighty heated these days. We are also busy working on patch 11.2 which will upgrade the patching system for the upcoming DFM reveal and subsequent release. Also, we are supporting the hard charging Santa Monica team with the DFM by having several folks embedded in the trenches lending a hand.

Our Engineers got the full universe cluster configured and deployed to our cloud servers autonomously through our build system, and while our initial tests would only allow 2 or 3 players to connect, we are now up to dozens of us battling every single day. Also, we have many new improvements and enhancements for the Oculus Rift coming in the next Hangar Patch, such as FOV fixes, and dual-screen rendering, which will greatly enhance the VR experience.

In addition, we’ve been working to support artists for enhancing visuals such as making PBR (or PBS) look as fantastic as possible and also greatly improved the shield effects, making them more configurable and now have a “from cockpit” view of the shields.
We are also very busy integrating systems for the DFM, such as matchmaking, and leaderboards, which will be needed for our upcomming release.

Animation has been very busy cleaning up the data from our first full performance capture session. Now, we are busy integrating the animation curves generated into our in game body and faces. And of course, making sure that all the animations work for the ships coming up in the dogfighting module.

Audio has been busy getting the interactive music working correctly, as well as adding new sound effects for lasers, thrusters, cockpits, breakups and hits – in addition, recording all the dialogue for the “bitching betty” or warning system for the space ships we will be flying soon.

Design has managed to fill 5 of the its open positions – it was a great month for finding some talented & dedicated designers that will go that extra mile to make Star Citizen the best experience possible. We are moving full steam ahead with BHVR on the economy simulation which will be responsible for generating many of the player missions in the game. It goes without saying that we are knee deep in dogfighting testing, and we are busy assisting with PBRimplementation in the hangars, as well as making the tools that will allow us to populate the systems that all of us are looking forward to visiting.

The art team has gotten the first female character modeled and approved by the man himself, we have also gotten the new facial rigs from 3Lateral and are busy attaching animations to them as we speak. We are working on ship parts and components that will be swappable on the various ships. We have completed the RSI helmet that you will be wearing as you fly in the DFM – or get ejected into space. We are also busy coordinating the performance capture sessions needed for both Star Citizen and Squadron 42. In addition we are busy sculpting the Xi’an race for look and feel. It is looking really sweet.

Overall, the team is hard at work, making sure that we deliver a great experience, and support Chris as we make the Best Damned Space Sim Ever!

FOUNDRY 42







Erin Roberts, Studio Director
Hi again from sunny England.

Well, the past month has flown by with a huge amount of work in a lot of directions…

The team has been focusing on two main areas… Support for the dog fighting module, as well as pushing forward on a bunch of systems and content for Squadron 42.

In terms of the dog fighting module the artists have been focusing on creating and polishing the maps that we will all be playing in. After getting the maps up and running, we have now been focusing on making space landmarks in the levels to make navigation intuitive, and will now be focusing in the last few weeks on lighting and effects to really make the maps sing. Design has been focusing on the different game modes for the dog fighting module, so on each map you will be able to play different types of games (Death match, team death match, horde mode etc.)

Also, a lot of work has been going into the Vanduul AI, balancing the new flight model with the new vehicle (Fighter) setup and AI. This is quite a process as we have to balance the physics system with the vehicle weight and thruster ratios, and then make sure it all acts the way it should with the new Kythera AI from Mooncollider. The coders have been working on a bunch of the game rules, effects, HUD elements, counter measures, control options and general stability for the module.

For Squadron 42, we have been pushing ahead with the block outs for all the UEE Capital Ships so we can get those into full production, the Idris and Retaliator are now in full production, along with a host of smaller craft, soon to be followed by the Panther and Javelin. This has entailed a bunch of concept / product design work from our internal concept artists Andrew Ley and Stuart Jennet who are making sure that every part of a ship, whether it be weapons, living quarters etc. all work as you would expect. We have to make sure each ship is a living and interactive space. (We want everything to have a function / use that looks like it should, and don’t want to have to re-work things later and waste time) We are also looking at starting the block outs for the Vanduul cap ship fleet next month as well as more work on the full block out of the Shubin Mining base. We have designed the ships systems for cap ships, which we will be sharing with the community in the coming weeks. Hopefully this will make manning capital ships with your friends a lot of fun, as different people need to work together to manage engineering, weapons control, shields, communications, navigation, radar and our favourite so far electronic warfare…

Meetings have taken place over the motion capture process (both body and facial), which we will be taking the lead for at Foundry 42, as it is a huge part of pushing the fidelity and storytelling for the game.

And finally David Haddock has been with us in the UK for the last two weeks, breaking down the story with Phil Meller, to continue with the script for S42 which is already moving towards the size of War and Peace. Phil will then be travelling over to LA to join David next month to finish their work off and get final sign off from Chris on the full story breakdown for S42.

That’s about it for now! As always, thanks for all your support, without you guys we wouldn’t be able to have so much fun making this great game.

BHVR




Mathieu Beaulieu, Producer
March was a very productive month at Behaviour Interactive.

We are deep into the design and backend development of the economy within the persistent universe, bringing together complex systems to create the most realistic economic system ever found in a space sim.

Concepts such as labor, salary, and employee happiness will be tracked and have an independent effect on the economic output of every location within the PU. Some worlds will favor the rich upper class, while others will favor the working class etc… We have also examined several vital issues such as inflation, monetary policy, central banks and player loans.

We have started to use the Physical Based Rendering technology developed by Crytek and have begun to apply it to all the hangars. The results are great and will bring all the in-game textures to a high level of realism.

Also, check out the latest development for the room system and the Asteroid Hangar on Episode 62 of Wingman’s Hangar!

Last month we completed a first pass on the UI framework. Now, we are making good use of this framework for the integration of the Dog Fighting Module menus, as well as the Visor HUD.

We are still ramping up and always looking for the best talent to join our team. Seven new employees joined us this month: 2 new artists, 2 intern artists, 1 UI designer, 1 game designer and 1 programmer. We are now 39 developers working hard to bring some amazing art and gameplay features to you in the ‘verse.

CGBOT







Tara Decker, Producer
The CGBot team has spent March (with the windows open working on various aspects of Star Citizen including ships, characters, and weapons.

After an intense knowledge-transfer visit from Forrest Stephan and Chris Smith in late February, work began on putting the Aurora through the damage and PBR pipelines. We had great results and look forward to seeing some really beautiful destruction during Dogfighting.

We are also working closely with Foundry 42 to get the Idris ready for single-player action. Several areas of the ship are being reworked as F42 goes through it with an eye towards making gameplay fun and interesting -we started the ship awhile back and are really happy to work with that incredible crew on making the Idris a great ship to own.

On the character front, we were happy to work with the new character lead, David Jennison, on starting female characters. We get the pleasure of working on the completely bad-freaking-*rse Female Punk Pirate outfit. Getting that to work with the female base model & seeing her awesomeness come to life is well, awesome.

Lastly, we jumped in to create some of the FPS weapons with [Redacted]. Weapons that are realistic of course, as Chris requires; so letting artists zone out on the details is always fun.

It’s been an intense March working with the teams to get ships ready for Dogfighting fun while also feeding the overall SC needs. We’re proud to contribute to the effort.

Btw, Canada, does a Gold in London count?

FREELANCE CONTRACTORS







Sean Murphy, Outsource Manager
Our stellar contract artists keep pumping out great work; Ryan Church is continuing to refine the Panther Escort Carrier and Emmanuel Shiu, Jan Urschel, and John Dickenson (among others!) continue on Vanduul, Banu, and Xi’an ships. Stephan Martiniere has created some fantastic environment paintings for the Tal system, Rob McKinnon has given us some awesome helmet, weapon, and armor designs, and Eddie del Rio has done some really interesting exploration of the Xi’an scout ship. Ed Lee has created a very cool crossbow for our Shroud of the Avatar crossover, and we’ve gotten some great Vanduul characters from Brett Briley and Justin Sweet.

In addition, we’ve got a couple of new names working with us – Stefano Tsai in the UK has started building the M50 and Gavin Rothery, production designer on the movie “Moon”, has started work on the UEE Gladius. We’re excited to have them on board!

 

MONTHLY REPORT: MARCH, 2014 (continued)
APRIL 1ST 2014

FPS TEAM





[Redacted]


What used to be merely an FPS team is growing! The team has been busily chasing our dogfighting goals, and steadily kicking along towards the debut of FPS as well.

The animation team has applied loads of elbow grease and polish to player animation and movement in 0G, player movement in space after ejection is enabled by thrusters on the pilot suit to really sell the experience of floating weightless in the black.

Our artists have leveraged their ample skills to produce tons of weapon FX, from lasers to grenades to the formidable electric shotgun. They’ve also turned their hands toward the environments, building up locations both on and off-planet, including that Outlaw space station we mentioned last month, perhaps you’ll be getting a peek at that soon?
Our engineers have spent the month deep in the weeds of movement and eye-look positions, fixing physics errors and debugging elevators. While not too glamorous from the player side, these things all add up to make your alternate life that much more real.

The networking guys have been slaving over hot matchmaking services, while working with our HUD artists to enable menuing systems and scoreboards. Dogfighting Servers have been deployed, and are even now being hammered by our testers to ensure the smoothest play experience possible for our backers when the dogfighting module goes live. This means that, In addition to letting you fly your ships and shoot your foes, we’ve added support for scoring and statistics keeping over all our multiplayer game modes!

Can’t wait to see you in space! (Sizzling like stellar bacon at the hot end of our lasers!)


VOID ALPHA





Mark Day, Studio Director

VoidALPHA in Emeryville, CA is focused on Planetside locations! Specifically, The Blocks and Landing Zone on Terrarime. Despite being a lower-income section of Prime, The Blocks is starting to look really good and contrasts nicely with the upscale environment that is Landing Zone. Speaking of upscale, Centermass, located on Landing Zone is as fancy as weapon shops come! It is the focus of great effort on our part and we are branding this location as our “beautiful corner”. It is a section of Landing Zone that will set the visual high bar for our team here at voidALPHA. We are determined to make it melt your eyes!


We are also in the early stages of conceptualization on another Planetside location that has lots of promise but we can’t quite share yet. Trust us, it’s going to look amazing!
We’ve been doing a tiny bit of traveling as well, with representatives going to BHVR in Canada for lighting training and to San Francisco forGDC 2014 to assist with recruitment efforts.

voidALPHA is building all this cool stuff with 5 people: a level designer, concept artist, production manager and 2 environment artists.


TURBULENT





Benoit Beauséjour, Founder
Web team here! We’ve spent the whole dreadfully cold month of March neck-deep in new features, and we switched a few priorities here and there to make sure that everything comes out as cool as it can be, but in the right order.

Much design work has been going on to flesh out the mechanics and interfaces for Orgs Drop Two. We want you to have fun roleplaying in your Orgs (yes, plural) and we know you can’t wait to do a bit of espionage of your own. As we move to implementation in the month of April and May expect to see more releases on the specifics of what we are preparing soon!

We’re still revamping the way ship data is handled in the site and more specifically in the store. You’ll be able to browse all the ship data and statistics right from the store pages. Some exciting new visualization features are also in the works!

Our team has been busy keeping up with the heavy Dogfighting Module development across all studios and focusing on producing new info, download and leaderboard views for the release of the DFM to the public. This includes how to get actual match and pilot data across to the site and in your accounts.

In preparation for this launch the crew has performed several server upgrades, maintenance and migrations to make sure the infrastructure is ready for the live release. This means switching to newer, more powerful server instances and preparation for the huge live operations that will follow launch day!

To help with spreading the good news, the Press section has been revamped to include more articles and more stuff for journalists across the globe. March also saw the release of the RSVP system with a first event for PAX East.

Major progress was made in making a new transient room system for the XMPP chat system that should be ready to release soon. So many Orgs were created in such short time we had to change the way the channels were handled. The net result is you will be able to use your Community Monicker in XMPP once this is out and live.

Team stands at solid 8 souls.

Platform team out!

 

ALPHA SLOT FAQ
APRIL 7TH 2014




Greetings Citizens,
As of the time of this writing, fewer than 3,000 Alpha Slots remain. As the counter moves inexorably closer to zero, we’ve come to realize that many people aren’t sure exactly what Alpha Slots are or how they’re relevant to the Star Citizen experience. We’ve put together a short FAQ to answer some of the questions we’re seeing about the slots. Our hope is that this will help explain why Alpha Slots are so important and why you’ll want to back for a package that includes one.

What are Alpha Slots?
Packages with Alpha Slots will be allowed free access to all of Star Citizen’s pre-release modules, including the Dogfighting, First Person Shooter and others. Our goal was to make Alpha Slots available to our earliest backers, the people who first helped make Star Citizen’s existence possible!

How was the number of Alpha Slots generated?
The initial number of Alpha Slots was calculated based on the number of ‘universe servers’ the programming team believed we could reliably budget for our module rollout. As Star Citizen’s funding has increased, we have been able to go wider and increase the number of first pass slots (you may recall that an earlier stretch goal created more slots by dedicating funds specifically to this purpose.)

Do I need an Alpha Slot to play the Dogfighting Module?
Every account with an Alpha Slot will be eligible to play the Dogfighting Module. If your package does not include one of the ships scheduled for the first release, you will be able to play with a ‘loaner.’ Later backers who do not have an Alpha Slot on their account will be given the option of purchasing a Dogfighting Pass to join the fun!

Can I still play without an Alpha Slot?
Players who join Star Citizen after the slots are gone will have the option of purchasing $5 passes to play the individual alpha modules, with the money going to cover the additional server bandwidth necessary. (For phased launches, like the upcoming Dogfighting Module, passes will not be available until servers have been allotted to all existing backers.) Note that you will need a separate pass for each future module.

Why didn’t I need an Alpha Slot for the Hangar Module?
Since the Hangar Module does not have online multiplayer enabled, we felt comfortable making it available to all backers regardless of Alpha Slot status.

Will you ever add more Alpha Slots?
No. Once the current allotment is over, no more Alpha Slots will be added to the counter. Going forward, players who miss out on the free Alpha Slots may test individual modules by purchasing a module pass (which covers the cost of additional hardware) in addition to their ship package.

What are Beta Slots?
Beta Slots refer to those assignments for joining the future beta test of Star Citizen’s persistent universe. As this launch is further in the future, we have not yet made a final decision on the number of Beta Slots that will be necessary.

 

Letter from the Chairman: $42 Million
APRIL 15TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,
$42 million in crowd funding! I can’t think of a better symbolic victory than reaching that number in crowd funding. The ‘meaning of life, the universe and everything’ is now the amount pledged to let us build a new universe!

I’d like to thank so many of you for coming out to PAX East to see the Arena Commander reveal. We’ll be sharing some additional footage later in the week to let everyone see what we weren’t able to show at the event! Technical glitches aside, it was extremely gratifying to see everyone’s reactions; everyone who got their hands on the game loved it, and more importantly, they immediately understood where we’re going for Star Citizen. I can’t wait to be able to share it with the entire community that has made the project possible.

At $42 million, you unlocked several celebratory goals:

• Updated Observist Guide – Additional funding from the $42 million level will go to expanding the website area of the Galactapedia: expect to see holographic ships, items and navigation interface in 3D! Imagine admiring your ships or planning your loadouts right here at the RSI website.

• Explorer-class mobiGlas Rig – Every player who backed before we hit $42 million will start the game with their own, visually distinctive mobiGlas “ExoGlas” rig which can be used to access the Observist at any time. I’ve charged the mobiGlas team with a very difficult task: creating a realistic interface that will help keep your affairs in order in an expansive galaxy. It’s almost like building our own in fiction operating system for an imagined future, and it’s very different task than building spaceships. This backer-exclusive mobiGlas kit will come pre-loaded with additional galactic information that new players would ordinarily need to explore or barter to fill out; it’s our way of honoring the information you’ve collected about the Star Citizen universe through the RSI site and community over the past year!

The towel features the UEE logo on one side and an Observist logo on the reverse.

• Gladius – The Squadron 42 team will develop an additional fighter for the game, the Aegis Dynamics Gladius-class light fighter. The Gladius will be the first fighter built entirely from concept to CryEngine in the UK! Here’s the official description: The Aegis Gladius is the UEE’s reigning light short-range patrol fighter. A single-seat ship with no room for expansion, the Gladius is fast, maneuverable and capable of punching far above its weight. The main advantage to the design is simplicity: cheap to produce, easy to repair and outfit and quick to train new pilots on. The Gladius is an aging design nearing the end of its life-cycle, although iterative updates have kept it the most nimble fighter in the active fleet.

• Towel – And of course, everyone who backs before we hit $42 million will also receive a towel for their hangar. Don’t explore the galaxy without it!

The team has put together some preliminary art for the towel, included in this post. Use your Observist towels with pride, they’re only available to backers who supported us before this level! (Just like Arena Commander itself, we’ve tried to come up with fiction to go with the towel: it’s the incentive reward your character got for subscribing to The Observist in the first place.)

For the $44 million goal, you’ve voted for an additional hangar room. The Hangar room system is currently being developed at Behaviour and will premiere with the upcoming asteroid hangar. Backers who support the game before we hit $44 million will have the following added to their hangars:

• Stellar Cartography – Walk among the distant horizons you’ve charted in Star Citizen’s dedicated “map room” featuring a 3D holographic representation of the known universe. Your map room will start with a basic guide to the United Empire of Earth, and will expand into something that is unique to you as you explore uncharted worlds and discover new secrets. Build the most in-depth universe map possible and show it off to visitors, or lock down your secret jump points and hidden trading posts so that no one else can follow. Interface directly with the Observist guide to find out everything from what ores are in demand on MacArthur to who serves the best pasta on Terra. And with the ability to leave your own notes about your encounters and travels, it’s more than a map: it’s your digital diary!

$42 million towel - damage states

The development team is back at work today getting the dogfighting module ready for its full release. As always, thank you: none of what you saw last week would have been possible without the support of our backers. Hitting $42 million means that even more resources are going into the ‘verse! Finally, remember to vote in the poll below, which will select the $45 million stretch goal reward item.

 

ARENA COMMANDER: PAX EAST AND BEYOND
APRIL 20TH 2014



Join the Star Citizen team for a special video taking you through the PAX East event and beyond to show you what’s coming in the first release of Arena Commander!

Please accept our apologies for the late night video release; it is the result of technical issues with the video export.

 

GIFTING CHANGES ALERT
APRIL 25TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,
We’re making some changes to how gifting works! Our Customer Support team has seen an increasing number of cases where backers have been taken advantage of by users posing as “middlemen” on the grey market. We’re aware that many backers have taken it upon themselves to offer such services for the good of the game. While we applaud your dedication, be aware that criminals seeking to prey on your good intentions are on the rise!

As a result of these cases, we’re making a number of changes to our gifting system to reduce the potential for fraud. These changes will take place on Thursday, May 1st. You have until then to move your packages and accounts to where you would like them!

The changes are as follows:

• An added thirty-day ‘gift lock’ on gifting users’ first purchases. This is intended to block users who create throwaway accounts to transfer stolen ships and packages. This applies only to new accounts and not any existing backers.

• In order to eliminate the middleman scam, packages will be giftable only once before they are locked to an account. Giftings prior to May 1st, 2014 will not apply to this limit.

• Packages and ships purchased using store credit may not be gifted. This is to prevent anyone from circumventing the single-gift limit by melting items for store credit and then purchasing them again

The safety of our backers and the Star Citizen experience is our utmost concern. In short, we do not want to see another user swindled on the grey market where we can not offer support. The hope is that gifting changes will reduce these increasingly common off-site sale issues.