Roadmap Roundup

Happy Friday, everyone!

Each and every week, we accompany the Roadmap update with a brief explanatory note to give you insight into the decision-making that led to any changes. This is part of an effort to make our communications more transparent, more specific, and more insightful for all of you who help to make Star Citizen and Squadron 42 possible.

With that said, let’s go ahead and dive into this week’s Roadmap Roundup!

-CIG Community Team

Notable Changes for October 23rd, 2020

• Behring A03 Sniper Rifle | Designing and creating the Behring A03 sniper rifle. Includes asset creation, animation, and balancing.
• Behring FS-9 LMG | Designing and creating the Behring FS-9 LMG. Includes asset creation, animation, and balancing.
• Vehicle Entry Identification | This feature adds dynamic markers when in close proximity to your vehicle to aid in entry. These contextually change depending on whether the vehicle is landed or in space to only show valid entry methods.

Grin Multi-tool Tractor Beam Attachment (Multi-Tool Tractor Beam – T0)
This card’s name, image, and description has been updated. | The Tractor Beam is a device that allows the control (movement) of an object without the need for an actor or other entity to be in physical contact. The first implementation of this feature will primarily be used for quickly and remotely moving cargo and miscellaneous material in space.

Object Push and Pull
The turnaround between 3.11 and 3.12 was too tight for us to get the feature in a spot where we’re happy with it. We need more time to get it right, and because of this, we’ve moved this card to allow for more time to finish their side of the feature. It has been removed from the roadmap for the time being, with the intention to return it when the Alpha 3.13 column is added.

Death Animation Improvements
Initially, we were hoping to make updates and polish improvements to the Death Animations in Alpha 3.12, but work required for Force Reactions took priority and ate up the time we had originally allotted for these improvements. In the end, it was a decision between a visual improvement and Force Reactions, which we thought were much more important overall. This card has been removed from the roadmap for the time being and will be returned when we find a place for it in our schedule.

Ship AI: Hazard Awareness and Avoidance
Work on Hazard Awareness and Avoidance will not be complete by the 3.12 branch date. This card has been removed from the roadmap for the time being and will be returned when we find a place for it in our schedule.

Server to Client Actor Networking Rework
As we’ve made progress towards improving the server to client actor networking, we’ve realized that this isn’t a task-set we’ll be considering “complete” like we do with other cards currently on the roadmap. More specifically, this is a task-set that we want to iterate on every release, continually refining our synchronization handling, and for this to be something that can and will be improving with each patch. We began this process of iteration with improvements in 3.9.1, and continued in 3.11, replacing a static latency buffer with a dynamic buffer. Meaning, the better your connection and frame rate is, the more up-to-date other players and NPCs positions and actions will appear. Ultimately, our focus is on making the player experience better and more stable, which means iterations on this alongside development rather than all at once.

Mystery Armor
The Character team splits time between work on SQ42 and work on the PU, and in this case, work needed for a piece on Squadron took priority and required us to pull multiple artists to support it. Because of this shift, and factoring in the complicated nature of this armor (cloth simulation and rigging, animations), and the fact that we’re waiting on upcoming back-end tech, it would be cutting it too close to branch day to confidently include this card in Alpha 3.12. It has been removed from the roadmap for the time being, with the intention of including it in the Alpha 3.13 column when it is added. This card has been designated as “Mystery Armor” because the character team is excited to surprise you with a popular armor-set that you’ve actually already seen concepts of… While we’re also looking forward to this new set, we want to dispel the rumor that this is the Titan Suit. Not yet folks.

That’s all for this week! Join the discussion on Spectrum.