Spectrum is a real-time communication web application built specifically for Star Citizen. Its motivation is to bring Star Citizen into your everyday lives. Spectrum allows you to communicate with other citizens whether you are playing the game, at work or on your mobile. Inspired by popular contemporary communication platforms, Spectrum has been built with the latest web technologies.
Spectrum’s focus is to facilitate community. The customization tools will make interaction within organizations agile and sophisticated. No longer will you have to go offsite for your org communication, you will have full access to private customizable chat lobbies, forums private rich chat and soon voice chat.
Spectrum will not only be a means of communication for the players with each other but for you to engage directly with community managers and developers. Additionally, separate lobbies will be accessible to subscribers and concierge.
Spectrum Alpha 0.3 Features
Communication
- Real Time updates of thread replies, user count… spanning the entire platform.
- A new kind of modern Forum engine with its efficient tag system and sorting mechanics and all the classic features that entail, rich-text, live fetching of URL data, and thread upvotes.
- A rich Chat engine allowing you to embed media from external (or RSI) sources, plus reactions and emojis.
- Spectrum-wide Notifications & Alerts, including In-app and browser notifications to messages/reactions and replies, Unread responses and even contextualized Mentions (“@”!). Sound alerts if you want to, and of course these include private messages to any other Spectrum user.
Usability
- One platform does it all. We’ve merged chat and forums into one responsive app.
- Settings let you customize the way you view and use Spectrum, with light & dark themes, enabling/disabling emojis and configuring your notifications.
- Threads come with a whole set of widgets to make navigation much easier, from response preview to Jump-To-Reply and displaying your position on the thread at all times.
- Bookmarks let you keep track of any type of element : your favourite chat lobby, thread or even category can be accessed in one click.
- The platform is designed for mobile use, with quick access to all functionalities.
Star Citizen Community Features
- Spectrum’s first tie-in with Star Citizen is the Presence module : all users can choose to display where and when they are playing : Online/Playing/Away/Do not Disturb… but also end-point location like Game Menu/Star Marine/Arena Commander/Hangar/Star Citizen.
- Spectrum is also the newest addition to Org functionalities : Your Org and its online identity now have their own private forums and chatrooms, complete with their own set of permissions and moderation tools.
Click here to check out everything Spectrum currently has to offer.
The Future of Spectrum
Spectrum is still in development, and it should not be considered complete. This release is just step 1 in the global release of Spectrum, and we’ll keep improving it with your help to add new functionalities and iron out bugs. We will make sure this process is as transparent as can be, and to that aim, we’re releasing a new module in the Issue Council where anyone can submit their own tickets or review anyone else’s. You can also read the Spectrum FAQ to find out more about the global communication platform transition.
Future releases of spectrum will include voice chat, a desktop application, a mobile app (android, iOS and possibly windows), and in-game integration through overlay.
Spectrum Alpha 0.3 Known Issues
- Emoji list is missing Unicode 9 latest updates (No avocado or salt shaker WHAT!)
- On mobile, the message input closes when you type. It’s bad. We’re on it!
- On mobile, the lobby presence list defaults to displayed, it’s annoying!
- We’re hunting a bug where sometimes private lobby unread “count” resets.