so in patch 311 we've got the bearing gp 33 coming which is the first grenade
launcher that we've done what excites me most about the grenade launcher is how
versatile it can be you'll be able to take this you know straight into a ship corridor and
blow a bunch of people up in there and you'll even be able to take it out into the
wide open spaces on planet surfaces and if you're good enough still be able to hit
and do a bunch of damage to people
so adding new damage types or delivery systems into star citizen is purely to link him
with a long-term goal and that goal is to provide people with as much choice as
possible in the way that they like to play the game
so the grenade launcher is a very different weapon compared to what we've got in
game at the moment and therefore it will suit an entirely different style of play right
now most of our weapons we've either got like one of the spectrum which is the
missile launcher or the rail gun which is like super heavy ordnance weapons and then
we've kind of got more traditional ballistic and energy weapons that fire like very fast
moving projectiles
so the main challenge with the grenade launcher is really getting the bounce right
just because it is an explosive weapon it's very easy for it to go one way or the other
of it's far too good or it's not good enough to use basically
so we've compared that with a normal grenade which we've had a couple of
bouncing problems with in the past like sometimes the the kill radius on that was far
too big and the damage radius on it beyond that was too small
so we've actually revisited that got that feeling a lot better and then we based this
grenade launcher and the damages these propelled grenades actually do off that and
initially they were one to one the same and we found that it was far far too powerful
because the radius on the explosion was far too big for something that you could fire
so quickly and had so much ammo for
so we reduced that in a little bit and we extended the damage radius
so you're still able to damage people and we've got it feeling quite good and play test
within theaters of war has helped us tune this a lot we've had a few play tests in the
map and it's really kind of demonstrated how on our shooting range we initially tune
things and sometimes that's at closer ranges and
so when we've actually got a much more open area to fire up people where people
are behind cover and they're like 50 to 100 meters to 200 meters away and you're
trying to hit them with a weapon it really starts kind of like calling out the situations
that people are seeing more often in the pu on planets especially um
so it's really helped us push out the the ranges of a lot of our weapons and the
grenade launchers included there and
so where we're at right now the weapon is essentially fully functional all the feature
work is done we're still awaiting some of the content to come in like final audio final
animations as it kind of goes through to the end of the the content pipeline and
obviously i can't wait to see what the backers actually do with this thing from like 100
meter plus skill shots on people to accidentally killing themselves when trying to take
a bunch of people out in corridors continuing to expand the various weapon types is
just one more way the content and feature teams are working to provide more player
agency for star citizens as they choose how to make their way through the persistent
universe and you can bet the work won't stop with either last quarter's electron
weapons or the upcoming grenade launcher in alpha 3.11 but up next it's time for
another sprint report
so let's get to it in the first of two lighting updates this week one of the existing
challenges of our current particle lighting model is that the particles can get very very
bright depending on the lighting situation far brighter than they should be in real life
and that's why the graphics and vfx teams have been working together to move the
existing particle lighting model closer to a physically based rendering one yep pbr is
coming for particles too this new systemic solution will ensure that particles are no
longer brighter than the light source that hits them and as an added bonus will not
only look better but will save vfx artists time when they no longer have to manually
balance the particle brightness in each scene because every particle will now simply
work in all the various lighting situations throughout the persistent universe better
looking and less work remember that we're going to come back to it again later
additionally the work of updating the day and night cycle looks for existing landing
zones continues with l-19 in lauraville and a recently completed sprint exploring the
effort to get those massive security towers up above to search for troublemakers and
security risks to hurston's prosperity down below it's a small touch but it's one more
way the lighting team is working to give each landing zone its own distinct look and
personality not just between themselves but within their own days and nights each
quarter the vehicle content team is converting more and more ships to the use of our
updated hard surface shader now this conversion is essential to implement not only
the wear and tear that will occur from the continued use of your spacecraft but the
eventual addition of new paint schemes and libraries that will bring much color to
the verse the examples you see here are just common development themes used for
testing purposes but we're going to keep an eye out for the paints that will reach ingame shops in future updates up next is better looking and less work part two now
you may have heard about recent improvements to the organics painting tool that
looks to continue advancing the tech our artists use to populate star citizens planets
and moons and here we've got sample images showing the repainting of existing
locations in stanton now as you can see the updated painting tool has a greater range
of variation in assets and overall provides a more interesting combination between
rock and brush and tree and color and everything else that can dot a planet's surface
as with previous updates the new tool doesn't just get us a better looking brush of
terrain it's also faster and more efficient to use than ever before important
advancements necessary to finish off the planets and moons of the upcoming pyro
system and beyond up in space teams are finishing up work on the cargo deck
exteriors ahead of their intended inclusion in the upcoming alpha 311 now we'll hear
specifics about the what and how and the why in a dedicated segment here in the
coming weeks but these things just look
so cool we wanted to squeeze a few of them in here this week now not only are
there multiple variations to go along with the multiple stations that are populated
throughout the stanton system take special note of the colored cargo containers
sprinkled within discussions are currently underway now to explore parity of metric
and function with the same kinds of containers players will one day carry on their
hull series spacecraft and while we're talking space stations it's been a while yet
didn't think we'd forgotten about docking did you
so let's take a look now at some concepts currently being explored for ship to station
docking the team recently completed a sprint exploring potential options for
extendable docking arms that can be used to allow spacecraft that are maybe a little
too big to fit on landing pads or inside hangers safe traversal between vehicle and
hanger now as it's said every time we show concepts and this will be no exception
these are explorations of idea and theme used not only to identify the direction we
want to move in but also to determine those we do not just as well now a bit beyond
the normal concept is this animatic that's being used to further explore the visual
intent this particular approach was going for now as this bridge extends out the idea
here is to avoid something that seemed too structurally sound while at the same
time avoiding the sense that you were merely just walking through a catwalk
exposed to the void around you and could easily be knocked out by some kicked up
space dust this extendable concept would also have buffer arms at the end designed
to absorb impact and a second stage connecting collar to make that final seal to the
newly arrived ship it's basically a two-stage soft dock and hard seal kind of deal this
concept is going for as with most things in the star citizen universe when the various
other disciplines like lighting vfx sound and dialogue and more come into play it's
easy to imagine how a relatively mundane task like ship docking can become a rich
and cinematic experience when all is said and done finally with some time left at the
end of their sprint and not content merely with an impressive animatic the team
went ahead and brought this concept mesh directly into engine to better gauge what
this option might look like expanding out from an existing station while validating the
distances that are being discussed what you're seeing here is the exact same thing
our developers saw when they first brought this concept in and it's a it's safe to say it
got a lot of our team members excited about the possibilities of ship the station
docking in star citizen's future you can just about see the advertisements along the
wall does stanton have a salt lick no texans all know what i'm talking about
so what did we learn about this week well we learned that new weapon types like
grenade launchers are about more than just blowing people up they're about
providing more choice for players when they go into combat that when building a
game of star citizen science and scope it's not enough to make tech that just looks
better you need systems that make work faster to go with them and that sometimes
a concept is little more than a series of thumbnail sketches and other times there are
impressive animatics you import into engine and walk around to check the scale
they're both good for inside star citizen i'm jared huckaby we'll see you next week
you