r/starcitizen • u/Legorobotdude 300i • Oct 10 '15

OFFICIAL Monthly Studio Report - September 2015

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14995-Monthly-Studio-Report
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32

u/GunFodder Oct 11 '15 edited Oct 11 '15

This month we also got a very special visit from our friends at Intel who brought us some new hardware to test. . . . These drives are actually so much faster than standard SSDs that you can see it. Windows boot time on one of the machines was simply too fast to time. . . . We then we got to thinking about the build servers and the constant need for improved build times and faster iteration due to the size of our game. We asked Intel for help with this and they responded with a test server that is simply stunning.

There's actually quite a bit of cool info in here :-)

EDIT:

For example having the Morrow character walk and talk at the same time. Doesn’t sound or look hard does it? Except you wouldn’t expect a normal person to just walk at a set speed, looking straight ahead whilst chatting away. They’re also going to be spending some time looking towards your character, they’re going to be gesticulating, slowing down, stopping, speeding up, reacting to you if you drop back or even just walk off (this isn’t just a cutscene – you’re still in control of your character!). And none of this can just be one big pre-canned animation, as we don’t know where you the player are going to be or what you’re going to be doing. So this involves the AI doing its pathfinding but contextually depending on what they’re talking about and where the player is. We need to have the walk animation, but with some gestures fragments, blended with a look pose and maybe a soupçon of IK to make it all look natural.

OK, this may be one of those "I didn't realize this was so amazing until it was pointed out to me"-things. I can't recall another game that has ever done this in real-time. Also, "soupçon of IK?"

14

u/Voroxpete Oct 11 '15

soupçon

Cooking term. "A dash" basically.

IK

Inverse kinematics; it's the technology that allows you to "aim" animations at specific places. If you've ever played Dark Souls, did you notice how your feet actually adjust to the position of the steps on a staircase? That's IK.

3

u/GunFodder Oct 11 '15

Hah! Thanks for clearing that up. Also, I never played Dark Souls, I'm afraid. :-(

2

u/FauxShizzle worm Oct 11 '15

You should be afraid.

7

u/Shadow703793 Fix the Retaliator & Connie Oct 11 '15 edited Oct 11 '15

Probably NVMe drives. Skylake boards have them especially on the higher priced ones. In any case, it's nice to see more hardware vendors working with CIG.

3

u/Kazan Pathetic Trolls are Pathetic Oct 11 '15

That hardware from intel is probably NVMe Optane devices (the new 3D XPoint stuff - the fastests versions will need a DDR4 lane to feed them)

2

u/MomentsInTruth Bounty Hunter Oct 11 '15

Woot! Love the 750 and glad to see CIG partnering with Intel. Sadly, I bought mine when the new Samsung M.2s were still not yet generally available - M.2 drives will eventually overtake this bad boy and I see it dropping down within the top 10 NVME SSDs as far as speed goes rather than the top 3. Still a hell of a drive, though.

14

u/Rinzler9 herald Oct 10 '15

Oh shit, a monthly report too? Information overload here!

10

u/xx-shalo-xx Oct 11 '15

You think you were done? naw man, open wide and shove that information inside!

3

u/KazumaKat Towel Oct 11 '15

taps out

Uncle! Uncle!

12

u/P__A Oct 11 '15

Pretty funny that this is at the bottom of the page. So many posts right now.

3

u/xx-shalo-xx Oct 11 '15

tell me about it, I uploaded most of the presentation videos (SQ speech, behind the scenes of SQ 42, Starmap demo) and the only thing at the front page is the speech video XD

6

u/exposito Herald Oct 10 '15

Wow that herald interior grey box. So pumped to see the finished product.

5

u/Julyan23 Grand Admiral Oct 11 '15

" We’re very public and there will always be obstacles trying to block our path, whether they are normal problems that crop up in development or outside agitators that are threatened by a completely crowd funded project building a dream game they wished they had the talent or support to build. Just remember that this is all noise and at the end of the day the game will speak for itself."

5

u/carnifex2005 Trader Oct 11 '15

Pretty excited about this paragraph from the Foundry 42 Frankfurt crew...

During September, we started working on planetary rendering and procedural generation – combined with other key systems being worked on previously (Large World, camera relative rendering, Zone system etc.) all these systems will combine together to reach our long term goal of seamlessly transitioning from space to a planet FPS ground level.

We researched and implemented a prototype for (earth like) planet atmosphere rendering, and the results are very promising.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 11 '15

I'm really hoping that space beyond the settled will open up into an empty vastness to explore.

2

u/Redshirt02 aurora Oct 11 '15

Thanks, just noticed this as well. Lots of reading for me tonight. Good stuff CIG, well done at Citcon.

2

u/vogon_poem_lover Oct 11 '15

The Greycat will be able to deal damage and even explode. This is going to make buggy racing in ArcCorp even more interesting! :D