Star Citizen ’s latest episode of Around The Verse has arrived and it details the days prior to alpha 3.0’s recent Evocati release and the wonders of turrets. There’s not a lot to discuss here in general, but it’s still got some solid footage for backers to watch.
Starting with the 3.0 progress report, there isn’t much worth talking about after all the major kinks have been worked out. As far as space travel is concerned, the current Evocati build has zero must-fix bugs. As a result, the 800 Evocati testers should receive the new content over the next few hours.
The decision to launch the Evocati happened on Thursday, but, as expected, the days prior to that milestone were far from easy. QA staff had to not only iron out minor bugs, but also address more serious issues like server disconnects, massive performance loss, spawn anomalies and ship insurance policies that simply didn’t work. If the bugs had been left in, players would have received repaired ships without doors or seats. Changes to burn up points also greatly impacted how quantum travel functions within the universe.
In fact, even on launch day, there were concerns about deadlocks that only kept sessions active for about 30 seconds before crashing. Alpha 3.0 just narrowly missed its expected September release window, but there are still plenty of issues to resolve before the client goes public. The next iteration of the Evocati build will focus on adjustments to the shopping system. At the time of publish, there are 17 must-fix issues to address there.
The feature of the episode, however, was 3.0’s turret system. On that subject, Cloud Imperium Games Lead Technical Designer Kirk Tome had lots to say. His team has been working hard to ensure turrets respond correctly to movement and turn faster than in previous builds of the game. There’s also been tweaks to reticles to make sure players know exactly where their bullet spray will end up. Alongside that freedom comes the ability to see your character while shooting and realistic responses to external forces like g-force.
Like all turrets in games, lots of analysis to determine precise angles were required in order to get it to work properly. Tests showed, for example, that while characters would sometimes sit in turrets as normal, they would face the wrong direction when the weapons deployed. That meant designers had to create separate entry, fire and exit fields to ensure each stage of combat worked as it should. As if that wasn't hard enough, care also had to be taken to confirm that bullet spray from turrets didn’t accidentally harm the ship it came from. Getting all of these facets to work in tandem mandated careful attention to detail, but Tome remains hopeful about 3.0’s iteration.
“The most important influence[s] we made were all done through trial and error,” Tome said. “We tried something and then played with it for a little while, found out what did work and what didn't, took the aspects that did and figured out ways in which we could improve the aspects that didn't. Because turrets deal with angles. So it's the angle of the turret and the guns to where you want to fire.
“Because the player is trying to get the target name of the ships or your enemy, trying to figure out exactly how the player input translated to being able to make the source of the shot and the destination of the shot was the most challenging, and really the goal of, improving turrets. All these things put together should mean that you'll have a lot more fun using turrets in 3.0.”
In terms of future aspirations, the team hopes to experiment with more diverse fire modes and accurate radar signaling to make turret combat more effective. When complete, turret users should be able to see what other turret users are doing on the ship. If the captain sees a viable target, he or she should also be alert all the folks behind turrets. In other words, there’s a solid foundation for turrets in and beyond 3.0.
Star Citizen alphas are available for Kickstarter backers on PC.
How do you feel about the 3.0 Evocati release? Will you be manning turrets when you play Star Citizen? Tell us in the comments section.
