Star Citizen’s latest Around The Verse focuses on alpha 3.0 progress as it pertains to a live build. The development team at Cloud Imperium Games also introduced fans to the intricacies of the gravlev system that governs the hybrid flight of bikes like the Nox and Dragonfly.
Starting with 3.0, here’s a brief list of the major bugs the team squashed over the past few days. Fixing these problems moves them one step closer to moving out of the PTU and into live.
BURNDOWN RECAP
- Cargo : A “boxhand” bug stuck cargo to players’ hands if the game crashed while holding an object. Cargo possession status is no longer factored into the persistence system. Shopping is basically feature-complete, but some animations aren’t playing and resource inventory may be shifted around.
- Missions : Missing animations and unresponsive mission givers have been tweaked.
- Ships : Problems with turrets reacting improperly to planetary rotation have been addressed. Firing accuracy has improved in the latest builds.
- Traversal : Minor polish is underway. UI elements are being added to make it clearer which landing pad is yours.
- MobiGlass : The Star Map is basically done and will start rolling out to ships with 3D radars soon. After that it will be implemented into 2D and hybrid radars. The hint system is also being tied to MobiGlass, so specific events in MobiGlass will trigger a hint dialog. The menu for “personal inner thoughts” is being finished, and holograms are working again on the latest engine tech with 3D markers.
- Performance : Various bugs related to disconnects, latency and gun reverb have been looked into.
- There are 240 must-fix issues that must be addressed before a live build can be published outside the PTU.
While it may sound like there’s still a lot left to fix, the team plans to have alpha 3.0 basically feature-complete at the time of publish.
THE GRAVLEV SYSTEM
The Gravlev system was this week’s featured topic, and it’s essentially the hovering technology that brings bikes like the Nox and Dragonfly to life. The main point being driven home by developers is that piloting these crafts is stable and it will provide plenty of player agency.
While bikes must respond to environmental factors like gravity, turbulence and drag, pilots have just enough control to get where they want to go. Hovering starts at a base height as determined by acceleration, but strafing upward can push the craft to a higher altitude without necessarily shifting out of the standard teraplaining mode. If you need more acceleration and less drag in racing situations, move closer to the ground. If you drop off a cliff, the bike will fall to gravity’s force until you reach an altitude low enough to support teraplaining. Small factors like turning, speed and collision detection can also impact height.
If navigating close to the ground seems a bit too boring for you, you can always tap the spacebar to enter free-flight mode. In this configuration, your Nox or Dragonfly responds to the exact same pressures as actual ships. Getting back down to hovering mode is as simple as lowering your craft. Mastery of bikes requires a basic understanding of this science, but the tools to learn it are at your disposal.
Beyond that advanced level of control, gravlev is also made better by emphasizing stability. The aforementioned collision detection system, for example, ensures that a bike isn’t thrown completely off course by something like a tiny pothole. The feature instinctively observes the size of oncoming hazards and only allows traversal to be majorly affected by larger threats like walls. When contacting craters your base height may dip, but using your thrusters will pull you out.
To make all of those concepts work in tandem, the feature has been designed so that a plane is created to keep the craft in position. In contrast to other games that use invisible terrain to create the illusion of hovering objects, Star Citizen bases its concept entirely on acceleration forces. As Technical Designer Andrew Nicholson put it, the goal is to create a plausible gravlev system that lives up to “every Star Wars fans’ dream.”
Star Citizen is in alpha for Kickstarter backers on PC. The gravlev system in particular is in its final polishing stages.
What are your thoughts on the latest alpha 3.0 progress? Will features like gravlev make Star Citizen the space sim of your dreams? Tell us in the comments section!
