Star Citizen Alpha 3.0.0/Pre-Release

Star Citizen Alpha 3.0.0 marks the next major step forward in realizing the vision of the Star Citizen Persistent Universe. As you'll see from the sections below, there's a lot of new content and underlying tech being worked on for this release which will enhance the experience of our players.

Major Features

Planetary Landings

Seamlessly land on and explore procedurally generated planets and moons in the Stanton system. Initially, players will be able to land on the three new moons Yela, Cellin, Daymar with Delamar as a stretch goal. Planet surfaces will include derelict ships, surface outposts, and inhabited bandit outposts ^[1]

Persistent Universe Content

A new planetoid, Delamar with the Levski landing zone (stretch goal), mission givers, mission givers, derelict ships, debris fields, and three new moons with outposts.

Item 2.0 Part 1

A new back-end item system that allows greater interactions between the players and objects in the universe. Includes fueling/refuelling, controlling power supplies, radar systems, quantum drives, and seats. Also, allows players to manually interact with cargo to for loading/unloading

Subsumption

Initial release of the foundation Artificial Intelligence system. Controls AI NPCs, missions, dynamic content, and conversational logic.

Cargo

Implementation of commodities, trading, automated cargo buy/sell kiosks, and, indirectly, piracy. Also the initial subset of Diffusion, a service architecture dealing with supply/demand of retail products, resources, and services.

Network improvements

New Message Queue, Physics Serialization and Persistent Data Refactor.^[2]

User Interface

Addition of kiosk UI, new Item 2.0 Multi-Function displays in ship cockpits, Field of View sliders, and a Unified Visor for seamless FPS/ Ship transitions, Mega Map for seamless transitions in/out of the Persistent Universe. Ship Security (locking/Unlocking) and generally improved cockpit experience

Character Customisation

Players can customise character heads, hair, eye colour and skin colour

Ship and gun updates

New Ships: Dragonfly, Nox, Constellation Aquila, Ursa, Prospector, Sabre Raven

Reworked Ships:Cutlass Black, Aurora Series

Guns: Adds P8-SC SMG, Scourge rail gun, reworked Gallant Energy Rifle, Arrowhead Energy Rifle, and Devastator-12 Energy Shotgun

Planetary Update

Yela

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Yela is the most frigid of the Crusader moons. Those bold (or careless) enough to step outside without a spacesuit will be killed instantly by its freezing temperatures. If the cold doesn't kill you, then any of the treacherous crevasses that crisscross the planet might. Cyrovolcanos have been known to erupt unexpectedly from such crevasses, so be wary when flying at low altitudes. Despite all its danger, there is much beauty to be found on Yela, like the underwater caves hidden beneath the moon's crust.

Cellin

Burning with volcanic activity, Cellin is the counter to her icy sister. Although the volcanoes have been dormant for hundreds of years, the surface is dotted with thermal geysers that erupt without notice. The largest of such geysers can destroy heavy vehicles. Highly corrosive clouds of gas are regularly released from the moon's surface, creating low visibility and damaging anything caught outside.

Daymar

Daymar's surface is like a harmonic blend of Yela and Cellin. It's mountainous surface is reminiscent of Cellin's volcanoes, while its craters share a warm likeness to Yela's frozen crevessases. Known for its dense atmosphere, thick fog and a loose dirt surface makes travel difficult. Lightning storms can help illuminate the fog, just don't get struck by their flash.

User Experience Polish

Improvement of Overall Framerate

We have decided to spend time increasing performance on the client and server side.

Player Count & General Stability

Currently, performance and stability drop sharply once the active players in a server reach 12-15 players.

Cockpit Experience

The Cockpit Experience sprint team is focused on improving the overall player experience in the cockpit through adjustments to cockpit geo, character placement, g-force/hit reactions, VFX, Audio, UI, and code support for things like camera shaking and hooking into ship health systems to display proper damage.

Space Landscaping

We are working on some extra Graphics code for the GPU particle system to support the creation of new VFX to implement space dust at points around Stanton. This will continue to be iterated on to create some more elaborate assets.

Basic Ship Security

With the gameplay we're adding in to 3.0.0, we're conscious that there may be some other players that would love to kill you and take your ship. To help prevent this, we wanted to implement some basic security that will allow you to lock the ship, so only you have the ability to pass freely through its doors.

Rotating and Orbiting Planets

We are very keen to make the Stanton map feel more organic as a real environment and having the planets rotate and orbit will really help with this.
This will also introduce a proper day/night cycle when you're on a planet surface which in turn opens up further gameplay possibilities.

Player Interaction System – User Experience Improvements

We want to give players the ability to more intuitively interact with items and objects within the game, but also find ways to indicate to the player what type of interaction they would be performing (pick up, start conversation, push button, etc).

Race Tracks on Planets

To give our planetary environments extra points of interest, and also an excuse to drive ground-based vehicles around at high speed, we thought the best way to do this was to build some rudimentary race tracks on the planets that would have been previously used by the research teams as a way to blow off steam and have fun.

Persistent Universe Content

Modular Room System for procedural generation of planetary outposts
- Official Outpost Spawning System ready for mission designers
- Integrated Outpost distribution to PlanetEd
- Single outpost Object Preset
- Cluster of Outposts
- Crash site mission
- Interface to hand place modules and save to Layer
- Interface to teleport the camera to the closest outpost
- Area boxes created by artists (all room sizes are now usable in the outpost procedural system)
- Entrance Room system working (stairs and ramps are now available as initial rooms)
- Rooftop Prop system working for Solar panel
- Wall prop system working for additional prop variations
- Material Wear/Dirt on props using Layer Blend done and actually working
- Developed Outpost "feet" system
- Set random rotation and offset caps on planet editor
- Start documenting 3 possible map layouts looping system (using 2 or 4 meters metrics * system; using connection additional corridor pieces; using spline skinned corridors)
- Support Aircon/solar panel system on outposts
- Added color tinting to Outposts
- Added color tinting interface to Planet Ed
- Created material distinction for interior / exteriors
- Group elements offset in Planet Object Preset to be able to offset landing pads
New Assets:
- Heavy Marine Armor
- Explorer Suit Armor
Cloth and Clothing simulation on various assets old and new
Updated helmet interiors and exterior for updated art, FOV tech and standardization
Armor converted to work within modular customization structure
Finalized delivery of ALL facial assets from 3lateral.
Ships:
- New Skinning and Rigging tools for landing gear on ships.
- Constellation Cargo Bay/Elevator extensions
- Light Group entity optimization

Moons

We are adding 3 new moons to the Crusader system; Yela, Cellin, and Daymar

Surface Outposts

The new moons will also have outposts on their surface for you to explore

Mission Givers

We're introducing Miles Eckhart (first seen in the Gamescom video) and Ruto to provide missions to players

Basic Derelict Ships

Derelict ships will be added to the system for extra points of interest and exploration

Inhabited Derelict Ship Sites

The Ship Art team is aiming to create another set of Derelict ships to be used in the Persistent Universe. These exploration rewards will appear to have been used as shelter by somebody rather than just being empty. Unfortunately, we're still working on AI functioning on the planet surface, so they will looked lived in, but uninhabited. For now…

Debris Fields

To accompany the derelict ships, there will also be debris fields within the system

Delamar / Levski (Stretch Goal)

We are adding the planet Delamar and the landing zone, Levski

Gameplay

Crusader Converted to Object Container Setup
- With the transition to Object Containers, the Crusader map was completely re-designed. Each Point of Interest is now an object container laid out via the Solar System Editor. This is in preparation for Object Container streaming and seamless transitions from different POI's and between Star Systems. Mission Flowgraphs are converted over to use Subsumption and the new Mission System.
Mega Map for Persistent Universe
- Mega Map tech (also used in Crusader for seamless loading between different gamemodes) is now possible in the new PU map, which is setup in the Solar System Editor. This allows the utilization of Mega Map technology.
Revamp of Power Plants / Shield Generators / Coolers and the Heat & Power System for improved gameplay and conversion to Item 2.0

Player Manned Turrets

Pick Up & Carry

As we're introducing cargo with 3.0.0, players will be able to manually interact with their cargo to load and unload it properly on their ships.

Item 2.0 Ship Conversion – Part 1 & 2

We are beginning the process of converting our available ships over to the item 2.0 system. This will allow for greater player control of the ship and also allow for expanded gameplay.

Item 2.0

Operator Seats.
- Operator seats replace existing vehicle seats as the new controllers of Item 2.0 based ships.
Radar System
Light Control System.
Fuel / Refuel.
Power Supply / Pipes.
Quantum Drive.
- Converting the quantum drive to Item 2.0 as part of the more general Item 2.0 process. This will also allow us to build more gameplay around quantum travel.

Insurance

This will be an alpha version of the insurance system where if your current ship becomes damaged beyond repair, you will be able to request a replacement ship (with basic loadout) from the insurance provider.

Stamina

We are introducing the concept of stamina into 3.0.0, this will mean that actions will have consequences. For instance, continuing to sprint will drain the stamina of your character, causing loss of breath and difficulty in aiming a weapon.

Doors & Airlocks

We are starting to update the doors and airlocks within the game to be more intelligent. This would mean that the door would 'know' if a room beyond them is depressurized and would stay shut for safety.

Cargo

Commodities bought using the kiosk will be transportable in the cargo holds of vehicles, to be sold in another location.

Commodities

Implementing items to represent units of commodity cargo.

Kiosk Support

Support UI on kiosks for buying and selling of cargo.

Atmospheric Entry Support

Adding VFX and Turbulence to atmospheric entry

Persistent Damage, Ammo and Missiles

Persistence ensures that your vehicle state is saved between sessions.

Repair

Improvements to our repair system to support our persistence model.

Inventory System Support

The inventory will offer a way to manage the cargo and commodities that are being carried by the ships a player owns.

Rover and Dragonfly In Ships

Players will be able to transport the Ursa Rover and the Dragonfly inside ships that are big enough to hold them

IFCS Performance Improvements

Changing the IFCS system to work in batch updates for performance improvements

Hint System

We have decided to include a first iteration of in-game hints to help new players acclimate to the various complex gameplay mechanics in Star Citizen.

Core Tech

New Radar Databank
Subsumption Base Functionality
- This is the initial release of the foundation technology that drives all of the AI, mission, dynamic content, and conversation logic. The mission content previously created with FlowGraph has been replaced and the implementation time to achieve a desired effect has been cut dramatically.
Various Performance improvements
Planetary Physics Grid to support orbiting and rotating planets
Multi-Function Display implementation for Item 2.0 Components on ships
IFCS improvements to support AI & Takeoff System
Unified Visor for seamless Ship 2.0 / FPS transition
HUD/Visor integration for new Radar Databank
Object Distribution
Terrain / Object blending for soft natural transition of objects intersecting with the ground
Video codec updated to Bink2, providing higher fidelity at lower bitrate
Vehicles no longer use Lua
- This is a huge step forward on the code side.
Skeleton Extension support for Item Port Offset overrides per item
Numerous types of physics simulation for all Item 2.0 attachments including hair, weapons, grenades and more.
Destructible component for items, props and environment assets
Nested Physics Grids support for vehicle transportation inside large ships, i.e. DragonFly & Rover
Physics simulation gravity vector now respects planetary gravity
Modular loadouts rule sets and support for up to five loadouts
Animation driven facial audio implemented
Updated Spacebox Editor Python integration.
Zone culling on all character assets and layers, system complete and mesh markup complete supplemented with tools to easily support new assets.
Solar System Editor
- A tool that will layout entire solar system with their astral objects (sun, planets moons) as well as space stations, etc.
New Light Controller for runtime light switches
New network message queue (current in QATR) to reduce network bandwidth and network thread time.
Light Entity Render node merging.
Dynamic Physics Grid to support sparse space areas vs. dense areas like space stations.
Highly optimized vertex and position format for all geometry
Texture memory usage reduced across the project
Unified material libraries for use across all departments
- Comparing and finding all duplicated normal maps and albedo maps in the LayerBlend texture library
- Clean up LayerBlend Material Libraries, Resolution Adjustments, Renames to Lower Case
- Follow-ups on list of unused textures and materials
Massively improved LOD computation and average face sizes for ships
Shared hair assets (instead of bespoke asset per head) for character creation
Automated facial asset LODs, skinning algorithm per LOD updated.
Reworked mesh setup of facial assets for optimal performance and reduced drawcalls.
Unified helmet and character mesh into singular render proxy for better performance and visuals.
Various portal and culling improvements.
Improved Animation Data Base collection and build process for optimized animation data streaming also added external tools to manage this.
Deprecated thousands of legacy and test assets including animations, geometry, libraries and more for reduced build size.
Automatic Asset Error collection and tracking.
Reworked itemport layout for characters and character items
Updated all assets using HumanSkin to highly optimized HumanSkinv2 shader. This saves upwards of a 100 megs of texture memory per face.
Vastly improved memory allocator which allowed massive reduction in runtime allocation count
Several significant optimizations to entity update code

Planetary Tech

The Physics Grid for planets and the modular space stations.

Solar System Editor Tool

A tool that will layout entire solar system with their astral objects (sun, planets moons) as well as space stations, etc.

Entity Update Component Scheduler

Will allow lower priority entities (i.e. those further away from players) to be updated less frequently, which should improve the overall framerate and allow us to add more content to the universe.

Entity Owner Manager

The Entity Owner Manager will track entities that are moved around the universe, making sure we spawn and unspawn them at the correct time

UI

Kiosk UI

Kiosk shopping will allow players to buy and sell various commodities with the gameworld to vendors throughout the universe

Item 2.0 Multi Function Displays

MFDs are being converted to work in the new item 2.0 system to give pilots even more control of their ships

Field of View Slider

This will allow players to narrow or widen the field of view to their liking

Character Customization

Players will now be able to customize their characters' heads, hair, eye color, and skin color

Personal Manager App

This App will allow players to review their inventory and customize various aspects of their suit and weapons

Mission Manager App

This is a redesign of the Mission App that is currently available within mobiGlas and is the next step to allow players more control over their mission tracking

Cargo Manifest App

After buying items at a Kiosk, players will be able to head to their ship and check their cargo manifest.

Vehicle Customizer App

This app will allow players to customize their ship via the ship customization screen, so edits can be done without locating the exact port on the ship.

Ship Selector App & Insurance Claim

This app would exist alongside the Ship Selection Terminals in the Persistent Universe, allowing players more freedom to spawn ships at designated locations. We are incorporating the Insurance Claim process, so we have one app that will serve two functions.

Heavy Armor for Star Marine

Heavy armor will be enabled for selection within the Star Marine loadout customization menu.

Insurance

With this first implementation of insurance, when a player's ship is destroyed they will be able to request a replacement version from their insurance provider

Inventory System

Very closely linked to the cargo manifest App. This will be the place to look for you personal inventory.

Mission Board App

The mission board allows players to see the service beacons that have been set up around the universe by other players calling for assistance

StarMap App

The StarMap will be introduced to allow players to view the PU at large and select planets to QT to

UI Owner Component

This is an underlying framework that will be used for the player manager App, cargo, and the Kiosk

MobiGlas Overhaul

The UI team are planning an overhaul of the mobiGlas system so that it better reads what the gamecode is doing. This change will make the mobiGlas system as a whole easier to maintain for the UI team

Comms System UI

We are adding the initial implementation of the Comms System in to 3.0.0 which will allow players to hail in order to request landing while at the various space stations in the PU.

AI

Mission System

The overall system that will be used to create mission flows when we start building missions like Patrol, Assassination, Smuggling, etc.

AI Turrets

We are adding the ability for AI to operate turrets in Crusader, so we are working to make sure that they track and fire upon the correct targets.

Graphics

RenderTarget refactor
- This saves over 50% of the video memory previously used for dynamic textures.
Physically-based area lights
Shadow map caching system
- This allows for many more shadow casting lights at once and avoids the need for baking shadows.
Revamped decal rendering system which renders fully deferred, instanced decals with aggressive overdraw optimizations

Render to Texture

This will have many uses going forwards, but our focus for now is to improve UI rendering and to introduce live rendering of video communications. We're aiming to improve rendering performance by rendering as much of the UI ahead of a frame. For video communications, this will mean that we don't have to pre-render the comms and store those files on the hard drive, as is the case with most games, allowing us to maintain fidelity and save hard drive space.

Environment Probe

This allows for bounced lighting and reflections to be updated dynamically and will result in better lighting visuals.

Atmospheric Entry

With 3.0.0 players will have the chance to land on astral bodies, which, in some cases, will involve passing through the atmosphere. Our graphics team are working on the tech that will make this feel as satisfying as possible for the player piloting the ship.

Volumetric Fog

GPU Particle Foundation

Engine Trails & Contrails

Asteroid Physics

We are making the switch to move the asteroid system to the new "Physics on Demand" system to allow the server and clients to dynamically create and simulate any portion of the asteroid field rather than just the area near the player.

Exposure Improvements

We are adding support for peripheral vision to be taken into account when calculating exposure, rather than just what is onscreen. This will avoid situations like looking into a space when there is something very bright (such as a planet surface or space station) just off-screen.

Backend

Diffusion Subset for 3.0.0

Diffusion is our second-generation cloud-oriented back-end service architecture. It dramatically simplifies the effort required to implement, maintain, and interact with services, while simultaneously providing major enhancements in the areas of scalability and redundancy.

Solar System Shop Service

The Solar System Shop Service dictates what retail products, natural resources, and services shops are willing to buy and sell. It also decides their current level of inventory and prices, all of which may vary over time. It acts as an intermediary between the game and the back end simulation/rule set.

Solar System Mission Service V1 "Mission Broker"

The Solar System Mission Service dictates what missions are being offered at various locations and at what price. It is also responsible for specifying when and where dynamic content should be instantiated and how it should be customized. That way, the reality that the player sees matches what is in that area, based upon hints provided by the back end simulation/rule set. This service will split into two for 3.1, with the latter functionality becoming the responsibility of a dedicated Dynamic Content Service.

Network

New Message Queue

Now that all our messages are strictly ordered we've been able to streamline the processing, allowing us to send and receive messages with less overhead. The new message queue also has extra features to handle packet loss and jitter, which helps reduce average bandwidth.

Physics Serialization

This will fix a few long standing threading issues between the network and physics code which will improve separation of physics and netcode for better maintainability.

Persistent Data Refactor

The expanding capabilities of persistent data to support gameplay features in 3.0.0 has required the Network team to work on this refactor

Ships & Weapons

Drake Dragonfly

A short-range open canopy craft capable of space and ground flight.

Drake Cutlass Black

Rework of the legacy ship

RSI Constellation Aquila

The newest available flight-ready variant of the Constellation series.

RSI Ursa Rover

Ground exploration vehicle.

MISC Prospector

Single-seater mining craft.

Aopoa Nox

An open canopy vehicle.^[3]

RSI Aurora

This is an updated version of the Aurora.

Behring P8-SC

An SMG for mid-range fighting that provides a high rate of fire.

Apocalypse Arms Scourge Rail Gun

A shoulder mounted railgun capable of providing high levels of damage at a long range.

Klaus and Werner Gallant Rifle

Rework of the legacy weapon.

Arrowhead Sniper Rifle

Rework of the legacy weapon.

KSAR Devastator-12 Shotgun

Rework of the legacy weapon.

Klaus and Werner Arclight Pistol

Rework of the legacy weapon.

Gemini L86 Pistol

Rework of the legacy weapon.

Behring P4-AR

Rework of the legacy weapon.

Production Schedules

#	Date	Patch & link	Est. Live Date	Est. PTU Date	Est. Evocati Date	Diff
36	2017-08-18	3.0.0 Production Schedule #19	N/A	N/A	N/A	Comparison
35	2017-08-11	3.0.0 Production Schedule #18	2017-09-04 (0)	2017-08-18 (0)	2017-08-10 (0)	Comparison
34	2017-08-04	3.0.0 Production Schedule #17	2017-09-04 (0)	2017-08-18 (0)	2017-08-10 (+7)	Comparison
33	2017-07-28	3.0.0 Production Schedule #16	2017-09-04 (+14)	2017-08-18 (+11)	2017-08-03 (+14)	Comparison
32	2017-07-21	3.0.0 Production Schedule #15	2017-08-21 (0)	2017-08-07 (0)	2017-07-20 (0)	Comparison
31	2017-07-14	3.0.0 Production Schedule #14	2017-08-21 (0)	2017-08-07 (0)	2017-07-20 (0)	Comparison
30	2017-07-07	3.0.0 Production Schedule #13	2017-08-21 (+17)	2017-08-07 (+14)	2017-07-20 (+14)	Comparison
29	2017-06-30	3.0.0 Production Schedule #12	2017-08-04 (0)	2017-07-24 (0)	2017-07-06 (0)	Comparison
28	2017-06-23	3.0.0 Production Schedule #11	2017-08-04 (+18)	2017-07-24 (+18)	2017-07-06 (+15)	Comparison
27	2017-06-16	3.0.0 Production Schedule #10	2017-07-21 (0)	2017-07-06 (0)	2017-06-21 (0)	Comparison
26	2017-06-09	3.0.0 Production Schedule #9	2017-07-21 (+15)	2017-07-06 (+13)	2017-06-21 (+9)	Comparison
25	2017-06-02	3.0.0 Production Schedule #8	2017-07-06 (0)	2017-06-23 (0)	2017-06-12 (0)	Comparison
24	2017-05-26	3.0.0 Production Schedule #7	2017-07-06 (0)	2017-06-23 (0)	2017-06-12 (0)	Comparison
23	2017-05-19	3.0.0 Production Schedule #6	2017-07-06 (+7)	2017-06-23 (+7)	2017-06-12 (+7)	Comparison
22	2017-05-12	3.0.0 Production Schedule #5	2017-06-29 (0)	2017-06-16 (0)	2017-06-05 (0)	Comparison
21	2017-05-05	3.0.0 Production Schedule #4	2017-06-29 (0)	2017-06-16 (0)	2017-06-05 (0)	Comparison
20	2017-04-28	3.0.0 Production Schedule #3	2017-06-29 (0)	2017-06-16 (0)	2017-06-05 (0)	Comparison
19	2017-04-21	3.0.0 Production Schedule #2	2017-06-29 (0)	2017-06-16 (0)	2017-06-05 (0)	Comparison
18	2017-04-14	3.0.0 Production Schedule #1	2017-06-29	2017-06-16	2017-06-05	N/A