This week’s edition of Star Citizen’s Around the Verse heralds the release of the 2.6.2 update on the PTU — and yes, the Buccaneer is in it. That’s a handy coincidence since the episode also contains part two of the ship pipeline deep-dive, which features that very starship as the devs polish it to “flight ready stage.” Technical Designer Matt Sherman and crew explain how they move ships through surface geometry and textures and parallax mapping, then adjust the joints and animations, the aural effects, the weaponry, and even the “bespoke” custom UIs for the ships that the player will use to pilot them — everything that needs to be done long before the math folks consider things like “balance.” The best bit is the designer whose job it is to think about how the ships will blow up:
“I jump in about white-box stage, after concept’s done, the modelling gets laid out, design has put some features in, I’ll go in and I’ll look at what the design is, what’s been done so far, and start to think about destruction. Very early on we start to think about how the ship will break apart.”
There’s also a check-in with the Foundry 42 Frankfurt studio, which is currently working on weapons, modularity, lighting, room types, animations, and cinematic conversations. Check it all out below!
