Luminalia 2954 Calendar - Day 11
Daily reward:
Pico the Party Animal
A super-rare Pico makes a very special holiday appearance.
4.0 Preview - Status Update
We wanted to provide a small update before we get too far into the winter break so we’re starting this thread and will be periodically dropping additional information here as it becomes available.
While we will aim to have a more in-depth breakdown after the Holiday, here is a brief list of some of the significant issues that have had corrective action taken so far:
- Global Lag – Once players were jumping into the live scaled environment, we discovered that some aspects of typical player behavior were spamming the infrastructure more than expected. A series of hotfixes were deployed to reduce these systems’ impact, resulting in improved interactions responsiveness and faster login queue times.
- Missions – Next up, the mission service encountered degraded performance after players had been engaging in missions post launch. After the source of the issue was identified, another corrective hotfix was applied.
- Hangar Spawn – It was discovered that the very recent change to allow players to spawn directly in the Hangar has had some unintended reduction in overall performance of the backend infrastructure. Spawning directly in the Hangar has been temporarily disabled so we can monitor the environment without this added load and ensure that this is the only cause of this issue.
In addition to these, we are currently in the middle of rolling out services updates aimed at optimizing Reputation and Mission services, Social system improvements, preventing concurrent unstows of Hangars, and safeguarding against the current leading cause of Hybrid crashes.
4.0 Preview update on Error 60030
*"Happy New Year everyone!
Just a quick note to share some updates: Today, the team rolled out a corrective script to repair many accounts affected by a variant of the “shard locked” issue (commonly seen as error 60030). With this rollout, a large number of accounts have been restored through a repair and cleanup process and should now be able to play.
This, along with a few recently deployed fixes, should help prevent additional accounts from encountering this one too.
We’re also continuing to work on resolving other variants of this issue that are still affecting others, as well as addressing various gameplay-related issues in the 4.0 Preview environment.
The team is back and focused on getting things in good shape as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and support, and we’ll keep you updated as we have more to share."*
This week in Star Citizen:
Now that the full team is back in action, we’re shifting into high gear. Our immediate focus is on refining 4.0 with improvements and fixes leading into a 4.0.1 patch. As shared in the year-end Letter from the Chairman, improving overall playability is our top priority, and we’re determined to start 2955 on the right foot.
Keep an eye on Spectrum in the coming weeks as 4.0.1 moves through the PTU and gets ready for its live release. Once we’re confident in the stability and strength of 4.0, we’ll also begin retiring 3.24.3 - but rest assured, we’ll give you a heads up before that happens.
- **Tuesday: ** January Subscriber Comm-Link
January 2025 Subscriber Promotions
In-game flairs:
- Centurion subs: Sand Nomad Plant Pot
- Imperator subs: Bronze Mya Vase + Sand Nomad Plant Pot
- Subscriber-Exclusive Store: Baltazar Stool
Ships of the Month:
- Centurion ship: Constellation Taurus
- Imperator ships: Constellation Taurus, Andromeda and Aquila
This week in Rally Citizen:
- **Tuesday: ** Lore post on the Aegis Eclipse
- Saturday: <:Twitch:884999004394500128> Daymar Rally
Concierge IAE Post-Sale now through January 21 including Intrepid, Medipin, Polaris, Hornet Mk2 Ghost & Tracker, and Paladin. Includes big sale 10-year and LTI insurance deals respectively.
Just a reminder for those looking to spend real money that CIG already tried to balance the 1-shotting Size 10 Torps on Polaris with no insurance reinbursement once, does not mean they will not take action after all these sales wrap up. Speculation sure, but we seen CIG do it already once telegraphing their intentions, so be mindful if you are tying up new money or that much credit in a Polaris.
UPDATE: Credit versions of this extended big ship sale no longer getting 10-Year Insurance. Behold, a 850 USD Polaris with 6 month insurance before tax. <:KEKU:1027250561902465044>
btw the sneakpeek is the exterior shot of this last weeks Teaser from the interior
you can see the same mechanism and windows in both shots
This week in Star Citizen:
- **Wednesday: ** Monthly Report + In Case You Missed It sale
- Thursday: Revamped Squadron 42 Newsletter
You’ll want to make sure you’re subscribed and ready to receive the new Squadron 42 newsletter to participate in a newsletter-exclusive contest, where you might find yourself taking home a physical piece of Squadron 42 history…
As a reminder, our weekly shows, Inside Star Citizen and Star Citizen Live, are on a hiatus, but we’re actively filming and will have that sweet content in your hands very soon.
@GeneralNews
An Epic Month Ahead
Star Citizen Alpha 4.0.1 is moving steadily through the PTU and is already accessible to all backers.
There’s plenty to look forward to as we wrap up January and head into February. Here’s a look at what’s coming up:
- Save Stanton: Chapter 2
- Squadron 42 Newsletter Update & Contest
- Red Festival 2955
- Referral Bonus
- Free Fly
- Coramor 2955
- Crux Cup 2955
PU Monthly Report November-December 2024
AI (Tech):
- AI Tech spent the last two months making performance improvements to AI systems and progressing with new features.
- The StarScript design tool received numerous updates, it also has a modern UI and better functionality for debugging behaviors.
- Multiple improvements were made to the ‘tactical point system’ to provide faster results when searching for usables, cover, or points on the navigation mesh with less impact on the frame-time budget.
Animation:
- The Animation team create player-interaction animations for hacking and door panels.
- They also worked on various creature animations for the kopion, Quasi grazer, and Valakaar, and prepped for upcoming creatures.
Art (Characters):
- The Character Art team supported StarWear art debt and fixed bugs for the live releases.
- Currently working on two new armors alongside upcoming armor variants.
Art (Ships):
- The Ship Art team spent the end of 2024 putting the finishing touches on upcoming vehicles that will be revealed or released this year.
- Alongside unannounced vehicles, several upcoming vehicles progressed through the white and greybox stages, including the Consolidated Outland Pioneer, Drake Ironclad, Anvil Paladin, MISC Starlancer TAC, Argo CSV-FM, and RSI Apollo and Perseus.
Core Gameplay:
- Work was done in support of an upcoming ship, fixing quality-of life issues with personal hangar and freight elevators, and a lot of bug fixing.
Economy:
- Vehicle repair costs were rebalanced taking into account the new prices for components and commodities. For example, repairing a ship’s hull should now be a lot cheaper than replacing missing components.
Graphics, VFX Programming & Planet Tech:
- The team finalized internal support for Vulkan and rolled it out as the default renderer for developers. This includes many stability improvements alongside multi-threading improvements to increase CPU performance on multi-core machines. These improvements are in the main branch, so they will reach the PU when the next major pull of the main code branch takes place.
- R&D for global illumination, reflections, and Planet Tech v5 all progressed and will continue at full pace now that the team’s work on Alpha 4.0 is complete.
Mission Design:
- Mission Design kicked off new content planned for 2025, more of which will be shared in the coming months.
R&D:
- The R&D team continued to finalize the core system components for the first version of dynamic weather.
- Similar controls were added for lightning and the quality of lightning event locations extracted from the weather map was improved.
- Volumetric cloud shadow rendering was stabilized to further improve occasional stepping artifacts when the camera moved, especially with the sun at low angles above the horizon.
@GeneralNews
Squadron 42 Newsletter Contest
Welcome to the ‘Squadron 42 Newsletter Contest’
To celebrate the debut of our revamped Squadron 42 Newsletter, we’re challenging you to unleash your in-game creativity by submitting stunning screenshots of your Star Citizen character in action, dressed in their finest UEE attire and embodying the true spirit of a Citizen of the Empire
Prize:
A page of sheet music from the Squadron 42 score, used in the official soundtrack recording sessions performed at Abbey Road Studios, London, and signed by Chris Roberts.