Studio Update

• Eric Kieron Davis welcomes us back to LA and states they have grown to 74 to include a total of 12 engineers

• New ships will have heat and power components that act as real heat sinks and affect IR signature masking

• Shopping should be provide more responsive purchasing with CIGs reimplementation of a new replicated function system, Remote Methods

• Improvements to trying clothes on and updating persistent data after purchases is next

• More light group entity work allows for individual direction lighting with rotation via a simple property

• Making light groups and interior devices rely on a vehicles power is next

• Through hard work the control manager can now dictate the control of an item or sub-items by any particular seat, console or AI and may be toggled by a player from direct to AI control, and has been added to DATAForge

• Whitebox of the Anvil Terrapin is complete and greybox is ongoing

• RSI Aurora progress is steady and past general polish into fine details such as cockpit controls, screens and sleeping quarters

• The QA team doesn't want to leave work and loves testing the new planetary tech that's soon to be released in 3.0

• The tech content team supports every aspect of the games with tech art constantly maintaining a unified library of assets for shared use

• Database of animations must be split logically in order that streaming be seamless or else your might do the slide

• Engineering, tech art and dev ops parsed asset errors this month via 200 megabyte text logs line-by-line

• A new editor tool implemented in item 2.0 characters will make loadouts easier and faster to create

• A new skinning tool reduces turnaround for skinning complex setups and improves the process overall

• Tech art worked hard to make sure your character's items attach and detach in real time fluidly

• The heavy marine is the most complex character to date and is ready for the battlefield

• The heavy outlaw is not far behind as well as various uniforms, outfits and aliens due to the character team

• Concepts for the Xi'An and Banu are finishing up and Rudo and Miles Eckhart are ready to meet you as quest givers in the verse

Banu Lore

Lore

• Banu were part of the original time capsule and humanity’s first contact

• Xi'An influence came from China, Vanduul the Visigoths, Tevarin from feudal Japan and the Banu the Persian empire

• Vernon Tar was the first human to have contact with the Banu who ended up being a fugitive running from one of the guilds

• Material items the Banu own signify their wealth and station in life

  • They tend to travel with all their belongings, hence why their ships on on such a grand scale and artisanal in quality

• Banu do not hold much interest in history such as who built this and when and where, they only care that it works and is effective at what it does

• The Banu lifestyle is about accruing stuff reflecting living a full life, places you’ve been, people you’ve met, etc and living in the present

Design

• The original design of the Banu had lots of ridges on the face and was a little scarier

  • They wanted to try and bring more colour into them, explore skin tones, why would have different skin tones and why those things exist

  • Tried to keep the old design of lines on the face as it was an interesting design language and they wanted to run with it a little more

• They wanted to get across some features that players can connect with with a little bit of a human element to the design

• The clothing will be very decadent, lots of patterns, colours that’ll show different places they’ve been

• The species as a whole is very specialized: If they’re a soldier/merchant/etc, they’ve trained their whole lives to be that.

• The Banu are a little awkward/aggressive seeming and the way they try and make you feel more comfortable is to display their wealth and belongings for you to see

Banu Defender

• The name of the ship implies its role, defence. It isn’t designed to be aggressive, but to protect what the pilot considers important.

• Because the ship was Banu, they collaborated with writers David Haddock and Will Weissbaum in order to design the ship.

• They had 18 initial ideas that were in a variety of different configurations that they had to pin down in order to get approval from Chris to begin concept.

• The Banu fly their ships differently than that of a UEE pilot in that instead of a traditional pilot and then a gunner manning a turret separately, they work in tandem to where the gunner will control the main armament alongside the pilot which is why there is a dual cockpit system for the Defender.

• While they were making the ship, they started via human standards, but found that things didn’t mesh correctly and wasn’t what they were going for, and so a lot of work went into how the ship “Flowed” together and made the ship feel more organic and smooth.

• The ship is designed around having a bigger shield than most fighters available, but trades that strength for having a very weak hull.

• The ship’s engine is a reengineered Xi’An tech engine that was put in place of a previous human engine due to its superior performance.

• The Xi’An don’t celebrate the same things culturally as we do such as art for example and a lot of their effort is put into things like ships as you can notice from their quality and aesthetic.

• The goal of the ship was to enable a pilot to be able to fly and gun, but if they needed a co-pilot for engineering or perhaps take over the guns to free up the pilot to do more things, then they can.