Roadmap Roundup Happy Wednesday, everyone!
Every two weeks, we accompany the Roadmap update with a brief explanatory note to give you insight into the decision-making that led to any changes. This is part of an effort to make our communications more transparent, more specific, and more insightful for all of you who help to make Star Citizen and Squadron 42 possible.
As we mentioned earlier this year, we’re now ready to add additional downstream teams to the Public Roadmap. More specifically, this means we’ve got a whole lot to share this week, but before we jump into that though, we wanted to take the opportunity to set proper expectations and remind folks what they can expect to see each Roadmap Roundup. While there’s been a few significant updates as we’ve looked to populate the Roadmap for the first time, you will find that this is not the norm. Now that we have the upstream and downstream teams populated, these Roadmap Roundups will likely be much shorter (akin to last week), as these are intended to call out significant changes to the schedule, such as a shift in priority, new or removed features, or anything else we think is a notable callout. That said, the Roadmap is a living document that grants you access into what our developers around the globe are working on, and the Roadmap itself will always be the best tool to follow along with progress.
We’re bringing the Progress Tracker to v1.0 with this update, and there’s a lot of notable updates this week! Along with new functionality and improvements to the roadmap itself, there are more than 100 new deliverables with this week’s update. Be sure to check out the full list of new teams below to help you explore which deliverables are new.
With that said, let’s go ahead and dive into this week’s Roadmap Roundup!
-CIG Community Team
Notable Changes for April 7th, 2021 Before jumping into the new game content, we’d like to call attention to a few new features to the functionality of the roadmap itself. These aim to make navigating the Roadmap an easier and more enjoyable experience.
Deliverables View You can now view the Progress Tracker sorted by Deliverable, rather than by Team. When viewing the Roadmap within this view, if you click on any specific deliverable, it will expand and show you all teams working on said particular deliverable. If you click on a team, it’ll take you to the respective team’s schedule on the Teams view. This is meant to give you multiple perspectives of the various work being worked on.
Search Our new Search functionality allows the search of both deliverables and their descriptions, letting you easily find your favorite features even if you can’t remember exactly what it’s called.
Sort/Filters
On the right-hand side of the Progress Tracker is a new expandable menu called Filters. Here you have the option to sort deliverables either alphabetically or when they’re due to begin work, filter deliverables by project, or filter them by disciplines assigned to them.
Release View/Progress Tracker Navigation On some deliverables, you’ll see a new section next to their description. If a deliverable on Progress Tracker also appears on Release View, you’ll see this section appear, which includes the image and category from the respective card, its release window, and a link to take you to the card on Release View as well.
Now, onto the roadmap content updates:
Progress Tracker
Physics Team
We’re currently re-evaluating the Physics Team schedule, resulting in the following three deliverables temporarily coming off the Progress Tracker until this process is complete.
Physical QT Movement
PhysArea Refactoring
Water Physics – Large Object Buoyancy
Mission Feature Team
Additional resources were needed for higher priority features this team has scheduled, therefore these deliverables are being removed from the Progress Tracker temporarily.
Grim Hex Race
Prisons V3
Dynamic Population
Bounty Hunter V2
US PU Gameplay Feature Team
Additional resources were needed for higher priority features this team has scheduled, therefore these deliverables are being removed from the Progress Tracker temporarily.
Mission Manager App
Grim Hex Race
Org Perks & Benefits
Notification System T0
Some of the new priorities for the US PU team are the following three deliverables, which have been newly added to the Progress Tracker.
Selling This feature deals with the ability to sell items back to the shops. Players will have the ability to sell items from their local inventory to the shop using our Building Blocks Tech. This will also support a generalized loot system that will fill lockers and enemy’s backpacks with a random assortment of items that can be looted and then taken back to shops to sell for money.
Persistent Hangars Work that grants players the ability to have their own Persistent Hangars. This will also bring changes to the Cargo gameplay loop by allowing players to pack their grids manually.
Persistent Habs Work that grants players the ability to have their own Persistent Habs.
Dev Tools Team
This team has been removed, but fear not, the team hasn’t gone anywhere! Dev Tools has split into two new teams, the Tools Team and the Editor Team, which are now both present on the Progress Tracker.
In addition we’re adding 20 teams to the Public Roadmap today. Within those 20 teams is more than 100 new deliverables. You can use the list below of new teams to go and browse new deliverables. Happy hunting! NEW TEAMS:
AI Content Team
AI Tech and Feature Team
Audio
Character Art and Tech Team
Cinematics Team
EU PU Gameplay Feature Team
Facial Animation Team
Firesprite Team
Gameplay Story
Lighting Team
Location Concept Art
Modular – MTL
Motion Capture Team
Narrative
Props Team
SQ42 Feature Team
Tech Animation Team
UI Feature Team
UI Tech Team
VFX Team
Greycat ROC-DS
Previously labelled as Unannounced, this deliverable has now been revealed on the Progress Tracker.
Persistent Streaming and Server Meshing As this deliverable continues to make progress, we’re able to more accurately define tasks required in the short term that are needed for its completion. Therefore, new deliverables have been added to both the Network Team and the Persistent Tech Team to represent this.
Release View
As a reminder, each column on release view represents an entire quarter’s worth of releases, not just the initial release. For example, we previously mentioned that the Starlifters, along with the Tonk, will be in an incremental 3.13.x update rather than its initial launch. We’ve got a few more deliverables in the same boat that are scheduled to come in an incremental 3.13.x patch:
Missions – Spawn Closets
Ship to Station Docking
Tumbril Nova Tonk
Crusader M2 Hercules Starlifter
Crusader C2 Hercules Starlifter
——
The following deliverable has been added to the Release view:
Greycat ROC-DS Building, implementing, and balancing the Greycat ROC-DS as a drivable vehicle.
As a final note, you’re probably wondering when we’ll be updating the roadmap to show additional quarters in the Release View. We’re going to be entering a regular cadence for these updates that coincides with the planning meetings that happen as a quarter comes to a close. These meetings wrap near the end of the month following the end of a quarter, so expect the horizon to push out after these are complete. For example, planning meetings for this quarter wrap near the end of April, so we’ll look to add the next column in a Roadmap update in May. And of course, the roadmap will continue its normal schedule of updates every two weeks, as well.
That’s all for this week! Join the discussion on Spectrum