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PU Monthly Report
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PU Monthly Report
Welcome to the latest PU Monthly Report! Read on for all the behind-the-scenes details of development throughout October, including progress on Nyx, upcoming ships, AI behaviors, the in-game economy, and more.
AI Content
In October, the Narrative and Social AI teams supported several initiatives for the upcoming Alpha 4.4 patch, including landing zone fixes. While technical issues prevented the complete implementation of these updates, they will be added in a future patch.
As unveiled at CitizenCon Direct, the team supported the social AI setup for Levski. They also captured and supported the setup of additional voice packs to support future social and mission content.
Discussions with the Combat AI team kicked off combat voice packs, with the plan to capture new ones in the upcoming year based on the latest version of the behavior. The goal with this new approach is to consolidate FPS and dogfighting triggers while specializing recordings to focus on specific groups.
AI (Features)
Last month, AI Features continued to iterate on first reaction and usable animations. In particular, those where items are being carried.
They also fixed crashes relating to Human combat, changed how NPCs are scanned, and how they react. Accuracy calculations were simplified, while the values used to tweak them are now easier to understand. This will also include a fix to the firerate of burst and single-shot weapons.
Numerous bugs were fixed for the Yormandi, included those introduced by late-in-the-day action refining and the implementation of arena-reset functionality. The team also supported serialization of the skill extenders and began to support the early design considerations for a boss variant.
The Yormandi’s animation set was also vastly improved, including the beam, bite, death, and emerge sequences. The timing, posing, and blending of attacks were enhanced to feel more natural and threatening. Technical and visual bugs were also addressed, such as the weak spots, jitters, and animation playbacks.
AI (Tech)
The AI Team made improvements to navigation-mesh generation, including to the generation algorithm. They also updated navigation links, specifically to the traversal behavior when NPCs go through manual doors, elevators, and interruptibles.
The team then implemented the first working version of the flight pathfinder through the voxel grid.
The first pass of the system that manages AI agent scripting in the flowgraph was completed. This enforces the validation of the action sequence to ensure the correct execution context is set in the systemic activities, providing a more reliable way to manually script agents and an extra guarantee that actions are validated and executed correctly. This included work on the critical flow mode for AI agents as well. While in this mode, failures in action execution are still reported as errors but can be handled with fallbacks, allowing the flow to proceed instead of failing and potentially stalling.
AI (Game Intelligence Development Team)
In October 2025, the Game Intelligence Development team worked toward the next milestone for Mission System v2, focusing on implementing ‘outline properties’, the first pass of a prototype property window for selecting an outline item.
They also continued implementing the ‘outline declaration,’ which is based on a declarative system where the designers first declare the resources that will be needed for the mission and the context in which they will be used. For example, resources global to the mission are first declared.
The GID team then elaborated on the preliminary technical design for the entity-scripting topic. Furthermore, they fixed issues with the Apollo tool, allowing them to continue debugging StarScript.
The devs are currently analyzing Mannequin to propose UI visuals to improve reading and simplify the overall use of the tool. Finally, bugs were fixed and new features were worked on for StarScript as suggested by the designers.
Animation
Animation worked on the Yormandi throughout October alongside improvements to the kopion. They also discussed dog capture with animal trainers.
Last month saw a major push within the Facial Animation team to complete the new content for Alpha 4.4. This included new animations for the returning ATC character mentioned in September's report.
At the start of the month, the team attended another shoot with the Narrative and Motion Capture teams. This time, they captured content for a new mission giver as well as multiple voice packs for NPCs throughout the Nyx system. These will be released as part of Alpha 4.4, though the mission giver will not appear until a future patch.
Art (Characters)
The Character Art team finalized various armors for a new gang and in-game rewards, and progressed with a new heavy armor and clothing items.
The Concept Art team finalized handoff sheets and began exploring directions for a new gang.
Art (Ships)
In the UK, the Ships team supported the release of the Anvil Paladin, Esperia Stinger, and Grey’s Market Shiv at CitizenCon Direct.
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Work on the Aegis Hammerhead and RSI Aurora continued to bring them up to modern standards. For the Hammerhead, Design are currently setting up the revisions, including the addition of blast doors throughout the corridors and updated component placement. The Aurora is currently awaiting downstream support, particularly for audio and VFX, as these feature some of the oldest in-game assets.
The Hull B is currently being prepared for its whitebox review, with the final touches being made to ensure it hits the required functionality criteria.
Both Drake Ironclad models and the Command Module progressed well into greybox, with geometry and lighting updates to the modular kits helping set the interior tone throughout.
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Four unannounced ships progressed through October. The first is on track for its final review in early November, while the second is art-complete and currently with the downstream teams.
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The third, an upcoming variant, passed its LOD0 review. Following this, the downstream teams began their tasks ahead of its final review.
Art was also completed for an all-new ship before it continued down the pipeline, with paints being created alongside a full pass from QA.
Another new vehicle, the Greycat UTV (which was briefly shown during the introduction of the STV), entered its whitebox phase.
Finally for the UK team, pre-production kicked off for the Anvil Liberator. This phase is before official production begins and aims to get a solid base for the wider team to use for further estimation and concept requests to aid in smoother delivery.
The North American team progressed with two unannounced vehicles. One is currently with downstream teams for closeout ahead of its final review, while the second is approaching its greybox review in early November.
Elsewhere, the RSI Perseus had a large-scale developer and QA playtest this month to check its robustness and intent in combat, which was a great success.
Whitebox work continued on the Drake Kraken, with more developers moving onto it as other projects were completed.
Community
October began with the return of Day of the Vara, the ‘verse’s spirited fall event, which the Community team supported with an informative thread and a pair of creepy contests. Players were invited to create ghastly gourds for a Pumpkin Decorating Contest and to unravel the mystery of the Vara with a Horror Story Contest.
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After months of careful planning and working closely with community organizers, one of Star Citizen’s biggest events of the year finally arrived, CitizenCon Direct, which kicked off on October 11. In the lead-up to the big show, the Community team showcased the winners of the recent video contest, airing these creative commercials just prior to the official broadcast. The team also supported CitizenCon Direct both during and after the show by helping coordinate watch parties, as well as through social media and by publishing a Q&A for the new Anvil Paladin and Esperia Stinger.
"We want to give a huge THANK YOU to everyone who made this CitizenCon Direct special - whether you gathered at watch parties, organized events in your community, or tuned in from home on Twitch or YouTube. You made it a day to remember." - Community Team
Star Citizen Alpha 4.3.2: Fractured Frontiers released to the PU last month, and the Community team published a Patch Watch post about the Structural Salvage Update in preparation for the changes the patch would bring. They further supported the release with a helpful guide to the Frontier Fighters Finale and a catch-all thread. As with every release, the team continues to coordinate across multiple aspects of development, ensuring player feedback from Spectrum and social media reaches the appropriate channels.
Additionally, Community published the September PU Monthly Report and 2026 Buy Back Token Schedule, and continued their evergreen tasks, including This Week in Star Citizen, the Roadmap Update and Roundup, the Arena Commander schedule update, and detailed feedback collection, analysis, and distribution.
Finally, in preparation for the arrival of the Nyx system in Alpha 4.4, the team prepared a Traveler’s Guide to Nyx to close out the month.
Core Gameplay
The Core Gameplay teams pushed forward on the inventory revamp. This involved working on the equipment area where players can add weapons, mods, and equipment, including tractor beams and medical guns.
“We are bringing back the ability to have two weapons stored on your back while you hold a third one in your hands.” Core Gameplay Team
The team also worked on the different inventory tabs and floating item slots, and kicked off the early stages of capital ship repair, rearm, and refueling. This involved getting started on technical documentation to properly break down the necessary tasks.
Economy
The team spent last month building the economy of Nyx and giving the system character. As part of this, mining, refining, and shops received passes to ensure the right story is told through balance and numbers.
For freelance cargo trading, besides the usual changes and new trade routes, the team worked on a journal entry to steer players in the right direction and give insight into how they think about trading.
Several missions were adjusted based on the Salvage career developments. For example, missions should now spawn ships that give fairer rewards for the buy-in, time, and effort invested.
Following positive feedback on the faction competition missions, the team provided support for new missions and events currently in production. At the same time, they continued looking into ways to incentivize cooperative gameplay.
Graphics, VFX Programming & Planet Tech
Folllowing the Preview Channel testing of Vulkan, the graphics team fixed many performance issues, the vast majority of which were caused by running out of video memory.
With Vulkan, all memory is managed manually by the game rather than the driver. In-engine, there were several features that didn’t have a memory cap or correctly report their expected memory usage. This meant that, in the graphics options menu, a lower video memory usage was reported than the reality. And, once players ran out, performance declined significantly. Most of these issues were addressed. However, video memory usage is still higher than desired, so several optimizations are underway to address it.
Alongside Vulkan, the team’s other major PU initiative is the planet-tech aspect of Genesis. While this is still ongoing, the devs are starting to achieve the desired visual quality in a variety of areas, as demonstrated at CitizenCon Direct. In parallel, there are several in-progress systems that will bring performance and memory usage to the desired level.
Mission Design
Mission Design worked on the recent limited-time event, the Frontier Fighters Finale. This included missions in Pyro and Stanton, along with changes to the tracking tech introduced in the Resource Drive event, which allows players to contribute to phases of contracts and earn rewards.
The team also completed a major loot refresh, with the devs updating the UGF and Distribution Centers to give greater future control and bring them up to par with the current design. This is something Missions and Level Design will continue to update each time they use older locations.
The devs also added several more locations, including the space-based ship graveyard, which was updated to support the Ship Ambush archetype. Additional ship graveyards and UGFs were added to generate more missions, supporting the increased player cap and new players.
The Mission team also completed their work on the ‘accept from world' feature. This will allow players to accept missions from physical items in the ‘verse instead of having to just use the Contract Broker (Wikelo’s Emporium is the test case for this). This will enable missions outside of mission providers to improve immersion. For example, it could enable a physical jobs board offering missions around a specific location.
The team also set up the new courier tech at existing locations to make them more robust when they go online. The missions in Pyro were the first step in testing this system.
Work also progressed on the features shown at CitizenCon Direct. System-to-system hauling progressed well, with the devs adding new missions that will require players to take items between star systems. These missions will expand the Hauling career until Reputation v2 is implemented.
Some existing missions will move over to the Nyx system with new narrative elements, while some older content will return, including Missing Person, Blackbox Recovery, and Retrieve Cargo. The upcoming Welcome to Nyx mission progressed well, too.
Finally, a design review was done for Siege of Orison, with the team looking at player feedback and seeing how to improve the event to support instancing.
Narrative
Last month, the Narrative team focused on the final preparations for the release of Nyx.
“Since Levski was first added to the Stanton system years ago, we have been eagerly awaiting the egalitarian society settling into its proper place among the stars. We have been coordinating with Design not only on the featured mission shown off at CitizenCon, but on dozens of other contracts that will become available to players once they enter the system.” Narrative Team
Narrative also worked alongside the Branding and Environment Art teams to create unique environmental storytelling and signage throughout the new locations.
The team then spent time on several future initiatives that will be coming in later patches alongside planning for next year’s new content.
Finally, members of the Narrative team attended the CitizenCon watch party in León, Spain, and were thrilled to have met so many wonderful people who support the project.
Online Technology
October saw the Online Services team progress with Item Recovery T1 and the early stages of instancing. They also finalized ‘stow context’ and fixed bugs.
With the error-reporting pipeline currently live on staging, the Live Tools team spent time making the final few adjustments. Deployment to production is scheduled for November, alongside the initial release of the new web-app tool. This will allow teams to create, update, and delete crash ownership rules based on the stream where the crash occurred.
For Hex, the ‘audit logs’ feature was fully implemented and is set for deployment in December. The devs are currently monitoring recent changes to item recovery and the new contact service, with the goal of integrating the updates into the Network Operation Center.
The Network team progressed toward the first iteration of their new Server Meshing technology, which will be moving into initial testing in early November. While players will not experience any significant changes, this is an important first step in laying the groundwork toward Dynamic Server Meshing.
R&D
In October, the R&D team worked on engine optimizations that will eventually make their way into the PU. For example, the bit-field decompression of animation key data was optimized utilizing the CPU's SSE instruction set. Tangent reconstruction was also optimized to reduce the need for runtime allocations and to execute faster. Strings embedded in model animation headers were replaced with name table entries to allow cheap, shallow copies that don't trigger excessive runtime allocations.
For rendering, material constant update processing was improved, while related internal structures were optimized to cut down on memory cost, saving dozens of MB of system memory. Gas cloud light updates were refactored to remove the need for temporary memory allocations, which often introduced intermittent stutter, and to significantly optimize the CPU processing cost.
Several key optimizations were implemented to cut down on the number of draw calls as well as the number of vertices being sent to the vertex shader each frame, resulting in triangles outside the current viewport. The first batch of updates relates to the submission of casters in shadow-map render passes. This will generate a more efficient hull to cull sunlight shadow casters during shadow map rendering. This helps with the shadow rendering cost on planets, culling hundreds of unnecessary draw calls at high level and avoids rendering of millions of irrelevant triangles.
Hull culling was also implemented for shadow casters of point, projector, and area lights. As above, this helps indoors areas with many local lights, cutting down both the CPU and GPU processing cost.
The team also added support for hull culling in the cube map and static shadow map gen passes. They also implemented a projected pixel area estimator to cull objects if the projected area of their bounds is below a configurable pixel threshold.
The second batch of optimizations concern the sub-object culling of complex meshes to reduce draw call and poly count in general and shadow passes. Previously, the engine aimed to merge complex meshes as much as possible, taking material boundaries into account. This helped reduce draw call counts massively but also meant that a lot of sub parts were processed by the GPU, even if they were outside the current viewport. The new approach tests visibility of sub parts first and then uses a heuristic approach to decide whether to render the merged mesh or its individual sub parts. While this slightly increases draw call count, it saves processing 10s of millions of triangles by the GPU when many shadow casting lights are active in dense scenes, such as indoors.
Lastly, 4MB of video memory was saved for the planet terrain height map render target. Some of these optimizations were added to the Star Citizen alpha streams and will be available in PU. Others will appear in the next SQ42-to-Star Citizen integration. Various smaller optimizations were also implemented to improve runtime performance, memory usage, and load times.
VFX
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VFX supported all of the game’s upcoming vehicles, with some standouts being the Shiv and Stinger.
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The Yormandi was a huge achievement for the VFX team. In particular, the beam attack and body emissions required additional care to bring them up to quality.
Quelle:
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