Character & clothing

Armor roles, Starwear and suit lockers are all in development and meant to arrive together, with decoration insurance expected to cover weapon racks and suit lockers, but no release timing is given.

Work on functional suit lockers has started, with ships being checked for support, and the initial release should hopefully cover many ships, with no date given and not every ship getting lockers.

Some ship entry/exit animations, like the Talon's, are too long and need shortening, but speeding them up risks audio desync; being able to cancel them is wanted but is a priority issue outside his influence.

Reward value is a balancing act, with a mix of mission-only, mission-or-loot, and loot-only items, some kept visually distinct by how they're obtained, and value isn't just about UEC worth.

The mining suit has a prototype with a dedicated visor for scanning mineables at greater range, and the existing salvage armor is getting a backpack that streams salvaged material directly into it.

A dedicated salvage visor is still at concept stage, intended to give extra detail on salvageable objects, while players without it will rely on their weapon's screen.

Suit lockers and ship inventory storage are on different teams so may not arrive together, but ships have inventory now, more will gain physical panels in 4.0, and there will always be somewhere to store gear.

The looting screen will be extended to armor and clothing in the PU version via a secondary view, but it needs rework for the persistent universe and they won't give a release timeframe.

The developers recount odd bugs: room-system crashes caused by helmet previews, refueling docking making ships clip inside the Starfarer, a flashlight slowly damaging Arena Commander ships, and mining consumables detaching without inheriting speed.

Wear and dirt are separate but linked systems: shooting and movement wear items down, lowering durability and risking misfires, dirt increases wear and depends on environment, and both can be cleaned or repaired, adding variety and non-permanence.

The intention is that heavy and medium armor will prevent complex tasks like flying a ship, so players would store armor first, with ships mostly offering somewhere to put it.

Four armor archetypes are planned (combat, specialist, utilitarian, support) and are progressing, but won't roll out until each has enough gameplay upsides and downsides, including power generation for support.

The team is building a simulation-style world where players can do what they expect, with webcam-driven avatar faces and processed voice to boost immersion and social interaction, still being improved.

Storage is on the backpack armor only because it was the first implementation; the goal is for most armor and clothing, such as belts and pockets, to add capacity to one inventory.

Hurston Business District, voice and face work and other ships stay in 3.4, while the female player character and ArcCorp move out, along with the 300 series ship work.

The female character touches many departments, needing new animations, cockpit fit solutions for a different skeleton height, customizer changes and clothing, and it lives in Game Dev rather than the 3.3 stream.

Female characters are still in progress: assets are being made one-to-one with male ones on a separate, differently proportioned skeleton, and release is expected in a bigger character release after the male work is finished, with no date.

Faceware tracking works with glasses, beards and small children, though imperfectly, for example with thick dark glasses or hidden lips; it can't work with sunglasses, and facial hair is slowing the gene-splicing customization.

Face capture has a performance cost, currently around a couple of milliseconds per frame at 60 hertz, so the team is working on load balancing and it will be an optional setting.

The animation team's goal is to retarget new male animations to the female so she is functional in game, then gradually replace them with female-specific ones, though time means not everything will get a unique version.

Retopologizing means rebuilding a huge high-poly sculpt as a low-poly mesh that can run in game, tracing its shape and silhouette with as few polys as possible while still animating well.

The big change in 2.1 is a refactored, physics-based EVA that blends animation with ragdoll, rotates from the center of mass, uses physical thrusters, and fixes aim posing and old EVA bugs.

Initial 2.0 and Star Marine only have temporary full suits of light, medium and heavy armour; the long-term plan, still being concepted, is mix-and-match pieces with protection by hit location, likely around 2.2.

Roberts says the helmet is mostly a display, and what shows on the HUD depends on the equipment you carry and ship systems you plug in, so it will be very customisable, with different ship HUDs coming around 1.0 or shortly after.

They are talking to 3Lateral about facial motion capture and high-resolution head scanning, with testing about to start on a few heads, using a rig customized to match theirs and gear from stretch goals.

Mostly deflects as spoilers: it is a new universe, Blair is probably not returning though homages are possible, and the drunk mission isn't much fun.