{"data":{"id":17187,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: July 2019","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/17187-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-July-2019","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/17187","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/17187","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly 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is a cross-post of the report that was recently sent out via the monthly Squadron 42 newsletter. We\u2019re publishing this a second time as a Comm-Link to make it easier for the community to reference back to.\nAttention Recruits,\n\nWhat you are about to read is the latest information on the continuing development of Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).\nAfter extensive investigation, we\u2019ve obtained information regarding AI fire discipline, physical combat, asteroid cluster progress, and more.\n\nThe information contained in this communication is extremely sensitive and it is of paramount importance that it does not fall into the wrong hands. Purge all records after reading\n\nUEE Naval High Command\n\n\nAI\nJuly\u2019s roundup starts with AI, who extended the first reactions worked on last month to be triggered by the actions of friendly AI characters. As a reminder, first reactions are part of combat behavior and are triggered by AI characters sensing the presence of an enemy. The first reaction is a precursor to real combat and includes specific animations, communications, and can lead the AI to investigate the source of suspicious noises or events. Progress was made on crucial upcoming features (that will also affect the PU): \u2018Fire discipline\u2019 influences the firing behavior of gunners and pilots \u2013 the idea being that surrounding events and actions alter the behavior between the extremes of \u2018trigger happy\u2019 and \u2018parsimonious\u2019. For target selection, the team added two new elements \u2013 \u2018self-preservation\u2019, which prioritizes attacking the most dangerous enemy combatant, and \u2018defend ally\u2019, which monitors friendly ships and AI and attacks players causing the most damage. AI security behavior has also been refined for security and interdiction missions to cover every event that could happen during a mission (of which there are many!).\n\n\n\nAnimation\nAnimation spent the month on melee and female-specific motion animations, \u2018Spec Ops\u2019 first reactions, and general useable animation. They also continued their ongoing work on story scenes and cinematic moments.\n\nArt (Characters)\nJuly saw great in-engine results on the hair pipeline and further work on tools to control hair grooming. Rigging for important characters was developed, as was texturing for costumes and uniforms. Going forward, the team will continue their texturing pass on heads and other outfits.\n\nArt (Environment)\nThe first of the asteroid sets mentioned in last month\u2019s update was completed and will serve approximately 30% of the game\u2019s needs. Asteroids (and other assets) evolve as the campaign progresses, so the next step is to create the variations. Archon Station\u2019s central hub received significant attention too, including early explorations of lighting and atmosphere. The aim is to have this social space feel as alive as possible and to accurately portray the fact thousands of people live and visit every day.\n\nDevelopment of the comma array exterior is coming to a close, with particular attention being given to how the player freely traverses the area while being \u201cfunneled\u201d to locations that show of the scale and grandeur.\n\nGas cloud work continued too, with Design working out their modular set requirements for the basic traversal areas. On the art front, the team are merging this tech with some of the asteroid belts players come across in the campaign. The reason being that some of them have solar winds and need to have movement, affect ship flight characteristics, and so on.\n\nFinally, some of the team began early work on one of the main planetary locations \u2013 a brutalist building with impressive scale.\n\n\n\nAudio\nAudio worked with SQ42\u2019s creative leadership to develop and refine the audio approach to many of the chapters and gameplay elements. They also supported Narrative and Design by editing, polishing, and implementing all required dialogue assets.\n\nCinematics\nThe Cinematics Team\u2019s July focus was mainly on \u2018playable\u2019 cinematics, such as conversations, briefings, or walk-and-talk scenes. This is due to new code and tech arriving last month that unblocks the team\u2019s ability to fully implement these types of scenes (mainly the intro and outros). Continuing from last month, the team worked with new code and tools that enable blending in and out of mo-cap from locomotion. They\u2019re already putting it to good use and bringing more scenes to the \u2018implementation complete\u2019 stage, which means a scene\u2019s state machine is done, approved, and the animation editing for each fragment reflects that. Even small scenes often require pre-scene idles, intros, dialogue options, waiting idles, resolves, post-scene idles, and more, so reaching \u2018implementation complete\u2019 is an important milestone. However, the scene is not fully complete in this state, but is \u2018functionally\u2019 finished and can be played through as designed. The next stage is for Level Design to implement the scene into the mission flow and review, feedback, and polish.\n\nTwo large changes were also done in-code: the hero cast and ships received \u2018Hero Global Unique IDs\u2019, which enables the team to move away from a proxy placeholder entity workflow. They can now also create \u2018child object container layers\u2019 in the editor that can easily fly with a ship or zone without having to wait for client mode to verify it works. These changes allow, for example, a fistfight scene play out on top of a Gladius wing while the player is flying the ship. They also received new editor code that brings them closer to a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) workflow.\n\n\n\nEngineering\nJuly began with work on the inventory system. Alongside the physical inventory (items attached to your suit), players will get a container to stow resources and other smaller items. The animation engineers are also in very early development of the motion matching system, which is a technique that creates much more fluid transitions between animations and will add an extra layer of fidelity to characters. The Actor Feature Team continued iterating on unarmed melee combat, including looking into a heavy attack and creating windows of opportunity for punching, dodging, and blocking. To refine timing, they created a test level where they can have multiplayer melee fights (set in a bar of course).\n\nThe Engine Team worked on support for tri-mesh splitting to optimize collisions and intersection tests, continued work on geometry instancing, and optimized the application of networked states as part of the ongoing physics update. They also added raycaster support for collisions on overlapping zones. Recent optimizations to physics include making vehicles \u2018go to sleep\u2019 when landed, not updating ship physical entity if parts move slightly, not looping through all rigid entities during the \u2018apply state from network\u2019 part of the physics step, and introducing the first step of box pruning.\n\nThey also continued removing the global render state along with graphic and fidelity planning and prep and added support for libunwind on Linux for more readable callstacks when DGS crashes. They also continued support for SOCS, with entity stability improvements, remove\/respawn single aggregates to memory, and general game code support.\n\nFor Rendering, they improved the anti-flicker heuristic for TSAA, which now uses the cumulative moving average for the first four frames to obtain faster convergence after history resets. They researched atmosphere artifacts at the horizon and made several major improvements. Some issues remain and will be fixed by a slightly different approach to atmosphere rendering that will unify the atmosphere, ground fog, and eventually clouds. Part of the research for this new approach involved implementing a ground truth solution for atmosphere light \u2018in-scattering\u2019 (single-scatter precise + multi-scatter approximation). For the procedural planet tool, they implemented a layout generation recorder for the designers that allows the visualization of collision issues in the layout of space stations and other locations.\n\n\n\nGameplay Story\nThe Gameplay Story Team got started on a large number of new scenes prioritized for the 3rd quarter of the year. Kick-offs, planning, and early animation work is currently on-going for many of these new scenes. They also continued to improve the setup for many existing scenes from chapter four with the Design Team to deliver additional idles and animations as required. The team are currently working through all quarter three scenes, checking that the track views are up to date, and creating idles that they anticipate will be required.\n\nGraphics\nFollowing last month\u2019s summit on the new renderer design, the Graphics Team started drilling into the finer details of the design and created example code to help nail down the API. Once complete, the graphics programmers will start converting the rendering code, with the eventual goal of a vastly reduced CPU cost. This will also eventually pave the way for modern graphics APIs. Alongside this, the final gas cloud work continued, which mainly consists of implementing a faster GPU sun-shadow calculation and integrating it into the rest of the renderer.\n\nLevel Design\nThe Social Team continued with the implementation of narrative scenes, crew behaviors, and some of the persistent entities such as the weapons vendor, firing range, and air traffic controller. Level Design are still polishing the chapters that include traversal and exploration along with focusing on the combat experience. The Spaceflight Team are currently developing combat spaces with Art and the points of interest where quantum travel will be seen, with focus soon shifting from level layout to the player cockpit experience as more AI behaviors make it into the game.\n\n\n\nNarrative\nIn addition to working with Production to plan out the team\u2019s goals for the new quarter, Narrative continued generating content for the text needs of various missions, including first passes on mission objective markers. They also submitted the first pass of a new mission summary system (formatted as an after-action report) to help figure out what kind of stats and metrics the missions will keep track of. This will also factor in the reputation system, as these factors will help establish a player\u2019s performance during the game. Finally, the team continued to review levels with Design to provide feedback about the narrative experience.\n\nQA\nUsables used primarily by Social AI (particularly for civilian setups) went through a rework and were tested by the embedded AI feature tester. This involved going into test levels and making sure the AI could navigate to the usables and use them according to their respective functionalities. They\u2019re also anticipating that testing will be required for the new ship AI formations feature. This system is already being used to a degree in the PU, but will need further functionality and destructive testing for SQ42.\n\n\n\nTech Animation\nTech Animation saw several new additions to their pipeline that, in the long run, will make for improved character deformation. Planning was done for the quarter ahead and beyond to ensure they have an idea what requests will be coming in from dependent teams. Alongside preparation and planning, head rigging was further developed, new tools were delivered to make internal processes easier, and comm calls were improved. The team in Germany also supported Cinematics with bug fixes and provided several loadouts and prop rigs to help them finalize animations.\n\n\n\nUI\nThe UI Team began concepting the UI for the \u2018datapads\u2019 various characters carry. They also finished the logos for the main UEE squadrons seen on military ships and uniforms.\n\nVFX\nVFX continued to work closely with the Art and Design teams on key locations, polished a large ship interior, and added effects to asteroids of varying scales. The VFX Tech Art Team (again with Art and Design) continued work on the gas cloud tools needed for The Coil. There are still a few minor issues being addressed, though everything is working in-engine as intended.\n\n\n\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026","de_DE":"Dies ist ein Querverweis auf den Bericht, der k\u00fcrzlich \u00fcber den monatlichen Squadron 42 Newsletter verschickt wurde. Wir ver\u00f6ffentlichen dies ein zweites Mal als Comm-Link, um es der Community zu erleichtern, auf die man zur\u00fcckgreifen kann.\nAchtung Rekruten,\n\nWas Sie hier lesen werden, sind die neuesten Informationen \u00fcber die Weiterentwicklung der Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).\nNach eingehender Untersuchung haben wir Informationen \u00fcber KI-Feuerdisziplin, physische Bek\u00e4mpfung, Fortschritt der Asteroiden-Cluster und mehr erhalten.\n\nDie in dieser Mitteilung enthaltenen Informationen sind \u00e4u\u00dferst sensibel, und es ist von gr\u00f6\u00dfter Bedeutung, dass sie nicht in die falschen H\u00e4nde geraten. Alle Datens\u00e4tze nach dem Lesen l\u00f6schen\n\nUEE Naval Oberkommando\n\n\nKI\nDie Razzia im Juli beginnt mit der KI, die die ersten Reaktionen, an denen im vergangenen Monat gearbeitet wurde, erweitert hat, um sie durch die Aktionen von freundlichen KI-Charakteren auszul\u00f6sen. Zur Erinnerung: Erste Reaktionen sind Teil des Kampfverhaltens und werden ausgel\u00f6st, wenn KI-Charaktere die Anwesenheit eines Feindes erkennen. Die erste Reaktion ist ein Vorl\u00e4ufer des realen Kampfes und beinhaltet spezifische Animationen, Kommunikation und kann die KI veranlassen, die Quelle verd\u00e4chtiger Ger\u00e4usche oder Ereignisse zu untersuchen. Es wurden Fortschritte bei wichtigen bevorstehenden Features erzielt (die auch die PU betreffen werden): \"Feuerdisziplin\" beeinflusst das Schussverhalten von Sch\u00fctzen und Piloten - mit der Idee, dass umliegende Ereignisse und Aktionen das Verhalten zwischen den Extremen von \"trigger happy\" und \"sparsam\" ver\u00e4ndern. F\u00fcr die Zielauswahl hat das Team zwei neue Elemente hinzugef\u00fcgt - \"Selbsterhaltung\", die den Angriff auf den gef\u00e4hrlichsten gegnerischen K\u00e4mpfer priorisiert, und \"Verb\u00fcndeten verteidigen\", der befreundete Schiffe und KI \u00fcberwacht und Spieler angreift, die den gr\u00f6\u00dften Schaden verursachen. Das KI-Sicherheitsverhalten wurde auch f\u00fcr Sicherheits- und Verbotsmissionen weiterentwickelt, um jedes Ereignis abzudecken, das w\u00e4hrend einer Mission passieren k\u00f6nnte (von denen es viele gibt!).\n\n\nAnimation\nAnimation verbrachte den Monat mit Nahkampf- und frauenspezifischen Bewegungsanimationen, ersten Reaktionen von'Spec Ops' und allgemein verwendbaren Animationen. Sie setzten auch ihre kontinuierliche Arbeit an Geschichten und filmischen Momenten fort.\nKunst (Charaktere)\nIm Juli gab es gro\u00dfartige Ergebnisse an der Haarpipeline und weitere Arbeiten an Werkzeugen zur Kontrolle der Haarpflege. Rigging f\u00fcr wichtige Charaktere wurde entwickelt, ebenso wie Texturierung f\u00fcr Kost\u00fcme und Uniformen. In Zukunft wird das Team seinen Texturierungspass auf K\u00f6pfen und anderen Outfits fortsetzen.\nKunst (Umwelt)\nDas erste der im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnten Asteroiden-Sets wurde fertiggestellt und wird etwa 30% des Spielbedarfs decken. Asteroiden (und andere Verm\u00f6genswerte) entwickeln sich im Laufe der Kampagne, so dass der n\u00e4chste Schritt darin besteht, die Varianten zu erstellen. Auch der zentrale Knotenpunkt der Archon Station erfuhr gro\u00dfe Aufmerksamkeit, einschlie\u00dflich fr\u00fcher Erkundungen von Licht und Atmosph\u00e4re. Ziel ist es, diesen sozialen Raum so lebendig wie m\u00f6glich zu gestalten und die Tatsache, dass t\u00e4glich Tausende von Menschen leben und besuchen, genau darzustellen.\n\nDie Entwicklung der Komma-Array-Au\u00dfenseite neigt sich dem Ende zu, wobei besonderes Augenmerk darauf gelegt wird, wie der Spieler das Gebiet frei durchquert und gleichzeitig an Orten, die die Gr\u00f6\u00dfe und Gr\u00f6\u00dfe zeigen, \"kunnelig\" wird.\n\nDie Arbeiten an der Gaswolke wurden ebenfalls fortgesetzt, wobei Design ihre modularen Anforderungen an die grundlegenden Traversenbereiche ausarbeitete. Auf der Kunstseite verschmilzt das Team diese Technologie mit einigen der Asteroideng\u00fcrtel, auf die Spieler in der Kampagne sto\u00dfen. Der Grund daf\u00fcr ist, dass einige von ihnen Sonnenwinde haben und Bewegung ben\u00f6tigen, die Flugeigenschaften des Schiffes beeinflussen und so weiter.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich begannen einige Mitglieder des Teams mit der fr\u00fchen Arbeit an einem der wichtigsten Planetenstandorte - einem brutalistischen Geb\u00e4ude mit beeindruckendem Ausma\u00df.\n\n\nAudio\nAudio arbeitete mit der kreativen Leitung von SQ42 zusammen, um den Audioansatz f\u00fcr viele der Kapitel und Gameplay-Elemente zu entwickeln und zu verfeinern. Sie unterst\u00fctzten auch Erz\u00e4hlung und Design, indem sie alle erforderlichen Dialogwerkzeuge bearbeiteten, polierten und implementierten.\nKinematiken\nDer Fokus des Cinematics-Teams lag im Juli vor allem auf \"spielbaren\" Kinofilmen wie Gespr\u00e4chen, Briefings oder Walk-And-Talk-Szenen. Dies ist auf den neuen Code und die neue Technologie zur\u00fcckzuf\u00fchren, die letzten Monat eingetroffen sind und die die F\u00e4higkeit des Teams, diese Art von Szenen (haupts\u00e4chlich das Intro und die Outros) vollst\u00e4ndig umzusetzen, freisetzen. In Fortf\u00fchrung des letzten Monats arbeitete das Team mit neuem Code und Tools, die es erm\u00f6glichen, sich in und aus der Mo-Cap von der Fortbewegung herauszuarbeiten. Sie setzen es bereits sinnvoll ein und bringen mehr Szenen in die Phase \"Implementierung abgeschlossen\", was bedeutet, dass die Zustandsmaschine einer Szene fertig ist, genehmigt wird, und die Animationsbearbeitung f\u00fcr jedes Fragment spiegelt dies wider. Selbst kleine Szenen erfordern oft vor der Szene liegende Idle, Intros, Dialogoptionen, wartende Idle, Resolutionen, Post-Szene Idle und mehr, so dass das Erreichen von \"Implementation Complete\" ein wichtiger Meilenstein ist. Die Szene ist in diesem Zustand jedoch nicht vollst\u00e4ndig abgeschlossen, sondern \"funktional\" beendet und kann wie geplant durchgespielt werden. Der n\u00e4chste Schritt ist, dass Level Design die Szene in den Missionsablauf integriert und \u00fcberpr\u00fcft, r\u00fcckmeldet und poliert.\n\nZwei gro\u00dfe \u00c4nderungen wurden auch im Code vorgenommen: Die Heldenbesetzung und die Schiffe erhielten \"Hero Global Unique IDs\", die es dem Team erm\u00f6glichen, sich von einem Workflow mit Proxy-Platzhalter-Entit\u00e4ten zu l\u00f6sen. Sie k\u00f6nnen nun auch \"untergeordnete Objekt-Containerschichten\" im Editor erstellen, die problemlos mit einem Schiff oder einer Zone fliegen k\u00f6nnen, ohne auf den Client-Modus warten zu m\u00fcssen, um zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen, ob es funktioniert. Diese \u00c4nderungen erm\u00f6glichen es beispielsweise, dass eine Faustkampfszene auf einem Gladius-Fl\u00fcgel spielt, w\u00e4hrend der Spieler das Schiff fliegt. Sie erhielten auch einen neuen Editorcode, der sie n\u00e4her an einen WYSIWYG-Workflow (What you see is what you get) heranf\u00fchrt.\n\n\nIngenieurwesen\nDer Juli begann mit der Arbeit am Inventarsystem. Neben dem physischen Inventar (Gegenst\u00e4nde, die an deinem Anzug befestigt sind) erhalten die Spieler einen Container, in dem sie Ressourcen und andere kleinere Gegenst\u00e4nde verstauen k\u00f6nnen. Die Animationsingenieure befinden sich auch in einer sehr fr\u00fchen Entwicklungsphase des Motion-Matching-Systems, das eine Technik ist, die viel flie\u00dfendere \u00dcberg\u00e4nge zwischen den Animationen erzeugt und den Charakteren eine zus\u00e4tzliche Ebene der Treue verleiht. Das Actor Feature Team fuhr fort, im unbewaffneten Nahkampf zu wiederholen, einschlie\u00dflich eines schweren Angriffs und der Schaffung von Gelegenheiten zum Schlagen, Ausweichen und Blockieren. Um das Timing zu verbessern, haben sie ein Testlevel erstellt, auf dem sie Nahkampfk\u00e4mpfe im Mehrspieler-Modus durchf\u00fchren k\u00f6nnen (nat\u00fcrlich in einer Bar).\n\nDas Motorenteam arbeitete an der Unterst\u00fctzung des Tri-Mesh-Splittings zur Optimierung von Kollisionen und Schnitttests, setzte die Arbeit an der Geometrieinstanzierung fort und optimierte die Anwendung von vernetzten Zust\u00e4nden im Rahmen des laufenden Physik-Updates. Sie haben auch die Raycaster-Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Kollisionen an \u00fcberlappenden Zonen hinzugef\u00fcgt. Zu den j\u00fcngsten Optimierungen in der Physik geh\u00f6ren das Einschlafen von Fahrzeugen nach der Landung, das Aktualisieren der physikalischen Einheit des Schiffes, wenn sich die Teile leicht bewegen, das Durchlaufen aller starren Einheiten w\u00e4hrend des Teils des Physik-Schritts \"Zustand aus dem Netzwerk anwenden\" und das Einleiten des ersten Schrittes des Boxenausschnitts.\n\nSie haben auch weiterhin den globalen Renderstatus sowie die Grafik- und Treueplanung und -vorbereitung entfernt und die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr libunwind auf Linux f\u00fcr besser lesbare Callstacks nach DGS-Abst\u00fcrzen hinzugef\u00fcgt. Sie unterst\u00fctzten auch weiterhin SOCS, mit Verbesserungen der Entity-Stabilit\u00e4t, dem Entfernen\/Wiederherstellen einzelner Aggregate im Speicher und der allgemeinen Unterst\u00fctzung von Spielcode.\n\nF\u00fcr das Rendering verbesserten sie die Anti-Flicker-Heuristik f\u00fcr TSAA, die nun den kumulativen gleitenden Durchschnitt f\u00fcr die ersten vier Bilder verwendet, um eine schnellere Konvergenz nach dem Zur\u00fccksetzen der Historie zu erreichen. Sie untersuchten Atmosph\u00e4renartefakte am Horizont und nahmen einige wichtige Verbesserungen vor. Einige Probleme bleiben bestehen und werden durch einen etwas anderen Ansatz bei der Darstellung der Atmosph\u00e4re behoben, der die Atmosph\u00e4re, den Bodennebel und schlie\u00dflich die Wolken vereint. Ein Teil der Forschung f\u00fcr diesen neuen Ansatz bestand darin, eine L\u00f6sung f\u00fcr die Bodenwahrheit f\u00fcr die \"In-Streuung\" von Atmosph\u00e4renlicht zu implementieren (Einzelstreuung pr\u00e4zise + Mehrfachstreuung). F\u00fcr das prozedurale Planetenwerkzeug implementierten sie einen Layoutgenerierungsrekorder f\u00fcr die Designer, der die Visualisierung von Kollisionsproblemen im Layout von Raumstationen und anderen Standorten erm\u00f6glicht.\n\n\nGameplay-Geschichte\nDas Gameplay Story Team hat mit einer Vielzahl neuer Szenen begonnen, die f\u00fcr das dritte Quartal des Jahres priorisiert wurden. F\u00fcr viele dieser neuen Szenen laufen derzeit Kick-offs, Planungen und fr\u00fche Animationsarbeiten. Sie verbesserten auch weiterhin das Setup f\u00fcr viele bestehende Szenen aus Kapitel vier mit dem Designteam, um bei Bedarf zus\u00e4tzliche Idle und Animationen zu liefern. Das Team arbeitet derzeit alle Szenen des dritten Quartals durch, \u00fcberpr\u00fcft, ob die Track-Ansichten auf dem neuesten Stand sind und schafft Leerlauf, von dem sie erwarten, dass er ben\u00f6tigt wird.\nGrafiken\nNach dem Gipfel \u00fcber das neue Renderer-Design im vergangenen Monat begann das Grafik-Team, in die feineren Details des Designs zu bohren und erstellte Beispielcode, um die API zu verbessern. Nach Abschluss der Arbeiten werden die Grafikprogrammierer mit der Konvertierung des Rendering-Codes beginnen, mit dem Ziel, die CPU-Kosten erheblich zu senken. Dies wird auch den Weg f\u00fcr moderne Grafik-APIs ebnen. Daneben wurden die abschlie\u00dfenden Gaswolkenarbeiten fortgesetzt, die haupts\u00e4chlich darin bestehen, eine schnellere GPU-Sonnenschattenberechnung zu implementieren und in den Rest des Renderers zu integrieren.\nLeveldesign\nDas Social Team setzte die Implementierung von narrativen Szenen, Crewverhalten und einigen der hartn\u00e4ckigen Einheiten wie Waffenh\u00e4ndler, Schie\u00dfstand und Fluglotse fort. Das Leveldesign poliert noch immer die Kapitel, die Traversen und Erkundungen beinhalten, sowie die Konzentration auf die Kampferfahrung. Das Raumflugteam entwickelt derzeit Kampfr\u00e4ume mit Kunst und den Points of Interest, an denen Quantenreisen zu sehen sein werden, wobei sich der Fokus bald vom Level-Layout auf das Spieler-Cockpit-Erlebnis verlagert, da mehr KI-Verhalten es ins Spiel schafft.\n\n\nNarrativ\nNeben der Zusammenarbeit mit der Produktion, um die Ziele des Teams f\u00fcr das neue Quartal zu planen, generierte Narrative weiterhin Inhalte f\u00fcr den Textbedarf verschiedener Missionen, einschlie\u00dflich der ersten Weitergabe von Missionszielmarkern. Sie reichten auch den ersten Durchlauf eines neuen Mission Summary Systems (formatiert als After-Action-Report) ein, um herauszufinden, welche Art von Statistiken und Metriken die Missionen verfolgen werden. Dies wird auch im Reputationssystem ber\u00fccksichtigt, da diese Faktoren dazu beitragen, die Leistung eines Spielers w\u00e4hrend des Spiels zu ermitteln. Schlie\u00dflich setzte das Team die \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung der Ebenen mit Design fort, um Feedback \u00fcber die erz\u00e4hlerische Erfahrung zu geben.\nQA\nUsables, die haupts\u00e4chlich von der Social AI (insbesondere f\u00fcr zivile Einrichtungen) verwendet werden, wurden \u00fcberarbeitet und vom Embedded AI Feature Tester getestet. Dazu geh\u00f6rte es, in die Testebenen zu gehen und sicherzustellen, dass die KI zu den Usables navigieren und diese entsprechend ihrer jeweiligen Funktionalit\u00e4t nutzen konnte. Sie gehen auch davon aus, dass Tests f\u00fcr das neue Feature der SchiffskI-Formationen erforderlich sein werden. Dieses System wird bereits in gewissem Ma\u00dfe in der PU eingesetzt, ben\u00f6tigt aber weitere Funktionalit\u00e4t und zerst\u00f6rerische Pr\u00fcfungen f\u00fcr SQ42.\n\n\nTechnische Animation\nTech Animation hat mehrere Neuzug\u00e4nge in seiner Pipeline gesehen, die langfristig zu einer verbesserten Charakterverformung f\u00fchren werden. Die Planung erfolgte f\u00fcr das kommende Quartal und dar\u00fcber hinaus, um sicherzustellen, dass sie eine Vorstellung davon haben, welche Anfragen von abh\u00e4ngigen Teams eingehen werden. Neben der Vorbereitung und Planung wurde das Headrigging weiterentwickelt, neue Tools zur Vereinfachung der internen Prozesse geliefert und die Kommunikation verbessert. Das Team in Deutschland unterst\u00fctzte Cinematics auch bei der Fehlerbehebung und stellte mehrere Loadouts und Requisitenrigs zur Verf\u00fcgung, um ihnen bei der Fertigstellung von Animationen zu helfen.\n\n\nUI\nDas UI-Team begann mit der Konzeption der Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che f\u00fcr die'Datenpakete', die verschiedene Zeichen tragen. Sie fertigten auch die Logos f\u00fcr die wichtigsten UEE-Geschwader, die auf Milit\u00e4rschiffen und Uniformen zu sehen waren.\nVFX\nVFX arbeitete weiterhin eng mit den Kunst- und Designteams an wichtigen Orten zusammen, polierte ein gro\u00dfes Schiffsinneres und f\u00fcgte Asteroiden unterschiedlicher Gr\u00f6\u00dfe zus\u00e4tzliche Effekte hinzu. Das VFX Tech Art Team (wiederum mit Art and Design) arbeitete weiter an den Gas Cloud Tools, die f\u00fcr The Coil ben\u00f6tigt werden. Es werden noch einige kleinere Probleme angesprochen, obwohl alles im Motor wie vorgesehen funktioniert.\n\n\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT.....","zh_CN":"This is a cross-post of the report that was recently sent out via the monthly Squadron 42 newsletter. We\u2019re publishing this a second time as a Comm-Link to make it easier for the community to reference back to.\nAttention Recruits,\n\nWhat you are about to read is the latest information on the continuing development of Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).\nAfter extensive investigation, we\u2019ve obtained information regarding AI fire discipline, physical combat, asteroid cluster progress, and more.\n\nThe information contained in this communication is extremely sensitive and it is of paramount importance that it does not fall into the wrong hands. Purge all records after reading\n\nUEE Naval High Command\n\n\nAI\nJuly\u2019s roundup starts with AI, who extended the first reactions worked on last month to be triggered by the actions of friendly AI characters. As a reminder, first reactions are part of combat behavior and are triggered by AI characters sensing the presence of an enemy. The first reaction is a precursor to real combat and includes specific animations, communications, and can lead the AI to investigate the source of suspicious noises or events. Progress was made on crucial upcoming features (that will also affect the PU): \u2018Fire discipline\u2019 influences the firing behavior of gunners and pilots \u2013 the idea being that surrounding events and actions alter the behavior between the extremes of \u2018trigger happy\u2019 and \u2018parsimonious\u2019. For target selection, the team added two new elements \u2013 \u2018self-preservation\u2019, which prioritizes attacking the most dangerous enemy combatant, and \u2018defend ally\u2019, which monitors friendly ships and AI and attacks players causing the most damage. AI security behavior has also been refined for security and interdiction missions to cover every event that could happen during a mission (of which there are many!).\n\n\n\nAnimation\nAnimation spent the month on melee and female-specific motion animations, \u2018Spec Ops\u2019 first reactions, and general useable animation. They also continued their ongoing work on story scenes and cinematic moments.\n\nArt (Characters)\nJuly saw great in-engine results on the hair pipeline and further work on tools to control hair grooming. Rigging for important characters was developed, as was texturing for costumes and uniforms. Going forward, the team will continue their texturing pass on heads and other outfits.\n\nArt (Environment)\nThe first of the asteroid sets mentioned in last month\u2019s update was completed and will serve approximately 30% of the game\u2019s needs. Asteroids (and other assets) evolve as the campaign progresses, so the next step is to create the variations. Archon Station\u2019s central hub received significant attention too, including early explorations of lighting and atmosphere. The aim is to have this social space feel as alive as possible and to accurately portray the fact thousands of people live and visit every day.\n\nDevelopment of the comma array exterior is coming to a close, with particular attention being given to how the player freely traverses the area while being \u201cfunneled\u201d to locations that show of the scale and grandeur.\n\nGas cloud work continued too, with Design working out their modular set requirements for the basic traversal areas. On the art front, the team are merging this tech with some of the asteroid belts players come across in the campaign. The reason being that some of them have solar winds and need to have movement, affect ship flight characteristics, and so on.\n\nFinally, some of the team began early work on one of the main planetary locations \u2013 a brutalist building with impressive scale.\n\n\n\nAudio\nAudio worked with SQ42\u2019s creative leadership to develop and refine the audio approach to many of the chapters and gameplay elements. They also supported Narrative and Design by editing, polishing, and implementing all required dialogue assets.\n\nCinematics\nThe Cinematics Team\u2019s July focus was mainly on \u2018playable\u2019 cinematics, such as conversations, briefings, or walk-and-talk scenes. This is due to new code and tech arriving last month that unblocks the team\u2019s ability to fully implement these types of scenes (mainly the intro and outros). Continuing from last month, the team worked with new code and tools that enable blending in and out of mo-cap from locomotion. They\u2019re already putting it to good use and bringing more scenes to the \u2018implementation complete\u2019 stage, which means a scene\u2019s state machine is done, approved, and the animation editing for each fragment reflects that. Even small scenes often require pre-scene idles, intros, dialogue options, waiting idles, resolves, post-scene idles, and more, so reaching \u2018implementation complete\u2019 is an important milestone. However, the scene is not fully complete in this state, but is \u2018functionally\u2019 finished and can be played through as designed. The next stage is for Level Design to implement the scene into the mission flow and review, feedback, and polish.\n\nTwo large changes were also done in-code: the hero cast and ships received \u2018Hero Global Unique IDs\u2019, which enables the team to move away from a proxy placeholder entity workflow. They can now also create \u2018child object container layers\u2019 in the editor that can easily fly with a ship or zone without having to wait for client mode to verify it works. These changes allow, for example, a fistfight scene play out on top of a Gladius wing while the player is flying the ship. They also received new editor code that brings them closer to a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) workflow.\n\n\n\nEngineering\nJuly began with work on the inventory system. Alongside the physical inventory (items attached to your suit), players will get a container to stow resources and other smaller items. The animation engineers are also in very early development of the motion matching system, which is a technique that creates much more fluid transitions between animations and will add an extra layer of fidelity to characters. The Actor Feature Team continued iterating on unarmed melee combat, including looking into a heavy attack and creating windows of opportunity for punching, dodging, and blocking. To refine timing, they created a test level where they can have multiplayer melee fights (set in a bar of course).\n\nThe Engine Team worked on support for tri-mesh splitting to optimize collisions and intersection tests, continued work on geometry instancing, and optimized the application of networked states as part of the ongoing physics update. They also added raycaster support for collisions on overlapping zones. Recent optimizations to physics include making vehicles \u2018go to sleep\u2019 when landed, not updating ship physical entity if parts move slightly, not looping through all rigid entities during the \u2018apply state from network\u2019 part of the physics step, and introducing the first step of box pruning.\n\nThey also continued removing the global render state along with graphic and fidelity planning and prep and added support for libunwind on Linux for more readable callstacks when DGS crashes. They also continued support for SOCS, with entity stability improvements, remove\/respawn single aggregates to memory, and general game code support.\n\nFor Rendering, they improved the anti-flicker heuristic for TSAA, which now uses the cumulative moving average for the first four frames to obtain faster convergence after history resets. They researched atmosphere artifacts at the horizon and made several major improvements. Some issues remain and will be fixed by a slightly different approach to atmosphere rendering that will unify the atmosphere, ground fog, and eventually clouds. Part of the research for this new approach involved implementing a ground truth solution for atmosphere light \u2018in-scattering\u2019 (single-scatter precise + multi-scatter approximation). For the procedural planet tool, they implemented a layout generation recorder for the designers that allows the visualization of collision issues in the layout of space stations and other locations.\n\n\n\nGameplay Story\nThe Gameplay Story Team got started on a large number of new scenes prioritized for the 3rd quarter of the year. Kick-offs, planning, and early animation work is currently on-going for many of these new scenes. They also continued to improve the setup for many existing scenes from chapter four with the Design Team to deliver additional idles and animations as required. The team are currently working through all quarter three scenes, checking that the track views are up to date, and creating idles that they anticipate will be required.\n\nGraphics\nFollowing last month\u2019s summit on the new renderer design, the Graphics Team started drilling into the finer details of the design and created example code to help nail down the API. Once complete, the graphics programmers will start converting the rendering code, with the eventual goal of a vastly reduced CPU cost. This will also eventually pave the way for modern graphics APIs. Alongside this, the final gas cloud work continued, which mainly consists of implementing a faster GPU sun-shadow calculation and integrating it into the rest of the renderer.\n\nLevel Design\nThe Social Team continued with the implementation of narrative scenes, crew behaviors, and some of the persistent entities such as the weapons vendor, firing range, and air traffic controller. Level Design are still polishing the chapters that include traversal and exploration along with focusing on the combat experience. The Spaceflight Team are currently developing combat spaces with Art and the points of interest where quantum travel will be seen, with focus soon shifting from level layout to the player cockpit experience as more AI behaviors make it into the game.\n\n\n\nNarrative\nIn addition to working with Production to plan out the team\u2019s goals for the new quarter, Narrative continued generating content for the text needs of various missions, including first passes on mission objective markers. They also submitted the first pass of a new mission summary system (formatted as an after-action report) to help figure out what kind of stats and metrics the missions will keep track of. This will also factor in the reputation system, as these factors will help establish a player\u2019s performance during the game. Finally, the team continued to review levels with Design to provide feedback about the narrative experience.\n\nQA\nUsables used primarily by Social AI (particularly for civilian setups) went through a rework and were tested by the embedded AI feature tester. This involved going into test levels and making sure the AI could navigate to the usables and use them according to their respective functionalities. They\u2019re also anticipating that testing will be required for the new ship AI formations feature. This system is already being used to a degree in the PU, but will need further functionality and destructive testing for SQ42.\n\n\n\nTech Animation\nTech Animation saw several new additions to their pipeline that, in the long run, will make for improved character deformation. Planning was done for the quarter ahead and beyond to ensure they have an idea what requests will be coming in from dependent teams. Alongside preparation and planning, head rigging was further developed, new tools were delivered to make internal processes easier, and comm calls were improved. The team in Germany also supported Cinematics with bug fixes and provided several loadouts and prop rigs to help them finalize animations.\n\n\n\nUI\nThe UI Team began concepting the UI for the \u2018datapads\u2019 various characters carry. They also finished the logos for the main UEE squadrons seen on military ships and uniforms.\n\nVFX\nVFX continued to work closely with the Art and Design teams on key locations, polished a large ship interior, and added effects to asteroids of varying scales. The VFX Tech Art Team (again with Art and Design) continued work on the gas cloud tools needed for The Coil. There are still a few minor issues being addressed, though everything is working in-engine as intended.\n\n\n\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":11,"created_at":"2019-08-14T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"6 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 22:03:24","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":17185,"next_id":17188}}