{"data":{"id":17349,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: October 2019","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/17349-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-October-2019","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/17349","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/17349","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).\n\nOperatives around the world collected the intel needed to provide you with this progress report. Intelligence suggests we\u2019ve uncovered intel on animation improvements, phase two of asteroid sets, and the dangers of combining too many heads into a DNA system.\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\nAI\nOctober\u2019s report kicks off with the AI Character Combat Team, who spent time iterating on NPC aiming. They simplified the ability to control if and when they want the lower body turning while aiming at a target and improved the way aim-tracking works. This makes it easier to determine when the movement should blend slowly or snap quickly. They also fixed a look-target synchronization bug that was causing general issues. On the behaviors side, they improved cover selection during combat by introducing new ways to weight cover locations based on target direction. NPCs can now choose between using a weapon\u2019s predefined fire mode or actively selecting auto, burst, or single shot. They added more wild lines and flavor to the behaviors too, such as NPCs taunting a target before they start investigating.\n\nShip AI moved the first pass of their new 3D pathfinding functionality into the main game-development branch. This approach is based on a non-canonical A* implementation that uses the signed distance field (SDF) to incrementally compute a path in a 3D environment. Progress is currently being made on the first version of 3D ORCA implementation and is getting close to a first working version.\n\nA new way for the designers to request that a ship follow a \u2018spline\u2019 (a tunnel that guides a ship\u2019s movement rather than a prescriptive track) was exposed. At runtime, the calculation automatically adjusts the tunnel size based on the environment and the information reported by the SDF. They also added new nodes to monitor target distance and the vehicle\u2019s relative state and make decisions according to the reported values.\n\nSocial AI optimized the \u2018usable search\u2019 function and are now able to cache the location of usables on the navmesh. This means they don\u2019t have to constantly recalculate the time an object is static in one location. They also continued the unification of operator and generic seats so that behaviors can utilize them regardless of height.\n\nImplementation of generic vendors continued, which employs usables that can \u2018provide\u2019 or \u2018accept\u2019 specific object types. This allows designers to create many different object types. For example, drinks bartenders can offer to patrons. They\u2019re currently progressing on the patrol functionality that defines paths for AI to follow. This path will carry information on which types of logic to activate while hitting the different path nodes.\n\nRegarding core services, the team now have navmesh support on planetary locations and are moving towards a more dynamic creation of navigation data on planet surfaces. They\u2019re also working on different bug fixes and optimizations, including multithreading the AI audio component to enable them to process audio events quicker on the servers.\n\n\n\nAnimation\nIn October, the team developed melee and stealth takedown animations, effort-movement sets, and reaction animations for NPCs that aren\u2019t holding stocked weapons. They also made progress on animations for scripted events and cinematics.\n\nArt (Characters)\nThe Art Team\u2019s work last month predominately revolved around hair and included finishing two new styles. They also began updating character costumes, accessories, and faces.\n\nArt (Environment)\nArchon Station progressed throughout the month, with attention going to the engineering sections and \u2018arms\u2019 of the station. Players will travel through several different archetypes, with each one needing its own distinct feel. The comms arrays made progress too \u2013 the \u2018hero\u2019 station is in the final development stages, with smaller variants coming soon. The new asteroid set mentioned in previous reports reached phase two. To complement the asteroid set, a kit of infrastructure parts left behind by previous operations\/settlements is in development. Alongside being visually interesting, the kit gives the Flight Design Team interesting shapes and spaces to work with. Several new developments to lighting tech meant certain areas received improvements too.\n\nFinally, gas clouds are progressing well, with new tech and lighting tools being made specifically for them.\n\n\n\nCinematics\nThe Cinematics Team worked on an important visual flow prototype. This will allow the Actor Feature Team to align their work on dependent mechanics and show other teams how the scene will unfold. They also finished testing the female player pipeline and prepped for an upcoming female-focused mo-cap shoot. The comms RTT pipeline is being more widely used, so the cinematic designers dialed in new cameras for air traffic control seats and other consoles to improve non-cockpit calls. With the hair pipeline finalized, hairstyles for certain key characters were updated. The Cinematics Team takes them and shows work-progress-renders of sequences to the Character Team so they can see how the new and higher-detailed hair looks in situ. They also prepared for work on a big EVA set-piece.\n\n\n\nEngineering\nIn the UK, Engineering helped improve helmet interactions, including putting them on, taking them off, placing them somewhere, and inspecting them. They also fleshed out and began implementing the interrupt\/rejoin tech worked on in September. Actor Animation added environment-based procedural character overlays. For example, a character in a windy environment will lean depending on the direction and strength of the wind and cover their face.\n\nThe Actor Team made several small improvements to the close-combat system, including triggering reactions on both local and remote clients, adding camera shake on successful hits, blocking with knives, damage and stamina impact, and updated animations. They also evolved the temperature status system that allows clothing to have insulating properties, adding hypothermia and concussion statuses.\n\nIn Frankfurt, the team spent time on the physics proxy refactor, including stream integration support. They also continued work on character and cloth soft-body physics simulation and added physics-level support to planetary wind.\n\nFor the renderer, they continued to work on the new graphics pipeline and render interface (Gen12). This included adding: an improved render pass handling and pipeline state setup, support for compute, a pipeline teardown, improved DXC compatibility for shaders, simplified resource layout setup, improved support for pooled render targets and resolution changes, support for reflected shader constant arrays, and porting DOF to the render pass system. They global render state removal also began.\n\nPlanet-side, they refactored and extended multi-cascade support for terrain height maps so dependent effects can better incorporate it for their own purposes (such as terrain shadows), and worked on cascade debug visualization to allow artists to efficiently tweak important height map properties. Regarding planet terrain shadows, they added a simple code interface and shared shader code for the application on the client side, provided support for temporal anti-aliasing, and completed the initial code and logic support for multi cascades. Work on planetary ground fog continued too. This involved adjusting code to cope with very large objects, making exception handler improvements, and adding API to asynchronously create a core dump without affecting the calling process. This will be mainly used to take snapshots of the DGS process state in case of non-fatal errors for efficient debugging without interrupting its service and affecting clients (previously, it was forced to crash).\n\nFor Animation, the team created a new dual quaternion skinning\/elastic blend wrap deformer for CPU and GPU skinning. They also completed tangent reconstruction \u2013 a pixel perfect version for software and compute skinning (both protos and original skins).\n\n\n\nGameplay Story\nThe Gameplay Story Team continued to work on a range of scenes during October, including building several for chapter five that were captured earlier this year. They also continued to work with Design to prototype how players interrupt scenes from different angles. Several prop setups were finalized, including cups, utensils, datapads, mops, and buckets. Existing scenes were checked to make sure the new props worked as intended. They\u2019re currently making sure they work seamlessly with the new console usable behavior.\n\n\n\nLevel Design\nThe Social Team spent October working with the interrupt, break-out, and re-join tech mentioned last month, applying it to each narrative scene on a case-by-case basis. This gives a higher level of fidelity and immersion for the cinematic delivery of the story elements. They\u2019re also working with the Social AI Team to further develop various crew behaviors. Level Design (alongside Art and AI) continued with the FPS intensive chapters, focusing on defining the systemic behaviors needed for the AI to realistically traverse environments depending on their loadouts.\n\nThe space and dogfight teams also focused on systemic AI behaviors, with the take-off and landing systems receiving polish to get them closer to their final state. The Tech Team finalized some of the prototype level mechanics that were added to several FPS-heavy levels.\n\n\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative Team continued its progress on tackling the in-game text that players will encounter throughout the course of the game. This covers everything from mission specific information to the text that may scroll across a screen in a particular environment. Additionally, Narrative consulted with UI Art on theming for several groups and organizations featured in the story so that they can receive a proper branding pass. There was also time spent on pre-production for a performance capture session scheduled for early next month. This session\u2019s focus will be on gathering additional Female Player recordings to bring her further into parity with the Male Player now that other departments like cinematics have completed successful tests with the earlier data that was captured.\n\nQA\nQA started learning the subsumption visualizer to better debug cinematic cutscenes and player-NPC interactions. They began creating new cinematic-focused test suites that will help them check cutscenes are playing correctly in the editor. Testing of the game\u2019s various wild lines continued and documentation was made to explain how these cutscenes should be tested going forward. Further improvements to usables went into game-dev, which will be tested to ensure the correct animations are being used and that the AI is using them appropriately. These new usables will eventually be added to the PU, where they will become part of the team\u2019s regular social AI testing.\n\nTech Animation\nThe Tech Animation Team refined the Visio-to-Mannequin pipeline to make it easier to import state machines straight to Mannequin, which will save a lot of time. They also worked with the props and usable teams on several new and old usables, implementing new animations and providing animation-ready templates in Maya for quicker authoring. A socket addition to the pipeline was also created to give animators the possibility of swapping props around between different attach points on the character rig. They also investigated and fixed several small bugs in weapons content, usables, cinematics, gameplay animations, props, and design.\n\nTech Art\nLast month, Tech Art laid the foundation for converting all T0 hero character heads to the DNA system. While the DNA system was primarily designed to allow the blending of individual face parts for facial customization, other advantages are reduced memory footprint and the ability to share unified attachments between heads regardless of their shape and gender. The efficiency gains will be significant too \u2013 the lower-tier DNA heads combined consume only a fraction more memory than Admiral Bishop\u2019s non-DNA head alone (one of the most complex rigs). While this new functionality is being implemented primarily for its efficiency gains, it can be used internally for facial blending too. During testing, the team found that combining portions of Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, and John Rhys-Davies into one head produced \u201cinteresting\u201d results.\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nThe UI Team focused on finalizing the visual style for two important elements of the player\u2019s kit \u2013 a new-look visor (what the player sees from inside their helmet) and a new style for the mobiGlas (particularly the local area map). When the concepts are complete, they\u2019ll make functional versions in-game.\n\nVFX\nIn the UK, the VFX artists continued to work on several locations, collaborating as always with the art and design teams. They also helped Design to prototype new ideas to make traversing open space in EVA more fun. The VFX tech artists implemented several improvements to gas clouds, including softer, blocky shadows to make them appear more natural. The Frankfurt-based team continued to work on gameplay effects and made improvements to the particle system. One of these improvements was proper depth-sorting for GPU particles. Previously, GPU particles were sorted with the newest spawned particle layered on top. This led to issues with how the particles moved in relation to the camera, making the effect appear inverted. Now the particles have proper depth sorting, this is no longer an issue.\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).\n\nMitarbeiter auf der ganzen Welt sammelten die notwendigen Informationen, um Ihnen diesen Fortschrittsbericht zur Verf\u00fcgung zu stellen. Die Intelligenz deutet darauf hin, dass wir Informationen \u00fcber Animationsverbesserungen, Phase zwei der Asteroiden-Sets und die Gefahren der Kombination von zu vielen K\u00f6pfen in einem DNA-System entdeckt haben.\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\nKI\nDer Bericht vom Oktober beginnt mit dem KI Character Combat Team, das Zeit damit verbrachte, \u00fcber das Zielen von NSCs nachzudenken. Sie vereinfachten die F\u00e4higkeit zu kontrollieren, ob und wann sie wollen, dass sich der Unterk\u00f6rper dreht, w\u00e4hrend er auf ein Ziel zielt, und verbesserten die Art und Weise, wie das Zielverfolgen funktioniert. Dadurch ist es einfacher zu bestimmen, wann die Bewegung langsam \u00fcberblenden oder schnell abbrechen soll. Sie beheben auch einen Look-Target-Synchronisationsfehler, der allgemeine Probleme verursacht. Auf der Verhaltensseite verbesserten sie die Deckungsauswahl im Kampf, indem sie neue M\u00f6glichkeiten zur Gewichtung der Deckungspositionen basierend auf der Zielrichtung einf\u00fchrten. NSCs k\u00f6nnen nun w\u00e4hlen, ob sie den vordefinierten Feuermodus einer Waffe verwenden oder aktiv Auto, Burst oder Einzelschuss w\u00e4hlen m\u00f6chten. Sie f\u00fcgten den Verhaltensweisen auch mehr wilde Linien und Geschmacksrichtungen hinzu, wie z.B. NSCs, die ein Ziel verspotten, bevor sie mit der Untersuchung beginnen.\n\nShip AI hat den ersten Durchgang seiner neuen 3D-Pfadfindungsfunktionalit\u00e4t in den Hauptgesch\u00e4ftsbereich der Spieleentwicklung verschoben. Dieser Ansatz basiert auf einer nicht-kanonischen A*-Implementierung, die das signed distance field (SDF) verwendet, um einen Pfad in einer 3D-Umgebung schrittweise zu berechnen. Derzeit werden Fortschritte bei der ersten Version der 3D ORCA-Implementierung erzielt und n\u00e4hern sich einer ersten funktionierenden Version.\n\nEine neue M\u00f6glichkeit f\u00fcr die Konstrukteure, ein Schiff einer \"Spline\" folgen zu lassen (ein Tunnel, der eine Schiffsbewegung und nicht eine vorgeschriebene Spur f\u00fchrt), wurde freigelegt. Zur Laufzeit passt die Berechnung die Tunnelgr\u00f6\u00dfe automatisch an die Umgebung und die vom SDF gemeldeten Informationen an. Sie haben auch neue Knoten hinzugef\u00fcgt, um die Soll-Distanz und den relativen Zustand des Fahrzeugs zu \u00fcberwachen und Entscheidungen anhand der gemeldeten Werte zu treffen.\n\nSocial AI hat die Funktion \"Usable Search\" optimiert und kann nun die Position von Usables auf dem Navmesh zwischenspeichern. Das bedeutet, dass sie nicht st\u00e4ndig die Zeit neu berechnen m\u00fcssen, in der ein Objekt an einem Ort statisch ist. Sie setzten auch die Vereinheitlichung von Operator- und generischen Sitzen fort, so dass Verhaltensweisen sie unabh\u00e4ngig von der H\u00f6he nutzen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDie Implementierung von generischen Anbietern wurde fortgesetzt, bei der Usables verwendet werden, die bestimmte Objekttypen \"bereitstellen\" oder \"akzeptieren\" k\u00f6nnen. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es Designern, viele verschiedene Objekttypen zu erstellen. Beispielsweise k\u00f6nnen Getr\u00e4nke-Barkeeper den G\u00e4sten anbieten. Sie arbeiten derzeit an der Patrouillenfunktionalit\u00e4t, die Wege f\u00fcr die KI definiert. Dieser Pfad enth\u00e4lt Informationen dar\u00fcber, welche Arten von Logik beim Auftreffen auf die verschiedenen Pfadknoten aktiviert werden m\u00fcssen.\n\nWas die Kerndienstleistungen betrifft, so verf\u00fcgt das Team nun \u00fcber Navmesh-Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Planetenstandorte und bewegt sich in Richtung einer dynamischeren Erstellung von Navigationsdaten auf Planetenoberfl\u00e4chen. Sie arbeiten auch an verschiedenen Bugfixes und Optimierungen, darunter das Multithreading der KI-Audiokomponente, damit sie Audioereignisse auf den Servern schneller verarbeiten k\u00f6nnen.\n\n\nAnimation\nIm Oktober entwickelte das Team Nahkampf- und Stealth-Takedown-Animationen, Effortbewegungssets und Reaktionsanimationen f\u00fcr NSCs, die keine Waffen im Lager haben. Sie machten auch Fortschritte bei Animationen f\u00fcr Drehb\u00fccher und Kinofilme.\nKunst (Charaktere)\nDie Arbeit des Art Teams im vergangenen Monat drehte sich haupts\u00e4chlich um Haare und beinhaltete die Fertigstellung zweier neuer Styles. Sie begannen auch, die Charakterkost\u00fcme, Accessoires und Gesichter zu aktualisieren.\nKunst (Umwelt)\nDie Archon Station entwickelte sich den ganzen Monat \u00fcber, wobei das Augenmerk auf die technischen Bereiche und die \"Arme\" der Station gerichtet war. Die Spieler werden durch mehrere verschiedene Archetypen reisen, wobei jeder einzelne sein eigenes Gef\u00fchl braucht. Auch die Comms-Arrays machten Fortschritte - die \"Helden\"-Station befindet sich in der Endphase der Entwicklung, kleinere Varianten folgen in K\u00fcrze. Der neue Asteroiden-Set, der in fr\u00fcheren Berichten erw\u00e4hnt wurde, erreichte Phase zwei. Als Erg\u00e4nzung zum Asteroiden-Set befindet sich ein Satz von Infrastrukturteilen in der Entwicklung, die durch fr\u00fchere Operationen\/Siedlungen zur\u00fcckgelassen wurden. Der Bausatz ist nicht nur optisch interessant, sondern gibt dem Flight Design Team auch interessante Formen und R\u00e4ume zur Arbeit. Mehrere Neuentwicklungen in der Beleuchtungstechnik f\u00fchrten dazu, dass auch bestimmte Bereiche verbessert wurden.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich kommen die Gaswolken gut voran, wobei neue Technologien und Beleuchtungswerkzeuge speziell f\u00fcr sie entwickelt wurden.\n\n\nKinematiken\nDas Cinematics-Team arbeitete an einem wichtigen visuellen Flow-Prototypen. Dies wird es dem Actor Feature Team erm\u00f6glichen, seine Arbeit auf abh\u00e4ngige Mechaniker auszurichten und anderen Teams zu zeigen, wie sich die Szene entwickeln wird. Sie haben auch die Pipeline der weiblichen Spieler getestet und sich auf einen bevorstehenden weiblich fokussierten Mo-Cap-Shoot vorbereitet. Die RTT-Pipeline wird immer h\u00e4ufiger eingesetzt, so dass die Filmdesigner neue Kameras f\u00fcr Flugsicherungssitze und andere Konsolen einbauten, um die Anrufe au\u00dferhalb des Cockpits zu verbessern. Mit dem Abschluss der Haarpipeline wurden die Frisuren f\u00fcr bestimmte Schl\u00fcsselpersonen aktualisiert. Das Cinematics-Team nimmt sie mit und zeigt dem Character-Team Work-Progress-Renderings von Sequenzen, damit sie sehen k\u00f6nnen, wie das neue und h\u00f6herdetaillierte Haar vor Ort aussieht. Sie bereiteten sich auch auf die Arbeit an einem gro\u00dfen EVA-Set-St\u00fcck vor.\n\n\nIngenieurwesen\nIm Vereinigten K\u00f6nigreich trug Engineering zur Verbesserung der Helmwechselwirkungen bei, einschlie\u00dflich des Aufsetzens, Ausziehens, Platzierens und Inspektierens. Sie konkretisierten sich auch und begannen mit der Implementierung der im September erarbeiteten Unterbrechungs- und Wiedereinsteiger-Technologie. Actor Animation hat umgebungsbasierte prozessuale Charakter\u00fcberlagerungen hinzugef\u00fcgt. Zum Beispiel lehnt sich ein Charakter in einer windigen Umgebung je nach Richtung und St\u00e4rke des Windes und bedeckt sein Gesicht.\n\nDas Schauspielerteam machte mehrere kleine Verbesserungen am Nahkampfsystem, darunter das Ausl\u00f6sen von Reaktionen bei lokalen und entfernten Kunden, das Hinzuf\u00fcgen von Kameraverwacklungen bei erfolgreichen Treffern, das Blockieren mit Messern, Sch\u00e4den und Ausdauerwirkungen sowie aktualisierte Animationen. Sie entwickelten auch das Temperatur-Statussystem, das es der Kleidung erm\u00f6glicht, isolierende Eigenschaften zu haben, indem sie Hypothermie- und Ersch\u00fctterungszust\u00e4nde hinzuf\u00fcgen.\n\nIn Frankfurt verbrachte das Team Zeit mit dem Physik-Proxy-Refaktor, einschlie\u00dflich der Unterst\u00fctzung der Stream-Integration. Sie setzten auch ihre Arbeit an der Simulation der Charakter- und Stoffweichk\u00f6rperphysik fort und f\u00fcgten dem planetarischen Wind Unterst\u00fctzung auf Physikebene hinzu.\n\nF\u00fcr den Renderer arbeiteten sie weiter an der neuen Grafikpipeline und dem Renderinterface (Gen12). Dazu geh\u00f6rten: ein verbessertes Renderpasshandling und die Einrichtung des Pipelinestatus, Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr die Berechnung, ein Pipeline-Teardown, verbesserte DXC-Kompatibilit\u00e4t f\u00fcr Shader, vereinfachtes Ressourcen-Layout, verbesserte Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr gepoolte Renderziele und Aufl\u00f6sungs\u00e4nderungen, Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr reflektierte Shader-Konstanten-Arrays und die Portierung von DOF auf das Renderpasssystem. Sie begannen auch mit der Entfernung des globalen Renderstatus.\n\nAuf der Planetenseite haben sie die Multi-Cascade-Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Gel\u00e4ndeh\u00f6henkarten \u00fcberarbeitet und erweitert, so dass abh\u00e4ngige Effekte sie besser f\u00fcr ihre eigenen Zwecke (z.B. Gel\u00e4ndeschatten) integrieren k\u00f6nnen, und an der Visualisierung von Cascade Debug gearbeitet, um es K\u00fcnstlern zu erm\u00f6glichen, wichtige H\u00f6henkarteneigenschaften effizient zu optimieren. In Bezug auf Planeten-Terrain-Schatten f\u00fcgten sie eine einfache Codeschnittstelle und gemeinsamen Shader-Code f\u00fcr die Anwendung auf der Clientseite hinzu, unterst\u00fctzten zeitliches Anti-Aliasing und erg\u00e4nzten die anf\u00e4ngliche Code- und Logikunterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr mehrere Kaskaden. Die Arbeiten am planetarischen Bodennebel wurden ebenfalls fortgesetzt. Dazu geh\u00f6rte das Anpassen des Codes an sehr gro\u00dfe Objekte, das Verbessern des Ausnahmebehandlers und das Hinzuf\u00fcgen von APIs zum asynchronen Erstellen eines Core Dumps, ohne den aufrufenden Prozess zu beeintr\u00e4chtigen. Dies wird haupts\u00e4chlich verwendet, um Momentaufnahmen des DGS-Prozesszustands im Falle von nicht schwerwiegenden Fehlern zu machen, um effizientes Debugging zu erm\u00f6glichen, ohne den Service zu unterbrechen und die Clients zu beeintr\u00e4chtigen (vorher war es zum Absturz gezwungen).\n\nF\u00fcr die Animation entwickelte das Team einen neuen Dual-Quaternion Skinning\/elastische Blend Wrap Deformer f\u00fcr die CPU- und GPU-Hautung. Sie haben auch die Tangentenrekonstruktion abgeschlossen - eine pixelgenaue Version f\u00fcr Software und Compute Skinning (sowohl Protos als auch Originalskins).\n\n\nGameplay-Geschichte\nDas Gameplay Story Team arbeitete im Oktober weiter an einer Reihe von Szenen, darunter auch an der Erstellung von mehreren f\u00fcr Kapitel f\u00fcnf, die Anfang des Jahres aufgenommen wurden. Sie arbeiteten auch weiterhin mit Design zusammen, um einen Prototyp zu erstellen, wie Spieler Szenen aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln unterbrechen. Mehrere Requisiten-Setups wurden fertiggestellt, darunter Cups, Utensilien, Datenpads, Mops und Eimer. Bestehende Szenen wurden \u00fcberpr\u00fcft, um sicherzustellen, dass die neuen Requisiten wie vorgesehen funktionieren. Sie stellen derzeit sicher, dass sie nahtlos mit dem neuen konsolentauglichen Verhalten arbeiten.\n\n\nLeveldesign\nDas Social Team verbrachte den Oktober damit, mit der Unterbrechung, dem Ausbruch und der Wiedereingliederung der im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnten Technologie zu arbeiten und sie von Fall zu Fall auf jede Erz\u00e4hlszene anzuwenden. Dies f\u00fchrt zu einer h\u00f6heren Treue und Immersion f\u00fcr die filmische Umsetzung der Story-Elemente. Sie arbeiten auch mit dem Social AI Team zusammen, um verschiedene Verhaltensweisen der Crew weiterzuentwickeln. Level Design (neben Art und AI) setzte sich mit den FPS-Intensivkapiteln fort und konzentrierte sich auf die Definition des systemischen Verhaltens, das die KI ben\u00f6tigt, um Umgebungen je nach Auslastung realistisch zu durchlaufen.\n\nDie Raum- und Luftkampfteams konzentrierten sich auch auf systemisches KI-Verhalten, wobei die Start- und Landeanlagen poliert wurden, um sie n\u00e4her an ihren Endzustand zu bringen. Das Tech Team hat einige der Mechaniken auf Prototyp-Ebene fertiggestellt, die zu mehreren FPS-starken Levels hinzugef\u00fcgt wurden.\n\n\nNarrativ\nDas Narrative Team setzte seine Fortschritte bei der Bew\u00e4ltigung des Textes im Spiel fort, dem die Spieler im Laufe des Spiels begegnen werden. Dies umfasst alles, von missionsspezifischen Informationen bis hin zu dem Text, der in einer bestimmten Umgebung \u00fcber einen Bildschirm scrollen kann. Zus\u00e4tzlich konsultierte Narrative mit UI Art \u00fcber Thematisierung f\u00fcr mehrere Gruppen und Organisationen, die in der Geschichte vorgestellt wurden, damit sie einen richtigen Branding-Pass erhalten k\u00f6nnen. Es wurde auch Zeit f\u00fcr die Vorproduktion einer Performance Capture Session aufgewendet, die f\u00fcr Anfang n\u00e4chsten Monats geplant war. Der Schwerpunkt dieser Sitzung liegt auf der Sammlung zus\u00e4tzlicher Aufnahmen von weiblichen Spielern, um sie weiter in die Parit\u00e4t mit dem m\u00e4nnlichen Spieler zu bringen, nachdem andere Abteilungen wie die Filmkunst erfolgreiche Tests mit den fr\u00fcheren erfassten Daten abgeschlossen haben.\nQA\nQA begann, den Subsumption Visualizer zu erlernen, um filmische Zwischensequenzen und Spieler-NPC-Interaktionen besser zu debuggen. Sie begannen mit der Entwicklung neuer kinofokussierter Testsuiten, die ihnen helfen sollen, die korrekte Wiedergabe von Cutscenes im Editor zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen. Die Tests der verschiedenen Wildlinien des Spiels wurden fortgesetzt und es wurde eine Dokumentation erstellt, um zu erkl\u00e4ren, wie diese Zwischensequenzen in Zukunft getestet werden sollten. Weitere Verbesserungen an den Usables gingen in die Game-Dev, die getestet werden, um sicherzustellen, dass die richtigen Animationen verwendet werden und dass die KI sie angemessen verwendet. Diese neuen Usables werden schlie\u00dflich der PU hinzugef\u00fcgt, wo sie Teil des regelm\u00e4\u00dfigen sozialen KI-Tests des Teams werden.\nTechnische Animation\nDas Tech Animation Team hat die Visio-to-Mannequin-Pipeline weiterentwickelt, um den Import von Zustandsmaschinen direkt nach Mannequin zu erleichtern, was viel Zeit spart. Sie arbeiteten auch mit den Requisiten und brauchbaren Teams an mehreren neuen und alten Usables, implementierten neue Animationen und stellten in Maya animationsreife Vorlagen f\u00fcr ein schnelleres Authoring zur Verf\u00fcgung. Au\u00dferdem wurde ein Socket-Additiv f\u00fcr die Pipeline geschaffen, um Animateuren die M\u00f6glichkeit zu geben, Requisiten zwischen verschiedenen Befestigungspunkten auf dem Charakterger\u00e4t auszutauschen. Sie untersuchten und beheben auch mehrere kleine Fehler in Waffeninhalten, Gebrauchsgegenst\u00e4nden, Filmen, Gameplay-Animationen, Requisiten und Design.\nTechnische Kunst\nLetzten Monat legte Tech Art den Grundstein f\u00fcr die Umwandlung aller T0-Heldenk\u00f6pfe in das DNA-System. W\u00e4hrend das DNA-System in erster Linie darauf ausgelegt war, die Mischung einzelner Gesichtsteile f\u00fcr die Gesichtsanpassung zu erm\u00f6glichen, sind weitere Vorteile der reduzierte Speicherbedarf und die M\u00f6glichkeit, einheitliche Anh\u00e4nge zwischen den K\u00f6pfen unabh\u00e4ngig von ihrer Form und ihrem Geschlecht zu teilen. Die Effizienzgewinne werden auch signifikant sein - die untergeordneten DNA-K\u00f6pfe verbrauchen zusammen nur einen Bruchteil mehr Speicher als Admiral Bishops Nicht-DNA-Kopf allein (eines der komplexesten Rigs). W\u00e4hrend diese neue Funktionalit\u00e4t in erster Linie wegen ihrer Effizienz implementiert wird, kann sie intern auch f\u00fcr die Gesichtsmischung genutzt werden. W\u00e4hrend der Tests stellte das Team fest, dass die Kombination von Teilen von Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill und John Rhys-Davies in einem Kopf zu \"interessanten\" Ergebnissen f\u00fchrte.\nBenutzeroberfl\u00e4che (UI)\nDas UI-Team konzentrierte sich darauf, den visuellen Stil f\u00fcr zwei wichtige Elemente des Spielerkits zu finalisieren - ein Visier mit neuem Look (was der Spieler aus seinem Helm sieht) und einen neuen Stil f\u00fcr das mobiGlas (insbesondere die lokale Umgebungskarte). Wenn die Konzepte fertig sind, werden sie funktionale Versionen im Spiel erstellen.\nVFX\nIn Gro\u00dfbritannien arbeiteten die VFX-K\u00fcnstler weiterhin an mehreren Orten und arbeiteten wie immer mit den Kunst- und Designteams zusammen. Sie halfen Design auch dabei, neue Ideen zu entwickeln, um das Durchqueren des Freiraums in EVA mehr Spa\u00df zu machen. Die VFX-Techniker haben mehrere Verbesserungen an Gaswolken vorgenommen, darunter weichere, blockige Schatten, um sie nat\u00fcrlicher erscheinen zu lassen. Das Frankfurter Team arbeitete weiter an Gameplay-Effekten und verbesserte das Partikelsystem. Eine dieser Verbesserungen war die richtige Tiefensortierung von GPU-Partikeln. Bisher wurden GPU-Partikel sortiert, wobei die neuesten Spawn-Partikel darauf geschichtet wurden. Dies f\u00fchrte zu Problemen bei der Bewegung der Partikel in Bezug auf die Kamera, so dass der Effekt invertiert erscheint. Jetzt, da die Partikel eine korrekte Tiefensortierung haben, ist dies kein Problem mehr.\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).\n\nOperatives around the world collected the intel needed to provide you with this progress report. Intelligence suggests we\u2019ve uncovered intel on animation improvements, phase two of asteroid sets, and the dangers of combining too many heads into a DNA system.\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\nAI\nOctober\u2019s report kicks off with the AI Character Combat Team, who spent time iterating on NPC aiming. They simplified the ability to control if and when they want the lower body turning while aiming at a target and improved the way aim-tracking works. This makes it easier to determine when the movement should blend slowly or snap quickly. They also fixed a look-target synchronization bug that was causing general issues. On the behaviors side, they improved cover selection during combat by introducing new ways to weight cover locations based on target direction. NPCs can now choose between using a weapon\u2019s predefined fire mode or actively selecting auto, burst, or single shot. They added more wild lines and flavor to the behaviors too, such as NPCs taunting a target before they start investigating.\n\nShip AI moved the first pass of their new 3D pathfinding functionality into the main game-development branch. This approach is based on a non-canonical A* implementation that uses the signed distance field (SDF) to incrementally compute a path in a 3D environment. Progress is currently being made on the first version of 3D ORCA implementation and is getting close to a first working version.\n\nA new way for the designers to request that a ship follow a \u2018spline\u2019 (a tunnel that guides a ship\u2019s movement rather than a prescriptive track) was exposed. At runtime, the calculation automatically adjusts the tunnel size based on the environment and the information reported by the SDF. They also added new nodes to monitor target distance and the vehicle\u2019s relative state and make decisions according to the reported values.\n\nSocial AI optimized the \u2018usable search\u2019 function and are now able to cache the location of usables on the navmesh. This means they don\u2019t have to constantly recalculate the time an object is static in one location. They also continued the unification of operator and generic seats so that behaviors can utilize them regardless of height.\n\nImplementation of generic vendors continued, which employs usables that can \u2018provide\u2019 or \u2018accept\u2019 specific object types. This allows designers to create many different object types. For example, drinks bartenders can offer to patrons. They\u2019re currently progressing on the patrol functionality that defines paths for AI to follow. This path will carry information on which types of logic to activate while hitting the different path nodes.\n\nRegarding core services, the team now have navmesh support on planetary locations and are moving towards a more dynamic creation of navigation data on planet surfaces. They\u2019re also working on different bug fixes and optimizations, including multithreading the AI audio component to enable them to process audio events quicker on the servers.\n\n\n\nAnimation\nIn October, the team developed melee and stealth takedown animations, effort-movement sets, and reaction animations for NPCs that aren\u2019t holding stocked weapons. They also made progress on animations for scripted events and cinematics.\n\nArt (Characters)\nThe Art Team\u2019s work last month predominately revolved around hair and included finishing two new styles. They also began updating character costumes, accessories, and faces.\n\nArt (Environment)\nArchon Station progressed throughout the month, with attention going to the engineering sections and \u2018arms\u2019 of the station. Players will travel through several different archetypes, with each one needing its own distinct feel. The comms arrays made progress too \u2013 the \u2018hero\u2019 station is in the final development stages, with smaller variants coming soon. The new asteroid set mentioned in previous reports reached phase two. To complement the asteroid set, a kit of infrastructure parts left behind by previous operations\/settlements is in development. Alongside being visually interesting, the kit gives the Flight Design Team interesting shapes and spaces to work with. Several new developments to lighting tech meant certain areas received improvements too.\n\nFinally, gas clouds are progressing well, with new tech and lighting tools being made specifically for them.\n\n\n\nCinematics\nThe Cinematics Team worked on an important visual flow prototype. This will allow the Actor Feature Team to align their work on dependent mechanics and show other teams how the scene will unfold. They also finished testing the female player pipeline and prepped for an upcoming female-focused mo-cap shoot. The comms RTT pipeline is being more widely used, so the cinematic designers dialed in new cameras for air traffic control seats and other consoles to improve non-cockpit calls. With the hair pipeline finalized, hairstyles for certain key characters were updated. The Cinematics Team takes them and shows work-progress-renders of sequences to the Character Team so they can see how the new and higher-detailed hair looks in situ. They also prepared for work on a big EVA set-piece.\n\n\n\nEngineering\nIn the UK, Engineering helped improve helmet interactions, including putting them on, taking them off, placing them somewhere, and inspecting them. They also fleshed out and began implementing the interrupt\/rejoin tech worked on in September. Actor Animation added environment-based procedural character overlays. For example, a character in a windy environment will lean depending on the direction and strength of the wind and cover their face.\n\nThe Actor Team made several small improvements to the close-combat system, including triggering reactions on both local and remote clients, adding camera shake on successful hits, blocking with knives, damage and stamina impact, and updated animations. They also evolved the temperature status system that allows clothing to have insulating properties, adding hypothermia and concussion statuses.\n\nIn Frankfurt, the team spent time on the physics proxy refactor, including stream integration support. They also continued work on character and cloth soft-body physics simulation and added physics-level support to planetary wind.\n\nFor the renderer, they continued to work on the new graphics pipeline and render interface (Gen12). This included adding: an improved render pass handling and pipeline state setup, support for compute, a pipeline teardown, improved DXC compatibility for shaders, simplified resource layout setup, improved support for pooled render targets and resolution changes, support for reflected shader constant arrays, and porting DOF to the render pass system. They global render state removal also began.\n\nPlanet-side, they refactored and extended multi-cascade support for terrain height maps so dependent effects can better incorporate it for their own purposes (such as terrain shadows), and worked on cascade debug visualization to allow artists to efficiently tweak important height map properties. Regarding planet terrain shadows, they added a simple code interface and shared shader code for the application on the client side, provided support for temporal anti-aliasing, and completed the initial code and logic support for multi cascades. Work on planetary ground fog continued too. This involved adjusting code to cope with very large objects, making exception handler improvements, and adding API to asynchronously create a core dump without affecting the calling process. This will be mainly used to take snapshots of the DGS process state in case of non-fatal errors for efficient debugging without interrupting its service and affecting clients (previously, it was forced to crash).\n\nFor Animation, the team created a new dual quaternion skinning\/elastic blend wrap deformer for CPU and GPU skinning. They also completed tangent reconstruction \u2013 a pixel perfect version for software and compute skinning (both protos and original skins).\n\n\n\nGameplay Story\nThe Gameplay Story Team continued to work on a range of scenes during October, including building several for chapter five that were captured earlier this year. They also continued to work with Design to prototype how players interrupt scenes from different angles. Several prop setups were finalized, including cups, utensils, datapads, mops, and buckets. Existing scenes were checked to make sure the new props worked as intended. They\u2019re currently making sure they work seamlessly with the new console usable behavior.\n\n\n\nLevel Design\nThe Social Team spent October working with the interrupt, break-out, and re-join tech mentioned last month, applying it to each narrative scene on a case-by-case basis. This gives a higher level of fidelity and immersion for the cinematic delivery of the story elements. They\u2019re also working with the Social AI Team to further develop various crew behaviors. Level Design (alongside Art and AI) continued with the FPS intensive chapters, focusing on defining the systemic behaviors needed for the AI to realistically traverse environments depending on their loadouts.\n\nThe space and dogfight teams also focused on systemic AI behaviors, with the take-off and landing systems receiving polish to get them closer to their final state. The Tech Team finalized some of the prototype level mechanics that were added to several FPS-heavy levels.\n\n\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative Team continued its progress on tackling the in-game text that players will encounter throughout the course of the game. This covers everything from mission specific information to the text that may scroll across a screen in a particular environment. Additionally, Narrative consulted with UI Art on theming for several groups and organizations featured in the story so that they can receive a proper branding pass. There was also time spent on pre-production for a performance capture session scheduled for early next month. This session\u2019s focus will be on gathering additional Female Player recordings to bring her further into parity with the Male Player now that other departments like cinematics have completed successful tests with the earlier data that was captured.\n\nQA\nQA started learning the subsumption visualizer to better debug cinematic cutscenes and player-NPC interactions. They began creating new cinematic-focused test suites that will help them check cutscenes are playing correctly in the editor. Testing of the game\u2019s various wild lines continued and documentation was made to explain how these cutscenes should be tested going forward. Further improvements to usables went into game-dev, which will be tested to ensure the correct animations are being used and that the AI is using them appropriately. These new usables will eventually be added to the PU, where they will become part of the team\u2019s regular social AI testing.\n\nTech Animation\nThe Tech Animation Team refined the Visio-to-Mannequin pipeline to make it easier to import state machines straight to Mannequin, which will save a lot of time. They also worked with the props and usable teams on several new and old usables, implementing new animations and providing animation-ready templates in Maya for quicker authoring. A socket addition to the pipeline was also created to give animators the possibility of swapping props around between different attach points on the character rig. They also investigated and fixed several small bugs in weapons content, usables, cinematics, gameplay animations, props, and design.\n\nTech Art\nLast month, Tech Art laid the foundation for converting all T0 hero character heads to the DNA system. While the DNA system was primarily designed to allow the blending of individual face parts for facial customization, other advantages are reduced memory footprint and the ability to share unified attachments between heads regardless of their shape and gender. The efficiency gains will be significant too \u2013 the lower-tier DNA heads combined consume only a fraction more memory than Admiral Bishop\u2019s non-DNA head alone (one of the most complex rigs). While this new functionality is being implemented primarily for its efficiency gains, it can be used internally for facial blending too. During testing, the team found that combining portions of Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, and John Rhys-Davies into one head produced \u201cinteresting\u201d results.\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nThe UI Team focused on finalizing the visual style for two important elements of the player\u2019s kit \u2013 a new-look visor (what the player sees from inside their helmet) and a new style for the mobiGlas (particularly the local area map). When the concepts are complete, they\u2019ll make functional versions in-game.\n\nVFX\nIn the UK, the VFX artists continued to work on several locations, collaborating as always with the art and design teams. They also helped Design to prototype new ideas to make traversing open space in EVA more fun. The VFX tech artists implemented several improvements to gas clouds, including softer, blocky shadows to make them appear more natural. The Frankfurt-based team continued to work on gameplay effects and made improvements to the particle system. One of these improvements was proper depth-sorting for GPU particles. Previously, GPU particles were sorted with the newest spawned particle layered on top. This led to issues with how the particles moved in relation to the camera, making the effect appear inverted. Now the particles have proper depth sorting, this is no longer an issue.\n\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":10,"created_at":"2019-11-13T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"6 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 21:46:58","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":17348,"next_id":17350}}